I hate to be a dink (well, honestly I don't hate it) but when someone says that EA doesn't have a good name they're essentially sitting in their ivory tower of video-game elitism like food critics before them. EA is the Large Chain restaurant of the videogame industry and doesn't get the respect they deserve. Sticking with the food analogy, EA produces a meal that looks good, tastes good, has good portions, had good service, and you don't get the shits after eating it; it may not be the best meal in the world, and you may not want to eat it all the time, but they still have a good reputation.
No shit sherlock. The PS3 would pretty much have to not sell any units before ruling out the PS4 would seem plausible.
Well, yes and no...
Sony's strategy for making money off of a videogame system is drastically different from Nintendo's strategy. Sony makes money because a lot of third parties sell a ton of games on their systems and Sony gets their licencing fee (cut) out of it; Nintendo on the other hand tends to be the number one developer on their own systems by a large margin so they profit through the sales of their own games. For Sony to be really profitable they need to have a very large chunk of the market share so that third party developers have no choice but to develop every game for the Playstation; if they lost enough marketshare that developers were focusing on another platform they would probably be better off leaving the hardware market.
Personally, I don't know the numbers that would require Sony to leave the console market but I suspect if they sold in the Gamecube/XBox range with the PS3 the PS4 might not happen.
There has been some friction inside EA with the Wii, most people want to focus on the PS3 and think the Wii is a distraction. So letting a small group focus on Wii specific stuff is a good option and lets the people at RS and the other main campuses focus on their PS3 titles
What's the color of the sky in your world Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll?
The fact is that EA is by far the most platform agnostic developer in the world and doesn't really focus on any platform in particular; opening up a Wii specific studio is probably EA just giving the Wii the same level of support that they're giving the PS3 and XBox 360. The way it works out is that EA can focus on graphics in one studio to maximize the potential of the XBox 360/PS3 and at the same time focus on new input for the Wii versions of the game to maximize the potential on the Wii.
I knew people who were working on the Playstation version of Madden after the PS2 was released and they were happy to do it; I don't know of what kind of crazy world you live in but developers are usually excited about the game they're developing not the game that they wish they could develop.
In the long run I expect to see the Wii (if it is popular enough) to be handled by developers in a very similar way to how handhelds have traditional been dealt with. In almost every major third party release for the home console a handheld version was made at the same time because of how much less expensive it was to develop and the size of the userbase for the handheld system. It is possible that you could see Final Fantasy, Metal Gear or GTA (or whatever) being released at the same time for the Wii and other platforms but the Wii version could be drastically different.
With MMO games there is a large percentage of the population who wants to not just play the game but to be one of the top players on their server; if you're in a beta (even for only a couple of weeks) you can level at a much faster rate than someone who hasn't played it before.
Also, in general many people want to be part of a beta because it is better than a demo at trying out to see if the game is any good.
Even in 40 player Resistance matches there has yet to be anyone reporting any lag thanks to Sony's online setup
Why do you keep saying this?
Sony (probably) built their online system to support 5 Million PS3 owners who wanted to play games online, meaning it was implemented with hundreds of thousands of concurrent users in mind; according to EA Sony has only shipped 200,000 PS3s. The fact is that Sony (probably) has a 5% of their intended load on their servers, if they had lag that would be a real serious problem.
I don't own an XBox 360 but I have seen Gears of War running in real time and it looks pretty good to me...
Maybe you need a vacation Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll, your trolling is getting more pathetic every day I think you need a break. Maybe play some PS2, or better yet some XBox/Gamecube/Wii and realize that it is fun playing videogames and you don't have to be a slave to a brand.
No one thinks you're cooler because you own only Sony stuff... No one thinks less of you either...
It is actually not that difficult to come to a reasonable estimate of what it would cost to produce the PS3 because most of the PS3's components are readily available (or are very similar to components that are readily available) to purchase by manufacturers; many of these components will have published prices and will even publish the price scale depending on how many components you're buying ($100 per unit for 1,000 to 5,000 units, $95 per unit from 5,000 to 20,000, etc.) and you can use that to estimate the price Sony can get if they're making 10,000,000 units.
For components designed in house by Sony (Cell, Blu-Ray drive, etc.) you can estimate the per unit price by taking the estimated cost to build and adding the cost of Research and Development by the number of units they will sell in order to break even (for something like the PS3 you'd probably want to break even in the 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 range).
Now, most of the losses are not losses in the sense that Sony is physically paying $900 to build a $600 system, but are the Research and Development costs for the platform and the components that have to be paid for in a certain ammount of time.
I meant median... The mean household income in Canada was in the 60,000-70,000 range... I was read all of this in an article that was describing the "typical" household in Canada to demonstrate that people were (generally) better off than they thought that they were. I don't know why I typed mean.
... easily could have sold them for over $1,000 a piece. That is still less than the average price on e-bay for the premium units.
Maybe I have odd timing but lately when I search eBay for 'PS3' I see that most of the PS3 units with less than 10 minutes remaining on the auction have bids in the $700-$800 range for 20GB model and $800 to $900 for the 60GB model; most of the auctions that have starting bids at $1000 or higher end without a single bid on them. Now, I don't doubt that some systems have sold for more than $1,000 but I think that those are becoming the exception not the rule.
If Sony set the MSRP at higher than $1,000 it would have been a disaster even if the system sold out initially because for the next 2 to 3 years any advertizement on TV that showed a PS3 game people would think "I don't wat to spend $1000 for that;" even if they reduced the price when supply went up (and advertized it heavily) all people would think is "The PS3 went from $1,000 to $600 in 6 months so it should be down to $300 by next christmas. I can wait for that before I buy the system". I believe it was Iwata who said that it wasn't a good idea to reduce the price of a system too early or too often because customers would begin to anticipate price drops.
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30 games per PS3 is really a lot. Not being much of a console gamer myself, I don't know what the average games-per-console is, but that seems pretty high. Of course this figure depends on how much Sony can bring the cost of manufacturing down. Did the analysts assume that they would and factor it in, or did they assume a constant cost/console?
The question I would have is whether Sony can bring the cost of manufacturing down at a rate greater than the rate they're going to be forced to reduce the price of the system?
Sometime in 2007 Microsoft will reduce the price of the XBox 360 so that the XBox 360 Bundle is $299 (as a guess), at this point in time Sony will be left with the decision to reduce the price of the PS3 or to reduce their loss on the PS3. If Sony allows Microsoft to Bully them into reducing the price of the PS3 it is likely that Sony will not start turning a profit on hardware throughout the entire generation (similar to what happened with the XBox), on the other hand if Sony doesn't reduce the price of the system they will likely bleed marketshare to Microsoft.
Honestly I hate Microsoft but the more I think about it the more I believe that Sony has lobbed the ball right into Microsofts court and ran off to get a drink while the ball is still in play; if Microsoft converts on this it will be really ugly for Sony.
My estimation method was not particularly scientific...
I basically eyeballed the October 2005 chart and watched how sales of systems changed over the months of November/December (with particular note of how the XBox 360 vs. XBox sales went) and then applied that to the October 2006 chart...
As a rough guestimate I would say that the Gamecube will be selling between 500,000 and 750,000 over the holiday period with the GBA in the 750,000-1,500,000 range; depending on how well supplied the PS3 is the Gamecube could outsell the PS3.
My point wasn't necessarily that the "Gamecube would outsell the PS3" as much as the PS3 will likely not be in the top 5 best selling gaming systems in the holiday months of 2006.
If you discount people who were looking to buy a PS3 to sell it on eBay, I'm willing to bet that over 90% of people who were looking to buy a PS3 already owned a PS2. $500/$600 is a lot of money to most people, and you'd have to be a pretty dedicated gamer to be willing to spend that kind of money which implies that you have been a dedicated gamer for a while and have "faith" in the Playstation brand; in other words you're probably among the to 5% most "hard-core" Playstation 2 owners.
No one wakes up one morning and says "Hmmm... I think I'm going to take up gaming today, here is $600 Mr. Sony!" Purchasing a "Next-Generation" system is a thought out act by people who are already in gaming. If you're buying a PS2 today you're likely buying it because you own a broken PS2 or you want to play a particular game; I know several people who are not typical gamers (don't own any systems) who have shown interest in games like Guitar Hero II. People who buy a PS2 today are unlikely to consider a PS3 until 2010.
PS3's strongest contender is the PS2. How sweet is that ?
Not to reduce your obvious excitement, but it is highly likely that through the holiday season the system sales will likely go:
Nintendo DS
Playstation 2
XBox 360
Nintendo Wii
PSP
GBA
Gamecube
Playstation 3
XBox
(I admit that the order could be shuffled, but the "general placement" is probably nearly correct)
Until the Playstation 3's supply increases it will likely be outsold by nearly every other console on the market, and it would be selling in the range of the Gamecube; even if the undersupply reports are false it is likely that the PS3 will be selling in the range of the GBA. It remains to be seen what the PS3 will sell like when the supply issues are worked out, but being that most system sales happen after the system costs less that $200 I expect the $500/$600 PS3 will not be in the league of the $130 PS2.
How many of the PS2s are being purchased by Grandparents who don't realise that when Little Billy asked for the new Playstation for Christmas, he meant a PS3, not just any version...
I was walking through the local Fry's last night and was wondering why they were stacking the PS2s in the main walkway. Seemed to me there might be a more popular item to stick in the high traffic areas, but maybe they were sold out of everything else.
I think you overestimate the demand for new consoles (not just the PS3), this is the sales numbers for 2006 up to (and including) October
Nintendo DS: 3,152,500
PS2: 3,131,500
XBox 360: 2,533,500
GBA: 2,060,500
PSP: 1,889,000
Gamecube: 525,500
XBox: 424,000
Playstation: 9,500
Now, the Nintendo DS was being outsold by the GBA until they released the DS lite...
The fact is that most people buy a system really late in its life, and that all those people who bought a Playstation since 2000 may now be starting to upgrade to the PS2. Most of the time we think of how average (or below average) our income is compared to everyone we know, when you actually compare your household income to the mean you'd probably find out that you were quite wealthy (the mean household income in Canada is $50,000 meaning that 50% of households make less than that; I expect that the US is very similar). Half of consumers aren't questioning whether they should 'upgrade' to a HDTV, they're thinking whether they should replace their 20 year old 20 inch TV with one of those fancy 32 inch CRT TVs.
Just as a question, is this really from interest in the PS3 or could it be something else? I don't know about the PSP but The PS2 has had Final Fantasy XII and Guitar Hero II released in November with Okami and Bully released not too long ago.
Could the sales actually be more directly releated to the fact that these systems are providing more gaming content for far less money than any of the "Next Generation" competition? Seriously, with budget games you could buy a PS2 a second controller and 4 or 5 games for the price of a Wii; compared to the XBox 360/PS3 you could probably get close to 20 games...
Neither Kameo no Perfect Dark Zero were that great. I have fond memories of Goldeneye, Diddy Kong Racing and Conkers Bad Fur Day, but the nostalgia may be clouding my judgement. Going back and playing these games now, they're not bad for a quick laugh, but they're not holding the attention the way I remember it. Where they really a great developer at all? Three stand out games and a bunch of other really, really ordinary titles doesn't really scream greatness to me. Especially considering the long development cycle of the games you mentioned, shouldn't the end result have been something truly outstanding?
I can't say that I've had too much hands on time with either Kameo or Perfect Dark Zero but what I would say is that the problem with these games was not lack of skill or shoddy development work but that there were better games that were released before either of these games. With Game Development you're trying to hit a moving target, this target is pretty clear 12 months ahead of time, kind of blury 24 months ahead of time, and very hard to see 36 months ahead of time; I could imagine it would be nearly impossible to predict where games would be 60+ months in the future.
Goldeneye will suck in comparison to modern console FPS mainly because it was the game which spawned the genre on consoles; in the past 10 years they have come a long way. Conkers BFD would probably feel dated but I suspect the gameplay would still be fun, and I never liked DKR because I though Mario Kart was far superior. The game I think would demonstrate how great Rare once was would be Banjo Kazooie. Banjo Kazooie was probably the only platformer of the generation I thought was better that Mario 64, although Mario 64 was more important because it was more revolutionary; I personally don't think many games that have been released since then really exceed the quality of either of these games without moving drastically away from simple platforming.
All I can say is it's about time the parents are being talked about here. I'm sick of everyone thinking the government should regulate what kids can and can't play (they do that with other things too, like abortion, and it's sickening). It's the job of the parents to raise their own children. Make sure the parents are informed and the games have the proper labels so everyone knows what the content is (which the game makers are doing). Then tell and let the parents do their job.
I think its fair to argue that if a product is labeled to be for people over a certain age to expect that retailers would respect that label and not sell/rent it to people who are under that age. The reason for this in not that it is the retailer's job to parent the chlidren but it is their responsibility to empower the parent to parent their own children; as long as a child can walk over to blockbuster and rent any game they have on the shelf it makes it remarkably difficult to really control the content that your children have access to.
The area with most game legislation I disagree with is that they tend to want certain content to automatically have a certain rating (for example a naked breast would automatically require a 'Mature' rating); this causes a problem because Michelangelo's David and Hard-Core Pornography both have Penis in them, the difference between them is context, and I would want a child to have access to one of them and not the other (and no I don't want children looking at porn).
Hey who knows, this whole networking thing could catch on... NAH, we'll just keep working in isolation and see if everyone else is wrong about it...
I personally hope that everyone else is wrong about a micropayment based horse armor/episodal content system; personally, I don't want to spend $150+ to buy all of the race tracks and cars that were available in the base game in the previous generation.
Well, the main reason was that Rare stopped filling the role that Nintendo needed them to fill and Nintendo was moving away from the 'Second Party' model. Rare was needed by Nintendo in order to supply their systems with several high quality games every year in order to keep consumer interest high, which was something they did fairly well up until about 1998 or so; late in the N64 generation many Rare games were taking 24-36 months to complete in an age where a long development cycle was 18 months. When Nintendo passed on buying Rare Perfect Dark Zero had been in development for 12 months, Kameo for 18 and both of those games were only released in 2005 (meaning they were in development for 5+ years).
Rare is still a good developer with lots of talent, the problem is their management structure needs a serious change
Most people think that the Wii supply is sufficient to meet demand.
Yes but Thinking that supply is sufficient to meet demand is quite a bit different from supply being Very Close to meeting demand. Most people didn't think the Wii was going to "sell out" before the doors opened on launch day; it is quite possible that in 3 weeks people could start paying $2,000+ on eBay to get a Wii for christmas because it isn't available, or that eBay sales could disapear for the PS3 because it is on the shelves of all major stores.
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I hate to be a dink (well, honestly I don't hate it) but when someone says that EA doesn't have a good name they're essentially sitting in their ivory tower of video-game elitism like food critics before them. EA is the Large Chain restaurant of the videogame industry and doesn't get the respect they deserve. Sticking with the food analogy, EA produces a meal that looks good, tastes good, has good portions, had good service, and you don't get the shits after eating it; it may not be the best meal in the world, and you may not want to eat it all the time, but they still have a good reputation.
No shit sherlock. The PS3 would pretty much have to not sell any units before ruling out the PS4 would seem plausible.
...
Well, yes and no
Sony's strategy for making money off of a videogame system is drastically different from Nintendo's strategy. Sony makes money because a lot of third parties sell a ton of games on their systems and Sony gets their licencing fee (cut) out of it; Nintendo on the other hand tends to be the number one developer on their own systems by a large margin so they profit through the sales of their own games. For Sony to be really profitable they need to have a very large chunk of the market share so that third party developers have no choice but to develop every game for the Playstation; if they lost enough marketshare that developers were focusing on another platform they would probably be better off leaving the hardware market.
Personally, I don't know the numbers that would require Sony to leave the console market but I suspect if they sold in the Gamecube/XBox range with the PS3 the PS4 might not happen.
There has been some friction inside EA with the Wii, most people want to focus on the PS3 and think the Wii is a distraction. So letting a small group focus on Wii specific stuff is a good option and lets the people at RS and the other main campuses focus on their PS3 titles
What's the color of the sky in your world Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll?
The fact is that EA is by far the most platform agnostic developer in the world and doesn't really focus on any platform in particular; opening up a Wii specific studio is probably EA just giving the Wii the same level of support that they're giving the PS3 and XBox 360. The way it works out is that EA can focus on graphics in one studio to maximize the potential of the XBox 360/PS3 and at the same time focus on new input for the Wii versions of the game to maximize the potential on the Wii.
I knew people who were working on the Playstation version of Madden after the PS2 was released and they were happy to do it; I don't know of what kind of crazy world you live in but developers are usually excited about the game they're developing not the game that they wish they could develop.
In the long run I expect to see the Wii (if it is popular enough) to be handled by developers in a very similar way to how handhelds have traditional been dealt with. In almost every major third party release for the home console a handheld version was made at the same time because of how much less expensive it was to develop and the size of the userbase for the handheld system. It is possible that you could see Final Fantasy, Metal Gear or GTA (or whatever) being released at the same time for the Wii and other platforms but the Wii version could be drastically different.
With MMO games there is a large percentage of the population who wants to not just play the game but to be one of the top players on their server; if you're in a beta (even for only a couple of weeks) you can level at a much faster rate than someone who hasn't played it before.
Also, in general many people want to be part of a beta because it is better than a demo at trying out to see if the game is any good.
Even in 40 player Resistance matches there has yet to be anyone reporting any lag thanks to Sony's online setup
Why do you keep saying this?
Sony (probably) built their online system to support 5 Million PS3 owners who wanted to play games online, meaning it was implemented with hundreds of thousands of concurrent users in mind; according to EA Sony has only shipped 200,000 PS3s. The fact is that Sony (probably) has a 5% of their intended load on their servers, if they had lag that would be a real serious problem.
I don't own an XBox 360 but I have seen Gears of War running in real time and it looks pretty good to me ...
... No one thinks less of you either ...
Maybe you need a vacation Mr. Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll, your trolling is getting more pathetic every day I think you need a break. Maybe play some PS2, or better yet some XBox/Gamecube/Wii and realize that it is fun playing videogames and you don't have to be a slave to a brand.
No one thinks you're cooler because you own only Sony stuff
I am pleased to announce that Next Week I will be able to announce when we will make our announcment that the Beta for Duke Nukem Forever will begin.
It is actually not that difficult to come to a reasonable estimate of what it would cost to produce the PS3 because most of the PS3's components are readily available (or are very similar to components that are readily available) to purchase by manufacturers; many of these components will have published prices and will even publish the price scale depending on how many components you're buying ($100 per unit for 1,000 to 5,000 units, $95 per unit from 5,000 to 20,000, etc.) and you can use that to estimate the price Sony can get if they're making 10,000,000 units.
For components designed in house by Sony (Cell, Blu-Ray drive, etc.) you can estimate the per unit price by taking the estimated cost to build and adding the cost of Research and Development by the number of units they will sell in order to break even (for something like the PS3 you'd probably want to break even in the 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 range).
Now, most of the losses are not losses in the sense that Sony is physically paying $900 to build a $600 system, but are the Research and Development costs for the platform and the components that have to be paid for in a certain ammount of time.
I meant median ... ...
The mean household income in Canada was in the 60,000-70,000 range
I was read all of this in an article that was describing the "typical" household in Canada to demonstrate that people were (generally) better off than they thought that they were. I don't know why I typed mean.
... easily could have sold them for over $1,000 a piece. That is still less than the average price on e-bay for the premium units.
Maybe I have odd timing but lately when I search eBay for 'PS3' I see that most of the PS3 units with less than 10 minutes remaining on the auction have bids in the $700-$800 range for 20GB model and $800 to $900 for the 60GB model; most of the auctions that have starting bids at $1000 or higher end without a single bid on them. Now, I don't doubt that some systems have sold for more than $1,000 but I think that those are becoming the exception not the rule.
If Sony set the MSRP at higher than $1,000 it would have been a disaster even if the system sold out initially because for the next 2 to 3 years any advertizement on TV that showed a PS3 game people would think "I don't wat to spend $1000 for that;" even if they reduced the price when supply went up (and advertized it heavily) all people would think is "The PS3 went from $1,000 to $600 in 6 months so it should be down to $300 by next christmas. I can wait for that before I buy the system". I believe it was Iwata who said that it wasn't a good idea to reduce the price of a system too early or too often because customers would begin to anticipate price drops.
NPD through VGCharts.org
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... or not ... but Please (for the love of god) stop bitching
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Please find good news about Sony and submit it
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... or not ... but Please (for the love of god) stop bitching
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Please find good news about Sony and submit it
30 games per PS3 is really a lot. Not being much of a console gamer myself, I don't know what the average games-per-console is, but that seems pretty high. Of course this figure depends on how much Sony can bring the cost of manufacturing down. Did the analysts assume that they would and factor it in, or did they assume a constant cost/console?
Here is a link to a cost analysis of the PS3 ( http://www.isuppli.com/news/default.asp?id=6919 )
The question I would have is whether Sony can bring the cost of manufacturing down at a rate greater than the rate they're going to be forced to reduce the price of the system?
Sometime in 2007 Microsoft will reduce the price of the XBox 360 so that the XBox 360 Bundle is $299 (as a guess), at this point in time Sony will be left with the decision to reduce the price of the PS3 or to reduce their loss on the PS3. If Sony allows Microsoft to Bully them into reducing the price of the PS3 it is likely that Sony will not start turning a profit on hardware throughout the entire generation (similar to what happened with the XBox), on the other hand if Sony doesn't reduce the price of the system they will likely bleed marketshare to Microsoft.
Honestly I hate Microsoft but the more I think about it the more I believe that Sony has lobbed the ball right into Microsofts court and ran off to get a drink while the ball is still in play; if Microsoft converts on this it will be really ugly for Sony.
My estimation method was not particularly scientific ...
...
I basically eyeballed the October 2005 chart and watched how sales of systems changed over the months of November/December (with particular note of how the XBox 360 vs. XBox sales went) and then applied that to the October 2006 chart
As a rough guestimate I would say that the Gamecube will be selling between 500,000 and 750,000 over the holiday period with the GBA in the 750,000-1,500,000 range; depending on how well supplied the PS3 is the Gamecube could outsell the PS3.
My point wasn't necessarily that the "Gamecube would outsell the PS3" as much as the PS3 will likely not be in the top 5 best selling gaming systems in the holiday months of 2006.
If you discount people who were looking to buy a PS3 to sell it on eBay, I'm willing to bet that over 90% of people who were looking to buy a PS3 already owned a PS2. $500/$600 is a lot of money to most people, and you'd have to be a pretty dedicated gamer to be willing to spend that kind of money which implies that you have been a dedicated gamer for a while and have "faith" in the Playstation brand; in other words you're probably among the to 5% most "hard-core" Playstation 2 owners.
... I think I'm going to take up gaming today, here is $600 Mr. Sony!" Purchasing a "Next-Generation" system is a thought out act by people who are already in gaming. If you're buying a PS2 today you're likely buying it because you own a broken PS2 or you want to play a particular game; I know several people who are not typical gamers (don't own any systems) who have shown interest in games like Guitar Hero II. People who buy a PS2 today are unlikely to consider a PS3 until 2010.
No one wakes up one morning and says "Hmmm
How sweet is that ?
Not to reduce your obvious excitement, but it is highly likely that through the holiday season the system sales will likely go:
(I admit that the order could be shuffled, but the "general placement" is probably nearly correct)
Until the Playstation 3's supply increases it will likely be outsold by nearly every other console on the market, and it would be selling in the range of the Gamecube; even if the undersupply reports are false it is likely that the PS3 will be selling in the range of the GBA. It remains to be seen what the PS3 will sell like when the supply issues are worked out, but being that most system sales happen after the system costs less that $200 I expect the $500/$600 PS3 will not be in the league of the $130 PS2.
I was walking through the local Fry's last night and was wondering why they were stacking the PS2s in the main walkway. Seemed to me there might be a more popular item to stick in the high traffic areas, but maybe they were sold out of everything else.
I think you overestimate the demand for new consoles (not just the PS3), this is the sales numbers for 2006 up to (and including) October
Now, the Nintendo DS was being outsold by the GBA until they released the DS lite
The fact is that most people buy a system really late in its life, and that all those people who bought a Playstation since 2000 may now be starting to upgrade to the PS2. Most of the time we think of how average (or below average) our income is compared to everyone we know, when you actually compare your household income to the mean you'd probably find out that you were quite wealthy (the mean household income in Canada is $50,000 meaning that 50% of households make less than that; I expect that the US is very similar). Half of consumers aren't questioning whether they should 'upgrade' to a HDTV, they're thinking whether they should replace their 20 year old 20 inch TV with one of those fancy 32 inch CRT TVs.
Just as a question, is this really from interest in the PS3 or could it be something else? I don't know about the PSP but The PS2 has had Final Fantasy XII and Guitar Hero II released in November with Okami and Bully released not too long ago. Could the sales actually be more directly releated to the fact that these systems are providing more gaming content for far less money than any of the "Next Generation" competition? Seriously, with budget games you could buy a PS2 a second controller and 4 or 5 games for the price of a Wii; compared to the XBox 360/PS3 you could probably get close to 20 games ...
Neither Kameo no Perfect Dark Zero were that great. I have fond memories of Goldeneye, Diddy Kong Racing and Conkers Bad Fur Day, but the nostalgia may be clouding my judgement. Going back and playing these games now, they're not bad for a quick laugh, but they're not holding the attention the way I remember it. Where they really a great developer at all? Three stand out games and a bunch of other really, really ordinary titles doesn't really scream greatness to me. Especially considering the long development cycle of the games you mentioned, shouldn't the end result have been something truly outstanding?
I can't say that I've had too much hands on time with either Kameo or Perfect Dark Zero but what I would say is that the problem with these games was not lack of skill or shoddy development work but that there were better games that were released before either of these games. With Game Development you're trying to hit a moving target, this target is pretty clear 12 months ahead of time, kind of blury 24 months ahead of time, and very hard to see 36 months ahead of time; I could imagine it would be nearly impossible to predict where games would be 60+ months in the future.
Goldeneye will suck in comparison to modern console FPS mainly because it was the game which spawned the genre on consoles; in the past 10 years they have come a long way. Conkers BFD would probably feel dated but I suspect the gameplay would still be fun, and I never liked DKR because I though Mario Kart was far superior. The game I think would demonstrate how great Rare once was would be Banjo Kazooie. Banjo Kazooie was probably the only platformer of the generation I thought was better that Mario 64, although Mario 64 was more important because it was more revolutionary; I personally don't think many games that have been released since then really exceed the quality of either of these games without moving drastically away from simple platforming.
All I can say is it's about time the parents are being talked about here. I'm sick of everyone thinking the government should regulate what kids can and can't play (they do that with other things too, like abortion, and it's sickening). It's the job of the parents to raise their own children. Make sure the parents are informed and the games have the proper labels so everyone knows what the content is (which the game makers are doing). Then tell and let the parents do their job.
I think its fair to argue that if a product is labeled to be for people over a certain age to expect that retailers would respect that label and not sell/rent it to people who are under that age. The reason for this in not that it is the retailer's job to parent the chlidren but it is their responsibility to empower the parent to parent their own children; as long as a child can walk over to blockbuster and rent any game they have on the shelf it makes it remarkably difficult to really control the content that your children have access to.
The area with most game legislation I disagree with is that they tend to want certain content to automatically have a certain rating (for example a naked breast would automatically require a 'Mature' rating); this causes a problem because Michelangelo's David and Hard-Core Pornography both have Penis in them, the difference between them is context, and I would want a child to have access to one of them and not the other (and no I don't want children looking at porn).
Hey who knows, this whole networking thing could catch on... NAH, we'll just keep working in isolation and see if everyone else is wrong about it...
I personally hope that everyone else is wrong about a micropayment based horse armor/episodal content system; personally, I don't want to spend $150+ to buy all of the race tracks and cars that were available in the base game in the previous generation.
There's a reason Nintendo dumped them...
Well, the main reason was that Rare stopped filling the role that Nintendo needed them to fill and Nintendo was moving away from the 'Second Party' model. Rare was needed by Nintendo in order to supply their systems with several high quality games every year in order to keep consumer interest high, which was something they did fairly well up until about 1998 or so; late in the N64 generation many Rare games were taking 24-36 months to complete in an age where a long development cycle was 18 months. When Nintendo passed on buying Rare Perfect Dark Zero had been in development for 12 months, Kameo for 18 and both of those games were only released in 2005 (meaning they were in development for 5+ years).
Rare is still a good developer with lots of talent, the problem is their management structure needs a serious change
Most people think that the Wii supply is sufficient to meet demand. Yes but Thinking that supply is sufficient to meet demand is quite a bit different from supply being Very Close to meeting demand. Most people didn't think the Wii was going to "sell out" before the doors opened on launch day; it is quite possible that in 3 weeks people could start paying $2,000+ on eBay to get a Wii for christmas because it isn't available, or that eBay sales could disapear for the PS3 because it is on the shelves of all major stores.