Stage is already set, Gamers partying
Zero Hour ticking away – Xbox 360 News at GameSpot __ My column in PC Magazine running this week (posting soon) discusses some of the promotional efforts for this launch.
Indeed, being in a blockbuster movie wouldn’t get one into the event. To get a coveted wristband and gain access, attendees had to win a contest, or be one of the lucky to register for the event and be accepted. European attendees were able to gain access through the Origen 360 contest, and North Americans could get their passes by being one of the winners of the Hex 168 contest, both of which were successful viral marketing campaigns put on by Microsoft. Additional attendees filled in the remaining slots by registering through various gaming media outlets and keeping their fingers crossed.
They hype is HUGE. The front page of my local paper has an “article” asking whether there will be enough to go around.
Every f-ing year toy manufacturers create artificial shortages of their products to increase demand, and every f-ing year the press falls for it. Heck, it’s ludicrous to even call it “the press” anymore.
I’d be so much more impressed if the launch titles were any better than the newer XBox titles coming up. Nothing in the launch salvo is a console mover… and history has taught us that being first to market without a console-mover can be a death blow.
I had a pre-order and was invited to my local EB’s midnight madness sale to be one of the first few dozen people in Toronto to officially -buy- a 360 and I’ve just returned from EB where I gave up the pre-order. $500CDN+ for a console that will eventually have decent games is just not worth it, even to a super-geek like me.
PS3 will totally steal the market when it enters – MGS 4, Gran Turismo 5, perhaps a new Tekken ? It’ll be like the last generation – rock solid, but few titles for the Xbox – Halo, DOA : Volleyporn, and racers. PS2 : extremely diverse amount of titles, some great, others utter crap.
I got a chance to play Call of Arms 2 on the X-Box 360 this weekend. Very nice game, definetly worth the money.
I’ll be buying the console, and if the PS3 is worth a damn I’ll buy it as well. Why be picky?
“PS3 will totally steal the market”
But by the time the PS3 is released the Xbox 360 will have tons of games AND will cost about $100 less than it does now. Plus you have to consider that the PS3 is supposed to cost more than the current price of the 360. Accordingly, the price difference at the time of the PS3 release will be phenomenal. Probably a price difference of $150 or more.
Not that I wouldn’t love to see the 360 fail. As far as I’m concerned the Xbox was a failure, I don’t care how many they sold or how many people signed up for the Live! service. A four BILLION dollar loss is a failure no matter how you try to explain it.
“I got a chance to play Call of Arms 2 on the X-Box 360 this weekend. Very nice game, definetly worth the money.”
Call of DUTY 2 is also on the PC, it looks the same and aside from some minor performance issues, is the exact same game for $10 less and it doesn’t require you to buy a 360. I saw this game running on a demo kiosk at one of the Future Shop stores I have to visit every week as part of my job. It was an on HD television and looked EXACTLY like the PC version (which doesn’t look state of the art by any stretch compared to games like F.E.A.R.) Combine this with the lousy launch lineup (over half of which is badly done ports) and the Xbox Live Marketplace which is going to make you pay for the system, the game, your Live subscription AND pay for extra content that your $10 more expensive game should have had to begin with and I’ll pass for quite some time.
I for one would buy a XBox 360 __IF__ Shenmue 3 is released for it, ’cause Shenmue is Shenmue, ’nuff said!
But of course PS3 will have the almighty that is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, this is a game one would defenitely be looking forward to play, not because the game itself but because of the story, damn I really wanna know what/who are/is The Patriots (aka La Li Lu Le Lo).
It’s crazy how people get suckered into the hype by simply preventing them from attending the “hype fest” or by telling them they can’t get the “hyped product”. Rejection is a powerful tool for promoters. It’s also funny how they have a supposed “shortage” of these consoles but yet every media entity in existence seems to be giving tons of them away for free in promotional events.
I just worry that these X-box consoles are going to ruin the quality of PC gaming since publishers will now attempt to make one effort at producing a game for both systems. Also, since console prices have to remain low enough to have mega-mass appeal, they will never be better than a low-mid level PC game and the complexity of the games will also be reduced for the (average) console buyer’s ease-of-use. As a result, I really hope M$ gets clobbered again so they will concentrate on expanding the possibilities and potential of the PC and forget about the “dumb” console market.
Parallax: “is the exact same game for $10 less and it doesn’t require you to buy a 360”
The 360 is expensive, there’s no doubt about it. But that price nothing compared to the price of a modern gaming PC. The same argument you made could go done in reverse, “It’s the exact same game for $10 more, but it doesn’t require you to buy a $1500 PC.” Heck, just a high end GPU alone costs as much as the 360!
Teyecoon: “I just worry that these X-box consoles are going to ruin the quality of PC gaming”
I think your worry is well founded. I think Microsoft will eventually kill gaming on the PC if the Xbox is eventually successful. Here’s why. With the Xbox/360 Microsoft gets a cut for every game or peripheral sold. Microsoft doesn’t have to do a bit of work and it gets paid. That’s exactly the business model Microsoft loves. With the PC, Microsoft gets nothing, unless it produces it. Don’t you see an advantage to steer developers to the Xbox/360?! I sure do.
Who has time for this system? There are too many other creative things to do than play a game!
And you don’t think people will pay for the ability to play that “very nice game” on their TVs? They will. And no, not enough people are doing the HTPC thing to say “they already can”.
Nice try, but you’re pissing in the wind.
You know what’s worse than the hype? People that use the hype as a reason not to join in the fun.
I’m all for not buying the system based on what it doesn’t bring to the table. I’m also for making fun of the guys who spent their night in a line at Best Buy. But I’m not for using the hype as a reason not to buy the console. At best, this type of argument shows a lazy mind.
Likewise, I’m not for using the hype around another system to justify not buying the existing system. That’s all the PS3 is at this point: Hype. At least the 360 actually exists…
As for hurting the PC gaming industry, it already has. The FPS games have moved from PC to console (see Halo). The MMOs are really the last line of PC games that have not had great success on the consoles, but that’s more due to implementation… something that I would guess Sony (PS3, EQ2) would love to overcome.
Microsoft seems to approach markets in 3 waves:
1. Introduce a product that demonstrates feasibility – and generates IP, so as to learn the customer’s preferences and get in the queue for patents.
2. A second generation product reflects what has been learned from the market, cements the IP into the design as a requirement for ancilliary products, and then agressive marketing achieves parity with existing players.
3. A third generation product uses the IP filed in stage 1 above for critical compatibility, is integrated with all their other products with preferential unpublished interfaces, and is designed and marketed to destroy competition. It is loaded with filters, convetrters and other migration tools that make moving onto the “standard” easy and moving away from it impossible.
After the third wave, once the market is dominated and all effective competition vanquished, each new generation simply obsoletes the previous – one generating an annuity for MS in that market.
After that is is simply:
Planned Obsolescence
Preditory Marketing
Contempt for the customer
Supression of new competition
Somehow buying off the DOJ
I was reading that MS is losing money on the new console. Supposedly it’s a big loss. One story said the loss is around $150.00 per unit. If you hate MS buy an Xbox, since it will cost them money. You will be lucky to find one. Another story said that the things are crashing. The morning news said there was a “glitch”. You wonder why there is a shortage. If MS used network manufacturing technology like Dell does, you would think they could keep up with demand and sell the things 24/7 with a website.
Step One: Place order and pay. (5-7 minutes, user time)
Step Two: Some plant cranks out Xbox number 1,xxx,xxx in (8.93 minutes robot and assembler time)
Step Three: Put on UPS truck and deliver. (2-3 days Teamster time)(next day add $19.00)
A process which in the network environment should take a total of less than 2 hours from order to fulfillment.
If it worked how it should, a defective unit could be replaced just as fast and efficiently as the system. The shortages mean that if you get a glitchy Xbox, you might have to wait awhile to get it replaced. It’s amazing that these things are not being cranked out as they are ordered. If a guy has a toy shop or web shop and wants to order 1,000 or 5,000 units, what does MS say? Sorry we don’t want your order, keep your money we don’t want to sell too many of these things since we are taking a beating. It seems sort of strange. Maybe this is the future of PC’s AND software. Headline 2006: NEW SECURE SOFTWARE-BIG PC SHORTAGES. People will be standing in lines waiting for a new PC. The way this Xbox system works, the supply chain seems to work the same as it did when Mattel was pumping out electronic football games in the 80’s with little LED players and you had to drive all over creation to find one around Christmas time, if you could find one. The funny part is that MS is reportedly taking a loss and the shortages are causing riots and driving up the prices due to a lack of supply with all this demand. If you can’t supply something, why in the world blow hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing it?
Maybe Honda will advertise a new car on TV and once you go to the dealer, you’ll be told sorry no luck, we just sold the last one. Check back in a week or two. Go buy a Chevy buddy, they have plenty of them sitting on the lot! We can’t help you. Get lost, it’s an on demand world.
I guess it beats soup lines. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
The unit is kept cool using a vacuum-sealed liquid-cooled system from what I have read. I’ve been look around for a patent on how this works.
Does anybody know the patent number?
I remember the shortages of the Mattel Football game.
You couldn’t find the things. When you finally did find one, it was like hitting the jackpot. Things haven’t changed much it seems.
Some places don’t have enough drinking water or food and we seem to be challenged in the USA by a shortage of computer games. Oh the humanity.
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/FB.htm
James,
Quote: “But I’m not for using the hype as a reason not to buy the console. At best, this type of argument shows a lazy mind.”
Quote: “Likewise, I’m not for using the hype around another system to justify not buying the existing system.”
You evidently don’t have to make monetary judgements between items that you want to buy but many people do have to make a financially judicious choice between buy or wait. The “lazy mind”? as you call it, seems to be a rational mind in determining whether their hard earned cash is being “suckered” out of them or whether the item price equals it’s value. IMO, the “lazy mind” buys without knowing anything about the actual real world performance or beneftis. I don’t mind all the fanfare but it is important to distinguish between paid hype and people spreading the word about getting a great product.