E3 Microsoft Conference Thread

I am def going to pick this up. I already know this will be a good party hit at my house. We are all in the 30+ age range.

It's ripe for new downloadable content which is fantastic!

 

I would like to offer my analysis of Microsoft's strategy and I hope I don't sound too harsh:

That they accomplished being the first of the next gen or rather current gen consoles to reach a "10m installed base" can be questionable due to the high failiure rate and personal opinion I can offer. Basically I feel that with the XBox 360's failiure rate and what is known (those who have gone to Microsoft for a refurb) and what is unknown (those who gave up and ended up buying another console after throwing away the dead)

And also that I personally feel that with RRoD consoles being sent back to MS, the ones that were not able to be fixed and therefore had to be replaced with a new to the customer refurb console counts as a shipped console and can be added to the number of consoles shipped (the install base number you are quoting and many "official" sources are quoting)

Basically I feel that the actuall install base, the XBox 360 owners that actually have a console in their home is much lower than the alleged inflated official shipped number of 11.x million consoles.

MS Xbox 360 has a strong games line up thanks to being available since 2005 and finally having Halo 3 coming in 11 or so weeks and the massive media hype that will surround that game alone is guaranteed to have at least 7 to 8 million copies sold by the end of this year, if not higher and set a new record for most copies of a game sold as I am sure that at minimum in the USA at least 7 million will buy the game and be on XBL and add the hype to bring in at least 4 to 5 million copies along with new consoles sold or much, much higher but that is just my opinion in looking back at what happened with Halo 2 and knowing that things have changed and MS is in the lead as they can claim to be.

As for the Disney and other movie DL videos, I personally do not care or see any use in that but I do remember that Microsoft stated prior to the XBox 360 launch that they wanted their console to be the next "ipod" or hot device must have, but seriously most Disney movies are on DVDs already, alot of movies are on DVD and the new formats and all I see of this DL media content is that people may buy this crap just to waste "disposable income" but hey it may be huge.

As for ownership of the living room, this one is tough, anything can happen and this holiday will prove interesting, I am hoping that consumers who buy these consoles are really doing it for games, movies and online play, but more than that and its hard to see the point in spending additional money.

Microsoft, even with their current RRoD problems should not lower the price of their console this year as a response to Sony's recent reshuffling due to the fact that Halo 3 alone despite what we all can guess is going to be the game of 2007 accross all platforms, unless it is not so and that is unlikely.

Basically I feel that even if the new "falcon 65nm" consoles get released this year and they also suffer from RRoD failiures and disc scratching that Halo 3 alone will decide the year and not a console failiure but I could be wrong too.

Rock Band looks like a nice idea but just like the famous or is that infamous rock bands, if people start screwing around it is just not going to be fun and will turn into a nightmare, then again remember that this game will get sequels...

Assassin's creed reminded me of what a near true Batman game or wall crawling superhero game could be but back on topic, yeah I agree but we will have to wait and see the game released to see if it turns into a boring game or a letdown or a sleeper, etc.

They will always have some overpaid jockstrap showcasing a videogame and trash talk, some people love their celebrities, so the cheese cannot be avoided there.

Ya that H3 edition Xb360 could have looked alot better if it really stood out of just a paint job and had something like a lunch box style sculpt of the Halo characters, but hey they could have an Elite version since there are Elites in the game.

Other than that I really wanted to know about upcoming games, like stuff to expect in the first half of 2008 but the new E3 served its purpose.

I really feel that this new E3 format is a move in the right direction, the audience should be more professional while watching trailers during the conference as they are supposed to be using their brains to analyse what is being presented to them and not fall into company/game ego pleasing hype zombie mode.

Having said that, Halo 3 really did not look as impressive as that pre pre alpha Killzone 2 trailer mainly because we know that XBox 360 contains monster tech chips inside and so far the Halo 3 game does not look that dramatically different than what we played in Halo 2 on the old XBox 1. Maybe if there were elaborate smoke effects and enviroment changing/destruction effects present but oh well we will have to judge once the game is finally out or...

Bungie purposely held back for the sake of knowing already that the game will sell reguardless and that they really don't have to work as hard as before since MS has the market this time and Halo 2 upped the fanbase of their game so they went the safe route to not anger fans.

RARE not showing Banjo 3 was weird given that the Stamper bros are no longer with RARE, reguardless it was weird, maybe Microsoft is planning another event in the upcoming E for All or they just feel that Banjo could have gotten lost in the Halo 3 sales deluge that is very possible to happen later this year.

Over all my disappointment was that there was no word on MechAssault 3 or sequels, then again I knew that this year was all about Halo 3 so maybe Microsoft knows that and they prefer to wait till 2008 to reveal anything further but yeah currently Halo 3 is such a monster that the only way it can fail is if fans lose interest ie, Halo fanship collapses and that is not likely to happen but that it affected Sony is evident in Haze and UT being on PS3 this year, even CoD4 faces the danger of being forgotten or compared to Halo 3 this year...

I mean hell I fear that even Kojima san personally delayed MGS4 for that same fear.

I personally am waiting to see how the RARE franchises start getting revisited on XBox 360 in seeing if its true that Killer Instinct series will ever return, Battletoads, etc so Banjo will pretty much be the first salvo.

Finally its not over yet, now we have to wait for TGS07, in the mean time I feel that E for All is useless and that the new, quieter E3 should be the standard from now on as it is supposed to be about the games and not about the crowd going wild or a bunch of strippers dressed as booth babes embarrasing/degrading the game industry and the people who attend these events.

 

Shipped numbers are going through distributers - consoles going direct from MS would not be, so are unlikely to be accounted for in those numbers.

Irrespective, 360 has been having no end of success on the software sales front, which is also an indicator of the install base.

 

Exactly.

I'm a little puzzled as to the confusion. The only way the installed base figures could be artificially inflated due to malfunctions would be if people were returning their units to the retail stores and picking up new units and therefore being counted twice.

Also, if MS' installed base is actually less than what they are claiming, it would be noticed in the impact on their other statistics. Such as software sales (as Dave points out), Live use, Live sales, etc.. If you doubt the 10m installed figure, then you have to believe every 360 owner has purchased 10 games instead of 5, and 100% of them are on Live, and they've all spent on an average $20 in marketplace instead of $10 in marketplace, and so on.

As to your opinions on digital distribution: As I told Todd, I'm sorry the model doesn't work for you and you have a personal dislike, but the sales figures from MS as well as Comcast (and others) prove that digital distribution is a viable market. Its the reason both Sony and MS are in this sector, neither of them is in the console business because they see revenue streams consisting solely of hardware and software.

 

Peter's view on this E3:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/kotakutalk...conference-smackdown-278348.php?autoplay=true

Interesting vid.

 

i liked that a bit, i think he made a very good point about how its better to have your message out of E3 relating to the present or not to distant present rather then saying how good you'll be a year or two later.

 

So, again, was there really so much from Sony that was 2008 only? I think there was plenty announced for this year.

 

How was it different than what any of the MS defenders said here?

Still it is interesting indeed, even his response is totally predictable and well known, fitting with the conference.

Please stop making sense.

 

I'd say the difference is obvious.

MS wanted to get across a certain message. They clearly did.

Whether Sony wanted to get across that same message or not, it's clear that they didn't.

MS spent their entire focus on Holiday 2007. Sony spent more time on things that will occur in the future.

Therefore, the perception is that MS has a much greater lineup this Holiday than Sony does.

That was the intent of MS' press conference.

Whether it's a reflection of reality or not, is something altogether different.

However, the mere fact that you have to continually raise questions in protest about the relative strengths of their lineups for 2007 proves that MS accomplished their E3 goal.

And all of this information should be taken into account when deciding who it was that had the best E3.

 

Personally, Im getting tired of how certain games, which are 3 to 4 years from release, being hyped and marketed at 3 or 4 straight E3s.

They show you these wonderful graphics and gameplay mechanics for games so far off that once they are released, even if they top notch titles, they are but a small step up in quality in comparsion to games released during the same time frame.

I like the wonderful surprise that was FarCry instead of the long tortureous wait of HL2 and Doom.

 

A choice between Holiday '07 and EOFY'07. To me, who'd be okay getting a PS3 at Christmas with a view to games coming a few months later, I don't see much difference. But I guess for some, if the games aren't out prior to Christmas, they lose interest or somesuch. They're much more immediate and aren't so keen on waiting.

I agree, that is a bit rough. But long term game library is part of the experience of owning a console too, and in the early days you're best, showcase titles aren't going to appear for a while after launch, but you still need to remind people of them. That should be backed up by some stuff to play until they release though, and consoles still don't manage that part of the life-cycle so well.

 

IGN's take on MS' performance this year:

It is all about the games coming this year. That's what the mass consumers really want to know about and that is what will make publishers/retailers happy... is to know who will perform best this xmas.

 

There is always time to hype whats coming in the future in Germany and TGS... I liked that Microsoft concentrated on upcoming games this holiday, even if their conference was flat, specially the VP dude... bring back Jay lol, at least he showed a little more personality.

 

My personal mindset after many years of being a gamer and general tech-head is that I will buy something for what it will do for me today and my future outlook is more what won't it do going forward that might make this a bad choice.

Ultimately, if I am buying something for what it can do in 3 mos., why not buy it in 3 mos.?

This has saved me from the disappointment of unfulfilled or only partially fulfilled promises and also helped me to avoid the early-adopter markup. In the case of the 360, which I didn't buy until Nov. of last year, I had a much better experience than when I bought the PS and XBOX at launch. There were plenty of quality games to choose from and I didn't have to buy crap just to tide me over until another quality title came along or to keep my shiny new game system from becoming furniture.

Don't get me wrong, I still live on the bleeding edge and sometimes that means that I get burnt (usually by another model coming out that performs much better than the one I committed to) , but I can't really gripe if the device does what I bought it for and for a price I thought made it a good value.

 

Yes, they did. But it's not the kind of vision I was looking for. For others, maybe it was. But the crew at 1up, usually quite favorable to the 360, unanimously agreed that Sony had the better conference, showing both good upcoming stuff and a vision for the future.

Where we disagree, is that I think they got two messages across - yes, we're going to get some great games before Christmas, and yes, we're going to get even more awesome stuff coming for you after that. In fact, I've been accustomed to seeing new things, and I thought they didn't show enough of the stuff I was looking forward to. But then there are two more shows coming, and they are increasing in importance now that E3 is weakening.

Your perception. Not the general perception, I think. Of course, there are also people who think that MS has a greater lineup for this Holiday anyway, but then this E3 isn't the thing that convinced them of it, they already thought so before.

They spent a lot of time on multi-platform games. That's fine, but it doesn't make me more excited for the 360 in itself.

I'm not raising questions about whether or not MS has a strong lineup. I think they do, in fact, have a very strong lineup. It's just that there weren't any surprises, and the presentation itself was, in my opinion, very lacklustre. One of the best things about Halo 3 for instance is, in my opinion, the replay features in the online game. And everyone agreed that it was easy to find gameplay of Halo 3 on the show floor that looked tonnes better than the trailer that was shown. The Rockband demonstration could have been loads better too. More importantly, the Sony press-conference really gave the impression that they simply didn't have time to show off such frolics, because there was so much more to be shown. The actual games to be played were in the big hall and all over the place for people to get to grips with and would get their separate limelight. Instead, they focussed on giving us a coherent vision of where the Playstation platform is headed, and managed to do so in a decent presentation.

To be fair, as mentioned in the 1up show, the 360's conference was being broadcast on TV, and it was clearly setup to cater more to that goal. That's what gave it the impression of being a cheap infomercial, imho, but it means you have to target a different audience, and so it makes sense. And I'm sure that the devs of CoD4, Assassin's Creed and so on really appreciated their opportunity to be in the limelight.

Also, the Sony conference wasn't perfect either of course - it showed very clearly that they were nervous and a little tense, and it also showed that they clearly watched last year's Nintendo conference carefully and took notes.

Sure. But actually, we're in the wrong thread for that. So I'm going to shut up about it anyway.

 

True enough. And I imagine Sony agree with you. Want they want is you to save you dolars for PS3 in 3 months, rather than spend it on XB360 now. If they haven't got much coming out in the next three months, and only show what's coming out in the next three months, that's not going to sway you. And nor is it going to present an accurate idea of what the platform will be.

I see a difference between long term platfrom promises like PS2's network that never appeared, and 6-8 month game window with playable demos. It's not like Uncharted, Lair, LBP, HS, yadayada-whatever-games-take-your-fancy games are going to disappear between now and March. So why not show them at E3 when lots of people are looking?

 

Has your opinion changed since you wrote this? In the comparison thread, you clearly seem to be conceding the point that most do feel MS has the best lineup for this holiday season, regardless of the reality.

Actually, I'd say that because the entire focus of MS' press conference was to directly compare the immediate benefits of the 360 vs the PS3, the results of that comparison is an analysis of their success.

I don't know where you are getting your ideas mentioned above, but from what I see hopping around the web and even watching G4's coverage, the general consensus is that MS has the strongest lineup for Holiday 2007.

Since that was their entire goal, I'd say they had an excellent E3.

Considering the fact that their lineup isn't nearly as overwhelming in comparison to Sony's as the general perception would make the casual bystander believe, I'd say that only further proves just what an incredible job they did.

Not only have they put forth an idea that everybody seems to have grasped and understood, it appears they've gotten everybody to buy into an idea that isn't necessarily true.

 

Ok, so its TGS and not E3, and only a rumor so don't get all twisted out of shape. Thought it was worth posting but not deserving of a new thread. There could be cool games potentially coming IF legit. I need my Chu-Chu Rocket. Cheers.
http://www.xbox360rally.com/mill-o-rumour-shenmue-iii-for-xbox-360/#more-1131