I hope the next X-BOX does launch early *cough*prematurly*cough* so that the REAL competition between Nintendo & Sony can go unhendered!
Who are the current X-BOX fans and those interested in the X-BOX? Those who are clutching to a security blanket. They see Microsoft in gaming and they think: "Microsoft will use thier power, money & influence to take over the market eventually" so they buy into the X-BOX 'cos they believe that Microsoft will do things to make themselves another monopoly. After watching the DreamCast fall 'cos of Sega's lack of power, money & influence people are VERY werry about thier investment so it's no wonder Microsoft's X-BOX looks so attractive to them. And Microsoft has backed this belief by supplying the industry with the most powerful console this generation, aquiring game developers by merely spending some of thier pocket change, dumping millions into advertising, millions more into exclussive deals and even more into a huge XBL network (mainly just a status and image thing, it hardly makes any real difference with such low broadband penetration). They also added features being the first console with an ethernet connection and a built-in hard drive. They've been "generous" and while some of that is needed to "break in" to the industry, most of it was just to give the impression that they wanna take over this industry by buying thier way in. I guess there's nothing wrong with that, we'd do it too if we were jumping into console arena with billions in the bank to "help out", but what the problem is that next generation they're taking all of those securities away.
Launching early AND with a more profitable (for them) system architecture in mind they're doing just that. X-BOX's biggest security blanket or "edge" is it's power...it's why people hold it in a higher respect and why ALOT of people bought it. From what we know now the next generation X-BOX will be the least powerful of the three 'cos it's earlier technology and is being produced with profits in mind (in other words, not like the original X-BOX). So where does that leave X-BOX fans without thier security blanket? On top of which (again, from what we know now) the X-BOX will not include backwords compatibility NOR a hard drive. Which means they're taking away a feature they tried to establish this generation (HD) and then they're taking away an industry standerd (BC) that the other console makers WILL be including! BC may not be much to existing X-BOX fans, but to potential fans it's a wanted feature 'cos they may have been waiting for the next X-BOX so that they could experience it's games *as well as* the first X-BOX's games. Without BC, IMO, the next X-BOX is gonna kill potentail sales and while we've beaten this issue to death in other topics I'm gonna leave it at that. Then, ON TOP OF everything else, current X-BOX fans and potential fans looking on the sidelines will lose a sense of security in seeing Microsoft cut short this generation...and without BC to help this transition a lil' it'll look even more premature in the eyes of consumers...high profile internal games and exclussives will be shifted to the next generation too soon just so that Microsoft can stop the bleeding & get a "headstart" on the competition...that's not serving the fans, that's serving themselves.
And as this article points out, the market doesn't truly shift until the leader of said market moves it. Now where are third parties gonna be: a starting over user-base & occassional (probably less than this generation) money hat from Microsoft to support a premature "next generation" X-BOX or a very profitable (due to learned/cheaper developement environment, lower licencing and a HUGE user-base to milk) PS2 in wait for the real next generation? I think we ALL know the answer...
