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One Year of Xbox 360
Gaming Nexus has up an article marking (kinda) the one-year anniversary of the 360's launch. Author Charles Husemann touches on the important moments in the console's first year on the market, discusses what Microsoft has done right, and talks about where the console is probably going in the future. From the article: "Obviously digital content such as TV and movies are going to be a big deal (assuming Microsoft can get those servers running smoothly and release bigger hard drives). I know I can stream it from my PC but I'd love to have Major Nelsons' podcast automatically downloaded to my 360 every week. I'd also like to see Microsoft resist the temptation to cram a browser into the system as I know they are going to get pressure to do so with the Wii and the PS3 having that built in. Instead I'd love to have a simple, easy to use RSS reader that can stream headlines along the bottom of the screen when I'm in the dashboard."
I do kind of like the idea of having an RSS reader with "new item" updates being presented like the "your friend has logged in/out" messages. I could even see doing it in-game for some stuff, although I could see that being annoying to most people.
Much as it would pain Microsoft, some kind of YouTube integration would be a killer app for the 360, too.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Yeah I wouldn't want a browser either if I knew it was gonna be IE. :)
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NPD has the 360 at 2.7 million in the US as the end of October.
Media Create has the 360 at 170k in Japan by the same time.
Things don't look very good in Europe, though not as bad as Japan - the total shipments to all of Europe most likely put the 360 in the 1.2 million range.
Throw in a handful from various minor territories.
Going into the November the 360 has sold about 6 million shipped and 4.5 sold million worldwide.
That's worse than the first Xbox. And even worse than the Dreamcast's first year.
ima holding out foh the xbox 1080 or the special edition 360x1!trillions2x with megahd hd disc addon. wheee technorogee!
That being said, Sony and Microsoft and taking losses to establish impenetrable market dominance and brand recognition in four of the biggest markets in the world (Gaming, Music, Entertainment[Hollywood], and Advertising). Does anyone actually think this is not the road we/they are going down?
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
I really like what Microsoft has done with the integration between the 360 and MediaCenter. I ended up reformatting my machine with MediaCenter and streaming my movies and pictures with it is fantastic. Personally, I really feel like xbox has hit the nail on the head with all the "extras" and integration they did with the 360. The downloadable game videos and demos was really a breakthrough in the console world. I realize the Wii and PS3 do this as well, which is great, but you definitely have to give it to Microsoft for doing it well, and doing it first. Well... maybe not first in the sense there were hacked xboxes with XMBC (which i've used). It was nice, but this integration is just seamless now with MediaCenter. My only complaint would be the lack of native support for DiVX and XVid but you can't really blame microsoft for supporting their proprietary format.
The downloadable tv shows and movies... meh, seems like they have issues to work out, and even then it may not be my cup of tea, but at least they're trying something.
And, of course this is all my opinion based on what I'm looking for. I don't need a browser in my console, so I don't see that as an advantage for the ps3 or wii. Just like I'm sure many people see no reason to stream pictures through their console so they don't see that as an advantage for the 360. Heh, just my little disclaimer.
I've had mine for nearly a year now, and have been very satisfied. At $50 a year, I think the Live Gold membership has been well worth it. I was impressed at first with being able to download 1+ gig demos reasonably fast. Plus 'free' Live content such as Texas Hold'em and Hexic are a bonus too. Admittedly, I don't have a whole lot of friends so all the chat/com features haven't done much for me.
I have a few complaints about the speed of loading Arcade games and having demos show as 0 on your gamerscore, but all in all, Live has been a good experience. It was just on the 22nd of this month that they added TV and movies to the Live content, and so far, I'm liking that too. Already downloaded South Park's Make Love Not Warcraft and a few other choice tv shows. They cost $2.00 each and do not expire. I know you can watch them while offline, as long as you are signed in with the same user profile that downloaded them. So the liscensing for them is stored locally.
As for the machine itself, it delivers on the graphics and has some great games. The DVD tray on mine has started to stick a bit. An xbox with a shoddy disc drive, who'de imagined?
Personally, I think they did a lot right. They were first to market, got some exclusive games, and have a well organized Xbox Live interface. One thing they could do is push a few more free arcade games to combat Sony.
Backwards compatibility
Microsoft tried to downplay BC and then at the last minute flip flopped and tried to implement a halfassed way of manually retrofitting small batches of games. If they had just kept their mouths shut and stuck to the "We don't feel BC is something gamers want" mantra they wouldn't have this year long bitchfest about BC. 360 owners would have gotten over and and moved on.
Hardware defects
Instead of being upfront about the insanely high defect rate for the 360, Microsoft tried to BS 360 owners about "within industry standards for defect rates" when there were people all over the net who had gone through 3,4,5,6,7 360s. They generated massive ill will amongst 360 owners and there are still many former Xbox owners not willing to buy 360s because of all the horror stories.
Developer Support
Going into what should have been its big holiday sales months, Microsoft only has Gears of War. Not exactly a game that is causing people outside the usual Xbox fanbase to want a 360. And Gears is no match for Halo/2 in single or online play.
10 Megs of EDRAM
Despite all the talk of how money means nothing to Microsoft, they skimped on the graphics hardware in the 360 and developers have been paying the price. We are now learning that more games besides PGR3 are being forced to run at less than 720p so they can avoid having to write tile renderers to fit inside the 360's EDRAM.
Charge for online play
Both Nintendo and Sony are offering free online play for their systems. The one company that should be able to afford to let its gamers play games for free isn't.
Peripherals
One word: overpriced
Harddrive
There is no reason Microsoft is forcing 360 owners to be able to have nothing better than a 20gig drive. Microsoft should let 360 owners upgrade their harddrive to any size they want.
Microsoft has pretty much squandered their one year head start. The press is completely focused on the Wii and PS3 now. Even stores are pushing the 360 displays off to the side to make room for the new Wii and PS3 kiosks or displays.
Just look at the home hardware, varied yes, duplicate chips yes
My DVD player+AnalogRecorder+80Ghd and my DigitalFreeTV Box w/80Gig and my CableTV/SatBox(no hd) and my xbox+250gHD all have common hardware wasted.
Ie, mpeg2 decoders and harddisks and damn remotes, if only for ONE reason is to get rid of all the remotes.
What we need is a common multimedia box or the consoles can do dual digital tuners + analogue with REPLACEABLE HD and built in DVD burner.
Analogue comes with many PC digital tuners on the same chip, or $5 chip, why cannot retail setup boxes do that aswell as default, not a $300 markup addon.
I got damn hate these solutions with no replaceable harddrives, they are cheap and getting cheaper, SELL THE DAMN machines without a harddrive as an option
and go and pick one up your self, im sick of 2-3x markup prices on these lounge room solutions. Stupid cable companies using R-tard marketing saying
we will have 250gig massive HD recording in the future, well sorry, you can buy 700gis TODAY!. SATA drives clipped into a plastic casing then slotted into
a device would be a better solution, then the hardware can reformat/system it from ROM. I know engineers want this, but business analysts say NO! because they
can't fake their high profits.
People want convergence because they are getting sick of all the cable mess, 50 inputs and outputs and a mix of signal types from svhs/component/hdmi.
And I wish companies standardized on machine widths, some are too narrow 10inchs, and some are too wide, nearly 19ins. Stick to 1/2 cabinet width dudes, about 13inchs, the old VCR
widths.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
He fails to mention the part about an estimated four million sales in the last three months.
:)
250,000 estimated shipments in October
750,000 estimated shipments in November
1.5-2 million estimated shipments in December
Where's the extra million you're accouting for? Japa...???...AHAHAHAHAHAHA, I can't even bring myself to type it.
I just got my Xboxs 360 a few weeks ago, but one of the thing I'm getting frustrated with is the number of times games crash because of "Can't read this disk" errors. These are new game disks on a new system. How common is this problem? Should I get my system replaced?