Impulsivity said:
It's because MS keeps shedding game staff and development houses. The lack of AAA games in the pipeline to announce is a direct result of that. I mean now would be the time to buy up developers that are available on the cheap not shed staff and developers like the continually successful RTS team from Ensemble and the Flight Simulator guys. All that seems to be left now is Bungee and Rare which, given Rare's not great post Nintendo track record, means they only have Bungee as a sole AAA developer. They also have a few aliances with Epic, Valve and Lionshead but they're really cutting back hard on their first party footprint. Is it possible that MS is trying to ease out of the segment like they are with the Zune to concentrate more on Windows 7 and other profit centers? You can tell Sony is still in it for the long haul as they buy up developers and maintain a dozen first party studios (they just bought another developer which they turned into SOE Austin a few weeks ago) and Nintendo seems to maintain a pretty healthy Nintendo branded development house, so why is Microsoft not buying up some successful developers? Instead they seem to be doing the opposite and taking the axe to studios that have been pretty golden in the past, Age of Empires 1-3 certainly came nowhere near losing money. The one other possibility is that they're keeping a new console release under wraps and all the big games are being developed to launch with that. If they are shooting for a 2010 launch then they would certainly need to be making the launch games right now. So they're either headed out or getting ready for the 3rd round it seems. |
That makes zero sense. They cut prices last year, and are prepared to follow up with another price cut if Sony does so. If they want to get out of the business, why not just sell the hardware for as much as they can and drop it like a hot potato? This sounds like wishful thinking on your part, given your history of MS bashing.
My theory is that they've been shifting focus to Microsoft Game Studios, not necessarily for development but for publishing. Some of the stuff Kudo Tsunoda has said seems to hint at this. Since they're keeping close ties to Bungie and the Ensemble spin-offs, but don't have to pay for their studios' upkeep anymore, they're more free to contract out to third parties for big exclusives. For instance, for games like Aion Guard or Faith and a .45 which need a publisher, Microsoft could conceivably step in and get some much needed exclusives.
