Microsoft's Early Next-Gen Entrance, Did It Work?

no it did not work as planned the wii has already overtaken the lead in world wide sales , its shipment numbers are its sales believe it or not lol ,,

and flaws are another mistake reasons why you dont rush a console out ,

and now they want blu-ray what do you think thatll do for the fan base if they used blu-ray for games

I highly doubt Microsoft would go Blu-Ray for their games. It would be a terrible move on their part, alienating the 11million (or however many) people who own normal xbox 360's, losing them tons of money on possible game sales. but then again, they are microsoft, so i dont know.yakk_3

Well, if buyers' history is any indication, they could make the switch to using blu-ray as their main drive, and all of the previous owners could just wait for their current console to crap out, and they would rebuy.

The only issue I really agree with is the second one. The other two just seem like poor attempts at making Microsoft look bad. Everyone who had the original Xbox knew that the HD in it provided an advantage for certain games. And from what I remember, there was never any question that the premium version of the 360 would have those same advantages whereas the core would not.

As for the third issue, it was a gamble that didn't pay off in terms of DVD playback. In terms of games, however, it has made no significant impact, if any at all. All the HD-DVD failure has affected is movies, and while it's nice to be able to watch movies on a console, I for one never bought mine for that reason--I bought it for the games.

Do I think that MS early start has paid off? I think as it stands now, it has given them an edge for the pure and simple fact that they got a headstart in terms of sales numbers. Had the high rates of hardware failures not been an issue, then I think they would've certainly done better, but to say that it was a complete failure is completely wrong, and it's still too early to tell who will end up being the top dog this generation.

When Sony is glad that they outsell the system by a few thousand units in the U.S. on any given month? Yeah, it worked. It worked brilliantly. Sony helped out quite a bit, though.

Microsoft cracked a very large piece of the puzzle (arguably the biggest piece) by being able to figure out how to compete (and in most cases -- beat) Sony in North America. They need to figure out Europe next, and I believe they will. Possibly not by this generation, but definitely in time for round three. Japan is irrelevant to Microsoft for two reasons. One, Nintendo pretty much has Japan sewn up, so it isn't like Sony is going to dominate over there, either. And second, it's the smallest and most fickle territory.

So in my eyes, Microsoft is nearly three years into a generation and they've outsold the PS3 in the largest market for every month save one, and even then they were only outsold by a few thousand systems. I'd say taking one of the two largest markets = win.

And incidentally, that article is pretty myopic and just all-around pretty poorly thought-out. Was TotalGamerZone asleep during the PS2 era? The system dominated without a hard drive. A hard drive does not make or break a system. Neither will hi-def movie capabilities. The article's insistence that a movie format is necessary for a VIDEO GAME system to compete is absurd and laughable. They ARE right about the RROD, though. Still, a pretty ill-conceived article IMO.

I don't really argree with that article.

1. the lack of the hard drive has nothing to do with when the console was released they could of easily added hard drives to the 360, but some idiot at MS believed that the original xbox didn't sell because it had a hard drive (the xbox almost didn't have a hard drive, and many people had to fight tooth and nail to keep it then). Anyway my main reasoning is that MS would of had two sku's even if the released a year later.

2. Faulty hardware is something you can't really plan for, and every system has faulty hardware to some degree. No matter how long you wait, and how hard you test there's still a good chance for a stupid design flaw to creep out, or somethings just not working as originally planned. If you ask some people the 360's still aren't really ready, and have a failure rate similar to the ones released 2 years ago.

3. MS was never ready to support HD-DVD. They knew even if it did beat blu-ray it would still be dead in 5 years, and not come near the success that DVD did (blu-ray is mostly the same). Adding an hd-dvd drive to the console would of just cost consumers $150 more, and gave them little to no benefit.

Now looking from a financial point of view did MS's early entrance work? Yes it did, gamers were craving for a new generation of console games, and MS was able to gain a huge percent of the gaming market from last gen because they filled the gap. The 360's sales were expected to reach about 30 million over the next 5 years, and they've hit half-way before they even hit the sweet spot. Once the 360 gets around $250 expect it's sales to really start rolling in.

Well Microsoft's early entry has worked seeing that they are way ahead of Sony in terms of console sales and software exclusives for it's system. However, along with it's haste, came conciquenses of shoddy workmanship resulting in the term "the red rings of death" becomming a commonly spoken phrase amongst gamers.

I think MS's biggest mistake (one shared by Sony), was it's underestimation of Nintendo which looks close to robbing them of the number one console sales slot in the U.S..