This is a crucial point, because the Xbox was originally touted as the platform for PC developers who wanted to migrate to console titles with a minimum learning curve. "Clearly the Xbox has a lot of advantages for developers," acknowledges Levine. "That's no secret. GameCube is relatively easy to develop for ... PS2 is a bear to develop for, but can you say 'installed base' and 'backwards compatible' and 'zillions of AAA franchises'?"
Not only that, a wealth of PS2 ports of excellent PC titles, like Half-Life, Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate are already on the console's release schedule. There may even be a small stream of Linux applications for PS2 coming soon, with Sony releasing a development kit to Japanese Playstation users, and scouting out the interest in an American version.
In any event, the Xbox's reputation as being the ultimate developer-friendly console seems to be waning, even before its release. "I never quite understand why Lorne Lanning [of Oddworld Inhabitants] stands up at every conceivable opportunity and mentions how Munch's Oddysee could only have been realized on the Xbox," Geoff Keighley says.
All this doesn't speak much for Xbox's prospects for expanding from the relatively slender beachhead it will likely have after this Christmas. "My guess is that Microsoft can survive one less-than-spectacular holiday season," says Bergman. "Two would be a serious blow."
"Given the challenge they faced, I think Microsoft did a great job with the launch. They've got a lot to compete against," says Levine. "It's going to take time and money to overcome that. However, Microsoft has two things going for them: time and money."
The company is taking a substantial loss on every Xbox sale, apparently hoping that the superior hardware inside will be its best future asset. On that score, the future hope for Xbox may lie in its connectivity functions, featuring a 100 megabit Ethernet connection and the preloaded potential to create an audience for console-driven online games. "If Sony had managed to launch their online network this fall (as was originally planned)," says Shacknews' Bergman, "then they would have a decent lead on Microsoft and would be able to put up a good fight against the Xbox (which has a built-in network adapter)." Failing that, Microsoft may now have an opening: "Xbox is well positioned for online next year," says Keighley, "whereas both the GameCube and PS2 seem to be behind the pack. But if Microsoft wants to be a serious player it needs more exclusive Xbox content, a better marketing strategy and a really compelling value proposition for the machine's online gaming component."
"The problem is that Microsoft has done next to nothing to exploit this hardware and show its potential," continues Keighley. "Think about it: The Xbox has an 8 gig hard drive. That is revolutionary, yet Microsoft hardly ever talks about it." But emphasizing the hard drive would probably require a shift away from traditional console games toward titles with vast inner worlds and multimedia-rich features; toward adventure and role-playing games and other grandly conceived, story-driven genres, in other words, which more and more resemble PC games.
"In a year," says Irrational's Levine, "I predict the market will be segmented into the PS2 crowd and the Gamecube crowd with Xbox being much more of a niche machine. Past a year or two, all bets are off."
Or as Geoff Keighley puts it: "What Xbox game are you looking forward to playing that is due in 2002? It's a rhetorical question. There are virtually no Xbox games announced for 2002 . . . [B]ut gamers buy consoles based on future potential. I can't tell you how many gamers bought a PS2 simply because they know the next Final Fantasy game is coming out for PS2 next year."
And he's right. As thin as the 2001 Christmas list is, Xbox's '02 lineup seems even less substantial, with nothing even close to resembling anything as ambitious as FreQuency or the Lost; certainly nothing, as Gates would have it, to capture the hearts of women or the elderly. For my own part, the only announced Xbox title to attract more than mild interest is Project Ego, a role-playing game from Big Blue Box, a satellite of Peter Molyneux's Lionhead Studios. Molyneux will also help oversee design of this game -- in which players create an avatar that, over decades of game time, literally ages in front of you, in a world that tangibly alters according to the actions you make within it. But then, Project Ego isn't expected until Fall 2002 at best -- and considering the long delays for Molyneux's PC game Black & White, who knows when it will really arrive?
"We don't change the way we do business based on changes in the competitive landscape," says an unperturbed Darren Horwitz, speaking from the Northern California office of Sony's American computer entertainment division. "We are only competing with ourselves this holiday season to outdo the tremendous success of this year past."
But the Microsoft promotional crusade lumbers on anyway, occasionally bombarding the key TV demographics with a series of unimpressive teaser ads, hoping against hope that, willy-nilly, it can become a worthy rival to the Japanese. (The European teasers spots for Playstation 2's Christmas season, by contrast, were directed by David Lynch.)
For now, Microsoft is thrashing around for purchase in a market driven by cool -- led by a CEO who gets his groove on to old Gloria Estefan tracks, and a general manager who clamors for games as original as the best independent and foreign films but has no perceptible clue what such an undertaking demands. Meanwhile, the industry's iconoclasts have already gravitated to the corporate culture that does know what it takes to let them -- and the company -- thrive.
One wonders if J. Allard even knows that "Run Lola Run" was actually brought to us by Sony.
This story has been corrected.
About the writer
Wagner James Au frequently writes for Salon, and is a contributing editor for Gameslice.
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