Once again someone saved me a lot of typing.
IMO Madden 2001 looked like NFL2K1 in BIG HEAD MODE. Why the heck does EA insist on the NFL players having bigger heads than a typical mascot?

Someone mentioned MS mishandling of EA. I couldn't disagree more here. EA wants everyone to pucker their lips up to give them a nice kiss on the rear. They are in bed with Sony and that is all there is to it. I can still easily remember EA telling Sega that they wouldn't release a Madden game on the DC until the system had sold units (which Sega then did with a great launch) yet they developed for the PS2 before it even launched. I have very little that is good to say about EA. They have a God type syndrome and most of their games have gone down hill. NBA Live is a prime example. When it comes to EA games I buy them if there isn't an alternative that is close in quality. If you give me 2 games that are very close then I'll put down the EA title every time. I personally root for Sega every year just due to the God syndrome that EA seems to have taken on. Just my opinion of course.

I won't go as far with the God syndrome that you mentioned - but given the alternative of a 2k offering from Sega and EA's sports line - Sega has yet to let me down.

I know this is getting off-topic... but I can't believe the stranglehold EA has on sports games, especially football. The Madden name killed NFL 2k3 this past year, and the two were very similar games. I have a couple of friends who recently got a PS2. I offered to get them 2k3 for 10 bucks, and they turned it down since it wasn't Madden.

Sony definitely scored by having online play only on PS2, but I hope that that means more Xbox users will support Sega and not let their sports franchises die.

EA was putting out some really good quality sports titles way back on the SNES. They built a reputation over the years of delivering quality sports titles that sports fans have come to recognize. Naturally if you want to hav a leg up on the competition, these are guys you want on your side.

Okay back to the "original" discussion. Microsoft has dropped it's price to $179.99 ( looking at the BestBuy.com website). Now still with a new lower price, this isn't enough, for me at least to purchase XBox. I'm not saying this from a "fanboy" perspective. But again, at the time I bought my PS2, I looked at the game librarys of all three consoles. And the PS2 had the games that appealed to me the most. I guess you can say that for Joe Gamer, after hearing the hype surrounding certain titles, the same would apply.

Now this brings me back to the question of "return customers". Will the 15 year old kid who bought an XBox rather than a PS2 pony up ( or have his parents pony up) another $XXX for ANOTHER XBox? Will the NextBox, with all it's "new and improved" features aside, have the quality games that he or she will want to play? We've heard alot of talk about "potential" regarding the XBox, but with games being cancelled and/or delayed and the handful mediocre titles as exclusives, is this going to be potential unrealized?

I think we also have to ask the question; Will developers still be committed to Microsoft down the road? Without developers there's no games obviously. And the EA situation with Microsoft can not sit will in Redmond. Without a smaller installed base and with only 12-13% of the market share in this generation, will Microsoft be able to convince game developers to give the XBox another go around? Alot of developers might be saying "Yeah you have a decent user base, but how many of those are you going to hang on to?" Yes they can dump truckloads of money in front of developers. But if games don't SELL that really hurts a developer's bottom line. And as we've seen of Microsoft's first party games, they obviously don't have the creative know how to crank out decent titles.

Funny litte sidenote. On the Howard Stern Show yesterday morning, Howard said he had a XBox for his game room. Gary ( Baba Booey) said that the two games to get were Halo and, I'm not making this up, Gran Turismo. I don't think that helps when you get a free plug and the guy doing the plugging mistakes one of the competitions games for one of your own.

To continue off topic, I prefered NFL2K and 2K1 to the maddens at the time (2001 and 2002) I believe. But Madden 2003 was much more my style than NFL2K3. 2K3 was just TOO much of a sim for me, and was just way to difficult. Wax the computer on the easiest setting, bump it up and get killed.

Plus EA's NCAA 2003 is my all-time favorite football game, while segas College Football 2K3 was mediocre at best.

Sega does own the basketball world, though last years NBA Live was a big improvement on recent years versions.

Josh,

I'm pretty close to your opinion on the sports games. I actually owned Madden2003, NFL2K3, and NCAA2003 for a good while. All three had their place in my game collection.

Captain Harlock,

I don't really see truckloads of great games coming out for any system right now and I don't see everyone jumping ship on MS either. I wouldn't doubt that MS will be in bed with Sega like Sony is with EA before you know it and other relationships will come as well. If you can't encourage the developers to develop for your system then buy the developing company! That is the way that Sony did a few of them since the PSX and that is the way MS is handling things. To be honest the best game I've seen out in a long time is RTCW for the Xbox. I haven't found much else reason to spend money on a new game for any of the 3 systems since I bought Metroid a while back.

It was me who mentioned MS mishandling EA I think... I won't hesitate to agree with you that alot of key developers think they're too cool for school - Capcom and EA are the two biggest I can think of. I do however think that EA is a key developer and since Sony cuts them a deal, MS is going to have to if they want to keep them around. It's totally crappy and stupid on EAs part, but what can you do? They do make some great games - even though nearly their entire E3 booth this year was sequels. I think Capcom is overrated too, but I still think MS should suck up to the key developers a little more than they do. They even ticked off Tecmo pretty good - Tecmo delivered a CG animation that was a few minutes long showing off the latest Team Ninja game... they even paid for it themselves. MS got the material and edited it down to a 5 second clip and showed that at the press conference. Tecmo was pissed... there's a few million bucks down the toilet. MS apoligized for their mistake. If it wasn't for Tecmo, there would've been only 2 Xboxes sold in Japan instead of 30 or whatever.

Actually I believe I am free to call M$ anything I wish, if it bothers you don't read my posts. As Josh stated I have been defending the xbox and M$ in here and there was no bashing or flame baiting of any consoles in my posts. I am a proud xbox owner and I even own stock in the company.

Funny, last I saw this version of xbox was getting kaoraoke (sp?) and they were working on the digital recording functions either for a new all in one xbox or for xbox 2. If you know for certain what features M$ and Sony want to put in their next game consoles please share.

Microsoft didn't get where they are by designing better software from the ground up. They try to beat their competitors or they buy them out. So far what they have done in the console is not much different. I agree they screwed up with the contracts for components as their lawsuit with nvidia pretty much proved that earlier. It usually takes them a few shots with a product to get it right anyway, the consoles won't be that different.

Assuming that the Japanese (asian) market will go with Sony is a pretty good way to go. They haven't shared any love with the Xbox and they likely will not. I don't however agree that if Sony puts out a console with no games, that a M$ console with good games that cater to the Asian market would not sell. Obviously there are other issues to consider (will the game I really want to play come out a week after the ps3 or will I have to wait 6 months to use this thing?) It's still too earlier to tell who will come out swinging when the new consoles are launched. At this point I would say M$ will put up a better fight but Sony will probably take the lead in the Asian market and depending on launch title could lead/share/follow Xbox2 in US.

I am pretty sure they knew they wouldn't be number 1 this time around and probably next. I imagine they are working off the same business model they do for everything else, 3rd times a charm. After having viewed the way they do business for quite some time now, I will also say that I would not put anything past them. They designed a great console, now they need to figure out how to get people to make more great games for it and to get people to buy it. I would expect them to address this before Xbox2 and I think those of you who think that Sony should be crowned the winner of the next generation 2 years before it comes out will be surprised.

It's still childish and it undermines everything intelligent you have to say... I like my Xbox and I'm not a big fan of Microsoft either... I don't own stock in the company. It's enough of a flame bait to start this argument between you and me.



Microsoft doesn't even know yet what they're going to do with xbox 2, and all I know about Sony's next gen is kinda old news now. Karaoke function on the Xbox was planned a long time ago, so that's nothing new either... and I don't know what you mean by digital recording functions.

Not really the same with their games division. They've bought up a few developers, but I don't think you realize just how tight with money they are.

Most people in Japan bought the PS2 because it was also a DVD player... they could wait for the software. MS will undoubtedly fail in Japan for Xbox 2. Especially at launch. In the US, I agree that it will be a much tighter race. However, even though I'm an avid Xbox supporter, I just don't see them beating Sony in the next gen.

That's quite possible they're just looking ahead to Xbox 3. However, I don't think that's very smart either. I also don't see how you can look at their business practices and come to the conclusion that they operate this way. They are in no hurry to develop a smart business model or even to follow the brilliant business model set up by Sony or even make it better. Right now anyway, they're not interested in changing the way they do things one bit. They're expecting the world to change around them and it's not going to. Maybe it works in the US, but not in other countries. They aren't even localizing more than 1% of their games they release into the Asian market. Their advertising doesn't really change much from country to country either. Sony is successful because they have set up shop in each country and have given each entity plenty of control and decision making ability. MS runs everything out of Washington - their head of Asian Market is American and lives in Redmond and doesn't speak any language other than English and he has all the power. Stupid. Until stuff like this changes, they'll just have to settle for number 2 (number 0 in Asian markets).

Well actually my point was that Microsoft is in a position that they could dump a truckload of money at a developers door and they would be dealing, currently mind you, from a position of "weakness" and not "strength". That in buying exclusive rights to certain games when they have a smaller user base puts some game companys at a disadvantage. If you check my previous comments you'll see that.

But I do agree with you that we are currently at a "down" point in the release cycle. And certainly not every game is going to be earth shattering.

Hmm, I don't know you all. Ever since Christmas, every big game store I go to here (in Tokyo) has been promoting XBOX really really heavily. When Steel Battalion came out, they had 4 or 5 sound proof mini-cubicles with a 5.1 setup and anyone could just play, in one of the big stores in Akihabara (electric city).

True, PS2 leads now (Duh), but every one of the kids I teach that has asked me about video games has said that they want to buy an XBOX. When I tell them I have one, they always say "COOOOOOL!!" Of course, this is hardly considered a credible forecast into the future of gaming systems, but that's the word on the streets.

Japanese spend a lot of money, but in these times, if a family has a PS2, they'd have to be pretty well off to justify getting an XBOX. So, we'll see how it goes for PS3 and XBOX2.

These numbers are a bit dated ( from the week of March 30th, 2003) but here are some weekly hardware sales numbers from Tendogames.com....


1. Game Boy Advance SP (Nintendo) 101,500 / 454,100
2. Playstation 2 (Sony) 56,700 / 878,600
3. Game Boy Advance (Nintendo) 20,900 / 750,300
4. GameCube (Nintendo) 9,400 / 197,000
5. PS One (Sony) 1,400 / 30,100
6. Xbox (Microsoft) 1,200 / 46,100
7. WonderSwan Crystal (Bandai) 700 / 16,200
8. Game Boy Color (Nintendo) 380 / 9,100
9. WonderSwan Color (Bandai) 370 / 9,600


The XBox, as we all know, has been getting absolutley PUMMELED in Japan.

The X-box is almost at the end of any shop in Japan, even with their nice sound systems and booth.Feel sad for it, like Microsoft Japan just does not know what to do.X-box Live was not a success also.And to make matters worse,Sony just announced they gonna get all Playstation 2 in Japan connected to broadband!

Sorry this is simply not true. The reason that there were shortages of the PS2 here at launch was due to Japan sales being so good that Japan told SCEA you will not get the units you want.

Sony made more money from the PS2 in Japan than they did by shipping them here to sell them at $299. so SCEA got the left over units until production was ramped up to give them more.

I know some people believe the stories of this devious plan by Sony to trick people into wanting a PS2 by not having units to sell people. If this was the case you would have seen a flood right before XMas to capture the last minute frenzy. Instead the units continued to trickle in for months.

Yeah, gcribbs is right on that. Sony is a Japanese company, the PS2 was selling great over there and at a higher price (meaning less of a loss per unit) so they wisely allocated more units for there than over here until sales calmed down over there.

I'm sure creating hype played at least a small part in the decision, but I can assure SCEA would have rather had the units over here at the time.

It is true. You're right that their 'shortage' didn't affect Japan, but that's totally meaningless. Sony knew the demand for PS2s was high in Japan for months before the US launch. They had plenty of time to prepare for another market... You're fooling yourself if you believe they just ran out.

"Sony made more money from PS2 in Japan..." Sony wasn't making any money off the PS2. They lost money on every unit sold.

It wasn't my main point to discuss what Sony did shady in the US launch of the PS2... you can believe what you want. I've heard it both ways and I can see either side being true - however, when you hear it from someone working for Sony, you tend to believe that.

"if this was the case you would have seen a flood before xmas" No... not necessarily. Do beanie babies flood the stores right before xmas? Cabbage Patch dolls? Sony was capable of meeting the pre-orders and the demand... they simply chose not to. It doesn't really matter either way - In your scenario - Sony failed to meet the demand due to sheer stupidity because their manufacturing plants were more than capable of filling the pre-orders... In my scenario, they failed to meet the demand on purpose because they are brilliant. Either way they managed to sell 40 million consoles and are positioned to win the next gen console war as well. Also either way, my point with that was simply that Sony can sell consoles without any software.

Sony is a Japanese company, but SCEA is an American company. That's why they're successful in several markets. Microsoft is an American company, and Microsoft Japan is an American company, and Microsoft Korea is an American company. SCEA had plenty of notice and resources to make for a successful launch and filling pre-orders yet they didn't. If your profit comes from software and you don't have any software, isn't it kinda wise to hold off on selling your loss leader until you have something profitable available to make up the difference? In the electronics industry - a few months could make a big difference in hardware costs.

I heard this information directly from multiple people at SCEA so I trust my information on this.

Not sure who at SCEA you heard it from(do not say since if they work at the Foster City main office they can get fired for leaking information even wrong info). I just trust the multiple people I heard this from.

sure they lost a small amount of money. However they lost far less selling it in japan since the units did not have to be shipped all the way to the US to be sold. Why sell units for a larger loss here when they can sell them for a smaller loss in Japan?

I do agree that they were able to sell units without many games at the time even in Japan(although that was more a dvd player issue at first) I do think that people are willing to buy a PS system since they know they will get good games at some point. They did for the PS1 they did for the PS2 and they will for the PS3.

I wouldn't say who the person is or what their job title is (since that would probably give the identity away as well)... I'll ask them again about it... it's been awhile since we talked about Sony anyway.

Sony Japan was more than capable of filling the initial demand and the steady flow of hardware sales in the following months... why would they need to re allocate US designated PS2s over to Japan? It doesn't even make sense logistically. Also - if you'll remember a few years back, SCEA released about 4 different stories to answer the question "where are the PS2s??!"

Let's assume for a moment that you're right... let's say that the units were shipped to Japan instead of the US... it still means they were dishonest about it and the results were the same - hype generated and they were able to save money on hardware while waiting for software to arrive. In any case - it was the most successful crappy launch ever.

It seems that I recall the lack of PS2 units available at launch were because of a chip that was very similar to the chips used in ICBM's and the fear that terrorists could have alot of fun with them.

hmm...The PS2 hype train rumors still exist today.

I don't know what other reasons Sony gave to explain the shortage, but the only one I heard officially was that they were having troubles with producing the EE chip. A quick google search turns this up:

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20001027S0012

It seems perfectly plausible to me. IMHO, they really had nothing to gain by artificially constraining supplies. Hype on the PS2 was already running red hot at the time so trying to pump it up even more would have been useless. If the units were readily available, they would have sold a million of them in the US on the first day and hit 2 million by February. As it is, I don't think they hit the 1 million mark in the US until well after December.

And in the long run, the overwhelming success of the PS2 was pretty much a foregone conclusion. Everyone in the gaming industry knew it. They might not have liked it, but they knew the PS2 was going to be huge and in a way it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. It killed the DC before it even launched. When you have that kind of heat, trying to create some kind of artificial scarcity only hurts your short term profits while enriching eBay gougers.

This is not necessarily true. If people come in and they CAN'T get something then they want it more (a flaw in human nature). If they see a ton of a something sitting for days then they think and say, "Well, I have time to think about this decision. Maybe I'll buy one in a week." To think that Sony would have just sold millions on millions at launch if they had them available doesn't ring true to me either. They would have sold to the original crazed gamers like me who buy every system that comes out and to the Sony fanatics who demanded the PS2 was the best system before they ever played a game but they would not have necessarily sold out to all of the other people who were debating the idea. I personally think Sony intentionall built hype for the machine by not meeting demand on purpose. This way they could get news headlines like, "PS2 the hottest thing and selling on Ebay for as much as $1200!" I honestly don't believe everything that Sony says. After all, they still deny ANY problems with the original Playstation systems which I personally owned 3 of due to them being faulty and was written about in all the game mags.
p.s. Please, no statistics stuff again. You don't need statistics for something to be true.