So what does this exactly mean? Microsoft doesn't think that they can compete with Sony over the long run for the "hardcore" crowd so they are going to compete with Nintendo? A new Mii to go along with an X-mote or Newton or whatever they're going to call it? Oh brother!

I guess you could call it a way of "Downstreaming" for the Xbox360 brand. Also its to broaden the appeal and provide competitive advantages over the Wii and the PS3 at the same time. Im not talking all segments, im talking about contested areas of the market where people consider both systems as viable.

The Wii is NonHD and the games have a different appeal to the Xbox360 games which are also more graphically pleasing. There are also the PC ports of the strategy games that Microsoft holds this genre uncontested.

The PS3 does not have a motion controller to speak of to compete in this segment.

Nintendo validated the motion controls with the Wii's success. Therefore people will see it as a good concept since it works so well for the Wii. Im talking people because the fanboys here are getting too emotional over this.

I think it is obvious Microsoft has seen Nintendo as the future. They have seen Nintendo take the lead and have chosen to follow suit rather then be left behind. Microsoft knows that Nintendo is always the leading company pushing new hardware.

As for the Mii's I think all Microsoft means is that they will be creating a personal avatar and likely making an online world the likes have been seen all over. A virtual world with property and everything is likely the way Microsoft is planning to go. The Mii's will likely also be ultra realistic and not cartoony like Nintendo's making them far more for the hardcore audience that Microsoft is appealing too. A create a character much like has been done in Tony Hawk and sports games for years. Just think about Microsoft making a standard avatar amker where you can take your character from Tony Hawk and play with him in Madden or Halo.

The motion sensing controller was obviously going to happen. Sony copied it in less then a year's notice coming out with their six axis controller. I suspect Microsoft's new controller will likely have similiar principles or maybe even more so then Sony. However I don't think it will be as good as Nintendo's own controller. The graphics combined with the new controller could give them a small edge on Nintendo but Nintendo's cheap price would keep it the casual gamers game console. Since casual gamers don't spend as much time and money on games as hardcore gamers do.

 So whats going to happen, Microsoft is going to roll out a new mimick control system that will probubly fall between six axis and full motion sensing. We already knew shortly after Nintendo unvieled the Wiimote that Microsoft was experimenting with its own controller. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft followed suit.

Next generation 2011 I expect to see more motion sensing utalized on all consoles. It will likely be standard or availible as an option on all three platforms. Its undeniably the future of gaming! 

The thing is that every attempt at a new motion sensing controller is going to be seen as copy-cat for some time. In a few years, you guys are right, the future will be here and it will be second nature. But now the Wii is so popular that the "casual" gamer will say that's a Nintendo rip-off. By the time everyone has a GOOD motion sensing controller, the new Wii will be out and be High Def. I think that Nintendo is going to be the leader for a while unless they make a huge screw-up. Then again, I thought that the PS3 would be sellng the most now.

Wait- I knew about the Wiimote rumours, but now they're copying the Miis too? :p Hahaha that's too funny! :p

Also, as far as them making 'realistic' Miis to appeal to the hardcore crowd the Xbox360 caters to, errm, that would make absolutely NO sense at all if they mean to attract the 'casual' crowd like the Wii. They already have the hardcore gamers. They don't have to convince them to get their machine. It's the casuals and 'non-gamers' they want, I assume that would be the whole point of making a Wiimote-like controller and Mii-system. Making these 'realistic' and such will do nothing but alienate the mainstream casual crowd and turn them off.

And I think it's far too late into this generation to pull something like this off. Wii was built from the ground up around the concept of user-friendliness, motion-sensing IR controls and the Mii/Wii channels system. Trying to tag things like that onto an already established 'hardcore' HD console doesn't make that much sense. It will get far, far less games that make use of the motion controls, and people who buy these games would also be forced to buy the Wiimote-controller. 

Time will tell, but I really, really cannot see this work out well for Microsoft. 

This should help the Xbox360 leverage the PC domain to a much greater extent.

Microsoft could completely dominate the: Strategy games genre, Adventure games genre, Action RPG genre, they could also go toe to toe with Nintendo over the party game and local multiplayer areas of the market (not enough to win but enough to gain sales here). Provided of course, that they can get the controller into enough peoples hands.

ookaze said:
Don't worry, I know pretty well how MS failed in conquering market segments in the past decades. I know pretty well why the only markets they succeeded in conquering are those where they didn't have to compete, and that they failed in every single one of the ones where they had to compete.

I can see a lot of markets they have conquered, often admittedly with the help of their OS monopoly. If you consider "software" as an indivisible entity, then of course there is not much else where they succeeded. MS PC joysticks were known for their high quality, however. Sony and Apple are tough competitors, so one cannot expect that MS can dispose of their established brands (Playstation, Ipod) in no time. Not instantly dominating the competition doesn't mean epic failure, though.

If you still believe that MS is not stupid enough to still try to go after Nintendo, waiting to find an unfair strategy to stall them in the meantime, then you are the one with zero knowledge about them.

Of course they are going after Nintendo. I just don't think they expect their new controller to change anything in the current generation.



Blue Dragon was there to give the console momentum, a foot in the door. It failed miserably.

It depends on what you expect. The past has demonstrated that it is not easy to get a foot in the door in Japan for a foreign company, unless you have a product that in some way appeals to the Japanese people. Obviously both the original Xbox and the 360 didn't and still don't appeal to the Japanese, so what could have realistically been expected from Blue Dragon? Unless you live behind the moon, the momentum it generated has to be considered decent - not overwhelmingly huge, but decent.

You're right, I fail to see that, as I never saw MS do whatyou describe. I've yet to see them improve any of their competitor products. Perhaps you thought "adapt to the MS way". Unfortunately, most of the time, it isn't improving. In the OS space, where they have their monopoly, it used to work, giving theman unfair advantage and no need to compete. Unfortunately, that's also why they failed in all the other markets.

Could you point out some examples of those "other markets" where they failed? And please don't say HD DVD now, because they only supported it, but it wasn't really their product.
I admit that "adapt to the MS way" might have been a better transcription, but whatever you call it, it often led to a successful product.

Except that none of their product with such losses are profitable in the present or the future.
But I guess being in denial makes you think a profitable FY is enough to make the XBox brand a profitable venture.
With billions of dollars in the hole? When the goal was to gain momentum and you end up with none?
When you wanted a good brand, and end up with a diluted one?
Yes, that's an epic failure, in my view.

Again: past losses are meaningless, regardless how high they were. They have already been balanced in past fiscal years. I don't understand what you mean by "diluted". Xbox is an established brand now, not as strong as Playstation, but it is recognized and MS have the majority of the third-party developers on board, even Japanese ones. That is worth far more than cash.
Again: not instantly dominating the competition doesn't mean epic failure. If you see it as one, it probably gives you a good feeling because you hate MS. But that doesn't make it more real.

You can go on replacing Sony and Apple by every single competitors who bested them, like Google.

I love your truisms. Here, you can make them universal: the past has demonstrated that it is not easy to get a foot in the door in some group of people for a company, unless you have a product that in some way appeals to this group of people. It was expected that Blue Dragon was enough to make the XB360 interesting for Japan market. Were you sleeping in a cave while MS trumpeted this everywhere? Now, you tell me the momentum it generated is decent? Wow! I guess that's why Blue Dragon is now headed to the DS. Anyway, I think Mistwalker destroyed their own company brand (and didn't help XBox brand in the process) and are dead already.

I won't say HDDVD, but it's good you talk about that, as it's one of their biggest failures, one of the most epic ever.

With Win95, MS wanted to own the content delivery market. Don't get me wrong, that was no idea of theirs, MS never had any innovative idea. No, it came from Apple. I remember in 1993, when I started using the then brand new WWW, videos were only available in Quicktime format, Apple's vision of codecs and containers for video and audio delivery. So, MS wanted that, as everything they stole from Apple. Of course, they couldn't compete, they lose when they compete, so they tried to use their unfair advantage in Windows to get that. They started with VfW things that include AVI (which is taken from the Amiga RIFF, lots of things in Windows were taken from the Amiga actually), ans ASF for streaming, and tried to put that in everything. They started gaining ground with AVI and ASF (WMV, WMA, ...), but now it all failed, because they were disrupted in every single part of the content delivery market: codec with Xvid/H.264/..., container with Apple Quicktime (iPod) as AVI is not compatible with the new HD codecs for video, or even for music files, media with BluRay where their formats are not the main ones, ...

All this money lost, all this posturing, all this boasting about being the best, all these dirty tactics, to arrive to being insignificant: that's what I call an epic failure. This epic failure I described spanned 15 years, which is why I call it one of the more epic, with the last episode being losing the HD DVD media hope.

Perhaps you're too young to have lived through all of this. Just remember the posturing when MS said they would have the best search engine within 2 years, several years ago. People (who should know better, like the Times) actually believed them, while we knowing people just rolled on the floor laughing. That was an attack on Google. Look where they are now.

You mean that a brand that is know for losing 6.5 billion dollars is worth more than cash? Well OK, I'm not an expert on these things, I'll just believe you.

As for the hating part, you almost got it right, but failed.

I actually don't care about MS, except when they attack people like me, because you know, I'm part of the most hated group of people by MS nowadays (and since at least 1999). MS has been a good laughing stock for all these years, but they can be dangerous with all their money. I don't understand why they can't let people be instead of hating on them.

According to Xplay about a month ago, they said that MS AND Sony were developing controllers mimicing the wii remote. It's not just MS. They just didn't know how long into development either were.
For me, do what you gotta do, but please (MS and Sony) stay focused on the hardcore gamer. Don't do like the Wii and turn this into focusing on casual gamers and spitting out 4 hardcore games a year. Getting everyone to play games is cool. Call me selfish, but I don't want a game the whole family can play.
I remember a time when all these family games were the biggest sellers, but thats not the case anymore with Halo, GTA, Metal Gear all out selling these everyone can play games. So please stick to the math.
And to all you wii lovers, no i'm not talk sh*t about your console. I'm just saying I had 1, for 3 months and sold it because it didn't appeal to MY taste. I know it's out selling any other console, which is great, kudos to them for making a console that appeals to young and old (geriatric old even). I'm just saying, they got a console for everyone now, keep these ones for me and the ones who stayed loyal since the begining of video game history.

 Yeah, do you know how much of the industry is copying some other guy. Nintendo didn't invent motion controls, or else it'd make BILLIONS selling the technology. Heck most of Nintendo's originality dried up in the 90's. What's left of it is whats coming out of Miyamoto's head.

 @darthdevidem01's First post:

Haha, that post is full of all sorts of win.