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Demo PS3 Units freeze on Purpose
AbsoluteZero writes "A Sony rep has claimed to Destructoid that demo PS3 units in kiosks across the country were built to freeze up on purpose. From the article: "We do that so that people won't play it all day long," he explained. "Specifically during Motorstorm, we made it freeze up a lot.""
It's a rep that visits game stores. Bottom of the food chain. One rep saying something stupid in the heat of christmas shopping with a shopper pestering him for conversation while he's trying to set up a demo kiosk isn't really that big a deal.
it could be that the booth is a PS3 in a nearly airtight clear plastic box...
I assumed it was a case of overheat
Also this weekend, I brought my Wii to my brother's place to show it off, only to discover he'd just scored a PS3
After a couple of hours of side by side comparison, his wife asked him why he didn't get a Wii instead.
Ouch.
(I also regret not having videotaped our gaming session, as my bro's wife lost her balance and dove headfirst during a bowling throw, almost going through the widescreen tv)
I asked this question on Digg and I am the one with the -22 Diggs. That's Digg for you. Well, here's my question:
Who is the guy that wrote this piece? Is it even true? The story just sounds made up.
Or is it just that people want to justify their hate for the PS3 so much that facts and logic goes out the window?
Seriously, who is Mr. Nick Brutal?
Actually FFXIIs load times are probably the best on the system. They seem to have taken a hint from many other games, including Metroid Prime, and do a preload of adjacent rooms while the processor is free, and also keeps the previous room in the buffer (monsters appear at the door if you go back and forth). You want ass load times? Try Suikoden V, great game, but each new area can be as short as one hallway wide, and the load time is always between 8-15secs. Probably just as bad is Dragon Quest 8, another great game, but it has a 5-10sec load every time you bring up the menu screen, and then another 5-10secs when you go into various alternate sections of the menu system, and then another 5-10secs to get back to the game.
It's really not so much the system's capability that defines load times, but how good the game is designed to accomidate for them. There's no question that the GameCube is far faster at retrieving data off the disc, but a lot of the faster speeds you're seeing are due to suggestions/requirements by Nintendo as to how to compansate for loading. Metroid Prime is a great example: large complex rooms are separated by small, simple corridors in which the processor has extra time to load the next room into memory. This way, the game never stops, the player is always doing SOMETHING, and furthermore, it helps to broaden out the level areas, and give some variety in room size and makeup. Many times these corridors are also sparcely populated, or include hidden power pickups as well. Also, since adjacent rooms load in the background, the game is always ready for where the player is going to be. The result is a game that never stops, and the maximum wait time for openning a door is something like 2-3secs tops if you've rushed through a large room before the processor had a chance to finish preloading the adjacent room.
FF12 did some of this by preloading adjacent rooms... it's one of the first games I've seen on the PS2 that does this, and it resulted in one of the fastest loading games on the system. Most RPGs on the PS2 are absolutely aweful in loadtimes: Xenosaga, Suikoden V, Dragon Quest, Star Ocean, Wild Arms 4, all obnoxious load times (and some obnoxious games, but I won't go there).
BTW: fuck HDs, why not simply have a gig onboard cache that would be used to store all possible data that will be needed in the next 20 seconds (like adjacent rooms or areas). That can practically be done now, but many programmers are too lazy to do anything with it... there is just no excuse for not doing things like this in Suikoden V and Dragon Quest.
This is probably the number 1 reason I like about Nintendo, beyond their high quality hardware and software, they have high standards about how clean games must be before they run on their systems. They realize that every game that goes out on their systems reflects on their image, and they take it upon themselves to make sure developers don't screw it up. Sony seem to project an image of non-involvement when it comes to their systems... as long as the developers pay their licensing fees and don't inherently crash the system every 5 minutes, they can do whatever they want. It's like the difference between Apple and Microsoft in terms of interface design, but that's a different post altogether.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.