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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."
Age of Empires
Asheron's Call
Flight Simulator
Halo
MechAssault
Crimson Skies
Project Gotham Racing
Counter-strike
Shenmue
Maybe they're not your cup of tea, but for millions of other gamers, they are great games. That Microsoft published them demonstrates an ability to identify quality games, and bring them to their gamers -- the only attribute worth having in a publisher.
In my opinion, this move only demonstrates further that Microsoft does 'get' gaming. Their sports games were also-rans, and completely unnecessary given the great lineup of third-party sports titles for their system. Cutting them was a smart move.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Shenmue is a Sega title, Counter-Strike is a Valve title. As far as I know, the rest of those are in-house or 2nd party titles, so I have no issues there.
What most people really seem to be missing here is that Microsoft cut the titles to work on the next year's titles, rather than cutting their sports line completely. They also make it fairly clear in the interview that the most well-received titles (Top Spin and Amped) were never considered yearly titles, and were therefore not part of the cut (though sequels may not have been in the works yet).
Microsoft has a lot of solid code in their sports titles, especially with the number of code bases they have to derive from in some areas (like baseball titles). All they are doing now is giving their developers more time to make their titles competetive with EA and Sega titles. They seemed to be close their first year out, but their latest run definitely fell flat. This was probably the only way to save these titles, even if it means they won't have a new series on the shelves for a year (and isn't one of the biggest complaints about these types of games the fact that they don't improve much in a year anyway?).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
...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'll let the article speak for itself, from page 2:
IGN Sports: Last year, the ESPN games weren't allowed to have Xbox leagues because of XSN. Now that the Microsoft lineup is not coming out, will the ESPN games be allowed to have leagues this year?
Kevin Browne: This past year, it wasn't a matter of them not being allowed, it was more that the technology came in at a latter date than what they felt comfortable reacting to. The ability exists for them to have the same sort of league functionality that exists for XSN Sports, and with the Tsunami release of Xbox Live that comes out this spring, they'll have an even better ability. My hope is that they take advantage of it, and if EA decides that they want to be on Xbox Live this year, that they'll take advantage of those capabilities and provide great sports games for Xbox customers.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
"Programming is like sex - one mistake and you'll have to support it for the rest of your life."