The Xbox 720 will be revealed at last on May 21, and it’s going to need a few things to compete with the PlayStation 4 and PC.
There is no denying that the Xbox 360 has become the defining console for the current generation of gaming. Sony fanboys may argue the fact, but it’s still true. Xbox 360 was the standard by which most games were developed. To be fair, PlayStation 3 did give us the Blu-Ray format, but now you can pick up a Blu-Ray player used for less than the price of a new videogame. Sorry, Sony, you’re a victim of your own success.
Now with the next generation approaching, and Sony having already revealed its hand, Microsoft has no excuse but to deliver something that can compete.
Speaking of Blu-Ray, Microsoft would do well to embrace the format this time around. When the Xbox 360 went with HD-DVD for its format of choice, the limitation left it with an unnecessary challenge. HD-DVD died out within the year as Blu-Ray took over and went mainstream as the new format of choice for film enthusiasts.
Xbox 720 needs to make its hard drive style more standardized instead of charging an extra hundred dollars just to have something to save a free demo to. The PlayStation 3 allowed gamers to swap out hard drives from their computers, and computer hard drives are much less expensive per gigabyte than official Microsoft hard drives.
Keep making the games easy to develop. That was one reason the Xbox 360 was the console of choice for new developers. The PlayStation 3 gave newcomers a bit of a steep learning curve with its supposedly more powerful OS, and most likely drove them to the Xbox 360 for the sake of saving learning time.
However, Microsoft also charges developers a cool few thousand to release a patch for a game they’ve already finished, making it financially impossible for newcomers to follow up.
What do you think the Xbox 720 needs to compete in the next generation?