History To Repeat Itself With PS3?

Dr. Eggman writes to mention a 1up article looking at the way things were when the PS2 launched vs. next week's PlayStation 3 launch. The question: can history repeat itself? From the article: "PS2: Released one year after the lower priced Dreamcast, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. PS3: Releasing one year after the lower priced Xbox 360, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. PS2: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.' PS3: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.'" The article also looks at how things have changed for Sony since the last time around.

Comments

Re:The Other side of the coin

[AKAImBatman]

I was reading the USA Today this morning, and they had an interesting outlook on the PS3 vs. the Wii vs. the XBox 360. It basically came down to:

PS3: You're not getting one. Ha!
Wii: Risky, but inexpensive.
XBox: Just fork over the cash for instant gratification.

I think that says a lot about the mainstream views on this generation of console.

The article can be read online here:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-11-09-con sole-cover_x.htm

Sega Issues

[therage96]

One important item to make note of here is that while the Sega Dreamcast was itself a decent system, Sega had already burned a lot of its customers with their numerous "1.5 systems." What I mean by that is, all of the many systems they created as extensions of current systems (Sega CD, 32X, etc..) that they sold as the next big thing, but completely failed on when it came to supporting them. I myself bought the 32X for $130 when it came out, and how many games were made for it? Less than 60. Same with the Saturn, the ultimate 2D system, suddenly found itself floundering when the Playstation focused solely on 3D games and Sega dropped it, and went on with the Dreamcast. After all of those, you could be sure I wasn't about to spend another dime on a Sega system, because how do I know its not another "1.5" system than will have its support cut out from under it in only a few months time.

Re:summary:

[twistedsymphony]

have you used the 360? MS is doing a whole lot of innovative things with the 360, some of it had rudimentary versions implemented on the Xbox 1 that have evolved into more refined features on the 360. The Dreamcast and the Saturn had a few minor innovative features, but there is more to innovation then hardware changes. Would you consider innovation in the PC space dead because we're all still using a keyboard and mouse? MS is innovating in the software arena and with their online service. Some of the things they've done that I consider to be innovative and Nintendo and Sony seem to be copycatting with their latest offerings:

• A unified online profile that contains all of your stats and setting across all of your games
• The ability to access and modify that profile online bringing your console presence to the PC
• An online feedback system that links to your unified profile that allows you to avoid or prefer players allowing you to keep playing others you enjoy playing with and avoid others you don't enjoy playing with
• The ability to access a set of controls with the touch of a button at any time allowing you to adjust various console and profile settings, adjust custom soundtracks, send and receive messages, view information about your profile and the profiles of the gamers you're playing against, etc.
• The ability to set your preferred controls... axis inversion etc. and have it be used for every game
• The "TrueSkill" skill raking algorithm for match making online with people at your skill level
• "Custom Soundtracks" that allow you to easily replace the in-game music with music from from a storage device, an iPod, or a networked computer
• Achievements which add replay value to games by suggesting goals and setting challenges that a gamer might not otherwise attempt
• Gamerscore derived from achievement that creates a sort of Meta-game that encompasses all games on their console
• The Xbox Live Arcade (which was started with the Xbox 1) for downloadable games and content delivery directly to the console

Some of these ideas start on the Xbox 1, and PC but have been really fleshed out and turned into really solid, beneficial and most importanly universal features. None of these have been done on other consoles to my knowledge.