Modding however is completely seperate from intellectual property theft. as the VHS before it, modding consumer electronics you own has substantial non-infringing uses. Thus, it should be protected fair-use. but thanks to the over-reaching DMCA, the consumer is now prohibited from altering a product they purchased and own, as well as having their right to free speech co-opted to protect an illegal corporate practice.
While many people would agree that for-profit ip theft in China is a serious issue - trying to use that to justify the DMCA (which is the only law that forbids the modding you hate so much) is not a solution, and only serves to make criminals of the paying customers.
After all, selling stolen intellectual property was already illegal. the DMCA makes it no easier to prosecute criminals who sell blackmarket software. contrarily, software piracy is much easier to do with a simple DVD writer than trying to convince black market customers to wield a soldering iron.
there was absolutely no cause or need for a law to prohibit reverse engineering - except that corporations have a large political budget, and much to lose if they have to price their product fairly and compete in an open market.
Everyone knows console makers are participating in the normally-illegal practice of selling product below cost. Everyone looks the other way because of the supposedly benevolent effect - consumers get hardware cheap. However, there is no fair market for software for this hardware (the console publishers fix pricing, and only compete between consoles - and they seem to have agreed on de facto price fixing).
In effect, the publisher is merely dumping the hardware to make the price of the next-gen console reasonable to the mass market consumer. if the actual price was applied to the machines, they would have to face the possibility of longer shelf-lives for their old product and a healthy after-market in truly 3rd party games and peripherals.
Which nearly exactly describes the situation in mainland China -- where systems as old as the famicom have a thriving aftermarket in peripherals, upgrades, and local games.
Yes, downloading games, or buying black market copies is certainly harmful to the game industry.
but mod-chips are only potentially harmful to those already breaking the law (if they weren't dumping, they wouldn't lose money if people bought the console but no games). And even then, mod chips only add another possibility for harm to the games industry. an opportunity orders of magnitude smaller than a simple DVD-R already does.
in short, it's the level system. more specifically, any character-advancement system that allows one player to become orders of magnitude more powerful than a 'newbie'.
first, it massively imbalances pvp. with a system that gives a player the power to kill a nearly endless stream of players weaker than himself, you simply cannot have player vs player content that appeals to the mass market.
second, it destroys the casual gamer segment. in the level based system, the casual gamer falls behind by definition, and quickly becomes a liability to most groups, not an asset. once the average character level is beyond what the casual gamer can manage, they leave, because there's no-one to play with. they can't earn 'experience' as fast as everyone else, because they don't play as much.
Furthermore, they can't even participate in the player economy. Without as much cash as the 'big boys' have to throw around, no player artisan is going to take his paltry money to make product appropriate for his character level. if they do, they'll undoubtably charge him much more than what the product sold for when the average level characters were at his level. He gets the ugly end of the player economy, just because he has fallen behind, or started late.
On top of that, even socializing is difficult. The lowbie almost certainly cannot safely travel to where the average level characters congregate alone. The game mechanics punish the casual gamer. They cast them out from the player society.
third, the levelling system wastes developer content. In everquest, the conservative estimates are at 80% of the content ever made for the game sitting idle. For all characters outside the appropriate level for any piece of content, there's no challenge, no reward -- so they don't bother (largely by design). Bust as we've already seen, the game casts out players who can't 'keep up'. for the most part, only the content suitable for the average character level matters. A glut of characters will hit a piece of content, pushing up demand for it, and crowding around it. Then they will all leave abruptly, and any changes made to alleviate competition for that content is waste. In fact, that content, overall, becomes waste. Think of all the developer time SOE sank into modelling, texturing, coding and balancing the creatures and zones in Everquest that no-one uses anymore.
Lastly, almost all levelling games have the underlying assumption that players need to be 'high' level to do 'cool stuff', see 'cool things' and fight 'cool mobs'. Newbies fight an endless stream of vermin. Hardcore players fight dragons, explore dungeons, see waterfalls and get cooler looking stuff. The casual gamer will simply never see most of the 'cool' content. It will be wasted because nothing they experience will encourage them to suffer through the rest of the injustices of the system to try to get to the 'cool' stuff.
Basically, casual gamers simply -aren't-playing-commercial-massmogs-. They aren't there because the game design punishes them. So questions as to why the content isn't there for them is largely moot.
Worse still, the content isn't there for them, because fundamentally, it's hard(er) to make. Game developers know very well how to make bigger meaner monsters with more, shinier treasure. Few of them know how to make an engaging sandbox.
There are other roadblocks for the casual gamer: hardcoded 'groups' with limited slots, design complexity for its own sake, 'downtime', 'time sinks', unclearly conveying game rules, etc.
But they pale in comparison to the problems created by the oldest design short-cut in persistant gaming.
I talk about the casual gamer instead of the socializer directly -- simply because as the socializer does not spend most of their time achieving, they are punished by the system in the same way as casuals.
But making 'open' systems for casual/social gamers, without adressing the traditional systems that keep these same people away, is a waste.
Since there's no race war potential in Everquest, there was no point in having the faction system to begin with. the game was all but intended to be PvE from the beginning.
If you wanted mandatory good/bad teams, that stick together according to the story, try Dark Age of Camelot. of course, there's a -reason- to seperate the good/bad in that game. because the whole point is to fight each other.
in everquest there's simply no point to maintaining verisimilitude. it's player vs environment to the extreme. expecting players to maintain counterproductive race-tension is naive. why alienate people who will make you better against your primary enemey? (the computer)
it's up to the game mechanics to follow the in-game context. the players will always simply maximize their effectiveness in what the game mechanics reward them most for.
the lawsuit was not over the theft of virtual property.
it was over whether the game maker should give a player stuff back that he claims was stolen by a hacker.
the court decided the game maker should replace the persons stuff.
It had no bearing whatsoever on whether the theft was a crime, or the alleged 'hacking' of the game was a crime. It -did- have a bearing on whether the meatspace court had jurisdiction to dictate fair compensation inside of a virtual world.
whether the court can force a game company to administrate a video game according to its rulings is the important part here.
Essentially this means that virtual world 'policies' are analogous to official legislative 'law', and therefore the court has jurisdiction to determine their fairness and application.
One can already sue a private company over discriminatory policies, but having a court decide 'fairness' of any one equally-applicable policy is quite another step. (this game maker treats all customer complaints of this type the same, it is not discrimination)
For example, consider this: Parent A grabs the last 'uber desireable toy' from a shelf in Toys R Us, and places it in her cart. She turns around for a moment, then turns back and 'uber desireable toy' is missing. She assumes a different parent, we'll say B, nabbed it when she wasn't looking. Breaking the 'rules' of the store by taking an item from her cart.
this lawsuit is equivalent to parent B suing Toys R Us to have another 'uber desireable toy' returned to her cart. despite the following: she never actually owned the toy, she has no idea -who- took it, she can't prove it was ever actually 'stolen' from her.
According the facts of this case as presented, the 'hacker' that 'stole' the victim's items is never named in the suit, named in court, or even had his existence confirmed.
This case has nothing to do with the legality of hacking the game, or stealing bits. It only has to do with the liability of the game maker and the jurisdiction of the courts.
in our industry you have to assume that any time your boss's boss arranges mandatory meetings with everyone in a group, department, or the company - it's because they're looking for dead weight.
most of the time there's nothing you can do about it, because they already -know- what you're doing, whether your manager says you do it well or not (their likely not going to trust your self-evaluation), and whether they're going to fire everyone.
They're just trying to cover their bases incase there is something unexpected.
Eg.
if they're cutting half a department they'll want to have some sort of idea whether your boss picked the desireable half to retain, or was playing favorites. (keep in mind 'desireable' often weights price over performance in such cuts)
or if they accidentally managed to plan on retaining only the two guys who -really- don't get along.
or if they're cutting an entire project they probably want to be sure that it doesn't turn out that a key employee was -actually- spending most of his time doing lucrative support work for legacy apps only he knows, despite being officially assigned to only this project being cut.
That being said no hatchet job will ever -start- with honesty. not officially anyway, there may be a leak, particularly if the manager is also getting canned, but they won't tell everyone.
The danger from under communication from every former employee is perceived as much greater than the danger of confrontation from one employee.
things like network sabotage, industrial espionage, etc are hard to pull off on short notice and easy to watch for on the fateful 'last day'.
But if you've got a head's-up that you're being downsourced in 2 months, you could much more likely find the time to cause problems, a buyer for a client list, or cause problems amongst remaining employees by publicizing salaries and such.
It makes sense as a default policy, but like you, i would hope they would trust IT employees to be professional about the situation, as higher-up HR and Accounting would be (trusted and professional).
funny... i just rented it. i mean, i'm only going to watch the special features once, and i'll have already seen the movie twice after i rent it...
so do i really need to -own- the super special movie to have not 'missed out'?
I don't intend on rewatching it often, so I don't see the point in buying this. let alone protesting, this. Maybe you do, and more power to ya. My preferences aren't for everybody, and I wasn't passing judgement. I was just noting irony.
perhaps i should have focused on the merchandising, which is more to the heart of my point. But I was hoping to make my point without having to carefully phrase it to prevent anyone from taking offense.
But feel free to make ad hominem arguments against me, just because I don't see the point in buying a movie I don't plan on watching that often. I recognize that someone else's opinions don't invalidate or represent a threat to my own.
the developers just want to do new things that they feel they can't do in the current game. or they can't justify updating the old client to support the new changes but not increase the system requirements alongside creating the whole new engine.
and naturally they feel attached to their old world, so they don't want to leave it.
so the 'sequel' approach appears.
but they need to realize that the best thing you can do is to isolate one project from the last. by name at least.
as UO has shown, people will play these games for years and years and years with relatively small ongoing development. why screw with what they find fun?
why not just make a new game, and let it stand on its own? I mean, sequels traditionally have been made in games when the developer admits the fun -was- there, but needs some serious tweaking to be fun again. but that just isn't the case with massmogs. not for their fans.
and prospective new customers won't care whether it's AC2 or something entirely new. they only know that AC1 didn't do it for them.
they can't be that short on imagination for new worlds can they?
if you have weight, you aim high, announcing a desire for something your opponent does not want (end of region coding), so that when you mediate on 'simultaneous release' it feels like a big coup for them.
If he started with asking for 'simultaneous release' they'd likely be more inclined to negotiate him down market by market under the guise of being reasonable.
of course it can backfire -- they can ignore you for being ludicrous and call your bluff - you don't even get partial victory.
of course for blockbuster, anything short of complete victory is still as bad. the demand in the time between different market releases pushes much of the market into willingness to commit 'piracy' to get the product. a demand that could be legally and more easily solved by going to blockbuster, if they had access to the legal material at the same time as the 'pirates'.
ending region coding for them would be great, but simply doing simultaneous release would be enough.
Contrary to this assertion, Everquest and D&D succeed based on their design. Not their entrenched positions.
they are the easiest games in their genres to pick up, play, and put down. The rules are very simple, straightforward, and hard to get 'wrong' in the beginning.
Sure, there are tactics that make a big difference in the end games, but the gamer is given a long time to figure these things out.
Contrarily, you can much more easily screw up a Hero-system character long before you ever play. And many other games seem to use complexity as a reward in and of itself. Complexity for its own sake.
This complexity seems to be the dividing line between casual and hardcore gamers.
As we all know the more casual gamers are more numerous, so it shouldn't be a surprise that if your game design is to take D&D but remove the archetypes, change the fiction, and add a more complex combat system, you're going to wind up not doing as well. Indeed, you may actually attract people to your game, who are put off, but like the genre itself, and gravitate toward the more consumer-friendly game.
This isn't to say they're the -best- games in their genres, just to say that they are certainly not sustaining their strength from being the first arriver. Everquest quite frankly was the third commercially supported 3d massmog. but it was friendlier to the mass market consumer than UO, and M59 before it.
When a massmog design hits that is both appealing and friendly to the mass market gamer, and still provides the depth of experience the hardcore gamer requires - it will overtake everquest. It's as simple as that. The network effect has weight on pulling people -to- a game, but not keeping them.
Indeed, Everquest's primary weakness, is the number of people who have played and left. This suggests there is room for improvement in appealing to the more casual gamer.
And if you appeal to the more casual gamer, you probably won't 'kill' any other massmog out there. But your numbers will certainly dwarf theirs, and push them firmly out of the genre-leading position.
The problem currently is that everyone either tries to directly emulate the leader in a slightly different genre, or they try to make gameplay advances through complexity.
Poker, Hearts, Chess -- the most endearing and widely appealing games in western culture (the only one i know enough to speak intelligently about) have very straightforward rules that make them easy to learn. Yet they harbor a depth to gameplay that modern role playing games and massmogs seem to miss in their never-ending quest for loot and levels.
Personally i think the number 1 reason for the seperation, is the longstanding tradition that in roleplaying games (online and off) a player who has been playing longer (higher level, higher skills, whatever) is nearly infinitely more powerful than one who just began -- not because of the player's ability, but because of the resources heaped upon them.
imagine playing cards against a euchre player who got to keep every trump card he was ever dealt. you simply would never be able to win.
in the cooperative sense, he would never play with you as his partner, for your lack of trump cards would be a liability in any competition he found challenging for his hand.
also consider that the truly interesting and exciting stuff is almost always reserved for those at the high end of this power scale. The new gamer has to trudge through a level grind of killing rats and bats to get to the point where teamwork matters, and -his- ability can be challenged.
EQs numbers primarily show that -most- people who try massmogs are not looking for the level grind, though many more hardcore gamers are more than pleased with it.
the gender neutrel word -is- athelete.;p simply, professional athelete.
that said, since there is no actual proof of a correlation between these two trends, the author is still an asshat.
i'd be more inclined to blame the decreased enrollment in sports on our kids being so damned fat anymore.
maybe this was the unanticipated effect of our civilization finally evolving away from physical advancement and toward mental advancement.
perhaps we do not waste away to become steven spielberg's frail greys, but rather, more like jabba the hut.
or maybe parents are just too busy working to actually do sufficient parenting.
those seem much more likely than sports video games. if anything, they're the only things keeping video gamer children even tenuously linked back to their profit-structure as potential future viewers.
cut off the stream of sports games, and -that- would kill their viewership in 10 years. course... we might get televised cstrike matches at that point...
my mistake, there was an extra 'S' in there. i meant NES;p
though i did nearly consider buying a GBA SP -just- so i could play SM3 wherever i want. and so i don't have to deal with cleaning the damn NES all the time. American NES == bad design.
well i can't argue with the numbers. or lack thereof.
i spoke from my own perspective about the number of people i find online playing any given new release (much easier to find a game of cstrike today than unreal 12 months ago) - and honestly I didn't even know they had 500k. last i heard it was 350k.::shrug:: there seems to be plenty for me, and xbox live doesn't have the rampant cheating and much more inconsistant lag levels of sony's solution, or pc gaming.
so i dunno. maybe it isn't growing. maybe it's limited by their relatively small (compared to the ps2) share of the console market, and the relatively small penetration of broadband into the home. but who cares.
lets assume it -ain't- growing. I can find a cheat-free game of cstrike whenever i want it. I can find a game for any new title out whenever i rent them. so long as that doesn't change, i'm happy as a clam.
though i could use an online rpg... even diablo-style, though i think something daoc-ish would go over well.
which is true enough. but the mass market consumer only -wants- to play games;p
besides, they have computers too, they just don't have the time/patience/expertise to deal with PC gaming in most cases.
again, i'm just pointing out the logic from the perspective of the mass market consumer, to show that no-one should be surprised that consoles are ruling the commercial genre.
but i agree with you completely as well, and that's why i have both.
first off I'm not saying console gaming is better than PC gaming. I'm saying it makes more sense for the casual, mass-market consumer.
next, i am not a european, so i can't relate to the cost woes. in the states console games are the same price as pc games, and get price discounts much sooner. perhaps the price difference there explains why the european console market is so much smaller than japan or the US.
knights of the old republic i managed to play through without encountering any bugs. so i'm sorry. saying it had a 'long list' needs to be qualified with 'long list of bugs you'll probably never encounter with known work-arounds'. that doesn't make up for having the experience ruined by a bug, but -some- bugs are unavoidable. at least the game didn't refuse to run because you had the wrong drivers installed. or an old CD-ROM that's incompatible with their copy protection.
i can rent games, and i (though i do seem to be the minority here) have never had a problem returning a console game that didn't work. so again, i've never experienced the problems you have there.
content downloads and gameplay fixes do exist on the xbox for xbox-live enabled games. yes, it used to be the exclusive domain of pc games - but that isn't the case now.
aside from that, i'd argue that the mass market doesn't even download the content when it's available. so having downloadable content on the PC isn't going to entice any consumer to choose PC gaming.
and yes. console gaming is vastly cheaper. consoles have a 3-5 year life cycle. pc's -may- get to 3 years if they're extremely lucky. every american home has a tv. including it in the cost of the console is silly. no-one's including the cost of a monitor with the computer cost. hell, i wouldn't even remove the need to have a computer from the console owner equation. most homes -will- have a computer either way.
so the equation becomes: console + home computer for surfing, email, home office, and digipics is cheaper than home computer for surfing, email, home office, digipics, and gaming.
this brings the initial price much closer for a fictional family with neither of these two items.
because a pc that doesn't have to be up to date for gaming is ludicrously cheaper and easier to maintain than one that does.
my points were to support the core argument that the console is a better solution to the mass market gamer.
Glitz glitz per dollar, for the mass market - i stand by my assertion. a console does better for less with 640x480. you also forgot to note that the console cost -includes- the cpu, and mobo, but your 'graphics card' cost doesn't take that into account.
even today i'd have to spend $200 to get a cheap-as-possible cpu, mobo and graphics card to get HALO to look better and play as good at 8x6 on my PC as it does on my xbox at 6x4. and i've had my xbox for 2 years now. my 2 year old geforce3 and 1ghz p3 would not come close to running HALO at 8x6 at a playable rate. and it cost more than twice as much as the xbox.
yes, if you have the money, pc gaming will -always- look better. but we're talking about -why- the mass market chooses the console at such high preference. and the cost difference to get the better graphics is a big part of that.
Integrity: Sony's online service is a joke to console gamers. It provides the worst aspects of multiplayer gaming to the least tolerant crowd. They made a mistake.
Microsoft does have a cheat-free network. Hell the quality is so damned high they can -charge- for it. and it keeps growing. punkbuster hasn't been doing much for keeping netgames from being a pos compared to what i get on the xbox. and now that cstrike has hit the xbox, i doubt i'll even be up-to-date on how 'good' things are going in pc network gaming in a year.
Return Policy: you're the second person to disagree that they haven't had the experiences trying to return console games that I have. I dunno. I just don't have a problem. Who cares, I'll give you that point, and I'll even waive the grandparent's point about console games allowing you to loan games out easier. but can you argue the strength of being able to -rent- games? it's a pure, undeniable advantage for any gamer. and particularly the mass market who do not research games to the degree that pc gamers do.
Costs: your $1000 athlon cost more than twice as much as my xbox, and my xbox is still going. even if you count the cost of the second controller, and hell even a memory card for good measure. (though i wouldnt need it, harddrive and all) and including the controller isn't even fair, as PCs don't have quite the same analogue, and when they do, it also costs a second controller. Your claim that one must automatically include the second controller only gives strength to the grandparent's assertion that console games are much more social.
again, i'm an xbox guy, so you can't toss harddrive and network adapter costs at me. truth be told, i probably wouldn't be on this side of the argument if it -wasn't- for the xbox. the limitations of the ps2 are the same as the ps1, and the same reason i didn't get one of those either.
but roll into the equation that i've never had to update video or sound drivers, or directx or any of that other stuff in the same time period just to make a game work. sure, it ain't much of a hassle for a pc gamer - but the mass market just doesn't do this, nor do they want to.
Again, I'm not arguing consoles 'best solution for everyone'. I'm arguing 'It's bloody obvious why the -mass-market- is choosing consoles, consider their needs, costs, and benefits'.
I was not always a console gamer. In fact, I hated consoles for quite some time. My passions were always FPS, RTS, RPG and massmog. the linear eastern-stylized RPGs on consoles didn't appeal to me, and the other genres weren't represented. I didn't even own a console between the SNES and my XBOX.
but i don't have the time or money to justify the kind of attention being a pc gamer requires anymore. and so i can easily see -why- console games dominate.
and that's all i'm saying. i'm not saying why consoles are better for everyone. i'm saying why consoles are better for the mass market. why, by next year, game shelf space will be about 80/20 console to pc compared with 60/40 right now.
but to your points.
9. Options? remember, this is the benefit for the mass market consumer we're talking about. the person whose gaming budget does not support a rig that can run -last years- games at 16x12 and 30fps, let alone the latest.
the hardcore pc gamer who spends the money every 14 months to have a rig that can achieve playable speeds at the highest resolutions on the newest games will -always- have a better picture than a console gamer. but the console does a hell of alot better with the latest games than an average pc spec does, for so much cheaper.
10. i have played FPS on my console. and quite frankly i absolutely -hated- the controller for the first 90 minutes i played halo. thank goodness that game was good enough to keep me playing - because once i stopped wishing for my optical mouse and dealt with it, i got used to it in a hurry.
It doesn't even bother me anymore, and I actually -prefer- FPS on the console, mostly because of the broadband only netplay and the no cheating thing. (i mostly only play fps for the multiplayer anyway. not like a decent single player fps has come out for the pc since halflife)
that, and being able to play doom3 and halflife2 when they release on the console i bought 2 years ago is much preferable to upgrading my 1ghz + geforce3.
11. shelf-life -- how can this be a PC advantage? you update your computer for security purposes, or install a new OS to play the newest games, and your old stuff is gone. ever tried playing a dos4gw game lately?
i can turn on my SNES no problem and play super mario 3. and i do. yet i can't boot up Syndicate Wars or XCOM Apocalypse as easily, and had to jump through hoops to get XCOM UFO Defense itsel running.
and the new trend in consoles toward backward compatibility resolves this so neatly it's not a remote issue, and is a -better- pro. my $300 console lasts at least 4 years. how long does your $300 video card last? how long can you play the latest games on a computer you bought 4 years ago?
I got my xbox and my 1ghz pc around the same time. guess which one plays the newest games at an acceptable speed?
12. different systems -- only applies at the end of a console's life cycle. the beauty of consoles is not only do you get 3-5 years out of $300, but at the end of it, when something better comes out - you can buy into it for the same price. You can always boot up your old system and play it. You can always boot up your new system and play it. A stark contrast to PC gaming where the cost of maintaining a 'frozen in time' PC to play an old game is so much higher.
13. Content lockout. My DVD player has content lockout via region coding and it doesn't upset me so much. I don't make it a habit of buying out-of-region discs, and if i did, it seems to me it'd be smarter for the -manufacturer- to change his region coding than ask his customers to.
4. Stability. You don't buy a console game on its release day, and then go home and download a 1.1 patch.
5. Ease of Use. Consoles require you to merely pop in the game and go. there are never patches, drivers, installs, video/sound configs, or any of that stuff PC gamers put up with.
6. Glitz. Console games are optimized to their fixed hardware. Halo on my xbox looks just like Halo on your xbox. I never have a friend tell me how awesome a ps2 game is, but find out my ps2 isn't fast enough to play it well.
7. Integrity. in online console gaming, it is possible to guarantee that no-one is cheating. Add to that the consistant matchmaking interface and features across a console, and it's no wonder that MS can successfully charge for their online service. It's miles above the average quality level of PC internet gaming.
8. Return Policy. Should a console game be found to be buggy, or even just not what it was advertised to be -- you can return it. This can not be downplayed. PC games cannot be returned in almost any case, yet console games can. Regardless of why (and we all know why) the point is that consumers will always gravitate toward the solution that is the most friendly. being able to rent, borrow, and return games is a gigantic benefit.
At the core though, consoles and their games are intentionally refined for the mass market. Very smart people spend alot of time making sure they are as refined as possible. they are more like appliances than tools. It just shouldn't be surprising to anyone that consoles are the preferred mechanism for gaming for the mass market.
PC games seem to have a market despite themselves. the hoops that fans jump through, the costs they deal with, the hassles of the menus and setup options, the limitations on the product the paying customer faces (in the name of 'copy protection') -- it shocks me daily to see how PC game fans put up with it.
firstly, game sales are not 'down'. the forecast -was- 18% growth, now it's merely 12.5%.
and they will still enjoying that double digit sales growth, even if another video game isn't sold all year. sales are only 'down from forecasts'. boo hoo. to have continued double digit growth in a time when most consumer markets are down or treading water must be a real bummer.
and the data is not even all in, nor does this article leverage any data aside from a vague 1-3% stock prices wiggle (which is not part of any trend, nor is it statistically significant) and some subjective measures from off-the-books sources. 'too much inventory', 'not exciting'... this is journalism?
Vice City set the holiday sales charts on fire last year because it was a great game. but, it could've sold that many copies in the middle of the summer, and then we wouldn't be reading this article.
imo, i wouldn't say the data is 'not looking too good'. but sensationalist journalism is what makes headlines.
first, you need is a freelance writer who gets paid only when his articles are published -- not when they're good, and not when they're accurate (Ben Berkowitz). then you need a single 'analyst' willing to go on the record and provide some quotes that can be interpreted as desired, but don't even actually -agree- with the story at hand (one US Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Tony Gikas). stir, publish, and congratulations!
you've churned out a publishable story about a poor holiday season, contrary to all the available evidence.
the difference i was trying to point out is that lately, it seems as if developers have to -wait- for 'entry level' systems to become pervasive enough to find a profitable market.
maybe feature creep due to hardware advances pushes up the minimum requirements. maybe the upgrade cycle slowed down as game development cycles grew, and hardware advances stayed at the same rate.
whatever it is, it definitely looks as if the games that are sold heavily on their graphics are staying in 'when its done' mode so long that you can't help but wonder why they -still- require such powerful machines to run acceptably when they release. if they were just working on gameplay and bugs, it's unlikely to push up system specs.
I mean, how could they be 'delayed' for 6-12 months and yet the minimum requirements still carry sticker-shock for all but the most hardcore gamers?
doom3 was -announced- in 2001. being gracious enough to consider that their 'start' date, and looking at anandtech's high end system guide for 2001, the best gaming rig you could buy then was an amd 1.3ghz and a geforce3.
i think the minimum requirements will still be a bit higher than that when it releases.
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Modding however is completely seperate from intellectual property theft. as the VHS before it, modding consumer electronics you own has substantial non-infringing uses. Thus, it should be protected fair-use. but thanks to the over-reaching DMCA, the consumer is now prohibited from altering a product they purchased and own, as well as having their right to free speech co-opted to protect an illegal corporate practice.
While many people would agree that for-profit ip theft in China is a serious issue - trying to use that to justify the DMCA (which is the only law that forbids the modding you hate so much) is not a solution, and only serves to make criminals of the paying customers.
After all, selling stolen intellectual property was already illegal. the DMCA makes it no easier to prosecute criminals who sell blackmarket software. contrarily, software piracy is much easier to do with a simple DVD writer than trying to convince black market customers to wield a soldering iron.
there was absolutely no cause or need for a law to prohibit reverse engineering - except that corporations have a large political budget, and much to lose if they have to price their product fairly and compete in an open market.
Everyone knows console makers are participating in the normally-illegal practice of selling product below cost. Everyone looks the other way because of the supposedly benevolent effect - consumers get hardware cheap. However, there is no fair market for software for this hardware (the console publishers fix pricing, and only compete between consoles - and they seem to have agreed on de facto price fixing).
In effect, the publisher is merely dumping the hardware to make the price of the next-gen console reasonable to the mass market consumer. if the actual price was applied to the machines, they would have to face the possibility of longer shelf-lives for their old product and a healthy after-market in truly 3rd party games and peripherals.
Which nearly exactly describes the situation in mainland China -- where systems as old as the famicom have a thriving aftermarket in peripherals, upgrades, and local games.
Yes, downloading games, or buying black market copies is certainly harmful to the game industry.
but mod-chips are only potentially harmful to those already breaking the law (if they weren't dumping, they wouldn't lose money if people bought the console but no games). And even then, mod chips only add another possibility for harm to the games industry. an opportunity orders of magnitude smaller than a simple DVD-R already does.
they're in CYA mode trying to 'reload' any interest in their franchise while they try to cobble together the Revolutions dvd.
the interest in their films fell way off, and so they're trying to generate some positive press and keep the core fanbase interested.
This is anything but selfless. They still have a dvd to sell that, judging by the attendance, not so many people care to buy at the moment.
in short, it's the level system.
more specifically, any character-advancement system that allows one player to become orders of magnitude more powerful than a 'newbie'.
first, it massively imbalances pvp. with a system that gives a player the power to kill a nearly endless stream of players weaker than himself, you simply cannot have player vs player content that appeals to the mass market.
second, it destroys the casual gamer segment. in the level based system, the casual gamer falls behind by definition, and quickly becomes a liability to most groups, not an asset. once the average character level is beyond what the casual gamer can manage, they leave, because there's no-one to play with. they can't earn 'experience' as fast as everyone else, because they don't play as much.
Furthermore, they can't even participate in the player economy. Without as much cash as the 'big boys' have to throw around, no player artisan is going to take his paltry money to make product appropriate for his character level. if they do, they'll undoubtably charge him much more than what the product sold for when the average level characters were at his level. He gets the ugly end of the player economy, just because he has fallen behind, or started late.
On top of that, even socializing is difficult. The lowbie almost certainly cannot safely travel to where the average level characters congregate alone. The game mechanics punish the casual gamer. They cast them out from the player society.
third, the levelling system wastes developer content. In everquest, the conservative estimates are at 80% of the content ever made for the game sitting idle. For all characters outside the appropriate level for any piece of content, there's no challenge, no reward -- so they don't bother (largely by design). Bust as we've already seen, the game casts out players who can't 'keep up'. for the most part, only the content suitable for the average character level matters. A glut of characters will hit a piece of content, pushing up demand for it, and crowding around it. Then they will all leave abruptly, and any changes made to alleviate competition for that content is waste. In fact, that content, overall, becomes waste. Think of all the developer time SOE sank into modelling, texturing, coding and balancing the creatures and zones in Everquest that no-one uses anymore.
Lastly, almost all levelling games have the underlying assumption that players need to be 'high' level to do 'cool stuff', see 'cool things' and fight 'cool mobs'. Newbies fight an endless stream of vermin. Hardcore players fight dragons, explore dungeons, see waterfalls and get cooler looking stuff.
The casual gamer will simply never see most of the 'cool' content. It will be wasted because nothing they experience will encourage them to suffer through the rest of the injustices of the system to try to get to the 'cool' stuff.
Basically, casual gamers simply -aren't-playing-commercial-massmogs-. They aren't there because the game design punishes them. So questions as to why the content isn't there for them is largely moot.
Worse still, the content isn't there for them, because fundamentally, it's hard(er) to make. Game developers know very well how to make bigger meaner monsters with more, shinier treasure. Few of them know how to make an engaging sandbox.
There are other roadblocks for the casual gamer: hardcoded 'groups' with limited slots, design complexity for its own sake, 'downtime', 'time sinks', unclearly conveying game rules, etc.
But they pale in comparison to the problems created by the oldest design short-cut in persistant gaming.
I talk about the casual gamer instead of the socializer directly -- simply because as the socializer does not spend most of their time achieving, they are punished by the system in the same way as casuals.
But making 'open' systems for casual/social gamers, without adressing the traditional systems that keep these same people away, is a waste.
Since there's no race war potential in Everquest, there was no point in having the faction system to begin with. the game was all but intended to be PvE from the beginning.
If you wanted mandatory good/bad teams, that stick together according to the story, try Dark Age of Camelot. of course, there's a -reason- to seperate the good/bad in that game. because the whole point is to fight each other.
in everquest there's simply no point to maintaining verisimilitude. it's player vs environment to the extreme. expecting players to maintain counterproductive race-tension is naive. why alienate people who will make you better against your primary enemey? (the computer)
it's up to the game mechanics to follow the in-game context. the players will always simply maximize their effectiveness in what the game mechanics reward them most for.
the lawsuit was not over the theft of virtual property.
it was over whether the game maker should give a player stuff back that he claims was stolen by a hacker.
the court decided the game maker should replace the persons stuff.
It had no bearing whatsoever on whether the theft was a crime, or the alleged 'hacking' of the game was a crime. It -did- have a bearing on whether the meatspace court had jurisdiction to dictate fair compensation inside of a virtual world.
whether the court can force a game company to administrate a video game according to its rulings is the important part here.
Essentially this means that virtual world 'policies' are analogous to official legislative 'law', and therefore the court has jurisdiction to determine their fairness and application.
One can already sue a private company over discriminatory policies, but having a court decide 'fairness' of any one equally-applicable policy is quite another step. (this game maker treats all customer complaints of this type the same, it is not discrimination)
For example, consider this:
Parent A grabs the last 'uber desireable toy' from a shelf in Toys R Us, and places it in her cart. She turns around for a moment, then turns back and 'uber desireable toy' is missing. She assumes a different parent, we'll say B, nabbed it when she wasn't looking. Breaking the 'rules' of the store by taking an item from her cart.
this lawsuit is equivalent to parent B suing Toys R Us to have another 'uber desireable toy' returned to her cart. despite the following: she never actually owned the toy, she has no idea -who- took it, she can't prove it was ever actually 'stolen' from her.
According the facts of this case as presented, the 'hacker' that 'stole' the victim's items is never named in the suit, named in court, or even had his existence confirmed.
This case has nothing to do with the legality of hacking the game, or stealing bits. It only has to do with the liability of the game maker and the jurisdiction of the courts.
in our industry you have to assume that any time your boss's boss arranges mandatory meetings with everyone in a group, department, or the company - it's because they're looking for dead weight.
most of the time there's nothing you can do about it, because they already -know- what you're doing, whether your manager says you do it well or not (their likely not going to trust your self-evaluation), and whether they're going to fire everyone.
They're just trying to cover their bases incase there is something unexpected.
Eg.
if they're cutting half a department they'll want to have some sort of idea whether your boss picked the desireable half to retain, or was playing favorites. (keep in mind 'desireable' often weights price over performance in such cuts)
or if they accidentally managed to plan on retaining only the two guys who -really- don't get along.
or if they're cutting an entire project they probably want to be sure that it doesn't turn out that a key employee was -actually- spending most of his time doing lucrative support work for legacy apps only he knows, despite being officially assigned to only this project being cut.
That being said no hatchet job will ever -start- with honesty. not officially anyway, there may be a leak, particularly if the manager is also getting canned, but they won't tell everyone.
The danger from under communication from every former employee is perceived as much greater than the danger of confrontation from one employee.
things like network sabotage, industrial espionage, etc are hard to pull off on short notice and easy to watch for on the fateful 'last day'.
But if you've got a head's-up that you're being downsourced in 2 months, you could much more likely find the time to cause problems, a buyer for a client list, or cause problems amongst remaining employees by publicizing salaries and such.
It makes sense as a default policy, but like you, i would hope they would trust IT employees to be professional about the situation, as higher-up HR and Accounting would be (trusted and professional).
funny... i just rented it.
i mean, i'm only going to watch the special features once, and i'll have already seen the movie twice after i rent it...
so do i really need to -own- the super special movie to have not 'missed out'?
I don't intend on rewatching it often, so I don't see the point in buying this. let alone protesting, this. Maybe you do, and more power to ya. My preferences aren't for everybody, and I wasn't passing judgement. I was just noting irony.
perhaps i should have focused on the merchandising, which is more to the heart of my point. But I was hoping to make my point without having to carefully phrase it to prevent anyone from taking offense.
But feel free to make ad hominem arguments against me, just because I don't see the point in buying a movie I don't plan on watching that often. I recognize that someone else's opinions don't invalidate or represent a threat to my own.
of the ridiculous level of marketing applied to the film and its merchandise.
cracks me up to see the sheeple gobble up the super special dvd's and whatnot.
you gotta figure Palahniuk's gotta be tempted to follow Hubbard's lead and give up on writing to begin an extremely lucrative cult.
or maybe 3D Realms will get bought by Microsoft, who'll set em on a new design path and make it the lead title for xbox next...
i mean... it's not like there isn't precedent for aimlessly floundering overhyped vaporware to be rescued like that...
'that's it? If you had a million dollars, that's what you'd do, two chicks at the same time?'
/at least i caught the reference
'damn straight, always wanted to do that. I figure if i were a millionaire i could Hook that up. Chicks dig money'
'Lawrence, not all chicks dig money'
'the kind that would double up on a guy like me do'
christ... i have fans????
the developers just want to do new things that they feel they can't do in the current game. or they can't justify updating the old client to support the new changes but not increase the system requirements alongside creating the whole new engine.
and naturally they feel attached to their old world, so they don't want to leave it.
so the 'sequel' approach appears.
but they need to realize that the best thing you can do is to isolate one project from the last. by name at least.
as UO has shown, people will play these games for years and years and years with relatively small ongoing development. why screw with what they find fun?
why not just make a new game, and let it stand on its own? I mean, sequels traditionally have been made in games when the developer admits the fun -was- there, but needs some serious tweaking to be fun again. but that just isn't the case with massmogs. not for their fans.
and prospective new customers won't care whether it's AC2 or something entirely new. they only know that AC1 didn't do it for them.
they can't be that short on imagination for new worlds can they?
if you have weight, you aim high, announcing a desire for something your opponent does not want (end of region coding), so that when you mediate on 'simultaneous release' it feels like a big coup for them.
If he started with asking for 'simultaneous release' they'd likely be more inclined to negotiate him down market by market under the guise of being reasonable.
of course it can backfire -- they can ignore you for being ludicrous and call your bluff - you don't even get partial victory.
of course for blockbuster, anything short of complete victory is still as bad. the demand in the time between different market releases pushes much of the market into willingness to commit 'piracy' to get the product. a demand that could be legally and more easily solved by going to blockbuster, if they had access to the legal material at the same time as the 'pirates'.
ending region coding for them would be great, but simply doing simultaneous release would be enough.
Contrary to this assertion, Everquest and D&D succeed based on their design. Not their entrenched positions.
they are the easiest games in their genres to pick up, play, and put down. The rules are very simple, straightforward, and hard to get 'wrong' in the beginning.
Sure, there are tactics that make a big difference in the end games, but the gamer is given a long time to figure these things out.
Contrarily, you can much more easily screw up a Hero-system character long before you ever play. And many other games seem to use complexity as a reward in and of itself. Complexity for its own sake.
This complexity seems to be the dividing line between casual and hardcore gamers.
As we all know the more casual gamers are more numerous, so it shouldn't be a surprise that if your game design is to take D&D but remove the archetypes, change the fiction, and add a more complex combat system, you're going to wind up not doing as well. Indeed, you may actually attract people to your game, who are put off, but like the genre itself, and gravitate toward the more consumer-friendly game.
This isn't to say they're the -best- games in their genres, just to say that they are certainly not sustaining their strength from being the first arriver. Everquest quite frankly was the third commercially supported 3d massmog. but it was friendlier to the mass market consumer than UO, and M59 before it.
When a massmog design hits that is both appealing and friendly to the mass market gamer, and still provides the depth of experience the hardcore gamer requires - it will overtake everquest. It's as simple as that. The network effect has weight on pulling people -to- a game, but not keeping them.
Indeed, Everquest's primary weakness, is the number of people who have played and left. This suggests there is room for improvement in appealing to the more casual gamer.
And if you appeal to the more casual gamer, you probably won't 'kill' any other massmog out there. But your numbers will certainly dwarf theirs, and push them firmly out of the genre-leading position.
The problem currently is that everyone either tries to directly emulate the leader in a slightly different genre, or they try to make gameplay advances through complexity.
Poker, Hearts, Chess -- the most endearing and widely appealing games in western culture (the only one i know enough to speak intelligently about) have very straightforward rules that make them easy to learn. Yet they harbor a depth to gameplay that modern role playing games and massmogs seem to miss in their never-ending quest for loot and levels.
Personally i think the number 1 reason for the seperation, is the longstanding tradition that in roleplaying games (online and off) a player who has been playing longer (higher level, higher skills, whatever) is nearly infinitely more powerful than one who just began -- not because of the player's ability, but because of the resources heaped upon them.
imagine playing cards against a euchre player who got to keep every trump card he was ever dealt. you simply would never be able to win.
in the cooperative sense, he would never play with you as his partner, for your lack of trump cards would be a liability in any competition he found challenging for his hand.
also consider that the truly interesting and exciting stuff is almost always reserved for those at the high end of this power scale.
The new gamer has to trudge through a level grind of killing rats and bats to get to the point where teamwork matters, and -his- ability can be challenged.
EQs numbers primarily show that -most- people who try massmogs are not looking for the level grind, though many more hardcore gamers are more than pleased with it.
the gender neutrel word -is- athelete. ;p
simply, professional athelete.
that said, since there is no actual proof of a correlation between these two trends, the author is still an asshat.
i'd be more inclined to blame the decreased enrollment in sports on our kids being so damned fat anymore.
maybe this was the unanticipated effect of our civilization finally evolving away from physical advancement and toward mental advancement.
perhaps we do not waste away to become steven spielberg's frail greys, but rather, more like jabba the hut.
or maybe parents are just too busy working to actually do sufficient parenting.
those seem much more likely than sports video games. if anything, they're the only things keeping video gamer children even tenuously linked back to their profit-structure as potential future viewers.
cut off the stream of sports games, and -that- would kill their viewership in 10 years. course... we might get televised cstrike matches at that point...
my mistake, there was an extra 'S' in there. ;p
i meant NES
though i did nearly consider buying a GBA SP -just- so i could play SM3 wherever i want. and so i don't have to deal with cleaning the damn NES all the time. American NES == bad design.
well i can't argue with the numbers. or lack thereof.
::shrug:: there seems to be plenty for me, and xbox live doesn't have the rampant cheating and much more inconsistant lag levels of sony's solution, or pc gaming.
i spoke from my own perspective about the number of people i find online playing any given new release (much easier to find a game of cstrike today than unreal 12 months ago) - and honestly I didn't even know they had 500k. last i heard it was 350k.
so i dunno. maybe it isn't growing. maybe it's limited by their relatively small (compared to the ps2) share of the console market, and the relatively small penetration of broadband into the home. but who cares.
lets assume it -ain't- growing. I can find a cheat-free game of cstrike whenever i want it. I can find a game for any new title out whenever i rent them. so long as that doesn't change, i'm happy as a clam.
though i could use an online rpg... even diablo-style, though i think something daoc-ish would go over well.
which is true enough. but the mass market consumer only -wants- to play games ;p
besides, they have computers too, they just don't have the time/patience/expertise to deal with PC gaming in most cases.
again, i'm just pointing out the logic from the perspective of the mass market consumer, to show that no-one should be surprised that consoles are ruling the commercial genre.
but i agree with you completely as well, and that's why i have both.
if i can play doom3 on my PC with my 1ghz and geforce3, i'll eat crow. but i ain't holdin my breath.
more likely, by the time it's released, when the minimum reqs are '2 ghz', it'll simply be less of a sticker shock. which was rather my point.
first off I'm not saying console gaming is better than PC gaming. I'm saying it makes more sense for the casual, mass-market consumer.
next, i am not a european, so i can't relate to the cost woes. in the states console games are the same price as pc games, and get price discounts much sooner. perhaps the price difference there explains why the european console market is so much smaller than japan or the US.
knights of the old republic i managed to play through without encountering any bugs. so i'm sorry. saying it had a 'long list' needs to be qualified with 'long list of bugs you'll probably never encounter with known work-arounds'. that doesn't make up for having the experience ruined by a bug, but -some- bugs are unavoidable. at least the game didn't refuse to run because you had the wrong drivers installed. or an old CD-ROM that's incompatible with their copy protection.
i can rent games, and i (though i do seem to be the minority here) have never had a problem returning a console game that didn't work. so again, i've never experienced the problems you have there.
content downloads and gameplay fixes do exist on the xbox for xbox-live enabled games. yes, it used to be the exclusive domain of pc games - but that isn't the case now.
aside from that, i'd argue that the mass market doesn't even download the content when it's available. so having downloadable content on the PC isn't going to entice any consumer to choose PC gaming.
and yes. console gaming is vastly cheaper.
consoles have a 3-5 year life cycle.
pc's -may- get to 3 years if they're extremely lucky.
every american home has a tv. including it in the cost of the console is silly. no-one's including the cost of a monitor with the computer cost.
hell, i wouldn't even remove the need to have a computer from the console owner equation. most homes -will- have a computer either way.
so the equation becomes:
console + home computer for surfing, email, home office, and digipics is cheaper than home computer for surfing, email, home office, digipics, and gaming.
this brings the initial price much closer for a fictional family with neither of these two items.
because a pc that doesn't have to be up to date for gaming is ludicrously cheaper and easier to maintain than one that does.
my points were to support the core argument that the console is a better solution to the mass market gamer.
Glitz
glitz per dollar, for the mass market - i stand by my assertion. a console does better for less with 640x480. you also forgot to note that the console cost -includes- the cpu, and mobo, but your 'graphics card' cost doesn't take that into account.
even today i'd have to spend $200 to get a cheap-as-possible cpu, mobo and graphics card to get HALO to look better and play as good at 8x6 on my PC as it does on my xbox at 6x4. and i've had my xbox for 2 years now. my 2 year old geforce3 and 1ghz p3 would not come close to running HALO at 8x6 at a playable rate. and it cost more than twice as much as the xbox.
yes, if you have the money, pc gaming will -always- look better. but we're talking about -why- the mass market chooses the console at such high preference. and the cost difference to get the better graphics is a big part of that.
Integrity:
Sony's online service is a joke to console gamers. It provides the worst aspects of multiplayer gaming to the least tolerant crowd. They made a mistake.
Microsoft does have a cheat-free network. Hell the quality is so damned high they can -charge- for it. and it keeps growing. punkbuster hasn't been doing much for keeping netgames from being a pos compared to what i get on the xbox. and now that cstrike has hit the xbox, i doubt i'll even be up-to-date on how 'good' things are going in pc network gaming in a year.
Return Policy:
you're the second person to disagree that they haven't had the experiences trying to return console games that I have. I dunno. I just don't have a problem. Who cares, I'll give you that point, and I'll even waive the grandparent's point about console games allowing you to loan games out easier. but can you argue the strength of being able to -rent- games? it's a pure, undeniable advantage for any gamer. and particularly the mass market who do not research games to the degree that pc gamers do.
Costs:
your $1000 athlon cost more than twice as much as my xbox, and my xbox is still going. even if you count the cost of the second controller, and hell even a memory card for good measure. (though i wouldnt need it, harddrive and all) and including the controller isn't even fair, as PCs don't have quite the same analogue, and when they do, it also costs a second controller. Your claim that one must automatically include the second controller only gives strength to the grandparent's assertion that console games are much more social.
again, i'm an xbox guy, so you can't toss harddrive and network adapter costs at me. truth be told, i probably wouldn't be on this side of the argument if it -wasn't- for the xbox. the limitations of the ps2 are the same as the ps1, and the same reason i didn't get one of those either.
but roll into the equation that i've never had to update video or sound drivers, or directx or any of that other stuff in the same time period just to make a game work. sure, it ain't much of a hassle for a pc gamer - but the mass market just doesn't do this, nor do they want to.
Again, I'm not arguing consoles 'best solution for everyone'. I'm arguing 'It's bloody obvious why the -mass-market- is choosing consoles, consider their needs, costs, and benefits'.
I was not always a console gamer. In fact, I hated consoles for quite some time. My passions were always FPS, RTS, RPG and massmog. the linear eastern-stylized RPGs on consoles didn't appeal to me, and the other genres weren't represented. I didn't even own a console between the SNES and my XBOX.
but i don't have the time or money to justify the kind of attention being a pc gamer requires anymore. and so i can easily see -why- console games dominate.
and that's all i'm saying. i'm not saying why consoles are better for everyone. i'm saying why consoles are better for the mass market.
why, by next year, game shelf space will be about 80/20 console to pc compared with 60/40 right now.
but to your points.
9. Options? remember, this is the benefit for the mass market consumer we're talking about. the person whose gaming budget does not support a rig that can run -last years- games at 16x12 and 30fps, let alone the latest.
the hardcore pc gamer who spends the money every 14 months to have a rig that can achieve playable speeds at the highest resolutions on the newest games will -always- have a better picture than a console gamer. but the console does a hell of alot better with the latest games than an average pc spec does, for so much cheaper.
10. i have played FPS on my console. and quite frankly i absolutely -hated- the controller for the first 90 minutes i played halo. thank goodness that game was good enough to keep me playing - because once i stopped wishing for my optical mouse and dealt with it, i got used to it in a hurry.
It doesn't even bother me anymore, and I actually -prefer- FPS on the console, mostly because of the broadband only netplay and the no cheating thing. (i mostly only play fps for the multiplayer anyway. not like a decent single player fps has come out for the pc since halflife)
that, and being able to play doom3 and halflife2 when they release on the console i bought 2 years ago is much preferable to upgrading my 1ghz + geforce3.
11. shelf-life -- how can this be a PC advantage? you update your computer for security purposes, or install a new OS to play the newest games, and your old stuff is gone. ever tried playing a dos4gw game lately?
i can turn on my SNES no problem and play super mario 3. and i do. yet i can't boot up Syndicate Wars or XCOM Apocalypse as easily, and had to jump through hoops to get XCOM UFO Defense itsel running.
and the new trend in consoles toward backward compatibility resolves this so neatly it's not a remote issue, and is a -better- pro. my $300 console lasts at least 4 years. how long does your $300 video card last? how long can you play the latest games on a computer you bought 4 years ago?
I got my xbox and my 1ghz pc around the same time. guess which one plays the newest games at an acceptable speed?
12. different systems -- only applies at the end of a console's life cycle. the beauty of consoles is not only do you get 3-5 years out of $300, but at the end of it, when something better comes out - you can buy into it for the same price. You can always boot up your old system and play it. You can always boot up your new system and play it. A stark contrast to PC gaming where the cost of maintaining a 'frozen in time' PC to play an old game is so much higher.
13. Content lockout. My DVD player has content lockout via region coding and it doesn't upset me so much. I don't make it a habit of buying out-of-region discs, and if i did, it seems to me it'd be smarter for the -manufacturer- to change his region coding than ask his customers to.
your missed points are:
4. Stability. You don't buy a console game on its release day, and then go home and download a 1.1 patch.
5. Ease of Use. Consoles require you to merely pop in the game and go. there are never patches, drivers, installs, video/sound configs, or any of that stuff PC gamers put up with.
6. Glitz. Console games are optimized to their fixed hardware. Halo on my xbox looks just like Halo on your xbox. I never have a friend tell me how awesome a ps2 game is, but find out my ps2 isn't fast enough to play it well.
7. Integrity. in online console gaming, it is possible to guarantee that no-one is cheating. Add to that the consistant matchmaking interface and features across a console, and it's no wonder that MS can successfully charge for their online service. It's miles above the average quality level of PC internet gaming.
8. Return Policy. Should a console game be found to be buggy, or even just not what it was advertised to be -- you can return it. This can not be downplayed. PC games cannot be returned in almost any case, yet console games can. Regardless of why (and we all know why) the point is that consumers will always gravitate toward the solution that is the most friendly. being able to rent, borrow, and return games is a gigantic benefit.
At the core though, consoles and their games are intentionally refined for the mass market. Very smart people spend alot of time making sure they are as refined as possible. they are more like appliances than tools. It just shouldn't be surprising to anyone that consoles are the preferred mechanism for gaming for the mass market.
PC games seem to have a market despite themselves. the hoops that fans jump through, the costs they deal with, the hassles of the menus and setup options, the limitations on the product the paying customer faces (in the name of 'copy protection') -- it shocks me daily to see how PC game fans put up with it.
firstly, game sales are not 'down'. the forecast -was- 18% growth, now it's merely 12.5%.
and they will still enjoying that double digit sales growth, even if another video game isn't sold all year. sales are only 'down from forecasts'. boo hoo. to have continued double digit growth in a time when most consumer markets are down or treading water must be a real bummer.
and the data is not even all in, nor does this article leverage any data aside from a vague 1-3% stock prices wiggle (which is not part of any trend, nor is it statistically significant) and some subjective measures from off-the-books sources. 'too much inventory', 'not exciting'... this is journalism?
Vice City set the holiday sales charts on fire last year because it was a great game. but, it could've sold that many copies in the middle of the summer, and then we wouldn't be reading this article.
imo, i wouldn't say the data is 'not looking too good'. but sensationalist journalism is what makes headlines.
first, you need is a freelance writer who gets paid only when his articles are published -- not when they're good, and not when they're accurate (Ben Berkowitz). then you need a single 'analyst' willing to go on the record and provide some quotes that can be interpreted as desired, but don't even actually -agree- with the story at hand (one US Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Tony Gikas). stir, publish, and congratulations!
you've churned out a publishable story about a poor holiday season, contrary to all the available evidence.
the difference i was trying to point out is that lately, it seems as if developers have to -wait- for 'entry level' systems to become pervasive enough to find a profitable market.
maybe feature creep due to hardware advances pushes up the minimum requirements. maybe the upgrade cycle slowed down as game development cycles grew, and hardware advances stayed at the same rate.
whatever it is, it definitely looks as if the games that are sold heavily on their graphics are staying in 'when its done' mode so long that you can't help but wonder why they -still- require such powerful machines to run acceptably when they release. if they were just working on gameplay and bugs, it's unlikely to push up system specs.
I mean, how could they be 'delayed' for 6-12 months and yet the minimum requirements still carry sticker-shock for all but the most hardcore gamers?
doom3 was -announced- in 2001. being gracious enough to consider that their 'start' date, and looking at anandtech's high end system guide for 2001, the best gaming rig you could buy then was an amd 1.3ghz and a geforce3.
i think the minimum requirements will still be a bit higher than that when it releases.