Zeckt said:
I am now on my fourth xbox where my first 2 had RROD and third had trouble with the huge bar thing continously turning off and the dvd driver not closing properly. My fourth xbox is the limited gears 3 one which comes with 2 gears of war controllers both of which are screwy. The one had its b button get caved in after 2 weeks and the second continously loses battery power over and over. This is my 5th xbox controller to mess up.
I've had Xboxs for about six years now. My first one lasted four years before it RRODed, a bloody long time. My second would still be lasting now, as I never had any problems with it - the only issue is that it was actually stolen from me, causing my switch to a third console, which has been 100% fine so far and that I've had for almost two years now. I'm still on the original controllers from that first console, which have never had a problem save for needing the battery changing.
And just look at their live service, where it costs developers 40 thousand dollars for a simple patch on their games. They lured a bunch of small independent developers and with the new update beat them in a corner and charge developers huge amounts of money to put games on the arcade.
Okay, maybe the company are screwing larger developers. However, I'm working for an indie project myself, and guess what system we're developing for? That's right, Xbox Live Arcade. So we've actually done our research, and I feel more qualified therefore than you to say that quite frankly, Microsoft make things easy for small developers. Maybe it's because they know those small developers don't have the money for Microsoft to bully from them?
With the new patch we are bombarded with advertisements, and they have the guts to raise the price on live for something which really should be free. You have to have an active live account to have access to "perks" like netflix (thats a JOKE) and live ruined any communication with their community with their games. Just look at the sorry state of the dungeon defender dlc, microsoft acts like bloody money grubbing tyrants and just look at how it ruins games that thrive on dlc like l4d or team fortress 2. You cannot mod ANY game on the 360, which makes people who bought skyrim on the 360 insanely jealous of all the fun the pc community gets to have with user created content. Microsoft simply does not ALLOW us access to it because it contradicts their ideals.
Free? You really expect XBLive to be free? It costs a hell of a lot of money to run, you know. What's almost $100 to you is about £40 here in the UK, and that is a very reasonable price to pay for playing online for a whole year, if you use it often enough. A lot of new release games give a free month or three months free anyway, and what you say about things like Netflix is a simple case of you not doing the research. Those things require the activation of XBL
SILVER, which is (and always has been) free. Dungeon Defender DLC is down to the development team, not Microsoft's Xbox Live division, andall Microsoft really acts like is a fair and normal company. Just like Apple, just like Sony or Nintendo, and just like (insert your vavourite corporate moneypot here). Back to the price, do you know how much it costs each year? To run Xbox Live, you need a team of at least a hundred people, you have bills everywhere, lighting at the servers, running the servers, the electric, maintenance (with the amount of traffic XBL gets it's a wonder the servers haven't burnt down yet), maintaining infrastructure over a vast area to keep up worldwide support, not to mention all the PR support, customer service (which I've dealt with and have only ever had good experiences with at Microsoft), and everything else a company needs to actually run. For all that, I see £40 a year as a piddling amount to pay. Look at PSN, anyway. I've had experience of PSN and Xbox Live, as before I got an Xbox I was a lifelong Sony supporter. And PSN, quite frankly, is crap. It may be free, but I'd rather pay and get a good service that also has decent security than Sony's trash service. Again, this is coming from someone who has experience of both. My opinion, but still a valid point...
Also, mods. Why does the Xbox need mods? I will concede that it would be nce to get mods on the Xbox, but it's not something that's necessary. Especially as in this day and age, almost everyone who owns an Xbox 360 will also have a PC (or Mac) anyway, so there is absolutely NOTHING stopping people from buying PC games instead. Sure, you may argue that people might not have a computer that can run up-to-date games, but that's bullshit, because it's easy (and not that expensive) to either get a custom build or to buy updated hardware and add it to your computer. To play the current generation of games anyway, you only need a build from 2010 onwards with updated drivers, I'd say. Which most people should have in their homes as a matter of course. Hell, I can play the latest PC releases (and do) on a laptop that only cost me about £800 - quite a reasonable price for the build it is. If I want mods, I'll simply buy a game for that instead of the Xbox 360, it's that simple.
Enough is enough! all microsoft accomplishes is strangling developers with their bullshit, and get away with releasing GARBAGE hardware so you have to re-buy the console and controller over and over and they actually have the guts to charge you almost 100$ a year to play games online.
See my above comments.
Next gen microsoft NEEDS to lose the race because they are literally keeping gaming in the dark ages with their selfish tactics. In a perfect world everyone would buy games only for the pc so developers / consumers can enjoy freedom and the biggest hurdle for developers would not be the money to make the games, but only their creativity. Will microsoft ever have gems like Cave Story, SOL exodus which is trying to make a space combat comeback, or Terraria? NO, because they ask for way too much money. Microsoft is the equivalent of the church in the dark ages.
What is there to defend about the 360 other then brand loyalty?
Plenty, see my above comments for details. Also, what you say about people only buying games for the PC? That marks you out as both a PC fanboy who isn't willing to give other systems a chance, and also as a fool. You really think a PC-only world would be better for gaming than an Xbox-only world? Neither would be good, because you need competition. That's one of the most fundamental rules of business (and yes, this is BUSINESS we're talking about - game companies are companies, after all...). A PC-only world would do as much as Microsoft apparently are to stagnate development, because the lack of competition from consoles would simply mean no drive or incentive to create or innovate. Change and creativity don't just come up unbidden when money s on the line, no matter what you may think. There's no market for creativity and independance when the big PC companies are controlling who gets the money. It really isn't hard to understand, you know. Basically put, your entire argument is wrong. That's that.
I'm not saying Microsoft are perfect, I've had problems with them in the past as well, and I know the pain of losing a console to the dreaded RROD. All I'm saying is that they're nowhere near as bad as you make out, and you are basically biased, and apparently seem to be nothing more than a PC fanboy, which is nothing worth bleating about.
