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December 19, 2005

Scoble Made Me Wait in Line for an XBox 360

Well, kind of. A little over a year ago, I wrote an entry talking about how Scoble influenced me to buy the original XBox.

I have been a Halo 2 addict since then, even frequently going to Halo 2 LAN parties on Friday nights where ten or so hard-core gamers get to use me as cannon fodder. It's always fun though, even if I can never finish higher than the middle of the pack (which is a good night).

Aside from that, my interest in the XBox 360 was kind of weak until I played a demo of Call of Duty 2. Then I was sold. I actually waited in line at Walmart for 15 hours to get a system the day they game out. Here's a picture of my chair that day:

Now before you accuse me of being crazy, realize that I am a freelance developer and I was able to take my PowerBook to Walmart with me and get some work done. It was still a long day though. The best experience I can compare it to is a flight across the ocean - sitting in the same place for that many hours is draining. At least I was inside and warm. Some of my friends had to camp outside at Best Buy.

So at the end of the night, I had a Premium system, 4 wireless controllers, and 2 games. It's an amazing system. I can't stop playing (and neither can my wife). Scoble, the XBox 360 is going to destroy the Playstation 3. And not just because of the games, but because of the XBox Live! service. The Live! service and its community make the 360 the best console gaming platform there is. Period. I would not even consider a system like the PS3 that does not have a service like Live!

And the Live! Arcade is perfect. My wife is hooked on Hexic, and I have played Geometry Wars more than Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero combined. By the time it is said and done, and the XBox 720 comes out, I will probably have spent hundreds of dollars on the Live! Arcade. I guess that's what Microsoft wants. And I have no problem paying for great games.

Scoble, I think the 360 is the best thing Microsoft has going for it right now. But Microsoft is stagnant when it comes to web development technology.

I have spent the last few years working with C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, SharePoint, and BizTalk. I even spent two weeks at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston. I have invested heavily in learning Microsoft's web development technology over the last few years.

And I'm walking away from it.

Scoble, as a web developer who is now doing freelance work for a living, my framework of choice is Ruby on Rails. Mostly for the reasons listed here. And also because Microsoft's web development technologies have lost their appeal. I can remember being blown away by ASP.NET when I first saw it. I now feel even more strongly about Rails. And when I talk to businesses and friends who are developers, I make sure they know about Rails.

Sure, I know about the new Visual Studio, ASP.NET 2.0, the new SharePoint, and the new SQL Server. And I just don't care. Microsoft needs to capture some of the 360 magic and use it on their web development technology or they will continue to lose developers like me.

Posted by Phil at December 19, 2005 09:54 PM

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Comments

Ruby on rails looks very nice. I thought I'd let you know though about mono, in case you ever want to apply your asp knowledge in an open source environment: http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

You use the XSP server instead of (or in addition to) IIS.

Posted by: dugh at December 20, 2005 12:03 PM

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