Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If Apple can position the AppleTV as a console (maybe open it up to developers) or build something more along the lines of a traditional console, they will crush. This opinion is pushed around a lot, however I cannot really see it happening, and I doubt Apple will ever pursue such a strategy. For Apple to enter the console market, they would have to compete with the big boys, meaning if it can't push 100 million pol…
I honestly don't know if Apple will enter this market, but I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are about the profit margin as the reason not to. I think they could build a next-generation-console-capable Apple-TV and sell it at or below $199 while keeping their 40% margin. They would sell you each additional wireless controller (and it would be sweetly designed, I suspect) for the standard $79 peripheral cost. The pr…
Stupid, Stupid xBox
141–150 of 185 posts
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are sort of right. I think that maybe apple's console entry could become a bastion of $1, low budget casual games. Not because it couldn't handle the hardcore games market, but because the store will be setup with the same problem all apple stores have of low visibility and freemium garbage dominating the storefront. Also a ton of devs will port their already existing casual freemium stuff to this device.…
No, it'll be going for a vastly more lucrative market: everyone who is wildly overserved by the existing console market. Consoles had three decades to break out of niche and they failed. It's time for the final disruption of the living room.
This is a potentially lucrative market, but it hasn't existed for 3 decades. I'm not even sure it has existed for 1. Changes in technology are only now making this possible, and tbh I hope all the console makers don't join this freemium casual game race to the bottom.
two and a half men and insert generic crime procedural are the most popular tv shows. Would you say CBS is disrupting tv right now by peddling a bunch of cheap garbage to the lowest common denominator audience.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#143I see a couple comments here, including the highest voted top level comment, questioning how the xbox can be "crushing" their competition given that a straightforward reading of console sales indicates things aren't so cut and dried. However, the xbox is crushing its competition, in several ways, and let me explain why a naive reading of unit sales is misleading. Many consoles sell at a loss, especially initially, or…
In particular that 360 has made more money for 3rd party devs than Wii.
It doesn't really matter if Microsoft makes more money per gamer than Nintendo if Nintendo is still more popular. As a ludacris example I'd consider consider a company that sold a million $1 items more successful than a company that sold one $2 million dollar item. One has market. The other just as a customer.
I'm not suggesting Wii is more popular than 360. I have no idea since I have no data. I'm am suggesting that the profit of Nintendo vs Sony vs Microsoft is irrelevant. What is relevant, I think, is which console is making money for 3rd party devs because that's the console that seems like it would have the most support in the long run. I'd love to see real data as to which console that is.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very interesting to take this spot-on assessment of the game console industry and compare it to the mobile phone industry. Microsoft and Apple are dominating in very similar ways when it comes to gaming consoles (Microsoft) and mobile (Apple). Yet Microsoft hasn't been able to replicate this winning strategy with its own phones. It seems to me that if one department at Micrsoft is "killing it", it would be Xbox.…
If there's one division at Microsoft that's killing it, it would be server and tools, which at $5.2 billion (latest Q) in sales is nearly as big as the Windows division now (and within 4 to 8 quarters - as the Windows 8 bumper dies down - will probably surpass it). The $20 billion / year in sales server and tools does, is three times the size of the XBox + Live group.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#145Somewhat related, an indie company managed to get a fighting game out on PSN and XBLA. It just got an update on PS3, but it can't get updated for Xbox because the patch is bigger than 4MB. [1]
Keep in mind, these are free updates that fix bugs and stability issues, not paid DLC. Even so, patching is really, really expensive. [2]
[1] http://shoryuken.com/2013/01/08/skullgirls-xbox-360-patch-de...
[2] http://kotaku.com/5884842/wait-it-costs-40000-to-patch-a-con...
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the promise of things like the Oouya console but they have yet to be proven commercially viable in the market. There are some interesting forces at work here. The amount of time and effort needed to build a truly cutting edge game console has historically been high, further tools to get the most performance out of the hardware have required similar investments in expensive engineering time. This combined with…
I just bought a fairly capable gaming PC for around $1,000. It's not the absolute fastest thing but it certainly performs more than well enough for all the indie games I've bought.
Those are typically not the graphics-intensive ones. I'm not sure what specs your machine make it into a 'gaming' PC, but I have yet to see anyone in the industry call a machine with the specs that 1000$ gets you today a 'gaming machine'.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#147I see a couple comments here, including the highest voted top level comment, questioning how the xbox can be "crushing" their competition given that a straightforward reading of console sales indicates things aren't so cut and dried. However, the xbox is crushing its competition, in several ways, and let me explain why a naive reading of unit sales is misleading. Many consoles sell at a loss, especially initially, or…
Nintendo themselves have confirmed it:
"With Wii U, we have taken a rather resolute stance in pricing it below its manufacturing cost, so we are not planning to perform a markdown."
1 - http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/130131/04.htm...
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#148Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody seems to remember just how much money Microsoft and Sony have lost on their consoles. - Through 2005, the Xbox gaming division had lost over $4 billion [1] - Microsoft took a charge of $1 billion dollars on its June 2007 income statement to account for the cost of replacing bricked Xbox 360s [1] - Xbox 360 and PS3 losses total $8 billion [2] Luckily for Microsoft, they've had the cash to burn to strong-arm the…
This is a very moot issue at this point. The $850+ million the Live division is now minting every quarter guarantees a strong profit base going forward for the Xbox. Their strategy worked brilliantly, and none of their competition has such a strong competitive advantage. Does it matter that it was expensive to acquire all those Live subscribers? No it does not. They made a huge bet on the future, and they had obscene…
But I have doubts. Even if the PS4 / WiiU fail and Microsoft does "spend whatever it takes to keep the XBox relevant in the living room", will that be enough? Microsoft wasn't shy about spending money on Zune, Windows phones, or tablets -- but the Zune is gone, the Windows phones have low single-digit market penetration, and the latest tablets don't seem to be doing better (we'll see, but it's not looking good).
Reasons I'm doubtful about the future of the Xbox:
1. It's not competing against the PS4. It's competing against Steam boxes, Android consoles, phones, and tablets. Not direct competition, but competition for our attention.
2. Indie games were big in 2012, and 2013 is looking bigger. Microsoft's platforms (other than Windows) are looking less palatable, especially for newer studios. Larger studios still fail as often as they ever did, but they're not getting replaced. The AAA titles will keep coming, but they're competing with scrappy folk who license the Unity and Unreal engines for prices that are very friendly... until you want to release your game for the Xbox.
3. With every generation of consoles, it becomes more difficult and expensive to produce content that leverages the new technology. It was a long time before people figured out how to produce content that really made the PS3 look better than the PS2, although much of that was due to architectural decisions. It may be that the survival of the Xbox depends more on what the market looks like in 2015 rather than 2014 or 2013. What will Apple have released by 2015? How many indie studios will have edged the behemoths out of the industry?
4. New generations of consoles no longer provide additional media functions that consumers desire. Two generations ago you got a pretty fine CD player with your PS1, last generation you got a DVD player with your PS2, and this generation you can play Blu-Rays or stream content from Netflix/Hulu. What's left? We have a PS3, but much of its justification was as a way to play Blu-Rays, Netflix, and Hulu.
On a side note, every time I've stopped by Ground Kontrol (the local arcade) recently, it's been packed. Even with a cover charge, even when most people have work tomorrow, even when the machines cost 25¢ per play, the doorman was turning people away because the building was at its occupancy limit.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#150"how it is crushing its original console competitors" Previous gen: > Xbox sales: 24 million > PS2 sales: 153 million Current gen: > Xbox 360 sales: 76 million > Wii sales: 100 million > PS3 sales: 70 million (all data from each console's respective Wikipedia) How is it "crushing" its competitors? Otherwise, I bought an XBox360 recently to get the Kinect for openFrameworks hacking and played a little bit with the con…
I beg to differ, as the NXE and the Guide are comparatively a joy to use, and while the Metro one has available real estate plagued by ads and feels lacking WRT what it could be (e.g pinned apps should stand front and center), it is enjoyable enough. There are a number of system-wide underused features, like global vibration settings, global racing games and fps mappings...
XMB could be great but pales in comparison due to poor choices, limited development, and is injecting crap I don't want call to actions like Singstar in my Games entries, while the settings area is a complete mess.
Pet peeves:
* It stings a little when I hit the PS button to look at the (missing) time while in game.
* It stings a lot when I have to manually toggle the DST setting
* I cringe every time I have to manage downloads on the PS3
* There's no way to have multiple profiles connected and save progress and trophies for coop games (the Halo series leverages that to great end)
All in all both have their shortcomings, but it really feels like the xBox acts as a modern platform/system whereas the PS3 acts like a PS2/Dreamcast era console.