Monday, July 27, 2009

Xbox 360 outselling the Atari 2600..So?


the significance of John Lucas's words

I recently came upon this article and really understood the significance of it, but to put it at face value the Xbox outsold or will outsell the Atari 2600 and be the biggest selling American born console.

the Atari 2600 hasn't been made since 1992, and Atari is defunct except as a publisher. So the comparison seems pointless, considering that Atari sold a similar amount of consoles in 4 times the amount of years the Xbox 360 has existed. Many reason that because there are more gamers, and gaming being a mainstream, that is nothing to celebrate about. Indeed, Nintendo has dwarfed Xbox 360 even though it isn't an American born creation, and the Xbox 360 is built in China anyway.

The Atari 2600 is Taiwan made, so what makes the Xbox 360 any less American than say Sony's PS3 is to its loyal fans and roots in Japan? Nothing because Japan sees a loyalty to the PS3 even though its also made in China. We should never consider manufacturing as the roots of a product, merely as an effigy of the designs. I have grown to be insulted by the comment of being a fanboy, and in this I am not really a fanboy as I am a loyal American to buy into the gaming market of Xbox from Microsoft. I won't pretend that the 33 percent failure rate and Red Ring of Death misery to Xbox owners doesn't hurt the console's image, especially considering that Atari 2600's almost never failed to work. But as technology grows, this comparision seems extreme since the current generation is more failure prone than past generations.

This being said, the highest selling American game console is also currently leading the console wars with Sony extremely close behind. It is amazing that a console with bad history in terms of its overheating problems will likely be cemented in history, and is still trying to make history with Natal. Something that may detail its epic presence in the face of its flaws.

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