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Microsoft today announced the acquisition on unspecified terms of game development company BigPark:
Microsoft Corp. today announced its intent to acquire BigPark Inc., an interactive online gaming company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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The acquisition will bring BigPark’s talented developers into Microsoft Game Studios, where the team will continue development on an exclusive Xbox 360 game. Over the past year, Microsoft and BigPark have worked closely on this project, providing Microsoft with a clear view into the caliber of talent and innovation at BigPark.
Actually, the relationship was even closer than that:
BigPark was founded by Wil Mozell, Erik Kiss, Hanno Lemke and Don Mattrick before Mattrick assumed the role of senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. Mattrick’s role as an investor in BigPark was fully disclosed to Microsoft before he joined the company, and his ongoing involvement as chairman of BigPark was approved pursuant to the Microsoft Standards of Business Conduct.
This investment is interesting in view of the way Microsoft has been pruning game developers in recent years including the demise of the Flight Simulator studio in January with the first round of layoffs this year.
Not all the promised features of the New Xbox Experience will arrive on November 19, but streaming of HD movies from Netflix will and and it’s a first for Microsoft:
It’s something you can’t get on the Roku. Nor on LG’s BD300. Nor on Samsung’s P2500 / P2550 Blu-ray players. Nor through Netflix’s own "Watch Instantly" portal. It’s high-def Netflix streaming, and it’s coming first to Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Yes friends, when the all new dashboard hits on November 19th, with it will come HD Netflix streaming for (US-based, presumably) Xbox Live Gold members.
There will only be 300 movies to start with and all the details haven’t been released yet, but it is on the way. For more on the interface changes coming in the New Xbox Experience, see Engadget’s exclusive first look.
Chris Morris at Forbes today broke the news that Xbox LIVE Primetime, the centerpiece of Microsoft’s "New Xbox Experience" (NXE) planned for the fall, has had to be delayed.
Microsoft has delayed the launch of "Xbox Live Primetime," its programmed series of interactive games with real-world prizes, until the spring. Microsoft managers say the delay is necessary in order to ensure a smooth launch of the system’s new user interface (or, if you prefer the terminology of Microsoft’s PR department, the "new Xbox experience").
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The engineering challenges proved formidable–perhaps even more than the company anticipated. Because the relaunch of Xbox Live is the biggest gaming project the company has undertaken since getting the 360 onto store shelves, things have slipped. Rather than postponing the launch until next year, when all touted features will be ready, the company has opted to cut. (Microsoft said recently that it would delay launching the feature that would allow members in different locations to simultaneously watch a streaming Netflix movie together.)Aaron Greenberg, group marketing manager for Microsoft, said the company is still very dedicated to the concept of Primetime and continues to work on it.
When Primetime was announced in July, I was dubious of the concept and still am without regard to the technical hurdles. It just doesn’t seem attractive either as an interactive game or as a business. Many new technologies start out lamely imitating their predecessors and using Xbox LIVE to imitate a TV game show seems to fit nicely in that category.
The rumors of September Xbox 360 price cuts in the USA came in right on the money when Microsoft formally announced them on Wednesday. Check out the lead paragraph in the press release:
Imagine if friends and families had the ability to instantly watch movies from Netflix, live out their musical fantasies through Rock Band 2 and Lips, star in their own Hollywood classics with You’re in the Movies, or have the power to never miss the latest episode of Heroes—all from one device, starting at $199.*
Yes we are talking the Xbox 360 here, but the console beloved of hard core gamers seems to have suddenly developed broad family entertainment appeal. It almost sounds as family oriented as the number 1 selling Nintendo Wii and gosh, now the Xbox 360 Arcade model described above is $50 dollars cheaper than the Wii.
All snarking aside, Microsoft clearly did what they had to do to try to hold their own in the face of the Wii’s runaway success and the Xbox’s fall into the number 3 spot in US sales behind the Wii and the Sony PS3. The full list of price cuts:
Microsoft had earlier in the week announced a roughly comparable price cut in Japan. Meanwhile it does not look like either Nintendo or Sony will follow suit in the US, since the former is still supply constrained while the latter apparently likes the the position of their high priced PS3 console just fine, buoyed by the fact that while the PS3 is an expensive game machine, it remains a cheap Blu-ray player.
Finally, for fans of the History of Business genre, Dean Takahashi has written a book on the history of the Xbox 360 and VentureBeat has the "final chapter", Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft’s video game console woes.
