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Microsoft Aims to Boost the 360's Family Appeal
Bloomberg is reporting on Microsoft's efforts to be more inclusive to 'family' game players. Essentially, Micrsoft admits they're looking to Nintendo as the generation leader this time around, with low cost and family appeal driving their sales numbers ever higher. To that end, Microsoft is looking at a possible price cut and shift in strategies to appeal to a broader audience. This dovetails with comments made by Bill Gates at the AllThingsDigital event regarding motion controls in the future of the console. "Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer wants to avoid the fate of the first Xbox. The console appealed mainly to hard-core gamers, generally males between 15 and 29 years old, and trailed Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 in sales by a 5-to-1 margin ... Microsoft's initial attempts to target children didn't live up to the company's expectations. A November game called Viva Piñata, in which kids build a garden and raise animals that look like piñatas brought to life, didn't make it into the top 20, even with a Saturday morning cartoon created to promote the game." It might not have sold, but VP was an awesome game.
Even with their 1 year release headstart, Nintendo is quickly approaching them in systems sold. It's become apparent that you can only sell so many systems to hardcore gamers, and that it's hard to sell expensive systems, even to hardcore gamers. Targetting children and families cannot be done by releasing a single game, or by releasing some peripherals which have motion sensing. It must be something that is the core of your system. Looking at the XBox 360 controller is daunting for people who aren't hardcore gamers, as is the size and look of the entire console. They're going to have a hard time turning things around for their current system. However, if they want to make a start, how about releasing a web browser. It's not like they don't already have one.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
> I'm a bit on the fence about this. On one hand, part of the Wii's charm is that a parent wouldn't have to worry about junior getting his hands on extremely questionable games.
Well, 360 has pretty nice parental controls. You can set them up and kid will not be able to start anything with higher rating than, say "E" "T"