Malevolent-Gaming

I was one of the first to have complained that the Wii is a "gamecube turbo" and that they could have released motion control as an add-on. But I realize that the incredible sucess of the Wii was due to it being a new console. I'm rather curious about Microsoft's approach with releasing Natal Holiday 2010 as a 360 add on. Are they just kind of testing the waters for their new console to debut in 2011? I know Sony isn't in a rush to get a new console out, and I keep hearing things about longer console life cycles. But part of me thinks that MS is going to release something new in 2011. This whole thing just seems strange to me that they'd release one of their supposedly biggest ideas as an accessory for a console at the end of its life.

I think they are indeed testing the waters. I assume they'll release a new console in 2011 or 2012 that will come with Natal if it's reasonably successful.

Nintendo's already admitted they'll have something in the not-too-distant future. Iwata and Miyamoto have said that HD adoption is high enough that they want to join the ranks of high-res.

I have no idea what Sony's play is. PS3 is just starting to pick up real steam.

Unless it's a catastrophic failure, Natal will be foundational to the Xbox 3. MS has put WAY too much money and time into it during a hard economic time for it to be just a test. They're not expecting to have really great games right off the bat, and they are planning on improving the algorithms over time. So there will be a similar-to-Wii curve of gameplay excellence vs. time after launch.

I think they want to get the kinks worked out before X3's launch, which makes Natal v1 with a planned v2. So from the perspective of v2, v1 is a test, but it's not a pass-or-fail test. It's a beta test, but that can be said of many predecessors.

Since I believe it to be a widespread beta test, I doubt MS will replace the test bed soon. I think their plan is to wait until they've hit the breaking point of lessons learned to we-need-new-hardware-to-fix-this and then they'll go ahead. I doubt the X3 will be a very powerful machine, though it will definitely be much better than the 360. The Wii proved you don't need a cutting-edge machine to sell games, which is a lesson highly applicable to the X3 provided Natal is core. And MS is making money from Live, but that works just fine on the 360 and so doesn't need better hardware. And, of course, the economy is worse than before.

Even if the PS4 was 3x as powerful as the X3, few would see the difference. Not to diminish the marketing impact of having the higher quality console, of course, but technically, filling a 1080p screen with good visuals does not cost much.

That definitely seems more reasonable. Sort of how they released the Xbox as a precursor to the "real Xbox", the 360, which is what they wanted all along.

I really hope that they don't decide to release a new console any time soon. I think gamers still have a bad taste in their collective mouths from having to send their rigs in for RROD repairs, and those who had to pay even more so. The million+ gamers who were banned from Live and had to buy new 360s are probably still pretty steamed as well. I wonder what the numbers look like on those banned who went and bought a new console?

On a personal note, I hope they don't. Netflix was really the only driving factor for me to finally go out and buy one myself, and it took a Walmart GC to get me to do even that.

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Did you hear that Netflix inked a deal with WB to delay new releases for 28 days to help WB's DVD sales? Between that and the surcharge for Blu-Ray rentals, I cancelled my Netflix acct.

What is this about Live members banned?

A Day before Modern Warfare 2 came out, Microsoft banned a whole bunch of Xboxes.
"Presumably" it was to cash in on gamers video game lust and cause them all to go out and buy new consoles. (The account isn't banned, just the box.) The timing was......interesting.



This was a 50/50 for me. I love more instant watch movies/tv. (Only reason I really have Netflix.) But I don't like the 28 days delay. However....

If I want to see a movie in the theatre, I do. If I like it alot, I buy the DVD when it comes out.
If I didn't care enough to see it in the theatre, I'll wait to rent it and see it then. If I didn't give enough of a shit about it to go see it in the theatre, I don't care when I get to see it on rental. (Plus the chances of borrowing it due to someone else having already purchased it increases.)

This won't drive up DVD sales from me, due to my requirement of SEEING A MOVIE BEFORE I BUY IT. If I didn't see it in the theatre, and I can't rent it first, there is no way in hell I'm buying it. But this is a moot point since the only movies that qualify for purchase are ones I've already seen in the theatre, or movies i don't give a shit about seeing in a timely fashion.

So for me, its really a win. More instant movies, and a change to movie rentals that doesn't effect me very much. If I REALLY wanna see a movie well...yar har feedlee dee.

The 1 million number might be an exaggeration, but MS did make a wide-sweeping banning of consoles. They claim the consoles were modded in some way and were thus prime territory for cheaters and hackers. Since it's too easy to sign up for a new Live account, MS went further and banned the consoles from Live (but they still function just fine in single player (AFAIK)).

The irony is that MW2 is a supremely glitchy game, and cheats would not have affected the user experience that much.

This isn't as bad as it seems. The only reason Netflix did this is so that they could have more WB stuff on instant streaming. Whereas any company can buy discs anywhere and rent them out, studios be damned, for instant streaming you need licensing and negotiations. The latter part is where the WB deal comes into play.

As for the blu-ray surcharge, where else can you rent blu-rays for the same price as DVDs? It's only a dollar a month. We don't even really have any video rental places left in my town- all of the blockbusters and other stores have shut down.

You bought a 360 mainly for Netflix? Or was it more like me with "I'll buy the PS3 instead of a blu-ray player because I can play some games on it too if I want to"?

Also, I really wonder about the damage of the RROD. I've heard from so many people that don't even know what the internet is that have sworn off the console and Microsoft due to hardware crapping out multiple times on them.

I was borrowing a friend's 360 for the longest time, and I never went out and bought any games for it. I constantly used it for Netflix though. When he wanted the console back I went out and bought my own 360 because I love watching Netflix. I would have to say that Netflix was a big reason I bought a 360.

90% of our Xbox usage is Netflix content.

I've been underwhelmed by the quality of Netflix streaming, so I always wait for the Blu-ray. Though I have streamed the first three Rocky movies this week, but they're only available in SD anyway.

The Wii is getting Netflix streaming now, too. I'm curious to see how much use it will get. It lacks HD, but the installed base is huge.

For my plan, 3 DVDs at a time, it was raised by $4 a month, considering I joined Netflix at a time when special edition DVDs cost as much as Blu-Ray discs now, I couldn't see the price justification.