Who dashed out and bought the Halo 3 Console?
By now you’ve probably been buried in the hype surrounding Halo 3, Microsoft Xbox 360’s exclusive “killer app” game released this week– the canny live action commercials featuring old veterans praising the franchise’s hero, Master Chief, the prominent coverage in the New York Times, the long lines and Chief tattoos and other totems of gamer enthusiasm.
With all that excess, you might assume this means Halo 3 is the game phenomenon of the year. And that would be a mistake. From the market’s point of view, all that fanboy energy is a sideshow. The reality is that the 360 is no longer the market’s most popular next gen console: the Wii owns that spot, now with more than half a million more units sold worldwide. For that matter, the 7 year old Playstation 2 is still going strong, and even into this year, was still outselling the 360.
While Halo 3 will sell well with the 11 million who already own one, the big question is, will it move significantly more 360s? And the even more crucial question, will it move the 360 back to its short-lived lead among next gens?
I’ll go on record right now and say No and No.
Click the link and read the Post and you’ll find out how he came to that conclusion.
To all those bitching about the Wii:
The most powerful console of its generation has NEVER been the one with the best games nor the top seller, want examples?
The Nintendo 64 was the most powerful console of the ps1/saturn/n64 generation, it flunked big time, instead the leading one who ate them all was the ps1 which was the least powerful one.
The same can be said about the PS2 which was also the least powerful of the ps2/gc/xbox generation and it solidified Sony’s domain in the console market.
Want another example? The PSP is more powerful than the PS2 and yet the DS which is nothing but two Game Boy Advance slapped together and the DS is outselling the PSP.
I’m old enough to know that one thing is a good looking game and another thing is a good looking game that is actually good ’cause just because the turd has gold plating it doesn’t stave away the fact that it’s still a turd.
Sorry Mustard……but games are for whomever enjoys them. Grown up or not. I’m not a gamer…..sometimes I wish I was, then other times I see how obcessed some gamer’s can get and I back off. But, my oldest brother(40), who is definatly a *grown-up* and the most serious person I know is a gamer freak….go figure.
My next oldest brother (35) like’s playing games with his oldest boys and his wife, they have a Wii and a 360…..he isn’t as crazy as my oldest brother about games, but feels it’s great *family* fun, hell, even my Dad is into gaming.
I bought the Halo 3 commemorative edition XBox 360. But not because it was Halo-oriented…
MY reason was that it was manufactured in August, 2007 (I checked the label on the unit before I bought it, there’s a flap you can lift up on the bottom of the box) so I knew it had one of the updated motherboards. They began production on them in July 2007, apparently.
I looked at the “Elite” and the Halo 3 edition. The Elite I saw was manufactured in July, but I wasn’t sure whether it was before or after the manufacturing change. The Halo 3 version was manufactured in August, so I knew it had the redesigned motherboard with the 65nm chip.
Anyway, it DOES look kind of cooler than a white XBox…
dunno about thats headline – its already sold a ton – more that that stoopid comicbook movie spiderboy lame shit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7015663.stm
AAAIIIIGH! I’m sorry, guys, I gave you a bum steer. The manufacturing date isn’t enough!
It turns out that Halo 3 XBoxes whose LOT NUMBER is 734 OR HIGHER have the new motherboard.
Mine is only lot 732! Depression descends… Sigh… There goes four hundred bucks.
OH, well, Halo 3 is turning out to be a lot of fun, and if the console DOES go bad, at least the replacement will probably have the new board (according to the XBox forums, all lots higher than 735 will have the new motherboard and chip).
Still… Bummer.
>>but games are for whomever enjoys them. Grown up or not.
I suppose.
Same thing goes for collecting baseball cards and comic books. I guess whatever floats yer boat, even if if’s something designed for pre-adolescents.
M$ is spending $10 for every $ they earn on this console. Even if they win, they lose.
#41 Mister Mustard
What indoor games do you play? Scrabble? Checkers? Yahtzee? Bridge?
Well, since you own a computer, here’s a nice link for you.
http://www.wartoft.nu/yahtzee/
Marianne Wartoft is an educated Swedish female that writes software including freeware.
She’s even got a competition going with her Yahtzee game!
Write back with a glowing review, perhaps some other of us Cranky Geeks will give it a try to beat your highscore. 🙂 🙂
Yawn… biggest 24-hour sales in history.
Equivalent to 1/5 of the installed-base of Xbox360 owners buying the game, wasn’t it…
I’m curious to see if they ever get to 50% of 360 owners, let alone 75% of 360 owners buying the game.
75%… That would be impressive.
And it wouldn’t involve any knob-polisher rhetoric about which console was selling more on a particular day, or how many of whichever console had ever been sold to date.
You really must understand that Nintendo has about 100 years of experience behind them. Obviously video games are relatively new, but when your entire business is and has been based around games for a century, you learn to adapt well.
Microsoft is a third their age, and still has no idea what it wants to be when it grows up.
>>What indoor games do you play? Scrabble? Checkers?
>>Yahtzee? Bridge?
I like Scrabble. And sometimes chess, if I can find somebody shitty enough to play me. Cribbage is another favorite, from my younger days. Although I haven’t seen any of those games in computerized form that reproduce the experience of playing in real life.
#2
You’re kidding, right? The R600 graphics card itself would cost you more than the limited edition XBOX 360 bundle at today’s newegg prices.
#46 Nice to see folks of all ages posting here with us.
#47 You don’t need a high-end 3D car to play games in 1024×768, which is pretty much on par with a PS3/360.
Any PCI-E card w/ATI or NVdia chipset and 256M of ram, I see them for 45$ these days.
One gig of ram is 35$. Intel dual core + mobo for 200$.
Vista basic 90$.
Don’t count the screen, apples-to-apples, I saw advertised in Best Buy an ACER desktop bundled & Vista Home, Intel dual core, DVD burner, dedicated PCI-E NVidia grahpics card.
For 400$.
The fact that you can spend 2,000$ on a high-end game machine is true, but not necessary for XBox 360 – to – PC comparison.
don’t have time to read any of this (watching ou v cu game), but what’s the game attach rate of wii’s? i know it doesn’t hold a candle to the 360’s. this is the number one factor of market dominance. as long as the 360’s console numbers hang close to the wii’s, it doesn’t really matter if they sell more. if 360 has a attach rate of say 5-7 games per console & the wii has what 1-2 games, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that 360 would have control over the market. enough said & i don’t think they’re even in the same market. they’re really complimentary markets as many would do well to have both systems. not one game that’s worth a grain of salt would need to be purchased on both systems (if u have both).