i don't think strength of first-party titles have anything to do with how well third-party titles will sell. I don't believe Halo's strength as a FPS has dampened the market for other xbox FPS, nor will Wind Waker's sales affect square's new rpg on the GC. (i can't honestly name a first-party sony title. they have a few notable exclusives, but that's not quite the same thing)
The factors that repel third parties from Nintendo are their tendency toward content control (they've made positive changes on this front, but they still have the stigma due their past), their high royalty rate, their propietary storage medium (higher production costs for publishers), and their lack of timeliness in delivering development kits.
sony broke open the 3rd party developer market originally by providing a pc-based development kit with industry-standard hardware, great tools and low royalties (compared to nintendo) with the original playstation.
Microsoft followed suit with low royalties, great tools, and standard storage - plus its architecture lured over 3rd party port developers with pc licenses. Granted sony regressed a bit with weak development tools on the ps2- but it was still a better overall deal than nintendo.
its just that now with Nintendo actually in competition against a roughly-equal-sized opponent and a much more massive opponent - it's developer-unfriendly business practices simply aren't being tolerated like they used to.
Though it's notable that they did cut their royalty rates last year, and have publicly eaten crow over the bad timing in shipping dev kits. Maybe they're already making the necessary changes - maybe it's too little too late *shrug*
but all of those reasons are utlimately conjecture (IANAconsoleDeveloper - though I have friends who are). The only thing any of us can know for certain is software sales and releases (due the monthly charts).
and nintendo doesn't seem to have considerably improved its position with number of releases, or game sales.
It's notable however that though Nintendo's profits nose-dived in Q2 last year, they'd corrected the trend, so they aren't a sinking ship. they aren't going to be bankrupted out of the game like Sega was. They'll only leave if they feel like they can get better profits on a different investment.
the idea that Nintendo will leave the hardware business comes from the common belief that if trends continue the way they're going, Nintendo will decide the money spent developing and marketing a console just isn't worth it. Not when they could theoretically sell their fantastic 1st party games to both leading console vendors and more than triple their potential market.
analysts look at the potential profits of a cross-platform Sunshine, Kart, Metroid or Wind Waker -- and note that the profit margin for Nintendo would be much much higher.
it isn't actually based on whether Nintendo can reverse the trends - it's all just armchair-commentary on what looks like a sure thing on paper.
As for the next console generation, it will definitely be based around the tried-and-true 'bigger better faster more'. More polygons, more color depth, more memory, and more storage.
On top of that, they're most likely going to roll in more online capabilities, more network integration capabilities, and quite possibly PVR capability.
You can get a gist of what MS has planned by taking a preview of the feature list for DirectX Next.
There's at least another generation (after the upcoming) or two of simply upselling graphics. Perhaps someone will go for an even bigger optical disc (like blu-ray or some such) next generation, but that's not likely.
VR will be a pipe-dream alongside flying cars for a long time yet.
i don't really know or care who's going to be winning the race in 5 or even 10 years. but i don't see any reason to think the overall trends in console hardware advancement won't continue for as long as they can. no-one has really done anything but pump graphics and move to bigger/cheaper storage for the past 20 years. the only real innovation has been sony's dual-function ps2, that provided cheap dvd capability to a market that was ready for it.
which is very similar to the situation if someone released a console/pvr in 05/06. Which is the basis for why i think that's even possible to begin with. Sony has to recognize that if MS tries it, they might usurp market control. So Sony has to match it (or call them on it, and hope they're bluffing).
Judging by the creation and sales-rate of the PSX, it looks like Sony is matching.
I never attacked Nintendo, I was just pointing out that the press release isn't for you and me, it doesn't say anything, and that no considerable changes in the trends have resulted from the increased market-share.
Yes, Nintendo is well-above 'healthy' as a corporation because of it's complete and utter dominance of the portable market and solid sales of excellent first-party games.
and the simple fact that Nintendo is losing money on each console (regardless of whether it's a penny or a dollar or a hundred) simply means that the console sales by themselves do not generate profit. Therefore analysts won't care how many of them you sell. My statement is still valid.
I never said that their increased GC sales were a net negative for the company - I merely said that their increased GC sales haven't been shown to be changing the minds of analysts (who believe the GC is a lame duck system like the Dreamcast was), or third party developers (who've been announcing they're no longer making GC games in no small number).
I listed Sony > Microsoft > Nintendo purely as the order that the market analysts consider them in, and the order according to 3rd party developer support and 3rd party software sales.
Try to be a bit less defensive, and stick to what people actually type, instead of responding to what they didn't type.
these kinds of press releases are primarily for stockholders, analysts, and 3rd party developers. even though fanboys may love to use this crap for their pissing contests, it isn't aimed at them.
of course, analysts don't really care about market share won by severely cutting prices. particularly if the increased market share doesn't result in significantly increased software sales. (which is yet to be seen despite the quantity of GC's sold)
The interesting part though is how console installed base correlation to total software sales tapers off more quickly than hardware sales.
Every ps2 game released should outsell every GC or xbox title 5 to 1 at least due the sheer size of the installed base. but the monthly numbers haven't shown that to be a trend over the last two years. Just as the monthly numbers haven't shown a significant increase in GC game sales due their new, larger, installed base. It just seems the new price is pulling in people who are only buying 1 or 2 of the already existing superhits (prime, wind waker, sunshine).
and so long as console makers lose money on each box - analysts by and large won't care about installed base. they only follow 3rd party developer movement and software sales. (nintendo may have been making money on each GC at $200, but it's extremely doubtful they still did at $150, let alone $100).
so the question is: are third party developers going to throw more titles toward nintendo now that they have a larger installed base? and, will the lower price actually result in significant software sales growth?
If not, then this article only tries to put up a rosy picture for the shareholders, though it'll have no real effect on the existing trends. ( sony > ms > nintendo )
as usual -- all opinions are objective - and mine is always more accurate than yours. [/sarcasm]
The things you own, own you
while I initially disagreed with this statement, upon seeing this 'brand loyalty' BS extend into 'my dad can beat up your dad'-style arguments online, i'm inclined to believe that for most people - it is absolutely true.
if this product is aimed at allowing amateur and indie content creation for their console, it might just sell me a gamecube. however, i'm hesitant to believe that.
particularly since Nintendo has historically been the most restrictive console maker in terms of which games and which publishers are allowed to create games for their systems. They've always attempted to control the 'quality level' of their product, to protect its image. (eg: lack of GTA-ish titles, censored bmx xxx, etc) Conker is perhaps the only bigname exception to this rule, but either it didn't turn out to be a very good game, or it wasn't hyped when it actually released -because after its E3 debut, I didn't hear peep about it.
But their attitude contrasts with MS and Sony who seem content to let 3rd parties throw handfuls of shiat at the wall to see what sticks.
Then consider the GameCube's proprietary media and relatively small storage peripherals (memory cards). unless they have a burner included and are confident it won't lead to game piracy, a content-creation strategy would likely require an entirely dedicated platform; a self contained creation and consumption device.
but it certainly could result in market-creation - about the only growth avenue open in the overall-down Japanese economy.
So sure, I'm pessimistic - particularly with their previous innovation track record (robbie the robot, exercise pad, powerglove, virtual boy).
But if what you say is true - that would definitely be a welcome solution to the lack of an indy market (and mod culture) for console gaming.
you mean like public/private key pairs for RFID transmission? if they didn't already do something like this, I'd be fairly surprised.
of course people have no qualms with handing their credit card to any kid in a smock, and swiping a credit card number from their machines is no-tech/no-cost/no-brained compared to an RFID receiver.
then there's the lack of an increase in car-theft that followed the proliferation of rf key fobs to lock/unlock car doors.
perhaps the hard cap of people willing to commit meat-space crimes has already been reached - regardless of the level of technology? particularly when they can still easily perform the same type of theft without even knowing what rfid is?
aside from all that, credit card theft leaves the burden of proof on the bank - not me. it's their money that's in limbo while the issue is up in the air. with debit, theft can result in the money being gone from my account until they can resolve the issue. a much more worrying situation. particularly considering the average speed of bank investigations when it's your money on the line.
so while i would be extremely hesitant to tie an rf payment fob to a debit card, i'm open to the idea of tying it to a credit card probably even without strong encryption.
of course i'm already hesitant to use debit cards for the same reason. particularly since i've yet to find a vendor who actually requires the pin to be entered. though admittedly i don't use it much.
Game development is deadlocked today. Games have grown in pursuit of more beautiful graphics and more complex systems for 20 years, but that growth is no longer translating into success, and games have stopped selling. The situation won't change if we keep expanding in a conventional way. Instead, we want to offer a gameplay experience which players haven't encountered until now.
This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.
And it also feels just odd to hear the implication, that innovation in games can't continue without their new hardware, from a Nintendo guy.
It comes off like a suggestion that writers can't continue to churn out new and exciting books without adding whiz-bang 'pop-up' technology.
yeah, i was referring to all consoles combined. granted i think the reason that the two biggest name western-styled rpgs are on the xbox is because of the harddrive, but i digress.
and the point of not simply automatically adding a pc port, is that (i believe) the PC will be an increasingly small slice of the overall market, and (its been proven) the costs for compatibility testing, performance testing and support are orders of magnitude higher.
naturally all the super-popular games will get ported to as many systems as possible, regardless of genre. but I think in the future, the more-risky RPGs like dungeon siege will be made first on the console, and if less-popular, likely never ported. (risky as defined by being from an unproven team, an unproven license, an unproven gameplay design, etc)
as for the overall top x RPGs, my point is simply that there are more RPGs from consoles up there than there have been historically. and i believe they will continue to grow. Again, i'm not saying PC RPGs are going away, or should go away or even could go away (they're here to stay). All I'm saying is that the market trend is toward them becoming a smaller percentage of total RPG sales - despite its likely remaining an ever-more-profitable niche itself.
As for the technical barrier -- well KotOR is essentially halfway between NWN and Baldur's Gate. (NWN with full inventory control of henchmen) After playing it, I don't see how someone cuold make a bad interface for an RPG like BG. All they have to do is copy what bioware did with Knights, and it'll be beyond good enough.
After playing Morrowwind on the xbox, I might have wondered if it were possible to do an interface that didn't feel bulky. But after Knights -- well it's just one of those games that shows up and defines the default controls for a genre. (eg: doom's 'wasd', console FPS dual-thumbstick controls, etc)
I'll grant you that I'm not infallible, and I have no crystal ball and there's a gigantic chance that my guesses about market development will wind up very wrong.
but KotOR obviates any concern for the technical feasibility of a western-style RPG interface on a console. (not to mention that eastern rpgs largely have the same interface requirements and have done well themselves ever since the Famicom)
western style PC RPGS won't decline in popularity. not by totals anyway. i believe that due to growth in gaming overall they'll likely always be in a growing market (barring dry spells like the early 90s).
But I believe that western-style RPGs will grow much faster on the console than they will on the PC, and they will eventually (relatively soon) eclipse the PC market as the preferred platform.
Excepting, of course, games that already thrive on player-made content. Which, while technically possible, I concede will be likely postponed on the console side as the business barriers are worked out. Frankly, someone would have to be a central authority to host the content on a proprietary console network. So they'd need their bandwidth costs covered at least. If that's to work, it needs to be approached as a revenue stream to at least be self-sustaining. Therefore, the hoster would be incentivized to keep the vast majority of player-made shlock off the system - to save bandwidth and stop people from downloading 1 crappy mod and thinking none of it's any good.
So someone has to rate, sort, host and charge for this content - and they'll have to figure out a legal/financial system to compensate the authors and work out rights. But i digress.
Back to my original point: consoles now have no technical barriers to presenting a modern western-style RPG. The console market being much larger - it is only to be expected that RPG developers and gamers (the people who only care about story, not technical merits) will gravitate toward the more stable, less quirky, lower cost (for both parties) system.
Where the reaction begins has no bearing on the danger the reactor poses; again, it's an education issue.
The danger in the event of catastrophic failure comes solely from a possible dispersal of the fissile material.
We have reactor designs now that simply can not result in the reaction going critical. It'd actually be much safer now than it was in the 70s.
The only reason you're not allowed to talk about these things, even to educate the public, is the same reason you're not allowed to promote nuclear power generation. It's simply career suicide for any public official to broach the subject.
Provided the radiation from their rocket stays at what the specs suggest, this is no more inherently dangerous than the operation of any of the dozens of nuclear reactors currently commissioned in the united states. (not counting nuclear naval craft)
The public's irrational fear of all things nuclear is the only opponent that killed nuclear technology. It has nothing to do with actual science or statistical risk.
Funny, all the old space probes had nuclear powerplants and that all worked out just fine.
This is an education issue mainly.
If people can believe we have designed black boxes that survive being slammed into the Pennsylvania crust at 400 mph or the disintegration of its containing shuttle at 30000 feet - why is it a stretch to believe we can make a containment system for fissile material that would survive even catastrophic launch failure?
1. I agree completely: display resolution is the absolute last built-in advantage that PCs have. They will always have the de facto performance crown, certainly. Still, it's certain that the next generation will have the horsepower to drive a great picture at 1080i and 720p. This advantage is one that won't be held for very long, imo (if at all past the next hardware generation).
2. player-made content is huge, I'll grant you that. but it can be done, particularly with the harddrives and network access. true, a publisher still has to decide to do it, but it is not an option that must be taken off the shelf if a developer decides to develop for the console.
3. the controls for a RTS simply don't work on a controller. I'll grant you that. Goblin Commander for the xbox has a pretty interesting approach that works fairly well, but it would break down long before you got to managing the number of units that *craft games handle easily.
I do however disagree with your FPS control opinion. I was a strict PC FPS fan for quite some time. But I bought an xbox (initially for mod-potential, but lo and behold: it's got worthwhile games too).
And frankly, I hated the controls as I played Halo for about the first 4 hours. Of course it's not as 'precise' as a mouse or trackball, but i'm starting to wonder whether that matters? Varying display sizes and varying polling-rates on PC FPS create some of the biggest discrepancies with player potential in those games. Yes, you will hit your target more often with mouse+kb. But if you can do well enough with a controller, and the playing field is level, does it really matter?
Clearly personal preference keeps many PC FPS fans from ever considering the console, and I'd never consider any opinion or preference 'wrong' -- but I don't think the control scheme for console FPS is deficient in any manner.
the RPG market overall is certainly growing - but of considerable interest is the way the console market for western-styled RPGs ballooned this past year.
As I said, I doubt any gaming market will die (i predict no 'end' for anything) and indeed due market growth overall I think they'll probably all continue to expand.
But I do believe the rate of expansion, and the total market size will be shifted in favor of console RPGs rather than PC RPGs in the coming years.
imo no game interface 'needs' any particular peripheral.
some games likely do better with a keyboard and mouse, simply because they have more, accessible keys for binding and various use. Real-time strategy games and realistic vehicle sims accentuate the usefulness of the keyboard -- no other genre does.
quite frankly i've seen more PC games with bad user interfaces than console games. Having that many buttons available is generally an invitation for disaster. For an RPG, where twitch is not necessary, having an intuitive 2 or 3 button sequence isn't any worse than memorizing one of 50-odd keyboard keys or custom binding the number row.
Specifically there is no part of an RPG interface that cannot be done well without a mouse and keyboard. Direct ports of a PC-game's user interface are likely problematic -- and if no attempt is made at reworking the UI, i'd call it half-assed as well. But if a UI is designed with a controller in mind, there seems to be no barrier (excepting again realistic flight sims and rts).
unless you think console rpgs have never had conversation trees, spellcasting or inventory. (patently absurd assertion)
No part of the KotOR interface, an RPG that includes all those elements, is what i'd consider a 'chore'. And that is without even mentioning the vast array of RPGs that came before it with adequate control schemes for those 3 oh-so-common elements.
This is quite likely similar to my long-held belief regarding the massmog Horizons.
It isn't necessarily a hoax per se, no-one is going to be pointing and laughing.
Rather it's more like a scam. An attempt to use the overly hungry and journalistically naive hardcore gaming media to push their non-existant product with big promises. Promise the moon, mock up some renders, build up the buzz, sell. Who cares if the product never materializes? the money sure did.
Quite frankly what would it take Infinium to make a 'playable' prototype unit? 1 slickly designed custom case, standard pc parts, a neat 3d demo and mockups of potential menus. Horizons similarly licensed a 3d engine and had some artists mock up a few of their promises to look good in still images.
The difference is, the David Allen feller behind Horizons simply promised the moon and stars, grew the marketability of the product, and got bought out. He never implied partnership with other corporations, let alone dozens of corporations.
Infinium may be crossing the bounds of shameless and jumping squarely into the illegal by trying to build their name through unlicensed implications and declarations about the involvement of established gaming developers and publishers.
So no, I don't expect them to put out a press release in 4 months saying 'April Fools!'. Rather, I expect for someone to eventually be suckered into investing into this idea, and after a year or so having to quietly put out a press release saying: yolk's on us folks, it doesn't exist and never did.
not entirely anyhow. Eastern-styled RPGs have been largely console-centric since the days of the Famicom. So this is more directly about the growth in popularity of western-styled RPGs on the consoles.
I think the main cause of the popularity explosion is developers are finally finding the western-styled rpg market in the console arena. They're learning that you can sell console players Morrowind and Knights of the Old Republic.
The only reason that these rpgs weren't on consoles in the past has been storage. Consoles prior to this generation didn't have enough storage to handle the content without having to switch a multitude of discs, something the average player does not want to do. Nor did they have appropriate storage for the massive save-game sizes western RPGs are known to generate.
Now however, that roadblock is gone (at least for the xbox this generation, and probably all systems in the next). It is only natural that RPG developers, the guys who always cared about story over all else, are gravitating toward the platform that lets them concentrate even more on story, and not worry about minimum system requirements, or compatibility.
RPGs on the PC will survive this turn in popularity like all other PC-gaming genres, sports, shooters, et al. They'll shrink in market share, but remain. I don't think PC gaming will ever die, just as mac gaming has never died. But it certainly will lose the edge it has held in the past.
with PCs losing their last vestiges of hardware advantage over consoles (namely harddrives and network adapters), there is less and less justification for publishers to ignore the console market under some illusion of console-gamer predisposition to action.
If the content is meant to be read, it will be copied, regardless of the scheme used. the instructions for what the protection scheme is looking for to determine authenticity of the media are right in the executable. you've handed the map to your stash right to the treasure hunters - it's all a matter of time.
the only situation that can get you around this, and even then it's largely temporary, is if the software has to be 'enabled' by a central authority to operate each time. Eg. CD Key schemes for online games.
however, for most software/media content it is not at all feasible to ask your customer to be online every time they want to use your product.
and in reality, the code used on the client to request and verify the 'activation' is once again, right there on the client system. the untrusted system. at the heart, every software protection scheme can be circumvented with a single altered jump statement.
the -best- you can do is to isolate 'pirated' copies of your product from the rest of your online community. and at the same time, you've spent millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours on a situation that isn't even proven to 'protect' sales.
'lost' sales to piracy is a vague amount that is touted by software protection vendors - but no-one has ever shown (via scientific study) that using a product like SafeDisc will net you more sales than if you hadn't used it. on top of that, no-one has studied whether any such possible increase in revenue could even cover the cost of implementing and supporting the copy protection scheme in the first place.
'palladium' is based on the idea that the client can be a trusted member of a conversation, but frankly, that isn't a very safe assumption in any situation where the client doesn't have to participate in the conversation to be useful.
as long as it's technically possible to run a self-signed application (think anyone with a development certificate), the client will be hacked. that all code must be signed may keep the binary from being anonymously distributed, but it can not and will not prohibit the data and source patch from being distributed.
all palladium allows is, once again, the ability to cordon off 'pirated' copies of your software from the rest of your online community. if it's useful as standalone software - it just won't help.
xbox-live is surprisingly similar to the rest of internet gaming. the communities form on a per-game basis.
all MS has to do is release a game that is little more than a collection of live-enabled popular card games, and they'll have the community they want.
it will be no more reflective of the 'community' you find in xbl cstrike, than yahoo games is of the PC fps 'community'.
the primary difference between xbl and regular internet gaming, is that MS is the controlling authority in a pseudonymous (not even remotely annonymous) online environment. in the rest of internet gaming, banning one asshat simply means he'll crop up somewhere else with very little hassle to him and he'll continue annoying people.
with xbox-live, at the very least an asshat has to shell out another $50 for another live account, and there's some discussion that MS blocks the credit card used to register a banned account, and possibly all cards issued to that individual.
xbox live is much more suited to actually delivering a community of reasonable people than anywhere else. If you'd ever tried playing a game that doesn't appeal to as many kiddies (ghost recon has many fewer kiddies than cstrike) you'd realize how easy it will be for them.
the only trick to for MS is figuring out how to get enough people online and playing, say, their card games. perhaps allowing people to play between xbox live and the MSN Zone.
and despite your assertion, the xbox communicator exists simply because you need to communicate to enjoy multiplayer games. and if you hadn't noticed, there's no keyboard.
ad hominem attacks are always much easier than providing a refutation of the issues brought up.
but of course, one of his criticisms of the field is that the people within it do not care to ever explain anything to people who do not know their jargon, nor do they ever feel it necessary to defend questions of their field with explanation. but that's truly a crticism of the people who work in the field, not the ideas and tenets of postmodernist literary criticism itself. and it's just as valid a critique of engineering in most cases. The dismissive superiority, the aloofness, it's not helpful.
the primary thing the author was pointing out is the postmodern logic trap: when everything is subjective, there can be no objective, logical measure for correctness or quality -- which is unique in all academia, and distinctly foreign to engineers.
Truly this is not even a critique as much as a giant warning sign that conventional logic isn't helpful in this territory. He may be implying a value judgement on this aspect, but if the reader isn't feeling defensive, there's no reason to consider it as vicious, superior, or confrontational.
The entire piece was just a tongue-in-cheek barb toward the other academic extreme pointing out: "hey, if you guys don't learn how to communicate your ideas to the rest of us, we're going to make fun of you the way you all make fun of us."
ironic that the objective extreme should quarrel with the subjective extreme, over which side is too isolated from the bulk of society.
'roll your own' solutions using open source software will always have better features than their closed-source competitors.
this goes for mythTV vs Tivo,replaytv,psx, et al as well.
but they will never be the product of choice for the mass market. so it doesn't matter who beats whom to the punch. it only matters (in the money making sense) who can deliver the best product to the largest market.
and if the xbox can do pvr and games, then i'll feel alot better about giving it to my mother-in-law than setting her up a mythTV box with an emulator -- even though that's what is sitting under my tv right now.
Slashdot Mirror
i don't think strength of first-party titles have anything to do with how well third-party titles will sell. I don't believe Halo's strength as a FPS has dampened the market for other xbox FPS, nor will Wind Waker's sales affect square's new rpg on the GC. (i can't honestly name a first-party sony title. they have a few notable exclusives, but that's not quite the same thing)
The factors that repel third parties from Nintendo are their tendency toward content control (they've made positive changes on this front, but they still have the stigma due their past), their high royalty rate, their propietary storage medium (higher production costs for publishers), and their lack of timeliness in delivering development kits.
sony broke open the 3rd party developer market originally by providing a pc-based development kit with industry-standard hardware, great tools and low royalties (compared to nintendo) with the original playstation.
Microsoft followed suit with low royalties, great tools, and standard storage - plus its architecture lured over 3rd party port developers with pc licenses. Granted sony regressed a bit with weak development tools on the ps2- but it was still a better overall deal than nintendo.
its just that now with Nintendo actually in competition against a roughly-equal-sized opponent and a much more massive opponent - it's developer-unfriendly business practices simply aren't being tolerated like they used to.
Though it's notable that they did cut their royalty rates last year, and have publicly eaten crow over the bad timing in shipping dev kits. Maybe they're already making the necessary changes - maybe it's too little too late *shrug*
but all of those reasons are utlimately conjecture (IANAconsoleDeveloper - though I have friends who are). The only thing any of us can know for certain is software sales and releases (due the monthly charts).
and nintendo doesn't seem to have considerably improved its position with number of releases, or game sales.
It's notable however that though Nintendo's profits nose-dived in Q2 last year, they'd corrected the trend, so they aren't a sinking ship. they aren't going to be bankrupted out of the game like Sega was. They'll only leave if they feel like they can get better profits on a different investment.
the idea that Nintendo will leave the hardware business comes from the common belief that if trends continue the way they're going, Nintendo will decide the money spent developing and marketing a console just isn't worth it. Not when they could theoretically sell their fantastic 1st party games to both leading console vendors and more than triple their potential market.
analysts look at the potential profits of a cross-platform Sunshine, Kart, Metroid or Wind Waker -- and note that the profit margin for Nintendo would be much much higher.
it isn't actually based on whether Nintendo can reverse the trends - it's all just armchair-commentary on what looks like a sure thing on paper.
As for the next console generation, it will definitely be based around the tried-and-true 'bigger better faster more'. More polygons, more color depth, more memory, and more storage.
On top of that, they're most likely going to roll in more online capabilities, more network integration capabilities, and quite possibly PVR capability.
You can get a gist of what MS has planned by taking a preview of the feature list for DirectX Next.
There's at least another generation (after the upcoming) or two of simply upselling graphics. Perhaps someone will go for an even bigger optical disc (like blu-ray or some such) next generation, but that's not likely.
VR will be a pipe-dream alongside flying cars for a long time yet.
i don't really know or care who's going to be winning the race in 5 or even 10 years. but i don't see any reason to think the overall trends in console hardware advancement won't continue for as long as they can. no-one has really done anything but pump graphics and move to bigger/cheaper storage for the past 20 years. the only real innovation has been sony's dual-function ps2, that provided cheap dvd capability to a market that was ready for it.
which is very similar to the situation if someone released a console/pvr in 05/06. Which is the basis for why i think that's even possible to begin with. Sony has to recognize that if MS tries it, they might usurp market control. So Sony has to match it (or call them on it, and hope they're bluffing).
Judging by the creation and sales-rate of the PSX, it looks like Sony is matching.
I never attacked Nintendo, I was just pointing out that the press release isn't for you and me, it doesn't say anything, and that no considerable changes in the trends have resulted from the increased market-share.
Yes, Nintendo is well-above 'healthy' as a corporation because of it's complete and utter dominance of the portable market and solid sales of excellent first-party games.
and the simple fact that Nintendo is losing money on each console (regardless of whether it's a penny or a dollar or a hundred) simply means that the console sales by themselves do not generate profit. Therefore analysts won't care how many of them you sell. My statement is still valid.
I never said that their increased GC sales were a net negative for the company - I merely said that their increased GC sales haven't been shown to be changing the minds of analysts (who believe the GC is a lame duck system like the Dreamcast was), or third party developers (who've been announcing they're no longer making GC games in no small number).
I listed Sony > Microsoft > Nintendo purely as the order that the market analysts consider them in, and the order according to 3rd party developer support and 3rd party software sales.
Try to be a bit less defensive, and stick to what people actually type, instead of responding to what they didn't type.
these kinds of press releases are primarily for stockholders, analysts, and 3rd party developers. even though fanboys may love to use this crap for their pissing contests, it isn't aimed at them.
of course, analysts don't really care about market share won by severely cutting prices. particularly if the increased market share doesn't result in significantly increased software sales. (which is yet to be seen despite the quantity of GC's sold)
The interesting part though is how console installed base correlation to total software sales tapers off more quickly than hardware sales.
Every ps2 game released should outsell every GC or xbox title 5 to 1 at least due the sheer size of the installed base. but the monthly numbers haven't shown that to be a trend over the last two years. Just as the monthly numbers haven't shown a significant increase in GC game sales due their new, larger, installed base. It just seems the new price is pulling in people who are only buying 1 or 2 of the already existing superhits (prime, wind waker, sunshine).
and so long as console makers lose money on each box - analysts by and large won't care about installed base. they only follow 3rd party developer movement and software sales. (nintendo may have been making money on each GC at $200, but it's extremely doubtful they still did at $150, let alone $100).
so the question is: are third party developers going to throw more titles toward nintendo now that they have a larger installed base? and, will the lower price actually result in significant software sales growth?
If not, then this article only tries to put up a rosy picture for the shareholders, though it'll have no real effect on the existing trends. ( sony > ms > nintendo )
kph please.
they don't have any miles you insensitive clod.
as usual -- all opinions are objective - and mine is always more accurate than yours. [/sarcasm]
The things you own, own you
while I initially disagreed with this statement, upon seeing this 'brand loyalty' BS extend into 'my dad can beat up your dad'-style arguments online, i'm inclined to believe that for most people - it is absolutely true.
if this product is aimed at allowing amateur and indie content creation for their console, it might just sell me a gamecube. however, i'm hesitant to believe that.
particularly since Nintendo has historically been the most restrictive console maker in terms of which games and which publishers are allowed to create games for their systems. They've always attempted to control the 'quality level' of their product, to protect its image. (eg: lack of GTA-ish titles, censored bmx xxx, etc) Conker is perhaps the only bigname exception to this rule, but either it didn't turn out to be a very good game, or it wasn't hyped when it actually released -because after its E3 debut, I didn't hear peep about it.
But their attitude contrasts with MS and Sony who seem content to let 3rd parties throw handfuls of shiat at the wall to see what sticks.
Then consider the GameCube's proprietary media and relatively small storage peripherals (memory cards). unless they have a burner included and are confident it won't lead to game piracy, a content-creation strategy would likely require an entirely dedicated platform; a self contained creation and consumption device.
but it certainly could result in market-creation - about the only growth avenue open in the overall-down Japanese economy.
So sure, I'm pessimistic - particularly with their previous innovation track record (robbie the robot, exercise pad, powerglove, virtual boy).
But if what you say is true - that would definitely be a welcome solution to the lack of an indy market (and mod culture) for console gaming.
Well, i'd buy that the japanese market is going through a tough time - the entire japanese economy is going through a tough time.
but there's no evidence that the shrinking market is a function of the hardware restricting innovation.
you mean like public/private key pairs for RFID transmission? if they didn't already do something like this, I'd be fairly surprised.
of course people have no qualms with handing their credit card to any kid in a smock, and swiping a credit card number from their machines is no-tech/no-cost/no-brained compared to an RFID receiver.
then there's the lack of an increase in car-theft that followed the proliferation of rf key fobs to lock/unlock car doors.
perhaps the hard cap of people willing to commit meat-space crimes has already been reached - regardless of the level of technology? particularly when they can still easily perform the same type of theft without even knowing what rfid is?
aside from all that, credit card theft leaves the burden of proof on the bank - not me. it's their money that's in limbo while the issue is up in the air. with debit, theft can result in the money being gone from my account until they can resolve the issue. a much more worrying situation. particularly considering the average speed of bank investigations when it's your money on the line.
so while i would be extremely hesitant to tie an rf payment fob to a debit card, i'm open to the idea of tying it to a credit card probably even without strong encryption.
of course i'm already hesitant to use debit cards for the same reason. particularly since i've yet to find a vendor who actually requires the pin to be entered. though admittedly i don't use it much.
Game development is deadlocked today. Games have grown in pursuit of more beautiful graphics and more complex systems for 20 years, but that growth is no longer translating into success, and games have stopped selling. The situation won't change if we keep expanding in a conventional way. Instead, we want to offer a gameplay experience which players haven't encountered until now.
This guy must have shot out of some sort of bizzare-o world. I mean, Nintendo may be having a rough generation, but the rest of the industry seems to be just fine, and the overall numbers are still always better than last year.
And it also feels just odd to hear the implication, that innovation in games can't continue without their new hardware, from a Nintendo guy.
It comes off like a suggestion that writers can't continue to churn out new and exciting books without adding whiz-bang 'pop-up' technology.
yeah, i was referring to all consoles combined. granted i think the reason that the two biggest name western-styled rpgs are on the xbox is because of the harddrive, but i digress.
and the point of not simply automatically adding a pc port, is that (i believe) the PC will be an increasingly small slice of the overall market, and (its been proven) the costs for compatibility testing, performance testing and support are orders of magnitude higher.
naturally all the super-popular games will get ported to as many systems as possible, regardless of genre. but I think in the future, the more-risky RPGs like dungeon siege will be made first on the console, and if less-popular, likely never ported.
(risky as defined by being from an unproven team, an unproven license, an unproven gameplay design, etc)
as for the overall top x RPGs, my point is simply that there are more RPGs from consoles up there than there have been historically. and i believe they will continue to grow. Again, i'm not saying PC RPGs are going away, or should go away or even could go away (they're here to stay). All I'm saying is that the market trend is toward them becoming a smaller percentage of total RPG sales - despite its likely remaining an ever-more-profitable niche itself.
As for the technical barrier -- well KotOR is essentially halfway between NWN and Baldur's Gate. (NWN with full inventory control of henchmen) After playing it, I don't see how someone cuold make a bad interface for an RPG like BG. All they have to do is copy what bioware did with Knights, and it'll be beyond good enough.
After playing Morrowwind on the xbox, I might have wondered if it were possible to do an interface that didn't feel bulky. But after Knights -- well it's just one of those games that shows up and defines the default controls for a genre. (eg: doom's 'wasd', console FPS dual-thumbstick controls, etc)
I'll grant you that I'm not infallible, and I have no crystal ball and there's a gigantic chance that my guesses about market development will wind up very wrong.
but KotOR obviates any concern for the technical feasibility of a western-style RPG interface on a console. (not to mention that eastern rpgs largely have the same interface requirements and have done well themselves ever since the Famicom)
western style PC RPGS won't decline in popularity. not by totals anyway. i believe that due to growth in gaming overall they'll likely always be in a growing market (barring dry spells like the early 90s).
But I believe that western-style RPGs will grow much faster on the console than they will on the PC, and they will eventually (relatively soon) eclipse the PC market as the preferred platform.
Excepting, of course, games that already thrive on player-made content. Which, while technically possible, I concede will be likely postponed on the console side as the business barriers are worked out. Frankly, someone would have to be a central authority to host the content on a proprietary console network. So they'd need their bandwidth costs covered at least. If that's to work, it needs to be approached as a revenue stream to at least be self-sustaining. Therefore, the hoster would be incentivized to keep the vast majority of player-made shlock off the system - to save bandwidth and stop people from downloading 1 crappy mod and thinking none of it's any good.
So someone has to rate, sort, host and charge for this content - and they'll have to figure out a legal/financial system to compensate the authors and work out rights. But i digress.
Back to my original point: consoles now have no technical barriers to presenting a modern western-style RPG. The console market being much larger - it is only to be expected that RPG developers and gamers (the people who only care about story, not technical merits) will gravitate toward the more stable, less quirky, lower cost (for both parties) system.
Where the reaction begins has no bearing on the danger the reactor poses; again, it's an education issue.
The danger in the event of catastrophic failure comes solely from a possible dispersal of the fissile material.
We have reactor designs now that simply can not result in the reaction going critical. It'd actually be much safer now than it was in the 70s.
The only reason you're not allowed to talk about these things, even to educate the public, is the same reason you're not allowed to promote nuclear power generation. It's simply career suicide for any public official to broach the subject.
Provided the radiation from their rocket stays at what the specs suggest, this is no more inherently dangerous than the operation of any of the dozens of nuclear reactors currently commissioned in the united states. (not counting nuclear naval craft)
The public's irrational fear of all things nuclear is the only opponent that killed nuclear technology. It has nothing to do with actual science or statistical risk.
now that's fresh fodder for a hollywood disaster film if I've ever heard it.
Funny, all the old space probes had nuclear powerplants and that all worked out just fine.
This is an education issue mainly.
If people can believe we have designed black boxes that survive being slammed into the Pennsylvania crust at 400 mph or the disintegration of its containing shuttle at 30000 feet - why is it a stretch to believe we can make a containment system for fissile material that would survive even catastrophic launch failure?
1. I agree completely: display resolution is the absolute last built-in advantage that PCs have. They will always have the de facto performance crown, certainly. Still, it's certain that the next generation will have the horsepower to drive a great picture at 1080i and 720p. This advantage is one that won't be held for very long, imo (if at all past the next hardware generation).
2. player-made content is huge, I'll grant you that. but it can be done, particularly with the harddrives and network access. true, a publisher still has to decide to do it, but it is not an option that must be taken off the shelf if a developer decides to develop for the console.
3. the controls for a RTS simply don't work on a controller. I'll grant you that. Goblin Commander for the xbox has a pretty interesting approach that works fairly well, but it would break down long before you got to managing the number of units that *craft games handle easily.
I do however disagree with your FPS control opinion. I was a strict PC FPS fan for quite some time. But I bought an xbox (initially for mod-potential, but lo and behold: it's got worthwhile games too).
And frankly, I hated the controls as I played Halo for about the first 4 hours. Of course it's not as 'precise' as a mouse or trackball, but i'm starting to wonder whether that matters? Varying display sizes and varying polling-rates on PC FPS create some of the biggest discrepancies with player potential in those games. Yes, you will hit your target more often with mouse+kb. But if you can do well enough with a controller, and the playing field is level, does it really matter?
Clearly personal preference keeps many PC FPS fans from ever considering the console, and I'd never consider any opinion or preference 'wrong' -- but I don't think the control scheme for console FPS is deficient in any manner.
the RPG market overall is certainly growing - but of considerable interest is the way the console market for western-styled RPGs ballooned this past year.
As I said, I doubt any gaming market will die (i predict no 'end' for anything) and indeed due market growth overall I think they'll probably all continue to expand.
But I do believe the rate of expansion, and the total market size will be shifted in favor of console RPGs rather than PC RPGs in the coming years.
imo no game interface 'needs' any particular peripheral.
some games likely do better with a keyboard and mouse, simply because they have more, accessible keys for binding and various use. Real-time strategy games and realistic vehicle sims accentuate the usefulness of the keyboard -- no other genre does.
quite frankly i've seen more PC games with bad user interfaces than console games. Having that many buttons available is generally an invitation for disaster. For an RPG, where twitch is not necessary, having an intuitive 2 or 3 button sequence isn't any worse than memorizing one of 50-odd keyboard keys or custom binding the number row.
Specifically there is no part of an RPG interface that cannot be done well without a mouse and keyboard. Direct ports of a PC-game's user interface are likely problematic -- and if no attempt is made at reworking the UI, i'd call it half-assed as well. But if a UI is designed with a controller in mind, there seems to be no barrier (excepting again realistic flight sims and rts).
unless you think console rpgs have never had conversation trees, spellcasting or inventory. (patently absurd assertion)
No part of the KotOR interface, an RPG that includes all those elements, is what i'd consider a 'chore'. And that is without even mentioning the vast array of RPGs that came before it with adequate control schemes for those 3 oh-so-common elements.
This is quite likely similar to my long-held belief regarding the massmog Horizons.
It isn't necessarily a hoax per se, no-one is going to be pointing and laughing.
Rather it's more like a scam. An attempt to use the overly hungry and journalistically naive hardcore gaming media to push their non-existant product with big promises. Promise the moon, mock up some renders, build up the buzz, sell. Who cares if the product never materializes? the money sure did.
Quite frankly what would it take Infinium to make a 'playable' prototype unit? 1 slickly designed custom case, standard pc parts, a neat 3d demo and mockups of potential menus. Horizons similarly licensed a 3d engine and had some artists mock up a few of their promises to look good in still images.
The difference is, the David Allen feller behind Horizons simply promised the moon and stars, grew the marketability of the product, and got bought out. He never implied partnership with other corporations, let alone dozens of corporations.
Infinium may be crossing the bounds of shameless and jumping squarely into the illegal by trying to build their name through unlicensed implications and declarations about the involvement of established gaming developers and publishers.
So no, I don't expect them to put out a press release in 4 months saying 'April Fools!'. Rather, I expect for someone to eventually be suckered into investing into this idea, and after a year or so having to quietly put out a press release saying: yolk's on us folks, it doesn't exist and never did.
not entirely anyhow. Eastern-styled RPGs have been largely console-centric since the days of the Famicom. So this is more directly about the growth in popularity of western-styled RPGs on the consoles.
I think the main cause of the popularity explosion is developers are finally finding the western-styled rpg market in the console arena. They're learning that you can sell console players Morrowind and Knights of the Old Republic.
The only reason that these rpgs weren't on consoles in the past has been storage. Consoles prior to this generation didn't have enough storage to handle the content without having to switch a multitude of discs, something the average player does not want to do. Nor did they have appropriate storage for the massive save-game sizes western RPGs are known to generate.
Now however, that roadblock is gone (at least for the xbox this generation, and probably all systems in the next). It is only natural that RPG developers, the guys who always cared about story over all else, are gravitating toward the platform that lets them concentrate even more on story, and not worry about minimum system requirements, or compatibility.
RPGs on the PC will survive this turn in popularity like all other PC-gaming genres, sports, shooters, et al. They'll shrink in market share, but remain. I don't think PC gaming will ever die, just as mac gaming has never died. But it certainly will lose the edge it has held in the past.
with PCs losing their last vestiges of hardware advantage over consoles (namely harddrives and network adapters), there is less and less justification for publishers to ignore the console market under some illusion of console-gamer predisposition to action.
Hollywood told me that even Tim Robbins could locate this kind of problem in under a minute with 1 Dr Pepper-in-a-bag.
I'm frankly shocked that the reality isn't how it was presented.
less corporate whoring == better non-game
non-games that will always be more fun than corporate alternatives:
pencil breaks
the twisted straw flicking game
folded-paper football
there's also the hand-slapping thing ('fingertips' or some such shit)... but it seemed there shoulda been some sorta scoring based on difficulty.
you started right.
If the content is meant to be read, it will be copied, regardless of the scheme used. the instructions for what the protection scheme is looking for to determine authenticity of the media are right in the executable. you've handed the map to your stash right to the treasure hunters - it's all a matter of time.
the only situation that can get you around this, and even then it's largely temporary, is if the software has to be 'enabled' by a central authority to operate each time. Eg. CD Key schemes for online games.
however, for most software/media content it is not at all feasible to ask your customer to be online every time they want to use your product.
and in reality, the code used on the client to request and verify the 'activation' is once again, right there on the client system. the untrusted system. at the heart, every software protection scheme can be circumvented with a single altered jump statement.
the -best- you can do is to isolate 'pirated' copies of your product from the rest of your online community. and at the same time, you've spent millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours on a situation that isn't even proven to 'protect' sales.
'lost' sales to piracy is a vague amount that is touted by software protection vendors - but no-one has ever shown (via scientific study) that using a product like SafeDisc will net you more sales than if you hadn't used it. on top of that, no-one has studied whether any such possible increase in revenue could even cover the cost of implementing and supporting the copy protection scheme in the first place.
'palladium' is based on the idea that the client can be a trusted member of a conversation, but frankly, that isn't a very safe assumption in any situation where the client doesn't have to participate in the conversation to be useful.
as long as it's technically possible to run a self-signed application (think anyone with a development certificate), the client will be hacked. that all code must be signed may keep the binary from being anonymously distributed, but it can not and will not prohibit the data and source patch from being distributed.
all palladium allows is, once again, the ability to cordon off 'pirated' copies of your software from the rest of your online community. if it's useful as standalone software - it just won't help.
xbox-live is surprisingly similar to the rest of internet gaming. the communities form on a per-game basis.
all MS has to do is release a game that is little more than a collection of live-enabled popular card games, and they'll have the community they want.
it will be no more reflective of the 'community' you find in xbl cstrike, than yahoo games is of the PC fps 'community'.
the primary difference between xbl and regular internet gaming, is that MS is the controlling authority in a pseudonymous (not even remotely annonymous) online environment. in the rest of internet gaming, banning one asshat simply means he'll crop up somewhere else with very little hassle to him and he'll continue annoying people.
with xbox-live, at the very least an asshat has to shell out another $50 for another live account, and there's some discussion that MS blocks the credit card used to register a banned account, and possibly all cards issued to that individual.
xbox live is much more suited to actually delivering a community of reasonable people than anywhere else. If you'd ever tried playing a game that doesn't appeal to as many kiddies (ghost recon has many fewer kiddies than cstrike) you'd realize how easy it will be for them.
the only trick to for MS is figuring out how to get enough people online and playing, say, their card games. perhaps allowing people to play between xbox live and the MSN Zone.
and despite your assertion, the xbox communicator exists simply because you need to communicate to enjoy multiplayer games. and if you hadn't noticed, there's no keyboard.
ad hominem attacks are always much easier than providing a refutation of the issues brought up.
but of course, one of his criticisms of the field is that the people within it do not care to ever explain anything to people who do not know their jargon, nor do they ever feel it necessary to defend questions of their field with explanation. but that's truly a crticism of the people who work in the field, not the ideas and tenets of postmodernist literary criticism itself. and it's just as valid a critique of engineering in most cases. The dismissive superiority, the aloofness, it's not helpful.
the primary thing the author was pointing out is the postmodern logic trap: when everything is subjective, there can be no objective, logical measure for correctness or quality -- which is unique in all academia, and distinctly foreign to engineers.
Truly this is not even a critique as much as a giant warning sign that conventional logic isn't helpful in this territory. He may be implying a value judgement on this aspect, but if the reader isn't feeling defensive, there's no reason to consider it as vicious, superior, or confrontational.
The entire piece was just a tongue-in-cheek barb toward the other academic extreme pointing out: "hey, if you guys don't learn how to communicate your ideas to the rest of us, we're going to make fun of you the way you all make fun of us."
ironic that the objective extreme should quarrel with the subjective extreme, over which side is too isolated from the bulk of society.
'roll your own' solutions using open source software will always have better features than their closed-source competitors.
this goes for mythTV vs Tivo,replaytv,psx, et al as well.
but they will never be the product of choice for the mass market. so it doesn't matter who beats whom to the punch. it only matters (in the money making sense) who can deliver the best product to the largest market.
and if the xbox can do pvr and games, then i'll feel alot better about giving it to my mother-in-law than setting her up a mythTV box with an emulator -- even though that's what is sitting under my tv right now.