Anyone remember the Genesis?

That was a really sweet system that entered the race well before Nintendo and had a clear lead in the console war. Then Nintendo pushed out some heavy hitters, (Donkey Kong Country in particualr) that showed how much better their hardware and therefore their software was by comparison.

So what did Sega do to counteract this? They released two garbage peripherals (Sega CD, and 32x) that were designed to make the Genesis seem more powerful.

The problem was they inadvertantly reinforced that the SNES was better out of the box because it didn't need 4 or 5 hundred dollars worth of add ons to compete. Thus the console war was lost by Sega (not to mention the Millions of dollars wasted developing the two failures) when they could have done much better just sticking to their guns and holding out for the next generation.


I can see MS fucking up big time here if they don't stick to their guns. With all the newbie gamers coming into the hobby I can see many of them turning their nose at the system just because it would look like they have to buy extra stuff that competitors already offer for free with the console in order to get the best gaming experience.

I like the 360 exclusive games, but MS has never been original, at anything... ever.

unoriginal...yes

brought nothing to gamers...no

they are pretty much responsible for making online gaming popular. I believe Xbox was the first to have "real" online gaming, with their XBL service.

I definitely have to agree with those that have said that MS innovated on the online aspect of gaming. Sure the 360 didn't have any huge deviation from that initial innovation, but the original innovation with easy to use online gaming is the reason all of us can enjoy online in our games now, or at least it helped.

 Very smart post dude:)

It does look bad when a console maker starts adding stuff that their competition was smart enough to build into their console in the first place. 

M$ adding these things is a confession that the competition has better forsight as to what gamers want. 

The original Xbox is a great piece of kit. Maybe not a great gaming console though... I purchased a used one about a month and a bit ago and have been playing around with it on a pretty regular basis. I modded it to act as a media PC, so I grabbed a mod chip, wired it up and installed XBMC onto it. I bought a few games and borrowed a few from friends to see what I'd been missing. So far the XBMC software has worked wonderfully. It does most everything I wanted it to do which is great for me. I wanted a spare PC type thing to stream my pictures, videos and music around the new house I'm moving into shortly.

Games, well there's where things get a bit murky. So far my favorite game on the system is Stubbs the Zombie. I sat down and played this game for at least 2 hours this morning and I'm still not sure why I like it. The gameplay is super simplistic, the environments aren't that interesting and yet I've now played it a few times and I think I've been having fun with it regardless of it's many flaws.

Sadly that's the most fun I've had with the games for the system. Of the 2 games I purchased (Halo 1 and Fable). Halo seems to be the much better game, it seems like a game that would be great to play with a friend. Single player has been a snore fest though. Fable could be a good game, but I haven't really played enough of it to tell.

Anyway, the original Xbox gets a 9/10 from me due to the other uses it's been given. I wish the 360 used off the shelf parts as well so the modding community could have worked wonders with it as well. I haven't played the 360 enough to give it a yay or nay yet. It plays games, which is cool in my books. ;)

Why do people get so defensive when a company integrates a successful, proven feature into their system? I mean, how many great games do we have out today that have borrowed features from prior great games? The way I see it, if your competitor has a product that works, its your responsibility to implement a similar product into your lineup. That way, your user base isn't missing out.

 Yes they did push online gaming on the consoles, but where do you think they got that idea???

 Where M$ gets all their ideas and games, the PC

ya... where did they get all there PC ideas? other companys! anyone ever heard of Netscape?!

Of all the companies in the console business. I would rather see Sony leave than Microsoft. Microsoft, has been this generation the best platform for third party developers. If we lose them, we could lose a lot of innovative games that may not appear on other systens. They have single-handedly kept alive the JRPG segment and for that I thank them.

Also, its the gateway for console games to hit the pc so I dont have to use the slow boxes all the time. ;) true HD FTW, not some 650p crap!