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Next-Gen Consoles -The Strategy Thus Far
tyko writes "CoolTechZone.com takes a look at all three consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and presents a nice overview of the strategies behind the products. From the article: 'Now that Microsoft has put its weight firmly behind HD-DVD, it seems obvious that Xbox 360 will have HD-DVD support. If recent rumors are anything to go by, Xbox 360 will not have support for HD-DVD games at launch because it won't ship with the needed HD-DVD drive. Whether or not the support will come later as an optional accessory is not clear either. Needless to say, this has added more confusion to the product that is due for launch in just two weeks.'"
He kind of lost credibility when he started talking about how Nintendo might be developing a visor or something for the Revolution. I think he took Miyamoto's recent comments about how games shouldn't be restricted by TVs a bit to serious. The controller is Revolutionary enough, Nintendo's not gonna go so far out as to get rid of TVs...yet...
Can't wait for my Nintendo Holodeck though...
I suspect that even with Microsofts weight behind HD-DVD, if they don't ship the 360 with a HD-DVD drive, it will fail.
History has shown that big add-on packs don't sell, so it's fair to assume that Microsoft will never be able to garner enough market share of HD-DVD capable 360s to make any difference to the market Sony will have of Blu-Ray players.
The article is correct in that Nintendo is left out of most discussions over the next generation of consoles. I am most excited about Nintendo's console of the three coming out. Why? The games!!
The $299 version (also known as the Core Package) will perhaps come with a hard drive? What sort of weird speculation is that? The contents of the Core and Premium packages were announced over a month ago, the info is available on Xbox.com, and it's pretty damn clear at this point that the Core version will absolutely NOT come with a hard drive. It doesn't get anymore clear than that.
It seems like the author had a deadline to post an article, and just went around and collected a bunch of things we already know and a bunch of speculations that we keep hearing over and over again and just submitted that. Thats all it takes to post on a "tech" site now I guess.
As many have already noted, this article is horribly written. It looks like the guy has done little to no research. It's more of an opinion/blog piece than anything else. Here's my "favorite" quote:
Sony PlayStation 3: Sony's PS3 is definitely keeping everyone guessing in regards to the launch date. The fact that it will not be simultaneously launched with the Xbox 360 is pretty much certain.
Gee, I was still holding out that Sony was gonna surprise everyone and announce a Holiday '05 ship date! Oh darn.
Okay, it's fine for a small site like CoolTechZone (which has amazingly not been slashdotted yet) to have poorly written articles like this. Whatever. But does it really merit being posted here? There are certainly better topics to be discussing.
-- jchenx
1. Depends on how much you intend to play it. How much is your time worth to you? It's not looking like there will be anything but a trickle of major games for the first 6 months to a year, so unless something specific catches your eye (specifically, probably Perfect Dark Zero for FPS fans, Oblivion for RPG fans, or Ninety-Nine Nights for action fans), I'd wait until it drops in price. 2. You'll in all likelihood be required to have the hard drive for a lot of features in games; patches, prettier graphics, maybe some extras. However, the biggest issue is that you need a hard drive of some sort to save your games-cartridges can save directly to themselves, DVDs not so much. You can get a 64 MB memory card for $40, or a 20 GB (roughly 300 times the size) hard drive for the extra $100 in upgrading from Core to the real version. You will absolutely need one of these options, and the cost-efficient option is clearly the $400 Xbox (it also comes with the DVD remote to allow you to double the machine as a DVD player (normally $30), and some other extras) 3. $60 for any major titles, with variations for bargain games; expect to pay $60 per game. 4. Probably not right after christmas, but expect it in June to compete with the launch of the Playstation 3.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
1. Depends on how much you intend to play it. How much is your time worth to you? It's not looking like there will be anything but a trickle of major games for the first 6 months to a year, so unless something specific catches your eye (specifically, probably Perfect Dark Zero for FPS fans, Oblivion for RPG fans, or Ninety-Nine Nights for action fans), I'd wait until it drops in price.
2. You'll in all likelihood be required to have the hard drive for a lot of features in games; patches, prettier graphics, maybe some extras. However, the biggest issue is that you need a hard drive of some sort to save your games-cartridges can save directly to themselves, DVDs not so much. You can get a 64 MB memory card for $40, or a 20 GB (roughly 300 times the size) hard drive for the extra $100 in upgrading from Core to the real version. You will absolutely need one of these options, and the cost-efficient option is clearly the $400 Xbox (it also comes with the DVD remote to allow you to double the machine as a DVD player (normally $30), and some other extras)
3. $60 for any major titles, with variations for bargain games; expect to pay $60 per game.
4. Probably not right after christmas, but expect it in June to compete with the launch of the Playstation 3.
5. Remember to preview!
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
1. Depends on what kind of games you play. The XBox gennerally had above average FPS games, average mmorpgs, and below average "party" games (DDR, easy to play fighters, etc). The PS2 has above average RPGs (not just Final Fantasy), below average FPS games, and average to above average party games (mainly just DDR). The game cube has below average FPS, average RPGs, and middle to above average party games (more in quantity then quality although Super Smash Brothers Melee is the king of party games).
Note: That was generally speaking, Its not to say they each have great games of each but certain systems tend to have more.
The next gen systems will probably follow suit. XBox 360 will have Perfect Dark: Zero and Halo 3 (you can count on it) for FPS. PS3 will have the remake of Final Fantasy 7 for RPGs. The revolution will have Super Smash Brothers Revolution for Party games.
2) Basically, it is pointless to NOT get an XBox 360 with HDD. The HDD is used to save games. If you can't save games, you can't keep all your unlocked stuff in FPS and fighter games, and you can't save in your RPG type games.
3) Most systems have games that run in the 35-55 dollar range.
4) Maybe not right after christmas but it will drop in at least the 6 months after release.
Speaking is NOT communication
1. If you haven't owned a console since the Super Nes, then I would say you are far better off getting a PS2/Gamecube/Xbox right now. For $299 you can get any one of them plus many games (for example the PS2 has a ton of excellent titles now priced at $20).
2. Hard drive used for custom soundtracks, downloadable content, speeding up loading times (except for the first which is actually much longer...). Although I don't think many developers will bother with the last one for the 360 since the HDD is not standard anymore.
3. Most are $50 right now, unless you are talking Canadian $, then they're $60. They will be US$60 next gen (which is another good reason to get a present-gen console since the games will be cheaper).
4. Not a chance. If you believe some people, MS has already stopped production of the Xbox, and the hardware is too costly (especially the hard drive) to make it any cheaper.
...and laughably inaccurate. Did you know The Xbox 360 has a Cell processor?
CoolTechZone couldn't even link the pages together properly (pages 2 and 3 are identical). The speculation on the Revolution is the sort of thing I'd expect from a 5-year-old... It might have virtual reality goggles and force feedback on the wireless controller (Newton's third law anyone?). Yes, and you might get a pullitzer prize!
I particularly liked the comment on graphics "nobody can really comment on the actual performance between the two", which was of course followed by several comments on the actual performance between the two.
The Xbox's remote control is "so you don't have to get up every time you want to change something." - such journalistic insight!
"it seems obvious that Xbox 360 will have HD-DVD support". Obvious unless you actually read any reliable source, or think for more than a moment about the fact that it's shipping in 2 weeks and HD-DVD isn't, presumably?
"Sony's strategy is to wait". Ahh - and there was I thinking they might actually be finishing development, gearing up for mass production, fabricating chips and writing games, etc!
"...if the Xbox 360 takes off, Sony will be positively behind" - well at least they are not negatively behind, eh?
"As far as pure specifications are concerned, the situation is exactly reversed" - umm, sorry, you've lost me there!
"Nintendo's idea of targeting to the younger demographics aren't particularly exciting" - where's a grammar Nazi when you need one?
"Remember Mario? It's a trademark character for Nintendo, if you will,..." or just a competent subeditor?
"Nintendo plans to get rid of the traditional wired (or not) game pads and wants to make them more interactive. This will put you in the middle of the game with your movements controlling those of the game characters." Making things more interactive by getting rid of them? Crafty!
"The absolute novelty of the experience will probably carry all of the new titles that Nintendo will come out with." Is English this guy's first language?
"Doom III is an FPS game" no, it's a FPS game. Write it out 100 times in detention, boy!
"What about other realism inducing effects?" What indeed!
"That's unclear at the moment, and it's something that we'll have to wait and see." what both unclear AND we'll have to wait and see. Wow, that's like, twice as unknown then, right, dude?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
If you haven't been involved in the past generation of consoles, it's getting to be a good time to check it out. Forget spending your money on a 360 and trying to pick out the couple of good games out of the launch titles. Instead, get a plain ol' Xbox, and you'll have a huge library of games available right away. And the best part, it'll all be dirt cheap compared to the 360 stuff. There's plenty of great stuff for the PS2 and the Gamecube as well.
I just got an Xbox about a year ago, and I had a few years of games to pick from. If I haven't played it before, it's new to me, regardless of the release date or how many sequels have already been released. All the consoles have a $20 best sellers category, you can't go wrong with that.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I got a giant list of PS2 games lined up to buy this holiday from the bargin bin and Greatest hits collection.
What games?
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
1) No, at the moment games are looking like a minor upgrade. Once developers get used to the hardware, and if you have a HD-TV, it might be worth it later. If you haven't played for a while I'd advise waiting for a Revolution as it'll have all the old games you remember, will be cheaper and looks damn good fun to boot.
2) The harddrive is mainly for storing media and backwards compatibility. MS have said to developers not to count on it being there so most will ignore it for vital game functions. However some big RPG has already said they'll use it.
3) Games seem to be about the same price as always but there's rumblings that bigger dev teams will drive up costs, it's not been seen yet, but most games were being developed for the last gen anyway.
4) Yes, always happens, been burnt far too many times on console launch price to get another in the "launch window".
Hey,
This isn't a direct answer, exactly, but if you're looking for a good console, for not too much money, then just avoid the new crap altogether. You didn't miss anything between the SNES and roughly 1999 (with the exception of Symphony of the Night and R-Type Delta), and there's some great stuff on the current/last generation of consoles:
Dreamcast:
Cannon Spike
Mars Matrix
Zero Gunner 2 (have to find an image online, wasn't released in US)
Rez (see Zero Gunner 2)
Dead or Alive 2
Soul Calibur
GigaWing
Crazy Taxi 1/2
Jet Set Radio
Maken X
PS2:
Symphony of the Night (PS1 game)
Gradius III & IV
Gradius V
R-Type Final
R-Type Delta (PS1 game, you probably can't find this, but if you ever see it and have a PS2, grab it)
Silpheed
Zone of the Enders 1/2
Neo Contra (if you liked the overhead levels in Contra: The Alien Wars (SNES) you will absolutely love this, its an awesome game)
Capcom Classics Collection (old stuff, but 1942, 1943, and 1943 Kai with remixed music are worth it)
Soul Calibur 2/3
Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution
Front Mission 4
Culdcept
Champions of Norrath 1/2
Katamari Damacy
Xbox:
Oddworld Stranger's Wrath (the only single player FPS really worth playing)
Halo (if you like multiplayer with 4 people in one room)
Halo 2 (if you want to mess with online multiplayer, the maps suck for 4 person games though)
Timesplitters: Future Perfect (another great 4 person FPS)
Dead or Alive: Ultimate (gorgeous remake of 2 with online play and tweaked movelist/block methods)
Hunter the Reckoning: Redeemer
Gunvalkyrie (awesome shooter from Sega, controls have a steep learning curve, but is really neat, has great music too)
Panzer Dragoon Orta (lock-on rail shooter, similar to Rez but not as cool)
Otogi 1/2
Phantom Crash (the sequel to this is Steel Lancer Arena International on PS2, but I haven't played it)
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (the best of all versions of it)
Crimson Skies
MechAssualt (never played 2, but 1 is pretty cool)
Can't speak for the Gamecube because I've never messed with one, and I've probably ommitted some stuff, but all of those are great games, and all of them should be easily obtainable for $15-$30 (maybe not the Dreamcast ones, I haven't gone looking since it stopped production). If you get a PS2 or XBox, be sure to grab an s-video cable for it, it makes a right noticable difference. Dreamcast can output VGA if you can find a converter box.
Pick one, get some games, and (maybe) by the time you're tired of it, the new consoles will have some games backing them up.
Well, I did neglect at least one awesome game: You must play Beyond Good & Evil (PS2 or Xbox).