My take on the X box (and why I think it's doomed to either failure, or massive success).
For the past
decades the world
headquarters of console gaming has really been located in
Japan. The Japanese have been looked to by "x-treme" gamers across the world. There's not a game magazine or
web site that doesn't point to the "latest thing" that's been released in Japan. You can
see the
drool as these guys await it's release in the US.
To this end I see one of two thing happening.
1.) The japanese companies in competition with the X box step up the schedule for the release of games/technology to the US market to be concurrent with US releases. Japanese nationalism dooms the
platform in japan itself, and a community of Japan-centric
hardcore gamers leads the community in avoiding the X box like the plague.
2.)
Microsoft produces a
superior (or at least
equal) product (with a similar or lower price tag), finances a launch of several game titles concurrent with the release of the platform and switches the center of US console gaming from the east to Redmond. I still don't think the system will fare well in the japanese market (although I'd love to hear a japanese noder's take on this situation).
This is based on my (I'll admit) somewhat
limited insights into the culture of harcore console gamers, the japanese and microsoft.
(the unofficial 3rd option) A bunch of
linux hackers port linux to the X box, create some killer linux based games for the console. Microsoft threatens to
sue anyone who does so and gets a huge load of bad PR. I laugh my pants off.
Thanks for the insight
Clone maybe the x box will work out. Although I can always hope for dismal failure...