They'd still need to allow for external memory cards though. "Controller memory" size might be enough for most people, but for some other who will want to keep saves from over 50 games (and multiple saves per game), I wouldn't expect those people to buy many controllers just for the memory.
What better way to market to the non-gmaing crowd than to make part of the console "cool" to carry around with you.
I would also add that it could be possible that the controller might act as a memory card for your saved games/profile. Going to a friend's house to play some games? All you need is to carry your controller and everything is in there. Fitting something like 128 or 256MB in a small form-factor is hardly a challenge anymore.
Does the NDS still outsell the PSP? Here in Sweden I would guess the PSP is much more of a success, but then people are still amazed of whatever sex/nudity on tv, magazines,... so I guess crap sells here.
All I know is over here in Québec, I have seen plenty of people with NDSes in public places, while the only PSP I have seen in action belongs to a friend of mine who is terminally ill and has nothing to do but burn all his money for the couple of months he has left (he also has a 360). I've never seen one in the hands of a random stranger playing it during commute or whatever.
I have no idea what the sales figure are, but from what I *see*, NDS is dominating.
Now some games will obviously utilize larger ranges of motion and sensitivity, but overall it isn't going to require wildly flailing about in your living room.
You only need one game that requires larger ranges of motion to have fun watching the testers studio...
Based on my contacts at a few dev. studios, they all seem excited about developing for the system and the overall feel I have received is that it will be about 2x as powerful as a Gamecube powerwise.
Based on my contacts at the Ubisoft testing studio, they all fear the Revolution and expect it to be a testing nightmare, with whole teams of people swigning their arms all about all day long... I would actually like to see a Rev. game being tested...
Anyway, anybody that chooses for MS software in this time of age where all problems concerning their disrespect for their clients is so obvious, is a big idiot and deserve all the problems that come out of this.
So true. I often compare the use of Microsoft products to the use of tobacco products. At first, we didn't know the consequences of its use, and people did it because it was the cool thing to do. Today, we very well know the consequences, yet some people still decide to do it. In both cases, it's human stupidity at its best.
Your other options for next-generation consoles are Microsoft and Nintendo, both companies that have tried to use dominant market positions to keep competition out.
Pray tell, what illegal strategies has Nintendo employed to keep its dominant market position and keep competition out? In the handheld market, they're not keeping the competition out, they simply make a better machine and Sony screws up all by itself.
That alone suggest something is there, something big, even if the game does not attract the average Slashdotter.
And that is because, *gasp*, there are more non-slashdotters than there are slashdotters.
"Alternate" games can have a huge success while being totally non-appealing to the usual gaming crowd. That's because the people who are interested in shooting people and seeing blood everywhere, or playing sports while sitting in your living room, are a very small minority. Yet some publishers consider they're the only group of customers worth marketing to. On the other hand, there's a company out there (I won't name it because it would make me sound like a fanboy) who knows that there is a vastly bigger market for "alternate" games than there is for FPS, RTS and sports game combined. That is why you see games like Pokemon or Nintendogs, which do not appeal to the "regular" gamer, yet have a tremendous success worldwide.
Now prices are going up to make games "better" but somehow I don't believe spending millions on hiring good voice actors and adding flashy effects is what should be the focus of game design. The focus should be on the game itself and in some cases the story.
So true. I *think* I am a gamer, but I don't feel like one when I read stuff like "Next-gen games, because of graphics, coding, voice acting, cinema scenes and everything else gamers expect, cost more to make". I don't expect voice acting and cinema scenes. Heck, I'd expect LESS cinema scenes. What I do expect though is to have fun, be it alone or with a bunch of friends on the sofa. Politicians (*cough* Clinton *cough*) keep bitching games are more influential than movies because they are interactive. Because of all those cutscenes, games become less and less interactive. It shouldn't be long till all we can do is *watch* a game.
Either I don't fit into the "gamers" category, or the game companies have no idea what a gamer wants. How about some good gameplay this time around? I guess Nintendo is the only one to actually have a clue.
I am shocked and appalled. As is well known, any reputable software vendor would release flaw free code that could not possibly cause hidden attacks such as this.
Although it can be "accepted" that code be released with unknown bugs (because we all make mistakes), the problem here is that the bug report is over 5 months old. It is one thing to ship buggy code, it is another thing to ignore bug reports and not fix your product once the bugs have been found. It is no longer unknown, Secunia has a release date of 2005-05-31 for that bug.
My only complaint is that the second stick will be practically _necessary_ for conventional gameplay - the wand on it's own is just a little too simple for most console-genre games.
But that is the whole point of the Revolution. We don't want EA to go and make yet another batch of traditional "console-genre games", we want a whole new breed of console genres. The "second stick" or whatever controller add-on one can plug in should always be secondary, or it should be as innovative as the wand. I'd really hate it if games required a regular controller to plug into the wand, and then only use the controller for regular gameplay.
That touch screen isn't a gimmick: it's a whole new world of gaming. I know several people who consider their DS to be their primary gaming platform.
And I am one of them. However, the touch-screen still seems gimmicky to me (and that's a Nintendo fanboy talking here). Even though I have played a couple of games that required the touch screen pretty extensively (Mario DS, Kirby Canvas Curse, and the wife is on Nintendogs), the two games I spend the most time with at the moment are Advance Wars DS and Mario Kart DS, and I only use the d-pad + buttons for both those games, never the touch screen.
Simply having two screens is a big plus in itself, allowing for all the action to go uncluttered while the extra info is displayed on the secondary screen. Plus, I love how folding the thing instantly puts the game into sleep mode, which then makes for insanely fast "boot speed" when you take it back.
The touch screen is definitely not the only good feature of the DS.
Still it's rude and it's a way to humiliate a member for something %80 of people make.
If it's such a common mistake, then maybe it is a *good* thing to point it out in an attempt to educate the masses, wouldn't you think so? There was nothing humiliating in the way the grammar-nazi pointed it out. If one feels humiliated simply because somebody pointed out an error, then that person has issues.
i expect to find defects in my electronics from time to time.
Whenever I buy a piece of non-gaming electronics, I expect it to not have any defects, at least while it's under warranty. Why should I expect more defects in a gaming console than in another piece of electronics? It's all just transistors. If they can't do it right, then they don't deserve my money.
We're not talking about an aging piece of electronics that fails after thousands of hours of service, it's something people bought yesterday.
If all we have are "previous" and "next", we are living in some sort of weird "current-gen" time where there are no consoles and fanboys have nowhere to go... scary.
What is the point of paying thousands to get one from eBay and then having to wait for shipping? Why not just pre-order? At worst it would take you 1 or 2 days longer than eBay.
Not sure how much the shortage is actually real, but what I know is this morning, while eating breakfast, news reporters from several channels were talking about those people waiting in line since about midnight in anticipation of the store opening at 8am (for those stores that didn't take pre-orders). Then, when I got to work (at about 10.30am), I wanted to look at those "Sold out" banners Microsoft made for the retailers, so I went to downtown Montreal's Future Shop (equivalent of Best Buy up here), and there were still 2 core systems and 3 full-systems on the shelves... I could have just taken one to the cash register and brought it home, while a bunch of suckers didn't sleep last night waiting in line in the cold rain...
Ordering from eBay and waiting for shipping is already pretty pointless, preordering is also useless over here apparently.
Why is everyone so "OK" with the idea of getting things for "free" through being shown ads?
People are greedy, they like getting things for free, even if it's crap. They don't realize that watching an ad is paying with your soul. Those people only value money.
Exactly. Who wins the next generation, if any manufacturer does, will depend on so many factors it's just not funny.
How about we wait till january of 2008 to determine who is the industry leader of 2007? What's the point of "predicting" which console will sell more? I won't be buying a PS3 because "it will dominate", if I buy a PS3, it's because it has good games, I couldn't care less about world domination.
Unlikely it was a 40MB drive, 10-20MB was quite large if you even had a hard drive. A computer with 640K wouldn't have had a 40MB drive (you'd spend the money on extended/expanded RAM first).
I just checked, you're right. The computer simply didn't have a hard drive at first (only 2 floppies). He bought the hard drive (which was indeed a 40MB) about 2 years later.
Marked for inflation the 360 costs less than what i spent on an atari years ago, and that is pretty amazing.
Not really. Basically all technology improves while reducing in price over time.
So true... about 20 years ago, my father bought a 8086 computer with 640k RAM and a 40MB hard drive for about $3000 (if my memory serves me right). Inflation would bring this to well over $5000 today. There is no way in hell I'm gonna pay $5000 for a computer today, even a top-of-the-line one.
Using inflation to compare prices on electronics is utterly pointless.
and even We Love Katamari (remember the original, the game that was supposed to rid us of derivative games? It has a sequel).
Ya know what? Katamari has a sequel because people asked for a sequel. We just couldn't get enough of the first one. "Having a sequel" in itself isn't bad. But when having a sequel is predictable, and the sequel has a sequel, and then the whole genre is used by hundred of games... that is when originality begins to go away.
Slashdot Mirror
They'd still need to allow for external memory cards though. "Controller memory" size might be enough for most people, but for some other who will want to keep saves from over 50 games (and multiple saves per game), I wouldn't expect those people to buy many controllers just for the memory.
I would also add that it could be possible that the controller might act as a memory card for your saved games/profile. Going to a friend's house to play some games? All you need is to carry your controller and everything is in there. Fitting something like 128 or 256MB in a small form-factor is hardly a challenge anymore.
All I know is over here in Québec, I have seen plenty of people with NDSes in public places, while the only PSP I have seen in action belongs to a friend of mine who is terminally ill and has nothing to do but burn all his money for the couple of months he has left (he also has a 360). I've never seen one in the hands of a random stranger playing it during commute or whatever.
I have no idea what the sales figure are, but from what I *see*, NDS is dominating.
You only need one game that requires larger ranges of motion to have fun watching the testers studio...
Based on my contacts at the Ubisoft testing studio, they all fear the Revolution and expect it to be a testing nightmare, with whole teams of people swigning their arms all about all day long... I would actually like to see a Rev. game being tested...
So true. I often compare the use of Microsoft products to the use of tobacco products. At first, we didn't know the consequences of its use, and people did it because it was the cool thing to do. Today, we very well know the consequences, yet some people still decide to do it. In both cases, it's human stupidity at its best.
Pray tell, what illegal strategies has Nintendo employed to keep its dominant market position and keep competition out? In the handheld market, they're not keeping the competition out, they simply make a better machine and Sony screws up all by itself.
And that is because, *gasp*, there are more non-slashdotters than there are slashdotters.
"Alternate" games can have a huge success while being totally non-appealing to the usual gaming crowd. That's because the people who are interested in shooting people and seeing blood everywhere, or playing sports while sitting in your living room, are a very small minority. Yet some publishers consider they're the only group of customers worth marketing to. On the other hand, there's a company out there (I won't name it because it would make me sound like a fanboy) who knows that there is a vastly bigger market for "alternate" games than there is for FPS, RTS and sports game combined. That is why you see games like Pokemon or Nintendogs, which do not appeal to the "regular" gamer, yet have a tremendous success worldwide.
Your sig... "Slashdot Rules"... where's my cookie?
So true. I *think* I am a gamer, but I don't feel like one when I read stuff like "Next-gen games, because of graphics, coding, voice acting, cinema scenes and everything else gamers expect, cost more to make". I don't expect voice acting and cinema scenes. Heck, I'd expect LESS cinema scenes. What I do expect though is to have fun, be it alone or with a bunch of friends on the sofa. Politicians (*cough* Clinton *cough*) keep bitching games are more influential than movies because they are interactive. Because of all those cutscenes, games become less and less interactive. It shouldn't be long till all we can do is *watch* a game.
Either I don't fit into the "gamers" category, or the game companies have no idea what a gamer wants. How about some good gameplay this time around? I guess Nintendo is the only one to actually have a clue.
Although it can be "accepted" that code be released with unknown bugs (because we all make mistakes), the problem here is that the bug report is over 5 months old. It is one thing to ship buggy code, it is another thing to ignore bug reports and not fix your product once the bugs have been found. It is no longer unknown, Secunia has a release date of 2005-05-31 for that bug.
But that is the whole point of the Revolution. We don't want EA to go and make yet another batch of traditional "console-genre games", we want a whole new breed of console genres. The "second stick" or whatever controller add-on one can plug in should always be secondary, or it should be as innovative as the wand. I'd really hate it if games required a regular controller to plug into the wand, and then only use the controller for regular gameplay.
And I am one of them. However, the touch-screen still seems gimmicky to me (and that's a Nintendo fanboy talking here). Even though I have played a couple of games that required the touch screen pretty extensively (Mario DS, Kirby Canvas Curse, and the wife is on Nintendogs), the two games I spend the most time with at the moment are Advance Wars DS and Mario Kart DS, and I only use the d-pad + buttons for both those games, never the touch screen.
Simply having two screens is a big plus in itself, allowing for all the action to go uncluttered while the extra info is displayed on the secondary screen. Plus, I love how folding the thing instantly puts the game into sleep mode, which then makes for insanely fast "boot speed" when you take it back.
The touch screen is definitely not the only good feature of the DS.
If it's such a common mistake, then maybe it is a *good* thing to point it out in an attempt to educate the masses, wouldn't you think so? There was nothing humiliating in the way the grammar-nazi pointed it out. If one feels humiliated simply because somebody pointed out an error, then that person has issues.
Whenever I buy a piece of non-gaming electronics, I expect it to not have any defects, at least while it's under warranty. Why should I expect more defects in a gaming console than in another piece of electronics? It's all just transistors. If they can't do it right, then they don't deserve my money.
We're not talking about an aging piece of electronics that fails after thousands of hours of service, it's something people bought yesterday.
If all we have are "previous" and "next", we are living in some sort of weird "current-gen" time where there are no consoles and fanboys have nowhere to go... scary.
I don't have an HDTV at home... what's the point of buying an Xbox360 then?
As far as I am concerened HDTV is the biggest benefit to console gaming that could have happened.
As far as I am concerned, good gameplay is the biggest benefit to console gaming that could have happened. I can't afford an HDTV.
Not sure how much the shortage is actually real, but what I know is this morning, while eating breakfast, news reporters from several channels were talking about those people waiting in line since about midnight in anticipation of the store opening at 8am (for those stores that didn't take pre-orders). Then, when I got to work (at about 10.30am), I wanted to look at those "Sold out" banners Microsoft made for the retailers, so I went to downtown Montreal's Future Shop (equivalent of Best Buy up here), and there were still 2 core systems and 3 full-systems on the shelves... I could have just taken one to the cash register and brought it home, while a bunch of suckers didn't sleep last night waiting in line in the cold rain...
Ordering from eBay and waiting for shipping is already pretty pointless, preordering is also useless over here apparently.
Just like wireless routers have "don't broadcast until the user explicitely configures you to broadcast"...
People are greedy, they like getting things for free, even if it's crap. They don't realize that watching an ad is paying with your soul. Those people only value money.
Don't tell that to anybody who's played Dragon Warrior
Dost thou wish to continue thy quest?
How about we wait till january of 2008 to determine who is the industry leader of 2007? What's the point of "predicting" which console will sell more? I won't be buying a PS3 because "it will dominate", if I buy a PS3, it's because it has good games, I couldn't care less about world domination.
I just checked, you're right. The computer simply didn't have a hard drive at first (only 2 floppies). He bought the hard drive (which was indeed a 40MB) about 2 years later.
Not really. Basically all technology improves while reducing in price over time.
So true... about 20 years ago, my father bought a 8086 computer with 640k RAM and a 40MB hard drive for about $3000 (if my memory serves me right). Inflation would bring this to well over $5000 today. There is no way in hell I'm gonna pay $5000 for a computer today, even a top-of-the-line one.
Using inflation to compare prices on electronics is utterly pointless.
Ya know what? Katamari has a sequel because people asked for a sequel. We just couldn't get enough of the first one. "Having a sequel" in itself isn't bad. But when having a sequel is predictable, and the sequel has a sequel, and then the whole genre is used by hundred of games... that is when originality begins to go away.