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Xbox 360 Launches In U.S.
Well, it's here. Braving long lines and launch parties, and even jail time, those that were willing to pony up the time and money have their hands on the first player in the next-gen war. 360 impressions are available all across the web, with [H]ardOCP and Gamespot offering exhaustive experiences for the interested gamer. The BBC, as always, offers a bigger perspective on the launch, and Gamasutra confirms that Microsoft is in for the long haul in the games industry. From the BBC: "Sony and Nintendo are planning to unleash their next gen consoles during 2006, giving Microsoft an edge over its rivals. The software giant is virtually tied with Nintendo for second place, way behind Sony, in a games market worth $25 billion globally. Microsoft has ambitious plans for its new machine. It said it expects to ship up to three million 360s worldwide within 90 days. But the company has admitted that the worldwide launch of the console could mean shortages in the run-up to Christmas. The console is due to hit Europe on 2 December and Japan on 10 December and some retailers are also warning about limited supplies."
There doesn't seem to be much new or interesting about the Xbox360 or then other next gen machines (apart from the nintendo revolution). It just seems to have more RAM, faster processor, etc. Thinking about it, what will the next generation consoles do that the current ones (gamecube, Xbox, etc) couldn't? Maybe games will have better graphics, but it seems to me like graphics have gotten as good as they really need to be.
People are also ignoring the cost of all the IP that is going into this system. MS have bought (or extensively licenced) all the hardware, and spent huge amounts of money on the software. Last time I checked coding software to run on a proprietary hardware like the xbox 360 is extremely expensive. And to get good coders, the kind MS would require for stability and security, this is potentially going to cost more than the hardware itself. Its like saying sales of Windows are 100% profits. In actual fact the software coding costs can be just as much as hardware costs.
In addition MS have created a huge central server system called Xbox Live which will need to be completely fail safe and have enormous bandwidth as every Xbox 360 is setup to connect to the service from the get go.
Come to think of it, the hardware costs for the Xbox would be probably low compared with the backend Live stuff and the software coding.