To be fair, Square has lately been making very major changes in how their Final Fantasy games play. Sometimes to the annoyance of their fans. If you're going to count Final Fantasy as being more of the same, you might as well go ahead and lump Mario and Zelda in there.
So are you sayinig that Mario 64 would have been revolutionary had it used characters other than Mario? Because unless you are, you don't really have a valid point here.
How revolutionary a game is has nothing to do with the characters used, and everything to do with how the gameplay is designed and how much of an impact it has on the games that follow after it.
For instance, the Z-targeting feature in Ocarina of Time is a feature that has been copied in pretty much every 3d adventure game that has come out since. It's something simple that makes perfect sense, but was missing in games like Mario 64, because no one had thought of it yet.
If you're going to strip away everything and drop a game down to it's most base characteristics, there's very little actual difference between Zelda:OoT and Mario 64, or Zelda & Tomb Raider or any of a thousand games. But each of those games has added something significant to the gaming industry to the point that every game in it's respective genre uses some form of it. And that is what I consider innovation.
I think you underestimate how cool it would be to play a brown paper sack. Especially if they just stuck the components in there, folded up the top, and poked some holes for the GC ports. That would be my favorite system ever.
But then, I'm a big fan of absurdity in electronics. That's why I use Windows.
I bet you're wrong, but it's not because of the size. It's cause of the price.
But yes, the PS3 is larger than the original Xbox. There have been numerous picture comparisons, and the actual PS3 (or at least the model shown at E3 this year) is actually larger than the model they've been showing off for the past year (though only slightly).
The hackability of the box depends on the WiiOS and it's security features. As "nice" as Nintendo is as a company, they've always been very protective of their intellectual property. You can be sure that WiiOS (okay, I really, really like that word) will have heavy security and DRM to prevent that sort of thing. That doesn't mean you won't be able to do it, it just means it won't be as easy as you might think.
Of course, the absolute best security would be to allow you to run a different OS from a USB harddrive, without accessing the main OS at all, just using the CPU/GPU and whatnot with binary drivers for the hardware, thereby totally removing the incentive to mess around with the internal OS unless you are specifically trying to copy/pirate games.
I think it's a question of standards. There are standards for TCP/IP, DNS and all these other protocols and utilities we use on the internet. The problem is, the standards are built to the lowest common denominator, not the most secure. If we required all DNS servers, top-level domain providers and ISPs to adhere to a standard of security (to the point that, if your servers are insecure, no other server will accept requests from you), while it would not get rid of problems, it would significantly reduce their impact.
Of course, some companies are doing this voluntarily, to the point that they are rejecting email from domains that do not meet certain requirements. But it's not a standard, so that means that someone's going to find a way around it.
Part of that is because the internet is still building itself as we speak. It's not a project that was planned and implemented, it just sort of happened, and it keeps just sort of happening. That's what makes it so wonderful, but it also makes it incredibly vulnerable.
So basically, you face a trade-off, the same kind of trade-off you face in life outside the internet. How much of your freedom are you willing to give up for the sake of security?
Heh, yes, I'll be keeping a close watch on www.anandtech.com around release, since they're pretty good at getting consoles and taking them apart for our geeky pleasure.
I agree it needs a lot more polish, but I'm not sure if this version is anything to judge by. It had the feel of being mostly a controller demo. I doubt that demo will make it into the game intact.
I'd think the best way to do it would be to have multiple sensors in the Wii. Possibly one at either end, then the two sensors in the bar triangulate the position of both sensors at the same time.
That doesn't mean that's how it works, but it makes sense to me.
No, not really. Red Steel, Metroid Prime 3, Sonic Wildfire and Zelda: Twilight Princess are probably the 4 games that are farthest along in development (except maybe that Spongebob game), but every game they showed seems to have been more a controller demo than an actual game.
And it makes sense, from a certain perspective. Nintendo's goal of this E3 was not to sell their games, it was to sell the controller. First, they have to prove the controller actually does work. Second, they have to get feedback on the controller so they can fix any problems or issues with it in the 4-6 months they have before release. Third, they have to generate enough hype to hold them until they can show improved visuals and the finalized controller mechanics that will actually sell the game.
I think reason three is the main reason they forwent announcing a price or release date. It's something they can announce 2 months from now to keep the hype up while they finalize the internal workings of the controller and console, get the visuals up to par (seriously, if you've seen any gameplay visuals from E3, you'll notice none of them look as nice as most gamecube games) and ramp up production.
Or maybe Nintendo isn't that smart and they're just being secretive for the fun of being secretive.
I'm fairly certain the 'dev kit' includes both development software, and hardware to test it on. If it did not, it would be pretty useless as a dev kit. So it would only be the $2000 fee. I can make that in 2 months if I severly curb my other entertainment expenses.
Selecting or doing things with menus or icons is much, much better with the Wiimote than with a control pad. You just point at what you want to select and hit A, much like a mouse. In fact, exactly like a mouse. It's worked for hundreds, possibly thousands of RPGs on the PC for years, it'll work for Wii.
Most console RPGs moving from one place to another can be accomplished just as efficiently with a Dpad as with an analog stick. In poin tof fact, there isn't a single Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest style game that could not be played with the Wiimote alone. The only games where you'd need the nunchuck would be more active style RPGs like Kingdom Hearts or Star Ocean.
The Wii controller, more than anything, simplies what would normally be complex controls.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised it uses any of the motion sensing. Super Smash Bros. has flat out the simplest control scheme since Super Mario Bros. There just really isn't much you can do to simpy or improve the controls, no matter what controller type you're using.
Also, SSB is a 2d game, the Wiimote is pretty much targetted at 3d control.
$249.99 is just speculation. But I think it's pretty good speculation.
Look at the philosophy behind the Wii. It's supposed to be simple, social, fun. My speculation is that for $250 you will get a Wii, 2 Wiimotes, 2 Nunchuks, and Wii Sports as a pack in. I also forsee ads during primetime dramas, maybe during Desperate Housewives if that is still running, saying for $250 you and your husband can play double tennis against your old college roommate and her husband.
Instant million seller to people who've never bought a gaming console in their life.
Actually, if you watched or read any of the information about the Nintendo press conference, you would have heard how much they stressed the physics used in Red Steel and Metroid Prime. Havok, one of the two leading physics software products (the other being Ageia's PhysX) is developing middleware for improved Physics on Wii. All the latest physics buzzwords, everything that made Half-Life 2 so great, is already included in Red Steel, and that's a first generation game.
As for AI, Wii potentially has better AI than either PS3 or 360. The only difference is, with a slower processor, it'll be able to control fewer AI at a time. So while you won't be able to have 100 reasonably intelligent AI, you will get 20 brilliant AI. It's a tradeoff, and will work better for some games than for others.
Add to that truly next generation controls, persistent, free internet service, and yes, more eye candy, and you still end up with a next generation system. The Wii will by no means be as powerful as the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but it will be a comparable solution.
Well, the last I heard, '50% better' was a fair description. i.e. CPU/GPU are roughly 50% faster. I think there's 2-3 times as much RAM than the GC.
That may be correct, but it's disingenuous. The clock speed is 50% faster. But, at least as far as the GPU is concerned, the GC GPU was created before ArtX was bought out by ATI, and before ATI was making graphics cards with unified shaders and about 12 other technologies that are in current gen pc and the 360 GPU that improve graphics output significantly, irregardless of clockspeed. So if correctly designed, the Wii graphics could be twice as good as GC graphics with the exact same clockspeed.
Don't get me wrong, the PS3 looks like a very nice machine. However, after reading 100 or so posts from this thread, Sony has managed to do something I thought impossible.
They made the Xbox 360 look cheap.
I had to go to wikipedia to check the price of the 360. It's only $399 for the premium system. And I thought to myself, 'That can't be right? That sounds so cheap.' Then I realized, it's because the PS3 is ridiculously expensive.
I'm not going to buy the 360 at $399. I most certainly am not going to buy a relatively crippled PS3 at $499, and $599 is right out. I'll have to get one eventually, but it's gonna be a long, long while before I can justify that sort of purchase.
Because Nintendo has been in the game for over 20 years, and consistently delivering smash hit after smash hit. Say what you will about the gamecube and it's relatively poor performance, it still had some of the best games of this generation, as did the n64 before it, the SNES before that, and the NES at the start of it all. Not to mention the gameboy, GBA & DS.
Nintendo's press conferences are so loud because every single person there, even if they're a Sony or Microsoft fanboy, most likely grew up either playing Nintendo games, or decrying how inferior Nintendo's systems were to Sega's offerings. When you're in a Nintendo press conference, it triggers all these subconcious memories of joy and wonder you experienced during childhood, so everyone there is already in a superhyped state before the conference even actually begins. Miyamoto could walk out on stage, and just say the word "Zelda" and the entire place would scream. Although they'd be a little confused if he walked off, the music stopped, they shut of the lights, and that was it.
Good job Sony. I did not expect them to copy the motion sensing idea until next generation. I thought it would take stellar Wii sales to sell them on the idea, but obviously Sony is a lot savvier than I expected.
I know a lot of Nintendo fanboys are outraged that Sony would steal Nintendo's ideas. But this just validates what Nintendo has been saying all along. It's the way it's always been, other companies in this industry innovate, Sony steals, but they steal well. It works in all other art forms, so it works in videogames as well. And the real winners are the consumers in the end.
On the other hand, what the hell is Sony thinking? No, seriously, are they completely stupid? Why did they go to all the trouble of holding their press conference before Nintendo?
They revealed too much. The new controller. Motion sensing technology. A firm pricetag. Specific release dates. This is now Nintendo's E3 to "win". They don't have to hold anything back. Anything they know, but haven't told us, they can go ahead and tell now. Sony's already blown their load.
If I were Sony, I would have taken great pains to arrange my conference after Nintendo's, even if it had to be early morning on Wednesday, right before the expo opened. Nintendo would have played things close to their chest (as they always do). Microsoft's conference would have absorbed some (probably not a lot, but some) of the hype Nintendo generated. Then Sony could have come back with a solid blow in the motion sensing controller.
Or, even better, they could have kept it silent, and not announced it until a few months before the Wii launched. This would have given them more time to perfect the technology, as well as giving them the chance to demo it with, I don't know, actual games? You know, like what Nintendo is going to do tomorrow.
So, in conclusion, a big Bravo to Sony Technical Operations. Those guys are on the ball. But a big WTF to Sony Marketing. For the first time in a long while you guys have totally failed. No cookie for you.
True, but that doesn't mean that Shadowrun was not based off of the ideas in Gibson's books (which it so obviously was). They added magic and trolls and elves because, well because they wanted to, but a lot of the other stuff draws directly from the books.
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To be fair, Square has lately been making very major changes in how their Final Fantasy games play. Sometimes to the annoyance of their fans. If you're going to count Final Fantasy as being more of the same, you might as well go ahead and lump Mario and Zelda in there.
How revolutionary a game is has nothing to do with the characters used, and everything to do with how the gameplay is designed and how much of an impact it has on the games that follow after it.
For instance, the Z-targeting feature in Ocarina of Time is a feature that has been copied in pretty much every 3d adventure game that has come out since. It's something simple that makes perfect sense, but was missing in games like Mario 64, because no one had thought of it yet.
If you're going to strip away everything and drop a game down to it's most base characteristics, there's very little actual difference between Zelda:OoT and Mario 64, or Zelda & Tomb Raider or any of a thousand games. But each of those games has added something significant to the gaming industry to the point that every game in it's respective genre uses some form of it. And that is what I consider innovation.
Of course, that may just be because we're pretentious nits.
But then, I'm a big fan of absurdity in electronics. That's why I use Windows.
But yes, the PS3 is larger than the original Xbox. There have been numerous picture comparisons, and the actual PS3 (or at least the model shown at E3 this year) is actually larger than the model they've been showing off for the past year (though only slightly).
If someone can hack together some drivers for the Wiimote, I'd be willing to buy a second one for some homebrew.
Of course, the absolute best security would be to allow you to run a different OS from a USB harddrive, without accessing the main OS at all, just using the CPU/GPU and whatnot with binary drivers for the hardware, thereby totally removing the incentive to mess around with the internal OS unless you are specifically trying to copy/pirate games.
Of course, some companies are doing this voluntarily, to the point that they are rejecting email from domains that do not meet certain requirements. But it's not a standard, so that means that someone's going to find a way around it.
Part of that is because the internet is still building itself as we speak. It's not a project that was planned and implemented, it just sort of happened, and it keeps just sort of happening. That's what makes it so wonderful, but it also makes it incredibly vulnerable.
So basically, you face a trade-off, the same kind of trade-off you face in life outside the internet. How much of your freedom are you willing to give up for the sake of security?
Heh, yes, I'll be keeping a close watch on www.anandtech.com around release, since they're pretty good at getting consoles and taking them apart for our geeky pleasure.
Regrettably, I never owned a Saturn. Pity me.
I agree it needs a lot more polish, but I'm not sure if this version is anything to judge by. It had the feel of being mostly a controller demo. I doubt that demo will make it into the game intact.
That doesn't mean that's how it works, but it makes sense to me.
And it makes sense, from a certain perspective. Nintendo's goal of this E3 was not to sell their games, it was to sell the controller. First, they have to prove the controller actually does work. Second, they have to get feedback on the controller so they can fix any problems or issues with it in the 4-6 months they have before release. Third, they have to generate enough hype to hold them until they can show improved visuals and the finalized controller mechanics that will actually sell the game.
I think reason three is the main reason they forwent announcing a price or release date. It's something they can announce 2 months from now to keep the hype up while they finalize the internal workings of the controller and console, get the visuals up to par (seriously, if you've seen any gameplay visuals from E3, you'll notice none of them look as nice as most gamecube games) and ramp up production.
Or maybe Nintendo isn't that smart and they're just being secretive for the fun of being secretive.
I'm fairly certain the 'dev kit' includes both development software, and hardware to test it on. If it did not, it would be pretty useless as a dev kit. So it would only be the $2000 fee. I can make that in 2 months if I severly curb my other entertainment expenses.
Including the first bomberman released for the TG16, which is still the best bomberman EVER.
Selecting or doing things with menus or icons is much, much better with the Wiimote than with a control pad. You just point at what you want to select and hit A, much like a mouse. In fact, exactly like a mouse. It's worked for hundreds, possibly thousands of RPGs on the PC for years, it'll work for Wii.
Most console RPGs moving from one place to another can be accomplished just as efficiently with a Dpad as with an analog stick. In poin tof fact, there isn't a single Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest style game that could not be played with the Wiimote alone. The only games where you'd need the nunchuck would be more active style RPGs like Kingdom Hearts or Star Ocean.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised it uses any of the motion sensing. Super Smash Bros. has flat out the simplest control scheme since Super Mario Bros. There just really isn't much you can do to simpy or improve the controls, no matter what controller type you're using.
Also, SSB is a 2d game, the Wiimote is pretty much targetted at 3d control.
Look at the philosophy behind the Wii. It's supposed to be simple, social, fun. My speculation is that for $250 you will get a Wii, 2 Wiimotes, 2 Nunchuks, and Wii Sports as a pack in. I also forsee ads during primetime dramas, maybe during Desperate Housewives if that is still running, saying for $250 you and your husband can play double tennis against your old college roommate and her husband.
Instant million seller to people who've never bought a gaming console in their life.
As for AI, Wii potentially has better AI than either PS3 or 360. The only difference is, with a slower processor, it'll be able to control fewer AI at a time. So while you won't be able to have 100 reasonably intelligent AI, you will get 20 brilliant AI. It's a tradeoff, and will work better for some games than for others.
Add to that truly next generation controls, persistent, free internet service, and yes, more eye candy, and you still end up with a next generation system. The Wii will by no means be as powerful as the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but it will be a comparable solution.
That may be correct, but it's disingenuous. The clock speed is 50% faster. But, at least as far as the GPU is concerned, the GC GPU was created before ArtX was bought out by ATI, and before ATI was making graphics cards with unified shaders and about 12 other technologies that are in current gen pc and the 360 GPU that improve graphics output significantly, irregardless of clockspeed. So if correctly designed, the Wii graphics could be twice as good as GC graphics with the exact same clockspeed.
Why, what video game characters do you beat off to?
They made the Xbox 360 look cheap.
I had to go to wikipedia to check the price of the 360. It's only $399 for the premium system. And I thought to myself, 'That can't be right? That sounds so cheap.' Then I realized, it's because the PS3 is ridiculously expensive.
I'm not going to buy the 360 at $399. I most certainly am not going to buy a relatively crippled PS3 at $499, and $599 is right out. I'll have to get one eventually, but it's gonna be a long, long while before I can justify that sort of purchase.
Nintendo's press conferences are so loud because every single person there, even if they're a Sony or Microsoft fanboy, most likely grew up either playing Nintendo games, or decrying how inferior Nintendo's systems were to Sega's offerings. When you're in a Nintendo press conference, it triggers all these subconcious memories of joy and wonder you experienced during childhood, so everyone there is already in a superhyped state before the conference even actually begins. Miyamoto could walk out on stage, and just say the word "Zelda" and the entire place would scream. Although they'd be a little confused if he walked off, the music stopped, they shut of the lights, and that was it.
I know a lot of Nintendo fanboys are outraged that Sony would steal Nintendo's ideas. But this just validates what Nintendo has been saying all along. It's the way it's always been, other companies in this industry innovate, Sony steals, but they steal well. It works in all other art forms, so it works in videogames as well. And the real winners are the consumers in the end.
On the other hand, what the hell is Sony thinking? No, seriously, are they completely stupid? Why did they go to all the trouble of holding their press conference before Nintendo?
They revealed too much. The new controller. Motion sensing technology. A firm pricetag. Specific release dates. This is now Nintendo's E3 to "win". They don't have to hold anything back. Anything they know, but haven't told us, they can go ahead and tell now. Sony's already blown their load.
If I were Sony, I would have taken great pains to arrange my conference after Nintendo's, even if it had to be early morning on Wednesday, right before the expo opened. Nintendo would have played things close to their chest (as they always do). Microsoft's conference would have absorbed some (probably not a lot, but some) of the hype Nintendo generated. Then Sony could have come back with a solid blow in the motion sensing controller.
Or, even better, they could have kept it silent, and not announced it until a few months before the Wii launched. This would have given them more time to perfect the technology, as well as giving them the chance to demo it with, I don't know, actual games? You know, like what Nintendo is going to do tomorrow.
So, in conclusion, a big Bravo to Sony Technical Operations. Those guys are on the ball. But a big WTF to Sony Marketing. For the first time in a long while you guys have totally failed. No cookie for you.
True, but that doesn't mean that Shadowrun was not based off of the ideas in Gibson's books (which it so obviously was). They added magic and trolls and elves because, well because they wanted to, but a lot of the other stuff draws directly from the books.