All things considered this probably means that you'll be seeing less FPS and heavy-bandwidth games on the GameCube (or whatever future console Nintendo decides to add online capability to). If Nintendo is recommending the use of AOL-- which is primarily a dial-up service-- this makes it easy for most players to get online, but it also lowers the expected average bandwidth. Thus, you'll see more Animal Crossings than Unreals on the Cube, simply because those types of games require less bandwidth (AIM + encrypted "item trade" messages = online Animal Crossing).
Half-Life uses about 5kb/sec (yes, kilobits, not kilobytes), UT a little more (but not much, maybe 15kb/sec max), and Q3 somewhere in between, maybe even less than HL. FPS games are not bandwidth-limited in the majority of cases, they just have severe problems with connections that have high packet loss (like say an AOL connection on a bad phone line).
Sure, if you tag AIM onto Animal Crossing and call online item trading a multiplayer game, you use less bandwidth, just like you do if you play Chess or Checkers online.
Most games don't have bandwidth problems at all, they just have issues with latency over the connections. The 'fast-paced' games moreso than others. Through years of development from many different theories, most FPS games have a pretty solid online experience with most latency and loss conditions, but the only time bandwidth has mattered has been when you had to download the patches, mods, and maps for the games. Many of the popular genres of console games haven't had a lot of developers putting them online yet, but they can still benefit from some of the work done in the FPS, RTS, and RPG genres on PCs in the last 10+ years.
The problem is the method, not the skills involved in observation or anything else, really.
As a social worker, regardless of how many years you spent doing it, there are a number of other conditions that come into play when it comes to you even observing a child in the first place (in a professional manner, that is). The only times I ever saw social workers or psychologists as a child were when I was having problems (namely, the judge ordered myself and my sister to see a social worker when my parents got divorced to determine whether or not we could decide on our own who we lived with, my parents did not have a nice divorce, and getting away from my mother was the best thing that could've happened for me at that time), and I saw a school psychologist a few times when teachers thought I was slow or falling behind (turned out I was bored and far ahead in terms of skill/knowledge/learning, so just not doing the work in many cases, if I were 5 years younger they probably would've put me on Ritalin)).
There were times in my life when my reaction to certain stimuli may have been violent, which would've been during the period 2 years before and after my parents divorced, for the most part (looking back puts things in a certain perspective), and the only fight I've ever been in during my life was during that time period (towards the end of it, in fact). The latter part of that time period also happens to overlap with the time at which we had first gotten the NES, though we'd had an Atari 2600 and various computers (with plenty of games) throughout most of my life (from the time I was about 2 years old). Did the NES have anything to do with my behavior? Yeah, it meant that I spent more time indoors and more time with those friends of mine that also had an NES, discussing and playing games. Did it make me more violent? It seems doubtful since the types of games I played were no more or less violent on the NES than on any other systems. The NES didn't even have better graphics than many of those computers.
The simple fact is that games are becoming more pervasive, more widely available, and more accepted in our lives. More kids are exposed to them. In any given case where a kid was violent, there's a certain chance that he played video games to some extent, based in part on the percentage of kids his age that played video games to that same extent.
Millions of people played Doom, and it was probably one of the most pirated video games of all time (on top of being one of the best selling games of all time). The game came out roughly 10 years ago. When 2 high school kids in a fairly well-off neighborhood (meaning that computers will be in most homes) shoot up their high school, there's a certain chance that you're going to find a copy of Doom in their house, and there's even a good chance that they played it and enjoyed it. Additionally, if they didn't have a lot of other games, there's a good chance they played it a lot, and maybe had a lot of associated material (books, mods, etc). Guess what? That doesn't mean the violent games lead to the violent actions. There are millions of case studies available of people that played Doom and went on with their lives as usual.
When you find a violent kid, you're likely to find someone that may enjoye violent games, books, movies, TV shows, whatever. Any person tends towards media that reflects their internal world to some degree, people like to be able to identify with the music they listen to, or with characters in a movie, or book, or game.
Of course, the real problem is when you find people overly susceptible to media influence with a tendency towards violence. Those people can easily create a feedback loop in their own behavior, essentially escalating their own tendencies through media consumption. The problem is not with the media itself, though, it's with properly identifying that person before they become harmful to themselves or others.
You mean Team Fortress 2 won't be out November 14th 2004? Damnit...
When Valve announces a date, I tend to half believe them until it goes gold or slips. I stopped looking at the release dates anyone else posts, especially for their games, when the credit card I used for the TF2 pre-order (in 1999) expired. (The above date of 11/14/04 I pulled off of EBGames.com shortly before hitting the 'Reply to This' link, knowing quite well they would have a date for it, and it would be roughly a year away, and without any announced dates from Valve to back it up).
As did Johnny Mnemonic, Speed and almost every other film where Keanu Reeves plays the central character... hey waitasec!
I would say that in those movies he either spoke too much or there was not another actor/actress in the movie that could offset his amazing ability to deliver memorable lines that completely destroy the mood of a scene. The 'Bill & Ted' movies were very good at tapping into his dialogue skills, or maybe they just had good casting.
It seems he's completely neglecting one of the major differences between the X-box and the PC, namely, the UI.
Umm, didn't he say right near the beginning of the article that the UI would be different between the two versions?
hmm here's the first paragraph of his first response in the interview:
Spector: We started right at the outset wanting to make a game simultaneously for both the Xbox and the PC. So, what we did was we set the bar at the Xbox level -- the PC version is going to be different only in that it will support a different UI. It will support the mouse and keyboard and higher resolutions. Other than that, our goal was really to design one game, with one experience, and then let players go for it.
OK, so, he's not restructuring the game around the input available on the given platform, but there's definitely a different UI, definitely mouse + keyboard considered here.
I mean, having a keyboard makes a difference. It allows more options, more diversity of control in a rapid manner. Unless the game is undergoing some kind of *insane* level of menuing, you can guaruntee that the game will not approach the complexity or detail possible using a PC.
Having a keyboard means you can do that. Having a game pad with 10 or so buttons on it means that you find a way not to do that. What is a series of keys across the top of the keyboard to change to specific weapons becomes a cycle on one or two buttons on the controller to cycle through the weapons, possibly in an on-screen menu rather than cycling the weapons in and out of the character's hands.
The first Deus Ex, imo, seemed rather heavily bound to a point & click interface, and it really seemed hindered by it rather than empowered by it. They really needed to rethink it, and hopefully that's what they did here. Although they've already stated they simplified the gameplay for various reasons, I don't think it was because of the controls, and I really hope they took the time to make the interface better because of the controls on the XBox limiting their options. Sometimes people need limitation to really express themselves fully, it puts the brain in motion thinking of new ways to do things.
Console gamers can be real gamers, for console games are real games. But they are often only attracted by the entry-level price of consoles, and don't have the dedication that a real PC gamer has.
That's why there are so many PC gamers out there with overclocked Athlon and Celeron rigs, right? I bought my first PC for gaming, and have performed the majority of upgrades on my PC strictly for gaming. That being said, it doesn't take much these days to get and keep a gaming rig up to snuff for the latest games. In fact, until Doom 3 comes out, there won't even be anything out there taxing systems over a year old. When the most used benchmark for video cards produces 300 fps on current generation chips, you either spend a boatload of money to get 300 fps or you stop caring. (Note: I was going to add Half-Life 2 as well as Doom 3 up there, but since HL2 is supposed to adapt the graphics quality to the system to maintain 60 fps, I don't think people will start worrying about it for a little while, except in the rare cases (especially rare for PC gamers that are trying to squeeze 2 more fps out of their rigs) where they want better graphics quality).
Do the mindless console playing masses have any concept of frames-per-second or screen resolution?
The majority: no. But then this is the case in PC gaming as well, and is why many of the top-selling PC games of all time are games that aren't in my (rather large if I do say so myself) collection of PC games (ie Myst, the Sims). At the same time, how many of the mindless speed-cranking, overclocking, must-get-100-fps game players out there understand that 100 fps isn't about getting more than your neighbor, but about capping that framerate lower and getting a consistant framerate. How many understand that v-synch is turned off in benchmarks to get raw video card numbers, but needs to be turned on when you play a game in order for that game to look good?
Have they ever known the joy of having the latest and greatest hardware... something none of their friends has yet?
Yeah, I had that joy when I bought a P2-400 w/ 256 MB of RAM, a Sound Blaster PCI64, a Diamond Viper V330 (yes, a truly bad video card), and 2 (not ONE, but TWO!) 12MB Voodoo 2 cards. Guess what happened? The Voodoo 2 cards generated so much heat that I spent a fortune on fans and still had to send 1 of the cards back for replacement. The system also had 2 of the earliest 7200 rpm IDE hard drives in it, and one of those drives failed about 3 months after moving it to a different system. The only thing I still own from that original bulk of 'nobody else has it' hardware is the floppy drive, which I never use but still keep in my systems. The only thing that was really great was that I bought the CPU last out of all of that stuff, and not only had a faster CPU not come out yet, but the price dropped $400 in the time it took for me to acquire the $900 worth of video cards and the $650 monitor and the $400 worth of RAM.
Do they have any idea of the many wonderful and diverse genres of PC games?
FPS. RTS. PC-RPG. MMO-RPG. That accounts for 95+% of the PC games worth buying, did I miss something? Maybe flight sims, turn-based strategy, city-builders, adventure games, all of those that have dwindled down to a handful of core titles which rarely generate much of a bubble on the PC gamers awareness radar these days?
Do they really care about control and precision?
Considering the state of PC game pads, I'd say that the question goes right back to you. I can get a USB adapter for my XBox that handles the keyboard. It'd be nice if I could the mouse would work as well, because I really can only use certain trackballs and keyboards anyway, whereas the only console gamepads I've had any problems with in the current generation are the Dreamcast controller and the XBox Controller S (yes, the smaller one).
# Powerfull hardware. The cheaper platforms have pathetic hardware companred to even a cheap gaming PC. 64mb? Please my vid card alone got more memory. Of course the price is more expensice but that is apperantly an accepted tradeoff for many customers.
The average graphics intensive PC game is still developed for a P3-600 w/ a TNT card w/ 16MB RAM on the video card and 32-64MB in the PC, and assuming that the person using the PC is running the game from cache because the OS and the crap running in the background ate the system RAM. That's why (in addition to the low resolution), console games can often push the boundaries of graphics capabilities beyond what most PC games will even try to do. That being said, we're in the tail end of the current consoles' lives (being 2-4 years into this generation, depending on the console, and 1.5-2 years away from the next generation), so PC-only games are going to start catching up and passing the consoles on this end.
ATI and nVidia make most of their money selling chips to OEMs. This is why ATI survived when 3dfx and a dozen other graphics chip companies died, because ATI held the OEM market almost entirely to themselves, and this gave them the resources to combat nVidia in the 3D space when nVidia came after the OEM space (and took most of it away). nVidia and ATI are also both selling a lot of chips in the console space at the moment, which is very lucrative in the long term because the same technology is in the consoles for much longer than they could ever hope to sell any one chip for anything other than bargain basement prices in the PC world.
Creative Labs is only concerned about holding their near-monopoly on the consumer desktop, even if it means selling 7.1 audio (hello, where's the 7th speaker? 6.1 gives you center front & rear already...). Their drivers are almost completely non-functional on any NT-based OS, and in most cases their older cards are completely non-functional on newer Windows OSs. That's not even getting into their compete by litigation strategy which has killed any company that went after the gamers with solid sound cards for game PCs. My on-board audio almost works better than my Audigy 2.
Don't get me wrong, I love games and gaming. I'm just resolved to not pumping those 2-300 every two years into a new console and games. I'll upgrade the PC, especially when sweet video cards are coming out each year. Plus, I can enjoy that memory/speed for other applications.
Considering the age of the current consoles, the planned release of the next generation consoles 2 years from now, and the life of the previous generation, even if you only spend 200-300 upgrading your PC every 2 years you'll be a bit behind on both sides.
I managed to buy every current major console available in the US just by slowing my PC upgrade process to an annual purchase instead of buying something every 6 months. The number of games I've bought slightly increased, but that's mostly because I have more systems available to play games on when the PC hits it's usual summer slump (and there are plenty of older console games to buy that are just as good as the latest greatest games, even though graphics improve throughout the life of a console as people improve their programming methods for that console). My PC is only slightly behind the curve compared to where it would normally be if I had continued upgrading it every 6 months, at 2GHz w/ 512MB RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti 128MB video card. Another 512MB RAM, upgrade one of the hard drives, wait for the next generation of cards to see if nVidia's going to wake up, and if the 2GHz CPU starts showing it's age, do another overhaul of the motherboard/RAM/CPU.
Game Houses need to keep in mind that the market is wide, but for sheer beauty, >= 1200x1024 32bit >=30fps screens are going to make game immersion much stronger than blowing up 320x240 60htz into a 52inch blurbox. I know some have tried sticking to PC and missed a huge market, but spend the money there on quality and they'll find my wallet.
Sorry, something about the fact that I can take the HDTV that I will buy anyway for movies and play games on it at 720i makes me wonder if I really need the hassle of playing games on my PC's 19" monitor just for the sake of 1600x1200@32bpp, or 1280x1024. Considering how many people will play Q3 at 640x480@16bpp just to try to maximize their framerate, I no longer care how comfortable my computer chair is, I'm going to go sit on the couch with my WaveBird or my XBox ControlBrick and play something besides Half-Life, WarCraft, and Diablo.
Ever heard the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none"? Well, it's the same with games - if you make them multi-platform, you have to make them for the lowest common denominator. This will inevitably result in the experience on more powerful machines being significantly worse that it could be had the game been written for it specifically.
Let's see, the game was designed for a ~P3-700 + ~GeForce 3. When was the last time you saw that on the system requirements of a game (I wonder what the PC version of this game will say for system reqs)?
On the other hand, you have the memory and resolution limitations of the console. The resolution isn't a problem if your system can handle it. Larger textures: it would be nice to have the option, but really isn't needed if the game is good.
As for Deus Ex specifically, the first game was a slideshow on my PC until a few patches came out (got 3dfx? Well, by the time it came out no one with a decent video card did). I'm going to avoid the second one on the PC like a plague for just that reason, even though it's not likely to be a problem.
On my second point, there are a few games that require that you purchase both versions. Legend of Zelda and Splinter Cell are two that come to mind.
Which Zelda game? Wind Waker has a lot of extra stuff in the GBA connectivity that can make the game easier (or make it easier to find secrets), which don't require a GBA game. I'll have to check around a bit more to see if there's anything that can be unlocked using Four Swords/Link to the Past in WW.
From what I've read of Splinter Cell, there are some extra levels if you have the GBA game as well as the GameCube game, but there are still extra features that don't require the GBA game. I really don't know how well this pans out, since Splinter Cell isn't really my type of game (or even if it is, previous Tom Clancy games were so bad I decided not to buy any more).
Most of the talk I hear about upcoming GBA connectivity also involves purchasing both versions of a game. The animal crossing thing sounds kind of cool, I admit.
I'll have to look around a bit more I guess, but I'm genuinely not concerned as long as the individual titles are worthwhile without considering the connectivity options.
On the third point, I guarantee that the Panasonic Q sales aren't that high. Although DVDs are pretty big in Japan, I don't think Japan went through the same widespread adoption that happened over here. After all, they already had VCD, and the leap between VCD and DVD isn't nearly as big as between VHS and DVD. In the North American market, the biggest one out there, DVD playback would have helped tremendously.
I really wouldn't know. DVD playback wasn't a consideration when I purchased any of my consoles, but I've used the PS2 as a DVD player recently because it saves me from having to buy a bigger/another A/V switch. I don't like using it as a DVD player because of concerns over the lifetime of PS2 hardware and the poor quality of DVD playback on the unit (that being said, the TV I have it hooked up to is pretty poor anyway).
On the fourth point, I disagree that it's going to take some time. It's never going to happen until Nintendo changes their policies and goes on an all out recruitment drive for third party support. I don't think that will ever happen. They made a better effort this time around but it's not enough.
It's always going to take time. Developers and publishers have to be convinced that Nintendo has a viable platform for their games, and that they will get a decent return on their expenditures. Nintendo has changed their policies, and while they may have to change their policies more, I can't see any justification for them to meet some of the policies that Sony and MS are using to bring in (and sometimes lock in) third parties when there's little for Nintendo to gain from it. Nintendo's brought in more 3rd party developers in a '2nd' party role, which is definitely beneficial both in getting 3rd party cooperation and in profits, as long as they are strong developers. They've also pushed to bring back 3rd parties that previously left, and to reduce the costs to developers on the platform. There's only so much they can really do, and really their failure is only measured in number of titles, not in failures in quality or profitability.
Not only will it not "take more time", but as time goes on they're actually losing third party support. They've lost Acclaim, Eidos, and (for me, the big one), Sega Sports. They finally got Square back, but is it too little too late?
Acclaim and Eidos claimed they weren't making money releasing for the Cube. As others have mentioned before, part of that is because their titles don't have any worse titles to stand out against on the platform, and were often worse on the Cube than on the other platforms for which they had released them. From what's been said on this board, the Sega Sports loss was a technical issue due to the size of the memory cards, though I haven't confirmed that on my own, nor do I entirely believe
The enthusiasm is not that criminals should go free, but rather that the innocent should not be punished for a crime they did not commit.
There are principles of due process, and the right to a fair and speedy trial. Nobody ever showed enthusiasm or promoted the notion that criminals should go free
The very principal of due process is that one must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt before being punished for a crime. Therefore, even if the person is guilty, but the crime can not be proven to have been committed by that person, they should go free, for fear that an innocent be punished.
I love that being forced to pay $15 for a cable that you just need for headphones is stupid, but NOT charging me $25 for a memory card to save my #$^%ing game is also stupid.
Let me see, for every RPG I bought on the NES I paid $60 instead of the normal $40-50 for a new game. So, assuming I bought 3 RPGs, I already paid more than I did for a memory card. The added cost in almost every case was due almost entirely to the added cost of producing the cartridges with the battery backup system with enough memory for the save files. Add in the handful of games at the time that included battery backup and weren't RPGs, and you might see where I'm going.
I would've killed for a memory card every time I forgot to note the difference between a 0 and an O when I wrote down the codes for Metroid. It would've been so nice if I could actually turn off Castlevania and then start where I left off when I came back.
All of that being said, the memory card I got with Animal Crossing is barely big enough for the game, which means it's nice I got the card with it, but sad that this is the standard sized memory card for the system (though I bought the bigger memory card when I bought the system). It's also nice that I've managed to pick up at least one other game at less than $50 that came with a memory card.
The one that really pissed me off was when my DreamCast VMU battery died, but then some third party memory card I picked up still works fine so I only lost my Soul Calibur data. Of course, the XBox hard drive seems to be working the best for me, but then if I want to take my game data somewhere I still could use a memory card (and that's pretty much exactly why they sell them for XBox).
How do you think the GC would have done if 1) It had online support half as good as the xbox's
I have an XBox and it's not online because of the subscription costs, but that's just me. If Nintendo would throw a few bones by having first party titles that supported their online adapter they'd probably get a few more sales, and maybe more third party support of the adapter. As it stands, having 1st party titles support the adapter is the biggest difference between Sony and Nintendo in terms of online offering. The next part is Sony offering the online adapter bundled with the console, which currently isn't working as well as they thought it would.
2) You could do actually useful things with GBA connectivity, and you didn't have to buy the same game twice for different platforms
Like what? In Animal Crossing I can download NES games that I've unlocked to my GBA, and plugging in the GBA gives me access to a small area of the game that isn't otherwise accessable. Metroid is the only case I can think of where you need 2 games to unlock something, and those are 2 different games (though both Metroid titles), and the only big benefit is unlocking a third game (by beating Metroid Fusion and unlocking Metroid in Metroid Prime). The best use of it I've read about so far is Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, and that one's been slammed by a bunch of people that haven't played it.
3) It used full-size DVDs and could do DVD playback
Well, if I could find sales figures for the Panasonic Q perhaps I could find a good answer for whether or not this effects their market share, since the Q happens to be sold in the market where the GameCube has done the best (even outselling PS2 in some weeks). I don't think the Q's market share is that big, though, especially given the price difference between the Q and the Cube (or the Q and other consoles).
4) Nintendo had FULL 3rd party support, and consistently worked for more. In other words, you get all of the great Nintendo games, plus all of the other great games out there that Nintendo doesn't make.
That's going to take time. Nintendo's been working on getting more 3rd party support for the last few years, and it will take more to get them, especially with the deals that Sony and Microsoft have been giving to 3rd parties (or with them buying up 3rd parties). All it takes to see this is what Nintendo's been getting from 3rd parties that wouldn't work with them at all in the previous generation, ie Square and Namco, and Namco's developing Nintendo franchise titles now.
I think there's also a more-than-average number of people here that own all 3 (+ DC) systems.
In other words, it's a fairly normal hardcore gamer demographic that is posting heavily on games.slashdot.org.
I also think it's getting more common for people to have more than one console as the PS2 is getting long in the tooth, and the 20-something age group is currently the people that grew up with the Atari 2600 and NES. The price of the GC along with the nostalgia factor may lend itself towards a lot of purchases by people looking for a 2nd console.
Most of the people I work with that own consoles are 30-somethings with HDTVs and an XBox w/ Live, and no PS2, or 20-somethings with a PS2 considering an XBox or GameCube.
i have two small children. maybe those withot children don't understand the pernicious nature of the crime.
What does having children have to do with understanding the nature of the crime? In fact, the people that commit the crime of creating child porn are far more likely to actually have children than not.
no, no crime deserves total abrogation of civil liberties, but this is hardly that.
You're right, this is hardly that. This is people that have committed no crime at all having their sites blocked without due process of any sort, without even being informed that their site is or will be blocked. When I worked for an ISP, the number one rule was that you do not take any action that will take a customer offline, because it can cause a great deal in monetary damages to be offline for even a short period of time. Anything that would take a customer offline had to be done because they weren't paying their bill, not because I (or someone that worked for me) did something that took them offline.
The problem with taking harsh knee-jerk reactions against crime is that you have a tendency to hit bystanders. It is one of the founding beliefs in the US that it is better to let criminals go free than to punish one person for a crime they did not commit.
Other than that, it remains to be seen whether the GameCube version of Four Swords will have it or not (since Four Swords was part of the GBA Link to the Past title).
I already found the OoT disc used and picked that up (I wasn't fortunate enough to get in on the pre-order deal). I hope that if this is true, there'll be some other way to get the extra Zelda titles without buying another console.
Anybody else seen that at other Blockbusters? (I still can't figure out why I got that so cheap.)
I got the same thing. The lady behind the counter that sold it to me said they had a fairly large number of copies of the game and they weren't selling very well (probably because of the bundle deals). I picked up the $20 Metroid Prime and then got Zelda Wind Waker with my GameCube when I found out the GameBoy Player bundle didn't include a game.
To the anon response: No, they weren't previously rented games or anything like that, they were definitely new. I'm also pretty sure they're still selling them for $20.
My step-brother was diagnosed at an early age as having ADD, and was eventually put on Ritalin, and then on Dextroamphetamines. Eventually he encouraged his mom to refuse the drugs, and pulled him out of public school to put him in a private school that used smaller class sizes and more customized curriculums.
In that environment he basically got well ahead of his grade level and was able to stop the very long (~6-8 hours) marathon homework sessions that he and his mom would have every nite. He went back to public school for 7th and 8th grade and didn't do quite as well, but still did much better than he had been doing previously in public school. Once he got to high school (where he and his mother could choose the classes that were right for him) he did significantly better. All of his academic improvement was without the drugs, but the teachers and administration of the public grade school always wanted him on the drugs, even though the drugs didn't help him at all with his work (apparently they made him quiet for long stretches of time and he asked fewer questions).
Knowing trends of a group of people with a certain affliction can greatly help in diagnoising it. Especially something like ADHD, which is a title thrown on every kid who ever gets bored
I don't think this can help at all with diagnosis, and I think that it's things like this being used for diagnosis that cause the title to be thrown at far more kids than actually have it.
Additionally, I think it's a sign that many diagnosed ADHD children may in fact simply be children that aren't being taught properly for their personal learning style. My youngest step-brother was a perfect example of that, imo, diagnosed several times with ADD (non-hyperactive), but he had absolutely no problems learning anything that he actually wanted to (he knows far more information about any gun in the world than I would expect anyone to, learned to play guitar fairly quickly, can pick up a video game that he's interested in fairly quickly, etc). He also had no problems paying attention to something once it caught his attention. His only problem was that if his attention wasn't caught by his teachers, there was a good chance he'd be completely focused on something else, and lose track of the teacher (who would then get irritated when he/she noticed). Since he was diagnosed at such an early age (before he even attended school), his behavior was most often attributed to ADD rather than anyone actually trying to teach him proper behavior (which is something that does need to be taught).
Then again, 12 hours of video games is nothing compared to the majority of my childhood (except for the periods in which I was restricted from playing for doing something wrong at school).
Personally, I've tried 3 different MMO games over the last couple of years, and would never try another one without looking over the forums a couple of times (over a week or so) to get an idea of how the response is to complaints, and how severe any complaints may be. Sure, forums tend to be filled with more complainers than anything else, and that should be taken into account. However, if there's no public access to the forums most players will be posting on, then you have to depend on forums available for the game elsewhere, which are much more likely to reflect poorly on the game than the official forums.
Isn't it the general console business model to sell hardware at a loss then recoup profits on software sales? 60 million PS2s sold means lots of losses (prior to counting game sales, of course).
Sony may have lost money on the consoles initially, but it's generally accepted that Sony hasn't lost money on a PS2 sale in quite a while, possibly not even since before the North American launch of the console.
Anyway you look at it, Nintendo is pointing at the wrong direction. Kids dont like "kiddie" games anymore: They make only kiddie titles and consoles.
You're right in that pre-teens and teens don't like 'kiddie' games, and that it takes a little while to convince some 20-somethings otherwise. Unfortunately, you're wrong in stating that Nintendo only makes those types of games and consoles. The majority of their titles are aimed at the widest possible audience, which often gives them a 'kiddie' label, but the titles themselves are in no way restricted to kids in terms of appeal and gameplay.
Gamers are incursionating in the "online" play: they dont want to go "online" with any title.
Interesting choice of words. If I understand what you're trying to say, the numbers don't really back you up here. Consoles aren't going online in huge percentages. As much as I'd like to see the GameCube have more support online, it's up to the developers. Nintendo did the same thing Sony did with their online offering (offer the adapters and let developers decide how to do it), but Nintendo is only using it in their own games for LAN play, while Sony's using it for Everquest. The console market is just far behind the PC in terms of getting gamers online. Nintendo's shown no signs of abandoning online gamers, they just aren't supporting it heavily the way MS does.
Gamers today apreciate games which take on more mature topics: they dont allow real mature titles on their console.
Where's any reference that Nintendo has not allowed a mature title on the GameCube? There're a handful of them on the system that people bring up over and over again, so I'll spare you there. But where's the title that Nintendo refused to allow?
Most consoles use standard formats to cut on expenses:they use propietary formats which are more expensive.
What's the price difference between a small DVD and a regular sized DVD? Sony had more than expenses on their mind when they developed both the PS1 and the PS2, as they have products in other markets that they want to tie into. Nintendo ties into their GBA, Sony ties into Sony Pictures and Sony Music. Microsoft wants your living room, nothing new there. Nintendo wants you to play their games.
They are doing very well on the handheld market because they are the only competetive handheld out there: Sony is releasing their handheld soon (think ps1 portable).
No one else has managed to even get a foothold in the handheld market even in Japan, where plenty of other handhelds have been released, including a previous Sony handheld (think PS1 connections and the whole deal, called the PocketStation iirc, just like GBA-GC link capability). Nintendo is also working on a next-generation handheld, as the GBA has been out for quite some time.
They have always had support by japanese users over american companies: sony is also a japanese company and is supported by a much larger number of game companies (american and japanese) and users.
OK, I think I understand what you're saying, it almost makes sense.
Nintendo has always somehow swam against the current and it has worked (for several reasons) but they just cant keep doing that, gamers are not impressed by some original kiddie games using franchises 10+ years old. Sega tried to do the same for years (with sonic and the gang) and at the end they realized they couldnt sale consoles just based in a set of characters.
Sonic was never anywhere near as strong a brand as Mario was, and Sega had a number of other factors involved in their demise. Sega almost had more failed consoles than Nintendo's had consoles at all, and almost as many failed add-ons to their consoles. Not to mention that their (Sega's) arcade division was losing money left and right, and that they had depended on their arcade titles as the source of new console titles (and console sales) for years. Sega was bleeding m
Also, just from a gamers' standpoint, if I want to buy a new game for a particular system at any given time, the odds of finding a game for the GameCube that I'll enjoy are far more slim than they are for either PC, XBoX, or Playstation.
I guess that depends on what you base your odds on.
When I go looking for a new game, I spend a good 20 minutes or so wandering around the store looking at titles (this is a problem for me because I own the PS2, XBox, GC, and GBA, and can't quite afford to buy a new title for every system all the time, so I make sure I'm buying a title I think I will play for at least 2 weeks). I have a much harder time finding games that even interest me on the PS2 and XBox racks than I do on the GameCube racks. That being said, there probably are more total PS2 games that I want to play, but they are much harder to find because there are many times more games that I don't want to play. When a good XBox or GameCube game comes out, it's easy to tell because everyone flips out like it's never happened before. Unfortunately, while there are more XBox games on the shelves, there are much fewer good games for the XBox than for the GC. The majority of my XBox games are multiplatform titles, including Soul Calibur 2, which is all I've played on my XBox besides KOTOR in the last couple months.
I've had the GC for the shortest time of the 3 current home consoles, but I'm getting close to having more titles for it than I do for the PS2, and passed up the XBox quite a while ago. As a console RPG fan, though, the PS2 is going to stay connected to my TV for quite some time, as neither Microsoft nor Nintendo are even close to hitting the same number of good console RPGs as the PS2, let alone the PS1.
>Nintendo is doing more innovation with its system >than either X-Box or Sony.
Yes, the whole GC-GBA connectivity is SO much more advanced over online gaming on the Xbox and PS2 (yes, I am being sarcastic).
The only difference between Sony's online offering and Nintendo's is that Sony is putting more support into it. Otherwise, both companies did the same thing: offer an online adapter and let the developers decide how to support it. At the least, Nintendo's working with it in terms of LAN gaming, though they are definitely not doing much to support playing online.
And what exactly is the point in totally redesigning a controller each time? The GC one is far from perfect - the D-Pad is WOEFUL, the sticks are different to each other and the Z button is useless. The problems with the Xbox pad are exaggerated, and the Controller S is a million times better anyway.
Sony didn't need to redesign their controller, just improve the analog sticks. Of the three, Sony's analog control is the worst, though I must admit I won't touch the Controller S on my XBox, because the original full-sized controller works much better for me and doesn't have the weird placement of some of the buttons that is seen on the S. The analog control on the full-sized XBox controller was what made me realize the Sony controllers were not quite up to it. The Nintendo controller sealed it.
As for particular issues with the Nintendo controller, I agree with the basic premise behind your complaints about the D-pad and Z button, but you're exaggerating those problems at least as much as anyone I've seen talking about problems with the larger XBox controller. I prefer that the sticks be different, as they should have different uses. The D-pad is setup as a secondary (or tertiary) interface, and isn't meant to be used the way the D-pad was used on older systems (and the way I still use the D-pad on my PS2). At least both Nintendo and Microsoft put the analog stick in the primary at-rest position of the left thumb.
And how is MP innovative?!? It is just Metroid in 3D!
Metroid in 3D, in first-person, with a very different control scheme, solid story line. Bleh, Metroid in 3D all alone would be enough for the title to be at the very least different from the pack. What's so rehashed about it that you feel the need to act like Metroid in 3D is explanation enough?
>The newest Zelda game has some of the most >revolutionary graphics I've seen in a while.
It is far from innovative, as it isn't really much further on from the previous N64 Zelda games.
Having not had an N64, I can't say too much, but having the OoT disc for the GC, I'd have to say that, as far as I can tell, you didn't address the statement in the least. The graphics are completely different. I wouldn't have called them revolutionary, because cel-shading is being used on every 10th game being released today, but saying it's not really much further from the N64 titles is rediculous.
>Lastly, is there any multiplayer game more fun >and unique than Smash Brothers
SMS is just an annoying beat-em-up type game, and there are far better multiplayer games available.
Examples? Any games like it (to address the unique part)? What's annoying about it?
>On the flipside, the X-Box's main draw is >yet-another-first-person-shooter.
Whereas all Nintendo can offer is yet another sequel.
Oh no, not another sequel. Oh well, I'll just wait for Halo 2 then. Doh! At least I have KOTOR to play for a while. Star What? Damn, did it again...
Not to mention the whole 'I paid for Kazaa' thing, which the parent is saying made them believe that they were legally in the right. They paid for a song-sharing service, and shared music.
In this case, the service they paid for was not what they thought they were paying for, as I'm sure somewhere on Kazaa's site it points out that they're not selling a service to trade RIAA titles (not exact wording, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
All things considered this probably means that you'll be seeing less FPS and heavy-bandwidth games on the GameCube (or whatever future console Nintendo decides to add online capability to). If Nintendo is recommending the use of AOL-- which is primarily a dial-up service-- this makes it easy for most players to get online, but it also lowers the expected average bandwidth. Thus, you'll see more Animal Crossings than Unreals on the Cube, simply because those types of games require less bandwidth (AIM + encrypted "item trade" messages = online Animal Crossing).
Half-Life uses about 5kb/sec (yes, kilobits, not kilobytes), UT a little more (but not much, maybe 15kb/sec max), and Q3 somewhere in between, maybe even less than HL. FPS games are not bandwidth-limited in the majority of cases, they just have severe problems with connections that have high packet loss (like say an AOL connection on a bad phone line).
Sure, if you tag AIM onto Animal Crossing and call online item trading a multiplayer game, you use less bandwidth, just like you do if you play Chess or Checkers online.
Most games don't have bandwidth problems at all, they just have issues with latency over the connections. The 'fast-paced' games moreso than others. Through years of development from many different theories, most FPS games have a pretty solid online experience with most latency and loss conditions, but the only time bandwidth has mattered has been when you had to download the patches, mods, and maps for the games. Many of the popular genres of console games haven't had a lot of developers putting them online yet, but they can still benefit from some of the work done in the FPS, RTS, and RPG genres on PCs in the last 10+ years.
The problem is the method, not the skills involved in observation or anything else, really.
As a social worker, regardless of how many years you spent doing it, there are a number of other conditions that come into play when it comes to you even observing a child in the first place (in a professional manner, that is). The only times I ever saw social workers or psychologists as a child were when I was having problems (namely, the judge ordered myself and my sister to see a social worker when my parents got divorced to determine whether or not we could decide on our own who we lived with, my parents did not have a nice divorce, and getting away from my mother was the best thing that could've happened for me at that time), and I saw a school psychologist a few times when teachers thought I was slow or falling behind (turned out I was bored and far ahead in terms of skill/knowledge/learning, so just not doing the work in many cases, if I were 5 years younger they probably would've put me on Ritalin)).
There were times in my life when my reaction to certain stimuli may have been violent, which would've been during the period 2 years before and after my parents divorced, for the most part (looking back puts things in a certain perspective), and the only fight I've ever been in during my life was during that time period (towards the end of it, in fact). The latter part of that time period also happens to overlap with the time at which we had first gotten the NES, though we'd had an Atari 2600 and various computers (with plenty of games) throughout most of my life (from the time I was about 2 years old). Did the NES have anything to do with my behavior? Yeah, it meant that I spent more time indoors and more time with those friends of mine that also had an NES, discussing and playing games. Did it make me more violent? It seems doubtful since the types of games I played were no more or less violent on the NES than on any other systems. The NES didn't even have better graphics than many of those computers.
The simple fact is that games are becoming more pervasive, more widely available, and more accepted in our lives. More kids are exposed to them. In any given case where a kid was violent, there's a certain chance that he played video games to some extent, based in part on the percentage of kids his age that played video games to that same extent.
Millions of people played Doom, and it was probably one of the most pirated video games of all time (on top of being one of the best selling games of all time). The game came out roughly 10 years ago. When 2 high school kids in a fairly well-off neighborhood (meaning that computers will be in most homes) shoot up their high school, there's a certain chance that you're going to find a copy of Doom in their house, and there's even a good chance that they played it and enjoyed it. Additionally, if they didn't have a lot of other games, there's a good chance they played it a lot, and maybe had a lot of associated material (books, mods, etc). Guess what? That doesn't mean the violent games lead to the violent actions. There are millions of case studies available of people that played Doom and went on with their lives as usual.
When you find a violent kid, you're likely to find someone that may enjoye violent games, books, movies, TV shows, whatever. Any person tends towards media that reflects their internal world to some degree, people like to be able to identify with the music they listen to, or with characters in a movie, or book, or game.
Of course, the real problem is when you find people overly susceptible to media influence with a tendency towards violence. Those people can easily create a feedback loop in their own behavior, essentially escalating their own tendencies through media consumption. The problem is not with the media itself, though, it's with properly identifying that person before they become harmful to themselves or others.
You mean Team Fortress 2 won't be out November 14th 2004? Damnit...
When Valve announces a date, I tend to half believe them until it goes gold or slips. I stopped looking at the release dates anyone else posts, especially for their games, when the credit card I used for the TF2 pre-order (in 1999) expired. (The above date of 11/14/04 I pulled off of EBGames.com shortly before hitting the 'Reply to This' link, knowing quite well they would have a date for it, and it would be roughly a year away, and without any announced dates from Valve to back it up).
As did Johnny Mnemonic, Speed and almost every other film where Keanu Reeves plays the central character... hey waitasec!
I would say that in those movies he either spoke too much or there was not another actor/actress in the movie that could offset his amazing ability to deliver memorable lines that completely destroy the mood of a scene. The 'Bill & Ted' movies were very good at tapping into his dialogue skills, or maybe they just had good casting.
It seems he's completely neglecting one of the major differences between the X-box and the PC, namely, the UI.
Umm, didn't he say right near the beginning of the article that the UI would be different between the two versions?
hmm here's the first paragraph of his first response in the interview:
Spector: We started right at the outset wanting to make a game simultaneously for both the Xbox and the PC. So, what we did was we set the bar at the Xbox level -- the PC version is going to be different only in that it will support a different UI. It will support the mouse and keyboard and higher resolutions. Other than that, our goal was really to design one game, with one experience, and then let players go for it.
OK, so, he's not restructuring the game around the input available on the given platform, but there's definitely a different UI, definitely mouse + keyboard considered here.
I mean, having a keyboard makes a difference. It allows more options, more diversity of control in a rapid manner. Unless the game is undergoing some kind of *insane* level of menuing, you can guaruntee that the game will not approach the complexity or detail possible using a PC.
Having a keyboard means you can do that. Having a game pad with 10 or so buttons on it means that you find a way not to do that. What is a series of keys across the top of the keyboard to change to specific weapons becomes a cycle on one or two buttons on the controller to cycle through the weapons, possibly in an on-screen menu rather than cycling the weapons in and out of the character's hands.
The first Deus Ex, imo, seemed rather heavily bound to a point & click interface, and it really seemed hindered by it rather than empowered by it. They really needed to rethink it, and hopefully that's what they did here. Although they've already stated they simplified the gameplay for various reasons, I don't think it was because of the controls, and I really hope they took the time to make the interface better because of the controls on the XBox limiting their options. Sometimes people need limitation to really express themselves fully, it puts the brain in motion thinking of new ways to do things.
Console gamers can be real gamers, for console games are real games. But they are often only attracted by the entry-level price of consoles, and don't have the dedication that a real PC gamer has.
That's why there are so many PC gamers out there with overclocked Athlon and Celeron rigs, right? I bought my first PC for gaming, and have performed the majority of upgrades on my PC strictly for gaming. That being said, it doesn't take much these days to get and keep a gaming rig up to snuff for the latest games. In fact, until Doom 3 comes out, there won't even be anything out there taxing systems over a year old. When the most used benchmark for video cards produces 300 fps on current generation chips, you either spend a boatload of money to get 300 fps or you stop caring. (Note: I was going to add Half-Life 2 as well as Doom 3 up there, but since HL2 is supposed to adapt the graphics quality to the system to maintain 60 fps, I don't think people will start worrying about it for a little while, except in the rare cases (especially rare for PC gamers that are trying to squeeze 2 more fps out of their rigs) where they want better graphics quality).
Do the mindless console playing masses have any concept of frames-per-second or screen resolution?
The majority: no. But then this is the case in PC gaming as well, and is why many of the top-selling PC games of all time are games that aren't in my (rather large if I do say so myself) collection of PC games (ie Myst, the Sims). At the same time, how many of the mindless speed-cranking, overclocking, must-get-100-fps game players out there understand that 100 fps isn't about getting more than your neighbor, but about capping that framerate lower and getting a consistant framerate. How many understand that v-synch is turned off in benchmarks to get raw video card numbers, but needs to be turned on when you play a game in order for that game to look good?
Have they ever known the joy of having the latest and greatest hardware... something none of their friends has yet?
Yeah, I had that joy when I bought a P2-400 w/ 256 MB of RAM, a Sound Blaster PCI64, a Diamond Viper V330 (yes, a truly bad video card), and 2 (not ONE, but TWO!) 12MB Voodoo 2 cards. Guess what happened? The Voodoo 2 cards generated so much heat that I spent a fortune on fans and still had to send 1 of the cards back for replacement. The system also had 2 of the earliest 7200 rpm IDE hard drives in it, and one of those drives failed about 3 months after moving it to a different system. The only thing I still own from that original bulk of 'nobody else has it' hardware is the floppy drive, which I never use but still keep in my systems. The only thing that was really great was that I bought the CPU last out of all of that stuff, and not only had a faster CPU not come out yet, but the price dropped $400 in the time it took for me to acquire the $900 worth of video cards and the $650 monitor and the $400 worth of RAM.
Do they have any idea of the many wonderful and diverse genres of PC games?
FPS. RTS. PC-RPG. MMO-RPG.
That accounts for 95+% of the PC games worth buying, did I miss something? Maybe flight sims, turn-based strategy, city-builders, adventure games, all of those that have dwindled down to a handful of core titles which rarely generate much of a bubble on the PC gamers awareness radar these days?
Do they really care about control and precision?
Considering the state of PC game pads, I'd say that the question goes right back to you. I can get a USB adapter for my XBox that handles the keyboard. It'd be nice if I could the mouse would work as well, because I really can only use certain trackballs and keyboards anyway, whereas the only console gamepads I've had any problems with in the current generation are the Dreamcast controller and the XBox Controller S (yes, the smaller one).
# Powerfull hardware. The cheaper platforms have pathetic hardware companred to even a cheap gaming PC. 64mb? Please my vid card alone got more memory. Of course the price is more expensice but that is apperantly an accepted tradeoff for many customers.
The average graphics intensive PC game is still developed for a P3-600 w/ a TNT card w/ 16MB RAM on the video card and 32-64MB in the PC, and assuming that the person using the PC is running the game from cache because the OS and the crap running in the background ate the system RAM. That's why (in addition to the low resolution), console games can often push the boundaries of graphics capabilities beyond what most PC games will even try to do. That being said, we're in the tail end of the current consoles' lives (being 2-4 years into this generation, depending on the console, and 1.5-2 years away from the next generation), so PC-only games are going to start catching up and passing the consoles on this end.
ATI and nVidia make most of their money selling chips to OEMs. This is why ATI survived when 3dfx and a dozen other graphics chip companies died, because ATI held the OEM market almost entirely to themselves, and this gave them the resources to combat nVidia in the 3D space when nVidia came after the OEM space (and took most of it away). nVidia and ATI are also both selling a lot of chips in the console space at the moment, which is very lucrative in the long term because the same technology is in the consoles for much longer than they could ever hope to sell any one chip for anything other than bargain basement prices in the PC world.
Creative Labs is only concerned about holding their near-monopoly on the consumer desktop, even if it means selling 7.1 audio (hello, where's the 7th speaker? 6.1 gives you center front & rear already...). Their drivers are almost completely non-functional on any NT-based OS, and in most cases their older cards are completely non-functional on newer Windows OSs. That's not even getting into their compete by litigation strategy which has killed any company that went after the gamers with solid sound cards for game PCs. My on-board audio almost works better than my Audigy 2.
Don't get me wrong, I love games and gaming. I'm just resolved to not pumping those 2-300 every two years into a new console and games. I'll upgrade the PC, especially when sweet video cards are coming out each year. Plus, I can enjoy that memory/speed for other applications.
Considering the age of the current consoles, the planned release of the next generation consoles 2 years from now, and the life of the previous generation, even if you only spend 200-300 upgrading your PC every 2 years you'll be a bit behind on both sides.
I managed to buy every current major console available in the US just by slowing my PC upgrade process to an annual purchase instead of buying something every 6 months. The number of games I've bought slightly increased, but that's mostly because I have more systems available to play games on when the PC hits it's usual summer slump (and there are plenty of older console games to buy that are just as good as the latest greatest games, even though graphics improve throughout the life of a console as people improve their programming methods for that console). My PC is only slightly behind the curve compared to where it would normally be if I had continued upgrading it every 6 months, at 2GHz w/ 512MB RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti 128MB video card. Another 512MB RAM, upgrade one of the hard drives, wait for the next generation of cards to see if nVidia's going to wake up, and if the 2GHz CPU starts showing it's age, do another overhaul of the motherboard/RAM/CPU.
Game Houses need to keep in mind that the market is wide, but for sheer beauty, >= 1200x1024 32bit >=30fps screens are going to make game immersion much stronger than blowing up 320x240 60htz into a 52inch blurbox. I know some have tried sticking to PC and missed a huge market, but spend the money there on quality and they'll find my wallet.
Sorry, something about the fact that I can take the HDTV that I will buy anyway for movies and play games on it at 720i makes me wonder if I really need the hassle of playing games on my PC's 19" monitor just for the sake of 1600x1200@32bpp, or 1280x1024. Considering how many people will play Q3 at 640x480@16bpp just to try to maximize their framerate, I no longer care how comfortable my computer chair is, I'm going to go sit on the couch with my WaveBird or my XBox ControlBrick and play something besides Half-Life, WarCraft, and Diablo.
Ever heard the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none"? Well, it's the same with games - if you make them multi-platform, you have to make them for the lowest common denominator. This will inevitably result in the experience on more powerful machines being significantly worse that it could be had the game been written for it specifically.
Let's see, the game was designed for a ~P3-700 + ~GeForce 3. When was the last time you saw that on the system requirements of a game (I wonder what the PC version of this game will say for system reqs)?
On the other hand, you have the memory and resolution limitations of the console. The resolution isn't a problem if your system can handle it. Larger textures: it would be nice to have the option, but really isn't needed if the game is good.
As for Deus Ex specifically, the first game was a slideshow on my PC until a few patches came out (got 3dfx? Well, by the time it came out no one with a decent video card did). I'm going to avoid the second one on the PC like a plague for just that reason, even though it's not likely to be a problem.
On my second point, there are a few games that require that you purchase both versions. Legend of Zelda and Splinter Cell are two that come to mind.
Which Zelda game? Wind Waker has a lot of extra stuff in the GBA connectivity that can make the game easier (or make it easier to find secrets), which don't require a GBA game. I'll have to check around a bit more to see if there's anything that can be unlocked using Four Swords/Link to the Past in WW.
From what I've read of Splinter Cell, there are some extra levels if you have the GBA game as well as the GameCube game, but there are still extra features that don't require the GBA game. I really don't know how well this pans out, since Splinter Cell isn't really my type of game (or even if it is, previous Tom Clancy games were so bad I decided not to buy any more).
Most of the talk I hear about upcoming GBA connectivity also involves purchasing both versions of a game. The animal crossing thing sounds kind of cool, I admit.
I'll have to look around a bit more I guess, but I'm genuinely not concerned as long as the individual titles are worthwhile without considering the connectivity options.
On the third point, I guarantee that the Panasonic Q sales aren't that high. Although DVDs are pretty big in Japan, I don't think Japan went through the same widespread adoption that happened over here. After all, they already had VCD, and the leap between VCD and DVD isn't nearly as big as between VHS and DVD. In the North American market, the biggest one out there, DVD playback would have helped tremendously.
I really wouldn't know. DVD playback wasn't a consideration when I purchased any of my consoles, but I've used the PS2 as a DVD player recently because it saves me from having to buy a bigger/another A/V switch. I don't like using it as a DVD player because of concerns over the lifetime of PS2 hardware and the poor quality of DVD playback on the unit (that being said, the TV I have it hooked up to is pretty poor anyway).
On the fourth point, I disagree that it's going to take some time. It's never going to happen until Nintendo changes their policies and goes on an all out recruitment drive for third party support. I don't think that will ever happen. They made a better effort this time around but it's not enough.
It's always going to take time. Developers and publishers have to be convinced that Nintendo has a viable platform for their games, and that they will get a decent return on their expenditures. Nintendo has changed their policies, and while they may have to change their policies more, I can't see any justification for them to meet some of the policies that Sony and MS are using to bring in (and sometimes lock in) third parties when there's little for Nintendo to gain from it. Nintendo's brought in more 3rd party developers in a '2nd' party role, which is definitely beneficial both in getting 3rd party cooperation and in profits, as long as they are strong developers. They've also pushed to bring back 3rd parties that previously left, and to reduce the costs to developers on the platform. There's only so much they can really do, and really their failure is only measured in number of titles, not in failures in quality or profitability.
Not only will it not "take more time", but as time goes on they're actually losing third party support. They've lost Acclaim, Eidos, and (for me, the big one), Sega Sports. They finally got Square back, but is it too little too late?
Acclaim and Eidos claimed they weren't making money releasing for the Cube. As others have mentioned before, part of that is because their titles don't have any worse titles to stand out against on the platform, and were often worse on the Cube than on the other platforms for which they had released them. From what's been said on this board, the Sega Sports loss was a technical issue due to the size of the memory cards, though I haven't confirmed that on my own, nor do I entirely believe
The enthusiasm is not that criminals should go free, but rather that the innocent should not be punished for a crime they did not commit.
There are principles of due process, and the right to a fair and speedy trial. Nobody ever showed enthusiasm or promoted the notion that criminals should go free
The very principal of due process is that one must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt before being punished for a crime. Therefore, even if the person is guilty, but the crime can not be proven to have been committed by that person, they should go free, for fear that an innocent be punished.
I love that being forced to pay $15 for a cable that you just need for headphones is stupid, but NOT charging me $25 for a memory card to save my #$^%ing game is also stupid.
Let me see, for every RPG I bought on the NES I paid $60 instead of the normal $40-50 for a new game. So, assuming I bought 3 RPGs, I already paid more than I did for a memory card. The added cost in almost every case was due almost entirely to the added cost of producing the cartridges with the battery backup system with enough memory for the save files. Add in the handful of games at the time that included battery backup and weren't RPGs, and you might see where I'm going.
I would've killed for a memory card every time I forgot to note the difference between a 0 and an O when I wrote down the codes for Metroid. It would've been so nice if I could actually turn off Castlevania and then start where I left off when I came back.
All of that being said, the memory card I got with Animal Crossing is barely big enough for the game, which means it's nice I got the card with it, but sad that this is the standard sized memory card for the system (though I bought the bigger memory card when I bought the system). It's also nice that I've managed to pick up at least one other game at less than $50 that came with a memory card.
The one that really pissed me off was when my DreamCast VMU battery died, but then some third party memory card I picked up still works fine so I only lost my Soul Calibur data. Of course, the XBox hard drive seems to be working the best for me, but then if I want to take my game data somewhere I still could use a memory card (and that's pretty much exactly why they sell them for XBox).
How do you think the GC would have done if
1) It had online support half as good as the xbox's
I have an XBox and it's not online because of the subscription costs, but that's just me. If Nintendo would throw a few bones by having first party titles that supported their online adapter they'd probably get a few more sales, and maybe more third party support of the adapter. As it stands, having 1st party titles support the adapter is the biggest difference between Sony and Nintendo in terms of online offering. The next part is Sony offering the online adapter bundled with the console, which currently isn't working as well as they thought it would.
2) You could do actually useful things with GBA connectivity, and you didn't have to buy the same game twice for different platforms
Like what? In Animal Crossing I can download NES games that I've unlocked to my GBA, and plugging in the GBA gives me access to a small area of the game that isn't otherwise accessable. Metroid is the only case I can think of where you need 2 games to unlock something, and those are 2 different games (though both Metroid titles), and the only big benefit is unlocking a third game (by beating Metroid Fusion and unlocking Metroid in Metroid Prime). The best use of it I've read about so far is Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, and that one's been slammed by a bunch of people that haven't played it.
3) It used full-size DVDs and could do DVD playback
Well, if I could find sales figures for the Panasonic Q perhaps I could find a good answer for whether or not this effects their market share, since the Q happens to be sold in the market where the GameCube has done the best (even outselling PS2 in some weeks). I don't think the Q's market share is that big, though, especially given the price difference between the Q and the Cube (or the Q and other consoles).
4) Nintendo had FULL 3rd party support, and consistently worked for more. In other words, you get all of the great Nintendo games, plus all of the other great games out there that Nintendo doesn't make.
That's going to take time. Nintendo's been working on getting more 3rd party support for the last few years, and it will take more to get them, especially with the deals that Sony and Microsoft have been giving to 3rd parties (or with them buying up 3rd parties). All it takes to see this is what Nintendo's been getting from 3rd parties that wouldn't work with them at all in the previous generation, ie Square and Namco, and Namco's developing Nintendo franchise titles now.
I think there's also a more-than-average number of people here that own all 3 (+ DC) systems.
In other words, it's a fairly normal hardcore gamer demographic that is posting heavily on games.slashdot.org.
I also think it's getting more common for people to have more than one console as the PS2 is getting long in the tooth, and the 20-something age group is currently the people that grew up with the Atari 2600 and NES. The price of the GC along with the nostalgia factor may lend itself towards a lot of purchases by people looking for a 2nd console.
Most of the people I work with that own consoles are 30-somethings with HDTVs and an XBox w/ Live, and no PS2, or 20-somethings with a PS2 considering an XBox or GameCube.
i have two small children. maybe those withot children don't understand the pernicious nature of the crime.
What does having children have to do with understanding the nature of the crime? In fact, the people that commit the crime of creating child porn are far more likely to actually have children than not.
no, no crime deserves total abrogation of civil liberties, but this is hardly that.
You're right, this is hardly that. This is people that have committed no crime at all having their sites blocked without due process of any sort, without even being informed that their site is or will be blocked. When I worked for an ISP, the number one rule was that you do not take any action that will take a customer offline, because it can cause a great deal in monetary damages to be offline for even a short period of time. Anything that would take a customer offline had to be done because they weren't paying their bill, not because I (or someone that worked for me) did something that took them offline.
The problem with taking harsh knee-jerk reactions against crime is that you have a tendency to hit bystanders. It is one of the founding beliefs in the US that it is better to let criminals go free than to punish one person for a crime they did not commit.
It's all about the GB Player.
Other than that, it remains to be seen whether the GameCube version of Four Swords will have it or not (since Four Swords was part of the GBA Link to the Past title).
I already found the OoT disc used and picked that up (I wasn't fortunate enough to get in on the pre-order deal). I hope that if this is true, there'll be some other way to get the extra Zelda titles without buying another console.
Anybody else seen that at other Blockbusters? (I still can't figure out why I got that so cheap.)
I got the same thing. The lady behind the counter that sold it to me said they had a fairly large number of copies of the game and they weren't selling very well (probably because of the bundle deals). I picked up the $20 Metroid Prime and then got Zelda Wind Waker with my GameCube when I found out the GameBoy Player bundle didn't include a game.
To the anon response:
No, they weren't previously rented games or anything like that, they were definitely new. I'm also pretty sure they're still selling them for $20.
My step-brother was diagnosed at an early age as having ADD, and was eventually put on Ritalin, and then on Dextroamphetamines. Eventually he encouraged his mom to refuse the drugs, and pulled him out of public school to put him in a private school that used smaller class sizes and more customized curriculums.
In that environment he basically got well ahead of his grade level and was able to stop the very long (~6-8 hours) marathon homework sessions that he and his mom would have every nite. He went back to public school for 7th and 8th grade and didn't do quite as well, but still did much better than he had been doing previously in public school. Once he got to high school (where he and his mother could choose the classes that were right for him) he did significantly better. All of his academic improvement was without the drugs, but the teachers and administration of the public grade school always wanted him on the drugs, even though the drugs didn't help him at all with his work (apparently they made him quiet for long stretches of time and he asked fewer questions).
Knowing trends of a group of people with a certain affliction can greatly help in diagnoising it. Especially something like ADHD, which is a title thrown on every kid who ever gets bored
I don't think this can help at all with diagnosis, and I think that it's things like this being used for diagnosis that cause the title to be thrown at far more kids than actually have it.
Additionally, I think it's a sign that many diagnosed ADHD children may in fact simply be children that aren't being taught properly for their personal learning style. My youngest step-brother was a perfect example of that, imo, diagnosed several times with ADD (non-hyperactive), but he had absolutely no problems learning anything that he actually wanted to (he knows far more information about any gun in the world than I would expect anyone to, learned to play guitar fairly quickly, can pick up a video game that he's interested in fairly quickly, etc). He also had no problems paying attention to something once it caught his attention. His only problem was that if his attention wasn't caught by his teachers, there was a good chance he'd be completely focused on something else, and lose track of the teacher (who would then get irritated when he/she noticed). Since he was diagnosed at such an early age (before he even attended school), his behavior was most often attributed to ADD rather than anyone actually trying to teach him proper behavior (which is something that does need to be taught).
Then again, 12 hours of video games is nothing compared to the majority of my childhood (except for the periods in which I was restricted from playing for doing something wrong at school).
Personally, I've tried 3 different MMO games over the last couple of years, and would never try another one without looking over the forums a couple of times (over a week or so) to get an idea of how the response is to complaints, and how severe any complaints may be. Sure, forums tend to be filled with more complainers than anything else, and that should be taken into account. However, if there's no public access to the forums most players will be posting on, then you have to depend on forums available for the game elsewhere, which are much more likely to reflect poorly on the game than the official forums.
Isn't it the general console business model to sell hardware at a loss then recoup profits on software sales? 60 million PS2s sold means lots of losses (prior to counting game sales, of course).
Sony may have lost money on the consoles initially, but it's generally accepted that Sony hasn't lost money on a PS2 sale in quite a while, possibly not even since before the North American launch of the console.
Anyway you look at it, Nintendo is pointing at the wrong direction.
:they use propietary formats which are more expensive.
.
Kids dont like "kiddie" games anymore: They make only kiddie titles and consoles.
You're right in that pre-teens and teens don't like 'kiddie' games, and that it takes a little while to convince some 20-somethings otherwise. Unfortunately, you're wrong in stating that Nintendo only makes those types of games and consoles. The majority of their titles are aimed at the widest possible audience, which often gives them a 'kiddie' label, but the titles themselves are in no way restricted to kids in terms of appeal and gameplay.
Gamers are incursionating in the "online" play: they dont want to go "online" with any title.
Interesting choice of words. If I understand what you're trying to say, the numbers don't really back you up here. Consoles aren't going online in huge percentages. As much as I'd like to see the GameCube have more support online, it's up to the developers. Nintendo did the same thing Sony did with their online offering (offer the adapters and let developers decide how to do it), but Nintendo is only using it in their own games for LAN play, while Sony's using it for Everquest. The console market is just far behind the PC in terms of getting gamers online. Nintendo's shown no signs of abandoning online gamers, they just aren't supporting it heavily the way MS does.
Gamers today apreciate games which take on more mature topics: they dont allow real mature titles on their console.
Where's any reference that Nintendo has not allowed a mature title on the GameCube? There're a handful of them on the system that people bring up over and over again, so I'll spare you there. But where's the title that Nintendo refused to allow?
Most consoles use standard formats to cut on expenses
What's the price difference between a small DVD and a regular sized DVD? Sony had more than expenses on their mind when they developed both the PS1 and the PS2, as they have products in other markets that they want to tie into. Nintendo ties into their GBA, Sony ties into Sony Pictures and Sony Music. Microsoft wants your living room, nothing new there. Nintendo wants you to play their games.
They are doing very well on the handheld market because they are the only competetive handheld out there: Sony is releasing their handheld soon (think ps1 portable)
No one else has managed to even get a foothold in the handheld market even in Japan, where plenty of other handhelds have been released, including a previous Sony handheld (think PS1 connections and the whole deal, called the PocketStation iirc, just like GBA-GC link capability). Nintendo is also working on a next-generation handheld, as the GBA has been out for quite some time.
They have always had support by japanese users over american companies: sony is also a japanese company and is supported by a much larger number of game companies (american and japanese) and users.
OK, I think I understand what you're saying, it almost makes sense.
Nintendo has always somehow swam against the current and it has worked (for several reasons) but they just cant keep doing that, gamers are not impressed by some original kiddie games using franchises 10+ years old. Sega tried to do the same for years (with sonic and the gang) and at the end they realized they couldnt sale consoles just based in a set of characters.
Sonic was never anywhere near as strong a brand as Mario was, and Sega had a number of other factors involved in their demise. Sega almost had more failed consoles than Nintendo's had consoles at all, and almost as many failed add-ons to their consoles. Not to mention that their (Sega's) arcade division was losing money left and right, and that they had depended on their arcade titles as the source of new console titles (and console sales) for years. Sega was bleeding m
Also, just from a gamers' standpoint, if I want to buy a new game for a particular system at any given time, the odds of finding a game for the GameCube that I'll enjoy are far more slim than they are for either PC, XBoX, or Playstation.
I guess that depends on what you base your odds on.
When I go looking for a new game, I spend a good 20 minutes or so wandering around the store looking at titles (this is a problem for me because I own the PS2, XBox, GC, and GBA, and can't quite afford to buy a new title for every system all the time, so I make sure I'm buying a title I think I will play for at least 2 weeks). I have a much harder time finding games that even interest me on the PS2 and XBox racks than I do on the GameCube racks. That being said, there probably are more total PS2 games that I want to play, but they are much harder to find because there are many times more games that I don't want to play. When a good XBox or GameCube game comes out, it's easy to tell because everyone flips out like it's never happened before. Unfortunately, while there are more XBox games on the shelves, there are much fewer good games for the XBox than for the GC. The majority of my XBox games are multiplatform titles, including Soul Calibur 2, which is all I've played on my XBox besides KOTOR in the last couple months.
I've had the GC for the shortest time of the 3 current home consoles, but I'm getting close to having more titles for it than I do for the PS2, and passed up the XBox quite a while ago. As a console RPG fan, though, the PS2 is going to stay connected to my TV for quite some time, as neither Microsoft nor Nintendo are even close to hitting the same number of good console RPGs as the PS2, let alone the PS1.
>Nintendo is doing more innovation with its system
>than either X-Box or Sony.
Yes, the whole GC-GBA connectivity is SO much more advanced over online gaming on the Xbox and PS2 (yes, I am being sarcastic).
The only difference between Sony's online offering and Nintendo's is that Sony is putting more support into it. Otherwise, both companies did the same thing: offer an online adapter and let the developers decide how to support it. At the least, Nintendo's working with it in terms of LAN gaming, though they are definitely not doing much to support playing online.
And what exactly is the point in totally redesigning a controller each time? The GC one is far from perfect - the D-Pad is WOEFUL, the sticks are different to each other and the Z button is useless.
The problems with the Xbox pad are exaggerated, and the Controller S is a million times better anyway.
Sony didn't need to redesign their controller, just improve the analog sticks. Of the three, Sony's analog control is the worst, though I must admit I won't touch the Controller S on my XBox, because the original full-sized controller works much better for me and doesn't have the weird placement of some of the buttons that is seen on the S. The analog control on the full-sized XBox controller was what made me realize the Sony controllers were not quite up to it. The Nintendo controller sealed it.
As for particular issues with the Nintendo controller, I agree with the basic premise behind your complaints about the D-pad and Z button, but you're exaggerating those problems at least as much as anyone I've seen talking about problems with the larger XBox controller. I prefer that the sticks be different, as they should have different uses. The D-pad is setup as a secondary (or tertiary) interface, and isn't meant to be used the way the D-pad was used on older systems (and the way I still use the D-pad on my PS2). At least both Nintendo and Microsoft put the analog stick in the primary at-rest position of the left thumb.
And how is MP innovative?!? It is just Metroid in 3D!
Metroid in 3D, in first-person, with a very different control scheme, solid story line. Bleh, Metroid in 3D all alone would be enough for the title to be at the very least different from the pack. What's so rehashed about it that you feel the need to act like Metroid in 3D is explanation enough?
>The newest Zelda game has some of the most
>revolutionary graphics I've seen in a while.
It is far from innovative, as it isn't really much further on from the previous N64 Zelda games.
Having not had an N64, I can't say too much, but having the OoT disc for the GC, I'd have to say that, as far as I can tell, you didn't address the statement in the least. The graphics are completely different. I wouldn't have called them revolutionary, because cel-shading is being used on every 10th game being released today, but saying it's not really much further from the N64 titles is rediculous.
>Lastly, is there any multiplayer game more fun
>and unique than Smash Brothers
SMS is just an annoying beat-em-up type game, and there are far better multiplayer games available.
Examples? Any games like it (to address the unique part)? What's annoying about it?
>On the flipside, the X-Box's main draw is
>yet-another-first-person-shooter.
Whereas all Nintendo can offer is yet another sequel.
Oh no, not another sequel. Oh well, I'll just wait for Halo 2 then. Doh! At least I have KOTOR to play for a while. Star What? Damn, did it again...
Not to mention the whole 'I paid for Kazaa' thing, which the parent is saying made them believe that they were legally in the right. They paid for a song-sharing service, and shared music.
In this case, the service they paid for was not what they thought they were paying for, as I'm sure somewhere on Kazaa's site it points out that they're not selling a service to trade RIAA titles (not exact wording, of course).