The Xbox 360 Will Win the Console Wars

Tom's Guide US ^ | April 1, 2010 | Wolfgang Gruener

[SmokingJoe]

In the dog-eat-dog game console market, it's not about who starts first.

It is as clear as can be: Nintendo is stuck in the past, Sony is confused about the present, and Microsoft is preparing for the future. While the Xbox 360 may not be the console with the highest potential out there, Microsoft is playing an incredibly smart game against its rivals that will get bloody later this year. Here are three reasons why Nintendo and Sony are in trouble in the console market and why Microsoft will come out on top.

Three years ago, I wrote a lengthy analysis about the state of the game console industry and my assessment was very different than what it is today. Back then, it was Nintendo that had the clear lead, Sony was confused, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 seemed to be a pizza-baking game console without an identity. The times have changed dramatically. Deep into the lifecycle of the three game consoles—a replacement for all of them is expected by 2013—there is an obvious generational trend and it does not take much to predict which vendor will claim the top spot.

-snip-

The Wii has been a breath of fresh air that has shaped the video game industry more than any other current-generation game console. The fact that the Wii retails for less than the other consoles, its simplicity, and its revolutionary game controller has served to give Nintendo the lead. While the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Xbox 360 were geared for HD gaming and titles that rewarded you for killing as many opponents as possible with as many bullets available, Nintendo concentrated on making video games fun—and not just for those who had a video game console already in their family room.

[SmokingJoe]

Should be an interesting year.

[Thane_Banquo]

titles that rewarded you for killing as many opponents as possible with as many bullets available

This is why I play XBOX 360. I love the acrid smell of video-game gunpowder in the morning. Smells like... VICTORY!

[jjw]

mine died with the red ring of death

[mowowie]

I’m glad i picked up the PS3.
It is awesome and yes it does do about everything.

I’m watching a Hulu tv show on it as i type.

[SoDak]

Hmm...2013 might be when I decide to finally pull the trigger and replace my Sega Saturn.

[jz638]

I think the author takes the possible impact of the Sony Move controller far too lightly. The Natal concept seems great, but I find it hard to believe that anything more than very buggy gimmick content will be available this year. Sony Move on the other hand seems like it will be ready for the holidays.

[dead]

NetFlix on my XBox is awesome. Now I stay up way too late every night.

[mowowie]

I just got the Blu ray version of Terminator Salvation in the mail today.

Can’t watch that tonight with an Xbox.....

[GeronL]

We can stream movies from Netflix over XBOX LIVE!

I also watch them on my laptop.

very cool.

[GeronL]

No but we can watch hundreds of other movies without waiting for a DVD. I do both. Great thing.

[y6162]

I like my ps3...head shots on Germans balloon in red gore in stop action.

shiver...if only sex was as good.

[I see my hands]

I'm not a gamer but I enjoy passing the time playing Tetris on my Game Boy on long flights. It's kinda old, what new hand held game console should I buy?

[Sarah Barracuda]

What’s your PS3 user name, I’ll add you :-)

[max americana]

[SmokingJoe]

The “Jasper” XBOX 360 that came out in September 2008 {65nm CPU, 65nm GPU, & 80nm eDRAM, with HDMI port, 256MB On-board flash (16MB was standard)}, is every bit as reliable as the PS3 and the Wii actually.
And when the “Valhalla” XBOX 360 comes out later this year {65nm single die CPU & GPU}, it will be even more reliable as far as overheating is concerned.
We've already seen pics of the new XBOX 360 “Slim” motherboards on the internet, apparently from the factory in China:

[printhead]

A friend of mine begged me to look at his sons’ PS3, suffering as it were from the Red Light of Death. He had me search “Red Light of Death” on youtube. Sure enough, there are numerous videos showing how to take one apart and to bake in an oven at 200deg C (the video came from the U.K.). That works out to about 360deg F. Anyway, I removed the heat sinks and inserted screws through the outside edge holes to act as legs to keep the board from touching the cookie sheet. I baked it for 10 minutes and let it cool naturally. It’s still working a month later. Oh, you’re referring to X-Box? Nevermind.

[mowowie]

Same on the PS3, Wirelessly.
For the moment Due to a contract Netflix has w/MS we can watch Netflix on the PS3 but only with a special disk in the machine. That contract is to end soon and we won’t need the disk anymore.
I use this softare on my PC called PlayOn.
With it i can watch Netflix, Hulu, CBS (all their new shows and a bunch of classics), ESPN, Amazon, Youtube, MLB, Pandora, Comedy Central and CNN on my PS3 with more to come.

PlayOn offers a 30 day trial and will work with the Xbox 360 also.

I’m really thinking of dropping cable all together and getting a HD antenna and building a Media Server/DVR machine.

[jeffc]

As a PC gamer, I do not really care for consoles but I know someday I will get one, probably a Wii as my wife likes the "family-friendly" looks of the games/activities (exercise, etc.).

Why do I not like consoles? They have dumbed-down games that used to be really great for PC. I find it strange that games for consoles are written on PC, then ported over, usually very badly, to PC. TDU has XBOX 360 hand controller icons to navigate the menus. There are scroll bars, but they do not work. It's just as easy to play TDU, a driving game, with a hand controller as it is a wheel and pedals.

They also shipped an unfinished game for PC - you cannot finish the game, as you cannot do inter-club races except on a LAN. Not everyone has a LAN to their friends (my TDU friends are all around the world, kinda hard to do a LAN that way). Plus, Microsoft paid Atari to keep the PC version off the market for 6 months to give the XBOX a head start. Didn't work for me as I don't have an XBOX. But enough others have XBOX and PC and decided not to wait for the PC version, thus falling for MS's deception.

Codemasters new F1 game, F1 2010, is being written primarily for consoles, but there will be a PC version, but not with what PC gamers prefer, multiplayer. Oh sure, there will be MP, but you won't have a full grid or dedicated servers. Not even the ability to host your own race. You'll have to join a server, which may or may not be up, to play against other people.

Why do this? Because it's too hard to program the game so that consoles can run full grid and dedicated servers. So another potentially good game for PC's is suborned to consoles.

Eventually, consoles will be able to run games just as well as high-end PCs and game makers will stop making them for PC - it's time consuming, therefor costly, to try and make a game fit every conceivable configuration available to PCs. Costs will kill PC games before piracy will.

[mowowie]

I’m mostly a PC gamer.
Due the Joystick of the PS3 i cannot play FPS’s on it at all. I usually just play my motor Storm and other racing games.
FPS’s were made for the mouse and keyboard.

[GeronL]

Thats the wave of the future. TV Channels you want, over the internet.

[thefactor]

Scene from Woody Allen's 'Manhattan':

Girl at party - "I have orgasms but my doctor told me they're the wrong kind."

Woody - "The wrong kind? I've never heard of that before. Even my worst one was, right on."

Probably one of the best scenes ever.

[RJS1950]

If it is an E74 error (go to the XBox troubleshooting site) it may still be under warranty if you registered the box. They extended the warranty to cover that problem.

[jeffc]

Also, I wouldn’t watch a movie on my high-end gamer PC if someone paid me. My smallest TV is a 37 inch WS Visio with 5.1 SS. MY game rig is a 28 inch HannsG with two one gig SLI’d cards. I still wouldn’t watch a movie on it. I have DirecTV PPV for that. Plus, I’m not all that into movies.

[mowowie]

The same as my FR name.

It was a computer generated password from work years ago.
I use it because there doesn’t seem to be any other mowowies on the net.

[RJS1950]

The wife plays slash and bash games and some of the Mario stuff on the PS3 and Wii. I prefer the XBox for first shooters like the Call of Duty series and Bad Company 2 as well as some the Indie games that MS sponsors for the XBox. Love to lob thumper grenades at other players and collapse buildings.

[jeffc]

FPS’s were made for the mouse and keyboard.

Agree. I don't know your age, but I'm 40+ and I cannot get the hang of hand controllers. My 8 YO son is a natural and plays on his cousin's XBOX and is a wiz. Remember, we don't have any such thing in this house, but he picks it up so fast, your head will spin. Must be an age thing, LOL!

[dangerdoc]

bump

[dangerdoc]

That’s why I bought a $70 Blu Ray player.

[mowowie]

Activision really blew it with the PC version of Call of duty: Modern warfare 2.
Total cpappy console port for the machine that made COD famous.

I just bought the new Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
Now that is a awesome game, Almost every thing a PC gamer wants, Unlike COD.

[Bad Jack Bauer]

Agree. I don't know your age, but I'm 40+ and I cannot get the hang of hand controllers. My 8 YO son is a natural and plays on his cousin's XBOX and is a wiz. Remember, we don't have any such thing in this house, but he picks it up so fast, your head will spin. Must be an age thing, LOL!

My daughter gave me a PS3 for Christmas. I have a couple of FPS games for it. My son in law and my daughter are usually down for the weekends and he brings his PS3 down. My other daughter is not very responsible so my oldest daughter usually keeps my grandson and brings him over. He brings his PS3 and we hook up our own little LAN and have at it. I am 49, My son in law is 30 my grandson is 8 and kicks both our asses with alarming regularity.

[Gen-X-Dad]

More fuel for the fire for the console fan-boy wars. I personally prefer the PS3 as we had a large backlog of PS2 games that we still wanted to play. I recently discovered the media server on the PS3 and am now enjoying watching internet content on my TV (wirelessly).

None of these guys are going anywhere. Microsoft had the financial muscle to break into the console market a few years ago and was willing to take huge losses to build market share. Sony and Nintendo have been duking it out for decades and have large installed fan bases. The competition is good for all gamers.

[SmokingJoe]

You could be right.
Way I see it, the Move is a straight move(if you will) on the Wii’s market, only the PS3 Move games will have much better AI, better physics, full HD and the move controller itself will be better than the Wii’s Motion Plus. So I see the Move taking market share from the Wii, outside of Nintendo own usually high selling first party games.
As far as Natal is concerned, I follow the video games market as much as the next guy, and still can't read how Natal will do in the market. I think we will get a better handle after E3 when Microsoft shows the Natal games line up in what they are calling “Natal Premier”.
For what it's worth, Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst, thinks Natal will outsell the Move by 5:1, for total Natal sales of 10 million by the end of the first year. But then he's been known to be wrong before.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=235894

I think Natal sales are going to depend on whether Natal is bundled with most or all 360 SKU’s, and on the price of the stand alone Natal kit ($50 will be ideal), and especially on how addictive and great the Natal games are, and how well Natal is marketed to the non-gamer market, especially kids and the non-gaming females. It will need to be sold outside the usual gaming channels like Gamestop, with the Natal fitness games for example, sold in gyms and fitness outlets, while Natal kids games could be sold in children's toy shops for example.

[SmokingJoe]

The reason the consoles get most of the love and AAA games these days is simple: Money.
Look at Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for example. The console venison on the PS3 and 360, outsold the PC version by about 15:1. It wasn't even close. In America alone, MW2 has already sold 10 million copies on the PS3 and the 360. Meanwhile, the most pirated game on bittorrent for last year was the same Modern Warfare 2, with a staggering 10 million illegal copies downloaded. That's money going out of the pockets of the notoriously money grubbing Activision.
In view of statistics like that, you can't blame a lot of publishers for putting most of their efforts and their AAA games on the consoles, and not as much effort on the PC can you?

[mowowie]

Ye i’m 42.
Just the right age to have had Pong in my house as a kid.
Then Atari 2600, Colecovision, Atari 5200, Nintendo, Genisis, Super Nintendo, Play Station, PS2, PS3 plus a very nice video card every couple of years including my first, the Diamond Monster-3D card.
Now that games are really getting awesome i really don’t play anymore. I usually just stick to my MotorStorm games on PS and The Battlefield series on my PC.

Take a game like Uncharted 2 on PS3, Supposed to be awesome.
Oh well, I just cannot play games like that with a joystick.

[yield 2 the right]

Real or AFD joke?

[SmokingJoe]

Looks real enough to me.
I happen to think he makes some good points, and some not so great points as well.

[Gen-X-Dad]

I’m really thinking of dropping cable all together and getting a HD antenna and building a Media Server/DVR machine.

---

I just dropped my Verizon FIOS cable (except local) and saved $60 bucks a month. That is a lot of money to figure out how to get content to my TV. I have used the media server on the PS3 for my own DVD collection and internet feeds. I have also got the NETFLIX for the streaming video on the PS3, and I am working on figuring out the DVR with a USB antenna/coax connector for the Windows Media Center that came on my laptop. If I can do that, I will be saving another $20 a month by sending my DVR set top box back which I only use for recording sports on the broadcast networks. This is the future of TV in my opinion as it is totally configurable based on the end users preferences.

I am currently waiting on Boxee to come out with their D-Link hardware box that allows you to turn your TV into a computer monitor and wirelessly acess anything under Boxee (which includes Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc.). I am also thinking about buying a wireless flat panel TV where the receiver is separated from the screen. By ditching my cable it has forced me to investigate all of this new technology which has been a lot of fun.

[SmokingJoe]

Nintendo DS, which is the successor to the Gameboy.

[Getsmart64]

My Xbox360 had the three ring of death. Microsoft paid for shipment and fixed my Xbox for free. They extended the warranty for that failure. Go to their support site and throw your numbers in and see if it still qualifies.

[yield 2 the right]

Good enough for me.

[PissAndVinegar]

yea,about Netflix..we can do that on the Wii too.

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2010/03/netflix-discs-for-wii-arrive-in-homes/

:P

[PissAndVinegar]

“The reason the consoles get most of the love and AAA games these days is simple: Money.”

Not entirely...

With consoles you are dealing with a fixed platform.
With PCs you have to write code that will work well on various CPUs, various Video cards. various operating systems (with various patches and software installed), etc.

You can get optimal performance, leading to better sales, on a fixed platform.

[SmokingJoe]

Correct on all points. Its another reason why so many people buy consoles, instead of just playing games on their PC’s, because they don't have to muck about with graphics settings on a console before they can play their games, or buy a new graphics card every couple of years or so, before they can play the latest graphics intensive game well.

[Melas]

Can’t agree at all. I play a lot of Bad Company 2, and a lot of MW2. MW2 is the slightly better game in my opinion.

[GenXteacher]

Or buy a new PC- a lot of games come designed for top-end PCs, and a console is a darn sight cheaper.

[texas booster]

One of the things that makes the PS3 great is its Cell processor and video power. Stanford University has helped Sony write a Folding@home client for the PS3. It runs in the background and drops out when heavy duty games are being played.

That has been harnessed to make the Folding@home the largest distributed server in the world, currently running about 6.5 petaFLOPs.

Free Republic started a folding team back in 2000 or 2001. It has steadily grown and about 160 FReepers donate over 1000 systems for folding.

The Freeper Folding@Home team 36120:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120

Questions about Folding@Home:

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Questions about the PS3 and folding:

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/PS3Guide

When you add in the PS3 folding program to your console please remember to enter “36120” as your team number. Our tradition is to use your FReeper name but you may use any name you wish.

Provided that your team number is 36120!

Many thanks!

[jeffc]

In view of statistics like that, you can't blame a lot of publishers for putting most of their efforts and their AAA games on the consoles, and not as much effort on the PC can you?

The biggest reason why someday only crappy, meaningless games will be made for the PC, along with $9 versions of AAA games that have been out for consoles for 2 or 3 years: pirates. I won't mind consoles by then, but I will never use a hand controller; mouse and KB for FPS's and a good wheel/pedals for driving games.

You're right, you can't blame the game makers.

[y6162]

“Folding@home “

I’m a Unix admin. In 20 words or less, what is its function?

[Sarah Barracuda]

Cool I just added you! Mine is Lakerchick4life so if you see that its me :-)

[jeffc]

Activision really blew it with the PC version of Call of duty: Modern warfare 2. Total cpappy console port for the machine that made COD famous.

I just bought the new Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now that is a awesome game, Almost every thing a PC gamer wants, Unlike COD.

Really? I haven't tried MW2 yet, but my son can't wait for it (he has to earn it first . . .). We play MW1 against each other; I beat him 6 out of 10 times, but I've yet to finish the SP part. He's done and bored with the SP part. I can't get past the Hunted mission, LOL. I'm not really a fan of it, though. It seems too . . .Quake-ish - you end up having to kill too many enemies to get to the next mission for it to seem realistic. I prefer SWAT4 (really old game!), but at least it seems realistic enough. The objective is NOT to kill the perps, but arrest them. That gets really intense!

Anyway, I'm more of a drive/race gamer, myself. TDU and RACE 07. I'm looking forward to TDU2 and hope they don't make it like TDU1, a port of their console version. I was looking forward to NFSW, but that will be a nickel-and-dime-you-to-death game. Sure, it'll be free to start, but you won't get any decent cars, and you'll be limited to where you can go, unless you pay for upgrades.