Firstly, they made a big blunder by releasing faulty hardware at launch (and beyond), with a failure rate of something like 60% (might've been even higher than that). Simply put, early 360 consoles were mostly duds. With that said though, they have fixed this problem now. But still, it doesn't look good on their record. Secondly, unlike the ps2, they haven't gone with a next-gen disc format as standard for their games, choosing to stick with DVD 9's. Sure, you can buy an HD-DVD addon for HD-DVD movies, but devs cannot make their games on HD-DVD discs, because assuming every 360 owner would have said HD-DVD addon would be too risky. While this might not be an issue NOW, in the future, devs are going to want to have the security of knowing that they can go all out to make the best quality games in the FUTURE, before signing binding contracts to make games exclusively for the console. Thirdly, a 360 console is not guaranteed to have a HDD in it, putting further restraints on the devs as to what they can do. Finally, they've released ALL of their big guns (Halo 3, Gears of War, Forza 2, etc), and already pushed the limits of their hardware with said games, within the first TWO YEARS of their console's existence. Which would be fine... if they had other big titles in the works. But they don't really have anything up their sleeves that is mindblowing (apart from a Gears of War sequel perhaps), which the ps2 always did.
(cont. in next post)
27/10/2007
Toowoomba, Queensland