XSN Sports Skips The Coming Season?

[Engineer_J]

XSN Sports Skips The Coming Season
By David Smith
3/29/2004

Key titles in its first-party Xbox sports lineup are taking the coming year off, Microsoft announced today. NFL Fever, NBA Inside Drive, and NHL Rivals will miss the 2004-2005 season.

Microsoft reportedly made the decision in order to raise the quality of its games. Despite a strong marketing push behind the XSN Sports online feature set, all three titles lagged well behind their competition from Electronic Arts and Sega in both critical and commercial reception.

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The decision as yet will only directly affect the three above-mentioned games. Rallisport Challenge 2 is still scheduled to ship later this spring. Links and Top Spin, Microsoft's golf and tennis titles, are not on a yearly timetable like its other sports offerings, and Microsoft has yet to make a decision regarding whether to follow up with sequels to either game.

None of Microsoft's sports franchises are going away for good as yet, and we look forward to seeing what develops from its internal studios. Expect more updates going into E3.

From www.1up.com

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More cost cutting measures? Doubt it there will be any until X-Box 2 No problems right?

Added: Do you think this is April's Fool or another interesting possiblity is MS buying Visual Concepts from Sammy/Sega

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Engineer_J

XSN Sports Skips The Coming Season
Key titles in its first-party Xbox sports lineup are taking the coming year off, Microsoft announced today. NFL Fever, NBA Inside Drive, and NHL Rivals will miss the 2004-2005 season.

More cost cutting measures? Doubt it there will be any until X-Box 2 No problems right?

Added: Do you think this is April's Fool or another interesting possiblity is MS buying Visual Concepts from Sammy/Sega

I think it makes sense, and has nothing to do with cost-cutting. NFL Fever, NBA Insider Drive, and NHL Rivals are all decent games, but they do pale in comparison to EA sports and SEGA Sports. Football, Basketball, Hockey, and Baseball should probably be the strongest links of their XSN lineup, but currently they are the weakest. Their other XSN games Top Spin, Amped, Links, and Rallisport Challenge give the competition a far better run for their money than any of the core sports, which needs addressing. If Microsoft needs a year off on them to focus on making them good, it sounds like a good plan to me.

I love the idea of the XSN sports network, but the only XSN sports games I bought were their Tennis/Snowboarding/Golf games (and plan to get rsc2) - even without the extended internet functionality ESPN sports are a step above the MS equivalents and SEGA/ESPN got my money. With someone who loves Live as much as me, you know that means MS's traditional sports games need work.

[Engineer_J]

So you don't think letting Oddworld, XSN, and Psychonauts go was an accounting or cost cutting measure

[Sword of Whedon]

I think it's more MS pigeonholing "worthy" games, which doesn't include "quirky" or "daring"

You know, like how they insisted on leaving out the Japanese track on Shenmue 2 despite having enough disc space to fit the entire Dreamcast version left over on the disc, causing me not to buy the XB version and hang on to my lovely subtitled import.

Honestly, why anyone needs to buy a new football game every year is beyond me. Aside from a few shuffles of players the game is exactly the same as it has been since gaming began.

[Reaver]

I'm glad that there won't be any new MS sports titles this year, and I wish all developers would do it. There is rarely enough innovation from year to year to warrant a new purchase each year other than getting up to date rosters, and how that you can download those there's even less reason. There should only be new sports titles every two years, possibly three. Maybe then we'll actually get some innovations.

[Sword of Whedon]

The question is: What is there to innovate? It's football/baseball/hockey

It's not like you can add your own rules or anything

Now if you added what I like to call "mafia mode", where you can threaten their families or break their knees if they keep dropping the ball, or fire them on the spot for sucking then you're getting somewhere.

Unfortunately there are all kinds of people who are suckers and will drop $50 for a few names on a uniform.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Sword of Whedon

The question is: What is there to innovate? It's football/baseball/hockey

SEGA added First Person Mode to ESPN Football 2K4, that was pretty cool, refining that even more so it was more user friendly and playable, or perhaps allowing a hybrid 1st/3rd person mode might be cool.

Or, a more comprehensive in game fantasy draft/league/stats/etc might be cool. For instance, I haven't seen any hockey game that even comes close to approaching the complexity of the old PC game Wayne Gretzky's Hockey with the League Simulator addon pack. That was an incredible stats/simulation package, and it would be cool to see something that complex in a modern 3D game.

But, MS doesn't even need to innovate, they just have to bring their core gameplay up to par with SEGA and EA's standards IMO. Their online innovations are already there.

[Sword of Whedon]

SEGA added First Person Mode to ESPN Football 2K4, that was pretty cool, refining that even more so it was more user friendly and playable, or perhaps allowing a hybrid 1st/3rd person mode might be cool.

It's just bells and whistles. It's still football. Who cares if you can shuffle players around better? Without the ability to threaten/kill/mutilate/fire players and put the fear of god into them, there's no real difference in play Think about the potential

"Randall Cunningham fails to get a completion the 4th time in a row. He's warned that there is a sniper in the pressbox who will take out his kneecaps if he misses again. He fails and pays the penalty. This encourages the other players to play better in the future"

"Star running back scores 4 touchdowns in a single game since his kids are on the Titantron strapped into electric chairs to encourage him"

[Astrakan]

Looks like perhaps those who speculated that this move was part of a peace making deal with EA, to try and bring them on board the Live train, may be right:

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/508/508793p1.html

KM

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Astrakan

Looks like perhaps those who speculated that this move was part of a peace making deal with EA, to try and bring them on board the Live train, may be right:

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/508/508793p1.html

KM

holy crap, now this is worth of a new topic!

Also, I'd guess its less of a deal, and more that MS putting out online sports game isn't as crucial if both EA and SEGA are putting out online sports games.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Engineer_J

XSN Sports Skips The Coming Season

More cost cutting measures? Doubt it there will be any until X-Box 2 No problems right?

http://www.gamepro.com/gamepro/domes...ws/35352.shtml
989 Sports Lineup Cancelled

"Sony Computer Entertainment America has cited the "extremely competitive" nature of sports titles, and "has decided to provide the development teams with the additional time needed to make products competitive and more importantly to provide compelling new content for consumers."

OMG!!! COPST CUTTINg MEASUREZ @ SonYZ !@ one THEY R GoinG UDNER with PS3 BIG PROBLEMNSS!!!!!oneone!!!11111

[Engineer_J]

So now they are all like Nintendo since no one but EA seems to make money on sports games.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Engineer_J

So now they are all like Nintendo since no one but EA seems to make money on sports games.

SEGA and Midway both sell lots of sports games, too.