Category: Industry Musings (Page 4 of 7)

I didn’t buy a 360. Sure, it’s true that I haven’t even seen an XBox 360 as of yet at the stores, but even if I’d come across one hidden in the back of a sales rack that everyone else had missed, I’m not sure I would have picked it up.

Given I’ve constantly harped about gameplay over graphics, this may not come as a surprise to a lot of Zen readers. It’s not that I don’t appreciate great graphics. But really, I don’t buy a console for ports of games that appear on other consoles. The 360 desperately needs an exclusive game made with it in mind. Continue reading

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how good your game is. Sometimes, it matters more the environment that your game is released in. Usually, when we point this out, we’re talking about gaming competition. Surely, Matrix Online and Saga of Ryzom would have fared better if there’d been more seperation between them and the juggernaut that is Worlds of Warcraft. Guild Wars fared better, but undoubtedly part of that is that MMO fans didn’t have to layer another subscription fee onto their existing WoW price tag.

The catch, of course, is that your ability to delay a launch is very limited. You hope and pray that you manuever yourself towards a good release window, but a full-sized MMO team burns through cash faster than Halliburton. You might be able to delay your launch a couple of months, but at some point, you have to bite the bullet before you start laying people off. This is obviously more true for smaller companies, but even inside behemoths like EA, your potential is fuzzy, but your actual burn rate is undeniable, which creates an impetus to ship as soon as possible. Continue reading

It’s worth noting that the PS3 announced their specs last night. Reading through them, it’s almost as if Sony waited for XBox to release their specs, and then increased all the numbers by one. The big question for MMO devs: will it have a hard drive? The answer: Maybe. Continue reading