PSP, even with the official firmware, is much, much better choice than DS if media playback is of importance. In fact, PSP Lite with the fat battery is a very nice portable media player when compared to just about anything out there.
Yeah, we all should hate Sony and yadayadaaa... but it's a great piece of hardware, just like PS3.
In some games, yes. As a sidenote, I got sucked into the hype and bought a DS. I hate the touch screen controls, they are basically of no use at all in *real* games, which admittedly can't be found in great numbers on DS. Touch screen is fine for minigames or as a mouse pointer replacement in general, but mostly rubbish elsewhere. Thankfully developers have realised this by now and make do just with the D-pad and the buttons in action games.
The games suck.
For you, maybe. There are heaps of junk for DS, too, not to mention lots of quirky non-game shit which, for some reason, sells like hot cakes in Japan.
- I'll pick one up in a couple rev's just to have a decent browser.
Nokia's high-end smartphones have had a WebCore and JavaScriptCore based browser for a long time now. It offers very similar feature set as the Safari on iPhone (including full page view, ability to zoom in, good JavaScript support for AJAX applications etc.), which isn't surprising since Safari is based on the same core.
However, it sounds much nicer than it is in practice. All that scrolling around (especially horizontal) drives you mad after a while if you actually want to *read* something. If the iPhone supports browsing in landscape mode (480 pixels if I recall correctly) it might be close to usable. Have a look at the flash demo in the S60 page ("See the big picture"). Also, you must be using WiFi or 3G as otherwise loading the pages takes ages.
Still, there are people who think that the S60 Browser is the best thing since sliced bread, so maybe it's just me. My mobile browsing is mostly just checking some news sites, not shopping at Amazon.com like in the S60 demo:)
599 Euros (Mainland Europe price) = £394.77. They're adding another £30 because the UK is known for swallowing higher prices than everywhere else.
The current information is that PS3 will be 649 EUR in Finland - but I wouldn't be too surprised if they pumped it up to 699 EUR ($900!) before launch. The price includes 22% VAT. The difference in VAT doesn't explain the 50 EUR difference to the price in most other EU countries. It's just a blatant rip off attempt by the Finnish distributor.
Microsoft tried to rip us off too when they released the original Xbox in 2002. The price was 500 EUR here in Finland, and about 300 EUR everywhere else (except in Ireland!). Well, they sold maybe 14 of them and were forced to drop the price to 300 EUR just a few weeks after the release AND give two free games and an extra controller for anyone who bought one for 500 EUR.
I'm actually hoping that PS3 does well, because there is a bunch of interesting games coming out in 2007 and 2008, but I wish that European gamers simply withstand from buying one at the current prices. It simply isn't worth it with the launch games (although the launch should be better than the US one).
Sony's been very arrogant towards especially European gamers lately, maybe it's time for some arrogance from us, too.
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
·
· Score: 1
You have to be on crack to think that the PS3 or the 360 had better launch titles.
Apart from one standout title for both PS3 (Resistance) and Wii (Zelda) there isn't much of a difference as far as scores gotten from reviews are considered. Both consoles have an equally uninteresting selection of very typical average-ish launch games. Except Zelda and Resistance there is nothing I'm even vaguely interested in. Just have a look at Metacritic and sort the games by score. PS3 has eight titles with a score of 80 or above, Wii has three.
Interestingly, all the multiplatformers (such as Call of Duty 3 you mentioned) released so far on both consoles are better on PS3, because they have better graphics, some have online play and, wait for this, PS3 versions have better controls. Surprisingly many Wii reviews complain about "annoying", "gimmicky", "clumsy" and "tacked on" controls.
There are some of us who see the ability to return to some of our childhood favorites as a huge selling point...
Sure, but many of those games (except Nintendo titles) are or will be available for PS2 and Xbox as part of those "classics" collections which are probably better value for money anyway (dozens of titles for $30 or so, instead of one title for $8).
"The original question posted indicates that this person runs a business, and does make money, and therefore can afford healthcare. Does Australia provide healthcare for anybody that wants it, regardless of income? If not, then his answer is off topic and deserving of nothing more than to be trolled."
Here where I live (northern Europe) free public healthcare is provided for anyone with the same quality of service regardless of their income. I'm almost 100% sure it's the same in Australia.
PS2 has more ">85/100" titles than the total number of games available for Xbox 360, Wii and PS3. PS2 is an excellent choice if you want to play some great games right now, instead of waiting for new Mario, new MGS or Halo3.
However, I don't like this new S60 Browser at all. The idea of scrolling around a web page which has been rendered exactly as it would appear on a big display is simply horrible from a usability viewpoint. It's surely a nice gimmick to show off to people, but actual surfing with it is pretty much impossible.
If the PS3 version of games is inferior to the Xbox 360 version, I don't see why anyone would want to purchase a PS3.
I'd rather not make the final judgment based on one game alone especially when Xbox 360 has been out for a year already and devs have almost two years of experience on it. But yes, I'd certainly take the Xbox360 version of Tony Hawk over PS3 version (unless I'd get a PS3 with it...)
Anyway, here is one big - no, it's HUGE - reason why anyone would want to purchase a PS3:
The prospect of fucking excellent games in the near future is impossible to pass by. PS2 had the best game library overall of the previous gen consoles (although Xbox was clearly superior for online gaming) thanks to lots of exclusives or titles which were exclusive for a good while (like GTA) from Sony itself or Sony-committed developers.
Stuff such as new MGS, new Gran Turismo, new stuff from Insomniac (Ratchet & Clank, Resistance), new stuff from God of War developers, new stuff from Ico/Colossus developers, new stuff from Naughty Dog (Jak), new GTA, new Devil May Cry, Katamari/Okami-type Japanese weirdness..Not to mention great versions of multiplatformers. All these games make it very difficult to pass the PS3 altogether unless you're a dedicated Sony hater. I can understand not wanting one at launch, however.
Yes, plenty of sequels in my list above, but before you start screaming "same shit with new graphics" have look at Wii launch list for comparison: only two or three of the launch games are NOT sequels, multiplatformers or rehashes of old franchise. And with the wii you don't even get better graphics, only new controls which may or may not work.
Besides Zelda there's pretty much nothing worth getting a Wii for...and even that will be available for Gamecube.
What about the class library? Is this going to make GNU classpath unnecessary?
Does somebody actually use GNU classpath?
According to the project page, version 1.0 (it's now at 0.9x...) will be "largely" compliant with Java 1.2 API, which means that it's unusable for any serious work, especially if you want to use any of the numerous popular frameworks and libraries.
I don't want to be harsh, but in my view GNU classpath has been quite unnecessary from the beginning.
Or why I should give twice as much money to M$ or $ony for mostly the same games I've been playing for the last 15 years?
New PS3/Xbox360 games are no more "the same games" than the new rehashes of Mario, Zelda, Metroid and so on you will be getting for the Wii. Yes, you'll get a new control method (not necessarily better), but there is more to a game than just the controls.
I predict that Nintendo will be pretty much the only publisher whose games will actually benefit from Wiimote, or at least try to enhance the gameplay with Wiimote controls. The others will release simple point-shoot-and-tilt-the-wiimote games or multiplatform ports with Wiimote controls shoehorned onto them.
By the way, why should I pay $$$ to Nintendo for playing 15 year old games on the Virtual Console? Those games are *exactly* the same they were back then.
I've never used Xbox Live, so I have a question concerning it: Are less popular or older games ever removed from the service, rendering them unplayable online thereafter? EA likes to remove online support for the PlayStation versions of older (as in two years old) sports titles in order to force players to purchase a newer version. Does this occur with the titles that are playable on Xbox Live, by chance?
Yes, apparently EA has pulled the plug on some of their older Live titles. However, if I have understood correctly, all the non-EA Live titles ever released are still playable online.
The last huge platformer innovation was Mario 64 almost a decade ago!
Innovation, maybe, but there has been a bunch of clearly better platformers after Mario 64. I have to confess that I haven't played the original Super Mario 64, only the DS version which is basically the same game. It's a good game, but I was put off by the "innovative" control system which made it very cumbersome to play.
And no, most genres have not advanced, they've been at a freakin' standstill for almost a decade(or all but died, like adventure games and shooters).
Yes, adventure games are pretty much dead. I enjoyed the Infocom games such as Zork series a lot (on CP/M). The last great (mostly) text based adventures, in my opinion, were released my Magnetic Scrolls in the late 80's and early 90's. I think they were killed by graphical adventures such as Monkey Island and others as PCs got more powerful. However, to be honest, I'll rather play a graphical adventure with a great plot than a purely text-based game on an amber 80x24 terminal or any of the RPGs you mentioned instead of Nethack.
Fucking kids and their playstations. Yea, your opinion on video games is irrelevant. Please, please, stick to the PS3. I really do not want to be associated with your ilk.
I don't know if you're specifically referring to me as a "fucking kid", but I've been playing video games on different systems (C64, Sinclair Spectrum, MSX, PC, Playstation, PS2, Xbox, Nintendo DS) since the mid-eighties or so. The chances are that you haven't played much longer.
I say it. What do we have to look forward on the PS3? Riiiiiidge racer and a 1,000 more titles that are simply rehashes of games gone by with larger version numbers.
It's funny you should say that. Let's see what do we have to look forward on the Wii: new Mario, new Zelda, new Metroid, new Super Monkey Ball, new Rayman, new Tony Hawk, new Call of Duty, new Madden, new Metal Slug, Trauma Center (already seen on DS), new SpongeBob plus a couple of new exclusive titles which may or may not be good. GT Pro launch game is just a port of an old (crap) driving game already released for GameCube in Japan. After a year or two we will get a new round of Mario, Zelda and Metroid and maybe even Resident Evil or a new Pokemon game! Nintendo, if anyone, is known for recycling their franchise year after year. The first Super Mario on the DS was just a port of the N64 version.
With the Virtual Console you get to play 15 year old games in an emulator. I guess that's much touted innovation.
[developers and lack of power]
Yes, I've heard this said many times, but the context has *always* been graphics, not gameplay.
Not always. For example, Splinter Cell on PS2 had smaller redesigned levels (smaller) when compared to the Xbox version. Of course it's arguable whether that had an effect on the gameplay or not. Choppier graphics and slowdowns in the PS2 version certainly made it less enjoyable.
[lack of multiplatformers]
Are you saying that Wii owners won't be subjected to AMAZING multiplatform hits like Naruto, King Kong, Under the Hedge, Monster House, Cars, One Piece, et. al? Thank GOD, I was worried about that.
Yes, most of multiplatformers are rubbish and I don't care for most them either. Then again, there are great multiplatform games too. I'm just trying to say that lack of multiplatformers combined with Nintendo's unability to produce enough exclusive AAA+ titles for Wii will probably kill it in the long run. In order to succeed a console needs a large selection of games catering for everybody - just look at PS2. Why do I think that Wii will not have too many great exclusives? Look at Gamecube's library. Two or three great games per year is simply not enough.
You seem to only be able to equate quality games with high-end graphics, but you are sadly mistaken.
No. Gameplay is, in the end, what matters. However, great graphics will make a great game even better. If I get to choose between great gameplay or great gameplay AND great graphics, I'll go for the latter. It's as simple as that. Just for the record, my all time favourite game has to be Dungeon Master on Atari ST. Great atmosphere and almost flawless gameplay combined with nice graphics for the time (which contributed a lot to the atmosphere).
Anyway, have fun playing Mario Skeet Shooting or whatever on your Wii. I'll be playing something else.
I'm just totally over the idea of paying $500+ for a machine, and $50+ for games, when they're extremely high-res, high-speed, and SHIT.
Who says PS3 games will be shit? Great gameplay and great visuals are not mutually exclusive.
The Wii gives me hope that there's something out there for people who like gameplay, not graphics, and have better things to spend the big bucks on than a friggin' procrastinaion console. Nice one, Nintendo.
Who says Wii games will have better gameplay? Wiimote alone doesn't guarantee great gameplay, as controls are only a part of the equation. Besides, nobody (except developers with lots of hands-on experience) really knows whether Wiimote is any good.
The gameplay on Wii must be stunning if the release games look like this:
GT Pro screenshots (oh, please do not start talking about the Wii Splinter Cell shots, they were taken from a PC development board and still looked horrible)
To me, PS3 and Xbox360 represent progress. Releasing an old console in a new casing (Wii) is not progress. Ask any developer what they would like to improve on the platform they are developing for and the most likely answer is "more memory, more storage, faster CPU and better graphics". Wii fans seem to have a very hard time understanding that performance and the ability to display great graphics is not a big, evil gameplay-killing monster. It's exactly the opposite: the more resources you have at your disposal, the less compromises you have to make in terms of gameplay. Do you know how many times developers have said to themselves "we would have loved to do that, but PS2/Xbox/Gamecube couldn't handle it"? Expect to see lots of "multiplatform" games released for both PS3 and Xbox 360, but not for Wii because making compromises isn't worth it.
Advances in technology have made games like Oblivion possible. Is Oblivion better than the RPG games we had ten years ago? Yes, it definitely is. Similar examples can be found in any genre.
ps. I too do think that PS3 pricing is crazy and won't be getting one anytime soon, but the road Sony is taking (i.e. push absolute cutting edge technology to the market) is, in the long run, the right one for Sony and the gamers too.
Then how do you explain the success of the PS2, despite its crappy 3D? Because let's face it, except for a handfull of games such as the Gran Tourismo serie, the Gamecube is far superior to the PS2 in terms of graphics
Explaining the success of PS2 is easy: extremely strong Playstation brand, good timing and, most importantly of all, superior game library. PS2 has by far the best selection of games for any console ever. PS2 offers something for everyone, whereas Gamecube is seriously lacking in some genres (most notably shooters, driving games and non-cutesy action).
I'm not alone with my opinion that PS2 has the best games. In Gamerankings.com there are 40 titles for PS2 which have got a score of 90/100 or more. For Gamecube there are only 16 titles with a score above 90/100.
Lack of great games killed Gamecube. One or two truly great games per year is not enough - I hope Nintendo is not making the same mistake with Wii.
(and so was the Dreamcast, at least in terms of resolution)
So what should MS do different? They cant. They lost, like the PS3 will loose. Because none of those have new concepts. They are just "better graphics". No, that will not make anyone buy it. Not the masses. The masses will buy something like Wii. A system that has an innovation, and that makes fun. Yes, some nerds will get the PS3, and so on. But they wont make the cash come in.
I think that you're wrong when you claim that the masses want innovation. I say that the masses want next gen graphics and the next GTA/Gran Turismo/Halo. As much as I'd like to see Wii succeed (and other consoles too; more choice is always good) I'm afraid it will do well only in Japan and hold the third spot pretty much everywhere else.
After all, Wii is basically just a slightly enhanced Gamecube with a novel controller, whose actual usability is still a big question mark.
Wii's lineup will consist of the same multiplatform stuff that is available for PS3 and Xbox360 (only with much better graphics on the other consoles; multiplatform games are also unlikely to take advantage of the new controller) plus the usual set of Mario/Zelda/Metroid sequels from Nintendo. If you didn't care for Mario & co earlier, you won't care now either.
Also, the ability to download and play old emulated games is likely to appeal to a very limited audience - this is "nerd" territory if anything.
...That, and so the English speaking world could enjoy the film too. If it's subtitled, might as well just throw it into a PDF story book format.
The English speaking world cannot read or what's the problem with subtitles?
I'll take subtitles any day over badly spoken English or, worse yet, dubbing.
BTW, did you notice the guy talking on the Sony pressconference sounded pretty depressed after the Wii presentation the previous day:) they've all the reasons to be.
Sony has no reason to be depressed or worried about Wii at all.
I've wondered about this before and I still don't get it: Sony sucks for releasing a truly next gen console ("no innovation!") and Nintendo rocks for releasing Gamecube in a new case ("innovation!") and a new controller?
Many Nintendo fans seem to think that Nintendo will win the "console war" with Wii. Somehow I just don't think that a new (yet unproven) controller and an ability to play old classics will be enough. Also, if you didn't care for Mario/Zelda/Metroid this time around, you are unlikely to care about them on the Wii either.
Wii's problem is that the masses expect gorgeous next gen gaming from the new consoles and Wii simply cannot deliver it.
Sony failed to show much of anything particularly impressive from their extra year of development. Graphically, things seem to have regressed since last year - perhaps since last year they were showing mocked-up CG rather than real footage.
I find it quite amusing that people are slagging Sony off for not showing anything impressive. Off screen footage of games shown at E3 that is available on various sites looks quite impressive to me, definitely "next gen" - as it should be.
Actual gameplay is of course what matters in the end and the pricing is quite horrible. Then again, PS2 and Xbox launched at about 500EUR where I live, so it's not that bad in comparison.
Nintendo, on the other hand, is getting all the praise for showing off Gamecube in a new casing with an interesting controller.
Not sure how they did it but the installer said something along the lines of "Sun JRE not detected" and offered to install it for me, wouldn't let me continue if I did not.
Don't reall exactly which JVM I was trying to use at the time, perhaps it was LaTTE?
No wonder the installer refused to continue. In fact, it's a small miracle that LaTTe (a result of a research project, apparently) was able to start it in the first place, as it seems to implement only a small subset of Java 1.1 features rendering it totally unusable for running anything real - even when Java 1.1 was the latest release. Java 1.2 was released eight years ago.
I've never quite understood why people seem to think that open sourcing Java would magically solve all the problems. For example, memory usage and relatively slow GUI performance seem to be one of the major gripes. Does someone really think that a bunch of open source coders who have never seen the sources before would be able to improve it in any reasonable time if the engineers at Sun cannot?
And how many (smart) OS coders would actually care?
However, fixing the relatively small bugs and annoyances in the standard Java libraries is certainly something that could be done by the 'community', as Sun seems to be notoriously slow in fixing some of the bugs..
Slashdot Mirror
PSP, even with the official firmware, is much, much better choice than DS if media playback is of importance. In fact, PSP Lite with the fat battery is a very nice portable media player when compared to just about anything out there.
Yeah, we all should hate Sony and yadayadaaa... but it's a great piece of hardware, just like PS3.
For you, maybe. There are heaps of junk for DS, too, not to mention lots of quirky non-game shit which, for some reason, sells like hot cakes in Japan.
http://www.metacritic.com/games/psp/scores/http://www.metacritic.com/games/ds/scores/
Nokia's high-end smartphones have had a WebCore and JavaScriptCore based browser for a long time now. It offers very similar feature set as the Safari on iPhone (including full page view, ability to zoom in, good JavaScript support for AJAX applications etc.), which isn't surprising since Safari is based on the same core.
http://www.s60.com/business/productinfo/applicat ionsandtechnologies/webrowser/
However, it sounds much nicer than it is in practice. All that scrolling around (especially horizontal) drives you mad after a while if you actually want to *read* something. If the iPhone supports browsing in landscape mode (480 pixels if I recall correctly) it might be close to usable. Have a look at the flash demo in the S60 page ("See the big picture"). Also, you must be using WiFi or 3G as otherwise loading the pages takes ages.
Still, there are people who think that the S60 Browser is the best thing since sliced bread, so maybe it's just me. My mobile browsing is mostly just checking some news sites, not shopping at Amazon.com like in the S60 demo :)
The current information is that PS3 will be 649 EUR in Finland - but I wouldn't be too surprised if they pumped it up to 699 EUR ($900!) before launch. The price includes 22% VAT. The difference in VAT doesn't explain the 50 EUR difference to the price in most other EU countries. It's just a blatant rip off attempt by the Finnish distributor.
Microsoft tried to rip us off too when they released the original Xbox in 2002. The price was 500 EUR here in Finland, and about 300 EUR everywhere else (except in Ireland!). Well, they sold maybe 14 of them and were forced to drop the price to 300 EUR just a few weeks after the release AND give two free games and an extra controller for anyone who bought one for 500 EUR.
I'm actually hoping that PS3 does well, because there is a bunch of interesting games coming out in 2007 and 2008, but I wish that European gamers simply withstand from buying one at the current prices. It simply isn't worth it with the launch games (although the launch should be better than the US one).
Sony's been very arrogant towards especially European gamers lately, maybe it's time for some arrogance from us, too.
Apart from one standout title for both PS3 (Resistance) and Wii (Zelda) there isn't much of a difference as far as scores gotten from reviews are considered. Both consoles have an equally uninteresting selection of very typical average-ish launch games. Except Zelda and Resistance there is nothing I'm even vaguely interested in. Just have a look at Metacritic and sort the games by score. PS3 has eight titles with a score of 80 or above, Wii has three.
Interestingly, all the multiplatformers (such as Call of Duty 3 you mentioned) released so far on both consoles are better on PS3, because they have better graphics, some have online play and, wait for this, PS3 versions have better controls. Surprisingly many Wii reviews complain about "annoying", "gimmicky", "clumsy" and "tacked on" controls.
Sure, but many of those games (except Nintendo titles) are or will be available for PS2 and Xbox as part of those "classics" collections which are probably better value for money anyway (dozens of titles for $30 or so, instead of one title for $8).
Here where I live (northern Europe) free public healthcare is provided for anyone with the same quality of service regardless of their income. I'm almost 100% sure it's the same in Australia.
PS2 has more ">85/100" titles than the total number of games available for Xbox 360, Wii and PS3. PS2 is an excellent choice if you want to play some great games right now, instead of waiting for new Mario, new MGS or Halo3.
N80 built-in browser is most definitely not Opera Mobile. It's the new Safari-related S60 browser which uses lots of open source technology:
S60 browser
However, I don't like this new S60 Browser at all. The idea of scrolling around a web page which has been rendered exactly as it would appear on a big display is simply horrible from a usability viewpoint. It's surely a nice gimmick to show off to people, but actual surfing with it is pretty much impossible.
I'd rather not make the final judgment based on one game alone especially when Xbox 360 has been out for a year already and devs have almost two years of experience on it. But yes, I'd certainly take the Xbox360 version of Tony Hawk over PS3 version (unless I'd get a PS3 with it...)
Anyway, here is one big - no, it's HUGE - reason why anyone would want to purchase a PS3:
The prospect of fucking excellent games in the near future is impossible to pass by. PS2 had the best game library overall of the previous gen consoles (although Xbox was clearly superior for online gaming) thanks to lots of exclusives or titles which were exclusive for a good while (like GTA) from Sony itself or Sony-committed developers.
Stuff such as new MGS, new Gran Turismo, new stuff from Insomniac (Ratchet & Clank, Resistance), new stuff from God of War developers, new stuff from Ico/Colossus developers, new stuff from Naughty Dog (Jak), new GTA, new Devil May Cry, Katamari/Okami-type Japanese weirdness..Not to mention great versions of multiplatformers. All these games make it very difficult to pass the PS3 altogether unless you're a dedicated Sony hater. I can understand not wanting one at launch, however.
Yes, plenty of sequels in my list above, but before you start screaming "same shit with new graphics" have look at Wii launch list for comparison: only two or three of the launch games are NOT sequels, multiplatformers or rehashes of old franchise. And with the wii you don't even get better graphics, only new controls which may or may not work.
Besides Zelda there's pretty much nothing worth getting a Wii for...and even that will be available for Gamecube.
New PS3/Xbox360 games are no more "the same games" than the new rehashes of Mario, Zelda, Metroid and so on you will be getting for the Wii. Yes, you'll get a new control method (not necessarily better), but there is more to a game than just the controls.
I predict that Nintendo will be pretty much the only publisher whose games will actually benefit from Wiimote, or at least try to enhance the gameplay with Wiimote controls. The others will release simple point-shoot-and-tilt-the-wiimote games or multiplatform ports with Wiimote controls shoehorned onto them.
By the way, why should I pay $$$ to Nintendo for playing 15 year old games on the Virtual Console? Those games are *exactly* the same they were back then.
Less pixels doesn't necessarily mean a better game, either. Great graphics and great gameplay are not mutually exclusive.
It will all end up in tears if Wiimote doesn't deliver.
Yes they do, most if not all Nokia's Symbian S60 3rd edition devices are supported: Opera Mobile download page
No more online play for EA's back catalogue
Innovation, maybe, but there has been a bunch of clearly better platformers after Mario 64. I have to confess that I haven't played the original Super Mario 64, only the DS version which is basically the same game. It's a good game, but I was put off by the "innovative" control system which made it very cumbersome to play.
Yes, adventure games are pretty much dead. I enjoyed the Infocom games such as Zork series a lot (on CP/M). The last great (mostly) text based adventures, in my opinion, were released my Magnetic Scrolls in the late 80's and early 90's. I think they were killed by graphical adventures such as Monkey Island and others as PCs got more powerful. However, to be honest, I'll rather play a graphical adventure with a great plot than a purely text-based game on an amber 80x24 terminal or any of the RPGs you mentioned instead of Nethack.
I don't know if you're specifically referring to me as a "fucking kid", but I've been playing video games on different systems (C64, Sinclair Spectrum, MSX, PC, Playstation, PS2, Xbox, Nintendo DS) since the mid-eighties or so. The chances are that you haven't played much longer.
It's funny you should say that. Let's see what do we have to look forward on the Wii: new Mario, new Zelda, new Metroid, new Super Monkey Ball, new Rayman, new Tony Hawk, new Call of Duty, new Madden, new Metal Slug, Trauma Center (already seen on DS), new SpongeBob plus a couple of new exclusive titles which may or may not be good. GT Pro launch game is just a port of an old (crap) driving game already released for GameCube in Japan. After a year or two we will get a new round of Mario, Zelda and Metroid and maybe even Resident Evil or a new Pokemon game! Nintendo, if anyone, is known for recycling their franchise year after year. The first Super Mario on the DS was just a port of the N64 version.
With the Virtual Console you get to play 15 year old games in an emulator. I guess that's much touted innovation.
[developers and lack of power]Not always. For example, Splinter Cell on PS2 had smaller redesigned levels (smaller) when compared to the Xbox version. Of course it's arguable whether that had an effect on the gameplay or not. Choppier graphics and slowdowns in the PS2 version certainly made it less enjoyable.
[lack of multiplatformers]Yes, most of multiplatformers are rubbish and I don't care for most them either. Then again, there are great multiplatform games too. I'm just trying to say that lack of multiplatformers combined with Nintendo's unability to produce enough exclusive AAA+ titles for Wii will probably kill it in the long run. In order to succeed a console needs a large selection of games catering for everybody - just look at PS2. Why do I think that Wii will not have too many great exclusives? Look at Gamecube's library. Two or three great games per year is simply not enough.
No. Gameplay is, in the end, what matters. However, great graphics will make a great game even better. If I get to choose between great gameplay or great gameplay AND great graphics, I'll go for the latter. It's as simple as that. Just for the record, my all time favourite game has to be Dungeon Master on Atari ST. Great atmosphere and almost flawless gameplay combined with nice graphics for the time (which contributed a lot to the atmosphere).
Anyway, have fun playing Mario Skeet Shooting or whatever on your Wii. I'll be playing something else.
Who says PS3 games will be shit? Great gameplay and great visuals are not mutually exclusive.
Who says Wii games will have better gameplay? Wiimote alone doesn't guarantee great gameplay, as controls are only a part of the equation. Besides, nobody (except developers with lots of hands-on experience) really knows whether Wiimote is any good.
The gameplay on Wii must be stunning if the release games look like this: GT Pro screenshots (oh, please do not start talking about the Wii Splinter Cell shots, they were taken from a PC development board and still looked horrible)
To me, PS3 and Xbox360 represent progress. Releasing an old console in a new casing (Wii) is not progress. Ask any developer what they would like to improve on the platform they are developing for and the most likely answer is "more memory, more storage, faster CPU and better graphics". Wii fans seem to have a very hard time understanding that performance and the ability to display great graphics is not a big, evil gameplay-killing monster. It's exactly the opposite: the more resources you have at your disposal, the less compromises you have to make in terms of gameplay. Do you know how many times developers have said to themselves "we would have loved to do that, but PS2/Xbox/Gamecube couldn't handle it"? Expect to see lots of "multiplatform" games released for both PS3 and Xbox 360, but not for Wii because making compromises isn't worth it.
Advances in technology have made games like Oblivion possible. Is Oblivion better than the RPG games we had ten years ago? Yes, it definitely is. Similar examples can be found in any genre.
ps. I too do think that PS3 pricing is crazy and won't be getting one anytime soon, but the road Sony is taking (i.e. push absolute cutting edge technology to the market) is, in the long run, the right one for Sony and the gamers too.
Explaining the success of PS2 is easy: extremely strong Playstation brand, good timing and, most importantly of all, superior game library. PS2 has by far the best selection of games for any console ever. PS2 offers something for everyone, whereas Gamecube is seriously lacking in some genres (most notably shooters, driving games and non-cutesy action).
I'm not alone with my opinion that PS2 has the best games. In Gamerankings.com there are 40 titles for PS2 which have got a score of 90/100 or more. For Gamecube there are only 16 titles with a score above 90/100.
Lack of great games killed Gamecube. One or two truly great games per year is not enough - I hope Nintendo is not making the same mistake with Wii.
No, it wasn't.
I think that you're wrong when you claim that the masses want innovation. I say that the masses want next gen graphics and the next GTA/Gran Turismo/Halo. As much as I'd like to see Wii succeed (and other consoles too; more choice is always good) I'm afraid it will do well only in Japan and hold the third spot pretty much everywhere else.
After all, Wii is basically just a slightly enhanced Gamecube with a novel controller, whose actual usability is still a big question mark.
Wii's lineup will consist of the same multiplatform stuff that is available for PS3 and Xbox360 (only with much better graphics on the other consoles; multiplatform games are also unlikely to take advantage of the new controller) plus the usual set of Mario/Zelda/Metroid sequels from Nintendo. If you didn't care for Mario & co earlier, you won't care now either.
Also, the ability to download and play old emulated games is likely to appeal to a very limited audience - this is "nerd" territory if anything.I've wondered about this before and I still don't get it: Sony sucks for releasing a truly next gen console ("no innovation!") and Nintendo rocks for releasing Gamecube in a new case ("innovation!") and a new controller?
Many Nintendo fans seem to think that Nintendo will win the "console war" with Wii. Somehow I just don't think that a new (yet unproven) controller and an ability to play old classics will be enough. Also, if you didn't care for Mario/Zelda/Metroid this time around, you are unlikely to care about them on the Wii either. Wii's problem is that the masses expect gorgeous next gen gaming from the new consoles and Wii simply cannot deliver it.
Actual gameplay is of course what matters in the end and the pricing is quite horrible. Then again, PS2 and Xbox launched at about 500EUR where I live, so it's not that bad in comparison.
Nintendo, on the other hand, is getting all the praise for showing off Gamecube in a new casing with an interesting controller.
In addition to adding their own stuff, Microsoft's JVM didn't support RMI which was (and still is) a part of Sun's JVM.
No wonder the installer refused to continue. In fact, it's a small miracle that LaTTe (a result of a research project, apparently) was able to start it in the first place, as it seems to implement only a small subset of Java 1.1 features rendering it totally unusable for running anything real - even when Java 1.1 was the latest release. Java 1.2 was released eight years ago.
I've never quite understood why people seem to think that open sourcing Java would magically solve all the problems. For example, memory usage and relatively slow GUI performance seem to be one of the major gripes. Does someone really think that a bunch of open source coders who have never seen the sources before would be able to improve it in any reasonable time if the engineers at Sun cannot?
And how many (smart) OS coders would actually care?
However, fixing the relatively small bugs and annoyances in the standard Java libraries is certainly something that could be done by the 'community', as Sun seems to be notoriously slow in fixing some of the bugs..