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The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming
Gudlyf writes "GameSpy has a multi-part series this week titled The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming, highlighting some of the biggest debacles ever to plague our beloved pastime. While only the first part of the series is present, I can already think of a few that the list wouldn't be complete without. Anyone care to offer their own picks?" Predictions for the Top 5 also welcome, we'll run another story at the end of the week to see how people did.
#26 - Gamespy decides that all gamers run their desktops at 800x600, and forces all their pages to be 800 pixels wide.
Wowbagger - Yes, obviously gamers don't buy high-end video cards and monitors that can run at higher than 800x600. Gamers like to see lots of wasted space on their screens.
</gamespy>
Criticize the
forcing
all your
text into
a few words
per line
because you are
running high res
and larger fonts
so as to have
a cleaner
display.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Virtual Boy
Other possibilities: Daikatana, 3D0 (the system, the company, the Army Men...ugh), BMX XXX, maybe some of Acclaim's advertising practices (though not likely), and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (though technically not a game, it's massive failure certainly had repercussions for Squaresoft).
#27 - Gamespy Arcade
Micro$will - Yes, all of those who bought a lifetime subscription to GameSpy3D now have to fork out $5 a month for all the new crap, like Roger Wilco and GameSpy Arcade. Joy!
#28 - FilePlanet
And for those of you that like to keep their games up to date (I.E. actually play them online) get the extra special benefit of shelling out more cash for access to FilePlanet! Don't bother trying to access id's ftp site, they're always full, just like our "free" 25 user ftp sites.
Thankfully, most games these days come with built in game browsers, and as for patches and maps, there's Google.
No, the XBox was not a blunder. Yes, it's too expensive to produce, but that's its only fault. It has the best graphics and sound and networking and features of any console out there.
"The machine is too complicated."
Not really. It's basically an NVIDIA IGP+MCP-T (except it uses a PIII instead of an Athlon). It's certainly not as complex as the original PS2 design (the later PS2 designs have been vastly simplified).
"Meanwhile, no doubt people are enjoying it around the world, but I'll bet there are already people high up in Microsoft questioning the decision to produce the Xbox"
No, they aren't. Microsoft didn't question the decision to start their Server division or their Windows CE division. Both lost money for several years before they became profitable. Microsoft is amazing (or at least anticompeditive) in how they will stick with a money-losing proposition for years until it pans out. Just wait, XBox will be rolling in the dough some day.
"No matter how many successful games companies you swallow, making a good, popular, game is part art."
Yes, and that's why 3rd party support is so essential for the XBox. Fortunately, the XBox is a developer magnet. The thing runs Windows and DirectX, so programmers can develop a PC title and an XBox title simultaneously, sharing programmers and code. This essentially makes the XBox "free" to develop for.
"doubt development houses are already finding that a project they're working on for the PC has problems running without major compromises on the Xbox."
Nope. The XBox is a GeForce3-class system. Remember that PC developers MUST develop for the hardware that is available - this usually does not mean Radeon 9800s or GeForce FX 5900s. Most PC games are designed to run, at least decently, on "Intel Extreme AGP Graphics". Even UT2003 runs on "Intel Extreme AGP Graphics" at 60fps, albeit at 640x480 with all the nice effects turned off. id has stated that their development target is the GeForce 3 - exactly what the XBox has (OK, the XBox is UMA, but it's not all that different)
"It's unimaginative and overpriced"
The XBox is extremely imaginative. It's a console built around a standard platform - the PC. Microsoft could probably start putting Athlons in the XBox and no one would know. They could switch the GPU for a GeForce4 Ti. When the XBox 2 comes out, compatibility won't be a problem - the old code will run just fine, but with better framerates. Developers will have no trouble adapting to the new hardware, either - it will be just like developing for the old hardware. Developers could even write games that scale-back their graphics to run on the XBox 1 but load on the eye-candy to run on the XBox 2. The XBox offers real tangable benefits to develoeprs.
For consumers, it costs the same as a PS2. Microsoft is the one eating the cost today, and with every enhancement (the XBox has been through 4 hardware revisions) they make the console cheaper to produce.
Also, the XBox runs at much lower resolutions than a PC.
I'm getting tired. It's 3:30 AM. Good Night.
Nintendo cancelling the SNES CD and leaving Sony holding a half-finished CD-ROM superconsole. Which they promptly decided to finish by themselves, and used to thoroughly brutalise everyone else and take over most of the console market.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Atari's biggest mistake has to be high up on that list, and I'm suprised nobody here has mentioned it yet.
They had the opportunity to buy the rights to produce and distribute a console from a Japanese company, back in the day when American companies were doing all the game consoles. However, it was during the video game crash, and for some reason, they decided to pass, and stick with their own system they were developing.
The system Atari could have had a huge chunk of? The Nintendo Entertainment System. Instead, they stuck to their own products, which really didn't go anywhere.
One wonders what might have happened if they had made the other choice...
Of course, we're talking about a company that had Jack Tramiel in charge, a man who was personally responsible for destroying multiple companies, and seemed to fight against turing the company around. During the Jaguar days, Atari hired someone to help get the company moving and going, a person who ended up quitting because Jack insisted in having control over everything, down to personally deciding when to approve overnight shipping of packages.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
What's the point here?
"unimaginative and overpriced"? The system has better hardware than its competitors, period. More memory, more processing power, (in some ways) a better graphics system. Of course it's going to cost more- and, at this point, it's not all that much more expensive. And "unimaginative"? What, exactly, is that supposed to mean? It's a piece of hardware. It does its job, with more built-in features (HD, network support, etc) than any of the other consoles. So... how is that unimaginative?
Your 32X alegory is just plain stupid. The problems developers had with the 32X are MUCH more similar to problems developers are currently having with the PS2- it's _nothing_ like the XBox. Microsoft wasn't trying to make a platform that would keep up with PC architecture, nor were they even claiming its as easy to develop on as a PC. But it is a SOLID FACT that the XBox is MUCH easier to develop on than the GC and (particularly) the PS2.
I know that some of us prefer more "hardcore" programming, but is it really a better idea to develop on a system with no OS or API (save a handful of poorly documented libraries), or one that has a subset of an already well-known and fairly established API? Again, what's the problem here?
Yes, the XBox is expensive to produce. Why else do you think people like this parent's poster realized its much cheaper to turn an XBox into a media center than to build one yourself? There's high-quality, expensive hardware in there. This was not a mistake, it was a design/marketing decision. Yes, it is one that would only work with Microsoft- because they have pockets deep enough to take the intial money hit that comes with selling something at a loss (or near to it).
Anyway, I'm not an XBox fanboy- I don't even really like it, to be honest. I own a PS2 and a GC, but no XBox. But, whether or not I like the platform, it still frustrates me when people who don't really know what they're talking about bash it because it's a Microsoft product. It has its flaws, but if it were being produced by any other company, you'd be touting it as the underappreciated dark horse that could really shine if only some developers took advantage of it. And, furthermore, if it were some sort of open source gaming platform shat out of Linus Torvalis' butt, you'd probably be sleeping with it at night!
If you have some mysterious and valid complaint with this unit that warrants it being one of the "Top 10 disasters in video game history", I'd bloody well love to hear it.
Nothing to see here.
Yeah, you're totally right! No gamer one would ever want to hop around on a pad and get exercise!
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