Got some killer insider info here from an Xbox Rep.
Guy I know from TXB forums (spaceghost) is an xbox rep.
here's what he had to say (before his thread got locked for some reason) read this quick, it might be getting deleted soon.
""
Hey all!
I'm back from Xbox Conference, and I've got a thousand things to tell you. (and a hundred things I can't tell you. Sorry 'bout those.) I"m exhausted, so I might have to split this into multiple threads or hold some until tomorrow. We'll see.
Now, to squash some rumors.
First, no news about Rare, so nothing one way or the other.
But I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that MS is NOT buying Sega. Sega is doing some bytchin' stuff for all consoles, but what they're doing for Xbox is over and above, fer sure. Again, there's stuff I can't say, but Panzer isn't delayed and it looked freakin' phenominal. I saw a lot of games on $6000 widescreen plasma televisions, and Panzer was absolutely beautiful.
Brute Force and Xbox Live are also on track for their current release dates, so any news of their delay is erroneous.
Since I mentioned Sega, let's talk about them for a second.
House of the Dead rocked and it looked great. A third party is releasing a light gun supposedly within days of the game release, and Sega is relying on their accessory's avialability. The game can be played with a controller, as we saw it done at the conference.
Panzer was beautiful, and the reps who checked it out said it was huge fun. I played vey little of anything, because I don't want to spoil a game by playing an early build or only playing it for a few minutes, which isn't really enough time to get the "hang" of it.
Toe Jam & Earl looks great and is hilareous. It and Panzer are both on my top ten list of games to get this year.
Sega GT2002 is out, obviously. There's a demo coming to OXM, as you've been promised for a while, as well as other surprises. That's all you'll get out of me. If you like racing at all, you need this game. Don't delay.
We also saw footage of NBA and NHL 2K2, both of which will have LIVE support and ONLY LIVE support.
No news about JSRFII. They were "content" with the sales of the first one, and it was not discontinued because of poor sales or anything. There's just plenty in the pipeline to support the sales for a while, so there's no need for them to make any mroe right now. Also no news about a Sonic Xbox game.
(By the way, to my knowledge, there are no games that are "LIVE ONLY" games. All games are "Live ENABLED", meaning they have complete, single player game experiences plus LIVE play. So don't pass on a game because it says "LIVE".
BAM showed Chase-Hollywood Stunt Driver and Reign of Fire. Chase looks like a more-fun version of Wreckless, and is a LOT better than the totally mud-sucky "Stuntman." Reign of Fire is based on the movie,a nd after completing the game as a human, you can play as the dragon. The dragon starts as a baby and grows as you play the game. Great looking adult dragon.
Tecmo wasn't there, but we got copies of the DOA XBV calendar in another training session. Um, it's gonna be March for a long time next year.
Metro One showed off a game called Spike, kind of a Power Stone type fighter.
Infogrames/Atari showed off Unreal Tournament, Transworld Snowboarding and Superman. All three were very exciting. Unreal will be huge, of course, being the killer app for LIVE. Trans. Snow had draw distances of over a mile.
Um, I can't remember a single game UbiSoft showed off except Splinter Cell.
Let me say this.... Splinter Cell isn't a Halo "killer", because it's harder to play than Halo. It's much more mental. But it does **** that will leave you going "Crap, I didn't think a video game could even DO that! Who the hell even THOUGHT of that idea?!?"
No matter what praises you hear about Splinter Cell, ignore them. Because it's better.
It's a MGS killer for sure. The people who have even a couple of hours playing the unfinished game said it makes MGS look like a miniseries on NBC. For all intents and purposes, it IS this year's "Halo." Is that from the UbiSoft guys? No. That's from the Microsoft guys.
We saw a little of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Malice, Rocky, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, State of Emergency (yes, with Multiplayer and more people on screen), Serious Sam, Conflice Desert Storm, The Thing (which is out), and a couple of others I forget. Sorry, I haven't even taken my stuff out of the car. Too tired.
First party stuff? I'm a believer. I believe Blinx will be huge. I wasn't sure before. I am now. I think Quantum Redshift is a beautiful thing, screaming at top speed and 60 FPS in PERFECT CLARITY. You know the podrace in EP1? It's like seeing those graphics done by the Xbox. It doesn't seem possible, but I saw it. It's amazing. NBA Inside Drive rocks. We even saw VERY brief footage of Project Gotham Racing 2. It looked to me like the reflections were real time, there's lots more cars including (I believe... I'm car stupid) a Lamborghini Countach. MechAssault was amazing, and was one of the more popular games on the playable kiosks there. Didn't see anything for Sneakers and you probably don't even care, but there's something special planned for it and Blinx that will give Mario hairballs. Kakuto Chojin looks great and the crowd loved watching it with lits of oohs, ahhs and groans as someone would get hammered. This is a fighter's fighter, with pretty much NO magic crap or turning into a fighting animal or anything non-real like that. You do have a boost ("Kakuto Chojin") that gives you extra flamboyant attacks. I did find out that it is pronounced KAH-coo-toe CHO-jin, not Kah-COO-toe like I thought. One of our presentation slides had it misspelled at Kakuto Chokin, so for the rest of the conference it was referred to as Cocatoo Chokin. Finally, Shenmue II will ship with the DVD of the movie that was released in Japan. MGM is releasing the DVD seperately for approx. $29.99, so getting it included free with the game is a deal and a half. They expect it to do very, very well, even without promotion, so with all the things they have planned for it, it will be a biggie for us.
Finally, game related, is Xbox LIVE. I can't give you numbers, but they're bigger than you think they are. How many people are playing the LIVE beta right now? Nope. There's more than that. How many people signed up for the beta? No, there were a LOT more than that. There's a ReVolt secret I can't tell you about. But most importantly, Sony's poorly orchestrated effort to get the jump on Xbox once again proved not only to screw THEM up, but it helped us out in a mega-huge way. Stores weren't convinced that anyone wanted to play consoles games online and were very restrained with their preorders. until Sony chose to undership and beat us, rather than wait and hit projections. Now, after every store has had to tell a hundred customers a day that they're out of the Sony adapter, store support for LIVE has exploded.
Xbox is green. LIVE is orange, and you will see both everywhere this season. GameCube and PS2 will be, appropriately: black, purple and blue.
Going into conference, I was convinced we were going to have a great Christmas season. Now? I'm convinced we will bring Sony to a screetching halt AND..... hurt Nintendo so bad that they might pull a Sega before next Christmas.
Is that just rep/PR bull****? No. Don't believe me? OK. A month ago, I cut off my ponytail and applied for a full time manager's job at a local retailer. I was offered the job. More money and benefits than I'm getting right now as a rep. My plan was to go to conference, and decide afterwards if I would stay or go. I haven't even been home two hours, and I can tell you that I would be a FREAKIN' IDIOT if I left Xbox now. I will be emailing the retailer tomorrow to turn down the job.
Guys, you are going to be giggling like little schoolgirls by Jan 1 with the bad ass stuff that's gonna happen. And if there's a Sony or a Nintendo rep out there reading this? My advice to you is that there's a manager's job here at a local retailer. You might be wise to consider changing careers. ""
-jarvis
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