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Playstation 2 Outsells both Xbox and Gamecube
Laurens writes "Despite various claims of both Microsoft and Nintendo, this article by the Los Angeles Times has the first independant salesfigures on all 3 next-gen consoles. And it seems the good ol' PS2 sold best this holiday season." I'm an hour into FFX and don't foresee turning my PS2 off much this week. Can't talk now. Must see Lord of the
Rings, and then play more FFX. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?
The only reason the GameCube hasn't sold more than the PS2 is because the PS2 has been out longer. Around here in Rochester, and at home in Connecticut, you're lucky if you find a GameCube in store. PS2s are a plenty because Sony's been making them for a long time, and there are lots of game choices. The PS2 is good, I'm not putting it down. But look where the PS2 is now, then see where the GameCube is in how many months.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
This article doesn't count major retail stores like Walmart and is basically disregarded in the retail community because it is totally off. Nintendo broke ALL console sales records and currently leads all the consoles regardless what others may believe. They have told their investors this is their STRONGEST year EVER - Meaning they're doing better than when the original NES came out, which is saying a LOT.
Microsoft spokesman David Hufford said, "Xbox has caught fire since launch."
Not exactly the best thought-out sound-bite to be offered to the press....
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
At a best buy in my area, there is about an 8x8 at the base, 6 foot high display of stacked PS2s. I was thinking they might be empty boxes, but who would want to post on /. about that? ;) That's a lot of PS2s.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Sony's marketroids have ALWAYS given them the advantage in the console arena, even when facing off against superior consoles.
Of course, it kinda helps that the PS2 catalogue is HUGE, compared to the relatively meagre selection offered by the other two.
Backwards compatibility has its advantages, in terms of brand loyalty. Nintendo had the right idea by making the Game Boy range backwards compatible. Suddenly all the money and time invested in the previous console's games hasn't wasted. That's a huge selling point, especially when parents are deciding what to buy their offspring.
...at least as far as I know, is that it's hard to program for. However, a quick survey of my friends who've bought PS2's indicates that very few of them are actually programming on theirs. Looks like shrinkwrapped software is the order of the day. <g>
Actually, it's the low-level programming that makes coding for the PS2 an order of magnitude more complex than the other boxes--but that also opens up at least an order of magnitude more potential, as any code hacker knows. The question of "which box should we target?" is usually answered with a simple number, and it looks like PS2 has a lock on that for the forseeable future.
There's also The Legend of Zelda. Most people probably don't follow this as much as I do, but I bought the N64 for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I'm thankful they released a second one for the system (even though the sounds the villagers make in the game are horrible) so it was more than worth my money. The only other game I own for it is Episode I Racer which came with the console.
Why are they selling so many? Final Fantasy owns you that's why. :)
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
To say "it's been out longer" as though that's not a good reason to buy a console misses the point. It would be more meaningful to say, "it's been sucessful after a year and change". At this time last year, dreamcast had been out longer than PS2, by about the same amount, but had few big games on the horizon, and had been losing 3d parties left and right. And you can talk about the reasons for this, but the fact is that, not only has sony got a lead, they've made good given that lead -- just as the new systems hit the market, you get GTA3, FFX, MGS2, and all sorts of other games that may or may not be associated with acronyms.
What i think it *is* fair to say is that the fact that PS2 is outselling either of the 2 new systems isn't symptomatic of the futures of either of those systems. Nintendo always has a slow start, but they're in it for the long haul, and they've shown a consistent ability to milk their franchises. And Microsoft, well, whatever, they'll probably just release the next version of office only for xbox so all their corporate customers have to buy them, so they're ensured of success.
god is just pretend.
I've seen a few people saying 'Well, X-box isn't going to sell because its a Microsoft product' and I've heard a few say 'It WILL sell because it is microsoft' And when I was in the store last week shopping for my son, I realized something. Consumers usually don't really care about this, they care about price, because after all, they don't play it, their kids do. On top of this, kids could almost give a shit who its made by, just as long as mom and dad will buy it, their friends think its the shit, and the marketing is in the right direction. Its pretty obvious if you sit in a walmart this time of year and listen to all the little kiddies go, 'But brian has an X-box!!!!!' or 'I don't want that stupid X-box, brian has one and it sucks, I want a PS2!'
On the other hand, you have the older people that like to play them.. like myself. But thats a different story. =)
Can all fish swim?
The data used is over ten days old and doesn't include sales figures from Walmart, Nintendo's leading retailer. So the numbers aren't even close to being correct.
Console wars are fought over who can get the best games that appeal to the masses out there. I've been seeing ads for NFL 2K2 and NBA 2K2, which are both being developed for all platforms by Sega. Sega wants to reach as many customers as possible with this strategy, but I feel that the real winner will be the platform with exclusive rights to a game that appeals to the masses. Sony has Squaresoft and the Final Fantasy series of games, and Nintendo has all of it's trademarked characters appearing on the Game Cube and Gameboy Advance. I haven't been following the X-Box too closely, so I do not know what's exclusive there.
The PS2 has the advantage that it plays ps1 games and DVD's.
Also if you have a ps1 what unit are you going to get? PS1 games don't look great but many are more fun than there ps2 conterparts and they are cheap.
Also more and more and better games are starting to appear for the PS2 MGS2, FF etc...
Plus the fact the sony appears to be able to churn them out quicker than demand doesn't hurt. That cube seems hard to find.
But, the games really make the difference, and I'm sure that the PS2 is killing on them this christmas :)
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Don't know how accurate this kind of speculation is... I've been through a few stores while shopping. One was sold out of Playstation2 and X-Box, and one was sold out of Gamecube, and the third had all three available. It all depends on where you go, seems equally likely that the store will be out of any of the systems, though most places have all three. I bought a Dreamcast myself :) Boot off of CD-Rs, a few good games, it costs the same as a game, who cares if it is discontinued :)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
One has been out for over a year, while the other two have had 2 months?
Well
i) That must be why MS choosed a strategic launch date in the christmas lead-up
ii) Why they spent so much on advertising
They don't care about specs, they care about what they think is good
Which is based on who's PR wins, primarily using the launch figures.
MS picked the fight, they can't go off crying if the bigger kid gave them a bloody nose.
I'm not saying that the figures are correct or an absolute judgement, but that those who live by the sword should be aware that they may well die by the sword.
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
To the PS2's credit, there is quite a nifty selection of games to choose from in Sony-land. GTA3, GT3, Devil May Cry, etc. But this is a far cry from this time last year, when most of the PS2 games were mediocre at best. Give the Gamecube a year to pick up steam.
How could either of them possibly outsell the PlayStation 2 when neither had shipped enough units to even compete. Both Gamecube and Xbox are sold out, they couldn't have possibly sold more than they did. To make it seem as if they lost some sort of non-existant competetion is rather silly. Remember the first month of the PS2? I bet lots of consoles outsold it that month. Playstation One, probably even the old N64. It's not becuase they were better or anything, it's simply that Sony shipped fewer PS2's that month than most consoles happen to sell in an average month.
If there were more Xbox's/Gamecubes to sell (enough to meet current demand; there are a few of each still availalbe, but only in those god-forsaken bundles, and almost only entirely through the internet), I'm sure they would have probably handily outsold the PS2.
But they find out what went wrong on version 1 and dominate in later versions.
Sony sold 962,000 PlayStation 2 consoles between Nov. 11 and Dec. 8, according to CSFB estimates based on figures compiled by research firm NPDFunworld. Microsoft, which launched Xbox on Nov. 15, sold 934,000 consoles. The GameCube, introduced Nov. 18, sold 602,000.
So let me get this straight, in this random, particular time period, Sony outsold GameCube and Xbox. Hmmm. First of all, it seems like the article is referring to actual sales to individuals, not sales to vendors. I'm not 100% sure but I've always thought the companies make their statements by how many items they have sold to vendors, because once the vendor buys it from Nintendo, or Microsoft, or Sony, then they've made their money.
Secondly, the most unfair thing about this article is the time period. I hate both Microsoft and their inferior Xbox, but I have to come to it's defense here, the study says Sony outsold Microsoft when in fact, according to their own results, Microsoft sold 28,000 less consoles, yet had 4 less days than Sony to do so. So basically, the Xbox was selling for 6/7 of the time the PS2 was, yet it sold at a rate of 38,917 boxes per day as compared to 34,357 PS2s per day.
Lastly, as for Nintendo's case, I just flat out don't believe those numbers. I talked to the local Best Buy and also to a few electronics stores in the mall just out of curiosity, and they say they've sold more Gamecubes than anything, but they've also had more shipments of Gamecubes, so they haven't sold out. This really all is just nitt-picking though because the fact of the matter is that PS2 is crap. They put together a pile of crap as fast as possible and released it first, and it's earned a lot of money, but it's still crap. The Xbox is made by Microsoft, that's all I have to say to know that it's a big pile of horse dung. So, we're left with GameCube, and despite it's "kiddy" reputation, I find it to be the best game console. In time, that's what consumers will see, and the numbers will show it. Right now articles like this are just acting as tools of the establishment.
~ now you know
You'd think that the PS2 would have lost its flash since the other consoles have newer technology. Technology moves quickly (think about computers one year ago..)
But it seems to be about the games, quantity and quality that is driving sales.
Also the figures are for the holiday shopinging season 2002. In total units shipped sony is way ahead.
Competition is good though.. Better systems and games no matter what unit you choose.
Right now, They have the lead because of better supply of the consoles... If it's not on the shelf, you can't buy it.
Once Nintendo and MS catch-up on the supply... Sony will likely drop the price to make it more attractive vs. the other consoles, especially MS's.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Can't talk now. Must see Lord of the Rings, and then play more FFX. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?
Personally, I think a GREAT time to have been alive would have been when debbie harry was at her finest!
Free Love!
Programming anything good or original is hard. That's the way it is. Use the same tools/techniques/engines/libraries as everyone else and you get the same result.
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
Actually I saw something rather interesting while I was at Circut City. My girlfriend was waiting (forever) in line to buy something so I gave the console game section a thourough look through. Right next door they had the consoles set up. The whole time I was there someone was always glued to the gamecube, and people would actually watch other people play. With the PS2 people sort of came and went (what I would consider average traffic). The only time it seemed like someone would try out the Xbox would be when the Game Cube and PS2 were already taken and they wanted to play "something". From those observations I would gather that the only thing holding the cube back, is the shortage of the systems. I continue to see X boxes on the shelves so I'm not so sure MS is in the same situation....
I've also read quite a few articles stating that the Xbox and dreamcast have sold out. If that's true, then perhaps some people are buying a PS2 instead of dreamcast or Xbox because they're AVAILABLE. Also, since stocks may be exhausted, it makes demand seem larger, but sales seem smaller.
Why do fans of a given system feel the need to freak out when there's even a hint that their pet system may not be the number one selling system? They foam at the mouth and rant and rave about stats and 'they're only selling more of the other system because blah blah blah'.
Can't you just enjoy your system? I've never understood die hard system loyalty anyways- all that matters to me is the games.
For this year, I think you would be very, very hard pressed to try and say that any other system other than Playstation2 has the best & most games.
Will this still be the same next year? Possibly, but I'm pretty sure that we will see X-Box with a respectable library of excellent games (even if MS has to purchase game companies out right to get 'em), and Gamecube will have a larger library than N64 enjoyed, though I think the big N will still rely on its solid core of 'kids' games and branding to earn them most of their money. PS2 should continue to be quite strong, and there are probably tricks in that screwy little EE to be dug up yet- though I would expect that many games may be starting to look a bit greyer when compared to its competition.
Interestingly though- there seems to be a whole lot of cross release games this time around- which may give glimpses of the various systems' underlying strengths and weaknesses.
But really lose the foaming frenzying fanboy fixation on your favorite platform and just play the games that you can get!
...can be found here concerning the Gamecube/Xbox/PS2 sales. The gist is that the PS2 will outsell all the others primarily because of the massive software base (remember that it plays PS1 games as well), and developers will be skittish to plunge resources into "the next new thing" when there's a well established audience for the PS2.
It's humorously written - and check out the rest of the site, it's a hoot.
Yeah, terrorists are slamming crowded jetliners into crowded skyscrapers, some nut is sending deadly diseases in the mail, the economy is in a recession that's putting thousands of our fellow geeks out of work, and Americans are dying in a war, but at least we've got neat video games.
Wait. According to previous articles, MS had only managed to build about 400,000 XBoxen, while GameCube built about twice as many. So how could they sell 934,000 XBoxen?
Are they counting preorders, perhaps?
True, for some it's just petty dick measuring (my console is kicking your console's ass!!)
But for me I keep a close eye on the sales because I know the software makers won't support a failed machine. Thus, I could end up with a Saturn/Dreamcast where there are some great games for two years and then the system is dead. Bad deal for those who spent hundreds on the system.
No, if I'm gonna buy a Gamecube, I want to be SURE that good games will still be coming out for Christmas 2004. I want that return on my investment. I don't want another 3DO.
So, yeah, I watch to make sure the console is selling and people are supporting it. If the N64 had died right away, sure I still would have gotten Goldeneye... but would I have gotten Perfect Dark or Majora's Mask? I don't think so. The user base wouldn't have been big enough to make it worth the risk. And if the N64 had had playstation-like sales, wouldn't Nintendo have been more willing to do another Mario game for it? And wouldn't Square have been more tempted to make games for it?
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
Well I guess I just didn't elaborate enough because I didn't want to write a 400 line article, but about the "scientific" nature of my personal research... it's not very scientific, I was just trying to illustrate my lack of trust for this report. This also ties into the second thing you pointed out, I know what you're saying about the number of people who own the console, but the article itself goes on to ream Nintendo for claiming 800,000+ in sales and claims they only sold 600 something thousand. My point is that I know personally from my own digging and following of Nintendo that they claimed to have shipped 800+ thousand, meaning vendors have bought that many, but I've not seen a release by Nintendo saying 800+thousand people have bought a GCN. I probably should have added that quote in from the article too...
~ now you know
...but not with the GameCube. According to the big N the Gameboy Advance has sold 20% more units in that span than any of the hook-to-a-TV consoles.
That would indicate about 1.2 million in sales (if Nintendo is to be believed; I haven't heard any independent data) and would also back up Nintendo's claim that they've sold as many total game machines as both of their competitors combined (with the GC and GBA).
So don't be surprised if from their position in "third place" they wind up making more profit this year than either of their competitors.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
What will we all do with your right arm?
Assuming a level playing field, you have a 1 in 3 chance of being right. But there isn't a level playing field. Two of the participants have prior experience in the console market. One of those two has better third party games then X-Box, and the other has better first party games then X-Box. The good sports games and such will be on all three. As we've all seen, It's the console with the best games that wins, not the one with the 'better' specs. So which console are people going to buy? GameCube, or PS2?
Oh, for a little twist, soon X-Box will be the most expensive option...
Last Christmas, it was the Dreamcast that was the incumbent leader outselling the upstart PlayStation2, with far more Dreamcast games and peripherals on the shelves than PS2 stuff. Now the Dreamcast is floating belly-up in the top of the bowl and PS2 is king.
A lot is going to change between now and X-mas 2002.
-----
A console's success is based on the games it supports. The Playstation 2 has been out for a year and as a result, has a great library of games. The XBOX and Gamecube are brand new, and as a result, only have a handful of games each. If you want to compare capabilities of hardware, then the GPU of the XBOX is superior to that of the PS2. If you want to compare portability, then the Gamecube trumps them both. If you want to compare number of systems owned, then the PS2 wins ... but take a look at the picture a year from now ... when the XBOX and Gamecube have matured to the level that the PS2 has reached and those are the numbers that really count.
Lore Sjöberg's article on video-game consoles says it best. Give it a read. ;)
o/~ Join us now and share the software
To me the most shocking part of the article is the horrifying rate at which the game industry is growing (did they say 36% this year!?!?!)
What that means for the console race... well once upon a time selling 700,000 consoles in 3 weeks was something to smile about... now that puts you in a distant third place. Even with the pie split three ways, the individual pieces are now bigger than the whole pie was ten years ago.
So there is plenty of room for three players. If in the long run Nintendo "only" sells 12 million GameCubes as opposed to Microsoft's 18 million and Sony's 23 million, I think there will be plenty of profit to be had.
So to ask which console will "win" the console wars is like asking which VCR manufacturer will "win" the VCR wars. The market is too big for that now. In fact, come 2005 I wouldn't be shocked to find a couple of more players in the ring...
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
I've been thinking about a console for myself for oh, the past month. I'm really leaning towards the PS2.
Why?
It's the games.
Grand Theft Auto 3, specifically. But that's just me.
I've been looking at the offerings for GameCube and Xbox, and none of them are really all that appealling. Tony Hawk 2x? What the hell? Why not just get Tony Hawk 3? Sure, we all know it's the same game as the first two . . .
I don't want a star-wars game. Halo looks good, as does Luigi's Castle, but I really don't want to play them. I'm just not drawn to them.
PS2 has Final Fantasy 8, 9, 10, whatever they are. Metal Gear Solid 2 (hell, even the first one will play on it). Regardless:
I think Nintendo really fumbled. Really. Great that it's 100 bucks cheaper than the other two major consoles, but still, the games aren't there . . . bettter than the Xbox, but not enough, you know.
And this all is because of PS2's lead time to market.
I think that's about right.
Dan
Nintendo insists those are sell-through numbers. But who can trust them? They claim their initial shipment of 700,000 (150,000 of which went to rental places like Blockbuster, display kiosks, and the Mexican and Canadian market) sold out in the first two weeks and that they have sold - to consumers - more than 800,000 total.
If that's true then that is the fastest Nintendo has ever gotten rid of 800,000 TV consoles. If it's true.
Let me ask you this. Nintendo complained when NPD released their figures (which mirrored the article exactly, making me think they're using the same research) that they didn't take department stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart into account, that they only surveyed speciality retailers like Babbages and Electronics Boutique and whatnot, and that Wal-Mart is in fact the biggest seller of GameCubes.
I have no way of knowing if that really matters or if that would change the numbers, but I can say that while my local Target, Babbages, and EB have been sold out of GC's for weeks, they keep reappearing on the shelves of my local Wal-Mart (as in, Nintendo is making Wal-Mart a priority for shipments).
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
I've been concerned that there might be another
console game market crash, but current sales figures might proove me wrong. Sony seems to be
selling tons of PS2 consoles now, despite the
fact that everyone was ripping on them for the
poor launch. It is next to impossible to get an
XBox or GameCube in any store where I live, and
there has even been a shortage of controllers and
memory cards for those systems as well. While
I've not seem a game a truthfully like enough
for XBox to buy one... there are great games
on the other two consoles, like Super Smash Bros.
Melee for GC and FF10 for PS2.
And then throwing in the GBA to the equation,
which I think is a wonderful system (probably
because it reminds me of the SNES).
Perhaps, if things go well, we'll see another few
years that are reminiscent of the 16-bit days.
We might see great games because of
competition between the console makers. I guess
we'll have to wait a little while though to see
if it is true.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The problem with these numbers is that it excludes Walmart. This really hurts Nintendo.
Nintendo priced the Gamecube $100 cheaper, and sells it as a family system. This combination makes Walmart especially significant for Nintendo. Walmart is their largest reseller, and is excluded from these numbers.
This is in addition to the obvious problems that during this time period, not all three systems were out. For installed base, of course the PS2 has the early selling advantage, but extrapolating anything from three weeks is meaningless when one of the three competitors wasn't on the market for one of those weeks.
However, if we pretend that it is relevants:
Sales per day:
Nintendo: 28666
Xbox: 38916
PS2: 35629
At this rate, Xbox will catch up with the Plastation 2 in a few decades. Nintendo should look better when the real numbers come out, as Walmart should help them catch up by a few thousand per day on their competition.
As far as platform adoption, Nintendo will be more dependant on Christmas numbers than the other consoles simply because it appeals to a younger crowd. XBox and PS2 are competing for the 16-25 market, Nintendo owns the rest of the market and has some presence in that market.
Look, ever since the "Sega does what Nintendon't" ads and the Mortal Kombat scandal in the SNES/Genny wars, Nintendo's weak side was exposed. In making a fun, colorful gaming system, it is easy to manipulate teens into thinking that other companies make "cooler" stuff.
Shrug, I loved my NES, my SNES, my brother's N64, and I'll love my Gamecube when I get it this weekend. My friends love their gamecubes. If the fiancee isn't kept entertained by the Gamecube games, we may pick up a PS2 and 6 or 7 games if the price drops (I'm not dropping $300 for the right to buy Frequency, FF7, FFX, Dragon Warrior 7), but even if so it is more likely to be for the PS1 compatibility.
Anyway, anyone who hasn't played SSBM (Super Smash Brothers Melee) or SMB (Super Monkey Ball) with three friends for hours doesn't understand how fun console gaming is. I play consoles mostly with friends, and we'll knock back a few beers while screaming and yelling during SMB or talking trash during SSBM.
I mean, to me, 4 player is more important than Final Fantasy, as I'll choose fun with friends over an RPG.
Alex
I got a PS2 last week for christmas (yep, opened it already) and i bought Grand Theft Auto 3. That game is amazing. I find it very addictive. The graphics is really incredible, the attention to details is more than i have ever seen (but then i have been away form console games since SN16 & Sega Genesis). M$ Xbox does look pretty impressive, but i like the idea of voting with my money. Besides, i am not at all disappointed with my the PS2. Once again I have fallen in love with an inaniminate object.
I don't do Sony. On the other hand, since I still have some PC and Dreamcast games that have been sitting around for months that I haven't even played yet, not having a PS2 is no big loss for me.
A c compiler is where the true challenges lie anyway.
Rich
That's the real joke, Nintendo is a games monster. Supporting Nintendo feels almost as bad as supporting Microsoft, especially with the stuff Nintendo pulled during its NES/Famicon monopoly games. Unfortunately, I'm a sucker for a new Mario/Zelda game, so off my money goes to Redmond's Nintendo of America.
The Gameboy line owns the handheld market. I just bought a GBA a few weeks ago, the older, color games are mostly NES ports, and the newer Advanced games, are mostly SNES ports. Yet these games, over a decade old, are selling for $40.
The N64, while not as successful as the NES appeared to have shipped as many units as the SNES over the years. Given that the N64 had limited 3rd party support, Nintendo probably did better as you make more money selling your own games than licensing third parties.
Oh well, if the Gamecube is as successful as the N64 I'll have many years of fun gaming. I'll just have to get over the guilt of feeding that monster that has been exploiting me since I was 8...
Alex
Geezus christ, what has slashdot come to that articles like this get 5 - funny?
And here's why.
You say VCR's are standardized. As in, they all play the same tapes.
I look at the GC game shelf. I see:
Super Smash Brothers. Wave Race. Tony Hawk. SSX Tricky. Madden Football. Crazy Taxi. A nice lineup of Sega games.
I look at the X-Box shelf. I see:
Halo. Tony Hawk. SSX Tricky. Madden Football. A nice lineup of Sega games.
I look at the PS2:
FF X. Tony Hawk. SSX Tricky, Madden Football,a nice lineup of Sega games...
Get my point? Soon you'll be able to play 80% of the world's software library regardless of which console you buy. The only difference will be a few unique games and extra features (want DVD playback? Want a hard drive? Spend a little more for a different console. Want a better picture, better sound, more features? Spend a little more for a better VCR).
And don't get me started on PC gaming. I put in 16 hours trying to fix Max Payne issues on my PC before I got it running smoothly (new video card drivers! Download the patch! Check their message board for a workaround! Call tech support! Reinstall Windows! Download the latest version of DirectX!!!) Screw that. Let me pop in Halo or Perfect Dark or MGS2 and go. Plug and play, baby.
If it weren't for the Starcrafts and Civ III's of the world I wouldn't do PC gaming at all... somebody explain to me again why those games can't be done on the X-Box?
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
The PS2 having 4 more days in the market only outsells the Xbox et all by ~30k units and slashdot is bragging about it?
:)
if you figure the math out, the way the xbox was selling if these were on the same timeline the xbox would have sold over 100k units more then the PS2.
What does this have to do with quality anyhow? I know BMW sells 1% of what ford sells, but hell if i'm going to say for id better then BMW's.
Xbox has Max Payne, Halo, Simpsons Road Rage, Amped, Project Gotham, SSX Tricky, Abe and Silent Hill 2, all of which are plenty rich enough to keep me happy.
This is a multiplatform erra, why people think backwards compatibility is the best i dunno, i don't run Windows XP to be backwards compatible with Windows 3.1, i've sort of passed that era. Just like i wouldn't spend 299 on a hifi vcr to play mono tapes recorded on a single head vcr, doesn't make sense..
after all, isn't slashdot always preaching use the right tool for the right job. If you wanna play PS1 games buy a 25.00 ps1 off ebay and save yourself 275.00
Or if you buy a ps2, please atleast say your buying it to play ps2 games. You don't buy a 1.6 ghz athlon to play ping on do you?
Ok, well that's not completely true- it wasn't the *only* reason. ;-) The one thing I noticed though was that while the Xbox's graphics are better than anything else out there, the games aren't as good as those on the PS2.
A friend of mine picked up an Xbox and I've had a chance to watch him play a few games. Honestly they all look really good, but I'm not all that impressed with the games themselves. Halo has this annoying habbit of stalling for a breif second (in addition ot the short loads between areas of the map) which would drive me nuts in a FPS. And honestly, not having a mouse/keyboard sucks.
Frankly, I'm loving GTA3, GT3 (much better then PGR IMHO), Devil May Cry, etc on my PS2 much more than anything on the Xbox. Even though DOA3 has much nicer graphics than TTT, I still prefer TTT because once you look at everything else, TTT is a better game.
Honestly, the only game on the Xbox I've seen so far that plays as good as it looks is Munch World. But let's face it, between Munch World and FFX, I'll take FFX.
To make it seem as if they lost some sort of non-existant competetion is rather silly.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Must see Lord of the Rings, and then play more FFX. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?
Y'know Taco, some of us WORK or STUDY all day.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Xbox has about all the games the PS2 does. Hell, even an enhance FFX, untrue MGS2"X", completely unconfirmed GTA3 in severe doubt right now, no release date and Rockstar has pulled all mention of it from its website and all the ea sports titles and everything else is coming over..
XBox doesn't have Gran Turismo. It doesn't have Devil May Cry. It doesn't have Jak & Daxter.
Not to mention Xenosaga, GrandiaX and a whole host of RPGs coming out first half of next year for PS2...
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
A number of people have pointed out that the newer consoles are in short supply so they don't have as much of a chance to sell.
Yet, if you check eBay XBox and Gamecube systems are going mostly at cost at this point (the ones that are selling at all). I personally think that XBox and Gamecube sales figures are bound to be a touch inflated at this point by MANY people who bought extra to sell on eBay, so there might be a bit of a soft market for both systems for a month or two.
I don't know if it's because there were two systems released this year or what, but at no point of either the XBox or Gamecube had the eBay demand the PS2 did last year. I'm not saying that means the PS2 is a better system or that it means anything about who will come to dominate in the future - just noting that demand for each new system is simply not nearly as high as the PS2 demand was (though they also had a more limited supply than the GameCube or XBox, I think).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you're constantly following the gaming scene (PC or console), then all the improvements in games seem kind of boring, because you know the immediate predecessor to the game in question was almost just as good.
But if you're away for a while, then it all seems fresh again, and it's a lot of fun that way.
My plan is to just play through the batch of stuff I have right now, then not bother with new games again for a good long while.
Have fun!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Strong third parties are BAD for Nintendo.
1. Nintendo would rather sell you Nintendo games than other games. If a console owner will buy 15 games over its lifetime, Nintendo would rather 12 of them be Nintendo than 7.
2. Strong third parties got them in trouble. They tried to keep them down during the NES days, but some of them got big. A few bolted to the Genesis, a LOT later bolted to the Playstation. Sony has no real longtime franchises.
3. Square is in financial trouble. Nintendo wants them weaker. The Sony investment helped them, but didn't make them too beholden to Sony. Apparently Nintendo owns (or owned) 20% of Square, at least at one point.
4. Square is the example. Nintendo wants developers to know that they can't screw with them. They are still the 800 lb. gorilla in this space, even if the Playstation had better penetration than the N64 (although not as much as Slashdot would have you believe... something like 30m N64s to 45m PS2s). Nintendo puts forth the least efforts to attract developers and is able to push systems. The 3rd parties tried to cut deals with Nintendo, so Nintendo ignored them and released its own games.
Users aren't loyal to Third Party franchises. They are loyal to franchises, period. Nintendo is in a strong position given that they have more strong franchises in house than anyone. Their franchises are probably almost as good as ALL of the Third Party ones, and that is by design. In the NES days, a Third Party could only release 5 games/year. This accomplished NOA's goal of only having great games, and NCL's goal of keeping the companies week.
Square is over a barrel. They are strapped for cash, and they are getting manhandled by Sony. Sony played nice while Nintendo was the big boy, now they are beating up the third parties. Everyone but Square gets to negotiate with Nintendo. Square will probably never be allowed to release another Nintendo system game, but who knows. They just have to kiss the ring... a LOT.
They helped kill the N64, which forced fans to either miss out on Nintendo franchises, Sony games, or buy two consoles. Buying a Sega console is one thing, Sega makes great games. Sony doesn't make games. I don't want to buy a second (or now third console) because Square decided to be retarded.
Square should suffer, then come back to the fold.
I see one X-box selling for $375 none of the other auctions have been bitten on. I see about 12 camecube auctions that are closing with sales, most in the $220-250 range. Most of the Playstation 2 auctions are on used systems going for $250. Based on the 'Ebay' factor, most people are finding the systems they want. Unlike last year where Sony cut PS2 production by 50% because of 'manufacturing problems.' If any conclusions can be drawn from the 'Ebay factor' it is that gamecube are selling out better than X box, probably because they have under a million units in the supply chain. Some PS2 owners are willing to part with their systems after a year of fruitless searching for games. More likely though these are people who have to be the first on the block to have anything new, and are selling the old PS2 units because they can't afford the xbox otherwise. Unless they're selling broken out of warranty PS2 units.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I picked up Metal Gear Solid 2, and to be quite blunt, I'm not impressed. Final Fantasy hasn't impressed me since the SNES days, and though I plan to pick up FFX as soon as I find a copy, I imagine I'll just give it to one of my friends like I do with every other shitty Playstation game I end up buying.
I have all three systems, the PS2, the XBox, and the Gamecube. As someone who is totally unbias, I can honestly say that the best reasons to own a PS2 are all PS1 games. Period. End of story.
Well, the one exception of course is Grand Theft Auto 3 which is VERY, VERY awesome. It's actually more than just stealing cars and running over people. It's somewhat a cross between Carmageddon and Driver, with a slight bit of racing and first person shooter thrown in. Quite a good game, and a whole lot of fun.
The other two games I've been playing the hell out of are Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo of course. Those three titles are all excellent, which and each are somewhat different types of games.
I would find it very hard to recommend one system over the other. And if I had to recommend just one, it wouldn't be the PS2. In fact, right now the one system I have the MOST good games for is ironically the Dreamcast.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I'll grant you BloodWake. Looks spiffy. UC does too. Most of the rest of those games are either 1) already on the PS2 or 2) coming out in parallell/on a slight delay with the XBox release on PS2.
JSRF is coming to PS2, as is Blood Omen2, Tapout, Rayman, and Spiderman, as well as Transworld Surf.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Sony is a member of both MPAA and RIAA, and Microsoft and Nintendo are not.
sulli
RTFJ.
I meant PSX, not PS2... I have heard everywhere from 40m to 100m. I said 45m, but it was probably closer to 60m like you are suggesting. Who really knows.
I would suggest that the PSX steamrollered the N64, but I won't necessarily agree that Sony steamrollered Nintendo. Nintendo made a lot of money the past few years. The Gameboy color sold a buttload, the GBA is now making money (some numbers I saw put the GBA+Gamecube sales > PS2 sales, with about equal numbers of each). Sure the Gamecube will make some cash, but they don't make much on the console (Sony and MS lose money on consoles, though Sony may be break even soon, they broke even on the PS2 project itself), but Nintendo sells the whole widget.
Nintendo was the world when the world was smaller 40m consoles. Ninteno is now a small player when their small niche is 30m-40m. Not too bad.
Apple Computers is profitable at between 2.5% and 4% of sales (around 5% of market penetration). Nintendo has the same situation. The Gamecube and GBA are cheap to make. The GBA is off-the-shelf components, the Gamecube is a good deal from IBM/ArtX(now ATI).
I bet you Nintendo makes a lot of shareholders happy, and us Mario/Zelda lunatics happy (if poorer).
The developers are going to look at REAL sales numbers when deciding which platforms deserve their attention with future releases
Although that is one factor, it might not even be the most important one. The most important one is profit. In fact, that's really the only factor. Developers look at the potential market for their game (based on a percentage of installed base marketing says will buy a game in a given genre), minus their costs to produce it. Included in those costs are development effort, which is supposed to be higher on PS2. Also licensing fees (don't forget about those). I don't know who has the best licensing scheme, but that certainly is a factor on why the XBOX has so many games out so quickly. Also, from what I hear, MS has better PR with developers, many of which already write games for windows, (and, just as important) on windows. My prediction: within a year or two, PS2 will seem dated. XBOX games will get better and better with time, as more Windows games are ported. After all, Windows is the gaming platform of choice, and XBOX is only a sidestep from Win64 development.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
See, I have a problem with the second gen XBox games will be significantly better than first gen. With most game consoles, first gen games tend to be bad not because of time constraints, but because the developers aren't familiar with the platform they're developing on. Going from NES->SNES->N64/PSX->PS2/GC meant your developers needed to learn a whole new platform each time. Thus, the second gen games are better because the developers working on them don't have a ramp up time to learn the hardware and API.
Now, the XBox is a Intel chip with a NVidia graphics adaptor. You're programming to DirectX. This is not a new hardware platform. And if you look, most of the first gen XBox games were made by companies that have experience working on PC games. These companies don't have the "learn the hardware" problem that traditional console developers had. So, I personally don't think that you can hope for the dramatic differences between, say, first gen PSX games and FFIX. You can, however, expect development teams to continually be able to tweak more and more out of a GC and PS2 as time goes on.
Nintendo said that they'd sold 802,000 GameCubes in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada as of December 14. That's a rate of about 200,000 per week. Seeing as this particular survey says they sold 602,000 as of December 8, about a week later, it sounds pretty dang reasonable to me. Care to rethink your anger?
The assumption that only two game consoles can exist in the market is statistical nonsense. In the case of the SNES and Genesis beating out the TurboGrafx and 3DO. The TurboGrafx simply had nothing behind it. It had little first party development, let alone third party development. The 3DO was simply too expensive. You'd end up shelling 500$ for a fucking game console, one that didn't specifically offer anything anybody wanted other than Dragon's Layer, Space Ace, and a Monty Python looking Zelda game. Because only Sega and Nintendo managed to get it right with a console doesn't mean only two consoles can exist necessarily. The Dreamcast sold well because it was released between Nintendo and Sony's generations of consoles.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Every Nintendo apologist always brings up this Walmart thing, but they coincidentally never give a source. Know why? 'Cause it's bogus. Where in this article's numbers did they say that Walmart figures were excluded?
It's even simpler than that, and you don't have to trust the survey at all, just Nintendo's own numbers. Nintendo came out with a press release saying that as of December 14, they had sold 802,000 GameCubes throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. That's about 200,000 per week. This survey says that they sold 602,000 GameCubes as of December 8. Note the dates and the numbers. Just about one week. 200,000 sales. Ya know, kinda like the 200,000 per week that Nintendo claimed they had been selling?
So for the love of God, will you guys please quit bringing up this completely false issue of Walmart? Besides, you'll just end up making the Nintendo look like it's doing even worse against the Xbox. Because if Walmart were really excluded from the numbers, than while Nintendo claims that they've sold 802,000 as of December 14, then Microsoft already sold 934,000 by December 8th, not even including your precious Walmart numbers. With the so-called absent Walmart numbers, Microsoft would then easily be over the 1-million sold mark for Xboxes.
The way the article was titled it was made to sound like the PS2 outsold the XBox and GC combined. Leave it to the LA Times to use a really shitty source for one of their stories. First NPDFunworld began their counting console sales before the XBox and GC were even released and they do not count WalMart sales. My GC was the last one left at a WalMart in Jonesboro Louisiana and I got it on the 18th. I haven't seen GC's anywhere in any decent quantity since they've come out. WalMart seems to have a number of XBoxes lying around though. If you read the article you start to figure something is fishy then they say Nintendo's only sold ~600k units when everywhere else is reporting they've sold upwards of 800k units. They fucking mention that number in the LA Times story for fuck sake. That's just bad journalism. I also think there's some kind of misconception that only two consoles can exist in the market. In the past offerings from smaller competitors to Sega and Nintendo were dismal failures. This is usually due to the failures of the company's marketing and deployment strategy. You can't offer a console with no games. It just will not sell. Just like you don't sell and OS with no software.
When it came to 3rd generation consoles (for Sega and Nintendo at least) Sega dropped the ball when it ran headlong into the Playstation. The PSX was just a better design than the Saturn. Sega stuck two SH3s in the Saturn (not learning from the Jaguar's failure to lure developers with two processors) which nobody really learned how to use properly. Most of the first series of Saturn and PSX games were arcade adaptations. When the reviews came out saying the PSX mimiced the arcade systems almost perfectly and the Saturn met with some serious slowdown in heavily sprite laden scenes the winner was pretty evident. The market fell out from under the Saturn and thus Sega because they didn't produce something that could keep up as well as Sony had. Sony also didn't bother with their own line of arcade games like Sega did, they just jammed third party games onto the PSX. Nintendo learned the same lesson, arcades are too fickle to stick games with any substance in so leave it to somebody else. If the XBox and GC both maintain a steady list of third party developers I think there might be plenty of room in the market for them both. Alot of people own several consoles and a handful of games for each one. As long as enough games get sold to make the companies mula there can be plenty of consoles in the market.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I don't think I can swear in my reply as many times as you did, but I'm going to give it a shot, because I want to be like you.
Sony breaks even on the PS2 as of a few months ago. Microsoft is taking a huge hit. Sony has the luxury of being able to lower their prices due to a years worth of cost reductions, Microsoft doesn't. Not that I think it matters since, as it said in my previous post, I think the PS2 and the GameCube have a better chance since they have (and will continue to have) the better games. If anything good ever does come out for the X-Box it'll just come out for the PC in a few months anyway.
I'm sorry if I offended you by suggesting that something other then the device you blew $300+ on might prevail. I can understand how that would be worrisome to you on a twelve year old's salary.
Oh, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck... There.