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MS Reveals Big-Name Xbox Games
LukeG writes "At this year's huge X02 event in Seville, Microsoft pulled out all the stops to convince the vast contingent of mainstream journalists present that the Xbox did indeed have the credentials to take on Sony and Nintendo. As well as the huge acquisition of Rare, Microsoft also reveled in the number of other potential AAA titles confirmed at the show. The best of these are examined in this preview."
Posted anonymously to protect the innocent! No karma-whoring here!
X02 and the future of the Xbox
X02 is the cunningly named sequel event to last year's Cannes X01 launch. It essentially gives Microsoft a competition free platform to make important announcements, introduce upcoming games and to spend prodigious amounts of money on industry journalists. This years event took place in Seville, and gave a fascinating glimpse into the direction Microsoft is heading.
Boarding the plane at Gatwick, I soon found myself engaging in some interesting speculation about what the event would reveal, and precisely what the show needed to achieve from Microsoft's point of view. Things have not gone entirely to plan for the Xbox in Europe, and while there has been no Japan-style disaster, Microsoft has only just edged out Nintendo in a region that has become increasingly important to the industry as a whole. In Europe, the battle for second place is still wide open. The consensus opinion amongst the journalists on the flight was that Microsoft needed to impress at X02 - particularly in the short term. Sony have an almost certain record-selling title in GTA: Vice City, and analysts have always held the view that this Christmas period - the first in which all the consoles have been available in all regions - is far more important than the last one. Worryingly for Microsoft, a number of their key titles have slipped alarmingly, and despite having a reputation for patience on this front (confirmed by many of the developers I have spoken to) I think the situation is now becoming a concern. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Knights of the Old Republic would have been extremely welcome, but it seems we won't see either until next year.
The event began, therefore, with an air of expectation amongst the assembled delegates. Knowing nothing of the venue, it was something of a shock when the numerous coaches pulled up outside an enormous theme park on the edge of the city. Festooned in green and black, and with a spectacular laser and water show, it was clear that Microsoft wanted something of a party atmosphere. This was primarily achieved through the free alcohol that was available, however, and it makes me tremendously proud to report that your British media representatives were foremost amongst the European nations in creating the necessary mood through alcohol consumption. It brought a tear to my eye, to see such dedication.
Clearly wanting to take a grip on the situation before everyone became too drunk to care, Microsoft quickly convened the nights press conference. Acting as master of ceremonies was Sandy Duncan, VP of Xbox Europe. Also speaking from Microsoft were Jay Allard, general manager of Xbox, Ed Fries, VP of content for Xbox and Michael Cassius, the European Xbox director. Several developers and publishers also made speeches, including Jay Wilbur from Epic, Peter Molyneux from Lionhead, and Yves Guillemot from Ubisoft. The proceedings were laced with flashy music and special effects as you might expect, but most of the interest was of course generated by the announcements made.
Some of these were pretty much expected, but overall there was a slight shift in tone from the company that may well prove to be significant. The initial announcements concerned various games planned for the platform, and included Project Gotham Racing 2, as well as other unheard of titles like Climax's Sudeki (which ultimately was considered one of the most promising games of the show - more later).
The worst kept secret in gaming - MS's purchase of Rare - was also revealed, with a cool price tag of around $375 million. The Stamper brothers were present, but did not speak - probably too stunned by the fact that they're now stinking rich. One interesting point was the movie played after the announcement. There has been intense speculation over which franchises would be retained by Rare, and which would revert to Nintendo. This movie seemed to suggest Rare would retain Perfect Dark, the Conker franchise and Banjo-Kazooie, as it featured all these characters as well as the first game to be released for the Xbox - Kameo. Kameo is a fairy with the ability to morph into a variety of other creatures, and the game seemed to be some kind of action puzzler, with a similar play-style to other Rare games. Release date is as yet unknown, but we're not likely to see it for at least a year.
The biggest announcements, however, and certainly those that MS was keen to promote the most, were those concerning the impending launch of Xbox Live. A lot of information was given here, and it will be covered in more detail in another article, but the pertinent points are the lauch date - March 14th in Europe - and the price, at around 59 Euros. This should translate to about £39.
The promotion of Xbox Live was definitely the prevailing theme of the show, and indeed MS representatives constantly badgered people to go and try it out. My overall impression was that MS are very happy with the system they have designed, but are slightly worried about how to sell and promote it. To elaborate on this point, let me just explain that this type of show is not only attended by specialist gaming press. In fact we were probably in the minority, with many more journalists from more neutral publications like the BBC or mens magazines, as well as general press. This meant that not all the journalists present came from a gaming background, and MS representatives made specific requests several times during the event for people to try out the Xbox Live demonstrations. They were extremely keen to get the message across, and were perhaps worried that certain press elements in attendance were missing out on the experience.
As said previously, there was a general consensus amongst the press that MS needed X02 to be a success to win over some critics. In this regard, the show was a success - but probably not an unqualified one. There are definite chinks in the armour, and perhaps the most significant is the real lack of stand out titles available in Europe in time for Christmas, and in particular titles with mainstream broad-based appeal.
Of all the possible AAA titles demonstrated at the show, only one will definitely be released in time for the holiday season. Ubi Soft's Splinter Cell looks fantastic -essentially it's the Tom Clancy take on the stealth genre. It plays a little like Metal Gear Solid, but aims to be more realistic and less arcade-like. There is also less of an emphasis on interruptive story, and the gameplay is extremely compelling. It's scheduled for release in November, and there'll be more info on it and other titles in the X02 games round up.
In the long term, however, things look decidedly rosy for Xbox. There are an enormous number of titles in development for the console as we speak - three hundred at the last count - and an amazing number of those look like they have real potential. Several games stood out as potential classics. I'll save the details for the games round up, but these included Sudeki, Kameo, Steel Battalion, MGS 2: Substance, Brute Force and Molyneux and co.'s offerings Fable (formerly Project Ego) and B.C. There are also titles designed with Xbox Live in mind, and having played both Unreal Champoinship and Mech Assault I can confirm that both are incredibly fun, with UC particularly being a grade A title.
X02 was also significant for the tone of the rhetoric we heard from many of Microsoft's top people. Ed Fries admitted in one particular speech that "we learned the hard way about the mistakes we made", referring at the time to two things - the eventual realization that Xbox prices were far too high when it came to the market, and also to the decision to release the controller S in Europe on November 1st. This conciliatory tone was evident throughout the event - Xbox is clearly trying to avoid the kind of bad reputation that MS as a company has with certain audiences. There was also quite a bit of honesty from the Xbox team in that they often admitted that they did not have all the answers. During the developer unplugged session, Jay Allard was asked about potential difficulties of using a voice communicator with certain game genre's. He simply said that MS had no idea how people would act in-game with the communicator, and that some risk was involved in the effort to bring voice to gaming, but that he and his team were convinced that it was worth a try.
The members of the Xbox staff present at the show were all as candid as Allard - it did give me the impression that the company is trying head off any accusations of being insensitive to consumers and the general public. As such, the event did go a long way towards convincing me of the viability of Xbox Live and of the continued success of Xbox in general. The particular thing to remember here is that Xbox will continue improve with age - it has only been in Europe for a matter of months. Encouragingly, there are a number of titles due that are almost guaranteed to be a success by any measure - games like Knights of the Old Republic, Halo 2, Fable and B.C., and Microsoft is clearly looking at long term prospects by buying companies of Rare's calibre. It seems that Microsoft's goal is now simply to grow its user base and make a success of Xbox Live. Playstation 2 has an unassailable lead in terms of numbers, so MS seems to be shedding it's myopia and looking to the future, and I'd contend that this is no bad thing. 2003 looks to be the definitive year in the history of the Xbox...
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Although Microsoft's main purpose during X02 was publicising the launch of Xbox Live, they also took the opportunity to impress upon the onlooking media the quality and quantity of upcoming Xbox titles. There are at the moment over three hundered seperate titles in development for the system, and Microsoft have garnered considerable third party support. This is mostly thanks to an impressive effort in courting developers from around the globe, and is helped along by some outstanding purchases in the form of developers Rare and Bungie, amongst others.
One of the most impressive aspects of the software line up is the number of titles we see emerging that have the potential to be classics - games such as Halo 2, Fable, B.C. and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic are as close as guaranteed hits as you can get in this industry. They are, if you like, the gaming equivalents of summer blockbusters. There were also a number of games on show at Seville that showed similiar levels of potential, despite not having perhaps quite the same profile.
Splinter Cell
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is Ubi Soft's take on the stealth genre. For those of you who loved Metal Gear Solid, but perhaps felt it was a little too arcade-like or else felt the story was an annoyance - take note, because Splinter Cell looks like it could have the answers.
The game uses the next generation Unreal engine, Unreal Warfare, and is played from a third-person perspective. You take control of an American covert operative, working for some shadowy government agency, with a mandate to sneak about and generally skulk in dark corners.
The demo on show at Seville began with your character standing outside an unassuming building. Sneaking around the side, a back entrance is quickly discovered, and the player makes his way inside. Facing you is a long corridor, with long light fittings breaking up the passage way into light and dark strips. Splinter cell is filled with great lighting, and this is one aspect that seperates this game from the MGS series. MGS, if you recall, never used lighting effectively or in a realistic manner. Splinter Cell, however, allows you to hide in the shadows, as well as manipulate local light levels through switches and shooting out lights. Your character has two special vision modes to give him the edge in the dark - a night vision mode, and thermal imaging mode. Both look pretty darn cool, and seem to form an integral gameplay component rather than a gimick.
Also available to the player are a number of cool gadgets, in the best 007 tradition. Two particular favourites of mine were the optical wire cam, and the sticky cam. The optic wire cam is simply a camera which views the world from the end of an optic cable. You can pass this cable under doors to give you a view of what lies behind before you enter a room - it's really a great touch, and works a little like those camera orbs from Thief II. The sticky cam is simply a camera you can throw and stick to surfaces, which can then be used to give a better perspective on your surroundings.
The graphics in Splinter Cell are superb, and extremely atmospheric. As said previously, lighting plays an integral part of the game, and it has a much more realistic look than MGS, which could look a little too stylized. In the demo the main character wore all black combat clothing, with numerous tool belts and pockets. The main character is also capable of performing a number of excellent maneuvers to complement his gadgets and weapons. He has the ability to suspend himself high up between the walls of a narrow corridor, to let enemies pass unsuspecting beneath, or else drop down on them to break their necks. Hostages can be taken and used as human shields, and of course a whole range of stealth weaponry is available.
Ubi Soft are promising nine massive missions set across twenty-six levels and four countries, and the levels will also include fully interactive elements such as retinal and fingerprint scanners. This is one of the real gems in the European Christmas release schedule, and should be released in the UK come November.
-X02 Splinter Cell Sudeki Steel Battalion Fable B.C. and get this quote "Unfortunately we'll only see Splinter Cell and possibly Steel Battalion sometime soon - the rest are at least a year away. It's encouraging, however, to see such quality in development - I suspect that this time next year the Xbox will have a considerable lead over its competitors in terms of the numbers of top quality titles." Hahaha
"One of the most impressive aspects of the software line up is the number of titles we see emerging that have the potential to be classics - games such as Halo 2, Fable, B.C. and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic are as close as guaranteed hits as you can get in this industry."
Um...yeah...let's see. Fable is at this point vaporware from a company that has produced no console hits AFAIK. I don't even know what B.C. is, and Star Wars games are a dime a dozen. Every system out there already has a few Star Wars games, few of which are "classics."
Let's see...Nintendo has Metroid, Zelda, some Donkey Kong Game, Mario Kart, Resident Evil...and XBox has BC, Fable and Star Wars...lol.
The "we have 300 games coming out" is the oldest trick in the book. Even 3DO supposedly had 300+ games "in developement."
I wonder if Halo 2 was on display?
Yes.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Luckily I got a look at the page... Uploaded to my web site.
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The fact that Nintendo makes interesting games is also surely a factor in their success, but the same could be said about Sega, and they lost the console war. At least they're still producing games.
Sony got lucky. They won the most recent generation of the console war because they beat Nintendo to market and scored Square. They made it easy for developers to make games for the Playstation by providing good C libraries and later on, lower-level access to the machine to let developers squeeze the last bits of goodness out of the machine. The PS2 has a rocky start because developers found it difficult to program for it, but the fact that the PS2 plays PS1 games, and because the PS1 was so successful, they managed to carry forward a lot of the developer support that they had with PS1. The end result is that even though the PS2 is a less powerful machine than the other two major consoles, it's got a much better library. If I had to pick one console to buy, it would be the PS2, if for no other reason than the fact that it's got so many solid titles.
Love or hate Microsoft, they're doing the smart thing to buy developers to secure exclusive titles for XBox. I'm not sure how you can say that MS buys companies and then ruins them -- Halo's a pretty fun game, and I'd have a hard time believing that Rare won't produce some pretty high quality titles in the future. MS is just giving consumers a reason to buy their console, and there's nothing wrong with that. Rare developed games exclusively for Nintendo's machines, and now they're going to turn around and do it for Microsoft. Hardly a big change for them.
The real reason why MS is a "smaller player" is simply the fact that there are a lot of console bigots out there. Generally speaking, console users have strong loyalties. Nintendo's been around for ages. Sony proved themselves with Playstation. Now Microsoft has to prove that the XBox is a viable platform.
The final opinion that I'd like to voice is the fact that title exclusivity is a *good* thing. For console manufacturers, exclusivity gives consumers a clear reason to buy their machine over all the others that are available. The fact that the Playstation got Final Fantasy VII was a non-trivial factor in its early success. If you're a Mario fan, there's one console that you need to buy: Gamecube. If you were a sports game fan in the 16-bit days, Genesis was the way to go. When you haven't got exclusivity, you have chaos. It vexes me when I buy a game (Soccer Slam for Gamecube is an example) that I play and enjoy, and then a few months later, another version of the game, with more bells and whistles, is released for a different console (in this example, the XBox). The differences between the two versions aren't significant enough to warrant buying the game for both consoles, but nevertheless, I would still enjoy those extra goodies, small though they may be.
Yep Halo gets alot of hype.. but it's true, if you only played the first few episodes, then you don't know Halo =) It gets better and better.
The vehicle aspect was doing something new, as I bet the best selling PC FPS this season will be Battlefield 1942, where vehicles are a huge part of the gameplay.
Back in the day, I won several national Quake 1/2 tourneys, and used to think I would never play a FPS on a console without a mouse, but Halo's dual analog setup feels really good. I play it over the internet with Gamespy tunnel, and to me it's also a plus that everyone I play with is using the same hardware and controls for a level playing field and good competition. Yes split screen sucks, but thats what sys link and Xbox live are for.
And as far as graphics... I grew up watching NTSC like most people, and when I play a DVD, I really don't notice the low resolution of my set, it's the standard of realistic moving images as most people know it. Halo and most of my Xbox games look better then anything I can play on my Geforce3 with my 21" $1900 monitor.
PC games are dying, well, in comparison to the mainstreaming of consoles. Only 1 PC game made it into the top 10 sales list last week. PC's are too expensive for average joe to keep updated, or even keep running.
Yeah and the market for selling add on to consoles is so hugh, thats like saying if ford can't make a decent steering wheel, then it is up to the owner to fix it instead of buying a volvo, face it consoles are defined by their controller, it is the one thing that you have to get right when designing a console, and the fact M$ screwed up demonstrates how out of touch with the market they are.
2) As an XBox Live beta tester, I can say that it's the greatest thing to happen to consoles since Mario.
Still have to sell it to the masses and it ain't going to work, consoles aint computers, most people will lose you after then you log on and wait around for someone to play, besides this types of things where tryed on the PC like mplayer years ago and where are they today? hell where the hell is M$ gaming Zone?, everyone just uses gamespy.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
Don't forget that you still can get all the football/hockey/basketball/whatever games on the GameCube as well.