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August 2nd Release For Street Fighter II
Gamasutra reports that Microsoft has announced Xbox Live Wednesdays, a soon-to-be weekly release of content to Xbox Live. They have a listing of the next few weeks worth of content, and happily Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting is slated for August 2nd. Frogger will be coming out tomorrow, July 12th, with Cloning Clyde due next week, Galaga the week after that, and Pac-Man expected on August 9th. From the article: "Xbox Live Arcade's Frogger has been enhanced for the Xbox 360, and features new, enhanced artwork that matches and complements the original style. In addition, according to Microsoft, the game's audio, including sound effects and music, has been modernized to sound crisp and clear on today's high performance sound systems." While these releases have mostly been seen as filler for the 360's very uneventful summer schedule, I can't complain too much about the chance to play Street Fighter II again. I'll be playing Chun Li; Who is your character?
If Microsoft announced it, why do we need Gamasutra reporting it? Does the /. community only want to hear of things through blogs these days?
I've always thought it was strange to compare sales numbers for the 360 with other "X months in" numbers for other consoles - but consider this: the Xbox 360 hasn't been through a real Christmas season yet. It was intended to rack up some real numbers (and would've too), but MS suffered from terrible execution and couldn't deliver on the demand. The sales numbers right now mean nothing, it is not the hot console season right now anyway. If the 360 flops *this* coming Christmas season, then there may be some genuine concern for the console's future.
I can give you some credit for the 'nothing worth playing' bit, though it stands to be seen whether or not any of the PS3's powerhouse franchises will be available at-launch. Once Halo 3 rolls out we will see a huge surge in 360 demand (deservedly or not, I wasn't a huge fan of the second game).
As for defect rate, Sony isn't much better off. The Xbox towards the end of its life was pretty rock solid, while I was still hearing about dead DVD drives left right and center with the PS2. This isn't to say the PS3 will be a piece of junk, but one should remember that Sony doesn't exactly have a golden track record either.
And can we stop it with the "$200 for multiplayer" argument already? We don't know if the PS3's online service will be for-pay also, and hell, even if it were, can it offer the excellent experience that Xbox Live gives? I'd pay good money ($5/month isn't much) to have the type of matchmaking abilities Live offers. If Sony can offer that for free, great, they win, but we don't know anything about that, so let's dispense with the Sony fanboy fellatio?
So far, just in casual discussions with friends and colleagues, there is more interest overall for the 360 than the PS3, though in general people are pretty blah about the next-gen thing in general. The only people I know that are still committed to buying the PS3 are the hopeless fanboys and Japanophiles.
The original Guile was the best character. I wish they'd release a remake of the "Original" SFII. You know, a glitched version. It'd be fun to have his unsweepable freeze, handcuffs and invisible throw. Being able to reset the machine was pretty sweet too >:)
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9814 has a nice listing of the glitch moves. I need to find a machine or ROM that these will still work on.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
They just pulled the release. Apparently they weren't supposed to have released it yet. Anyone have a cache of the release?
Which of those versions can you play online though? For the ones you can play online, do they have matchmaking and a large player pool too?
Maybe some companies will get rich by outsourcing libraries of ultra high res background models and textures. Games striving for realism they could take full advantage of some desks, lamps, walls, doors, that they buy from a graphics house much like they get the q4/ut/source engine.
Another possibility is the procedural stuff that wil wright kept talking about in spore. This technology could be used to take simpler textures and make them look good on the fly maybe.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg