The Successes and Failures of the XBox

thegamebiz writes "Amped IGO continues its 'XBox Retrospective Week' with a great two-page feature breaking down exactly where Microsoft went right and wrong with the XBox. From the article: 'Both lists have included hardware and the acquisitions of developers, but both have ended by reverting to the big issue: games...No matter how many impressive technical specs are shoved down our throats we must remember one simple fact: in the end, it's all about the games.'"

Eh?

[Demona]

"It's all about the games." I didn't buy an Xbox for the games, I bought it for the Xbox Media Center. Of course I had to void the warranty, but I've never used a warranty for anything I've bought anyway.

They shouldn't have dropped the 2 A.I. games

[artifex2004]

They had two games that were supposed to be part of the launchday lineup, that were offshoots of the movie A.I. From what little I heard, they were cool, and expanded that universe. But they apparently dumped them because the movie was considered unsuccessful in the U.S.

I told myself when I heard about the games coming out that I'd be sure to buy the system as soon as they did. Still haven't bought an XBox. Bought a PS/2 instead, after the first price drop.

Re:Games...

[frederec]

I have to say this is one of the reasons I'm glad that the Xbox and PS2 had somewhat different markets where they excelled: there are different kinds of gamers with different tastes. It's great that there's a console that had what you wanted. As for me, since I dig those Japanese games, the PS2 is what I have and I've never touched the XBox. All my American RPGs are on the PC.

Though I will let you know, I've always thought that people who played J-RPGs for the story or characters are nuts. I agree with you, so much of the time they're all the same. There are exceptions (SMT from Atlus, arguably Xenogears, some NIS games), but even those are debatable. To me, the whole point of playing these games is all about the battle system and the progression systems. FFVII had a confused and meandering plot that eventually just drops itself and finishes, but what made it fun was the materia system. What keeps me playing Final Fantasy games are the different systems in place like materia, sphere grids, or a job system. The battle system was pretty simple, but the character progression was fun.

On the other hand, Shin Megami Tensei and Digital Devil Saga from Atlus both had very fast-paced battles, yet even still most average battles required some thought, care, and strategy. Games like that are nice, the only older RPG I can think of where you could get your butt kicked no matter how powerful you thought you were was Chrono Trigger.

So just so you know, even people who love J-RPGs have the same complaints as you. Heck, that's what makes the list of role-playing cliches [project-apollo.net] funny. But in spite of their shortcomings, they can be a lot of fun.

These "successes"

[SetupWeasel]

Are all overshadowed by the amount of money MicroSoft lost. Look, the Xbox 360 would need to be the most profitable console ever for MS to break even on this venture. No other company could sustain this level of loss. In fact, this sort of business model is precisely the sort of thing that our anti-trust laws should prevent. Microsoft must be paying some politicians a lot of money to overlook the Xbox subsidy in every Windows or Office license the government buys. It is a fucking joke to call this preversion of our economic system a success.

From TFA:

[travail_jgd]

"It instead competed by traditional means, and made the Xbox a success through its smart business practices, games, and focus on offering a central unified online gaming service."

Having effectively unlimited funds doesn't hurt either. Unlike other companies, Microsoft had no exit strategy [xboxsolution.com] if the XBox tanked -- other than pouring more money into it.

I once told a friend that with Microsoft's cash reserves, they could pretty much afford to give away 10-12 million XBox bundles and still have a ton of play money left over. Even if each giveaway cost the company $500-$1000, it wouldn't deplete their cash reserves. What other companies could afford to do that??