Microsoft's Rush To Xbox 2 A Danger?

Game Boy writes "Brit games business site Gamesindustry.biz has posted a fascinating editorial asking whether Microsoft is about to shoot itself in the foot over Xbox 2 by rushing to launch the console years ahead of its rivals' next-generation platforms. It's a pretty good analysis of how Microsoft is thinking about this marketplace, and why they could be pretty drastically wrong - I work at a major games publisher, and a lot of people here are worried about exactly the same things, but it's rare to see anyone actually discussing them openly. Xbox has done pretty well so far, but Microsoft could be heading for a disaster that even Bill's billions won't dig them out of..."

Comments

On cross platform development

[Samir Gupta]

The main thesis of the author seems to be that Xbox 2 will be difficult to develop for in a cross-platform environment.

I do not necessarily believe this to be the case. Xbox 2 alpha devkits are already deployed, and I think it's safe to say that major middleware vendors such as Renderware, Havok, etc. whose products are specifically designed to facilitate easy cross platform development are already working on Xbox 2 versions of their APIs.

When PS3 comes out, in theory (of course, I know in real life, it's never this easy), they should just be able to recompile and reexport art assets.

Furthermore, Xbox was much easier, from a developer's standpoint, to develop for than PS2. Microsoft had an full graphics, sound, and networking API in the form of DirectX/XTL, rather than Sony that gave you little more than a set of specs about instruction sets, registers, and memory locations for the various processors (EE, GS, IOP) and minimalist sample code. Xbox's dev/debug tools have always been much slicker and helpful than what Sony gave you out of the box.

Without disclosing any NDA stuff, I can say that developers will likely continue to have much less a learning curve with Xbox 2 than PS3, and this advantage must be factored in.

But Wait....

[standsolid]

[attempted humor]
but wait! no one is even mentioning how Nintendo has a part in all of this! Why?
[/attempted humor]

Re:No, no, no

[jkabbe]

Just because you release a platform before a competitor doesn't automatically make it better.

Exactly. Look how well the Dreamcast crushed the PS2.

And xbox 1 one was good how?

[Micro$oft $uck$]

Xbox 2 better have some kinda kick-ass graphics before i buy. I'll stick with gamecube, thnk you very much. Plus, at the rate MS is going, Xbox 2's will have two each be shipped in their own seperate trucks. I mean come on, it's a console, not a PC. Consoles do not need to be that big! And MS didn't really create the graphics abilities of Xbox, they bought the right to use Nvidia graphics cards in them. PS2 and GCN's graphics cards were made just for games. Point: If MS is going to make a new Xbox, then they should make it themselves.

Re: next console should be portable.

[UncleFluffy]

not only was your grammer horrible, but so was your spelling

That would be "grammar" you would be referring to, I assume.