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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.
I don't know if this guy is just a Mickeysoft basher or what but I like the surprise he stated about the fact that Micro$oft has so many internal troubles in its decision making process.
_ __
He says that they are not the unstoppable Juggernaut most people make them out to be.
That is pretty cool stuff. It gives me the hope that maybe a company software based or not will come along and make some business decisions that are not bone-headed and knock the Borg off their perch.
In any case, the article in terms of getting a feel for Redmond is very interesting.
_______________________________________________
ACK
I know this has been discussed before,
but has anyone managed to get linux running
on the thing yet ? only price drop to this
Its a steal for a nice little x-term or even a
apache server.
http://www.polyprecords.com
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I think the Dreamcast experience shows us that you just cannot recover from the position the Xbox is in - unless....
Well, MS could obviously use its market power to cut prices to silly levels. If it did it all over the world then it could be accused of dumping, but it would be high risk - MS would look to make money on the games, but would face more law suits.
Yet, given the pathetic nature of penalties suggested by the DoJ they might want to take that risk.
And what government wants to go up against a company selling its console for $99?
Anyway, get a Dreamcast. They're cheap and you can run Linux on them!
More DC Linux Stuff here.
Xbox falls. Right... Sales are disappointing.
:-)
Well, he wouldn't say "oh,that xbox was a crap trying to compete with 128bit Sony PS/2 with absolutely awful Microsoft image behind on their own game" right?
Since its first debut or rumors, I couldn't get why on earth a person with p4 2000/GeForce 4 would buy xbox either... Yes,there are my friends having such configuration AND bought a PS/2 too.
One of the reasons were especially simple and funny looking... They bought it instead of an DVD deck. There are some stories that, Xbox needs another thing to play DVDs...
I wouldn't want to sound funny but... If next Xbox was based on Itanium or AMD Hammer chip, something you CAN'T GO AND BUY FROM A SHOP directly, it will sell real good.
On same time, PS/3 will feature Grid computing from IBM
Worst fault was... Using Microsoft name on it. Moderate me troll or not.
XBox's problems could be seen before launch. They claimed they made their hardware by asking gamers what they wanted. Who/what/which gamers did they ask? As all console makers make their hardware in hopes of sales, the ones that remain standing are the ones that people can identify a certain game with it's designated system (ie. Mario/Nintendo, GT or GTA/PS2). XBox launched with a good game, Halo, but they could have done so much better by striking up a deal with Blizzard. I still think that if any online console is to make it big, it will have to strike a deal with a company such as Blizzard. Everquest is good, but not all gamers will want to shell out more money to pay for a monthly fee. They will need a game such as Diablo 2 or Starcraft to make that console a must-have and it will have to be free to play online. Every console has it's strengths and weaknesses, but XBox has too many weaknesses vs. strengths. Sure the graphical strength and processing power is there, but to reiterate what has been said many a time in previous posts, "games are what make the console".
What might make XBox a must-have console to buy would be for Microsoft to "unknowingly" leak the development kits or whatever it is to give gamers more options. For example, if I could transfer Mp3's, DivX files, or emulators and ROMs over to my XBox via its Ethernet port onto HD, I would most certainly be using it much more. Of course that is if I could play Mp3's (not WMA only), watch DivX, and use MAME on it. Of course this would be officially forbidden, but we all know how MS plays. MS, leak us the tools, you'll get more console sales at least.
What I see is a p3 733 CPU with custom Nvidia chip (anyone dares to benchmark?) running some extra-cool directX which MS is hiding from us (PC users) oh and a HD which runs some form of FAT (omg,make it at least ntfs for journaling,household electricity problems)
:-)
Did you see Sony PS/2's specs? Don't you laugh to those people (they finally got a clue) saying Xbox would kill PS/2 because it has 733 Mhz CPU???
MS couldn't win this game. Maybe next time... Oh and those "cool" plans... No, I don't want BillG in my god damn TV...
Microsoft seems to think that they can treat the Xbox like a piece of software. "This version didn't work out so great. Luckily, we have mandatory upgrades in the EULA, so people will have to buy the next version." No. They fail to realize that companies like Sony and Nintendo have successful consoles because they are *extremely* well refined for doing one thing only and that one thing well: playing games. (Duh.) Case in point: the SNES. Weak ass machine, 128/16kb sys/vid RAM, 3.5/2.6/1.7MHz CPU. Effectively less powerful than any given PC 5 years before its time. Yet, it's tight, well designed hardware was able to deliver astonishing audio and video effects for the time.
So, Microsoft decides to jump on the boat and they offer a console that is really nothing more than a repackaged desktop PC. Stock *everything* except for their pretty case. Microsoft sees Windows as "successful", and surely thought that if they do to the Xbox as with Windows, it too will be successful. That is to make it has huge and feature rich as they possibly can. Totally the wrong idea. It needs to fail so that game companies see quite clearly that this is no way to offer a console. I would venture that if the Xbox were a success, we'd see more slapped together consoles like this cropping up from Nintendo, Sony, or whoever else. Now they know they really have to engineer hardware instead of use the current market hardware like a Lego-kit to build a game platform.
Why bother.
...and that's after Saturn sold at a loss. It cost them nearly a billion dollars and put them out of the hardware business. That kind of thinking is what killed the Dreamcast.
It was a seriously over-ambitious system. The electronics were too expensive (hence the loss), and (likely in an attempt to compensate) the other parts were cheap and poorly designed. When you pick up a Dreamcast controller in your hands, it screams "Piece of junk!" through your fingers.
Sega needed it to sell big, and sell lots of games to make up the loss, basically to push Playstation aside right out the gate. It didn't, and by the time word started getting around about the great games, talk of the Playstation 2 killed it.
It didn't look or feel like a better system than the Playstation, and it was launched with the unrealistic expectation of (and desperate need for) a quick win. People perceived it as a loser box, a machine that would be abandoned, and lo and behold it was. This drove away users and developers alike.
It's true, good games aren't enough to carry a system. You also need a solid strategy for more new games, and a system that looks like you should buy it and feels like something worth hundreds of dollars.
First off, they don't have many good games in their lineup for the forseeable future.
They have completely failed in Japan, which is a real problem because many of the best games come from Japan.
How are they going to make money? They have put a PC in a box and are selling it at a loss, whereas Sony and Nintendo either make money or at least break even on their console sales. Microsoft took a shortcut and simply put a PC in a box, because their expertise is not in making hardware, that's simply not going to work from a business standpoint.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
They're in for the long haul. They know people will buy the GameCube for the Mario/Zelda/Metroid games when they come out. They're not going to abandon their system, or development of their flagship products, just because people haven't bought it on the merits of the first wave software.
I also believe that their next portable platform will play GC discs. Long haul.
If I ran a game company, I'd be working on GC games. Ones with big, readable text for small screens.
both GC and PS2 supports HDTV + DTV (480p => 1280i) and the PS2 also supports standard VESA resolutions for VGS/SVGA/XGA output. to utilize this you need special cables and games written to take advantage of it.
the hardware DolbyDigital encoder suffers from delay problems when operating in real-time. the DD format is heavily compressed and for the intended purpouse software encoded ProLogic2 is just as good (with higher fidelity as a bonus - the DD at 384 kbit/sek includes all 5.1 channels vs a standard 2 channel uncompressed DPL2 audio runs at 1.4 mbit/sek).
all consoles can do widescreen (anamorphic or not) and there should be no reason why games should have long loading times on any of these plattforms. just look at Jak&Daxter on PS2 - vitually NO loading time at all when you play.
Microsoft's going to make plenty of bank on the XBox overall. This whole thing is pretty much a non-issue, and is a bunch of media hype about Microsoft being a failure for not being the #1 console. Nobody in Microsoft expected to be anywhere near the #1 console, Sony built way too good of a brand name with the Playstation. Microsoft is in this for the long haul, at least two more hardware releases.
Also, the PS2 sold mostly on the brand name, it would have sold well even if not PS1 compatible. Further, the PS3 looks like its going to be even harder to program for, using tons of processors (IBM style grid computing), and Sony has shown no interest in providing better libraries and documentation for even the PS2..They are getting away with this now because the sold a mass of consoles based on their brand name, but treating 3rd party developers the way Sony does is a dangeorous business, ONE slip-up on the business side, and developers are going to flock away from Sony in a mass exodus.. That's not a good position to be in for the long term, and Microsoft realizes that (Nintendo also realizes this after the N64 debacle).