Immediate Criticisms

stealth toilet

stealth toilet

Moderator
I had a lot of hope for the new Xbox going into this generation, but so far I am extremely dissapointed. I thought now that MS actually had a fanbase in the industry to expand on, they would do so. However, everything I have seen so far from E3 has led me to believe they not only will have trouble gaining new customers, but will experience difficulty keeping the ones they have. These areas I think MS really dropped the ball in.

Online

This was MS's greatest strength in the current console war, but going into the next one, they are falling behind. Sony and Nintendo both have completely free, wireless, connections to the internet, while MS is still charging annual fees. What the hell? All the extra bells and whistles they are adding to XBl seem completely unnecessary, uninteresting, and un-free.

Hardware

During this generation the Xbox was the most powerful console (or at least tied for the most powerful console, but I don't see Half-Life 2 coming to the Cube anytime soon), but the 360 is underpowered compared to the PS3. Perhaps it is more powerful than the Revolution, but people buying the Revolution will do so for its "revolutionary" gameplay, not for its pretty graphics. Even if the Xbox 360 is more powerful than the Revolution, the revolution is not directly competing for system specs, so anyone looking for a powerful system is going to choose a PS3.

Controllers

PS3 supports up to 7 people wirelessly on any given console. Xbox 360 supports 4. In fact, aside from being wireless, the controls haven't changed significantly at all. If anything they're dumbed them down to resemble the PS2 controller. Not really symbolic of a visionary company paving the way in the game industry.

Backwards Compatibility

Initially the 360 was not supposed to be backwards compatible at all. Now it is, for "top selling games". This could mean anything from the best 2 top selling games, to 10, or maybe more, no one knows. One thing's for sure, don't count on having even half of the Xbox library for game selection for the 360. Which is pretty pathetic when you conisder the PS3 is backwards compatible to over 13,000 games, and the Revolution is backwards compatible for 4 generations!

Overall

Complete dissapoinment. MS didn't think any of this through. No innovation, creativity, or vision was displayed at all through the whole unveiling of the 360. They rushed it too soon, and it shows. This is of course my "immediate" thoughts on the company, but man, they have dug a hole so deep within this past week, they're lower than they were when they started out...
 
so... you don't think the revolution is going to have powerful hardware?  Graphics wise.. its setup very nicely.
How many players will the Rev support?

Ps3... I am not convinced is going to be as powerful as they say.  How many times does Sony do this and give us less than what they stated?

Bv :hat
 
You also have to understand that it's probably 1000x easier to program games for the X360 than it is for the PS3 because of the complexity of the Cell chip vs. the ease of programming for a PC with DirectX 10.

But my beef for PS3 and X360 are the wireless controllers. I have one of the nice Logitechs for my Xbox now, same speed as the new ones will be, and it still lags horrendously at times. Wireless is definately a waste as far as controllers are concerned.

...not as though the new PS3 controller is even good-enough looking to deserve wireless...
 
Online

This was MS's greatest strength in the current console war, but going into the next one, they are falling behind. Sony and Nintendo both have completely free, wireless, connections to the internet, while MS is still charging annual fees. What the hell? All the extra bells and whistles they are adding to XBl seem completely unnecessary, uninteresting, and un-free.
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If they charge, I believe it is because they will have a head-start on online gaming. If they go backwards compatiable, there are so many good games that will already have online capabilities. Nintendo has none, and Microsoft has quite a few, but IMO they dont compare to Xbox's online games. Also, I'm pretty sure that XBox 360 was going to have wireless......and, I believe they are still going to make it so that only people with broadband can use it, which is another GREAT feature to limit lag.
 
Honestly xbox will be a success simply because its riding the coattails of Halo and other big games that I dont know about. It is definitly the "hot" and "cool" system to have. Everybody who has XBL right now knows that you have to pay for it. They probably wouldnt be surprised that they have to pay for the 360 XBL. Once again unless more people catch on to the fact that other systems have it for free then MS probably would keep it that way. And im sure there are even some people out there who feel that its still worth it to pay for the service. About the hardware, I could care less unless it is extremely crappy. Im sure they've improved on the hardware, its up to developers to make the games.
 
You also have to understand that it's probably 1000x easier to program games for the X360 than it is for the PS3 because of the complexity of the Cell chip vs. the ease of programming for a PC with DirectX 10.
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Ease of development did jack all for the GC which was extremely easy to develop for.

so... you don't think the revolution is going to have powerful hardware? Graphics wise.. its setup very nicely.
How many players will the Rev support?
Click to expand...

Its not so much that I don't think it will have powerful hardware, its just that people that are going to buy a new console based on system specs will buy either a PS3 or Xbox 360. Nintendo thinks that better graphics and better sound aren't what next gen is about, so they're not competing with the other consoles over that. People that buy the revolution will do so because of its gameplay capabilities, not its powerful hardware.

Everybody who has XBL right now knows that you have to pay for it.
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But that's because there's no alternative. Yes the PS2 has online capabilities but nothing in the vein of what XBL provides. As far as I can tell XBL isn't going to change at all for the 360, and by that time Nintendo and Sony will probably upgrade their online service to about the same thing.
 
The reason I said what I did is because they wouldnt be surprised that the next XBL wont be free. I wouldnt be surprised if most gamers who have bought an xbox know anything about the next generation of systems except that they are new and "better'. Again some probably wouldnt mind paying for the service and feel its worth it.
 
I wouldnt be surprised if most gamers who have bought an xbox know anything about the next generation of systems except that they are new and "better'.
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I really don't think you give Xbox owners enough credit. I don't see why they would be any less likely to know about the next gen consoles than a GC owner or a PS2 owner. Why wouldn't they know about the PS3 and Revolution's free online plan?
 
I didnt say they wouldnt I said I wouldnt be surprises if they didnt. And the reason for that is because to me it seems that a lot of people just jumped on the bandwagon.
 
don't be so hard to judge the it could be that the ps3 was running at almost maximum capacity

while the 360 was running at 1/3 the capacity.
 
Actually, when I had initially posted this they hadn't said that at all.

It wasn't until after they saw the PS3 that they came out and said it would be 3 times more powerful.

Or maybe they did and I just didn't hear about it until after, but I'm pretty sure it was "after the fact".
 
"We're in the middle of a war, and it's time to choose a side." (sorry, had to say that.) :D
 
still, the new design isn't visually appealing.  Its rather bland.  their old Xbox had more of a bold statement in case preference.

I am sure it'll be cool... but I just saw it again today on TV.... the "Finished product for the casing" and it just doesn't look good.  They had a picture of a few concepts they made.  one was an entire gun metal grey colored system... that was shiny.... man that looked sharp.... they should have went with that.  That basically stated "I'm hungry....  and I'm out for Console meat."

BV :hat
 
stealth toilet said:
Controllers
PS3 supports up to 7 people wirelessly on any given console. Xbox 360 supports 4. In fact, aside from being wireless, the controls haven't changed significantly at all. If anything they're dumbed them down to resemble the PS2 controller. Not really symbolic of a visionary company paving the way in the game industry.
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Ok, this may seem like a stupid question, but how would you do 7 player split screen? I don't get the point of having up to 7 players on one console if you only have one tv. It seems like an unnecessary bell and whistle kind of thing that Sony is using to try and look good. But is it even practical?
 
Not really unless you're playing sports games like Madden. Which is the reason why you would want to buy two multi taps to play them now. At least the PS3 now can do it without having to buy that extra equipment. That seems a lot more practical to me.
 
I think that 5 controllers per system would have sufficed, as it would get crowded to have more than 5 people playing on the same TV (even if it was a sports game w/o splitscreen). However, maybe Sony has some plans for using all 8 controllers, or maybe its for people that have big TV's or host tournaments or something. Either way, I'd rather have it available to me than not available to me.
 
I played a South Park game a long time ago on a system (don't remember which), and we tried a four people deathmatch. It should be fun in theory, but in real life the screen was too small to see anything. Seven players would be bad. And for that matter, why seven? How on earth do you plan on splitting the screen in seven? Six or eight would make a lot more sense.
 
I actually don't have a problem with playing a 4 player game on splitscreen. its not the greatest experience but once you get into it it's still a lot of fun.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought they said that 7 other controllers could link up wirelessly, in addition to one already linked up, thus making the controller total 8.

And as people have already pointed out, 8 (or 7) player splitscreen would not be a practical idea. Sony knows this better than we do. They are obviously doing it to please people who play sports games, or maybe they even have a new multiplayer experience planned for 8 people per console. I'm sure they have very legitimate reasons for doing this.
 
Eight players? Sounds fun, but wouldn't nine be more logical? Three in the top row, three in the middle, three in the bottom. That was all screens are equally big. Or then again four in the top row, four in the bottom. Oh. :-[

Anyway, what they should focus on instead is having a multitap that works on tv's instead of controllers. Instead of sharing a screen, you have one tv each. Technically, it's not harder than having a split-screen, or so I imagine. 'sides, it would be a lot more fun as you could turn the tv's around and not be able to watch what the other person(s) are doing. This is particullar important in deathmatch games or games where you play against an opponent. Plus you could have two tv's, both split in four and have eight players at once without reducing the screen size that much. I'm a genius! :woot
 
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