Slashdot Mirror
Playstation 2 delayed again
D4MO writes "Saw
the news that the Playstation 2 will probably be delayed. Apparently, Sony is having a really hard time getting the graphics chips right, and so they will miss their December launch, and probably be in more of a Feb/March range. Sega's Dreamcast, OTOH is out already in a lot of areas."
Just remember...Sony is to Sega what Microsoft is to RedHat as far as marketing dollars and muscle. It's hard to mess with giants....especiailly Sony whose products are actually GOOD. :)
Werd.
Now, I don't have any games yet (they won't come in 'til this afternoon... sigh), and if there was a CE EULA anywhere, that's where it would be -- there's no OS packaged in the DC unit itself.
--
The proper response to statements like 'Microsoft has never made a bad product' is to burst out laughing. The more people out there 'feeding that meme' the better- it's one thing to make a big argument, but laughter is a wonderful deflator of empty hype, and it's fun, too! :) :)
Here, I'll show you: "Windows 2000 will ship in the year 2000 and deliver great benefits to IT professionals everywhere." *ROTFL*
In extreme cases you might want to go with the Daffy Duck sort of over-the-top Hysterical Laughter... it all depends on just how funny the statement really is, and how serious the person stating it seems
No it doesn't! How many times to we have to say it: windows CE is on SOME game disks -- not on the ROM. If it bothers you, get a DC but avoid all windows CE games (there haven't been many.) Then, put BSD on it. Asking people to avoid the DC because of CE is like asking people not to buy PCs with linux on them because a lot of PCs have windows 98. In short, buy a DC it is only $199 for gods sake. There are already 16 titles for it.
You're completely missing the point I made. I'm saying there should be no Sony testing, no Sony submission at all. If someone wants to release a game, just let them go ahead and do it. The market will decide what's good and what isn't. The crap software houses will die off due to lack of sales, and the good ones will make money. Natural selection.
At the end of the day, all I want is for the consoles to be market driven, rather than prorietary, as they are now. It works for the PC games industry. The console makers are just being greedy, at the expense of the customer (i.e., me!)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
This is not a public forum. It is a moderated forum, and the owners of slashdot will do whatever the hell they want to :)
Prediction: the first company that allows open development for its console with make an absolute fortune. Unfortunately, I think they're all too paranoid about losing intellectual property to risk it. Sigh.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Don't you think it's odd that a couple of Japanese Analysts start talking about how the Playstation 2 will be delayed on the very day the Dreamcast comes out?
This "news" about the Playstation 2 is not from Sony. It is purely SEGA FUD.
Look, we all know that Sega has ferked up in the past, and a lot of people have lost faith in them over the years. But seriously now, the Dreamcast is going to be a solid product. Yah, when the psx2 comes out, its gonna blow DC out of the water. But since that's not happening for atleast another year, Sega is going to have the best system out on the market for a while.
They've also got the best game line up for a system launch, ever. Plus the system is only 200, at launch, which hasn't happened since the super nintendo.
I wish people would just stop dogging Sega so hard because they're really trying hard this time around, and Sega as a company makes some of the best arcade games around. The last thing I want to do is see them die.
Joseph?
I'd take this as speculation at best. Has anyone else noticed that Babbage's (at least those near me) have large amounts of Dreamcast stuff, right near a sign which proclaims that the Playstation II release date will be '2001?'. Somehow I smell a fish with the fact that nobody's published release dates seem to mesh at all with Sony's announced schedule.
Personally I loved the Babbage's manager who told me that 'Microsoft is backing Dreamcast, so you know it won't fail. Microsoft has never made a bad product.' I burst out laughing, purchased my copy of Kingpin and made a mental note to never ever shop there again.
Okay, so here's the real scoop on the Sega Dreamcast: it's a joke. To be honest, I was waiting patiently for the release of the Dreamcast system, and now that I've had a chance to play with it...
The system itself is not horrible. It uses a Hitachi SH-4 SuperH RISC at 200mhz, not too bad. The graphics card is a NEC Videologic PowerVR2DC capable "of rendering 3 million polygons per second." The funny part is the modem: a Rockwell HCF-based chipset. Now, don't get me wrong, for a cheap game console it's not too bad. The big problem with Rockwell HCF chipsets are that they have notorious connection problems. Connections over 43k tend to drop packets and drop connection. I hope Sega has thought ahead, because there have been all sorts of problems connecting HCF modems to USR-based modems... In the current version, there is no way to update the modem firmware or the init string.
The next, in a long list of problems, is the browser itself. The "Web Planet" browser is, quite bluntly, a piece of crap. Regardless of what Sega says, it does not handle JAVAscript. Period. And instead of a nice Javascript error, like a normal browser, it dumps raw code onto the screen, which will frighten most users. There are numerous other problems, like the inability to use redirect pages like come.to, and the lack of configurable options.
I like the idea behind Dreamcast, but after playing with one most of this week (yes, my company recieved a handful early.), I've come to the conclusion that Sega missed the mark. With all the hype, it's going to be like the first Playstation all over again, but I see a lot of disappointed users in the future.
For my money, I'll wait until Sony releases the Playstation 2. At least they're waiting and pushing back dates rather than put out a crappy product.
"137!! Why 137!"
You know, you sound like a friend of mine about computer stuff. We try to get him to upgrade, but he will never do it. Why? Because there is something always better right around the corner. When the P2 and Dolphin come out, I will go ahead and say not to buy those either. Why? Because, Some startup company will have something better on the horizon that everyone will say is the cats meow. Just look at the Nvidia GeForce. All the sudden, 3DFX comes out of the woodworks spreading rumors (don't believe me? just take a look at that CNBC interview with the 3DFX CEO). Cripes. My money will be with Sega today.......
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
As for Nintendo, they have more to worry about than Sega. Nintendo's market share has plummeted since the NES, dropping from ~95%+ to ~50% (SNES) and now to ~25% (n64). If the trend continues, Dolphin is in for a rough time in the market.
Should be interesting, but Sega has the upper hand for now, having an actual console on shelves and a serious head start. Let's see what they do with it.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Do you really think that a "New PC" will be able to realistically emulate a Dreamcast, PS2 and a Dolphin???????
Huh???
firstly - a PC might be able to match a DC in terms of hardware, but certainly not the PS2 or Dolphin.
secondly - it takes time to write emulators. The first PC PSX/N64 emulators are only just maturing. That's after the console has been on the market for >4 years.
Maybe after a few years this will be possible, but not now. My advice - remember, the DC is available now, and the PS2/Dolphin will probably be >6 months away. Many good games may come out on multiple systems, so if you need a new console now, the DC is the only option. Remember, if you are own a PSX, that when the PS2 comes out, it will play all your old games, and use all your old peripherals. (The PS2 will use the PSX dual-shock joypad as standard.)
just my 2 cents
padzo
If M$ is the solution, can we have the problem back?
I'm not quite sure how Sony could be compared to Microsoft. I seem to remember a time when the only big game consoles around (with regards to sheer popularity at least) were the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. The very notion that anybody would have bought a Genesis puts an interesting light on the idea that American consumers will buy just about any junky thing so long as it has a good advertising campaign (in Japan Sega wasn't even a contender.. Nintendo won hands down). Nintendo simply slipped.. it's their own fault, really. They had the lead, and then they lost it. That's what we call competition.
Sony is still a relative newcomer to the game console arena (well, in my rather skewed perception of time, that is), and Nintendo is not exactly dead. Neither, apparently, is Sega. This hardly qualifies as any kind of monopoly. Sony's in the lead, but it's still anybody's game. Microsoft, on the other hand, has no real competitors as far as the average end-user is concerned. Of course, the recent waves caused by Red Hat's splash into public view may change all that, but for now..
Also, I don't know about most people, but I'm still rather happy with PlayStation classic. It's a good system, and there a lots of good games (and hey, despite the usually horrible endings, who doesn't love the FF series?). I don't see any reason to drop more cash on a Dreamcast. I like using my money for desktop hardware, personally.
Besides, why bother wasting money on a system when it firsts comes out when a few months later the price will drop? I certainly didn't get a PSX when it first came out, and I rather doubt I'll get the sequel as soon as it hits stores. Back when we made the jump from Nintendo to Super Nintendo, that was a different story. We've gotten to a level now, however, where more eye-candy isn't as much of an attention grabber for me anymore.
As for closed consoles..? Well, why bother? If you want to make a real game, you might as well develop it for a real computer system. After all, why limit yourself to a certain hardware configuration? A lot more games are possible (not to mention more fun) with tons more RAM, faster processors, and all the other bells and whistles that are constantly being pushed past their current limits.
~ Kish
1. I've never read an article that claimed the PS2 would be launched as early as this one claimed. The date it's supposed to be "slipping" to, is the date I've always heard it would be released.
2. I also find it odd that Sony is called "inexperienced" with graphics chips, seeing as they've shipped 20+ million units of the PS1. And, yes, it included a graphics chip that was considered cutting edge for a consumer machine when it was designed.
3. The issue isn't with Sony designing the chip; it's with manufacturing problems. Supposedly they've been working on the chip for years now, and the design is finished. Let's not start calling them overambitious and incompetent just because they've got a better chip than can currently be used under Linux.
So, the Dreamcast's only hope of making money is that gap. They probably know they have an inferior product, so they shipped it quickly before the Dolphin or the PS2 got here. I'm not touching this console any time soon.
Of course, PS2 is going to be more expensive. Of course, it ain't gonna be delayed for its December release! It's Christmas. The FUD here is so clear, Sega is hoping that by saying things like this, they're gonna be the choice #1 for Christmas console presents.
But I'll say it clearly if Santa Claus happens to be reading Slashdot. :) Even if the PS2 is delayed, I don't want a Dreamcast for Christmas. When PS2 comes out, it's gonna be Christmas every day!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Whoa! According to what I've been told, and I may be misinformed, Sega's proprietary OS is Windows CE-based, as well.
Does anyone have more information on this?
"137!! Why 137!"
bright moments wrote
.... unless they expected they would benefit. While some PC-centered groups would be very happy for consumers to stick to their nice predictable upgrade path (RamBus, FutureIO, etc), I'm afraid the world doesn't work that way.
That gives Sony some time to make changes to the PS2 specs. What they need to do is dump the firewire port. Get out of that dead-end technology and get on the USB2 bandwagon. Everybody's doing it, so why get left behind in the dust with proprietary gear, even if it is better. I mean, didn't Sony learn anything from betamax?
Have you got any evidence to back up your claims? My understanding is that IEE 1391 (aka firewire) is a peer-peer connection whereas USB is host-based. Sony is a very savvy consumer electronics company (one of the few Japanese companies to be truely international in scope) and if they've made the commercial decision to put iLink (their name for IEEE 1391 to avoid Apple's firewire branding tax), others are likely to follow. They would not have gone to the trouble of putting it into their digital TVs, camcorders, etc
As for your claim that everyone is doing it, I would be very interested to learn your sample size of "everyone". Parroting popular press with their own ad-driven agendas is OK if you wish to follow the herd but then in my observation of nature, herds tend to be driven to the slaughter house. Consumer market where unit costs are critical, is completely different from the techical market where robustness, functionality and future development path credibility is much more highly valued. For example, betamax is widely used in the media production industry.
So, to return to the point, what evidence have you that firewire is a dead-end technology?
LL
Honestly, I don't understand all these comments of "Sega Sucks, Playstation rules!", especially on a forum of "alternative OS users" as Slashdot usually is. What are you really saying? "I don't need to try out the new system, because I already believe in the brand name of the upcoming, super-duper one that has been announced to come out later." Isn't this how Microsoft and all other standard setters use their names and tactics? All this talk about FUD from Sega -- do you really think they're big enough to make up all this negative news on a system when they have enough trouble trying to hawk theirs? If anything, Sony and Nintendo are the ones this time putting the pressure on with their semi-vaporware announcements. It's almost certain that they both will release more powerful systems, but, as everyone here should know, software is the main draw. Dismissing a console because it's not popular brand-wise sounds horribly strange coming from this group. Sega this time has gotten the 3rd party support from Namco, Konami, Capcom, Bioware, Midway, and a lot of others, so the games are here this time, unlike the Saturn. Pledging loyalty to one label -- Sega, Nintendo, Sony -- is exactly why so many people got burned by the Saturn, the N64 (sorta), and so on. If there's anything that remains constant in console games, it's that what you do in the past doesn't count as much as what you do in the present and the future. Computer games follow the same credo -- look at the C&C following when it first arrived compared to its number compared to Starcraft today. This doesn't mean that you should go run out and buy the Dreamcast if there's no game that you like on the system (and I certainly plan to get the PSX2 as well, if it's got some good games), but waiting a year or more for no other reason than a company bias makes everyone a follower, and not their own judge.
Just to remember what is the "Missing Graphics Chip", after all.
It is a customized Chip that integrates 4MB VRAM with 16 processors working in parallel, one for each screen section. I'd guess.
And all of that at 150MHz. That makes for the aclaimmed 75 million polygons per second and 48Gbps data transfer rate (within VRAM) announced.
Just check it at SONY's official playstation page.
-><- no
From what I've heard, the WinCE used is so identical to the palmtop version that they had to suppress the mouse cursor subroutine. "Dragon", the native OS used, has been noted that it provides the usual console environment to develop in without using any CE code at all. I'd assume it would resemble SDL.
--
Actually, that's mostly a myth. Console hardware still has a considerable markup on it, and they make a fair bit of money from it. Where they lose out is when they start bundling game packs with it, because then they have to pay the game publisher as well. Even then, I suspect it only reduces their margins slightly. I doubt they're actually making a loss.
As for loss of quality, that's a non-issue. Having an open development platform would simply mean more choice (and yes, some of that would be rubbish!). There's no reason it should lead to a reduction in the number of "approved" titles that are released via the existing QC process of the major players.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown