Xbox - Borrowing Nintendo's First-Party Model?

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their interview with Xbox VP for game publishing, Ed Fries, in which Microsoft's attitude to first-party game development is discussed. It's revealed that "Microsoft is internally... developing between 35 and 40 Xbox titles", and Fries comments on taking creative risks: "In the beginning, you had people like Seamus [Blackley] and me talking about artistry in game design and so on, but some of that collides with the realities of the games industry." The piece suggests, that with "almost every key third party title available on all three consoles" it's up to Microsoft themselves "...to provide the [internal-developed game] innovation and take some of the creative risks which change a good console into a great one", and ventures that, although Xbox has more third-party support, the "parallels with Nintendo's model are startling."

Comments

Easier Said than Done

[the_riaa]

Okay, let's count the number of successful Microsoft-developed games versus the number of successful Nintendo-developed games. While I don't doubt that Microsoft could eventually do it, Nintendo's been not only making first party games for 20 years now, they've gotten really good with it. Plus, it takes time for game franchises to become beloved - Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Metroid, Final Fantasy - those franchises really only cemented their place in history by having consistently good sequels. Face it, if the only Zelda title we ever got was the first NES incarnation, how many would think of the series in such high light?

And not to knock Microsoft's attempt at doing this (I'd love to see them succeed - I'm always down with good new games), I'll wait to pass judgement until I actually see a good MS developed game. I just hope their new efforts are better than some of the past Xbox overhypes, like 'Blinx the Time Sweeper'. Because we all wondered what would happen when you cross Luigi's Mansion, a Cat, and a TiVo and made a game out of it.