Well, as a whole unit Take-Two is not a good purchase...
The company has to be broken down into much smaller units and sold off. Someone will want Rockstar North with Grand Theft Auto, another will want Visual Concepts and so on... Few people who have $2 Billion (or more) will want the massive bloted company that is Take Two
I don't think that anyone here will doubt that they would have bought (or be considering buying) a PS3 if they had sold it for $300.
The important question is what will happen to Phil Harison and Ken Kuratagi if (in my opinion "when") the PS3 fails to sell 25 Million consoles worldwide?
I think you need to take demographics into account. I don't have the numbers to say for sure but it makes sense to think that most people that have $600 to spend on a video game console and/or a video player most likely either already have an HDTV or plan on purchasing one very soon.
Anecdotally I can say by speaking with my coworkers that in the upper middle class and above HDTV's are the norm, with everyone on my team owning at least one (well the junior engineer on the team only has an EDTV but there are no SDTV only households).
But had they not included the Blu-Ray player the PS3 would have never been $600... If the PS3 was (simply) the 20GB PS3 without a Blu-Ray player they could have priced it at $300 or $400, launched in April of 2006 with Millions of systems and been the "talk of the town."
The "Lag" isn't caused by the technology it is caused by the use in game...
In Wii Sports: Tennis there is a tiny ammount of lag as it begins the swing action after it recieves a swing input; in comparison Wii Sports Bowling (since there is no triggered input) has no lag...
From what I have seen, you adjust to this lag reasonably quickly and start swining the 1/10th of a second earlier in order to get the action triggered when you want it.
In the end they will drop the PS3 price to something sort of reasonable and sell plenty of them. They can make it through the first year or so by reputation alone pushing game developers to create for the platform.
It doesn't work that way though...
Consider Sega, they have released Virtual Fighter 5 for the PS3 which has recieved respectable reviews (88% on Gamerankings.com) and its sales are awful on the PS3; from the looks of the American and Japaneese sales, it will sell (approximately) 15% as many copies as Virtual Fighter 4 did on the PS2. This is not a unique situation...
EA, Activision, Sega and Namco have all released good quality games for the PS3 that have sold well below their expectations and will likely reduce (or drop) support for the platform if this continues... Without the support of the major third party developers a plaform dies a very fast death.
So... You find the quote about it not being profitable that I was refering to and also find a quote from a time when the Saturn and Playstation were struggling (and retailers Were conserned with slow CD rom sales)...
And in neither case did Nintendo actually bash the format, they were (in fact) explaining there choices in not going with the format...
For the most part companies do not have control over when they release a console...
As sales drop to an unacceptable rate third party publishers remove support for a platform and the console is (essentially) dead. You're (typically) given 18 to 24 months notice (because you find out pretty early that EA isn't planning on starting development on new games for your patform long before they release their last game) so you end up having the necessary time to release another system before it becomes obvious that the platform is dead.
Hypothetically speaking, if the Wii or PS3 were to push XBox 360 sales to under 5 Million consoles per year (worldwide) you would see a new XBox 360 long before 2012
I was wondering whether an XBox Live Account was the same as a Windows Live Account (that is buying one gives you access to the other)...
Personally, I think it would be cool to be able to have 1 identity on an Console and PC but I have no desire to spend $100+ to have 2 seperate identities.
You mean like how out of touch Nintendo's PR was when the company decided to implement optical discs and online gaming even after they repeatedly bashed both of them?
Please supply me with ONE quote where Nintendo bashes optical discs or online gaming?
When Sony and Nintendo were working on the SNES CD Nintendo got a lot of exposure to the negative sides of CD gaming (Low data transfer rates, poor seek times and high latency which lead to long loading times)... Nintendo choose the cartridge over the CD because they thought that 3D gaming was about large seamless environments rather than FMV video.
At the same time Nintendo tried online services (in Japan) with both the NES and SNES that were expensive and never really attracted much attention; after watching the "Online out of the box" Sega Dreamcast fail to inspire gamers Nintendo said that online games were "Not Profitable" and that Nintendo was not interested in moving online at the moment. Even with these statements it was well know that Nintendo was working on online games internally but was unsure on whether they were going to publish them.
With using an 8cm optical disc they have limited how small the PSP can actually get (essentially they can't make it as small as the Gameboy Micro got)... with that said, if they moved to a 65nm process (like the PS3/XBox 360) they could reduce the power-consumption and move to a much slimmer design which would make it more portable.
Yes, early adopters will have to go out and buy another $50/$60 controller inorder to get rumble in their games...
The PS3 controller has been taken apart several times by mod-groups (the most popular mod is to put an LED behind the center button) and they never found a rumble pack...
Honestly, I don't think PC gaming has been on the same level as consoles (in terms of sales) for a very long time...
The big problem PC gaming has is that its two biggest strenghts work against eachother; everyone has a PC and the hard-core group of PC gamers have amazingly powerful hardware. This ends up meaning you either target the Hard-Core and have limited sales, or you target the mainstream and upset the hardcore gamers (thus limiting sales)...
I don't understand how this is supposed to be appealing. It appears to be basically a Second Life ripoff, except they've taken out most of the customization ability and replaced it with the ability to purchase someone else's customizations (unless you have a developers license).
The whole idea of a "virtual community" sounds great on paper, but this looks like they're basically trying to create a virtual shopping mall. But if I want to shop online, I'll use google or amazon or something like that and find what I need a lot quicker. Why would I want to make my little avatar walk down some virtual hallway to get to the virtual store I want to virtually buy shit from? Isn't that just a waste of time? People need to stop trying to make "virtual communities" look like the real world, and start designing them to take advantage of the strengths the online world has over the real world.
Sony wants this to be a new and revolutionary vehicle for advertising. But for advertising to be effective, you need people to look at the advertisements. If all people get from this is a place to go look at advertisements, they won't stick around for very long. And giving them some private "apartment" where they can change the color of the walls just isn't going to hold anyone's interest for long.
Well, I know it is not designed to appeal to me...
I suspect they're trying to aim this service at the Casual or Non-gamer market but what they fail to realize is that no casual gamer will spend $500 for a gaming system...
Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue.
I ask you: Are these convincing arguments? And directed at journalists, who are natural questioners and skeptics, of all people? What happens when you are told not to eat the apple, not to read that book, not to date that girl? Your interest is piqued, of course. What am I not supposed to know?
Here's the kind of information the "scientific consensus" types don't want you to read. MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology Richard Lindzen recently complained about the "shrill alarmism" of Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming -- but they also might not.
"We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as "the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," "the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and `"Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."
While vacationing in Canada, I spotted a newspaper story that I hadn't seen in the United States. For no apparent reason, the state of California, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have dragged Lindzen and about 15 other global- warming skeptics into a lawsuit over auto- emissions standards. California et al . have asked the auto companies to cough up any and all communications they have had with Lindzen and his colleagues, whose research has been cited in court documents.
"We know that General Motors has been paying for this fake science exactly as the tobacco companies did," says ED attorney Jim Marston. If Marston has a scintilla of evidence that Lindzen has been trafficking in fake science, he should present it to the MIT provost's office. Otherwise, he should shut up.
"This is the criminalization of opposition to global warming," says Lindzen, who adds he has never communicated with the auto companies involved in the lawsuit. Of course Lindzen isn't a fake scientist, he's an inconvenient scientist. No wonder you're not supposed to listen to him.
Inspite of what you may believe, there is a politicaly motivated movement to ensure that scientists that do not agree with the Global Warming Consensus are not heard...
How about you ask some of these people about whether there is not political agenda:
Dr. Christopher Landsea: Leading expert in the field of hurricanes and tropical storms. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory - resigned as an author of the IPCC 2007 report, released earlier this month stating the IPCC was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound." - wrote a lengthy and detailed open letter to his scientific colleagues explaining why he was withdrawing from helping to author the report. - "I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized." - "In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concer
I really don't understand why people go on and on about the PS3's price.
It retails for $499 usd
Not $700, not $800, not whatever other made-up numbers people use (although yes, europe got screwed here as usual). What do you get for that price?
$800 worth of hardware.
Hardware that no other console has. Hdmi, standard high capacity optical drive, user replaceable hard drive, in a package that has had essentially no manufacturing defects. Yeah, its expensive, but it's a lot of machine for the money. If you don't want to pay for it, don't buy it, but stop acting like sony owes you a cheaper machine.
Sure it retails for $499...
I can find the $599 model at ever retailer and online but I have yet to see the $499 model; bloggers have been contacting Sony because they believe it has been discontinued...
Now, even at $499 it is still a $499 gaming console with no (particularly) interesting games; it doesn't matter what hardware it has because I'm unlikely to be using it in any way except as a gaming machine. Basically, if Chevy produced a cobalt and put $40,000 worth of electronics in it would you argue that the car was not overpriced at $50,000?
The game was (more or less) finished by the time it moved to the Wii...
Completely re-doing combat at that point in time would have been impossible. I suspect you will see greated Wiimote usage in the Next Zelda game which should be released Q4 2008 (as a guess).
I was looking into Orb the other day and came to the conclusion that someone has to ask Nintendo/Opera to ensure that their browser has a way to hide the navigation bar...
As for the game, most publishers are going to be announcing Wii products (over the next 3 months) in order to build anticipation for these games at E3.
You're comparing chess and sodoku to wii sports or ball-and-cup?? All I gotta say is: yikes..
Your initial comment was "The fact that such simple games are so popular is a sad commentary on the intelligence of the general public" to which I pointed out that just because a game is simple doesn't mean that only the unintelligent would enjoy it.
Since it is obvious that you have never played Wii sports I can try to explain why it is so popular...
When you play Wii Sports: Bowling you will notice that Nintendo has produced such a simple interface that everyone who is between the age of 4 and 125 can understand how to play; at the same time it is the best approximation of bowling that has ever been produced. Tennis, Boxing, Baseball and Golf are all have the same intuitive easy to use interface and yet capture the enjoyment of the sport for a lot of people.
So I guess the follow-up game to Wii Sports will be "Wii Ball-in-Cup"? How about "Wii Walk and Chew Gum?"
The fact that such simple games are so popular is a sad commentary on the intelligence of the general public.
You do realize that games like chess and checkers are also very simple games and require a lot of intelligence, aren't you? Sudoku is an amazingly simple puzzle which is not easy.
Whether you like to admit it or not, often the shiny graphics and convoluted storyline are there to give lazy (and potentially unintelligent) people a reason to complete brainless and repetitive tasks in a game.
I see the value in moving away from scripting everything to a more physics based system but at some point it becomes more involved to create something interesting using physics as compared to scripting...
As an (extreme) example, consider a racing game where you were forced to design and build a real engine for your car... Suddenly, rather than set acceleration = 1.0 and max speed = 145 you have to hire a dozen designers to get exactly the same effect...
I understand we're decades away from an example like that, but physics is not the solution to every problem
Wii Sports was nominated for two awards and the one that seemed most appropriate for it to win is the one it won (game design)...
As I see it, Wii Sports demonstrates that sometimes the best design is the simplest; Nintendo could have (easily) made each of the sports games a full simulation but the greatness of Wii sports is how unintimidating it is which (in my opinion) comes from its simplicity.
I think you are using a very narrow definition of art...
You're saying that for an author to produce art it has to be a novel or epic-poem, for a painter to produce art it has to be a grand mural, or for a composer to produce art he has to produce an opera.
A haiku can be art, graffiti can be art, and a pop-song can be art...
Sometimes the most important way to define art is that it changes the medium after it has been produced... Games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Brain Training, Nintendogs, and Wario Ware have all changed how the industry sees games or how a genre is seen.
Whether some people would like to admit it or not, Wii Sports could be seen as art because it was produced by the artists frustration with complicated control mechanics and massive budgets; and the industry will never be the same for having experienced it.
Fable was an overhyped turd of a game. Molyneux is still managing to fool the gaming press that he is still relevant.
Mass Effect is just another crappy Unreal Engine 3 game. Oh look shiny armor with bright lights on it! Every game that is stuck with the UE3 engine has that same ridiculous look that low poly highly normal mapped models end up looking like. And the game itself sounds dreadfully boring. Bioware has really gone downhill since BG and BG2.
There are people to speak about the history and future of RPGs. None of these guys are one of them.
Fable was overhyped (Molyneux said he was going to produce the "Best RPG Ever") but was actually a pretty good RPG on both the XBox and PC...
The fact is that every one of these developers is producing anticipated RPGs (for the XBox 360 which is why this talk was produced by Microsoft) and their input is of value to many small developers who are working on RPG games...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, as a whole unit Take-Two is not a good purchase ...
... Few people who have $2 Billion (or more) will want the massive bloted company that is Take Two
The company has to be broken down into much smaller units and sold off. Someone will want Rockstar North with Grand Theft Auto, another will want Visual Concepts and so on
But is that really a fair comparison?
Both systems were released in late 2004/early 2005 (depending on your region) and have had 2 full years to build their userbase...
The word "duh" comes to mind ...
I don't think that anyone here will doubt that they would have bought (or be considering buying) a PS3 if they had sold it for $300.
The important question is what will happen to Phil Harison and Ken Kuratagi if (in my opinion "when") the PS3 fails to sell 25 Million consoles worldwide?
But had they not included the Blu-Ray player the PS3 would have never been $600
The "Lag" isn't caused by the technology it is caused by the use in game ...
In Wii Sports: Tennis there is a tiny ammount of lag as it begins the swing action after it recieves a swing input; in comparison Wii Sports Bowling (since there is no triggered input) has no lag ...
From what I have seen, you adjust to this lag reasonably quickly and start swining the 1/10th of a second earlier in order to get the action triggered when you want it.
It doesn't work that way though
Consider Sega, they have released Virtual Fighter 5 for the PS3 which has recieved respectable reviews (88% on Gamerankings.com) and its sales are awful on the PS3; from the looks of the American and Japaneese sales, it will sell (approximately) 15% as many copies as Virtual Fighter 4 did on the PS2. This is not a unique situation
EA, Activision, Sega and Namco have all released good quality games for the PS3 that have sold well below their expectations and will likely reduce (or drop) support for the platform if this continues
So ... You find the quote about it not being profitable that I was refering to and also find a quote from a time when the Saturn and Playstation were struggling (and retailers Were conserned with slow CD rom sales) ...
And in neither case did Nintendo actually bash the format, they were (in fact) explaining there choices in not going with the format...
Congratulations!
For the most part companies do not have control over when they release a console ...
As sales drop to an unacceptable rate third party publishers remove support for a platform and the console is (essentially) dead. You're (typically) given 18 to 24 months notice (because you find out pretty early that EA isn't planning on starting development on new games for your patform long before they release their last game) so you end up having the necessary time to release another system before it becomes obvious that the platform is dead.
Hypothetically speaking, if the Wii or PS3 were to push XBox 360 sales to under 5 Million consoles per year (worldwide) you would see a new XBox 360 long before 2012
I was wondering whether an XBox Live Account was the same as a Windows Live Account (that is buying one gives you access to the other) ...
Personally, I think it would be cool to be able to have 1 identity on an Console and PC but I have no desire to spend $100+ to have 2 seperate identities.
Please supply me with ONE quote where Nintendo bashes optical discs or online gaming?
When Sony and Nintendo were working on the SNES CD Nintendo got a lot of exposure to the negative sides of CD gaming (Low data transfer rates, poor seek times and high latency which lead to long loading times)
At the same time Nintendo tried online services (in Japan) with both the NES and SNES that were expensive and never really attracted much attention; after watching the "Online out of the box" Sega Dreamcast fail to inspire gamers Nintendo said that online games were "Not Profitable" and that Nintendo was not interested in moving online at the moment. Even with these statements it was well know that Nintendo was working on online games internally but was unsure on whether they were going to publish them.
With using an 8cm optical disc they have limited how small the PSP can actually get (essentially they can't make it as small as the Gameboy Micro got) ... with that said, if they moved to a 65nm process (like the PS3/XBox 360) they could reduce the power-consumption and move to a much slimmer design which would make it more portable.
The beauty of this is that it demonstrates how out of touch most of Sony's PR really is ...
Yes, early adopters will have to go out and buy another $50/$60 controller inorder to get rumble in their games ...
...
The PS3 controller has been taken apart several times by mod-groups (the most popular mod is to put an LED behind the center button) and they never found a rumble pack
Honestly, I don't think PC gaming has been on the same level as consoles (in terms of sales) for a very long time ...
...
The big problem PC gaming has is that its two biggest strenghts work against eachother; everyone has a PC and the hard-core group of PC gamers have amazingly powerful hardware. This ends up meaning you either target the Hard-Core and have limited sales, or you target the mainstream and upset the hardcore gamers (thus limiting sales)
That's just how I see it though
Well, I know it is not designed to appeal to me
I suspect they're trying to aim this service at the Casual or Non-gamer market but what they fail to realize is that no casual gamer will spend $500 for a gaming system
While vacationing in Canada, I spotted a newspaper story that I hadn't seen in the United States. For no apparent reason, the state of California, Environmental Defense, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have dragged Lindzen and about 15 other global- warming skeptics into a lawsuit over auto- emissions standards. California et al . have asked the auto companies to cough up any and all communications they have had with Lindzen and his colleagues, whose research has been cited in court documents.
...
"We know that General Motors has been paying for this fake science exactly as the tobacco companies did," says ED attorney Jim Marston. If Marston has a scintilla of evidence that Lindzen has been trafficking in fake science, he should present it to the MIT provost's office. Otherwise, he should shut up.
"This is the criminalization of opposition to global warming," says Lindzen, who adds he has never communicated with the auto companies involved in the lawsuit. Of course Lindzen isn't a fake scientist, he's an inconvenient scientist. No wonder you're not supposed to listen to him.
Inspite of what you may believe, there is a politicaly motivated movement to ensure that scientists that do not agree with the Global Warming Consensus are not heard
How about you ask some of these people about whether there is not political agenda:
Dr. Christopher Landsea:
Leading expert in the field of hurricanes and tropical storms.
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
- resigned as an author of the IPCC 2007 report, released earlier this month stating the IPCC was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound."
- wrote a lengthy and detailed open letter to his scientific colleagues explaining why he was withdrawing from helping to author the report.
- "I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized." - "In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concer
Sure it retails for $499
I can find the $599 model at ever retailer and online but I have yet to see the $499 model; bloggers have been contacting Sony because they believe it has been discontinued
Now, even at $499 it is still a $499 gaming console with no (particularly) interesting games; it doesn't matter what hardware it has because I'm unlikely to be using it in any way except as a gaming machine. Basically, if Chevy produced a cobalt and put $40,000 worth of electronics in it would you argue that the car was not overpriced at $50,000?
The game was (more or less) finished by the time it moved to the Wii ...
Completely re-doing combat at that point in time would have been impossible. I suspect you will see greated Wiimote usage in the Next Zelda game which should be released Q4 2008 (as a guess).
I was looking into Orb the other day and came to the conclusion that someone has to ask Nintendo/Opera to ensure that their browser has a way to hide the navigation bar ...
As for the game, most publishers are going to be announcing Wii products (over the next 3 months) in order to build anticipation for these games at E3.
Your initial comment was "The fact that such simple games are so popular is a sad commentary on the intelligence of the general public" to which I pointed out that just because a game is simple doesn't mean that only the unintelligent would enjoy it.
Since it is obvious that you have never played Wii sports I can try to explain why it is so popular
When you play Wii Sports: Bowling you will notice that Nintendo has produced such a simple interface that everyone who is between the age of 4 and 125 can understand how to play; at the same time it is the best approximation of bowling that has ever been produced. Tennis, Boxing, Baseball and Golf are all have the same intuitive easy to use interface and yet capture the enjoyment of the sport for a lot of people.
You do realize that games like chess and checkers are also very simple games and require a lot of intelligence, aren't you? Sudoku is an amazingly simple puzzle which is not easy.
Whether you like to admit it or not, often the shiny graphics and convoluted storyline are there to give lazy (and potentially unintelligent) people a reason to complete brainless and repetitive tasks in a game.
I see the value in moving away from scripting everything to a more physics based system but at some point it becomes more involved to create something interesting using physics as compared to scripting ...
... Suddenly, rather than set acceleration = 1.0 and max speed = 145 you have to hire a dozen designers to get exactly the same effect ...
As an (extreme) example, consider a racing game where you were forced to design and build a real engine for your car
I understand we're decades away from an example like that, but physics is not the solution to every problem
Wii Sports was nominated for two awards and the one that seemed most appropriate for it to win is the one it won (game design) ...
As I see it, Wii Sports demonstrates that sometimes the best design is the simplest; Nintendo could have (easily) made each of the sports games a full simulation but the greatness of Wii sports is how unintimidating it is which (in my opinion) comes from its simplicity.
I think you are using a very narrow definition of art ...
...
... Games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Brain Training, Nintendogs, and Wario Ware have all changed how the industry sees games or how a genre is seen.
You're saying that for an author to produce art it has to be a novel or epic-poem, for a painter to produce art it has to be a grand mural, or for a composer to produce art he has to produce an opera.
A haiku can be art, graffiti can be art, and a pop-song can be art
Sometimes the most important way to define art is that it changes the medium after it has been produced
Whether some people would like to admit it or not, Wii Sports could be seen as art because it was produced by the artists frustration with complicated control mechanics and massive budgets; and the industry will never be the same for having experienced it.
Fable was overhyped (Molyneux said he was going to produce the "Best RPG Ever") but was actually a pretty good RPG on both the XBox and PC
The fact is that every one of these developers is producing anticipated RPGs (for the XBox 360 which is why this talk was produced by Microsoft) and their input is of value to many small developers who are working on RPG games