Japan Will Have To Wait For Xbox 235
securitas contributed a link to this New York Times article which indicates a delay in the Japanese release of the Xbox. "MS insists it's going to meet its Nov. 8 North American release date. I'll believe it when I see it. Also, Namco has signed on to produce 4 games for Xbox including 2 exclusives." Ledge adds a link to this AP story carried by Fox News as well: upshot is that units won't go on sale in Japan till Feb. 22. (A chart comparing announced vs. actual dates for all the consoles would be interesting, since they all seem to be delayed.)
Japan - other tech. (Score:3, Interesting)
What about localisation issues for XBox, availability of games. local titles?
Some of the big games in the arcades here (China) are dancing games, drumming games, piano playing games (!), all very far away from traditional console fare. I've seen accessories for these for various consoles. Question, are MSFT going to push games which do well in their home market weirdness and ignore local weirdness?
dave "no mr. bond, i expect you to dance!"
I think that it is pretty clear to anyone (Score:2, Interesting)
1, There are few developers, apart from M$ and Bungie willing to develop for it and those that do have little or no console experience. btw who whats to play pc games on a tv anyway.
2. It is overpriced for a consoles (around $299) and underpowered for a computer 600mh.
3. It is marketed towards the 16 to 25 market who are the most likely to own a computer and have no use for a Xbox anyway.
4. It is badly designed for a console, who whats a hard disk in their console, what do you do in case of a harddisk crash.
5. If you are into that cut down puter, intergrated graphics, sound and processor philosophy then Nvidia are about to bring out the nforce + there will prob be a million clone's even when the thing flops.
In short, the Xbox takes all the disadvantages of a console, such as the inablity to upgrade, low processor power, closed archtechure and paying to develop for it. While it add's all the disadvantages of a computer like bad design, hardware bloat and poor software implementation (ie directx).
I predict that M$ will both miss the us release date and not even attempt to sell the thing in japan.
The Xbox is the bastard child of anti-ps2 vapourware that even the marketing of M$ will never be able to sell.
Re:I think that it is pretty clear to anyone (Score:2, Interesting)
Just look at all the crap changes they make to movies to please test audience's.
Plus there is a limit to hype if the product will not sell passed the first few weeks and people in business who have seen stuff like this before and will again and have there livelyhood riding on it will not buy into this in the current environment.
I'm sorry the xbox has remainder written all over it. It's true that a few people will que to buy one when it is launched but like The Phantom Menence after the third week it will be history.