Gamers know the move.
Alone, you rush into a room filled with a heavily armed enemy, and through luck, light-speed reflexes and suffering heavy damage, you manage to triumph. Gangsters, space aliens and terrorists have no chance.
Unless, by some turn of events, you get clobbered. Then, you just reload a saved game and try again.
Microsoft tried this Rambo strategy when it launched the Xbox in 2001 in an attempt to conquer the video-game business. The company ended up an estimated $3.7 billion lighter and a distant second place to market opponent Sony. But with a reload in business strategy, the Redmond giant returned last year with the Xbox 360 in a second effort to win the battle for the home gamer.
Both times Dean Takahashi was on the scene to tell the story.
While most people just eat the sausage, Takahashi is the kind of business reporter interested in capturing the detail of what goes into the breakfast links. In his 2002 book, “Opening the Xbox,” the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reporter told the inside tale of the Windows attack on the behemoths of the video-game business. In his latest opus, “The Xbox 360 Uncloaked,” Takahashi returns to cover Episode II – Microsoft Strikes Again.
At nearly 500 pages, “Uncloaked” provides a surprisingly engaging story about a little-seen side of a business obsessed with journalism about the products rather than the process. Digging deep into his ample array of sources, Takahashi has crafted a business book enjoyable by the average gamer and a grand narrative interesting to anyone in the industry.
“Microsoft Xbox employees will read it,” Takahashi predicted. “So will employees of Nintendo and Sony, as well as everyone else who works in the industry.”
A dedicated gamer, Takahashi also hopes that game fans and wannabe game developers will take an interest in the multibillion-dollar dealings that ultimately decide the fate of their favorite games.
With a strategy that might commit as much as $17 billion during the next decade to bringing entertainment to the home, Microsoft stands out as one of the key players making the business of gaming as interesting as the games themselves. Still, the question remains: Will this investment pay off?
Takahashi explained: “They have a machine that they can price aggressively compared to the competition, such as Sony. They have made it easier to enjoy nongame entertainment on the box, from listening to music to playing movies. They have created a more appealing industrial design and a marketing campaign aimed at broad reach. The rest depends on execution and coming up with creative mass-market games.”
-King Features
X-Men: The Official Movie Game, Xbox, Activision, released today; Over G Fighters, Xbox-360; Ubisoft, Monday; Moto GP 2006, Xbox-360, THQ, today; SiN Episodes, PC, Ritual Entertainment, today; NBA Ballers: Rebound, PSP, Midway Games, today; The Da Vinci Code, PS2, 2K Games, Monday; Over the Hedge, GCN, PS2, Activision, today; OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, PC, SEGA, today|Source: Gamermetrics.com
