Forbes: "Rather than pay $199 just for the unit, users can now get an Xbox for $99—as long as they also take a two-year contract to Xbox Live Gold.
This new low price looks even better when you consider you don’t need to buy a new TV, which is what Samsung and, soon, Apple want you to do. “If you want to start a phenomenon,” says Ballmer, “it doesn’t start with thousand-dollar-plus devices that sell at unreasonably low volume and need major room redesigns.”
It turns out that many moons ago, Microsoft once had its eye on the Sony published LittleBigPlanet series.
Project Spark idea was decent but they quickly gave up ..
LBP was wonderful
Microsoft in a nutshell. Always tried to poach Sony employees, games, 3rd party games and devices like the depth camera that was turned into Kinect but was running on PS2 before Xbox 360. Wouldn't be surprised they wanted LBP. Just like they worked behind the scenes pushing the MLB to bring Sony's baseball game to Xbox instead of making their own.
https://www.playstationlife...
They didn't spend years trying to develop their own baseball game. They wanted Sony's game.
They're scum.
"However, Healey said Media Molecule wouldn't have felt right doing that, adding it would have been "morally corrupt"."
Major kudos to Media Molecule for being an upright studio with principles.
Great, more stories like this please. Show the last of the zombies holding the line what we've been saying for years: Microsoft is anti competition, anti industry and has no interest in making games at all.
But hey, at least there's an Xbox Games Showcase to look forward to, right?
Well considering SONY just killed the series, LBP would've been dead by now either way. Though MM probably wouldn't exist by now either, so I'm glad they stayed with SONY, hopefully they don't get shut down any time soon or ever honestly.
The full Skewedcast crew back for this episode and Gareth, Justin, Michael, and JoeyZ at Skewed and Reviewed break down the latest entertainment news qith a focus at 40:00 on the Microsoft Studio Closures and how it impacts the game community and what can be done to help offset this negative trend.
Xbox has repeated the same terrible mistakes for over a decade. The reason is simple: its priorities are back-to-front.
ohhh man, the press really did not like those last closures, their having a field day bashing xbox,
anyway, ive got to nip off to the shops now, i've run out of microwave popcorn.
Apparently the last 10 years wasn't enough to get the gaming press to notice but as soon as they touch Bethesda it is full on nuclear war. A lot of people in the gaming press seem to have this irrational hard on for Fallout and Skyrim despite the fact they are low quality poor buggy games.
I've grown tiresome of the unbalanced fandom in the gaming press for fantasy games and their ability to just forgive crap so long as it's a fantasy game RPG game all quality concerns are not an issue for them,
Clearly this is just a big conspiracy orchestrated by the popcorn industry, Microsoft are just their puppets, every time they open their mouths, I'm forced to stock up on popcorn.
Yep, Microsoft and Sony are a mess. Neither have a compelling business strategy and they're not making bangers anymore.
The only point to xbox is and always has been to take market share and money from PlayStation and Nintendo, but mostly PlayStation. It's been the goal since sweaty Steve Balmer said it himself.
Yup. To put Sony out of business because they thought they were a threat to their Windows business.
Genuinely curious: how is Sony (hardware company) threat to Windows (operating system/software company) business?
I mean the motto "xbox, the most optional console ever made" was peaked years ago, people are just now taking a step back from deepthroating Phil to see what we've all been seeing for a long time now.
I’ve still got friends that main on XB. For their sake, I hope it sticks around. They’ve put everything into that ecosystem. It’s all or nothing.
I wonder if we’ll ever get back the level of competition seen during the 360/PS3 era?
Seems like Daddy Microsoft is trying to shut it down. Or at least bring costs under control. On the bright side, it seems likely that acquisitions are going to stop.
"This spring, for the first time, subscribers to Xbox’s Live online service in the U.S. spent more time consuming video and music than multiplayer games."
MS: Mission Accomplished
Hey, remember when Sony was criticized for "just using the PS3 as a trojan horse for Blu-Ray" and people liked to say "lol, people don't even play games on PS3, its just a cheap Blu-Ray player for all the people I know haha"? How times change.
Fortunately, things do change quickly as we saw with the original Xbox/PS2 to the 360/PS3. If Sony manages to botch the PS4 launch like they did the PS3 one, and let MS beat them to market by over a year, then they will have deserved their fate. But if both companies release the console within the same time frame, with the same price, and similar specs, it will be very interesting.
World Wide weekly sales say NO...............
MS is winning full stop.
"Ballmer is working to persuade the big pay-TV players—Comcast and Verizon are already Xbox partners—to allow their customers the choice of an Xbox over a cable set-top."
LOL, this will never fly unless MS is willing to pay the difference in lost revenue.
Article is based on American market and Americans usually do not even know there is another way besides the good old US of A.
Europe and Asia and other parts of the world are seen by the average American as a bad evil Communist regime.