

Younger Than The Xbox 360 - mh_
http://www.marco.org/2013/05/28/younger-than-the-xbox-360

======
georgemcbay
These are basically random thoughts spurred by the points the article makes as
opposed to direct statements about the content of the article...

Microsoft always intended to use games as a stepping stone to becoming a
broader entertainment play. They were talking about this publicly as far back
as the Xbox 1 (the former Xbox 1, now known as the Xbox 1 that isn't the Xbox
One) in the 2001 time frame.

I'm fine with that strategy and even encourage it, but as a gamer I'm
distraught with other decisions they _seem_ to have made (it is impossible to
tell what decisions they've actually made from rumors or misreporting because
they are failing on the PR/messaging for specifics of the Xbox One on a
spectacularly epic scale currently).

In the long run, the Xbox 360 is kind of the odd duck of the Xbox line in
terms of hardware architecture considering the old Xbox 1 was x86 based and
basically a closed PC, just like the new Xbox One. Of course, the 360 happened
to occur over the time period that Live proved that a full online experience
for a console should be considered an essential component. (I just wish they'd
stop raising the cost of Live while also increasing the amounts of ads it
throws at you (without raising the value to suit), and stop charging for
things that are free elsewhere (eg. Netflix, etc), and start using some of the
mountains of money they earn from Live to provide dedicated gaming servers,
etc).

The Wii U is actually a pretty nice device. I have one. I'll buy pretty much
any system Nintendo puts out just to play their first party games, at least
until they're forced to go the route that Sega did. But anyway, the remote
touchscreen gamepad "second screen" thing is pretty cool I love using it for
Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Instant. Being able to redirect the video play to the
gamepad device's screen when the TV is otherwise in use is really nice, and it
really makes things like searching a breeze compared to using a more
traditional remote. Yes, you can achieve the same basic sorts of things with
other consoles plus an external device like a tablet via things like
SmartGlass, but with the Wii U it Just Works without having to dick around
with anything.

~~~
lukifer
Nintendo's success has always been driven by games, not hardware. While much
of the punditry surrounding the U has legitimacy, it's failing mostly due to a
lack of compelling first-party titles.

There was never a chance that the U would sell in the same numbers as the
first Wii; the "non-gamer gamer" moment has come and gone. But if it had
launched with a new Zelda, a new (real) Mario, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Smash
Bros. (the list goes on), they'd be selling moderately well, with the game
revenue as the cherry on top. Hopefully it won't be too late by the time those
titles trickle onto the platform over the next year or two.

~~~
Steko
Nintendo thinks it won the last round and developed the Wii U in a vacuum,
expecting success only to find out the world had moved on.

Sony thinks it was robbed of victory (or at least it's usual dominance) by MS
in the last round and is eager for a straight up rematch.

MS has all the momentum so at least they can pretend they won the last round
and seem primarily worried about competition from other entrants (mainly
Apple, Google and Samsung).

~~~
jerf
Yes, this is certainly the popular wisdom, but the numbers substantially
disagree. Nintendo _did_ win, at least numerically. It didn't win by PS2
margins, but it won. Microsoft does not have the momentum; they narrowly edge
out the PS3 overall, and that's _down_ from the clear dominance they started
this generation with. (Yes, even allowing for the PS3's later start.)

(If you don't personally like the Wii, hey, great. Neither did I, really. But
it did win on most objective measures. Even the much-ballyhooed "attach rate"
seems to be have been only _slightly_ worse than the XBox360 & PS3, certainly
not enough to make up for anything.)

Microsoft is currently a narrow 2nd out of 3, in imminent danger of becoming
3rd of 3 in a year or two (in a parallel world with no new consoles), but
common wisdom would seem to have them outselling everybody by 4 to 1 or
something, which isn't even close. At least when Sony acted like masters of
the universe with the PS3, they actually _were_ the masters of the universe.
Microsoft's attitude has me very confused.

~~~
suby
I can't find anything concrete, but I think it's fair to say that the attach
rates for the 360 and PS3 are similar, and as you say, Microsoft is only
narrowly 2nd out of 3rd in terms of consoles sold.

I think a case can be made for the 360 being more valuable than the PS3,
though, just because of the online service offered by Microsoft. They had at
least 20 million users paying for gold in January of 2012, which comes to
around a billion dollars a year for Microsoft. Who knows what the operating
costs are, but I'm sure they're doing well, especially considering that they
show advertisements on top of the subscription revenue.

I can't find any numbers for PS+, but I'd be shocked if it's anything
comparable to what Microsoft has going.

------
primigenus
You know what else is younger than the Xbox 360? 7 year olds, a huge part of
the incoming audience for this console generation which will probably last
another 10 years, so until they're nearly adults.

Today's 7 year olds grew up in a world where Xbox, Playstation, Wii, Facebook,
Android and iPad are a normal part of their universe. There's nothing novel or
special about them. If this generation of consoles finds its audience with
this age group like the Super NES did for me when I was growing up, the Xbox
One, PS4 and Wii U will be much-loved despite their strategies, flaws, cloud
computing, DRM or achievements. They will just be loved if they have good
games.

We're all cynics who can look back and compare now to then, exclaiming how
Facebook and Apple have stolen the market. But for 7 year olds, the world is
the world, and they're only getting started. I envy them for the ability to be
naive about this stuff. :-)

~~~
b3b0p
Except we can still play our SNES and NES. Due to the fragility of the systems
and supposed rumors it is most likely today's 7 year olds won't be able to
play their Xbox or Playstation when they are our age, sadly.

They sure don't make games and systems like they used to.

~~~
jonnathanson
It's not just the fragility of the hardware, but also the increasingly firm
stance against backwards compatibility.

No doubt this is driven by publishers, who'd rather focus on big topline
profits on new releases than double-dip (or triple-dip) old titles. There's
less and less ROI in investing the time, resources, and manpower to build
emulation for old console hardware, or to get developers to do the same for
their old games.

That being said, I predict we'll see a golden age of backwards compatibility
and cross-platform titling within a few console generations. Not for folks
like you and me, whose old (by now, ancient!) games are evolutionary dead-
ends. But for the 7-year-olds of today, whose consoles are basically just
fancy PCs in shiny shells -- and whose games are going to be built very
similarly, regardless of platform, and distributed digitally.

~~~
Pxtl
There was no backwards compatibility in the 8-bit era. Backwards compatibility
was a novel invention of the PS2 and the GBC.

~~~
T-hawk
False. There was backwards compatibility long before the PS2. Just not in
market-leading Nintendo's systems.

Way back even before the 8-bit NES, the Atari 7800 was backwards compatible
with Atari 2600 games. So was the ColecoVision, although through a hardware
adapter that basically was an entire 2600 on a chip outputting raw video to
the ColecoVision.

And the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive had an adapter to play 8-bit Sega Master
System games, running the SMS code on an auxiliary sound Z80 in the Genesis,
so slightly hardware assisted but mostly built into the console.

------
moskie
> _the Xbox One’s heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be
> designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs
> instead of the (non-Microsoft) smartphone in their pocket._

This overlooks a use-case that is common in my home: browsing the web with
others in the room. It happens all the time in my living room that there are
multiple people present and we want to look up something online, or share
something with the group. Yes, we could pass around or huddle in front of a
tablet or phone, but using the HTPC is the best shared-experience solution.

It's for reasons like this that I'm (so far) heavily leaning towards the Xbox
One as my preferred choice as my nextgen console. If it's as fluid of an
experience as they led us to believe during the unveiling (which is a big if),
the Xbox One will become the #1 used device in my home. It will be the best
way to view content in my living room, without having to hunt for remotes or
wireless keyboards or switching inputs. And yes, it will also play triple-a
video games. Sign me up.

~~~
rapind
Are you seriously trying to convince us that while you're _in-person_ sharing
(shudder), your spouse / kids / siblings aren't in reality busy instagramming
on their phones?

------
w1ntermute
Gotta love how he casually slips Tumblr and Instapaper in the list. Tumblr, I
can understand, but Instapaper's influence outside of the technorati is highly
overestimated by the technorati.

~~~
runjake
He slipped that in there, because the _entirety of his audience_ are aware of
what Tumblr and Instapaper are. You're being silly.

~~~
w1ntermute
He claims it's a list of "notable things". Instapaper does not fall into that
category, no matter how you look at it.

~~~
runjake
Notability is in the eye of the beholder. I look at them both as notable
products.

Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones are notable to a certain set of people.
However, they are probably not notable to a large swath of South American
tribespeople or even the 7+ billion people on Earth at large. This doesn't
mean they aren't notable people in certain contexts.

Now, once again, Marco is writing an article to his audience, and his audience
is aware of Tumblr and Instapaper and they find those products notable.

It's notable to his audience. Is this really that hard for you to figure out?
Or do you have some personal anger/beef with Marco?

------
ecdavis
_> And the Xbox One’s heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be
designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs
instead of the (non-Microsoft) smartphone in their pocket._

This really jumped out at me as a silly statement to make.

Isn't the general idea of innovation that you imagine what people might want
or need and then you build it? Why is it misguided for Microsoft to be trying
something new that they think people will like?

My experience with browsing the web on a Smart TV is that opening the browser
was a hassle, the interface was awkward to use (buggy on-screen keyboard), it
was extremely slow, seemed to give me mobile versions of sites and - for some
reason - was unable to stream content smoothly. If I had to guess as to why
people don't browse the web on their TVs, it would be because the technology
sucks. Mobile phones had browsers for years before the mobile web really took
off. TVs could be the same. A few use cases that I can think of from my
immediate family:

* Streaming web content while doing something else. Watching online guitar lessons while playing along, for instance.

* Watching TV while using another application. Tweeting while you watch chat shows, Skyping with friends while you watch a movie, creating animated .gifs on the fly and posting them to Tumblr.

* Browsing in a group. Huddling around a screen and/or passing a device from person to person is sub-optimal.

* Quick, voice-initiated browsing or searching. Currently performed using phones/tablets, this could easily spread to televisions if the technology existed. Pause your movie, open a browser, find a restaurant that delivers and order food without going hunting for your phone.

~~~
Pxtl
This is why I'm really disappointed in how Google kinda half-assed the Google
TV thing. I want to see somebody get out in front of Microsoft with this...
the Ouya is too focused on gaming, and the various TV-stick android devices
are too small-potatoes. I want to see somebody like LG or Samsung notice this
gap and make a nice set-top Android device... copy the PS Move interface so
the user has a nice mouse-pointer/game-controller and a camera pointed at them
for Skype. Just make the whole device a little set-top camera looking thing.

------
hkmurakami
_I see problems with all three approaches. The Wii U depends mostly on casual
gamers, but the best casual gaming device for most people is the iPad Mini._

Never underestimate the power of Pokemon though. That alone can potentially
change the tides.

~~~
jsemrau
Never understood why people follow this notion. All gaming consoles are for
casual gaming (relax on the couch, turn on, play , stop). The number of FPS'
don't make a good indicator to distinguish between "hardcore" and casual.

~~~
UberMouse
I would hardly say the people who play Call of Duty 12h a day when a new one
comes out are using their console for "casual gaming"

~~~
neona
I'm not exactly sure what to call those people without being derogatory
(brogamers, etc), but generally I consider those people to be separate from
those who play a wider variety of games.

------
fuzzywalrus
"And the Xbox One’s heavily pushed smart-TV integration features seem to be
designed for an imaginary world in which people browse the web on their TVs
instead of the (non-Microsoft) smartphone in their pocket. "

I don't think I've read a more accurate summery of the Xbox One than the above
quote.

~~~
untog
As someone with a PC connected to their TV, I beg to differ. My housemates and
I use it all the time to browse the web- place orders on Seamless, use
YouTube, even use Amazon Instant without having to use a slow, remote-based
interface.

I'm not saying that many people do this, but I'm saying many _would_.

~~~
slantyyz
You're right. I think it's quite possible that the reason why nobody surfs on
their TV is that nobody has made it an enjoyable experience _yet_.

Back in the days when we had to use WAP to get web access on phones, I'm sure
nobody imagined that we'd be doing desktop style browsing on the small screens
of our phones.

Even having PDAs/phones with great screens sucked. I had a Toshiba e800
PocketPC with a VGA screen, but browsing on that thing sucked. And then in
2007, along comes Apple with phone having a less dense screen than my e800 but
a vastly better browsing experience. And now, with awesome browsing
experiences available on all smartphones, people have trouble remembering how
the Internet on a phone used to suck horribly.

------
Justsignedup
Well said. The guys at Nintendo didn't realize that the WiiU will just cater
to the KIDs who are mainly playing the dozens of iPad games.

The Wii was truly innovative. Everyone want it and to play it. Adults enjoyed
it, they played with their kids. I remember my co-workers raving about them
playing bowling with the family every night.

I see that not in the WiiU.

~~~
Pxtl
I think the WiiU was Nintendo's attempt to port the interface of their wildly
popular DS console into the living room. The two-screen (one touch, one not)
interface, the button layout - everything DS is in the Wii U. And it was
designed with only a single controller in-mind - group gaming would be using
the old Wiimotes.

Basically, a return to the hardcore world they'd abandoned with the Wii,
taking what they'd learned from the DS and bringing it over.

The device seems to be a half-hearted move back towards core gamers, but they
kind of got lost in the middle and got interest from _nobody_. Perhaps it's
doing better in Japan where there's more room for that middle content - for
complicated, elaborate overwrought single-player experiences without screaming
about hardware power.

------
seabrookmx
That list at the beginning of the article really is an eye opener.

That said, I don't agree with his take on consoles. Though I'm a little
unimpressed with the Wii U, "almost changed nothing" is an exaggeration. HD
Video, tablet controller, improved online functionality, etc. are all big to
most gamers.

Also "the best casual gaming device for most people is the iPad Mini" may be
true, but that's not in my mind what the Wii was good at. Wii was one of the
best party-game consoles ever made (IMO only beat by the N64, however PS1/2
and XBox were great as well). Online gaming is more convenient for hardcore
gamers, but if you just wanna have a few drinks and some pizza in a buddy's
basement, nothing rivals Mario Kart or Smash Bros.

I'm a die hard PC gamer, but as soon as Smash Bros. drops for Wii U I'll be
buying one. Halo is the only other exclusive title I can think of that has
this kind of notoriety.

~~~
Pxtl
I'm constantly shocked at how completely Nintendo's competition has abandoned
the field of couch gaming. Sony hangs in there with the various Little Big
Planet titles, but otherwise the industry seems to ignore the ocean of
distance between Call of Duty and Carnival Game Pack 4. Even Capcom made some
absolutely _stellar_ entries in this genre back on the Dreamcast - Powerstone
2 is the only thing that comes close to the awesome mayhem of Super Smash in a
4-player brawl.

------
columbo
I believe 2007-2008 represents the end of one era and the beginning of
another. The changes that happened during that time were huge.

------
6ren
All 3 strategies may be fatal - it's just that only the Wii U has been
released.

~~~
gordaco
Looking at the huge backlash against the XBox One in most gaming forums, it
seems so, although there is a strong self-selection bias there.

~~~
6ren
Yet, people panned the iPod and iPad too.

But my reasoning against PS4/Xbox One is that gaming PCs are not selling well;
phones/tablets are. The latter will be sudden death to consoles.

------
TeMPOraL
Ah, Xbox 360. I love it for the unbreakable power supply unit that does
excellent work powering DIY 3D printers worldwide :).

------
ojr
> _I expect the PS4 and Xbox One to both sell well. But I can’t confidently
> predict that either will outsell its predecessor._

PS2 is the best-selling video game console to date
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_game_conso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-
selling_game_consoles)

------
Dylan16807
Bing? Really? Come on, a rebranding doesn't make something new.

------
300bps
How long can Sony bleed money from their electronics division?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/business/global/sonys-
brea...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/business/global/sonys-bread-and-
butter-its-not-electronics.html?pagewanted=all)

