Point of Fact: Nintendo didn't have a "HAMMERLOCK" on the console market just before the N64/PS era, they lost their "HAMMERLOCK" when they were dreadfully late to the 16-bit party.
The Genesis and SNES shared the throne and it was Nintendo that ultimately said to SEGA, hey, scoot over.
They had a "HAMMERLOCK"(can I stop using that word now?) with the NES in North America, and the SMS couldn't touch it. No 8-bit player could. 1 in 3 US households had a NES by IIRC 1989.
While in Europe the SMS strangely dominated the 8-bit era.
We both forgot the Pocketstation, Sony's last foray into this market, and a failure at that, and it's been how long since the Gameboy came out? I guess I forgot how much it cost back then, appologies.
Because 1) Sony doesn't make the buffoonish design and marketing errors the Nokia and Sega does, and 2) because Sony has almost nine times as many developers as Nintendo does.
Design flaws? No, but they don't exactly make products which have style and personality either.
Developers: They're almost all third party. Third party houses move where the money is. That's how Sony got where it is in the first place. You can't count on third party dev houses to stick with you. If game sales are weak and they aren't making money, they bail ASAP, and it would be a very poor business decision and an enormous gamble to bank on either the DS or PSP being a success and locking yourself into a contract/exclusivity deal you can't break right now.
Also, most of these dev houses haven't released a quality title yet. Do you we really need to go through the list of utter crap that's come out for the PS2 from some of these third parties?
Haven't seen a noise to signal ratio as bad as the PS2s since Atari ruled the world. So let's just reduce that 9 times figure to 2-3 times, solely on the basis of quality.
Sony is the king of market share, and has been since about a year and a half into their first foray into the gaming business.
Only in the console arena, which is dominated by males aged 20-30. The precise demographic which has basically next to NO use for a handheld that just plays their bought again PS2 games on a smaller screen.
Sony's dominance is as much luck in timing as anything else. They managed to hit the market with just the right product at just the right time to lure in aging Nintendo/Sega gamers. Plus, don't underestimate the draw Final Fantasy had after 6.
First off, you're totally on mars. SCEA has more titles from their doors alone than the GC and XBox have from all publishers put together, and they include many of the platform's gems. Second off, it's not clear that it matters who publishes the games.
Dark Cloud 1&2, Gran Turismo 3, Jak, Ratchet & Clank, Frequency, and Amplitude. Man, that's alot. And the universal appeal just oozes out of those titles too.
Yeah, and it didn't help Nintendo when it was PS vs N64. On this point I agree with you: the hardware has little to do with the success of the platform. However, battery life is not a problem for the PSP, which it has been for all of the platforms that have failed in your list except the N-Gage, and though you credit that as the number two source of issues, I really don't think you emphasize it enough.
PS/N64 granted. Your Genesis example however is flawed, Genesis hit the market before the SNES did, and left Nintendo playing catch up.
Oh and the Wonderswan actually did pretty good in Japan.
Those are the two points on which Sony has smashed Nintendo and Microsoft for the last ten years. I think you should be much more worried for Nintendo than you currently are. I don't think it's a clear-cut battle either way; touchscreen and memory stick both address very fundamental problems in portable gaming. Nobody has talked about *either* of those yet.
Sony took the male 20-30 demographic. This isn't the handheld demographic. There are reasons Nintendo is considered "kiddy" after all.
You sure Sony's not tapping a new market at the same time?
Sure? I'm utterly convinced they're going to have to. I'm not however convinced it's going to work.
What?... what? My playstation is now thirteen years old, and it still works. Do you have any moving-media devices that still work after all that time? One of the two controllers is original! Christ, my N64 isn't even working, and I got my PS first. And the N64 is solid state!
Two things the market has historically shown: 1. No handheld priced over $100 has EVER succeeded. 2. Battery life is more important than processing power.
The gameboy beat and has beat all comers because it's been the cheapest(always $100 or less) and has had the best battery life. Add into this the quality of the handheld games and the inevitable deluge of third party software due to it's ubiquity and cracking the Gameboy market share is a tough thing to do. Not to mention over 10 years of backwards compatible games, a large catalog of games which appeal to the thus far primary market for handhelds(children [Hence the importance of low cost]), and a now quite slick design.
SEGA failed with the Gamegear, and that was color versus black and white released by a company who at the time shared the console throne with Nintendo AND had strong first party titles(as Nintendo does and Sony doesn't). It was also competing at a time when there weren't several thousand Gameboy titles in the back catalog.
Atari failed too, miserably.
Nokia most recently failed, and failed miserably.
So, why do people think the PSP is going to do well? Because of Sony's dominance in the Console realm? It didn't help SEGA when SEGA was sharing dominance with Nintendo. Because it's technically superior offering? Hasn't helped any other competitors.
What we have upcoming is the maker of the number two non-PC gaming product(the PS2) trying to take on the number one non-PC gaming product(the GBA).
The handheld market really isn't all that screwy, it's actually pretty easy to understand. To succeed you need a cheap product with excellent battery life that can compete with the experience offered by other offerings. So far, most competitors have gotten the last bit to one degree or another. Nokia failed on all 3 fronts. Those 3 points are absolutely necessary to capture the existing market away from Nintendo.
Nintendo's gameboy is the platinum standard, it IS the handheld market for all intents and purposes, and it's been the market for quite some time.
Now, if you want to argue that Sony stands a chance at growing the handheld market, as they did with the Console market, and thus introducing new factors required for success in that realm, I'll buy that as a possibility. I do not however see it, because I don't see the primary market for consoles using handheld gaming devices enough to justify the purchase of one without getting additional value from it they can't get elsewhere.
In my case for instance, I'll just wait a year and throw down a bit more change and get a PS3 or a GCN2 or an XBox 2.
Then add in the following things we know about Sony: 1. No gaming product they have released has lived up to it's hype. See also: the PS2. 2. They have an awful reputation for hardware longevity, their stuff breaks, frequently. See also: the PS1/PS2.
Except for a few developers, I expect the vast majority to take a wait and see approach to the PSP. I see it occupying at best the position the GameGear was in. A distant but respectable second and a must-own for the hardcore, but not the mainstream all pervasive product the PS2 or GBA are.
As to the DS. The DS is a niche product, and built to be a niche product. It's an attempt to give gamers stuff they aren't going to get on a console, or PC, or on the GBA/PSP. New concepts, new types of games, and the like. It's primary purpose is not as a handheld, it just could only work as a handheld(due to the two screens), so it really isn't targetted in anyway at the handheld market, though I'm sure people from that market will buy it.
The DS is targetting a different market than either the PSP or the GBA.
Heck the PSP targets a different market than the GBA does. One I'm not sure exists and has the means to buy the thing(College kids fit the bill, but I was flat BROKE in college).
Take me for example. I'm an early 20s male, how do I spend my time.
Well, I'm either at home, at work, in transit to work, or out and about. I won't(and don't) bring a handheld gaming device to most of those locations. Most either have TVs(Home, friends houses) or it's impossible/not likely for me to be gaming in those locations (I'm not whipping out any of these devices at a bar or at work for instance).
Now, waiting rooms and the like, sure, but four times a year is hardly worth the cost of a handheld. Travel? Yea, great. Got a laptop for planes, and I don't ride too many trains or buses as I'm not an urbanite.
I ended up getting a GBA for two main reasons: 1. GBA-GCN linking. Not used a lot, but FF:CC for example gives you an experience you can't get anywhere else. 2. Homebrew development.
The games were really just a bonus.
So, you have Nintendo's platforms, both of which offer you experiences you simply can't get anywhere else. The DS has a lot of potential, if some of the rumors are true. Regardless it's going to give you something you can't get anywhere else. The virtual boy did, the original Gameboy did, the GBA does. Whether or not this is something either you or the market want is up in the air, but it's definately a big difference and advantage.
The PSP meanwhile is a disk-based souped up 3D gameboy. All it offers is portability. Toss in the history of the Market, and it isn't going to do well.
D20 is successful because it was forced on everyone, but it's not really appropriate for everything it's applied to. Call of Cthulu for instance, the D20 version can't hold a candle to the old version.
D20 fails on the same levels GURPS does.
A really "good" system is Rolemaster, but calling it incredibly complicated would be an understatement. It's almost like it was designed to run on a computer.
They already did, a lonnnggg time ago. It's called a GBA. It's got some good hardware in that little thing too. Oh and it costs at present less than half what the PSP is going to cost. It'll probably drop in price here soon, but you can pick up an SP for $70 new or used if you know where to look(regular for $50). Really nice on the battery life too.
Lots of good games out for it too. In fact, more of em than for any other handheld! A decade of games, some of which are amongst the best/most addictive ever produced! Oh and with a flash cart you can play NES/SMS games, heck you can even play old adventure games here soon, and develop your own homebrew apps for it! $210 buys you connectivity to the GCN, and around 5000 titles if you're an *arggghhh* pirate.
No the games aren't fundamentally better just prettier. Gamers have gotten worse and easier to please though(I didn't thank that was possible, people bought Phalanx after all, but apparently it was.).
Take this game for instance: Beyond Good and Evil. It was critically praised, is a fantastic game, and came out for all 3 consoles AND the PC but it didn't sell(you can pick it up for $19.99 on the XBox or GCN).
Good and even good AND innovative doesn't mean sales. So it's always the safe bet, yet another FPS, yet another Madden title.
Then you have the general dumbing down of games. No new gameplay elements. We'll just take a buncha stuff from other games in the genre, improve the AI and physics a bit and BLAMO, we've got a success (*cough* Halo *cough*).
Most games may as well have been released for the last generation of consoles. Apart from how pretty they are, they're pretty much more o' the exact same.
No, but I rarely pay even $50 for games unless it's something I know I'll still be playing in a decade. I tend to rent or buy 'em used and cheap.
Oh, and nowhere near $100, try $70 of todays dollars for a $50 game. Which btw is about the pricepoint most N64 games came out at, long after Nintendo lost their monopoly. They were expensive because of the cartridge medium, not because Nintendo priced higher than people do today.
And one could argue that Sony or Nintendo have pushed "utter garbage" onto gaming markets.
Utter garbage in the sense that you didn't like the products? Absolutely. Utter garbage in the sense that they didn't work as advertised, no.
If you really want to argue that all of the long-running console series which started during this era suck, go right ahead. You won't find many who agree with you.
Why couldn't they do that under competition? What if competiting games were better?
There WERE competing games from third parties out for Nintendo's platforms. They regulated quality, that was it. They also put out systems that still work to this day, were very whiz-bang for their time, and were actually less expensive at launch(adjusted for inflation) than Systems are now. Heck, they were less expensive (adjusted for inflation) than the PS2 or XBox are now AND they included a game.
If you asking why Nintendo chose to limit content on their platforms. Look into the gaming crash Atari caused by being completely unregulated. Nintendo pretty much single handedly created the console market from the ruins of that crash. They did it by not making the same mistakes Atari did.
When it comes to dictators, Nintendo and Sony have been quite benevolent in their past(not to other businesses but to the consumer) when they exercised absolute control. MS hasn't been and still isn't.
Nintendo was a monopolistic juggernaut who controlled all licesning and the entire market.
I didn't dispute that, what's in dispute is what the company did from a consumer standpoint with their effective monopoly. And what they did was release some of the best games ever and leverage it for "quality control" purposes. Yes, crap came out, but a lot less crap than comes out today. Gaming prices weren't much higher then than they are now, and they used FAR more expensive media. The SNES and NES were both quality products as were all Nintendo original games.
Sony pretty much had portable audio locked with the walkman for a while, and yet the quality of their product was still good.
Microsoft meanwhile, used their position to push utter garbage onto the Desktop and Server markets. Only fixed things when absolutely forced(and still not always then), etc., etc.
All companies strive for a monopoly position, it's what they do when they get there from your standpoint as a consumer that you need to pay attention to.
Are you honestly asserting that to us, as gamers, Nintendo screwed us in the 80s worse than MS screwed us in the OS market in the 90s?
To reiterate, it's not the monopoly it's what they do with it. Nintendo was IMO a faaar more benevolent dictator in the gaming market than MS has been in the OS market.
Nintendo and SEGA in the 80s/90s produced what many of us think of as the golden era of console gaming.
Heck most of those games are STILL better than almost everything that's come out in recent memory. Even GTA traces it's roots to that age(and apart from incremental improvements, not much has changed).
Meanwhile, Microsoft dominance gave us Windows ME and an NT that could be crashed with an ICMP packet.
Both Sony and Nintendo have a track record of continuing to release quality products(albeit at a slower pace in the case of Nintendo) and doing real innovation in their respective markets even when they all but control them utterly, whereas Microsoft's track record should make you run away screaming in horror. Even now, with real, free competition in the OS market, MS still hasn't completely cleaned up.
What do you think the console Market would look like with MS in the position Nintendo was in in the late 80s?
Well there's only one first party publisher per console. However, the first(and second) party games are the only ones you can count on to be exclusive, as the third parties aren't really bound by massive financial incentives to any single system.
The third parties will go wherever the userbase is, so it forms this pack mentality. I pick my first platform based on first-party titles(guarantees) then pick up others based on third party support/popularity a year or so in to a generation.
Buying a console on the basis of supposed or speculated third party support is a crapshoot. Everyone else has to do the same for that support to manifest. Going with first party, at least in the beginning of a generation, is generally a sure bet. Provided of course you like those games.
However if MS wins, the gaming industry will be dead within a decade. Sony won't stick around in the Americas, they came into the industry because it had finally been proven profitable by Nintendo and Sega, they're very much a fair weather company.
Which will leave us solely with Microsoft and no competition. This is the company that had the balls to release Windows ME, and only cleaned up their OS act(and actually still hasn't, since Windows(yes, even XP) is still complete and total Shit) when faced with free competition they couldn't buy out. A convicted monopolist who views lawsuits as the cost of doing business. A company that wants to be able to force you to buy what they want you to buy, regardless of quality. A bleak picture indeed.
Add into this the branding Microsoft has done with their console(such as it is) and new blood into the industry will dry up because there are no "kiddie" or even "neutral" systems left.
We'll be looking at what happened to the comic book companies. Everything will become more and more niche, and MS isn't going to sell this stuff at a loss once they win. Advancement will stop, their open door policy will pump piles of steaming shit onto the sole console, and it'll be Atari all over again.
Don't think I'm right, fine, but you should know better than to buy ANY Microsoft product by this point, whether selling for a loss or not, no matter how good it may be. Giving money to MS is never a good idea unless you happen to like paying to have your hobbies destroyed.
I agree. It's very surprising. I'd expect PS2 or actually the GCN, which is where most gamers are and most of the audience for this type of thing is respectively. I'd toss the GBA in there, but really, SNK games wouldn't be all that great on that platform.
However, from a purely technical standpoint, the XBox is the best decision. With it's HDD, load times aren't as big of an issue, and it's best positioned for online play as you stated.
OTOH, with a pathetically easily installed mod-chip you can play most of the old SNK stuff already on the XBox and I'd think most SNK fans would favor local play over internet play.
So I don't think this will succeed, and I don't think the XBox was the right choice.
It was never an exclusive, Capcom just thought the game would appeal more to GameCube owners(it's a difficult oldschool style sidescrolling 2D platformer after all) than to anyone else, so they didn't release it for other platforms.
If you don't already own it and a Cube you probably aren't into that style of game anyway(it's a cartoon! Kiddy!).
It evidentally did well enough that they're porting it to PS2. I get the feeling it won't look as good as it did on the Cube(since the cube is really, really good at that style of game), but hey, at least the normal people will be able to enjoy it.
I just hope they don't tone down the difficulty to make it more accessable or compromise/tone-down the style to get it onto the technically inferior PS2, as that would pretty much ruin the game.
A lot of guys I know who recently(past 2 years) graduated with degrees in CS don't do programming work, if they even have jobs.
Anyway, if you're in the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has pretty much every little labor detail you could want.
Here are their stats on computer programmers. Remember, entry level means you start out at the low end, so depending upon which state and which company, figure $40,000 a year.
The Atari crash, brought about largely by Atari's policies, the same policies Microsoft and Sony pretty much have, caused so much pure and utter shite to come out that gamers just gave up on consoles all together.
PC gaming wasn't really affected by it, but it barely existed at the time outside of small hobbyist circles.
These failures shaped NOAs strategy(once Nintendo decided it might be worth it[Atari ALMOST was the company that distributed the NES stateside]) which caused the industry to grow again.
So, looking at the situation right now, and many people who actually matter in gaming(note, not one MS rep matters, they haven't been around long enough) seem to agree with this. The Japanese market needs a nice healthy dosage of innovation if it's going to be prevented from contracting. Many of the older dev houses are turning to Nintendo and it's next series of platforms to provide this innovation. MS does not, and probably will never, matter in Japan.
Saying anything else amounts to hubris when MS's #4 platform has less than 5% of the sales of the #3 Cube and less than 1% of the sales of the #2 PS2. They bungled so many things they're the least likely to woo Japanese developers away from Japanese console companies without quite simply just buying them out.
Slashdot Mirror
Point of Fact: Nintendo didn't have a "HAMMERLOCK" on the console market just before the N64/PS era, they lost their "HAMMERLOCK" when they were dreadfully late to the 16-bit party.
The Genesis and SNES shared the throne and it was Nintendo that ultimately said to SEGA, hey, scoot over.
They had a "HAMMERLOCK"(can I stop using that word now?) with the NES in North America, and the SMS couldn't touch it. No 8-bit player could. 1 in 3 US households had a NES by IIRC 1989.
While in Europe the SMS strangely dominated the 8-bit era.
We both forgot the Pocketstation, Sony's last foray into this market, and a failure at that, and it's been how long since the Gameboy came out? I guess I forgot how much it cost back then, appologies.
... what? My playstation is now thirteen years old, and it still works. Do you have any moving-media devices that still work after all that time? One of the two controllers is original! Christ, my N64 isn't even working, and I got my PS first. And the N64 is solid state!
Because 1) Sony doesn't make the buffoonish design and marketing errors the Nokia and Sega does, and 2) because Sony has almost nine times as many developers as Nintendo does.
Design flaws? No, but they don't exactly make products which have style and personality either.
Developers: They're almost all third party. Third party houses move where the money is. That's how Sony got where it is in the first place. You can't count on third party dev houses to stick with you. If game sales are weak and they aren't making money, they bail ASAP, and it would be a very poor business decision and an enormous gamble to bank on either the DS or PSP being a success and locking yourself into a contract/exclusivity deal you can't break right now.
Also, most of these dev houses haven't released a quality title yet. Do you we really need to go through the list of utter crap that's come out for the PS2 from some of these third parties?
Haven't seen a noise to signal ratio as bad as the PS2s since Atari ruled the world. So let's just reduce that 9 times figure to 2-3 times, solely on the basis of quality.
Sony is the king of market share, and has been since about a year and a half into their first foray into the gaming business.
Only in the console arena, which is dominated by males aged 20-30. The precise demographic which has basically next to NO use for a handheld that just plays their bought again PS2 games on a smaller screen.
Sony's dominance is as much luck in timing as anything else. They managed to hit the market with just the right product at just the right time to lure in aging Nintendo/Sega gamers. Plus, don't underestimate the draw Final Fantasy had after 6.
First off, you're totally on mars. SCEA has more titles from their doors alone than the GC and XBox have from all publishers put together, and they include many of the platform's gems. Second off, it's not clear that it matters who publishes the games.
Dark Cloud 1&2, Gran Turismo 3, Jak, Ratchet & Clank, Frequency, and Amplitude. Man, that's alot. And the universal appeal just oozes out of those titles too.
Yeah, and it didn't help Nintendo when it was PS vs N64. On this point I agree with you: the hardware has little to do with the success of the platform. However, battery life is not a problem for the PSP, which it has been for all of the platforms that have failed in your list except the N-Gage, and though you credit that as the number two source of issues, I really don't think you emphasize it enough.
PS/N64 granted. Your Genesis example however is flawed, Genesis hit the market before the SNES did, and left Nintendo playing catch up.
Oh and the Wonderswan actually did pretty good in Japan.
Those are the two points on which Sony has smashed Nintendo and Microsoft for the last ten years. I think you should be much more worried for Nintendo than you currently are. I don't think it's a clear-cut battle either way; touchscreen and memory stick both address very fundamental problems in portable gaming. Nobody has talked about *either* of those yet.
Sony took the male 20-30 demographic. This isn't the handheld demographic. There are reasons Nintendo is considered "kiddy" after all.
You sure Sony's not tapping a new market at the same time?
Sure? I'm utterly convinced they're going to have to. I'm not however convinced it's going to work.
What?
Yes, the PS2 neede
To keep costs down the current rumor is that wireless linking will be a $50 add-on to the PSP.
Shrug, don't know though, do we?
Two things the market has historically shown:
1. No handheld priced over $100 has EVER succeeded.
2. Battery life is more important than processing power.
The gameboy beat and has beat all comers because it's been the cheapest(always $100 or less) and has had the best battery life. Add into this the quality of the handheld games and the inevitable deluge of third party software due to it's ubiquity and cracking the Gameboy market share is a tough thing to do. Not to mention over 10 years of backwards compatible games, a large catalog of games which appeal to the thus far primary market for handhelds(children [Hence the importance of low cost]), and a now quite slick design.
SEGA failed with the Gamegear, and that was color versus black and white released by a company who at the time shared the console throne with Nintendo AND had strong first party titles(as Nintendo does and Sony doesn't). It was also competing at a time when there weren't several thousand Gameboy titles in the back catalog.
Atari failed too, miserably.
Nokia most recently failed, and failed miserably.
So, why do people think the PSP is going to do well? Because of Sony's dominance in the Console realm? It didn't help SEGA when SEGA was sharing dominance with Nintendo. Because it's technically superior offering? Hasn't helped any other competitors.
What we have upcoming is the maker of the number two non-PC gaming product(the PS2) trying to take on the number one non-PC gaming product(the GBA).
The handheld market really isn't all that screwy, it's actually pretty easy to understand. To succeed you need a cheap product with excellent battery life that can compete with the experience offered by other offerings. So far, most competitors have gotten the last bit to one degree or another. Nokia failed on all 3 fronts. Those 3 points are absolutely necessary to capture the existing market away from Nintendo.
Nintendo's gameboy is the platinum standard, it IS the handheld market for all intents and purposes, and it's been the market for quite some time.
Now, if you want to argue that Sony stands a chance at growing the handheld market, as they did with the Console market, and thus introducing new factors required for success in that realm, I'll buy that as a possibility. I do not however see it, because I don't see the primary market for consoles using handheld gaming devices enough to justify the purchase of one without getting additional value from it they can't get elsewhere.
In my case for instance, I'll just wait a year and throw down a bit more change and get a PS3 or a GCN2 or an XBox 2.
Then add in the following things we know about Sony:
1. No gaming product they have released has lived up to it's hype. See also: the PS2.
2. They have an awful reputation for hardware longevity, their stuff breaks, frequently. See also: the PS1/PS2.
Except for a few developers, I expect the vast majority to take a wait and see approach to the PSP. I see it occupying at best the position the GameGear was in. A distant but respectable second and a must-own for the hardcore, but not the mainstream all pervasive product the PS2 or GBA are.
As to the DS. The DS is a niche product, and built to be a niche product. It's an attempt to give gamers stuff they aren't going to get on a console, or PC, or on the GBA/PSP. New concepts, new types of games, and the like. It's primary purpose is not as a handheld, it just could only work as a handheld(due to the two screens), so it really isn't targetted in anyway at the handheld market, though I'm sure people from that market will buy it.
The DS is targetting a different market than either the PSP or the GBA.
Heck the PSP targets a different market than the GBA does. One I'm not sure exists and has the means to buy the thing(College kids fit the bill, but I was flat BROKE in college).
Take me for example. I'm an early 20s male, how do I spend my time.
Well, I'm either at home, at work, in transit to work, or out and about. I won't(and don't) bring a handheld gaming device to most of those locations. Most either have TVs(Home, friends houses) or it's impossible/not likely for me to be gaming in those locations (I'm not whipping out any of these devices at a bar or at work for instance).
Now, waiting rooms and the like, sure, but four times a year is hardly worth the cost of a handheld. Travel? Yea, great. Got a laptop for planes, and I don't ride too many trains or buses as I'm not an urbanite.
I ended up getting a GBA for two main reasons:
1. GBA-GCN linking. Not used a lot, but FF:CC for example gives you an experience you can't get anywhere else.
2. Homebrew development.
The games were really just a bonus.
So, you have Nintendo's platforms, both of which offer you experiences you simply can't get anywhere else. The DS has a lot of potential, if some of the rumors are true. Regardless it's going to give you something you can't get anywhere else. The virtual boy did, the original Gameboy did, the GBA does. Whether or not this is something either you or the market want is up in the air, but it's definately a big difference and advantage.
The PSP meanwhile is a disk-based souped up 3D gameboy. All it offers is portability. Toss in the history of the Market, and it isn't going to do well.
D20 is successful because it was forced on everyone, but it's not really appropriate for everything it's applied to. Call of Cthulu for instance, the D20 version can't hold a candle to the old version.
D20 fails on the same levels GURPS does.
A really "good" system is Rolemaster, but calling it incredibly complicated would be an understatement. It's almost like it was designed to run on a computer.
They already did, a lonnnggg time ago. It's called a GBA. It's got some good hardware in that little thing too. Oh and it costs at present less than half what the PSP is going to cost. It'll probably drop in price here soon, but you can pick up an SP for $70 new or used if you know where to look(regular for $50). Really nice on the battery life too.
Lots of good games out for it too. In fact, more of em than for any other handheld! A decade of games, some of which are amongst the best/most addictive ever produced! Oh and with a flash cart you can play NES/SMS games, heck you can even play old adventure games here soon, and develop your own homebrew apps for it! $210 buys you connectivity to the GCN, and around 5000 titles if you're an *arggghhh* pirate.
Yea, I'm being a smart-ass, but really....
No the games aren't fundamentally better just prettier. Gamers have gotten worse and easier to please though(I didn't thank that was possible, people bought Phalanx after all, but apparently it was.).
Take this game for instance: Beyond Good and Evil. It was critically praised, is a fantastic game, and came out for all 3 consoles AND the PC but it didn't sell(you can pick it up for $19.99 on the XBox or GCN).
Good and even good AND innovative doesn't mean sales. So it's always the safe bet, yet another FPS, yet another Madden title.
Then you have the general dumbing down of games. No new gameplay elements. We'll just take a buncha stuff from other games in the genre, improve the AI and physics a bit and BLAMO, we've got a success (*cough* Halo *cough*).
Most games may as well have been released for the last generation of consoles. Apart from how pretty they are, they're pretty much more o' the exact same.
would you pay $90 for a GameCube game?
No, but I rarely pay even $50 for games unless it's something I know I'll still be playing in a decade. I tend to rent or buy 'em used and cheap.
Oh, and nowhere near $100, try $70 of todays dollars for a $50 game. Which btw is about the pricepoint most N64 games came out at, long after Nintendo lost their monopoly. They were expensive because of the cartridge medium, not because Nintendo priced higher than people do today.
And one could argue that Sony or Nintendo have pushed "utter garbage" onto gaming markets.
Utter garbage in the sense that you didn't like the products? Absolutely. Utter garbage in the sense that they didn't work as advertised, no.
If you really want to argue that all of the long-running console series which started during this era suck, go right ahead. You won't find many who agree with you.
Why couldn't they do that under competition? What if competiting games were better?
There WERE competing games from third parties out for Nintendo's platforms. They regulated quality, that was it. They also put out systems that still work to this day, were very whiz-bang for their time, and were actually less expensive at launch(adjusted for inflation) than Systems are now. Heck, they were less expensive (adjusted for inflation) than the PS2 or XBox are now AND they included a game.
If you asking why Nintendo chose to limit content on their platforms. Look into the gaming crash Atari caused by being completely unregulated. Nintendo pretty much single handedly created the console market from the ruins of that crash. They did it by not making the same mistakes Atari did.
When it comes to dictators, Nintendo and Sony have been quite benevolent in their past(not to other businesses but to the consumer) when they exercised absolute control. MS hasn't been and still isn't.
Nintendo was a monopolistic juggernaut who controlled all licesning and the entire market.
I didn't dispute that, what's in dispute is what the company did from a consumer standpoint with their effective monopoly. And what they did was release some of the best games ever and leverage it for "quality control" purposes. Yes, crap came out, but a lot less crap than comes out today. Gaming prices weren't much higher then than they are now, and they used FAR more expensive media. The SNES and NES were both quality products as were all Nintendo original games.
Sony pretty much had portable audio locked with the walkman for a while, and yet the quality of their product was still good.
Microsoft meanwhile, used their position to push utter garbage onto the Desktop and Server markets. Only fixed things when absolutely forced(and still not always then), etc., etc.
All companies strive for a monopoly position, it's what they do when they get there from your standpoint as a consumer that you need to pay attention to.
Are you honestly asserting that to us, as gamers, Nintendo screwed us in the 80s worse than MS screwed us in the OS market in the 90s?
To reiterate, it's not the monopoly it's what they do with it. Nintendo was IMO a faaar more benevolent dictator in the gaming market than MS has been in the OS market.
Nintendo and SEGA in the 80s/90s produced what many of us think of as the golden era of console gaming.
Heck most of those games are STILL better than almost everything that's come out in recent memory. Even GTA traces it's roots to that age(and apart from incremental improvements, not much has changed).
Meanwhile, Microsoft dominance gave us Windows ME and an NT that could be crashed with an ICMP packet.
Both Sony and Nintendo have a track record of continuing to release quality products(albeit at a slower pace in the case of Nintendo) and doing real innovation in their respective markets even when they all but control them utterly, whereas Microsoft's track record should make you run away screaming in horror. Even now, with real, free competition in the OS market, MS still hasn't completely cleaned up.
What do you think the console Market would look like with MS in the position Nintendo was in in the late 80s?
Well there's only one first party publisher per console. However, the first(and second) party games are the only ones you can count on to be exclusive, as the third parties aren't really bound by massive financial incentives to any single system.
The third parties will go wherever the userbase is, so it forms this pack mentality. I pick my first platform based on first-party titles(guarantees) then pick up others based on third party support/popularity a year or so in to a generation.
Buying a console on the basis of supposed or speculated third party support is a crapshoot. Everyone else has to do the same for that support to manifest. Going with first party, at least in the beginning of a generation, is generally a sure bet. Provided of course you like those games.
However if MS wins, the gaming industry will be dead within a decade. Sony won't stick around in the Americas, they came into the industry because it had finally been proven profitable by Nintendo and Sega, they're very much a fair weather company.
Which will leave us solely with Microsoft and no competition. This is the company that had the balls to release Windows ME, and only cleaned up their OS act(and actually still hasn't, since Windows(yes, even XP) is still complete and total Shit) when faced with free competition they couldn't buy out. A convicted monopolist who views lawsuits as the cost of doing business. A company that wants to be able to force you to buy what they want you to buy, regardless of quality. A bleak picture indeed.
Add into this the branding Microsoft has done with their console(such as it is) and new blood into the industry will dry up because there are no "kiddie" or even "neutral" systems left.
We'll be looking at what happened to the comic book companies. Everything will become more and more niche, and MS isn't going to sell this stuff at a loss once they win. Advancement will stop, their open door policy will pump piles of steaming shit onto the sole console, and it'll be Atari all over again.
Don't think I'm right, fine, but you should know better than to buy ANY Microsoft product by this point, whether selling for a loss or not, no matter how good it may be. Giving money to MS is never a good idea unless you happen to like paying to have your hobbies destroyed.
We have Herbert West: Re-animator and recently(ann also directed by Stuart Gordon) Dagon.
So, recently? Yea, within the past 3 years. Blockbuster? No.
Then there's a slew of Lovecraft influenced movies(most good horror was influenced by Lovecraft and Poe).
No it's not, there are plenty of worse movies.
Here's an example of one that makes watching Battlefield Earth seem almost a pleasure in comparison.
Ok, I'm confused here, how the hell does that contradict anything I said?
Specifically that I don't think the XBox was the right platform for this and that I don't think the XBox ports will succeed in the marketplace.
I agree. It's very surprising. I'd expect PS2 or actually the GCN, which is where most gamers are and most of the audience for this type of thing is respectively. I'd toss the GBA in there, but really, SNK games wouldn't be all that great on that platform.
However, from a purely technical standpoint, the XBox is the best decision. With it's HDD, load times aren't as big of an issue, and it's best positioned for online play as you stated.
OTOH, with a pathetically easily installed mod-chip you can play most of the old SNK stuff already on the XBox and I'd think most SNK fans would favor local play over internet play.
So I don't think this will succeed, and I don't think the XBox was the right choice.
It was never an exclusive, Capcom just thought the game would appeal more to GameCube owners(it's a difficult oldschool style sidescrolling 2D platformer after all) than to anyone else, so they didn't release it for other platforms.
If you don't already own it and a Cube you probably aren't into that style of game anyway(it's a cartoon! Kiddy!).
It evidentally did well enough that they're porting it to PS2. I get the feeling it won't look as good as it did on the Cube(since the cube is really, really good at that style of game), but hey, at least the normal people will be able to enjoy it.
I just hope they don't tone down the difficulty to make it more accessable or compromise/tone-down the style to get it onto the technically inferior PS2, as that would pretty much ruin the game.
Europe: Violence bad. Nudity/Sex ok.
USA: Violence good. Nudity/Sex bad.
Japan: Violence ok. Nudity/Sex good. Tentacle rape better!
Different cultures/different attitudes.
So then, why allow the media in?
Jibe 1 - See username.
Jibe 2 - Michael Bolton, is that you?
A lot of guys I know who recently(past 2 years) graduated with degrees in CS don't do programming work, if they even have jobs.
Anyway, if you're in the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has pretty much every little labor detail you could want.
Here are their stats on computer programmers. Remember, entry level means you start out at the low end, so depending upon which state and which company, figure $40,000 a year.
The Atari crash, brought about largely by Atari's policies, the same policies Microsoft and Sony pretty much have, caused so much pure and utter shite to come out that gamers just gave up on consoles all together.
PC gaming wasn't really affected by it, but it barely existed at the time outside of small hobbyist circles.
These failures shaped NOAs strategy(once Nintendo decided it might be worth it[Atari ALMOST was the company that distributed the NES stateside]) which caused the industry to grow again.
So, looking at the situation right now, and many people who actually matter in gaming(note, not one MS rep matters, they haven't been around long enough) seem to agree with this. The Japanese market needs a nice healthy dosage of innovation if it's going to be prevented from contracting. Many of the older dev houses are turning to Nintendo and it's next series of platforms to provide this innovation. MS does not, and probably will never, matter in Japan.
Saying anything else amounts to hubris when MS's #4 platform has less than 5% of the sales of the #3 Cube and less than 1% of the sales of the #2 PS2. They bungled so many things they're the least likely to woo Japanese developers away from Japanese console companies without quite simply just buying them out.
Verizon and SBC aren't much better than AT&T from a service standpoint.
There just simply aren't alternatives in a lot of areas.
Arcades were enormously popular once upon a time.
I'm actually surprised that most sports bars don't have an XBox and a PS2 set up by now for non-game nights.