What would have happened without the high failure rates?

[Legend11]

MikeB said:
@ Legend11

ou honestly don't think that the RROD has negatively impacted sales of the 360?

Yes, more new people would have been attracted, but also fewer XBox fans would have bought multiple machines. Overall the RRoD and drive related issues are very negative, it hurts reputation and consumer satisfaction. But the 360 would IMO have lost significantly regardless, looking at the PS3 roadmap.

As for the PS3 having "better" technology, in my opinion it's better to have technology that is easier and quicker for programmers to use rather than something which forces programmers to write their code in a particular way and ends up costing unnecessary delays and expenses for developers.

No, need for delay if lead on the PS3 (look at how fast Insomniac is pumping out top quality titles, this year they will already release a 3rd generation game as good as fully adapted for the PS3). It always took developers extra time and effort to port DirectX games to Mac, Linux and Amiga as well. Microsoft does not build tools which enhance porting difficulties to rival platforms.

The most impressive PS3 games have an edge over the most impressive 360 games already, sure it's easier to tap the 360's potential, but there's also not a lot of room for growth (far less potential). Probably already Gears 2 will see the 360's peak, I was expecting better from Halo 3 (4th generation high profile, high budget 360 exclusive) and Mass Effect from a technical perspective. Uncharted & Ratchet showed huge advancements just like you would expect from 2nd generation PS3 games. 2008 PS3 games will set new milestones increasing this gap, with more than enough headroom left to see this trend continue for quite a while to come.

Porting DirectX games to Amiga? The Amiga was dead when the first version of DirectX came out, nobody was porting from DirectX games to the Amiga. It filed for bankruptcy a year before the first version of DirectX was released and some European company released 2 very niche Amiga models after that.

The rest of this discussion is based on a "What if?" and people's opinions and it isn't worth arguing over since nobody knows what would have happened and can only give their best guess.