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Phil Harrison: Microsoft making $1B bet on Xbox One games

Seriously, stating how much money you're spending to try and show dedication to game development is insane. It's just another PR statement from MS to try and take away from how bad they look right now. I expect them to make some good games for sure, but coming from the company that stated they already dropped $400 Million on an NFL deal, $1 Billion for games doesn't really seem that big coming from them.
 
The more I read the more I think this thing is stupid.

I'm playing a game, my brother walks in, Kinect recognizes him in the room, he says 'Xbox Home', it logs me out of the game?

Man, this is gonna piss off a lot of people.
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
Seriously, stating how much money you're spending to try and show dedication to game development is insane. It's just another PR statement from MS to try and take away from how bad they look right now. I expect them to make some good games for sure, but coming from the company that stated they already dropped $400 Million on an NFL deal, $1 Billion for games doesn't really seem that big coming from them.
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What?

$1 billion is a stupid amount for games alone, possibly more than Sony and Nintendo will invest combined.

How can you complain about this?
 
NotUS said:
The more I read the more I think this thing is stupid.

I'm playing a game, my brother walks in, Kinect recognizes him in the room, he says 'Xbox Home', it logs me out of the game?

Man, this is gonna piss off a lot of people.
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I mean... if you're brothers that big of a dickhead, couldn't he just as easily press the power button?
 
Great news. The bet word made me realize though, it would be like Nintendo saying they are making a $20M bet on SW development.
 
NotUS said:
The more I read the more I think this thing is stupid.

I'm playing a game, my brother walks in, Kinect recognizes him in the room, he says 'Xbox Home', it logs me out of the game?

Man, this is gonna piss off a lot of people.
Click to expand...

Kinect will already be tracking you as Player One. It will see the controller in your hand and it can see if you're talking. It should be fairly easy to prevent people from fucking you over.
 
Its kinda sad to see this investment get looked down because of all the bad pr and decisions microsoft made. This is good for like 20~25 games or so for development alone. So im wondering if marketing is included or not.
 
Hix said:
What?

$1 billion is a stupid amount for games alone, possibly more than Sony and Nintendo will invest combined.

How can you complain about this?
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My point is that it means absolutely nothing in terms of game output, game dev costs (they gonna be stupid like Capcom and RE6 with 600 people working on one game?), marketing costs, what games are for the core and what are for typical Kinect games, etc.

Amount spent doesn't show efficiency at all. Going back to Capcom and RE6 needing 600 people, Naughty Dog for example, has 200-300 employees working on multiple projects at the same time while have way more logical dev costs. Until we know every single detail, this is just MS shouting a huge number to make people wet themselves without seeing anything that comes out of this massive sum.
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
My point is that it means absolutely nothing in terms of game output, game dev costs (they gonna be stupid like Capcom and RE6 with 600 people working on one game?), marketing costs, what games are for the core and what are for typical Kinect games, etc.

Amount spent doesn't show efficiency at all. Going back to Capcom and RE6 needing 600 people, Naughty Dog for example, has 200-300 employees working on multiple projects at the same time while have way more logical dev costs. Until we know every single detail, this is just MS shouting a huge number to make people wet themselves without seeing anything that comes out of this massive sum.
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Certainly but the very same article relates that this is coming off the back of 15 internally developed exclusive games, 8 of which are new IPs.

$1 billion is a crazy number and Sony won't even come close to it for game investment, so I feel at least Microsoft deserve some kudos (hint hint) for being willing to sink so much money for games alone.
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
My point is that it means absolutely nothing in terms of game output, game dev costs (they gonna be stupid like Capcom and RE6 with 600 people working on one game?), marketing costs, what games are for the core and what are for typical Kinect games, etc.

Amount spent doesn't show efficiency at all. Going back to Capcom and RE6 needing 600 people, Naughty Dog for example, has 200-300 employees working on multiple projects at the same time while have way more logical dev costs. Until we know every single detail, this is just MS shouting a huge number to make people wet themselves without seeing anything that comes out of this massive sum.
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Of cource it's PR, what do you think these interviews are?

There is nothing mindboggling that was said. It’s basically what every first party console manufacturer says, it’s a variation of “We are investing 20 mil. In digital games”, “We are committed to hardcore games”, “More first party publishes games are coming” etc.

I think you are making too big a deal of it.
 
Insane amount. Sounds promising. But could still be NFL and other large licensing deals if these somehow tie back into games.
 
LiquidSolid said:
Exactly how much money equals one good game? Over $100 million like Halo 4?
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Not every game is a Halo 4 (Microsoft's most expensive game ever by far)

Are you suggesting development costs will come anywhere near that for games on average this gen? If so, the industry is done.
 
Hix said:
Are you suggesting development costs will come anywhere near that for games on average this gen? If so, the industry is done.
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Development costs in general are rising. They might not reach Halo 4 levels, but it's still unsustainable.
 
Wow, that's a good chunk of money. I wonder if they will use any of it to underscore the fact that it will play games. ;-p
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
My point is that it means absolutely nothing in terms of game output, game dev costs (they gonna be stupid like Capcom and RE6 with 600 people working on one game?), marketing costs, what games are for the core and what are for typical Kinect games, etc.

Amount spent doesn't show efficiency at all. Going back to Capcom and RE6 needing 600 people, Naughty Dog for example, has 200-300 employees working on multiple projects at the same time while have way more logical dev costs. Until we know every single detail, this is just MS shouting a huge number to make people wet themselves without seeing anything that comes out of this massive sum.
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Your clutching at straws man, historically MS have been fairly efficient with their software development, they've been doing this for a long time. Halo 4, thier block buster game was a little over $100mill + marketing, and thats with some of the leading minds in the industry.

$1b is alot for any company, regardless of how rich they are.
 
Marcel said:
Development costs in general are rising. They might not reach Halo 4 levels, but it's still unsustainable.
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I think there are already like 5 of the major companies that said dev cost are not rising.
Because they optimized their content pipeline this gen.

Devs can work faster and create content faster don't have to hand optimize a lot of content like they are most likely doing right now.
 
Marcel said:
Development costs in general are rising. They might not reach Halo 4 levels, but it's still unsustainable.
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If this is the case then the industry is screwed and we should be ready to embrace our new handheld gaming overlords.

Where does this leave Sony or Nintendo who can't pull $1 billion dollars out of their asses to sink into games alone?

Cave Johnson said:
Wait what? So Remedy's new "exclusive" + Ryse are an extra games on top?
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Yes, they aren't in the count. The Yahoo article on this states specifically that they are 15 internally developed titles.

Whether that moneyhatting extends beyond Ryse and Titan for third parties is another issue.
 
Maybe they shouldn't have fired all their talent this gen, then they could have saved a fair chunk of money in layoff and startup fees.
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
WERE SPENDING A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY WE CARE BOUT CORE GAMER!
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So they spent 1 Billion for shits and giggles? I hope E3 blows our faces off. This also begs the question, how much did Sony invest in their 1st party/Exclusives?

E3 is going to be amazing for both companies!
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
Seriously, stating how much money you're spending to try and show dedication to game development is insane. It's just another PR statement from MS to try and take away from how bad they look right now. I expect them to make some good games for sure, but coming from the company that stated they already dropped $400 Million on an NFL deal, $1 Billion for games doesn't really seem that big coming from them.
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No it's not, it shows commitment to a platform and commitment to an area where "US GAMERS" thought they needed improvement the most.
 
Hix said:
Not every game is a Halo 4 (Microsoft's most expensive game ever by far)

Are you suggesting development costs will come anywhere near that for games on average this gen? If so, the industry is done.
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I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying building studios up from scratch is expensive, often leads to development issues and that leads to budgets that balloon enormously. 343 isn't the only example of this by the way, Eidos Montreal is the other recent example and we've already heard rumours of something similar happening with Black Tusk. So I just think it's a bad way to build up your first party lineup and can easily go wrong.

Oh and your comparisons to Sony and Nintendo are ridiculous. Why would either company need to invest that much money in the first place? Both are already well covered in terms of first party studios.
 
A lot of different first party games would be awesome, specially new IP's

Give us adventure / action / rpg's MS
 
mysteriousmage09 said:
WERE SPENDING A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY WE CARE BOUT CORE GAMER!
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Refreshingly enough you are the only one so far trying to shit up a MS thread so there is hope.

Glad to see they are investing in first party titles, we will see what this actually translates to come e3
 
Why should I care? Microsoft has not proven themselves capable of starting new studios and now we expect them to turn out gold with a bunch if new startups on their first shot?

They bought Bungie who were already well into making Halo. They bought Rare who hasn't made anything worthwhile since. They killed FASA. their last try at rolling out new studios en masse for a new system resulted n more games like Azurik and Brute Force than Halo.

Their one in house success has been Turn10 who were founded in 2001 and didn't release their first game until 2005. Somehow we're supposed to believe that all of these new studios will ramp up faster than them with more initial employees and most likely without a direct competitor to use as a template.

If this commitment existed 5 years ago we might actually know the pedigree of these studios. You know, like Sony did. Instead Ms is trying to buy their way out of first party negligence. They haven't gotten that to work for them yet.
 
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