2004 Good Year for Xbox

Voodoo Extreme has details from a Microsoft release about Xbox accomplishments in 2004. From the article: "Xbox Live online gaming service has set a new standard for online gaming with more than 1.4 million members around the world."

Comments

I think

[keeleysam]

that the artice is very biased, because it fails to even mention that the PS2 and Gamecube had even better years...

NOT BEING A TROLL

Re:RTFA

[FriedTurkey]

The overall Halo franchise, which includes predecessor "Halo: Combat Evolved" for the PC and Xbox, has sold a collective 12.8 million copies in just three years. Where can PS2 or GameCube boast a system only title selling like that?

Actually the Grand Theft Auto Series for PS2 out sold Halo individualy and as a series. Halo isn't a system exclusive as it is on the PC too as you yourself mentioned.

Re:a new standard of what?

[fondue]

The statement looks even less impressive when you consider that the PS2, a machine that is (in many people's experience) no walk in the park to get online, has over 2.6 million online users in the US alone - with virtually no marketing support for this feature.

Xbox Live has been an unmitigated disaster.

Re:Broadly speaking, I'd agree

[badasscat]

The X-Box gets virtually all of the cross-platform console titles and the X-Box versions of these games are usually the best, due in part, although not entirely, to features such as the HDD and customisable soundtracks.

This isn't a very good argument for the Xbox being a very memorable console. Where are the quality first-party and exclusive titles? There are a few (Halo, KOTOR, if you're into those sorts of games), but not many. Most Xbox owners seem to have the system for the exact same games - everybody has DOA3, everybody has Project Gotham, everybody has Halo and Halo 2. They also may buy Madden and the odd random PC-port FPS when they get bored of Halo, but it just goes to show how basically forgettable and generic of a game library the system has.

I also completely disagree with your statement that "only Nintendo fanboys cling to this view". My statement above is based in part (though certainly not entirely) on my own buying experiences for my Xbox. I am an Xbox owner, and the reason I own it is for the multi-platform games. I'm certainly no Nintendo fanboy; I'm not gonna sign off here and fire up some Mario. I don't even like Mario games. (I think I'm at the stage of my life where I can finally admit that, after years of trying to convince myself otherwise.) But I will say that at least the GameCube has a decent amount of content that you can't find anywhere else (not even PC), unlike the Xbox.

The last stats I saw showed that the X-Box had out-sold the PS and the Gamecube by a considerable margin during the 2004 Christmas period.

I'm not sure where you saw those stats or what region(s) and time period(s) they covered. Certainly it was not the case worldwide. It may have been the case in one or another territory, over a specific period of weeks as determined by Microsoft to sound the most impressive in a press release. (Similar to what they've done here, with the "article" we're all supposedly bantering about.) Nintendo does the same thing, though; they put out their own set of stats showing how they'd more than doubled the sales of the PS2 and Xbox combined over the Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, for example. These numbers can always be selectively drawn and applied to achieve whatever marketing result you want.

Re:a new standard of what?

[fondue]

"How would you even get reliable numbers for PS2 online gamers in the US?"

From Sony. I assume their data collection method involves either just going by the number of Network Adapters sold (which is as reliable a method as going by one-time Xbox Live logins), or by requesting data on the number of unique user registrations made to third party Network Play games.

"This is ignoring the fact that the two audiences aren't remotely comparable (one of them subscribes, the other is free, PS2 has roughly seven times more consoles sold, etc.)."

So it's not fair for Sony to have made network gaming more popular, just because their approach is more consumer- and developer-friendly? Great logic there.

"And with the critical support (most videogame jouralists love it)"

Most videogame 'journalists' say what they're told. See article.

"economic support (most publishers make use of it now)"

Aside from those publishers whose output consists mainly of racing games and shooters, where it's become an expected feature (even though most people will never use it), pretty much every publisher made the minimum contractually required number of Live-supporting games and then never touched it again.

"and popular support (people who use Live for a while learn to swear by it)"

All 1.4 million of them.

"calling it "an unmitigated disaster" is pretty silly"

It's not made anyone any money, it's not made online console gaming a mainstream activity (fewer than 10% of Xbox owners have signed up to it), and it's actively prevented the platform's network capabilites from being used to their promised potential.

Where are the massively multiplayer games? Why are pretty much all the games limited to 16 players max? Why can't I use a keyboard? Why can't I set up a server on a PC? Why can't I play PSO against users in other countries? Why can't I play against PC and PS2 owners in the same game?

MS have painted themselves into a corner. If the PS3 / N5 have network capability out of the box (and that will really mean out of the box, not 'unlockable' by taking out a subscription launched one year after the console), Xbox Live in its present form will die as inevitably as services like CompuServe died in the wake of the WWW. All the content providers will take their games to where people can actually play them.

MS should enjoy the unwarranted good PR Xbox Live has had so far while they can.