Xbox 360 - 1

Most of you have probably already heard the news of the Xbox 360's two-tier pricing structure, so I won't bore you with the specifics. However, I did want to share my disappointment with Microsoft as both a gamer and a game creator.

I have never really liked the idea of having two different SKU releases for any sort of gaming product (other than a special edition of a title) because it tends to skew the market and split up your userbase. In the case of 360, M$ is basically splitting up those who are truly hardcore gamers and those who either can't afford $400 or just aren't really interested in additional features, such as a hard drive.

From a gamer perspective, it would have been a nice step for M$ to just include wireless controllers from the get-go in the basic 360 package. Sure, wired controllers work perfectly fine, but after all my time with Nintendo's Wavebird and the daily use of a wireless mouse and keyboard for my PC, the thought of me being tied to my controller (especially with my living room or gaming room layout) is just painful. Also, not having integrated 802.11 support is a bit of a step back, especially for a company that is hoping to increase the percentage of gamers who subscribe to Live. How many people actually have their consoles next to a ethernet port or router? Odds are very few. With the cost of wi-fi-capable routers dropping significantly these days (you can generally get one for around $30), one could expect a larger majority of houses to have them. On that same note, why the hell is the 360's Wireless Network Adaptor costing us $99?!!!! That's like 3x the cost of purchasing a M$ PC wireless adaptor. So, when you throw that additional cost into the mix, having a completely wireless and HD-capable console will hit you for a whopping $500... and that's before you buy any games. That's plain crazy.




On the other side of things, when I speak as a game developer, I'm a little bit upset that M$ has not made the hard drive a standard item. Now, it's going to be one of the first features cut from games if time becomes an issue. Who's going to truly support a peripheral that probably only 25% of the market is going to actually have? It's just a major step back to go from a console with an hdd (Xbox) to a sucessor without one. It's like M$ is saying, "well, we know we told you the hard drive was a major thing last generation, but we were lying. It's actually not that important, which is why we're not including it with all our systems now." Obviously, cost is a major issue and M$ wants to actually try to make money this time, but it's still a major blow to Xbox fans everywhere.

In the future, I expect that there will only be one Xbox 360 pack and it will be the core one, but with a wireless controller. I think the HDD is going to go the way of the Dodo once gamers figure out there is no real use for it that can't also be handled by a memory card... unless you are talking about storing your entire mp3 collection on it or something. Develoeprs are now going to cater their download file sizes to be able to be put on memory cards (in order to hit the lowest common denominator), so that won't be a problem. So, that just brings up the question of what the HDD is actually going to be beneficial for. If M$ didn't think it was important enough, then why should gamers?

In the end, I'm just a bit saddened by the decision M$ have made with its new console. I think the split-pack idea is going to come back around and haunt them. I, for one, am certainly now not buying one at launch. I'll just wait until the prices come down and there are actually some decent games to play. In the meantime, I'll be perfectly happy with GTA on PSP, Kingdom Hearts II on PS2, Castlevania on DS and a host of current generation games that will probably be a lot more fun and definitely a lot cheaper.