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Date Posted: 12:22:12 10/06/05 Thu
Author: chazo
Subject: i wouldnt say that TT
In reply to: Toaster 's message, "Re: Gaming Gaming Gaming" on 08:40:05 10/06/05 Thu

Victory for the Sony PS3 looking more unlikely as support for Kutaragi drops

Can Kutaragi shake off the Xbox 360 with his commitment to hardware evolution?

Japan’s recent general election, featuring Koizumi’s battalion of “smiling assassins” [high-profile women media personalities and diplomats designed to dazzle voters], resulted in an emphatic victory for Koizumi. This winter, the next-generation gaming industry also appeared to be gearing up for a general election. The question is, which next-generation console will be victorious?

In the middle of this month, the gaming industry’s biggest event, “Tokyo Game Show 2005″, was held at Makuhari Messe. The catch cry for TGS was, “You can see the future from the front seat.” Smiling wryly, a major software company executive remarked, “We [the software industry] are the ones who really want to see the future.”

With a sigh, he continued: “Next-generation game consoles are like a general election. For software makers like us, [choosing a platform to develop for] has been a drawn-out process similar to choosing a political power or political party to support, and it is extremely difficult to predict the outcome.”

The highlight of this general election for the gaming industry will be seeing whether the “Oda-Nobunaga [powerful Japanese ruler and well-known historical figure] of the industry” Ken Kutaragi and his Playstation camp can exude the same powerful charisma as [Japanese Prime Minister] Junichirou Koizumi.

An industry insider remarked, “The outcome will depend on whether gamers support Sony executive Kutaragi in his firm belief that the evolution of the game console [hardware] will result in a bigger market for Sony.”

In the periodic management plan Sony released on the 22nd, Sony had the following to say about their high-tech creation, the PS3: “Our top priority is to bring innovation to the market by next spring.”

Most believe it will be a decisive victory [for Sony], with the catch phrase “Don’t stop evolution”, much like Junichirou Koizumi’s election victory with his catchphrase “Don’t stop reformation.” However, another industry insider confided, “This is nothing but a nightmare for many Japanese software development companies.”

One of the reasons for this nightmare is soaring development costs.

The industry insider went on to say, “Kutaragi has said, ‘Please develop suitable software for PS3 - this software must not be of the same standard as PS2 software.’ Developing software for the PS3 from scratch will require an initial investment of at least 2 billion yen [US $17.6 million] [not including development costs]. There are not many software companies that can easily afford that kind of money.”

The prevailing rumor is that many software companies with difficulty may end up developing for the Xbox 360 (to be released on 10 December 2005).

The previous interviewee also said, “Kutaragi is pursuing hardware evolution, and the credibility gap for him is now even worse than that of the GameCube era [when many developers defected from Nintendo].”

In fact, Microsoft is garnering support from many software developers and game creators in Japan. This kind of movement [spearheaded by Microsoft] is reminiscent of The Democratic Party of Japan’s general election catch phrase - “We will not give up on the Japanese market.” Indeed, one software developer slated to develop exclusively for Sony is now questioning whether this was the right decision.

One journalist, a veteran of the industry, observes, “The Xbox 360 is selling at 39795 yen [US $350], whereas the PS3 will probably be more expensive. To draw a comparison with PC operating systems, the Xbox 360 is like a low-cost and stable version of Windows, while the PS3 resembles a high quality Macintosh [operating system]. Considering the economic variance within the world market, we may find that console selection depends heavily on geographic location.”

In an aside about the Nintendo Revolution, the journalist remarked, “It will survive on the basis of its originality. I don’t know about [its prospects in] other countries, but it may win alone in Japan.”

Unlike Koizumi’s emphatic victory in the general election, opposition in the gaming industry is strong. Therefore, the future prospects for the battle of the next generation consoles look chaotic.

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Tomonobu Itagaki of Team Ninja told his interviewers at Tokyo Game Show that he thinks “Xbox 360 is the best game console on the earth. It’s better than PlayStation 3.”

Why? “PS3 has too complicated of architecture.”

Team Ninja is currently developing games for the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP and Xbox 360. They’ve also created games for the Xbox and PlayStation 2, which lends this statement an air of credibility.

That said, he still feels that Microsoft’s new console isn’t as powerful as he’d like them it to be. He noted, “I never felt that I had enough machine power. The more power I get the more I want to do. Even with Xbox 360 there’s never enough.”

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Microsoft is reinforcing the growing belief in Japan that the Xbox 360 will be the cheaper console to develop for. Reports in the Japanese media regarding the CESA Developers Conference 2005 have just begun to surface.
Boyd Multerer

Boyd Multerer

At the CESA Developers Conference 2005 (CEDEC) held at the end of August, Microsoft held a “Microsoft Game Developers’ Day” to showcase its XNA development architecture. Since it was the first public showing of the XNA architecture in Japan, Boyd Multerer, Microsoft and XNA Product Unit Manager, was on hand to give Japanese developers a run-down on the benefits of XNA. Multerer presented a slide show that began with the statement: “XNA helps studios and publishers develop better games, cheaper and quicker, on all Microsoft gaming platforms”. The slideshow detailed how XNA would resolve the complicated work flow and data incompatibility problems experienced in current-generation game development.

“XNA Studio”, based on “Visual Studio 2005 Team System”, aims to make game development simpler and faster across multiple Microsoft platforms: the current Xbox console, the next generation Xbox 360 console and Windows PCs that run PC games. It remains to be seen whether this promise of lowered development costs and shortened development life cycles will lure more Japanese developers into developing for the Xbox 360 in preference to the PS3.

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1up interviewed Gabe Newell again, and this time it was video interview. Last time he bashed the XBox360, this time he goes after the PS3. In fact, he calls it "another Sega Saturn."

See the Video Interview Here. http://valve.1up.com/flat/Themeweek/Valve/video5.html

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http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2453


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