Why the XBox 360 may already be the next generation’s winning console
It’s heresy among the gamers to say that any particular console may have “won” a particular round of the game wars, especially when you’re talking about features not directly related to the games themselves. Over at Offworld, Jim Rossignol posts an excellent article discussing how the XBox may already be a generation ahead.
All I have to do is consider that I already spend most of my time gaming on a PC. Partly that’s because I’m an old man with a fetish for humming boxes that I built myself, and partly it’s because I want all the other features that a PC offers: instant access to my email, Twitter, screen-grab software, and my own music to replace generic rock track X on racing game Y.
If the 360 does start to support all these things (there’s no confirmation as to whether Last.FM will be able to run in the background as a soundtrack to your games), it’ll become the kind of gaming machine that I want to spend my time with for more reasons than just because it has some games that my PC doesn’t.
It will become a device that has more of the networked infrastructure, and more of the media tweaks and toys that I take for granted as part of my desktop computer.
I think that there’s way more to it than just this. With the Natal Microsoft is planning to re-launch the XBox. And if I’m reading between the lines correctly, they’re essentially going to do what Nintendo did with the Wii, except they won’t even bother to beef up the hardware. They’ll simply bundle the new motion technology in and go on a media blitz. And I think that could work. After all the box will basically be able to do everything from downloading games to playing movies and music off of your home network.
It’s taken a while, but the 360 may finally be the “everything box”.
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