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The 360's Position in the Next-Gen War
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a great article on the Elite Bastards site looking at the Xbox 360's positioning in the next-gen market. In the first of a three part article series, the author looks at the lessons Microsoft learned from its first hardware outing, and what he feels the company's strategy will be in the near future. From the article: "Clearly my impression of the Xbox 360 is that it is positioned to compete significantly better in the next gen console race than its predecessor. The difference this time around is that although Microsoft will no longer have the decidedly most powerful console, they also won't have the most expensive console, and believe me, they will compete on price. The Xbox 360s media (DVD) and input device (gamepad) are safe choices and the CPU may be merely adequate, but the GPU is quite potent and should go far in keeping Microsoft's box in the same league as Sony's overall despite the disparity in time to market."
Where every console is a winner!
And every console maker does better just by showing up.
I know there are a around 5-10 million people who desperately want to believe articles like this one, or the hundreds of variations of it you find on places like www.teamxbox.com's forums. They latched on to the Dreamcast, and then the Xbox, and now the 360. There is a sad and indignant feeling that this time their console HAS TO do better, I mean, come on, it just HAS TO.
Gran Turismo is the single best (modern) console game I've ever played. I'm going with whoever has GT, probably sony.
I never understood how people can play FPS and RTS on console, without a mouse I'm hosed, especially with the huge dead-zones on Current Analog noobsticks.
I haven't seen a single game on Xbox that has made me want one. Gran Turismo on it's own is enough for me to buy PS3 and there will most likely be 2 releases for PS3, along with the mini GT's like GT:Concept.
As for platform fighters, I'll stick with neo-geo.
What could be better than a jet powered motorcycle? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8l6GTHLSWE
"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the XBox 360 is in for a rough future."
If by 'rough future' you mean humiliating failure, yes you deserve your +5 Insightful.
Let's just sum up the magnitude of the 360 fiasco:
* Dead already in the Asian market - getting outsold by the GameCube
* Has sold only around a million consoles - worst console launch ever - by a wide margin
* Stores all over the US have stacks of 360s sitting unsold - despite the best efforts of the marketing company Microsoft has hired to try to give the impression that 360s are sold out everywhere
* eBay prices, as many have pointed out, are basically retail prices and masses of 360s are going unbid
* Microsoft has dropped backwards compatibility
* The hardware defects are staggering with the system - talk to anyone who works at a shipping company if you still believe the 'less than 5%' of 360s are defective BS Microsoft is trying to tell people
* 360 games have become a regular source of ridicule on gaming sites where the most common joke is 'those have got to be Xbox screenshots' when each new 360 game gets released
* The fucked up graphics hardware - the poorly designed ATI graphics system makes the 360 a nightmare for developers where they have to implement expensive and tedious to implement tile based renderers to avoid the jaggy filled graphics people are seeing with current 360 games.
* The old jokes about Microsoft bringing all the bad aspects of pc development to the console market arent't that funny anymore for 360 owners. Crashes, graphics glitches, save problems, network lag problems - everyone is waiting around for 'the upcomming patch that will fix their 360 game'
* Almost every game of any interest on the 360 is scheduled to have a pc version. And now that people are seeing just how weak the 360 hardware is, no one wants to be stuck with the dumbed down 360 version.
Microsoft is no longer relevant to the console market. Right now they are best described as trying to salvage some of their existing Xbox userbase.
The 360 will not break 10 million consoles in its lifetime. Pretty much the only people who give a shit about the console are the diehard Dreamcast/Xbox demo.
So put summarize what you just said in that long winded spiel...your a Nintendo fanboy. Tanks Dominate, the Revolution doesnt.