If you has asked me 6 months ago, I think I would have been firmly of the belief that X-Box had a real serious shot. After talking to publishers, other developers and journalists, I'm beginning to think that X-Box has a pretty grim future. I may venture out far enough on a limb to say that X-Box is flat out going to fail in the marketplace.

X-Box aficionados point to its high powered graphics chipset, hard drive, broadband and other nice technical goodies as evidence of its superiority, but much like the AMD vs. Intel battles, who is "best" doesn't necessarily determine who wins.

The problem is that the vast majority of console gamers don't buy a console for the hardware, they buy it for the software. Remember that consoles are consumer devices: maybe 1/10 of 1% (if that) of PSX owners can tell you the CPU that powers it. They just don't care.