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Why Microsoft's Keeping the Next Xbox Under Wraps
donniebaseball23 writes "Microsoft recently confirmed that it's not going to be talking at all about its next Xbox, codenamed Durango, at this year's E3, instead keeping the focus on Xbox 360. Forbes columnist Chris Morris explains that Microsoft likely doesn't have games to show for the system yet — and why should they take the focus off Xbox 360, which currently has a lot of momentum? Ultimately, though, the decision not to show the next system 'could have a ripple effect on the rest of the industry,' he says. And by pushing Durango's unveiling back a year, 'Microsoft could find itself going head to head with Sony in a battle of features, even if the machines don't hit shelves at the same time.'"
The latest rumor is that an ARM-based Xbox 'lite' is planned for 2013, with a true successor to the 360 coming some time after that.
I think that while Microsoft would certainly like to release the new Xbox already, they are afraid of doing so. Not because of Sony, but because of Nintendo.
The last generation surprised everyone on the console front. Hardcore gamers kept playing with PS3 and Xbox360, but Wii ultimately won the round by attracting general population into gaming. Suddenly you had millions of new people introduced into gaming, especially girls. While Microsoft has always produced quality products and by far they are the best on the industry on lots of products, they don't know how to capture that market. They want it badly, but they want to look how Nintendo succeeds with their Wii successor. By delaying the release they can learn from Nintendo's mistakes and hit them hard next year and become the #1 of next generation consoles.
You mean that companies *don't* reveal 100% of their products before their announcement? What a shock! Modern tech journalism is just getting ridiculous :(
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They should call the 360 a "burning platform" to drum up some excitement for the possible future versions.
Just keep in mind, MS and Sony, that every year your systems age is another year for more of your users to look at their friends' new PC's and say "Wow, that blows away my console!" Being more-and-more obsolete is not a good position to be in in the videogaming world. Every time I've turned away from consoles in the past, it's been because I was impressed by how advanced the PC's had gotten compared to the consoles.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
it will likely be the last standalone game console ever made.
The 360 has been going on strong for the last 10 years since its inception... an epic long time for vide game industry.
Microsoft is planning to have XBOX 720 run a variation of Windows 8. This would finally kill the 'black sheep' from their platform lineup and complete their "Windows Everywhere" vision.
Why pre-announce something that is far from being ready to ship? All that would do is steal sales and thunder away from your existing product. The only reason to announce a new console early is if a competitor is getting ready to release something significant enough to affect your market share. Seems like this is just an excuse for a fluff article.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The current Xbox 360 is still generating massive amounts of revenue, http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/01/12/xbox-360-extends-win-streak-to-12-straight-months-with-banner-holiday-sales.aspx, if they introduce a new platform, it will kill off the current version and forego the millions in additional revenue by extending the life of the 360. only when sales start to slump will the 720 be announced.
Sold about 20M more units but from what I've read in Business Week I think it was a few months ago the problem is in game sales. Those casual gamers tend to by a few games and then stop. XBox and PS3 gamers tend to by a few games a quarter. Wii has a lot of add ons too but I suspect XBox with Kinect and its higher initial price probably makes the hardware sales a wash but they sell more games.
A bigger issue might be Kinect: maybe they don't have a new piece of hardware available yet and don't want to get caught being the company that releases the same accessory as the previous console confusing the argument for upgrading. They might end up coming out with it integrated in the console I suspect.
First is that they tend to be an "and a" console. Meaning people seem to own one of the others "and a Wii". Ok, nothing wrong with that, but it does seem to be that it isn't so much competing and taking away the market for the other two, but living along with them. That does, of course, mean fighting in terms of getting game sales. People may well elect to buy for their other console.
Second thing I've noticed is they don't seem to get used that much both by the people who have multiple consoles, and those that just have Wiis. They seem to get treated like board games in that they get played with a bit, but then put away only to be taken out for parties. Again, nothing wrong with that, but people don't seem to be buying a bunch of games for them. They get some at first but then set it aside
This seems to be accelerating as the novelty of the motion control is wearing off.
The Wii is not a failure, in any way shape or form, but it is not some massively dominant game platform.
Why would I want to lose the ability to use my phone as, well, a phone to plug it in to my TV and play games or watch movies on it? I could instead just buy a device that plays games and does so better, and then keep my phone as a phone.
To me this is like suggesting you get rid of your oven, toaster, kettle, and so on and only have a microwave. Yes, technically you can get along with just a microwave, it'll cook most things, with some potential issues and reservations. Or, you know, I could not get rid of those and keep different devices for different jobs.
If it wasn't for consolization MS and Sony would've had to have released a console by now to keep up with the demands of gamers, but consolization took over and all developers are doing for the most part is crapping out below par games (compared to computers). These games lowered the standards of both PC and console gamers and stagnated the entire industry at a certain level. This allowed MS and Sony to milk out their current generation to seven years currently and current gamers are stuck in the lethargy that games are 'good enough', 'graphics are good enough', 'I want to hold onto my investment for awhile longer', and all that jazz allowing the two b big ones to take advantage of such a situation.
MS and Sony aren't going to release a new console in a forseable future till the pendelum swings back to PCs and people realize how awesome they are in comparison to ancient hardware running in their living room. Which will and is starting to happen as game developers realize that the whole 'PC gaming is dying' was a load of shit and there is plenty of money to be made on the PC, especially in the f2p genre... You can really thank TF2 and LoL for promoting that. Right before it swings back MS and Sony will release a new barrage of consoles to bring their console gamers back and attempt to solidify their position once again.
I'm almost 100% positive they have a dynamic model they keep updating just waiting to be released at the right time in both camps. This isn't a war for making quality products, it's for milking as much as humanely possible from their original investment in a console (which really doesn't amount to much more then a custom computer and a bunch of marketing). They have no reason or goal to improve their old products besides offering buzz things like, motion controls the Wii hit a home run with and the equivalent of a Kinect. This is what happens when a company is given complete reign over their industry. Companies turn a profit, they aren't their to be innovative when they have nothing to compete with.
Hopefully, and I really do mean hopefully, Valve will get it's act together and take Steam to the next level. A few self help videos showing people how they can hook their PCs up to their big screen TV and how easy it is to hook a x360 controller up to a said system (a fatal mistake MS made to promote consolization). This is in addition to features that just make gaming easier. Like making a open performance specification, not a static baseline that all games adhere to because hardware is so antiquated, but rather what level of performance a game will run at on your hardware.
Giving each game a red/green/yellow sticker on their product page based on your hardware specifications. Red it wont run at all or really poorly, green it will run more then adequately (say 40fps without stutters or huge pitfalls longer them a certain MS), and yellow it will run with some stutters or may seem sluggish. Valve already harvests computers for their specs and they have the Steam overlay in place which could quite easily check FPS in game. This would be quite easy for Valve to implement as they have access to the biggest repository of hardware for gamers and performance data from it. For anyone else this would be almost unachievable.
Breaking this up a bit, each red/green/yellow sticker could be hovered over and broken down into components showing the user what they need to upgrade in order to improve their experience. This would take a lot of the guesswork out of the hardware aspect, which is one of the marketing points for buying a console from MS or Sony and it'll allow game makers the freedom of producing a game to whatever specifications they want as per normal on a computer.
It's things like this that empower users to play their games. The idea should be not to lock down the hardware, but offer a means of allowing users to see how their experience will vary on a case by case basis. Adding to this the planned big HTPC Steam interface can make a huge impact on how PC gaming is seen.
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I guess some people didn't know how to interpret the original Xbox 360's error indicator. It takes three red quadrants to make a Red Ring of Death, despite the name. A full red ring (four red quadrants) only means the video cable isn't pushed in all the way.
a $1 smartphone/tablet game may be enough, why get a $200-300 console?
Because smartphones and tablets are limited in the genres that they can do well. Touching objects on the screen, or sliding objects around on the screen? Great. Anything that scrolls, or otherwise would work best with a gamepad? Not so great. Puzzle games like Bejeweled? Great. Puzzle games like Tetris? Not so great. A touch screen is completely flat, meaning that unlike with a directional pad, an analog stick, or a set of buttons, the thumb can't feel where it is on the controller.
It's like they don't want to sell for the PC at all unless you're hemorrhaging money.
For one thing, an iPhone application's developer keeps 70 percent of the revenue after deducting $1000 for each Mac to run Xcode and $100 per year for the developer license. A developer of a game on a CD doesn't get nearly that high of a royalty.