Slowly, the acceptance for the XBox360 is starting to worry me. First, there are not enough consoles. That’s not a big deal for a launch, since everybody expects it. But that was only the beginning of a long stretch of negative publicity.
People who really wanted the console anticipated the shortage and preordered. However, Microsoft didn’t even ship enough consoles to fill the pre-orders. The result - madness. Even worse, it annoyed a lot of hardcore fans, the audience you absolutely want on board.
There are also the technical problems. It scratches discs. It has massive heat problems. No worries though - it works if you hang it off a string.
Now, there are reports from Japan that they sold a total of maybe 30,000 consoles. The rest is gathering dust on the shelves. It’s not really a surprise, since there’s no game catering to Japanese tastes in the lineup, but it’s not good either.
All those woes set the backdrop for the games, which are not meeting expectations for next-Generation consoles. They mostly perform on par with XBox/PS2 games that are coming out right now. And now, we’ve got the first game that looks better on current gen than on next gen. If the head of a games company says something like “When you play on an Xbox or a PlayStation 2, you start to see that it is beautiful” when talking about the 360 experience, it starts to hurt.
Yes, you can wave it off as transition difficulties. And many (bad games, initial hardware glitches, undersupply) are. But add to that that you can’t really enjoy games without HDTV, games cost $60, and the console starts at $400, you’re asking people to pay a lot of money for this transition.
All that bad press combined with the high price will convince many of the more casual gamers to at least wait quite a bit with a purchase. Combine that with the high cost of creating a next gen title, and it spells big losses for the game companies, which is certainly not increasing their interest in the new consoles.
That doesn’t mean that there is imminent doom and the collapse of the market - but it certainly prepares the field for a machine aiming at the lower end market. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Microsoft is intentionally setting the stage for Nintendos’ Revolution.
Some of it’s launch troubles, but some of it is the corporate mentality. Microsoft is used to having a monopoly and the idea that people will ditch their product en masse is foreign to them. Seriously, they don’t get it, they see that they’re the only next-gen system on the market and they think “Well, people HAVE to upgrade, don’t they?” They’re just too used to people jumping when they say frog.
All that said, all will probably be forgiven by the graphics zombies once “Halo 3″ comes out.
I doubt this round will be decided by the hardcore graphics fans. So getting negative press now impacts MS, and it impacts the whole market. I just pray Sony gets a better start - otherwise, we’ll see a serious industry shakeout. (As opposed to just a shakeout, which we’ll see anyways)
Graphics zombies (my friend Nathaniel calls them graphics whores) are honestly the only people buying the 360 right now. Everyone I know who likes gameplay is holding off and seeing what’s coming down the pike for the 360 because the launch titles are so damn bland and unimpressive. To be totally honest, the only games that stimulate my interest are the zombie game featured on the console trailer and the Dead or Alive game, and I’m not paying $460 just to bash someone’s head against some stairs.