Sega-cd add-on for the genesis --> failure
Sega32x --> failure
Sega Saturn --> failure
Sega Dremcast --> failure
The PS2's main selling points were its exclusive titles like japanese games and especially the RPG's (Square titles are a system sellers) and its backwards compatability with the PS1 in hardware and memory cards (I believe MC's could be used too??). Thes the reason I got my PS1 was for streetfighter and final fantasy not because it was the PS1.
... and much more discriminating. Compare you're young gamer self to how you view games now. When you were a kid you didn't care so much about reviews of games (unless you had a magazine subscription) you just wanted to play and experience every genre type of the games that you liked in existence. Thats how it was for me. Back in the day it was 1) Action / Beat-em-ups 2) Fighting games 2) RPG's and 3) shooters like Gradius, R-Type, etc. (Not first person shooters).
And to tell you the truth that hasn't changed in all these years I still like games from those categories/genres. I have expanded my gaming to included PC gaming, RTS and online FPS like Quake/unreal. But the gameplay/genre could still be boiled down to 5-6 genres you can count on your fingers.
There's a few problems and realities that the industry has to face:
1) Games and gaming are $!@# expensive (Esp for teens/kids who don't have rich parents) which limits the size of the market who can afford them. Look at what happened when Nintendo dropped their Gamecube to $99 they sold 2.5 million more! Thats nothing to sneeze at you just increased your market by 15-20% with a single price cut. I believe games themselves could reach a much wider audience if they didn't cost so much to produce and retail for over $40US ($60-70$CDN).
2) The older you become the more discriminating and jaded you get with the more games you play. It's unavoidable, the novelty loss gets worse with time, it becomes harder and harder to wow a seasoned gamer. Your nostalgic 'old favorites' from when you were a kid look like a pile of crap nowadays, with the rare few old games that are as your nostalgic mind remembers them.
3) Game rentals, I'm sorry but game renting negates almost any reason for anyone to purchase a game. The publishers and companies are just F'n dumb I swear! Available game rentals should be DEMOS of the game, not the complete thing. How moronic it is when you can buy and finish a game on 4-7$ weekend rental at blockbuster then fork out $40-50 for a brand new singleplayer game that once finished sits on the shelf and collects dust, thats over 500% savings at least for the same gaming experience!
Gaming industry has to wake up and realize that games are consumed differently them movies. It's not like the movie industry where you release to the theatres first and then make DVD/VHS versions available later, and you can consume movies much faster then you can consume games due to their short length of usually 1-2hrs. Rented games are available usually the day they are released, which totally negates any reason to buy them, after you've already played them! It's very simple economics really. Thats what has been the norm all throughout these years in thh industry, you can rent any game and finish it in a weekend rental for %500 less then actually buying the game.
.. If you're a hardcore gamer, plus the cost benefits of a PC gamer through Warez and emulation offset the 'so called' costs of gaming in general for both Console and PC
You've got good exclusive games on Xbox, GC and PS2. PS2 for your RPGS, GC for Quality stuff, and Xbox for FPS, Mech assault the 'rest'.
The fact that if you sell your computer stuff (video card, cpu, etc) at the right time you can get up to 50-60% discount on your next videocard/upgrades by selling on eBay that offset the so called "excessive costs" of PC gaming. You just got to be smart about it.
Console stuff devalues worse now more then ever because you can get the games for free and emulated on the PC after the console comes out even though some emulators take longer to make then others. Right now they have good working emulators for every system ever made except the GC, PS2 and Xbox. Look at SNES, Playsation, N64, GameboyAdvance, gameboy, NES, etc.
The problem of near infinite time investment... of time and work versus finite amount of resources for small customer payoffs / results.
It takes massive investments of time to get the computer to do some of the most basic interface and problem solving tasks so that humans can do and perform some simple tasks, even today. Tools and compiler/language development needs to get better. Right now many programs are too fragile, very hard for the end users to modify (without recompilation), and they are far from robust.
Think of it this way, in an ideal world any program should be able to run on any platform without having to be recompiled and any necessary hardware/software dependencies would be automagically emulated (assuming you have the CPU power).
Computer scientists have yet to create decent "building blocks" and tools that don't require a thorough understanding of how the tool itself was made. i.e. you don't expect a construction worker to know the workings of how his tool(s) was made or came to be manufactured or how it works internally, he can use it to perform all tasks from the intended "purpose" without ever having to understand how it was made or works internally from a single domain of functionality.
Too many times programmers have to have cross disciplinary knowledge of their tools/etc that should not be required to get the job done.
Weak analytic/development tools to help other programmers and new programmers demystify what is going on without having to write lengthly comments to tell other programmers what sections of code mean. This should tip you off right there that if you have to comment and explain something that should be as obvious as reading plain english sentences that mean the same thing you've got severe weakness on multiple person projects that shouldn't be there. No one ever gets confused about- "Today I went to the supermarket and bought some food." with "Today I picked up some food at the supermarket."
If you look at computer programming languages today, its like learning a foriegn language because you're forced to "learn the rules", syntax of how the language works AND how it parses and a million other little "gotchas" when it interprets your code. Right now programming tools to create things are simply in the dark age. How many lines of code does it take to create buttons, lists, input boxes, programmer and user friendly functionality from scratch? It takes a massive investment of time and energy today just to create the meaningful building blocks let alone full programs.
Slashdot Mirror
Sega-cd add-on for the genesis --> failure Sega32x --> failure Sega Saturn --> failure Sega Dremcast --> failure The PS2's main selling points were its exclusive titles like japanese games and especially the RPG's (Square titles are a system sellers) and its backwards compatability with the PS1 in hardware and memory cards (I believe MC's could be used too??). Thes the reason I got my PS1 was for streetfighter and final fantasy not because it was the PS1.
... and much more discriminating. Compare you're young gamer self to how you view games now. When you were a kid you didn't care so much about reviews of games (unless you had a magazine subscription) you just wanted to play and experience every genre type of the games that you liked in existence. Thats how it was for me. Back in the day it was 1) Action / Beat-em-ups 2) Fighting games 2) RPG's and 3) shooters like Gradius, R-Type, etc. (Not first person shooters).
And to tell you the truth that hasn't changed in all these years I still like games from those categories/genres. I have expanded my gaming to included PC gaming, RTS and online FPS like Quake/unreal. But the gameplay/genre could still be boiled down to 5-6 genres you can count on your fingers.
There's a few problems and realities that the industry has to face:
1) Games and gaming are $!@# expensive (Esp for teens/kids who don't have rich parents) which limits the size of the market who can afford them. Look at what happened when Nintendo dropped their Gamecube to $99 they sold 2.5 million more! Thats nothing to sneeze at you just increased your market by 15-20% with a single price cut. I believe games themselves could reach a much wider audience if they didn't cost so much to produce and retail for over $40US ($60-70$CDN).
2) The older you become the more discriminating and jaded you get with the more games you play. It's unavoidable, the novelty loss gets worse with time, it becomes harder and harder to wow a seasoned gamer. Your nostalgic 'old favorites' from when you were a kid look like a pile of crap nowadays, with the rare few old games that are as your nostalgic mind remembers them.
3) Game rentals, I'm sorry but game renting negates almost any reason for anyone to purchase a game. The publishers and companies are just F'n dumb I swear! Available game rentals should be DEMOS of the game, not the complete thing. How moronic it is when you can buy and finish a game on 4-7$ weekend rental at blockbuster then fork out $40-50 for a brand new singleplayer game that once finished sits on the shelf and collects dust, thats over 500% savings at least for the same gaming experience!
Gaming industry has to wake up and realize that games are consumed differently them movies. It's not like the movie industry where you release to the theatres first and then make DVD/VHS versions available later, and you can consume movies much faster then you can consume games due to their short length of usually 1-2hrs. Rented games are available usually the day they are released, which totally negates any reason to buy them, after you've already played them! It's very simple economics really. Thats what has been the norm all throughout these years in thh industry, you can rent any game and finish it in a weekend rental for %500 less then actually buying the game.
.. If you're a hardcore gamer, plus the cost benefits of a PC gamer through Warez and emulation offset the 'so called' costs of gaming in general for both Console and PC
You've got good exclusive games on Xbox, GC and PS2. PS2 for your RPGS, GC for Quality stuff, and Xbox for FPS, Mech assault the 'rest'.
The fact that if you sell your computer stuff (video card, cpu, etc) at the right time you can get up to 50-60% discount on your next videocard/upgrades by selling on eBay that offset the so called "excessive costs" of PC gaming. You just got to be smart about it.
Console stuff devalues worse now more then ever because you can get the games for free and emulated on the PC after the console comes out even though some emulators take longer to make then others. Right now they have good working emulators for every system ever made except the GC, PS2 and Xbox. Look at SNES, Playsation, N64, GameboyAdvance, gameboy, NES, etc.
The problem of near infinite time investment... of time and work versus finite amount of resources for small customer payoffs / results. It takes massive investments of time to get the computer to do some of the most basic interface and problem solving tasks so that humans can do and perform some simple tasks, even today. Tools and compiler/language development needs to get better. Right now many programs are too fragile, very hard for the end users to modify (without recompilation), and they are far from robust. Think of it this way, in an ideal world any program should be able to run on any platform without having to be recompiled and any necessary hardware/software dependencies would be automagically emulated (assuming you have the CPU power). Computer scientists have yet to create decent "building blocks" and tools that don't require a thorough understanding of how the tool itself was made. i.e. you don't expect a construction worker to know the workings of how his tool(s) was made or came to be manufactured or how it works internally, he can use it to perform all tasks from the intended "purpose" without ever having to understand how it was made or works internally from a single domain of functionality. Too many times programmers have to have cross disciplinary knowledge of their tools/etc that should not be required to get the job done. Weak analytic/development tools to help other programmers and new programmers demystify what is going on without having to write lengthly comments to tell other programmers what sections of code mean. This should tip you off right there that if you have to comment and explain something that should be as obvious as reading plain english sentences that mean the same thing you've got severe weakness on multiple person projects that shouldn't be there. No one ever gets confused about- "Today I went to the supermarket and bought some food." with "Today I picked up some food at the supermarket." If you look at computer programming languages today, its like learning a foriegn language because you're forced to "learn the rules", syntax of how the language works AND how it parses and a million other little "gotchas" when it interprets your code. Right now programming tools to create things are simply in the dark age. How many lines of code does it take to create buttons, lists, input boxes, programmer and user friendly functionality from scratch? It takes a massive investment of time and energy today just to create the meaningful building blocks let alone full programs.