Xbox 360 Has Nothing On Atari 2600

MBCook writes "Forbes has posted their thoughts on the launch of the Xbox 360. They start out with 'Has there ever been as confused a launch as the Xbox 360?' and it continues from there. Citing multiple confusing variations, unoriginal games, expensive bundles, and complexity of controls (among other things) it concludes: 'If anything, the Xbox 360 is aptly named: Microsoft is trying to give gamers the spin.'" Next Generation's not-so-next-gen impressions are similar. From the article: "The games you can buy today for Xbox 360 at your local retailer are not the future. As evidenced by the litany of solid but not outstanding reviews, and, my own hands-on experiences, they are but a whisper of what this machine (or the next generation of hardware as a whole) will ultimately be capable of."

Comments

Old systems

[SoCalChris]

To me, old systems were a lot more fun than any of the new systems. Back when they couldn't rely on good graphics to sell a game, they actually had to have good gameplay. Atari was great, as was the NES. When the Genesis & SNES came out, is when gameplay started going downhill.

I have no desire for a PS3 or XBox 360. The Revolution might be interesting, it looks like they are actually trying to innovate, and come up with something new, besides fancier graphics. We'll see though. For now, I'm sticking with my NES.

Re:Old systems

[theJML]

I will have to agree with this poster, while there are a few games here and there that are interesting, most of the titles lately are either: A. Obivous sequels adding nothing but another number on the end of the title and promises for better graphics, or B. Wannabe other games. You know, the knock off GTs, or GTAs, the reworked old NES/SNES Game come to next gen consoles, etc...

Everytime a new console comes out I think "Wow, hopefully this new amazingly fast processor and next gen power inspires people to build new and different games that are both challenging and fun in ways they couldn't do before" but usually it comes out as "oh, wow. another Madden game."

I still play my NES on a regular basis. It honestly looks sweet on my HD TV and some 21st century audio processing gives it an interesting spin. All 8 bits seem to still be enough for fun.

/*it may be off topic, but the only beef I have is that I can't seem to get the zapper to work on the HD Screen. I have tried two "known good" zappers and they don't work for somereason... any ideas?*/

Atari 2600 hasn't aged well

[HunterZ]

Earlier this year I got into eBay and bought an Atari 2600 game lot, more than doubling my collection. I pulled my Atari 2600 - the very one I've had since childhood - out of the closet, dusted it off, hooked it up, and started testing all the cartridges to see which ones still worked... ...And I noticed something: The games weren't nearly as fun any more. As I wandered around the maze in Adventure I realized that my tastes had changed over the years, and the simple gameplay - while still charming and laced with nostalgia - just wasn't as captivating any more as it was 20 years ago. I know that a lot of people will disagree, as evidenced by the popularity of remakes of these games on modern systems and cell phones. In my case however, I gradually gave up my Atari 2600 in favor of more sophisticated PC and Gameboy games. I'm now extremely picky about which games I like - shunning most console titles and playing only a few new PC games each year, along with a growing stash of older titles that still call out to me. I also increased my NES collection via eBay, and it seems to have fared much better in the enjoyment department (so far).

I still plan to keep my Atari 2600 around, but it will probably not get played very often except perhaps by curious house guests. I imagine that's a better fate than most XBox 360's will see 25 years from now though...

this is to be expected....

[moosesocks]

Microsoft has never been about innovation. It's always about the package.

There was absolutely nothing innovative about the original XBox. All of the basic concepts used by MS in it were either heavily derived from earlier systems or grabbed from the PC world.

The fact is that the success of the XBox can be attributed to the fact that Microsoft bundled all of these ideas into a package in a manner that had never been done before in the console world. Microsoft has always focused on the sum of the parts rather than the parts themselves.

Windows 95 was the first consumer OS to successfully combine multitasking with a decent GUI. Unix was without a doubt better at multitasking, and most would argue that the Mac OS GUI was a lot more mature than the Win9x GUI... Of course, this is an over-simplification of the facts, but the point stands.

Halo was far from an innovative FPS. It's incredibly fun because it took the best aspects of all the successful FPS games from the past few years and combined them into one package. If you pick the XBox apart point by point, you can find another console that outdoes the XBox hin that particular category, but once you compare them as a whole, the XBox comes out on top.

Deja vu, all over again.

[Leviathant]

With all this buzz over the XBOX360, I remembered that I had an old USB Gravis Eliminator gamepad that I picked up at a computer show in a $1 box, but never put to use -- at the time, no game emulator I had found could handle USB joysticks.

So I hit Google and found ZSNES, a really nice Super Nintendo Emulator. Onward, I went looking for ROMs of my favorite games, as well as games that I never owned or rented at the time. To my mild surprise, most of the games I scrolled past were pretty terrible. I downloaded about a dozen, and mostly play Metroid, Megaman games, and Super Mario Allstars. (I don't have time for the two SNES Final Fantasy games.)

For all the years that the SNES was out, only a handful (or two!) of games were really excellent. The rest, mostly so-so, sometimes really really bad.

Though that may sound somewhat optimistic for the 360, I think these new consoles suffer the NeoGeo problem -- Lots of hype, lots of tech, but way too expensive for what you get back, in my opinion. The games sure look shiny, but that only gets you so much.