Pre-Xbox 360 Playstation Defects

March 18th, 2009

xbox-black

Generally speaking, I’m not particularly fond of thick skinned American attitudes and culture. I think part of it’s because I’m not from a country with real significance on the world stage, and hence am far removed from the patriotic gullibility that comes with being such a big important country like the States.

A good example of American culture within the corporate sense of the video games industry is Microsoft’s E3 press conference last year. While Jack Trenton of Sony America can’t be excused for his forced puppet-like gags, Microsoft were more than happy to divulge in corporate wankery and take a few, in fact many consistent swings at the competition.

As I whined about last year (yes, there are obviously misgivings here), what particularly chafed was the part of the presentation were Microsoft’s reps were touting about their rolling tally of former Playstation namesakes making their way cross-platform to the Xbox 360. I found their comments interesting, partly because of the contrast it made between companies of different cultures, but more importantly because it made me think back to the previous generation, and the number of significant Playstation titles making the transition over to the Xbox. At the time though, the discussion on this phenomena was eerily quiet. Even the first time that Microsoft announced the first slew of big Playstation franchise hitting the console under the X moniker*, the shock and horror was much more moderate than recent clammer jammings over the Final Fantasy XIII defect, and yet this first time around included big hitters like Metal Gear Solid.

I wanted to use this post to briefly point out some of those significant. A few of these titles jumped straight across to the Xbox, others just went “multiplatform”, with the former being strong titles that held ground for the PS2, pending the Xbox and Gamecube releases.

Metal Gear Solid 2:Subsistence
Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath
Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
Dino Crisis 3
Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams
Silent Hill 4: The Room
Genma Onimusha
Grand Theft Auto: Double Pack
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Midnight Club II
SSX 3
SSX On Tour
SSX Tricky
TimeSplitters 2
TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

I could have overblown this list with titles like Crash Bandicoot, but in reality these titles were inevitably multiplatform to begin with and/or never held any weight prior to the PS2’s original dominance. The titles listen in contrast were all significant to the system before the Xbox had arrived on the scene.

*This included Metal Gear Solid X, Crash Bandicoot X among others, with only Tony Hawk’s Proskater 2X; a semi-remake of the original game keeping the original moniker.

Tamer: The Original Xbox Mascot?

November 30th, 2008

I was looking through some old media on my computer some time ago and I came across these images from back in 2000 when the Xbox was first released. These are images of the first Xbox mascot, put out the same time as the original press release first announcing the console. I can’t quite remember much about what was said about the this mascot lady; even after reading through those early press releases she isn’t mentioned. The images are named Tamer, so I guess that’s her name or the name of her robot companion. In anycase, it’s interesting to look back on these. I also included a picture of the original Xbox console design, which I wish they went through with.

x shaped xbox silver

tamer and robot xbox mascot

xbox female mascot

xbox mascot tamer and robot

Yeah I know, real posts will be coming as soon as I can get around to it. Which might be a while.

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Tags: mascot, xbox