true, most of those franchises are ruined for me because they milked them so much, i havent played a pokemon game,  in ages, same thing with mario and zelda. i was mainly talking about halo,its true it could go on, but as a gamer i cant imagine what more they can do with it without it becoming ridiculous like call of duty. im not a halo fan, but il be sad if the franchise turns into a call of duty with people pulling a die hard and using kamikazi remote control cars. ofcourse im not a dev i dont have a wide imagination. same thing with socom they did so many games the only reason i might be interested in the next one is because of co-op.

franchises can go on forever, but the more they last the more damage they take. i dont know about you but i dont want to live the same experiences over and over again with minor changes.

mainly the point is everyone needs new ips.

If its all about new ip's then I am certain Microsoft will do just fine next gen then.  Because this gen MS has done relatively better than Sony when it comes to new IP's (IMHO).  So this entire thread is useless if we take your example.

New Ip's are important but so are the franchises, and while I do agree that a franchise can be burnt out, I think it takes more than a game every 3 years to do it.   Besides from what I have seen of Reach, its probably going to be better than Halo 2 and 3 so instead of getting worse like a lot of other franchises it is getting better.

Maybe among forum fanboys.

Out of 4 xbox users i know in real life only one person might be using live to play online and with that person being game developer it's understandable :)

So are you saying Live has little to no affect on hardcore gamers?  

I would beg to differ, since you obviously don't know many people on live you have no idea how die hard most of these folks are.  

You said first party studios, not exclusives. MGS4 is not from a first party studio neither is Gears of War. MS can buy and order exclusives without owning the studios, and that is one major thing they did this generation to help them succeed.

I think there are several million people who use that service, if I'm not mistaken.

The Xbox live subscribers are the group that started the Xbox craze, and the reason you know so many people who own one and don't subscribe, is because the machine is very popular.

In some respects it doesnt matter how you do it as long as you have a raft/range of exclusives that get people to buy your console and enjoy it.

Guess the only downside with that is that it could potentially be alot more expensive to do (not that is necesarily a problem if you have lots of cash), also you dont end up owning the Tech (in some cases they might if they pay for it as well).

I guess what i am trying to say is that relying on others is ok to reduce the costs of owning a studio (building, rent, staff, hassles), but it could also be a pain in terms of Tech improvements, owning tech, making the tech better. Sony have improved many of their own internal studio games by getting thier internal studios to talk to each other and spread the tech/code. I think there will be big improvements for games such as Infamous 2 because of work they have done on Uncharted 2 etc (and many others).

I wonder if that will have any impact on the next generation or not... I really dont know.

First party or third party, it doesnt matter because they need more exclusives.

But more first party would be better because of full exclusivity and the full power of the 360.

Since at any given time you can go out to MS site and seeing them having signifigant opportunities posted in for team member or XBox product areas.  Couple that with the profits the 360 is producing the last couple years and those profits continuing to increase.  This leads me to believe MS is hiring for internal teams to produce 1st party titles.

exactly and i also don't really know any people with a ps3.