The title of this topic may sound like one chosen by a typical 360 fanboy so I'll start by saying that I do not own a 360. I got a Wii at launch and I got a PS3 one week ago but I don't own a 360. Like many people on this site, I simply have an interest in video games, and particularly in what leads to their success or failure in the marketplace. That being said, let's get onto the topic of discussion: What's the secret of Xbox 360's success?
Granted, the 360 is not in the lead this generation but it appears to be doing much better than its predecessor, the original Xbox. As a matter of fact, it has now outsold the original Xbox in the "Others" territory: http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2305.
So how did Microsoft manage to achieve this success?
Here are my thoughts:
Head start: The 360 was released about one year in advance of the Wii and PS3. This head start certainly didn't hurt. It allowed the 360 to start building a user base that to this day surpasses that of the PS3, in spite of many people's predictions of Playstation brand loyalty.
HD graphics: In addition to being the first console on the market this generation, the 360 was the first console in history to support HD graphics in all of its games. While the debate over whether better graphics make better games is one for another thread, it's apparent that many gamers found the improvement in graphics to be an attractive feature.
Pricing: A fully featured 360 (with a 20 GB hard drive) cost $399 at launch. Currently, this is the price of the cheapest model of the PS3. Microsoft has managed to continually drop the price of their system and it appears that consumers can now get a fully featured 360 (with a 20 GB hard drive) for $220 (see: http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2298). This is $30 less than the price of a Wii, $180 less than the cheapest (80 GB) PS3, and $180 less than the fully featured launch 360, which had a similar 20 GB configuration, making it the cheapest fully featured console on the market; even cheaper than the Wii.
Online experience: Arguably, the biggest strength of the original Xbox was the online gaming experience provided by Xbox Live. Microsoft built upon this foundation and it has become a central feature of the 360. While the PS3 and Wii offer free services while Microsoft's service still requires a subscription fee, Xbox live is receiving more support from developers than PSN or Nintendo's WiFi service.
3rd party support: This one is a bit more complicated as it's somewhat of a chicken/egg situation. Just as Sony got many 3rd party developers to make games for the PS1, Microsoft has gotten some impressive third party support for the 360. While many top tier games are going multi-platform, there's little question that the 360 currently has more developer support than any other console on the market, even Wii for the time being. The reason that this factor is more complicated is that it's unclear if developers were drawn to the 360's large user base or whether more people bought the 360 because of its library of games.
It appears that all of these factors combined to help the 360 overcome hurdles like the low adoption rate of the original Xbox, a negligible adoption rate in Japan, a devoted Playstation userbase in the "Others" territory, the failure of HD-DVD leading to a useless add-on drive, lack of built-in wireless networking capability, and of course, an unprecedented hardware failure rate known as the red rings of death.
