The X Box

[preacher]

Well its out. The Best Buy where I live got 50 of the things in. My friend brought one. He said there were actually people that waited in line since midnight to buy one.

Anybody else here shell out the $300 + $100 for game and controller? Was it worth it?

[master jedi]

I don't have one and don't intend to buy one. I heard it crashes a lot, but what do you expect from Microsoft. Do you really want something that crashes a lot? Not me.

I recomend that you save your movey for the GameCube by Nintendo. It costs $100 lessand doesn't crash. I think it can play DVD's also. You can hook your Gameboy Advance up to it and use it as an extra controller/screen for some games. It also takes up less space than the X-Box. I think the GameCube is able to get on the internet.

Just go with Nintendo's GameCube and skip the X-Box. You won't regret it.

[LTBasker]

I don't think you can play DVDs on the GameCube since it uses mini-discs for game discs...

I've also heard that about the X-box crashing alot, and I also heard from someone who played it that it's just like a PS2 with a new casing. Guess microsoft couldn't do something on their own their first and hopefully ONLY time around.

Nintendo Gamecube: $100 less, better graphics, probably bigger levels, made by a company that's had alot of experiance in gaming and it's also small as heck.

X-Bow: $100 more than Game Cube, PS2 like graphics which means probably smaller levels and I heard it's pretty huge and bulky and is being released from Microsoft, which is Microsoft plus they have no experiance in releasing game consoles.

(Btw, I'm not knocking the PS2, that system rocked, just we don't need two systems with the same graphics, especially when they're released very seperately.)

[preacher]

I'm in complete agreement. I think the X Box is going to be a big P.O.S. Funny you should mention lock ups. Last week when Toys R Us got its gamecube demo (top notch controls) I decided to see how the X Box was doing and lo and behold it had locked up. there were two people that were playing a racing demo and the box just stopped. One of the players made a remark something to the effect that if this was the quality that Microsoft had promised the X Box was in trouble. I couldn't have agreed more. It amazes me that so many people are interested in the X Box just on the basis of hs dolby digital surround sound feature.

You might be interested in some comments I made concerning the future of X Box and the practices of Microsoft in general that I made about a month and a half back.

<From a previous post>

I for one am not a fanboy, and for many years now I have given Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. I acknowledge that on paper the X-Box's stats looks very impressive. However, specifications for any product, from video game systems to kitchen blenders can be written to seem much more impressive than what they actually are. Speaking from experience, as a CCTV engineer I am often stupified at some of the seemingly excellent camera products that are available. Often my reactions to amazing technology is knee-jerk, but once I actually sit down and start comparing apples to apples I am amazed how benchmarks for performance tests are actually conducted. Marketers are extremely sneaky. You give me any specification that makes any device look rock-solid and I assure you I can write another version to make the devices performance seem absolutely horrible. So what one needs to ask themselves, is what conditions Microsoft used to conduct performance tests?

There is no question that Microsoft has dominated the computer software industry. Otherwise they wouldn't have been the scapegoats of the most recent anti-trust hooey. I do believe that Microsoft is extremely corrupt, but not for the reasons the attorney general argued. Microsoft's genius lies in the fact that it concentrated on standardizing first, the performance of Windows 95 to put it bluntly sucks rear-end. The really scarey thing is that Microsoft has attempted to position itself as the end-all be all of interfacing with everything in your house. Don't believe me? Then go to a couple of seminars held by Intellution, and Siemens and listen to how these companies have exclusive deals with Microsoft to produce software (labeled Soft Logic) that is capable of running pumps in a waste treatment plant, or integrating with your household electronics. I don't know about you guys but it worries the crud out of me to think Microsoft's software will be able to turn on my boiler in the future, especially when I've lost count of the amount of times I've had the blue-screen of death pop up.

Many do not realize this, but Microsofts money earner is its database packages (SQL and Access the forerunners). What I find most outrageous is that the SQL documentation is written so poorly that in order to figure out some basic functionality you have to either a) go to a Microsoft sponsored seminar to learn what to do, or b) call up Microsoft, and for a $250 consultation fee paid with credit card, have a programmer walk you through things. There was one occasion my previous employer gave me permission to call Microsoft to figure out what we were doing wrong, only to discover it was a bug in their realease of SQL. But do you think they did not still charge our company $250? In order to fix the problem we had to buy an upgrade at a "reduced price". That is my biggest complaint is the quality control Microsoft implements. In my experience it is almost non-existant. To be assured you get quality product you have to pay more money than you really should. I realize that there are programmers on this forum that would interject that debugging is an ongoing thing. This is true, but Microsoft support stinks. Their strategy is to flood the market with crap to get it out and then fix things after most people are using it. But they won't fix it unless people cough up more money.

I can count on one hand the number of games I've seen that Microsoft makes for the PC that I've actually thought were good. Starlancer is one, and Asheron's Call is another. They have never made a hardware system (to my knowledge) until now. Their expertise is in tayloring existing technology into a standarized system, not making new technology. Personally, I think Microsoft's ego has ran away with them. If the X-Box comes out on top it will be because of the resources it can tap to drown us in X-Box products. Not because of what is on the specification.

<End of previous post>

You and I are in complete agreement master jedi.

[bigbarada]

Ummmm, I think the x-box is gonna suck eggs.

Sorry, that's all I could think to say after preacher's long but very well thought out post. Thanks for the info preacher, I had already decided to go with the Gamecube but it's nice to see not everybody is impressed with paper stats. Anybody can make anything look good on paper.

To me Nintendo has the most experience and thus far they have released many games that I absolutely love (Mario64, any Zelda game, Rogue Squadron). I never understood all the hullabaloo over the Playstation or PS2, since I never enjoyed any of their games.

So, I'll stick to Nintendo and if they go under then I will probably just never buy another console system.

[master jedi]

Originally posted by LTBasker
I don't think you can play DVDs on the GameCube since it uses mini-discs for game discs...

I think they run on mini dvd's. I heard that Nintendo is going to release a GameCube that plays DVD movies a while after the normal one will be released.

[LTBasker]

Originally posted by preacher
There was one occasion my previous employer gave me permission to call Microsoft to figure out what we were doing wrong, only to discover it was a bug in their realease of SQL. But do you think they did not still charge our company $250? In order to fix the problem we had to buy an upgrade at a "reduced price". That is my biggest complaint is the quality control Microsoft implements.

Yes, I'd have to agree... Not long ago I found out why AOL 6.0 was having severe problems with my NEW computer, it's because AOL has some files that are incompatible with Windows ME which came with this computer. Not only that, but if you use an older AOL version, the worse the problems get. C'mon, Win98 had 0 problems with AOL, and if Windows ME (not very good with computers and don't trust myself to install Win98) screws up this computer big time, which I'm suprised it hasn't from as many screwups it's caused, Microsoft will be sued. Sure I could change my ISP, but I shouldn't have to especially when the previous Microsoft product worked fine with it, and not to mention there was no warning or anything about the incompatible files.

[JediTricks]

I'm curious to see some X-box reviews from our common fellow posters - good or bad. I'm almost certainly going to continue to avoid this thing like the plague it is, but I am curious why dozens and dozens of guys spent the night in front of the local Best Buy (if the news hadn't shown it, I never would have known).

[master jedi]

Who else here thinks the guy who designed the coltroller for the X-Box should be drug out back and shot?

[derek]

i remember over a year or so ago when x-box was announced, they showed a demo of some chick and robot that looked mind blowing. this is what i was expecting, but it's not what microsoft delievered.

i look back on the marketing frenzy i bought into last year with the PS2 and i just laugh now. sure the x-box looks a little better in some games, but over all it isn't much better. i still think "dead or alive 2" on the dreamcast is the best visual game i've ever seen for the price.