Microsoft's rush to next-gen could see the Xbox take a tumble

[gekko]

Rockafeller had competition too, until he bought them all out.

[tarakan69]

Well they are going to launch EARLY with no Hard-Drive, and backward compatiability.

I doubt a $300 X-Box 2 will be able to outsell a $99 dollar PS2...

Plus the PSP will expand the Playstation brandname, and lots of people will wait for Playstation 3.

Plus since when is a console's life cycle 3 years?

X-Box is starting to finally get good exclusives... and MS is already calling quits.

I'm not a big fan X-Box, but I buy all 3 consoles... I don't see the headstart saving them.

PS2 got away with an early launch only because of HUGE brandname recognition... MS doesn't have that.

Now that X-Box loses it's hardware edge... what happens to then in the long run?

[TheGame]

Tarkan, that's about the same thing as I used to say. If you launch early you have the risk of being like Dreamcast or Saturn and get killed off in hardware/support. If you release later than Sony you have the chance of being like N64, Gamecube, or Xbox. Getting less support based off of userbase.

Right now, I think taking Sony down can't be solved by a release date... in all honesty, Sony would win no matter when they release Ps3 assuming the hardware is a reasonable price and has reasonable features. What MS should concentrate on is getting the biggest chunk of the pie possible. In the respect, releasing early is not a bad idea.