Even Worse News for Bill's XBox

Here's an interesting Newsweek article that I read this week. It's about the XBox and its technical savvy (or its lack thereof). The online version of the article is ironically hosted by MSNBC (Microsoft's joint venture with NBC). The article states that the XBox's superior hardware still produces games with "jaggies" -- the one thing that was seen on PS2s early on, but eventually eliminated. The thing is that MS has been boasting the power of the nVidia chip and how it can do FSAA (Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing, the thing that reduces the jaggies) and the first thing to show up on this system? Jaggies. And now the XBox has another slap in the face..."even though Microsoft claims that Xbox is three times more powerful than PS2, major game publishers say all three systems are in roughly the same class." (Article)

Some highlights from the article:

• The Xbox is "a game console that�s expensive to manufacture, a bulky, awkward controller that few seem to like and an underwhelming lineup of launch games."
• The "Xbox was too big for Japanese homes and its controller was too big for Japanese hands"
• "The folks who made Halo have crafted a riveting game that almost overcomes (but doesn�t quite) the fact that as a first-person shooter, Halo is best played on a PC with a keyboard and mouse."
• "Many of the other Xbox launch games that we previewed are varying degrees of not good."
• "And here�s proof that on Xbox, as with every system before, the reality never lives up to the rhetoric: all the games exhibit jagged lines and slowdown�despite the Xboys� statements that such problems would be relics of the past."