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State of the 360
IGN is reporting on The State of the Xbox 360, detailing information on the next-gen console since this past E3. From the article: "Coming into the home stretch here, it's clear Microsoft has had its fair share of problems. The MTV event, though brilliantly conceived, was a hype-without-substance infomercial that impressed nobody, especially the most important people -- gamers. At the actual MTV event, I did an informal poll which revealed that three-fourths of the people attending were there only to see the Killers. E3 was underwhelming to put it mildly, and the summer months proved to be vacant of everything but rumors, leaks, and more rumors and leaks. The Tokyo Game show helped Microsoft's cause a little, and Microsoft finally revealed its Japanese pricing and the worldwide release dates, leaving one major news announcement left open - the day-and-date launch games. Apparently, Microsoft and friends are still working on these last details."
And don't forget that MS and Sony have pretty much screwed over backwards compatibility in this generation. With MS only going to do select games for backwards compatibility/emulation and the PS3 only supporting Memory Stick Duo, the Big N's GCN backwards compatibility and FREE (for first party titles at the moment) backwards compatibility off the internet looks golden.
Sony and MS probably don't care about backwards compatibility anyways, they're gonna make money off the next iteration of the popular franchises. As long as people are willing to shell out $50 for the next graphical update of Madden, Halo, etc. they need not worry about people playing the old stuff. Less reasons for them to not buy the new shiny thing (tm).
At least with Nintendo in the days of old, you knew each Mario and Zelda game was different than the last. Yeah the graphics got better with the system, but you go from Mario 1 -> Mario 3 -> Mario World -> Yoshi's Island, you're talking similar basic mechanics (they're platformers) but with different things going on in each. Can you say the same thing about sports games and first-person shooters?
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