I cain't think of any reasons why programmer's times are spent making that kind a software. Maybe they just dont have alot of reasons for needing them.
I agree with the golden age comment. Nintendo and Sega were both gaming companies. Sony is a media company and MS is a software company.
Still, more equal marketshare means better compeition which should mean better games (all else being equal). We'll see what actually happens though. It's is fully possible that Sony or MS screws up (like that $500 price tag for the console alone) and the market becomes 70-20-10. We'll just have to wait and see.
Personally, I think the ideal would be 40-30-30 Nintendo-Sony-MS.
Yes, but for various reasons (including launching later, and being a newcomer) the XBox never got close to the PS2 in market share. But they've learned lessons and got the word out that they are here and are serious, so now is when we might see a real race.
Comming out of the gate like Sony did with the PS and taking over a lead spot in the industry is rare.
Silly poster. You're not thinking like a politician.
If they did that, it would be CENSORSHIP and they would be thrown out of office. Instead what they are doing is saving innocent kids from their terrible parents^H^H^H evil industry types who are trying to get kids to play sex games and learn how to commit mass murder.
You are against mass murder, aren't you?
If this gets passed, they will say in a year or two that it made a small "dent" but people found ways around the law or turned to other sources of violence (music, TV, movies). So that is when they will add on to the bill (which will be given a cute acronym like K.I.D.D.I.E. or named after a dog that was hit by a car by someone who had played GTA, thus "Spot's Law"). They will make the law more draconian and add new media types.
This will continue until people come to their senses, or the Californian government gets total censorship control over the media. The pendulum swings, it's up to the voters where it stops.
Just what we (and especially financially strained CA) need: more bureaucracy. Let's ignore that fact that banning the sale of games with certain content is blatant government censorship (good or bad). Let's ignore that whole "freedom of speech thing" (even if that refers to only political speech).
The article makes a great point. The RIAA gets to oversee music. The MPAA gets to oversee movies. The ESRB is impotent and the goverment must oversee games.
But next it will be music.
Then movies.
Then TV.
And the slope slickens (like that word? I think I invented it). This bugs me for many reasons, but two major one. First, the government shouldn't be in the business of censoring anything some little group doesn't like (once it's law, how long do you think it will be before any violence of any kind against any minority is instant grounds for a banning?). And second, of all the things we see (cursing and sex on network TV, violence, sexualizing of children, anti-religious sentiments, etc.) why is it VIDEO GAMES that we are working on? If the average kid plays 1 hour of video games a day (probably too high), and watches 3 hours of TV (probably too low, much of it "sexy" primetime), and sees 2 big movies a year (violent, "sexy"), and more houses have TVs than video games (for obvious reasons), which medium will have the most effect on kids psyches?
Right. The video games.
PS: Let's just ignore the fact that at the rate we're going video games are about the only place kids can see real conflict (especially in sports) since we wouldn't want to keep score in games or every let anything harm poor Billy or it might hurt his self esteem (until he is 18-21 unless he is a minority, at which point he is in the "real world" and his self-esteem be damned even though he was never taught any coping skills).
Is anyone else surprised by the XBox numbers? I figured they'd be up, but I would think that it would be more like 70% of people interested in the PS3, 25-35% in the XBox. I guess MS's work (and lost $$$s) have paid off. Now if the can make a console (and games) good enough to keep things that way we may be back to the early 90s when Sega and Nintendo were neck and neck (which I think was almost a golden age). That could be a great thing.
Really, I'd like to know about the interest in the Revolution, but I don't expect all that much until after the Tokyo Game Show (starts friday!) when Nintendo is expected to release more details. Once the Revolution is better known (games, prices (or at least a guess), etc) then the numbers will mean more.
I agree. Setup a little home server or a test box somewhere with Linux on it and pound on that to get used to Linux, to test server configurations and how to do things, etc. You need the experience.
You may also want to look into courses/certifications. For example get a book or two on RedHat's certification or any others and read through them (maybe even go after it).
I have cable right now, and wouldn't be able to surf if the power went out (even though I have a laptop). Wireless (not 11b, WiMax type) is the only way you can do that, and that assumes that the wireless device (repeater, router, whatever you want to call it) that your computer would connect to still has power (or has a backup).
You'd think all the communication problems post-Katrina would have taught people something too. I've heard all sorts of stories of people not being able to communicate, police walkie-talkies being useless after a few hours when the battery dies, etc. Considering hams that prepare for this kind of thing know what they're doing and are supposed to prepare and be ready for having no electricity and such.
This was a big PR chance. I heard in some areas the ONLY way to get messages passed (especially "Is my brother OK" type Health & Welfare traffic) was by hams.
I thought that HomePlug was using your house's power wiring as a replacement for ethernet, not unlike HomePNA where you piggy back on your existing phone lines for the same purpose.
Aren't HomePlug and BPL different, or have they merged, or what?
Opening your eyes and actually using them instead of mindlessly repeating the garbage that some war happy people in the White House are telling you might be a really good idea indeed.
Thinking instead of mindlessly repeating the garbage that some anti-war hippy is telling you might be smart.
Sure there isn't a USSR who could take out the entire country in one shot anymore, but one or two missiles is enough. One well placed nuke could kill/injure 10 million if it took out Los Angeles county. New york city has 8 million. Two nukes, well placed, could take out 18 million people. There are 295 million people in the US. That would be 16.39% of the US population. That is literally decimation. That is 50% more than decimation.
You think New Orleans is bad? There were what, 100,000 people left when the hurricane hit? We had 2/3 days to evacuate before it hit. We had that much warning. And the city is livable going forward. Compare that to a few hours notice. Millions dead. Millions injured. The area would be worthless thanks to fallout. Some of the largest and most important companies in the US could be gone. You think the post 9/11 recession was bad?
You don't have to take out half the country in one shot. Just take out LA, New York, or another large city (Seattle, San Fran., etc). If you can hit in the MIDDLE of the US (say Denver, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc) that would scare people even more.
North Korea, Iran, Terrorists, other states that haven't announced yet or are currently friends/neutral but could turn with an election or coup. Just because big bad USSR is gone doesn't make us safe from nuclear attacks.
See, now THIS (if done right) would be how you'd get me to buy a UMD movie.
Note, not THIS movie.
But if I could buy Spiderman 2 and the Spiderman 2 game on one disc for $50 I would consider it over the $40 game. Or if I could buy a music game (something like Amplitude) and it had the music videos for all the tracks on the disc, I would be willing to pay more for that.
Now of course, they don't offer that. And licensed games basically are ALWAYS TERRIBLE. There are a handfull of exceptions (Spideman 1/2, for example), but by and large they are terrible. They'd still sell very well (those games always do, especially the ones for little kinds because the parents don't look into if the game is GOOD, it just matters that it has Spongebob).
The real problem is that the movie content takes up basically all the disc, so you'd need to ship it in a two disc package (one for the movie, and one for the game) which would just be an excuse to hike the price (but we have to make TWO discs!).
This could work well, especially if they could come up with some more creative uses, but based on this first effort it looks like it will be used to prop up failing movie properties with game demos. Hazaah.
So as long as you are making a glorified demo disc, how 'bout dropping the cruddy movie and selling a disc of 20 working demos of new games for $5 or $10? I am MUCH more likely to buy a game I've played (thus know the quality of) than one I haven't. Demos have done great things for many computer games (can you say Doom?). Now that we have the technology, I don't know why we don't see this more with video games. The DS and PSP can both do it (including wirelessly), and they game companies say they will do that, but they don't (at least not in the US, I hear the DS can get demos at various shops/kiosks and movies in Japan over wireless). I have broadband. Let me try a game if I want to? How does giving me a chance to get hooked hurt your bottom line?
Too bad so many of these companies aren't run by games, or anyone with half a clue. Bad movie + game demo = $60. Yeah right. More like this: bad movie + game demo = $5.
Run. That's all I can say. Unless you can get the principal or someone like that behind you to give you card blanche to implement things however you see fit (within budget) no matter if the teachers want it that way or not. Otherwise, run.
The last guy was a friend of the staff and just filled in. No real policy or leadership there (my guess) before. Now a new guy has come in and wants to change things. You're not going to be liked initially.
As another poster suggested, Macs are great. I'd try to force a change to them, but good luck. If you stay, you will be servicing old Windows boxes forever, and trying to get Linux to cover everything the old NT boxes did without anyone noticing (because they'll complain you changed something "for no reason").
I don't gamble online, but I know there is one thing I'd question: what laws are there to keep online gambling fair? As other posters have pointed out, there are plenty of pokerbots to make things less fun. As far as I know there are no laws (and no enforcement if they exist) to prevent online gambling companies from cheating you outright. That slot machine? The code is rigged against you (far more than a "fair" slot machine, this one actively makes sure you never win big, but win at intervals that encourage you to continue). The poker table? The "dealer" could purposely tilt the odds (again, more than they should be) to make it harder to get even so much as a pair. For all you know, the other guys at the table who get good hands are plants who's hands are occasionally rigged to be good.
It's the wild west. Anything goes. And there for, so will your money if you try. A combination of that and market saturation is probably blame. Free poker (where you don't bet real money) will probably continue to grow. But online casinos? They've probably peaked.
YES! That was it exactly! To tell the truth I had never though about that possibility, but it does make perfect sense that it existed in Japan and they never brought it over. It always seemed weird that they would make the thing and market it on the box and everything if it was never going to be sold.
Yup. I've though about that before, and that is kind of how I feel. I was there at just the right time for the SNES (which was a golden age in many ways), but I was there early enough to have an NES for two years or so before that.
I know this got marked troll, but I agree. The PlayStation was the first console that wasn't seen as "for kids". I suppose the Saturn wanted to be the same thing, but the PS was the more successful of the two in the sates (by far) so it gets the credit.
As much as people may hate AOL (I do), they got more people onto the internet than anyone else (whether that is good or bad is up to you). You may not like Dragonball Z or some of the other things that Cartoon Network shows/showed, but for many people that was their first exposure to Anime (my was from the Sci-Fi channel, but they were a close second). Whether that is good or bad is up to you.
I agree that the "unwashed masses.. where they did not belong" part is a troll, but the PlayStation was the system that made gaming "cool" for adults (you can argue whether that was the system, the games, or just that was around the time many games who were raised on NESes became adults). It wasn't targeted exclusively at kids.
"PlayStation" has become the new "Nintendo". It is the word people use when they don't know the right one to describe video games. In the early 90s that seemed unfathomable. But I guess Nintendo took that title from Atarii.
No, you're quite correct. The SNES came out while I was a gamer. The Genesis, GameBoy, and GameGear came out while I was a gamer but before the PS.
But before that, I didn't have any money to save up to be able to buy a console. I had to beg for months to get an NES (check), beg for months to get an SNES (check), beg for months to get a GameBoy (check). I bought myself a GameGear later after the price came down and it had been out for a while, later got a Genesis for my birthday (2-3 years after launch).
I knew about the SNES launch ahead of time, but I couldn't afford one. The PS was the first console I knew the launch date of and was able to save up for and purchase at launch.
PS: I was only 5-6 when the Genesis came out? I didn't realize that. I guess I think of myself as becoming a gamer with the NES even though it was released when I was.. what... 1? I got in on the tail end of it, but I guess it doesn't seem like that to me.
As for the "expensive production", I don't think they meant games as a whole, but copies.
Before the PlayStation (and Saturn, which never took off in the Sates and ended up a black sheep in my opinion), games came on carts. SNES carts, NES carts, Genesis carts.
Carts cost money. While back then it may have cost 10 cents to press a CD (just a guess), it cost $10 for a cart (again, a guess). And the more memory you put on, the more expensive the cart (remember the ads about how much data was packed into Donkey Kong Country?). With a CD, it didn't matter if you put 50 megs or 650 megs on, it cost the same.
You press a CD, then you sell it.
You burn the ROM chips for a cart. Then you make the circuit boards. Then you solder the two together. Then you add the little battery for saved games. Then you put in in the plastic cart. Then you label it. Then you sell it. Did I mention that Nintendo did all this so you had to pay them to do it?
The difference is in where the expense is: at the front (design, programming, etc) or the back (production). Not that making games was dirt cheap back then.
But for the rest of your point, you're right. Too many standards today? Yep (PS, PS2, GC, XBox, NGage, DS, GBA, PC, Mac, and anything else). Crippling uncertainty? Yep (but... that game is... new! We can't do that.... what if it doesn't sell? Just make Madden 2006 and Generic FPS 7 instead).
I remembered more after reading the article. I had forgotten about the "U R Not (red) e" campaign.
But the thing that the article really reminded me of was Jumping Flash. I loved that game and it's sequel. You played inside the Rab-bot (giant robotic rabbit) and jumped around in true 3D and shot and enemies and collected carrots and... something. It sounds kind of dumb but the game was fantastic (just a weird premise).
I discovered that game from the demo disc that came with the system. I still don't understand why they don't do this anymore. There was a little demo of it on the disc and I played that one level over and over and over until my local stores finally started carrying the game after it came out.
Not only did you get that demo disc, you also got a tech demo disc with things like showing tons of colored cubes (all the colors it could render), bouncing balls, a large walking T-Rex you could make growl and rotate around (to show off high poly counts, I think) and other such things.
But then there was the controller I never bought. On the box of the original PlayStation were pictures of games and peripherals you could get. One was a cool double-joystick. I didn't know what games it would be for, but I thought it was very neat. I kept waiting for that to come out, wondering what it would be used for. It never did come out, and about a year later I remember seeing a PlayStation box and they had changed the picture (it had obviously been canceled).
Of course, the PlayStation had innovations. It was TINY. I remember getting the thing home and being surprised how small it was. It was the size of a magazine which seemed unfathomable for some reason (although I suppose the SNES was about the same size). Maybe I thought that after seeing the large black brick that was the Saturn (I loved those "Theater of the Eye" commercials). The memory cards were a great idea. SNES games didn't need them, and the Saturn and Sega CD had built in memories in the system. You could backup to a memory cart, but it wasn't like the PlayStation where you could take your game data to someone else's house and you could BOTH have your data to play with (for a Saturn you could only have one cart, so only one player's data).
What a great system. Hard to believe that's 10 years old. So many great games too. The ones mentioned above, FF VII and IX, PaRapper, UmJamma Lammy, Crash Bandicoot (when it was good), Ape Escape, Ace Combat, and so many many more.
I don't think I'll ever forget that. I would have been 12 at the time (seems hard to believe). That was the first console that I bought a launch. I went down to my local Toys 'R' Us (remember when they were good?) and went straight to the big glass case that they kept all that kind of stuff in (they only use little ones at my local store now). I always loved that case because it had all the cool expensive stuff in it.
Anyway, I couldn't find the ticket to buy the thing so I asked an employee who was just coming on duty who had never heard of the PlayStation (imagine that happening today) and insisted they didn't sell such a thing. I had to show him the PS in the display case to prove it to him, but then he made me a ticket I could use to buy it.
I remember looking at the selection of games and wasn't immediately drawn to anything as a must have game. As I remember there was Battle Arena Toshinden, Tekken (something), Ridge Racer, and a few others. I bought Ridge Racer and BAT. A bit later I bought Rayman when it came out.
Ridge Racer I had never heard of, but I LOVED that game. Battle Arena Toshinden was a fantastic fighter (that was the first "3D" fighter I ever really played, even though it wasn't really 3D) and that was tons of fun. My brother and I got tons of time out of that.
Still ran until I sold it about two years ago when I was cleaning things out. Got TONS of hours out of that system.
Ah, but you will have to switch at least once so that the game can copy all the data off the DVD to the hard drive. That will take quite a while even at 12x. And that would still be annoying.
The place where the HD would help the most would be if games were delivered via Internet which we may see later in this new generation.
Yeah, I thought about that but, but I figured I'd give Sega the benefit of the doubt. It was a nice little system, but it was too late.
I never bought a saturn because at that point I relied on my parents to buy my consoles and a $400+ Saturn would have been a hard sell. I wasn' that interested in one as there were only three games I can remember ever wanting: Clockwork Knight (probably terrible), Bug (bought for the PC for $5 a few years later), and Panzer Dragoon (supposed to be quite good). I'm sure there were other good games (I'd like to try Nights: Into Dreams) but there was never enough to make me want to buy the system. If the 3D sonic game that was previewed ever materialized, maybe I would have bought one. But all they released was Sonic R.
I was skeptical of MS, but they had Halo (which I wanted to try), Jet Set Radio Future (which I REALLY wanted), Shenmue 2 (which I really wanted), and a few others. They got the games I wanted.
Slashdot Mirror
I cain't think of any reasons why programmer's times are spent making that kind a software. Maybe they just dont have alot of reasons for needing them.
Still, more equal marketshare means better compeition which should mean better games (all else being equal). We'll see what actually happens though. It's is fully possible that Sony or MS screws up (like that $500 price tag for the console alone) and the market becomes 70-20-10. We'll just have to wait and see.
Personally, I think the ideal would be 40-30-30 Nintendo-Sony-MS.
Comming out of the gate like Sony did with the PS and taking over a lead spot in the industry is rare.
If they did that, it would be CENSORSHIP and they would be thrown out of office. Instead what they are doing is saving innocent kids from their terrible parents^H^H^H evil industry types who are trying to get kids to play sex games and learn how to commit mass murder.
You are against mass murder, aren't you?
If this gets passed, they will say in a year or two that it made a small "dent" but people found ways around the law or turned to other sources of violence (music, TV, movies). So that is when they will add on to the bill (which will be given a cute acronym like K.I.D.D.I.E. or named after a dog that was hit by a car by someone who had played GTA, thus "Spot's Law"). They will make the law more draconian and add new media types.
This will continue until people come to their senses, or the Californian government gets total censorship control over the media. The pendulum swings, it's up to the voters where it stops.
The article makes a great point. The RIAA gets to oversee music. The MPAA gets to oversee movies. The ESRB is impotent and the goverment must oversee games.
But next it will be music.
Then movies.
Then TV.
And the slope slickens (like that word? I think I invented it). This bugs me for many reasons, but two major one. First, the government shouldn't be in the business of censoring anything some little group doesn't like (once it's law, how long do you think it will be before any violence of any kind against any minority is instant grounds for a banning?). And second, of all the things we see (cursing and sex on network TV, violence, sexualizing of children, anti-religious sentiments, etc.) why is it VIDEO GAMES that we are working on? If the average kid plays 1 hour of video games a day (probably too high), and watches 3 hours of TV (probably too low, much of it "sexy" primetime), and sees 2 big movies a year (violent, "sexy"), and more houses have TVs than video games (for obvious reasons), which medium will have the most effect on kids psyches?
Right. The video games.
PS: Let's just ignore the fact that at the rate we're going video games are about the only place kids can see real conflict (especially in sports) since we wouldn't want to keep score in games or every let anything harm poor Billy or it might hurt his self esteem (until he is 18-21 unless he is a minority, at which point he is in the "real world" and his self-esteem be damned even though he was never taught any coping skills).
Sorry that got a little rant-y.
Really, I'd like to know about the interest in the Revolution, but I don't expect all that much until after the Tokyo Game Show (starts friday!) when Nintendo is expected to release more details. Once the Revolution is better known (games, prices (or at least a guess), etc) then the numbers will mean more.
Still, the XBox 360 has quite a buzz it seems.
You may also want to look into courses/certifications. For example get a book or two on RedHat's certification or any others and read through them (maybe even go after it).
I have cable right now, and wouldn't be able to surf if the power went out (even though I have a laptop). Wireless (not 11b, WiMax type) is the only way you can do that, and that assumes that the wireless device (repeater, router, whatever you want to call it) that your computer would connect to still has power (or has a backup).
This was a big PR chance. I heard in some areas the ONLY way to get messages passed (especially "Is my brother OK" type Health & Welfare traffic) was by hams.
Aren't HomePlug and BPL different, or have they merged, or what?
Plus, it didn't let me make a France joke ;)
Thinking instead of mindlessly repeating the garbage that some anti-war hippy is telling you might be smart.
Sure there isn't a USSR who could take out the entire country in one shot anymore, but one or two missiles is enough. One well placed nuke could kill/injure 10 million if it took out Los Angeles county. New york city has 8 million. Two nukes, well placed, could take out 18 million people. There are 295 million people in the US. That would be 16.39% of the US population. That is literally decimation. That is 50% more than decimation.
You think New Orleans is bad? There were what, 100,000 people left when the hurricane hit? We had 2/3 days to evacuate before it hit. We had that much warning. And the city is livable going forward. Compare that to a few hours notice. Millions dead. Millions injured. The area would be worthless thanks to fallout. Some of the largest and most important companies in the US could be gone. You think the post 9/11 recession was bad?
You don't have to take out half the country in one shot. Just take out LA, New York, or another large city (Seattle, San Fran., etc). If you can hit in the MIDDLE of the US (say Denver, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc) that would scare people even more.
North Korea, Iran, Terrorists, other states that haven't announced yet or are currently friends/neutral but could turn with an election or coup. Just because big bad USSR is gone doesn't make us safe from nuclear attacks.
As long as no other country builds an automatic retaliation system without telling us. I wonder where that idea would come from?
Note, not THIS movie.
But if I could buy Spiderman 2 and the Spiderman 2 game on one disc for $50 I would consider it over the $40 game. Or if I could buy a music game (something like Amplitude) and it had the music videos for all the tracks on the disc, I would be willing to pay more for that.
Now of course, they don't offer that. And licensed games basically are ALWAYS TERRIBLE. There are a handfull of exceptions (Spideman 1/2, for example), but by and large they are terrible. They'd still sell very well (those games always do, especially the ones for little kinds because the parents don't look into if the game is GOOD, it just matters that it has Spongebob).
The real problem is that the movie content takes up basically all the disc, so you'd need to ship it in a two disc package (one for the movie, and one for the game) which would just be an excuse to hike the price (but we have to make TWO discs!).
This could work well, especially if they could come up with some more creative uses, but based on this first effort it looks like it will be used to prop up failing movie properties with game demos. Hazaah.
So as long as you are making a glorified demo disc, how 'bout dropping the cruddy movie and selling a disc of 20 working demos of new games for $5 or $10? I am MUCH more likely to buy a game I've played (thus know the quality of) than one I haven't. Demos have done great things for many computer games (can you say Doom?). Now that we have the technology, I don't know why we don't see this more with video games. The DS and PSP can both do it (including wirelessly), and they game companies say they will do that, but they don't (at least not in the US, I hear the DS can get demos at various shops/kiosks and movies in Japan over wireless). I have broadband. Let me try a game if I want to? How does giving me a chance to get hooked hurt your bottom line?
Too bad so many of these companies aren't run by games, or anyone with half a clue. Bad movie + game demo = $60. Yeah right. More like this: bad movie + game demo = $5.
The last guy was a friend of the staff and just filled in. No real policy or leadership there (my guess) before. Now a new guy has come in and wants to change things. You're not going to be liked initially.
As another poster suggested, Macs are great. I'd try to force a change to them, but good luck. If you stay, you will be servicing old Windows boxes forever, and trying to get Linux to cover everything the old NT boxes did without anyone noticing (because they'll complain you changed something "for no reason").
Run.
It's the wild west. Anything goes. And there for, so will your money if you try. A combination of that and market saturation is probably blame. Free poker (where you don't bet real money) will probably continue to grow. But online casinos? They've probably peaked.
Thanks for the info.
Yup. I've though about that before, and that is kind of how I feel. I was there at just the right time for the SNES (which was a golden age in many ways), but I was there early enough to have an NES for two years or so before that.
As much as people may hate AOL (I do), they got more people onto the internet than anyone else (whether that is good or bad is up to you). You may not like Dragonball Z or some of the other things that Cartoon Network shows/showed, but for many people that was their first exposure to Anime (my was from the Sci-Fi channel, but they were a close second). Whether that is good or bad is up to you.
I agree that the "unwashed masses.. where they did not belong" part is a troll, but the PlayStation was the system that made gaming "cool" for adults (you can argue whether that was the system, the games, or just that was around the time many games who were raised on NESes became adults). It wasn't targeted exclusively at kids.
"PlayStation" has become the new "Nintendo". It is the word people use when they don't know the right one to describe video games. In the early 90s that seemed unfathomable. But I guess Nintendo took that title from Atarii.
But before that, I didn't have any money to save up to be able to buy a console. I had to beg for months to get an NES (check), beg for months to get an SNES (check), beg for months to get a GameBoy (check). I bought myself a GameGear later after the price came down and it had been out for a while, later got a Genesis for my birthday (2-3 years after launch).
I knew about the SNES launch ahead of time, but I couldn't afford one. The PS was the first console I knew the launch date of and was able to save up for and purchase at launch.
PS: I was only 5-6 when the Genesis came out? I didn't realize that. I guess I think of myself as becoming a gamer with the NES even though it was released when I was.. what... 1? I got in on the tail end of it, but I guess it doesn't seem like that to me.
Before the PlayStation (and Saturn, which never took off in the Sates and ended up a black sheep in my opinion), games came on carts. SNES carts, NES carts, Genesis carts.
Carts cost money. While back then it may have cost 10 cents to press a CD (just a guess), it cost $10 for a cart (again, a guess). And the more memory you put on, the more expensive the cart (remember the ads about how much data was packed into Donkey Kong Country?). With a CD, it didn't matter if you put 50 megs or 650 megs on, it cost the same.
You press a CD, then you sell it.
You burn the ROM chips for a cart. Then you make the circuit boards. Then you solder the two together. Then you add the little battery for saved games. Then you put in in the plastic cart. Then you label it. Then you sell it. Did I mention that Nintendo did all this so you had to pay them to do it?
The difference is in where the expense is: at the front (design, programming, etc) or the back (production). Not that making games was dirt cheap back then.
But for the rest of your point, you're right. Too many standards today? Yep (PS, PS2, GC, XBox, NGage, DS, GBA, PC, Mac, and anything else). Crippling uncertainty? Yep (but... that game is... new! We can't do that.... what if it doesn't sell? Just make Madden 2006 and Generic FPS 7 instead).
But the thing that the article really reminded me of was Jumping Flash. I loved that game and it's sequel. You played inside the Rab-bot (giant robotic rabbit) and jumped around in true 3D and shot and enemies and collected carrots and... something. It sounds kind of dumb but the game was fantastic (just a weird premise).
I discovered that game from the demo disc that came with the system. I still don't understand why they don't do this anymore. There was a little demo of it on the disc and I played that one level over and over and over until my local stores finally started carrying the game after it came out.
Not only did you get that demo disc, you also got a tech demo disc with things like showing tons of colored cubes (all the colors it could render), bouncing balls, a large walking T-Rex you could make growl and rotate around (to show off high poly counts, I think) and other such things.
But then there was the controller I never bought. On the box of the original PlayStation were pictures of games and peripherals you could get. One was a cool double-joystick. I didn't know what games it would be for, but I thought it was very neat. I kept waiting for that to come out, wondering what it would be used for. It never did come out, and about a year later I remember seeing a PlayStation box and they had changed the picture (it had obviously been canceled).
Of course, the PlayStation had innovations. It was TINY. I remember getting the thing home and being surprised how small it was. It was the size of a magazine which seemed unfathomable for some reason (although I suppose the SNES was about the same size). Maybe I thought that after seeing the large black brick that was the Saturn (I loved those "Theater of the Eye" commercials). The memory cards were a great idea. SNES games didn't need them, and the Saturn and Sega CD had built in memories in the system. You could backup to a memory cart, but it wasn't like the PlayStation where you could take your game data to someone else's house and you could BOTH have your data to play with (for a Saturn you could only have one cart, so only one player's data).
What a great system. Hard to believe that's 10 years old. So many great games too. The ones mentioned above, FF VII and IX, PaRapper, UmJamma Lammy, Crash Bandicoot (when it was good), Ape Escape, Ace Combat, and so many many more.
Anyway, I couldn't find the ticket to buy the thing so I asked an employee who was just coming on duty who had never heard of the PlayStation (imagine that happening today) and insisted they didn't sell such a thing. I had to show him the PS in the display case to prove it to him, but then he made me a ticket I could use to buy it.
I remember looking at the selection of games and wasn't immediately drawn to anything as a must have game. As I remember there was Battle Arena Toshinden, Tekken (something), Ridge Racer, and a few others. I bought Ridge Racer and BAT. A bit later I bought Rayman when it came out.
Ridge Racer I had never heard of, but I LOVED that game. Battle Arena Toshinden was a fantastic fighter (that was the first "3D" fighter I ever really played, even though it wasn't really 3D) and that was tons of fun. My brother and I got tons of time out of that.
Still ran until I sold it about two years ago when I was cleaning things out. Got TONS of hours out of that system.
The place where the HD would help the most would be if games were delivered via Internet which we may see later in this new generation.
I never bought a saturn because at that point I relied on my parents to buy my consoles and a $400+ Saturn would have been a hard sell. I wasn' that interested in one as there were only three games I can remember ever wanting: Clockwork Knight (probably terrible), Bug (bought for the PC for $5 a few years later), and Panzer Dragoon (supposed to be quite good). I'm sure there were other good games (I'd like to try Nights: Into Dreams) but there was never enough to make me want to buy the system. If the 3D sonic game that was previewed ever materialized, maybe I would have bought one. But all they released was Sonic R.
I was skeptical of MS, but they had Halo (which I wanted to try), Jet Set Radio Future (which I REALLY wanted), Shenmue 2 (which I really wanted), and a few others. They got the games I wanted.