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Game Industry Experts Discuss Xbox 2
Alan Wong writes "Taken from the latest issue of Xbox Nation magazine, 1UP.com has posted a feature entitled Doing The Right Thing, where eleven industry insiders discussed what it would take for Microsoft to make the next Xbox a success. Among the panel members were Nolan Bushnell, Trip Hawkins, Steven Kent, Bioware's Greg Zeschuk."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell
They should've contacted Ken Williams (of former Sierra fame - http://www.sierragamers.com/), and maybe they'd gotten some input of how to make games that appeal to the cerebral part of the marketplace as well.
I am biased, because I am a big Xbox fan...but...
Most of the excitement I see around consoles currently, is around the Xbox. The PS2 is starting to look really bad lately, in comparison to Xbox games. The Gamecube has the whole on-line vaccuum which many Nintendo fans say is no big deal. Because they don't understand why there is excitement around on-line gaming. (Trust me, there is)
I was recently at a professional conference at Purdue University. (No, this was not for students, but for technical professionals) The agenda had 'game night' listed for 3 of the nights. I had no idea what it would be- charades, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey...who knows. Imagine my happy surprise when I walked in the room and saw 4 Xboxes connected via System Link and projected onto big screens. We played for 2 or 3 hours every night, and people who weren't even videogame fans got into the action.
I really don't think people would have/could have done this with the other consoles. This type of technology is what is making the Xbox 'cool' right now. When I have videogame neophytes (or even PS2/Gamecube owners who aren't familiar with the Xbox) over to play some games, they are usually blown away by Xbox Live. "These are REAL people?" they say over and over into the microphone...(sullying my gamertag while doing it).
The better technology built into the Xbox is finally becoming more important, now that people see that all 3 consoles can play games. But the Xbox can save more games, play your own music, play on-line, download new content, system-link...
Hopefully the next Xbox pushes the envelope a little bit further, so games are still exciting 3 years after the launch of the console.
Because when I play on a PS2 or Gamecube, I think that just playing 'standard' console games is a real snore-fest.
No reason to lie.
" mention the above, because it's plain to see that the Xbox is already a success. By market standards, they're in an incredible place. (Um.. TurboGrafx, anyone... Or N-Gage?) Sure, they're not the number one player, but coming from nowhere, they've made themselves into a contender, and that's a success as far as I can see."
What a lot of Slashdotters don't know is that it's okay to not be in first place in the games market. A lot of people say the Nintendo 64 failed because the PS sold more units. Um, Nintendo sold 30 million N64's along with millions of software they produced. I'm surprised Nintendo doesn't have a McDuckian Money Bin on their property.
"Derp de derp."