Power On: The Story of Xbox [Documentary 6 Parts]

[eastmen]

The Blu-ray standard was finalised in 2004. I don't know if this would have been a good idea, but given the size of many of the games, DVD wasn't an ideal choice. Quite a lot of high-profile games shipped on 2 discs (AC3, Borderlands GOTY, Dragon's Dogma, Skyrim Legendary Edition, Dead Space 2 and 3, Fallout 3 GOTY, FO New Vegas GOTY, Mass Effect 2 and 3, Witcher 2) and a bunch shipped with 3 discs or more (Blue Dragon, Elder Scrolls Oblivion GOTY, Final Fantasy XIII, LA Noire, Lost Odyssey, Rage, Star Ocean).

It obviously wasn't a deal breaker but it's the only technical aspect of 360 that felt like it hadn't moved forward from the previous generation.

I dunno , the only physical 360 game I had was sneak king that I got free from burger king. Most of us thought dvd and bluray for games were already dated. I am also glad I bought digital as I can still download all those games today without needing the disc .

Now for movies physical still leads the way but hopefully that changes soon

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Most of us thought dvd and bluray for games were already dated.

In 2005? It's only been in the past few years that digital downloads have overtaken physical media sales so let's not go nuts and claim this was the case fifteen years ago.

 

[Nesh]

I had both consoles. I really saw nothing better from my 360 compared to my PS3 except that it was faster to navigate between game and OS, and that the controller was more comfortable for some games, (but a total freakin disaster with fighting games).

 

[BRiT]

I really saw nothing better from my 360 compared to my PS3 except that it was faster to navigate between game and OS, and that the controller was more comfortable for some games, (but a total freakin disaster with fighting games).

Guess you never played online games with friends. If you had, you'd have clearly remembered how great cross-party chat regardless of game being played was on the X360. There were even folks who used X360 party chat to organize their gaming sessions on PS3. You can probably even find posts on here by ShiftyGeezer or others at the time filled with loathing of PS3 live experiences.

 

[mr magoo]

Ms with X360 got so many things right it’s almost unbelievable. Online, social, gui, achievements, arcade games for gods sake it used cloud for profile settings and saves before cloud was even a thing. X360 was incredible jump in the future and changed gaming. Many features that we take now for granted and are available everywhere originated on x360 and that’s why for me personally it’s the best console ever.

 

[Nesh]

Guess you never played online games with friends. If you had, you'd have clearly remembered how great cross-party chat regardless of game being played was on the X360. There were even folks who used X360 party chat to organize their gaming sessions on PS3. You can probably even find posts on here by ShiftyGeezer or others at the time filled with loathing of PS3 live experiences.

I played GoW 2, 3 and judgement (coop and competitive), and Halo Reach Coop with friends.
I dont remember much regarding how they compared. I remember that Sony at some point made some improvements that I cant recall.
I spend a lot more time playing fighting games online on PS3 which found dreadful on a 360 controller.
But in general I wasnt the kind of person that was very interested in "online gaming socialization" and chatting. But I did play online on both
I was happy with both
Maybe there were some extra details you guys were more interested in than I was.
My PS3 got significantly more playtime than my 360 did

 

[Nisaaru]

It obviously wasn't a deal breaker but it's the only technical aspect of 360 that felt like it hadn't moved forward from the previous generation.

Back then I installed every game I wanted to play on HD first because playing with active DVD was simply too loud

 

[see colon]

The Blu-ray standard was finalised in 2004.

Maybe, but it wasn't commercially available until 2006

The first Blu-ray disc players were sold in mid-2006. The first Blu-ray disc titles were released soon after this, which was on June 20, 2006.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Back then I installed every game I wanted to play on HD first because playing with active DVD was simply too loud

Exactly that double-edged sword. Going with DVD meant game installs to HD were more common much sooner than on PS3 where many games would only run from the disc.

Maybe, but it wasn't commercially available until 2006

This is referring to the drives capable of playing Blu-ray movies. The physical disc standard and specification for data was finalised in 2004. Nobody was making and selling mass-market drives in 2004 or 2005 because the mass-market was going to be driven by movies but Sony, LG, Panasonic or Hitachi could have built a data-only drive fro Microsoft. Again, I'm not suggesting this would have been sensible but it was a technical option.

 

[goonergaz]

Microsoft didn't get any luckier with 360 than Sony got with PS1. Many of the problems that PS3 had were the same problems Saturn had (complicated development environment, priced higher, wacky marketing). I see your point, that it should have been more of a win for Microsoft given the missteps from Sony, but Xbox did do very well. PS3 might have overtaken 360 in worldwide sales eventually but PS3 still lost to Wii in that regard But Microsoft won North America big. 360 is the second best selling console in NA of all time, behind PS2 by less than 5 million units last time I checked. And as poorly as they did in Japan (PS3 outsold 360 6 to 1 or something there), that was a huge growth for Microsoft. I think they doubled sales over OG Xbox while Sony's sales were halved from PS2->PS3. Also, unless things have changed drastically since I last looked, PS3 is still ahead of PS4 sales in Japan. Who knows how long Sony will sell PS4's. Perhaps they will catch up.

Couple of major differences;
1) PS1 was their 1st console X360 was MS 2nd
2) Saturn had a year head start PS3 did not
3) PS1 smashed it out the park in all aspects, if we’re comparing to X360 then it really did fail
4) The US will always support their own and very US focused products

I completely agree. In terms of the design (ignoring RRoD), Microsoft knocked it out of the park with the 360. They jumped right on unified shaders before they were the norm in the PC world, Epic had persuaded them to double the RAM to 512Gb whilst developing Gears of War, EDRAM allowed easy 720p MSAA and the console sold for a good price. The only thing Microsoft could have done better was a higher-capacity optical medium instead of DVD. For movies Microsoft backed HD-DVD but couldn't quite bring themselves to put the drive into the console. This meant a bunch of games shipped on multiple discs, but even this was a double edged-sword as it introduced the norm of installing consoles game to the HDD which was faster than PS3's Blu-ray drive.

Which kind of shows why some of us consider it a failure, you didn’t even mention the very one sided face offs and lack of Sony exclusives at the start of the gen, then Kinect which helped boost sales later on…all so much in favour yet launches aligned sold less each month (bar the odd Xmas IIRC)

Sony only survived because of its music and property groups . If sony didn't have the vast resources it did have it would have gone the way of sega during the ps3 generation.

Lol, like Xbox has always been such a financial success for MS.

 

[Nesh]

Lol, like Xbox has always been such a financial success for MS.

He also ignores that Sony managed to turn around the PS3 in the same generation making it a product people wanted.
Something the original XBOX did not succeed at.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Which kind of shows why some of us consider it a failure, you didn’t even mention the very one sided face offs and lack of Sony exclusives at the start of the gen, then Kinect which helped boost sales later on…all so much in favour yet launches aligned sold less each month (bar the odd Xmas IIRC)

This leans in what @JPT said earlier about goals and expectations. Pre-launch of PS3 Sony's rhetoric was utterly bonkers and detached from reality. They were complete asshats. But as they got closer to launch, and for a period after, Sony clearly had very different expectations because you cannot launch a $700 console a year or more (fifteen months in the UK - Xbox launched in November 2005, PS3 in March 2007) after your competition and still expect to sell loads.

I have never understood why Xbox has not sold better internationally but when Microsoft's best and most popular effort (360) sold as many than Sony's worst (PS3) you can understand why Microsoft wanted to change their business model so that it was not predicated on game sales which are related (attached rates) to hardware sales. Recurring subscriptions is the way to keep the money coming in on a predictable basis.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This is referring to the drives capable of playing Blu-ray movies. The physical disc standard and specification for data was finalised in 2004. Nobody was making and selling mass-market drives in 2004 or 2005 because the mass-market was going to be driven by movies but Sony, LG, Panasonic or Hitachi could have built a data-only drive fro Microsoft. Again, I'm not suggesting this would have been sensible but it was a technical option.

And that was the problem. At launch wasn't one of the largest costs for the PS3 the Blu-Ray drive? And shortages of ... was it the drives or the crystal that was used ... meant that producing PS3's in quantity were problematic. Looks like the crystals were the culprit behind the shortages (Blu-ray laser shortage ending; PS3 price cuts should follow | Ars Technica ). And that didn't end until sometime in 2007.

Had MS decided to include Blu-Ray with the launch of x360, the console likely would have been dead in the water due to issues with not only a large enough supply of the drives but the cost of the drives as well.

I remember at the time BRD drives started to appear for PC, I looked into it because I was interested in getting one, however, the price was exhorbitantly high (for me). I don't remember the exact cost, but it was in the 500-1000 USD range IIRC just for a bare bones OEM white box internal drive.

Without help from consumer Blu-Ray media players the component cost associated with Blu-Ray drives wasn't going to be driven down far enough for it to be a feasible cost in a console in 2005. And it's questionable if it was feasible in 2006 either as that was one of components that paradoxically almost sunk the PS3 as a viable consumer device while at the same time giving many early PS3 adopters the only reason to get one.

Of course, as the generation went on and the cost and supply of drives improved, it turned out to be a good decision, but it was touch and go in 2006/2007 whether the PS3 would be able to survive the massive losses the console was incurring for Sony. Losses that at the time were primarily driven by the Cell and the inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive.

Regards,
SB

 

[goonergaz]

Yeah, from memory the Blu-ray drive was a Trojan horse in PS3, but I really appreciated just needing one box that did everything, I seem to recall if you actually bought the bits to make parity with PS3 the 360 cost more.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And that was the problem. At launch wasn't one of the largest costs for the PS3 the Blu-Ray drive? And shortages of ... was it the drives or the crystal that was used ... meant that producing PS3's in quantity were problematic. Looks like the crystals were the culprit behind the shortages (Blu-ray laser shortage ending; PS3 price cuts should follow | Ars Technica ). And that didn't end until sometime in 2007.

There was a shortage of blue diode, that's right. Much of the cost of PS3's drive attributed to the the codec licensing, and the DRM implementation and the diode shortage also caused a spike as demand outstripped supply which also drives up costs.

Blu-ray was one approach, HD-DVD was another option. Double-sided DVDs or despoke double-density DVD were others. There is a seemingly endless number of variations of optical discs which are all based on the same technology - a laser able to discern digital encoding at specific track widths, at various numbers of layers.

 

[eastmen]

Couple of major differences;
1) PS1 was their 1st console X360 was MS 2nd
2) Saturn had a year head start PS3 did not
3) PS1 smashed it out the park in all aspects, if we’re comparing to X360 then it really did fail
4) The US will always support their own and very US focused products


Which kind of shows why some of us consider it a failure, you didn’t even mention the very one sided face offs and lack of Sony exclusives at the start of the gen, then Kinect which helped boost sales later on…all so much in favour yet launches aligned sold less each month (bar the odd Xmas IIRC)


Lol, like Xbox has always been such a financial success for MS.

1) The ps1 competed against a broke sega and 18 month late nintendo
2) Saturn did not have a year head start. Both consoles were released within months of each other . Saturn Nov 1994 , May/July 95 for NA/EU. Playstation Dec 94 for japan and sept for na/ eu.
3) Sure because one of its competitors was just a video game company and the other was making video games and love hotels. mean while MS went up against a huge multimedia conglomerate and a love hotel company.
4) That is true of all territories.

There are a bunch of people here who want to dismiss Microsoft as being lucky that Sony messed up but wont acknowledge that Sony is lucky sega and nintendo messed up. Your still going on about it.

He also ignores that Sony managed to turn around the PS3 in the same generation making it a product people wanted.
Something the original XBOX did not succeed at.

Did Sony turn the ps3 around ? Last I look it still sold a third less than the ps2 it also shipped about 13 million less than the ps1 . Looks like as per wikipedia ps3 with 87.4 million unit ships , ps1 with 102.5m units sold , ps2 with 155m units shipped

 

[Nesh]

Did Sony turn the ps3 around ? Last I look it still sold a third less than the ps2 it also shipped about 13 million less than the ps1 . Looks like as per wikipedia ps3 with 87.4 million unit ships , ps1 with 102.5m units sold , ps2 with 155m units shipped

From a struggling slow start, a one year delay in America and a one year and a half in Europe it surpassed the 360 in total sales
So yeah they did.

 

[eastmen]

From a struggling slow start, a one year delay in America and a one year and a half in Europe it surpassed the 360 in total sales
So yeah they did.

Did it ?
According to wikipedia the xbox 360 sold 84m as of june 2014. The ps3 numbers are shipped only.

Such a stunning victory tho going from 155m units sold to 87.4m shipped while your competition goes from 24m to 84m.

Man I'd love to go to my boss and tell them I made a product that barely managed to sell half of what the previous one did while loosing billions on it to get it to sell. Got to love the hard core fans stanning for it

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Such a stunning victory tho going from 155m units sold to 87.4m shipped while your competition goes from 24m to 84m.

If the point you are making is that Xbox's biggest commercial success was no better than PlayStation's biggest commercial failure, then you made it well. But that would be a really weird point to make whilst not mentioning that Wii easily outsold both.

 

[Nesh]

Man I'd love to go to my boss and tell them I made a product that barely managed to sell half of what the previous one did while loosing billions on it to get it to sell. Got to love the hard core fans stanning for it

I wonder how you feel about the OG XBOX then
And XBOX One sold like...hmmm
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/449842/switch-vs-ps4-vs-xbox-one-global-lifetime-sales-june-2021/