by: Marcus Yam
Microsoft pulls no punches in pointing out PS3 mistakes
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Console wars are the sweet fuel to all fanboy discussions, and whenever a representative of a particular games company says something particularly scathing about the competition, explosions are sure to follow.
Xbox product manager Aaron Greenberg recently spoke out in an interview with Destructoid regarding all the apparent shortcomings of Sony’s current PlayStation execution. “We have been fighting Sony’s promises from the day we entered the market and if you remember at that time it was all about PS2 being an online cybercity with partner announcements from the likes of RealNetworks and AOL,” he said.
Greenberg’s comments were in response to a question regarding whether or not Microsoft would be able to stand up against what will likely be PlayStation 3’s best year yet with games such as Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, among others. But Greenberg isn’t completely taken with Sony’s software promises, saying, “Then three years ago at E3 they showed what PS3 games would supposedly look like with the Killzone 2 video, that we are now learning will ship four years later. That means that we will have shipped Gears of War and Gears of War 2 before they can even get Killzone out the door.”
PlayStation Home was announced at the Game Developers Conference in March 2007, and is more than a year behind schedule, although Greenberg figured it as two years. “Think back to GDC 2007 when Sony promised to leap ahead in online with the Sony Home unveil. Here we are two years later and multiple delays for a product that has appears to have little to no buzz.”
Greenberg then opened the floodgates with a barrage of critical questions: “Where are the achievements? The friends list integration across all games? Where is the long-promised video store? Where are all the other products using and networking with their CELL chip? How come Blu-ray did not result in better games? What happened with Sixaxis and rumble? Where is the complete 1080p game library we were promised? If Blu-ray as they said would be such a catalyst to PS3 console sales, then why have PS3 sales over the past couple months not seen any lift since the format victory?”
With all that said, Greenberg returned to preaching the strengths of the Xbox 360. “The reality is that Xbox 360 is leading this generation with a larger installed base, more than 2xs the games library, the most exclusives along with the leading online service and community. While we have not yet announced all of our plans for the full year, I am confident that we will extend our lead over the PS3 in 2008,” he said.
While the best of 2008 has yet to arrive (with the exception of Grand Theft Auto IV), the fight for second place is far from over. The first place, of course, appears to be firmly in the grasp of Nintendo with its Wii.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter predicted that even with the release of Rockstar’s latest open-world hit, the Wii would be the top selling console of April by a huge margin. Pachter estimated that the Wii outsold the PS3 and Xbox 360 combined, though he also figured that Sony’s machine sold more than Microsoft’s console. NPD Group findings will be available this Friday.
I guess you could say I'm an anti-fanboy because I am very negatively opinionated about M$! 