Virgin games will now retail for $20 in the new DVD-style cases.

Also, say good-bye to your manual -- it's on the CD now. (The part of this article that I'm least fond of.)

They swear they're not cutting back on development costs for games, and will "continue to release high-quality games" -- so these aren't supposed to be "budget titles." We'll see.

I'm not immensely familiar with Virgin as a publisher -- what have they done? I'm sure I've got some of their stuff at home, but can't think of what.

What are your thoughts on this?

If I'm not mistaken Virgin used to be a major player in the PC games department, and that was about 10 years ago. The only game I know of that they did was the Seven Guest.

High quality games for only 20 dollars? I'll believe it when I see it. But if they can cut costs in other areas like packaging and the game manuel then maybe they have something. Also, they stated that if you want the manuel they will mail the consumer one free of charge.

Personally, I don't mind that manuels are put on Cd's. I bought Dungeon Keeper 2 two years ago and the manule for that game was on the cd. I just printed it on my printer. But in away, it does take away from the game. I do like the feel and the read of a good manuel, but if there able to cut cost in that area and leave other area's intact I'm all for it!

They're gonna cut $20-$30 off of the retail price by using smaller boxes and not including a printed manual? Whatever, chief.

Oooh, wait. You mean I can get Jimmy White Cue Ball, Screamer 4x4, AND Carmageddon2 for $40?! Dude, where do I sign up? Jimmy White Cue Ball is worth that by itself!

I did some sniffing around on their website and they are wholly owned by Titus (the French company who recently bought out Interplay). Virgin interactive also owns the rights to make GBA games featuring Tiny Toons, Flintstones, and Tom & Jerry. I'm sure the bidding was furious for those licenses.

It's always a sign of a truly solid company when their PR manager directly accuses their entire industry of "ripping people off." Wait, doesn't that mean that until now you were ripping people off as well?

I got a good laugh out of the thread title when I first saw it. *heh*

- Alan

The problem with this theory is that you can't double your sales by halfing your cost. At least not in this industry, yet.

It's just not financially feasible to charge $20/copy for games that cost $4 million+ to make, unfortunately. Believe me, we've looked at it from every angle.

I'm fairly familiar with most of the major companies' finances in the games industry. NONE of the publishers out there are getting stinking rich - most are losing money right now hoping that the console industry turns around in 2002. The lucky ones are in hiring freezes, the unlucky are laying off.

>I'm not immensely familiar with Virgin as a publisher

They got out of the North American PC market several years ago, because Virgin Interactive U.S. went boom. At one time Virgin owned Westwood Studios, but both of them were bought in a fire sale by EA, and EA killed several Virgin games, including some controversially violent ones (thrill kill) and switched their roles, so that Westwood was in charge of Virgin's properties (which included, at the time, Swords & Sorcery, which was ultimately killed by Westwood and picked up by Activision, where it was sold as Wizards & Warriors).

Stefan

If publishers are hoping that the console market turns around in 2002, then most will all lose huge profits. There is just to many publishers in the console market at this time, and most of them are putting out crap.

In addition, watch for the xbox to fail next year. And for all those PC publishers who thought they could get rich come crying back and asking for forgiveness. .

I remember when Virgin secured the Dune licence and got two developers to produce games for it, one a French company that made Dune I and the other was Westwood, who made the groundbreaking Dune II. I'd never heard of Westwood before that, and I don't think RTS was even a term back then. That was in...1992?

Tim (aka Gx_Farmer)
http://www.mrfixitonline.com

Yes, and actually Virgin produces a number of budget "white label" games around 1995 or so. I believe they also had rights to some of the early Bullfrog stuff, but my memory is a bit fuzzy. The Virgin label is a bit more prominent in Europe than here in the states.

- Alan

Xbox won't fail because Microsoft won't let it.

Microsoft will spend their way into the market. Every dollar they make is a dollar they're taking away from Sony, and Microsoft is ALWAYS focused and successful when they have a true competitor to shoot for.

They have something like $20 billion dollars in the bank, not to mention the fact that they're making more money every day. If they have to pump $5 billion into getting X-Box a 30% marketshare in consoles, it will be money well spent in the long run.

Think 2010. Think streaming movies to your TV over the Internet. Think cable/instant messaging/console/Internet/TiVO in one box. Microsoft has to win this game. They could EASILY turn this into a Netscape vs. Explorer battle if they want. In five years Sony could be gone if Microsoft spent to make it happen.

I think Adam has a point. Microsoft can absorb huge losses by virtue of being Microsoft. Look what they did to the peripheral market just a short time ago. The Console race might just be a marathon, not the sprint it's traditionally been.

-Andrew

I'm still left asking the question why we're talking about crappy kiosks and mediocre launch titles in the context of a product whose first mass media advertising is by way of a Taco Bell commercial. I don't think of Taco Bell as the sort of sexy affiliation you want people to make when you're trying to establish a brand in the public imagination.

Personally, as I've stated before, I'm excited about the titles and possibilities of the Xbox and I'm no Microsoft groupie. I do, however, wonder how serious Microsoft is about this product if they're handling it in a fashion that anyone can see is pretty sloppy and hamhanded.

I think that the Taco Bell thing is an almost brilliant move. Only better idea would have been to sign up a fast food franchise that people actually eat at. Seriously, what could be better than positioning the X-Box launch as a culturally relevant event right up there with the latest trash kiddie movie? It gets the X-Box out of the gaming ghetto right off the bat.

I don't think that the X-Box is going to be much of a success, but I do like the way that Microsoft is trying to get the system into the mainstream. Everybody seems to be into games these days, though you'd never know it from old school media. Gotta applaud Microsoft for trying to jam its new console into a world where "Corky Romano" gets more play than a gazillion-selling game series like Zelda or The Sims.

Yeah, they're trying to promote it like a crappy summer movie. WTF?

It's the medium, not the message, that's important here.

'I don't think of Taco Bell as the sort of sexy affiliation you want people to make when you're trying to establish a brand in the public imagination.'

Just as a wild guess, their marketing research probably tells them that game systems get off the ground based on teenagar/20s early-adopter word of mouth. Coincidentally, this group has a large overlap with people who eat at Taco Bell. It makes perfect sense to me.

Product positioning is very important. Especially so in the case of a newcomer on the scene.

You have market leaders with established reps out there and a totally unknown product coming along. Tabula rosa in terms of play. It's coming from a company with a questionable reputation in informed circles and one that's simply not thought of as a factor, yet, in the console or, really, computer gaming arena. It hasn't produced hardware on this scale before for anything.

Nobody knows what to expect. Even the usually well informed press seems to be tossing up its hands.

So it seems incumbent that a strong message be determined from the outset and a serious campaign laid in to reinforce this angle. I agree that new measures to make this a broader phenomenon than a head-to-head competition with market leaders and their established fanbases is a good idea. I don't think linking to a second rate fast food establishment is brilliant. Talking chuahuas aside.

Where are the tv ads for the X-Box that show it off on its genuine strengths? That establish why this is the product to have? You need to draw contrasts with existing and competing products in terms of technical prowess. Gamers are gearheads and early tech adopters should be a primary concern. Select titles that will appeal to groups outside the 'usual suspect' crowd of video gamers, ones with presumably broader appeal that will make any red blooded male stand up and take notice, should get their own spotlights. "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault" is one such game. WWII nostalgia is at an all time high as is patriotism in general. Why push a racing game? You can get similar fare, or better (GT3, for example, depending on tastes) elsewhere.

If you want to cross promote do it with the X Games. They're coming up. How about the X Files? The X-Men and Marvel? Or aren't these cool franchises obvious enough? Why freakin' Taco Bell?

Oi. Vey. :)

And don't get me started about the kiosks. I went to two local stores, one a Babbages and the other Circuit City, to find a working kiosk. Babbages couldn't figure out how to turn theirs on, while giving me an earful about how the Xbox was going to suck, and Circuit City had three empty shelves for the goods and no kiosk.

When does this thing supposedly ship?

I agree with Adam. It seems to me that MS has written off the PC as a growth market and is putting the pieces in place to win the next war -- dominance of online transactions, services, and delivery -- with .Net on the back end and XBox/UlimateTV/Stinger/PocketPC on the front.

All of these launch issues are somewhat interesting to hard core gamers, and endlessly fascinating to fanboys on all sides, but in the long run they don't mean much. Frankly, MS can afford to treat the entire XBox lifecycle as a very expensive public beta test while they prepare the next generation. Which, if you think about it, is historically their modus operandi for entering a new market. Look at WindowsCE/PocketPC, they just took their lumps and kept chipping away until they got it right. Their biggest strength is that they can outspend and outlast anyone, as long as the strategic objective is important enough.

The other thing is, MS doesn't have to win the battle to win the war, second place is fine. All they need is a large enough installed base to begin leveraging their online infrastructure and then network effects begin to take over. Sony's problem is that they only have one piece of the puzzle. If they want their next console to be a portal for online transactions and media delivery then they have two choices: partner with someone or integrate with .Net/Passport/etc. The second option is the least risky, but it leaves them in the position of selling hardware at a loss while MS reaps tranasction fees from their users.

As I said in another post, this is going to be interesting to watch; it's going to make the browser wars look like a skirmish.

One prediction: In 3-5 years, if MS dominates online entertainment, the same people who today are predicting failure are going to be saying that their competitors didn't have a chance because of MS' monopoly position.

"The Console race might just be a marathon, not the sprint it's traditionally been."

It's never been a sprint. Console companies fritter away absurd amounts of money launching new systems, and the real payoff doesn't come until a few years down the road, when they've covered their development costs and can lower the price of the system and sit back and let the licensing fee money roll in.

"You have market leaders with established reps out there and a totally unknown product coming along. Tabula rosa in terms of play. It's coming from a company with a questionable reputation in informed circles and one that's simply not thought of as a factor, yet, in the console or, really, computer gaming arena. It hasn't produced hardware on this scale before for anything."

Let me guess--Sony, just before the PlayStation launch? Oh, wait--you're talking about Microsoft.

How soon they forget.

"One prediction: In 3-5 years, if MS dominates online entertainment, the same people who today are predicting failure are going to be saying that their competitors didn't have a chance because of MS' monopoly position."

Same thing happened with Sony. Is happening--right now. In this thread.

Despite what the people on this board may think of Taco Bell (myself included), this may be the audience MS wants to target. From what I understand, Microsoft even puts its logo on Monster Trucks. Talk about catering to the masses. Of course, I think they're sending mixed messages, what with the hefty price point. I'm thinking GBA is the current winner. Now if they would just release a back-lit version...

- Alan

"It's never been a sprint. Console companies fritter away absurd amounts of money launching new systems, and the real payoff doesn't come until a few years down the road"

Yeah, but don't they have to establish themselves within the first 6 months or so, or it's pretty much over and done with? Sprint to adoption, or game developers abandon you. That sort of sprint.

MS might be able to take a more tortoise-like approach and develop an audience more slowly than companies that must succeed immediately (like NEC and Sega).

-Andrew

---

Quote:

Sprint to adoption, or game developers abandon you. That sort of sprint.

---

Guys, it takes 18-24 months to make a game for a new platform these days.

Developers (or publishers, really) have decided whether or not to develop for a platform long before it is known whether it will be a success or not.

Let's say you wait to see if the Gamecube is a viable platform, using Christmas 2001 figures as your yardstick for viability. The earliest you can get into the GC market (if any) will then be Summer 2003, probably Christmas 2003. You'll be facing second-generation titles on that platform by then, possibly even third-generation from first-party developers.

A system really only gets good 12-18 months after initial launch, when the bulk of the third-party developers have had sufficient time to assess the system (not the market). A brilliant game like GTA3 was designed and well into production back in the days when everyone was saying that the PS2 would be a flop.

Sorry, Mr. Long, but the Dreamcast was dead long before the first retail unit was manufactured. EA killed it with its very public decision not to support it.

"If you want to cross promote do it with the X Games. They're coming up. How about the X Files? The X-Men and Marvel? Or aren't these cool franchises obvious enough? Why freakin' Taco Bell?"

Because then you're stuck in the geek ghetto again. A lot of people eat at Taco Bell. As popular as Entertainment Weekly tells us that the X-Files and the X-Men are, they're still seen as cult geek obsessions that don't pull in a wide demographic. The Taco Bell campaign hits the teen to 20s market, but without tying the X-Box to products that are still on the fringe for the majority of people.

Except that people that eat at Taco Bell generally do so because they can't afford to eat anywhere else. Broke college students and teens without income appear to be the typical customers.

"Broke college students and teens without income appear to be the typical customers."

Who are they selling consoles too? Middle class people in their 40's? There was no shortage of PS1s among the people I went to college with. I think the Taco Bell idea is great since its reaching exactly the market MS wants to target.

They could certainly do more in other areas though. Whoever decided to showcase Munch as their only demo should be fired. My EB has Devil May Cry running next the the XBox kiosk and their are barely any glances at the Box. Things are even worse at the local Babbages since the kiosk is currently out of order.

"Except that people that eat at Taco Bell generally do so because they can't afford to eat anywhere else."

Says who? I'm 35 and can afford to eat most anywhere, but I still love Taco Bell. It is one of my top five fast food places (and Del Taco is in there, too). I had a friend who worked at Taco Bell all through college, and it was still her very favorite fast food. I still enjoy getting a sack of bean burritos and packing the musket ((tm) Aaron).

Didn't we have a thread on here a few months ago about how ubiquitous Taco Bell is in Los Angeles?

"Allard and his team encouraged the game development community to think about a console that would 'challenge their imaginations.' The first thing that developers wanted was more memory. Done. Then they demanded more polygons, offloading as many as possible to the graphics chip. Done. "But we said, 'Where's the revolution? You're asking us to do more of the same." Allard remembers. "And then they said, 'let's complete the illusion."

"Game developers wanted the same level of continuity found in Hollywood feature films. Allard came to believe that with a DVD player, an Ethernet port, a 733-mhz processor and a killer graphics chip, the Xbox would be a full feature entertainment device that could do for the home what the PC has done for the office. He'd build on the architecture of the PC so the developers would have a familiar platform on which to work, and sell the box at a low price point."

From, "Making the Xbox" by Jeffrey M. O'Brien in the November 2001 Wired.

That gives me wood. Put Allard, the GM, for Xbox development on TV in a big leather chair with demos of the more unusual and polished Xbox fare running behind him. A straight advertisement. No goofy anthropomorphic animals or things blowing up. Let him talk about revolutions in entertainment and challenging the imagination.

If Microsoft has money to blow and really wants to reach out to new buyers then they have to aim just a bit higher than Taco Bell. Perhaps, for demographic reasons, a cross promotion down the road would be good but you don't want to lead with it for chrissakes. First impressions matter, IMHO. Blowing money to overcome weak acceptance and poor positioning is possible but hardly much of a cause for celebration or consumer confidence.

Doesn't Pepsi own the Taco Bell franchise? IMHO, MS should have gone one rung up and targeted the cola markets. Then again, what do I know; I'm not the one with the money to burn.

- Alan

"I still enjoy getting a sack of bean burritos and packing the musket ((tm) Aaron)."

I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I don't want to know......

"I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I don't want to know......"

Sure you do! I think it is time to start moving that phrase into common usage. "Packing the musket" is when you have already had three or four bean burritos, and you decide to have a fourth or fifth one. I have also referred to it as "double-shotting the guns," but "packing the musket" was first and I think it sounds better.