Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft Games’
Microsoft Says No Plans to Buy Electronic Arts – EA Sports
Microsoft Corp has no plans to acquire Electronic Arts, a Microsoft executive said, shooting down unsubstantiated talk of a potential bid that triggered a spike in the video game publisher’s shares.
“We have no plans to acquire EA,” Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. “They remain a very important partner to us. No acquisitions.” Spencer declined to comment on whether it had held talks with Electronics Arts on such a move. Shares of Electronics Arts jumped more than 8 percent on Wednesday on unsubstantiated talk that Microsoft may want to buy the video game publisher. Last year, Electronic Arts, the publisher of popular titles like “Madden” football, unsuccessfully pursued a buyout of rival video game company Take Two Interactive Software. The Redwood City, California-based company, which has a market value of $6.5 billion, is frequently named by traders as a target for Walt Disney Co and Time Warner Inc.
Microsoft to Cut Xbox 360 Elite Price For Japan
Microsoft Corp said it would lower the price of its high-end Xbox 360 model by a quarter in Japan, keeping pace with Sony’s launch of a cheaper PlayStation 3 ahead of the critical shopping season.
Microsoft plans to cut the price of the Xbox 360 Elite, which comes with a 120-gigabyte hard disk drive, to 29,800 yen ($321) on Sept. 10 from 39,800 yen. The price of the entry-level Xbox Arcade model will stay at 19,800 yen in Japan, and the company will phase out its mid-range Xbox 360 model with a 60-GB hard drive, in line with its announcements last week for outside Japan. Microsoft said then that it was cutting the price of the Elite model by $100 to $299.99 in the United States and by 50 euros to 249.99 euros in Europe. Sony, which competes head-on with Microsoft in terms of functionality of their game consoles and target users, said two weeks ago that it would launch a slimmer, cheaper version of the PlayStation 3, in a bid to jump-start sales.
Following Microsoft’s price cut announcements last week for markets outside Japan, Nintendo Co Ltd said it has no plan to lower prices of its top-selling Wii console. The Wii sells for 25,000 yen in Japan, compared with the new Xbox 360 Elite price of 29,800 yen and 29,980 yen for the slimmer PS3 model, which will hit store shelves on Thursday.
Microsoft: Xbox 360 Not Having Blu-ray is Good
Microsoft pats itself on the back for not having a high-definition optical storage medium such as Blu-ray Disc.
During infancy of the current console generation, there was much debate regarding Sony’s inclusion of the Blu-ray Disc format with the PlayStation 3. The blue and violet lasers did drive costs up, but it was hard to argue with the value of a 50GB storage medium for Sony’s console.
Fast forward ahead years to today, and we’re still on the same argument but on a different scale. Xbox product director Aaron Greenberg told CVG that the Xbox 360 lack of a Blu-ray Disc drive has allowed it to take a massive lead against the PS3.
“Being $100 cheaper [than PS3] is part of the reason we’re nearly twice their installed base,” Greenberg said, referring to the North American market, according to CVG.
PlayStation 3′s added investment in Blu-ray Disc, while it does cost more, pays off with games such as Final Fantasy XIII, where it ships on one disc versus three DVDs for the Xbox 360.
“The fact that we’re able to offer a console starting at $199 is a benefit of not being burdened with that cost,” Greenberg said to Edge magazine.”For us, our bet was on digital distribution, that was the future – the ability to [play] 1080p movies with no disc, no download required; we have the largest movie and TV library, the largest HD library of any console.”
Ironically, Microsoft’s $199 version of the Xbox 360 doesn’t come with the accessory that is needed most for the company’s bet on digital distribution – a hard disk drive.