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Microsoft Games Boss Promises Higher Quality, Fewer Games

Posted by simoniker on from the one-title-per-hardware-platform dept.

Thanks to the San Jose Mercury News for its article discussing Microsoft Game Studios' new general manager Shane Kim's attitude to development, as the piece notes: "Some of Kim's first acts have been to ax or delay several projects. Since the fall, Microsoft has scaled back its staff of internal game developers from 1,200 employees to about 1,000." But it's argued: "Because there are now so many others making games for the Xbox, Microsoft needs to make fewer titles, Kim said... This shift toward a conservative investing style mirrors the larger shift within the video game industry, where development budgets and marketing costs are reaching Hollywood proportions."

2 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Microsoft makes some pretty decent games by edwdig · · Score: 2, Informative

    You're the one trolling. The GameCube is outselling the Xbox worldwide by a significant margin. In the US, the Xbox is slightly ahead, but the GameCube has been closing the gap since the cut to $99 last fall.

  2. Re:Microsoft makes some pretty decent games by edwdig · · Score: 2, Informative

    Japan is the 2nd largest market for games. It's not something you can just talking aside when talking about console sales. Especially not in this situation. The Xbox has a slim sales lead over the Cube in the US and Europe, but is hugely behind in Japan. Perhaps if the Xbox had a huge lead in the regions its ahead ignoring Japan would be interesting. But right now, ignoring Japan is just tossing aside the numbers you don't like to make your side look better.

    Tossing aside Japan can really change the outlook of consoles. The N64 was only outsold by the PS1 3:2 in the US, and that's largely because the last year or two of the N64's life had a large reduction in the number of games available. But in Japan, the PS1 outsold the N64 somewhere around 10:1, which had a huge effect on the worldwide numbers, and is where all talk of the N64 not doing well talk comes from.

    The Japanese aren't buying the Xbox not because the system is American, but rather because the games are all catered to American tastes. Selling NFL Gameday with all English text & packaging in Japan isn't going to sell. Nor will selling lots of First Person Shooters.