This is a non-argument Pirates steal regardless, the internet has made piracy 100% easier then it used to be and getting no-CD cracks is so easy the target market of gamers (teens to adults of 35 or so) are computer savvy enough to do it. Not many in the target market of gamers are computer ignorant or illiterate anymore we've had an entire generation that has grown up using the internet and computers, etc, so it is second nature.
We've long since passed the age of needing copy protection like SecuRom because of 'casual copying' because of the mass introduction of CD and DVD burners, if you want to blame someone blame the hardware industry and the game developers themselves for not working with the hardware industry to create DVD/CD roms that can read special (non-standard) media that is NOT SOLD TO THE PUBLIC (see: Game cube discs). Make the non standard media bigger by a factor of 25-50% more storage and sell the public media that has 'less' then the special IP discs so they can't fit the content on publicly available discs.
The people who made CD burners and DVD burners ubiqitous but yet did not design their hardware to allow software developers do use non-standard media (ala like the gamecube disc) to protect their IP, it is the fault of the game industry sitting on its ass and letting the hardware industry ruin them through innovation. The hardware industry KNOWS that people want its hardware to get free stuff they are not stupid, they make insane profits at the expensive of IP owners, be it game developers, movie makers, music, etc.
If you want to protect your IP you're going to have to stop putting it on media that the public can get it's hands on. Thats much better then any kind of current copy protection. And yes I know there would still be "rips"/images but without insanely draconian DRM (which no one wants) it's something the software and game industry has been putting up with for a long time.
People will always steal and bootleg, no matter how rich or how poor you are people want all they can experience before they die and 'to hell' with everyone else.
Either way it's pretty much too late now, until the introduction of DRM and higher standards and stopping the crappy games from game developers themselves. PC gaming will be nothing but the big names (doom3, half-life, etc).
Just so you know I didn't mean to insult you purposefully I apologize if I offended. I'm not that great at expressing myself in a polite manner. Also I know you're experienced here but I'm talking about a game being FUN and APPEALING to more action oriented gamers like myself and by 'action oriented' I dont mean FPS type gameplay, just give me more control over my character instead of me being a passive observer and chatter while the battle takes place. Note that, financial success does not a great game make (The matrix for instance, sold something like a million copies but it doesn't mean its a good game, i.e. check the reviews). Planescape tormet: A great game (check reviews), a classic, sold like utter crap. Why? Property and name most likely, it was based original IP based on the 'planescape' universe so it was definitely hardcore, original, risky. Compare that to Baldurs gate (based on a known property -- forgotten realms, sword coast, drizzt, instant market!). They had the same gameplay but sold drastically different numbers and it wasn't because planescape was a bad game, it just didn't have the appeal a game set in the forgotten realms had.
If that same thing happened, that death would permanently affect your character. You might lose some of your accumulated experience or skill points, perhaps some of the equipment it took you some time to collect. A lag spike leading to death isn't an "Oh, well, try again." moment. Trust me, I deal with this on a regular basis........ like an FPS than a traditional online game. There is much less focus on persistence in PlanetSide, so they can focus more on twitch gameplay. Notably, a death on PlanetSide has very little impact overall.
What are you smoking? I'm sorry... maybe I am misinterpreting what you mean by 'big impact'? I have to even question if you play MMORPGS, most MMO's have very little penalties beyond experience penalty and most give you a choice to go 'hardcore' and opt in to increase your penalties (challenge of the game) they do everything to make sure the character doesn't lose a significant amount of anything when you die except for a 'death fee' in experience or gold. In FFXI all you get is an experience penality and a respawn. Consider what happens when you can't run away from a monster and it hits you when it is twenty feet away or more (FF XI) even with a super low ping because of the way the 'non existant' game mechanics are designed (play animation, take off X amount of HP regardless of distance or whether the attack animation *actually* hit a player), also note the total lack of collision detection in MMO's. Dying occurs often in FF XI (esp if u try to solo) and there is yes there is a penalty (and its still just as annoying) even with the 'respawn' game mechanics in FF XI. So MMO chars are just as 'throw away' in the sense that you die and respawn but the game developers in their infinite wisdom force an experience penalty on you for death to give you an incentive to 'avoid death' but then a lag spike hits or you have improper collision detection and weak combat system (because remember, no collision detection or actual decent gameplay system exists) and your whole damage system is based on the character being in 'war mode' with an enemy regardless of the vast distance between the monster and you he can still hit you with a melee attack from 3 screens away! Yes I can see GENIUSES @ behind mmo's at work here. A game like Q3 manages to have collision detection but MMO's don't, why is it a traffic issue? Maybe you really need to start thinking about the huge DEFICITS and annoying features in many major MMO games. That annoy the living crap out of even the paying customers. In FFXI if you dont party to fight you're screwed you must party with people to fight beyond level 11-13 and that sucks and often times you spend time looking for characters close enough to your level to party with instead of just 'getting in and having fun' you're waiting around to find other people for
I know about the technical issues I play Quake and you learn all you need to know about ping and latencny playing first person shooters. What person who doesn't play UT, Q3 or any other online FPS not know that latency is a factor? Also games not being fun because of 'technically challenging' latency is an excuse. Obviously it can be done as Sony proved with Planetside.
This isn't a shot at you FYI. So maybe you're not skilled enough or have enough schooling to design game mechanics/network engine around the 'challenge' of latency but other games have done just that. But this is not the gamers problem remember. The gamer pays for fun he's not interested in the details and neither should he be. When say you want to buy a DVD player you're not interested in the difficulty the manufacturer had in making it cheap enough for you to afford a good quality one you just wanted a good quality one for a reasonable price that can play all DVD's and is very compatable.
But look sony did it with Planetside obviously so it can be done. And by 'twitch' it doesn't have to be 'superfast' realtime gameplay that requires super low latency ala quake3 but it should be at least as good as say diablo 2. Remember 'twitch' doesn't have to be super fast-realtime first person shooter style mechanics. It just has to allow the player to actually control his character and do things besides watch it, this is what I mean when I say I hate 'automatic gaming' or 'noninteractive gaming'. There are no interesting game mechanics in MMO's that haven't been done MUCH better in single player games.
Actions/game mechanics can take time they dont have to be 'immediate' but they can't be aganizingly slow either or automatic (ala current MMO's) they just have to be FUN and allow a player to play a game in short sessions instead of long drawn out ones current MMO's use say while travelling (taking you 20-40 minutes just walking around in a virtual world is not 'fun').
Also it couldn't hurt to make these games more fun. When you are controlling a SINGLE character and not a group of characters, there must be something else for the player to do that is fun if automatic 'playing' is some sort of 'technical necessity' because of latency or some other issue. This 'auto control' for avatars/units is acceptable in realtime strategy games because no one could manage to control tonnes of units individually. But when in an MMO you have one character it's awful boring when you cannot control your avatar or make any 'fun' or 'strategic' decisions with his actions.
The point is MMO's are not any more fun then single playe RPG's they are most of the time much worse. In other words the game mechanics and fighting systems they have in current MMO's are not very fun at all in and of themselves.
The games maybe 'fun' for the first little while until the novelty 'multiplayer' novelty wears off and you realize you're playing a sub par game and you've been ripped off for $79 (in the case of FF XI) + whatever in monthly payments. Playing MMO's reminds me of Zelda playing windwaker when you're on the sea. When you're travelling on the sea in Wind waker you almost bash your friggin head in not doing anything and sitting passively as you 'travel' while not engaging or doing anything your itching to do something or interact with anything but because your out in the 'open sea' and monsters are few and far between it makes you bored out of your skull. This is what all MMORPG's are like especially since you dont have to do anything. They purposely make things take too much time to try to keep players from whipping through content too fast but it backfires in making the game tedious and not fun unless you have severe amounts of time to kill having either no social or work life or if you're lucky you can do whatever if you're independently rich.
I wasn't thinking the game had to be twitch it should just be more interactive. i.e. you don't do a lot of fun tasks, management or manipulations that are fun and goal oriented. Think civilization or alpha centauri, these games are fun because they you you are making decisions that effect game outcomes (do I built this beneficial building or a unit?). MMO's do not have interesting 'management' activities for to go along with their passive style of gameplay. Perhaps it's a limitation of internet and/or graphics technology to do 'realtime' with that many people in a game at once but look at diablo. It's not MMO but the combat and whatnot is realtime and you can have 8 players in a group tonnes of monsters (10's and 20's of monsters and little lag).
They don't have to make it like an FPS. Altough I do believe 'twitch' (i.e. controlling your character) is a superior gameplay mechanic AFAIC because you are actually involved and doing something instead of watching your character do everything for you this is why video games are supposed to be interactive entertainment with emphasis on both interactive and enterainment. They should be fun but passive huge-time-sink MMO gaming is certainly not fun people just convince themselves that it is because currently MMO's IMHO are basically glorified chatrooms while you 'play' passively. This wouldn't be an issue if there were things in the game that were actually fun to do, manage, decide, or manipulate.
MMO's take too much time to play and they have to realize that most MMO's are really f'n boring. Too much time is wasted doing things that are not fun (travelling, etc) and many of the things that are supposed to be fun like combat, etc. Are half-baked and basically the computer plays for you. I think this is a real issue is the rise of 'automatic gaming' what is there to interact with if the computer does everything for you?
This is partly why I had a love/hate relationship with NWN and all pay to play MMO's. The speed at which the game goes and the interactivity is almost completely absent you watch your character more then play or control your character. This is why twitch based game mechanics are superior IMHO and they should start using them for MMO's. FFXI and all current MMO's leave the person not doing much other them moving their character and turning on auto attack, compare this with fun games like Soul calibur 2, Mario Kart, Quake or Unreal tournament. There is just no fun in playing a videogame that is essentially passive and non-interactive. This is why I quit Final fantasy XI I couldn't stand the passive nature of 'playing', when really all you're doing is finding monsters turning on auto attack, while you could be surfing the web or actually doing something else waiting for your automatically controlled character to finish (don't laugh many people do).
Even though you say that I still think the problem is very difficult because on the PC you're trying to be all things to all people, so your drivers and software have to interact normally on different platforms, motherboards, chipsets and whatnot. This is why I never bought Via or 'non-intel' chipset motherboards because of the stupid random crashes, driver issues, and whatnot you'd have to deal with for going with a cheaper board.
You have to stay compatable with games that are many years old already that people continue to play and also you on a PC the operating environment is much more chaotic and non-standardized. I mean how many programs do people install on their computer that effect some OTHER program and whatnot, or what about different CD/DVD drives and copy protection, as a case in point, not all DVD/CD drives are tested against the copy protection so they end up having to disable it or tell their customers 'tough luck'.
It's also the PC game industries obession with copy protection and really bad QA so that their games require patching that ruins new users experience IMHO. NWN for instance from bioware crashed right out of the box if you played the game for a while or when loading/saving you could experience frequent crashes and whatnot.
I think on the whole MS and Intel and hardware companies are going to have to come up with some sort of "quality of service" initiative so that when you write drivers for hardware and whatnot they aren't going to 'break' something in some application/game on different platforms.
As good as competition (ATI vs. Nvidia) for the industry is, it has drawbacks in spreading support resources too thin (i.e. multiple chipsets, motherboards, etc).
For gaming having one chipset to support and one platform makes it easier to keep compatability from breaking. This is part of the reason why consoles do so well and even sony's PS2 had growing pains in the backwards compatability so we know that being backward compatable is difficult. But I think it has to start with Intel, Microsoft, hardware/motherboard chipset/video companies and whatnot to come up with a system that ensures any 'missing feature' and whatnot can be automagically compensated for.
The game industry isn't blameless, the games industry itself has to start thinking like console game companies: No patches, release once. If they were releasing buggy games on consoles any major showstopper bugs would kill their reputation as a company and probably make for a lot of unhappy customers.
I think the problem is that... there's too much quantity and not enough quality. Too many "me too's" and very little original ideas or IP at all. But the downward trend was caused by companies abandoning the PC for consoles. Case in point - Bioware, Microsofts 'Mechwarrior developers' (forget their name), Blizzard focusing on console's and MMO's when they should be doing Diablo 3 and/or Starcraft 2. (Both games with HUGE audiences that would most likely love a sequel). But lets face it...
1) PC games are too obsessed with hardware requirements (especially your video card) no one wants to upgrade their card every 1 to 2 years at 300 and 400+ a pop for the latest and greatest and possibly on top of that a CPU/Motherbaord + ram and/or powersupply.
2) There have been no good PC games in diverse amount of genre's in a long time. The last 'half decent' singleplayer RPG released for the PC was KoTor but you can get Kotor multiplatform anyway. Also there has been a dearth of good RPG's for the PC. NWN was a let down, there has been no word on baldurs gate 3 or whatever either and bioware success started out on the PC.
3) Too many FPS games. I'm sorry but everyone's flooding the market with FPS and/or MMORPG's. I'm thankful EA still ports the Need for speed series games to the PC because no one has a good game that can really compete in the racing/driving arena. Most of the companies stick to the tried and true formula. For instance how many mechwarriors, dooms, unreal tournaments, and whatnot do we really need? Every update fragments the multiplayer online game community.
4) No one's made a serious attempt at publishing console games and designing with PC hardware in mind, this means NO CRAPPY PORTS of OLD GAMES. They must release at the same time on all platforms or for the PC first and then the consoles. Part of a games sales is exclusivity. Doom 3 and Half-life 2 are first and foremost PC games and are exclusively better on PC. If console companies would try to design a game with the PC in mind as well as for their 'sacred' consoles from the start then we would see better sales and whatnot period.
Whats the point in owning a lot of movies? I could never figure that one out. You can rent them for cheap and how often does your movie collection actually get used? Most movies you buy you watch a few times and then they sit on your shelf just like games you've finished. I never got why people could have collections of 100's of DVD movies. I can see owning a few or major releases that are worthwhile but I never understood the fascination with purchasing a huge movie library.
You say "... while my DVD collection keeps growing." yeah but I'm sure 90% of those titles are collecting dust as well. Out of curiosity, how many times do you watch the same movie?
Deserves insulting because religion is irrelevant
on
Game with God
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Well I don't know about you but religion is the last and only reason why biological science is being railed against and might take a turn for the worse, check out sites like www.arn.org and whatnot for the modern creationist movement based on some convoluted concept of "special creation" of the first cells (in Behe's case) or as some Old earthers in the movement would have it human beings. In fact religion is the cause of a lot of human division in the world where you have a lot of nutjobs believing entirely different things about the origins of humanity, the age of the earth, how long humans have been on the planet, how they got here, etc.
For people that might flame me I do not believe in seperating the bible from history there is no historical or rational basis in doing so I do not subscribe to "different models" of faith (as seen here:
Faith and reason - Internet encyclopedia of philosophy that were created because we found out that the earth was old and the bible's history is not history at all. Before scientific times this could be somewhat excused as a culture needs to have some worldview base/common values, history and culture but it's not now.
ID is based off an incorrect and outdated worldview unless you really believe God did the whole job in 6 days a few thousand years ago, global flood, noah's ark and all that (Local flooders: if the flood was local why not just have Noah and animals move, or warp him some place also why does the biblical god a good 99% of the time use nature (or something) as an intermediary to destroy human beings, esp when it's claimed that as god you're omnipotent and have full control over matter/nature's laws?).
Also I want everyone to look up Mathew 8:30-34 you can check out this website. Effectively disproving 1) The notion that Jesus is god (either you believe demon beings exist and cause disease/unnatural/violent behaviour, or christ is not god as god would know such things don't exist) 2) Christ promotes and endorses superstition and ignorance he actually 'plays along' with the excorcism if you don't believe in demons, which is tantamount to lying and bearing false witness which disqualifies him as the Son of god (since lying is a sin!). 3) If he was really the son of god and had eternal life he would have stuck around to make the world a better place, the christians rationalized his death away in the gospels because they lived in hopeless and harsh times, in short they were deluded.
Finally even the OT and gospel authors conclude those who dont view the bible as historical in it's entirety on fundamentals (i.e. the first chapters of genesis, creation of adam and eve, the fall, the origin of death in humanity through 'great gran-daddy'adam's disobedience). Don't take my word for it paul's whole basis for the christian religion was that it was rooted in reality and history (or so he thought anyway). Here's the bible characters own own words on his stance towards the OT (the 'bible' before the gospels were written).
"Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
"Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
"As by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men - . . death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression... [I]For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ".[/I] - Please notice the contrast taking place here it spells it out in HUGE LETTERS that the origin of physical death is rooted in adam not evolution or progressive creation.
See problems with non-literal or theistic evolutionist interpretations of the
I think the real problem is that there is different audiences out there in regards to games.
Some like turn based and somewhat-to-fully-automated automatically controlled characters or 'managed' characters (i.e. Neverwinter Nights and most other modern MMORPGS automatically attack and do everything for you most of the time). Other's like action or "twitch" based games.
IMHO the 'twitch' based (realtime fighting/w deep fighting system) are the best ones because they should ideally a) rely on skill which ups replayability, if you suck at a game you have a challenge to master the game b) have to make you think and FEEL a certain level of challenge and stress c) you can play through the game again with a different set of skills, weapons which effect how you fight and d) Lastly and only lastly do story and FMV really matter, FMV does not add to the value of a bad game but it will make a awesome game truly great. The only time when this changed was when FF VII came out and people started buying games with more emphasis based on their graphics. You can have just as interesting and memorable moments on a graphically 'deficient' (by modern standards) game. FF3US(FF6-JPN) was a great game without the fancy graphics.
RPG's whether you like to think of it or not are built around stories, combat and the level grind. Sure they can 'try to diversify' but what would seperate a modern RPG from an action game like Final fight or a fighting game like soul calibur 2 if they allowed 'realtime' fighting?
Take Final fantasy Chronicles (realtime combat), the play control was all right but the combat system had no depth and the world was very 'disconnected' and had no feel of continuity. Compare it to a game like Diablo II (realtime combat) and you see what Final fantasy chronicles was missing, they needed combat skills, more character classes and different ways to attack and combat characters. This is probably the #1 reason besides the 'phat loot' hook in Diablo 2 that makes diablo 2 such a great game. Even within it's limited skill tree you can make at least some range of different characters to attempt to play them differently. If you want to see an amazing game that no RPG has yet rivalled in the class options department get a hold of Final fantasy Tactics. This game is probably one of the most original games to come out in the tactic/hybrid RPG game.
Now my bit on "interactivity", in an RPG you rarely engage the world other then exploring/revealing it and pushing a button to open/get goodies or get caught up in mini-games or battle. The thing about RPG's is discovering new areas and having an interesting characters/purpose with an good and deep combat, character development and treasure system.
Also RPG's are games about fighting and the old if not tried and true video game conventions (leveling up, next level, big bad boss, etc) take those away and there's not much left of the "RPG" genre. Strip away an RPG's story and fancy graphics and nothing is left but the combat system and the world/map/dungeon layouts/w monster encounters. So once you know the combat system and the layout of the world you have a problem with replayability because the world is predictable, this does not mean a random world, maps or dungeons are necessarily better (See diablo 2) but they have to be designed well and be "fun". If they don't add to the game they should be scrapped.
Personally I think most RPG players and buyers are not very good at twitch based games and thats why RPG's haven't changed in forever. They are easy games that are 'gameplay' and interactive light, they are more passive but more engrossing via story/fmv.
But the most engrossing and fun games you've probably ever been hooked on and spent the most amount of time with are most likely simulations/strategy games like Civilization, Alpha Centauri, multiplayer action games, and puzzle ga mes. I can't think of any other game I've replayed a lot besides strategy games, puzzle games and multiplayer games.
... suck in the gameplay department. I also don't know anyone that buys games for their graphics alone. Both play their part in staying with the status quo. The graphics should be as good as the hardware is capable and everyone accepts that. I don't think anyone is suggesting a return to 8-bit nintendo graphics, but 2D 16-bit style games could still hold up on modern hardware at higher resolutions if the art was updated with 'quasi' 3d / 2D artwork.
The Gameboy advance while not being amazing in the graphics department is the best handhelds ever created because there are a lot good and original games for it, and they are fun (See: Advance wars / Advance wars 2, Golden sun, etc)
Almost all games sell based on how fun the game actually is. Games cannot simply rely on graphics, the best example of these failures are MMOG's. Take a look at EVE: The 2nd genesis, thats what you get for focusing too much on graphics and not enough on gameplay: Shitty subscriber base. I was bored out of my f'n mind while trying to play that game.
Now take a fun game like City of Heroes and you know why it is selling and doing so well. It's because it's a fun game and word of mouth and mindshare from previous success's is some of the best marketing you can get.
MS just saw an opportunity I really don't think they converted anyone and gained much mindshare from other consoles. They took what was left of the PC market and the PC gamers that were sick of upgrading their video hardware ever year or two. Not a huge accomplishment if you ask me, most of the first releases of Xbox games would have been PC games (Halo, Mech Assault, etc) if not for Xbox.
Think about countries that are not wealthy, even here in Canada most places pay as little as possible (which means $7.15CDN/hr) if even finding a shitty place here is at least 600-700$ a month and after taxes, UI (unemloyment insurance) and what not has been taken off your check you're lucky to be left with anything after phone/utilities, etc. Up here you need a job and food stamps and thats on 35hrs/week because most places don't give you full hours so they can save $. I know lots of people who are on work and have to get foodstamps and they can't save hardly anything if they are a single parent and have a kid on top of that.
I also don't really agree with your comment about 1000 years ago thee were people in the ancient world that had a much slower pace of life and more amount of time circa 1000AD (after all it takes time to grow food and there were labour saving inventions and whatnot) I think you need to bone up on your history after all we are talking post roman and greek civilization here. I agree that their are benefits/perks to living in the modern world but no one picks the time and age in which they are born in, so that goes without saying.
I'm just saying with all the inventions and strides we've made in the efficiency of food production, housing, electricity and whatnot it's ironic lots of people are still barely able to make ends meet, and we shouldn't just say "tough titties" to those who lacking abilities or the potential to develop skills to an adequately competitive level (so they can find a job/be compensated) they were not born with.
I like learning but the structure of school is NOT fun or much of the time even relevant. Half the time the people teaching you what you'd really want to be learning aren't qualified or have no idea beyond the basics in elementary and highschool and I think this is a real problem.
I wish there was some "open source" learning project that wass funded by businesses about subjects you can learn on your own over the internet (Math, physics, etc) that is maintained and updated by people working in their field for businesses so you have people right on the cutting edge giving out free class material, tests, etc, subsidized by those who are willing to work for it on their own after school or on their own time.
Another problem is our schools exist to serve the economy and the people that own major corporations or "the means of production", basically schools produce workers for people who are major business owners and reap the most rewards from their work in a lot of fields. Schools are little different then worker farms for kids. Even by the time they get out of highschool they still need to take on huge amount of debt to go onto higher ed to even get a decent paying job to survive beyond 'subsistance' level. So they've been working day in and day out for at least 12-16+ years of their life by the time these people get out of highscool or college. I wish they could identify kids "Trade skill kids" or kids that will never make it academically and find something else for them to do because they're wasting time on kids who can't succeed or for whom learning x subject is beyond their abilities.
I think theres a huge problem with the way we live our lives as a culture around the monetary unit. How is life truly 'better' today then it was 100 or 1000 years ago? You have more toys and convenience and more luxury but you still have to work like a dog and it still costs you (in work) the same amount of time taken away from life. You still have to work to eat and put a roof over your head, the only difference is that you're constantly being held up for cash by either the government or businesses just so you can live. We've advanced to the point where the efficiency of food production requires less then 3% of a (modern) countries population to take care of the food needs of an entire nation but yet we still have homeless people and millions of people slugging it out at minmum or just barely above minimum wage jobs for 40+ hours a week who can't even afford food and a place to live let alone the cost of kids and many of these people WERE educated beyond highschool the problem is we keep inventing ourselves out of jobs and raising the bar, but the human brain and condition is not keeping up. We have a surplus of people and not enough 'good' jobs, and by good I don't mean good paying. I mean good as in you and your wife dont spend 50+ hour weeks at the office and barely have time to do anything else but live at work while your child is raised by babysitters, entertainment devices, or the school system. I think the problem is the fast paced consumption driven life.
It's hard to get exited about learning and school when you're born with limited abilities and struggle with school. I don't believe it's just liking learning vs. not liking learning determinin the success of the person. Many teachers will tell you "hard work" or loving learning alone is not enough. Their are tonnes of university professors who will tell you differently that some people CAN'T meet the expectations or requirements in skill, knowledge abilities.
People are born with talent and potential to compete in today's world or they aren't. Most people will never attain or are able to develop skills to a level where they can be competitive and I don't believe they are stupid or uneducated it's just our system is too achievement oriented and revolves too much around money and serving those who own the means of production. As a culture we are forced to take jobs that currently exist or new ones when our current ones become ob
Everything new gets old and old new again. This illustrates a law of psychology is that things get old the more you expose yourself to them for the vast majority of people. The fresher they are in your memory while you are consuming a product you will soon get burnt out on it after you no longer get some sort of psychological reward or satisfaction from it.
But then years later you may go back to it and play game X or watch movie Y all the way through again. Think about it, even some of the greatest replayable games of all time eventually people master them to such a degree where it is no longer challenging or they are so familiar with it that they seek a different/new enviornment or set of challenges and circumstances. Novelty and enjoyment can only last so long if you are overdosing on it. I'd say the principle is kind of like pesticide/poison resistance in organisms the more you expose yourself to it the more you become immune to it's effects. The same thing goes for the opposite end of the spectrum, pleasure.
Or for instance another example, you can get nearly the same sex from most any girl on the planet or find a girl you like and can enjoy but you eventually get bored or become disinterested over time to seek out someone who's life and behaviour you don't know inside out because once you know all there is to know interest wanes.
... many businesses are just as bad as if not worse then thieves. Such as Price fixing, buying political power, buying questionable laws, etc.
Piracy exists, sure we all know that but who here or your typical P2P or Newsgroup/IRC warez whore has the money and can afford to purchase all the warez or software they download? That's right. No one! If someone can get something for free without paying for it they will, if businesses can get a higher "return on investment" by shafting their employee's THEY WILL. Because businesses only significantly reward those at the top amd/or who are critical to business or who own the business while everyone else is a chump.
Windows XP is $120-200 in Canada for a brand new copy. PC games are $49-79.99 each, Office which is probably the most pirated after windows XP the most is barely used for anything other then typing out the odd document which they could use wordpad, notepad or any other free half decent text/document alternative. Cry me a river! We live in a capitalist society and people's greed is what drive's companies to produce product so they can rape our wallets silly, piracy exists because overly greedy business people are just as bad as freeloaders. No one does any amount of work that justifies the kind of money people at the top of the food chain make, so what if the little guy steals? People at the top are also taking advantage of our ignorance of their production costs and true cost of their items. I'm sure we've been ripped off plenty at retail stores without knowing just how much markup they are making on said items. One can only wonder how much "work" went into windows 98 over windows98 or how about millenium over 98? Please for the average user there were no "real" justifications beyond "it's newer therefore better", what was significantly upgraded that warranted the purchase between 98, SE and ME?
Any company would easily trade it's 'overpaid' workers for foreign labour if their was a justifiable cost reduction and increased profits, "people be damned", most businesses in this day and age don't care about workers, worker turnover is probably at it's highest level in educated jobs in history and it's going to get worse because we are inventing ourselves out of jobs and our economic model, tax system.
No one wants to spend 16+ years of their life in school only to get out and have a job for 2-4 years if that and then either have to go back to university or hope to hell your skills will transfer to another job when we invent your replacement or we find cheaper labour in foreign country X, which the WTO has bee grooming as a pool for cheap labour for the interest of the multinationals who see that North american workers are too expensive, or will be given X amount of years.
... and other issues such as connectivity, lag and figuring out a way to make it so any dumb idiot can connect isn't going to be easy. Since connecting to the internet and all the problems you have using internet for games is problematic. Come on the internet quality of service for real-time games is problematic for everyone, everyone can't get the same online experience because it is ISP and router-hop dependent. No one can gaurantee quality of service with regards to latency at this time over the internet, so realtime games will not be so great when pings fluctuate or are well above 100ms.
Also I think online marketshare is for console internet "peripherals" are limited like the GC's broadband adapter are limited. You want an "all in one" console in that regard, you don't want to have to pay extra.
The online connectivity should be built right into the console. This means WiFi or ethernet which isn't going to be cheap from Nintendo's perspective, and then the internal software that makes leasing an IP address easy... but what happens later on when the internet goes to IPV6 and the console can't upgrade its internal software to support internet connectivity? Grandted IPV6 is a long way off but it shows you once you put connectivity in you're stuck with it unless you somehow support IPV6 well before it's widespread.
Nintendo as a company would like a profit on their console they can't lose gobs of money through a war of attrition like Xbox and Sony can with their other businesses to rely on to supply revenue. They need exclusive games from major publishers on their system or they are going to get creamed by the PS3, I really have no faith in Xbox2 unless it attracts developers with superior technology thats head and shoulders above the PS3 with exclusive system selling titles.
... has been going down for quite some time now. The only decent original games that have been released in the last 4-5 years you could probably count on both hands. All the others are re-hashes and re-treads of existing franchises because companies are so entrenched in making money its hard for them to invest money in original ideas and games that defy or invent new gaming conventions, in short they are afraid of losing money and not keeping investors happy about quarterly profits.
I also think this has to do with the japanese gaming audience as a whole. Japanese gamers and gaming culture are more experienced and hardcore about gameplay then their us counterparts. They are really more hardcore about their games then north americans are. Why do you think that most games come with sissy difficulty settings or have been so easy in the last 4-5 years? To pander to a North american audience.
I think this is a real problem is that games are being dumbed down to a point where theres no challenge and the japanese do not like unchallenging games that lack depth. This is what made Streetfighter 2 such a hit on both shores was its strategic depth and skill based gameplay.
We saw more original games and content in the NES/SNES and Genesis era then in any other era in video game history (sorry to say it but pre-NES era of computer/console games had little diversity and lack of widespread adoption, the NES is what saved the industry).
Look at Nintendo for instance, they had the balls to release a 2D game for the gamecube (Zelda: Four swords) although it plays and looks much like it's snes and GBA counterparts the game was still fun. There needs to be a willingness to try new things just like nintendo knew that all games don't need to be 3D to be fun, this isn't to say that companies should go back to making 2D games, just that they need to come up with original games once again and not be so focused on refining already existing genres, they should be enhancing existing genre's. There is lots of room for innovation in existing genre's they really have to take a long hard look and study what tasks or game mechanics are fun.
There's always a market for fun games because the best games usually sell and gain their reputation by word of mouth anyway.
Ikaruga was not just about the polarity. Polarity forces you to make choices, thats is whats so fun about polarity is skill factor involved in conjunction to how the levels are designed. (Level 4 anyone?) hardly a gimmick when you need to use it skillfully to survive! Knowing when to absorb enemy shots and knowing when to release them to kill enemies in the correct order to obtain the maximum score is what ikaruga is about. If you have any doubt check the demos on different screen widths/options on horizontal it will show you advanced chaining techniques in the levels in conquest mode.
Ikaruga was mainly about chaining and getting a high score. It is a twitch skill based game. The game while short and somewhat uninspired had deep puzzles for chainers in level design. Just watch some of the best ikaruga players The goal of any serious ikaruga player is to chain enemies and rack up the highest score possible which is a tremendous feat in and of itself. Thats the Ikaruga's main draw, is the challenge of mastering the levels and chaining perfectly, not to finish the game on easy just shooting guys blindly or dying until you get infinite continues to finish the game.
Check out some of the replays here... this is what ikaruga is really about.
The only thing that 'gave us technology' is people's hardwork. Many people not involved in making the technology profit from it by proxy under the capitalistic system that's hardly 'freedom'. Lots of people work hard for no money (i.e. bittorrent, open source).
Why you can't see a day when money becomes obsolete is pure ignorance. Not to mention I think you read my post wrong totally. I'm not espousing technology is evil, I'm espousing that our inventions become so efficient that they don't need us and we are basically provided for and 'babysat' by our own inventions.
You never have to reach far on slashdot for ignorance thats for sure.
... sitting on store shelves forever. But let's not forget to teach old testament morality and justice and the new testament apocalyptic message.
Possible bestsellers:
1) Jesus & the apocalypse: Kingdom of god on earth.... Snippet: Wipe out those heathen unbelievers at your return who just 'didn't get' the low quality, paradoxical, contradictory message that took an omniscient, omnipotent god 1000 years to write!
2) Demon vanquisher... Starring Jesus as the excorcist (ref: Math. 8) because we *all* know demons cause disease!
3) Marry your rapist... Snippet: Be a benevalent god creating benevalent laws such as these for your followers! (ref: Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB)
4) Show no evil... Snippet: Be the OT god and mete out justice for disobedience, remember all acts of disobedience require death by our omniscient super-rational reasoning!
This is exactly why capitalism will become obsolete and/or severely reformed in the future with a lot of socialist/communist like ideas. We invent machines because we are beings with limited power, energy, efficiency, and intelligence individually. Collectively we can create more sohpisticated things in power, means and intelligence (intelligence in the future anyway) then ourselves unless there is some 'natural law' based limits on just how intelligent/automated something can be.
Technological innovation creates an "unseen" financial debt upon millions of not billions of people by it's introduction into society. Where people lose jobs and have no source of income. How will the kids and parents of the future get money if it is possible to out invent ourselves where are own intelligence becomes superceded by enhanced humans or even *gasp* obselete to some superior machine intelligence thats akin to a godlike intelligence? Will money become obsolete once humanities collective desires and needs are easy to meet with staggering efficiency of resource use? There's a thought for you!
Right now how resources and things are divided is not really based on merit if you compare strictly merit of those at the top vs. those at the bottom.
Right now economically, it's akin to the "law of the jungle" where the "biggest strongest" (person(s) with most money, assets, resources to control workers) gets to have the best lives while the people at the bottom get squat. The rich people in the future probably won't be rich because of their intellectual abilities once we've achieved automation of everything, they will be rich because they inherited it or used people to exploit people and the system to acquire it through underhanded means.
Money is a means to power and no one 'deserves' insane amounts of money to spend on their vanities while their exists suffering people and barely scraping by in the world. Just shows the sad state of humanity as a whole. If human's can't live to learn together and evolve ethically and socially then I'm sure our created and automated intelligent machines/human beings will want to wipe those kinds of people out.
... considering that console emulation is huge and emulating the original 8, 16-bit and older 32-bit consoles for a modern PC is easy performance wise. The N64 and the PS1 are completely emulated on modern PC's they do have their quirks and not all the games work, but all the "golden oldies" and usually the most popular ones you'd actually want to play do. Also pulling ROMS off DC++ and the newsgroups for pre Playstation/CD games is cake on most news providers that provide binaries.
I got to play Majora's mask for N64 via emulation that I could never have done since I never owned an N64 but I managed to play Ocarina of Time and some other N64 games at a friends.
I don't know how these guys can re-release the really old classic games when PC emulation negates any reason to play them on a console.
There is a lesson to be learned with backwards compatability and the video game industry in general.
The trend of selling new video game systems every five or so years is having a negative effect on installed base and units sold -- the sales and installed base of such systems has actually been decreasing over time. Look at the numbers
Nintendo NES -- 59-60 million units SNES - 49 million units N64 - 34 Million units GC - 13 million units
Notice the steady decrease in unit sales and this applies to every console maker! It happened with sega and everone else. The only exception is Sony because they are the industry leader. The problem you see now is that you have people and users that SKIP whole console generations and pick up the latest console which has backwards compatability with a whole playstation line of games that is going to keep upping your installed base over time, not decrease it because 1) Everyone gets a video game machine that plays ALL of their old games not just new ones. 2) Bonus: It doubles as a DVD player and I'm sure the PS3 will probably do so as well since it was in the PS2. 3) It's backward compatable with memory cards and controllers (Big money saver).
So whenever you do your customers a favor you increase your profits because a) you dont have to reinvent the wheel in regards to memory cards and controllers and b) your costs for producing the same controllers/memory cards over that length of time you have time to significantly cut costs because the initial investment for producing them has already been payed so you can charge very little. I can get brand new playstation 1/2 controllers for $12CDN at walmart! A GC controller is over 2x as expensive. Sony knows how to win customers they are doing everything that their competitors are not.
These are the main things that will decide the winner in the next console war:
1) Exclusive games from top tier dev's, especially top tier in ALL genre categories.
2) Backwards compatability is now a must have feature because of the PS2.
3) Significant hardware upgrades that no other console has because everyone is going to be equal graphically (Note: It was the CD storage capacity that put the PS1 on the map and stole all the original SNES developers).
4) Publisher support is critical as evidenced by the need for establishing a decent game library across all genre's.
Throughout time the console market share for nintendo has been going in one direction, that is downwards. I don't expect it to change radically unless they get developers psyched to develop for their next-gen system. Nintendo's tired old franchises can only take them so far.
Notice how Xbox and GC are barely treading water with regards to RPG's and the lack of other important games and genres (no squaresoft, no jap RPG developers, no Metal gear solid 'exclusives', etc). All the big name developers on the PS1 and PS2 were the ones that developed for the original NES and SNES most of them are NOT new but industry veterans. MS and Nintendo practically have to beg for software support from 3rd parties or buy them out or flash their cash and bribe them to get some games on their systems.
As it stands now there is also too much money and politics invested in Sony brand and hardware at big publishers so don't expect developers and publishers to piss off the company that gives them their best sources of revenue.
The best bet for MS or Nintendo is to go for the dev's and get them psyched to do something radical like offer CD/DVD medium that offers 2x the storage space of typical DVD's or something. I mean a CD compared to a cartridge was technologically miles ahead in storage capacity for a fraction of the cost of a cartridge so it was a no brainer.
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This is a non-argument Pirates steal regardless, the internet has made piracy 100% easier then it used to be and getting no-CD cracks is so easy the target market of gamers (teens to adults of 35 or so) are computer savvy enough to do it. Not many in the target market of gamers are computer ignorant or illiterate anymore we've had an entire generation that has grown up using the internet and computers, etc, so it is second nature.
We've long since passed the age of needing copy protection like SecuRom because of 'casual copying' because of the mass introduction of CD and DVD burners, if you want to blame someone blame the hardware industry and the game developers themselves for not working with the hardware industry to create DVD/CD roms that can read special (non-standard) media that is NOT SOLD TO THE PUBLIC (see: Game cube discs). Make the non standard media bigger by a factor of 25-50% more storage and sell the public media that has 'less' then the special IP discs so they can't fit the content on publicly available discs.
The people who made CD burners and DVD burners ubiqitous but yet did not design their hardware to allow software developers do use non-standard media (ala like the gamecube disc) to protect their IP, it is the fault of the game industry sitting on its ass and letting the hardware industry ruin them through innovation. The hardware industry KNOWS that people want its hardware to get free stuff they are not stupid, they make insane profits at the expensive of IP owners, be it game developers, movie makers, music, etc.
If you want to protect your IP you're going to have to stop putting it on media that the public can get it's hands on. Thats much better then any kind of current copy protection. And yes I know there would still be "rips"/images but without insanely draconian DRM (which no one wants) it's something the software and game industry has been putting up with for a long time.
People will always steal and bootleg, no matter how rich or how poor you are people want all they can experience before they die and 'to hell' with everyone else.
Either way it's pretty much too late now, until the introduction of DRM and higher standards and stopping the crappy games from game developers themselves. PC gaming will be nothing but the big names (doom3, half-life, etc).
Just so you know I didn't mean to insult you purposefully I apologize if I offended. I'm not that great at expressing myself in a polite manner. Also I know you're experienced here but I'm talking about a game being FUN and APPEALING to more action oriented gamers like myself and by 'action oriented' I dont mean FPS type gameplay, just give me more control over my character instead of me being a passive observer and chatter while the battle takes place. Note that, financial success does not a great game make (The matrix for instance, sold something like a million copies but it doesn't mean its a good game, i.e. check the reviews). Planescape tormet: A great game (check reviews), a classic, sold like utter crap. Why? Property and name most likely, it was based original IP based on the 'planescape' universe so it was definitely hardcore, original, risky. Compare that to Baldurs gate (based on a known property -- forgotten realms, sword coast, drizzt, instant market!). They had the same gameplay but sold drastically different numbers and it wasn't because planescape was a bad game, it just didn't have the appeal a game set in the forgotten realms had.
If that same thing happened, that death would permanently affect your character. You might lose some of your accumulated experience or skill points, perhaps some of the equipment it took you some time to collect. A lag spike leading to death isn't an "Oh, well, try again." moment. Trust me, I deal with this on a regular basis. .... ... like an FPS than a traditional online game. There is much less focus on persistence in PlanetSide, so they can focus more on twitch gameplay. Notably, a death on PlanetSide has very little impact overall.
What are you smoking? I'm sorry... maybe I am misinterpreting what you mean by 'big impact'? I have to even question if you play MMORPGS, most MMO's have very little penalties beyond experience penalty and most give you a choice to go 'hardcore' and opt in to increase your penalties (challenge of the game) they do everything to make sure the character doesn't lose a significant amount of anything when you die except for a 'death fee' in experience or gold. In FFXI all you get is an experience penality and a respawn. Consider what happens when you can't run away from a monster and it hits you when it is twenty feet away or more (FF XI) even with a super low ping because of the way the 'non existant' game mechanics are designed (play animation, take off X amount of HP regardless of distance or whether the attack animation *actually* hit a player), also note the total lack of collision detection in MMO's. Dying occurs often in FF XI (esp if u try to solo) and there is yes there is a penalty (and its still just as annoying) even with the 'respawn' game mechanics in FF XI. So MMO chars are just as 'throw away' in the sense that you die and respawn but the game developers in their infinite wisdom force an experience penalty on you for death to give you an incentive to 'avoid death' but then a lag spike hits or you have improper collision detection and weak combat system (because remember, no collision detection or actual decent gameplay system exists) and your whole damage system is based on the character being in 'war mode' with an enemy regardless of the vast distance between the monster and you he can still hit you with a melee attack from 3 screens away! Yes I can see GENIUSES @ behind mmo's at work here. A game like Q3 manages to have collision detection but MMO's don't, why is it a traffic issue? Maybe you really need to start thinking about the huge DEFICITS and annoying features in many major MMO games. That annoy the living crap out of even the paying customers. In FFXI if you dont party to fight you're screwed you must party with people to fight beyond level 11-13 and that sucks and often times you spend time looking for characters close enough to your level to party with instead of just 'getting in and having fun' you're waiting around to find other people for
I know about the technical issues I play Quake and you learn all you need to know about ping and latencny playing first person shooters. What person who doesn't play UT, Q3 or any other online FPS not know that latency is a factor? Also games not being fun because of 'technically challenging' latency is an excuse. Obviously it can be done as Sony proved with Planetside.
This isn't a shot at you FYI. So maybe you're not skilled enough or have enough schooling to design game mechanics/network engine around the 'challenge' of latency but other games have done just that. But this is not the gamers problem remember. The gamer pays for fun he's not interested in the details and neither should he be. When say you want to buy a DVD player you're not interested in the difficulty the manufacturer had in making it cheap enough for you to afford a good quality one you just wanted a good quality one for a reasonable price that can play all DVD's and is very compatable.
But look sony did it with Planetside obviously so it can be done. And by 'twitch' it doesn't have to be 'superfast' realtime gameplay that requires super low latency ala quake3 but it should be at least as good as say diablo 2. Remember 'twitch' doesn't have to be super fast-realtime first person shooter style mechanics. It just has to allow the player to actually control his character and do things besides watch it, this is what I mean when I say I hate 'automatic gaming' or 'noninteractive gaming'. There are no interesting game mechanics in MMO's that haven't been done MUCH better in single player games.
Actions/game mechanics can take time they dont have to be 'immediate' but they can't be aganizingly slow either or automatic (ala current MMO's) they just have to be FUN and allow a player to play a game in short sessions instead of long drawn out ones current MMO's use say while travelling (taking you 20-40 minutes just walking around in a virtual world is not 'fun').
Also it couldn't hurt to make these games more fun. When you are controlling a SINGLE character and not a group of characters, there must be something else for the player to do that is fun if automatic 'playing' is some sort of 'technical necessity' because of latency or some other issue. This 'auto control' for avatars/units is acceptable in realtime strategy games because no one could manage to control tonnes of units individually. But when in an MMO you have one character it's awful boring when you cannot control your avatar or make any 'fun' or 'strategic' decisions with his actions.
The point is MMO's are not any more fun then single playe RPG's they are most of the time much worse. In other words the game mechanics and fighting systems they have in current MMO's are not very fun at all in and of themselves.
The games maybe 'fun' for the first little while until the novelty 'multiplayer' novelty wears off and you realize you're playing a sub par game and you've been ripped off for $79 (in the case of FF XI) + whatever in monthly payments. Playing MMO's reminds me of Zelda playing windwaker when you're on the sea. When you're travelling on the sea in Wind waker you almost bash your friggin head in not doing anything and sitting passively as you 'travel' while not engaging or doing anything your itching to do something or interact with anything but because your out in the 'open sea' and monsters are few and far between it makes you bored out of your skull. This is what all MMORPG's are like especially since you dont have to do anything. They purposely make things take too much time to try to keep players from whipping through content too fast but it backfires in making the game tedious and not fun unless you have severe amounts of time to kill having either no social or work life or if you're lucky you can do whatever if you're independently rich.
I wasn't thinking the game had to be twitch it should just be more interactive. i.e. you don't do a lot of fun tasks, management or manipulations that are fun and goal oriented. Think civilization or alpha centauri, these games are fun because they you you are making decisions that effect game outcomes (do I built this beneficial building or a unit?). MMO's do not have interesting 'management' activities for to go along with their passive style of gameplay. Perhaps it's a limitation of internet and/or graphics technology to do 'realtime' with that many people in a game at once but look at diablo. It's not MMO but the combat and whatnot is realtime and you can have 8 players in a group tonnes of monsters (10's and 20's of monsters and little lag).
They don't have to make it like an FPS. Altough I do believe 'twitch' (i.e. controlling your character) is a superior gameplay mechanic AFAIC because you are actually involved and doing something instead of watching your character do everything for you this is why video games are supposed to be interactive entertainment with emphasis on both interactive and enterainment. They should be fun but passive huge-time-sink MMO gaming is certainly not fun people just convince themselves that it is because currently MMO's IMHO are basically glorified chatrooms while you 'play' passively. This wouldn't be an issue if there were things in the game that were actually fun to do, manage, decide, or manipulate.
MMO's take too much time to play and they have to realize that most MMO's are really f'n boring. Too much time is wasted doing things that are not fun (travelling, etc) and many of the things that are supposed to be fun like combat, etc. Are half-baked and basically the computer plays for you. I think this is a real issue is the rise of 'automatic gaming' what is there to interact with if the computer does everything for you?
This is partly why I had a love/hate relationship with NWN and all pay to play MMO's. The speed at which the game goes and the interactivity is almost completely absent you watch your character more then play or control your character. This is why twitch based game mechanics are superior IMHO and they should start using them for MMO's. FFXI and all current MMO's leave the person not doing much other them moving their character and turning on auto attack, compare this with fun games like Soul calibur 2, Mario Kart, Quake or Unreal tournament. There is just no fun in playing a videogame that is essentially passive and non-interactive. This is why I quit Final fantasy XI I couldn't stand the passive nature of 'playing', when really all you're doing is finding monsters turning on auto attack, while you could be surfing the web or actually doing something else waiting for your automatically controlled character to finish (don't laugh many people do).
Even though you say that I still think the problem is very difficult because on the PC you're trying to be all things to all people, so your drivers and software have to interact normally on different platforms, motherboards, chipsets and whatnot. This is why I never bought Via or 'non-intel' chipset motherboards because of the stupid random crashes, driver issues, and whatnot you'd have to deal with for going with a cheaper board.
You have to stay compatable with games that are many years old already that people continue to play and also you on a PC the operating environment is much more chaotic and non-standardized. I mean how many programs do people install on their computer that effect some OTHER program and whatnot, or what about different CD/DVD drives and copy protection, as a case in point, not all DVD/CD drives are tested against the copy protection so they end up having to disable it or tell their customers 'tough luck'.
It's also the PC game industries obession with copy protection and really bad QA so that their games require patching that ruins new users experience IMHO. NWN for instance from bioware crashed right out of the box if you played the game for a while or when loading/saving you could experience frequent crashes and whatnot.
I think on the whole MS and Intel and hardware companies are going to have to come up with some sort of "quality of service" initiative so that when you write drivers for hardware and whatnot they aren't going to 'break' something in some application/game on different platforms.
As good as competition (ATI vs. Nvidia) for the industry is, it has drawbacks in spreading support resources too thin (i.e. multiple chipsets, motherboards, etc).
For gaming having one chipset to support and one platform makes it easier to keep compatability from breaking. This is part of the reason why consoles do so well and even sony's PS2 had growing pains in the backwards compatability so we know that being backward compatable is difficult. But I think it has to start with Intel, Microsoft, hardware/motherboard chipset/video companies and whatnot to come up with a system that ensures any 'missing feature' and whatnot can be automagically compensated for.
The game industry isn't blameless, the games industry itself has to start thinking like console game companies: No patches, release once. If they were releasing buggy games on consoles any major showstopper bugs would kill their reputation as a company and probably make for a lot of unhappy customers.
I think the problem is that... there's too much quantity and not enough quality. Too many "me too's" and very little original ideas or IP at all. But the downward trend was caused by companies abandoning the PC for consoles. Case in point - Bioware, Microsofts 'Mechwarrior developers' (forget their name), Blizzard focusing on console's and MMO's when they should be doing Diablo 3 and/or Starcraft 2. (Both games with HUGE audiences that would most likely love a sequel). But lets face it...
1) PC games are too obsessed with hardware requirements (especially your video card) no one wants to upgrade their card every 1 to 2 years at 300 and 400+ a pop for the latest and greatest and possibly on top of that a CPU/Motherbaord + ram and/or powersupply.
2) There have been no good PC games in diverse amount of genre's in a long time. The last 'half decent' singleplayer RPG released for the PC was KoTor but you can get Kotor multiplatform anyway. Also there has been a dearth of good RPG's for the PC. NWN was a let down, there has been no word on baldurs gate 3 or whatever either and bioware success started out on the PC.
3) Too many FPS games. I'm sorry but everyone's flooding the market with FPS and/or MMORPG's. I'm thankful EA still ports the Need for speed series games to the PC because no one has a good game that can really compete in the racing/driving arena. Most of the companies stick to the tried and true formula. For instance how many mechwarriors, dooms, unreal tournaments, and whatnot do we really need? Every update fragments the multiplayer online game community.
4) No one's made a serious attempt at publishing console games and designing with PC hardware in mind, this means NO CRAPPY PORTS of OLD GAMES. They must release at the same time on all platforms or for the PC first and then the consoles. Part of a games sales is exclusivity. Doom 3 and Half-life 2 are first and foremost PC games and are exclusively better on PC. If console companies would try to design a game with the PC in mind as well as for their 'sacred' consoles from the start then we would see better sales and whatnot period.
Whats the point in owning a lot of movies? I could never figure that one out. You can rent them for cheap and how often does your movie collection actually get used? Most movies you buy you watch a few times and then they sit on your shelf just like games you've finished. I never got why people could have collections of 100's of DVD movies. I can see owning a few or major releases that are worthwhile but I never understood the fascination with purchasing a huge movie library.
You say "... while my DVD collection keeps growing." yeah but I'm sure 90% of those titles are collecting dust as well. Out of curiosity, how many times do you watch the same movie?
Well I don't know about you but religion is the last and only reason why biological science is being railed against and might take a turn for the worse, check out sites like www.arn.org and whatnot for the modern creationist movement based on some convoluted concept of "special creation" of the first cells (in Behe's case) or as some Old earthers in the movement would have it human beings. In fact religion is the cause of a lot of human division in the world where you have a lot of nutjobs believing entirely different things about the origins of humanity, the age of the earth, how long humans have been on the planet, how they got here, etc.
For people that might flame me I do not believe in seperating the bible from history there is no historical or rational basis in doing so I do not subscribe to "different models" of faith (as seen here: Faith and reason - Internet encyclopedia of philosophy that were created because we found out that the earth was old and the bible's history is not history at all. Before scientific times this could be somewhat excused as a culture needs to have some worldview base/common values, history and culture but it's not now.
ID is based off an incorrect and outdated worldview unless you really believe God did the whole job in 6 days a few thousand years ago, global flood, noah's ark and all that (Local flooders: if the flood was local why not just have Noah and animals move, or warp him some place also why does the biblical god a good 99% of the time use nature (or something) as an intermediary to destroy human beings, esp when it's claimed that as god you're omnipotent and have full control over matter/nature's laws?).
Also I want everyone to look up Mathew 8:30-34 you can check out this website. Effectively disproving 1) The notion that Jesus is god (either you believe demon beings exist and cause disease/unnatural/violent behaviour, or christ is not god as god would know such things don't exist) 2) Christ promotes and endorses superstition and ignorance he actually 'plays along' with the excorcism if you don't believe in demons, which is tantamount to lying and bearing false witness which disqualifies him as the Son of god (since lying is a sin!). 3) If he was really the son of god and had eternal life he would have stuck around to make the world a better place, the christians rationalized his death away in the gospels because they lived in hopeless and harsh times, in short they were deluded.
Finally even the OT and gospel authors conclude those who dont view the bible as historical in it's entirety on fundamentals (i.e. the first chapters of genesis, creation of adam and eve, the fall, the origin of death in humanity through 'great gran-daddy'adam's disobedience). Don't take my word for it paul's whole basis for the christian religion was that it was rooted in reality and history (or so he thought anyway). Here's the bible characters own own words on his stance towards the OT (the 'bible' before the gospels were written).
"Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
"Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
"As by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men - . . death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression... [I]For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ".[/I] - Please notice the contrast taking place here it spells it out in HUGE LETTERS that the origin of physical death is rooted in adam not evolution or progressive creation.
See problems with non-literal or theistic evolutionist interpretations of the
I think the real problem is that there is different audiences out there in regards to games.
/w deep fighting system) are the best ones because they should ideally a) rely on skill which ups replayability, if you suck at a game you have a challenge to master the game b) have to make you think and FEEL a certain level of challenge and stress c) you can play through the game again with a different set of skills, weapons which effect how you fight and d) Lastly and only lastly do story and FMV really matter, FMV does not add to the value of a bad game but it will make a awesome game truly great. The only time when this changed was when FF VII came out and people started buying games with more emphasis based on their graphics. You can have just as interesting and memorable moments on a graphically 'deficient' (by modern standards) game. FF3US(FF6-JPN) was a great game without the fancy graphics.
/w monster encounters. So once you know the combat system and the layout of the world you have a problem with replayability because the world is predictable, this does not mean a random world, maps or dungeons are necessarily better (See diablo 2) but they have to be designed well and be "fun". If they don't add to the game they should be scrapped.
Some like turn based and somewhat-to-fully-automated automatically controlled characters or 'managed' characters (i.e. Neverwinter Nights and most other modern MMORPGS automatically attack and do everything for you most of the time). Other's like action or "twitch" based games.
IMHO the 'twitch' based (realtime fighting
RPG's whether you like to think of it or not are built around stories, combat and the level grind. Sure they can 'try to diversify' but what would seperate a modern RPG from an action game like Final fight or a fighting game like soul calibur 2 if they allowed 'realtime' fighting?
Take Final fantasy Chronicles (realtime combat), the play control was all right but the combat system had no depth and the world was very 'disconnected' and had no feel of continuity. Compare it to a game like Diablo II (realtime combat) and you see what Final fantasy chronicles was missing, they needed combat skills, more character classes and different ways to attack and combat characters. This is probably the #1 reason besides the 'phat loot' hook in Diablo 2 that makes diablo 2 such a great game. Even within it's limited skill tree you can make at least some range of different characters to attempt to play them differently. If you want to see an amazing game that no RPG has yet rivalled in the class options department get a hold of Final fantasy Tactics. This game is probably one of the most original games to come out in the tactic/hybrid RPG game.
Now my bit on "interactivity", in an RPG you rarely engage the world other then exploring/revealing it and pushing a button to open/get goodies or get caught up in mini-games or battle. The thing about RPG's is discovering new areas and having an interesting characters/purpose with an good and deep combat, character development and treasure system.
Also RPG's are games about fighting and the old if not tried and true video game conventions (leveling up, next level, big bad boss, etc) take those away and there's not much left of the "RPG" genre. Strip away an RPG's story and fancy graphics and nothing is left but the combat system and the world/map/dungeon layouts
Personally I think most RPG players and buyers are not very good at twitch based games and thats why RPG's haven't changed in forever. They are easy games that are 'gameplay' and interactive light, they are more passive but more engrossing via story/fmv.
But the most engrossing and fun games you've probably ever been hooked on and spent the most amount of time with are most likely simulations/strategy games like Civilization, Alpha Centauri, multiplayer action games, and puzzle ga mes. I can't think of any other game I've replayed a lot besides strategy games, puzzle games and multiplayer games.
... suck in the gameplay department. I also don't know anyone that buys games for their graphics alone. Both play their part in staying with the status quo. The graphics should be as good as the hardware is capable and everyone accepts that. I don't think anyone is suggesting a return to 8-bit nintendo graphics, but 2D 16-bit style games could still hold up on modern hardware at higher resolutions if the art was updated with 'quasi' 3d / 2D artwork.
The Gameboy advance while not being amazing in the graphics department is the best handhelds ever created because there are a lot good and original games for it, and they are fun (See: Advance wars / Advance wars 2, Golden sun, etc)
Almost all games sell based on how fun the game actually is. Games cannot simply rely on graphics, the best example of these failures are MMOG's. Take a look at EVE: The 2nd genesis, thats what you get for focusing too much on graphics and not enough on gameplay: Shitty subscriber base. I was bored out of my f'n mind while trying to play that game.
Now take a fun game like City of Heroes and you know why it is selling and doing so well. It's because it's a fun game and word of mouth and mindshare from previous success's is some of the best marketing you can get.
MS just saw an opportunity I really don't think they converted anyone and gained much mindshare from other consoles. They took what was left of the PC market and the PC gamers that were sick of upgrading their video hardware ever year or two. Not a huge accomplishment if you ask me, most of the first releases of Xbox games would have been PC games (Halo, Mech Assault, etc) if not for Xbox.
Think about countries that are not wealthy, even here in Canada most places pay as little as possible (which means $7.15CDN/hr) if even finding a shitty place here is at least 600-700$ a month and after taxes, UI (unemloyment insurance) and what not has been taken off your check you're lucky to be left with anything after phone/utilities, etc. Up here you need a job and food stamps and thats on 35hrs/week because most places don't give you full hours so they can save $. I know lots of people who are on work and have to get foodstamps and they can't save hardly anything if they are a single parent and have a kid on top of that.
I also don't really agree with your comment about 1000 years ago thee were people in the ancient world that had a much slower pace of life and more amount of time circa 1000AD (after all it takes time to grow food and there were labour saving inventions and whatnot) I think you need to bone up on your history after all we are talking post roman and greek civilization here. I agree that their are benefits/perks to living in the modern world but no one picks the time and age in which they are born in, so that goes without saying.
I'm just saying with all the inventions and strides we've made in the efficiency of food production, housing, electricity and whatnot it's ironic lots of people are still barely able to make ends meet, and we shouldn't just say "tough titties" to those who lacking abilities or the potential to develop skills to an adequately competitive level (so they can find a job/be compensated) they were not born with.
I like learning but the structure of school is NOT fun or much of the time even relevant. Half the time the people teaching you what you'd really want to be learning aren't qualified or have no idea beyond the basics in elementary and highschool and I think this is a real problem.
I wish there was some "open source" learning project that wass funded by businesses about subjects you can learn on your own over the internet (Math, physics, etc) that is maintained and updated by people working in their field for businesses so you have people right on the cutting edge giving out free class material, tests, etc, subsidized by those who are willing to work for it on their own after school or on their own time.
Another problem is our schools exist to serve the economy and the people that own major corporations or "the means of production", basically schools produce workers for people who are major business owners and reap the most rewards from their work in a lot of fields. Schools are little different then worker farms for kids. Even by the time they get out of highschool they still need to take on huge amount of debt to go onto higher ed to even get a decent paying job to survive beyond 'subsistance' level. So they've been working day in and day out for at least 12-16+ years of their life by the time these people get out of highscool or college. I wish they could identify kids "Trade skill kids" or kids that will never make it academically and find something else for them to do because they're wasting time on kids who can't succeed or for whom learning x subject is beyond their abilities.
I think theres a huge problem with the way we live our lives as a culture around the monetary unit. How is life truly 'better' today then it was 100 or 1000 years ago? You have more toys and convenience and more luxury but you still have to work like a dog and it still costs you (in work) the same amount of time taken away from life. You still have to work to eat and put a roof over your head, the only difference is that you're constantly being held up for cash by either the government or businesses just so you can live. We've advanced to the point where the efficiency of food production requires less then 3% of a (modern) countries population to take care of the food needs of an entire nation but yet we still have homeless people and millions of people slugging it out at minmum or just barely above minimum wage jobs for 40+ hours a week who can't even afford food and a place to live let alone the cost of kids and many of these people WERE educated beyond highschool the problem is we keep inventing ourselves out of jobs and raising the bar, but the human brain and condition is not keeping up. We have a surplus of people and not enough 'good' jobs, and by good I don't mean good paying. I mean good as in you and your wife dont spend 50+ hour weeks at the office and barely have time to do anything else but live at work while your child is raised by babysitters, entertainment devices, or the school system. I think the problem is the fast paced consumption driven life.
It's hard to get exited about learning and school when you're born with limited abilities and struggle with school. I don't believe it's just liking learning vs. not liking learning determinin the success of the person. Many teachers will tell you "hard work" or loving learning alone is not enough. Their are tonnes of university professors who will tell you differently that some people CAN'T meet the expectations or requirements in skill, knowledge abilities.
People are born with talent and potential to compete in today's world or they aren't. Most people will never attain or are able to develop skills to a level where they can be competitive and I don't believe they are stupid or uneducated it's just our system is too achievement oriented and revolves too much around money and serving those who own the means of production. As a culture we are forced to take jobs that currently exist or new ones when our current ones become ob
Everything new gets old and old new again. This illustrates a law of psychology is that things get old the more you expose yourself to them for the vast majority of people. The fresher they are in your memory while you are consuming a product you will soon get burnt out on it after you no longer get some sort of psychological reward or satisfaction from it.
But then years later you may go back to it and play game X or watch movie Y all the way through again. Think about it, even some of the greatest replayable games of all time eventually people master them to such a degree where it is no longer challenging or they are so familiar with it that they seek a different/new enviornment or set of challenges and circumstances. Novelty and enjoyment can only last so long if you are overdosing on it. I'd say the principle is kind of like pesticide/poison resistance in organisms the more you expose yourself to it the more you become immune to it's effects. The same thing goes for the opposite end of the spectrum, pleasure.
Or for instance another example, you can get nearly the same sex from most any girl on the planet or find a girl you like and can enjoy but you eventually get bored or become disinterested over time to seek out someone who's life and behaviour you don't know inside out because once you know all there is to know interest wanes.
... many businesses are just as bad as if not worse then thieves. Such as Price fixing, buying political power, buying questionable laws, etc. Piracy exists, sure we all know that but who here or your typical P2P or Newsgroup/IRC warez whore has the money and can afford to purchase all the warez or software they download? That's right. No one! If someone can get something for free without paying for it they will, if businesses can get a higher "return on investment" by shafting their employee's THEY WILL. Because businesses only significantly reward those at the top amd/or who are critical to business or who own the business while everyone else is a chump. Windows XP is $120-200 in Canada for a brand new copy. PC games are $49-79.99 each, Office which is probably the most pirated after windows XP the most is barely used for anything other then typing out the odd document which they could use wordpad, notepad or any other free half decent text/document alternative. Cry me a river! We live in a capitalist society and people's greed is what drive's companies to produce product so they can rape our wallets silly, piracy exists because overly greedy business people are just as bad as freeloaders. No one does any amount of work that justifies the kind of money people at the top of the food chain make, so what if the little guy steals? People at the top are also taking advantage of our ignorance of their production costs and true cost of their items. I'm sure we've been ripped off plenty at retail stores without knowing just how much markup they are making on said items. One can only wonder how much "work" went into windows 98 over windows98 or how about millenium over 98? Please for the average user there were no "real" justifications beyond "it's newer therefore better", what was significantly upgraded that warranted the purchase between 98, SE and ME? Any company would easily trade it's 'overpaid' workers for foreign labour if their was a justifiable cost reduction and increased profits, "people be damned", most businesses in this day and age don't care about workers, worker turnover is probably at it's highest level in educated jobs in history and it's going to get worse because we are inventing ourselves out of jobs and our economic model, tax system. No one wants to spend 16+ years of their life in school only to get out and have a job for 2-4 years if that and then either have to go back to university or hope to hell your skills will transfer to another job when we invent your replacement or we find cheaper labour in foreign country X, which the WTO has bee grooming as a pool for cheap labour for the interest of the multinationals who see that North american workers are too expensive, or will be given X amount of years.
... and other issues such as connectivity, lag and figuring out a way to make it so any dumb idiot can connect isn't going to be easy. Since connecting to the internet and all the problems you have using internet for games is problematic.
Come on the internet quality of service for real-time games is problematic for everyone, everyone can't get the same online experience because it is ISP and router-hop dependent. No one can gaurantee quality of service with regards to latency at this time over the internet, so realtime games will not be so great when pings fluctuate or are well above 100ms.
Also I think online marketshare is for console internet "peripherals" are limited like the GC's broadband adapter are limited. You want an "all in one" console in that regard, you don't want to have to pay extra.
The online connectivity should be built right into the console. This means WiFi or ethernet which isn't going to be cheap from Nintendo's perspective, and then the internal software that makes leasing an IP address easy... but what happens later on when the internet goes to IPV6 and the console can't upgrade its internal software to support internet connectivity? Grandted IPV6 is a long way off but it shows you once you put connectivity in you're stuck with it unless you somehow support IPV6 well before it's widespread.
Nintendo as a company would like a profit on their console they can't lose gobs of money through a war of attrition like Xbox and Sony can with their other businesses to rely on to supply revenue. They need exclusive games from major publishers on their system or they are going to get creamed by the PS3, I really have no faith in Xbox2 unless it attracts developers with superior technology thats head and shoulders above the PS3 with exclusive system selling titles.
... has been going down for quite some time now. The only decent original games that have been released in the last 4-5 years you could probably count on both hands. All the others are re-hashes and re-treads of existing franchises because companies are so entrenched in making money its hard for them to invest money in original ideas and games that defy or invent new gaming conventions, in short they are afraid of losing money and not keeping investors happy about quarterly profits.
I also think this has to do with the japanese gaming audience as a whole. Japanese gamers and gaming culture are more experienced and hardcore about gameplay then their us counterparts. They are really more hardcore about their games then north americans are. Why do you think that most games come with sissy difficulty settings or have been so easy in the last 4-5 years? To pander to a North american audience.
I think this is a real problem is that games are being dumbed down to a point where theres no challenge and the japanese do not like unchallenging games that lack depth. This is what made Streetfighter 2 such a hit on both shores was its strategic depth and skill based gameplay.
We saw more original games and content in the NES/SNES and Genesis era then in any other era in video game history (sorry to say it but pre-NES era of computer/console games had little diversity and lack of widespread adoption, the NES is what saved the industry).
Look at Nintendo for instance, they had the balls to release a 2D game for the gamecube (Zelda: Four swords) although it plays and looks much like it's snes and GBA counterparts the game was still fun. There needs to be a willingness to try new things just like nintendo knew that all games don't need to be 3D to be fun, this isn't to say that companies should go back to making 2D games, just that they need to come up with original games once again and not be so focused on refining already existing genres, they should be enhancing existing genre's. There is lots of room for innovation in existing genre's they really have to take a long hard look and study what tasks or game mechanics are fun.
There's always a market for fun games because the best games usually sell and gain their reputation by word of mouth anyway.
Ikaruga was not just about the polarity. Polarity forces you to make choices, thats is whats so fun about polarity is skill factor involved in conjunction to how the levels are designed. (Level 4 anyone?) hardly a gimmick when you need to use it skillfully to survive! Knowing when to absorb enemy shots and knowing when to release them to kill enemies in the correct order to obtain the maximum score is what ikaruga is about. If you have any doubt check the demos on different screen widths/options on horizontal it will show you advanced chaining techniques in the levels in conquest mode.
Ikaruga was mainly about chaining and getting a high score. It is a twitch skill based game. The game while short and somewhat uninspired had deep puzzles for chainers in level design. Just watch some of the best ikaruga players The goal of any serious ikaruga player is to chain enemies and rack up the highest score possible which is a tremendous feat in and of itself. Thats the Ikaruga's main draw, is the challenge of mastering the levels and chaining perfectly, not to finish the game on easy just shooting guys blindly or dying until you get infinite continues to finish the game.
Check out some of the replays here... this is what ikaruga is really about.
http://kiken.sirkain.net/Ikareplay.html
The only thing that 'gave us technology' is people's hardwork. Many people not involved in making the technology profit from it by proxy under the capitalistic system that's hardly 'freedom'. Lots of people work hard for no money (i.e. bittorrent, open source).
Why you can't see a day when money becomes obsolete is pure ignorance. Not to mention I think you read my post wrong totally. I'm not espousing technology is evil, I'm espousing that our inventions become so efficient that they don't need us and we are basically provided for and 'babysat' by our own inventions.
You never have to reach far on slashdot for ignorance thats for sure.
... sitting on store shelves forever. But let's not forget to teach old testament morality and justice and the new testament apocalyptic message.
Possible bestsellers:
1) Jesus & the apocalypse: Kingdom of god on earth.... Snippet: Wipe out those heathen unbelievers at your return who just 'didn't get' the low quality, paradoxical, contradictory message that took an omniscient, omnipotent god 1000 years to write!
2) Demon vanquisher... Starring Jesus as the excorcist (ref: Math. 8) because we *all* know demons cause disease!
3) Marry your rapist... Snippet: Be a benevalent god creating benevalent laws such as these for your followers! (ref: Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB)
4) Show no evil... Snippet: Be the OT god and mete out justice for disobedience, remember all acts of disobedience require death by our omniscient super-rational reasoning!
This is exactly why capitalism will become obsolete and/or severely reformed in the future with a lot of socialist/communist like ideas. We invent machines because we are beings with limited power, energy, efficiency, and intelligence individually. Collectively we can create more sohpisticated things in power, means and intelligence (intelligence in the future anyway) then ourselves unless there is some 'natural law' based limits on just how intelligent/automated something can be.
Technological innovation creates an "unseen" financial debt upon millions of not billions of people by it's introduction into society. Where people lose jobs and have no source of income. How will the kids and parents of the future get money if it is possible to out invent ourselves where are own intelligence becomes superceded by enhanced humans or even *gasp* obselete to some superior machine intelligence thats akin to a godlike intelligence? Will money become obsolete once humanities collective desires and needs are easy to meet with staggering efficiency of resource use? There's a thought for you!
Right now how resources and things are divided is not really based on merit if you compare strictly merit of those at the top vs. those at the bottom.
Right now economically, it's akin to the "law of the jungle" where the "biggest strongest" (person(s) with most money, assets, resources to control workers) gets to have the best lives while the people at the bottom get squat. The rich people in the future probably won't be rich because of their intellectual abilities once we've achieved automation of everything, they will be rich because they inherited it or used people to exploit people and the system to acquire it through underhanded means.
Money is a means to power and no one 'deserves' insane amounts of money to spend on their vanities while their exists suffering people and barely scraping by in the world. Just shows the sad state of humanity as a whole. If human's can't live to learn together and evolve ethically and socially then I'm sure our created and automated intelligent machines/human beings will want to wipe those kinds of people out.
... considering that console emulation is huge and emulating the original 8, 16-bit and older 32-bit consoles for a modern PC is easy performance wise. The N64 and the PS1 are completely emulated on modern PC's they do have their quirks and not all the games work, but all the "golden oldies" and usually the most popular ones you'd actually want to play do. Also pulling ROMS off DC++ and the newsgroups for pre Playstation/CD games is cake on most news providers that provide binaries.
I got to play Majora's mask for N64 via emulation that I could never have done since I never owned an N64 but I managed to play Ocarina of Time and some other N64 games at a friends.
I don't know how these guys can re-release the really old classic games when PC emulation negates any reason to play them on a console.
There is a lesson to be learned with backwards compatability and the video game industry in general.
The trend of selling new video game systems every five or so years is having a negative effect on installed base and units sold -- the sales and installed base of such systems has actually been decreasing over time. Look at the numbers
Nintendo NES -- 59-60 million units
SNES - 49 million units
N64 - 34 Million units
GC - 13 million units
Notice the steady decrease in unit sales and this applies to every console maker! It happened with sega and everone else. The only exception is Sony because they are the industry leader. The problem you see now is that you have people and users that SKIP whole console generations and pick up the latest console which has backwards compatability with a whole playstation line of games that is going to keep upping your installed base over time, not decrease it because 1) Everyone gets a video game machine that plays ALL of their old games not just new ones. 2) Bonus: It doubles as a DVD player and I'm sure the PS3 will probably do so as well since it was in the PS2. 3) It's backward compatable with memory cards and controllers (Big money saver).
So whenever you do your customers a favor you increase your profits because a) you dont have to reinvent the wheel in regards to memory cards and controllers and b) your costs for producing the same controllers/memory cards over that length of time you have time to significantly cut costs because the initial investment for producing them has already been payed so you can charge very little. I can get brand new playstation 1/2 controllers for $12CDN at walmart! A GC controller is over 2x as expensive. Sony knows how to win customers they are doing everything that their competitors are not.
These are the main things that will decide the winner in the next console war: 1) Exclusive games from top tier dev's, especially top tier in ALL genre categories. 2) Backwards compatability is now a must have feature because of the PS2. 3) Significant hardware upgrades that no other console has because everyone is going to be equal graphically (Note: It was the CD storage capacity that put the PS1 on the map and stole all the original SNES developers). 4) Publisher support is critical as evidenced by the need for establishing a decent game library across all genre's. Throughout time the console market share for nintendo has been going in one direction, that is downwards. I don't expect it to change radically unless they get developers psyched to develop for their next-gen system. Nintendo's tired old franchises can only take them so far. Notice how Xbox and GC are barely treading water with regards to RPG's and the lack of other important games and genres (no squaresoft, no jap RPG developers, no Metal gear solid 'exclusives', etc). All the big name developers on the PS1 and PS2 were the ones that developed for the original NES and SNES most of them are NOT new but industry veterans. MS and Nintendo practically have to beg for software support from 3rd parties or buy them out or flash their cash and bribe them to get some games on their systems. As it stands now there is also too much money and politics invested in Sony brand and hardware at big publishers so don't expect developers and publishers to piss off the company that gives them their best sources of revenue. The best bet for MS or Nintendo is to go for the dev's and get them psyched to do something radical like offer CD/DVD medium that offers 2x the storage space of typical DVD's or something. I mean a CD compared to a cartridge was technologically miles ahead in storage capacity for a fraction of the cost of a cartridge so it was a no brainer.