2005 This is where the establishment phase begins, see how the Xbox360 targets a wide range of game styles with the few high quality exclusives it gets. They are establishing a ground/base from which to build on this year. Theres a good fighter, shooter, racer and RPG to cover every genre. One for each, looks pretty deliberate to me. 2005 was not a great year, but for people who bought the system on launch it gives them something good from every genre.

Project Gotham Racing - 88%

Dead or Alive 4 - 85%

Perfect Dark Zero - 81%

Kameo Elements of Power 79%

2006 In this year they fleshed out their library of quality games by diving straight into the deep end of the PC pool. Most of these games come straight out of a PC catalogue and it looks like they did an excellent job of fleshing out the Shooter genre initially. For the most part its shooter/shooter and more shooter but they can be forgiven as I doubt they had much choice for buying exclusives.

Interesting games - Dead rising, it shows the early attempts by Microsoft to win favours with the Japanese publishers like Capcom. It is probably indicitive of the relationship they built up with capcom that they got games like Devil May cry 4 later on for their system.

Viva Pinata signifies their first real attempt to cater to a more female/child audience and shows how Rare fits into their strategy.

Lastly Gears of War 1 signifies the beginning of the console centric push at the shooter genre. Earlier, the shooters were PC cum 360 ports, after 2006 the reverse is true and the shooters that came exclusively to the system were for the most part console shooters first and then the PC was considered as an extra revenue source.

Gears of War - 94%

Oblivion - 94%

3 Ubi-Clancy games at 85,89,90% respectively

Dead Rising - 85%

F.E.A.R - 85%

Viva Pinata -84%

Hitman: Blood money - 82%

Saints Row - 81%

Prey - 79%

2007 This is easy, look at "The big three" shooters that float right to the surface. They were all designed primarily as console shooters first. Halo 3 a landmark pure shooter, Mass Effect - an excellent hybrid, Bioshock a mix between the two. To have one of these games land in a year is expected, two and it looks deliberate but you can argue accident, three and it screams intention. Add Gears of War to this pile and I believe that it shows a definate focus from late 2006 to late 2007 on high quality console shooters.

It makes sense to target this genre at this point in the consoles lifecycle because A. Its the perfect time to show off the capabilities of your system without being overshadowed by the PC B. Shooter fans are the most likely IMO to Pony up the dough early on in a systems life when the price is much higher C. They got here first, thats difference between releasing these games in the 2006/2007 season and releasing Socom, RFOM, KZ2 in 2008/2009. They got these people to move, and to move in their direction.

Interestingly the last 3 good exclusives - Lost Planet, Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon are all Japanese games and they show the initial fruits of Microsofts Japanese involvement.

Bioshock 96%

Halo 3 - 94%

Mass Effect - 91%

Forza motorsport 2 - 90%

Project Gotham racing 4 - 85%

Crackdown 83%

C & C 3 82%

Lost Planet 79%

Eternal Sonata 79%

Blue Dragon 79%

2008 - Ok a bad year so far! :( But we have to look at the upcoming exclusives to really get a sense of which direction they are taking from here.

Two JRPG games were released 2007, then 4 exclusives for 2008 with FFXIII and Star Ocean 4 to come in 2009. This is an obvious push in this genre, it looks like Microsoft will attempt to earn a similar dominance in this genre as they did for shooters. Rounding out the JRPGs with a western flavour we have Too Human, Fable 2 and exclusive content for Fallout 3 we have an amazing push towards RPG games, especially when considering the MMO games that are slated for release soon as well.

Gears of War 2/Left 4 dead are more organic products of Microsofts earlier efforts in the shooter genre. They didn't buy them or entice them, they are the fruits of their earlier labours. 

Age of Coman + Champions Online + Huxley ( Interesting three MMO type games)

Fable 2/Too Human/Infinate Undiscovery/Last Remnant/Tales of Vesperia/Lost Odyssey - 79%

Summing it up.

Between mid 2005/mid 2006 the Xbox360 was establishing a presence in every genre. Microsoft leveraged their PC dominance to give the Xbox360 a legup, especially in the Shooter genre where both are strong players.

From the end of 2006 - end 2007 Microsofts shooter push was played out. They had 4 excellent shooters come out of this period and they established 3 excellent new IP franchises for the system with two remaining exclusive.

From the middle of 2007 Microsoft established both the current RPG push we are experiencing now and the mainstream push we saw portrated in the E3 conference. We can see it with the new avatars,  Movie maker, strong focus music games including lipz and the gaming style of both Viva Pinata and Banjo Kazooie to be key pieces of this strategy. The RPG genre is less hardcore and more mainstream than the Shooter genre so it complements the "casual" type games very well.

 

 

Microsoft... Looks like they went through genres slowly, building up names in the RPG and even JRPGs now, and very unexpected,

great strategy honestly, the only thing that realy held them back was the rrod

A very interesting read... Although I fail to see how RPG's are less hardcore. In some respects, they are alot more hardcore.

Yes I think there was a very definite strategy, which you've highlighted very well.

Of course their miscalculation was the way the market has changed this generation with regard to the casual fanbase. But as Sony made the same miscalculation, Microsoft's strategy should give them a good chance of being second this generation.

I reckon if Rrod hadn't happened, this wouldn't even be a question, second place would have been certain.

starcraft said: Yes I think there was a very definite strategy, which you've highlighted very well. Of course their miscalculation was the way the market has changed this generation with regard to the casual fanbase. But as Sony made the same miscalculation, Microsoft's strategy should give them a good chance of being second this generation. I reckon if Rrod hadn't happened, this wouldn't even be a question, second place would have been certain.

I don't think they've adjusted their plans hugely since the beginning. If you consider that games have a lead time of two to three years we won't see a serious response to the Wii until between the end of this year and the end of next. Everything up until this point has been TO PLAN IMO because you can't change on a dime and start pursuing a new strategy if the old one doesn't work too well. This mainstream push was always slated to happen from this point onwards, The Wii may have given it more emphasis but the idea was there from the beginning and noone can deny that if you consider games like Banjo would have taken years to make. For the Xbox360 vs Sony competition, Sony is sitting a year behind in releases to the Xbox360 so that head-start is really hitting home. We didn't see it so much last year because of the incredible work Microsoft has to do to keep up with the PS3. The question is not why isn't the Xbox360 outselling the PS3 but why hasn't the PS3 left the Xbox360 in the dust? My answer is that Microsofts strategy has really kept them in the race. In the space of one year and two holiday seasons the Xbox360 had 4 90%+ Shooters released exclusively with combined sales of 17 Million. Now the PS3 is releasing 3 big name shooters - Socom, RFOM2, KZ2 and because Microsoft has "been there, pwned that" They can't sell nearly as many systems to the shooter crowd because Microsoft got most of them the first time round and the 2nd time round they will capture many more when you Add gears 2+Left 4 dead to the legacy titles that are available. So whilst Sony seems to be hitting shooters hard, Microsoft is going after the RPG crowd and not even bothering to answer the Sony FPSers specificially. They didn't even mention left 4 dead at E3... LOL they're that worried.

Strategyking92 said: A very interesting read... Although I fail to see how RPG's are less hardcore. In some respects, they are alot more hardcore.

 

 Well they're more and less hardcore I think. A lot of them children and females can play and enjoy so from that perspective they're not as hardcore so they can mesh well with the other strategies Microsoft is employing to mainstream the console.

starcraft said: Yes I think there was a very definite strategy, which you've highlighted very well. Of course their miscalculation was the way the market has changed this generation with regard to the casual fanbase. But as Sony made the same miscalculation, Microsoft's strategy should give them a good chance of being second this generation. I reckon if Rrod hadn't happened, this wouldn't even be a question, second place would have been certain.

 

 I agree.

Sony's first party lineup is still far better. Granted, Microsoft is doing a good job buying exclusives, but that list still isn't better than Sony or Nintendo overall.

The RPG strategy is pretty clear, but it doesn't seem to be solving their Japanese problem.

2008 list should include: Lost Odyssey(79%) and Ninja Gaiden 2(81%). Both are good games. By end of the year that list would feature: Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and a few others I can not think of.