xbox: future or folly?

[rbhawcroft]

i think that its gone pretty much. Most of the people who i know who buy consoles already had a ps2 or were young and wanted a nintendo, xbox's art as a game style is wr0ng its about entertainment and realism.
It presumeable will be backed for a while buy if developers dont see big ish returns for games its likely to suffer especially as they would ahve to programme more for an xobox game ratehr than a ps2 only game. microsoft should have just done flash memory and usb2 and rolling upgrades.

 

It will be great once I can mod it.

 

[Mutilator]

After watching this video I'm going to have to say future. It has a lot of great games coming out between now and Christmas... in fact I think I'm going to buy an Xbox & Moto GP this afternoon.
My bro in law already has a PS2 and lives a block away... 1/2 of his games are mine, no need to buy a 2nd PS2.
Not to mention Doom 3 is only going to be on Xbox since the PS2 can't handle it... not that I'm going to play a FPS on a console but I might...

 

[bleeb]

I think the games will get better and better because the developers are only using a fraction of the processing power at the moment. And I believe Microsoft is pushing to put out a TON of great games before Christmas (Like Mutilator Says). Plus, Microsoft can commit a TON of cash to increase development. I think I'm going to wait until they release Playstation 4 because I have no money these days.

 

[IamDavid]

It will be great once I can mod it.

 

[Desturel]

There are many good games on the way, but to say any one system will be the future is always folly. As long as they make good games, Nothing else really matters.

 

[royaldank]

The XBOX is going to be around for awhile. A new battle will start at the end of the summer for online play. XBOX's built in ethernet and one cost gaming might give it an edge over Sony's idea to let developer charge as they wish. Couple that with the fact that PS2's improvement curve is leveling off while GC and XBOX are both still climbing, and you have an interesting situation coming up.

 

[Draco]

Originally posted by: Mutilator
After watching this video I'm going to have to say future. It has a lot of great games coming out between now and Christmas... in fact I think I'm going to buy an Xbox & Moto GP this afternoon.
My bro in law already has a PS2 and lives a block away... 1/2 of his games are mine, no need to buy a 2nd PS2.
Not to mention Doom 3 is only going to be on Xbox since the PS2 can't handle it... not that I'm going to play a FPS on a console but I might...

Hmmm, nice trailer. Cool looking games!

 

[CrackRabbit]

Look for the middle of October to be the time when new games are released by the truckload.
IMHO, The only thing holding back the X-Box is its reliability, Ive seen several of them crash/lock up for no reason, And i know i have seen at least 2 "My X-Box Just died/is dying!" threads on here. As soon as MS can get the reliability up to where the PS2 is (and im not saying there havent been PS2s crash or die , just far fewer of them) and make me feel as if i dont have to buy an extended warranty with it, ill get one.

 

[GermyBoy]

Only time will tell. I'm not Miss Cleo!

 

[Smolek]

future, ps2 didnt hit its stride til going into year 2 either

 

[schdaddy]

have you seen the graphics on the XBOX? It's ovisiously the future once more titles hit the shelves

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: schdaddy
have you seen the graphics on the XBOX? It's ovisiously the future once more titles hit the shelves

graphics aren't anything when the game is crap anyway

 

[Mavrick007]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: schdaddy
have you seen the graphics on the XBOX? It's ovisiously the future once more titles hit the shelves

graphics aren't anything when the game is crap anyway

So we have good looking crap then

Seriously though, programmers will like to program for Xbox cause it's so much like working with the PC. I mean basically it is a PC. I think it will be around for quite awhile, but I am really curious to who is going to win out overall when the games start to flood out. Maybe there will be enough support for all the consoles but who knows. I've also heard that PC gaming is a dying trend too.. but you know I just can't get used to these consoles like my PC and I don't want that trend to ever die.

 

[Queasy]

"but I am really curious to who is going to win out overall when the games start to flood out."

I am less concerned about who is going to win out then all three consoles succeeding. Frankly, I bought an X-Box, and I enjoy my X-Box immensely. If games such as Project Ego live up to their hype I'll be enjoying it a helluva lot more. But, I would like to see all three succeed so that prices will remain reasonable. All the recent price-cutting was caused directly by the competition in the market. That is a good thing for we the consumer IMHO. However, that won't stop the fan-boy rants and crap threads.

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: schdaddy
have you seen the graphics on the XBOX? It's ovisiously the future once more titles hit the shelves

graphics aren't anything when the game is crap anyway

So we have good looking crap then

Seriously though, programmers will like to program for Xbox cause it's so much like working with the PC. I mean basically it is a PC. I think it will be around for quite awhile, but I am really curious to who is going to win out overall when the games start to flood out. Maybe there will be enough support for all the consoles but who knows. I've also heard that PC gaming is a dying trend too.. but you know I just can't get used to these consoles like my PC and I don't want that trend to ever die.

And don't forget that X-Box developers can optimized all they want without worrying about compatibility with a much wider range of hardware combinations. They only gotta target 1 CPU, 1 chipset for graphics, sound, etc. However, I think that it'd be really cool if Microsoft offered an optional graphics expansion, similar to what Nintendo did for N64. They could sell a custom-made GF3 to boost up the graphics capabilities of X-Box so that they can offer better quality and higher performance at high-resolution HDTV.

I'm a big fan of consoles because as geeky as I am, I get to a point where I want my computer to just run well. Once I mess around with hardware components, tweak things and screw around with various drivers and game patches, there is a high chance that I have to wipe out a full Windows install, etc. I prefer just popping in a DVD to a console and play games on a nice larger-screen TV.

I tried to get Serious Sam SE to work with my Matrox recently in dual display and I spent more time fixing and trying to figuring wtf is going on than actually playing the game. WTF? If I want to regularly play games on a computer, I'd build a separate machine dedicated to gaming so that I have a functioning workstation at all times. But that's very costly to build and maintain so I'd rather buy an X-Box and a GameCube to keep myself and my family entertained.

 

[UberNeuman]

They need that one hit game to make a name in the console world.... Where I work the PS2 sales have been strong because of GTA3... We tend to sell PS2's quickly because of that one game... Our GameCube and Xbox shipments haven't been as heavy. Now our return rate - we seem to get an X-box back about everyother week... We've had a few Playstation2's come back, but that was the bundle with GT3 and I haven't seen any PS2 (blue box) come back in awhile.

GameCube returns have been low - why I don't know - but then, we haven't received any more shipments either... With all the price drops recently, we've seen a high pick-up in PS2 again... One day we received 30 units!

I own all of those systems and enjoy them quite a bit, but Xbox needs to find that one "gotta have" game - and I'm sorry, but Halo isn't it...

 

[joohang]

UberNeuman, I agree.

The reason I am picking up the GameCube first because my brother an I love Super Smash Bros. to death. And my siblings and I like to play Mario Party 3 on weekend nights. Mario Party 4 looks pretty sweet so that's another reason to buy a GameCube. We don't give a rat's @$$ about frame rates or power of the consoles. The games determine their success.

The low return rate of GameCube is probably because those who buy GameCube bought it for at least one or two games that they love to play.

 

[LiQiCE]

In support of Nintendo, I think they make one of the most reliable gaming systems out there. I personally don't own GameCube, but I've owned the NES and SNES and they were solid machines. They took a lot of abuse and still kept going strong. I think thats one of the major reasons why you see a low rate of return for defective GameCubes at least.

I really don't know what to make of the X-Box problems because I know quite a few people that have never complained of a problem with the X-Box. On X-Box forums I never read about problems with the X-Box, I usually only hear about them on PS2 forums or on generalized forums where PS2 fans are using it as a reason to push PS2. Personally my X-Box has been running 100% strong with no crashes except those that exist in the software itself (in other words, they are reproduce-able, a certain combination of doing certain things will crash a game) ... Bugs in games exist in PS2 and GameCube games alike, especially first generation games, so I don't really accredit that to a drawback of X-Box.

It seems to me that in terms of build quality, PS2 is the worst, using the cheapest parts... Although in terms of reliability PS2 and X-Box are probably about on par with the GameCube having a leg up. Thats just what I estimate from reading testimonials and from personal experience... Dont have any hard number stats to go off of because I doubt either MS or Sony would want to release their RMA rates.

 

[rgwalt]

Nintendo has notoriously had a solid hardware platform. The systems and games have always worked well unless you dropped your cartridge. However, some of the original NES systems had problems with the screen blinking on and off. My NES went on the fritz for about a year, and then started working again. By the time they hit the SNES and the N64 they had those problems ironed out. The GC is similar in that I haven't heard of any hardware problems, however, it won't be playable for ever. If kept clean, the SNES and N64 could be played for hundreds of years since everything is solid state (provided that you had enough controllers such that you would wear them out). The GC won't be like that though... Eventually the drive mechanism will fail on the CD drive.

Ryan

 

[Angrymarshmello]

Um, gone pretty much? It's not outselling PS2 but it was never expected to. It's outselling the GC