Helped in that, i believe it was because of the original XBOX that brought online gaming to life and from then on every game that was released on the XBOX had some sort of online component. Online was the benchmark to next-gen gaming and it still is....in a way, this helped american devs finally be recognized in the gaming world where western games started getting some regonition and started selling for that matter since it was being drowned out by japanese devs and japanese games.

That in effect, has hurt the gaming industry too since Japanese devs were probably overwhelmed by online gaming and didn't realize how popular it was in america, but yet not so important in Japan which is where most of their fanbase comes from. their games, particulary rpg games, were being turned off by american consumers and they started scrambling to change it up and include online or changing the gameplay....this is what probably screwed over S-E who made FFXI a strictly online MMORPG which bombed and even i got turned off by that because they tried to do something different but went overboard with this online phenomenon. It even got rid of the idea of world map's in jrpg's and turned into point and click or just big overworlds you walk around to...

Because japanese devs made mostly single player games and japanese variant, they were being ignored by western gamers who are switching to mostly americanized games such as shooters, sports mainly. and now japanese devs are catering to their style of gaming and even their rpg's are beginning to look more like american rpg's and this is what i hate about it. if jrpg's of this new generation start becoming more like mass effect or oblivion, i'm gonna hate it because that'll be the end of turn-based or action-rpg. or if resident evil becomes more first person view shooter then action, i'm gonna be annoyed. and it looks like it's already there.

I am not sure about the x-box brand, but in my gaming life, MS is everything that is gaming. I am a PC gamer at heart, and thanks to Direct X, it's greater then it ever would have been without it.

I remember the days of making sure my sound card would work with a game, and having to pick the right one. Making sure my Joystick worked... so much today we just take for granted :).

So as a PC gamer, I love what MS has done. As an x-box fan, I love what MS has done. As a 360 owner, MS can go jump off a cliff.

Yea, I'm fickle :p

^^Nicely done. M$ went a long way towards industry standardization.

Wow. Just wow.

(exits the room quickly before the flamefest starts)

I for one actually likes MicroSoft as a OS developer. I know they get a lot of flak for windows, but has anyone used an OS like Linux, knows XWindow is difficult to use for anyone who isn't "1337"(Device driver support anyone).

Windows and Dos while maybe not the best thing in the world, but they have made it so the everyday user can hop on a machine and use it, and before you bring up MAC remember, windows works on millions of different computer setups while Apple's OS only works with the machines it's designed for.

I respect what MS has done in the computing realm. As for gaming, they are sort of meh to me, but i also have to respect them for creating the first system designed and supported within the United States since the Atari Jaguar.