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Reflections on the Holy Trinity
1up has a piece looking at gaming's future by reflecting on gaming's past. What do the launches of older systems teach us to expect from the PS3's ... eventual debut. From the article: "Shouts of 'Dreamcast' ... fall a little flat when you consider that Dreamcast was more of a last-ditch attempt from a company that hadn't turned a profit in 10 years. Microsoft isn't bowing out anytime soon, which means that being out in front will probably be an advantage -- by the time Sony launches, the 360 will be over the launch hiccups and rolling with a steady stream of new software. On the other hand, if Blu-ray is as big for the PS3 as DVD was for the PS2, Microsoft could find itself technologically inferior -- a direct consequence of its rush to market. "
A father, a son, nor a holy ghost are mentioned anywhere here. One might suggest that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are the holy trinity of gaming, but how do they map to the previous set? Not to metnion that Nintendo isn't mentioned in the article. Wait~! This is the third playstation iteration and there is the concept of three in trinity... That couldn't be it could it... (Rather lame if you ask me)
what anybody says, last-ditch or whatever, the Dreamcast is still comparable with almost anything on the market today, purely from a technological (read: graphics quality) standpoint.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
NES, Genesis, Gameboy
Does the history of the Play(space)Station make Nintendo the father and Sony the son?
Three buttons on the PlayStation controller are X, Square (a box), and Circle (which has 360 degrees). X, Box, 360. So do we have a holy ghost?
While it is true that history tends to repeat itself, every time when someone tries to divine the future from the past they make the same fatal mistake that makes their predictions totally useless. They simply take into account too short section of the past, quite often only few years, instead of few centuries and their predictions are directed on a too close future, often few months or years rather than decades. Anyway, I don't think this trend is going to stop anytime soon and so here we go with yet another useless prediction.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Dreamcast was more of a last-ditch attempt from a company that hadn't turned a profit in 10 years
Yeah, I'm sure Sega was thinking that when they designed it... "Well, we're done for. Let's blow a whole bunch of money on one last failed console before closing the doors."
...that Gob would approve.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Hmm. Methinks we should *bonk* Zonk for going with this story...
Where's the holy trinity? Or is that just a sensationalist headline again?
Doh!
So what... and if you'd read my follow-up post you would have seen I ment the slashdot article and not the 1up article. Btw I view nested at threshold 0, oldest first.
by the time Sony launches, the 360 will be over the launch hiccups and rolling with a steady stream of new software
They keep saying that, but the launch hiccups never quite go away and the software keeps not quite starting to stream. It's been four months since the XBox 360 came out. It's not going to be many more months before, if this continues, the PS3 will be out and the analysts will still be promising, hey, the XBox 360 is going to be done with its launch hiccup period any minute now! How on earth can you simultaneously say "the XBox 360 is in a good position because it's got a head start!" while you're admitting the XBox 360's head start hasn't exactly begun yet?
It's funny how every argument for why the XBox 360 is going to be successful comes down eventually to "well, because Microsoft has a lot of money". This is silly. Microsoft's huge cash funding and desire to dominate can prevent them from failing. But it can't make them succeed. That is to say, as the article notes, that cash funding can prevent them from the worst parts of the fate of the dreamcast-- the whole thing where two years into the product's life it gets dropped from the market and the parent company stops making consoles. Microsoft can avoid that by just refusing to give up and continuing to feed the XBox 360 money pit. But the cash funding can't prevent them from reaching at least part of the fate of the Dreamcast-- the whole thing where two years into the product's life it's dead in the water, out of third party support, and graphically outgunned by a product that has a larger installed base.
I have said it before but I think the gaming industry in its thrust to make people spend computer system like amounts of money and to add the absolute best crap to their system without really testing it are prepping themselves for another video game crash like 81. And we ALL know who came out tops after that one.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I'm not understanding this. These two new video formats do... what, exactly? Nothing, beyond showing higher quality digital video. Which is utterly useless unless you have an HD-TV, which is not exactly a universal standard.
When the PS2 hit, it revolutionized / popularized DVDs. Why? Because a DVD cost at worst $25 at the time, and that's a good cheap buy. Couple that with the value you get out of having a combo game system and DVD player (since DVD players were expensive to buy seperately) and that's a no brainer money saver.
But now, if you want to take advantage of Blu-Ray, you need a multi-thousand dollar television, and potentially more expensive movies. Which is NOT as much of a no-brainer as the PS2 was.
On top of all that, we're rapidly approaching the point where we've gone as high-def as we realistically NEED to go. For a lot of folks, standard DVD is "fine." The upgrade is too expensive and the reward too low when you've got a workable solution; this isn't like VHS tapes which could degrade over time, had blatantly inferior video quality, and interactive features. DVD has plenty going for it and all HD adds on top is more rez, which while nice, isn't important enough.
No. The video capability is not going to be what sells the PS3. It's a nice bonus but not as critical as the game library is at this point. (And given the 360's scrawny library, including unimpressive entries on the release chart, the PS3 has a good chance to sieze advantage...)
Do you actually believe any of the shit you write? Seriously?
I'm not understanding this. These two new video formats do... what, exactly? Nothing, beyond showing higher quality digital video. Which is utterly useless unless you have an HD-TV, which is not exactly a universal standard.
The blu-ray format allows vastly increased storage for games. This gives the PS3 a real and distinct advantage, because game developers-- who are already shipping multi-DVD games-- can just use their disc space frivolously. By the end of this game generation, the XBox 360 will have a serious problem because developers will be making games so elaborate and complicated that you will virtually need blu-ray or hd-dvd amounts of storage to express them. (The Revolution, which does not support HD resolutions and will not need such high-res models and textures, will sidestep the storage problem the same way the Nintendo DS does-- by simply not having very complicated games.)
The blu-ray format also allows you to play Blu-Ray movies, but I can't think of any reason why that should be considered a system selling point; people who have HDTVs already will consider it a nice bonus, but only the geekiest of high-end consumers will specifically set out to buy any kind of blu-ray or hd-dvd player THIS early on.
Some analysts think that the blu-ray drive is a trojan horse to get PS3s into households, but they have it backward. The blu-ray is in no way a guaranteed seller; the PS3, however, is. The PS3 is a trojan horse to get blu-ray players, which Sony stands to profit from enormously in its other divisions, into households.
Microsoft should be worried, very worried.
Sales of 360s have been falling each month. Last month sales are all the way down to 160k units. Sales of the PS2 were 300k.
To make that perfectly clear, Sony's six year old machine is outselling Microsoft's brand new console by almost 2 to 1.
The cries of the 360 being sold out everywhere just don't add up anymore. It was true back in December, less so in January, and by March 360s were in stock in all major retailers in the US. The local Walmart, BestBuy, and other like stores have had 360s on the shelves everytime I've been in them since February.
If there really was demand for the system there should be millions of people screaming for 360s right now. There aren't. The 360 is only attracting the most hardcore of the former Xbox owner crowd. Outside of Xbox circles the 360 might as well not exist.
I think people have been living with the delusion that just because this is Microsoft's second console that it will 'of course do better' and that 'it has to' Of course the real world doesn't work like that. Companies put out products that do worse and worse each time all the time.
Right now I see mostly pc games on the horizon for the 360. I can't imagine how those new games will do anything to turn around the decreasing sales of the 360.
It could address the perception that the 360 is too noisy, runs too hot, and basically is annoying to own. It would do this by introducing an upgraded system that runs cooler and quieter, with a more reasonably sized power supply.
However, I think that is unlikely to actually happen. The relaunch will probably just add more features. Because this is Microsoft we're talking about.
To think there was a point at which I thought they might win this round...
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
One thing that has become apparent, at least to me, is Sony's attempt to repeat the history of the successful PS2 launch which was buoyed by the console's ability to play DVDs. The problem this time around though is that Blu-Ray is not established the way that DVDs were when the PS2 launched. I remember that I finally got tired of waiting for the PS2 to come out and went out and bought a Sony DVD player when the prices became more attractive. This time though, not only are there not Blu-Ray players available, there aren't any movies in the format either.
I think the Xbox 360 launch pushed up the PS3 launch a year or even two ahead of where Sony wanted it to be. They really needed that time to get Blu-Ray established with movies and stand alone players. Then the PS3 would come along as a great game machine and a probably lower cost alternative to play Blu-Ray movies. Unfortunately, Microsoft has ruined that script. Now the Playstation 3 is going to have to live or die on gaming alone at launch, something that its predecessor would have had a hard time doing given the so so launch titles of that time (especially in Japan).
I'm not saying that Sony has no chance to prevail against the competition, only that their attempt to repeat history has failed. They might have been better served by a more Nintendo-like attitude of releasing things when they are ready rather than being too worried about the competition and building so much hype. Of course, Sony probably has a lot of reasons that they really can't wait, especially since the Playstation brand is basically carrying the company these days.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Mr. T before he pities the fool, Mr. T while he pities the fool and Mr. T after he pitied the fool.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I think for Microsoft, truly the third time is the charm. And the cool thing about my prediction is that it's as well reasoned as those put forth by this article's author and I just pulled it out of my ass.
Microsoft has been losing money in their game business since the original XBox launch. Their stock has been flat for five years, and the stockholders are starting to get annoyed with the money drain. Microsoft may at some point be pushed into "concentrating on their core business area". Losing money forever isn't a business.
The only gaming holy trinity that pops into my head.
"Nintendo has massive new developer support for the Revolution. The system will be a little bit more powerful than the 360 but won't support 720p"
I stopped reading there. The revolution will be noticably less powerful then both the X360 and PS3. This is how Nintendo is going to going to keep it so much cheaper.
And we ALL know who came out tops after that one.
I do, but I don't think you do.
None of the current hardware makers made it out. Only new console makers that came into the market after the crash did well.
So if history repeats itself, how does that help Nintendo?
If history repeats itself, then it's more likly that the Phantom will come out on top rather than the Revolution
I can't believe the stupidity coming from you. It's been stated many times over that the Rev is significantly less powerful than box the 360 and the PS3, with the 360 being very slightly less powerful than the PS3 and some devs saying that the 360 will outperform. I'm also not sure where you're coming up with these numbers, but XBox 360 already has millions sold, analysts predicting 12mil by the end of the year, and more people hopping on the bandwagon every day. So far, out of the people I know that are gamers, most of them (approx. 75%) are going from never owning a console to the 360 or from PS2 to 360. I don't hear anyone caring about the PS3 because they don't have the patience to wait a year until they can get their hands on one. Having a year start and basically same power hardware will give them a boost. So will awesome games like GRAW, Oblivion, Gears of War, Halo 3, etc. The only reason PS3 might have high sales is the same reason PS2 did - their consoles break and need to be replaced. My brother is on his 3rd PS2 and I was on my second until I realized Sony just makes garbage.
Let it all out fanboy!!!
Yeah baby, show the world just how bitter and delusional a real diehard Xbox fanboy is!
What an astroturf. How much do you get paid per article?
From: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/show/21589
We received the following from a young man who we will call "Mr. Smith."
(CW)TB
Hey guys,
I interviewed for a guerilla marketing business in San Francisco that targeted web forums.
I was told that if I accepted the job, I was to have at LEAST 50 identities on as many forums as I could muster (they wanted 100 eventually), with a goal of 5 posts an hour. The posts had to be well thought out, and the idea was that I was to establish multiple identities with a history on the forums, so that when the timing was right a well written but subtly placed marketing post could be finessed in. And regular visitors would recognize the post as coming from a long time poster.
They had 12 people working there full time, and were hiring 10 more. You do the math. No wait, I'll do it for you: that's 880 posts a day (if minimum was met). However he said the better ones could do around 8 or 10 an hour. And they had different "verticals" so there was the sports guy, and the games guy, the hentai, excuse me I mean anime guy, etc.
But the most critical point was this: develop and integrate the identity. No random "HEY EB GAMES IS AWESOME BUY THIS" stuff.
Kinda spooky.
Didn't take the job. It was a fucking mill.
Microsoft fanboy trying to throw around the astroturf lable???
u rfing
Yawn..................
Microsoft's massive and disgusting history of astroturfing:
http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft%20astrot
Microsoft has been caught repeatedly in astroturfing campaigns.
Sony never.
Nintendo never.
Apple never.
IBM never.
And so on. It is the sick culture up there in Redmond. Fucking loser deserve the ass raping they are getting from Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft's latest astroturfing campaign looks like it consists of getting a marketing firm to post all over the Net messages describing supposed 'real life' console players desperately searching for 360s but being unable to find one 'because clearly they are so damn popular because everyone is jumping on the 360 bandwagon!!!"
What is hilarious is these poor minwage fucks keep getting caught by people asking them what city they are in. And then a flood of people telling the maketing dweeb about all the stores in the city they are claiming to be from where 360s are in stock.
Fucking sad.
I read the article description and came away with Tank, Healer, DPS...
Consoles are overrated...
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
...doesn't mean it's off topic. I guess that explains why Arrested Development got cancelled though. None of the mods seemed to get it. If it's any consolation, that's exactly what I was thought when I saw the title :)
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I just wish they had been able to make a true anamorphic widescreen mode for RE4, not just the cropped 16:9 mode. That would have been killer. Of course, you would only have been able to use it if you had the component video adapter for GC, which was only available in Japan and only worked with the earlier versions of the GC (they took off the digital video out port for later hardware revisions).
My other first post is car post.
You mean warrior, chanter, and cleric right?
You've been playing mmo's too long when that's what comes to mind when you hear holy trinity.
The Dreamcast launched in 1999. No profit in 10 years would be 1989. I'm pretty bloody sure Sega earned massive profits from the Genesis, which coincidentaly launched in 1989.
One of the big things hamstringing the X360 right now is the insistance upon high-res imagery. It's not a ludicriously more powerful system than the Xbox, and asking it to have both 10x better effects and graphics and do it at 10x the resolution just won't work... once you have higher resolutions running well, you've used up the system's power.
We'll have to see if this is a major problem over the lifespan of the Xbox, or just launch-day hiccups. If lots of people pick up high-def sets, this could be a big win for them. But if high-def pickup is more moderate, other systems will just plain look better for the majority of people's TV's.
And who knows, maybe Microsoft will change that policy once other systems launch.
The ______ Agenda
Yeah, I'd rather have a Dreamcast than a Nintendo Revolution anyday.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin