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Ballmer - Xbox 'Can Take Sony' In Next Generation
An anonymous reader writes "According to GameSpot, a Q&A with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has him saying that, although the company's Xbox game console isn't making money (or bleeding them dry), the pain has been worth it. 'We have gone from nowhere to a significant player,' he said, adding: 'I am betting we can take Sony in the next generation.' Guess things are set to get even more interesting with the forthcoming next-gen console launches."
Sadly, I'm guessing that Ballmer's crass remark may end up being true if Sony take too long to release the PS3. At the very least Microsoft will make big inroads in western markets, and stand to do well in Asia if (a) the console is much sexier than the current version, and (b) they managed to sign some big Asian games studios. Admittedly neither of these is very likely.
I have no problem if Microsoft become a bigger player in the console market. The original XBox definitely raised the standards of what we could expect from console performance, and without XBox there would be no one to keep Sony honest*. What I don't want to see is Microsoft pulling a Windows on the console market. That would be very bad for all involved, and would just give Ballmer the meathead more to crow about.
*Yes yes yes. Gamecube, Dreamcast, Phantom, blah blah. Anyone honestly think they could keep Sony honest?
gadgetophile.com
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should be:
"I am betting we will take it in the ass from Sony in the next generation."
Really, that is far more plausable.
I hear that sometimes many people thing MS being a monopoly is a bad thing but one large monopoly against another like MS against Sony is the essence of competition. This is the sort of thing consumers dream of, witness such cheap hardware as XBOX and PS2 now, where only one thing has driven the price down
COMPETION!
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Parent sounds kinda flamebait-ish, but actually pretty perceptive.
Sony have a huge following in Japan, and there are a squillion totally insane and unfathomably games for the PS2 that never see the light of day outside of Asia.
I doubt MS would be able to understand Sony's Japasia market, let alone penetrate it.
gadgetophile.com
No, but being nearly tied with Nintendo, the oldest console player, for second place is. They basically came out of nowhere.
If you haven't already realized, the Xbox is a *good* console. If Sony just sits on their haunches with the PS3, Microsoft could very well take the lead from them in the next generation, especially now that the new Xbox and Playstation seem likely to launch very close together.
The Xbox brought lots of innovative new features to the table, if Microsoft can continue to come up with interesting stuff they will likely have the most compelling system.
Word of mouth may have kept many away from the Dreamcast, but I doubt it'll stop Xbox Next (or whatever they are calling it)
The only thing that Microsoft could do to 'take' Sony is to sign a lot of exclusive deals with pretty much every top developer. This round of consoles has shown that it doesn't matter how much more powerful the hardware is if you don't have enough games to please the market.
Red herring. MS could've sold each console for $50 and taken control of the market. But that would not set them up for long-term success. They are essentially playing within the same boundaries as everyone else, although they do pump in an extra infusion of cash as needed. But their monetary advantage paled against Sony's mindshare advantage.
Besides, are the only successful products in the world the ones with >50% of the market share? How does the rest of every industry operate?
The XBox two will rule all because it will have such hits as Halo:Revisited and Halo2, and Halo3, and X-Halo, and World of Halo, and Halo all stars. We will get to play throught intense action games without being bored to death by those awful RPG's.
Oh wait, didn't Nintendo say the same thing?
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I don't think MS can ever hope to do in gaming what they've done with Windows and Office. They could get on top for a generation of machines. They could even figure out how to do some things better and make money even if they aren't the best selling console. But every four or five years, there will be a competitor or two with credible competition. Any dominance they win will be under continual threat. Nintendo found out the hard way and Sega REALLY found out the hard way.
Many gamers don't even commit to one console. And gaming platforms aren't like business platforms. They go stale after a few years. Gamers always want to be the first kid on the block with the hot toy. Technical superiority isn't enough either. "Intellivision basketball is much more like real basketball." only worked once when console gaming was getting off the ground. As long as the graphics are the next obvious step up from the last console it will come down to the controllers and the GAMES. The graphics being a little bit better won't mean jack.
I only point this out because MS seems to be badly addicted to having monopolies. Having one in gaming is a completely different kettle of fish. The closest thing to a monopoly in gaming was Atari back in the day. They weren't invincible and neither was Nintendo. The real danger is that an also-ran console is a deep money pit. MS currently has the second place console and I'd guess they're just breaking even. It's a big risk and lot of money just for the chance be number one for a generation.
I think old Steve is getting far to high off his own hype. As it stands Sony is number 1 and I do not see that been any different with the next version of the game console. The reason I think this is becasue of the big change in the XBox 2. They are using a different CPU(IBM RISC), a new GPU(ATI) adding there own microcode to the CPU to stop people doing what they have been doing to the current XBox.
It also means(and this is what I think)that you will not be able to play XBox games on the XBox 2, they will have to re-write DirectX, build a RISC OS for it and then there is Live I would say there will have to re-write most of that as well. MS has never writen software for RISC in the past and I think that the time frame they have set themself is very unrealistic.
Now if you look at how Sony they have had far more years under there belt in the console market, they have partnered up with some good people to bring the PS 3 to life and have build a technology that they are plaining on putting in there other product(Cell).
Saying all that I am looking forward the XBox 2 and think it is a good step for MS in there battle for the console market. Do I think they will catch up with Sony, no but I think they will make money off the XBox 2 and that is a good out look for the future of the XBox console. May be the XBox 3 will be the one that turns the tide.
"The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin, American author
The sad thing is that Balmer may be right:
1) The current Xbox is losing money, but the Xbox 2 will be built with cheaper materials (esp. Flash memory, instead of a hard drive)
2) The current Xbox has much better graphics than the PS2, and there is no reason to believe that this will change with the Xbox2/PS3 3) Microsoft is hell-bent on dominating the console market (watch the discovery channel special "Inside the Xbox").
4) They believe that if you control a family's entertainment, you essentially control the family (again, from "Inside the Xbox")
This is one market MS cannot afford to lose. They will throw everything they have at it.
He said it CAN take Sony. He didn't say anything about WILL take Sony.
The next version of Windows CAN be bugless. It won't, but until it comes out, they can say it CAN be a lot of things.
Ballmer:-
For us--I don't know about the industry--but for us management is going to grow, security is going to grow, the server platform itself ought to grow, collaboration, business intelligence. I can look at almost anything and tell you I see absolute growth possibilities.
Translation:- We can't innovate for crap, so I'll just make some blanket statement about how IT is going to somehow grow bigger - without giving any concrete or useful examples.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
"They are not dominating the PDA market like they wanted to."
Actually, they are. Since the launch of Pocket PC, Windows CE devices have been growing in marketshare consistantly. In fact, the #1 PDA manufacturer isn't PalmOne anymore, it's HP.
"They are slowly but surely losing the server market."
They can't lose what they never had. Microsoft never owned the server market.
"Microsoft is where IBM was in 1980. They are on top, but headed for a fall. The reason? Because despite the rhetoric, Microsoft can't innovate. They can only copy."
IBM is still a $90 billion a year company. There was no IBM "fall". They are still very much alive and kicking.
"Despite reams of hype and much marketting muscle on Microsoft's part, Sony still sells ten Playstations for every Xbox."
Statistically, you're full of crap. At the beginning of this year, Microsoft had sold 13.5 million XBOX consoles. Sony has sold 50 million PS2 consoles. That's 3.7 to one, not the ten to one you quote.
And, remember, PS2 launched over a year and a half earlier than XBox.
"Because despite the rhetoric, Microsoft can't innovate. They can only copy."
When Apple rips off features from Windows XP (fast user switching, video chat, disk encryption, save window with places on left), it's "innovating". When Microsoft invents these features, it's "copying".
"They are not the king of set top boxes."
Carriers deploying Microsoft TV based products:
- Comcast Cable (largest cable operator in world)
- Megacable (largest cable operator in Mexico)
- Bell Canada
- Swisscom (largest broadband provier in Switzerland)
- Reliance Infocomm (largest broadband provider in India)
Who didn't expect Microsoft to be a significant player? For Microsoft to have entered this market and remain insignificant in it would have been evidence of a colossal blunder. Microsoft has the funding it takes to bring in top talent / expertise and develop. Microsoft has one of the most formidable marketing machines in Technology. These alone almost guarantee Microsoft got attention when it entered a market that isn't exactly awash with players.
However, an important piece that might not be immediately apparent is that Microsoft's day 1 for competing with console makers didn't start with the Xbox. Microsoft has competed for decades; every time a consumer or game developer makes a choice on whether they pick a "PC" or console.
Granted, this hasn't been direct competition per se. People tend to look at PC gaming and consoles as exclusive markets. However, there IS a certain degree of indirect competition between the two markets. And more importantly - whether Microsoft has been competing with consoles all along or competing with other OSes for personal computing gaming... Microsoft has been developing expertise in gaming technology.
Microsoft is not going from "nowhere to significant" with the Xbox. It's nowhere as drastic as Ballmer makes it sound. Microsoft has simply decided to shift their existing business strategy to compete directly with console makers.
Granted, the console industry is made up of considerable competition. Microsoft's task isn't trivial. But combine their existing expertise, funding, and talent for marketing... it's no surprise the Xbox has had at least mediocre success.
BZZT! Wrong. Honestly, if you don't know what you're talking about - why post?
MS could have easily sold the XBox for $50 as long as it was $50 [or the local currency equivalent] in all markets. Selling a product below cost is not dumping, idiot.
Here, read this and find out that you're completely wrong.
This is why I hate Slashdot. People are so interested in both gaming the system to gain karma and to try to sound smart that nonsense like the above gets posted. Please, don't post here anymore. You're obviously not trying to add anything to the actual discussion. If your self esteem is this poor, go see a shrink.
I wouldn't say Microsoft really came out of nowhere and almost tied Nintendo is representative of Microsoft's strength in the console biz. It's more along the lines of how weak Nintendo was earlier this year. Nintendo *really* stumbled recently, and Sony took a huge lead because of it. MS basically had a free ride because of that, as well.
There's a few things stopping MS from winning the console wars.
1. Japan is EXTREMELY Xenophobic. They aren't going to sell out their extremely LARGE (highest pre-selling American game: Zelda at 700k units. Highest pre-selling Japanese game: Dragon Warrior 7 at 3,000k units.) console market to a "Gaijin" company without VERY good reason. The XBox is NOT good enough to make them give up their stranglehold on the market.
If you don't get why Japan is where the console wars will be won or lost, let me point it out to you. 99% of all successful console games in the past 20 years have been from Japan. The only exception I can think of is Halo -- and that was a PC game which had it's XBox port released a year before the PC version. Unless Microsoft can invade and make progress in Japan, they will NEVER make any headway in the console market. Period.
2. Sony might drop the ball but the chances of them truely screwing up the PS3 is *very* slim. Yes, the cell processor is a gimmick and a scam, and will fall flat. The PS3 will almost definately be a success, however, because of sheer inertia.
The only thing that could really kill them is if their arrogance makes them do the same kind of stupid errors that Nintendo did in the late 80s that put Big N in the spot they are now (basically being arrogant asses, pissing on 3rd parties and trying to push people around). Granted, the PSP and their repeated micromanagement with stuff like Final Fantasy 11 in the US kinda hints at that same kinda arrogance... However. Nintendo would be far more likely to capitulate on this than Microsoft.
3. Nintendo is *not* going to be idle during all this. Nintendo blew *everyone* out of the water this E3. Sony had a mock up of a unfinished portable with a 2 hour battery life. Microsoft had games they announced a year ago. Nintendo had a playable version of their new portable and about 9 bombshell announcements, one after another. The "Reggielution" as it were got so many people fired up that it really breathed some very much needed fresh air into Nintendo's sails.
Nintendo is calling their next console the Nintendo Revolution. This represents Big N's new thinking -- that horsepower isn't going to be enough to win the next generation of console wars. They're right. The DS completely blew everyone away who saw it, not because it was so graphically potent -- although it was quite nice -- but rather, because it brought so many NEW THINGS to the table. Touch pad, Wireless Link, WIFI Internet on a portable, 2 screens, etc. These are going to bring new games, and new WAYS to play games, and that is going to push sales.
In other words -- Japan has 2 huge titans gearing up for a *huge* battle for #1. There's no room for some silly spoiled foreigner brat of a company to try and push their way in. Especially when all they can muster up for information at the largest console convention in the world is some new screenshots of a game that was announced at last year's E3. Unless Microsoft gets serious, they're not going to be getting anywhere.
I know that it's unpopular to actually say good things about Microsoft, but the Xbox is a really good console. It's easy to program, full-featured, and especially lately seems to be getting a lot of the top releases.
The fact that a company could enter an industry with no prior experience and do better than the likes of Nintendo is really impressive, huge bankroll or no. They had a good strategy, good hardware, innovated in relevant areas, and managed to do pretty well. The simple fact that they stand a good chance of unseating Sony in the next round of consoles (which many analysts believe) is just evidence of their success.
Sony would be foolish to discount Microsoft's resolve to be successful in Japan. Read up on the failure of Word 6.0 in Japan, followed by the success of Word 95.
They are using a different CPU(IBM RISC), a new GPU(ATI) adding there own microcode to the CPU to stop people doing what they have been doing to the current XBox.
Sony is using a different CPU (Cell), and probably a different GPU, why doesn't the same argument apply to them?
and then there is Live I would say there will have to re-write most of that as well.
Why would they have to do that? Nothing that runs on the servers needs to change very much.
MS has never writen software for RISC in the past and I think that the time frame they have set themself is very unrealistic.
They wrote Windows NT for the DEC Alpha (a 64 bit RISC processor) and supported it until NT 4, and they have Windows CE which runs on ARM's RISC processors.
they have partnered up with some good people to bring the PS 3 to life
Microsoft has "partnered up" with IBM and ATI. Are they not "good people"?
By "standard", you mean Microsoft's standards. Which is fortunate since this is a Microsoft product. An obvious advantage to this is being able to develop a tittle for both the Windows and Xbox (or "pc" and "console" if you prefer the misnomer) markets. But in the end, this "standard" is not any more special as any other existing standard. When you code for Sony, you use their tools. And when you code for Microsoft, you use their tools.
Those stats are just Japan. XBox owns a considerably larger portion of the market in the States and Europe.
Several posts have suggested that if XBox can't win Japan, they can't really compete in the console market. That's crap: Nokia phones are nearly unknown in Japan, but they sell more wireless phones than anyone else in the world. Japan is just a market, like anywhere else.
Actually I think Japan is rated more important than it really is. Its main market is slightly bigger than germany alone. There is only one fact why it is important. Japan has many game studios and is looked up upon for historical reasons. The big markets currently are probably US, the EU as a whole (face it economically the EU is a single country) and China, with India probably as an emerging market.
Japan from a non producer perspective is small compared to those markets. The fact why there are so many successful japanes game companies has two sides. Face it US corporations usually produce lots of rather lousy non intuive sequels, whereas japanes companies used to go for the riskier sides and didnt rely entirely on sequels and shooters. But the situation changes currently with more and more sequels to sequel being released by them also.
The other thing is, from the middle of the 80s til Microsofts attempt, there has not been a single successful console which was not japanese. So we have japanese manufacturers holding a tight grip on what games are released and we have game producers who want to enter the market. Guess who has an advantage?
Umm...Apple hardly ripped off any of these features from Microsoft and certainly not from XP. I remember full on video conferencing in the early '90s with "budget" UNIX workstations like the SGI Indy. (We are talking pre Win95 here - back in the Microsoft stone age.)
The encrypted file system introduced in OS X is actually based upon some NeXT technology. (And NeXT is even older than those SGI Indy systems...or did you also miss the part of history when Steve Jobs brought over all the engineers from NeXT and took over Apple?) Anyway, NeXT had an encryption API (for use by applications) for fast elliptic encryption. Go read a little about the encrypted file system in OS X and you will find, well, how about that - fast elliptic encryption!
Also, OS X is UNIX based and UNIX systems are inherently multi-user. The "fast user switching" (and remote desktop stuff) just exposed the multi-user guts of the OS in a user friendly way. (Yes, NeXT also had stuff like remote desktop - login to any machine on the LAN and see your files and apps as if you were sitting at your own box.)
Its just taking time for the OS guys at Apple to take all the good ideas from what came before and fit them together in a logical way in OS X.
In many ways, the "modern" Windows UI (95, 98, NT4, 2000) actually borrow from the NeXT UI. In my opinion, XP tried to do something new with the UI and it turned out pretty bad where as OS X also tried to do something new with the UI and (while somewhat rough at first) is actually getting pretty damn good!
Just recently I decided to go out and get a current generation console. Now, I haven't owned a console system since the SNES, but I've kept abreast of the market and played plenty of games with friends. In that time I've largely moved over to the PC for most of my gaming and, quite frankly, I haven't really looked back. I don't really want to turn this into some sort of PC vs. Console flame war, mind you, just setting the picture.
When I bought a console system I was thinking about all the stuff I wasn't getting on the PC: being able to play a game with my friends in the same room on the same screen, making gaming a bit more of a group activity. Having a fun system to play around with some stuff that consoles actually do pretty well, and playing exclusive titles that I'm not going to get a chance to play on the PC. Given all this and considering that I already have a solid PC for gaming the XBox isn't really that great. My final decision was actually a Gamecube.
Why? Well, the 'cube has a strong library of very good games that simply won't ever be ported to another system because they're Nintendo properties. If I want to play Legend of Zelda, Metroid Prime, Super Smash Bros., Eternal Darkness, Mario Kart, etc. there's only one system that's going to fill that need. As for multi-platform, but console only games (e.g. Starcraft: Ghost) almost all of them are made available for the Gamecube and with graphics that are often better than the PS2. The PS2 drew me with its large library of games, but nothing really stood out. Many of the best PS2 games (e.g. GTA3) are eventually ported to the PC or to the Gamecube. Online play is nice, but again, most of the games that involve online play are often ports of PC games or sports games that I have no interest in. The XBox, in its favor, often has the best graphics and sound of any of the consoles. It has the very nice feature of an integrated hard drive. Ultimately though any of the games I'd really want to play on it are really just PC games. KOTOR, Thief 3, Splinter Cell... I can't imagine wanting to play these on a console system when I could play them on an upgradable, typically more powerful computer with the added bonus of free online play, easy patching and all the other things that computer gaming means.
Ultimately this is where I see the XBox. Microsoft wanted to make a console that was more or less a computer and that's pretty much what they've done. The problem with this is that if you already have a computer you probably don't have much need for the XBox.
In the console market, I'm not convinced that it's worth very much at all. Selling into a market dominated by kids, with a product cycle of about 5 years, a large portion of console buyers are going to grow out of the market, and a large portion are first time buyers.
Actually, I can't think of any other industry where 'significant players' crash and burn on as regular a basis as the console market - Being a 'significant player' didn't help Atari or Sega, both of whom had at one time or other bigger shares of the market than the xbox does, and it didn't do them any good.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
It's not "we are about 17million+ console sales behind Sony", it's "we're only 18 million away from passing them". Think positive man!
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IIRC:
Grand Theft Auto, Getaway, Sing Star, Eye Toy, Tomb Raider, Lemmings, Worms, Rare games, Peter Molyneux games all developed in UK.
Prince of Persia etc. developed in Canada.
The Sims etc. developed in USA.
Wierd games with quirky characters (Oddworld, Heart of Darkness) developed in France
Settlers developed in Germany
Tetris devised in Russia, but ported everywhere. Some new wierd PC games (perimeter) from CIS countries also.
Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy from Japan.
The Hobbit, Way of the Exploding fist, etc. from Australia.
No one country has a monopoly on game development, but there are differences in traditions between the main areas.
1. Japan is EXTREMELY Xenophobic. They aren't going to sell out their extremely LARGE console market to a "Gaijin" company without VERY good reason.
As a resident of Japan, I can never understand why Microsoft's collosal incompetence in Japan is blamed on some sort of Japanese xenophobia. MS released a system that was huge, whose clock got reset when unplugged (unplugging peripherals is very common in Japan to save on electric costs), which scratched customer CDs and DVDs and then told those consumers to just "ignore it, it's no big deal", which featured as a flagship game aimed at adults "Sneakers", which got a 34% on gamerankings.com, as well as a "killer app" consisting of an FPS (Japanese aren't too fond of FPS), and yet the reason the Japanese didn't buy it is xenophobia??
The rest of your points are pretty spot-on, but...
Face it US corporations usually produce lots of rather lousy non intuive sequels, whereas japanes companies used to go for the riskier sides and didnt rely entirely on sequels and shooters.
This really isn't fair or particularly true. Sure, Japan gets more weird or niche games overall, but outside of a few exceptions that doesn't mean they ever sold all that well. Looking at the twenty best-selling games in Japan so far this year (via Magic Box's recent news), I only see two games that aren't existing franchises or sequels. Maybe it used to be better, but I think if you actually look back you will see it has almost 'always' been like that in Japan - niche games do niche business, almost always, almost everywhere.
And US game devs have made lots of innovative games, it was just that in the past you were more likely to see them on a PC rather than a Japanese console. This is even more true for European devs.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Same thing happens to my dreamcast yet that was a HUGE success in Japan.
Do this for me: count the number of American cars you see in Japan. Count the number of Japanese cars you see in America. Japan has a very protectionist economy, it wouldn't surprise me if that's why the Xbox is down.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
"Supressing technology is more evil than lousy working conditions in some third world country."
someone please tell me that this is not the general Slashdot opinion.
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I don't see why many people think most people think the console market is dominated by kids etc. The kids demographic may play a part, but everyone needs to know the average gamer is around 30. Do you think kids buy all these games, no.
Another thing that should be noted, gamers don't "grow" out of any market, if anything there always looking for the next best thing. If a large portion of console buyers WAS infact first time buyers there would only be a marginal increase in console growth, and if you compare it what the console market was from what it is now... it's grown tremoundasly. This closely ties in to the fact that gamers that bought there first nintendo have not grown out of anywhere, and are still buying even more consoles now.
Atari and Sega made mistakes, huge ones. The console market is a very sensitive one, one blunder and it could cost you everything. Who would of ever thought of playing a sega game on the gamecube.
The console market is becoming more and more like the film industry. Like it or not, there is money to made there, and HUGE audience... and it only keeps growing.