Xbox 360 Launch: Success or Mess?

[A Black Falcon]

Hmm... I'd say that they were very successful, in the US and Europe... until it came time to actually make the systems fast enough. Their haste to get the system out did not work with their production schedule, and the massive console shortage that resulted is predictable. Really, they should have waited. Getting out first isn't overrated... it's rated as not mattering much. Has the first console in a generation ever won? I don't think so...

On that note... he problem of 'what is a console generation'... we want to break things into nice even categories, but it just doesn't work that clearly. For instance. Here's one potential breakdown...

Console generation 1: Magnavox Odyssey (1972-1974) (the first home console)
Console generation 2: Home Pong/clones (1975-76) (might not count, since these systems did not have addon carts, just built in stuff)
Console generation ... 3?: 2600 era. 1976-on. Fairchild Channel F was first, though (1976, versus '77 for the Atari VCS (later '2600'))... the Odyssey 2 also is in this generation.
Now then... where does the Intellivision (1980-on) belong? Is it a late 'generation 3' console? Does it create a new generation?
Same question about 1982's Colecovision... it's a clear and significant step up, again... is this a new generation?

Then the NES (1984 in Japan). Is this a new generation? What is a 'new generation'? It requires more than simply better graphics; the Sega Master System has better graphics than the NES but did not create a new generation.

Then the next generation is clear... Genesis, Turbografx, and SNES... but then... are the 3D0 and Jaguar (1993) of that generation, or next-gen consoles? Next-gen I guess... but that would mean that that generation started in 1993, while the most popular console in the generation came out in late 1995 in the US (PSX)... and the 3D0 was technologically behind within a few years -- it hit before some big upgrades in 3D technology I believe... etc.

Things get much easier to understand for the last generation. :) DC, GC, XBox, and PS2... very clear. This gen is the same... PS3, Rev, X360... kind of nice really, to have a clear dividing line, instead of all that mess...


Yes, launching a year behind a massively popular console is bad. But launching a year before one doesn't help much more. Not that the X360 will totally fail... sure, it could win. But that will be based on the games, and the performance of the PS3 and Revolution, not based on the fact that the X360 launched first. For instance, the Super Nintendo beat the Genesis, despite launching two years later...

As for costs, obviously MS has nowhere to go but up... Xbox was a terrible failure moneymaking-wise, can't get much worse than that...



Kiosks. I can't say, haven't been to any gaming stores with one since the X360 came out.

Advertising. I don't watch cable TV, and only rarely read console gaming magazines, and didn't see any on network TV, so all I can say is, their online hype machine seemed to be going pretty well...

Launch games, US. The three first party titles look great. The other stuff is a mixed bag though... some terrible sports games, some barely-touched more expensive repackagings of Xbox games, etc... but still, a large lineup good enough to make it worth it if you have the money, it seems to me. Eighteen games total.

Launch games, Europe... not sure what they got... over 10 games though?

Launch games, Japan. Terrible. Six games... no PGR3, no Kameo, no DOA3, no Japanese games other than Ridge Racer 6... no wonder people didn't buy it, Ridge Racer 6 and PDZ (a game in a genre unpopular in Japan) were the only good games?

Global launch within three weeks... good idea for marketing. Good idea in concept. Bad in execution because it made the extremely limited supplies of the console even more limited. I think that they had 320,000 consoles for US launch. They sold that many in November... virtually all on day one. Then none were in stores for a month (recently some stores did get restocked I think). Ouch. When there are no consoles to sell, you can't sell them... so, for its first month, the X360 only sold 320,000 consoles -- compared to over 500,000 for the first month of the Xbox in the US. Europe? Same major problem with not enough supply. Japan had enough supply, but that's only because of low demand... maybe if they'd held off on the Japanese launch until DOA4 came out? :)

Oh yes, and EBay said a while ago that they'd (re)sold over 30,000 X360s... about 1/10th of the total launch supply... for far more than $300 or $400. Says something about how hard they are to get.

I'm not even sure Dead or Alive 4 is out yet, nevermind that other games like Blue Dragon (was on the Famitsu most-wanted list), Lost Odyssey, Every Party, Ninety Nine Nights, Enchant Arm, and others won't be available until sometime in 2006.

Every Party was a launch game (but didn't sell much)... other than that none of those other games are out yet.

The faulty hardware. I don't know all the facts, and I'm not sure what the actual failure rate is but I do know that this has been one of the worst launches in the regard of faulty hardware. Overheating, crashing, scratching discs...I'm actually quite surprised that people are still buying them over ebay for multiple times what they're worth just to have it now.

Launches always have problems, and I don't think that the problems are worse this time than usual...