Xbox 2: Tony Hawks, Spider-Man, Quake 4 and more

Let's face it, Mircosoft aren't in it for the innovation or the decent games. They're in it to get into a monopoly position and then have complete control over digital content in order to milk the market as far as possible.

Kinda ironically these are the same things Sony wants control over.

ironic... or proof that people just dislike M$ more than they dislike sony becaue they are so ready to point it out when M$ makes these moves but no one seemd to mind when the update for the psp that turns it into a pda was leaked.



i agree with the sentiment expressed but i hope we aren't listing quake 4 as a "shelf-filling rework". I think by now we give ID a little more credit than that.
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£59.99? I haven't seen that kind of price since the Mega Drive was my format of choice. Please don't let it return to that.


I don't think anyone is in it for the innovation or quality, really. Nintendo makes good games because the company believes it leads to financial success, but it knows a hell of a lot about milking franchises too. The more obvious examples include endless Mario Party rehashes, but chucking Link into Soul Calibur 2 and Mario into DDR is plainly cynical "they'll buy it for the characters" business (though Soul Calibur 2 would have sold anyway, the appeal of Link can't be denied). Let's not forget that whilst Nintendo cranks out the classics, it would love to get into a monopolistic position in the gaming world if it could - gotta love those old development contracts.

Beyond a certain size, all developers are in it for the money.


Indeed. Kind of reminds me of Reggie's comments last E3 about how one competitor wants complete control of your entertainment life, and the other cares not what you do as long as it's on their OS.

LOL



And on the monopoly debate. The mega-corps are here to stay in the world of videogames, whether we like it or not; if there's a billion or two to make, they'll stick their ugly snouts into whatever creative indsutry's ready for exploitation.

Until the qualiy dries up I won't complain, though. We'd never get to play our new GTA's, Zelda's, RE's etc. without some big bucks behind them.

I bought that for a whole £4 about three years later... Rental stores selling their stock having kept the original packaging = good.

Guys... You've mis read that, it was in US $ not the £. $59.99, which is the quoted figure is £31. So expect games to be no more than this gen, amazing considering HD-DVD is likely to cost a fair bit more to produce than normal DVD's.

Oh and you think $59.99 is alot, wait till you see the prices for Blu-Ray games... You will think 'F**k That' when you see them because they will be about £60

Might have something to do with Sony NOT holding back computing innovation and progress for the last 20 years simply so that they can make more money. Microsoft crushes, kills or buys and subverts any technology that conflicts with its own, even if it is superior.

SOny hasn't managed to do that (yet).

I suspect LUPOS' concern at your hatred towards M$, are manifested in the possibility that these feelings could affect your impartiality towards the XB, GC & PS2. As a respected multi-platform site, I'm sure SPOnG separates the M$ brand with the XB brand - therefore, giving balanced and fair coverage for all systems ;-)

Ee, i remember the price of Sonic and Knuckles when that came out... and the fact all EA games cost a fiver more...

Microsoft aren't as evil as people make out. They're only as evil as every other soul-crushing megacorp. All of these companies do the same; EA, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and even those bloody Frenchies at Infogrames churn out bland sequels every so often. Look at Rayman 2, for the love of silicon!

Big companies have big bills to pay. These games pay for them. Guaranteed revenue is better than a risk, which is why innovation comes from companies with nothing to lose.

Heck, Capcom made one of the most original brawl games ever- Powerstone- and only released it on Dreamcast, never reviving the series. Why? Because they don't know what it would suit best, because Dreamcast owners diversified to the other systems.

And, what else did you expect at the console launch off the third parties? Nights into Dreams? Launch titles for big home consoles are series games, arcade conversions and the odd new thing. Some things never change.

That's incredibly naive. I have to admit I wouldn't p*ss on Microsoft if it was on fire anyway (probably afterwards though, just to say I had) but surely you're aware of more monopolistic and crushing activities from MS than any other company?

This is of course very crude but in terms of evilness I would have to rate the above:

Microsoft, EA, Sony, Nintendo, Sega

That's based on the Schnide Evilness Ratings where first indicates high evil and last indicates the lesser of all evils. You can patent this if you pay me a million squids.

my point, and thank you for helping me make it, is that sony has the same aspirations that M$ does. You seem to know it yet you and so many others are quick to point out what M$ is doing while giving sony a free ride. IF what you fear is a monopoly ruining video games then right now sony should be the evil empire. My hop eis that the two of them will stay in constant competition for years to come like genisis and snes.

as for M$ holding back progress it is indeed true... in the case of computers. in respect to video game however they have made great stides to progress. taking on games that they felt where really inovative... at the time blinx sounded liek a really cool idea... and somethng only possible with the built in hard drive. Or the fact that charcters coudl get certain limbs wounded and have to change fighting styles in taofeng. Admitedly both of those games where way sub par (taofen much worse than blinx) but the attempt to make soemthign new and different was there. Sony on the other hand has been content to sell a system 1 year and a half older than the xbox for the same price or more since its release causeing most companies to develop for their system and then port to the superior xbox and game cube. It seems to me you and many others are carrying your pc related biasis over into the video game market, fact is as of right now M$ is still the underdog, the sega of the 8 bit era, waiting to pounce on nintendo in the next round and actually level the playing field.



yea, what he said.

I don't think he did mate. And anyway, does Sony really have the same aspirations? Because Sony is already winning the console war at the moment.

Have Sony been buying out every company that makes competing CD players in it's history? Or TVs? Or anything else like that? Did Sony wave it's wallet at Rare as soon as it sold the first Playstation?

Sony is winning the battle because rightly or wrongly it has the products that the general consumer favours more. Microsoft would rather buy its way into the market which is exactly what many people, including myself, have a problem with.

Nintendo in my opinion have already lost the console war and will be software-only within a couple of years, but that's a different argument I could win.

Yes. Sony and Microsoft both want control of digital media. The difference is that Sony wants control over content (music, film etc - remember it owns all these companies), the distrabution (PSP, walkman, CD players) and the technology (blu-ray).

Microsoft wants control of, I think, primarily distrabution so that it can use it as a platform for future services and then expand outwards.



The thing is that Sony has never tried to muscle in and buy its way into a market. Sony only enters markets related to the media context, where as traditionally Microsoft has only entered the computer markets. Microsoft has now entered a whole new sector of industry and is going to try and monopolies. If is succeeds, ultimatly the consumers will have no choice - as in the PC market.

It's an interesting point that every time we have 3 consoles on the market at anyone time, one always seems to die. The current generation is the first time that hasn't happened. I would hope that Nintendo would be able to stay in the market and at least challenge Sony/M$.



I'm sorry but I think that all the "innovative" games on the Xbox are as dull as dishwater. People buy an Xbox for Halo. I just don't understand it. It's so average.

Microsoft started by rehashing a PC and releasing it as a console. Hardly a mark of progress.



Yes. If the market is there then people would rather develop for the PS2, just as increasingly they would rather develop for Xbox over Gamecube.

This has always been the way Sony, and any other giant in an advantagous poistion has worked. They release an interesting and innovative product (a 'star') and take a gamble on it's R&D. If this gamble pays off they can milk it as a cash cow for years.

I have a lot of respect for the way Sony can flog old hardware at full price years after release. It's possibly a side effect of their strong brand, and shows a well-managed company that is producing consumer-led products.

Ultimatly, as Fiske stated in terms of culture, consumers select a few products from a vast range and these become the popular culture and the mass-products, building on their own success. People will not buy products that do not appeal to them.




M$ isn't an underdog any more. When M$ first said it was due to enter the industry everyone underestimated them.

The reason we carry bia over is because we don't want to see a PC monopolistic Microsoft in gaming.



The PSP and PS2 offer a distrabution media. Games are just another product, in the same ways as film and music. They can be connected to the Internet and allow users to play disks containing more Sony-generated media. In this respect, Sony is partially the way towards convergence.



I don't really understand the comment about Rare, but it's likely in the future that Sony will own the technology that the "CD players" are based upon and thus can milk competitors (similar to the current EA/Renderware senario). At the present time they don't own that technology.

In terms of entering a market, again there is the point that Sony produce the mass-market, branded and consumer-led products.



Yeah!



They haven't "lost" the console war. They're not the market leader, but they're not out of it either. They cream the kind of profits others can only dream of. If they can wake up and get the same Nintendo fever going they had in the early 90s, they could become very powerful once again. They need to do this by producing the products the masses want, even if they are conventional.

One point is that Nintendo would be wise to diversify. The strong Nintendo brand could be used in other area. Prehaps it could get a foothold in the content rather than the creation or develop a new unique selling point? We don't know what markets are there until someone enters them!

I really don't know what will happen to them if they carry on the way they are. When their profit margins actually shrink, prehaps next generation, we'll find out.

However, I wouldn't underestimate Japanese industry.

Sony is winning because the consumer thinks Playstation = videogames.

The consumer thinks PS = videogames because of the range of quality games on the original PS.

The PS had a range of quality games because Sony made the best 32-bit machine, and bent over backwards for 3rd party developers.

They bent over backwards because... ... ..etc. etc. etc.

The thing is LUPOS, most people are willing to give Sony a chance since they have done nothing but produce quality hardware since they set up. Sony TVs, videos, hi-fis, DVD players, broadcast equipment and even games consoles have all sold like hot cakes in competitive markets. The only way to do that is to produce quality hardware with the features that people need.

Microsoft have produced buggy, bloaty, slow software that crashes often and has no warranty and is covered by a 100% limitation of liability. If MS software kills your business, you have no chance to claim money back from MS. Windows NT caused your Aegis missile cruiser to lock up? Sorry, no comeback. And they have done that in a non-competitive market that they own.

In order to get where they are today, MS made sure every clone manufacturer had a license for MS-DOS that prevented them from buying it if they pre-loaded any other OS. They made sure that Windows didn't work on Dr-DOS, the most popular MS-DOS replacement at the time. And they made sure that the sale of every PC resulted in them getting a cut, even if it was sold without an OS installed. And it goes on, you can't get Windows at the normal OEM pricing if you ever install another OS, making it impossible to compete with your competitiors. Even someone as large as Dell, without the overheads of other companies, stopped installing Linux on their servers for a while due to MS's pricing tactics.

I, personally, can't see MS leaving those tactics behind when their money has bought them an overbearing percentage of the computer games market. Then they'll use their console monopoly to make sure the only game in town is XBox, maybe license it out to hardware manufacturers to make them compete on price, using the above licensing and pricing tactics to make sure they don't stray.

Once they have the console market, they integrate it with the PC market they already own and use it to get hold of the entertainment content delivery market. Your XBox will become the only way to watch downloadable movies or TV or listen to downloadable music. Then when the newspapers are moved totally online, they will own the keys to your opinions.

Sony are not able to do any of that, because they don't have the PC market to back it up. They may get in to bed with Apple to do that, but they still don't have the market share to make a difference, besides Sony Connect is a stab at the heart of Apple's iTunes Music Store. Plus Sony has not yet used the tactics it needs to use to get there, Microsoft have, on the back of poor products.

Based purely on the past experiences I have had with Sony and Microsoft, I'd much rather Sony were in change of the entertainment business than Microsoft.

Of course, I'd much rather nobody owned it, but it looks like Mr. Murdoch might be trying to force the issue and grab control from the content end, rather than the technology end.

The future is coming, boys and girls, the only choice we have is how long it takes to get here and who we give the keys to.