X-not (Microsoft Xbox)

Member Name: Dringostarr

Product:	Microsoft Xbox
Date:	09/05/02 (748 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good games now, Internet Ready, Hardrive

Disadvantages: Bad controller, Lack of exclusive future titles, Big and ugly

The Microsoft X-box is a great piece of kit, hard drive built in makes the use of a memory card extinct (nearly), Internet ready out of the box showing instant support for Internet gaming and boasting the best specs around.

Sadly though this console fails to live up to either the Playstation 2 or the Nintendo Gamecube. The initial launch games are outstanding; Halo is the best first person shooter around. Amped is great fun, Dead or Alive 3 is the best fighter this earth has ever seen, Jet Set Radio Future is quite possibly the greatest game SEGA have ever made and Project Gotham manages to rival GT3 quite well. So surly this console is a must have with games as great as that, well the quality of games isn't the problem, the fact is the X-box is awful to play on. Vital to every console's fun factor is the controller, if it hurts to play you wont want to play and so the games are not fun. Gamecube's new controller is excellent, PS2's despite being an old design still works beautifully and the X-box frankly does not. Playing Halo is good fun but would be a hell lot more enjoyable if you weren't messing around with the controller all the time and so these games lose something that would have made them the greatest games on earth on the Gamecube or PS2.

Second of all despite the initial batch of great titles everything from now on in dries up. No more exclusive and excellent X-box titles, Shenmue 2 is a port of a Dreamcast game and it still may go multi-format, Hitman 2 is now a PS2 game as well, even titles such as Bloodrayne and Dead to Rights are multiformat. X-box has run out of exclusive smash hit games everything else is cheap PS2 ports or multiformat games. Bungie's Halo 2 promises yet another exclusive smash hit but that?s a year away. Sony have the rights to both Psygosis and Polyphony making two ace racers Wipeout and GT exclusive to them and many other titles like Metal Gear Solid and Tekken always appear first on the
PS2. Nintendo have more exclusive titles than any of them, Factor 5 make PC and Gamecube games and never make games for PS2 or X-box games. Nintendo themselves develop their own titles such as Mario and Zelda and then there is HAL, Camelot, Rare, Silicon Knights, Retro Studios and many more second party developers.

The fact is Microsoft are struggling, they have a technically good system but the amount of exclusive titles are reducing, Nintendo had a slow start but exclusive games Resident evil, Starfox Adventures, F Zero, Super Smash Brothers, Bloody Roar, Super Monkey Ball, Zelda, Mario Sunshine, Metroid, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Racing, Animal Crossing and so much more, shows already why the cube outweighs its closest rival. We can't count out the PS2 either, Final Fantasy titles, Tekken, Ico etc... Are all massive and basically exclusive hits.

So when you spend £200 on an X-box your getting a great laugh, for a few months at least, £130 for a Gamecube gets you a nice console now and an even better one by the end of 2002. The best of the X-box is avalible now, Gamecube's is still to come and soon I realize that £200 for an X-box isn't really worth it, despite online capabilities, options to add songs and DVD player. So be warned, it looks good now but in a few months you will be trading it in for a bigger catalogue of the PS2 and better future of the Gamecube. You have been warned!!!

Dringo.

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