Microsoft's Rush To Xbox 2 A Danger? 676
Game Boy writes "Brit games business site Gamesindustry.biz has posted a fascinating editorial asking whether Microsoft is about to shoot itself in the foot over Xbox 2 by rushing to launch the console years ahead of its rivals' next-generation platforms. It's a pretty good analysis of how Microsoft is thinking about this marketplace, and why they could be pretty drastically wrong - I work at a major games publisher, and a lot of people here are worried about exactly the same things, but it's rare to see anyone actually discussing them openly. Xbox has done pretty well so far, but Microsoft could be heading for a disaster that even Bill's billions won't dig them out of..."
I'm confused... (Score:4, Insightful)
Poor sales/titles (Score:5, Insightful)
On a side note, I couldn't believe my eyes the other day when I saw a brand new X-Box on sale for $99.
So much for cross-console games? (Score:2, Insightful)
It indeed could be a danger (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The article does point out (correctly) that Microsoft's idea of first to market being key to the next generation is not supported by what happened to the Dreamcast console, which was first to market.
2) Even if Microsoft does come out with the Xbox 2 sooner it would have to be light years ahead of the PS2 to get an audience, because both the XBox and the Gamecube are better machines in terms of graphics capacity now, and that is not enough to overcome Sony's dominance
3) I find the generation counting (5th generation -- since NES) offensive. What happened to Atari 2600/Intellivision/Coleco Vision?
xbox2 != Sega Dreamcast. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft hasn't displayed the same hubris ( kind of a shock ) and it's probably a 50/50 chance of success. It would be made better with backwards compatibility, but i don't know if thats a feature of the xbox 2
Halo 2? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the point. The article argues that Microsoft's rush to be "first to market" ignores the next-generation R&D going on in the industry.
Backwards compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
BUT!
If the Xbox2 is *not* backwards compatible, then yes, this could be a problem. If I have a choice between Xbox 1 with a library of games, or the Xbox2 with a few new games, or the PS2 with a ton of new and old games (with the promise that the upcoming PS3 will play all of my current games), then it's going to be a no-brainer for the majority of people out there. And all it will do is change the Xbox divivion from losing over $500 million to one losing more.
Even Microsoft's investors can't stand a division losing money forever, no matter how much Windows and Office brings in.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You don't understand the power of the Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, with the XBox, the Microsoft has been screaming "JUMP!" at the games industry for over a year. The industry has remained unconcerned. Looks like Microsoft's treating an industry it's trying to dominate with one it's already dominated.
Re:Microsoft needs to know their place (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that really true? I would imagine the brand name of Microsoft is extremely strong in popular culture. It strikes me that Microsoft's brand may have a very poor image here at Slashdot, but Slashdot doesn't exactly equate to popular culture.
If the Xbox2 is cheaper to produce!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if the Xbox2 is cheaper to produce, and does not bleed money with every console sold, then it would certainly be in Microsoft's advantage to change over as quickly as possible.
However, if it's still a money pit, then there is absolutely NO reason to switch!
Re:No, no, no (Score:1, Insightful)
If the Xbox 2 is a better product, coming out early will be just fine. MS can take a profit hit on the Xbox 2 or market the pants off of Sony if they really wanted to win this one.
Re:No, no, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Poor sales/titles (Score:2, Insightful)
Or did were you talking about upcoming weak titles like Halo 2, Mech Assault 2, Doom 3, Fable, or Jade Empire? The problem, here, that KotOR is the only one of these titles that isn't a finger-twitcher shoot-em-up (or, okay, kick-em-up, in the case of Jade Empire).
For gamers who simply have itchy fingers that need scratching, really, any platform will suffice.
For gamers who actually value things like story and strategy, the XBox is simply inadequate. Unless the "Story Mode" on Kakuta Chojin really does it for you
That might further cut into ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, no, no (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, no, no (Score:2, Insightful)
CDs eventually supplanted the vinyl records in the marketplace, but it took a considerable time to do so because of the capital investment consumers had in both the playback equipment and the records themselves.
The majority of people only bought CD players when there were a sufficient quantity of new titles to play on them to make it seem worthwhile.
If Microsoft cannot produce a large quatity of new and superior titles being first to market with the platform will be meaningless.
So you're both right.
KFG
Re:backfire, well we'll fire back! (Score:5, Insightful)
The PS2 had two major things going for it at the time. It was backwards compatible with the very large PS1 game catalog. It was backward compatible with the PS1 controllers. And it could play DVD movies. When it came out, the PS2 cost as much as many low end DVD players.
So I could either buy a Dreamcast. It will only play games. Or I could wait and buy a PS2 and have it do double duty as a DVD player.
Re:backfire, well we'll fire back! (Score:1, Insightful)
Look at the numbers from the SEC filings. Nintendo is turning a profit, and so is Sony. If they are selling their systems at a loss(and neither has admitted to doing so for more than brief periods of time) they're making it up on game sales. Microsoft isn't.
Hell, they(as well as Nintendo) are even on track to selling as many units as the SNES/Genesis/N64(30/25 million) did by the end of the current generation and they still haven't made one red cent of profit.
The only explanation for this is that they can't make money off of the games.
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly that could help. But, honestly, I think one of Microsoft's major problems is simply cultural. The status quo looks like this:
1. The majority of titles worth playing are made in Japan.
2. Japan's business climate is still exclusionary and very difficult for foreigners to navigate.
You'll notice that the XBox has no trouble snatching up titles from companies like Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take 2 games, which is HQ'ed in New York.
But, you know, I'm a big fan of Koei games, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition. As far as I know, Koei games have been on every single Nintendo, Sega and Sony platform. Suddenly, RTK9 comes out, and as an XBox owner, I'm out of luck.
I do not think that breaking Sony's hold on many Japanese game developers is going to be an easy task for Microsoft. Companies that look like eight-hundred-pound gorillas in America often simply can't leverage their massive finances to their advantage overseas - e.g., read up on Coke and Pepsi's frustration in trying to take the middle eastern markets.
Makes me shudder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Such an "innovation" introduced to the console is a double edged sword. I'd advise against going that route myself as it would enable all that is bad and wrong about the proprietary software world (led by Microsoft) to infect the console market.
I haven't owned a console in my adult life (although I was quite a fan of the Colecovision), so maybe my perspecive is skewed. However, don't most people buy consoles because they want to play games with a high entertainment value and great sound and graphics without the troubles and complexity involved with PCs? I'd say most people with consoles also own PCs, and if it was just a matter of wanting to play games then the market for consoles wouldn't be nearly as large as it is today--most people would play on the PC, perhaps electing to equip their PCs with TV-out for big-screel livingroom experience.
I figure if you have to worry about buying a flash upgrade CD every few weeks or months or having to use your x-box live subscription to run "x-box update" regularly because the product was slapped together and rushed to market to beat the competition then you might as well stick with your PC. The last thing a kid needs to worry about is having his x-box turned into a spamming zombie because he forgot to load in the upgrade CD before connecting to his buddy for network play.
Re:Halo 2? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft considered Bungie, at that time the mac-gaming comunity family jewels, a goose with golden eggs, hoping for games that would be as ground breaking on consoles as on Mac.
Unfortunately, Halo, while a very good game, is no where revolutionary. And with your crown jewels only pumping out 1 or 2 games every 3 years, you really can't impress the audience.
IMHO, microsofts biggest mistake is NOT bribing the developers enough. They should have thrown TONS of money to the game industry instead of the hardware industry. Make contests "coolest game wins $1.000.000 (ONE MILLION DOLLARS)" and shit like that.
well, i guess they never understood the software market anyway, which is understandable if you've ever only knew one market position (monopoly)
Exactly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sega screwed everyone first, then was tagged as a weak company, and everyone knew it. They could have come out with a console 50 times better than anyone else's, and they still would have failed, because nobody believed they would be around next month.
If you knew Mercedes was going broke, would you buy a Mercedes? Of course not, you'd buy a Lexus or a Beamer or something else equally silly and ostentatious.
Everyone knows Microsoft is going to be around, and they've already shown extreme patience in this market. So there is no risk buying their new console.
Which is why the whole Sega analogy is dumb, as the AC points out.
Not waving but trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
I may be getting into a habit of replying to you (i.e. a well-known troll [google.com]), but I saw your posting got "5, Informative", and I can't hold back. :-)
It's not just the technology (i.e. engine/framework APIs) that's the problem. The problem is game production. And the problem is that game production is not just about technology. It's about game design, asset production, and so on.
Producing assets that will work fine on a GC, PS2, but hey, also on an Xbox 2 (and take advantage of the Xbox 2) is not as easy as 're-exporting'.
As for different tech capabilities limiting game design, look at the complaints about Thief: Deadly Shadows, where PC users feel the game (level design/size) was compromised to make it work ok on the XBox. I keep seeing comments on the web from people who feel that games out on PC and console suffer on the PC, because the levels expansiveness, draw distance, etc, have to be compromised to make it work on the consoles (which have much less RAM, and cpu/gfx hardware is for many tasks not as capable). These problems, despite what armchair developers like to think, are hard problems to solve in a real shipping game. That's why a lot of developers don't want to take them on. Making a game is hard enough already. Hence some of the views expressed in the article in question.
However, your point about ease of programming of PS n versus Xbox n is right on the mark. (Presumably due to the same reason that a broken clock is right twice a day...)
Re:Pretty well? (Score:1, Insightful)
Well not compared to PS1. After all, Sony came from not being in the market to market leader with their first attempt. Sure, they didn't have the same stigma that Microsoft does, but for the market that's being sold into (general consumer) that stigma is not nearly as big of an issue.
The fact that the Xbox even made it to the "big three" (PS2 and Gamecube being the other two members) is a testament to its success
Being third in a three horse (well even four if you count Dreamcast) is not anything to crow about.
Considering where Microsoft started (scratch),
You act like they created the design from scratch. XBox is a modded PC, they didn't start anywhere near from scratch. AAMOF, their whole strategy counted on leveraging existing technologies (PC's and Windows).
They might not have done as bad as many people were thinking/hoping, but given what they started with and the resources they have to apply, probably the best that can be said is that they did a good job of not utterly failing.
What do you mean "Danger"?!? What BS (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, this is just another case of someone trying to point out how Microsoft is wrong so that this person can show how smart he is.
The simple fact is this: Someone is going to be the first mover. I didn't hear anyone complain when PS2 went into production. The fact is that they were backwards compatible with PS1 which was considered revolutionary at the time. If PS3 were the first movers, do you think these same people would be complaining that it would be too hard to handle both PS2 and PS3 at the same time? No.
They are going to be first movers, and yes, people are going to be taking advantage of this. I will probably buy an X-box 2, if it is better. The games will be there, and if the software shop is good enough, Microsoft will PAY them to develop for X-box2, so don't worry about them.
I haven't heard that X-box 2 won't be compatible, so unless they are really stupid, they won't need to worry about compatibility issues.
I think what they need to do is:
1) keep the hard drive. The main reason why I buy games for X-box when multiple versions are available is because the hard drive makes saving and accessing games so much faster, and when you are playing things over and over again, you don't have to wait for the damn memory card to write.
2) Make the console smaller and lighter. It is a brick, and it's too big and hella ugly. I guess if they want to make it a PVR as well, then it will need to be bigger and heavier, but maybe they should use laptop technology to make it more user friendly.
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
If a console has no compelling exclusive games, people will not buy it. In terms of the TurboGrafx, it wasn't just compelling software, but also a question of mascots... and Bonk (the caveman) vs. Mario, Link, etc. (on the Nintendo side) vs. Sonic (on the Sega side of things) meant bad things for NEC.
MS is in the same boat as NEC was. No, they don't need a mascot for the console - the PlayStation and PlayStation2 proved that wrong. Nowadays you need compelling franchises, and the Xbox only can build off of Halo and KOTOR right now... and both of those are available in other ways. Whereas you'll have to completely undress to count on your fingers, toes and nether regions to add up all of the compelling franchises the PS2 has on its platform.
SO, using that as the argument's basis: an upgradable platform is nice, it's cool, all of us at /, would humbly approach it and fawn over it and its capability. But if it doesn't have the games that people buy, only the guys interesting in modding it are going to buy it.
Re:Xbox has NOT done pretty well so far (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, no, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the majority of titles worth playing for people with Japanese game fetishes =P.
Here's what I've played in the last year:
- Legacy of Kain: Defiance
- Beyond Good and Evil
- Morrowind
- P.N. 03
- Homeworld 2
- Ico
- F-Zero GX
Here's what I have lined up for the next few months:
- Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
- Dungeon Siege + Expansion
I could three games out of that lot that were made in Japan. The Japanese certainly can make an awesome game, but there are plenty of excellent titles coming out of the West too.
Re:No, no, no (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a poor example. GTA Vice City took well over a year to hit the Xbox after the initial PS2 release. Sony has GTA San Andreas locked up on the PS2 next. That's not a success. I won't even go into details about Manhunt, yet another title from American company Rockstar that debuted on the PS2 first (before the Xbox). If Microsoft wants to beat fellow monopolist Sony, then it needs to start on a buying binge of American and European software companies. Of course, it would be best to spin off their Xbox division (and mix the PC gamers division with it too) and give it a chunk of that $60 billion in the bank thereby they wouldn't trigger anti-trust issues in the US and the EU. But too much hubris in Redmond will prevent that from happening.
Re:No, no, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Your stats are flawed. You didn't count pay-per-view (PPV) revenues nor broadcast network and cable deals. How many times do you see "Deep Impact" on broadcast or cable compared to Amageddon? You don't. You listed rentals, but not actual DVD/VHS sales. And with DVD sales, you'd have to include Buena Vista stats as well as Criterian Collection Edition stats too. There is no question which one made more money.
Re:Pretty well? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Great" is in quotes because that is subjective.
Re:doesn't matter (Score:1, Insightful)
Real life happens, yes. So suck it up, be a man, and replay your previous 5 minutes of gameplay when real life stops intruding later.
Stop being a fscking drama queen. It's a game. It's not a quest to discover the meaning of life, where 5 minutes counts since it'll take you your entire lifetime to uncover it.
Besides, you'd just spend those 5 minutes whining about some other equally meaningless thing anyway.
Of what? A good example of a game that shipped far before it was actually ready to be shipped? Yes, I agree.
Re:Halo 2? (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember when I first heard about the purchase of Bungie and was terribly disappointed. You see, there was a lot of hype about how cool Halo would be even before the purchase. But before the purchase it was supposed to be a really cool PC game. After the purchase, it would be an XBox title. And it IS revolutionary. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark notwithstanding, Halo is the first wildly successful FPS on a console. Before Halo, FPS fanboys wouldn't even consider a console. With Halo, you practically had to have an XBox if you were an FPS kind of guy.
No, the acquisition of Bungie was brilliant. Now, the purchase of Rare is a whole 'nother thing...
Re:No, no, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Just look at all the EA games and series that are currently on PS2 (some of which are also in some cases xbox/gc/PC) and think about how bad it would be for SONY if those were xbox only.
The other advantage is that hopefully EA would start making better games (say what you like about MS, they make/publish some fun games, zoo tycoon for example) instead of "yet another WW2 first person game".
Oh and further to that, if it was possible, they should also buy Square Enix (now that would REALLY hurt SONY)
Re:No, no, no (Score:2, Insightful)
MS should do this (Score:3, Insightful)
2.Have it so that it has graphics power and hardware better than the PS2/XBOX/GC
3.Implement strong copy protection (for example, have all code encrypted with the decryption being done by circutry thats either in the same plastic package as the CPU, that would probobly thwart most people, even better is if its a public key algorithim so that you need the MS only private key to do anything, remember XBOX private signing key has yet to be leaked/cracked/brute-forced/whatever)
4.Give away the devkits/licences/whatever and simply change the system so that the only thing developers have to pay to MS is a per-unit royalty for every copy that is manufactured
Because they would be first to market and they would have the most powerfull hardware and a lot less up-front costs for developers wanting to produce a game, it would make xbox2 more attractive to developers.
An even better idea would be to offer even further incentives for any developer that will sign on to only produce games for the Microsoft platform (XBOX2) and not for SONY or Nintendo platforms (PS3 or Gamecube 2)
Fact is, if microsoft can get critical mass of developers (particularly if they get exclusitivity), everyone will be forced to buy XBOX if they want the good stuff.
The same thing happened with the origonal PlayStation way back when (SONY offered a better deal than either SEGA or Nintendo were prepeared to offer and got key companies like EA and Square to sign on as a result)
Re:Halo 2? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, you're neglecting that Bungie was a good acquisition, and this is why...
Not because it did good things for the XBox game library, but because it totally destroyed what was left of the Macintosh game library...