(steps in chamber to be deloused, steps into chamber 2, rubs nasa preventive germ cream, steps into chamber 3 and is examined by doctors, steps into chamber 4 and dons Freaky_1 Flame Retardant Suit, gets sprayed with Fire Resistant liquid over suit, does sign of the cross, kneels and prays to allah, grabs picture of kids, kisses it and puts it in pocket, posts article found on the net, closes eyes, hits submit button)
Ten Reasons why the Xbox 720 will launch in 2009
An Australian gaming website has put forward an article which explains why they believe the next Xbox will go on sale in 2009, meaning that the current Xbox 360 will follow a normal four year lifespan just like the original Xbox. Their logic for this belief is the following - 1) The Xbox 360 is unreliable 2) The Xbox 360 has a three year warranty 3) Xbox 360 dragged its feet on wireless guitars 4) Xbox 360 doesn't HDMI as standard 5) Xbox 360 doesn't have a hard drive as standard 6) No WiFi as standard 7) Limited to DVD for games storage 8) It is ugly and loud 9) Failing in Japan and 10) Microsoft, and everyone else, considers the Xbox disposable.
quote:
The hypothesis of this article is simple: that the Xbox 360 will have a four-year lifespan just like its predecessor, and that its successor will be rushed to market. That the next Xbox, whatever it is called, will go on sale in the US, Europe, and Japan in time for Christmas 2009, and will arrive in Australia and New Zealand in March 2010.
Why would Microsoft do that? Why would the mighty 360 be abandoned? It has a substantial install base, a healthy attach rate, and an online service second to none. Yet there are flaws so glaring that the engineers and marketers responsible could be forgiven for wanting to sweep it under the rug, and just pretend it never happened.
_______________
10 Reasons The Next Xbox Will Launch In 2009
We follow the clues, and they all lead to a rushed release.
by: James Cottee 10/10/2007
The hypothesis of this article is simple: that the Xbox 360 will have a four-year lifespan just like its predecessor, and that its successor will be rushed to market. That the next Xbox, whatever it is called, will go on sale in the US, Europe, and Japan in time for Christmas 2009, and will arrive in Australia and New Zealand in March 2010.
Why would Microsoft do that? Why would the mighty 360 be abandoned? It has a substantial install base, a healthy attach rate, and an online service second to none. Yet there are flaws so glaring that the engineers and marketers responsible could be forgiven for wanting to sweep it under the rug, and just pretend it never happened.
What reasons could Microsoft possibly have? We’re glad you asked. Without further ado, we present…
The Top Ten Reasons Why The Next Xbox Will Be Rushed To Market.
1: The Xbox 360 is unreliable.
This is the big one. For most consumer appliances, the thought of system failure rarely creeps beyond the back of your mind. A typical TV, toaster, microwave, or alarm clock can be expected to last a decade or more. Even games consoles usually become obsolete long before they conk out.
But the Xbox 360 turned that upside down. For this console, malfunctions are endemic, and inevitable – just turning it on is like playing Russian Roulette. Will it fail to turn on? Will it gouge my game disc? Will it explode? These thoughts plague every 360 owner, every start-up, every day.
Sure, improvements are being introduced in new machines rolling off the line, and heat sinks are grafted onto its smouldering innards during warranty repairs. And to be fair, they’ve been pretty speedy fixing busted units. But it is too little, too late. The Frankensteins at Microsoft have created a monster.
2: The Xbox 360 has a three-year warranty.
Which brings us to our second clue: the three-year retroactive warranty now in place for all Xbox 360 owners. It was a big decision, putting that warranty plan into place. Console owners now need pay nothing for repairs in the first three years of a 360’s life. It’s estimated this scheme will ultimately cost Microsoft over one billion American dollars.
And billion-dollar decisions are not taken lightly.
A lot of time and thought went into choosing that number. Why not two years? Why not four? Why not a ‘lifetime’ warranty? The simplest answer may well be that three years is the effective lifetime of the Xbox 360. Beyond that, the world will have moved on…
3: The Xbox 360 Dragged Its Feet On Wireless Guitars.
Home music games are only going to become more important as time goes by. SingStar, Guitar Hero, and soon Rock Band bring the illusion of collaborative music creation to the living room. Music games need novelty controllers, and novelty controllers need wireless.
Yet Microsoft has been reluctant – very reluctant – to let anyone else create wireless controllers for the 360. It is a bitter irony that a system that from day one has been promoted as having wireless controllers as standard forced gamers to settle for wired guitars, while the PS2 version of Guitar Hero II enjoys wireless support. Only the impending mega-blockbuster release of Guitar Hero III was enough to twist Microsoft’s arm.
These decisions aren’t so much about technological limits as saving face. Ergo, there is unlikely to be a change to this policy during the current hardware generation. Concordantly, Microsoft will have yet another reason to speed things along and roll out the next model.
4: The Xbox 360 Doesn’t Have HDMI as standard.
High-def is still expensive. Very expensive. Unless you’re a merchant banker, a commodities trader, or a plumber, $3000 for a new telly is still a lot of money. Aware of the price sensitivities of the vast American (and, by association, western) multitudes, far-eastern telly manufacturers are presently gearing up to make high-def affordable.
This new wave of cheap flat screens will arrive sooner than you think. Don’t be terribly surprised if Christmas ’09 sees the debut of LCD 1080p screens for under $1000. HDMI will come standard on all those sets, along with digital TV receivers. The rip-off merchants that make HDMI cables may even bring the price down by then, too.
The point is, HDMI will be standard. And right now, that particular socket is not standard on Xbox 360s. Even if it was, 720p is still the de-facto resolution for 360 output; 1080p wasn’t part of the console’s original vision, and only added later via a firmware update.
5: The Xbox 360 doesn’t have a hard drive as standard.
This one really is baffling. Hard drives aren’t that expensive any more. You don’t even pay a dollar a gig. Yet Microsoft chose to design a console without a HDD as a standard option. It was actually a step down from the original Xbox.
Not only that, but the available hard drive is proprietary, and you can’t swap them around like memory cards – you can only have one. Compare that to the PS3, which lets you bung in any hard drive you like. Sizes will continue to increase, costs will go down, and Sony has future-proofed its console against this trend.
Meanwhile, a 20-gig drive on 360 has barely enough room for your maps and save files.
Make no mistake, hard drives and downloadable content aren’t the future – they’re the present. TiVo will be starting in Australia soon, legitimising what trend-setting down-loaders have been doing for years.
PlayTV will help PS3 ride this new media wave.
Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 is flailing in the backwash, covered in bluebottles.
6: The Xbox 360 doesn’t have Wi-Fi as standard.
This is another big one. Even if you don’t wear one of those effeminate Star Trek-style earphones with your mobile, you will be well aware of the wireless revolution. Even the Wii has Wi-Fi, but the 360 requires a $170 add-on just to connect to the net without a tether.
There are health & safety considerations, too. Penny Arcade readers will recall the fate of Gabe and Tycho’s friend Jim, who got tangled in the cords behind their telly and never escaped. His skeletal remains are a grim reminder of the plastic shackles of 20th century technology.
Gamers, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
7: The Xbox 360 is limited to DVD for games storage.
Mass storage will only become more important as high-def content in games and movies becomes standard. Sure, you can download a Geometry Wars or a Space Giraffe in a snap. For 50 gig games, that isn’t really feasible. DVD doesn’t really cut it, either. Lost Odyssey will come on four discs.
Whether it’s Blu-ray, HD-DVD, or even a new proprietary 12cm disc format, the consoles of the near future will need high-capacity storage like never before.
8: The Xbox 360 is ugly and loud.
Some useful euphemisms: inelegant, homely, plain, haphazard, and asymmetrical. The truth: the Xbox 360 is not a beautiful machine. Certainly not as pretty as its competitors. The PS3 is a mighty obelisk, the Wii sleek and functional. The 360 just doesn’t have the same kind of class; like the nouveaux riche at the gentleman’s club. Like the ghetto resident in his gold chains. It just doesn’t look the part.
Its physical size is also a turn-off – it’s still basically just a PC in a different case. All the removable face-plates in the world can’t conceal that fact.
Then there’s the ring. The ring of LEDs, now synonymous with the dreaded triple-red-light malfunction indicator of death. Even when the system is working perfectly, those lights are a reminder of failure. They have to go – and the only way to get rid of them is to start from scratch.
Oh, we almost forgot – the 360 is the noisiest video game console ever made. It grinds, it whirs, it grunts, and it does its level best to drown out whatever game you’re playing. The noise issue is definitely a ‘do over.’
9: The Xbox 360 is failing in Japan.
Perhaps the greatest technical strength of the 360 is the ease with which programmers can port games across from PC. Aside from pornographic dating simulators, PC gaming is virtually non-existent in Japan, meaning that Japanese developers and consumers have approximately zero compelling reasons to devote their time and money to the system.
For all the arguments listed above, and more, the Xbox just isn’t gelling with Japanese consumers. The first Xbox, being big, ugly, and foreign, rubbed the xenophobic, space-conscious Japanese consumer entirely the wrong way. The 360 has fared little better.
Even before the 360 went on sale, Microsoft execs were saying they didn’t expect to succeed in the Japanese market until Xbox version 3.0. The first two systems were just warming up. They admit it. The century to date has been spent carefully building up relationships with developers like Capcom, with the occasional hit like Dead Rising being the result.
Is it worth succeeding in the single largest video game market in the world? Yes. Yes, it is. Yet the Japanese demand a system that is elegant, refined, has loads of locally-made games, and will actually fit in their tiny wooden houses.
The 360 fails on all those counts. Its successor may yet succeed.
10: Microsoft, and everyone else, considers the Xbox disposable.
There was a lot of talk about the old Xbox being supported after the introduction of the 360. Microsoft would still support it, stores would still support it, there’d still be new games coming out, and it would evolve into a entry-level cousin of the 360, just like the PSone had co-existed with the PS2.
But that’s all it was – talk. Once the 360 arrived, the games industry dropped Xbox 1 like a hot potato.
Why? That’s the way Microsoft works. It’s a company that has made countless billions by endlessly rolling out new and (supposedly) improved products, making arbitrary changes to consign older software to the dustbin of history (with the exception of Notepad – you can’t improve on perfection). Microsoft makes money not by producing superior technology, but by forcing people to upgrade.
The folks at Microsoft are in the business of making their own products obsolete. They do it very well. Whether it’s Office, Windows, or an Xbox, it’s doomed as soon as it goes on sale. Sure, other companies do the same thing. It’s just Microsoft is better at it.
…So, there you have it. It’s just a theory, of course. But the Xbox 360 is an imperfect console in a changing world. Microsoft’s hand may be forced sooner than any of us expect. Let’s just hope that the next Xbox, whatever it is, and whenever it arrives, finally fixes all these nagging problems, and earns its rightful place in the home console pantheon.
What do you reckon? When do you think the next Xbox will go on sale? Have your say in the forums.
http://www.gameplayer.com.au/Home/F...4d9b4e5-ecf3-48cf-bf20-a8eadba014f7&v7Pager=1
Ten Reasons why the Xbox 720 will launch in 2009
An Australian gaming website has put forward an article which explains why they believe the next Xbox will go on sale in 2009, meaning that the current Xbox 360 will follow a normal four year lifespan just like the original Xbox. Their logic for this belief is the following - 1) The Xbox 360 is unreliable 2) The Xbox 360 has a three year warranty 3) Xbox 360 dragged its feet on wireless guitars 4) Xbox 360 doesn't HDMI as standard 5) Xbox 360 doesn't have a hard drive as standard 6) No WiFi as standard 7) Limited to DVD for games storage 8) It is ugly and loud 9) Failing in Japan and 10) Microsoft, and everyone else, considers the Xbox disposable.
quote:
The hypothesis of this article is simple: that the Xbox 360 will have a four-year lifespan just like its predecessor, and that its successor will be rushed to market. That the next Xbox, whatever it is called, will go on sale in the US, Europe, and Japan in time for Christmas 2009, and will arrive in Australia and New Zealand in March 2010.
Why would Microsoft do that? Why would the mighty 360 be abandoned? It has a substantial install base, a healthy attach rate, and an online service second to none. Yet there are flaws so glaring that the engineers and marketers responsible could be forgiven for wanting to sweep it under the rug, and just pretend it never happened.
_______________
10 Reasons The Next Xbox Will Launch In 2009
We follow the clues, and they all lead to a rushed release.
by: James Cottee 10/10/2007
The hypothesis of this article is simple: that the Xbox 360 will have a four-year lifespan just like its predecessor, and that its successor will be rushed to market. That the next Xbox, whatever it is called, will go on sale in the US, Europe, and Japan in time for Christmas 2009, and will arrive in Australia and New Zealand in March 2010.
Why would Microsoft do that? Why would the mighty 360 be abandoned? It has a substantial install base, a healthy attach rate, and an online service second to none. Yet there are flaws so glaring that the engineers and marketers responsible could be forgiven for wanting to sweep it under the rug, and just pretend it never happened.
What reasons could Microsoft possibly have? We’re glad you asked. Without further ado, we present…
The Top Ten Reasons Why The Next Xbox Will Be Rushed To Market.
1: The Xbox 360 is unreliable.
This is the big one. For most consumer appliances, the thought of system failure rarely creeps beyond the back of your mind. A typical TV, toaster, microwave, or alarm clock can be expected to last a decade or more. Even games consoles usually become obsolete long before they conk out.
But the Xbox 360 turned that upside down. For this console, malfunctions are endemic, and inevitable – just turning it on is like playing Russian Roulette. Will it fail to turn on? Will it gouge my game disc? Will it explode? These thoughts plague every 360 owner, every start-up, every day.
Sure, improvements are being introduced in new machines rolling off the line, and heat sinks are grafted onto its smouldering innards during warranty repairs. And to be fair, they’ve been pretty speedy fixing busted units. But it is too little, too late. The Frankensteins at Microsoft have created a monster.
2: The Xbox 360 has a three-year warranty.
Which brings us to our second clue: the three-year retroactive warranty now in place for all Xbox 360 owners. It was a big decision, putting that warranty plan into place. Console owners now need pay nothing for repairs in the first three years of a 360’s life. It’s estimated this scheme will ultimately cost Microsoft over one billion American dollars.
And billion-dollar decisions are not taken lightly.
A lot of time and thought went into choosing that number. Why not two years? Why not four? Why not a ‘lifetime’ warranty? The simplest answer may well be that three years is the effective lifetime of the Xbox 360. Beyond that, the world will have moved on…
3: The Xbox 360 Dragged Its Feet On Wireless Guitars.
Home music games are only going to become more important as time goes by. SingStar, Guitar Hero, and soon Rock Band bring the illusion of collaborative music creation to the living room. Music games need novelty controllers, and novelty controllers need wireless.
Yet Microsoft has been reluctant – very reluctant – to let anyone else create wireless controllers for the 360. It is a bitter irony that a system that from day one has been promoted as having wireless controllers as standard forced gamers to settle for wired guitars, while the PS2 version of Guitar Hero II enjoys wireless support. Only the impending mega-blockbuster release of Guitar Hero III was enough to twist Microsoft’s arm.
These decisions aren’t so much about technological limits as saving face. Ergo, there is unlikely to be a change to this policy during the current hardware generation. Concordantly, Microsoft will have yet another reason to speed things along and roll out the next model.
4: The Xbox 360 Doesn’t Have HDMI as standard.
High-def is still expensive. Very expensive. Unless you’re a merchant banker, a commodities trader, or a plumber, $3000 for a new telly is still a lot of money. Aware of the price sensitivities of the vast American (and, by association, western) multitudes, far-eastern telly manufacturers are presently gearing up to make high-def affordable.
This new wave of cheap flat screens will arrive sooner than you think. Don’t be terribly surprised if Christmas ’09 sees the debut of LCD 1080p screens for under $1000. HDMI will come standard on all those sets, along with digital TV receivers. The rip-off merchants that make HDMI cables may even bring the price down by then, too.
The point is, HDMI will be standard. And right now, that particular socket is not standard on Xbox 360s. Even if it was, 720p is still the de-facto resolution for 360 output; 1080p wasn’t part of the console’s original vision, and only added later via a firmware update.
5: The Xbox 360 doesn’t have a hard drive as standard.
This one really is baffling. Hard drives aren’t that expensive any more. You don’t even pay a dollar a gig. Yet Microsoft chose to design a console without a HDD as a standard option. It was actually a step down from the original Xbox.
Not only that, but the available hard drive is proprietary, and you can’t swap them around like memory cards – you can only have one. Compare that to the PS3, which lets you bung in any hard drive you like. Sizes will continue to increase, costs will go down, and Sony has future-proofed its console against this trend.
Meanwhile, a 20-gig drive on 360 has barely enough room for your maps and save files.
Make no mistake, hard drives and downloadable content aren’t the future – they’re the present. TiVo will be starting in Australia soon, legitimising what trend-setting down-loaders have been doing for years.
PlayTV will help PS3 ride this new media wave.
Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 is flailing in the backwash, covered in bluebottles.
6: The Xbox 360 doesn’t have Wi-Fi as standard.
This is another big one. Even if you don’t wear one of those effeminate Star Trek-style earphones with your mobile, you will be well aware of the wireless revolution. Even the Wii has Wi-Fi, but the 360 requires a $170 add-on just to connect to the net without a tether.
There are health & safety considerations, too. Penny Arcade readers will recall the fate of Gabe and Tycho’s friend Jim, who got tangled in the cords behind their telly and never escaped. His skeletal remains are a grim reminder of the plastic shackles of 20th century technology.
Gamers, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
7: The Xbox 360 is limited to DVD for games storage.
Mass storage will only become more important as high-def content in games and movies becomes standard. Sure, you can download a Geometry Wars or a Space Giraffe in a snap. For 50 gig games, that isn’t really feasible. DVD doesn’t really cut it, either. Lost Odyssey will come on four discs.
Whether it’s Blu-ray, HD-DVD, or even a new proprietary 12cm disc format, the consoles of the near future will need high-capacity storage like never before.
8: The Xbox 360 is ugly and loud.
Some useful euphemisms: inelegant, homely, plain, haphazard, and asymmetrical. The truth: the Xbox 360 is not a beautiful machine. Certainly not as pretty as its competitors. The PS3 is a mighty obelisk, the Wii sleek and functional. The 360 just doesn’t have the same kind of class; like the nouveaux riche at the gentleman’s club. Like the ghetto resident in his gold chains. It just doesn’t look the part.
Its physical size is also a turn-off – it’s still basically just a PC in a different case. All the removable face-plates in the world can’t conceal that fact.
Then there’s the ring. The ring of LEDs, now synonymous with the dreaded triple-red-light malfunction indicator of death. Even when the system is working perfectly, those lights are a reminder of failure. They have to go – and the only way to get rid of them is to start from scratch.
Oh, we almost forgot – the 360 is the noisiest video game console ever made. It grinds, it whirs, it grunts, and it does its level best to drown out whatever game you’re playing. The noise issue is definitely a ‘do over.’
9: The Xbox 360 is failing in Japan.
Perhaps the greatest technical strength of the 360 is the ease with which programmers can port games across from PC. Aside from pornographic dating simulators, PC gaming is virtually non-existent in Japan, meaning that Japanese developers and consumers have approximately zero compelling reasons to devote their time and money to the system.
For all the arguments listed above, and more, the Xbox just isn’t gelling with Japanese consumers. The first Xbox, being big, ugly, and foreign, rubbed the xenophobic, space-conscious Japanese consumer entirely the wrong way. The 360 has fared little better.
Even before the 360 went on sale, Microsoft execs were saying they didn’t expect to succeed in the Japanese market until Xbox version 3.0. The first two systems were just warming up. They admit it. The century to date has been spent carefully building up relationships with developers like Capcom, with the occasional hit like Dead Rising being the result.
Is it worth succeeding in the single largest video game market in the world? Yes. Yes, it is. Yet the Japanese demand a system that is elegant, refined, has loads of locally-made games, and will actually fit in their tiny wooden houses.
The 360 fails on all those counts. Its successor may yet succeed.
10: Microsoft, and everyone else, considers the Xbox disposable.
There was a lot of talk about the old Xbox being supported after the introduction of the 360. Microsoft would still support it, stores would still support it, there’d still be new games coming out, and it would evolve into a entry-level cousin of the 360, just like the PSone had co-existed with the PS2.
But that’s all it was – talk. Once the 360 arrived, the games industry dropped Xbox 1 like a hot potato.
Why? That’s the way Microsoft works. It’s a company that has made countless billions by endlessly rolling out new and (supposedly) improved products, making arbitrary changes to consign older software to the dustbin of history (with the exception of Notepad – you can’t improve on perfection). Microsoft makes money not by producing superior technology, but by forcing people to upgrade.
The folks at Microsoft are in the business of making their own products obsolete. They do it very well. Whether it’s Office, Windows, or an Xbox, it’s doomed as soon as it goes on sale. Sure, other companies do the same thing. It’s just Microsoft is better at it.
…So, there you have it. It’s just a theory, of course. But the Xbox 360 is an imperfect console in a changing world. Microsoft’s hand may be forced sooner than any of us expect. Let’s just hope that the next Xbox, whatever it is, and whenever it arrives, finally fixes all these nagging problems, and earns its rightful place in the home console pantheon.
What do you reckon? When do you think the next Xbox will go on sale? Have your say in the forums.
http://www.gameplayer.com.au/Home/F...4d9b4e5-ecf3-48cf-bf20-a8eadba014f7&v7Pager=1
I'm guessing people hate because they can't afford it.
