From the developer's standpoint MS is looking like a savior. The current model of this generation isn't working and countless studios are closing. X1 is looking like they want a war, not so much with Sony but the used game market.
Publishers are looking at the X1 with willingness to try things that may fail because of the high profit margin as compared to other consoles without restrictions. Just one example is a great game like Pshychonaughts sold poorly right? Later on down the road gamers clamored to it when they may have realized it slipped under their radar and looked to ebay and second hand shops to get it. Imagine now that the title would have been an easy accessible download. All that word of mouth could have launched that title again after a year or two of being on the market and could have possibly put that company in a better position to release a follow up.
If MS manages to fight for the best exclusives, it could end up with them as the unlikely hero that saves gaming from it's four years of decline. It's been reported that other than Call of Duty and Fifa that sales are in a steady downfall. THQ just went under and they had some great games that just hit shelves. Layoffs, layoffs, more layoffs. It saddens me as I did some 3-D models for video games back in 2006-2007. When you work for a game company there is no stability. You never feel like you have a solid career ahead of you even with a degree. It's a sad state.
I can see both sides of the coin and I think gamers should look at what has happened in the past few years. Companies are unwilling to try different things unless they're XBLA/PSN downloads with OMG! DRM attached! Bastion, Braid, Shadow Complex, Mark of the Ninja, etc...all fantastic games that without a digital service may have never seen the light of day. These games made the devs money and rightfully so. Gamestop didn't get paid multiple times for each purchase. The devs got paid.
Now look at the situation between PS4 and X1. If you are a dev, you want to get paid right? X1 doesn't look too bad now does it? Every time a game is sold on X1 devs are getting paid. Every time a game is sold on PS4, it could be that one copy multiple times at Gamestop. No money for the devs.
Just saying MS must have some sort of plan. Especially with they're no back down attitude. There's just a lot of angry gamers out there this generation. We may have to give up a little to keep new experiences coming our way. You want diversity in gaming or just more Call of Duty and Madden constantly coming down the pipeline?
Thanks for reading!
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Good insight. This is my opinion, but I believe the overall design of the Xbox One came from outside the Xbox brand, not from within. I think higher-ups are the ones turning it into an all-in-one media box. Not a single key designer/leader from the Xbox or Xbox 360 development teams are still a part of the Xbox brand. They've all left Microsoft, so now the brand is being run by people who had no part in making Xbox a success in the first place.
Microsoft's current strategy is classic "blood from the stone". Their business model is not designed to expand gaming or expand the core Xbox fans. Their business model is to extract more money out of the same (or fewer) amount of people who are on 360, assuming they switch over. The media and TV-watching features are there so that if Xbox One fails as a gaming console, they can simply rebrand it as a set-top box. It sounds silly, but there was a time (before Kinect) when the Xbox 360 was seen as the hardest of hardcore game systems, and now look where we are.
"The current model of this generation isn't working and countless studios are closing" Did it occur to you that they may be forced to close because their products or marketing or strategic decisions are not good enough? Do you think the video games industry is the only place where companies go bankrupt?
It's quite simple, too many games are released with 10-15 hour campaigns, no replay value and a cheap multiplayer that's dead in a month's time. If I see such a game, but the premise of it still interests me then of course I'm not paying £40 for it when that same £40 can get a game with countless of hours of content. I think the gaming industry is one of the few where products on considerably different quality are sold for the same price.
Produce a game of quality with a serious level of content and you'll have consumers like myself who stills dusts off his N64 to give OoT a go.
how about making a damn good game people will buy like someone who made mario, halo, zelda, gears, cod franchise, battlefield, uncharted, god of war,,,, etc make a good some thats not total crap and guess what? people will buy your game more so than not.... dont screw over gamers because developers are getting more and more greedy with games campaigns lasting only 10 or less hours and or chopping up a full game only to release DLC at a price after you already paid 60$ for it... give me a break
By the time people got around to it 2 years later the company was already dead. I really do think that digital downloads in a few more years it's whats going to save a lot of companies but selling a disc based game and treating it like a digital copy just brings people to a bad place. People always need to be eased into it slowly and not have a company force you into what they want. As humans we always like to feel like we had a choice, just like everyone moved to netflix and other forms of digital movie watching apps because it was just convenient not having to go to a shop to rent a movie. Choice don't force and everyone would happily move over, Digital Downloads for games is where the future is.