Xbox 360 Underwhelms

What more need be said? It shouldn't come as a surprise that the early life-cycle software products are nothing more than slightly prettier versions of games that could just as well have been released on the original xbox.

It's fairly likely that most of these products were originally developed on xbox or PS2 and then development switched over to the Xbox 360 once they were able to obtain development kit. The designs of these games remain firmly rooted in the xbox era.

The HD aspect does nothing more than put PC quality graphics on your TV screen. If you have a decent modern graphics card you can almost certainly do this already. nVidia and ATI are quite capable of putting a PC display on a television, but really you're better off on a PC monitor anyway.

The greatest step for 360 so far is the controller. The only problem is that this does not work well for shops, where the wireless controller needs to be chained down and can easily end up with flat batteries. I believe a wired solution may be used in some cases, but this means the consumer can't try out the real wireless controller.

It also seems unlikely that Xbox 360 will have Final Fantasy or GT, which will probably remain Sony only (though this isn't assured). These are key products that will leave many gamers waiting for a PS3. Right now Xbox exclusives we can rely on are Halo and DOA. The former has always been loved in the US, but I'm not sure it will win many sales in Japan. It's going to be a tough battle between the new consoles and very likely that both of them will take several months to get genuine 'next gen' titles onto shelves.

We can bet that rising development costs and the fact that publishers don't really know what makes a good game will result in even more play-it-safe licenses, sequels and suppressed innovation in games, leaving customers ever more jaded.

I for one won't be rushing out to buy a 360 whenever they finally ship in Australia. In fact, I may not buy one at all unless some software I really have to have appears on it. I've seen no sign of this yet.

posted by Peter Wake @ 10:42 pm