foxtail said:
One of the reasons MS dropped support for the Xbox 1 was that it was a loss leader, the original Xbox never once gave Microsoft an annual profit. The hardware components and previous contracts with manufacturers were costing them too much money. If the margins were a little better they would've squeezed a little more life out of the old xbox, like Sony did with the PS2.
If you want to look at that Iwata quote you also have to look at where and when it comes from. (circa 2004 in a Japanese publication) Iwata said in the interview that Sony's online golf game (referring to Minna no Golf Online in Japan) did not sell as well as the offline versions of the games in the series (and that was true). Although this version of Minna no Golf can be played offline you have to connect online once in order to start the game for the first time, and so you have to have actual Online access and the hard drive. The game also had a fee but it's unclear (unlikley?) you needed it to setup the game. "At the moment, most customers do not wish to pay the extra money for connection to the Internet, and for some customers, connection procedures to the Internet are still not easy."- Iwata Just to be clear when Iwata says "pay extra money for connection" he wasn't talking ISP fees but game subscription fees. If you look at games that required a subscription fee to access a good portion of the game's content online (not just optional multiplayer), they usually didn't sell that well at the time. Games like Final Fantasy XI Online, Nobunaga no Yabou Online and EverQuest Online Adventures weren't selling that great. Even Monster Hunter and Monster Hunter G weren't getting big sales on the PS2 at the time. MH1 on the PS2 was the biggest of the bunch selling 265,828 copies in Japan but when the Gamecube version of Phantasy Star Online I & II even manages to sell 138,277 copies in Japan (and 189,082 copies on the GC in the US [327,359 total]) it doesn't seem like online peak was all that high then. Sub Fee games just weren't selling that great on home consoles at the time of this interview. |
For 360, that is true i can see that, but if the console was hurting them that bad, why do a followup?? For the thrill of competition? Maybe.
I understand what Iwata said, but what im focusing on is the comment about devs losing interest in making online games, which as we all know did not happen. Onlnine games were not selling that great of course they were not, we all knew that. What i have trouble is he assumed that they would continue to sell bad, which is not true and he was wrong. I dont know why people are trying to spin this part
