VGCharts is fun. Unfortunately I think they're missing all of the european PS2 data, so you have to go country by country.
But here's some fun ones: Japan PS3 vs. PS2 vs. Wii - Note that the Wii is tracking like the PS2. The next chart demonstrates how bad the PS3 is doing in glorious Nippon. Japan PS3 vs. Gamecube vs. Wii - I left the Wii in instead of the PS2 because the lines are really close. You'll note it's at this point the PS3 is doing worse than the GAMECUBE. US PS3 vs. PS2 vs. Wii - This looks familiar... US PS3 vs. Gamecube vs. Wii - So does this! Worse than the gamecube again!
So, that leaves Europe. Where, well, everything is dominating the PS2, because VGChartz doesn't have the data.
See, here. The Wii is still spanking the PS3. Everything is beating the PS2 though.
PS3 sales are tracking PS2 sales in no country on earth, except maybe europe. It's a fantasy.
Judging by comments on various boards - people who dwell in their parents basements, have no life, and have few to none real life friends aren't potential Wii buyers anyway.
It's just waggle in Lego Star Wars. I'd be hitting the button instead of swinging all the time.
Don't worry though, apparently Mario & Sonic at the Olympics has a fencing mode... so there might be hope there.
The Baseball bat in Wii Sports actually tracks pretty accurately, it's just there's a lag to it, and if you make quick movements it glitches. There's bounding or something involved.
Well, the Nintendo conference wasn't bad... it's just way disappointing compared to every other year. Wii Fit was pretty interesting(not from a gamer/enthuisiast standpoint, more from a my god Nintendo is going to sell millions of these things[If Richard Simmons can become a wealthy celebrity off of home fitness videos...]), and dating all of their main franchises for this year was good news, and well, that was about it. No big announcements... nothing really. Too many numbers, figures, charts. Yea, yea, E3 is for retailers, buyers like that kind of stuff, whatever, it's boring.
Sony used to do that number crap too, but I guess they couldn't this year since there's not a lot of positive stuff to talk about. Consequently, Sony put on a much better show. I'd say the best show.
It would be called hyperbole, it would've been more accurate to say that the 360s DVD drive can stream the same amount of data to it's internals in a little over half the time. If I implied that the PS3 has absurdly long load times, that wasn't my intention, we were as far as I know, discussing blu-rays impact on game content. Compared to the PS2 ALL of the next-gen(and last-gen for that matter) consoles are blazingly fast loaders.
You have to transfer that data to the hdd before you can stream it from the HDD, and the HDD's bandwidth is limited by bottlenecks inside the system(as well as the HDD itself, if the default HDD can saturate SATA1 transfer rates I'd be really surprised), the textures per scene are further limited by the amount of RAM available and the speed of the RSX. Those bottlenecks, and the slow speed of the BD drive combine to present EXACTLY the scenario I described. If you want the HDD's extra transfer speed, you have to have that content on the HDD, which means if you wanted to cache 50GB of data(blu-ray double-layer capacity), you'd be looking at *hours*, oops, sorry, an hour and a half of total time to cache it. I'm sure creative programmers will find ways to maximize what they can do with the added storage, but I do not see the scenario the person I was replying to envisioned.
To reiterate: You will not see more textures or larger textures per scene on the PS3 versus the 360 because of the blu-ray drive. You will see the added storage used to reduce load times by redundantly laying out data on the disc and reducing seeks(although this is probably closer to a wash). You will possibly see more textures per game and/or larger textures per game, but not PER SCENE. You have the possibility of more levels and bigger levels(depending upon how creative devs can get, there are probably trade-offs). You will have the possibility of far more HD FMV. You won't have to swap discs. Blu-ray washes out to an advantage but not some huge advantage.
What part of that do you disagree with? That blu-ray is an advantage but not a huge advantage? That this is all academic because no one is going to fill 25-50GB of disc space versus a few DVDs because the PS3 doesn't have the market to justify the cost?
Off the top of my head the new ones(that aren't non-games) are: Disaster: Day of Crisis*, Project HAMMER**, Endless Ocean, Eyeshield 21***, Kirby****
And of course Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, and all the old standbys. Personally, I'd be happy if they made a console Star Fox where he never, ever, ever leaves the cockpit of his Arwing. My expectations for Star Fox are at Sonic-esque levels right now. And by that I mean I was impressed by Secret Rings because it was a 3D sonic that didn't absolutely suck.
The only reason I tolerated Command I think is because of how absolutely god-awful adventures and assault were.
* - Monolith, now a nintendo 2nd party.
** - NST, so god knows if it will be good. If it's crap from Nintendo, and it wasn't farmed out, it probably came from NST.
*** - Manga centering around a football(the kind where you use your hands) star who's batman-esque secret identity is an unassuming high school student. It's Batman meets the NFL. It will never see these shores. Which saddens me, because it looks like Anime mutant league football.
**** - Not new, but there hasn't been a *real* Kirby on a console in a long time.
Little Big Planet is fresher than Mario Galaxy, but that's not really surprising. The only things I know of that Mario Galaxy is introducing is some physics, a bee suit, and planetoids. Little Big Planet otoh is basically a sand-box physics simulator, and that's pretty new outside PC games w/construction modes. One is an established series in a long-existing genre, and the other defies classification. A Wii corrolary would be stuff like Elebits and Trauma Center(or the DS version), both third party. Or things on the Horizon like Zack & Wiki.
Paper Mario has a cool twist to it, but it's still an RPG. Twilight Princess is like Ocarina and Link to the Past had a love child(and Phantom Hourglass looks better than TP). Smash is Smash. Metroid Prime is Metroid Prime. Of all of them, Paper Mario is probably the most unique. It plays differently than Mario & Luigi, but it lacks the charm Super Star Saga had.
You also have stuff like Project HAMMER, Endless Ocean, etc. The bulk of nintendo's truly new stuff is all "non-games" though.
Uhh, that link says exactly what I said. The drive is slow. Thank you for proving what I said with a fine link. But hey, refering to a just over 1 1/2 hour transfer time for a double-layer+ BD-ROM as *hours* makes the whole thing inane.
It's funny, because after my rather vitriolic diatribe, I started thinking about why I was so angry about someone saying that casual gaming was going to supplant hardcore gaming. And it came down to this: when casual music listening (pop/easy listening) became mainstream, look what it did to our radio stations. Look what it did to music in general. Creating artistic works for the lowest common denominator is almost always a Very Bad Thing.
Well, radio(radio predates TV[which supplanted it] for going mainstream, and only really film predates it of the modern media) has more to do with media consolidation than anything else, and you can still get a ton of variety on things like NPR and college radio in terms of music(no radio plays anymore though really, outside NPR). No, it's not always a very bad thing. It's almost always a good thing. When a medium goes mainstream it begins to fufill every niche(except where restricted by law). I guarantee you someone puts out at least one movie a year that you like. It may not be hollywood, it may not have a huge budget, it may be filmed on Super 8 in someone's basement with a moneys dredged up by relatives and staring friends, but someone probably puts one out. Someone puts out a novel you'd like every year. Some DJ sneaks a song that you like onto the corporate approved playlists every year. The exception might be TV, but gaming is and never will be TV.
That isn't the case with gaming right now... there are certain genres and certain types that are catered to, and well, that's about it. If you solely follow the hardcore enthuisiast media, you won't even hear about the few things that might cater to your niche. Adventure games, for example, were all but dead, with the exception of the odd year where we'd see a few(and none in the style of the old LucasArts games until the DS and episodic content on the PC).
Most hardcore gamers that are my age had an NES, an SNES, and an N64. Some of the few who were lucky enough to have parents that were into family gaming at the time also had an Atari. Not to mention Sega Genesis and the other systems. They were hardcore gamers at the time when those were the only systems and genres of games you could buy. The games you mention as hardcore gaming are all fairly recent. Most hardcore gamers remember those old school games fondly.
Yes, something had to get you started. Were you really a "hardcore" gamer in the days of your first console? Or did it gradually grow on you? The same will probably hold true for a section of the casual and new gamers entering the market.
Again, lowest common denominator. Also, to even play games then was hardcore enough. We didn't really need a separate designation. Huge games now include WoW, Counterstrike, Halo. Even Civilization and most of the similar strategy games are primarily hardcore gamers, just in a different genre.
There wasn't a seperate distinction because there weren't a ton of people running around in full blown panic mode about it. You either played games or you didn't. Now people feel the need to draw this distinction out of I guess... elitism? Leftovers of feeling grown up because you don't play Mario?
I personally blame the gaming media, which not only sucks, but is composed of neckbeard enthuisiasts. Those guys are going to be out of jobs soon enough though. I don't care about what IGN(you can't spell ignorant without it!) has to think about Drake or Galaxy, I can view gameplay footage and video and evaluate it for myself.
I don't appreciate your trivialization of hardcore gamers, who were hardcore gamers when they played the first game that defined each genre of the many genres of games we have now. I think as games become mainstream, many of these casual gamers will try to convince everyone that their style of gaming is the center of the universe, regardless of the rich history of gaming. And I don't want to see the industry dumbed-down and watered-down like that. Like pop music.
The drive is too slow for that. The 360s normal run of the mill DVD drive feeds data to the 360 faster than the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 can feed the PS3. You get more storage, but it's *slower*. To transfer a whole disc worth of textures to an HDD would take *hours*. So, it's all a compromise. You can have more levels per disc, more textures, but the transfer rate is going to kill you if you want larger streaming levels with larger textures without transfering to a faster HDD. And HD performance isn't exactly excellent or we wouldn't have SANs. If you want more/higher detailed textures per scene, you want the bandwidth provided by a DVD drive. If you want more level/texture variety or if you want bigger levels(depending upon how you can lay things out) but lower quality/less textures per scene you want Blu-ray. You can also have way more FMV.
And that's not even getting into the costs and how batshit insane you'd have to be to actually fill a blu-ray disc with content given how pathetic the PS3 is doing. Right now, all that extra space is really being used for is duplicating data to improve load times.
I don't think Blu-ray is a huge advantage in regards to gaming. If anything it washes out to an advantage, but not a huge one.
None of those matter unless you already own a PS3. The only thing they did that is going to help their sales figures is the $100 price-drop / upgrade.
This was like a pre-2006 Nintendo conference. Plenty to keep the faithful happy, a few things to push people on the fence, but nothing to convert the doubters or the masses.
Most who mock smash know absolutely nothing about it, sorry. I haven't put a lot of time into VF. I have a hard time getting into 3D fighters(me ceasing to play fighters obsessively coincided with about the saturn era, so...), and Virtua Fighter takes a while to even be able to play, and well, I don't know anyone who plays it. It's abysmally popular outside asia for precisely the reasons I've never put much time into it. I guess by hardcore you meant inaccessable and with a learning curve like a cliff. Because that's virtua fighter.
I was using forums to illustrate that there are people who have absolutely obssessed over this game to the point where if it was anything else outside gaming you would call them hardcore. As I said these are the type of guys who do non-tool assisted speed runs. They are hardcore fans of these games. This doesn't really exist here in the US for any of these other games(and as I dwell in the US, the story where I am commenting on took place in the US, I tend to assume we're talking about the US). I was using the existance of this, that entire competitive scene, and this discrepancy to infer that if VF is a hardcore game, than Smash has to be as well.
No, I do not play Smash competitively. I don't play SC or Tekken competitively either(although.. with SC, I could still probably do really well in a tournament). I can still SHFFL and wavedash though, and I've played a few people who *do* play it competitively. I am not a hardcore smash player, or a hardcore fighter player. I'm not at that level and if I ever was, haven't been since Alpha was in the arcades.
There's also an age-old argument I don't feel like rehashing here about 2D versus 3D fighters and the purity/blah blah blah/therein. I'm still shocked that you wouldn't consider Smash, when played at the competitive level, a hardcore fighter, and that Tekken is further along towards that then it is.
I think it's charming that a couple million American teens have found a fighting game they can play, and can feel that there is so much depth to, and can apply the 'hardcore' label to themselves because they can shffl and wavedash.
So.. only teens and kids enjoy smash and can feel it has a ton of depth then? I better let almost everyone I went to college with know about that. We're all 25+ now, so it's nice to know our birth certificates are wrong and we're really no older than 19. That's awesome man, thanks. Seriously, can we avoid those kind of generalizations? There's a whole huge subset of gaming culture that spin that kind of crap off into flames.
Anyway, most people in the general populus would classify Soul Calibur as a hardcore fighter, so is Smash really, in your opinion, not as far along the spectrum as that series?
I should clarify this because I've been belaboring this point for a few days.
Say for the sake of argument the new Jak & Daxter or Ratchet & Clank(or whatever) and Mario Galaxy both turn out to be absolutely fantastic platformers. Great level design, great controls... the only appreciable difference apart from characters is that Galaxy doesn't have a teen angst storyline, and the other does. That's what I meant by window dressing. If you love 3D Platformers, why would the fact that an excellent 3D platform features Mario turn you off? If both are out for the same console, you love 3D platformers, and you own that console, wouldn't you pick up both?
That's with all things being equal. If Galaxy was a better platformer... wouldn't it make more sense to grab it?
People do this to Nintendo franchises all the time. The characters are old, so the game is a rehash. Then they'll turn around and praise the 4th sequel to a game that itself was originally a rehash of another game that defined or created a genre, for some reason I can't comprehend. The only thing I can come up with is that they are very shallow in their gaming tastes.
Can you SHFFL? Then you can't judge smash. Smash Brothers Melee(hereafter referred to as Smash) has a competitive scene that's far more hardcore and massive than Virtua Fighter. Seriously, those guys scare me. They've gotten to the point of mastery in a single game where to play it at the highest level requires absolute mastery of almost every *NUANCE* of the game. If "hardcore" games are defined as being played by "hardcore" players, then Smash is really hardcore. Hell, I don't think your typical smashboards regular has seen the sun more than once or twice. Smash Brothers is also far more commercially successful than Virtua Fighter, and the brilliance of it is that you don't have to play it like the hardcore people do to enjoy it. I'd argue that Smash Bros Melee is a hardcore fighter, just because of it's depth. It also happens to be the most accessible. The only competition I'd say it has is from some of the older 2D Capcom and SNK fighters. The guys who play those at that level are equally ridiculously obssessed. For both groups of hardcore dedicated fighter gamers(the SNK/Capcom crowd and Smash) they measure things in quarter-frames and PIXELS.
Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Soul Calibur fans need not apply for the hardcore label. They just don't measure up. They're up against the type of people who do non-tool assisted speed runs of games.
Pokemon is like that too, actually. The poopsocking that can go into that is ridiculous. Smogon has in-depth analysis of every pokemon, every move. The possible combinations/configurations are ridiculous. To construct these teams legitimately we're talking hours upon hours of grinding, a good deal of luck, and a ridiculous amount of dedication. There are variations upon variations and tons of matchup potentials. But, like Smash, you don't have to play like that. You can beat the game without ever knowing what an EV is.
Both of these games have extended metagames, which people have dedicated enormous amounts of time to figuring out. The guys who play these things in that way play at another level(competitive smash is itemless[yes you have that option] 1v1 in a stage like Final Destination). I'm not like that, I play Smash as a party game, and I don't really play Pokemon.
I tried to track down a Virtual Fighter board that's anything like Smash Boards(there are boards, and they do character comparisons, but nothing like those freaks on Smash Boards do), and I couldn't. Same for Soul Calibur and Tekken. These gamers are not hardcore, they aren't obsessed. If any of those games qualify, so does Smash.
Man, I'm with you, I totally prefer to play refined rip-off of a Mario 64 rehash starring an anthropomorphic critter with guns #6, now with better graphics, too.
The point being that in that department, no one else has anything either unless you're shallow enough to only care about the window dressing that surrounds the gameplay.
They still haven't shown me any games that compel me to purchase one. There's a bunch of "well that looks cool, if I owned a PS3" but nothing to motivate me to go out and spend $500+tax on one. Maybe, like the 360, one of my roommates will be compelled to pick one up. Even Metal Gear I can wait on the system hitting $300 and the game going budget/cross platform for.
I will own a PS3 eventually(only console of a generation I *haven't* owned is an original XBox), and I plan on picking up the titles that fit that criteria as I see them, but... meh.
Hmm? Oh, by those standards there's very little original content on the Wii either, and nothing truly original once you take in the entire history of gaming. There's a lot of novelty in regards to home consoles though, some from the control scheme, and some just because it either hasn't been done outside a niche title in a long time, or it's never been on a home console before. It's just fucking ridiculous to praise the stuff Sony puts out as original and then call Nintendo, who in some cases ORIGINATED the genre Sony is exploiting unoriginal simply because the SPRITES(not 2D so not sprites, but you get the idea) have changed. It's like the people that refused to give the time of day to, or play Windwaker, not because of the one glaring flaw it had with the Triforce hunt, not because they don't like the genre, but because it was cell-shaded.
But sure, here we go!
Content you could argue as original: Zack & Wiki - Myst style adventure game with pointer control. I can't recall one of these ever hitting a console before. Trauma Center - The board game Operation taken to an extreme. DS Remake. Wii Fit - There have been games with this general idea before, but not with the stressing of the fitness component for quite a while. This is the next Wii Sports and it's going to be fucking HUGE. Wii Sports - The control scheme made this utterly unique when it came out, short of some arcade games. Elebits - FPS centered entirely around a gravity gun. Not really completely new, but a bit novel. My Word Coach - Puzzle game... but... that's sorta not right... define this! Big Brain Academy - Puzzle game, but also a party game... with an odd concept. DS Remake. NiGHTS - It's a sequel, but the original didn't really fit anywhere, and it hasn't been seen since the Saturn. Dragon Quest Swords - There was a standalone like this (DQ Kenshen), and there have been some arcade games similar, but nothing really on a console. Super Paper Mario - Platformer RPG. That's a new twist on the RPG(although Zelda 2 did have RPG elements...), and the 2D/3D gameplay gimmick isn't something I can recall on a console before.
And now, Genre Representation: FPS - Medal of Honor: Vanguard, Call of Duty 3, FarCry: Vengeance, Red Steel, Elebits, Metroid Prime 3(Aug 27) Light Gun Shooter - RE: Umbrella Chronicles(November), Ghost Squad(Q4) Platformer - Mario Galaxy(Nov 12), Dewy's Adventure (TBA), Ton of VC representation of the classics. Action - PoP Rival Swords, Spiderman, Tomb Raider Anniversary (Nov) Party Game - Wii Sports, Warioware, Mario Party 8, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2(Fall) Action Adventure - LoZ: Twilight Princess Action RPG - Marvel: Ultimate Alliance RPG - Super Paper Mario Sandbox - Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Scarface Turn-Based Strategy - Fire Emblem (Nov 5) Fighter - Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Smash Bros Brawl(Nov 12) Stealth - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - Double Agent 3rd Person Shooter - RE4 Sports - Madden '07, Tiger Woods '07, etc. All of EAs '08 stuff is coming. Wrastling - WWE (November) Arcade Sports - The Bigs, Mario Strikers, Mario & Sonic @ the Olympics Arcade Racer - Excite Truck, Need for Speed, Sonic falls in here probably 3D Shooter(flight) - Blazing Angels Shooter(Traditional) - Ton of VC stuff. Arcade Shooter - Heatseeker Adventure - Zack & Wiki (Oct) Music/Rhythm - Guitar Hero 3(Fall, although to be honest, we're all getting this for the PS2), Boogie(Nov), Dance Dance Revolution(TBA) Puzzle - Big Brain Academy, Puzzle Quest(Fall) Murder Simulator - Manhunt 2(eventually)
I left off a bunch of stuff that will probably be shown at E3, has an announced release date not for this year, or I just plain forgot(and I left off things that aren't out as much as possible). There are very few genres not covered, and quite a few bits of crap in there, but the coverage is great. You're only really missing traditional JRPGs and Realistic Racers.
I'm going to guess that english isn't your first language...
Those aren't original games. The window dressing is different, but that doesn't matter. I didn't even comment on their quality, apart from Drake, which looks fucking awful.
Also, the only RPG out for the PS3 right now is Oblivion... FF won't hit til 2009, Folklore probably not until next year, and White Knight Story, god only knows... and Godfather and Madden play way better on the Wii than on the other systems...
None of those Sony games you mentioned are either original or stellar. Most of them are the same old thing with a new coat of paint. Lair is Rogue Squadron w/o the star wars license, and some arguably bad design decisions. Warhawk, I have no idea what genre it's even in anymore. Isn't it a BF2142 clone now? Resistance is the epitome of the cliche shooter. Heavenly Sword? God of War with a girl... it may be Genji-level bad or it could be good. Drake looks like shit. And most of these aren't even from their "core" development teams... Resistance/Drake aren't internal... Lair is Factor 5....
The 360 is also full of this. They're both ramping up to have a lot of depth in certain genres, but not a lot of bredth across genres. The Wii currently has more quality RPG exclusives then either for example(although Eternal Sonata and Blue Dragon are coming out for the 360 soon, which will change that).
Pretty much no matter what genre you're into, Nintendo has you covered, right now, or will have you covered by the end of the year(even odd stuff like myst-esque adventure games, and the old sim-city style sim). They have just about everything covered, and a bunch of whacky stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere. The settings / coat of paint for their first parties is in most cases familiar, but the core gameplay is good and in most cases different. Bitching about mascot games is bitching about the immaterial. Mario Galaxy wouldn't play any better if you swapped Mario with a "to the extreme!" anthropomorphic weasel and added a gun and teen-angst story in...
Now, yea, not all of the games are good -> great... but complaining about genre coverage in a general sense just doesn't make sense... If you're into the genres the 360/PS3 have and are covering really well, then yea, it's disappointing... you can't satisfy a genre addiction on the Wii right now... but there's less missing from it's schedule than either of its competitors.
Oh, right, they strong-armed the retail and wholesale channels to keep prices at whatever level they wanted to. You don't need to do that anymore though, since you can contractually set minimum pricing due to a recent SCOTUS decision.
Weren't they even more devious though, and it was something like $20 in Nintendo cash?
This is like playing a game of, "hey, remember the 80s?"
It's all old stuff. You can read most of it in Game Over if you're inclined.
Basically, Nintendo was extremely strong-armed with third party developers during the NES days. You could only publish so many games a year(hence Contra being released as an ULTRA title), and you couldn't publish for other platforms like the Master system. They tried, unsuccessfully to crack down on unlicensed titles via their lockout chip, which was cloned by tengen(among others) and lost the resulting court case. That's also the source for the Nintendo seal of quality(all it really meant then was that a developer had paid the licensing fees, followed the rules, and the cart had a 10NES lockout chip).
They kept this up(being controlling in regards to third parties) to a certain extent until Yamauchi handed the reins over to Igawa.
Additionally, they strong-armed retailers, and to some extent manipulated the software market by having a hard lock on cartridge production.
Also, their Nintendo Authorized Repair Center thing(the US NES had a tendency to break because of the way it loaded, putting stress on the contacts) was a little bit of a scam.
Oh, and censored the original Mortal Kombat for the SNES, before the ESRB came into existance. I think that about covers it all.
Slashdot Mirror
VGCharts is fun. Unfortunately I think they're missing all of the european PS2 data, so you have to go country by country.
But here's some fun ones:
Japan PS3 vs. PS2 vs. Wii - Note that the Wii is tracking like the PS2. The next chart demonstrates how bad the PS3 is doing in glorious Nippon.
Japan PS3 vs. Gamecube vs. Wii - I left the Wii in instead of the PS2 because the lines are really close. You'll note it's at this point the PS3 is doing worse than the GAMECUBE.
US PS3 vs. PS2 vs. Wii - This looks familiar...
US PS3 vs. Gamecube vs. Wii - So does this! Worse than the gamecube again!
So, that leaves Europe. Where, well, everything is dominating the PS2, because VGChartz doesn't have the data.
See, here. The Wii is still spanking the PS3. Everything is beating the PS2 though.
PS3 sales are tracking PS2 sales in no country on earth, except maybe europe. It's a fantasy.
Please don't bring up Megaman. Megaman is like the goto franchise if you want to talk about "beaten to death."
Poor blue bomber...
Judging by comments on various boards - people who dwell in their parents basements, have no life, and have few to none real life friends aren't potential Wii buyers anyway.
It[Little Big Planet's style of play] is new to consoles to my recollection.
It's just waggle in Lego Star Wars. I'd be hitting the button instead of swinging all the time.
Don't worry though, apparently Mario & Sonic at the Olympics has a fencing mode... so there might be hope there.
The Baseball bat in Wii Sports actually tracks pretty accurately, it's just there's a lag to it, and if you make quick movements it glitches. There's bounding or something involved.
Well, the Nintendo conference wasn't bad... it's just way disappointing compared to every other year. Wii Fit was pretty interesting(not from a gamer/enthuisiast standpoint, more from a my god Nintendo is going to sell millions of these things[If Richard Simmons can become a wealthy celebrity off of home fitness videos...]), and dating all of their main franchises for this year was good news, and well, that was about it. No big announcements... nothing really. Too many numbers, figures, charts. Yea, yea, E3 is for retailers, buyers like that kind of stuff, whatever, it's boring.
Sony used to do that number crap too, but I guess they couldn't this year since there's not a lot of positive stuff to talk about. Consequently, Sony put on a much better show. I'd say the best show.
It would be called hyperbole, it would've been more accurate to say that the 360s DVD drive can stream the same amount of data to it's internals in a little over half the time. If I implied that the PS3 has absurdly long load times, that wasn't my intention, we were as far as I know, discussing blu-rays impact on game content. Compared to the PS2 ALL of the next-gen(and last-gen for that matter) consoles are blazingly fast loaders.
You have to transfer that data to the hdd before you can stream it from the HDD, and the HDD's bandwidth is limited by bottlenecks inside the system(as well as the HDD itself, if the default HDD can saturate SATA1 transfer rates I'd be really surprised), the textures per scene are further limited by the amount of RAM available and the speed of the RSX. Those bottlenecks, and the slow speed of the BD drive combine to present EXACTLY the scenario I described. If you want the HDD's extra transfer speed, you have to have that content on the HDD, which means if you wanted to cache 50GB of data(blu-ray double-layer capacity), you'd be looking at *hours*, oops, sorry, an hour and a half of total time to cache it. I'm sure creative programmers will find ways to maximize what they can do with the added storage, but I do not see the scenario the person I was replying to envisioned.
To reiterate: You will not see more textures or larger textures per scene on the PS3 versus the 360 because of the blu-ray drive. You will see the added storage used to reduce load times by redundantly laying out data on the disc and reducing seeks(although this is probably closer to a wash). You will possibly see more textures per game and/or larger textures per game, but not PER SCENE. You have the possibility of more levels and bigger levels(depending upon how creative devs can get, there are probably trade-offs). You will have the possibility of far more HD FMV. You won't have to swap discs. Blu-ray washes out to an advantage but not some huge advantage.
What part of that do you disagree with? That blu-ray is an advantage but not a huge advantage? That this is all academic because no one is going to fill 25-50GB of disc space versus a few DVDs because the PS3 doesn't have the market to justify the cost?
Off the top of my head the new ones(that aren't non-games) are:
Disaster: Day of Crisis*, Project HAMMER**, Endless Ocean, Eyeshield 21***, Kirby****
And of course Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, and all the old standbys. Personally, I'd be happy if they made a console Star Fox where he never, ever, ever leaves the cockpit of his Arwing. My expectations for Star Fox are at Sonic-esque levels right now. And by that I mean I was impressed by Secret Rings because it was a 3D sonic that didn't absolutely suck.
The only reason I tolerated Command I think is because of how absolutely god-awful adventures and assault were.
* - Monolith, now a nintendo 2nd party.
** - NST, so god knows if it will be good. If it's crap from Nintendo, and it wasn't farmed out, it probably came from NST.
*** - Manga centering around a football(the kind where you use your hands) star who's batman-esque secret identity is an unassuming high school student. It's Batman meets the NFL. It will never see these shores. Which saddens me, because it looks like Anime mutant league football.
**** - Not new, but there hasn't been a *real* Kirby on a console in a long time.
Little Big Planet is fresher than Mario Galaxy, but that's not really surprising. The only things I know of that Mario Galaxy is introducing is some physics, a bee suit, and planetoids. Little Big Planet otoh is basically a sand-box physics simulator, and that's pretty new outside PC games w/construction modes. One is an established series in a long-existing genre, and the other defies classification. A Wii corrolary would be stuff like Elebits and Trauma Center(or the DS version), both third party. Or things on the Horizon like Zack & Wiki.
Paper Mario has a cool twist to it, but it's still an RPG. Twilight Princess is like Ocarina and Link to the Past had a love child(and Phantom Hourglass looks better than TP). Smash is Smash. Metroid Prime is Metroid Prime. Of all of them, Paper Mario is probably the most unique. It plays differently than Mario & Luigi, but it lacks the charm Super Star Saga had.
You also have stuff like Project HAMMER, Endless Ocean, etc. The bulk of nintendo's truly new stuff is all "non-games" though.
Uhh, that link says exactly what I said. The drive is slow. Thank you for proving what I said with a fine link. But hey, refering to a just over 1 1/2 hour transfer time for a double-layer+ BD-ROM as *hours* makes the whole thing inane.
It's funny, because after my rather vitriolic diatribe, I started thinking about why I was so angry about someone saying that casual gaming was going to supplant hardcore gaming. And it came down to this: when casual music listening (pop/easy listening) became mainstream, look what it did to our radio stations. Look what it did to music in general. Creating artistic works for the lowest common denominator is almost always a Very Bad Thing.
Well, radio(radio predates TV[which supplanted it] for going mainstream, and only really film predates it of the modern media) has more to do with media consolidation than anything else, and you can still get a ton of variety on things like NPR and college radio in terms of music(no radio plays anymore though really, outside NPR). No, it's not always a very bad thing. It's almost always a good thing. When a medium goes mainstream it begins to fufill every niche(except where restricted by law). I guarantee you someone puts out at least one movie a year that you like. It may not be hollywood, it may not have a huge budget, it may be filmed on Super 8 in someone's basement with a moneys dredged up by relatives and staring friends, but someone probably puts one out. Someone puts out a novel you'd like every year. Some DJ sneaks a song that you like onto the corporate approved playlists every year. The exception might be TV, but gaming is and never will be TV.
That isn't the case with gaming right now... there are certain genres and certain types that are catered to, and well, that's about it. If you solely follow the hardcore enthuisiast media, you won't even hear about the few things that might cater to your niche. Adventure games, for example, were all but dead, with the exception of the odd year where we'd see a few(and none in the style of the old LucasArts games until the DS and episodic content on the PC).
Most hardcore gamers that are my age had an NES, an SNES, and an N64. Some of the few who were lucky enough to have parents that were into family gaming at the time also had an Atari. Not to mention Sega Genesis and the other systems. They were hardcore gamers at the time when those were the only systems and genres of games you could buy. The games you mention as hardcore gaming are all fairly recent. Most hardcore gamers remember those old school games fondly.
Yes, something had to get you started. Were you really a "hardcore" gamer in the days of your first console? Or did it gradually grow on you? The same will probably hold true for a section of the casual and new gamers entering the market.
Again, lowest common denominator. Also, to even play games then was hardcore enough. We didn't really need a separate designation. Huge games now include WoW, Counterstrike, Halo. Even Civilization and most of the similar strategy games are primarily hardcore gamers, just in a different genre.
There wasn't a seperate distinction because there weren't a ton of people running around in full blown panic mode about it. You either played games or you didn't. Now people feel the need to draw this distinction out of I guess... elitism? Leftovers of feeling grown up because you don't play Mario?
I personally blame the gaming media, which not only sucks, but is composed of neckbeard enthuisiasts. Those guys are going to be out of jobs soon enough though. I don't care about what IGN(you can't spell ignorant without it!) has to think about Drake or Galaxy, I can view gameplay footage and video and evaluate it for myself.
I don't appreciate your trivialization of hardcore gamers, who were hardcore gamers when they played the first game that defined each genre of the many genres of games we have now. I think as games become mainstream, many of these casual gamers will try to convince everyone that their style of gaming is the center of the universe, regardless of the rich history of gaming. And I don't want to see the industry dumbed-down and watered-down like that. Like pop music.
You weren't a
The drive is too slow for that. The 360s normal run of the mill DVD drive feeds data to the 360 faster than the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 can feed the PS3. You get more storage, but it's *slower*. To transfer a whole disc worth of textures to an HDD would take *hours*. So, it's all a compromise. You can have more levels per disc, more textures, but the transfer rate is going to kill you if you want larger streaming levels with larger textures without transfering to a faster HDD. And HD performance isn't exactly excellent or we wouldn't have SANs. If you want more/higher detailed textures per scene, you want the bandwidth provided by a DVD drive. If you want more level/texture variety or if you want bigger levels(depending upon how you can lay things out) but lower quality/less textures per scene you want Blu-ray. You can also have way more FMV.
And that's not even getting into the costs and how batshit insane you'd have to be to actually fill a blu-ray disc with content given how pathetic the PS3 is doing. Right now, all that extra space is really being used for is duplicating data to improve load times.
I don't think Blu-ray is a huge advantage in regards to gaming. If anything it washes out to an advantage, but not a huge one.
None of those matter unless you already own a PS3. The only thing they did that is going to help their sales figures is the $100 price-drop / upgrade.
This was like a pre-2006 Nintendo conference. Plenty to keep the faithful happy, a few things to push people on the fence, but nothing to convert the doubters or the masses.
Most who mock smash know absolutely nothing about it, sorry. I haven't put a lot of time into VF. I have a hard time getting into 3D fighters(me ceasing to play fighters obsessively coincided with about the saturn era, so...), and Virtua Fighter takes a while to even be able to play, and well, I don't know anyone who plays it. It's abysmally popular outside asia for precisely the reasons I've never put much time into it. I guess by hardcore you meant inaccessable and with a learning curve like a cliff. Because that's virtua fighter.
I was using forums to illustrate that there are people who have absolutely obssessed over this game to the point where if it was anything else outside gaming you would call them hardcore. As I said these are the type of guys who do non-tool assisted speed runs. They are hardcore fans of these games. This doesn't really exist here in the US for any of these other games(and as I dwell in the US, the story where I am commenting on took place in the US, I tend to assume we're talking about the US). I was using the existance of this, that entire competitive scene, and this discrepancy to infer that if VF is a hardcore game, than Smash has to be as well.
No, I do not play Smash competitively. I don't play SC or Tekken competitively either(although.. with SC, I could still probably do really well in a tournament). I can still SHFFL and wavedash though, and I've played a few people who *do* play it competitively. I am not a hardcore smash player, or a hardcore fighter player. I'm not at that level and if I ever was, haven't been since Alpha was in the arcades.
There's also an age-old argument I don't feel like rehashing here about 2D versus 3D fighters and the purity/blah blah blah/therein. I'm still shocked that you wouldn't consider Smash, when played at the competitive level, a hardcore fighter, and that Tekken is further along towards that then it is.
I think it's charming that a couple million American teens have found a fighting game they can play, and can feel that there is so much depth to, and can apply the 'hardcore' label to themselves because they can shffl and wavedash.
So.. only teens and kids enjoy smash and can feel it has a ton of depth then? I better let almost everyone I went to college with know about that. We're all 25+ now, so it's nice to know our birth certificates are wrong and we're really no older than 19. That's awesome man, thanks. Seriously, can we avoid those kind of generalizations? There's a whole huge subset of gaming culture that spin that kind of crap off into flames.
Anyway, most people in the general populus would classify Soul Calibur as a hardcore fighter, so is Smash really, in your opinion, not as far along the spectrum as that series?
I should clarify this because I've been belaboring this point for a few days.
Say for the sake of argument the new Jak & Daxter or Ratchet & Clank(or whatever) and Mario Galaxy both turn out to be absolutely fantastic platformers. Great level design, great controls... the only appreciable difference apart from characters is that Galaxy doesn't have a teen angst storyline, and the other does. That's what I meant by window dressing. If you love 3D Platformers, why would the fact that an excellent 3D platform features Mario turn you off? If both are out for the same console, you love 3D platformers, and you own that console, wouldn't you pick up both?
That's with all things being equal. If Galaxy was a better platformer... wouldn't it make more sense to grab it?
People do this to Nintendo franchises all the time. The characters are old, so the game is a rehash. Then they'll turn around and praise the 4th sequel to a game that itself was originally a rehash of another game that defined or created a genre, for some reason I can't comprehend. The only thing I can come up with is that they are very shallow in their gaming tastes.
Can you SHFFL? Then you can't judge smash. Smash Brothers Melee(hereafter referred to as Smash) has a competitive scene that's far more hardcore and massive than Virtua Fighter. Seriously, those guys scare me. They've gotten to the point of mastery in a single game where to play it at the highest level requires absolute mastery of almost every *NUANCE* of the game. If "hardcore" games are defined as being played by "hardcore" players, then Smash is really hardcore. Hell, I don't think your typical smashboards regular has seen the sun more than once or twice. Smash Brothers is also far more commercially successful than Virtua Fighter, and the brilliance of it is that you don't have to play it like the hardcore people do to enjoy it. I'd argue that Smash Bros Melee is a hardcore fighter, just because of it's depth. It also happens to be the most accessible. The only competition I'd say it has is from some of the older 2D Capcom and SNK fighters. The guys who play those at that level are equally ridiculously obssessed. For both groups of hardcore dedicated fighter gamers(the SNK/Capcom crowd and Smash) they measure things in quarter-frames and PIXELS.
Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Soul Calibur fans need not apply for the hardcore label. They just don't measure up. They're up against the type of people who do non-tool assisted speed runs of games.
Pokemon is like that too, actually. The poopsocking that can go into that is ridiculous. Smogon has in-depth analysis of every pokemon, every move. The possible combinations/configurations are ridiculous. To construct these teams legitimately we're talking hours upon hours of grinding, a good deal of luck, and a ridiculous amount of dedication. There are variations upon variations and tons of matchup potentials. But, like Smash, you don't have to play like that. You can beat the game without ever knowing what an EV is.
Both of these games have extended metagames, which people have dedicated enormous amounts of time to figuring out. The guys who play these things in that way play at another level(competitive smash is itemless[yes you have that option] 1v1 in a stage like Final Destination). I'm not like that, I play Smash as a party game, and I don't really play Pokemon.
I tried to track down a Virtual Fighter board that's anything like Smash Boards(there are boards, and they do character comparisons, but nothing like those freaks on Smash Boards do), and I couldn't. Same for Soul Calibur and Tekken. These gamers are not hardcore, they aren't obsessed. If any of those games qualify, so does Smash.
Man, I'm with you, I totally prefer to play refined rip-off of a Mario 64 rehash starring an anthropomorphic critter with guns #6, now with better graphics, too.
The point being that in that department, no one else has anything either unless you're shallow enough to only care about the window dressing that surrounds the gameplay.
There's actually a bar here in Boston that does this... Every Tuesday night is Wii night at the Wonder Bar. You put down a $40 deposit for the remote.
I haven't gone in(I noticed it the other week while on the way somewhere else), so I can't comment on how successful it is.
They still haven't shown me any games that compel me to purchase one. There's a bunch of "well that looks cool, if I owned a PS3" but nothing to motivate me to go out and spend $500+tax on one. Maybe, like the 360, one of my roommates will be compelled to pick one up. Even Metal Gear I can wait on the system hitting $300 and the game going budget/cross platform for.
I will own a PS3 eventually(only console of a generation I *haven't* owned is an original XBox), and I plan on picking up the titles that fit that criteria as I see them, but... meh.
Hmm? Oh, by those standards there's very little original content on the Wii either, and nothing truly original once you take in the entire history of gaming. There's a lot of novelty in regards to home consoles though, some from the control scheme, and some just because it either hasn't been done outside a niche title in a long time, or it's never been on a home console before. It's just fucking ridiculous to praise the stuff Sony puts out as original and then call Nintendo, who in some cases ORIGINATED the genre Sony is exploiting unoriginal simply because the SPRITES(not 2D so not sprites, but you get the idea) have changed. It's like the people that refused to give the time of day to, or play Windwaker, not because of the one glaring flaw it had with the Triforce hunt, not because they don't like the genre, but because it was cell-shaded.
But sure, here we go!
Content you could argue as original:
Zack & Wiki - Myst style adventure game with pointer control. I can't recall one of these ever hitting a console before.
Trauma Center - The board game Operation taken to an extreme. DS Remake.
Wii Fit - There have been games with this general idea before, but not with the stressing of the fitness component for quite a while. This is the next Wii Sports and it's going to be fucking HUGE.
Wii Sports - The control scheme made this utterly unique when it came out, short of some arcade games.
Elebits - FPS centered entirely around a gravity gun. Not really completely new, but a bit novel.
My Word Coach - Puzzle game... but... that's sorta not right... define this!
Big Brain Academy - Puzzle game, but also a party game... with an odd concept. DS Remake.
NiGHTS - It's a sequel, but the original didn't really fit anywhere, and it hasn't been seen since the Saturn.
Dragon Quest Swords - There was a standalone like this (DQ Kenshen), and there have been some arcade games similar, but nothing really on a console.
Super Paper Mario - Platformer RPG. That's a new twist on the RPG(although Zelda 2 did have RPG elements...), and the 2D/3D gameplay gimmick isn't something I can recall on a console before.
And now,
Genre Representation:
FPS - Medal of Honor: Vanguard, Call of Duty 3, FarCry: Vengeance, Red Steel, Elebits, Metroid Prime 3(Aug 27)
Light Gun Shooter - RE: Umbrella Chronicles(November), Ghost Squad(Q4)
Platformer - Mario Galaxy(Nov 12), Dewy's Adventure (TBA), Ton of VC representation of the classics.
Action - PoP Rival Swords, Spiderman, Tomb Raider Anniversary (Nov)
Party Game - Wii Sports, Warioware, Mario Party 8, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2(Fall)
Action Adventure - LoZ: Twilight Princess
Action RPG - Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
RPG - Super Paper Mario
Sandbox - Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Scarface
Turn-Based Strategy - Fire Emblem (Nov 5)
Fighter - Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Smash Bros Brawl(Nov 12)
Stealth - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - Double Agent
3rd Person Shooter - RE4
Sports - Madden '07, Tiger Woods '07, etc. All of EAs '08 stuff is coming.
Wrastling - WWE (November)
Arcade Sports - The Bigs, Mario Strikers, Mario & Sonic @ the Olympics
Arcade Racer - Excite Truck, Need for Speed, Sonic falls in here probably
3D Shooter(flight) - Blazing Angels
Shooter(Traditional) - Ton of VC stuff.
Arcade Shooter - Heatseeker
Adventure - Zack & Wiki (Oct)
Music/Rhythm - Guitar Hero 3(Fall, although to be honest, we're all getting this for the PS2), Boogie(Nov), Dance Dance Revolution(TBA)
Puzzle - Big Brain Academy, Puzzle Quest(Fall)
Murder Simulator - Manhunt 2(eventually)
I left off a bunch of stuff that will probably be shown at E3, has an announced release date not for this year, or I just plain forgot(and I left off things that aren't out as much as possible). There are very few genres not covered, and quite a few bits of crap in there, but the coverage is great. You're only really missing traditional JRPGs and Realistic Racers.
You were right, that was fun.
So I take it then that Han shoots first in your world? Since SDTV content is painful, and Greedo only shoots first in SD.
I'm really glad your kind does not matter.
I'm going to guess that english isn't your first language...
Those aren't original games. The window dressing is different, but that doesn't matter. I didn't even comment on their quality, apart from Drake, which looks fucking awful.
Also, the only RPG out for the PS3 right now is Oblivion... FF won't hit til 2009, Folklore probably not until next year, and White Knight Story, god only knows... and Godfather and Madden play way better on the Wii than on the other systems...
Ohhhh kkkkayyyy....
and
are your friends... they won't hurt you.
None of those Sony games you mentioned are either original or stellar. Most of them are the same old thing with a new coat of paint. Lair is Rogue Squadron w/o the star wars license, and some arguably bad design decisions. Warhawk, I have no idea what genre it's even in anymore. Isn't it a BF2142 clone now? Resistance is the epitome of the cliche shooter. Heavenly Sword? God of War with a girl... it may be Genji-level bad or it could be good. Drake looks like shit. And most of these aren't even from their "core" development teams... Resistance/Drake aren't internal... Lair is Factor 5....
The 360 is also full of this. They're both ramping up to have a lot of depth in certain genres, but not a lot of bredth across genres. The Wii currently has more quality RPG exclusives then either for example(although Eternal Sonata and Blue Dragon are coming out for the 360 soon, which will change that).
Pretty much no matter what genre you're into, Nintendo has you covered, right now, or will have you covered by the end of the year(even odd stuff like myst-esque adventure games, and the old sim-city style sim). They have just about everything covered, and a bunch of whacky stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere. The settings / coat of paint for their first parties is in most cases familiar, but the core gameplay is good and in most cases different. Bitching about mascot games is bitching about the immaterial. Mario Galaxy wouldn't play any better if you swapped Mario with a "to the extreme!" anthropomorphic weasel and added a gun and teen-angst story in...
Now, yea, not all of the games are good -> great... but complaining about genre coverage in a general sense just doesn't make sense... If you're into the genres the 360/PS3 have and are covering really well, then yea, it's disappointing... you can't satisfy a genre addiction on the Wii right now... but there's less missing from it's schedule than either of its competitors.
Oh, right, they strong-armed the retail and wholesale channels to keep prices at whatever level they wanted to. You don't need to do that anymore though, since you can contractually set minimum pricing due to a recent SCOTUS decision.
Weren't they even more devious though, and it was something like $20 in Nintendo cash?
This is like playing a game of, "hey, remember the 80s?"
It's all old stuff. You can read most of it in Game Over if you're inclined.
Basically, Nintendo was extremely strong-armed with third party developers during the NES days. You could only publish so many games a year(hence Contra being released as an ULTRA title), and you couldn't publish for other platforms like the Master system. They tried, unsuccessfully to crack down on unlicensed titles via their lockout chip, which was cloned by tengen(among others) and lost the resulting court case. That's also the source for the Nintendo seal of quality(all it really meant then was that a developer had paid the licensing fees, followed the rules, and the cart had a 10NES lockout chip).
They kept this up(being controlling in regards to third parties) to a certain extent until Yamauchi handed the reins over to Igawa.
Additionally, they strong-armed retailers, and to some extent manipulated the software market by having a hard lock on cartridge production.
Also, their Nintendo Authorized Repair Center thing(the US NES had a tendency to break because of the way it loaded, putting stress on the contacts) was a little bit of a scam.
Oh, and censored the original Mortal Kombat for the SNES, before the ESRB came into existance. I think that about covers it all.