The choice to not use their own hardware is not what I call choice, because its not what people chose, but which the DRM forces them to.
So do like I did, and buy a laser printer.
Only reason why those have less locked up cadriges is a matter of market share, if that changes in the future, expect cadrige lookup there too.
The specs might not be open, but this doesn't mean the card is locked down. There's nothing preventing people from reverse-engineering them.
Many piece of hardware require some firemware to boot, which happens to be shipped with the driver, without that firmware the hardware won't work, if hardware happens to check for signature on that firmware (not sure if any actually do that), it would be *impossible* to make an OpenSource driver for that hardware.
Last I looked, this is a separate issue - DVDs are content. And the "encryption" is broken.
Yeah, its broken and illegal in plenty of countries to either use or ship.
My point was that you always have choices.
You call being forced to not do what I want "choice", I don't.
But remember, if you're the one who made the mistake of buying a locked-in device, unless you were misled, you have only yourself to blame.
You assume that people have a choice in the first place, which however often isn't the case. Where are the gaming consoles that aren't locked down to only run authorized code? How many printers don't try to force you to only use authorized color cartridges? How many current generation graphics card are available with open specs? How many DVDs are non-encrypted? How many MP3 shops are there that sell non DRMed music? Answer to all this is 'not much' or 'none' and there is little sign that it will get better in the future and plenty of sign that it might get much much worse. The new GPL is simply trying to counter this trend.
### Trust me, I tried to like the Gamecube games, it just wasn't happening for some reason.
Can't say much about SmashBros, but I fully agree that almost all N64 versions of Nintendo games are superiour to their Gamecube counterpart. Mario64 was superiour to MarioSunshine in pretty much every aspect, better setting, better levels (actual jump'n run fun, far less stupid puzzles and no cleanup), less frustation, jump-into-the-picture instead of a stupid cutscene, better swimming (real 3D, not stupid up/down buttons), no stupid gymicks and lots of other little details. Same is true with WaveRace, the N64 version simply had the far better controls, in the Gamecube version you always 'stick' to waves and its hard to get out of them, N64 controlled much more fluently and graphically the GC WaveRace couldn't impress either, neither did it have much more tracks. Oh well, and I don't think many people think Zelda:WindWaker is better then OoT, last one was simply better yet again. And that doesn't even take into account those games that didn't get a Gamecube version, where was PilotWings, ExciteBike and all those other games?
Overall there isn't much to argue about, many N64 games simply were better then the Gamecube versions, sometimes an order of magnitude, I mean Mario64 and Zelda:OoT are legendary, but WindWaker and Sunshine are pretty forgetable. That combined with bad third party support is what killed the Gamecube, it simply had neither the awesome Nintendo titels nor the good third party ones. Last not least the N64 also had original games, while the Gamecube didn't have much at all, Luigis Mansion was ok, but nothing more, Pikmin had the potential to be an awesome game, but yet again, didn't really turn out as good as it could (for to few scenarios, 8h limit, etc.).
About MarioKart however I disagree, even so this might only be true for single player mode, MarioKart64 was plain awefull in singleplayer, buggy, boring and ugly. MarioKartDoubleDash on the other side looked good, played well and had a reasonable difficulty, still far easier then the SNES version, but it was actually fun to play. I haven't played MarioKartDD in multiplayer much at all so I can't comment about it, but since MarioKart64s multiplayer actually was a lot of fun things might looks different there.
As in "faster load times"? Come on, of course faster load times and crisper graphics can help a game, but those things are really rather little details, gameplay, story and stuff are the dominant things and better graphics won't do much to improve them, especially in times where there is 'enough' graphic power around to do virtually anything. So far I havn't seen anything on the PS3 or XBox360 that impressed me, quite the opposite, there are still many genres and experiences were both of them (and well, the rest of the consoles) have little to nothing to offer (flight simulations, adventure games, 2d games, etc.). I am for sure not going to toss out $400-600 just for faster load times, which I didn't have any problems to begin with, neither on XBox nor on Gamecube, even PS2 only had throuble with it in badly ported games for most part.
### The controller won't revolutionize anything unless they make games that are revolutionary.
Very true. Its after all the games that matter, not the controls nor the graphics and so far Nintendo really didn't have anything interesting to offer in terms of games, same old Metroid Prime with different controller, blah, Mario with a mouse cursor added, yeah, Excite Truck with a lame steering wheel ripoff, boing... nah, thats really exactly not what I want, thats pretty much the same as PS3 and XBox360 have to offer, just instead of with flashier graphics, Nintendo offers 'flashier' controls. I kind of get the feeling that neither Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft have much of an idea where to go with their console, a bit multimedia here, a bit graphics there, but it all feels like "been there, done that". So in the end the most interesting aspect of the next generation tends to be the virtual console and XBox-arcade, which are not only good because of nostalgia, but also because they offer new or at least different game experiences then the rest of todays games, which far to often feel pretty much the same.
### Like the Dvorak keyboard, ergonomic innovations that force people to relearn basic skills are bound for failure irrespective of the upside.
Are they? Or is it just that nobody has ever really tried hard enough? I mean Dvorak is ok, but its not that much better then Qwerty, since the underlying keyboard itself is still the same, so its not a big suprise that it failed, buying new hardware (refering to 1940 or so when Dvorak layout was born) and doing new training for a rather minimal improvment just wasn't worth it. But if you take something like the Kinesis Keyboard, I am not so sure that they would fail in the mass marked. Sure, they might not replace the standard keyboards anytime soon, but a good ergonomic keyboard, why not, it shouldn't be that hard to find a few customers for that? Microsoft Natural got quite popular over the time. The throuble however is that those ergonomic devices are both extremly expensive (~$300) and hard to get, I can't just order them from Amazon or buy them in the computer shop next door and in addition to that they also lack the backing of a larger cooperation. But if Microsoft or Logitech produced a Kinesis like keyboard for a good price and maybe did some advertising of it, it might have a reasonable chance to succeed.
### Gaming is one of the areas where many slower cores offer more benefit than few faster cores, so thanks for making it clear that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Since when is that? Most games already strugle hard to make use of two cores, since multithreading has been for a long time be a no-no in the gaming world. That of course doesn't mean that multiple specialized processing units aren't a good idea (GPU, PPU, etc.), but when it comes to general purpose computing single core is still king in gaming.
### How many times have you cried while actually playing a game
How often have you cried in an action sequence in a movie? Not so often I would guess. Isn't the nature of those cry-moments in movies that they are all slowly paced and filled with little or no activity and in addition to that don't almost all cry-moments get initiated by some non-hero controlled force (Titanic sinks not due to the actions of any of the protagonist)? And if so, isn't it rather unfair to judge cry-moments in games by their amount of action and player involvment? Of course the player has little to do in those moments for exactly those reasons, that however doesn't mean that playing the game didn't have any influence on those scenes, you have to grow attached to the characters and that just doesn't happen in 30sec cutscene, but if you have fought side by side with those characters for hours and hours things might look different.
### You know, a lot of people watch television in excess of 4-6 hours a day.
I wouldn't be suprised if that number is largly over estimated. The thing with TV is that you don't need to watch it when you have it running, with games you have to actually do something to use them, but TV is for a lot of people for most of the time simply a tool to get some background noise while doing other stuff. That doesn't necessarily mean its less or more addictive then games, but its a different thing.
SD-Cards actually do have build in DRM stuff which might be used to make haking impossible or at least a lot harder, however I have no idea how that actually works and never seen it in action.
### Do you honestly think Sony will allow Memory Sticks you buy from best buy as a way of saving games?
They do so for the PSP, so why shouldn't they allow the same for the PS3 (MemorySticks already *are* Sonys proprietary technology)? Only obvious reason to not allow it would be that every PS3 has a build in harddrive, so there is no need for memory cards at all, since its simply not needed except maybe for transfering savegames.
One thing I don't get is why Microsoft again went with custom memory cards, SD-Cards are extremly cheap these days (1gb for 20EUR) while those 'memory units' are still horribly expensive (64mb for 30EUR), even Sonys memory sticks are cheap in comparism (1gb for 50EUR). Ok, Microsoft can make some money with those memory units, but given that XBox360 is all about Live and multimedia and stuff, wouldn't it have made more sense to actually add support for media that is both more widespread and compatible (inserting SD-Card from digicam directly into XBox360 for viewing images and such)? Anybody really interested in XBox360 will go with a harddrive anyway, so I can't image that those memory units sell all that much. So why force something rather useless an limited on the customer?
### Good gameplay can save a game with a terrible story. But a good story can't save a game with terrible gameplay.
Ever played Dreamfall? Actual gameplay in that game is really almost non existant, almost no puzzles, a fight system that is plain awefull and a sneaking system that isn't exactly much fun either by any means. Even for an adventure game its really very low in terms of gameplay. If it wouldn't be for the story and art there really would be exactly nothing worth to play Dreamfall. The story however is great and thanks to it and the awesome art direction that game still scored reasonably well (5/5 at Gamespy, 8.1 at gamespot, 7.5 ign, etc). A good story can certainly boost a game a lot and be the only reason to play a game in the first place.
That of course doesn't mean that gameplay is unimportant, a story like Dreamfall with some actually good gameplay inbetween would be great, better then the game it is now. However good gameplay really isn't a requirement, the only important part is that gameplay doesn't get in the way of the story, if you die a hundred times and just get stuck you won't ever find out how the story continues, so it that is of course a thing to avoid, but lack of challange or actual play really can be quite secondary to some games.
### You can't say Metroid Fusion isn't a good game.
It was a good game, but just that 'good', nothing more nothing less. It was pretty much the same as SuperMetroid and MetroidZero was also very much the same, it just felt like 'been there, done that'. When I look at the SNES with StreetFighter2, StarFox, MarioWorld, YoshisIsland, Zelda3, MarioKart, PrinceOfPersia, AnotherWorld, FinalFantasy, CronoTrigger, SuperMetroid, PilotWings, Actraiser, Simcity and a heck of a lot other great and original games, the GBA just doesn't have much to offer to come close to that in terms of great games. Yes, it has a few great ones, but really far to few in comparism with the SNES.
The throuble with the GBA (and DS) is that they really do make SNES games, the same old games you already played 10 or 15 years ago, often bit by bit, just with viewpoint shrinked a bit due to the smaller resolution. And those games that aren't remakes are often successors with little new stuff (Metroid features still pretty much the same weapons, Castlevania also doesn't really change a lot, NewSuperMarioBros also doesn't feature much new gameplay, etc.). The number of really new and good GBA games is actually quite small, AstroBoy Omega Factor was awesome, but beside that, not so much.
### There's lots compatibile including virtually all the AAA titles.
Isn't that part of the problem? Its nice to have support for AAA titels, but most people already have played them over and over again and there is a good chance that those AAA titles will get a successor sooner or later anyway, so at least for me I don't really consider AAA titles that important, at least not really more important then the rest and looking at that list Yager, Shenmue, Panzer Dragon, Psychonauts, BrokenSword, Fahrenheit, Advent Rising, Riddik, X-Men Legends 1 and 2, TimeSplitters2 and 3 all not listed, all quite good games, all games I own. So while the backward compability might be better then nothing, it is *FAR* away from being an XBox1 replacemet, since the fraction of games that work is still quite small compared to those games that are on the market.
What makes things even worse is that Microsoft doesn't have offer any way to bundle XBox360 binaries with newly released XBox1 games, meaning even when a new XBox1 game is released there is nothing the developers can do to get XBox360 compability out of the box, it all depends on Microsoft to provide a patch or maybe not depending on the gamers luck. The transition from XBox to XBox360 is really far from optimal and I have some doubts that it will ever get much better before the XBox1 finally fades away completly.
### but Microsoft doesn't benefit from that subsequent retail transaction.
Doesn't Microsoft make money with selling games? Wouldn't it help if the console are actually sold to people interested in buying games instead of being stuffed in some warehouse? And beside, isn't Microsoft selling the consoles at a loss? So every console they 'sell' loses them money, unless they can make it back with games... just a thought.
### The removal of San Andreas from most retailers' shelves followed by a re-rating of the title resulted in a loss of nearly $25 million.
Sales number put GTA:SA on par with the previous GTA releases, so while pulling it back from the shelves for sure costs some money, I can't see how that should go anywhere near that $25mio number.
### Brookhaven National Laboratory actually built a game called Tennis for Two using an analog computer. Essentially, it was Pong.
You are correct that Tennis for Two was probally the very first video game, however it was basically nothing like Pong, sure, both 'simulated' tennis, but thats where the similarities stop. Tennis for Two has a sideview, simulates gravity and allows the player to control the angle at which he reflects the ball, while Pong is top down and has a panel that you can move up and down. Tennis for Two looks really looks quite a bit more impressive and while Pong has been cloned thousands of times, I havn't yet seen a Tennis for Two clone.
### How long have we been screaming for fully deformable terrain? When I miss someone with a rocket launcher I want it to take out the fucking wall. Granted the technology hasn't been there
The technology was there back in 1994, see Magic Carpet or XCom:UFO, both have had fully destructable terrain. The throuble is that Doom recieved all the hype and instead of destructable terrain developers focused on developing static maps with precalculated shadows and stuff, which resulted in better locking games, but also games whoes levels simply couldn't be deformed at runtime anymore. The technologie simply moved into a direction that made destructable terrain an hard problem (BSP trees), while it was an pretty easy one before (tilemaps), so gameplay got axed to create flashier graphics.
Fun with portals, grazy gravity and stuff, hm, I think I have seen that already around back in 1993, like here and here, good to see that today first person shooters are finally catching up...
### if you create this new entrance and go through it, without placing a linked exit, you're now going against the natural progression of the portal system, and something weird happens.
Most simple solution would be to link the portal to itself, so if you go in, you come out at the exact same spot, just the other way around. Even more funny would be to make the portal like a mirror, so if you go in you come out in a world that is a mirrored version of the one you left. 'The Room' demo that was shown on GDC a while back did fun stuff like that, it had scale-portals, throw a small object through one portal and it will come out enlarged of another portal.
### Most just cut to cinematics -- or worse, text or voice (Doom 3's PDAs).
While Doom3 overused the PDA quite a bit, I find nothing wrong with it in principal. The PDA is an in-game object and so it should be used for whatever the character in a game uses it normally, if that allows to carry some story across then thats a good thing. One nice thing of Doom3 was that it turned the cross-hair into a 'talk-to' symbol when aiming at friendly characters, great way to solve the 'must not kill good guys'-problem, without making the good guys look invulnurable, but well, thats another story.
Cutscenes also don't have to be evil by itself, a good cutscene would be for example those of Shadow of the Colossus, when you approch a colossus for the first time, you get a short cutscene, however those simply emphasis what both the player and the character are doing at that exact point, starring at the colossus in amazement. The main problem with cutscenes today is that they often contradict with the actual rules of gameplay, if a character dies in Final Fantasy in-game, you use phoenix feather, no big deal, if he dies in a cutscenes he is gone for good. In cutscenes the hero in many games talks to characters, uses computers and other objects, while the gameplay often only allows shooting and absolutly no peacefull use of the environment (ie. MaxPayne2) or ways to talk to characters, except entering a cutscenes, good old multiple choice dialogs are seldomly seen these days and even if they are seen, they are often meaningless, since you simply can click everything without making a difference. While I don't think real choice in a story is a 'must', it is definifly interesting to see how characters react to different questions. Last not least the character making decisions without the player actually interacting is of course always an annoying thing.
I think one underlying core problems with many games these days is that they simply don't allow role playing (not that leveling up shit, but playing a role), the whole gameplay is restricted to meaningfull actions, shot, jump, run, punch, etc., the normal stuff is often missing, sit down in a chair, drink something, talk, etc. Fahrenheit allowed a lot of pretty useless stuff and I think it adds a lot, since you can really play the role of the character and are not limited to just shooting things. Games don't have to be like rollercoster rides all the time, sometimes its simply fun to wander around in an environment and look around and games should simply provide some more actions to actually do that.
If you read the actual blog instead of that summary of a summary, you will find out that he is not tired of games with story:
As a game player, I find myself enjoying single player action adventure games more than I have since I was a kid. I get immersed in them more, get more wrapped up in the stories (even the ones told thru cut scenes), and actually feel like I am living the adventure.
So he isn't tired of playing them, quite the opposite, he loves them, what he is however tired of is developing those games, since the experience developing them is a lot less entertaining then the experience playing them.
Would you carry your Wiimote around for lausy 6kb of data? I know I wouldn't, you can't really store anything worthwhile, a 64x64 image and the memory is almost full, that just wouldn't make any sense on a console that renders to TV. Favorite color and other stuff could simply be selected inside the game each time, its not really so special that you wanna store it. You also have to take the price into account, flash memory is quite cheap, so if they would want to store a photo and other personal stuff, they could simply have added more memory, its cheap after all and there is no reason to limit yourself to 6kb if you would want to actually store something interesting. In the end I think the most likly is that they won't do any personal storage at all and simply use the memory to store calibration data (ie. MAC address of the Wii so that the Wiimote knows which console to connect to and such).
Slashdot Mirror
So do like I did, and buy a laser printer. Only reason why those have less locked up cadriges is a matter of market share, if that changes in the future, expect cadrige lookup there too.
Many piece of hardware require some firemware to boot, which happens to be shipped with the driver, without that firmware the hardware won't work, if hardware happens to check for signature on that firmware (not sure if any actually do that), it would be *impossible* to make an OpenSource driver for that hardware. Yeah, its broken and illegal in plenty of countries to either use or ship. You call being forced to not do what I want "choice", I don't.### Trust me, I tried to like the Gamecube games, it just wasn't happening for some reason.
Can't say much about SmashBros, but I fully agree that almost all N64 versions of Nintendo games are superiour to their Gamecube counterpart. Mario64 was superiour to MarioSunshine in pretty much every aspect, better setting, better levels (actual jump'n run fun, far less stupid puzzles and no cleanup), less frustation, jump-into-the-picture instead of a stupid cutscene, better swimming (real 3D, not stupid up/down buttons), no stupid gymicks and lots of other little details. Same is true with WaveRace, the N64 version simply had the far better controls, in the Gamecube version you always 'stick' to waves and its hard to get out of them, N64 controlled much more fluently and graphically the GC WaveRace couldn't impress either, neither did it have much more tracks. Oh well, and I don't think many people think Zelda:WindWaker is better then OoT, last one was simply better yet again. And that doesn't even take into account those games that didn't get a Gamecube version, where was PilotWings, ExciteBike and all those other games?
Overall there isn't much to argue about, many N64 games simply were better then the Gamecube versions, sometimes an order of magnitude, I mean Mario64 and Zelda:OoT are legendary, but WindWaker and Sunshine are pretty forgetable. That combined with bad third party support is what killed the Gamecube, it simply had neither the awesome Nintendo titels nor the good third party ones. Last not least the N64 also had original games, while the Gamecube didn't have much at all, Luigis Mansion was ok, but nothing more, Pikmin had the potential to be an awesome game, but yet again, didn't really turn out as good as it could (for to few scenarios, 8h limit, etc.).
About MarioKart however I disagree, even so this might only be true for single player mode, MarioKart64 was plain awefull in singleplayer, buggy, boring and ugly. MarioKartDoubleDash on the other side looked good, played well and had a reasonable difficulty, still far easier then the SNES version, but it was actually fun to play. I haven't played MarioKartDD in multiplayer much at all so I can't comment about it, but since MarioKart64s multiplayer actually was a lot of fun things might looks different there.
### Beefier systems do make for a better game,
As in "faster load times"? Come on, of course faster load times and crisper graphics can help a game, but those things are really rather little details, gameplay, story and stuff are the dominant things and better graphics won't do much to improve them, especially in times where there is 'enough' graphic power around to do virtually anything. So far I havn't seen anything on the PS3 or XBox360 that impressed me, quite the opposite, there are still many genres and experiences were both of them (and well, the rest of the consoles) have little to nothing to offer (flight simulations, adventure games, 2d games, etc.). I am for sure not going to toss out $400-600 just for faster load times, which I didn't have any problems to begin with, neither on XBox nor on Gamecube, even PS2 only had throuble with it in badly ported games for most part.
### The controller won't revolutionize anything unless they make games that are revolutionary.
Very true. Its after all the games that matter, not the controls nor the graphics and so far Nintendo really didn't have anything interesting to offer in terms of games, same old Metroid Prime with different controller, blah, Mario with a mouse cursor added, yeah, Excite Truck with a lame steering wheel ripoff, boing... nah, thats really exactly not what I want, thats pretty much the same as PS3 and XBox360 have to offer, just instead of with flashier graphics, Nintendo offers 'flashier' controls. I kind of get the feeling that neither Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft have much of an idea where to go with their console, a bit multimedia here, a bit graphics there, but it all feels like "been there, done that". So in the end the most interesting aspect of the next generation tends to be the virtual console and XBox-arcade, which are not only good because of nostalgia, but also because they offer new or at least different game experiences then the rest of todays games, which far to often feel pretty much the same.
### Like the Dvorak keyboard, ergonomic innovations that force people to relearn basic skills are bound for failure irrespective of the upside.
Are they? Or is it just that nobody has ever really tried hard enough? I mean Dvorak is ok, but its not that much better then Qwerty, since the underlying keyboard itself is still the same, so its not a big suprise that it failed, buying new hardware (refering to 1940 or so when Dvorak layout was born) and doing new training for a rather minimal improvment just wasn't worth it. But if you take something like the Kinesis Keyboard, I am not so sure that they would fail in the mass marked. Sure, they might not replace the standard keyboards anytime soon, but a good ergonomic keyboard, why not, it shouldn't be that hard to find a few customers for that? Microsoft Natural got quite popular over the time. The throuble however is that those ergonomic devices are both extremly expensive (~$300) and hard to get, I can't just order them from Amazon or buy them in the computer shop next door and in addition to that they also lack the backing of a larger cooperation. But if Microsoft or Logitech produced a Kinesis like keyboard for a good price and maybe did some advertising of it, it might have a reasonable chance to succeed.
### Gaming is one of the areas where many slower cores offer more benefit than few faster cores, so thanks for making it clear that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Since when is that? Most games already strugle hard to make use of two cores, since multithreading has been for a long time be a no-no in the gaming world. That of course doesn't mean that multiple specialized processing units aren't a good idea (GPU, PPU, etc.), but when it comes to general purpose computing single core is still king in gaming.
### How many times have you cried while actually playing a game
How often have you cried in an action sequence in a movie? Not so often I would guess. Isn't the nature of those cry-moments in movies that they are all slowly paced and filled with little or no activity and in addition to that don't almost all cry-moments get initiated by some non-hero controlled force (Titanic sinks not due to the actions of any of the protagonist)? And if so, isn't it rather unfair to judge cry-moments in games by their amount of action and player involvment? Of course the player has little to do in those moments for exactly those reasons, that however doesn't mean that playing the game didn't have any influence on those scenes, you have to grow attached to the characters and that just doesn't happen in 30sec cutscene, but if you have fought side by side with those characters for hours and hours things might look different.
### You know, a lot of people watch television in excess of 4-6 hours a day.
I wouldn't be suprised if that number is largly over estimated. The thing with TV is that you don't need to watch it when you have it running, with games you have to actually do something to use them, but TV is for a lot of people for most of the time simply a tool to get some background noise while doing other stuff. That doesn't necessarily mean its less or more addictive then games, but its a different thing.
SD-Cards actually do have build in DRM stuff which might be used to make haking impossible or at least a lot harder, however I have no idea how that actually works and never seen it in action.
### Do you honestly think Sony will allow Memory Sticks you buy from best buy as a way of saving games?
They do so for the PSP, so why shouldn't they allow the same for the PS3 (MemorySticks already *are* Sonys proprietary technology)? Only obvious reason to not allow it would be that every PS3 has a build in harddrive, so there is no need for memory cards at all, since its simply not needed except maybe for transfering savegames.
One thing I don't get is why Microsoft again went with custom memory cards, SD-Cards are extremly cheap these days (1gb for 20EUR) while those 'memory units' are still horribly expensive (64mb for 30EUR), even Sonys memory sticks are cheap in comparism (1gb for 50EUR). Ok, Microsoft can make some money with those memory units, but given that XBox360 is all about Live and multimedia and stuff, wouldn't it have made more sense to actually add support for media that is both more widespread and compatible (inserting SD-Card from digicam directly into XBox360 for viewing images and such)? Anybody really interested in XBox360 will go with a harddrive anyway, so I can't image that those memory units sell all that much. So why force something rather useless an limited on the customer?
### Good gameplay can save a game with a terrible story. But a good story can't save a game with terrible gameplay.
Ever played Dreamfall? Actual gameplay in that game is really almost non existant, almost no puzzles, a fight system that is plain awefull and a sneaking system that isn't exactly much fun either by any means. Even for an adventure game its really very low in terms of gameplay. If it wouldn't be for the story and art there really would be exactly nothing worth to play Dreamfall. The story however is great and thanks to it and the awesome art direction that game still scored reasonably well (5/5 at Gamespy, 8.1 at gamespot, 7.5 ign, etc). A good story can certainly boost a game a lot and be the only reason to play a game in the first place.
That of course doesn't mean that gameplay is unimportant, a story like Dreamfall with some actually good gameplay inbetween would be great, better then the game it is now. However good gameplay really isn't a requirement, the only important part is that gameplay doesn't get in the way of the story, if you die a hundred times and just get stuck you won't ever find out how the story continues, so it that is of course a thing to avoid, but lack of challange or actual play really can be quite secondary to some games.
### You can't say Metroid Fusion isn't a good game.
It was a good game, but just that 'good', nothing more nothing less. It was pretty much the same as SuperMetroid and MetroidZero was also very much the same, it just felt like 'been there, done that'. When I look at the SNES with StreetFighter2, StarFox, MarioWorld, YoshisIsland, Zelda3, MarioKart, PrinceOfPersia, AnotherWorld, FinalFantasy, CronoTrigger, SuperMetroid, PilotWings, Actraiser, Simcity and a heck of a lot other great and original games, the GBA just doesn't have much to offer to come close to that in terms of great games. Yes, it has a few great ones, but really far to few in comparism with the SNES.
The throuble with the GBA (and DS) is that they really do make SNES games, the same old games you already played 10 or 15 years ago, often bit by bit, just with viewpoint shrinked a bit due to the smaller resolution. And those games that aren't remakes are often successors with little new stuff (Metroid features still pretty much the same weapons, Castlevania also doesn't really change a lot, NewSuperMarioBros also doesn't feature much new gameplay, etc.). The number of really new and good GBA games is actually quite small, AstroBoy Omega Factor was awesome, but beside that, not so much.
### There's lots compatibile including virtually all the AAA titles.
Isn't that part of the problem? Its nice to have support for AAA titels, but most people already have played them over and over again and there is a good chance that those AAA titles will get a successor sooner or later anyway, so at least for me I don't really consider AAA titles that important, at least not really more important then the rest and looking at that list Yager, Shenmue, Panzer Dragon, Psychonauts, BrokenSword, Fahrenheit, Advent Rising, Riddik, X-Men Legends 1 and 2, TimeSplitters2 and 3 all not listed, all quite good games, all games I own. So while the backward compability might be better then nothing, it is *FAR* away from being an XBox1 replacemet, since the fraction of games that work is still quite small compared to those games that are on the market.
What makes things even worse is that Microsoft doesn't have offer any way to bundle XBox360 binaries with newly released XBox1 games, meaning even when a new XBox1 game is released there is nothing the developers can do to get XBox360 compability out of the box, it all depends on Microsoft to provide a patch or maybe not depending on the gamers luck. The transition from XBox to XBox360 is really far from optimal and I have some doubts that it will ever get much better before the XBox1 finally fades away completly.
### but Microsoft doesn't benefit from that subsequent retail transaction.
Doesn't Microsoft make money with selling games? Wouldn't it help if the console are actually sold to people interested in buying games instead of being stuffed in some warehouse? And beside, isn't Microsoft selling the consoles at a loss? So every console they 'sell' loses them money, unless they can make it back with games... just a thought.
### The removal of San Andreas from most retailers' shelves followed by a re-rating of the title resulted in a loss of nearly $25 million.
Sales number put GTA:SA on par with the previous GTA releases, so while pulling it back from the shelves for sure costs some money, I can't see how that should go anywhere near that $25mio number.
### Brookhaven National Laboratory actually built a game called Tennis for Two using an analog computer. Essentially, it was Pong.
You are correct that Tennis for Two was probally the very first video game, however it was basically nothing like Pong, sure, both 'simulated' tennis, but thats where the similarities stop. Tennis for Two has a sideview, simulates gravity and allows the player to control the angle at which he reflects the ball, while Pong is top down and has a panel that you can move up and down. Tennis for Two looks really looks quite a bit more impressive and while Pong has been cloned thousands of times, I havn't yet seen a Tennis for Two clone.
### How long have we been screaming for fully deformable terrain? When I miss someone with a rocket launcher I want it to take out the fucking wall. Granted the technology hasn't been there
The technology was there back in 1994, see Magic Carpet or XCom:UFO, both have had fully destructable terrain. The throuble is that Doom recieved all the hype and instead of destructable terrain developers focused on developing static maps with precalculated shadows and stuff, which resulted in better locking games, but also games whoes levels simply couldn't be deformed at runtime anymore. The technologie simply moved into a direction that made destructable terrain an hard problem (BSP trees), while it was an pretty easy one before (tilemaps), so gameplay got axed to create flashier graphics.
Fun with portals, grazy gravity and stuff, hm, I think I have seen that already around back in 1993, like here and here, good to see that today first person shooters are finally catching up...
### if you create this new entrance and go through it, without placing a linked exit, you're now going against the natural progression of the portal system, and something weird happens.
Most simple solution would be to link the portal to itself, so if you go in, you come out at the exact same spot, just the other way around. Even more funny would be to make the portal like a mirror, so if you go in you come out in a world that is a mirrored version of the one you left. 'The Room' demo that was shown on GDC a while back did fun stuff like that, it had scale-portals, throw a small object through one portal and it will come out enlarged of another portal.
### Most just cut to cinematics -- or worse, text or voice (Doom 3's PDAs).
While Doom3 overused the PDA quite a bit, I find nothing wrong with it in principal. The PDA is an in-game object and so it should be used for whatever the character in a game uses it normally, if that allows to carry some story across then thats a good thing. One nice thing of Doom3 was that it turned the cross-hair into a 'talk-to' symbol when aiming at friendly characters, great way to solve the 'must not kill good guys'-problem, without making the good guys look invulnurable, but well, thats another story.
Cutscenes also don't have to be evil by itself, a good cutscene would be for example those of Shadow of the Colossus, when you approch a colossus for the first time, you get a short cutscene, however those simply emphasis what both the player and the character are doing at that exact point, starring at the colossus in amazement. The main problem with cutscenes today is that they often contradict with the actual rules of gameplay, if a character dies in Final Fantasy in-game, you use phoenix feather, no big deal, if he dies in a cutscenes he is gone for good. In cutscenes the hero in many games talks to characters, uses computers and other objects, while the gameplay often only allows shooting and absolutly no peacefull use of the environment (ie. MaxPayne2) or ways to talk to characters, except entering a cutscenes, good old multiple choice dialogs are seldomly seen these days and even if they are seen, they are often meaningless, since you simply can click everything without making a difference. While I don't think real choice in a story is a 'must', it is definifly interesting to see how characters react to different questions. Last not least the character making decisions without the player actually interacting is of course always an annoying thing.
I think one underlying core problems with many games these days is that they simply don't allow role playing (not that leveling up shit, but playing a role), the whole gameplay is restricted to meaningfull actions, shot, jump, run, punch, etc., the normal stuff is often missing, sit down in a chair, drink something, talk, etc. Fahrenheit allowed a lot of pretty useless stuff and I think it adds a lot, since you can really play the role of the character and are not limited to just shooting things. Games don't have to be like rollercoster rides all the time, sometimes its simply fun to wander around in an environment and look around and games should simply provide some more actions to actually do that.
Would you carry your Wiimote around for lausy 6kb of data? I know I wouldn't, you can't really store anything worthwhile, a 64x64 image and the memory is almost full, that just wouldn't make any sense on a console that renders to TV. Favorite color and other stuff could simply be selected inside the game each time, its not really so special that you wanna store it. You also have to take the price into account, flash memory is quite cheap, so if they would want to store a photo and other personal stuff, they could simply have added more memory, its cheap after all and there is no reason to limit yourself to 6kb if you would want to actually store something interesting. In the end I think the most likly is that they won't do any personal storage at all and simply use the memory to store calibration data (ie. MAC address of the Wii so that the Wiimote knows which console to connect to and such).