If journalists fail to understand what the Wii is about, what makes you think the general public will understand? The general public is going to see the Wii as gimicky, while gamers who pay attention are going to realize what nintendo is doing and be interested. Sure, they may gain marketshare with the general public by introduction through gamers, but average non-gamer joe is not going to see a Wii at walmart and think of it as a must-have.
True, but you are looking at the overall market. Regardless of Nintendo's target market, their main market is gamers. Sure, I'm sure the Wii will target more of the general market than the 360 or ps3, but their primary market is still going to be gamers and their kids.
And I bet the HD adoption rate of gamers is higher than the general population by a significant margin. And while HD adoption rates right now are low, the price of HD TVs is approaching standard TVs, and the release of HD-DVD and blu-ray players will likely raise adoption rates as well.
Compared to the 360 and PS3, the Wii will look last gen. And while I'm sure that doesn't really matter to Nintendo, and that the console will be fun regardless, this means that essentially the only games worth purchasing for it will be exclusives, as the games will generally look much better on the competition (and this is assuming that either MS and Sony will release a similar controller, or that cross-platform developers will shortcut and adopt gimicky features for the Wii, if any). I'm still getting a Wii, but it would be nice if they at least supported widescreen or 720p (some xbox games had 720p and I doubt development costs were that much more, as even less had HD sets for the xbox).
"While Oblivion does have its share of bugs, the only slowness I noticed was after playing for a while and letting the game cache get fragmented."
What about the dirty disk errors that pop up at random? (the oblivion tech forum is rampant with them, so I know it wasn't just the two machines I tried). Yah, I know how to clear the cache, but have you tried riding a horse? The loading every 3 seconds is unbearable. And the fact that with a PC with similar specs to the 360 gets farther grass draw distance is perplexing.
"You should clarify that the DVD-ROM is loud when it's spinning at full speed. The machine itself (fan noise) is very quiet"
I disagree, the fan noise is very noticable (it is an annoying whirling sound) when playing some games. I can somewhat forgive the DVD noise, but why couldn't they have included a 60gig drive (not much more expensive than a 20) so some games parts could be loaded onto it? (perhaps the batch was bad, as the two xboxes were from the same shipping batch, but I doubt it). The PC version of oblivion loads twice as fast. I hope the PS3 doesn't make the same mistake and allows games to be loaded onto the hard drive.
"You're dinging the 360 for not doing something it never claimed to do."
From the MS 360 website: "But Xbox 360 is also the center of your digital entertainment world." This is a hard feat to achieve if it supports only MS formats (plus mp3) and doesn't support the most popular format for digital video.
The problem is that the 360 doesn't even correctly extend MS Media Center formats. You can get divx to play with MS Media Center, but it will not extend it to the 360. The only explanation is they disabled it on purpose.
"As for having limited component video inputs, get yourself a mux. I'm preferential to Audio Authority's 1154A, but you don't need to spend > $200 on a mux. You can find decent ones (minus auto-switching, audio format conversion, and the cool rack-friendly form-factor) for less than $50. You do realize the PS2 can do component output, right? The graphics will still look PS2-bad, but the color and sharpness will be better (and if you have a game that can support 480p, like GT4, you can only do that over component)."
Thanks, that is my next investment. I got the PS2 for romance of the three kingdoms, which still uses SNES era graphics, so I figured component would be moot.
"Who currently owns the property? You have to track down the series of sales of IP until you hopefully find the right company you need to deal with. This is painful."
This is very true, but I know a decent amount of people would be willing to shell out $5 for betrayal at krondor with the original soundtrack, with perhaps an updated color palate. And I'm sure there are some other 32 bit games that would get a lot of downloads that would not be hard to convert, but you are right, you have all the liscensing problems.
The thing is, I downloaded outpost kaloki (sp?), geometry wars, and zuma. and thought "what a great idea this is aweseome". A week later I was done with these games, and nothing else on live interests me, and 360 live has been out almost a year.
I did not outright dismiss the 360, but once live has a good deal more of games, they switch to the smaller processer (early 2007 I believe), and some more games are out I'll probably pick one up. divx support and the ability to load games onto the hard drive would be a dealbreaker for me.
I had a 360 for about a week, took it back, and got a ps2 (for a specific game, plus some cash in the pocket). First of all, they did a great job with the dashboard, it looks slick and you can customize it. The achievements, gamerscore, and interaction with other gamers are genius. Geometry wars and burnout were some of the funnest I've had playing games ever. Downloading demos was genius as well, I had as much fun downloading and trying new games as I did playing ones I paid for.
So why did I take it back? Well, perhaps I wouldn't have if street fighter II was out already and Oblivion wasn't such a bugfest (and runs suprisingly slow at times for a 360 game). The machine is noticibly loud (I even took it back and got another and it was still loud). If I had an enclosed cabinet, this wouldn't have mattered as much. The future announced games didn't hold much interest to me. But the biggest factor was that the 360 sucks as a media center, and it couldn't replace my hacked xbox with Xbox Media Center. Lack of divx support and video only available to MS XP Media Center Edition killed it as a media center. My TV only has a couple componenet video inputs, so my decision was to keep the xbox and take back the 360.
What MS needs to do is quiet down the console (they are already taking steps towards this with a smaller chip), add divx support (and FLAC tag support, but that doesn't have as wide an appeal as divx), remove the "XP media center" lock-in for videos (they are taking steps towards this, but we will see what they actually do), improve the media features in general (better media player features), and add more games to xbox live (porting abandonware would be cheap and make a killer system IMO).
What is also interesting is that, according to the interview, all tracks are recorded on their server as 384 kbps mp3s, meaning it is a waste of money to download them as FLAC files.
Allofmp3.com pays ROMS (the russian recording industry) (http://www.roms.ru/romseng/index.html) which is why they are allowed to exist. ROMS is responsible for paying the artists. Now, perhaps ROMS keeps all the money for themselves, but that is not allofmp3.com's problem. American artists may not get anything, but there are Russian artists, and I'm sure they get paid, otherwise allofmp3.com would not exist.
The problem is that the definition of an RPG game is so distorted that nearly anything could classify as an RPG game. Heck, I don't even consider final fantasy an rpg, I consider it a "linear movie-game". Basically everything is lined out, you are just along for the ride.
What is interesting is in that linked pdf on the microsoft site, under alterantive views, it mentions open source software maturing and the potential for costs to go down.
Re:A long historical tradition of dumb names
on
Both Sides of Wii
·
· Score: 1
"Super Scope 6"
Whoa I forgot about this. I got this for my birthday when I was a kid. What a shitty product.
I agree. I don't want quicktime installed. I don't want realplayer. Just give me the information in text, or the ability to select the video in different formats. windows media player is bad enough, I don't need three crappy players on my system.
I somewhat agree with you. The PS3 is rumored to be around $600-700. This was denied by sony, but they have not released any pricing info. If they match the xbox in price, they will win this generation. If not, they will die. $600-700 is way too much for a console, even with blu-ray. Most people will be waiting for cheap combo players IMO.
I believe the revolution just killed itself in one move. I have no doubt they will still make a profit, but instead of leaping to first, I believe they will lose even more position, at least in america. Marketing is very important to Americans, and Wii is the stupidest name I've ever heard (far stupider than xbox360, which is saying something). Hopefully Wii will stand on it's innovation alone (I will still likely be getting one).
Seriously, Revolution was an aweseome name for a console. Much better than xbox (has no real meaning). However, Wii is the stupidest name I've ever heard. It's even much worse than the false rumor "Go".
In one move nintendo went from a possible first to a most likely last place. Alot of gamers are conceited (alienware, etc). The name isn't going to affect my chance of getting one, but it sure is going to be embarassing to tell my friends "hey, I just got a Wii!".
If the people behind xbox live arcade were smart they would pull up famous games from the past, slightly update the graphics (not necessary, but would be nice for HD), and sell them on arcade. I know they are trying to go more for arcade games, but I would bet a decent amount of people would pay for Betrayal at Krondor with the original soundtrack, Wing Commander, some of the old school RPGs, etc. I know you can get these games for free, but if they slightly updated the graphics I wouldn't mind shelling out $5 for them.
Street fighter 2 is going to be released on xbox live arcade soon, hopefully. That's going to be a blast to play with people online.
Really? Because the best buy here in az checked the computers and there is not a single 360 at any best buy in arizona. Walmart and target said the same. So where are these 360s, Japan?
Who cares? They are both video game systems. The snes had two ports. The 360 has 3 usb ports, 2 memory card slots, headhpone adapters on the controllers, and another slot on the controllers that I have no idea what it is used for. Doesn't make much of a difference, but obviously the 360 has more components, hence more costs.
Just inflation itself takes the $199 and makes it $280 using a 2005 calculator (http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi). So it is about 6% more expensive. Rates went up even higher this year IIRC so the 6% is likely even less. The 360 also uses significantly more components than the snes, including usb ports and an ethernet adapter. So the price is on par at least with the SNES.
If you take inflation into account, and look at some of the prices that children's toys are going for today (some dolls are close to $100 by themselves, some board games go near $50 [heroscape], the xbox 360 isn't really expensive. Of course, the revolution is going to be less expensive, and this will work better for some families. IIRC the SNES was $199 when it came out what, 10 years ago? An extra $99 is a drop in the bucket.
I see the war being mainly between the 360 and the revolution, unless the following becomes true: 1) The playstion 3 is NOT $600-700 as stated by a the french sony spokesman (no link, on/. backlog) 2) They are able to hit xmas US 06 with ample supply (I think they will run into the same probs as the 360).
Number 1 is based on the fact that 600-700 is way too much for a console. Buying another controller, recharge kit, and game, and you're already into middle ground PC costs, plus you can get a 360 and a revolution for that price. Sure, they have blu-ray, but I'm betting I'm not the only one waiting for Apex blu-ray/HD-DVD combo players for $50, and I bet we'll see those within a year or two.
Number two is based on the fact that if they run into the same supply problems as the 360 (like they did with the playstation 2) then it means we won't even see the console in stores until 3-6 months after release, giving the 360 and revolution more time to establish a decent game base, and is a greater chance for people to say "screw it, I'm not waiting 6 months, there are 360s and revolutions on the shelves right now...".
Slashdot Mirror
If journalists fail to understand what the Wii is about, what makes you think the general public will understand? The general public is going to see the Wii as gimicky, while gamers who pay attention are going to realize what nintendo is doing and be interested. Sure, they may gain marketshare with the general public by introduction through gamers, but average non-gamer joe is not going to see a Wii at walmart and think of it as a must-have.
True, but you are looking at the overall market. Regardless of Nintendo's target market, their main market is gamers. Sure, I'm sure the Wii will target more of the general market than the 360 or ps3, but their primary market is still going to be gamers and their kids.
And I bet the HD adoption rate of gamers is higher than the general population by a significant margin. And while HD adoption rates right now are low, the price of HD TVs is approaching standard TVs, and the release of HD-DVD and blu-ray players will likely raise adoption rates as well.
Compared to the 360 and PS3, the Wii will look last gen. And while I'm sure that doesn't really matter to Nintendo, and that the console will be fun regardless, this means that essentially the only games worth purchasing for it will be exclusives, as the games will generally look much better on the competition (and this is assuming that either MS and Sony will release a similar controller, or that cross-platform developers will shortcut and adopt gimicky features for the Wii, if any). I'm still getting a Wii, but it would be nice if they at least supported widescreen or 720p (some xbox games had 720p and I doubt development costs were that much more, as even less had HD sets for the xbox).
It would be nice if nintendo supported HD, or at least widescreen.
Awesome, I may just pick up Guitar Hero II afterall. Warpigs was the whole reason I picked up the guitar.
"While Oblivion does have its share of bugs, the only slowness I noticed was after playing for a while and letting the game cache get fragmented."
What about the dirty disk errors that pop up at random? (the oblivion tech forum is rampant with them, so I know it wasn't just the two machines I tried). Yah, I know how to clear the cache, but have you tried riding a horse? The loading every 3 seconds is unbearable. And the fact that with a PC with similar specs to the 360 gets farther grass draw distance is perplexing.
"You should clarify that the DVD-ROM is loud when it's spinning at full speed. The machine itself (fan noise) is very quiet"
I disagree, the fan noise is very noticable (it is an annoying whirling sound) when playing some games. I can somewhat forgive the DVD noise, but why couldn't they have included a 60gig drive (not much more expensive than a 20) so some games parts could be loaded onto it? (perhaps the batch was bad, as the two xboxes were from the same shipping batch, but I doubt it). The PC version of oblivion loads twice as fast. I hope the PS3 doesn't make the same mistake and allows games to be loaded onto the hard drive.
"You're dinging the 360 for not doing something it never claimed to do."
From the MS 360 website: "But Xbox 360 is also the center of your digital entertainment world." This is a hard feat to achieve if it supports only MS formats (plus mp3) and doesn't support the most popular format for digital video.
The problem is that the 360 doesn't even correctly extend MS Media Center formats. You can get divx to play with MS Media Center, but it will not extend it to the 360. The only explanation is they disabled it on purpose.
"As for having limited component video inputs, get yourself a mux. I'm preferential to Audio Authority's 1154A, but you don't need to spend > $200 on a mux. You can find decent ones (minus auto-switching, audio format conversion, and the cool rack-friendly form-factor) for less than $50. You do realize the PS2 can do component output, right? The graphics will still look PS2-bad, but the color and sharpness will be better (and if you have a game that can support 480p, like GT4, you can only do that over component)."
Thanks, that is my next investment. I got the PS2 for romance of the three kingdoms, which still uses SNES era graphics, so I figured component would be moot.
"Who currently owns the property? You have to track down the series of sales of IP until you hopefully find the right company you need to deal with. This is painful."
This is very true, but I know a decent amount of people would be willing to shell out $5 for betrayal at krondor with the original soundtrack, with perhaps an updated color palate. And I'm sure there are some other 32 bit games that would get a lot of downloads that would not be hard to convert, but you are right, you have all the liscensing problems.
The thing is, I downloaded outpost kaloki (sp?), geometry wars, and zuma. and thought "what a great idea this is aweseome". A week later I was done with these games, and nothing else on live interests me, and 360 live has been out almost a year.
I did not outright dismiss the 360, but once live has a good deal more of games, they switch to the smaller processer (early 2007 I believe), and some more games are out I'll probably pick one up. divx support and the ability to load games onto the hard drive would be a dealbreaker for me.
I had a 360 for about a week, took it back, and got a ps2 (for a specific game, plus some cash in the pocket). First of all, they did a great job with the dashboard, it looks slick and you can customize it. The achievements, gamerscore, and interaction with other gamers are genius. Geometry wars and burnout were some of the funnest I've had playing games ever. Downloading demos was genius as well, I had as much fun downloading and trying new games as I did playing ones I paid for.
So why did I take it back? Well, perhaps I wouldn't have if street fighter II was out already and Oblivion wasn't such a bugfest (and runs suprisingly slow at times for a 360 game). The machine is noticibly loud (I even took it back and got another and it was still loud). If I had an enclosed cabinet, this wouldn't have mattered as much. The future announced games didn't hold much interest to me. But the biggest factor was that the 360 sucks as a media center, and it couldn't replace my hacked xbox with Xbox Media Center. Lack of divx support and video only available to MS XP Media Center Edition killed it as a media center. My TV only has a couple componenet video inputs, so my decision was to keep the xbox and take back the 360.
What MS needs to do is quiet down the console (they are already taking steps towards this with a smaller chip), add divx support (and FLAC tag support, but that doesn't have as wide an appeal as divx), remove the "XP media center" lock-in for videos (they are taking steps towards this, but we will see what they actually do), improve the media features in general (better media player features), and add more games to xbox live (porting abandonware would be cheap and make a killer system IMO).
What is also interesting is that, according to the interview, all tracks are recorded on their server as 384 kbps mp3s, meaning it is a waste of money to download them as FLAC files.
Allofmp3.com pays ROMS (the russian recording industry) (http://www.roms.ru/romseng/index.html) which is why they are allowed to exist. ROMS is responsible for paying the artists. Now, perhaps ROMS keeps all the money for themselves, but that is not allofmp3.com's problem. American artists may not get anything, but there are Russian artists, and I'm sure they get paid, otherwise allofmp3.com would not exist.
Interview here:
http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3interview.htm
The problem is that the definition of an RPG game is so distorted that nearly anything could classify as an RPG game. Heck, I don't even consider final fantasy an rpg, I consider it a "linear movie-game". Basically everything is lined out, you are just along for the ride.
Snakes on a plane, Pirate sniper ninjas.
Seriously, "Pirate sniper ninjas", if done correctly, as a movie would kick ass. Ok, so I've been drinking, but still...
What is interesting is in that linked pdf on the microsoft site, under alterantive views, it mentions open source software maturing and the potential for costs to go down.
"Super Scope 6"
Whoa I forgot about this. I got this for my birthday when I was a kid. What a shitty product.
I agree. I don't want quicktime installed. I don't want realplayer. Just give me the information in text, or the ability to select the video in different formats. windows media player is bad enough, I don't need three crappy players on my system.
I somewhat agree with you. The PS3 is rumored to be around $600-700. This was denied by sony, but they have not released any pricing info. If they match the xbox in price, they will win this generation. If not, they will die. $600-700 is way too much for a console, even with blu-ray. Most people will be waiting for cheap combo players IMO.
I believe the revolution just killed itself in one move. I have no doubt they will still make a profit, but instead of leaping to first, I believe they will lose even more position, at least in america. Marketing is very important to Americans, and Wii is the stupidest name I've ever heard (far stupider than xbox360, which is saying something). Hopefully Wii will stand on it's innovation alone (I will still likely be getting one).
Seriously, Revolution was an aweseome name for a console. Much better than xbox (has no real meaning). However, Wii is the stupidest name I've ever heard. It's even much worse than the false rumor "Go".
In one move nintendo went from a possible first to a most likely last place. Alot of gamers are conceited (alienware, etc). The name isn't going to affect my chance of getting one, but it sure is going to be embarassing to tell my friends "hey, I just got a Wii!".
If the people behind xbox live arcade were smart they would pull up famous games from the past, slightly update the graphics (not necessary, but would be nice for HD), and sell them on arcade. I know they are trying to go more for arcade games, but I would bet a decent amount of people would pay for Betrayal at Krondor with the original soundtrack, Wing Commander, some of the old school RPGs, etc. I know you can get these games for free, but if they slightly updated the graphics I wouldn't mind shelling out $5 for them.
Street fighter 2 is going to be released on xbox live arcade soon, hopefully. That's going to be a blast to play with people online.
That was awesome :)
Really? Because the best buy here in az checked the computers and there is not a single 360 at any best buy in arizona. Walmart and target said the same. So where are these 360s, Japan?
Who cares? They are both video game systems. The snes had two ports. The 360 has 3 usb ports, 2 memory card slots, headhpone adapters on the controllers, and another slot on the controllers that I have no idea what it is used for. Doesn't make much of a difference, but obviously the 360 has more components, hence more costs.
Not if you consider that the video card equivalent (x1900) itself is $400-500 retail.
Just inflation itself takes the $199 and makes it $280 using a 2005 calculator (http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi). So it is about 6% more expensive. Rates went up even higher this year IIRC so the 6% is likely even less. The 360 also uses significantly more components than the snes, including usb ports and an ethernet adapter. So the price is on par at least with the SNES.
If you take inflation into account, and look at some of the prices that children's toys are going for today (some dolls are close to $100 by themselves, some board games go near $50 [heroscape], the xbox 360 isn't really expensive. Of course, the revolution is going to be less expensive, and this will work better for some families. IIRC the SNES was $199 when it came out what, 10 years ago? An extra $99 is a drop in the bucket.
Umm, unlike your comment my info actually is on the /. backlog:/ 1848228
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/05
which is the last article to bring up PS3. If you have comments contrary to mine, back them up. because I havn't seen them anywhere.
I see the war being mainly between the 360 and the revolution, unless the following becomes true: /. backlog)
1) The playstion 3 is NOT $600-700 as stated by a the french sony spokesman (no link, on
2) They are able to hit xmas US 06 with ample supply (I think they will run into the same probs as the 360).
Number 1 is based on the fact that 600-700 is way too much for a console. Buying another controller, recharge kit, and game, and you're already into middle ground PC costs, plus you can get a 360 and a revolution for that price. Sure, they have blu-ray, but I'm betting I'm not the only one waiting for Apex blu-ray/HD-DVD combo players for $50, and I bet we'll see those within a year or two.
Number two is based on the fact that if they run into the same supply problems as the 360 (like they did with the playstation 2) then it means we won't even see the console in stores until 3-6 months after release, giving the 360 and revolution more time to establish a decent game base, and is a greater chance for people to say "screw it, I'm not waiting 6 months, there are 360s and revolutions on the shelves right now...".
Umm..best buy says they don't have a single premium 360 in any of their stores in ARIZONA. So much product on the shelves.