Xbox 360 destined to fail ?

Microsoft are pulling out all the stops in a last desperate bid to dominate the home console market. The Xbox360 is due out in less than a month, which they hope will give them a headstart on the PS3 due out next year.
The big problem, which everyone is downplaying, is compatibility. As far as we know, Microsoft's line is still (at this late stage), that Xbox games won't work on the Xbox360. They say the top-line games will need some re-coding and will be released in 360 versions. If that's really the case, then they're expecting people to cough up $400 for a machine that won't play any of their existing games. Or $300 for the lower spec machine which doesn't have controllers or a hard drive (ie. its useless).

Compare that to the PS3 which will play all PS2 and PSone games.

Anti-Microsoft bigotry aside, I can't see how they expect this plan to work. Who the hell is going to pay $60 for another version of a game they already own? Simply stuffing the console out early isn't going to compensate for the fact that it isn't backward compatible.

That's not the worst of it. The launch title looks set to be Project Gotham Racing 3. In the footage available on the web of the finished game, as demonstrated in the last couple of weeks at the X05 show, Microsoft either have some very serious hardware or software problems, specifically in their inability to page textures properly. Click the image below for the full-size 140kb version and look in the areas I've highlighted. Each pair of pictures is one frame apart. Check out the nauseating pop-in of the low-level texture to the high-level texture. Watching this entire trailer, I couldn't absorb any of the gameplay or other eye candy because the popup texture was so very very obvious and distracting. (See it for yourself at gamtrailers.com).
You'd think for a launch title they'd pull out all the stops to prevent stuff like this from getting through, and being Microsoft, you'd think their PR people would have jumped on this and not allowed it to be showed. But if that's what the Xbox360 is, then that's what it is. It's white for a reason - it's a white elephant.

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