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XBox (Games)

Game Industry Experts Discuss Xbox 2 49

Posted by Zonk from the the-past-is-doomed-to-repeat-itself? dept.
Alan Wong writes "Taken from the latest issue of Xbox Nation magazine, 1UP.com has posted a feature entitled Doing The Right Thing, where eleven industry insiders discussed what it would take for Microsoft to make the next Xbox a success. Among the panel members were Nolan Bushnell, Trip Hawkins, Steven Kent, Bioware's Greg Zeschuk."
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Game Industry Experts Discuss Xbox 2 More

Game Industry Experts Discuss Xbox 2

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  • "Among the panel members were Nolan Bushnell... Who?

    ...Trip Hawkins... Who?

    ...Steven Kent... Who!?

    ...Bioware's Greg Zeschuk." Oh yeah, Greg. I know him... oh wait no I don't.

  • what it would take for Microsoft to make the next (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dmayle ( 200765 ) * on Saturday October 02, 2004 @02:42PM (#10414972) Homepage Journal

    what it would take for Microsoft to make the next Xbox a success

    Come on... Disclaimer: I have never owned an Xbox (I bought a PS2 a year after it came it, and a Gamecube shortly after that. After selling them both when I moved, I bought another PS2, and will buy the gamecube again, as well, but used this time.)

    I mention the above, because it's plain to see that the Xbox is already a success. By market standards, they're in an incredible place. (Um.. TurboGrafx, anyone... Or N-Gage?) Sure, they're not the number one player, but coming from nowhere, they've made themselves into a contender, and that's a success as far as I can see.

    They've taken one portion of the market, and done it better than anyone else, and that's the 'net connection. Anyone who has used the PS2 network adapter (as I have) has seen that it's a pale comparison to Xbox live.

    If Microsoft wants to succeed, all they have to do is keep doing what they've been doing well, and make sure to continue pushing out good games.

    Nintendo has historically pushed out some of the best games, but limited to mostly first and second-parties. Sony has managed to have the most games, with the few gems spread throughout the abundance overcoming all the other really crappy games, and Microsoft nailed the online market.

    Since the online market is going to do nothing but grow, they're already in a good position for the future...

    • Re:what it would take for Microsoft to make the ne (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bigman2003 ( 671309 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @06:57PM (#10416689) Homepage
      I am biased, because I am a big Xbox fan...but...

      Most of the excitement I see around consoles currently, is around the Xbox. The PS2 is starting to look really bad lately, in comparison to Xbox games. The Gamecube has the whole on-line vaccuum which many Nintendo fans say is no big deal. Because they don't understand why there is excitement around on-line gaming. (Trust me, there is)

      I was recently at a professional conference at Purdue University. (No, this was not for students, but for technical professionals) The agenda had 'game night' listed for 3 of the nights. I had no idea what it would be- charades, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey...who knows. Imagine my happy surprise when I walked in the room and saw 4 Xboxes connected via System Link and projected onto big screens. We played for 2 or 3 hours every night, and people who weren't even videogame fans got into the action.

      I really don't think people would have/could have done this with the other consoles. This type of technology is what is making the Xbox 'cool' right now. When I have videogame neophytes (or even PS2/Gamecube owners who aren't familiar with the Xbox) over to play some games, they are usually blown away by Xbox Live. "These are REAL people?" they say over and over into the microphone...(sullying my gamertag while doing it).

      The better technology built into the Xbox is finally becoming more important, now that people see that all 3 consoles can play games. But the Xbox can save more games, play your own music, play on-line, download new content, system-link...

      Hopefully the next Xbox pushes the envelope a little bit further, so games are still exciting 3 years after the launch of the console.

      Because when I play on a PS2 or Gamecube, I think that just playing 'standard' console games is a real snore-fest.

      • Imagine my happy surprise when I walked in the room and saw 4 Xboxes connected via System Link and projected onto big screens. We played for 2 or 3 hours every night, and people who weren't even videogame fans got into the action.

        I really don't think people would have/could have done this with the other consoles.

        Actually, this could have been done with a Gamecube and network adapters. Mario Kart DD multiplayer is a hell of a lot of fun.

        I have all three consoles. For me what makes the XBox different

        • Yes, you're right- Mario Kart Double Dash is a good LAN game.

          And when you're done with that- you can play Kirby's Air Ride and 1080- those last two only allow for 4 players.

          So how long would we really want to keep playing Mario Kart Double Dash?

          Of course, the only reason you would be playing it at all, is that you can't run Burnout 3 on the Gamecube...
          • "you can't run Burnout 3 on the Gamecube..."

            And that certainly isn't our fault as Gamecube owners.
            EA fucked us, hard.
            I was all set to pre-order it as I have loved burnout 1&2 on the Cube.
            Now I have the choice of buing a new (old one died) PS2 for a crappy Burnout (if it is anything like how 2 was developed) or buy a Xbox.
            I'm sorry but as good as burnout is I cant justify buying even a used xbox for just 1 game as noting else on the X-box realy makes me want to own one.

    • Re:what it would take for Microsoft to make the ne (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @07:22PM (#10416821) Homepage Journal
      " mention the above, because it's plain to see that the Xbox is already a success. By market standards, they're in an incredible place. (Um.. TurboGrafx, anyone... Or N-Gage?) Sure, they're not the number one player, but coming from nowhere, they've made themselves into a contender, and that's a success as far as I can see."

      What a lot of Slashdotters don't know is that it's okay to not be in first place in the games market. A lot of people say the Nintendo 64 failed because the PS sold more units. Um, Nintendo sold 30 million N64's along with millions of software they produced. I'm surprised Nintendo doesn't have a McDuckian Money Bin on their property.
  • N'Gai Croal
    General Editor
    Newsweek Magazine
    N'Gai Croal lives in Brooklyn, NY.

    Why is a general editor of a non-video game focused magazine commenting on this? If he was the editor of say, GMR, I'd give him some slack, but Newsweek?

  • Split focus w/ console and handheld systems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrgreen4242 ( 759594 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @03:05PM (#10415151)
    There was an interesting question in there about wether Sony and Nintendo's 'split focus' on home and portable systems is something that would help the next Xbox. Now, I think that this might effect the Sony v. MS in MS's favor, as the PSP is goign to be fighting an uphill battle in the handheld arena. This might draw some resources away from the PS3.

    However, if the DS is a success I think that it could give Nintendo the edge it needs to take the lead over MS in North America (the only place the XBox is beating the GC in sales) and help it maintain and widen it's lead in the world. With it's low price of entry (especially by the time the next round of consoles are released), it's unique data entry, ample screen space, and wireless networking, the DS could actually suceed in the handheld/console connectivity segment that the GBA, let be honest, failed in.

    Anyways, if there are a few million DS's in the market by the time the GC2 launches, and they include wireless connectivity between them (here's an idea: give the GC2 a built in ethernet port AND a wireless adapter and have all GC2s function as an AP for DS's) right off the bat (in terms of having games that give a truly usefull feature when used w/ a GC2 and DS link at launch) it could be what spurs those DS owners to choose the next GC over the Xbox2.

    Or I could be wrong, it happens.

    • >This might draw some resources away from the PS3.

      What resources? I can't understand what you mean. For financial merit to have PSP alongside PS line is, you can hedge the resources between multiple platforms to reduce the entire risk, as with Nintendo case. Until now, SCE has relied on the sole PlayStation platform, but it has PS/PSX/PSP lines. Next, for technical merit, as SCE has its own fabs to produce chips (unlike other fabless Nintendo/Microsoft that rely on NEC/TSMC), you can share those fabs am
      • What resources? I can't understand what you mean.

        There are lots of resources that the Sony games division would need to split. Off the top of my head, I would say advertising would be a big one. Also, the PSP is a similar enough piece of hardware that the PS3 and the PSP could concievabley be competing for exclusive games. By this I mean that if all the PSP games are just ports of PS2/3 games there isn't much incetive to have both. On the other hand, developers may not want to comit to do an exclusive tit

        • I'm willing to wager that only a very small percentage of Xbox owners own a GBA, and those that do probably don't give a crap about linking them. I personally know about 15 people with Xbox's, and not a one of them owns a Gameboy. The Xbox currently has something though, that Nintendo systems probably won't ever have again for the adult market, which is the 'coolness' factor. The fact is, that Nintendo and Microsoft only really get along because they target totally different age groups, and it's likely to s
          • Now I may not know what "cool" is anymore but at 31 I think most of the Gamecube (and PSX/PS2) games I own and play are cool.
            Sounds to me like you buy into that whoe x-treme marketing "edgy" thing they try to use as cool. I think Sega used to do this as well.
            I always thought console gaming was about having fun and enjoying the games, not being a "cool" individual, just like everyone else.
            If you like games buy whatever console you like based on the games it offers. And for god sake dont send you kid to coll

  • Launch Early? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Saturday October 02, 2004 @04:34PM (#10415767) Homepage Journal
    The experts seem to be pushing for an early launch, which seems strange to me.

    Microsoft have unique levels of flexibility on their launch date - they can simply wait a bit and up the specs of the machine as their off-the-shelf parts fall in price.

    If they go early, they have lower specs, less software, and less time to polish that software, and they will be up against people's perception of how good the '1000x more powerful than PS2' PS3 will be rather than the actual device.

    If they go for the same day as Sony, they can use the cash mountin to outspend Sony on marketing and to go $10 cheaper than Sony.

    If they go late, they can out-spec Sony.
    • however, powerful specs don't really push well for an early launch date.

      not to mention that such dates probably are dependant on parts suppliers as well(and of those i'm thinking the cpu provider especially being not so flexible..).
  • Going by other murmurings and apparent leaks, the Xbox 2 will be based around a customised 3.5 GHz Power PC CPU, including 128bit vector processing units. This architecture is much more effective than x86 for raw processing.

    The interview talks of a sensible price being $299 or even $199, with subscription services providing a subsidy.

    This (provided one can bypass whatever DRM lockdown is slapped on), could make the Xbox 2 a very cheap way of doing high performance clustered computing.

    Alex
    So in summary (t

    • Re:Linux on Xbox 2, cheap supercomputing (Score:4, Interesting)

      by unclethursday ( 664807 ) on Sunday October 03, 2004 @07:37AM (#10419158)
      Going by other murmurings and apparent leaks, the Xbox 2 will be based around a customised 3.5 GHz Power PC CPU

      Which means years before release, right now. IBM has hit a wall, for the time being, at 2.5 GHz, much like Intel has hit a similar wall at around 3.6 GHz.

      Otherwise, we'd be seeing (or at least hearing about) the 3.0 GHz and 3.5 GHz G5's in Apple PowerMacs soon. And Jobs admitted that Apple and IBM weren't able to hit the 3.0 GHz mark on the G5 just yet back at the WWDC in June, even though both companies had hoped to have the 3.0 GHz G5's out in the PowerMacs before the WWDC.

      Initial rumors about 3.5 GHz PowerPC chips are fine and dandy... but, as of right now, IBM simply can't produce them. If the Xbox 2 goes with the PowerPC architecture, it might be at the 2.0-possibly as high as 3.0 GHz mark, depending on the price of the chips and the rest of the system components.

      • Initial rumors about 3.5 GHz PowerPC chips are fine and dandy... but, as of right now, IBM simply can't produce them. If the Xbox 2 goes with the PowerPC architecture, it might be at the 2.0-possibly as high as 3.0 GHz mark, depending on the price of the chips and the rest of the system components.

        Interesting, I wasn't aware of PowerPC having trouble with clockspeed ramp up, although it stands to reason.

        My point was more that due to the subsidies & economies of scale the Xbox could make a very cheap

      • I think you will see those higher speed chips in the IBM pSeries hardware before you see it in an Apple. Not to dis Apple users but IBM usually tests and sets out the basic design before doing the custom job (because the chips apple wants are different from a stock PPC) for Apple.
  • Why did he even bother to participate? He had one sentence in three pages.
  • Why this puff piece was posted is beyond me. I am planning on opening a gaming cafe in the next 3 months. This menas everything about gaming interests me these days. I want to know what is popular now and what may be popular in the future and why. Perhaps some discussion of market share or sales statistics. How about details on hardware specs or online services. Maybe information on their relationships with resellers and publishers. All this article does is try to convince people that Microsoft is still
  • I can't believe this was not even mentioned! I would say backwards compatibility with Xbox titles is going to be an extremely important thing that Sony has a great track record on.
  • There's a lot of talk about MS releasing early to gain a foothold. There's a side of this whole thing that makes me think this is a bad move. Besides the fact that a year early release won't necessarily help that much, there's the whole disc format issue. One of the main reasons the PS2 did so well, especially in comparison to the dreamcast, was its incorporation of a DVD drive. As DVD was taking off, PS2 came with one for free. That convinced a lot of people to pick one up when otherwise they might not ha
  • Just two simple steps.

    First, have Billy boy sit down with his waller and talk to Shigeru Miyamoto. Write down 0s until Miyamoto says stop. This would absolutely cripple Nintendo.

    Next, have him sit down with the president of Square-Enix. Have him write down 0s until they agree to an exclusive 10 year deal. There's just huge numbers of RPG gamers who bought PS2 only for the Ffinal Fantasy line, and that isn't mentioning what Dragon Warrior does in Japan. SE games are one of the few differences between
    • Well, why not say "If MS could declair marshal law and take over the government they could force everyone to only use MS consoles in the US".

      I doubt MS could offer Miyamato the freedom to "innovate" the way he likes, and besides I seem to remember him not being inclined to leave Nintendo.

      Square Enix might be possible, but I think it would turn into another Rareware.

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