The Xbox 360 has now been the top selling console for 18 months straight. However they still suffered the issues that plagued the rest of the video game community by selling .6 million less consoles than last year at this time. Even though the console sales dipped, Xbox Live had a membership increase of 15 percent. Even with the dip in sales for consoles over the year Microsoft still made $18.6 billion during the fiscal 2012 fourth quarter.
Source: XBLA Fans
The biggest gaming event of the year has officially kicked off, and the first day of E3 2012 has already come to a close. It’s hard to believe how quickly this week goes by every year. Regardless, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Nintendo and Sony have all held their press conferences and brought out their biggest guns to show off just what their vision for the next year or so of gaming looks like. As always, the forums and social media are ablaze with reactions of excitement, disappointment, fan boy bliss, and everything in between. Here are my thoughts on what we we’ve seen so far.
A few weeks back, Microsoft announced a pilot program that is underway in Microsoft Stores giving consumers the chance to buy a 4GB Xbox 360 and Kinect sensor for just $99 up front, and $14.99 a month going forward for two years. Today, Microsoft has announced that the program is expanding to Best Buy as well as select GameStop locations in the United States. As a reminder, upon paying the $99 up front, the buyer signs a 2-year contact that commits them to paying the $14.99 a month fee. In exchange, you go home with a 4GB Xbox 360, a Kinect sensor, and a 2-year subscription to Xbox Live Gold. If the program sounds enticing, you can head to a Microsoft Store now, or wait for Best Buy and select GameStop brick and mortars to start the program later this month.
Source: Major Nelson
Check out the Xbox Kinect Fans E3 hub for all of our coverage!
I hope you’re ready for the Olympics! Because it’s coming to your living rooms this June. The title is London 2012 – The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games. Quite a mouthful – I know. The US version will have a June 26th release date and UK/Europe will get to compete for their country on June 29th. This title will be a multiplatform release, but exclusive to the Kinect are the 110m Hurdles and Beach Volleyball. Watch the trailers after the break and get excited to represent your nation in over 45 events this summer!
There seems to be a problem with the adoption of the Kinect in Japan: space. Something we here in America take for granted, but is a reality for our brethren to the East. While Kinect sales in the West have blossomed, they have unfortunately stagnated and declined in Japan. The amount of space in Japanese homes is smaller compared to American ones, which in turn means less appeal to the audience over there. This issue has also resulted in less developers interested in creating games for a system peripheral that has seen mediocre sales, but Grasshopper Manufacture hopes to change a few opinions with its upcoming game Diabolical Pitch.
Released with much fanfare on November 4th, 2010, Kinect sold 8 million units over the next 60 days, snatching up the Guiness World Record for fastest selling consumer electronics device of all time in the process. Of course, in the entertainment world, with great success often comes great angst among the fanbase. In the Kinect’s case, much of the grizzled hardcore gamer crowd immediately rejected the idea of a motion controller for the Xbox, claiming that the new technology was a gimmicky draw for casual gamers and that Microsoft was going to force Kinect down gamers’ throats by slapping it into everything possible. The Next Web snapped a pretty hilarious screenshot of the games subreddit after Microsoft’s E3 keynote last year, and you can see the overwhelmingly negative response from a group made up of what most people probably think of as typical gamers.
Are the hardcore gamers right? Has Microsoft abandoned its core in order to gain a spot in the living rooms of the coveted Wii-playing elderly and Farmville mom crowd? Well, not exactly. 2011 saw the release of the fantastic Gears of War 3, the latest iterations of Modern Warfare, Battlefield, and Saint’s Row, and a number of other great, “hardcore” titles on both retail and XBLA (you probably won’t find any casual gamers playing Dark Souls). Basically, Microsoft is still pumping out all of the content that made it beloved in the hearts and minds of gamers, but it’s also adding to the overall entertainment experience on the Xbox by integrating Kinect with games and other software in interesting new ways. How so? Well, let’s get on to the main feature – the State of Kinect 2012. Read each category for some in depth analysis or feel free to skip down to the bottom for a quick roundup of this year in Kinect.
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