A Blue Dragon faceplate (pictured inside) is just the latest Microsoft Japanese gambit, as we try to discover what went wrong with the original Japan-busters Ninety Nine Nights and PGR3 and whether or not Gears of War will play in Tokyo....
Xbox 360 is simultaneously the underdog in Japan, and backed by nearly infinite billions of dollars. So what's been going ion this week? First and foremost, it has been revealed that the Blue Dragon Xbox 360 pack will include a fancy "Blue Dragon" faceplate.
It was announced a few weeks ago that a demo disc of Lost Odyssey will be included in every issue of Famitsu published on October 20th. The demo is said to offer players a taste of the first hour of the game, drawing them in with amazing cinematics and introducing them to the main characters.
Just today, it was announced that the demo disc will also be included as part of the Xbox 360 Core System Anniversary Pack along with Project Gotham Racing 3 and Ninety-Nine Nights...
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
GL compiles a list of some of the most mind-blowing video game narrative twists in recent memory, from The Last of Us to Outer Wilds
With articles like these cant you tag the games mentioned so that we can know ahead of time if there’s a spoiler to avoid?
Not clicking on your article otherwise.
This starts out as a good article on the 360's chances in japan and then seems to quickly jump on every negative it can. It even goes so far as to ask why microsoft didn't change the main character in GoW for the japanese audience (ya.. and why didn't they just shoot cliffyb??) The seemed like a moderately good read, and he seems like he really wants blue dragon and lost odyssey to succeed, but not too much. In fact, he simply wants them to push other game developers in the right direction...
I also didn't understand that he only mentioned western games when he talked about the Z-rating... Dead Rising (completely japanese developed) got a z-rating and still sells.