How can you tell the difference between a company’s PR talk and what they really do? It is easy. Look at the money.
Ubisoft says they are preparing for the next console launch (!). Now, we know Nintendo is not making a new console. Sony just came out with the PS Slim so we know they aren’t coming out with a new console any time soon.
Ubisoft wouldn’t be spending money hiring more people unless they were pretty sure. All that ‘risk’ talk is just a smokescreen.
It seems that Microsoft is going to re-brand Xbox 360 and ‘launch’ the newly branded console sometime in 2010. Ubisoft talked about ‘expanding the game industry’ and now would be the time they would need to really apply the manpower to game development to get out those launch titles.
I thought Natal was Microsoft jumping the shark. The thing about jumping the shark is that you cannot un-jump it. From what we were shown, Natal has all the trappings of a ‘Birdman’. They don’t seem to understand what attracted people to the Wii. They just think it is ‘new interface’ and ‘casual games’.
The Xbox Reboot is going to be tons of fun to watch. The core Xbox 360 customers are going to go nuclear. If you thought Nintendo fans had problems with the Wii’s new direction, just wait until Reboot arrives. And it will be fun to watch Xbox Reboot’s impact in the market. Wii sold in big part due to its multiplayer games. Natal can’t do multiplayer at the same time, hahahaha. It is not impossible to witness Xbox Reboot crash and burn.
The probability of Xbox Reboot making an impact with the Expanded Market is not very high. The Xbox 360 is just too darn big, doesn’t even include wi-fi, and no one in the Expanded Market is going to pay $50 for online play even if they do play online. Natal hasn’t even been placed in regular customer’s hands, in any demo, yet.
Nevertheless, we will hear that Xbox 360 losing money, having hardware flaws that blew up another billion dollars, with constant price drops, and re-branding the console halfway through the lifecycle are only indicators that the Xbox 360 is very successful and Microsoft is on its way to the top.