OPINION: FFXIII on Xbox

For details, see this story...

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3168704

I don't like this much. I don't care as much as this guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-uTnqYHZ-I (I dare you watch the whole thing without feeling a deep sense of sorrow for the human race...)

but I nonetheless feel somewhat upset at the announcement. Microsoft's policy of buying everything they don't have, including console market share, is disturbing. The simple fact is that due to their PC software pseudo-monopoly they have more money than just about anybody doing anything anywhere. So even though the original Xbox was a complete business failure for years, the entire Xbox part of the company not even turning a profit until close to the end of the consoles viable life (if you want to call it that), we still get an Xbox 2. Other companies can't work this way, because they have to follow the regular Adam Smith rules of business. Microsoft shoveled a crap system with crap games for years and didn't even bat an eye.

This time around they have really learned that it is actually about the games. You can thank Halo and Bungie for that. Also they have learned over years of failure that there is a hardcore of japanophile gamers that wouldn't buy their system if their life depended on it. The solution? Get A class Japanese titles on their system, pronto. How are they doing this? With pure capital. Can you really blame Sqeenix for taking the cash? I don't. What are they losing? Not a thing. Who made them the custodians of the pristine Japanese game development pipeline? The developers are the winners.

We're the losers, as we are with just about anything Microsoft touches. Could they even have done a better job than they have thusfar with their amazingly popular software business? Probably not, but giving them any more capital for any reason is just nuts. They're the British Empire of the next stage of world history, basically. The world badly needed a standard operating system for it's personal computers, Microsoft had the best opportunity to be the one the world chose, and the world chose Microsoft. Now what people like the disturbed boy above are reacting to is a care for the pass time of video gaming itself.

Things have been going swimmingly for decades with the reins of the industry in the hands of a couple Japanese corporations, each jousting for the top spot, each creating great games and hardware in cutthroat competition. Microsoft has bought it's way into the market with brute force economics, but has not and will not contribute in the way that Sega, Nintendo and Sony have. Microsoft will not take the industry forward, unless you count "Achievements" as important as Mario or the Emotion Engine.

Did anyone else really want a PC hooked up to their TV? Besides Microsoft that is? The first Xbox was practically a Packard Bell in black and green. What are they adding to the conversation? You aren't buying a dedicated game console, you're buying a second PC, a PC where Microsoft controls every possible variable. Who wanted that? There is the frustration. The market kicked the first Xbox to the curb, and we are still seeing them on store shelves. The Japanese have yet to be fooled thank goodness, but now it is perhaps a time where Bill and the boys can make some headway there. That is of course only if they can pull their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that releasing FFXIII for 360 in the states but not in it's homeland is an amazingly poor move. They won't be making any friends across the Pacific like that, but they really don't need to do they?

For me personally, I'll be damned if I will ever have my hands in Microsoft products all day at work, and then do the same thing when I'm playing games at home. I just won't do it. Now, Valkyrie Profile on Xbox? Then I might have to buy a video camera.