The PS3 won't make it as a home computer. I doubt that even most Linux hobbyists would bother with a Linux station made out of stripped down PS3 guts.
The PS3 currently costs Sony about $800 to make. Getting rid of Blu-ray, the WiFi adapter, and PS2 hardware might bring the price down to about $500. Note that this is still without monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers. Furthermore, customers will have the "joy" of running on a non-x86 processor, meaning they'll have to recompile any piece of software they wish to use. Yeah, that's a great idea for Grandma.
Meanwhile, for $500, you can get a brand name computer from WalMart - with monitor - that has more memory, a larger HDD, AND a LCD panel. It may not be top of the line, it may not be able to play Doom3, but hey, neither would that underpowered Cell-based desktop.
Even if there were 10 AAA games that's a total price of $1200. Ok, fine, so who buys 10 new games at once anyways? So you buy a PS3 and 3 games. That's still about $800.
The PS3 needs exclusive games that are "good" or better. Darkness isn't exclusive, nor is Assassins Creed.
I don't know why people keep mentioning Singstar. Do you honestly think a karaoke/DDR game is going to convince anyone to buy a PS3? Even fans of those games aren't going to spend $600 (or even $500) just to get a single game.
Warhawk is very confusing, as it was first a Blu-ray game, then was a online only deathmatch type game that you would download, for free even. Now it's supposedly both a BR AND download game?
Furthermore, even if Sony did manage to lower the price this year (unlikely) and quadruple its sales, according to the latest data, that would put the PS3's sales at about 350k in the US. This is lot better, and may even beat monthly 360 sales for once. Unfortunately, the 360 still has its 12 months head start, plus months of outselling the PS3. Also, any move that Sony makes will simply be matched by Microsoft who unlike Sony, is actually making a small profit off their hardware at the current time. On top of all this, the Wii is expected to continue its strong sales into 2008, meaning it will still be ahead of the PS3, and ever gaining on the 360.
Finally, consider this, the 360 has Halo3 coming this fall, and that alone is expected to be a major incentive to buyers. The PS3 has nothing nearly as compelling on its schedule at this time. Yes, I know Lair! Heavenly Sword! But remember - those games aren't out yet. Many folks feel they got burned by the PS3's launch lineup which only managed to turn out 1 OK/good exclusive game. Even Genji, which was expected to be a major inticement for gamers, turned out to be fairly mediocre and worse still, buggy. I sincerely hope that Lair, Heavenly Sword and others live up to their hype, but past experience tells me that this is rarely the case. I'm sure they'll be good games, but not the WOW-GREAT! titles that the PS3 needs right now.
What, so people who speak French, Spanish, German and Italian don't play video games?
If they're already localizing into 1 language (English into Japanese or Japanese into English) why not do the other languages at the same time? It's not rocket science, just smart project management.
It can't cost more than a few hundred grand per language and when we're talking millions for just the initial game development, that's a small price to pay to gain access to millions of additional customers.
The hackers already found a workaround for Microsoft's workaround to detect the hacker's first modchips. And so the cycle continues...
As for modifying equipment, unfortunately that's actually illegal thanks to the idiotic congress that passed the DMCA some years ago. Before that, modchips weren't illegal at all.
While I agree with your point that region lockouts are a stupid, pointless technology, the reason they exist is to protect local distributors.
When a game is localized for another country, it's often done through a different company - for instance Atlus does a lot of English translations of smaller Japanese titles for the US market.
If you imported a copy of one of the games they did, then you aren't paying the local distributor (Atlus) for your copy.
Granted - this is a VERY tennuous argument here. Usually, the game that's being imported is a version that hasn't been localized (ie. it's still in Japanese-only) and the copyright holders ARE getting their money for the title... However, the argument is that by buying a non-localized copy, you're depriving the local distributor of the sale. Yes, this is basically like saying "well, we WOULD have localized that title, but now that YOU bought your copy already, why bother?" And yes, the response to this is "Well, I WOULD have bought the localized version...IF YOU HAD EVER DONE ONE."
This assumes, of course, that said title is even available in your area. A lot of games that make it to the US, never make it to Europe which just seems downright stupid to me. I'm certain a lot of European players do import titles from the US (and Japan) that aren't otherwise available there. This was one of the reasons Sony wanted to shut down LikSang so badly.
This also doesn't even get into the problem of when games are altered/censored due to corporate or government stupidity. A good example of this would be turning the "blood" in Metal Slug from red to white for the US version, because apparently Americans are too delicate to be exposed to the fact that red stuff comes out when you shoot people...in a war.
Overall, it's just very stupid. Unfortunatly, since the modchip to disable the region lock, also allows pirated copies, the manufacturer just lumps all modchip users into the same category - much the same way that region free DVD players are considered "illegal".
That reminds me of my days playing Pallidum's Robotech RPG. If you were unlucky enough to be caught in an attack without your trusty giant mecha, you could always resort to wearing the heavy personal body armor and take comfort in the fact that you'll only take half damage from nuclear weapons.
Huh? 360 Premium + Live = $450. Last time I checked, $450 $600.
HD-DVD/Blu-Ray - again, WHO CARES? Why would you bother buying a player that only handles one format? Sure, buy HD-DVD...but...I what if I want to watch Pirates in HD? OH, well, I'll have buy a second player, that does the same function, only in a "different" fashion. Pah! That's stupid and a waste of money.
And if you really want to play the price game, consider that the 360 comes with component cables, and the Elite comes with both component video and a HDMI cable. So that PS3 is really going to cost you closer to $630 before you even buy your first game.
The HD video consortiums were stupid to foist two different standards onto the public. Didn't they learn anything from the DVD-Audio/SACD fiasco?
I do agree with you on the point that the Wii is selling into a different market than the PS3 and 360 for the most part.
Smart consumers aren't going to get involved with another stupid, pointless format war. There is no discernable difference between HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
For now, upconverted DVD will do nicely. When (If) things settle down with the HD video formats, I'll pick up a player.
But not now. You'd have to be a fool to pick sides this early on - especially when single format players are dropping in price, and there's a strong possibility we'll see a fully functioning hybrid player capable of playing DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray before Christmas.
Of course, this all assumes that you can see the difference between upscaled DVD and HD - which not everyone can - AND that you care enough about this difference to bother buying a new player, not to mention media.
For the time being, I'm also of the opinion that upscaled DVD is "good enough" for the time being.
Underpricing the hardware is a common practice in the video game console market. The hardware companies (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) expect to make the majority of their money from the licensing fees collected from software sales.
Blah blah blah PS3 media center. The 360 does this too. And costs less.
Linux - yeah, OK, but who cares? Seriously. The PS3's Linux is on a customized kernel due to the hardware, meaning you'll have to recompile everything not included on Sony's distribution. Even then, the PS3 doesn't come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse. For $600, you can get a decent Dell, with monitor, keyboard, mouse AND LINUX. Besides, do you honestly expect folks to hook their PS3 up to their big HDTV just run a Linux CLI?
The 360 also supports HD - in fact - the Premium and Elite models even come with HD CABLES! You know, the ones that Sony makes you buy separately?
Sure, Ninja Gaiden looks great, but think about it - is ONE game worth nearly $800 after you factor in the console, cables, game, and tax?
Stores received very few 20GB PS3s, a fact which Sony then used as evidence that there wasn't a demand for the 20GB version (wait...what???)
If you're only interested in the games that are available for both the PS3 and 360 - which, sadly, are the better titles for the PS3 right now - why waste $100-200 more on a PS3 when you could get a 360 for less? Do you really think that being able to play one of the HD video formats is REALLY that much of a deciding factor for someone interested in GAMES?
$500 is too much to pay for ANY console that has virtually no games for it at this time. Blu-Ray is not a deciding factor here. We will see Blu-Ray players for $500 or less very shortly. Those who were only interested in the PS3 as an inexpensive Blu-Ray player will go for those, and stop buying PS3s. After that, the *only* reason to buy a PS3 will be to play games. Let's just hope there's actually something to play by that time...
Now, if there wasn't a format war going on, and HD was about where DVD was when the PS2 came out, then yes, the PS3 would have been in a much stronger position. But without games, it would still only really appeal to the home theater fans - not the gamers. And once video players inevitably dropped below the PS3's price, the home theater folks would stop buying PS3s. The reason the PS2 did so well was that by the time this drop-off occured, its game library was more than strong enough to entice folks to buy a PS2 for its games - not just as a DVD player.
I have HDTV and could certainly afford a PS3. But...why?
I don't care about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. I'm more than content to wait this stupid format war out, or until hybrid players are out for under $300.
The PS3 is more expensive than the 360, yet the crossplatform titles look and play nearly identical between the two. This might not be as big a problem if there were actually a good selection of exclusive games for the PS3, but there too, the 360 has the advantage - EVEN IN THE AREA OF RPGs, which was one of the strengths for the PS1 and PS2!
The price is also a problem. Would you spend $700 for a PS3 and a single game? What game is worth that much money? Especially when you know that in 6-12 months, the price will drop on both the game and the hardware.
I believe he's already been disbarred from one state, but is still allowed to practice law in Florida, which is where he's launching his current lawsuits from.
I figure it's only a matter of time before even Florida grows tired of him and disbars him, at which point he'll simply find another lawyer as kooky (or worse) than himself to handle the lawsuits while the former lawyer continues making his rounds on the talk show circuit. After all he'll need the money. Lawyers aren't cheap you know;-)
Of course, my wife pointed out that maybe this is all just an elaborate scam on his part. Think about it, his blathering about GTA and ManHunt has done nothing but generate tons of publicity for those titles and their publisher. Who's to say these companies aren't just paying him to sue them? He files the lawsuit ($300), goes on FOX News for a bit, gets a few press releases, then "settles out of court". Now he can go onto his next client. He's nothing more than a character actor who's convinced the media to take him halfway serious.
Considering your typical RPG is about 30-50 hours, swapping a disc out every 5-10 hours shouldn't be a problem. It's still better than dealing with a TV series on DVD spanning an equivelant span of time.
That said, I agree that PC games are rather ridiculous, many still use CD after all these years.
If someone wants to play PS2 games, BUY A PS2. It's cheaper than a PS3 without having to worry about any incompatibility issues.
In fact, if anyone out there is considering a PS3 and doesn't have a PS2 - GO BUY A PS2. By the time you've played through the good games for the PS2 (whatever you call good) the PS3 will be cheaper and hopefully have a library worth giving a darn about. The PS3's upscaling ability for PS2 games isn't worth $600. Besides which, most HDTVs already upscale, so this seems like a totally useless feature to me...
So far, reviews for cross platform games for the PS3 and 360 say they look and play almost identically, so these titles shouldn't be used to determine which console to buy. However, if all you are interested in are titles that are cross platform (eg. Madden) then you'll want to go with the 360, because it's cheaper.
Light gun? Awww. I wanna be able to swing my Wiimote around like a maniac and club those zombies into submission! And be able to do it with my friends. Yes, 4 people swinging like mad, in a small room. I don't know who'd be worse off - the zombies, or the human players.
Storage won't be a problem. Blue Dragon is 4 DVDs. Multi-disc (J)RPGs are as old as optical media for consoles. The games are designed such that disc swaps only occur in one direction - IE. you won't be going back to disc1 after you've swapped it for disc2.
It won't even affect the manufacturing costs much either since DVD is so much cheaper than a single BD.
Even if FFXIII contains 2 hours of HD FMV (which is highly unlikely), that would only put the total game's size at about 4 DVDs - 5 at the most.
While the 360 hasn't sold like mad in Japan, it's important to note that the two big J-RPGs for the console - Blue Dragon and Eternal Bell, sold very well - enough to make a small spike in 360 hardware and software sales. This proves that the Japanese are at least willing to buy a 360, if it has games they want.
We also know that Final Fantasy is a very big franchise in Japan.
Square's mentioned FFXIII won't be ready for release (in Japan?) until April 2008. What would happen if the PS3 is still struggling to even keep up with the monthly sales of the Wii and 360 worldwide? It would really be hard to justify releasing a game as expensive as FFXIII on a console that doesn't even have enough customers to guarantee a profit.
And yes, while FFXIII will certainly HELP convince people to buy a PS3, I don't think that it'll be a system seller by itself. Think about it. Would you spend nearly US$700 for just one game? Ok, so say Sony dropped the price of the PS3 to US$500. Would you spend nearly US$600 for just one game?
This is the problem that Square-Enix could be facing.
Their choices would be: * Release exclusively on the PS3. (Note: they may not have a choice anyways if they already have a contract with Sony for FFXIII so the other options may be moot.)
* Announce a port to the 360. The 360 has the power, and certainly has the popularity overseas. Would FFXIII be enough to swing more Japanese to the 360 in Japan though?
* Announce a port to the Wii. At the rate things are going now, the Wii will be the undisputed leader in Japan by next year. However, the Wii lacks the graphical power of the PS3 and 360, and there could be issues with the controller (not enough buttons/sticks) If such a port was announced, would Square re-work the game to try to take advantage of the Wii's controller, or just force people to use the GameCube attachment? Also, what would this do to Wii sales worldwide? Would FFXIII do for the Wii what FFVII did for the PS1?
Finally, remember that SquareEnix has talked about turning FFXIII into a franchise containing many games on many different platforms. They've talked about future FFXIII spinoffs on the Wii and DS already, I believe. Just because they're saying "no FFXIII for the 360" doesn't mean that other FFXIII-related games may not show up there later, only that perhaps the central game will only be on the PS3.
The SCUMM games should translate very well to the DS with only minor modifications, or just cramming the entire game screen onto the touch screen portion of the console.
I don't see it being a major project, and then you could shove the carts out with 2 games on them for $30/ea.
It may not sell as many titles as Pokemon, but it should certainly net a profit larger than $0.;-)
Oregon Trail taught countless kids that "Dynsentery" was just a more adult way of saying "Diarhea".
Lemonade Stand taught me the meaning of 16bit-integers, and that if you're too successful in business, you'll end up making negative amounts of money, and crash the world.
Ok, sure. But will your daughter still like to play those games when she's 8-12 years old?
I'm guessing no, she won't.
The problem isn't that there aren't games for kids, it's that once they hit ~8-10 (to say nothing of 11-12) years old, there just aren't that many games that are age-appropriate in terms of content AND complexity for them. Reminds me of when I was 10 and getting chased out of the bookstore in the mall because I was trying to browse the sci-fi section which the clerk said was "for adults only", yet the only books they had in the "Young Adult" section were stupid quasi-romance trash novels aimmed at girls with a 3rd grade reading ability.
My friend has a daughter who's 11 and likes animals. She likes to play 'Zoo Tycoon', but doesn't want to be bothered with the business aspect of the game. She just wants to create a zoo with nice spaces for her animals to live in, so she uses a cheat code to get cash. She also doesn't want to play anything with an "E" rating, because she's already figured out that the vast majority of those titles are too young for her.
There are very few commercial games that are actually aimmed at the "tween" ages of 8-12.
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The PS3 won't make it as a home computer. I doubt that even most Linux hobbyists would bother with a Linux station made out of stripped down PS3 guts.
The PS3 currently costs Sony about $800 to make. Getting rid of Blu-ray, the WiFi adapter, and PS2 hardware might bring the price down to about $500. Note that this is still without monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers. Furthermore, customers will have the "joy" of running on a non-x86 processor, meaning they'll have to recompile any piece of software they wish to use. Yeah, that's a great idea for Grandma.
Meanwhile, for $500, you can get a brand name computer from WalMart - with monitor - that has more memory, a larger HDD, AND a LCD panel. It may not be top of the line, it may not be able to play Doom3, but hey, neither would that underpowered Cell-based desktop.
Even if there were 10 AAA games that's a total price of $1200. Ok, fine, so who buys 10 new games at once anyways? So you buy a PS3 and 3 games. That's still about $800.
No, the console must come down in price.
The PS3 needs exclusive games that are "good" or better. Darkness isn't exclusive, nor is Assassins Creed.
I don't know why people keep mentioning Singstar. Do you honestly think a karaoke/DDR game is going to convince anyone to buy a PS3? Even fans of those games aren't going to spend $600 (or even $500) just to get a single game.
Warhawk is very confusing, as it was first a Blu-ray game, then was a online only deathmatch type game that you would download, for free even. Now it's supposedly both a BR AND download game?
Furthermore, even if Sony did manage to lower the price this year (unlikely) and quadruple its sales, according to the latest data, that would put the PS3's sales at about 350k in the US. This is lot better, and may even beat monthly 360 sales for once. Unfortunately, the 360 still has its 12 months head start, plus months of outselling the PS3. Also, any move that Sony makes will simply be matched by Microsoft who unlike Sony, is actually making a small profit off their hardware at the current time. On top of all this, the Wii is expected to continue its strong sales into 2008, meaning it will still be ahead of the PS3, and ever gaining on the 360.
Finally, consider this, the 360 has Halo3 coming this fall, and that alone is expected to be a major incentive to buyers. The PS3 has nothing nearly as compelling on its schedule at this time. Yes, I know Lair! Heavenly Sword! But remember - those games aren't out yet. Many folks feel they got burned by the PS3's launch lineup which only managed to turn out 1 OK/good exclusive game. Even Genji, which was expected to be a major inticement for gamers, turned out to be fairly mediocre and worse still, buggy. I sincerely hope that Lair, Heavenly Sword and others live up to their hype, but past experience tells me that this is rarely the case. I'm sure they'll be good games, but not the WOW-GREAT! titles that the PS3 needs right now.
What, so people who speak French, Spanish, German and Italian don't play video games?
If they're already localizing into 1 language (English into Japanese or Japanese into English) why not do the other languages at the same time? It's not rocket science, just smart project management.
It can't cost more than a few hundred grand per language and when we're talking millions for just the initial game development, that's a small price to pay to gain access to millions of additional customers.
The hackers already found a workaround for Microsoft's workaround to detect the hacker's first modchips. And so the cycle continues...
As for modifying equipment, unfortunately that's actually illegal thanks to the idiotic congress that passed the DMCA some years ago. Before that, modchips weren't illegal at all.
While I agree with your point that region lockouts are a stupid, pointless technology, the reason they exist is to protect local distributors.
When a game is localized for another country, it's often done through a different company - for instance Atlus does a lot of English translations of smaller Japanese titles for the US market.
If you imported a copy of one of the games they did, then you aren't paying the local distributor (Atlus) for your copy.
Granted - this is a VERY tennuous argument here. Usually, the game that's being imported is a version that hasn't been localized (ie. it's still in Japanese-only) and the copyright holders ARE getting their money for the title... However, the argument is that by buying a non-localized copy, you're depriving the local distributor of the sale. Yes, this is basically like saying "well, we WOULD have localized that title, but now that YOU bought your copy already, why bother?" And yes, the response to this is "Well, I WOULD have bought the localized version...IF YOU HAD EVER DONE ONE."
This assumes, of course, that said title is even available in your area. A lot of games that make it to the US, never make it to Europe which just seems downright stupid to me. I'm certain a lot of European players do import titles from the US (and Japan) that aren't otherwise available there. This was one of the reasons Sony wanted to shut down LikSang so badly.
This also doesn't even get into the problem of when games are altered/censored due to corporate or government stupidity. A good example of this would be turning the "blood" in Metal Slug from red to white for the US version, because apparently Americans are too delicate to be exposed to the fact that red stuff comes out when you shoot people...in a war.
Overall, it's just very stupid. Unfortunatly, since the modchip to disable the region lock, also allows pirated copies, the manufacturer just lumps all modchip users into the same category - much the same way that region free DVD players are considered "illegal".
That reminds me of my days playing Pallidum's Robotech RPG. If you were unlucky enough to be caught in an attack without your trusty giant mecha, you could always resort to wearing the heavy personal body armor and take comfort in the fact that you'll only take half damage from nuclear weapons.
Huh? 360 Premium + Live = $450. Last time I checked, $450 $600.
HD-DVD/Blu-Ray - again, WHO CARES? Why would you bother buying a player that only handles one format? Sure, buy HD-DVD...but...I what if I want to watch Pirates in HD? OH, well, I'll have buy a second player, that does the same function, only in a "different" fashion. Pah! That's stupid and a waste of money.
And if you really want to play the price game, consider that the 360 comes with component cables, and the Elite comes with both component video and a HDMI cable. So that PS3 is really going to cost you closer to $630 before you even buy your first game.
The HD video consortiums were stupid to foist two different standards onto the public. Didn't they learn anything from the DVD-Audio/SACD fiasco?
I do agree with you on the point that the Wii is selling into a different market than the PS3 and 360 for the most part.
Smart consumers aren't going to get involved with another stupid, pointless format war. There is no discernable difference between HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
For now, upconverted DVD will do nicely. When (If) things settle down with the HD video formats, I'll pick up a player.
But not now. You'd have to be a fool to pick sides this early on - especially when single format players are dropping in price, and there's a strong possibility we'll see a fully functioning hybrid player capable of playing DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray before Christmas.
Of course, this all assumes that you can see the difference between upscaled DVD and HD - which not everyone can - AND that you care enough about this difference to bother buying a new player, not to mention media.
For the time being, I'm also of the opinion that upscaled DVD is "good enough" for the time being.
Underpricing the hardware is a common practice in the video game console market. The hardware companies (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) expect to make the majority of their money from the licensing fees collected from software sales.
Blah blah blah PS3 media center. The 360 does this too. And costs less.
Linux - yeah, OK, but who cares? Seriously. The PS3's Linux is on a customized kernel due to the hardware, meaning you'll have to recompile everything not included on Sony's distribution. Even then, the PS3 doesn't come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse. For $600, you can get a decent Dell, with monitor, keyboard, mouse AND LINUX. Besides, do you honestly expect folks to hook their PS3 up to their big HDTV just run a Linux CLI?
The 360 also supports HD - in fact - the Premium and Elite models even come with HD CABLES! You know, the ones that Sony makes you buy separately?
Sure, Ninja Gaiden looks great, but think about it - is ONE game worth nearly $800 after you factor in the console, cables, game, and tax?
Stores received very few 20GB PS3s, a fact which Sony then used as evidence that there wasn't a demand for the 20GB version (wait...what???)
If you're only interested in the games that are available for both the PS3 and 360 - which, sadly, are the better titles for the PS3 right now - why waste $100-200 more on a PS3 when you could get a 360 for less? Do you really think that being able to play one of the HD video formats is REALLY that much of a deciding factor for someone interested in GAMES?
$500 is too much to pay for ANY console that has virtually no games for it at this time. Blu-Ray is not a deciding factor here. We will see Blu-Ray players for $500 or less very shortly. Those who were only interested in the PS3 as an inexpensive Blu-Ray player will go for those, and stop buying PS3s. After that, the *only* reason to buy a PS3 will be to play games. Let's just hope there's actually something to play by that time...
Now, if there wasn't a format war going on, and HD was about where DVD was when the PS2 came out, then yes, the PS3 would have been in a much stronger position. But without games, it would still only really appeal to the home theater fans - not the gamers. And once video players inevitably dropped below the PS3's price, the home theater folks would stop buying PS3s. The reason the PS2 did so well was that by the time this drop-off occured, its game library was more than strong enough to entice folks to buy a PS2 for its games - not just as a DVD player.
I have HDTV and could certainly afford a PS3. But...why?
I don't care about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. I'm more than content to wait this stupid format war out, or until hybrid players are out for under $300.
The PS3 is more expensive than the 360, yet the crossplatform titles look and play nearly identical between the two. This might not be as big a problem if there were actually a good selection of exclusive games for the PS3, but there too, the 360 has the advantage - EVEN IN THE AREA OF RPGs, which was one of the strengths for the PS1 and PS2!
The price is also a problem. Would you spend $700 for a PS3 and a single game? What game is worth that much money? Especially when you know that in 6-12 months, the price will drop on both the game and the hardware.
I believe he's already been disbarred from one state, but is still allowed to practice law in Florida, which is where he's launching his current lawsuits from.
;-)
I figure it's only a matter of time before even Florida grows tired of him and disbars him, at which point he'll simply find another lawyer as kooky (or worse) than himself to handle the lawsuits while the former lawyer continues making his rounds on the talk show circuit. After all he'll need the money. Lawyers aren't cheap you know
Of course, my wife pointed out that maybe this is all just an elaborate scam on his part. Think about it, his blathering about GTA and ManHunt has done nothing but generate tons of publicity for those titles and their publisher. Who's to say these companies aren't just paying him to sue them? He files the lawsuit ($300), goes on FOX News for a bit, gets a few press releases, then "settles out of court". Now he can go onto his next client. He's nothing more than a character actor who's convinced the media to take him halfway serious.
Considering your typical RPG is about 30-50 hours, swapping a disc out every 5-10 hours shouldn't be a problem. It's still better than dealing with a TV series on DVD spanning an equivelant span of time.
That said, I agree that PC games are rather ridiculous, many still use CD after all these years.
I'm not quite I understand your comment...
If someone wants to play PS2 games, BUY A PS2. It's cheaper than a PS3 without having to worry about any incompatibility issues.
In fact, if anyone out there is considering a PS3 and doesn't have a PS2 - GO BUY A PS2. By the time you've played through the good games for the PS2 (whatever you call good) the PS3 will be cheaper and hopefully have a library worth giving a darn about. The PS3's upscaling ability for PS2 games isn't worth $600. Besides which, most HDTVs already upscale, so this seems like a totally useless feature to me...
So far, reviews for cross platform games for the PS3 and 360 say they look and play almost identically, so these titles shouldn't be used to determine which console to buy. However, if all you are interested in are titles that are cross platform (eg. Madden) then you'll want to go with the 360, because it's cheaper.
The PA folks posted they refuse to talk about "him" anymore and encourage the rest of the media to do the same.
Without the national media attention, hopefully "he" will just shut up and go away.
Light gun? Awww. I wanna be able to swing my Wiimote around like a maniac and club those zombies into submission! And be able to do it with my friends. Yes, 4 people swinging like mad, in a small room. I don't know who'd be worse off - the zombies, or the human players.
Storage won't be a problem. Blue Dragon is 4 DVDs. Multi-disc (J)RPGs are as old as optical media for consoles. The games are designed such that disc swaps only occur in one direction - IE. you won't be going back to disc1 after you've swapped it for disc2.
It won't even affect the manufacturing costs much either since DVD is so much cheaper than a single BD.
Even if FFXIII contains 2 hours of HD FMV (which is highly unlikely), that would only put the total game's size at about 4 DVDs - 5 at the most.
While the 360 hasn't sold like mad in Japan, it's important to note that the two big J-RPGs for the console - Blue Dragon and Eternal Bell, sold very well - enough to make a small spike in 360 hardware and software sales. This proves that the Japanese are at least willing to buy a 360, if it has games they want.
We also know that Final Fantasy is a very big franchise in Japan.
Square's mentioned FFXIII won't be ready for release (in Japan?) until April 2008. What would happen if the PS3 is still struggling to even keep up with the monthly sales of the Wii and 360 worldwide? It would really be hard to justify releasing a game as expensive as FFXIII on a console that doesn't even have enough customers to guarantee a profit.
And yes, while FFXIII will certainly HELP convince people to buy a PS3, I don't think that it'll be a system seller by itself. Think about it. Would you spend nearly US$700 for just one game? Ok, so say Sony dropped the price of the PS3 to US$500. Would you spend nearly US$600 for just one game?
This is the problem that Square-Enix could be facing.
Their choices would be:
* Release exclusively on the PS3. (Note: they may not have a choice anyways if they already have a contract with Sony for FFXIII so the other options may be moot.)
* Announce a port to the 360. The 360 has the power, and certainly has the popularity overseas. Would FFXIII be enough to swing more Japanese to the 360 in Japan though?
* Announce a port to the Wii. At the rate things are going now, the Wii will be the undisputed leader in Japan by next year. However, the Wii lacks the graphical power of the PS3 and 360, and there could be issues with the controller (not enough buttons/sticks) If such a port was announced, would Square re-work the game to try to take advantage of the Wii's controller, or just force people to use the GameCube attachment? Also, what would this do to Wii sales worldwide? Would FFXIII do for the Wii what FFVII did for the PS1?
Finally, remember that SquareEnix has talked about turning FFXIII into a franchise containing many games on many different platforms. They've talked about future FFXIII spinoffs on the Wii and DS already, I believe. Just because they're saying "no FFXIII for the 360" doesn't mean that other FFXIII-related games may not show up there later, only that perhaps the central game will only be on the PS3.
Did you miss the schoolyard tauntings one would get if their parents bought them an Atari 2600 after the ColecoVision came out?
I'm sure similar tauntings happend when the NES/Sega Master System, SNES/Genesis, etc. came out too.
My friend remarked how horribly dated the graphics of FF7 looked, until I reminded her that the game is older than her daughter.
The SCUMM games should translate very well to the DS with only minor modifications, or just cramming the entire game screen onto the touch screen portion of the console.
;-)
I don't see it being a major project, and then you could shove the carts out with 2 games on them for $30/ea.
It may not sell as many titles as Pokemon, but it should certainly net a profit larger than $0.
Oregon Trail taught countless kids that "Dynsentery" was just a more adult way of saying "Diarhea".
Lemonade Stand taught me the meaning of 16bit-integers, and that if you're too successful in business, you'll end up making negative amounts of money, and crash the world.
Conker struck me as Nintendo's way of screaming "Lookie here! We're not kiddie, see? We've got ourselves a foul-mouthed, hungover squirrel!"
The game may have been "M", but it was anything BUT "mature".
Ok, sure. But will your daughter still like to play those games when she's 8-12 years old?
I'm guessing no, she won't.
The problem isn't that there aren't games for kids, it's that once they hit ~8-10 (to say nothing of 11-12) years old, there just aren't that many games that are age-appropriate in terms of content AND complexity for them. Reminds me of when I was 10 and getting chased out of the bookstore in the mall because I was trying to browse the sci-fi section which the clerk said was "for adults only", yet the only books they had in the "Young Adult" section were stupid quasi-romance trash novels aimmed at girls with a 3rd grade reading ability.
My friend has a daughter who's 11 and likes animals. She likes to play 'Zoo Tycoon', but doesn't want to be bothered with the business aspect of the game. She just wants to create a zoo with nice spaces for her animals to live in, so she uses a cheat code to get cash. She also doesn't want to play anything with an "E" rating, because she's already figured out that the vast majority of those titles are too young for her.
There are very few commercial games that are actually aimmed at the "tween" ages of 8-12.