X-Box2 Early release = does not equal absolute success

[DezNutz]

This is my first post in this forums, and I would like to start out saying hi to you all, and I enjoy reading all the important information you have to share.

I have read in many places in these forums how big X-Box2 is suppose to be and its early release is suppose to be one of those steps. If you have not learned anything from Sega, learn this, that releasing system first does not equal domination of next generation market. Can you say Saturn, or Dreamcast?

To me releasing the system first is a must play by a losing console on existing market. Sony would keep on dominating the existing generation as long as they could,m they are in no need of a next generation console as they own this one. That being said, I don't think we would be seeing the next generation market continue to develop like it is without Microsoft being the first to get a next generation console out there.

I understand it will be a good unit, and it has been in development for years, but do you honestley think the PS3 has not been in development for at least as long as XBox2?

I look forward to getting more specific detials on each next generation console, and will abviously reserve judgement until I get my hands on a control of each system. A system is only as good as the games avilable for it, and right now Sony more then 95% of games I wanna play, and I know I am not alone, that fact alone is going to be Microsoft's biggest hurdle. They can make a techincal solide machine, make development of games easy for developers, but if they dont get any Grand Theft Auto's, Final Fantasy, or Socom games (not to mention a long list of others) then I will still not get that system. I don't want to buy a system for Halo, I enjoy Halo, Halo2 & Ghost Recon 2, but I got to see more then this to get me to buy any system.

[siren]

Great first post and welcome to the forums. I wish more of our new posters would aspire to this level of quality.

To answer you question, Microsoft understand that it isn't only about releasing first. They know that it is about the games. That is why over 100 developers currently have Xbox2 development kits. That is why there is over 200 games in development for it. That is why Microsoft sent them development kits over 2 years ago, so they would have time to make the great games even for the launch year.

Sega's problems with the Saturn and Dreamcast were so far above and beyond just releasing early.

With the Saturn, Sega changed the core of the hardware to a dual processor just 6 months before launch. This broke compatibility with the SegaCD/32X upgrades they had shipped for the Genesis. Originally the 32X+SegaCD was supposed to be able to play all Saturn games and was kinda a head start into the next generation. This pissed off a lot of their top consumers. On top of that, it broke all existing games that were in development for the platform. Several of these games ended up going to the Playstation only because developers didn't want to pay the money to redevelop them for the new Saturn.

As for the Dreamcast. People were still hurt from the Saturn, but that isn't the biggest problem. In part due to the Saturn, Sega was hurting financially. They were in debt big time and were on the verge of bankruptcy when they released it. They didn't even have enough money to lobby major developers to make games. It released with a decent launch lineup, but lacked any real support over a 9 month period as a result. In the end, the PS2 started to come out and Sega just didn't have the money to combat Sony's heavy marketing and hype.

Microsoft does not have either of the 2 problems called out above.

[SessDMC]

A very intresting read there from both of you, What siren said is deffinatly true. since the time the dreamcast came out they was almost bone dry of money, I dont know how well they are doing in the software side of things these days, but to say that Xenon dev kits were out 2 years ago is a blow to sonys next gen console, but cell powerd workstations have said to take less time to develop game for the console, what sony need to do now is to be quick when certifying games, and also to be 'nicer' to their developers, so then they get better game titles etc.

[DezNutz]

I am one of those Sega owners ( I had orignal Genesis, with bottom load Sega CD & top fit 32X), I was just using those two systems of examples of first to release system that do not win the battle. There are several others from many other developers that could be used. Being burnt from Saturn, made me select my consoles a little more closey, and I am always a bit wary of the first system on a next generation platform.

The Saturn had many more problems then what you state above, if I remeber correctley. First off the release was done right, I believe Toys-R-Us got the sytem months before nay other retailer, and it sold for $400 at time of release. In the U.S. I dont even remeber an annoucement of release or build ect, very poor release was done, one day I was walking through Toys-R-Us and I saw the system out there before I heard anyhthing about it.

Dreamcat, IMO, was a decent console. They had some pretty good quality games (Sonic, Resident Evil:Veronica, Toy Commander, Soul Calib ect..) but they where so early a release, the system could not compete techincally with the PS2 and the huge library of games on it. I don't think EA sports made any Dreamcast games either which is a real nail in the coffin, even though Sega 2k games where pretty good, they where not EA.

Being released early was not the only fact that helped doom these systems, but it did not help in long run either. It proved to be just another hurdle that Sega could not overcome. While I am sure Microsoft does not have all the problems Sega had with the release of their systems, I believe they got alot of different ones that will be just as hard to overcome.

Sega had the advantage of dominating prior platform generation (with the Genesis 16bit), this is one advantage Microsoft does not have. Sega had a large library of gaming franchises people enjoyed and bought the system for, something I don't see with Microsoft who really only has one major franchise in Halo. While I know they got development kits out early, what it really comes down to me, is what are they gonna do with these kits? Hopefully they can generate some new franchises, or crossover some existing ones, and make some games I wanna play. So far I have yet to see any games for any next generation system, which will determine which system I get. They could have 100 X-Box2 games at launch, but if they are all cross-overs of existing X-Box titles, then why whould I get this system? Maybe EA sports will release Madden on next generation on XBox first, that may be the most game I will want to play on the system (without having knowledge of any other games being developed for it), but knowing that EA will release a Madden with PS3, along with all the other titles I like to play would make me wanna wait for the PS3.

I guess it comes down to the games, I will have to wait to see what games are coming out for X-Box2, and what they look/play like. Hopefully they will have much better controller style as well, cause I think everyone would agree Sony has a *expletive deleted* hard to beat controller as well.

[SessDMC]

Sony designed (the controller) with egronomics in mind, (it been discussed in another thread, quite and intresting read if you ask me) and i will admit the only game that was hugley talked about was Halo around my area, project gothem and other games was treated as second grade games (IMHO) im not sure what siren would say to that, but i got that impression. nothing can beat the Dualshock controller, unless it was a modded copy.

[siren]

there were 2 problems with the Xbox controllers.

1) The first one was too big. Ergonomically it was the most sound controller out. That doesn't make it good though.

2) The black and white button. This was done because studies showed that the 2nd buttons on the top of the PS2 controller go underutilized because it is to hard to gamers to press and switch between them. MS has solved this problem and is moving the Black and White buttons accordingly.

[SessDMC]

Which buttons are thos that go underuilized siren? Just curiouse.

[Seb]

Personally I find the R2/L2 buttons very easy to use. It just seems natural, if not instinctive for me to use them, especially when playing games like TimeSplitters.

Anyway, it's is true that Microsoft releasing early may not mean success. Sony have always been the trailing console to launch and have always won in the end. Just look at Saturn v. PSone or Dreamcast v. PS2.

Naturally business theory tells us that launching early in any other market has huge benefits, like capturing market share, but this just doesn't happen with game consoles. People know what they like, and they are very loyal. The majority of people don't just switch between consoles depending on who launches first. The major factor when someone chooses a console is the games it has as always and as Siren said, Microsoft are stepping up their game plan to try and fight back in this area of the console war. However, as are Sony with the development of better workstations and a friendlier CPU/GPU design/configuration.

Microsoft know they need to get some sort of competitive edge, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. Getting the right blend between launching early and creating the superior console hardware will make the difference. Technologically, it seems, at this stage, that PS3 will have more grunt behind it and consequently it is/may be taking longer to hit the fab facilities than Xbox 2. In an ideal world the best console would win. The winner would have the best games, a competitive launch date and the superior hardware, but we know that neither console is going to have all three, so we will just have to wait and see what happens.

[PeanutButterMunky]

Personally I find the R2/L2 buttons very easy to use. It just seems natural, if not instinctive for me to use them, especially when playing games like TimeSplitters.

I agree. TimeSplitters is a good example. It's a shame that a lot more games don't utilize those buttons. They either don't use them, or they just give them the same exact functionality as the front ones, which is lame.

[SessDMC]

Their best used in FPS games, like with Red Faction 2, when you has two guns in each hand, you have to use the L1 and 2 button to shoot the left gun and r1 and 2 buttons to fire the right button, and most of the time the gun had a second function useing the L and R 2 buttons, it was seriously entertaining, and ive still got the game, i hope there will be a Red faction 3 in the next Generation.

[gaming ultima]

Their best used in FPS games, like with Red Faction 2, when you has two guns in each hand, you have to use the L1 and 2 button to shoot the left gun and r1 and 2 buttons to fire the right button, and most of the time the gun had a second function useing the L and R 2 buttons, it was seriously entertaining, and ive still got the game, i hope there will be a Red faction 3 in the next Generation.

yea i was a big fan of the 2 red factions as well
man wouldn’t a next gen red faction be cool
and i also think anyone who finds it hard to use the l2 and r2 buttons and switch between them and the r1 and l1 buttons has something wrong with their brains as its extremely easy

[SessDMC]

Any ways before we go totally off topic, its about Xenons early release... so any one elses opinions are welcome i guess about this release date.

[DezNutz]

lol, man did this get a bit off-topic but still a good discussion. I just hope Microsoft has more to the X-Box2 then an early release, and wanted to make that point really clear. I enjoy competition, and I think good platform competition could only benefit me and every other gamer out there.

[cyrusmg]

long time reader, first-time poster

I agree that in order to make the headway they need to against Sony, they are going to have to provide some serious firepower.

Of course launching early is an advantage most likely (seeing as how they seem to have had the buissness strength to change the generation cycle lifetime, they probably have the strength to do an early release the way it needs to be done) but i think your point is a very real issue for them.

By the time the PS# comes out, if we haven't seen some seriously good titles that the populous in general accepts, then MS is going to have a difficult time competing in what appears to be becoming a very mainstream market.

but there you go, that's just why this competition is so good for all of us with the where withall to sit and evaluate after the dust settles.

[SessDMC]

I think ive just had a thought, they might be makeing great titles (like killzone, and GT4 etc.) to make people say, wow that was great cant wait for the sequil and hopefully could pull have a few customers... the again, it probably waint, but they will buy a ps3 as well...

[knowitman]

2) The black and white button. This was done because studies showed that the 2nd buttons on the top of the PS2 controller go underutilized because it is to hard to gamers to press and switch between them. MS has solved this problem and is moving the Black and White buttons accordingly.

I would say that if Mircrosoft was trying to fix something with the white and black buttons that they went the wrong way. IMO those buttons are a lot harder to reach and use effectively then the PS2 configuration.

I also don't really understand the use of the two triggers on the back. People say the only advantage is that they are analog. They don't realize that the buttons on the PS2 controllers are analog, too.

[cyrusmg]

I didn't really think that MS would have a shindig before E3, but Siren's post about the possability (i know he didn't say that anymore than i did, he just happened to get me thinking) really interests me.

It makes coplete sense really, i mean they don't want a head to head competition until they have some idea of what the ps3 is going to bring to the fight (a.k.a. isscc anyone?) so i'd be willing to bet that some time in the next weeks or so, seeing as how sony has made an annoucement recently about the playable version at E3, nintendo will be there with tech demos probably (or at least comething to show off the revolutionary thingy) MS, i would think from a PR perspective, needs to make a statement soon or risck letting the Sony machine get a jump on them.

[The_One]

To answer you question, Microsoft understand that it isn't only about releasing first. They know that it is about the games. That is why over 100 developers currently have Xbox2 development kits. That is why there is over 200 games in development for it. That is why Microsoft sent them development kits over 2 years ago, so they would have time to make the great games even for the launch year.

Wow, they sure learned their lesson . That's more games than XBox has TO DATE!

Making great games for launch sounds good and dandy... but honestly, how many games that were released for the XBox, PS2, or GCube was decent? There you go, food for though. 200 games released could possibly mean that only 2% of them are decent, which is about 4 or 5. I mean, seriously, to DATE, how many worthwhile games are there on each console? Perhaps 5-10% of all games ever published? See where I'm going? Food for thought indeed...

1) The first one was too big. Ergonomically it was the most sound controller out. That doesn't make it good though.

I suppose it really was ergonomic. At least I don't have to switch between the trigger buttons like switching between the R1 and R2 . The down side to only having 1 trigger button is the lack of functions. For example, in Timesplitters 2, most guns have a secondary function, which utilizes the R1 button (by default), this probably got mapped to the L-Trigger on the XBox controller, which is no biggy, but then you realize that XBox's controller had less buttons to start with... Uh, time to worry, how are we going to implement every button? I guess we'll have to copy Halo and use the analog sticks' button...
That was simply one scenario out of many that could have happened in Radical Design's daily meetings .

@siren in general: You've mentioned only 2 of infinite scenarios that could happen to Microsoft, and those are ones that happened to Sega. Which proves... Not much. Sure, Microsoft isn't going to go bankrupt, and sure, they learned their lesson about games being important. However, you also fail to realize that those are two fundamental aspects. No one will succeed without them, and it's pretty much a no brainer. Having M$ realize them now have simply put them on the same playing field as Big N and Sony, and I'm afraid they were still one generation too late. On the otherhand, I guess it's better late then never, eh, siren ?

@DezNutz: Sure, releasing first doesn't guarantee success, but it does elevate the playing field to your favour. Having a console out early can hopefully help you snatch some of the market before your competitors can react, which is definately a plus for M$. I'm going to get whichever console that suits me the best, of course, but I did get the PS2 for it's RPG's, and if M$ is going to succeed, their console better have some heck of a good RPG's on it. That's also one main reason why XBox failed in Japan and some Asian regions (although last I heard [which was last year], XBox sales have soared and PS2 sales have declined).

[siren]

Actually, MS has over 500 titles out which is amazing when you consider the PS2's 800 and the GC's 350 or so.

This is US releases only of coarse.

Your food for thought is great, but you seem to be ignoring that they have taken measures to help increase the quality of the titles in the first year. Having the extra 2 years of development over the norm for launch will go a long way in this regard.

If you want to talk decent, then you need to look beyond what most fanboys call decent. Decent is any game that manages to sell over 250k copies. These games almost universally profitable at that level. When looking at the Xbox and PS2 you would have about 25 - 30% of their titles at the decent mark. If you want to talk about mind blowing games, yea 5 - 10% is more accurate. These are the games that everyone buys. These are the Million sellers.

Also consider the following, the first year a console is out, generally the worst games are out. For the PS2, at the one year mark, they barely had a 2.0 attach rate. That is 2 games sold per system. On the other hand, even with the original Xbox, they had an attach rate of over 4.0 by one year in. This was mostly due to getting the development tools into developers hands a mere 3 months sooner than the norm.

Now make that 2 years more than the norm. You can seriously expect some of the Xbox2 launch titles to be as good as 2nd or 3rd generation titles on most systems.

[cyrusmg]

ok so, hypothetically, the xenon gets a 6 month headjump on the PS3. Launch titles for the Xenon are better than anyone could have hoped any everybody loves it.

Is it likely that the dev's for PS3 are going to watch what is going on with xenon and try and beat it or at least match what will be almost the second wave of games by the 6 moth point when the PS3 releases? In other words, is it ok to think that the PS3 launch titles might very well be as good/better than the Xenon post release games?

i can see how it would go either way, so im curious.

[The_One]

Also consider the following, the first year a console is out, generally the worst games are out. For the PS2, at the one year mark, they barely had a 2.0 attach rate. That is 2 games sold per system. On the other hand, even with the original Xbox, they had an attach rate of over 4.0 by one year in. This was mostly due to getting the development tools into developers hands a mere 3 months sooner than the norm.

Yeeaaahh... This had nothing to do with the fact that most XBoxes had Jet Set Radio Future and Seta GT Rally (which is already two games) bundled with it, now did it?

Bottom line: Both games had an attach rate of ~2 games per console sold. Two games coming with the console bundled does not count as extra attach rate... .

[siren]

Also consider the following, the first year a console is out, generally the worst games are out. For the PS2, at the one year mark, they barely had a 2.0 attach rate. That is 2 games sold per system. On the other hand, even with the original Xbox, they had an attach rate of over 4.0 by one year in. This was mostly due to getting the development tools into developers hands a mere 3 months sooner than the norm.

Yeeaaahh... This had nothing to do with the fact that most XBoxes had Jet Set Radio Future and Seta GT Rally (which is already two games) bundled with it, now did it?

Bottom line: Both games had an attach rate of ~2 games per console sold. Two games coming with the console bundled does not count as extra attach rate... .

Please know what your talking about before slamming me. Attach Rate is calculated by independant companies. The main one being NPD. NPD does not include bundled games in their calculations.

[DezNutz]

Also consider the following, the first year a console is out, generally the worst games are out. For the PS2, at the one year mark, they barely had a 2.0 attach rate. That is 2 games sold per system. On the other hand, even with the original Xbox, they had an attach rate of over 4.0 by one year in. This was mostly due to getting the development tools into developers hands a mere 3 months sooner than the norm.

I would disagree with you that is is only due to the fact the developers had more hands on time, and also has to do with the PS2 being out for a tested amount of time before X-Box. They where more developers on the next generation system due in no small part to the PS2 being so successfull. In PS2's first year, they where very few developers in the next generation console market as the previous generation still had the most market share, it made sense for most developers to continue to release on existing generation system and not so much on next generations yet. By the time the X-Box was released every developer was into the next generation, and the X-Box had more devlopers to select from, and to work on their system.

[cyrusmg]

While I agree with you I think there is more to it than that. The XBOX was infinitely easier to program for, which made it very attractive to developers. I’m not sure if any games actually ended up going to XBOX instead of PS2 but it is certain that the rate that game developers embraced the XBOX was faster than it was for the PS2 because of their development tools.

[luxurys]

Dreamers
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Dreamgazers
Publisher: TBA
Release Date: TBA
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3

A new title for the PS3, Dreamers is a psychedelic action/adventure that takes you on a wild ride into the thoughts and dreams of a narcoleptic whose 4 hour dreams start to become 4 day fatal comas.

Developed by Dreamgazers, a new studio that began in 2004, the studio looks to bring you a game that seperates itself from common game cliches and bring you something new, inspired by everyday life and people. Some of the dreams in which your character falls into are created from "Dreamers" fans. They are currently holding a contest, looking for unique and creative dreams to use in the game. The winners recieve everything from collectors editions of the game to being on the games credits. Check out the contest here: Are you a Dreamer?

The details are scarce on the game but what we do know is that you play a narcopletic named Jorge. You will live an everyday normal life when out of the blue you have these attacks of deep sleep or hallucinations. These attacks usually only last for 5-10 minutes but happen anywhere at anytime. When you fall into these dreams you start to notice that there may be a purpose and the only chance of awakening is to finish whatever goal is set before you.

Using clues to find why your condition is worsening, Jorge will search within his dreams, nightmares, and ill-fated past.

Some features the game will hold:
-Stunning highly detailed enviroments
-Dreams based on real life peoples dreams
-Game uses a highly modified version of the Reality Engine
-First person adventure, third person action
-Great cast, storyline, and amzing visuals.