World of Warcraft and Gears of War shifted some serious units to hardcore gamers... but everyone wants a Wii. No matter what "$up4 1337 haxx0rz" say about 1080p and pzwning n00bs and how gimmicky the controller is, Moms don't listen to haxx0rz. Moms listen to Dr. Phil, and spend their money accordingly. This article is proof that the "magic" isn't gone even if the initial launch hype is finally settling down. Why doesn't the article ask if the PS3 magic is gone? Everyone's played the one or two games that made it worth buying. You can get a PS3 without even trying. The Wii, games and accessories occupy top spots on Amazon.com.
The PS3 availability is regional. I have yet to see a ps3. I've been looking for one. They always promise a mid week shipment. Gone by 4:00 pm that day. I'm in Edmonton, AB canada. The Wii is doing insanely well the PS3 is doing better then the 360 at a similiar point after its launch. It's hard to tell who will win now.
Having a lot of cousins working in tech in china, I can attest the labor laws do not prevent 85h weeks, 45 of which is unpaid overtime. As well they provide dorms and meals to reduce the possible need to be off site but they expect you to be at their beck and call. Although for an oppressive regime of tyrants I never witnessed any oppression. Or even seen any police that weren't directing traffic. They also don't pay income tax or have any retail taxes that I could see. The tyranny is all to those who rock the boat. To the average folk in china, the tyranny is benign. For those who tkae pride in how the state are different I'd like to point out if you rock the boat in the US you will also disappear. Much faster if your brown or black.
Look at rap music... For the most part, Rap music has the worst portrail of black people and it is created (for the most part) by black people...
It's marketted and sold by white people to other white people. The largest rap market is surbanite kids/wiggers. It's chosen to appeal to this fairly insipid group. Just as GTA is targetted at this infantile audience.
Again, from my experience with wii sports. It is shallow. The guy who owns the wii and has been playing with it for weeks was taken down soundly by me in boxing. The bowling is fairly limited and once you get the hang of the controls it's a fairly shallow bit, we usually have 7 or 8 people over at my friends house at any given time. All our scores in bowling are about the same. Despite some of us playing it a lot more and some of us being hardcore gamers. Anyone who has had some time with wii sports will relate that it isn't that deep. Compare it to SF3. The gradation of skill is a lot more meaningful there as compared to the timing game you play with wii sports boxing.
Easy to pick up does not imply lack of depth. Games like Tetris or Mario Kart (and even Wii Sports, to a certain degree) are very easy to pick up and to learn. They have simple rules, but these rules result in deep gameplay.
If you've only played Wii Sports for two hours, you haven't even scratched the surface. Did you know that you can slice the ball in Wii Tennis? Or that you can make uppercuts in Wii Boxing? Thinking that you've seen Wii Boxing after two hours is like thinking that you're a pro bowler after two hours. After all, you're just throwing a damn ball at a few wooden figures, where's the depth? And actually, I'm mentioning that because I've played a lot of Wii Bowling, but I don't play real bowling. I always win in Wii Bowling, but a week ago, I played against a pal who goes bowling in real life. He had never played Wii Bowling, but he actually almost beat me the first time he played it. There's your depth.
You actually gave an example of the lack of depth. Wii bowling and real bowling are vastly different. go to the alley and try it. And he almost beat you. A example of a deep game is like Warcraft 3. No combination of 4 or less of my friends can beat me. We have the same starting point but the skill levels are just so different. But anyone can beat anyone in mario party 8. Even wii boxing, the vetrans can be taken by the noob. Chess is deep. Checkers is not. Take a long time to even get proficient in chess. checkers is easy to learn but has much less depth. Streetfighter alpha 3 is deep. Marvel vs Street fighter less so, smash bros even less.
The bad will compelled them not to buy it. Which lead to a feedback loop where 3rd parties didn't support it leading to fewer potential customers. The entirety of the reason with fear of similiar lack of support. This became a self fufillign prophesy when sega had to bow out because they had so little marketshare. Sony was or nintendo could have picked up the slack but Sony was in a better position to do so. Perhaps the marketting had some factors but the most compelling reason the sega fan boys had fro droppign sega was the fear it'd end up like the 32x, saturn, sega CD.
People will buy it in expectation of games to come. I have a $750 GC for EB game. This is the for the PS3, some accesories and MGS4 when it comes out. Some people get it earlier to allow them to watch blu ray. MGS4, FFxiii, GT:HD are all motivations for me to get the machines as well as my 80 game back library of sony Ps2/Ps1 titles.
You often pay the $1000 back a few times over to a mechanic when you need to replace your clutch. You dont' wear otu a automatic transmission as much because it switches gear much more smoothly then a human can.
To make games that anyone (literally) can pick up and play, and enjoy, without the crutch of violence and fancy visuals.
They also trade off depth for a shallow learnign curve. Which means after a couple of sessions, the game is stale. Niche games with depth like FF:tactics can keep a interested gamer in it for months or even years while Rayman rabbits got old about the 2nd hour. Ditto with the wii sports. Zelda is the only exception out of the launch titles and even then is often refered to as tedious.
in that while the US has pretty much overcome racial and gender discrimination. As a minority, I missed this overcoming youspeak of. The Us still has a long way to go. In some major metropolitan areas it may have overcome those issues but the majority fo the rest of the countries needs a lot mroe work.
When The bandwidth crisis comes our lord and saviour Google of montain view will decent from heaven with plentiful fibre and smite the ISPs, other search engines, and other assorted prime evils. And there shall be porn and on demand pirated music and movies for all. All our lord shall ask is to implant a small chip in our brains and google ad our day to day life.
Sega destroyed themselves. The support for the saturn and 32x did more to kill them then sony. Since the US was their primary market (they had taken the #2 then the #3 position in japan already) They did many foolish things to thismarket. Most of it was incredibly stupid business decisions. No matter how good the dreamcast was (and it was a goodmachine) their business decisions made further competition in that market impossible. All the Sega fanboys I knew (16) switched to sony after the 32x and saturn debacles. Sega was a gong show fromt he Sega Cd onwards.
The Ps2 was only sold at a loss for the first run. According to all available info. The Xbox and 360 were sold at a loss up till even today. The Xbox has too many outsourced components. The part costs have not fallen for MS significantly while the selling price has. They have admitted it still sellls at a loss. Ditto with the 360. Sony has said the Ps2 has not sold at a loss for a long time.
The Ps3 may be the same as the Ps2. Since the majority fo the initial costs is R&D and fab facilities. Their cost get lowered much faster then the Xbox and 360 because no one except them is making a buck off the manufacturing.. Well rambus but they exstort everyone.
I paid $560 (CND) for my first run PS2 (still working) with summoner. It was a terrible game but the system paid off for me. The 60g PS3 is ~$650 CND here now so the differential is just inflation for me. For the 20 gig version it's no difference. Remember the Ps2 was expensive at first too. 2 years later it was $300 CND. 6 year slater it's $170 CND. It's not that far from the PS2 price point after inflation and the 20g model is at the exact same price point. Most of the "price" backlash is MS fanbois finding fault. You can find more fault with the RSX and lack of universal shaders and little edge over the 360's Xenos or the split memory architecture or the cell's ridicoulous learning curve and lack of good devleopers tools but the price isn't a huge issue. It's price is close to the ps2 release price.
As for the graphics and power arguements, they are fairly close to each other. The cell might offer awe inspiring vector and floating point but the universal shaders will ensure the 360 can mostly keep up graphically with the same or better frame rate. The tripple core will keep the 360 in the game as multi processor technique develope and the unifired memory of the 360 may make more sense and flexibility then the split "fast" ram and "normal" ram of the ps3. But time will tell. I can see some situations where the Ps3 set up makes more sense but I'm not a game programmer. But in the end, it all come down to the games. No matter what the 360 has on the ps3 the letters FF, MGS, GTA, GT, GOW will mean more then RSX, XENOS, GDDR3.
Sega of america was evil to it's early adopters. The saturn and the 32x basically killed the market for the dreamcast. Dreamcast was awesome bust since they bruned so many with the Sat and 32x they had killed themselves. And releaseing a 200$ peripheral and then dropping it after 12 games is worse then pricing yoruself $600 or being a tyrant with your third parties. So Sega was evil too. In a much mroe tangable way to the end consumer.
If being dicks is the benchmark for yoru business then no one should have it. Remember MS is a software cartel built on monopoly and aggressive marketting and Nintendo was a masssive tyrant back in the days it was #1 (NES - SNES).
As for over priced, I don't feel that way. But it might because I have enough room in my budget to get the Ps3 and a whack of games and acccesories right now. All I am waiting for is a compelling game. My PS2 is starting to have slow load times so it's days are numbered (5 years old. not too shabby). The blu ray is nice since my HDTV is just a upscaled SDTV because of the lack of HD content from my IPTV provider. I have about 60-100 PS2 games (I haven't counted in a while) and I haven't played about 20 of them. So to get my monies worth I need BC.
I'm problably not typical for the market though. I agree that it's way too early to see who will "win" this round. I think the Wii will be either #1 or #2. The xbox #2 or #3 and sony may still come out on top if they get their major franchises.
Everything you just outlined already is part of the rating system. The new (and never to be approved) legislation wants to meddle with it and assign the responsibilities to the FTC. Adding nothing and simply adding more bureaucracy. These types of games tend to be infantile teenager fodder. Getting up in arms about it gives them more credit then they are due. GTA and it's ilk serve a niche, teens who thing "adult" means swearing and violence and further FTC interferance merely backs that up. Just as every teenage today tries to drink themselves to death (including el presidente) and sleep with anything that moves in order to be "adult". It's partly because people like the senators involved that put a "adult" tag on those activities and the fact we lack any modern initiation ritual that the kids do it. They have no other way to be adult. It all loses it's luster for most people by 24 and we settle down into real adult life. Responsibilities, debt, inane rantings on forums, and marriage. As for adult games, right now the major players dont' want to touch that. It's suicide to be labels a porn machine. The company i work for put out cell phone porn and now the crazies have come of the woodwork to protest it. It's more then ratings keepign the porno games from coming. The US is more comfrotable with murder then with sex.
It's not that fancy. They turned off frame collision (or set it to only check every 7 frames) and the fact their main cpu was faster allowed to display and scroll their muddy 512 color BG faster. It's not a "trick" or even very clever. As it was really only used well in sonic and maybe ecco. all their other games were just muddy low detail platformers.
Enviromentalists got DDT banned in the states. DDT is not the best defense against malaria in the states. Malaria kills how many americans a year again? Just because you don't like the truth of the matter is no reason to ignore it. Well, unless you like being petty. DDT is still used and funded in many third world locations. Try to direct yourself to betetr education. North american enviromentalists tend to be knee jerk and often push for unessacary things but they have some use as well. They are not all unthinking waves of hippies. Certainly some things like the bad rep of nuclear is due to mis information but others like banning DDT in N.A. where it's nto that nessacary isn't that bad.
The numbers make my case. Only a small percentage participate online. It's not a compelling feature for the majority fo video game players. They like their single player world. Another reply to my post listed online usage rates of halo2(online gaming paragon). ~20% is all that has ever taken their copy online. My arguement is similiar, online gaming isn't a killer app. It's a niche feature.
Blast processing was just marketting. The double frame buffering technique is news to me. I think this might be retro active rationalization. Since this double buffering would not "speed" up anythign and woudl lead to a bit of a control lag. I am aware that the CPU could nto access the frame buffer directlly and has to use the VDP. But this dbl frame buffer situation would not lead to improved speeds of bg scroll.
The key differences between the SNES and Genesis was that the SNES has custom graphics chip which could display more colors, more sprites and deal with rotation effects and so on but the Genesis had a faster CPU. Although the color pallete was horrid. That is why Sega games look so muddy while SNES games generally look more colorful. Faster GPU allowed faster BG scroll leading to sonics "blast processing". I have also dug up some info regaurding how they advised the blitter to do funny things to allow quick loading of bg images.
For a long time I thought the US was almost half black because of the prevalence of black race issues and black people on TV and media. It turns out they represent about 12.12% of the US pop. I was veyr surprised. I think the tendancy of Americans to think Black vs White is silly. There are other flavors of color out there and White is not homogenious either.
-excerpt from link: "Primary Recurring Characters: White (80%), African American (15%), Latino/Hispanic (2.0%), Asian/Pacific Islander (0.8%), Multiracial (0.6%), Native American (0.3%), Indian/Pakistani (0.3%), Apparent Minority (0.3%), Arab/Middle Eastern (0.1%)"
It's the first reference I found. It's an ip address because it's a google digest of a pdf. I had different numbers from another study. but the general gist is right. The actual proportions of race in the us are:
White 74.67% African American 12.12% Asian and Pacific Islander 4.46% Other 5.99%
Online play is a niche market. For a number of reasons Online gaming appeals mostly to 1337 players. Most people do not want to get pwned or griefed. Most people feel the out of the package AI is challenging enough. That is why MMORPG/FPS aren't devouring the whole console market or the attach rates for the free live service is fairly low and paying members even lower. The online stores have changed this a little, but most people still do not feel a desire to play online. Online play isn't the compelling feature slash gamers think it is. Perhaps the Wii will also bring online play to masses but for now the genres discourage true newbies from entering into that arena and isn't compelling for most console owners. No non-1337 individuals I know play online. None. The ones that do, post here and have been online gamer geeks since doom. We are outlyers. Online isn't that important yet.
Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft and Gears of War shifted some serious units to hardcore gamers... but everyone wants a Wii. No matter what "$up4 1337 haxx0rz" say about 1080p and pzwning n00bs and how gimmicky the controller is, Moms don't listen to haxx0rz. Moms listen to Dr. Phil, and spend their money accordingly. This article is proof that the "magic" isn't gone even if the initial launch hype is finally settling down. Why doesn't the article ask if the PS3 magic is gone? Everyone's played the one or two games that made it worth buying. You can get a PS3 without even trying. The Wii, games and accessories occupy top spots on Amazon.com.
The PS3 availability is regional. I have yet to see a ps3. I've been looking for one. They always promise a mid week shipment. Gone by 4:00 pm that day. I'm in Edmonton, AB canada. The Wii is doing insanely well the PS3 is doing better then the 360 at a similiar point after its launch. It's hard to tell who will win now.
Having a lot of cousins working in tech in china, I can attest the labor laws do not prevent 85h weeks, 45 of which is unpaid overtime. As well they provide dorms and meals to reduce the possible need to be off site but they expect you to be at their beck and call. Although for an oppressive regime of tyrants I never witnessed any oppression. Or even seen any police that weren't directing traffic. They also don't pay income tax or have any retail taxes that I could see. The tyranny is all to those who rock the boat. To the average folk in china, the tyranny is benign. For those who tkae pride in how the state are different I'd like to point out if you rock the boat in the US you will also disappear. Much faster if your brown or black.
Look at rap music ... ...
For the most part, Rap music has the worst portrail of black people and it is created (for the most part) by black people
It's marketted and sold by white people to other white people. The largest rap market is surbanite kids/wiggers. It's chosen to appeal to this fairly insipid group. Just as GTA is targetted at this infantile audience.
Again, from my experience with wii sports. It is shallow. The guy who owns the wii and has been playing with it for weeks was taken down soundly by me in boxing. The bowling is fairly limited and once you get the hang of the controls it's a fairly shallow bit, we usually have 7 or 8 people over at my friends house at any given time. All our scores in bowling are about the same. Despite some of us playing it a lot more and some of us being hardcore gamers. Anyone who has had some time with wii sports will relate that it isn't that deep. Compare it to SF3. The gradation of skill is a lot more meaningful there as compared to the timing game you play with wii sports boxing.
Easy to pick up does not imply lack of depth. Games like Tetris or Mario Kart (and even Wii Sports, to a certain degree) are very easy to pick up and to learn. They have simple rules, but these rules result in deep gameplay.
If you've only played Wii Sports for two hours, you haven't even scratched the surface. Did you know that you can slice the ball in Wii Tennis? Or that you can make uppercuts in Wii Boxing? Thinking that you've seen Wii Boxing after two hours is like thinking that you're a pro bowler after two hours. After all, you're just throwing a damn ball at a few wooden figures, where's the depth? And actually, I'm mentioning that because I've played a lot of Wii Bowling, but I don't play real bowling. I always win in Wii Bowling, but a week ago, I played against a pal who goes bowling in real life. He had never played Wii Bowling, but he actually almost beat me the first time he played it. There's your depth.
You actually gave an example of the lack of depth. Wii bowling and real bowling are vastly different. go to the alley and try it. And he almost beat you. A example of a deep game is like Warcraft 3. No combination of 4 or less of my friends can beat me. We have the same starting point but the skill levels are just so different. But anyone can beat anyone in mario party 8. Even wii boxing, the vetrans can be taken by the noob. Chess is deep. Checkers is not. Take a long time to even get proficient in chess. checkers is easy to learn but has much less depth. Streetfighter alpha 3 is deep. Marvel vs Street fighter less so, smash bros even less.
The bad will compelled them not to buy it. Which lead to a feedback loop where 3rd parties didn't support it leading to fewer potential customers. The entirety of the reason with fear of similiar lack of support. This became a self fufillign prophesy when sega had to bow out because they had so little marketshare. Sony was or nintendo could have picked up the slack but Sony was in a better position to do so. Perhaps the marketting had some factors but the most compelling reason the sega fan boys had fro droppign sega was the fear it'd end up like the 32x, saturn, sega CD.
People will buy it in expectation of games to come. I have a $750 GC for EB game. This is the for the PS3, some accesories and MGS4 when it comes out. Some people get it earlier to allow them to watch blu ray. MGS4, FFxiii, GT:HD are all motivations for me to get the machines as well as my 80 game back library of sony Ps2/Ps1 titles.
You often pay the $1000 back a few times over to a mechanic when you need to replace your clutch. You dont' wear otu a automatic transmission as much because it switches gear much more smoothly then a human can.
To make games that anyone (literally) can pick up and play, and enjoy, without the crutch of violence and fancy visuals.
They also trade off depth for a shallow learnign curve. Which means after a couple of sessions, the game is stale. Niche games with depth like FF:tactics can keep a interested gamer in it for months or even years while Rayman rabbits got old about the 2nd hour. Ditto with the wii sports. Zelda is the only exception out of the launch titles and even then is often refered to as tedious.
When The bandwidth crisis comes our lord and saviour Google of montain view will decent from heaven with plentiful fibre and smite the ISPs, other search engines, and other assorted prime evils. And there shall be porn and on demand pirated music and movies for all. All our lord shall ask is to implant a small chip in our brains and google ad our day to day life.
Sega destroyed themselves. The support for the saturn and 32x did more to kill them then sony. Since the US was their primary market (they had taken the #2 then the #3 position in japan already) They did many foolish things to thismarket. Most of it was incredibly stupid business decisions. No matter how good the dreamcast was (and it was a goodmachine) their business decisions made further competition in that market impossible. All the Sega fanboys I knew (16) switched to sony after the 32x and saturn debacles. Sega was a gong show fromt he Sega Cd onwards.
The Ps2 was only sold at a loss for the first run. According to all available info. The Xbox and 360 were sold at a loss up till even today. The Xbox has too many outsourced components. The part costs have not fallen for MS significantly while the selling price has. They have admitted it still sellls at a loss. Ditto with the 360. Sony has said the Ps2 has not sold at a loss for a long time.
The Ps3 may be the same as the Ps2. Since the majority fo the initial costs is R&D and fab facilities. Their cost get lowered much faster then the Xbox and 360 because no one except them is making a buck off the manufacturing.. Well rambus but they exstort everyone.
I paid $560 (CND) for my first run PS2 (still working) with summoner. It was a terrible game but the system paid off for me. The 60g PS3 is ~$650 CND here now so the differential is just inflation for me. For the 20 gig version it's no difference. Remember the Ps2 was expensive at first too. 2 years later it was $300 CND. 6 year slater it's $170 CND. It's not that far from the PS2 price point after inflation and the 20g model is at the exact same price point. Most of the "price" backlash is MS fanbois finding fault. You can find more fault with the RSX and lack of universal shaders and little edge over the 360's Xenos or the split memory architecture or the cell's ridicoulous learning curve and lack of good devleopers tools but the price isn't a huge issue. It's price is close to the ps2 release price.
As for the graphics and power arguements, they are fairly close to each other. The cell might offer awe inspiring vector and floating point but the universal shaders will ensure the 360 can mostly keep up graphically with the same or better frame rate. The tripple core will keep the 360 in the game as multi processor technique develope and the unifired memory of the 360 may make more sense and flexibility then the split "fast" ram and "normal" ram of the ps3. But time will tell. I can see some situations where the Ps3 set up makes more sense but I'm not a game programmer. But in the end, it all come down to the games. No matter what the 360 has on the ps3 the letters FF, MGS, GTA, GT, GOW will mean more then RSX, XENOS, GDDR3.
Sega of america was evil to it's early adopters. The saturn and the 32x basically killed the market for the dreamcast. Dreamcast was awesome bust since they bruned so many with the Sat and 32x they had killed themselves. And releaseing a 200$ peripheral and then dropping it after 12 games is worse then pricing yoruself $600 or being a tyrant with your third parties. So Sega was evil too. In a much mroe tangable way to the end consumer.
If being dicks is the benchmark for yoru business then no one should have it. Remember MS is a software cartel built on monopoly and aggressive marketting and Nintendo was a masssive tyrant back in the days it was #1 (NES - SNES).
As for over priced, I don't feel that way. But it might because I have enough room in my budget to get the Ps3 and a whack of games and acccesories right now. All I am waiting for is a compelling game. My PS2 is starting to have slow load times so it's days are numbered (5 years old. not too shabby). The blu ray is nice since my HDTV is just a upscaled SDTV because of the lack of HD content from my IPTV provider. I have about 60-100 PS2 games (I haven't counted in a while) and I haven't played about 20 of them. So to get my monies worth I need BC.
I'm problably not typical for the market though. I agree that it's way too early to see who will "win" this round. I think the Wii will be either #1 or #2. The xbox #2 or #3 and sony may still come out on top if they get their major franchises.
Everything you just outlined already is part of the rating system. The new (and never to be approved) legislation wants to meddle with it and assign the responsibilities to the FTC. Adding nothing and simply adding more bureaucracy. These types of games tend to be infantile teenager fodder. Getting up in arms about it gives them more credit then they are due. GTA and it's ilk serve a niche, teens who thing "adult" means swearing and violence and further FTC interferance merely backs that up. Just as every teenage today tries to drink themselves to death (including el presidente) and sleep with anything that moves in order to be "adult". It's partly because people like the senators involved that put a "adult" tag on those activities and the fact we lack any modern initiation ritual that the kids do it. They have no other way to be adult. It all loses it's luster for most people by 24 and we settle down into real adult life. Responsibilities, debt, inane rantings on forums, and marriage. As for adult games, right now the major players dont' want to touch that. It's suicide to be labels a porn machine. The company i work for put out cell phone porn and now the crazies have come of the woodwork to protest it. It's more then ratings keepign the porno games from coming. The US is more comfrotable with murder then with sex.
It's not that fancy. They turned off frame collision (or set it to only check every 7 frames) and the fact their main cpu was faster allowed to display and scroll their muddy 512 color BG faster. It's not a "trick" or even very clever. As it was really only used well in sonic and maybe ecco. all their other games were just muddy low detail platformers.
Enviromentalists got DDT banned in the states. DDT is not the best defense against malaria in the states. Malaria kills how many americans a year again? Just because you don't like the truth of the matter is no reason to ignore it. Well, unless you like being petty. DDT is still used and funded in many third world locations. Try to direct yourself to betetr education. North american enviromentalists tend to be knee jerk and often push for unessacary things but they have some use as well. They are not all unthinking waves of hippies. Certainly some things like the bad rep of nuclear is due to mis information but others like banning DDT in N.A. where it's nto that nessacary isn't that bad.
The numbers make my case. Only a small percentage participate online. It's not a compelling feature for the majority fo video game players. They like their single player world. Another reply to my post listed online usage rates of halo2(online gaming paragon). ~20% is all that has ever taken their copy online. My arguement is similiar, online gaming isn't a killer app. It's a niche feature.
Blast processing was just marketting. The double frame buffering technique is news to me. I think this might be retro active rationalization. Since this double buffering would not "speed" up anythign and woudl lead to a bit of a control lag. I am aware that the CPU could nto access the frame buffer directlly and has to use the VDP. But this dbl frame buffer situation would not lead to improved speeds of bg scroll.
The key differences between the SNES and Genesis was that the SNES has custom graphics chip which could display more colors, more sprites and deal with rotation effects and so on but the Genesis had a faster CPU. Although the color pallete was horrid. That is why Sega games look so muddy while SNES games generally look more colorful. Faster GPU allowed faster BG scroll leading to sonics "blast processing". I have also dug up some info regaurding how they advised the blitter to do funny things to allow quick loading of bg images.
For a long time I thought the US was almost half black because of the prevalence of black race issues and black people on TV and media. It turns out they represent about 12.12% of the US pop. I was veyr surprised. I think the tendancy of Americans to think Black vs White is silly. There are other flavors of color out there and White is not homogenious either.
6 mil (WOW total users) vs install base of 100 mil (PS2 install base). Even WOW is a "niche" product.
source PDF
Source HTML
-excerpt from link:
"Primary Recurring Characters: White (80%), African
American (15%), Latino/Hispanic (2.0%), Asian/Pacific
Islander (0.8%), Multiracial (0.6%), Native American (0.3%),
Indian/Pakistani (0.3%), Apparent Minority (0.3%),
Arab/Middle Eastern (0.1%)"
It's the first reference I found. It's an ip address because it's a google digest of a pdf. I had different numbers from another study. but the general gist is right. The actual proportions of race in the us are:
White 74.67%
African American 12.12%
Asian and Pacific Islander 4.46%
Other 5.99%
source
Online play is a niche market. For a number of reasons Online gaming appeals mostly to 1337 players. Most people do not want to get pwned or griefed. Most people feel the out of the package AI is challenging enough. That is why MMORPG/FPS aren't devouring the whole console market or the attach rates for the free live service is fairly low and paying members even lower. The online stores have changed this a little, but most people still do not feel a desire to play online. Online play isn't the compelling feature slash gamers think it is. Perhaps the Wii will also bring online play to masses but for now the genres discourage true newbies from entering into that arena and isn't compelling for most console owners. No non-1337 individuals I know play online. None. The ones that do, post here and have been online gamer geeks since doom. We are outlyers. Online isn't that important yet.