Slashdot Mirror
Japan Will Have To Wait For Xbox
securitas contributed a link to this New York Times article which indicates a delay in the Japanese release of the Xbox. "MS insists it's going to meet its Nov. 8 North American release date. I'll believe it when I see it. Also, Namco has signed on to produce 4 games for Xbox including 2 exclusives." Ledge adds a link to this AP story carried by Fox News as well: upshot is that units won't go on sale in Japan till Feb. 22. (A chart comparing announced vs. actual dates for all the consoles would be interesting, since they all seem to be delayed.)
How does the Xbox compare with Gamecube, PS2, etc ?
Is it possible to install Linux or BSD on a Xbox ?
{{.sig}}
Japan always seems to go its own way on a lot of techie things. Given the dominance of homegrown consoles in that market, is it likely that MSFT will take it over?
What about localisation issues for XBox, availability of games. local titles?
Some of the big games in the arcades here (China) are dancing games, drumming games, piano playing games (!), all very far away from traditional console fare. I've seen accessories for these for various consoles. Question, are MSFT going to push games which do well in their home market weirdness and ignore local weirdness?
dave "no mr. bond, i expect you to dance!"
With the current dismal Japanese support now, it won't sell in Japan. How much more support can they find with the 2 months delay they just bought themselves?
...and the Xbox, in spite of "Halo", really doesn't have anything to compare to established game line that Nintendo is going to roll out for the Gamecube. While the Xbox looks like a nice system on paper, it's not going to be the "system to get" for Xmas 2001.
On the other hand, it has the marketing might of Microsoft behind it, a host of people who understand x86 and DirectX programming for it, and a sweet architecture. Xmas 2002 might be more interesting.
No car racing games please. I'm sure we'll see enough crashes.
That's what you get for making us wait forever for all your game systems!
And for not releasing any RPG's during the NES era!
And for dumbing down what RPG's you did release!
And for not releasing the Linux kit for the PS/2 here!
And for giving us all that tentacle pr0n! *shudder*
And most of all... that's for the fan abuse at the end of Evangelion!
So there!
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I think it's about time I got my finger out of my ****** and got myself a PS2. I'll wait until the release of the xbox. Hopefully, they'll slash prices by then, and I also want to contribute to PS2 keeping up with the xbox. DirectX schmirect x. Does it have anything like the emotion engine?
Stop the brainwash
The truth is that Microsoft will be using the Xbox's intended for Japan as backups in case the demand is to great. I suspect that if the launch is short of spectactular and the excess systems are not needed, then the Japanese launch will go on as previously scheduled.
You mean I'm going to have to wait 3 and a half months before I can get my imports?
It's already too late for the XBox. More delays in the Japan release will just mean fewer titles developed in Japan. The machine will flop in Japan, and if it flops in Japan, it will be a worldwide flop.
Now the REAL question is, since Bungie was bought out by M$, are they going to keep their promise and do a simultaneous Mac/PC/XBox release, or will M$ shaft everyone and force them to do an initial release on XBox only?
Why bother pointing out that the XBox release will encounter some delays?
It happened frequently with almost all the consoles since the dawn of humanity
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Salvor Hardin
Is it me or is this a bad move on the part of Microsoft to not sell to Japan until after the Christmass season? First off this gives Sony Playstation 2 and the makers of the Nintendo GameCube the power to use its financial backing in japan to slash prices in the USA. After all the biggest amount of buyers of consoles and games are in Japan. Did anyone else notice that on ebworld the GameCube comes out a full 10 days after the projected date of the Xbox? It used to be that the GameCube was comming out 5 days earlier than the Xbox, guess Microsoft felt the competition eh. I wonder if that time difference will make a difference.
I'm going to put together a petition to insist that MS permanently delays XBOX in the UK too. Who's with me?
That was classic intercourse!
Swim overseas to get your own Xbox now!
Of course you'll be able to install Linux in it though I suspect XP to be installed in it in a few months. With all the new range of possibilities that web applications can offer and the new xml libraries that XP offers, there's no doubt that XBOX is the new WEBtv of M$.
Come on, wake up people...
forget DotGNU it's way behind... unless...
1. Hack value. You *know* someone will get Linux running on that thing. At the very least I could gut it for the CPU and return it. (It's manufactured by the evil empire, they can deal with some fradulent RMA.) Wait, with Intel's recent price cuts, by the time the Xbox is released, a P3 750MHz would probably cost less than the gas it would take to drive to and from the store. Oh well.
/. karma. No it won't, why the fsck I write that? I think I'm being hit with a Microsoft Mind Control Beam(TM).
2. It's not easily confused with an IBM PS/2. But wait, that still doesn't make me want one. Shit.
3. It looks cool. I can impress all my... Nevermind.
4. I could play boatloads of cutting-egde, white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat, blast-in-your-face 3D hyper-accelerated games. Hmm, Duke Nukem Forever is still vaporware and probably won't be released for Xbox anyway. Guess not then.
5. It will make my writeups on E2 get C!'d and give me lots of
6. I can get something high-tech before the Japanese. Only problem... Microsoft != High Tech
Gee, I guess I DON'T want an Xbox!
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
So? The US market is MS' primary market, and with Nintendo's date being moved back 2 weeks, Microsoft has a chance to actually sell this unit. Sure, the Japanese market would help, but I don't see this console doing well their anyways (WAAAAAY too bulky for most Japanese, most prefer a smaller item like the GCN).
I seriously think that we all over estimate the importance of launch date of a new console. Just look at the PS2- only now, with the ads for GT3 saturating the evening TV am I inclined to part with £300 for one - it's been around for AGES, theres a couple of spanky new machines just around the corner, but ONE GOOD GAME and I'm most likely going to get one this weekend.
Which was launched first? The Saturn, PS, N64??? dunno! but the few decent games for the Saturn just weren't as good as those for the PS or N64 - so it was dooooomed.
Its all about the games!
1, There are few developers, apart from M$ and Bungie willing to develop for it and those that do have little or no console experience. btw who whats to play pc games on a tv anyway.
2. It is overpriced for a consoles (around $299) and underpowered for a computer 600mh.
3. It is marketed towards the 16 to 25 market who are the most likely to own a computer and have no use for a Xbox anyway.
4. It is badly designed for a console, who whats a hard disk in their console, what do you do in case of a harddisk crash.
5. If you are into that cut down puter, intergrated graphics, sound and processor philosophy then Nvidia are about to bring out the nforce + there will prob be a million clone's even when the thing flops.
In short, the Xbox takes all the disadvantages of a console, such as the inablity to upgrade, low processor power, closed archtechure and paying to develop for it. While it add's all the disadvantages of a computer like bad design, hardware bloat and poor software implementation (ie directx).
I predict that M$ will both miss the us release date and not even attempt to sell the thing in japan.
The Xbox is the bastard child of anti-ps2 vapourware that even the marketing of M$ will never be able to sell.
*Four game controller ports
:(. However, I do actually think that the XBox could end up being a really cool console.
*A front-loading DVD tray
*An Ethernet card
*An NVIDIA graphics processing unit (GPU)
*An Intel 733MHz processor
*An internal hard drive
(information taken from xbox.com)
How does Xbox compare to others? Well, it has a NIC in it. This is something that no other console has. I am sure that this will increase the popularity of the XBox alot, since it is going to be easy to connect it to the internet using high-speed internet such as xDSL and Cable.
The XBox will also have a Hardrive. I am not sure how this will work, but I asume you will have to "install" games. This does allow for faster loading times.
Finally, the console is made by MS. No matter how much people dislike MS, it is clear that they will be able to get a lot of game developers on their "side".
I just read through my post and realized how much pro-MS I sound
Intel Pentium III based processor, x86 instruction set, Nvidia GPU, Microsoft Operating System...
Your're right. It doesn't sound like a PC at all. Maybe it is a WebTV unit?
Ok, yes Japan is the hear and sould of current console market. Japanese companies have developed the market, and currently rule supreme. But the kinds of games Japanese customers buy are often somewhat different, and the Japaneese market is actually smaller than the US market. It's going to take MS longer to produce games for the Japanese market. If they rush the release there, then they will flop there.
Microsoft has done well in the PC gaming market, and the xbox may allow them to extend that market into consoles. They may not initially lure away many hard core console gamers, but it they can get a good initial response in the US, then they will lure in more developers to create games for the Japanese market, and also get more traditional console style games written for their platform. For XBox to be successful they need to have solid hardware, and have a good development kit. I've hear many times how the PS2 is just too hard to develop for. If Microsoft can get enought consoles in consumers hands, and the developers like to develop for it, then it will be a success.
How big is the Christmas season in Japan? Isn't Japan primarily Shinto(sp?) in religion?
steve
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
One of the exclusives is supposed to be Namco's Dead To Rights, a game already under development for the PS2. Very exclusive indeed. I really hate those straight-faced, blatantly misinforming PR suits.
"Those innocent fun games of the hallucination generation"
While the Gamecube was delayed in the US, allowing consumers to adopt the X-Box fist, the Gamecude will be able to establish a decently library if games after its meager offering in mid-September.
It looks like each will premere beifre the other in their home markets. This however will be better for Gamecube maker Nintendo and Gamecube console owners. Microsft could take a loss for several quarters until they have asserted some dominance because of thier desktop stranglehold, while Nintendo has all their efforts in the videogame market. (Although the Game Boy divion is a safety net, after dominating the handheld market for more than a decade.) As long as the Gamecube is a success in Japan, we will see most if not all games translated into English, unlike what we saw with the N64's relative failure (in hindsight).
If it were racism, we'd be talking about "those goddamn slant-eyed sushi-gobbling midgets stealing our god-given right to play with cool shit."
But we're not.
This is about venting feelings of displeasure that result from almost always getting slick tech from Nihon in a *secondhand* fasion (i.e., 6 to 9 months after the stuff starts retailing in Tokyo) -- or (and this happens a lot) not getting it at all, unless you're willing to pay extra to have something imported.
See the difference?
If some section of downtown London were the gaming Mecca of the planet (rather than akihabara), a lot of non-UK residents with names like "Smith," "Jones," and "MacPherson" would probably be saying something similar about the UK right now.
Yes, they'll probably end up shipping out service pack CD's to registered owners of the X-Box. That'll be a world first.
And if the X-box runs a version of Windows:
a) will they call the OS X-Windows (I'm sure that'll be popular!)?
b) How resilient is it likely to be when your six-year-old kid pulls the plug out during a game save? "Registry not found, (A)bort (R)etry (F)ail (B)uy a proper console?"
c) Can the hard disk get so FUBAR'd that customers may have to re-install the OS?
d) Will there be an X-Box Second Edition?
Sigh. Oh well, here we go again...
b) There isn't a registry
c) The OS isn't "installed"
Try again.
It may be already too late for the machine in the US. At $300, it is going to be (street price) prolly $100 more than both ps2 and gamecube. So right there you have lost the middle class buyers.
Now, throw in the fact that nintendo has Pokemon, Mario and Zelda, and Ps2 has GT3, while Xbox has Halo. Nintendo is gonna have the kids market in a lockbox, with the key thrown away. Not to mention that MGS2 is coming out for the ps2....
...personally I can't wait for all the video of Ballmer trying to speak so fast that no one can understand that MS lost a shitload of money on the Xbox.
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
Look, I loved that Konami added Monkeyboy to the DDR lineup. Shows they're supporting Xbox ;)
I've been saying this since X was announced months ago: It'll start strong and early adopters and non-partisan geeks will make for good early sales numbers.
Then, total lack of an overseas market and GCN's arrival will mean Xbox becomes <reverb>The PC Port Dumping Ground of Doom!</reverb>
I'll agree with you about the broadband killing dialup tho'.
I won't agree on the PS2 issue (entirely): Yes, goofy architecture, but it seems to be worth it to many devs, and seeing that PS2's Christmas should be "solid", and GCN's going to be on every 12-year-old's list, I don't know where Xbox will be.
Oh wait, yes I do. Last. Don't get me wrong - I want Xbox to do well, if only to keep PS2 and GCN (does anyone know why the hell it's GCN and not NGC?) on their toes...
Let's met here 6 months after launch and see who's closer to being right.
GTRacer
- Now owns all 3 GT's and a GT3 Demo
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
The thing is, the PC market is shit, and has been for a while. Consoles are where it's at, and developers know this. The idea of a PC port somehow loses its relevance when you consider that we're basically developing for the consoles in the first place.
It is true that Windows became immensely popular because Microsoft pressured its in-house development teams to make applications for it. BOB didn't get as much of that 'privilege'.
The thing is, both the MS Office and MS Home (Encarta, Money, etc.) suites of programs were really good at the time of their first releases (admit it, it was Microsoft who first did an office suite right) and thus people started using Windows because of these nifty applications.
The same thing will happen to the X-Box, as long as the games on the X-Box turn out to be innovative. For the office and casual home markets, Microsoft got their 'innovation' by combining ease-of-use and functionality (although both were present on competitors' products, they were the ones who achieved the right mix first). You can also get that same kind of 'innovation' on consoles by combining games with outstanding gameplay factor with cutting-edge graphics/sound/input technology.
IHMO, however, I don't think the X-Box will achieve that just yet. Although DirectX is a proven technology for game development (amidst all its COM quirks), Microsoft still lacks innovative gameplay, unlike PS2 and GameCube (Luigi's Mansion sure looks like a very fun game!). Just licensing/buying up a few game companies and tell them to produce games for the X-Box simply Doesn't Work.
What Microsoft has to do is to focus on their in-house titles and strive for perfection, like what Nintendo did with its NES/Famicom system back in the 80's. Whether Microsoft even has good in-house titles in store remains to be seen, however.
Or maybe they're doing just that for the Japan release (which probably would have caused the announcement of the delay), especially since the Japanese are extremely stringent when it comes to games and will not buy the X-Box at all if they found out that its games were crappy.
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
'Member it didn't sell south of the border and after much hair-pulling, GM execs figured it out?
Maybe in 6 months Bill will wake up to the fact that his new console didn't make it because of language issues in English-speaking territories:
Xbox == Ex-box
That, or maybe it's because nobody can use that stupid-ass controller... Anyone checked out that thing's mass yet? Is it bending space-time?
GTRacer
- Likes the new Zelda
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
you forgot what about when the HDD get fragmented beyond all recognition (which inevitablly happens to any HDD with windows on it, and defrag under win2k seems to take forever on large drives) maybe we will luck out and it will utilize something other than FAT/FAT32/NTFS.
on a side note, why the hell can't M$ include the drivers and what not needed for maintaining and reading a non FAT/FAT32/NTFS partition. If they could just do this it would make my world a lot easier (right now i can just read both drives from the *nix partions)
and our reservations for the Xbox filled up months before the gamecube. We get about 10 - 15 calls a day asking when its going to be out, can we reserve it, etc etc.
Microsoft already brought out about 30 display boxes for the games that are going to be available upon release. There are a lot of games you can't get on PS2 or DC.
xxx straight edge xxx
I have been trying to post articles on Slashdot for a month now, but they are insistant on publishing other articles. I just posted an article on Quantum Computing. I think you will all enjoy it quite a bit. For those of you who do not know what Quantum computing is, the article explains it quite well. Here is the link . You can post comments on the article below it. Please tell me what you think.
Maybe the games that would sell the thing aren't out yet. Enough fanatics exist to buy a few hundred thousand, but not millions.
Incidentally, if you want a Sony PS2, they're clogging the aisles at Costco and Fry's. Literally. There are pallets of those things in aisles. Full pallets. With no gaps in the stack, like none sold.
Consloes are loss-leaders by their very nature. I doubt that Microsoft is at all concerned about making a quick profit on early XBox sales. (Frankly, I doubt that is possible anyway). Making a profit on games is all about moving software, and you need to have as big an installed base as possible to maximise the number of software units sold. As such, they are focusing on the markets where they can deliver the most units and hopefully get the most sales.
At any rate, Microsoft will be losing money hand over fist on consoles for a long time to come. Mid to long term software sales are where the money will be.
Ignoring your hard disk rants, none of these things happened to the Dreamcast, which ran on WindowsCE. The reason desktop OSes are imcomplete is because M$ wants you to buy new versions. XBox will have an embedded OS, similar to Dreamcast and PDAs running CE. M$'s business model in these cases is based on selling PRODUCTS not SOFTWARE, so the product (of which the OS is a part) better work.
No, I'm no M$ cheerleader, but you need to recognize that not everything they touch turns to dust.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
...and smell the maple nut crunch.
This is their opportunity. Japan is an aggressive and critical market for console gaming. While the X-Box is delayed, if Nintendo got something to market they could do really well. Pity it seems everyone in the console industry has gone belly-up and decided to just LET Microsoft win without a fight. =(
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
This probably happens quite a bit with any game, the marketing departments will do anything to make their product look better then the rest. It really doesn't matter much I dont think, we will see how nice it looks when it finally comes out. The screenshots now aren't even coming from a 'real xbox' but just a mockup of what they think it will be like.. should we whine and cry about that also?
Note: I am not planning on buying an xbox at all, im happy with my ps2..
I believe my colleague, Alex Pham, broke that story in the Los Angeles Times last week. http://latimes.com/business/la-000068596aug24.stor y
The only reason that Xbox or PS2 can't have a "Mario" or a "Zelda" or a "Pokemon" is that Nintendo has trademarks on those names. So Sony can call its Mario game "Crash" and its Pokemon clone "Digimon" (although in the case of digimon, it's actually the other way around).
Sure, you can make a falling blocks game; you just can't call it Tetris.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you import an Xbox, you won't get warranty service, and because most console games have been region coded since NES, you'll have to import all your games too.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Any group of joe schmoe hobbyists who writes a kickass game in DirectX, can easily have it ported to XBOX. Publishers obviously like that - even the shareware/cheapy CD/Game companies can get in on this. What's this mean? There's potential for decent new games at a very reasonable price.
Windows comes on the game discs. In order to use Windows on Xbox games, they'll have to license it from Microsoft. In order to use anything else, they'll probably have to get their game's loader digitally signed by Microsoft. Something similar was necessary on Dreamcast, which compared part of the boot sector (the part that displayed "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD.") against the ROM bit-for-bit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now, throw in the fact that nintendo has Pokemon, Mario and Zelda, and Ps2 has GT3, while Xbox has Halo. Nintendo is gonna have the kids market in a lockbox, with the key thrown away.
Pokemon? PS1 has Digimon. Mario? PS1 has Crash. Zelda? PS1 has Diablo. Other games? Nintendo's quality has been falling (minigames in Mario Party 3 aren't as fun as those in MP2 and MP1 with Thinsulate gloves; Dr. Mario 64 is much cheesier than the new tetris). All MS needs to do get a mascot; will it "embrace and extend" Tux?
Will I retire or break 10K?
according to your logic, the NES, SNES, and every other machine that is non-existent in the year 2001 is a flop.
Only half right. The NES and Super NES may have lost commercial significance, but both consoles still have strong communities of independent developers. Find proof at the nesdev site; you might want to try my GNOME vs. KDE game.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The GameCube release in Japan for console and games IS earlier than the release in the US (like most console releases).
So, GC will get a 5 month headstart on X-Box.
well, this isn't very important. the x-box probably wasn't going to do well in japan, anyway, even if it had come out on time. The Japanese game market is already has a huge war going on with Sony and Nintendo, and quite frankly, no one over there really give's a rat's ass about the X-box. All this does is just seal its fate.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
I never really considered shipping to be much of an issue; I just assumed that Japan was used as a test region for the global market....of course, now that I think of it, a million packaged PS2s *do* take up a lot of space, and sending it all via priority shipping would only raise costs unnecessarily; Sony would then have to either raise retail prices (which would result in fewer sales) or take the loss (which would cut more into their profits).
:)
thanks
on a side note, why the hell can't M$ include the drivers and what not needed for maintaining and reading a non FAT/FAT32/NTFS partition.
Microsoft doesn't ship them because Microsoft wants to lock you into its proprietary NTFS. Third parties don't ship them because Microsoft's IFS kit is incomplete and prohibitively expensive; at US$1,000, who can afford to port ext2 or reiserfs to NT? On the other hand, OSR is selling a filesystem development kit, among other toolkits, but I could not find any pricing information (other than "e-mail sales@osr.com", which doesn't help in the fast pace of Slashdot discussion).
Will I retire or break 10K?
So I geuss that the hundreds of images and movies on ign are fakes too. They must have an huge crew to create all these fake images and movies.
Will it be called the "Cheesebox"?
For the record, I wrote To: webmaster@osr.com,sales@osr.com and asked for the price of the OSR FSDK. The "before you contact us" page said something to the effect: "If you're not using IE 5.x, we don't want to hear your bitching about how it looks bad in Opera or Konqueror, as all of our target audience (Windows developers with eyesight) can use IE 5.x." I asked "I am using IE 5.5 on Windows ME, but I can't find the price."
I got a reply from sales: "Your browser isn't broken. We weren't displaying the $100,000 price of the package." I guess not putting the price on the web page was their way of saying "if you have to ask, you can't afford it."
Will I retire or break 10K?