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PS2 Vs. X-Box: Winner Emerging?
gripdamage writes "This article on
MSNBC says XBox's sales are slowing and are not expected to meet Microsoft's
expectations. MSNBC previously
reported that sales have been weak in Japan. The strongest and most
interesting assertion in the article is that "In its regular global video game survey last week, Goldman Sachs said U.S. retailers showed a
'surprisingly clear' preference for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 over the Xbox."" X-Box isn't dead yet - not by a long shot.
1.) No sales in Japan? Lets see, choices that have existed in the Japanese console department are Nintendo (Japanese corp), PS2 (Japanese corp), Sega (Japanese corp), and now X-Box (american corp).
2.) With PS2's backward compatability, they already jump the gun with a large userbase already established AND a large game selection already established.
3.) This was X-Box's first release. Lets determine a winner after either a.) MS (or Sony) drop out of the console market or b.) The 2nd or 3rd generation X-Box.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
What's the reason behind this? Is it the technology, the pricing, or the software? Halo is cool, but its no GTA3. Is there some break-out, gotta-have-it game waiting in the wings to make x-box take the lead? With PS2 getting Everquest, the logical response might be an Asheron's Call port to X-Box, but is there anything in the wings that makes X-Box look better?
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So, will they decide it's not working and pull-out and leave those X-Box owners dangling (I.e. future Slashdot article titles, "Linux on the X-Box a Review of Distributions","New Life For Your Old XBox - Cheap Firewall", and the inevitable Jon Katz feature lamenting how we are not all playing our fathers' video game consoles anymore)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you look at the prices in Sweden, you can get your X-Box for 4700 SKR (remove last digit to get US dollars). You get a Playstation 2 for 1200 SKR less, and automatically gain the possibility to play all of your old PS1 games. The much larger existing game base for the PS2, and the price, is dragging Microsoft down.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
A retailer told me recently that Microsoft is gonna keep pumping money into the XBox just to keep it on store shelves for about 5 years or so. So, it won't go away like the Dreamcast did, it will just clutter up store shelves.
My personal conspiriacy theory is that they ARE gonna take XBox's off the shelves and put in their PVR and other stuff to make XBox 2.0 the "ultimate convergence box" that was the big thing in 1998.
Microsoft made some very big blunders with the Xbox, especially internationally. For instance, they didn't re-think their controller (already large for US hands) before releasing in Japan. The result was that they had a lot of angry small-handed customers for whom the system was almost unplayable. Talk about a rookie mistake.
I actually worked at the Xbox-unleashed launch "party" in NYC, a weekend long game tourny/media happening at a swankish club. Sleeping with enemy, I know, but I needed the cash. It was the most forced/fake hooplah event I've ever been at. Most of the hardcore gamers (who were sleeping in shifts on the corner so as to have the best chance at winning the grand prize) trash talked the system when the M$ reps weren't around.
Mostly they talked about how all the good games were already out for PS2 and about how the controller felt weird. Even though the X-box is supposed to have superior hardware, I havn't seen any remarkable difference between its graphics and the PS2/Gamecube. Unless they find some real innovative ways to exploit the hardware advantages (notably the presence of a Hard Drive) they're dead in the water. When it comes to consoles, to borrow from the Clintion-insider campaign slogan, "it's the games, stupid."
Howard Dean for president
Givent that last week's numbers in Famitsu show that the X-Box is being outsold by the PSOne of all things, I think we can safely say that its Dead In Japan. A disappointing start in Europe has been compounded with the insider news that total European sales so far don't even match what the Gamecube preorders have managed yet with a month to release, and Microsoft really were looking at struggling by just on their US sales. Bad news there surely means a desperate price drop must be on the way.
Its kind of a pity, actually - Halo really is very good indeed, and the launch titles generally are much better than what the PS2 saw in its first six months.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Let's see... PS2 came out in a virtual next-gen void. DC was winding down, publishers wanted to go with the known commodity, Playstation's follow-on. So, PS2 started selling with major problems, but the desire for a box was so great that they were the de facto "buy" recommendation.
/. tastes blood in the water and moves in for the kill. Let's be objective!
XBox started with PS2 having 1 year lead and another top console, the Gamecube, a week away from launch.
Consoles are crowded now. It's been proven over and over that the XBox has superior visuals and audio (if only for the fact that it's 18 months newer than the PS2) but it's in a fight for growth with the Gamecube against the PS2. A huge head-start is never easy to compete with, but it isn't a reason to write off the underdog.
If you were to replace "Playstation 2" with "Windows", and replace "XBox" with "Linux", this thread would have 1200 comments all stating how just because Windows sells more doesn't mean it's better. But, when MS is the underdog,
(I like to think of myself as objective, but I do own an XBox and 6 games, so I may be biased)
Broadband support from Xbox:
None, and details are unknown (expect something at E3, but the broadband support is suppose be rolled out June 2002.
Broadband support from Sony:
Ethernet/Modem kit that allows you to specify how to connect, Linux kit that lets you do just about anything you want (rip/play MP3's, connect to the Internet), Upcoming AOL support (Yes, AOL sucks, but that's still a damn lot of people)
Holy cow are you uninformed. You marked the dvd remote as costing people $20-$30, but didn't mark the PS2 accessories as costing money.
1. Xbox has a built-in ethernet port and card - ie once the online system is active, it's plug and play, and that has always been the plan. Broadband only, so no bottlenecks from slower modem users. Sony's plan wasn't broadband online gaming from the start.
2. Online gaming - Halo, with a workaround, yes is playable online, but it was optimized for LAN, not 'net, so it's slower and not optimized for online. And you don't know of future online games? There are many, the most anticipated of course, being Unreal Championship. Microsoft is not stupid, and they will not begin an online system without massively good online games. PS2 will be rolling out their online system around the same time, but MS has much more experience with online communities and gaming.
If you're a PS2 fan, you could say it's a tie for anything online related. But if you're realistic, Xbox has the lead in this area.
3. Game support. Yes, PS2 may have more better games. And yes, PS2 has more games. Now consider the ratio of games to good games - Xbox comes out on top. When you compare two consoles where the difference is a full year, PS2 obviously will come out on top. You can't compare quantities in relation to time. PS2 has a larger fanbase, PS2 has more games, PS2 generally has a head start. With MS having a handicap of one year, it's doing far better than I personally, would expect. If you want to be objective, compare strating figures of both consoles. Compare the first month, or the first 3 months of the 2 systems. Xbox takes the lead here.
FYI I couldn't care less that Xbox is made by Microsoft. Why do you think they barely advertise their name on their xbox ads? They know the tension and hatred so many have towards them. They want Xbox to succeed without relating it to the infamous software giant as much as possible. Take that as good or bad, I like Xbox because it's a great system, IMHO. Give MS time, and it'll end up just as big as PS2.
All, great systems. PS2, Xbox, Gamecube. Just buy the one that has more games that you like. That's all it's about.
Some of us wait for the games to come out before we buy the system.
Remember how MS were caught with their pants down on the Internet, but they turned on a dime and now they are a very serious player in the space.
I find it funny when I come across this meme, which was originally put about by Microsoft itself. How, exactly, have Microsoft turned on a dime and become a very serious player in the Internet space?
They gave away their Internet Explorer, from which they make no profit. They failed in their attempt to squash AOL, even though they threw money at MSN - at one stage practically giving away $400 dollars a time to get people to sign up. They brought Hotmail for $400 million in January 1998, and over four years later are only just starting to get any revenue from it. They were wrong footed by Suns Java in 1998, and have only recently released a copycat solution. They've been wrongfooted by competition from Open Source, and have yet to come up with an effective strategy to it. Apache software is still installed on over 60% of all web servers. But most significantly, they don't make any serious revenue selling products or services over the web, nor are their products yet really integrated with the web.
Bearing in mind that the web started to take off exponentially about seven years ago, please tell me, how exactly has Microsoft "turned on a dime" with regards to the Internet?
So they got everyone to use a product (IE) by giving it away for free as part of the default install on 99% of PCs sold. Gosh. Well done Microsoft!
You obviously haven't been paying attention to recent gaming history, have you?
"near-flat-shaded cartoonish games" made the PSOne the most popular console ever. The crappy PSX chewed up and swallowed the Dreamcast (which when in the right hands can push pixels at least as well as the launch PS2 games did) and would've done so to the N64 if the Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon franchises hadn't kept it hanging on for dear life. Both of those systems have _far_ superior graphics, and both fell before the PSX.
Even games don't make the console. The Dreamcast had at least twice the number of games released in the US in its 1.5 year run before the death announcement than the N64 had when it was released in 1996. It's got some of the best games I've ever played. Skies, of Arcadia, Armada, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, the playable Jedi Power Battles, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Sonic Adventure 1 & 2. More and more DC games get ported and sequeled on other systems all the time. Yet somehow it didn't survive.
Image makes or breaks systems. Image killed the Dreamcast because of the "power" of a system that wasn't even out for more than a year after the DC's release. Image is what's giving Microsoft's Xbox some serious problems, because alot people just despise Microsoft, and while they may feel that they can't get away from them on the PC, they can sure as hell not give them any more money.
There's one or two Xbox titles I'd want to play. Ones that would normally get me to buy the system, but I'm not doing it because it's Microsoft, and I'm trying to take a stand. No it won't bring them down. Sony and Nintento aren't wonderful by any means, I have no illusions about this. It's just where I feel can have the most impact on preventing Microsoft from extending their defacto monopoly. And from what I can see it's working pretty well.
The day Microsoft announces that the Xbox is dead, I'll buy a used one and some games, but not before then.