Xbox 360 Game News, Reviews, and Columns - XboxFocus

The State of the Xbox 360

by Steve Wysowski March 5th 2008 7:02 PM CST7 Comments

The Xbox 360's current standing in this generation isn't something I'm too confident in.

Don't be mistaken, I bleed green and white through and through, and will be with the console 'til its last dieing breath. Still, I'm concerned about the console's present, and more importantly, its future. I've been playing my Wii more and more, and with Smash Bros. Brawl coming out this weekend, I don't think I'll be playing my 360 outside of review purposes for a while. So that means, if I were an average non-employed gamer I wouldn't be playing my 360 at all. If someone would have told me I'd be playing my Wii more than my 360 a year ago, I'd probably break my balls in painstaking laughter.

Right now, the Wii is crushing our silky white box in all markets. Japan has been on the verge of pulling an Luisitania on any ship carrying Xbox 360s for quite some time now, but no one expected Microsoft to have such a limited hold on its home market of North America.

The Wii isn't the "fad" console as many fanboys are making it out to be. It is simply the better console, and the pie charts show it. Innovation is something Microsoft has always been lacking, and something Nintendo strives upon. Innovation is the difference between the two companies; and the gap is becoming wider each day.

While we look up in jealously of the Wii above us, we cannot forget about that evil bastard below ......the Playstation 3.

For the record, I am a PS3 owner. Sue me. I enjoy video games, and just because I may prefer one console over the other doesn't mean I'll boycott the other because of it. The gaming industry is open and wide, and its consumers should be the same too. But the truth is, PS3 isn't that far behind the Xbox 360 as most gaming sites would have you believe. The "ever-struggling" PS3 isn't doing that bad at all, especially for the price it was originally being sold at (600 dollars might as well have been a million for me). Now that the console is at a price that someone with a normal sized wallet may consider , the PS3's market is expanding at a faster rate than the 360's currently is. Not to mention a killer wave of Playstation-only releases is coming up ever so soon, that will at least put the PS3 and the 360 at a stalemate.

No matter which way you look at it, there is so much crap headed in Microsoft's direction that not even a Hoover Dam-sized shield could reflect it. With Leopard proving to be a better operating system than Vista, and Apple's hardware becoming stronger each year, if the Xbox 360 were to end the this console "race" behind the PS3 and Wii, it may wind up being Microsoft's last try in the video game market. In other words, the death of the Xbox community.

Well ain't that just a downer?

The sad part is, the 360 had a full year advantage over its competitors. A full year! That is like giving an olympics runner a 100 meter adavantage on a 600m race. Or from Nintendo and Sony's perspective, giving a hare sleeping pills the morning before a big race against a tortoise. The Wii has not only caught up in a one-year span, but it has surged ahead of the 360. Now with the PS3 bringing up the rear, the 12-month advantage MS relied on is practically gone.

So, what's going wrong? Why is the Xbox 360 slowing down after its hot start? RRODs? Nope, because oddly enough, no one isn't buying an Xbox 360 because they think it will eventually explode (although they should). Crappy Xbox LIVE Updates? Nope. A third party game is kicking the crap out Halo 3? Nope (sorry Halo nerds; that's due to Call of Duty 4 just being better).

In my opinion, it winds down to Japan. It may just be a tiny islandic market, but its the most important by far. The fact that the 360 can't find an audience in Japan may in fact come down to the seperation between cultures that no software company will be able to rectify. No Japanese market results in no Japanese investors, which translates to no foreign money, and eventual translates into failures in other terriotories. The Xbox 360 can't sell fifty million consoles in North America without selling at least ten million in Japan, and we all know the latter is never going to happen. There is no way to change the fact the Xbox 360 has failed in Japan; all we can do is deal with what we have, no matter how scary the future may be.

Luckily my friends, Microsoft has the one trick up its sleeve; and that's the best online video game community in the world. The Xbox LIVE Community has become larger than the PC crowd, and is easily the most dedicated. We love our console, and we will not abandon it. More people own Xbox 360 games than they do PS3 and Wii games, and that shows something. Not only is the community dedicated to its console, but the games on the 360 are simply better than its competitors. With Gears of War 2 coming this year, hopefully Microsoft can expand past that community in all markets. I sure hope so, as right now, our little online portion of the world is one of the few things we can hold on to.