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IGN XBOX reviews Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
This is the first game I've found myself really wanting to play for the Xbox. But I'm either going to wait until the Xbox gets a remodeling so it's smaller, or see if I can borrow my friend's Xbox for a few weeks.
Even at $199, I have no desire to buy an Xbox. There isn't a single game out for the Xbox that I want to play.
On the other hand, if I didn't already own a PS2, I'd be all over the $199 PS2, which has dozens of great games that the Xbox doesn't.
Meanwhile, I still love my Gamecube, and the first thing I'm going to do after finals is play Resident Evil.
Just skimming the news for the week, here's what catches my eye:
One year ago, the death of the Dreamcast was announced. I was very fond of that little white box, and that was a very sad day. At the time, I said that there were still a number of upcoming Dreamcast games that I was looking forward to playing. I was looking forward to Crazy Taxi 2, and Sonic Adventure 2, and Shenmue 2, and Phantasy Star Online.
But I never bought Crazy Taxi 2, because they removed the two player mode. (Though admittedly, my roommate picked up Crazy Taxi 2 on clearance from Toys R Us last week, but more on that some other time.)
I never bought Sonic Adventure 2, because it was announced as Gamecube bound.
I never bought Shenmue 2, because sadly it became an Xbox exclusive in North America, and I didn't get a chance.
And I never bought Phantasy Star Online, because I kind of lost interest in it.
In fact, I didn't buy a single Dreamcast game once its death was announced. I actually feel kind of guilty about abandoning the poor little fellow. It's not that I ever stopped liking it, it's just that the circumstances changed. Though I didn't buy any new Dreamcast games, my little white box got at least as much play as my even-deader N64.
So it goes.
Hey, look, according to ign xbox, Xbox is winning!
But wait, according to ign cube, The Numbers Don't Lie, and the GameCube has been selling better.
And what blows my mind is that those two articles both cite the same data. To summarize, as of that report the Xbox (with a four day head start) had sold more consoles (in the US) total, but since the GameCube's release, it has been selling better.
My interpretation? They're both selling well, and often selling out completely. And it's kind of silly to shout "Look at me, I'm winning!" after the first 100 meters of a 10 k marathon, especially when the runners have to drag along a lead weight called "limited supply". Meanwhile another million copies of Metal Gear Solid 2 have probably been sold, and Final Fantasy X comes out in less than a month...
Oh, in other news, apparently 2.4 games have been sold for each Xbox sold, which puts it ahead of the 1.9 games/console Nintendo and Sony managed. But I'm sure that has nothing to do with most buyers being required to buy a bundle with 2-3 games.
So here in the first few minutes of round two, Nintendo is claiming the Gamecube is the fastest selling next generation console, and they're sticking to their guns when interviewed about the claim. Microsoft has stayed quiet on the issue, probably because they just didn't have enough consoles available to compete, thus making claims that the Xbox has been selling out moot as a basis of comparison. And though Sony was quick to toot their own horn last year when the shit hit the fan with PS2 sales, they probably won't respond to Nintendo's press release, and they'll end up seeming mature in the face of what looks like bragging from Nintendo.
Never mind the fact that Metal Gear Solid 2 has already 1.8 million copies just in North America, and it's not even Christmas yet. And it was just released in Japan today.
The point is that the PS2 has a huge head start, and it's way too soon to start cheering for any of the challengers to the belt which Sony's currently wearing.
And while Nintendo claims to have sold 510,000 Gamecubes in the first week, way back at the very beginning of round one Sega sold 410,000 Dreamcasts in the first week, and look where they ended up.
Last Friday when I was in Bakersfield, Pi bought a Gamecube and a DVD player from WalMart for less than the cost of a PS2 or an Xbox. Admittedly, the DVD player was on sale for $75, but his total with sales tax was still only $294.22.
Let's do a quick comparison of each of the three contenders for equivalent configurations, shall we? We'll assume a non-sale price of $100 for an external DVD player, and I'll be nice to the PS2 and allow the Gran Turismo 3 bundle to be its entry, and we'll assume 7.5% sales tax as a compromise between Bakersfield's 7% and the Bay Area's BART subsidizing 8ish%.
Gamecube:
PS2:
Xbox:
Um, other fudge work in these numbers: Admittedly, the Xbox has a hard drive and network adapter, but at the moment all the Hard Drive is good for is storing custom music sound tracks and I'm assuming that it can store saved games. And on the assumption that the Xbox's hard drive can store saved games, I didn't add in the price of a memory card on the Xbox.
The Gamecube memory card is smaller than the PS2 memory card, so I probably should have added two Memory Card 59's to my Gamecube total to be more equitable.
I think I recall seeing that the Sony Hard Drive/Network Adapter Bundle will be $150 when it comes out this spring, so that puts the final price of the PS2 (even with the bundled GT3) way up above the Xbox.
I expect that the Gamecube Modem and Ethernet adapters will be $50 each when they come out. And a nice portable removable Gamecube Hard Drive is also a possibility.
But, for now, I'd argue that games aren't really taking advantage of the Xbox's network and hard drive features enough to really count them into the overall equation.
Oh, and as long as I'm on the subject, you can get a Dreamcast for $50, and find most of the games and accessories for $10 to $20. If you're really cheap.
If you bought every possible accessory for the Gamecube as they come out, you'd probably end up spending more on the Gamecube than the Xbox in the long run. But most people won't buy all the Gamecube accessories, and most probably already have a DVD player, and most people with an Xbox probably won't ever use the Hard Drive or Network Adapter, so I still say the Gamecube wins the price game.
Besides which, I think being able to pick and choose with the Gamecube is better than Microsoft's Model-TX.
So the Xbox has now technically been released on the East Coast, but I don't have time to say anything, because I've got a midterm tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to quickly say two things about the Xbox commercials I've seen:
Also, I'm curious who the hell Nintendo is marketing the Gamecube towards, because I've only seen one Gamecube commercial (compared to 4 Xbox commercials). And worse, my roommate (who tutors a Berkeley High student) tells me that no one at Berkeley High School has even heard of the Gamecube, but that everyone is talking about the Xbox.
Nevermind that there's only one game I want to play coming out for the Xbox this year; I think this is a better reason than any not to buy one right away.
Tonight while browsing Yahoo!, I came across an ad which told me "Taco Bell is giving away 6,755 Xbox™ systems."
"6,755?" I mused. "Isn't that something like... half of the Xbox launch numbers?" ;-)
Well, maybe they're just trying to create a shortage, so they can repeat the success of Sony's PS2 over-hype under-deliver machine. Eh, we'll see.
My anticipation for the Gamecube is building, and being the list monger I am, I felt like breaking down my anticipation. And I think these are some rather revealing lists, really.
Now, admittedly, I could have filled in five games for the xbox, but Halo is the only xbox game I really feel a burning desire to play at the moment. I tried to limit the lists to be the games that I really want to play. Of course, the Gamecube list is much longer, so I limited it to the top five (I'm also anticipating Super Monkey Ball, among a few others) games coming out before Christmas (otherwise Zelda would have bumped Luigi off the list, for example).
Now what's the point here? First of all, I'm obviously a little more interested in one console than the others. But second, check out IGN's top 10 year 1 PS2 games. All of the games I'd include in my top 10 list are in their list, except several of the games in their list are so obviously a stretch (having to include that many sports/racing games in such a list is just a bad sign), and my top 10 list would have been a top five list instead. What's interesting, though, is if I make a retroactive PS2 anticipation list:
The moral here is: There are almost as many games I'm anticipating for the Gamecube that come out in the Gamecube's first month as I wanted to play in the whole first year of the PS2's existence. (Though I fully acknowledge that SSX is a great game, I didn't actually desire to play it. It came as part of my bundle, and so it was only an accident that I discovered its greatness) For that matter, if you only count the games I anticipated ahead of time, the GCN wins over the PS2 hands down. Of course, we'll see how these GCN games live up to my anticipation, because my PS2 anticipation was pretty misplaced. Just check out my top 5 year 1 PS2 games:
Hm, I wonder what's going to suffer more: My bank account or my final grades. Hm. This so isn't good.
So, here is the first American Gamecube commercial, and here are the first five print ads. The ads are significantly better than the Game Boy Advance ads, and on the whole, they're rather a new direction for Nintendo.
The print ads are rather clever, doing amazing things with such a limiting device. The commercial follows in the cubed theme of the print ads, but is rather edgy. Not that that's a bad thing. I would have liked it if the commercial had shown about 3 times more game play, but overall, I think it will be getting people's attention and setting up (hopefully) more gameplay heavy commercials in the future.
I've now seen the Gamecube commercial three or four times on actual TV, but the only Xbox commercials I've seen are the 7-up ones. And scouring the web, all I could find were some Canadian Xbox commercials. If you happen to know where I can see a full american xbox commercial (or if you've seen it and want to describe it), please post a comment. I'm curious to see how Microsoft, who as far as I know was planning on playing the "edgy" angle, is going to stack up against Nintendo, who just raised the ante...