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GameCube Really And Truly For Sale

Posted by timothy on from the if-you-care dept.

Several readers have submitted the news that the GameCube is now officially for sale. With the GameCube and Xbox newly on offer, and the still-amazing PlayStation2 still hanging on, and dirt-cheap, high-power PCs on every corner, it looks like the predicted deaths of both console and PC are still some ways off. On the whole, I'd rather have the Mandrake Gaming edition (mentioned previously) than a new console.

5 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. I dunno about that. by trilucid · · Score: 5, Insightful


    "GameCube and Xbox newly on offer, and the still-amazing PlayStation2 still hanging on, and dirt-cheap, high-power PCs on every corner, it looks like the predicted deaths of both console and PC are still some ways off."

    Actually, in my mind at least, that's actually an indication of the problem(s) to come for hardware companies. The fact that high-powered systems are everywhere you look means the market will become saturated with "more of the same" at some point.

    Already, PC hardware manufacturers are facing vanishingly small profit margins (except for Apple, which always makes it a point to sell their stuff at a price that actually makes some money). Yeah, I know all the stuff about various tech leaders making sweeping statements about "never needing more than 640K of memory" and such, but we really are headed for a "meaningful speed" cap on this.

    The gaming market will probably be the last of the hardware sectors to really feel the crunch in this respect, because new games always drive hardware to the limits (unlike business apps, which run fine on my old P2-266). One could say that companies like Microsoft drive hardware with new (arguably bloated) OSes that require bigger & badder computers to run well, but even that has to stop at some point.

    Basically, there will be a point soon where even gaming consoles will all be "fast enough", which will mean bad news for hardware manufacturers until the "Next Big Thing" emerges to max out even cutting-edge stuff. Will it be "true virtual reality"? Who knows? I for one will be interested to see...

    1. Re:I dunno about that. by dimator · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Basically, there will be a point soon where even gaming consoles will all be "fast enough"

      ...except that it has never been about hardware performance. If it was strictly about polygons and mip-mapping, then the PS1 would not have been competition for the N64, because PS1 games all looked like shit. It's about fun games, and blockbuster titles like MGS1, Gran Turismo, Zelda, Mario, etc., make or break a system, which is why console makers love to see "exclusively for XXX" so they can have an advantage over console YYY.

      --
      python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
    2. Re:I dunno about that. by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Fast enough" can be an issue for someone running a word processor and internet programs, but in graphics, it is very easy to require exponentially more processing power by increasing the level of detail, and lets face it, games have a long way to go in the level of detail area. For an example of how much power you need to do detailed 3D, look at Pixar's rendering farm. They have combined processing power of 1.5THz, 8TB of RAM, and 27TB of disk space, and it still takes them hours to render one frame.

      --
      "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
  2. come on by nomadic · · Score: 5, Insightful


    On the whole, I'd rather have the Mandrake Gaming edition (mentioned previously) than a new console.

    No you wouldn't. Come on, admit it.

  3. Linux != Gaming by EchoMirage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On the whole, I'd rather have the Mandrake Gaming edition (mentioned previously) than a new console.

    This is humping Linux for Linux' sake, but of course, it's FUD. Linux is not a gaming platform - we've seen a plethora of evidence for this. The Linux gaming companies can't turn sustained profits, games get released months (sometimes years) after their other-platform counterparts, and support is sketchy, at best.

    Timothy saying he'd rather have M:GE instead of a GameCube would be like me saying I'd rather use my bicycle to travel from LA to Boston instead of taking a plane. Sure they both serve essentially the same function, but one is more practical in an exponentially more obvious way.

    If you're going to parade Linux around, at least do so intelligently in markets where it actually has the edge.