Slashdot Mirror
MS Touts Time Advantage Over PS3 Launch
Gamasutra is reporting on Microsoft's loud exclamations on the advantage their November launch will afford them, compared to the expected 2006 launch of the PS3. In fact: "UK Xbox boss Neil Thompson has boasted that Microsoft expects to have a even more significant lead on the PlayStation 3 than previously supposed, suggesting that, in his opinion, the PlayStation 3 might launch in Europe as late as spring 2007 ..." More on this FUD from Next Generation.
... that, unlike the XBox 360, the PS3 may launch with games I would want to buy
The Xbox 360 will be competing with the PS2, however. And is anyone predicting that there will be more Xbox 360 games sold in than PS2 games sold in the time before the release of the PS3? Or at least in the time before the end of the 05 holiday shopping season?
Perhaps the sales of games will tilt a little more in favor of the Xbox brands and the PS2 sales > xbox 360 + xbox sales won't be as overwhelming as the PS2 sales > xbox sales were in the earlier days.
Rather than focusing on trashing a yet to be released console, I hope MS realizes that on their release day, their nemesis is still the PS2.
If Sony released the PS3 on the 31st of October?
I know it's almost certainly not going to happen, but we can dream.
Also, why is it FUD if it's MS, and rumours if it's anyone else?
C17H21NO4
One word: Sega
Maybe they are talking about a whole new competition. Like whose product can aquire more dust on the boxes in the back room at Best Buy.
I just hope Sony is using this time to find cheaper or more reliable parts so there isn't another dieing drive problem. I hope both consoles do well, but I doubt I'll get the 360 untill there are at least 6 games that I consider to be "must have's." The PS3 will be playing at least 30 of the "must have's" I already want, so, most likely, I'll be getting that... as long as I can use my old saves.
And I'll get the Revolution if they don't pull an MS and show us some games I'm gonna want to play. Then again, if I can play all the old games, I'll get one anyway. Knowing the big N, it won't break my checking account either.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
I know how Slashdot likes to spread their funny acronyms whenever they have a chance, but this is certainly not fear, nor uncertainty, and certainly not doubt. The PS3 is going to be equal to or slightly better than the Xbox 360 in performance, but it's going to be launched at least a year after the new Xbox. That's pretty much a fact. It's definitely not going to be launched earlier than spring/summer in Japan, and then late summer/fall in the US. Given how Sony treats the European market, it's probably going to launch here about six to nine months later, so I don't think a 2007 release date is off the wall.
The only people who care about the 360 are the hardcore Sega "Sony killed my Dreamcast with Hype" and Microsoft is "always the winner" crowds.
No Sony PS2 owner has ever expressed any interest in the 360. If such a PS2 owner exists, I'd love to see proof of it.
No Nintendo GameCube owner has ever expressed any interest in the 360. If such a GameCube owner exists, I'd love to see proof of it.
PS2 owners are talking about getting a Revolution as a second system.
GameCube owners are talking about wanting a PS3.
PC gamers are laughing at the 360 since it looks like 360 versions of games are having to be down ported. They will just buy new video cards for their systems to play the better versions of Obvlion, Quake, etc...
All the Xbox owners who love to talk about having the 'most powerful system' are abanoning the 360 for the PS3. Bogus PR sites like majornelson don't appear to be helping Microsoft stem the tide of defections.
There are probably 10-15 million diehard Xbox/Dreamcast owners who will buy the 360 no matter how bad it is or how crappy the games look. They could all buy the system on the day it is released(if MS was able to make that many systems) or over five years.
No matter how much Microsoft tries to pretend they are in a race with Sony and Nintendo, the reality is they are at best trying to salvage some percentage of the current Xbox installed base. With what has to be the most disasterous console launch year ever, I will be impressed if Microsoft manages to retain %75 of current Xbox owners. There are huge numbers of current Xbox owners saying they are looking at switching to the PS3 and or Revolution.
MS, give the shit talk a rest, focus on your base - they aren't a happy group of people right now.
So, let's see where Microsoft is at:
So in essence, they're delivering a time-crunched crappy box that doesn't run anything... even existing XBOX games. Even the Dreamcast had (at worst estimation) a decent lineup. And it was touted as being technologically superior.
People buy consoles for games, or at least the surety of games down the line. We can buy a PS3 and rest assured that we'll have a ton of games. We can buy a Revolution because it'll have all the Nintendo franchises we love. This is the reason tons of people bought the NES, the SNES, the GB/GBA, the PSX, the PS2.
The 360, simply, gives no reason to buy.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Damn, that's a pretty good point.
The PS2 has literally thousands of top-bracket games, while the Xbox 1 has only ever had comparatively few, and the percentage of good ones is even lower. While the Xbox 360 hardware will clearly be more capable than the PS2, it's all for naught without the games, and Sony is laughing all the way to the bank on that score.
In fact, Sony could I think counter the Xbox 360 pretty effectively for at least a year with a simple publicity campaign of "Where are the games?".
I have both a PS2 and an Xbox btw, and I like them both. But the parent makes a good point.
It seems very malicious of Neil Thompson to suggest the PS3 will have such an extremely late launch date. Does he have a reliable source backing up this claim?
...so buy our product which you don't really want in the meantime.
I suspect he is trying to use the age old Microsoft-perfected tactic of instilling doubt about their competitor's product. Trying to say to people, the PS3 is years off (even though offically it is less than a year away)
Oh well, Microsoft using dirty tricks is nothing new I guess.
"They've got a technologically inferior console that's the sequel to a console whose only redeeming feature was technological superiority."
Technologically inferior? Compared to what? Oh, something that hasn't been released yet? I'm sure the XBOX 360 will be a technologically inferior set of hardware compared to the XBOX 1080, but I don't really see how that relates to...um...November 2005.
Beyond that, I agree with the other comment regarding this parent as a troll. It's amazing how, after so many quality titles being released on the XBOX (many of them original IPs too), how people still regard it as the HALOBOX, as if it was still 2001. It's also amazing how these trolls have all probably spent little or no time actually playing with the system in the 4 years since its release.
Come on guys. Every Xbox360 slashpost for the last three months ends up with some highly moderated post about how the Xbox360=Dreamcast. If it's gotten to the point where you're using one word and getting modded up X points, it's too far. There are other, far more intelligent reasons why a first release does not equal an advantage, but a comparison to Sega is not one of them. Sega is nothing like Microsoft, and the Dreamcast is completely different than the Xbox360.
Microsoft could not be more different than Sega in this situation. Sega was already running out of cash. Its arcade incomes had dropped next to nothing. More than that, Sega had lost its single major technology partner - Microsoft - just before launch, because Microsoft had suddenly decided to start dev on its own console. Sega lost its president just before the Dreamcast launch. It postponed the launch date an entire month after a solid promise of September 23. Sega was banking on the Dreamcast, but Microsoft will not go under if no one buys an Xbox360. Sega nearly did when few bought the Dreamcast.
With regards to the hardware, there are now declining returns on hardware performance. Three years of R&D does not look like three years of graphical and gameplay improvement to the mainstream. Nintendo has wisely realized this and correspondingly revamped the UI technology rather than the graphic tech. I haven't seen the PS3 in real action (few have), but I can't imagine it can do much more technically than the Xbox360, at least in terms of the difference between the Dreamcast and PS2. Sega pushed the online capabilities of the Dreamcast, but they were too far ahead of the game (this was when ISDN was fast). Now, with broadband penetration in most American middle class homes, Xbox Live 2 looks revolutionary.
Finally - and unfortunately - Microsoft has realized that it really isn't even games that matter to a consoles success: it's culture. The Dreamcast's launch lineup was unarguably the best console launch ever, and hedgehog heads and tails above the medicore PS2 launch and Halo-driven Xbox launch. What it was missing was cultural penetration. But owning an Xbox, in America and Europe, is cool. Turn on MTV and watch Pimp My Ride. It's not PS2s people want in the backseats of their cars, it's Xboxen. You never saw anything like that with the Dreamcast. Sega thought it was all about the games, and it never was. The PS2 succedded because the PS1 was cool, and because it racked up massive cool points with GTA3.
I could go on. Go research the Dreamcast launch and you'll see that not only is Sega/Dreamcast completely unlike Microsoft/Xbox360, but the market is a completely different animal now. But please, stop with the Sega comparisons. They're dumb.
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II
- Jade Empire
EU PSP Launch, how late was that. If they keep to that schedule, PS3 EU spring 2007 launch is being optomistic.
So, people want to start this DC and 360 comparison again...let me tell all of you who never picked up a DC and have never seen one, it was and is better than a PS2. It was the only online console at the time. Games were often made on both systems, and often ran faster and looked better on the DC. The DC had all the advantages in place that the 360 had, the difference is that Sony did something Sega didn't expect...they dished out the FUD. Go back and do some checking and you will find that Sony's FUD compain against Sega was as bad as this one everyone is claiming M$ is up to now.
The fact is we have two huge companies going head to head over a console. This is honestly something that has never really happened. Sony has TONS of money and check out the numbers folks, their worth is more the M$. Sega and Nintendo never could have hoped to make the money these two companies make because they are specialized into a single market of consoles. Sony has their hands in everything from home electronics to DVDs and computers. There is a lot more money for M$ and Sony to duke it out with.
So we will see two new consoles going head-to-head at the same time, relatively. There will not be the 1 year gap like the last time, 1999 for DC, 2000 for PS2 and 2001 for Xbox. If PS3 is out in Spring 06, we will see to competitive consoles with close launch dates duking it out for supremacy and then we'll see if Sony starts up their own FUD.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
The biggest draw for me to the 360 is the online. MS has put together a solid online system that neither Sony or Nintendo can even come close to at this point.
Give Microsoft reputation for producing less than par network application how long do you think it's going to be before you XBox 360 is owned? I doubt that their DRM + trusted architecture is going to be bullet proof enough to prevent hackers running code.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.