And, damn is it good!
No, I haven’t joined a cult, though I will be talking about Microsoft (yes, it’s another Xbox post) today, so I guess that’s almost the same thing.I was working in retail (as a toy store manager) back when the Xbox came out near the end of 2001, and living just a little ways down the road from Redmond, there was plenty of hype going around. It was going to be the best thing to ever happen to videogames, they said. It’d change everything, we were told.
It wasn’t and it didn’t.
That’s not to say it sucked, it just didn’t have a solid launch lineup. It had Halo, but that was really all it had. Most everybody who bought one from my store bought Halo, and maybe their favorite sports game, but that was about it. And that wasn’t the case at just my store. It happened like that all over America. There was even a joke making the rounds on the internet (and it’s still floating around today) that the Xbox was really just at $300 Halo TV Adapter.
^.^
A bit harsh, but still slightly reflective of the reality of the situation MS was in.
Nearly three years later, things have changed for the better.
There are a lot of great games out now, some exclusive, some not. But even the non-exclusive ones tend to fare better on the Xbox. That’s cool by me, since I don’t have a PS2 anymore, and most of the big titles that don’t come out for the Gamecube come out for both the PS2 and Xbox, so I’ll still have a way to play them. It took them a while, but it looks like the Xbox has found a place in the gaming world.
At least in the US. Xbox is floundering in Asia, and I doubt it’ll ever catch on. The price keeps dropping in Japan and Korea, and they keep sticking more free stuff in the box. Marketing the Xbox in Asia has become a real money pit. They’re better off letting it die and putting the marketing muscle behind the Xbox 2 (or “Xenon” or whatever it’s going to be called) and writing this round off.
It’s cool, though. If the X2 comes out anything like the Xbox, I’ll get one – so long as the games are there. I’ve been bitten before, buying a console at launch and then waiting months and months for the “killer app” titles to come out. When the next generation of hardware rolls around (X2, Nintendo’s “Revolution” and the PS3), I’ll be sticking to my “five-game rule” – if there aren’t five games out on the shelves that I’m willing to buy, I don’t get the system. It’s been fairly effective in the past, and there’s no reason to think it won’t hold true in the future.
Of course, if all 3 of them launch with a batch of great games, I (and my bank account) could be in for a world of hurt….
^.^