They aren't using a modified 9700. If anything it's probably just an overclocked evolution of the Gamecube's Flipper GPU, which is a console exclusive part not really related to any PC chips.
As for GameCube profitability, the first two links you provided point to estimations and expectations, not factual outcomes. Just because Main thought (before the console was released) they might "incur a small loss on the GameCube hardware initially" doesn't mean that's what ended up happening. The quotation from Perrin is taken out of context: she's referring to the GameCube price drop to $99, not the initial price of the console. They chose to lower the price to essentially break even to maintain a competitive price.
The Spaceworld "expectation" was mere weeks before the console's release in Japan. There's no way Nintendo didn't know what to expect at that point, and it also shows they have been more than willing to sell the Gamecube at a loss (they don't have some hard and fast rule against this like a lot of Nintendo fans suggest). I think it's slightly crazy to suggest Nintendo was wrong about this, but I guess it is faintly possible.
But I don't see what you are talking about with the last quote being "out of context". You said the Gamecube has been sold for a profit "since its inception". That clearly isn't the case. When Nintendo dropped the system to $99 they were selling the console at a loss. This isn't that unusual even for the razorblade model of consoles - oftentimes it isn't until somewhere in the middle of a console's life when the hardware is sold at a loss, especially if manufacturing efficiencies and/or removing hardware features (like the digital video out on Gamecubes) takes longer than expected.
Presumably there is plenty of other data out there to show that Nintendo has sold their hardware at a loss. I think the three data points I offered are more than enough evidence, but I'll probably dig up some more quotes for the next time this myth comes up (presumably during the next Nintendo-related thread on Slashdot:D).
It's easy to make the argument that Nintendo favors the razorblade model considerably less than some of its competitors do (though even that argument isn't entirely fair since both competitors are fairly recent to come onto the scene, during a period where Nintendo too has been more willing to do this). I could agree with that argument. But suggesting they never sell their console hardware at a loss is nonsense, and that's the argument that is usually made by a lot of Nintendo fans. Correcting that misinformation was my intention.
Yes, the PS2 is not being sold at a loss _now_. That's not so impressive considering it's been on the market for five or six years. Nintendo has profited from every GameCube sold since its inception, yet Sony lost money on every PS2 unit sold for several years. It can't be denied that Nintendo is the only truly solvent console maker. Sony and Microsoft support their console costs with their other businesses.
Very little of what you wrote is actually true.
As I mentioned already, the Gamecube has been sold at a loss (it actually still might be, believe it or not). You apparently need evidence, so you can take a look at my post here for just that.
Sony's Playstation brand is actually what supports many of the their other businesses, not the other way around. It has been enormously profitable for them. From an article last year:
The company's PlayStation home console and games accounted for 68 percent of total operating profit last fiscal year and 10 percent of revenue. Last quarter, the division contributed a third of operating profit and 13 percent of revenue.
Sony's financial troubles are mostly if not entirely non-Playstation related. It's not clear how much Sony has lost on selling PS2 hardware, though I don't believe there is any evidence to support an assertion that it was sold for a loss for several years. I would love a reference for that.
Where is the proof that Nintendo hasn't ever sold the Gamecube at a loss? It's nothing more than Nintendo fanboy mythology, as Nintendo has publically stated at least twice that they were taking losses on the Gamecube hardware.
January 14, 2004 Perrin: I would say that our losses are really negligible. It's such a small amount. Plus with the amount of software that's being sold we're still definitely in a solid profit situation. http://cube.ign.com/articles/463/463155p2.html
Huh? The PS2 isn't being sold at a loss either. This is ignoring the fact that the Gamecube has been sold at a loss at least twice during its lifespan, a fact Nintendo... defenders love to not mention.
The shortage excuse is over (Microsoft claims that they want to produce about 1 million/month) but they sold less than 200 000 in the US in March (IIRC 197 000), since they sell less in Europe and nearly nothing in Japan, that would be a total of maybe 350 000 worldwide, 400 000 if we are very optimistic.
How does MS get these new units to the market, teleportation? March wasn't going to show this lack of a shortage because the consoles weren't for sale yet. Shipping via boat takes at least a couple weeks, maybe more. IIRC most stores in the US had their major "Yes, we have X360s now!" ads towards the beginning of April, so this month's sales should reflect some of this difference. But next month's sales will probably be the real indicator, since the X360 will be widely available and potential customers can be assumed to know that. But it's still at least a couple weeks too early to see what kind of impact the lessening of shortages had on the X360's sales.
It's the size of the gaming market that matters, though, not some bizarre standard of technological savvy. I don't have the exact numbers handy, but Japan has been smaller than the US for some time (I believe since the PS1 era) and Europe is now larger too. More importantly the Japanese games market is basically shrinking and has been since the PS1. The same is not true of the US and especially Europe, which is growing rapidly.
I'm a lot more interested in playing youthful games like Mario and Zelda that have great design than GTA and other "mature" games that are actually aimed at kids who are still thrilled by random violence and high polygon counts.
If you don't think GTA has succeeded almost entirely because of its great design, you're no better than the (largely mythical) audience you're attacking. Your judging is entirely based on looks, not substance.
And "high polygon counts" in a GTA game? They are some of the homeliest looking games that were released in the last generation! Even vaguely upgraded N64-ports like Kirby's Air Ride feature better graphics!:D
Your reference, of course, was to those killed by Saddam. The number killed in the last three years is much shallower. Even the BBC, a particularly strident anti-Iraq war rag, puts it at 37,626 tops.
I'm pretty sure they were making an extrapolation. That's not unreasonable for the next decade or so before Iraq becomes stable, assuming your numbers are right. But the BBC isn't even endorsing those statistics in the article, pointing out that a number of critics think that they are a gross underestimate.
And the BBC being a "rag"? That's pushing it a little, don't you think?
To be pedantic, the PlayStation didn't have any 3D action/adventure/platform games before Mario 64 came out for the Nintendo 64. Speaking of the camera for that game, I didn't really think it was all that bad.
Sure it did: Jumping Flash. In a lot of ways it even did it better, too. A shame the genre basically only became clones of Mario64 after its release. The Jumping Flash series offered an interesting alternative approach.
The grandparent was referring to the final devkits, which are probably going out in May/June. This was fairly widely reported in the gaming media. Here's just one example story.
I'm not sure how different the current devkits are from the final PS3 hardware, but it could potentially lead to some serious development work still to come. If nothing else the more elite devs will want to take at least a few months to get better performance/graphics out of their game using the presumably superior performance of the final kits. A good example of this is Rare's X360 launch title Kameo: Rare added self-shadowing to all of the characters within the last two months or so of development, and it really improved the (already beautiful) graphics.
What do you mean by "new user issues"? You mean "things people will eventually learn to work around"? Come on, most of these are just usability issues, they could be fixed in software, and they should have been caught in a rew usability testing iterations.
Your parent poster obviously didn't figure out what was going on with respect to, say, auto-log-off. That's not his problem, it's Microsoft's problem for not making it clear.
Sure, eventually he'll learn, but why should he have to?
Complex things sometimes take a while to learn. It'd be wonderful if everything was completely obvious from the start, but that's impossible (at least without sacrificing advanced usability). The important thing is that they shouldn't take that long to learn or figure out. The poster I was referring to had basically just purchased his X360. I wrote "new user issues" because they hadn't even had it for a week. I guarantee that after two weeks he would have had considerably less complaints. It isn't that complex of a device - I'm not talking about it taking four months to figure out! But in a lot of ways the X360 offers a new approach to certain console capabilities, and it can take a little while to adjust to them. It's not any more complicated than my cable box, and it took me roughly a week to get a handle on that's TV-on-demand interface.
For obvious reasons I can't really test it right now, but I'm 99% positive the auto-log-offs state very clearly that they need to do it for an update.
Yes, but you should at least be able to navigate the dashboard, start other downloads, chat with friends, etc. Downloading itself isn't a particularly processor intensive task, and it shouldn't be too difficult for the system to put up a "download in progress... game is paused" message for anyone who tries to enter or resume a game.
I expect we'll see this improve as MS releases more dashboard updates.
I didn't think about chatting with friends. That's a good point. I guess I just only download demos when I'm not using the console, so it's never seemed like a big deal to me.
This rather bothers me as well. I'd much rather be logged in or not depending upon how I feel, rather than what the internal state of the box wants.
You can log out anytime you want (or just make yourself look like you're logged out). The only reason the system forces you to log out is when it is a necessity (generally for software updates).
Lots of games on the PS2 autosave, just as lots of Xbox games didn't. There seems to be a lot of developers around who haven't quite understood that it isn't save and autosave anymore, it is save and manual save.
DOA can get away with autosaving without warnings because there really isn't any moment-to-moment progress to be lost. However, in an RPG every resource you consume or action you take could count as progress, and as such unless you're going to hit the memory card every second or two, you need to warn the player.
This is really only a problem for the X360 because that's the only console that has the concept of "quitting" a game. You don't quit anything on the PS2, you just turn the machine off.
I didn't mean to imply that only the Xbox1 did autosaves, though it was pretty rare on the PS2 and Gamecube. It definitely is a developer education issue.
Autosaves in an RPG are more of a gameplay design issue than anything. Of course since the X360 doesn't have any yet that can't be what the grandparent post was complaining about. But it's pretty ridiculous that games like Burnout Revenge and Amped 3 pop up big "now saving" messages that stop the game in its tracks every time you accomplish anything. DOA4 saves in the background after every battle and it doesn't slow the game down at all. That's clearly not a console issue, it's a developer issue.
And really, that summarizes all of the growing pains the X360 is experiencing. It took a very simple thing, a console, and expanded it out in new directions. Some of those are painful and confusing. Some aren't.
Most of your problems just sound like new user issues, honestly.
Downloads are fux0red. You can only download one at a time, and while that's happening you can't do anything else. There is no time display, only a percentage display. Not only is the percentage display grossly wrong, if you don't touch the box (because you can't do anything else), the screensaver kicks in and shows you the menu underneath -- totally useless. Downloads instantly start at 5% done. Abort and restart it, and it'll automatically be 50% done. Abort and restart it again and it'll be 100% done and quit downloading. Limiting downloads is actually a feature, sort of. The X360 isn't a PC. Games expect to get complete hardware performance every time they run (technically 5% or so of one of the cores is devoted to the GUI, but you understand what I mean). Yeah, I guess you could still want to listen to music or something while you download a demo, but the interface isn't really designed for multitasking like that. That's a good call, it's already fairly complicated enough for a gaming system. Like I said, it's a console, not a PC.
You want the screensaver to cut in. Some HDTVs are very susceptible to burn-in. The controller turns off too, to save power. I guess that could be mildly annoying to some people, but I don't think you are expected to just sit there and watch the download.
The 50% resume issue is a little bizarre, but it's not really much of a problem IMO. I've never had that fake 100% issue before, and I've resumed and stopped downloads all of the time.
The box constantly logs me in and out - some things need me in, some out. Like your problem with unexpected reboots, this sounds like an issue with software updates for a new system. I'm not sure I consider it a problem myself, but you won't really have to worry about it now.
Menu items are inconsistent. Even on the same menu, some items are highlighted by brightening the center, others are highlighted by brightening the edges. Where does this specifically occur? I've never noticed this.
When you quit a game, the OS doesn't know if you've saved the game or not. So, it'll always warn you that you are about to lose data, even if you haven't started a game. A little communication between the OS and games, please! This is more of an issue with shoddy games that don't autosave, generally lazy multiplatform releases. It's not a problem with the consoles. Games like DOA4 will never make this complaint. It just autosaves in the background when you unlock or accomplish something new. This kind of thing was pretty standard even on the better Xbox1 games.
The unit is really loud. Much louder than my PC or my microwave. It is very loud. This is probably my biggest complaint with the console. That said, my PS2 is roughly the same volume, maybe even louder. So is my new videocard. I understand why they don't allow this, but it's too bad you couldn't upgrade the fans to something higher-end and quieter like I have with my PC's CPU.
Graphics have been a letdown compared to my PC. Wow, seriously? What PC games am I missing exactly? I've had the completely opposite experience. I haven't seen anything on the PC that looks as good as PGR3, DOA4, Kameo, GRAW, Full Auto, and occasionally PD0. This is the first videocard upgrade I've really been disappointed with, and it's solely because nothing has come close to the X360 I've had for months.
And I'm a big fan of the controller too. One of these days I have to pick up the wired version for my PC. It's just so damn comfortable.
I've played all of those games online. Did one of them add an autoranking feature in a patch I missed or something?
If I want to play Halo 2 on Live I just pick a game type category and go. It then sets me up with opponents that are my skill level on a full server. No PC FPS game comes close.
Come on now, you're just making stuff up here. Which experts consider 480p closer to HD than NTSC? 480p is roughly 300,000 pixels. 480i is obviously half that (no "order of magnitude" here). 720p is more than 900,000 pixels (and a lot of consumers are going to use 1080i, which is even higher).
And the difference in resolutions on a smaller HDTV (like say, even less than 30") is readily apparent with reasonable source material to most people that don't severely need new glasses. You think MS hasn't done the research on this? Their standard kiosk HDTV size is only 23".
There are good arguments to be made in favor of Nintendo skipping HD resolutions, especially if it lets them release the console at $150 or less. But pretending HD isn't a significant upgrade over SDTV and EDTV is not one of these reasons.
*One* HDTV setup won't give consumers any comparative idea of the relevative graphics 'quality' of the 3 systems.
Except this "*One* HDTV" isn't a rare situation. Every single X360 kiosk I've ever seen in person has a HDTV hooked up to it. Walmart has them, Best Buy has them (and my main Best Buy's huge HDTV demo with surround sound actually has the Xbox1 hooked up to it, bizarrely enough - the X360 is the standard HDTV kiosk you see in most retailers), Circuit City has them, EB/Gamestop has them, Fry's has them, Toys'R'Us has them, etc. This isn't some accident, this is exactly what MS planned for with their deal with Samsung. It's supposed to be completely standard. I'd be shocked if Sony doesn't do the same with the PS3. The difference in picture clarity is going to be obvious to most customers, though whether they will find it something to base a purchase off of is still up in the air. I personally think many of them will, though the games are generally going to look so much better regardless on the non-Revolution hardware that it might be a much easier decision if they want nice graphics.
(I'm not sure how parents are going to respond to the idea of a new console that features games that look almost identical to the Gamecube they already have. That should be interesting, though I suppose it is possible Nintendo is lying to third party devs about the hardware the final system will offer.)
And then there are several xbox 360 titles that aren't actually rendering 720p, they're rendering at 480p and then upscaling to 720p. And for xbox360 titles like *that* the xbox upscaling makes no difference at all because your HDTV will take the Revolution's native 480p and upscale to 720p/1080i as well. So then its just a question of which upscaler is higher quality. On an expensive TV, I'd bet on the TV. On a cheap TV, *maybe* the xbox will do the better job.)
This is not remotely true AFAIK. Care to name some of these Xbox360 titles? Some titles look like they are just upscaled because the devs did such a lazy job (like with most of Activision's stuff, for example), but those games don't look particularly good to begin with, and bigger publishers like EA and Ubisoft don't do that kind of thing. I doubt Activision will for much longer, either - seems more a symptom of rushed launch titles than anything else. But they are certainly not being internally rendered at 480p.
Probably because these Xbox Live Arcade games only tend to run $5, occasionally $10. The fact that every game has a demo available for it takes care of some of the "lending need" too. But I don't think many people purchase a game for $5 and then worry about being able to sell it later to make some of their money back! The pricing model basically puts it slightly above arcade game pricing, and it's even cheaper than a lot of game rental places. It's way, way below the $50-60 retail price standard that some people actually like to sell used.
If MS starts allowing significantly more expensive titles we might start to see some serious whining. But with a 50 meg game size limit I can't see them (or publishers) getting too crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
They aren't using a modified 9700. If anything it's probably just an overclocked evolution of the Gamecube's Flipper GPU, which is a console exclusive part not really related to any PC chips.
As for GameCube profitability, the first two links you provided point to estimations and expectations, not factual outcomes. Just because Main thought (before the console was released) they might "incur a small loss on the GameCube hardware initially" doesn't mean that's what ended up happening. The quotation from Perrin is taken out of context: she's referring to the GameCube price drop to $99, not the initial price of the console. They chose to lower the price to essentially break even to maintain a competitive price.
:D).
The Spaceworld "expectation" was mere weeks before the console's release in Japan. There's no way Nintendo didn't know what to expect at that point, and it also shows they have been more than willing to sell the Gamecube at a loss (they don't have some hard and fast rule against this like a lot of Nintendo fans suggest). I think it's slightly crazy to suggest Nintendo was wrong about this, but I guess it is faintly possible.
But I don't see what you are talking about with the last quote being "out of context". You said the Gamecube has been sold for a profit "since its inception". That clearly isn't the case. When Nintendo dropped the system to $99 they were selling the console at a loss. This isn't that unusual even for the razorblade model of consoles - oftentimes it isn't until somewhere in the middle of a console's life when the hardware is sold at a loss, especially if manufacturing efficiencies and/or removing hardware features (like the digital video out on Gamecubes) takes longer than expected.
Presumably there is plenty of other data out there to show that Nintendo has sold their hardware at a loss. I think the three data points I offered are more than enough evidence, but I'll probably dig up some more quotes for the next time this myth comes up (presumably during the next Nintendo-related thread on Slashdot
It's easy to make the argument that Nintendo favors the razorblade model considerably less than some of its competitors do (though even that argument isn't entirely fair since both competitors are fairly recent to come onto the scene, during a period where Nintendo too has been more willing to do this). I could agree with that argument. But suggesting they never sell their console hardware at a loss is nonsense, and that's the argument that is usually made by a lot of Nintendo fans. Correcting that misinformation was my intention.
Very little of what you wrote is actually true.
As I mentioned already, the Gamecube has been sold at a loss (it actually still might be, believe it or not). You apparently need evidence, so you can take a look at my post here for just that.
Sony's Playstation brand is actually what supports many of the their other businesses, not the other way around. It has been enormously profitable for them. From an article last year:
Sony's financial troubles are mostly if not entirely non-Playstation related. It's not clear how much Sony has lost on selling PS2 hardware, though I don't believe there is any evidence to support an assertion that it was sold for a loss for several years. I would love a reference for that.
Ok, where is your proof of this claim then?
j apan.nintendotarget/index.html
m irror/news/0108/n23r.html/
Where is the proof that Nintendo hasn't ever sold the Gamecube at a loss? It's nothing more than Nintendo fanboy mythology, as Nintendo has publically stated at least twice that they were taking losses on the Gamecube hardware.
May 24, 2001
In the GameCube business, industry specialists estimate the company will lose 5,000-10,000 yen per console, each carrying a 25,000 yen price tag, at least for the first year.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/BUSINESS/asia/05/25/
Spaceworld 2001
We expect to incur a small loss on the GameCube hardware initially, and you're right that it hasn't been our habit in the past but we expect it to turn okay early next year. - Peter Main, Nintendo
http://terror.snm-hgkz.ch/mirrors/www.thegia.com/
January 14, 2004
Perrin: I would say that our losses are really negligible. It's such a small amount. Plus with the amount of software that's being sold we're still definitely in a solid profit situation.
http://cube.ign.com/articles/463/463155p2.html
Huh? The PS2 isn't being sold at a loss either. This is ignoring the fact that the Gamecube has been sold at a loss at least twice during its lifespan, a fact Nintendo... defenders love to not mention.
The shortage excuse is over (Microsoft claims that they want to produce about 1 million/month) but they sold less than 200 000 in the US in March (IIRC 197 000), since they sell less in Europe and nearly nothing in Japan, that would be a total of maybe 350 000 worldwide, 400 000 if we are very optimistic.
How does MS get these new units to the market, teleportation? March wasn't going to show this lack of a shortage because the consoles weren't for sale yet. Shipping via boat takes at least a couple weeks, maybe more. IIRC most stores in the US had their major "Yes, we have X360s now!" ads towards the beginning of April, so this month's sales should reflect some of this difference. But next month's sales will probably be the real indicator, since the X360 will be widely available and potential customers can be assumed to know that. But it's still at least a couple weeks too early to see what kind of impact the lessening of shortages had on the X360's sales.
It's the size of the gaming market that matters, though, not some bizarre standard of technological savvy. I don't have the exact numbers handy, but Japan has been smaller than the US for some time (I believe since the PS1 era) and Europe is now larger too. More importantly the Japanese games market is basically shrinking and has been since the PS1. The same is not true of the US and especially Europe, which is growing rapidly.
MPEG2 isn't open either, actually. :D
Truly open, license-free audio codecs are exceedingly rare. Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are the only two I know of offhand, though there are presumably more.
No, I'm pretty sure you have to pay license fees for AAC. Linkie.
I'm a lot more interested in playing youthful games like Mario and Zelda that have great design than GTA and other "mature" games that are actually aimed at kids who are still thrilled by random violence and high polygon counts.
:D
If you don't think GTA has succeeded almost entirely because of its great design, you're no better than the (largely mythical) audience you're attacking. Your judging is entirely based on looks, not substance.
And "high polygon counts" in a GTA game? They are some of the homeliest looking games that were released in the last generation! Even vaguely upgraded N64-ports like Kirby's Air Ride feature better graphics!
Your idea is solid, but your downplaying of digital projectors is a mistake. IMAX is a huge supporter of digital projection and has been for a long time. Digital is the future, even for IMAX.
It's not. It's not even close.
Your reference, of course, was to those killed by Saddam. The number killed in the last three years is much shallower. Even the BBC, a particularly strident anti-Iraq war rag, puts it at 37,626 tops.
I'm pretty sure they were making an extrapolation. That's not unreasonable for the next decade or so before Iraq becomes stable, assuming your numbers are right. But the BBC isn't even endorsing those statistics in the article, pointing out that a number of critics think that they are a gross underestimate.
And the BBC being a "rag"? That's pushing it a little, don't you think?
The Wolfenstein 3D SNES version came with an extra processor in the cartridge. It wasn't unextended.
To be pedantic, the PlayStation didn't have any 3D action/adventure/platform games before Mario 64 came out for the Nintendo 64. Speaking of the camera for that game, I didn't really think it was all that bad.
Sure it did: Jumping Flash. In a lot of ways it even did it better, too. A shame the genre basically only became clones of Mario64 after its release. The Jumping Flash series offered an interesting alternative approach.
Aren't the newer versions of FairPlay still unbroken? JHymn can only do iTunes 5.0 and below songs, for example.
Earlier versions of Microsoft DRM were cracked too.
The grandparent was referring to the final devkits, which are probably going out in May/June. This was fairly widely reported in the gaming media. Here's just one example story.
I'm not sure how different the current devkits are from the final PS3 hardware, but it could potentially lead to some serious development work still to come. If nothing else the more elite devs will want to take at least a few months to get better performance/graphics out of their game using the presumably superior performance of the final kits. A good example of this is Rare's X360 launch title Kameo: Rare added self-shadowing to all of the characters within the last two months or so of development, and it really improved the (already beautiful) graphics.
What do you mean by "new user issues"? You mean "things people will eventually learn to work around"? Come on, most of these are just usability issues, they could be fixed in software, and they should have been caught in a rew usability testing iterations.
Your parent poster obviously didn't figure out what was going on with respect to, say, auto-log-off. That's not his problem, it's Microsoft's problem for not making it clear.
Sure, eventually he'll learn, but why should he have to?
Complex things sometimes take a while to learn. It'd be wonderful if everything was completely obvious from the start, but that's impossible (at least without sacrificing advanced usability). The important thing is that they shouldn't take that long to learn or figure out. The poster I was referring to had basically just purchased his X360. I wrote "new user issues" because they hadn't even had it for a week. I guarantee that after two weeks he would have had considerably less complaints. It isn't that complex of a device - I'm not talking about it taking four months to figure out! But in a lot of ways the X360 offers a new approach to certain console capabilities, and it can take a little while to adjust to them. It's not any more complicated than my cable box, and it took me roughly a week to get a handle on that's TV-on-demand interface.
For obvious reasons I can't really test it right now, but I'm 99% positive the auto-log-offs state very clearly that they need to do it for an update.
Yes, but you should at least be able to navigate the dashboard, start other downloads, chat with friends, etc. Downloading itself isn't a particularly processor intensive task, and it shouldn't be too difficult for the system to put up a "download in progress... game is paused" message for anyone who tries to enter or resume a game.
I expect we'll see this improve as MS releases more dashboard updates.
I didn't think about chatting with friends. That's a good point. I guess I just only download demos when I'm not using the console, so it's never seemed like a big deal to me.
This rather bothers me as well. I'd much rather be logged in or not depending upon how I feel, rather than what the internal state of the box wants.
You can log out anytime you want (or just make yourself look like you're logged out). The only reason the system forces you to log out is when it is a necessity (generally for software updates).
Lots of games on the PS2 autosave, just as lots of Xbox games didn't. There seems to be a lot of developers around who haven't quite understood that it isn't save and autosave anymore, it is save and manual save.
DOA can get away with autosaving without warnings because there really isn't any moment-to-moment progress to be lost. However, in an RPG every resource you consume or action you take could count as progress, and as such unless you're going to hit the memory card every second or two, you need to warn the player.
This is really only a problem for the X360 because that's the only console that has the concept of "quitting" a game. You don't quit anything on the PS2, you just turn the machine off.
I didn't mean to imply that only the Xbox1 did autosaves, though it was pretty rare on the PS2 and Gamecube. It definitely is a developer education issue.
Autosaves in an RPG are more of a gameplay design issue than anything. Of course since the X360 doesn't have any yet that can't be what the grandparent post was complaining about. But it's pretty ridiculous that games like Burnout Revenge and Amped 3 pop up big "now saving" messages that stop the game in its tracks every time you accomplish anything. DOA4 saves in the background after every battle and it doesn't slow the game down at all. That's clearly not a console issue, it's a developer issue.
And really, that summarizes all of the growing pains the X360 is experiencing. It took a very simple thing, a console, and expanded it out in new directions. Some of those are painful and confusing. Some aren't.
Well put.
Most of your problems just sound like new user issues, honestly.
Downloads are fux0red. You can only download one at a time, and while that's happening you can't do anything else. There is no time display, only a percentage display. Not only is the percentage display grossly wrong, if you don't touch the box (because you can't do anything else), the screensaver kicks in and shows you the menu underneath -- totally useless. Downloads instantly start at 5% done. Abort and restart it, and it'll automatically be 50% done. Abort and restart it again and it'll be 100% done and quit downloading.
Limiting downloads is actually a feature, sort of. The X360 isn't a PC. Games expect to get complete hardware performance every time they run (technically 5% or so of one of the cores is devoted to the GUI, but you understand what I mean). Yeah, I guess you could still want to listen to music or something while you download a demo, but the interface isn't really designed for multitasking like that. That's a good call, it's already fairly complicated enough for a gaming system. Like I said, it's a console, not a PC.
You want the screensaver to cut in. Some HDTVs are very susceptible to burn-in. The controller turns off too, to save power. I guess that could be mildly annoying to some people, but I don't think you are expected to just sit there and watch the download.
The 50% resume issue is a little bizarre, but it's not really much of a problem IMO. I've never had that fake 100% issue before, and I've resumed and stopped downloads all of the time.
The box constantly logs me in and out - some things need me in, some out.
Like your problem with unexpected reboots, this sounds like an issue with software updates for a new system. I'm not sure I consider it a problem myself, but you won't really have to worry about it now.
Menu items are inconsistent. Even on the same menu, some items are highlighted by brightening the center, others are highlighted by brightening the edges.
Where does this specifically occur? I've never noticed this.
When you quit a game, the OS doesn't know if you've saved the game or not. So, it'll always warn you that you are about to lose data, even if you haven't started a game. A little communication between the OS and games, please!
This is more of an issue with shoddy games that don't autosave, generally lazy multiplatform releases. It's not a problem with the consoles. Games like DOA4 will never make this complaint. It just autosaves in the background when you unlock or accomplish something new. This kind of thing was pretty standard even on the better Xbox1 games.
The unit is really loud. Much louder than my PC or my microwave.
It is very loud. This is probably my biggest complaint with the console. That said, my PS2 is roughly the same volume, maybe even louder. So is my new videocard. I understand why they don't allow this, but it's too bad you couldn't upgrade the fans to something higher-end and quieter like I have with my PC's CPU.
Graphics have been a letdown compared to my PC.
Wow, seriously? What PC games am I missing exactly? I've had the completely opposite experience. I haven't seen anything on the PC that looks as good as PGR3, DOA4, Kameo, GRAW, Full Auto, and occasionally PD0. This is the first videocard upgrade I've really been disappointed with, and it's solely because nothing has come close to the X360 I've had for months.
And I'm a big fan of the controller too. One of these days I have to pick up the wired version for my PC. It's just so damn comfortable.
Of course I never played the console version for more than 5 minutes, being a PC gamer automatically makes a controller awkward.
:D
No, it doesn't.
Only a peculiar breed of PC gamer finds it automatically awkward. Most of us have no problems after a couple minutes of acclimation.
I've played all of those games online. Did one of them add an autoranking feature in a patch I missed or something?
If I want to play Halo 2 on Live I just pick a game type category and go. It then sets me up with opponents that are my skill level on a full server. No PC FPS game comes close.
Come on now, you're just making stuff up here. Which experts consider 480p closer to HD than NTSC? 480p is roughly 300,000 pixels. 480i is obviously half that (no "order of magnitude" here). 720p is more than 900,000 pixels (and a lot of consumers are going to use 1080i, which is even higher).
And the difference in resolutions on a smaller HDTV (like say, even less than 30") is readily apparent with reasonable source material to most people that don't severely need new glasses. You think MS hasn't done the research on this? Their standard kiosk HDTV size is only 23".
There are good arguments to be made in favor of Nintendo skipping HD resolutions, especially if it lets them release the console at $150 or less. But pretending HD isn't a significant upgrade over SDTV and EDTV is not one of these reasons.
*One* HDTV setup won't give consumers any comparative idea of the relevative graphics 'quality' of the 3 systems.
Except this "*One* HDTV" isn't a rare situation. Every single X360 kiosk I've ever seen in person has a HDTV hooked up to it. Walmart has them, Best Buy has them (and my main Best Buy's huge HDTV demo with surround sound actually has the Xbox1 hooked up to it, bizarrely enough - the X360 is the standard HDTV kiosk you see in most retailers), Circuit City has them, EB/Gamestop has them, Fry's has them, Toys'R'Us has them, etc. This isn't some accident, this is exactly what MS planned for with their deal with Samsung. It's supposed to be completely standard. I'd be shocked if Sony doesn't do the same with the PS3. The difference in picture clarity is going to be obvious to most customers, though whether they will find it something to base a purchase off of is still up in the air. I personally think many of them will, though the games are generally going to look so much better regardless on the non-Revolution hardware that it might be a much easier decision if they want nice graphics.
(I'm not sure how parents are going to respond to the idea of a new console that features games that look almost identical to the Gamecube they already have. That should be interesting, though I suppose it is possible Nintendo is lying to third party devs about the hardware the final system will offer.)
And then there are several xbox 360 titles that aren't actually rendering 720p, they're rendering at 480p and then upscaling to 720p. And for xbox360 titles like *that* the xbox upscaling makes no difference at all because your HDTV will take the Revolution's native 480p and upscale to 720p/1080i as well. So then its just a question of which upscaler is higher quality. On an expensive TV, I'd bet on the TV. On a cheap TV, *maybe* the xbox will do the better job.)
This is not remotely true AFAIK. Care to name some of these Xbox360 titles? Some titles look like they are just upscaled because the devs did such a lazy job (like with most of Activision's stuff, for example), but those games don't look particularly good to begin with, and bigger publishers like EA and Ubisoft don't do that kind of thing. I doubt Activision will for much longer, either - seems more a symptom of rushed launch titles than anything else. But they are certainly not being internally rendered at 480p.
Probably because these Xbox Live Arcade games only tend to run $5, occasionally $10. The fact that every game has a demo available for it takes care of some of the "lending need" too. But I don't think many people purchase a game for $5 and then worry about being able to sell it later to make some of their money back! The pricing model basically puts it slightly above arcade game pricing, and it's even cheaper than a lot of game rental places. It's way, way below the $50-60 retail price standard that some people actually like to sell used.
If MS starts allowing significantly more expensive titles we might start to see some serious whining. But with a 50 meg game size limit I can't see them (or publishers) getting too crazy.