Two tales
The welcome rumour and the crazy CEO
By David Wylie - September 4th, 2008
The August doldrums officially beat me down from any attempt at writing, and most attempts at gaming.
However, it seems that on the cusp of September, the ol’ Xbox has wooed me back to its warm and comforting bosom . . . wow, that sentence actually gave me the creeps.
Back on track, I was welcomed again into the video game world this week with one of the juiciest bits of gossip I’ve heard in a while. Gaming news site Xbox 360 Fanboy is reporting that a US$200 Xbox 360 with a Wiimote-style controller may be on the way for the 2008 holiday season.
Citing a source in Microsoft’s marketing department (who has already done a great job at getting publicity even if the rumour turns out to be bunk), the site said Xbox will be taking on Nintendo’s Wii, which has been killing the 360 and the PlayStation 3 since its release.
“File this all under rumors’ville for now, but don’t totally discredit the information. $199 Arcade’s are sounding very likely and, with Microsoft’s push to undercut the Wii, matching the Wii’s motion controls sounds like a total possibility. We’ll just have to wait and see,” says the site.
It would be great to see simple motion control games, such as those offered on Wii Sports, paired with the 360’s superior graphics. The 360 Wiimote rumour has been circulating through the mill for a while now. Let’s hope this one has more substance to it than the previous ones.
Also this week, I couldn’t believe it when I saw a story on Britain’s Telegraph website – usually a reputable news source – with the headline “The end of the games console era.” The headline inspired me to promptly do a double take, smack my forehead and exclaim “You can’t be serious?”
Only it was serious.
The argument was that players will be able to play games for free on their home computers because the games will all be free – with one hitch: they will all be sponsored by advertising.
Alex St. John, CEO of Wild Tangent, is the man putting forth this ridiculous idea. He claims he’s the guy who convinced Microsoft to jump into the console market. St. John says there won’t even be a next generation of consoles. He says Massively Multiplayer Online games will take over.
“The era of consoles defined by graphics and high-production values is over,” he tells the Telegraph. “Sony and Microsoft took the bet that prettier graphics would be the huge differentiating feature for their consoles. They were wrong. Everybody expects things to look good, so making it look 10 per cent better doesn’t have a big impact on its value. Since that’s changed, we now live in an era where community defines the value of a game, not production values. So the community dynamics of an MMO are more valuable to a user than how good the graphics look.”
Someone’s been living in crazy land.
*UPDATE: Microsoft has now announced a big price cut on its three Xbox models, including an $80 price cut to its arcade version — bringing it down to $199. So half the rumour has come true. We’ll see if the company brings out a motion-sensor controller (a la Wii) in time for Santa Claus to deliver.
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2 responses so far:End of the Console Era?
Those people need to play GNTEX2.
Then they would be too busy playing on consoles to notice the era is just beginning…
Yeah crazy people are hilarious. I think if anything, consoles will bridge the gap between TV gaming and PC features. They already are in this generation and as time goes on the things that each can do will become more and more in sync with one another, but neither replacing each other.