If you are at all familiar with the Xbox 360 game then you are probably familiar with the Gears of War curb stomp. That is what Sony fanboys world-wide felt like today when Final Fantasy finally jumped to the Xbox 360 as well, instead of being a Sony exclusive game (as it always has been ever since Final Fantasy jumped from Nintendo to Sony).
This ends a long saga of exclusive Final Fantasy titles going to Sony and at this point I think the 360 actually has more Square-Enix titles in the pipeline than the Playstation 3! The 360 is going to get Star Ocean, The Last Remnants, Final Fantasy XIII, and Infinite Undiscovery. Right now as far as I know the PS3 only has Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Versus sounds like a really interesting game but Final Fantasy (the flagship product) was really the only thing that ever made me want to own a PS3 and now I don’t have to.
Also, I think the argument that the PS3 is worth having because “blu-ray is the future” is a total crock. Blu-ray sales have flat-lined ever since HD-DVD got kicked off the market, while downloadable content in the form of HD movies and TV shows have been rising steadily for the last year. I think Microsoft may actually have it correct when they say that people are moving away from physical media and more toward the ability to just select what they want from a massive on-demand library of HD content and then be able to watch it in a short time period.
One way Microsoft is helping 360 owners and Netflix fans is by tying the two services together. Now Netflix subscribers will be able to get access to everything that is in their “instant queue” via the Xbox 360. What this means is that 360 owners don’t need to buy the set-top box that Netflix has been marketing and instead will have their 360 perform that capacity. Also, it looks like you will be able to watch the content together with your friends who are in the same “live party”. I haven’t seen many details on how that will work but it is all tied into the new Mii-ripoff that Microsoft has implemented as part of the massive revamp of the 360’s core look that will hit this fall.
All in all it was an exciting news conference and covered a lot of games that i’m looking forward to including Resident Evil 5 (full co-op and 360 exclusive DLC), Fallout 3, Fable 2 (full co-op 360 exclusive), GTA IV 360 Exclusive DLC, Rock Band 2 (on 360 first in September), Portal 2 (360 exclusive for 2008) and Geometry Wars 2 (offline co-op and tons of new modes).
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1 response so far ↓
1 The Raging Tech // Jul 17, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Just my two cents, but I think “blu-ray is the future” isn’t so much of an argument against the xBox 360 as it is just a good reason to own a PS3. Movies that still come out on physical media the next few years will come out on DVD & Blu-Ray, and I enjoy watching things when my internet is down. Since the PS3 has firmware updates via the internet and plays games and music and stuff like the XBox, it’s still the best Blu-Ray player for the price. But that’s apples and oranges as far as preference over the XBox 360.
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