Th!nkEmpire: I’m blogged out

Th!nkEmpire: I’ll get something tomorrowish

Th!nkEmpire: chewing around a few ideas

Gr00veMerchant: lol

Gr00veMerchant: yeah

Gr00veMerchant: I’m thinking about talking about the death of the Xbox 360

Th!nkEmpire: the death, eh?

Gr00veMerchant: yep

Th!nkEmpire: how so?

Gr00veMerchant: Cause of Death: Stupidity by not having the foresight to A.) Support a Hi-Def format fully and B.) Shamefully put their tail betwixt their legs and embrace Blu-Ray as champeeen.

Th!nkEmpire: ah

Th!nkEmpire: lack of hard drive?

Th!nkEmpire: integrated, at least

Gr00veMerchant: not so much that, I have a 120 GB hdd on my Xbox, and I have support for externals and flash drives and better still my pc rig.

Th!nkEmpire: hmmm okay

Gr00veMerchant: but to 1.) Not have some sort of hi-def drive built in or pumping money into HDDVD before it was way too late.

Th!nkEmpire: yeah

Gr00veMerchant: and now to turn their back on blu-ray after its success is just effin’ retarded

Th!nkEmpire: but, the lack of a hdd shoots the concept of provided a relatively uniformed platform for development, does it not?

Gr00veMerchant: the inclusion of a hdd at the sub-350 price point and a 120 GB hdd at the sub-450 price point shoots that concept to shit.  And worse still, they’ve still provided an option of a unit without a hdd, which impedes the progress of “next-gen”/now current gen gaming.

Th!nkEmpire: That’s what I’m saying

Th!nkEmpire: The fact that they provide an option lacking a hard drive removes a, say, consistent operating platform

Th!nkEmpire: developers who want to develop a game that utilizes a hard drive now cannot

Th!nkEmpire: (you see this ‘issue’ more with a BR-DVD, as the data seek time is pretty retardedly slow)

Th!nkEmpire: but

Th!nkEmpire: take, for instance, FFXI for the ps2

Th!nkEmpire: we’re going old school here

Th!nkEmpire: it sold dick

Th!nkEmpire: for the simple fact that, 1. it was going to sell dick anyways

Th!nkEmpire: but 2. I need a peripheral to run it

Gr00veMerchant: I hardly think the douche bags that own an Arcade/Core system, are the market that I’m talking about here.

Th!nkEmpire: heh

Th!nkEmpire: there are some, such as Sherman (you’ll remember him, who bought one because they could buy a hdd separately and it was cheaper outright)

Gr00veMerchant: The person who owns the core/arcade system was A.) A cheapskate, and not deserving of such luxuries or B.) Impatient (and probably a cheapskate) and didn’t wait for a proper system to become available and thus exempt from such luxuries.

Gr00veMerchant: Oh Shermanator (Sherman is a former co-worker of ours - ED.)

Th!nkEmpire: What about the common issue of a parent buying a system?

Th!nkEmpire: I still don’t understand why a company would want to fragment their own installation base so much

Th!nkEmpire: it’s like

Th!nkEmpire: they’re

Gr00veMerchant: An uneducated buyer who doesn’t care about their kid or the long-term benefits of such a purchase is at their own fault.

Th!nkEmpire: playing towards a PC

Gr00veMerchant: I agree.

Gr00veMerchant: They should stick with (1) perhaps (2) systems, tops

Th!nkEmpire: I’m all up for educating the parent, but what it comes down to, more often than not for the parent, is that “what’s cheapest”

Th!nkEmpire: so I can get more stuff

Gr00veMerchant: See, and this again goes back to foresight.

Gr00veMerchant: While the price was initially cheaper, was the long-term cost really worth it?

Gr00veMerchant: for essentially at launch what was 50 dollars?

Th!nkEmpire: but consumers want options, sir!

Th!nkEmpire: OPTIONS DAMNIT

Gr00veMerchant: Options should be things like “What color accessories shall I buy?”  or “I prefer sports games” or “Nintendo Wii”.

Gr00veMerchant: Not the bastardized platform which encompasses (360… get it) Microsoft’s endeavor.

Th!nkEmpire: You mean: “I don’t want to play my system after the first month I get it, or for the rare first-party game that comes out”

Gr00veMerchant: I wouldn’t buy a 300 toy for 1 months use, and I’ve damn sure learned not to count on first party games given their rarity (Unless of course I’m a Nintendo Fan boy)

Gr00veMerchant: I think we’ve found our post for tomorrow.