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Was Blue Dragon What X360 Needed In Japan?
simoniker writes "Have major RPG Blue Dragon and other Microsoft efforts paved the way for Japanese Xbox 360 success? 8-4 Ltd's John Ricciardi and Kotaku's Japanese correspondent Brian Ashcraft have been talking about the issue, with Ricciardi commenting on Gears Of War's recent appearance in the Japanese Top 10 game chart, with 33,000 units sold in one week: 'I mean, granted, everything is relative — so yes, in a market where the average 360 game sells around 5,000 copies, 30,000 or so may seem like a big deal, but at the end of the day, their userbase is not expanding. The week Gears came out they only sold a little over 7,000 pieces of hardware. It's not enough.'"
Right now the PS3 console is outselling the XBox360 console at about a 3:1 ratio in Japan. Gears of War is not something to extrapolate from. Right before it, I don't think there was a single XBox360 game in the top 30 in Japan.
That's pretty much sums it up. Look at the 20 most anticipated games in Japan.
http://the-magicbox.com/topten3.htm
6 DS games
3 Wii games
6 PS3 games
3 PS2 games
1 PSP game
1 360 game
Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey simply aren't enough. They need 3-6 times this many Blue Dragon's and Lost Odyssey's.
The 360 has about the same footprint as the PS3. Especially since the lastest craze is to flip the consoles on their sides.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Japan's population is roughly equal to half that of the United States. Last year, Japanese consumers bought almost twice as many DS units (the best-selling handheld on the market) as American consumers did. And when I say American consumers, I mean the US and Canada. So your answer would be, no.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
HDMI delivering the best quality is debatable. Having delivered the Pepsi Challenge to close to 50 or so people who've visited my home theater over the last year I haven't found a single solitary person who could tell the difference. besides DLPs are the only true digital display format available today (LCDs and Plasmas are still technically analog) and most scaler chips in TVs are analog as well meaning the whole keeping the signal digital is crap, not to mention decoding DRM adds a few milliseconds to the signal processing which is bad for any hardcore gaming. And if you really need more inputs buy a switcher. It will probably cost less then the costs added to the console for an HDMI out, not to mention you can use it for other things as well.
Have you tried... reading the box? most will have the natively supported resolutions printed right on it. Even still does it matter? They all support at least 720p and the ones that don't can scale (and scale very well) to whatever you want. I suppose it matters on the PS3 but not on the 360.
1080p doesn't add much to the consumer experience in gaming... actually I'd argue that on a console it can actually take away from it... significantly. Why? Because it's being used as a marketing buzzword. If a game has trouble rendering in 1080p they drop FSAA, drop the poly count on the 3D models, go with lower resolutions textures, drop the FPS, etc etc etc. IMO those do a whole lot more for the image quality then 1080p over 720p. All things equal of course I'd prefer 1080p over 720p but when you're pushing these consoles to their limits... you can rarely get 1080p without something else suffering significantly for it.
I'd appreciate some more space or the ability to use my own drive, but at the same time I've never hit the limit of my drive, nor do I know anyone who has. I've currently got about 5 or 6 demos, 10 or so game trailers, 20 or so XBLA games, an HD movie, install files for the FFXI beta as well as game saves and updates for over 50 titles. AFAIK there are only 2 games that install data on the HDD on the Xbox 360 and quite a few PS3 titles that do already to keep loading times at a reasonable speed. The PS3 has a screw to remove a door then the drive can be pulled out and there are 4 more screws to remove the drive from the caddy (which you'll need to do because you can't get extra caddys), if you stand it vertically then you have to put the console back horizontally to get the drive out (and if you're storing it vertically it's probably because you don't have the space for that) the 360's HDD can be removed with the push of 1 button, it has no screws or extra parts and requires no tools at all. You don't need a reference link there at some 10 million people that own them.. ask any one of them. But just incase you still need instruction:
Collector's Edition
You're right about conversions-- at least where it applies. On paper, with perfect electronics (which don't exist), a CD is enough to satisfy the most sensitive ears. But because we don't have perfect electronics, we've moved to 96 kHz/24 bit audio -- able to reproduce frequencies dogs can't hear at volumes that virtually no audio equipment can reach (and certainly not with any level of fidelity) The same can apply to video.
Quantization error (technical jargon for conversion problems) can arise if you have cheap hardware (by which I don't refer to price...) Some TV's won't be noticible at all, others might be very apparent. Which is why it's important to get a good TV first.
I've got an 1080p LCD HDTV; it has to digitize any analog signal it gets for display.
My brother, OTOH, has a 1080i CRT HDTV.
Both have Component and HDMI. Interesingly enough, HDMI looks slightly worse on my brother's CRT. (A CRT's 'native' signal is the component video... in fact, component video's signal describes what the TV has to do to aim and fire the electron beam that makes a CRT work. When HDMI is used, the signal has to be converted to analog first.) On my LCD, they're not distinguishable.
As far as why you get a bad picture at 1600x1200 on your PC: There are a number of possible reasons. Your video card is one of them, the monitor itself is another. If you are using one of those DVI->VGA adapters to connect the monitor, that is a pretty big red flag.
If you're using a DVI->VGA adapter, it's going to look bad; I've had more than a few video cards that had both DVI and VGA outputs, and I've tried the quality of the adapters. My advice-- use the native VGA output; the adapters just plain suck.
I used to have my Mac Mini hooked to a KVM (sharing the monitor with a PC), the Mac Mini had noticible 'banding' scrolling up the screen constantly. At 1600x1280, it was intolerable; at 1280x1024, it was at least livable. When I switched the KVM to display from the PC, the picture was gorgeous with the same settings. Swapping the KVM cable around didn't do anything, nor did removing it entirely-- the Mini just couldn't output a VGA signal that looked as good as the video card in my PC (no suprise considering the only choice I had was to use one of those lame DVI->VGA adapters)
Last but not least is the cable. VGA cables differ quite a bit from TV cables-- much thinner wire, much smaller surface area on the connector. A Component cable has the ability to push a far more powerful signal; this also means that you can get a higher quality signal.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.