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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."
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
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.
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.
The quality/crap ratio for the Xbox may be higher than the PS2 but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of crap titles. Also, aside from Halo and KOTOR there have been no really must-have titles for the Xbox and both of those games have now been released on the PC. MS really needs a few exceptionally strong exclusives (NOT released for the PC) to make owning an Xbox worthwhile.