Every console has games out there that have complex stories. Some are multiplatform, some are exclusive. Nintendo has nothing even close to a monopoly on story. In fact, the closest thing that Nintendo has to a story-driven game, Zelda, does not even have that great a story. Don't get me wrong, I love Zelda, and it has some of the best gameplay out there, but it is far more gameplay- than story-driven. Its story is nothing close to the stories in games like Knights of the Old Republic, Metal Gear, some of the Final Fantasy games, Halo, etc. That doesn't make it a bad game. Interestingly enough, though, is the fact that while (for example) Windwaker's story isn't that complex, it had a bit more of an emotional pull than some of the other, more complicated plots. Sometimes simpler is better. Conversely, however, look at all of the "stories" in the other major Nintendo franchises. Only Metroid's story can be called anything more than an excuse to string levels together.
So I don't know what I'm saying, but I think that there are great story-driven games all around. Nintendo's only monopoly is on the fact that when they make a great game, it stays great across console generations and keeps pushing the boundaries of what each franchise is all about. To characterize them as the "story-driven" console would be simply incorrect.
But what the hell good does that do if they've already bought the bike? I can see taking advantage of enthusiasm to get people to buy it, but dragging out the process on purpose AFTER the bike is bought is just annoying. I would just get pissed off, especially if they had it in stock. It doesn't take a new car that long to get ready to turn over to the customer, why should it a bike?
Agreed, but it was just never as fun. That's the thing about the Blizzard games. They're usually more fun to play than other games of the same type. It's always a matter of opinion, and I certainly enjoyed Rise of Nations (I love that it can be like many different games in one box), but the Blizzard RTSs were always just more fun (to me).
No, it didn't. It was cheesy, didn't have the same balance, and was pretty quickly forgotten. SC has lasting power, and the devs are still balancing it to this day.
Regardless of the weird programming model, 360, PS3, and most PC games in the future will be working to take advantage of multiple processors. Of course, with PCs, there will still be legacy systems to deal with, but there will be a lot more in common with up to date PCs (with hot shit nvidia cards) and the PS3 (and xbox360) than with the gamecube.
And as for programming models, what's weirder than a control scheme that no other system uses?
No prob. And as much as I usually end up sticking up for xbox against nonsensical anti-microsoft bashers, I feel your pain on the nintendo side. It's not just slashdot that does it, but also the mainstream media; they all refer to the supposed "failure" of the GC, when, as you put it, the marketshare numbers were not that far behind xbox (and were in fact much better in japan). I don't think it helps, though, when Nintendo themselves discuss the "failures" of the gamecube (a recent reggie article did just that). Your reasoning is exactly mine when I try to contradict asinine xbox bashing: if it's not true, then don't act like it's true, and don't expect that other people are so dumb as to not be able to differentiate when you're stating opinion versus fact. The "you" there was the general "you", and not you directly of course.
I think the point is not that the Wii is not a viable platform, but it's not going to be the same as developing for the other 3 platforms. The other 3 will most likely share quite a bit more code, as well as art assets. The Wii will not, simply because it won't be as powerful as the others. Porting to the Wii will be more like porting to last gen systems, in that you're probably removing a lot of features or in some case creating an almost entirely different game.
Again, that's not necessarily a problem for the Wii, because it's intended to be a completely different kind of game machine. Games will be simpler in some cases, in other cases they'll be using the Wii custom controls (which no other system will be able to use, including PS3), and most likely the games that use a huge budget and really stretch the limit of the system will be exclusives.
Point being, if you're writing to multiple platforms at once, the Ps3, 360, and PC can be dealt with at once with the same kind of cost the parent poster hinted at. If you add Wii to the mix, you're porting, and the only reason it's worth doing (because of the extra effort to downgrade) is to most likely take advantage of the Wii's unique features. If wii gets a lot of marketshare, that's exactly what will happen, but it's an additional cost and throws the 1.2x cost factor off kilter.
true there is some expense involved but if I recall correctly, they were able to get a line ready in something like 15 minutes. There's cost involved in both cases but if that is true about HDDVD, then you are at least spared the cost of entirely new production lines. More importantly, you're able to reach economies of scale much more quickly using existing lines.
If I recall the news correctly from E3, for some reason North America and Japan are considered to be the same region with the BluRay format. Not 100% sure but I'm pretty certain....
From what I understand, one of the major selling points for HD-DVD was that they would be able to make a minor tooling change on existing DVD lines so that they could spit out HD-DVDs. So the economies of scale are mostly already in place.
Here's a tip: read something about the game, watch some footage, pull your head out of your ass, and go away.
This clown is the poster child for all that is wrong with slashdot and its desperate anti-Microsoft-at-the-lack-of-any-common-sense readership.
(Let me guess about the replies: ninety percent will be by my old friend "anonymous coward", and fifty percent will reword the sentence above to attack me.)
I think the licensing and royalties is the main impetus behind this, not selling BluRay players. Sony co-developed the CD standard with Philips, and although I'm not sure how royalties got paid out on that, look how ubiquitous the format is. I know that Toshiba got paid out quite a bit on DVD royalties, because they did most of the dev on that standard (IIRC). Sony wants to do the same with Blu-Ray, and they could care less how much they make on selling disc players.
As for Blu-Ray being doomed, they also have a lot of powerful allies. They've got Dell and Apple in the PC space, tons of consumer electronics makers like Pioneer, Samsung, and Panasonic, and the support of the majority of the movie studios. That last is the key; the studios prefer BluRay because of tighter (read, more draconian) DRM. Without studio support, no movie format will do that well. Sony owns a movie studio themselves, which is also a leg up. As for hardware manufacturers not wanting a format that has heavy royalties, they're stuck either way. They either pay Sony for BluRay or Toshiba for HDDVD. I don't know how much it is but I'm sure they're competitive with each other and from everything I've read, licensing costs are not an issue in the format war.
DOn't get me wrong, I have no preference for BluRay. I'm just stating the facts as I know them. If anything, I'm partial to HD-DVD only because I've heard its DRM isn't as damn fascist.
I agree with the click-stick button. It's not just a problem with PS, though. I'm playing a lot of oblivion these days and constantly find myself going into crouch mode when things get frantic. I'm trying to zap monsters and run away, and all of a sudden I'm crouched down and move slower (right stick). Or I find myself in third person view (left stick) and get awfully confused. Though click-sticks do work nicely for sniper zoom, I find. Very intuitive there.
As for the symbols, they're a pretty key part of the Playstation branding, so they're here to stay.
My first disappointment with this controller is lack of a rumble feature, but following swiftly on its heels is disappointment in the fact that they didn't take the opportunity to move the damn analog controllers into a more ergonomically friendly location.
Every PS fanboy states that the dual-shock is the best controller out there, but when it comes to analog stick placement, it's only because it's what they're used to. Crook your thumbs into the shape necessary to work with the dualshock sticks. Then move them around a little. You'll feel a little fatigue (maybe not much, if you've played a lot with the controller). Then move your thumbs up a little, into the place where the gamecube and xbox controllers have the analog sticks. Move them around again. You'll likely feel less fatigue. That's because your thumbs are in a more relaxed place there, not having to exert any effort to hold it.
It's no surprise that 2 different companies placed the sticks higher up than the dualshock after 2 completely separate bouts of ergonomic research. The thumbs in the dualshock position are already flexing to keep that position. Your most natural position to rest your thumb is on your index finger. If you rest your thumbs on your ring finger, you'll feel the muscles pull because they need to to reach that non-natural state. It's the same state they're in when using the dualshock. You have to exert energy just to keep them at a rest state with those sticks.
The worst part of the design is that it's an example of lazy, "that's the way it's supposed to be" design. It's like the classic story (in software development circles) of the woman who always cut the ends off of a roast before cooking it. When her husband asked why, she said, "that's the way my mom did it; that's the way you're supposed to do it." Later, she asked her mom why she cut the ends off, and her mom told her "because my pan was too small to hold the whole roast." That's the same thing with the design of the dualshock. Those sticks aren't there because of exhaustive ergonomic studies. They're there because they're an afterthought. They were added to the original PS1 controller well after the system's original release, and they were put in the only place they fit. No one wanted to change the rest of the controller around (which is, by the way, a fine controller if you don't use the analog sticks). After they caught on, no one wanted to go back and move them around, because controllers are such an iconic part of console branding.
So that's why I'm disappointed. They had a chance to fix a bad design. It was even more important that they do so today, since most games nowadays use the analog sticks instead of the d-pad. But they didn't, and that's just sad. So now the more frequently used controls are in a harder to reach place, but hey, you can hit that d-pad to change weapons or select from a menu just fine. Oh, and now you can tilt the thing, too....
I agree that it would be stupid to leverage leadership in gaming to sell more units in the consumer electronics arena, but I don't think that's the goal. The goal is to promote Blu-Ray as a format so they can get paid on the licensing costs for the format. They'll still be dealing with razor-thin margins with their TVs and Blu-Ray players (and continue the battle with their newfound sparring partner, Samsung), but so long as they're making money on every Blu-Ray player sold, they're happy. It's the same thing they've been going after with every new proprietary format they've pushed.
I think there should be some sort of fanboy metric, based on the number of exclamation points used, with maybe some sort of multiplier if the word "total" or "totally" is used in the subject.
Boy that sounds fun. I love having technology at my disposal that has been developed over many years and with millions of dollars, capable of all sorts of interesting graphics, gameplay, and sound, just to watch it roll dice.
In other news, the Bush administration has been caught posting on religious forums with quotes like "now that Islam has pretty much been abandoned by most people...."
Slashdot Mirror
Something about a bunch of planets and a ring and zombies and shit blowing up. C'mon!
Every console has games out there that have complex stories. Some are multiplatform, some are exclusive. Nintendo has nothing even close to a monopoly on story. In fact, the closest thing that Nintendo has to a story-driven game, Zelda, does not even have that great a story. Don't get me wrong, I love Zelda, and it has some of the best gameplay out there, but it is far more gameplay- than story-driven. Its story is nothing close to the stories in games like Knights of the Old Republic, Metal Gear, some of the Final Fantasy games, Halo, etc. That doesn't make it a bad game. Interestingly enough, though, is the fact that while (for example) Windwaker's story isn't that complex, it had a bit more of an emotional pull than some of the other, more complicated plots. Sometimes simpler is better. Conversely, however, look at all of the "stories" in the other major Nintendo franchises. Only Metroid's story can be called anything more than an excuse to string levels together.
So I don't know what I'm saying, but I think that there are great story-driven games all around. Nintendo's only monopoly is on the fact that when they make a great game, it stays great across console generations and keeps pushing the boundaries of what each franchise is all about. To characterize them as the "story-driven" console would be simply incorrect.
But barbie horse adventures and kabuki warriors are backwards compatible! It's true!
But what the hell good does that do if they've already bought the bike? I can see taking advantage of enthusiasm to get people to buy it, but dragging out the process on purpose AFTER the bike is bought is just annoying. I would just get pissed off, especially if they had it in stock. It doesn't take a new car that long to get ready to turn over to the customer, why should it a bike?
Agreed, but it was just never as fun. That's the thing about the Blizzard games. They're usually more fun to play than other games of the same type. It's always a matter of opinion, and I certainly enjoyed Rise of Nations (I love that it can be like many different games in one box), but the Blizzard RTSs were always just more fun (to me).
No, it didn't. It was cheesy, didn't have the same balance, and was pretty quickly forgotten. SC has lasting power, and the devs are still balancing it to this day.
Regardless of the weird programming model, 360, PS3, and most PC games in the future will be working to take advantage of multiple processors. Of course, with PCs, there will still be legacy systems to deal with, but there will be a lot more in common with up to date PCs (with hot shit nvidia cards) and the PS3 (and xbox360) than with the gamecube.
And as for programming models, what's weirder than a control scheme that no other system uses?
No prob. And as much as I usually end up sticking up for xbox against nonsensical anti-microsoft bashers, I feel your pain on the nintendo side. It's not just slashdot that does it, but also the mainstream media; they all refer to the supposed "failure" of the GC, when, as you put it, the marketshare numbers were not that far behind xbox (and were in fact much better in japan). I don't think it helps, though, when Nintendo themselves discuss the "failures" of the gamecube (a recent reggie article did just that). Your reasoning is exactly mine when I try to contradict asinine xbox bashing: if it's not true, then don't act like it's true, and don't expect that other people are so dumb as to not be able to differentiate when you're stating opinion versus fact. The "you" there was the general "you", and not you directly of course.
I think the point is not that the Wii is not a viable platform, but it's not going to be the same as developing for the other 3 platforms. The other 3 will most likely share quite a bit more code, as well as art assets. The Wii will not, simply because it won't be as powerful as the others. Porting to the Wii will be more like porting to last gen systems, in that you're probably removing a lot of features or in some case creating an almost entirely different game.
Again, that's not necessarily a problem for the Wii, because it's intended to be a completely different kind of game machine. Games will be simpler in some cases, in other cases they'll be using the Wii custom controls (which no other system will be able to use, including PS3), and most likely the games that use a huge budget and really stretch the limit of the system will be exclusives.
Point being, if you're writing to multiple platforms at once, the Ps3, 360, and PC can be dealt with at once with the same kind of cost the parent poster hinted at. If you add Wii to the mix, you're porting, and the only reason it's worth doing (because of the extra effort to downgrade) is to most likely take advantage of the Wii's unique features. If wii gets a lot of marketshare, that's exactly what will happen, but it's an additional cost and throws the 1.2x cost factor off kilter.
true there is some expense involved but if I recall correctly, they were able to get a line ready in something like 15 minutes. There's cost involved in both cases but if that is true about HDDVD, then you are at least spared the cost of entirely new production lines. More importantly, you're able to reach economies of scale much more quickly using existing lines.
If I recall the news correctly from E3, for some reason North America and Japan are considered to be the same region with the BluRay format. Not 100% sure but I'm pretty certain....
From what I understand, one of the major selling points for HD-DVD was that they would be able to make a minor tooling change on existing DVD lines so that they could spit out HD-DVDs. So the economies of scale are mostly already in place.
"Zack attack in the wack-wack-wack!"
Here's a tip: read something about the game, watch some footage, pull your head out of your ass, and go away.
This clown is the poster child for all that is wrong with slashdot and its desperate anti-Microsoft-at-the-lack-of-any-common-sense readership.
(Let me guess about the replies: ninety percent will be by my old friend "anonymous coward", and fifty percent will reword the sentence above to attack me.)
I think the licensing and royalties is the main impetus behind this, not selling BluRay players. Sony co-developed the CD standard with Philips, and although I'm not sure how royalties got paid out on that, look how ubiquitous the format is. I know that Toshiba got paid out quite a bit on DVD royalties, because they did most of the dev on that standard (IIRC). Sony wants to do the same with Blu-Ray, and they could care less how much they make on selling disc players.
As for Blu-Ray being doomed, they also have a lot of powerful allies. They've got Dell and Apple in the PC space, tons of consumer electronics makers like Pioneer, Samsung, and Panasonic, and the support of the majority of the movie studios. That last is the key; the studios prefer BluRay because of tighter (read, more draconian) DRM. Without studio support, no movie format will do that well. Sony owns a movie studio themselves, which is also a leg up. As for hardware manufacturers not wanting a format that has heavy royalties, they're stuck either way. They either pay Sony for BluRay or Toshiba for HDDVD. I don't know how much it is but I'm sure they're competitive with each other and from everything I've read, licensing costs are not an issue in the format war.
DOn't get me wrong, I have no preference for BluRay. I'm just stating the facts as I know them. If anything, I'm partial to HD-DVD only because I've heard its DRM isn't as damn fascist.
Actually, they did (well, if not billions, a lot of money). Which makes the whole thing much more amusing.
I agree with the click-stick button. It's not just a problem with PS, though. I'm playing a lot of oblivion these days and constantly find myself going into crouch mode when things get frantic. I'm trying to zap monsters and run away, and all of a sudden I'm crouched down and move slower (right stick). Or I find myself in third person view (left stick) and get awfully confused. Though click-sticks do work nicely for sniper zoom, I find. Very intuitive there.
As for the symbols, they're a pretty key part of the Playstation branding, so they're here to stay.
My first disappointment with this controller is lack of a rumble feature, but following swiftly on its heels is disappointment in the fact that they didn't take the opportunity to move the damn analog controllers into a more ergonomically friendly location.
Every PS fanboy states that the dual-shock is the best controller out there, but when it comes to analog stick placement, it's only because it's what they're used to. Crook your thumbs into the shape necessary to work with the dualshock sticks. Then move them around a little. You'll feel a little fatigue (maybe not much, if you've played a lot with the controller). Then move your thumbs up a little, into the place where the gamecube and xbox controllers have the analog sticks. Move them around again. You'll likely feel less fatigue. That's because your thumbs are in a more relaxed place there, not having to exert any effort to hold it.
It's no surprise that 2 different companies placed the sticks higher up than the dualshock after 2 completely separate bouts of ergonomic research. The thumbs in the dualshock position are already flexing to keep that position. Your most natural position to rest your thumb is on your index finger. If you rest your thumbs on your ring finger, you'll feel the muscles pull because they need to to reach that non-natural state. It's the same state they're in when using the dualshock. You have to exert energy just to keep them at a rest state with those sticks.
The worst part of the design is that it's an example of lazy, "that's the way it's supposed to be" design. It's like the classic story (in software development circles) of the woman who always cut the ends off of a roast before cooking it. When her husband asked why, she said, "that's the way my mom did it; that's the way you're supposed to do it." Later, she asked her mom why she cut the ends off, and her mom told her "because my pan was too small to hold the whole roast." That's the same thing with the design of the dualshock. Those sticks aren't there because of exhaustive ergonomic studies. They're there because they're an afterthought. They were added to the original PS1 controller well after the system's original release, and they were put in the only place they fit. No one wanted to change the rest of the controller around (which is, by the way, a fine controller if you don't use the analog sticks). After they caught on, no one wanted to go back and move them around, because controllers are such an iconic part of console branding.
So that's why I'm disappointed. They had a chance to fix a bad design. It was even more important that they do so today, since most games nowadays use the analog sticks instead of the d-pad. But they didn't, and that's just sad. So now the more frequently used controls are in a harder to reach place, but hey, you can hit that d-pad to change weapons or select from a menu just fine. Oh, and now you can tilt the thing, too....
I agree that it would be stupid to leverage leadership in gaming to sell more units in the consumer electronics arena, but I don't think that's the goal. The goal is to promote Blu-Ray as a format so they can get paid on the licensing costs for the format. They'll still be dealing with razor-thin margins with their TVs and Blu-Ray players (and continue the battle with their newfound sparring partner, Samsung), but so long as they're making money on every Blu-Ray player sold, they're happy. It's the same thing they've been going after with every new proprietary format they've pushed.
I think your point is mute.
I think there should be some sort of fanboy metric, based on the number of exclamation points used, with maybe some sort of multiplier if the word "total" or "totally" is used in the subject.
Boy that sounds fun. I love having technology at my disposal that has been developed over many years and with millions of dollars, capable of all sorts of interesting graphics, gameplay, and sound, just to watch it roll dice.
I don't mean this as flamebait but what do you mean by this:
"PC developers appear to have almost zero confidence in the 360."
I don't understand that in the context of either the article or your post.
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/brothersina rms3/news.html
"Next chapter of Gearbox's Brothers in Arms franchise named, confirmed for PS3, Xbox 360, PC; dated for holiday season."
Meme police here again!
Please cease and desist.
In other news, the Bush administration has been caught posting on religious forums with quotes like "now that Islam has pretty much been abandoned by most people...."