I created my Gold account in September when I bought my 360 and, yes, I got the first month free (the first charge to my credit card occurred precisely a month later). As far as I could tell, it was automatic because I was signing up with a brand new 360.
Re: Think again, fanboi. Real men play PC games.
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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· Score: 4, Funny
Think again LARPig! Real mean take LSD and just sit on the couch hallucinating that they're running around with armor and weapons!
They've yet to sell more than 500,000 on any month besides their launch (and possibly) this month that just passed. They should be selling AT LEAST 500,000 consoles and are simply not. If they don't pick up the pace, they might be the first to 10 million but they'll lag after that.
Why? Because the PS2 sold more and sooner? Keep in mind that a) the PS2 was $100 cheaper than what people consider the "true" 360 model (even averaging the two versions, the PS2 was $50 cheaper) and b) the PS2 had a rabid following in Japan (and a nearly 8-month head start there).
No, I don't think total sales are concern #1 here. Concern #1 is how far ahead of the PS3 the 360 can get and stay. Microsoft can probably do a $50-100 price drop next spring (and probably will, for the sake of tradition if nothing else) while Sony is already getting killed in terms of PS3 profitability. A $50 price cut would even put the 360 on equal price footing with the Wii. If they add the 20GB hard drive to the "core" and a bigger hard drive to the "premium" (this is the direction I believe MS will go in an effort to more fully match up with PS3 specs and take away a Sony bragging point), the price difference between the HD consoles will look even bigger.
In other words, I think it's possible for MS to push demand up in the next year with both a price drop and the release of even more big titles (Halo 3 looms large still, even if I don't care that much myself).
The reason you don't notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p in an Xbox 360 game is because all you're changing isthe point in the signal path where the conversion is taking place from 1080i to 1080p. Your 1080p display takes every 1080i source and converts it to 1080p, so if you set your Xbox to output 1080i you're still seeing 1080p. Frankly, the difference will end up being marginal at best even with "native" 1080p games on both the 360 and the PS3 because the likelihood is that 1080p games will be output at 1080p/30 (frames per second) which is equivalent in the amount of data transmitted to 1080i/60 (fields per second, which translates to 30 "full" frames per second).
Now, that doesn't meant that there isn't an advantage to having the 1080p display because at the very least you're getting the full display of all the 1080i resolution instead of downconverting to 720p (or, more properly, "768p") for display on a 1366x768 LCD (the most common LCD HDTV resolution). Also, once the players mature, the 1080p movies encoded on HD-DVD and Blu-ray could be transferred at their original film frame rate (24 fps) without having to go through the extra 3:2 conversion that has to happen to get to the standard TV refresh rates (30/60).
The proper way to test whether you're enjoying better detail with your 1080p display would be to hook your 360 up to both the 1080p display and a 768p display (ideally, displays of the same size), set the output to 1080i and look at some games that way. Some games will show little difference due to being rendered internally at a lower resolution, but you're still probably eliminating scaling artifacts by going 1080i->1080p instead of 1080i-720p.
1080p is nice but hardly necessary; that rez is basically science fiction (content wise) for the next 4 years
One might think that you don't know what you're talking about from that statement. Let me debunk this a bit:
1. 1080i even at 60 fields/30 frames per second, IS a higher resolution than 720p at 60 frames per second. One can make arguments about the visual quality depending on content (e.g., the "sports is better in 720p" contention), but the data transferred via 1080i is still greater than that transferred via 720p.
2. Thanks to #1, that means that a 1080p monitor displays all 1920x1080 pixels of the interlaced 1080 signal, simply putting the two fields together and displaying them as a single frame.
3. Most HDTV signals via OTA broadcast, satellite and cable are 1080i.
4. Add 1, 2 and 3 together, and you've got the result that a 1080p monitor has a significant display advantage for most HDTV sources today, over that of "720p" displays (which are most commonly 1366x768p displays). It's relatively simple to deinterlace a 1080i signal compared to scaling said signal to 720p.
5. All HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies released so far are stored in 1080p on the discs. Except for the first Toshiba and RCA HD-DVD players, the other high-def optical players (the Samsung and PS3 Blu-ray players and the Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on) can output 1080p. 6. Even if a game console today isn't sending out 1080p signals (both the Xbox 360 and PS3 can, though only select games truly support such resolutions), it's virtually guaranteed that the next generation in 5 years will do so easily. Of course, as noted above, even 1080i output benefits from a 1080p display.
7. Satellite and cable TV providers can, in theory, add true 1080p content to their systems since they aren't under the same broadcast bandwidth restrictions as terrestrial OTA providers.
8. Putting 5, 6 and 7 together means that 1080p content is not only the future, but that it's also here right now. While it's undoubtedly still in large part an early-adopter situation, you can still walk into a Best Buy and walk out with hardware and software that will provide you 1080p content.
Considering all of the above, how is 1080p "science fiction?" The answer, of course, is that it's not. That's not to say that people shouldn't buy a 720p HDTV. Right now, they're probably the sweet spot in terms of price and picture quality (the "cheap" 1080p units tend to slack a bit when it comes to the quality of their internals, particularly in terms of their contrast ratio and general usability) when it comes to digital TVs. But, this situation is probably very temporary and 1080p TVs will be competitive in terms of price and visual quality within the next two years. I expect the market to stabilize on that resolution for the foreseeable future since the likelihood of going beyond 1080i/p in terms of general TV standards is slim at best (the FCC is having a hard enough time trying to shove the current HDTV standards down the market's collective throat).
The movie industry won't want to release their movies in two different formats (three including DVD).
People say that all the time, but I'm not sure it's true. Releasing on Blu-ray, HD-DVD and DVD would be far cheaper than it used to be to release on both DVD and VHS, yet the latter occurred for years after DVD happened. The only extra effort for the HD formats, as far as I can tell, would be creating separate menu systems since both HD-DVD and Blu-ray support the same audio/video CODECs. Some companies are already doing movies on all three - for example, Superman Returns from Warner is slated for release on HD-DVD (a combo DVD/HD-DVD disc - nice) and Blu-ray this Tuesday. Interestingly, Warner was also the company from which I bought 90% of my DVDs for the first couple early-adopter years because they jumped into the new format with both feet in terms of both catalog titles and new releases.
If you can't just stroll into a store on a completely random day, pull a PS3 off the shelf, pay for it and walk out, then it is properly described as "unavailable" or "sold out" for most people. I suppose you could say "in short supply" but that distinction is a bit fine.
That doesn't mean DLC isn't worthwhile, but I think Rare understands that certain games don't really require or get enhanced by it.
Well, Viva Pinata is a game that could, unquestionably, be enhanced by downloadable content. That doesn't seem to be the question. Rather, the question seems to be whether devoting resources to the development downloadable content will be as profitable as moving those resources to the development of full retail games.
For example, one of the additions under consideration is a true cooperative online multiplayer mode for VP - right now, all you can do is send and receive items. If they think that the time spent creating the additional game mode will generate similar (or, of course, greater) profit to that same time spent working on a new game (perhaps Viva Pinata 2: Paper Revenge?), then they'll go for the DLC.
I find the whole thing quite reasonable. After all, Viva Pinata was not shipped incomplete as an episodic game might be - the game is perfectly good as it is. I'm enjoying the game right now (30 hours spent so far, and if I continue playing in an effort to secure all the pinata and all the achievements I could easily double that), so even if Rare never provides another download I'll feel good about my purchase and I'd probably go for a sequel.
I'll note finally that if they continue providing more DLC like their first two downloads, I'll not buy any more. The additional content so far has been perfunctory, weak at best, even for a buck (I think on the XBL points conversion table they were $1.10 or thereabouts) a piece. Fortunately I got $10 off the price of the game so I don't feel ripped off...yet.
The "make money on Blu-ray" theory also fails in that Sony makes less money per BD movie than it does per PS3 game. As a special added bonus, Sony doesn't get to take home the entire per-disc licensing. Instead, they get to share those fees with the other 8 "Blu-ray Disc Founder Companies" such as Matsushita (Panasonic), Sharp, Samsung and Pioneer.
That's a good point, to a point. While it's true that the PS3 and Wii could end up segmenting the market, the question remains whether the PS3 market is big enough considering its high price (launch adopters hardly count in the long run, especially with the small number of PS3s that will be available between now and spring). In other words, while developers and customers may not be as interested in multiplatforming between the PS3 and Wii with their radically different capabilities, if the Wii has a much larger market share than the PS3 then Japanese developers - especially those doing games intended solely for the Japanese market - could simply devote more (or all) of their resources to developing for the Wii. This applies less outside of Japan since the 360 already has a pretty solid base (especially considering the fully functional unit is still $100 more expensive than consoles of previous generations) and will likely attract some developer support regardless. That said, even outside Japan, if the Wii becomes a runaway success then the 360 could suffer for it as well.
To be fair, it's not a really question of "will" MGS and Final Fantasy sell - they'll sell huge, in that if there were 2 million PS3s owned by gamers, each of those games could still sell a million units. It's more a question of how huge the sales will be. Think of it this way: If Take 2/Rockstar had skipped the Xbox entirely in terms of GTA games, they still would have sold millions of units and made a ton of money. By releasing on the Xbox, they probably got at least a million more sales (virtually every used Xbox I see on Craig's List comes with at least a copy of San Andreas) for the relatively small cost of porting the game.
The problem for Sony is that there seems to be a perception that they need their exclusives due to the Microsoft head start and the high price of their hardware. Because they didn't lock up franchises like GTA or the "hot" new property, Assassin's Creed (for example), Microsoft can make what is probably a cheaper deal to make them multiplatform and gamers won't have those extra incentives to buy the PS3 (don't get me wrong, there are other incentives - I'm only a "hater" in terms of price).
The bottom line is that PS2 ended up with many (many, many) exclusives over time thanks to their ridiculous market share advantage. For at least the next year, if not a couple years, they're not going to have that advantage (certainly not in the US, probably not in Europe, maybe not in Japan depending on the Wii's penetration), so PS3 exclusives will have to come either from the preference of a particular developer (MGS's boss seems to be enamored of Sony, for example) or specific deals (like cheaper licensing fees) between the developer and Sony. Otherwise, it makes more sense to at least go multiplatform based purely on the hardware numbers.
As a gamer, I hate exclusives because they unnecessarily (given the relatively low cost to port games as opposed to starting from scratch) limit my options. They are necessary, though, for companies trying to differentiate themselves from the competition and sell more hardware.
...the people I know who do all bought this game they have all finished it (multiple times). [emphasis mine]
...the game seems kind of short, with little replay value. [emphasis mine]
A game can't have "little replay value" if you play it "multiple times." Frankly, I can't think of a higher recommendation for a game.
I do have an Xbox 360 but don't have Gears of War (Viva Pinata came out about the same time - that and Marvel Ultimate Alliance have been occupying my time). In any case, I've read no review that would discourage me from buying the game. While every one of them includes some "nitpicks," every single one has indicated that the game is very fun. If a game is very fun, then the "replay value," to my mind at least, is self-evident.
It's Jade Empire and I would agree that it doesn't get enough props. It's fun, well-produced, "linear-plus" RPG action. And, unlike the two KOTOR games I can't remember any showstopping bugs.
KOTOR2 was good until you reached the endgame but then just fell apart. Had they given the game another 2 months of work, it might have ended up legendary, but everyone was anxious to cash in on the sequel (and they surely did).
If you're going to correct folks, please use the correct terms. Composite and S-video (at least in the US) can only do NTSC, and while there are only 480 visible lines, there are 525 actual lines. The term "480i" is best reserved to describe an interlaced digital signal with 480 interlaced lines - for example, NTSC sources transmitted via cable or satellite digitally and then converted to NTSC in a receiver for output via RF, composite, S-video or component (though they can also sometimes convert the signal to 480p for output through component or better connections to a digital TV).
The truth is that it can only be judged on a per-game basis since frame rates will vary, level of real graphical detail will vary, etc. But, to get an idea how much display information will be lost in downconversion to 480p, here are some numbers:
I would only nitpick a bit on 8-bit Metal Gear. I didn't even own an NES (well, I had one for a month after Dragon Warrior came out because I just had to play that game) and I played Metal Gear - it was indeed a big deal in the US. Maybe not Mario big (what was?) but it was still a big seller. I can still remember it as one of the video games featured on the backs of all my Marvel comics for a month.:)
Even if you spend $3000 on a PC and you will never get the kind of graphics that the PS3 is capable of running at a 1080 resolution.
I think you need to scale back your hyperbole a bit. If one goes with the new Nvidia 8800 (particularly in SLI) on your hypothetical "$3000" PC, doing PS3 level graphics at 1920x1080 will hardly be a problem. Take a look at what this card can do in Oblivion if you need more information.
Note that I'm not a PC gamer these days at all since my [already old] PC broke down and I've been too cheap and lazy to replace it. In fact, I much prefer console gaming, and would agree that generally consoles provide a better gaming value than the PC. But, if one is willing to spend "the big bucks" (I consider "big bucks" to be $2,000 and up) on their gaming PC, they can definitely get to the level of PS3 launch-game graphics and beyond.
Huh? Is this concept of used games with large margins being somehow a ripoff of both the seller and the purchaser still out there?
You can't base the "fairness," "kindness" or "value" of this free game based on the wholesale price of the game. After all, Gamestop is a retail outlet. If I get a free game from Gamestop that would otherwise cost me $20 to buy, then the value to the customer is obvious, regardless of how much they paid the schlub who traded/sold it to the store.
Let's say Microsoft sent me a brand new copy of Gears of War to make up for the fact that I went two weeks without my 360 because it broke down (hey, MS, that sure would be nice by the way;-]). Should I somehow be disappointed by this because that copy of the game probably only cost at most a few dollars (including Epic's cut) to Microsoft? Or should I consider it a $60 value because that's how much I'm saving if I get the game for free? (For the answer to this question, see below.)
Good rule of thumb for 40in HDTV, 720p is fine, but over 40in then 1080p is worth considering but wait for the January/March price drop.
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say, and obviously I don't know how European LCD pricing is going, but I would say that at least one 1080p model - the Westinghouse 37" - is worth considering right now. I've seen the price on that one as low as US$1,200 which is competitive with the big-brand 720p (well, 768p) sets.
Only the ONE price (that of the SNES) was out of line with US pricing. The other two he mentioned - an Xbox at $190 in 2003 (I believe the actual retail at that time was $200 in the US) and a DS at $120 (the DS Lite is priced new at $150 Canadian at amazon.ca) - are both in line with US prices. It's also worth noting that the exchange rate between USD and CAD in 1991 (the year the SNES was released in North America) hovered around 1.00:1.15, meaning that $400 would have been way out of line with reality for an SNES in Canada.
It depends on the game. In the [H]ardOCP review, this appears to be the first card that can do Oblivion with maxed in-game settings (the grass has been the problem area in the past, even with top-of-the-line cards) at very high resolutions and high AA settings while retaining solid framerates - the settings they considered ideal in their testing were 8x AA at 1600x1200 and 4x AA at 1920x1200. That would be impressive for a SLI setup, let alone a single card.
How worthwhile that is depends, of course, on just how killer a person wants their gaming rig to be (I can't imagine ever buying a $600 graphics card myself). But, given that the performance seems to exceed that of any other graphics card (or any two, for that matter), it's pretty clearly the card to get to ensure maximum gaming PC penis size.:)
Great point! Obviously, the GTA franchise has been struggling to get sales traction and publicity. A Slashdot article might just save the company and finally get a couple interested in these sleeper titles.
Slashdot Mirror
I created my Gold account in September when I bought my 360 and, yes, I got the first month free (the first charge to my credit card occurred precisely a month later). As far as I could tell, it was automatic because I was signing up with a brand new 360.
Think again LARPig! Real mean take LSD and just sit on the couch hallucinating that they're running around with armor and weapons!
Why? Because the PS2 sold more and sooner? Keep in mind that a) the PS2 was $100 cheaper than what people consider the "true" 360 model (even averaging the two versions, the PS2 was $50 cheaper) and b) the PS2 had a rabid following in Japan (and a nearly 8-month head start there).
No, I don't think total sales are concern #1 here. Concern #1 is how far ahead of the PS3 the 360 can get and stay. Microsoft can probably do a $50-100 price drop next spring (and probably will, for the sake of tradition if nothing else) while Sony is already getting killed in terms of PS3 profitability. A $50 price cut would even put the 360 on equal price footing with the Wii. If they add the 20GB hard drive to the "core" and a bigger hard drive to the "premium" (this is the direction I believe MS will go in an effort to more fully match up with PS3 specs and take away a Sony bragging point), the price difference between the HD consoles will look even bigger.
In other words, I think it's possible for MS to push demand up in the next year with both a price drop and the release of even more big titles (Halo 3 looms large still, even if I don't care that much myself).
The reason you don't notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p in an Xbox 360 game is because all you're changing isthe point in the signal path where the conversion is taking place from 1080i to 1080p. Your 1080p display takes every 1080i source and converts it to 1080p, so if you set your Xbox to output 1080i you're still seeing 1080p. Frankly, the difference will end up being marginal at best even with "native" 1080p games on both the 360 and the PS3 because the likelihood is that 1080p games will be output at 1080p/30 (frames per second) which is equivalent in the amount of data transmitted to 1080i/60 (fields per second, which translates to 30 "full" frames per second).
Now, that doesn't meant that there isn't an advantage to having the 1080p display because at the very least you're getting the full display of all the 1080i resolution instead of downconverting to 720p (or, more properly, "768p") for display on a 1366x768 LCD (the most common LCD HDTV resolution). Also, once the players mature, the 1080p movies encoded on HD-DVD and Blu-ray could be transferred at their original film frame rate (24 fps) without having to go through the extra 3:2 conversion that has to happen to get to the standard TV refresh rates (30/60).
The proper way to test whether you're enjoying better detail with your 1080p display would be to hook your 360 up to both the 1080p display and a 768p display (ideally, displays of the same size), set the output to 1080i and look at some games that way. Some games will show little difference due to being rendered internally at a lower resolution, but you're still probably eliminating scaling artifacts by going 1080i->1080p instead of 1080i-720p.
One might think that you don't know what you're talking about from that statement. Let me debunk this a bit:
1. 1080i even at 60 fields/30 frames per second, IS a higher resolution than 720p at 60 frames per second. One can make arguments about the visual quality depending on content (e.g., the "sports is better in 720p" contention), but the data transferred via 1080i is still greater than that transferred via 720p.
2. Thanks to #1, that means that a 1080p monitor displays all 1920x1080 pixels of the interlaced 1080 signal, simply putting the two fields together and displaying them as a single frame.
3. Most HDTV signals via OTA broadcast, satellite and cable are 1080i.
4. Add 1, 2 and 3 together, and you've got the result that a 1080p monitor has a significant display advantage for most HDTV sources today, over that of "720p" displays (which are most commonly 1366x768p displays). It's relatively simple to deinterlace a 1080i signal compared to scaling said signal to 720p.
5. All HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies released so far are stored in 1080p on the discs. Except for the first Toshiba and RCA HD-DVD players, the other high-def optical players (the Samsung and PS3 Blu-ray players and the Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on) can output 1080p.
6. Even if a game console today isn't sending out 1080p signals (both the Xbox 360 and PS3 can, though only select games truly support such resolutions), it's virtually guaranteed that the next generation in 5 years will do so easily. Of course, as noted above, even 1080i output benefits from a 1080p display.
7. Satellite and cable TV providers can, in theory, add true 1080p content to their systems since they aren't under the same broadcast bandwidth restrictions as terrestrial OTA providers.
8. Putting 5, 6 and 7 together means that 1080p content is not only the future, but that it's also here right now. While it's undoubtedly still in large part an early-adopter situation, you can still walk into a Best Buy and walk out with hardware and software that will provide you 1080p content.
Considering all of the above, how is 1080p "science fiction?" The answer, of course, is that it's not. That's not to say that people shouldn't buy a 720p HDTV. Right now, they're probably the sweet spot in terms of price and picture quality (the "cheap" 1080p units tend to slack a bit when it comes to the quality of their internals, particularly in terms of their contrast ratio and general usability) when it comes to digital TVs. But, this situation is probably very temporary and 1080p TVs will be competitive in terms of price and visual quality within the next two years. I expect the market to stabilize on that resolution for the foreseeable future since the likelihood of going beyond 1080i/p in terms of general TV standards is slim at best (the FCC is having a hard enough time trying to shove the current HDTV standards down the market's collective throat).
My apologies for the bold yelling, by the way. That was only supposed to be one word (man, I hate when I don't use "preview"). :)
People say that all the time, but I'm not sure it's true. Releasing on Blu-ray, HD-DVD and DVD would be far cheaper than it used to be to release on both DVD and VHS, yet the latter occurred for years after DVD happened. The only extra effort for the HD formats, as far as I can tell, would be creating separate menu systems since both HD-DVD and Blu-ray support the same audio/video CODECs. Some companies are already doing movies on all three - for example, Superman Returns from Warner is slated for release on HD-DVD (a combo DVD/HD-DVD disc - nice) and Blu-ray this Tuesday. Interestingly, Warner was also the company from which I bought 90% of my DVDs for the first couple early-adopter years because they jumped into the new format with both feet in terms of both catalog titles and new releases.
If you can't just stroll into a store on a completely random day, pull a PS3 off the shelf, pay for it and walk out, then it is properly described as "unavailable" or "sold out" for most people. I suppose you could say "in short supply" but that distinction is a bit fine.
Every movie released so far on both HD optical formats has been 1080p.
Well, Viva Pinata is a game that could, unquestionably, be enhanced by downloadable content. That doesn't seem to be the question. Rather, the question seems to be whether devoting resources to the development downloadable content will be as profitable as moving those resources to the development of full retail games.
For example, one of the additions under consideration is a true cooperative online multiplayer mode for VP - right now, all you can do is send and receive items. If they think that the time spent creating the additional game mode will generate similar (or, of course, greater) profit to that same time spent working on a new game (perhaps Viva Pinata 2: Paper Revenge?), then they'll go for the DLC.
I find the whole thing quite reasonable. After all, Viva Pinata was not shipped incomplete as an episodic game might be - the game is perfectly good as it is. I'm enjoying the game right now (30 hours spent so far, and if I continue playing in an effort to secure all the pinata and all the achievements I could easily double that), so even if Rare never provides another download I'll feel good about my purchase and I'd probably go for a sequel.
I'll note finally that if they continue providing more DLC like their first two downloads, I'll not buy any more. The additional content so far has been perfunctory, weak at best, even for a buck (I think on the XBL points conversion table they were $1.10 or thereabouts) a piece. Fortunately I got $10 off the price of the game so I don't feel ripped off...yet.
The "make money on Blu-ray" theory also fails in that Sony makes less money per BD movie than it does per PS3 game. As a special added bonus, Sony doesn't get to take home the entire per-disc licensing. Instead, they get to share those fees with the other 8 "Blu-ray Disc Founder Companies" such as Matsushita (Panasonic), Sharp, Samsung and Pioneer.
That's a good point, to a point. While it's true that the PS3 and Wii could end up segmenting the market, the question remains whether the PS3 market is big enough considering its high price (launch adopters hardly count in the long run, especially with the small number of PS3s that will be available between now and spring). In other words, while developers and customers may not be as interested in multiplatforming between the PS3 and Wii with their radically different capabilities, if the Wii has a much larger market share than the PS3 then Japanese developers - especially those doing games intended solely for the Japanese market - could simply devote more (or all) of their resources to developing for the Wii. This applies less outside of Japan since the 360 already has a pretty solid base (especially considering the fully functional unit is still $100 more expensive than consoles of previous generations) and will likely attract some developer support regardless. That said, even outside Japan, if the Wii becomes a runaway success then the 360 could suffer for it as well.
To be fair, it's not a really question of "will" MGS and Final Fantasy sell - they'll sell huge, in that if there were 2 million PS3s owned by gamers, each of those games could still sell a million units. It's more a question of how huge the sales will be. Think of it this way: If Take 2/Rockstar had skipped the Xbox entirely in terms of GTA games, they still would have sold millions of units and made a ton of money. By releasing on the Xbox, they probably got at least a million more sales (virtually every used Xbox I see on Craig's List comes with at least a copy of San Andreas) for the relatively small cost of porting the game.
The problem for Sony is that there seems to be a perception that they need their exclusives due to the Microsoft head start and the high price of their hardware. Because they didn't lock up franchises like GTA or the "hot" new property, Assassin's Creed (for example), Microsoft can make what is probably a cheaper deal to make them multiplatform and gamers won't have those extra incentives to buy the PS3 (don't get me wrong, there are other incentives - I'm only a "hater" in terms of price).
The bottom line is that PS2 ended up with many (many, many) exclusives over time thanks to their ridiculous market share advantage. For at least the next year, if not a couple years, they're not going to have that advantage (certainly not in the US, probably not in Europe, maybe not in Japan depending on the Wii's penetration), so PS3 exclusives will have to come either from the preference of a particular developer (MGS's boss seems to be enamored of Sony, for example) or specific deals (like cheaper licensing fees) between the developer and Sony. Otherwise, it makes more sense to at least go multiplatform based purely on the hardware numbers.
As a gamer, I hate exclusives because they unnecessarily (given the relatively low cost to port games as opposed to starting from scratch) limit my options. They are necessary, though, for companies trying to differentiate themselves from the competition and sell more hardware.
A game can't have "little replay value" if you play it "multiple times." Frankly, I can't think of a higher recommendation for a game.
I do have an Xbox 360 but don't have Gears of War (Viva Pinata came out about the same time - that and Marvel Ultimate Alliance have been occupying my time). In any case, I've read no review that would discourage me from buying the game. While every one of them includes some "nitpicks," every single one has indicated that the game is very fun. If a game is very fun, then the "replay value," to my mind at least, is self-evident.
It's Jade Empire and I would agree that it doesn't get enough props. It's fun, well-produced, "linear-plus" RPG action. And, unlike the two KOTOR games I can't remember any showstopping bugs.
KOTOR2 was good until you reached the endgame but then just fell apart. Had they given the game another 2 months of work, it might have ended up legendary, but everyone was anxious to cash in on the sequel (and they surely did).
If you're going to correct folks, please use the correct terms. Composite and S-video (at least in the US) can only do NTSC, and while there are only 480 visible lines, there are 525 actual lines. The term "480i" is best reserved to describe an interlaced digital signal with 480 interlaced lines - for example, NTSC sources transmitted via cable or satellite digitally and then converted to NTSC in a receiver for output via RF, composite, S-video or component (though they can also sometimes convert the signal to 480p for output through component or better connections to a digital TV).
The truth is that it can only be judged on a per-game basis since frame rates will vary, level of real graphical detail will vary, etc. But, to get an idea how much display information will be lost in downconversion to 480p, here are some numbers:
480p = 720x480 = 345,600 pixels x 60 frames = 20,736,000 pixels/second.
720p = 1280x720 = 921,600 pixels x 60 frames = 55,296,000 pixels/second.
1080i = 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels x 30 frames = 62,208,000 pixels/seconds.
So, all other things being equal, you lose 62.5% of the picture information going from 720p to 480p.
Well, gosh. That's just a big shock! I mean, with the Zune being out, what a week? I'm stunnedyears.
You've got an axe to grind. That's cool, but at least used something more effective than pudding with which to do so.
I would only nitpick a bit on 8-bit Metal Gear. I didn't even own an NES (well, I had one for a month after Dragon Warrior came out because I just had to play that game) and I played Metal Gear - it was indeed a big deal in the US. Maybe not Mario big (what was?) but it was still a big seller. I can still remember it as one of the video games featured on the backs of all my Marvel comics for a month. :)
I think you need to scale back your hyperbole a bit. If one goes with the new Nvidia 8800 (particularly in SLI) on your hypothetical "$3000" PC, doing PS3 level graphics at 1920x1080 will hardly be a problem. Take a look at what this card can do in Oblivion if you need more information.
Note that I'm not a PC gamer these days at all since my [already old] PC broke down and I've been too cheap and lazy to replace it. In fact, I much prefer console gaming, and would agree that generally consoles provide a better gaming value than the PC. But, if one is willing to spend "the big bucks" (I consider "big bucks" to be $2,000 and up) on their gaming PC, they can definitely get to the level of PS3 launch-game graphics and beyond.
Huh? Is this concept of used games with large margins being somehow a ripoff of both the seller and the purchaser still out there?
;-]). Should I somehow be disappointed by this because that copy of the game probably only cost at most a few dollars (including Epic's cut) to Microsoft? Or should I consider it a $60 value because that's how much I'm saving if I get the game for free? (For the answer to this question, see below.)
You can't base the "fairness," "kindness" or "value" of this free game based on the wholesale price of the game. After all, Gamestop is a retail outlet. If I get a free game from Gamestop that would otherwise cost me $20 to buy, then the value to the customer is obvious, regardless of how much they paid the schlub who traded/sold it to the store.
Let's say Microsoft sent me a brand new copy of Gears of War to make up for the fact that I went two weeks without my 360 because it broke down (hey, MS, that sure would be nice by the way
"Duh."
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say, and obviously I don't know how European LCD pricing is going, but I would say that at least one 1080p model - the Westinghouse 37" - is worth considering right now. I've seen the price on that one as low as US$1,200 which is competitive with the big-brand 720p (well, 768p) sets.
Only the ONE price (that of the SNES) was out of line with US pricing. The other two he mentioned - an Xbox at $190 in 2003 (I believe the actual retail at that time was $200 in the US) and a DS at $120 (the DS Lite is priced new at $150 Canadian at amazon.ca) - are both in line with US prices. It's also worth noting that the exchange rate between USD and CAD in 1991 (the year the SNES was released in North America) hovered around 1.00:1.15, meaning that $400 would have been way out of line with reality for an SNES in Canada.
It depends on the game. In the [H]ardOCP review, this appears to be the first card that can do Oblivion with maxed in-game settings (the grass has been the problem area in the past, even with top-of-the-line cards) at very high resolutions and high AA settings while retaining solid framerates - the settings they considered ideal in their testing were 8x AA at 1600x1200 and 4x AA at 1920x1200. That would be impressive for a SLI setup, let alone a single card.
:)
How worthwhile that is depends, of course, on just how killer a person wants their gaming rig to be (I can't imagine ever buying a $600 graphics card myself). But, given that the performance seems to exceed that of any other graphics card (or any two, for that matter), it's pretty clearly the card to get to ensure maximum gaming PC penis size.
Great point! Obviously, the GTA franchise has been struggling to get sales traction and publicity. A Slashdot article might just save the company and finally get a couple interested in these sleeper titles.