Unless you're using REALLY excessive compression the data read rate of the drive is going to be the bottleneck. In fact compression might make it faster since the drive can read more assets in the same time then.
The problem with that plan is that the PS3's gaming function is a platform that Sony has a monopoly on. That's not just important for users that might not WANT a pricey "entertainment system", it's important to game developers because it'd mean their potential market are only the high-end users. When you're making a product of which 99% does appeal to a very wide market you're stupid to make that last % (in this case platform marketshare) reduces your product's appeal to a tiny fraction of its former value. If the PS3 was significantly cheaper to develop for so the games could break even with much fewer units sold that would not be an issue but it's at least as expensive as the XBox 360. The Wii could afford ending up with less marketshare than its competitors, the PS3 can't.
That system would need to be VERY scalable otherwise your rating needs a date at which it expires and Joe Sixpack wonders why his game won't run on his five year old "4-star" computer.
All TBS games with per-unit turn orders (as opposed to per-side) use that. The difference to ATB is that with ATB the game doesn't pause during the turns and if you're too slow while giving out orders the enemy might act before you do. Sure, in effect it's the same as ATB if you had superhuman reflexes that allow you to choose the action within a few frames (the stop ATB option does not stop the ATB bars in he first menu you see) and there was no delay between order and execution (when an attack animation is playing the other characters have to queue up their actions but ATB bars keep filling, most noticeable in FF9) so the time between attacks remains constant.
For a market to exist the government has to enforce the law. Otherwise concepts like property and contracts become meaningless. In this case there was a contract between the ESRB and Rockstar that said "You assure us that what you've shown us is the worst stuff in the game and we let you use our 'Rated M for Mature' label". In the eyes of the government Rockstar failed to uphold its end of the contract and advertised compliance with a standard the product did not actually comply with, which means the buyer is misled to believe the product has a "feature" it does not actually have. I don't see what's against the free market here or do you mean free market means you can defraud the customer?
I think it shows a fundamental error on the behalf of the ESRB that the game managed to get that T rating in first place. How come they "discover things later"? Unless it's hidden very carefully they should stumble across it during a normal playthrough. Oh, right, the ESRB can't be bothered to actually play the games they are supposed to rate.
Well, compare it with FFIX where the ATB bars usually filled faster than the attack queue cleared so it was effectively turnbased and your actions took forever to resolve. Not good if you fill your bar, select heal and by the time it's that character's turn the target is long dead.
Is that the NES or the Gameboy Megaman? I only played the GB version as a kid and when I got to play my first real Megaman game I found it way too easy.
Well, the N64 had less storage than the Sega CD so I wouldn't say the XCircle is the first. See? Even there Microsoft copies Nintendo;).
The PC gaming market isn't really dying, at least not in Europe. Its strength is the low barrier to entry which is why you see more indie games on the PC shelves. To get an indie game on a console you have to make a PC version and have it sell, or at least reach a big audience. Many (all?) of the indie games on XBox Live Arcade were released on the PC first.
Would you pay 250$ for a Gamecube, 60-70$ for a game and 40$ for a DVD? Those are the japanese prices. Everything is more expensive in Japan (or Europe, for that matter) compared to the US.
Most successful cellphone games are either older games, ports of successful indie games or ports of GBA games. Hell, I saw a sellphone (hm, interesting typo, I think I'll keep that) provider demo "The Great Gianna Sisters" on a cellphone last year as their big new game. I wonder how they're allowed to release that now, considering the game was pulled shortly after its original release because of legal action from Nintendo.
It's the japanese pricing, you can convert that directly into your currency and know the final values (minus 10% maybe). Japan gets screwed just as much as we do.
Iwata has mentioned (not in this article) that they will allow independent developers to make downloadable games for the system (he included those games in the 500-1000Y quote) but he's been wording it so ambiguous that we don't know whether you have to write the games for an emulated console or whether you can use the Wii itself. The latter probably requires you to pay the 2000$ for the dev kit.
The Wii remote rod has the button laysout of a NES so you just have to hold it with both hands, the "classic" controller is a Dualshock clone and as such a SNES clone as well.
Dunno, how did they handle that with the iQue? They were nodelocked but I don't know what they do in case of hardware failure (and even worse, theft since you can't send in the old one so they could copy the node key over to another unit).
Nintendo offered game downloads for their earlier consoles, it's likely that this descision was independent of Microsoft's Live Arcade. They thought "Hey, we've got widespread internet access, let's sell emulated games!". They probably DID look at Microsoft (or Sony if they were being ignorant of non-Japanese companies but considering the number of XBox 360 and Live features they are copying they probably looked at MS) when deciding that online is ready for mass market use.
That's a technical limitation, those carts are expensive to produce and bring into stores (that's why everyone went with the PS1 instead of the N64). A download system has much lower costs to Nintendo. They're probably making the same profit per unit on both offerings.
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Unless you're using REALLY excessive compression the data read rate of the drive is going to be the bottleneck. In fact compression might make it faster since the drive can read more assets in the same time then.
The problem with that plan is that the PS3's gaming function is a platform that Sony has a monopoly on. That's not just important for users that might not WANT a pricey "entertainment system", it's important to game developers because it'd mean their potential market are only the high-end users. When you're making a product of which 99% does appeal to a very wide market you're stupid to make that last % (in this case platform marketshare) reduces your product's appeal to a tiny fraction of its former value. If the PS3 was significantly cheaper to develop for so the games could break even with much fewer units sold that would not be an issue but it's at least as expensive as the XBox 360. The Wii could afford ending up with less marketshare than its competitors, the PS3 can't.
That system would need to be VERY scalable otherwise your rating needs a date at which it expires and Joe Sixpack wonders why his game won't run on his five year old "4-star" computer.
All TBS games with per-unit turn orders (as opposed to per-side) use that. The difference to ATB is that with ATB the game doesn't pause during the turns and if you're too slow while giving out orders the enemy might act before you do. Sure, in effect it's the same as ATB if you had superhuman reflexes that allow you to choose the action within a few frames (the stop ATB option does not stop the ATB bars in he first menu you see) and there was no delay between order and execution (when an attack animation is playing the other characters have to queue up their actions but ATB bars keep filling, most noticeable in FF9) so the time between attacks remains constant.
For a market to exist the government has to enforce the law. Otherwise concepts like property and contracts become meaningless. In this case there was a contract between the ESRB and Rockstar that said "You assure us that what you've shown us is the worst stuff in the game and we let you use our 'Rated M for Mature' label". In the eyes of the government Rockstar failed to uphold its end of the contract and advertised compliance with a standard the product did not actually comply with, which means the buyer is misled to believe the product has a "feature" it does not actually have. I don't see what's against the free market here or do you mean free market means you can defraud the customer?
I think it shows a fundamental error on the behalf of the ESRB that the game managed to get that T rating in first place. How come they "discover things later"? Unless it's hidden very carefully they should stumble across it during a normal playthrough. Oh, right, the ESRB can't be bothered to actually play the games they are supposed to rate.
I thought it DID say "strong sexual content"?
1-3 and 10 were turn based, the rest uses that combination of the worst aspects of realtime and turnbased called "Active Time Battle".
Well, compare it with FFIX where the ATB bars usually filled faster than the attack queue cleared so it was effectively turnbased and your actions took forever to resolve. Not good if you fill your bar, select heal and by the time it's that character's turn the target is long dead.
How about Impossible Mission?
Is that the NES or the Gameboy Megaman? I only played the GB version as a kid and when I got to play my first real Megaman game I found it way too easy.
That's interesting because the GC is still going for 100 Euros which is more than 100$.
No, they used HEAVY compression (which would probably look ugly as hell). RE2 was a similarily FMV-heavy game and there is an N64 port.
I started to play DOA on the 360. Man, that's a disappointing game. Am I the only one who felt like the hair movement in it is completely distracting?
Yes. Hair movement. Sure. You were looking at the physics of her... hair.
I think it was more along the lines of "Hey, it has Halo."
Well, the N64 had less storage than the Sega CD so I wouldn't say the XCircle is the first. See? Even there Microsoft copies Nintendo ;).
The PC gaming market isn't really dying, at least not in Europe. Its strength is the low barrier to entry which is why you see more indie games on the PC shelves. To get an indie game on a console you have to make a PC version and have it sell, or at least reach a big audience. Many (all?) of the indie games on XBox Live Arcade were released on the PC first.
You misspelled "Gangsta, yo!".
Would you pay 250$ for a Gamecube, 60-70$ for a game and 40$ for a DVD? Those are the japanese prices. Everything is more expensive in Japan (or Europe, for that matter) compared to the US.
Most successful cellphone games are either older games, ports of successful indie games or ports of GBA games. Hell, I saw a sellphone (hm, interesting typo, I think I'll keep that) provider demo "The Great Gianna Sisters" on a cellphone last year as their big new game. I wonder how they're allowed to release that now, considering the game was pulled shortly after its original release because of legal action from Nintendo.
It's the japanese pricing, you can convert that directly into your currency and know the final values (minus 10% maybe). Japan gets screwed just as much as we do.
Iwata has mentioned (not in this article) that they will allow independent developers to make downloadable games for the system (he included those games in the 500-1000Y quote) but he's been wording it so ambiguous that we don't know whether you have to write the games for an emulated console or whether you can use the Wii itself. The latter probably requires you to pay the 2000$ for the dev kit.
The Wii remote rod has the button laysout of a NES so you just have to hold it with both hands, the "classic" controller is a Dualshock clone and as such a SNES clone as well.
Dunno, how did they handle that with the iQue? They were nodelocked but I don't know what they do in case of hardware failure (and even worse, theft since you can't send in the old one so they could copy the node key over to another unit).
Nintendo offered game downloads for their earlier consoles, it's likely that this descision was independent of Microsoft's Live Arcade. They thought "Hey, we've got widespread internet access, let's sell emulated games!". They probably DID look at Microsoft (or Sony if they were being ignorant of non-Japanese companies but considering the number of XBox 360 and Live features they are copying they probably looked at MS) when deciding that online is ready for mass market use.
That's a technical limitation, those carts are expensive to produce and bring into stores (that's why everyone went with the PS1 instead of the N64). A download system has much lower costs to Nintendo. They're probably making the same profit per unit on both offerings.