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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Microsoft Says No New Xbox 360s In 2009 123

OrochimaruVoldemort writes "Microsoft has said to Engadget that they do not plan on making new consoles available in 2009. This comes from the same company that said it wasn't producing a Blu-ray drive for that Xbox, so it is pure speculation. Expect to see a new console within that year. Engadget also hints: 'Microsoft representative let us know today that "While we don't normally comment on rumors like this, we can tell you that we have no plans to release a new console in 2009."' The rest of us will wait and see. For now, focus on what is available."
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Microsoft Says No New Xbox 360s In 2009

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  • by DanWS6 ( 1248650 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:02PM (#23410606)
    I just wanted to get this out of the way now before rumors start flying.
    • With out free on line play, being able to host your own games, LAN only play, free mods, user mod and maps, able to play 100% free games, and other stuff pc gameing will be the KING!!!!!!!!!!!
      • by Conception ( 212279 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:50PM (#23411246)
        See, the sad thing is PC gaming isn't King, even if its better. Consoles make 2-3x as much as PC gaming does at least. There's no contest anymore. The King was crowed long ago.
        • by Behrooz ( 302401 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:30PM (#23411652)
          I hate to say this, but MMO games and the continuing subscription model limited only by server and bandwidth costs make PCs king of the profit field.

          I hate to say it because I think all of the MMO games currently available are roughly comparable to being consumed by and subsequently shit out of a bear.

          Eventually some visionary developer is going to get it right, though... and they're going to end up richer than God.

          • by Amouth ( 879122 )
            personaly seeing how much micro payments have managed to leach off of me in the past 2 years.. subscription based games are not the big money maker..

            while subscriptions helps a company understand the market and have a realive budget, they turn away gamers.

            one game i play http://www.airrivals.net/ [airrivals.net] the idea is simple.. free to play.. and you can access all content without paying a cent.. but there is an item shop that is a cash shop.. and it is done as micro payments.. they do quite well and it isn't uncommo
          • I'm working on the cure for the MMO. It is simply this -- make everything emergent. A big problem with MMOs are that they end up fighting evolutionary forces and market forces. Instead, co-opt them!

            I'm working on a space game where everything is playable by the users, or designable by the users, scriptable by the users, or it evolves on it's own in the background using genetic algorithms. There is no dev-generated "content." There is "mining" and "farming" but this will be done by people who choose to
          • by Hassman ( 320786 )
            I hate to say it because I think all of the MMO games currently available are roughly comparable to being consumed by and subsequently shit out of a bear.

            You're one of the few. I'm pretty sure Blizzards' 100 billion subscribers think that at least 1 company got it right...
        • by Soulslayer ( 21435 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:55PM (#23411900) Homepage
          Consoles, in aggregate, generate more game software sales revenue from traditional brick and mortar retail outlets than the PC. Its a bit more difficult to sort out the hardware side. NVIDIA posted a record quarter for its first quarter this year (at $1.15 billion) but that's from a variety of sources and only one of the big two name sin gaming. There is no good way to filter out PC gaming hardware vs non-gaming hardware outside of video cards so we won't try and split up the more than $100 billion a year PC system sales to compare it to the $8 billion or so in console hardware sales.

          Sticking with software for a moment; if you compare US PC retail software sales vs US console software sales the PC came in third behind the PS2 and XBOX 360 last year with $900 million from brick and mortar stores (ignoring that NPD collects data from only 60-80% of the market and extrapolates the remainder). If you add back in subscription sales [next-gen.biz] the PC was actually the top (non-portable) platform last year with over $2 billion in software and subscription sales. And if you accept recent evidence that digital sales have reached parity/exceeded brick and mortar sales then the PC is in the neighborhood of $3 billion in software derived revenue per year, or in the same ballpark as the top three console platforms combined.

          Of course, all of that is a lot of silly wang measuring using NPD numbers. Which really amounts to comparing one wildly inaccurate (or at the very least, incomplete) set of numbers to another. The frustrating thing is that while NPD uses a lot of hand waving when describing their data collection methods and releases very selective sub-sets of data to the public (remember, their business model revolves around selling the detailed stuff); our illustrious media accepts these numbers as immutable, indisputable, fact. They then turn around and ignore that the $18.5 billion figure includes hardware, software, and accessories sales for nine platforms (PS2, XBOX, XBOX 360, PS3, DS, Game Boy Advanced, and PSP) plus partial software sales from a tenth (the PC) and proclaim that video games outsell theatrical movies tickets by almost two to one. The general public in turn parrots this line ('cause the news is always right) and console fans trumpet the 17 to 1 ratio vs retail PC software sales as proof that the PC industry is essentially dead.

          • by Soulslayer ( 21435 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @07:01PM (#23411974) Homepage
            Erm...the missing platforms from the list of nine would be the Wii and the GameCube.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by kesuki ( 321456 )
              what about the wonder swan sure it never made it anywhere but japan...

              and one thing i hate, is the way 'Blu-ray' adoption rates "Don't Count PS3s, because they're console sales" even though every website I googled said 'PS3 is the best Blu-ray movie player, PS3 is the Only Blu-Ray Player to support BDJava, yada yada yada..'

              Why would anyone pay $400 for a Blu-ray stand alone when the PS3 is $400? and furthermore, $200 'BD-rom drives' aren't Blu-ray players even though you can buy plenty of HD movie playback
              • not all PCs come with a graphic card capable of playing a video game.

                Tetris, developed by Alexey Pajitnov and originally published by samizdat, is a video game. All PCs with a CGA, EGA, VGA, or more powerful VGA-compatible video card have been able to run Vadim Gerasimov's port of Tetris to the PC [oversigma.com], even if inside an old-PC emulator such as DOSBox.

                My point is that sure, low-end PCs with an Intel GPU won't run Xbox 360- or PS3-level graphics, but they'll definitely run DS- or PSP-level graphics, and probably even Wii-level graphics. So if a game engine can scale down to

                • by Kawahee ( 901497 )

                  So if a game engine can scale down to the Wii, why can't it scale down to low-end PCs?
                  Because the Wii is a single, unified platform. Game developers don't need to worry about anything changing when they scale it down.
                   
                  What happens when you get a low-end PC with 8mb of integrated graphics and no sound?
                  • by tepples ( 727027 )

                    What happens when you get a low-end PC with 8mb of integrated graphics

                    Tetris still runs.

                    Quake III Arena works in 8 MB graphics [quake3arena.com], and that game is over eight years old. When was the configuration you speak of commonplace? And how much VRAM does a PSP have? If your engine can't scale that far, you might need separate SKUs for low-end and high-end PCs, just as games come in PS2 and PS3 editions.

                    and no sound?

                    Then the game turns on captions or whatever other scheme you've devised to make the game accessible to deaf people. Console games need captions too, just in case the TV is on mut

                • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @10:40PM (#23413780)

                  So if a game engine can scale down to the Wii, why can't it scale down to low-end PCs?
                  It most certainly can. I've heard so many people say things like "Oh, the xxx engine can't do this or that fast, etc..." More often than not, it's the content, not the engine, that kills performance. At my last company, our in-house engine (which was then making Xbox, PS2, and GameCube titles) was ported to the PSP. It did a fine job, too. That same engine is being used now for all current-gen platforms (360, PS3), and they're still making PSP games with it. There's a limit though - it wouldn't be efficient to scale it down to the Nintendo DS - they have an engine for that which is optimized specifically for low-memory platforms.

                  It's not always an issue of just the engine, though. There are lots of issues with scaling a game. If you have an extremely CPU-intensive AI system that runs fine on the Xbox or PS3's multiple cores, how do you affect this without substantially impacting gameplay? If all your art is shader-based, and relying on shaders that simply don't exist on the Wii, then what? There's not always a practical way to scale down the number of bones a character has - that's another scaling problem for you.

                  At some point, it becomes easier to simply rework the game for the lower-end platform than to port the game. Likewise, the gap between the highest end PC and lowest end of the current market seems to be substantially larger than it used to be.

                  The game my company is currently developing requires hardware with shader 2.0 support at a minimum. All of our assets are being developed with this hardware in mind. Should we create two sets of assets, one for shader 2.0 hardware and one using simple blended textures? Lighting, another shader-dependent beast, would end up looking completely different for the two systems. While this is possible, you end up making significant compromises in the look of the game.

                  It's all great to say "scale it down to low-end PCs", but we're making version two of a successful online PC game. Our players will be expecting a game that looks and plays significantly better than the first version. So while we're not going to require ridiculous specs, we still have to compete with the screenshots and videos of other PC games. There's a pretty significant difference between a Tetris game and what we're producing.
                  • At some point, it becomes easier to simply rework the game for the lower-end platform than to port the game. Likewise, the gap between the highest end PC and lowest end of the current market seems to be substantially larger than it used to be.

                    Console game publishers often sell two SKUs: one for PlayStation 2 and one for PLAYSTATION 3; or one for Wii and one for Xbox 360. Obviously, the developers hand-reduce the assets for the weaker system. So why can't PC game publishers they sell one SKU "for Windows XP" and one "for Windows Vista"? It wouldn't be entirely correct, as the Vista version would probably still run on a beefy enough XP box unless it uses DX10, but consumers would at least get the hint that one is for older PCs and one for newer.

                    • So why can't PC game publishers they sell one SKU "for Windows XP" and one "for Windows Vista"? It wouldn't be entirely correct...

                      And there's the rub. It might create more confusion than is really solves. And developers / publishers are likely not in a hurry to further fragment an already fragile (and potentially confusing) market. While Vista (with it's gaming score) might help to alleviate some confusion about performance requirements, it will likely take a while before that OS is ubiquitous enough to make this a reliable benchmarking tool.

                      Ultimately, I think it comes down to the fact that publishers have determined that there's

                • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
                  Any sufficiently long discussion devolves into semantics...
                • by kesuki ( 321456 )
                  "So if a game engine can scale down to the Wii, why can't it scale down to low-end PCs? "

                  market share, how many people are there with a PC with a low end graphic card, that still want to play 'modern' video games? not very many, most of those people don't have incomes either, eg: kids. they can beg their parents for this that or the other, but i know a lot of adults who intentionally buy a PC with a featureless graphic card, just so that they can keep their kids from playing pc games on it, and tell them
                  • by tepples ( 727027 )

                    i know a lot of adults who intentionally buy a PC with a featureless graphic card, just so that they can keep their kids from playing pc games on it, and tell them to stick to whatever consoles they've bought them etc.
                    Given the console oligopoly's lockout chip business model and blanket refusal to deal with microISVs, how can a small developer of video games reach these parents and their children?
                    • by kesuki ( 321456 )
                      I'd suggest a 'web game' platform, or steam. Pogo.com was a small web game company until they became large enough for EA to buy them out... but maybe with EA's presence it's harder for small developers to target the web game market (generally web games run even on older computers just fine)

                      'steam' seems to have about the same minimum footprint as java would (400 mhz, at least 64MB ram, win2k, xp or vista), except requiring from 1 GB to 'up to 60 GB'(one slashdot reader said his purchased game folder went t
                    • by kesuki ( 321456 )
                      wierd, they had 2 different ram requirements, one at 64 mb and on another page 256 mb... sigh

                      64 MB
                      http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=about [steampowered.com]

                      256MB
                      http://www.steampowered.com/steamtour/6.php [steampowered.com]
          • by sjelkjd ( 541324 )
            The subscription sales include console revenue... did you RYOFA?
            • Indeed, though console online revenue is a tiny fraction of the total subscription based revenue in the US. Basically you have Xbox Live Gold subscribers (~1 million @ $40 a year) and a small population of Final Fantasy XI (most FFXI subscribers in the US play on their PCs) and Phantasy Star Online players. On the PC, World of Warcraft alone accounts for nearly $450 million a year in subscription revenue.

          • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
            Also what about Europe? Stores here have roughly the same amount of space for PC games as they do for all consoles combined (unless you love the pain of shopping at Gamestop).
            • PC gaming seems to be a lot more popular in mainland europe than in the UK and US, I know a lot more PC gamers than console gamers and dutch gaming sites also give PC gaming a lot of coverage... So yeah I agree there.
              • Consoles never took off in EU because of the import duties/taxes made them more expensive than those Sinclair Spectrum's you all used. It's why most of the Amiga games late in it's life were from Europe, because you all were still using them rather than switching to SNES's and Genesis machines.

        • For the casual to hardcore gamer though, console gaming usually is better. With a console you usually have around 5-8 years of which the platform will have new games released for it unless that platform is a total failure (Such as the Virtual Boy). With a PC you have to keep upgrading. A game released 3 years from now won't run as well as a game made today on today's hardware, however with a console usually a game released at the end of life will run just as well or even better then a game made on the conso
        • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          Is that each console or all consoles in total? Because there are 3 consoles...
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          See, the sad thing is PC gaming isn't King, even if its better.

          It's not better, it's different. PC gaming offers the widest range of titles and peripherals and, for people for whom gaming is the focus of their life and thus they can afford such things, the most detailed gaming experience (best graphics, best sound, blah blah blah.) Console gaming offers a relatively hassle-free experience. Each has its own appeal.

          I do both, and I feel I say from experience that each has its place. Don't forget handheld gaming (arguably, the oldest kind of self-entertainment) :) e.g.

  • by Methlin ( 604355 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:08PM (#23410694)
    If they said they did it would hurt sales of the current revision. Now if Nintendo or Sony were going to release a Wii2 or PS4 in the next year you'd have the standard MS vaporware announcement while they scramble to actually put a product together.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DanWS6 ( 1248650 )
      With as well as the Wii is selling right now I don't think Nintendo would want to announce a Wii2 for a while.
      • by KingArthur10 ( 679328 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (dragob.ruhtra)> on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:29PM (#23410960)
        Yes, what they will do is wait for the market to become saturated with Wiis. Then they will start selling different colors. Colors will correspond to different bundled games. After a while, they'll release a Wii.1 version with expanded internal Solid State memory, possibly more RAM (to enable larger texture files), and the elimination of the Gamecube slots to make it slimmer. It's possible you'll be able to purchase a USB accessory to connect Gamecube devices to.
        • "It's possible you'll be able to purchase a USB accessory to connect Gamecube devices to."

          Nintendo can't even emulate N64 memory cards. What makes you think they'll be able to emulate GameCube memory cards and controllers over USB? (Also the fact that the Wii doesn't support use of e.g. the Classic Controller in GC mode.)
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Yvan256 ( 722131 )
          I'm with you on the colors and the expanded internal storage memory, but Nintendo has never modified their hardware while keeping the same system/name.

          The only thing that was extremely close in terms of hardware (old system + new features) was the Gameboy Color, and even that had a different name. Unless you also count the Gamecube and the Wii, in which case there's also a lot of hardware differences along with the new name.

          More RAM to enable larger texture files? I don't think so.
    • Yeah they might make a Wii 2, but only four of them will be produced, one for Nintendo HQ and three for the ebay market.
  • by corsec67 ( 627446 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:09PM (#23410710) Homepage Journal
    I read the title to mean that MS would stop making 360s.

    What the article said is that there isn't going to be a slim version of the 360 or a 360 with a Blu-Ray drive.

    Quite a big difference, I think.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by snl2587 ( 1177409 )

      It's almost as though Microsoft is actively trying to fail.

      • by grahamd0 ( 1129971 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:07PM (#23411402)

        How so? They've already got at least 3 versions of the console. How is it that further confusing the market is their only possible means of success?

        This may shock you, but the most popular and financially successful non-portable console of this generation has a grand total of *one* version.

        • I read the title to mean that MS would stop making 360s.
          What the article said is that there isn't going to be a slim version of the 360 or a 360 with a Blu-Ray drive.
          Quite a big difference, I think.


          How so? They've already got at least 3 versions of the console. How is it that further confusing the market is their only possible means of success?

          I think you misunderstood the OP's point. He wasn't passing judgement on whether or not a new version was viable, rather in their mind the title of the /.
          • You skipped a post in your quote.

            I was replying to:

            It's almost as though Microsoft is actively trying to fail.
            • Oh, I'm sorry man. I guess it was my filtering thing and I missed one. Sorry for the confusion.
    • by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:30PM (#23410976) Homepage
      File this one under "Ways in which pedantry and literalism have damaged your brain".
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Do you really believe he has a file with a name like that?
    • by Anonymous Coward
      The latest comments from Microsoft in the most recent conference call confirmed that they still were losing money on the 360 hardware and that there was no ETA on when they would finally cross the break even point. The huge amount of money they charge for online and other services are what is keeping the division out of the red.

      Console hardware has been to straight disasters in a row for Microsoft with the entire endeavor racking up over 7 billion in losses. Over the past year Microsoft has been slowly migr
      • by corsec67 ( 627446 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:42PM (#23411118) Homepage Journal
        Are you trying to make it sound like MS hemoraging money is a bad thing?

        If they keep trying to break in to the Japanese dominated console market and keep failing, losing tons of money, all I can say is "Good for them".
        • I really wish more Americans had a mentality like they have in Japan. In Japan they're actually proud of their native companies doing well, and the populace is loyal to them. Here in the U.S., we have absolutely no loyalty to our own companies, and are more likely to bash the hell out of them than acknowledge the good they do for our economy or our role in the world marketplace. If Sony and Nintendo went under tomorrow, Japanese citizens would be committing suicide. If Microsoft went under tomorrow, most U.
          • I really wish more Americans had a mentality like they have in Japan. In Japan they're actually proud of their native companies doing well, and the populace is loyal to them. Here in the U.S., we have absolutely no loyalty to our own companies.

            Um... how is that bad? The free market has no room for patriotism. Companies should have to compete for my loyalty. I won't by American because we have unions that create shoddy workmanship. It's getting worse every day with the government feeding you the line tha

      • by TeraCo ( 410407 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @07:16PM (#23412110) Homepage
        Are you retarded? Why would they dump the 'difficult and risky to chip' xbox360 market for the 'I can pirate games with 30 seconds on a search engine' vista market?

        If they abandon the console market, it will be because they're leaving the games industry all together.
        • You (and most people) forget, with an xbox 360 and an afternoon, I can pirate _every_ game. At once.
          • by TeraCo ( 410407 )
            You're in the vast minority there, as opposed to being in the vast majority of PC users. If nothing else, most people won't chip their xboxes because they don't want to void the warranty on a few hundred dollars worth of gear.
      • Are you serious? I don't think you've been paying attention. Right now, according to Joystiq, the Xbox 360 has sold 19 million worldwide. It has 12 million worldwide subscriptions to Xbox Live. It was the first console in the current generation of consoles to sell 10 million in the U.S., compared to 8.8 Wii's and 4.1 PS3's. In another article (one I'm too lazy to find) the 360 was posting the highest attach rate. Microsoft's game division is finally in the black with its quarter-to-quarter earnings, a
      • The vast majority of Microsoft 360 developers are US PC x86 directx focused and most of them would rather have Microsoft resuscitate the dying PC gaming market than being forced to work on console hardware.

        Some game designs put three or more players' characters on the same screen. Examples include Bomberman, Gauntlet, and NBA Jam. A lot of people have friends over who do not own their own computer, so it's not cost-efficient to have a separate computer and monitor for each player. If there's no third Xbox, then for which platform are DirectX developers going to develop such four-player games?

        • by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          They could try being less narrow-minded and start making games for non-DirectX platforms instead? Over-specialization is suicide.
          • by tepples ( 727027 )

            They could try being less narrow-minded and start making games for non-DirectX platforms instead?

            There are two platforms that can use DirectX: Windows-based home theater PCs (GL/DX) and Xbox 360 (DX). And there are three consoles that don't support DirectX: Wii (GX, similar to OpenGL), PLAYSTATION 3 (OpenGL ES), and Mac mini (OpenGL).

            Larger developers could easily transition their future products to Wii or PS3. But smaller developers have flocked toward Windows for its openness toward smaller developers, and mid-size developers have been able to sell their works on Xbox Live Marketplace. But with

    • I read it that way too, and the reason we read it that way is because that's what it says. It says there will be no new 360s in 2009. We're not being pedantic, thats a straight forward interpretation of what is written.
      • by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:38PM (#23411734) Homepage
        We're not being pedantic, thats a straight forward interpretation of what is written.

        Yes, that's a straightforward interpretation. Another straightforward interpretation is that there'd be no new types of 360s (360s could possibly refer to either individual machines, or classes of machines, much like "I didn't see any new birds" could refer to individuals, or species). And since a sentence having multiple straight forward interpretations is completely bog-standard in English -- it can take a great deal of effort to write in such a way that there isn't multiple possible meanings -- most people are very used to holding these multiple definitions in their head, and selecting the most likely one based on context and experience. Or all of them, which is how puns work.

        So of the two meanings, which is more likely? MS isn't going to manufacture any xbox hardware of any kind in 2009? Or they are not going to release a new design for their hardware in 2009?

        Maybe pedantry isn't the right word. What is the right word for assuming there to be only one possible correct interpretation of a sentence?

        Though to be fair, adding the word "types" or "kinds" would have certainly made the meaning more clear. I'm all for that.
        • by PopeGumby ( 1125507 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:58PM (#23411954)
          Yes, that's a straightforward interpretation. Actually, sorry, I'll take back what I said, saying that there will be no new 360s in 2009 isnt really an interpretation at all, it's just what's written.

          Realising that its referring to types or models is an interpretation, extrapolating meaning from missing words and from the text of the summary.

          Obviously it didnt take me very long to realise my mistake, but the fact is I saw the headline, and was momentarily taken aback by the decision not to produce any new 360s at all next year.

          The plural also didnt help. If the headline read "No New Xbox 360 In 2009" it would be much more obvious, but having it as a plural further confuses.
          • Realising that its referring to types or models is an interpretation, extrapolating meaning from missing words and from the text of the summary.

            Not really. Like I said, "360s" could refer to classes of machine or individual machines, just like "birds" can refer to individual birds or species of birds. No extra word is necessary strictly speaking.

            If you aren't "interpreting" things people say or write, then you are probably getting the wrong meaning much of the time. For example if you heard someone say "I
    • by intrico ( 100334 )
      I agree that the title is very misleading. The wording of this title "Microsoft Says No New Xbox 360s In 2009" implies that they are ceasing manufacturing/shipping of the current XBOX 360 model in 2009. It really needs to be edited for clarity.
    • they said nothing about this fall... perhaps it will be out sooner! Or they'll just keep the box the same size to not split the accessory market.
  • Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:16PM (#23410792)
    Microsoft not having any plans on May 14th 2008 to release a new X360 model before December 31, 2009 is front page news worthy?
  • well duh (Score:3, Funny)

    by hurfy ( 735314 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @05:37PM (#23411072)
    They are too busy fixing the ones they already built.......

    I'll believe it when i see it....oh wait..i mean don't see it
  • by NaCh0 ( 6124 )
    What about the Xbox 720?

    • I wonder what the next name will be. I doubt they'll just double 360, that's kind of lame. No doubt, in the great tradition of Microsoft products, they will choose a succession of names where you could absolutely, positively not tell the order of release of the products from the name. Without knowing computer history, please put the following products in order of release:

      Windows Vista, Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows 98, Windows 3.1;
      Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 6, Visual Studio.Net

      (Of course, I expect
  • O, RLY? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by nutshell42 ( 557890 )
    Nintendo denied the existence of the new slimmer DS the day before the release. They'd be stupid if they didn't. And by those standards, Microsoft's denial is quite a weak one. They have "no plans" (those could change) to release "a new console" (it wouldn't be a new console, just a redesign of an old one).

    So my opinion is that those rumors sound quite plausible but if you decide to hold off on a console purchase in May 2008 because there might be a revision in mid to late 2009 you were just looking for ex

  • Sounds like Microsoft will release a new xbox 360 in 2008 then. That way their statment holds true...

    Peter.
  • A great big THANKYOU!

    From all the "Red Circle Of Death"-experienced gamers everywhere!

    I keed, I keed!

    Cheers!

    Strat
  • I'd guess that the recent games like Asassin's Creed and other console-first, PC later games are starting to show up the consoles and while it's not having a lot of effect yet, it's starting to, and people are waiting for the PC release before buying, because they know that unless the conversion is a dud, the PC version is always going to be better and higher resolution...

    But as I said, it's only a small number of people looking that way at present, because the difference is slight at the moment.

    I'd guess t
    • I think you guessed poorly. As someone in retail electronics, the vast majority of people have no idea what resolution means. Couple that with the higher and higher demands on performance PC hardware, and its an expensive proposition. Joe Majority is not going back to PC gaming, ever. And the majority is all that really matters here.
      • by GrpA ( 691294 )
        I'm always suprised when I hear comments like this... Especially as I didn't suggest anything extreme such as "PC games were going to overtake consoles", but take a look at what the game designers are saying about Console Vs PC on google (takes a little searching).

        What I was saying is that the PC architecture is still so far ahead of console that next-gen games will only play on PC. (And by Next-Gen, I mean games designed for the technology designed over the past two years).

        The PC is already and likely perm
        • conversely, games intended for console frequently don't make it to the PC. It's not that you can't play them - they just weren't designed for keyboard and mouse (and few people actually keep an X-box or PS2 like pad for their PC ).

          I have six console-style gamepads that I can plug into my PC's USB ports (one PC-native, and adapters for three PS2, one N64, and one GameCube). Obviously, I'm an outlier, but why don't more people plug one or two gamepads into a PC?

          So if you want to see where this is going, compare PCs that can run anything you can do on a console (assuming it's not an exclusive title) to older PS2 and Xbox's and you will see why the console's need to keep up also

          A lot of console titles aren't "exclusive" in the sense of being exclusive to one console, but they never show up on Windows or Mac OS X despite being released on all three consoles and even one or both handhelds. Why is this the case?

        • The PC is already and likely permanently dominant in the area of MMORPGs and FPS games. There is little point even questioning it

          I don't think I'd be so quick to say that.

          I mean, is the same FPS game released on the PC and a console going to always look and play better on the console? Absolutely.

          But where will it sell more copies? It's starting to be the console by far.

          Those kinds of market forces have to start distorting the status quo there, assuming you don't think they are already.
        • What I was saying is that the PC architecture is still so far ahead of console that next-gen games will only play on PC. (And by Next-Gen, I mean games designed for the technology designed over the past two years).

          So what you mean is that games designed for the latest expensive PC graphics cards will only play on the latest expensive PC graphics cards? The problem is, most people have no interest in those cards, as well as all the other costs with gaming (more RAM, better processors, Windows Vista). Most pe

      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        As someone in retail electronics, the vast majority of people have no idea what resolution means.
        For most people, consoles are SDTV (or EDTV at best), and PCs are HDTV. The vast majority of monitors paired with new computers that I saw in Circuit City this week are 1280x720 or bigger, while plenty of TVs are stuck at what is effectively 320x480.
        • I don't know, out of the 90ish people on my friends list on Xbox live, I only know of one person running their 360 on a SDTV.

          If you've got $400 to blow on a console, you've probably managed your wealth well enough to already have an HDTV and surround system.
    • by Chad Birch ( 1222564 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @07:30PM (#23412248)
      I think you've got this entirely backwards. It's PC gaming that's in trouble, not the consoles. Average people have little to no interest in constantly upgrading their PCs just so the newest game will run, worrying about driver problems, patches, the current rash of DRM on PC games, etc. With an Xbox360 or PS3, they just come home with the game, put the disc in, and it starts. They didn't even have to look on the back of the box before they bought it to see if they needed to spend $200 on a new video card first. The reason it takes games like Assassin's Creed so long to come out for PC is because the PC version is almost an afterthought now, it's hardly even considered a major platform. Grand Theft Auto IV is probably the "biggest" game of the year, and last I saw it didn't even have a PC version planned. If you're a PC-exclusive gamer now, you're going to get left behind on a lot of the big games, and I only see this trend continuing in the future.
      • If you're a PC-exclusive gamer now, you're going to get left behind on a lot of the big games
        What about the little games? PCs running Windows or Mac OS X have games that are developed and self-published by microISVs [wikipedia.org]. Consoles, not nearly as many, at least until Microsoft figures out a way for all XNA Creators Club members to publish their games to the general public on Xbox Live Marketplace.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Don't forget how you don't have to worry about little shits running around with wall hacks, transparency exploits and other things that tend to happen in the PC gaming world within a few months of a game's release.

        Oh and don't get me started on how so many PC releases are bugfests for their first few weeks or months. Nothing sucks more than downloading a demo, seeing it run so-so with promises of fixes before it goes gold, then buy the game and it not work at all without either a lot of dicking around with
    • Hot graphics don't make good gameplay, nor does it create market dominance. Nintendo is proving that quite handily. You might also have noticed that this year's DS has outsold the technically superior PSP.

      I gave up on the PC gaming treadmill...though I am still quite happy playing 2004/2002/2000 era PC games. The graphics may be mediocre, but the gameplay is great.
      • What you say is correct... to a point. For me (and yes, this is anecdotal and subjective) hot graphics can really enhance gameplay. "Hot graphics" alone is not enough, however. But excellent graphics at high resolutions, coupled with good gameplay and story line, IMO, make for a killer combo.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      they know that unless the conversion is a dud, the PC version is always going to be better and higher resolution...
      But if you have friends over, how much do four copies of the PC version cost compared to one copy of the console version? Heck, not everybody who visits my house and wants to play video games owns a computer.
    • Of course, that's assuming that every gamer instantly upgrades to the latest graphics cards every year in order to get all the latest buzzwords.

      I'd guess that most PC gamers play on a several year old machine barely capable of playing World of Warcraft and the Sims, which is all they're really interested in. Other gamers have consoles for things like fifa, COD, GTA etc.

      The high-end PC market is pretty small, and most people would rather play Assassin's Creed on their new 50" HDTV than Crysis on a PC, no mat
  • Translation... (Score:5, Informative)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2008 @06:53PM (#23411870)
    'We don't want to say, "We're releasing a better version next year." and then have people refuse to buy the old units like they did with the HDMI thing. Especially as it would be for a full twelve months this time. That would really kill our lead against the other consoles in North America. So, uh, "We've got no plans!"'

    It's almost certainly a lie. But they would be crazy to tell the truth and destroy their market until the new models did finally ship.

    It's pretty much guaranteed Sony will ship new models too. Bigger hard drives, cooler processors, smaller cases, new skus with games bundled. There are always new stimuli to keep the market active. But no one in their right mind acknowledges their roadmap for the next 20 months (to the end of '09), screwing their current market with all the people who figure they'll just wait.

    It's not just consoles. Canon releases a new xxxD camera every year or so, a new xxD camera every 18 months, pretty much like clockwork. And yet they refuse to announce the new model until the last possible moment, denying everything they can, so as not to trash the current prices. Look at what happened to the $3,000 Canon 5D that everyone assumed would have got a new revision in February. Even without a new rev turning up, discounting got so competetive on the assumption the old model was about to become obsolete that it now goes for a hair over $2,000. Even then, people like myself who'd still get a lot from the 5D are putting off their purchase, waiting for whatever its successor turns out to be or much lower 5D prices, rather than letting Canon shift stock now.
    • I thought 5D was getting close to $2000 very early last year, not this year or late last year. I've found a thread in August 2006 about a then-price drop on that model. It's a model that I certainly wouldn't mind getting, though other priorities beckon.

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