Scott Miller (3DRealms) .plan update over X-Box

Scott Miller van 3DRealms (onze Duke Nukem Forever vrienden) heeft een .plan update gepost waarin hij z'n twijfels over de X-Box het net op mikt. Scott lijkt naast de PC en de consoles van Nintendo en Sony weinig plaats te zien voor de X-Box:

[1] A big knock against all next-gen consoles, now that they have the graphics horse power to matter, is that TV screens are relatively low-resolution monitors that cannot deliver the clean, detailed images of a PC monitor. Until HDTV is wide spread, this gives a BIG advantage to PCs.

[2] Typically, in a given major market, only the top two brands will be highly successful, and I think everyone has good reason to believe Sony is a lock as one of those two. Nintendo or Sega both have a very strong chance at being the other one, since both of those companies are solely focused on the gaming market and that gives them many business and marketing advantages. Nintendo, ESPECIALLY, seems like a sure-thing because of their very strong gaming brands, like Zelda, Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and Pokémon. And even the PC itself must be considered a formidable game platform.

[3] It's just not convenient or easy to use a mouse in front of a TV, so that's a big-time PC, and an advantage that makes games that are best played on PCs (FPS and RTS games, among others), often too hard to play on the X-Box as with the other consoles.

[4] If Microsoft believes that anyone will want to use the Internet and do their email, etc. on a TV-based console system, they will been proven wrong. I just don't see people putting up with that kind of hassle, and reading text on fuzzy TVs, and doing anything on the X-Box that is far better suited to a PC. Maybe when a desk in front of TV screens become standard equipment, then consoles will have a prayer at becoming more than just a game machine.

[5] I foresee that the majority of X-Box games will be enhanced ports of PC games. This will be a serious problem for the X-Box's identity, because I don't see many developers making original content and brands for it--the majority of developers will still make games for the PC and then choose to port them to the X-Box. I predict most developers who develop games for the PC will simply say, "Hey, let's do an X-Box version, too!"

[6] It's hard to imagine that any hardcore PC game players will buy the X-Box. People with PCs will stick with PCs because PCs are by far the better game playing machine (assuming the PC has a generally equal CPU and 3D graphics card, and PCs for sale when the X-Box comes out should easily exceed the X-Box's CPU power, and be close to equal with the 3D graphics card), because they easily support the mouse (you're setting at a desk!), and the monitor is capable of displaying text that's readable in something wider than a 50 column mode! Also, the PC has many other applications, and it has a keyboard (imagine trying to play a FPS without a mouse and a keyboard--and think about all those keyboard shortcut keys for so many other games), making it the best all-in-one solution for most people. Quite simply, few people with a PC, I think, will switch to the X-Box to play games when it's easier to stay put on the PC. Sure, some people with older PCs may buy an X-Box to play high-end PC games, but I think that's a small percentage of us. Overall, stripped down PCs that are reduced to game machines doesn't seem like a winning idea, because a PC is so much better, and PC prices are becoming much less a barrier for people who might otherwise buy a console machine.

De rest (ja, er is nog meer ) kun je hier lezen.