Source www.1up.com (some chapters from the new book on making X360)

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3150474

Do yourself a favour and go for it :)

It wasn' t Microsoft' s kind of game, since it was a gritty crime game with foul language, abusive treatment of women, and cop killing.

*cough* 25 to Life, Urban Reign etc. etc. *cough*

It' s less a PS2 game than an Xbox game. PS2 has to keep up its adrogynous males and spirit-of-Gaia image, yeah? Want a shocker? Have Nintendo pic it up XD

Speculation about a split was rife when Rare sent out a Christmas card in December, 2000. On the card was a green Christmas tree with a black box underneath it. On the box was a green X. Once the Microsoft team saw that, they decided that Rare might be worth going after.

Good publicity story, or strange corporate practices? You decide!

MS' strategies sucked, but at least they' re learning...

Give credit where credit is due. Microsoft learns fast. It is evident on all aspects of this conglomerate, from OS to messenging solutions, software identification to anti-spyware solutions. They pick up and go so swiftly it makes you wonder how they keep doing it year after year. While I might not like the corporation itself, I find myself awestruck at the company' s evolving business moves, especailly from the gamer' s perspective. Integrate X-Box Live into PCs, palm pilots and cell phones? Oh hell yeah! You want to penetrate Japan? Integrate X-Box Live into MSN! Booyeah, instant exposure.

Still, those are pretty major gaffes that they made throughout the years. I like the part that Gears of War prompted extra memory. Everything and their mothers could use extra memory.

I' m not ' corporate-rebel' , so yeah, MS may be stupid sometimes, but they' ve survived, and they' ve grown. You KNOW they have to be doing something right, even if not everyone likes it

I' m personally happy that they understood the importance of the Japanese market. I' m thinking they thought that Japan stood alone; forgetting that smaller Asian countries, like Singapore here, or Malaysia and such, often take pop culture ques from both Japan and the West. The gaming generation anyway.

This sounds like a generalisation, but Asian tastes are more or less the same, give us our adrogynous men and spirit-of-Gaia storylines please!

I don' t think they forgot about the other asian market but Japan is a bigger focus than those seeing as they are trying to better their popularity in this generation and seeing as they were' nt popular in japan I think they made more of an effort...but the japanese just keep skinning up their noses...oh well who cares give us all the good stuff.

I personally think they should just forget about the japanese because it' s usually when you stop focusing on someone they run after you. I think they should try and use their marketing strategies wasted on japan to china.

The China market is a VERY VERY VERY different one from the Jap market. Honestly, they live in a WORLD of their own, and since 98% of the population are still rural peasants, you don' t exactly have that huge overwhelming market companies think they have.

Plus, they are more liable to support their own industries. Currently there' s a rise in animation companiese/industries in Hong Kong, who in turn outsource/sell to the mainland China and vice versa.

And as I said before, China players are more PC players than console players. The game they play are mostly their own anyway, with new Chinese MMORPGs by the dozens per month! Anytime they actually do play a Western game like World of Warcraft is rare, and more often than not, they' re doing it as a job to sell the character away after a while.

And honestly speaking, whatever they publish to China is just going to be pirated anyway =/ In Shang Hai, the most cosmopolitan city in China, there' s a famous huge open-air market that stocks nothing but pirated goods of all kinds. Electronic, Louis Vitton bags, whatever. And they have police guards patrolling it =/

but they' ve survived, and they' ve grown. You KNOW they have to be doing something right

that or they have unlimited funds -pick one (warning!! this is an IQ test)

:)

I don' t care about their planes of world domination, as long as they keep pumping out AAA titiles I' m satisfied.