Will Xbox Live Survive 2008 Holiday Stress?

November 3, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 1:38 pm

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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.

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The American Entertainment Industry is Contributing to Global Piracy!The American Entertainment Industry is Contributing to Global Piracy!

Believe it or not, there are many gamers that live outside the United States. Those of us that do not live in Japan and the US aren’t always a first priority for the entertainment industry when it comes to hot new releases, yet everyone feels the power of the marketing dollar… we’re just not all “privileged” enough to experience it on day one… or year one. Here is one such story, written by rover on of our forum posters, explaining how this leads to piracy in our global economy…

Let us pretend for a moment the best motion picture of the year ranked 10 out of 10 stars on imdb.com and was released in November 18th 2007. While the United States had access to the movie all year, distributors announced a European premiere on June 16th 2008. Months after North American the release, Europe may see this blockbuster movie in its region, leaving everyone to ask themselves, “how do I see this wonderful film now?”

The world isn’t as it once was. Years ago we found ourselves lining up on an early Saturday morning in the freezing rain just to buy a new CD or rent the latest movie on VHS. Today, people expect to get what thy want NOW. We see a spot during a commercial on TV for a new CD, movie or perhaps a TV show which spark our interest and what do we do? We can wait six days to watch the next hit TV show prime time episode or line up at CD MegaWorld Monday morning at 7am to buy the CD, or we do something entirely different: we go online. Most of us would go to amazon.com to find that excellent new artist, or perhaps itunes.com to find the latest episode of our favorite TV show.

Online is the way to go. We don’t mind paying for quality entertainment; the only thing we ask is to get some flexibility to our time schedule. Some of us may watch our hit prime time TV show at 1 AM or listening to our favorite music on the bus at 5 AM. The question is “can I?” and the answer is, “yes you can!”

Now here’s where problems arise. The “yes you can” statement only applies to one group of people, specifically the North Americans. You watched this seasons first episode of “Lost” on TV, you can go online and find out there are three full seasons of 22 episodes already aired. Great! Now all I must do is pay up roughly USD $1 per episode and I’ve got the ability to download all episodes and watch them at my own leisure… right?

(more…)

Castle Crashers: Ye Old School Gaming!Castle Crashers: Ye Old School Gaming!

In a world of 3D worlds, dynamic lighting and intense shadows we see far too few old school retro style platformer titles. With the advent of Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and the PlayStation Network we’re seeing a few new indy developers getting into the game.

Castle Crashers, developed by The Behemoth, is an upcoming side scroller of cutely neat beat ’em up action on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA). The game will be 1,200 Microsoft Points (USD $15) and will launch August 27th, very soon. This side scroller allows for 4-player action, local or over the Xbox Live system with your friends and there is another mode for battling each other known as Arena.

This is like an artistically rendered version of Golden Axe with Knights! There are many different knights, each with their own powers of attack, Blue Knights can attack with Ice while the Orange Knight attacks with Fire, the Ninja Knight fires shurikens and a host of other unique Knights do battle with their own methods of madness.

If you checkout The Behemoth‘s Castle Crasher Website you’ll see a host of images and their recent trailer showing off the action. It’s safe to say, this is going to be a fast paced slightly silly slightly retro beat ’em up game paying homage to Golden Axe, Double Dragon and TMNT (original arcade one at least) with the graphic style of Alien Hominid HD, their last title.

Stay tuned, we’ll be announcing a contest to win a copy of Castle Crashers in the very near future!

Distributed Game Development Using ContractorsDistributed Game Development Using Contractors

Gamers around the world have noticed a large trend in the video game industry in the last 15 years, massive growth with massive projects and unbelievable costs, goals and sales. We’ve seen the impossible become achievable in epic projects like World of Warcraft and huge sales figures from Halo 3 but we’ve also seen game titles fall down in a burning wreck.

Each studio tries to beat the next studio with crisp realistic graphics, real time physics engines, life-like explosions all with huge costs. Does it all sound familiar? If you’re a movie buff you’ve probably seen movie studios cranking out the same style of movie, high computer graphic effects with talented high priced actors making longer and longer films.

The only big difference? A game studio hires most of their talent for full time positions and then has to figure out what to do with them when the project ends. Perhaps this explains Microsoft’s effort to remove game studios like Ensemble, Bungie and FASA, it’s all too much to handle when a high budget project ships and time frees up in the studio.