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A very effective marketing campaign
By Sparky | November 22, 2005
So I’m very underwhelmed with the Xbox 360. After getting home and eating some food I got to spend a few hours with Brien’s and I can’t really say that I’m all that impressed. Yes the graphics are better than the original Xbox, but not by the leaps and bounds that Microsoft has been promising. If you look at the leap Sony took from the Playstation 1 to the Playstation 2 it was impressive - significantly better graphics and more fluid motion.
The textures are better, as is the lighting. The gameplay is neither extreamly fluid nor terribly innovative. Luckily I think a lot of that blame falls on the game developers rather than on the platform itself, but it is still inexcusable. It’s as if the platform and launch titles are the Xbox 1.5 rather than the next generation Xbox.
An interesting limitation - the core system ships with neither a memory unit nor the hard drive accessory. Sadly Microsoft did not even include enough flash RAM for a user to get an Xbox Live account. This means that even if a user is willing to spend the $60+ a year for an Xbox Live account they will be unable to sign on unless they spend an additional $20-100 on storage for the unit.
I almost feel sorry for the people that have spent 36+ hours waiting in line in the cold to get their hands on an expensive device that fails to impress. Brien spent well over $500 between the console, an extra controller, and three launch titles. He won’t admit it but privately I think he wishes he had waited until the frenzy had died down and the costs had come down.
Microsoft’s marketing department really knows how to work it. They have managed to sell out on a pathetic release and get the general public in a frenzy over the console thus virtually guaranteeing they will sell out every shipment until the 2005 holiday season is over.
Update: Speaking of bad usability there is a switch on the actual component video cable marked “HD”. If you select HD then the cable transmits 1080i rather than 480p. Strange they could not make it auto-detect. Selecting HD did improve the graphics a surprising amount, but I still stand by my underwhelmed rating for the platform and launch games.
Topics: Events, Technology |