bluetev

They will be ok. Assassin creed sold 8 milion in a very competitive fall 2007 market. AC2 has less competition, its no longer a new IP and much improved over AC1. Expect at least 10-12 million sales, which means revenues next quarter will at least triple. Hopefully that will persuade them to complete Beyond Good and Evil 2.

All the recent news aabout stuff like this, twitter and online movies etc on the 360 is quite ironic if you remember how the PS3 was accused at launch of having no games and being a media machine rather than a games console. Even in its troubled first year, the PS3 had less of a non-gaming, casual emphasis and more exclusives compared to the 360 this year - and Ratchet / uncharted 1 / Heavenly Sword looked and played way better than ODST or Left4Dead 2.

Anyway, on topic, I feel its very important that MS charge for this service. A lot. Or else it wont satisfy its loyal fans.

Thats what happens when developers start off with a great base in the form of a very good but not perfect first game in a series, and spend a lot of time making it better and addressing all the weaknesses - something the best games this year, KZ2, AC2 and UC2 have in common. Note to Valve: those 3 games are good examples of what sequels are meant to be.

Your personal GOTY CAN be a multi-plat if you own a PS3
Your personal GOTY HAS to be a multi-plat if you own a 360, cos all the exclusives are c**p

Best non-exclusives of the year: AC2 and Batman.

You know what, playing on PSN, you realise how much better it would be for mankind if they could just keep their mouths shut if you have nothing useful to say. Most of the time, nobody has mics, and its works pretty well, people do work as a team. But when someone with a mic comes on it often gets pretty annoying, there was one guy on Uncharted 2 coop who kept slagging off a lady player - well guess who had the highest score among the three of us and saved our asses in the last part?

Seems like the supposedly immense Live community is built up of the same people who doomed the Dreamcast by pirating games on that console. Its amazing how many people blame Sony and the PS2, but in a model where they sell consoles for a loss and make profits on games, piracy is lethal. No wonder Shenmue sold just 1 million on 10 million Dreamcasts, bet there were twice as many pirated copies.

But at the same time, it just proves what a twisted company MS is. They could have done this long back - the fact that they did it right now is because their sales are getting hammered and they want a million extra sales the easy way. The worst impact will be on the used 360 market because theere wil be no way to distinguish bricked and working consoles, though I may be wrong, and all these people will just unload their consoles on the market for innocent customers to get duped. I was considering a used one for mass Effect and Alan Wake, but looks like not a good idea any more.

Really? Read somewhere that they greet each other by rubbing their noses. Cant see that catching on.

Agree,havent seen a sibgle GAEM in the last three years. All the GAEMs are there on the 360, and the PS3 ends up with the games instead!

I dont think they will start charging yet.
The problem with generation is, you have two other companies who are ripping off customers - MS effectively charges $300 per customer over their lifetime for online, for lower cost, as they save a lot of money by not providing servers and their much vaunted "features" such as cross game chat, when you think about it, dont cost much at all. Add on the overpriced peripherals and poor quality construction, and Sony is $400 behind.
Similarly, dear old nintendo manages to charge $50 less for something that costs maybe $200-250 less to manufacture.

Anyway, at least they are selling more and GT5/GOW3 should add half a billion in sales next year. I just hope that the PS3 doesnt attract too many of the $50/year xbox crowd, love the lack of whiny, obnoxious teenagers with headsets. There are very few people with headsets on PSN and the online experience is better for it, as the visual cues are really excellent in games like KZ2, R2 and UC2. In fact, when we got ppl with mics, teamwork seems to deteriorate. Strange, but true.