Slashdot Mirror
The State of the Game Console Wars
An anonymous reader writes "Two years after the next-gen game consoles hit the market, the verdict is in. What does the future hold for each of the Big Three? Here is a thoughtful but crude summary of the X-Box vs. GC vs. PS2 ordeal."
Basically, it depends what kind of games you like to play. Although, those lines are getting a bit blurry too.
Personally, I am a gamecube person. I have always been a fan of nintendos first-party games, and they are the only non-PC games I usually find an urge to play.
Yes, I enjoyed Celda.
It's straight from the article linked to in this story!
I can enjoy the sort of tongue-in-cheek humor this article has, but I wish I could rate this as "-1, Redundant" for the front page. Honestly, it's pointless. This current generation of consoles has had their fates sealed for a year now. Anyone who would take the time to read the article would already be aware of everything presented. None of what is explained in this story qualifies as "news."
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
There really is no sense to this "console war" thing. PC vs. Mac is a viable religious debate, because Macs cost thousands upon thousands of dollars unless you want a low-end eMac. But with game consoles costing $129 and $149 (OMG TOO AMERICAN-CENTRIC) is it really a big deal anymore to own all three? You can buy all of them with one week's paycheck, if you make a good salary. If you play enough games on each to justify the initial cost of the console, it really shouldn't be a big deal.
My X-Box wins as it's running X-Box linux. :)
And, the article *does* read like a 11-year-old wrote it thinking he was an "3lit3 dewd."
Define "thoughtful" please.
Bill
bamph
..about the current state of gaming. Something like,
;)
I like to play games on:
My PS2
My XBox
My GameCube
My N64
My Computer
2+ of Above Choices
CowboyNeal's couch
Seriously, excluding the obCowboyNealReference, I'm really interested in a breakdown. I used to be terribly addicted to console games, starting with an Atari 2600, then moving to the NES and the SuperNES. Once I discovered computers, console gaming lost all its magic to me and although I've played on friends' PS, PS2, and even a 3DO, I never really got into consoles again.
Would be cool to see a survey of how many people still use console games nowadays, vs those who game only on their computer, vs those who don't care about games at all (except in the toxic waste dump that is CowboyNeal's couch
--
Rate Naked People at Fuck Meter! (not work-safe)
Its pretty damn apparent that this article is a joke. I mean, look at the webpage its from. I could tell you it was just a joke by hovering over the link and looking in my status bar. Really, come on editors I know its late at night but you could at least TRY!
This is nothing more than a person's personal opinion on the state of the console gaming market today, and you would be crazy to site it in any research paper or anything of that sort.
I just don't believe the shameless timewaste.
Is there a way to mark this entire thread as -1 Troll, just before all of the PC and console zealots arrive? I can smell them coming.
It would be a kind of flashing warning sign to others entering into the thread. Ya know, safety purposes.
Microsoft and Nintento are scrapping it out for second place. Does that really constitute a 'war'?
Sega and Nintendo, that was a console war. This is... not.
Take a look at the hardware requirements for Jedi Knight II:
Operating System: Windows 95 OSR2/98/ME/2000/XP
Computer: 100% DirectX-compatible computer required.
CPU: Pentium II or Athlon class 350 MHz or faster CPU required.
Memory: 64 MB required. 128 MB required for Windows 2000 and XP.
Graphics card: 16MB OpenGL-compatible PCI or AGP 3D Hardware Accelerator required.
Sound card: 16-bit DirectX 8.x-compatible sound card required.
CD-ROM: Quad-Speed IDE or SCSI CD-ROM drive required.
Input device: Keyboard or mouse required. Joystick supported.
DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 8.0a is included on this CD.
Installation: 665 MB of free hard drive space required. Additional free space required after game installation for Windows swap file and save games.
By comparison, here's the hardware requirements for Halo:
Xbox.
Did Blaster send one of the big moderators back to April 1st? The domain speaks for itself. Is there anything that could be truly useful to be found on a website with the domain pointlesswasteoftime.com?
That indicates that they know it's a joke.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
It is a troll, but not for the reason suggested above - the ac who is reporting this is reporting a change that did not take place, while leaving the real change un-highlighted. A subtle variation on this popular troll.
Well done.
Can anyone answer the following questions:
... right now the thing is big and ugly ...
1. How many PS2 consols have sold to date
2. How many Xbox consols have sold to date
3. How many Gamecubes have sold to date
I would also like to know when M$ is planning on making the XBOX smaller
I fail to see how an opininated piece of rubbish that lays out predictions, nay, edicts for what game console is the l3373S7 without describing the details of how the conclusions were drawn can be reffered to as thoughtful.
btw: I think that infographic was already published in USA today.
I turn to slashdot for informative tech news, not something I could find with a search engine by typing in video games +boobies
ôó
Look at it this way:
Nintendo is making a huge profit. Sony is making a (relatively) small profit. Microsoft is taking a loss the size of Nintendo's income (not profit). Very different picture there.
Oh, and the SNES outsold the Genesis 2:1. Profit wise it was probably an even wider gap, although I've never seen financial figures for the two companies from back then.
personally i havent owned a console since my genesis which i still play. but im really anticipating sony's playstation 3 because of all added features invovled its a pvr with 120gb hdd, dvd-rw drive, i mean its gonna be amazing, i'd probably buy one and never purchase a game.
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
I wonder if this is an article where the majority of Slashdotters won't mind if you don't RTFA!
It is true that Nintendo is third place in the US... And for that they are suffering a bit. Don't get me wrong, I am a Nintendo fanboy (and to a lesser extent Square, and by extension, Sony) who hates Xbox with a passion, but Nintendo isn't going anywhere in the States, and it's got a tough time ahead of it. Best wait for the secret announcement later.
Elsewhere, Nintendo takes the cake, even worldwide it takes second-place with 9.55 million units (as of March) sold to 9.4 million Xboxes (as of July) (consider the fact that Xbox sales are biased towards the US, and you get a more interesting picture of the world sales. For links on the info, look at the link at the bottom of this post.). So Nintendo is hardly down and out.
And that brings me to my anecdote. Earlier this month, I had the privilege to sit in a two-hour open forum featuring four highly respected people in the gaming industry. One of these was Ms. Laura Fryer, Director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group.
Naturally, as a Slashdotter, I decided to ask Ms. Fryer the two hard hitting questions:
The initial response? "Them's fighting words!"
She went on to address my second question first, dismissing it as untrue. Of course, I found evidence to the contrary later on, but the fact is that she lied about it.
Then of course, there was the Linux part of the question, which she dodged, mentioning something about "security" before going on about "intellectual property" issues (nVidia and Intel have problems with Linux on the Xbox? This is the way she tried to paint it...)
In any case, though the public opinion coming out of it was quite likely biased for her ("She's in the industry! She knows what she's talking about!") The fact of the matter is she blatently lied and danced around my question. Needless to say, it's quite ego-boosting to realize that a 17-year-old kid had to make a member of MS management lie and dance around the answer...
As for more information on the incident, you can see my blog entry on the subject.
The PS2 and the Xbox are the two hottest selling consoles on the market right now. These two consoles in some ways redefined gaming by including a way to connect the console to other players around the world via the internet. The next generation of game consoles will obviously be better. They will be faster. They will have bigger hard drives. The will have better graphics. In short they will almost be as powerful as a desktop computer. Can Sony, Microsft, and Nintendo sell these next generation consoles for less than $300 conoles and still make a profit. The console that wins the pricing war will likely win the "console war."
Kids play alot of games. Kids have Christmas (OMG TOO JESUS-CENTRIC) and a birthday.
when game companies were game companies. I hate Sony for releasing the Playstation, and I despise M$ for the XBox (and other obvious reasons). I think it's awful that those two compainies are not dependent for survival on the quality of the product.
Call me sentimental, but I feel as though the PS? and XBox have no substance, no charm, no soul. Nintendo and Sega have all those things for me. It's something that cannot be explained by logic or statistics.
Also, I know I can't be the only one who thinks that first-person shooters do not belong on consoles.
While I agree with your point it should also be noted that the PC has a larger market share of game sales than all the consoles combined and that's without any mass market advertising like tv/billboards that you see for console games. So, I'd say there are plenty of Joe Schmoe's that are ok with a not very complicated long list of requirements.
It seems that your post relies on a stereotype of consoles being for idiots and kids and pc's for intelligent people which is certainally not the case.
Oh yeah, here's the requirements for homemade lasagna, courtesy of Emeril Legasse:
2 cups fresh ricotta cheese
8 ounces grated Provolone cheese
8 ounces grated Mozzarella cheese
8 ounces grated Romano cheese
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon chiffonade of fresh basil
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 recipe of Emeril's Meat Sauce, recipe follows
1/2 pound grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 package of dried lasagna noodles
By comparison, here's the requirements for frozen lasagna
porp
But with game consoles costing $129 and $149 (OMG TOO AMERICAN-CENTRIC) is it really a big deal anymore to own all three? You can buy all of them with one week's paycheck, if you make a good salary.
The PS2 and xbox are normally priced at $179. And how many households make a good salary? Some don't have a salary at all, any more, and a second console certainly isn't a priority.
Also consider that some gamers are (gasp) underage, and as such have limited resources to spend on gaming. Let's say you're a kid with a PS2 and $240 burning a hole in your pocket. Would you prefer to buy an xbox, second controller, memory card and one (1) platinum hit game, or twelve (12) greatest hits games for the console you already own?
that everyone else here thinks this article is downright asinine. Since when did some penis-fetishist's *opinion* on the state of the console war start to matter? If this works so well, I'm going to write an article on how I think alien invasion is the cause of the East coast power outages, and see if I can get it posted. Sheesh...
Um, maybe I'm a little out of things considering that I took the MCAT yesterday and have been more or less drunk since it concluded, but why was that article posted? Are the admins off this weekend?
Don't get me wrong, the subject matter could have been an interesting read, but My cat has buried things in his sand box that had more journalistic merit than that "article" did.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Finally, an acknowledgement that flaccid US Gamecube sales are due to the majority of American gamers being insecure in their manhood.
The format of the article underscores this point beautifully.
Although the article is informative in the fact that it names the three major consoles, there isn't any other usefull content there. I do wonder if the writer truly is clever in their textbook depiction of a completely stereotypical trailer park reject wrestling fanatic with a breast obsession. It couldn't be the writer's real perosnality because this person obviously knows how to use a computer.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
I can't ever see a day I buy a console when I could use the money to get another 5 fps for CS on my dang PC ...
Did Michael even bother to read what he linked to? This "article", and I use that term loosely, reads as bad as last months Stuff magazine - like a 9 year old boy who can use MSPaint and should be on Ritalin.
There is nothing "thoughtful" about this article.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
It's OFGSPABBTGSPT, not OFGSPABBGTSPT, n00b !
As has already been pointed out, the article is poorly written and a joke. I didn't quite finish it for those reasons, and I felt like I was losing brain cells.
:).
The whole question is moot, though. After all, the combination of having the best advertising and releasing first will be what wins out. Even fan loyalty will likely come in handy. So, why bother predicting, when one bureaucratic screw up can ruin the whole thing.
Now, there are the other holy wars...Linux, vi, and the like being worthy causes
your kidding right?
i thought it damn funny!
u must own a gamecube right and didnt think to add the balls?
I'd like to see a source for this market-share figure, because I'm not entirely buying it. My skepticism is attributed to the sales of games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Yes, I am aware that two of the three games mentioned do/will have PC ports.
And to address your second point, that's simply not the case: I'd hardly refer to someone without extensive computer experience as an "idiot." Many people I've spoken to have no idea what's in their computer. I work in technical support and have a good deal of experience speaking with these people. They don't know, and certainly don't care, what "DirectX" is. What's a "32 Emm Bee video card"? What the hell is AGP? These kind of things do realistically put people off somewhat. And though many modern computers are more gaming-oriented as costs of hardware is being driven down, and people are becoming more comfortable with this sort of thing, "casual" gamers are probably not going to play PC games. Besides, a PS2 costs a bit less than a new mid-end video card (retail, these people don't scope Pricewatch), and it takes no technical expertise to install; just hook it up to your television.
I will make one concession to you: The PC's chances in this market are getting better and better, as many of the young'uns become more experienced with computers and the terminology relating to them, as well as many computer-related skills. However, some people would argue that PCs are becoming more of a commodity product as many features are being transferred to other devices (cell phones that can check email and send instant messages, and the like). I prefer to centralize, everything's done on my PC, but others may differ greatly in their ways of getting things done. What do you think the desktop PC will look like in 10 years? I'm curious to hear what other people think.
And you know what? I bet 19 out of 20 people make the frozen lasagna instead.
Hmmm. Last I checked, Starcraft: Ghost was still a multi-console release. Interesting article, though slightly misguided.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
Xbox is basically a gussied-up PC, complete with x86 processor. That's one of it's big hooks for developers, that it's almost trivial to develop for it compared to a PC.
.0001% of users would run linux? Cost-benefit analysis would seem to suggest it best for them to not do it.
Contrast that with the other two systems. Totally proprietary. I hear PS2 is a "nightmare" to develop for. I doubt the cube is cake either. Getting linux to run on these would be, at best, a long and expensive process. Touche - why should they spend money to develop that when maybe
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Collect them all!
Hack them!
Trade them with your friends!
Good point. But both Netscape and IE were free, and yet how many browser choices are there now?
That's gross over-simplification, to be sure. But I think that a large part of the sentiment that underscores these "wars" is the question: have we sold our collective soul to MSFT again? Or have we managed to resist this time?
Just because the console is $179 this year doesn't mean that it won't be $799 for an X-Box when MSFT has a monopoly on consoles. That might seem ridiculous, but MSFT's economics of the X-Box dictates such an outcome--why else would they be willing to lose money on the X-Box now, if not to make obscene amounts later?
--
$tar -xvf
I know writing style isn't exactly the most required trait in a /. article, but this story reads like it's from a fucking exchange student who got sent thought he was going to boliva but ended up in an english speaking country. Sure, it's about videogames and geeky stuff like that, but you fuckers have to draw the line somewhere. Am I right people? or am I right?
Who cares what you think. The article doesn't have to be insightful. It's just pointing out what has been obvious for a while now, and doing it in a rather humorous way. Get over yourself and accept the truth.
i think the Indrema box will win the console wars!
/been under a rock...
i wish i was but oh well
Someone should tell him that the PS2 uses a whole PS1 main cpu just to handle its IO (ok...this also conveniently provides backward compatibility for most PS1 games...but I digress...).
Then again why bother telling him? Anyone with a clue knew this, and the rest of the specs, about a year before the PS2 came out.
I think people should stop complaining. It was a quite humorous editorial piece on the status of the console industry. I stopped taking it seriously when I saw the image of the fake testicles attached to the Game Cube. If you take it as a light-hearted editorial- it's actually a good read.
Notice how they didn't have a "What went wrong?" for the Xbox? Like say, actually having more than a single game worth buying? Sheesh.
The reason the Xbox isn't closer to the ps2 is that it isn't "cool" in japan, and thus the amazing console game creation prowless of the japanese isn't paying much attention to the Xbox(except for the companies that MS pays to create games). That, and the lack of good games aside from halo for the first year and a half of the Xbox's existance.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Well, given the PC's strength is strategy games and hardcore RPGs, the target market for most PC games is nerds who'd understand that anyway. And also, consoles will never be as good at FPS as PCs. The major difference is the interface, and frankly the PC interface is so much more versatile than any controller on the market. I've always thought that if people didn't pirate games like it was their job, the PC would be doing much better.
Nononono - You got it all wrong. Dennis Miller is funny because of his choice of topic - relevancy - you seperate the two and you are left with nothing but a big pile of LAME.
whats an "Xbox" is that like the new master system?
Does it run on minix?
There are a number of GameCube releases that excite me in the future:
Mario Kart Double Dash
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
I do not own a GameCube currently but I'm planning on buying one to play these two games...
Still, I'm glad to have a PS2 so I can play this game:
Final Fantasy X-2
Where the Music Matters
It's true, that was the worst article ever.
The first next gen console is still the best next gen console! Sega Dreamcast is a powerful little machine, and I love it! Only recently, X-Box was given a taste of Jet Grind Radio, but Sega Dreamcast had it years ago! Only recently, X-Box was given SHENMUE 2, but Sega Dreamcast has the SUPERIOR SUBTITLED VERSION WHICH HAS THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE DIAOLOGUE with voice acting far superior than X-Box's corny english dubbed version of it. PlayStation 2 top-sellers Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2 are better played on their original Dreamcast. Speaking of PS2, Space Channel 5, and Space Channel 5 Part 2 recently came out for PS2, but Dreamcast had them first, and they kick ass on Dreamcast. Feet of Fury, a new dancing game for Dreamcast, is far superior than any PS2 version of DDR. Dreamcast is the first home console to allow web-access for MMORPGs, and web-access for surfing. Programs available at www.dcemulation.com allow Dreamcast to do many tasks unique to that console, such as playing VCDs, DIVX CDs, MP3s,
old arcade games, emulated versions of old systems. Oh yeah!
get a life
...
I'm pretty sure all of those are the requirements to run Windows XP. Seriously... the only thing optional about any of those for running XP is the sound card, and maybe the video card.
And another thing: how many people do you know who actually look at the hardware requirements? I don't ever think I've met a non-geek who has.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Part of my issues in buying a game system such as PS2 / Xbox / GameCube is not so much their practical value as a gamming platform, but rather their practical value to do other shit.
I'm happy to say I own none of the above.
The GameCube takes those funky ass 3 inch disks, making them none to useful to play full sized DVDs
In theory both PS2 and x-box have the ability to do DVD, I don't know the details nor do I know if they do VCD/SVCD.
I would *hope* the next generation of concole game devices would take into account not so much the teen crowd, but the adults that might want something useful as well. At least DVD support is considered, but what of (S)VCD, mp3, Ogg, mpeg-4, and other on the edge standards.
If there came out today a basic console game system, that had the ability to read a hard drive, removable media, or network any of the newer video / audio standards I'd be the first one to buy it. But I'm not really what you'd call a true blue gamer.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
...I am gonna scream!!!
The GameCube had so much potential, but Nintendo just doesn't market to the right audience. I'm in my mid-twenties, enjoy blood-bathing carnage, and don't want cartoonish looking games. And where's the online play? Madden2K4 just came out... XBox and PS2 have online play, but wheres the online play for the GameCube?
The only reason I bought one was for Metroid, and the previous vision of Zelda (before they butchered the game and turned it into comic book fairy land for 4 year olds).
My PS2 however leads the pack. All the games I want and more. Plus, most of the online play is free (aside from Evercrack). Not much to say except that I'm looking forward to PS3's distributed platform.
The XBox is getting better. The original controllers sucked. They finally introduced controllers for the under 7 foot crowd. The single player of Halo was great, but the online play is something to skip. I simply have a problem with paying for a subcription to online games. I'm already shelling out $50/mo. for DSL. Just one more bill to worry about. I think the XBox might go the same way as the Dreamcast... too many people modding their boxes, not enough people buying games to justify continuing the platform.
This is a terrible article. It reads like it was written by a 16 year old.... and an immature 16 year old at that.
WURD!!
And that is market momentum. Nintendo is still on the mind of the ones among us who are in their early 20s. We remember lusting after those Donkey Kong handhelds and NEOGEO games that seemed to define video games after Atari. Even after GameCube, I'm still open to give Nintendo a chance but I'll be wary. Younger ones will not remember the glory days of nintendo and have already associated the image of nintendo with crap.
Enter Playstationa and both 1 and 2 were huge successes. They have whipped up a market momentum ( PS2 would not be such a success without the success of the PS1) that will benefit them much. Seriously which console are we all looking forward to most? Playstation3 of course.
And we all know the XBOX is really a celeron computer with a TV output and a different BIOS. That does much harm to its image as a sleek game box, as much as its sales performance so far. Microsoft has also garnered up a bad image just like AOL for internet connection, with its BSOD and Outlook worms conquering the world.
Given all three consoles come out at the same time with the same pricetag, everyone will buy the PS3 first without checking reviews and specs whether or not it is the winner.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
...Like the fact that you can get a very GOOD Mac for much less than your "thousands upon thousands of dollars" -- and it's not an eMac. You can get a very nice iMac G4 for about $1,300. You can even get the new Power Mac G5 for just $2,000 (for the low end of the line), considerably less than thousands upon thousands.
Blatantly wrong hyperbole like that doesn't do much for the credibility of your point.
Talk abounds concerning another round of price drops in the near future. Speculation says that Gamecube will fall to $129 while PS2 and Xbox will be priced at a modest $149. I had assumed the prices had already fallen. Silly me, they'll cut it in time for the holiday season like last year.
I realize that many gamers are underage, but I take the position of assuming that the article's writer (while he doesn't show it) is over the age of 18, and most likely, so are you and the rest of Slashdot's readers. This comment, being posted on Slashdot, was designed to cater specifically to Slashdot readers rather than, of course, to people who will never read the comment.
You do have a point about the Greatest Hits games, but chances are that there aren't 12 Greatest Hits games worth buying (which there almost certainly aren't) and you'll be suckered into buying more new games at $50-55 apiece. This is, of course, assuming that you don't already own the originals of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Final Fantasy X. When I was younger, I owned about 35 Playstation games. The only Greatest Hits title I owned was Crash Bandicoot, and it was given to me as a gift. I would go so far as to make the assumption that most people don't wait a long enough time for the low-price Greatest Hits release to actually buy it. If they want it, they'll probably get it when it's new. So, essentially, it boils down to 3 full-price games vs. one new console. Though, you do have me on one point -- I hadn't bothered to factor in the costs of memory cards, controllers, and other peripherals.
But the inverse may actually be true -- for many people, it may actually be more likely that you will buy more "Greatest Hits" titles for the new console that you just got -- so, if it comes down to 5 full-price games for PS2 that you've never played (since you own the originals of the Greatest Hits games), or 5 Platinum Hit games for Xbox that you've never played, you're only spending a marginal amount more on the Xbox games including the console.
I could be entirely wrong, but it sure makes sense to me.
Seriously, My love for the XBox has nothing to do with games. I LOVE having something that can play divx, xvid, mp3, vcd, dvd, svcd right in the family room. I used to run a cable from my computer for tv out, but it always was a pain in the ass and half the time it looked aweful. Plus, if one of my roommate's wants to watch something on the XBox, it doesn't rob me of my ability to do stuff on my computer.
Also all the emulated systems on the Xbox! Nes, Snes, Genesis, Mame, and now N64 and playstation.
Shit, most of the time I'll be playing Contra or Super Mario Brothers 3 or Sonic 2 on it, I love my old timee games.
In 10 years from now, when they have Ultra-Crazy Halo 18, I'll still be playin' my Xbox!
I am referring to the latest iteration of Macintosh computers, the G5, which to my recollection start at $1,999 for the low-end model ranging through $2,999 for the dual 2.0 GHz. Certainly discussing console wars by pitting the Gamecube up against Playstation 1 doesn't make a ton of sense. If you're not going to compare the latest product cycles, then what's even the point?
Umm, maybe I'm wrong but do the editor's at SlashDot actually check out these posts? This is a very poor article if you ask me.
Take a look at what you actually wrote, not what you might have been thinking. If you're going to be as irrelevant as to bring up the cost of Macs, at least get the facts right. You claimed that you couldn't get a Mac other than an eMac without spending "thousands upon thousands" of dollars. You are wrong. Period.
They didn't take any controllers, or the dvd remote, or the leads. If the fucktards ever got it to work, they would have found Bloodduster's Fisting the Dead album on the hard drive, among other music only a mother could love their son playing (damn that's a mixed metaphor). Sorry. I suppose I am still upset.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Slashdot is bullshit on the left, bullshit in the middle, and bullshit on the right.
...and that seems to be a good way of building a cluster with the performance of a 2 GHz P4.
n 1v s2cpu.html
n ce .html
. ht ml
Seriously, I remember that for general purpose cpu limited tasks computing power varies with the square root of the number of processors, and directly with the speed of the processors.
1 vs 2 processors, on an Octane (note that a multi cpu mobo has both advantages and disadvantages compared with two networked single cpu computers)
http://futuretech.mirror.vuurwerk.net/spec95oct
If your task can be easily chunked then you might see a 7 GHz equivalent machine, but if it cannot be paralleled efficiently you might be stuck with performance that is worse than a single 750 machine.
http://coeweb.eb.uah.edu/licos/spectra/performa
has some figures indicating that doubling the size of the cluster reduced run times by around 30%-40%, for some benchmarks (by eyeball)
http://www.climate.unibe.ch/cluster/performance
Has some fun graphs showing what can happen if your network protocol absorbs too much CPU time.
I for one welcome our new console overlords...
Be them from microsoft, sony or nintendo...
I for one, welcome our new hot grits... PROFIT!
You are correct. Perhaps I should reread my original postings.
However, assume that you do, then, have a $1300 Power Mac G4, and a comparable PC. Is the cost of both of these able to be paid off in a single paycheck? Unless you're Steve Jobs, probably not. Would even a $1300 product have to be something worth investing in, going all-or-nothing, to justify zealotry and a "platform war?" I would certainly hope so.
So, considering the above, is the actual cost of a Mac relevant in any way to the point I was making, or are you just trolling to emphasize your love for Macs and why I should own one?
Sorry for the following rant, but I've been in this industry long enough to know how it works.
First of all, saying the Xbox is the future is just fanboyism as the article totally lacks the journalism and the facts to support it.
In fact, even saying the Xbox is #2 is really the typical short-sighted american view of the market. The videogame industry is worldwide, and as such, you really need to view the market in total console and software sales. Xbox and GCN are actually exchanging #2 and #3 in total sales worldwide several times each quarter. But this is not actually the point, the point is that even if they were a solid #2, they are still a failure in terms of their own expectations.
Microsoft has made a lot of artificial gimmicks to support the Xbox in the market, and the lack of profits on the Xbox division should be enough for anybody to see that. They expected to be able to snatch most of the PS2 market within one generation and there is simply no sign of them being able to do that, even when spending billions in marketing and development, severely undercutting the price of the Xbox (losing upwards more than $150 per machine), sacrificing royalties and/or explicitely giving money to developers for exclusive games and features, or outright buying them.
I'm not saying which of the Xbox, GCN or PS2 are the most powerful, or has the best games, or yadda yadda. Pure and simple facts, see the Microsoft press releases regarding the Xbox before entering the market. You'll see that they completely ignore Nintendo, and regard Sony as their target and sole rival. The sad truth is, they are way far behind their own forecasts and they haven't captured but a tiny fraction of the supposedly huge market they would conquer in this generation. They are struggling with millions in revenue, but not a penny of profit, fighting for #2 with a company they chose to ignore.
And no, forecasts were not optimistic some long ago. It's annoying how anybody with Internet access can't even make a simple article without checking the facts.
This and this are some of the first news regarding Xbox, check that PS2 is the console mentioned as its target and Gamecube is quite simply ignored.
I ask... Is Xbox really "teh fu7ur3"? Seriously, had not Microsoft budgeted such a huge amount of money for this venture, the Xbox would never survive. And it's quite a waste of money not to be in #1 after all.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
The site is a Joke site.. I doubt any of the "information" is accurate.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Well, maybe not the best, but pretty darn good.
"Visit a video game message board and you'll find verbal warfare, Nintendo owners vs. X-Box owners vs. Playstation 2 owners. Accusations of sexual deviance are their bombs, typographical errors their bullets."
http://www.freepokerchipset.info
I have a large (~290) game library. I'm not looking forward to any new consoles, because the current generation is just starting to realize its potential. The Xbox is very much an online console, and the Live! service still only has a couple of good titles (Mech Assault, Tetris, ...). The GameCube has about 12 must-have titles, but the third-party support is still weak (I'm waiting on Snake Eater and CVX to step things up).
And the PS2, well... of the ~35 PS2 games I own, the only ones I recally really, really liking off the back are Rez and Ico. Everything else has been merely ok 3rd-party stuff (as is the Xbox collection that's not Sega titles).
I don't really care about the console hardware itself, because that only defines the features a game might have. What I'm interested in are the development houses I know rock: most of Sega's teams (AM2, Sonic Team, UGA, etc), Nintendo (and their great 2nd and 3rd parties, like Camelot and Silicon Knights), Bioware (KOTOR's awesome, I hope to see more from them on consoles), Konami, Capcom, etc.
Anyone still focused on the hardware itself clearly hasn't been paying attention. I can't fucking play a game console that has no games!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Granted I don't have the links to back this up, but I remember reading a trustworthy news article on Sony's profits on quarter, and the amount that the playstation 1 accounted for that.
It was basically the difference between profitability and losing money. Granted there's accounting involved here, but the playstation is critical to Sony's profitability these days.
Microsoft will not win in the long run because Sony owns Japan, and Microsoft will never own Japan. And the Japanese make the best console games.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
It rules because it has an OS. So you can do other stuff as well as play games. And it is upgraded. And it can emulate console games (although this is dubiously legal, and there aren't emulators for all consoles right?).
Still if you're rich (or too poor to buy pc, or too dumb to use one[which is their worst point, most people don't have the time and/or logic to learn]) my second option would be an x box.
Then one could buy halo 2 when it comes out.
BTW. A good game doesn't need good graphics. Take tetris, or half life. As a rule of thumb though, a game with good graphics means the devs put lotsa effort into it. There are exceptions.
Thank you rof reading my off topic thought!
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
thoughtful but crude
I think he meant thoughtless and pointless. I remember this time when I read an article that was worse than.....wait, no, this takes the cake. Thank God (or our founding fathers or whatever) for freedom of speech.
ACTUALLY, according to this link, Nintendo is going to be dropping the US price of the Gamecube to $99 by the end of September. Unfortunately, the only other place I found the info was here and there's no linkage in that "viewer mail" section to get more details. Nintendo's website was similarly not helpful at all.
Assuming the above is true, it was probably at the end of last week's news cycle and we'll probably hear more tomorrow.
I'm the one who pointed out that the cost of a Mac wasn't relevant to this discussion. If you had merely asserted that a high-end PC (of whatever kind) might cost thousands of dollars, you would have been accurate and I wouldn't have objected. I'm merely trying to keep others from being misled by your incorrect assertion about the cost of Macs. There are a LOT of people who believe what you said about the cost of Apple hardware until they get the facts. Something that keeps getting repeated tends to be believed, even if it's false.
I couldn't care less whether you own a Mac or not. Correcting a false statement isn't trolling.
hit a little too close to home for the poster above:)
Plain and simple, the NES. No console will ever top it!
1) It's juvenile, which fits right in with the stereotype that all video game players are 15 year-old boys.
2) It's sexist, which not only reinforces (1) but also leads people to believe that video games are not for women.
3) It focuses on violent video games, which might lead a reader to believe that all video games have violent themes. Come to think of it, the vast majority of them do. Perhaps it's because game companies now cater almost exclusively to 15 year-old boys.
4) It is poorly written, sophomoric in the extreme, and housed at a URL that indicates the respect the author has for the writing.
Yes, yes yes. I know. I'm just a bitter old man. The guy who wrote the article was just joking around. But isn't everyone getting *just a bit* tired of first-person shooters dominating the market? Games like EverCrack have shown that other genres can make it, but these days truly creative and daring games get steamrollered by shoot-em-ups. Why? Because like Hollywood, the video game producers know that they can make boatloads of money off of the one demographic that has tons of time and disposable income.
Is that *really* all that videogames have to offer the world? Tits, guns, and meyhem?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Let me be the first to say everything here is either +5 funny or -1 offtopic. Anything in between is just gravy.
For crying out loud, that GameCube has testicles. Do we really need to link to something like that? And I thought goatse was already bad enough. *shakes head*
Honestly, I'd be willing to bet that it's just an ed picking some tripe he thought was funny and agreed with. He just picked it because it says 'Microsoft is a bunch of buy-exclusives-and-rob-the-pc-gaming-world-whores' as well as 't3h GC r00lz but N fr4g3d 1T'.
/. michael. IHBT (by the eds of all people)
Finally, it finishes up with some crap about the PS2 being the best thing since sliced fucking bread (mainly because you can slice people like bread in GTA), even though all it's just a PS1/DVD player and has the gall to say that the PS2 online support is ahead of the pack....
*blink*
oh, right.
When there was Sega and Nintendo nun of this big wars. nobody really played all that much is when the games were good IMO. I think the games are just 90% of the time going downhill beacuse there is no such thing as gamers that are respectful of others. so you may as well play single player. I play all kinds of multiplayer games and it just seems that either there needs to be one of these things. #1 PAYbyPLAY meaning you pay for how much time you spend online #2 Monthly pay X$ per month to play #3 Strict moderation by master servers. meaning if you are convicted of TKing on a consistant basis = killing all the time for shits and grins then be not allowed to play online simple as that. It makes the entire gameing experinces terrible but who cares about that aye mate? guess i will get a offtopic post but ohh well either that or troll sumfin i try to make good posts and i just get shit mod so do it again WOOT!
Sorry was in bad mood when made account
...mentioned in the article- XBox, Gamecube, and PS2. Of the three, I find myself enjoying the Gamecube the most, followed closely by the XBox, with the PS2 as a distant third.
I find the XBox and the Gamecube to have much nicer/smoother graphics than the PS2 games. Also, I like the fact that they each have four controller ports- four-player simultaneous games are a blast. Yeah, I know you can buy a multi-tap for the PS2, but nobody I know has a multitap and there isn't much game support for them. Nintendo has the best controllers ever, IMHO, followed by the XBox S-Controllers. The PS2 controllers are... adequate.
I also like the small, cute appearance of the Gamecube. Yeah- call me weird, but something appeals to me about a system that squeezes that much power out of so little hardware. Maybe it's some sort of innate engineer's sense, I don't know. By contrast, the XBox seems to have slighly nicer graphics but is many times more massive.
People complain about the game libraries on the XBox and GC, compared to the PS2's. It's true that the PS2 has hundreds as times as many games as the other two systems. But I think that's only really an issue if you play hundreds of games. If you take the best 5, 10, or 15 games or so from any system's software library, I think the three consoles are pretty even.
Even though it made this point in a "funny" way - that article was SERIOUSLY RIGHT about one thing- the "kiddie"/"girly" image of Nintendo is KILLING it. Nintendo has to re-establish itself as a system for "real men". Like it or not, the reality is that a large portion of the game-buying public just doesn't want to be seen buying something like the Gamecube, and would rather go with the more-manly XBox or PS2.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Well, I own myself a Nintendo GameCube and reading the article make me think the writer hasn't seen one but from afar. Is Zelda the only game playable on the NGC? Anyone has heard of Eternal Darkness? Perhaps the "Nintendo is childish" was true for the N64, and Nintendo paid for it, but if games like Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness or Rogue Leader (for naming three only NGC titles) seem to anyone a game for children I would recomend to give them a second thought.
DON'T PANIC
I wonder why the editors, in their infinite wisdom, elected to use an Xbox controller to represent 'games'. I think we can all agree that Microsoft is on our various shitlists, for one reason or another. And indeed the reasons are as varied as the people who read slashdot and the markets they (MS) have muscled their way into. Putting that aside, though, wouldn't it make more sense to have an icon that typified the category of games? Something universal, like Pac-Man(tm) or Pong paddles, or similar. And if the motivation is to pick something current, perhaps something GameCube-related would be more relevant? After all, Nintendo is the only pure-games company among the top three. And besides, it does have a long and storied history - how many of us spent countless hours playing The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers on the NES when our colleagues (co-belligerents, more like) were outside playing football? I know I did. So, unless there is some kind of corporate reason for having an Xbox-related category logo (which is doubtful... although I have seen a few Microsoft .NET banners on ./ - tsk tsk :), I respectfully submit that a picture of some Nintendo peraphernalia would represent the essence of the category 'games' far better than an Xbox-related one would. A candidate that comes to mind, immediately, is the GameCube itself. It is a beautiful piece of machinery: it evokes memories of the beloved Apple G4 cube, another engineering marvel.
That's how I feel about it. What say you?
That is pretty much where we are now. It seems that 90% of new PC games are RPG/FPS/RTS/SIM. With about 9% being 'light' games (The Sims, xyz Tycoon, etc.)
Hardcore RPG; create/share new levels, if you need lot of text unless you like scrolling ten words at a time a TV won't cut it, you need a high res display.
FPS; need mouse and keyboard, Goldeneye and Halo would still be better with K/M.
RTS; lots of micromanagement, need mouse and tons of keyboard shortcuts.
Hard Core Sims; when you have an entire 747 cockpit on the screen you need high resolution to read every gauge.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Fark, yeah, but I thought /. had more class than this. It's not the least bit informative, and it's funny only if you like that sort of thing which most people don't.
/. gives them a degree of credibility which this article does not have. Stick to real news for nerds, and stuff that actually does matter.
Come on, I'm not offended here. But putting these things on
http://www.walkingtaco.com
do eet.
Why in the world is there an XBox controller icon, a PS2 controller icon, yet no Gamecube icon, when clearly the article is about all three consoles?
But it was bound to happen. Console gaming is now mainstream and brings in gazillions of dollars a year. The 800-lbs gorillias are stomping on the little guys in an effort to dominate the market and they will do anything make sure they are on top. They don't care about "quality" or "soul", it's all about profit. This sort of reminds me of what happened in the PC industry. It started out sorta fun and good natured, but turned into a cold and barren wasteland dominated soley by the whims of the mega-corporation(tm).
OK. I guess my dreamcast is finally dead. There are still games being sold for dreamcast and stores still sell upgrades and games, even consoles. Too bad.
I wholeheartedly disagree.
One of those gamecubes?
A 20 year-old male will watch a story about a cartoon fish if it's funny and he has his girlfriend with him as a gaydar shield.
/. every day.
by the year 2503 the definition of the word "victor" has changed drastically thanks to the actions of incompetent Canadian Empire General Leonard Victor in World War 6.
My suggestion: The KillSim TitBox.
Those are actual quotes from the article. The article itself is a troll, and highly offensive! Please mod down the parent post, as the portion of the article contained within is highly inappropriate and typical of troll material posted to
It's funny if you're a troll.
Quite offensive if you're looking for a legitimate article.
This isn't redundant, this guy posted the entire article, whereas the previous post had only the first page.
...a popular female character...who must perform a series of dangerous missions while avoiding being punched in the breasts. ...hazardous quests to avoid all manner of mammary assault."
However, posting the entire article means your post contains this obvious troll-quality material:
"Dead or Alive's entertaining depiction of voluptuous women erotically punching each other in the breasts.
Clearly someone has a fetish.
Yeah, you might look dumb calling Sony's custom hardware technically inferior while prasing Microsoft's DRM gimped 700 MHz Celery machine.
Oh wait, I just put more thought into that silly article than the author did in 27 hours. His lack of productivity must have something to do with his dick size.
That poor dude needs to get over himself. A complete humiliation combined with completion of mundane but challenging tasks might build up his self esteeem. An enlistment might work, though earning a living of any kind for a decade could substitute. Then he might not be afraid to sing in public, carry his wife's purse (you will do this when you have kids), or do anything he damn well pleases, including Nintendo. He might also be less inclined to slap tities on an Xbox because people who are not afraid to do what they want are atractive enough to have real girlfriends. In short, and I do mean his dick, the author needs to get a life.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The price of the machine will never be much beyond costs, because in the console business model the profit comes from the game licenses.
Microsoft et al. sure hope they won't lose money on the hardware, but profiting from the hardware isn't key. Providing the hardware is just one aspect of the grand marketing effort to sell the games (from which they get their cut).
News at 11.
I can't get over how many mindless anti-MS drones there are here- When you look past the fact that the controller is a little uncomfortable (or a lot, depending on the size of your hands) and the fact that the console is as big as a VCR, you realise there are actually some really good games for the system. I've got a PS2 and an XBoX, and I find use the XB more. Besides, the PS2 has so many cookie-cutter average titles...
-and although I wouldn't say that the "manhood" factor is the sole contributor to GCN's demise, I'd say it's at least a contributing one. If only Panasonic Q was available outside japan...
I don't think MS are ever betting on making loads of dosh from the hardware. What is going on between Sony and MS at the moment is nothing less than a war for control of the living room. The current generation of consoles have already changed from being straight gaming machines to being able to play DVD's (I'm leaving the big N out of this cause they always marketed the GC as a pure gaming experience). And both of the big console makers have started to dip their toes in the waters of online gaming, and whats the betting that the next consoles will allow access to the internet as well as other online services.
Who knows what these boxes will be doing for us in a decades time, I predict that we will we will see all the modern media devices (dvd, dvr, games, hi fi) converge into one box in the center of the living room.
Really!
Sony's profits are down 98%.
Microsoft's game division is down 42 percent.
Nintendo posts a 11.5 billion yen profit for the quarter. That's about $1 MILLION A DAY or $12 a second.
Who's the loser here? Console sales aren't instant profit. Games are what matters, and with Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire selling 9.5 Million worldwide(Who said it was dead?), Nintendo can afford to make the games they want without having to copy anyone else to make a quick buck.
Ok, I laughed. I'll admit it. I have a low threshhold of humor.
But how did this get front page on Slashdot? Uh... standards, folks. Learn it, love it, live it.
And you can have my Dreamcast when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. I just wish I could find THPS 3 for it....
Well.. if you can't afford all console systems then stop "blaming" the systems you don't own for your lack of money!
For the record, right this second I have your mother's labia stretched over my head like a fishy skull cap. GOOD GOD MAN! that has to be the alltime funnyest thing i read. on another note its quite mean and immature as well.
Sorry was in bad mood when made account
I'm not entirely convinced that your average gamer finds Nintendo games "cartoony" and therefore for kids. Yesterday on my way back from the game store a painfully obvious tough guy started talking to me about the GC game I had in my hand. We chatted for a bit about different consoles and he seemed adamant on getting a GC (as soon as he had robed enough kids of their lunch money to be able to afford one no doubt). This isn't the first time I've been surprised at just how well the GC is received by your average gamer.
The problem then is not that gamers see Nintendo games as for kids, but that your new-wave late 20s, wife and half a kid, never played games until the Playstation bloke sees them as for kids. I'm not going to go on about how these people aren't "real gamers" but, well, let's just say that I don't value there opinion about games very highly.
Sony and MS are targeting everyone, Nintendo is targeting gamers. So Sony and MS, please, take the non-gamers, so that Nintendo can keep the "real" gamers happy with more of what we want (if you haven't played Zelda because it's cell shaded then, well, sucks to be you).
What the article does not say is that the console market will soon die. Aside crude jokes about a man's manhood and the type of console he has (which is relatively true), there are no new "killer apps" for home consoles, and home consoles will die, just like arcades did.
What will XBox2 and PS3 have ? sports games, FPSs, 3D platformers, racing games, beat-em-ups, etc. The same stuff like the current generation when it comes to gameplay. The only difference will be visual: the new consoles will have much better graphics. But, will the graphics alone be a sufficient reason to update ? I think not, since the graphical difference would not be that great. The graphics difference between PS2 and PS1 is huge. The graphics difference between PS3 and PS2 will also be huge, but the average person will not be able to spot it!!! Since pixels will be so tiny, it would take a computer high-definition monitor to really evaluate the difference.
Imagine the situation: take a football game (soccer for US people) like ISS (ISS Pro Evolution) by Konami. Imagine that the PS3 version has much better graphics: the players are much more realistic, with clothes folding, with real gravity, with much better animation, but with the exact gameplay. Let's say that you already own a PS2 with the aforementioned game. Would you buy a PS3 for playing the new game ? I wouldn't. If the gameplay is the same, why spent all those money for the same stuff ?
How many beat-em-ups, driving games, FPSs, 3d platformers we could play ? I am personally bored with all these types of games. It's only young people that have no previous experience in games that will buy new consoles. Current console owners will not throw their boxes out just because a new console has much better graphics.
By the way, its the Sony hype machine that killed the Dreamcast. I am saying this because before PS2 goes out, there were rumours that the PS2 could do 75 million polygons and such, promising previously unheard realism and such, which of course proved to be complete nonsence: the PS2 can barely do 10 million polys, and that number depends on many factors. Now, we see the same pattern: that PS3 will be 1000 time much more powerful than PS2 and such BS. Well, we are promised 1000x10,000,000 million polygons per sec = 10,000,000,000 polygons per second!!! that's 10 billion polygons!!! Isn't that an obvious lie ? GPU technology has not advanced that far yet.
SEGA was a fool to abandon the Dreamcast, especially with the tile-rendering architecture that used. They could have provided an upgrade path by simply sticking an extra GPU. Some say that console upgrades never work. This is true for upgrades that are expensive and hang outside of the machine as separate boxes. I am talking about simply sticking a new PowerVR chip on the Dreamcast motherboard. It could have, let's say, 4 slots for 4 PowerVR GPUs, but the initial box would come with only one. Then, if one needed, he/she could buy a new chip and have it plugged into the box in the shop that the console was bought by a simple slide-in move.
Even if the upgrade path would not work, PowerVR chips are very good CPUs. They could make Dreamcast 2 with very little cost, by simply adding more GPUs.
Maybe you should say the requirement would be Xbox v.1-1.3. For one thing, why compare two games when Jedi Knight 2 is available for the Xbox? Secondly, even having an Xbox doesn't guarantee that a newer Xbox game will work for the Xbox. I have only heard of people who bought their systems at launch that can't even play newer games on their Xboxes; games like Brute Force, for example. So maybe, the requirement for Halo 2 will be Xbox v.1.2-1.3.
... CowboyNeal's lap. That's what you meant, yes? ;-)
And oh, in such a poll it would be nice to have some odd choices, like Commodore C=64 and Nintento 8-bit. Some of those games still blow most of todays crap out of the water when it comes to gameplay, and I have one friend that still plays Super Mario on his old Nintendo rather than buying some new console.
The PC will always be the premier gaming platform
The PC isn't going anywhere and it will always have higher specs than any console.
Game Over
"Flopping around on a swingset may still be a lot of fun at my age, but I'll never know."
Thoughtful people don't use Poser models :P
The article, while dead-on in some respects, is entirely of a sarcastic and humorous nature. No one is attempting to get you to "cite this" for a paper. If the tittie-slapping didn't tip you off, the penis jokes should have. I swear to god, you people must be the idiots that keep the Simpsons on the air, lo these many years after it stopped being funny.
Anyway, it is a battle cause everyone wants a winner even if there is no point.
Nintendo will alway have the youth market cause it makes great games for children, none of the other systems comes close.
Sony will always have a huge following cause they have a good system thats backwards compatable with a lot of decent games on both platforms, heck my girlfriend just bought a PS1 so many years AFTER it came out cause she loved the RPG's they had and is waiting for the PSX so didnt want to spend the money on a PS2. And yes I know people are like it sucks, but you know what, I LOVED the DVD feature, cause I didnt have a dvd player when I bought it, nor do I really have the space to have BOTH a dvd player and a game system in my appartment.
The xbox might win out in the future, but they have to buy there way there, which I feel is cheating but whatever. Some third parties are finally signing on (as opposed to advoiding it like it was a black hole when it first came out to the point that Microsoft bought game companies to write for it cough Bungie cough) The thing that will kill the xbox is that the Japanese HATE it. Microsoft could put a 50 inch plasma screen into the system and they will never like it cause they have a deep seated hatred for Microsoft and Bill Gates. The american market is big, but it seems to be the norm of if you cant get it big in Japan (where a lot of the system games are naufactured and developed, if you look a lot of the xBOx's games have been former PC games that where reworked for the system instead, Halo and such) then your going to be small here.
Of course the defining thing will be, who could get their system out first.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
"Oh, and the SNES outsold the Genesis 2:1. "
That's totally not true! Genesis outsold SNES by 7 to 5 worldwide. The only place on the world where SNES outsold SNES was in USA, where the game market was (and still) prefering immature gaming. Sega always created slighty more adult oriented consoles than Nintendo, better control pads more adapted for adults hands, never used purple/lego box sytle for their console and allowed more violent games than Nintendo. Also, Sega created some really nice expension for their console, like Sega CD, who allowed to play unmatchable qualities games (by then) on the CD unit like Samurai Showdown, Fatal Fury Special, Lunar 1 & 2, Final Fight CD, etc. Remember that Nintendo removed all trace of blood in Mortal Kombat 1?
Look, almost any Role Playing game or classic adventure gaming is Canadian or European. USA and Japan are stong for creating and playing childish games. Well, looks what's Canadian and look what's American:
Canadian: Baldur's Gates, Neverwinter Night, Icewind Dale, Wizardry, Jagged Alliance, Need for speed 1 & Porshe, Grand Prix 4, the Longuest Day, Syberia, Post Mortel
American: Diablo, Warcraft III,
Mortal Kombat, Need for speed 2, 3, 4, Hot Pursuit, Put put join the parade, Clay Fighter, Full Throttle, Leisure Suit Larry
With little new exciting game ideas, all the Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, and first person shooter clones will destroy the video game industry.
Will they blame their lost sales on piracy and mod-chips then?
Lets see... Nintendo seems to carry more games for a younger audience than its competitors... A younger audience is less likely to write articles flaming other consoles for not catering to *their* tastes. If you don't like little kid games, then you might not be a little kid. That doesn't mean there aren't little kids out there that like little kid games. There's no need to 'make fun' of their console on the basis that it also carries other titles for a more mature audience. I doubt the heads at Nintendo were planning a strike at Sony's share of the market when they could much more easily grab a seperate slice.
From now on, I'm adding "+boobies" to everything I google!
I completely agree. Walk into your local neighborhood GameStop/Electronics Boutique/Best Buy and look at the floor space that they dedicate to PC games vs. Console games. That is where you can see the biggest indicator.
Floorspace is expensive, so they are going to stock their shelves and dedicate that floorspace with the products that can maximize revenue.
At the GameStop in my town, they now dedicate more space to used console games then they do to PC games, and I'm in the same town as Geek-Central Purdue University. The same goes for the Best Buy in town.
Honestly, I prefer my Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox (there are advantages/disadvatages to all, no religous orthodoxy here) to my PC for many games, simply because it is simpler and I can sit down and play on my 36inch tv from my couch. Games like Civilization / Warcraft / almost any strategy game I prefer on the PC, but for things like Soul Calibur, Medal of Honor, Deus Ex, Final Fantasy, NFL 2K*, Knights of the Old Republic, I like the console.
And you know what? I bet 19 out of 20 people make the frozen lasagna instead.
You mean 19 out of 20 Americans. I'm not saying Americans are bad, stupid, or uncultured. I'm saying that it's not common in American society to devote a lot of time toward eating well, and it has been that way for decades. Becuase of this, most Americans don't know what eating well is. It's changing for the better, though.
I'm American, by the way. And I make my own lasagna.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Someone mark this jive turkey for trolling, we don't like his kind here.
"Nintendo is making a huge profit."
Not from GameCube, though - the profit is being driven by the Game Boy.
I know it was a joke, but any man that has to question his sexuality that much when it comes to playing a video game is both a huge sissy and probably gay to begin with. I feel sorry for the article writer, poor guy is pathetic.
...bugs me as well as some others, but let's look at Microsoft's record in various markets dominated by other companies:
0) Identify an important market (e.g. databases, web browsers, digital video, development tools, operating systems)
1) Release a product that sucks and no-one wants for that market (e.g. Access, IE, Video for Windows,
2) Lose money on it like there's no tomorrow.
3) Release a slightly improved version and give it away (Access, IE, VFW) or force people to buy it (development tools, Windows).
4) Kill off all your competitors. (Borland, NetScape, Apple, Borland, OS/2.)
5) Profit!
I think that 3 & 4 correspond to the ? in most dotcom business plans. The difference between the way MS works and the way most dotcoms work is step 0.
"Wait, wait, wait. So your name is 'Gay Fauker?'"
"*snickers*"
"Sufferin' succotash."
They profit on both the Gamecube and GBA systems.
Do you people realize that few companies have ever bounced back from a failure of a couple consoles.
1.) Sega... failed SegaCD, 32X, Dreamcast. Result... Many sega games available to other consoles
2.) Atari... failed later 8-bit systems, Jaguar. Result... Many atari exclusives like pitfall ended up on other systems.
Guess what... nintendo is on track right about now. And it's good news to see metroid + fzero on ps2.
Being a certified game geek, I found the article a very funny read. I'm surprised at how many of you took it seriously, or were offended at it's content (or lack thereof).
"Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space..."
My M.O. is to wait until a console is past it's prime and scoop it up for $50 at a garage sale or EBay and pick up games at $10-$14 a pop. This is what I've done with the PS and DreamCast (best console ever BTW). I even have an old Sega Genesis (which I got mainly for nostalgia)
I'll wait a couple of months for everyone to start dumping the there old GC to fund the new console they want for Christmas.
I don't keep up with game news anyway. I just like to play the games (as does my son). I get a cheap console that's new (to me) and lots of cool games that don't cost $50 each.
=Shreak
Try Phantasy Star Online. It's not technically a MMORPG, since you can only actually play the _battle_ part of the game with 3 other people at a time (though it's debatable whether that's better or worse than FF XI's policy of people being randomly placed on servers and never, ever meeting those on other servers). But there are a good number of classes, weapons, etc., and plenty of non-cheaters left.
The Xbox version is better because it has voice chat; although I have a Gamecube keyboard now, it's just too slow for things like "Hey, did anyone notice the Dark Bringer over here that's about to KILL YOU ALL while you're wasting time killing Claws?", or "You stupid chunk of tin, why the hell did you grab that Trifluid?[magic restoring item; androids have no magic]". However, cheating in the Xbox version is even worse than on the GameCube, it costs more (I think), and you can't play with people from other countries (who are often nicer than US gamers).
(Disclaimer: I don't have an Xbox myself.)
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Don'tcha mean conscience?
If it had been just another word in a sentence, I would have let you get away with it, but no. Not when you use it in a way as if you're defining it. That's a case when you really do need to spell it correctly. Besides, you didn't just get a letter or two wrong, you were completely off. No "n" sound. Not enough syllables... You got pretty close to conscious though, for what it's worth.
Given how much the author of the article rambles on about not wanting to appear gay, he sure is hot to whip out the penises and start waving them around.
:p
I don't know very many straight guys that go around making up lots of penis art unless it's a scribbled picture of a person next to a penis and an equals sign between them.
Has anyone else heard of this game coming out for the XBox?
No. Ye who bought X-Boxes, beware.
Beware says the buffer, for once upon a dream MS released DOS, and it worked. And next came Windows 3.1 and it also worked. And MS grew larger and more potent with it's market share. And then came Windows 95 and it did not work as well, but it would be fixed in the next version. And 98 came and BSODs abounded. And all the world put up with it, for it would be fixed soon, and all the games were for it. And then came the great plague of ME terror of the desktop. By then it was too late, and MS brought over their latest fix for NT, and called it 2000, and it was OK. But still it could not be perfect at it's release and 4 service packs were issued, 1 for each hundred critical flaws. And then came XP and it also required patching, for MS had lost the spirit of the engineer to a desire to gain market share.
So to, shall be the fate of the X-Box and console industry if Microsoft wins. You have been warned.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Myself, I'm still reeling that something from Pointless Waste of Time made Slashdot! This site is pure humor, filled with complete bullshit! Some of it is pure hilarity. You need to see their movie reviews-- in the Goofy Movie review the guy talks about a Vietnam battle scene.
I really love PWOT, and I can only assume that it is through editorial oversight (the kind we often see on Slashdot) that this actually made it as "news".
My stupid web site
I think its obiviously a joke.
fucking christ you retards, it's pointlesswasteoftime.com. i bet you all bought the 50 reasons why lotr sucks and the matrix articles hook line and sinker as well.
suck it.
They need to remove the x-box option to make room for the GBA.
You are jealous and yours must be the size of an ant.
I read the article (I know, against the rules), and I have to agree with many other posters that the author was slanted toward MS. Here's why:
XBox:
MS has been dumping money into XBox. Whether is succeeds or not is not up to the market. MS is betting on XBox, and considering how much money they're willing to spend it will be around for a while. XBox will die when MS decides its a loss they don't want to continue, or when people stop purchasing software or boxen. I feel that MS will give up before that happens since XBox is enjoying some popularity here in America.
Either way, Nintendo and Sony both benefit from MS's success or failure, as XBox is an experiment in my mind. Sony has SOE (Sony Online Entertainment), but as far as I can tell its populated mostly by Everquest variations and some PC games, its obvious Sony is playing it safe in this terrority with established subscription titles while MS is taking severe hits.
Sony:
Even though Sony has a hold on the market. Look at their hardware. The speed or graphics doesn't bother me, its the reliability. How many of you have had to purchase a new PS2 because it crapped out. Disc read errors anyone? I have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth since I'm on PS2 number 2. Sony's goal is similar goal to MS's, make the console the "everything box."
Let's take a closer look at this approach. DVD Player, DVD-RW, PVR, Console, CD Player, and MP3 Player. How cheap is this going to be? Its not that different from the PS2's capabilities, but Sony needed to use the cheapest parts possible to keep the PS2 under $300 when it came out. How cheap are the parts going to be for the PS3? This worries me. I haven't heard of any problems regarding XBox, and my GameCube hasn't given me any problems yet (I've had my GC and PS2 for the same amount of time almost).
Nintendo:
Nintendo isn't in severe trouble. GBA is holding them up and the GameCube isn't doing that bad either. Profits are being made. But that doesn't change the fact that the need some help in their library of games. It doesn't need GTA to be successfull. Nintendo's destiny is really uncertain in my mind since the GBA has no competitors and won't for another 2 years.
Upcoming games make the GC's future look bright. FF: Crystal Chronoicles, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Castlevania and True Crime: LA. Your major RPG, Adventure and Action titles are on the horizon. Even a GTA-like game (True Crime, check gamespot). So it will be interesting if people will invest in Nintendo to get their hands on these games.
Nintendo's concern will always be gaming, which is why they've always released great software to complement their great gaming hardware. In either case, Nintendo's software will always be around, so that makes me happy even if its on Sony hardware 10 years from now.
"Nintendo is kiddie!!!1"
"Teh Xbox is big!!!1"
"Sony liek hype!!!1"
A shame they didn't think of evaluating the ACTUAL GAMES available for each of the machines, or how they've performed commercially in the three main territories. Or failing that, tried to be funny.
At least the domain name was accurate.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
uh..... you lost me, oh wait now I get it. Bit of stretch don't you think? He would have to get a high score and then not go into medicine for that to work wouldn't he?
Yeah, the PC is a great gaming console, as long as you don't mind spending about 10 times as much money as you need to be to get working, non-laggy games. I also hope you don't mind the fact that the game still doesn't look as good as most of the console games out there, because it has to be designed for the lowest common denominator so that those of us who aren't Bill Gates can actually afford a system capable of playing it. Oh, and don't forget the total lack of stability, the annoying and often faulty software activation process, and the amount of space it's wasting on your hard disk.
Sounds fun to me!
btw: I think that infographic was already published in USA today. What, the perceived penis size one?
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Why oh why is there no way to play Shenmue on a PC?
The article totally missed it. The future of gaming will be handheld. I see the battlelines drawn: Nintendo (again the "pioneer") vs Nokia vs Some-Korean-Company. Gaming != 3D-FPS. There are plenty out there who would want nothing more than to play Tetris while waiting for the power to come back on. Wait, try plugging your PlayStation2 and 19" CRT to your UPS. Five minutes of gametime!
You know, This one?
Penny-Arcade has all the rebuttal that needs to be said on that topic.
Personally, I don't think Nintendo really cares if they beat the PS2 or the XBOX outside of Japan. Despite being a big Nintendo fan (since the SNES), I've always had the impression that the West (ok, everywhere _except_ Japan) are like second-rate citizens to Nintendo. Nintendo market their product at the Japanese, everyone else is just an afterthought. The problem is, Nintendo's 'pride' and 'tradition' (in typical Japanese style) has blinded them to what the rest of the world wants.
It's a sad thought that one of the greatest game companies of all time could miss the boat and dwindle over the next few years. Miyamoto, as brilliant as he is, needs to acknowledge the grown up world. That is, if Nintendo want to be successful in the western sense.
The most memorable games on my GameCube don't come from Nintendo, but from third-parties. Eternal Darkness and Super Monkey-Ball are the games me & my friends will remember most when the GameCube has long retired. Mario Sunshine had nothing on Mario 64 (at least Mario 64 kept me interested with different settings, Sunshine is all beaches and sand.... YAWN). The exception is Zelda: Wind Waker, which was awesome. These games could have easily been released on other, more technically capable consoles (I'm thinking of XBox here).
As for the 'XBox is just a PC' argument, who cares? By that logic, the GameCube is a somewhat glorified PowerPC Mac, while the PlayStation and PS2 are just MIPS workstations with inferior graphics hardware....
> > "Nintendo is making a huge profit."
;)
> Not from GameCube, though - the profit is being driven by the Game Boy.
Very true, but Nintendo does actually make a profit on the console and the games as well. Sony doesn't make as much profit on the games as Nintendo does (which is actually good for Sony as it allows more developers to make inventive games). Nintendo also has a large collection of first and second-party software titles that don't have a licensing fee, which represents extra profit. That is probably the thing (besides the GameBoy) keeping Nintendo alive at this point: They have the exclusives of the single best console game maker in the world, Nintendo.
Console-wise, Sony has to pay DVD licensing fees along with the extra expense of miscellaneous equipment (USB ports, etc.) that the PS2 has, although I believe those losses are offset by other cost-reducing measures. Overall, IIRC Sony makes either a small loss or a small profit on a console sale. Nintendo is the same way from what I understand, they make if anything a very small profit, but no more than a very small loss. What surprises me is the difference in quality between the Nintendo hardware and the Sony hardware. A well-made GCN game looks simply astonishing compared to a well-made PS2 game, and on a cheaper system to boot!
The basic point I'm trying to make is that although Nintendo is raking in most of their profit from the GBA, that doesn't mean that the GameCube is a money-sink, they simply make (much) less profit on it than from the GBA.
I think the real trick is being behind enough in games when you're ready to make a game purchase. It isn't that I don't want the games when they come out, it's just that I wanted another game when it came out and it is currently a meager $20-$30. I can spend my time on that game I wanted previously and be in the same position later on with the currently new game. I hope I can resist the urge to drop this trend when I get a disposable income.
I think your observation about buying new hardware may be pretty well on. If I could get four games I wanted to play for a while on a different console along with the console or five games on my current console I'd probably pick option one. Of course, that would require a decent amount to spend on games at once. Reduce the amount you have to spend to $170 and you're looking at 3 new $50 games and some change or a new console and one game. Suddenly it isn't as attractive. Also making somebody of the new attention deficit generation save enough not to blow the $50 as soon as they have it could be a trick.
If not now, when?
you mentioned golf, and although I'm sure you are enjoying the animated goodness of mario golf as much as the gameplay, I just wanted to point out that EA's Tiger Woods: PGA Tour 2003 (and soon, 2004) is a *kickass* golf game. It takes everything you've come to expect in a golf game, and chuckles at the simplicity of those expectations. It is far more real, far more polished, and far more enjoyable than any golf game before it. Check it out!
:)
p.s. The PC version of Tiger Woods 2003 is not representative of the quality of the GC title. I don't know what happened exactly, but I have a feeling that they coded it for console play and then gave it to a first-year compsci class for a midterm project. Be Warned, and try the demo if you don't believe me
You wait until the games you want drop in price?
....why....that's just damned un-American!
We gotta have it now, Now, NOW! A game ain't worth having if all your friends had it first. Damn, I thought that was simple common sense.
this article is *REALLY* funny.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Yeah, I know. I feel bad about it too. :) Damn my inability to consume fast enough. However, sometimes I shell out the big bucks for games. I'll get Soul Calibur 2 within a week of its release. I got Final Fantasy X when it was expensive too. Its just most of the time I'm behind enough that I can take my pick of games I really want and some are at the cheap end.
If not now, when?
It seemed obvious to me that it was a joke. Surely the smartest people on the Internet aren't so gullible as not to have known that!
You die too easily.
I cant believe some of you people take that so seriously! Its a joke! The name of the site is POINTLESSWASTEOFTIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! dont take everything so seriously.