By the time Microsoft SHOULD be worried, they'll have a new system out that makes the PS3 look sick..... I'm sure they're quaking in their billion dollar boots......
Remember Sony is the ones on the "10 year lifespan plan" not MicroSoft.
Have no fear. I'm sure you haven't forgotten about that 45nm cell that Sony already has waiting in the wings....
But you could be right. My only point is that, if you're wrong, then Microsoft has painted themselves into a bit of a corner in terms of Media and Hard Drive Space.
The 120 GB hard drive currently sells for $180... or about twice as much as you could buy a 120GB drive from Newegg for and throw it in your PS3. And they don't have any option at all for larger media. Sure they could always work out a deal with Sony for bluray... but I've already gone to great lengths explaining how that would make zero business sense.
And even if they DID come out with a new Xbox... what media would it be running on? How would a brand-new system be able to compete in terms of price? You could easily have Microsoft in a Sony scenario where their new hardware would be very expensive, there would be fewer games available, and at least for the first few months the hardware would be hard to come buy.
Don't get me wrong... As far as I'm concerned the 360 is still the undisputed ruler of the next generation. It's making the most money off of its software, it has the largest library, the largest install base of dedicated gamers who actually go out and buy games, and HANDS DOWN the best online service.
I just can't, for the life of me, see how the next couple of years could pan out in terms of the hardware...
(Okay... that's not true.)
Since this is probably one of the only posts I'll get to make today... There is ONE way:
They could always make use of the fact that you can connect any EXTERNAL drive to the 360 and give-up on their whole Nazi encryption scheme. They've had people trying to crack the PS3's encryption since the damned system came out, and so far there has been only minimal success and THAT success is usually patched over because it's an online system. So there's really no reason for the proprietary drives.
Microsoft could either release a hard drive shell that's easier to put a 2.5 inch drive into or simply allow people to use their own externals. With 500GB worth of space (or more), then they could simply ship games on two or three DVDs, have the whole games install on the hard drive, and then it wouldn't really matter what kind of media they were running.
I've installed at least 15 gigs from an 8GB DVD (I'm thinking Flight Simulator X and some of the latest strategy games) So you could even have something like a 15 gig install for each game and a seperate disc that has nothing but uncompressed audio and cutscenes on it.
Granted... that's sort of thinking "outside the box"... and it doesn't really adhere to Microsoft's ridgid code... but they just proved with Super Street Fighter HD and Bionic Commando that they can be flexible when their lives are on the line.
Nobody wants to make the billion dollar mistake Nintendo made with Mortal Kombat I. (How on earth could there be a Rainless post THIS long without a shot at Nintendo?
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