The Future of Xbox Live
April 9, 2009In the year 2059 Microsoft and Sony have joined forces in the Entertainment Departments to merge the Xbox and Play station into one console called the X-Station. This 13th generation video game console targets both casual and hardcore gamers as their user base, but the X-Station is technologically more geared towards the hardcore gamers who are considered veteran players. The specific purpose of this device is to be an all in one media center source for every family’s home theatre centers. With a purchase of an X-Station users can freely stream all types of Media from their home user base pc. The X-station provides of the most comprehensively advanced codec system with allows it to view all types of formats with little or no ease. Besides streaming media it has the most powerful gaming community because of the merger of Xbox live. As well families can rent movies, TV series, watch HD programming trough an HDMI cable, surf the web with full windows 7000 support, have access to an application store, and able to get the latest news via real time.
The first milestone that led to the necessary merger of those two Departments is the problem with exclusive video games. The production values needed to create video games was getting higher and higher as technology advanced. The standard Video Game budget for a project was $20 million to $50 million and up. By the year 2032 video game producers couldn’t make enough profit to sustain their companies. This was all due to having exclusive games to specific consoles. Third party developers were becoming the future of video game producers as the first party developers were becoming a dying breed. The economic crisis that began in the year 2009 added more catalysis to this current situation in 2032.
Microsoft and Sony had to put forth incredible sums of money in these exclusive console games and copyrights for certain series. They both had to drive fans to buy their consoles by publishing their own games. They began to lose money, while Nintendo’s console Revolution continued to soar very strong in terms of sales. On August 27 2008 Pachter said, “The cost of making a game is so high that you need to recover it by selling a lot more units.”(Pachter, 2008) In 2032 Microsoft and Sony lost a total of 7 billion dollars due to lack of hardware sales. As well David Dennis, said “Third party (publishers) are looking at the same things we are and they want to put games into as many people’s hands as possible.” (David Dennis, 2008). Ever since the year 2007 up to 2059 all Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear solid games became multiplatform.
The second Milestone in the development of the X-Station was the massive success Nintendo achieved with their console and handheld. In the Year 2050 Nintendo released there 12th generation console called the Revolution, and then afterwards in the year 2054 Nintendo released next gen handheld console called the NintendoD3. These two entertainment devices managed to outsell Sony’s and Microsoft’s 12th gen console combined. Nintendo was getting an incredible amount of money by targeting casual gamers. Since 2006 when Nintendo first released the Wii they had taken over the niche of the casual gaming market, and continue to do so strongly in 2059. In order for Microsoft and Sony to get a better grasp of the gaming market they needed to merge their entertainment departments.
Relations from the past that factored into this present situation with the release of the X-Station began in the year 2005. During that time period the Wii managed to sell over 70 million units worldwide, and the Nintendo Ds and Dsi sold over a combined 250 million units worldwide. On the other hand the Sony had lost a great deal of money because of the price of their console and Microsoft couldn’t compete with Nintendo. During 2008 BMO Capital Markets analyst Ed Williams stated, “The lack of a dominant console means it’s too difficult (for software makers) to give up on a console.” With the PS3 or Xbox 360, you don’t have a clear winner like the PlayStation 2 or PlayStation were.”(Ed Williams, 2008) As time passed onto to the 2050’s exclusive video game deals were as good as dead.
The merger of both Entertainment departments occurred on November 22 2055 on national television at The Sony headquarters in Tokyo Japan. It is expected that with Sony’s arsenal of advance technology and music production studios combined with Microsoft’s talented crew and existing Xbox live user base will make the X-Station very successful in the near future.
Reference List
Wii. (2009, April 5). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wii&oldid=281912686
Era of exclusive video game deals ending. (Aug 27, 2008). In Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN2637967820080827?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
