Try mail ordering from elsewhere in Europe. Outside the UK(and the US/Japan) I understand availability is a lot better. The Wii is region locked, but europe is a single region, so that's not an issue. Exchange rate wouldn't be a big deal either.
I never claimed it was anything other than my opinion. And yes, a lot of Halo fans are of the opinion that the single player aspect of the game is good. Frequently, these people have not played many other FPSes. If it was a PC title, it would rate as maybe Average. Well, actually, Halo and Halo 2 for the PC rated as abysmal, but that's more due to lazy ports than anything else.
Also, you should play star control 2. It's free now. The plot/story elements are very similar to mass effect, gameplay is different though(Star Control isn't an RPG). Don't get me wrong I like Mass effect, I just don't find it's storyline particularly original or it's botox-injected face graphics particularly appealing, and if we're going to rank things, that counts. It's an excellent RPG and has provided me with many hours of entertainment, but it has many flaws.
GH3/Rock Band. Well, to each their own. A lot of people already owned the guitar controller for the PS2, so the PS2 versions will be much, much cheaper. Especially factoring in that PS2/Wii/PC games are $10 less a copy than 360/PS3 games. That sort of counts for something.
I would rather have the interface that doesn't have to compensate for it's failings. In the holodeck example, I'd rather be on the holodeck than using a keyboard + mouse. If the design/control scheme has to compensate for a lack of immersion/precision within the controls, it's an inferior interface.
Because to compensate, it has to interfere and take away control. I'd rather have the control than not. I don't want what's stopping me from headshotting enemy A to be the controls/interface, I'd rather it be my own skill. This is why a holodeck would be superior to KB+Mouse and why KB+Mouse is superior to dual analog and why the Wiimote is superior to dual analog.
At present, consoles are inferior in that respect for a number of genres, barring, maybe, the Wii. Auto-aim and various other compensation methods are the Clippys of the gameplay world. They help you make due with a subpar interface.
The wii controls aren't better than the PCs. They're close, but not better. It's about at Quake 1/2 levels of precision, at least with current implementations. The pointer isn't quite as accurate, and the sensor bar/IR detection tech still has a bit of a ways to go. Next-gen, hopefully they do wi-fi/true triangulation, and then it'll be just about perfect.
Using the nunchuck in place of WASD(EQ) is worlds better though. I hope someone releases a peripheral for the PC to simulate it.
Something strike a nerve, some reason to resort to personal attacks? Well, if that's the way it be, so be it.
Learn to fucking write. I don't see a SINGLE reply to you about sales. NOT ONE. In fact there are TWO comments about game quality, so evidentally I'm not alone in not "getting" that your post was about sales and not a value judgement on quality(I think it's pretty obvious my initial reply was a statement as to quality). This supposed legion of people who got what you meant apparently felt no need to reply to you. Why, this could mean you were so damn clear, they felt no need, or it could mean you're a fucking idiot. This is also setting aside the fact that you referenced NOTHING. You provided no meaningful analysis of what any potential, assumed true of course, data could mean. You just spouted off shit and gunned for the insightful mod from the 360 legion. You've still referenced NOTHING. You've made no points, you've made no argument, and are now engaging in the final resort of trolldom, the personal attack.
And this also sets aside the fact that there are no reliable methods of tracking PC sales, your list of cross-platform games(was that what it was? I can't tell. Perhaps you should take a remedial english class) doing well on the 360 isn't a list of cross-platform games. This is also setting aside the fact that without supplying any competing information your assertion that the 360 is "cleaning up" is just that, an assertion. Now, I have seen attach rate figures from NPD and a few other groups that are favorable to the 360, but it also has more systems in the wild in NA(we'll refrain from Europe since only the UK has any sales data really), and has been out a full year longer than it's competitors. Without a whole metric asston of other data, that particular little factoid(attach rate/sales data[to clarify]) is utterly meaningless except as an interesting tidbit. That's also console on console, I believe I brought up the PC, or can you not read?
I can only conclude that you take my difference in opinion(and HOLY FUCK! I SAID it was an opinion, do 360 people not understand that these judgements are opinion? Evidentally not) on the quality of those games personally, and thus chose to reply to me . Was it that Mass Effect is Star Control of the Old Republic RPG? It is, btw. Halo is also an overrated average/mediocre game. The horror of someone saying that! Fire up the defense force! Hey brah, somebody said something bad about Master Chief! No, not Master Chief! Yah, brah, can't stand for that. To the fratmobile!
Enjoy being associated with a bunch of antisocial, relatively poor and poorly educated fucktards brah. Because that's how nielson paints the 360 crowd in their last demographic study. I'd provide a link, but I understand we don't do that in this conversation, it might support an assertion.
Sales show most people like licensed games. Sales show the original Pokemon for the GBC set a nigh-unbreakable bar of 15 million units sold in north america alone. Sales show Titanic is one of the greatest movies of all time. If you wanted to list cold hard sales data you should have listed cold hard sales data and refrained from any comments as to quality/originality, but you chose not to. You instead chose to spout untruths about innovation in the 360 lineup, which is almost barren of that quality, outside a handful of exclusive titles.
You have no point to make a counterpoint to, no meaningful analysis, and have backed nothing up with facts or references. Just vague handwaving, innuendo, and assertions.
Even when looking at games available on all systems, the 360 cleans up.
No it doesn't. That's a matter of opinion. The XBox has very little genre coverage and suffers from pretty much the exact same problem the original XBox had. Very few unique games that aren't better on the PC.
Let's look at your list: Halo - A mediocre single player fps, redeemed only by multiplayer. Guitar Hero 3 - Can play it on a PS2, and everyone owns a PS2. Orange Box - An inferior port of a PC title. Call of Duty 4 - See Orange Box. Assassin's Creed - Crossplatform. Rock Band - Crossplatform, will be coming to the PS2/Wii eventually. Mass Effect - Excellent, but it's basically a blatant ripoff of Star Control.
Orange Box in particular runs better even on older PC hardware than the 360 version. You get free live-esque service via steam or XFire, dedicated servers, more players per map, more maps, the ability to create your own maps, a better control interface, etc.
Yea, I love the Mass Effect story. I loved it more though when it was called Star Control. Sure they claim never to have played SC2, but they're fucking lying.
Oh, and the close-ups look like ass. Everyone has been injected with copious amounts of botox, they have dead zombie eyes, and it just looks poor, unstylized and lazy, like something someone tossed together in Poser 4 about 10 years ago.
People keep saying it has some fantastic library. This, much like the original XBox, is true only if you don't own a gaming PC. The 360's library is: Mass Effect, Dead Rising, and a ton of PC ports(all of which are better on the PC [dedicated servers, free online play, community mods/maps, better graphics, better controls, etc.]). Oh and there's the typical cross-platform EA stuff, and some unique sports/racing stuff I guess. Oh and Halo, which is at best a mediocre single player FPS.
Not many, I believe most of them left/were reassigned after the game went gold, and a new team took over expansion/maintenance. Those original guys were working on the thing for a few years, so yea, I know I'd be glad to move on to another project.
The designers are probably still there though.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Blizzard has a gradual dev churn in place to prevent burnout.
Gaming journalism isn't journalism. It's copying press releases and being shown things. Any old joe bloe can be a gaming "journalist", all you need is a bit of webspace and the right access. I'm honestly surprised companies don't just cut out the fucking middleman and post the shit we rely on "journalists" for.
Here's an example of a story that was pretty important, but reported on precisely 2 sites, and not accurately at either. IGN's direct2drive offered and advertised pre-orders for the game BioShock, including preloading to compete with Steam. This was advertised. They had a leak/accidental activation of their activation servers several days before release, thus breaking street and pissing off Take 2. News of this hit a number of forum communities after people who had used this service found they could activate the game early. A number of people then proceeded to order from Direct2Drive, only to find the preload link(preloading was *advertised* remember) had been delinked off the finished order page. A quick google(or alternatively you could use fileplanet's own search tool) revealed a link to the file, so it wasn't exactly hidden, just delinked off the order page. This was posted on those forum communities or found by those who had ordered. At this point the general consensus is that jig is up, but at least everyone can preload so they get it on release, hey, we weren't supposed to have it yet anyway, oh noes. People downloaded the preload. Some got it, but most didn't as they realized it was still there, and they pulled the preload(which they had ADVERTISED HAVING) off fileplanet.
Everyone(regardless of being motivated by a broken street date) who downloaded(or attempted to) the preload after it was delinked got a nasty legal letter from IGN courtesy Fox's legal dept(involving hacking, you dirty hackers, how dare you use google or our own search tool), and spent days not knowing if they'd even get their money back(IGN did refund everyone after a few days). Now that strikes me as a pretty nasty thing to do to paying customers, and something that would be of interest to anyone considering using a service like that. So yea, "journalists", pull the other one, it's got bells on.
Gaming also has basically no critical culture. Imagine if movie reviews were: 1/5 (Special effects), 1/5(Sound), 1/5(Rewatchability), 1/5(Story), 1/5(Acting). That's how game reviews are done. The whole thing is one big fucking joke.
Only if you view online as the end all be all, and even then Nintendo's involvement in networked consoles predates Microsoft having a networked operating system. Nintendo is responsible for pretty much every modern control method(including first party wireless controllers) outside PCs, as well as a large swathe of genres, via either outright creation or the popularization therof, which is a far greater contribution to gaming than cramming together a bunch of free-on PC stuff into an API/service and charging $50/year for the privaledge of using it.
There is very, very little either MS or Sony have done, most of it was already contributed by older players in the arena, with Nintendo have a disproportionate number of contributions within the home console space amongst the existing players by virtue of being around for so long. If we're going to talk about Microsoft's big contribution, it's going to come back to DirectX, not live.
Also, Nintendo allows VC transfers for repairs. My roommate managed to kill my disc drive and they transfered my VC stuff over to the replacement Wii, no problem.
Wages are not and have never been the problem. The biggest chilling effect caused by unions has been pensions(and more so the liability engendered therein and the mismanagement of pension funds/finance by employers*). When workers collectively get together and demand their fair share of their labors in terms of wages, the controlling interests of a company have a few options; cut the number of workers, raise prices, cut dividends, become more efficient in other areas, or cut their own imo excessive salaries. That they often decide to cut workers(often not the unionized ones by the way, since a union will be damned if it allows downsizing outside a plant closure) while simultaneously raising prices just proves that the general attitude towards the controlling interests of many companies should be a gigantic fuck you(the concepts of sacrifice and noblisse oblige are all but dead amongst the upper class, yet somehow enough middle class people identify with their selfishness to make certain political standpoints viable). Few are the companies that don't do whatever they can get away with, and yet blaming the workers for similar behavior is somehow in vogue amongst a certain set of people.
That some of the tale of the rise of unions is a large collective group of assembled people intimidating those who cross a line(as if the Union workers weren't putting principles above base needs, weren't we all taught that that is a noble act?) is somehow anathema to you is positively un-democratic. A small group of elites tried to break the unions, a large group tried to keep them together. Do you somehow wish for the good old days of serfdom? Did you happen to pop out of the right set of gonads(well, obviously you did in a certain sense, as you weren't born say a Sudanese peasant)?
You realize government stepping in for any regulation is anathema to pure laissez-faire capitalism, right? Whether that be for safety(and speaking of which some OSHA standards are fairly retarded), the environment, or for regulation of the free market via trust busting and anti-monopoly activities. Let's look to the presidency of the Roosevelts briefly; Teddy Roosevelt - class traitor, trust buster, inspiration for a children's toy, buster of US Steel[to the benefit of their shareholders], a conservationalist, and a very beloved president. FDR - The new deal and his socialist policies probably saved the country from radical populism, akin to a god amongst many of the "greatest generation".
I fail to see what is so enshrined about capitalism, or what is so horrible about socialism(and you have appealed to a hatred of socialism without spelling out any reasons as to why socialism is bad... perhaps a marxist ran over your dog as a child?). Europe seems to be doing pretty alright, especially if you're not that well off. You may have to wait for health care, but at least you'll get it. You don't have to worry about dying in a gutter. You don't have to worry about your next meal. And yet there are still fantastic innovations and companies coming out of socialist countries. Research in Motion, Canada, the Blackberry. Nokia, communications. Airbus, toe to toe with Boeing. Eastman Kodak(and canadian subsidiaries) tons of printing/film tech. I don't see the oft-referred to failure to motivate innovation within Europe. Say what you will about socialism, but at least it's baser motivations are altruistic, while the baser motivations of the capitalist are selfish. Which is the better system? Well, I feel not the need to judge/argue at present.
There's an old argument/intelectual exercise, related originally I believe to taxation. You have just been born, you have no idea to who, no idea as to their social standing/the inheritance due, design the fairest system you can.
* - Detroit/GM for example got fucked by a combination of lack of vision amongst their executives/eggheads and their outstanding liabilities in regards to pension plans. In terms of wages, I know for a fact Toyota pays quite fair and similar wages
Well, back in the day I could buy the services of a man and his descendants for life from a friendly dealer in such things. Sometimes at auction, other times right off the boat. It was an institution condoned by the bible, called slavery. Times moved on.
Back in the day I could pay my workers in company money, good only at my company store, and that was alright. I had no incentive to provide for their safety or continued well-being, and if my workers got uppity and tried to form a garsh-darned union, I could just hire different workers, or hire a group of strike-breaking thugs to go make an example out of a few of them. And of course, in the case of say, coal-mining in appalachia, when the seams dried up we just pull out of our company town, massive labor savings when we close the company store and all we've paid out is now worthless. As an added bonus we can evict our workers from their company housing! Score! Times moved on.
Let's look at the opposite side of the coin for a second, in most of the country, non-compete aggreements are currently completely legal. Not so in California, which has made them non-enforceable, unjustly restricting the rights of employers to set the own terms for employment. The knaves! Of course a side-effect of this is that Silicon Valley became the tech center instead of Rt. 128...
Or are we talking about a real free-market for labor? I presume then we are tearing down national borders for the movement of labor? So, say a comp-sci grad from landimmakingupica willing to work for minimum wage and with a working knowledge of english should of course have your job. He's willing to work for far less and is just as talented after all. We'll just curtail the right of assembly for all american citizens so they can't unionize and demand a fair wage, and let the Landimmakingupicans have all of those jobs.
Unions form due to the fact that if they are not present then the wealthy heads of businesses(who are often the wealthy heads of businesses due to the luck of being passed through the right vagina, yay for meritocracy let's repeal the estate tax so we have a class of people that never needs to actually earn anything!) have a tendency to abuse their labor pools as much as possible for their own benefit. Have Unions become organizations that in many ways serve their own interests as opposed to the interests they were originally formed to protect? Yes. Does this make them some far-flung evil? No. The amount of good unions are responsible for, especially in regards to the middle class, over the course of history is staggering. You don't have to hire union workers by and large, except in certain areas that have enshrined them as much in law as the police dept or local utility monopolies. But that's fucking democracy for you, people just have no sympathy for wanting to condemn a man to slow death from black lung so you can draw a higher salary and pay out a few more cents a share. Fucking democracy, fucking western society, damn uppity peasants! Teacher's 30k in debt should have to work for whatever we fucking offer! That'll help affordable education, as the pool shrinks and wages for qualified teachers go through the roof.
Warcraft 1 was supposed to be a Warhammer RTS, but Games Workshop wouldn't license their IP to blizzard, so Blizzard did a find/replace on Games Workshop fluff, and boom, the world of warcraft was born(The story goes they submitted a nigh-completed game to GW, and GW turned them down, so any original lore/story in Warcraft is of the ohshit variety). Seriously, check out some of the Warhammer fluff, it's much much better than anything Blizzard's hacks have come up with, especially Orcs(and especially 40k Orks). As there was no real interest in moving beyond a thinly vieled ripoff of Warhammer until Warcraft 3, there's been little deviation. Even the art style still largely mimics GW. Starcraft deviates a bit more from 40k than Warcraft does from fantasy, but the influence still screams through loud and clear(Protoss = Eldar, Humans = Imperium, Zerg = Tyranids).
Warhammer lore itself is heavily inspired by Michael Moorcock(in particular Chaos), and both it and 40k are an enormous amalgam of various things, but have moved beyond it in the 20-some years since the first books came out(remarkably, given the just above fanfiction level of talent generally employed by games companies for book/fluff writing).
Outside a straight up multiplayer shooter interface it's not. The limitations of the interface automatically mean the PC interface is going to suck if you make design decisions based on a console. On a PC you have at least 104 keys, at least 2 buttons and a pointer. With key combinations that allows an interface orders of magnitude more complex than is possible on a controller. This isn't even adding in macro keyboards.
So yes, the very act of targetting a console means the interface must be simplified, generally greatly. Which has thus far come at the cost of complexity in the game. Bioshock for example, was greatly simplified compared to System Shock 2(No inventory management, incredibly easy because difficulty was scaled by the limitations of a console controller, etc.). Invisible War was nigh-unplayable. Oblivion had to be modded by the PC community.
In addition console demographics are inherantly less sophisticated than PC demographics. A console player puts disk in, plays. A PC player checks requirements, updates drivers, patches, installs and/or creates modifications and/or maps, and in general is willing to spend FAR more intellectual effort on a game than a console player.
Not that there aren't certain genres that are better on a console for various reasons, there are. But when an age-old PC franchise or PC genre makes the leap to what is for those franchises and genres an inferior demographic, it invariably suffers. PC gamers get quite justifiable pissed about that.
Bethesda's always done that(also they are always buggy on release). Morrowind is in many ways less complex than Daggerfall(what was it, half a million NPCs, 6 endings, and a far more complex skill/crafting/etc system?).
It's going to suck. It's a foregone conclusion. They're going to target consoles as the primary platform, and thus it's going to be incredibly dumbed down like the majority of games fitting that description have been. Stillborn by catering to the console crowd.
Eidos has already proven they can't do it.
So yea, at best it will be less of disappointment than invisible war was, but still more of a disappointment than Bioshock.
Call me when it's PC exclusive and I might hold out some hope of it improving upon the genre or it's progenitor in any way other than fluff-wise.
It's going to suck, it's a forgone conclusion. They're going to pull an Invisible War/Bioshock and make the primary target consoles, thus dumbing it way the hell down, again, for the console crowd, who will go gaga over it because they think Halo is a fan-fuckingtastic(as opposed to ho-hum average) FPS with a fantastic story(as opposed to incredibly convuluted and shitty and needs books to explain).
This is how these things work. Unless it's PC only, I have no hope for Eidos making a real sequel to Deus Ex. They've already proven they can't do it. In fact only Bethesda, Epic to some degree, and Valve have managed not to absolutely castrate games by embracing the path of the XBox.
I repeat, it is going to suck. Get used to it now and maybe be pleasantly surprised by how little it sucks compared to Invisible War.
I own a 360, a PS2, a gaming PC, and a Wii. I own 30 Gamecube Games, 70 PS2 games, 7 360 games, more PC games than I care to count, and about 20 Wii Games. This isn't counting VC purchase, live purchases, PS1 titles, or the older consoles and titles I own.
I spend about $200 a month on video games and movies.
I know a lot of other people in a similar boat who own and are happy with their Wii. The only time I encounter the sentiment expressed by you is on the internet, with nothing ever backing it up. Yay for anecdotes.
I'm in the same boat as the grandparent. Some of us don't like realistic racers. Just. not. interested. I do on occassion like the arcadey stuff though.
I'm not a fan of FPSes on a console, outside Metroid Prime 3. RTSes and PC ports I prefer to play on a PC because of the cheaper price per game and the modding community. I'm not a big fan of over the shoulder 3rd person shooters either.
This means the only 360 game I've really enjoyed is dead rising, and I've gotten a lot more play time out of the Wii. In fact in order or usage total, between me and my 3 roommates, it's PS2 > Wii > 360. The PS2 beats out the Wii only because it's basically a Guitar Hero box at present.
I love that aspect of it, but I also hate it. Since everything is at a fixed rate regardless of what you do.
I wish there was a way to improve skills outside the SP system, so if I have a large chunk of time, I can spend it on actively grinding say, my probing skills by doing exploration missions or scouting or something.
I really do think a hybrid of a UO/Galaxies style skill system, where skills level up as you use them, with passive attribute based offline skill increases ala Eve would be ideal.
Slashdot Mirror
Try mail ordering from elsewhere in Europe. Outside the UK(and the US/Japan) I understand availability is a lot better. The Wii is region locked, but europe is a single region, so that's not an issue. Exchange rate wouldn't be a big deal either.
I never claimed it was anything other than my opinion. And yes, a lot of Halo fans are of the opinion that the single player aspect of the game is good. Frequently, these people have not played many other FPSes. If it was a PC title, it would rate as maybe Average. Well, actually, Halo and Halo 2 for the PC rated as abysmal, but that's more due to lazy ports than anything else.
Also, you should play star control 2. It's free now. The plot/story elements are very similar to mass effect, gameplay is different though(Star Control isn't an RPG). Don't get me wrong I like Mass effect, I just don't find it's storyline particularly original or it's botox-injected face graphics particularly appealing, and if we're going to rank things, that counts. It's an excellent RPG and has provided me with many hours of entertainment, but it has many flaws.
GH3/Rock Band. Well, to each their own. A lot of people already owned the guitar controller for the PS2, so the PS2 versions will be much, much cheaper. Especially factoring in that PS2/Wii/PC games are $10 less a copy than 360/PS3 games. That sort of counts for something.
I would rather have the interface that doesn't have to compensate for it's failings. In the holodeck example, I'd rather be on the holodeck than using a keyboard + mouse. If the design/control scheme has to compensate for a lack of immersion/precision within the controls, it's an inferior interface.
Because to compensate, it has to interfere and take away control. I'd rather have the control than not. I don't want what's stopping me from headshotting enemy A to be the controls/interface, I'd rather it be my own skill. This is why a holodeck would be superior to KB+Mouse and why KB+Mouse is superior to dual analog and why the Wiimote is superior to dual analog.
At present, consoles are inferior in that respect for a number of genres, barring, maybe, the Wii. Auto-aim and various other compensation methods are the Clippys of the gameplay world. They help you make due with a subpar interface.
The wii controls aren't better than the PCs. They're close, but not better. It's about at Quake 1/2 levels of precision, at least with current implementations. The pointer isn't quite as accurate, and the sensor bar/IR detection tech still has a bit of a ways to go. Next-gen, hopefully they do wi-fi/true triangulation, and then it'll be just about perfect.
Using the nunchuck in place of WASD(EQ) is worlds better though. I hope someone releases a peripheral for the PC to simulate it.
Something strike a nerve, some reason to resort to personal attacks? Well, if that's the way it be, so be it.
Learn to fucking write. I don't see a SINGLE reply to you about sales. NOT ONE. In fact there are TWO comments about game quality, so evidentally I'm not alone in not "getting" that your post was about sales and not a value judgement on quality(I think it's pretty obvious my initial reply was a statement as to quality). This supposed legion of people who got what you meant apparently felt no need to reply to you. Why, this could mean you were so damn clear, they felt no need, or it could mean you're a fucking idiot. This is also setting aside the fact that you referenced NOTHING. You provided no meaningful analysis of what any potential, assumed true of course, data could mean. You just spouted off shit and gunned for the insightful mod from the 360 legion. You've still referenced NOTHING. You've made no points, you've made no argument, and are now engaging in the final resort of trolldom, the personal attack.
And this also sets aside the fact that there are no reliable methods of tracking PC sales, your list of cross-platform games(was that what it was? I can't tell. Perhaps you should take a remedial english class) doing well on the 360 isn't a list of cross-platform games. This is also setting aside the fact that without supplying any competing information your assertion that the 360 is "cleaning up" is just that, an assertion. Now, I have seen attach rate figures from NPD and a few other groups that are favorable to the 360, but it also has more systems in the wild in NA(we'll refrain from Europe since only the UK has any sales data really), and has been out a full year longer than it's competitors. Without a whole metric asston of other data, that particular little factoid(attach rate/sales data[to clarify]) is utterly meaningless except as an interesting tidbit. That's also console on console, I believe I brought up the PC, or can you not read?
I can only conclude that you take my difference in opinion(and HOLY FUCK! I SAID it was an opinion, do 360 people not understand that these judgements are opinion? Evidentally not) on the quality of those games personally, and thus chose to reply to me . Was it that Mass Effect is Star Control of the Old Republic RPG? It is, btw. Halo is also an overrated average/mediocre game. The horror of someone saying that! Fire up the defense force! Hey brah, somebody said something bad about Master Chief! No, not Master Chief! Yah, brah, can't stand for that. To the fratmobile!
Enjoy being associated with a bunch of antisocial, relatively poor and poorly educated fucktards brah. Because that's how nielson paints the 360 crowd in their last demographic study. I'd provide a link, but I understand we don't do that in this conversation, it might support an assertion.
Sales show most people like licensed games. Sales show the original Pokemon for the GBC set a nigh-unbreakable bar of 15 million units sold in north america alone. Sales show Titanic is one of the greatest movies of all time. If you wanted to list cold hard sales data you should have listed cold hard sales data and refrained from any comments as to quality/originality, but you chose not to. You instead chose to spout untruths about innovation in the 360 lineup, which is almost barren of that quality, outside a handful of exclusive titles.
You have no point to make a counterpoint to, no meaningful analysis, and have backed nothing up with facts or references. Just vague handwaving, innuendo, and assertions.
Even when looking at games available on all systems, the 360 cleans up.
No it doesn't. That's a matter of opinion. The XBox has very little genre coverage and suffers from pretty much the exact same problem the original XBox had. Very few unique games that aren't better on the PC.
Let's look at your list:
Halo - A mediocre single player fps, redeemed only by multiplayer.
Guitar Hero 3 - Can play it on a PS2, and everyone owns a PS2.
Orange Box - An inferior port of a PC title.
Call of Duty 4 - See Orange Box.
Assassin's Creed - Crossplatform.
Rock Band - Crossplatform, will be coming to the PS2/Wii eventually.
Mass Effect - Excellent, but it's basically a blatant ripoff of Star Control.
Orange Box in particular runs better even on older PC hardware than the 360 version. You get free live-esque service via steam or XFire, dedicated servers, more players per map, more maps, the ability to create your own maps, a better control interface, etc.
Yea, I love the Mass Effect story. I loved it more though when it was called Star Control. Sure they claim never to have played SC2, but they're fucking lying.
Oh, and the close-ups look like ass. Everyone has been injected with copious amounts of botox, they have dead zombie eyes, and it just looks poor, unstylized and lazy, like something someone tossed together in Poser 4 about 10 years ago.
People keep saying it has some fantastic library. This, much like the original XBox, is true only if you don't own a gaming PC. The 360's library is:
Mass Effect, Dead Rising, and a ton of PC ports(all of which are better on the PC [dedicated servers, free online play, community mods/maps, better graphics, better controls, etc.]). Oh and there's the typical cross-platform EA stuff, and some unique sports/racing stuff I guess. Oh and Halo, which is at best a mediocre single player FPS.
Not many, I believe most of them left/were reassigned after the game went gold, and a new team took over expansion/maintenance. Those original guys were working on the thing for a few years, so yea, I know I'd be glad to move on to another project.
The designers are probably still there though.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Blizzard has a gradual dev churn in place to prevent burnout.
Gaming journalism isn't journalism. It's copying press releases and being shown things. Any old joe bloe can be a gaming "journalist", all you need is a bit of webspace and the right access. I'm honestly surprised companies don't just cut out the fucking middleman and post the shit we rely on "journalists" for.
Here's an example of a story that was pretty important, but reported on precisely 2 sites, and not accurately at either. IGN's direct2drive offered and advertised pre-orders for the game BioShock, including preloading to compete with Steam. This was advertised. They had a leak/accidental activation of their activation servers several days before release, thus breaking street and pissing off Take 2. News of this hit a number of forum communities after people who had used this service found they could activate the game early. A number of people then proceeded to order from Direct2Drive, only to find the preload link(preloading was *advertised* remember) had been delinked off the finished order page. A quick google(or alternatively you could use fileplanet's own search tool) revealed a link to the file, so it wasn't exactly hidden, just delinked off the order page. This was posted on those forum communities or found by those who had ordered. At this point the general consensus is that jig is up, but at least everyone can preload so they get it on release, hey, we weren't supposed to have it yet anyway, oh noes. People downloaded the preload. Some got it, but most didn't as they realized it was still there, and they pulled the preload(which they had ADVERTISED HAVING) off fileplanet.
Everyone(regardless of being motivated by a broken street date) who downloaded(or attempted to) the preload after it was delinked got a nasty legal letter from IGN courtesy Fox's legal dept(involving hacking, you dirty hackers, how dare you use google or our own search tool), and spent days not knowing if they'd even get their money back(IGN did refund everyone after a few days). Now that strikes me as a pretty nasty thing to do to paying customers, and something that would be of interest to anyone considering using a service like that. So yea, "journalists", pull the other one, it's got bells on.
Gaming also has basically no critical culture. Imagine if movie reviews were: 1/5 (Special effects), 1/5(Sound), 1/5(Rewatchability), 1/5(Story), 1/5(Acting). That's how game reviews are done. The whole thing is one big fucking joke.
Only if you view online as the end all be all, and even then Nintendo's involvement in networked consoles predates Microsoft having a networked operating system. Nintendo is responsible for pretty much every modern control method(including first party wireless controllers) outside PCs, as well as a large swathe of genres, via either outright creation or the popularization therof, which is a far greater contribution to gaming than cramming together a bunch of free-on PC stuff into an API/service and charging $50/year for the privaledge of using it.
There is very, very little either MS or Sony have done, most of it was already contributed by older players in the arena, with Nintendo have a disproportionate number of contributions within the home console space amongst the existing players by virtue of being around for so long. If we're going to talk about Microsoft's big contribution, it's going to come back to DirectX, not live.
Also, Nintendo allows VC transfers for repairs. My roommate managed to kill my disc drive and they transfered my VC stuff over to the replacement Wii, no problem.
Wages are not and have never been the problem. The biggest chilling effect caused by unions has been pensions(and more so the liability engendered therein and the mismanagement of pension funds/finance by employers*). When workers collectively get together and demand their fair share of their labors in terms of wages, the controlling interests of a company have a few options; cut the number of workers, raise prices, cut dividends, become more efficient in other areas, or cut their own imo excessive salaries. That they often decide to cut workers(often not the unionized ones by the way, since a union will be damned if it allows downsizing outside a plant closure) while simultaneously raising prices just proves that the general attitude towards the controlling interests of many companies should be a gigantic fuck you(the concepts of sacrifice and noblisse oblige are all but dead amongst the upper class, yet somehow enough middle class people identify with their selfishness to make certain political standpoints viable). Few are the companies that don't do whatever they can get away with, and yet blaming the workers for similar behavior is somehow in vogue amongst a certain set of people.
That some of the tale of the rise of unions is a large collective group of assembled people intimidating those who cross a line(as if the Union workers weren't putting principles above base needs, weren't we all taught that that is a noble act?) is somehow anathema to you is positively un-democratic. A small group of elites tried to break the unions, a large group tried to keep them together. Do you somehow wish for the good old days of serfdom? Did you happen to pop out of the right set of gonads(well, obviously you did in a certain sense, as you weren't born say a Sudanese peasant)?
You realize government stepping in for any regulation is anathema to pure laissez-faire capitalism, right? Whether that be for safety(and speaking of which some OSHA standards are fairly retarded), the environment, or for regulation of the free market via trust busting and anti-monopoly activities. Let's look to the presidency of the Roosevelts briefly; Teddy Roosevelt - class traitor, trust buster, inspiration for a children's toy, buster of US Steel[to the benefit of their shareholders], a conservationalist, and a very beloved president. FDR - The new deal and his socialist policies probably saved the country from radical populism, akin to a god amongst many of the "greatest generation".
I fail to see what is so enshrined about capitalism, or what is so horrible about socialism(and you have appealed to a hatred of socialism without spelling out any reasons as to why socialism is bad... perhaps a marxist ran over your dog as a child?). Europe seems to be doing pretty alright, especially if you're not that well off. You may have to wait for health care, but at least you'll get it. You don't have to worry about dying in a gutter. You don't have to worry about your next meal. And yet there are still fantastic innovations and companies coming out of socialist countries. Research in Motion, Canada, the Blackberry. Nokia, communications. Airbus, toe to toe with Boeing. Eastman Kodak(and canadian subsidiaries) tons of printing/film tech. I don't see the oft-referred to failure to motivate innovation within Europe. Say what you will about socialism, but at least it's baser motivations are altruistic, while the baser motivations of the capitalist are selfish. Which is the better system? Well, I feel not the need to judge/argue at present.
There's an old argument/intelectual exercise, related originally I believe to taxation. You have just been born, you have no idea to who, no idea as to their social standing/the inheritance due, design the fairest system you can.
* - Detroit/GM for example got fucked by a combination of lack of vision amongst their executives/eggheads and their outstanding liabilities in regards to pension plans. In terms of wages, I know for a fact Toyota pays quite fair and similar wages
I have a karma bonus, I choose not to use it.
Well, back in the day I could buy the services of a man and his descendants for life from a friendly dealer in such things. Sometimes at auction, other times right off the boat. It was an institution condoned by the bible, called slavery. Times moved on.
Back in the day I could pay my workers in company money, good only at my company store, and that was alright. I had no incentive to provide for their safety or continued well-being, and if my workers got uppity and tried to form a garsh-darned union, I could just hire different workers, or hire a group of strike-breaking thugs to go make an example out of a few of them. And of course, in the case of say, coal-mining in appalachia, when the seams dried up we just pull out of our company town, massive labor savings when we close the company store and all we've paid out is now worthless. As an added bonus we can evict our workers from their company housing! Score! Times moved on.
Let's look at the opposite side of the coin for a second, in most of the country, non-compete aggreements are currently completely legal. Not so in California, which has made them non-enforceable, unjustly restricting the rights of employers to set the own terms for employment. The knaves! Of course a side-effect of this is that Silicon Valley became the tech center instead of Rt. 128...
Or are we talking about a real free-market for labor? I presume then we are tearing down national borders for the movement of labor? So, say a comp-sci grad from landimmakingupica willing to work for minimum wage and with a working knowledge of english should of course have your job. He's willing to work for far less and is just as talented after all. We'll just curtail the right of assembly for all american citizens so they can't unionize and demand a fair wage, and let the Landimmakingupicans have all of those jobs.
Unions form due to the fact that if they are not present then the wealthy heads of businesses(who are often the wealthy heads of businesses due to the luck of being passed through the right vagina, yay for meritocracy let's repeal the estate tax so we have a class of people that never needs to actually earn anything!) have a tendency to abuse their labor pools as much as possible for their own benefit. Have Unions become organizations that in many ways serve their own interests as opposed to the interests they were originally formed to protect? Yes. Does this make them some far-flung evil? No. The amount of good unions are responsible for, especially in regards to the middle class, over the course of history is staggering. You don't have to hire union workers by and large, except in certain areas that have enshrined them as much in law as the police dept or local utility monopolies. But that's fucking democracy for you, people just have no sympathy for wanting to condemn a man to slow death from black lung so you can draw a higher salary and pay out a few more cents a share. Fucking democracy, fucking western society, damn uppity peasants! Teacher's 30k in debt should have to work for whatever we fucking offer! That'll help affordable education, as the pool shrinks and wages for qualified teachers go through the roof.
Warcraft 1 was supposed to be a Warhammer RTS, but Games Workshop wouldn't license their IP to blizzard, so Blizzard did a find/replace on Games Workshop fluff, and boom, the world of warcraft was born(The story goes they submitted a nigh-completed game to GW, and GW turned them down, so any original lore/story in Warcraft is of the ohshit variety). Seriously, check out some of the Warhammer fluff, it's much much better than anything Blizzard's hacks have come up with, especially Orcs(and especially 40k Orks). As there was no real interest in moving beyond a thinly vieled ripoff of Warhammer until Warcraft 3, there's been little deviation. Even the art style still largely mimics GW. Starcraft deviates a bit more from 40k than Warcraft does from fantasy, but the influence still screams through loud and clear(Protoss = Eldar, Humans = Imperium, Zerg = Tyranids).
Warhammer lore itself is heavily inspired by Michael Moorcock(in particular Chaos), and both it and 40k are an enormous amalgam of various things, but have moved beyond it in the 20-some years since the first books came out(remarkably, given the just above fanfiction level of talent generally employed by games companies for book/fluff writing).
Outside a straight up multiplayer shooter interface it's not. The limitations of the interface automatically mean the PC interface is going to suck if you make design decisions based on a console. On a PC you have at least 104 keys, at least 2 buttons and a pointer. With key combinations that allows an interface orders of magnitude more complex than is possible on a controller. This isn't even adding in macro keyboards.
So yes, the very act of targetting a console means the interface must be simplified, generally greatly. Which has thus far come at the cost of complexity in the game. Bioshock for example, was greatly simplified compared to System Shock 2(No inventory management, incredibly easy because difficulty was scaled by the limitations of a console controller, etc.). Invisible War was nigh-unplayable. Oblivion had to be modded by the PC community.
In addition console demographics are inherantly less sophisticated than PC demographics. A console player puts disk in, plays. A PC player checks requirements, updates drivers, patches, installs and/or creates modifications and/or maps, and in general is willing to spend FAR more intellectual effort on a game than a console player.
Not that there aren't certain genres that are better on a console for various reasons, there are. But when an age-old PC franchise or PC genre makes the leap to what is for those franchises and genres an inferior demographic, it invariably suffers. PC gamers get quite justifiable pissed about that.
Bethesda's always done that(also they are always buggy on release). Morrowind is in many ways less complex than Daggerfall(what was it, half a million NPCs, 6 endings, and a far more complex skill/crafting/etc system?).
It's going to suck. It's a foregone conclusion. They're going to target consoles as the primary platform, and thus it's going to be incredibly dumbed down like the majority of games fitting that description have been. Stillborn by catering to the console crowd.
Eidos has already proven they can't do it.
So yea, at best it will be less of disappointment than invisible war was, but still more of a disappointment than Bioshock.
Call me when it's PC exclusive and I might hold out some hope of it improving upon the genre or it's progenitor in any way other than fluff-wise.
It's going to suck, it's a forgone conclusion. They're going to pull an Invisible War/Bioshock and make the primary target consoles, thus dumbing it way the hell down, again, for the console crowd, who will go gaga over it because they think Halo is a fan-fuckingtastic(as opposed to ho-hum average) FPS with a fantastic story(as opposed to incredibly convuluted and shitty and needs books to explain).
This is how these things work. Unless it's PC only, I have no hope for Eidos making a real sequel to Deus Ex. They've already proven they can't do it. In fact only Bethesda, Epic to some degree, and Valve have managed not to absolutely castrate games by embracing the path of the XBox.
I repeat, it is going to suck. Get used to it now and maybe be pleasantly surprised by how little it sucks compared to Invisible War.
I own a 360, a PS2, a gaming PC, and a Wii. I own 30 Gamecube Games, 70 PS2 games, 7 360 games, more PC games than I care to count, and about 20 Wii Games. This isn't counting VC purchase, live purchases, PS1 titles, or the older consoles and titles I own.
I spend about $200 a month on video games and movies.
I know a lot of other people in a similar boat who own and are happy with their Wii. The only time I encounter the sentiment expressed by you is on the internet, with nothing ever backing it up. Yay for anecdotes.
Your loss. Zack and Wiki is a fantastic adventure/puzzler/platformer hybrid. There hasn't been anything like it released in over a decade.
Is it a little cutsey/cartoony? Yea, but so were all the Lucasarts games you philistine.
See, I'm the opposite. My 360 gets no use, and the Wii gets a ton. I have 7 360 games and about 20 Wii Games.
What's the point of these anecdotes? Is there one? Do they even mean anything?
I'm in the same boat as the grandparent. Some of us don't like realistic racers. Just. not. interested. I do on occassion like the arcadey stuff though.
I'm not a fan of FPSes on a console, outside Metroid Prime 3. RTSes and PC ports I prefer to play on a PC because of the cheaper price per game and the modding community. I'm not a big fan of over the shoulder 3rd person shooters either.
This means the only 360 game I've really enjoyed is dead rising, and I've gotten a lot more play time out of the Wii. In fact in order or usage total, between me and my 3 roommates, it's PS2 > Wii > 360. The PS2 beats out the Wii only because it's basically a Guitar Hero box at present.
I love that aspect of it, but I also hate it. Since everything is at a fixed rate regardless of what you do.
I wish there was a way to improve skills outside the SP system, so if I have a large chunk of time, I can spend it on actively grinding say, my probing skills by doing exploration missions or scouting or something.
I really do think a hybrid of a UO/Galaxies style skill system, where skills level up as you use them, with passive attribute based offline skill increases ala Eve would be ideal.