Time Names Xbox a Most Significant Microsoft Moment
Time Names Xbox a Most Significant Microsoft Moment
November 12, 2008
Time is running a feature on the Top 10 Microsoft Moments, and the Xbox made the list.
No, not the (fairly) sleek 360, but the extra-beefy original. From the article:
By the [2001] holiday shopping season, gamers all over America wanted them, launching a three-way battle for video-game dominance between the Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube... Microsoft had a $500 million marketing budget for the game platform, which also contained a hard drive and Internet connectivity. The Xbox was more powerful and more expensive — not to mention heavier — than the PlayStation 2, but lacked Sony’s stable of popular games — it didn’t take off as a platform until the stunning success of Halo, a mankind-vs-aliens space opera that helped redefine the first-person shooter genre.
Other high (or low) points include the release of MS-DOS, Windows, BOB and those quirky commercials featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.
GP: The pic shows a working prototype that was on display at E3 in 2001.
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Posted 11/07/09 at 04:27pm
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:26pm
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:23pm
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:18pm
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
Posted 11/07/09 at 03:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:58am
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:56am
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:51am
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:48am
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:11am
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:07am
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:05am
JDKJ: I'm no psychologist, but I'm told that crazy people have a tendency to do crazy things.
JDKJ: I'm no psychologist, but I'm told that crazy people have a tendency to do crazy things.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:03am
chadachada321: Whoops, was out of the convo for awhile. I do wonder what type of ammo he used etc, but the real issue is WHY he did it, not HOW
chadachada321: Whoops, was out of the convo for awhile. I do wonder what type of ammo he used etc, but the real issue is WHY he did it, not HOW
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:56am
JDKJ: But if it turns out that they actually did, they'll have Hell to pay.
JDKJ: But if it turns out that they actually did, they'll have Hell to pay.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:45am
JDKJ: And I'd tend to rule out the possibilty of FN Herstal supplying restricted ammunition to someone merely because they're ordering it from a military base.
JDKJ: And I'd tend to rule out the possibilty of FN Herstal supplying restricted ammunition to someone merely because they're ordering it from a military base.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:37am
JDKJ: I know you don't leave your gated community and get around much in dark alleys, so you may be surprised to learn that there's this thing called "the black market" where, if you've got enough money, ain't too much of anything which can't be bought.
JDKJ: I know you don't leave your gated community and get around much in dark alleys, so you may be surprised to learn that there's this thing called "the black market" where, if you've got enough money, ain't too much of anything which can't be bought.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:36am
Austin_Lewis: Or, maybe he or someone else at the base ordered the SS190 from FN Herstal.
Austin_Lewis: Or, maybe he or someone else at the base ordered the SS190 from FN Herstal.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:32am
Austin_Lewis: the hands of private owners. They run about 300 dollars minimum for a box of 50, and boxes of AP 5.7 are extremely scarce, mainly residing in the hands of Class III stores or individuals who for one reason or another got a demo box of it.
Austin_Lewis: the hands of private owners. They run about 300 dollars minimum for a box of 50, and boxes of AP 5.7 are extremely scarce, mainly residing in the hands of Class III stores or individuals who for one reason or another got a demo box of it.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:30am
Austin_Lewis: There are other firearms that fire the 5.7. However, I too would like to know where he got the ammo and what kind was used. Maybe Hasan, planning not to live through this, went out and bought one the boxes of SS190 that are floating around in
Austin_Lewis: There are other firearms that fire the 5.7. However, I too would like to know where he got the ammo and what kind was used. Maybe Hasan, planning not to live through this, went out and bought one the boxes of SS190 that are floating around in
Posted 11/07/09 at 08:44am
JDKJ: And it isn't yet clear what type of ammunition Hasan used. It's strange that he purchased a gun but didn't purchase ammunition for it at the same place and time. Especially because the calibre required is peculiar to the actual gun.
JDKJ: And it isn't yet clear what type of ammunition Hasan used. It's strange that he purchased a gun but didn't purchase ammunition for it at the same place and time. Especially because the calibre required is peculiar to the actual gun.
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Comments
This is news? I thought that it was sort of, you know, obvious.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
I collect consoles and games, but don't own an Xbox because I think it was a big pile of <insert vulgarity here>. I am, however, a happy Xbox360 owner since the number of exclusive titles worth owning is above 4. Personally I think Microsofts best move was the functionality of the newer console and it's seemless transition to XBL, something Nintendo even in their infinite wisdom have failed to act upon.
I never got that <insert vulgarity here> Xbox either. I have an Xbox 360 though, because of the games.
Agreed.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
The RROD was the reason I held off buying an XBox360, but I waited until they had brought out the next version of it and they seem to have improved on design hugely. Plus it also helped I got the elite console using Pokerstars Points :)
How they dare to call a semi-brainless 3rd person shooter with huge lack of imagination that redefines nothing 'Opera' is beyond my understanding skills...
Quite possibly because it more closely resembles a space opera rather than sci-fi. Besides which, the highest calling a game need answer to is to be fun, and halo did achieve that, regardless of the twelve year olds on xbox-live.
I googled that words and looks you're just half-right:
"Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale."
ok for the last part but can't agree for the emphasis on romantic and melodramatic adventure, pretty absent into the Halo saga.
About the fun part, well it's very subjective - I found Halo pretty boring because the lack of intriguing contents
You've clearly never seen any of the Master Chief and Cortana fanfiction then...
seriosuly though they were terrible terrible games (the single player at any rate)
Onto the fun part, that's subjective by definition. I understand that. Not a problem, because personal preferrence is just that, personal.
Secondly, I was referring more the the actual character than the plot/technology itself, as space opera has more of focus on characters than normal sci-fi, as sf has a higher focus on ideas and tech. That's something you learn from watching and reading both genres, respectively. Master Chief is closer to a space cowboy than a starship captain/hacker/scientist/bounter hunter/merc/whatever. Or so is my opinion, anyway.
So the only requirment for making an entire game fall into the genre of "space Opera" is for one character to be a "space cowboy"... nuh-huh... what genra a game falls into is determined by the overall plot and the story as a whole. Halo clearly does not fit what i think would define a "space opera". really the story is no better than what you find in just about any sci-fi story... there would need to be A LOT more focus on the story, characters and drama for it halo to be considered an opera
The halo bashers of all people are the ones claiming halo doesn't have a plot. So I focused on the character. So if it's assuming Halo either no plot or shit plot, then I took it out of consideration to accomodate this side's bitching. So if you take that out, what else is there?
Master Chief is Halo, and Halo is Master Chief. He's the entire damn thing.
As a secondary point, a story need not be better in order to be classified in a genre. Space opera can often come out cheesy, and just as bad as some sf. So sorry if I confused you there. It's bad space opera, does that help?
Wait, it didn't take off as a platform until Halo? Ummm, wasn't Halo a launch game?
Someone over at Time needs to get their timelines straight.
Anyone who thinks Halo redefined first person shooters is a fucking moron. Halo brought absolutely nothing new to the table. If you want to talk about redefining first person shooters, Half-Life is that way.
Half-Life? You mean the game with the ridiculous plot and gameplay mechanics that died out a decade ago? You mean the game where the story takes a back seat to searching for more health packs and armor? The game whose only remarkable feature is a physics engine and the amount of furor its fans defend it with?
plot is subjective, you could say the same about halo.
Half life may have been released in 1998 but we're comparing it to something released in 2001 so it's a good comparison. We're talking about the original halo not halo3.
If you spent more time searching for health packs and armor than advancing through the level thats your problem, i for one never had that problem.
So yes i agree half-life was much more re-defining than halo who brought nothing new to the table, but if you want to compare it to something from the same time frame, Max Payne and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, even Serious Sam.
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Alright, let's examine that plot. We have evil corporations, alien overlords, and psionic grubs. None of that could really be called "high-brow". In fact, I could probably peice the entire plot together from 1950's sci-fi novels. It doesn't even make much sense. How on Earth could a human population with no water survive? Where is their food coming from? How are large apex predators like antlions able to survive, much less breed, when there's nothing that they can eat?
Let's look at the health system: it's been in use since Doom. It was gradually replaced with totally healing medkits and regenerating health because there was no way that anybody other than the most skilled players could go through the game without scouring the levels for health packs, because there was really no way to use cover effectively.
Let's looks at the guns: you somehow have access to a pocket dimension where you can carry pistols, machine guns, a shotgun, and the one unique gun in the game: the gravity gun. Hell, at least Doom had a BFG.
The only thing Half-Life brought to the table that was "new" was FPS puzzles, a physics engine, and high-end graphics.
Compare that to Halo. In Halo, you had two gun slots, with reasonable access to ammunition for them throughout the levels. You had smart enemies, who were described as bot-worthy even then. You had graphics on a console game that were on par with a PC game. You had vehicles as a key gameplay mechanic, a feature which is STILL uncommom (and no, an overlong vehicle section does not a key gameplay mechanic make). There was a regenerating shield (I'd guess that this is where regen health got its start) on top of a health system which used static bars, but could be fully healed by the health packs that occasionally pop up.
Health systems like Half-Life do better in multiplayer games, where they lead to a resource control element. In single-player games, it merely distracts from the environment. The player becomes a drug addict, going from fix to fix just to stay alive. Attention payed to your health is subtracted from attention payed to your enemies.
Oh hey, were you guys talking about something? I was busy recalling the redefinition of FPSes with GoldenEye on my 64.
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The Mammon Industry
Goldeneye proved that an FPS can work on a console, something up until then that failed miserably.
Prior to this, I think Quake (and more specifically QuakeWorld for online play) defined the way the FPS plays today.
Additionally, kudos to GameSpy for creating an interface for finding online servers which most FPS and MMORPGs wouldn't dream of doing without.
sry Dark Sovereign - it's unfair to be 3vs1 but I have to point you out that you still haven't told us, beside advanced thechnical features (well halo was younger too), what great plot Halo had, how much involving the story was and why.
The truth is they where two different sci-fi games: HL was leaned toward a storyline and Halo to the gear, special effects and free ride. Somebody find one side funnier, somebody else the other.
Actually, I believe he covered that in the first part of his post.
ok so somehow halo's story about a distant future we colonize space, meet some aliens that hate us, and we fight is somehow unique? You're gonna go find their homeworld and try to nip it at it's source, nothing that hasn't been done before, almost reminds me of r-type in FPS form instead of SSS and more depth. Like i said, plots and stories are objective and vary from a person's point of view. I personally liked HL's story because it feels just like the goverment to be developing something top secret, experiment goes awry, weird aliens invade and they try to silence the whole thing even the survivors, it appeals to me. I guess you only played HL2 since you're talking about antlions and such, none of that existed in HL1. And who says they had no water in HL2? I don't recall that anywhere, there were plenty of stages with water and near the coast and such. You had to race a dune buggy near the coast and also had an air boat running through a river, very fun stage. they never said the animal population died off but even without normal animals i'm guessing antlions ate people. halo's story did not appeal to me but i'm not going to argue one is better than the other cause it's a matter of taste. "Different strokes" as it were.
You may think that having limited weapon slots is unique to halo but it was first implemented in Rise of the Triad back in 1995 (a great game for its time i might add). It ran on a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine so it's not like halo broke the mold with that bit. Bullet based weapons in ROTT did however have unlimited ammo but it's really just more fun that way at the time, they could have made it limited if they wanted to.
Personally i don't see anything wrong with a health system that makes the game more challenging, if you have a problem keeping yourself healed up maybe its time to set the difficulty to easy so you don't have to scour for med kits and energy for your shield. I ran through it requiring only the occasional refill at the wall mounted health/shield recharger. If i got hit too hard and screwed up just consider it a loss, you screwed up, reload from the last save point and try again.
Also, "described as bot-worthy?" Technically all enemies you fight in a game are bots, its just AI making their decisions. Once again you're comparing a game from 1998 to a game from 2001 so if you wanna compare AI, lets pick something closer to 2001. Max Payne was a great play, so was Serious Sam with gobs of enemies to slaughter, and return to castle wolfenstein, all in the same year, all with good AI also so the AI isn't exactly a ground breaking first for Halo either. Even Deus Ex for the PC had some great AI that flanked me several times and made for good combat, included an inventory system and the ability to modify weapons, character augmentations to increase different skills, each situation had several possible solutions to allow you to use stealth and cunning or brute force depending on how you modded your body, excellent graphics for the time and good story and it came out in 2000.
So tell me again what was revolutionary about halo?
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Did I ever actually call Halo revolutionary? Take a look at my post instead of simply generalizing as one of the numerous idiot halo fans, for one. They irritate me, but I dont dump a game in the trash pile because of some idiots like the game. That's like those jerks who automatically decide a band is shit because people have actually heard of the band. Granted, the majority has bad taste, but not 100% are bad.
The highest calling a game need answer is that it should be fun, or at least, enjoyable to those who bought it. I never said it was revolutionary or that it had a good plot. If I wanted a decent plot, I'd be walking to my library and checking out a decent book. Sometimes, blowing off steam is what appeals to me. If you dont like it, then dont spend your hard earned money on it.
I'd be enjoying the Orange Box if it wasn't for the goddamned code you need to play it(It's installed on my old pc, but it died.). But while I love a little puzzle now and then, it's not illegal to want to play different games.
late response by me sorry i've been in a cave playing wotlk. I never said you called it revolutionary, actually i wasn't responding to your post i was responding to darksovereign, he's the one claiming the plot much better than HL1 and somehow that makes halo better than HL. Then again he apparently never played HL1, and apparently only played the leaked portion of HL2 where they hadn't even added water to stages (i played it too, at the time my R9800 pro could barely run it decently) but by release those stages had the water added.
The article was claiming that Halo redefined FPSs, which is what is being argued. Neither did I say Halo was a pile of trash, simply that it wasn't the revolutionary game so many people claim it to be. You're right, it was a fun game and that is all a game needs to achieve to be considered a decent game, which halo was decnt and the 4 way split-screen deathmatchs on a big screen were fun too. To reiterate: Halo was a great console shooter, but far as FPS gaming in general goes, it was nothing new or amazing on the FPS front, at least not for anyone with a long history of FPS gaming although I can see why life long console gamers would think it's all never been done before.
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Lets just keep in mind the arguement i'm making is not a HL1 vs Halo1, it's that halo is touted by halo fans as being amazing, groundbreaking, and revolutionary in the FPS genre. I contend that it was groundbreaking in the console FPS genre, not the FPS in general genre.
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Finally somebody says the key word: console. Halo was the first dual-thumbstick shooter that played decently. Does that mean it was a good or innovative game or had a solid story? Nope. It just had a decent application (for the time) of what were classically PC FPS ideals onto a home console/controller.
THANKYOU. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this.
i remember when it came out, so many new-gamers were just so awed and amazed by it. I was assualted daily by dumb statements on how the graphics were vastly superior to the computer blah-blah-blah and for that I hate the original xbox and halo. At the time i had a good gaming rig so I had a really hard time seeing halo as an amazing graphical work.
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Lol yeah. I remember pre-ordering my 3dfx voodoo 5500 (with it's whopping 64mb RAM and ground-breaking anti-aliasing) and the other side of the box had a rendered pic of Halo, which was then a PC only FPS/RTS hybrid. I used to have such high hopes for that game... then MS bought it and announced the Xbox.
The graphics were well done, if not advanced. But then again, I love snow, and the colors blue, purple, and gray, so that might have something to do with it. It had my favorite colors .
MEH, the xbox would've been a HUGE failure if not for legions of Halo fans. The system had crap for games, MS bought it's way into the console marke by buying up bungie and the rights to Halo. Therefore in my mind the XBOX isn't really an achievement at all, it was really MS's business tactics that won the day for them. Likewise with the 360, getting it out so much earlier than the PS3 (at the cost of hardware stability...) secured them lot of games.
Timing helped, but the PS3 is a bitch to develop for, something the N64 had problems with also and you can see similarities in the lack of 3rd party support, and additionally the exclusives for the PS3 just fail to excite me in any way shape or form. The XBox360 just gathered pace, sorted out their woeful hardware problems just in time and started to develop a decent catalogue. I really don't give a damn about the Halo series and yet I love the console (though I concur with your thoughts on the original XBox).
The article calls the xbox a Microsoft moment, not a gaming moment, though. Even if it is just business tatics on Microsoft's part, it still stands as a meaningful moment for Microsoft. Though we mainly talk about games here, Time doesn't.
Being that we're talking about Microsft here, does it really surprise you? It's how they work. Making everyone use their stuff, if possible, appears to be their main goal.
Crap for games? how about the best WW2 game prior to COD2 on the 360 and still holds up even now. I am of course talking about Brothers in Arms, Great story, great gameplay, great characters, emotionally stirring, and it was very very hard.
Oh yeah and also Ninja Gaiden. you officially lose this argument
United we Stand, Divided we fall.
Crap for games? how about the best WW2 game prior to COD2 on the 360 and still holds up even now. I am of course talking about Brothers in Arms, Great story, great gameplay, great characters, emotionally stirring, and it was very very hard.
Oh yeah and also Ninja Gaiden. you officially lose this argument
EDIT: the hell why aren't my replies going under the person im replying too?
EDIT2: oh never mind Dennis can you delete my extra post for me.
United we Stand, Divided we fall.
Yeah, most of the exclusives relatively sucked, but there's no denying it had the better hardware.