Microsoft Doesn't Deny Xbox 360 Has 54.2 Percent Lifetime...

[Stargate Nerd]

At yet it's never really been challenged by the PS3.

Turns out that Adam Smith's invisible hand doesn't really work? Good build quality didn't help the Xbox1 and Gamecube topple the PS2 last gen either.

The idea that all the good games on 360 eventually came to PC is ridiculous, and the number of games that do so is likely to decrease over time.

Why would it decrease over time when it's supposedly very easy to port from PC to 360 and vice versa? If you look at the exclusives that the 360 has over the PS3, most of them are also available on PC. The only exception I can think of are Gears 2, Halo 3 and Forza 2.

[Stark]

What? How is it a failure of the free market that the more expensive, not-really-much-better PS3 failed to push an established competitor out of the market? The PS3 needed to be cheaper or significantly better, and it was neither. That's not OMG FREE MARKET, that's Sony executives being idiots.

PROTIP - developers may see the console market as safer or more profitable.

[Uraniun235]

b-b-but it's sony! and it's called playstation! that must mean it should be on top!

[Stargate Nerd]

What? How is it a failure of the free market that the more expensive, not-really-much-better PS3 failed to push an established competitor out of the market? The PS3 needed to be cheaper or significantly better, and it was neither. That's not OMG FREE MARKET, that's Sony executives being idiots.

PROTIP - developers may see the console market as safer or more profitable.

My point is, what does the 360 sucking at quality have to with the PS3 losing? You're the one who pointed out that the 360 is ahead despite quality issues.

[Stark]

You seemed to think the 'free market' should have allowed PS3 to push 360 out of the market, despite being more expensive and not significantly better. That really doesn't make sense. The 360 suffered for having such terrible reliability, but the PS3 suffered more for being an overpriced piece of shit. That's the invisible hand, right there. You even imply that Xbox 'failed' despite decent build quality, even though it was very successful. It's not about 'dethroning' jack shit.

I wonder if the PS3 makes money yet? I belive the redesign to Slim has pushed them back into losing money, so I guess they're gambling on actually reaching more people now that their console is competitively priced.

[Count Chocula]

I've had an XBox360 for going on two years now, with zero...ZERO...problems. Despite my 4-year-old son playing on it like 2 hours every day after school, and 6 hours or more of weekend play (yah him and me, and not all at once). I've played it for 6 hours at once, and had it on pause mode overnight many a time, with guess what - no problems. Hell, it's worked better than any other Microsoft product I've ever used, including this laptop's Vista OS. What's my secret? I have it set horizontally on a shelf, so the cooling fan can cool and the disc loads like every other fucking disc loader in the world besides the Nintendo Wii. Magic!

And speaking of Sony...my digicams are Nikon and Canon. I don't have and will never have a Sony TV, receiver, console, camera, or anything else. I haven't bought a fucking Sony since the original Walkman came out. Sony's go-to-market approach seems to be "make it incompatible with everything else (memory sticks, anyone?), lock out the good product features with a retard-level interface, hype the shit out of the product, then sell a less capable unit at the same price as a fully capable product from someone else to all the mouthbreathers that can't figure out an attack in Street Fighter." A pox on their house. Oh yeah, and they can't seem to attract the same software house talent that PS3 and Wii can.

[Stark]

Anecdotes are useless; 360s have well-documented design flaws causing all kinds of RTB problems. This is how statistics work.

The idea that using it horizontally is some kind of magic secret is totally asinine and you must be literally retarded to think that isn't common. This IS the console that has people wrapping them in damp towels to try to resurrect them; their faults and 'solutions' are extraordinarily well documented.

[Vympel]

What's my secret? I have it set horizontally on a shelf, so the cooling fan can cool and the disc loads like every other fucking disc loader in the world besides the Nintendo Wii. Magic!

You're just asking for it to break. Stop jinxing it.

EDIT: what Stark said.

Oh yeah, and they can't seem to attract the same software house talent that PS3 and Wii can.

I can only assume instead of "PS3" you mean to say X360, but LOL what the fuck? Software house talent - and Wii? 90% of Wii games are shovelware casual user Fisher Price shit, and are not noteworthy at all- it's leagues behind the X360 and PS3 in terms of software. And what software house talent does X360 'attract' that the PS3 doesn't? Bungie? And ... Bungie?

[Count Chocula]

snark snark snark

OK fine it's an anecdote. Pardon my lordships but I didn't read The Statistical Abstract of Microsoft XBox Reliability Issues, 2nd Edition 2009 before posting.

I can only assume instead of "PS3" you mean to say X360, but LOL what the fuck? Software house talent - and Wii? 90% of Wii games are shovelware casual user Fisher Price shit, and are not noteworthy at all- it's leagues behind the X360 and PS3 in terms of software. And what software house talent does X360 'attract' that the PS3 doesn't? Bungie? And ... Bungie?

I freely admit that the Wii's graphics are, damn, at least two generations behind XBox360 and PS3, but (anecdote warning STARK IGNORE THIS POST) I must admit I like the hell out of the motion-sensing controller. And Call of Duty 3 for Wii, despite the low-rez graphics compared to the XBox, is damn entertaining with the magic wand controller. If only I could figure out how to get past that fucking buttstroking Nazi, I'd be golden.

And the Wii, despite its cruder graphics, outsells both XBox and PS3. Hardware and software. Maybe I'm drawing a false analogy here, but my thinking goes "console that people are buying the shit out of" = "developers are writing the shit out of games for it" + "they must be pretty well-done games and not shareware crap if Wii titles are in 4 of the top 10 worldwide, which is the same as 360 and PS3 combined."

[Stark]

Go fuck yourself, shithead. Some ludicrous number of 360s failed, and you inanely suggested that USING IT SIDEWAYS prevented it. Seriously half the 360s that entered Australia left again in a warranty box. This is way more comlpex than 'ROFFLE USE IT SIDEWAYS', and even Microsoft tells people not to stand it up (although fuck knows why anyone would have wanted to anyway).

PROTIP - when someone asks you 'what software house talent has Wii attracted', saying 'I like the controller' is not a response. Your logic later is simply braindead. The Wii sells because it's cheap and accessible for families. Selling lots does NOT mean you thus have good developers - as Vympel says, Wii has piles of horrid shovelware and significant slices of software sales are the same half-dozen titles.

This thread is really bringing out the idiots. It's MAGNET STUPID.

[Count Chocula]

you inanely suggested that USING IT SIDEWAYS prevented it

Lol. If only they hadn't totally fucked up the design in the first place?

STAND IT ON IT'S PRIMARY COOLING VENT KIDS!

Ironically, one of my mates was on his third old 360 when it died the day after 3 years wore off... so he just bought an arcade + 120gb drive (for $30 less than a pro). Now he's got a revised, non-broken one, and he figures in previous generations he would have bought a new console by now anyway.

Contradiction and anecdote +5 for the win! Go STRAK!

I concede on the software side, not knowing enough about the coding requirements for the different platforms.

[Starglider]

Selling lots does NOT mean you thus have good developers - as Vympel says, Wii has piles of horrid shovelware and significant slices of software sales are the same half-dozen titles.

There are several factors in the success of the Wii, but one that is often glossed over is marketing. Both Microsoft and Sony had a string of bizarre and ineffective ads, with marketing that appealed mostly to existing gamers and read as 'more of the same but prettier' in the press. Nintendo staged a simple but highly effective marketing campaign for the Wii - personal recommendation was important in sustaining growth, but the PR campaign had to get it going in the first place. Third party publishers have copied that; I've seen several ads for third-party Wii games on TV here (and I hardly watch TV), and they all show happy players and families flailing about with Wii controllers with the occasional brief shot of the game. For casual gamers this seems to be almost Pavlovian; they see people having fun, with a tiny taster of the game (not enough to see how limited it is), they think 'ah, that game look fun', they buy the game. You are completely correct in saying that the Wii has not attracted much interest from competent developers, but it has attracted a lot of competent publishers. For a publisher competence has nothing to do with game quality; it's solely about maximising profit margins, by any means possible.

[Stark]

Contradiction and anecdote +5 for the win! Go STRAK!

I concede on the software side, not knowing enough about the coding requirements for the different platforms.

Are you fucking stupid? Yes, everyone knows that the initial marketing (where it is vertical, like a PS2) was pretty damn stupid considering the cooling problems it turned out to have. They've even added far more vents to the design over iterations even as they resolved the manufacturing problems. I'm not seeing how this makes you look less like a fucking retard for thinking having it sideways is a magical solution.

Because you're cataclysmically deficient, let me spell it out for you.

~40% of the 360s in the world are dead. Not all of them were used vertically; indeed in the last few years I'd be surprised if many were at all as the known problems would make such a stupid idea. Thus, being sideways doesn't stop your 360 dying, which you can't understand because you honestly think 'mine is fine' is a response to 'lot of them died'. I've been through 3, and I've never stood it up. ANECDOTE FIGHT.

Stars, I think it's definately a combination of marketing and titles - the Wii was very effectively aimed at a new, larger, and different market, all of which gave it new sales and buyers who weren't even considering the other two. All the marketing I've seen for Wii are family loungeroom styled stuff, which is a step up from the truly bizarre PS3 ads I've seen.

I'm not actually sure how profitable the vast majority of Wii games are; but I guess since they're so cheap to make and the installed base is huge, it is on average more profitable for smaller publishers than the other platforms.

[Count Chocula]

I've been through 3, and I've never stood it up. ANECDOTE FIGHT.

Ding ding! Shuffle. Shuffle. Whoosh! miss. Whizz! Bop! Oooowwww!

You win. Your Total Cost of Entertainment > Mine. Mebbe my having a more recent model made the difference, as I wasn't an early adopter.

P.S. I tend to agree with you on the Wii. We have one in the playroom, and the son, nieces and nephews absolutely love it, especially for multiplayer games. Hell, even my wife will play an occasional Wii Play game but she won't touch the XBox. I know I'm stuck on the hardware side here, but the Wii's controller really is easier for a novice to use than a traditional controller.

[Starglider]

I'm not actually sure how profitable the vast majority of Wii games are; but I guess since they're so cheap to make and the installed base is huge, it is on average more profitable for smaller publishers than the other platforms.

It's not just profit margins; making lots of smaller cheaper games is preferable from a publisher's point of view, because it reduces risk. The history of the industry is littered with formerly successful games publishers that went under simply because they had a run of three or four big-budget flops (still better than dev houses, which can go after just one major flop). That goes double at the moment as credit is hard to come by. Lots of games does dilute marketing spend, but you can often alleviate that by giving them all common branding (see; the rapid succession of Raving Rabbids games).

I agree with Chocula on one thing; PS3/360 controllers (aka good controllers) are intimidating to a lot of people. My wife refuses to play any 360 games because she cannot get her head around the usual dual-stick control system (move/look) and says she can't use thumbsticks competently 'because I never learned when I was growing up' (???). However she enjoys playing various numerous Wii games that have random collections of bizarre and awkward control schemes. A good fraction of the female 'casual gamers' I know have a similar attitude.

[Stargate Nerd]

You seemed to think the 'free market' should have allowed PS3 to push 360 out of the market, despite being more expensive and not significantly better. That really doesn't make sense. The 360 suffered for having such terrible reliability, but the PS3 suffered more for being an overpriced piece of shit. That's the invisible hand, right there.

I admit it was probably a little cryptic, but by no means did I want to imply that the PS3 should have won. We can learn by looking at console history that build quality doesn't seem to influence success, or if it does not to a great degree.

You even imply that Xbox 'failed' despite decent build quality, even though it was very successful. It's not about 'dethroning' jack shit.

But what measure would you say it was a success?

I wonder if the PS3 makes money yet? I belive the redesign to Slim has pushed them back into losing money, so I guess they're gambling on actually reaching more people now that their console is competitively priced.

IIRC Sony has been profitable or close to for a while. And a Slim PS3 should be saving them money rather than costing them more, which is why they could lower the price.

[Stark]

The Xbox was popular (at least in the US, but even in AU) and got MS's foot in the proverbial door. I believe it lost money as a business, but it laid the groundwork for the 360's dominance of the next-gen market (and indirectly led to the design flaws in the 360). MS learned from the Xbox, whereas Sony appears to have totally ignored their mistakes (and successes) with the PS2.

The Slim will probably eventually save them money, but redesigning it to be cheaper = not free.

[JointStrikeFighter]

IIRC the xbox division did make money eventually.

[Vendetta]

IIRC the xbox division did make money eventually.

It has had a couple of profitable quarters on the back of Halo 3 and Gears releases, but overall it's a money sink designed for getting the Microsoft brand into the living room.

It's still pretty much funded by Office, Server, and OS divisions though, which is where the really shiny money is for Microsoft.

[Stargate Nerd]

The Xbox was popular (at least in the US, but even in AU) and got MS's foot in the proverbial door. I believe it lost money as a business, but it laid the groundwork for the 360's dominance of the next-gen market (and indirectly led to the design flaws in the 360). MS learned from the Xbox, whereas Sony appears to have totally ignored their mistakes (and successes) with the PS2.

Yes you're right, it got Microsoft's foot in. And there's always the claims that the consoles just serve as a way for Microsoft to enter and dominate the living room.
You still have to ask yourself though if losing 4 billion dollars on the first Xbox was worth it.

It has had a couple of profitable quarters on the back of Halo 3 and Gears releases, but overall it's a money sink designed for getting the Microsoft brand into the living room.

It's still pretty much funded by Office, Server, and OS divisions though, which is where the really shiny money is for Microsoft.

It's too bad that the Zune and other consumer electronics ventures muddy the financial reports of the Entertainment division, otherwise there'd be more clarity over how well the 360 is doing.

[Lusankya]

I agree with Chocula on one thing; PS3/360 controllers (aka good controllers) are intimidating to a lot of people. My wife refuses to play any 360 games because she cannot get her head around the usual dual-stick control system (move/look) and says she can't use thumbsticks competently 'because I never learned when I was growing up' (???). However she enjoys playing various numerous Wii games that have random collections of bizarre and awkward control schemes. A good fraction of the female 'casual gamers' I know have a similar attitude.

If they're first person games, a lot of girls (myself included) can't properly get their hang around the controls. I need both inverted y axis and inverted x axis, otherwise I keep on turning the wrong way. And while inverted y axis is pretty much standard, plenty of games don't offer inverted x.

She also might get slightly motion sick from the games, which wouldn't help her get used to the controls. I find that having the controls the "wrong" way around actually increases the sensation of motion sickness, which means that I can't play any first person games for more than about 5-10 minutes without feeling so sick that I have to stop. This leads to me being unable to get accustomed enough to the controls to stop the motion sickness because for every 10 minutes I play, I have to rest for 30.

A Wii controller is probably a lot more intuitive in the way that you move it around, which (I imagine) would decrease the motion sickness by making it easier to predict the results of your actions.

EDIT: I remember reading something a while back that suggested that while male susceptibility to motion sickness is inversely proportional to spatial awareness, female susceptibility is directly proportional to spatial awareness, which I found quite interesting. I'll see if I can find the source.

[DaveJB]

It's too bad that the Zune and other consumer electronics ventures muddy the financial reports of the Entertainment division, otherwise there'd be more clarity over how well the 360 is doing.

Last year they managed to get the 360's production costs down to the point where they could make a modest profit on each unit sold. However, the whole warranty saga has pretty much ensured that the 360 hardware will never be profitable for Microsoft.

Mind you, they were never really relying on the hardware making a profit (they certainly didn't with the original Xbox) - Xbox Live was always going to be where they made most of their money from, along with sales of their own first-party games.

[Modax]

She also might get slightly motion sick from the games, which wouldn't help her get used to the controls. I find that having the controls the "wrong" way around actually increases the sensation of motion sickness, which means that I can't play any first person games for more than about 5-10 minutes without feeling so sick that I have to stop. This leads to me being unable to get accustomed enough to the controls to stop the motion sickness because for every 10 minutes I play, I have to rest for 30.

The speed of the gameplay seems to have an effect on me. I have no problem playing shooters in which you move at normal speed like COD or Halo, but whenever I've tried to play arena shooters like UT3 I start to feel ill after 10 minutes or so.

[JointStrikeFighter]

My GF gets motion sickness watching me play gears of war after about 2 minutes. It probably has something to do with all the shaky cam.

[Lusankya]

I got motion sick playing Myst III. It's the first person viewpoint that does it. It's similar to the reason people get motion sick in cars - you get conflicting input from your different senses, and your body just basically says "no way, dude".