Slashdot Mirror
The PS2 - A Betamax In the Making?
Feedmag is running an article that talks about the "openness" of the PS2, as well as the upcoming competition with the widely anticipated X-Box. Well thought out and interesting.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Last time I checked my PC has a very nice sounding Klipsch Promedia setup. I could hook it up to something nicer but I dont have the money. As far as less expensive stuff sounds you can do extremely good for $150-200 if you get a couple regular 2.1 setups. Wait! No! Then you get a 4.2 setup. Oh well better then plain stereo and better then the dolby pro logic you get from the PS2.
Only those who dream can grasp reality.
I get the feeling that there are a few holiday
shoppers who will return DOA2 and X-Squad for
not being the type of "Hardcore" they were
expecting.
They make the same betamax to PS2 insinuations in this article: http://www.daily rad ar.com/features/game_feature_page_853_1.html
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
i remember when the first playstation came out, well, kinda, but look at how far they have taken the platform so far. But there has been a helluva lot more awareness of the Xbox and the PS2 than i was ever aware of for the PSX, think about it, there were those rumors and stories early on about the exporting of the PS2 to certain being forbidden due to the hardware specifications for 3d calculations, etc.. (yeah im gonna buy a ps2 and strap it into the front of a nuclear missle).
But i digress, i think that ps2 is going to go at a hell of a pace forwards in popularity. to be trailed by the Xbox, who knows what's going to happen with them, as someone else mentioned before, the dreamcast, i only vaugely heard stuff about that, mainly from one guy at work here who ended up getting bored with it and the stiff prices on the games, he ended up selling it for a couple hundred bucks (Australian) to someone else and just tried to forget he ever bought the thing.
Heres to sony, the one and only.
and no i don't work for sony!
--
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
Although Sega's consoles and games have always been an exciting crossover from the arcades, in the past they have never put enough weight on the console market. Just think of the Sega Saturn that failed miserably in North America, despite extremely sturdy controllers and great games. You just don't see Sega commercials on TV anymore (remember the yelling "Sega" dog?), as opposed to Sony's incredibly retarded Playstation ads where they basically just throw any unrelated crap at your senses and cram that ugly PS logo at the end. Sega's marketing is just too honest and not aggressive enough to keep up with the other mind-raping giants of the industry. Their stronghold has always been the arcades and they seem reluctant to shift their investment toward the console. The dreamcast is a nice all-around box but it won't go far unless they change their marketing strategy.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Flashback a couple years:
"Why would any kid want a 'Sony' when compared to the huge brandnames of Nintendo and Sega?"
The problem with your argument is that the core audience is 13 years old and doesn't have much brand loyalty or even brand knowledge at all. In fact being a known brand might even translate into "old and bad" to this crowd. (For them, 2 years ago might as well have been in the seventeenth century for all they know.)
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Yes, lets all believe this article and forget about the facts... Sounds like microsoft's work already.
First off, the single biggest reason that BETA lost the war was due to the half-as-long-as-VHS tapes. While that wasn't the situation for long, it was a problem at a key point in consumer adoptation. Similar problem with VCDs. This arguement might apply to DreamCast v. PS2 or X but the storage space on X and PS2 is identical.
Another point brought up is that the X box does not require developer's licenses, but this has been the situation with PC gamming from the beginning and yet consoles still rule. Sounds like their "facts' just don't hold up.
Then there are several things they conviently avoid... It may be easy to port PC games to X but it *should* not require any porting at all! It is just using PC hardware... It's onl microsoft's propritary OS that leads to any trouble at all.
Finally, Processing power! The PS2 is a minature CRAY supercomputer and the X-Box is a minature 600MHz PC. Does that even compare?
Only advantage I see to the X-box; a week after the X-box comes out we'll have hacks to run Linux on it!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
i think making emulators for the MS xbox should ..since its architecture is
..its got weird or "obscure" ..same for nintendo
..else we will see lots of xbox ...hah ...they always get the rom somehow
..they can emulate anything
...we dont know thats why we call em they
.. >:)
..and rule the worledz
be pretty easy
like a PC
making emulators for the PS2 should be waaaay
harder since
hardware architecture
i think MS should make legal xbox emulators for
lets say 1/5 the price of the xbox and sell
em legaly
emulators for free
the rom
they emulated amiga
who are they ??
i want to be a haxor
i will control the net
LOVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
cya
sheep for the sheep human for the human i just wonna keep my soul alive
And the winner is...
Well its pretty hard to call. PS2 is out the door but the horse is limping. The inital crop of games induced a few "wow's!" but more than a few "whatevers", as developer knowledge of the platform increases the quality of product will improve, but still, right now the dreamcast is the platform running the best titles.
When the XBox comes out it'll be winning hardware wise, have an impressive roster of people developing for it and half a billion dollars of a marketing budget. Microsoft may be prone to buggy software, but consider that this is a closed box, lots of nastiness with incompatibility (the source of many a game developers woe's) and a favoured set of api's will greatly reduce instability.
G
Looking back at the run of the original PlayStation, it's very clear that the games have become better and better visually as time has progressed, and the programmers have learned to better utilise the hardware and it's abilities. I only hope for Sony's sake that they can do that again.
Of course, this always happens with console platforms. For example, compare
As developers familiarise themselves and build up/optimize their platform skills, the amount of performance they wrench out can be amazing. You should have seen the Spectrum port of Chase HQ - it's unbelievable how much they crammed into that crappy little box!
The real deciding factor tends to be the gap in technologies at deployment. The most successful consoles had a combination of far superior technology and good early games. That's why the SNES killed the Genesis, and the Playstation killed the Saturn. N64 was hampered by a late arrival and fairly insignificant graphical advances. More pointedly, the Sega 32-bit upgrade didn't really offer much above the SNES so it flopped. So the question is - how much better (tech wise) is the PS/2. I can't really say - initially it looked like the tech would blow everything out of the water, but now I'm not so sure. All I know is, if it flops, there goes another victim of the RAMBUS touch of death. :)
Two weeks ago, Seamus Blackley (who designed Flight Unlimited and who is in charge of Xbox development) visited my campus. According to him, the Xbox uses a completely different bus than the PC (it's much wider and faster). He also mentioned that as far as licensing goes, the top developers (ie SquareSoft, EA) get their dev kits at very high discounts while smaller, less known developers have to pay the full price. Microsoft is following the same policy. As far as "openness" goes, I think what Microsoft (or Seamus at any rate) means is that because the Xbox is so similar to PCs, people developing for it will know what's going on inside rather than having to completely rely on say, Sony's documentation.
The Sega Dreamcast runs a custom variant of Windows CE.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Perhaps not, but a gaming machine was the designers' original conception of it. They weren't even going to put a keyboard on it at first!
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
I think the Dreamcast will fall into the same pit every other Sega console system has fallen into: bad, bad games. (well, Sega's master system wasn't bad, but it just didn't catch the way nintendo did.) Nintendo has controlled the market on console systems for one simple reason: they had the best games. Sure there's a couple of Sega titles that stick out, but Nintendo's had nearly every fighting game (Sega's orginal design for the 3-button pad on the genesis was terrible for fighting games... hitting select to switch between punches and kicks is not cool! They later tried to amend this with their six-button controller, but it came to late to beat out the SNES's hold on the market) and such memorable titles as: Megaman, Final Fantasy (personally, i buy wherever Squaresoft goes... that can at least guarantee you some good games), Castlevania, Mario (though the sonic series is great... one of the only fast games), Metroid, Contra, Donkey Kong Country... and many many more. After the NES and SNES, the upstart Sony Playstation picked up the torch (Grand Turismo and Final Fantasy are just the beginning). Once again, they had the good games, and so they succeeded. N64, with all its hype, has very few good games. Goldeneye 007 is great, but Mario 64 and Zelda 64 lacked the magic of their earlier counterparts. Personally, i'm putting my money on PS2... the hardware specs look good, and Squaresoft's supporting them. At the very least, i'll get a couple great games out of the deal :-)
The bottom line is, the market will go where the games are... and Dreamcast doesn't have them.
//radiotakeover.
Hey! I thought all the slashdot people were so called tech-savvy. Who are we kidding? The PS2 is a big failure already. No Anti Aliasing??? (and don't give me that "PS2 can do that in software... my *spectrum* can do AA in software!) Hard to program for, non standard components, mediocre games. Sony had no idea what they were doing. DC is a much better designed machine, gamecube (love that IBM chip) looks well designed as well and XBox also has all the right bells (established technology). Since when do we slashdotters believe the hype?????
If the dev kit is free, how's Microsoft going to make money off the Xbox? After all, they are heavily subsidizing the hardware.
A guy on the Xbox team (Seamus Blackely) gave a talk at my college two weeks ago and he said quite explicitly that Microsoft will be charging considerable amounts for the dev kit. Select developers (SquareSoft, for example) will receive big discounts.
Also, the Xbox will use a proprietary DVD based format. Even if you developed a game, you still have to find a way to burn a DVD
My local Best Buy and CompUSA were the same. The guy at Best Buy said that people started lining up at 7:00 last night. They had something like 50 consoles in, but there must have been at least that many people in line at 10:00 this morning.
Playstation is really kind of odd, in that the hype about it seems to transcend from geeks and games to almost everyone. CNN.com had a front page story on it this morning, for Christ sake. My parents would give me blank stares if I tell them about Dreamcast, X-Box, or GameCube. But they sure as hell know what a Playstation is. Sony has done a brilliant job marketing both this and the PS1.
*sigh* Hopefully Sony will stick to their 100k consoles a week until Christmas promise, and I can get one in a couple weeks. DOA2 and NHL2001 are calling me.
AFAIK, the Sony Playstation 2 cannot encode 5.1 Dolby in hardware, making the optical outputs primarily for passing along 5.1 mixes in FMV sequences or DVD movies (or Pro Logic mixes).
OTOH, NVIDIA's newly announced sound chip for the Xbox will feature Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding, hopefully allowing for true surround sound in games.
http://www.s4biturbo.com/
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
for cryin' out loud. stop making the damn boxes. they're already taking a loss -- just make some really nice graphics APIs. if they make the money off of licensing and game sales anyway, having the boxes be the limiting factor only hurts them.
I think you mean principle, unless you have some weird gaming relationship with that dude who runs the school.
Then, what does it say? I have loads of people commenting on this sig, but none of them have ever said what the correct translation is.... I might change it to: Kan du lese dette er du skandinavisk!
Today is a great time to be a gamer!!
I work at a EB in my town, and I hear all sides of how people are looking at the next round of console wars. Basically, there are a few groups that pretty much everyone can be put it.
A) The platform loyalists. I have heard people come in and say they will buy whatever Sony/Nintendo/Sega/Microsoft/Grandma/Acme puts out and they have no doubts that it will be the system that destroys all others.
B) The patient waiter. These are the people that are going to wait for the next 3 systems to be released and then buy the one (ones) that have the best games. This seems to be the most logically one, but these days, whats logic anyways)
C) The misinformed. You would be amazed at what some people think about the various systems. This is where the hype really plays in, and these are the people that marketing folks just LOVE.
Unfortunately, it seems that most people fall into category C. Some peolpe think the PS2 is more powerful than a $3000 PC. Others think the GameCube is less powerful than the Dreamcast. Others still will try and convince you that Superman for the N64 is a good game.
The Betamax comparison is completely off base here. The reason being that Betamax was actually better quality than VHS, but VHS still won the war. If anything, in the coming months Sony and its PS2 will be the VHS of the upcoming console shoot out, and it will be up to their marketing department to make the PS2 the mainstream machine.
Everyone here knows that superior tech wont mean squat if you don't have a compelling reason to use it. On consoles this means exclusive games. Its looking like the PS2 is not going to get those exclusive titles from third parties like Oddworld 2 (recently announced to have switched to XBox exclusively), and instead they are going to have to rely on their in house dev teams (there is only ONE Sony brand launch title) to draw people to their platform.
These upcoming console wars are going to be interesting indeed.
Anyway, while I won't say one console creates quality games compared to other consoles, I will say that different consoles have different markets. For example, Sega has a repuation for having good sports games. Nintendo tends to be targetted for a younger audience (like, 10 year olds) that goes for action/adventure games (mario, zelda, bond, whatever). Sony, on the other hand, have a very large RPG market which is probably for an older crowd (teenagers). (Probably due to memory limitations of a cartridge compared to CDs. Those nice RPG movie sequences require space). Anyway, the point is, Nintendo doesn't have better games than other consoles, but they do have different games.
Well while many of you are shelling out up to $700 for your very own PS2 before having even bought it, I'd like to say one thing... The estimate of $199 by next christmas in this article is WAY off. You can already get them for as little as $40 (US) in Japan. Why you ask. Because it sucks. Plain and simple. Games are going for as little as ooh $20 average... It is not fully backwards compatible with PS1 games... infact just search the web and you will already find lists of incompatible games... oh but wait it plays DVDs right??? Well not ALL DVDs... don't ask me how this happened, but it doesn't even play the Matrix... oh hmm... must still be alright though right because this is Sony... wrong.. the pure lack of 3D hardware makes this baby awful... take my advise and either buy a PS1 for $99, wait for a game cube, or wait for the PS2 to reach the sub $100 level... Sony pulled a Sega Saturn boys and girls.
My parents got our beta in the early 80s so it had a 'sleek, modern design.' It was the same size as a VHS and the slot where you popped in the tape appeared to be the same as a VHS (rectangular slot with a little flap that hinges into the machine). It lived through 3 rambunctious kids (starting at ~7 years old) and still works fine today. In the same span of time I think we went through 2 or 3 VHSs (mid-grade Panasonics and the like). We also have a beta video camera :) and a fine collection of John Hughes flicks which were picked up for practically nothing.
But getting back to the point, quality of the machine means nothing compared to the modules the machine plays. I too followed Square, and I'll stick with Sony as long as Square does. And anyone who's played console games knows, say, playing Final Fantasy on a PC just isn't the same (some say it's better, I say pbbbt ! there's a reason why they sell console style controllers for PCs). I guess it's the same reason why I still haven't picked up FF Anthology, I don't want to play FF6(3) on a playstation when I've still got my SNES.
Had you read the article, you might've noticed that the X-Box is going to be open sourced, so that (ideally) anyone can write software to it. If you're looking for a Linux based system, take a look at the Indrema. There was something about it on this sight a couple weeks ago.
Untill I can emulate them. Yeah. That should do the trick. Lesse here, 5 years between consoles, that's, hmmm, about 10x computing power compared to today. So reasonably I should be running a 8Ghz with 1.28 gigs of ram, a 300 gig hard drive... hmm. Yep. Emulation is the way to go. Not now, but later...
Besides, I'm sick of all those whiny punks playing all my favorite mods (especially CS). I don't need Gran Turino or Final Fantasy XXI to come out for the PC. Leave those to the console kiddies.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Or was that, like just about everything else you seem to write, another totally self-serving, manipulative pile of crap meant to cash in on the "Slashdot sucks, we K5 readers are more intelligent than that" mentality?
Oh wait, never mind. If you read his user profile he's apparently letting anyone use his account for karma whoring and trolling.
Either that or it's his excuse for ending his pretense at "groupthink experimentation" and going back to being a shamelss karma whore / troll... argh, I've spent too much time thinking about this already...
Jay (=
God forbid you want to watch TV
I really wanted a PS2 today, but couldn't bring myself to drop $500 for a usable system (ps2, controller, memory, games), plus the time to sit in line...
I know that the majority of the people out there paying for console devises don't care. but Honestly, do you really think that the PS2 based on linux will loose out to XBox based on windows? So I could have a stable console game machine to play with...or the mini-computer in a box that has a tendancy to crash on me...
I don't know about anyone else, but I have a computer, and if I want to play a pc game I'll get it and play it on my pc. I am not buying a seperate peice of hardware to play something I can play now.
PS2 is going like mad right now...I've seen several people who were in line at the stores to get theirs...
Sony has done good, and will still do good, the ps1 was a good console box...and I have yet to find a lack of games or junk to go with it.
Just my $0.02
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
the Phantasy Star series
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
On the other hand, if PS2 wins, it will be because the open development model of X-Box leads to a glut of crappy games, while Sony gets good developers with at least some minimal quality assurance. That's how Nintendo beat Atari so many years ago.
Personally, I think M$ will win, because Sony is pushing PS2 as a desktop computer replacement, a role for which it is completely unsuitable. It doesn't matter; if we manage to send either Sony or MS down the tubes, we're left with one larger evil corporate monopoly that wants to take over the world, instead of two smaller ones.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
So all of Sony's websites, after PS2 is released here, will be hyping PS3?
Way to stay objective. Never mind the fact that if all you did was dedicate the P3 to outputting games to a 600x400 TV screen, you'd rip up framerate wise as well. Hence the X-Box.
Obscurity? nVidia hit the scene a lot earlier that "a little over a year ago". The Riva128 was a VERY talked about card. And the TNT became a Voodoo2 killer (though not an SLI killer). This was back in August/September of 1998. Apparently, to this guy, they didn't exist before the TNT2 Ultra.Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In theory it's not bad technology, but the memory latency is huge and this is a major problem for most code. The bandwidth doesn't do you any good unless you use liberal prefetching and huge cache lines. Perhaps for console systems this will become the norm. As it stands in the PC market, programs aren't designed for this type of memory situation and thus they run slowly.
First, DC uses DirectX as an API. Second, the only "goofy chip" to learn on the XBox is the video hardware. The amount of dev time getting a poly pipeline set up is insignificant to things like game logic or asset creation for a title.
Current compilers are uber-optimized already for the x86. The bulk of game code can be written in C++ with an assurance of reasonable performance.
Does that mean that X-Box will do better than the PS2? Who knows?
The Xbox is a PC!!!!!!!! It's using standard parts! People are so damned lazy.
-motardo
- ...
- Early Amiga games (Marble Madness) with later ones (Elfmania, Stardust)
- ...
You really want to start an Amiga flamewar, don't you?The Amiga is/was NOT only a game machine dammit!
:)
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Ooh Sorry but I must disagree big time here. Look at the dreamcast section on gamespot. See how many titles are above 9?!? Sega has got great games for the dreamcast. They always had great games but yeah sometimes they clucked up. Now the NES/SNES were great but then didnt Nintendo cluck up just as big with the N64 (CD's will never be popular...) Sony hit it big cos they got people who arent really interested in video games to buy their console. They captured the average joe on the street and got his money. There are some really great games out for the Playstation but there is a LOT of crap and I dont think that the top games for the Playstation outshine the Dreamcasts. Now as for the PS2...the first set of games do *not* match up to Sega's present offerings in any shape or form. Soul Edge vs Tekken? SE wins. Madden vs NFK2k1? NFLetc is the better *game*. Touch passing man! Ridge Racer looks good mind you :)
Personally, I think the PS2 will rise because they have the hype with them and their kit is a step above the Dreamcast. If that had come with DVD as standard I think it might have been different. Guess we shall see!
I think that what it'll take to make the XBox a success is not so much marketing/public mindshare as much as developer mindshare. Note, too, that this doesn't mean "most developers win". This might eb true in the PC/Corporate market, but in the console market, the platform with the most *good* games will walk away the winner. So what MS needs to do is concentrate on getting the likes of the Steve Wostons of the world to notice the platform. Surely, people like Woston already have preview versions of the Xbox. The question is, will they prefer them over other platforms and write games accordingly?
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
My Second Vote Was For Gore
great comedy company.
Jet Set Radio, Virtua Tennis, Crazy Taxi, Phantasy Star Online, Sonic, Samba de Amigo, F355 Challenge, Virtual On, Eternal Arcadia, House Of The Dead 2, Shen Mue. Each of these is original, fresh, polished and a lot of fun. That's the output of a single company in a single year. So here's my question: Are you *completely mental*? The market has completely failed to go where the games are. The public at large is currently showing a distressing prediliction for third-rate driving games and clones of clones of clones.
Plus, you *have* to play NFL2K1. The gameplay and artificial intelligence are outstanding.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
But completely irrelavent.
The betamax lost for one reason only, MARKETING.
That's how it works. There is a reason noone is using CP/M anymore. The Betamax had hardly any movies released.
This article is a worthless Piece of Shit.
--
they send me $10 and I will send them Lostman's Complete Book of True Reality. This book is guarenteed to explain how to obtain added realism to events such as Baseball, Football, and Soccor by "Going out and Experiencing Them"(c).
As far as I can tell, what this will mean for Sony is that the first games for the Playstation II will be impressive, and it will have much room to grow, especially as the programmers get smarter about using the beast.
;)
Whatever else people might say about Sony, the PSX2 is here now, and the X-Box isn't. Once it comes out, sure they'll have some competition, but I think a lot of people will just stick to using their PC's. As long as Square sticks with Sony, I'll be interested.
However, what I really wanted to play was Metroid 64. And for that I'll probably have to wait for the 'Dolphin' or whatever. BAH.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
N64 used Rambus, look what Nintendo learned from that: The N64s memory expansion which 'added extra video memory' actually REPLACED the original video RAM with a much lower latency type resulting in substantial performance increases in a few games that were oddly programmed.
Also the Gamecube uses a 16MB integrated SRAM main memory.
They REALLY don't want to suffer Rambus-like latencies again!
grab your ankles bitch
>of course, we will never see sony, nintendo, or microsoft ever do anything like that ;) how much you want to bet the XBox will have some type of microsoft bios/rom that will make it impossible to install linux on it? :)
Say... Something like a little message on the screen saying.
"By attempting to install an alternate Operating System on your Xbox you have violated the terms and conditions for using this Computing device. While you were reading this your hard disk has been formatted and your bios erased. Thank you for choosing the Xbox, have a nice day
****PLINK****
--
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
Anyone using a TV sytem other than NTSC will be able to laugh at your post smugly.
:D
You have the lowest quality television system in the world and you wonder why it's difficult to tell the difference between Betamax and VHS?
grab your ankles bitch
But Microsoft has its own problems. The X-Box looks like it's going to be both expensive (because of its reliance on PC technology) and significantly behind the curve in terms of performance. And from what it looks like so far, the X-Box software architecture isn't exactly going to be pretty either; close ties to Windows APIs are both a blessing and a curse.
I think whichever box ends up more open and more hackable will win in the market, if for slightly different reasons. I hope Sony figures this out before it's too late. Microsoft, with their choice of fairly standard PC technologies, may end up not being able to do anything about winning in the market that way, but their victory may be Pyrrhic, as they see their nice X-boxes turned into even nicer, Microsoft-subsidized Linux machines.
The PS2 IS a bitch to write for simply because Sony designed it as simply a more up to date Playstation.
The Gamecube is a dream to develop for as Nintendo went round the most prolific developers and asked them what was wrong with the N64 when they were deciding on the feature set, resulting in a VERY well balanced machine.
grab your ankles bitch
Memory bandwidth limitations make it virtually impossible to use both vector units for the 3D engine so developers are struggling to find a way of using the second one to the fullest without crippling another process.
Most just don't bother.
grab your ankles bitch
At first I was going to wait for the Nintendo 64, then I was going to wait for the Dreamcast, then I was going to way for the Playstation 2, and now I'm thinking of waiting for the X-Box, but it finally hit me.
Man can own multiple console machines at the same time.
Apparently, there is no crime against owning both a Playstation 2 and a Dreamcast at the same time or even, dare I say it, a Nintendo 64, Playstation 2 and Dreamcast at the same time.
Now, I'm not sure why I thought that I couldn't own two consoles at the same time. I guess it just feels a bit wrong owning two machines which do basically the exact same thing only because sony, sega and nintendo can't get it through their heads that the money is in the software.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
good god, and i actually clicked on that link. (AT WORK!!)
smart ass
--
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
I work for an advertising agency in Canada (I know, I know, only half a step removed from the Devil), and one of our major clients now is Sony. One of our staff decided that it was very important for us to better understand the client's products, and acquired us a grey-import PS2. And it's fun. And hardly anyone plays on it any more, preferring someone else's office-residing Dreamcast.
The main reason we're all playing on the Dreamcast rather than the PS2 is that the games are currently *far* more impressive on that platform. Many an afternoon is wasted^H^H^H^H^H^Hdedicated to competitive research of games such as SoulCalibur, Crazy Taxi, Sega Rally, and so on. Clearly, it's far easier for us to get games for the DC because of the fact that it's been around over here for a while, but still, we have 4 games for the PS2. And the only one of those that is even vaguely fun is the soccer game we have. It's also the game with the most realism (we have a racing game that is more realistic, but it's realistic to the point of unplayability). The games we have are visibly early-adoption titles.
I have a feeling that if the PS2 really is going to be the trojan horse of the home entertainment market, the games developers are going to have to mature their games very quickly indeed. Looking back at the run of the original PlayStation, it's very clear that the games have become better and better visually as time has progressed, and the programmers have learned to better utilise the hardware and it's abilities. I only hope for Sony's sake that they can do that again.
I imagine it's true for the PSX and other 1st gen consoles, but even back in the Amiga days you could get the best performance by directly addressing the graphics chip to do parallel processing, etc.
Hell, the same could even be said for the Pentium with its multiple pipelines, and with the fancy graphics cards, but the majority of developers just forget about it and let DirectX or the compiler work out how to do it well enough, or they just go and licence the Quake, etc, engine where someone else has gone to the trouble of hand-optimising.
As with all new systems, there's going to be a learning process. Go back to the launch of the PSX and look at some of the games you went WOW over, and compare them with the speed and complexity of new titles for exactly the same handware, now that developers have had a chance to work out how to squeeze every last drop out of the system.
And given the success of Linux, obsucre technical documentation seems to be no hurdle to the average programmer...
R.I.P. N64, I'd miss you if you had more games I liked...
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
For the record, the Minnesota Wild is an expansion team that we finally got despite a pissy son of a bitch Norm Green's decision to take our hockey team. As their fight song states, the game is in our blood and our blood is in the game. You can't take that away from us.
And yes they aren't the best but they are an expansion team, cut them some slack!
Are you lonely? Hate having to make decisons? Meetings, the practical alternitive to work.
Agreed. I'm American, and speak only a little Danish, so I've missed the train on two counts.
I used to love football, push up to block up, down to block down and then run behind him. That game rocked! Much better than later football games (tecmo bowl) that had players doing god knows what after the snap.
(A really good graphics card can make the ASCII characters much clearer, though, which is a plus.)
And Nintendo saved the industry last time with the NES.... hope the Gamecube does it again....
The Japanese won't buy a USian console. No console will suceed without success in Japan. The Japanese developers won't produce for a console that doesn't sell well in Japan, and as they make 99.9% of all decent console games, there will be no point buying any such system. Japan is the biggest videogames market in the world, second place the USA, very closely followed by the UK and Europe.
What happened to the Atari Jaguar? How about the 3DO? Thankfully the Japanese didn't buy those pieces of silicon crap.
Meanwhile some people slate the Dreamcast on the grounds that it is losing developer support in the west, it continues to get support from the big Japanese developers, who are also working hard on PS2 titles, whilst they also prepare some amazing launch titles for Gamecube. I say the Dreamcast is all the better for not having crappy western style games released for it, making it look like the general quality of software is low.
Thank God for the Japanese!
It doesn't mean anything. The letter X is commonly used as a filler when one wants a Three Letter Acronym, and only has a two word name.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
History indicates that the market can really only support one console at a time for a 5 year period. That means 3 out of the 4 "eighth generation" systems are going to die a ugly or perhaps just a mediocre death.
However, never in history has the home gaming market been so large. A market this large has room for niches: for example the Saturn remained the machine of choice for 2D fighting game nuts long after the Playstation had trounced it out of the mainstream market. Nintendo's loyal following means that N64 games are still coming out and making money (Mario Tennis promises to be a treat; Mario Golf has given me hours of top-notch entertainment, and I've only played it at friends').
We will see a clear winner, but this will only be a major problem for the companies who've based their business model on getting a near-monopoly (i.e. the companies who don't just want to sell a few games - they want to become the hub of worldwide home-entertainment). Sega and Nintendo have less to lose; they can fill niches and continue to make money. MS and Sony have more riding on this, and one of them will win, one of them will lose.
--
* The next (current?) generation of consoles offer beter play comfort than PC. I'd rather sit in front of my widescreen Wega screen than on my than a tiny 17" VGA monitor.
* Someone mentioned the PS2 not supporting Dolby 5.1 or DTS. It does not have the decoder build-in, but it outputs the signals through the optical port so you can hook it up to an external decoder.
* PS2 movie playback could be better. It's not region-free (probably because Sony is involved in DVD Video publishing as well). It also does NOT support CD+G, DVD Audio, VideoCD, SuperVCD or MP3 playback. In addition the PS2 drive (especially the 2nd generation model) is crap at reading recordable media. Also a remote control is not part of the standard equipment. You have to shell out extra for that.
* The licence requirement is actually a good thing for consumers. With a $25,000 fee developers will make sure they'll produce something that will return their investments.
* US games suck. Electronic Arts, Acclaim, need I say more? The Japanese produce far better games. Microsoft has not been able to get the major Japanese houses to publish for their Xbox system. If you want quality stuff for your system you need to sign up Square, Konami, Enix and Capcom.
* Many people seem to think the Sega Saturn failed. It only failed in the US and European market. In Asia it sold well and had plenty of decent games (Anyone who has played "Yakyuken Special" will agree) which did not get released outside of Asia. The current Japanese userbase is already enough to ensure a steady stream of games for PS2.
* Sony will prolly want to turn PS2 into a hybrid PC, but they can't change the basic configuration. You don't have to get the extra peripherals if you just want to play games.
* Xbox is nothing more than a PC which outputs to TV. As such it can't seriously be called a new system. We will see mostly PC stuff ported to Xbox. Porting will be easy because Xbox IS the same platform. Xbox will buy you a system with no exclusive games, just rehashes of PC games.
Three words why ps2 will win out: Final Fantasy X. Who isn't going to buy that game? And do you think M$ has a snowball's chance in hell of getting a series so popular? I think not.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
- Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision. Magnavox Odyssey2 lasted the longest of the also-rans.
- ColecoVision, Atari 5200. Not much else going on at this time. Mattel Aquarius turned out to be vapour.
- Commodore 64. Three-way tie for second between Atari 800, Sinclair Spectrum 48K, and Apple II. None reached C64's critical mass. And before anyone complains, ask yourself this: What program kept you recalibrating your 1541, your word processor, or The Bard's Tale?
;-)
- Nintendo Famicom/NES. Sega Master System was a distant second, and the Atari 7800 was the desperate act of a dying legend.
- Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo. Or, Nintendo Super Famicom, Sega MegaDrive, depending on your longitude. Established the pattern of Sega doing better in N. America than Japan. NEC TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine was well known for kick-starting the CD revolution, but a couple of kick-ass RPGs weren't enough to keep it alive.
- SNK NeoGeo. If you had the money, this was as good as it got in those days. If you had the money, that is.
- Atari Jaguar. If 7800 was the event horizon, this was the singularity. A moment of silence, so JTS can perform last rites while Hasbro pisses on the grave....
- Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64. Sega Saturn was a flop on both sides of the Pacific, while 3DO and Phillips CDi "converged" too soon.
And so, here we are. Dreamcast is doing better in N. America than Japan, PS2 is the Cabbage Patch Kids 2000, and XBox and GameCube are rumbling in the distance. This looks like it will be an interesting fight.Here's my two-bit predictions:
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
This sig intentionally left blank.
The Net Yaroze was a limited series. Sony ended up killing it when it became clear that supporting it cost them more than the return on their investment. IIRC, only two games ever made it to the real market from the Yaroze platform.
It was also quite clearly not open. Yaroze games could not (initially) be played on a normal PSX; A hack was developed later to allow it, but I've never seen it. Then again, I don't have a Yaroze. The best thing about the Yaroze ended up being its ability to play copied games and foreign games. And the development environment included with the Yaroze was not nearly as robust as the commercial one, for obvious reasons, mostly support and the amount of money licensed developers spent to buy the PSX development platform.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, extending the analogy used in the article, does this mean that we'll have all the pr0n we could ever want on the X-box? (aptly titled too!)
"Ask me about Loom"
Look folks, I believe that this is the real reason why the PlayStation will be gobbled up by the X-Box. Doesn't this sound rather like BetaMax all over again? It does to me. If Microsoft could put the knife to the throat of closed standards like OS/2, or Java, who's to doubt that they could also kill the PlayStation/2, too?!? Let's hop to it, folks! Let's beat Sony AND Microsoft, by making a Linux game console within the year! I vote that VA Linux Systems do it, as the Linux Hardware Leader for the Linux Community!!
The PS2 has a TOSLINK (optical digital) on the back for digital audio and can do AC3 and DTS out to an external decoder just fine.
It's in the specs somewhere. Games will be able to use this as well - it'll be nice to have full home theatre surround instead of the tinny 4 speaker setups that most PC surround sound is today.
The difference now is that the actualy CAN turn the platform into a home computer. 20 years ago (was it really that long ago) no one had home computers so no one gave a crap about turning the atari into a PC. Now that everyone has a PC, the idea of crossing your gaming platform over becomes obvious. It can work, whether it will or not is another question.....
As for the glut of low quality crap and prOn (prOn on an Atari game!?!?! Gotta see it to believe it....), I disagree as well.... Every gaming platform has crap made by no name companies hoping to sell a few games, but it didn't effect the NES, the SNES, the PS and it won't effect any new system that comes out.
On a slightly different note, I just upgraded my PC. TBird proccessor, lots of new fangled shiny stuff, blah, blah. Then a thought occured to me, will this be the last home PC (in the traditional sense) that I ever buy? If a PS2 or PS3 can do everything my PC can, with a few extra devices, why would I need a PC anymore?
Then I thought that the reason the PC is so succesfull is because it's very open and you can do so many things yourself with it. Someone earlier made a point about opening up the PS2, and I think they're right. PCs are so popular because people can write programs like Napster and let everyone use them for free. EVERYTHING on a PS2 will have to be bought from some manufacturer, and I won't be able to write my own things for it.
That right there, IMHO, will keep any future gaming platform as a niche product. A very lucrative product, mind you, but a niche none the less. The PC isn't going anywhere if they don't let us hackers play with any new gaming platform.
Sorry if this is old news/ideas for people.
Trains stop at a train station. Buses stop at a bus station.
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
DC versus PS2 Showdown!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I don't know, the SNES and Genisis/MegaDrive were really one generation.... not really segmented.... who could forget Street Fighter II Turbo on SNES vs Street Fighter II Special Championship Edition fighting it out.... well, most people actully.... :)
:)
However, the one little thing I loved about the end of the SNES's life cycle was the fact that at the end of 1994, Donkey Kong Country was a bigger seller then the entire new 32-bit generation (Saturn/PSX).
Anyway, back onto topic - I believe the market can support 2 consoles. The Nintendo 64 was supported though this generation - the companies make their money from software sales, not hardware sales. Look at the Top 10 games sales lists. New 1st and 2nd party N64 software is constantly in the top positions. People buy the software, N64 games sell incredibly well. The Ocarina of Time was a huge seller (and a damn great game too).
2 consoles can survive, this has been shown. And, in this next generation, 3 might squeeze in. The PS2 is here, if only due to it's hype machine fooling the public that it is a great consol (it's not imho). The Gamecube will be at least as successful as the N64 (and the N64 made Nintendo money), if not more (it is FAR easier on 3rd parties to code for then the N64 or PS2). Nintendo always manage some classic games, ALWAYS. And, I think Microsoft will squeeze the X-Box into the market, mainly because they could make no money at all this generation just to push the X-Box into the market as part of a long-term (next or 2 generations time), or it might just be successful this time.
Well, I've ranted, hope it makes some sence. I have my 1st VCE (final year of high school in the Victorian [state of Australian] education system) exam in 11 hours. It's an English exam. I should have been revising. All well. Hope I can write a nice piece on Montana 1948 and Cabaret then....
I should get some sleep....
As a result, the market was quickly flooded with mediocre games and Japanese "Strip" titles ranging from the traditional mah-jongg to (I kid you not) *two* versions of rock-paper-scissors.
Most of these were from production houses that we nicknamed "One-Take Video", for the incredibly shoddy camerawork and the lack of talent beyond "80cm, 55cm, 78cm". And did I really need to know my opponent's blood type? :)
But 3DO's market wasn't destroyed by smut. Poor as the quality may have been, these titles shone like the moon compared to titles like "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties" (an American attempt at erotic gaming), "Virtuoso" (a heavy-metal guitarist picks up sawed-off shotguns and fights aliens from Dimension Dope-Ass), and "Shadow: War Of Succession" (imagine Street Fighter with sub-South-Park graphics where the first player who presses "Kick" wins).
Consumers were confronted with absolutely awful games for an overpriced system. "But wait!" I hear you cry, "Isn't it the *great* titles that get attention?"
It would be, if anyone knew about them. 3DO spent next to nothing on advertising. 3DO's affiliates, partners, and licensees spent even less. Virtually all of 3DO's exposure came from trade shows and industry magazine articles, written by people with no vested interest in the company's success.
So how will the X-Box be different?
Money. Cash money. Fat Sacks Full of Cash Money. Microsoft cannot run out of money. Nothing they can legally do could possibly break them. They currently maintain so many products that will never earn them money that one more isn't even going to show up on the balance sheet.
"Expenditures (in gazillions):"
"Overhead: X-Box 0.034"
So in this humble gamer's opinion, the X-Box is going to lose money for a very long time, embarrassing everyone who looks its way.
-c.
--
Casey
More scratches on the cave wall, thanks be to anonymity.
Nintendo are without a doubt the best for GAMES. I want to play games, not watch movies on a poor quality DVD player, or have fancy FMV intros. I love my NES. I love my Game Boy(s). I love my SNES. I love my N64. I will love my Gamecube. Give me Super Mario Bros the original, or Super Mario 64 - I love them all. From the original Legend of Zelda to Majora's Mask, Nintendo just don't dissapoint (except for the pushing back of release dates....) But their games always are of the highest quality, and they are always the most inovative in software and hardware. Just look at the N64 control, and now the Gamecube (and the current Gamecube control pics are supposedly missing some feature....). After the N64 control was out, EVERYONE rushed out anologue controls.... Sega and their warped Saturn thing, and Sony and their dual anologue (no-one uses both, because the 2nd one is in such a bad place). Nintendo is where quality is from. And they are the only consol company that will be seeing my money.
Wow. I now know never to go to Urban Myths for information.
The Betamax was of discernably better quality on my early 80's consumer-grade television than the VHS machine I later got. Period.
I used the Betamax due to its superior picture quality (I dubbed VHS tapes onto it with almost no image loss). In the early 90's the machine started to eject tapes incorrectly (it wouldn't let go the magnetic tape properly), so those were its final days (for me). Also it began to be more difficult to tell the difference between this first-generation Betamax machine and the current 3rd and 4th generation VHS machines.
The original Betamax was of superior picture quality to the original VHS machine.
So in spite of this, does anyone still think Microsoft is going to choose to make less profit and cut into potential Windows marketshare out of the goodness of their own hearts and a love of spiffy technology?
However- it does make _great_ vaporware to try and cut off Sony's air supply with, and the risks of faking demos for it are much less than the risks of faking demos in court! So you'll be hearing a LOT about the wonderful X-Box.
Just don't bank on ever _buying_ it. That is not its purpose.
Now in 'Plain Old Text' flavour :)
----
Nintendo are without a doubt the best for GAMES.
I want to play games, not watch movies on a poor quality DVD player, or have fancy FMV intros.
I love my NES.
I love my Game Boy(s).
I love my SNES.
I love my N64.
I will love my Gamecube.
Give me Super Mario Bros the original, or Super Mario 64 - I love them all. From the original Legend of Zelda to Majora's Mask, Nintendo just don't dissapoint (except for the pushing back of release dates....)
But their games always are of the highest quality, and they are always the most inovative in software and hardware. Just look at the N64 control, and now the Gamecube (and the current Gamecube control pics are supposedly missing some feature....). After the N64 control was out, EVERYONE rushed out anologue controls.... Sega and their warped Saturn thing, and Sony and their dual anologue (no-one uses both, because the 2nd one is in such a bad place).
Nintendo is where quality is from. And they are the only consol company that will be seeing my money.
Yeah I agree with this. I still have my 800. Most of the media is dying these days, but I keep it to run a couple of games. And just for the fact that it is cool, and I spent way too much time on it. Hell I still know most of the memory map! I also want one of these machines. A simple computer, that plays games, but is programmable. Nice toy like the 800 was. You are right, neither M$ or Sony can do this. Too damn bad. I will have to stick with older PC machines and Linux. The hobby factor is still there even though some of the simple convience (ok spelling czars, it's late!) factor is missing.
Blogging because I can...
Here is is, looking normal I hope....
----
Nintendo are without a doubt the best for GAMES.
I want to play games, not watch movies on a poor quality DVD player, or have fancy FMV intros.
I love my NES.
I love my Game Boy(s).
I love my SNES.
I love my N64.
I will love my Gamecube.
Give me Super Mario Bros the original, or Super Mario 64 - I love them all. From the original Legend of Zelda to Majora's Mask, Nintendo just don't dissapoint (except for the pushing back of release dates....)
But their games always are of the highest quality, and they are always the most inovative in software and hardware. Just look at the N64 control, and now the Gamecube (and the current Gamecube control pics are supposedly missing some feature....). After the N64 control was out, EVERYONE rushed out anologue controls.... Sega and their warped Saturn thing, and Sony and their dual anologue (no-one uses both, because the 2nd one is in such a bad place).
Nintendo is where quality is from. And they are the only consol company that will be seeing my money.
Actually, the PS1 wasn't a bitch at first. Programmers had a very easy time with getting good results out of the PS1; it was Sega's Saturn that gave them so much difficulty. Eventually the Saturn titles got a lot better, but not after a great deal of work. The PS2 is likely to get a lot better also, but it will take effort - and probably more effort than the developers will need to get similar results on other systems.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I had to read the /. post twice and look at the picture. PS2 could well mean the old IBM Microchannel-based PC.....bad connotation....one would think Sony would know that.
Aide: Grant drinks too much to command an army. Lincoln: Find out what he drinks and give it to my other generals!
I for one do not think that the market can stably support 4 consoles given current development and distribution models. Console game development is expensive in ramp-up learning time, and therefore companies will need to make decisions on what console they will make games for.
So now the question is, who will survive to the next iteration (it's approximately a 5 year cycle, so who will still be around in 6 years?). My money is on Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. Sony and Nintendo for I think they will both make a lot of money off of their consoles, and Microsoft because while I don't necessarily think that they will make as much money, they can afford for at least one iteration not to.
Currently, at least, that's my guess...but then again, maybe the market CAN support 4 consoles and I am wrong....or perhaps I am still wrong, and it can only support 2?...
Then Microsoft will have the same problem Sony had where developers were bypassing their published SDK, writing directly to hardware and creating games that were incompatible with certain model PSX's. Not a pretty site, and could be a PR disaster. Sony cracked down on it hard and fast, telling developers in no uncertain terms that they were to use the SDK at all times. When programmers write to the so-called "bare metal", you lose the ability to correct errors and flaws in the underlying hardware and software.
In a war of FUD, don't you think Nintendo could trump even MS and the X-box?
FUD? FUD doesn't apply to a world where sales are predominantly decided by children. In that world, whatever has the best graphics, games and commercials (and to a lesser extent, price) is the one that will sell, and the others will vanish into the woodwork. Probably the most important factor will be the fact that console games and PC games have been traditionally vastly different in varieties, and gameplay. There has been some crossover, notably Quake, Final Fantasy and a few others, but for the most part the crossover versions paled in comparison to the native versions. I have a feeling that the X-Box will be more of a threat to the traditional PC gaming markets than the console markets. Remember that Microsoft also doesn't have the Japanese game designers that have made most of the games you'd commonly associate with console machines, but rather has US-based developers who are more often than not more familiar with PC games. I can see it cutting heavily into the PC markets and making a lot of Microsoft's OEM partners very angry.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
BETAmax is still VERY much alive afaik, not in the general consumer market, but in the professional video recording industry, i.e. news broadcasting. how do you think the pictures are so clear? they use BETAmax that is recording at doublespeed (i think) and it makes for very very clear pictures. (mind you they have much much much higher quality recording equipment in comparison to the home VCR, even the old BETAmax ones.
--
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
but not because of the XBox. Looking through the specs I see 32 MB of Direct Rambus RAM. Now, given this from Intel, is Sony the only major rambus user left? Could this also have to do with the PlayStation2 shortage? I hope to see the day when Rambus memory is as hard to find as memory boards for my Thinkpad 340 laptop.
As an aside, why did they use mpeg2 compression? Because mpeg4 isn't ready and Sony wants nothing to do with the evil mp3? Do you think they will let us flash the image decoder with mpeg4 for even better in-game video? And seeing the max resolution is 1280x1024, how can I hook this up to my 19" monitor and finally get rid of my t.v.?
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Uhh, I had access to our family's old Betamax for a while. Lesee here. It had mechanical buttons. It was a top loader(okay, no big deal, it'll sit on the table).
Taping a show was an interesting exercise. You first had to flip open a door and manipulate the huge LED clock to set the right time for the VCR to start. THEN you had to set the main power switch to auto record, THEN you had to hit the record and play button, and then hope for the best.
No kids, back in the early 1980s we didn't have TIVO or anything like that. We had VCRs that had friggin TV tuner dials(or a big row of radio buttons where you had to insert a plastic number on the side, and each channel has a set of potentiometers) and you couldn't just use a remote. Nope, this one had a corded "remote" that could ONLY pause, fast forward, or rewind. On-screen menus? HA!@
Ghod I hated that behemoth of a Betamax VCR. I think I'll settle for inferior quality VHS.
To really put the U and D in FUD, imagine that the Gamecube is coming out two months later than the X-box - but Nintento starts hyping the Mario 8D with smellovision four months beforehand. On X-box launch, will the kids be clamoring for an X-box that plays QuakeIII, or will they be going on and on about the Mario commercials they see on TV?
I think it'll be really interesting to see what MS, Nintendo, and Sony (which will be quite entreched by then) do to try and gain marketshare.
The real problem MS has is that right now I don't see what the draw would be for the X-box - Sony has the original Playstation name to ride on (which obviously will do little good if few good games show up). Nintendo has Mario and friends and genius game designers. Right now, the biggest thing the X-box seems to have is the new Oddworld, or possibly Halo. Both of those are giant unknowns - Halo looks pretty, but has yet to show us gameplay. From the last movies I saw of Oddworld it again looked rather pretty, but the gameplay shown was a combination RTS and platformer - that might be good but is a lot different than what they've done before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe this should be a story on /., after all it goes back a long ways, and it's news for nerds (/. nerds), cause no one else cares. :)
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
i DID read the article :P
:)
the XBox is not open sourced. microsoft is letting developers write software using their API (running on a closed-source kernel) (with closed-source development tools) all running on a closed source MS-XBox OS...
im looking forward to the Indrema system, they look like they are doing it right... i hope they have funding
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
A lot of innovative stuff comes from the smaller teams - not quite the same as the days of bedroom programming, but almost there (lounge?) Do you think they'll consider the PS2 as a viable platform?
I haven't made any of that stuff up. The developers I work with have told me about the problems they face. Luckily, as a publisher, we have some money and time we can throw at those problems. Other people might not be so fortunate.
Anyone notice the striking similiarities between this and just before the crash of the 1980s? What with unlicensed games (which resulted in an incredible glut of low quality crap and atari porno games (really!)) and the idea of turning your video console into the home computer. It didnt work then, what makes them think it'll work now? History repeating itself...
-
Neither the PS2 or the XBox has an architecture for the ages, so either one could be the BetaMax.
+ Sony has spread some PR about the PS2 being the next great home computer. However, the Playstation 2, being a closed and proprietary platform, will never attract broad applicaiton support beyond games and maybe a web browser.
You guys think Windows is a closed system, but at least someone doesn't have to buy $20K of custom hardware and sign a stack of NDAs to build an app for it.
+ The XBox, even thought it's based on PC hardware, *is not a PC*, and does not have the advantages of a PC. When you are marketing to lower middle-class parents buying a toy for their 12 year olds, you can't rev the hardware every 18 months like the PC world tends to do.
That means that what MS has announced is what you are going to get, for the next 3 years. Just like Sony.
On top of that Microsoft has no real coherent interactive TV strategy (XBox != WebTV) or application strategy to go along with the XBox. Meaning that this will never be more than a game box either.
There's probably a few people here who remember the days when they chucked their 2600s and ColecoVisions and went on with life gaming on Atari 800s, C-64s, and Apples. And, what do you know, those platforms are still around to some extent and getting press on Slashdot. Maybe this is a fading hope, but someday someone will realise that there is a huge market out there for a *real* home computer, that is very cheap, simple, runs personal applications, and is also a kick-ass game machine. Sony won't do it, and Microsoft can't.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Oh yea... principle... damn must be all those years in Catholic school!
I thought that the typical (non-EV6/Athlon) CPU FSB is a transmission line structure, with the CPU, bridges and memory interface chips all on the same bus.
Anyone seen this article in the register yesterday ?
Wait for it...
Someones gone and released a £10 ZX Spectrum consule with 2000 games built in with a N64 style controller... for proof or to buy one check here
Retro mania here I come!!!!!
The X-box is much more conventional - it's an x86 machine with an nVidia graphics chip. What Microsoft is banking on is that by the time the X-box has to go into volume production, it will be possible to build a $300 PC. You can't do that yet, which is why the PS2 has to use wierd hardware.
Bear in mind that the X-box really is a $300 PC, built from parts Microsoft doesn't make. If the X-box can be sold for $300, so can commodity PCs. That opens up some interesting options.
For about fifty dollars a month, Japanese gamers will get next-generation wireless networking
That has to be one of the greatest slobbering missives Ive read here in some time. The invocation of wireBBBZZZZless to describe what cant be anymore than a wireless hub/gateway and a wireless NIC in the PS2 may be going a little far... a device isnt exactly wireBBBZZZZless if you can travel all the way to the garage with it, I think wireBBBZZZZless would mean you arent tethered to a singular 'basestation'.
Now - if Sony has something up their sleeves that will allow 'next generation wireless networking' on a campus (or in a MetroArea) I want the same thing for my Laptop. Single purpose units (a machine to play games, a machine to play DVD's, a machine to Play MP3's , etc) is a waste of time - I much prefer maintaining all the functionality into a single device that is modular/upgradeable/non-proprietary - ie a computer.Who wants to buy a PS2 with all these static-built-in features, only to be forced to buy another device 12 months later that duplicates those features -may improves some others (like gamegraphics) your PS2 becomes garbage then.
And If Sony's trackrecord is served: you wont see the IEEE1394 and USB ports do anything other than plug in additional Sony PS2 ExtendoPack(TM) modules.
No thanks - Ill much prefer upgrading my video card.
Oh, and remember Geeks " The [music] industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams. It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what." The disturbing part is what Heckler says Sony will attempt to do to help them win: "Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this," Heckler told the Summer Forty-Niner. "We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source -- we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [Internet-service provider]. We will firewall it at your PC."
DO you really want these people being the 'hub' of your entertainment system?
Help put whores like Sony in their place:
Will this stupid myth please die soon?
From the urban myths writeup:
3). "Betamax failed in spite of the fact that it was a superior technology."
False. Comparisons between VCRs with similar features showed no significant differences in performance. In fact, most of the differences could only be seen with sensitive instruments, and likely would never show up on most consumer grade television sets. . In particular, the qualitative differences between the two formats were less than the differences between any two samples from the same manufacturer. It was only the later (and more expensive) versions of Beta which noticeably improved the quality, as commercial and broadcast outlets turned to Beta as a standard. In fact, at that time Beta was an inferior technology because VHS allowed for longer recordings. Early beta technology allowed for one-hour recordings, while VHS allowed two hours.
In the final analysis, the world decided it didn't really need two kinds of video tape--Betamax, say hello to eight track tape.
The real reason was there wasn't enough pr0n on Betamax!
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
And by making the playstation 2 able to play (almost) all existing playstation games they are providing a HUGE incentive for their 70 million + current users to stick with them. My understanding is that the X-Box will not be able to play standard windows games. Why the hell not? That would be the only reason to buy an x-box.
People don't like throwing out their entire collection of games. The main advantage of consoles over pcs is stability - not that it doesn't crash (though that it important, and i'll believe in a non-crashing microsoft product when i see it), but the fact that after 3 years, you can still go out and buy games that run on your console. By making ps2 play original playstation games, that means that you can upgrade the console and keep playing all your old games. It means that the platform you invested in in 1996 will continue to be viable into.... when? 2003 maybe? Whereas the computer you bought in 1996 was obsolete by 1997 and none of the new games would run on it. That is SOOOO frustrating!
Lets say you have 30 games for your playstation. And assume the average cost was $40. $40 * 30 = $1200 on games, versus $200 (when it was new) on the hardware. Now you are again looking at spending $200 - $300 on hardware. Are you going to get the one that supports your $1200 investment or not? And if you're a computer gamer who's spent a ton on computer games - why would you go out and buy a windows based product that doesn't support those games? Why not choose a system that has demonstrated (for the first time in history) that they want to continue to allow you to enjoy old favorites, while making a giant library of new titles also available?
Taping a show was an interesting exercise. You first had to flip open a door and manipulate the huge LED clock to set the right time for the VCR to start. THEN you had to set the main power switch to auto record, THEN you had to hit the record and play button, and then hope for the best.
This type of programming was not a Betamax-specific "feature". My parents just last year *finally* replaced their old VHS VCR (possibly Magnavox?) that they've had since the early-to-mid-80's, and it had the same "flip door" (although the door was long ago broken off) where there were little buttons, dials, and switches to schedule recordings. Seems to me that this isn't something the Beta should be bashed for per se since it was probably how many VCR's of that era, both Betamax and VHS, were programmed.
The PS2 is hard to program for:
1. Because it's new, obviously, and therefore there is a lack of developers with PS2 experience;
2. Because there is a lack of 'official' development tools for it, and development teams are having to spend time and resources developing their own;
3. Because Sony are notoriously hard to work with on development issues.
Just because it's going to be difficult doesn't mean the games are going to be better. The Xbox is going to have some great games on it, whether they're ported from the PC or not - simply because it's familiar territory for developers, and therefore development teams can spend more time and resources on creating the game and not the tools.
Don't dismiss the Xbox out of hand just because it's from Micro$oft.
That was awesome. If I was a moderator, I'd make sure you'd get at least a 2. ;)
=steve
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
One item that wasn't emphasized all that much in the article is Internet play (and playability in general).
I don't really care about Moore's Law cubed if the games are no fun to play. I own a Dreamcast right now and am having a great time -- and I haven't even gotten into the online play yet.
The article noted that Japan will get online play on the PS2 early next year, and then North America will follow in about a year. That strikes me as _way_ too long. That means that if you buy a Dreamcast today, you will have around a year-and-a-half to play games like Quake III online before the PS2 even gets going on it. ALl of the buzz I hear at this point if about how much fun it is to play NFL2K1 and Quake online, and if Sega can keep the network working, they will be the only online-console game in town for more than a year (at least in the US). I see that as being a huge advantage, moreso than fancy graphics.
SegaNet has already signed up 100,000 folks since September 7th, and that is with only one primary online game (NFL2K1) out. Granted, they have heavily promoted the network with DC price-drops and a 50-hours-free trial, but that is a fairly strong opening that will only get stronger once more folks buy Quake 3 and NBA2K1 (November) and Unreal Tourney (Q1 2001) are released.
What Would Sutekh Do?
In most markets competition is good, because it forces companies to improve their products because naturally they want the *best* products. But when it comes to gamoing systems, I'm concerned, because the market gets spread out, and if developers sign contractial agreements spread out among the systems, our quality and vast selection of games decrease. Naturally, most people cannot afford to buy more than one gaming system. It simply doesn't make sense. But if we limit ourselves to one system, we also limit our spectrum of games.. hence the reason I probably will buy neither a PS2, and X-Box, a Dreamcast, or a Nintendo Whateva. I'll stick to PC Games, thank you. Basically those sytems are all turning into stripped PC's anyway. Well, thanks for bearing with me, I had to get my opinion out.
~ The Irony is, The only reason I'm not at Berkeley right now is because I was on acid during my SAT's..
Actually Sony does get it. Thats why they are selling the thing almost at cost, and charging $25,000 to obtain a license to make the games (hence the software).
I think we also need to remember that the ps2 is going to be completely backwards compatible (games, controllers, everythings), and that, even though (as the article mentions) it will cut into their DVD player market, Sony did agree to put a fully functional and impressive (in terms of sound, etc) DVD player. Now, maybe they are really just trying to win "the war of the living room," (and I am sure, as a business, that's their number one goal), but they also seem to be very user supportive in this endeavor.
The question then, of course, is will Microsoft do the same? Sure they open the system to developers, but when I want a feature that will cost Microsoft money, will they include it to keep my business?
The acronym PSX comes from the development process of the Playstation. The X comes from eXperimental, as in the technology, for the time it was being made, was experimental.
Cogito, ergo sum.
The differences between the US and Japanses PS2's are that the US has a drive bay in the back for a hard disk/ ethernet card instead of the PCMCIA slots that the Japanese one had, and the US one has the DVD playing software in ROM instead of as a file on the memory card, so it can't be corrupted by games, which was a big fiasco over there (Ridge Racer broke the DVD player when it saved). Cool that you can execute stuff off the memory card though...
It still decodes in software, it's just that the software is in ROM, not on the memory card.
BBK
I think I read about the same problem with PC emulators on the Mac. You might be able to find a fix at www.macwindows.com (I'm too lazy to look myself).
-Fyre
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
But maybe now with the way computers have shaped the world, maybe not so much.
Just because anybody can make games for your console doesn't guarantee that it will rule the market. A market flooded with second rate games is what killed the Atari. Check out Joystic Nation.
You seem to be under the assumption that "All the world's an open source oyster". Putting together a decent game these days costs a LOT of money. $25K is just the cost of doing business.
FUD? FUD doesn't apply to a world where sales are predominantly decided by children.
Wow their cowboy - Children are the ONLY ones susceptible to Fear, Uncertainty and doubt. Be that a child of 32 years and 180lbs or 12 years and 80lbs. When making decisions please rely on facts, make informed decisions based on 'graphics and games'. "Commercials" are a tool of markatroids wielding balls of FUD. I dont know how things are run in your family (or social group) but 'children' dont make decisions here. If you are felt to be incapable of objective, reasoned thought, uninfluenced by markatroid FUD - you are not permitted to make decisions. So, when a child says 'but PS2 has the XMAHSAD MegaGraphix(TM) dual-line-in-line-sight-line PROSucessor, I just gotta have it" you know they are a victim of FUD and should be ignored... and re-educated.
I've always wondered whats the point of have an integrated 32MB graphics card that capable of doing so many polygons at a time when all i'm going to use it for is the run a 80x25 Text terminal
-- If i knew what i was doing i'd make sure not to do it again --
And now M$ says it's hard to develop for? Heheheheh.
0x0000
"The Internet is made of cats."
as we all know too well.. it all depends on which platform the game developers choose...
:) open hardware specs and open software running it. these console makers need to realize that they cant do everything! if i were them, i would create a nice standards based console, then open the specs on the thing and let the developers do what they may with it.
;) how much you want to bet the XBox will have some type of microsoft bios/rom that will make it impossible to install linux on it? :)
i personally think Sony will reign here. M$ is known for buggy software, and Sony has (as far as i have heard) a pretty nice development system...
all i want to know is WHEN are we going to see a Linux based game console?!? thats what we NEED!
of course, we will never see sony, nintendo, or microsoft ever do anything like that
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
The PS2 is hard to program because it is a *new* system and there aren't lots of experts to run to and "How to Program the PS2 for Dummies" books at Barnes & Noble.
Is DirectX easy to use from a programmer's point of view? Is the Win32 API? MFC? C++? X11? No, no, no, no, and no. The PS1 may have been a bitch at first too, but who cares when there are great games like Gran Turismo 2.
Remember that Microsoft also doesn't have the Japanese game designers that have made most of the games you'd commonly associate with console machines, but rather has US-based developers who are more often than not more familiar with PC games.
Izzat so, huh? Look at this link for a list of XBox developers, current as of 9/20. Just scanning the list shows a number of big Japanese names, including such hard-hitters as Capcom and Konami. Squaresoft is obviously missing, but that's because they focus on a single platform at a time and have already invested quite a bit of time in the PS2 (FFX and XI will both be PS2 titles -- after that, we'll see what happens). However, the Dreamcast, and the Genesis before it, are both proof positive that a console can survive without SquareSoft (and in the case of the Genesis, even have some good console RPGs, such as the Phantasy Star series).
How many successful games on the DC use DirectX? It was my understanding that only a very few PC ports used DirectX, and the rest all wrote straight to the hardware.
If you'd read the review link I posted than you'd note they are planning to do a lot more than set up a "poly pipeline". They are talking about things like specular bump mapping, and some other very wierd but interesting effects.
That is a good point about having to only learn the graphics chip, but I'm still not sure that there will not be a large number of developers going for assembly in order to take advantage of specific PIII features.
As for your final point - I totally agree, there's really no way to know if eitehr or both will do well. I'd say the PS2 is a better bet for sucess because of Sony, but companies have destroyed thier own game systems before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am pretty sure that I am actually the only person left on the planet who owns a Betamax. It still works great, even though it is the size of my first PC.
The Beta/VHS thing goes to show, the man with more marketing wins. Even though Sony has a huge marketing department, MS (for all intents and purposes) has a lock on the game market.
It wouldn't be too far-fetched to believe in a Windows/X-box compatibility layer, enabling Windows developers to quickly jump to the X-box, giving MS yet another leg up on the competition.
=Brian
No it wasn't about PS/2 the connector.... It was about PS/2 the IBM PC brand.... I believe the mouse connector originated there, and is really the only thing left.
I love the way this guy suckered not one person in, but another person correcting the sucker! Love it! Well Done!
The key was "Microchannel", a proprietary (relatively short-lived) bus architecture, standard on the PS/2. Fast, but most definitely closed. IBM's last attempt at regaining control over the PC.
Oh wait, was the response another attempt at sucking someone in? :)
It's hilarious that everyone talks about the technical superiority of Betamax. The only thing it had over VHS was drum diameter. Other than that, it was a mechanical nightmare, and way more expensive to build and adjust. Sony learned from the Betamax mistake, and designed the 8mm video format with a transport in the VHS style.
Behold the power of FUD.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
BTW, maybe you can answer a question for me...
Where did the acronym PSX come from? The PS makes sense, but what does the X mean?
Good, that'll save me some time. It's always best to install Linux on a clean hard drive.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Ah, thanks for the link. So, really all you would get are really long in-game movies without any noticable image quality improvement. Bet Square would LOVE that. How about sitting through the whole FF movie before playing the game?
br.I was under the assumption that mpeg4 was better quality for equivalent size file of mpeg2, when it is actually equivalent quality in a smaller file. (file compression vs. image compression). Did that just make sense? Well, I know what I mean.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Actually, the Playstation development was opened to some degree - you could buy a $700 system called the Net Yarouse (the link is a slashdot story in fact about a GPL'ed development document for the Playstation!!!!).
But that is beside the point, as I'm not sure the existance of the Net Yarouse really helped moved the Playstation all that much (I never owned a PS, but will be getting a PS2).
As for the X-box points you make however, you have a number of flawed assumptions.
As far as being ahead in performance - from the numbers, sure, it sounds like the X-Box must be miles ahead of published specs for the PS2, the Dreamcast, and the Gamecube. However we all know how specs can lie, right? You take a standard PC platform with a few custom chips and all of the various bottlenecks like memory and PCI bus, against three systems stuffed to the gills with high-bandwith buses, and vastly more customized chips. I'm not saying the X-box will not be more powerful but it might not be the leap you'd think from the numbers.
Also, I have to say that all of the X-box movies I've seen (pretty much all from Daily Radar) have really left me cold. They do not seem to show much going on, and simply look rather bland. That could definatly just be a problem with the demo, but long before the PS2 came out I was seeing movies of stuff generated by the system that impressed me a lot more.
Ethernet is the one thing I'll agee on you with. Sony was silly not to include it in the box, though I think they have a pretty good chance at a high sell-though rate on the HD/Ethernet adaptor.
Now about the "no goofy graphic chip to learn". Yes, that is true for games that use DirectX. But will those be system seller games? I have my doubts. The real coders will, in fact be figuring out how to write DIRECTLY to the new chip nVidia is developing for the system, thus they WILL have to learn a new "goofy graphics chip" in order to produce good games. Don't believe me? Read this review with Michael Abrash from the Xbox technology group. One of the telling things he says, and I quote, is:
"The coolest thing about my job is that Xbox is a fixed platform. Performance is my favorite thing, and for the first time since the original 4.77 MHz PC, I can actually justify taking the time to understand things down to the metal and figure out how to really optimize, because the machine is never going to change."
So as you can see, there are developers that will be programming as far down as they can go, they will take some time to understand the chip. I'm not saying that's bad - I'm just saying the X-box turns out to be little different than a console with a good library.
Now as far as it being more expensive, who can say? I'd personally bet it comes out at $300 just because it pretty much has to. But, I also wouldn't be surprised to see $400. Either one might be real trouble if the Gamecube is coming out about the same time for a smaller price. In a war of FUD, don't you think Nintendo could trump even MS and the X-box?
And for worries even from developers using the system, try out the interview with Scott Miller from 3D Realms. He has some serious doubts about the X-box being so close to the PC as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Rambus uses less connections/chip, so it can be packaged smaller, and more channels per chip can be used - the PS2 uses 4 channels of RDRAM for 3.2 GB/s of bandwidth, using fewer pins than the 1.066 GB/s PC133 SDRAM bus in most PC's. Fewer pins means fewer traces and that makes boards cost less. It was the only way that Sony could get the bandwidth it needed for the PS2 while still staying in budget.
The N64 uses an early form of RDRAM as well, one of the first uses of the technology.
It's not that it's bad technology, just misapplied to PC's when supply was not availible,and managed by a company with a overzealous legal department.
BBK
Actually, the Playstation 2 looks really promising to me.
Apparently the problem with Betamax was poor marketing, but Sony, despite other problems it might have, has the potential to market the PS2 as a video game console, a DVD player, and a computer without too much difficulty.
Now if only it ran Linux...
Had to be done.
The PS2 is hard to program for:
1. Because it's new, obviously, and therefore there is a lack of developers with PS2 experience
But is that a reason for a programmer who already knows Windows to never trying writing code for Linux? Of course not. The PS2 is hard to program for, yes, but that's true of anything new. Wanna-be-techies are using the "hard to program" issue as fuel against the PS2, which is misplaced.
A guitar is hard to play, too, if you don't know how to play guitar. I submit this as evidence that there will never be any good guitar players.
The differences between the computer industry and the console industry make a great deal of difference here. Virtually _all_ new game systems have excessive prices for licensing. Sony needs to make money too, and the console industry is full of so many other systems that died too quickly for all their benefits.
Nintendo still charges outragous fees for each game on it, and likewise controls it's market. They're still around, (of course that may be due to the Pokemon scourge).
Yes, these fees will drop given time. But the PS2 has an ace up it's sleeve: It already plays PS1 games. This I would think make a lot of difference, since you already have a vast library of games to play already.
I also think MS has one thing set against them, they're MS. Many avid console gamers have spoken about how a console can't compare to the computer when you concider the price involved -- not to mention the ease of use. Many of these same people may cast a suspicious eye towards the X-box.
Personally, I (and my friends) will probably end up getting all the new systems that come out, PS2, Gamecube (nintendo), and X-box. Of course they all need a few good RPG's first!
"Hacking is your Everyday Thought."
-Aeris the wired
"Software is a feeling, refined and expanded by each who touch it."
-Solstice
Solstice@deninet.com
The reason the PS/2 is going the way of the Betamax isn't about technology, it's about marketing. You see, Sony kept the Betamax proprietary and the industry shruged at it, and the customers never became interested. The same is true with the PS/2. They enter a market with a huge base of good, cheap hardware (ISA) and try to sell a totally incompatible yet technically superior system (microchannel) and nobody understands why they should buy all new equipment. Had IBM made the microchannel standard available to manufacturers at a reasonable cost instead of only allowing super-expensive cards to enter the market, it could have taken over ISA in a heartbeat. Just like the betamax, people don't want expensive and superior, they want cheap and adequate.
Huh? Oh, you mean that OTHER PS2... bah!
When Sony killed the betamax format, the vcr market was still a very very new and undeveloped market. The same can hardly be said about the videogame console market, which sony currently dominates and has had years of experience dominating.
The second important difference to note is that Sony completely screwed up the marketing/promotion side for betamax. Sony actually cut back marketing expenditures when sales initially rose and failed to raise them when vhs started making headway. But if you've seen any of Sony's marketing efforts recently, you know there's been a lot of change.
The industry is a different place from what it was back in 1975. PS2 might still fail, but if it does, it won't be because it too much resembled betamax.
-- Anne Marie
nintendo's new console gamecube is coming out in the not-too-distant future(fall 2001 for americans), probably before x-box for that matter. sure, its a year away, but upto this point, nintendo has come through with one thing that few others have: quality games! and games are what people own consoles for, not their ability to imitate computers. check out cube.ign.com for more information, and video clips of what this thing can do... its pretty damn impressive in my opinion. -agent oranje
-agent oranje.
Sony will not let it happen. Not onlt is it sont's bread and butter they have Alot of Quality games that are played only on thier system. I think that sony will not only bring down the price of programming on thier system. They will find other ways to make money with PS2 such as Online Gaming. I do not think they are going any where soon.
I see a lot of discussions over spechs and branding and what not but I think a lot of people just passed over what seemed to me the real ace in the hole for the Xbox. If you missed it at some point in the article (sorry not gonna dig up the quote) it was stated that royalties would not be required to produce games for the Xbox. This isnt the same thing as those liscencing fees just to make a game. For a company like squaresoft 20k to buy a design platform is pocket change. But the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions they pay out to Sony in liscensing fees is a BIG DEAL. History has shown that when you cut to the chase the console with the best games wins. So when you ask the big guns like Squaresoft and Konami and Capcomm if they are excited about Xbox right after you tell them they don't have to pay a dime to sell their games on it. I think its a no brainer that they are gonna say yes. So if enough of the box's actually sell the games will come flooding in. Jartan
The ps2 has long passed the Dreamcast in Japan. In Japan Nintendo and Sony are kings, with Sega a distant third, but not hurting too badly. The PS2 has already made it. My god the thing is sold out until xmas, and I have only seen one commercial that only lasted 3 seconds. The xbox too late to hurt the Dreamcast or the PS2.
And to even think about the Xbox is pointless. It doesn't exist; it's a friggin peecee; and Nintendo's next system already looks better than the hype that Microsoft has presented. The argument that this article makes: that the Xbox is like some kind of free gift to developers, only having to pay $900 for the Visual Programming suite as opposed to $25000 for a dev kit is silly. Does he even have any understanding of how much investment it takes to make a good game. I know developers complain about these costs, but for christs sakes, you don't care about porting shareware games.
And I swear if one more idiot programmer complains about how hard it is to program, then they need to go write visual basic games for the xbox. Low level coding for consoles is hard work. The nintendo was tough; the snes was hard as hell: it had all those funny chips; the saturn was a multi cpu nightmare: it had dual procs and 2 gpu's. So what if the EE is harder to work with than the genisis or the ps1, tuff titty.
Just note all the cool (free) apps for the DC...
mpeg player - GypPlay
also an..
mp3 player
gb emulator in development
snes emulator in development
nes emulator in development
Boob!
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
"Building demand" or not, you can be sure Sega is having a field day.
The quality of 2nd and 3rd generation Betamax VCRs is well in excess of VHS VCRs made 15 years later. It isn't just the better resolution, it's also the far superior sound reproduction (VHS sounds like $&!@ if you hadn't noticed) and better color bandwidth.
Believe me, if I hook up a decent quality 15 year old Betamax up side by side with a modern VHS VCR, the quality difference will be clearly visible. If you look at a really good Betamax it will approach SVHS quality.
The failure of Beta was part technical (lack of long tapes) and part marketing. Don't be fooled by "myths" about it's quality though--there is a good reason that Betamax VCRs still sell in the hundreds of dollars on Ebay.
After reading through all these comments (many quite good) I realized that a lot of the people posting were (probably) born *after* the halcyon days of Pong and the original Atari. That's pretty weird.
I mean, the Atari, Intellivision, and (later) ColecoVision -- and going to the Aladdin's Castle at the mall to play stuff like Donkey Kong and Pac Man and (my fav) Tron -- were staples of my later "kid" years.
I remember, too, picking up some cheesy pong game at Radio Shack. It was basically pong and some weird shoot-the-TV screen gun game.
And, of course, I remember many days in Sears playing the Sears-branded version of Atari.
Wow.
The PSX has consistantly had better titles than the N64, and even then it took Sony a while to overcome the popularity of Nintendo. Opinions are slow to change in this industry. I believe the X-Box will be about as successful as the Saturn was. When the Saturn came out, Sega was the merest of blips on the console gaming radar. Just releasing a high-tech system isn't enough. And Microsoft doesn't even have a blip on the screen. The blips right now are a fading Nintendo (Pokemon is really the main thing keeping them up), Sega, and Sony. There's not really room for a fourth name.
And the PS2 is hyped. Right now, they're going for $700 on ebay. This whole transparent "We're initially releasing 500,000 fewer units than we first said but we'll still release the predicted number by Christmas" ploy has worked, too. This is a system people want. That better systems are coming out in a year is less than irrelevant. Joe Six Pack (who isn't as technically savvy as you, and hasn't put much thought into the decision of what console to get in the first place) isn't going to want to buy another $300 console in one year's time.