This was a serious conference between senior management at MS and financial analysts concerning information that is relevant to investors. Many of these analysts work for investment firms that have sizable holdings in MS stock.
In other words, this was a serious dicussion among grownups about their business. No PR or marketing BS, because it wouldn't work with this audience. If you try to understand the transcript, a lot of what MS has done and will be doing with respect to i...
The 360 gave me a good year of gaming in 2007. As far as I'm concerned, it has already paid me back what I spent for its purchase. If I get anything more out of it from this point, it's just extra gravy.
I spent a lot less for the wii but got even less in return. I regret not having ebayed it this holiday season.
2008 is the year I finally get a PS3. Or is it? I'll wait for the big titles to hit and see if they're everything they're cracked up to be. If the PS3...
...only if it's legitimate news.
In which case, they must.
You really can't make any reliable predictions about console sales when so many important factors are expected to change. There are several, but let me name just one: price. MS hasn't even begun to play hardball with the price of the 360. At this point MS can probably afford to slash the price of the 360 by $100 across the board. But hasn't anybody else noticed that MS has not yet bothered to respond directly to the last price-drop on the PS3, which is now several weeks old? I myself am wond...
The death of HD DVD is bad for the 360 for the simple reason that it is very good news for the PS3. The 360 did not decline or lose anything, but the PS3 gained a heck of a lot. Since the two machines compete head-on and are constantly measured against each other, a PS3 plus is tantamount to a 360 minus. Think of it the same way as moving anything to the other side of the "=" sign in an equation.
Personally, I think gaming is still a superior experience on the 360 at ...
Most asshat analysts tend to focus on the profit angle in concluding that all Bioware IPs are destined for a multiplat future. But they don't realize that porting has its opportunity costs too. The work of porting old games can distract Bioware from creating new ones. Even when Bioware was focused on the 360, Mass Effect turned out buggy as all get out, and Bioware was not expected to finish the trilogy sooner than 6 years. Somehow, I'm not confident that Bioware can improve quality or cut de...
The argument based on current prices of existing skus is weak. The time is about ripe for a price drop across the entire 360 product line, and MS will need a new high end model if they want to maintain a profit stream from premium pricing at the top trim level.
I also believe that if an "ultra" model is released, it will probably be Toshiba branded and won't look like a 360 at all but will look more like a standard AV component.
Zhuk, you crack me up. I can see that you get a real kick out of teasing children to piss them off. Do you use a separate account to work on the xbox kids?
Any VG Charts figure is a guess, but at least it's an educated guess. It's at least partially based on actual data, which is more than can be said of most poster's comments here. NPD numbers are probably closer to the actual numbers because they are based on more and newer data, but even their data is incomplete, so in the end they are also guesswork,albeit more educated guesswork.
VG charts is not useful as an actual bean count. What it is useful for, at best, is an indicator...
The article is not about whether you win or not. Not every article about the PS3 will be about whether you win or not. The article is also not written from a gamer's perspective. Not very article about the PS3 has to be written through a gamer's viewpoint. Making and selling the PS3, after all, is a business, so naturally, business people will talk about it from a business perspective. If you broaden your perspective just a bit, you will appreciate that the article presents several recent fin...
Very welcome news. I'm happy that underwhelming sales (so far) have not deterred development of the sequel. This series has remained fresh and enjoyable over the years. In fact, if they re-release all the prior installments with improved visuals for the PS3 (it would all fit on a single BluRay disk), I would buy them all over again. Imagine playing R&C, Up Your Arsenal, etc. with the graphics of Tools of Destruction. Heck, that would also work for Jak and Daxter.
It's not even out yet, but it's already feeling like old news. It can be disadvantageous to talk too much about something too soon in that it loses some of its novelty and newsworthiness. The same thing happened to Devil May Cry and Too Human. I think Sony should hold back on any more KZ news until it's just about to come out. Then they can pull out all the stops and do a Halo3 style blitz.
The 30% figure is a rumour. It is a product of pure speculation, which, in all fairness, is the result of MS' own failure/refusal to disclose the true rate of failure. The real figure is probably not that high, but definitely higher than the acceptable industry standard. The console remains successful because, for all the bad press about the RROD, it is probably not as widespread as some people would have you believe.
At any rate, if you still don't buy a 360 now despite the 3-...
English footall has sucked massive arse for years even before the advent of video game systems. 99% of the posters in this forum were born after the last time England won the World Cup, which I daresay wouldn't even have happened if England had not the benefit of home field. If a scapegoat is needed for England's continued futility, might I suggest the gene pool? I say do what France did. Build your entire squad from immigrant talent. Then perhaps it may have a chance.
This article would have been a helluva lot more useful if the blogger had verified whether his replacement unit was a new falcon model. Although its build date was after manufacturing of the new falcons started, I'm not sure when MS transitioned to 100% falcon production, because I think the old zephyrs were still rolling out in September.
Why did they even bother to make a PS3 version if they were going into it half-a$$ed? Once word of technical its problems gets around, the PS3 version is not going to sell very well.
"But the PC platforms are much easier to upgrade," Cai observed. "It doesn't take long for a game console to get outdated"
WRONG WRONG WRONG. It's the other way around. Because console specs are locked in place, they only become "outdated" when a new generation of the same console is introduced to render the preceding specs obsolete. Until then developers only have to code for the specs of the current generation. Technology may continue to advance,...
If it's any consolation to you, not too many copies of the non-bundle version of Rock Band were going to sell for the PS3 to begin with. This snafu should depress sales of that SKU even further. For the 360 version, which is expected to make up the overwhelming majority of sales, the GH3 controller works just fine.
Even if we assume that the PS3 will continue to outsell the 360 at the current rate, IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN 200 YEARS for Sony to catch up to MS in the EU. In the meantime, the 360 lead in the US continues to grow.
I think part of the problem is that the PS3's revival has not been broadly based. Of the 15K unit lead of the PS3 over the 360 in the EU this week, Spain and Italy accounted for 12K, or 80%. This continues a trend I noticed last week. Elsewhere, Sony barely edged out...
Ahem, I play Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario Galaxy is a SERIOUS game. Super Mario Galaxy IS NOT a casual game. And neither was Viva Pinata. Don't confuse games aimed at children with casual games. Scene It is a casual game, and so is wii sports. I do not play Scene it. I do not play wii sports. Know the difference.
And as I've said all along, casual gamers, by definition, don't buy a heck of a lot of games or invest a lot of time or money in gaming. If they did, they wouldn't...