Yeah yeah... I already tried to explain this and it didn't do any good. I meant that they are niche in the sense that Nintendo gamers like all the Nintendo games. Not everyone is a Nintendo lover. I know alot of you are, but I have yet to meet one in person. Niche was probably the wrong word. I do remember talking to people about games years ago and I would hear "Nintendo games are all the same" quite often. Zelda and Mario aren't the same as each other, but they both certainly appeal to the same people. My whole point with that niche comment was just that. Xbox's games seem more diverse to me, but everyone has pointed out that I'm dumb so I dropped it.

Nintendo games do transcend age demographics - mainly due to the fact that alot of Nintendo fans who are around 30 grew up on Nintendo. They have alot of loyal fans. I'm sure they recruit new ones all the time, but I would say most of the people who own a Gamecube now have at one point owned one if not all of their previous systems. Last Xmas alot of moms bought the GCN out of the 3 because it was the cheapest. I don't see that being as big a factor this Xmas, so it'll be interesting to see who comes out on top. Probably PS2 followed by Xbox and GCN fighting over 3rd place scraps. It doesn't really matter whether GCN sells more or Xbox sells more - 2nd place is just the first loser. The people I talk to outside of this forum all think the Xbox is the best followed by PS2 and then GCN, so I'm sure that skews my viewpoint. It's probably not representational. I'm just speculating anyway, so don't mind me.

I don't think anyone here disputes that the Xbox has some nice looking games coming out, just nothing close to the killer aps on PS2 and GC. I personally don't see any of the new Xbox titles or even Xbox Live being something that will make significant numbers of people who don't already own an Xbox go buy one. I do believe that Nintendo has several of these games coming out over the next few months.

I love all good games no matter which console they come out on. Hence I own all three consoles so I can pick and choose the games I want irregardless of console.

That said, I think I'm in the same boat as Trigger. I'm 31 and most of my friends are around that age. In my circle of friends I'm the only one who has all three consoles. Everyone else in my circle has an Xbox. They all weighed their decisions on the current and future games for each system and the capabilities of each console.

One of my friends told me he didn't like the Gamecube because he thought it was more of a kids console with all of the "cartoony" games it has. I tried to show him how fun and cool the games were, but he's just stubborn. He wouldn't even give JSRF for the Xbox a chance. I believe people should try something before shunning it. And by trying I don't mean playing it for 5 minutes at a store kiosk.

Since I got my Xbox my other two consoles don't see much play time. I haven't gotten Mario yet because I have other games I need to finish first. Hell, there are some PS2 games I need to finish, but it's difficult for me to pull myself away from my Xbox.

For the record I've had my PS2 since last summer, I bought the Gamecube the day of the price drop, and I got the Xbox about 2 weeks later. I have 23 PS2 games, 8 GC games, and 9 Xbox games.

The games I'm most looking forward to are Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, Mech Assault, Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, GTA: Vice City, Brute Force, XIII, Robotech: Battlecry, Blinx, Toe Jam & Earl, Unreal Championship, DOA:XBV, James Bond: Nightfire, THPS4, Midtown Madness, Crimson Skies, Doom3, Soul Calibur 2, Tekken 4, Dragon's Lair 3D, DX2: Invisible War, Ninja Gaiden, Shinobi, Xenosaga, Star Fox Adventures, and Mario Party 4.

I just realized there are too many for me to buy all of them this winter. I'm probably going to lean towards Xbox multiplayer games since all of my friends have Xboxes. But I also need some single player games for the times I'm alone.

I need another job. Maybe, just for the winter to feed my gaming needs. And, I haven't even mentioned DVDs. Okay, I need 2 part time jobs.

Seriously it's a great time to be a gamer. My friends gravitate towards the Xbox. I'm sure other's gravitate towards another console. It's just awsome having a choice.

I didn't figure this thread would still be going so strongly.

One disadvantage Xbox has in a prediction thread of this type is that, for almost everybody, 'AAA system seller = a sequel'. And it can't be just any sequel; who predicted GTA3 as the single most important third-party system seller since, perhaps, Street Fighter 2 on SNES? Nobody. It has to be a sequel to a proven AAA franchise for most people to say "Eureka! Now THAT will sell systems!"

Xbox is relying far less on console sequels than the competition, so in a huge list of unfamiliar names, it's very easy to say, "I see nothing worth playing". It's only natural. I'm sure that even 99% of people on game messageboards who read that Breed is coming to Xbox, for instance, would respond with a collective "Huh?". But that doesn't mean it, or any other now-obscure game, won't blow up into something huge.

That's how I feel about the GC and PS2... it's all just opinions based on perceptions.

Excellent point. You hit the nail on the head...

Link?Link?Link?

That's true. If one of Xbox's exclusives turns out to be as compelling as GTA3, it would mean a big difference. But I don't expect that to be the case. Everybody who went to E3 came back excited about Metroid. It's true that GTA came in under the radar last year while everybody was gawking at Metal Gear, but that was the exception rather than the rule.

Most franchises rely not merely on the popularity of their characters, but also on their reputations for quality. People look forward to Mario, Metroid, and Zelda games because, on a lot of people's lists of the top ten best games of all-time, there's at least two games from each of those series.

A fantastic game instantly sets itself up as a franchise, and if the sequels are well-managed, that franchise can be built upon. Gaming franchises represent quality as much as name recognition, which is why, after Goldeneye, Perfect Dark was so anticipated and the Bond games from EA were not.

Anyway, the huge, outstanding, must own game that nobody's hyping now could as easily be the painstakingly crafted "The Getaway" on PS2 or the Treasure developed "Wario World" on Gamecube.

Xbox targets "hardcore" gamers, but it doesn't exactly have that market cornered.

A decade ago, the gaming world was split between Nintendo fans and Sega fans. Most of the people who stuck with Sega through the Saturn and the Dreamcast would, at this point, naturally gravitate toward the Xbox. All of the fantastic Sega games that didn't save the Dreamcast are getting sequels on the Xbox.

But plenty of hardcore gamers were too busy playing MGS2, Devil May Cry, and GTA3 last year to fuss with the Xbox, even for Halo, and an awful lot of hardcore gamers are Nintendo fanatics. Really, Xbox is favored among Dreamcast fans and PC gamers who normally eschew consoles.

The more fanatical nature of the Xbox audience explains the high tie-in rate for the early sales. But a lot of hardcore gamers get really excited when you start talking about a new Metroid game, and a new Mario game and a Zelda game only sweeten that deal. Further, Xbox is not in second place worldwide. It's struggling in Europe and it was dead on arrival in Japan. I believe that, this holiday season, its slim lead over Gamecube in the US will evaporate.

Halo is not the fastest selling game ever. Mario already eclipsed most of its records, and both MGS2 and GTA3 sold more software over the last year than Halo. Further, a lot of people are expecting Metroid to be better than Halo.

And Halo 2, with a port of the 4 year old Counterstrike, and maybe a port of Doom 3 next year hardly makes Xbox an FPS "fest." I mean, counter-strike is great, but it's so old there are PDAs and probably cell phones with the power to run that game.

Finally, I don't think Microsoft has "billions to burn." They have a lot of cash assets, but corporations are owned by individual investors, who do not have money to burn. These are middle-class people, looking for their stocks to pay the highest possible dividends every quarter so they can retire. Microsoft is certainly burning billions on the Xbox, but I question whether their investors will allow them to continue to do so in today's chilly economic climate.

Microsoft is profitable, but the Xbox division is hemmorhaging money. If Bill wants it bad enough, stock prices be damned, he can buy dominance in the console gaming industry; heck, he could probably buy a monopoly on the industry if he were willing to push Microsoft into losses for a couple of quarters. But I think, more likely, the costs of buying a console war will be more than MS is willing to pay.

Also, Nintendo, who many people continue to underestimate as "the little guy" in this game, has over $5 billion in cash assets, and can spend toe-to-toe on promotions with MS, because, unlike Xbox, Gamecube is actually pulling in profits. And Sony isn't going to let their industry dominance slip away particularly easily. I think Microsoft could probably take over the continent of Europe through conventional warfare and spend less than it would cost them to beat Sony and Nintendo in a console war.

I continue to believe that there is only room in the market for two successful platforms. Microsoft has remained committed to keeping a constant flow of money to keep Xbox healthy, but unless the division starts pulling its own financial weight, I continue to see them as the least likely of the three consoles to have a successor in the next generation.

Not even. I was at E3 and alot of people were disappointed with Metroid or else ignored it completely. I was one of them. I had high hopes that it would be a cool game since FPS games are my favorite and it just didn't do it for me.

Oh yeah, and ScandalUMD... that really long post of yours above - I completely disagree with 90% of it. I also think if you're going to make such bold statements you should provide some links to your sources of info. I'd go into detail point by point, but it's pointless and pretty much the same stupid arguement we've all been having for a year now.

While I would like to argure with you and I wish you were wrong the numbers do not lie. I have all three systemsl and like the XBOX the most the PS2 has such a large user base hard for them to loose at this point.

Link?

I'm afraid a lot of those people are going to be very disappointed...

I'm expecting Metroid to be better because it is a totally different type of game. It is being touted as a First Person Adventure, rather than a First Person Shooter, because the emphasis is on exploration rather than shooting everything in sight.

I'm not much of an FPS fan, so I'm expecting to like Metroid much better, though admitedly I'm skeptical as I'm not a fan of the first person perspective in general.

I don't think Halo and Metroid will be able to be compared. There will be too many differences in the style of gameplay. I'm skeptical of Metroid myself, but I will wait to play it before I decide. I wish Nintendo would start doing demo discs in the magazine so we could try these games out.

Plus, this thread is just discussing this holiday season, and it takes a while for a game that comes in under the radar to turn into a "system seller" through word of mouth, postive reviews, rentals, etc.

It's doubtful that any of the games coming out between now and X-mas that have the potential to do this (on any system not just the X-box) will have enough time to gain popularity and become system sellers before the holidays are gone.

Well, it won a lot of cross-platform game of show awards. The graphics look great, and Nintendo was pleased enough that they bought Retro Studios.

I fully expect it to surpass the year-old Halo in most respects. A lot of people found Halo pretty repetitive. If you ask me, Goldeneye is still the best console FPS ever, and Half Life is the best FPS overall.

As for the basic notion that Xbox is losing money for Microsoft, does anyone disagree? Does anyone see it becoming profitable in the near future? How?

Nintendo's profits, including the record profits they reported in spite of the Gamecube launch, have been well established before, as has their $5 billion war chest.

The Xbox's losses have also been much discussed, including the high rumored losses on the initial hardware, and the increase in that loss when they dropped the prices five months after the system launched. With Microsoft losing something like $125 on each Xbox sold, and pouring an additional $500 million into promotion, you don't need links to show the thing isn't making money. It's intuitively obvious.

But how about just discussing this:

With Xbox Live launching to Microsoft's estimates of "a few tens of thousands of users" and a $2 billion network infrastructure, well, multiply 100,000 users by the price of a $59 Xbox kit. What do you get? A hell of a lot less than $2 billion.

If everyone on earth who currently owns an Xbox buys a kit, that's $59 times about 4 million users. About $240 million dollars. And it's not as if everyone will buy Live, and it's not as if Microsoft actually gets $59 of revenue back; the store keeps a chunk of that. Plus they have the expenses of the headset and the pack-in in addition to the infrastructure. How does Microsoft make money on this?

Scandal - see? I didn't even need to argue my points and you still carry on your side of it. Microsoft is losing money on each console... it's a multibillion dollar corporation though, so I doubt that they are stupid enough to just bleed money for no reason. They have some of the best minds in the world working overtime on sales data and projections and stuff that most of us wouldn't understand... these people have years of experience under their belts and they also have the scissors in hand to cut losses when they feel the Xbox isn't ever going to turn around.

So, since the Xbox seems to still be in full-swing with games due and Microsoft continually obtaining new deals with developers and whatnot - I don't see how your opinions and speculations about how much money they are losing or have lost or stand to profit or whatever means anything. That wasn't even the part of your post that I disagreed with most, but it doesn't matter anyway - since none of us is an expert or an insider, we don't really know anything and we're all just talking out our asses.

And if you disagree with the idea that Microsoft employs smart people that would cut their losses on the Xbox if it became an actual burden on the company (a company that primarily makes Operating Systems and Productivity software and *Provides Internet Service), then it's clear that we'll never see eye to eye on the subject. So either way it's probably best to just drop it. It's just like the argument that Nintendo will probably go software only or that Sega will team up with whoever or that the PS3 will be made of organic matter that we'll stick in our rectums and control with our bowel movements.



By the way - that Link looks like a tool - I genuinely feel bad for those who were excited about the original look of Link and are now having to endure that guy above. I'm sure it looks much better in motion. I basically ignored Zelda at E3.



As for Metriod vs. Halo vs. any other FPS... I've seen Metriod first hand and it wasn't all that great. First Person Adventure just means that it's a First Person Shooter. FPS games all have adventure in them. There are a few that don't have much like Serious Sam and Doom and Quake - they are more or less find the key, open the door, kill the monsters... Essentially, that's an adventure too, but with an emphasis on the action and less on the story. Recent shooters have been more story driven with NPCs and FMV sequences and stuff you can interact with in your own time. I don't see how Metroid is any different. It looked like another bland FPS to me at E3.

I am one of the people who thought Halo was repetitive and yet I can't deny that it was alot of fun. The thing that was so great about Halo is that the controls were awesome - it showed FPS lovers who are used to a mouse and keyboard (yes there are millions of us) that a console's controller can be just as tight. I think that some of the repetitive nature of Halo was just added in to make it a bit longer - take it out and you have a really awesome game that is a tad too short. Max Payne was awesome, but too short. Halo was the perfect length and had terriffic pacing. I really didn't mind having to blast through a few levels that looked like a previous one because I was having fun doing it. Can you tell me a game that isn't repetitive in some way?

If anyone tries to compare Metroid to Halo and controls come up, Metroid will lose because the controls aren't nearly as tight. Metroid looks nice in the FMV sequences, but the first person perspective is really cluttered and the graphics simply aren't as impressive as Halo. I didn't see the final game, so I'm sure the end product will be better than what I saw. I know that Metroid fans would've preferred something other than a FPS game though. I honestly hope Metroid is good cuz it was one of the few titles I was interested in for the GC.

In all fairness to the cell animated Link. The way he looks will make no difference to me. Its all about how much fun the game is to play and Miyamoto has proven to me with Mario Sunshine that he is still king. The screen shots I've seen look amazing. So I don't see what the problem is.

As far as Microsoft and profits. They are in this for the long run. I'm sure they were expecting to lose billions on the Xbox this time out to establish their name in the market. Microsoft is not giving up and I expect them to give Sony a much bigger challenge next time around. If the Xbox 2 turns into another billion dollar failure then they might back out, but we will have to see in 2005 or 2006.

Metriod is something I will wait and see on. I'm not the biggest FPS fan, but I did like Halo (not enough to buy it though). If Metroid works as a First Person game I will get it, if not I won't. I'm hoping the demos are up soon for it.

Yeah, a lot of people found it repetitive because it was so fun that they played through the game two or three times!

Intelligent comment.

Well, I had to answer this one. I consider myself a very avid gamer and I don't really care for Mario or Zelda games. When the genesis came out, I left Nintendo behind and haven't looked back. Actually, I have tried the newer releases a bit (Mario sunshine) and they're okay at best IMO.

The whole thing comes down personal preference. You can't make vast generalizations about games and game trends, because there will always be someone who disagrees based on their own opinions. You can't argue against opinions, only voice and discuss your own.

Here comes an opinion: I think that there wil be two or three games that come out for XBOX this fall that will be big sellers and generate the same hype as a Mario Sunshine or GTA III. These things take time though and we won;t know if this happens for nother 6-12 months. Maybe then one of these games will bring the franchinse title that XBOX is missing (when compared to Nintendo). Blinx could be the next Mario, with a good first release and ten more years of consistent fan appeasement).

I'm surprised at the life of this thread, but then again, any conversation that pits one system against another is going to keep going....and going....and going............................