How did the Xbox360 overthrow the Playstation heritage?

While we wait for the PS4 reveal, I'm wondering whether SONY beating Microsoft to the next gen pazzaz is gonna make people want a Playstation for the next gen, the same way the X360 coming a year before the PS3 made it the new cool thing.

But then I tell myself nah, the Xbox popularity is too big to be overshadowed by the PS4 even if it's revealed/released before the next Xbox.

But then I tell myself it happened before, the PS2 was the X360 of the last gen but the X360 came and took the throne.

I was playing on the PC up until 2002, stopped gaming for a while, then got back on board with a Day 1 X360, so I never was part of the PS2 crowd. So I ask you, how did the Xbox manage to overthrow the PS2? And will the PS4's reveal being earlier than the reveal of the next Xbox make the PS4 overthrow it and launch the next Playstation supremacy era?

five hundred and ninety nine U.S. dollars.

It might be because that 360 got a 1 year head start and the popularity of xbox live and Halo, before 360 ps2 was the go-to game system, then it changed completely.

Sheer arrogance. Now in video form!

@animasta:

Also that.

Two jobs.

A year head start, easier to develop on(x86) compared to Sony's arcane cell arcitecture and their inability to provide good dev-tools from the get-go and sheer arrogance.

The PS3 did actually surpass the 360 in sales world-wide this year though.

Can you fill the following blank? While Microsoft gave me the halo and the cod2 and the sexy online multiplayer, SONY embarrassed themselves and ruined their popularity by offering me ______

PS3 cost a fortune

No games

@officegamer: Actually, I've turned around on Sony in the years since the last generation. I'm mainly a PC guy now, but Sony has taken a lot more steps towards consumer acceptance than Microsoft has. I have a feeling that there will be a similar video for the Xbox conference from this year's E3.

the initial pricepoint of a 360 is much higher than the ps3, and always has been

it just was marketed as the cheaper product ( a lie) and shipped a year earlier

@videogamesarenotart: Umm, what fantasy world are you living in? The PS3 cost $500 minimum at launch, when the high end 360s was topped out at $400. You'd have to pay for 2 years of XBL to even out that price.

• Coming out a year earlier with a relatively robust online infrastructure and "better" features (some of which still have yet to be matched by Sony).
• Better games.
• Sony... kind of shit the bed by going crazy with the Cell processor. Developers were struggling with it long after everyone discovered that the 360 theoretically was less powerful, but a lot easier to develop for.
• $599. When the 360 launches at $399, and you still think a $200 markup is still a smart move...

As for the next-gen: it all depends on what's true of the rumours and what they actually announce. A solid launch line-up, reasonable price of the console, a good online infrastructure, actual real third party support... Nowadays, brand loyalty doesn't mean a lot when you give the consumer more value than the competition for a reasonable price.

All my friends had a 360 and a PS3 was like a million dollars.

Xbox netflix, set top box

@pudge said:

This nails it. Arrogance hurt Nintendo (N64) and Sony (PS3)... could be Microsoft's turn.

RIIIIIIIIDGE RACER!

Of that there is no doubt in my mind. Games are so low on Microsoft's priority list right now that I can't even imagine what the E3 conference is going to look like.

it had games with characters who didn't look like weird manchilds with girly hair.

The second people started playing Call of Duty on the 360. At least in the US.

Sony completely dropped the ball with the PS3 launch. They assumed that because the PS2 was popular, people would support their new console, regardless of price, lack of games and poor online support. The 360 beat them out of the gate by almost a year, was a more reasonable price, was easy to develop for, had a large amount of third party support and an online infrastructure that Sony are still playing catch up with. Remember what PSN was in the early days? Remember when there were no trophies and every multiplatform game looked and ran a million times better on the Xbox? And thanks to XBL, if your friends had an Xbox, you were pretty much forced to join them there. MS were very smart with the 360, while Sony were initially self assured and incredibly lazy.

The fierce competition really forced them to step up their game though. It'll be interesting to see what Microsoft does after the PS4 announcement, especially now they're the ones who seem to be slouching and risk losing their spot on the top.

One could argue that in the long run PS3 came out ahead. Not in sales but in quality.

Well, the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 worldwide. Just not in the US market.

But that said, one year early + PS3 $600 + easier to develop = better results for the 360

"$400"

then you add on the monthly fees

then you add on the wifi adapter

then you add on the wireless controller cost

then you add on the harddrive cost

you need to learn a bit about marketing, kid, it was marketed at a lower price, but the total cost was much higher for anything near what the ps3 offered out of the box

@miketakon: One could argue that, but one would be wrong about that.

The Xbox 360 came out a year earlier, was (initially) cheaper, and had Cawladoody.

The PS3 was two hundred dollars more, came out a year later, and had... Resistance: Fall of Man. Which isn't a bad game, but it's not Call of Duty 2.

lol

I still remember listening to an OXM podcast, I think. Maybe it was Garnet Lee, instead. Who knows. ~ But he said, "Do you know why Halo is the biggest game in history? Because Microsoft told you it is." Something like that. It was a gist. Regardless of what the truth is. Truth is CoD is, and that's waning too. Killzone has just a big of a chance to overthrow CoD at this point.

@peasantabuse: that's what i thought, you don't understand what "price point" means.

its the price a car on a lot might have at a car dealership, but it isn't the price you are going to pay when you buy it

Well, the most successful console isn't just the one that comes out first, there are a lot of different factors. But yes, the 360 did seem to benefit greatly from getting that one-year jump on PS3, and Sony could do the same thing with the PS4, but I think only if there's a large enough gap between the PS4 and Next Xbox launch. This feels pretty speculative, but I doubt we'll see that large a gap between the consoles this time round.

360 is still ahead of PS3 in total sales.

1 year headstart, PS3 coming out at $599.99 and Sony not delivering on the Killzone Trailer right out of the box.

How did the Xbox overthrow PS2? Well it didn't at all.

I know you mean 360 but you can't really compare that with PS2. Besides if you do that PS2 would still win in a matter of most units sold.

No 360 was so popoular because it was the first Next Gen console. Everyone wanted the new thing and 360 offered that when no one else did.

Either way guys, the Wii sold the most and it's irrelevant to the persistent popularity of consoles, nobody touches their Wii anymore. So I'm talking about about popularity than sales. The Xbox reigns supreme (fanboyism aside by the way).

Microsoft just had a clearer vision for their console at the beginning before Sony did. And to some extent they still do, we can only hope that Sony stop viewing their Playstation consoles as a means to push other products (such as 3D televisions). Instead Sony needs to focus on the Playstation as a core stand alone product, something that can sell itself.

Microsoft marketed their console better than Sony. Like @videogamesarenotart said, totalling all the costs for the 360 made it the more expensive console, but Microsoft's marketing made it seem like the better deal.

Of course there is also the problem of the PS3 being harder to develop for, which for quite some time meant that multi-platform titles looked and ran better on the 360.

I think it boils down to Sony focused on hardware, and Microsoft focused on services/software. Not surprising really.

I think this next/next gen is wide open though. Even Nintendo could make a comeback.

I had a 360 in 06, I didn't need a WiFi adapter, a hard drive came with the system, I had an existing Xbox Live account, and yes, I did buy one wireless controller. So it was still 50 bucks cheaper at purchase than if I would have got the low tier PS3. Considering the recent lack of employment I was enjoying back then, I was fine with that.

Maybe you should learn to use punctuation and complete sentences before you call random people on the Internet "Kid". Or do they not teach that in schools anymore?

you just tried to "lol" out of logic like a child, dont try to correct my grammar

you paid more for your 360, whats so hard to understand? you got suckered in with a low price point, then got nickel and dimed to no end

It didn't, as both consoles are near the same numbers worldwide; though to be fair it did achieve parity after the sheer and utter dominance of the PS2 over the also rans; an achievement to be sure but parity is not superiority.

@videogamesarenotart: I think you're missing the point. You could have spent more buying a 360 than the PS3, but those were optional peripherals that most people had no use for.

You're also attempting to make it sound a lot worse than it actually was, which is hurting your case. A hard drive came with the system, "core" units that sold it separately didn't appear until later and built in wi-fi became a standard thing by that point. Buying extra consoles is something you have to do with every console, the only extra cost there with the Xbox was the price of the recharge kits, and you didn't need those as you could just use regular batteries. And if we're getting petty about additional costs, shouldn't you also be factoring in the fact the 360 came with several free XBLA games pre-installed on the HDD?

Mircosoft should be proud of where the 360 ended up, but they only "won" in America (well, second place in the overall - which goes to show you how much the popularity of a console means it's a good device for you). It's a big world with many markets (and more every year) and if I were MS I'd be thinking about how I could get out of last place every where else that isn't home base.

@videogamesarenotart: I'm not correcting it, just pointing out that it's atrocious.

You're trying to make me freak out like I'm some sort of Xbox fanboy, but that is not the case. I bought every console last generation, and then I spend the last two or so years building this Steam account to go with them. It made more sense for me to buy an Xbox as my primary machine (and I made the right decision there, all the PS3 ports were godawful), but I was always planning on getting all of the consoles last generation, as I didn't have a good enough Gaming PC at that time in my life.

All I'm saying is that Xbox had the better strategy. What you see as "nickel and diming" I see as piecemeal delivery. Instead of Sony's plan to pack it all into one box and charge crazy prices for it that they STILL took a loss on, Microsoft chose to put out a console where you could pick and choose what you wanted. They probably went a little too far in this direction (the lack of a require hard drive and later the problems with Kinect), but their strategy paid off far more than Sony's strategy which led to them giving away games so they could get people to pay for cloud storage and background downloads. Sony had the better product, but Microsoft had the better gameplan. End of story.

did you just try to say people had no use for a bigger harddrive ?

@videogamesarenotart: But you seem to have missed the part where the Dual Shock 3 is made out of pineapples.

In the early days, when XBLA games were under 50mb each and before they even started selling bigger harddrives? Yes, I am saying that.

The PS3 architecture was a real big hurdle early in the console's life and still is, it was a double edge sword in the end results for games. First party studios produced some of the most amazing looking games on that system but on the flip side was a slew of shoddy ports that really hurt the PS3 and whether it was the system of choice for 3rd party games.

I didn't until I bought a 360 s when my Original finally broke down. I just didn't instal games and deleted XBLA games when I was finished with them. Not everyone needs top of the line stuff ALL THE TIME.

I think the more important questions is: how the fuck did Microsoft fuck up their early dominance so hard? It's like they gave up the second that things looked 'safe.'

It was cheaper at launch and had better online were you could play with your friends and games to highlight those features. That is it plan and simple if Sony can turn that around they can take the lead. When all else fails it comes down to the games.