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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@electroshock headset: Why? I can’t fathom why anyone would pay $100 to do this on purpose.
@VR horror survival: I think this is a good idea, and I thought DayZ was a survivor horror game. I do tend to get jumpy with various mobs from different games so having it VR would be even worse.
I wanted to give my impressions of E3, I have to say that Bethesda just knocked it out of the park day one. I was admittedly on the fence about Fallout 4, I wasn’t sure I wanted to even look at it. Then Todd Howard took to the stage and converted me to a rabid fanatic of Fallout 4. He did a fantastic job of building up and revealing the various features of the game. Showing the great detail of character creation, adding that you can play as a woman (to be fair you can do so in all Fallout games). Then the sheer amount of vibrant color which goes a long way to look better than the drab colors of Fallout 3. Then he went into the sheer amount of weapon customization and then stated “oh and you can build settlements” at which point I lost it and had to have this game. Then he revealed you can have a real freaking Pip boy!
After that presentation everything else just felt lack luster. Even the lovely rendered Doom just failed to impress me. When Adam Sessler asked what’s different about this Doom? They then stated that it was speed and weapons, which to me is what every FPS has or aspires to have. FPS in general just doesn’t make me happy, building does and adding THAT to Fallout 4 is like making it an entirely different game.
I will most likely be building settlements across the wasteland like I’m building a new Civilization. I may end up forgetting the main story entirely as I will be busying acting like I’m playing a modded Civ game to look like Fallout.
I saw the Hololens which is a great concept and idea, but it seemed like the control of it was a little rough there. I’ve been told this game is 2x the size of Skyrim, one developer spent 4oo hours exploring and was still finding new things. So I suspect Jonah may not want to play this.
I do like when you guys have Genre talk like the D&D, Vampire Masquerade, and Dr Who.
QotW: I think I prefer a voiced character, someone who has an identity. The blank slate is nice but I feel like I need a complete story and knowing that my character never says anything can feel kind of gimmicky at times, especially when other characters are basically having to be your voice.