Microsoft Gains First Strike and Scores a Critical Hit!

You’ve probably heard by now that one of Sony’s biggest theoretical exclusives, Final Fantasy XIII, is coming to the 360.  To be honest, even before I owned a PS3, this was never a huge concern of mine.  To begin with, I knew the game was basically never coming out.  And as much as I liked Final Fantasy IV, VI and VII, I never really got too into any of the other ones (got close to the end in VIII, barely started IX, played a little bit of X… X-2 and XII are on my shelf unplayed).

But, yeah… I know there are a lot of Final Fantasy fans out there and this will make probably half of them ecstatic, a quarter furious, and a quarter who don’t care.  Either way, this is, at the very least, a major psychological blow to Sony and a big coup for Microsoft.  A friend of mine was literally trying to sell his 360 to pick up a PS3 MGS4 package because he figured he could play MGS4 and (what he most wanted) Final Fantasy XIII whenever it finally came out.  Based on this news, that is no longer going to happen and he is keeping his 360.

This news also basically more or less confirms the death of big 3rd party exclusives. Sure, MGS4 just came out, but I’m guessing Sony probably shelled out a bunch of money for it and even so, I’m still guessing there’s a chance it will eventually make it to the 360 (the biggest problem, I think, is probably the space constraints… but MS may be about to remedy this… more on this in a sec).  Even if they hadn’t, MGS4 was announced before companies realized that Sony wasn’t going to be the King of the Hill any more, and my guess is that if they had realized that Sony was going to struggle as much as they have in this generation, they would’ve attempted to at least make it multi-platform considering the obvious expense that went into creating it.

Still, even though it seemed like FF XIII sucked all the air out of the rest of the E3 news, Microsoft actually had two other important announcements that actually didn’t relate to games themselves:

•  A parternship with Netflix that allows Netflix subscribers to watch movies and TV shows on their XBox 360s at no additional cost. I am currently a Blockbuster Online subscriber, but something like this could lure me away, particularly if they’re able to offer any HD content (which it does not appear to be yet).  Still, even without HD, 10000 movies and TV shows at my fingertips is definitely tempting.
• The ability to download game discs to your hard drive to improve loading times and (probably) reduce errors and crashes.  The DVD-Rom drive in my XBox 360 is definitely its weakest link, making horrifying crunching sounds and causing my games to slow down, or worse, freeze up completely.  While I’m not a huge fan of all the mandatory installs on the PS3, at least having the option to do so on the 360 is very welcome, particularly since I’m having problems with my drive.

And with the ability to install content onto your 360 HD and the announcement of a new 60GB SKU, suddenly much bigger games, such as, oh I dunno, MGS4, become distinctly more realistic.  Sure, MGS4 for the 360 could ship on multiple discs, but as long as we can install the game onto a Hard Drive (while also still maintaining the ability to swap discs if you want to), then we have nothing to worry about, right?  Microsoft hasn’t said anything about something like this yet, but this certainly seems like a possibility now, no?  Microsoft’s response to the “We couldn’t have made this game without Blu-ray” can now easily be “or the ability to install onto a hard drive, which we now have.”  This seemingly cool but innocuous announcement actually cuts deeply into one of Sony’s selling points.

And, of course, Netflix cuts into another.  If people can easily access a massive library of movies for a relatively low monthly fee, suddenly having a Blu-ray player doesn’t seem all that great. Microsoft may have been on the losing side of the HD format war, but they’re absolutely killing Sony in what will eventually be the NEXT format: on-demand online video.  Microsoft obviously already had their Video Marketplace, but the addition of Netflix instantly adds a massive, easily and cheaply accessible library of videos.  And while it may not be HD yet, we can be pretty certain that it’s coming eventually.  How can a Blu-ray player compete with that?

So, Sony loses a huge exclusive and potentially two other big selling points after Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference. Will they be able to respond in kind?  We’ll know soon enough.