I agree with Grant. Microsoft wedged its foot in the door to the game industry with the Xbox which created an opening to the gaming market. It was eventually enough that Microsoft would be able to pry the door open from Sony’s grasp and enter house with its portly self.

Sony is able to overlap console generations because the previous generations were successes. The original Playstation had a large fan base and the PS2 still has an overwhelming market dominance. It would be stupid of Sony to brush off such a large market and source of income (something the orginal Xbox lacked).

Sony has always used their own customized ASICs in their Playstation line. This has allowed Sony to continue to integrate the various chipsets in the PSX and PS2 and migrate to smaller geometries over time. That was how they were able to transform the original Playstation into the PSOne and the PS2 into the PSTwo mini.

Microsoft put themselves in a bind when they took essentially off the shelf parts from Intel and NVIDIA and licensed them for use in the XBOX. They did not own the CPU or the graphics chip nor any of the other controller ICs in the box; they even included a harddisk which was an added cost component above and beyond what the PS2 offered. I applaud Microsoft’s inclusion of the harddisk; however, try as they might, they could not cost down the system using the same strategy that Sony employed. In fact, there was no way to cost down the XBOX significantly at all. So while the PS2 continued to go down in cost, XBOX was losing money out of the gate and each time Sony dropped the price on the PS2, it was costing Microsoft even more money to drop the price of the XBOX and stay competitive in the marketplace. Sony was really bleeding Microsoft dry in the last generation.

Microsoft really had to take a few pages out of Sony’s playbook to construct the XBOX 360 so that they would not be placed in this situation again. By doing so, Microsoft chose to go with new custom ICs, which they hold the intellectual rights to. While this will allow them to cost down the 360 over time – think Falcon which is the 65nm shrink of the current 90nm chipset, it also meant that XBOX 360 would fundamentally not be backwards compatible to the XBOX.

Sony achieved backwards compatibility to the original Playstation by building in the physical PSOne chipset onto the PS2 motherboard. They could do that because they owned these ASICs. Over time, they were able to integrate that functionality into the PS2 emotion engine or integrate key hardware while using some software emulation. You can see this in the PS3. The original launch PS3 included the hardware PS2 emotion engine on the motherboard. That was an expensive way to go, but now that Sony has started to get a handle on software emulation of the PS2 emotion engine, they’ve pretty much dropped the IC on current production PS3s.

Since Microsoft didn’t own the CPU nor the graphics chipset that powered the XBOX, they’ve had to do software emulation for XBOX titles on the 360. All in all, I’m very impressed with the list of XBOX games that Microsoft has managed to make compatible with the 360, and they continue to work on title compatibility to this day. Given the incompatible nature of the hardware, it was probably right for Microsoft to kill off the XBOX. They wanted first party and third party developers fully focused on the next generation. Not letting go of the XBOX would have created a double whammy for Microsoft – continued and increasing losses for each XBOX sold, and less attention of developers to support the new 360 platform. We as consumers may not like it, or understand the reasons, but it was a smart business decision.

And despite the hardware issues on the XBOX 360, many people still continue to support the platform… why is that? It’s because of the games. Can you imagine what might have happened to the 360 in this generation had developers not been fully focused on the 360 and there were not as many amazing titles available for it?

In the end, I believe Microsoft killing the original XBOX was the right thing to do. Why? Because they ensured the survival of the XBOX brand and lineage and ensured that Microsoft would continue to be in this market instead of letting Sony dominate it unchallenged. This provides consumers with more choice by increasing competition in the marketplace – which are all good things.

Please look at the other articles here such as What is Sony? What is Microsoft? What is Nintendo? Which try to further analyse the building bricks of this industry. Considered comments to these (or any other article) is very much appreciated. The wider the variety of input the better the understanding.

Thanks again,

Bruce

If you check the books by renouwned New York Times writer and now Mercury Times writer, Dean Tackahashi, you see the true idea behind the discontiuation of the 1st-gen Xbox.

As early as 2003 the Xbox 360 was in the pipelines of developement, even though the 1st-gen xbox had only been on the shelves for less than 6 months, which was released in Nov 2002.

At the time, it was seen that the 1st-gen xbox was “simply a move into the market place, not aimed at being a long-term placeholder”. It was MS’s way of getting a “foot-in-the-door” as they say. It was always scheduled for a short life-span from day one. And there were working with a seven year plan, which included the release of it’s succesor in late ‘05, which was being worked on only weeks after the release of the 1st-gen xbox.

They had estimated that by the end of the seventh financial year, coming up soon, the platform “might” just break even, if the 1st-gen console was farmed out, to allow developers to concentrate on new-gen titles, rather than split their already floundering studios resources.

They had “estimated” it could loose as much as $US9.3 billion should things NOT go right for them, as a worse case senario. This figure was known to them on the outset of the 1st-gen Xbox, and even Bill Gates and Robbie Bach signed off on that figure, reluctantly at first, but it was shown that in the long term, it would pay off.

Ed Fries worked closely with all the developers on both the 1st-gen and the early stages of the 360’s life. Ensuring they (Dev) had tools and services that they could rely on, without to much fuss, and to a level they (dev) wanted. MS Xbox-Div, via Ed Fries, worked closely with the developers to ensure they (Dev) got what they wanted. It was the developers more than anything else that wanted clear patterns of work loads, so they could concentrate solely on one acrhitecture, rather than two which were completely different to each other.

This is why the two games, Perfect Dark Zero, and Kameo were ditched as 1st-gen games, even though PDz was almost fully complete, and Kameo had but months to go before being completed. Their (MS Xbox-Div) choice to then ditch all the code and begin again, promted them to move Halo 2 to a later release date in ‘04, and Ed Fries actually tried to get that extended a further 9 – 12 months, but was only given a repreve from April ‘04 to Nov ‘04 for its completion and release. This was to be followed up with Halo 3 some time later, well into the 360’s life-span. Which is a complete story in itself.

If the developers had two different platforms to develope for, their tasks would be multiplied at least 3 fold, as working with a new style of architecture, is like doubling your workload, if not more.

The 1st-gen Xbox had a finite life-span, it was on schedule to be “retired” at the time it did, and was supported by MS until they knew it was no longer a viable thing for both developers, publishers and themseves as a manafacture.

Additionally, they didn’t own the rights to the 1st-gens hardware, this possed probelms for them, so when they asked for tenders for both the CPU and GPU, one of their stipulations was that they (MS Xbox-Div) wanted to own the rights to the components. Something the ealier CPU manafactures did NOT want to do, but ATI and IBM were willing to do.

This gave them control over how and where the items could be built, and a level of costing to bring the initial price down on manafacturing, and reduce the time between initial launch prices, and the first level of price reductions due to continual redesigning of the components. Which, as we all know, is common with all hardware being built these days.

Their aim was to break even, or at least have a “component costing” below their inital figures by early or mid ‘07. Which btw they succeded in doing by early in ‘07, with a surplus of $US75 in the costing of parts. This didn’t include production however, so they still ran/run at a loss once that factor was taken into account.

To do this, they needed to concentrate on just one line of product, and thus allow all manner of accessories to be made for it, where they are able to make a greate rprofit margin btw, by both 1st and 3rd party companies. To have both consoles would mean developers, manafactures etc would need to concentrate on two platforms for MS, as well as other major companies, such as Sony and Nintendo. Stretching their already stretched facilities and resources.

Many of which were showing negative readings in their annual reports, and having their stock shares dropping and the companies were running at a loss. Carrying that over into yet another platform, as well as a previous/current one, would only take them further into debt. Something MS and the 3rd parties didn’t want. They (MS Xbox-Div) wanted the dev etc to concentrate soley on the 360, which they have done, and in doing so, now have a listing of over 370 games coming out on the platform over the next 18 months, not including any games yet to be announced during that time. A listing that far exceed any other single console platform currently available.

I have compiled a list of in excess of 340 Xbox 360 Retail disc based games already, NOT including any XBLA games. If this was to have been split between both the 1st-gen and the This’Gen console, the number of Newer games would be far less, and be of lesser quality or innovation.

All of which makes perfect economic sense in the great scheme of things. But unfortunately, not many gamers look at the bigger picture – these days, and have a tendancy to be somewhat short sighted on such things, and are more into “instant” or “right-now” gratification. And the loss of an object, even if it was scheduled from day one, was seen, by their accounts, as a “silly (read *&^% dumb) thing to do” . . . .

But when you see WHY it was done, you can understand the reasoninng behind it. The two books in question are Opening The Xbox and Xbox 360 Uncloaked. The latter touches on the 1st-gen’s life and origions, as well as the 360 beginings. The former does go into the future of the Xbox brand, which includes their vision which included a Next-Gen Xbox.

You may be right as the 360 has a better software advantage as they have a lot of really good games out for their system and that may be from them getting a 1yr head start on the Compition but in the end I think it hurt more because as we all know the famed RROD (Red Rings of Death) has curbed it’s chance at dominating. So many people including myself have not bought the system for fear of it breaking down. Now yes they have extended the Warrenty but that doesn’t instill much confidence in their system I think it is more just to cover their butts. I still can’t believe that some people who have bought the 360 and it has broken down on them 2,3 or even 4 or more times still are loyal to Microsoft. Everyone says that Games make or break the System but that really doesn’t matter if the system constintly breaks down on you. If the Hardware is sound then yes Software can make or break it. It really shouldn’t be the other way around but also back to the point of the games. Most systems all
made by the Major Hardware Manufactures (Nintendo,Sony & Microsoft) never have good games in the beginning of the Console cycle but, now just like Microsoft they are coming out with great games from all different kinds of Genres such as

Heavenly Sword,Lair,Uncharted Drakes Fortune,Motorstorm,Folklore,Ratchet & Clank Future:ToD,Little Big Planet, MGS4 and many multiplatform equals

From this it seems Sony is coming to it’s own and has many IP’s from the Previous generation which I am sure it will take advantage of such as you Mentioned

God of War
Kingdom Hearts
Final Fantasy
Socom U.S. Navy Seals
Sly Cooper
Twisted Metal etc etc etc…..

As for the development tools I can’t comment too much as to how tough it is since I’m not a developer but some are able to do it and others can’t some like EA complain & complain about how hard it is while others actually do it and make it happen. I’m not denying in anyway that it isn’t more difficult for them but i think that when it comes to it being more difficult it sounds like some are saying it’s just too hard this is all we can do and seem to give up instead of trying to figure it out and make it the best they can or at least similar to the 360.Sorry but that sounds like lazy developers to me.I personally agree with Nintendo’s Miyamoto when he said something to the effect of….

“A Bad game will always be bad but, a delayed game may someday be good”

So in the end I don’t mind that a lot of the PS3 games get pushed back if it means they do need more time to make them the same or better than the 360 that’s fine with me. I rather wait for a delayed good game that pay the $60.00 for a bad game.

There is one thing that Microsoft has done right thru out all this that Sony hasn’t and that is it has developed a standard where Online must be included & Achievement implented in every game. Sony on the other hand has not said to developers This feature needs to be standard so a lot of games lack these extras. Not to get off topic but the same pretains to the Blu-ray VS HD-DVD war. HD-DVD Hardware has certain Standards while Blu-ray is everchanging it’s specs and hasn’t said to Hardware Manufacture’s this need to be standard. If Sony starts to implent such a policy I think it will help a whole lot.

Anyway, it doesn’t surprise me at all. This was MS strategy all along. They are not in to make money, they just want to overtake the console market and join PC and Console games into one. Like they did in the OS world.

Xbox, whether you like it or not, has a DirectX architecture and porting games between PC and Xbox is a snap. If it were to become the predominant game console, all games will be produced under DirectX, and that means $$$POWER$$$ for MS. Monopoly. Suddenly its OS/2 vs. Win 95 all over again. They haven’t made it this far, 5 billion and six years later, but they are still trying.

Console gaming is under threat…

Darkoon