With almost 30 years of successful home consoles, video game journalists everywhere are still forgetting the most critical piece of information; consoles are judged by the quality of their games, not the power of their hardware.
With the announcement of the Xbox One last week gamers everywhere are crying foul at the idea of being unable to play used games at no cost. Claims are flying that the Xbox One is already a failure.
Being unable to swap games with friends is something that we will all miss and many have already declared their intention to boycott Microsoft’s upcoming release but people will buy whatever has the games they want to play irrespective of price or convenience and this is a good thing.
Lets take a stroll down memory lane. It’s 1996. the Nintendo 64 arrived amongst much hype following the hugely successful Super Nintendo only to be viewed as a failure by gamers everywhere.
Mario 64 was a groundbreaking achievement but struggled to hold the attention of many and people would cry “the Nintendo 64 sucks”, “the controls are so stupid!” Or “the Playstation has way better graphics” and then, on August 23 1997, a game called Goldeneye came along and suddenly friends were playing multiplayer games together in their lounge room in a way they had never done before.
Sales surged. Nintendo was back on top
Every console has had its own highs and lows in terms of sales and popularity and these peaks and troughs coincide with the games that are being released for them.
Even before its release the Xbox One is proving to be far from perfect but don’t give up hope yet. If the Xbox One, Playstation 4 and even the Wii U turn out to be resounding success stories it will mean we’re playing some of the highest quality games that have ever been released.
Ubisoft has recently announced that Watch_Dogs and Assassins Creed: Black Flag will be available on the Xbox One.
Some of my favourite times are still getting people together for split screen Castle Crashers, Dungeon Defenders or Raskulls.
I noticed in the uk there isn’t a big problem with the xbox one, since the reveal in just 24 hours from may 21rst xbox one surpassed all ps4 pre orders accumilated for over two months. it is breaking all pre-order records, even on amazon uk.
here are the story headlines
Xbox One breaks pre-order records at Blockbuster _ Games industry news _ MCV
UK Xbox One pre-orders ahead of PS4, although PS4 enjoys post Xbox spike
Xbox One pre-orders ‘extremely high’ as retailers back console – Gaming News – Digital Spy
Xbox One hits Amazon as console breaks pre-order records _ CNET UK
does this mean that internet gaming journalism and fanboyism does not reflect the results of Microsoft’s reveal strategy. It appears their plan worked. They plan to snatch up the hardcore at E3 when they drop their gaming strategy.
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