Man behind XBox quits Microsoft

[CocaCola5]

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<< why are people so eager for any sign that xbox is failing? is it because they don't have one? >>



yup, bunh of lame whiners. lexus sucks because i only have a geo metro! bah. >>





They cost the same, $299.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

<< Or maybe some people here don't like consoles that much. At least with a Gameboy you could take it along with you in the car and stuff (didn't like those either btw), here you have something as stationary as a PC, but with less functionality and no way to upgrade it after the hardware becomes totally obsolete (e.g. 2 months from now).


depends on how you use it a console is great when friends come over. a pc is not lan partys are fun, but thats so much trouble its like an event its just different. i can spent 200-400 a year on my pc's video card alone. its a big big different >>



Get geek friends then, a friend of mine has at home: 1 VAX, 1 Digital, 2 notebooks and 6 PCs. Then you get together with several friends and play Roborally (board game)

Btw, now THIS is a console freak.

 

[Nefrodite]

They cost the same, $299.


even sadder then v4 camry vs v6 accord. v4 camry owner insists on bashing accord.


get over it.


sonys a freakin evil company too. they try to stick copy protection in everything, and force propriety formats down consumers throats. people need to get a clue

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

<< Or maybe some people here don't like consoles that much. At least with a Gameboy you could take it along with you in the car and stuff (didn't like those either btw), here you have something as stationary as a PC, but with less functionality and no way to upgrade it after the hardware becomes totally obsolete (e.g. 2 months from now).


depends on how you use it a console is great when friends come over. a pc is not lan partys are fun, but thats so much trouble its like an event its just different. i can spent 200-400 a year on my pc's video card alone. its a big big different >>



Did you not use enough smileys in your last post or something?

 

[puffpio]

From what I've heard (I've heard Seamus speak about this in person) He started working on DirectX, but then he started tinkering w/ an idea of making a console, he got some other MS people into it, and they started developing a sales pitch to Bill Gates and the rest is history.

From what I gathered from his talks, I got the impression that he was the one who came up with the whole idea to begin with. But nowadays it seems that aspect is downplayed. I think cuz he speaks like a normal person and not like a PR person. But what the PR person fails to see is that the gaming community like the normal person and has a distrust of the PR person.



<< I'll take any opportunity to bash Microsoft, but in this case I do place my doubts. How do you conclude the X-Box isn't doing well from the fact that one of the people working on it got bored with his work and decided to do something else? He apparently got bored with his previous job too, otherwise he'd not have left DreamWorks. He was hired to work on DirectX, but started working on the X-Box instead. Two options: 1) He didn't like working on DirectX either, and was still looking for something else, which he apparently didn't find in the X-Box either. (Maybe he wanted to start his own business?) 2) He wanted to work on stuff like DirectX, but was put to work on the X-Box instead, and as he didn't like that kind of work he left. If Microsoft had fired half the people, or a lot of X-Box employees suddenly quit I'd have said 'Ok, something is not well there', but this is only one person. Not like DreamWorks died out when he left them either. >>

 

[Duck0fD3ath]

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It doesn't outsell it in the USA, it just had sold a lot already before the X-Box got on the market. >>



Hate to break it to ya buddy, but PS2 outsells everything everywhere, including Xbox in USA. Xbox launched better than PS2 did, perhaps better than any console ever, in the US. But the PS2 is selling like hotcakes now b/c its game library is so well built up. The site I got this info from is down at the moment, but I'll post them later when it's back up.

 

[skace]

<< why are people so eager for any sign that xbox is failing? is it because they don't have one? >>



Well, if Xbox was never created I would have Halo for my PC by now. Theres 1 reason...

 

[SagaLore]

<<
It seems XBox isn't doing that well.... >>



It sucks, that's why.

 

[SagaLore]

<<

<< How do you conclude the X-Box isn't doing well from the fact that one of the people working on it got bored with his work and decided to do something else? >>



From the fact that PS2 (which supposedly is inferior to Xbox) outsells Xbox, even in USA, from the fact that Xbox flopped badly in Japan and Europe, from the fact that MS has already had to cut it's price overseas to make it even remotely appealing and from the fact that MS is way behind it's sales-forecasts. >>



Xbox isn't even a real gaming console, it's a customized IBM compatible, with a few tweaked items from Intel and Nvidia. It runs off of an NT kernel. It was never made from scratch with gaming in mind - it's just a general processing PC made into a propietary machine.

Europe and Japan probably just know better.

 

[SagaLore]

<<

<<

<< How do you conclude the X-Box isn't doing well from the fact that one of the people working on it got bored with his work and decided to do something else? >>



From the fact that PS2 (which supposedly is inferior to Xbox) outsells Xbox, even in USA, from the fact that Xbox flopped badly in Japan and Europe, from the fact that MS has already had to cut it's price overseas to make it even remotely appealing and from the fact that MS is way behind it's sales-forecasts. >>



It doesn't outsell it in the USA, it just had sold a lot already before the X-Box got on the market. If 8 million PS2s are sold already in a year time, and X-Box is selling at 2 million/day then sure, there have been sold more PS2s still after X-Box is on the market for 3 1/2 days (Ok, so it's slightly exagerated, but you hopefully get my point), but anyone claiming PS2 is outselling X-Box at that point and believing it is on crack. X-Box is selling much faster, so unless it is brought to a halt X-Box will outsell PS2. Microsoft has enough gaming companies willing to code games SOLELY for X-Box (It's called threatening and bribing) to ensure a constant stream of high-quality games which aren't available for PS2. I don't like that method, but they use it anyway.

In Europe X-Box was released with a much higher price than the US, probably cause they presumed that anyone willing to pay those rediculously high prices the software and music industry asks in Europe would also be willing to pay a lot for the hardware. They also noticed that this doesn't work (the prices is the reason there is a lot more piracy here than in the US), and therefor they dropped the price of the X-Box here by 180 Euros. Still it's 299 Euros, compared to the Gamecube being only 199 Euros. Don't know if they follow the same tactics in Japan, but if they do it's no wonder they sell a lot less than expected, if they put a console into an market where the established names (with more games available) are a lot cheaper to start with.

They wanted to put a far better console on the market than their competitors, but failed to see that the reason consoles are so popular is that it's a cheap machine with which you can play the latest games. Instead they released a console for the price of a low price computer, which means that anyone who wants/needs a computer for wordprocessing/emailing/downloading pr0n anyway will instead buy a medium or high price computer, and just copy all the overpriced games to safe money. (Not arguing the legal side of it, it's just what people do.)
Of those who want a console only those with too much cash and a liking for certain X-Box only games will buy it for that price.

P.S. They didn't advertise the games much here anyway, just the console (with a commercial that didn't even show a game). If you want to give people a reason to buy it, at least bother to show them what they will get.

P.P.S. Never thought I'd give lessons in Marketing to Microsoft >>



Something else you need to add:

Microsoft is and has not made any money from the Xbox. They are spending money.

Just like they did with the WebTV.

They aren't even breaking even. Journalists have only guessed that Microsoft must be expecting to make money from the games instead.


The xbox is a fully functional PC, with a builtin network adapater, which would have been great to use to hook up to cable modems for internet use... but they didn't even add that feature. Some opensource developers have created a TCP/IP module to run on it, for online gaming capabilites... but that's it

 

[SagaLore]

<< it's quite stupid that japan doesn't like the xbox that much. they always like "cutting edge" electronics and xbox is pretty much one but maybe they don't like the fact that it's big. i dunno. the ps2's graphics and sound sucks as compared to the xbox. and i'm pretty sure geeks would choose the xbox over the ps2. correct me if i'm wrong. >>



It's NOT cutting edge electronics! It's a Celeron with it's cache paths doubled to that of a Pentium III, and a pre-retail Nvidia motherboard! And the OS the games run on it a shrinked NT core. It uses a dinky IDE hard drive for quick storage. Don't drop your xbox! The controllers are just USB controllers with different connectors.

That to me is not cutting edge, that to me is beta testing for the masses.

 

[Bluga]

<< <<
It seems XBox isn't doing that well.... >>



It sucks, that's why. >>

 

[ElFenix]

heheh xbox

 

[Nefrodite]

It's NOT cutting edge electronics! It's a Celeron with it's cache paths doubled to that of a Pentium III, and a pre-retail Nvidia motherboard! And the OS the games run on it a shrinked NT core. It uses a dinky IDE hard drive for quick storage. Don't drop your xbox! The controllers are just USB controllers with different connectors.

That to me is not cutting edge, that to me is beta testing for the masses.


yet, it has the most awesome graphics of any console. dead or alive 3 anyone? oh wait.. do pc games look like that yet? no blood wake... water that is awesome. etc etc

it has a harddrive, get over it. its a step up from a flash memory chip card. which is um cutting edge right? and umm yea the chips in the other consoles are "cutting edge" too eh? the gamecube uses a ati setup. the ps2 is badly designed holding it back. bah