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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.
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.
The word here is "may". A year ago it seemed like the X360 may launch with interesting titles, too. That usually gets resolved as launch draws closer.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
Also, why is it FUD if it's MS, and rumours if it's anyone else?
It's FUD to say the PS3 won't be shipping in Europe until 2007 when Sony has said no such thing and MS clearly has a financial agenda for spreading such nonsense.
Rumors are spread by people with either a) no vested interest, or b) an unconfirmed (or uncomfirmable) vested interest. You could call this a rumor if you didn't know the source, or if the source was independent, e.g. neither MS nor Sony (nor Nintendo).
Coming from the company with a console going head to head with the PS3, it is FUD to spread unsubstantiated rumors that make the competing system look as bad as possible.
You may as well say it's a "rumor" that there's SCO code in Linux. That's not a rumor, that's FUD coming from SCO. It's an unsubstantiated factoid designed for no other reason than to drive people away from a competing product and towards yours. That's the definition of what FUD is, and this is the same thing.