We have reached the end of 2010 and what have Microsoft left their consumers to be excited about? Forza… really? What the heck is going on, Microsoft? We didn't even get an official Gears of War III announcement at this years VGAs? We all know it's coming so why not just go ahead an announce it – or is that game going multi-platform as well?
PlayStation 3 gamers have plenty of exclusives to look forward to already, starting as early as January next year. They have Little Big Planet 2, Killzone 3, The Last Guardian, The ICO Collection, inFamous 2, Motorstorm: Apocalypse, Resistance 3, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Socom 4, Twisted Metal and the heavily speculated Starhawk *wink, wink*. Further more, all of these games are guaranteed to be AAA titles and that's more than I can say for Microsoft's last exclusive release, which was my most anticipated game of 2010 and also happened to be a huge flop, Fable III.
It's hard to see Microsoft's strategy in all of this. Are they relying on Kinect to to be sole selling point of the consoles? No hardcore gamer would even consider buying an Xbox 360 over a PlayStation 3 this Christmas. Isn't Christmas the biggest opportunity for these companies to cash in? Yeah, sure, Kinect may be doing great numbers but a good percentage of devout gamers are going to be dumping the console if they don't get any good news soon.
Perhaps Microsoft have royally screwed themselves over and the Kinect is supposed to be their proverbial last chance perk. They haven't secured any independent developers for a long time and most of the studios that did develop exclusive titles for them have opted to go the way of the multi-plat, take Bungie for example. Independent developers don't want to do exclusive games any more, there is more money to be made doing multi-platform games despite handsome bribes by either parties. This is not just the case for Microsoft – Sony are losing exclusives by the numbers too – Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, and Metal Gear Solid are perfect examples. Fortunately, Sony have secured a lot of great studios which gives them a great advantage over Microsoft. The only Microsoft in-house studios that I can count up from the top of my head are Turn 10, Lionhead, and RARE. There may be several more but, honestly, this is all I can think of right now. Sony, on the other hand, have Media Molecule, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Guerrilla Games, Polyphony Digital, Zipper Interactive, and Sucker Punch. It's safe to say that the PlayStation brand is future proof whereas things are looking grim for Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Microsoft could be sitting on something big and are just waiting for the right moment to blow us all away – maybe it's the Xbox 720, although that would be a extremely risky move. Only time will tell whether these are the dying days of the Xbox 360. From my standing point it certainly seems that way.
Source
PS3 has over 20 confirmed exclusives for 2011 and Xbox has 2. :lol: :lol: :lol:
Log in to comment