Xbox 360 Launch: Success or Mess?

[Weltall]

Here's my take:

I think Microsoft borrowed a page from Sony's book by creating an artificial shortage to increase demand to a fever pitch. I don't believe Microsoft's denial of this charge anymore than I believed Sony's denial of the same charge five years ago. It's working. From my own personal experience, the supply is many times greater than demand. However, I also have to think that a lot of them are being fickle... you have to factor in how many people were doing what I did, buying the machine just to sell it for a huge profit (I ended up getting $750 cash for my Core). It's very hard to tell what kind of impact this will end up having. The PS2's sales continued to be strong because the quality of software, at worst, remained steady and constant, and within six months of the launch, the first round of killer apps started to appear, led by Gran Turismo 3.

PS2 also didn't face very stiff competition. The Dreamcast folded almost immediately, nobody really expected much competition from Nintendo (justifiably), and the Xbox was a completely unknown quantity. Xbox launches early, but might it end up being the Dreamcast in the end? I mean, it won't flinch nearly as bad as Sega, Microsoft's got the muscles Sega never had, but the PS3 is going to be very hard to stop, and it doesn't really matter what the technology spells in the end. It didn't last time. It will come down to market presence and mindshare. There's no denying which company has long held a virtual monopoly on both, and I think it will show.