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Microsoft Cancels 2004 Xbox Sports Lineup
madopal writes "Well, it's no secret that Microsoft has been slashing internal development (Mythica, anyone?). Now, they've announced that they're cancelling their entire 2004 line-up of XSN Sports games for Xbox. Wow, with Ed Fries gone, it sure is a different place over there." The article quotes Kevin Browne of Microsoft as saying: "We need to be making great games, and the marketplace told us that we're just not at that level."
Oh my... No new crappy sports titles from Microsoft. How will XBox owners ever get by?
Let's get back to our core business, making great operating systems!
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
"We need to be making great games, and the marketplace told us that we're just not at that level."
when have you guys made anything great? it's ok take your time to think about it....
only MS game i ever played was Halo and i didnt even like it. i played it because i bought an xbox and i beat the oddworld game too quick.
plus do we really need more sports titles anyway? there are like 10 variations of each sport possible, and they all are released every year with the new team info.
We know better than to believe most PR. Perhaps much of MS's energy is being redirected towards Xbox 2?
Besides, as was pointed out earlier, Xbox sales are being driven by sports games, but largely not the ones made by MS: think EA, Sega, etc. Considering that Xbox hardware sales are not exactly a cash cow, Xbox 2 seems to be of superb strategical importance for market domination, especially compared to the idea of doing Xbox 1 sports games.
Hmmm... XBox sports games sold pretty decent. Not great, but better than many of their other first party titles (better than Grabbed by the Ghoulies, certainly!). The only legitimate reason I could see for them doing this is if they came to an agreement with EA to add Live support to their next season of sports titles. OR, this could be an April Fools joke, two days early...has anyone else reported this as well? Without just stealing the story from IGN, that is?
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
Let's start a petition for Microsoft to release the source code to these games now that they've abandoned them!
What with this a nd the recent price drop, it's clear the Xbox as a platform is reaching the end of its life. M$ seems poised to release the Xbox 2 any day now. Or week, or month, or year. Whatever.
Take a look at the market for football titles. It's absolutely flooded with drek. NFL Blitz, NFL Gameday, NFL Fever, NFL 2k4, and the only two good games: ESPN NFL Football and the Madden series. But even Madden seems to be heading away from being a football game and more towards a coaching or ownership sim.
It's sad that Microsoft's cutting out the XSN games because they had a great idea combining sports titles with Xbox Live (which would seem to indicate many more possibilities than simply playing online), and the console could always use some strong sports titles on Xbox Live, but as sports games go, the XSN titles just weren't good enough to compete with other companies' offerings, online or not.
Still I've gotta admit, I always got excited at the notion of what would be possible with Xbox Live sports games. Custom leagues, custom teams, drafts within the leagues... it could really break some new ground for the incredibly tired sports genre. Seems that won't be happeneing any time soon.
...with the exception of Top Spin, they were really not that great anyway, and I doubt we would have seen a Top Spin 2004 anyway. So it's just kinda...meh.
I think that this is representative of a couple of things.
First, it shows how much more like Nintendo Microsoft is moving for game development. Quality over quantity. I think initially, Microsoft was emulating Sony with its mere quantity, as if it were Microsoft's job to fill in the gaps in the lineup. Maybe it's because they finally have the third party support to start focusing on quality first party (and when I say first party I am also referring to second party) titles. For the first year or two after the launch, Microsoft seemed to releasing everything they possibly could. Over the past year they became much more focused, told the in house dev studios to get it done but take their time (Crimson Skies, for example) and canned other titles that weren't up to par.
Now, it seems they're getting even leaner.
Which brings me to my second point.
And this is the one that will draw the atypical slashdot trolls like flies to a honey factory. Say what you will about monopolistic practices or Microsoft always borrowing from other companies. It's true. But one of the things Microsoft excels at is adapting their products until they work. With regards to the Xbox, they've displayed much more willingless to change the xbox based on market movements than Sony, and especially Nintendo. Canning and revamping the sports lineup is just one of these macro-adaptations that will make them that much more formidable in Xbox2. Someone posted that the canning was because of Xbox2. I think that's true, but only indirectly. They're not going to be Azurik 2, Bloodwake 2, and Fusion Frenzy 2 with the Xbox2 just because they can. My guess is that it will 2-5 extremely strong titles.
I know I'm sounding like a fanboy here, but it might take an Xbox 3.11 to start to dominate the market, but they're moving towards that, and this is demonstrative of that movement.
But one of the things Microsoft excels at is adapting their products until they work.
That is because they have the cash to enter a market and do very poorly but still survive. Any other company (pretty much) would not have time to adapt their product while losing money.
They didn't even bother to release any roster updates, tho they made sure to brag up and down that they could have.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Top Spin is the only good game to come out of all of the XSN junk, and even its load times were painfully slow.
I dig my Xbox, but crap is crap.
That is because they have the cash to enter a market and do very poorly but still survive. Any other company (pretty much) would not have time to adapt their product while losing money.
Well, to some degree yes. That is certainly true now. However, while I might be off on my MS history, I'm not so sure it was true back in the DOS/early windows era. I think you're defintely right, but I also think that it's as much a characteristic of Microsoft's corporate identity as much as it is money.
Hey, Hey, Hey...
Links 2004 is loved by many (including me).
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
golf is never going to save a big operation like XSN. Neither will tennis, and go figure those are the two games they go closest with.
There won't be as many shitty sports games flooding the market this year.
Microsoft may have bought a number of second parties, but their in-house development is something different (having had a friend who worked there). Can't say any of their in-house stuff has ever really interested me.
The Amped snowboarding games are the only snowboarding simulations out there. Though I think that development team has already been terminated, it makes me sad to think I will have to choose between 2 racing games for my off-season snowboard fun. As that isn't much of a choice at all, I guess that's $50 more per year that stays in my pocket. Bummer.
Don't worry folks, there are still enough XBox sports titles to fill up those bins of unsellable used games for the next 300 years.
While Microsoft is obvious very cash rich as a company, their games are on tight budgets and they are always trying to cut corners on cost. While throwing money at a game isn't a silver bullet, Microsoft's attitude in the end does hurt the quality of any game they are working on.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
This is the first step in microsoft realizing that it has no place in the gaming industry...go ahead I know there's people bitching at me right now, but plain and simple...sony is outselling them. Xbox has no hope unless they make it backwards compatible, until they realize this, I will continue to talk about how stupid the development decisions are for Xbox.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Alright, I'll admit it and let the masses of /. cut me down ... I am a fan of the XBox. The controllers are a little bulky, but the graphics are great and they have some FUN games. Yesterday I finally picked up a copy of "Ninja Gaiden". I never played Ninja Gaiden for the NES but I remember hearing how cool it was ... for the XBox it is amazing. It's the best game that I've played on the XBox since Halo ... by far. Not only that, and this is where it's relevant to the topic, it has an XBox live feature. I *THINK* it's designed so that you fight other Ninja's around the world but I'm not really sure because I'm too cheap to shell out the bones for XBox Live. Anyhow Microsoft is smart to drop their shitty sports lines, NFL Fever was lame ... give the Live access to EA and let them handle all that shit. Madden, is in my opinion, the best football sim and if I want people to get real messed up it's all about Street.
Sounds like someone over there might have finally caught a clue. In the game business people won't put up with a crappy 1.0 and a mediocre 2.0 while waiting for the finally good 3.0.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Gotta' disagree with what some other people are saying regarding a "flood" of sports titles.
Fact is, there are what seem to be a huge amount of sports titles at first, until you realize how fragemented the games and series' are across systems and platforms.
It seems to me that Microsoft killing off an entire line of X-box games is a huge blow to a genre that is essentially now left only with the EA Sports line of games across all platforms, with possibly Sega having a small share of that.
It's sad. The RPG Bandwagon is really screwing up gaming in general.
-- Primis.
EA: Ok we will do Live but you need to back off from Sports title. MS: What? No?? We have NFL Fever out there MS: ok seriously.. can we continue rallisport and Top Spin? EA1 whisper to EA2: MS thinks rallisport is a sports game EA: ok.. release rallisport update now, push TopSpin for xbox2. Get rid of Links though. Tiger is mad about it. MS: Will do. But you will do Live before this Holiday season.. EA: We will!
Of course it was true back in the early days of DOS, Windows, and OS/2. Maybe you've even heard of their once-upon-a-time sugar-daddy/knight in shining armor: Does the name "IBM" ring a bell? It may be true that Microsoft didn't have their own endless suply of money back then as they do now, but don't believe for a second that the monetary momentum wasn't behind Microsoft back then, especially when their competition came in the form of non-IBM companies trying to compete with Papa IBM.
And as a result of their IBM-granted monopoly, they now exist to stick their fingers in every pie imaginable, at any cost beyond imaginable. Once it was PC operating systems and applications. Then it was servers. Yesterday it was stuttering stuffed Barneys, cable TV channels, internet push technology, and handheld devices. Today it's digital rights restriction and the Xbox in the living room....but I repeat myself.
True, but how does that negate what the parent says?
"Michael Jordan is a great basketball player."
"That's because he's much taller than your average person."
And?
bugbread: Not all explanations are counterarguments, just as not all conversations are arguments.
Learn this, J-boy.
Good point. Actually, I kind of debated for a while (with myself) whether the comment was meant as an argument, or an addendum. I may well have guessed wrong, in which case I apologize.