Grimfarrow

That is total hyperbole. None of the titles you listed are even close to being considered "innovative", especially when compared to titles like "Mr. Mosquito", "Animal Forest", "Rez", "Zentai Zetsumei", "ICO", "Pikmin", and many, many others. I will once again maintain that the US video game business have nearly lost all traces of originality, especially when compared to the Japanese. The days of "System Shock", "Jagged Alliance", and other truly fun games have come and gone. Most games seem to be the usual RTS, FPS, or "Tycoon" knock-offs.

Biggest example is this: I just played "Dungeon Siege" and I was so utterly bored that I deleted it off my hard drive in about 2 hours. There is NOTHING even remotely innovative about the game at all. Sure, the graphics are nice and it has much more convenience than Diablo II, but it is the same darn thing over & over again. It is the same type of malaise and utter boredom that greeted me when I played "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" too.

But beyond that assertion, I think that both sides of the argument are reading WAY too much into this resignation. His resignation will affect X-Box's consumer confidence, but it will most likely be short-term. This hardly signals the beginning of the end of the X-Box, no matter what doomsayers may say. Let's wait until E3 before we make any more predictions, shall we?

jeffdsmith

The sky is falling! The sky!!!



Run for it!

ScandalUMD

Of course, we've never seen so much as a screenshot of many of those games. Some of the games on the list are best met with skepticism, rather than optimism, especially those that come from unknown developers, and have shown us nothing but renders. Some of those games will be good, a couple might even be great. Some of them are certain to be disappointing. Others may never be released at all.

Still others may defect to Playstation 2. Dino Crisis 3, for example was originally an XBox exclusive, but it was canceled in favor of a new sequel to Capcom's "Survivor" series, and is definitely based around the PS2 version, and may be PS2 exclusive. The Sega stuff will be good, but Virtua Fighter and the sports games are Sega's biggest titles, and VF is PS2 exclusive, while the sports games are multiplatform.

Bungie is a wild card. Halo is great; a milestone for FPS. But it is also a game that took more than three years to develop. Bungie may or may not be able to put out another game of that calibur soon enough to matter for the XBox.

I didn't say that no good games will come to the XBox, but with sales where they are, It seems unlikely that developers will want to make exclusive titles for the system. Especially when PS2 has a user base five times as large. The XBox game plan was to sell the system on Halo and the hardware, and it clearly didn't work.

The departure of Seamus Blackley is a major event. Regardless of what he says, it looks a lot like he was pushed out, and paid off to make the departure look amicable. This is not an uncommon practice. If indeed, Microsoft fired the father of the console, that means that support for the XBox is eroding within Microsoft. For two years, Blackley has been synonomous with XBox. If he's out, it's difficult to determine what that means. It cannot mean anything good. This is a system that is definitely on shaky ground.

AgtFox

First off, I'm an owner of all 3 systems. In the number of games I have it goes (from largest to smallest): PS2 (30+), GameCube (5), X-Box (3). I have been renting a LOT of X-Box games just to get a feel of whether I will like them or not enough to purchase them.

Blackley leaving is not that big of a deal in my mind. He was an arrogant ass as I had said before. He built hype into certain titles on other consoles coming over to the X-Box instead of building hype on what was exclusive or debuting on the X-Box. The hype he built around certain titles on other systems hurt him because the companies that made these games never came out and said that the game was being made for X-Box or not. He seemed to be more enamored with games that might not be than with the games that were actually in Microsoft's court. It is bad when the lead person (or perceived lead person) is spreading rumors about future titles that have not, and maybe will not, be announced. I believe Ken Lobb came over from Nintendo to take Blackley's spot. He will not be as arrogant as his predecessor, although he also seems to have a bit of baggage about how or why he left Nintendo as well.

It would be very difficult for either Nintendo or Microsoft to believe that they could build a huge enough install base before E3 2002. I think a lot of people learned from the PS2 launch that sometimes it is better to wait and see what games are coming than to just jump onto a new console. The PS2's biggest plus was that it was a DVD player (albeit not a good one) out of the box along with a game machine for $300. If you look at it from that perspective it was a bargain vs. going out and getting a stand-alone DVD player and another game system. Let's all be truthful, the PS2 launch games kinda sucked...but people knew what was coming (which was mostly sequels) and were excited about it.

So now let's talk about the companies from my perspective as an owner of all 3.

Nintendo

Nintendo has a built in user base no matter where they go because of 2 main things: Mario and Zelda. These guarantee the built in user base to move over to the GameCube in an overall large percentage. I will be honest, I buy Nintendo's machine for 1 reason: Zelda. Wherever Zelda goes, I go. The other games are just icing on the cake. Going into E3, Nintendo has set itself up pretty well and looks to have the most promising future with what has been shown to the public. As long as they can meet their dates on such games as Eternal Darkness, StarFox Adventures and Super Mario Sunshine, this will be a great year for the GC. Should Metroid Prime, Zelda and Resident Evil 0 make an appearance before the end of the year, that would make the year even more great. Games like Mario and Zelda sell systems and will continue to sell systems until Nintendo is no longer in the system business.

Sony

Sony also has a built in user base. Unlike Nintendo for many years, Sony had to build up that user base. I think it is safe to assume that Sony will be #1 in overall sales until something drastic happens. Drastic would be something like 3rd parties totally ignoring the PS2 on both exclusives and multi-platform releases. The truth of the matter is that Sony would not be where it is today if it wasn't for Square going exclusive and Sony backing Square games up with lots of advertising money. Console RPGs were very much a niche market before Final Fantasy VII. Sure the games sold well, but FFVII was the breakout. People who had never played Console RPGs before saw the FFVII ads and went out and bought the game, and if they didn't have the system they bought that as well. Then they went out and bought FF8-10 after being wowed by FF7.

Of course, it wasn't all Square that has gotten Sony to where it is today. Sony built a strong 3rd party base of support. EA, Konami, Capcom, etc. were all making games for Sony. EA is the largest game company and Madden still sells millions. Konami brought out a little game called Metal Gear Solid that sold systems as well. The 3rd party companies helped sell systems and this strong support has continued on in the PS2.

Going into E3, Sony is the quiet one. Sony is being very secretive on many projects they and 3rd party developers are working on. Out of all the games on each system we know, Sony's looks like the weakest of them. I am surprised Sony has been so quiet early this year, I guess they think their install base can hold until E3 when they blow everything out. Sony is doing a better shush job than Nintendo is with their games. I would say as it stands now, outside of the recent on-line announcements, Sony is the weakest game-wise going into E3.

Microsoft

Microsoft has not reached their, in reality, unattainable goal of 5 million units by the time E3 rolls around. They have fallen on bad times both in Europe and Japan. They are now dropping the price and giving away 2 free games and controllers to entice people to go out and buy their X-Box. Japan most likely will not bite, mostly because they bought the PS2 exclusively as a DVD Player. The X-Box is also a DVD Player, but you need something extra to use that feature and the ones that wanted a DVD Player probably already have it in the PS2. Microsoft is at a disadvantage in Japan. They have a slate of games that do not appeal to the Japanese gamer. FPS games are not highly regarded there, they are looking for Japanese produced RPGs and they are looking for the more oddball games, like dating simulators, over there. If MS wants to get Japan as a major player they have to shell out money for a Japanese developer to make a console RPG exclusively for the X-Box. Halo will sell, but not as well as it did here.

In the current slate of games available, MS has created a wide-ranging base of games. In the back of my mind I think they did this hoping that Japan would catch on that they are going for niche games and some more oddball-type games. Problem is I don't think they hit the correct genres for Japan to catch onto.

I have never, in my long game-playing career, seen a system with different games that one person thinks is a diamond and another person thinks it is dung. The only (pretty much) universally loved game is Halo. Every other game someone will love and someone will hate. Jet Grind Radio Future, Gunvalkyrie and Amped are great examples of this. Some people think all of them are great games, some think they all suck. Some find 1 or 2 good. Some are bored by these games and some are excited by these games. Some whine about the controls, some whine about the length. You get the idea? I have never seen this before, even on the Dreamcast.

Microsoft needs another title that can be universally loved, whether it be from in-house or 3rd party. They created a wide-ranging base of games and this is ultimately what has hurt them. They tried to be a Jack of all Trades and have failed. Maybe they need more of the sequels and less of the original games...or maybe an original game will be stupendous. They need to hone in the masses and not so much on the hardcore or niche environment. I believe they made these games believing they were made for the masses, but the games ended up being above the masses.

Microsoft desperately needs an RPG, preferrably by a Japanese company. They will quickly fall into Nintendo's N64 problem if they do not get one. This all goes back to Sony and FF7, RPGs sell systems nowadays. You couldn't say that a decade ago, but now you can. Microsoft also needs to aggressively advertise the games that they believe will appeal to the masses. The $500 million they spent seems to have been wasted. I have yet to see a really good advertisement for the X-Box, maybe it is time to hire a new ad agency.

Going into E3, Microsoft is in the middle. They have a lot of announced games with little to no screenshots. Many of the games announced are unfortunately geared toward the hardcore gamer (Mech Assault, Tekki, etc.), but they need to appeal to the masses to have any chance of the X-Box getting off the ground. The only ones I see geared toward the masses would be Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Unreal Championship and possibly World Series Baseball 2k3. Hopefully if Ken Lobb takes over he will tell everyone what the masses want. Blackley only promised rumored games to the masses, Lobb must create them if he is put in the position.

Microsoft obviously will have a large on-line lineup much like Sony at E3. I'm not sure if Microsoft won't bring out a modem equivalent for the X-Box and create modem servers for games. Broadband has not taken off as much as MS probably wants and they were thinking ahead (which is good), but they need to match Sony with it's broadband/modem plan. Yes, most of the people on this board probably have broadband, but we do not make up the majority of game players. The majority most likely are still stuck in modem land.


I'm excited about each system and my excitement goes like this in order: GameCube, X-Box, PS2. I'm not big into on-line games, but I may attempt to play them. PS2 has good games, but many are multi-console and I would probably choose the X-Box version over the others if given the choice. If the multi-console games come out at the same time, I forsee the X-Box selling better numbers and for sure getting the backing of people that own both the PS2 and X-Box. E3 may change my lineup in this paragraph, but we shall see.


One more thing...I also tire of people that like to point out the negatives of systems they do not own or have never tried. Yes, I remember being on the negative end of the X-Box before it was released, but since then I have seen that all the systems have their great and weak points. Blackley leaving is not huge news and I think the writing was on the wall with him a long time ago when he created rumors on certain games.

Let's just be happy with the systems we have and not say that X console is going to fail. I believe that all 3 are going to survive, but they each need to make some moves. I think I've said enough for now



since some insist on starting a new thread on this topic, please continue this discussion here:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=202418

-namja