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Life After the Videogame Crash
Clark Hall writes "Is it 1983 all over again? E3 is over and millions of gamers are realizing they can't afford a PS3, or an HDTV. Is it time for a steep and painful correction in the gaming market? Pointlesswasteoftime has been tracking what is looking like a Hindenburg voyage for console gaming, with HDTV playing the role of Hydrogen." From the article: "There's going to be a lot of money lost the next few years, a lot of articles written, a lot of panic, a lot of changes. And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers. Hopefully it will allow for creativity from the players, and room for small, independent game makers to create content. Hopefully it will be something every working person can afford. "
This could mean a huge boost in PC Gaming. I'm not willing to dish out $400-$500 for a console system and another couple grand for an HDTV, but I'm certainly willing to spend the money to upgrade my PC.
HDTV will become the standard and wont cost as much in the (hopefully) near future. they're just now still overcharging for it. panic is for the impatient.
...all cock-blockery aside...
Seriously, you can buy an HDTV for about $500 now if you look around, it will be $300 by Christmas 2007 or shortly thereafter, and you can even get a 1080p version right now for $500 (check out the NY Times electronic reviews a couple of weeks back, and in the Wall Street Journal two weekends ago in the Saturday issue).
And you can buy a Nintendo Wii by about Presidents Day 2007 for a reasonable price at Costco - maybe even by Christmas 2006.
The world isn't over. Your old TV works fine with a cable box, you don't need a 64 inch screen HDTV, you can settle for a 32 inch or 40 inch one.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
With Nintendo being the cheapest system and it doesn't require you to get a HDTV. I firmly believe they will be the console that comes out on top this generation of systems. PS3 will not be #1 this time around and will sink to #3.
What videogame crash? I can certainly afford an under 300usd Wii. Oh wait, you mean sony? They'll just have a wonderful future building cameras, and slapping rootkits on the wrong places
I'm sticking with PC gaming.
I just can't justify spending all that money on a game console, and then on top of that, having to shell out THOUSANDS for an HDTV set just so I can see Solid Snake in Hi-Def? Ummm.. NO.
I'm sticking with my old-fashioned Tube T.V. as long as I possibly can, and I'm not buying any new HD or Blue-ray DVD players until the format war is good and over and prices come down to something reasonable. Which means I won't be getting an HD TV or DVD players for probably 5-10 years.
I'm sure I won't miss it either.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I read this article earlier today, and the author just writes off the Wii completly. What he's not grokking, is that the Japanese game market already crashed a few years back. Microsoft and Sony were able to use the ever growing US market to write that off as an anomoly, but Nintendo took it to heart and came out with the DS and now the Wii in response.
So, yes, it's reasonable to say that Sony and Microsoft (and all their 3rd party developers) are in for a harsh awakening, but Nintendo is already on the other side of the crash and things are looking better than ever.
You can play for free or spend hundreds of hours with the same online games. Thanks to the PC. 60 euros for a 10 hours time of play is over. Add the limited number of console and you have the crash.
Only the Nintendo situation is good: make toy, funny games and... money.
"And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers. Hopefully it will allow for creativity from the players, and room for small, independent game makers to create content. Hopefully it will be something every working person can afford. "
So it's the Nintendo Wii.
Otherwise it would be a monster to make any kind of cash on a good bank heist. You would need to hire day laborers just to get all the cash into your rental truck..
Storm
Just relax, pull out that old copy of UT or TA or NFS III or Madden 2001, and ignore all of the gnashing of teeth by the hardware vendors. If it's fun, it's good. Who says it also has to be high tech?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Looking at market trends, it's difficult to see just why there will be a big crash. Xbox360 keeps selling, massive turnout for E3, Nintendo is still selling shitloads of Nintendogs, and PS3 will definitely turn heads, no matter the price. Seriously, are these *really* signs pointing to a crash?
Seriously, I would buy a $1000 game console if it had games worth playing. I might even pay more than that considering a console lifespan is 5+ years (ie. generally longer than the $2000+ computer I am using).
Todays games are just barely even worth a $200 console let alone 3 times that price. As the summary mentions, the current crop of games are lacking that certain something that makes you want to play them because they traded it away for fancy graphics and sound.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I don't think video games will crash (unless you're running Windows). I think Sony and Microsoft will be hurting for a while since they're introducing very expensive consoles that don't offer a significant bang per buck at a time where people are more conscience of prices because of energy costs. I think more people will probably wait for the prices on the consoles and the video games to drop significantly before buying.
My friends and I are not paying $500+ USD for either Sony or Micrsoft. The jury is still out on the Wii (Nintendo had to screw up the name). I'm waiting for the next Castlevania game for the DS to come out before I get a DS Lite.
It's the same article he posted on the industry crashing with some minor tweaks. Just another click-whore, move along.
Maybe it wasn't the Hydrogen but the coating on the fabric... personally I think that disaster has given Hydrogen an undeserved bad rep when it comes to nextgen fuel options.
(hell, if someone described how dangerous the stuff we fill our cars with now can be to us for a new fuel, it would never get adopted.)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
There's going to be a lot of money lost the next few years, a lot of articles written, a lot of panic, a lot of changes. And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers.
:)
That's all well and good, and I really couldn't care less if something like that happened (which I'm kind of skeptical of anyway). But if they create something "different and innovative", I sure hope they they don't take away my blood, guts, and hookers!!! I for one like blood, guts and hookers. Who wouldn't?
Place sig here.
Authors thoughts:
1. Make thesis.
2. Make realization that thesis cannot be supported.
3. Twist random facts, pull information out of context, and hope enough morons who lack logic will agree.
4. Send retarded article to Zonk, and twist fingers for #3.
What the fuck kind of shit is this person spouting?! This is ridiculous! Just because the CONSOLE industry is taking a huge hit by no means indicates that the ENTIRE industry will be taking a hit. There are plenty of amazing advents that are being made that will push the PC gaming industry from its slump in the past few years. PPUs are going to push the boundaries of PC games far beyond what we can currently see, and if the response to Half-Life 2's astounding physics are any indication, the result of functioning PPU's is going to be RIDICULOUS. These units are already spreading into the Industry, and when they are available for sale to the general public in a relatively short time, games are going to be made to take full advantage of them.
A great example is a game that was shown at E3 this year (unfortunately I didn't have the time to attend and my last look at the game was several months ago so I have no name for you). This game featured one of the PPU's in a Deathmatch style environment where the player wielded various weapons and psionic abilities. One of the weapons was a grenade that pulled thousands of interactive objects together and then exploded sending each one on it's own independent path. There was NO frame lag during this. The fact that games will be able to support so many interactive objects without slowing down gameplay means that entirely new concepts are going to be creatable. And this is only one chunk of change going on in the industry. Genre's are blending themselves together and becoming more innovative and interesting. Graphical capability is skyrocketing (go look down a bit for the John Carmack explanation of Mega-texturing) and along with that how much more enveloped players are becoming.
It doesn't matter if these major companies take hits based on their technolgy, there are so many things within the industry that are going to keep it flying. And that's just WITHIN the industry! Sony and Microsoft are massive companies with plenty of other sources of income. So what if Microsoft lost 4 billion on the XBox? They're making so much more in the grand scope of things.
So no, the game industry won't crash. The mere thought is ridiculous.
I have a beautiful Sony Wega 32" HDTV (up to 1080i) with a TUBE. Yes, the antiquated and unloved tube...but let me tell ya, that thing has an amazing picture, will outlast (probably) any LCD or Plasma and even with the giant footprint (weight alone was 165lbs) it still fit into my budget ($800) and my apartment.
HDTV is the next big thing, people will switch once the content is there.
The author's comments on the 2600 and ET are also off base...ET failed because it was buggy and it just plain sucked!
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This guy gets half his facts wrong and the other half he completely makes up. He talks like the video game industry crash of the early 80s like it was some inexplicable cataclismic event that no one could explain. At that time, literally ANYONE could make a game for the Atari, and there was no governing body that certified a game was acceptable. A LOT of crap was released. Then along came Nintendo, requiring all games released for their system to be "Liscenced by Nintendo". And whats with the "...Sony plans to take a $400 to $500 loss on every single damned PS3 they sell for the first few years." Is he just making stuff up?? The article he sites doesn't make a statement even remotely close to that. Yes I realize that Sony will be taking a loss per machine, but he is pulling numbers out of the air. Then he goes on to argue that people play games because they are looking for novel graphical experiences, comparing Golden Eye, to Red Faction 2. i.e. We are all graphics whores. Yes graphics are a key selling point for games, but thats not what makes a good game. People will always pick up the shiniest pebble, but so long that gamers enjoy the games they play, they wont stop playing regardless of whether or not the graphics are three times better than last years title. This article is completely bogus, the game industry is far from crashing.
Almost all the doom and gloom proposed in the summary is solved by the Wii. Did the writer honestly not know:
Pointlesswasteoftime has been tracking what is looking like a Hindenburg voyage for console gaming, with HDTV playing the role of Hydrogen.
> That bodes well for the console that does not care about HDTV and will work great on any screen.
And when gaming comes back, it will hopefully be different and innovative and based on something other than eye candy and the shock value of blood and guts and hookers.
> Pretty much exactly what the Nintendo executives have been saying for months now. Instead of going the "small improvement in graphics" route they redesigned the UI. From the reports I've read it is quite innovative to use.
Hopefully it will allow for creativity from the players, and room for small, independent game makers to create content.
> Nintendo's online service could possibly be used to download 3rd party games, and indie developers should love the freedom of creativity a motion-sensing controller allows, while the dev kits are easy to use, cheap, well-established (from the time of Game Cube) and no HD visuals means they don't need a warehouse of artists designing highly detailed textures.
Hopefully it will be something every working person can afford.
> The highest I can imagine this will come out at is $250. At best I'd guess $200. Considered by itself that is still a decent chuck of change for a stand-alone game player, if playing games isn't that important to you (I've heard rumors people like that are out there), but when put next to the other 2 game playing options it looks like a steal.
360 could have made Microsoft a _lot_ more money if they sold the first units they had for $600. Then there wouldn't have been a shortage; everyone who could afford one, gets one. A month later when they've sold all they can to the Lik-Sang crowd, it drops $200.
Sony may have just learned from the 360 release that they can charge a lot more to the early adopters by releasing a limited supply and then drop the price soon after. I hate Sony too (having to do with their tech support, not the products, which are generally solid), but I see the logic here. It's about avoiding a shortage on the release date.
I am pretty sure I can get a free PS3 from any one of the ubiquitous "click the monkey to win a free PS3" ads. So, I am basically waiting for the "free HDTV" ads to appear, and then I am all set.
Jesus said to his disciples: "If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one" - Luke 22:36
A reader at my forum posted a question regarding the PS3 and if it is really more expensive than the PS2. In 2000, the PS2 sold for US$299. In 2006, the PS3 will sell for $599. Over the past 6 years, the dollar has fallen in value by about 50% in many areas of the market (not just gasoline or housing). Things haven't really gotten more expensive, the dollar has just become more worthless. You can thank Greenspan and Bernanke for their inflationary monetary policy.
For many households, their incomes have nearly doubled in the past 10 years, if not 6 years. I know my income is up nearly 300% in 7 years. For me, the PS3 is cheaper versus the true cost of living than the PS2 was, and I'm 32, not 25. Considering I was 26 when the PS2 came out, I am already past the "I can't afford XYZ" phase of my life.
Maybe things are coming to a head in the economy entirely, where people are earning more and more dollars, but those dollars are constantly worth less and less to a global market. For a guy like me living on a personal gold standard, most prices have been falling over the last 5 years, not rising. For those of us who see our paychecks going up every year, the PS3's reported initial price shouldn't see that outrageous, especially considering many of us aren't doing much more than we were doing 6 years ago, so getting a raise seems pointless.
At least the PS3 has many new features to show for the dollar price increase. What is the Euro price of the PS3? The dollar fell against the Euro almost 50% in that same time.
For me, I won't buy it anyway, since it's a Sony product and I'm through with them. I was a Sony fanboy for a decade, but not now with their junk and their consumer manipulations. They can go suck it. Even still, the PS3 seems comparble to the PS2 in actual value rather than dollar price.
We're talking about whether there will be a major gaming-industry crash, due to people not being able to afford new consoles. But someone offers a theory for why new consoles aren't affordable, and it gets slammed -1 Offtopic?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I agree with most of it, especially the MMORPG trend. Recently "City of Heroes" has been my affliction... It's comic book style combat in real time! Thats where I'm betting consoles will hit the wall. Playing a MMORPG on a big screen TV is just a Novelty.
A few words about the "hard core gamers":
Madden Football 2002 had a feature that allowed you to setup an online league. A windows based Madden Football League Server. You could connect over the net to run a draft, trade players and check injury reports. It was buggy and seemed to crash all the time but It was the best feature of a PC game I ever saw. I became a hard core Madden Football fan because of it. I could run a league of my own! With my friends, with strangers, with anyone! Some charged membership fees and played for a cash prizes. The hard core gamer had full control.
EA promptly removed the feature the following year saying it was to difficult to mantain and not enough gamers used the feature. Promptly built a buggy online server of their own and charged for access.
We few Hard Core Gamers were not enough to keep the best feature Madden Football ever created. Game companies are after the mass market. The mass market is all about novelty. Discount bins full of Madden 2006 are the result.
"HARD CORE GAMER FOREVER!"
-DML337ira
is going to crash the gaming industry it is the mistaken belife that graphics=gameplay & story. why buy ut2k7/8/9 etc when it's the same as the previous game but better graphics and new models throwen in. also consider oblivion, the story is weak, the game takes no chances. it's morrowind with better graphics and less choices.
Pointlesswasteoftime has been tracking what is looking like a Hindenburg voyage for console gaming
Hey hey, now wait a minute here... HDTV is still a new technology, and the discs and standalone players are barely even out yet. How can they be so sure HDTV will *still* not fall in price like basically any other maturing technology in time? And what's this about PS3 too expensive? Console gaming != PS3. There's that smash hit Wii from Nintendo according to E3 reporters, and of course the Xbox 360.
I call rubbish, and find console gaming more interesting to keep an eye on than ever before. Some upcoming games have me wondering if it's cinematic trailer or in-game footage. And the amazing part is that they're priced for the home segment; well, possibly besides this PS3 then.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
All the marketing hype behind HDTV has duped the general public into believing that a higher definition actually makes a difference. Unless you sit eighteen inch's away from your sixty inch screen, there is no difference between a traditional television and an HDTV.
I'm being completely serious: if you can't tell the difference between HDTV and standard def, you need to see an optometrist.
I sit about 12' away from my 50" plasma, and I can easily see a dramatic difference between HD content and standard-definition content. At one point I accidently set my cable box for 480p output, and for the next day or two happened to be watching only standard-definition programming so of course I didn't notice anything wrong. Then I tried to watch a high-definition show, and within five seconds I was hunting through the settings trying to figure out why the picture looked so blurry. It really is that dramatic. I also have a smaller plasma which is farther away from the viewing position (42" at 18') and I can easily tell on that one as well.
Have you actually seen HDTV and standard-definition on the same TV set? I doubt it, or you wouldn't be making claims like this. Or perhaps the set you were comparing on was marked "HDTV compatible" or something equivalent, which just means that it can accept a high-definition signal, but can't actually display it at its full resolution -- typical "EDTV" sets have 480 lines of vertical resolution just like standard-definition TVs do.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
I see consoles getting more and more expensive and decent gaming PC's getting cheaper and cheaper. When the price of one gets close to the price of the other, how can there not be a confrontation?
I presume lenses have gotten slightly better over time too? For instance, Metropolis from 1927 seems somewhat blurry (or maybe it has some purple fringing or something?), and probably wouldn't have much extra useful resolution if scanned in to HD.
I have lousy eyesight and even I can tell the difference between standard and high definition TV. I dare you to sit ten feet away from an old SDTV 60" screen and a new HDTV 60" screen and to tell me that they look the same when showing high definition content.
Adult Swim is all standard definition, so it's not a good example. 12 Oz. Mouse looks just as crude on a $10,000 television as it does on a $50 one. Flip over to ESPN-HD and notice how craggy Joe Morgan's face really is when he does Sunday Night Baseball. (It is seriously jarring the first time you see it.)
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I think the people who are dissing it expected it to resemble the movie more than it did.
I think the author of TFA got it just right.
I'm almost 40 years old, now. My wife and I just had our first child last week. I barely have time to log into here to catch the news, much less any inclination for paying that much money for a console to play inferior games to what you get on the PC.
The console market is in trouble, but they don't really want us to know it. They want to hope for a perfect storm of entertainment, and unfortunately for the, the holy grail is realistic and affordable VR gaming. As the author said, we thought we'd have that by now, and we are still a decade or more away.
Life catches up to you, and while game makers talk about the target demographic being 18-35 male, most of them are H.S. and college kids. Those kids don't have a ton of disposable income. Once they hit the real world, they don't have the time to devote. The more involved in the real world they get (you know, girls, work, girls, hobbies, girls, sex, girls) the less they devote to games.
When H.S. and college guys can afford the game systems and the games, then you might have something. With the PS3, that isn't going to be the case for a majority. That's a problem.
I wonder what other big, recent disasters might have been given a false spin with the general public. . ? It's easy enough to do. People like to be told simple answers which fit easily with their current beliefs, no matter how flawed or limited those beliefs might happen to be.
-FL
And you wanted a "content appliance" to go with it that let you download things off the 'net and even let you do some things like web browsing and email and such on it.
Nintendo is making a game console (I think) but the PS3 and XBOX 360 are heading toward becoming "content appliances" like I've described. I don't think it's a stupid gamble on the part of MS and Sony. They care about the games, but they care more about people downloading movies and music and such (for a fee) from the MS and Sony networks.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
For what it's worth, hydrogen has been proven not to have been the cause of the Hindenburg catastrophe -- a new formula for the outer shell coating ("exterior paint," if you will) that turned out to essentially be solid rocket fuel, and lightning caused the disaster. Granted, the Hyrdogen probably didn't help matters much, but it wasn't the cause.
As for the topic at hand, I think the article author is overstating things. I doubt the gaming market will decline -- on the contrary, I expect it to prosper. As the hardware becomes more expensive, the software will become more of the focus. This should allow the smaller game development houses to get their feet in the door, because they haven't been focusing on the "shiny graphics" factor, and won't have to re-gear their business model.
I will not, however, be surprised if the PS3 is the last for Sony, or if Microsoft delays the development and launch of the 3rd Xbox for some time in order to recoup as much as possible via game (software) sales.
~UP
Eat the Path.
You're smoking crack. I watch a ton of [adult swim], and I just upgraded from a CRT to an LCD HDTV. One of the first things I noticed was how much better all the cartoons were--richer, more saturated colors without any color bleed, better contrast, no irritating flicker or scan lines. And that's just with upscaled regular TV!
Stick in a DVD and you can see your favorite movies all over again, and make out details you never saw before. It can be problematic, in fact--suddenly I could see fingerprints on the glass in the rotating pen scene in "2001".
And then there's actual HD. 720p looks like a well encoded DVD. 1080, even downscaled to my TV's native 720p, is amazing--but there's nothing worth watching in 1080, unfortunately.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Nearly 5 years ago an article was written in Game Developers Mag. claiming that the same certain something was missing from most games and that it was here that small developers had a chance. Here we are and the same focus on graphics instead of content prevails with few small developers. Is this really the end before things get back on track?
I say, muds have always (i know that's not true) existed and always will so let the graphics have their fun. The two worlds have yet to merge and until total emersion becomes possible it just won't matter.
-Tim Louden
ET was a failure before it left the factory. It had an impossibly short development schedule (almost 7 weeks). Howard S. Warshaw, who wrote Yar's Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, had to rush the project in order to get it out in time for the Christmas shopping season. The rush job left the code base so buggy that sometimes, bugs that surfaced made it impossible for player's to complete the game's tasks. Gameplay itself left a lot to be desired.
Atari's mistake was not in being optimistic about the stength of the ET brand in pushing sales; the mistake was in assuming that the strength of the movie license was enough to compensate for the game's design problems. It, of course, wasn't. Atari's bankruptcy was due in part to the failure of ET in light of the company's financial expectations; however, a bankrupt Atari would not have collapsed an entire industry. There was still Intellivision and several other companies.
By 1982 the video game market was so saturated with games, consoles, and arcades that one could twirl blind through any American suburb and end up in front of a Pac-Man machine. I remember the impact the glut would have on some of my favorite arcades like Pirate's Cove (Monterey Park, CA). It wasn't easy to make money on new arcade cabinets because they were everywhere; and everyone who wanted a console pretty much had one.
Companies were releasing too many derivative game designs. Business customers had only so much room for arcade cabinets in their businesses. Players matured and demanded more innovative gameplay - "simulation" became the new hot trend. C64, Amiga, and other computers began offering more value to players.
Somewhat correct, but Intellivsion continued to sell up until the early 90s, and Nintendo arguably had the mindshare of the 90s generation.
The author's basic thesis is that video gaming is a novelty. He suggests that the Crash of '83 was due, at least in part, to the novelty of video games. Were we discussing Magnovox and Ralph Baer, I'd willingly toss around the word "novelty"; but by the time the home consoles were big in the '82, video gaming was past being a novelty.
I think the PS3 is a gamble for Sony considering the company's dependency on Playstation for profits, but I don't think a crash is inevitable for a couple of reasons: 1) the technological state each console on the market means it is possible to produce unique, immersive gaming experiences that will be very satisfying to players; and 2) gaming has long since past being a novelty. It's not even an occasional diversion anymore. Video gaming is as incidental to recreation as television viewing. I just can't take this guy seriously.
Is America really ready for one? In my view, I dunno if they're ready. Even if the industry is strong(And Nintendo is crowned the number one next-gen), I question the rest of America. Higher security standards, unemployment, The War in Iraq, DMCA, companies exporting jobs overseas, Hurricane Katrina. Not to mention rising gas prices. In my view, the crash of the video game industry could be bad for America's economy, if it does happen.
I bought the original PS when I could get it, completely modded, for 150DM, I've skipped the second generation completely so far, but I'm tempted (especially since I'm moving to an all-free-software PC) to try the third. So, Wii, XBoX360 and PS3 are my options:
Wii It has a crappy name, but looks halfway decent. The price seems to be ok (I'm not that much of a video gamer, as you might have concluded by now), but I'll probably not be happy with the game choices (I never had a thing for Nintendo titles, which is why I didn't even own a GameBoy back then). Also: Why have a wireless controller and attach a second doohickey to it by cable? The Nunchuk is pretty dumb, I'd say, give me two wireless controllers instead, so I can move my arms apart... XBoX360 Aside from my near-universal contempt for Microsoft (They have only made two products I didn't find utterly crappy, QB4.5 (which still had some stupid memory-limits) and the original Intellimouse Explorer (three of which died in a two-year period), which was finally a mouse big enough for my paws) and the well known problems (noise, overheating)? Maybe I'm not that interested in a PC-in-disguise and don't want a miserable online-shop? PS3 Damn, that thing is expensive and ugly as hell. Did those designers watch too many 50s space operas? Ugh. In addition to that, I don't trust anything Sony after the Rootkit-shit and have not bought a single Sony product since then. But on the other hand, it'll probably feature the most interesting games (mainly japanese rpgs, though Nintendo also had a few gems there...)So, what am I to do? Enlighten me! :-P
I don't think this new Billy Joel remix scans as well as the original...
You must think in Russian.
I have some more info.
Games included:
Consumers found the console unplayable after just one session of game number 3. This caused some major class action suits.
Another reason that the console made no money was it mysteriously failed among the cuddly kitten-loving demographic. Initially some bought them just to extract the kitten component (ala Rio CF drive), however they were scolded by their peers for giving money to that sick twisted fuck.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Good post, but $400 AUD for a *used* X-Box? They're about $100 AUD tops. I bought one brand new two years ago for $280 AUD.
...one reason why I posted last week that I think Nintendo hit a home-run: http://tgtf.com/blogs/holt/archive/2006/05/12/7445 .aspx
They are doing something very different from everybody else.
Let me rephrase! Of course there is an obvious and detectable difference between standard and high definition. But it does not make a difference to the viewer UNLESS you are actively trying to determine the resolution of the screen.
...but it had the exact same headline last time.
For $600-$800 I can get a good PC and play games on it.
One example... GTA 3 looks 1000x times better on my PC than any version did on the PS2 and a TV set. The same can be said for a great many games. Now I don't know about the new Xbox360 or PS3, but I don't want to have to buy an HDTV and a $600 console to approach what I already have on the computer and nice 21" CRT.
Very true. It's also been studied by the US Airforce that pilots can make out the details of an image flashed at 1/240th of a second. It's not that the human eye cannot detect anything above 24fps, it's just with motion blur added into film that it looks acceptable.
For a quick test on if you can notice a difference, find yourself a good CRT somewhere (work, your own, friend.. etc). Set the refresh rate as low as it can go, usually that's 60Hz. 60Hz is 60 refreshes per second which is 60fps in essence. Look at a completely white screen with that. Most people will notice it flickering. You may not realize that what you're seeing is "flickering", but it really does give off that headache effect. Now change the refresh rate to 100Hz (if you can). See a difference? If not, see an eye doctor.
The human eye can capture quite a bit of detail at a really quick rate. The parent is correct in that the reason that 24fps looks "good" to you is because of motion blur. If you were to freeze the image and look at a single frame the detail is quite low and, in a lot of action scenes, will look blurry. Your brain is pretty good at piecing together this information into a solid image however, but the detail level can be brought up a notch.
I'd like to also note the difference of the resultion to the grandparent. Please set your monitor to 640x480 and maybe play a game with a bunch of text on it like an RPG or something. That's 480p (which is still better than standard TV, but your monitor isn't made for interlaced images). Now change your monitor resolution to 1280x720 (or if you can, 1925x1080) and play the same game. Look at the text especially. Notice that while it's smaller and you can see more of it on the screen that it still looks clear? That's 720p and 1080p respectively. If you can't notice a difference when sitting back and looking at 640x480 compared to 1925x1080.. please don't drive anywhere.
It's also been studied by the US Airforce that pilots can make out the details of an image flashed at 1/240th of a second.
I've seen this claimed over and over and over again on different web sites, usually as a justification for why games "need" to run at 200 fps. But I have never found anyone who could provide a reference to the original study. Since I know you wouldn't dream of just repeating hearsay on slashdot, any chance can you give me a pointer to where this was published?
It is obvious to any gamer that this guy, David Wong, has absolutely no concept of video gaming and the market thereof. Judging from this article I doubt he is even a gamer at all. He even admits he, "games for the novelty." I don't think a good portion of us do. To him, games are just as good as their graphics, which is not the reason your average gamer plays them. Only morons like this guy. Not only is he a casual wannabe gamer he has no right to comment and critisize an industry he cares and knows nothing of.
The video crash of 1983 was NOT caused by everyone being suddenly bored of video games. It had everything to do with an oversaturated market of unliscenced games. That's one reason Nintendo's system was such a breakthrough. Because its marketing system forced quality control on the publishers. This point along renders his entire article a giant pile of jibberish.
BTW, what is this article doing on slashdot? I'm new here but I had expected higher quality articles rather than this two bit dribble that isn't fit to wipe my ass with.
~ So sayeth the wise Alaundo
a) This is not true, as any basic check of median income would have told you ("median" being the key word, because it's not as skewed by rich folks as "average" income would be).
Median (or any other measure of "average" income) has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a family lives paycheque to paycheque. The grandparent post is actually bang on, especially in North America but also in the rest of the 1st world too. This is for several reasons:
1) Wages in most 1st world countries have almost, BUT NOT QUITE, kept pace with inflation, so employed people are making more dollars but must spend even more dollars to make ends meet.
2) People are trying to "keep up to the Jones'" again at a pace not seen since Ronald Regan ran the US. Overall "average" families are buying larger homes, driving bigger vehicles, eating more food and so on.
3) Tax load is higher--in the US the gov't has to pay for all those military operations and has a crushing debt. Income taxes are relatively low but the US consumer is nickel-and-dimed to death by state and local taxes and service fees. Sales taxes are particularly bad because they are "regressive" so those who have to spend more of ther income to live effectively pay a higher tax rate (the poorer you are the higher your tax rate basically). Canadians are even more heavily taxed, although most of it comes right off your paycheque.
4) As a result of the above household debt is at a record high--on average US household debt load is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of disposable income! Basically this means that if you add up the value of all the assets (house, cars, investments, etc) then subtract liabilities (mortgage, credit cards, loans, etc) that the average family is IN THE NEGATIVE by the same amount as their combined annual after-tax income!
The Atari VCS cost $249 when it was first launched. That's more than $800 in today's dollars. You were lucky to find a 19" TV set for $500 - about $1,500 in today's dollars.
Early adopters tended to be upper-middle class or even rich. $800 is still not that much today for them. What is different today is that the Atari was exciting, new and different from anything before--until 1978 basically all you could get was pong and Oddysey (hardwired to play one or a handful of very simple games). The "Fairchild Channel F" was the only cart-based console until the VCS and it was hard to find and had a small library of crappy games. Also The VCS situation was very different from the XBox360 or Wii or PS3. Back then going from pong to being able to play Space Invaders and Breakout (the hottest arcade games of the time) right in your home was amazing. What do we get now with these expensive new machines? Umm...well I guess I can play NFL football 2006 instead of NFL football 2005 and umm..you can see the players sweating and the picture will be clearer...if you buy a new HDTV. There isn't much there motivating average people to run out any buy these next-gen consoles yet. These new consoles are a bit like the Intellivision situation--when the Intellivision II came out it gathered dust on the store shelves because owners of the original Intellivision didn't see anything compelling about it (it looked prettier and talked if you had one of the handful of games that supported it--and the original intellivision could talk too if you got an add-on).
As for the TV, almost nobody had to buy a new one to take advantage of the VCS' capabilities--WAY more people owned 19" colour console sets in 1978 than currently own full-resolution HDTV sets today, and not many people will spend twice the money just to get a TV that makes their console look nice--and besides that crisper image there isn't much out there yet to get excited about.
I'm saying that most people do have the money, they just don't know how to prioritize their purchases.
Maybe they DO know how to prioritise--in fact maybe better than they did in the late 70's and early 80's. As you mentioned there is also
In 1983 we didn't have any option but Atari2600/Intellivision/TI99. Now we have all the emulated games we can ever want. Innovation may be dying, but we have 20 years of games where it wasn't quite dead.
God spoke to me.
...to get a console
That $600 means I can play any of the coolest console games
Except there aren't any cool games for these new consoles. Only one of the consoles is even released, and I haven't seen any XBox360 titles that make me want to go out and get a 360. In fact, I've never seen an XBox title of any kind that made me want to go out and get an XBox. Halo? There is a PC version. Halo II or III? I'm not a huge FPS player and it seems more of the same to me. So far, despite the silly name, I think that the Nintendo Wii is the most innovative offering if not the most powerful.
The Xbox offers me roughly the same gaming experience for less money than a gaming PC
You can find a PC for the very same $600 that is quite capable of playing a lot of good games, plus it'll meet all your computing needs too. I think the console makers sense this because when asked to justify their high price, MS and Sony speak a lot about how their machines are so much more than mere game consoles and suggest implicitly that they could be replacements for video players, multimedia PCs and so on. Their software offerings, however, suggest they are not yet serious about anything beyond games just yet. They'd better pay attention to that though, or they might hit a 1983-like patch of trouble.
I don't have to upgrade the video card ever and the accessories are nice.
There are some pretty sweet PC accessories out there, and you most often aren't tied to your PC vendor like you are with console vendors. I haven't upgraded my video card in a few years and I haven't had a problem with the games I've bought. Windows Vista might require an upgrade but it's looking less and less like I'll ever get Vista anyways--My main home computer is Linux and I have an older secondary machine that came with XP already installed which is mostly used by my girlfriend (I may play the odd game).
I'm not sure if others have found the same thing, but it seems as I get older that my interest in new videogames has diminished drastically, but I still quite enjoy some older games, or simpler games in the style of older games. I couldn't care less about Halo III--don't think I'd play it if someone paid me to take a 360 and a copy of the game. However, I'll fire up MAME and play Centipede or Pepper II (was there ever a Pepper I?) or Mr. Do. I might play Quake to get out agression or play Sim City because it seems like a "constructive" waste of time. Maybe that is why none of these new consoles hasn't impressed me at all--they offer nothing to people with my tastes.
Advanced AI and dynamic story mangment can really change the gaming expirience. Of cause ther is now such AI in the existence, and some would argue it's not possible on existing hardware. However there is also practically no research going in that area. Devlopment of natrual languadge interface stopped several years ago, due loss of interest. All that remain is Elisa -like bots. However crisis in game market could really revive interest in the game AI. Bethsoft's Oblivion for example have AI considerably improved, comparing with previous installments of Elder Scroll.
Massive proliferation of competing consoles (plus a myriad of incompatible, with each other or the consoles, "home computers", sometimes from the same manufacturers, also competing for the game-players dollar) forcing prices down to the point where no one can sell most of them for a profit, coupled with a recession, driving most of the players in the businesses and taking out most of the consoles (and "home computers") on the market?
Um, no, its nothing like that at all. Why would anyone ask such a stupid question?
People always complain about "lack of innovation" yet can't exactly explain what kind of games we should be getting from developers. Adventure games, graphical and non-graphical, pretty much died out. Traditional roleplaying games are few and far between. Simulators are a distant memory. Non-realtime strategy games are rare. I can only assume that those genres faded away or became marginal because people weren't interested anymore, yet now everyone is crying and moaning about repetitive and unoriginal FPS and GTA-esque games, and demanding innovation from developers. I think people are just getting exactly what they ordered, so I don't understand where all the complaining is coming from. "Innovation," as I understand it, refers to quirky and strange games that are clearly out of the ordinary, like Katamari Damacy. But is a game fun just because it's innovative? No. Innovation for innovation's sake doesn't guarantee a good game.
Another thing in TFA: independent developers. Does this refer to small groups and solo projects? If so, independent developers can fuck right off, because if I want independent games, I'll surf to the nearest flash portal or download shareware games. Are people really suggesting that they'd rather use their shiny new PS3 to play some lame flash games instead of Metal Gear Solid 4, or are they trying to stick it up to the man in a rebellious fit of anti-consumerism rage?
The U.S. government has already pushed back plans to eliminate analog TV over-the-air broadcasts due to the fact that few people have found it worthwhile to HDTV so far.
Then why are SDTV (480i) sets, not even EDTV (progressive) sets, the only affordable digital TV sets at Wal-Mart?
Wii fully supports SDTV and EDTV.
Sure, you can play. But if friends come over to your house, how many of them can play on your PC at once?
So you're expecting it to more than triple in 2 years time? Thats still unrealistic.
Moore observed transistor density increasing 3.9% per month (that is, doubling every 18 months). The estimate for HDTV growth that you allege is unrealistic is 4.7% per month (that is, tripling in 24 months).
only the very hardcore gamers or the videophilles is going to buy an HDTV on purpose, the rest only will if their primary TV goes down.
Primary TV will go down after Super Bowl XLIII. The forced obsolescence of analog TV through FCC regulations will push DTV into the marketplace as well, and not just digital SDTV if the big-box stores are as good as upselling HDTV sets as I'm predicting.
I'm not buying consoles because their games tend to be vapid and very weak. They're simplistic, lowest-common-denominator games that don't last me more than a day for the best of them. They're not moddable. They aren't strategically deep, 99% of them. And I was reared on AppleII games which, while they were simple, tried to be thought-provoking and challenging on a deeper level than twitch reflexes.
I just don't like the console format.
And I'm buying fewer PC games now than ever. I can't remember what the last one I bought was. It might have been the first Dawn of War, which was... OK.
The next one I'm going to buy will likely be Supreme Commander, which I trust will be excellent.
Games magazines are not trustworthy. Almost all of them are either on the take or infected with hype fanboyism.
Game companies are not trustworthy. They lie incessantly about hardware requirements, features and everything else, while releasing the same warmedover shit again and again.
Software stores are not trustworthy, and collude with the above two groups. Their pig-in-a-poke sales scheme-- overpriced games and no return policy-- has burned me more times than I care to mention.
Like so many others, the entire games industry from previews through production through reviews all the way to the bargain bin, is driven increasingly by marketing. Rather than release good product, companies use unethical marketing tactics to sell their shit, in the name of short-term profits.
The only good large house is EA. At least they give the appearance of giving a damn.
In many ways, all this is similar to the business model of the MPAA and the RIAA. After this latest crash, expect the game companies to blame their shortfalls on piracy, and go after high school kids who decide to pirate Duke Nukem MCXXVIII rather than spend $50 on entertainment that won't last them a day.
Game Industry: I know you guys read this kind of thing. You people need to listen to us, your decades-loyal supporters, before you lose us to other forms of entertainment.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.