Virtual Boy control wasn't bad. Most Nintendo controllers haven't been bad.
The only ones that really were bad were the IR controllers(which all sucked) and the Powerglove(which worked ok with precisely ONE game, which was pretty much standard for peripherals[super scope, powerpad, etc.]).
As to system control, well, I haven't seen a bad one yet. Gameboy, NES, Virtual Boy, SNES, Gameboy Advance, N64, GCN. All of the included controls have been useable.
Goldeneye got it right first. Halo is largely the heir to Goldeneye, only, well, not nearly as groundbreaking.
I don't understand why everyone praises it, it's an ok, but disappointing Bungie game, and a good but not great FPS.
The story? sub-par. Level design, awful and repetitive. AI, good, but not great. Control, goldeneye+, great for a console, but still doesn't beat a Keyboard/Mouse.
Of course to play something prettier and better you need to toss down almost 2k USD, but still, these are FPS gamers we're taking about, that's standard.
Oh and multiplayer on a console, while it can be fun, isn't near as fun as on a PC. Why? Because I can see your damned screen and I have less precise control.
I'm not talking about sniping people with a zoomed in scope here, anyone can do that. I'm talking about the massive advantages of mouse look and completely remappable controls.
Halo as a game would've been awesome 7 years ago, right now though(and at it's release) it's just average.
The first time I played Halo, I sat down, thought oh hey, it's goldeneye, but not as good! Went through the first few levels on Legendary, got bored with single player and turned it off. Then I tried multiplayer, and thought, eh, back to the PC, this sucks.
The touchscreen is center mounted between the controls, so it could be programmed to be a customizeable control pad. Supposedly it has little subtley raised bumps on it so you can work it by feel.
Of course that means you'll have to muck it up with finger prints, but that's not too big of a deal.
The interface to Metroid Prime: Hunters (DS) is as follows. You can use either the D-Pad + L button for some basic control and then touchscreen/stylus to complement or rather than using the D-Pad you can use XYAB/R for the same thing.
The control has been thought through. Trust Nintendo, you have reason to.
Square-Enix is doing 3+ DS titles and 1 token PSP title.
Konami is still TBA/TBD for the DS and is doing 1+ PSP title last I heard.
And yes, who cares about Rare? The only property I think they own is Conker(who has had one good game thus far), and it looks like they're wasting that by doing a mindless shooter. Nintendo retains the PD property, the Donkey Kong property, and pretty much every other bit of IP that rare used to make good games.
Perhaps Square-Enix just knows that Live is so good that less than 20% of all XBox owners use it.
Hence they don't want to get suckered into a closed low-penetration service on a low-penetration 4th place console from an infamous and hated company that produces a garbage OS and loves to lock people in.
Of course, you're statistically more likely to die in an automobile accident, or be executed by your own government. But hey, let's just overstate the actual threat cause we're scared!
Umm SEGA and Nintendo were neck and neck at the end of the 16-bit generation. 30-45 million units apiece if I remember right.
A better example would be Nintendo saying "Our customers are happy with our 8-bit system" a year(IIRC) before the Genesis hit the streets.
18%? It's higher than that. Try 1/3rd, mostly kids too.
Here's the worldwide breakdown as of January of this year: PlayStation 2 - 70 million Xbox - 13.7 million GameCube - 13.94 million Game Boy Advance - 49.42 million
Hmm, I thought the GBA had sold more than that, guess I was wrong. Anyway, here are the percentages(Handheld + Console counted as one market): Sony - 47% Microsoft - 9% Nintendo - 43%
I suspect the 2 1/2 hour figure is playing a movie from the internal drive, i.e., the drive is being accessed and read continuously, something which would draw more power (MPEG decoding not considered.) Typical gameplay would access the disk far less, which could explain the disparity.
Ok maybe, but a lot of PS2 games rely heavily on FMVs, and they seem to IIRC(I'm dead tired atm hence using thrown instead of throne) read from the disk an awful lot. So if that's the cause, Final Fantasy and a lot of other games on the PSP are going to require an AC tether. I'd bet my hat that 8 hours of gameplay is a vast overstatement, at least with the current system. Won't know for sure until 2005 however, but if Sony is reading this, they should know that they will die if they don't make it over the 6 hour mark with games.
Movies, no big deal. Games, that's a big deal.
I also wonder how both the PSP and the DS will do on battery life if they are doing WiFi. My laptop battery behaves quite differently using 802.11b than it does connected via Ethernet cable.
DS uses a low power proprietary(some say Bluetooth) network link good for 30 meters for LAN play, and the WiFi(802.11b) is for internet play via hotspots or at houses.
Sony is straight 802.11b WiFi.
So, my guess is you'll need to be tethered to use the DS online and to use the PSP for multiplayer, given how much of a power hog 802.11b is.
DS is supposed to be comparable to the GBA SP for battery life, so figure 8-10 hours out of it, which is plenty. Anything over 6 is fine, 8+ is the magic point.
Here's how it broke down:
Sony sold 100,000,000 PS1s.
Nintendo sold 30,000,000 N64s.
Now the funny thing is that Nintendo sold only a small percentage more SNESs than they sold N64s.
So... what happened? Sony GREW the market... A LOT. Nintendo kept their fanbase(and continues to keep them into this generation), but didn't get too many new converts.
Also, going into the N64/PS/Saturn era, Nintendo was not dominant. They shared the thrown with a player called SEGA because they were horribly late to the 16-bit party with the SNES.
Comparing the modern console market to the modern handheld market doesn't hold up either. There are different considerations that buyers take into account when buying a portable versus a non-portable product.
Battery-life is a big one, and one Sony appears to have lost(regardless of their claims that they get 8 hours of life, I don't see how it's possible they get more than the 2-2 1/2 hours they claim to get with video in real life with the current model). If they can't wring 6 hours+(minimum, no exceptions) out of the thing, it's dead in the water.
Thermoelectric cooling is already used in computing. They're called peltiers and are generally paired with a watercooling rig for EXXXTREEEEEMMMMEEEEE cooling.
I'm just curious, as the AC(who probably isn't visible) who also replied is as well, how precisely they're going to get 8 hours of gaming when they can only display 2 1/2 hours of video.
Either something besides the LCD/optical drive is drawing almost 4 times more power than the rest of the device or they're lying about gaming battery life.
Heh, the entire Media at E3 is basically there to be mindless sycophants to whichever one of the big 3 they're currently listening to.
In fact, I think fanboy is a requirement to be sent to one of their media presentations, judging by the universal reaction to each. Even when they're disappointing they still try to highlight the positive(like Nintendo's performance last year).
I wasn't attacking Microsoft, I was attacking some of what I've read on forums about people touting two gun mojo, destructable environments/vehicles and online play as "new" things, when they aren't at all.
Was just positively small and insignificant. Yay, another MMORPG. Wooo. Excitement. I was really hoping for another SEGA console(return of pure gaming companies!), but I knew it wasn't coming and I knew it was going to either be disappointing or it would piss me off(like MS buying out SEGA or something).
Heck a lot of things were overshadowed by Sony and Nintendo. Some of the eyetoy stuff is just neat, wild new speculation about the PSP(will it manage to play games longer than it can play video[2.5 hours]!? Time will tell!), and the DS is confirmed as nifty.
Watching the XBox fanboys tout some of the Halo 2 stuff is proving to be amusing though. I love how it's like most of them never played Marathon or any of the better PC FPSs to hear some of them talk about all the revolutionary new features. The game looks really good, but comeon now.
Metroid Prime 2 looks like more of the same, only now with multiplayer. That's kinda neat I guess.
The new Zelda looks like it'll be really cool, but that's not til 2005.
Square-Enix once again moves the line between masculine and feminine with their FF character designs.
No, the GCN was sold to retailers for more than it cost Nintendo to make until the price drop Nintendo used to clear out backstock last November. It now sells at a minimal loss(I'm not even sure if it still does) which they make up for with IIRC only one game sale. The PS2 and PSX were also sold to retailers for as much(and more at times) than they cost Sony to make.
Have proof otherwise? Atari couldn't prove it when they were accusing Sony of dumping, and Sony vehemantly denied selling systems at a loss. Both with the PS2 and the PS1. Rather the myth was born in the PS1 era due to reductions in manufacturing costs and a change in exchange rates.
How could the PS1 cost $500 at launch in Japan and a year later cost only $300 here!? The people cried.
Well, RAM dropped in price by half, Sony made all the parts themselves, and the exchange rate went from 80 yen to the dollar to 110 yen to the dollar. Had they made NO improvements in the product line at all, and RAM hadn't dropped in price at all, it would've gone from $500 to $363 just due to exchange rates. Add in a $30(adjusted to $21) per megabyte reduction in the cost of RAM plus production improvements and you can easily see how Sony was making a TIDY profit off every unit sold @ $300.
The N64 never took a loss either per Nintendo. Got proof otherwise?
SEGA sold both the Saturn and the Dreamcast at a loss. Neither Nintendo(until last November) nor Sony ever DID.
MS has taken the highly successful end-era SEGA model and sells the XBox at a massive loss in a bid for market share, hoping to defer part of it through game sales. This isn't the typical console business model, contrary to what many think.
Cel-shading is an attempt to do real-time hand drawn animation style graphics. Wind Waker did it well, it just had a really cutsey style. Viewtiful Joe also did it well, in a different almost Jet Set Radio style. Jet Set Radio Future was a cool cel-shaded game as well.
Also, screens of Wind Waker and Viewtiful Joe really don't do the games justice. You need to actually play them.
Still, I didn't feel anywhere near as demasculated playing Wind Waker as I did playing "Kingdom Hearts" during the Under the Sea stage.
Oh it does make you inferior. You're missing out, obviously a newcomer and not a gaming "hipster".
Some Cartoony games of Awesomness: Sam and Max: Hit the Road Day of the Tentacle Viewtiful Joe TONS of good stuff that's "cartoony" was made prior to 1996 as well.
There's a VJ announced as coming to the DS too(and the original VJ is being ported to the PS2[at least in japan] and VJ2 is coming out for both PS2 & GCN). Also announced are: Dynasty Warriors DS, Rayman DS, FF:CC DS, Dragon Quest DS, and Need for Speed DS.
Wow, Nintendo's line-up is just wow.
Then, we have a couple really, really good games coming out for the XBox, EA finally embracing Live, etc.
Sony is smug, methinks. Everything really amazing they have is all third party or not hitting shelves til next year. The PSP looks to be a solid product, but it's not nearly as cool and exciting as the DS.
Why should I buy a game for a portable system with a 3 - 4" screen when if it's good I already own it and can play it on my 54" HDTV(or would rather play on my TV in the case of new releases)?
Why should I buy a new system to play the exact same game I can play on a system I already own?
Why should I buy a portable system(which if it's a mini-PS2, it should cost at least as much as the PS2 does[$180 atm]) I'll barely ever play? I'm an adult, I'm either in the car, at home(PS2), out and about, at work, or at a friend's house(PS2). I travel a bit for work, but really, I tend to either read, sleep, or play on my laptop. Recently, I've been playing my GBA a bit on planes, trains and in the bathroom, but I didn't buy that for GBA games, I bought it basically as a peripheral to my GCN.
Don't see any value in being able to port over PS2 games easily, sorry.
Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Boy control wasn't bad. Most Nintendo controllers haven't been bad.
The only ones that really were bad were the IR controllers(which all sucked) and the Powerglove(which worked ok with precisely ONE game, which was pretty much standard for peripherals[super scope, powerpad, etc.]).
As to system control, well, I haven't seen a bad one yet. Gameboy, NES, Virtual Boy, SNES, Gameboy Advance, N64, GCN. All of the included controls have been useable.
Goldeneye got it right first. Halo is largely the heir to Goldeneye, only, well, not nearly as groundbreaking.
I don't understand why everyone praises it, it's an ok, but disappointing Bungie game, and a good but not great FPS.
The story? sub-par. Level design, awful and repetitive. AI, good, but not great. Control, goldeneye+, great for a console, but still doesn't beat a Keyboard/Mouse.
Of course to play something prettier and better you need to toss down almost 2k USD, but still, these are FPS gamers we're taking about, that's standard.
Oh and multiplayer on a console, while it can be fun, isn't near as fun as on a PC. Why? Because I can see your damned screen and I have less precise control.
I'm not talking about sniping people with a zoomed in scope here, anyone can do that. I'm talking about the massive advantages of mouse look and completely remappable controls.
Halo as a game would've been awesome 7 years ago, right now though(and at it's release) it's just average.
The first time I played Halo, I sat down, thought oh hey, it's goldeneye, but not as good! Went through the first few levels on Legendary, got bored with single player and turned it off. Then I tried multiplayer, and thought, eh, back to the PC, this sucks.
The touchscreen is center mounted between the controls, so it could be programmed to be a customizeable control pad. Supposedly it has little subtley raised bumps on it so you can work it by feel.
Of course that means you'll have to muck it up with finger prints, but that's not too big of a deal.
The interface to Metroid Prime: Hunters (DS) is as follows. You can use either the D-Pad + L button for some basic control and then touchscreen/stylus to complement or rather than using the D-Pad you can use XYAB/R for the same thing.
The control has been thought through. Trust Nintendo, you have reason to.
Square-Enix is doing 3+ DS titles and 1 token PSP title.
Konami is still TBA/TBD for the DS and is doing 1+ PSP title last I heard.
And yes, who cares about Rare? The only property I think they own is Conker(who has had one good game thus far), and it looks like they're wasting that by doing a mindless shooter. Nintendo retains the PD property, the Donkey Kong property, and pretty much every other bit of IP that rare used to make good games.
Perhaps Square-Enix just knows that Live is so good that less than 20% of all XBox owners use it.
Hence they don't want to get suckered into a closed low-penetration service on a low-penetration 4th place console from an infamous and hated company that produces a garbage OS and loves to lock people in.
Rofl. There's no such thing as perfect security.
You're always in danger from the terrorists.
Of course, you're statistically more likely to die in an automobile accident, or be executed by your own government. But hey, let's just overstate the actual threat cause we're scared!
Umm SEGA and Nintendo were neck and neck at the end of the 16-bit generation. 30-45 million units apiece if I remember right.
A better example would be Nintendo saying "Our customers are happy with our 8-bit system" a year(IIRC) before the Genesis hit the streets.
18%? It's higher than that. Try 1/3rd, mostly kids too.
Here's the worldwide breakdown as of January of this year:
PlayStation 2 - 70 million
Xbox - 13.7 million
GameCube - 13.94 million
Game Boy Advance - 49.42 million
Hmm, I thought the GBA had sold more than that, guess I was wrong. Anyway, here are the percentages(Handheld + Console counted as one market):
Sony - 47%
Microsoft - 9%
Nintendo - 43%
I suspect the 2 1/2 hour figure is playing a movie from the internal drive, i.e., the drive is being accessed and read continuously, something which would draw more power (MPEG decoding not considered.) Typical gameplay would access the disk far less, which could explain the disparity.
Ok maybe, but a lot of PS2 games rely heavily on FMVs, and they seem to IIRC(I'm dead tired atm hence using thrown instead of throne) read from the disk an awful lot. So if that's the cause, Final Fantasy and a lot of other games on the PSP are going to require an AC tether. I'd bet my hat that 8 hours of gameplay is a vast overstatement, at least with the current system. Won't know for sure until 2005 however, but if Sony is reading this, they should know that they will die if they don't make it over the 6 hour mark with games.
Movies, no big deal. Games, that's a big deal.
I also wonder how both the PSP and the DS will do on battery life if they are doing WiFi. My laptop battery behaves quite differently using 802.11b than it does connected via Ethernet cable.
DS uses a low power proprietary(some say Bluetooth) network link good for 30 meters for LAN play, and the WiFi(802.11b) is for internet play via hotspots or at houses.
Sony is straight 802.11b WiFi.
So, my guess is you'll need to be tethered to use the DS online and to use the PSP for multiplayer, given how much of a power hog 802.11b is.
DS is supposed to be comparable to the GBA SP for battery life, so figure 8-10 hours out of it, which is plenty. Anything over 6 is fine, 8+ is the magic point.
Here's how it broke down:
Sony sold 100,000,000 PS1s.
Nintendo sold 30,000,000 N64s.
Now the funny thing is that Nintendo sold only a small percentage more SNESs than they sold N64s.
So... what happened? Sony GREW the market... A LOT. Nintendo kept their fanbase(and continues to keep them into this generation), but didn't get too many new converts.
Also, going into the N64/PS/Saturn era, Nintendo was not dominant. They shared the thrown with a player called SEGA because they were horribly late to the 16-bit party with the SNES.
Comparing the modern console market to the modern handheld market doesn't hold up either. There are different considerations that buyers take into account when buying a portable versus a non-portable product.
Battery-life is a big one, and one Sony appears to have lost(regardless of their claims that they get 8 hours of life, I don't see how it's possible they get more than the 2-2 1/2 hours they claim to get with video in real life with the current model). If they can't wring 6 hours+(minimum, no exceptions) out of the thing, it's dead in the water.
Thermoelectric cooling is already used in computing. They're called peltiers and are generally paired with a watercooling rig for EXXXTREEEEEMMMMEEEEE cooling.
Here. You want go buy an overpriced one?
It's about 50% as fast as the XBox CPU.
Toss a decent video chip in there, tone down the resolution for the screen size, and you could be good to go.
I'm just curious, as the AC(who probably isn't visible) who also replied is as well, how precisely they're going to get 8 hours of gaming when they can only display 2 1/2 hours of video.
Either something besides the LCD/optical drive is drawing almost 4 times more power than the rest of the device or they're lying about gaming battery life.
Heh, the entire Media at E3 is basically there to be mindless sycophants to whichever one of the big 3 they're currently listening to.
In fact, I think fanboy is a requirement to be sent to one of their media presentations, judging by the universal reaction to each. Even when they're disappointing they still try to highlight the positive(like Nintendo's performance last year).
I wasn't attacking Microsoft, I was attacking some of what I've read on forums about people touting two gun mojo, destructable environments/vehicles and online play as "new" things, when they aren't at all.
Was just positively small and insignificant. Yay, another MMORPG. Wooo. Excitement. I was really hoping for another SEGA console(return of pure gaming companies!), but I knew it wasn't coming and I knew it was going to either be disappointing or it would piss me off(like MS buying out SEGA or something).
Heck a lot of things were overshadowed by Sony and Nintendo. Some of the eyetoy stuff is just neat, wild new speculation about the PSP(will it manage to play games longer than it can play video[2.5 hours]!? Time will tell!), and the DS is confirmed as nifty.
Watching the XBox fanboys tout some of the Halo 2 stuff is proving to be amusing though. I love how it's like most of them never played Marathon or any of the better PC FPSs to hear some of them talk about all the revolutionary new features. The game looks really good, but comeon now.
Metroid Prime 2 looks like more of the same, only now with multiplayer. That's kinda neat I guess.
The new Zelda looks like it'll be really cool, but that's not til 2005.
Square-Enix once again moves the line between masculine and feminine with their FF character designs.
I'm just all curmudgeony right now.
No, the GCN was sold to retailers for more than it cost Nintendo to make until the price drop Nintendo used to clear out backstock last November. It now sells at a minimal loss(I'm not even sure if it still does) which they make up for with IIRC only one game sale. The PS2 and PSX were also sold to retailers for as much(and more at times) than they cost Sony to make.
Have proof otherwise? Atari couldn't prove it when they were accusing Sony of dumping, and Sony vehemantly denied selling systems at a loss. Both with the PS2 and the PS1. Rather the myth was born in the PS1 era due to reductions in manufacturing costs and a change in exchange rates.
How could the PS1 cost $500 at launch in Japan and a year later cost only $300 here!? The people cried.
Well, RAM dropped in price by half, Sony made all the parts themselves, and the exchange rate went from 80 yen to the dollar to 110 yen to the dollar. Had they made NO improvements in the product line at all, and RAM hadn't dropped in price at all, it would've gone from $500 to $363 just due to exchange rates. Add in a $30(adjusted to $21) per megabyte reduction in the cost of RAM plus production improvements and you can easily see how Sony was making a TIDY profit off every unit sold @ $300.
The N64 never took a loss either per Nintendo. Got proof otherwise?
SEGA sold both the Saturn and the Dreamcast at a loss. Neither Nintendo(until last November) nor Sony ever DID.
MS has taken the highly successful end-era SEGA model and sells the XBox at a massive loss in a bid for market share, hoping to defer part of it through game sales. This isn't the typical console business model, contrary to what many think.
Stop perpetuating the fiction.
Don't forget the laser, and the fact that the screen is a big backlit TFT.
The UMD media comes in protective sleeves(as all Optical media should DARN IT) like old Videodiscs did.
So, don't let that stop you from getting one for your nephews. I think the low battery life is the main major mark against the PSP right now.
Yea it was sarcastic.
Cel-shading is an attempt to do real-time hand drawn animation style graphics. Wind Waker did it well, it just had a really cutsey style. Viewtiful Joe also did it well, in a different almost Jet Set Radio style. Jet Set Radio Future was a cool cel-shaded game as well.
Also, screens of Wind Waker and Viewtiful Joe really don't do the games justice. You need to actually play them.
Still, I didn't feel anywhere near as demasculated playing Wind Waker as I did playing "Kingdom Hearts" during the Under the Sea stage.
Oh it does make you inferior. You're missing out, obviously a newcomer and not a gaming "hipster".
Some Cartoony games of Awesomness:
Sam and Max: Hit the Road
Day of the Tentacle
Viewtiful Joe
TONS of good stuff that's "cartoony" was made prior to 1996 as well.
There's a VJ announced as coming to the DS too(and the original VJ is being ported to the PS2[at least in japan] and VJ2 is coming out for both PS2 & GCN). Also announced are: Dynasty Warriors DS, Rayman DS, FF:CC DS, Dragon Quest DS, and Need for Speed DS.
Wow, Nintendo's line-up is just wow.
Then, we have a couple really, really good games coming out for the XBox, EA finally embracing Live, etc.
Sony is smug, methinks. Everything really amazing they have is all third party or not hitting shelves til next year. The PSP looks to be a solid product, but it's not nearly as cool and exciting as the DS.
Yes I do.
We didn't forget about it and neither did they. They've been working on it the whole time.
These screens are FROM that same game, and it's being released.
There are screens from E3 out now showing a Metroid game that looks around 90% as good as Prime being played on the DS.
So, yea, this little thing has some horses in it.
I think it looks kinda awkward with that wide screen myself.
Will have to demo it at a store to be sure, but it seems like it would require you to be in an uncomfortable position while playing it.
Wrong. All consoles(except the Dreamcast and XBox) have sold at at worst a break even point upon launch.
If you count R&D sunk costs, they yea, they all sell at a loss, but that's not how you calculate such things.
Elves actually, magic ones, that have been fired from making toys and cookies.
OP just made the common mistake of confusing the two.
Why should I buy a game for a portable system with a 3 - 4" screen when if it's good I already own it and can play it on my 54" HDTV(or would rather play on my TV in the case of new releases)?
Why should I buy a new system to play the exact same game I can play on a system I already own?
Why should I buy a portable system(which if it's a mini-PS2, it should cost at least as much as the PS2 does[$180 atm]) I'll barely ever play?
I'm an adult, I'm either in the car, at home(PS2), out and about, at work, or at a friend's house(PS2). I travel a bit for work, but really, I tend to either read, sleep, or play on my laptop. Recently, I've been playing my GBA a bit on planes, trains and in the bathroom, but I didn't buy that for GBA games, I bought it basically as a peripheral to my GCN.
Don't see any value in being able to port over PS2 games easily, sorry.