Kim: Microsoft is not leaving the gaming space

Gaming is larger than most any other form of entertainment. Sure, games are more expensive to buy than a movie ticket, but games are getting better and better and more people who were weened on games are getting older and can afford their own stuff. I’m 39 (40 in Sept). I started with Pong, Atari 2600, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Genesis, N64, Xbox, and now 360 and PS3. Not to mention the PC games I’ve played. Of my 5 best friends, 3 game at least on a regular basis. And, like I said, we are all around 40. I can only imagine that the percentage of people who are now 20 that will continue to game into their 40s will be higher than my generations.
So, yeah, I would say that gaming is ‘an important part of entertainment’. I love my Netflix and all that stuff, but don’t lose focus, Microsoft!

this might be the last generation of consoles, with high prodtion costs on consoles killing game devs.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/31331241

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/05/e3-predictions/

sony and microsft losing billions, it’s more likely that consoles will go the way of the dodo bird

I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if a couple of generations down the line the Xbox was running Windows Gaming Edition, manufactured by Dell and powered by Intel and Nvidia.

In two generations there’ll be one console, developed by SONY & M$. Nintendo will still do there own thing. But SONY & M$ will concentrate on game development and share the loss against the console. That’s provided Cloud doesn’t take off.

@ The_Deleted
That’s like saying there’s going to be a merge of Mac and PC and its going to run WinMac or Leo-dows. It. Aint. Gonna. Happen.

Not counting for economic mega-upheavals, there will always be as many consoles as the market will bear. Right now, and for the past 15 years, that number has been about 3 major consoles.

It wouldn’t make any sense for Sony and MS to merge because they’d have to share profits and sign off together on every initiative; even if they did, someone else would take advantage of the need for a competitive alternative in short order. Apple, maybe. Like it or not, companies are in this business to make money for themselves, not to march us toward some glorious unified holodeck future.

BDH: Games cost more money to make because the labor and talent cost more; those cost more because games are worth a whole crapton more money than they used to be. Even a shite console game can expect to sell over a million copies nowadays with decent marketing or some kind of hook.

It would be silly of them to leave console gaming space or the focus on console games now, they got a good momentum there. In fact, I don’t see their attempts to appeal to a larger, non-hardcore audience succeed.

Though I’d rather hear MS assure everyone they still believe in the PC as a gaming platform too. Year after year, they’ve blown so many chances there it isn’t even funny anymore and the complete non-show of Games for Windows at this E3 doesn’t exactly instill much confidence.

Well he has to be very careful what he says on this subject given that MS spent two years mocking and criticising Sony for including non-gaming capabilities and content on the PS3.

What’s next? XBox Home? They’ve already announced avatar stores and the chance to win avatar accessories in games. And their Sky announcement showed lots of avatars congregated in an online, virtual space to watch a big screen. Sounds all very familiar.

Of course there will be new consoles. They will simply not be the technological leap these ones were, just upgraded versions of the current architecture.

PS4 will most likely be a new Cell with more SPUs and a bigger/better GPU.

In short, Microsoft and Sony will be doing exactly what Nintendo did this time around with the Wii, which is essentially an overclocked GameCube.

However, just following this strategy alone should still produce some awesome gaming performance – simply because devs are getting so much out of the current hardware now and the development techniques won’t be changing… they’ll be right at home.