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In her latest (overdue) Biting the hand column, Jessica catches up on some rather diverse subjects. Starting out with the layoffs at Kesmai she goes to the demise of SlowNewsDay, the well planned launch of DAoC and ends with the launch of the Xbox. Which is only slightly related to MMOG as the next bit shows:Unca Bill personally sold the first Xbox on Thursday. By the weekend, news outlets were reporting that 300,000 of the initial 400,000 manufacturing run had been sold. At around $300 for the basic box, that’s a cool $90 million, of which Microsoft probably gets half.
This is the start of the Console Wars between the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox. Sony has already sold somewhere between 10 and 14 million PS2 units, giving them a nice lead. Whether the Xbox can make a significant dent in that lead remains to be seen, and no one I know seems to consider Nintendo's GameCube a serious contender. Since Microsoft expects to lose between $100 and $150 on each console and not make a dime on combined hardware and software sales for at least three years, I’m betting they don’t much care right now. When you have multiple billions in the bank, you can afford not to care.
I think it’s a given that the games will compare favorably with PS2 and GameCube games, if only because the same developers seem to be making products for two or even all three platforms. With a built-in broadband adapter, where the Xbox could shine eventually is with online games. Microsoft has been publicly sparse with details about Xbox online gaming plans, but they have been making some key game hires recently, including persistent world game veteran Jonathan Baron, late of Kesmai, EA and Infogrames and author of an interesting paper at Gamasutra on psychology in multiplayer games. They are also building a new SDK to allow 3rd party developers and publishers to seamlessly incorporate the latest Zone features and account management into their products, as well as furiously hiring developers to help design and build an Xbox-specific online services technology and platform.
So there is a long-term strategy here, and it seems to include both the PC and Xbox. As for specific games, that’s something I’m going to have to research more. The future of online console games is a subject probably worthy of an entire column by itself. Although let me just say:
Microsoft, now that EA has abandoned the Mechwarrior license and you own it, talk to Jonathan about a persistent world BattleTech game that allows players to build their own lances and upgrade and salvage equipment to build them out into companies and battalions. With the way you keep improving the Mechwarrior solo games, I can only imagine what kind of incredibly cool multiplayer Mechwarrior persistent game you could develop… |
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Catching Up on Biting
