What's not in the summary or TFA is that this is the first handheld to be "fully" region locked. The PSP was region locked for movies, while the DSi had region locking for the online stores.
Actually, DSi games were region locked too.
But this is the first handheld where titles bought off store shelves will all be region locked. There's been evidence for some time that Nintendo are the most anti-consumer of the three console developers, but I think this is probably the final proof.
What? This has nothing to do with being anti-consumer. But it's very bad for the low number of consumers like me, that import games and play genres that are not popular on my territory. I can't say I'm pleased with this. I'm used to it, but I thought Nintendo understood that it wasn't making them any good. I hope this protection will be broken.
But given my long experience of region-locked consoles, people like me are far too small a quantity for region-locking to have any impact on sales. In entertainment at least. It's even more obvious with BRD or DVD.
Combined with the console's price-point, this really does make me wonder where Nintendo are going with this. They've put it at a price tag which, like the PSP, is going to put it out of reach of most of the playground demographic, at least until Christmas.
The launch units are obviously for enthusiasts.
And yet among non-Japanese grown-up gamers, one of the biggest uses of handhelds is for when you go travelling. I'm not going to sit at home and play on a handheld, in general, when I have proper consoles and a gaming PC in my flat. Why should I peer at a tiny screen and cramp my hands up for a handheld's controls when I could be gaming in comfort? And my commute? I suspect that like many people who live in or near a major city, my commute on public transport is just too crowded and too rattly for handheld gaming.
Clearly you're part of a tiny fraction of the people that bought a DS/DSi/DS XL: - lots of non-japanese grownup gamers bought the DS, - the DSi XL is made precisely for people that sit at home and play on their handheld, - most children are not playing their DS only when they commute, - people who commute in Japan play the DS even when it's crowded, -...
So basically you're not even the target for the DS from what you describe, so it's clear why you can't give a proper prevision on the success or failure of 3DS.
Like it or not, FF13 was starved of resource by Square-Enix. But as any project manager will tell you, there is more than one kind of resource. FF13 had plenty of budget. It had no shortage of artistic talent. But it was deprived of the company's core games development talent and of any sensible kind of project management. Go read the interviews that followed FF13's launch, when Square-Enix realised it had a turkey on its hands and began the blame game (which we've seen even more pronounced on FF14). The game had a huge number of artists working for many years to produce assets for the game - artists who just aren't needed for the low-budget graphically primative handheld and Wii games. What it didn't have was anybody putting work into developing game mechanics or even a storyline to hold the game together. This is why we got a game that was graphically beautiful (on the PS3, at least), but which just did not work as a game.
I agree with that, but still it has nothing to do with DS games depriving HD games of resources. This is nonsense and just plain false, as the HD engine for FFXIII and other SE games was being developed at the same time. DS game developers at Square-Enix didn't deprive HD game developers, this doesn't make sense, and sure didn't deprive DQ IX of resources.
Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS. Now sure, those games have some pretty neat gameplay elements, but they are always going to be constrained by the limitations of the hardware. It's not just graphics; a lack of RAM in these systems constrains the size of the play areas you can use and so on (hence the mission-based structure that a lot of these games tend to take).
So this can't be games that deprived FFXIII of game developers.
The results of Square-Enix's strategy have been plain in the performance of their games lately and their financial results for the last year or so (for which see google). The handheld and Wii games get ok-ish reviews and do not exactly set the charts on fire in terms of sales (they tend to do ok-ish in Japan and underwhelmingly in the West); they don't cost much to develop, but they're not exactly setting the world on fire.
I agree with that, except for DQ IX, they are crap games. This is the same for PSP games. Actually, you could say the same for most SE games released this generation, HD games included, except for DQ IX on DS, so I don't see the point here. And no, no SE Wii game received OK-ish reviews.
At the same time, the big-budget main-series FF games take forever to develop (remember, no effective project management) and get panned on release. If I remember, FF13 had pretty decent initial sales, but these fell off a cliff as word of mouth basically torpedoed the game below the waterline.
Receiving 39/40 review from Famitsu is being panned on release? What nonsense is that? FF13 was just far more frontloaded than any other FF main numbered release in Japan, that's all. It's first week amounted like 85+% of its LTD sales which is just insane.
In short, Square-Enix does need to put its resource focus back onto its big-budget AAA titles; but by resource, I mean development talent, not money.
What I can't accept is that I think you're saying that they put talent in their DS or Wii games, which I hope and believe, is completely false. If it were to be true, given how bad their games on these platforms are (except for Yuji Hoori Dragonquest of course), then Square Enix won't be able to pull out of the rut they're in nowadays.
As for Japanese gaming falling behind the West; wake up and smell the coffee. It's clear you're a Nintendo fanboy - and one of the minority who hasn't been through the disillusionment process yet. Don't worry, it's not necessarily a permanent condition; I was a Square-En
The high end titles have suffered (13 and 14) because there has clearly been a lack of development focus on them. It's clear that Squenix's emphasis has been on bad-to-middling handheld titles, like the (entirely pointless) Dissidia games, the Kingdom Hearts handheld titles and rubbish like Crystal Chronicles on the Wii. The company was doing just fine right through to FF12 (which was difficult to get into, but pretty awesome when you did).
Then you must have an agenda, because the problems of FFXIII have absolutely nothing to do with technic. They have to do with game direction, which is completely independant of which console you develop for or if you master every bit of the console or not. Basically, you're coming into this thread talking about problems that aren't there (at least for FFXIII). The lack of town in FFXIII has nothing to do with SE having Wii, DS or PSP devkits, or with the games they made for these platforms. And the Enix part of the company is doing just fine on DS, with Dragonquest IX being (for now) the best 3rd party sales ever on a game platform in Japan (more than 4 millions sales in Japan alone). Contrast that with the fact that FFXIII is the main numbered FF (which is not a MMO, aka traditional FF) with the least sales in Japan (less than 2 millions sold in the last Famitsu top 100 released recently).
If SE followed your advice, they would be dead by now. FFXIII was in development for a loooooong time and cost a LOT of money.
It really only is with the advent of the current hardware generation that their output has gone to hell.
It's symptomatic of wider Japanese gaming, I think. Outside of a few exceptions, Japanese developers have never really got to grips with the PS3, 360 and the modern PC in a way that the West has. As a result, I think Japanese console games now lag behind their Western counterparts to roughly the same extent that they led them by in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation.
So the last sentence was your hidden agenda. Your last sentence is wrong BTW. Nintendo alone proves you wrong on all counts. Japanese console games are far beyond their western counterpart just by counting Nintendo alone. The main problem of this generation is money, greed and graphics. This generation, western console games look like they're more advanced (I didn't say better) because it's more occidental to put lots of money on the table to do grandiose games. Japanese are far more conservatives. The problem is that there's no market to sustain these games (except on Wii and DS), and the consequence is that dev studios are dying left and right, and those that are not dead yet are posting losses after losses every quarter. Lots of big publishers died or are dying this gen. The only reason why japanese console games seem to lag behind is because they at least saw a little better the obvious outcome : their death if their game doesn't work. And it's symptomatic of most publishers (both western and eastern) this gen : not supporting the market leader with grandiose products. The writing was on the wall since 2007 really.
For Square Enix and Final Fantasy, I guessed the outcome in 2007, seeing how they were handling FF and DQ, with FF getting all the push by SE, leaving DQ behind, but I was sure Dragonquest was the one that would come to the front and survive, if only just because Yuji Hoori was doing the right choices (like putting his next DQ on the leading platform as always, which was the DS). While the Square part of the company was doing nonsense like putting FF on the loser consoles just for "the graphics". This showed right away that FF was going in the wrong direction. The MMO FFXIV only confirmed this fiasco in a spectacular way.
It's sad really, when Xenoblade is a better FF than FFXIII, but it doesn't have the brand name to sell as much, not even a tenth of what FFXIII sold. FFXIII is still a financial success I think, though not as good as SE hoped I think, as they're already in trouble, despite FFXIII and DQ IX last year.
The Wii has only one processor core. The Wii has a GPU capable of only ~15 million polygons/second max, and incapable of plain old bumpmapping, nevermind more complex shaders. It has a pitiful amount of memory available. Reducing the resolution of a 360 or PS3 game doesn't reduce the massive amount of shaders and effects the Wii simply could not handle. That's why games need to be completely independently developed for the Wii, it's nearly impossible to do a straight port and downgrade, simply because the limitations are so vastly different. It's a Gamecube. Surely you're not suggesting that a PS2 could play PS3 games easily at 480p as well?
Which just shows you're ignorant. PS2 DOES play "PS3" games at 480p, like some football games (PES/Winning Eleven) and some beat'em all games, and some others. Even some movie franchises games. SO yes you're wrong. There is no technical reason why the Wii can't have the same games as the HD consoles, except the games wouldn't be in HD of course. Your technical nonsense is just an excuse, which was debunked a while ago.
Nintendo seems to be the only one that needs to upgrade the capabilities of their current console. There's lots of games coming out for PS3 or XBox360 that I'd like to play, but these games are not coming out on the Wii because it's simply not powerful enough.
Nintendo doesn't need to upgrade anything because they're not in the technology business. And the reason why these games are not coming out on the Wii is not because it's not powerful enough. It's just an excuse, as shown when a well-known game engine (allowing these games) wasn't released for the Wii for this very reason, and yet comes out later for the iPhone, which has even lower resolution. How stupid is that? This excuse does not work anymore just looking at the Gamecube, which, despite being more powerful, didn't get the games either.
I think the larger danger to the consoles is not the PC market, but the mobile market with the iPad and such. I've been surprised at how much the iPad can actually pull off for not being just a gaming device (N.O.V.A., etc).
This article reminds me a bit of some of the early predictions where the people couldn't see the need for more than a few computers in the world. It reeks of something that will come around and bite them in the ass for not progressing quick enough.
I've heard this countless times, and I don't believe one bit of it. Like when the Wii launched, and I saw Slashdot collectively being wrong on everything about it, like the name "Wii", that thread was very virulent and stupid. All of this comes from the same mistake, every single time : people believe that consoles are in the technology business, while consoles are in the entertainement business. I understand why people make this mistake especially on Slashdot, but still. Th iPad and before it the PC, would be a threat to home consoles if consoles were in the technology business. But now just put them in the entertainment business. To help you, assume consoles (games for consoles actually, talking about consoles is wrong already) are movies. Now look at these movies, and evaluate the amount of fun between watching them in your living room, in your bedroom alone on your computer screen, and on the move. And perhaps you'll understand why the iPad, or PC are not a threat to dedicated home consoles. At least I'm convinced they're not. But people rightfully feel consoles face competition from these devices, because 360 and PS3 are looking more and more like PC, opening themselves up to competition from other PC derivated devices like the iPad.
The Wii just appealed to the casual gamer grandmas who would have never considered console before. The only reason it sold so much is because it opened a new market that consoles could previously never break into. It was also relatively cheap, further lowering the bar to its entry into the market. The 360 appealed more to the traditional console crowd. Most serious gamers I know have 360s. Not many have a Wii.
This is plain wrong on two counts : - 360 mainly got PC games, so is not appealing to traditional console crowd at all, but more to traditional PC crowd, who must have heavily migrated. This just accelerated the demise of PC gaming. Only the true hardcore are still on PC now, the "mainstream" PC gamers (so mainly USA gamers) seems to have migrated en masse to 360. - "serious gamers" doesn't mean anything, and if you meant hardcore gamers, obviously they play all the best games on all consoles, so only the ones that have a Wii are true "serious gamers". The others are just fanboys or kids if they claim anything about being "serious gamers".
I don't know either why you're refering to the Wii in the past.
Umm no. It will be in the default kernal eventually and that works out-of-the-box. The idea that user friendliness is "pasting some lines to bashrc and running some commands" and that "user friendliness" should be left up to distros rather than the main line for Linux is pretty much one of the reasons Linux has never really mattered on the desktop and why 95% of computer users prefer Windows or Macs.
This is pretty irrelevant here because the people affected by this patch and benefiting from it are all deeply involved in Linux already. What you say is even more irrelevant because this patch won't affect in anyway those users that prefer Windows or Mac (users used to graphics and not to command line) if they ever happen to try Linux. To add to the ridicule of what you're saying, the kind of workload causing this scheduling problem (the heavy stress on the CPU scheduler) are just unsustainable on both Windows and Mac.
The problem here is clear to me : this is a userspace problem that they include in the kernel. It's a userspace problem because you don't actually need one addition of this kind to make it effective, you need one for every workload you happen to fall upon. Which means it must be configurable, and if you put that in the kernel, you then have to put the myriad other workload corrections in the kernel, or you'll have inconsistencies, with some workload treated in the kernel, others in userspace. This is a policy problem basically, and I just don't understand how the kernel developers can say it's sane to put this in the kernel. Of course one patch of this kind is not bloat, but as soon as you start adding the corrections for other workloads, it'll add huge bloat to the kernel. This doesn't make sense to me.
That's a bit excessive! It does have some nice things going for it, including a fairly nice API that's been binary and source compatible for decades.
This is no advantage in this case as there are decades old API which are nicer, standard, and as a bonus have open implementation (like MPI).
There's end-to-end Unicode support in all APIs, a nice event logging and tracing system, a nice performance monitoring system (WMI), various asynchronous file and socket APIs, including advanced copy-less APIs that can tie TCP streams to specific CPU cores, etc...
All of which are pretty much useless in HPC, and when they are useful, they're already there in better form on Linux. A nice event logging and tracing system, really? When people want maximum computing efficiency, they don't want all that.
Unlike Linux, Windows has a built-in volume snapshot system that supports application quiescing (not just cache flushing), exportable snapshots, advanced access-list support that is standard and consistent, etc...
All of which are useless in a cluster. If Windows snapshots are exportable to Linux LVM, this is a good thing. The same if Windows ACL support is standard with the POSIX ones, or at least the one in Linux. I didn't know that, but at the same time who cares?
Really, the biggest issue with Windows is that the source is closed, so if you need something special for a cluster, you're out of luck. "patch tuesday" is only an issue on networks which are not controlled, and a supercomputer would use a dedicated, isolated network.
Which is nonsense because a FS like Lustre is still updated constantly, and often need tweaking to a particular hardware. And no, the biggest issue with Windows is its efficiency. It's one of the worst ones in the Tsubame 2.0 system at Rmax being 52 % of the Rpeak. In part due to the use of GPU, but still. Even the first on the top 500, that also uses GPU, is at 54 %. Linux can go in efficiency to as high as 87 % and more.
Japan, seriously, how many times do we need the protagonist to be a 13 year old boy with no fashion sense and spiky hair? Also, would it kill you to have the story make some goddamn sense for once?
Perhaps you should play more japanese RPG, instead of always playing the same one. At least that's what I get from what you're saying.
Seriously, when I find out that the main character is the dream of a ghost and the answer all along was that we needed to combine all of the feelings of love throughout the world to break the time loop or something I just want to kick the writer in the nuts.
Oh god! I hope you don't play games only for the story though, or you missed a lot from this game including the essential part of the story actually, you only remembered the ending! Must have been a lot of bore throughout that game. Remember: games are about having fun, not looking at a story, which is for movies.
That's why I tend to prefer western RPGs, even if they do spend way too much time stealing ideas wholesale from Tolkien, again. I'd love to see more studios go the Mass Effect or even Alpha Protocol route just to freshen up the genre.
Good for you. I'm actually more and more disappointed by JRPG, the classic ones. And that's mostly because they become more and more like movies, which is not fun in a game (lots of cutscenes etc.) But SRPG (mostly a japanese genre in RPG) are getting better on the other hand, and that's a good thing for me as that's my preferred genre.
Videogame culture is about 40% American/Other Western Countries, 40% Japanese/Other Asian Countries, and about 20% original.
That's about right if you forget Nintendo.
Yes, Japanese developers are very behind in game design.
That's about right if you forget Nintendo.
You look at, say FFXIII. Big-name game, big-name people. They're about par with America in terms of art, music, maybe a bit behind in programming because they don't pay as well. But their game designers are probably ten years behind.
Now look at, say Super Mario Bros Wii. Big name game, big name people. I don't know if they're par or below anyone in term of art, music and programming, but what I know, is that noone has been able to replicate what they do in decades, and they still went out and released this Wii episode that exploded in the charts while most observers where seeing it as a failure and a "lazy" port of DS game. So most of these observers, that included lots of game designers, seem like they're centuries behind.
Go to an American game-design site like Gamasutra. They'll talk about interaction looks, gameplay design AS the story. Then go to Japan, where most of their game design is "like this game, but with different numbers and colors." They just do not get game design as a science.
I'm not sure scientists are the best entertainers. Actually, I'm pretty sure of the contrary. But what you say makes sense, as the first videogames were made by computer scientists. Game design is good for school, but I don't think school and successful games go well together. School is too academic to work for games.
In interests of fairness, however, there is a lot American developers could learn from Japan. First, story. Japanese writers are good at making unique characters. Compare (to use well-known examples) Cloud Strife to Master Chief. Both have unique art designs, but look at the characters. One is an ex-elite soldier recovering from torture/experiment-induced amnesia and a feeling of duty to a dead comrade. The other is a supersoldier who is REALLY good at killing things, and is the last survivor of a battle that, until last week, was never really shown. Now, which sounds like a more interesting story?
I don't know, but games are not movies, so this is just nonsensical. Many of the best selling games from Japan have no story (and most come from Nintendo anyway). This Nintendo company is a pain in the ass to many people, so much that unless they forget about them, most of what they say is contradicted by these small japanese company.
People have been saying that since the beginning of time.
Surely you meant "people on PC".
Casual and indie gaming is not a new phenomenon, except on consoles. There have always been casual and indie games on the PC.
Did you write this with a straight face? Do you even believe your own BS? FYI Tetris or Pacman are casual games, made specifically to tailor to women in the case of Pacman (thus why there are so much colors in this game, and why everything looks not scary at all), and perhaps not intentionally for Tetris. If you're so old of a gamer, surely you rememeber the uproar about Tetris, which propulsed the Gameboy to heaven, with guys lamenting about Tetris not being a game (it doesn't have an end! The graphics are crap! Nintendo stole it from the Russian! GASP!). Even Mario was considered not a game by PC gamers back in the day. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and history repeats itself.
The GameCube in particular had some nice RPGs, shooters, adventure and platforming games that are notably absent on the Wii.
Seriously, get out of this rock you've lived under for so many years, and just check the line up for this year, or the past one. Platforming absent from the Wii? Are you insane? That's where the genre is the best represented. I can give you adventure, and the Wii didn't have really good exclusive shooters outside of Japan for now. The RPG always were there, and several were out even this year with indifference from people like you who just ignore them. And you expect to be taken seriously when these RPG do pitiful sales because people actually are not interested in them? There are two apparently good RPG in Japan now (Xenoblade is out, the Last Story is not yet) that will surely come to the west. I will buy them for sure, but I'm sure your lot will ignore them and then come out next year saying the same nonsense about not having any nice RPG, Shooters and Platforming on Wii.
There are tons of them this year alone. But you won't look for them, you don't buy them, and yet you expect them to shine. Monster Hunter 3 came out this year with a redesigned classic controller. You didn't even buy that since the last game you bought was Brawl, so years ago. So you lived under a rock since that Brawl launch, or you're just making silly excuses just to draw the illusion that you're rightfully bashing the Wii.
Why is it a problem for you to wait a few hours for a download. You need to go out and buy a UMD game, or get someone else to deliver it for you. With a decent connection, a download s always quicker and more convenient!
Of course this isn't really a big problem for the PSPGo. One big glaring problem though, often overlooked, is that you need a PS3 to get your games. Which is pretty stupid.
The only reason Sony could bring all those things is because they are a big international company with tons of cash flow and manufactures. That's also why analysts always assumed Sony and MS would be the victors this gen instead of Nintendo, which still is a very small company compared to these behemoths. It's easy to forget because Nintendo made profits like never seen before in this console generation, while the two others lost billions of dollars of money. I think also that's why what Sony has done is nothing special (except if you think being a big corporation is special in itself) and can easily be brushed. At the time, Nintendo was knee deep in lawsuits, especially from Atari, so it couldn't expand in Europe.
Question is how many did they sell? If they sold a metric assload of them (at a profit obviously), I doubt Sony would care *what* the critics thought...
Actually, in Japan, they still haven't sold the first shipment of PSPGo. I'm not sure about USA, but that's surely the case too, given the really poor sales in NPD. And in Europe, like in USA, PSP is dead since a very long time. The problem is not the hardware, they've sold 60 millions of them. The problem is that the primary source of revenue is the software sales, and PSP software sales are dead since a very long time, despite countless hits released on PSP, which all flop.
Most of the time (and including earlier PS3), console hardware is sold at a loss to push it into the market and the vendor regains the money from game sales. The Wii was the first among the current generation consoles that broke this tradition.
This "everyone sells its console at a loss" is a myth.
This was never a tradition, so the Wii didn't break any tradition. Nintendo is the older console manufacturer still alive, so is the traditional one, and they never sold their console at a loss, except the very first months of Gamecube because they quickly dropped the price before launch.
Sony is the big one that introduced this business tactic that was then followed by several companies or gaming division of companies which all met their demise. This includes Sega, MS and Sony. You'll rightly tell me MS and Sony gaming divisions are not dead, but the only reason why is because they are big enough and had enough profit in other divisions to stand the billions of dollars they lost by using this tactic. This tactic only works when you're the one with the biggest market: the one with the more consoles and who sells the most games. When you don't, you fail harder to the point of not being able to sustain it even one generation. The net result of XBox is a loss of 6+ billions of dollars, as for the PS3, they lost as much as they profited with the PS1 and PS2 combined! Two generations of profits (due to being market leader) erased with only one generation of loss (due to not being leader).
Why would anyone buy a PS2 if he can have a PS3. I never understood that. I would never play a PS2 game on a PS3. Why? For what? And if you have PS2 games it is highly likely you do have a PS2. So again, why?
I don't match any of your scenario. I never had a PS2, and I bought a PS3 specifically for its PS2 compatibility. Actually, I bought a PS3 when they announced they were clearing stock of PS2 compatible PS3. Guess what, I still were able to buy old PS2 games new, and several PS2 games I bought went gold after I bought my PS3, like Persona 4. And I play all my PS2 games on PS3. Even worse for you, I even play PS1 games on it!!! Some people are more gamers than graphics whores, which is why FFVII PSN sold very well for example.
No, the first step to installing the pirate stuff isn't the homebrew channel. The first step is buying a Wii. Nintendo should eliminate that step first. This is just insane.
You're insane indeed. So the solution to piracy is to never sell anything that could be pirated? It's so stupid it's not even funny, if you wanted to be funny.
Only a few years ago it was utterly unimaginable that hardware makers would try their best to lock users out of their own systems.
Except Nintendo isn't trying to lock users out of their systems, they're trying to lock pirates out. Nintendo is not stupid enough to let pirates have an easy way. People that choose that way have accepted to do it the hard way anyway. People that like homebrew won't be really impaired, and the true pirates won't be impaired either. The ones that will be hit hard are the casual pirates, people for whom someone knowledgeable installed the necessary software. These are the true customers that can be put back on the right path to buy the content they actually want. Pirates and homebrew users are not real customers to Nintendo if they don't buy any games.
I'm pretty sure the Wii came out before his blog started,
And you're pretty wrong. The fact that he was posting in the Wiikly notwithstanding. You sound like all these MS and Sony viral marketers that he talks about. The fact is that he predicted nearly perfectly most of what happened in this generation of consoles, so it's no wonder people love Malstrom, but viral marketers hate him with a passion.
and that Nintendo/Sega have been into more casual mini-game style games for a lot longer than the Wii. Saying a blog has "opened your eyes" makes it sound more like you are easily brainwashed.
So you don't know his blog but you are quick to dismiss it and call people who read it "brainwashed" ? It won't work. Malstrom is really making life like hell to viral marketers. It's funny to watch them recoil in terror at everything he writes.
Well, based on what I can see based on the ease of all of the new Wii games, Nintendo Hard has become Nintendo "this game will play by itself practically". Or Nintendo Hard has become Nintendo frustrating because third parties can't use a touchscreen/motion controller effectively in a game.
Well, based on what I can see, you have not played any Wii game, and you are a typical troll.
I'm sorry but the games on the Wii are crap, the Virtual Console has more decent games and more playability than the entire current Wii library.
Which is confirmed here : you haven't played any Wii game. Even Wii Sports, that comes with the console outside of Japan, destroys your argument.
And its not that the Wii is underpowered its just the developers aren't giving it decent games. I don't care that its in standard definition, I care if its fun.
This must be your 2 only correct sentences.
And I'd much rather play The Orange Box on my 360 than sit through another minigame compilation that seems to be the only games ever made for the Wii.
Isn't it a little strange that none of the big console makers (Sony, MS, Nintendo) havn't announced plans for a next generation console? I mean christ..how long have the current-generation consoles been out for now..4 or 5 years?
We have seen plans for a next generation console. Kinect is marketed by MS as their next generation console, like a new launch that would give 4-5 years more life to XB360. Even if that's only marketing, no console maker has any reason to launch a next generation console: * We're in a recession, it wouldn't be a wise thing to do, especially given the state of the industry, * That requires funds, and 2 of the 3 are in a "profitability" mode, Sony and MS console divisions lost countless billions this generation, they just can't afford to go on like this, * MS lost more than $8.5 B (!!) on its XBox line across the years, and is only now slowly recovering some of this money back. The ROI of XBox is disastrous, and it would be worse if they were to make a new one soon; * Sony Playstation division lost all the profits they made during the PS1 and PS2 era, with the PS3 only. Like MS, making a new console would put them back hundreds of millions in the red; * The gaming industry is collectively in the red. If you remove Nintendo, they're all in the red this generation. Even if you add Nintendo actually * Nintendo is the only one making insane (never seen before) profits in the gaming industry. Activision is the sole other making decent, thanks in part to WoW and CoD games. But Nintendo has no incentive to make another home console, when 3rd parties still have not embraced the Wii correctly, and while Wii is still selling like no other home console before it. For years, the gaming industry acted like they wanted the small Kyoto firm to die, and look at the small Kyoto firm just making the reverse happen, including knocking over two big companies in its way. It's just amazing to watch.
It's actually what a Sony guy said a few days ago when asked about the PSPGo. He said it was an experiment and they learned some lessons from it, like people wanting physical media instead of downloadable only.
This experiment is interesting because it just lowers any chance of success for MS strategy that was based on "no more physical media". Every successful download only game is getting a physical media release on console. Isn't it strange if the future is no physical media?
Slashdot Mirror
What's not in the summary or TFA is that this is the first handheld to be "fully" region locked. The PSP was region locked for movies, while the DSi had region locking for the online stores.
Actually, DSi games were region locked too.
But this is the first handheld where titles bought off store shelves will all be region locked. There's been evidence for some time that Nintendo are the most anti-consumer of the three console developers, but I think this is probably the final proof.
What? This has nothing to do with being anti-consumer.
But it's very bad for the low number of consumers like me, that import games and play genres that are not popular on my territory. I can't say I'm pleased with this.
I'm used to it, but I thought Nintendo understood that it wasn't making them any good.
I hope this protection will be broken.
But given my long experience of region-locked consoles, people like me are far too small a quantity for region-locking to have any impact on sales. In entertainment at least. It's even more obvious with BRD or DVD.
Combined with the console's price-point, this really does make me wonder where Nintendo are going with this. They've put it at a price tag which, like the PSP, is going to put it out of reach of most of the playground demographic, at least until Christmas.
The launch units are obviously for enthusiasts.
And yet among non-Japanese grown-up gamers, one of the biggest uses of handhelds is for when you go travelling. I'm not going to sit at home and play on a handheld, in general, when I have proper consoles and a gaming PC in my flat. Why should I peer at a tiny screen and cramp my hands up for a handheld's controls when I could be gaming in comfort? And my commute? I suspect that like many people who live in or near a major city, my commute on public transport is just too crowded and too rattly for handheld gaming.
Clearly you're part of a tiny fraction of the people that bought a DS/DSi/DS XL: ...
- lots of non-japanese grownup gamers bought the DS,
- the DSi XL is made precisely for people that sit at home and play on their handheld,
- most children are not playing their DS only when they commute,
- people who commute in Japan play the DS even when it's crowded,
-
So basically you're not even the target for the DS from what you describe, so it's clear why you can't give a proper prevision on the success or failure of 3DS.
You're misreading what I said.
Like it or not, FF13 was starved of resource by Square-Enix. But as any project manager will tell you, there is more than one kind of resource. FF13 had plenty of budget. It had no shortage of artistic talent. But it was deprived of the company's core games development talent and of any sensible kind of project management. Go read the interviews that followed FF13's launch, when Square-Enix realised it had a turkey on its hands and began the blame game (which we've seen even more pronounced on FF14). The game had a huge number of artists working for many years to produce assets for the game - artists who just aren't needed for the low-budget graphically primative handheld and Wii games. What it didn't have was anybody putting work into developing game mechanics or even a storyline to hold the game together. This is why we got a game that was graphically beautiful (on the PS3, at least), but which just did not work as a game.
I agree with that, but still it has nothing to do with DS games depriving HD games of resources.
This is nonsense and just plain false, as the HD engine for FFXIII and other SE games was being developed at the same time. DS game developers at Square-Enix didn't deprive HD game developers, this doesn't make sense, and sure didn't deprive DQ IX of resources.
Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS. Now sure, those games have some pretty neat gameplay elements, but they are always going to be constrained by the limitations of the hardware. It's not just graphics; a lack of RAM in these systems constrains the size of the play areas you can use and so on (hence the mission-based structure that a lot of these games tend to take).
So this can't be games that deprived FFXIII of game developers.
The results of Square-Enix's strategy have been plain in the performance of their games lately and their financial results for the last year or so (for which see google). The handheld and Wii games get ok-ish reviews and do not exactly set the charts on fire in terms of sales (they tend to do ok-ish in Japan and underwhelmingly in the West); they don't cost much to develop, but they're not exactly setting the world on fire.
I agree with that, except for DQ IX, they are crap games. This is the same for PSP games. Actually, you could say the same for most SE games released this generation, HD games included, except for DQ IX on DS, so I don't see the point here.
And no, no SE Wii game received OK-ish reviews.
At the same time, the big-budget main-series FF games take forever to develop (remember, no effective project management) and get panned on release. If I remember, FF13 had pretty decent initial sales, but these fell off a cliff as word of mouth basically torpedoed the game below the waterline.
Receiving 39/40 review from Famitsu is being panned on release? What nonsense is that?
FF13 was just far more frontloaded than any other FF main numbered release in Japan, that's all. It's first week amounted like 85+% of its LTD sales which is just insane.
In short, Square-Enix does need to put its resource focus back onto its big-budget AAA titles; but by resource, I mean development talent, not money.
What I can't accept is that I think you're saying that they put talent in their DS or Wii games, which I hope and believe, is completely false. If it were to be true, given how bad their games on these platforms are (except for Yuji Hoori Dragonquest of course), then Square Enix won't be able to pull out of the rut they're in nowadays.
As for Japanese gaming falling behind the West; wake up and smell the coffee. It's clear you're a Nintendo fanboy - and one of the minority who hasn't been through the disillusionment process yet. Don't worry, it's not necessarily a permanent condition; I was a Square-En
The high end titles have suffered (13 and 14) because there has clearly been a lack of development focus on them. It's clear that Squenix's emphasis has been on bad-to-middling handheld titles, like the (entirely pointless) Dissidia games, the Kingdom Hearts handheld titles and rubbish like Crystal Chronicles on the Wii. The company was doing just fine right through to FF12 (which was difficult to get into, but pretty awesome when you did).
Then you must have an agenda, because the problems of FFXIII have absolutely nothing to do with technic. They have to do with game direction, which is completely independant of which console you develop for or if you master every bit of the console or not.
Basically, you're coming into this thread talking about problems that aren't there (at least for FFXIII).
The lack of town in FFXIII has nothing to do with SE having Wii, DS or PSP devkits, or with the games they made for these platforms.
And the Enix part of the company is doing just fine on DS, with Dragonquest IX being (for now) the best 3rd party sales ever on a game platform in Japan (more than 4 millions sales in Japan alone).
Contrast that with the fact that FFXIII is the main numbered FF (which is not a MMO, aka traditional FF) with the least sales in Japan (less than 2 millions sold in the last Famitsu top 100 released recently).
If SE followed your advice, they would be dead by now. FFXIII was in development for a loooooong time and cost a LOT of money.
It really only is with the advent of the current hardware generation that their output has gone to hell.
It's symptomatic of wider Japanese gaming, I think. Outside of a few exceptions, Japanese developers have never really got to grips with the PS3, 360 and the modern PC in a way that the West has. As a result, I think Japanese console games now lag behind their Western counterparts to roughly the same extent that they led them by in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation.
So the last sentence was your hidden agenda.
Your last sentence is wrong BTW. Nintendo alone proves you wrong on all counts.
Japanese console games are far beyond their western counterpart just by counting Nintendo alone.
The main problem of this generation is money, greed and graphics.
This generation, western console games look like they're more advanced (I didn't say better) because it's more occidental to put lots of money on the table to do grandiose games. Japanese are far more conservatives. The problem is that there's no market to sustain these games (except on Wii and DS), and the consequence is that dev studios are dying left and right, and those that are not dead yet are posting losses after losses every quarter. Lots of big publishers died or are dying this gen.
The only reason why japanese console games seem to lag behind is because they at least saw a little better the obvious outcome : their death if their game doesn't work.
And it's symptomatic of most publishers (both western and eastern) this gen : not supporting the market leader with grandiose products. The writing was on the wall since 2007 really.
For Square Enix and Final Fantasy, I guessed the outcome in 2007, seeing how they were handling FF and DQ, with FF getting all the push by SE, leaving DQ behind, but I was sure Dragonquest was the one that would come to the front and survive, if only just because Yuji Hoori was doing the right choices (like putting his next DQ on the leading platform as always, which was the DS). While the Square part of the company was doing nonsense like putting FF on the loser consoles just for "the graphics". This showed right away that FF was going in the wrong direction. The MMO FFXIV only confirmed this fiasco in a spectacular way.
It's sad really, when Xenoblade is a better FF than FFXIII, but it doesn't have the brand name to sell as much, not even a tenth of what FFXIII sold. FFXIII is still a financial success I think, though not as good as SE hoped I think, as they're already in trouble, despite FFXIII and DQ IX last year.
Um, what?
The Wii has only one processor core. The Wii has a GPU capable of only ~15 million polygons/second max, and incapable of plain old bumpmapping, nevermind more complex shaders. It has a pitiful amount of memory available. Reducing the resolution of a 360 or PS3 game doesn't reduce the massive amount of shaders and effects the Wii simply could not handle. That's why games need to be completely independently developed for the Wii, it's nearly impossible to do a straight port and downgrade, simply because the limitations are so vastly different. It's a Gamecube. Surely you're not suggesting that a PS2 could play PS3 games easily at 480p as well?
Which just shows you're ignorant. PS2 DOES play "PS3" games at 480p, like some football games (PES/Winning Eleven) and some beat'em all games, and some others. Even some movie franchises games.
SO yes you're wrong.
There is no technical reason why the Wii can't have the same games as the HD consoles, except the games wouldn't be in HD of course.
Your technical nonsense is just an excuse, which was debunked a while ago.
Nintendo seems to be the only one that needs to upgrade the capabilities of their current console. There's lots of games coming out for PS3 or XBox360 that I'd like to play, but these games are not coming out on the Wii because it's simply not powerful enough.
Nintendo doesn't need to upgrade anything because they're not in the technology business. And the reason why these games are not coming out on the Wii is not because it's not powerful enough. It's just an excuse, as shown when a well-known game engine (allowing these games) wasn't released for the Wii for this very reason, and yet comes out later for the iPhone, which has even lower resolution. How stupid is that?
This excuse does not work anymore just looking at the Gamecube, which, despite being more powerful, didn't get the games either.
I think the larger danger to the consoles is not the PC market, but the mobile market with the iPad and such. I've been surprised at how much the iPad can actually pull off for not being just a gaming device (N.O.V.A., etc).
This article reminds me a bit of some of the early predictions where the people couldn't see the need for more than a few computers in the world. It reeks of something that will come around and bite them in the ass for not progressing quick enough.
I've heard this countless times, and I don't believe one bit of it.
Like when the Wii launched, and I saw Slashdot collectively being wrong on everything about it, like the name "Wii", that thread was very virulent and stupid.
All of this comes from the same mistake, every single time : people believe that consoles are in the technology business, while consoles are in the entertainement business. I understand why people make this mistake especially on Slashdot, but still.
Th iPad and before it the PC, would be a threat to home consoles if consoles were in the technology business.
But now just put them in the entertainment business. To help you, assume consoles (games for consoles actually, talking about consoles is wrong already) are movies. Now look at these movies, and evaluate the amount of fun between watching them in your living room, in your bedroom alone on your computer screen, and on the move. And perhaps you'll understand why the iPad, or PC are not a threat to dedicated home consoles. At least I'm convinced they're not.
But people rightfully feel consoles face competition from these devices, because 360 and PS3 are looking more and more like PC, opening themselves up to competition from other PC derivated devices like the iPad.
The Wii just appealed to the casual gamer grandmas who would have never considered console before. The only reason it sold so much is because it opened a new market that consoles could previously never break into. It was also relatively cheap, further lowering the bar to its entry into the market. The 360 appealed more to the traditional console crowd. Most serious gamers I know have 360s. Not many have a Wii.
This is plain wrong on two counts :
- 360 mainly got PC games, so is not appealing to traditional console crowd at all, but more to traditional PC crowd, who must have heavily migrated. This just accelerated the demise of PC gaming. Only the true hardcore are still on PC now, the "mainstream" PC gamers (so mainly USA gamers) seems to have migrated en masse to 360.
- "serious gamers" doesn't mean anything, and if you meant hardcore gamers, obviously they play all the best games on all consoles, so only the ones that have a Wii are true "serious gamers". The others are just fanboys or kids if they claim anything about being "serious gamers".
I don't know either why you're refering to the Wii in the past.
Best for you right now? Update your .bashrc file.
Best for all the people who miss this little nugget? Include it in the kernel.
This is nonsense.
Best for all people who miss this little nugget? Include it in the Linux distributions.
This is what they are for BTW.
Umm no. It will be in the default kernal eventually and that works out-of-the-box. The idea that user friendliness is "pasting some lines to bashrc and running some commands" and that "user friendliness" should be left up to distros rather than the main line for Linux is pretty much one of the reasons Linux has never really mattered on the desktop and why 95% of computer users prefer Windows or Macs.
This is pretty irrelevant here because the people affected by this patch and benefiting from it are all deeply involved in Linux already.
What you say is even more irrelevant because this patch won't affect in anyway those users that prefer Windows or Mac (users used to graphics and not to command line) if they ever happen to try Linux.
To add to the ridicule of what you're saying, the kind of workload causing this scheduling problem (the heavy stress on the CPU scheduler) are just unsustainable on both Windows and Mac.
The problem here is clear to me : this is a userspace problem that they include in the kernel. It's a userspace problem because you don't actually need one addition of this kind to make it effective, you need one for every workload you happen to fall upon. Which means it must be configurable, and if you put that in the kernel, you then have to put the myriad other workload corrections in the kernel, or you'll have inconsistencies, with some workload treated in the kernel, others in userspace.
This is a policy problem basically, and I just don't understand how the kernel developers can say it's sane to put this in the kernel.
Of course one patch of this kind is not bloat, but as soon as you start adding the corrections for other workloads, it'll add huge bloat to the kernel. This doesn't make sense to me.
That's a bit excessive! It does have some nice things going for it, including a fairly nice API that's been binary and source compatible for decades.
This is no advantage in this case as there are decades old API which are nicer, standard, and as a bonus have open implementation (like MPI).
There's end-to-end Unicode support in all APIs, a nice event logging and tracing system, a nice performance monitoring system (WMI), various asynchronous file and socket APIs, including advanced copy-less APIs that can tie TCP streams to specific CPU cores, etc...
All of which are pretty much useless in HPC, and when they are useful, they're already there in better form on Linux. A nice event logging and tracing system, really? When people want maximum computing efficiency, they don't want all that.
Unlike Linux, Windows has a built-in volume snapshot system that supports application quiescing (not just cache flushing), exportable snapshots, advanced access-list support that is standard and consistent, etc...
All of which are useless in a cluster. If Windows snapshots are exportable to Linux LVM, this is a good thing. The same if Windows ACL support is standard with the POSIX ones, or at least the one in Linux.
I didn't know that, but at the same time who cares?
Really, the biggest issue with Windows is that the source is closed, so if you need something special for a cluster, you're out of luck. "patch tuesday" is only an issue on networks which are not controlled, and a supercomputer would use a dedicated, isolated network.
Which is nonsense because a FS like Lustre is still updated constantly, and often need tweaking to a particular hardware.
And no, the biggest issue with Windows is its efficiency. It's one of the worst ones in the Tsubame 2.0 system at Rmax being 52 % of the Rpeak. In part due to the use of GPU, but still. Even the first on the top 500, that also uses GPU, is at 54 %. Linux can go in efficiency to as high as 87 % and more.
Japan, seriously, how many times do we need the protagonist to be a 13 year old boy with no fashion sense and spiky hair? Also, would it kill you to have the story make some goddamn sense for once?
Perhaps you should play more japanese RPG, instead of always playing the same one.
At least that's what I get from what you're saying.
Seriously, when I find out that the main character is the dream of a ghost and the answer all along was that we needed to combine all of the feelings of love throughout the world to break the time loop or something I just want to kick the writer in the nuts.
Oh god! I hope you don't play games only for the story though, or you missed a lot from this game including the essential part of the story actually, you only remembered the ending! Must have been a lot of bore throughout that game. Remember: games are about having fun, not looking at a story, which is for movies.
That's why I tend to prefer western RPGs, even if they do spend way too much time stealing ideas wholesale from Tolkien, again. I'd love to see more studios go the Mass Effect or even Alpha Protocol route just to freshen up the genre.
Good for you. I'm actually more and more disappointed by JRPG, the classic ones. And that's mostly because they become more and more like movies, which is not fun in a game (lots of cutscenes etc.)
But SRPG (mostly a japanese genre in RPG) are getting better on the other hand, and that's a good thing for me as that's my preferred genre.
Videogame culture is about 40% American/Other Western Countries, 40% Japanese/Other Asian Countries, and about 20% original.
That's about right if you forget Nintendo.
Yes, Japanese developers are very behind in game design.
That's about right if you forget Nintendo.
You look at, say FFXIII. Big-name game, big-name people. They're about par with America in terms of art, music, maybe a bit behind in programming because they don't pay as well. But their game designers are probably ten years behind.
Now look at, say Super Mario Bros Wii. Big name game, big name people. I don't know if they're par or below anyone in term of art, music and programming, but what I know, is that noone has been able to replicate what they do in decades, and they still went out and released this Wii episode that exploded in the charts while most observers where seeing it as a failure and a "lazy" port of DS game. So most of these observers, that included lots of game designers, seem like they're centuries behind.
Go to an American game-design site like Gamasutra. They'll talk about interaction looks, gameplay design AS the story. Then go to Japan, where most of their game design is "like this game, but with different numbers and colors." They just do not get game design as a science.
I'm not sure scientists are the best entertainers. Actually, I'm pretty sure of the contrary. But what you say makes sense, as the first videogames were made by computer scientists.
Game design is good for school, but I don't think school and successful games go well together.
School is too academic to work for games.
In interests of fairness, however, there is a lot American developers could learn from Japan. First, story. Japanese writers are good at making unique characters. Compare (to use well-known examples) Cloud Strife to Master Chief. Both have unique art designs, but look at the characters. One is an ex-elite soldier recovering from torture/experiment-induced amnesia and a feeling of duty to a dead comrade. The other is a supersoldier who is REALLY good at killing things, and is the last survivor of a battle that, until last week, was never really shown. Now, which sounds like a more interesting story?
I don't know, but games are not movies, so this is just nonsensical. Many of the best selling games from Japan have no story (and most come from Nintendo anyway).
This Nintendo company is a pain in the ass to many people, so much that unless they forget about them, most of what they say is contradicted by these small japanese company.
People have been saying that since the beginning of time.
Surely you meant "people on PC".
Casual and indie gaming is not a new phenomenon, except on consoles. There have always been casual and indie games on the PC.
Did you write this with a straight face? Do you even believe your own BS?
FYI Tetris or Pacman are casual games, made specifically to tailor to women in the case of Pacman (thus why there are so much colors in this game, and why everything looks not scary at all), and perhaps not intentionally for Tetris. If you're so old of a gamer, surely you rememeber the uproar about Tetris, which propulsed the Gameboy to heaven, with guys lamenting about Tetris not being a game (it doesn't have an end! The graphics are crap! Nintendo stole it from the Russian! GASP!).
Even Mario was considered not a game by PC gamers back in the day.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, and history repeats itself.
The GameCube in particular had some nice RPGs, shooters, adventure and platforming games that are notably absent on the Wii.
Seriously, get out of this rock you've lived under for so many years, and just check the line up for this year, or the past one.
Platforming absent from the Wii? Are you insane? That's where the genre is the best represented. I can give you adventure, and the Wii didn't have really good exclusive shooters outside of Japan for now. The RPG always were there, and several were out even this year with indifference from people like you who just ignore them. And you expect to be taken seriously when these RPG do pitiful sales because people actually are not interested in them?
There are two apparently good RPG in Japan now (Xenoblade is out, the Last Story is not yet) that will surely come to the west.
I will buy them for sure, but I'm sure your lot will ignore them and then come out next year saying the same nonsense about not having any nice RPG, Shooters and Platforming on Wii.
When was the last title worth buying for the Wii?
There are tons of them this year alone. But you won't look for them, you don't buy them, and yet you expect them to shine.
Monster Hunter 3 came out this year with a redesigned classic controller. You didn't even buy that since the last game you bought was Brawl, so years ago. So you lived under a rock since that Brawl launch, or you're just making silly excuses just to draw the illusion that you're rightfully bashing the Wii.
Why is it a problem for you to wait a few hours for a download. You need to go out and buy a UMD game, or get someone else to deliver it for you. With a decent connection, a download s always quicker and more convenient!
Of course this isn't really a big problem for the PSPGo.
One big glaring problem though, often overlooked, is that you need a PS3 to get your games.
Which is pretty stupid.
The only reason Sony could bring all those things is because they are a big international company with tons of cash flow and manufactures.
That's also why analysts always assumed Sony and MS would be the victors this gen instead of Nintendo, which still is a very small company compared to these behemoths.
It's easy to forget because Nintendo made profits like never seen before in this console generation, while the two others lost billions of dollars of money.
I think also that's why what Sony has done is nothing special (except if you think being a big corporation is special in itself) and can easily be brushed.
At the time, Nintendo was knee deep in lawsuits, especially from Atari, so it couldn't expand in Europe.
Question is how many did they sell? If they sold a metric assload of them (at a profit obviously), I doubt Sony would care *what* the critics thought...
Actually, in Japan, they still haven't sold the first shipment of PSPGo.
I'm not sure about USA, but that's surely the case too, given the really poor sales in NPD.
And in Europe, like in USA, PSP is dead since a very long time.
The problem is not the hardware, they've sold 60 millions of them. The problem is that the primary source of revenue is the software sales, and PSP software sales are dead since a very long time, despite countless hits released on PSP, which all flop.
Most of the time (and including earlier PS3), console hardware is sold at a loss to push it into the market and the vendor regains the money from game sales. The Wii was the first among the current generation consoles that broke this tradition.
This "everyone sells its console at a loss" is a myth.
This was never a tradition, so the Wii didn't break any tradition. Nintendo is the older console manufacturer still alive, so is the traditional one, and they never sold their console at a loss, except the very first months of Gamecube because they quickly dropped the price before launch.
Sony is the big one that introduced this business tactic that was then followed by several companies or gaming division of companies which all met their demise. This includes Sega, MS and Sony.
You'll rightly tell me MS and Sony gaming divisions are not dead, but the only reason why is because they are big enough and had enough profit in other divisions to stand the billions of dollars they lost by using this tactic.
This tactic only works when you're the one with the biggest market: the one with the more consoles and who sells the most games. When you don't, you fail harder to the point of not being able to sustain it even one generation.
The net result of XBox is a loss of 6+ billions of dollars, as for the PS3, they lost as much as they profited with the PS1 and PS2 combined! Two generations of profits (due to being market leader) erased with only one generation of loss (due to not being leader).
Why would anyone buy a PS2 if he can have a PS3. I never understood that. I would never play a PS2 game on a PS3. Why? For what? And if you have PS2 games it is highly likely you do have a PS2. So again, why?
I don't match any of your scenario.
I never had a PS2, and I bought a PS3 specifically for its PS2 compatibility. Actually, I bought a PS3 when they announced they were clearing stock of PS2 compatible PS3. Guess what, I still were able to buy old PS2 games new, and several PS2 games I bought went gold after I bought my PS3, like Persona 4.
And I play all my PS2 games on PS3. Even worse for you, I even play PS1 games on it!!!
Some people are more gamers than graphics whores, which is why FFVII PSN sold very well for example.
No, the first step to installing the pirate stuff isn't the homebrew channel. The first step is buying a Wii. Nintendo should eliminate that step first. This is just insane.
You're insane indeed. So the solution to piracy is to never sell anything that could be pirated? It's so stupid it's not even funny, if you wanted to be funny.
Only a few years ago it was utterly unimaginable that hardware makers would try their best to lock users out of their own systems.
Except Nintendo isn't trying to lock users out of their systems, they're trying to lock pirates out. Nintendo is not stupid enough to let pirates have an easy way. People that choose that way have accepted to do it the hard way anyway.
People that like homebrew won't be really impaired, and the true pirates won't be impaired either. The ones that will be hit hard are the casual pirates, people for whom someone knowledgeable installed the necessary software.
These are the true customers that can be put back on the right path to buy the content they actually want. Pirates and homebrew users are not real customers to Nintendo if they don't buy any games.
I'm pretty sure the Wii came out before his blog started,
And you're pretty wrong. The fact that he was posting in the Wiikly notwithstanding.
You sound like all these MS and Sony viral marketers that he talks about.
The fact is that he predicted nearly perfectly most of what happened in this generation of consoles, so it's no wonder people love Malstrom, but viral marketers hate him with a passion.
and that Nintendo/Sega have been into more casual mini-game style games for a lot longer than the Wii. Saying a blog has "opened your eyes" makes it sound more like you are easily brainwashed.
So you don't know his blog but you are quick to dismiss it and call people who read it "brainwashed" ? It won't work. Malstrom is really making life like hell to viral marketers.
It's funny to watch them recoil in terror at everything he writes.
Well, based on what I can see based on the ease of all of the new Wii games, Nintendo Hard has become Nintendo "this game will play by itself practically". Or Nintendo Hard has become Nintendo frustrating because third parties can't use a touchscreen/motion controller effectively in a game.
Well, based on what I can see, you have not played any Wii game, and you are a typical troll.
I'm sorry but the games on the Wii are crap, the Virtual Console has more decent games and more playability than the entire current Wii library.
Which is confirmed here : you haven't played any Wii game. Even Wii Sports, that comes with the console outside of Japan, destroys your argument.
And its not that the Wii is underpowered its just the developers aren't giving it decent games. I don't care that its in standard definition, I care if its fun.
This must be your 2 only correct sentences.
And I'd much rather play The Orange Box on my 360 than sit through another minigame compilation that seems to be the only games ever made for the Wii.
Sadly, it was true : only 2 sentences right...
Isn't it a little strange that none of the big console makers (Sony, MS, Nintendo) havn't announced plans for a next generation console? I mean christ..how long have the current-generation consoles been out for now..4 or 5 years?
We have seen plans for a next generation console. Kinect is marketed by MS as their next generation console, like a new launch that would give 4-5 years more life to XB360.
Even if that's only marketing, no console maker has any reason to launch a next generation console:
* We're in a recession, it wouldn't be a wise thing to do, especially given the state of the industry,
* That requires funds, and 2 of the 3 are in a "profitability" mode, Sony and MS console divisions lost countless billions this generation, they just can't afford to go on like this,
* MS lost more than $8.5 B (!!) on its XBox line across the years, and is only now slowly recovering some of this money back. The ROI of XBox is disastrous, and it would be worse if they were to make a new one soon;
* Sony Playstation division lost all the profits they made during the PS1 and PS2 era, with the PS3 only. Like MS, making a new console would put them back hundreds of millions in the red;
* The gaming industry is collectively in the red. If you remove Nintendo, they're all in the red this generation. Even if you add Nintendo actually
* Nintendo is the only one making insane (never seen before) profits in the gaming industry. Activision is the sole other making decent, thanks in part to WoW and CoD games. But Nintendo has no incentive to make another home console, when 3rd parties still have not embraced the Wii correctly, and while Wii is still selling like no other home console before it. For years, the gaming industry acted like they wanted the small Kyoto firm to die, and look at the small Kyoto firm just making the reverse happen, including knocking over two big companies in its way. It's just amazing to watch.
It's actually what a Sony guy said a few days ago when asked about the PSPGo. He said it was an experiment and they learned some lessons from it, like people wanting physical media instead of downloadable only.
This experiment is interesting because it just lowers any chance of success for MS strategy that was based on "no more physical media".
Every successful download only game is getting a physical media release on console. Isn't it strange if the future is no physical media?