E3 Power Rankings, Probably Moving Next Year

The Escapist takes a crack at ascribing 'power rankings' to this year's E3 players. Microsoft, EA, and Irrational are in the top three spots, with Bethesda and the newly-employed Peter Moore rounding out the top five. From the site's commentary on Microsoft: "Despite the lawsuits, the man with the biggest pockets earns the top slot by a fair margin. Microsoft has cleaned up on big-name exclusives and is slowly but surely building up Games For Windows as a brand. However, what really does it for Microsoft is Fallout 3, Halo 3, Mass Effect and BioShock. If one of those doesn't sell you a buggy, overheating, now-under-warranty Xbox 360, nothing will. Their upcoming billion-dollar 360 repair costs might dethrone them sooner than later, though." Meanwhile, the rumour is going around that LA won't be the site of the event next year.

Re:360's problem, or a narrow FPS market

[Aladrin]

"you care nothing for casual gamers"

Yeah, because XBox Live Arcade is for hardcore gamers. -roll eyes-

I just looked through the games list on EBGames.com to see how things stack up for boxed games. The 360 has a ton of shooters and action games, and so-so amount of other games. So then I looked at the PS3 and PS2. Surprise, surprise... The same thing. Maybe not -quite- as thick on shooters, but the actions games are there in full force. I'm including both of those because GTA/etc are considered Action. (Because they are not strictly first-person, I guess.)

Don't let Slashdot spin let you think that all games on ANY console are of 1 genre. It's not even close to that.

Re:360's problem, or a narrow FPS market

[drewmca]

I agree with this. Everyone is criticizing Microsoft and Sony for failing to capture the casual gamer. At the same time, they're lauding the Wii for succeeding. But they fail to realize that one of the main reasons the Wii is doing so well is because the casual gamer doesn't want to spend a lot of money on something that they treat, well, casually. The price point is the big thing with the Wii, once you get past the novelty hook that puts it on so many news shows.

But does the casual gamer want to spend $50 a game? Probably not. Casual gaming will be mainly filled out by low cost games, via things like PSN, Live Arcade, and the Virtual Console. With that in mind, Microsoft arguably has one of the most attractive lineups for casual gamers out there, even exceeding Nintendo's. Casual gamers are exactly who games like Bomberman, Uno, Zuma, Catan, Poker, etc, are aimed at. Cheap titles that can be played for short periods of time and sometimes shared with friends. Sony is starting to catch up with PSN but it doesn't look like they're getting as broad a portfolio of supposedly casual games. They're continuing to play the "hardcore" card. And Nintendo, strangely, is actually currently a bit more "hard-core gamer" focused in its online initiative, given that most of its titles are old Nintendo games that only nostalgia fans would be interested in (believe me, I've tried playing them and most just don't hold up).

The shame is that Microsoft is still priced out of the casual gamer's market with the console itself. Once the 360 comes down to a mass market price, they may be a bit more capable of capturing the casual gamer market than people have been giving them credit for.