Staring at the Stupid
I've been riding Sony pretty hard for months, mostly because the execution of their PS3 strategy is FUBAR.The thing about FUBAR, though, is that it's not an exclusive state. And riding headlong into the fog, who do I see?
Hey, it's Microsoft!
It's been two months since launch now, and one additional game has shipped--Dead or Alive 4. Whoopee. However, College Hoops was scheduled to ship 1/23, and there were four or five strong-sounding games shipping on 1/31. That seemed about right.
Then College Hoops got pushed. And last Friday I noticed over at EBGames that every single titled listed as shipping on 1/31 had pushed--in some cases by months.
As a good friend of mine used to say--shitskis.
The next titles are shipping on 2/14--Fight Night Round 3 and Full Auto. Those are both potentially outstanding games, but one new game in nearly three months from launch is a public relations disaster.
And while there are a good number of games scheduled to ship in March, I fully expect quite a few of those titles to slip as well.
So Microsoft can't ship enough consoles to satisfy demand, but the games aren't shipping either. No matter how poorly Sony is executing, that's still a giant problem.
Now there are two ways Microsoft could manage the games issue: via the Live Marketplace or additional backwards compatibility updates. The first option--the Marketplace--works very well as a supplement, but it's not even remotely feasible to use it as the primary supply. And on Friday, Microsoft announced that there will be no additional backward compatibility updates until March.
Ouch.
So the number of games available for the console since launch is almost zero, and backward compatibility updates are, to be charitable, infrequent.
Screwed up, guys. You're screwing up.
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