Sony PS3 under pressure due to Xbox 360 price cut, according to analyst

Now that the European Xbox 360 price cut is no longer a rumor but a reality, how will it affect its rival, Sony's very own PlayStation 3? According to analysts, it'll most likely to put a pressure on the sleek black console when it comes to pricing.

And what a pressure it will be. With Microsoft's Xbox 360 most expensive SKU, Elite, being GBP 40 (US 80.26) less expensive than the PlayStation 3, Microsoft's next-gen console is looking all the more appealing to gamers indeed. Principal analyst David Mercer said:

Sony will be nervous that the PS3's recent sales surge may fizzle out now that the premium Xbox 360 undercuts the PS3 by GBP 40, and the cheapest Xbox model is almost half the price of a PS3 .

So what will be Sony's gameplan? According to Mercer, Sony will most likely be careful to focus on their daily sales, but will "hold out until later in the year before making its next price move." In any case, it looks like that the winner in the end will always be the end users, the gamers.

Rock Band Xbox 360 DLC for March 11: Black Tide, Paramore, Serj Tankian

Harmonix Manager of Community Development Sean Baptiste (aka hmxsean) dropped by Rock Band's official forum site and announced some of the upcoming downloadable content for the Xbox 360 version of the game.

According to the official, the new songs should be up today, March 11, and each song will cost 80 Microsoft Points (US 0.99). Here's the list provided by the community manager:

• "Shockwave" by Black Tide (Master)
• "Crushcrushcrush" by Paramore (Master)
• "Beethoven's C " by Serj Tankian (Master)

There's still no word if the same songs will also be made available in Rock Band for the PlayStation 3. The last DLC pack the Sony next-gen got for this game was last week's Grateful Dead.

Just keep checking back here at QJ.NET as we promise to update you as soon as we pick up new development.


Buy: [ Rock Band Special Edition (Xbox 360) ]
Buy: [ Rock Band Special Edition (PS3) ]

Microsoft Europe VP explains how Xbox 360 big price drop became possible

As much as the newly announced Xbox 360 price cut for Europe is a very welcome move from Microsoft, one has to got to wonder what are the real reasons behind it.

Is it, as some would like to believe, a precursor to the rumored 60GB SKU? It's a good thing, though, that Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Europe Vice President Chris Lewis gave a few statements explaining why such price drops have become possible.

"We had to reach and surpass key milestones before we dropped 360 s UK price," Lewis said. If you're wondering what specific milestones Microsoft is talking about, Chris Lewis provided as well the following outline:

• We ve taken 42 revenue share of next gen-games market - including hardware, peripherals and software, as well as the stunning performance of Live.
• We re consistently attaching games at high level - we re now at north of seven games to every console. That s considerably more than our competitors and something we re immensely proud of.
• On top of that, we ve worked our way to a 17.7 million units worldwide installed base - and Europe is a critical geography within that figure.

Lewis also commented that the "ability to continually drive cost through the console" is also a big factor to the price cut. The new prices will take effect in Europe this coming March 14.

Epic Games' Tom Sweeney on PC gaming, Vista problems, and more

Mainstream PC users usually don't put into mind gaming as one of their primary reasons for buying their units. The biggest uses for their PCs would mostly focus on for checking their email, or simply updating their Facebook or MySpace accounts.

This was one of the dilemmas Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO and founder, talked about in an interview conducted by TG Daily. He also expressed his opinion on how the PC is currently having trouble keeping up with the competitive gaming market that the consoles are monopolizing, as well as some possible solutions that the PC industry can go with if it wants to competitively make some headway against its rivals.

Sweeney also pointed towards the message that most current game developers are sending to gamers when it comes to getting the best bang out of their PC gaming buck as one of the biggest mistakes in the industry. It used to be that mainstream PC users can play just about any game on their machines with optimal results.

Games nowadays rely on high-end user specs if they want gamers to enjoy their gaming experience. A simple downscaling solution wouldn't cut it either because of the huge margin created by PC manufacturers when producing their machines.

Another fault he pointed out was the continuation of Vista 32-bit version instead of sticking to an exclusive 64-bit platform. This causes old problems like virus and spyware to bog down user systems, thus making the PC platform unsuitable for optimal gaming conditions.

TG Daily also asked his opinion on the idea of using external graphic cards which can be plugged into your PC and raise its visual performance. Sweeney liked the idea of using a PC as "an out-of-the-box workable gaming platform". However, this might not be a viable solution for gamers who want to properly step up their machines for gaming purposes.

Sweeney proposed his own solution to change the way how the PC industry can keep up with the current gaming trends:

If you look into the past, CPU makers are learning more and more how to take advantage of GPU-like architectures. Internally, they accept larger data and they have wider vector units: CPUs went from a single-threaded product to multiple cores...

Then, every PC, even the lowest performing ones will have excellent CPUs. If we could get software rendering going again, that might be just the solution we all need. Intel s integrated graphics just don't work. I don't think they will ever work.

It looks like PC manufacturers, and the industry itself, have a big job on their hands if they want to keep up with the standards of using today's PCs as a solid gaming platform instead of an all-around performance machine. In any case, we'll just have to wait and see if they are indeed up to this enormous task.

Harmonix playing with the idea of user-created songs for Rock Band

So what's next for Harmonix's rocking new rhythm title aside from the occasional new song? Vice President of Product Development Greg LoPiccolo assumed that the next step for Rock Band (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) would be the introduction of user-created music for players to really get into the spirit of the game.

It definitely sounds like an interesting take on how to make Rock Band stand out as an innovative rhythm title. LoPiccolo mentioned that it was a "natural direction for the franchise to move" and that it would be a great way for musically inclined gamers to express themselves even further.

However, the idea isn't without its own set of difficulties. Problems such as IP and ratings issues are bound to pop up somewhere, but he's quite hopeful of the possibility of it happening sometime in the future.

He was even considering requests of adding a new peripheral to the Rock Band instrument scheme, specifically a keyboard. LoPiccolo was very open to the idea, saying that should there be enough songs which could warrant the addition of a keyboard instrument then they'll be right on it.

However, all of these ideas are still up in the air as Harmonix still seems to have their hands full on other projects. For now, we'll just have to wait and see if our indie band songs will get a chance to make it onto the virtual stage. Keep coming back to this space as we look out for more updates on the game.


Buy: [Rock Band Special Edition (Xbox 360)]
Buy: [Rock Band Special Edition (PS3)]

Bizarre love triangle: shareholder sues Take-Two over EA's buyout offer

 

And it's a one-two punch. After doing a bit of damage control to reassure its employees after Electronic Arts tried to buy out their company, Take-Two Interactive is slammed with a lawsuit. The funny thing is, it was filed by one of T2's very own shareholders.

The lawsuit alleges that Take-Two purposely kept EA's US 2 billion buyout offer a secret so that it could enrich its senior executives. Apparently, T2 approved a measure to increase management compensation in case of a takeover just days after the offer.

The compensation approved by the board raised the fees and bonuses that will be received by ZelnickMedia's management in case the company was sold. From US 3.8 million, it was raised to an "exorbitant" (as the lawsuit described it) US 16.5 million.

The lawsuit claims that the actions they took to respond to EA's offer (or as the lawsuit phrases it: "outright rejection of EA s offers and failure to negotiate") represents a failure to "reasonably respond" and "maximize shareholder value."

The lawsuit, filed by Patrick Solomon, specifically calls out Strauss Zelnick and Benjamin Feder, the partners of ZelnickMedia. In response to the lawsuit, the company replied: "We believe that the claims lack merit, and intend to defend vigorously against them."

Analysts: Xbox 360 price drop for US, more console war theories

The recent Xbox 360 price drop in Europe got analysts in a tizzy over what's in store for the console wars now, saying that Microsoft will get an advantage over the competition. Analysts are now surmising that the price drop may also be headed to the U.S.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter speculates that the U.S. price cut will be introduced before Christmas. He singles out the Xbox 360 Arcade, saying that Microsoft would probably drop its price by at least US 50, making the SKU cheaper than the Wii.

However, while Pachter is confident that the 360 can hold its own until the holidays, he does add that the PlayStation 3 is likely to pick up in sales due to the market's call for Blu-ray. But then this may be all the more reason the U.S. price cut may happen:

I'm pretty confident that they will maintain a spread between the 360 and the PS3, and think that [Microsoft is] proud enough to care if the PS3 outsells the 360 consistently.

Colin Sebastian, an analyst from Lazard Capital Markets, also predicts a price cut for the Xbox 360 in the US. He also expects that, along with the price cut, Microsoft will introduce a new Xbox 360 SKU with a larger hard drive (perhaps he means the rumored 60 GB SKU?).

Sebastian goes on to say that the PlayStation 3 may also introduce a price cut, depending on how well the market takes to a cheaper Xbox 360 (if Microsoft chooses to introduce one): "They may be left with little choice if pricing continues to limit market share."

As for the Wii... well, no one seems at all worried for the Nintendo platform even with all the talk about price cuts. "I think the Wii success has more to do with the gaming experience than the price point," says Sebastian, echoing Jesse Divnich's earlier sentiments.