melante

Microsoft Xbox Natal: A Leap Forward in Gaming

To Gaucho420:
no, this is not "too little, too late" but, on the contrary, "too much, too early"! If it really works as shown, this will be amazing and opening countless new possibilities. Anyway, as long as I don't see and try it personally, I'll remain a little doubtful on its real robustness and effectiveness.

Microsoft's XBox 360 Successful in Japan

MSFT is starting to harvest the fruits of their hard work in supporting and nurturing japanese game developers, something where SNE is lacking instead lately, and not just in Japan but worldwide. Anyway I think the "console war" for this generation is still far from over. We'll see :)

Report from Inside Electronic Arts' Shareholders Meeting

I don't understand why people keep saying that TTWO has ONLY one franchise... Their sport titles are on average better than EA's and have recently released very successful titles (Bioshock, for instance). True, none of these is as popular as GTA, but which other gaming IP is?

As I live in SE Asia I think I should do some clarification regarding Thailand. The local government has nothing to do with this story. It was simply a decision by the local distributor to withdraw the game. What happened was that an obviously insane teenager killed a taxi driver to see whether it was as easy as in the game. He will likely be sentenced to death. A very sad story but I guessed such a person would have killed someone anyway soon or later.

Video Game Industry: One of the Most Attractive Areas to Invest

Bruce, sometimes you say something worth reading, but this time you really had me roll on the floor laughing... how can you say it's not worth developing for the Wii, DS and PSP? True that piracy can be (and is) a problem but it's all to be seen in the perspective of development costs and hence ROI. Developing a title for DS and PSP is quite cheap and people still make a lot of money out of it (otherwise do you think anyone would still publish games for them?).
Cheers and remember that the Wii is, amongst the big consoles, the one with the biggest user base (by far) and the cheapest one to develop for, which means the system that can offer the biggest profit.

Microsoft Figured We'd All Be on Vista by Now

Wow, downgrading to XP because a 6 y.o. kid din't find pinball... that's surely a big fault by MS: shame on Bill!! Come on, get a life (plus some freeware pinball games) and don't waste our time with such pointless articles.

Microsoft : Stock Still Has Plenty of Room to Move

Strong PC growth should be good for Intel, AMD, NVidia and the like.... I keep hearing too many people from all walks of life complaining about Vista and planning to switch to Linux or MacOS to be bullish on MSFT at this time....

Microsoft: XBox 360 Price Drop Won't Fix Broken Strategy

Dear Mr. Ehrenberg,
thanks for a very thoughtful insight I really enjoyed reading. I fully agree with the four point you outlined for a better Microsoft strategy: they are very sound. Anyway I have the feeling you are a bit overcritical about MSFT at this time. Not only because of the (small) price cut, but also because all the other points have actually been addressed: X360 warranty has been extended up to 3 years (and a new chip is on the way), meaning that the company is fully supporting its user base and, as shown at the recent E3, the upcoming lineup of games is undoubtly quite strong, both for hardcore as well as casual gamers (Scene-It, the sequel of Viva pinata etc.).
Moreover, a big change in the H&E division just happened (Mr. Moore left MSFT to join ERTS, as you surely know) so, very likely, we will also see a different strategy from now on.

Besides this, affirming that a product like Halo 3 will not move customers as the people from GigaOM said..... well, I woudn't be so sure as it will be the only very big game franchise to be released for the upcoming holiday season (the other "bigs" I think of are GTA IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 which will be released only in spring 2008) so it will get all the attention and customers will surely follow. Anyway, let's see: I am really curious to see how the situation will evolve.

Best regards,
Roberto Dillon