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360 Sales Slow, Chip Blamed For Issues
Gamasutra has a bevy of information about the XBox 360. Sales seem to be slowing, just as supply issues seem to be resolving. Microsoft has a target for its annoyance regarding those issues. An analyst is blaming German chip manufacturer Infineon Technologies for the slow arrival of 360 units to market. Regardless of past problems, the company is going full speed ahead with more launches. Latin America saw launch on February 2nd, and "The system will launch in Korea on February 24, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore on March 16, Australia and New Zealand on March 23, with a global presence in 30 countries by the end of March."
There are no real killer titles (and a lot of ports); and
You still can't buy the damn thing. Nowhere that I've seen, anyway. It's 'Out of stock' notices all round where I live...
You must think in Russian.
I'm with you on waiting. I haven't been an early console adopter since SNES. I'd rather wait and see how things sort out first. I don't have the time or money to be playing around with multiple systems and I rather just pick one after the competition has run a bit.
NINJA SPIRIT - The Ancient Art of Insanity
especially if the GBA player can be attached to the NR... I am 100% sold. It would mean that I can play 100% of the games I regularly play on my current box/SP with the new one, plus the game download service and unique interface.
... they come out with Grand Theft Auto: Seattle ... now, that would be sweet, using the choppers on top of the hospitals here, jumping onto car ferries while being pursued, using a cycle to get on the Ice Cream Cruise, and riding across the swinging bridge or using the Monorail track to bypass traffic jams ...
According to the Konami and Nintendo shareholders meetings - translated into English, mind you - from this year, it looks like the GBA player will be attachable to the NR, and have wireless connections too.
We have an old school xbox in our living room on a DLP projector, and it already looks pretty good. I really only play Fable and Morrowind GOTY on it, and my roommates only play Halo 2 and Madden. As of yet we are not impressed enough to split a 360. That box will likely stay there until we can actually compare PS3 and Xbox 360 side to side.
I agree. I only play Fable (ok, Fable: The Lost Tales or whatever the upgrade was), Sims 2 (new), and Lego Star Wars on the xBox. The rest of the games I find pretty boring. I'll wait until we can look at PS3, NR, and xBox360 - and only believe in games I can demo and see reviews for. I bought the xBox on the hype of games, and I'm not going to shell out good money until I see real games and can test and compare them for all the systems.
Unless
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You can be absolutely positive that if the PS3 sells for $500/unit it will sell nowhere near 500k units in one day in the U.S.
That's why you can be absolutely positive that the PS3 won't be priced at $500.
Sony has never gone to market with the most expensive console, even though all the "experts" have always predicted that every upcoming Sony console would be more expensive than the competition.
Sony wants to let people thing that it's going to cost $500 so people will think it's a bargain when it comes out at $349.
I wouldn't say that there is a lack of interest for next generation platforms; historically speaking, the next generation of platforms has always had at least two consoles that sold well. Personally, I don't see the xbox360 as a next generation platform; the release time between the xbox and xbox360 just seems to be too small. Am I the only one who finds it strange that the xbox was the last of the previous generations to be released and that their 360 was the first of the "next-gens" to be released? It seems apparent that Microsoft didn't care enough to release something truly inspiring for their consumers but rather wanted to get the advantage of being the first console out by a long-shot. As a result, it's apparent that the upgrade from the xbox and 360 isn't as overwhelming as we expect when we compare different generation consoles; furthermore, the lack of games for the system is another testament to their speedy release.
Sorry to get a little long winded, but to conclude: say what you want about the 360 sale's, but don't group it with the other next-gen consoles or use it to make assumptions regarding next-gen sales.
Speaking as one who does not own a 360, but has field tested it in HD with a friend, I must say that the unit has quite the graphical and raw horsepower punch. I was never much impressed with the original Xbox, but the 360 is a different animal. It competes with a high end gaming PC rig, playing Quake 4 pretty damn well for a $400 toy. COD II is a damn fun game (even if it has had problems with multiplayer in Xbox live). Didn't much care for PDZ though. Not the point.
I don't think the PS3 will be significantly more powerful, particularly given that Cell SPEs are weighted toward SIMD single precision FP, whereas Xenos has three full integer and VMX (Altivec) cores. The 360 is an amazing deal for $400 - when it works. And that's the problem with the unit. It has an abysmal failure rate, even for a 1st gen product. So I'm holding out for a product update from MS and waiting to see how the PS3 will really perform.
But I'm not so dismissive of MS's latest offering. If fact, on raw power alone, I'm pretty damn impressed.