On the consumer side, growing from nearly nothing 200% a year or more, still doesn't mean that you have a great amount of marketshare. Sure, you got hundreds of thousands of consumer users if not millions, but when the competition has hundreds of millions of users, that isn't holding any sizable market share. I hate growth statistics because they are misleading. For instance, in order for a big company (e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) to maintain double-digit growth, they must literally make tens of billions of dollars, and if they keep growing by billions, it increases the amount they must grow by. On the other hand, relatively small companies (like Red Hat) may be able to make just a few million dollars and that would make their growth in the double digits or more.
I really want to know how many people play 4 player games. There are only 3 types of games that I know of that implement multiplayer modes regularly on consoles: fighting, racing, and FPS.
I hate tag tournament modes in fighter games where you might have 4 players but really, only 2 people are playing at a time. You might as well hand off the controller.
Racing games are potentially fun (car, snowboarding, bike, etc.) but with such limited screen real estate, it's a pain. I think Gran Turismo 3 went the right direction with its i.Link/Firewire capabilities.
And don't get started on FPS games on consoles...
DVD capabilities? Not that I think consoles make great DVD players as the PS2 has shown, but without it, I think many people will be wondering why the GameCube doesn't have them while X-Box (albeit at the cost of a ~$30 US controller) and PS2 have them included. I know that there is going to be a GameCube that will have DVD capabilities later, but I wonder if it will cost Nintendo some sales.
I agree with the other replies more or less about closed source programs don't necessarily "meet deadlines", and if they do meet the original deadline, it is because they usually cut back on features or functionality. However, in addition to that, I also disagree about the "unreliability and hard to maintain/upgrade" of closed source programs from the perspective of end users. Even though they may be from companies with bad reputations (and poor security models or business practices), IE, AOL IM, Adobe Photoshop, and other programs do what they are designed to do, and they do it well enough that I don't have major complaints. While I use Mozilla, gaim, and Gimp to a large degree, the number of bugs, crashes, and times where it is necessary to upgrade to the latest version to maintain usability is by far larger than their closed source equilivants (not counting gAIM on the last note since it really isn't their fault).
Although it's somewhat of a corp (not that it's mega anymore IMO), K-Mart in CA is running the Akira Special/Limited Edition for $19.99. All this and more over at the dvdtalk.com forums where they discuss great deals on nearly everything DVD related (B&M and online).
Who in the world was there left to compete with anyway? In most cities, there was always one cable company to begin with, and I seriously doubt that the cable company in Houston, TX has any concern what the cable company in Miami, FL does.
I don't know where you found that the X-Box CPU is much slower than the PS2. Reading on various websites, the Intel CPU plus the NVIDIA chipset (GeForce 3 basically) is really great. Mind you, I own a PS2 and I have no intention of buying an X-Box, but only because nothing impresses me about it. The machine itself is great and I wouldn't mind owning a regular PC equivilant, but that's kind of the whole point.
There are no exclusive games that make me jump and say "Wow!". Halo for instance (if you even think that's revolutionary anymore), is going to the PC and Mac. The only exclusive Japanese game that I've heard of so far is Dead or Alive 3, and while it looks good (I also own DOA2: Hardcore), I am much more addicted to Tekken's style of play.
I believe the main failure of the X-Box as it stands now, is the official lack of support of Japanese developers as Brian Hook stated in his Ask Dev column over at Voodoo Extreme. Also, there are hardly any exclusive games, and the mainstream who follow trends will jump on the PS2 if the price drops just because games like Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy X, and so forth are on it, and almost any other X-Box game that's great, will also be on PS2 (Metal Gear Solid 2, Tekken, Tony Hawk, SSX: Tricky, etc.).
I agree with your point especially since many people on various other forums have expressed the same idea about the X-Box and the fact that it may just turn out to be a standardized computer, but I don't believe that Sony is going to market this development kit to your everyday consumer.
They had a very limited number of PS2 Linux development kits that were available to the Japanese, and they only took pre-orders/orders on their website. Again, they're not stupid to think that the millions who have bought the PS2 will buy a Linux OS "add-on package".
Do you consider the X-Box a PC then? It's supposedly running a special version of the Windows 2000 kernel underneath of it with DirectX drivers. Maybe that was too easy a point that consoles can be "PCs" since almost everybody knows that the X-Box really is just one, but how about the Dreamcast? If I recall correctly, the developers got a WinCE development kit in addition to the barebones dev kit to develop games for. If the Dreamcast can run an OS, would that be a PC? I think other people had it more correctly that a PC is much more open and can be expanded as a computing device. Not that it is defined by running an OS of any degree.
Actually, the PS2 would fail on point #2. It makes more noise than my computer. Admittedly, my personal computer has quiet fans, but it is a common complaint that the PS2's fan is really noisy.
Just as a side question, is there any way to turn off the PS2 (or rather put it in standby mode) when playing DVDs with either a remote or a DualShock 2 controller?
While I primarily use Linux now on my main machine at home, you have to admit that Windows XP is definitely an improvement over Win95/98/ME, which the majority of users will be switching from. If I had not already switched some of my other machines to Linux/Windows 2000, I would definitely consider it. Windows 2000 has not crashed on me at all, and whenver it did crash, it was because I was installing the latest NVIDIA drivers and trying some new option.
Isn't the external hard drive only for the PCMCIA version of the PS2 (only released in Japan as far as I know)? I don't think the external hard drive works via the USB port. If someone could post any links to the contrary, please do. I'm very interested in the expansion options for the PS2.
You may be right but you have to also be reminded that many if not all of these people are not paid and are programming because they are interested, have the love for it, or really just want to do something better for the software community. When there are no managers, threats of being "fired", and because you really believe that it should be done in such and such way, of course egos tend to rise up. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer it that people spoke their mind without wimping out so long as it does not get too personal. Innovation thrives on competition.
Realism? I think there are far many more things to complain about than weapon switch hotkeys in D2 if you want to talk about realism.:)
In any case, some of this is due to gameplay and making games *gasp* fun and somewhat easier on the gamer. I hardly got D2 for the intricate puzzles and mind boggling plot.
That's the problem with many of today's games and why I stopped playing Black and White after 2 weeks (ok it was nonstop playing, but hey:). The novelty wore off and I just wanted to be able to drop in, play a few minutes here and there, and still feel satisfied.
Sound i could understand but keyboard and 2-button mouse functions are pretty common nowadays. Also, I haven't seen anyone really use force feedback outside of racing games with their steering wheels (then again, where did the whole flight simulator / sci-fi fighter genre go?).
I thought that Red Faction used the internally developed GeoMod engine...
Re:Next Generation - full speech recognition in a
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Gnome 1.2.0 Released
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Regarding the UI in TVs, digital cable (even just regular cable I believe in some areas like Texas) does have the ability to let you know what's on the next/prev channel and you can also move forward in time too. This is not done via a TV guide button; it's actually an info bar on the screen. They still have the TV guide of course, but w/ the new info bar, you really don't need it unless you're browsing up to 7 days in advance. Consequently, they added a 4 button select pad for channel up/down and time forward/backward.
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I think it's CmdrTaco that put in that little bit about liking Final Fantasy.
On the consumer side, growing from nearly nothing 200% a year or more, still doesn't mean that you have a great amount of marketshare. Sure, you got hundreds of thousands of consumer users if not millions, but when the competition has hundreds of millions of users, that isn't holding any sizable market share. I hate growth statistics because they are misleading. For instance, in order for a big company (e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) to maintain double-digit growth, they must literally make tens of billions of dollars, and if they keep growing by billions, it increases the amount they must grow by. On the other hand, relatively small companies (like Red Hat) may be able to make just a few million dollars and that would make their growth in the double digits or more.
I really want to know how many people play 4 player games. There are only 3 types of games that I know of that implement multiplayer modes regularly on consoles: fighting, racing, and FPS. I hate tag tournament modes in fighter games where you might have 4 players but really, only 2 people are playing at a time. You might as well hand off the controller. Racing games are potentially fun (car, snowboarding, bike, etc.) but with such limited screen real estate, it's a pain. I think Gran Turismo 3 went the right direction with its i.Link/Firewire capabilities. And don't get started on FPS games on consoles...
Thank god you haven't seen the X-Box.
DVD capabilities? Not that I think consoles make great DVD players as the PS2 has shown, but without it, I think many people will be wondering why the GameCube doesn't have them while X-Box (albeit at the cost of a ~$30 US controller) and PS2 have them included. I know that there is going to be a GameCube that will have DVD capabilities later, but I wonder if it will cost Nintendo some sales.
I agree with the other replies more or less about closed source programs don't necessarily "meet deadlines", and if they do meet the original deadline, it is because they usually cut back on features or functionality. However, in addition to that, I also disagree about the "unreliability and hard to maintain/upgrade" of closed source programs from the perspective of end users. Even though they may be from companies with bad reputations (and poor security models or business practices), IE, AOL IM, Adobe Photoshop, and other programs do what they are designed to do, and they do it well enough that I don't have major complaints. While I use Mozilla, gaim, and Gimp to a large degree, the number of bugs, crashes, and times where it is necessary to upgrade to the latest version to maintain usability is by far larger than their closed source equilivants (not counting gAIM on the last note since it really isn't their fault).
Although it's somewhat of a corp (not that it's mega anymore IMO), K-Mart in CA is running the Akira Special/Limited Edition for $19.99. All this and more over at the dvdtalk.com forums where they discuss great deals on nearly everything DVD related (B&M and online).
Who in the world was there left to compete with anyway? In most cities, there was always one cable company to begin with, and I seriously doubt that the cable company in Houston, TX has any concern what the cable company in Miami, FL does.
I don't know where you found that the X-Box CPU is much slower than the PS2. Reading on various websites, the Intel CPU plus the NVIDIA chipset (GeForce 3 basically) is really great. Mind you, I own a PS2 and I have no intention of buying an X-Box, but only because nothing impresses me about it. The machine itself is great and I wouldn't mind owning a regular PC equivilant, but that's kind of the whole point. There are no exclusive games that make me jump and say "Wow!". Halo for instance (if you even think that's revolutionary anymore), is going to the PC and Mac. The only exclusive Japanese game that I've heard of so far is Dead or Alive 3, and while it looks good (I also own DOA2: Hardcore), I am much more addicted to Tekken's style of play. I believe the main failure of the X-Box as it stands now, is the official lack of support of Japanese developers as Brian Hook stated in his Ask Dev column over at Voodoo Extreme. Also, there are hardly any exclusive games, and the mainstream who follow trends will jump on the PS2 if the price drops just because games like Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy X, and so forth are on it, and almost any other X-Box game that's great, will also be on PS2 (Metal Gear Solid 2, Tekken, Tony Hawk, SSX: Tricky, etc.).
I agree with your point especially since many people on various other forums have expressed the same idea about the X-Box and the fact that it may just turn out to be a standardized computer, but I don't believe that Sony is going to market this development kit to your everyday consumer. They had a very limited number of PS2 Linux development kits that were available to the Japanese, and they only took pre-orders/orders on their website. Again, they're not stupid to think that the millions who have bought the PS2 will buy a Linux OS "add-on package".
Do you consider the X-Box a PC then? It's supposedly running a special version of the Windows 2000 kernel underneath of it with DirectX drivers. Maybe that was too easy a point that consoles can be "PCs" since almost everybody knows that the X-Box really is just one, but how about the Dreamcast? If I recall correctly, the developers got a WinCE development kit in addition to the barebones dev kit to develop games for. If the Dreamcast can run an OS, would that be a PC? I think other people had it more correctly that a PC is much more open and can be expanded as a computing device. Not that it is defined by running an OS of any degree.
Actually, the PS2 would fail on point #2. It makes more noise than my computer. Admittedly, my personal computer has quiet fans, but it is a common complaint that the PS2's fan is really noisy.
Just as a side question, is there any way to turn off the PS2 (or rather put it in standby mode) when playing DVDs with either a remote or a DualShock 2 controller?
While I primarily use Linux now on my main machine at home, you have to admit that Windows XP is definitely an improvement over Win95/98/ME, which the majority of users will be switching from. If I had not already switched some of my other machines to Linux/Windows 2000, I would definitely consider it. Windows 2000 has not crashed on me at all, and whenver it did crash, it was because I was installing the latest NVIDIA drivers and trying some new option.
Isn't the external hard drive only for the PCMCIA version of the PS2 (only released in Japan as far as I know)? I don't think the external hard drive works via the USB port. If someone could post any links to the contrary, please do. I'm very interested in the expansion options for the PS2.
You may be right but you have to also be reminded that many if not all of these people are not paid and are programming because they are interested, have the love for it, or really just want to do something better for the software community. When there are no managers, threats of being "fired", and because you really believe that it should be done in such and such way, of course egos tend to rise up. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer it that people spoke their mind without wimping out so long as it does not get too personal. Innovation thrives on competition.
Realism? I think there are far many more things to complain about than weapon switch hotkeys in D2 if you want to talk about realism. :)
In any case, some of this is due to gameplay and making games *gasp* fun and somewhat easier on the gamer. I hardly got D2 for the intricate puzzles and mind boggling plot.
That's the problem with many of today's games and why I stopped playing Black and White after 2 weeks (ok it was nonstop playing, but hey :). The novelty wore off and I just wanted to be able to drop in, play a few minutes here and there, and still feel satisfied.
Sound i could understand but keyboard and 2-button mouse functions are pretty common nowadays. Also, I haven't seen anyone really use force feedback outside of racing games with their steering wheels (then again, where did the whole flight simulator / sci-fi fighter genre go?).
I thought that Red Faction used the internally developed GeoMod engine...
Regarding the UI in TVs, digital cable (even just regular cable I believe in some areas like Texas) does have the ability to let you know what's on the next/prev channel and you can also move forward in time too. This is not done via a TV guide button; it's actually an info bar on the screen. They still have the TV guide of course, but w/ the new info bar, you really don't need it unless you're browsing up to 7 days in advance. Consequently, they added a 4 button select pad for channel up/down and time forward/backward.