It's Xbox incarnation was. From the time Microsoft bought Bungie and told them they needed to have Halo ready or the Xbox launch, they had six months to make Halo 1 as it existed on the Xbox. We all know that all that RTS stuff got totally thrown out. Heck, even Halo 2 was pretty much only done in the last six months or so if you watch the special edition DVD.
Hunt For Red October. It's my undestanding that there's so much boring detail in the book that you could probably actually operate a nuclear submarine after reading it.
Yeah, and by Stephen King, no less. You can probably argue that the majority of the movies adapted from his works (that were released in theaters anyway) were superior to the book.
There's also a fairly good Q&A with the film-makers at Coming Soon!. It's hard to take much of what you read at AintItCool seriously, when you consider that the guy reviews movies from the standpoint of a five year old at best.
Yeah, what's up with the no crosshairs. In real life, I get to line up a front and rear site with my eye, or use a scope that actually does have crosshairs. So, in a video game where I don't have the same sort of depth perception that I do in real life, they take away the only nearly equivalent thing. Not to mention that you can adequately judge a target in real life to be able to make a hip-shot, but it's nearly impossible to do in a game without cross-hairs. There's one way to view your surroundings in Time Crisis 2 that eliminates your crosshairs but allows a more free look, but good luck getting off an accurate shot that way.
While its seems like a big deal, it's really not. All the really good Sega Sports games (in recent years) were actually developed by Visual Concepts anyway. So, sure, they're not owned by Sega anymore, but the studio making the game still exists, and will still be making sports games. So, that's something.
From the Febuary issue of XBN magazine (the last one):
Speaking in December at a Financial Conference, Electronics Arts Cheif Financial Officer Warren Jensen displayed two screenshots purporting to represent the graphical capabilities of both Xenon (Xbox 2) and Playstation 3, claiming that the audience-wait for it-should "imagine the characters in a football game expressing real emotions. That's the kind of thing that's going to be possible with the next generation of technology."
All I know is that the DS (Dual Shock) came out before the first Gran Turismo, because I played with analog contols on that bad-boy. I believe that monkey game (the one with the nets and stuff) was the first on the PS1 that actually required the DS controller though, although I don't see how you could have played Metal Gear Solid without it either. The Dreamcast controller was the first to have analog triggers, which made it the best driving controller (now carried over to the Xbox). The best thing the Xbox controller did was make those dual analog sticks feel more solid, and make them concave on the top so that you weren't tweaking a mushroom top with your thumb, where it could easily slip off. Moreso on the smaller Controller S than the original Duke controller (where the left stick was still mostly mushroom topped).
Re:Why is this news to the slashdot audience?
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EA's Plans for Xbox 2
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So, when the release date for Longhorn is announced, that also won't be 'news for nerds'?
There ain't nothing wrong with Force Feedback (rumble) in controllers. Games is makes a huge difference on are normally FPS' and Racing games, so you can actually feel things that are happening that you can't see. Another great example that comes to mind is how excellently is was used in Metal Gear Solid, all these years ago. That being said, some games, like Rallisport challenge, where it's rumbling the whole time due to the road surface, can lead to a little numbness from time to time.
Isn't so much that they screwed Sega over, yet again, or that real NFL players won't be in any Sega football game, or that the teams won't be either. You could very easily create fake teams that looked like their real-life counterparts, and players that mimicked the real ones, then jsut give options to change the names on everything. The thing you can't get around, however, is that they can't use the real stadiums.
And, as far as I know, they don't have an exclusive license on college football. I think Sega should refocus their efforts on college football, and simply blow away the market while they still have a chance.
I would actually argue that the Playstation 2 appeals less to the true 'hardcore' gamer than any other system. Nintendo caters to the old-school (note that I didn't say 'skool') nostalgic gamer due to it's franchises, and after the death of the Dreamcast, most of the hardcore console gamers went with the Xbox (yes there are other good games besides Halo 2), at least from what I've seen of that former crowd, of which I was one. Mostly because of the fact that Sony pretty much killed the Dreamcast due to initial marketing hype and developer pinching (EA and Squaresoft to start with), to which they are, of course, entitled, but nonetheless, it left a sour Sony taste in many gamer's mouths. No doubt about it, the PS2 succeeded as well as it did because the PS1 was 'cool'. And 'cool' is not what brings the true gamers, as you put it. Games are. And I'm talking about quality, not quantity (which the PS2 obviously has).
I don't own a PS2 because there's not a single game I want for it that I can't get on another console (at least in the long run), its graphic capabilities retained much of that 'PS1 look', and it doesn't have a good online system in my opinion, and the majority of it's top selling games (like the GTA series that you can get on an Xbox as well) don't really interest me. Pretty much all my gaming is done online now, and normally exclusively with people I've known to play games or argued with on message boards for years. I still have no interest in the PSP either, besides the fact it's a cool looking little gadget, simply because I have no interest whatsoever in any of its games. Wipeout? Metal Gear card-battle? Yet another good-yet-overrated Spider-man game? No thanks for now.
Yeah, it does. As a matter of fact, that was pointed out in an episode of X-Play last night, where they showed the physics of Half-Life 2, Theif, Hitman, Halo 2, Psy-ops, and more. If the dumbasses at X-Play know, you'd think the people who actually developed the engine would too.
We all know why they did this. So Sega doesn't have any other licensing options in terms of football. Nobdy actually wants an AFL game, and I bet they won't even make one. It's just so Sega can't. EA sucks monkey balls.
I don't see how your points are a factor. Considering the PSP's specs, it's perfectly capable of handling a large scale 3D environment in a game. There's plenty of capacity on one of those UMDs to support it, and the screen size has an adequate amount of resolution to show acceptable detail in a 3D world. It's not how big a screen is, remember, it's how close you are to it. Lastly, your point about rendering building and framerates on the PC don't really apply due to the unfixed nature of the PC. I'm sure they'd optimize it just fine for the fixed-system PSP, much like was done on the PS2 and Xbox versions.
Except that they come out on other systems later. GTA 3 and Vice City are already out on the Xbox and PC, and San Andreas has already been announced for the Xbox and PC as well. Considering they're superior versions on both platforms, if you have the patience, it bodes well to wait. Like the Xbox versions have custom sountracks, 480p, and widescreen, with better draw distance and framerate. Not knocking the PS2 versions, but those changes do make a difference.
Yeah, I'm the buddy... After looking at other solutions, as well as what we alreay had, we realized the biggest problem was lack of retainment on all the stats, and that Bungie keeps changing the amount of records in the rss files, so we want to keep all the incoming RSS in a database (which Kick The Donkey has done) in a logical fashion, to allow all sorts of ratios, analysis, whathaveyou. That, and Bungie's site, while very functional, kinda sucks, and doesn't allow for cetain things we'd like to see.
I find it very interesting that on a system where it's arguably best game series (in terms of exclusives) is a racing game, that the controller doesn't allow for analog braking/gas simultaneously. Sure you could map the gas/brake to the right thumbstick, but that doesn't allow you to feather the brake while keeping the throttle down, nor to you get real analog control from the L/R1 and 2 shoulder buttons. Not to mention that the thumbsticks on the Xbox pad offer a lot more tactile feedback, as well as more resistance and a better, indented shape to prevent your thumb from slipping off, which makes it better for controlling pretty much anything with dual analog control for movement.
While I'll agree that there are some similarities to the Dreamcast controller (the triggers and main button layout (which is identical to the Dual Shock's), the Dreamcast controller was horribly designed from an ergonomical standpoint, as it required you to tweak your wrists outward in order to hold it, which became quite uncomfortable, even after short playing periods, due to the fact that it was somewhat disc-shaped.
And yeah, except for racing and FPS games, the orginal Xbox controller (aka 'The Duke'), was indeed quite large, but was still more comfortable to play with.
fails to say a word about its evolution? Why would the existing Xbox evolve more with only a year left in its lifespan? I don't give a crap about the system evolving nearly as much as I'd like to know about the evolution of Xbox Live functionality. Not to mention the fact that consoles, which are fixed systems (unlike a PC) don't technically 'evolve' anyway.
You forgot to say fuck to the good racing games (Project Gotham 2), which are online, and the superior versions of all the Tom Clancy games as well. And aren't fanboys the type of people that call systems overhyped and want them to fail? Lemme guess, you think the Dual Shock is the best controller ever made?
No rental pricing on DVDs, so you could just buy them when they came out, instead of being forced to rent. That, and the rapid increase from theaters to home video release, which rapidly makes people choose to skip movies in the theater and just wait a few months for them to come out on DVD. For the price of two people going to the movies, you can wait a couple months and own said movie instead, on a format not subject to wear upon repeat viewings, no less.
Slashdot Mirror
It's Xbox incarnation was. From the time Microsoft bought Bungie and told them they needed to have Halo ready or the Xbox launch, they had six months to make Halo 1 as it existed on the Xbox. We all know that all that RTS stuff got totally thrown out. Heck, even Halo 2 was pretty much only done in the last six months or so if you watch the special edition DVD.
Hunt For Red October. It's my undestanding that there's so much boring detail in the book that you could probably actually operate a nuclear submarine after reading it.
Yeah, and by Stephen King, no less. You can probably argue that the majority of the movies adapted from his works (that were released in theaters anyway) were superior to the book.
There's also a fairly good Q&A with the film-makers at Coming Soon!. It's hard to take much of what you read at AintItCool seriously, when you consider that the guy reviews movies from the standpoint of a five year old at best.
Yeah, what's up with the no crosshairs. In real life, I get to line up a front and rear site with my eye, or use a scope that actually does have crosshairs. So, in a video game where I don't have the same sort of depth perception that I do in real life, they take away the only nearly equivalent thing. Not to mention that you can adequately judge a target in real life to be able to make a hip-shot, but it's nearly impossible to do in a game without cross-hairs. There's one way to view your surroundings in Time Crisis 2 that eliminates your crosshairs but allows a more free look, but good luck getting off an accurate shot that way.
While its seems like a big deal, it's really not. All the really good Sega Sports games (in recent years) were actually developed by Visual Concepts anyway. So, sure, they're not owned by Sega anymore, but the studio making the game still exists, and will still be making sports games. So, that's something.
From the Febuary issue of XBN magazine (the last one):
Speaking in December at a Financial Conference, Electronics Arts Cheif Financial Officer Warren Jensen displayed two screenshots purporting to represent the graphical capabilities of both Xenon (Xbox 2) and Playstation 3, claiming that the audience-wait for it-should "imagine the characters in a football game expressing real emotions. That's the kind of thing that's going to be possible with the next generation of technology."
So that's where that shot came from, BS aside.
All I know is that the DS (Dual Shock) came out before the first Gran Turismo, because I played with analog contols on that bad-boy. I believe that monkey game (the one with the nets and stuff) was the first on the PS1 that actually required the DS controller though, although I don't see how you could have played Metal Gear Solid without it either. The Dreamcast controller was the first to have analog triggers, which made it the best driving controller (now carried over to the Xbox). The best thing the Xbox controller did was make those dual analog sticks feel more solid, and make them concave on the top so that you weren't tweaking a mushroom top with your thumb, where it could easily slip off. Moreso on the smaller Controller S than the original Duke controller (where the left stick was still mostly mushroom topped).
So, when the release date for Longhorn is announced, that also won't be 'news for nerds'?
Since nobody's said it. EA can suck a fart out of my ass.
There ain't nothing wrong with Force Feedback (rumble) in controllers. Games is makes a huge difference on are normally FPS' and Racing games, so you can actually feel things that are happening that you can't see. Another great example that comes to mind is how excellently is was used in Metal Gear Solid, all these years ago. That being said, some games, like Rallisport challenge, where it's rumbling the whole time due to the road surface, can lead to a little numbness from time to time.
Isn't so much that they screwed Sega over, yet again, or that real NFL players won't be in any Sega football game, or that the teams won't be either. You could very easily create fake teams that looked like their real-life counterparts, and players that mimicked the real ones, then jsut give options to change the names on everything. The thing you can't get around, however, is that they can't use the real stadiums.
And, as far as I know, they don't have an exclusive license on college football. I think Sega should refocus their efforts on college football, and simply blow away the market while they still have a chance.
I would actually argue that the Playstation 2 appeals less to the true 'hardcore' gamer than any other system. Nintendo caters to the old-school (note that I didn't say 'skool') nostalgic gamer due to it's franchises, and after the death of the Dreamcast, most of the hardcore console gamers went with the Xbox (yes there are other good games besides Halo 2), at least from what I've seen of that former crowd, of which I was one. Mostly because of the fact that Sony pretty much killed the Dreamcast due to initial marketing hype and developer pinching (EA and Squaresoft to start with), to which they are, of course, entitled, but nonetheless, it left a sour Sony taste in many gamer's mouths. No doubt about it, the PS2 succeeded as well as it did because the PS1 was 'cool'. And 'cool' is not what brings the true gamers, as you put it. Games are. And I'm talking about quality, not quantity (which the PS2 obviously has).
I don't own a PS2 because there's not a single game I want for it that I can't get on another console (at least in the long run), its graphic capabilities retained much of that 'PS1 look', and it doesn't have a good online system in my opinion, and the majority of it's top selling games (like the GTA series that you can get on an Xbox as well) don't really interest me. Pretty much all my gaming is done online now, and normally exclusively with people I've known to play games or argued with on message boards for years. I still have no interest in the PSP either, besides the fact it's a cool looking little gadget, simply because I have no interest whatsoever in any of its games. Wipeout? Metal Gear card-battle? Yet another good-yet-overrated Spider-man game? No thanks for now.
Did you not actuall read my comment? Like I said, yes, Halo 2 uses it's own physics engine, which X-Play got right.
Yeah, it does. As a matter of fact, that was pointed out in an episode of X-Play last night, where they showed the physics of Half-Life 2, Theif, Hitman, Halo 2, Psy-ops, and more. If the dumbasses at X-Play know, you'd think the people who actually developed the engine would too.
We all know why they did this. So Sega doesn't have any other licensing options in terms of football. Nobdy actually wants an AFL game, and I bet they won't even make one. It's just so Sega can't. EA sucks monkey balls.
I don't see how your points are a factor. Considering the PSP's specs, it's perfectly capable of handling a large scale 3D environment in a game. There's plenty of capacity on one of those UMDs to support it, and the screen size has an adequate amount of resolution to show acceptable detail in a 3D world. It's not how big a screen is, remember, it's how close you are to it. Lastly, your point about rendering building and framerates on the PC don't really apply due to the unfixed nature of the PC. I'm sure they'd optimize it just fine for the fixed-system PSP, much like was done on the PS2 and Xbox versions.
Except that they come out on other systems later. GTA 3 and Vice City are already out on the Xbox and PC, and San Andreas has already been announced for the Xbox and PC as well. Considering they're superior versions on both platforms, if you have the patience, it bodes well to wait. Like the Xbox versions have custom sountracks, 480p, and widescreen, with better draw distance and framerate. Not knocking the PS2 versions, but those changes do make a difference.
Has anyone, besides this article, ever had any doubt about the next Xbox launching at the standard 299 price point? I don't think so.
Yeah, I'm the buddy... After looking at other solutions, as well as what we alreay had, we realized the biggest problem was lack of retainment on all the stats, and that Bungie keeps changing the amount of records in the rss files, so we want to keep all the incoming RSS in a database (which Kick The Donkey has done) in a logical fashion, to allow all sorts of ratios, analysis, whathaveyou. That, and Bungie's site, while very functional, kinda sucks, and doesn't allow for cetain things we'd like to see.
Wait, Sony has made a good game? I'm sure they've published plenty, but made? I don't think so.
I find it very interesting that on a system where it's arguably best game series (in terms of exclusives) is a racing game, that the controller doesn't allow for analog braking/gas simultaneously. Sure you could map the gas/brake to the right thumbstick, but that doesn't allow you to feather the brake while keeping the throttle down, nor to you get real analog control from the L/R1 and 2 shoulder buttons. Not to mention that the thumbsticks on the Xbox pad offer a lot more tactile feedback, as well as more resistance and a better, indented shape to prevent your thumb from slipping off, which makes it better for controlling pretty much anything with dual analog control for movement.
While I'll agree that there are some similarities to the Dreamcast controller (the triggers and main button layout (which is identical to the Dual Shock's), the Dreamcast controller was horribly designed from an ergonomical standpoint, as it required you to tweak your wrists outward in order to hold it, which became quite uncomfortable, even after short playing periods, due to the fact that it was somewhat disc-shaped.
And yeah, except for racing and FPS games, the orginal Xbox controller (aka 'The Duke'), was indeed quite large, but was still more comfortable to play with.
fails to say a word about its evolution? Why would the existing Xbox evolve more with only a year left in its lifespan? I don't give a crap about the system evolving nearly as much as I'd like to know about the evolution of Xbox Live functionality. Not to mention the fact that consoles, which are fixed systems (unlike a PC) don't technically 'evolve' anyway.
You forgot to say fuck to the good racing games (Project Gotham 2), which are online, and the superior versions of all the Tom Clancy games as well. And aren't fanboys the type of people that call systems overhyped and want them to fail? Lemme guess, you think the Dual Shock is the best controller ever made?
No rental pricing on DVDs, so you could just buy them when they came out, instead of being forced to rent. That, and the rapid increase from theaters to home video release, which rapidly makes people choose to skip movies in the theater and just wait a few months for them to come out on DVD. For the price of two people going to the movies, you can wait a couple months and own said movie instead, on a format not subject to wear upon repeat viewings, no less.