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Salon Goes Inside the X-Box
Romancer writes "According to this
article, Recent X-box "Sales have been disappointing, and the co-creator of Microsoft's game console just quit his job -- a day before a book portraying him as a hero hit the bookstores." "
The article itself is allright, but it has a lot of good links.
Microsoft needs to help the developers. Give them free dev kits. Give them free support. If you built it, they will come.
Without massive developer interest like there was with the Sony PS1, you end up with a flop like the Dreamcast. Good games are the only thing that will keep the customers interested.
No amount of advertising can compensate for mediocrity...
Wait a minute. Did I just say that about MS?
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
All of the articles talking about Blackley's departure as being a sign of XBox's fall are mostly just hype. Blackley did this interview with Gamespot and said that his departure had to do with the coming of E3 and the formation of his own game company.
It gives me the hope that maybe a company software based or not will come along and make some business decisions that are not bone-headed and knock the Borg off their perch
And then we can start bitching about THEM!
Seriously - we don't want any ONE company to knock them off the perch. We want the hordes to eat the perch! making sure no one else gets up there to crap on us again!
I think the Dreamcast experience shows us that you just cannot recover from the position the Xbox is in - unless....
Well, MS could obviously use its market power to cut prices to silly levels. If it did it all over the world then it could be accused of dumping, but it would be high risk - MS would look to make money on the games, but would face more law suits.
Yet, given the pathetic nature of penalties suggested by the DoJ they might want to take that risk.
And what government wants to go up against a company selling its console for $99?
Anyway, get a Dreamcast. They're cheap and you can run Linux on them!
More DC Linux Stuff here.
"Opening the Xbox" is published by Prima Publishing. Among gamers, the Prima name is best known for publishing strategy guidebooks for a wide variety of console and computer titles. Prima guides are currently available for more than a dozen Xbox games, including Microsoft's popular shooter Halo and gridiron simulation NFL Fever 2002. Strategy guide publishers like Prima often depend heavily on the cooperation of game companies -- like Microsoft -- to release hint books that are information packed, timely and useful to gamers.
They also depend on mushbrained "journalists" giving them free advertising. That paragraph is worded like a prima press release, no one uses "information packed" in any other context.
Question - is Mr McCauley (who wrote the Salon article) a complete tool, or did he agree to include that exact phrasing in exchange for getting some sort of access? Have things gotten to the point where companies like Prima can dictate terms to the press? (He actually works for the Philadelphia Inquirer, not Salon.)
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
First off, there are far more than "10 games" and many more than "two or three good ones". Second, the Playstation didn't launch with "hundreds of different games". How long has the PS1 been out? 6 years?
Doesn't any large corporation have internal trouble in decision making processes? Why do you think it takes our government so long to pass bills? It's one big messed up corporation.
What?
Its just a computer inside a pretty box that connects to your TV so you can play games
Yeah, those have never succeeded.
Reading one of the side articles that the topic article linked to, it seemed that Gates was more interested in attacking Sony than he was in putting out a product that people would actually enjoy.
My brother has one of these things, and I hate the controller (even the smaller Japanese version that he picked up on a visit overseas). The games are nothing new (older PS2 re-releases for the most part, and don't even talk to me about Halo - if I want a FPS I've got my PC).
So am I surprised that it's not doing all that well? No. I think this one should have spent a little more time on the drawing board, and not come out just to take sales away from Sony.
I have all the current consoles, in fact, I have almost every console that has been made.
Of the current three the best hardware is the XBox. You get the HD for saving games and adding levels/characters/etc. You get true high definition support. True wide screen support. And very good Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The GC game selection isn't very good, but it's cheaper. It has no DD and not all games support 480p resolution. The PS2 can only do DD in cut scenes. Not many games at all do wide screen. Both the GC and the PS2 still use memory cards. The XBox also has the shortest load times for games by far. The XBox also has built-in Ethernet.
As for game selection the PS2 wins, mainly because it's been out so long that the good games have appeared. Nintendo needs to get their Mario/Zelda/Metroid games out NOW. Microsoft is steadily releasing good games. Also, go hit IGN sometime when a game comes out on all three consoles. They have started doing very good side-by-side-by-side comparisons, and the XBox always wins. Better graphics, better sound, and sometimes extra levels/characters/etc.
Microsoft won't lose this. They have far more plans for this system than a simple game console. Give them another year to get even more good games out and we'll see what happens.
This is the famous Microsoft sensitivity and respect to the rights and cultures of others coming to the fore.
Seriously, this sort of thing is a part of the corporate culture. _Somebody_ had to approve the code name.
It comes down to how much respect does MS have for others, inside the company?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
As it turns out, the X-Box contains a couple layers of hardware based encryption. For instance, I'm pretty sure that you can't run any code from CD unless it's been signed with a key that MS possesses - development is done on the disk. None of the software that supports this is accessible from the game, and the hardware is likely prtected too, so you'll have a bitch of a time loading linux on it.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I agree, MS could cut prices to such a level that they could flood the market with cheap units. However, unlike the old Vetrex system which had an asteroids-like game burned into the console ROM itself, the X-Box requires software - and there lies the deficiency.
Microsoft made all the same mistakes that Neo Geo did in releasing a console - all the same mistakes that 3DO did. (Please tell me I'm not the only gamer old enough to remember.) Impressive hardware, nice design specs, even a cool niche idea - but not enough support. The Neo Geo was only for NG games and didn't have third party support that I'm aware of. The 3DO had so few games that I hesitate to think of more than one offhand.
The X-Box has fallen into the same perilous pitfall. MS built a system that's a bear to develop for and they didn't secure enough games on release day. Hell - in their release year.
The Gamecube sells because Nintendo has the almighty power of branding in the console market, and because they've got games by legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto; that makes a lot of difference. Nintendo isn't about games, it's practically about franchises, esp when Miyamoto gets involved.
The Playstation 2 sells because, even though it's beastly hard to develop for, it was backward compatible with the libraries of PS1 games already out there. ("Look, Mom! You don't *need* to buy me all new games!") On top of that, they've got heavy duty third-party support: Konami's Metal Gear Solid series, and Squaresoft's Final Fantasy, to name two offhand.
MS didn't pay attention and has wound up in a bad way. On top of not paying attention to the console market, which they really didn't know, MS didn't even pay attention to the *PC* market, which is their bread and butter. They should know how tight the hardware markets are and how difficult it is to sell a third-party system; they've spent years ensuring this is how it would be. Yet, even so, they distribute the X-Box -- a scaled down PC, with the ability to port your PC games to it -- which places it directly in contention for a part of the PC Gamer market.
Alas, PC gamers have already bought their hardware and aren't bloody well likely to jump ship for Halo's sake.
-
I just don't know. MS has made every mistake they possibly can make with the X-Box. I don't see that unit climbing out of obscurity. They should lick their wounds and prepare for round two, because this one is lost; maybe they should go read about Sega's console history, and see how Sega made the leap from the Master System to the Genesis. (and then *not* follow them down the same paths as the Saturn or the Dreamcast..)
There has actually been a lot of talk in the business community about Microsoft's (mis)management. Bill Gates & Co. are obviously brilliant strategists, having successfully established a powerful monopoly over an exceptionally fast moving field. However, they have created very little in the way of an internal corporate structure. They still run it like a startup. What we may be looking at is something like an Alexander the Great empire, an enormous power at the moment, but likely to collapse as the original founders retire.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
give it to the netbsd geeks they could get netbsd to run on a left-handed and broken abacus.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
...and that's after Saturn sold at a loss. It cost them nearly a billion dollars and put them out of the hardware business. That kind of thinking is what killed the Dreamcast.
It was a seriously over-ambitious system. The electronics were too expensive (hence the loss), and (likely in an attempt to compensate) the other parts were cheap and poorly designed. When you pick up a Dreamcast controller in your hands, it screams "Piece of junk!" through your fingers.
Sega needed it to sell big, and sell lots of games to make up the loss, basically to push Playstation aside right out the gate. It didn't, and by the time word started getting around about the great games, talk of the Playstation 2 killed it.
It didn't look or feel like a better system than the Playstation, and it was launched with the unrealistic expectation of (and desperate need for) a quick win. People perceived it as a loser box, a machine that would be abandoned, and lo and behold it was. This drove away users and developers alike.
It's true, good games aren't enough to carry a system. You also need a solid strategy for more new games, and a system that looks like you should buy it and feels like something worth hundreds of dollars.
More games, more games, more games. Then lower the price of the games. People are not buying a console because it looks cool, was made by a certain company or simply just to have another one. You buy it to play games.
I bought a Dreamcast in December and have bought at least 20 games for it since then. Why? Its a decent console, connects to the internet, and most of the games still left are under $10. I have spent less for my DC and all 20 games combined then the Xbox and one controller costs. $50-60 for one freaking Xbox game is over 2X above what I will ever pay for a console game, therefore my kids and I will stick to our PC's, Dreamcast and PS1.
The gamers and must-haves will always buy new, they already have the Xbox and now its up to the general public to keep it floating.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
This is a false argument. It is unfair to compare a 6-month old system with a 2-year (PS2) or 8-year (PSX) old system. At least compare today's X-box to the PS2 6 months after launch (which is when I bought mine).
PS2 at the time had only 2 'great' games (SSX and Madden), and a handful of good ones (Armored Core 2, Star Wars Starfighter). It also had a TON of crap. Comparing that to the X-box today with Halo, Jet Set Radio Future, and DOA3 they are not so different. SONY was also in a similar position to Microsoft when PS2 launched. Dreamcast had been out for over a year and had a number of good, solid titles behind it: Soul Calibur, Sega GT, Jet Grind Radio just to name a few. I remember at the time of PS2's launch when people were commenting how PS2 had mostly crap games, while Dreamcast had a good library of titles. Sound familiar?
Today, PS2 has FAR more market penetration than DC ever did, so it will be a more difficult struggle for MS. Plus, PS2 has done a much better job of continuing to produce great titles than Sega ever did. Gran Turismo 3, Grand Theft Auto 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Silent Hill 2, SSX/Tricky, Devil May Cry, Ace Combat 4, Wipeout Fusion, Virtua Fighter 4, etc.--most of which are exclusive content--are all great games that drive system sales. The upcoming schedule for PS2 also has more highly-anticipated titles than any other system.
Since the beginning, the Xbox has been perceived by many as a "cheap PC that connects to the TV to play games". And as evidenced by the upcoming titles on the system, a lot of PC ports seem to be in its future. Xbox will have far and away the most FPS games of any console, I'm sure. Problem is, it will have little else. Most console gamers grew up on "Japanese" video games. Many are anime fans. US developers mostly seem uninterested in making that style of game (cute), instead opting for 'manly' killing machine games. Consoles are driven by content, not tech specs, and the Japanese still own in the content department, at least as far as console-style games go.
Also, while the stable hardware platform should make Xbox less buggy than normal MS software, the folks at Redmond hardly have a reputation for making things that work well. That, coupled with the public's negative views of MS as a company ("evil corporate pirates!") and SONY's experience and head start, things look bad for Xbox.
And when the Japanese public finds out Xbox was called "Project Midway" by MS Insiders, don't expect to sell many more boxes there. ^_^
--
Dave
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
First off, they don't have many good games in their lineup for the forseeable future.
They have completely failed in Japan, which is a real problem because many of the best games come from Japan.
How are they going to make money? They have put a PC in a box and are selling it at a loss, whereas Sony and Nintendo either make money or at least break even on their console sales. Microsoft took a shortcut and simply put a PC in a box, because their expertise is not in making hardware, that's simply not going to work from a business standpoint.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
They're in for the long haul. They know people will buy the GameCube for the Mario/Zelda/Metroid games when they come out. They're not going to abandon their system, or development of their flagship products, just because people haven't bought it on the merits of the first wave software.
I also believe that their next portable platform will play GC discs. Long haul.
If I ran a game company, I'd be working on GC games. Ones with big, readable text for small screens.
Er... isn't that the definition of a video game console? What do you think is inside the GameCube -- Keebler Elves?
Yes, there are more than 10 games for the system. And how many are exclusive games that I want to play?
Halo. Project Gothom. Jet Grind Radio. Dead or Alive 3. Maybe New Legends and Munch's Oddyssee.
The rest of the games are either co-released for other platforms (Spiderman: The Movie, that Batman games, etc) or PS2 remakes (Genmu Onimusha, for example).
So at the moment, we've got 4 games I really want to play that are exclusive to the system. (If you don't disacount Halo since it's coming to the PC (and hopefully Mac) right before Hell Freezes Over)).
The PSOne took over because they won over developer support over Nintendo, which focused on their cartridge technology. They courted the 3rd party developers. Now, they're smart enough to not let them completly jump ship to Microsoft, so unlike your PSOne vs Nintendo argument (Six years! Give Xbox six years, and it will be just as good!), Sony isn't going to let their premiere developers leave them the way Nintendo did, so they'll still have a great lineup.
The Xbox has potential. It's even a powerful system. But they're fighting an upstream battle, and just saying "give them time! It's a great system!" isn't going to help. If they want to really succeed, they need to get the exclusives to their system, and that means winning over Japan.
I don't see it happening. I'm sorry, and I know that you've spent a lot of time in this article defending the Xbox. But you've got to face the facts - unless something changes, something that makes game developer en masse go "Damn, let's dump the PS2 and go to the Xbox" so that all the gamers will go "Damn - I guess we'd better switch as well" - until that day happens, PS2 will keep on winning since developers will develop games for the clear winner first to make money, then the "other" consoles later to pick up some extra income if possible. And with the Xbox systems/games dropping off in sales instead of increasing, the just looks more bleak.
Maybe Xbox 2 will be better. (For God's sake, maybe they'll include some real USB ports so I don't have to use the controller to t-y-p-e-i-n-w-o-r-d-s.) Maybe broadband support will really be "out of the box" instead of waiting 8 months for MS to decide that "Gee, I guess a TCP/IP stack is a good idea". Maybe someoe will hear the majority of users going "controller sucks - deal with it". Maybe they'll let you download games over a broadband connection for a fee (mixing in with the Ultimate TV developers that have been reassigned to the Xbox?).
But first we have to weather the current Xbox 1 storm, and it looks pretty rudderless.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Incomplete
Confusing
Badly designed
Overly difficult
I have said before that well designed games don't need manuals, and yet here's a whole subindustry devoted to selling you an additional manual! I suggest to all of you that if you play a game and have so much trouble figuring it out to the point where you think a "strategy guide" would be useful, you write to the company that made the game and tell them what's wrong with it. Because if you need a strategy guide, there is something wrong with the game. Most game developers love to hear suggestions on what they could have done better, and if enough people tell them, their next game will be better.
Furthermore, if you get stuck anywhere in any game, it's almost certain that someone will have posted a walkthrough, or even just a usenet post (which Deja/Google will do a wonderful job of finding for you) with the solution. Meaning you spent $10 up front for a guide you might or might not need (if you're buying it in case you get stuck) when you could have found the information for free from your fellow gamers.
Oftentimes strategy guides aren't even that good. I've worked on and seen enough games in development to know that some of the authors don't even spend much time at all with the game, and essentially just push rewritten versions of the manual or design document out the door as quickly as possible. To be fair, that isn't true for all of them, some guide book authors really do try to provide a valuable service. The main point of this rant is that it's only even a potentially valuable service as long as game companies are writing bad games. And if the games are bad, you shouldn't buy them.
I would love to hear a counter example from someone who buys strategy guides and finds they improve the experience (of an otherwise good game) somehow. Anyone out there?
The article is biased, and full of contradictions.
It tries to make the point that since the head of the development effort is quitting his position, he must know something we don't, and that the XBox must be doomed. It then follows with this:
--quote
"Absolutely! Xbox kicks ass."
But, hey, what else would you expect an ex-Xbox evangelist to say?
--endquote
So... he's not quitting because the Xbox is doomed? What's this article about again?
You know, I'm typing this on an iMac, and I've just realized that my model didn't come with a cup holder. Should I sue ;-)
Now that you mention it, though, it does seem a bit odd that the bitness thing has gone by the wayside; it might have made a fun marketing strategy, say, five years ago. It really comes down to the realization that if it's really a numbers game, it's not the big ones on the spec sheet that count. Yes, geeks have known this for years. But it would seem that people outside the geek world are starting to figure this out.
That said... well, yes, mister, that is where they keep all the gigabytes. See, they come out of here by this long ribbon when they're needed, feed around here into this circuit board, and see this big grey metal box where the power cord goes into? Once you have 1.21 gigabytes and the DVD is spinning at 88 mph...
/Brian
A lot of people have said similar things about Microsoft's initial failures, only to be proven very wrong after a year or two once Microsoft has won the war.
I think that more competition in the console market is better for everyone. Yes, Microsoft rarely gets a product right on the first try, but look at the difference between win 98 and win 2000. Two years can make a big difference.
All companies make mistakes. Not all companies learn from them.
Amazing magic tricks
Microsoft's going to make plenty of bank on the XBox overall. This whole thing is pretty much a non-issue, and is a bunch of media hype about Microsoft being a failure for not being the #1 console. Nobody in Microsoft expected to be anywhere near the #1 console, Sony built way too good of a brand name with the Playstation. Microsoft is in this for the long haul, at least two more hardware releases.
Also, the PS2 sold mostly on the brand name, it would have sold well even if not PS1 compatible. Further, the PS3 looks like its going to be even harder to program for, using tons of processors (IBM style grid computing), and Sony has shown no interest in providing better libraries and documentation for even the PS2..They are getting away with this now because the sold a mass of consoles based on their brand name, but treating 3rd party developers the way Sony does is a dangeorous business, ONE slip-up on the business side, and developers are going to flock away from Sony in a mass exodus.. That's not a good position to be in for the long term, and Microsoft realizes that (Nintendo also realizes this after the N64 debacle).
Why is the Console "Network effect" never mentioned. Has anyone ever seen something on the local geographical distribution of console sales. Local, like by city or smaller geographical units.
Most gamers buy the same console as their friends so they can share games. This would make the incumbent almost impossible to dislodge and might be the "real" reason the market can't sustain 3 consoles. Dreamcast had lots of good games but I think the "Network effect" killed it, little else.
This would mean that Japan for sure is dead for Xbox (see sales data below), Europe will depend on the GC early succes. The GC addresses a slightly younger audience so they are to a lesser degree taking on PS2 head-on. Sales of Consoles in Japan early April. Third week sales is out but I couldn't find it)
Quote
Sales tracking firm Media Create reports that in the first week of April (4/1 - 4/7), Microsoft sold an abysmal 2,179 units, a number that in and of itself is astonishingly low for a newly-released console system. But when you examine sales of some of the other hardware on the market, the news gets even worse. In the same week in April, Sony's seven-year old PS one platform sold 3,959 units. And get this--Sega's discontinued Dreamcast console even managed to outsell the Xbox with 3,427 units purchased by Japanese gamers. As for the other next-generation platforms, the PS2 and the GameCube sold 80,734 units and 15,06
8 units respectively.
Help fight continental drift.
So are you.
First off, they don't have many good games in their lineup for the forseeable future.
That is *YOUR* Opinion. Personally, My opinion is that Halo, Project Gotham, Max Payne, Munch's Odysee, Simpsons Road Rage, Rallisport Challenge and DOA3 have all been EXCELLENT games.
They have completely failed in Japan, which is a real problem because many of the best games come from Japan.
How are they going to make money? They have put a PC in a box and are selling it at a loss, whereas Sony and Nintendo either make money or at least break even on their console sales. Microsoft took a shortcut and simply put a PC in a box, because their expertise is not in making hardware, that's simply not going to work from a business standpoint.
Where do you get this nonsense? Everything is a PC in a box. Why such a fuss over putting a hard drive and Linux on a PS2? Isnt that " Just a pc in a box".
I don't know what you guys are smoking, but the Xbox has only JUST began. The online lineup is amazing, the future titles coming through are amazing and the potential is amazing.
Just like others have said, we haven't even scratched the surface of the potential of the xbox. It is nice being able to play my own music, have basically infinate game saves and have an EXCELLENT LAUNCH Library.
You want a sh**y launch library look at the ps2. Took a year before things really got going!
And i'm sorry, a 300.00 xbox doesn't cost anymore then a 299.00 PS2. You DO get DD 5.1, HDTV 1080 support, DVD Playback, (yeah yeah, a remote is needed, spend the 20 freaking bucks!), Great game linup and a hard drive with infinate potential and savegames.
I'm sorry, but i'm looking foward to Unreal Championship with the voice commander. It will be nice to not need a keyboard and be able to yell at people.
Since M$ has a history of just dropping things that don't work out right. Is the Xbox worth it to them to stick it out for the long haul? We all know that given enough time M$ can make any product acceptible to consumers.
http://Lenny.com