I have been prepping this post fo a short while now and i meant to post it the other day but got caught up with the " Wii" announcement and discussions and so have only just gotten around to it.

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I' m going to start with a relevation.

Just under a week ago my coursemates and i were lucky enough to be able to sit through a presentation of the XNA development environment and get a brief look at DirectX 10 along with a couple of other things. It was a lecture i was never going to miss, and i am certain that virtually every single person enrolled on my course was present and acounted for. That presentation that has pretty much convinced me, ahead of E3 that Microsoft could have the next-gen battle in the west won already.

There are several factors that have formed my ..no doubt controversial to most.. view, and the main factor is a trio of games that i see as being paramount to Microsoft' s strategy in the US and Europe:

- Gears of War
- Too Human
- Mass Effect

All 3 games are due to be released aroundabout the same time that Sony and Nintendo are launching their consoles, and all three are exclusive to Xbox 360.

There are a large number of games that are going to be exclusive to Xbox 360, and games like; Lost Planet, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Blue Dragon, Lost Planet, Cry On, Dead Rising, Viva Pinata, Crackdown, Just Cause and ofcourse Halo 3, -- will no doubt help push the console along and have big effects on console sales, but i see the 3 games i listed previous to be far more important to Microsoft' s first 12 months competing with Sony' s machine.

They' re new IP' s for one, each from a highly respected codeshop who have previously developed awesome titles that have gained huge followings. They also undoubtedly look like what you expect next-gen games to look like, and while we' ve already had Oblivion and Ghost Recon on 360, they' re about the only games that are worthy of noting as being next-gen, -- with the others being nice ports. Gears of War], Mass Effect and Too Human however are definately a representation of what this generation will give us with regards to visual fidelity.



I would personally say that Gears of War is more important than Halo 3 and I would say that Gears is going to be to Xbox 360 what Halo was to Xbox, and then some. That' s what I would say!



1.5 million copies of Halo 2 were pre-ordered in the US before its release and 2.4 million copies were sold within the games first 24 hours on store shelves, going on to sell 7+ million copies in a year. Not bad for a videogame! But with the growing number of first person games headed for Microsoft' s shiny new console, when Halo 3 arrives it won' t make the kind of impression that some expect, or it will but won' t be hailed as the machines finest game. I expect Gears and Too Human to sell those kind of figures and hopefully even more as the userbase expands past the 20 million or so that Xbox reached.

I would say that both Too Human and Gears of War are also currently more anticipated by Microsofts userbase and i think Gears of War is going to be a title that Microsoft push heavily against PS3 and i forsee it to some extent having an effect on Sony' s sales, simply because they won' t have anything that looks THAT good. The only downside to Gears of War is the lack of online play, something that certainly won' t effect sales but would have been a welcome addition.

It' s definately going to be a graphical showcase for the hardware, developed by Epic themselves to show what can be done with their engine. It looks gorgeous. It' s that simple, and i know that lately it' s been put on the back burner for a short while and people have half way forgotten about it because it' s been delayed until November, but it' s definately time to start thinking about it again because it' s going to be at E3 and it' s going to look even better than you remember.

A couple of things that you will see coming out of E3 are re-worked motion capture animations and demonstrations of the melee combat in the game. At least, that' s what i expect. It' s also viable that Microsoft will make a demo available on Xbox Live Marketplace, like the already confirmed Lost Planet (3 levels) Demo set for 9th May. That' d be nice too and i think it' s that kind of thing that they need to do to get people thinking about buying 360.



The only game i think could be argued as being more needed/anticipated/important than Gears has to be Too Human. Definately the biggest competition to Ninja Gaiden' s crown as the most stylish title to grace a Microsoft console, though i would actually say that honour belongs to Geomery Wars -- but we' ll get Ninja Gaiden 2 later on anyhow!

I' ve already said much about this game in other threads so i' ll just post some pretty pictures instead...











Mass Effect, i think will be hugely popular in Europe especially, outdoing the development teams previous KOTOR games that sold very well on Xbox, oh and ofcourse Jade Empire, which you either loved or hated...



While Microsoft are gong to great lengths to secure Japanese developed RPG' s, i think that it' s games like this that will sell 360 in the west, and open up doors for other developers wanting to work on epic projects like this.

I know relatively little about the game, only that it looks great, but It obviously has massive potential.

It' s on the backs of these games, and the announced but not elaborated on extra blades/additions to the consoles dashboard, including the DirecTV blade, that i think come christmas time, with a strategic price reduction 360 could potentially outsell PS3 in Europe and the states, aided by the hardware shortages which you just know Sony will suffer.

It' s fair to say that just a handful of games aren' t enough to contend with the launch of a new machine, but when you have several titles that will undoubtedly sell the kind of figures that Halo and Halo 2 sold on Xbox, the have them supported by other exclusive big name games and 3rd party multiplatform games, some of which will also be availble on PS3 (RE5 for example), i can' t see how anybody could say that a launch lineup could possibly contend, no matter how overhyped (can you say Perfect Dark Zero?!)

I think that if Microsoft hit 10 million units sold by Early 2007, they would almost certainly have the US and European markets in the bag, with only the rest of the world to worry about.