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PSX2 Memory Card Recall Ordered
tlhIngan writes "Apparently, the PlayStation2 has shipped with several glaring bugs, that is prompting a recall of the 8 MB memory cards. News of the recall is here. It appears that there are problems with the DVD playback such as skipping video/sound, inability to recognize Japanese region DVDs, and dual layer/dual sided CDs take a while to recognize, if they recognize at all. For memory cards, playing Ridge Racer V will corrupt the 8 MB memory card, destroying the DVD driver (which will have to be reloaded from the utilities CD). Additional problems include overheating and freezing." Okay, it turns out that the cards aren't being recalled, but there's still come severe weird mojo going on here somewhere.
bwahahahahahahah!
First Intel and Dell are screwed over by rambus compatibility problems with the 820. Then they're screwed over with their botched MTH backup plan for the 840. Then Sony under ships PS2 due to large production shortfalls in rambus memory cards. Now the system is flakey and suffers from overheating and freezes.
Yet RMBS is over $300 from Intel's pumping and PS2 shipment. These suckers are almost as big as the ones who thought the world would pay Qualcomm $20 billion a year in CDMA licensing by 2010! This story looks to be a pretty decent Greek tragedy. The combined hubris of Intel and the the sycophantic analysts that follow it like birds follow a horse is amazing.
Exactly. AFAIK, every Intel PC CPU ever created had a flaw/bug. Here are a few buggy x86 opcodes...
8088/8086 - AAA, MOV bugs
80186 - POP, SHL, ROL bugs
80286 - CMPS, INS, MOVS bugs
80386 - IBTS, INS, LAR, LSL, MOV, MOVS, MUL, POPAD bugs
80486 - BSWAP, CMPXCHG, IBTS, INS, INVD, JMP, MOV bugs
Pentium - FDIV bug
There are far more, but I think you get the picture... Suddenly the problems with the PS2's memory card don't look so bad. The 80386 had the POPAD bug, the 80486
The original Killer Instinct Gold did have a bug where it would crash if you had a rumble pack in. Nintendo fixed this bug and re-masked the rom, so the newer carts don't have this problem.
I suppose you could complain to nintendo and ask to send it back and get a new one.
Anyway, both rom images have been dumped and are available if you look around... The newer rom has 02 in byte 63, while the older rom has 00. Nintendo always marks new versions this way. I've never seen a 01 version of Killer Instinct Gold, I wonder if there was one...
Actually, 980,000 units is not a small quantity. But there is a grain of truth in this. It seems that in Japan, companies will "test the market" to see if there actually is a demand for a product. This is almost the reverse of what happens in the US where market research is conducted ad nauseum while a product is still on the drawing board. The result is that the Japanese come up with hits that couldn't be predicted by market research such as the home VCR and the Walkman, to name a few.
There have also been duds that no one outside Japan has heard of. Anyone ever hear about the Sony Palmtop? Sony Bookman?
Also, one advantage of releasing the product in Japan first and fixing the real-world problems that inevitably come up is that Japanese will be less adversarial when it come to pointing out shortcomings, leading to quicker resolutions and improvements. Can you imagine what itwould be like here, with lawyers falling over themselves filing class-action lawsuits on behalf of emotionally scarred gamers because of a defective and dangerous product sold by a greedy corporation that puts profits before people (sarcasm)?
you are one stupid gook.
If you stop to put your brain in gear, you'd realise that long before Netscape was even an idea, Microsoft and IBM did the Release-Patch two step...
Your exactly right. Here is how it works. Mommy buys them one system, say a DC. Therefore from now it is their sworn duty to be biased toward any other system. A consoles power means nothing, if I don't own it its not more powerful then the one I have now. All games for it suck except . It is also your duty to watch carefully for any negative press on other systems, memorize, and when your friend talks about it and thats why my system is better than yours.
Havent they bugtested the shit at all? I tought they did heavy extensive regression tests on the hardware before it goes to mass production and strick tests of the productions lines to find these kind of bugs _before_ public release. Stupid nuts..
Yeah, but none of those can even compare to the gran turismo series on the playstation. If you want the ultimate in driving games look no where else. Gran Turismo 2000 is the main reason im gonna get a playstation2.
This does seem like a warm-up for the Microsoft X-Box. But hey, there is 1 good thing about Sony over Microsoft. When was the last time you've seem Microsoft recall a buggy product?
Hah! I wonder if it's the same moderator that's been bashing this entire thread. lol. Oh well, I have karma to burn...
Quality games since birth? You mean, that graphic abortion Zelda, or other ugly-ass games like Contra?
Actually, the problems related to the Dreamcast were due to faulty CDs, not the hardware being defective. And then, it was only in two or three titles, many Midway games. Actually you're incorrect the problems were both in the hardware and in the CD's. Having worked at Activision during the time of release about three cd pressing plants produced badly pressed cd's (Blue Stinger among them). Also around half of the Dreamcast's from China had trouble when they would shift into their 'powerdown' mode. Forgot my password.
Obviously not the ones that I have.
And nowhere does the original post mention a "marvelous PSX2 game selection"
Do us all a favor and read posts before you criticise them offhand, OK? It's a shame that you might not ever see this, since I'm posting a day and 1/2 late.
--- listen up u nationalistic amerikkkan, just because u thiunk you r better than the rest ofthe world dosent mean that u r entitled to better products then us. --- 1. There's nothing nationalistic about the original poster, but you seem to be pretty reactionary. What's the big problem? It's easy to imagine that there is some sort of conspiracy, but odds are the original poster means exactly what he said: He hopes that it's fixed by the time he can buy one. Big deal, if the situation were reversed, odds are you'd feel the same way. 2. Slashdot is a site based in America, with a large number of American readers. How many foreign sites cater to Americans? Compared to most places, Slashdot is very kind to its foreign readers. 3. For being so anti-American, your spelling seems to indicate that you've dipped into our educational system. :>
Dude, you're preety damn gullible
why is this a troll? he responded to a troll, maybe but this isnt a troll.
Maybe I don't waste time logging in for trolls.
I'm very familiar. Thank you.
400/450/500 MHz speedsI don't remember seeing Mr. Job's name on any of the first wave of press releases. He does have a few employees working for him, you know.
Processor speed was just a minor difference between the various models. Stock RAM and HD sizes varied also. If you ordered the top-of-the-line, you still got the top-of-the-line, with the fastest processor Motorola could deliver at the time.
Yes, he did. He probably also fired a few Marketing and Sales Managers along the way. Rightfully so, I might add.
Not even close. Apple had the 500s in supply, ready to ship. Unfortunately they were counting on Motorola holding up their end of the deal, and actually continuing to supply 500MHz chips. Due to popularity of the machine, Apple was out of supply within days, and some clueless manager thought he had the answer. Apple wasn't trying to fool anyone. I hope that whoever came up with the stupid idea is flipping burgers somewhere now.
Oh, and there was nothing "defective" about the machines.
Maybe by design. So US gamers getting a PSX2 with (they think) the bonus ability to play region 2 DVDs... and now we learn that, any game, say *all* US PSX2 games to come, can magically disable the DVD playback card not of the same region code as the disc if they see it in the slot, or force it back to region 1. Hmmmm. Is this really a bug? Sou kashira!
"I like the fact that square is releasing at least 2 titles in the Final Fantasy series and other RPGs for the PS2."
I love RPGs, but the Final Fantasy series went south starting with FF7 and continued on it's way with FF8. I can remember being really hyped up about FF8 when it was released, only to find that instead of purchasing a role playing game all I got was a few CD's with semi-cool CG animation and no gameplay whatsoever.
What I'd like to see are a return to real RPGs, less FMV, more gameplay, fun to play, addictive, and ones you actually contribute to the plot unfolding, not sitting back and watching a 20 minute movie, fighting a wimpy-ass boss-like character, then watching another 10 minute movie explaining what happens next!
The SNES also suffered from overheating. With playing RPGS for 10 hours straigt, we always had to give the system some cooldown time
You want original, try the train driver game...boy, now that's wierd.
Yah, I know you wish that warez kids could be crushed and jailed like the drug dealers are nowadays, but frankly, for a corporation to intentionally damage one of its customer's products is nothing short of criminal. If there is a crime going on, the only way to resolve it is to let the police do their job. Corporate vigilantism sets a dangerous new precedent.
The Merchedes A-class was bugged.... The constructor did not guess that anyone would try to drive around an elk instead of over it. As if anyone would not do his outmost to awoid an animal bigger than the car. To their credit they DID offer free upgrade, at list in Norway. I'ts now bugfree as far as i know. Ugliness is not a bug:)
The box on my creative riva TNT card, which is over a year old, says it does 9 Gigaflops.
Now, that's the box. Even if marketing was exaggerating 300%, it would STILL do 3 Gigaflops, which is half of what the PSX2 can do. And this thing's two generations old.
What I want to know is why somebody hasn't written drivers for linux or otherwise that will let other software use the floating point unit... think about what that would do to mp3 encoding time...
revconor@retroactive.org
Or so they told us gamers. I remember being told how the Playstation (original) had overheating problems and all these bugs and stuff. You know what the funny thing is? I have an original Playstation. I have had it for years, and I have never had it overheat or crash. Hey, maybe I got the freakish non-buggy Playstation, by shear chance... or maybe FUD hypes up small problems.
The "pimply faced" ones are everyone with only one game system because their mommy bought it for them (after much begging) and they have no real cash of their own. The true gaming 31337 buy every console, even multiple consoles (for upstairs and downstairs) and buy both US and JP systems so they don't have to fuck with or wait for "mod chips" to come out. It's great, always being way ahead of the curve! Heh!
I remeber a while back (1994 or so) that US Robotics had a heat problem with their 28.8k modems. The Codec chip they used would drift after being powered up for a certain amount of time (i think). The engineers figured out a way to compensate for the drift with the firmware!
>Anyone who owned a Playstation before model #(I >forget, but I'm sure someone will help me out >here) 1000/1001/1002 My old 1002 still works though... More or less.. (mostly less)
Any modchips out yet?
At least Amiga OS had to spiffy exec.library/SetFunction() call for on-the-fly patching of individual functions within shared libraries...
I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!
Just to let you in on a secret - the Iron Chef gets three days to prepare for a particular ingredient, whereas the challenger only gets told the day before the show is recorded.
Sounds like someone's been believing benchmarketing again...
In 6 months time, PCs will have outpaced PSX stuff again.
New systems have bugs. It's just a rule of the universe.
Rambus, the only memory for PC grade machines, where the modules must have heat sinks!
Not only that, but only a maximum per-centage of the memory banks can be active at one time to prevent melt-down. Presumably, a software bug in managing memory could physically destroy the whole machine.
"Hey, that's funny, I think I smell smoke."
Being stationed over here in Japan has its upsides :-) I've got my PSX2 hooked up to a friends' Sony Wega, and its so clear its almost scary. I have yet to experience the overheating or freezing of the console, so I guess I'll consider myself lucky.
"Additional problems include overheating and freezing." - Does that mean that they get very hot, then all of a sudden turn ice-cold? Fire and ice, hehe.
This really makes me wonder if companies are ever going to start shipping finished product. I would be so mad if I had bought one of those pieces of crap. This reminds me of Ultima 9. That thing was released with so many bugs it wasn't even possible to finish. Now they've released the final patch, with "all the bugs fixed", increased performance for all video cards (except nvidia RIVA TNT2, which I have). I'm glad to be a part of beta testing, even if I have to pay $50 for the priveledge. Remember, test first. Sell later. Uggg.
You friends kept their saturns in the corner and never played them? I am guessing they got rid of them before panzer dragoon saga, import x-men vs street fighter, shining force 3 or burning rangers. That is just too bad! If you waited until 1997 or 1998 you could have gotten a machine that had graphics that were almost as good as the psx (if you like 2d games than the saturn blew the psx out of the water) for a fraction of the price. More games came out for the ss then the N64 and in 1998 we bought all those games for a dollar each. These games included kick butt arcade ports from Sega as well some 3rd party games from eidos capcom and EA (amazing how many third party games came out for a console that wasn't supposed to have any third party support.) I have no idea why you friends left their saturns in the corner. At the end of the 32-64 bit era putting down $15-50 for a SS was really a no brainer. Most people who say that saturn sucked never actually played one. If my DC ends up being another saturn than I for one will be perfectly happy (except that might mean trouble for our friends over at SErvice GAmes.)
Sony told Daily Radar that all memory card recall rumors are false. What really happened is that they are just halting production of stand alone memory cards and then they will go back on sale at the end of the month. You can find more information about this here http://www.dailyradar.com/news/game_news_2163.html
I wasn't that impressed with the graphics of the PS2 (compared to a PC or Dreamcast). Also, rumour has it that GT2000 is a port of GT2 for the PSX. GT2 for the PSX wasn't a very good game even if you ignore the obvious bugs. For example, the catch up code in it makes it very much an arcade game.
Actually modern supercomputers (see Blue Horizon) run at over a TFLOP. They gain this performance from fast superscalar CPUs, not a bunch of vector processors. This means they will run nearly all (parallel) software fast, not just 4d vector stuff.
You are mistaken about the frame rate. It is 60Hz, not 3600Hz. Also, you do see each one of those frames (actually fields) right after it's drawn on the next VBlank. And lighting does take some effort on the part of the vector units which is one reason terrain does not usually have realtime lighting, it is lit in the tools (not counting FX lighting like missles lighting up halls, etc, which is usually done on the CPU anyways).
I agree with you on the power of the PS2. Current CPUs do not have floating point vector units which are what give the PS2 its awesome floating point performance specs. (But these are special processors that really only accelerate 3d calculations.)
Let me say that I really dig the PS2 (I have a TOOL). It's an extremely powerfull graphics machine and I think some groundbreaking games will become possible with it.
So why doesn't it look any better than my PC? I remember when the 3DO console was supposed to be 50 times faster than a PC too. It just isn't true.
I now have a PSX2 (freshly imported) sitting next to a Dreamcast at our office, and I've got to say, the PSX2 looks like a hunk of crap, right now. Perhaps it's just the choice of game (some samurai chop-em-up battle thing with N64-looking graphics), but it also doesn't help that it looks like Tokyo-at-Night-After-Godzilla. It's big, it's black, it's got a few LEDs. Unless they put together an awesome cadre of games by the American release, it's going to be Dreamcast for a while.
Dude, stop trolling, its not like PC and DC software aren't full of bugs. I have several friends who are DC programmers and if you think that DC games have no bugs, you are _sorely_ mistaken. Besides, the DC runs WinCE, now do you really want that? I can see it now, fire up Sonic and the BSOD pops up halfway through the game....no thanks.
I know that, I was just making a point. If anyone is in Miro$oft's pocket its Sega, not Sony.
>Dude, stop trolling, its not like PC and DC software aren't full of
>bugs. I have several friends who are DC programmers and if you think
>that DC games have no bugs, you are _sorely_ mistaken. Besides, the DC
>runs WinCE, now do you really want that? I can see it now, fire up
>Sonic and the BSOD pops up halfway through the game....no thanks.
How quickly these silly PC gamers forget about things like the buggy Pentium chips that Intel had to replace because people raised such a stink about it. Or how about Commodore advising the first buyers of the A500 to drop them onto a tabletop in order to fix a problem caused by chips that weren't seated properly in the sockets on the A500's motherboard? I think Sony did themselves a huge favor by recalling these machines when they found out these problems.
>At least Amiga OS had to spiffy exec.library/SetFunction() call for
>on-the-fly patching of individual functions within shared libraries...
Hey did you drop your A500 on a tabletop to seat the chips on the motherboard like Commodore suggested?
People wonder why Sony only releases a small quantity of the PS2 and only in Japan. Half the reason people think Japanese products have such high quality. They Guniea Pig their own consumers first.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
---
:>
listen up u nationalistic amerikkkan, just because u thiunk you r better than the rest ofthe world dosent mean that u r entitled to better products then us.
---
1. There's nothing nationalistic about the original poster, but you seem to be pretty reactionary. What's the big problem? It's easy to imagine that there is some sort of conspiracy, but odds are the original poster means exactly what he said: He hopes that it's fixed by the time he can buy one. Big deal, if the situation were reversed, odds are you'd feel the same way.
2. Slashdot is a site based in America, with a large number of American readers. How many foreign sites cater to Americans? Compared to most places, Slashdot is very kind to its foreign readers.
3. For being so anti-American, your spelling seems to indicate that you've dipped into our educational system.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Well, looky there. Someone seems to be annoyed by my bashing overzealous moderation... Hint: Offtopic means that a reply doesn't have anything to do with the previous message. If someone's talking about bad moderation, and then I say something about bad moderation, that's not off-topic. Now, if someone says something about cheeze whiz, and I say something about bad moderation, then that is off-topic. See the difference little moderator type personage?
Intolerant people should be shot.
Yeah, well there seems to be a bunch of moderators who've been bashing down everything remotely arguementative lately. Oh well, I'm sure after they keep getting bashed in meta-moderation, they'll either shape up or stop getting points. (I assume I'm not the only one using unfair ratings more lately?)
Intolerant people should be shot.
Be man enough to let me know what your problem with me is.
I have not done anything to offend you and if I have give me the chance to explain.
Sometimes, you know, JonKatz is right.
I do hope you don't object to anything on my homepage because I have a pathological dislike of Nazis.
Working for the (other) man
Which is it? Hot or cold?
:)
FYI - I finished Ultima 9 without any patches... on a TNT2, no less. AND, the 1.18 *significantly* increased Direct3D performance.
Bugs? Glitches? You ain't seen nothin' yet.
Just wait till the X-Box is released!
>It gets annoying to watch Crash hang in midair for a half hour while the system sorts itself out.
Is it any more annoying than watching those damn commercials for Crash?
More information on Memory Recall.
Though 980,000 were actually ordered, a small fraction of that number ware actually delivered.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Yeah, I don't get it. My only guess is that some of the trolls managed to gain moderator access somehow.
:>
I don't mind people marking me down if it is deserved, but at least they could do it right - my post could have easily been 'Offtopic' (or, as a stretch, 'Flamebait' although I wouldn't agree with that) - but 'Troll'?
I don't troll. I piss enough people off without even having to try.
Anyhow, thanks for the support...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Parainoia talking. Eliminating the parallel port was a cost cutting measure, pure and simple. Note that the seperate a/v outs have gone as well.
It's almost good enough to erase the memories of how incredibly bad Umjammer Lammy was (I *loved* PaRappa, and was greatly let down by that sequel).
:)
Jet Set Radio definitely has the style and the concept (wait'll Congress finds out - a game where you paint graffiti and run from the cops!), can't wait to find out if it actually plays as well
Sony's move in this direction is noble and looks good to consumers, but I don't think it'll take long before this feature is largely forgotten in favor of new and fancy titles.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
At present, the PSX2 faces an uphill battle against the less expensive Dreamcast (who already has a foothold in the US market). They'll need to deliver more "must have" games faster than the competition. My guess is that it'll be a "SNES/Genesis" war all over again.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Oh, and technical specifications have never proven the deciding factor in a console's success. Great graphics always take a back seat to great games. The PSX2 might look wonderful, but it won't matter if the games aren't there. It needs to be easier to develop for than the Dreamcast in order to make any difference. If tech specs were all that mattered, we'd be playing Intellivisions, Jaguars and N64s right now - but it's the games that really matter to people.
The Dreamcast game selection has made it a monster success so far. And compared to the Saturn, the PSX feels cheap - but nobody gives a rat's ass about such trivial details.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
In short, it's a nice thing to have when possible, but the console market moves so fast that keeping the backwards compatibility isn't a major selling point and may prove detrimental to maintain over many product cycles.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
This mentality has been around for a lot longer than most people think. The micros that were around before the PC came out and crushed everyone often had buggy firmware. Minicomputers before that had more than their fair share of quirks. I bet if you go back to the mainframes around in the 50s, you'd find that inside they were a mess of patchwork.
Nah, the Dreamcast is gonna have a DVD addon soon.
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
You're right that the lack of backward compatibility hurt the Atari 5200, which was a shame because they could have easily made it compatible with/upgradable to the computer systems. (The Atari 7800 failed because the games were all five year old rehashes: Galaga and Robotron2084 were old news in 1988.) On the other hand, The ColecoVision offered a 2600 expansion module which was very popular and helped the platform. The moral is that compatibility matters.
Even Sega understood this at one time -- with add-ons both the Genesis and GameGear could play old Master System games. Then they blew it with the whole Sega CD/32 versus Saturn thing, and lost lots of customer loyalty.
I think that backward compatibility is a wonderful feature in a video game system, and something that will become mandatory sooner or later. You can no longer pretend that your audience are all 12 year olds that are going to forget about you and start chasing girls in a year or two. Especially as Internet-based communities start around these games, you have to be able to move the user base forward and stop starting from scratch every three years.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This also makes me wonder what Nintendo is coming up with.... It might be worth while to wait a little and see before plunking down the $$'s.
If you don't test your equipment before launch, don't be surprised when it fails. The same thing happened with the Dreamcast on launch(in the US, anyway). Does this affect the old PSX Memory Cards too, or are they 'safe' from this virus^H^H^H^H^HGlitch?
Interesting theory, but it doesn't make any real sense.
Here's a theory for you - Sony wants to stop exports of the PS2, right?
Yep, they don't really like exports. That doesn't make sense either, but that's another discussion.
So, they release PS2's with memory cards that have a known problem - for all of the Japanese consumers, it's an easy fix - go down to the nearest store (which will have the "fixed" cards already, manufactured before the launch) and trade in your old card for the new one.
I'm afraid Sony doesn't dislike exports that badly. Thinks about how much money it would cost to make that many memory cards! Beside that, Sony would loose face to it's Japanese customers if it made them all stand in another huge line-up.
For import users though, you're pretty much stuck - it says on the box that you can't export them, so how do you think they'll treat someone from the US looking for an upgrade?
First off, you must not have read the article. It says:
"As such, any PS2 units that NCS imports this week will contain a defective PS2 memory card that will need to be returned to our vendors."
People don't import the hardware, companies send them to other companies. So Sony would never see "someone from the US" returning the console, they'd only see the companies they sold the console to in the first place.
I estimate four rounds of "buggy" memory cards to shake out most of the import market, staggered every few weeks.
That's just plain illogical. Imagine the memory cards cost $20, if Sony were to give returns on four more rounds, they'd be throwing away $100 worth of sellable merchandise! I guarentee they wouldn't waste that much money on something that's going to happen anyway, like exporting.
StylishPants.Org - Home of everything that's interesting, and nothing that's not.
Looks like Sony is taking a page from Microsoft's marketing playbook. Pretty box, but..no thanks. Time to buy a Dreamcast. :)
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)
Bowie J. Poag
I always thought that Sega would drop the ball with DreamCast. I had (have) Zero expectations and confidence in it's longevity as a Console. It's headed right in that corner where all my friends keep their Saturns' but never play them.
:)
Hey, i wouldn't mind a PS2, but i love my DC, already have a dvd player, and for christs sake i wouldn't want to use a game controller as a remote for my dvd player
I've already got a DVD Drive/Mpeg board, too (Buggy Piece of shit) What's wrong with using a console controller for a DVD player? I haven't had any other CD player in my room other than my PSX/TV and I've never minded the User Interface (although I wish I had better low-end sounds)- hell, *I can't wait to play DVD's on my PSX2.*
That's something no DC owner can say about their console.
Kagenin
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
This is par for Sony products in the last few years. From my Diskman's broken battery cover, to my DVD player with burned out lights, to my 1 year old TV thats been in the shop twice... They used to be the #1 brand for quality consumer electronics but now, sadly, I think of them along with Goldstar or HiVal. .02
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
I've been playing console systems since the days of the atari and I can't ever recall a public recall of a component on one of these systems much less bugs that were this disastrous to the stabiloty of the console. Is this from rushed deployment you think or is it the pressure of bigger better graphics and sound?
I forsee more of these bugs to be found though I think Sony will be quick to stomp them out. Its still really scary to think this is happening to the machines designed for one purpose only.
Orac
I had a DC that I picked up on 9/9/99 and never had a problem with it until Worms Armageddon. It was my only WinCE game, and the only one that wouldn't load properly. I went back to the store a few weeks ago, swapped DC units, and havn't had any problems since. I can't find a listing of any bugs specific to WinCE, but apparently I had one.
-B
It was explained to me that the most of the problems with skipping audio/video and unrecognized disks is not due to bad engineering or poor QC, but due to the fact that nobody follows the actual DVD specs to the letter. Usually things work fine, but every once in a while a particular DVD will not play nice with a particular model DVD player and you're generally screwed. I believe that the players are getting much better, though. My 8 month old Samsung player absolutely will not play The Matrix. The Matrix DVD was rushed to market and there are about a dozen players that just won't recognize it as a valid DVD.
-B
There was no recall. Dailyradar contacted Sony -- it's just a hoax.
t ml
http://www.dailyradar.com/news/game_news_2163.h
I guess that's why they release these things in Japan first... they use Japan as a guinea (sp?) pig so that when they get to the US it actually works :-)
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
Ahh, but it is logical - if you take a long term, 100 year view as a Japanese company would. It's more valuable to be able to completely segment markets now and be able to drive up costs over the long term than it is to save a bit per unit in manufacturing costs for extra memory cards. They can always recycle them later as "fixed" cards after they have deactived each layer of trouble programmed in.
Plus, I was talking about individual exports - like the people who flew to Japan, and brought a few back. Obviously (acording to the theory) Sony would support some exports through a handful of companies that Sony controlled behind the scenes. You can't block a river, but you can channel it to do what you wish...
As for annoying Japanese consumers - that doesn't matter at all, because (as I said) it's but a slight inconvience to them easily overcome by Sony. For some poor person who bought a PS2 from Ebay - well, good luck!
Why apply logic to a conspiracy theory anyway? They aren't supposed to be logical, that's the whole point!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To whomever programmed the AI of the auto-insult responder - you forgot to include the humor discrimination routine again. Back to the 'ol drawing board, I'd say!
(To silly responder: of course I don't believe it. Note that it's marked as "Humor". I'd normally ignore posts so far off the mark, but I decided to respond just in case there was more than one person on earth silly enough to believe I might actually really believe this theory - and of course in a hope to stop the Sony Yakusa (sp?) from coming into my house and killing me silently while I sleep!)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It goes back much further. I remember installing a new OS in the 1970s with assorted bugs. Fortunately, the manufacturer of that mainframe supplied source code and a BBS for customers to share notes and patches...
...like Black Matrix Advanced... Ok I have to admit that the Saturn version is better for cool factor, but hey! :-) <p> :-) <p> :-) I just wish the game was a little harder. :-) <p> :-)
And Sentimental Graffiti 2 is one of the most eagerly awaited sequels ever... I have the first game on Saturn and it is great! And the second one even better! I just wish Konami would port Tokimeki Memorial 2 for the Dreamcast (the PSX system limits simultaneous EVS usage to one character at a time... I want *ALL* the chars to be able to say my name, dammit!) <p>
Grandia 2 is coming! Grandia 2! And it looks INCREDIBLE!
..and while I agree that the early-release titles weren't really inspiring, there were still some goodies. I *LOVE* Kita e: White Illumination! It suffers from poor performance thanks to being a WinCE game, but it has great designs and the Communications Break System is nice, since it lets you interject comments instead of just waiting for a chance to speak!
Anyway, there are tons of great DC games both out and in the pipeline to be released... Maybe not as many cool ones as the Saturn but certainly many are coming out.. Especially the great NEC Interchannel releases, and hopefully more input from Konami (TokiMemo 2!!! Please!! The PSX is just too limited for such a game!)
human generation.
Backwards compatibility is why I didn't get a 5200 and eventually Atari lost the crown. The things (consoles 15-20 ago) were hugely un-popular (IMHO) because the they sucked. The games sucked, the graphics sucked, the sound sucked. That's not to say they weren't fun. but comparing the simple experience of Combat or Robotron with Falcon 4.0, Twisted Metal, or Quake is a joke. The realism has improved on every level and for an entertainment medium that purports to create a *"virtual"* reality is very important. Remember 1st and 10 the football game? Vs. Madden 2000?!?!
Anyway, gaming is finally becoming mainstream and the quality and number of the games and machines is a big part of that. Atari could have 20 years of faithful customers had they bent over backwards to keep them, but the industry moves fast and they tripped. No doubt Sony will stumble at some point, but after you reach a certain size I don't know if you can fall, or just kind of teeter (IBM).
It's also fun to see games created by people who have been playing quality games since birth, as opposed to those who had to define a whole new artform.
Think about *starting* gaming on a Dreamcast, PS2 vs an old "Pong, Pong, and more Pong" box. *sigh*
--
+&x
....at least Sony is recalling some of the defective stuff. Some companies enjoy selling defective products, then making you buy them all over again for a less defective version. Any come to mind?
Though this may seem like a biased report seeing as how it's a Nintendo related site, it's also IGN and they usually report accurate legit stuff. It would seem that if you look past the fill-rate capabilities of the PSX2, you run into some hardware limitations of a different kind.
This post sponsored by Ninja Burger. "
Yeah, I mean what are the chances v1.0 software will be full of bugs?
(at least here in the U.S., where I am)
;)
Sony will get the bugs worked out before they do a world-wide release. We will get thoroughly tested boxes this fall. I'm just glad I wasn't one of the ~1,000,000 first weekend purchasers!
One more reason for the limited release, I guess
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Well at least Sony will have all those bugs worked out by the time it is open to the US market. You can think of Japan as beta testing ground for the rest of the world, Pokemon (a success), and the PSX2 (still working the bugs out). Gotta love those japanise.
One interesting upgrade Sony decided to also include with each upgrade to the PSX hardware was a major upgrade in the copy protection. Each edition made it more and more difficult to play import games on them. If I want to play an import on mine using a disc swap, I need to have reflexes of steel. But no matter how many editions the made, it was STILL possible to do a disc swap. That's one bug they just couldn't work out :)
Well, I thought it was an interesting corelation
>Remember the problems we used to have with the >old videogame systems (Atari VCS, Intellivision, >Colecovision? Joysticks that had crappy ergonomics or worn out too quickly, having to clean the electrical contacts with a pencil eraser , crappy picture because of the old $2.50 switchboxes...wasn't so bad after all!
The only two that stick out in my mind were the Atari 5200 joysticks. They broke all the time. I think the remaining 5200 joysticks that never broke are in the Smithsonian.
And we all remember the days of getting garbage on the TV when we tried to play out favorite 8-bit Nintendo cartridges for the umpteenth time(accompanied by the blinking red light). We always blew in the cartridges(even though we weren't supposed to) and tried it again and again. Ahh those were the days.
In terms of personal experiences, the stands for the Nintendo Virtual Boy were flimsy(at least the plastic sections), and broke way too easily under the stress of the unit itself.
I'm also not surpised that the PS2 has problems with DVDs. I've been looking at DVD players and found a page that listed all models; and encouraged you to write about the DVD player that you own. Almost EVERYONE had some sort of problem, that that's just with the DVD playersl. You also get movie studios putting out low quality DVDs that most players have problems with.
Quality-wise, Toshiba is doing great, I'm planning on getting the next Toshiba DVD player with progressive scan that comes into my price range.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
"Yet RMBS is over $300"
Yep, much like every Linux related stock out there... little revenue, poor business models, yet astronomical market caps.
Go Figure.
"Anyone got better uptime?"
My Magnavox Oddossey has been up since '74.
Why leave it on, and who cares about uptime on a console game system? You serving web pages from it or something?
Sending out 1st generation buggy products is standard for Sony - I saw a TV documentary which followed the rise and rise of Sony. The same thing happened with the Trinitron TV way back, where there was a fault on the tubes which meant the picture brightness would reduce after a few months.
What was interesting was the founders of the company are genuniely enthralled by technology.
Worms: Armageddon and Sega Rally Championship also use WinCE... and yea, they sometimes refuse to load.
my karma ran over your dogma
No. I think they meant DVDs.
I think you might want to look at this from a different perspective. You see, most people that are in the market for a new game console already own another gaming system. Since PSX is the most common console already, the odds are that this customer has old PSX games, too. I would bet that the vast majority of the public that would buy a console that doesn't have one already would be parents with children that want a system, and that isn't a large demographic, relatively speaking.
Therefore, there are many advantages to getting a system compatible with old PSX games... Use the new PSX2 as the main machine. Then hook the old console up to the little TV in the basement, or keep it for the kids, or save it for a backup when somebody else is watching a DVD on the new one... There are tons of good reasons for com
Sony has little to worry about when it comes to Dreamcast. The biggest reason for this is that the PlayStation 2 will play all of the old PlayStation CD's. Another good reason is that Sony's graphics system has proven to kick Dreamcast's not-all-that-impressive ass.
Though purely MHO, other benefits to PSX2 are that Dreamcast's game selection is largely pathetic, and the Sega hardware is made from such cheap plastic that it feels like a kiddie toy.
You're right, for the most part. The majority of the old games will be forgotten, and PSX2 games will prevail. I can definitely acknowledge that. But, who says you won't want to play the original Tekken 2 in a few years? How about Final Fantasy 7 or 8, once 9, 10, and 11 come out?
I still play my original Nintendo, if only for shits and giggles.
The point is that Sony's initial market share for PSX2 will partially hinge on backward compatibility. If that helps them to sell more systems, then they're that better off for the future. If that makes gamers worldwide happy, if only for a few months, they'll take it, trust me.
Dreamcast, though it's not my favorite system, is not a bad platform. There are some definite innovations held within that cheap plastic chassis. However, Sony's heritage, backward compatibility, and superior overall architecture (not to mention previous contracts and sheer market power) will crush Dreamcast, leaving Sega to rest in ashes for another 500 (internet) years before it rises again.
I remember talking 3 years back to my friend's uncle who works in the TV business (Mostly editing work for Poland's largest TV station) about buying a TV + VCR. When I asked him about Sony equipment he just laughed then said 'Think about all the Sony equipment your or someone you know has owned and think about how often you take it to get repaired.'
After talking with my friend we realized that every single piece of equipment we have from Sony has either broken down (walkmans) or has had to be repaired! EVERY SINGLE THING.
He recommended Thompson for the TV, Panasonic for the VCR.
Anyway, right now I have a 28" SABA TV (the insides made by Thompson - SABA is a company that wins awards every year for industrial design but they're fully owned by Thompson) that I've had for 3 years with no problems, my Technics stereos have been trouble free for over 4 years. Hell, I even have a 14 year old Panasonic boom box that runs on 110V.
I also have 3 trashed Sony walkmans (less than 1 year each) and memories of a simple 2 tape sony radio that just stopped working after 3 years.
In all truth, I'm quite surprised that
-- polish ccs mirror
> Home video-game machines have been out for barely a generation.
Huh? game consoles have been around for more than 20 years. Or do you mean human generation?
In any case, this is not the first time that a game console has had backwards compatibility. The Atari 7800 had backwards compatibility for playing 2600 cartridges (unlike the 5200, which failed miserably)
I don't know how much of a factor that was in the 7800's favor, but it was quite a bit more successful than the 5200. (of course, that was during the game console 'dark ages' when they were hugely un-popular)
I believe 'freezing' is synonymous with 'hanging' or 'the infamous blue screen of MS death' ... not actually lowering their temperature. It gets annoying to watch Crash hang in midair for a half hour while the system sorts itself out.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
problems on both sides. We got the goods good because we were patient.
Ah... this was what the article talked about. I missed hearing about most of these bugs.
2. Anyone who owned a Playstation before model #(I forget, but I'm sure someone will help me out here) will remember all
the problems the PSX had with overheating, scratching cds, and the laser breaking, etc.
Yep.. Mine has to be proped up at an angle so that the vents on the bottom can get enough air to cool the system. But i have one of the first playstations, my friend has a newer one and has had no problems. I hope they fix these bugs before the US launch. One of the reasons I want a ps2 is because not only will I be able to play the new games I can play my old ones as well (and I was hoping with out the wonderful over heating). It would be sweet to play Blood Omen, Legacy of Cain with out it locking up all the damn time.
-----
Can I Play With Madness?
No, it didn't. Those discs worked perfectly well, just not in American systems. It was later found out that they were PAL versions of the games, IIRC That's not defective, that's a mix-up.
-- Your IP is showing
But this is the beta testing. They just got people to spend a few hundred dollars for the privilege to beta test.
Pretty common ploy (*coughM$cough*) these days, it seems.
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Remember the problems we used to have with the old videogame systems (Atari VCS, Intellivision, Colecovision? Joysticks that had crappy ergonomics or worn out too quickly, having to clean the electrical contacts with a pencil eraser , crappy picture because of the old $2.50 switchboxes...wasn't so bad after all!
Dreamcast owners shouldn't be laughing too hard: the US Dreamcast's intial game shipments included several defective GD-ROMs.
On the plus side, being in the US - this is going to be resolved long before it hits our shores (legally, at least!).
PS2 is still an awesome and exciting system, and even as a Dreamcast owner - I'll likely snatch this up on stateside release.
_path
Hmmmm.........a big ass peltier sandwhich, water block and hoses, and a small freezer with a radiator coil should take care of that. Sounds like a job for Kyle
--Have a Johsonville brat.
Additional problems include overheating and freezing.
LOL! Why doesn't it shatter then?
"I have no particular problem with a new system keeping backwards compatibility, but I don't think it's a powerful feature that'll attract new users. Players who already have a PSX and like the games won't benefit (except for the "neato" factor and one less thing to hook up to the TV)" Actually some people who own a playstation already may actually have split the cost of it with their brothers/sisters (ie me) so if they buy a playstation2 they can still play all there PSX games and just let their brother/sister have the old PSX and you get the PSX2 =) And since PSX2 cd-rom is faster games should load faster which is a nice benefit. I've also read that somes games graphics are improved a little bit using PSX2.
Be nice. The marketing kids know that without the ubiquitous e-fix, the vc kids won't touch it.
Normally the console market has been able to avoid the "release buggy stuff and patch it" mentality that Netscape started.
When I worked for a software company in the QA dept., we were actually told that if a level 1 bug doesn't seriously effect output or usability we were to put a note of it on the send, but consider it a "feature". Fortunately, I got out of that fscked up company.
However, it's not a big suprise that Sony ran into this problem. They were in an *enormous* push to release PSX2 in Japan. It boggles me that they could have missed something of this magnitude. Could it have been a management push to "ignore semi-major errors"?
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
I would think with all the flaws that we have heard about dvd and all the resources that sony has---sony should create their own type of cd media. atleast i would think that that would be better than trying to fix a flawed (well, in a few ways i guess) product. I remember a slashdot story on some other cd that sounded really cool. I think it would be better if sony had gone with this; they could optimise it for video games...oh it would be so much cleaner than hacking up something that isn't working
Firstly I apoligize if this has been stated anywhere already but there is something missing here. Put Simply where is the Sony Press release on this recall ? It is NOT on the sony US web site (www.sony.com) it isnt on the sony world web site (www.world.sony.com) and funny enough it isnt even on the sony japan web site (www.sony.co.jp) and when i followed the sony japan site through to the playstation 2 area in the press releases they didnt meantion anything there either. The last press release they had was about the PSX2 and its memory card being illegal to export.
So I ask you once again, if sony hasnt mentioned it... where is it ?
When I was a little boy I found the most annoy statements where the ones starting with When I Was a Little Boy, dont you
I think this is probably why they release such things in Japan first. The fans there are so rabid, they will probably forgive such oversights longer than the more fickle American audience. From a purely selfish point of view, I say let all the bugs creep out now, so that when I get mine it will be "Like Buttah!" If the japanese market is willing to be Sony's beta testers, then let them. Dead-Meat
I assume by freezing he means that the picture freezes and the game locks up. However I find it rather humerous that the sentence was phrased to say that other problems were "overheating and freezing". As if the machine was sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold.
I have one of the earliest Game Boys. The display was missing a few columns the last time I used it. Started out as just one, and grew. I haven't had it on in the last year, so I don't know what condition it's in now.
Sent from my iPhone
I'd moderate you up, if I had any points left. >;-)
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
... that no matter how advanced the hi-tech industries become they still manage to release products that still have bugs. I hope this mentality doesn't start to move over to other industries. The next thing we'll see is the automotive industry telling us to restart our cars to get the brakes to work and the populous will probably accept it like they already do for so many hi-tech and software companies. I can't say that the rest of industry is perfect, but it has a hell of a lot better track record than the hi-tech or software industries. _g$
~The JiGgLe in Yo' jElLy
Dual Layer Dual Sided CDS? Does such a beast even exist?
I didn't realise that The uptime was for a game of GT which I couldn't be bothered to save due to having no money for new memory cards.
Working for the (other) man
On a late model PSX I never shut it off and only reset for games
I think my record is about 4 months. In the 1.5 years I have been using it it has only crased 3 times and these seemed to relate to it eventually losing the audio track.
Anyone got better uptime?
Working for the (other) man
Okay...I'm not sure where that came from...but whoever posted it needs smacked. You obviously think that the world revolves and relocates in your arse... The comment to which you replied said nothing about Americans deserving better products. It made no attempt to insinuate that Americans are better than the rest of the world. All the guy said (and quite legitimately I might add) was that this bug would most likely be worked out before it launches in the states. This is a perfectly valid statement. Considering that this is a fairly major issue, it only makes sense that Sony would try to resolve it before releasing the machine anywhere else...US or otherwise. The original poster was simply expressing his gratitude that this was found and will, probably, be fixed before he spent his hard earned money on it... Grow up.
Oh please! 3600 fps? For a start, the GeForce does its T&L in (mostly?) hardware, which chews into the 6.2 Gflops. Doing 75 million polys, with all features enabled, even Sony don't claim that much. How will it support higher res with 4 Mbyte of embedded DRAM, it must have a hard enough time paging the textures in and out (yes, go figure) - I hope they compressed their textures like the Dreamcast does, but they're worryingly quiet about that.
Huge kudos to Sony for shipping the beast, especially with the engineering inside the box (awesome) and very well done for an excellent marketing campaign, but, erm, as regards marketing they sort of over-succeeded in your case. Interpreting 3D graphics performance claims meaningfully is one of the harder tasks we're faced with ...
You mean these aren't special effects?
Yep. The machine also kicks you in the shins in football games.
Sega Rally also has horrible slow-down problems. Chef's Love Shack had horribleload times. I'd attribute both of these to their use of Windows Crap Edition.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
What DC hardware problems are you referring to? There were no significant hardware problems that I'm aware of. There were some faulty pressings of the launch titles, but those were solely software problems.
Have you bothered to look at the PSX2 screenshots??? Talk about underwhelming. I guarantee that the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between RR5 and Sega Rally 2. And what's this marvelous PSX2 game selection you're referring to? Ridge Racer 5 and Street Fighter? Yeah, that'll make me run out and buy an import. Whereas the DC has at least a dozen AAA titles
Yes, PSII does have mouse support, at least partially, possibly better. PSII supports PS1 hardware, and there is a PS1 mouse. Nobody uses it, but its there. I've never seen one though, I only know it exists 'cause PS1 Quake says "mouse supported" on the back.
I've also haven't found any reports of a recall or any major problems with PS2 from any of the news sources over here (in Japan) either, though I've been keeping an eye out since I saw this article. Now some people have posted links to another story which says there never was a recall.
Judging by the fact I haven't heard one thing about it over here, I would say there is nothing to this.
Joe
Anyone have any other links about problems with PS2?
I did a quick check of most of the online newspapers here, and found nothing. Nothing was said about this on the news this morning. And one would expect to see some big banner on the playstation web site (www.scei.co.jp), but it looks the same as always. However, checking out some online BBS's, there were quite a few messages from people having problems with various games (strange sound errors, loading errors, etc).
I haven't tried any DVD's yet, but I'll rent some this weekend and see what happens. And I guess I'll pop by a game store sometime and see if they've heard anything.
Anyway, I'm especially worried, since I've mainly been playing Ridge Racer since Saturday...
so...anyone hear anything else?
Joe
>The region ID is just stored in the clear on the DVD, it's up to players to enforce it.
Yes and no (mostly no). While yes, they could technically ignore it; Sony would not have been granted the $10,000 license to decrypt DVD in that case (a requirement of licensing to decrypt/play DVDs is that you implemet region coding). So no, if they didn't do this, then there would be no DVD Movie playing for Playstation. Unencypted playing, though, would be legal. But how many DVDs do you own that aren't encrypted? Probably not many...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
You mean these aren't special effects? Just imagine walking near some lava and feeling the heat from your PSX2...
for $450-$550 (NYC) ... oh well, maybe I'll wait. I am starting to buy this whole "let's manufacture bad memory cards so the exporters can't get the stuff to work" theory...
Sony has a good reason why this happened. See, due to the amount of brain-power needed on the PS2's development, Sony had to contract some of the work out to Boeing. However, Boeing misplaced some of the design specs for stuff like DVD Playback, and the functionality was lost until everyone found out at launch time. :)
But, seriously... how does a Japanese firm forget to put in hardware that recognizes region 2 DVDs!?
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
hmm
I seem to remember similar problems with the CD-ROM drive on the PSX that took Sony months to sort out.
I'm seing various reports around the net suggesting that another problem the PS2 has is that the 4Mb of video RAM is holding it back.
The thing has a fill rate second to none, but when 4Mb has to hold the framebuffer *and* textures, at 640x480x32bit, texture RAM is in *very* short supply.
Dreamcast has 8Mb video RAM, FWIW.
In the long term, Sony expect developers to begin streaming textures from DVD to alleviate the problem.
Also, it seems that Dreamcast and N64 have "free" (i.e. no performance hit) anti-aliasing in hardware. PS2 has antialiasing routines, but there is a performance hit. This explains the jaggies in some of the launch titles.
--
Until Dreamcast has anything but games that seem to be like crappy copies of their earlier titles with better graphics rendering I won't care.
At present, Power Stone and Crazy Taxi are both Dreamcast games which break the mould and have no obvious forerunner. Innovative Dreamcast games yet to come (to the West) include Chu Chu Rocket, Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio, and probably others I can't at the moment remember.
The mix is pretty similar on PS2 -- lots of sequels and prettied-up rehashes (Tekken Tag Tournament, Ridge Racer 5, Street Fighter Ex, etc.), along with several innovative titles such as Fantavision (which looks fantastic).
--
Overheating I can understand. The cards are electronic, and the chips just plain run too hot for the cards.
But freezing? How did they manage that? Do the two memory card slots act like some sort of Peltier or something? And if so, when will we see the Web pages where someone hacks his PSX2 to cool his processor?
Heh. IIRC, the Mac originally shipped in '84 without even the ability to create a new directory. You had to keep an empty one around and duplicate it.
Makes you long for the good old days before microcomputers when _some_ thought went into these things. Not to say they were bug-free, but they were probably somewhat better than the 'if it compiles ship it' mentality we're seeing now.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Jesus, you are such a dork.
I work for a Japanese company, and believe me, most of the time they're not thinking any more than six months ahead. Your so-called "conspiracy theory" is nothing more than a rehashing of the Japan Inc. crap that was so popular in the 80s.
Get your head out of your ass and wake up.
Apparently, the PlayStation2 has shipped, with several glaring bugs ...</i>
...hmmm... bad drivers for the DVD, failure to recognize certain "standard" DVD's, crashing, freezing, overheating... etc.
...sounds like Sony really is going after the PC/Windows gamer crowd.... by giving them what they've come to expect from their hardware... (c:
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
I find it a bit poetic that a system with so much hype turned out to be a bit of a fiasco. The PS2 seems to me a bit doomed from the start, I haven't seen anything for it that impressed me and they have a fight with Sega with the Dreamcast. I'll end up having to buy a PS2 so I can get FF10 and 11, I'm sick like that. Other than Final Fantasy I can't think of any other reasons why I would actually want a PS2, to me it is just more of the same. In another 2 years I'll put together a PC (or equivilent) that will be as or more powerful than the PS2. The same thing happened with the PSX, when it was released it beat the crap out of the PC gaming makret, people were still running around in Doom on the PC. Now the average PC whoops on the PSX's ass. It would be impressive to me if it had some sort of 3D projector aparatus so Squall and Rinoa were 3 feet tall and had a 120 degree viewing angle or something, that would have been really spectacular.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The first batch of PSXs that came out had a lot of problems with heat, reading certain games, and skipping during FMV. I preordered mine and was one of the lucky few to not have a problem with the first batch (still have it) but most people had to wait a week or two for a new, working batch to be sent out. I hope the same happens again...
1) Well, I mean they've only been developing this thing for what, 2 years now? What do you expect :)
2) At least the bugs will be worked out presumedly before it launches here in the States.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
It's always great to hear that something you *really* want but can't have (yet) is really not that good anyhow!
I wonder if they missed this in their beta testing, and if so how... and if not, why they decided to ship anyhow? Normally the console market has been able to avoid the "release buggy stuff and patch it" mentality that Netscape started. Oh well, I just hope they fix all the bugs in time for the North American launch.
dual layer/dual sided CDs take a while to recognize
;)
I'm sure you meant DVDs... but it would be a grave bug if the PSX could recognise stuff that doesn't exist
1) Get one of those 14" X 14" Rubbermaid sink tubs
2) Fill it with ice cubes and cold water...
Waitaminnut - at what point do you overclock the CPU? I missed that part.
Whoa - Parrapa on crank!
Very little "technical muscle" is necessary to play DVDs from a particular region. The region ID is just stored in the clear on the DVD, it's up to players to enforce it. If the PS2 can play any encrypted DVDs (which presumably it can,) then its inability to play region 2 DVDs is just a simple (alarmingly stupid) bug.
What I wonder is, if it can't play region 2 DVDs, what can it play? There are region-free DVDs, but not many. I wonder if the current PS2 plays region 1 (American) DVDs? If so, that would be a much more serious issue for the DVD CCA than DeCSS...
MSK
Sony is probably willing to release a buggy product if it means in the long term that no one will be able to region jump... with DVDs or games. ('Course, someone may come up with a mod, but that's another story...)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
hee-hee...boy, I hope this doesn't mean Connectix Virtual GameStation2 v1.0 will be full of bugs as well!
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
It is a shame that Sony would do such a second rate job. This is not typically like them. I assume that many top execs are considering seppuku at this point. (The "Sony" culture in Japan is incredible. Almost any university-bound youngster has his/her sights set on working for Sony, it's like an icon!)
I wonder what their rationale is for this seeming rush job. Dreamcast has been on the market long enough in Japan to get its piece of the pie, and it's not likely that Sony would have lost much market share by waiting a few more months for better debugging. Nintendo, their real competitor, doesn't have anything on the horizon, either, deepening my puzzlement at the move.
Fortunately, the bugs will probably be worked out by the time the PSII crosses the Pacific.
Does anyone have ideas/links for possible reasons why Sony would commit such a blooper?
While I'm disappointed about the memory card recall (surely this problem was avoidable) I'm not at all surprised that the PS2 has trouble with DVD's. Here in the UK there have been a number of examples of DVD players (not necessarily Sony's) having similar problems (skipping sound/video, un- playable disks....). If they can't get it right for a box built solely to play DVDs I don't expect them to get it right for a box intended to be a web-browser, DVD-player, games machine etc.
It's a shame that a system as hyped as the PSX2 fell flat on it's face, IMHO, but I can't see it really hurting the platform too much. The die-hard fans will stick it out, and the folks who were expecting it to fail probably would have found something even if Sony hadn't so willingly Obliged them :).
This sort of public "testing" of the machine makes sense, in a way; an in-house QA team cannot anticipate every possible circumstance that might occur when the system is delivered to thousands of users. This is simply the "Worst Case Scenario", IMHO; that is, a large-scale test of the software/hardware not only revealed subtle problems, but a wide variety of glaring troubles that could have/should have been caught internally.
Problems with "new" technology as it hits the shelves is hardly surprising; but how did these issues make it through Sony QA? As hard as it is to believe that they didn't see these problems internally, it's a little more believable than Sony releasing a product with such a wide variety of known issues. That's not necessarily true, though: All you Big Corporate types, what's better? Releasing a buggy product on the expected date, or delaying release until the product is *reasonably* issue free?
I doubt we'll ever know the truth re: PSX2; I expect any and all official Sony releases will focus more on what they're doing about the problem rather than how the problem occured in the first place.
-- if(game-theory) moderate++;
This is different, because while the previous fault surfaced only rarely, these errors occur in normal use, e.g, you can't save your Ridge Racer V game, because it will corrupt the memory card. That is a regular fundamental flaw that regular testing could have caught and solved before release.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
I doubt if this will impact the US launch, I think it's slated for September?? The encryptioin issues and work arounds to make it "US-importable" will IMO be almost a different product. The PS2, US version will also be much more that a game console, its a vehicle to pump more up-sell product into the US/ More movies, CD's, Games, services etc..It's the basis for a long and drawn out marketing campaign.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
I have one of the old 1001 playstation models, and always had problems with fmv skipping, but, after adjusting the fbias screw it works just fine. The one thing that ticks me off is the until I bought one of those fan stands for it, i damn near had to adjust it weekly. now I'm down to about once every 6 months. It still ticks me off though, I thought having to put in extra cooling was something for the pc when you are overclocking, not to run a standard game console. what next? will 3dfxcool be selling peltier units for the PS2? I hope the flaws are fixed before the US launch, but I just canceled my preorder. I'm not paying $300 for the same problems i have from a machine five years old.
As for the DVD and memory card problems, hopefully a software update will help. Just wish you could update psx software. I love Gran Turisimo 2, but i would have gladly waited an extra month or two so I could get %100 complete, and not have all the collision detection issues.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
It'll be interesting to see how long these problems stay in people's memories. Sony's marketing, and the fawning Sony tends to get in the media, means that it's likely that in 6 months' time, all the PS2 launch problems will be forgotten.
Compare this with Sega's lot. The Dreamcast is an excellent, solid machine although of course not as cutting-edge as it was at its Japanese launch, oh so long ago -- but the launch problems, which were similar to those Sony are experiencing now, are still dragged out whenever the Dreamcast is discussed.
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Remember that when you think your getting a steal. DVD players are DVD players for a reason, as are consoles :)
On the other hand, i've left my dreamcast on all night long, and got up in the morning and played a few more hours of crazy taxi with no problems
Oh yeah, Chu Chu rocket is out, and online gaming is here with the DC. PLUS PlanetWeb announced V2.0 of the web browser that support jscript 2.0, MP3 Playback, and a bunch of other nifty features. You can read up more about it at http://dc.ign.com
Hey, i wouldn't mind a PS2, but i love my DC, already have a dvd player, and for christs sake i wouldn't want to use a game controller as a remote for my dvd player :)
Overheating is nothing new to the PSX world. I have a solution to share with my Japanese friends. I came up with this during a snow storm last year that caused our Playstation to be on for about 18 hours straight.
1) Get one of those 14" X 14" Rubbermaid sink tubs
2) Fill it with ice cubes and cold water
3) Put a glass baking pan across the top so it sits inside the tub. The water should be just underneath the glass.
4) Put your Playstation inside the baking pan
5) Enjoy some icy cold Parrapa the Rapper
Note: It is possible that this will only work while you are very, very high. It was not tested under sober conditions.
-B
Here's a theory for you - Sony wants to stop exports of the PS2, right? So, they release PS2's with memory cards that have a known problem - for all of the Japanese consumers, it's an easy fix - go down to the nearest store (which will have the "fixed" cards already, manufactured before the launch) and trade in your old card for the new one.
For import users though, you're pretty much stuck - it says on the box that you can't export them, so how do you think they'll treat someone from the US looking for an upgrade?
I estimate four rounds of "buggy" memory cards to shake out most of the import market, staggered every few weeks.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The release of the PS2 is not a Microsoft-type, bug filled get it out the door now type thing. If that were they case, they would be doing a global launch. Instead, I think it is just some seriously powerful technology having some teething problems. Think about it, putting together a system with the power of some SGIs isn't an easy process. Neither is getting a 300MHz processor into a small box. I'm surprised that there haven't been more problems then there have. Sony makes quality products, and I've heard an interview with their CEO in the US, that their primary concern is quality. It may be later, may not be the fastest or best, but will be high quality. It does make sense, however. Even if you don't read the specs for something, if you just pick up a Sony anything, you'll usually be fine, be it a TV, a computer. They have an image to uphold, and I'm sure they'll get it worked out. Second, all you people saying that a console like this is not worth it, that eventually PCs will do it too, should buy a clue. Even taking into account the current massive growth in computer performance (doubling every year instead of every 18 months) a computer as powerful as the PS2 won't be out for another two years minimum, (if you go by theoretical polygon performance. You're talking 15M polys for a GeForce and 75M for a PS2. They're both grossly inflated, but still, the PS2 has a better chance of reaching its high because games can be programmed extremely close to the metal to take advantage of every naunce of the architecture.) And even then it won't cost the $150 that the PS2 will by then. Take a look at the N64. The thing is an obsene 5 years old, but is still chuging. It blew away the PCs of the time, and is still pretty impressive in terms of graphics, especially the new high-res games. And thats from a crappy console. Even PSX games (the PSX has a 33MHz proc) wouldn't look that bad if they only had texture filtering. There is a correct tool for everything, and if its ultimate gaming you're going after, look no farther than the PS2.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Just a sec, we can't really hold Netscape responsible... just think.....
UNIX(tm)?.....AmigaDos?.....MS-DOS?....Windows?. ....These go back a lot further than Navigator, than the Web even, and they've all had numerous patch releases over time! It's just unfortunate that buggy first releases have become the de facto standard in the software industry.
But that's off topic. How are Sony going to go about patching/fixing these problems? I guess you could flash the firmware, but that won't solve fundamental hardware defects (heat problems etc.) Are these problems limited to the memory cards, or do they affect the console as a whole? Is this the end for a console/software packege developed in tandem?
As far as software/OS problems go, I suppose putting a well-known and tested OS on a console may have to become the future of console development if this keeps happening. Seems Sega may have got something right for once. (And before the flames start, I didn't say CE was any good..)
It seems that fundamental console design issues may need a radical overhaul here, as this is precisely the sort of headache that most people buy consoles (as opposed to computers) to avoid.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
1. Dreamcast had a buttload of problems when it launched, both hardware & software. The US launch saw resolutions to problems on both sides. We got the goods good because we were patient.
2. Anyone who owned a Playstation before model #(I forget, but I'm sure someone will help me out here) will remember all the problems the PSX had with overheating, scratching cds, and the laser breaking, etc. And look at it now: the very model of what a gaming console should be?
Erf, I'll shut up now
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
This was quickly glossed over by the Sony marketing spinners.
I was execting bugs with the PSX II for the same reason, they have rushed it out and will release an updated version for the European market as we are more likely to complain about the quality.
Also at the price, even with them losing approx. 150 dollars per machine they will have to have had very tight development and production costs which is an indication of probably quality issues, ie. you pretty much get what you pay for. Especially with the unit coming in below cost compared to a lot of DVD players.......
Working for the (other) man
Couldn't the tendency to overheat be used to thaw out the frozen games?
that the technology in DVDs used to keep people from watching them..is keeping people from watching them.
First, the DVDs can't be played because of a technically unnecessary region coding scheme (read the article if you haven't). Second, the decrypt key is getting memory fscked and needs to be reloaded from scratch. Both these problems are the PS2 not having the technical muscle to jump through the content control hoops the DVD CCA has created. This situation will only get worse as more and more "features" and complexity are added to control your access to media. Get used to it, now you can take it for granted that the version1 of *anything* will suck (if only because of the legal limitations created by content control lobbyists)
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