Squilliam on 03 May 2009
| Dodece said: @Squilliam Your correct in your analysis that feast and famine are a result of development cycles. However that is the price of having fewer first, and second party studios. Microsoft has done a good job of covering this by acquiring third party exclusives, and it looks as if their studios are adapting to team staggering, but it is still there. The reality is that Microsoft hasn't gotten to a point where their studios do not deliver a consistent number of titles every year. Bungie does not deliver every year. Rare deliver two one year, one the next year, and then two the next. Lionshead has only delivered one game this generation. Mistwalker basically delivers every other year. So it is easy to see how it ends up being that one year is fatter then the other. The fact that Microsoft has so few studios, some do not deliver every year, or deliver less one year, and more another means some years are short, and some are heavy. Microsoft contracting out games, and securing third party exclusives helps. However it doesn't change the fact that without that Microsoft would have some very thin years indeed. The upside for Microsoft this year as I said is that all their studios are delivering, or are supposed to be delivering without exception. So they should have more high end exclusives this year then last year. Just due to the two year cycle peaking this year for them. |
Whilst thats true of 1st/2nd party games, I think by excluding third party exclusives of which many go multi-platform obscures the bigger picture of how they arrage their exclusives. Once you consider the 3rd party exclusives whether timed or permament you can see that whilst it doesn't look as impressive looking backwards, looking forward they were an excellent way to improve the Xbox 360s lineup against the PS3. It also helps to even out the flood of games say from 2009.
Tease.
