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Xbox Coming to Arcades
Stanl writes "The San Jose Mercury News reports that Microsoft will be taking Xbox technology into arcades, including a statement that, 'arcade titles influence the kind of console games that fans buy.' That is an interesting unattributed observation."
...I can see why they thought of it.
It is black-letter fact, the arcade is dead. Has been dead, in fact, for a long time. From the article itself:
Eddie Adlum, publisher of arcade magazine RePlay, said arcades have been in decline ever since the rise of console gaming. About a decade ago, he estimates there were 10,000 arcades, but that number has since dropped to about 3,000. Hit games such as ``Ms. Pacman'' once sold 100,000 machines, but today, typical hits sell maybe 4,000 to 6,000 units, Adlum said.
However, there is something very similar to the arcade which is growing moderatealy well both in the U.S. and especially in Asia. It's a kind of mutation of the "internet cafe." It seems, while kids won't plunk down dollars to play conventional arcade games, they will go out and "rent" a PC to play Counterstrike or Starcraft for an hour or three. Multiplayer games, it seems, still have draw. And thus the article goes on...
Lately, the rise of online gaming, especially in Asia, has transformed many arcades from stand-alone machines to networks of connected computers where players can play against each other or anyone else over the Internet. That transition plays to the Xbox's strength, since it is primed for broadband gaming, and it also plays to Microsoft's strong relationship with Sega, which is a big supporter of online gaming.
So they think they will somehow tap into this growing phenomenon, instead of merely blowing 50 million or so producing expensive collectors items. I'm not holding my breath, but anything is possible, I guess.
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The implication here is that the Xbox crashes and freezes to a degree similar to MS Windows.
In fact, it does not. I've played the hell out of mine for 15 months, and it flows like buttah. I'm no MS apologist, and their PC operating systems have nearly made me Elvis my monitors on a number of occasions. But their XBox? Technical problems on an un-modded unit? Unheard of.
Somebody mod this ignorant buffoon down.