nightsurge on 03 February 2009
You are reading too much into what I am saying.
I think you're totally wrong here. I don't really think the problems MS is having with hardware affected sales during the 1st year they launched. By putting their product on the market first Microsoft did scoop up a lot of sales of people who wanted a next gen console and didn't want to wait another year for one of the other 2. I know thats why I bought one in November of '05. I didn't have anything else to get for Christmas so I waited overnight at Best Buy and got a 360. Now would I have bought that $400 dollar 20gb Premium 360, LIVE subscription, extra controller, Perfect Dark, COD 2, and Recharge kit if the PS3 was sitting right next to it for either $500 or $600? Hell no. Microsoft penetrated the market early and had zero competition for sales such as mine. Kudos to them, no ones complaining or thinks its cheating (cheating? are we on the playground?). But to compare sales as if the PS3 being on the market for 2/3 the time of the 360 hasn't had an impact in total sales is illogical. Not to mention the friend factor. Which console do all my roommates have because I had the 360 first? You guessed it. Microsoft selling their 360 early and getting out Halo 3 and Gears of War was brilliant. Who wanted a PS3 back then? I know I didn't. Times are changing though. Anyways, I wasn't whining, I was making a logical point for the arguement. I have nothing to whine about, I own my console now and couldn't be happier.
I was not specifically referencing the first year of sales when I was saying that there were many negatives and hardware issues. The whole RRoD debacle likely scared many possible sales away from it (after the first year).
And sadly, for most fanboys, yes this is a playground and they do think of the headstart as some sort of cheating.
XDR ram is proprietary, but not any revolutionary bleeding technology, and in fact it would have been better for them to include more traditional ram. The Cell is nothing special either, really, and they'd have been better off making something more traditional and adding in a discrete physics chip to make it easier to program for and cheaper. It's new tech, but not the most powerful by any means when it comes to processors. So I guess that leaves just Blu-Ray, which was a blessing and a curse in different ways.
