That could beat driving around in the version x(of 50, with slight differences) indestructable box.
As long as when you turn right something ya know, explodes or sparks or something.
And now that we've ragged on Gran Turismo for it's bit of silliness(Who needs brakes? That's what other cars and scenary is for!) we may as well rag on Resident Evil, Doom, etc. a bit... when you have a freakin' rocket launcher, the words "it's locked" are not in your vocabulary.
No, the record companies paid the radio stations "payola" to play/promote certain music.
It's illegal now(well, w/o saying airtime is paid for), so now they use third parties who bribe... err I mean *lobby*.. music directors who tell DJs what to play.
Heh. Sony originally promised *TWO* HDMI ports and said there would only be 1 SKU.
They also mocked the wii controller, 8 months or so before ripping it off.
They also said PS3 would be a vast distributed computer network where I could what borrow spare cpu cycles from people worldwide not using their PS3. That was a while ago.
Now, Nintendo otoh never gave a price apart from $250, and never promised anything they haven't delivered on. There was supposed to be a DVD-addon. Mention of this has been dropped, but they never said it would play DVD movies out of the box.
Yea, that worked out real well for Nintendo with the N64. Coming off of 2 straight console success stories, revitalizing the industry with the NES, making some of the greatest games of all time. Oh but wait, no, it didn't.
The only brands that matter are the franchises people care about. And that's just an extension of the fact that the only thing that matters is the games. To paraphrase Clinton, "It's about the games, stupid." And that's not established until the games actually come out. FFVII was originally supposed to be an N64 game. RE4 was supposed to be a Gamecube exclusive. I wouldn't expect a johnny-come-lately sony fan to appreciate that. I hope your bandwagon is large enough to ensure you don't face the disappointments of Nintendo, Microsoft and SEGA owners. Because atm, it's looking like you will.
Basically nothing interesting hits the PS3 that's worth even $400 until late 2007, and none of that is guaranteed. Granted, this is merely my opinion, but I maintain my previous position, if you buy a PS3 before next year, you are a fool. Perhaps a fool surrounded by enough other fools to get a big enough install base to make you a lucky fool in terms of third party support, but a fool none the less.
Me, I'm buying a Wii at launch because I like the lineup and I love Nintendo games enough for it to be worth it over the 5 year cycle. I can't say this of Sony(apart from a few exceptions which I can live without, but given the choice of giving up all Sony first/second party games or all Nintendo games, I'd pick Sony every time[as any person with a soul would]), only of some of the third parties that have put games out on the PS1/PS2. Unfortunately, I also love certain games and franchises made by third parties. So I may very well end up with a PS3, but only if enough fools buy it and the price/value ratio becomes more favorable.
For the love of god, please, don't make me buy a PS3. Let me keep that $200 in my pocket and just wait until 3 months after something must-have comes out on the system. Don't be a sheep, follow the games, and they aren't games until they're sitting on the shelf.
I'm sorry what? Oblivion is better than Fallout, Nethack, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, the entire Ultima series, Dragon Quest 1-6, Final Fantasy 1-6, half the Seiken Densetsu series, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Chrono Trigger, etc. etc. Hell, Daggerfall and Arena are in there too if you want TES. A few of those are less than a decade old, but all of them are older than the PS2.
It's prettier, it's also far less clever than a lot of the games I just listed, far less ground breaking, and in many ways a step backwards from Morrowind. Plus, you need to freakin' mod it to deconsole-fy the interface, and like all TES games it was(and still is, but it's better) buggy as hell.
And no, most genres have not advanced, they've been at a freakin' standstill for almost a decade(or all but died, like adventure games and shooters). Platformers to Shooters to FPSes. We've gotten polish but nothing beyond incremental. The last big FPSes in that category were Tribes 2, Deus Ex and Half Life(and maybe an honorable mention to Goldeneye). The last huge platformer innovation was Mario 64 almost a decade ago! Beat 'em ups have gone *downhill* since Street Fighter 2, only Smash Bros still captures that flavor, and only Soul Calibur does 3D truly decently. Then we have RPGs, which have gotten... prettier. Nethack dynamically generates an entire dungeon for you. Ultimas had *huge* overworlds(as do various hack derivatives). JRPGs have been using the same basic formula pretty much since their inception, the only difference is now there is FMV and they're prettier(or in the case of FF:XII play for you). I could go on and on and on.
The only progress the 360 and PS3 represent is graphical progress. If you're really a hardcore gamer, you'll play something like Nethack, or replay System Shock 1/2. The graphics really, really don't matter as anything other than a nice bonus.
Fucking kids and their playstations. Yea, your opinion on video games is irrelevant. Please, please, stick to the PS3. I really do not want to be associated with your ilk.
In many of the more advanced civilizations on the planet Earth, the Wii has already supplanted the great Sony Playstation 3 as the standard repository of all video games, for though it can cause tiredness and it's graphics are not as advanced, it scores over the more pedestrian console in two important respects.
First, it is significantly cheaper; and secondly it has the word Wii printed in large friendly letters on the box.
The DS launch was similar. It launched in NA before Japan. Why? Christmas is an important holiday in NA and Europe, not so much in Japan.
Oh and the NES also launched at $200(with two controllers and Super Mario Bros). There was also a $250 deluxe pack that included ROB, the zapper, gyromite and duck hunt.
It's like fark with user-moderators. K5 but much less advanced. Slashdot w/o the discussion.
Shit, we're talking about a site that only offers one more level of nesting over freakin' forums. Run and managed by a bunch of tech-TV rejects, and populated with all the "31337" technical people who couldn't stand being modded to oblivion on slashdot.
The only exclusive games in big franchises hitting the PS3 anytime soon are Gran Turismo(not a new game, just 4 in HD), Final Fantasy(main series), and Metal Gear Solid IV. All TBA 2007. That's maybe 20 million consoles(being generous and not assuming any overlap between the fanbases), and requires that FF and MGS(both series are in a sales decline as well) stay on the PS3 exclusively, which isn't assured. That's about what Nintendo pulls off with their franchises(also in decline), btw, and about how many systems the Gamecube sold. It's also about how many Sony can get out there by Christmas 2007 if you give them the benefit of the doubt.
With the drastically increased cost of development in this new generation, exclusives are a bad idea unless one console really pulls ahead, and given the launch numbers and production rates of the PS3, that's not going to happen until late 2007, if at all. The reality is there are two development targets atm if you want to make money w/o incentives from a console maker in this next generation. PS3/360/PC and the Wii.
Since 1985, there have been a total of 7 main-series console Super Mario games, one of which was an archive(All Stars). 3 for the NES, 1(or 2) for the SNES, 1 for the N64, and 1 for the Gamecube. A 7th(or 8th depending on whether or not you count All Stars) is coming out in 2007. It will be the third 3D main-series Mario title released in just over 10 years, and the 7th(or 8th if you count all Stars) game in the Super Mario series released for a console in just under 22 years. Now if we count handhelds(3 unique handheld games), cameos(tons), spinoffs and the like, that number increases(to 140 appearances in 26 years), but that's not really fair to do. Super Mario RPGs, the Yoshi series, the sports titles, etc. they're all different games, just sharing the same character. And the cameos may as well not even count.
Add one and subtract a few years from that if you want to count the original Mario bros. Oh and add one if you want to count both versions of Mario 2.
There have been a total of 6 actual console Zelda games(unless you count four swords), since 1987. 3 2D, 3 3D. A 4th 3D is coming out this year. It will be the 8th Zelda in just under 20 years. There were 4 unique portable Zeldas(first in 93), with a 5th due out early next year.
Metroid? 1 for the NES, 1 for the SNES, 2 for the Gamecube, 1 for the Wii. In just over 20 years. There's also 3 handheld games(with a 4th rumored). So 8 games in 20 years total.
Kid Icarus? 1 game. 20 years.
Mario Party? No fucking argument here, there's a new game of this almost every year.
In the meantime, Jak and Daxter, a game first released in 2001, has already seen 4 console games in the main series and one handheld game, with another 2 games supposedly slated for 2007(one portable, one console). That's just under 1 game a year. The same holds true of Sly Cooper and Ratchet and Clank. Metal Gear Solid will have seen 4 in 9 years(decent pacing). And Final Fantasy will have seen 7 main series titles in 9 years(little fast). Madden(and most Sports games) are 1 a year.
See the difference here yet? A lot of the franchises established not even 10 years ago are hitting 5th and 6th installments, while most of Nintendos are only slightly above that(three games max).. despite having been around a decade or more longer(in the case of the PS2 platformers, 15 years+ longer). Oh, and no one, and I mean no one, can challenge the Blue Bomber, Megaman, for sheer milking. There were 9 main-series Megaman games alone, another 8 X platformers, and 4 Zeros, and now ZX. This isn't mentioning the RPG spinoffs or the 3D games(of which there were 2!) or the Arcade games, etc.. Nobody, and I mean *nobody* drives a character/franchise into the ground like Capcom can(23 platformers total in 20 years! And that's being conservative!). I think if you total it up, there's been a new megaman game with basically minor tweaks(and a franchise update!) from the previous one, every year since Megaman's inception(sometimes twice a year!). He's like the Madden of platformers, only even older and slightly more promiscious(Castlevania is getting pretty bad here of late too, but mainly on portables).
Actually I own a PS2. I'm on my 3rd PS2(well 4th if you count the stolen one, but that's not fair) in fact(because the optics are shit, hopefully the PStwo acquired after the $600 press conference of doom actually lives to see the PS3 reach a sane price), and I've owned about 60 games for the thing(currently 35, I lost a bunch of titles during the afforementioned theft).
God of War. David Jaffe. Freelance designer. Gratuitous use of nudity Rygar(does anyone even remember this PS2 title, or did just the people with warm fuzzies towards the original NES title nab it?) rip-off. It's good for what it is, but it's nothing really special, except in the Blizzard/Nintendo area of sheer polish. Even Jaffe points this out. Oooh, nipples(in the *first* level no less) and uber-violence grafted onto a hum-drum action platformer and a typical gaming B-movie storyline. The *innovation* drips off of it. I'm sure I'll be going back to play this one in 10 years. It's fun for what it is, but it's no classic.
Ico. God, now we're going back a ways. Good game. I think I had one of the 100,000 copies they actually sold of it in the states, it's since been completely and totally outdone by Ubisoft's Prince of Persia, but it was great at the time. There's also Okage, but we don't like to talk about that one.
Katamari Damacy. Gee, this is a Namco game. Namco != Sony(are we going to include a bunch of the Tales series, Ace Combat, etc. as well?). It's also basically pac-man with a twist and I evidentally didn't do enough drugs in college to be able to really get into it(I also don't like Halo, I must be curmudgeony). Btw, on this note, Insomniac and Sucker Punch != Sony either(although they may as well be second party, they're still both independant last I checked). So there goes Ratchet and Clank(which has seen how many games in what, 5 years now?), Spyro, and Sly Cooper(same as Ratchet and Clank and Jak&Daxter).
What, no Mark of Kri(a game so badass it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry!) mention, no Shadow of the Collossus, no bringing up the awesomeness that is Harmonix(not a sony 2nd party btw) and Red Octane? We're not going to mention Rez, or Amplitude, or Frequency, or dozens of Atlus titles? No Psychonauts!? No DDR!? Wait, because almost none of them were made by Sony? They were only made for the shittiest platform out there hardware wise(not that I care, except about the atrocious load times and anti-ergonomic we only like it because we've used it for 10 years controller where applicable) because it managed to get #1 marketshare fairly early and hit that self-feeding cycle? If either Microsoft or Nintendo(or even SEGA for that matter, which had a number of awesome titles on the Dreamcast) had managed to get the bandwagon going, most of the games that make the PS2 worth owning(and thus so dominant) would've shown up on either platform. They're interchangeable, and while Microsoft doesn't do any better than Sony does from a 1st/2nd party perspective(actually they do slightly worse imo), Nintendo absolutely destroys them both.
And Sony needs to be humbled. In order to *not* fail compared to the PS2, they need to sell 100 million PS3s and counting within 5 years? At $500-$600 at launch(and really no titles in that window worth that price of entry) does anyone really think it's possible for them to succeed in this? And even if they do, with dev costs doubling or tripling and most franchises in decline(MGS3 sold less than MGS2, DQVIII sold less than DQVII, FFX FFVIII, etc.), does anyone seriously think the third party support the PS2 enjoyed is even probable, at the prices we're used to and with real quality increases in titles? They need to go through the fires Nintendo did with the N64 and cube, really beef up their internal development teams so they can truly stand alone(if necessary), and drop their hardware/marketing guys like Kaz and crew in favor of people like Ueda or Yamauchi. Maybe then they'll have more than 1 great franchise, a good franchise, an ok franchise a
Right, because the move to Sony ruined so many old Nintendo franchises. Like Final Fantasy, man 7 really sucked, it just wasn't the same. And Viewtiful Joe, that sucked ass when it went to the Playstation too. Oh and Dragon Warrior, man, those sales were never the same. Resident Evil 4, when Capcom moved the series over to the cube, that game just freakin' blew. Oh, and let's not forget Metal Gear went completely downhill when Kojima took it off the MSX. The list of games ruined by Sony is just like endless man.
Your argument is shit. See the thing about Sony and video games is that they produce so little actual content they could vanish tommorrow and the impact would almost be nil. No more Gran Turismo, no Jak/Daxter game each year, no Sly Cooper game each year, no Socom... and that's it(and yes that's the difference between Sony's franchises and Nintendo's, 1 a year like a freakin' megaman or madden versus one or two per console generation). Their system, style, etc. is pretty much completely forgetable, it's generic consumer goods and it even taints some of the third party stuff a bit. Look at your list, it's two Sony franchises(solid, but utterly generic and niche to boot[Gran Turismo in particular is to racers what Madden is, only it actually has competition, and Socom is destroyed by many other franchises]), two Capcom franchises, a Namco franchise and a Konami franchise(that went seriously downhill with the 2nd installment of the modern reinvisioning, and no, 3 didn't redeem it). Fuck Sony.
Shadow of the Colossus - Note the jagged edges and overall muddy appearance. God of War - Same. Resident Evil 4 - Getting better but still muddy, some jaggies. Halo 2 - Same as RE4, some jaggies. Oversized(remember, 480p, up to 16:9) Red Steel shot 1 and shot 2 - Crisp, no jaggies, decent lighting, texture detail is good.
The number of players that want a robust PvP system is probably about equal to the number of players that want high-end raid content. Everyone else wants Diablo 2.
The PS3 will "fail" for a few basic reasons. The launch and lead-in library is no better than the PS2's was, and the PS2 had the advantage of also being a reasonably priced DVD player at a time when the writing was on the wall for DVD being the next movie format(which isn't the case for blu-ray[if blu-ray is as successful as DVD, we're looking at 2010 as the year the PS3 hits the same sweet spot the PS2 did]). It was also half the price. What games are being released with the PS3 that in aggregate make it worth $500-$600 and the cost of those games? I've raised this question time and time again and no one has given an answer to it(which is odd because it's an opinion question). It's all about the games that are hitting in 2007, or the TBA games. Namely Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII, which, assuming there's no overlap in the fanbases, and every fan of those series buys a PS3, won't get the PS3 above 15 million units sold. Mario, Zelda, and Metroid manage the same feat and it hasn't propelled Nintendo to "success" in the past two generations.
It's also incredibly expensive to develop a PS3 title, so the games need to either sell better or you need to charge more. Very few games are going to make decent profits during the first year of the PS3, at least off the PS3 alone, which is why so many titles are 360/PS3/PC. Bets need to be hedged. We see this happening for the most part. Then we have the cheap Wii, at current gen development prices.
Now, you bring up Asia. No, the 360 doesn't stand a chance here, but this doesn't automatically mean a PS3 win. Hell, Famitsu's recent poll of developers and consumers shows just as many people think the console is too expensive as think that here, the difference being that Microsoft may as well not exist so there's no competing high-end system. And we also have Nintendo, which commands much brand-loyalty, and is coming off the recent run-away success of the DS over the PSP. If Nintendo pulls a repeat of this, the PS3 will become a niche system similar to the Gamecube's position last generation. I have no doubt that regardless, it'll still have it's home run titles, but you don't hit 100 million console sales off the greatest hits, you hit that off a ton of singles and doubles by having title diversity(it's a positive feedback loop as well). It is full and well possible that the realities of the next generation of consoles leave Nintendo in an extrememly strong position, and this possibility is confirmed by the number of Wii titles in development and the statements of the various executives(they all said to buy a Wii(and a PS3 or 360)).
So no, nothing is settled yet. About the only safe thing to say is that in Asia the PS3 will beat the 360. But, will the 360 compensate for that in Europe and NA? Maybe. Will Nintendo pull ahead in Asia due to various reasons and thus weaken Asian dev support for the PS3? Not assured, but there's a good chance of this. Will Nintendo capitalize on the same things in Europe and NA? Maybe.
It's fun to speculate, but all I care about as a gamer is what's on the shelves when the systems launch later this year.
And by that criteria, neither the PS3 nor 360 interest me.
Meh. I quit AO waayy back when because they were seemingly changing the rules on me at least once a month. I'd level a character up because it had combinations of abilities/etc. I thought would give me an advantage, only to have the rules changed. Constantly. My (IIRC) fixer got nerfed(range fix I think... it's been a while). I rolled a (IIRC) nanomage, that got nerfed. The crashes, mission bugs, etc. never bothered me a terrible amount. The game stayed in a state of beta not from a stability standpoint but from a balance/finalization standpoint for as long as I played it. That's what killed funcom in my eyes, not any code problems. You'd go from munchkin to gimp on a constant basis.
I actually quite enjoyed the beta, the ending beta event, and the first several months of the game in spite of it's problems. Once they nerfed me, hard, with no real option to re-optimize except reroll, the THIRD time. I quit. By the time the option to redistribute points was added, it was too little too late. Not even a free month or year(now free with ads) could get me back. I had lost all faith that funcom could deliver any kind of consistant world, and it just wasn't worth the time investment.
Sucks too, I was mainly drawn to AO by the setting.
That's why people left AO in droves and it died, horrible management by Funcom.
Blizzard threw lore and continuity out the window the moment they took the ability to speak common away from the undead. I mean, they spoke it, 3 years ago, they got their minds back, remember everything from when they were alive, could speak it as servants of the lich king and even in official stories to this date(like the Arathi basin teaser), but woah, can't speak or understand the language anymore. Because, uhh... they can't. Ok, they just can't.
Not that that matters, because: A. Gameplay concerns trump lore/continuity concerns in a game. B. It's not their lore anyway, it's Game Workshop's with a slight paint job. So is Starcraft(Zerg == Tyranids, Humans == Space Marines/Imperium, Protoss == Eldar). Most WoW lore is derived from Warhammer and was contrived around Warcraft 3 and pre-WoW launch. It absolutely baffles me why anyone would use LORE as a supporting reason for a Blizzard game. It's the gameplay.
WoW's problems have less to do with lore and more to do with fundamental design problems(Paladin/Shaman PvE/PvP disparity should've NEVER happened[yea, it evens out in PvP, since the PvE advantages translate into gear advantages which balance out the disparity in PvP for not quite long enough for the horde to catchup before the next dungeon is released, but when was the last battleground released?]. Allowing each faction to have *BOTH* is a fix that's been a long time coming and they'll probably fuck up) and a catering to large social groups(with no real rewards other than a sense of self-accomplishment to the people that hold said groups together) over the vast base of more casual and smaller-group gamers that made the game popular. The difference between the game from 1-60 and the game *at* 60 is what gets people to quit, not lore concerns. Hell, slow paced content releases, mindless faction grinds(or honor grinds) and sheer time commitment at set intervals to content we could've cleared daily if it weren't for artificial lockouts claimed more people than lore ever did. No one in any of my guilds really gave a fuck about lore as anything other than a possibly interesting back-story to why we were running a dungeon to get better gear so we could go kill alliance(or flex our e-peen on the forums), which got boring rather quickly. Players switched sides back and forth using multiple accounts. On a PVP server we had decent relations with some guilds(still kill them, but we'd BS on vent) on the other side of the aisle and would even occassionaly trade members as people got bored of a given perspective. We actually had a nigh-official priest and warrior exchange program with one of our chief cross-faction rivals during the gates of AQ quest series.
And about justification. The ringworld was unstable up until hecklers got Niven to "fix" it(and how was the ringworld constructed?). Melange is *never* really explained, nor is the method of ghoula reincarnation or the powers of a bene gesserit to anyones real satisfaction. Technomagic in Babylon 5. Psychics/psykers/psionics. All of the "ancient" stuff in Stargate SG-1. The shittons of stuff in Star Trek that's mainly only internally consistant(if that). The monolith and the method of "ascension" in Clarke's work. How did sliding *really* work? Did anyone ever have to recharge cybernetics in Gibson's work? How was that stuff powered anyway? Off neural activity? I don't really remember. Psychohistory(and tons of other stuff) in the Foundation series. *TONS* of stuff in Sci-fi is black-box. It works under some premise or some understanding of the realities of the physical universe that current science can't quite explain. It's magic based around a reality-based "what if."
Hell in classic Sci-Fi(like Jules Verne) they don't even *try* to give an explanation. And everyone is fine with that. The time machine just works. Details, what details? It's a *time machine* Hey look buddy, if you're going to get all nitpicky, anything sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. We might add some crazy theory i
Perhaps you are. If that's the case tho, is any console going to really satisfy you as much as the $600 into my PC per year route? Probably not. Oh, it'll be cheaper, but then we're into a value argument. And the Wii probably wins there if you can make it those magical first 10 minutes into any given game.
Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros Brawl look pretty nice. RE4 was great on the cube(especially on an SD tv, the jaggies you'll see in screens get smoothed out to almost unnoticeable). Twilight princess is looking fairly impressive for the cube/wii as well(albeit some of the facial expressions in some screens are a tad disconcerting). The first Viewtiful Joe was nice as well, style can trump raw fill rate(although the Cube wasn't a slouch, it tended to look better than the PS2). Metroid Prime showed an attention to detail that was quite nice as well.
What I found really odd, since you brought up CoD3... the smoke effects. The smoke effects in call of duty 3 for the Wii look extremely nice, and down right out of place next to the muddy textures(N64 comparisons seem apt, but memory is probably misleading me there a tad). Something's up there. It looks like someone photoshopped actual smoke into an N64 game. I don't think the textures are done. Still doesn't take the cake for worst "next-gen" graphics though. That honor goes to Madden for the 360/PS3, which looks like somebody from the late 90s is playing around with Poser and Bryce. Just... ugh.
And no, no one would buy a wiimote controller for the gamecube. It would be an add-on, and add-ons don't sell terribly well. Launching the improved gamecube with the controller as a bog-standard peripheral basically lets them do a reset.
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That could beat driving around in the version x(of 50, with slight differences) indestructable box.
As long as when you turn right something ya know, explodes or sparks or something.
And now that we've ragged on Gran Turismo for it's bit of silliness(Who needs brakes? That's what other cars and scenary is for!) we may as well rag on Resident Evil, Doom, etc. a bit... when you have a freakin' rocket launcher, the words "it's locked" are not in your vocabulary.
No, the record companies paid the radio stations "payola" to play/promote certain music.
It's illegal now(well, w/o saying airtime is paid for), so now they use third parties who bribe... err I mean *lobby*.. music directors who tell DJs what to play.
Heh. Sony originally promised *TWO* HDMI ports and said there would only be 1 SKU.
They also mocked the wii controller, 8 months or so before ripping it off.
They also said PS3 would be a vast distributed computer network where I could what borrow spare cpu cycles from people worldwide not using their PS3. That was a while ago.
Now, Nintendo otoh never gave a price apart from $250, and never promised anything they haven't delivered on. There was supposed to be a DVD-addon. Mention of this has been dropped, but they never said it would play DVD movies out of the box.
Go back to fucking digg you moron.
Yea, that worked out real well for Nintendo with the N64. Coming off of 2 straight console success stories, revitalizing the industry with the NES, making some of the greatest games of all time. Oh but wait, no, it didn't.
The only brands that matter are the franchises people care about. And that's just an extension of the fact that the only thing that matters is the games. To paraphrase Clinton, "It's about the games, stupid." And that's not established until the games actually come out. FFVII was originally supposed to be an N64 game. RE4 was supposed to be a Gamecube exclusive. I wouldn't expect a johnny-come-lately sony fan to appreciate that. I hope your bandwagon is large enough to ensure you don't face the disappointments of Nintendo, Microsoft and SEGA owners. Because atm, it's looking like you will.
Basically nothing interesting hits the PS3 that's worth even $400 until late 2007, and none of that is guaranteed. Granted, this is merely my opinion, but I maintain my previous position, if you buy a PS3 before next year, you are a fool. Perhaps a fool surrounded by enough other fools to get a big enough install base to make you a lucky fool in terms of third party support, but a fool none the less.
Me, I'm buying a Wii at launch because I like the lineup and I love Nintendo games enough for it to be worth it over the 5 year cycle. I can't say this of Sony(apart from a few exceptions which I can live without, but given the choice of giving up all Sony first/second party games or all Nintendo games, I'd pick Sony every time[as any person with a soul would]), only of some of the third parties that have put games out on the PS1/PS2. Unfortunately, I also love certain games and franchises made by third parties. So I may very well end up with a PS3, but only if enough fools buy it and the price/value ratio becomes more favorable.
For the love of god, please, don't make me buy a PS3. Let me keep that $200 in my pocket and just wait until 3 months after something must-have comes out on the system. Don't be a sheep, follow the games, and they aren't games until they're sitting on the shelf.
I'm sorry what? Oblivion is better than Fallout, Nethack, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, the entire Ultima series, Dragon Quest 1-6, Final Fantasy 1-6, half the Seiken Densetsu series, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Chrono Trigger, etc. etc. Hell, Daggerfall and Arena are in there too if you want TES. A few of those are less than a decade old, but all of them are older than the PS2.
It's prettier, it's also far less clever than a lot of the games I just listed, far less ground breaking, and in many ways a step backwards from Morrowind. Plus, you need to freakin' mod it to deconsole-fy the interface, and like all TES games it was(and still is, but it's better) buggy as hell.
And no, most genres have not advanced, they've been at a freakin' standstill for almost a decade(or all but died, like adventure games and shooters). Platformers to Shooters to FPSes. We've gotten polish but nothing beyond incremental. The last big FPSes in that category were Tribes 2, Deus Ex and Half Life(and maybe an honorable mention to Goldeneye). The last huge platformer innovation was Mario 64 almost a decade ago! Beat 'em ups have gone *downhill* since Street Fighter 2, only Smash Bros still captures that flavor, and only Soul Calibur does 3D truly decently. Then we have RPGs, which have gotten... prettier. Nethack dynamically generates an entire dungeon for you. Ultimas had *huge* overworlds(as do various hack derivatives). JRPGs have been using the same basic formula pretty much since their inception, the only difference is now there is FMV and they're prettier(or in the case of FF:XII play for you). I could go on and on and on.
The only progress the 360 and PS3 represent is graphical progress. If you're really a hardcore gamer, you'll play something like Nethack, or replay System Shock 1/2. The graphics really, really don't matter as anything other than a nice bonus.
Fucking kids and their playstations. Yea, your opinion on video games is irrelevant. Please, please, stick to the PS3. I really do not want to be associated with your ilk.
Unfortunately, the PI article only listed one controller.
Ahh well, we'll find out for sure in about 50 minutes. Time to get ready for work.
Saga is indeed awesome. Had Orta been like Saga, I probably would've gotten an XBox.
Greatest game of all time tho... that's tough.
In many of the more advanced civilizations on the planet Earth, the Wii has already supplanted the great Sony Playstation 3 as the standard repository of all video games, for though it can cause tiredness and it's graphics are not as advanced, it scores over the more pedestrian console in two important respects.
First, it is significantly cheaper; and secondly it has the word Wii printed in large friendly letters on the box.
*Appologies to the late, great Douglas Adams*
The DS launch was similar. It launched in NA before Japan. Why? Christmas is an important holiday in NA and Europe, not so much in Japan.
Oh and the NES also launched at $200(with two controllers and Super Mario Bros). There was also a $250 deluxe pack that included ROB, the zapper, gyromite and duck hunt.
It's like fark with user-moderators.
K5 but much less advanced.
Slashdot w/o the discussion.
Shit, we're talking about a site that only offers one more level of nesting over freakin' forums. Run and managed by a bunch of tech-TV rejects, and populated with all the "31337" technical people who couldn't stand being modded to oblivion on slashdot.
That's the native resolution for my laptop actually. I don't think it's 60 fps though.
The only exclusive games in big franchises hitting the PS3 anytime soon are Gran Turismo(not a new game, just 4 in HD), Final Fantasy(main series), and Metal Gear Solid IV. All TBA 2007. That's maybe 20 million consoles(being generous and not assuming any overlap between the fanbases), and requires that FF and MGS(both series are in a sales decline as well) stay on the PS3 exclusively, which isn't assured. That's about what Nintendo pulls off with their franchises(also in decline), btw, and about how many systems the Gamecube sold. It's also about how many Sony can get out there by Christmas 2007 if you give them the benefit of the doubt.
With the drastically increased cost of development in this new generation, exclusives are a bad idea unless one console really pulls ahead, and given the launch numbers and production rates of the PS3, that's not going to happen until late 2007, if at all. The reality is there are two development targets atm if you want to make money w/o incentives from a console maker in this next generation. PS3/360/PC and the Wii.
Since 1985, there have been a total of 7 main-series console Super Mario games, one of which was an archive(All Stars). 3 for the NES, 1(or 2) for the SNES, 1 for the N64, and 1 for the Gamecube. A 7th(or 8th depending on whether or not you count All Stars) is coming out in 2007. It will be the third 3D main-series Mario title released in just over 10 years, and the 7th(or 8th if you count all Stars) game in the Super Mario series released for a console in just under 22 years. Now if we count handhelds(3 unique handheld games), cameos(tons), spinoffs and the like, that number increases(to 140 appearances in 26 years), but that's not really fair to do. Super Mario RPGs, the Yoshi series, the sports titles, etc. they're all different games, just sharing the same character. And the cameos may as well not even count.
Add one and subtract a few years from that if you want to count the original Mario bros. Oh and add one if you want to count both versions of Mario 2.
There have been a total of 6 actual console Zelda games(unless you count four swords), since 1987. 3 2D, 3 3D. A 4th 3D is coming out this year. It will be the 8th Zelda in just under 20 years. There were 4 unique portable Zeldas(first in 93), with a 5th due out early next year.
Metroid? 1 for the NES, 1 for the SNES, 2 for the Gamecube, 1 for the Wii. In just over 20 years. There's also 3 handheld games(with a 4th rumored). So 8 games in 20 years total.
Kid Icarus? 1 game. 20 years.
Mario Party? No fucking argument here, there's a new game of this almost every year.
In the meantime, Jak and Daxter, a game first released in 2001, has already seen 4 console games in the main series and one handheld game, with another 2 games supposedly slated for 2007(one portable, one console). That's just under 1 game a year. The same holds true of Sly Cooper and Ratchet and Clank. Metal Gear Solid will have seen 4 in 9 years(decent pacing). And Final Fantasy will have seen 7 main series titles in 9 years(little fast). Madden(and most Sports games) are 1 a year.
See the difference here yet? A lot of the franchises established not even 10 years ago are hitting 5th and 6th installments, while most of Nintendos are only slightly above that(three games max).. despite having been around a decade or more longer(in the case of the PS2 platformers, 15 years+ longer). Oh, and no one, and I mean no one, can challenge the Blue Bomber, Megaman, for sheer milking. There were 9 main-series Megaman games alone, another 8 X platformers, and 4 Zeros, and now ZX. This isn't mentioning the RPG spinoffs or the 3D games(of which there were 2!) or the Arcade games, etc.. Nobody, and I mean *nobody* drives a character/franchise into the ground like Capcom can(23 platformers total in 20 years! And that's being conservative!). I think if you total it up, there's been a new megaman game with basically minor tweaks(and a franchise update!) from the previous one, every year since Megaman's inception(sometimes twice a year!). He's like the Madden of platformers, only even older and slightly more promiscious(Castlevania is getting pretty bad here of late too, but mainly on portables).
Actually I own a PS2. I'm on my 3rd PS2(well 4th if you count the stolen one, but that's not fair) in fact(because the optics are shit, hopefully the PStwo acquired after the $600 press conference of doom actually lives to see the PS3 reach a sane price), and I've owned about 60 games for the thing(currently 35, I lost a bunch of titles during the afforementioned theft).
God of War. David Jaffe. Freelance designer. Gratuitous use of nudity Rygar(does anyone even remember this PS2 title, or did just the people with warm fuzzies towards the original NES title nab it?) rip-off. It's good for what it is, but it's nothing really special, except in the Blizzard/Nintendo area of sheer polish. Even Jaffe points this out. Oooh, nipples(in the *first* level no less) and uber-violence grafted onto a hum-drum action platformer and a typical gaming B-movie storyline. The *innovation* drips off of it. I'm sure I'll be going back to play this one in 10 years. It's fun for what it is, but it's no classic.
Ico. God, now we're going back a ways. Good game. I think I had one of the 100,000 copies they actually sold of it in the states, it's since been completely and totally outdone by Ubisoft's Prince of Persia, but it was great at the time. There's also Okage, but we don't like to talk about that one.
Katamari Damacy. Gee, this is a Namco game. Namco != Sony(are we going to include a bunch of the Tales series, Ace Combat, etc. as well?). It's also basically pac-man with a twist and I evidentally didn't do enough drugs in college to be able to really get into it(I also don't like Halo, I must be curmudgeony). Btw, on this note, Insomniac and Sucker Punch != Sony either(although they may as well be second party, they're still both independant last I checked). So there goes Ratchet and Clank(which has seen how many games in what, 5 years now?), Spyro, and Sly Cooper(same as Ratchet and Clank and Jak&Daxter).
What, no Mark of Kri(a game so badass it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry!) mention, no Shadow of the Collossus, no bringing up the awesomeness that is Harmonix(not a sony 2nd party btw) and Red Octane? We're not going to mention Rez, or Amplitude, or Frequency, or dozens of Atlus titles? No Psychonauts!? No DDR!? Wait, because almost none of them were made by Sony? They were only made for the shittiest platform out there hardware wise(not that I care, except about the atrocious load times and anti-ergonomic we only like it because we've used it for 10 years controller where applicable) because it managed to get #1 marketshare fairly early and hit that self-feeding cycle? If either Microsoft or Nintendo(or even SEGA for that matter, which had a number of awesome titles on the Dreamcast) had managed to get the bandwagon going, most of the games that make the PS2 worth owning(and thus so dominant) would've shown up on either platform. They're interchangeable, and while Microsoft doesn't do any better than Sony does from a 1st/2nd party perspective(actually they do slightly worse imo), Nintendo absolutely destroys them both.
And Sony needs to be humbled. In order to *not* fail compared to the PS2, they need to sell 100 million PS3s and counting within 5 years? At $500-$600 at launch(and really no titles in that window worth that price of entry) does anyone really think it's possible for them to succeed in this? And even if they do, with dev costs doubling or tripling and most franchises in decline(MGS3 sold less than MGS2, DQVIII sold less than DQVII, FFX FFVIII, etc.), does anyone seriously think the third party support the PS2 enjoyed is even probable, at the prices we're used to and with real quality increases in titles? They need to go through the fires Nintendo did with the N64 and cube, really beef up their internal development teams so they can truly stand alone(if necessary), and drop their hardware/marketing guys like Kaz and crew in favor of people like Ueda or Yamauchi. Maybe then they'll have more than 1 great franchise, a good franchise, an ok franchise a
Right, because the move to Sony ruined so many old Nintendo franchises. Like Final Fantasy, man 7 really sucked, it just wasn't the same. And Viewtiful Joe, that sucked ass when it went to the Playstation too. Oh and Dragon Warrior, man, those sales were never the same. Resident Evil 4, when Capcom moved the series over to the cube, that game just freakin' blew. Oh, and let's not forget Metal Gear went completely downhill when Kojima took it off the MSX. The list of games ruined by Sony is just like endless man.
Your argument is shit. See the thing about Sony and video games is that they produce so little actual content they could vanish tommorrow and the impact would almost be nil. No more Gran Turismo, no Jak/Daxter game each year, no Sly Cooper game each year, no Socom... and that's it(and yes that's the difference between Sony's franchises and Nintendo's, 1 a year like a freakin' megaman or madden versus one or two per console generation). Their system, style, etc. is pretty much completely forgetable, it's generic consumer goods and it even taints some of the third party stuff a bit. Look at your list, it's two Sony franchises(solid, but utterly generic and niche to boot[Gran Turismo in particular is to racers what Madden is, only it actually has competition, and Socom is destroyed by many other franchises]), two Capcom franchises, a Namco franchise and a Konami franchise(that went seriously downhill with the 2nd installment of the modern reinvisioning, and no, 3 didn't redeem it). Fuck Sony.
What does this have to do with fun games?
I'd imagine people would buy fun games. Unless they're PSP owners apparently.
Shadow of the Colossus - Note the jagged edges and overall muddy appearance.
God of War - Same.
Resident Evil 4 - Getting better but still muddy, some jaggies.
Halo 2 - Same as RE4, some jaggies.
Oversized(remember, 480p, up to 16:9) Red Steel shot 1 and shot 2 - Crisp, no jaggies, decent lighting, texture detail is good.
The number of players that want a robust PvP system is probably about equal to the number of players that want high-end raid content. Everyone else wants Diablo 2.
So, you bring up Tibet, but no mention of Taiwan. Interesting...
Ahh the immortal elves. It's kinda sad that the best use for Earthdawn was as background material for Shadowrun.
The PS3 will "fail" for a few basic reasons. The launch and lead-in library is no better than the PS2's was, and the PS2 had the advantage of also being a reasonably priced DVD player at a time when the writing was on the wall for DVD being the next movie format(which isn't the case for blu-ray[if blu-ray is as successful as DVD, we're looking at 2010 as the year the PS3 hits the same sweet spot the PS2 did]). It was also half the price. What games are being released with the PS3 that in aggregate make it worth $500-$600 and the cost of those games? I've raised this question time and time again and no one has given an answer to it(which is odd because it's an opinion question). It's all about the games that are hitting in 2007, or the TBA games. Namely Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII, which, assuming there's no overlap in the fanbases, and every fan of those series buys a PS3, won't get the PS3 above 15 million units sold. Mario, Zelda, and Metroid manage the same feat and it hasn't propelled Nintendo to "success" in the past two generations.
It's also incredibly expensive to develop a PS3 title, so the games need to either sell better or you need to charge more. Very few games are going to make decent profits during the first year of the PS3, at least off the PS3 alone, which is why so many titles are 360/PS3/PC. Bets need to be hedged. We see this happening for the most part. Then we have the cheap Wii, at current gen development prices.
Now, you bring up Asia. No, the 360 doesn't stand a chance here, but this doesn't automatically mean a PS3 win. Hell, Famitsu's recent poll of developers and consumers shows just as many people think the console is too expensive as think that here, the difference being that Microsoft may as well not exist so there's no competing high-end system. And we also have Nintendo, which commands much brand-loyalty, and is coming off the recent run-away success of the DS over the PSP. If Nintendo pulls a repeat of this, the PS3 will become a niche system similar to the Gamecube's position last generation. I have no doubt that regardless, it'll still have it's home run titles, but you don't hit 100 million console sales off the greatest hits, you hit that off a ton of singles and doubles by having title diversity(it's a positive feedback loop as well). It is full and well possible that the realities of the next generation of consoles leave Nintendo in an extrememly strong position, and this possibility is confirmed by the number of Wii titles in development and the statements of the various executives(they all said to buy a Wii(and a PS3 or 360)).
So no, nothing is settled yet. About the only safe thing to say is that in Asia the PS3 will beat the 360. But, will the 360 compensate for that in Europe and NA? Maybe. Will Nintendo pull ahead in Asia due to various reasons and thus weaken Asian dev support for the PS3? Not assured, but there's a good chance of this. Will Nintendo capitalize on the same things in Europe and NA? Maybe.
It's fun to speculate, but all I care about as a gamer is what's on the shelves when the systems launch later this year.
And by that criteria, neither the PS3 nor 360 interest me.
7.5 Million? Really? Goldeneye for the N64 outsold that!
Meh. I quit AO waayy back when because they were seemingly changing the rules on me at least once a month. I'd level a character up because it had combinations of abilities/etc. I thought would give me an advantage, only to have the rules changed. Constantly. My (IIRC) fixer got nerfed(range fix I think... it's been a while). I rolled a (IIRC) nanomage, that got nerfed. The crashes, mission bugs, etc. never bothered me a terrible amount. The game stayed in a state of beta not from a stability standpoint but from a balance/finalization standpoint for as long as I played it. That's what killed funcom in my eyes, not any code problems. You'd go from munchkin to gimp on a constant basis.
I actually quite enjoyed the beta, the ending beta event, and the first several months of the game in spite of it's problems. Once they nerfed me, hard, with no real option to re-optimize except reroll, the THIRD time. I quit. By the time the option to redistribute points was added, it was too little too late. Not even a free month or year(now free with ads) could get me back. I had lost all faith that funcom could deliver any kind of consistant world, and it just wasn't worth the time investment.
Sucks too, I was mainly drawn to AO by the setting.
That's why people left AO in droves and it died, horrible management by Funcom.
Blizzard threw lore and continuity out the window the moment they took the ability to speak common away from the undead. I mean, they spoke it, 3 years ago, they got their minds back, remember everything from when they were alive, could speak it as servants of the lich king and even in official stories to this date(like the Arathi basin teaser), but woah, can't speak or understand the language anymore. Because, uhh... they can't. Ok, they just can't.
Not that that matters, because:
A. Gameplay concerns trump lore/continuity concerns in a game.
B. It's not their lore anyway, it's Game Workshop's with a slight paint job. So is Starcraft(Zerg == Tyranids, Humans == Space Marines/Imperium, Protoss == Eldar). Most WoW lore is derived from Warhammer and was contrived around Warcraft 3 and pre-WoW launch. It absolutely baffles me why anyone would use LORE as a supporting reason for a Blizzard game. It's the gameplay.
WoW's problems have less to do with lore and more to do with fundamental design problems(Paladin/Shaman PvE/PvP disparity should've NEVER happened[yea, it evens out in PvP, since the PvE advantages translate into gear advantages which balance out the disparity in PvP for not quite long enough for the horde to catchup before the next dungeon is released, but when was the last battleground released?]. Allowing each faction to have *BOTH* is a fix that's been a long time coming and they'll probably fuck up) and a catering to large social groups(with no real rewards other than a sense of self-accomplishment to the people that hold said groups together) over the vast base of more casual and smaller-group gamers that made the game popular. The difference between the game from 1-60 and the game *at* 60 is what gets people to quit, not lore concerns. Hell, slow paced content releases, mindless faction grinds(or honor grinds) and sheer time commitment at set intervals to content we could've cleared daily if it weren't for artificial lockouts claimed more people than lore ever did. No one in any of my guilds really gave a fuck about lore as anything other than a possibly interesting back-story to why we were running a dungeon to get better gear so we could go kill alliance(or flex our e-peen on the forums), which got boring rather quickly. Players switched sides back and forth using multiple accounts. On a PVP server we had decent relations with some guilds(still kill them, but we'd BS on vent) on the other side of the aisle and would even occassionaly trade members as people got bored of a given perspective. We actually had a nigh-official priest and warrior exchange program with one of our chief cross-faction rivals during the gates of AQ quest series.
And about justification. The ringworld was unstable up until hecklers got Niven to "fix" it(and how was the ringworld constructed?). Melange is *never* really explained, nor is the method of ghoula reincarnation or the powers of a bene gesserit to anyones real satisfaction. Technomagic in Babylon 5. Psychics/psykers/psionics. All of the "ancient" stuff in Stargate SG-1. The shittons of stuff in Star Trek that's mainly only internally consistant(if that). The monolith and the method of "ascension" in Clarke's work. How did sliding *really* work? Did anyone ever have to recharge cybernetics in Gibson's work? How was that stuff powered anyway? Off neural activity? I don't really remember. Psychohistory(and tons of other stuff) in the Foundation series. *TONS* of stuff in Sci-fi is black-box. It works under some premise or some understanding of the realities of the physical universe that current science can't quite explain. It's magic based around a reality-based "what if."
Hell in classic Sci-Fi(like Jules Verne) they don't even *try* to give an explanation. And everyone is fine with that. The time machine just works. Details, what details? It's a *time machine* Hey look buddy, if you're going to get all nitpicky, anything sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. We might add some crazy theory i
Perhaps you are. If that's the case tho, is any console going to really satisfy you as much as the $600 into my PC per year route? Probably not. Oh, it'll be cheaper, but then we're into a value argument. And the Wii probably wins there if you can make it those magical first 10 minutes into any given game.
Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros Brawl look pretty nice. RE4 was great on the cube(especially on an SD tv, the jaggies you'll see in screens get smoothed out to almost unnoticeable). Twilight princess is looking fairly impressive for the cube/wii as well(albeit some of the facial expressions in some screens are a tad disconcerting). The first Viewtiful Joe was nice as well, style can trump raw fill rate(although the Cube wasn't a slouch, it tended to look better than the PS2). Metroid Prime showed an attention to detail that was quite nice as well.
What I found really odd, since you brought up CoD3... the smoke effects. The smoke effects in call of duty 3 for the Wii look extremely nice, and down right out of place next to the muddy textures(N64 comparisons seem apt, but memory is probably misleading me there a tad). Something's up there. It looks like someone photoshopped actual smoke into an N64 game. I don't think the textures are done. Still doesn't take the cake for worst "next-gen" graphics though. That honor goes to Madden for the 360/PS3, which looks like somebody from the late 90s is playing around with Poser and Bryce. Just... ugh.
And no, no one would buy a wiimote controller for the gamecube. It would be an add-on, and add-ons don't sell terribly well. Launching the improved gamecube with the controller as a bog-standard peripheral basically lets them do a reset.