| Shadow1980 said: Without the OG Xbox, Halo would have ended up being a PC/Mac series and likely far different from the series we got. With no console to support there would have been no motivation to buy Bungie. Fable would have been a PC title, Forza would never exist, and games that had been third-party exclusives for the Xbox would have likely come out for PS2 and/or GameCube. Rare may have stayed partnered with Nintendo as MS likely wouldn't have bought them out. Online gaming on consoles may not have been popularized without Xbox Live and Halo 2. With less competition the GameCube may have done a lot better, though it would still have been dominated by the PS2. Finally, without the Xbox we wouldn't have had the 360, and the PS3 likely would have fared considerably better even had it still cost $500 at launch. Then again, the Wii may have done even better than it did as there were fewer choices and Nintendo was selling a system at half the PS3's cost. Alternately, with only a single competitor and the possibility of the GameCube faring better than it did, it's possible that Nintendo may have chosen to go with another conventional console sold at a more affordable price, perhaps more in line with the 360 in terms of specs and cost. Had Nintendo released a conventional console with full seventh-gen power at $100 less than the cheapest PS3 SKU, it may have drawn third parties back as the PS3 may have struggled even against this hypothetical "anti-Wii." As mentioned earlier, the fate of online gaming in the console space would still be up in the air; with no Halo 2 to prove how popular online gaming would be, it's possible online services would still be rudimentary in nature, and thus a great many series known for their online component may have been single player experiences only or limited to split screen multiplayer. Also, we can only guess what would have happened to games like Saint's Row and Dead Rising, which were released for the 360 when it was the only seventh-gen system on the market and were never ported to PS3. With no seventh-gen system in the period from Q4 2005 to Q3 2006, it's possible that many games released in that period might not have been made. So, while the sixth generation would only look somewhat different, the seventh would likely have had a very different landscape, and consequently each subsequent generation would likely look increasingly more alien to our actual experience. |
Finally someone who doesn't talk only about Rare and Halo. Forza is one of the greatest contributions of MS to the industry. But it wasn't only Forza. MS started to compete with the almighty Gran Turismo with other racing series: Sega GT and one of the best IPs of all time imo, the PGR. PGR was what MSR ever dreamed to be. What racing game had such a good car list as PGR1 and PGR2 at that time? And when Bizarre decided to move to multiplatform, they created Playground Studios, which now produces the best arcade-sim racing game. So, the contribution of MS is undeniable.
But I don't agree with the premise that GameCube would have sold a lot better. The Xbox sales would be mostly transferred to PS2, not to GC. PS2 and Xbox were much more similar consoles.
