Slashdot Mirror
Smoke and Mirrors from Sony and Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "History tells us: Don't believe what you're hearing about the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.There was a lot of hype last week about the next generation of game machines. Microsoft said the Xbox 360 will ultimately reach 1 billion consumers worldwide, while Sony gave a laundry list of features for the PlayStation 3, showing some jaw dropping footage along the way. (Nintendo promised a Revolution, but didn't go much further than that.)
I hate to be a wet blanket, but it's time to come back to reality."
I usually remembered some fantastic games coming near the end of the lifecycle, like Earthworm Jim 2 for the SNES or Return of Joker for NES. Developers learn the intricacies of what you can do, and do more amazing stuff as time goes by. Better perhaps than even these artificial demos. Respect the software.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Why wouldn't a company pimp it's product? So maybe they do get carried away, but they have to generate hype somehow.
I think it is completely wrong of them to use pre-rendered images, and say it is actual gameplay footage (killzone, anyone?), but I can't imagine that this early on the developers have even gotten close to figuring out the nuances of the systems.
It all comes down to the games. If a console has powers like a supercomputer, it still won't be fun if the games are terrible.
You don't play the hardware in the console, you play the games. That's all there is to it.
...I've never really understood why people (who probably have a fairly modern PC) would be interested in a console system such as an XBox or PlayStation. PCs (of whatever flavor) are so much more capable and customizable than consoles, and are much more flexible as well.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
You know, it would be nice if you could at least tell where the submitter's comments end and where the first paragraph of the linked article begin. Quotation marks, anyone? "From the article:" perhaps?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Sounds like you might be a closet Nintendo fan, as they have put out those types of games for years. And they seem to be setting up to do something amazing for the next generation.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
This kind of critical reporting is the difference between journalism and PR ("public relations" or the "press releases" that are its lifeblood). But gaming journalism still has a long way to go
FTFA:
"It's not hard to forgive the hardware publishers for a little bit of hyperbole at E3, the annual trade show of the video game industry. It is, after all, their moment in the sun. But now that the crowds have gone home and the booth babes have changed back into street clothes, it's time to recognize that a fair number of the promises made last week will quietly fade away."
The best time to report critical insights, especially those counter to PR claims, is during the "moment in the sun". When everyone's paying attention. Otherwise, reporting is a footnote, and the PR floods the media. Result: most people believe the unopposed PR. Gaming coverage has been improving, as competition heats up in a bigger market of people with competing interests, not just gaming.
To see how badly "reporting" can go wrong, just look at the synthetic world of national and international affairs in the mass media, rarely insightful, and totally distorted in representing reality. With games becoming ever more realistic, and reality ever more bent to our imaginations, it's ironic that reporting on reality becoming more of a fantasy game, while gaming reporting becomes more realistic.
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make install -not war
There are some new and original games coming out, it's just that it's sometimes hard to find them, because the big sequels are the ones that get he majority of the hype and advertising. That's kind of a bummer, I'll agree.
I think Nintendo hears what you're saying, and tries to be creative in a lot of ways. That sort of gets overlooked, however, because they tend to then brand all of their ideas with their big franchises, Mario being the number one example. So the PS and Xbox fanboys rant about how 50% of the games available for the GC are just mario games, ignoring the fact that there's a whole lot of variety within the Mario universe.
I don't have anymore of an idea what Nintendo's big Revolution is going to be than any other random guy on the street, but I have found their games to be fairly consistently fresh and fun.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
...and in fact, I *still* play Mario Kart (and a few others) on my SNES from time to time. And everyone that comes by the house that I can convince to play it with me agrees, it has a lot of gameplay value and stays fun for hours.
-Valiss
Wow... pottymouth, yo.
Look, Dave, we all know you're the world's biggest Apple fanboy, so if it gets you excited that the Xbox 360 uses an IBM processor from the same family as the one in the G5, that's great. Seriously, why does the rest of the world care? Apple doesn't make the processors in Macs, nor does Microsoft make the processors in PCs.
Is it ironic? I guess so, but I'm not sure it's quite the watershed moment you think it is. MS went with the company that could give them the fastest multicore processor for the least money. It was IBM. The only major company using those processors is Apple. So they used Apples to develop on. End of story.
Why does everything to be some kind of schlongs-and-rulers war with Mac types?
Do Sony and MS actually expect me to toss out my entire entertainment system to replace it with their all in one box?
Given the stupid curved sufaces on both the new Xbox and the PS3, the answer would appear to be yes.