The usual technique of talking about what companies will be doing with their next generation of equipment has been going on for a while with gaming consoles. Talk of the PlayStation 2 came out around the same time as the Xbox was released. It’s all an effort to make unsettle the consumer of the rivals products.While in Japan, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said they were planning to release the Xbox2 in 2006 – what isn’t clear is if this would be the release date for Japan or Worldwide. Some analysts are wondering if this date is being floated as it matched the year given by Sony for the PS3 and Microsoft aren’t rushing the Xbox2 out so as to give the Xbox box as many years as possible to make back some of the losses they’ve had on the project to date.In a typical large company PR fog type of way, MS reps are quoted as saying
“Our executives often talk about the future in terms of vision and the possibilities of technology. This is what allows us to be innovative as a company.”
At the same time a MS VP Peter Moore, has been telling conference delegates in London at the Games Summit that MS “have no plans” to bring out a handheld gaming device, saying that as hand held games were solitary experience, they had no future. This really sound like someone shooting from the hip and not carefully thinking about where these devices are or where they will be in the future. There a big future for networked games on handheld devices, I’ve had games demoed to me running on handheld devices, including Smartphones that really come alive when they played against other people.