Xbox Delays - Fat Lady Enters Stage Right
Ahh another week, another twist in the console soap opera.Turbulence remains in the Xbox camp and we’re a matter of weeks away from the launch of the GameCube which stole the show at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this year. Xbox GM J Allard was on hand and talked up the fact that they had delivered on their promise to have fifty titles on the show floor, espousing Microsoft’s ability to deliver.
It seems though, that the modern day trend of quantity over quality will chart the course initally for the Xbox as anyone who was there will tell you only a handful of games were even worth looking at. Fifty titles on the show floor J? Well, at least your console is large enough that I can wrap a sweater around it and catch a few z’s while I wait for some room to clear in the Nintendo camp.
Three months on, rumours on hardware problems and potential delays have been a constant out of Redmond, met with swift denials of course. There may not be smoke (yet), but I’ll be damned if it isn’t warmer in here. You feeling warm J? Maybe it’s just me…maybe not.
If there is one thing history has taught us, and taught us well, it’s that a console which launches first in North America is cursed. Atari’s Jaguar and the 3DO (or as I like to call it, the 3DOA) both serve as testament to what happens when companies outside Japan make moves on the console hardware market. The Xbox hasn’t made friends with the Japanese buying public, and sending them the message now that they’re not as important as the US will only serve to increase the indifference towards the console that has dripped from Japanese consumers.
Not that they haven’t tried! J, you and your people are to be commended for your efforts thus far. Japan’s gamers suggest the controller is too big? You went and made a smaller one for them. Good for you I say! I’m saying good for you! Contracts with the Japanese development community have not been as easily won. Where do we head when a cash-strapped Sega finds itself more financially secure and rid of the titles it owes you?
More telling than anything though, is the space between the Xbox launch and the GameCube launch. Close to six months will pass between when the Kyoto giant’s next machine launches and when the latest Western console invades. It’s small, it’s cute, the games have been crafted by the single greatest designer on the planet and it won everybody’s heart at E3.
The GameCube is for children? Let’s not fool ourselves J. The GameCube is launching with a pedigree that no other company - with the possible exception of Sega - can hold a candle to. The software is first-rate, it appeals to all ages, they’ve got more support from the world-wide developer community now than the company has had since 1995 and they still managed to put 40 million N64’s in homes around the world.
But take heart J. I like you, I do. This industry needs more people like you and Seamus, people with flair and style and charisma. Bigger names have backed the wrong horse and lived to tell the tale, and there is surely life after Xbox. I do feel the need to borrow from another of your competitors at this time, as only now their campaign begins to make sense. It was not, apparently, a message to consumers, but rather a message to the competition. Cryptic and in-decipherable it remained until now, it suddenly all makes sense.
Welcome to the third place…
posted by splash · at 5:23 am · filed under Editorials