With the just-announced price drop of the Xbox One, the removal of the Kinect, and the recent hiring of the games-focused Phil Spencer as new head of the Xbox division, Microsoft is backing off extremely hard from their initial branding as an always-on living room service and joining the Playstation 4’s price as more of a classic console. This might be good news for the future of consoles, but it’s also indicative of how perilous the console market is right now.
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.
The current Microsoft Xbox motto is .....We're Microsoft Xbox, and we don't care and it shows!
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.
Not if we don't buy in.
Its coming but its up to us as consumers as to how much we are willing to be hosed
Microtransactions can be a good thing, it's just a real shame that companies feel the need to ruin it and be greedy. If developers/publishers want to extend a game's life by adding in new content down the line, I don't see how that is a bad thing for fans of the game.
It's things like digital currency that bother me though. Letting people take shortcuts which can have a drastic effect to online modes by letting them buy the best stuff with real cash. Worse still, you then get games like GTA Online which (on the first few weeks at least) was clearly designed around trying to encourage people to buy ingame currency for real money by charging ridiculous amounts for dying and guns + ammo.
When games get designed around microtranactions is where the real problem lays. I don't see anything wrong with map packs and even funky weapon skins (providing they're not included on the disc then "unlocked" by buying them separately.
I despise these things.
It's bad enough when they rip pieces out of games and then release them as DLC and call them "extra content" what a load of BS. It's very very rare that it is indeed extra content. Now we see this crap coming into gaming more and more. It will get to the point where i am playing an RPG and if i want to upgrade my armor or weapons i will need to pay REAL money for it.
DLC like i was talking about above and Microtransactions don't do the gaming world any good, it takes the fun out of it and ruins it.
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