This year many gamers will open new consoles for the holidays and many of those same gamers are going bring their console “live” on Xbox Live the same day. Traditionally we’ve found Xbox Live falls under the weight of the holiday rush much like Apple’s iTunes. Will we repeat history again?
Although a fully loaded Xbox Live service is money in the bank, how much money will Microsoft lose when gamers login for the first time to a service in a state of destruction? People say first impressions are extremely important, but Microsoft makes a poor first impression every holiday. Xbox Live’s Jerry Johnson told Eurogamer:
“I can tell you that when Robbie Bach is on the phone on Christmas Day calling people asking what the hell is going on, and that’s coming down from Steve Ballmer… that’s the kind of attention it got last holiday.
Many things have changed since then, and we realised [sic] the kind of growth trajectory we were on and had to prepare for it.” (Kotaku)
It’s obvious the top executives at Microsoft want to give customers a great first impression and, after a few repeated holiday down times, this year is the chance to change it all. By now, Microsoft should be fully aware of the holiday flash crowd and have a system ready to cover the load.
Plenty of gamers login because their console automatically signs in on startup, but a handful of those gameres will be shopping for Xbox Live Arcade games to see what Microsoft is now offering them and their new console. Many XBLA games the current 360 crowd is bored of will be fresh and new to holiday adopters so it’s very important to keep the system online.
Much like Amazon, sales will decrease when the service is busy or under heavy load. Hopefully Microsoft is ready to make a great first impression to new buyers and give them the option to buy high valued (high markup) electronic downloads.
I enjoyed watching the press conferences this year. I’ve been waiting to see Mirror’s Edge and Assassins Creed, but also took an interest in a few titles I didn’t know anything about. I absolutely loves that it was less talking and more videos.
I mainly play The Sims series, so what I took away from E3 was the information released about The Sims 4.
I was glad to hear that there is an autosave feature since my Sims 3 game has crashed so many times and I’ve ended up losing hours of gaming. I also enjoyed seeing the new feature: The Gallery (Similair to The Sims 3 exchange) and hearing that it would be in-game.
I am glad to hear that the lots our sims visit will actually be full with people. I am excited to see what the emotions system is going to be like. The world looks great and I am just really excited about the Sims 4. I am counting down until September 2.