Fewer hassles, less expensive over the long run, lots games in genre's other than FPS, RTS or MMORPG, and although consoles do have DRM it's transparent to the user. Although mods have their appeal, they also reduce the # of games people buy, thus reducing developer income, we've all read of folks who have been playing CounterStrike+Mods to the exclusion of all else (and not buying games) for the past 8 years or so. There's no incentive to make new games if devs know some broke eastern european geek with a lot of time on his hands who pirated the game in the first place is going to be doing mods and give them away so that everybody is going to be playing the same game for 5 years or more.
But how many games do they have? It's fine that the casual gamers and granny gamers own Wii's but for a lot of those folks, they use it like one of those 5 old arcade games in a joystick things. It's essentially a box that plays Wii sports (or perhaps Wii Fit for those thirtysomething/fortysomething soccer moms who use it instead of Yoga/Pilates DVD's) and not much more. In this household the PS3 is used more hours, because it is more versatile, video/music/games/GameOS web browser good enough for Hulu/Linux)
Do you know what I tell people? "Don't play commercial big publisher/big dev house games on PC's, it's a sucker's game. You're better off going console. If you want to play some obscure indie game or some old Flight sim of the type the Clancy-istas or Dale Brown-ites go gaga over, or Nethack, fine. But don't play off the shelf games on PC's."
There are a few games that I think work very well as a console port. My favorite example is Diablo, which IMHO plays better (and faster) on the PS1 than the PC. I am still miffed that Orange Box on the PS3 does not have mouse support (at least in Single Player and Portal) even though PS2 port of Half-Life 1 does. Even though I loathe WASD as a control scheme for movement, I like mouse aiming and given the choice I'll use it in a console game. Did it in the PS1 ports of Quake II and Alien Resurrection, did it again in Half Life and Deux Ex for the PS2.
The second issue is one of attention span, console games are designed for shorter attention spans on average, so they tend to be simpler then PC games.
They are? That might have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, but not these days or even 10 years ago. There are some pretty looooong and HUGE console games out there, even back in the NES days many games simply could not be beat in one sitting. You'd have to save, or get a password save, or simply pause. And considering how FPS's and RTS's replaced all those Avalon Hill and SSI wargames and RPG's as the big genre's (changing demographics did that by itself) I don't think PC gamers have any longer attention spans than console gamers, if they ever did considering how many arcade ports there were for the C64.
I installed Linux on my PS3 within the same day as I purchased it. Makes a fine little web browsing/emailing/IMing/text editing/Nethack playing/GIMP using machine.
You shouldn't blame the consoles themselves for Deus Ex 2, blame the original Xbox for not including USB ports, because the PS2 port of the original Deus Ex game had mouse and keyboard support. (though using a hybrid method of controlling movement with the analog stick on the Dual Shock and aiming with the mouse works best)
I also make a firm distinction between "dumbed down" and "altered and simplified for ease of use". For UI, simpler is better. UI shouldn't be complex for complexity's sake and shouldn't get in the way of actually enjoying the game.
Not completely locked. Sony doesn't care what you do with your PS2 or PS3 as long as you do it under Linux under a run-time environment/hypervisor. I'm glad consoles are mostly locked, it keeps crappy cheapo eastern European dev houses from releasing all their Myst clones and Diablo clones with bad production values on them.
The death of pc gaming won't be due to piracy but the ever increasing dumbing down of titles
You'll have to define dumbing down for me. Do you mean gameplay or more likely, just control changes.
and the half-assed job of porting shitty console titles to PC because the publishers want to cater to the retard masses who buy their games
When you work you want to get paid, right? You don't want developers to get paid for their work?
instead of the smart adults who want to play games such as Deus Ex and System Shock 2.
I must have imagined playing Deus Ex on my PS2.
A port of the game, entitled Deus Ex: The Conspiracy, was also released for the PlayStation 2, on March 25, 2002. Along with pre-rendered introductory and ending cinematics which replaced the original versions, it features a streamlined interface with auto aim, and improved graphics and motion captured character models. Some levels were changed and chopped down into smaller areas separated by load-screens, due to the memory limitations of the PlayStation 2.
It's a grand idea, and would be very cool, but I think that little niche will stay on computers only.
I agree, but I wonder why there isn't someone trying to do games like those on the consoles, the PS2 and PS3 do have those wonderful USB ports. Though the funny thing is, there was more turn based stuff in the early days of the PS1. If memory serves me well, X-Com and Panzer General both came out soon after the PSone's launch. I think Sony must have encouraged a few PC developer houses to port a few games to the PS1 to show what it could do, but then few other PC game houses signed on.
I'm level 27 in Oblivion and have yet to see an average bandit with magical stuff, They carry glass (and some carry daedric) which may "look" like it's glowing but isn't. It's the quest enemies, (and quest rewards) that have provided me with magic stuff. I got my first magic item with the Thuronir quest series, the final boss of that one carries a magic weapon. My first night eye item was a placed one, the Fin Gleam, which I actively searched for. I didn't see any other armor pieces with Night Eye till level 26! I've not seen any Chameleon items at all. My first +Str items were rings I enchanted myself.
I can't ever go to consoles as consoles don't run the games I like well. (Decent race sims, turn based strategy games like Gal Civ II, sports sims like Front Office Football etc...)
Maybe if folks like you bought consoles and bought the very few turn based simulation type games out for them, they might make more of them....maybe.
More likely they're just being lazy bums, because the PS3 version of Oblivion sold enough to reach "Greatest Hit" status which requires sales of at least 500000 copies. Oblivion for PS3 also has Shivering Isles available as DLC (for those who buy the original release rather than the GOTY edition).
Someone had told me the GameOS supports the "plug and play" network media stuff that Microsoft and other vendors (including Myth TV?) offer. Does it? If so, what's the best the PS3 can do "off the shelf" ?
That might show how it runs for those worried about system requirements, but probably wouldn't be able represent the diversity of gameplay in a lot of games (like say, Oblivion and Fallout 3) for those wondering more about how it plays.
For my sake, I became interested in Oblivion after reading about it, but only became sure that I wanted to own it after playing it for a goodly period of time on an acquaintances Xbox360.
As a nerdy little guy the worst treatment I got was in 5th and 6th grades and NOT at the hands of the "top jock" group. It was those who might have wanted to be "top jocks" but weren't quite good enough to make it. It got toned down in 7th and 8th grades, in 8th grade a new kid (who was hispanic in almost 100% white rural school) trying to find his niche decided to pick on me. It didn't last long after I got mad enough to push him back and asked him why the heck he was picking on me since I wasn't one of the ones that was picking on him and that if he kept it up I'd break his fucking arms. (he was a kind of a jock so didn't want to lose the use of them for sports)
A couple of months in my freshman year of high school I was subject to some shit, but that was due to others feeling inadequate themselves. That ended and then I never had a problem. I was on good terms with jocks mostly, we didn't hang out or anything but I respected their skills they respected mine. There were jocks on the "Scholastic Bowl" team as well.
While OtherOS on the PS3 has video limitations, GameOS doesn't. So what one could do is use Linux on the PS3 to get the files and store them on an external FAT32 drive (readable in both Linux and GameOS) one ps3-boot-game-os later and you're good to watch them. GameOS is also DLNA compliant and there's always the video for rental and sale on the Playstation Network store.
but it seems to me that a few years ago, most games had downloadable demos to try. I've been noticing in the last 2 or 3 years that more and more games are being released with no demos.
It's the age of the DVD filling game, it was easier for companies to do demos when they could represent gameplay in 200MB or less, and it takes time that many developers would rather devote to the game.
Here's a Peter Molyneux quote on the matter:
Speaking at Microsoft's Spring Showcase event in San Francisco Molyneux said, "There's no plan for a demo at the moment. Demos are probably the trickiest and hardest things to design, because there are probably 60- or 70- odd features we introduce to the player, and it takes us about ten to 15 hours to introduce all those.
"Trying to squeeze some of those down into a demo is really hard, if not impossible," he observed. "So I would vote not to do a demo."
And here's another from Clint Hocking of Ubisoft in regards to Far Cry 2:
"One reason is, even if we were to give out what you played today - even if we put invisible walls around it and said, here's the demo, you can go anywhere you like inside these walls and play it how you want - that's potentially right there eight-to-ten hours of gameplay," said Hocking.
"I don't know too many people who are willing to give away a 12-hour game for free"
There's also another option for demo-ing Fallout 3, try the PS3 or Xbox360 version, because I highly doubt there's going to be a demo. Fallout 3 uses the same engine Oblivion does and is a very "open ended go anywhere" game and it might be difficult for Bethesda to do a good demo that would represent the variety of gameplay in a reasonably small enough file size to download. Oblivion itself doesn't have a demo either.
You might remember those 2-page magazine ads for the game. On one page there's Mog surrounded by bosses with a caption that says something like "It doesn't seem fair." and then the next page, shows Mog surrounded by smoking Boss remains.
Slashdot Mirror
Fewer hassles, less expensive over the long run, lots games in genre's other than FPS, RTS or MMORPG, and although consoles do have DRM it's transparent to the user. Although mods have their appeal, they also reduce the # of games people buy, thus reducing developer income, we've all read of folks who have been playing CounterStrike+Mods to the exclusion of all else (and not buying games) for the past 8 years or so. There's no incentive to make new games if devs know some broke eastern european geek with a lot of time on his hands who pirated the game in the first place is going to be doing mods and give them away so that everybody is going to be playing the same game for 5 years or more.
Don't forget all those PS2's that Sony is still selling...that thing just won't DIE.
But how many games do they have? It's fine that the casual gamers and granny gamers own Wii's but for a lot of those folks, they use it like one of those 5 old arcade games in a joystick things. It's essentially a box that plays Wii sports (or perhaps Wii Fit for those thirtysomething/fortysomething soccer moms who use it instead of Yoga/Pilates DVD's) and not much more. In this household the PS3 is used more hours, because it is more versatile, video/music/games/GameOS web browser good enough for Hulu/Linux)
Do you know what I tell people? "Don't play commercial big publisher/big dev house games on PC's, it's a sucker's game. You're better off going console. If you want to play some obscure indie game or some old Flight sim of the type the Clancy-istas or Dale Brown-ites go gaga over, or Nethack, fine. But don't play off the shelf games on PC's."
There are a few games that I think work very well as a console port. My favorite example is Diablo, which IMHO plays better (and faster) on the PS1 than the PC. I am still miffed that Orange Box on the PS3 does not have mouse support (at least in Single Player and Portal) even though PS2 port of Half-Life 1 does. Even though I loathe WASD as a control scheme for movement, I like mouse aiming and given the choice I'll use it in a console game. Did it in the PS1 ports of Quake II and Alien Resurrection, did it again in Half Life and Deux Ex for the PS2.
They are? That might have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, but not these days or even 10 years ago. There are some pretty looooong and HUGE console games out there, even back in the NES days many games simply could not be beat in one sitting. You'd have to save, or get a password save, or simply pause. And considering how FPS's and RTS's replaced all those Avalon Hill and SSI wargames and RPG's as the big genre's (changing demographics did that by itself) I don't think PC gamers have any longer attention spans than console gamers, if they ever did considering how many arcade ports there were for the C64.
I agree with the market thing, though these days with PSN and Xbox Live it might be more feasible for these sort of niche games to appear on consoles.
But as for "Starting to look like a computer"....heh. I used to love doing this:
Yeah, I've got a PS2 Linux kit, though midgar refuses to boot, the HD gave up the ghost. But now I get to do this:
I installed Linux on my PS3 within the same day as I purchased it. Makes a fine little web browsing/emailing/IMing/text editing/Nethack playing/GIMP using machine.
You shouldn't blame the consoles themselves for Deus Ex 2, blame the original Xbox for not including USB ports, because the PS2 port of the original Deus Ex game had mouse and keyboard support. (though using a hybrid method of controlling movement with the analog stick on the Dual Shock and aiming with the mouse works best)
I also make a firm distinction between "dumbed down" and "altered and simplified for ease of use". For UI, simpler is better. UI shouldn't be complex for complexity's sake and shouldn't get in the way of actually enjoying the game.
Not completely locked. Sony doesn't care what you do with your PS2 or PS3 as long as you do it under Linux under a run-time environment/hypervisor. I'm glad consoles are mostly locked, it keeps crappy cheapo eastern European dev houses from releasing all their Myst clones and Diablo clones with bad production values on them.
You'll have to define dumbing down for me. Do you mean gameplay or more likely, just control changes.
When you work you want to get paid, right? You don't want developers to get paid for their work?
I must have imagined playing Deus Ex on my PS2.
I agree, but I wonder why there isn't someone trying to do games like those on the consoles, the PS2 and PS3 do have those wonderful USB ports. Though the funny thing is, there was more turn based stuff in the early days of the PS1. If memory serves me well, X-Com and Panzer General both came out soon after the PSone's launch. I think Sony must have encouraged a few PC developer houses to port a few games to the PS1 to show what it could do, but then few other PC game houses signed on.
There are some hand placed items in Oblivion, if you know where to look, the Fin Gleam being a famous example.
I'm level 27 in Oblivion and have yet to see an average bandit with magical stuff, They carry glass (and some carry daedric) which may "look" like it's glowing but isn't. It's the quest enemies, (and quest rewards) that have provided me with magic stuff. I got my first magic item with the Thuronir quest series, the final boss of that one carries a magic weapon. My first night eye item was a placed one, the Fin Gleam, which I actively searched for. I didn't see any other armor pieces with Night Eye till level 26! I've not seen any Chameleon items at all. My first +Str items were rings I enchanted myself.
Maybe if folks like you bought consoles and bought the very few turn based simulation type games out for them, they might make more of them....maybe.
More likely they're just being lazy bums, because the PS3 version of Oblivion sold enough to reach "Greatest Hit" status which requires sales of at least 500000 copies. Oblivion for PS3 also has Shivering Isles available as DLC (for those who buy the original release rather than the GOTY edition).
We don't have those disclaimers here across the pond yet. I find mascara adverts most annoying in their false eyelash using false advertisementness.
I have only played Metroid Prime via a demo unit in a store and even I thought of Metroid Prime's lack of loading screens when playing Portal.
Yep, that plug n' play network stuff is called DLNA, as far as I know if you got the bandwidth you can stream (or copy) 1080p video (in formats the PS3 supports) to the PS3 right out of the box once you enable the functionality.
http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/connectdlna.html
It works with photos and music too.
That might show how it runs for those worried about system requirements, but probably wouldn't be able represent the diversity of gameplay in a lot of games (like say, Oblivion and Fallout 3) for those wondering more about how it plays.
For my sake, I became interested in Oblivion after reading about it, but only became sure that I wanted to own it after playing it for a goodly period of time on an acquaintances Xbox360.
True but he will be able to tell if he likes the gameplay and it's guaranteed to run.
As a nerdy little guy the worst treatment I got was in 5th and 6th grades and NOT at the hands of the "top jock" group. It was those who might have wanted to be "top jocks" but weren't quite good enough to make it. It got toned down in 7th and 8th grades, in 8th grade a new kid (who was hispanic in almost 100% white rural school) trying to find his niche decided to pick on me. It didn't last long after I got mad enough to push him back and asked him why the heck he was picking on me since I wasn't one of the ones that was picking on him and that if he kept it up I'd break his fucking arms. (he was a kind of a jock so didn't want to lose the use of them for sports)
A couple of months in my freshman year of high school I was subject to some shit, but that was due to others feeling inadequate themselves. That ended and then I never had a problem. I was on good terms with jocks mostly, we didn't hang out or anything but I respected their skills they respected mine. There were jocks on the "Scholastic Bowl" team as well.
While OtherOS on the PS3 has video limitations, GameOS doesn't. So what one could do is use Linux on the PS3 to get the files and store them on an external FAT32 drive (readable in both Linux and GameOS) one ps3-boot-game-os later and you're good to watch them. GameOS is also DLNA compliant and there's always the video for rental and sale on the Playstation Network store.
It's the age of the DVD filling game, it was easier for companies to do demos when they could represent gameplay in 200MB or less, and it takes time that many developers would rather devote to the game.
Here's a Peter Molyneux quote on the matter:
And here's another from Clint Hocking of Ubisoft in regards to Far Cry 2:
There's also another option for demo-ing Fallout 3, try the PS3 or Xbox360 version, because I highly doubt there's going to be a demo. Fallout 3 uses the same engine Oblivion does and is a very "open ended go anywhere" game and it might be difficult for Bethesda to do a good demo that would represent the variety of gameplay in a reasonably small enough file size to download. Oblivion itself doesn't have a demo either.
And considering that you had to give them things to upgrade your storage....what were they doing with all that stuff.
You might remember those 2-page magazine ads for the game. On one page there's Mog surrounded by bosses with a caption that says something like "It doesn't seem fair." and then the next page, shows Mog surrounded by smoking Boss remains.