Microsoft Investing One Billion Dollars On Games

[Adam91]

 

 

 

Microsoft received a lot of unsettling feedback from gamers after their Xbox One presentation due to the lack of games being shown despite the fact that the presentation was to show off the console itself where as E3 would be the main spotlight for the games. But this may bring some hope back as Microsoft told OXM in an interview they will be investing 1 billion dollars into Xbox one exclusives. Microsoft announced that 15 Xbox One exclusives will be released in the first year of the new consoles launch and 8 of those 15 will be brand new IP's,

being one of them.

 

"Thankfully, a glance at the bigger picture reveals that this is more a question of presentation than strategy. Microsoft will invest no less than $1 billion into games next gen - an unprecedented sum for the firm - and Xbox One will swipe 15 exclusive titles in its first year at retail, including eight new IPs. All that's on top of a two-year period of bulking up, which has seen Microsoft Studios open new games studios in London, Washington and Victoria, British Columbia while snapping up talent for its existing operations."

 

Microsoft stated that one of their game studios Black Tusk is working on a new title that is set to compete with Halo and Gears of War.

 

"Black Tusk Studios is working on a mysterious action title that's designed to compete with Halo and Gears of War. Microsoft has opened Lift London to create and incubate smaller scale cloud-based games. New projects are underway at Microsoft Studios Osaka, reflecting IEB president Don Mattrick's assertion that the company remains "committed" to Japan. Perhaps most hearteningly, Microsoft has acquired Press Play and Twisted Pixel to work on "weird, unique" titles for Xbox Live. In short, there's a lot more bubbling away under the surface than the Xbox One event suggests."

 

So will this restore any faith to the core gamers who felt abandoned by the Xbox One reveal?

 

 

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[Fishy]

That guy thinks he works for Microsoft. 

[Zelda]

We will see. But I am not too keen of them at the moment. And it wont be the first time Microsoft has broken promises. So we will see how this fairs out. 

 

But I am going to laugh like crazy if they dont release games very often in the first year. Similar to Nintendo Wii U. And when the complaints start coming in, I can just picture Microsoft saying, "Well, the Xbox One has all that neat stuff in it. Why dont you watch tv or listen to music?". 

 

That'll be the day when Microsoft will realize that most of their customers bought a "gaming" console to play "games" on. Not to watch "tv" on. 

 

They'll figure it out sooner or later. 

[Caboose The Ace]

I guess now no one can say the Xbox one has no games coming out for it I wonder what these games are though

[SternuS]

Problem is that Microsoft thinks that "many games" = "happy customers". Well it doesn't mean that at all. Blizzard launched Starcraft in 1998, with its only sequel Starcraft II: WOL launched in 2010. For 12 years Starcraft was one of the most popular RTS games, and even after 12 years of inactivity many thousands of gamers still waited for the sequel. Now Starcraft II helds many tournaments with great prizes, and a lot of people plays it. And this is just an example of why Microsoft will never understand what an adult customer desires.

[Drizzy_Dan]

This is true ^^ BUT.

 

Black Tusk huh? Anyone interested in their project? They say it's gonna compete with Halo and Gears and right now that might seem like a dumb idea but on the new console they could do so much.

[RedStarRocket91]

EDIT: Major wall of text, even by my standards. I've added a spoiler tag for your convenience and sake of post length.

 

 

 

The use of 'compete' is very interesting. Assuming that whatever Black Tusk are making actually turns out to be a launch title, there's a few things we can infer from it.

 

Firstly, Microsoft do not want to 'compete' with themselves. While they'd probably be happy to take on Gears of War, which is an exclusive but not in-house, they wouldn't want something which would force people to make a choice between it and Halo, because that might result in fewer sales to people who don't have a lot of disposable income (i.e. most gamers), meaning more expenditure but reduced individual title profits.

 

So what does this mean? Well, it's more likely than not that it'll be closer to Gears of War than Halo, because they'll want their launch exclusives to make money directly for them, rather than having to share any profits with another developer, as they'll want to make sure Black Tusk's game sells well, while ensuring that 343i's future stuff also gets lots of sales.

 

I'm going to come out right now and say that we're going to end up with bi-annual, complimentary release dates: one year we'll get a new Halo, one year we'll get a new Black Tusk, the next a new Halo, the one after that a Black Tusk, and so on. This is the strategy EA was pursuing with Medal of Honor and Battlefield, which worked very well until everyone realised MoH was terrible, and it's what Activision has been doing with Modern Warfare and Black Ops, alternating between Treyarch and Infinity Ward every year, which has resulted in insanely high sales and new records with every release. Look at Ghosts: we know literally nothing about this game other than that it's going to be full of the usual jingoistic, my-country-'tis-of-thee garbage and that there will be a dog, and yet it ALREADY has something like a hundred thousand pre-orders across all prospective systems.

 

The other possibility is something that, as Halo fans, we should all be worried about. Microsoft invested staggering amounts of money into making sure Halo 4 was the biggest, best game of the year: the best talent the industry has to offer, the best musicians and sound effects possible, a virtually unlimited budget and advertising everywhere from theatres and television to the Xbox dashboard itself. And for all that, it still failed to beat Call of Duty, with a population in serious decline and many fans swearing off future instalments altogether.

 

So what does this mean? Well, perhaps Black Tusk's game is meant to OUT-compete Halo: essentially, Microsoft has seen Halo 4's poor performance even with all the money spent on it, and decided to kill it off because they see it as unprofitable or as a lost cause. The new IP we'll be seeing at launch is meant to replace Halo altogether: they want something new to try and sell the Xbox One, because they don't think Halo can do that anymore. And why would they spend money on an in-house game if it's losing money, but not even selling systems and avertising the platform to compensate?

 

Ultimately though, I'm glad in a way that they've said they want to compete with Halo and Gears of War, because that way they aren't going to try and compete with Call of Duty. CoD is one of those things, that, at this point, simply can't be stopped: it's going to outsell anything that tries to mimic it not because it's somehow inherently better, but because it's CALL OF DUTY, and that's what everyone wants. Having a 'name' is a big deal: it's why Battlefield, despite arguably being better than CoD, loses so badly to it in terms of sales; it's why Apple products, though so much more expensive, regularly outsell competitors by millions of better units; and it's why things like Starbucks, which offer pretty mediocre coffees, have all but killed off smaller, nicer coffee shops. Competing with CoD is a guaranteed way to lose money: we need new games trying new things and finding their own spot, so that people buy them in addition to CoD games, instead of trying to make us buy them instead of CoD.

 

Also, here's hoping that any new IP for the 'hardcore' demographic doesn't make heavy use of the new Kinect. It WILL be buggy and broken, at least at first, and there's nothing that kills a franchise faster than unresponsive and inaccurate controls. And for those of us born partially disabled, or without mild American accents, it's even worse.

 

 

 

So I guess in summary what I'm saying is, the new IP had better be bloody good, without gimmicky motion/voice controls where a controller would just do the job better, and needs to go out and try new things instead of competing with established franchises, unless they're in-house and are destined to replace them.

Edited May 30, 2013 by RedStarRocket91

[The Stig]

I think instead of investing so much into new games, they should be investing that money to existing games first, so that they can improve them. Imagine Halo if it had a $500 Million dollar budget...

[Zelda]

It seems Microsoft does not understand the difference between quantity and quality.

 

Having several games is always nice, but I would rather have few games with great quality. Rather than having tons of games that aren't all that great.

 

Now, seeing as Microsoft said that they are going to invest over a billion dollars into games, doesn't mean they are going to produce a crap ton of games, it could mean they are going to invest allot of many into making games better, quality wise. Its one of those statements that you need to read between the lines to try to figure out the truth behind it.