A Gamer’s Guide to the Gaming Industry – Part 4
The difference between a gamer’s guide and the standard professional analysis of the gaming industry, or the Interactive Entertainment Industry if the reader wishes to get all fancy, is that unlike the boring executives, the gamer wants to know about the
games and the consoles, not the industry itself.
So far the guide has shared with gamers the key players in the market and discussed the rise of the smart phone and how John Carmack, the developer behind the upcoming Rage, is probably on the payroll of one of the smart phone developer companies.
Or maybe we left out the latter part, besides as much as we hate to admit it, Carmack’s prediction regarding the smart phone going to rival consoles one day does seem more than plausible.
While there is still time for a Terminator-esque rise of the smart phones, the present day belongs to the consoles, and one of those consoles is Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which as the name suggests can be kept at any angle. Just do not try moving it around with
a disc inside, you have been warned.
The original Xbox was a quite successful and the reason for that was that it was the only other console which was in direct competition with the PlayStation 2.
So when it came round to the next generation and Sony announcing the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo the Wii, what did Microsoft do? Well apparently they did a full spin and announced the Xbox 360.
While Sony had a 10-year product life-cycle plan and went on to introduce a new format of Disc, BluRay, along with a powerful GPU and a complete home entertainment solution and Nintendo decided to ditch better graphics in favour of taking a huge risk and
building their Wii around the concept of motion gaming, Microsoft were not as imaginative, at least at the start.
Nintendo took the initiative and launched the Wii early and this seemed to push Microsoft who also decided to launch their console the first chance they got (which it turns out was November, 2005). A move that had both its advantages as well as it’s fair
share of disadvantages.
The fact is that Microsoft got a head start on the PlayStation 3, which released a year later, something which Sony has only recently been able to catch up to, but on the other hand, the Xbox 360 still seemed like it was not fully finished.
Do not get us wrong, the games on offer were superb; Forza, Dead Rising, Halo and Gears of War are games no gamer would say no to, apart from the odd World of Warcraft player, but then again no one really cares what they think about consoles anyway.
The problem which every two out of three Xbox 360 owners seemed to have, became infamous as the RROD or the Red Ring Of Death. Basically the Xbox would overheat and stop working and the only way to fix the issue was to send the console back to Microsoft
who would replace it, free of cost of course.
In fact, the RROD became so common that people were afraid to sneeze in the same room as the 360 in fear that it might trigger a RROD attack, or maybe that was just us.
It was not all doom and gloom for the Xbox as the console with a sick note had quite a few tricks up its sleeve which readers can find out about in the next article:
A Gamer’s Guide to the Gaming Industry – Part 5 - Feature
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of Bettor.com
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