Microsoft Wants 360 To Have PS2-Like Lifespan 160
Gamasutra is reporting on comments from Microsoft executive Mindy Mount, reacting to Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and his observations about the modern console life cycle. Mount indicated that the company is looking towards the PlayStation 2's success well into its lifespan for inspiration. "In comments very similar to those made by Iwata, Mount suggested that a rush to create a new generation of consoles was not necessary until there was a compelling hardware feature to justify it. 'At this point from the technological perspective, there are some real advances ... that make it worth having a next-generation console," said Mount. "Right now there aren't that many things on the horizon that you think, wow, that's going to be a game-changer.'"
I wont' be the first one to say it but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wont' be the first one to say it but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I will say, though, that I buy/rent games on my PS3 rather than my 360 if given the choice now because my 360 is acting weird sometimes (graphical corruption that goes away when it's turned off and back on) and I don't want to have to wait 6 weeks until I can play it again. It's easier to just get them for the PS3 and not have to worry about it.
Maybe if I can make my 360 last long enough, they'll rep
I'd prefer (Score:3, Insightful)
I sent one back for "red ring of death" - which they still won't admit is their own fucking fault for not putting in enough cooling for the original processors (multiple sites have opened up the new ones and photographed the enlarged heatsinks they're putting in now compared to the original).
What do I get back? A "replacement" unit that dies a month later because the fucking DVD drive motor is defective.
So for this year, I've actually had my 360 for 10 of the 12 mont
Re:I'd prefer (Score:5, Interesting)
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So in other words you are saying, you'd prefer to keep digging that whole deeper rather than exert a little to climb out.
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Ok, this will be obvious, but that is the kind of situation eBay was invented for. There is a German saying that goes: "Besser ein Ende mit Schrecken, als ein Schrecken ohne Ende." (An ending with horrors is better than never ending horror.) What's the appropriate idiom in English, as I can't seem to find it?
Yes, I do realize that you might be talking
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Who is buying PS2 if it is not to replace one? I can't believe that many people are buying one for the first time
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Re:I wont' be the first one to say it but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but my impression was tha
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Wikipedia does link to an article which has an interview with a Nintendo rep who claims, "Nintendo will offer support to help Wii owners with problems to recover their games [if your console breaks]," so it looks like the GP 'should' have went through Nintendo to replace their console if they wanted to keep their downloaded games. Not saying the should *have* to, just seems like that's Nintendo's policy. (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=148658)
As I said, maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But from everything I've read, you shouldn't have been able to transfer your games off your girlfriend's console and back to a new console, and I suspect that's not actually what happened.
-Trillian
I don't think he actually did move the wii games. Nintendo told me I was out of luck. The mechanism they have is "repair" where they either transfer all the contents to another wii and reset the encrypt keys to the new one or they fix your old one by giving you refurbed parts. It wasn't acceptable because the wii was brand new and I would not accept refurbed parts and they couldn't guarantee a new wii was coming back. I opted to exchange and lose my $20 in wii points but it also meant anything I purchased
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So why not a refurb? I've had startlingly good luck with refurbished things over the years - it seems like they get the QC that units coming off of the assembly line don't get. Even thinking about it, I can't remember ever having a refurbished product break, and I've bought plenty of refurbished things over the years.
I have too. they tend not to last as long. Someone linked to an article that stated refurbed 360's had double the failure rate of new 360's (360's returned after repair were more likely to fail again then new). I can't find the post. It was regarding a RROD article a while back. for optical drives, the electric motor in them has a finite lifespan. Refurbs are used products thus anything I get back is likely to have consumed part of that lifespan. Thats why refurbs are always cheaper. Wear and tear from usa
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I don't remember the specifics of how to do it, but I believe it was all mentioned in the Wii manual. If not there, then at my.nintendo.com.
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Create a my.nintendo.com account and tie it to your Wii. If you get a new Wii, you change the association on your my.nintendo.com account and the games will stop working on the old system and be available on the new one.
I don't remember the specifics of how to do it, but I believe it was all mentioned in the Wii manual. If not there, then at my.nintendo.com.
Did so after exchange, no luck. Nintendo explicitly said the games are non transferable between machines. The manual does not provide instructions for this. It is explicitly not possible and the my.nintendo.com account is more for advertising.
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The problem is you tried to do it after the fact. The my.nintendo.com FAQ specifically says that games you purchase before associating your shop channel account with your my.nintendo.com account don't get registered.
If it wasn't in the manual, it was in the user agreem
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The problem is you tried to do it after the fact. The my.nintendo.com FAQ specifically says that games you purchase before associating your shop channel account with your my.nintendo.com account don't get registered.
If it wasn't in the manual, it was in the user agreement when you create the Wii shop channel account. They were very specific that that was the reason for associating it.
Can you direct me to the page I can't find it. [google.ca] And no I registered before purchasing and my.Nintendo account displays all 3 of the games I purchased. No luck transferring to the new wii. I may have missed something but here are the details:
Monday:
Got wii,
set up wii,
put in wii sports played a bit.
Tuesday:
Resitered for my.nintendo,
linked to wii using shop channel settings, registered CC
bought $20 of VC points,
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It must've been in the Wii Shop account creation that the info was, but I very specifically remember reading this, and I didn't go looking for it on my own. My understanding though was that deleting your Wii Shop account permanently closed it, however, if you went to another Wii and registered your my.nintendo.c
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Log in to my.nintendo.com and the FAQ is near the top of the page. It basically just says you can't transfer the games to someone else, and that it only tracks games purchased after the association.
It must've been in the Wii Shop account creation that the info was, but I very specifically remember reading this, and I didn't go looking for it on my own. My understanding though was that deleting your Wii Shop account permanently closed it, however, if you went to another Wii and registered your my.nintendo.com account there first, you would move the account. I remember it specifically said that if you did the transfer, the games would stop working on the old console, which would imply you were supposed to do the transfer first.
Excerpted from the FAQ section:
Q:
Can I register games that I purchase on my Wii Virtual Console?
A:
Yes! But, you must first link your Wii Shop Channel to your My Nintendo profile. Once this link is created, the Virtual Console games you download will automatically be added to the list of registered games.
Please note that this Wii Shop Channel/My Nintendo link is not created when you register your serial number using My Nintendo's Product Registration program. This link is created using the Wii Console (Wii
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Are you aware that nothing on live actually requires a credit card? Gold membership and points cards are available at pretty much every store that sells games - and they are priced exactly the same as buying points through the console/web site.
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Are you aware that nothing on live actually requires a credit card? Gold membership and points cards are available at pretty much every store that sells games - and they are priced exactly the same as buying points through the console/web site.
You are aware that is irrelevant. I object to the policy. You may be able to circumvent it but the policy itself is not that great. I can certainly circumvent Chinese political speech laws when in china if I just don't say anything however that doesn't make the policy wrong.
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You can still send your Wii in after the warranty expires, you just don't get the repairs for free. Just because you were too lazy to do it properly doesn't mean the system is faulty.
Lazy? I had to do a lot of leg work to find a EB with a wii to exchange. A new wii vs a repaired wii is always better. A repair often gives you a refurbished replacement for the part that is broken and they ship it both ways. The defect on my wii was a broken optical drive that failed to read the dist about 60% of the time. Statistically a repaired electronic device has a drastically increased failure rate. A refurbed optical drive brings the expected lifespan of the wii down greatly as well. My wii was in
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So your VC purchases were worth less to you than your fear of a refurbished unit. What do you expect Nintendo to do about that? You haven't even verified if they'd send you a refurbished unit.
They wouldn't guarantee it wasn't refurbished. Most repair centres use refubs (xbox certainly does as does Sony) And yes the $20 in VC was worth less then the higher rate of future breakdowns on the new unit. However does Nintendo really expect me not to complain with such policies? Remember this is slashdot, I thought we objected to unreasonably restrictive DRM but apparently Nintendo gets a free Pass?
100% backwards (Score:4, Funny)
Most of these customers had a solid PS2 library already and had to buy another.
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YMMV... but I have only had Microsoft consoles fail on me... *shrug* meaningless, but mindshare is part of all of this, and if MS doesn't ramp up QC so everyone doesn't need to use their warranty, the next generation will have Microsoft going the way of Sega, in spite of having Halo 3.
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Okay, I'll bite. Why on earth would you do that?
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Just a Guess... (Score:2)
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So I 100% agree that most PS2 sales are probably replacements.
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Mine hasn't broken down. (Score:1)
What I came here to say is that this can't be anything but a good thing. Why should everyone rush out to buy a new console every four years or so? If the PS1/PS2/PS3 and X-Box/X-Box 360 aren't going to change their strategy and market segment at all (like Nintendo has, in handhelds and consoles), there's no great reason to get the latest and greatest.
Better graphics are impressive -- I've seen Halo 2 on the 360; it'
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a) wants to eventually have a home media center thing where they get a slice of all games played and all ppv video you watch and all songs you download. They need to "upgrade" people from the 360 to that system or the next step in that direction.
b) They never get anything right till their third rev. The xbox 360/2 has a shot at being a decent unit by that measure.
Re:100% backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. People who say this are missing the obvious hole in their argument: attach rates.
If everybody out there were constantly re-buying broken PS2's, the attach rate would plateau and then actually drop. Think about it - a person with 10 games has an attach rate of 10. Then their console breaks, so they buy another one; now their attach rate is 5. (10 games divided by 2 consoles.) But that has never happened. The PS2's attach rate has only ever gone up, consistently, and at least to a year or two ago, the rise in attach rates was actually accelerating. (It's natural for attach rates to start to stabilize at the end of a system's lifespan, as people stop buying games for it.)
I've never been convinced that any model of PS2 has ever had a higher defect rate than the industry average, or were any easier to break. It was a popular system, so naturally you were going to have some people with breakdowns. It's not like the 360, which even MS has admitted has multiple design flaws (their own words) and seems to have close to a 100% defect rate, judging by both the anecdotal reports and by MS's expectations of what it's going to cost them to repair defective units. But here you have multiple people saying their launch PS2's work just fine - chalk me up as another, and Sony has never had to cop to any problems with these systems. There's never been any threat of any class action either.
I've seen about as many reports of the Wii overheating as I did of PS2 breakdowns in the early days.
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Around n64/ps1 gaming era my NES still worked without having to wiggle the cartridges around. My 5 year old ps2
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How important will back compatability be? (Score:5, Insightful)
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DRM, plain and simple.
xbox was modable, and with the new 360 they can now go as far as breaking your machine's hardware remotely (see my sig) to keep you from using your device how you want.
if they provided a fully reverse compatible api people would just use the original games to reverse engineer the 360, and microsoft can't have uppity people exercising their personal property
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Of course they're going to be jealous of the PS2 lifespan. It's been a great machine (minus a few hardware difficulties early on) with possibly the deepest lineup of games on
No he doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
If he did, MS would have made ONE version of the 360. Does he really think he can get away for 7 years with a console without a harddisk for that long? Does he really think DVD's are going to be a big enough storage option for that long?
MS has set themselves up to have a constant stream of 360 setups that won't be good enough to play new releases. A game will need a HD, a game will need HD-DVD and whatever else MS WILL decide to add in the future. Make NO mistake about it. MS will find it impossible to resist to release newer 'better' versions of the 360.
Then there is the hardware itself, current generation consoles are obsolete already compared to the PC. Even a modest PC gaming rig will have more video memory then consoles have for TOTAL memory.
Does this matter? Can you say MMORPG? That is one big cash machine in the game industry but so far there has been little luck getting it too run on consoles. That is because in a MMORPG you never really know what is going to happen next. They are memory hogs because they need to have lots of data loaded all the time.
In a more traditional game, no matter how large the level, it is more or less up to the designer WHAT is actually in that level. In a MMORPG (or for that matter a modded game like The Sims or Oblivion) the contents of a level can skyrocket simply because of varation.
I can come across several dozen people each in outfits with their own textures.
Stream load that!
It is one of the reasons why user mods to games like The Sims and Oblivion and Never Winter Nights seem to always include higher resolution textures and more style choices. Why didn't the company include them from the start? Because their minimum requirements would have skyrocketed. My 'pimped' oblivion makes the original look like morrowind but the cost in hardware is extreem.
We all seen how PC games that got the console treatment had to be butchered to deal with the limitations of obsolete hardware. Deus Ex 2 anyone? Why can't I access the huge amount of user mods on the console versions of Oblivion? Where is the user commonity of the Console version of The Sims?
7 years is a long time for the 360 but more importantly Microsoft. Sony is a different company then MS, it (used to be at least) is a hardware company. MS is a software company, and I think MS will find it impossible to resist pushing updates.
The proof? The lifespan of the x-box. It was DEAD the moment the 360 was released, Sony is still actively working on the PS2. This despite the fact that the x-box was a younger machine.
Hardware limitations aside, MS is just not a company that can support a product for so long without new must have features being slipped in. When they see that PC gaming (in which they after all have a very important role) is overtaking their console gaming division in capabilities they WILL release a new 360 with more memory or something, effectivly ending the life of previous models.
But hey, if they don't that is good new too, I am looking forward as a PC snob of half a decade of looking down on console gamers and their quant old relics again.
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As for console redesigning, Micros
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The supreme, in technology, is always a loser. It's far too expensive and not that much better than a cheap alternative (the ps2). Sony somehow emulated the xbox instead of the PS2... MS did not simply pay the price of entry with the XBOX, they screwed up in several ways.
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The 360 is already on year two. They've already stated there will be no HD-DVD games. The PS2 was trumped by computers long before that one started to fade. And really, you could say it isn't even fading yet, and computers are way past what the PS2 can do.
The fact that you used WILL doesn't mean your right. The 360 will most likely stay as is, with improvements only being ones of comfort, not
When have Microsoft statements counted? (Score:2)
Well of course they have. But the reality of what they actually do is very different, with pressure growing from the PS3 and publishers of both systems to be able to use more storage media in games.
Even at launch, multi-platform publishers were complaining about the space on the DVD - you think that pressure is going to ease up over the next few years as consumers embrace HD?
The PS2 was trumped by computers long before that one started to fade.
Play God o
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Next, God of War. Can you follow a conversation? It was clear on technical merits *he* was basic the 360 being outdated compared to PC's. Not on how good the game itself was. You can't cherry pick here. If the PS2 was trumped, and it *was* by PC's, and yet still was popular, the 360 can do the same thing.
Yeah Wii this Wii that. The 360's have sol
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Well, as a rule consoles work without breaking. Zing!
Get off the fanboy hobby horse for a bit and walk a mile in the shoes of the average gamer. Someone interested in all the consoles, and PC gaming too.
Next, God of War. Can you follow a conversation? It was clear on technical merits *he* was basic the 360 being outdated compared to PC's.
Which if you'd played it realized held up well with modern games in terms of atmosphere and grap
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And yes, they can exist on just DVD for another several years on *that* console. Because even with that *limitation*, and with the fact that they haven't maxed out the system's capabilities, they are already making great games for it "right now".
While more capacity in the delivery medium would get used, with a nice established based people will continue to make games for it that don't suck. When do you see PC's game swit
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MMORPGs have been stuck on systems much worse than the 360 (e.g. FFXII)...they may have to tone down the graphics a bit, but that isn't something that is driving the console
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Long story short, you're right - and wrong.
Microsoft have seggregated the market with the hard disk and non hard disk edition of the 360, you're right.
The thing is though, they will always support a baseline with the console.
There ARE rumours there may be some hard disk only games, which would not be unlike N64 games which required the expanded memory pack for the system.
Sure it's rare and it's bloody stupid to
Apply same thinking to Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well duh. (Score:2)
Clearly one of the most innovative pieces of the Playstation 3 platform is the virtual environment. Not as open ended as Second Life, you can still do all the critical things you would like. There are three things people want from a virtual environment:
1. Permanency
When someone moves an object, they want that object to stay moved. When they kill a dragon they want that dragon to stay dead. When they learn a new skill they want to always have that skill.
2. Diversity & Uniqueness
They want their charac
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In some ways yes. There are other bits that need adding, but I don't want to give everything away. If you're looking for someone who has put the pieces together, give me a call. It love to work on a real project.
Issues (Score:2)
1. Fix the hardware issues. I personally have never had a problem with any of my 3 consoles, knock on wood (1 firmware modded, 2 not modded) and I don't personally know anyone that has, but it's obvious something is going on with it.
2. Either drop the core, or put a hard drive in there with it. I'm sorry, but the lack of the hard drive is really what is ke
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Plus, with a hard drive in every system, it might be possible to even set aside a portion of it (say, 512 megs
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This boggles the crap out of me, why I'm always getting that screen. I don't even have a memory card, I do have a hundred freakin gigs on the HDD. Maybe the 360 should try some really advanced AI and figure out that when there's only one available option, it might be a sensible default?
Slimline is a beast (Score:3, Informative)
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More amazingly, I still have a Sega Master System from 17 years ago that still works.
Will This Thinking Help PS3? (Score:1)
That being said, I have to wonder if Microsoft isn't ceding an advantag
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PS2 vs Xbox (Score:2)
Anyway.
The cell processor isn't hard to code for at all. It just takes a different mindset, and the ability to figure out what to turn into little processing packets and send out to a cell. The hardest part is really just m
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Odd, given that one of the reasons Insominac gave for why Gears of War looked better than Resistance was that GoW used texture streaming.
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Flash forward a few years to when dev
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The PS2 is still being manufactured. Some of the units they made 7 years ago. Even if Sony stopped right now. There will still be a sizable PS2 market 3 or 4 years from now. As it stands, I think the PS2 will still be doing well in 7 years.
My 12 year old son is still clamoring for a PS2. So the PS2 market is STILL expanding.
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Even if one concedes the Cell processor is difficult to program for, its clearly not impossible to do so. If vendors continue producing games for the PS3 (and if we're having a realistic argument, its safe to say they will do so, even if not exclusively), they will become more and more familiar with the nuances of programming over time. As this happens, the greater resources on the PS3 will shine through more and more. After four or five years, its entirely possible we could see significant differences in game-play and graphics on PS3 games, opposed to 360 games.
I think with Ratchet and clank the difference is starting to surface. The game looked good but the real distinction is the number of objects on screen were sometimes staggering without slowing the machine down. The number of fully animated object like passing traffic, animal life, distant objects etc... made it a more immersive and believable world.
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I'm pretty unbiased in my standings between the 360 and PS3. I own b
Wishful thinking? (Score:1)
Fact is, any console manufacturer would looove to have the PS2's sales lifecycle; it's the best-selling [vgchartz.com] console of all time.
The other fact is that no matter what lies the XBox 360 game boxes tell (i.e. 1080i/p stickers on game boxes), the 360 renders games like Gears of War and BioShock in 720p (at best) and upscales its output to 1080i/p. Graphically, the 360 is an intermed
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Ah, to be so blissfully ignorant must be nice
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I think both systems are in generally the same class. Other than that, what can be said? One system streams textures faster, another can apply more pixel filters, etc., etc. Does faster loading from a hard drive cache count as better graphics? What about a simple
I'd rather... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want to have a PS2-like lifespan they better work on fixing the console. It's not much fun owning a video game console which is being repaired/replaced for months on end.
It should last... (Score:2)
What a bunch of BS (Score:2, Insightful)
The PS2 was one console, never needed to be upgraded to play new games, and it usually lasted forever. I still have my fat PS2 from early release, and it still works beautifully (had one disc read error a year ago that was fixed by cleaning the disc). Microsoft is clearly NOT goin
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Mindy Mount? (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but ... (Score:2)
Easy enough (Score:3, Funny)
xbox360 core
xbox360 full
xbox360 arcade
xbox360 family
xbox360 elite
-------------------
xbox360 v2.0
xbox360 hd
xbod360 ++
xbox360 sp3
xbox360 black
xbox360 gold
xbox360 platinum
xbox360 7
xbox360 dx11
xbox360 <fill in blank>
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I might have been trolled here; have a nice day anyway.
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Not just short but artificially shortened. Microsoft basically pulled the plug on the XBox as soon as the 360 appeared. The PS2 is clearly last gen, but Sony are still producing new versions of it even now.
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Not just short but artificially shortened. Microsoft basically pulled the plug on the XBox as soon as the 360 appeared. The PS2 is clearly last gen, but Sony are still producing new versions of it even now.
The major difference was that the PS2 was profitable per unit (ignore r&d) soon after launch while the Xbox was never profitable per unit up until it's demise. Mostly due to the sourced parts and IP Microsoft had to deal with. Sony's costs on the PS2 diminished continually while Microsoft's weren't as much under their control. A key part of that was the inclusion of the hard drive, HD's decrease in price per GB but generally not very much per unit. Contributing to their decision to partially ditch it i
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