XSN For Others?

[Graeme]

While most of us our rightly excited about the prospects of XSN on XBox Live starting up in the next few weeks, there has been one point of concern that I have had with XSN since it was announced.

 

Will Non-Microsoft publishers have access to XSN??

 

Every single thing about it has been rather vague in stating that it is for XBox Live, and the best thing to happen for Sports on XBox blah blah blah, but never actually mention if Sega or anyone else could get in on the act.

 

I've quitely waited to see what happens, until recently a few nuggets have appeared that might tend to favor my hopes. The first one is a little out in left field, and I'm more sure there's no relation every time I read it, but from:

 

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/rpg/starwarsk...ws_6072390.html

 

Bach also discussed a variety of other topics, including the impending arrival of XSN, the Xbox Live sports network that lets players form leagues and set up tournaments. He also said that the company is continuing to work with third parties to garner additional support for the system, citing games such as Counter-Strike, Rainbow Six 3, Max Payne 2, and others.

 

Now is this just poorly written, or are they talking about XSN throughout? Or, as I am now thinking, the "system" refered to is just the XBox (which already has all that support).

 

However, this second little tidbit is a tad more interesting. From an interview on Operation Sports about ESPN NFL 2K4:

 

http://www.operationsports.com/features.as...game=espnnflint

 

Operation Sports: Will online leagues or franchises be implemented through Xbox LIVE somehow?

 

Greg Thomas: We will have full leagues and leaderboards on PS2 for sure and we are working with Microsoft to hopefully bring a lot of our online features we?re touting in the PS2 version of ESPN NFL Football, onto the Xbox version. Since Xbox Live runs on Microsoft?s network, it?s something we have to work out the details with Microsoft, but we?re very optimistic we?ll have some really cool online features forthcoming next year.

 

So, does anyone else remember reading anything a little more concrete?

[Camp]

It would be cool to see XSN's online features adopted to games by non-Microsoft developers but I would be surprised to see it. Microsoft would like to see their XSN sports software become a dominant force and the online features are a key ingredient. Sharing that ingredient with the competition would be a surprise.

 

Perhaps Sega can do their own version of XSN-like statistacal tracking...but even if Microsoft assists it won't be called "XSN".

[Robot Monkey]

It would be cool to see XSN's online features adopted to games by non-Microsoft developers but I would be surprised to see it.

 

But then again, wouldn't using XSN be a freebie to a developer in the sense that you don't need internal meetings to fight over the scope of implementing league code, its interface, etc?

 

I know, I know it's the same logic behind XBL and we knwo of at least one major publisher that didn't agree with tht elogic (but I would suggest that that case is unique, and other factors are at work).

 

-j

[Beer Monkey]

It's bad business to piss off your third-party developers and publishers. You lose third party support, and the next thing you know people aren't buying your console any more.

 

MS should certainly open up XSN to third parties.

[EnemaEms]

For some reason I thought I read on the original announcement of XSN that 3rd party developers would start using it on next years titles. I could be wrong though. I thought it said that SEGA would be on it with their 2K5 series of games.

 

-Dean-

[Graeme]

Microsoft would like to see their XSN sports software become a dominant force and the online features are a key ingredient.

 

An actual good game to build it around is even more key, and I just don't think Rivals or Fever will quite deliver this year. XSN may help sales of those games this year, but it can only do so much if the game is sub par.

 

The way I look at it though, is that XSN is not a key feature for MS Sports dominance... why should they care so much about that (and yes, I do realise how big of a market it is)? They are fighting with Sony for online and console dominance. This is a much better XBOX and XBox Live selling point, than it is for Fever and Amped.

 

How many unit sales are they possibly losing this year with the EA games not being online? Possibly a fair chunk. Even for people that aren't online, this could be a deciding factor as they might be considering it. Now you take Sega, who are implementing leagues into their PS2 versions, but not for XBox and you've potentially got even more people buying for their PS2 instead of XBox.... meanwhile Fever is down to $20 in a few months.

 

To me, it doesn't make good business sense to have it exclusive to MS titles, and if it were up to me I'd damn well make sure Sega and Midway had access to it, Counterstrike had it going in, and everyone making a racing title knew just how great it could possibly make their games.