So, now we know, if any of us still cared, when the Xbox is coming.

Microsoft’s games console-cum-centrally-heated rabbit hutch will arrive in Europe next March, at what looks like a suicidal price of £300. And really, at first glance, that seems to be all there is to say about it. Game over, bye-bye Microsoft. The Xbox, after all, seems in most respects to be simply the PS2 but heavier, and the obvious feeling of anyone even passingly sane is that no-one in their right minds is going to want to buy one. If you want the kind of largely tired, mainstream games that make up most of the Xbox’s prospective catalogue, you’ll be able to get 95% of them on the PS2, and if you want to play innovative and fun games by the world’s generally-acknowledged best game designers, you’ll be wanting a Nintendo Gamecube.

And of course, either of those options will set you back substantially less money (and occupy a lot less of your floorspace) than the Xbox. PS2 is currently selling like hot bananas at £199 in the UK and roughly equivalent rates elsewhere, and Gamecube is likely to come in at either the same price or, as is widely suspected, £149. And with Xbox calling for a £330 spend to match the PS2’s functionality (the DVD controller being an optional extra with the Microsoft machine), your reporter has been racking his brain fruitlessly for the least few days trying to think of a single reason why anybody would want to hand over the cash. 

And there’s another dog’s egg in Microsoft’s basket too. It’s a well-publicised semi-fact that the Japanese, commonly regarded as the leading-edge market driving the games business, have so far shown no discernible interest in the Xbox. There’s traditionally been a cultural resistance to Western platforms in Japan, but even aside from that the Xbox seems to be specifically designed to repel the Japanese gamer. They like their electronics small and dinky in the East, and you could use the Xbox to club down a stampeding buffalo. Short people could climb inside the box for shelter if caught in a thunderstorm on their way back from the game shop. The joypad alone is practically the size of the Gamecube.  What possible chance does the Xbox have in Japan?

Now, viewers, at this point some genius in the crowd would normally pipe up “Ah, but the success of a console is always down to the games, not the price or the size”. But even if that wasn’t the kind of fatuous stupidity that it is, it still doesn’t help the Xbox. Because there are two things the Japanese really like, gamewise. One is huge, epic RPGs in the fairly traditional style represented by the likes of Final Fantasy and Zelda. And as far as the people who buy those are concerned, basically you want them written by Nintendo or Square. And with Sony having recently bought up 20% of Square, it’s a safe bet to say that the company won’t be producing any exclusive killer apps for the Xbox any time soon.

The second thing the Japanese like is off-the-wall, completely weird stuff. The Japanese charts are stuffed with train-driving games, "girlfriend simulators”, insane 2D shoot-‘em-ups, abstract gambling games and increasingly-bizarre “rhythm action” titles. Precisely, in fact, the sort of games that the white-bread, ready-salted, vanilla-lite Xbox has coming out for it in absolutely no droves whatsoever. Microsoft have gone squarely for the market they know best (which is dimwitted American tech nerds in backwards baseball caps), which means the machine’s prospective release schedule is an unending list of brown-looking cyberpunk rubbish featuring “cool” guys with huge guns, racing games with awful nu-metal soundtracks and sports games with unbelievably realistic player eyebrow modelling, but nothing else to distinguish them from their 300 near-identical predecessors. The only two Xbox games people are expressing any kind of excitement about are Jet Set Radio Future and Project Gotham, a couple of fairly minor updates of Sega Dreamcast titles which, despite critical plaudits aplenty, both stiffed on their original release. 

Ask anyone in the games business, and they’ll tell you “Ooh, well, you never know, the next generation battle could go either way, we’ll have to wait and see.” But that’s because almost everyone in the games business is a congenital idiot. If there’s ever been a safe bet in the world of videogames, it’s that a £300 Xbox is going to be the biggest turkey of all time. Microsoft’s only hope is a wave of uncontrollable American patriotism in the wake of the World Trade Centre disaster, but frankly, there’s more chance of the twin towers being rebuilt from unsold Xboxes.