Should've been 690

Hype is very common in these situations and contrary to popular belief I am not a hater of the subject I am posting about today, but I want to make my opinions known and since this is my personal forum for it, you can read it.

On Tuesday, amongst tons of press hype and a few fights, the Xbox360 launched in America, and as I type this, seems to have sold out. Now, I have nothing against Microsoft or their consoles, I own an Xbox and love to play Halo, Halo2, KOTOR, KOTOR II and a few others, but that was always the problem. I feel strongly that the original Xbox didn’t have enough good, exclusive games to warrant a purchase. In fact most of the games available were either PC ports or available on the other systems. The launch lineup for the new system is no different.

Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 are PC ports with slightly improved graphics, but what I saw in the stores didn’t impress me for what a next-gen console should do. Kameo: Elements of Power and Perfect Dark Zero were games that jumped from a few systems until they finally landed on the Xbox360 and it seems to show in the graphics, if not the gameplay. There isn’t really anything new here. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, Ridge Racer 6, Amped 3, NBA Live 06, FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup, NBA 2K6 and Madden NFL 06 are all the newest versions of older games and while decent in their own right, nothing is very new and exciting here. Peter Jackson's King Kong and Gun are multi-platform games that I could also play on my PS2 with only somewhat worse graphics. Of the only games that seem like they were made from the ground up for the Xbox360: Dead or Alive 4 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion have been delayed, Project Gotham Racing 3 seems like part 2 with longer load times and nice graphics, and Halo 3 is nowhere to be seen. Plus I have no confidence that it will be released in the spring, I’d say look to late Fall 2006 or early 2007, based on the development time of Halo (a lot longer than many people know, the original Halo was supposed to launch on the Mac around ’99 until Microsoft bought Bungie) and Halo2.

As for hardware, Microsoft is one of the biggest software companies in the world. They have a lot of good people working there and connections with some of the greatest electronics companies in the world. The strength of systems like the original PSX, PS2, Gamecube, SNES, Genesis and Dreamcast were they custom hardware designs made to be first and foremost game machines. Microsoft instead chooses to make custom PCs, running on custom versions of Windows, allowing developers to port their games back and forth from the PC platform. This is good business for them, bad game style for us.

I liken the new Xbox to the Dreamcast, except the Dreamcast had a lot of love in it and the creative gods at Sega behind it. Microsoft has no dedicated gaming division, only smaller developers that they have bought and assimilated into their collective. Time will tell, but I predict that Microsoft remain in second and perhaps third place in the next console war.

There is one good point I finish on: Xbox Live. Microsoft has made a cohesive, interesting, feature-filled online gaming community for the console gamer, something that many a Japanese developer said could never happen. This is the only advantage they have over Sony and Nintendo and just maybe they can use it well.

Wisdom of the Day: Don’t rant on your blog.