1. This is not just endemic to slashdot. It's also on digg, fark, the penny-arcade web-forums, gamefaqs/gamespot forums to a more limited degree(although those are so overrun by trolls it's tough to tell what the actual mood is), my old FPS clan web forums, my old WoW guild forums, and my crossover guild forums. It's so widespread there's actually a backlash against it to troll up replies or play the typical gaming troll of going anti-hype(which I do quite often, but I haven't been in this case). I actually have seen old trolls from other sites begin migrating around trying to stir up what I presume is a minority(for example: NeoTenchi on digg is an old games.slashdot/gamefaqs troll). Oh and the Sony fanboys, which is one side of the whole console wars I've never really gotten(I mean I own a PS2[several in fact] and a PS1, but i don't have much love for Sony because of it). You're bitching about the downsides to community moderated sites. Prevailing opinion wins and dissent is quashed. Get over it. A more interesting question is why the winds are blowing that way.
2. On a lot of technology sites, your 20-something -> 30-something reader probably has a soft spot for Nintendo because of the NES/SNES. Or they're PC gamers(if they game at all anymore). You don't hit a ton of Sony fans in that demographic(and you have to be a member of the Sony faithful atm to be really positive about the PS3 launch, it has what, 2 exclusive games worth buying, 4 by the end of Q1 2007 and then everything else is TBA 2007 or TBA... for $500-$600. What are these people, insane?), at least not in the US(Europe[and Australia I guess] is different). I run into a remarkable amount of people who got into IT because of gaming(PC and consoles) in the 80s/early 90s, and Nintendo is looking to be delivering in spades to these people. Tons of slashdot readers have warm fuzzies towards Nintendo, and there is a rabid pro-Nintendo current here in games. You also have the fact that Nintendo fans display the word "fan"'s origin from fanatic. Kind of like apple fans.
3. Stop trying to pull a FortKnox/Slort/etc. Slashdot's flaws are well known and have been debated to death and even spawned a few legendary threads of mod-bombing. I know it's oh so fun to do and Zonk is the new Michael/Jon Katz, but I mean, come on. Zonk was pissing off the Nintendo faithful not too terribly long ago, and similar posts got made by them about him then. He's an MMO/Xbox guy, unless that's changed post-E3. Don't be like the people that lodge FCC complaints, unless you like picking arguments on the internets. In which case, awesome.
4. The DS is looking to provide the type of experience and games the N64 and Playstation era should have delivered much moreso than it did imo. If it weren't for everyone's apparent hard-on against 2D gameplay during that era. We're getting franchise updates in the vein of Symphony of the Night and I personally think that's great. I really dig the 2D/3D hybrid style. It's also very relevant to the gimmicky claim. Many, many people called the DS gimmicky here and elsewhere. Try saying that now. You'd think people would remember and be a bit more gun-shy about making claims like that. Most, if not all hands-on reviews have been quite positive, and if any company can pull it off, it's Nintendo. I'm pretty sold on it being something novel, but I'll reserve final judgement for when I'm holding it in my hands and actually playing it.
5. Graphics matter for the first 10 minutes or where they provide a barrier to gameplay. In pre-3D games, they basically don't matter(game is going to look precisely like you remember it looking, and nostalgia will get you past that 10 minute hump. SNES/Genesis in particular hold up EXTREMELY well). In the 3D era, including the playstation, I find the graphics quite dated and awful(they don't look like I remember them looking), but what really kills replaying that stuff for me are crap like loading times/screens and unskippable FMV. That doesn't stop me from enjoyi
What EA needs to do is finally recover from the conservative streak that has plagued them since Lord British and Origin fucked the company over(Richard Garriot and crew are as much responsible for the demise of studios like Westwood as EA is). They need to spin-off a small-budget brand to do their innovative/experimental development, much like major film studios do for art/independant films, and start taking some chances. They can think of it as R&D.
When was the last time we saw a truly great designer emerge? It's pretty much been static for a decade.
Between the Wii, the Wii's Virtual Console, the PC, and the 360's Live Arcade there are plenty of venues to release lower-budget more limited appeal games that could still overall turn a profit for companies. Not enormous blockbuster profits, but I think the modern video-game industry chases those big hits waaayyyy too much. Always going for a home-run, never a single.
Have you ever seen the original texas chainsaw massacre? Not the new MTV-generation piece of shit, the original low-budget horror flick. While in many ways it set the stage for future slasher flicks, it's very very light on actual depicted gore, and goes for it's shocks in other ways.
Funny, if I did what Sony did I'd be non-personed in some Eastern European or Turkish Prison, having all sorts of horrid things done to me*. Yet Sony as a whole and Sony's other divisions get a complete pass.
This whacky world sure be whacky and wierd.
* Alright, so I'd just be in a normal jail having horrid things done to me.
Actually, I've owned 4 PS2s(2 broken, 1 stolen, 4th and current is a slimline purchased after the E3 price announcement to play the library), and own quite a few games for the console(mainly RPGs, but also things like Rez, MGS2, MGS3, Ace Combat 4, and R-Type Final just to name a few). Kicker is, apart from the 4 I mentioned previously, and some produced by acquisitions, Sony is responsible for none of them. They appeared on Sony's platform because it was the one with the marketshare. If Sony didn't exist, they would've appeared on some other platform.
You are aware that just because a title appears on a system doesn't necessarily mean it was produced by or paid for by the console maker.
And I don't hate Sony, I just have no reason to like them, and don't particularly like their attitude or feel they've contributed enough to the industry to be given any faith or benefit of the doubt. If the value proposition of the PS3 changes, I'll begrudgingly buy one. Right now, I see absolutely no rational reason to purchase one(and no one has given me one yet). And everything I said is true, I don't need to make it up. Sony leads no electronics market except for video games and their gaming hardware is highly prone to breakage.
Digg isn't any better(it's actually worse on the Wii/PS3 front, there's a few "neutral" articles but the general feeling in the comments section is even more rabidly anti-sony). And it only does one level of nesting.
Ha, ha, never heard that one before. Boy really proves your point.
You picked the username!
Serisously, though you insist the comparison be made with HDMI when down-rezing will only be down on Blu-Ray movies. Not games, and then not till 2010. How is the $500 box not the more valid comparison? I still don't get why PS3 detractors are so shrill about not needing HDMI, not needing Blu-Ray, then insisting that the high end model is that one that must be compared when the low end model still has more features than the XBox 360.
Because it has a blu-ray player, the only reason to include a blu-ray player is for movies. W/O HDMI that's crippled the moment they turn on ICT. Oh sure they say not til 2010, but I'm not enough of an idiot to trust the MPAA further than I can throw one of their member's buildings. It doesn't give me anything over the DVD drives in the 360 or Wii, except slower transfer(and more FMV!), and to get any value out of it I have to go for the $600 version. I can't upgrade the $500 PS3 with an HDMI port later either. So I'm stuck and at the studio's mercies.
And what features does the low-end PS3 have that the 360 doesn't? Blu-ray, that's it. Blu-ray doesn't matter for games. In order to salvage something out of their decision to include it, you have to plop down the extra $100.
There's also a tendency to *always* use the higher SKU.
Truth is you just want the price difference to be as high as possible to justify your choice if other than Sony for whatever reasons (valid or not) because you don't like Sony.
Who actually *likes* Sony? They produce over-expensive easily broken electronics that fail just outside of warranty. In the consumer sphere they're beaten in every metric by some other electronics company and slaughtered on price and quality these days by chinese knockoffs. Their media division is constantly responsible for not only gimping anything innovative coming out of the electronics division(including blu-ray) but also for insane draconian measures like the rootkit debacle. They try to force you into a Sony world, where everything gets along great as long as everything came from them and you paid the premium for the lower quality. Their first-generation stuff almost always fails quickly(not many 1001 PS1/PS2s left in this world), and their combination electronics always fall victim to the general rule of convergance(10x the features but each one is half as good as a standalone). No one *likes* Sony unless they still have warm fuzzies from 8 years or so ago when the brand actually had value.
And as to gaming, in a world where Sony never existed, we would have missed out only on the following: Gran Turismo, God of War, Ico, and SotC.
Why would anyone actually *like* Sony? This concept confuses me.
Sony *had* a reputation for making quality products. Even then they mainly coasted by on the strength of their professional stuff and a few great consumer lines in order to charge a premium. There's been a lot of talk of relabeling the brand "second-rate" these days, because it is. You can get cheaper and better stuff from other big-name electronics companies, and have been able to for a while.
The Playstation and the PS2 have totally dominated the console space for the last decade. If I ran a company that had sold 200 million systems and 2 billion games in the last decade I'd be pretty proud of myself too.
Replace that with Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System and you have the situtation in 1995(only it was 60 million NES and 50 million SNES, but the penetration was about the same, 1/3rd of all american households). Didn't help them any. Pride cometh before the fall is the phrase, right? And Kaz and crew are acting mighty proud and arrogant, which of course reflects on the corporation they are employed by.
I mean take this for example: Backpeddling on features. No more multiple HDMI ports, etc. Mocking Nintendo's controller as gimmicky, Sony would never do something like that. Queue E3. Look a knock-off, we're innovative. Mocking MS's 2SKUs. The PS3 will have one SKU. Queue E3. 2 SKUS! People will buy the PS3 without games. etc. etc. etc.
It's a freakin' morass resembling the N64 launch only with somehow more hubris.
I guess at least Sony hasn't gone into a partnership with someone who is later going to release the system, crafted from that partnership, that's going to destroy them. So they're one-up on Nintendo there.
Why? What games are coming out at launch that you absolutely need to play this year?
Maybe I've missed something. I certainly have the money to pick one up or even pre-order one in addition to the Wii and the slew of titles I want for it hitting this year, but I see absolutely no reason to do so.
I'm guessing that's going to be $300-ish, sometime in 2008. That's more than the PS2 was when it hit it's real sales stride(at the $200 pricepoint) and about 6 months later, but I think it's a good estimate given I pulled it out of my ass.
The key to Sony winning this generation is getting the price down quick enough to begin to hit the mass-market. If they can't do that, they fail to get the penetration to win exclusives, and either MS or Nintendo become the default console. If they can, they'll push off their momentum from the PS2 and easily take #1.
They only compare to the High End PS3 price with its support of HDMI.
Because of HDCP and ICT. When ICT gets turned on(and it's going to be turned on sooner or later), your $500 PS3 and $30 BR Discs are no better than a $30 DVD player and it's $10 discs.
Neither of the other boxen have HDMI, so the only fair comparison would be to the $100 cheaper non-HDMI version. The more expensive PS3 also has a larger hard-drive, but even the low end one has a 20gig harddrive.
Neither one of the other consoles have blu-ray as a selling point. So they don't need HDMI to be future-proof against HDCP/ICT.
PS3 will likely be Linux compatible straight out of the box without modding. How could Slashdotters not go ape for this console?
PS2 had linux. PS2 linux was crippled. PS3 will have linux. PS3 linux will be crippled. If I don't get full access to the hardware, what's the point? And if I have full access to the hardware, there's nothing stopping me from soft-modding the thing. It's not going to happen. I'm sure we'll see news if it does, but yea, not counting on it.
Two less capable machines do not add up to the same value as one more powerful machine if it does what you want.
When you say capable, capable of doing what? Crunching a few more theoretical floating-point ops? Per Carmack, the 360 is almost as capable in any real sense of delivering the visuals. Then we have the wii, which has it's own little feature-set that isn't replicated anywhere else. When it comes to gaming capability, the PS3 is no more capable of delivering an entertaining engrossing experience than any other system.
Or are we talking about capable of playing an unproven format? What blu-ray movies are you looking forward to, precisely? Ultraviolet, the 5th element, Terminator 1/2? Lol.
Or are we talking about capable of playing third party games that don't even have release dates yet? Because counting on that worked damn well for Nintendo fans in the PS/N64 era. Why, FFVII was *never* demoed on project reality. That's a myth I just made up. And Kojima of MGS fame really wouldn't flee Sony for Nintendo and his dev-buddies over there in a heartbeat if Konami management let him. Also a myth I completely just made up.
Oh! I know, capable of storing more data per disc! What about capable of raping my wallet with $100 games! Because it's more expensive to master(so it costs more initially) and stamp blu-ray(so per disc it costs more) and the content generation expenses are orders of magnitude higher. And because every single game out now has totally exceeded single layer DVD w/o using pre-rendered video! Wait, no, they haven't. Even oblivion didn't, and it was crammed full of voice-acting.
The HD-DVD player was the most ludicrous example of all to throw in the article. They even envoked the Betamax comparison (when in my opinion HD-DVD will likely be the really Betamax redux). The whole thing smacked of trying to stop Sony momentum from building.
You have a crystal ball? Because I don't. And what momentum? Have you not been browsing the internet lately? Have you not gone over to any of the poll sites(like nexgenwars? Are you oblivious to which way the wind is blowing? Sony *has* no momentum. They completely blew E3 and the internets have been against them ever since. Hell, all of my local gaming store employees are at *most* neutral towards the thing.
There's a small subset of hopefuls that crop out of the woodwork every so often, only to get beaten down and retreat back into silence.
I myself am looking forward to a $500 dollar blue ray player that plays games and hooks up to my 1080p NEC 1350.
Check this out. That's FF3 DS, also hitting Q4 of this year. Nice quasi-2D 3D style imo, kind of like the new Zelda for the DS. And the airship's back in classic style(one of the things that really, really irritated me about X was the way they did the airship). Also getting Magical Vacation(Magical Starsign here, DS) from Brownie Brown(old Square/Enix 2D artists) and possibly Mother 3(GBA). There's also a dragon quest due out in a blend of the FF3-DS and the DQVIII style coming out at some point.
There's just too much stuff coming out this year... sigh. I'm going to have such an incredible backlog next summer.
Millions is nothing, millions is assured. The launch units will sell out(all console launches pretty much do), and there's your millions. If by some stretch of the imagination it *doesn't* sell out at launch(personally I see absolutely no gaming reason to buy one at launch, but that's me), it's effectively dead. The key time comes *after* launch. And that's where the price is *really* a killer.
It needs to sell 10s of millions to do well(on it's own) and at least 100 million(and counting) to not be a "failure" compared to the PS2. At the pricepoint it's at, it's simply not going to do that. Even the fanbases of the two anticipated titles it has coming out: FFXIII and MGS4 won't get it above 20 million or so(providing there's no overlap between the bases, every last fan of each series buys a PS3, and they actually stay exclusive[since they're third party]).
Name the titles you want(must be exclusive). Name the month and year of their release dates. Come on.
It's not grain, it's noise. Probably just have a shitty hdtv that upconverts signals poorly. Anyway, alright, so we have until between 2014 and 2016 before retailers stop stocking DVDs. That's how long it took for DVD(first player released in 1996) to pull that trick off on VHS(Circuit City for example *just* dropped VHS completely this year). And for studio releases we should have until 2014(VHS was dual-released with DVD until 2004) before dual-releases stop being exceptionally common and until 2016 for them to disappear all-together. 8-10 years.
In the meantime, I'm sure some new HD standard will come out which can actually accurately display what would be captured on even poor quality 35mm film stock(1080i/p doesn't come close). At which point the whole cycle will begin again.
It's 6 degrees of freedom in 3 dimensions, plus absolute and relative positional information. Up/Down, Foward/Back, Left/Right, Pitch, Yaw, and Roll.
Oh, with 2 more from the d-pad (up/down, left/right).
Now, with the addition of the nunchuck you get an extra 9 degrees of freedom. 3 from the analog(X, Y, and Yaw) and then an additional 6 from the gyros/accelerometers.
That's 17 degrees of freedom or about 8 dimensions.
Slashdot Mirror
And even if Microsoft gave the OK, EA owns the publishing rights to Bond video games, so they'd need to get involved as well.
Goldeneye is pretty much a guaranteed no-go on both Live Arcade and the Virtual console, unfortunately.
1. This is not just endemic to slashdot. It's also on digg, fark, the penny-arcade web-forums, gamefaqs/gamespot forums to a more limited degree(although those are so overrun by trolls it's tough to tell what the actual mood is), my old FPS clan web forums, my old WoW guild forums, and my crossover guild forums. It's so widespread there's actually a backlash against it to troll up replies or play the typical gaming troll of going anti-hype(which I do quite often, but I haven't been in this case). I actually have seen old trolls from other sites begin migrating around trying to stir up what I presume is a minority(for example: NeoTenchi on digg is an old games.slashdot/gamefaqs troll). Oh and the Sony fanboys, which is one side of the whole console wars I've never really gotten(I mean I own a PS2[several in fact] and a PS1, but i don't have much love for Sony because of it). You're bitching about the downsides to community moderated sites. Prevailing opinion wins and dissent is quashed. Get over it. A more interesting question is why the winds are blowing that way.
2. On a lot of technology sites, your 20-something -> 30-something reader probably has a soft spot for Nintendo because of the NES/SNES. Or they're PC gamers(if they game at all anymore). You don't hit a ton of Sony fans in that demographic(and you have to be a member of the Sony faithful atm to be really positive about the PS3 launch, it has what, 2 exclusive games worth buying, 4 by the end of Q1 2007 and then everything else is TBA 2007 or TBA... for $500-$600. What are these people, insane?), at least not in the US(Europe[and Australia I guess] is different). I run into a remarkable amount of people who got into IT because of gaming(PC and consoles) in the 80s/early 90s, and Nintendo is looking to be delivering in spades to these people. Tons of slashdot readers have warm fuzzies towards Nintendo, and there is a rabid pro-Nintendo current here in games. You also have the fact that Nintendo fans display the word "fan"'s origin from fanatic. Kind of like apple fans.
3. Stop trying to pull a FortKnox/Slort/etc. Slashdot's flaws are well known and have been debated to death and even spawned a few legendary threads of mod-bombing. I know it's oh so fun to do and Zonk is the new Michael/Jon Katz, but I mean, come on. Zonk was pissing off the Nintendo faithful not too terribly long ago, and similar posts got made by them about him then. He's an MMO/Xbox guy, unless that's changed post-E3. Don't be like the people that lodge FCC complaints, unless you like picking arguments on the internets. In which case, awesome.
4. The DS is looking to provide the type of experience and games the N64 and Playstation era should have delivered much moreso than it did imo. If it weren't for everyone's apparent hard-on against 2D gameplay during that era. We're getting franchise updates in the vein of Symphony of the Night and I personally think that's great. I really dig the 2D/3D hybrid style. It's also very relevant to the gimmicky claim. Many, many people called the DS gimmicky here and elsewhere. Try saying that now. You'd think people would remember and be a bit more gun-shy about making claims like that. Most, if not all hands-on reviews have been quite positive, and if any company can pull it off, it's Nintendo. I'm pretty sold on it being something novel, but I'll reserve final judgement for when I'm holding it in my hands and actually playing it.
5. Graphics matter for the first 10 minutes or where they provide a barrier to gameplay. In pre-3D games, they basically don't matter(game is going to look precisely like you remember it looking, and nostalgia will get you past that 10 minute hump. SNES/Genesis in particular hold up EXTREMELY well). In the 3D era, including the playstation, I find the graphics quite dated and awful(they don't look like I remember them looking), but what really kills replaying that stuff for me are crap like loading times/screens and unskippable FMV. That doesn't stop me from enjoyi
What EA needs to do is finally recover from the conservative streak that has plagued them since Lord British and Origin fucked the company over(Richard Garriot and crew are as much responsible for the demise of studios like Westwood as EA is). They need to spin-off a small-budget brand to do their innovative/experimental development, much like major film studios do for art/independant films, and start taking some chances. They can think of it as R&D.
When was the last time we saw a truly great designer emerge? It's pretty much been static for a decade.
Between the Wii, the Wii's Virtual Console, the PC, and the 360's Live Arcade there are plenty of venues to release lower-budget more limited appeal games that could still overall turn a profit for companies. Not enormous blockbuster profits, but I think the modern video-game industry chases those big hits waaayyyy too much. Always going for a home-run, never a single.
That's where I presume Gyration comes in with their gyroscope.
Have you ever seen the original texas chainsaw massacre? Not the new MTV-generation piece of shit, the original low-budget horror flick. While in many ways it set the stage for future slasher flicks, it's very very light on actual depicted gore, and goes for it's shocks in other ways.
You didn't want to be a *silly cow* or a *sad animal*?
Oh sure, bring up Miike(you're talking about the movie, right, not the comic?). Way to go.
And scarily enough I swear I heard something about them spinning off a game from the same source material the movie used.
Funny, if I did what Sony did I'd be non-personed in some Eastern European or Turkish Prison, having all sorts of horrid things done to me*. Yet Sony as a whole and Sony's other divisions get a complete pass.
This whacky world sure be whacky and wierd.
* Alright, so I'd just be in a normal jail having horrid things done to me.
EA doesn't predate Nintendo. Nintendo entered the video game industry circa 1977.
Hell, Donkey Kong predates EA(1981).
Actually, I've owned 4 PS2s(2 broken, 1 stolen, 4th and current is a slimline purchased after the E3 price announcement to play the library), and own quite a few games for the console(mainly RPGs, but also things like Rez, MGS2, MGS3, Ace Combat 4, and R-Type Final just to name a few). Kicker is, apart from the 4 I mentioned previously, and some produced by acquisitions, Sony is responsible for none of them. They appeared on Sony's platform because it was the one with the marketshare. If Sony didn't exist, they would've appeared on some other platform.
You are aware that just because a title appears on a system doesn't necessarily mean it was produced by or paid for by the console maker.
And I don't hate Sony, I just have no reason to like them, and don't particularly like their attitude or feel they've contributed enough to the industry to be given any faith or benefit of the doubt. If the value proposition of the PS3 changes, I'll begrudgingly buy one. Right now, I see absolutely no rational reason to purchase one(and no one has given me one yet). And everything I said is true, I don't need to make it up. Sony leads no electronics market except for video games and their gaming hardware is highly prone to breakage.
Digg isn't any better(it's actually worse on the Wii/PS3 front, there's a few "neutral" articles but the general feeling in the comments section is even more rabidly anti-sony). And it only does one level of nesting.
Ha, ha, never heard that one before. Boy really proves your point.
You picked the username!
Serisously, though you insist the comparison be made with HDMI when down-rezing will only be down on Blu-Ray movies. Not games, and then not till 2010. How is the $500 box not the more valid comparison? I still don't get why PS3 detractors are so shrill about not needing HDMI, not needing Blu-Ray, then insisting that the high end model is that one that must be compared when the low end model still has more features than the XBox 360.
Because it has a blu-ray player, the only reason to include a blu-ray player is for movies. W/O HDMI that's crippled the moment they turn on ICT. Oh sure they say not til 2010, but I'm not enough of an idiot to trust the MPAA further than I can throw one of their member's buildings. It doesn't give me anything over the DVD drives in the 360 or Wii, except slower transfer(and more FMV!), and to get any value out of it I have to go for the $600 version. I can't upgrade the $500 PS3 with an HDMI port later either. So I'm stuck and at the studio's mercies.
And what features does the low-end PS3 have that the 360 doesn't? Blu-ray, that's it. Blu-ray doesn't matter for games. In order to salvage something out of their decision to include it, you have to plop down the extra $100.
There's also a tendency to *always* use the higher SKU.
Truth is you just want the price difference to be as high as possible to justify your choice if other than Sony for whatever reasons (valid or not) because you don't like Sony.
Who actually *likes* Sony? They produce over-expensive easily broken electronics that fail just outside of warranty. In the consumer sphere they're beaten in every metric by some other electronics company and slaughtered on price and quality these days by chinese knockoffs. Their media division is constantly responsible for not only gimping anything innovative coming out of the electronics division(including blu-ray) but also for insane draconian measures like the rootkit debacle. They try to force you into a Sony world, where everything gets along great as long as everything came from them and you paid the premium for the lower quality. Their first-generation stuff almost always fails quickly(not many 1001 PS1/PS2s left in this world), and their combination electronics always fall victim to the general rule of convergance(10x the features but each one is half as good as a standalone). No one *likes* Sony unless they still have warm fuzzies from 8 years or so ago when the brand actually had value.
And as to gaming, in a world where Sony never existed, we would have missed out only on the following: Gran Turismo, God of War, Ico, and SotC.
Why would anyone actually *like* Sony? This concept confuses me.
Sony *had* a reputation for making quality products. Even then they mainly coasted by on the strength of their professional stuff and a few great consumer lines in order to charge a premium. There's been a lot of talk of relabeling the brand "second-rate" these days, because it is. You can get cheaper and better stuff from other big-name electronics companies, and have been able to for a while.
The Playstation and the PS2 have totally dominated the console space for the last decade. If I ran a company that had sold 200 million systems and 2 billion games in the last decade I'd be pretty proud of myself too.
Replace that with Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System and you have the situtation in 1995(only it was 60 million NES and 50 million SNES, but the penetration was about the same, 1/3rd of all american households). Didn't help them any. Pride cometh before the fall is the phrase, right? And Kaz and crew are acting mighty proud and arrogant, which of course reflects on the corporation they are employed by.
I mean take this for example:
Backpeddling on features. No more multiple HDMI ports, etc.
Mocking Nintendo's controller as gimmicky, Sony would never do something like that. Queue E3. Look a knock-off, we're innovative.
Mocking MS's 2SKUs. The PS3 will have one SKU. Queue E3. 2 SKUS!
People will buy the PS3 without games.
etc.
etc.
etc.
It's a freakin' morass resembling the N64 launch only with somehow more hubris.
I guess at least Sony hasn't gone into a partnership with someone who is later going to release the system, crafted from that partnership, that's going to destroy them. So they're one-up on Nintendo there.
Why? What games are coming out at launch that you absolutely need to play this year?
Maybe I've missed something. I certainly have the money to pick one up or even pre-order one in addition to the Wii and the slew of titles I want for it hitting this year, but I see absolutely no reason to do so.
I'm guessing that's going to be $300-ish, sometime in 2008. That's more than the PS2 was when it hit it's real sales stride(at the $200 pricepoint) and about 6 months later, but I think it's a good estimate given I pulled it out of my ass.
The key to Sony winning this generation is getting the price down quick enough to begin to hit the mass-market. If they can't do that, they fail to get the penetration to win exclusives, and either MS or Nintendo become the default console. If they can, they'll push off their momentum from the PS2 and easily take #1.
I personally don't see that happening, but meh.
They only compare to the High End PS3 price with its support of HDMI.
Because of HDCP and ICT. When ICT gets turned on(and it's going to be turned on sooner or later), your $500 PS3 and $30 BR Discs are no better than a $30 DVD player and it's $10 discs.
Neither of the other boxen have HDMI, so the only fair comparison would be to the $100 cheaper non-HDMI version. The more expensive PS3 also has a larger hard-drive, but even the low end one has a 20gig harddrive.
Neither one of the other consoles have blu-ray as a selling point. So they don't need HDMI to be future-proof against HDCP/ICT.
PS3 will likely be Linux compatible straight out of the box without modding. How could Slashdotters not go ape for this console?
PS2 had linux. PS2 linux was crippled. PS3 will have linux. PS3 linux will be crippled. If I don't get full access to the hardware, what's the point? And if I have full access to the hardware, there's nothing stopping me from soft-modding the thing. It's not going to happen. I'm sure we'll see news if it does, but yea, not counting on it.
Two less capable machines do not add up to the same value as one more powerful machine if it does what you want.
When you say capable, capable of doing what? Crunching a few more theoretical floating-point ops? Per Carmack, the 360 is almost as capable in any real sense of delivering the visuals. Then we have the wii, which has it's own little feature-set that isn't replicated anywhere else. When it comes to gaming capability, the PS3 is no more capable of delivering an entertaining engrossing experience than any other system.
Or are we talking about capable of playing an unproven format? What blu-ray movies are you looking forward to, precisely? Ultraviolet, the 5th element, Terminator 1/2? Lol.
Or are we talking about capable of playing third party games that don't even have release dates yet? Because counting on that worked damn well for Nintendo fans in the PS/N64 era. Why, FFVII was *never* demoed on project reality. That's a myth I just made up. And Kojima of MGS fame really wouldn't flee Sony for Nintendo and his dev-buddies over there in a heartbeat if Konami management let him. Also a myth I completely just made up.
Oh! I know, capable of storing more data per disc! What about capable of raping my wallet with $100 games! Because it's more expensive to master(so it costs more initially) and stamp blu-ray(so per disc it costs more) and the content generation expenses are orders of magnitude higher. And because every single game out now has totally exceeded single layer DVD w/o using pre-rendered video! Wait, no, they haven't. Even oblivion didn't, and it was crammed full of voice-acting.
The HD-DVD player was the most ludicrous example of all to throw in the article. They even envoked the Betamax comparison (when in my opinion HD-DVD will likely be the really Betamax redux). The whole thing smacked of trying to stop Sony momentum from building.
You have a crystal ball? Because I don't. And what momentum? Have you not been browsing the internet lately? Have you not gone over to any of the poll sites(like nexgenwars? Are you oblivious to which way the wind is blowing? Sony *has* no momentum. They completely blew E3 and the internets have been against them ever since. Hell, all of my local gaming store employees are at *most* neutral towards the thing.
There's a small subset of hopefuls that crop out of the woodwork every so often, only to get beaten down and retreat back into silence.
I myself am looking forward to a $500 dollar blue ray player that plays games and hooks up to my 1080p NEC 1350.
I'd expect nothing less from a dumb swede.
Oh feel free. You're going to be guilty of conspicuous consumption, but hey, so what.
Check this out. That's FF3 DS, also hitting Q4 of this year. Nice quasi-2D 3D style imo, kind of like the new Zelda for the DS. And the airship's back in classic style(one of the things that really, really irritated me about X was the way they did the airship). Also getting Magical Vacation(Magical Starsign here, DS) from Brownie Brown(old Square/Enix 2D artists) and possibly Mother 3(GBA). There's also a dragon quest due out in a blend of the FF3-DS and the DQVIII style coming out at some point.
There's just too much stuff coming out this year... sigh. I'm going to have such an incredible backlog next summer.
Millions is nothing, millions is assured. The launch units will sell out(all console launches pretty much do), and there's your millions. If by some stretch of the imagination it *doesn't* sell out at launch(personally I see absolutely no gaming reason to buy one at launch, but that's me), it's effectively dead. The key time comes *after* launch. And that's where the price is *really* a killer.
It needs to sell 10s of millions to do well(on it's own) and at least 100 million(and counting) to not be a "failure" compared to the PS2. At the pricepoint it's at, it's simply not going to do that. Even the fanbases of the two anticipated titles it has coming out: FFXIII and MGS4 won't get it above 20 million or so(providing there's no overlap between the bases, every last fan of each series buys a PS3, and they actually stay exclusive[since they're third party]).
Name the titles you want(must be exclusive). Name the month and year of their release dates. Come on.
Square-Enix has no platform loyalty. If Sony doesn't move enough units, they'll jump just like they did from Nintendo in the N64->PS transition.
It's not grain, it's noise. Probably just have a shitty hdtv that upconverts signals poorly. Anyway, alright, so we have until between 2014 and 2016 before retailers stop stocking DVDs. That's how long it took for DVD(first player released in 1996) to pull that trick off on VHS(Circuit City for example *just* dropped VHS completely this year). And for studio releases we should have until 2014(VHS was dual-released with DVD until 2004) before dual-releases stop being exceptionally common and until 2016 for them to disappear all-together. 8-10 years.
In the meantime, I'm sure some new HD standard will come out which can actually accurately display what would be captured on even poor quality 35mm film stock(1080i/p doesn't come close). At which point the whole cycle will begin again.
Yea, count me out on this round.
Oh and as to games. Yea, no.
to play Nintendo games on Sony hardware continues...
Join us next month for the release of 2.7 with Loco Roco, and the following month for yet another crack.
Wait, what part of that doesn't Xbox Live Arcade already do?
A. Has Nintendo's Library
B. Is on a cheaper console
As to precedent, well, there's Satteliview, the Famicom Network, the SEGA channel, etc.
No, that's wrong. The fourth dimension of space is different, the cube analog becomes a tesseract for example.
It's 6 degrees of freedom in 3 dimensions, plus absolute and relative positional information.
Up/Down, Foward/Back, Left/Right, Pitch, Yaw, and Roll.
Oh, with 2 more from the d-pad (up/down, left/right).
Now, with the addition of the nunchuck you get an extra 9 degrees of freedom. 3 from the analog(X, Y, and Yaw) and then an additional 6 from the gyros/accelerometers.
That's 17 degrees of freedom or about 8 dimensions.