[ad_1]
Rumors that Microsoft is preparing to launch games and services on Switch are, in some ways, too fantastic to believe. a dream come true for fans and girls of a certain age. The rumor agreement suggests that the company is considering not only launching the integration of Xbox Live and Game Pass, but also publishing "native" games (including, it has been reported, Ori and the blind forest and Cup) and distribute the others via the company's highly anticipated Project xCloud platform. All this seems so suspicious pie in the sky that each fragment of new information has reached us for huge handles of salt. The idea that two giants of video games could meet and collaborate in this way is unprecedented, but just take a look at the history books to realize that it's really not as strange as it may seem.
A quick search on this site provides various glowing comments about Nintendo from Phil Spencer, Executive Vice President of Microsoft Games, and his willingness to touch players on "competing systems". The US headquarters of both companies are located in Redmond, Washington, and Spencer always has warm words when the subject of Nintendo is discussed.
This open-arm approach is very different from the previous scheme, which had designed the original Xbox One and hindered its launch with terrible messages and misreading of its audience. While the company's vision of the "always on-line" future is slowly but surely coming true, Microsoft's efforts to reposition Xbox as a multimedia center have arrived too early and involved too much compromise from the point of view of their public of players. As a result, the incredible goodwill that the company managed to save after the debacle of the "red circle of death" of the 360 was marred by its weaknesses still online, activated by Kinect and foiling the game.
Conversely, Sony, humiliated by the fate it received after the launch of the PS3 for $ 599, took advantage and took the lead with the PS4. Microsoft has stopped officially declaring its sales in 2014, which probably tells you everything you need to know, but Sony has boasted in January of having sold 91.6 million PS4 to date. Although Switch stands at around 22.86 million euros, it was launched less than two years ago and is showing annual growth, while sales of aging home consoles are falling rapidly. VGChartz estimates that the Xbox One has sold over 40 million of its various SKUs, less than half of Sony's figure. The point is clear. Microsoft lost this war against Sony.
It should also be remembered that, even if the latest generation PS3 "beats" on the Xbox 360, the actual numbers are closer than you can imagine. While the incredible third-party game catalog of this console, combined with solid first-party deals, has captured hearts and minds, the global final sales of the 360 and PS3 have placed them at 4.4 million. units.
So, while we tend to look back and laugh at Sony's incredible hybris, the PS3 has regained relative sales parity at the end of the seventh generation. While Phil Spencer struggled to bring back Microsoft at this time, he refocused on the main players and strove to humanize the company with a personal style recognizing the strengths of the competition, even on sunny days. 360. They are not known as a reference while conquering.
His also It should be remembered that the Xbox brand has always been a non-starter in Japan. His audacity and daring makes it a difficult sell in Japan where, thanks to the perception that it is a great American product clearly not designed for the Japanese, he always struggled. In fact, the word "fight" is too generous – sales are terrible. According to Famitsu, only 15,339 Xbox Ones were sold in the country in 2018, bringing its estimated lifetime sales to 102,931 after five years. Microsoft is barely registering in Japan, one of the largest gaming markets in the world.
This puts Microsoft in an unenviable position: on the one hand, there is little interest for even launching in Japan – shipping costs, marketing and associated costs of support for Xbox infrastructure in the country (where, according to Media Create, only 68 Xbox were sold during the week ending on 17th February, compared to 65 958 switches) means that the company is losing money simply being The. However, if he ever hopes to win the Japanese players, Microsoft will not be able to abandon this territory either. Rocks on the left, difficult places on the right.
And what would happen if was there a way to penetrate this market that would eliminate much of the expenses associated with selling a big physical box to an audience that historically views it as the physical manifestation of an ignorant and alien intruder? And what would happen if Could Microsoft sell its games on hardware that is not in direct competition with its own product and has already been accepted by this audience, not to mention millions more around the world? Framed in this way, rumors of collaboration make more sense.
Getting games on low-specification devices also matches Microsoft's stated intentions. We have heard a lot about its intention to move the Xbox brand to the cloud and a multitude of devices via Project xCloud rather than just to the physical box under the TV; Indeed, Microsoft is already considering a future in which we will not buy more gaming hardware, but will pay a monthly subscription, Netflix type, and will play pretty much anything that has a screen and a connected wireless keyboard. With all the server-side processing, the delay is a major hurdle to overcome, especially with certain games and genres, but Microsoft must be relatively confident to be able to solve this problem to the satisfaction of a wide audience. As far as control is concerned, Switch is practically 1: 1 with the Xbox One (apart from analog shoulder triggers), so no problem there, but streaming is based on one factor: an Internet connection robust.
In Japan, we have seen Ubisoft's only Ubisoft streaming games (Assassin's Creed: Odyssey) and Capcom (Resident Evil 7). The country's digital infrastructure is on the eve of advance on most other countries, mainly because of its smaller footprint on the map. Although the North American public may be interested, the infrastructure of this vast continent is not suitable or, in some areas, completely non-existent.
With the progressive rollout of 5G, Microsoft may be betting that people will not rely on physical networks for ultra-fast connection speeds, but if it puts all its eggs in the basket, Japan is the place to be while the rest of the world is slowly catching up.
There is also another connection to Microsoft addresses by publishing to Nintendo hardware. When he bought the British developer Rare in 2002 for $ 375 million, his intentions were obvious: to divert from Nintendo part of this more lucrative and younger population to compliment the unconditional crowd he had drawn with Halo: Combat Evolved. The studio behind huge successes like GoldenEye 007 and family titles like Banjo-Kazooie just sounded like the ticket to develop the Xbox user base.
This plan never really worked, though; at least not to the extent desired by Microsoft. After the good day of the 90s, where Rare seemed to be totally In phase with Nintendo and its audience, the developer has probably struggled to find his pace with Microsoft. The crazy, irreverent and British sensibilities of the studio have never really shone on the Xbox platform. The endearing oddities seem to have disappeared and, despite the glimpses of his former character, there is always a perception that the studio does not enough Insert into the Microsoft X-Shaped box.
Microsoft knows it. he knows he is sitting on a gold mine of intellectual property that simply does not interest the majority of his clients. This does not mean nobody buy them, but the Venn diagram of Halo, gears and Forza The fans simply do not have enough links with players who can recite the entire Great Mighty Poo song. There is a rich nostalgia for the retro production of the society she has tried to exploit with the marvelous Rare Replay but, again, it's for nothing if the audience of your product is on another console.
Of course, Nintendo players are younger, but there are also players under 30 who miss Rare, who have adopted the convenience of Switch and jumped on the opportunity to replay. Dark Perfect on a handheld or share a banjo with their children. The nostalgia of these first polygonal games of the PlayStation / N64 era is in full swing; Rare games would sell at the bucket on the switch.
And if Microsoft and Nintendo manage to work out, they're just a leap forward from – whisper it – GoldenEye 007 escaping from prison for N64 licenses. That this dinosaur, a vestige of the Cold War, can flourish in the world of modern gaming is no longer a subject of conversation, but it is a tempting possibility.
Recall also that Microsoft already publishes on rival consoles to attract a different audience; Minecraft This is the perfect example of a financial partnership between platforms that makes financial sense and where an agreement with Nintendo is just as logical. Some series of signatures already address perfectly to the public of the Xbox. It is therefore much less incentive to put Halo on Switch, for example, and even less likely that a "good" Mario game appears on a non-Nintendo system. The rare angle, however, would seem to be profitable for both companies, and that's why it makes so much sense.
And the money is always the bottom line. If it is possible to access a market that a company does not target, the principles can quickly disappear – that's the job. Exclusive offers that seemed watertight can suddenly be bent or broken completely. Remember the famous "Capcom Five", five exclusive GameCube announced in 2002. Among these games, only P.N.03 remained GameCube only; one was canceled from the outset, while Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe and Resident Evil 4 jumped on other platforms. The famous game director, Shinji Mikami, said that he would leave his job or "cut his head", as the Japanese colloquial language says, if that translates roughly, if he manages to surrender on another platform. Nine months after the release of the GameCube, RE4 was already on PlayStation 2 and, with the upcoming launch of the game on Switch, in May of this year, we still have it. more precisely, Mikami-san too.
Even the most unlikely, impious unions can quickly come to fruition. If, at the end of the millennium, you had asked a Sega fan if Sonic could one day appear on a Nintendo console, he would probably have thrown a virtual computer into disgust. In December 2001, however, Sonic Adventure 2 was on GameCube and Sonic Advance on Game Boy Advance. In the shortest possible time, the biggest of the rivals became super boyfriend and the unthinkable was a reality.
Although we were dying to see Microsoft's leading franchises on Switch, or conversely, weird things happened and there is lot exciting crossover potential in the future. Who knows, a banjo or a master amiibo boss may not be as crazy an idea as we thought at the beginning of the year.
[ad_2]
Source link