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XBox 360 Redefining the Console?
Game Girl Advance has up an editorial arguing that, in effect, Microsoft has already won the next round in the console wars by shifting the battlefield. Looking at Gamasutra's rundown on the 360's multimedia and Live components, its easy to see why jane says that the 360 isn't really a console anymore. From the article: "Xbox 360 does not compete with Sony or Nintendo. It is not a gaming console. It is a powerful device to deliver content online and over WiFi. Microsoft's real competition is Apple, Yahoo, and Google. Apple's movie-download service. Yahoo's retail channels. Google's - well, everything. Heck, throw Comcast and TiVo in there for good measure. The games are merely a means to an end - an 'instant-on revenue to support an exponential expansion into the living room,' as Eric put it over an IM chat we had."
The PSP has movie playing capabilities, wifi, and a bunch of other non-gaming features as well... but wasn't that held against it, instead of being thought of as revolutionary? Time will tell, I guess...
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Microsoft often takes utter failures and tries to remake them into something successful. The Xbox 360 looks like they're repackaging webtv. However I must confess, it looks like this time they may be getting it right. I do plan on buying one and no not just for the games. Although I've been waiting quite a while for PD Zero.
Apple hasn't even announced a movie download service yet (albiet everybody and their brother has speculated they eventually will), and they're allready being cast as the company to beat. I love it.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
I'm sure I'll be getting one. Besides the very impressive hardware specs (is this where we get real-time Toy Story?), I like the builtin Wifi. It should've been done in the original Xbox. I don't know about you guys, but I don't have Cat5 running through my house, and I'm not going to setting up my Xbox next to my router. Wireless controllers are nice too.
I like the idea of my gaming box being part of a whole multimedia system. I'd be worried if I was Sony and Nintendo, but at the end of the day Microsoft has to get the games out. I still wish I had gotten a PS2 just for the sheer number of games on it.
Oh, and is this thing going to be backward-compatible with Xbox1?
No matter what your console extras have , And i predict the PS 3 will offer many of the same features as the Xbox 360 , The overridding succes factor is still based on two things , how cool your console is (draw in the casual crowd) and the quality of your games .
.No ammount of media hype will change that , The average man dosn't need or want a multi media soloution they want something to waste a few hours on
The Xbox 360 has not even come close to wining on either front , Most of the buzz i hear from my freinds is not about the multi media capabilties its about having a rocking new version of Grand theft auto or other "Cool" titles.
People buy consoles to play games , they may enjoy the extra stuff like DVD playing and music play-back but the over-riding fansination is still to have some great games you can play alone or have a few freinds over for a game and some beers.
the buzz i do hear recently has mostly been about the PSP or the DS , mainly arguments over "nostaliga about the old game & whatch " vs a Playstation you can carry around.
People do not buy a console based on what ever else it can do , they buy it for the games
when they get a chance to play some "wicked cool" game that they can later thrash their freinds at.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
No matter what kind of features it has - and I'm very interested in the new Live stuff - without awesome games, it's no go.
I work in retail; I spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week selling these things. As soon as we start talking about it a customer asks me what's the difference between the Xbox and the Xbox 360.
And based on the games I've seen, I don't know what to tell them - DoA 4 looks exactly the same as DoAU on the current box, Perfect Dark isn't even in the textured stage yet (wtf have they been doing for the past 5 years), Kameo doesn't look a generational leap better...
People aren't gonna pay 300$ just so they can pay 2$ to download new cars in Forza while playing games that don't do anything new.
--Moo.
He's got his project, Neon in the firmware.
Nintendo will continue to go their own (very different) way, but I think this console war between MS and Sony is just getting interesting. MS was fighting at a huge disadvantage with the XBox. Too little consumer electronics experience. This time around, they start on equal footing.
The war rages on. And we're winning. That is, those of us who use and enjoy game consoles are the winners. The more slick stuff the console does, the better for us.
and no info. Give us the specs and less hollywood fluff.
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey --Beck
So, is Microsoft competing with Nintendo and Sony, or is it not? You can't say that Microsoft's changed the battlefield, that they're now no longer competing with Nintendo and Sony, and then say "the console wars are over."
Of course they're still competing with Nintendo and Sony. Yes, the 360 has some impressive specs. Yes, it's got some fancy new features. Is it still a console? Um... yes. So, it's going to compete with the Revolution and the PS3.
Microsoft's been talking about merging the PC and console gaming markets for a while now, and the X-Box 360 definitely shows that. So, it has a slightly different focus than the Revolution or the PS3, but it's still a console, and it's still aimed towards console gamers (among others, to be sure).
As far as winning the console wars? I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets tired of hearing that about systems that haven't even hit the market yet. Can we please stop saying that some piece of machinery has won a battle that hasn't even begun?
The only reason they said all that stuff is for a fallback excuse when they get beaten in the console war. Are they really trying to say that playing games on that machine is secondary... I find that quite apalling.
It won't have tv recording capabilities.Although it is being rumored to send hd programming through the service - neither economical nor convenient (my bandwidth ain't big enough).
is not news.
torrent link is here: http://www.torrentspy.com/download.asp?id=293150
The PS3 could ship in the same timeframe as the new XBox. Just because Microsoft made a paper release this week means very little strategically in the long term.
BTW, who pays Game Girl Advance's bills? It'd be interesting to know.
Doesn't this thing seem incredably simular to the PSX? Except that's it's based on a new game platform instead of an existing one, it seems virtually the same. And we all know how well the PSX worked out... Obviously I expect the XBox360 to turn out at least a bit better than that, but I don't see people using it for much more than what they use Xbox's, Playstions, and Gamecubes for now: Playing Video Games. All the other crap isn't really nessicary.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
is Game Girl Advance?
Huh?
I love people who base their product evaluations on competing technology that doesn't even exist yet.
I think XBox 360 wil be greater than the immersive virtual sex machine Larry Flint is selling.
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
- XBox Media Center - can decode 480p
- mini iMac - can decode 780p, but no surround sound output
- XBox 360 + XBox Media Center = maybe decode 1080i, with surround sound output, plus it's smaller to boot, and includes WiFi by default
Eventually, geeks are going to have some very hackable off-the-shelf device that serves as their Media Center, and is powerful enough to decode whatever codec they desire. A mass-produced appliance will simply be smaller and cheaper than something you can build yourself. If XBox 360 fulfills this role, then that's something worth celebrating.These are the kind of reviews that MS is banking on to monopolize the home console market. They got their foot in the door with X-Box, losing money on the venture largely because they wanted to gain market share. They'll also underprice 360, and this time they'll be the first out of the gate. If I were Microsoft and I thought I could get away with it, I'd price these as low as possible, to the point where Sony and Nintendo can't compete with similar specs.
By the time you've rhymed one line, I've already busted ten; You rap in exponential time and I'm big-O of log(n).
Reminds me of what Nokia said about N-Gage. How very well that went.
I just find it ironic that you mention drones in your post and then post this shit, as anonymos no less.
Besides the very impressive hardware specs (is this where we get real-time Toy Story?)
I'm very sick of companies announcing theoretical specs. The current XBOX can manage about 10% of the 100 million theoretical polygon count in an actual game. The new XBOX can do 500 million! OOOOOOH! Maybe we'll see 50 million polygons in an actual title, but honestly, I won't hold my breath.
Here is my challenge to every company at E3: Show me something that could not be done this generation. I'm not talking micropayments. That would only take a simple software upgrade. I'm not talking a larger world or more enemies on screen. Again this could be done with simpler worlds or enemies in current consoles. I'm talking about games that are fundamentally different because of the new hardware. Like the difference between Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter.
I want to know why I need to pay for new hardware to play your new games. Pie in the sky theoretical bullshit and pointless processor speeds ain't going to get it done this time.
...I don't have broadband, so the only thing of any interest to me is games, SINGLE-PLAYER games. Given the complete lack of decent thrid-party games for the current Xbox, the PS3 and Revolution are still far more intriguing to me. Besides, anything good that comes out for the 360 will come out for the PC, where I can play it with my keyboard and mouse, at a higher resolution than the HD era could ever hope of achieving, and using a 360 controller as well! HAH! Girls just want a 360 because they can get Bejeweled on Live Arcade without have to deal with all the difficulty of trying to use a pc.
people see marketing-speak like "content delivery" and see right through it. I've seen dozens of ideas and products promising total home content delivery services, it basically is another way to charge for something you don't want or already have/can get.
:) so I am not the best predictor, but with that caveat I will say at least in the US if MS can deliver on the games it will be an interresting fight for sony to keep the mindshare. Nintendo is pretty much pigeonholed as a "kiddy" system unless they come out of the box with something really stunning .
This generation will be won the way all the others were won, games. people buy consoles because they want consoles. I personally only have a gamecube from the current gen ) first to go to 99$
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_On
Consoles are always about increasing performance, just like how the SNES did to the NES. I don't really see anything that's revolutionary for the new XBox. If they came up with some new idea that's never been implemented before, rather than saying "Hey, look, we have a 256bit system, take that 128bit systems!" or something along those lines, then I suppose it could be redefining consoles. But as it is right now, the XBox and PS2 are both entertainment electronics as well, and so was the original Playstation. You can plug them into your TV or receiver, then play cd's and movies on them. It's like saying "We've included a new type of storage media in this Dell! Look at us, we're redefining computing because we have a flash hard drive!" If the XBox was fanless, it would be closer to redefining consoles, but here's how a new console could truly redefine the group:
Find a new way to interact with the player
As we have it now, we have keyboards, mice, joysticks, gamepads, dance pads, and light guns. Perhaps if there was some new way to have a gamer interact with the console (and don't say speech), then it would truly be revolutionary and redefining
I agree with Nintendo's statement... XBOX jumped the gun on releasing this bad boy, while PS3 and Revolution sit back, jack their tech and find little things to beat it in the year or so that they have left to tweak... 360 was probably some clever egomaniacle quip for running circles around the competition, but i think it's going to end up standing for MSX being left in the dust spinning their wheels... Hell, a few mods and add-ons and the PSP competes completely with the thing.
-jÆ Nana korobi ya oki
Funny and insightful. I'd mod you up if I still had my mod points from this morning.
As far as the new X-box 360 goes, i admit its an impressive piece of hardware, have they already won the war yet...what war?!! the phrase 'console war', is a media pun used to bring about hype everytime a new batch of systems are brought about. What it realy means is the strong hold a company has on the gaming market. Will Microsoft gain the stronghold that Sony have held for so long, well today and tomorrow will reviel all.
Yes the specs of the new X-box are, well, they've raised the bar thats for sure. Will the other companies be going back to the drawing board over it, i think not. PS3, will pose around the same specifications i would think, well if recent rumours are true and Nintendo will add to the stirring prospects of anticipation.
But what does all this root to, well what do we really buy the damn things for, games lol.
Yes all the consoles will have DVD play, online gaming etc. But you can do the same thing by using your PC, or buying a dvd player for about $40. All in all, its the games which we should really be looking towards and how developers can now push the envelope on their ideas as they now have all the tools and horsepower to do so.
Specs are highly important yes, but thats all they are. Has X-box redefined the console market, i don't think so, what they are posing, is what Sony and Nintendo have been since the launch of the previous consoles. All they have done has further added to our gaming experience. So look forward to all three companies offering similar products, some with added extras of course.
The latest MK is pretty similar to VF.
oh wow hey....MAYBE...all of this MS Marketing Blitz is because E3 is this week and MS has gotten an early start. Expect to see a lot of E3/Gaming related posts this week seeing as it's the biggest gaming-related convention of the year. Oh, and maybe look into some anger management courses, or get laid or something, you seem tense.