From an economic point of view, its a lot cheaper to have your driver play a $300 video game (PS2 system, [insert game name here], and memory card) than it is to get some time on the race track.
The point, though, was that the redesigned track hadn't even been driven and drivers already had an idea of how they would approach it, because EA got the blueprints for the redesigned track from the construction company (in soft-copy, of course) before it was even built. The further point was that the drivers' initial estimates based on the game turned out to be as little as 1mph off actual track speeds, and given that this was the first time anyone drove on the track, it's likely that speeds will come closer into line over time.
I don't particularly care for oval tracks, either, but there's still quite a difference when a track goes from a flat course to having variably-banked turns (which is what the article mentions has happened). It generally means you can go much faster through the turns, but you still have to figure out where the car is going to go when you head into it, and just how fast you can manage it.
What you don't seem to understand is not everyone can afford to splash out on a new DVD drive just for ONE FUCKING TITLE! Sure, when, say, 20% of games are shipping on DVD, it's possibly a valid argument, but for ONE TITLE, asking someone to shell out almost as much again on new hardware as they did on a game just to play the title is ridiculous.
What you don't seem to understand is that those of us that have had DVD-ROM drives for a while have gotten sick of them releasing games on more and more CDs per title (5, 6, how many do we need? I have 4 for my Diablo 2 + expansion install), without even bothering to release them on DVD for those of us that have it. By your logic, people would never upgrade video cards, either, because it's just for one title (and later another title, but still just one title because the last game wasn't worth upgrading for). I've got a whole 1 game on DVD, and it's the original Baldur's Gate, think about how long ago that came out (oh, and 2 games that came with one of my first DVD-ROM drives, which I've never played). My original reason for buying the drive was simply because it was cheaper than buying a DVD player for my TV, and because, at the time, my monitor was bigger than my TV. That doesn't work any more, though, because DVD players are almost as cheap as the drives, and I got a bigger TV.
You also approach things from the biased US perspective. Sure, a drive in the US may be that cheap, but consider other countries where the exchange rate is poor. You could probably spend well over $100 on a DVD drive. Importing from a cheaper market is not an option due to customs fees.
Don't forget region encoding, though most drives can at least be changed in firmware a couple of times. Don't blame me for poor exchange rates and import duties. Yes, I have a US perspective, because I live in the US. I don't care if they publish games on CD, I just want them to start publishing these huge multi-disc games on DVD. It's pathetic when I get a new game and it's 3-6 CDs, half the time packaged in paper envelopes or cardboard that scratches the shit out of the discs. Gee, maybe they could afford a plastic jewel case if they didn't have to press so many discs.
In the past, I've wound up paying more in fees for something than the actual item cost. DVD drives are not "dirt cheap".
DVD drives are dirt cheap, import fees are taxes a given government decides to put on foreign goods. Hell, most of the parts in my computer, including the DVD-ROM drive, weren't even made in the US.
Until such time as a DVD is mandatory to install a good percentage of software, the old "I'm getting sick of the excuses" line is pretentious, elitist bollocks. It's simply not cost effective to buy a new piece of hardware that will do LESS (since most systems have a CDR these days) than your existing hardware. (Movies are not a valid reason to own a DVD drive as the majority of DVD rom content is total crap.)
So it goes back and forth, in a nice big circle. DVD-ROM games aren't released because people complain about not having DVD-ROM drives, people won't buy the drives until the content is available, but when people make the content available, the people that don't have the drives complain.
BTW, if you're using a CD-R(W) drive IN PLACE OF your CD-ROM drive, then that's your choice, but I've never setup a system that way or recommended that anyone setup one that way, simply because you can save huge amounts of time even on one disc if you ever do CD-to-CD-R transfers. I never use my writers as ROM drives.
The fact you've never owned a CD-ROM drive faster than your current DVD drive means you either have more money than sense, have only ever used REALLY slow CD-ROM drives,
I mentioned specifically a 74x multi-beam drive. That drive was one I bought about 4 years ago, and was the last CD-ROM drive I owned (Diablo 2's copy-protection killed it). The majority of CD-ROM drives available today are 56X drives, pretty much
Yes GC does 480p, but GC is still FAR FAR behind PS2/XBOX for ONLINE GAMING. More and more people are into ONLINE GAMING. GC's online gaming is too pathetic to even consider it a rival of PS2/XBOX. Hell even Dreamcast's online capability (Unreal Tournament) is better than GC.
You're confusing online capability with online games, as evidenced by your inclusion of UT in parens after mention of the Dreamcast rather than mentioning that the Dreamcast came with a 56K modem installed (and could be upgraded to a broadband adapter if you could find the thing). The capability of the GC for online gaming is on par with the PS2. The games available is the problem.
If a new console for Nintendo means real online gaming on par with PS2/XBOX, I am all for it.
But with that said, I think if they just put money into making GC an ONLINE GAMING console, they can actually compete with XBOX/PS2...until then, I'll be playing Ghost Recon and Crimson Skies on XBOX LIVE and Socom 2 and Madden 2004 on PS2 ONLINE...no way do I buy a GC version of a game that is online on another console...
Two of the games you mentioned are 3rd party games. Why don't you ask the people that developed Ghost Recon and Madden 2004 why those games aren't online on the GC? Because the online adapter doesn't come with the console? Neither does the adapter for the PS2. Because they don't have a 'Live'-style service? Neither does the PS2, and MS is losing money on it. Because Nintendo isn't using it themselves and they aren't hyping it? Neither did Sony until they decided to do an EQ game on the PS2 (subscription revenue is sweet when you already have the infrastructure). What GC needs to become an online console is an exclusive title that people actually play online. Right now Nintendo doesn't see a reason to do it themselves and isn't willing to give incentives to other developers to do it, either.
Could you imagine Mario Party being an ONLINE game? Mario Kart?
Mario Kart I could imagine as working quite well, though my best memories of the series are always going to be playing on the SNES with my friends in the same room. Mario Party doesn't seem like it'd be nearly as interesting online, as most of the minigames are about the interaction between the players. Then again, Mario Kart may very well be online, as it's LAN capable and there's been a lot of talk about the GameSpy tunnelling software that Nintendo contracted.
The possibilities are endless, but NO, Nintendo KNOWS GC is for kids and THAT'S WHY they have NO interest in making GC an online gaming console, because kids don't make enough from their allowance to get a cable modem/dsl...Nintendo blows...
Right... Which is why my youngest step-brother was the first person I knew to put his console online (though of course I had to help my parents set things up to share the cable modem). I wouldn't be surprised if my gf's 10-year-old brother put his PS2 online this XMas since he's been playing Madden 2004 so much and most of his friends have it as well. That's what people don't seem to get, the games that sell the best on the PS2 are appealing just as much to the kids everyone says Nintendo's marketing after as to the teenagers and the 20-somethings. Sony would not have a piece of the console market if they hadn't realized one simple thing: teenagers are more afraid of what other people think of them than they are interested in actually having fun. A large number of the people playing those games online on the XBox and the PS2, just like PC games, are not the people footing the bill for those consoles (and PCs) and for them to be online.
In 2002 the GC has three games in the top 20(Mario Party 4, Mario Sunshine, and the same Zelda game mentioned above). Again, better, but not by much.
It should be noted the 2002 numbers are fiscal year, and end 3 months before the 2003 numbers you quoted. In other words, the slow months from March to the end of July are counted in the 2003 numbers while the end-of-year numbers are counted in the 2002 numbers. Then again, I can't be sure that the summer months are as slow in Japan for games as they are in the US, but then FF X-2s numbers don't change all that much from one chart to the next, but a lot of the other games' numbers dropped significantly.
In America, the situation is better. The GC is in fourth place, but still has 4.7 million sales. There are three games in the top 20, two of which are made by third party licensees. However, it's still not much compared to the commanding lead held by the PS2(and ever-increasing competition from the XBox).
Unfortunately the US yearly sales charts haven't been updated in 3 years, otherwise we could get a better picture of things. Fortunately, the US charts don't change much for months at a time because people keep buying the same games for quite a while (yet it's worth mentioning that the GC and XBox versions of Madden NFL have dropped considerably, with the GC version completely off the top 20 chart. The US charts are ranked by $ rather than units sold, as well, meaning that a GBA game ranked #2 by units sold is #4 because the games are $30-35/each rather than $50/each.
The GC is also only 7,000 units behind the XBox in console sales for the time period of the chart, which is a number the GC has been known to easily surpass when a new game with high appeal comes along (maybe next week?).
So given that the GC is basically on the bottom in the high-end console market, it's not surprising that Nintendo would try to get a new system out earlier. Given the extremely strong sales of the GBA, I don't think it's likely that their new system will be portable, either. If Nintendo gets their system out a year before anyone else, they'll have time to build up momentum and, more importantly, third party licensees. Nintendo's strength over the past couple generations has been in their in-house games, but those aren't enough to sustain the system. If they play their cards right, Nintendo might just pull a Sony and take the lead in the next generation.
The problem with this idea is that they really need the 3rd parties on launch, and that Sega showed in this generation that getting out too early doesn't always help (see the DreamCast). Unless they've managed to keep things very quiet for at least the last 12 months, it's unlikely that they're replacing the Cube within the next year, as 3rd parties would need at least 18 months, and often 24, to prepare launch titles. Sony, on the other hand, will just pull an advertising blitz as soon as the first next-gen console comes out, whether it's Sony's console or not, just as they did with this generation when the DreamCast came out, a year before the PS2. Even MS hit the advertising early on this generation. Everyone knew they were working on a game console long before it came out, but since they were unproven in the market no one waited like they did for Sony.
However, technology will eventually take its toll. Online gaming is exploding, has already exploded.
Nintendo has online adapters available, and are even using it for LAN play, but no one else is developing online capability on their console. Why not talk to EA and ask why they're not putting the online component of their games out on the GC versions? If it's already exploded, Nintendo shouldn't have to talk about it or put it in all of their games, the 3rd parties should be supporting it to sell their games. Yet 3rd parties wonder why their multi-console titles don't sell well on the Cube, when they're not even taking advantage of the platform.
DVDs and DVD-like formats are the established standard.
Yes, that 3" GC disc is a DVD-based format, as well, just like the 3" disc that the PSP will use is a DVD-based format.
Third-party support has grown amazingly and is now vital for console survival.
It always has been, but then only if 3rd parties develop quality games. It's nice to throw around numbers like 500 or 1500 games like Sony does with the PS2 or Nintendo does with the GBA, but the reality is that people want to look at a shelf full of games and see multiple titles they want to play. It's impressive to see the walls of PS2 titles most retailers carry, but closer inspection reveals that the games most people want would take up significantly less space.
Top-end video and audio capability are no longer luxuries, but expected.
Yes, and Sony's the bottom of the barrel for video and audio in the current generation.
Even Sony has realized the advantages of hard drives, media players, etc.
Sony invented the advantages of media players in consoles with the PS1, it's hardly something they've had to realize. It provides excellent possibilities for selling other products their corporation has to offer, like CDs and DVDs, since they're proud members of the RIAA and MPAA. As for the advantages of hard drives, where is that PS2 hard drive? I found an article a little while ago (which was quite old) that said it would be widely available in the US in 2001 bundled with the broadband adapter.
However - it still doesn't fix the problem of what happens when I want to play F-Zero X and the other half wants to watch Pride and Prejudice AGAIN!!!
That's what the GC price drop is for, assuming you have another TV. Then again, I told my gf I was buying it both for the bedroom and the Zelda bundle.
The PS2 was released in October, which is a little early for the November shopping extravaganza, but it also had the unique position of being the first of the next-gen consoles to be released, and hype is a company's best friend.
Just a minor correction, the Dreamcast was released in September the year before, and is definitely part of the current generation despite it's support being cut off very early. Sony built up the PS2 hype and released the redesigned PSOne around the same time to counter (successfully) the DC's early launch, and I'd expect the same thing to happen again if Nintendo or MS come along with their next-gen console much earlier than the PS3. Sony also had significant supply problems with the PS2 launch, meaning that for many people they weren't available until as much as 6 months after the launch.
So, to answer your question, it's more like 10 months, not 1.
Given the typical 6+ month difference in console releases between Japan and the US (at least for Japanese console manufacturers, though the Cube was 3 months), I wouldn't be surprised to see a release in mid-2004 with a US release in the Fall, though this soon I would expect it to be a handheld rather than a home system (with a home system released in Japan in possibly early 2005 and the US again around the fall). Unfortunately, it's at least as unusual for Nintendo to release a new handheld so soon as it is to release a new home console so soon, so it's really hard to say for sure what they're doing until they make an official announcement.
Not that I really support this sort of idea, but the bootable layer could load a proprietary DVD driver that disabled the ability to read writeable discs, as well as dealing with whatever other anti-piracy measures they'd have on the discs. Of course, eventually someone would probably figure out how to get around it.
This is pretty much the case with the PS2 anyway, as the drive is perfectly capable of reading DVD-R and CD-R discs, you just have to mod it to get it to work.
Releasing a new game system would be a smart and bold move for Nintendo, but what about the games?
New systems mean new games, but of course it remains to be seen what this system is, and up until now they had simply been saying they'll make an announcement in 2004, not that they'd actually have a system in 2004 (though that could be the announcement). Of course, if the system comes out late in 2004 in Japan, it could be well into 2005 before it hits the US.
If this new system even "just" offers quality comparable to today's ATI videocards (which it would have to have if it were to go into production for next year), why bother?
More than likely, any video chipset used for a new console would be fairly comparable to video cards that come out around the same time as the console, or slightly afterwards, rather than today. Of course, that's just assuming that it would be anything like the XBox with nVidia's graphics chips.
Nintendo just needs to swallow their pride and just start making games for all of the systems. Sega did it and is no longer fighting bankruptcy. Let some other sucker pony up the money for builing the home systems.
The big difference, though, is that Nintendo is not fighting bankruptcy, while Sega was losing money left and right before they gave up.
Technology is getting to the point where it has actually overtaken the ancient NTSC television. I play my Xbox in 480p "HD" mode on my HDTV for the few games that support it and it's fucking great! It pains to play in the lower "t.v." resolution. Since most people have regular "crappy" t.v.s it really does not make any sense to upgrade to a more powerful game system unless the games are there.
None of this makes much sense when the Cube already does 480p. It's more like you're typing to hear the keys click.
Nintendo's strong arm tactics are finally nipping (no racist pun intended) it in it's ass. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE the gamecube and I have had a lot of fun with it, but it has what, a smattering of games at best?
Perhaps. Then again, with the smaller number of games and the high percentage of quality games, it's easier to pick a random game off the shelf and be satisfied with the purchase.
All in all, I doubt anyone will be able to stop Sony at this point. Sony has spent Billion(s) of Dollars on R and D for the PS3 and whereas Micro$oft could actually outspend Sony on R and D, you know they won't, or if they do, they will create something less than inspired, like the Xbox. Once again, I like my Xbox, but really, it's just an 800mhz p.c. with an aging Geforce card in it. Sigh....
No one thought Nintendo could be beat after they overtook the market from Sega back when they released the SNES (and before the Genesis took the market because the SNES came out so much later). As for the XBox, try looking at the system requirements for games some day, and consider the overhead of the OS itself, and try to figure out how many games actually require what the XBox has. The difference between a PC and an XBox doesn't come in the packaging, it comes in the developers' ability to know what the end-user has and build for it, rather than building for a lowest-common-denominator and testing 100s of combinations of hardware. Sony's had their 2 consoles, but the real question is whether or not developers will be as ready to move from them as they were to move to them if they see a better system. Additionally, I think it's rather sad that most of the PS2 ads I've seen lately have actually been for 2 or 3-platform titles, but don't mention that fact because they're Sony ads.
From the nintendo.com/zeldaclassic/ site: (choose from: Mario Party 5, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and 1080 Avalanche)
So, it appears that it's not just any 2 games, and frankly I might be buying 2 of those games, but I don't think that's how I'll be getting my Zelda disc (since I'm buying another Cube soon anyway and decided to use the disc as a bonus justification). Perhaps when I pick up Mario Kart and Mario & Luigi I'll register to get the disc and give it away as an XMas present.
I don't know from marketing, but I really don't see how companies like that will ever be crucial to the industry. Is marketing such a problem that it would be worth sharing profits with another company to solve?
It's not really about marketing unless you're questioning the existing model (developer goes to publisher, who takes care of marketing, distribution, and usually financing the project). They were trying to play the part of a go-between for the developers and publishers, isolating the developers a bit more from the management of the publishers and isolating the publishers from overseeing the projects so much. In theory, it should work in such a way that a production house has a stable of good developers and a knowledge of how they work and what it would take to get a project off the ground and to a final state. This production house could then go to the publisher either with a completed game asking for the amount that it cost to produce plus some additional fees and negotiate the contract for any profit on the title (which is pretty much what a developer does now if they have a finished product they're shopping around). Alternatively, they can shop around ideas with a solid plan in place to produce a new project and try to get a publisher to fund it, which is actually how most games are produced today (except that with the producer the developer again wouldn't have to do this).
Ideally, the producer has a good group of developers working for them and a good understanding of how those developers work, and can turn out higher quality titles on a better budget than independent developers (or developers beholden directly to their publishers), because the producer would be the interface between the two, meaning that developer resources aren't wasted on dealing with the publisher and the publisher may have better assurance that the details are being overseen by the producer.
The real problem is that in order for something like this to be successful, a production house actually has to be trusted by well-known high-quality developers, or the developers have to form the production house themselves with solid managers (and lawyers) to make sure they don't have problems like G.o.D. Games or Ion Storm. Those managers also have to be wary about signing multi-title deals just for the sake of gaining funds or security for the company, as this would make them further beholden to the publishers, leaving the developers in the same position as always (feature creep and rushed releases are commonly attributed to publishers and marketing). In other words, it would have to come out of a group of development houses that can afford to fund their own projects or already have fair leeway with their publishers in terms of development times and features. Needless to say, the companies with the most money and say over their own development are also the least likely to actually need a production house, which is where the problem comes in with the whole idea. The only real benefit the whole thing would have would be to allow new developers to come into a rather large production house and get their feet wet, and eventually add to the development team after they've gained experience. Unfortunately, it also means that new developers would end up spending a long time doing small-time work on big projects before they could work on any ideas of their own, and the bigger a production house gets, the longer that time period can stretch.
Independent, in this case, refers to independence from the publishers (and developers), ie they're not a game publisher, so in theory they could've worked with any publisher.
They were trying to play a role currently being played by both the publishers and the developers and sit in the middle somewhere. Whether or not it was a good idea, on the other hand, depends on whether or not developers or publishers felt they really needed something like that.
On the other hand, yes, being backed by VC does make them more likely to go under or get sold out fairly quickly, especially after so much VC got burned up in the 90's.
there are roughly 200 Million PCs worldwide and if even a 3rd of them are being used for any online gaming whatsoever, then what i'm saying is true,
They're not. Simple as that. Even if you don't consider the crossover between games, you'd be extremely lucky to come up with a number near 65-70 million.
heck, i think Counterstrike players are numerous enough that they beat PS2s numbers by themselves
It depends on what numbers you're talking about. At the height of CS' popularity it had about 3 times as many players as what Sony is now claiming for the maximum simultaneous players found online for SOCOM 2. CS did so well that it outdid even the combination of every other online FPS at the time. It also happens to be a mod for the only FPS in the top 20 best-selling games of all time.
On the other hand, the number of CS players at that time was approximately 1/800th the number of PS2s that have been sold, and less than 1% of the number of copies of Half-Life (which, at the time, was required to play CS) that were sold.
Furthermore, the best-selling PS2 game (GTA:VC) outsold Half-Life by a half-million units (not including the PC port of GTA:VC, or the upcoming XBox port). The only games that sold better than GTA:VC were The Sims and a slew of Nintendo games, namely Tetris and 6 Mario games. Super Mario Bros. 1 sold 5 times as many units as Half-Life, and 4 times as many units as the Sims. There are a total of 3 PC games in the top 20, the above mentioned Sims(7) and Half-Life(15), and Myst(18). The combined sales of those 3 games does not equal the number of PS2s sold, yet the #1 game alone comes close and the #1 and 2 games combined almost double it.
The difference comes down to one of pure potential. If online games on the PS2 reached 1/3rd of CS' online audience within the first 2 years of mainstream online console gaming, what does that mean down the line? CS came out nearly 5 years after mainstream online PC gaming hit, and online PC gaming was possible (and done by some) for quite a while before that (and online console gaming has also been possible for quite a while). The numbers of games like EQ, Diablo 2, and StarCraft put CS to shame, but the sales of the games don't even rank (at the same time, I question this for Blizzard's games, as I've often heard numbers that would easily rank them close to, if not above, Half-Life).
Anyway, the whole point is that console games sell more copies than PC games, and in a very short time are getting the same numbers of players online. It's only a matter of time, at the current rate, before online console gaming becomes a very large percentage of all online console gaming, if not the predominant form. That being said, I do agree that it's a different experience, as is console gaming in general, but I think you'll find that this only leads to different types of titles becoming popular in the long run. People keep saying FPS games and PCs just go together, yet the FPS barely existed on the PC before it went online, at which point the genre exploded (though, frankly, Doom was probably bigger because it was an FPS and easily pirated rather than because it had online play). Online gaming almost completely changed the landscape of PC gaming, and I won't be surprised if it does nearly the same (though hopefully in different ways) to console gaming.
And, to reiterate, the different functionality EA wanted was primarily that they didn't want Online available for older games. That is, once SSX 3 came out, online functionality for SSX Tricky would have to be halted. Although in principle developer power sounds great, in the XBox Live case it seems that the XBox Live specifications provide developers with the tools to do what they want to do, except for hosing their users, and that is precisely what EA was being stymied at.
Unfortunately, they also haven't done online play on the Cube, despite most of their multiplatform titles being available there and the Cube's online strategy having few differences from Sony's (except, of course, that Sony's now pushing the online angle).
And don't be fooled into thinking that it is because XBox Live prevents developers from taking a cut of the profits. Phantasy Star Online charges an additional users fee that goes to the publisher.
The one thing EA wanted in this realm, though, was customer data, as stated here: http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/14/technology/ techinv estor/hellweg/ EA gets to use the infrastructure in which it invested so heavily and collect the revenue and marketing data [by making online play available on the PS2]. Microsoft, on the other hand, built out its own infrastructure (and service, called Xbox Live) and handles the billing and customer relationships.
There's another quote which I remember also seeing in US articles (but I can't find those articles at the moment) here: http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0, 7204,73 43540%5e15321%5e%5enbv%5e15306,00.html EA declined to join with Microsoft because it felt it would lose "ownership" of the customer, EA spokesman Jamie McKinlay said.
"The player would buy our product and then pay Microsoft to play it online. Microsoft would retain all that player information on a database and we wouldn't have access to it."
It's truly an interesting thing when Microsoft, of all people, is keeping information about your use habits from someone (especially since EA has a deal with AOL that means customer data for people playing EA games online is sold to AOL, if you'd like proof of that, read EA's privacy policy).
I think you're all arguing over an almost completely different kind of consistency than what exists with XBox Live.
The consistency has to do with the features supported and the idea that you don't have to sign into different services to play different games.
The player can use their friends list to invite people to play, regardless of what game they are playing at the moment. The service can handle the exiting from one game and loading (and connecting to a game) of the next when the user decides to accept that invitation. The user doesn't have to enter a log-in and password when 95+% of the users don't have keyboards (yes, my password to bypass the parental rating on my PS2 is XXXXXXXX or however many times I have to hit that damned button). Voice communication works the same way in every game. You find games the same way.
On the other hand, if developers want people to jump through hoops and not have voice communication or be able to invite each other to play their game (or other games), yeah, this might be a problem. If I want people to perform a KI 99-hit combo to get online in my game, maybe I should be allowed to do that. If I want to sell my customers' data to keep my struggling online business afloat, maybe I should be allowed to do that.
Do it somewhere else. EA's problem has everything to do with the last sentence in the previous paragraph and nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph. Anyone else has their own reasons, though very few seem to have been all that reluctant to support Live if they support multiplayer at all on consoles.
Will there ever be room in the market for an "independent production company" like CEG?
I think the problem is that CEG wasn't a production company at all. They were simply trying to fill the same role for developers that agents play for actors or managers play for musicians, and the industry isn't quite setup that way, yet. If it starts to move in this direction, it'll be more likely that the publishers will establish the role of agents, putting people out there to look for game developers, rather than having game developers pitch directly to publishers as they do now, and since the agents will be an arm of the publishing company, the cut the agent takes will be extra padding in the publisher's bottom line.
Only once this system (which is more or less a scam) is in place would an independent company have it's place, and only then if that company had made significant in-roads with the publishers. It only becomes a production company (of sorts) when they've got enough developers under their wing and when they can maintain developers by making single-title deals with publishers (rather than multiple-title deals which are fairly common with successful developers).
Even at that point, you have to find ways around the economic problems with the games industry, realizing that most titles fail and that games are getting more expensive to produce every year, and, as an independant production house, publishers aren't likely to sign off on your projects until they're fairly close to completion unless you have a very solid team in-house that has released some very strong titles and has been very consistent about doing so. The music industry's getting hammered by bad economics, and the movie industry turns out a lot of crap to try to deal with it's economics, so moving to a model with more 3rd parties involved in games, where the economic problems are really just starting, doesn't seem like a sound idea.
That being said, having one of CEG's founders move on to CAA seems like just about the perfect move for both him and CAA, since they need people with a better idea of how the games industry works, and it essentially gets him a little closer to the job he was setting up at CEG in the first place.
I know a LOAD of people who warezed MGS, simply because they don't have a DVD drive. (And the old argument "Well buy one, they're cheap" is garbage. That's like having to buy a new CD player just to play one album you want, and you won't use for anything else.)
If you replace your CD-ROM drive with a DVD-ROM drive then you're set, and you will use it (though probably mostly for CDs).
I've had DVD-ROM drives in my systems for 6 years, I'm getting a little sick of the excuses, especially when the drives are dirt cheap (less than $40) and usually perform better than CD-ROM drives. I've never owned a CD-ROM drive faster than my current DVD-ROM drive, and I owned some very unusual high-speed CD-ROM drives over the years (back when DVD-ROM drives were expensive I didn't want to use them to read CDs, though multi-beam 74x CD-ROM drives weren't cheap, either).
I was actually thinking of getting an SP - I still may but then again I may just wait until the Psp Comes out. I have super mario 3 on NES and on SNES with the Super Mario All stars. I doubt I'd pay 30-40 bucks again just to take it on the road. I'm glad you agree that some new mario 2d platformers would be nice.
Lucky for me I didn't own an SNES, otherwise there'd probably be a lot more games I didn't care about either way on both the GBA and GC platforms. I also didn't own SMB3, though I played it quite a bit on friends' NES systems.
Which of the 3 castlevania games isn't excellent? In case I buy an SP.
I have Aria of Sorrow and Harmony of Dissonance, both are excellent. I read some bad reviews of Circle of the Moon, but will probably pick it up eventually. I simply won't call it excellent until I've played it;)
The portable gaming market is different than the home console market. GBA is the only portable - PS2 has competitors this is why GBAs sell more.
Actually, I think the GBA sells more because the PS2 costs almost twice as much (as the SP, 3-4 times as much as the older GBA), and because multiple GBAs per household is much more likely than multiple PS2s per household (comes with the whole portable thing). I have 2 SPs, an old-style GBA, and a GB Player myself.
The Dream Cast was not in the same console generation as the PS2 - and if they were, who cares? They hardly went anywhere with it.
They were in the same generation, Sony pushed the advertising for the PS2 up to keep people waiting for their console rather than buying DreamCasts (which cost 2/3 as much at launch as a PS2 that launched a year later), and launched the PSOne (redesign) around the same time as the DreamCast as well. Many of the games ported from the DC to the PS2 don't look as good on the PS2 because the DC games just looked better (especially the 1st gen titles). It just didn't do well in the Japanese market and had a shaky US launch, so it was killed off too soon. The only point, and why people should care, is that regardless of how good the system is (was), being first out the gate isn't everything people seem to think it is.
Re:Shouldn't this be true only for J2ME games?
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Nokia N-Gage Cracked
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The games like Tomb Raider and so forth that are sold on carts specifically for the N-Gage are not J2ME games, but they are the games that the article is talking about. There are only a handful of phones that can handle them, but there's not much special about the N-Gage hardware to make it an issue (except, of course, that most of the phones that can run it tend to be more expensive than the N-Gage).
And through all this, Sony will probably devise a single-chip version of the PS2 and everyone will buy the DVD player that happens to have a PS2 inside rather than buy the PS2 that happens to play DVDs.
As it stands they've already got the 2 primary chips down to 1 chip, and they announced in the last couple of months that they're starting production of that chip on a smaller fabrication (90 nanometer iirc). This would probably lead to use in the PS3 for backwards compatibility, though they'd have to maintain the I/O chip (or put that functionality into the main chip) for the PS1 compatability. As for a DVD player that happens to play PS2 games, it seems they're more focused on higher-end electronics for things like that, notably their Tivo-like unit with DVD recording capability that just happens to also play PS2 games (the PSX).
Why not even release a PDA based on a shrunk-down PS2 core? They've already got Linux on it.
Who knows, maybe it's a heat issue, or they simply feel that their existing line of PDAs is going in the right direction.
The same thing goes with the other parts in the XBox.
Is Intel going to keep making 733MHz CPUs for anything less than a premium? Of course not, they probably aren't producing anything under 1GHz any more. Plus, if I remember correctly, there were some differences between the XBox CPU and a standard CPU, though not major, which would also increase the costs. The slowest Intel CPU you can buy at any given time is usually not much less expensive than the slowest current-generation CPU available.
Do you think nVidia's still producing a lot of GF3-era hardware when the GF4MX has taken over even the GF2MX's price points? They have GF4s and the GFFX to cover the mid- and high-end price points, with even some of the GF4 Tis slipping into the low-end.
This is also the major reason that ATI is probably a better choice for most consoles (as an off-the-shelf processor), because ATI has dealt with OEMs for most of their existence, and those people like to have chips available for a while (though not as long as consoles in most cases, still a lot longer than you might be able to find the same chips in cards on store shelves).
In the end, this is probably why Microsoft licensed technology from IBM rather than awarding a contract to produce the chips, since they could probably outsource chip production (or even do it themselves) over the long term for less than having IBM produce the chips indefinitely as all the rest of IBM's lines upgrade for new chips for Apple and others.
Just think, even if MS is buying single-platter drives, how many hard drives are being produced with 8GB platters? Not very many, since that would only produce 16 and 24GB drives, and it's unlikely you could buy a new 24GB drive for $24.
Of course, they're getting better prices than end-users normally see, but it still adds up to a loss (though smaller than the numbers most people throw around, even at launch the most detailed estimate I saw put it closer to $30-50 loss per console at $300 retail, which was, of course, at launch, rather than recently, so even with no cost reductions (and they have had some cost reductions in the manufacturing end) you're looking at $150-170 loss per console, max).
currently the xbox is the number 2 system (at least in the minds of developers) - but if the GC continues to sell red-hot at firesale prices, that may all change before christmas 04. You may see developer support shifting back toward the GC.
Right, except that, with the exception of the cheap, fast ports that most GC owners don't seem to buy, this probably won't effect the games coming out for the Cube itself, but rather for it's successor, especially if developers expect the next consoles to start hitting in late 05 rather than sometime in 06, and even moreso if the Japanese releases from Sony and Nintendo are still ahead of the US releases (as they were with this generation and most previous consoles).
as such i was half expecting a holiday US price cut to $150 w/2 games and the redesign at $100 at least by summer 04. (which means more rumors and leaked specs/designs should be circulating right about now )
Yes, except that Microsoft is more concerned with the image (to consumers) of competing with Sony rather than the image of competing with Nintendo. If they admit to competing with Nintendo (with a price cut that brings them closer to Nintendo's prices), then some people may feel that they're competing for #2 rather than #1, and take the cheaper console instead.
but really, i'm only asking because it's all more interesting to me than a japanese price cut, which simply brings their price on par with the fairly longstanding US/european pricing.
Of course, but then Microsoft recently launched advertising for their Live bundle, bundling Live (and the games that were bundled with the most recent Live kit) with the XBox at about the same price the previous XBox bundles were selling for (maybe a little lower, but I haven't paid much attention to XBox prices since I bought one a year ago, and I know it's lower than it was then). With that advertising campaign underway, it's unlikely they'll drop the price until the end of the month at the earliest (possibly Thanksgiving to capitalize on one of the biggest retail days of the year). Given the current advertisements, it's likely that any price cut so soon would be held pretty tightly by MS to keep people from waiting the 2-3 weeks for the cut.
Given the Zelda package is supposed to be out today, I may be heading out after work to pick up a second Cube for my apartment, making it the only non-handheld system that I've ever owned more than one of.
When Sony jumped into the market with the PSOne, they didn't have a long term plan to slowly take market share away from Nintendo and Sega - they aimed to corner the market for that generation and move on from there. I think that you're overstating the future for the XBox - it certainly could go down the way you describe but it's not as likely as it seems you believe.
There's a difference between the market Sony came into and the market Microsoft came into, though. Sony saw a market that wasn't being reached by either Nintendo or Sega: 16-25, or even older, males that grew up with Nintendo and Sega but wanted something 'cool' instead of the same old stuff. They also saw that Sega had some of the right ideas (at the time) with arcade ports, and Sony made an arcade version of the PS1 to make those ports easy (much like Sega did with some of their consoles). Further, Sony saw that the optical discs could work if you used a memory card to store data. Then Sony signed up Square and sealed the deal with a lot of the previous Nintendo owners that wanted to see more FF games, and FFVII surpassed expectations for sure, bringing in many people that had never played any of the 6 games before it.
Microsoft, on the other hand, saw a market with potential to get them into people's living rooms, especially with Sony marketing their machines with CD and DVD player functionality. Microsoft stepped it up by letting you rip your CDs to the hard drive and letting you save games on the hard drive, reducing the memory card to a system for transporting saved games rather than actually saving them in the first place (which may have hurt MS in terms of all of those nickel-n-dime peripheral purchases other console makers thrive on). MS didn't have an untapped market they were aiming for, they were just trying to get the machines in people's homes, and get developers to put games on the machines.
I don't think Microsoft is going to be a company that gets a devoted following (like Nintendo) since they have not really been a great first person game developer (outside of the third party companies that they've bought) so they're not going to have a guaranteed base they can work from.
It's unlikely unless their in-house developers (those third parties they've bought) produce some memorable franchises that people want to see more of. Perhaps Halo can do that, but I'm not really sure, and though I remember the original Crimson Skies, that's certainly not the appeal of the new game for me. KOTOR, well, they'll never own Star Wars;)
if MS is going to beat Sony's ps3 to market with their xbox next, they're running short on their window to release a refresher product.
The PSOne redesign was only released about a year before the PS2, I don't see why we'd expect redesigns of current-generation products before the end of 2004 given that the next-generation consoles are expected in the 2005/2006 timeframe. Afterall, the redesigns are usually about taking advantage of the consolidation of the various parts in the system (something that the XBox can't really take as much advantage of given the fairly standard PC parts, though it could use smaller drives and a smaller motherboard) to release something smaller (and cheaper) for the low-price end-of-life run before, during, and after the release of the new system, not about revitalizing the product line in it's mid-life while it's still the current generation.
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From an economic point of view, its a lot cheaper to have your driver play a $300 video game (PS2 system, [insert game name here], and memory card) than it is to get some time on the race track.
The point, though, was that the redesigned track hadn't even been driven and drivers already had an idea of how they would approach it, because EA got the blueprints for the redesigned track from the construction company (in soft-copy, of course) before it was even built. The further point was that the drivers' initial estimates based on the game turned out to be as little as 1mph off actual track speeds, and given that this was the first time anyone drove on the track, it's likely that speeds will come closer into line over time.
I don't particularly care for oval tracks, either, but there's still quite a difference when a track goes from a flat course to having variably-banked turns (which is what the article mentions has happened). It generally means you can go much faster through the turns, but you still have to figure out where the car is going to go when you head into it, and just how fast you can manage it.
What you don't seem to understand is not everyone can afford to splash out on a new DVD drive just for ONE FUCKING TITLE! Sure, when, say, 20% of games are shipping on DVD, it's possibly a valid argument, but for ONE TITLE, asking someone to shell out almost as much again on new hardware as they did on a game just to play the title is ridiculous.
What you don't seem to understand is that those of us that have had DVD-ROM drives for a while have gotten sick of them releasing games on more and more CDs per title (5, 6, how many do we need? I have 4 for my Diablo 2 + expansion install), without even bothering to release them on DVD for those of us that have it. By your logic, people would never upgrade video cards, either, because it's just for one title (and later another title, but still just one title because the last game wasn't worth upgrading for). I've got a whole 1 game on DVD, and it's the original Baldur's Gate, think about how long ago that came out (oh, and 2 games that came with one of my first DVD-ROM drives, which I've never played). My original reason for buying the drive was simply because it was cheaper than buying a DVD player for my TV, and because, at the time, my monitor was bigger than my TV. That doesn't work any more, though, because DVD players are almost as cheap as the drives, and I got a bigger TV.
You also approach things from the biased US perspective. Sure, a drive in the US may be that cheap, but consider other countries where the exchange rate is poor. You could probably spend well over $100 on a DVD drive. Importing from a cheaper market is not an option due to customs fees.
Don't forget region encoding, though most drives can at least be changed in firmware a couple of times. Don't blame me for poor exchange rates and import duties. Yes, I have a US perspective, because I live in the US. I don't care if they publish games on CD, I just want them to start publishing these huge multi-disc games on DVD. It's pathetic when I get a new game and it's 3-6 CDs, half the time packaged in paper envelopes or cardboard that scratches the shit out of the discs. Gee, maybe they could afford a plastic jewel case if they didn't have to press so many discs.
In the past, I've wound up paying more in fees for something than the actual item cost. DVD drives are not "dirt cheap".
DVD drives are dirt cheap, import fees are taxes a given government decides to put on foreign goods. Hell, most of the parts in my computer, including the DVD-ROM drive, weren't even made in the US.
Until such time as a DVD is mandatory to install a good percentage of software, the old "I'm getting sick of the excuses" line is pretentious, elitist bollocks. It's simply not cost effective to buy a new piece of hardware that will do LESS (since most systems have a CDR these days) than your existing hardware. (Movies are not a valid reason to own a DVD drive as the majority of DVD rom content is total crap.)
So it goes back and forth, in a nice big circle. DVD-ROM games aren't released because people complain about not having DVD-ROM drives, people won't buy the drives until the content is available, but when people make the content available, the people that don't have the drives complain.
BTW, if you're using a CD-R(W) drive IN PLACE OF your CD-ROM drive, then that's your choice, but I've never setup a system that way or recommended that anyone setup one that way, simply because you can save huge amounts of time even on one disc if you ever do CD-to-CD-R transfers. I never use my writers as ROM drives.
The fact you've never owned a CD-ROM drive faster than your current DVD drive means you either have more money than sense, have only ever used REALLY slow CD-ROM drives,
I mentioned specifically a 74x multi-beam drive. That drive was one I bought about 4 years ago, and was the last CD-ROM drive I owned (Diablo 2's copy-protection killed it). The majority of CD-ROM drives available today are 56X drives, pretty much
Yes GC does 480p, but GC is still FAR FAR behind PS2/XBOX for ONLINE GAMING. More and more people are into ONLINE GAMING. GC's online gaming is too pathetic to even consider it a rival of PS2/XBOX. Hell even Dreamcast's online capability (Unreal Tournament) is better than GC.
You're confusing online capability with online games, as evidenced by your inclusion of UT in parens after mention of the Dreamcast rather than mentioning that the Dreamcast came with a 56K modem installed (and could be upgraded to a broadband adapter if you could find the thing). The capability of the GC for online gaming is on par with the PS2. The games available is the problem.
If a new console for Nintendo means real online gaming on par with PS2/XBOX, I am all for it.
But with that said, I think if they just put money into making GC an ONLINE GAMING console, they can actually compete with XBOX/PS2...until then, I'll be playing Ghost Recon and Crimson Skies on XBOX LIVE and Socom 2 and Madden 2004 on PS2 ONLINE...no way do I buy a GC version of a game that is online on another console...
Two of the games you mentioned are 3rd party games. Why don't you ask the people that developed Ghost Recon and Madden 2004 why those games aren't online on the GC? Because the online adapter doesn't come with the console? Neither does the adapter for the PS2. Because they don't have a 'Live'-style service? Neither does the PS2, and MS is losing money on it. Because Nintendo isn't using it themselves and they aren't hyping it? Neither did Sony until they decided to do an EQ game on the PS2 (subscription revenue is sweet when you already have the infrastructure). What GC needs to become an online console is an exclusive title that people actually play online. Right now Nintendo doesn't see a reason to do it themselves and isn't willing to give incentives to other developers to do it, either.
Could you imagine Mario Party being an ONLINE game? Mario Kart?
Mario Kart I could imagine as working quite well, though my best memories of the series are always going to be playing on the SNES with my friends in the same room. Mario Party doesn't seem like it'd be nearly as interesting online, as most of the minigames are about the interaction between the players. Then again, Mario Kart may very well be online, as it's LAN capable and there's been a lot of talk about the GameSpy tunnelling software that Nintendo contracted.
The possibilities are endless, but NO, Nintendo KNOWS GC is for kids and THAT'S WHY they have NO interest in making GC an online gaming console, because kids don't make enough from their allowance to get a cable modem/dsl...Nintendo blows...
Right... Which is why my youngest step-brother was the first person I knew to put his console online (though of course I had to help my parents set things up to share the cable modem). I wouldn't be surprised if my gf's 10-year-old brother put his PS2 online this XMas since he's been playing Madden 2004 so much and most of his friends have it as well. That's what people don't seem to get, the games that sell the best on the PS2 are appealing just as much to the kids everyone says Nintendo's marketing after as to the teenagers and the 20-somethings. Sony would not have a piece of the console market if they hadn't realized one simple thing: teenagers are more afraid of what other people think of them than they are interested in actually having fun. A large number of the people playing those games online on the XBox and the PS2, just like PC games, are not the people footing the bill for those consoles (and PCs) and for them to be online.
In 2002 the GC has three games in the top 20(Mario Party 4, Mario Sunshine, and the same Zelda game mentioned above). Again, better, but not by much.
It should be noted the 2002 numbers are fiscal year, and end 3 months before the 2003 numbers you quoted. In other words, the slow months from March to the end of July are counted in the 2003 numbers while the end-of-year numbers are counted in the 2002 numbers. Then again, I can't be sure that the summer months are as slow in Japan for games as they are in the US, but then FF X-2s numbers don't change all that much from one chart to the next, but a lot of the other games' numbers dropped significantly.
In America, the situation is better. The GC is in fourth place, but still has 4.7 million sales. There are three games in the top 20, two of which are made by third party licensees. However, it's still not much compared to the commanding lead held by the PS2(and ever-increasing competition from the XBox).
Unfortunately the US yearly sales charts haven't been updated in 3 years, otherwise we could get a better picture of things. Fortunately, the US charts don't change much for months at a time because people keep buying the same games for quite a while (yet it's worth mentioning that the GC and XBox versions of Madden NFL have dropped considerably, with the GC version completely off the top 20 chart. The US charts are ranked by $ rather than units sold, as well, meaning that a GBA game ranked #2 by units sold is #4 because the games are $30-35/each rather than $50/each.
The GC is also only 7,000 units behind the XBox in console sales for the time period of the chart, which is a number the GC has been known to easily surpass when a new game with high appeal comes along (maybe next week?).
So given that the GC is basically on the bottom in the high-end console market, it's not surprising that Nintendo would try to get a new system out earlier. Given the extremely strong sales of the GBA, I don't think it's likely that their new system will be portable, either. If Nintendo gets their system out a year before anyone else, they'll have time to build up momentum and, more importantly, third party licensees. Nintendo's strength over the past couple generations has been in their in-house games, but those aren't enough to sustain the system. If they play their cards right, Nintendo might just pull a Sony and take the lead in the next generation.
The problem with this idea is that they really need the 3rd parties on launch, and that Sega showed in this generation that getting out too early doesn't always help (see the DreamCast). Unless they've managed to keep things very quiet for at least the last 12 months, it's unlikely that they're replacing the Cube within the next year, as 3rd parties would need at least 18 months, and often 24, to prepare launch titles. Sony, on the other hand, will just pull an advertising blitz as soon as the first next-gen console comes out, whether it's Sony's console or not, just as they did with this generation when the DreamCast came out, a year before the PS2. Even MS hit the advertising early on this generation. Everyone knew they were working on a game console long before it came out, but since they were unproven in the market no one waited like they did for Sony.
However, technology will eventually take its toll. Online gaming is exploding, has already exploded.
Nintendo has online adapters available, and are even using it for LAN play, but no one else is developing online capability on their console. Why not talk to EA and ask why they're not putting the online component of their games out on the GC versions? If it's already exploded, Nintendo shouldn't have to talk about it or put it in all of their games, the 3rd parties should be supporting it to sell their games. Yet 3rd parties wonder why their multi-console titles don't sell well on the Cube, when they're not even taking advantage of the platform.
DVDs and DVD-like formats are the established standard.
Yes, that 3" GC disc is a DVD-based format, as well, just like the 3" disc that the PSP will use is a DVD-based format.
Third-party support has grown amazingly and is now vital for console survival.
It always has been, but then only if 3rd parties develop quality games. It's nice to throw around numbers like 500 or 1500 games like Sony does with the PS2 or Nintendo does with the GBA, but the reality is that people want to look at a shelf full of games and see multiple titles they want to play. It's impressive to see the walls of PS2 titles most retailers carry, but closer inspection reveals that the games most people want would take up significantly less space.
Top-end video and audio capability are no longer luxuries, but expected.
Yes, and Sony's the bottom of the barrel for video and audio in the current generation.
Even Sony has realized the advantages of hard drives, media players, etc.
Sony invented the advantages of media players in consoles with the PS1, it's hardly something they've had to realize. It provides excellent possibilities for selling other products their corporation has to offer, like CDs and DVDs, since they're proud members of the RIAA and MPAA. As for the advantages of hard drives, where is that PS2 hard drive? I found an article a little while ago (which was quite old) that said it would be widely available in the US in 2001 bundled with the broadband adapter.
However - it still doesn't fix the problem of what happens when I want to play F-Zero X and the other half wants to watch Pride and Prejudice AGAIN!!!
That's what the GC price drop is for, assuming you have another TV. Then again, I told my gf I was buying it both for the bedroom and the Zelda bundle.
The PS2 was released in October, which is a little early for the November shopping extravaganza, but it also had the unique position of being the first of the next-gen consoles to be released, and hype is a company's best friend.
Just a minor correction, the Dreamcast was released in September the year before, and is definitely part of the current generation despite it's support being cut off very early. Sony built up the PS2 hype and released the redesigned PSOne around the same time to counter (successfully) the DC's early launch, and I'd expect the same thing to happen again if Nintendo or MS come along with their next-gen console much earlier than the PS3. Sony also had significant supply problems with the PS2 launch, meaning that for many people they weren't available until as much as 6 months after the launch.
So, to answer your question, it's more like 10 months, not 1.
Given the typical 6+ month difference in console releases between Japan and the US (at least for Japanese console manufacturers, though the Cube was 3 months), I wouldn't be surprised to see a release in mid-2004 with a US release in the Fall, though this soon I would expect it to be a handheld rather than a home system (with a home system released in Japan in possibly early 2005 and the US again around the fall). Unfortunately, it's at least as unusual for Nintendo to release a new handheld so soon as it is to release a new home console so soon, so it's really hard to say for sure what they're doing until they make an official announcement.
Not that I really support this sort of idea, but the bootable layer could load a proprietary DVD driver that disabled the ability to read writeable discs, as well as dealing with whatever other anti-piracy measures they'd have on the discs. Of course, eventually someone would probably figure out how to get around it.
This is pretty much the case with the PS2 anyway, as the drive is perfectly capable of reading DVD-R and CD-R discs, you just have to mod it to get it to work.
Releasing a new game system would be a smart and bold move for Nintendo, but what about the games?
New systems mean new games, but of course it remains to be seen what this system is, and up until now they had simply been saying they'll make an announcement in 2004, not that they'd actually have a system in 2004 (though that could be the announcement). Of course, if the system comes out late in 2004 in Japan, it could be well into 2005 before it hits the US.
If this new system even "just" offers quality comparable to today's ATI videocards (which it would have to have if it were to go into production for next year), why bother?
More than likely, any video chipset used for a new console would be fairly comparable to video cards that come out around the same time as the console, or slightly afterwards, rather than today. Of course, that's just assuming that it would be anything like the XBox with nVidia's graphics chips.
Nintendo just needs to swallow their pride and just start making games for all of the systems. Sega did it and is no longer fighting bankruptcy. Let some other sucker pony up the money for builing the home systems.
The big difference, though, is that Nintendo is not fighting bankruptcy, while Sega was losing money left and right before they gave up.
Technology is getting to the point where it has actually overtaken the ancient NTSC television. I play my Xbox in 480p "HD" mode on my HDTV for the few games that support it and it's fucking great! It pains to play in the lower "t.v." resolution. Since most people have regular "crappy" t.v.s it really does not make any sense to upgrade to a more powerful game system unless the games are there.
None of this makes much sense when the Cube already does 480p. It's more like you're typing to hear the keys click.
Nintendo's strong arm tactics are finally nipping (no racist pun intended) it in it's ass. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE the gamecube and I have had a lot of fun with it, but it has what, a smattering of games at best?
Perhaps. Then again, with the smaller number of games and the high percentage of quality games, it's easier to pick a random game off the shelf and be satisfied with the purchase.
All in all, I doubt anyone will be able to stop Sony at this point. Sony has spent Billion(s) of Dollars on R and D for the PS3 and whereas Micro$oft could actually outspend Sony on R and D, you know they won't, or if they do, they will create something less than inspired, like the Xbox. Once again, I like my Xbox, but really, it's just an 800mhz p.c. with an aging Geforce card in it. Sigh....
No one thought Nintendo could be beat after they overtook the market from Sega back when they released the SNES (and before the Genesis took the market because the SNES came out so much later). As for the XBox, try looking at the system requirements for games some day, and consider the overhead of the OS itself, and try to figure out how many games actually require what the XBox has. The difference between a PC and an XBox doesn't come in the packaging, it comes in the developers' ability to know what the end-user has and build for it, rather than building for a lowest-common-denominator and testing 100s of combinations of hardware. Sony's had their 2 consoles, but the real question is whether or not developers will be as ready to move from them as they were to move to them if they see a better system. Additionally, I think it's rather sad that most of the PS2 ads I've seen lately have actually been for 2 or 3-platform titles, but don't mention that fact because they're Sony ads.
From the nintendo.com/zeldaclassic/ site:
(choose from: Mario Party 5, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and 1080 Avalanche)
So, it appears that it's not just any 2 games, and frankly I might be buying 2 of those games, but I don't think that's how I'll be getting my Zelda disc (since I'm buying another Cube soon anyway and decided to use the disc as a bonus justification). Perhaps when I pick up Mario Kart and Mario & Luigi I'll register to get the disc and give it away as an XMas present.
I don't know from marketing, but I really don't see how companies like that will ever be crucial to the industry. Is marketing such a problem that it would be worth sharing profits with another company to solve?
It's not really about marketing unless you're questioning the existing model (developer goes to publisher, who takes care of marketing, distribution, and usually financing the project). They were trying to play the part of a go-between for the developers and publishers, isolating the developers a bit more from the management of the publishers and isolating the publishers from overseeing the projects so much. In theory, it should work in such a way that a production house has a stable of good developers and a knowledge of how they work and what it would take to get a project off the ground and to a final state. This production house could then go to the publisher either with a completed game asking for the amount that it cost to produce plus some additional fees and negotiate the contract for any profit on the title (which is pretty much what a developer does now if they have a finished product they're shopping around). Alternatively, they can shop around ideas with a solid plan in place to produce a new project and try to get a publisher to fund it, which is actually how most games are produced today (except that with the producer the developer again wouldn't have to do this).
Ideally, the producer has a good group of developers working for them and a good understanding of how those developers work, and can turn out higher quality titles on a better budget than independent developers (or developers beholden directly to their publishers), because the producer would be the interface between the two, meaning that developer resources aren't wasted on dealing with the publisher and the publisher may have better assurance that the details are being overseen by the producer.
The real problem is that in order for something like this to be successful, a production house actually has to be trusted by well-known high-quality developers, or the developers have to form the production house themselves with solid managers (and lawyers) to make sure they don't have problems like G.o.D. Games or Ion Storm. Those managers also have to be wary about signing multi-title deals just for the sake of gaining funds or security for the company, as this would make them further beholden to the publishers, leaving the developers in the same position as always (feature creep and rushed releases are commonly attributed to publishers and marketing). In other words, it would have to come out of a group of development houses that can afford to fund their own projects or already have fair leeway with their publishers in terms of development times and features. Needless to say, the companies with the most money and say over their own development are also the least likely to actually need a production house, which is where the problem comes in with the whole idea. The only real benefit the whole thing would have would be to allow new developers to come into a rather large production house and get their feet wet, and eventually add to the development team after they've gained experience. Unfortunately, it also means that new developers would end up spending a long time doing small-time work on big projects before they could work on any ideas of their own, and the bigger a production house gets, the longer that time period can stretch.
Independent, in this case, refers to independence from the publishers (and developers), ie they're not a game publisher, so in theory they could've worked with any publisher.
They were trying to play a role currently being played by both the publishers and the developers and sit in the middle somewhere. Whether or not it was a good idea, on the other hand, depends on whether or not developers or publishers felt they really needed something like that.
On the other hand, yes, being backed by VC does make them more likely to go under or get sold out fairly quickly, especially after so much VC got burned up in the 90's.
there are roughly 200 Million PCs worldwide and if even a 3rd of them are being used for any online gaming whatsoever, then what i'm saying is true,
They're not. Simple as that. Even if you don't consider the crossover between games, you'd be extremely lucky to come up with a number near 65-70 million.
heck, i think Counterstrike players are numerous enough that they beat PS2s numbers by themselves
It depends on what numbers you're talking about. At the height of CS' popularity it had about 3 times as many players as what Sony is now claiming for the maximum simultaneous players found online for SOCOM 2. CS did so well that it outdid even the combination of every other online FPS at the time. It also happens to be a mod for the only FPS in the top 20 best-selling games of all time.
On the other hand, the number of CS players at that time was approximately 1/800th the number of PS2s that have been sold, and less than 1% of the number of copies of Half-Life (which, at the time, was required to play CS) that were sold.
Furthermore, the best-selling PS2 game (GTA:VC) outsold Half-Life by a half-million units (not including the PC port of GTA:VC, or the upcoming XBox port). The only games that sold better than GTA:VC were The Sims and a slew of Nintendo games, namely Tetris and 6 Mario games. Super Mario Bros. 1 sold 5 times as many units as Half-Life, and 4 times as many units as the Sims. There are a total of 3 PC games in the top 20, the above mentioned Sims(7) and Half-Life(15), and Myst(18). The combined sales of those 3 games does not equal the number of PS2s sold, yet the #1 game alone comes close and the #1 and 2 games combined almost double it.
The difference comes down to one of pure potential. If online games on the PS2 reached 1/3rd of CS' online audience within the first 2 years of mainstream online console gaming, what does that mean down the line? CS came out nearly 5 years after mainstream online PC gaming hit, and online PC gaming was possible (and done by some) for quite a while before that (and online console gaming has also been possible for quite a while). The numbers of games like EQ, Diablo 2, and StarCraft put CS to shame, but the sales of the games don't even rank (at the same time, I question this for Blizzard's games, as I've often heard numbers that would easily rank them close to, if not above, Half-Life).
Anyway, the whole point is that console games sell more copies than PC games, and in a very short time are getting the same numbers of players online. It's only a matter of time, at the current rate, before online console gaming becomes a very large percentage of all online console gaming, if not the predominant form. That being said, I do agree that it's a different experience, as is console gaming in general, but I think you'll find that this only leads to different types of titles becoming popular in the long run. People keep saying FPS games and PCs just go together, yet the FPS barely existed on the PC before it went online, at which point the genre exploded (though, frankly, Doom was probably bigger because it was an FPS and easily pirated rather than because it had online play). Online gaming almost completely changed the landscape of PC gaming, and I won't be surprised if it does nearly the same (though hopefully in different ways) to console gaming.
And, to reiterate, the different functionality EA wanted was primarily that they didn't want Online available for older games. That is, once SSX 3 came out, online functionality for SSX Tricky would have to be halted. Although in principle developer power sounds great, in the XBox Live case it seems that the XBox Live specifications provide developers with the tools to do what they want to do, except for hosing their users, and that is precisely what EA was being stymied at.
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Unfortunately, they also haven't done online play on the Cube, despite most of their multiplatform titles being available there and the Cube's online strategy having few differences from Sony's (except, of course, that Sony's now pushing the online angle).
And don't be fooled into thinking that it is because XBox Live prevents developers from taking a cut of the profits. Phantasy Star Online charges an additional users fee that goes to the publisher.
The one thing EA wanted in this realm, though, was customer data, as stated here:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/14/technology
EA gets to use the infrastructure in which it invested so heavily and collect the revenue and marketing data [by making online play available on the PS2]. Microsoft, on the other hand, built out its own infrastructure (and service, called Xbox Live) and handles the billing and customer relationships.
There's another quote which I remember also seeing in US articles (but I can't find those articles at the moment) here:
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0
EA declined to join with Microsoft because it felt it would lose "ownership" of the customer, EA spokesman Jamie McKinlay said.
"The player would buy our product and then pay Microsoft to play it online. Microsoft would retain all that player information on a database and we wouldn't have access to it."
It's truly an interesting thing when Microsoft, of all people, is keeping information about your use habits from someone (especially since EA has a deal with AOL that means customer data for people playing EA games online is sold to AOL, if you'd like proof of that, read EA's privacy policy).
I think you're all arguing over an almost completely different kind of consistency than what exists with XBox Live.
The consistency has to do with the features supported and the idea that you don't have to sign into different services to play different games.
The player can use their friends list to invite people to play, regardless of what game they are playing at the moment. The service can handle the exiting from one game and loading (and connecting to a game) of the next when the user decides to accept that invitation. The user doesn't have to enter a log-in and password when 95+% of the users don't have keyboards (yes, my password to bypass the parental rating on my PS2 is XXXXXXXX or however many times I have to hit that damned button). Voice communication works the same way in every game. You find games the same way.
On the other hand, if developers want people to jump through hoops and not have voice communication or be able to invite each other to play their game (or other games), yeah, this might be a problem. If I want people to perform a KI 99-hit combo to get online in my game, maybe I should be allowed to do that. If I want to sell my customers' data to keep my struggling online business afloat, maybe I should be allowed to do that.
Do it somewhere else. EA's problem has everything to do with the last sentence in the previous paragraph and nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph. Anyone else has their own reasons, though very few seem to have been all that reluctant to support Live if they support multiplayer at all on consoles.
Will there ever be room in the market for an "independent production company" like CEG?
I think the problem is that CEG wasn't a production company at all. They were simply trying to fill the same role for developers that agents play for actors or managers play for musicians, and the industry isn't quite setup that way, yet. If it starts to move in this direction, it'll be more likely that the publishers will establish the role of agents, putting people out there to look for game developers, rather than having game developers pitch directly to publishers as they do now, and since the agents will be an arm of the publishing company, the cut the agent takes will be extra padding in the publisher's bottom line.
Only once this system (which is more or less a scam) is in place would an independent company have it's place, and only then if that company had made significant in-roads with the publishers. It only becomes a production company (of sorts) when they've got enough developers under their wing and when they can maintain developers by making single-title deals with publishers (rather than multiple-title deals which are fairly common with successful developers).
Even at that point, you have to find ways around the economic problems with the games industry, realizing that most titles fail and that games are getting more expensive to produce every year, and, as an independant production house, publishers aren't likely to sign off on your projects until they're fairly close to completion unless you have a very solid team in-house that has released some very strong titles and has been very consistent about doing so. The music industry's getting hammered by bad economics, and the movie industry turns out a lot of crap to try to deal with it's economics, so moving to a model with more 3rd parties involved in games, where the economic problems are really just starting, doesn't seem like a sound idea.
That being said, having one of CEG's founders move on to CAA seems like just about the perfect move for both him and CAA, since they need people with a better idea of how the games industry works, and it essentially gets him a little closer to the job he was setting up at CEG in the first place.
I know a LOAD of people who warezed MGS, simply because they don't have a DVD drive. (And the old argument "Well buy one, they're cheap" is garbage. That's like having to buy a new CD player just to play one album you want, and you won't use for anything else.)
If you replace your CD-ROM drive with a DVD-ROM drive then you're set, and you will use it (though probably mostly for CDs).
I've had DVD-ROM drives in my systems for 6 years, I'm getting a little sick of the excuses, especially when the drives are dirt cheap (less than $40) and usually perform better than CD-ROM drives. I've never owned a CD-ROM drive faster than my current DVD-ROM drive, and I owned some very unusual high-speed CD-ROM drives over the years (back when DVD-ROM drives were expensive I didn't want to use them to read CDs, though multi-beam 74x CD-ROM drives weren't cheap, either).
I was actually thinking of getting an SP - I still may but then again I may just wait until the Psp Comes out. I have super mario 3 on NES and on SNES with the Super Mario All stars. I doubt I'd pay 30-40 bucks again just to take it on the road. I'm glad you agree that some new mario 2d platformers would be nice.
;)
Lucky for me I didn't own an SNES, otherwise there'd probably be a lot more games I didn't care about either way on both the GBA and GC platforms. I also didn't own SMB3, though I played it quite a bit on friends' NES systems.
Which of the 3 castlevania games isn't excellent? In case I buy an SP.
I have Aria of Sorrow and Harmony of Dissonance, both are excellent. I read some bad reviews of Circle of the Moon, but will probably pick it up eventually. I simply won't call it excellent until I've played it
The portable gaming market is different than the home console market. GBA is the only portable - PS2 has competitors this is why GBAs sell more.
Actually, I think the GBA sells more because the PS2 costs almost twice as much (as the SP, 3-4 times as much as the older GBA), and because multiple GBAs per household is much more likely than multiple PS2s per household (comes with the whole portable thing). I have 2 SPs, an old-style GBA, and a GB Player myself.
The Dream Cast was not in the same console generation as the PS2 - and if they were, who cares? They hardly went anywhere with it.
They were in the same generation, Sony pushed the advertising for the PS2 up to keep people waiting for their console rather than buying DreamCasts (which cost 2/3 as much at launch as a PS2 that launched a year later), and launched the PSOne (redesign) around the same time as the DreamCast as well. Many of the games ported from the DC to the PS2 don't look as good on the PS2 because the DC games just looked better (especially the 1st gen titles). It just didn't do well in the Japanese market and had a shaky US launch, so it was killed off too soon. The only point, and why people should care, is that regardless of how good the system is (was), being first out the gate isn't everything people seem to think it is.
The games like Tomb Raider and so forth that are sold on carts specifically for the N-Gage are not J2ME games, but they are the games that the article is talking about. There are only a handful of phones that can handle them, but there's not much special about the N-Gage hardware to make it an issue (except, of course, that most of the phones that can run it tend to be more expensive than the N-Gage).
And through all this, Sony will probably devise a single-chip version of the PS2 and everyone will buy the DVD player that happens to have a PS2 inside rather than buy the PS2 that happens to play DVDs.
As it stands they've already got the 2 primary chips down to 1 chip, and they announced in the last couple of months that they're starting production of that chip on a smaller fabrication (90 nanometer iirc). This would probably lead to use in the PS3 for backwards compatibility, though they'd have to maintain the I/O chip (or put that functionality into the main chip) for the PS1 compatability. As for a DVD player that happens to play PS2 games, it seems they're more focused on higher-end electronics for things like that, notably their Tivo-like unit with DVD recording capability that just happens to also play PS2 games (the PSX).
Why not even release a PDA based on a shrunk-down PS2 core? They've already got Linux on it.
Who knows, maybe it's a heat issue, or they simply feel that their existing line of PDAs is going in the right direction.
The same thing goes with the other parts in the XBox.
Is Intel going to keep making 733MHz CPUs for anything less than a premium? Of course not, they probably aren't producing anything under 1GHz any more. Plus, if I remember correctly, there were some differences between the XBox CPU and a standard CPU, though not major, which would also increase the costs. The slowest Intel CPU you can buy at any given time is usually not much less expensive than the slowest current-generation CPU available.
Do you think nVidia's still producing a lot of GF3-era hardware when the GF4MX has taken over even the GF2MX's price points? They have GF4s and the GFFX to cover the mid- and high-end price points, with even some of the GF4 Tis slipping into the low-end.
This is also the major reason that ATI is probably a better choice for most consoles (as an off-the-shelf processor), because ATI has dealt with OEMs for most of their existence, and those people like to have chips available for a while (though not as long as consoles in most cases, still a lot longer than you might be able to find the same chips in cards on store shelves).
In the end, this is probably why Microsoft licensed technology from IBM rather than awarding a contract to produce the chips, since they could probably outsource chip production (or even do it themselves) over the long term for less than having IBM produce the chips indefinitely as all the rest of IBM's lines upgrade for new chips for Apple and others.
Just think, even if MS is buying single-platter drives, how many hard drives are being produced with 8GB platters? Not very many, since that would only produce 16 and 24GB drives, and it's unlikely you could buy a new 24GB drive for $24.
Of course, they're getting better prices than end-users normally see, but it still adds up to a loss (though smaller than the numbers most people throw around, even at launch the most detailed estimate I saw put it closer to $30-50 loss per console at $300 retail, which was, of course, at launch, rather than recently, so even with no cost reductions (and they have had some cost reductions in the manufacturing end) you're looking at $150-170 loss per console, max).
currently the xbox is the number 2 system (at least in the minds of developers) - but if the GC continues to sell red-hot at firesale prices, that may all change before christmas 04. You may see developer support shifting back toward the GC.
Right, except that, with the exception of the cheap, fast ports that most GC owners don't seem to buy, this probably won't effect the games coming out for the Cube itself, but rather for it's successor, especially if developers expect the next consoles to start hitting in late 05 rather than sometime in 06, and even moreso if the Japanese releases from Sony and Nintendo are still ahead of the US releases (as they were with this generation and most previous consoles).
as such i was half expecting a holiday US price cut to $150 w/2 games and the redesign at $100 at least by summer 04. (which means more rumors and leaked specs/designs should be circulating right about now )
Yes, except that Microsoft is more concerned with the image (to consumers) of competing with Sony rather than the image of competing with Nintendo. If they admit to competing with Nintendo (with a price cut that brings them closer to Nintendo's prices), then some people may feel that they're competing for #2 rather than #1, and take the cheaper console instead.
but really, i'm only asking because it's all more interesting to me than a japanese price cut, which simply brings their price on par with the fairly longstanding US/european pricing.
Of course, but then Microsoft recently launched advertising for their Live bundle, bundling Live (and the games that were bundled with the most recent Live kit) with the XBox at about the same price the previous XBox bundles were selling for (maybe a little lower, but I haven't paid much attention to XBox prices since I bought one a year ago, and I know it's lower than it was then). With that advertising campaign underway, it's unlikely they'll drop the price until the end of the month at the earliest (possibly Thanksgiving to capitalize on one of the biggest retail days of the year). Given the current advertisements, it's likely that any price cut so soon would be held pretty tightly by MS to keep people from waiting the 2-3 weeks for the cut.
Given the Zelda package is supposed to be out today, I may be heading out after work to pick up a second Cube for my apartment, making it the only non-handheld system that I've ever owned more than one of.
When Sony jumped into the market with the PSOne, they didn't have a long term plan to slowly take market share away from Nintendo and Sega - they aimed to corner the market for that generation and move on from there. I think that you're overstating the future for the XBox - it certainly could go down the way you describe but it's not as likely as it seems you believe.
;)
There's a difference between the market Sony came into and the market Microsoft came into, though. Sony saw a market that wasn't being reached by either Nintendo or Sega: 16-25, or even older, males that grew up with Nintendo and Sega but wanted something 'cool' instead of the same old stuff. They also saw that Sega had some of the right ideas (at the time) with arcade ports, and Sony made an arcade version of the PS1 to make those ports easy (much like Sega did with some of their consoles). Further, Sony saw that the optical discs could work if you used a memory card to store data. Then Sony signed up Square and sealed the deal with a lot of the previous Nintendo owners that wanted to see more FF games, and FFVII surpassed expectations for sure, bringing in many people that had never played any of the 6 games before it.
Microsoft, on the other hand, saw a market with potential to get them into people's living rooms, especially with Sony marketing their machines with CD and DVD player functionality. Microsoft stepped it up by letting you rip your CDs to the hard drive and letting you save games on the hard drive, reducing the memory card to a system for transporting saved games rather than actually saving them in the first place (which may have hurt MS in terms of all of those nickel-n-dime peripheral purchases other console makers thrive on). MS didn't have an untapped market they were aiming for, they were just trying to get the machines in people's homes, and get developers to put games on the machines.
I don't think Microsoft is going to be a company that gets a devoted following (like Nintendo) since they have not really been a great first person game developer (outside of the third party companies that they've bought) so they're not going to have a guaranteed base they can work from.
It's unlikely unless their in-house developers (those third parties they've bought) produce some memorable franchises that people want to see more of. Perhaps Halo can do that, but I'm not really sure, and though I remember the original Crimson Skies, that's certainly not the appeal of the new game for me. KOTOR, well, they'll never own Star Wars
if MS is going to beat Sony's ps3 to market with their xbox next, they're running short on their window to release a refresher product.
The PSOne redesign was only released about a year before the PS2, I don't see why we'd expect redesigns of current-generation products before the end of 2004 given that the next-generation consoles are expected in the 2005/2006 timeframe. Afterall, the redesigns are usually about taking advantage of the consolidation of the various parts in the system (something that the XBox can't really take as much advantage of given the fairly standard PC parts, though it could use smaller drives and a smaller motherboard) to release something smaller (and cheaper) for the low-price end-of-life run before, during, and after the release of the new system, not about revitalizing the product line in it's mid-life while it's still the current generation.