It didn't take a lot for Microsoft, one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, to find a market to compete in where they would be widely viewed as the underdog. Just Sony, another of the richest and most powerful companies in the world.
Robert X. Cringely's latest I, Cringely column looks at three major changes, or "inflection points", as he refers to them with all due credit to Intel's Andy Grove, happening in the computer-audio-video-entertainment convergence we've all been waiting for now for nearly a decade. Those changes involve Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo and Google. He's predicting an Airport-Express like device for audio and video that will turn the Mac Mini into a PVR, coupled with an iTMS-like store for HD movies, designed to pre-empt what Microsoft is trying to do with the Xbox 360, which is basically the same thing except with gaming as the test case.
News is trickling out of E3 like treacle after an explosion in a molasses factory. So far:
Voodoo Extreme is reporting from the Microsoft press conference at E3 that the Xbox 360 console will be able to play the some Xbox titles via emulation. On his blog, Major Nelson also repeats the claim issued by Robbie Bach at E3: that the Xbox 360 will play "the most popular" Xbox titles. There are also other interesting bullet points, and surely more details will come out as the conference continues; MS is expecting between 25-40 titles for the new console in 2005, and something called "Xbox Live Marketplace" will allow gamers to create and sell for cash custom game content. (One assumes that "most popular" would include at least Halo and Halo 2--Ed.)
Alexander "The Man" Seropian has added screenshots to his 1Up.com blog; it features images from the Stubbs level editor and a screenshot from an unfinished level, where friendly robots are trying to kick his ass.
According to Forbes, Final Fantasy XI is indeed coming to the Xbox. The article does not go into any detail on the specifics, so it is unclear whether the original Xbox or Xbox 360 is the intended platform. The Final Fantasy series of RPGs has been a stalwart for Japanese console makers, Sony in specific over the past iterations of the PlayStation.
UPDATE: Reports from those viewing the live stream indicate that FFXI will be coming to the Xbox 360 and will support network play between PC and Xbox platforms.
Quake 4 has been officially announced for the Xbox 360 at E3, confirming its inclusion on the list of games for the new console released by Microsoft following the MTV launch event for the console.
Weapon respawn times for Warlock, Turf, Containment and Sanctuary have been added by Typher to HBO's weapon respawn page. Louis Wu posted the news at HBO.
A few stories today also on whether or not the Xbox 360 is going to play games for the original Xbox. Many cite backwards compatibility with the PlayStation as one of the PS2's primary advantages; according to this analysis of console backwards compatibility at hardgeus.com, Sony achieved this by including an entire PS1 on a chip inside the box, eschewing software emulation because PlayStation developers bypassed the official APIs in favor of the extreme optimizations they could get by writing directly to hardware, something that would have made emulating the older console's APIs in software utterly useless.
Last week, Xbox corporate vice president Peter Moore told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that Microsoft still doesn't know if they can make the new Xbox backwards compatible, but that a decision would be made by this Monday, May 16th. That meshes with what J Allard said after the MTV event. Ars Technica has taken a detailed look at the challenges posed by console backwards compatibility.
Bill Gates is quoted in this month's Time Magazine, featuring the Xbox 360 on the cover, as saying that when the PlayStation 3 launches, it will "walk right into Halo 3."
In last week's Weekly What's What Update, Frankie said:
We're quite some time away from announcing what our next game is and for which platform.
Some more Xbox 360 related items:
Major Nelson points out in his blog this Wired interview with J Allard.
The article clearly places Bungie's Halo and Halo 2 in the proper pivotal place in the Xbox's history:
Then came Halo 2. Microsoft gave its in-house studio, Bungie, a Hollywood-size production and marketing budget for the sequel. Elaborate teasers ran alongside movie trailers, and Bungie's preview at E3 in May 2004 wowed members of the game industry press. Last November, fans lined up around the block to pay their $50. When the stampede was over, the title had posted a bigger opening day - $125 million - than Hollywood's biggest-ever three-day opening weekend ($114 million for Spider-Man). As it turned out, Halo 2 lived up to its hype. Perhaps most important, it took full advantage of the Xbox's online capabilities, allowing players to trash-talk long distance in real time. In its third year, the Xbox division turned its first profit during what Ballmer refers to it as "the Halo 2 quarter."
However, aside from two oblique references without any specific information, there's nothing about a possible Halo 3.