your idea of how far two inches could be will vary from mine, or anyone else's. not all gamers have the most steady hands either; it doesnt take the most steady of hands to press a button OTOH.
i will be interested in seeing how the new controller will work out and whether i can actually turn my body to talk to someone while playing. hell... can i even pause a game, sit the controller down and then come back to play without the controller falsely sensing that i moved abruptly?
nintendo has the time to iron out all the kinks, but we all have reason to doubt all the next-gen systems except for the x360...and thats only because we can [not] go to any store already to see its faults and shortcomings.
thats is a bad analogy; changing the steering wheel of a car DOES directly change the way you drive, but changing the way your engine works does not? that doesnt make sense...
whats under the hood [that which actually powers and is responsible for moving your car] has a larger impact on your overall experience than just your steering wheel. how fast can you go? how quickly can you come to a stop, whats your turning radius. any racer will tell you that even something a simple as changing the type of tires you use can have a serious impact on your driving experience. the steering wheel is but the interface. [i will admit it would be cool to be able to "drive" by just pointing a wand in the direction you want to go] the cell is like the engine. a steering while can be swapped in and out easily; you cant change your engine without radically changing your entire car. radical changes are out of the question when discussing consoles, so why not opt for a supposedly more capable engine from the start?
and sad, but true... changing your steering wheel may change the way games are made, but its still just a peripheral. nintendo knows that peripherals can [read: will] be copied, and if its up to sony... improved. thats why they arent giving away all the revolution's secrets yet. think of controllers as an aftermarket item. sony took and improved upon the nintendo idea of analog movement by adding a second analog stick to use for controlling the camera, they also improved upon the rumble feature. patents can be skirted, console makers do it all the time. outside of inherent console properties, peripherals dont mean much. the DS as genius on nintendo's part because two screens could not be added in for the psp, nor could touchscreen abilities. the DS is in fact unique.
if the revolution controller takes off, expect to see copies for all other consoles. if the ps3's architecture pays off, dont expect to see any do-it-yourself upgrade, "cell-n-solder" kits available for any of the other consoles anytime soon.
i think his point was just that we cant elevate nintendo's innovation until we actually see it. personally im with you, they have proven themselves over the years, but everyone knows that even the mightiest of giants can fall. [during the height of the 16-bit era, i would have laughed in your face if you told me that sega would have been run out of business, and that nintendo would fall to #3 behind sony and microsoft of all companies?!?!?!] nintendo has proven that they are capable of being great, but they have also proven that they can fail as well. where i think nintendo's strength lies, is in the fact that they are not afraid to fail. however... they are NOT perfect.
its the same as how we cant trust any of the market analysis or speculation on the ps3; we dont have any official word on either in terms of price, launch and/or final hardware. [let alone how x console will fare against another] so its funny to read how people will put down any of the unreleased consoles, since so very little is known about them.
i was going to avoid responding as to not feed the troll, but im glad to hear that im not the only person that knows the numbers. whether you think gt sucks or not. the numbers dont lie.
part of the delay behind the bluray rollout was waiting on the final specs for the managed copy system. so in the end, you will be able to make copies to some extent. exactly what they consider to be a copy? i dunno...
youll get your copy, but to what level you will be able to work with it and just how degraded it will be? who is to say yet?
er... mine still works. granted, i had to get it fixed once due to an accident involving my roommate and some coke [the drink; its quite sad that i have to clarify... ]. but mine still works fine. actually better than my relatively new xbox does... =\
i admit that sony hardware supposedly has its issues, but ive only run into one person thats had to resort to such tactics. ive been pretty lucky as far as my sony products go, and i admit that. but apparently im not the only one since people keep buying playstations like they do.
the ps2 won because they had the selection and volume of games. it wasnt first, it wasnt the most powerful, it wasnt marketing. it wasnt the cheapest of the consoles either.
not all games were great, not all were bad, but they had something in there for everyone, whereas we all seem to turn to nintendo for party games and lighthearted romps with characters from our youth, and our xboxes are good for cranking out a couple of rounds in the latest FPS PC port. the ps2 had those and games in nearly every genre imaginable. there was something for everyone. so everyone bought one. this is how nintendo dominated consoles for so long. its the selection that people love. no sony has that ball and is rolling with it...
i bought a ps2 because it had games i wanted to play. i bought an xbox because it had games i wanted to play. when nintendo releases more games that i want to play, i will buy one of those too. i want to buy an x360, but i want to see more solid software... and i want a box to actually be available. same goes for the ps3. ive seen the games im interested in. they need to have followthrough and execute.
i think the point he was trying to make was that its not guaranteed. some teams do get better over time. other teams are under such pressure to crank out/something/ that they never get the chance to fully tap into the power of the system to the level of other more prestigious teams without such constraints.
there is a reason that movie-based games churned out to meet or beat the film to the theaters suck in general, whereas a firm that can afford to take years to "get it done when its done" like say... kojima productions, or bungie can crank out the best of the best time and time again.
just having the experience of ten titles under your belt does not equate to being a better programmer than a company that only has five...
if youre spending your entire time filling back orders, no new consumers are able to buy your product. back orders are only a fraction of a consoles total sales over its lifetime. if they cant fill even the backorders, consumers that possibly would buy the console upon seeing it in stores, are denied the opportunity. this in turn makes them more likely to buy a competing product. IMHO.
if you can not even come close to meeting demand, you are not reaching your goals as a company and your consumers are being let down. if you are selling well in one or two territories, thats one thing, but thats very rarely strong enough to last long in the industry. of course sales seem strong now; they dont have any next gen competition. even in territories where they are in high demand they are being outsold by some consoles that have been around for half a decade at the least. in territories where the x360 isnt in high demand, the console is getting outsold by the phantom! just kidding.
truth be told, my notion to buy the x360 is getting fuzzier and fuzzier. i want the console, but the longer i wait, the longer i start to feel like its not such a big deal; i can wait on the ps3.
overall sony is losing cash from the electronics divisions [walkmen, and other consumer electronics], but the games division has been posting profits IIRC
in a way, thats what makes the game work. its frustrating to a level where you feel how difficult the quest is, but still fun and intriguing enough to make you want to stay with the game.
the whole platform jumping crap to get to the architects office was probably the most annoying to me next to the underwater levels, but what kept me going through to the end was the fact that as hard as it is, its only an action game on the outside. its center is a puzzle game. outside of the fighting, most of the obstacles are gotten past using a well thought out plan of attack rather than thumb reflexes like we are accustomed to, and undoubtedly attempt to rely on.
yeah, they botched the push with the ps2 harddrive. sony obviously would want to push everquest on their new box if only to keep people from leaving the service like they are doing on pc.
the closest handheld competitor: the game gear sold about 6-8 million units in its lifetime. the psp has already sold at least half of that in slightly more than a year. the DS may be winning the race, but we all know the race doesnt/always/ go to the quickest. personally i think the psp wont beat out the DS completely, but i think that sony's developer support will make the race a bit tighter in the coming months [once they actually release some dayum second generation games]
i posted them before... i wish i could find the figures now, but ill post the handheld data once i can find the old charts.
monopoly? not really. sony doesnt stop most companies from creating cross platform games.
that is why you see so many simultaneous releases for all three major consoles. there/are/ a few key franchises that sony signs exclusivity contracts with. however even these contracts eventually expire. that is the reason why many sony based franchises eventually make their way to the other consoles too. think: grand theft auto, metal gear solid... sony gets x amount of months being the exclusive company with a certain game published for them. these contracts are few and far in between in comparision to the cross platform games.
the companies that are sony-only are usually first party developers. SCEJ, whatever they call sony europe, SCEA and SOE. you will not see first party titles ported to the other consoles under normal circumstances. ie, gran turismo, god of war, etc... every console has first party titles, you will not see ports of halo or super mario brothers on any other major console either. it just so happens that due to the large userbase of sony consoles, developers tend to release more software on their platform in order to maximize their profits.
until the 16 bit era, cross platform games were almost non existent. nintendo effectively sought to punish those that created cross platform software. until the playstation emerged as lead console during the 32bit era, companies didnt have many options; i hear that sega at the time was no where near as friendly as sony was from a business and hardware standpoint. when sony offered the chance for third party developers to break free of nintendos stranglehold, most companies jumped at the opportunity. its just now that nintendo seeks to regain much of their once infamous third party support. solid third party support is what will win any generations console war.
come again?/The Xbox has done a decent job of not turning into a port system- there's a good amount of exclusive titles and quality content like ninja gaiden, Bioware's offerings, Panzer Dragoon orta.../
the xbox has more ports than the other two. the xbox ports from the pc, and get most cross platform games. there are a few exceptions, but far, far less than for ps2 and gc.
actually, as far as slashdot goes, we are supposed to hate them both sufficiently enough to post and troll all articles that mention either company from internet explorer on our sony vaios running windows xp while listening to sony BMG artists music bought from the sony connect website in media player inbetween matches of halo1 [b/c real halo fans dont play halo2 multiplayer] on our xbox360s connected to our sony wega HDTVs. =)
true, but sony has been singing about a spring launch for a while now. people expect it now. looks like we have to wait, but the public is ready now. they said "hey spring everyone, oh, and save your money ist gonna be expensive". people waiting to buy both felt one of the reasons they couldnt buy the x360 now is because i have to save up for my $10,000 ps3. they heard the magic word: spring, so all that prelaunch cash is ready to spend at a moment notice. all we need is a good month of ads and everything is ready....if they can ship out enough consoles is another thing.
i agree with the GP poster. sony isnt giving MS anything to use in thier counterstrategy. if youre sony and on the attack, you want the enemy to know youve got guns bigger than theirs and that you are going to attack them with all your might, but you dont want to announce the numbers of guns, where they are, how many soldiers theyre bringing to the fight etc... intelligence like that gives the enemy a chance to know what to defend against; fear of the unknown. sony business secrets are guarded closer than a maximum security prison right now. they have too much to lose...
halo3 is anticipated for just that very reason. alot of people were disappointed with halo2 and want to see if bungie can "get it right" again. the halo2 fans will move on to halo3, unfazed. and halo1 fans want to jump back on the bandwagon.
true. microsoft could have held off on halo2 for another year and a half and released it with the x360 at launch, but from a business perspective they knew they had to release it back in 04. they were in severe financial straits, and knew that it had the capacity to move units. they had rare in the fold and banked on perfect dark zero to move the halo crowd and the nintendo converts instead at x360 launch. what they didnt bank on was that PDZ would be a lackluster title; one almost overshadowed by a simple game called geometry wars.
halo2 made for MS's first quarter of turning a profit. it did sell systems. it did do solid numbers. but one outstanding game per year is not enough. i buy more than one game a year. so do most of us. the next year they had nothing to followup with [jade empire and a few of their other "key" titles did soso, and werent very memorable... the rest were pc ports ] meanwhile their competition hit them hard with some very solid, generation defining games. sony had a bunch [god of war, katamari damacy...] and even nintendo dropped a couple of stunners [re4, paper mario2...]. microsoft isnt in a position where they can afford to hold their cards, and they have a serious problem with followup.
i just hope they get it right before i finally buy my x360, and halo3 of course... =)
halo2 was released to combat grand theft auto: san andreas for the ps2. halo2 sold like hotcakes and was advertised like crazy. all you heard was how HOT halo2 was.
what hype didnt tell you was, grand theft auto outsold halo2 by more than 5 million copies. this was before it was available for xbox.
playstation fans are every bit as loyal to ps3 as xbox fans are to the xbox brand. the difference is that xbox fans seem to be more vocal. halo3 will launch and you know what? people will STILL buy ps3s. only people who already own x360s can even play the game in the first place. that group/may/ number ~1.5 million by the time sony can ready a autumn launch [if they do wait that long]. while i plan to buy both consoles, im definitely not going to forget about the ps3 if i have the chance to buy/play halo3. halo3 and a bunch of second gen games are great, but not enough to overcome years and years of sony brand loyalty coupled with the imminent sony marketing blitz.
at this point thats almost like saying that sony is capable of creating a device that will beat the ipod. can sony create a better mp3 player? yeah, possibly maybe. will it convert the majority of mp3 buyers? nope! microsoft can not win at this point [even with halo3]. it will take a mistake on sonys part for sony to not continue on in stride as the leader next gen as well. think of nintendo, sega and sony. sony was good and came ready to fight, but it was truly an equal part of nintendo and sega mistakes that led to the rise of the playstation.
halo1 was a success due to the fact that it was one of the better xbox titles at launch, and one of very few exclusive titles available for xbox.
yes, it did include a ton of excellent features and would be a solid title on any console, but if that were universally true... why was halo for pc not as well received?
halo was definitely a standout in the console world, but at best it was a standard taste of what the pc world has been experiencing for a while. personally, the only thing that set it apart for me is the use of a shield opposed to tons of health packs. it created a more strategic game than the normal "run and gun, check every corner"-gameplay i was used to.
Slashdot Mirror
he meant "precisely" two inches.
...and thats only because we can [not] go to any store already to see its faults and shortcomings.
your idea of how far two inches could be will vary from mine, or anyone else's. not all gamers have the most steady hands either; it doesnt take the most steady of hands to press a button OTOH.
i will be interested in seeing how the new controller will work out and whether i can actually turn my body to talk to someone while playing. hell... can i even pause a game, sit the controller down and then come back to play without the controller falsely sensing that i moved abruptly?
nintendo has the time to iron out all the kinks, but we all have reason to doubt all the next-gen systems except for the x360
thats is a bad analogy; changing the steering wheel of a car DOES directly change the way you drive, but changing the way your engine works does not? that doesnt make sense...
whats under the hood [that which actually powers and is responsible for moving your car] has a larger impact on your overall experience than just your steering wheel. how fast can you go? how quickly can you come to a stop, whats your turning radius. any racer will tell you that even something a simple as changing the type of tires you use can have a serious impact on your driving experience. the steering wheel is but the interface. [i will admit it would be cool to be able to "drive" by just pointing a wand in the direction you want to go] the cell is like the engine. a steering while can be swapped in and out easily; you cant change your engine without radically changing your entire car. radical changes are out of the question when discussing consoles, so why not opt for a supposedly more capable engine from the start?
and sad, but true... changing your steering wheel may change the way games are made, but its still just a peripheral. nintendo knows that peripherals can [read: will] be copied, and if its up to sony... improved. thats why they arent giving away all the revolution's secrets yet. think of controllers as an aftermarket item. sony took and improved upon the nintendo idea of analog movement by adding a second analog stick to use for controlling the camera, they also improved upon the rumble feature. patents can be skirted, console makers do it all the time. outside of inherent console properties, peripherals dont mean much. the DS as genius on nintendo's part because two screens could not be added in for the psp, nor could touchscreen abilities. the DS is in fact unique.
if the revolution controller takes off, expect to see copies for all other consoles. if the ps3's architecture pays off, dont expect to see any do-it-yourself upgrade, "cell-n-solder" kits available for any of the other consoles anytime soon.
i think his point was just that we cant elevate nintendo's innovation until we actually see it. personally im with you, they have proven themselves over the years, but everyone knows that even the mightiest of giants can fall. [during the height of the 16-bit era, i would have laughed in your face if you told me that sega would have been run out of business, and that nintendo would fall to #3 behind sony and microsoft of all companies?!?!?!] nintendo has proven that they are capable of being great, but they have also proven that they can fail as well. where i think nintendo's strength lies, is in the fact that they are not afraid to fail. however... they are NOT perfect.
its the same as how we cant trust any of the market analysis or speculation on the ps3; we dont have any official word on either in terms of price, launch and/or final hardware. [let alone how x console will fare against another] so its funny to read how people will put down any of the unreleased consoles, since so very little is known about them.
i was going to avoid responding as to not feed the troll, but im glad to hear that im not the only person that knows the numbers. whether you think gt sucks or not. the numbers dont lie.
part of the delay behind the bluray rollout was waiting on the final specs for the managed copy system. so in the end, you will be able to make copies to some extent. exactly what they consider to be a copy? i dunno...
youll get your copy, but to what level you will be able to work with it and just how degraded it will be? who is to say yet?
er... mine still works. granted, i had to get it fixed once due to an accident involving my roommate and some coke [the drink; its quite sad that i have to clarify... ]. but mine still works fine. actually better than my relatively new xbox does... =\
i admit that sony hardware supposedly has its issues, but ive only run into one person thats had to resort to such tactics. ive been pretty lucky as far as my sony products go, and i admit that. but apparently im not the only one since people keep buying playstations like they do.
the ps2 won because they had the selection and volume of games. it wasnt first, it wasnt the most powerful, it wasnt marketing. it wasnt the cheapest of the consoles either.
not all games were great, not all were bad, but they had something in there for everyone, whereas we all seem to turn to nintendo for party games and lighthearted romps with characters from our youth, and our xboxes are good for cranking out a couple of rounds in the latest FPS PC port. the ps2 had those and games in nearly every genre imaginable. there was something for everyone. so everyone bought one. this is how nintendo dominated consoles for so long. its the selection that people love. no sony has that ball and is rolling with it...
i bought a ps2 because it had games i wanted to play. i bought an xbox because it had games i wanted to play. when nintendo releases more games that i want to play, i will buy one of those too. i want to buy an x360, but i want to see more solid software... and i want a box to actually be available. same goes for the ps3. ive seen the games im interested in. they need to have followthrough and execute.
i think the point he was trying to make was that its not guaranteed. some teams do get better over time. other teams are under such pressure to crank out /something/ that they never get the chance to fully tap into the power of the system to the level of other more prestigious teams without such constraints.
there is a reason that movie-based games churned out to meet or beat the film to the theaters suck in general, whereas a firm that can afford to take years to "get it done when its done" like say... kojima productions, or bungie can crank out the best of the best time and time again.
just having the experience of ten titles under your belt does not equate to being a better programmer than a company that only has five...
ssshhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
be careful, youre letting sony's secret out of the bag. all of MS paid employees that troll the sony threads might hear you.
if youre spending your entire time filling back orders, no new consumers are able to buy your product. back orders are only a fraction of a consoles total sales over its lifetime. if they cant fill even the backorders, consumers that possibly would buy the console upon seeing it in stores, are denied the opportunity. this in turn makes them more likely to buy a competing product. IMHO.
if you can not even come close to meeting demand, you are not reaching your goals as a company and your consumers are being let down. if you are selling well in one or two territories, thats one thing, but thats very rarely strong enough to last long in the industry. of course sales seem strong now; they dont have any next gen competition. even in territories where they are in high demand they are being outsold by some consoles that have been around for half a decade at the least. in territories where the x360 isnt in high demand, the console is getting outsold by the phantom! just kidding.
truth be told, my notion to buy the x360 is getting fuzzier and fuzzier. i want the console, but the longer i wait, the longer i start to feel like its not such a big deal; i can wait on the ps3.
mods? please tell me im not the only idiot that found this funny...
thats just sad, huh?
overall sony is losing cash from the electronics divisions [walkmen, and other consumer electronics], but the games division has been posting profits IIRC
in a way, thats what makes the game work. its frustrating to a level where you feel how difficult the quest is, but still fun and intriguing enough to make you want to stay with the game.
the whole platform jumping crap to get to the architects office was probably the most annoying to me next to the underwater levels, but what kept me going through to the end was the fact that as hard as it is, its only an action game on the outside. its center is a puzzle game. outside of the fighting, most of the obstacles are gotten past using a well thought out plan of attack rather than thumb reflexes like we are accustomed to, and undoubtedly attempt to rely on.
ever notice how the trolls are starting to bubble up to the top?
yeah, they botched the push with the ps2 harddrive. sony obviously would want to push everquest on their new box if only to keep people from leaving the service like they are doing on pc.
the closest handheld competitor: the game gear sold about 6-8 million units in its lifetime. the psp has already sold at least half of that in slightly more than a year. the DS may be winning the race, but we all know the race doesnt /always/ go to the quickest. personally i think the psp wont beat out the DS completely, but i think that sony's developer support will make the race a bit tighter in the coming months [once they actually release some dayum second generation games]
i posted them before... i wish i could find the figures now, but ill post the handheld data once i can find the old charts.
monopoly? not really. sony doesnt stop most companies from creating cross platform games.
/are/ a few key franchises that sony signs exclusivity contracts with. however even these contracts eventually expire. that is the reason why many sony based franchises eventually make their way to the other consoles too. think: grand theft auto, metal gear solid... sony gets x amount of months being the exclusive company with a certain game published for them. these contracts are few and far in between in comparision to the cross platform games.
that is why you see so many simultaneous releases for all three major consoles. there
the companies that are sony-only are usually first party developers. SCEJ, whatever they call sony europe, SCEA and SOE. you will not see first party titles ported to the other consoles under normal circumstances. ie, gran turismo, god of war, etc... every console has first party titles, you will not see ports of halo or super mario brothers on any other major console either. it just so happens that due to the large userbase of sony consoles, developers tend to release more software on their platform in order to maximize their profits.
until the 16 bit era, cross platform games were almost non existent. nintendo effectively sought to punish those that created cross platform software. until the playstation emerged as lead console during the 32bit era, companies didnt have many options; i hear that sega at the time was no where near as friendly as sony was from a business and hardware standpoint. when sony offered the chance for third party developers to break free of nintendos stranglehold, most companies jumped at the opportunity. its just now that nintendo seeks to regain much of their once infamous third party support. solid third party support is what will win any generations console war.
come again? /The Xbox has done a decent job of not turning into a port system- there's a good amount of exclusive titles and quality content like ninja gaiden, Bioware's offerings, Panzer Dragoon orta.../
the xbox has more ports than the other two. the xbox ports from the pc, and get most cross platform games. there are a few exceptions, but far, far less than for ps2 and gc.
funny, but no... that would only happen if halo was a nintendo owned property =)
actually, as far as slashdot goes, we are supposed to hate them both sufficiently enough to post and troll all articles that mention either company from internet explorer on our sony vaios running windows xp while listening to sony BMG artists music bought from the sony connect website in media player inbetween matches of halo1 [b/c real halo fans dont play halo2 multiplayer] on our xbox360s connected to our sony wega HDTVs. =)
the ps3 has been delayed until 2007? wow... thats news to me. - sarcasm
sony has announced spring 06, and is waiting on AACS. they every well could make it out the gate by late may.
true, but sony has been singing about a spring launch for a while now. people expect it now. looks like we have to wait, but the public is ready now. they said "hey spring everyone, oh, and save your money ist gonna be expensive". people waiting to buy both felt one of the reasons they couldnt buy the x360 now is because i have to save up for my $10,000 ps3. they heard the magic word: spring, so all that prelaunch cash is ready to spend at a moment notice. all we need is a good month of ads and everything is ready. ...if they can ship out enough consoles is another thing.
i agree with the GP poster. sony isnt giving MS anything to use in thier counterstrategy. if youre sony and on the attack, you want the enemy to know youve got guns bigger than theirs and that you are going to attack them with all your might, but you dont want to announce the numbers of guns, where they are, how many soldiers theyre bringing to the fight etc... intelligence like that gives the enemy a chance to know what to defend against; fear of the unknown. sony business secrets are guarded closer than a maximum security prison right now. they have too much to lose...
halo3 is anticipated for just that very reason. alot of people were disappointed with halo2 and want to see if bungie can "get it right" again. the halo2 fans will move on to halo3, unfazed. and halo1 fans want to jump back on the bandwagon.
true. microsoft could have held off on halo2 for another year and a half and released it with the x360 at launch, but from a business perspective they knew they had to release it back in 04. they were in severe financial straits, and knew that it had the capacity to move units. they had rare in the fold and banked on perfect dark zero to move the halo crowd and the nintendo converts instead at x360 launch. what they didnt bank on was that PDZ would be a lackluster title; one almost overshadowed by a simple game called geometry wars.
halo2 made for MS's first quarter of turning a profit. it did sell systems. it did do solid numbers. but one outstanding game per year is not enough. i buy more than one game a year. so do most of us. the next year they had nothing to followup with [jade empire and a few of their other "key" titles did soso, and werent very memorable... the rest were pc ports ] meanwhile their competition hit them hard with some very solid, generation defining games. sony had a bunch [god of war, katamari damacy...] and even nintendo dropped a couple of stunners [re4, paper mario2...]. microsoft isnt in a position where they can afford to hold their cards, and they have a serious problem with followup.
i just hope they get it right before i finally buy my x360, and halo3 of course... =)
halo2 was released to combat grand theft auto: san andreas for the ps2. halo2 sold like hotcakes and was advertised like crazy. all you heard was how HOT halo2 was.
/may/ number ~1.5 million by the time sony can ready a autumn launch [if they do wait that long]. while i plan to buy both consoles, im definitely not going to forget about the ps3 if i have the chance to buy/play halo3. halo3 and a bunch of second gen games are great, but not enough to overcome years and years of sony brand loyalty coupled with the imminent sony marketing blitz.
what hype didnt tell you was, grand theft auto outsold halo2 by more than 5 million copies. this was before it was available for xbox.
playstation fans are every bit as loyal to ps3 as xbox fans are to the xbox brand. the difference is that xbox fans seem to be more vocal. halo3 will launch and you know what? people will STILL buy ps3s. only people who already own x360s can even play the game in the first place. that group
at this point thats almost like saying that sony is capable of creating a device that will beat the ipod. can sony create a better mp3 player? yeah, possibly maybe. will it convert the majority of mp3 buyers? nope! microsoft can not win at this point [even with halo3]. it will take a mistake on sonys part for sony to not continue on in stride as the leader next gen as well. think of nintendo, sega and sony. sony was good and came ready to fight, but it was truly an equal part of nintendo and sega mistakes that led to the rise of the playstation.
halo1 was a success due to the fact that it was one of the better xbox titles at launch, and one of very few exclusive titles available for xbox.
yes, it did include a ton of excellent features and would be a solid title on any console, but if that were universally true... why was halo for pc not as well received?
halo was definitely a standout in the console world, but at best it was a standard taste of what the pc world has been experiencing for a while. personally, the only thing that set it apart for me is the use of a shield opposed to tons of health packs. it created a more strategic game than the normal "run and gun, check every corner"-gameplay i was used to.