The Changing Face of the Console Wars

An article at Gamasutra explores the decisions by Microsoft and Sony to launch significant hardware additions — their respective, upcoming motion-control schemes — in the middle of a console cycle, rather than waiting until the next generations of their systems are ready. It's indicative of a change to the established pattern of console wars; nowadays, it's more about adding features and gadgets to improve existing products than developing entirely new ones. Quoting: "... for Sony and Microsoft, motion controllers are their next-gen consoles. And it's a damn sight easier than launching Xbox 720 or PS4. They can debut these peripherals without needing to engineer completely new boxes for consumers, potentially bundle them over time, and they have a much better chance at getting exclusive games, thanks to the specificity of the hardware (something that's happened a lot for the Wii). Thus, both hardware manufacturers and publishers like EA see these controllers sparking new interest in Xbox 360 and PS3, which will delay the next dreaded console transition for another few years."

Comments

Old school.

[Luke727]

Sometimes I let the neighborhood kids play with my joystick.

You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[binarylarry]

I know the solution! We'll copy Nintendo!

We'll be rich! Muahahaha

- Sony and MS boardrooms

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so right.

There's no innovative forethought.

They're just copying the guys that kicked their asses.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Zero_DgZ]

It's certainly been done before.

Remember that after the '84 video game crash, Nintendo came along and pretty much defined modern video gaming as we know it with the NES. Controllers with D-pads, managed third party licensing, holiday timed releases, literature, and mascots: Nintendo pretty much just made it all up and the rest of the fledgling industry followed suit.

Here's some food for thought: It's becoming pretty clear that gaming as a whole is moving towards a bit of a different demographic. This is partly because those of us who were the kids buying the first Nintendos and Segas have grown up into (presumably) responsible adultlike beings who are now buying Wiis and Xboxes. Coupled with this is the move to 'casual gaming' led mostly by the Wii (and also the DS) which is bringing in people from older generations who up until now have been unfamiliar with video gaming entirely.

One caveat about this: The "bug your parents" business model doesn't apply as well anymore. Older and wiser people who are making frankly massive investments into consoles and games for them are expecting to get a decent run time out of their investments. The huge new market of first-time gamers, grandmothers, and all the other people we like to pick on (who are all buying the Wii) are a tenuous market at best, and it's likely that the console makers are concluding that forcing everyone to jump ship and move to a new platform will probably alienate this whole market. Lots of grandmothers will say, "screw you, I'm not buying a new games machine" and suddenly not only are they not making money on new console sales but they're not making money on their legacy machine anymore, either.

The cash cow then becomes not selling new machines, but selling new upgrades for the existing machines. Grandma (or whoever) will swallow "buy this thing that plugs into your Wii (or Xbox, or PS3)" easier than she'll swallow "spend $500 on this new console that's different from your old one."

The Wii already has this curious casual gamer market. Sony and Microsoft sure want to capitalize on that success, and it's clear that the best (read: cheapest) way to do this is by upgrading rather than replacing. And while all the rest of us are cracking wise about people ripping off Nintendo, at least this method of Nintendo-rippage will be cheaper (and hopefully better) than replacing existing consoles outright. Which will piss off a lot fewer people.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Lord Bitman]

"Nintendo has completely dominated a market we didn't even no existed by adding basically nothing more than instructions telling people to move while playing video-games. If we make something which not only does that, but which also actually captures motion, perhaps we can claim the market they found for ourselves!"

Haven't tried WiiMotion+ because, for fuck's sake, should I need to spend £80 to try out something which the system claimed to already come with? I've got no evidence that it's actually any better, and I haven't heard if using WiiMotion+ improves the recognition on older titles, but my instinct is "of course it doesn't"

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Hurricane78]

Well, it worked for MS. Or what do you think Windows (all versions) or Office (all versions) is?

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

The more motion controllers get invested in by hardware manufacturers the more developers will use them the more integrated they get the better they'll be the more fun we'll have!

They copied Nintendo, so what? If they can put out a better product are you saying you won't use it simply because they didn't come up with the idea first? Copying and improving is pretty much how competition works. MS and Sony shouldn't declare themselves the greatest innovators ever, which they probably will, but as a gamer I don't care. Just give me a better gaming experience. I don't care who came up with it first just who does it best.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[aliquis]

Guess that's why we never see the year of Linux on the desktop.

I know the solution! Let's make it function like Windows!

- Gnome and KDE teams.

(Yeah, lack of games, a reason, the extent Windows is used at schools, friends, works and such affects things to, and I know that. But the point isn't really "this is what they are doing wrong", the point is about copying an old concept.)

And no, I'm not trolling. Back in the days of KDE 2 and such I hated how it tried so hard to be Windows. I didn't wanted Windows. I came from the world of Amiga and would so much prefer something new and innovative there someone thinks up something better rather than try to copy whatever crap is the most succesful at the time. Never understood that concept, never will.

Same goes for AROS and to less extent Haiku. Sure AmigaOS and BeOS was nice, but what good do you get from copying the same (more so in the case of AmigaOS.)
AmigaOS _WAS_ good, it don't cut it today. It's useless to copy it _NOW_. What I would see a purpose in and actually like would be something revolutionary new. Sure it may be harder to get users and apps to something such but it's what would be needed to actually get on top of everything else.

What if Apple iPods had been copies of 80ies walkmans? Would they had beaten Sony at their own game? No.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[gbarules2999]

I agree with that (not the Nintendo stuff, however), but also in the whole idea that there's really no big reason to upgrade and push games forward. Today's beautiful games already cost so much to make and are just barely finding the limits of their systems (Uncharted 2, for example) that it's simply not worth the significant burden of new consoles. And will the consumer care for a console that's not that noticeably nicer looking or doesn't contain any new features? Is there any technology barrier that games can break in the next few years?

Considering the consoles are now at the prices that their predecessors launched at eight to nine years ago, I simply can't see why anyone would care about a new console. This sounds like Captain Obvious stuff when you think about it for a moment, but the market is just fine with what's already there.

The problem with the Wii is that it's a fad. It's doomed to fail pretty quickly - the console sales are dropping, slowly but surely. The major reason why they made so many sales was the price factor, and even that's not a determining point any longer. Nintendo will find themselves treading water while Sony and Microsoft are out chugging their machines along and making a more and more stable platform that they can slap more doodads and whizdoos on for extra profit.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[aliquis]

Good post but you lost me at grandma swallows.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Yvan256]

What do you mean? An african or european grandma?

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[__aaqvdr516]

If by fad you mean the Wii is a longstanding dominant force in the market then I agree. But that's pretty much the opposite of the standard use of the word fad.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Blakey Rat]

Considering all the Xbox Live copying that's been going on at Sony and Nintendo, you can't blame Microsoft. In fact, Sony's entire PS3 business plan seems to be to copy successful ideas from other companies, then add Blu-Ray... have they done a single innovative thing yet with it?

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Toonol]

The problem with the Wii is that it's a fad. It's doomed to fail pretty quickly - the console sales are dropping, slowly but surely.

A fad that dominates this console generation. It's been out for two and a half years, and still sells far more per week than either of it's competitors. Sony's price cut and new slim model gave it a few weeks of increased sales, but it's already dropped back down. Even assuming the best case scenario for either MS or Sony, it will be at least 18-24 months before they could catch up with the Wii's market. Realistically, they're only fighting for second.

There's no reason to consider the Wii a fad; it doesn't fit the definition. That's like considering the iPod a fad.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean kind of like how Sony kicked Nintendo's ass for the previous two console generations?

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[LoudMusic]

If by fad you mean the Wii is a longstanding dominant force in the market then I agree. But that's pretty much the opposite of the standard use of the word fad.

Wii longstanding? It's been on the market less than three years!

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[binarylarry]

It's also completely fucking pwned the PS3 and the Xbox 360 for the entirety of those ~3 years.

And the Xbox 360 had like a full year head start.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

No; you obviously haven't thought it out. The farthest Nintendo has ever gone in copying Sony that was NOT a clear case of technological evolution was the Wii Classic Controller's analog stick layout and addition of a second set of triggers (presumably to make any potential cross-platform ports easier for third-parties). The N64 took nothing from PS. The GameCube took nothing from PS2.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[joocemann]

A fad is something that becomes highly popular and is quickly replaced or suffers a loss of use.

I think it is pretty clear, given how little people actually play their Wii's (and how few games are actually even likeable), that it IS a current fad.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[brkello]

This is true, the Wii has won. But on a personal level, for me the Wii controller is a bit like the dumb standalone baseball games you can buy. It is fun for the mini-games, but really isn't as engaging for traditional games (like the ones I grew up with on the Nintendo). I like "normal" controllers. I like to lounge back on my sofa and play a console game. To me, the Wii has a weak lineup of traditional games other than their first party titles. I am very pleased with my 360 and the games it has. My friends all have Wii's which were fun at first, but all seem to be collecting dust now after the novelty has worn off. I really hope that Nintendo continues appealing to the casual gamers, but I don't want MS and Sony to go too far over that way. If everyone has to have motion controllers, it takes away the ability to play games the way I want to play it. I don't want to jump around like an idiot to play an RPG. I am glad these will just be addons and not replace the standard controller. Otherwise, I'd probably just stick with PC gaming.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[billcopc]

As someone who lusted after the elusive Wii for months before finding one, I can tell you first-hand it is a fad product. It was fun, we bring it to boring family parties and everyone tries the bowling, but it is dead to me.

It's fun to play, once in a while, but having every single goddamned game require you to either point at the screen or flail your arms, means I will never play it when I just want to "veg". There is no way to play Wii in a relaxed position, you can't just lay back in the sofa (or stretch out) and casually mash buttons. Call me lazy, but I'm not always in the mood to burn calories when I'm bored.

In contrast, I'm perfectly capable of playing Street Fighter, Resident Evil, many driving games, puzzle, RTS any many others with a cordless controller (or lap-style kb/trackball). Don't tell my guild, but sometimes I even play World of Warcraft while stretched out on the couch.

That fact alone makes the Wii far more tiring to play, thus discouraging extended play periods. I couldn't stand the new Zelda, and that right there should be a big hint. The only games I am willing to play are party-style, play for a minute then pass it to your buddy (and/or have another drink).

If Sony/MS add the gyro/motion controllers and a few party games to their existing library, it will make their platforms appealing to the casuals, without shutting it out from more traditional gamers like myself. Just don't make Halo 4 require a stupid gun controller I have to aim at the flood, or I will shove that controller AND the console up some designer's ass.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Ceiynt]

I totally agree with the last few sentences there, about not jumping around to play an RPG. I've not played more then 2-3 hours of metroid three due to the fact I have to move my arm around, that gets tiring after a while. I wish they had classic of GC controller scheme for it. Sometimes I want to lay on the couch, under a nice warm blanket playing a game. Not positioned directly in front of my TV with my arm outstretched. The novelty of the wiimote is nice, and it worked really well for some things, like Wii Sports or Punch Out, but sometimes I want to turn it off and use traditional controls. Same goes for the DS, I got the Wizard of Oz game, and it MAKES you use the touch screen to move, select, everything. Was it too hard to make it also use the d-pad and the ABXY buttons? Again, the touch feature is nice and works for some things, a la Phantom Hourglass, but when it's forced because it's there, and the traditional controls would work better, the novalty sucks.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[RocketRabbit]

And, dominant?

The thing was bought by a lot of grannies, then tucked away with a doily on top. If you look at game sales, it's hardly dominating.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[captjc]

It's fun to play, once in a while, but having every single goddamned game require you to either point at the screen or flail your arms, means I will never play it when I just want to "veg". There is no way to play Wii in a relaxed position, you can't just lay back in the sofa (or stretch out) and casually mash buttons. Call me lazy, but I'm not always in the mood to burn calories when I'm bored.

In contrast, I'm perfectly capable of playing Street Fighter, Resident Evil, many driving games, puzzle, RTS any many others with a cordless controller (or lap-style kb/trackball).

Yes, Waggleware is a problem facing Wii games. Not all games are waggleware. Most Nintendo games will work with a Gamecube controller. Virtual Console and many Wiiware titles will work with it as well. Last time I was at Target, I found that they were still selling GameCube controllers and even wireless ones as well. I have also found, with the exception of the newest Wiimotion+ titles, you do not need to flail your arms. Pointing at the screen is also not difficult to do in a relaxed position as long as you do not have your sensor bar and TV set up in a half-assed fashion.

As a Wii owner who uses it for personal solo play and for multiplayer party games, the jumping and flailing around like an asshole that one sees in commercials are not typically done by those who have played it for any length of time.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

A fad is something that becomes highly popular and is quickly replaced or suffers a loss of use.

I think it is pretty clear, given how little people actually play their Wii's (and how few games are actually even likeable), that it IS a current fad.

Opinions, opinions, opinions. I play with my Wii more than I play with my PS3. And if I had a 360, I'd probably never play it given that I only care about 2-3 games for the system. I own almost 20 games on the Wii, with 20 games on my wishlist, while I have 7 PS3 games, and around 10 on the list.

And of course, I guess I will be called a casual gamer now, because that's the only kind of gamer that I can be, right? A casual gamer that loves to play and beat VC games, on top of the retail games available on the Wii, but a casual gamer nonetheless to the "hardcore" community.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[captjc]

I've not played more then 2-3 hours of metroid three due to the fact I have to move my arm around, that gets tiring after a while.

Actually, I feel quite the opposite. I thought that the Wii controls were actually much better than the GameCube controls. I does take some time to get used to, and I had to change the precision and sensitivity settings to maximum, but it feels way more precise than the GameCube controller. Then again, IMO the GameCube control schemes on Metroid Prime were always clunky and unintuitive coming from a Sony Playstation controller FPS background. Especially when it came to facing 3+ enemies at a time. I haven't had any problem with tired arms or playing while sitting or laying in a chair, at least no more so than with a controller.

As for the DS, I do agree that forcing the use of the Touch Screen when it is not needed has ruined way too many potentially good games (especially Star Fox Command). Even Metroid Prime DS seemed clunky at times.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Atiniir]

This is pretty much the exact reason why I traded my Wii to some dude on craigslist for a 360. It's been over a year now, I have had no issues whatsoever with the 360, and within the first month of owning it, I put in more quality gaming time on it than I did in over a year of owning a Wii. The Wii is an underpowered, shit system with annoying mini games that mostly just focus on how "nifty" the Wii-mote is. I'm looking forward to the idea of add on motion control mostly because I like to believe that they'll use it to make RTS games way more fun to me than they ever have been. I imagine that gesturing at masses of troops and such that I want to control will be far more rewarding than using a cursor or what have you. Or it will just be a positive way to browse through my streaming netflix queue. I play games because I want to relax and have fun and flailing around wildly in my living room is pretty much the opposite of fun or relaxing to me.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Atiniir]

Good job with the spelling there, "genious".

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how you handwave Nintendo copying Sony by claiming it as technological evolution.

Nintendo may not have stolen a lot from Sony, but they did steal everything they have ever done from other companies. Fanboys like you will never admit that though.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Point out, in your own terms, what Nintendo did in chronological subsequence of Sony doing same that was not clearly and obviously technological evolution. And if you can't come up with anything better than ROM -> disc, an obvious example of MY point, stop arguing about it.

Nintendo may not have stolen a lot from Sony

Sony was the company mentioned.

but they did steal everything they have ever done from other companies

Post moar about it, hatertard.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[TheRaven64]

I don't have any recent figures, but when I looked about a year ago, the PS 2 was still outselling the Wii, and already had a massive installed base. In terms of hardware, it's pretty close to the Wii (a bit slower, and it doesn't have the motion sensor, but for SD output it's still pretty good) and is now quite cheap, retailing at $99 new (and even cheaper second hand). New games are still being released for the PS 2 so, even though it's a 'last generation' console, it's not a dead platform.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo "coincidentally" didn't switch to optical discs until after Sony cleaned their clocks with the Playstation. The only point of yours that proves is that you are a fanboy.

Copying is copying, the company is irrelevant. If you're going to cite Nintendo as a font of innovation, then you might want to know about their past.

Here, this will work even better. Post anything that you think Nintendo created and I'll show you where they copied the idea from.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[KDR_11k]

Game sales... You mean those charts that contain the flavour-du-jour for the HD systems that change every month and a list of great Wii games that stay there forever? Those charts that show that Wii Sports and Wii Play are the most sold games this decade while Wii Fit is closing in on #3? Where sales expectations of 10 million units happen and are met? Where the number of games sold per system is roughly equal to the PS3's?

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[KDR_11k]

Honestly if just pointing at the screen is too much work for you you're either a cripple or so fat you can barely walk up a set of stairs. Pointing takes almost zero effort, less than handling a mouse even. Wrist on the lap, small movements to move the cursor, how exactly can you get tired with that little activity? Obviously games that make waggle equate to the attack button and require you to do roughly 500 attacks per minute are just retarded but not just because it's tiring, also because it's just stupid to map the movement sensor to a button like that, either make use of the analog input that the sensor represents or use it for stuff that doesn't deserve a button (e.g. reloading in an FPS works really well with movements).

Also the casuals don't want stupid minigame compilations so if that's all that MS and Sony offer them they won't get any.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[KDR_11k]

If you think it's the motion sensor that's responsible for all the success the Wii is seeing you're going to lose money. It's the software! Noone would have bought the Wii if it wasn't for killer apps like Wii Sports and Wii Fit.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Lord Bitman]

It's not the software, it's the marketing. Nintendo releases games that are miles behind anything else in terms of what they do (Wii tennis has ONE button, that's less sophisticated than pong, which arguably had two [left OR right!]), but shows people standing up and swinging their arms in the commercials. Suddenly everyone decides they want one, when you could get the same experience by swinging around an XBox controller.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[KDR_11k]

Pong didn't have buttons, it had a knob. Also the Wii Tennis input is analog, it does matter how you swing that thing even if someone who only took a casual glance at the game wouldn't notice that.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Toonol]

Software sales for the Wii still dominate the top of the charts, more than the other two consoles. Active and continuous game sales would seem to indicate games are being played.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[RocketRabbit]

We don't know, grand total, what the biggest game sales are for 2009 yet.

However, counting Wii Sports as a sale is a little weak, as it comes with the system.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is not consoles. I have no doubt about the level of gaming performance expected from the next generation of consoles.
- physics hardware and software solution built in, ray tracing hardware enhancement capabilities built in, advanced ai software built in, other middleware like sky shaders for weather, inverse kinematics, foliage systems, and cinematic systems.

Actually, the game industry is becoming a bit too much like the movie industry. Half Life 2 and Portal are recent games that are fully interactive. HL2 actually did a good job with story and atmosphere. Doom 3 and other games are more hollywood-esque - immersion, and simulating physical reality are more they're forte.

If there's one useful thing the Japanese invented / brought to the world, it's actually music and melody.
The themes of Mario, Zelda, and Street Fighter actually genuinely have some melodies from talented artists, of an eastern flavor.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course it doesn't.
Nobody has ever suggested that.
A game has to make use of the extra data from the wii motion+ accessory.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[brkello]

By standard controller I mean the xbox/360/ps2/ps3 controller. I don't need to go back in time when I only had a couple of buttons like the NES. Nor do I need to use hand gestures or swing my arm around in place of pushing a button.

I do not own a Wii, but a lot of people I hang out with do. I have played it, it was fun, but not anything that made me want to buy it. It was only interesting when there was a group of people together and we are drinking. I like RPGs, and other than Tales of Symphonia 2, the Wii is really weak on those. Heck, even Final Fantasy is going multi-platform and the Wii isn't included because its hardware is too weak.

Like I said, I like RPGs. Tales of Vesperia, Mass Effect, Eternal Sonata, Fable 2, Blue Dragon, etc. etc.

People have been saying the PC has been doomed for years. Quite frankly, the arguments are at best moronic. Keyboard and mouse is superior to other inputs for certain games. And most people would rather have a controller than a KB/mouse when they are sitting on a sofa.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[hellfish006]

The sales of the Wii are just dropping to a normal rate of sales per month. People look at this as if the "fad" is over. The Wii is just now starting to move units at the same rate as the other consoles, so if you consider that amount to be low than the other 2 consoles must be doing really bad since they have never had numbers like the Wii

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Lord Bitman]

find me a term which is more-general than "button" but less-general than "input" and I will use it. Pong had two ways to tell the thing to go, Wii tennis has one.

No, it doesn't matter how you swing the thing. Even if someone who was bullshitted by Nintendo's marketing ploy wouldn't notice that. Here's an experiment: Try swinging in various different ways, at various different times, and watch what moves the character on the screen performs, how the ball moves, etc. Don't worry about points, just keep track of what you are doing and what happens.
Next, try swinging at various different times, with the same motion each time. Notice the exact same things as before happening on the screen.

Wii Tennis fakes motion-capture by providing you with different motions which tip over the sensor at different times. It's all the same sensor, noticing the same motion, from the same action. It's just noticing at different times. Wii bowling is another good example of this. Wii baseball /would/ be, but it doesn't have the pretense of being anything else.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[joocemann]

Per console, the Wii has by far the least number of games sold by far. This is indicative of user insatisfaction and/or the actual usefulness of the system over extended time (aka fad).

This is also not to mention that Wii owners really only buy a specific handful of games while ignoring pretty much everything else that is made. This is indicative of poor quality overall and the gimmick/fad nature of the system.

People are satisfied and having fun, so I don't hold it against nintendo for what I consider a weak offering to gaming --- the system has also involved lots of people who don't normally even play video games. Both of these factors leading to it being so inferior to true modern gaming that people cannot even compare the Wii to the two major competing consoles pushing today's most up-to-date gaming technology. But lets not get too dreamy here in realizing that the Wii is the way of the Pog.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[scot4875]

Then try it again and add some topspin and watch all the crazy shit you can make the ball do. Or are you not that advanced of a player to handle the controls for this "one button game"?

If you don't think how you swing it matters, you are absolutely 100% wrong. No, you don't get a different animation on screen, but the way it reacts off the racket (you know, the thing that actually matters) changes drastically. And bowling works exactly the same way. Baseball not so much, or at least I haven't played it enough to notice any differences in swings.

IOW: L2P, noob.

--Jeremy

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

"coincidentally"

Technological evolution. Design goal for N64's storage medium was low latency, proprietary control, and copy protection. By 2001, mini-DVD with scrambled headers was good enough. Try harder, son.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Lord Bitman]

Apparently you have done what most people do: You "try adding some topspin" in order to see if it seems to do the same thing you wanted it to. This doesn't actually let you see what is happening, only "I tried this, Hey look! I win now!"

If you actually break down the individual motions and look at how it effects the timing of when different events would be detected, you will realize pretty quickly that every supposedly-captured event can be "faked" through careful timing and a downward flick.

This isn't some vast conspiracy, it's just the limits of the system. The way the inputs were programmed in was: repeatedly performing the desired actions, then letting an automated system build up some heuristics which matched those motions. WiiMotion+, apparently (that is, I have heard) has a much better system for determining what is actually going on, and so has much better heuristics. However, the the original Wii controller is so primitive that it winds up pretty much always being nothing other than "when did this happen?" (basically, it was so horrible that in order to get it to work at all, they needed to turn up the thresholds until they were practically meaningless).

If you think how you swing it doesn't have an effect, you are absolutely, 100% wrong. But if you think it "added topspin" because you moved your wrist in a certain way while swinging, you are 100% wrong. If there are seventy-seven different directions, twists, etc, you can put on the controller while swinging, to produce the same result (animation-wise and ball-direction wise) then it's not motion capture. If delaying or speeding up those actions produces more direction change than actually changing direction, twisting, etc, then it's not motion capture which determines the way the game behaves.

I didn't say that I am unable to get the ball to do what I want it to. I said that I have determined what I need to do in order to get the ball to do what I want- and it's not what you claim it is. Try delaying your swings sometimes, see how realistic the reaction seems.

Re:You're geniouses among men Sony, MS

[Mythrix]

I dunno, I believe I played most of Resident Evil 4 stretched out on my stressless. You don't really need big movements to point at the screen or even to shake the Wiimote around. (Although I guess the pointing part depends on your TV/living room setup.)

The hint is to not keep your hand lifted up all the time, but to just let it rest on your lap, knee or the armrest, even when you need to point it on the screen. ...I think I even play Wii Sports/Tennis like that now.

New?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, consoles have been doing this for years.

The various attempts of light guns such as the super scope, sega mega 32x cd add on, eyetoy for the ps2, added memory pack for the N64 etc.

Re:New?

[QuantumLeaper]

Very true, they always launch some sort of add-on, and no really buys them and very few games will use it. When they do use the new controller, they still support the old one because that where all the sales will be. I can't even think of one new controller/add-on in mid-cycle that even sold had more than 50% of the players adopting.

Re:New?

[Ceiynt]

The original PS1 controller didn't have analog control sticks. Sony copied it from the N64, and has used the DualShock controller since.

Re:New?

[QuantumLeaper]

Most games on the PSX didn't require analog controls, they could use analog controls if you wanted too. I do have a PSX and in fact its sitting within reach right now. My point is its never adopted with the current generation, it maybe used in following generations.

Re:New?

[sabernet]

Ahh, Sony took it from both Nintendo and SEGA. Both competing companies had analogue sticks going for them with a release only 1 month apart(N64 controller in June, Saturn analogue stick in July of the same year). Sony was the odd one out with no analogue input for the PS1 on the regular gamepad. However, they did have a dual analogue joystick system out(the Hackers movie had people playing Wipeout on a set of those). Seeing themselves as falling behind techwise, they took the thumbstick idea their competitors had and combined it with the dual-stick system the PS1 was already compatible with and had accessories for by simply doubling up the sticks on the gamepad.

Re:New?

[timeOday]

What's new is pushing the add-ons as the "next gen", as a fig leaf for the lack of new consoles / longer product cycle. The "new thing" is less new stuff.

Re:New?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

An universally, every single one of these attempts failed; miserably.

If a console does not have functionality on day one, or by default, then you cannot tack on additional requirements, especially when it comes to games. Developers already worried about how small your console demographic really is cannot risk further decimating their audience by requiring people to buy some new fangled, overpriced gadget in order to play your game. People are not going to be willing to fork out double the cost on an accessory and a game, when they could just buy two regular game, usually of higher wuality, for the same price. Light gun game makers have known this for years, and often package the game with the accessory to try and make the package more digestable.

The Wii broke through the gadget impasse by making the gadget an integral part of the console from day one. Sony and Microsoft have done this to a lesser degree by making wireless controllers and in Sony's case "motion sensors" available from launch. But they cannot catch up to Nintendo on the gadget front until the next cycle. It's not possible to get all owners to upgrade their consoles at once so that developers aren't looking at a decimated pool of players. Baring an exceptional few, developers will make games for the console they know everyone definitely has, and they are right to do so.

We are not witnessing a change in the old regime of video games, at least, not from Sony and Microsoft. What we are seeing is envy from these two companies. They want the player numbers and console sales that Nintendo has. What they don't realise, or want to admit, is such numbers will neccessary mean a precipitous drop in the overall quality of game titles and consistent marketing of gadgets, widgets and dongles which may catch casual buyers but which will not attract and hold the longer term game players that the console needs to truly survive. The Wii has become a tired, cliched dead end, or real interest to no-one who actually choose video games over other pastimes. It can and will be replaced by an even blander and cheaper new console or console-like platform at the first opportunity. Nintendo has lost its loyal fan base and is now reliant on an extremely fickle and detached user base with no attachment to the brand.

Gimicks are gimicks. They are not the future of video games. In modern games, I need to control movement of a character in 3D environment, while maintaining camera control and awareness, and while maintaining quick acess to broad array of functionality and abilities, all while making room for meta and system controls. How do I do this by waving my arms or shaking the controller? How would you perform all the functions needed in say, Super Mario World with a motion control system, while retaining the same level of responsiveness and control. You can't. The standard controller is a proven method of such control and this has not happened by accident but rather by design, and it would be the height of folly to disregard that.

Sony and Microsoft complain that modern games are "too hard" for potential new players to understand or control, so we need new control methods. This is like arguments that maths is too difficult, so we shouldn't bother having people learn it. Yes, it's hard to learn how to control video games. But for decades now people have done just that, despite the difficulty. Why? Because they truly love to play video games and have put in the effort to become good at doing so. Just like people who actually like so called "difficult" things like maths will put in the effort to become better. People who cannot control video games are people who were never interested enough to bother learning how, yet now you want to disregard the former group for this latter, albeit larger one?

For the long term sake of your business, which of these groups should you be trying to hold onto? By focusing on these peripherals instead of on core games, what kind of foundation are building for your business over the next ten years?

Re:New?

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be seen as "new" since it seems aimed at casual gamers. However, the new controllers are going to fail miserably. I don't see any gains for game developers.

Having a "much better chance at getting exclusive games" is only good from the console manufacturers view. I understand Sony making exlusives, Microsoft making exclusives and Nintendo making exclusives. Everyone else doing it are plain retarded. And as a consumer, i hate exclusives.

Seeing the amount of work which is NOT platform specific (content creation such as models, animation, cutscenes, music, level design) it astounds me that there's actually still anyone making games specific for a single platform. The cost of developing for multi platform is a lot lower than creating the content. Sure, you might not be able to squeeze those extra 25% out of the console, but you can still make damned good games none the less.

Also looking at Swedish figures, (from dataspelsbranschen.se, a swedish games market organization), the turnover for game sales is as follows:

PC - 210381938 sek
PS3 - 187357453 sek
XB360 - 178960880 sek
Wii - 155687047

The fabulous Wii (the biggest of the bunch and which everyone is trying to copy) has the lowest turnover by far. Also nice seeing the PC doing relatively well in spite of rampant piracy.

On a sidenote, as a PS3 owner, I personally HATE the motion controller. And I don't mean the technology (even though flawed), I mean how it is used. The ONLY game using the sixaxis feature where it didn't completely detract from the gameplay I've encountered so far is 'Flower'. In all other games, it's just been a crappy substitute for using the stick. (And 'Flower' would proably have been better if you could control it with the stick).

Seriously, game developers, stop bloody forcing me to shake the controller.

Re:New?

[stuboogie]

"If a console does not have functionality on day one, or by default, then you cannot tack on additional requirements, especially when it comes to games. Developers already worried about how small your console demographic really is cannot risk further decimating their audience by requiring people to buy some new fangled, overpriced gadget in order to play your game. People are not going to be willing to fork out double the cost on an accessory and a game, when they could just buy two regular game, usually of higher wuality, for the same price."

"It's not possible to get all owners to upgrade their consoles at once so that developers aren't looking at a decimated pool of players."

I would have to disagree with this assessment. Look at Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Both required spending a considerable amount of money on "new fangled, overpriced gadget(s)" to play the games and that is exactly what people did. I think the underlying issue is that MS and Sony need a flagship game (i.e. Halo) to launch these new accessories and therefore create the market for future development that uses the accessories.

Personally, I was hoping for a next gen console from MS or at least for them to roll out a hardware revision that would resolve the issues that have plagued the 360.

Re:New?

[westlake]

Very true, they always launch some sort of add-on, and no really buys them and very few games will use it.

But this strategy seems to have worked out very well for Wii Fit, Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Re:New?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because those hardware add-ons are exclusively used by that game/series and often come bundled with the game. How many Wii games in general use the Wii Fit board of the guitar? Outside of Wii Fit/Guitar hero iterations, how many future Wii games do you think will use them?

Re:New?

[Yvan256]

If they plan on requiring the Wii Fit Board for "Metroid: Other M", then count me out. I wouldn't even be able to reach the morph ball area.

Re:New?

[A12m0v]

Gimicks are gimicks. They are not the future of video games. In modern games, I need to control movement of a character in 3D environment, while maintaining camera control and awareness, and while maintaining quick acess to broad array of functionality and abilities, all while making room for meta and system controls. How do I do this by waving my arms or shaking the controller? How would you perform all the functions needed in say, Super Mario World with a motion control system, while retaining the same level of responsiveness and control. You can't. The standard controller is a proven method of such control and this has not happened by accident but rather by design, and it would be the height of folly to disregard that

I guess someone here didn't play Super Mario Galaxy

Re:New?

[A12m0v]

Seriously, game developers, stop bloody forcing me to shake the controller.

I guess someone didn't play Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2

Re:New?

[NervousNerd]

Some newer games required a DualShock, well at least according to Wikipedia:

Released in 1999, the PlayStation hit Ape Escape became the first game to explicitly require DualShock/Dual-Analog-type controllers, with its gameplay requiring the use of both analog sticks.

Re:New?

[blackraven14250]

I think part of the reason for this is that it's not a mandatory upgrade. People were forced into the Wiimote if they wanted any new Nintendo console games, and they then decided they liked it. They didn't choose the Wii because of the controls; they chose the Wii because the one adventurous dude they know did, and word of mouth took over.

Also, late addons fail because of market factors too. The addon is more expensive because of the low volume, it's more prone to breakage due to less testing and potentially worse manufacturing, which then kills the word of mouth these innovations rely on, and the addon fails. Could you imagine the problems we might have heard if the Wiimote was a literal addon for GameCube, rather than basically repackaged with it?

Re:New?

[KDR_11k]

I'm not sure about the numbers but there are quite a few Wii games with the option to use the balance board, often it's just a gimmick and not useful for proper gameplay (Punch-Out) but apparently it's sometimes a selling point (Shaun White Snowboarding, We Ski). There are plenty of BB based ball rolling games (Kororinpa 2, Equilibrio, the next Super Monkey Ball) too.

Re:New?

[GWBasic]

An universally, every single one of these attempts failed; miserably.

Agreed, with one caveat: Accessories are a good way to test market technology to include in the next-gen version of a console. Even if these versions aren't a success as far as profitability goes; the developers get to become familiar with the technology, the bugs get worked out, and the marketers learn what kind of games people like. These lessons can then be applied to the PS4 and Xbox 720.

Re:New?

[carou]

How would you perform all the functions needed in say, Super Mario World with a motion control system, while retaining the same level of responsiveness and control. You can't.

I guess someone here didn't play Super Mario Galaxy

And almost nothing of any significance in Super Mario Galaxy is motion controlled. In any situation where fast and precise reactions are required, control is achieved using the analog stick or buttons.

There are games where motion control works well, especially by tilting the controller - for example, I think Super Monkey Ball is much better on the Wii than on the Gamecube, because I think it's easier to achieve fine movement control. That's not to say that Super Mario Galaxy would be improved with the same control scheme, because fast reactions are more neceeary there; I can move the analog stick from one axis to the other, much faster than I can swing the whole controller round by 180 degrees.

What? No.

[stonecypher]

The extension of consoles is the defacto behavior for consoles, and always has been. In modern times it's been things like Wii Fit, the Eye Toy and so on, but nobody here has forgotten the Power Glove or the Power Mat, the Sega CD and the Sega 32x, and indeed that pattern goes back into the 70s, with the Intellivision overlay system and the Commodore 64 Extender.

Indeed, it's only the last generation or two which have skipped it. Anyone who believes this is new has only been gaming through one generation of consoles, and that should be their first red flag that they're not ready to talk about the history of gaming.

Could not be less correct.

How is this new?

[Darkness404]

How is this a new tactic? Nintendo released a successful Famicom Disk System for the Famicom (NES in Japan) that expanded the Famicom by using cheaper media and cheaper games that could easily save without extra expense of a battery backup. Sega released like a million things to expand the Genesis (Mega Drive) including a CD add on, and the 32x. Nintendo used games with new CPUs and other chips to extend the life of the SNES beyond the 16 bit generation.

Re:How is this new?

[Orion Blastar]

Before all of that the Atari 2600 had different controllers for different games. First the joystick and paddle controllers, then the driving controllers, then the keypads for the BASIC cartridge, and then the Star Raiders keypad, etc. The better joystick was invented by WICO as it styled the arcade joystick used in many arcade video games and the Mattel did the Tron joystick from the Tron arcade game. I am sure I am missing other Atari 2600 add ons. But the Atari 2600 was the original add on console. There was a super charger that plugged into the cartridge port and loaded games via cassette tape like Fireball and gave the Atari 2600 better graphics as well. But that Atari Graduator Keyboard that turned the Atari 2600 into an 8 bit computer never came out except in beta tests, IIRC.

Modern Game Consoles better have a computer mode and maybe a virtual machine that can run Windows inside of it to play Windows video games or Linux for FOSS video games. :)

Naturally

[Dan East]

We are reaching an era in computing where devices can push audio and video beyond human perception levels. For example, if display resolution were increased, a person would not be able to tell the difference visually from typical viewing distance. Or if color depth were increased to 64 bit over 32 bit could that even be perceived? I'm not saying we're there yet, but we are quickly approaching that point.

Once that happens then what will be the next generation anything? It will be a matter of small refinements, novelties and exclusiveness of titles.

Re:Naturally

[Pharmboy]

Once that happens then what will be the next generation anything? It will be a matter of small refinements, novelties and exclusiveness of titles.

Nope, interactive pr0n. Get super high resolution, let people scan/upload face pictures for the head and choose from a menu for the body, and you wouldn't build enough of them at $2000 each. Obviously, you would need some kinda of wireless control system that doesn't require two hands.

Re:Naturally

[wamerocity]

Thank you! I was coming here to say pretty much the same thing. Why bother pushing for a new system at this point? So a next system has more processing power and ram, so what? Are games today more fun than they were 4 years ago because the graphics are better? Would the next call of duty REALLY be that much better if it was rendered in 1080p instead of 720p? Innovation and quality design makes good games.

Re:Naturally

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, the fanboi will be driven out of existence. The future is, indeed, going to be great.

I'd even bet producers could see the benefits of releasing a decent (vs. shiny) game, someday.

Re:Naturally

[Nf1nk]

There are still memory considerations. Consider GTA IV (now pretend that it isn't boring) at any given time there may be a couple of dozen cars on the road that you can see. It would be a major improvement if they could have a traffic jam with hundreds of cars and dense crowds on the sidewalks (it is unclear whether this would make it more fun, but it would be more real). This doesn't change the resolution of the screen, but it takes much more computing power than we have in the current generation of consoles.

Maybe I picked a poor game for an example, but imagine bustling market places and tropical reefs with thousands of fish.

Re:Naturally

[Blakey Rat]

Well, considering this exact same post appears in Every. Goddamned. Gaming. Thread. you really needn't have bothered-- believe me, we've all read it before.

Slashdot needs a -1 Tired Cliche moderation.

Re:Naturally

[Yvan256]

Obviously, you would need some kinda of wireless control system that doesn't require two hands.

So, we're back to a joystick interface for 50% of the units?

Re:Naturally

[4D6963]

Well you're correct in that we're reaching the limits for certain things such as resolution (where the apparent angle of a pixel on the screen is smaller than your best eye resolving power (28 seconds of arc) at a typical viewing distance, or where bit depth is about as good as needed (although I think we may be able to see RGB 888 from anything superior in low contrast gradients without any dithering. Which IMHO is why Photoshop always dithers its gradients (or just about anything it does), but then there are always other limits to push.

For example, screens with a higher contrast (i.e. darker darks) can make a big difference, or if we're gonna talk about colour, the gamut can be increased, or yet we could have more range than 0-255 (i.e. extra range for brighter lights for higher dynamic ranges, for example, a screen that would almost blind you when you look at the in-game sun to represent light intensities correctly. Although I'm not sure this is in any way desirable... Well time will tell). And of course, it's not like we see video games stereoscopically (except for a few ones but it's marginal), or we also have a very limited FOV (our screens probably occupy less than 30 of or FOV while representing sometimes over 90), and so on...

And on top of that of course we can still see individual polygons, individual pixels in textures, lackluster real-time shadowing, unnatural motion and transitions, etc... We push old limits and are left with new (or not so new) ones.

Re:Naturally

[FlyingBishop]

I think the visualization is fairly unimportant. New and exciting physics, on the other hand, with more realistic explosions and health effects will be interesting (though of course, never better than their old-school counterparts, only different.)

Re:Naturally

[JRR006]

On the other hand, I've been playing a few of my favorite titles from the PS and PS2 era and all of the loading makes me crazy. Silent Hill is load screens up and down every hallway. Ico: moving through every door, window, and hole entails a loading screen. FFXII: a product very late in the PS2 dev cycle, and walking through the first city is a chore. Persona games entail plenty of loading. Mass Effect and its infamous elevators might be partly down to clumsy design, but it's also a limit of storage space and processing power. We've got open world sandbox games like Crackdown or GTA, but picture something with the polish and intensity of Mass Effect running on the next platform with an 'open-galaxy' world. I agree that I don't care how high def individual textures are, but the opportunity for increased breadth and granularity is very enticing.

Re:Naturally

[Suicyco]

We are still very limited in what can be done. The amount of models on screen at any one time, the field of view, interactivity of the environment, etc. More processor speed, better GPU's and more ram will all lead to more realistic and fine grained physics, larger interactive environments, 3d displays, faster load times, you name it.

People said the same exact thing with the ps2, the pentium, all that outdated tech.

We have a long way to go yet, these primitive consoles are just the tip of the ice berg. Its not just how many "p" the resolution is. Its about the complexity that can be achieved, the depth of the experience. PC's are far better at this than the current consoles, and thats with current technology.

The next Call of Duty would REALLY be that much better if it didn't slow down with so much on screen at any one time, with fuller more interactive environments, very fast load times, hyper realistic physics, far more advanced input devices, 3d immersion, voice commands to AI squad mates, the list goes on and on.

Re:Naturally

[brkello]

There is always something that can improved upon. If not graphics, then number of enemies that can be show on a screen. More processing power allows for more complex AI. There is always a disruptive technology that we don't expect that drives something in another direction. Maybe it will be holographic games. Maybe it will be a console that links directly to your brain. Possibilities are endless.

Re:Naturally

[Anonymous Coward]

Because big changes don't happen overnight, although it seems like it. The constant small changes are needed to push the technology forward. After awhile, these small changes will enable a noticeable innovation to emerge. Imagine if decades ago, the console makers thought 2D is good enough and stopped putting faster chip in their hardware. We will never have all these fancy 3D effects that we've grown accustomed to. Remember that faster mass-market (read: cheap) computers are always a good thing! Your holodeck will never see the light of the day otherwise.

Re:Naturally

[Inverted Intellect]

While yes, we can push the amount of information displayed to high enough levels (e.g. resolution and bit depth) that fidelity shouldn't matter anymore, there are still colors that we can perceive which are yet not in the standard RGB color gamut, and similar issues regarding sound reproduction, e.g. the unnaturally consistent and repetitive reproduction of in game sounds.

Besides which rendering methods, A.I. programming and physics simulation are all far from having attained the fidelity required in order to be similarly complex to our senses as the real world is, even as reproduced on a monitor and sound system.

But yes, it is true that small refinements and occasional novelties will be the driving force behind game sales. That's not really a change.

Re:Naturally

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes, graphics DO matter. There are many things that cannot have the same impact or immersion without the graphics to back it up. While good graphics cannot make a bad game good, they can make a good game great.

People who recite the tired mantra that graphics don't matter are lying to themselves. You KNOW deep down that they do matter. Everybody knows it. That is why we have fancy graphics cards and powerful consoles. If graphics really didn't matter then we would all still be playing Atari 2600.

Thank You Apple

[Gothmolly]

Thanks for creating a fun, engaging product that plays games with "good enough" quality. The next console doesn't have to be faster and have sexier graphics, it needs to be more fun, or more real.

I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it is not unheard of for manufacturers to release gadgets, this specific instance is purely because of Nintendo. Nintendo have created a whole generation of devices that have non-traditional controls (Wii motion stuff, NDS touchscreen, etc) and it has proven to be a very popular.

This is just an attempt to incorporate those good ideas into products that previously didn't have them.

Merely a response to Wii

[Anonymous Coward]

They see an inferior tech selling nicely and figure motion control will make new customers consider their superior tech.

The Wii proved that it isn't all about the graphics, but I don't think there is anything earth shattering about the input tech that others can't copy.

I'd like to have to fun of motion control without having to limit myself in the graphics dept like Wii.

Re:Merely a response to Wii

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the Wii proved that but it isn't selling games aside from Wii Sports and it is an overpriced piece of shit for the price they sell it. Most people who bought the Wii made the purchase because they were sold by the marketing of the product. I know,I was one of them. I bought one for my kid but he lost interest a couple of weeks after he received his gift. Now he asks me again to go outside to play.I do not think that the motion controller à la Wii is the future of gaming. For young kids maybe but I just can't picture a fat fuck jumping around, mimicking sword fights for hours on end. I find Project Natal more interesting than the Wii or PS3 motion wand.

Personnaly, I want gaming to be relaxing when I decide to play for an hour or two, sitting in my sofa. If I want physical interaction, I do some real sports, tennis, biking, soccer, swimming.

Long lived generation

[spire3661]

THe reason the last generation of consoles went by so quickly is because the level of online interactivity on the previous consoles left alot to be desired and were jsut out of reach. Now that all the consoles have successful online digital money presses, the motivation for new hardware is less and less. I figure we wont see next gen prototypes for at LEAST 2 more years, maybe more.

Re:Long lived generation

[QuantumLeaper]

When by quickly? The Sixth generation games consoles where sold from September 9, 1999, Dreamcast to November 22, 2005 when the XBox 360 was released. Microsoft the the last one in the Sixth Generation consoles and the first one out of that generation.

Re:Long lived generation

[Spatial]

What was quick about it? It was seven years, 1998 to 2005.

Re:Long lived generation

[spire3661]

And we started seeing spec rumors/announcements and prototype hardware right about now in the cycle. We arent going to see specs or prototypes for at least another 1.5 to 2 years in this gen. So while I may have mis-stated above, the sentiment remains that there are several reason that this hardware cycle is going to last longer then initially expected.

Re:Long lived generation

[4D6963]

No that's a biased way of looking at it because the Dreamcast didn't have any successor (and it came out in 1999, not 1998). Look at it this way, PS2 (2000) to PS3 (2006), 6 years, GameCube (2001) to Wii (2006), 5 years, Xbox (2001) to Xbox 360 (2005), 4 years. So the average periodicity for this previous generation was 5 years. It's not THAT short but on the other hand I don't think it's ever been shorter.

Re:Long lived generation

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

Dude, the Dreamcast was released on November 27, 1998.

I know, because I had a friend get me one for a Christmas present. It was one of the ones with Yukawa Senmue on the box. You know, from the commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnsg3YLYcDk&fmt=18

He was funny and self-deprecating. It was sort of a recognition of how Sony's Playstation had managed to beat out the Saturn over time (The Saturn was the #1 console in Japan, roughly until FF7 came out for the Playstation)

I still thought the Segata Sanshirou ads were better though =) I think the Saturn would've won in the U.S. if Sanshirou had been the mascot here. He kicks your ass if you don't play Sega Saturn. =D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNwYPdEBTc&fmt=18

Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[erroneus]

Perhaps it's merely my own lack of vision and creativity, but I can't imagine much further growth in the capabilities of consoles. Display technologies have been maxed out. Memory and processing systems are well balanced between power and cost even if the consoles are still a bit too costly in my opinion. Until the next great other technology comes out, I can't imagine getting much better than it already is... a little better perhaps, as the costs of more impressive technologies decrease, but nothing significant. In fact, I would go so far as to say the advancement between XBox and XBox360 is barely noticeable. PS2 and PS3 is largely the same thing.

What they will do, in the next gen, however, is figure out new ways to kill the second hand and other post-first-sale business activities. If the PSP Go is any indication of what is to come, we are going to see a decrease in the popularity of new consoles.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[TheKidWho]

The current generation of consoles are TERRIBLE compared to PCs. A new PC with a Radeon 5870 has nearly 6-8 times the graphical processing power.

Most consoles games run at sup 720P resolutions and are upscaled to fit a 1080p screen, view distance in console games is terrible, textures are blurry messes, and frame rates suck.

The fact that you can't see a difference between the xbox to xbox360 is laughable.

Just because you have low standards doesn't mean the tech can not advance much further than it already is.

Either way, eventually the hardware will get powerful enough to run real time ray tracing in HD, or at least a mix or real time ray tracing and rasterization, this is when consoles will most likely achieve very long life cycles.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[TheKidWho]

P.S. If you want to see where the next generation of consoles are headed, simply look at Crysis on a maxed out Rig.

Current Generation PCs can still barely run the game at 1600p with 30fps, personally I predict the next generation consoles to have equivalent power to this.

Here is a screenshot.

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/4228/crysis64200806291401238to6.jpg
http://media.photobucket.com/image/Crysis%20max/LiquidReactor/Crysis/Crysis2009-05-2608-40-24-45.jpg

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[binarylarry]

I play games at 2560x1600, you insensitive clod!

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[QuantumLeaper]

What at 5 frames a second?

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[TheKidWho]

Modern graphics cards such as the Nvidia GTX series or Radeon 4xxx to 5xxx series can easily play games at 2560x1600 with 30-60fps, especially games that are console ports.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[WarlockD]

Its doubtfull the next gen systesm are going to go non-media based. The go is nice but it still takes hours to download anything just think how much data will be needed for even blue-ray type games? 10 million people downloading 30 gigs at a time is going to hurt any server:P

I agree though, I think they are not going to be upgrading the hardware significantly. They are going to play this like the PS1 did with the introduction of the duel shock controller. Even then, there was a clear need for an analog controller. I don't know, however, if a motion controller will change attitudes in either system.

I do believe that both Sony and Microsoft are not going to enjoy the next console upgrades. There is always a big lul, lots of money lost on reintroduction, people WANT backward compatibility, etc. Lets also be fair too, most of the games right now are fairly mature so it be a hard sell to another $600 dollar console with 10 crappy games at launch. Also look at their architecture. Sony has a full cell chip (minus one SPE for cost) and Microsoft uses 3 cores with two SPE's each. There is no way you could emulate that kind of power without also including that chip and thats going to add to the cost. Also what are you going to upgrade it too? The cell chips are supercomputer class, what, PS3 is going to go duel/quad core and Microsoft is going to add a second processor? I doubt they are going to even change the chips out at this point. Even going to an Intel chip can't be done. Not with the significant differences between the two. Besides, it looks like ALL the consoles use PowerPC style processors so there must be a reason for it.

I think I saw the future with the N64 and didn't know it. That little memory expansion bay? I think the next box is going to have the same basic architecture but with upgradeable video graphics hardware. Most games I play now a days doesn't require more than my older PentiumD, but god damn it requires a GTX280.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[icebraining]

Its doubtfull the next gen systesm are going to go non-media based. The go is nice but it still takes hours to download anything just think how much data will be needed for even blue-ray type games? 10 million people downloading 30 gigs at a time is going to hurt any server:P

I disagree: getting rid of physical distribution and killing second-hand sales with one move will compensate any bandwidth they'll have to pay.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[PostPhil]

No, it's the other way around. PC's are currently TERRIBLE compared to consoles. How can I say that? It's easy. There is no objective meaning of "terrible": it depends on what your goals are. Apparently you're one of the gamers who prioritizes eye-candy and/or processing power. I don't, and many others don't either.

Here's what I think is important:

1. I can actually play the f***ing game at all. The PC market has intentionally alienated used-games with copy-protection and "activation". If you already activated your old game and try to resell it, good luck if you're the new owner who can't install it on their computer. But let's say this is *my* old game, not a used one. Five years down the road, if I want to use it on my new PC with my new version of Windows (because it's going to *have* to be Windows), can I activate it to play? Is the company's servers even around? How do we deal with all the breakage due to OS updates, malware, driver bugs, etc...

2. I can actually play the f***ing game at all, without having to take out a bank loan. For under $300, I can buy a console off the shelf, pop in the disk for any game I own, and I can play it immediately. As long as I have this hardware, I can continue to have the *freedom* to play these games 10 years from now if I wish to. Let me see you play Crysis with a computer off the shelf for under $300. "Technically feasible" doesn't count. I'm referring to the ability to have a genuinely enjoyable gaming experience.

3. Consoles are dedicated to their jobs, with standardized hardware and software. PC's are for general purposes, but do not excel for special purposes like gaming (or high-end audio or video) unless you spend a lot of money to get *non-standardized* hardware and software. As a result of the predictability of the console platform, quality control is easier when you only have to worry about one hardware platform coupled with one software platform. (Note that I wouldn't condone this for PC's. They really are for general purposes and not specifically just gaming.)

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[gbarules2999]

\Most consoles games run at sup 720P resolutions and are upscaled to fit a 1080p screen, view distance in console games is terrible, textures are blurry messes, and frame rates suck

Citation needed.

I shouldn't feed the trolls, but sometimes...

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[aliquis]

While Crysis is a special case I guess you could google 5870 review.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[Blakey Rat]

In fact, I would go so far as to say the advancement between XBox and XBox360 is barely noticeable.

You must have the shittiest TV in history.

Compare a late Xbox title, like the Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, and compare it to a launch Xbox 360 title, like Oblivion or Kameo. You're seriously telling me you can't tell the difference between those? It's night-and-day.

PS2 and PS3 is largely the same thing.

Ok, now I KNOW you're smoking crack. The PS2 looks like shit even compared to the original Xbox, and the PS3 is (marginally) more powerful than the 360.

If the PSP Go is any indication of what is to come,

It's not. It's a horrible failure in the marketplace, and just one more example of "what the FUCK is Sony THINKING?!" Sony making a dumb-ass product doesn't indicate anything, other than Sony makes a lot of dumb-ass products.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[4D6963]

Yawn, alright that's an old debate but since you've been modded up...

1. Big deal, crack the games (even if you bought them) and see if that's such a big deal. Now trying pirating games on consoles (if you're opposed to pirating then it's a moot point for you though).

2. You already have a PC, so that's a dishonest point to make. Everybody has a PC, no matter whether or not they want to play video games. And even if you have a 3 year old PC with an integrated Intel graphics chip it won't take you more than $300 to have a machine that overpowers the Xbox 360. And PC games are priced cheaper than console games. Also, I can play PS2 and Wii games with my PC. Can your Xbox do that?

3. Bullshit. Consoles are basically cheap PCs (what's the Xbox 360 but a glorified PC with a special OS?) and even share the same hardware. And for all you care, your average PC will kick the arse of any console currently out there. You might say that theoretically things would work better on consoles since the hardware configurations are unified but these days that's a bullshit point to make. And if you disagree well you can keep your Red Ring of Death Xbox and I'll keep playing games flawlessly on my PC.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[MattMooreSucks]

Those all may be true, but parent post was merely arguing that the technical side of consoles still had a long way to go, as evidenced by the fact that even right now, PCs are running games at a much higher level.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the big win consoles have over PCs --

MULTIPLAYER

Right now I could go to my friend's house, pick up a controller (since he 2+ controllers) and we can play some Halo while sitting on the couch. And then my other buddy can come over. And then a 4th buddy. We can play on the same TV.

PCs are inherently single machine, single player. How many true split screen games are on the PC? None. While you could play online, your basic console of this gen has that too. While you could bring your gaming machine over to a friend's and LAN, your console can do that too. So in that regard, consoles win out over PCs.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[TheKidWho]

Apparently you need to get some reading comprehension.

For starters, the OP was referring to graphics reaching a plateau which I was arguing against. If you weren't such an idiot you would have realized that.

1) Steam solves all of those problems, I have steam games from 5 years ago that I can still easily play and maintain. I also have games from nearly 15 years ago that I can still run on my computer today, so what is your point again? Any activation problems with old games can be solved within 15 seconds through google. So what is your problem again?

2) That argument doesn't fly very much. You have a computer that you are obviously using to type this post in right? You realize that a graphics card that is easily 4x more powerful than a console only costs $150 right? Why are you bringing up Crysis anyways, I was merely pointing out that next gen consoles will approach the graphics capabilities of Crysis on current high end PC hardware.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[TheKidWho]

Here you go:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=List+of+native+1080p+ps3+games

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[Turiko]

1: if you want to re-sell the game, this is indeed not possible, and it sucks. If you have an old game then there will be cracks and fixes. If the company stopped offering support or went bankrupt then you have every right to circumvent their DRM. Who said windows? WINE plays a lot of games fine. And with desktop virtualization, you just need to have your old copy of windows around and load it up inside your actual OS. The virtualization gets rid of OS updates, malware, driver bugs and stuff too. 2: go buy a pc for $300, set it up, and install crysis. If you're an idiot and set the graphical options to maximum, then yes, it doesn't work. Then again you can just make it go down and have the game fully functional. This way you will be able to play the game again later with a completely different experience, thus making replayability. 3: Bullshit. I have a motherboard with a decent integrated audio card. I have a non-integrated graphics card. I can do whatever i want - try composing or editing music on a console. Try making 3D models on a console. Yes, PC's are general purpouse. But they are simply better for the things consoles can, because you can upgrade later. If you run an xbox game on an xbox360, can/does anything change? Nope. It does if you always use low-cost hardware for PC's.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[westlake]

The PC market has intentionally alienated used-games with copy-protection and "activation"
How do we deal with all the breakage due to OS updates, malware, driver bugs, etc...
 

Why the heck should I buy your used PC game?

Gog.com - to choose just one example - repackages classic MSDOS and Windows games for XP, Vista and Win 7.

The garage sale price is $6 or $10. Weekend specials offer an even better value.

PC games have a strong online community.

There's no real problem getting Doom, System Shock 2, Arcanum or a Temple of Elemental Evil up and running - with vast improvements over the original, commercial, release.

As long as I have this hardware, I can continue to have the *freedom* to play these games

Your freedom ends when the console dies.

The PC gamer can still play Commander Keen on a system with the latest and greatest in hardware and OS.

PC's are for general purposes, but do not excel for special purposes like gaming (or high-end audio or video) unless you spend a lot of money to get *non-standardized* hardware and software

The mid-line desktop these days will be a 64 bit quad core with 6 to 8 GB of RAM, up to 1 TB of storage and a sport a serviceable video card with multichannel HDMI digital audio and video out.

Walmart.com or TigerDirect will have something in this class for $700-$800.

That is a much bigger investment up-front than your console, of course - but for the gamer on a budget, the PC can be a very attractive platform.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[Anonymous Coward]

This FUD gets insightful? "Consoles are cheap PC's?" What's next, "the iPhone is just a cell phone with a pretty screen?"

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[brkello]

Oh come on...PC's don't excel for gaming? It sure as hell does for RTS's and FPS's. The graphics are better, the input allows for more complex games, and you have access to FREE downloads and mods. If a PC and a console has the same game, often you have to pay for the mods where they are free online...and you don't even have access to many user created mods.

Listen, I am a big fan of gaming. I like to do it both on the PC and the consoles...they both have advantages and disadvantages. Saying PCs are terrible compared to consoles is just flat out stupid. If you are too poor or mentally slow to figure out how to play games on the PC, you have more to worry about than gaming.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[4D6963]

Nope, it's just a phone with a multitouchscreen, no buttons and a special OS. Think about it, what's special about the iPhone, technically? Nothing, it IS just a phone.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[4D6963]

That's a good point. I never thought of it because I don't have any friends :D.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[tepples]

Oh, and I thought of another thing:

You have a computer that you are obviously using to type this post in right?

You don't happen to know where I could buy a kickass graphics card to replace the Intel GMA in an ASUS mini-laptop, do you?

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[WarlockD]

They are going to have to drastically reduce the price then. I can see spending 30 bucks on a game for the GO but 59.99 for a game for a download? Till we all get 50mbps pipes with the servers to back it up, we are going to see more downtime on releases than AO did when it went live:P

Still, they could do price reductions faster than what could be done at stores. I just think to many people are in the way for it to work well (ISP, net neutrality laws, etc)

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have a PC, for other purposes. The marginal cost of adding a decent graphics card is considerably less than the cost of a console.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn, alright that's an old debate but since you've been modded up...

2. You already have a PC, so that's a dishonest point to make. Everybody has a PC, no matter whether or not they want to play video games. And even if you have a 3 year old PC with an integrated Intel graphics chip it won't take you more than $300 to have a machine that overpowers the Xbox 360. And PC games are priced cheaper than console games. Also, I can play PS2 and Wii games with my PC. Can your Xbox do that.

Actually, my main computer is an iMac. Many people only have laptops these days. I also do have a PC laying around, but it doesn't have the motherboard to take the new memory, graphics cards, and CPUs. I'd say most people are in my boat and it takes more than $300 to get something that would play a new game. Any yes, my PS3 can play my old PS2 games.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.videogameszone.de/screenshots/original/2009/10/Risen_PC_vs_Xbox_360_10.jpg
http://static.videogamer.com/videogamer/images/pub/misc/masslarge14.jpg

Oh and no console is capable of running Crysis, a 2 year old PC game.

Re:Could it be a sign of delay in the "next gen?"

[4D6963]

I'd say most people are in my boat

Yeah, sounds like a case of believing most people are like you. I'm so sure that most people have iMacs and too old PCs laying about.

Sucks for PC users

[Anonymous Coward]

Game graphics advances will be stunted due to these dinosaur consoles being the dominant force in the industry. I guess the bright side is I won't be blowing $300 every 2 years on graphics cards.

Re:Sucks for PC users

[binarylarry]

You actually think Nvidia and ATI (and Intel..hahaha) aren't going to compete anymore because some morons in tangentially related industries got into the game business?

Re:Sucks for PC users

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know; I think graphics have advanced far enough that we are starting to see diminishing returns. Aside from bumping up the resolution to something PC gamers are used to, I don't really think there is much room for improvement. People like to point to Crysis, but I honestly was not particularly impressed with it. I used to be a console hater, but I just got tired of all the bullshit involved with PC gaming. Consoles have their own bullshit to deal with, but PC gaming is worse. I think it's analogous to the whole Linux on the desktop thing. Maybe Linux offers all this shit, but at the end of the day many people just don't feel it's worth the effort and go with Windows. That's exactly how I feel about console gaming.

Re:Sucks for PC users

[Anonymous Coward]

Crysis was basically just a tech demo for what the most powerful lines of x86 processors and gpu could handle, the game was at best an afterthought, at worst an excuse to cash on a shit tech demo nobody would have cared about otherwise, it's one of the least relevant benchmarks ever and still the meme took hold because of a few moronic gamers who think "it kills my gpu therefore it's the best game ever".

Re:Sucks for PC users

[Quiet_Desperation]

Game graphics advances will be stunted

And some of us gamers cry "Thank effing baby Jebus" for that. Have you missed all the complaints about how gaming is too dominated by graphic card wank fests over who has the best lighting effects or water reflections? Or how the hardware has advanced too much along the polygon count side, actually making it difficult to do anything else other than service shiny graphics, enemy AI or any other intellectual concerns be damned?

I guess the bright side is I won't be blowing $300 every 2 years on graphics cards.

Yeah, bingo. People are getting tired of that. A friend showed me a newer PC FPS a couple weeks ago. Pretty as all hell, but just another goddamned shooter with dumbass enemies and puzzles for the short bus crowd. Whee!

All about the money...

[biscuitlover]

Could this be because of the losses that Sony and MS are making on each unit sold? I couldn't say whether past consoles always turned a profit, but I suspect that after investing so much money in their respective hardware, neither company wants to move on to the next gen before they can claw back as much cash as possible on games and add-ons...

Re:Thank You Nintendo

[Anonymous Coward]

There, fixed that for ya.

Re:What? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even the last generation skipped it - the PS2 had the hard disk & broadband extension, and the GCN had the broadband adapter. Although they were highly underused, extensions were there last gen (save for the original X-Box)

Re:What? No.

[QuantumLeaper]

The Dreamcast came with a modem as standard and look at how many games even used it. I think I can count the number on one hand.

Re:What? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have FREAK hands

Patents

[tepples]

I don't think there is anything earth shattering about the input tech that others can't copy.

It depends on which patents Nintendo owns or exclusively licenses from another party vs. which patents Nintendo non-exclusively licenses from another party.

Re:What? No.

[QuantumLeaper]

How many games used the modem? PSO and what?

What does this mean for game design?

[damn_registrars]

Currently, button-mashing is pretty similar between the Sony and MS consoles. This makes it pretty easy to conceptually port a game from one of the two consoles to the other (which is probably part of why we so so many simultaneous releases for the two), even if the programming APIs are distinct. On the other hand, the Wii controller has very few buttons and is controlled more so by gestures and movements.

If Sony and MS start pushing for motion-driven controllers, instead of button-mashing, and they each design their own new controllers for that, what is the likelihood that the inputs will actually be similar? If a useful motion - say a forward stabbing motion - is interpreted dramatically different between the Sony and MS systems, this could potentially make cross-platform release more time and resource intensive for the game companies.

Which, one could conjecture, could potentially drive the game companies to release more games on just one platform, instead of both Sony and MS.

Re:What does this mean for game design?

[grumbel]

For this generation the most likely thing is that most games will completely ignore the motion sensing stuff, as it doesn't make much sense to invest large amount of money into an add-on that only a fraction of people will own.

On top of that its questionable if motion sensing would even work for regular hardcore games. Especially Microsofts Natal just seems unfit, with no buttons at all you are extremely limited in how you could use the controller in a game (how do you fire a gun?).

Sonys solution looks more promising as it actually has buttons, so it might be useful as a lightgun like tool that could enhance aiming in some games. But how to apply it to gaming in general is still pretty much an unsolved problem and it remains to be seen how many buttons it really has (Is it a full PS3 controller replacement?).

Even on the Wii after all those years people are still struggling to do anything useful with the motion controller in regular games. And more often then not the results are rather uneven.

I think in the end we will end up with a bunch of party & mini-games, some experimental use in regular games and then only see actual real use of motion sensing in the next generation after all that experimentation is over and some new gameplay mechanics have been established.

Re:What does this mean for game design?

[Hailth]

Good point, this is why a lot of titles don't make it to the Wii right now, and also why a lot of Wii titles don't make it to other consoles.

But, unlike the Wii which only has the OPTION of using Gamecube controllers for normal games, the PS3 and 360 will have the STANDARD of using controllers for games after their evolved control releases. This is different from the Wii because not every Wii owner, and Nintendo intended it to be this way, owned a Gamecube previously, so not every Wii owner has alternatives to the Wiimote. 100% of PS3 and 360 owners will have alternatives, and while that % may slowly drop, most new-comers will still be picking up bundled consoles which will include a normal controller and thus still have alternative control schemes which developers will tap into when continuing to release cross-platform titles.

So while we're obviously going to see a drop in cross-platform titles, it will be small and probably not enough of a thorn in anyone's side to have a PS3 owner buy a 360 or a 360 owner buy a PS3 unless they already intended to. And even if somebody doesn't like the direction Sony and MS are going now with these new controller designs which will open up new worlds of gaming for many people, they've got to appreciate the fact that this won't totally change game design.

Re:What does this mean for game design?

[brkello]

Not going to happen. The Wii, while great, does not have the processing power of the other two consoles. Not only would they have to port the controls, but they would have to port the graphics and AI down to the Wii level. So people with multiple consoles would not buy the Wii version because it would be limited too much. On the other hand, what you suggest would make it easier for them to port Wii games to the other two consoles as the 360 and PS3 could handle anything that the Wii plays.

Ultimately it means that the PS3 and 360 would get the party games of the Wii...while game companies that want to make games for the PS3/360 would just stick with that platform. I think Nintendo will probably have to come out with a new console here before MS and Sony so it can catch up on capabilities and then you might see ports in the Nintendo direction as well.

Re:What? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chu chu rocket
Quake 3
The japanese version of DOA2

Just off the top of my head

Re:What? No.

[QuantumLeaper]

You are right there are more modem games for the Dreamcast than I thought at first.

Re:What? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can not count up to three games on one hand, then perhaps you shouldn't be saying other people have freak hands ;)

Multiplayer drawback

[tepples]

The current generation of consoles are TERRIBLE compared to PCs. A new PC with a Radeon 5870 has nearly 6-8 times the graphical processing power.

Even if one PC in your network has a powerful GPU, you usually need four PCs for four players, and you need to buy powerful GPUs for all of them. Even if you did buy extra PCs to run things like OpenOffice, Firefox, and Boxee, the Intel GMA that probably came in them won't cut it. Consoles, on the other hand, have a wide selection of major label titles that can use one console, one monitor, and four gamepads. Some of these games are in genres that don't even need to split the screen, like fighting games.

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[TheKidWho]

Yeah and most of those fighting games can be played on a PC, with 2-4 controllers too.

Besides, there are plenty of games that are local multiplayer on the PC side too. Left 4 Dead for example includes split screen functionality on the PC.

A lot of console games are also moving towards providing online only mulitplayer like some recent racing games.

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[tepples]

most of those fighting games can be played on a PC, with 2-4 controllers too.

Can you recommend a good 4-player PC fighting game for fans of the Super Smash Bros. series? Or something like Mario Party or WarioWare or Rabbids? Or anything like Rock Band or Guitar Hero that hasn't been either discontinued or sued into oblivion?

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[icebraining]

You now, he was responding to the GGP post, who said

"Display technologies have been maxed out. "

And clearly they haven't. That doesn't mean the PC is a better gaming machine, it's just technologically more advanced. The reason for the lack of single-system multiplayer games is not technical, it has to do with different target markets.

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[TheKidWho]

I don't know, I don't really play any of those games. I'm sure there are a ton of Indie games similar to Smash Brothers However. Personally I like Street Fighter IV and that is available for PC too.

Besides that, the Guitar Hero series is available for PC too, so what is your point?

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[tepples]

Besides that, the Guitar Hero series is available for PC too, so what is your point?

Thank you; I wasn't aware of that. I thought it was one of those franchises that was on the PC in early iterations but then console-only in later iterations. For example, Hudson released a Bomberman game for the PC and Konami released a DDR game for the PC, but nothing since.

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[WCLPeter]

And clearly they haven't.

While this is obviously true for PCs, this isn't so true in the home consumer market.

Its taken years for the good 1080p sets to get down to reasonable prices and only now are we starting to see people buy them in any numbers. Even still, when you look at the average install base of TV's in peoples homes they're certainly not all 1080p yet.

No one is going to release a new consumer Hi-Def standard now, not after the broadcasters, content producers, manufacturers, cable and satellite providers, have spent, and are still spending, a large fortune upgrading all their stuff to run at 1080p.

In terms of the consumer market, we're done and we're going to be maxed out at 1080p for quite a long while.

When looking at it like that, a 360 or PS3 can run games just fine at 1080 resolutions at frame rates that would be acceptable to all except the most jaded of PC gamers. There is simply no need to upgrade, other than more processing power, since the visual aspects are already pretty much covered.

Although I would love it if Microsoft would get their shit together and release hardware that doesn't fail when you blow on it. I'm on my second 360, first one red ringed, and will soon be on to a third, I keep having the "Open Tray" disc read problem.

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[TheKidWho]

As far as DDR goes, there is Stepmania which is IMO significantly better than any of the DDR iterations.

As far as Bomberman games go, the best ones were on older generation consoles which can easily be emulated.

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is going to release a new consumer Hi-Def standard now, not after the broadcasters, content producers, manufacturers, cable and satellite providers, have spent, and are still spending, a large fortune upgrading all their stuff to run at 1080p.

Moreover, OTA broadcasters are currently practically married to 720p and 1080i MPEG-2, considering the capabilities of almost every HD tuner in existence. While it's possible to broadcast 1080p24 MPEG-2 as 1080i60 (Wikipedia has details), full migration to 1080p MPEG-4 OTA is just about out of the question, for years and years (if ever).

Re:Multiplayer drawback

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you recommend a good 4-player PC fighting game for fans of the Super Smash Bros. series?

Super Mario War!

Accessories and gimmicks

[wampus]

You can sell more $99 gizmos and gimmick games than you can new consoles, pure and simple.

Re:What? No.

[noidentity]

Successful mid-cycle add-ons I can remember (and have purchased and used) in recent history:

N64: memory expansion
Playstation: analog controller, dual shock
Playstation 2: network/hard drive

And of course the earlier cartridge-based systems had lots of successful add-ons, only they were in each cartridge, so you weren't as aware of them. Examples include battery backup, memory mappers to allow larger games, and custom processors (e.g. SuperFX on SNES).

What? Game consoles?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG I'm a computer nerd. I thought this article was about terminal emulators!

Re:What? Game consoles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I play BSD-games, insensitive clod.

Re:What? No.

[pudro]

Really?

Re:What? No.

[Trixter]

with the Intellivision overlay system and the Commodore 64 Extender.

Don't you mean the System Changer? That played Atari VCS games, not C64.

Re:What? No.

[icebraining]

The Rumble Pack was pretty popular among the N64 owners I knew. It also came with some games (I got mine with Starfox 64).

Re:What? No.

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Could not be less correct.

It looks like it's just the summary (surprise, surprise) that is wildly incorrect. The article itself seems to only talk about the current generation of consoles.

Re:What? No.

[Jerf]

The Intellivoice sounds like a closer fit to what we're talking about, as it enabled a new form of game, rather than functioning as backwards compatibility.

No idea if that's what the original poster meant. But it definitely does show that augmenting consoles is a very old idea... older than many people reading about it. :)

Somewhere around here I still have an Intellivoice, and all four released games for it (I don't count the baseball one). You have not lived until you've heard a little 4KB cartridge (not a typo! in fact, 4KB was twice the usual size; and yes, I'm using bytes because I think measuring games in kilobits is a crock) babbling away at you. An amazing amount of voice was shoehorned into those things. Online MP3s that have samples of even a single thing it could say are themselves larger than all released games combined.

Re:You're ingeniuos among men, Nintendo

[scorpivs]

Microsoft haters forget that there are two sides to Microsoft: The one that sucks and

If I understand correctly, Nintendo plans for Sony and Microft to mass-produce sets of both right-and-left Powergloves, but at the same time, like in a package deal? Why didn't they think of that the first time?

Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another way to wrench money out of the consumer imo. Glad I'm not a console gamer, and if I was, I'd buy a Wii.

Re:What? No.

[Zero_DgZ]

I would question your notion of "skipped it." There was, of course, the network adapter and hard drive combo for the PS2 as well as the Eye Toy. The Gamecube had its broadband adapter... thingy, as well as the Gameboy player and the phenominally useless GBA linkup (except for Crystal Chronicles). And no console escaped the ubiquitous presence of the DDR dance mat.

And who can forget the E-Reader and the wireless link dongle for the Gameboy Advance? Oh, that's right. A lot of people can, and did. Both were supposed to revolutionize portable gaming, and both... didn't.

$2 billion says you're very wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero has proved, to the tune of $2 billion in sales, that you *CAN* "requir[e] people to buy some new fangled, overpriced gadget in order to play your game".

Clearly people *ARE* willing to fork out double the cost on an accessory and a game, instead of just buying two regular games, for the same price *IF* you create a game that makes it sufficiently more enjoyable to play with the accessory. The announcement of Guitar Hero for the PSP demonstrates that the game does not require the accessory controller, but who honestly believes it would have been as successful on the major consoles if it had used just the standard controllers?

I'd rather just have next gen

[Quiet_Desperation]

For me the way to ease the purchase of a new gen console is with strong backward compatibility. When I bought an XBox 360, it was partially because I never had the original XBox, and the XBox games (Halo 1/2, Fable 1, Jade Empire, etc.) I wanted to play were on the compatibility list. I really feel Sony dropped the ball when they dropped PS2 compatibility.

I've gone back and rented a number of Gamecube games (Tales Of Symphonia, Eternal Darkness, etc.) for my Wii. If Nintendo wanted to have achieved true awesomeness in my eyes, they would have put a slot for Gameboy Advance games in the thing. I played some GBA games on the attachment for the Gamecube, and playing them on a big TV is great. Advance Wars with big, glorious maps made the game much more epic.

I also recall the Sega 32X and the CD for the N64. both of which I have. Nifty idea, but the developers just don't develop in droves for something not in the core system specs.

Your claims are pointless BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You know everyone laughs at people like you, right? I mean, hysterically. Oh noes! We haz "low standards" because we like to game and not put together "rigs" and fiddle about, and then wave them about as geeky penis surrogates.

Stop clutching at class distinctions in people's gaming habits.

Re:Your claims are pointless BS

[TheKidWho]

Wow Reading comprehension, get some you retard.

Guitar hero sucks

[Sam36]

I freaking hate guitar hero. And I hate how all of my little punk cousins all want guitars for christmas now. Freaking brats

Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[beatsme]

Thank the heavens. The gimmick will no longer be about graphics, but gameplay. Now, how long before the emphasis is on storytelling?

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[alen]

mod this up

last 20 or so years the only thing that improved in consoles was graphics. the controllers have stayed the same and a few gimmicks like the power glove never caught on. now the graphics are good enough even if they get better that people want a different game play experience and not just better graphics

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[4D6963]

The emphasis on storytelling? Really?? Please tell me you're kidding. Have you played any Call of Duty or GTA game lately? Basically they're more like interactive movies more than games. Really.

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Blakey Rat]

Even going back to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Storytelling! That game's script was better than most blockbuster movies. And I still think Halo 2 is one of the best-written games ever made... even from the very first cutscene with Arbiter, how could you play that and not be affected?

I love Slashdot, it's the only gaming forum on the web full of people who (obviously) don't play games.

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

last 20 or so years the only thing that improved in consoles was graphics. the controllers have stayed the same and a few gimmicks like the power glove never caught on. now the graphics are good enough even if they get better that people want a different game play experience and not just better graphics

In the last 20 years or so the only thing that improved in consoles was graphics. The controllers have stayed the same, and a few gimmicks, like the power glove, never caught on. Now that the graphics are good enough that even if they do get better, people will want a different game play experience and not just better graphics.

Christ, fixd. Do you not proofread at all? Your comment could hardly be read.

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[wild_berry]

The important thing about play is the engagement of your imagination. That's why I look back at terrible 8-bit graphics and sound and remember them being so much more than what's on screen. Visuals and sounds that are too good -- or however immersive the motion control interface -- can't make up for not engaging my imagination.

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

You honestly thought Halo had a good story? You must not play many games.

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Blakey Rat]

I thought Halo 2 had a good story. I thought the story in Halo and Halo 3 was a let-down.

But it might help that I've read all the novels... it's probably a lot more powerful if you have all the background material they don't really discuss in the games. For instance, without reading the novels, you have no idea why people keep talking about Reach.

And of course, this being Slashdot, it's trendy to hate the mainstream-- since Halo is mainstream, of course you're required by Slashdot law to say it sucks.

In any case, the point of my post (examples aside) was that this generation's games have excellent stories, and anybody saying there's no story in games has absolutely no clue what they're talking about. Do you agree with that?

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are required to read novels to understand the story in a game, then that game did a poor job at relaying the story. It's not because it's "mainstream" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean), it's because the story in Halo is rubbish.

Try playing something like the Deus Ex or Half-Life series. All of those are "mainstream", so that blows your idiotic theory away.

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Blakey Rat]

Half-Life doesn't even have a story, it has a "setting" maybe.

Here's the so-called story in Half-Life: an experimental teleporter malfunctions, making aliens randomly appear in a science lab. In the course of escaping the lab, you repair approximately 26 generators. Then some guy we know nothing about takes you into a magical space subway car and the game ends.

THAT'S better than Halo 2? It's the same fucking story as DOOM.

Deux Ex, I'll give you. But Half-Life is nothing but over-rated stacked atop over-rated.

And you (assuming you're the same anonymous coward I was talking to before) never even bothered to answer the question. Examples aside, do you agree with the *point* of the post?

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Half-Life series. That includes Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Those games buried Halo when it came to story.

Modern games don't have as good of stories as older titles. The days of Star Control 2 or Deus Ex quality stories in games are gone.

Re:Graphics no longer; gameplay it is.

[Blakey Rat]

God-fucking-damnit, respond to the POINT OF THE FUCKING POST not the examples. ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION YOU FUCKER!

I give up, this conversation is pointless.

Not Sure I Buy It

[EpsCylonB]

Not sure if I buy it, yeah this generation may last longer than the standard five years, it basically already has for Microsoft.

It says more about the power of the consoles and the way games use them than it does about anything else. I have kind of noticed the same thing with PC gaming. My 8800GT still lets me play the latest games reasonably well. But how long will this last ?, I give it a couple of years max before either Sony or Microsoft start gearing up to release the first next gen console.

The sooner the better

[nlawalker]

The sooner that everyone has implemented and is using motion controls, the better. We need developers to get shitty, gimmicky uses of it out of their systems, and we need better hardware and software for reduced lag and more precise control.

Am I really personally that interested in games that are 100% built around motion control? As the Wii taught me, no, I'm not. I think a lot of game enthusiasts feel the same way. What I *am* excited about, and what I think game enthusiasts should be excited about, is when developers come up with more subtle uses that really add control and flexibility. One thing I really want is the ability to change the direction of the first-person camera in racing games by tilting my head, so I don't need to take my hands off of the controls (note - I'm not talking about "head tracking" where position data is used to provide a realistic viewport, I'm just talking about mapping head tilt to an analog camera control). My understanding is that GT5 + PS Eye will provide this feature. Leaning in first person shooters is another good example. Is it a "realistic" 1 to 1 mapping of a real world motion to a game action? No, but it adds to a player's ability to control the game seamlessly. It only adds to the experience - it doesn't take anything away and you don't have to use it, and the game is still perfectly playable even if you don't have the right hardware.

We need to get to the point where developers are no longer asking "how can we establish a good player experience by using motion control" and instead focus on gameplay and implementation with standard controllers, later asking "where could motion control help this experience we've established?"

Re:What? No.

[Dahamma]

Exactly! This is what happens when a "20-something" tries to write about the history of console gaming.

I remember getting the Intellivision voice synthesizer add-on in about 1982. "Watch for flak!"

Swallow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandma (or whoever) will swallow "buy this thing that plugs into your Wii (or Xbox, or PS3)" easier than she'll swallow "spend $500 on this new console that's different from your old one."

Must... resist... swallow... joke

Oh what a load of bull

[SmallFurryCreature]

Only an idiot would think that resolution has got anything to do with immersion. A low-rez photo is 100% realistic, but a canvas the sized of a cathredal ceiling is still clearly a painting.

The current graphics are getting better but there is still a lot of detail missing and we humans are very good at seeing it. Games like GTA4 seem to be very realistic until you realize that... what is missing. Where are the cats and dogs. The pigeons (that fly up). Why are most of the windows just textures and not windows.

You can hide some of the missing elements with speed but it soons becomes very clear that the world is far from complete, far from realistic. Why does my car only leave tire tracks on the road but doesn't it draw a track in the sand? Because the current computers are nowhere near powerful enough to handle even such a simple thing.

And it matters, and the company that will give us the next advance will be the company with the next big hit because while there might be a market for games that look like games, there is also a market for games set in worlds that look and act more realistic.

One of the earlier racing titles I had was a LCD game where you had a round track and you raced by chosing the inner or outer line with some parts being unpassable so you had to choose wisely or be stuck behind an "AI" driver. Games have improved, you can now drive at will across the road. As graphics and physics have increased the games have become more "realistic". From attempting to have some idea of physiucs to simulating each wheel on its own and onward. Someday someone will make a racing sim that can handle a changing road and we will have dirt racing games that are even more like the real thing because of it and it will be good.

Not all games have to be real, there is a room for Mario kart but Mario kart itself is no longer the game it once was thanks to ever increasing CPU power.

So, your entire story is as idiotic as those people who claim "HD, who needs it, I can't see the difference anyway". It shows you should get some glasses, or in your case, play a old game that was once considered state of the art and then a modern game.

You will see that better graphics are not just a novelty.

"Console" in the 1970s sense

[jabberw0k]

My favorite console, for look and feel and touch, was always the VT05.

Blu-Ray? Live Arcade?

[twoallbeefpatties]

There's a couple of other points to be noted in here, I think. For one thing, we're seeing the real takeoff of XBox Live Arcade. If these cheap downloadable games for $15 are getting so much good credit, then what's the use to upgrade the system for them, especially if new hardware could force a change in the XBLA standard when people still aren't fully integrated with the standard they have? Not to mention that they're still waiting to see if anything materializes out of the small indie games area.

On Sony's end, people are finally buying Blu-Ray discs. That drop in price for the PS3 has had a bunch of people (my coworkers, at least) talking about picking up the system as a hi-def movie player. To update to a new system with a premium price again, they might end up losing the customers that were just about ready to hop in for the new movie player.

The industry needs new consoles

[dschmit1]

I, for one, chose to largely skip this generation of consoles. So, if the industry wants my dollars they better get that new generation in production.

Re:The industry needs new consoles

[Schnoogs]

Then you're not a gamer so I doubt there's anything they can offer next generation that will make you one.

bullshit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like everyone is preaching this except the actual developers. Why? Because there will be a new console out by either Sony or MS by 2011. Launch title developers are already starting to scope out their new engines for the next generation. Sony and Nintendo have always bettered their hardware (unlike MS so far). MS needed to come out with something so they weren't left out of the motion sensing game. If they waited till 2011 it would be way to late in the game. Sony and Nintendo both already shipped with it. Still the same game.

Yawn, you suck at answering questions

[SuperKendall]

1. Big deal, crack the games

You ignored the whole breakage due to OS updates.

2. You already have a PC, so that's a dishonest point to make. Everybody has a PC, no matter whether or not they want to play video games.

Almost 10% of new computers buyers have macs actually.

Of the ones that have PC's, large numbers of them today just have laptops. Just how are they going to put in that new video card? What about netbook buyers? Are they going to have a fantastic gaming experience too even though they technically have a "PC".

Consoles are great because it frees you from the ball and chain of HAVING to buy powerful systems and Windows.

3. Bullshit. Consoles are basically cheap PCs

Bullshit back at you. If the consoles were "basically PC's" the PS3 would not be harder to code for. Microsoft has made the 360 more like a PC to be sure, especially library wise - but it's all still very proprietary and custom stuff housed inside, only from the library side does the console look that much like a PC.

Your tired old canards about PC gaming belong to somewhere around five years ago, consoles are quite obviously the present and future of gaming. It's best you get used to this now so you can save yourself a ton of money and aggravation. I am so glad I got off the gaming PC upgrade train a few years ago...

Re:Yawn, you suck at answering questions

[drinkypoo]

Bullshit back at you. If the consoles were "basically PC's" the PS3 would not be harder to code for. Microsoft has made the 360 more like a PC to be sure, especially library wise - but it's all still very proprietary and custom stuff housed inside, only from the library side does the console look that much like a PC.

The only way the PS3 is not like a PC is the CPU, which has more coprocessor[s] than processor[s]. The Xbox 360 is like a unified memory PC, like the Xbox before it; while the Xbox was basically made with off the shelf PC parts (save the GPU of course... but it was PC technology packaged for low price) the Xbox 360 is a more custom job. The 360 has an ATI-made integrated GPU and north bridge, and again it's presumably [mostly] made of repackaged PC technology.

Otherwise, spot on...

Re:Yawn, you suck at answering questions

[brkello]

1. Maybe you mean when they update the game? OS updates don't change anything. But in any case, you just download the update to the crack.

2. Macs can play many games as well...and as far as total marketshare, PCs still rule...in any case, you don't really have a point for the majority for users. The minority can play on consoles...still doesn't make PC gaming terrible as the GP post was replying to.

3. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about. I have a Masters in C.S., so maybe this is obvious because of that reason, but I really think any moron should be able to figure out that consoles are just locked down PCs. The PS3 is "harder to code for" because it has a cell processor (like what computers) have. It is more challenging to get the most out of systems that process things in parallel. My brother writes games for the 360. The games he writes can be played both on the PC and the 360 WITHOUT HAVING TO PORT IT.

I'd suggest you shut up and read if you ever want to post about this topic again. You are completely ignorant of what you are talking about and are just making a fool of yourself. Gaming is great both on the PC and on consoles. It's fine if you prefer one over the other...then just play it. Telling someone else that their form of entertainment sucks just because you can't afford a good gaming rig or can't figure out how to update your graphics card driver is just lame.

Re:Yawn, you suck at answering questions

[4D6963]

You ignored the whole breakage due to OS updates.

I don't feel concerned, I still run Windows XP and if you care so much about gaming and "OS update breakage" maybe you should do.

Almost 10% of new computers buyers have macs actually.

What's your fucking point? A Mac is still a PC, it's just a PC with 'not Windows' as an OS. You don't need Windows for a machine to be a PC.

Of the ones that have PC's, large numbers of them today just have laptops. Just how are they going to put in that new video card? What about netbook buyers? Are they going to have a fantastic gaming experience too even though they technically have a "PC".

Now you're just being a nitpicking asshole. No one in their right mind is going to compare a fully portable machine with a machine that isn't portable, must be plugged to the wall and requires a TV set.

If the consoles were "basically PC's" the PS3 would not be harder to code for.

Yep, and funnily enough that's one major reason why the PS3 isn't successful. Even then the PS3 and its exotic internals could still be a PC, just a weird ass PC that no one would want. Well, no one wants it as a console anyway.. The rest of your point is more nitpicking.

Your tired old canards about PC gaming belong to somewhere around five years ago, consoles are quite obviously the present and future of gaming.

lol, you're just blind to the status quo, the PC gaming vs console gaming hasn't changed much anytime lately.

I am so glad I got off the gaming PC upgrade train a few years ago...

Yeah, now you're on the console upgrade train. Have a nice ride, dumbass.

Re:Yawn, you suck at answering questions

[bds1986]

Almost 10% of new computers buyers have macs actually.

Every time I read or hear this it's like nails on a chalkboard.....A MAC IS A PERSONAL COMPUTER. Any suggestion to the contrary is purely the invention of some bullshit-peddling marketer. I'm typing this post on a Mac, and provided you have a unit sold since the Intel transition, the hardware components are widely available and by no means Mac-specific. The only difference is the chassis they come in.

In any case, your point is irrelevant because you can play games perfectly well on any Intel-based Mac with a decent graphics card. Just buy or pirate a copy of Windows and install with Bootcamp. I've played COD4 and Bioshock on my MBP, and it works just fine, with graphics either on a par with or superior to anything I've seen from an Xbox 360.

Re:Yawn, you suck at answering questions

[ArwynH]

3. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about. I have a Masters in C.S., so maybe this is obvious because of that reason, but I really think any moron should be able to figure out that consoles are just locked down PCs. The PS3 is "harder to code for" because it has a cell processor (like what computers) have. It is more challenging to get the most out of systems that process things in parallel. My brother writes games for the 360. The games he writes can be played both on the PC and the 360 WITHOUT HAVING TO PORT IT.

*sigh* Yes, you have a piece of paper stating you have taking a bunch of classes in CS and passed with a reasonable grade. So what?

Games consoles are not PCs, Macs on the other hand - are, they are just the brand made by Apple. PC stands for Personal Computer. While their form factor keeps changing, everything I've ever heard called a PC has to be capable of more than just playing games. It has to be capable of doing general tasks and not just specialised tasks. To be honest, the iPhone is more of PC than your average games console. All you have to do is enlarge the screen 2-3x and you have a decent mobile tablet PC.

You are correct however when you point out that most consoles are capable of being PCs, all you have to do is add a few peripherals and replace their OS. Once you do that however, they are no longer game consoles... Similarly I can turn my DS into a PDA, by using a R4 and the correct software. Does that make all DSs sold PDAs?

In conclusion, the terms we use to describe computer systems(PC, Server, Games Console, PDA and even 'mobile(cell) phones') are based on what software they are currently running, or to be more exact, the use to which they are being put and not by what hardware they have or what said hardware is capable of.

Re:What? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

They had a browser on a disc too.

I'd be interested in their 360 addons...

[AmazingRuss]

... but my FOURTH xbox is starting to flake out, and will probably be dead soon.

I appreciate that they sent me 3 new ones under warranty, but god DAMMIT, a console should last more than a year. I would have thought that by the 3rd one they would have figured out how to manufacture them correctly.

Re:I'd be interested in their 360 addons...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they actually sending you new ones or re-furbs? If they are just sending a replacement that they fixed, it is likely to have the same design flaw as the broken one you sent back. Therefore if they have fixed the design flaws, you are unlikely to benefit from it until you actually pay for a new one.

Little people playing Wii

[tepples]

I think it is pretty clear, given how little people actually play their Wii's

Little People and Wii? You don't mean how Lucas from Brawl is a dead ringer for Eddie, do you?

Intellivoice

[tepples]

An amazing amount of voice was shoehorned into those things.

There were two things: First, the samples were encoded using a model similar to the linear prediction seen in Speex. (Speex is a linear predictive speech codec that scales all the way down to 4 kbps.) Second, the Intellivoice's ROM had 16 KiB of samples of a generic "announcer" saying various generic things.

Reading Wii discs on a PC?

[tepples]

Big deal, crack the games (even if you bought them)

Even once the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement takes effect in all G-20 countries?

Everybody has a PC

But not everybody's PC comes bundled with a copy of Windows, and for the price of a copy of Windows to install on my Mac, I could buy an Xbox 360.

PC games are priced cheaper than console games.

As Anonymous Coward pointed out in another comment, you typically need more desktop PCs and monitors for a multiplayer PC game than you need consoles and TVs for a multiplayer console game. Not all games are in FPS/RTS genres that require each player to have a private view. Where are the PC games comparable to 4-player console games like Super Smash Bros. series? Otherwise, you have to multiply the price of the game by the number of players in the household.

Also, I can play PS2 and Wii games with my PC. Can your Xbox do that?

What kind of PC drive to you need to read Wii discs, which have a slightly scrambled sector layout relative to standard DVD-ROM?

Re:Reading Wii discs on a PC?

[4D6963]

Even once the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement takes effect in all G-20 countries?

The what now? Is it something I give a crap about? Hmm, didn't think so.

But not everybody's PC comes bundled with a copy of Windows, and for the price of a copy of Windows to install on my Mac, I could buy an Xbox 360.

Muahahaha, buy, Windows, hahaha. Even if you insisted on buying (lol) you could get a copy of XP on eBay for cheap as hell.

you typically need more desktop PCs and monitors for a multiplayer PC game

Who cares? Not me, cause I don't have anyone to play with at my place.

What kind of PC drive to you need to read Wii discs, which have a slightly scrambled sector layout relative to standard DVD-ROM?

The BitTorrent kind.

LAN parties are more awkward than Mario parties

[tepples]

You realize that a graphics card that is easily 4x more powerful than a console only costs $150 right?

Unlike most console games, most PC games need a separate PC and a separate graphics card for each player. Now we're up to $600, the PS3 launch price, and we still haven't factored in the time to dismantle the PCs and bring them to the LAN party every other weekend.

Re:LAN parties are more awkward than Mario parties

[Anonymous Coward]

Since all of us real gamers don't put up with this ghetto splitscreen bullshit, how many consoles and HDTVs do you need to provide EACH player with their own individual screen? Do splitscreen multiplayer console games even support networked play?

That's what I thought.

FPS and RTS are not for everyone

[tepples]

Oh come on...PC's don't excel for gaming? It sure as hell does for RTS's and FPS's

Apart from gimmicky first-person shooters like FaceBall and rail shooters like Time Crisis, most first-person shooters are rated M for Mature, and I can't play M-rated games with my aunt's kids who are visiting. RTS needs a separate computer for each player, and that can get very expensive very fast.

Wii is an OC'd GameCube

[tepples]

I think I saw the future with the N64 and didn't know it. That little memory expansion bay? I think the next box is going to have the same basic architecture but with upgradeable video graphics hardware.

Or better yet: The Wii is literally a GameCube with a 50% faster clock speed, double the RAM, a 512 MB SSD, and a USB controller with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi sticks plugged into it.

What about natural law engines?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are reaching an era in computing where devices can push audio and video beyond human perception levels. For example, if display resolution were increased, a person would not be able to tell the difference visually from typical viewing distance. Or if color depth were increased to 64 bit over 32 bit could that even be perceived? I'm not saying we're there yet, but we are quickly approaching that point.

Once that happens then what will be the next generation anything? It will be a matter of small refinements, novelties and exclusiveness of titles.

Sure, video resolution (and in particular audio resolution) is getting close to maxing out. That does emphatically NOT mean that there is no room for improvement in hardware. Realism in real-time rendering is still woefully lackluster compared to "what would be possible if we had the CPUs to do it". OK, we have physics engines, which make things a lot more realistic since the particles on the screen act according to the laws of mechanics. You could envision extended physics engines where each virtual "molecule" is imbued with elemental physical and chemical properties, such that water in a game would be freezable, boilable, reactive to other substances and displaying the correct viscosity, reflectiveness and so on. Programming "liquid dynamics" into an engine could be as obsolete as programming Super Mario to drop down when an edge is detected on the NES.

And what about biology engines? Human and animal game characters could be constructed with realistic internal anatomy and workings, organs, blood flow and so on. 1) making them more realistic in terms of speed, strength, abilities and so on and 2) would make for some seriously awesome shooter games :-P

Plenty of scope for improvements...

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How do I dumped cartridge?

[tepples]

[a music game] that hasn't been either discontinued or sued into oblivion?

As far as DDR goes, there is Stepmania

StepMania comes with no music. In 2005, Konami sued a commercial distributor of StepMania with music for patent infringement. They settled out of court in 2007, with Roxor Games agreeing to transfer all the relevant copyrights and trademarks to Konami. Konami immediately stopped selling the arcade, PC, and PlayStation 2 versions of In the Groove.

As far as Bomberman games go, the best ones were on older generation consoles which can easily be emulated.

For one thing, they're still console games, not PC games, so score one for consoles like Wii. For another, one would first have to dump the ROM. The backup exception in U.S. copyright law (17 USC 117) doesn't apply to downloading "backups" from the Internet. Provided I can find a copy of Super Bomberman on eBay, what do you recommend for dumping Super NES Game Paks to my PC? Otherwise the standard line becomes "consoles are better because you don't have to pirate to play multiplayer games."

sigh

[smash]

Why is it so amazing that they've added motion sensing to controllers? It wasn't revolutionary when nintendo did it, and its not a big thing for sony and microsoft now. Its a fuckign glorified USB device - you can put whatever sensors in it you like. If you wanted to put a fucking flatulence sensor in the thing, and control say, jin in tekken 8 with the volume and aroma of your farts, you could.

They've done it in the middle of the life cycle because people seem to want it (for whatever reason) and its easily done.

I'm not big on motion control at all, but i'm happy sony/ms have done it to show nintendo up for the BS marketing campaign of the wii about how its an amazing new controller that no one else could possibly implement on ps3 or 360 because the hardware came out without it.

What is changing?

[v(*_*)vvvv]

The very first Nintendo/Famicom had a glove. I present to you exhibit A:
http://hybridsnick.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/powerglovead.jpg

From the power glove to the nintendo Wii balancing board to wheels for racing games, a peripheral has never changed the face of anything. They are business as usual.

And anyone with a clue knows that game makers are extremely cautious when making titles which require specific peripherals. Those who have them are always a fraction of the entire target console market, and those who do not need enough incentive to buy the peripheral with the game. And the more sophisticated the peripheral, the higher the cost.

Since I don't know the writer of the original article better, I'm going to say he is an idiot.

Re:What is changing?

[AA Wulf]

Exactly, I don't understand what this line is all about:

It's indicative of a change to the established pattern of console wars; nowadays, it's more about adding features and gadgets to improve existing products than developing entirely new ones.

Let's go through a long list of things released during the 20+ year console war's history, shall we?

Nintendo Power Glove
Nintendo Power Pad
Nintendo Light Gun
Nintendo R.O.B.
That little light and magnifier thingy for the Nintendo GB?
Sega 32X
Sega CD
Atari Jaguar CD
Nintendo Super Scope
Nintendo GBA's integration into the Nintendo Gamecube
Xbox Media Center
Sony Playstation DualShock controller
PS one (compete w/ LCD screen)
Sony Playstation 2 Slim
Sony Playstation 3 Slim
The numerous add-on peripherals for Nintendo Wii

How is any of this different than what we have had for the last 20 years? It has always been the trend of console designers to milk us for every cent they possibly can on a gaming console before coming out with the next generation. Few systems (like the Xbox) have done so generally with new functionality without the need to purchase add-ons. Others have released better, sleeker versions of the original console before moving on the the next gen. Still others have given us a schlew of peripherals in an attempt to generate revenue from those looking to create "home arcade" systems.

Not all genres need a private view per player

[tepples]

Since all of us real gamers don't put up with this ghetto splitscreen bullshit, how many consoles and HDTVs do you need to provide EACH player with their own individual screen?

Not all video games are FPS or RTS, and not all genres need a private view per player. What advantage would there be to provide separate views for each player in 2-player fighting games like Street Fighter IV (which are represented on PC) and 4-player fighting games like Super Smash Bros. series (which aren't)? All players need to see all characters anyway.

Do splitscreen multiplayer console games even support networked play?

Mario Kart: Double Dash supports 4 players per machine and multiple machines in a LAN.

Re:Not all genres need a private view per player

[Anonymous Coward]

2D fighting games are a single genre that wouldn't necessarily benefit from multiple screens (although when you play them online it is needed). What about all of the other multiplayer genres (of which FPS and RTS make up the bulk)? In my opinion, not having individual screens per player is a weakness, not a strength. I like having my entire screen and I'm big on having personal space. The last thing I want to do is huddle around a single television with a bunch of other people when I'm trying to play a game.

So one really old console game supports it. That isn't much of an incentive. With a PC I could run just about any game in windowed mode if I went insane one day and actually wanted split screen.

Re:Not all genres need a private view per player

[tepples]

2D fighting games are a single genre that wouldn't necessarily benefit from multiple screens (although when you play them online it is needed). What about all of the other multiplayer genres

Tetris and similar puzzle games use a split screen, but they get away with it because they use a portrait-oriented playfield. When your playfield is 4:9, it's a waste of space not to put four of them across a 16:9 screen.

(of which FPS and RTS make up the bulk)?

I disagree, but I can be swayed with citations. Or could you recommend some good E or E10+ rated FPS or RTS for when my aunt's kids come over?

With a PC I could run just about any game in windowed mode if I went insane one day and actually wanted split screen.

Do most PC games support having multiple instances running on one PC?

are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you kidding me? this is no different than the 1980s or 1990s.. its a trend that is status quo for every generation of consoles. nintendo and sega genesis had guns and robots and pc gaming took off and we started seeing flight simulator joysticks and steering wheels.. which made their way onto the ps/ps2/xbox generation. wireless controllers and arcade style joysticks.. there was a mouse for super nintendo and a bazooka.. DDR pads, guitar hero guitars and drums.. there was an exercise pad for the original nintendo.. not to mention the power glove!

ok I jumped around a bit but i think I make my point.. sure we are getting a big more creative in the ways that we implement new technology into video game gadgets.. but accessories and new controllers and new ways to play the game have been on every game system from the beginning and I have to rant a little bit that some 12 year old thinks that it is a "hot new thing" because they dont want to believe that they are living in a time without innovation

Post anything that you think Nintendo created.....

[Aklyon]

The Game Boy.

Now Show Me, AC.

Re:Post anything that you think Nintendo created..

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean other than the hundreds of electronic handheld games that predated it?