You can pick up PSone games on the PSN store for 5.99. And yes they DO have sales just like steam. Just booted up the PS3 and checking out the weekly deals:
console games sale prices come nowhere near Steam sale prices, why even argue
Dungeon Hunter Alliance (Online PS3 Diablo clone similar to the PS2 Snowblind engine games): 99 cents
Blokus 99 cents
Earthworm Jim HD 99 cents
Eufloria 99 cents
But to be blunt, you argument is why some developers pay much attention to PC ports, since from what they see PC gamers are either:
Cheapskates in the "first world" unwilling to pay full price for a game even if they've spend 1500 dollars on their gaming rig.
Pirates in the "second world" and "third world" nations who don't want to pay for anything.
The difference being that a console's hood is welded shut.
And for good reason. Even the worst games today have a higher level of quality than all the game-clone crap/shovelweare pushed out during the 2600 era that helped cause the crash of 84.
This product will be jumping into the arena with a tried and true digital distribution system already in place, which is one of the bigger remaining speed bumps in the console market.
The PSN Store for PS3's and BBN on Japanese PS2's, Xbox Marketplace, and Wii Shop want their argument back.
For the longest period of time, I couldn't understand why MS / Sony shipped their consoles with such tiny HDs.
Price? And the fact that you can't beat the bandwidth of a truck full of blu-rays. The hard drive was originally intended to be used for media, game caches and saves, and relatively small downloadable titles, not downloadable versions of massive mega gigabyte full size games that would normally be on disc. The hard drives are also upgradeable. Current model PS3's ship with bigger hard drives than launch models did..... much bigger. The smallest hard drive shipped with a PS3 in the US is now 250GB, there is also a 500GB model. They do a 12GB model for PAL territory, don't know why.
We've certainly seen a rather dramatic shift on the mobile side, with 'free-as-in-you-already-own-one' cellphones and cheap downloadable games striking a certain amount of fear in the hearts of dedicated mobile console makers. Notably, they haven't done this by being objectively better(if anything, pure touchscreen gaming is sort of mediocre, and a lot of cellphone games are worth all 99 cents they cost); but they sure are convenient.
The Cell phone gaming market is not the same market as say the PSP/Vita gaming market. The people buying phone games are the people who don't own PSP's, Vita's or carry their DS's around with them.
Of the last console generation I owned a PS2 and a Xbox360, I owned one game on each before the PS2 became a glorified DVD player (which is sucked at) but the Xbox fared better, chipped and running XBMC it served as a media centre until 2010, nether were useful gaming machines as any games released on them that I wanted to play came out on the PC anyway.
If you only bought one game for each, why did you buy them in the first place if you consider the PC superior and consider yourself a PC gamer. And since you only bought one game, perhaps you don't know the PS2 and it's games very well. Sitting next on the shelf to my 24 PS3 disc based games I have 34 PS2 games, and MORE PS2 games in boxes not on that shelf. Some PSone games too, about 15 of those, and more stored away.
LoL, people like the Xbox 360 graphics, that's still standard def with no AA.
What? There are 360 games that output 1080P! And I know there's 360 games with AA...hell there's PS2 games that have it. The 360 is standard def only when hooked to an SDTV.
40% of their sales came after the price drop in their respective units. People want cheaper consoles for casual gaming,
Correlation does not equal causation, because perhaps people waited to buy a cheaper 360/PS3 and then played Oblivion, Fable, or Skyrim on it.
Anyone who thinks that console and mobile gaming don't occupy the same market is delusional.
They're not the same market. Tablet owners play Angry Birds while riding the bus or waiting at the doctors office. console owners are playing Street Figher X Tekken, CoD, X-Com, DCUO, or Skyrim. Totally different markets.
I've played Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 on the PC and the PS3. Same game (mostly), totally different user experience, because of the way the interface to the player is built/designed. Hated it on the PS3, love it on the PC; so IMO the RTS is one genre that is built for a PC kind of device.
Does RA3 on the PS3 have USB mouse support? The old PSone RTS's always did have PSone mouse support.
They are? Perhaps the Wii is, but the 360 and PS3 aren't. You even call those two "pc pretenders" and they play games that are also on the PC.
The Wii outsold the Xbox and Playstation 2:1 until they both dropped their prices to cater for the casual market.
The Wii outsold the PS3 and 360 because Nintendo was selling consoles to people like "grandmothers" that didn't normally buy them. The wii was selling to a totally different market than the PS3 and 360 were. And the 360/PS3 price drop was because they were able to make the hardware at lower cost, not just to sell the things to Wii owners.
The average console player plays Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Rock Band and the like.
On the Wii, perhaps but the best selling PC game is the Sims series...not some turn-based hex strategy game.
Gran Turismo on the PS3 which is really an arcade game.
Nope, it's a simulation a different "style" of simulation than the PC racers but still a simulation. In fact GT2 came with TWO discs, one for the "arcade mode" which no one used and the other "simulation" mode which is the one people played.
However Nintendo proved that causal was where the money was in consoles.
No they didn't because as they found out, they sold lots of Wii's but not a lot of games. There are people with wii's whose only games are Wii Sports and perhaps Wii Sports 2 and Wii Fit, and that's it. Your average PS3/360 owner has more games. I have 24 disc based PS3 games, and other games as digital downloads (DCUO, Home, FreeRealms, Flower, Little Big Planet, etc etc).
powerful consoles like the Turbo Grafx and 3DO were beaten by less powerful consoles because that was what the market wanted
Ha ha, no. The TG16 was beat because of GAMES selection. It was also in some less capable than a SNES. The 3DO while originally competing with the likes of th e SNES and Genesis was hurt by the lack of third party support, high price and eventually was curbstomped by the Saturn and PSone. which are superior to it AND cheaper. The early Saturn and PSone libraries had several ports from the 3DO, the famous 3DO version of Road Rash for example. Return Fire was another game that found new life on the PSone. The PSone is essentially the 3DO "done right"
Consoles are about casual, accessable games, this is the core of the console market.
They are? I must be imagining games like Final Fantasy, Might and Magic, Dragon Quest, Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Carnage Heart, the original X-Com, EQOA, FFXI, DCUO, Disgaea, Skyrim, Falout 3/New Vegas.
This is why there still isn't a successful strategy game on consoles.
What are you talking about, there were such things years ago, but being a PC gamer you just didn't know or hear about them.
To make truely in depth games (I refuse to call them "hardcore") you need a platform that is extensible, not a limited platform.
Define "in depth". Which is funny because you mentioned DOOM, which is a PC game that got more "casual gamers" playing PC games. pre-doom the PC game market was more RPG, flight sim, adventure game, turn-based hex game centric. DOOM is more like an arcade game than anything else.
BTW, the NeoGeo and Turbo Grafx were so good that the companies who made them no longer exist.
They WERE sucessful...in Japan...the US is not the only market. SNK and NEC are still around, though they don't make console hardware.
Consoles depend on the casual gamer,
I think your ideas of what console gaming are were set back in 1985 or something.
Any console DRM isn't bandwidth intensive.....but the built in audio chat the consoles and most games have is for certain. Besides, the PS3, 360, and Wii don't even have connections for phone lines, only wireless and/or ethernet. The PS2 did, but I think only a few games support playing over dialup, two being MMORPG's without voice chat. I think the 2002 version of THPS does too, (Has built in support for USB modems AND supports the Network Adapter)
"Why the hell do gamepads still need a Select and Start button?"
Two more buttons. They're often used for pause and options/save. And also backwards compatibility. The PSone had them because it was originally designed as an SNES addon and PSone games used them...so the PS2 had to have them and PS2 games use them too, and so on with the PS3.
This is really bad for Adobe, too, as there are no free, _usable_ tools for creating PDFs.
Could you define what you mean by that? On Linux I creating PDF's is a built in option with some software and with those that don't have an export to PDF option, there's always cups-pdf which leets you print to pdf right from the print dialog.
Even on windows there's free "PDF printers" one can install.
Until Sony's change of heart, after which system updates deleted Other OS.
That's not quite the right way to say it. The firmware update is not forced, you can decline it, in fact the firmware update requires you to confirm the update TWICE if you've got an OtherOS capable system, and keep OtherOS. You'll lose access to PSN and games that require more recent firmware, but that's the tradeoff.
That's right, though the "GameOS" does use open source code. Take a look at the license information in a PS3's System>About Playstation 3
You'll see mentions of cairo, webkit, NetBSD, FreeBSD, libungif (Including Eric S. Raymond's name), expat, Freetype2, libxml2, etc. You'll even see Theo de Raadt's name!
I've seen Ogg notices in game manuals too I think.
Sony and Nintendo seek only established studios with "financial stability" and "relevant video game industry experience".
True, because, bluntly put, they don't want a bunch of wannabe game developers making a ton of shovelware tetris/bejeweled/sokoban clones.
So that's why you "pay your dues" if you want to do a console game. If you're not willing or capable of doing so...you'll have to live with the reality of how things are.
Several games for Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 required a RAM expansion cartridge.
Several is an exaggeration, in the N64's case it is "THREE". DK64, Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask. in other words, games requiring expansions are niche cases which is why the meme is: console hardware expansions fail in the market"
Some genres, such as cooperative platformers, fighting games, and party games, just work better on a big screen with real-life friends in person than on a desk with strangers hundreds of miles away.
They do? Maybe for 10 year olds playing games after school with their babysitter, or family dragging out the wii once or twice a year at get togethers and having some laughs while flailing around...but for eveyrone else.... you CAN play those games over the network.
I know you're still stuck in that "Babysitter with a couple of kids with a SNES connected to an SDTV" mindset but it's time to grow up. Playing games with online friends can be every bit as fun as doing so with non-online friends. Not just PC-centric games but other games as well.
Piston will have backward compatibility with many popular titles in the Steam library,
41 is not "many" taking into account how many games are on Steam.
but Xbox 360's original Xbox emulator didn't cover the vast majority of original Xbox games either.
True, but CECH(A/B/E) Model PS3's play ALL PS2 games in addition to ALL PSone games. This steambox aint gonna have much of a library because Steam is just a delivery system, not a platform. The games are developed by other companies, do you think Turbine is going to go to the trouble of porting LOTRO, or Perfect World port STO, or CCP port EVE? If they haven't to the PS3 or 360, then they sure aren't going to port to Linux because the market is so small.
I don't know whether it'll do Netflix and the like, but that'd be a plus.
There is no Linux Netflix client, it is not likely to ever happen.
Slashdot Mirror
You do know that PS3 hard drives are user replaceable and are standard 2.5" SATA drives don't you?
You can pick up PSone games on the PSN store for 5.99. And yes they DO have sales just like steam. Just booted up the PS3 and checking out the weekly deals:
console games sale prices come nowhere near Steam sale prices, why even argue
Dungeon Hunter Alliance (Online PS3 Diablo clone similar to the PS2 Snowblind engine games): 99 cents
Blokus 99 cents
Earthworm Jim HD 99 cents
Eufloria 99 cents
But to be blunt, you argument is why some developers pay much attention to PC ports, since from what they see PC gamers are either:
Cheapskates in the "first world" unwilling to pay full price for a game even if they've spend 1500 dollars on their gaming rig.
Pirates in the "second world" and "third world" nations who don't want to pay for anything.
The difference being that a console's hood is welded shut.
And for good reason. Even the worst games today have a higher level of quality than all the game-clone crap/shovelweare pushed out during the 2600 era that helped cause the crash of 84.
This product will be jumping into the arena with a tried and true digital distribution system already in place, which is one of the bigger remaining speed bumps in the console market.
The PSN Store for PS3's and BBN on Japanese PS2's, Xbox Marketplace, and Wii Shop want their argument back.
Valve isn't big enough to pay a large number of developers to do native Linux ports.
For the longest period of time, I couldn't understand why MS / Sony shipped their consoles with such tiny HDs.
Price? And the fact that you can't beat the bandwidth of a truck full of blu-rays. The hard drive was originally intended to be used for media, game caches and saves, and relatively small downloadable titles, not downloadable versions of massive mega gigabyte full size games that would normally be on disc. The hard drives are also upgradeable. Current model PS3's ship with bigger hard drives than launch models did..... much bigger. The smallest hard drive shipped with a PS3 in the US is now 250GB, there is also a 500GB model. They do a 12GB model for PAL territory, don't know why.
We've certainly seen a rather dramatic shift on the mobile side, with 'free-as-in-you-already-own-one' cellphones and cheap downloadable games striking a certain amount of fear in the hearts of dedicated mobile console makers. Notably, they haven't done this by being objectively better(if anything, pure touchscreen gaming is sort of mediocre, and a lot of cellphone games are worth all 99 cents they cost); but they sure are convenient.
The Cell phone gaming market is not the same market as say the PSP/Vita gaming market. The people buying phone games are the people who don't own PSP's, Vita's or carry their DS's around with them.
rxvt on a PS2/PS3, now that was a console on a console. (Yes, I've actually done it)
How? Besides, I haven't seen any Android games that can match the quality of what the 3DS and PSP can do, let alone the Vita.
Of the last console generation I owned a PS2 and a Xbox360, I owned one game on each before the PS2 became a glorified DVD player (which is sucked at) but the Xbox fared better, chipped and running XBMC it served as a media centre until 2010, nether were useful gaming machines as any games released on them that I wanted to play came out on the PC anyway.
If you only bought one game for each, why did you buy them in the first place if you consider the PC superior and consider yourself a PC gamer. And since you only bought one game, perhaps you don't know the PS2 and it's games very well. Sitting next on the shelf to my 24 PS3 disc based games I have 34 PS2 games, and MORE PS2 games in boxes not on that shelf. Some PSone games too, about 15 of those, and more stored away.
LoL, people like the Xbox 360 graphics, that's still standard def with no AA.
What? There are 360 games that output 1080P! And I know there's 360 games with AA...hell there's PS2 games that have it.
The 360 is standard def only when hooked to an SDTV.
40% of their sales came after the price drop in their respective units. People want cheaper consoles for casual gaming,
Correlation does not equal causation, because perhaps people waited to buy a cheaper 360/PS3 and then played Oblivion, Fable, or Skyrim on it.
Anyone who thinks that console and mobile gaming don't occupy the same market is delusional.
They're not the same market. Tablet owners play Angry Birds while riding the bus or waiting at the doctors office. console owners are playing Street Figher X Tekken, CoD, X-Com, DCUO, or Skyrim. Totally different markets.
I've played Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 on the PC and the PS3. Same game (mostly), totally different user experience, because of the way the interface to the player is built/designed. Hated it on the PS3, love it on the PC; so IMO the RTS is one genre that is built for a PC kind of device.
Does RA3 on the PS3 have USB mouse support? The old PSone RTS's always did have PSone mouse support.
Consoles are primarily played by casual players.
They are? Perhaps the Wii is, but the 360 and PS3 aren't. You even call those two "pc pretenders" and they play games that are also on the PC.
The Wii outsold the Xbox and Playstation 2:1 until they both dropped their prices to cater for the casual market.
The Wii outsold the PS3 and 360 because Nintendo was selling consoles to people like "grandmothers" that didn't normally buy them. The wii was selling to a totally different market than the PS3 and 360 were. And the 360/PS3 price drop was because they were able to make the hardware at lower cost, not just to sell the things to Wii owners.
The average console player plays Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Rock Band and the like.
On the Wii, perhaps but the best selling PC game is the Sims series...not some turn-based hex strategy game.
Gran Turismo on the PS3 which is really an arcade game.
Nope, it's a simulation a different "style" of simulation than the PC racers but still a simulation. In fact GT2 came with TWO discs, one for the "arcade mode" which no one used and the other "simulation" mode which is the one people played.
However Nintendo proved that causal was where the money was in consoles.
No they didn't because as they found out, they sold lots of Wii's but not a lot of games. There are people with wii's whose only games are Wii Sports and perhaps Wii Sports 2 and Wii Fit, and that's it. Your average PS3/360 owner has more games. I have 24 disc based PS3 games, and other games as digital downloads (DCUO, Home, FreeRealms, Flower, Little Big Planet, etc etc).
powerful consoles like the Turbo Grafx and 3DO were beaten by less powerful consoles because that was what the market wanted
Ha ha, no. The TG16 was beat because of GAMES selection. It was also in some less capable than a SNES. The 3DO while originally competing with the likes of th e SNES and Genesis was hurt by the lack of third party support, high price and eventually was curbstomped by the Saturn and PSone. which are superior to it AND cheaper. The early Saturn and PSone libraries had several ports from the 3DO, the famous 3DO version of Road Rash for example. Return Fire was another game that found new life on the PSone. The PSone is essentially the 3DO "done right"
Consoles are about casual, accessable games, this is the core of the console market.
They are? I must be imagining games like Final Fantasy, Might and Magic, Dragon Quest, Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Carnage Heart, the original X-Com, EQOA, FFXI, DCUO, Disgaea, Skyrim, Falout 3/New Vegas.
This is why there still isn't a successful strategy game on consoles.
What are you talking about, there were such things years ago, but being a PC gamer you just didn't know or hear about them.
To make truely in depth games (I refuse to call them "hardcore") you need a platform that is extensible, not a limited platform.
Define "in depth". Which is funny because you mentioned DOOM, which is a PC game that got more "casual gamers" playing PC games. pre-doom the PC game market was more RPG, flight sim, adventure game, turn-based hex game centric. DOOM is more like an arcade game than anything else.
BTW, the NeoGeo and Turbo Grafx were so good that the companies who made them no longer exist.
They WERE sucessful...in Japan...the US is not the only market. SNK and NEC are still around, though they don't make console hardware.
Consoles depend on the casual gamer,
I think your ideas of what console gaming are were set back in 1985 or something.
I have them but I posted already. The thought on my mind was:
"That deserves a +5 funny at least, but you know that might really be a workable way of testing if there's actually precognitive people out there"
But then I realized I had read a bit too much sci-fi.
Any console DRM isn't bandwidth intensive.....but the built in audio chat the consoles and most games have is for certain. Besides, the PS3, 360, and Wii don't even have connections for phone lines, only wireless and/or ethernet. The PS2 did, but I think only a few games support playing over dialup, two being MMORPG's without voice chat. I think the 2002 version of THPS does too, (Has built in support for USB modems AND supports the Network Adapter)
"Why the hell do gamepads still need a Select and Start button?"
Two more buttons. They're often used for pause and options/save. And also backwards compatibility. The PSone had them because it was originally designed as an SNES addon and PSone games used them...so the PS2 had to have them and PS2 games use them too, and so on with the PS3.
This is really bad for Adobe, too, as there are no free, _usable_ tools for creating PDFs.
Could you define what you mean by that? On Linux I creating PDF's is a built in option with some software and with those that don't have an export to PDF option, there's always cups-pdf which leets you print to pdf right from the print dialog.
Even on windows there's free "PDF printers" one can install.
Until Sony's change of heart, after which system updates deleted Other OS.
That's not quite the right way to say it. The firmware update is not forced, you can decline it, in fact the firmware update requires you to confirm the update TWICE if you've got an OtherOS capable system, and keep OtherOS. You'll lose access to PSN and games that require more recent firmware, but that's the tradeoff.
The base OS is custom, and not Linux.
That's right, though the "GameOS" does use open source code. Take a look at the license information in a PS3's System>About Playstation 3
You'll see mentions of cairo, webkit, NetBSD, FreeBSD, libungif (Including Eric S. Raymond's name), expat, Freetype2, libxml2, etc. You'll even see Theo de Raadt's name!
I've seen Ogg notices in game manuals too I think.
Sony and Nintendo seek only established studios with "financial stability" and "relevant video game industry experience".
True, because, bluntly put, they don't want a bunch of wannabe game developers making a ton of shovelware tetris/bejeweled/sokoban clones.
So that's why you "pay your dues" if you want to do a console game. If you're not willing or capable of doing so...you'll have to live with the reality of how things are.
Several games for Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 required a RAM expansion cartridge.
Several is an exaggeration, in the N64's case it is "THREE". DK64, Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask. in other words, games requiring expansions are niche cases which is why the meme is: console hardware expansions fail in the market"
Some genres, such as cooperative platformers, fighting games, and party games, just work better on a big screen with real-life friends in person than on a desk with strangers hundreds of miles away.
They do? Maybe for 10 year olds playing games after school with their babysitter, or family dragging out the wii once or twice a year at get togethers and having some laughs while flailing around...but for eveyrone else.... you CAN play those games over the network.
I know you're still stuck in that "Babysitter with a couple of kids with a SNES connected to an SDTV" mindset but it's time to grow up. Playing games with online friends can be every bit as fun as doing so with non-online friends. Not just PC-centric games but other games as well.
I found instructions on how to get it to work on Fedora (involving alien)
Piston will have backward compatibility with many popular titles in the Steam library,
41 is not "many" taking into account how many games are on Steam.
but Xbox 360's original Xbox emulator didn't cover the vast majority of original Xbox games either.
True, but CECH(A/B/E) Model PS3's play ALL PS2 games in addition to ALL PSone games. This steambox aint gonna have much of a library because Steam is just a delivery system, not a platform. The games are developed by other companies, do you think Turbine is going to go to the trouble of porting LOTRO, or Perfect World port STO, or CCP port EVE? If they haven't to the PS3 or 360, then they sure aren't going to port to Linux because the market is so small.
I don't know whether it'll do Netflix and the like, but that'd be a plus.
There is no Linux Netflix client, it is not likely to ever happen.