Metal Arms seems like exactly the kind of game that should either receive major hype (something Vivendi isn't in a position to provide at the moment) or be released in the off-season. If this game were released just about anytime between April and August, it would get a heckuva lot more attention. It would probably even get better review scores since fewer good games would be competing during its release period.
Then again, there's the question of who will OWN Vivendi's game division this time next year. Maybe they decided to get it out ASAP in the hopes that it would make a chunk of change and stoke interest - and more importantly, bidding - again. It could be considered particularly important since Half-Life 2 and Starcraft: Ghost won't drop until next year.
There's certainly no reason to feel sorry for me. Instead of doing the same thing over and over [and over and over], there are new games coming out every week and I can't possibly hope to play every good one.
Of course they do: Once you've played them and then become busy playing new games. Super Mario Brothers, for example, is quite obsolete for people who've played the game through dozens [upon dozens] of times. I know that I can't get anything significant (besides nostalgia) out of Yar's Revenge or Civilization because I've enjoyed them and moved on.
Even if people HAVEN'T played "ancient" games, most of them would probably hold little interest for young gamers. They would probably wonder what was so compelling about moving a little gun back and forth shooting aliens lined up in rows moving down faster and faster, all with butt-ugly graphics and in two dimensions.
There are few games that support the added resolution or the widescreen features, and many of the few that do suffer from slowdown issues.
Virtually all Xbox games support 480p output with NO (zero, nada, etc.) negative impact on frame rates/gameplay. While most are still in 4:3 format, they still look a lot better in progressive format. Gamecube has a somewhat lower percentage of 480p games, though most new ones have the capability - again, with NO (ZERO) negative impact on gameplay. The reason that it costs nothing to provide 480p is because the frames are already rendered in full resolution. Modern games don't render internally at 320x200 or similar anymore, thus the 640x480-plus resolution frames are already there to be output.
I would also defy you to find 720p/1080i Xbox games that take a big performance hit when using the higher resolutions. Developers have the ability to test these resolutions and if they can't get them without taking hits, they don't include them. In short, you're in FUD city.
The problem is that consoles are pushed as far as they can go during a development process... They just don't have an extra few thousand pixels lying around. Programmers can either spend additional time downtuning the graphics when a HDTV is detected...[etc.]
Again, see above. 480p is free and requires NO (ZERO) extra development besides the code that tells the console to output NTSC or 480p (nothing complex there), and there's no evidence that 720p and 1080i games have suffered for the inclusion of those resolutions.
If you are thinking of spending the 2k for a high-res gaming setup...
Is this still 2000? Did I miss a worldwide time warp? HDTVs start at between $400-500 nowadays. Admittedly, they're not full-resolution sets giving 1920x1080 pixels, but even a cheap one improves the experience of playing Xbox and/or Gamecube immensely. Mine was $600 (right around the price of the hottest new video cards for PC gaming) many moons ago (Samsung 27" 4:3 HDTV) and was WELL worth it to me for the improved gaming experience. Even a true widescreen direct-view (tube) HDTV can be had for well under $1,000 and will look great.
There are great PC games, no doubt, and I respect those who prefer their PC for gaming. BUT, an HDTV gaming rig, even if you don't already have an HDTV-capable console, can be had for under $1,000 easy.
Innovation like that gives us (and, more importantly, video game companies) items like the PowerGlove which usually turn out to work badly...of course, the specific kind of "innovation" referenced in this story gives us things like the miracle of spoon-bending and The Psychic Friends Network.
It reminds me of the days when I could astound easily astounded people by reading tarot cards. I used the Arthurian tarot (because the deck looked cool) and had a whole spiel about why I considered it superior to other forms of tarot. To make a pretty short story longer, I became quite adept at identifying what was going on with people's lives by interacting with them over a deal of the tarot and some of the simple-minded really believed my malarkey - at least I wasn't charging money.
Getting back to your point, I would submit that innovation in terms of controllers does happen, though it tends to be more practical, particularly in the area of rhythm games. Dance Dance Revolution would be nothing without the dance controller pads and Samba de Amigo was all about shaking the ole maracas. Heck, I used my fishing controller on the Dreamcast quite a bit (yes, I was one of the few).
Designing new and innovative game controllers is expensive and there needs to be a good reason to do it. Too often, they turn into curiosities which are unprofitable, unworkable or both.
Yet another meeting has been called to order on Slashdot where people can bash the Xbox and talk about "the only good Xbox game." The fact that most of those people don't own an Xbox and/or have never played any of the other Xbox games never stops them, and it's certainly exciting to see FUD spread by someone other than Microsoft! Woot!
Crimson Skies - Great fun. Knights of the Old Republic - Duh. Outlaw Volleyball - Great gameplay AND Steve Carell. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The sequel's on all three but the first was fantastic and "Only on Xbox." Rallisport Challenge - Excellent rally racing. Splinter Cell - First on Xbox and a true system seller at the time. Panzer Dragoon Orta - Short but just about as sweet as it gets...great art meets great gameplay. Steel Battalion - High-priced but immersive and the best console sim experience ever.
I own, and have owned, more good Xbox games than the above but I'm not going to make this a book.
In short, declaring Halo is the only reason to own an Xbox is like saying Super Smash Brothers Melee is the only reason to own a Gamecube, or SSX is the only reason to own a PS2 - it was true once but hasn't been so for a LONG time.
I think it's the fact that the fourth quarter seemed to account in 2002 for just about half of total sales for everyone. Concurrent with that is that in 2002, EA's share from Q1-Q3 dropped just about right in half from 17.3% to 8.6% with Sony beating them in the fourth quarter to finish out with 8.8%. That tells me that the Q1-Q3 numbers, while interesting, mean very little about how the total year's numbers will shake out (and also that Madden is always released in Q3).
This long between games and they couldn't put online play into a first-party, guaranteed popular game that features robust multiplayer? Big-time missed opportunity on Nintendo's part. This game - along with other popular multiplayer Nintendo games like Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. - is the kind that could make Nintendo an online force.
PS - Please don't bring up third-party Internet hacks/workarounds. Nice as such solutions might be, they don't measure up to building the capability into the game from the ground up.
Note that I consider budget titles to be $30 and under, new.:)
If you haven't played it yet, and whether you like the series or not, Buffy the Vampire Slayer tops my list of games that should have stayed full price longer and sold more. Sells for $25 or less.
For the visceral thrill of beating your opponents to a pulp while playing a futuristic frisbee football (think Discs of Tron combined with that silly game they played on Battlestar Galactica), Deathrow is quite a bargain. Sells for $20 or less, usually under $15.
Mechassault was a lot of fun on Xbox Live, though it got a bit repetitive. Fortunately, even the single-player campaign is worth its current $20 pricetag - playing through every difficulty level was a blast for me.
It's become a cult favorite with its original incarnation on the Dreamcast and the sequel on the Xbox - accent on the "cult" since it's never sold that well in the US. Jet Set Radio Future is well worth your time if you didn't get it bundled with the Xbox. This one is relatively hard to find new but used copies can be had for under $10.
Outlaw Golf and Outlaw Volleyball are both very fun games in the "silly sports" genre. Despite their silliness, however, there's enough simulation depth to ensure hours of fun - Outlaw Golf in particular gets props from me for having an analog swing instead of the old double/triple-click systems. Steve Carrell of The Daily Show fame does the announcing work on both and he's hilarious. Outlaw Golf runs $25 or less new with Outlaw Volleyball still relatively new at $30 or less.
Note that these are all either Xbox exclusives or, in the case of Outlaw Golf which ended up with a Gamecube port, Xbox originals. If I were going to mention some great multi-platform games, I'd probably throw in Max Payne (if you didn't play it on PC for some reason) and SSX Tricky (just a lot of fun, but blown away now by SSX3), both coming in under (sometimes well under) $20.
Everybody knows what the thing's capabilities are, and certainly anyone who actually considers buying one finds them out very quickly - at the very least, it's instantly identifiable as a cell phone.
The one feature that intrigued me was the wireless multiplayer but with barely average games and the high pricetag, it just can't entice me...And considering I enjoy spending money on video gaming, don't have a cellular phone and don't have a portable MP3 player, this SHOULD be a device that sucks me in. It hasn't, and I'm thinkin' it won't...
Why am I being close-minded? I understand that you've had trouble with WMP and so have decided to use something else. That's fine. Why is my choice less valid? It would be like someone liking Opera to browse the web and being called close-minded because it works well enough that they don't feel the need to play around with Firebird/Mozilla.
In short, use what you like and leave others to do the same without getting pissy about it.
Though I'd hardly call Media Player and Windows Messenger "vital components".
I should note that when I described them as such, I was referring to the fact that browsing and media playback programs are, in general, vital to the consumer. There's no way those specific applications should be vital to the operation of an OS, and Microsoft making them so is both stupid and evil (in the monopolist sense).
Seriously, I'm not an insane Microsoft apologist, but I don't know what you're talking about with the slow startup times (mine starts instantly), sluggish performance (everything I play through it works beautifully) and the "chubby" interface (I view videos full screen - when I move the mouse a simple play/stop/size/position bar pops up - and once I start a playlist of music, WMP gets minimized). The only two formats I have issues with are Real (I simply will not follow any link to a Real file because I hate that company like the plague) and QuickTime (I deal with relatively few of those, and I just use Apple's program to take care them of them).
I use Mozilla/Firebird because IE is a piece of unadulterated garbage (though at least Google's toolbar takes care of popups for me when I'm "forced" to use it), but WMP has been working great for me and doesn't seem slow at all since moving to XP a couple months ago.
I only change things like media players and browsers when there's a compelling reason to do so - i.e., the program isn't doing something I really need/want to do. Right now everything is perfectly fine and I refuse to rock my boat.:)
Sure. They're stupid. After all, a smart person would want to spend hours on their computer just to figure out the best program with which to play a CD on their PC while doing taxes, balancing the checkbook, etc. That's MUCH smarter than just sticking the CD into the Windows machine and letting the program already in residence take care of it. Genius, I say, genius!
Here's another worse-case scenario if MS took a bunch of vital components out of the OS...
Peon: Sir, we need to figure out which browser, video player and instant messaging system to put into our computers.
CEO: Huh, what? I was sleeping.
Peon: And very well, too, sir.
CEO: So what did you want again?
Peon: We need to put a browser, video player and instant messaging system on our computers and I need to know which ones to use.
CEO: There's more than one? Damn. Well, how do we make money?
Peon: The Real people are offering us $2 million a year to put their software on our computers, but it drains system resources, it's hard to uninst...
CEO: Excellent! Use that!
Peon: But sir, there are a couple of better free programs we could put on the systems.
CEO: So what? Two million is two million, baby! Cha-ching!
Peon: Okay, what about the instant messaging and internet browser?
CEO: Just get the most money you can for each.
Peon: What about quality, sir?
CEO: Seriously, man. I'd really rather not fire you. Most of the time you're pretty good about knowing when I'm napping. Get the picture?
Peon: Absolutely, sir. Money for placement. Hope you enjoy the rest of your nap, sir.
CEO: I will now.
First of all, MS can't be saying that it's WMP that's making Windows superior? You've got to be kidding me. Most people don't even use that app for their multimedia needs.
I suspect you're referring to the same "most people" who don't use Internet Explorer (a truly inferior product) for their web-browsing needs - in other words, "a minority of people." I use Windows XP (surprisingly, the best Microsoft OS I've used) and I find that that Windows Media Player, with the appropriate codecs installed, works quite well for a wide variety of multimedia files. The idea that "most people" using Windows are using an outside multimedia viewer/player when the software that comes with the system works fine is laughable.
I think it has less to do with the right-ward slant and more to do with it being more entertaining to watch. CNN's most entertaining show is Larry King Live and he was tiresome to me back when he was on radio - [that jerk] O'Reilly on Fox beats King hands down in the entertainment department. Personally, I like Buchanan, Press, Matthews and Olberman (the MSNBC line-up), but I'm weird that way.
Oh, and before I get the snot kicked out of me for equating interest in news programming with entertainment, I would point out that with one 24-hour news channel, entertainment can be secondary...with three 24-hour news channels (CNN, MSNBC and Fox) competing, you've got to have more than just a person with great hair reading off a TelePrompter.:)
Which, by the way, worked out quite nicely for Sega until they had Saturn development fall behind causing them to market upgrades (32x and SegaCD) to the Genesis that nobody wanted. The Genesis did VERY well and delayed real excitement about the SNES for solid interval (the fact that early SNES games didn't take full advantage of the system didn't help, either). If the Saturn had made it out a year earlier than it did, Sega might still be in the console business since the Dreamcast wouldn't have been the "make or break" situation that it was.
I understand. First-person shooters are the light of the PC gamer's life, and if they can't run their FPS at 1600x1200 with full detail then the game sucks. I don't think people who enjoy their PS2s are crying rivers over the fact that Doom 3 isn't going to be on their console. More likely, they're looking forward to playing one of the 20+ potentially good games coming out for their system just in the rest of this month (Battlestar Galactica, Final Fantasy X-2, Fatal Frame 2, Monster Rancher 4, Metal Arms, Secret Weapons Over Normandy to name a few - only ONE of which will be coming out for the PC anytime soon). Then again, maybe at the realization that they can't play any of them on a $500 256MB graphics card they'll just jump off a bridge.
I think I'll knock this comment down to 1. It has the smell of flamebait but I still feel the need to post it.:)
These companies can use the "cost of server" excuse if they want, but I don't buy it. The games aren't hosted on remote servers such as those available for games like Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942 and the like. All they're truly providing for their sports games is matchmaking, which doesn't exactly require an Everquest-type server farm. Even supporting just two years worth of the game would be a pretty big step toward satisfying customers. Then again, if that's too odious for these poor, struggling companies (sarcasm aimed primarily at EA) then why don't they put in an option to simply enter an IP address to hook up to a remote game? That would require ZERO participation by Sega/EA and could generate some goodwill amongst customers - especially those customers who might have thought they would get some decent online value out of a purchase they might have made just a couple of months before the online capability was negated.
As for feeling charitable toward Sega in light of their financial troubles, if they can't make money on their sports franchises then I say get out of the business. I'm not in the habit of feeling empathy for the stupid decisions of companies, even companies like Sega which have satisfied me in the past. I don't have a sense of loyalty towards companies from which I purchase products or services, especially if I think they're looking to screw me on the back end.
Then again, it's moot since I do my online console playing on Xbox Live which doesn't [yet] disable services for older game versions.
The Sega Sports (titled ESPN this year) titles on PS2 do indeed have free online play. On Xbox, of course, they require the Xbox Live subscription, though at least that covers every other Xbox Live game. Unfortunately, Sega isn't doing PC sports so if that's the way you play you're out of luck - as far as I know, Madden's the only full-featured PC football game in town these days.
On the unfortunate side, on the PS2 Sega is apparently mimicking EA's policy of not allowing online play of older games once new versions come out. I suspect that Sega figures they can't compete yearly with EA if they don't follow the same upgrade/online policy. AFAIK, Xbox Live policy prevents companies from doing this to customers (one of the big sticking points with getting EA on board with XBL).
In summary, EA is evil...they make some good games and I'm too wimpy to boycott (just bought SSX3 - friggin' fabulous), but they're evil. Sega is less evil but they're not above being evil if EA's evil puts them at a competitive disadvantage.:)
Insert obilgatory mouse and keyboard comment here...at least that's the kind of thing the die-hard PC gamers always shoot back at me.:)
I agree with you, especially at the moment. For the price of the latest, greatest video card alone you can get all three consoles brand new plus a game or, if you like the Nintendo line-up, the Gamecube plus eight games (up to double that if you go for the budget titles/used games). Not too shabby for a lot of hours of fun. Right now, the only games I play on PC are Hoyle Casino and Civilization III.
At the rate I'm going, the next time I upgrade will be when Firaxis comes out with the new version of Pirates! that's supposedly in the works.
1. My use of the word "can" was quite deliberate.
2. The PS2 and Xbox controllers have an identical number of buttons.
3. I could easily argue that better looks and better sounds can do more to enhance playing games than the controller. If it were purely based on the controller, people wouldn't go so gaga over Gamecube games with its bizarre (compared to the other two) controller (which I personally hate and suffer through only because GC has some great games and I'm too lazy/cheap to buy an adaptor - an option which exists on the Xbox to allow use of a PS2 controller, BTW).
4. Any trick I can do on PS2 Tony Hawk, I can do on Xbox Tony Hawk. While I might have to use different button combinations, different doesn't automatically mean worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Then again, there's the question of who will OWN Vivendi's game division this time next year. Maybe they decided to get it out ASAP in the hopes that it would make a chunk of change and stoke interest - and more importantly, bidding - again. It could be considered particularly important since Half-Life 2 and Starcraft: Ghost won't drop until next year.
There's certainly no reason to feel sorry for me. Instead of doing the same thing over and over [and over and over], there are new games coming out every week and I can't possibly hope to play every good one.
Even if people HAVEN'T played "ancient" games, most of them would probably hold little interest for young gamers. They would probably wonder what was so compelling about moving a little gun back and forth shooting aliens lined up in rows moving down faster and faster, all with butt-ugly graphics and in two dimensions.
There are few games that support the added resolution or the widescreen features, and many of the few that do suffer from slowdown issues.
Virtually all Xbox games support 480p output with NO (zero, nada, etc.) negative impact on frame rates/gameplay. While most are still in 4:3 format, they still look a lot better in progressive format. Gamecube has a somewhat lower percentage of 480p games, though most new ones have the capability - again, with NO (ZERO) negative impact on gameplay. The reason that it costs nothing to provide 480p is because the frames are already rendered in full resolution. Modern games don't render internally at 320x200 or similar anymore, thus the 640x480-plus resolution frames are already there to be output.
I would also defy you to find 720p/1080i Xbox games that take a big performance hit when using the higher resolutions. Developers have the ability to test these resolutions and if they can't get them without taking hits, they don't include them. In short, you're in FUD city.
The problem is that consoles are pushed as far as they can go during a development process... They just don't have an extra few thousand pixels lying around. Programmers can either spend additional time downtuning the graphics when a HDTV is detected...[etc.]
Again, see above. 480p is free and requires NO (ZERO) extra development besides the code that tells the console to output NTSC or 480p (nothing complex there), and there's no evidence that 720p and 1080i games have suffered for the inclusion of those resolutions.
If you are thinking of spending the 2k for a high-res gaming setup...
Is this still 2000? Did I miss a worldwide time warp? HDTVs start at between $400-500 nowadays. Admittedly, they're not full-resolution sets giving 1920x1080 pixels, but even a cheap one improves the experience of playing Xbox and/or Gamecube immensely. Mine was $600 (right around the price of the hottest new video cards for PC gaming) many moons ago (Samsung 27" 4:3 HDTV) and was WELL worth it to me for the improved gaming experience. Even a true widescreen direct-view (tube) HDTV can be had for well under $1,000 and will look great.
There are great PC games, no doubt, and I respect those who prefer their PC for gaming. BUT, an HDTV gaming rig, even if you don't already have an HDTV-capable console, can be had for under $1,000 easy.
It reminds me of the days when I could astound easily astounded people by reading tarot cards. I used the Arthurian tarot (because the deck looked cool) and had a whole spiel about why I considered it superior to other forms of tarot. To make a pretty short story longer, I became quite adept at identifying what was going on with people's lives by interacting with them over a deal of the tarot and some of the simple-minded really believed my malarkey - at least I wasn't charging money.
Getting back to your point, I would submit that innovation in terms of controllers does happen, though it tends to be more practical, particularly in the area of rhythm games. Dance Dance Revolution would be nothing without the dance controller pads and Samba de Amigo was all about shaking the ole maracas. Heck, I used my fishing controller on the Dreamcast quite a bit (yes, I was one of the few).
Designing new and innovative game controllers is expensive and there needs to be a good reason to do it. Too often, they turn into curiosities which are unprofitable, unworkable or both.
Crimson Skies - Great fun.
Knights of the Old Republic - Duh.
Outlaw Volleyball - Great gameplay AND Steve Carell.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The sequel's on all three but the first was fantastic and "Only on Xbox."
Rallisport Challenge - Excellent rally racing.
Splinter Cell - First on Xbox and a true system seller at the time.
Panzer Dragoon Orta - Short but just about as sweet as it gets...great art meets great gameplay.
Steel Battalion - High-priced but immersive and the best console sim experience ever.
I own, and have owned, more good Xbox games than the above but I'm not going to make this a book.
In short, declaring Halo is the only reason to own an Xbox is like saying Super Smash Brothers Melee is the only reason to own a Gamecube, or SSX is the only reason to own a PS2 - it was true once but hasn't been so for a LONG time.
Of course, what I should be able to do is write a post without typing "Sony" where I should be typing "Nintendo."
So, if someone could knock my post down a couple points for stupidity, that would be great.
I think it's the fact that the fourth quarter seemed to account in 2002 for just about half of total sales for everyone. Concurrent with that is that in 2002, EA's share from Q1-Q3 dropped just about right in half from 17.3% to 8.6% with Sony beating them in the fourth quarter to finish out with 8.8%. That tells me that the Q1-Q3 numbers, while interesting, mean very little about how the total year's numbers will shake out (and also that Madden is always released in Q3).
PS - Please don't bring up third-party Internet hacks/workarounds. Nice as such solutions might be, they don't measure up to building the capability into the game from the ground up.
If you haven't played it yet, and whether you like the series or not, Buffy the Vampire Slayer tops my list of games that should have stayed full price longer and sold more. Sells for $25 or less.
For the visceral thrill of beating your opponents to a pulp while playing a futuristic frisbee football (think Discs of Tron combined with that silly game they played on Battlestar Galactica), Deathrow is quite a bargain. Sells for $20 or less, usually under $15.
Mechassault was a lot of fun on Xbox Live, though it got a bit repetitive. Fortunately, even the single-player campaign is worth its current $20 pricetag - playing through every difficulty level was a blast for me.
It's become a cult favorite with its original incarnation on the Dreamcast and the sequel on the Xbox - accent on the "cult" since it's never sold that well in the US. Jet Set Radio Future is well worth your time if you didn't get it bundled with the Xbox. This one is relatively hard to find new but used copies can be had for under $10.
Outlaw Golf and Outlaw Volleyball are both very fun games in the "silly sports" genre. Despite their silliness, however, there's enough simulation depth to ensure hours of fun - Outlaw Golf in particular gets props from me for having an analog swing instead of the old double/triple-click systems. Steve Carrell of The Daily Show fame does the announcing work on both and he's hilarious. Outlaw Golf runs $25 or less new with Outlaw Volleyball still relatively new at $30 or less.
Note that these are all either Xbox exclusives or, in the case of Outlaw Golf which ended up with a Gamecube port, Xbox originals. If I were going to mention some great multi-platform games, I'd probably throw in Max Payne (if you didn't play it on PC for some reason) and SSX Tricky (just a lot of fun, but blown away now by SSX3), both coming in under (sometimes well under) $20.
The one feature that intrigued me was the wireless multiplayer but with barely average games and the high pricetag, it just can't entice me...And considering I enjoy spending money on video gaming, don't have a cellular phone and don't have a portable MP3 player, this SHOULD be a device that sucks me in. It hasn't, and I'm thinkin' it won't...
In short, use what you like and leave others to do the same without getting pissy about it.
I should note that when I described them as such, I was referring to the fact that browsing and media playback programs are, in general, vital to the consumer. There's no way those specific applications should be vital to the operation of an OS, and Microsoft making them so is both stupid and evil (in the monopolist sense).
I use Mozilla/Firebird because IE is a piece of unadulterated garbage (though at least Google's toolbar takes care of popups for me when I'm "forced" to use it), but WMP has been working great for me and doesn't seem slow at all since moving to XP a couple months ago.
I only change things like media players and browsers when there's a compelling reason to do so - i.e., the program isn't doing something I really need/want to do. Right now everything is perfectly fine and I refuse to rock my boat. :)
Sure. They're stupid. After all, a smart person would want to spend hours on their computer just to figure out the best program with which to play a CD on their PC while doing taxes, balancing the checkbook, etc. That's MUCH smarter than just sticking the CD into the Windows machine and letting the program already in residence take care of it. Genius, I say, genius!
Peon: Sir, we need to figure out which browser, video player and instant messaging system to put into our computers.
CEO: Huh, what? I was sleeping.
Peon: And very well, too, sir.
CEO: So what did you want again?
Peon: We need to put a browser, video player and instant messaging system on our computers and I need to know which ones to use.
CEO: There's more than one? Damn. Well, how do we make money?
Peon: The Real people are offering us $2 million a year to put their software on our computers, but it drains system resources, it's hard to uninst...
CEO: Excellent! Use that!
Peon: But sir, there are a couple of better free programs we could put on the systems.
CEO: So what? Two million is two million, baby! Cha-ching!
Peon: Okay, what about the instant messaging and internet browser?
CEO: Just get the most money you can for each.
Peon: What about quality, sir?
CEO: Seriously, man. I'd really rather not fire you. Most of the time you're pretty good about knowing when I'm napping. Get the picture?
Peon: Absolutely, sir. Money for placement. Hope you enjoy the rest of your nap, sir.
CEO: I will now.
I suspect you're referring to the same "most people" who don't use Internet Explorer (a truly inferior product) for their web-browsing needs - in other words, "a minority of people." I use Windows XP (surprisingly, the best Microsoft OS I've used) and I find that that Windows Media Player, with the appropriate codecs installed, works quite well for a wide variety of multimedia files. The idea that "most people" using Windows are using an outside multimedia viewer/player when the software that comes with the system works fine is laughable.
Oh, and before I get the snot kicked out of me for equating interest in news programming with entertainment, I would point out that with one 24-hour news channel, entertainment can be secondary...with three 24-hour news channels (CNN, MSNBC and Fox) competing, you've got to have more than just a person with great hair reading off a TelePrompter. :)
Which, by the way, worked out quite nicely for Sega until they had Saturn development fall behind causing them to market upgrades (32x and SegaCD) to the Genesis that nobody wanted. The Genesis did VERY well and delayed real excitement about the SNES for solid interval (the fact that early SNES games didn't take full advantage of the system didn't help, either). If the Saturn had made it out a year earlier than it did, Sega might still be in the console business since the Dreamcast wouldn't have been the "make or break" situation that it was.
I think I'll knock this comment down to 1. It has the smell of flamebait but I still feel the need to post it. :)
As for feeling charitable toward Sega in light of their financial troubles, if they can't make money on their sports franchises then I say get out of the business. I'm not in the habit of feeling empathy for the stupid decisions of companies, even companies like Sega which have satisfied me in the past. I don't have a sense of loyalty towards companies from which I purchase products or services, especially if I think they're looking to screw me on the back end.
Then again, it's moot since I do my online console playing on Xbox Live which doesn't [yet] disable services for older game versions.
On the unfortunate side, on the PS2 Sega is apparently mimicking EA's policy of not allowing online play of older games once new versions come out. I suspect that Sega figures they can't compete yearly with EA if they don't follow the same upgrade/online policy. AFAIK, Xbox Live policy prevents companies from doing this to customers (one of the big sticking points with getting EA on board with XBL).
In summary, EA is evil...they make some good games and I'm too wimpy to boycott (just bought SSX3 - friggin' fabulous), but they're evil. Sega is less evil but they're not above being evil if EA's evil puts them at a competitive disadvantage. :)
I agree with you, especially at the moment. For the price of the latest, greatest video card alone you can get all three consoles brand new plus a game or, if you like the Nintendo line-up, the Gamecube plus eight games (up to double that if you go for the budget titles/used games). Not too shabby for a lot of hours of fun. Right now, the only games I play on PC are Hoyle Casino and Civilization III.
At the rate I'm going, the next time I upgrade will be when Firaxis comes out with the new version of Pirates! that's supposedly in the works.
Even better, stop investing money in paint and color marketing and spend that money on game development.
1. My use of the word "can" was quite deliberate.
2. The PS2 and Xbox controllers have an identical number of buttons.
3. I could easily argue that better looks and better sounds can do more to enhance playing games than the controller. If it were purely based on the controller, people wouldn't go so gaga over Gamecube games with its bizarre (compared to the other two) controller (which I personally hate and suffer through only because GC has some great games and I'm too lazy/cheap to buy an adaptor - an option which exists on the Xbox to allow use of a PS2 controller, BTW).
4. Any trick I can do on PS2 Tony Hawk, I can do on Xbox Tony Hawk. While I might have to use different button combinations, different doesn't automatically mean worse.