Along with the congratulations and flames however, I received some extra information from my sources which I had not reported on in that article. In case you haven't read the first editorial, I strongly urge you to do so.

The new info I received is in regards to Microsoft's online plans for the Xbox and the situation retailers in Canada find themselves in (which unfortunately seems to be even worse than North America).

Below, a European developer (whose name has been withheld in confidentiality) elaborates on the alarming situation, and expresses the reasons as to why they've pulled one of their titles, due to the nature of Microsoft's online direction. Please note that thie information below is strictly verbatim, which was sent to me via email -- there have been no alterations whatsoever, it pertains things that happened last August, thus there's a possibility of slight changes which have taken effect.

"Here's how it'll work. You fork over a ton of money to Microsoft for your XBox, fair enough. You then fork over another ton to buy a game (a lot of which goes to Microsoft - probably more than the developer or publisher in fact). Then to get online you pay Microsoft's initial online fee (they haven't announced this officially, but one Microsoft employee at XFest said $10 a month, and then another one promptly denied that). This covers basic matchmaking services - Gamespy on the Xbox basically. Then, if you want any extra features... like a persistant world or characters (as in EverCrack, or Phantasy Star) you pay more money to the developer. This is where Company X had hoped to make their money - with persistant online games on the Xbox. But wait... Microsoft take a cut of that too! Yes, they take some of the developers subscription money. So why do online games on the Xbox and give Microsoft some of your money, when you can do them on PC and keep it all to yourself.....? You don't."

As you can see Microsoft's online plan compared to Sega's existing and soon to be disbanded structure is extremely restrictive and expensive to both publishers as well as consumers. Sadly tough, Microsoft doesn't seem to be alone in this as Sony is looking at a similar model for their online plans.

Meanwhile, regarding the situation in Canada -- who better to ask about that then our resident Soul Calibur champion and all around fighting game freak Andrew "Reno" Alfonso, who in fact is a native Canadadian resident. As per my request, Reno conducted a brief investigation of his own and shared the following comment.

"As for the retailing situation in Canada, I've found out that Future Shop, WalMart, Electronics Boutique, Sears, and Toys R Us are all getting XBoxes. I can't find out who else is getting them, but from what I've heard from Microplay (Canada's largest home-grown game retailer) and other independents is that no other stores in Canada are getting an XBox until next year at the earliest."

Microsoft's retail plans are starting to look more and more like Sega's disastrous domestic Saturn launch. To build a viable long term strategy and retail presence with a new console, the worst thing you can do is piss off the people who you expect to sell your product to. Sadly that seems to be exactly what Microsoft is doing.

Further comments, flames, death threats, etcetera are welcome at ali@the-nextlevel.com.

Special thanks for Reno (who wasn't up to the task to writing something about this himself), and our sources within the XBox development community.

··· Ali