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Games Entertainment

Next-Gen Consoles -The Strategy Thus Far 45

Posted by Zonk from the comparison-shopping dept.
tyko writes "CoolTechZone.com takes a look at all three consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and presents a nice overview of the strategies behind the products. From the article: 'Now that Microsoft has put its weight firmly behind HD-DVD, it seems obvious that Xbox 360 will have HD-DVD support. If recent rumors are anything to go by, Xbox 360 will not have support for HD-DVD games at launch because it won't ship with the needed HD-DVD drive. Whether or not the support will come later as an optional accessory is not clear either. Needless to say, this has added more confusion to the product that is due for launch in just two weeks.'"
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Next-Gen Consoles -The Strategy Thus Far More

Next-Gen Consoles -The Strategy Thus Far

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  • Great article...but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nmaster64 ( 867033 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @07:30PM (#13993563)
    He kind of lost credibility when he started talking about how Nintendo might be developing a visor or something for the Revolution. I think he took Miyamoto's recent comments about how games shouldn't be restricted by TVs a bit to serious. The controller is Revolutionary enough, Nintendo's not gonna go so far out as to get rid of TVs...yet...

    Can't wait for my Nintendo Holodeck though...
    • I didn't think much of this article. The author seemed fairly biased against Microsoft and for Nintendo. Like the visor thing you mentioned. And how things are disorganized with the Xbox 360 and we don't understand what accessories are going to be in the package. I was pretty clear on the list of accessories and have been since they announced the two SKUs. And we don't know whether HD-DVD games will be supported later on? Yes we do. They won't be supported. Microsoft has already said so. Also, he says that
    • Yeah, I don't know where that visor idea came from(the author making shit up is my guess), but it's completely ludricrous. First off, it would probably cost more than the console itself. Nintendo's strategy with the GC, and I imagine the Revolution, is going to focus on the games not expensive cutting edge hardware(head visors aren't cheap). Second, something that big would definitely be shown off with the preview of the controller if it was a big part of Nintendo's strategy. Third, after the Virtual Boy's
      • To be fair, I think Nintendo is likely to be the first console maker to exploit VR-type technology, if/when the technology gets up to snuff. It's just not there yet. You point out that the Virtual Boy didn't go so well... neither did the Power Glove, but they're bringing back that idea now that the technology has improved. The lesson to be learned from Virtual Boy isn't, "3d visors are a bad idea," it's, "3d visors with poor framerates and red wireframe graphics are a bad idea."

        But yeah. A visor on the Revo

  • HD-DVD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gaima ( 174551 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @07:32PM (#13993580)
    I suspect that even with Microsofts weight behind HD-DVD, if they don't ship the 360 with a HD-DVD drive, it will fail.
    History has shown that big add-on packs don't sell, so it's fair to assume that Microsoft will never be able to garner enough market share of HD-DVD capable 360s to make any difference to the market Sony will have of Blu-Ray players.
    • ACK, HD-DVD as a add-on would fail, on the other side it shouldn't hurt if Microsoft added HD-DVD support in later XBox360s, of course it would be unusable for games since not all XBox360s would have it, but as a added bonus for XBox-as-MediaCenter it might be quite nice.

    • Re:HD-DVD (Score:3, Informative)

      by dummyname12 ( 886454 )
      Microsoft has already said that even if an HD-DVD upgrade comes for the XBOX 360, game's will not be shipped using the format. This would alienate all the players who didn't shell out for one of the upgrades. The HD-DVD drive would be used as an option to watch HD-DVD movies only.

      The author should have done a little research.

      In fact, in my simple Google search for "Microsoft XBOX 360 HD-DVD Support" the front page came up with an article [techwhack.com] confirming this.

      Seriously, "journalists"... research is not
    • True, if MS does decide to ship an HD-DVD add-on, it probably won't do very well, given the history of all past console add-ons. However, I'd find it hard to believe that the lack of HD-DVD right off the bat will cause the 360 to fail.

      Unlike the previous console generation, you don't have any media available in the next gen format. It'll still be a few years before we see any mass adoption of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD (especially considering many folks, like myself, will be waiting to see which format wins out in t
  • The article is correct in that Nintendo is left out of most discussions over the next generation of consoles. I am most excited about Nintendo's console of the three coming out. Why? The games!!
    • Funny, that's the same reason why the Revolution is the one I'm the least excited about.
      • No, you see, he said "games," not "same generic genre-representative game repackaged ad infinitum."

  • Poorly researched article (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EvilDonut ( 164879 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @07:52PM (#13993704)

    There is no clarity in regards to accessories that will come bundled with the package, and the optional accessories that you can purchase.

    However, there are going to be two versions of the console retailing at $299 and $399, respectively. The $299 will be the base model and will come with a wired controller and perhaps a 20GB hard disk drive.


    The $299 version (also known as the Core Package) will perhaps come with a hard drive? What sort of weird speculation is that? The contents of the Core and Premium packages were announced over a month ago, the info is available on Xbox.com, and it's pretty damn clear at this point that the Core version will absolutely NOT come with a hard drive. It doesn't get anymore clear than that.

  • It seems like the author had a deadline to post an article, and just went around and collected a bunch of things we already know and a bunch of speculations that we keep hearing over and over again and just submitted that. Thats all it takes to post on a "tech" site now I guess.

  • Why is this even on Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)

    by jchenx ( 267053 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @08:12PM (#13993838) Journal
    As many have already noted, this article is horribly written. It looks like the guy has done little to no research. It's more of an opinion/blog piece than anything else. Here's my "favorite" quote:

    Sony PlayStation 3: Sony's PS3 is definitely keeping everyone guessing in regards to the launch date. The fact that it will not be simultaneously launched with the Xbox 360 is pretty much certain.

    Gee, I was still holding out that Sony was gonna surprise everyone and announce a Holiday '05 ship date! Oh darn.

    Okay, it's fine for a small site like CoolTechZone (which has amazingly not been slashdotted yet) to have poorly written articles like this. Whatever. But does it really merit being posted here? There are certainly better topics to be discussing.

  • The CoolTechZone article is barely literate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @08:33PM (#13993990) Homepage Journal
    ...and laughably inaccurate. Did you know The Xbox 360 has a Cell processor?

    CoolTechZone couldn't even link the pages together properly (pages 2 and 3 are identical). The speculation on the Revolution is the sort of thing I'd expect from a 5-year-old... It might have virtual reality goggles and force feedback on the wireless controller (Newton's third law anyone?). Yes, and you might get a pullitzer prize!

    I particularly liked the comment on graphics "nobody can really comment on the actual performance between the two", which was of course followed by several comments on the actual performance between the two.

    The Xbox's remote control is "so you don't have to get up every time you want to change something." - such journalistic insight!

    "it seems obvious that Xbox 360 will have HD-DVD support". Obvious unless you actually read any reliable source, or think for more than a moment about the fact that it's shipping in 2 weeks and HD-DVD isn't, presumably?

    "Sony's strategy is to wait". Ahh - and there was I thinking they might actually be finishing development, gearing up for mass production, fabricating chips and writing games, etc!

    "...if the Xbox 360 takes off, Sony will be positively behind" - well at least they are not negatively behind, eh?

    "As far as pure specifications are concerned, the situation is exactly reversed" - umm, sorry, you've lost me there!

    "Nintendo's idea of targeting to the younger demographics aren't particularly exciting" - where's a grammar Nazi when you need one?

    "Remember Mario? It's a trademark character for Nintendo, if you will,..." or just a competent subeditor?

    "Nintendo plans to get rid of the traditional wired (or not) game pads and wants to make them more interactive. This will put you in the middle of the game with your movements controlling those of the game characters." Making things more interactive by getting rid of them? Crafty!

    "The absolute novelty of the experience will probably carry all of the new titles that Nintendo will come out with." Is English this guy's first language?

    "Doom III is an FPS game" no, it's a FPS game. Write it out 100 times in detention, boy!

    "What about other realism inducing effects?" What indeed!

    "That's unclear at the moment, and it's something that we'll have to wait and see." what both unclear AND we'll have to wait and see. Wow, that's like, twice as unknown then, right, dude?

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