Next-Gen Consoles -The Strategy Thus Far

tyko writes "CoolTechZone.com takes a look at all three consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and presents a nice overview of the strategies behind the products. From the article: 'Now that Microsoft has put its weight firmly behind HD-DVD, it seems obvious that Xbox 360 will have HD-DVD support. If recent rumors are anything to go by, Xbox 360 will not have support for HD-DVD games at launch because it won't ship with the needed HD-DVD drive. Whether or not the support will come later as an optional accessory is not clear either. Needless to say, this has added more confusion to the product that is due for launch in just two weeks.'"

Comments

HD-DVD

[Gaima]

I suspect that even with Microsofts weight behind HD-DVD, if they don't ship the 360 with a HD-DVD drive, it will fail.
History has shown that big add-on packs don't sell, so it's fair to assume that Microsoft will never be able to garner enough market share of HD-DVD capable 360s to make any difference to the market Sony will have of Blu-Ray players.

Poorly researched article

[EvilDonut]

There is no clarity in regards to accessories that will come bundled with the package, and the optional accessories that you can purchase.

However, there are going to be two versions of the console retailing at $299 and $399, respectively. The $299 will be the base model and will come with a wired controller and perhaps a 20GB hard disk drive.

The $299 version (also known as the Core Package) will perhaps come with a hard drive? What sort of weird speculation is that? The contents of the Core and Premium packages were announced over a month ago, the info is available on Xbox.com, and it's pretty damn clear at this point that the Core version will absolutely NOT come with a hard drive. It doesn't get anymore clear than that.

Re:Nintendo Revolution

[cowscows]

Well, one problem right now is that Nintendo has told us basically nothing about the Revolution's game line up. That makes it hard for some people to get excited about it. On the other hand, many of us have reasonably active imaginations, and when we combine what we know about the new controller with a bunch of franchises that we've grown up with, we can understand a lot of potential and get pumped up about that. Sadly, many individuals choose to only utilize screenshots, E3 demos, and marketing hype to influence their expectations. I'm afraid that that crowd will constantly be under-whelmed by Nintendo, and probably miss out on some excellent games.