Shooters like Halo and Gears Of War have catapulted Microsoft to a leadership position in the videogames business, but now they're trying to figure out how to capture an audience outside the hardcore.
Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, took the stage at the DICE Summit on Thursday morning to answer a barrage of questions about Xbox 360 from New York Times reporter Seth Schiesel. The talk kept coming back to the new casual mass market gamer, and while Kim seemed confident that Microsoft would be able to expand its userbase, he stopped short of giving any concrete details as to how his first-party games group would do this in 2008.
Kim also briefly talked about the Halo IP, Halo 3 and Halo Wars, Nintendo's Wii, Bungie's departure, the financial bottom line, third party games and the console wars, this month's NPD sales release and Xbox 360's supply issue, and Microsoft's portable gaming plans. However, he shied away from talking about any new games from the internal Microsoft division that he runs.
Not every Halo game has been a banger, but the franchise still has a raft of the greatest games of all time.
Infinite is a dumpster fire and as much as I like ODST, in no universe it ranks above Halo 2. This list is trash.
Best to worst: Halo 3, Halo 2, Halo Reach, Halo CE, Halo 4, Halo ODST, Halo Infinite, Halo 5.
The Xbox 360 was a fantastic console in its day with some truly classic titles, but what are the seven best games for the console?
I'll go with,
Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Culdcept Saga, Shadow Complex, Ace Combat 6 with the flight stick,A Kingdom for Keflings, A World of Keflings.
Bonus Kinect Games: Happy Action Theater and Sesame Street.
*Skyrim was so bad on PS3 that it almost deserves to be #1*
Ah yes, Shadow Complex! Good indies back in the day. Summer of Arcade. I enjoyed Trials Evolution as well.
Was this made by a.i.? No human being would put Shadowrun, Fable III, and Splinter Cell: Conviction into a list of the 7 best Xbox 360 games.
Would love to play Ace Combat6 on PlayStation, but Xbox decided to buy exclusivity and keep it off a competing platform.
The only mainline game I never played except for one level at a friends place. Game sold less than any other in the series if I remember correctly.
360 had Namco hitters AC6 and RR6... both quality titles. You should at least bust out the 360 for AC6 if you can score the flight stick. Its great.
When the current gen XBOX offering is so lacking people need to refer to games released two generations back....
It's a nostalgia peice same reason we get thousands of YouTube videos on sega genisis. Something people have fond memories for but the era is long gone.
It's xboxs golden year imo it was their genisis years the time where they stuck it to the market leaders Sony.
They stuck nothing. Sony screwed themselves giving Xbox an opening. They would have gotten the usual smack down if the PS3 had launched at $399 and was easier to develop for.
The Xbox 360 launched in North America 18 years ago, and is now officially old enough to buy you a drink in Europe.
Great platform, and many of its games (not bc) still hold up well to this day. Like the PS3, I keep a 360 hooked up for those games you can't play any other way.
The last gasp of greatness from XBox, you are missed, except the RROD that was lame, but amazing exclusives until the Kinect dropped.
I really enjoyed my X360, some great exclusives on it. Used to play the shit out ot Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, two masterpieces
The Casual Market
doesn't want 2 pay for online service
Videogames on Windows and on MSN are very big with the casual gamer.
They will have no problem with enabling 3rd parties (think XNA) to bring all the bite-sized gaming opportunities
i wonder what fanboys are going to say now. maybe they going to hate microsoft now since they are creating casual games..... anyways i see everyone wants to copy wii now...and you[re right wii has free online.