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The Battle Of The Consoles: From Atari To The Xbox
msolnik writes: "There's been a lot of talk about Xbox, and GameCube, and even more speculation about the technology inside the box. However, the console wars are not going to be won based purely on technology. There's a long history of cyclical win and lose peaks and troughs for companies that have tried to stay the course in this business. Nintendo stands alone in having survived a number of generations of innovation and still managed to remain a contender in the market. Tom's Hardware has delivered this unique assessment of The Console Wars." Update: 12/06 16:28 GMT by M : Note that Tom's has updated some of the charts in the article - they note that there was a misunderstanding between Tom's and the article's author as to which version of the charts to post.
...Further proof that the world is in dire need of more (competent) editors.
... Relative successes are listed in bold." NEC's Turbografx 16 is listed in bold, as a "relative success." Sega's Genesis, on the other hand...? Apparently Genesis wasn't "relatively successful," according to Hodgson, etc. Oh, and FYI, while I'm sure Nintendo appreciates their listing N64 as a "relative success," they might have preferred that the authors at least INCLUDE the Super NES on the list.
The authors open their article with a neat little chart listing "the dates of the introductions of various consoles.
Their wonderfully-short second section, "Console History," spans in painstaking detail the gaming industry's progress during the crucial period between the heyday of MIT's Rail Road Club and the formation of software giant Infocomm in 1979. From there, they proceed directly to the next logical video gaming landmark -- with a third section, accurately titled, "Then Came Doom."
The article's most valuable offerings are a 21-item chart comparing a whopping three consoles (Xbox, PS2 and GCN), including such poignant criteria as "DVD Movie Playback" and "Broadband Enabled"; and a whole five sentences comparing these three systems, proving conclusively that somewhere during the authors' extensive research for this article, one of them did in fact quickly scan MSNBC's "Game Time" article -- which, it's worth adding, is a vastly more useful and intelligent article (with regard to the current "Top 3"), and can be found at the following URL:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/techgames_front.asp
crib
Please don't read my journal
It's obvious that technology doesn't really come into play when consoles are concerned. It's all about marketing and getting the buy-in of the game development companies. Just like the applications make the OS, the games make the console.
The Sega Dreamcast was WAY ahead of its time when it came to graphics. Soul Calibur is one example of a game with outstanding graphics that kick the crap out of anything on the PSone (which was the competition at the time). Personally, I think it competes more directly with the PS2, but that's another topic altogether. The point is that it didn't have the backing of the game developers like the PS did, so in the end, it lost out. Not because it was an inferior system (it wasn't), but because the marketing push and support wasn't there.
But as far as the Game Boy is concerned... Let's face it, Nintendo played its cards right. When the GB first came out it actually wasn't that expensive. It boasted the power of the NES (which was the only Nintendo console available) and a simple grayscale LCD screen. And it was cheap. When I got my GB, I bought it myself with money I had saved up (I was maybe 11 at the time), and it was maybe $150 CDN for me to buy. Plus I was able to afford a game or two.
Now, along comes Sega's Game Gear a few years later. Think Portable Genesis. That's all well and good, but the colour screen drove up the price enough to make it more inaccessible to some. And from what I understand from a couple of people who had them, they weren't that great for battery life.
Among the Nintendo users, people were always posing the question of when Nintendo would release a colour version of the GB, and the reply was when Nintendo could guarantee a similar price and similar battery life - two of the important factors for a good handheld console.
The Game Gear folded, maybe because it was too expensive. The TurboExpress was definitely a technical achievement for the time, but the price was definitely a little much, and out of the price range of its target audience.
Yes, Nintendo's taken its sweet time to producing a 16-bit colour handheld, but one thing I respect them for is their methodology. With the GB line, they tend to wait until they can guarantee that any new products meet price and performance requirements set by their original device... And it's been worth the wait.
There is no escape from The Muffin.
Text adventures are still alive and well, and still to this day feature better graphics than any console. (Even if you have a 1600x1200 monitory, text adventures feature more detail, you can zoom in infinantly on any area if your imangination is good enough)
Text adventures have always been puzzles and NPC interactoin. Sure there is a strong movement away from pure puzzles in the text adventure world, but they are still there. Doom is about finding the blue key, while Zork is getting the theif to do what you can't do yourself.
My first console was an Atari VCS (the wooden version of the 2600) - My how things have changed.
Call me nostalgic, but I stil believe the 8-bit days were the best. Get your SEGA Master System or your NES (with funky robot if rich) and you were away!
I currently own a PS2, I use it sometimes, GT3 and GTA3 are pretty good games, lots of fun.. But having observed the progression of games over the last, say, 10 years, I believe they came to a bit of a halt when the Internet got popular.
Games houses all thought "Wow, the Internet, let's make our games support online play, let's build communities!".
Sure, that's a great idea. Brings in money. Uses the Internet. Builds huge user bases (look at Ultima Online, Everquest etc.)
Also, around the same time, more and more games started getting ported to new funky 3D versions - of course Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake were the daddy's - other platforms such as the Amiga failed miserably (With the likes of Alien Breed 3D - the apparent Doom competitor). I've not really seen any _really_ original games in the past 5 years, maybe it's not possible anymore? Maybe people are too narrowminded. I don't want any more 3D conversions of driving games, fighting games, or platform games. What does that leave? Is the games market so huge that we've expired originality and can now only focus on making our GPU's in consoles faster to support prettier textures on the same old 3D models. Who knows.
Why were 3D platform games soooo good? Why did everyone love a parallel scrolling Shoot'em UP? Sit a kid of today down infront of a 8/16-bit console with a 'decent' game from the past. Sure, they'll complain "the graphics are crappy!", but give it 5 minutes of gameplay and they probably wouldn't be able to get off it all day. I doubt they'd be the same with their new GameCube or PS2 or XBOX.
What changed? What happened?
Maybe I just got old and don't get the buzz from gaming I used to, I'm quite partial to a bit of GT3/GTA3 on the PS2 and FlightSim/Quake/UT on the PC - but you just don't get the same flashy lights around the 'gaming' thing anymore.
Be it the XBOX, PS2 or GameCube - they all basically do the same thing. Sure, some have slightly higher specs, some have Internet support, some have big this, big that. Whatever. The key to consoles being successful (as they once were) would be for the games designers. Back in the day, games designers/dev guys would make the most out of the limitations of the machine - look at platforms like the C-64/ZX Sinclair. People used to get excited about the demo's cracking groups etc. used to release basically because it was so unreal of the technology at the time. You don't see that anymore. I'm not actually aware of any 'demo scene' on the PC. Did the PC get too good? Is there nothing worth making a demo about these days?
The flair has gone. Modern games are just conversions of old games, made into pretty 3D and added Internet play.
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."