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Xbox 2 to Release in Fall of This Year
GamesIndustry.biz has the news that the Xbox 2 will be launched sometime in late fall of this year. With EA games already working on Xbox 2 titles and rumors of a name for the console in circulation, it looks like the first of the next-gen consoles will be here soon. From the article: "Many have expressed concern that Microsoft is forcing the next generation of console hardware too early, and that the current generation still has much to achieve. The most famous example of this came from then Nintendo of Europe MD David Gosen speaking at an ELSPA summit in London last October, where he lambasted Microsoft for pushing a next generation machine to market in 2005, and even went so far as to question Microsoft's motivation as profit." Additionally, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has Balmer saying that they will "blow by Sony" with their next console.
I think the quote (although badly written) was saying that Nintendo was speculating that their motivation might be something other than profit.
Although whatever their motivation (beating the other guys to market, driving the competition out of business, etc), it ultimately comes down to profit.
Derivatives of the PowerPC 970 are being used in the Xbox Next and Project Revolution, Nintendo's successor to the GameCube. A sister processor will also be in Sony's PlayStation 3 system. IBM is currently developing the 970MP, which is due out in the 3rd quarter of 2005, and is code-named "Antares". The PowerPC 970MP is said to be a dual-core processor that can scale up to 3.5GHz. This chip should start at 90nm and then graduate to the 65nm process.
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Except Microsoft has far more money than Sega. Sony won't be able to bury them with "Emotion Engine 65 bazillion polygon" bullshit marketing they way they did with Sega.
I think what he meant is that thier motivation by releasing xbox 2 early might not be profit, but to get more marketshare at loss. Kinda like how they are doing with xbox1. Ofcourse thier long term goal is profit, but he is talking about short term goal of starting the next gen so early.
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Power and control. Microsoft has shown that it is willing to give up short-term profits in order to dominate a market. They only start turning the screws after the competition has been destroyed.
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The thing that bothers me is that Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior in the PC world directly affects their ability to be so competitive in the console world. Microsoft makes use of monopoly rents to subsidize the losses they accrue with the XBox.
It's a lot easier to spread into new markets when you can siphon profits from a monopoly you hold in another market.
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The one H&E quarterly profit is a phantom, resulting completely and entirely from the release of Halo 2. It will not be repeated. Microsoft got a large spike in revenue since they are the publisher of Halo 2, and it was a fantastically quickly-selling game. This spike was large enough to cancel out their losses from the quarter in which the game was released, hence the profit. Unfortunately this doesn't really mean much of anything. The "profit" from that quarter was absolutely measly in comparison to their general losses, and wasn't enough to cancel out the loss from the quarter before-- if you look over the last six months instead of just the last quarter they lost money in that period. And there seems no reason to believe anything but that the next three months will devour that profit just as nicely.
Bungie seems to have been the one good investment H&E has made since the beginning of the XBox. But there is no chance they are going to be able to make the segment float on its own. Meanwhile if you can produce an event which causes a quarterly profit once, this isn't terribly impressive. H&E might as well have put $50 million in a savings account every quarter for a few years, then withdrawn it all at once and said "look! we made a profit this quarter!"
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If there was an article about Bill Gates wiping his nose, he'd be criticised here.
With good reason! Have you seen the brand of tissues he's using? That stuff is made directly from trees!
Responsible people use tissues made from recycled paper. He's clearly mad with power!
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Are you responding to me or someone else?
I suspect my post above was unclear, I am sorry. What I was trying to point out is that gamesindustry.biz has no evidence in their article more solid than "according to sources". I was not trying to say Microsoft couldn't or wouldn't or shouldn't release their console in that timeframe, just trying to observe that maybe readers should be aware that this news is not from official sources and should not be taken simply at the Slashdot headline's word. We don't know anything for certain yet.
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I agree with you, but I don't think that will work so well in the console market. Even if they deliver backwards compatibility in their next gen console, the playing field is much more open than in the OS market. Even if they win with this next round of consoles and start screwing everyone (including 3rd party devs) over, with the following gen Sony (and I guarantee you Sony will still be around) can appeal to those same 3rd party devs and have a good shot.
Don't forget, unlike with Windows OS, every new generation requires the customer buy a completely new set of hardware, and unless they deliver backwards compatibility there's not that much reason for a customer to stick with the XBox unless the customer actually likes the product. MS won't have the lock-in they have in the OS market.
Am I the only one rolling eyes over this? I just can't get excited about new consoles. I currently own all the current consoles, and feel guilty as I hardly use them now.
About the only things that could seem like a major upgrade to me would be improved resolution by requiring an HDTV (not likely to happen), and cheap but effective VR gear like in Sci-Fi (really not likely to happen anytime soon.)
I mean, come on, all the current game systems have many of the same games on them now with little to distinguish them visually and aurally.
Same goes for PC games, really. All FPSers follow the exact same formula, and dispite all the graphical glory possible with Geforce 6800 Ultras and Athlon64 FXs and their ilk, they all boil down to trying to imagine yourself in a virtual world when all you see and experience is coming from the monitor in front of you and the speakers nearby.
Why isn't there true VR yet? A FPSer that utilized immersive, full-body experience would be amazing!
Instead, we just get new super-marketed hype machines that push more polygons than the last models so the eye-candy is sweeter, but otherwise they're the same old thing all over.
I will admit I enjoy many of the games available for the current systems and they weren't possible before them, but I think the real next generation should be a VR gaming system.
(Yes I know the Virtual-Boy was a flop, but that was Nintendo's mistake in releasing "VR" too early on too inadaquate hardware)
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All the companies are looking for profit- you've just listed 2 out of the 3 methods they are using to obtain this. Microsoft's "hook" is online play- the console was designed around Live from the start, with the hard disk and the built-in Ethernet port and the headset slot (does anyone really use memory cards with Xboxes?) on the controllers. There's a very good chance Xbox 2 will have digital media and possibly PVR functionality as well, to play for the same "home media" market as Sony is. Nintendo is still content to make devices that play games and nothing else.
I'd tend to suspect-- and if this news is true suspect even more-- Microsoft's goal with the XBox2 very much isn't profit. I mean, the "maybe it's profit" bit in the article is still a stupid comment, you're right. But I think the comment's wrong.
The thing is Microsoft seems very willing to do things for motivations other than profit. All of Microsoft's divisions except Server, OS and Office are consistent and heavy money losers. The XBox has been no exception. Microsoft doesn't really seem to ever show signs of minding this. If it's for purposes of expansion, no amount of money wasted seems to be too great.
Now, mind you, Microsoft insists they do very much intend to make a profit on the XBox 2. They claim this has been the goal all along, lose money on the XBox, make it back on the XBox2. But as I said, I'd question this. Here's why.
The chief reason the XBox has been such a money loser seems to be the cost of the console. Microsoft went out and bought a bunch of relatively expensive commodity PC components from off-the-shelf companies to build the XBox from, and the result seems to have been a console so expensive to manufacture that no realistic amount of game license sales that a single consumer might generate could recoup the loss from selling them that XBox. All signs are Microsoft has learned at least some lesson from the XBox that they will be applying on the XBox 2. Leaked information so far indicates that Microsoft has dropped the hard drive and will be contracting to more traditional video game console contractors-- like IBM-- rather than trying to buy PC components (important because IBM, since they're geared for contracting, will be able to lower their prices over time, whereas PC vendors, since they're geared for bulk, if anything raise prices over time-- because who, for example, makes 8GB hard drives anymore?). This by itself would indicate Microsoft is finally in a position to start making money-- though they'd have to make an awful lot to recoup the billions in losses from the XBox 1-- since they seem to be taking steps to manufacture a console that isn't sold at a large loss.
But I think Microsoft has given indication they aren't going to be taking advantage of that position. The problem is the release date. Microsoft has been very explicit that they intend to beat the PS3 and N5 to market-- and if this article is right, they'll be beating it to market by a LOT. But they probably realize at some level that whether they do that or not, they're going to have to retain the technical lead. Microsoft's entire strategy this generation has been based almost entirely on having the best hardware and attracting developers and users through that. They can't change strategies that quickly; surrendering the technical lead to Sony means potentially surrendering a huge chunk of their fanbase from this generation at the same time, if Sony shows even a hint of competence in marketing. This presents a problem. With the XBox, Microsoft had the advantage of two years to tinker with their hardware and let technology improve after the PS2 was released. With the XBox 2, Microsoft will be giving (or expect to be giving) Sony as much of an extra year to prepare their console, plus they'll have to overcome Sony's crazy vector processing ways (which were enough the PS2 was able to almost keep pace with the XBox and Gamecube when programmed by experts, despite being two years older). This would mean that they would have to design the box to be [i]so[/i] powerful that PPC or no, Hard drive or no, it's going to be sold at a loss.
If I'm right about this, and Microsoft does continue selling the XBox 2 at a loss anywhere near the scale of the XBox-- this seems to mean Microsoft simply doesn't, and never has, cared about profit with the XBox, their "it'll make money eventually" profits aside. Microsoft can sell at some loss and still make a profit, of course, technically, maybe, but the chances of this are so shaky it shows profit isn't actually a goal-- just a nice
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I think the current hardware on the PS2/GameCube/X-Box is more than enough to make great games for the next year or so.
That works out well then, considering "XBox 2" won't be coming out until late this year (at the earliest) and both PS3 and Revolution aren't coming out until sometime in 2006.
And even with new consoles being released, there will probably be games released for current-gen consoles for at least the next 2-3 years. There won't be as many, but it's not like your PS2 or XBox immediately becomes worthless the minute a new console comes out.
I am inclined to agree with the statement that the only reason M$ is doing this is for profit.
You really think Sony and Nintendo do what they do for anything other than profit? Sure they'll talk about the artistry involved in creating games and how they're inspired to push the limits of technology, but that's mostly PR. All three companies want to own the video game market and make as much money as possible.
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Kids are another obvious example of Nintendo's existing niche. I'm a single parent of two 11-year-olds. Nintendo has a huge advantage with pre-teen kids and their parents. You talk about "killer games," and Nintendo has several killer franchises -- Zelda for one -- that work for a family audience. XBox has exactly zero such games or franchises, unless you want to count sports titles which the PS2 is very comparable in anyway. For my money, the limited range of GC sports titles are more than enough to keep Nintendo on the list of choices, for us. PS2 would be second. XBox's selling points actually make me recoil. (Don't get me wrong, I thought Bungie was the best game company out there period before the MS buyout -- but Halo bores me asleep. One more of those? XBox, from my point of view, is pitching itself to a far nastier audience than I ever want to become part of.)
Their Xbox niche is 25+ year old people, which is a growth market. But even if they win that, and even if it gives them an overall win in the console market, that doesn't mean they've taken Nintendo's audience.
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