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Out Of The XBox
theodp writes 'Bill G.'s snagged the cover of this week's Time, which asks the question: Is Microsoft about to do in the living room with the Xbox 360 what it did in the office with Windows? Turn to page 13 in your Book of Xenon, please: 'As the world's software leader, Microsoft is among the best suited to enable and capitalize this transformation. This is our opportunity to lose.' If PlayStation 3 folks are scared, they're not showing it. 'We look at delivering a quantum leap in technology, not just Xbox version 1.5,' quips a Sony spokeswoman.' The story also reveals that the previously discussed rumor about Halo 3 parrying the PS3 launch is accurate.
I'm really expecting all three systems to be similar in technical capabilities. It will be a matter of games and, this time, services and ease of use, that distinguish the various systems, I think.
While I know the XBox 360 is much closer to release than the PS3, I've noticed a very large difference in their hype strategies. Sony is doing the same thing they did with the PS2 by hyping the hardware's tecnical potential. While that's impressive to Slashdotters, even we take Sony's boasts with copious amounts of salt, and make up a relatively small portion of the now mainstream target markets.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is hyping the functional promise of the XBox 360. They seem to have a VERY solid and cohesive Internet strategy that I think will take them very far in the public consciousness. Live accounts and the enforcing of Live compliance with all games will be an enticingly transparent and consistent experience that will lure many more to online gaming, like Halo introduced many to the LAN party. The scaled-down free variant of Live will help in this area, especially if "Free Live Weekends" means every weekend is free. There are a lot of people who are moving to 802.11 because of its relative simplicity compared to setting up a wired network; the difference between 54 or even 11Mbps and 100Mbps means little to most people when the Internet connection is 4Mbps.
While I assume that PS3 will also have wifi, Live's unified front will spoil people if Sony doesn't implement a similarly unified online portal. The idea of Cell technology is impressive, and as a friend noted, success in the form of PS3 will do much to further efforts to use Cell, which would be interesting to see. PS3's losing market share would tarnish Cell's business appeal, deserved or not. If Live's uniformity within what would otherwise be a very fragmented online gamespace marginalizes the PS3's online presence, XBox 360 might severely encroach on Sony's market.
GTA games eventually make it to XBox; Rockstar is independent, bound only by a time-limited exclusivity contract to Sony. Microsoft just absorbs their exclusive developers. Future iterations of Halo will likely never be anywhere but XBox and maybe PC.
Your rebuttal of the "XBox 1.5" claim is spot-on, though. Even without the obvious differences in horsepower, Xbox 360 distinguishes itself remarkably well from the XBox.
Meanwhile, Nintendo, as the aforementioned friend analogized, in the face of the bluster of Sony and Microsoft, has said it wants to go play hopscotch. They marginalize themselves, but as long as they retain their proven economic sanity, they'll stay afloat, and maybe one of their crazy schemes will eventually reinstate them as a leader.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
The thing I've been watching has been MS success at courting Asian game studios. You don't see it yet, but they started going over when the X-Box was first on the drawing board, to begin wooing game producers. More importantly they kept at it through years of failure, and now it appears that with the launch of the next console, they might begin to reap dividends on all those investments. I think you're right that consoles live or die on the games they can deliver (although the DVD add-in was a nice bonus last round and DVR capability will probably be similar this round) so watching MS success at getting traditional console developers should be telling.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
First is the "media center" idea of the XBox 360. Good luck. You'll need it. I have a DVD player. Everyone does. In fact, I have many (computer, PS2, etc.). But the feature is nearly free, so I don't blame them for including it. Sony will do better in that regard because their machine will play Blu-Ray discs. But as for the rest of it, they are going to have a hard time getting me to use it for anything but games. Play music? Why should I rerip all my CDs? And even if they were in MP3 (they are in AAC), I bet I couldn't just copy them over to the X-Box 360, I'd have to re-rip them. I'm not going to do that. Unless I can stream them to the machine, I won't use that part. I won't play DVDs on it (already covered that). Now playing video would be nice if I could stream if off my computer (a Mac). But my guess is that you can only do that from a Windows Media Center eddition computer, which doesn't help me. They can put all the media features they want, it doesn't matter to me, I'll only be buying it for the games. I don't care about videoconfrencing, VOIP chat, or editing home movies (or anything else they come up with). It is a console, and while it is nice they will pack on all those features, I don't think it will make any real difference in sales.
The thing that WILL make a difference (in my mind) is the micropayments thing they are talking about. I don't know about the rest of you, but the idea of paying $1 so my character can wear a shirt that they sell at Old Navy sounds like one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. I will not be buying virtual shirts. I will not be paying money to unlock content on the disc. I refuse to pay to buy pointless items. I don't care if everyone who plays the game online gets a bright pink shirt with the word "Luzer" on it unless they buy another one, I'm not doing it. Go milk someone else for money, that idea will fail. And based on other industries (I'm looking at you cell phone companies), I wouldn't be buying that virtual shirt, I would be RENTING it for $1 per month. I WON'T PAY MONEY TO RENT VIRTUAL CLOTHING. I don't see myself buying extra soundtracks, cars to race with, new tracks, new levels, new playable characters, etc.
As for the X-Box 1.5 remark, it has some truth. The X-Box 360 is big because it has 3 cores. That is the most important part in my mind because it means that you have an additional 2 cores above what the current generation has for things like dynamically generated models (LOD on terain and such), and most importantly enemy AI. That single handedly more than trippled the ammount of CPU available to AI, so AI should get much more interesting in upcomming games.
As for the PS3, it is revolutionary in it's Cell architecture, providing 8 cores. Now because they are so specialized, they may be harder to program. But if it works out (I should probably say "when" because with Sony, they'll find a way to get benefit out of it even if it takes a while), it will make the X-Box 360 look like an X-Box 1.5 in how far they are from the programming model of the last generation of consoles.
Nintendo is the wildcard in all this. I saw what is suposedly their logo for the Revolution (which I doubt is real because Nintendo always changes from the codenames of their systems). But if what they are promising works out, it sounds quite interesting. Now the question is (after writing all the above) will the Revolution have multiple cores? If not, they could be at a real disadvantage once games start taking advantage of 'em.
The next year or so should be interesting to watch. I like the idea of MS releasing Halo 3 when the PS3 comes out because of the shear bravado of it. But if Halo 3 isn't as good as people hope (or the PS3 has some amazingly popular break out launch title) then the move could backfire. The other thing to watch on MS's part is backwards compatibility. That is the ONLY feature that I care about from them that would change my mind on purchase. Right now
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.