Slashdot Mirror
Console Price Cuts And The Holiday Season
Thanks to CNN Money for their article discussing the state of the console market heading into the Xmas season. The author discusses the lack of major price-cuts for the PS2 and Xbox, suggesting: "Sony feels it can make more money this holiday season from its existing customer base", and speculating: "It's more and more likely that the reason we haven't seen price cuts from Sony and Microsoft is their next generation machines won't hit stores until 2006." If this is the case, it's suggested that "...the life cycle of this [hardware] generation will be the longest of any in the industry's short history", perhaps surprising considering rapidly advancing technology.
"...the life cycle of this [hardware] generation will be the longest of any in the industry's short history", perhaps surprising considering rapidly advancing technology.
What will a PS3 or Ybox or GameCylinder be able to do that current consoles can't? Higher resolution video? Better audio? More/better networking?
There's little need for the next generation - games already look about as good as can be expected for a normal TV display. Why rush the next generation of consoles when the returns (for extra power) are diminishing to a point it's not trivial (for the average person, not for you) to tell the difference between the Dreamcast and Xbox versions of the same game?
As long as I can play my ps1/ps2 games on my ps3 I will be happy. If only Nintendo would add a port for NES carts... I could finally mothball my old system.
I've had this same conversation a lot. I think there's one area that CAN actually use the increased processing power and even larger hard drives...and that's game AI. In the current generation, fighting games only remember what's happened in the current fight. It'd be a lot more entertaining if the games could analyze my playstyle and come up with a unique style to counter-act mine. I'm sure other genres could benefit from this also (FPS, RTS, etc.)
That's a pretty interesting quote, when you consider that Sony's Kunitake Ando claimed that the emergence of the XBox would shorten the video game lifecycle. Here's a good quote from the ZDNet Article
To be honest, I think that this might have been true, but the sour economy in the USA has probably had as big an effect on the console lifecycle than anything. As far as price cuts are concerned, all three companies are waiting to see if the Gamecube price drop translates to a spike in sales. I mean, what's the point in a pricecut if the cube doesn't do any better at a $80 price advantage?
My hunch: There will be a spike, and Xbox and Gamecube will be $149 by mid november.
That seems speculative. I'd be surprised if at least *one* next gen console doesn't come out for the 2005 Holiday season (with, of course, the PSP coming out for the 2004 season), but I'd bet on more. Of course, we won't know for sure until E3 next year -- which will likely have tons of announcements.
Nintendo doesn't have to add a port. You can already play NES games on the GameCube. Investigate the following combo:
Atari 2600: 1977 to ~1984 (~7 yrs)
Nintendo Famicom: 1983 to 1990 (7 yrs)
Sega SG-x000 (later Sega Master System): 1983 to ~1988 (5 yrs)
Sega MegaDrive/Genesis: 1988 to 1994 (6 yrs)
Nintendo Super Famicom: 1990 to 1996 (6 yrs)
Sony Playstation: 1994 to (1999, but now rereleased as PSOne today)
Sega Saturn 1994 to 1998 (4 yrs)
Nintendo 64: 1996 to 2001 (5 yrs)
Sega Dreamcast 1998 to 2003 (5 yrs)
Sony Playstation 2: 1999 to ?
Nintendo GameCube: 2001 to ?
Microsoft Xbox: 2001 to ?
The video game industry is well over 30 years old, with the Magnavox Odyssey released in January 1972. It is just plain wrong to say the video game industry is young.
As for this being the longer generation, that's a hard claim to pin down. You can't really say "X generation lasted Y years" because consoles are not released all at once. The 8-bit generation either lasted until the introduction of the Sega Genesis in 1988, or it ended when Nintendo began selling the Super Famicom in 1990? (Or you could even say it never really ended, since Nintendo was still producing Famicoms long after 1990.)
I suppose you could say the Sega Dreamcast marks the start of this generation in 1998, and then if the first next-generation console comes out in 2006 it would make this the longest run without new blood. But wait, couldn't you say the Microsoft Xbox is "next-generation" along with the GameCube, having almost double the power of the Dreamcast and PS2?
Or you could ignore all of this, realize that we're all just waiting for "the next big thing" and start saving your pennies now. ; )
This site and Google are your friends.
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
still missing and due to the relative low resolution of the TV Sets that hurts quite much.
I am rather surprised of how nobody seems to "know" when the next generation consoles will be out.
When I spoke to some Xbox developers, they told us that they received a test machine (standard PC) about two years before the official launch. Then some other test hardware dropped in from time to time.
Considering that developing a game takes around two years, we should be getting indications in advance. The developer scene for Xbox is growing bigger (google for xbox development), so I expect them to have a difficult time keeping this one secret.
To show off a new console would be hard without cool games. Simply porting existing games would be too easy, since you wouldn't use all the potential in the console and miss the cool-factor. The least thing to do would be to create new graphics to make up for the advances in the graphics chip.
The same thing goes for the GameCube and the PS2
---
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up space in the middle
"perhaps surprising considering rapidly advancing technology. "
No, not surprising at all. Consoles are so powerful today that the visual difference from game to game is limited mainly by the artists. There's enough you can do in real time that a doubling or quadrupling in processor speed isn't going to make $300 worth of difference to the consumer.
The next big upgrade people will be excited about is the ability to do CG in real-time comparable to the stuff we've seen come out of Pixar. Perfectly smooth, anti-aliased, nice shadows, bright color, etc. Unfortunately, consoles are still a ways away from that. What's worse is that when they do reach that point, then what?
I'm not the least bit surprised that niether Sony nor Microsoft are backburnering their next consoles. Unless they can deliver a 'holy shit!' product, they're going to find themselves nicely saturated. They need to be careful, though, they're leaving the door wide open for Nintendo. And those dudes sure like to innovate. Who here wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Nintendo's successor to the GameCube was portable? THat may not sound so exciting in light of Sony's PSP, but then again it would have Nintendo's support fully behind it as well as third parties dedicated to it.
"Derp de derp."
The Intellivision got an upgrade to add VOICE!
.
The NES had many MBC upgrades, one of which quadrupled the resolution!
You got the SNES/Genesis because the sprites looked so much better, the controller had more buttons and the music was tons better.
With the PSX/Saturn came CDs and 3D. Wow!
With the DC/PS2/Etc. came... BETTER 3D and uh... DVD? MS added a harddrive. .
Aside from polishing off little things with consoles, there's no real limits they can't reach if they just don't use too many polygons.
But wherever Mario is, I'll go.
It half officially has been dropped to $150. BUT you can't buy it at $150. In fact if you go to your local store, you'll find it hard to find the blue box anymore (which is still labeled at $179 if you can still find it - Old stock).
But the new stock comes in a black box, bundled with a crap game (Why can't they throw in a good game?!?), and a network adapter, for $200.
I love this marketing ploy, lower the price, but remove the product, so its cheaper, but the customer has to pay more (for more stuff of course, but I personally wasn't interested in the network adapter or game, I just want to play FIFA at home with my friends...).
I hate it when I do that.
"Gamecube" should be PS2. Argh.
Not true in the US.
The regular old blue-boxed PS2's are still in many stores (at least here in NY), and they're not disappearing anytime soon since the new models have just come out in the US (the ones that offer progressive-scan DVD playback and the ability to read +/- DVD discs).
PS2s are still $180 or $200 depending on whether you get the broadband adapter or not.
Since this thread has quickly turned into this anyway, here's what I think the industry should be aiming for in its next releases.
I'm no lawyer, but I think the legal "copying" issue here is small-to-non-existent since the person asking for the solution clearly owns the cartridges already, so ROM images of their own cartridges would seem to be a legitimate thing to posess. I'm speaking in relative terms, if not in absolute terms, sinnce many (most?) people download or otherwise copy ROM images without owning the cartridge at all, and that's were you have a reasonable claim that Nintendo and the publishers and retailers are being abused.
The other cool thing about doing it this way is once the ROMs are flashed to a 256MB (or even 512MB) cartridge (this is done once only, with easy-to-use Windows or Linux software), you can simply select the game to play from an on-screen menu of all your cartridges (100's if you've got them). No cart-swapping. Less wear & tear.
And no crappy NES controllers to break down!
The next generation of consoles (or gen after) will, likely, have movie quality graphics. IE, Gollum rendered in real-time on your home console as you make him throw rocks at frodo to get that damn precioussss back.
...and I didnt even mention the in-console standard physics engines or other such ideas coming into play.
This is an amazing accomplishment, but it introduces an unparalleled level of complexity. The industry is simply not going to have time to make as many games... unless...
They develop actors and sets. Dont be suprised if, say, Mitsurugi from Soul Calibur becomes the next "Standard" action hero for a bunch of Japanese samurai games. Hes already got a super-complex model of him ready to go. In fact, were already seeing this, with Nina (tekken) getting her own game.
While it will be interesting to see this development, there is the worry of a stagnation of game types. The "Time To Crate" factor may come into play here, to an almost unbearable level. While tweaks will be available, its quite possible that the door frame in a horror game will look exactly the same in an action game, or RPG. Simply to keep production costs down.
Tweaking and adjusting styles will be where the real gold shines in on future games. Sure, we will still get creative games like Rez, but the standard-type games will become more like Movies.
no