according to pixelgamers.com, we can expect an update to Xbox Live dashboard within the next 2 weeks. Updates will include:
- a download manager for 6 parallel downloads in the background
- ability to download while playing a game or a demo
These two features alone will be a major upgrade, and will solve one of the biggest gripes gamers have right now — the single download that basically puts your xbox360 on hold until the download is done.
May 14th, 2006
Not a surprise to anyone browsing the Live marketplace recently — tons of movie trailers being promoted.
Paramount has decided to join the party - and many are speculating that this effort is two-fold. 1) marketing a movie today means reaching 18-34 yr olds, and gaming is a great place to get those eyeballs, 2) it’s a marketing effort to promote future HD-DVD releases.
Item 1 makes perfect sense and is compounded by cable/tv ratings that continue to slide, especially in this younger demo.
“It hits the audience in a big way - the 12- to 34-year-old audience. That’s the sweet spot of frequent moviegoers,” said Gerry Rich, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing. “They’re the early adopters. We think they impact and influence a lot of folks. They’re gatekeepers of what’s cool and what’s not.”
Item 2 makes some sense — although I still hold out that people rather download HD content, or rent it ( think NetFlix ), but don’t really want to own a bunch of plastic. The value is not in owning a physical good anymore, it’s in having instant access to the content, sharing with friends, tagging. mixing, etc. If anything these HD trailers will create even a greater demand for instant HD content — and microsoft should be pushing that the way iTunes did for music.
April 18th, 2006
“Within the next four to six weeks, anybody will be able to walk into a store and buy an Xbox 360.”
- Peter Moore @ DICE convention
RE: the global launch he adds:
“Was it controversial? Yes. But it’s what we needed to do to bring next-gen gaming to a global audience. There have been short-term shortages, but we’re driving a clear advantage as we go forward. It was the right decision. There were component shortages, but they’ve been fixed. Now we’re starting to cook. We’re building a vibrant, rich and profitable business model for the future.”
RE: Xbox Live usage among Xbox360 owners — Moore announced that 54% of Xbox 360 owners use Live. This is a huge increase compared to the original xbox Live usage rate of 10%.
Overall, Moore, who is the Xbox chief at Microsoft, told the audience that there have been 4 million pieces of content downloaded from Xbox Live since launch.
RE: the try-before-you-buy model (first used by shareware developer Apogee back in the day). Geometry Wars was given as an example, where 36 percent of all people who downloaded the demo went on to download and purchase the full version of the game. According to Moore, the average Xbox Live Arcade conversion is 20 percent — with the worst performing game coming in around 10 percent.
He bosted that “Nothing normally converts from sample to purchase at a rate of 35 percent. It’s proof positive that we are dragging gaming into the online era.”
As I’ve mentioned earlier on this blog, the future is an on-demand, all digital distribution system, and Xbox Live is definitely pushing the envelope in the right direction.
February 12th, 2006