Game Off!

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The economic fallout has begun! The poor guys at Microsoft have had to cancel the big launch party of "Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007" for the Xbox 360. Microsoft had organised a big "Good Luck India" signature campaign in the run-up to this release.

We covered the launch of Microsoft's newest gaming console, back in September. After all, this was the first time that a big daddy like MS was putting its marketing muscle into gaming. The Yuvraj-Akshay "Game On" ad was a hit and getting ICICI to offer it on EMIs was a smart move.

But the real driver of the mania needed to be an India-specific killer title that would drive sales like crazy. After all, the economic model of the console gaming industry is to make losses on the hardware and compensate with software ie. games! Microsoft acknowledged this and promised that the Yuvraj Singh edition of its cricket game would be out as World Cup action hotted up. Now though, they've had to frantically hit at the "Escape" key!

I have a contrarian view on this. As Indian fans come to terms with the defeat and figure out how to kill time, maybe the game will be a hit. Maybe all of us are convinced that India can only win the cup in the virtual world and we'll be the guys to make them do it! I think Microsoft should go ahead and release it . They've promised the Tech 2.0 team a demo, so watch out for the review soon!