Most of these comments are missing the point. If you take a look at the magazine industry, Maxim, a newcomer to the scene, went from 0 to a 6 million circulation per issue in roughly 7 years... this = lots of profit. EGM and Game Pro on the other hand have about 700,000 circulation per issue. EGM has been around for 15 years and the has less than 1/6th the circulation of a magazine that is less than half its age. This equals significantly less profit. Now, the brilliant minds over there probably took note of the meteoric success of Maxim and its ilk, looked at the demographics and saw a pattern, i.e... most people who buy Maxim are in the same demo as the people who buy their magazine. If they make it more like Maxim then perhpas they can get a piece of the 5.3 million more readers Maxim has. This equals more profit. End result, EGM looks more like Maxim. The net effect maybe that hardcore gamers are alienated by the more Maxim like coverage; however, this positions the magazine For the maxim crowd.
The other misconception here is that games are a male dominated industry, if you take a look at the sales numbers you will see that the top selling game is the Sims. The Sims, sells predominately to a female audience at roughly 70 to 30 split. While Killathon 3 , may get more hype, make no mistake, as games move towards the mainstream, there are and more women gamers. Make no mistake, there isn't a major publisher out there who isn't working on a strategy for women. Industry wise games have to go down that road otherwise they risk imploding and having what happened to the comic industry happening to them.
In the end the Maxim-ization of EGM not only does a disservice to the industry but to the gamers who got them where they are today as well as the women audience who are expanding the market. EGM should focus on what it does best, cover games, rather than chase a subscriber base that belongs to someone else.
I noticed the THX logo at the begining of SSX 3 and though it a little strange. But hey, if it makes people buy THX speakers and give money to Lucas I guess this is a good thing???
You bring up some good points...
1 - A HUGE catalogue of games already out there
-- Of which 90% suck. Most GBA titles are shovel-ware and people know it.
Hasn't hurt Sony on the PS1/2 side, has it?
No but there is a critical difference in that good PS1/2 games are sometimes original and of higher quality (graphics, gameplay, etc...). Most of what is good on the GBA is remakes of SNES stuff or sequels to GB games.
2 - A HUGE number of devoted Nintendo fans
-- That may be the case but they will go where the good games are. (note the lack of GC success Nintendo has)
Notice how well the PS2 vs. GC arguments swap sides with PSP vs. GBA. The GBA's current sales are higher than the PS2's. The GBA has a catalogue (and back catalogue) that will take significant time to reach for any competitor, even if the PSP has a larger percentage of good games (and considering Sony's past and present, that's unlikely).
The GBA only has 2 or 3 viable platform franchises at most, other than Pokemon that will drive hardware adoption. All Sony needs is a Metal Gear, GTA, Madden, and that will drive PSP adoptions.
It will play movies in a format that no one has as of yet. No one knows how many movies will be released in this format, nor who would be willing to buy movies they already have in a new format, just to be able to play them on a PSP.
Sony owns Sony Music, and Sony Pictures / Columbia. Any takers on they won't levarge those assets? Remember that Sony attributed the failure of the Betamax to lack of content and purchased companies accordingly.
Battery life is one of the things that caused the original GameBoy to beat out many of it's competitors, despite being technologically inferior.
I disagree it was combination of the fact that the GB was significantly more portable, only required 2 x batteries as opposed to 6 x for the Lynx / Sega, and it was targeted at kids. However, once again look at who sony is targetting the PSP to, not GBA owners but PS2 owners who have more disposable income where buying batteries aren't that big a deal. In any event, I 'm sure the PSP will use a Lith-Ion / Lith Polymer rechargeable
That being said, it's still doing fairly well, and backwards compatibility is almost definite for whatever they'll announce next year.
I don't think we'll see compatibilty with the GBA, but more than likely compatibility with the GC. If Sony is using and optical format, Nintendo can't afford to stick with a cartridge format, as optical is cheaper to produce and distribute.
Actually the PSP scare the crap out of Nintendo...
To address your points:
1 - A HUGE catalogue of games already out there -- Of which 90% suck. Most GBA titles are shovel-ware and people know it.
2 - A HUGE number of devoted Nintendo fans -- That may be the case but they will go where the good games are. (note the lack of GC success Nintendo has)
3 - The price of the PSP is going to be set far higher than the GBA. -- Only about 100 more and when people can have PS2 level graphics in a small form factor at that price, they will buy. Also don't forget, the PSP will be able to play movies, have wireless networking built in, etc... Right now gamecubes are cheaper than GBAs and people aren't lining up for them
4 - Battery life - a full 3D game running off mechanical optical media is going to eat batteries. Nintendo have always pushed battery life as a key feature and indeed it is. -- Except for not, the GBASP was a cheap ploy to get people to shell out $100 for a backlit color screen. Battery life was an excuse for them to justify the original GBA. Beside, battery life is stupid argument. If people need to buy new batteries, they will, the success of the afterburner kit demonstrated this. The PSPs battery life will be equally to the GBASP at the very least. Also, while the PSP will have a moveable media, it will also have solid state media.
5 - Nintendo are not asleep at the wheel. I wonder what they are conjuring up with 1T SRAMs and ATi graphics etc.... Hmmm... -- Your only valid point. Nintento does have something big up their sleve.
However Sony have time and money on their side. The Big N aren't going to release anything in a hurry. -- Actually the big N doesn't have time on their side. They need to get something out as fast as possible, as GBA sales are what is keeping their company afloat. If Sony can threaten this revenue stream, Nintendo will enter into a Sega like hardware death spiral.
LucasArts was involved in so far as saying, ship this in July because we don't think it is that good, and we don't want anything taking away from Rouge Squadron 2 console sales during Q4 (which they believe is a superior title). FYI: LucasArts is shocked that KOTOR got amazing reviews and selling really well.
All of the people who contributed to the successes of their major titles, like Tim Schaefer, Ray Gresko, Justin Chin, etc... have long gone. The people who are left like Hal Barwood, produce crap like Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Judging by the fact that Full Throttle 2 has been canceled, and Sam and Max 2 is in limbo (both being produced internally), something is rotten in the state of denmark.
I would disagree with you on the Xwing games though. Even with the mines and the missles, they were still a lot of fun. In the case of Xwing vs. Tie fighter, LEC / Totally games dropped the ball in the sense that Tie fighter had been such a stellar game, with a stellar story line, that ditching SP in favor of MP only in Xwing vs. Tie, was almost criminal.
This article neglects the adventure games that LucasArts published which were also really high quality. The decline of LucasArts on the PC side started with the release of the game: The Dig, but the straw that broke the camels back was: Rebelion. I don't know how they were able to release that game but you could look at it and wonder what had gone wrong at LEC. For a long-time LEC produced all of their games in house (with the exception of the Xwing games made by Totally Games, Larry Holland's shop). At some point they decided they didn't want to foot dev. bills, and farmed out most of it to companies like Factor 5, and Raven which results in mostly crap. Of the games that are produced in house you get garbage like Indiana Jones, and the Infernal Machine made by sacred cows at LEC like Hal Barwood (also EP on RTX Red Rock). Like Microprose, for a while you could buy anything from LucasArts and it was going to be a good game, sadly that is no longer the case.
Using F-Zero GX is a bad example for a "hard game". Sure it is hard in the sense that the AI is good. But it is also hard in that the designers used really cheap-shots, like you miss a jump; you die in the final levels to make it "hard". This does not make it hard in terms of a challenging game; it makes it hard in terms up memorizing the level so you can make that jump which wouldn't be such a big deal except that to make it "hard" the designers only allow you to continue 3 times. This takes F-Zero out of the realm of hard / challenging into the realm of hard / annoying. It is an important distinction which this whole argument obscures.
The pentium M is roughly 1.5 x faster than a P4 at equivelent MHz. A 1.6 pentium M performs about as fast as a 2.4 P4, while using significantly less power. You can find benchmarks on most hardware sites.
It is sad that the pentium M, the best x86 proccessor Intel has ever made has been pretty much abandoned by them marketing-wise and sales wise. Hopefully this will help spur sales of the pentium M.
What you say is true however, when Saturn, Jaguar et al were around the stakes to entering the console market were significantly lower. You now have Sony and Microsoft playing for keeps, and Nintendo hanging in there. If there is one thing that is for certain it is these guys are not afraid to spend money. With the Phantom console "costing" more than $500 I don't see anyway for it to replace the PS2 and Xbox at $179, or the Gamecube at $125. Also, don't forget, PS3 and Xbox2 are almost done as well, and when launched will be at the 300 price point.
Amazingly enough the folks from infinuim were at E3 but not as Exhibitors. They did a couple of press demos however they did not bring any prototypes with them. In the words of one of the people who talked to them, infinium is "clueless".
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Getting EULA's in English would be the first step.
It is amazing the speed difference between a 5400RPM drive and 7200RPM drive.
This was Ashcroft's top priority before 9/11. He must have enough time on his hands to pursue it now.
I bet the privacy policy on this has google owning your email and rights to search and index it.
Nutch is in need of people... Lots of folks are using Lucene (open source) instead of Verity.
Considering the current site is run on jsp, tomcat and MySQL, I'd say the Friendster folks are pretty happy with open source stuff...
Most of these comments are missing the point. If you take a look at the magazine industry, Maxim, a newcomer to the scene, went from 0 to a 6 million circulation per issue in roughly 7 years... this = lots of profit. EGM and Game Pro on the other hand have about 700,000 circulation per issue. EGM has been around for 15 years and the has less than 1/6th the circulation of a magazine that is less than half its age. This equals significantly less profit. Now, the brilliant minds over there probably took note of the meteoric success of Maxim and its ilk, looked at the demographics and saw a pattern, i.e... most people who buy Maxim are in the same demo as the people who buy their magazine. If they make it more like Maxim then perhpas they can get a piece of the 5.3 million more readers Maxim has. This equals more profit. End result, EGM looks more like Maxim. The net effect maybe that hardcore gamers are alienated by the more Maxim like coverage; however, this positions the magazine For the maxim crowd.
The other misconception here is that games are a male dominated industry, if you take a look at the sales numbers you will see that the top selling game is the Sims. The Sims, sells predominately to a female audience at roughly 70 to 30 split. While Killathon 3 , may get more hype, make no mistake, as games move towards the mainstream, there are and more women gamers. Make no mistake, there isn't a major publisher out there who isn't working on a strategy for women. Industry wise games have to go down that road otherwise they risk imploding and having what happened to the comic industry happening to them.
In the end the Maxim-ization of EGM not only does a disservice to the industry but to the gamers who got them where they are today as well as the women audience who are expanding the market. EGM should focus on what it does best, cover games, rather than chase a subscriber base that belongs to someone else.
Mythica was cancelled because it was a project close to Ed Fries, plain and simple.
Orkut is cooler than Friendster because it runs on IIS and .Net where as Friendster runs on Tomcat and Linux.
Hmm considering friendster has only been live for around 10 months, beta seems apt.
They did it to DeusEx 2 which couldn't hold a candle to the first and now they are doing it to the thief series..
While it is great that sales quadrupled, the big N is still isn't selling as many GCs as they projected or expected. 1 x 4 = 4
I noticed the THX logo at the begining of SSX 3 and though it a little strange. But hey, if it makes people buy THX speakers and give money to Lucas I guess this is a good thing???
Sorry if this is trollish...
You bring up some good points... 1 - A HUGE catalogue of games already out there -- Of which 90% suck. Most GBA titles are shovel-ware and people know it. Hasn't hurt Sony on the PS1/2 side, has it? No but there is a critical difference in that good PS1/2 games are sometimes original and of higher quality (graphics, gameplay, etc...). Most of what is good on the GBA is remakes of SNES stuff or sequels to GB games. 2 - A HUGE number of devoted Nintendo fans -- That may be the case but they will go where the good games are. (note the lack of GC success Nintendo has) Notice how well the PS2 vs. GC arguments swap sides with PSP vs. GBA. The GBA's current sales are higher than the PS2's. The GBA has a catalogue (and back catalogue) that will take significant time to reach for any competitor, even if the PSP has a larger percentage of good games (and considering Sony's past and present, that's unlikely). The GBA only has 2 or 3 viable platform franchises at most, other than Pokemon that will drive hardware adoption. All Sony needs is a Metal Gear, GTA, Madden, and that will drive PSP adoptions. It will play movies in a format that no one has as of yet. No one knows how many movies will be released in this format, nor who would be willing to buy movies they already have in a new format, just to be able to play them on a PSP. Sony owns Sony Music, and Sony Pictures / Columbia. Any takers on they won't levarge those assets? Remember that Sony attributed the failure of the Betamax to lack of content and purchased companies accordingly. Battery life is one of the things that caused the original GameBoy to beat out many of it's competitors, despite being technologically inferior. I disagree it was combination of the fact that the GB was significantly more portable, only required 2 x batteries as opposed to 6 x for the Lynx / Sega, and it was targeted at kids. However, once again look at who sony is targetting the PSP to, not GBA owners but PS2 owners who have more disposable income where buying batteries aren't that big a deal. In any event, I 'm sure the PSP will use a Lith-Ion / Lith Polymer rechargeable That being said, it's still doing fairly well, and backwards compatibility is almost definite for whatever they'll announce next year. I don't think we'll see compatibilty with the GBA, but more than likely compatibility with the GC. If Sony is using and optical format, Nintendo can't afford to stick with a cartridge format, as optical is cheaper to produce and distribute.
Actually the PSP scare the crap out of Nintendo...
To address your points:
1 - A HUGE catalogue of games already out there
-- Of which 90% suck. Most GBA titles are shovel-ware and people know it.
2 - A HUGE number of devoted Nintendo fans
-- That may be the case but they will go where the good games are. (note the lack of GC success Nintendo has)
3 - The price of the PSP is going to be set far higher than the GBA.
-- Only about 100 more and when people can have PS2 level graphics in a small form factor at that price, they will buy. Also don't forget, the PSP will be able to play movies, have wireless networking built in, etc... Right now gamecubes are cheaper than GBAs and people aren't lining up for them
4 - Battery life - a full 3D game running off mechanical optical media is going to eat batteries. Nintendo have always pushed battery life as a key feature and indeed it is.
-- Except for not, the GBASP was a cheap ploy to get people to shell out $100 for a backlit color screen. Battery life was an excuse for them to justify the original GBA. Beside, battery life is stupid argument. If people need to buy new batteries, they will, the success of the afterburner kit demonstrated this. The PSPs battery life will be equally to the GBASP at the very least. Also, while the PSP will have a moveable media, it will also have solid state media.
5 - Nintendo are not asleep at the wheel. I wonder what they are conjuring up with 1T SRAMs and ATi graphics etc.... Hmmm...
-- Your only valid point. Nintento does have something big up their sleve.
However Sony have time and money on their side. The Big N aren't going to release anything in a hurry.
-- Actually the big N doesn't have time on their side. They need to get something out as fast as possible, as GBA sales are what is keeping their company afloat. If Sony can threaten this revenue stream, Nintendo will enter into a Sega like hardware death spiral.
LucasArts was involved in so far as saying, ship this in July because we don't think it is that good, and we don't want anything taking away from Rouge Squadron 2 console sales during Q4 (which they believe is a superior title).
FYI: LucasArts is shocked that KOTOR got amazing reviews and selling really well.
All of the people who contributed to the successes of their major titles, like Tim Schaefer, Ray Gresko, Justin Chin, etc... have long gone. The people who are left like Hal Barwood, produce crap like Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Judging by the fact that Full Throttle 2 has been canceled, and Sam and Max 2 is in limbo (both being produced internally), something is rotten in the state of denmark.
The RTS game was: Force Commander.
I would disagree with you on the Xwing games though. Even with the mines and the missles, they were still a lot of fun. In the case of Xwing vs. Tie fighter, LEC / Totally games dropped the ball in the sense that Tie fighter had been such a stellar game, with a stellar story line, that ditching SP in favor of MP only in Xwing vs. Tie, was almost criminal.
This article neglects the adventure games that LucasArts published which were also really high quality. The decline of LucasArts on the PC side started with the release of the game: The Dig, but the straw that broke the camels back was: Rebelion. I don't know how they were able to release that game but you could look at it and wonder what had gone wrong at LEC. For a long-time LEC produced all of their games in house (with the exception of the Xwing games made by Totally Games, Larry Holland's shop). At some point they decided they didn't want to foot dev. bills, and farmed out most of it to companies like Factor 5, and Raven which results in mostly crap. Of the games that are produced in house you get garbage like Indiana Jones, and the Infernal Machine made by sacred cows at LEC like Hal Barwood (also EP on RTX Red Rock).
Like Microprose, for a while you could buy anything from LucasArts and it was going to be a good game, sadly that is no longer the case.
Using F-Zero GX is a bad example for a "hard game". Sure it is hard in the sense that the AI is good. But it is also hard in that the designers used really cheap-shots, like you miss a jump; you die in the final levels to make it "hard". This does not make it hard in terms of a challenging game; it makes it hard in terms up memorizing the level so you can make that jump which wouldn't be such a big deal except that to make it "hard" the designers only allow you to continue 3 times. This takes F-Zero out of the realm of hard / challenging into the realm of hard / annoying. It is an important distinction which this whole argument obscures.
The proccessor pipeline is highly optimized and super efficient, eliminating wasted wait state cycles common in the P4s pipeline.
The pentium M is roughly 1.5 x faster than a P4 at equivelent MHz. A 1.6 pentium M performs about as fast as a 2.4 P4, while using significantly less power. You can find benchmarks on most hardware sites.
It is sad that the pentium M, the best x86 proccessor Intel has ever made has been pretty much abandoned by them marketing-wise and sales wise. Hopefully this will help spur sales of the pentium M.
What you say is true however, when Saturn, Jaguar et al were around the stakes to entering the console market were significantly lower. You now have Sony and Microsoft playing for keeps, and Nintendo hanging in there. If there is one thing that is for certain it is these guys are not afraid to spend money. With the Phantom console "costing" more than $500 I don't see anyway for it to replace the PS2 and Xbox at $179, or the Gamecube at $125. Also, don't forget, PS3 and Xbox2 are almost done as well, and when launched will be at the 300 price point.
Amazingly enough the folks from infinuim were at E3 but not as Exhibitors. They did a couple of press demos however they did not bring any prototypes with them. In the words of one of the people who talked to them, infinium is "clueless".