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Xbox - Past, Present, And Future
Thanks to EGM for their interview with Microsoft's Ed Fries, discussing the state of the Xbox. He talks about the specialization of Microsoft's first-party Xbox publishing efforts, saying: "When we were starting, not only were we learning about how to be a console publisher, but we were also trying to make sure we had games in every genre because we really didn't know what kind of third-party support we were gonna get." Fries also quibbles with Nintendo's lack of voice acting in their games, mentioning: "someone asked [Miyamoto and Iwata] why none of their games had voices. And they talked about cost and the time and trouble to localize it... and I just felt like I was listening to silent-movie directors talking [about how films work fine without sound]", and arguing: "I feel like that's just part of the price of doing business nowadays, and it's something everyone should be doing."
Games without voice acting can be cool too ofcourse, it's just that in some games it adds up to the action. When you're making millions on a game, i'm sure you can fit in a few people to say something...
On the other hand, my game experience is not dependent on voices, it's dependent on the look and feel of a game...
Voice acting is great! - *IF* you can skip it ;-)
Compare this with some of the excellent writing on Animal Crossing. I'm 100% behind spending that money on good writers and not on mediocre voice talent.
m.
"Sebastian you're in a mess. They called you King of all the Hipsters, is it true or are you still the Queen?" -- B
Nintendo has quite a lot of niche games like Zelda and Metroid -- neither of these has any voiceovers (apart from a few sentences in the intro to Metroid Prime), and they work just fine without them.
Many would probably think that Zelda was just plain wrong if it had voices. Zelda has such a long history that you've made yourself a picture of Link in your mind, and a voice would disturb that picture. The Wind Waker works just fine with just grunts and shouts for expressions, since the faces of the characters are incredibly good at showing emotion.
And in the Metroid games there's never anyone to talk to anyway. :-)
A very underrated game is Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube, witch has voiceover. And it's not crappy Resident Evil-style voices either, it's real good. Characters actually sound like they care for what they are doing, though the main bad guy does get a bit over the top sometimes...
Leveling up builds character.
OK, this is a new one. I mean, I've read more anti-Nintendo stuff than anyone sane should have to read, but I've never heard Nintendo criticized for their lack of voice acting before.
On top of that, I have trouble thinking of a game that anyone ever said "Yeah, the voice acting on that game was great! Buy the game for the voice acting!" Kingdom Hearts is the closest to that I can come up with.
And why is Microsoft doing the criticism? DO they really think they have more to gain by attacking Nintendo than by going after Sony? Sony is at least pursuing the same market they are - Nintendo is not. If they manage to get Nintendo out of the business, it will probably not substantively increase their sales.
Some days, I think small niche products offend Microsoft more than actual large competition. I wonder why that is.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
OK, this is a new one. I mean, I've read more anti-Nintendo stuff than anyone sane should have to read, but I've never heard Nintendo criticized for their lack of voice acting before.
He is not bashing Nintendo, he is just disagreeing with their attitude towards voice acting.
On top of that, I have trouble thinking of a game that anyone ever said "Yeah, the voice acting on that game was great! Buy the game for the voice acting!" Kingdom Hearts is the closest to that I can come up with.
And your point is what...?
And why is Microsoft doing the criticism? DO they really think they have more to gain by attacking Nintendo than by going after Sony? Sony is at least pursuing the same market they are - Nintendo is not. If they manage to get Nintendo out of the business, it will probably not substantively increase their sales.
This isn't MS attacking Nintendo at all, and you seem to be reading far too much into it. He just disgrees with their attitude towards voice acting.
Some days, I think small niche products offend Microsoft more than actual large competition. I wonder why that is.
And some days I think that people get far too het up about such small things.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
Localization is difficult and expensive to get right. The only real way to do it is to get someone who's very fluent in both languages AND regional dialects and get them to translate. Then, if your not using synthesized voices, you have to hire voice artists (who also speak the target language and possibly the dialect so you get the pronunciation right) to re-record every line. Some of these games have HUGE voice files. Thankfully, software to render voices in real-time is comming along pretty well.
Oh, and All Your Base Are Belong To Us!
Almost every interview with XBox people that makes it onto /. contains a few lines in which they make comments about how Nintendo is hopelessly behind the times, doomed, unworthy, etc.
This is a pattern with them - they trash talk Nintendo. They do it professionally, but it's still clearly trash talk.
And, I mean, really, the silent-movie directors analogy seems to pretty clearly signal a "They are going to get left behind because of their lack of voice acting."
And that's just ridiculous. Nintendo got left behind because of a bad decision on hardware. They will remain behind because they are not altering their software design to compete directly with Sony.
They will not care, because they are capable of looking at the other tech company that has any sort of obsession with multiple colors of cases, and realizing that, hey, maybe being a niche product isn't all that bad.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
And why is Microsoft doing the criticism? Do they really think they have more to gain by attacking Nintendo than by going after Sony?
If you were to actually read the article you would learn that he has a lot of respect for Nintendo.
Here, to save you some clicking:
EF: [But] you asked me before what's the last game I spent a lot of time on--that'd be the new Pokemon.
EGM: Pokemon?
EF: Yeah. But then, you know, I've been playing games forever, and some of my favorite games of all time are Nintendo games. I have no problem loving a Nintendo product, because there's a lot there to love. But when you ask me about the future and where things are going, maybe [Nintendo and I] don't agree on that.
See, in the real world, it is possible to both like and dislike aspects of something. All in all he comes accross as a thoughtful, reasonable person who is very interested in pushing games as an artform. It was pretty interesting.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
Play a Sega game that has voice acting. Say a Sonic Adventure game. You're going to cringe every time someone talks.
Sega's hires two types of voice actors: those who do not know what inflection is, and those who use it in all the wrong places.
I will say though, the House of the Dead games wouldn't be as fun without the really bad voice acting.
As to voice acting and Nintendo games, I think a large part of the problem is if Nintendo did give Link a voice, if it came out any less than perfect, the bitching they'd hear would make the cell-shading complaints look like nothing.
The reviews that said Samus needed a voice are just plain stupid. There isn't anyone she could possibly talk to.
I think whenever Nintendo finally gets around to making some new characters, that's when they should go with voices - if it fits the game.
And that was my point - aside from the way in which this particular bit of trash talk is utterly illogical, I don't understand why they're going after Nintendo with such vigor - it's far from their major competitor, and it's not as though Nintendo's audience is going to go XBox anytime soon - XBox has very little to offer the gamer who really enjoys Metroid Prime, Zelda, and Eternal Darkness. It's riding on Live. And Nintendo is so far from similar to that strategy that I fail to see why Microsoft would think it's customers are "in play".
Philip Sandifer's academic website
I don't think Nintendo got left behind by bad hardware at all, they just failed to release enough mainstream (aka mindless cookie cutter games), unless you're talking about the N64. That thing was plagued by both cartridges and not enough mainstream games.
"The question for me is how much are Sony and Nintendo really going to be [competing] head-to-head. Because the more and more I hear about [the PSP], it sounds like a [more] expensive machine. They've gotta spin that disc [media], which means they've gotta have good battery technology. They're gonna have [wireless networking], the screen, and everything else...it sounds like an expensive device." Sounds like this guy doesn't think the hand warmer is going to be very successful against the GBA.
I was referring to the utter disaster of canning their planned CD-based ad-on to the Super Nintendo that they were developing with Sony.
Sony released it anyway. You may have heard of it. It was called the Playstation.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
In something like Zelda, you can only read a couple of lines at a time and it is far too slow to try and skip ahead with what they are saying, especially if you didn't mean to talk to that person again.
You're complaining about Zelda, and then you defend Morrowind? In Zelda, you just push the A button a bunch of times and they shut up. Maybe B shuts them up immediately, I dunno, but in any event I do not remember ever being annoyed by the conversation system of any Zelda game. (Sailing around empty oceans in wind waker or building experience in zelda 2--okay that sucks.)
Morrowind, on the other hand, was a nightmare. They had that terrible "question" system, so that you could ask every single person about every single stupid thing your avatar had ever heard in the entire universe, but 99% of the time every character would say the exact same text that every other character in the universe would say.
In fact, Morrowind, and Neverwinter Nights actually vindicate the stance of Miyamoto et. al.. I own both of those games, but I've played very little of them, because I was completely put off by all the meaningless text, cookie cutter plots, and general busy-work philosophy of gaming and narrative design that went into making them. (I also own BG2, and never finished it, but the dialogue in that game actually seemed interesting).
It's true that if you take a great game and add great voices to it without making it any more cumbersome than sure that's just dandy. (I can't think of any examples of that happening, but perhaps you can.) But Nintendo is correct to realize that voice work is a massive new cost to a game that doesn't automatically increase the quality of the final product.
This whole discussion shows me why Microsoft is dependent on second and third party developers to make good software for it (which is no big deal, Sony is too.) Microsoft has a typical business mentality that it can just throw money into a process and expect better quality products to result. But Art and Games are differnt from Operating Systems. The more money and investment you throw into a project, the higher the risk involved with making it, and therefore you become less willing to allow your staff to be creative and take the risks necessary to produce a truly ground-breaking game. Nintendo has been around the block a few times, and wisely understands the tradeoff between willingness to take risks and an emphasis on shiny graphics technology and voices.
The part of the article that grabbed my attention was when he was talking about Psychonauts. Here is what he said: "...it's great to have something in our portfolio that's just really unique and artistically challenging and not so blatantly commercial.".
This is an attitude I would like to see expressed more often by the people holding the purse strings. One of the ways that Hollywood maintains legitimacy and dodges censors is by having some portion of its annual output be more 'artistic' films. It gives the medium legitimacym and you never know when one of the art films will become a blockbuster.
It would be nice if the majoy games studios took a similar attitude and funded a certain number of art games a year. It would help in the arguments about whether or not gaming is a legitimate artistic medium, for sure.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
...for voice localization: translate the subtitles, DON'T CHANGE the japanese voices. Not only it's cheaper, but it also keeps purist h4rdcore gam3rz happy!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Some games make good use of VAs, most don't. I really don't find VAs to be a selling point of a game. I'm prefectly fine with just hearing Link scream as he races towards the bottom of a canyon in OoT.
And if there's voice acting, how can I quickly get through the scene if I'm playing through again? In Zelda games I just press A or B repeatedly so I can continue playing... will that end if it starts using VAs?
(Slightly OT: I've found that if you hold R + B (could be A, I sold my copy a while back) and using the alternating button to move while reading text in OoT, the text pops up a lot faster. Or maybe I just got bored waiting for it to do that and I forced myself to believe that.)
Heh, I can't believe no one's pointed this out yet (maybe everyone's forced themselves to forget), but Zelda HAS had Voice Acting!
Anyone recall a little defunct system called the CD-i (IIRC) made by Phillips? It had not one, but THREE Legend of Zelda games, all of which were apparently quite bad. I know one, and I think another, had voice acting.
Or maybe we should just sweep that one under the rug and pretend the games were meant to be fire fuel.
Nintendo is right. Most of the voice acting in games is terrible. I'd rather have none than have to listen to half-assed voice over. Look at anime. 99% of the dubs are terrible, grating messes. Even Disney has a hard time creating a good anime dub. Until people are willing to take the time and spend the money to create excellent vocal tracks, they should just skip it.
If you would actually read the interview, you would see he is not taking a pot-shot at Nintendo.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
(1) Them attempting to have Xbox games in every genre is *driving away* 3rd party publishers. There's no incentive to develop a type of game for that platform if Microsoft already has it covered. A competent game development team would probably be able to make a better *game* than a Microsoft internal team (who are a bunch a monkeys, I tell ya) - but they have no hopes in competing based on the *marketing* and money that MS likes to throw at their own titles. 3rd parties can't even compete on the branding: for example, Microsoft's "Xbox Sports Network" titles. At least Sony had the decency to separate theirs ("989 Studios").
You are talking out of your arse. Making games in all the genres wouldn't drive anyone away at all. The PS2 has a game in every genre, and that has the biggest 3rd party support out of all them.
And your marketting comment is stupid, as it is the same for ALL the console makers.
2) Microsoft's Xbox team repeatedly and consistently ignored 3rd party developer input when they were designing the Xbox. Witness - the Xbox controller. Nobody outside of Microsoft liked it. Microsoft asked developers repeatedly, developers repeatedly told Microsoft that it sucked. And they were completely ignored - probably because some high up egomaniac like Ed Fries greenlighted it and their underlings were all "yes" men and didn't want to say that it sucked.
That's probably why they developed the Controller S.
(3) Xbox Live. You have no option of ignoring Microsoft's "Live" system if you want to make an online game. Everything *must* go through Microsoft, and gamers must pay Microsoft $5 a month for the ability to play online. Which immediately makes trying to develop or sell an online game far, far worse for a developer. Doubly so for a persistent online game or MMORPG because MS scalps $5 a month before you get a chance to ask customers to pay for access to your game. And Xbox games aren't allowed to talk to other systems. Which means no cross-platform Xbox and PS2/Gamecube/PC games to boost online population.
The reason is MUST got through Microsofts system is so everything works together. The Friends List is universal and so is your Gamertag. The XBL fee doesn't make it worse for a developer to sell a game, because the games have significant offline content to them. If anything, they will sell more because those with XBL tend to buy most of the XBL games.
The chances of compatible cross-platform online titles are extremely remote anyway. And your comment about the people online pretty much proves you haven't even got XBL.
(4) Voice acting. In multiplayer games there should be no voice, other players is all you should hear talking. In single player - fine, whatever. I don't hate it, but don't care for it either. I don't care what language it's in (with subtitles), so long as it's not *bad* acting and I can have them shut the hell up when I'm tired at the end of the day and just want to kill something.
Erm, and what online games have this voice acting you are going on about? The only one I know of is Ghost Recon where the soldiers might quietly say "Got him!" when they shoot someone.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
I can think of lots of games. When the CD ROM was new, having a talkie on your label was a major marketing and selling point. I remember buying Sam & Max and MI2 on CD ROM just to hear the voice acting, even though I already owned the games on disk.
Among game manufacturers, MS has the unique position that several of their top tier developers and titles were envisioned in English. They can begin development of the game in English, and not have to worry about alienating a significant number of game players who they could otherwise easily reach, nor do they need to worry about staffing people proficient in english. This comes at the cost of ignoring markets like Japan, which are smaller and have protective tarrifs in place.
Contrast this with Sony and Nintendo. They have a solid market in Japan, which they cannot simply ignore. There's less taxes, less headaches, and they have far more public access. But they cannot ignore the world market as much as the American film industry does. So they can either make the voice acting in all Japanese and leave it up to their foreign subsideraries to localize, they can alienate their home market and start out in English and do english only, or they can design to reduce the amount of localization needed.
This isn't just about voice, its about affordable universal appeal. One of the best movies ever was made in Japan, but the language in which it was filmed has certainly harmed its marketablity and audience appeal.
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Actually, in nearly all the Xbox staffer articles I ever read, many completely admit to owning multiple systems and playing games on those system (particularly Ken Lobb). Moreover, while many of these guys will quite gladly point out sales figures, many of them also seem to really admire Nintendo. I can't say they have the same respect for Sony, but I don't think they've ever really "badmouthed" Sony or Nintendo in the sense that they are competitors.
Since we're english-speaking, we see many more articles and interviews with Xbox officials. The ones with Nintendo's in a post-Peter Moore world are little more than press releases. I would venture to say you can't find one interview in which a Sony or Nintendo rep admits to playing one of their competitor's systems or games.
For games that need it, voice overs really help lend to the immersion. While there is a prevalence of bad voice acting in the industry, I think that will change with time as it becomes more commonplace.
For a game that needs it, to avoid it because of the hassle is stupid. There are plenty of talented amateur and professional actors that can do this work for much less than the cost of hiring some big name movie star. Local theatre groups or college drama departments are good places to look.
I'd love to do voice over work, but I have no contacts in the game industry nor a resume of voice work. I do have a great deal of stage experience and a voice I'm told records well. I don't really know where to start to get into this kind of work, though. I'd certainly work for less than Dennis Hooper!
Actually, I remember reading once that one of the Nintendo inventor types really admired the Eyetoy. And I think I heard Miyamoto say he liked Ico.
2) The controller was certainly the cause of much mirth among the press, but I think the level of vitriol was out of all proportion to the actual weakness of the device. Believe it or not, there are some people (myself included) who prefer the bigger controller, and yes, I own all three major consoles, and have both the original and (smaller) controller-S for Xbox - I choose to use the bigger controller when I can.
3) That cost is amortized across every Live game you play, of course. So unless your customer is going to be buying Live just to play your game, it's not really a factor. Most game developers I know (and I know quite a few) like Live quite a lot, because it handles a whole bunch of stuff for them. It's easier to bring an online title to market, because you don't have to worry about matchmaking and voice-chat and cross-game invitation, because it's all handled by the Live service. Now, maybe if you're EA you have a different perspective, because you pissed hundreds of millions of dollars down the tubes on EA.com and probably think that should entitle you to some kind of competitive advantage for having shelled out on that infrastructure, but for other developers Live is a pretty good thing.
4) Voice acting should be used where it's appropriate, and hopefully done well when it is used. I think proscribing that it's okay in this genre but not in that one is a bit too rigid. Fries's is bemoaning the fact that quite often the decision is not based on whether it's right for the game, but on cost.
Microsoft, like all businesses, cares about their own success. Just like Sony. Just like Nintendo. What's your point?
On top of that, I have trouble thinking of a game that anyone ever said "Yeah, the voice acting on that game was great! Buy the game for the voice acting!"
I think you need to play more games, ASAP. Sure, most gamers don't buy a game specifically for the voicework. Contrary to popular 'hardcore gamer' opinion, the same is true for graphics. But like great graphics or great music, great voice acting adds immensely to the experience. That you haven't encountered many games that exhibit this is rather frightening. Get out of Square-country much?
And like many others noted, RTFA next time, please. Fries is very willing to give Nintendo props.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
It is hard to take a serious, fair look at Nintendo and comment that they aren't behind the times when it comes to gaming. The best you can do to defend them is to argue that it makes for better games, or that the old games were better, new features like online gaming aren't fun, etc. I mean, why isn't the new Mario Kart playable online? Nintendo has the hardware to do so available. Do you know how many people would buy a GC just for that? Just the network effects of online gaming alone can boost game and console sales massively.
And the reason this type of stuff keeps coming up in MS interviews is because the media ask MS about this stuff - the controversy is good for pagehits. You don't see Ed Fries bringing it up first, do you? And every MS interview I have seen is overwhelmingly respectful towards Nintendo, even if they do disagree with them (which is still allowed, right?).
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
The second rule of Slashdot: Nothing good regarding MS can be mentioned on Slashdot.
That INCLUDES the XBox, people!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Just remember to salt the fries.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I disagree. This is very entertaining reading; like a sub-intellectual train wreck. :)
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
2) The controller was certainly the cause of much mirth among the press, but I think the level of vitriol was out of all proportion to the actual weakness of the device. Believe it or not, there are some people (myself included) who prefer the bigger controller, and yes, I own all three major consoles, and have both the original and (smaller) controller-S for Xbox - I choose to use the bigger controller when I can.
Exactly. I get sick of people assuming that everyone's hands are the same size, that I, for some reason, would want to play games with a controller made for a child's hands. I had to buy the larger controller for my XBox because it came with the controller-S. Thankfully, I had already played co-op Halo with a friend of mine, and used the full-sized controller (because he, unlike most men I know, has very small hands and prefers the S), and knew that I would prefer it. If I hadn't, I'd be complaining about the S to no end, which has some really poor choices for button placement.
3) That cost is amortized across every Live game you play, of course. So unless your customer is going to be buying Live just to play your game, it's not really a factor.
Exactly (again). I don't have Live for pretty much this reason, as I have few (or no) games that use it. On the other hand, MS seems to be willing to bundle trial subscriptions now, so when I pick up Crimson Skies it may be time to put the consoles on the network to give it a try. Since I plan on getting a 2nd GameCube if/when the Zelda bundle comes out (I wanted a 2nd Cube for the bedroom anyway, Zelda only sweetens the deal) I'll have another reason to put the consoles on the network (can just see it now playing Mario Kart over the network for more players or just to get away from split-screen).
As for voice acting, I see it as a simple matter of the two companies (MS and Nintendo) looking at it differently. MS may see it as necessary for their titles, and in many ways they might be right. Nintendo probably sees more of the bad side of voice acting, and realizes that there's a significant cost to doing it well. Additionally, look at how many titles MS didn't even bother translating for Japan. It's not like MS is actually bothering with the cost of translation, let alone Japanese voice acting, for all of their games, so they shouldn't expect someone else to do the same for MS' native market. At the very least, Nintendo has been doing a great job on their translations, regardless of whether or not their games have any voice acting (and as has been said many times, who really thinks putting voices on classic characters is a good idea?).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
And that was my point - aside from the way in which this particular bit of trash talk is utterly illogical, I don't understand why they're going after Nintendo with such vigor - it's far from their major competitor, and it's not as though Nintendo's audience is going to go XBox anytime soon
I think it's because, when it all comes down to it, Nintendo are the only ones Microsoft is really competing with, even though their lineup targets Sony more than Nintendo.
The fact is that Nintendo's outselling Microsoft worldwide, and that Nintendo's recent price-drop means they could start outselling Microsoft in the US, as well. This puts Microsoft in direct competition with Nintendo, rather than Sony, which is far ahead of both companies in terms of sales (though Nintendo occasionally passes Sony in home console sales in Japan).
The XBox and the Cube are squaring off for the 2nd console slot, but Microsoft is trying not to give people that image (with their pricing and by aiming their titles towards Sony's user base, though the latter gives it away pretty well). People that already own a PS2 are a much larger market than people that don't own a PS2 but are currently interested in a current-generation console. Nintendo might be pulling in a few customers that haven't bought a PS2 just because of their price, but overall the majority of their customers already own a PS2. The number of people willing to put down the money for an XBox that don't already own a PS2 is dwindling daily, and has been since the box was released. The XBox is riding on a handful of exclusive titles and it's Live play, and this differentiates it from Nintendo much more than Sony. Both Sony and Nintendo have more exclusive titles than Microsoft, and Sony's getting advertising from EA just because EA won't go online with anyone but Sony (and they mention it in all of their ads for their online games now). Therefore, Sony and Microsoft are clearly slugging it out in the online space, which is an even smaller market (the segment of people that own consoles that want to play online), but the online angle is really what would bring players to XBox over the Cube as a second console, because based on exclusive titles, unless you're really hurting for Halo, KOTOR, and Crimson Skies (1 of which is and 1 of which will be a PC title), you'll probably have a better selection on the Cube, and the multi-platform stuff from EA is only online on the PS2 (negating the Live bonus for EA fans).
If Microsoft was even close to the sales numbers of Sony, it's much more likely that Sony would get a mention on every one of MS' interviews, even if it seems fairly innocent the way this one appears to be on the surface. MS knows that as long as Nintendo's in play they won't have much room to compete for the #1 spot, because Nintendo's the type of company that can pull themselves back up to #1 if they get things right, and they are making money on their system, which gives them a leg up with shareholders that Microsoft isn't going to have for some time.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
"You are talking out of your arse. Making games in all the genres wouldn't drive anyone away at all. The PS2 has a game in every genre, and that has the biggest 3rd party support out of all them.
And your marketting comment is stupid, as it is the same for ALL the console makers."
The PS2 has the biggest 3rd party support because (1) the PS2 has the biggest market share, and (2) Sony aggressively promotes third party developers. Since the Xbox is losing the marketshare war bady, you'd think that they'd be more aggressive in promoting sales of third party products instead of trying to capture all of the software revenue themselves. IMO, Nintendo pretty much proved that a console without third party support was doomed, no matter how good the first-party software is.
"The reason is MUST got through Microsofts system is so everything works together."
The question is whether you want all Xbox games to "work together" or whether you want all players of a game, across all consoles and operating systems, to "work together". Personally, I think that when people are playing Everquest they're thinking about playing Everquest, not that they're PS2 (or PC or Mac) owners, and it would be insane to require them to log into a Sony (or Microsoft or Apple) controlled online service.
"The chances of compatible cross-platform online titles are extremely remote anyway."
Actually, most cross-platform networked games are compatible across platforms.
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It does not mean that--I liked System Shock 2 and Deus Ex for their non-linear RPG aspects, because the text and story in those games was actually kind of interesting.
As I said, in the likes of Morrowind, BG2 and NWN I can skim read the text and exit it all by clicking the 'Cancel' button. In something like Zelda I cannot - they have to finish their little speech first, and even then that requires me to keep pressing the A button to scroll it two lines at a time.
To me, having to skim through the text and realize that I've already skimmed through this text 20 times already is infinitely more annoying than having to press A a bunch of times.
Your last sentence emphasises why MS has to rely on 3rd party so much - because they are just starting out. Nintendo certainly didn't have such a pool of development talent when they started out.
The analogy is ridiculous--Nintendo certainly couldn't rely on contracting out to an already existing billion dollar industry of game developers. I am just saying that it is perfectly okay for Microsoft to have no understanding of what goes into a good game because they aren't in the business of making games. If they were primarily game developers, they would see that throwing more money and resources onto a project in the form of better graphics and sound isn't always a recipe for success.
I don't really understand what you are trying to say with your comment on shiny graphics technology and voices, though.
Those things are expensive. Things that are expensive increase the cost of risk associated with your project. A project unwilling to take risks is unwilling to be creative. Therefore, a creative project would be wise to disregard expensive things.