Microsoft have bet big on Titanfall shifting Xbox Ones, and based on the hype around the beta it seems to have garnered a lot of interest.
Yeah, especially those on PC...add the Bluepoint hype on the 360 version, you got a few people who might not be compelled to not get a 500 console for a game that really isn't a next-gen game.
Is this really necessary?
Yes.
Now, we're only 3 months from both launches. I'm sure MS you do, like Sony did, everything that it can to stay competitive through out the generation.
Microsoft isn't Sony. They are not a company who is bleeding dry. They have far too many internal players within the company and they pretty much rely on their OS to stay ahead. Hell, what they do puts them in a different wave length then at Sony's because even now, they still have not gotten all their shit straight (shutting the fuck up would have been a start...but they keep doing that from time to time).
Not unless your last name is Zampella.
Also, yeah competition is good for consumers. It would be a shame to lose a competitor.
Not unless that competitor was poison.
Clearly it is working. Look at the love for titanfall. Paying for an exclusive game is nothing new. Companies been doing it for years... Just so happens MS has more money to throw around.
Yes, because doing a deal behind a developer's back is legit, right?
To be honest - full disclosure?
As a gamer, I love my 360 and have over a hundred games for it. I own a PS3 and a gaming PC, but the 360 was usually my platform of choice for most of the generation. (PC took over once the age of the console started to show, but that's neither here nor there.) I also absolutely despise everything Microsoft has done "for"/to the PC platform, and as a gamer I would much prefer they carry on pretending they don't know it exists.
As an investor (and Seattle resident besides), I feel the X-Box brand needs to be gone yesterday and they need to - and have always needed to - be placing the money they've frivolously wasted on what's increasingly become an ugly vanity project on advancing PC as a platform.
Your "vision" of X-Box as the gateway to a Windows World is the same broken, stupid-ass vision that's gimped this enterprise for a decade. Microsoft could have been the ones in control of Steam. They could have been the ones out there right now trying to bring a literal Windows PC box into the living room - the "Steam Box" could have been everything they ever wanted from this moronic exercise - and it all would have cost them a miniscule fraction of what the X-Box has, if Valve's operating costs are anything to go by.
At this very moment - cursing their name and shaking their fist all the while - Valve is doing more to advance Windows as a platform and put it into living rooms than Microsoft has done in over ten years and untold billions of dollars of wasted time and effort. That, to me, is absolutely unconscionable as an investor; I can completely understand the wrong-thinking that (in the moment) caused board members to believe the X-Box project originally had merit, but I cannot abide the continued doubling-down long after the fact when there are better roads to be taken that are painfully obvious to anyone who cares to look.
Bros before Bones.
I'm still bitter at MS for making me fear for a shit online-only gen for months.
I honestly never thought in my lifetime I would have worry about a hobby and yet, here I am, feeling the most dread I've ever had that didn't involve my immediate self and those around me. What happened on the 21st of May of last year was pretty much the accumulation of every transgression big business done during last generation. Considering I'm never getting a Bone makes me feel a bit happier since that would mane less money to spend on.
Halo 4 is the elephant in the room of this conversation because despite it's immense success, it left a sour taste on a lot of gamers (let alone that drop off rate in the MP community). We don't know rather it's still going to be played like it's a 2001 game or that it might be an actual Spartan-2 sim which might invigorate people's interest in both the franchise, the system, and, perhaps, actual next-gen gameplay.
Throw in a week or two free gold inside the game.
One year. No way most people is going to gauge the service in even a month (or 3), Gotta' give them both the time and value of the free offer to gauge rather they want to keep continue the service or not.
20 years is in 4 generations, not 2. There won't be an elimination of physical consoles and physical games for a really long time. Yeah maybe in 20 years, but that's like after Playstation 7.
You can still buy most PC retail games as a physical copy because even PC game companies realize that not everyone has the internet available to download 20GB games via STEAM.
We have to get to a place where digital downloaded game sales reach a point where companies can safely ditch physical without leaving money on the table by alienating consumers. Then we have to reach a point where streaming is so widely available for gaming that locally stored digitally downloaded copies of games are no longer needed without leaving money on the table by alienating consumers. I will be a very old man by the time that happens because honestly, there's going to be money on the table for companies to keep going physical for many, many more years.
This idea that PS Now type services are going to REPLACE standard gaming is way premature, even predicting 2 gens away. Gamers will want to be able to game anywhere like they can now with STEAM. Even going offline for months at a time if they need to like I did for the past 20 years everytime my ship deployed and was still able to game.
Basically, when the internet is perfected.