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Prognosticating Sony's Downfall
Via Evil Avatar, an article on About.com theorizing Sony's defeat at the hands of Nintendo and Microsoft. An interesting piece of speculation. From the article: "Sony introduces the PS3, sporting far more powerful hardware than either alternative system, limited online system support, and a fairly solid launch line-up. Nintendo introduces the Revolution. At the same time that the Revolution and PS3 hit the store shelves, Microsoft reduces the price of the Xbox 360 and releases Halo 3. Halo 3, combined with the price reduction, effectively undercuts the momentum of the PS3 launch. Customers have to decide between the 360 with Halo 3, the PS3 with a potentially high price tag, and the Revolution, priced near current generation game consoles."
Don't forget that Halo 3 will not be able to counter the PS3's launch (as the author seems to think it still will). It's been delayed. Good thing too, because even if you downplay Bungie's continued work on H:2 it still wouldn't have had the slightest chance of being good otherwise. A little more than a year is simply not enough time to make a good sequel.
Halo was mostly done in a little over a year. Work on Halo 2 was nearly reset at about the time the E3 2003 video was shown. And those were with fewer resources than are likely being made available for Halo 3.
Factor in the fact that the PS3 will possibly be delayed until 2007 (Sony never gave a firm US date, and who's to say it won't also be delayed in Japan?) and a Halo 3 release date that coincides with the PS3's is entirely possible and to the optimist, even likely.
"This is considered plagiarism."
Halo was mostly done in a little over a year
Didn't Halo start out on the Mac, have 2-3 years of development before Microsoft bought them? Wouldn't that put it at 3-4 years in development?
Not to be anal, but the only big name game I know of that was developed in a little over a year and still was high quality was Starwars Rogue Squadren 2: Rogue Leader.
Sony introduces the PS3, sporting far more powerful hardware than either alternative system
What? I admit that I haven't been following this for the last month or so, but from what I've seen the XBox 360 will be at least as powerful as the PS3. Yes, the PS3 has a bunch of processing units in its cell processor, but most of them are special-purpose and not as powerful as the XBox 360's three generic cores.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Would you be willing to elaborate more on your line of thinking?
When I think of MS, I think:
- First company to require online/phone activation of a mainstream product (Windows XP).
- Inventor of Windows Media, the format that made useless an entire library of "free*" (as in "*some restrictions apply") music I'd downloaded when the authentication server was turned off.
- First company to market a game console that depends on an online service for a good portion of its functionality.
- First company (at least, that I know of) to market a non-streaming video file format (WMV) that lets the author block random access, so you can't skip commercials.
- Palladium
- HailStorm
- The biggest development company pushing for software subscriptions instead of purchases.
- Restricted HD-DVD video in Vista.
I know Sony has done some stupid things, like ATRAC/Memory Stick/other-proprietary-format and the rootkit, but at least to my knowledge they have put far fewer intrusive and crippled technologies on the market than MS. If I've missed out on something big, I'd really like to hear about it.
As for Nintendo, right now they're relatively benign, but I still remember them well for the things in my original post.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Nintendo...not consumer friendly? Bullshit. I had my Nintendo DS repaired last week completely free. I scratched the touch screen, Nintendo paid for shipping there and back, and they even replaced the touch screen. It was shipped there, fixed, and mailed back. The total time for all this? 6 days. Now, you think Sony would do this for you? I believe they have a policy that they won't accept a PSP for a free repair unless it has 14 dead pixels - all close together. Nintendo will replace a DS if it has only one dead pixel.
Summarized:If you expect to be treated fairly, you must take this seriously. You need to boycott Sony products. You harm yourself if you do not: you will make it okay for them to harm you again and again.
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