Color Me Unskeptical
January 6th, 2008, 1:52am by GeoffEGM’s gossip column is reporting that Microsoft recently started development on a first-party sequel that was initially going to come out for the 360, but is now slotted for its successor. Joystiq and this 1up author seem to think this is silly - the 360 is still a very young console. But this strikes me as eminently reasonable.
It’s not unheard of for a big franchise to make only one appearance on a given generation: look at Zelda, which had only one entry on the SNES, or Mario, who took two whole generations to come up with a true sequel to Mario 64. Given the enormous time and effort that would no doubt go into, say, Halo 4, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that it might take a couple of years to really get off the ground. Plus: the 360 has been quite successful so far this generation - if I were Microsoft, I’d definitely want to try and solidify that lead by having a must-buy launch title for the Xbox 720 or whatever it’ll be called.
Posted in Geoff, Microsoft |
January 6th, 2008 at 4:56 am
I was about to post on this in the opposite way, although taking a quick look at the Halo series timeline on Wikipedia does suggest a roughly 3 year development time for each game. It would probably be a pretty smart move to launch their next system with something like Halo 4, although this would seem to contradict their earlier statements that the 360 will last more than 5 years.
“Mario, who took two whole generations to come up with a true sequel to Mario 64.”
Let’s not kid ourselves here… Mario Sunshine was a “true” sequel to Mario 64. I suppose it just wasn’t considered the “spiritual” predecessor to it as Mario Galaxy seems to have been dubbed. Maybe people didn’t like it as much, but Mario Sunshine was a “true” Mario game as much as Mario 64 was.
January 6th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Perhaps, but it wasn’t launched with nearly the fanfare as either 64 or Galaxy. And of course, it was the only Mario of its generation, so the point stands anyway
January 7th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Jeff makes a good point in that, the possibility of MS working on a next gen sequel NOW means that the lifespan of the 360 may not be as long as they’ve lead us to believe. I’ve always thought the 360 would have 5 years max no matter what MS says to the contrary.
With regard to Sunshine, yes, its a true Mario game and yes the point still stands. As much as people blast Nintendo for “milking” mario, they are pretty good about only releasing 1 or 2 iterations of their main franchises per generation. The gamecube saw 1 true zelda, 1 true mario, and 2 metroids.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
“The gamecube saw 1 true zelda, 1 true mario, and 2 metroids.”
*ahem* Not to make my sole purpose in life to nitpick these posts, but depending on how you look at it, there were either 2 Zeldas for the GCN, or perhaps there WILL be 2 Zeldas for the Wii (assuming they do actually follow through with releasing another Wii Zelda that they’ve sort of indicated that they’re working on).
Of course, your point still stands. I didn’t even really disagree with the point before… I was just defending Mario Sunshine from “irrelevant” status. =)
January 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
DOH!
I forgot about TP on the cube!
January 7th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Well - the 360’s about 2 years in. 3 year+ development times aren’t unheard of - so there’s no reason to believe that the 360 won’t make it the full 5 years.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
It’s not that it won’t make it the full 5 years, it’s that it won’t make it longer as MS has suggested in the past.