LogFAQs > #976976115

slacker03150 posted...

It also had hands down the Best controller

I'd argue that this should say "worst controller", but honestly, even in its generation the Dreamcast existed, and it was coming on the heels of the N64, so even I can't say that.

It was still a terrible controller though.



Cruddy_horse posted...

I don't even understand how the Xbox made it to the 360, I'm glad it did but all Xbox had was Halo 1&2, plus Fable 1 but aside from those games the library sucked ass and felt pointless next to a PS2.

Never underestimate the power of Halo.

Not only was it one of the best-selling games of that generation period, it had a huge percentage of the overall install base of the console. The sales numbers alone are something like 1 out of every 3 people who owned an Xbox were going to own Halo (though that might be deceptive - throw in people buying replacement consoles and the correlation probably goes up). Halo 2 comes even closer to being like 1 copy for every 2 Xbox owners.

I know that from my personal perspective, I think pretty much everyone I ever knew who owned an Xbox also owned Halo 1 and 2. I can't think of any other game in the history of gaming that had that level of penetration (maybe Super Mario Bros, but that only pulls it off by virtue of being a mandatory pack-in that comes with nearly every version of the console).

Ultimately, the 360 got made because the original Xbox met Microsoft's expectations. They didn't jump directly into the marketplace and instantly become the #1 console, but they were still almost on par with Nintendo (the company perceived as THE video game company for more than a decade), and they beat Sega (the other long-term competitor). From their perspective, they'd proven they could be a viable company in the market, and understood that if they built on their success and corrected their mistakes, they could easily improve (and they very much did).

It's easy to compare other consoles to the PS2 and the Wii and view them as failures, but both of those were ridiculously unnatural outliers for their generations (and neither managed to repeat that success). I don't think any major console developer is going to see themselves as a total failure and decide to maybe drop out of the race unless they're selling below 20 million units (like Sega and the Dreamcast), or are having tons of totally unrelated internal corporate drama and chaos going on making it nearly impossible to continue (like Sega with the Dreamcast).

Hell, even Sega probably would have come out with a 7th gen console to compete with the PS3/360/Wii if not for the fact that they'd been spiraling internally since screwing up with the 32X and Saturn. It wasn't a single failure that drove them out, it was repeated failures and a lot of bad corporate decisions that left them unable to go on. But Microsoft was in a very strong and diversified position in the mid-2000s, and could easily take the chance on the 360 doing better.