No, the comparison does not fall flat. My choice of words could've been better. By "full holiday season" I meant that it had been out for the entire calendar year ("full-year" holiday season").
Comparing Holiday 2001 to Holiday 2007 for PS2 and PS3 is still valid as they are the same time period after launch.
I find it very difficult to believe that the PS3 will match or surpass the PS2's performance.
Simply put, the PS2 had a fantastic first full holiday season in 2001. Sure, it was competing against the Gamecube and the Xbox, but between those they had only two then-available killer apps: Halo and Super Smash Bros. Melee. The PS2 had a great library of titles: Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2, Devil May Cry and (depending on your market) Grand Theft Auto 3 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 or Gran Turismo 2 and Onimusha. And these were just the ones that sold over a million worldwide by year's end 2001. At the time, all but one of those (THPS3) were exclusive to Sony's machine.
Fast-forward to holiday season 2007. Final Fantasy XIII won't be here or in Europe in time for the holidays (remember, there's an 8-11 month lag after the initial Japanese release). Metal Gear Solid 4 will be here, but not in Europe (assuming standard delays). Devil May Cry isn't exclusive anymore and Grand Theft Auto IV comes out on multiple platforms at once. I'll be amazed if we get Gran Turismo before 2008's holiday season.
Meanwhile, the Wii may continue dominating in the untested non-gamer/casual market demographics, and the 360 will have a strong library of games, not to mention the new Halo title.
This does not mean doom for the PS3. They still have interesting titles. They still have Blu-Ray which with the release of Casino Royale is turning from an unnecessary add-on to something at least worth investigating further. This year, Sony has something they've never had before: real competition. The PS3 won't dominate the way the PS2 did in its second year. There will be a PS4. But they've burned a lot of marketshare as a result of their hubris, and their previous victory won't be repeated to the same extent this time.
With plenty of consoles left in the 220,000 strong initial shipment, it would appear that a strong supply is the key to launch victory. When you ship 2-3x more than your competitors, you're bound to sell more. I wonder how many 360s or Wiis would've been sold had they also shipped 220,000 units.
Microsoft and Nintendo can spin this another way: Xbox 360 and Wii are the only next-gen consoles to completely sell out of their initial shipment!
Well, yes, we're killing sheep but at leas the help is more relevant. A transplanted organ will work for years or decades - a worthy sacrfice. When I eat lambchops I'm hungry just a few hours later.
My experience with MMOs is pretty limited: I played some UO during the launch, played YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates for a few months, and tried Second Life once. My understanding is that, for the most part (and particularly WoW) they're about dungeon-leveling. Kill monsters, level up, kill bigger monsters, continue. There's not much variety in what you can do. The Ultima series (and to some extent Bethesda's Elder Scrolls) gave you some variety: you can spend hours, if not days, not killing monsters and still enjoy it. As the article mentions, there's other MMOs: puzzle ones, racing ones, sports ones, FPSs ones.
Well... what if all those were one and the same? More on that in a second. A quick look at MMOG Chart reveals the market to be, at most, about 15 million players. Considering the increasing popularity of the genre, increasing access to broadband worldwide, and economic conditions worldwide, the market will be increasing. Maybe some day there will be 30 million or 50 million MMO players.
What this means is that there's room for other types of games (I can see a Cabela's Big Game Hunt MMO as being appealing). If Ultima Online can survive a decade on 100,000 subscribers, we could see an explosion of focused , low-population MMOs if the overall market keeps increasing. It would just be a continuation of what we see today.
But back to my earlier question? Why do these all need to be separate games? Why can't they all be in one?
What if there was a game that combined all of these elements and let players decide what they wanted to do? I'll put my example in "real-world" terms but this would obviously be modified to sci-fi or fantasy terms as needed. Let's say you've got a dog breeder that wants to breed his prize dogs with a specific type of wild dog (this player largely plays a Nintendogs-type of sub-game). This wild dog is only found in a very dangerous nature reserve (dungeon) controlled by an enemy territory. He'd have to hire mercenaries to infiltrate and capture this animal (traditional combat MMO players). The enemy territory also has players protecting their resources.
Let's say something needs to be transported. Ordinarily, you might be able to use in-game methods (CPU controlled) but you may need to hire a smuggler to take it (combat driving game). The goal of this, the end result is to have a lot of different sub-communities while on the larger scale, you've got a lot of players you're interacting with.
I think that's the "next level" in MMOs and it would solve a lot of the problems with current ones (albeit introducing new ones).
I wonder how this device works. There's no information about it at Tenebraex's website, so it doesn't say. I know that in basic biology you learn that eyes are made up of rods and cones. Rods distinguish light and dark and cones distinguish color. Cones don't work very well in the dark. Rods do. So we can't "see" color as well in the dark. It's interesting that this is both a biological and a technological problem.
OK, I just ran pbrush.exe but I don't see any commands for establishing my network protection. It only gives me some tools for what seems to be a diagraming program.
Maybe I should read the article or the summary for more detail.
The New York Times did not proclaim him the godfather of sudoku. Maki Kaji proclaimed himself the godfather; Nikoli is not a person, it's the company. And godfather doesn't necessarily mean creator or originator. It means sponsor, or someone who brought something to wide acclaim and recognition. Kaji has the right to give himself that title if he wants, although it belongs to Wayne Gould just as much (who brought Sudoku to the UK).
That you're making a tempest out of a teacup is an understatement.
Not "yet"? It already happened over sixty years ago.
George Stinney was electrocuted at age 14 in South Carolina.
Of course, we fared better than England, were in the 1800s it was not uncommon to execute children (even young girls). The minimum age for death penalty at the time was eight years. It was finally raised to sixteen in 1908.
"Part of the secret of Apple TV is that, like most of Apple's products, it doesn't try to do everything and thus become a mess of complexity. It can't receive or record cable or satellite TV, so it isn't meant as a replacement for your cable or satellite box, or for a digital video recorder like a TiVo. It can't play DVDs, so it doesn't replace your DVD player. Its sole function is to bring to the TV digital content stored on your computer or drawn from the Internet."
All this for $299? You could theoretically buy an Xbox 360 for the same price and watch video stored on your computer downloaded from the internet or DVDs, or play games. For $399 (not Mossberg's "50% more"), you can watch video stored on your computer, play DVDs, play games, download games and demos, and download episodes of shows and movies as well as trailers, etc. You don't even need to have a controller plugged in. The remote will do just fine.
For $300, you could also buy an old Xbox, "convert" it to something similar, and still have money for a Tivo. And I'm sure there's dozens of other options (that I'm not aware of) that work just as well for less.
I'm not a fan of useless combination of features but AppleTV is far, far away from being a killer app, as are most set-top boxes.
But come off it, Microsoft. You don't release this data but I put dollars to donuts that the Xbox 360 is the most faulty console release in recent memory. I've seen reports of people on their sixth console. My only hope is that when my current Xbox 360 breaks and I get my fourth one, they give me a working replacement, not the crap they've unloaded over the past year and a half. (That's my only qualm with the 360).
It runs on a Garage Games engine. Xbox Live Arcade already has a game running on that engine: Marble Blast Ultra. Penny Arcade has themese up on XBLA and gamer pictures you can get.
I would be flabbergasted if it wasn't released on XBLA. It will, probably, come out a few months after its PC/Mac/Linux release.
Some take the risk but it's not across the board. Katamari Damacy had a great price on release, $30 or under if I recall. Even in the new gen, some titles come out much cheaper: take Test Drive Unlimited for the X360 for example. It's better than many $60 driving games but it was $40 on release.
You're completely right though: it should happen a lot more.
Because the title is confusing. The title should read something like "Most Optical Content Not Stable" - that would differentiate it from hard drives and magnetic tapes.
The thing is that we passed the $60 limit, in real dollars, a long time ago.
NES cartridges could be $45 back in the late 80's (possibly higher, I don't recall, just remember that as an average price point for new releases). Some games on the SNES were even more expensive: I distinctly remember seeing Mortal Kombat being advertised at $79.
Adjusting for inflation we're looking at $75-$105 prices nowadays. And outside of specialized collector's editions or games requiring additional hardware, we're not at that price.
Sure, games were more expensive back then because of the carts. But a game being on a cart or a disc didn't matter to most people. They weren't buying the physical media, they were buying the game.
That doesn't mean I agree every game should be $60. But game pricing over the past 25 years hasn't increased at the torrid pace some might complain about. Arcade pricing, on the other hand, has. Most arcade games should be about $0.50 now. Many are much higher.
I always wonder why companies rail against this "pirating" on YouTube which is predy ridiculous since YouTube is not and, in its current format, will never be a replacement for mass-market television. The problem is that if YouTube gets away with it, so can others. So they have to squash YouTube infringers, even if it's not really a threat.
The media companies themselves aren't stupid. Look at the All-Time Most Viewed on YouTube. We've got OK! Go (a band signed with Capitol Records/EMI, an RIAA member), Nike, SNL (NBC), My Chemical Romance (a band with Reprise, a Warner Bros. label, also an RIAA member). Record labels are on it, production companies/ film studios, and a heck of a lot of networks. Here's a short list of partners.
YouTube (and sites like it) should be treated a bit different than the Napster of old. It holds a lof of other advantages over "old piracy", all of which is extremely useful to owners of the copyright:
Not a worthwhile copy of the real thing. YouTube (as it is now) could never replicate seeing a movie in theatres, or on DVD, or even on cable. The quality is acceptable enough for its free price, but that's about it. Unlike pirated software copies or (to most people) MP3s, this is not a true "copy" of the product you sell.
Tracking, tracking, tracking. YouTube collects age and sex information. I don't know if they record this for each video being viewed, but what if CBS suddenly learned that one of its shows seemed extremely popular with females over 50? Let's say it was a show they didn't expect to fit that demographic (like the military drama The Unit). Maybe this will help them sell more advertising.
YouTube is soft DRM. It's easier to distribute a link to a file on YouTube than it is to distribute the file itself.
There's a lot more to this, of course. But networks (finally!) aren't being total idiots. As far as I know, the three major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) all let you stream shows for free through their sites. Other networks may be doing the same thing (to some extent, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, Comedy Central, and the Sci-Fi channel do this). I don't think YouTube is the be-all and end-all in matters of online media. I'm speaking alot about them just because they're referenced in the article and they're the 'Video_blog Portal 2.0' (or whatever) that I'm most familiar with.
It gives me some hope that user response seems about as positive as Napster and the media conglomerate's response has been a hell of a lot more tempered; consumers get content for free, media creators/owners/distributors lose less control. Sure, crazy DRM schemes still pop-up, but this gives me hope that we're progressing positively. I'll take non-intrusive DRM as long as it does no harm and I get content for less (or free), not for the same price or more.
There's Turtle Beach (Voyetra); I believe they make onboard solutions as well. I named that one only because that's what I have right now. Years ago I had another brand whose name I can't recall. But you're right. The other results on NewEgg were not familiar to me.
The answer for what Creative needs to do is simple. Continue making high end gaming and musician sound cards, and continue making onboard soundcards. I don't know if Creative makes any soundcards for console systems (or if consoles even need them), but that's another market area. There still has to be some value to the "SoundBlaster" brand.
Even if sound eventually goes into emulation and works mostly on software, they can still be market leaders as long as they change with the market.
(I believe Mr. Harrison first joined Sony's SCEA branch in 1996).
Phil, if you could go back in time and give professional advice to your 1996 self, what would you say? If you were to give professional advice to people interested in entering the industry today, what would it be?
Instead of an iPod, if you need music on the road, get a CD player or an AM/FM radio. When you need to listen to weather reports an FM radio will be more useful than an iPod. A camera is a good idea but think about the total number of pictures you need to take. Even if you only take 10 pictures a day, that's over 3000 pictures you'll be going through once you get back. Are you really going to do that? Is it useful in any way?
I wouldn't bother with a tripod or an SLR camera. Carry something like the equivalent of a Canon Elph. Small, lightweight.
I have to give it up for Sony. Playstation Home seems like something useful and it might even transcend its inherent gimmickry. It's not reason enough to buy a PS3, but it gives me hope that someone inside of SCEA knows what they're doing.
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No, the comparison does not fall flat. My choice of words could've been better. By "full holiday season" I meant that it had been out for the entire calendar year ("full-year" holiday season").
Comparing Holiday 2001 to Holiday 2007 for PS2 and PS3 is still valid as they are the same time period after launch.
I find it very difficult to believe that the PS3 will match or surpass the PS2's performance.
Simply put, the PS2 had a fantastic first full holiday season in 2001. Sure, it was competing against the Gamecube and the Xbox, but between those they had only two then-available killer apps: Halo and Super Smash Bros. Melee. The PS2 had a great library of titles: Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2, Devil May Cry and (depending on your market) Grand Theft Auto 3 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 or Gran Turismo 2 and Onimusha. And these were just the ones that sold over a million worldwide by year's end 2001. At the time, all but one of those (THPS3) were exclusive to Sony's machine.
Fast-forward to holiday season 2007. Final Fantasy XIII won't be here or in Europe in time for the holidays (remember, there's an 8-11 month lag after the initial Japanese release). Metal Gear Solid 4 will be here, but not in Europe (assuming standard delays). Devil May Cry isn't exclusive anymore and Grand Theft Auto IV comes out on multiple platforms at once. I'll be amazed if we get Gran Turismo before 2008's holiday season.
Meanwhile, the Wii may continue dominating in the untested non-gamer/casual market demographics, and the 360 will have a strong library of games, not to mention the new Halo title.
This does not mean doom for the PS3. They still have interesting titles. They still have Blu-Ray which with the release of Casino Royale is turning from an unnecessary add-on to something at least worth investigating further. This year, Sony has something they've never had before: real competition. The PS3 won't dominate the way the PS2 did in its second year. There will be a PS4. But they've burned a lot of marketshare as a result of their hubris, and their previous victory won't be repeated to the same extent this time.
Microsoft and Nintendo can spin this another way: Xbox 360 and Wii are the only next-gen consoles to completely sell out of their initial shipment!
Well, yes, we're killing sheep but at leas the help is more relevant. A transplanted organ will work for years or decades - a worthy sacrfice. When I eat lambchops I'm hungry just a few hours later.
My experience with MMOs is pretty limited: I played some UO during the launch, played YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates for a few months, and tried Second Life once. My understanding is that, for the most part (and particularly WoW) they're about dungeon-leveling. Kill monsters, level up, kill bigger monsters, continue. There's not much variety in what you can do. The Ultima series (and to some extent Bethesda's Elder Scrolls) gave you some variety: you can spend hours, if not days, not killing monsters and still enjoy it. As the article mentions, there's other MMOs: puzzle ones, racing ones, sports ones, FPSs ones.
Well... what if all those were one and the same? More on that in a second. A quick look at MMOG Chart reveals the market to be, at most, about 15 million players. Considering the increasing popularity of the genre, increasing access to broadband worldwide, and economic conditions worldwide, the market will be increasing. Maybe some day there will be 30 million or 50 million MMO players.
What this means is that there's room for other types of games (I can see a Cabela's Big Game Hunt MMO as being appealing). If Ultima Online can survive a decade on 100,000 subscribers, we could see an explosion of focused , low-population MMOs if the overall market keeps increasing. It would just be a continuation of what we see today.
But back to my earlier question? Why do these all need to be separate games? Why can't they all be in one?
What if there was a game that combined all of these elements and let players decide what they wanted to do? I'll put my example in "real-world" terms but this would obviously be modified to sci-fi or fantasy terms as needed. Let's say you've got a dog breeder that wants to breed his prize dogs with a specific type of wild dog (this player largely plays a Nintendogs-type of sub-game). This wild dog is only found in a very dangerous nature reserve (dungeon) controlled by an enemy territory. He'd have to hire mercenaries to infiltrate and capture this animal (traditional combat MMO players). The enemy territory also has players protecting their resources.
Let's say something needs to be transported. Ordinarily, you might be able to use in-game methods (CPU controlled) but you may need to hire a smuggler to take it (combat driving game). The goal of this, the end result is to have a lot of different sub-communities while on the larger scale, you've got a lot of players you're interacting with.
I think that's the "next level" in MMOs and it would solve a lot of the problems with current ones (albeit introducing new ones).
I wonder how this device works. There's no information about it at Tenebraex's website, so it doesn't say. I know that in basic biology you learn that eyes are made up of rods and cones. Rods distinguish light and dark and cones distinguish color. Cones don't work very well in the dark. Rods do. So we can't "see" color as well in the dark. It's interesting that this is both a biological and a technological problem.
OK, I just ran pbrush.exe but I don't see any commands for establishing my network protection. It only gives me some tools for what seems to be a diagraming program.
Maybe I should read the article or the summary for more detail.
Nah...
The New York Times did not proclaim him the godfather of sudoku. Maki Kaji proclaimed himself the godfather; Nikoli is not a person, it's the company. And godfather doesn't necessarily mean creator or originator. It means sponsor, or someone who brought something to wide acclaim and recognition. Kaji has the right to give himself that title if he wants, although it belongs to Wayne Gould just as much (who brought Sudoku to the UK).
That you're making a tempest out of a teacup is an understatement.
Not "yet"? It already happened over sixty years ago.
George Stinney was electrocuted at age 14 in South Carolina.
Of course, we fared better than England, were in the 1800s it was not uncommon to execute children (even young girls). The minimum age for death penalty at the time was eight years. It was finally raised to sixteen in 1908.
All this for $299? You could theoretically buy an Xbox 360 for the same price and watch video stored on your computer downloaded from the internet or DVDs, or play games. For $399 (not Mossberg's "50% more"), you can watch video stored on your computer, play DVDs, play games, download games and demos, and download episodes of shows and movies as well as trailers, etc. You don't even need to have a controller plugged in. The remote will do just fine.
For $300, you could also buy an old Xbox, "convert" it to something similar, and still have money for a Tivo. And I'm sure there's dozens of other options (that I'm not aware of) that work just as well for less.
I'm not a fan of useless combination of features but AppleTV is far, far away from being a killer app, as are most set-top boxes.
Penny Arcade is somewhat spot-on with their view that the new $479 X360 is competing against the $599 PS3 since the $499 PS3 is becoming increasingly rare in retail locations.
But come off it, Microsoft. You don't release this data but I put dollars to donuts that the Xbox 360 is the most faulty console release in recent memory. I've seen reports of people on their sixth console. My only hope is that when my current Xbox 360 breaks and I get my fourth one, they give me a working replacement, not the crap they've unloaded over the past year and a half. (That's my only qualm with the 360).
What? Habbo Hotel? Even their website states they only have like 3,750 users online. I'm not sure that was the best example.
It runs on a Garage Games engine. Xbox Live Arcade already has a game running on that engine: Marble Blast Ultra. Penny Arcade has themese up on XBLA and gamer pictures you can get.
I would be flabbergasted if it wasn't released on XBLA. It will, probably, come out a few months after its PC/Mac/Linux release.
Some take the risk but it's not across the board. Katamari Damacy had a great price on release, $30 or under if I recall. Even in the new gen, some titles come out much cheaper: take Test Drive Unlimited for the X360 for example. It's better than many $60 driving games but it was $40 on release.
You're completely right though: it should happen a lot more.
Because the title is confusing. The title should read something like "Most Optical Content Not Stable" - that would differentiate it from hard drives and magnetic tapes.
The thing is that we passed the $60 limit, in real dollars, a long time ago.
NES cartridges could be $45 back in the late 80's (possibly higher, I don't recall, just remember that as an average price point for new releases). Some games on the SNES were even more expensive: I distinctly remember seeing Mortal Kombat being advertised at $79.
Adjusting for inflation we're looking at $75-$105 prices nowadays. And outside of specialized collector's editions or games requiring additional hardware, we're not at that price.
Sure, games were more expensive back then because of the carts. But a game being on a cart or a disc didn't matter to most people. They weren't buying the physical media, they were buying the game.
That doesn't mean I agree every game should be $60. But game pricing over the past 25 years hasn't increased at the torrid pace some might complain about. Arcade pricing, on the other hand, has. Most arcade games should be about $0.50 now. Many are much higher.
The media companies themselves aren't stupid. Look at the All-Time Most Viewed on YouTube. We've got OK! Go (a band signed with Capitol Records/EMI, an RIAA member), Nike, SNL (NBC), My Chemical Romance (a band with Reprise, a Warner Bros. label, also an RIAA member). Record labels are on it, production companies/ film studios, and a heck of a lot of networks. Here's a short list of partners.
YouTube (and sites like it) should be treated a bit different than the Napster of old. It holds a lof of other advantages over "old piracy", all of which is extremely useful to owners of the copyright:
There's a lot more to this, of course. But networks (finally!) aren't being total idiots. As far as I know, the three major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) all let you stream shows for free through their sites. Other networks may be doing the same thing (to some extent, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, Comedy Central, and the Sci-Fi channel do this). I don't think YouTube is the be-all and end-all in matters of online media. I'm speaking alot about them just because they're referenced in the article and they're the 'Video_blog Portal 2.0' (or whatever) that I'm most familiar with.
It gives me some hope that user response seems about as positive as Napster and the media conglomerate's response has been a hell of a lot more tempered; consumers get content for free, media creators/owners/distributors lose less control. Sure, crazy DRM schemes still pop-up, but this gives me hope that we're progressing positively. I'll take non-intrusive DRM as long as it does no harm and I get content for less (or free), not for the same price or more.
There's Turtle Beach (Voyetra); I believe they make onboard solutions as well. I named that one only because that's what I have right now. Years ago I had another brand whose name I can't recall. But you're right. The other results on NewEgg were not familiar to me.
The answer for what Creative needs to do is simple. Continue making high end gaming and musician sound cards, and continue making onboard soundcards. I don't know if Creative makes any soundcards for console systems (or if consoles even need them), but that's another market area. There still has to be some value to the "SoundBlaster" brand.
Even if sound eventually goes into emulation and works mostly on software, they can still be market leaders as long as they change with the market.
It used a skateboard and common cans of whipped cream. It never did propel me anywhere, but it was delicious.
(I believe Mr. Harrison first joined Sony's SCEA branch in 1996).
Phil, if you could go back in time and give professional advice to your 1996 self, what would you say?
If you were to give professional advice to people interested in entering the industry today, what would it be?
Instead of an iPod, if you need music on the road, get a CD player or an AM/FM radio. When you need to listen to weather reports an FM radio will be more useful than an iPod. A camera is a good idea but think about the total number of pictures you need to take. Even if you only take 10 pictures a day, that's over 3000 pictures you'll be going through once you get back. Are you really going to do that? Is it useful in any way?
I wouldn't bother with a tripod or an SLR camera. Carry something like the equivalent of a Canon Elph. Small, lightweight.
And for god's sakes don't take a laptop.
If I had it my way, I'd have double daylight savings time and just make it permanent. So what if the sun doesn't come out until 10AM in the winter?
I have to give it up for Sony. Playstation Home seems like something useful and it might even transcend its inherent gimmickry. It's not reason enough to buy a PS3, but it gives me hope that someone inside of SCEA knows what they're doing.
Who pays for trailers and demos?