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would have sold more had there been no delivery problems.

Yeah, gotta hand it to Sony - that PS2 launch was fucking flawless.



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+1, Sarcastic, if you please.

So... So far we have a company which didn't test its console as well as it should have and now game developers who didn't test their games on normal TVs... Nice!

Fine, 70 million sold, just like Microsoft has sold 15.5 million units. Let's not forget resale and refurbishment which only get counted once, too. Either way you look at it, both companies have issues that make their numbers appear more impressive than they truly are. But 70 million is still substantially more than 15.5 million, nearly triple the market penetration. As for your remarks about replacement units and playing pirated games, the same holds true for the XBox. Let's not forget the "dirty disk" class action against Microsoft and the bad hard drive unit replacements. There's also the "illegal", by Microsoft definitions, Linux installations. There's also mod chips, which weren't nearly as much of an issue with the PS2 as they were for the PSOne but were a big issue for Microsoft and the first XBox.

None of that really matters as much as the game unit sales of the two "series" that we were discussing. GTA 3 more than doubled the sales of Halo in the three years since they were both released while GTA: VC nearly tripled the sales of Halo in just two years time, Halo was out an entire year before the release of GTA: VC and it's sales aren't even close. GTA:VC wasn't touted as being the defining game of the platform like Halo was when it came out either.

You come across like a demented fanboy when you take in the big picture here. Sorry, GTA is a more popular title than Halo will ever be, which was my point in the first place, Halo isn't really as popular as Mcrosoft wants everybody to believe it is.

The true threat to games of today and tomorrow is the lack of quality in games on the market. As small game developers are swallowed up by the EAs and UBISofts at the same time the production cost of making a game rises vastly meaning fewer and fewer small companies can be successful without major backing from an EA, UBI or Microsoft. Competion won't be completely stifled but innovation will certainly be slowed.

My friend recently purchased an Xbox and went on a binge on aquiring games. I thought I'd jump in with him and help him get some good ones. I spent about 2 hours on the Xbox website purveying all released and announced games. Only one piqued my interest, and its been (wrongly) accused of racial insensativity. Every other game with some potential was part of a series and for the most part, not up to par with the original.

Even the games for PC are having the same issues. Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Counter-strike 2, Starcraft 2, GTA 5 are the only games I am looking forward to and I don't expect them to move the bar all that far. On the MMORPG front there is very little innovation even announced since Shadowbane's dismal showing. Sony's control of the MMORPG market certainly dims the future on this front.

I'm sure a few games will surprise me but I predict a dark ages period in true innovation for the next ten years or maybe even until a happy mix of movies and games can be made, which is a long way off.

Despite the fact that Windows is releasing patches on a monthly basis and that its operating system has been riddled with viruses for the second half of the year, Apple's first major flaw in an operating system is enough of a problem to go over all of them.

Now, I would like to point out that I am not an expert in Windows, but the situation hasn't exactly been rosy. Blaster and SoBig being two examples of note, there are still problems that pop up on almost a weekly basis. Its gotten so bad that Microsoft has been dishing out patches like candy on Halloween and Easter all in one, and now its to the point where for people's conveinence they're plugging the holes in their product once a month.

Meanwhile, there have been minor security flaws in OS X, like a screensaver problem, but nothing too major. There have been, I think, 2 security patches since Panther's release. However, Panther is brand new, all of two months old. Let us take the shrink wrap off before you try and tear our operating system to pieces.

In retrospect, just 9 articles below this one on /., there was an article on an IE exploit. Or should I say, another one.

SO, let's give credit where credit is due. Mac OS X isn't a brick wall, and I (myself) have never argued that it was. However, it isn't a slice of swiss cheese like Windows XP seems to be.

Oh, and while we're at it, OS X is more elegant, user-friendly, aesthetic, stable, and fun to use than Windows XP. :P

Q: How long will Microsoft support a platform that seems destined to be in the red for the next few years? After all, you have invested $3.5 billion on the Xbox and are still losing money on the sale of each unit.

A: We are being smart about bringing the cost of producing the Xbox console down. We can decide to not make it a long investment business and price it to get a better return, but this is a 10-, 15- and 20-year investment.

XBOX Link Cable.