E3 is next week and nothing positive has changed on Microsoft’s Xbox One. It’s kinda gross to be honest. 24 hour online “check in”, weird used games policy…it’s a mess. They might have some good ideas somewhere in there, but the message is pretty lost and being overlooked by everyone. It’s a terrible place to be in for MS, it’s a really shocking image of a man in a suit with his black loafers jammed into his mouth. So this E3 is super important for everyone. Here’s my take a few says ahead of E3.
Nintendo
With hardware that many consider an overpriced joke with an anemic software line up, things have looked dicey for good old Nintendo. In recent weeks, Microsoft has pretty much been selling how honest and simple the Wii U is to people. It plays games, it can do a few other side things but it’s really straight forward now. No weird rules, no one watching you, it’s just a game system. Now they just need to release games for it. That is of course coming. The Nintendo stable is being worked now, Mario is in the works, Mario Kart, probably a Smash Bros. game, Animal Crossing. Nintendo is doing direct videos to it’s fan this year and all they need to do is give dates for the games that their fans are waiting for. It’s been a rough 8 starting months, but I think Nintendo is going to right the ship. A nice little price drop wouldn’t hurt either.
Sony
Smart move letting MS take egg on the face. Let their biggest thorn in their side twist in the wind while you get your ducks a row for the show. Now I think Sony is going to have some online DRM too, but it’s hard to really know how much. There’s been no real word on what Sony is up to, it’s all been doom and gloom rumors about Xbox One. Now, if they tell people they aren’t going to be strangling games like Microsoft, they will have a leg up. Sony has some serious talent in it’s software studios, they got the best console indie support so Sony is really in a place to pounce. Show games we haven’t seen, show the hardware, give a date and price (I’m thinking $400 is the likely sweet spot). The PS4 is poised to be the good guy of the Next Gen.
Microsoft
They have to climb out of the hole they dug and I don’t this company is capable of doing it. Their PR has been a complete disaster. It’s these new policies that have gotten them there and I don’t really see them changing them much. Sony must have had these same conversations with publishers and developers so that makes me wonder what Sony’s stance on online DRM is going to be. Now, if Microsoft adopts the way Steam prices and puts stuff on sale, it’ll win a lot of people back. They’ve announced that all games will be able to download or buy in stores at retail on the same day. Now if they keep ridiculous pricing for downloading games over time, it’ll be a dead service. Steam does 2 or 3 big sales a year with a lot of great titles for insanely low prices. Group buys, bonus material out the wazoo. Plus all the sales sprinkled about over the year. People love Steam for the value and convenience. The XBOne [i[could[i/] be the Steambox of the living room before Valve can get their Steambox out. A lot of the XBOne new policies are similar to how Steam currently works, but the value looks completely in MS’s favor. That’s mostly conjecture at this point, but MS has not been one one value these days. MS has to make the right moves and this is one of them. So that leaves us with this: They have to show a ton of games. Exclusives will be pretty important. You gotta give reasons for gamers to want to go anywhere near this hardware, because right now it looks like they are losing a large portion of good will and fandom that they’ve been striving for these passed 13 years.
It’s an uphill climb. They have to show new games to get attention and pricing that makes sense software and hardware wise (it cannot be sold for a penny more than the PS4 does. It’ll be killed if that happens). It’s a hard sell.
Good luck next week fellas.