brief thoughts on
the sony/msft vgame showdown:
(edited from an email msg i sent to a friend)
i haven't been paying a ton of attention to the video game fracas, but it seems like all of the companies are hell-bent on stoking the fires for their consoles. sony has pre-released details of the ps3 (obviously just to counter the momentum that msft has been gaining) - if you look at what the xbox 1 has been doing vs. the ps2, it's pretty impressive. in this battle, though, it's useless to fight over just technology, which is why i think sony loses this in the long-run. it's all about the games, and this is where msft has an edge - apparently, it'll be much easier to develop games for the xbox 360 vs. ps3. if you look at what msft has been doing - getting the formerly exclusive guy at squaresoft to bring the final fantasy franchise to the xbox - it's notable. time will tell, i suppose. we talked about this in my competitive strategy class today, actually, and the professor showed a pretty impressive clip that sony put up....it was unreal....so lifelike! but then, it was pre-rendered stuff so it'll be interesting to see what actual gameplay looks like.
obviously, msft's ambitions here go way beyond games...ultimately, the xbox 360 is a specialized media center 5.0 PC, and this was its plan from the beginning - the console is merely an entree into controlling the living room, which is a smart strategy. sony could try to do the same thing, but it doesn't have the same software expertise as msft and will have a tougher time executing on such a strategy. plus, sony has fucked up repeatedly with respect to standards - its mp3 player was a miserable failure because it tried to lock-in users to its proprietary format for music. but the company now has new mgmt, so it'll be fun to see what sony and msft do to each other in this space. interesting to note that msft's drm software is gaining traction.
posted by janimal @ 3:11 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Yeah, one of Sony's problems is that they are a hardware manufacturer by trade, and this seems to permeate their mentality. They have shown some success with Sony Online Entertainment, but anyone addicted to those games will tell you that Sony's support is abysmal.
Microsoft on the otherhand definitely has its eyes on the big picture. If you want to see some interesting shit, look at what they're doing with XNA. I read an interview with, I think, J Allard (could have been Fries at the time) about XNA and how they don't just want everyone buying an xbox, they want all developers using their development kit--regardless of what they're developing for (conceivably). So MS is looking to dominate this shit at both ends. They don't just want to be the console/service of choice, they want to be the development standard.
But yeah, I found the gaming press who were declaring the PS3 the victor in the round of E3 showings amusing. All Sony really did was show off a bunch of pre-rendered footage and remind everyone about the games in their roster. Sure the tech specs on the ps3 *seem* better than the 360, but the bottom line is that it will be years before any game out there taxes either machine.
Also, remember that since developing for the xbox is the same as developing for the PC, MS has just opened its powerful new console up to the high end PC game developers. In particular you have Valve and Epic who can very very easily leverage their Unreal and half-life game engines on this console. These are engines notorious for being licensed out to other developers who make stellar games with them. It will take some time for these games to come together, but MS will have a real edge there. The ps3 might run the Unreal engine easily, but the 360 is fucking ready to go. Plug and play.
Then there's the whole media center thing. Man I could rant about that too, but I think it's great. My main concern is if the public "gets" it--will they understand what they can leverage from this machine or will they only want a video game console from their video game console? Hard to say at this point.
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