ELECTRONIC ARTS

The will milk a franchise until it's t!ts are dry dead, hanging on the floor and all wrinkled with massive pimples.

Low and behold it is an ugly site to witness what EA will do to a game in order to make money. Harlem pimps have better reputation of exploitation for cash than these fellas.

Not only will they re-hash the same old stuff to death but EA has found ways to sell games without ever making a simple improvement or upgrade. Madden is the biggest prostitute on the market right now. Every year they just update the roster, change a few names and add bogus ratings then put a fresh face on the cover and there you have the BRAND NEW Madden game. Like any good pimp, EA knows how to limit competetion so they went out and bought exlusive rights to the hookers for a bizillion dollars. Now that is some real hustlin right there!!!

Today's price really confirms the idea that another major price drop might occur right before Christmas.

1) July is a slow month to announce a price especially since this generates buzz in the industry and gets you good press time. I understand it's E3 but they could have announced the drop and then say it would be affective like November or December. No they said the price change was immeadiate and everywhere in NA territory.

2) 80 GB model is just a gimmick to see if people bite on it. Why would you buy 20 extra gig and Motorstorm for an extra $100 buck when you can get an 100 GB drive on the web for $35-40 and get Motorstorm at gamestop for $30-35? Sony is just testing the market to see if there is any real demand for this size of hard drive. They know having multiple SKU is a bad idea especially after the Xbox 360 Elite. This package has very little value to it and Sony knows it very clearly.

So I think the long term thinking is stop the bleeding right now with a $100 price cut and test the 80 GB model's demand. I expect around November that Sony will announce a 2nd price cut of $100 going to a full $399.99 and making the 80 GB the standard SKU and discontinue 60 GB model.

Why Sony does this?

1) Microsoft is bound to respond with a price cut of their own sooner or later but sometime near the Halo 3 launch at which point the gap between the 360 and PS3 is again up to $200. Sony will not sit there and wait to shrink it's market share so they will need to counter once more.

2) Many people don't understand that the high price of the PS3 is due to Blue Ray diodes which are now becoming less expensive to mass produce and higher yields. At some point Sony has to make a BOLD move and risk even greater loss in hopes of staying close in the race and hoping the technology becomes the industry standard in a few years so they come out ahead.

3) We already know BD is currently leading the HD format market and if by the end of the year most retailers pull the plug on HD-DVD then Sony can take deep breaths. This single factor could lead to the mentioned price cut because with the format war over, Sony can afford to take up losses in the hardware department knowing they can recover them from royalties of BD movies. Look at it this way, Sony is trying to create a large user base to make money from both game and BD movie sales so either way they get royalties from every single disc sold. No Hollywood studio will deny a 10-12 million userbase already established for BD by the end of the year.

I have Vegas on 360 and RFOM on PS3 but I spend more time with Vegas because I just like the gameplay much better.

Few things you should try:

1) Learn to use cover-sniping - this done when you in cover and have a SR and then you zoom button but the camera remain the same and when you peek out you are switched instantly to sniper scope camera for an accurate kill. Try it this is one of the most effective techniques to get massive head shot kills in multiplayer. See when you are in cover you can aim the reticle to the head of the enemy and before you peek hit zoom and there you have deadly one shot kill. Mastering this technique can make a seasoned sniper very dangerous and almost unbeatable at long ranges.

2) C4 - my favorite accessory because of it's versatility and massive damaging effects in a small confined area. Learn how to stick them to wall and properly detonate them from distance. Must have for camping snipers who need to cover their back. Also the throw and detonate technique is great for precision explosions because unlike a grenade you don't have wait for it to hit the ground to explode. Launch it in their blow it while its 3-4 feet above the ground send a deadly shockwave thorugh a room or corridor.

Hope this gets you started let me know if you want more techinques or creative ways to use weapons and explosives.

My understanding:

Sony actually has respectable worldwide studios in place for development. Microsoft hardly ever makes their games because they mostly acquire other studios like Rare and Bungie or find independent devs like Epic or Bioware to make exclusive on thier system. See the way Sony thinks, they believe instead of paying upfront for an exclusive they rather create one through their one their own studios and not have worry about paying top dollar once a game becomes a hit. For example Sony's Santa Monica studio created God of War which became a massive hit upon release. Now if GOW was made by some 3rd party developer than they hike up the price for exclusive rights and charge Sony a lot money or even threaten to defect to Microsoft and go multi platform much like GTA and DMV 4. Sony is very smart they know every new generation of gaming has new trends and new hit franchises so they rather not pay old ones with rehashed titles. They tend to evaluate what they "must have" like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and Grand Turismo versus what they "can afford to lose" like GTA and DMV 4. They will lock up any crucial franchise they think will be very important to them like when they bought Guerilla games and basically financed Killzone 2 and it's $20 million budget.

Microsoft keeps buying or signing studios to exclusive deals to a very high rate up until this point however some of their big name aquisitions have yet to make a sales impact like RARE which was once a quality studio now has the burden of making the 360 a more family oriented system with kiddy games like Viva Pinata. The deal with Epic to keep Gears of War 360/PC exclusive cost Microsoft a lot of money and lately Bioware has been cashing in on Microsoft's willingness to pay top dollar to make exclusive games.

Bottom line as long Microsoft has the pockets and will to pay developers to keep a game exclusive, you will keep seeing all these big name deals and huge splashes. However to this day, only 1 Microsoft aquistion Bungie has really payed off anything of significance in terms of sales. That single purchase may have saved the entire Xbox division from doom.

LOL sheep keep forgeting their history.

Remember why you lost you market dominance in the first place back in the N64 vs Playsation geneneration?

Cause your mighty console maker chose to stick to dying hardware of which the usage of cartridge was heavily favored versus optical media.

That single decision caused the downfall of the entire Nintendo empire hence leading Sony to create it's own platform to support the CD. Nintendo could have ruled the video game industry forever only if it had the common sense to adjust to changing times and adapt it's strategy according. Imagine Nintendo and Sony in a mutual partnership creating a conglomerate monopoly on the video game industry. Sad to see Nintendo fall from grace and lose billions in revenue because of a simple choice.

Anyway Nintendo still continues the same trend of decision making today except this inability to stay with the times is given a new spin and claimed as "thinking outside the box" when creating the Wii. In fact in terms of hardware the Wii is a old hardware infrastruture perfected by other risk takers such as Sony and Microsoft so that Nintendo can now add it to it's hardware and play the safe card without having to develop complicated hardware and advanced graphics proceessors and risking failure from such highly sophisticated techonology.

I salute Microsoft and Sony for having the balls to develop such advanced machines and the willingness to take risk of failure in order to make progress. If Nintendo was the only choice in the market then PC would have consoles beat by decades rather than months or years.

Thank you Nintendo for creating you own worse enemies Microsoft and Sony and giving us gamers more choices in the video game industry.

[QUOTE="ghettocheeze"] ....smerlus

business don't work like that... If MS counted every console they replaced as a console sold, then they'd be breaking quite a few accounting laws and be in Federal trouble.

Well in fact Microsoft never claims units as "sold" that is why in every one of their press release they used the terminology very carefully and say units "SHIPPED" in the distrubution channel. Which is probably a safeguard to protect themselves against legal action. Again they never actual report what has been sold but only the number that has left the factory. For better clarification, they only tell the the numbers from PRODUCTION meaning what they have made in factories and send to be shipped. Now they can be very unclear on whether those numbers are units send to retailers or freight carriers for actual replacement on the product. See this way Microsoft never falsifies any data or number and the can just choose to remain silent on the real figures without ever having to release them. It is totally legal and has been used by many companies even Sony did the same when it lauched the PS2 and had the DVD laser problems but those were mostly repairs not full replacements and only a fraction of the consoles suffered from it in the early life of the hardware which Sony fixed within a year. But Microsoft is going on it's second year and the toll keeps rising and now they finally had to admit a hardware problem without having to face class action lawsuits from consumers.

This is serious news because this is an admission of guilt by Microsoft and really a last resort measure because they couldn't solve the problem in time and would have faced major backlash from media outlets and comsumer agencies. Again this very bad for Microsoft as this could really reflect poorly espcially if the consensus among the general public is established that Microsoft is a faulty manufacturer with a high rate of failure. Microsoft need to address this very quicky to retain confidence or risk seeing it's market share quickly getting dissolved by Nintendo and Sony. The latter being a vicious and cruel marketing generator with a known reputation of having the ability to put consoles out of buisness based on sheer propaganda. Sony is a wounded dog right now looking to make a fatal attack and this could be really apparent next week at E3 when they begin to selectively take shots at the rival and the only thing going for Sony right now is that they have a reasonably well made products with far less failure rate. This could really become a selling point especially if a price drop is announced like most analysts predict. It may be enough to turn the tide in favor of the PS3 if Microsoft continues to fumble this sutuation. Extended warranty means very little or next to nothing to people if the console continues to fail from hereon. Finally I would like to say this Microsoft needs to be honest and upfront about this and can no longer keep applying a bandage to the bleeding (warranty) when in fact they need major stitches (revamped hardware model).

This is a serious topic because I own a 360 myself and go lookup my handle on Xbox Live before you start to flame me.

Anyway the numbers are staggering when you look at it. Microsoft said replacement would cost 1.05 billion.

1) That would mean even if every replaced 360 was a full model that would make it around 2.6 million units give or take. Now I know not every unit will be replaced but most likely if you get 3 rings then you need a new one.

2) That would be 23% of the 11 million units sold claimed by Microsoft, are defective or have failed. Less than the number that DailyTech.com has reported to fail which they say is closer to 33%.

CONCLUSION: Again this raw data and guess work but even if the number is close to 20-25% than that is an alarming high rate of failure for any product.

Now the real question: HOW MANY ACTUAL UNIT HAS MICROSOFT SOLD?

Please serious answer only as I'm trying to understand what the real market share of 360 vs Wii vs PS3.

In my understanding I believe Nintendo might have actually supassed 360 in units sold when you adjust the replacement ratio.

I don't get what's the point of this useless strategy?Halo franchise basically popularized this form of advertising but why does a behemoth like Halo need such a campaign?Halo 3 will sell on hype alone then why waste your money on this type of stuff?

Viral marketing especially stuff like Ilovebees.com is only noticed by the hardcore gamers and fanboys. Microsoft needs to target casual gamers and the best way would be in your face type stuff or using major media outlets like MTV, myspace or youtube. The general public would have never found Ilovebees if it wasn't for the fanboys who watched every single frame of the trailer. Why advertize to a group of people who are going to buy your product anyway?

Viral ads are helpful for small indie devs who are trying to create hype not a media machine like Halo. It's one thing to do tie-in with famous products and services but why start a random website thatno even cares about and to display your product in it?

Overrated: Halo 3

Underrated:Unreal Tournament 3

Vance_009

Exactly my thoughts. Halo can't hold a candle to UT. console fps will always be inferior to pc shooters.

CS + UT > Halo + GEoW + PDZ + Shadowrun combined.