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Citation needed. I distinctly remember shield regeneration from Faceball 2000 a decade earlier.

If it did, I don't see any reference to it on the wikipedia page or this 1up page. The 1up page does list several landmarks for the game, but not regenerating shields.

Didn't PCs have SDTV output at the time?

Sure. Some TVs even had VGA inputs at the time, or through the use of a converter box you could translate VGA to YPrPb component. It was still a hassle to setup, the composite/s-video SDTV output was 480i rather than 480p (progressive scan really does make a difference), and you're still tied to a keyboard and mouse. A PC with incidental TV support is not the same as a console designed around the "10 foot experience". That's why I don't understand the infatuation with UT3 on PS3 having kb/mouse support. Unless you're sitting in front of a desk, a kb/mouse setup just doesn't work.

More of a genius than Trent Reznor (Quake; Halo 2)?

IMHO? Absolutely, emphatically, yes! But then I've never been much of a fan of NIN or Trent's music. I do appreciate his views on digital music sharing, though. Marty O'Donnell is more in the league of John Williams than Trent Reznor, as far as I'm concerned. Though Bungie did bring in Steve Vai and other contemporary artists for the Halo 2 soundtrack. If you haven't heard Steve Vai's Mjolnir Mix you really should check it out.

I think it's worth noting that Seanbaby was supposed to fight Uwe, too, but Uwe pussied out when he found out that Seanbaby is a trained MMA fighter. He's a big toughguy when he's fighting your average internet dork but if someone actually knows how to fight, he's nowhere to be found.

the higher cost of entry may be helping the PlayStation 3 in this respect.

Since when does higher cost mean higher quality, regardless of what it can do?


Seeing as I haven't had one ring of death or scratched disc on my PS3, I'd say it's a pretty high quality machine.

i do find it interesting slashdot reports this story, as opposed to the reported ridiculous failure rate for the 360...

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7892
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160603

as a somewhat long-time slashdotter, i'm disappointed this hasn't shown up here for further discussion...

personal anecdote: there are two people i know of with an xbox 360; one is on his fourth and the other's network adapter doesn't work...

God of War 3: hasn't been announced (in fact the next two god of war games are for the PSP and mobile). Sony owns the God of War franchise, though, so it'll probably happen eventually I'll grant you.

Kingdom Hearts: Last I checked there hasn't been a PS3 version announced. A quick google search turned up "Kingdom Hearts not necessarily on PS3". Kingdom Hearts being one of the less photorealistic of Square's franchises actually seems to be an obvious switch to the Wii (much like Dragon Quest makes sense on the DS due to its cartoony style).

White Knight Story: Absolutely. Don't delude yourself into thinking that it's a high-profile game (I doubt it'll surpass the sales of, say, Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, which is under 1 million worldwide) but it's certainly a PS3 game I'm hyped about.

1) Simple probability-if there is a simple 5% failure rate (too high in my book anyway) the probability that any one person will get a defective unit is 1/20 or one in twenty. However the probability that one person will get 5 defective units is (1/20)^5 or (1/3200000) one in three million, two hundred thousand. If the failure rate was so low, only 2 people in the world would share Crecente's fate. The story at 1up about the man with 11 failures would happen once for every 204,800,000,000,000 consoles sold.

To make the second example realistic (make the probability at least one in 10 million, the number of consoles sold) the failure rate would have to be at least 23.1% assuming every box he got had the same probability for failure.

2) They gave him BETA machines. They knew.

3) I'm not going to respond to that. It is ridiculous.

In the case of any application that runs on direct-X, it's nearly impossible to program any game that came or comes out on a console so that it won't run on the older versions. Sure, it may look worse or not run all the features, but they are stuck, because, for instance, the X-Box runs direct-X 9. Some games are actually Direct-X 8, even(Halo 2, originally). Also, since the game doesn't *require* a Direct-X 10 card to run, it's obviously just a software nerf Microsoft is doing here.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153097
The 360 cannot run DX-10, so basically if the title comes out on it and the PC, it can be hacked regardless of what Microsoft tries to do to annoy users.

So this is expected. A small hack and presto - the thing runs in DX9.

Both games have been doing very poorly in sales as well. Microsoft needs to stop the B.S. and give us useable games out of the box.

"<a>"

Yeah, because that worked SO well for them with the Hot Coffee scandal, when:

- their board of directors got sacked (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3158369)
- their CEO was listed as worst of 2005 (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6140903.html)
- they cut earnings forecast by $50 million after the GTA:San Andreas recall (http://money.cnn.com/2005/07/20/technology/person altech/gta/)
- their stock price fell through the later half of 2005 (even before the SEC investigations began) (http://finance.google.com/finance?q=TTWO)

Truly "masterful".

D.

People seem to buy it unbundled just fine.

It's not aimed at hardcore gamers. It's for casual gamers, and it's perfect for them. Easily worth 60 bucks - they probably get more playtime out of it than we get out of most hardcore games.

Thanks to sandwichtron's post it turns out they did... http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160096

We prefer to work with adults.

Anybody remember these features from 1UP, with commentary from sarcastic elementary school kids?

Anybody remember these features from 1UP, with commentary from sarcastic elementary school kids?

The fantastic Retronauts podcast talked about this milestone recently. They determined that as ownership of the Wii increases, Virtual Console purchases per person decreases. They surmise that all the hardcore fanboys who rushed out to buy the console bought a disproportionately large number of VC titles. It will be interesting to see the numbers after a year.

while I don't know about the aesthetic tastes of the typical Japanese consumer the Xbox 360 was designed by Hers Experimental design lab in Japan. And it won the Good Design Award in Japan in 2006.

What is it about the console you find so appalling?

GTA IV is coming to the 360 the same day as the PS3. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/may0 6/05-09GrandTheftAutoPR.mspx

FFXIII is not coming to the US until the end of 2008 at the earliest in which time the PS3 will be at least $100-200 cheaper than today. A game that may be out in 18 months is hardly an incentive to invest $600 today. http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3159809

This is just a summary of the best ones * Heavenly Sword * LittleBigPlanet * SOCOM Confrontation * Folklore * Uncharted: Drake's Fortune * Lair * Ratchet & Clank A good summary with screenshots, comments and videos can be found on 1up: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3159592 LittleBigPlanet, Folklore, Lair, Drake's Fortune and Heavenly Sword are all of them very bad news for the Xbox360 and even the Wii. Yes, even the Wii. Oh and take a laugh with the Pain simulator!

Square-Enix doesn't like the idea of the Virtual Console, apparently. They'd rather port or remake older titles to card or disc and collect $40-$50, instead of settling for a "mere" $5.00 to $8.00 for digitally distributed product. It's hard to blame the execs, since Square-Enix can easily crap in a box and sell a million copies of anything with "Final Fantasy," "Dragon Quest," or "Kingdom Hearts" in the title. They've simply trained their fandrones too well.

When the Nintendo Gamecube settled into third place during the previous console generation, many publishers shifted their efforts to the vastly more popular -- and profitable -- PlayStation 2 and Xbox. But the surprise success of the Wii, which just crossed the five million sales mark (faster than any other console in video game history), has publishers scrambling to get their games back on Nintendo's mass-market machine.
(...)
After Ubisoft, Electronic Arts is the next major third-party developer to redirect resources to the Wii. Not only has the gaming giant set up Wii-dedicated development teams, but within the last month, EA has released no fewer than three Wii titles

Bloomberg reports companies like Electronic Arts, who has been ironically praised as one of the foremost Wii innovators, and Take-Two Interactive have been playing catch-up since Nintendo's E3 showing. EA tells Bloomberg they will have a dozen games on Wii this year, whereas Take-Two has three in the pipeline (likely comprised of The Bigs, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Manhunt 2).

Just because you're reading his blog doesn't mean that he's not the Editor-in-Chief of 1-Up. Which, methinks, makes him "press". Now be a good boy and go apologize. :P

Apparently, Atari made the first version of the Lynx larger deliberately because focus groups told them they equated that with value-for-money (see this R J Mical interview, search for "never trust focus groups"...).

They later released a second version with almost identical specs, but which was quite a bit smaller and much better looking.

The Lynx may have been battery greedy and a bit bulky (even the revised version), but the spec was still *amazing* for something that size at the time. There was a good case to be made that it filled a somewhat different niche to the Game Boy. Shame it lacked a *really* must-have game like Tetris; and *that* was fantastic- the GB's horrible flat and smeary greeny-grey graphics really didn't matter there.

The issue is that the machine doing the billing must NOT be connected to the Internet.

Doug Lombardi, director of marketing at Valve, says, "There has been no security breach of Steam." However, he does confirm our expert's findings by adding, "The alleged hacker gained access to a third-party site that Valve uses to manage the commercial partners in its Cyber Café program. This Cyber Café billing system is not connected to Steam. We are working with law enforcement agencies on this matter, and encourage anyone with more information to e-mail us at Catch_A_Thief@valvesoftware.com."

Using a dead console for commercial applications? Is this anything like when some company used Atari Jaguar molds to build dental equipment?

Though that's great news for Wii gamers, the question is: how many of these titles are going to be 'shovelware'?

Oh yeah, when you know you can't win an argument, just attack the premise as insane. Ok.

It was mentioned on this Games For Windows podcast in their latest episode. Check it out. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3148397

*One Year Ago*

"How can the Revolution sell without HD visuals?"
"There will be a new version released two years later. Just like how Nintendo puts out new versions of its handhelds."
"And what about that motion controller?"
"You cannot sell a console just on teh strength of a controller! Nintendo is just being desperate."

Bill Gates would say: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3151063

"There's room for innovation here, but moving that controller around -- it's something that's not mainstream for most games. It's tough because sometimes you move the controller, and you don't [mean] to fly into the ground. You just want to put the controller down. People aren't that good at totally standing still. Even pilots actually sit in a chair when they do their flying."

**One Year Later**

"Microsoft! Are you going to copy the Wii's controller?"
"Eh? Uh? We dunno! We are looking into it."
"So what else are you going to do?"
"Well, we have this new Elite model Xbox 360 for you to buy! Putting out new hardware is fun!"
Someone comes in and says, "Damn it, Nintendo! Make more Wiis! I can't find them anywhere!"

Bill Gates says: http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=1492 0&ncid=AOLGAM000500000000010

"Nintendo is our competition!"

Can we now admit that Nintendo made some very smart business moves with the Wii without being called "zOMG fAnBOy!!1!"? It is not so much that Wiis are outselling the other systems, but that the Wii is making profit while doing it. Where are the game journalists and 'analysts' who were proclaiming 'Revolution' would sell only around ten million units in its lifetime? Where are the people who poo-poohed the Wii's controller at the beginning? Oh, that's right. When Nintendo succeeds, the goal posts are moved further back. They began saying, "Is it a gimmick?" to "Is it a fad?" to "It is only selling because it is cheap!" After the DS did its magic, these same fools said, "This success we will never see again!" Then comes the Wii that is selling even stronger.

Nintendo went from a 'lose, lose' situation to a 'win, win'. Microsoft wondering whether or not to put in motion controls is a sign that a revolution is occuring. I bet that Microsoft's next system (along with the controller) imitates the Wii as best it can.

Supposedly Madden does too, although living in Austin I can't remember seeing anything other than "bright and sunny." :)

Look, just because 3rd party support is eroding and previously exclusive titles are going multi-platform (or becoming 360 exclusives), doesn't mean the PS3 was a poor investment, right?

And it's too bad, too. I'll wait.

From http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3158254

Nitty gritty details aside, Penello did say the console is "the same." The almost-a-year-old announcement of a revised chipset -- one that will have the 360 running cooler and quieter -- hasn't bore fruit just yet, as the Elite SKU features the same 90 nm chip currently in Xbox 360 hardware.

Make of it what you will:

New OS's more expensive versions doing better, selling faster than XP.

Sony has recently said not to expect too much from the backwards compatibility upgrades for the European market claiming that the system isn't exactly powerful enough to software emulate these old games.

Both the 360 and the Ps3 claim better numbers but the simple fact is in single threaded performance it's a bit lacking. Even the Ps3's specs should be able to PLAY every ps2 game but it can't, Xbox has an issue where a single thread is slower than the original xbox.

So expect them to patch, but even they have admited they can't patch everything (and one response they had was that you have MGS3, but not MGS2, the newer game is better right?

Link: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3158104

I just hope the 360 releases a couple more BC upgrades for some of the best classic games and ignores this page in the PS3 playbook.

And the lineup for this year seems crammed full of good Wii games - my only concern is the paucity of decent RPG titles. Now if we could port a certain Molyneux game from the xBox ...

The article names exactly those issues that you will find in every game development process, not just FF12's. I can imagine that the number of people working on this specific game is much higher than in other productions, and probably makes problems in communication and verification much more prominent. But as far as the numbers in TFA are concerned, they don't seem to be any different than standard.

Even for the simplest game, a developer will seek to develop on the target machine, and running on the target output, which is the TV. The huge demand for content is not just a FF12 feat., you will find it in every kind of game. Even the timespan of other games is not so much different. Take e.g. Unreal3's based games.. or HalfLife..

I think Mr. Lee should not have gone to the GDC, because his review article is full of fan-boy drool and not much else.. I don't know why this was even posted on /.

Sigh. I guess that means it's time to see lots of sub-standard games ported to the Wii ...

So let's see, rumble technology is soooo last generation, but we've made an expensive agreement to offer it for anything new we've developed. We can force anyone who's rich enough to have bought a PS3 to buy new controllers to upgrade. (If they really want this ancient technology.)

PS3 owners should be really exploiting the motion sensitivity of the PS3 as this is sooo current generation. So current generation that our developers haven't made many games for it. (Although the Wii is obviously a gimmick.)

Our supply system is so good, that we have PS3s sitting on people's shelves. (Although I defy anyone of you from trying to find any PS3s!)

I feel so sorry for the SONY PR department. I honestly don't think the Sony Playstation development department knows what they're doing at all with the PS3 anymore. The PR department is running around trying cover up the Sony Product Development blunders with every step they take.

And if the past is anything to go by, the 360 version will have nice online play and voice chat...does it on the PS3?

No, the 360 won't have online versus play either....

"1UP: There's a lot of controversy among western VF fans about the lack of online play capabilities in the games. What is it specifically about VF that you think doesn't work well in an online context?

HK: The biggest problem is the time lag when executing techniques. VF runs at 60 frames per second, and every frame is important. We could make adjustments to eliminate lag, but if we did that, there would be no difference in the timing of the various moves, and the competitive aspect of the game would be ruined. We ran some tests in-house with simulated lag, but it wound up feeling like a completely different game!"

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3149135

I don't know it looks like the PS 2 version might have slightly poorer graphics, but I think that it more than makes up for it with
the extra story line.

http://boards.1up.com/zd/board/message?board.id=gv disc&message.id=246

there's something to say about it: PS2 but no Wii?? fuck!
I want it on the Wii!! there was a mock-up video on youtube about what it'd be like to fling clone troopers through walls by swinging your wiimote. I WANT that.

And since we're on the Wii + StarWars subject.. when are they going to release a lightsaber duel game for the wii? I mean, It's clearly what the console was designed for ;) First time i saw it, the first thing that came to my mind was "DAMN! LIGHTSABER FIGHTS!!!". More so when we learned there was a speaker on it. Kinda like my ForceFX replica, except the blade is on the screen and it might actually cut stuff!.. I mean.. what the hell are they waiting for? SW fans have been waiting for this for AGES (there was even a guy who did something to capture a toy lightsaber movement with a webcam and use that as the interface for a duelling game.. sort of.. but I can't find the link :( ).

Of course it was marketed for girls. Good lord, the packaging alone is enough to send a diabetic into coma. The point is more that he and the rest of the company completely fumbled advertising this to ... everyone else. While I'm sure young women *can* enjoy it, this is a deep strategy title that can be enjoyed by everyone, and it's darn cute to boot. I am far from the only person to think so, and I think it's a disservice to the game to pigeonhole it the way Gates has here.

Yesterday 1up quoted Kojima in an interview saying he was looking at 360 and PC development.

Metal Gear Solid was PC and PS1. MGS2 was Xbox, PC and PS2. The only reason that MGS3 ended up an exclusive was that by that stage the writing was on the wall, and there was really no reason to go multi-platform given the massive install base the PS2 had.

MGS4 will end up being a 6-month PS3 exclusive. Why release for a single system with (by then) a 5-6 million install base when you could release for both of the high-tech platforms and hit a 20+ million install base? Unless Sony has ponied up cash to keep it exclusive or they've somehow purchased Konami, the developer owes their loyalty to whichever platform or platforms which has the most potential profit for the money they spend developing it.

Windows is *significantly* cheaper than OSX.

The way the industry works now, almost no developer can afford to self-fund a "full-size" game. For most of those who can, it's an all-or-nothing bet; if the game tanks (And many great games regrettably do), the developer goes out of business. So for the overwhelming majority of developers, to do a full game it means getting a publisher to fund development. Publishers are understandably cautious about funding more risky (but potentially great) games. As a result you tend to see lots of knock offs, sequels, and crappy movie licenses. Innovation is stifled. Add on that most developers exist only so long as they keep getting publishers to fund them.

One way to escape this is to simply develop smaller games. That's great if you like that sort of game, but not so good if you really want to develop a sprawling RPG, a large FPS, just about any adventure game, or something similar.

Episodic content is potentially a way forward. These days the overwhelming expense in a large game is the content, not the programming. A first episode that represents, say, 20% of a game may only need 40% of the content. (Even better, episode two probably only needs 15% more content to generate the next 20% of the game, assuming you're releasing episodes quickly enough that you don't need to update your engine or art.) It's a much lower risk. More developers can afford to self-fund in this model. More risky ideas can be tried. I'm quite confident that Bone and Sam & Max weren't going to be funded by a major publisher as full games. As the developer typically self-publishes, if the game is a success the developer can bank it to support future development, possibly even more traditional big-single-release games.

Episodic content is problematic. As a customer you're left hanging mid-story. (Did we say you'd be playing Episode Two within six months of episode one? Did you purchase Episode One on that basis? Hope you don't mind waiting six more.) If the developer goes bankrupt or cancels an unprofitable line you may never see the conclusion. (Sucks to be you, Sin Episodes fans. Of course, you can suffer that even in "full" game releases.) While episodic content is almost exclusively sold online, reducing overhead and costs, you pay what overhead there is once per episode, driving costs up. I'm not a fan of episodic content for these reasons. But I believe at least some developers are embracing episodic content as a way to escape extremely cautious publishers.

Correct to an extent. Even assuming that full DX10 games actually hit the market in the next few years, 1up's article which announced that the Xbox 360 wasn't going to be fully DX10 capable quotes an ATI representative (probably only slightly biased) that the 360 is running a special DX9 that, as relating to the game Crysis, makes it so that "DX10 visuals can be replicated on the Xbox360, but it can't be properly called DX10." So, the 360 still has graphical growth to hold it over, and should be reasonably comparable to the majority of the DX10 games for the near future.

XBox 360 is still of relatively little interest to anyone who doesn't care about FPS games (at least that's how I feel about it, being in that category myself).

I hope you don't mean this, which looks like a Playskool toy. And no matter what 1up says, this isn't anything like a Gibson Flying V.

Except that Square-Enix has already shifted their focus back to Nintendo.

Dragon Quest IX is DS exclusive. Dragon Quest is THE big gaming franchise in Japan, I'm told it sells bigger numbers than the top 3 franchises in the US combined. http://www.gamespot.com/news/6163073.html?sid=6163 073

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings and It's a Wonderful World (a Kingdom Hearts spinoff) are also both DS exclusive. Being spinoff titles and not major releases, this isn't as big of news, but it's still pointing at the end of SE's relationship with Sony. http://ds.ign.com/articles/732/732509p1.html http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3154010