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Salon Goes Inside the X-Box
Romancer writes "According to this
article, Recent X-box "Sales have been disappointing, and the co-creator of Microsoft's game console just quit his job -- a day before a book portraying him as a hero hit the bookstores." "
The article itself is allright, but it has a lot of good links.
All of the articles talking about Blackley's departure as being a sign of XBox's fall are mostly just hype. Blackley did this interview with Gamespot and said that his departure had to do with the coming of E3 and the formation of his own game company.
First off, there are far more than "10 games" and many more than "two or three good ones". Second, the Playstation didn't launch with "hundreds of different games". How long has the PS1 been out? 6 years?
X-box has been selling almost nothing over here in Europe but today is the first day with the new price, 299 which brought the Xbox to below $300 here in Sweden where it was previously around $500. Reportedly several stores have sold out of Xbox today so maybe now things will get going for Microsoft in the gaming arena.
Anyway, get a Dreamcast. They're cheap and you can run Linux on them!
Yeah, except that you can't get them new any more (by all means, let me know if I'm wrong - but just me. We don't want a repeat of last week when somebody bought all 304 copies of crazy taxi 2 off kbtoys.com to ebay them later).
And buyer beware: a small percentage of Dreamcasts cannot run Linux or any CD-R software for that matter. Check the compatibility list.
More games, more games, more games. Then lower the price of the games. People are not buying a console because it looks cool, was made by a certain company or simply just to have another one. You buy it to play games.
I bought a Dreamcast in December and have bought at least 20 games for it since then. Why? Its a decent console, connects to the internet, and most of the games still left are under $10. I have spent less for my DC and all 20 games combined then the Xbox and one controller costs. $50-60 for one freaking Xbox game is over 2X above what I will ever pay for a console game, therefore my kids and I will stick to our PC's, Dreamcast and PS1.
The gamers and must-haves will always buy new, they already have the Xbox and now its up to the general public to keep it floating.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
This is a false argument. It is unfair to compare a 6-month old system with a 2-year (PS2) or 8-year (PSX) old system. At least compare today's X-box to the PS2 6 months after launch (which is when I bought mine).
PS2 at the time had only 2 'great' games (SSX and Madden), and a handful of good ones (Armored Core 2, Star Wars Starfighter). It also had a TON of crap. Comparing that to the X-box today with Halo, Jet Set Radio Future, and DOA3 they are not so different. SONY was also in a similar position to Microsoft when PS2 launched. Dreamcast had been out for over a year and had a number of good, solid titles behind it: Soul Calibur, Sega GT, Jet Grind Radio just to name a few. I remember at the time of PS2's launch when people were commenting how PS2 had mostly crap games, while Dreamcast had a good library of titles. Sound familiar?
Today, PS2 has FAR more market penetration than DC ever did, so it will be a more difficult struggle for MS. Plus, PS2 has done a much better job of continuing to produce great titles than Sega ever did. Gran Turismo 3, Grand Theft Auto 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Silent Hill 2, SSX/Tricky, Devil May Cry, Ace Combat 4, Wipeout Fusion, Virtua Fighter 4, etc.--most of which are exclusive content--are all great games that drive system sales. The upcoming schedule for PS2 also has more highly-anticipated titles than any other system.
Since the beginning, the Xbox has been perceived by many as a "cheap PC that connects to the TV to play games". And as evidenced by the upcoming titles on the system, a lot of PC ports seem to be in its future. Xbox will have far and away the most FPS games of any console, I'm sure. Problem is, it will have little else. Most console gamers grew up on "Japanese" video games. Many are anime fans. US developers mostly seem uninterested in making that style of game (cute), instead opting for 'manly' killing machine games. Consoles are driven by content, not tech specs, and the Japanese still own in the content department, at least as far as console-style games go.
Also, while the stable hardware platform should make Xbox less buggy than normal MS software, the folks at Redmond hardly have a reputation for making things that work well. That, coupled with the public's negative views of MS as a company ("evil corporate pirates!") and SONY's experience and head start, things look bad for Xbox.
And when the Japanese public finds out Xbox was called "Project Midway" by MS Insiders, don't expect to sell many more boxes there. ^_^
--
Dave
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
GTA3 comes out for the XBox this summer.
The X-box is about to take a price dive of £100 in the UK ($140?). This will happen in the next couple of days and was sent out in a memo to Toys'R'Us yesterday. The reason for this is said to be to compete with the Gamecube which is being released at £130. I think that bad sales may have also had an effect on this decision.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.