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If Microsoft's predictions are correct, this could pose a major threat to Sony's well-established PlayStation line of consoles.

I wonder what Sony's or Nintendo's predictions might be...

Most unbiased indications are saying that XBox 360 is not doing quite as well as they would have hoped, especially in Japan where the reception has been lukewarm at best. Couple that with the fairly unimpressive game line-up it's not going to take Nostradamus to see that were just going to have to see what happens in the forthcoming months.

The XBox 360 hype never seemed to pick up steam (at least in the UK) and now there are units on shelves that hype has largely subsided. At the moment the XBox360 is only competing with current hardware on shelve's, that includes its younger brother (Xbox), the PS2 and the gamecube. PS2 units sold is probably rapidly approaching 100 million units worldwide ....

So until we see the other Next Gen consoles on shelve's this is just idle speculation.

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=84 98&page=2

I dont think XBox 360 is much of a threat to Sony, or Nintendo just yet ;)

Nick ...

How this post got modded insightful i'll never understand.. maybe because its anti-microsoft...

The x-box was supposed to have the higher tech and the live advantage and it bombed.

I direct you to here: the xbox outsells the gamecube everywhere except Japan. http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=11 067. If that means it bombed then the gamecube bombed too.

The x-box had it and it didn't sell. Nobody has ever in my opinion come up with a satisfactory reason for the failure of the x-box.

See point one.

Another one that amazed me is that one post said the x-box had signed the big names. Bungie and EA. Wtf? Bungie IS NOT a big name. They got 1 game and that is it. EA is big but EA signs on to anything. Getting EA to endorse your new console is like getting a hooker to go out with you for money. Even /.ers should be able to manage that.

Erm what? Xbox already had EA supporting them, and Microsoft owns bungie so obviously Bungie would be supporting Microsoft. Also, bungie only got one game? Clearly you don't know your history, Bungie was out and out the most critically successful Mac games producer ever, also making very critically successful games for pc. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/myth2soulbligh ter/ Myth II is about as good as a computer game can possibly be. To all those who followed Halo's development, Microsofts initial purchase of them was most definitely a big thing, given that it was clear even from early dev shots that halo could be something special.

As for the graphics being amazing. Oh please. I already play at higher resolutions on my now 2yr old PC. Richer friends won't accept anything less then 1600x1200 while sony's own games like eq2 can already make use of 512mb video cards despite the fact they were not even out. Other recent games to can make use of hardware features that even top of the range pc's don't have let alone these weak consoles.

You seem to be confused about the difference between a computer monitor and a TV screen. See this article: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dtv2.htm Weak Consoles, do you realise the xbox360 has a triple core processor? How many of these do you see in your local PC shop? The current fastest dual core AMD is the 4800 X2, which is dual core 2.4ghz per core. Which costs around 800 dollars! http://shopper.cnet.com/AMD_Athlon_64_X2_4800/4014 -3086_9-31396324.html. Note: The cheaper xbox360 costs 300 dollars. Want to carry on comparing the un-comparable? I suggest you start with melons and small off-duty Czechoslovakian traffic wardens.

The 360 is lacking launch titles and has not got the mindshare with the general public.

Xbox360 Launch Line up: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6139695.html
PS2 Launch Line up: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&cl ient=safari&rls=en&as_qdr=all&q=+%22ps2+launch+lin e+up%22+worst&btnG=Search
Indeed, most people regard PS2's launch as one of the worst ever with the DC being one of the best ever. The ps2 steam rollered the DC thus meaning that the initial launch means nothing.

So you look at a 7-day period and claim the sales are better? I'm sure we can find an arbitrary 7-day period where the PSP sold more, too.

It's certainly possible but not likely. More info on Japanese sales.

It's difficult to say which is doing better without up to date sales figures. However it has been shown that the DS has been consistently outperforming the PSP in Japan and generally in the U.K. and France.

I'm not sure about figures in the U.S. but PSP may have a lead. It would be great if we could have total sales figures instead of units shipped from Nintendo and Sony.

It's difficult to say which is doing better without up to date sales figures. However it has been shown that the DS has been consistently outperforming the PSP in Japan and generally in the U.K. and France.

I'm not sure about figures in the U.S. but PSP may have a lead. It would be great if we could have total sales figures instead of units shipped from Nintendo and Sony.

2) I don't buy that "Nintendo bombed with casual gamers with the GameCube". The GC wasn't aimed at casual gamers in anyway. Maybe at kids and/or new gamers, with the easy to use control layout and abundance of party games. I also don't know how you define "bombed", but to me, a company who sells (until recently) only 2 products, and makes more money than any of it's competitors over the lasts two years (they actually made more money than MS and Sony combined, of course MS lost money, but they made nearly twice what Sony Games did) didn't have any products that 'bombed'. See here for numbers.

3) Will the Revolutions controller be the greatest thing ever? Maybe. Hopefully they will be smart and bundle a 'standard' controller cradle with every wand style controller sold. At the very least you can have a regular console controller that knows where you are pointing it. Give me NHL 2k7 where I can point where I want the puck to go when I shoot it and I'll call it the greatest thing ever.

4) My money is on Nintendo making the most money of any game company this time around. Just like last time. Sony will probably move the most units, and MS will be lucky to break even. Nintendo will quietly sell millions of systems and games, all at a profit, and will continue to make boat loads of cash.

There are some benchmark sites around. One of the popular ones is Aquamark3. They even have a database where you can compare your scores against other folks that have similar hardware. The trick is figuring out how to filter out the folks who have overclocked their systems.

Alternately, video card listing, which is a nice cheat sheet for figuring out whether a particular card is a "DX9" card or not.

http://www.pcvsconsole.com/features/video/

A nice chart that takes most of the guesswork out of the equation.

Regardless, I doubt either the Xbox or the Gamecube have spread further apart from each other in sales.

Essentially Japan is getting better prices because in Japan XBox1 made Microsoft even more losses than everywhere else

You're joking, right? Installed base in Japan in June 2005 was 484k, with current sales of ~250/week.

Let's just call it 500k, and we'll assume they lost $150 on every single one of those sales, and that they never recouped any profits from sales of games, accessories, etc. So they lost $75m on just the console. Again assume no profit at all on anything else, so lets just double that $75m to cover any other losses that aren't covered in the costs attributed to the console - hell triple it even.

Now they had that one quarter last year where they made $83 million during christmas, with the lauch of Halo 2. Other than that they've been losing money hand over fist every quarter - iirc, the total lost is currently over $2b, $2.4b I think including the $83m profit, but let's just call it $2b.

So, $2b lost with an estimate of $225m of that attributable to Japan, that's 11%. (and a *very* high estimate)

Go ahead, do the math any way you want. Japan won't be the biggest money losing territory no matter how you stack it, they just didn't sell enough there for it to have generated "more losses than everywhere else." The only way you might be able to spin it even close is that they *may* have lost more per console sold in Japan.

They are dumping it cheaper there, because if they repeat the xbox performance in Japan, the exact same outcome is in the cards. No Japanese market, means Japanese developer support will dry up just as fast as with round 1, and that means a serious dearth of titles that will affect the US and European markets. If the original xbox had been more successful in Japan, it would have had a more rounded selection of games - especially games that appeal to Japanese gamers - and as a likely consequence more *exclusive* games, which would help sell the system in all markets.

It's all about the games... always has been, always will be. This is exactly why Nintendo finally lost second place to microsoft. They lost so much developer mindshare and support in all territories that they couldn't contend for first place. MS only lost support in Japan - give it back that support (which requires solid userbase) and it could have contended. It is a testament to the quality of Nintendo's first and second party game development that they are only a slim margin behind microsoft in the race for #2. I still can't believe how well the Rare deal worked out for Nintendo. I mean I still can't believe the company that was so prolific at turning out solid blockbusters has in 3-4 years only provided MS with the mediocre "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" and a port of "Conker's BFD." Maybe they will redeem theselves with PDZero and Kameo on the 360, but for the Xbox they've been a complete and total bust.

You want figures? I got figures for you.

Try these

Note a few of the key figures here:

NES = 61,780,000

SNES = 49,020,000

N64 = 32,930,000

Gamecube = 18,030,000

Admittedly, the higher figures for the older consoles reflect the greater time they've had on the market, but don't overestimate this - there haven't exactly been many NESes sold over the last 5 years. Now note the really key piece here. Compare the figures for the Nintendo console in each generation with its competitors. The NES beats the Mastersystem into the ground. The SNES beats the Megadrive by a comfortable margin. The N64 loses... hard... to the Playstation, but still beats off the other competitors. The Gamecube loses massively to the PS2 and is pushed into third place by a total newcomer - the X-Box.

The DS hasn't had a bad start, but its sales aren't on a par with those of the old Gameboy. It's still too soon to tell how the DS vs PSP fight will turn out in the long run, but it's looking like the PSP is going to win in Europe, at the very least.

To cut a long story short, these are not a happy set of sales figures. In pretty much any other company, heads would be rolling over this. Any Nintendo fan who tries to tell you otherwise is deluded or lying.

"Wrong. Nintendo was splitting the market with Sega."

Not really. Only the MegaDrive/Genesis ever competed with Nintendo. NES owned the market.

"The Xbox has BARELY surpassed the 'Cube,"

worldwide sales:

60 million PS2's (in 2003!...check the last link to see a rise to +_83 m. in 2005)
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zd1up/is _200401/ai_ziff117173

18.7 million Gamecubes
http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5553

20 million xbox'
http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=14 306&page=1

Check the last link for a decent comprehensive list of salesfigures. But those numbers represent the fact that a n00b sold more than an established player; but what's your point? Stability? Yeah...

"As for "history", it shows that the industry is STABILIZING."

Sure...an entirely new gamesconsole maker entering the industry and selling enough games to be able to create a second generation of it's console. If you mean stable as in 'profitable', you're right, but if you mean 'makeup of the industry', you're wrong. Plus,m the games market is still growing, it's not stable yet (stable means no growth or maybe a steady rate of growth...neither of which has happened).

"You got your chronology mixed up."

True, (by a year, too). But then again "with a game library that was significantly different from Nintendo's or Sega's offerings" (which is the point you made earlier) isn't really correct. One might try to make the point that Sony had more mature games, but that's a rather magnified claim when one looks at the actual games for each system. I might add that (as with ANY console) the ps1 was rather expensive when it was released too (especially in that year of grey imports).

"What happened was that the kids who were buying videogames in the 80s grew older and STILL wanted to buy videogames,"

That's true in a very limited way, which ignoresss the distinction between the geek/hardcore gamer and the 'casual' gamer (the one which has driven the market the past 10 years). What you say is true for just that core market, but it doesn't begin to explain the growth of the games market.
In the days of the NES/SNES/Mastersystem/Genesis, it was the hard-core, the gamers, who kept on playing games as they grew up. Not the masses, which reserved computergames for their youth and got social-pressured out of it as a hobby.
In the UK and europe, it was very definitely Sony's adds which legitimised gaming and changed it from a geeks dirty little secret to something which could be done in high end nightclubs (at the time). There is a large amount of literature on this subject, because it /was/ such an import image change which allowed the market to (for better or worse...in many hard-core gamers minds most definitely worse) grow and expand it's market to the non-geek. This and only this is the reason why the games market is larger than the movie bussiness (or more propperly and less media hyped, only if one compares the US national movie business to the worldwide games business).

Your oh-so-wittilly-snarky comment on the end tells me you really don't get the shift this last point has created for the industry. All I can say is go google (and talk to industry people, read industry commentary...shit, go read financial investment firms' commentary, as this was something HUGELY important for them.).

I enjoy a good discussion, and actually appreciate being correctee on my points (which is a great way to learn more), but don't try and be a condescending asshole about it.

disclaimer: I'm from UK and I hope I haven't fallen for a troll

The following stats in general conflict with your opinion. Xbox stats follow what you say, the picture is quite different for other consoles. Especially if you then normalise for population, gdp per head, whichever other metric you choose.

"From gaming-age: http://forums.gaming-age.com/showthread.php?t=3362 8

All shipment figures as of December 2004.

PS2

19.47m Japan
32.86m USA
29.06m Europe

81.39 Total

XB

1.70m Japan (asia pacific- some discrepancy as sony and microsft count as japan, others count as Europe/Pal)
13.20m USA
5.00m Europe

19.90m Total

GC

3.78m Japan
10.11m USA
4.13m Europe

18.02m Total

GBA

15.48m Japan
32.82m USA
17.44m Europe

65.74 Total

DS

1.45m Japan
1.36m USA
0.03m Europe

2.84m Total
"
Taken from http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=14 306

i agree with you to an extent.

where i see the psp succeeding where others failed is also in the name[s]. sony is now known as a competent console creator. before now, only sega and nintendo had that general name recognition. you can say playstation and non-gamers know what youre talking about. people trust the playstation name for games. they trust that sony games [overall] arent all crap. sega did well against the gameboy, but various mistakes on their part as a company doomed the fledgling system [well, all their systems for that matter].

also, i agree with you about games. many companies will obviously try the ol' "lets port this famous series to the portable" trick. [which is one of the psps' current failures], but for now at least the psp has many big time developers devoted to making their nickels and dimes off of the psp. all it takes is a few more A level games for the system to push the psp out of the same category as the gamegear. we are still really only looking at the launch titles, more will follow and they will use the hardware much more efficiently [re: loading time, game length, and production values]

i dont understand why people claim that the system is so doomed for failure. as of june, the psp had already sold 5 million units at least, and thats before its even released in europe. the gamegear on the other hand sold 8 million during its entire lifecycle. to put it in perspective. that matches:

a quarter of the worldwide xbox sales total.
a third of worldwide gamecube sales total.

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=84 98&page=2

keep in mind that those systems have been available for years now. the psp has only been available for four months in the us [at the time of the statistics] and isnt even available yet in europe! come on, its got a fight on its hands for sure, but dead? i dont foresee that... people said the same thing when sony announced the playstation.

I've always referred to this excellent pcvsconsole table of PC video card specs for a very concise overview of the specs and performance of the various video cards. It really is worth a look if you want to see how much more horsepower is in the newer cards as compared to the older ones.

This article, apparently published around April '91, lists 7 million copies of Super Mario Bros. 3 sold. This one (analysis) lists sales of 18M overall (and 8.5M for GTA:VC). SMB3 has, for a while now, been the canonical best selling game of all time.

NPD numbers are tricky in that they don't cover all stores, and the precise numbers themselves cannot be used publically without getting charged up the yang. And of course, they don't cover the Japanese market, where GTA games don't do nearly as well. (Media Create, however, produces free stats for hardware and software sales in Japan.)

As a novelty. But Pong doesn't have the lasting appeal of something like Space War, which I believe came out even earlier.

The original Space War was played in university tech labs only. Before releasing Pong, Nolan Bushnell & company produced Computer Space, the first arcade video game and somewhat similar (I think I heard) to Space War, but it was not popular, probably because it was too complex.

My gut tells me you're right about Space War being more interesting than Pong (which I picked as an extreme example to test against GTA:SA). But honestly, alas, by this point I've lost almost all track of the GTA:SA vs Pong argument.

> Well, it could still be done I think without wrecking the tone.

I really don't see how.

What were we talking about here, again? We started this discussion so long ago I'm getting fuzzy on it.

There are some interesting turns to the story, despite the fact that many of them are predictable -- and in that respect it's much like the rest of the game, which is a collection of extremely well-polished and well-executed clichés.

I dunno, it still hasn't broken through my apathy filter yet. Gameplay footage looks mostly like yet another "guy slays bunches of monsters in 3D using combos and special moves through a series of linear levels" game. But maybe that's just the lack of sleep talking....

Oh, I enjoyed the story in Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, too. A fantastic game with characters that you actually cared about.

I've also heard PoP:SoT had a good story, but I probably won't get around to playing it. Not that I have anything against it... just that there's such a lot of games to play that I'll probably never be able to find time for. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not moving away from video games altogether these days. I played Katamari Damacy for weeks, but before that there was a good drought of gaming interest. Ah well.

These days, I find think about homebrew game creation is starting to pull ahead of actual game playing in my interests list. Which is a recipe for further gaming angst, I know....

The Xbox 360 is going to launch with about as many "Japanese" games as the original Xbox did.

While Microsoft has signed on several big name developers to do games, none will have games ready for launch. By the time these titles do come out Sony will have the PS3 and it will be too late for Xbox 360. Also, only a couple Japanese titles really draw a lot of mainstream attention in Japan. The others are somewhat niche. Remember Jet Set Radio? Dead or Alive 3? Yeah, they really helped the xbox out.

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=15 959

But unfortunatly that's the only thing for Xbox anyone was interested in. (the second table is only for the US market and it's gonna be a lot worse worldwide).

But unfortunatly that's the only thing for Xbox anyone was interested in. (the second table is only for the US market and it's gonna be a lot worse worldwide).

What else is there?

Children. Adults with jobs, families, and lives.

As opposed to what? One of PS2's redundant anime/ninja/samurai games? Or something childish like Mario Karts? FPS, racing and sports games are not the bulk of video game sales?

It's hard to imagine children enjoying a childish game, I know.

But what does Nintendo know?

Whoops!

Since the 20th of march nintendo have released colored ds, and nintendogs, which which have resulted in DS outselling the psp EVERY week since that date. Source: http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=82 72&page=14 and the next pages.

I was under the impression that the Gamecube had sold around 18m consoles, mostly all at a profit, whereas the XBox had sold around 20m consoles, mostly all at a large loss. That 2m difference is hardly "pathetic third spot" when you consider the PS2 has sold 80m consoles.

Worldwide Hardware Sales (End of 2004)
PlayStation 2 - 81.39 million
Xbox - 19.9 million
GameCube - 18.03 million
Game Boy Advance - 65.74 million
Nintendo DS - 2.84 million (6m April 2005)
Sony PSP - 0.51 million
N-Gage - 1.3 million
PSone - 101.73 million

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=14 306&page=1

If Nintendo have to change something, it is to reverse the decline: NES: 60m, SNES: 50m, N64: 33m, GC: 18m

(they'll probably sell a couple more million GC this year - maybe Nintendo should reduce the size a bit and cut the cost a bit more)

Gamecube outsold Xbox in worldwide totals

Uh... source? No, it didn't.

Well, let's take a little look at Google and find out, shall we?

According to console sales statistics for 2003, worldwide sales for the three consoles looked a bit like this:

Now, those numbers are pretty old, so let's try to find something more recent, like sales statistics for 2004. Now the playing field looks a bit like this:

So you're correct in saying that the Gamecube didn't outsell the Xbox as of the end of 2004, but that's relatively recent, and the Gamecube is certainly much closer to the Xbox in terms of sales than either of them are to the Playstation 2. You can draw your own conclusions at this point--I don't have a preference either way--but I think it would be somewhat unfair and short-sighted to say that the Gamecube was a failure.

As an aside, I suppose that "Nintendo makes money on Gamecube sales" is a somewhat salient point because, after all, if they're still making money, they'll most likely keep on making consoles.

Gotham did/does use licensed cars:

"The first thing you'll notice in this game is that it features a great amount of licensed cars such as Ferrari, BMW, Porsche and Mercedes and many cars for each class."

http://www.pcvsconsole.com/user_review.php?rfi=143

North America
PlayStation 2 - 32.86 million
Xbox - 13.2 million
GameCube - 10.11 million

Japan / Asia
PlayStation 2 - 19.47 million
Xbox - 1.7 million
GameCube - 3.78 million

Europe / PAL
PlayStation 2 - 29.06 million
Xbox - 5.0 million
GameCube - 4.13 million

The sales for 2004 (from here appear to agree fairly well with the overall numbers the previous poster had, with the PS2 just barely outselling the GBA (note: you'll have to add the GBA and GBA SP sales yourself) in 2004, and both of them putting the smack down on everything else.

System - Sales this week - Total this year
Nintendo DS - 221,625 - 889,400
PlayStation 2 - 112,970 - 2,503,532
PSP - 85,059 - 245,078
Game Boy Advance SP - 80,271 - 2,340,693
GameCube - 29,991 - 588,528
Game Boy Advance - 1,270 - 194,148
Xbox - 499 - 36,379
Swan Crystal 70 - 7,388
PSone 40 - 13,939

Overall numbers for the year are available here and agree with what the previous poster had:

Worldwide Hardware Sales (End of 2004)
PlayStation 2 - 81.39 million
Xbox - 19.9 million
GameCube - 18.03 million
Game Boy Advance - 65.74 million
Nintendo DS - 2.84 million
Sony PSP - 0.51 million
N-Gage - 1.3 million
PSone - 101.73 million

I'm too lazy to cut and paste any more, but everything I turned up from a quick google search seemed to agree fairly well. Overall-- PS1 is in the lead, PS2 is in second, GBA is third, followed by the Xbox and the Gamecube.

I just did a quick google search and found those numbers on a forum. Hardly an authoritative source, but I've seen similar numbers elsewhere so I figured they were close enough. Still, I'm perfectly willing to believe I'm way offbase...can you show sources proving me wrong?

GC is certainly 32-bit . The 970 (Power4/G5) is the first widely released 64-bit processor in the PowerPC family aside from the defunct PowerPC 620 (circa 1994). I believe the 620 didn't yeild the kind of results IBM was hoping for so they canned it.

And the PS2 does use a 128-bit MIPS-based processor designed by Sony and Toshiba. MIPS-"based" means that they bought a 64-bit MIPS architecture license from MIPS (about the only thing they sell) and adapted it to their application. Now, I'm not an expert on that architecture and and there is some argument as to what truly makes an n-bit processor (its data bus or address bus). I'm going to have to say that it is at minimum 64-bit data bus with a 128-bit address bus or 128-bit data bus with a 64-bit address bus, but it could just as well be fully 128-bit.

Not that ANY of that matters, like you say. The PS2 CPU isn't what's interesting about it at all. It's the VPUs , which have caused oh-so-much pain for game developers around the world.

Everyone stating that this had been done with the Voodoo5, you forget Quantum3D. They not only did to the Voodoo2, exactly what Gigabyte's done here to the nVidia 6600 chip, by combining 2 SLI'd boards on one. But, they also helped inspire the SLI idea by taking 3dfx's first Voodoo chips and putting them onto a singleboard: http://extreme.pcvsconsole.com/view.php?news=1944

BTW. the figure illustrates "the overal architecture of a computer network in accordance with the present invention"

Previous /. article provides link to this description.

not to pick nits, but the 3do was 32bit... link, link for a more comprehensive list of 'bit-ness'...

Vector operations on desktop processors are more or less an afterthought added for the additional buzzword and the odd photoshop filter. In short they are an extension of limited significance.

On the Cell processor the vector units *are* the processor. They do the computing for the applications, the general purpose processor that is the main part of a regular cpu only runs the OS and coordinates the vector units.

From http://journal.pcvsconsole.com/?thread=9240:

Say, for instance, that a website wanted to stream a TV signal to you in their new improved format DivY. They could send you a cell that contained the program instructions for decoding the DivY stream into a regular TV picture. Then they send you the DivY-endoded picture stream. This would work if you had a PS3 or if you had a digital TV, or even if you had a powerful enough PDA - assuming their design followed the new standard.

And you thought the broadcast flag was bad. When these folks talk about the PC platform being dead, they're not just talking about the silicon. They are talking about end-to-end computing, where you control your own hardware and software. This is a power grab, and a big one.

But UNC's Zimmons has his doubts. "I believe that while theoretically having a large number of transistors enables teraflops-class performance, the PS3 [Playstation 3] will not be able to deliver this kind of power to the consumer," quoted from /. referenced article.

Zimmons talks the details.

According to http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=82 72&page=10 Xbox sales were somewhat higher. But it's the WWW -- don't believe half of what you read, and none of what you read.

1. PS2 - Madden NFL 2004 (Electronics Arts)
2. GBA - Pokemon Ruby (Nintendo)
3. GBA - Pokemon Sapphire (Nintendo)
4. PS2 - Need for Speed Underground (Electronics Arts)
5. NGC - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Nintendo)
6. PS2 - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar)
7. NGC - Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (Nintendo)
8. PS2 - Tony Hawk's Underground (Activision)
9. PS2 - Enter the Matrix (Atari)
10.PS2 - Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (Electronics Arts)

These are sales figures from North America. Looking at that list, the only game there that was not an established game franchise is the Matrix game - and that was already an established movie franchise. Simply put, companies that want to make money need to exploit their established characters. The video game industry is still relatively young and perhaps after more maturing, originality will sell games. For now, companies should bet on sequels selling. The link I provided provides a list of the best selling games in Japan for 2003, which paints a similar picture.

Now, I will agree that companies should not "pump out" sequels. Companies need to realize that in this industry, established characters are a license to print money, IF you protect your characters and make sure that poor release after poor release does not devalue them. For instance, the most recent Tomb Raider game was a sequel that did not sell because it was a bad game with an established character. Companies need to use established characters but also release quality games.

The real reason that companies are kissing Sony's ass is because Sony is a Japanese company.

Not so. Many of the companies that are "kissing Sony's ass" were developing for the orginal Playstation. When the era of the PS2 and Xbox came about, companies that put out PS1 games felt it'd be safer to continue their developement with Sony's nextgen system, as opposed to Microsoft's brand new one. Think about it: Sony would be assured of a large amount of PS2 sales in the crowd that had already owned and liked PS1s. Plus, many* that never had PS1s saw the PS2 as a better investment over an Xbox for a new system, especially when it came to backwards compatibility (*I can't say all; tons of people, myself included, chose an Xbox over a PS2).

The problem is the Japanese developers make all the good games and these developers are all loyal to Sony because Sony is run by Japanese people who look like them.

Then why does has the PS2 soundly beat the Gamecube in system and game sales in Japan?

I'd venture a guess that loyalty is rarely the leading motivation for most companies to develope games. I seem to recall Square releasing Final Fantasy VII on the PS, when all the previous FF games were on Nintendo systems.

The Play Station was a failed colaboration between Sony and Nintendo to produce a SNES with a CD-ROM. I remember when working for a PS1 developer in the '90s that sony used to get very upset with people who used the phrase "Play Station" instead of "PlayStation", there's the reason why.

Edge magazine here in the UK had a picture of a Play Station a while back so pictures do exist but I cant find one on the web. The best I can find are these two links which mention the project in passing.

http://www.nintendoland.com/home2.htm?snes/snescdr .htm
http://hankfiles.pcvsconsole.com/answer.php?file=2 08

Technically, the Gamecube has 48MB of RAM, but the problem is that 24MB of the ram consists of relatively fast 1T-SRAM with a bandwidth of 2.6GB/sec and another 16MB of standard DRAM that has a bandwidth of only 81MB/sec. Here's a some good info on it

In contrast, the PS2 has 32MB of ram that runs at 3.2GB/sec (more linkage).

So, yeah, if your trying to feed geometry to the GPU the slower ram may not cut it. What some developers do (for example, lucasarts when they made jedi starfighter) is use the slower ram as a ramdisk "swap drive", or just use it to hold sound. In essence, though, you've got 8 megs less than a ps2.

My guess is this: If theywanted to make Driv3r for the Gamecube you could definitely do it (and make it look damn good), but it wouldn't be as easy as doing a simple port from the PS2 version. While profits may not have been the stated reason, perhaps revenue from the gamecube version were not worth the added cost/headache of porting.

Dunno... It's all speculation on my part. But the slow RAM issue isn't bullshit, for what it's worth.

Firstly, In terms of sales, Xbox is second. Gamecube is third. PS2 is first, and not surprisingly, as they had a two year head start on the pair.

In the USA it goes PS2 - Xbox - Gamecube. If you consider world wide sales then Gamecube slightly edges out Xbox.

And yes, PS2 had a 2 year head start, but if I recall the figures correctly it's like 70 million PS2 and 13 million Xbox. Ahh yes, here are the figures.

Face it, the PS2 "won". It had more games and better games. The tide is turning but it's too little too late for Xbox. It was a good console too, and very good price, but the games weren't there in sufficient numbers. It's better now, but we're about to see the next gen consoles. Xbox lost the battle. Microsoft might not have lost the war though. They gained a lot of respect with the Xbox. It wasn't a farce. They did a lot of things really well. I was surprised.

Secondly, in terms of capability, Xbox is the winner, hands down.

Yup, can't deny that.

Thirdly, the reason you've only heard Halo included with 'good game' and 'Xbox' was because you're not a console gamer. Otherwise you'd have heard Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Knights of the Old Republic, Crimson Skies, as well as plenty of cross-platform games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City (The last three all have better graphics on the Xbox than the PS2 counterpart).

Can't deny that either. Games look sweet on the Xbox. But it's all about the games. You buy the console which has your games. Only a dolt buys the console based on tech specs.

The true console warrior has all three consoles though, and these silly console wars are for gamer wannabes.

Actually, you're wrong on your first point - Gamecube is second in worldwide sales, with Xbox taking third (it's close, though). GC sold 13.94 million units as of the end of 2003, while Xbox sold 13.7 million units. You can read more about it here. I fully agree with your other two points, though.

GCN is still beating the Xbox worldwide.

Playstation 2 sales: 70 million

XBox sales: 13.7 million

Gamecube sales: 13.94 million
(Source)

The gamecube is barely holding even with the Xbox, and has been thoroughly demolished by the PS2. (I didn't check the last few months, which might show an increase in GC sales because they are now priced at $100, but it's not going to make that big a difference in the overall numbers.) Even if you subtract out the 20 million PS2 units (roughly) that sold before the launch of the other two, it's still no contest. Obviously, there is a large subset of people that don't mind the fact that the PS2 is also a DVD player.

At first, PS2 software sales were extremely slow because people were buying PS2 consoles to use solely as a cheap DVD player...

Sorry, I wasn't aware that the Xbox was actually doing well in some places. I live in Japan, where the Xbox is selling about as well as, say, cowpies. The most recent sales data I found was here; the PS2 and GBA are running about neck-and-neck, both beating the Xbox by about a factor of 100 (yes, one hundred). In recent weeks the Xbox is facing a serious challenge from the PSOne.

So maybe Microsoft can establish an American standard, but no way are they in shape to take on Sony here.

Sorry, I wasn't aware that the Xbox was actually doing well in some places. I live in Japan, where the Xbox is selling about as well as, say, cowpies. The most recent sales data I found was here; the PS2 and GBA are running about neck-and-neck, both beating the Xbox by about a factor of 100 (yes, one hundred). In recent weeks the Xbox is facing a serious challenge from the PSOne.

So maybe Microsoft can establish an American standard, but no way are they in shape to take on Sony here.

1. 32 MB - Main Memory
2. 2MB - Sound Card
3. 2MB - IO/PSOne chip
4. 4MB - Graphics

I'm prett sure the Game Cube has 40MB of memory total, and the Xbox has 64MB total(all of which is shared).

Too late.

As it says in the post, check out Game Informer. Awesome screenshots of it all...Barret looks especially impressive.

ApeXtreme (Apex Extreme) winner of the Best New Home A/V product at last January's CES. Also previously slashdotted.

I'm guessing IBM makes a lot more money off gamecube sales then G5 sales. Think about it, there have been around 14 million gamecubes sold (if you trust this source) and how many macs sold? I doubt 14 million. Even if the profit margin on the game cube processors is lower, IBM could still be making more money.
Now if IBM doesn't have to make significant changes for the X-box 2, and it can expect similar sales as the original X-box, then they can expect a huge profit while keeping the costs low.

Also, no matter which console wins, IBM wins. The article states that they are making the processor for the X-box 2, the new gamecube, and the PS3. So they benifit the most when people to buy multiple consoles, instead of just one, but they have also insulated themselves incase any one of the three makes huge profits and the other two bomb. As long as overall unit sales are as high as they expected, they win. (On a side note, 10 years ago who'd of thought IBM would ever be so integrated into gaming?)

In other words, I think it is a money making move, and a good one too. If they wanted publicity they wouldn't want something where they need to produce (most likely) over 30 million processors (2 per system, with similar sales as the current X-box worldwide over it's life), since they only have so much foundry space and they would probably rather use that space for the jobs they get from the publicity.

But then again, this is all speculation. Few people know the true motives behind large corps.

Meanwhile the PSP has two processors based on an R4000 core, each at 333MHz. Compare this to a Sony Playstation with a single R3000 at 33.8688 MHz (30 MIPS, bus bandwidth 132 Mb/sec), Sega Saturn with two Hitachi SuperH (SH-2) at 28.6 MHz (each 25 MIPS Plus 22.6MHz Yamaha FH1 24-bit DSP and a couple of video processor chips, and just for giggles, Playstation 2 which is harder to quantify from specifications but its Emotion Engine based around a 2-issue 128 bit MIPS design with 3.2GB/sec bandwidth to main memory, not to mention the couple of vector coprocessors more powerful (though less general-purpose) than the core. Oh yeah, and the same R3000 core (or something programatically the same) as the Playstation is tucked in there too. But, I digress. The PSP is slightly like a baby PS2. It has only one vector unit, but it still has one. The clock rate is basically the same (slightly higher, but not really worth mentioning) as a PS2. It should be a powerhouse of a system. My only regret is that it will probably be locked down pretty tight and I hate to support that kind of thing.

Nonetheless the PSP is a kind of revolution that puts it dramatically beyond today's handhelds, as today's handhelds are ahead of, well, some of the old handhelds. (You would have a hard time convincing me that a GBA is really that much better than a Turbo Express, for example, or even a Lynx, except for form factor.) Of course GBA is not a speed demon, but it wasn't trying to be. However the fact that the GBA SP is so wildly successful in spite of its lack of power does not show that there is not a market for a more expensive device that does it all. After all, Gamecube and Playstation 2 are both still doing quite well.

"Microsoft is after all the largest tech company in the world"

I think IBM may have issues with this.

This is a bit off topic, but perhaps I could have phrased it better. Microsoft Windows is the most run software (if you count OS's as software) in the world might have been more accurate.

I could make an argument for Microsoft being bigger than IBM, based on the fact that their Market Value is larger than IBM and despite the fact that IBM makes more in Sales, Microsoft makes more in profits. which is what counts.

To jump back on topic, the fact remains that most home users run Microsoft windows, so they might be interested in this news. It is far more interesting to the general public, than the current CNN front page technology offerings...

Can technology build a better Buffett?
FCC starts rewriting Internet rules

Heck CNN has an article on how one of the dixie chicks is pregnant in their "top stories" section. This is a top story? Bigger than the OS that has 85-90% market share getting it's source code stolen? The OS that most "common" people run? I would say the microsoft story is much more interesting than a dixie chick getting knocked up. That could be my tech bias talking though.