Evil-Angel:
This is not a bad thing for MS. Read my post below and the one I made on an earlier thread. It would have been bad if Bungie staff quit en-mass to form their own studio. Heaven knows MS paid them enough money to do that ($50 million in bonuses) and there would have been no strings attached to MS. That they didn't suggests that the split was amicable and well planned. Remember, a deal like this takes months to negotiate. MS and Bungie have probably been talking about...
Ha! Can't say I didn't see this coming. Essentially, MS is spinning off Bungie into an independent company so Bungie can do things that may not have been possible as a formal part of MS. This is not just a creative freedom issue, as there may also have been legal/contractual issues that would have prevented Bungie from doing certain things as part of MS. For example, standard non-competitive and conlict clauses in Nintendo licensing ageements could have prevented Bungie, as part of MS, from r...
Nintendo has a completely different business model from Sony and MS and it is just plain wrong and useless to compare Nintendo to the other two. Nintendo is a game console manufacturer first and foremost. Its software business is secondary. Nintendo has to make money on the console hardware, and its first party software line-up exists solely to drive sales of its hardware. Software sales and license fees from third party titles are a nice bonus, but the primary source of revenue is hardware s...
Zune would have had a better chance if the Zune brand had been properly distanced from the name "Microsoft." There is so much anti-MS hate bleeding over into the Zune that it may not have a chance. On its own merits I think it's an ok product, but it lacks the flair and hip style of the Ipod. But that's just me.
"The 360 will have its little niche in Japan but let's not kid ourselves here. Japan is a lost cause for 360 this generation. The only reason MS cannot quit Japan now is because if they did, the 720 would have no chance there either. MS has to maintain a presence in Japan at all costs because if the Japanese respect something, it's perseverance. If they see that MS hung in there through thick and thin, they MAY (that's a big may) eventually warm up to the next MS console."
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I don't believe the 40 gb model will do anything better than or have everything that the 60 or 80 gb models have. If HD size were the only differentiator, hardly anybody will buy the more expensive models. In order to prevent the 40gb model from cannibalizing sales from the top end, it has to compromise features in return for its lower price. I'm looking at picking up a PS3 myself when Ratchet/Drake's come out, but because of all this talk about a cheaper/improved new model I'm in no hurry to...
I can see several reasons why this may actually be a smart move:
1. Allowing the shareholders to buy back Bungie allows MS to maintain goodwill with the developers and ensures that they will continue to favor the 360 platform.
2. By allowing Bungie to buy itself back, but retaining right of first refusal to publish all future games, MS has a better chance of keeping the core developer talent together in a unit that is friendly to the 360 instead of having talente...
Personally, I find the picture dubious. It's an attachment to a post on a forum, and it was that poster's first post, so it would seem that he signed up just so he could put that picture up. But regardless of whether the picture is real or phony, the fact that people are ready to believe the claim so easily speaks to how low public confidence in the 360's quality control has sunk. It will take months, if not years of trouble-free operation for MS to repair the damage that has been done by the...
Now that the die shrink has been implemented, 360s should cost less to produce. I expect a price cut at least by January, or sooner depending on when Sony put out the 40 gb PS3.
You may not like the strategy they adopted, which depended heavily on being first to market, but this is arguably one of two main reasons MS has a fighting chance to actually consolidate its foothold in the gaming market. The other reason is Sony's decision to leverage its gaming business in order to support a fledgling storage format. If Sony had not insisted on its Trojan horse gambit and released a blu-ray free PS3 earlier and cheaper, I strongly believe the 360 would have seriously strugg...
Watch out for that site. The phrase "even the devil can quote scripture" comes to mind. He is not objectively analyzing numbers to discover facts. Rather, he has a pre-conceived hypothesis, and he picks and chooses numbers that are favorable or at least spinnable to his point of view while conveniently ignoring those that are not. He's more of a debater than an analyst.
All this means is that more pirated copies of Halo 3 will circulate in India. Until China and India get serious about protecting intellectual property, those two markets will never realize the potential that their huge population numbers would seem to suggest. I hope the governments there realize that failing to protect intellectual property will also stunt the development of home-grown Indian or Chinese creative talent, not just in software but in literature, art and science in general, ther...
Let's try to clear some of the lingering misunderstanding from the UK sales numbers. A cursory glance at total sales will not reveal the most important things that the numbers have to say. While it is true that year-to-date sales for 360 and PS3 are comparable for 2007 (2006 and earlier were not included) the total numbers are not as important as where they apear to be trending statistically. The PS3 numbers included the big sales bump at the initial release of the console. This is to be expe...
This is a stupid article because it completely misses the economic significance of an important fact even after it goes to great lengths to point it out. Here it is: the video game industry makes more money from fewer customers or fewer units sold than the publishing or movie industry. This is important because, first, a more compact customer base requires less investment in marketing and distribution expenses to reach. In other words, it should cost less to sell 2 million games to 2 million ...
Yes, it may be "just" a good game, but it's a good game that was masterfully marketed. Complain all you want about hype, but when properly employed to push a good enough product, it works. In all fairness though, Halo 3 pre-sold about 1.5 million units before any reviews came out, so we can't blame hype for those sales. There simply are a lot of people out there that like Halo.
I would have to question the judgement of whoever at MS approved sending so much valuable gear to reviewers. Non-valuable promotional materials are fine but $800's worth of useful stuff creates a conflict of interest situation. And in the end it probably wouldn't sway a reputable reviewer one way or the other. This was just dumb and wasteful.
I still don't understand why they can't set up a separate team, ala Ninja Gaiden Sigma, dedicated to either porting or rebuilding their existing IPs to/for other platforms after the PS3 version is released. Unless they have determined in advance that their franchises won't sell well enough on other platforms to justify the additional investment, maintaining console exclusivity for their flagship titles costs a lot in terms of opportunity loss. This strategy made sense when their console of ch...
There is another practical benefit to MS from these figures besides the revenue. MS can take these numbers to other developers that have not committed to the 360 to demonstrate just what kind of sales are achievable on that platform. Because these are not theoretical projections but are actual sales figures of a real game, it presents other devs with a realistic money amount to shoot for and gives MS a powerful tool for persuading these developers to create more games for the 360. The pitch w...
Halo is like the little wedge that gets the 360 inside the house. The initial console purchase is usually the single biggest expense in gaming, and is therefore the most difficult investment to persuade the consumer to make. But once you get over that hump, it's a lot easier to persuade the customer to purchase additional software or peripherals to get more mileage out of the initial console investment. For example, not many would buy a 360 just to play Virtua Fighter 5. But these same peopl...
oops. Clicked on wrong post. Sorry.