Are we shipping something tonight? Heheh.

"How many posts can I get to without mentioning GYM again?"

Who cares when you are cheating. About 4 of your posts have involved your company.

“I never thought I’d say this, but by the standards in
this industry Microsoft is actually looking relatively innovative.”

Compared to whom? Sony or Nintendo? I think Nintendo has them both beat hands down on the innovation front. Whether that helps them or hurts them, we'll have to see. The new controller will either be the next Power Glove fiasco or the new Gameboy for Nintendo.

The case for PS3

Pros: Near triple the market-share. Same price, far far better compatibility (fully backwards compatible with PS 2), better game selections, better hardware, Cell chip and Blu-Ray. Wide array of data storage and transfer features (CF, SD, Memory Stick).

Cons: No 'Live' offering yet and Sony Developer tools are a royal pain.

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The Case for Xbox 360

Pros: It's here now (well sorta), impressive launch list titles, great developer tools. Lots of third-party accessory makers. Finally not a big black box of death.

Cons: Consumer confusion per 2 versions and legacy backwards compatibility glitches serious, DOA in Japan. High sticker price. Aimed at hardcore, too much push on Xbox Live. Worldwide shipping strategy a trainwreck. Media Center functionality being downplayed. MFST FUD marketing drones slagging PS3 every other eye-blink. Less demand to move away from legacy.

Christopher: >Pros: Near triple the market-share.

How can something not shipping have triple the market share? That sounds like a Microsoft PR trick! I'm jealous. I wish I had tried that. Yeah, imagine what you'd say now: Microsoft Windows Vista -- 20x the market share of OS X.

Nah, I don't think that'd work. ;-)

How much money we are going to lose on each unit, Robert?

Christopher: full backwards compatibility is merely a dream for Sony. They know they won't achieve it. In fact, their most recent slimline PS2 won't even play all PS2 games. But Sony's already gone on record as saying the PS3 will not be 100% backwards compatible with either PlayStation on the market. They will likely beat Microsoft pretty bad though, at least in Japan where the Xbox 360's BC list is what? 14 games?

I like gaming related posts, as it's my thing (www.gamesarefun.com) ;)

Incidentally, that long tail quote is out of context. Bad Robert! He wasn't specifically talking about the video game industry there, but rather the media center industry, if one can call it that. But even if he was, it's a weak compliment. Using words like "by the standards of the industry" and "looking" and "relatively" are much weaker than saying "Microsoft is leading the industry in innovation."

"Impressive launch list titles" - you call the list of mostly sequels 'impressive' for the Xbox 360, Christopher? Really?

And I'm with Goebbels (that might be a first), the whole GYM thing was already declared bogus 50 posts or so ago. It was a nice effort though to look outside of what already is mostly available at digg, memeorandum, slashdot, etc.

For Scoble, and the clueless, I was taking about current unit marketshare, the footprint is 3x as great. 90 million, to 22 million (with 6-7 Xbox 360's forecasted). So even if only half upgrade, you are still starting from a larger pie, just random statistical inference.

Ok, let me make this easy...

30 million - Xbox (22 million) plus Xbox 360's (forecasted) sold at end of 2006. Giving it an extra million to even out.

90 - Million PS2 users NOW. Assuming only half upgrade, you are still 15 million ahead of where Xbox will be in 2007.

See? Make sense?

And backwards compatibility is always but a dream, but Sony will reach into the thousands, MFST has 12 titles for Japan. And yes, Vista will have way more than 20x the marketshare of OSX (long-term). You track existing marketshare, and forecast the upgrade potential.

Actually tho, more iPods out there than current Xbox and forecasted Xbox 360's to 1Q 2007, iPods just hit 30 million, kinda amazing really. Xbox still has tons of things going for it, Xbox Live, 3 cores, but the hubris of the current marketing is overwrought. A good second place showing, I am impressed, but that won't be enough to take down PS3.

TDavid, well, I agree in principle, but talking about the quality of each one unto itself. Geesh, trying to be positive for once and get dinged. ;)

I'll also bet that no one will beat Nintendo in terms of backwards compatibility.

Robert, you might want to look into this: http://www.ps3blog.net/2005/10/13/top-10-reason... and after reading a review from IGN (and they pretty much know their stuffs), I think I'll wait for PS3 to come out.

My comments:

the thing people forget about Sony (and something that Microsoft never tries to exploit, I don't know why) is that Sony is very deceptive in its marketing...

anyone remember Sony's comments when the PS2 was coming out:

1) back home in my country we heard that PS2 was being banned since North Korea was using the "Emotion Engine" to power inter-continental ballistic missiles...I kid you not!

2)Real-time rendering of toy story like graphics..

3)AOL etc etc deals for online this and that...

And you don't have to go far to see that this is a strategy employed by Sony...check out the naming convention: Emotion Engine, Reality Synthesizer, Cell chip...all of which makes you feel that you're getting a machine made by God...while the RSX chip is an m-architecture for nvidia's G70 chip (releaed 3 months back)...

MS shies away from such things (again, I have no idea why cause by right they should do all this as well) e.g. when MS could've simply announced at E3 that they'll offer backwards compatibility with Xbox titles without saying anything else...they chose to tell everyone (truthfully or whatever) that it'll be backwards compatible with the "top-selling" Xbox games...and u see 214 and counting titles on the list all enhanced on the Xbox 360...

my point is: Why is everyone (here and elsewhere) giving Microsoft the stick for announcing what is real vs not even thinking for a second that ALL those promises being made by Sony will eventually vaporize...

Recent examples: Sony Rootkit, and the Movie Reviewer Sony BMG invented for its own movies...

Conclusion: bash Microsoft all you want...but be reasonable in your strong bias against the company...

Oskar: cool. When that comes out I'm sure there'll be a Nintendo announced that'll be even better than the Sony. And after that it'll start all over again.

So BillG is going to be at the bellevue best buy??
Might run over there just for that. :P

That's the rumor, I don't know if that's true.

Is The Xbox Coming Back To Stores WHEN?

when is the 360 going back to stores?