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Game Industry Experts Discuss Xbox 2
Alan Wong writes "Taken from the latest issue of Xbox Nation magazine, 1UP.com has posted a feature entitled Doing The Right Thing, where eleven industry insiders discussed what it would take for Microsoft to make the next Xbox a success. Among the panel members were Nolan Bushnell, Trip Hawkins, Steven Kent, Bioware's Greg Zeschuk."
To be honest your comment was the exact kind I was trying to lure in with my post, because most people (me included obviously) don't know about these guys. So thanks a lot, that's helpful info :)
In my defence I do know who Bioware is, but not anyone in it my name...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell
They should've contacted Ken Williams (of former Sierra fame - http://www.sierragamers.com/), and maybe they'd gotten some input of how to make games that appeal to the cerebral part of the marketplace as well.
The experts seem to be pushing for an early launch, which seems strange to me.
Microsoft have unique levels of flexibility on their launch date - they can simply wait a bit and up the specs of the machine as their off-the-shelf parts fall in price.
If they go early, they have lower specs, less software, and less time to polish that software, and they will be up against people's perception of how good the '1000x more powerful than PS2' PS3 will be rather than the actual device.
If they go for the same day as Sony, they can use the cash mountin to outspend Sony on marketing and to go $10 cheaper than Sony.
If they go late, they can out-spec Sony.
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I am biased, because I am a big Xbox fan...but...
Most of the excitement I see around consoles currently, is around the Xbox. The PS2 is starting to look really bad lately, in comparison to Xbox games. The Gamecube has the whole on-line vaccuum which many Nintendo fans say is no big deal. Because they don't understand why there is excitement around on-line gaming. (Trust me, there is)
I was recently at a professional conference at Purdue University. (No, this was not for students, but for technical professionals) The agenda had 'game night' listed for 3 of the nights. I had no idea what it would be- charades, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey...who knows. Imagine my happy surprise when I walked in the room and saw 4 Xboxes connected via System Link and projected onto big screens. We played for 2 or 3 hours every night, and people who weren't even videogame fans got into the action.
I really don't think people would have/could have done this with the other consoles. This type of technology is what is making the Xbox 'cool' right now. When I have videogame neophytes (or even PS2/Gamecube owners who aren't familiar with the Xbox) over to play some games, they are usually blown away by Xbox Live. "These are REAL people?" they say over and over into the microphone...(sullying my gamertag while doing it).
The better technology built into the Xbox is finally becoming more important, now that people see that all 3 consoles can play games. But the Xbox can save more games, play your own music, play on-line, download new content, system-link...
Hopefully the next Xbox pushes the envelope a little bit further, so games are still exciting 3 years after the launch of the console.
Because when I play on a PS2 or Gamecube, I think that just playing 'standard' console games is a real snore-fest.
No reason to lie.
" mention the above, because it's plain to see that the Xbox is already a success. By market standards, they're in an incredible place. (Um.. TurboGrafx, anyone... Or N-Gage?) Sure, they're not the number one player, but coming from nowhere, they've made themselves into a contender, and that's a success as far as I can see."
What a lot of Slashdotters don't know is that it's okay to not be in first place in the games market. A lot of people say the Nintendo 64 failed because the PS sold more units. Um, Nintendo sold 30 million N64's along with millions of software they produced. I'm surprised Nintendo doesn't have a McDuckian Money Bin on their property.
"Derp de derp."
Why this puff piece was posted is beyond me. I am planning on opening a gaming cafe in the next 3 months. This menas everything about gaming interests me these days. I want to know what is popular now and what may be popular in the future and why. Perhaps some discussion of market share or sales statistics. How about details on hardware specs or online services. Maybe information on their relationships with resellers and publishers. All this article does is try to convince people that Microsoft is still in the console business and attempts to convey the impression that Microsoft wont get its ass kicked by Sony again while providing excuses for when they do. If OSDN wants to sell Ad space they might as well be honest with us about it. Oh but wait, the whole purpose of the article was to give the Xbox some "street cred" with industry leaders that read slashdot wasnt it?
There are lots of resources that the Sony games division would need to split. Off the top of my head, I would say advertising would be a big one. Also, the PSP is a similar enough piece of hardware that the PS3 and the PSP could concievabley be competing for exclusive games. By this I mean that if all the PSP games are just ports of PS2/3 games there isn't much incetive to have both. On the other hand, developers may not want to comit to do an exclusive title for both the PS3 and the PSP. I am sure there are more resources that would be divided, but it's 4 am and the Guiness is working on me.
IMHO Nintendo just gave up the idea to link up different things. You know, requiring 2 things to link them up looks like tie-in sale to be frowned upon usually. Therefore they linked DSs.
Not trying to be rude, but that doesn't really make much sense. What did they link the DS to? When has Nintendo EVER shied away from cross promotional tie in sales? Have you looked at the amazing amount of mario/zelda/pokemon lunchboxes/card games/cartoons/pajamas? Nintendo aims its products sqaurely at the 8-15 crowd, and that's the group that the tie in products work on. (The DS looks like it may be the start of a more mature demographic for the N, but we'll have to see when all the games come out).
Nintendo fans who own DS buy Nintendo console where you can see Mario/Zelda/Pokemon, anyway. It won't help increasing sales much.
That's true of Nintendo console owners. If you have GC now, you're likely to get a GC2. However, there's a good chance that if you have a PS2 or an XBox you have a GBA. If you have a GBA, there's a good chance you'll get a DS. If the GC2 and the DS have some killer interactivity and you have a DS already, when given the choice between buying a GC2 and an XBox2, I think that the DS may be the thing that tips the scale. Even if Nintendo can steal an extra 5% of XBox2 it would be worth it.