| Wednesday, April 10, 2002 |
21:38 - XBox Death Watch
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/10/1351245&mode=thread&tid=127
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The consensus seems to be forming across the Web: the Xbox is doomed.
Despite a brave face being put on lackluster sales by Microsoft's marketing machine, the numbers can't be denied: the Xbox is being outsold by the psOne. It's doing especially poorly in Japan and Europe, where they had hoped to make up for a weakish US start. They're taking a serious loss on the sale of each console, with an eye toward making up the cost on volume and firmware licensing agreements for developers-- and considering a) the low volume and b) the pathetic library of games, it would seem that the glowing green X-shaped tear in the top of the box is a gateway to Hell into which Microsoft is hurling bag after bag of large-denomination bills.
How sad does that make me? Hold on, I can't hear you-- too much loud music and carousing being done here. Someone just sprayed me with Silly String. The celebration party's a little too wild; I'll get back to you in a bit.
This Slashdot article has a lot of enlightening comments. (And a lot of insanely funny ones too-- one guy says "My kids think Gamecube is the cat's ass," to which another responds, "Help me out with the lingo here. Does this mean they like it, hate it, or just need a lesson in basic feline anatomy?") Among the less-raucous are tidbits like the one about how Microsoft plans to keep funding the Xbox sales push in order to keep the machines on store shelves for as much as five years, regardless of whether sales ever pick up. Hey, bring 'em on-- the more money we can make 'em lose, I'm all for it. Go nuts!
Other readers point out articles by Gord of the inimitable actsofgord.com: This one, where he speaks preemptively (in November) about the chances the Xbox might have against its entrenched competition in a real-world gamer's market-- and this one, in which he deconstructs the pricing schemes of the various companies and which ones subscribe to the "Sell the consoles at a loss and make it up on game licensing deals" scheme (hint: Microsoft is not the first to do it, but they're in the minority). The Gord hath spoken.
What you won't find among the Slashdot comments, however, is rhetoric from people who refuse to buy Xboxes on principle. You know, because it's Microsoft, regardless of how carefully they hide the MS logo in the Xbox ads. This is Slashdot we're talking about-- surely you'd expect that there would be at least some of the idealistic ranting. But there's none-- not a peep. I don't understand this. What has happened to these people's spirit? This is Slashdot, for Pete's sake. Open-source geeks. These people will fight a holy war over whether Linux or FreeBSD has the open-source license that's more likely to undermine and overthrow Microsoft's hegemony. These are people who will use StarOffice and KDE and GIMP and claim to their last dying breath that they have all the functionality of a Windows-using commercial-software sheep. And yet to judge by their comments, half these people bought Xboxes. What is wrong with this picture?
I was thoroughly convinced, along about November, that there would be throngs of Linux and open-source people out in front of Fry's at midnight on the day of the Xbox's launch, waving signs and passing out flyers and denouncing Microsoft's business practices-- just like they did at the Win95 launch and the Win98 launch. I was fully expecting to read all about it in the tech press the next day. But... I didn't. Why? Who knows? Who can understand the gamer's mind? The cynical side of me says "Sure, anybody can be idealistic when they're talking about office apps or Web servers-- but when it comes to Halo, all bets are off! W00o0ot! Go Xb0X!" And going by my experience with MMORPGs and the people who play them, I have a very hard time forcing that cynical side of me to shut up. I want to believe my friends have a little bit more integrity than that. I want to believe that the people I know and respect can resist the lure of bump-maps and battle-damaged cars and the gutted soulless husk of Bungie for the sake of a little solidarity in the face of a Microsoft marketing offensive explicitly designed to get under their defenses and win them over and make them start saying "Mmmmmicrosoft? Well... gee... I guess they're not all that bad..." as they bang away on their giant Xbox controllers.
No, it must be something else. Do these guys drop their facade of idealism in favor of sane pro-vs-con discussions whenever video game consoles are concerned-- because they're somehow not the same as desktop operating systems? Because the Microsoft that makes the Xbox is really not the same hated corporation that they've been fighting all their lives against-- they're an underdog now, so they deserve a fair shake and a chance to prove their worthiness in the market? Is that what's happening?
Unfortunately, I can't seem to convince myself that that's the case. My reasoning always seems to circle around to what my cynical side is telling me. Just wave some crack in the air, and the freedom-fighters will drop their keyboards and soak their chins with drool. If only the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade were so easily won over.
I just got rid of my PS2 tonight-- I'd bought it on September 10th, so my heart was never really in it in the first place; I'd played Gran Turismo 3 for a few weeks, but as it turned out I haven't touched it in about four months. And truth be told, the only reason why I bought it in the first place was as a sort of preemptive strike-- to get a video game console into the house, so other members of my household would not feel tempted to fill that void by buying an Xbox for the house.
Now that such a move seems to be less and less likely, given the timbre of the headlines, I feel safe in unloading the PS2 to a friend. He wouldn't have been able to afford one on his own, and I was willing to pay to get the damn thing out of my room, so it worked out pretty well for all involved. And since the friend in question actually lives in the same house as me, the PS2 is moving to the big-screen TV downstairs, where it can be even more visible in its Xbox-displacing glory than it was before. I should have put it there in the first place.
And maybe it will elbow aside some sports from the TV. Believe it or not, I'd rather listen to video games all day than sports for ten minutes.
And in any case, it's not doing me any good up here. Time to send it back in to continue the good fight.
Meanwhile, I resume my quest to discover where the anti-Xbox solidarity has gone. Granted, people aren't buying Xboxes, but it's on the Xbox's merits (or lack thereof), not because of anti-Microsoft fervor. Hey, I'll take what I can get-- but I would love to see just one person refuse to buy an Xbox because they don't buy Microsoft products, even video game systems.
Is that too much to ask?
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