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.

...

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.

It could possibly happen, 360 certainly has its software advantages (though i wouldn' t write-off Some big launch titles at Sony' s booth to be shown at E3)..

I think Sony are without Doubt more worried about the Situation of Japan at the moment, Nintendo are absolutely trouncing Sony in Japan.. DS lite Sales have gone up Even further than the last sales period (WTF are newly-born Japanese buying this thing?) selling over 170,000 units, Original DS still selling more than both PSP and PS2 at i think about 40,000 units..

I guess and read that Wii is becoming a strong symbol already to Japanese gamers.. even if half of the current DS/lite owners go on to buy a Wii over there, that could be enough for Wii to dominate the market..

The DS had to be a huge sigh of relief for Nintendo. They' re console sales were in threat of Microsoft and Sony and Sony was moving into their handheld territory with the PSP. The huge DS sales should help lead them back into the console wars with the Wii.

To be honest I think the halo 3 thing is being over cooked as in I don' t think that many people are going to get it this time round (hopes to goodness i' m wrong) however I think you' ll find a lot of new interests in gears of war heck even i' m waiting for gears of war so i' d definately agree on it possibly being the game (along with others to come) to push the 360 also with viva pinyada airing in september it gives them a bit of free advertising and opening to attract another bracket of consumers, I also think it will be a fun game to play.

I for one am hoping for a MS win this round. If only to silence some of the fanboys, though some will shout even higher, and i will gain support it it gets to be the underdog.

Sony' s silence is making me doubt how well its going for their console, and from what iv read, the launch titles look like a sad bunch!

thanks for a coherent, well structured post Majik.

Made my morning of marking and handing in assignments slightly more entertaining too.

I' ve seen the DX10 pres too, and If Microsoft can pull it off as sweetly as it looks, developers will be flocking to a shared platform dev environment.

When I think back to the number of surprises in the hardware industry, the numbers of times people have overstretched themselves, or made things too difficult to develop for in the quest for the " mines better than yours" hardware battle supremacy..

It certainly sounds like MS have the lead at present with the new production facility on the way, and with the PS3 stock extremely limited for the first year and with a strong 2nd line of more developed next gen titles, personally I' d like to see MS win this round - a competitive marketplace is an exciting one.

The other thing is, that with all the hype and money they are risking with the PS3, and stating extended lifecycles etc..etc.. of their hardware - what happens a few years in to the 360 when MS launch their hardware secret? Or are willing to launch a new console again. They wont give up until they have won a round, and of all the developers they are the most driven to succeed.

When the chap mentioned a hardware secret a couple few years down the line to us I was quite taken aback, but he wouldnt go into any other detail.. with such a large amount of time and so(NY) many questions let surrounding the PS3, it jtu feels now like the 360 is ready to be something more substantial, and that PS3 is playing catchup at least for now - and the wii wii is seen as a separate entity to the both of them.

The West is one thing, North America is the first market to watch!

Why even name Jade empire,the dev in biopware already stated the team behind mass effect is gonna be the team behind KOTOR,not jade empire or baldurs gate.

And it make sense,that was a sci-fi game and mass will be one ;)
Also Lucas arts restrained and changed bioware ideas then and then,said bioware even though they was happy with the co-work.


Btw,Gears of war will support,co-op through the whole game,seeing how marcus is gonna have his friend phonix with him,the other player take control of him,it will also support TEAM DEATHMATCH.

But yes i dont think the online part will be as crucial as the SP,which gonna have pre-scripted awesomness with UE3.0 engine at its best.


BTW ENCHANT ARM is coming to USA/EU...

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/704/704069p1.aspx

score in famitsu was 7,8,8,9

basically one of the reviewer gaved it 7,and two of them 8,and one really loved it i guess and gaved it 9.

Hey Andy!

A hardware secret?! Hahaha well I know that there' s some technology currently lying dormant in 360, but Sony will know that too because by now they' ll have taken apart and tested the retail units they picked up shortly after launch. No doubt they' ve invalidated their warranty several times over and maybe even struggled to remove the protective foil on the heat sink like we did...

I know that Microsoft have repeatedly said that the console is future proofed, possibly hinting at ungradability, but i don' t quite see how when i look at the internal workings of the console itself. N64 was ungradable though, needing the expansion pak to play select games, so it' s not as far reaching as it sounds.

XNA is going to be a blessing for 360 developers, but Sony will undoubtedly follow suit with their own development environment. It IS amusing that 360 will be the only console to benefit from DX10 though, at least it' s amusing from my personal perspective. I' m not certain if i want Microsoft to crush Sony, I think i' d rather just see them loosen Sony' s grip on the industry and have the kind of situation we had with Megadrive (Genesis) and SNES as far as marketshare goes.

I' m really interested to know what price Sony will be launching at and with what games, because then i' ll be abale to evaluate the situation more thoroughly and decide whether any and all funds i have at the years end are going to expanding my Xbox 360 library or starting my Playstation 3 collection...

I was hoping that we' d have seen shome screenshots of the next Oddworld game by now, but i suppose this will suffice for a while...

This game acutally had my interest... and maybe assasins for the ps3 want to hear more on both.. M$ do seem to be getting some interesting games... I wonder now more about my next gen purchase... but then M$ has had a long time to get stuff interesting for me, the PS3 might be the same... hmmm...

I' m definately gonna get enchanted arm it looks interesting....damn i can' t believe iv' e been so interested in so many 360 games i' m expecting a drought now...as for the technology isue when I got my 360 and looked at it I remember thinking that there may be something more to it thats not been awakened yet if thats true it will be interesting to see microsofts counter when the race ensues. Also it' s interesting to see how microsoft seem to have learnt a lot this time round they seem more composed somehow and sony seem to be hiding behind the scenes (probably worrying).

...your initial post is definitely interesting reading, which generally highlights some pretty highly anticipated games to appear on 360 (and it' s touted developer friendliness)....

...but with so little knowledge about Sony' s hand, how can you really make an accurate *coughunbiasedcough* assessment?....

....for example, new consoles generally suck during launch and the first year or so right?.... ...and you guys are always going on about how " 360 is just getting warmed up" .. ...well wouldn' t that be the same for the PS3?......

.....do you have any info about the planned releases for PS3 about a year after launch?... ...when devs are more familiar with it' s workings?....

....also: i was under the impression that Sony have a substantial amount more of support from developers, correct?... ...so even if (for arguments sake) PS3 and 360 are equal in terms of ability, circa Christmas 2008, wouldn' t one expect to see more impressive, truly next gen games with the ' only on playstation' sticker?....

.....personally i don' t give a flying f*ck who ' wins' because, they only thing that i truly care about, is good games which appeal to me personally as a GAMER.....

...why do you feel the need to tell us all about how great MS is going to be anyway?... ...don' t you think they have their own press agent?.. (opta perhaps?) or are you just another, less blatant corporate viral marker? (who happens to also dispense ultra cool anime)....

...it' s your business i guess.... .although it does get rather boring at times y' know?....

...companies suck, games rule.....

....The End...

....for example, new consoles generally suck during launch and the first year or so right?.... ...and you guys are always going on about how " 360 is just getting warmed up" .. ...well wouldn' t that be the same for the PS3?......

Yeah, that' s pretty much what i expect. But if Microsoft hit 10 million by the end on this year, then go on to sell more than Sony in 2007 there could be a new ;eader in this generation, meaning that those infamous Japanese developers that are so fond of Sony because of their marketability would begin jumping ship.

I expect Sony will probably come out ahead, but Microsoft certainly has a fighting chance in the west.

Sony have done pretty much everything wrong up to this point, instilling much doubt in people like myself as to whether they were fully prepared for this generation anyway. E3 will give me a better idea of what Sony are doing and i don' t doubt that i' ll be impressed, but the company hasheld a firm grip on the industry for 2 generations now and Microsoft came out of nowhere and outsold a company that has been doing this for 20 years.

What Microsoft did with Xbox; unified online system, HDD, downloadable content etc... is now being emulated by the market leader, so obviously these addtions that they brought to the console front are both wanted and needed. People thought having a HDD and a unified online service would never work, but they weren' t laughing at the popularity of capabilities like custom playlists in games.

What Microsoft has done and IS doing is being watched very closely by it' s biggest rival, and if Sony is watching then we should probably take notice too.

They' re doomed in Japan. 360 will never sell like a Playstation or Nintendo console will on their home turf, but the western market has proven itself to be very different. Marketshare is important and something that developers take into account when they start talking about their next game. It' s important to US because a consoles marketshare directly affects the volume of titles on the machine, something you can see clearly with Gamecube.

I' m not biased towards Microsoft. I think they are moving in the right direction and i think Sony are lagging somewhat, but the company i want to see do really well is Nintendo. I' m a big Nintendo fanboy (i hate that term)

....also: i was under the impression that Sony have a substantial amount more of support from developers, correct?...

Sony was more marketable. I think that' s changing, and hat were seeing now is developers that would have never really looked twice at Xbox are deciding to put games out on both formats as not to be left out if one console rapidly pulls ahead.

Microsoft is obviously a well known company in the west, and they have vast quantities of money to throw at studios and publishers and they' re spending more and more all the time to secure themselves with not only the kind of games PS2 had but also to increase the volume of games over what Xbox had.

If you look at the little things that they are doing, like making the E3 HD trailers and demo' s available for Xbox Live users to download, play and watch, as well as giving Silver members a week free of online play. That' s what should be happening. I mean, before now we would have had to just read about the medias experiences of playing the demos on the showfloor, but now we can play them?! That' s a smart move.

Mark Rein of Epic Games said that he thinks at some point down the line Sony will be licencing their online service from Microsoft. That say a lot in itself. But then what doe Mark Rein know eh...

My comments can be taken as and how people like, but i stand by them. The idea here is to discuss the topic. What' s your view?



Oh, and i' ll upload the next 3 episodes for you tomorrow!

To me it seems like Sony doesn' t take gaming seriously and Microsoft does.

Mircosoft had huge detailed plans that they modifed over long periods of time for designing the 360 and its controller. They show videos on the process and show how the people in charge know and control everything that is going on with the development. They made XNA and xbox live and all this other stuff that shows they are serious and care a lot about having the best stuff.

With sony you get the idea that they had a one week contest between 7th graders to design the controller and console. The more you think about the PS3 and the controller the the more flaws you can think off. They don' t show videos of the design process or show the guys in charge taking part in development. They do is talk about how awesome it will be but don' t give you any facts, they just say its awesome.

The only people sony are convincing are people without the mental capacity to realize its a bunch of BS.

360 has a lot more going for it than XBox did. So yea I' d say it' s going to do well in the West to say the least.

It' s wierd though. I think MS really caters well for its target audiences (which are huge), but they seem to ignore the marginal gamers, those with slightly different tastes. Most 360 games and the most popular XBox games seem to merge into one imo. Even Too Human, Mass Effect and Gears don' t seem to be getting me hugely excited, although I' m definitely interested in seeing how they turn out in the end. I mean is DX10 and XNA gonna just bring us more of the same?

Maybe 360' s just getting started, and later we' ll see a much more diverse range of styles. But atm it seems MS are happy just catering for their own bunch. If they don' t realise that ' The West' includes a lot of people, who may or may not share the taste for gun toting bald badasses, they might even ' lose' . Maybe I should just go live in the East..

ORIGINAL: choupolo

It' s wierd though. I think MS really caters well for its target audiences (which are huge), but they seem to ignore the marginal gamers, those with slightly different tastes. Most 360 games and the most popular XBox games seem to merge into one imo. Even Too Human, Mass Effect and Gears don' t seem to be getting me hugely excited, although I' m definitely interested in seeing how they turn out in the end. I mean is DX10 and XNA gonna just bring us more of the same?

Maybe 360' s just getting started, and later we' ll see a much more diverse range of styles. But atm it seems MS are happy just catering for their own bunch. If they don' t realise that ' The West' includes a lot of people, who may or may not share the taste for gun toting bald badasses, they might even ' lose' . Maybe I should just go live in the East..

It' s more up to the developers than Microsoft to cater for the niche markets. Microsoft doesn' t actually get to order around the developers working on 360 titles. They probably have some influence over MGS (duh) but I think all of the studios that make up MGS are extremely creative and have a lot of freedom anyway.

All in all the reason why marginal gamers don' t get catered for too often is simply because they are marginal. As sad as it is, developers want games that sell well and appeal to the masses, not games that sell small quantities and yield small profits. The cost of failure is extremely high these days so fewer developers are willing to take the risk.

Hmm, well I can understand why they do it this way. But if you account for all the different niches, interests, styles, genres etc that mainstream gamers over here don' t play, you get quite a huge chunk of the potential gaming population that gets missed out. Possibly even as big as the popular gamers themselves. Even though it' s harder to extract profit from the marginal crowd, they' re by no means less important in the larger picture. So not only is there a sizable profit to be made in total (for MS at least), it can only help to keep the gaming industry and 360s image healthy.

I thought PS2 did fairly well in this respect, which I think was to do with Sony allowing/supporting many different developers from different backgrounds (and with different interests themselves) to make games. MS does have a lot of influence on what games appear on the 360, if only by choosing it' s 3rd party dev partnerships carefully. PC has always done well here imo, due to the platform' s lack of ownership per se, allowing practically anyone to make games and publish them on the internet if not on the retail shelves. And despite popular belief it is possible to make great games on small budgets!

I' m even less optimistic about PS3 this generation however, mainly because of how they' ve been acting and what we' ve seen so far (hardly f-all!), but all I know is, the Japanese are a diverse bunch too and aren' t just good at RPGs. And that' s something I' d like to properly see more of on 360. Oh well, E3 will reveal all (of life' s mysteries!)

ORIGINAL: locopuyo

To me it seems like Sony doesn' t take gaming seriously and Microsoft does.

Mircosoft had huge detailed plans that they modifed over long periods of time for designing the 360 and its controller. They show videos on the process and show how the people in charge know and control everything that is going on with the development. They made XNA and xbox live and all this other stuff that shows they are serious and care a lot about having the best stuff.

With sony you get the idea that they had a one week contest between 7th graders to design the controller and console. The more you think about the PS3 and the controller the the more flaws you can think off. They don' t show videos of the design process or show the guys in charge taking part in development. They do is talk about how awesome it will be but don' t give you any facts, they just say its awesome.

The only people sony are convincing are people without the mental capacity to realize its a bunch of BS.

Thats another reason why I think microsoft has done as well as it did with the xbox, they' ve showed the process of development of their product so you have a better feeling that a lot of thought went into it and it wasn' t just flung together. Sony on the other hand gives me the feeling that they made their machine with movies being the main focal point the design isn' t anything to go by, the components just seem like they went with stuff just to out do their rival without taking costs into consideration, to me it' s contrasting because it seems like sony has taken such an amateur approach this generation whereas microsoft seems to be the most planned and thought out...(but maybe i' m wrong).

It' s wierd though. I think MS really caters well for its target audiences (which are huge), but they seem to ignore the marginal gamers, those with slightly different tastes. Most 360 games and the most popular XBox games seem to merge into one imo. Even Too Human, Mass Effect and Gears don' t seem to be getting me hugely excited, although I' m definitely interested in seeing how they turn out in the end. I mean is DX10 and XNA gonna just bring us more of the same?

Maybe 360' s just getting started, and later we' ll see a much more diverse range of styles. But atm it seems MS are happy just catering for their own bunch. If they don' t realise that ' The West' includes a lot of people, who may or may not share the taste for gun toting bald badasses, they might even ' lose' . Maybe I should just go live in the East..

Long Quote i know!

Too me its always seemed like Sony was the one doing repetetive games, boring stuff like Jak 2 and Ratchet and Clank, i mean really Too human, mass effect and Gears of War arent really a like, except its SciFi and ofcourse the Unreal Engine. Mass Effect is a Tactical Shooter RPG, Too Human is a Action game with RPG elements, and Gears of War is a stop and pop styled shooter! I think they will all play differently!

People thought having a HDD and a unified online service would never work, but they weren' t laughing at the popularity of capabilities like custom playlists in games.

...who exactly?.... ...ANALysts maybe?...

It' s important to US because a consoles marketshare directly affects the volume of titles on the machine, something you can see clearly with Gamecube.

...no..

.... that would only be important to that particular manufacturer and it' s fan(boy)s..

....a real gamer would just sell his dying machine and get it' s rivals better supported machine ..(or not bother if it was crap from the get go).....
......isn' t that how Sega got replaced by Sony?... (don' t fry my @$$ sega fans, I' m just trying to be objective...