@ stranne

IMO less than 7 million difference isn't much at all. The PS3 outlook is a rapid increase of sales, the 360 outlook is a rapid decline in sales when nearly all XBox users upgraded. 2008 IMO is the year of transition.

I think failure rates have actually risen the 360's sales, I know tons of people who just say to hell with returning it and getting back another defective one, and just go out and buy a brand new one.

@ Legend11

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.



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.

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.

I probably would have bought a 360 if it weren't for the high failure rates because of the modchip availability. If I put a modchip in a 360 and it burned out, I couldn't exactly just send it back.

Legend11 said: 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.

I know the devs which have ported games like Shogo, Descent: Freespace, Heretic 2, Quake 2 & 3, Gorrky 17, etc to the Amiga and have rights to a long list of other games including SiN and Worms Armageddon.  A quote:

"A.T. Hun: What is the greatest challenge in porting a Win32, Direct3D game to Linux?

Thomas Frieden: Well, it's getting the Win32 and DirectX stuff out of it :). That's most of the work. Direct3D and especially DirectDraw are the most critical parts, as well as DirectMusic. There are other considerations, like byte ordering, which is no problem on an x86 based Linux, but on PPC and Alpha. Then, there's also some small work to be done to come across compiler specific constructs. But in the case of Shogo, we are using gcc on Amiga and Linux version, so this is no issue anymore."

 

I don't think the sales in NA have been hurt too much, however I for one will not get an xbox 360 until RRoD is permanently fixed, despite wanting some of the exclusive titles.

In Europe and Japan I do think it's hurt them quite a bit.

Most likely, if it hadn't been for that, they likely would have been able to hold onto 2nd for this generation, or at least an extremely close 3rd. As it is, the PS3 will ultimately pass them based on much stronger Japan and Other sales.

Username2324 said: I think failure rates have actually risen the 360's sales, I know tons of people who just say to hell with returning it and getting back another defective one, and just go out and buy a brand new one.

Its funny how did dvd reader in the original PS2 effect sales??? My 1 st PS2 had to be sent in for $100 worth of repairs. I paid $300.00 originally for it + 100.00 for the repair it came back and lasted another 9 months and couldnt read blue disk.

So I traded it in at gamestop for $100.00 and got some games, and bought another one at best buy with the extended 2 year warranty for $200.99 that one was still the big bulky one with a network adapter traded that in a when the 360 launched for a core unit for my son and eventually picked up a slim unit which we never use!

 My original 360 a pro version I got at launch lasted 16 months then I got rrod by the way I used the 360 10x more then the original Ps2 got used! so I paid $400.00 + I got the warranty at BB for like $60.00 more when it pooped I got a new one from best buy and that one was bad out of the box so I kept it till the elite came out!

exchanged it for the elite and $80.00 and got another 2 year warranty on it if it fails Ill get another!

Why take this approach because all console take a shit if you use them and with microsofts 3 year warranty out of the box its less of a risk then any other console out there if your going to play it alot.

My sons 360 went down after 9 months and his warranty was thru MS, we sent it in for 3 weeks got it back and its been fine ever since! by the way its still covered for rrod til DEC 08!

 MS sales are slowing because rumar has it they are preparing a 360 with the new chip set that runs cooler and quiter and are ramping up different SKU's and maybe another price drop like sony did to them with the PS2!

$100.00  across the board on all models what would that do if they stuffed supply chains with a better less expensive hardward and the greatest software line up on a nex gen console!

@ Legend11

"Axel Deising:
The Mac version of "Shogo: Mobile Armor Division" and the LithTech engine it is based on, is coming along nicely although it was somewhat delayed (2-3 weeks) because of our contract-work on LithTech V2. The Mac (and Linux) port is based on the sources of the Amiga port which is nearing completion. Most of the work required to get Shogo and LithTech to run on Mac, Amiga or Linux is identical: removing Windows dependencies of all sorts (Direct3D to OpenGL, MFC etc.), removing Visual C++ dependencies, implementing a DLL-mechanism etc."

"HJF: Shogo was a lot more difficult in almost any aspect. It was written for DirectX, whereas Heretic II was using the OpenGL API. DirectX does a lot of things completely different. Furthermore, it also uses DirectSound (Heretic II's sound system is much simpler) and DirectInput. It used Windows dialog code and the Microsoft Foundation classes. There was also some issues with it being Visual C++, which has some, well, strange "features". All this was hard to port, this is the reason why it took us so long."

Basically, porting DirectX games involves a lot of rewriting to open standards and if needed custom implementations. DirectX was never designed to make cross platform development easy. Due to the Windows monopoly, to implement things very differently compared the rest of the industry allows them to keep Windows games for itself or cause Windows games to take a long time to port to alternatives. DirectX is closed Microsoft technology and is unavailable for rival platforms.

Developing cross platform games on the PS3 is a much better approach and will yeild much better results for PS3 as well as 360 games (much better efficiency).

RRoD scared me off