Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays – did you get what you wanted this year?
Let us know what you got from your loved ones.
We have a few fun reward tiers – our most hardcore fans will definitely want an MP3 of one of the crew or any of the crew recording a voice mail or answer machine outgoing message, or the entire podcast bantering for a few moments. There’s also the requisite T-shirt, which will have the awesome Gaming Podcast logo.
Rumors float around the Internet questioning when Microsoft will ship a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 or add-on device like they did with the, now failed, HD-DVD. At CES 09 Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, says this request is “way down the list.”
Mr. Bach had some great selling points as to why a Blu-ray player has little value in the world of Xbox 360. The primary reason, of course, being the Xbox 360 developers cannot take advantage of Blu-ray as a development platform for games. This was the price Sony, or the consumer, paid to own a PlayStation 3 since all games are printed on the media and are, in effect, Blu-ray “capable.”
We say capable because not all (any?) PlayStation 3 games currently make full use of the Blu-ray media. Many games will reprint the game on the media for optimization purposes, fill the game with international voice overs for all countries or, otherwise, stuff the media with something that will serve a useful purpose. Sony has near-future-proofed their device by giving game developers years of growth in terms of utilizing the Blu-ray capacity.
Microsoft chose to take the smaller old-style DVD format for games and media. Adding the HD-DVD didn’t add a large deal of risk because, as we saw, they can discontinue the model and not change their core gaming demographic. We still laughed a bit at them, but that was where it ended. Bach also said that it’s not really a great economic time to push a new 360 SKU on potential customers with additional cost just for Blu-ray movies playback.
They could add Blu-ray game development support as well but that would just alienate the “28 million Xboxes” they have already shipped.
“OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it.” (gamespot)
Of course, the first thing that came to our mind was “well, you did it for HD-DVD, how is Blu-ray different?” The key areas we can think of really come down to Blu-ray is a Sony technology and they are a direct competitor and, to top it off, HD-DVD allowed them to fight against the PS3 at the media level of the industry. They minimized the risk by making the product a secondary add-on device and, if HD-DVD had won, they’d have the winning format already under production (still not for games).
It seems Microsoft has changed their battle plans a little. They started out talking up the media aspects of the 360, using Media Center, renting movies and TV shows and had the HD-DVD as a subproduct. Today, they’re investing in Netflix for media and everything else favors the games.
Which is fine, we like games.
Entertainment Software Association (ESA) president Michael Gallagher called this the “Golden Age of Gaming” during his E3 keynote address. Calling out innovators like Nintendo who have “helped revolutionize our industry” and Sony’s Home initiative.
The keynote fell on the ears of fifty or so people who filled the large room awaiting his talk. Gallagher believes we’re in some of the best years of the gaming industries life based on… sales figures, technology and innovation?
If we’re in the Golden Age of Gaming we might as well pack it in now. Text book definitions of the phrase are defined as “the first and best of the four ages of humankind; an era of peace and innocence that finally yielded to the silver age.” Or, “the most flourishing period in the history of a nation, literature, etc.” (dictionary.com)
By that definition, we’ve seen the best to come and everything from here is downhill. When a person retires from work they’re often said to have reach the “golden age” of their career. Is this the correct message to be sending to the industry? That we’ve done it all and now it’s time to sit and relax.
People see facts and figures constantly and brush them off as, well, facts and figures. But, when people see charts and graphs they “oooh” and “aaaah” over them because the visualization is easy to understand. Now, thanks to the NPD Group and Deutsche Bank, people are seeing some pretty graphs about the console battle. These show just how well the race is going on all fronts of the war.
Although the data is fairly small the colors show it all, the Wii crossed over the Xbox 360 numbers in unit sales and hasn’t stopped since the launch. Here we are, on the third holiday season since the Wii launch, and people still cannot find them in stores. Shortage? Doubtful. Considering the massive sales numbers and the fact that they did take the 360 in numbers it seems the supply just can’t meet the over-the-top demands, but why is the demand so high for the little Nintendo bundle of joy? People just can’t get enough Wii.
The Xbox 360 has much to brag about as well, they’re not first in the race but their nearest next-generation graphic console, the PlayStation 3, isn’t even close. The chart shows them both rising in much the same way, with the same “pops” along the sales chart but in a completely different scale. Since Microsoft doesn’t want to consider Wii a competitor, they’re clearly winning the war in their eyes.
Oddly enough, one of the big pops in Xbox 360 sales where around the PS3 launch. Perhaps these consumers were waiting for both consoles to launch before making a decision? More than likely, it was holiday related and had little to do with the PS3 launch but it is fun to ponder anyway.
What about software sales? We’ve heard the Wii has little to offer in terms of games while the 360 wipes the floor with the competition.
To our surprise, the Wii is rocking the sales figures in terms of software but still doesn’t compare to the Xbox 360. Microsoft pulls out 93-million units while Nintendo takes home a modest 73-million units in software… yet again Sony doesn’t show up to the fight. Looking at November 2007, you can see the Wii jumps significantly in unit sales, no doubt related to the Super Mario Galaxy launch — once they hit that figure they never looked back and continued to climb.
Although a few of us expected Sony’s PlayStation 3 to make huge progress this year, each month they have marginal growth is causing their competitors to excel beyond anyones imagination. We’re starting to wonder how well Sony’s “10 year plan” is going to work out with their competitors taking advantage of the market now when, in 10-years, they will be sitting on their pile of cash to re-invest in the 8th generation of consoles.
(Thanks, GameDaily)
I did get what I wanted, because I love money.