It's a pretty common tactic. Ignore the actual content, and just attack the messenger. Kos proudly wears the label of liberal. And so he can't ever be correct, and anyone who listens to him is obviously a partisian liberal as well. No need to consider what he said. Don't think about it, just reflexively discount it. If he knew anything about anything, he would be a conservative.
I would say that the DS redesign is more about Nintendo's confidence in the handheld's continued success, and less about the PSP. It's also another chance for Nintendo to make some easy money, cause you know a bunch of people who already have DS's are going to go out and buy a new one just to have it. I also would note that even if the PSP is seen as higher quality, it hasn't really translated into domination of the handheld market that a lot of people were predicting back during all the hype. Like you said, it really came down to games. And in that case, Nintendo seems to have a strong upper hand there. Maybe they've learned something.
Oh yeah, and just looking at the hardware, the PSP released at $250, while the DS was $150. A $100 difference is much less of a premium than $300-400 we'll probably see for the PS3.
As for Sony marketing the PS3 as some sort of high end super console gadget, I have my doubts how successful that will be. In my opinion, the console market hasn't really be itching for that niche, and if you really want to spend buckets of money on a gaming rig, you've probably already got yourself a nice PC. If that niche does exist, and I guess the hardcore gamer is that niche, well, they'll sell some for sure. But Nintendo's whole strategy seems to be that that market isn't growing, possibly shrinking, and not the best place to put your efforts.
But as you noted, games are the key for consumers. But I would think that for developers/publishers, installed base is pretty important. If Sony doesn't keep pace with Nintendo and MS in terms of console sales, the developers aren't going to stick around forever. I don't predict that the PS3 is a complete and utter flop, just that they're not going to have a rough go at it this time around. And I think the console price will be one of the biggest factors in that outcome.
95% of my "main" gaming consists of having something fun to play when there are people over. The way the world generally works, as you get older life dumps more and more responsibility on you, and free time quickly becomes your most precious commodity. I don't spend only three or four hours per week in front of the TV playing video games because I don't like them that much anymore. That's just all the time I can spare now-a-days.
That wasn't such a big deal 5-10 years ago, cause all those adults didn't know what they were missing. They didn't grow up with video games. But now a bunch of us childhood gamers are busy with the real world, but don't want to completely give up a hobby that has brought us so much enjoyment. Nintendo has noticed this, and noticed how big of a market we are (and how we've generally got a decent amount of disposable income), and is gearing their console towards our needs.
Furthermore, I'm not sure why you're so certain that we're going to get bored with this new controller. Is moving your arms around a little somehow innately less fun than just pushing a bunch of abstract buttons stuck on a piece of plastic? I think you're still sort of stuck in some sort of mindset relating back to those little control demos that Nintendo showed back when they first announced the remote controller. Just because your imagination hasn't allowed you to see any involved or engaging uses for the controller doesn't mean that game designers are having the same problem.
When the party atmosphere is gone, people will stop playing certain games. But instead of putting down the Wii remote and picking up a PS3 controller, maybe they'll just put a different disc into the Wii, and play something else.
But the more likely scenario is that if the regular action games do still work better with the normal controllers, then some worthwhile developers will create all new types of action games that do work with the wii remote. And if you still miss the old action games, there's no one stopping you from playing them on other systems.
I'm okay with that. I played with an Xbox360 at a store kiosk the other day, and the games looked nice and I had a good time, but I certainly wouldn't say I had even twice as much fun with it than I did at the old Xbox kiosk sitting next to it.
Nothing that I've seen from the PS3 demos looks like twice the fun I've had with my PS2. And how many times more powerful is this next gen hardware?
Where's the bang for the buck? Knowing how many shaded triangles the system can push isn't fun. Knowing how many polygons are on screen isn't particularly exciting. The returns on pushing the hardware to the limit just aren't as big anymore.
And so Nintendo is saving everyone a little bit of money by recognizing that, and instead putting their effort towards creating something that really will offer some return on the investment.
True enough, but I think the price discrepancy in this case, at least as far as the PS3 is involved, is well beyond what we're used to from major console competitors. If I'm going to spend $200 on a system, but there's another one that's maybe a little bit fancier for 50 bucks more, I might say what the heck, and spend a little extra. But if the price difference is between $200 and $500-600, there's not even a comparison. That's not even the same market.
If Sony was releasing the exact same system as the PS3, with the exact same specs, and the exact same price, the only difference being that the PS1 & 2 never existed, I think they'd have been laughed right out of E3. $600 for a mass market game console is ridiculous.
The PlayStation name is the only thing that will give the PS3 a chance at that price.
I know of a small sandwich shop down the street which is less about undercutting its competitors' prices, and more about providing a pleasant experience for their customers. Should Apple buy them as well?
There's a lot of parallels that you can draw between Apple and Nintendo, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense for them to merge. Why is it bad that Nintendo is an independent company? Why would Apple want to outlay a huge pile of money to buy them? How many years would it take for that purchase to pay itself off? Would it even work? Even if there was no interruption to either business, and they both continued to turn a profit, the purchase price would be very large, and it'd take many years for the profit to cover those initial costs. Apple is doing pretty well financially, but I still don't think they can afford to buy their way into a huge market like MS is doing.
Apple is already well respected in Japan. They don't need Nintendo's help. Nintendo doesn't need their help. I really don't see the logic in it at all. Sorry:(
Meh, it depends on the game, and the gamer. I'll just take GTA for example. I did not find the missions to be particuarly fun. Some of them were, but some of them(particularly the ones with time limits) were very boring to me. So I stopped doing them. But I still had many hours of enjoyment of the game, just through exploring the huge city they had created.
The cheat codes really made that aspect of the game more fun for me. I got to enjoy parts of the game that never would have become available to me otherwise, because I wasn't willing to grind the missions. But I made my own fun, and the cheat codes were just another tool for that.
And another less extreme example. Contra, back on the NES. The 30 man code took what was otherwise a very frustrating experience and made it much more managable and fun. Could I have practiced enough and become so skilled that I could get through that game with only three lives? Possibly, but that's not really how I wanted to spend my time. Instead I'd play the game, trying not to die, but also not worrying about it too much.
Cheat codes just add another option to the game, and often open up new possibilities. If you don't want to use them, there's noone forcing you to. And if you just can't help yourself, despite wanting to play it normally, then you've got some self control problems, and how they affect your gaming is probalby going to be the least of your worries.
SimCity taught me, to an extent, how cities function -- balancing residence and commerce, infrastructure, etc. The list goes on.
Ah yes. When I got older and eventually became involved in some real urban planning, you cannot imagine how disappointed I was when I learned that just laying railroad tracks randomly across roads was not actually a valid way to alleviate traffic.
My physical mailbox gets its full share of advertising, but it's rare that I get more than four or five pieces of mail at my house on any one particular day. Compare that to my main email address, where my spam box increases in size by a couple hundred emails overnight. The spam filters try their best, but stuff sometimes gets routed to the wrong box, and it's a pain in the ass to watch it all.
The basic truth is, one of email's greatest qualities is also one of its main weaknesses. I can send dozens of my friends messages at no real cost, and that's great. But on the flip side, dozens of asshole strangers can send me messages all day at no real cost to them. Sending physical mail requires postage fees that quickly add up, creating a substantial economic barrier for a lot of potential junk-mailers.
You're not going to be able to educate everybody, and even if you did, it probably wouldn't matter. All those products being spammed must appeal to a few people, and those people are going to click those links even if they know better. And the economics of spamming require only a very small response to be profitable.
I think a hardcore gamer is simply someone who dedicates the bulk of their time to gaming. It doesn't have anything to do with what games you play, or how many years you've been playing them. It's really just how much time you spend with them. I remember spending endless hours with an Atari machine and then my NES, but nowadays I'm lucky to get an hour per day to play games. I was a hardcare gamer when I was younger, but not anymore.
Simply put, It's not being a hardcore gamer that makes you like violence and boobs in your games. Being a teenage male makes you like those things. Being a teenager also means you're likely to have less responsibility, and therefore more free time. And it's much easier to be a hardcore gamer if you've got lots of free time.
It's not always like that. My mom has a job where she sits at a desk at home waiting for people to call most of the day. She probably spends 4-6 hours per day playing Snood. It's dedicated to just one game, but that still seems pretty hardcore to me.
But anyways, hardcore games aren't necessarily bad. One of the things that makes a game fun is recieving a sense of accomplishment from it. This can happen on many levels, but gaining new abilities or skills with the game is a good way for it to happen. The intense and long learning curve rewards many many hours of play, and so it appeals to people who have that time to spend. The downside to that is that it creates barriers for people who don't have those long hours.
Enter Nintendo, recognizing this fact, and targeting the rest of us. I'm not a hardcore gamer because I don't like games anymore, I just don't have the time to dedicate to it. I want to play games more, it's just hard to make happen, and it's been hard to find games that reward me for short and sporadic periods of play time. And there are a lot of people my age who are in the exact same boat. So with the DS and the Wii, Nintendo is trying to change this. And if the hardcore gamers want to come along for the ride, Nintendo will be happy to take their money as well.
I just don't expect that the hardcore guys will be that satisfied with what they get. Most Wii games probably won't provide the long hours of entertainmnent that we're used to seeing. They'll need to be judged from a different perspective. It'll be interesting to see if the gaming media understands that.
If someone does post on a website about a crime they commit, and a school administrator noticed it and considered it plausible, the proper course of action would be to notify the police, and let them decide what the repercussions would be.
If the cops charge him with a crime, or say he's potentially dangerous or whatever, then sure, the school can then consider removing him from the student population. But the school does not have the right to judge and sentence this kid based purely on some downloaded text. It's outside their authority, and probably outside their resources and experience to determine whether or not the kid is actually guilty or not.
This is actually a non-surprising extension of schools needing to cover their ass in regards to this sort of thing. Because so many parents can't be bothered to be parents, they're expecting the schools to do it for them, and suing them when they don't. But this is just the schools treating the symptoms (getting sued), instead of the disease (parents not caring). It's not a fair or good solution for the kids, and it's not sustainable.
I think if Nintendo is going to take a loss on anything with the Wii, it'd be the controllers. They're marketing the system very heavily as a multiplayer experience, and with the gamecube, that's been one area where they're well regarded by just about everyone who's given it a shot. And with this gaming for everyone kick they're on, it's in their best interest to put controllers in as many hands as is possible.
All that being said, I don't think the controllers will cost them as much to make as you think. Gyroscopes aren't exactly new technology, although I imagine they're much refined over some of the earlier attempts at video game motion detection. And the controllers apparently communicate through bluetooth, which is pretty standard(cheap)these days. Other than that, what is it? A few buttons and LED's wrapped in plastic? A tiny rumble motor? I anticipate the controllers costing closer to $30. In a dream coming true world, the console would ship with two controllers.
I'm not sure how great a game based on one's actual location would be due to the fact that the world is a big place, and dividing it up into manageable chunks would probably result in the game not being particularly tailored to your actual location as much as your general part of the world. And if you need to move to another part of the world in order to access other content, most of the content will probably never get seen by any particular individual person, because travelling is generally time consuming and expensive.
But along a related line, I've played with a GPS unit with some built in games, and one of them was basically a maze that you navigated through by actually walking around. So your specific location on the earth didn't matter, but your position relative to where you were when you started the game was what mattered. It was kind of fun for a few minutes. But really only because of the novelty of it. Although there was a very specific and unique relationship between what was displayed on the screen, and what you were experiencing in reality, there were also a lot of significant differences. (IE, the maze would happily lead you into a street full of traffic if you weren't paying attention).
But that's not to say that phones can't be a really unique platform.
He's not retarded as much as he's got an anti-nintendo agenda. But I can out-do him. I predict that the Wii will cost $200 (power cord not included). The power cord will be a proprietary design, and will cost $79.99. The Wii will come with one wireless controller, however, the console will have built in jamming hardware that interrupts the communication with the controller. You can turn off the jamming by purchasing a difficult to install firmware for $29.99. Of course, there will be other firmware upgrades to purchase, such as the two controller firmware(another $19.99, will only install if you've already installed the first firmware upgrade), and so on for more controllers.
Oh, and Nintendo is likely to take out the slot loading disc player, and replace it with a caddy system somewhat like the PSP. The caddy will have to be purchased seperately, and will be available in 6 fun colors, easily worth the $24.99 it will cost.
So once you get it all set up, and purchase a few games, you can expect to pay in the neighborhood of $483.72. Still cheaper and more fun than a PS3, but the graphics won't be as shiny, and the controller will vibrate non-stop, probably giving you horrible arthritis.
Excellent. Your post was very informative. I am not a particularly avid movie watcher, and so my knowledge of these sorts of things is admittedly limited. But still, I question how big that market is, and see some potential pitfalls. One big one being the fact that there's a competing format, meaning that there's no guarantee that Blu-ray will even exist in any meaningful capacity five years down the line. That could make many people reluctant to splurge the way they may have with DVD's, which while they weren't really mainstream when the PS2 came along, they were established.
Basically Sony is trying what they did with the PSP/UMD deal again. That didn't really pan out for them, especially not in terms of selling non-game media, and I see the deck being stacked even more against them this time. The PSP costs significantly more than its competitors, in fact the price difference is relatively close to the PS3 and its competition. But there's still a big difference between $250 and $600. Plus I think you can make a strong argument that the difference between the Xbox360 and the PS3 is not as significant as the difference between a DS and a PSP. Oh, and Blu-ray is also going to face the same strong opponent that defeated the UMD, the venerable DVD. It's still going plenty strong.
Exactly. I might feel a little stupid going to Gamestop and asking for a Wii, but I'd feel a whole lot stupider going to Gamestop and putting down $600 for a game system when I could buy both of the other two new consoles for the same price.
A silly name will get you some playful taunting and maybe cause a few insecure teenagers to change their mind. But money talks louder than even the goofiest of words, and $600 is a large chunk of change. Three hundred bucks, sure I can swing that. I just won't replace my digital camera as soon as I wanted to. Four hundred? Maybe, if the console is offering me some amazing games (Xbox 360 isn't quite there yet), I'll get that extra hundred bucks by eating out a little less for a couple months. $600? That's getting pretty close to a mortgage payment. You'd better have something really good up your sleeve if you expect me to put out that much money for a video game console.
What's that? Blu-ray? HDMI? How will those make the games better? Oh? They're mostly for movies? And I'll need to buy an HDTV to make it matter? That's what you've got to offer me? Ohhh, a motion sensing controller. Like on the Nintendo. Well, sort of like the Nintendo. But not as "useful". And not as "half the price of a PS3". No thanks.
The problem is, the number of consoles that you sell equates to more than just revenue. The installed base is very important to developers and publishers, and having a smaller number of potential buyers means less games being developed. And that becomes a self reinforcing cycle. It also works the other way, in that more console sales means more games, means more console sales, and more games, etc...
Sony was on the good side of that trend for the current round. They could continue to sell PS2's by the truckload for years, but that won't do much to help the PS3 if they only sell 5 million in the first year while MS and Nintendo each sell 3-4 times that. Add in the fact that if Nintendo sees big success (certainly possible), it'll have a bunch of games that cannot really be ported to the PS3, so they won't even have as many of the cross platform titles to boost their library.
It's a damn shame too, because the PS2 brought us a ton of excellent games(and a lot of dreck, but no worries).
So I guess the question is, does the market that Sony is targeting actually exist? And to what degree are they abandoning the market that they've already built up with the PS and PS2?
People talk about how ballsy Nintendo is being by betting their console on a new "vision" of Next-gen, while Sony and MS are continuing to fight over the hardcore gamer market. To hear Sony talk about the PS3 as of late, it looks like they're actually targeting a different market as well, and just banking on the hardcore gamer market to buy it anyways and give them some initial numbers until their percieved market comes into being.
I'm all for companies creating new markets, but it seems really risky for Sony to give up on one that they've already got a good hold on in pursuit of somethign that's by no means certain. If the PS3 was wooing us all with some really bitching games and a reasonble price tag it might work as a blu-ray trojan horse to help them conquer this media-convergence center that they're predicting, but that's not really how they're painting it anymore. The PS2 was a gaming machine that just happened to play DVDs. They're talking up the PS3 as a Blu-ray player that also happens to play games. That might seem like a subtle difference, but if they're really functioning under that mindset, the games part of the console could suffer, and the floor could potentially fall out from under them. They'll end up with another failed format, and a significantly smaller piece of the console pie. And when you consider that the gaming division of Sony has been one of their most consistent sources of profit, it seems to not make so much sense. While they think they've got a lot of potential gain if it all works out, they've also got a whole lot to lose if it doesn't. It just seems that they could've found a less risky way to do it. Apple didn't sacrifice the Macintosh in order to create the iPod. Hell, what did Sony sacrifice to get started with the Playstation? If this media center device idea is so great, and they know how to pull it off, it should be able to stand on its own, they shouldn't need to trick people by calling it a Playstation.
I'm not trying to criticize or otherwise poop on your comment, but I'm curious as to what all these extra features might be that are worth another $1000+.
What exactly do blu-ray movies propose to offer beyond higher quality video/sound and more DRM? A fancier remote control? I know that with current DVD players, you can get a range of video quality by spending more or less money, but there's got to be a level of diminshing returns on that, and I'd imagine that the majority of units shipped are lower end.
I think the high prices now are the early-adopter status more than some sort of super fancy feature set, unless these players are offering things that I haven't heard of yet.
Yeah, the fact that the Neo-geo cost more back in the day than the PS3 will is hardly a saving grace for Sony. Apple's G4 Cube wasn't the most expensive computer ever, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't over-priced, and the fact that it was basically a flop in the marketplace, despite winning all sorts of design awards is no fluke.
The most useful thing to compare the PS3 to in terms of price is its contemporaries, which are the Xbox360, and the Wii. When you look at the prices of those two systems, and see how much higher the PS3 is, Sony really needs to be clearer about what they're offering to justify that extra expense. They've been rambling a lot about Blu-ray and some sort of nebulous media center stuff that doesn't really mean that much to most people, because it's basically vaporware at this point. The crux of it is that although DVD support helped with the PS2, most people associate the playstation brand with video games, and most people who are interested in it are looking forwards to using it to play video games.
The point is, as many have said before, the games are really what do the talking. Sony's execs can spend as much time and money convincing themselves that a media center is what we're all interested in, but that doesn't make it so. There's certainly a chance that somewhere down the line it will all come together, and the PS3 media experience will be sort of like TiVo, once you've had it, you can't live without it. But there's a lot of potential problems involved there. Can it all come together in a useful way? Is Sony set up to make it work? Will other content developers go along with it? Will DRM make it fail? And possibly most important, even if all of that can work itself out, can it happen fast enough? I'm not sure Sony has the luxury of time in convincing us all that our lives need this. If the video games aspect of the PS3 can't float the system long enough to get a critical mass of units out there, then it'll all implode before it hits its stride.
Well, keep in mind that this is a sequel to a very successful and well regarded franchise. If they changed it too much, it would no longer be a Smash Bros. game, it'd be it's own beast, even if it contained the same characters and was named similarly.
Perhaps there is a lot of potential for a game with a similar premise, which uses the Wii controller in some crazy ways, but that's not where they decided to take this game. I'm all for innovation, but sometimes it's a good idea not to throw away what already works. I'm sure they can find plenty of ways to improve upon the Smash Bros. franchise while retaining the core controls.
It's worth mentioning again that the Wii controller's capabilities are at least one big step beyond what Sony has shown with the PS3 controller. The Wii controller does not only detect motion, it also knows where it is in 3D space relative to the screen. That lets you do things that the PS3 won't be able to. One of the most basic things that comes to mind is pointing. The Wii can tell exactly where you're pointing it at. The PS3 doesn't have that capability, not to mention that the controller isn't really a shape conducive to pointing. They might be able to try and fake it by having you calibrate the controller by pointing it directly at the center of the screen each time you play, starting a measured distance from the screen, etc. but that'd be flaky at best.
Just saying "motion sensing" is selling the Wii short. No matter how well Sony pulls off their own motion sensing, if that's all it is, its potential falls well below what Nintendo's offering us.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a pretty common tactic. Ignore the actual content, and just attack the messenger. Kos proudly wears the label of liberal. And so he can't ever be correct, and anyone who listens to him is obviously a partisian liberal as well. No need to consider what he said. Don't think about it, just reflexively discount it. If he knew anything about anything, he would be a conservative.
I would say that the DS redesign is more about Nintendo's confidence in the handheld's continued success, and less about the PSP. It's also another chance for Nintendo to make some easy money, cause you know a bunch of people who already have DS's are going to go out and buy a new one just to have it. I also would note that even if the PSP is seen as higher quality, it hasn't really translated into domination of the handheld market that a lot of people were predicting back during all the hype. Like you said, it really came down to games. And in that case, Nintendo seems to have a strong upper hand there. Maybe they've learned something.
Oh yeah, and just looking at the hardware, the PSP released at $250, while the DS was $150. A $100 difference is much less of a premium than $300-400 we'll probably see for the PS3.
As for Sony marketing the PS3 as some sort of high end super console gadget, I have my doubts how successful that will be. In my opinion, the console market hasn't really be itching for that niche, and if you really want to spend buckets of money on a gaming rig, you've probably already got yourself a nice PC. If that niche does exist, and I guess the hardcore gamer is that niche, well, they'll sell some for sure. But Nintendo's whole strategy seems to be that that market isn't growing, possibly shrinking, and not the best place to put your efforts.
But as you noted, games are the key for consumers. But I would think that for developers/publishers, installed base is pretty important. If Sony doesn't keep pace with Nintendo and MS in terms of console sales, the developers aren't going to stick around forever. I don't predict that the PS3 is a complete and utter flop, just that they're not going to have a rough go at it this time around. And I think the console price will be one of the biggest factors in that outcome.
95% of my "main" gaming consists of having something fun to play when there are people over. The way the world generally works, as you get older life dumps more and more responsibility on you, and free time quickly becomes your most precious commodity. I don't spend only three or four hours per week in front of the TV playing video games because I don't like them that much anymore. That's just all the time I can spare now-a-days.
That wasn't such a big deal 5-10 years ago, cause all those adults didn't know what they were missing. They didn't grow up with video games. But now a bunch of us childhood gamers are busy with the real world, but don't want to completely give up a hobby that has brought us so much enjoyment. Nintendo has noticed this, and noticed how big of a market we are (and how we've generally got a decent amount of disposable income), and is gearing their console towards our needs.
Furthermore, I'm not sure why you're so certain that we're going to get bored with this new controller. Is moving your arms around a little somehow innately less fun than just pushing a bunch of abstract buttons stuck on a piece of plastic? I think you're still sort of stuck in some sort of mindset relating back to those little control demos that Nintendo showed back when they first announced the remote controller. Just because your imagination hasn't allowed you to see any involved or engaging uses for the controller doesn't mean that game designers are having the same problem.
When the party atmosphere is gone, people will stop playing certain games. But instead of putting down the Wii remote and picking up a PS3 controller, maybe they'll just put a different disc into the Wii, and play something else.
But the more likely scenario is that if the regular action games do still work better with the normal controllers, then some worthwhile developers will create all new types of action games that do work with the wii remote. And if you still miss the old action games, there's no one stopping you from playing them on other systems.
I'm okay with that. I played with an Xbox360 at a store kiosk the other day, and the games looked nice and I had a good time, but I certainly wouldn't say I had even twice as much fun with it than I did at the old Xbox kiosk sitting next to it.
Nothing that I've seen from the PS3 demos looks like twice the fun I've had with my PS2. And how many times more powerful is this next gen hardware?
Where's the bang for the buck? Knowing how many shaded triangles the system can push isn't fun. Knowing how many polygons are on screen isn't particularly exciting. The returns on pushing the hardware to the limit just aren't as big anymore.
And so Nintendo is saving everyone a little bit of money by recognizing that, and instead putting their effort towards creating something that really will offer some return on the investment.
True enough, but I think the price discrepancy in this case, at least as far as the PS3 is involved, is well beyond what we're used to from major console competitors. If I'm going to spend $200 on a system, but there's another one that's maybe a little bit fancier for 50 bucks more, I might say what the heck, and spend a little extra. But if the price difference is between $200 and $500-600, there's not even a comparison. That's not even the same market.
If Sony was releasing the exact same system as the PS3, with the exact same specs, and the exact same price, the only difference being that the PS1 & 2 never existed, I think they'd have been laughed right out of E3. $600 for a mass market game console is ridiculous.
The PlayStation name is the only thing that will give the PS3 a chance at that price.
I know of a small sandwich shop down the street which is less about undercutting its competitors' prices, and more about providing a pleasant experience for their customers. Should Apple buy them as well?
:(
There's a lot of parallels that you can draw between Apple and Nintendo, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense for them to merge. Why is it bad that Nintendo is an independent company? Why would Apple want to outlay a huge pile of money to buy them? How many years would it take for that purchase to pay itself off? Would it even work? Even if there was no interruption to either business, and they both continued to turn a profit, the purchase price would be very large, and it'd take many years for the profit to cover those initial costs. Apple is doing pretty well financially, but I still don't think they can afford to buy their way into a huge market like MS is doing.
Apple is already well respected in Japan. They don't need Nintendo's help. Nintendo doesn't need their help. I really don't see the logic in it at all. Sorry
Meh, it depends on the game, and the gamer. I'll just take GTA for example. I did not find the missions to be particuarly fun. Some of them were, but some of them(particularly the ones with time limits) were very boring to me. So I stopped doing them. But I still had many hours of enjoyment of the game, just through exploring the huge city they had created.
The cheat codes really made that aspect of the game more fun for me. I got to enjoy parts of the game that never would have become available to me otherwise, because I wasn't willing to grind the missions. But I made my own fun, and the cheat codes were just another tool for that.
And another less extreme example. Contra, back on the NES. The 30 man code took what was otherwise a very frustrating experience and made it much more managable and fun. Could I have practiced enough and become so skilled that I could get through that game with only three lives? Possibly, but that's not really how I wanted to spend my time. Instead I'd play the game, trying not to die, but also not worrying about it too much.
Cheat codes just add another option to the game, and often open up new possibilities. If you don't want to use them, there's noone forcing you to. And if you just can't help yourself, despite wanting to play it normally, then you've got some self control problems, and how they affect your gaming is probalby going to be the least of your worries.
SimCity taught me, to an extent, how cities function -- balancing residence and commerce, infrastructure, etc. The list goes on.
Ah yes. When I got older and eventually became involved in some real urban planning, you cannot imagine how disappointed I was when I learned that just laying railroad tracks randomly across roads was not actually a valid way to alleviate traffic.
My physical mailbox gets its full share of advertising, but it's rare that I get more than four or five pieces of mail at my house on any one particular day. Compare that to my main email address, where my spam box increases in size by a couple hundred emails overnight. The spam filters try their best, but stuff sometimes gets routed to the wrong box, and it's a pain in the ass to watch it all.
The basic truth is, one of email's greatest qualities is also one of its main weaknesses. I can send dozens of my friends messages at no real cost, and that's great. But on the flip side, dozens of asshole strangers can send me messages all day at no real cost to them. Sending physical mail requires postage fees that quickly add up, creating a substantial economic barrier for a lot of potential junk-mailers.
You're not going to be able to educate everybody, and even if you did, it probably wouldn't matter. All those products being spammed must appeal to a few people, and those people are going to click those links even if they know better. And the economics of spamming require only a very small response to be profitable.
I think a hardcore gamer is simply someone who dedicates the bulk of their time to gaming. It doesn't have anything to do with what games you play, or how many years you've been playing them. It's really just how much time you spend with them. I remember spending endless hours with an Atari machine and then my NES, but nowadays I'm lucky to get an hour per day to play games. I was a hardcare gamer when I was younger, but not anymore.
Simply put, It's not being a hardcore gamer that makes you like violence and boobs in your games. Being a teenage male makes you like those things. Being a teenager also means you're likely to have less responsibility, and therefore more free time. And it's much easier to be a hardcore gamer if you've got lots of free time.
It's not always like that. My mom has a job where she sits at a desk at home waiting for people to call most of the day. She probably spends 4-6 hours per day playing Snood. It's dedicated to just one game, but that still seems pretty hardcore to me.
But anyways, hardcore games aren't necessarily bad. One of the things that makes a game fun is recieving a sense of accomplishment from it. This can happen on many levels, but gaining new abilities or skills with the game is a good way for it to happen. The intense and long learning curve rewards many many hours of play, and so it appeals to people who have that time to spend. The downside to that is that it creates barriers for people who don't have those long hours.
Enter Nintendo, recognizing this fact, and targeting the rest of us. I'm not a hardcore gamer because I don't like games anymore, I just don't have the time to dedicate to it. I want to play games more, it's just hard to make happen, and it's been hard to find games that reward me for short and sporadic periods of play time. And there are a lot of people my age who are in the exact same boat. So with the DS and the Wii, Nintendo is trying to change this. And if the hardcore gamers want to come along for the ride, Nintendo will be happy to take their money as well.
I just don't expect that the hardcore guys will be that satisfied with what they get. Most Wii games probably won't provide the long hours of entertainmnent that we're used to seeing. They'll need to be judged from a different perspective. It'll be interesting to see if the gaming media understands that.
If someone does post on a website about a crime they commit, and a school administrator noticed it and considered it plausible, the proper course of action would be to notify the police, and let them decide what the repercussions would be.
If the cops charge him with a crime, or say he's potentially dangerous or whatever, then sure, the school can then consider removing him from the student population. But the school does not have the right to judge and sentence this kid based purely on some downloaded text. It's outside their authority, and probably outside their resources and experience to determine whether or not the kid is actually guilty or not.
This is actually a non-surprising extension of schools needing to cover their ass in regards to this sort of thing. Because so many parents can't be bothered to be parents, they're expecting the schools to do it for them, and suing them when they don't. But this is just the schools treating the symptoms (getting sued), instead of the disease (parents not caring). It's not a fair or good solution for the kids, and it's not sustainable.
I think if Nintendo is going to take a loss on anything with the Wii, it'd be the controllers. They're marketing the system very heavily as a multiplayer experience, and with the gamecube, that's been one area where they're well regarded by just about everyone who's given it a shot. And with this gaming for everyone kick they're on, it's in their best interest to put controllers in as many hands as is possible.
All that being said, I don't think the controllers will cost them as much to make as you think. Gyroscopes aren't exactly new technology, although I imagine they're much refined over some of the earlier attempts at video game motion detection. And the controllers apparently communicate through bluetooth, which is pretty standard(cheap)these days. Other than that, what is it? A few buttons and LED's wrapped in plastic? A tiny rumble motor? I anticipate the controllers costing closer to $30. In a dream coming true world, the console would ship with two controllers.
I'm not sure how great a game based on one's actual location would be due to the fact that the world is a big place, and dividing it up into manageable chunks would probably result in the game not being particularly tailored to your actual location as much as your general part of the world. And if you need to move to another part of the world in order to access other content, most of the content will probably never get seen by any particular individual person, because travelling is generally time consuming and expensive.
But along a related line, I've played with a GPS unit with some built in games, and one of them was basically a maze that you navigated through by actually walking around. So your specific location on the earth didn't matter, but your position relative to where you were when you started the game was what mattered. It was kind of fun for a few minutes. But really only because of the novelty of it. Although there was a very specific and unique relationship between what was displayed on the screen, and what you were experiencing in reality, there were also a lot of significant differences. (IE, the maze would happily lead you into a street full of traffic if you weren't paying attention).
But that's not to say that phones can't be a really unique platform.
He's not retarded as much as he's got an anti-nintendo agenda. But I can out-do him. I predict that the Wii will cost $200 (power cord not included). The power cord will be a proprietary design, and will cost $79.99. The Wii will come with one wireless controller, however, the console will have built in jamming hardware that interrupts the communication with the controller. You can turn off the jamming by purchasing a difficult to install firmware for $29.99. Of course, there will be other firmware upgrades to purchase, such as the two controller firmware(another $19.99, will only install if you've already installed the first firmware upgrade), and so on for more controllers.
Oh, and Nintendo is likely to take out the slot loading disc player, and replace it with a caddy system somewhat like the PSP. The caddy will have to be purchased seperately, and will be available in 6 fun colors, easily worth the $24.99 it will cost.
So once you get it all set up, and purchase a few games, you can expect to pay in the neighborhood of $483.72. Still cheaper and more fun than a PS3, but the graphics won't be as shiny, and the controller will vibrate non-stop, probably giving you horrible arthritis.
Excellent. Your post was very informative. I am not a particularly avid movie watcher, and so my knowledge of these sorts of things is admittedly limited. But still, I question how big that market is, and see some potential pitfalls. One big one being the fact that there's a competing format, meaning that there's no guarantee that Blu-ray will even exist in any meaningful capacity five years down the line. That could make many people reluctant to splurge the way they may have with DVD's, which while they weren't really mainstream when the PS2 came along, they were established.
Basically Sony is trying what they did with the PSP/UMD deal again. That didn't really pan out for them, especially not in terms of selling non-game media, and I see the deck being stacked even more against them this time. The PSP costs significantly more than its competitors, in fact the price difference is relatively close to the PS3 and its competition. But there's still a big difference between $250 and $600. Plus I think you can make a strong argument that the difference between the Xbox360 and the PS3 is not as significant as the difference between a DS and a PSP. Oh, and Blu-ray is also going to face the same strong opponent that defeated the UMD, the venerable DVD. It's still going plenty strong.
Exactly. I might feel a little stupid going to Gamestop and asking for a Wii, but I'd feel a whole lot stupider going to Gamestop and putting down $600 for a game system when I could buy both of the other two new consoles for the same price.
A silly name will get you some playful taunting and maybe cause a few insecure teenagers to change their mind. But money talks louder than even the goofiest of words, and $600 is a large chunk of change. Three hundred bucks, sure I can swing that. I just won't replace my digital camera as soon as I wanted to. Four hundred? Maybe, if the console is offering me some amazing games (Xbox 360 isn't quite there yet), I'll get that extra hundred bucks by eating out a little less for a couple months. $600? That's getting pretty close to a mortgage payment. You'd better have something really good up your sleeve if you expect me to put out that much money for a video game console.
What's that? Blu-ray? HDMI? How will those make the games better? Oh? They're mostly for movies? And I'll need to buy an HDTV to make it matter? That's what you've got to offer me? Ohhh, a motion sensing controller. Like on the Nintendo. Well, sort of like the Nintendo. But not as "useful". And not as "half the price of a PS3". No thanks.
The problem is, the number of consoles that you sell equates to more than just revenue. The installed base is very important to developers and publishers, and having a smaller number of potential buyers means less games being developed. And that becomes a self reinforcing cycle. It also works the other way, in that more console sales means more games, means more console sales, and more games, etc...
Sony was on the good side of that trend for the current round. They could continue to sell PS2's by the truckload for years, but that won't do much to help the PS3 if they only sell 5 million in the first year while MS and Nintendo each sell 3-4 times that. Add in the fact that if Nintendo sees big success (certainly possible), it'll have a bunch of games that cannot really be ported to the PS3, so they won't even have as many of the cross platform titles to boost their library.
I don't think time is on Sony's side here.
It's a damn shame too, because the PS2 brought us a ton of excellent games(and a lot of dreck, but no worries).
So I guess the question is, does the market that Sony is targeting actually exist? And to what degree are they abandoning the market that they've already built up with the PS and PS2?
People talk about how ballsy Nintendo is being by betting their console on a new "vision" of Next-gen, while Sony and MS are continuing to fight over the hardcore gamer market. To hear Sony talk about the PS3 as of late, it looks like they're actually targeting a different market as well, and just banking on the hardcore gamer market to buy it anyways and give them some initial numbers until their percieved market comes into being.
I'm all for companies creating new markets, but it seems really risky for Sony to give up on one that they've already got a good hold on in pursuit of somethign that's by no means certain. If the PS3 was wooing us all with some really bitching games and a reasonble price tag it might work as a blu-ray trojan horse to help them conquer this media-convergence center that they're predicting, but that's not really how they're painting it anymore. The PS2 was a gaming machine that just happened to play DVDs. They're talking up the PS3 as a Blu-ray player that also happens to play games. That might seem like a subtle difference, but if they're really functioning under that mindset, the games part of the console could suffer, and the floor could potentially fall out from under them. They'll end up with another failed format, and a significantly smaller piece of the console pie. And when you consider that the gaming division of Sony has been one of their most consistent sources of profit, it seems to not make so much sense. While they think they've got a lot of potential gain if it all works out, they've also got a whole lot to lose if it doesn't. It just seems that they could've found a less risky way to do it. Apple didn't sacrifice the Macintosh in order to create the iPod. Hell, what did Sony sacrifice to get started with the Playstation? If this media center device idea is so great, and they know how to pull it off, it should be able to stand on its own, they shouldn't need to trick people by calling it a Playstation.
I'm not trying to criticize or otherwise poop on your comment, but I'm curious as to what all these extra features might be that are worth another $1000+.
What exactly do blu-ray movies propose to offer beyond higher quality video/sound and more DRM? A fancier remote control? I know that with current DVD players, you can get a range of video quality by spending more or less money, but there's got to be a level of diminshing returns on that, and I'd imagine that the majority of units shipped are lower end.
I think the high prices now are the early-adopter status more than some sort of super fancy feature set, unless these players are offering things that I haven't heard of yet.
Yeah, the fact that the Neo-geo cost more back in the day than the PS3 will is hardly a saving grace for Sony. Apple's G4 Cube wasn't the most expensive computer ever, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't over-priced, and the fact that it was basically a flop in the marketplace, despite winning all sorts of design awards is no fluke.
The most useful thing to compare the PS3 to in terms of price is its contemporaries, which are the Xbox360, and the Wii. When you look at the prices of those two systems, and see how much higher the PS3 is, Sony really needs to be clearer about what they're offering to justify that extra expense. They've been rambling a lot about Blu-ray and some sort of nebulous media center stuff that doesn't really mean that much to most people, because it's basically vaporware at this point. The crux of it is that although DVD support helped with the PS2, most people associate the playstation brand with video games, and most people who are interested in it are looking forwards to using it to play video games.
The point is, as many have said before, the games are really what do the talking. Sony's execs can spend as much time and money convincing themselves that a media center is what we're all interested in, but that doesn't make it so. There's certainly a chance that somewhere down the line it will all come together, and the PS3 media experience will be sort of like TiVo, once you've had it, you can't live without it. But there's a lot of potential problems involved there. Can it all come together in a useful way? Is Sony set up to make it work? Will other content developers go along with it? Will DRM make it fail? And possibly most important, even if all of that can work itself out, can it happen fast enough? I'm not sure Sony has the luxury of time in convincing us all that our lives need this. If the video games aspect of the PS3 can't float the system long enough to get a critical mass of units out there, then it'll all implode before it hits its stride.
It's actually nothing like the Titanic, because decades from now, millions of people won't go see a movie about its disaster.
Well, keep in mind that this is a sequel to a very successful and well regarded franchise. If they changed it too much, it would no longer be a Smash Bros. game, it'd be it's own beast, even if it contained the same characters and was named similarly.
Perhaps there is a lot of potential for a game with a similar premise, which uses the Wii controller in some crazy ways, but that's not where they decided to take this game. I'm all for innovation, but sometimes it's a good idea not to throw away what already works. I'm sure they can find plenty of ways to improve upon the Smash Bros. franchise while retaining the core controls.
You're missing out dude. If you can relax enough to get past your "fear" of cartoons, you'll discover a lot of great gaming.
It's worth mentioning again that the Wii controller's capabilities are at least one big step beyond what Sony has shown with the PS3 controller. The Wii controller does not only detect motion, it also knows where it is in 3D space relative to the screen. That lets you do things that the PS3 won't be able to. One of the most basic things that comes to mind is pointing. The Wii can tell exactly where you're pointing it at. The PS3 doesn't have that capability, not to mention that the controller isn't really a shape conducive to pointing. They might be able to try and fake it by having you calibrate the controller by pointing it directly at the center of the screen each time you play, starting a measured distance from the screen, etc. but that'd be flaky at best.
Just saying "motion sensing" is selling the Wii short. No matter how well Sony pulls off their own motion sensing, if that's all it is, its potential falls well below what Nintendo's offering us.