Okay, I'm going to put forward a theory that may or may not be right -
Killer Apps are more likely to appear on a machine that had cack-all good games on it.
Hear me out here - the Gamecube is a good example of this. We all love our Gamecubes, right? Okay so when an excellent GC game comes out like Metroid Prime or whatever, it is labelled 'killer app' and hits number 1 in the charts. Aside from it being an indicator of MP being a great game, it is also an indicator of a drought of other good games on the machine (I know there are others, I'm just using MP as an exaple). So, when a game like MP is released, just about everybody who owns a GC will buy it. Killer App.
Mario 64 - killer app. While it wasn't the only good game, when it was launched, how many N64 games were there. Three maybe? Four? Not a massive amount of choice. A game thatstands out amongst three games is going to be a 'killer app'.
Even on systems where there were loads of good games, killer apps would often appear in times of drought, especially where that particular type of game was lacking. Of course SF2 was going to be a killer app on the SNES - there was damn all decent to offer fighting fans before it. Sonic the Hedgehog had no competitors. When Halo was released on XBox, I personally believe that the quality of games surrounding it was particularly poor - long before I feel the XBox came into its own.
Then you have some systems that actually made the mistake of launching with loads of games, many excellent, so a game that could have been labelled 'killer app' would never stand out. PSP is a great example of this. A machine with a perception of no good games and yet around the time of launch we had Ridges Racers, Lumines, Wipeout Pure. Any one of those could compete with the killer apps of another system - the difference is that they were actually released around way too many other titles, some of them being high quality titles.
So I don't know the 360 games personally. But...could it be the case that a game won't stand out as being a 'killer app' because there is just no drought? If Dead Rising had been released a month after launch and the only launch titles were three average-to-good games, would it be in the killer app hall of fame?
Killer Apps are more likely to appear on a machine that had cack-all good games on it.
Hear me out here - the Gamecube is a good example of this. We all love our Gamecubes, right? Okay so when an excellent GC game comes out like Metroid Prime or whatever, it is labelled 'killer app' and hits number 1 in the charts. Aside from it being an indicator of MP being a great game, it is also an indicator of a drought of other good games on the machine (I know there are others, I'm just using MP as an exaple). So, when a game like MP is released, just about everybody who owns a GC will buy it. Killer App.
Mario 64 - killer app. While it wasn't the only good game, when it was launched, how many N64 games were there. Three maybe? Four? Not a massive amount of choice. A game thatstands out amongst three games is going to be a 'killer app'.
Even on systems where there were loads of good games, killer apps would often appear in times of drought, especially where that particular type of game was lacking. Of course SF2 was going to be a killer app on the SNES - there was damn all decent to offer fighting fans before it. Sonic the Hedgehog had no competitors. When Halo was released on XBox, I personally believe that the quality of games surrounding it was particularly poor - long before I feel the XBox came into its own.
Then you have some systems that actually made the mistake of launching with loads of games, many excellent, so a game that could have been labelled 'killer app' would never stand out. PSP is a great example of this. A machine with a perception of no good games and yet around the time of launch we had Ridges Racers, Lumines, Wipeout Pure. Any one of those could compete with the killer apps of another system - the difference is that they were actually released around way too many other titles, some of them being high quality titles.
So I don't know the 360 games personally. But...could it be the case that a game won't stand out as being a 'killer app' because there is just no drought? If Dead Rising had been released a month after launch and the only launch titles were three average-to-good games, would it be in the killer app hall of fame?
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