[Harry]

Originally Posted by kupoartist

That's more than a little inaccurate and unfair If anything, the 360 is comparable to the Playstation 2, which was "rushed" between a year and a year and a half before the X-box and Gamecube were, just as the 360 will be this time round. The Dreamcast was between 2 and 3 years before the others, and the hardware was majorly inferior, whereas the 360 isn't that far behind the PS3 by most reckoning.

While a comparison with the DC is inaccurate, this is how the Xbox 360 risks to be perceived by gamers in some parts of the world (probably not in North America), and I am sure marketing analysts at Sony thought about this.

Microsoft tried to do what Sony did with the PlayStation 2, as kupoartist said. But then again, games they have released so far for the Xbox 360, with a couple of fine exceptions, look like Xbox games in HD. The problem is, in my opinion, that when Sony launched its PlayStation 2 there were few games being released on non Sony platforms; on the opposite, the Xbox 360 has been launched while many AAA titles are still being developed for PlayStation 2. I am speaking of Shadow Of The Colossus (I can't find a game on the Xbox 360 as spectacular or as brilliant as this), but also God Of War, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, the soon to come Final Fantasy XII, the wonderful Rogue Galaxy (a great RPG from the same developers behind Dark Cloud), and many more. I think Microsoft underestimated this, capitalizing on the next-generation fever. Also, the Xbox was released one year later than the PS2, yet a new Xbox is released one year before the PlayStation 3 - this means two years less in the life span of a Microsoft console. Gamers - in particular those not living in North America, where multiple console owners are much more frequent than in Europe - do care about this kind of things.

In any case, as I said, the 360 and the PS3 will be directly comparable in terms of performance, like the PS2 and the Xbox did. If Sony is unable to launch a system that is slightly superior in terms of hardware to the Xbox 360, then they do have some trouble, especially because they are the ones, together with Microsoft, trying to market their console as the "most powerful".

I think things could get really interesting once the true second generation of Xbox 360 games and the first decent PS3 games will hit the stores. I just hope this generation will bring something more than hordes of nameless, soulless cross-platform releases from big corporates. Both Sony and Microsoft need to focus more on unique software for their systems than on silly comparisons of empty system specs.