Microsoft Wants 360 To Have PS2-Like Lifespan 160
Gamasutra is reporting on comments from Microsoft executive Mindy Mount, reacting to Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and his observations about the modern console life cycle. Mount indicated that the company is looking towards the PlayStation 2's success well into its lifespan for inspiration. "In comments very similar to those made by Iwata, Mount suggested that a rush to create a new generation of consoles was not necessary until there was a compelling hardware feature to justify it. 'At this point from the technological perspective, there are some real advances ... that make it worth having a next-generation console," said Mount. "Right now there aren't that many things on the horizon that you think, wow, that's going to be a game-changer.'"
I wont' be the first one to say it but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wont' be the first one to say it but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How important will back compatability be? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How important will back compatability be? (Score:2, Insightful)
DRM, plain and simple.
xbox was modable, and with the new 360 they can now go as far as breaking your machine's hardware remotely (see my sig) to keep you from using your device how you want.
if they provided a fully reverse compatible api people would just use the original games to reverse engineer the 360, and microsoft can't have uppity people exercising their personal property rights.
I'd prefer (Score:3, Insightful)
I sent one back for "red ring of death" - which they still won't admit is their own fucking fault for not putting in enough cooling for the original processors (multiple sites have opened up the new ones and photographed the enlarged heatsinks they're putting in now compared to the original).
What do I get back? A "replacement" unit that dies a month later because the fucking DVD drive motor is defective.
So for this year, I've actually had my 360 for 10 of the 12 months (a full 1/6 of the year) because the fucking morons won't do a proper "advance replacement" (you guarantee w/ credit card that you'll send the defective unit back in the box they shop your replacement) and insist it goes to the factory where their techs will go "yup, it's defective" and ship another out.
No he doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
If he did, MS would have made ONE version of the 360. Does he really think he can get away for 7 years with a console without a harddisk for that long? Does he really think DVD's are going to be a big enough storage option for that long?
MS has set themselves up to have a constant stream of 360 setups that won't be good enough to play new releases. A game will need a HD, a game will need HD-DVD and whatever else MS WILL decide to add in the future. Make NO mistake about it. MS will find it impossible to resist to release newer 'better' versions of the 360.
Then there is the hardware itself, current generation consoles are obsolete already compared to the PC. Even a modest PC gaming rig will have more video memory then consoles have for TOTAL memory.
Does this matter? Can you say MMORPG? That is one big cash machine in the game industry but so far there has been little luck getting it too run on consoles. That is because in a MMORPG you never really know what is going to happen next. They are memory hogs because they need to have lots of data loaded all the time.
In a more traditional game, no matter how large the level, it is more or less up to the designer WHAT is actually in that level. In a MMORPG (or for that matter a modded game like The Sims or Oblivion) the contents of a level can skyrocket simply because of varation.
I can come across several dozen people each in outfits with their own textures.
Stream load that!
It is one of the reasons why user mods to games like The Sims and Oblivion and Never Winter Nights seem to always include higher resolution textures and more style choices. Why didn't the company include them from the start? Because their minimum requirements would have skyrocketed. My 'pimped' oblivion makes the original look like morrowind but the cost in hardware is extreem.
We all seen how PC games that got the console treatment had to be butchered to deal with the limitations of obsolete hardware. Deus Ex 2 anyone? Why can't I access the huge amount of user mods on the console versions of Oblivion? Where is the user commonity of the Console version of The Sims?
7 years is a long time for the 360 but more importantly Microsoft. Sony is a different company then MS, it (used to be at least) is a hardware company. MS is a software company, and I think MS will find it impossible to resist pushing updates.
The proof? The lifespan of the x-box. It was DEAD the moment the 360 was released, Sony is still actively working on the PS2. This despite the fact that the x-box was a younger machine.
Hardware limitations aside, MS is just not a company that can support a product for so long without new must have features being slipped in. When they see that PC gaming (in which they after all have a very important role) is overtaking their console gaming division in capabilities they WILL release a new 360 with more memory or something, effectivly ending the life of previous models.
But hey, if they don't that is good new too, I am looking forward as a PC snob of half a decade of looking down on console gamers and their quant old relics again.
Apply same thinking to Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want to have a PS2-like lifespan they better work on fixing the console. It's not much fun owning a video game console which is being repaired/replaced for months on end.
Re:I wont' be the first one to say it but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wishful thinking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why a hard drive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, with a hard drive in every system, it might be possible to even set aside a portion of it (say, 512 megs to 1 gig) to act as a swap file, not unlike a PC. It would just enable better performance overall. Considering the Xbox had a hard drive in it (and you couldn't buy one without it), it's surprising Microsoft didn't do the same this time around.
What a bunch of BS (Score:2, Insightful)
The PS2 was one console, never needed to be upgraded to play new games, and it usually lasted forever. I still have my fat PS2 from early release, and it still works beautifully (had one disc read error a year ago that was fixed by cleaning the disc). Microsoft is clearly NOT going the PS2 route.
Re:100% backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. People who say this are missing the obvious hole in their argument: attach rates.
If everybody out there were constantly re-buying broken PS2's, the attach rate would plateau and then actually drop. Think about it - a person with 10 games has an attach rate of 10. Then their console breaks, so they buy another one; now their attach rate is 5. (10 games divided by 2 consoles.) But that has never happened. The PS2's attach rate has only ever gone up, consistently, and at least to a year or two ago, the rise in attach rates was actually accelerating. (It's natural for attach rates to start to stabilize at the end of a system's lifespan, as people stop buying games for it.)
I've never been convinced that any model of PS2 has ever had a higher defect rate than the industry average, or were any easier to break. It was a popular system, so naturally you were going to have some people with breakdowns. It's not like the 360, which even MS has admitted has multiple design flaws (their own words) and seems to have close to a 100% defect rate, judging by both the anecdotal reports and by MS's expectations of what it's going to cost them to repair defective units. But here you have multiple people saying their launch PS2's work just fine - chalk me up as another, and Sony has never had to cop to any problems with these systems. There's never been any threat of any class action either.
I've seen about as many reports of the Wii overheating as I did of PS2 breakdowns in the early days.
Re:Wishful thinking? (Score:1, Insightful)