WTF are you talking about? I have a PS2 and a cube. I've had the cube for half as long as the PS2, and I have about the same number of games (about 8-10 a piece), and would rate my GameCube games a good step up, on average, from my PS2 games. In fact, about half the GameCube games I have I would rank in my top-20 or so favorite games: Metroid Prime, Smash Bros. Melee, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Tales of Symphonia. I don't think one PS2 title has made it on that list, yet. The only thing I think the PS2 has going for it is the PS1, which was a much stronger generation, IMO.
The best thing about Nintendo consoles is Nintendo. They're far and away, IMO, the best game developer in the world, and they only release titles for their own systems (duh). In an era in which I feel a lot of game companies are losing their touch, Nintendo's titles seem to become more and more interesting every year. I'm sick and tired of simply "bigger, faster, stronger" consoles. I feel like that the only reason I upgrade, these days, is because all the new games won't be released for the older console, not because the new one is any more powerful. The Revolution, taking a completely new approach to game-play, actually offers something my current consoles can't. I can't really claim that about the 360 or the PS3, besides the obvious graphical improvements, and I don't give a damn about online play, either.
Like most people, I have an 8 hour a day job and an asshole boss to boot. When I come home at night, I just want to have fun. Nintendo delivers.
Because, if it was a total failour, they'd still have the GBA line, untarnished, and going strong (as it was and still is). If they had released the Virtual Boy as a replacement for the SNES, for instance... they probably would have gone belly up. This way, Nintendo currently has 3 different lines to rely on: GameBoy line, DS line, and console line. All are strong enough, at the moment, that if one were to fail, the company wouldn't go bankrupt. Now, let's be honest about this, the DS is already becoming the replacement for the GBA. But this was a positive side-effect of the success of the DS, and Nintendo was perfectly prepared that this would happen. The fact that the DS can play GBA games makes it a "GBA compatable" line, at least. There will probably continue to be a GBA line around for a while yet, as there are still a fairly large number of DS naysayers, but that may also start to disappear with the introduction of the DS Lite, as it addresses a lot of the biggest issues that the naysayers have (too big, too heavy). Unfortunately, it fails to address my biggest concern with the DS, which is that it's fairly uncomfortable and unergonomic, and the Lite doesn't really look like it changes the shape very much. Then again, I've never played a handheld console that I thought was comfortable to hold for long periods of time.
It was interesting to hear you're reply, because I think we both tend to have similar interests in gaming, though we're just looking at things from a few different angles. First I'll clarify some points:
First of all, a quick correction, FF8 was actually made for the original Playstation. FFX was the first FF game for the PS2, with the pretty graphics, and that's probably the game you were thinking of.
I laughed when I read this, because I totally understand how my comment could have been interpretted that way. No, what I meant was that FF8 was one of the few games on the PSX that had a moderate amount of success at striving towards some sort of realism. On a side note, it's one of my absolute favorite games, so I may be a bit biased. FFX, interestingly, was made by the same team that did FF8, which is why they aimed at a similar, more realistic graphical style, as apposed to FF9 or FF11.
I disagree. Recent reports from the Revolution dev kit appear to indicate that the system is actually comparable to the 360 and PS3. Claims that it's not powerful, equating it to the original Xbox is pure FUD. Sheesh, the GC itself is already comparable to the Xbox. Have you not seen screenshots of Zelda:TTP? Also, any concerns that the new controller will not work with all game genres are unfounded, since it's expected that you'll be able to "insert" it into a more traditional controller.
Okay, I have heard totally the opposite. The last I heard was that developers complained that Nintendo's design was not powerful enough for the games they wanted to create, so Nintendo slightly improved upon the power of the system, but that they're current statements, as of late was "about twice as powerful" as the cube. Now, to be sure, these "x times more powerful" statements are very silly. When I think about it, the PS2 FEELS about twice as powerful as the PS1, and I don't expect the PS3 to feel 34x more powerful, or whatever ungodly number Sony pulled out of their ass a few months ago, so twice as powerful seems like a great bullshit estimate that will definitely satisfy me. Regarding the GameCube power vs. XBox... I actually tend to agree with you on that, I always viewed the two systems to be approximately equal... though I sorta wanted to avoid a flame war, since many XBox fanboys I know pride themselves with having "the most powerful system". The fact is, we really just don't know yet. Nintendo's marketting revolve around what opportunities the new system provides, and not just on arbitrary numbers, as Sony and MS have been basing their marketting around. When all the pieces fall, I could well imagine that the Revolution is every bit as powerful as the other two, though Nintendo will have chosen to play that aspect down from a marketting standpoint.
I think you're forgetting about a few things that the new systems are bringing to us. A lot of people have been really excited about the latest version of the Live Arcade, about it bringing down the costs of games, and enabling indie developers to reach more gamers. As you may know, Nintendo has already announced they'll be doing something similar with their backwards compatibility library, although specific details remain to be seen. Similarly, a lot of folks are also digging the new achievement system with the 360, and how it's a return of the "beating your high score" fun of the arcades. And finally, you forget about the uniqueness of the Revolution controller, and Nintendo's claim on how it will bring in droves of casual gamers to their platform.
Yes, but these features, including the Revolution controller (of which I'm extremely excited to get my hands on) are not so much "moving gaming forward" but branching out into side areas. Previous generations were about advancing pre-existing concepts, or perminantly embracing technologies that were were fairly obvious next steps (as with the introduction of the 3D era). Things like experimental contro
I think the biggest problem is that Microsoft really jumped the gun. When every other generation starter was released, the previous systems were already starting to seem quite dated to gamers, and needed an overhaul. The Genesis, the PS1, and Dreamcast: all systems that, when released, had gamers saying not only "wow, that's really cool", but "it's about time!" I just remember the first time someone brought in a new Dreamcast, there was little hype for it's release, but all of us looked stunned when we saw it, and knew that the next generation had REALLY arrived.
With the third generation, the SNES/Genesis era, things like expanded color palettes, sampling synth based sound, and graphical scaling and warping made the systems truely "next generation". These weren't features that the SNES/Genesis could "do better", but things that the previous systems simply couldn't do at all. With the PS1/N64, we saw another huge jump with the edition of 3D graphics. Sure, the SNES had some rudimentary 3D games at the end of it's life (most of which cheated by including 3D graphics chips in their cartridges), but nothing to the extent that the next gen could do.
The 5th gen was a little more illusive, as the PS2/Gamecube/XBox era doesn't exactly add anything completely new that wasn't in the previous generation. But in this case, the pitfalls of the previous gen systems were becoming painfully obvious, and I think the general gaming community agreed that it was time to fix these things. This was the generation of attempting to achieve "realism", something the previous generation could bearily even strive for: the closest thing was probably FF8, but games of that graphical calliber were few and far between, and even in that case, we're still dealing with 2D backgrounds. Thus, it was becoming clear that the things that game manufacturers wanted to be able to do were not possible with the previous generation, so the PS2/GameCube/XBox were a welcomed update.
But the gaming community couldn't be happier right now. PS2 and Gamecube sales are just as strong now as they were 2 years ago, XBox sales were great before the 360s release. I don't see the gaming community in any sort of agreement that we are really in need of an update. The graphical capabilities of the XBox and Gamecube have just bearily begun to be challanged, and while the PS2 is obviously a little dated, most gamers are perfectly happy with the titles available for it. When you have gamers looking in awe at screen shots of Zelda: TTP and FF12, you know its not quite yet the time to release a new system.
I think it's pretty obvious that Microsoft jumped the gun on this one. I think Sony is banking on the gen switch to be ripe by the time they push the PS3 out the door, but they may have also jumped the gun, too. The only one who totally avoids these pitfalls is Nintendo, because the Revolution is not designed to be a replacement for the GameCube in the traditional sense. I think we'll see GameCube titles being released far into the life of the Revolution. It is not "next gen" in the sense of, "the old system was not powerful enough to do the things we want to do", the fact that it's only about twice as powerful as the cube probably puts it closer to the XBox than the 360 or PS3. It's purpose is to introduce another type of gaming, entirely, that you can play along side your traditional GameCube style games.
The bottom line is, these new systems are not promising things that we are not already getting, to a certain degree, with the previous generation, they don't really take gaming to the "next level" like the Genesis, PS1, or PS2 did. The feeling I'll get from playing a game on the PS3 is probably going to be similar to the feeling I've gotten playing a game on the PS2. Where-as the PS2 added enough realism to really delve into new territory in terms of atmospheric elements that really changed the gameplay experience, and you could see that this was coming from before its launch.
This is the first generation in which I truly believe is being lead by Sony and Microsoft, not by the gaming community itself, it's just being forced upon us.
It doesn't take an audiophile to notice the difference between a 128kbps mp3/aac file and a CD, or a high-quality lossless, MPC, or OGG file. It may take a decent stereo system or decent computer speakers. Maybe iPod's earbuds aren't good enough to notice, but I doubt that, as I've heard they're good quality earbuds.
I would rephrase that: it doesn't take an audiophile to notice the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and a CD. But it sure as hell takes one to notice the difference between a 128kbps aac and a CD. Let's be realistic, the AAC format is far ahead of the mp3 format, we shouldn't even be talking about them together. AAC is much closer to OGG in quality (so much so, that there seems to be a never-ending war on which one is better). I can immediately tell when something has been saved as a 128kbps mp3, but it takes me some pretty intense listening if it's an AAC.
That said, the average person DOES NOT CARE, and to be honest, neither do I most of the time, and I'm a professional musician. Remember, it was less than 20 years ago that practically everyone was listening to music on audio tapes, and content listening to scratchy vinyls. In fact, the main reason that everyone switched to CDs wasn't because of quality, it was because of their ease of use, and their supposed resistance to abuse (which we now know better, unfortunately). If you think about it, AACs do lose some quality, but they never will again, whereas CDs eventually get scratched and become unusable. AACs/MP3s/OGGs, being stored on a hard drive, are a much more resilliant form of media than we previously have experienced. There are other issues, of course, but give me a 10 year old AAC any day over a 10 year old CD, it will actually work!
Hell, in 5 years, memory will be so cheap that we'll see iPods with the capability of storing as many apple lossless files as we can store AACs now. Download time would be slower, but by then, we'll all have much faster connections anyway. This is not bound to be an issue forever.
It's the labor of manufacturing the final product that costs the most. This is just another optical drive, like a DVD player or CD player. It will probably require only slightly more manufacturing time than your old CD player. So DVD players cost a lot more than CD players when they first came out... most of that was due to markup, since it was considered a "new technology" people were willing to pay more. In this case, since Sony is simply trying to get the Blu-Ray standard out into the world quickly, its to their advantage to set the price pretty low, especially if their first player is going to be part of their multipurpose game system. Also, since they hold the patents for all the blu-ray standards, they don't have to pay any royalties. Even if it is a little more expensive, they'll make it back in Blu-Ray DVD sales later, like they do with game sales for their consoles. They can afford to chop a significant amount just for that. All these figures seem way off, considering pretty much ALL the parts are being designed and manufactured by Sony, themselves.
What are you smoking? Every game store I've been in has just as many PS2 games as XBox (and 360) games, if not more. It's GameCube games that took a big hit, and are usually deligated to a small shelf in the back, but PS2 games are usually right out front and in great supply.
But otherwise, yes, I think Sony will have a VERY tough time marketting a competing controller to the Revolution. For one, Nintendo are now appearing as the champions of innovation, going against the grain and coming up with something new. This is a huge draw to youth (and adults) who'd rather not feel like they're trapped in a circle of mass-consumerism. This is also a huge reason for Apple's recent success with the iPod, it proudly flew in the face of many of the current trends, and solidified a new market. People LIKE that, they don't just buy into a product for it's functionality, but for what it represents. Currently, companies like Apple and Nintendo have public personae that appear to endorse themes of innovation and individuality. If Sony simply copies Nintendo, even if the actual product is very different, People will ignore it, because what Nintendo's real boon with the Revolution is exactly that, the offering of a gaming Revolution.
Sure, it was a great game, but it's a bit more of a Mario spin-off series, of which there are many. The fact that you don't play as Mario, alone, sorta makes it a non-canon game. It is to the Mario series as Final Fantasy Tactics is to the FF series: great game, but not part of the standard set, due to large departures in basic gameplay.
This is another reason why I think Sony is trying a different (and more intelligent, IMO) strategy by witholding the release date of the PS3 until shortly before its launch. Currently, Microsoft's waiting around for Sony to pin up a release date, so they can prepare the launch of a huge "must-have" around the same time and undermine the system launch. If Sony just keeps quiet, and then suddenly announces that the PS3 will be launched "next week" (a scenario that I think is quite possible), Microsoft will be caught with their pants down. Everyone's expecting Sony to use the same tactics that they have in the past, but if you look at the current situation, it's much different from any of their previous releases. Both the PS1 and PS2 were the first big systems of their generation (except for the Dreamcast, I know, but Sega was already floundering as a hardware company before then, and were of little concern to Sony). Sony was the guy who could step up and offer something far beyond what was currently on the table, and therefor, they boasted about it for months, even years, before their releases. This is a good strategy when you're the first out of the gate, but its not a very good strategy when you're second, because the other guy has a long time to devise a strategy to undermine your launch. Not only that, but you can't hold people's attention for long periods of time by offering them something far beyond what's currently on the market. This is where the N64 failed. Nintendo talked up the new system for over a year before it's release, while in the meantime, Sony and their cronies put forth some of the greatest gaming opportunities in the history of the industry. When the N64 finally launched, the Playstation's developers had had time to get their skills up to almost on par with the new system, so Nintendo had very little to offer in the way of power.
When push comes to shove, the popularity of a game cannot rest on just its name alone, especially if people are considering spending an extra $300 to get the console to play it on. If people hear that it's flashy but not very fun to play, they may have been willing to buy the game at one point, but it's not worth $350 to them. If this was Halo 2, it would be different, since Halo 1 was such a huge hit. But H2 dissapointed a lot of people (everyone I talk to preffers Halo 1 by a large amount), so I think many die hard fans are going to reserve judgement more than they would have. Microsoft had a huge opportunity by holding back a highly anticipated "possible killer-app" like Halo 2 for the 360, but they blew it. H2 is new enough, now, that H3 isn't going to be as anticipated, in fact, there are no extremely highly anticipated games for the 360, which could put the system's future on rocky ground.
I just want them to hurry up and secure a US release for Mother 3! I'd rather not have to play a fan-sub ROM two years later, though I will if I have to!
Agreed. There really haven't been any "normal" side-scrolling Mario games since Mario World. Although Castlevania has some good titles. Oh, and I hear that there's this small, unknown series called Metroid... supposed to have some good scrollers;)
World's Better? It looks exactly the same, just lighter.
I just recently got a DS, and my ONLY complaint with the system is its ergonomics. It's like if you put shoulder buttons on an NES controller! After about 5 minutes on MarioKart DS, my right hand starts to fall asleep. This is due to the shape of the controller (completely rectangular), not the size or weight. The size and weight are perfect the way they are, it's no heavier than a GameCube controller or a DualShock 2, and the size seems just fine to me. I also have had absolutely no complaints about the screen brightness. The Lite seems like a total waste. Now, if they re-shaped it to be more comfortable to hold, I'd buy one without a second thought.
I would have thought AACS support was something they could patch the final hardware to do, and thus not prevent them actually going into production. Finished machines could be stockpiled and patched before being boxed.
That would be a huge waste of time and resources; going back and patching hundreds of thousands of units after the fact. Remember that these things are turned out on an assemebly line. The most efficient way of running an assembly line (thus the most ecconomical) will always be to have the final product, in it's final packaging, at the other end. What you're suggesting would require storing thousands of units, having to reopen their packaging, and possibly their casing, patch the unit, and repackage it. This may not sound like much for one unit, but for the hundreds of thousands that will be churnned out, we're talking about a substantial operation. Why not just wait 2 weeks until the AACS patch can be applied to the chips before assembly, thus completely illiminating the need for a complex "re-patching"? The greatest amount of time in production is setting up the assembly system, but once that happens, actual production goes quite quickly. I'm sure they're busting their asses putting the assembly system together (if they haven't already finished). The moment the chips are finalized (AACS included), they can be shipped even faster than the final production line will churn units out, so production can virtually start the moment the first shipment arrives, and continue without stopping.
What happened to the infamous Sony hype machine? Don't they realise that the greater the market's uncertainty about PS3, the more sales will go to the Xbox 360? Oh that's right, they don't care, "it's not a competitor".
The second most successfull technology company this year (losing only to Google) was Apple, who have been making miricals, financially, for quite a few years now. iPod marketting has been even more successfull in Japan than in the states, which is really saying something. Their marketting strategy? Wait until the release date (go ahead, say what you will about the actual delivery date, but some do get released on the release date, I got my video iPod only about a week after its release, btw), then launch a huge ad campaign, creating a huge amount of buzz to jumpstart the sales of the new product. Seeing the fairly unsuccessfull overhyped launch of the 360 (compared to other new generation systems), they're going to wait it out.
From our perspective, it may look like a bad idea, and yes, they may lose a few fence sitters to the 360. But on launch day, and the surge of advertising, everyone will completely forget about the lack of hype before-hand, go out and buy it. What we think of the PS3 TODAY means very little if the actual launch is successfull. I'm going to guess they'll start up a huge add campaign within a week of it's release, so that people will at least know it exists on the launch day. These are just speculations, but it's probably a very smart thing to do. Being good at marketting (which, as you commented, Sony is) isn't simply about how much hype stir up, it's about when you do it, and how. Letting out a slow release of moderate press may just reach the same people for a long period of time, while putting all you're energy into one huge add campaign has the likelyhood of penetrating into more diverse audiences. After all, in a crowd, noone but the closest people are going to turn their heads if you slowly let air out of a balloon, but if you pop it...
Woah dude, you're making a WHOLE lot of generalizations there. The PS2 outsold the XBox, worldwide, something fierce. As someone said previously, the PS2 is STILL outselling the 360, and it's still priced pretty high ($125 for a 5 year old console). It's also one of the most well-liked from a user perspective, despite it's being a distant 3rd in terms of power, this generation.
Sure, the 360 was recieved fairly well... but compared to what, though? To be perfectly honest, I've never seen a more flacid system launch, especially a "first of the generation" launch. Hell, I heard more buzz surrounding the VirtualBoy's launch (though that was mostly negative press). The best I've ever heard anyone describe this launch was, "pretty good", but that's kind of an arbitrary statement. I mean, you can sell 3 units and say, "wow! Look, I sold 3 units, that's pretty good!" The measurement I'm going on, since it will reflect both the present and the future of the system, is amount of publicity, and compared to the PS1, PS2, N64, GameCube, DS, XBox, and SNES, this launch was extremely unenthusiastic. Microsoft had a lot going for them on this one: it's been about 4 years since the last major console release, console gaming's numbers have never been better, there have been fairly few big hits or killer apps for a while now so everyone's screaming for something new. It should have been one of the biggest launches EVER. "Pretty good" is fucking terrible if you're the first of the generation because anything better than "totally suck" that follows it is going to drive its sales into the ground.
I work for an NBC station, I run the master control board, I see virtually all of the content of one of the worlds biggest media outlets. I have yet to see a single XBox360 commercial (which continues to baffle me), and just about the only press it got was a short announcement on the launch day, and an endorsement from an old guy on the Today show.
My Prediction PS3 doesn't blow anyone away. It won't have a $700 price tag, it will look slightly better than the 360, and have better launch titles, but it won't be a spectacular launch. People will be underwhelmed (but not angered) when the controller is just a DualShock 3 with a little more curves, and noone gives a shit about blu-ray. The Revolution, quick on its heals, on the other hand, will be one of Nintendo's most successful launches since the SNES, due to the amount of interest in the new design philosophy, it's lower price following the lackluster launches of the two pricier systems, a few killer first-party launch titles (smash bros has already been confirmed for the launch), and one third-party hardcore FPS designed to turn the heads of the XBox crowd. It will be vilainized by many, and hailed the "greatest system ever" by others, bringing to the surface some pretty large schisms within the gaming community, but at the end of the day, it will generate a fairly substantial amount of indendant press. Slashdot, at the time, will turn into a warzone. The launch will be the most successfull of the three systems, although it's future is up for grabs, depending upon it's longevity and following titles. It has a good chance of outselling both PS3 and 360 over the course of the generation, but it also has a chance of fizzling out. There will be no middle ground for anything, as far as the Revolution is concerned.
It was really cool for the first few hours, and then after a while, it became a total chore: play the wind song, wait 20 seconds for the wind song to play, point in the right direction, put down controller and wait 5-10 minutes, pull up to island. After a while, when you get that song of gails, or whatever the one is that gives you warp spots, it becomes a little faster, but it's also one more song you have to play. After doing this 40-50 times, it gets old really fast, especially in a series where you traditionally have to go back and forth across the map just to figure out what you're supposed to do next, it really killed the joy of adventure.
I don't mind having to go all the way across the map all the time, from one task to another, that's what the series is based on. But give me some terrain, give me something to do, something to look at while I'm doing it. It's difficult to make endless blue ocean, "exciting" or even interesting after you've done it for 10 hours.
Another problem was the abuse of the song playing system. In Ocarina and Majora, the system was near perfect: you only needed to play a song every once in a while, there was something "quick and simple" about it. I found myself having to play the wind changing song, like, every 2 minutes while I was searching out my next objective in WW, and the sequence of playing + animations just seemed to take forever.
The dungeons were on par with the rest of the series, especially the last two regular dungeons, the storyline was fun, the puzzles were great. But I hated the saling, which made me not want to explore, which really sapped a lot of the enjoyment out of the game for me.
Well, in his case, yes, since he's hiring field techs, who will be required to write a lot of handwritten notes. On the other hand, testing an office tech on proficiency with a keyboard + spellchecker, would make perfect sense. Employers should be testing new hires with the tools that 1) they will be working on, 2) what they are used to. If those things do not match, then there's a problem, but every office has a word processor with a spellcheck, and everyone is used to using one, if they can use one efficiently and effectively, that should satisfy the employer's needs.
A good analogy is in the hiring of a mathematician, and basing their being hired on their speed of their computational skills sans calculator. Most of the time spent on various mathematical needs should be in the creative process, and all mathematicians have been using calculators and computers for computation since the late 60s. Obviously, ones computational skills WITH a calculator (ie: knowing how to use a calculator correctly) is important, but knowing that they can divide 5904 by 249875 in their head in under 10 seconds is useless information.
Okay, I admit, I'm a console gamer, former disgruntled PC gamer, I tend to like the style of games that come out on consoles, so I'm a bit biased. But from about 1999-2003, I had a PC (I'm back to Mac for good now), and tried to get into the PC gaming genre. This was probably the most frusterating experience of my life. Every year, I found I was outclassed and couldn't run the latest games. To keep up, I would have had to throw $150 at a video card every year and a half, and $300 on a new motherboard/processor every 3 years. And as we know, upgrading only goes so far, eventually you gotta replace it with a whole new box, which, for a decent gaming PC that won't fall behind in 6 months, is a good $1500.
Last year I bought a GameCube for $100, before that, I bought a used PS2 for $150. For hardware, that's all I've had to spend. The average generation for a console is about 5-6 years (PS2 was released in 2000, GameCube in 2001, if I remember correctly), so if I keep up with even 2 consoles, and buy them at launch cost ($300-$400), I'm spending about half of what it would be to replace a computer every 6 years (and I've never had a computer for 6 years), not including all the upgrades it requires to keep it up to date.
The fact is, PC gaming is EXPENSIVE, very expensive. If the target audience is around 13-18—many of these kids don't have jobs, if they do, they're working at McDonald's for $7/h. It comes down to this: kid finds a game he likes, looks at the box and realizes that his computer can't handle it (this happened to me about 90% of the time growing up). Now, if he's game, he can throw $150 on a new video card, or $150 at a PS2, during mid-generation, and that's that. After years and years of having to make the choice between "throw money at upgrading dohickey" or "buy console and be done with it", as I did, most people finally get smart.
But the other reason PC gaming is "dying" or at least in a slump, is the XBox, which has taken over the genres of games formerly occupied by PCs. The PS2 also moved in to fill some of the gap. FPSs, MMORPGs, these are PC genres, hell, even GTA migrated over... fairly successfully, to put it lightly.
Third, the advent of party gaming. It came into the spotlight with the N64, but with the XBox and GameCube, have grown into a hugely successfull market. Sports games, fighing games—hell, smash bros melee practically stands as a market all on its own—outside of heavilly prepared LAN parties, these are almost impossible to market or play on PC.
But I would say the #1 reason goes back the frusteration of getting a computer to play games, of which I experienced hundreds of hours with growing up. I'm a techy, but I have no interest in adding even MORE hours of troubleshooting to my life than I already do, so I've switched, have you?
Heck, I'm all for that! Especially if it allows them to put some muscle into it and add in a small suite of mini-apps that tend to go along with browsers: email, text editor, address book, calander.
Oh come on, I've heard this arguement more than a few times, only from slashdot. But the other 98% of the population doesn't even know what a "rootkit" is. And "so much attention" is only relative. It got quite a bit of attention on tech sites, but if it wasn't on NBC Nightly News or on the front of a section of the NY Times, it won't even make a dent in sales. I would say, even if it DID make headline news, you might see a 1% sales drop. Most people use consoles for playing games, not viewing media, anyway, most of what Joe Sumer will be hooked with is fancy graphics, a lot of buzz, and news of must-have games. I have little doubt that Sony will be able to deliver those three things just fine, as it did on their last two releases. So no, the rootkit issues is not going to bite Sony.
Don't be two quick to think Apple will let that happen. I agree, that the current iPod will eventually go out of style, but NEVER underestimate Apple's ability to understand cultural trends, and be able to reinvent their image on the fly: it's called Steve Jobs, and it's what makes him a genius. Apple has been able to keep its public image as "the underdog ready to fly in the face of corperate mongers" since it's debut. They hold it today just as much as they did when they launched the super bowl ad back in 1984. Time does not stand still, and I don't think anyone realizes that better than Apple. In fact, it's the one thing that really sets them above the competition. Sure, the next guy will make a shinier product to rival the iPod, but the next day, Apple moves on to something else that turns everyone's heads. Eventually the brand name "iPod" will fall, as a cultural icon, but you know who will be there to replace it? Apple.
My only concern is that all these 3rd party music stores, being locked out of FairPlay, will turn to WMA PlayForSure, and suddenly you'll have AAC being badly overshadowed by the WMA market. Now, Apple's banking on noone getting on board with the other guys, because it won't work on the iPod, but they better make damn sure that it doesn't have the reverse effect. After all, what's more important to them, the iPod or iTMS?
Finally, ya know what's going to be funny? in 10 years, when we're still calling them "MP3 Players" and every company has dropped compatibility for playing mp3s in their players, because noone uses them any more.:)
Sorry dude, you need a computer to use an iPod. Sure, there are a few folks out there who probably have all their music on their friend's computer, but those people are few and far between. Seeing that the iPod demographic, while mainstream, tends to be the technically elite mainstream... and fairly cosmopolitan, it's safe to say that a large percentage of the the demographic has fairly decent internet access. And, so what if it takes 2 hours to download a movie? Many people download things while they sleep, movies would be one of them.
Well, ya learn something everyday. I had no idea about the Metroid Pinball rumblepack. Though, I doubt it would take much to send an on/off message to a computer controlled dynamo. What's the storage capabilities of a GBA cartridge compared to a DS cartridge? This is going to be a BIG issue for a web browser. The protocol would limit the size of the GBA cartridge to a lot less than the DS cartridge, is my guess.
Opera is changing that. Opera Mini is but one example.
Come back and talk to me when it actually changes. Currently, this is all speculation. Currently, it's a niche market in comparison to similar markets... as I said, portable gaming is a bigger market than the console gaming market. We'll talk when Google gets more hits from Opera Mini than Firefox proper.
It [Nintendo] is [an underdog] in the home console market. Everyone's always going on about Sony and Microsoft, often forgetting Nintendo. Until the Revolution was announced, that is...
Now you're basing your arguement on what "everyone" is always going "on and on" about. We all travel in different circles. With the group or friends I have, and the press I tend to read (like Slashdot, Washington Post, various RPG gaming sites), Nintendo comes up very often, I rarely hear about XBox, and usually when I do, it's an article noticing that the 360 launch has been quite unenthusiastic, overall, something even NBC was noting.
Let's also look back on market share. Nintendo is SECOND in world sales, they are ahead of Microsoft, by quite a bit, in fact. Only in the US are they in third place, and they still have a good 20% of the console market here... I usually think of an underdog as something that's been completely overshadowed by another party.
Well known? Where?
Ummm, where have you been, dude? There were SEVERAL slashdot articles that noted it, there was one on 1Up.com, I think. Most gaming sites, when the GameBoy Micro was announced, the first thing they did was take a picture of the micro next to an iPod mini. Sure, we haven't heard from Nintendo, first hand, that the mini was it's inspiration, but considering the fact that they've had their eye on the whole portable electronics market for years, AND they chose virtually the same naming convention, suggests that it's very likely that there was some influence. I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF are you talking about? I have a PS2 and a cube. I've had the cube for half as long as the PS2, and I have about the same number of games (about 8-10 a piece), and would rate my GameCube games a good step up, on average, from my PS2 games. In fact, about half the GameCube games I have I would rank in my top-20 or so favorite games: Metroid Prime, Smash Bros. Melee, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Tales of Symphonia. I don't think one PS2 title has made it on that list, yet. The only thing I think the PS2 has going for it is the PS1, which was a much stronger generation, IMO.
The best thing about Nintendo consoles is Nintendo. They're far and away, IMO, the best game developer in the world, and they only release titles for their own systems (duh). In an era in which I feel a lot of game companies are losing their touch, Nintendo's titles seem to become more and more interesting every year. I'm sick and tired of simply "bigger, faster, stronger" consoles. I feel like that the only reason I upgrade, these days, is because all the new games won't be released for the older console, not because the new one is any more powerful. The Revolution, taking a completely new approach to game-play, actually offers something my current consoles can't. I can't really claim that about the 360 or the PS3, besides the obvious graphical improvements, and I don't give a damn about online play, either.
Like most people, I have an 8 hour a day job and an asshole boss to boot. When I come home at night, I just want to have fun. Nintendo delivers.
Because, if it was a total failour, they'd still have the GBA line, untarnished, and going strong (as it was and still is). If they had released the Virtual Boy as a replacement for the SNES, for instance... they probably would have gone belly up. This way, Nintendo currently has 3 different lines to rely on: GameBoy line, DS line, and console line. All are strong enough, at the moment, that if one were to fail, the company wouldn't go bankrupt. Now, let's be honest about this, the DS is already becoming the replacement for the GBA. But this was a positive side-effect of the success of the DS, and Nintendo was perfectly prepared that this would happen. The fact that the DS can play GBA games makes it a "GBA compatable" line, at least. There will probably continue to be a GBA line around for a while yet, as there are still a fairly large number of DS naysayers, but that may also start to disappear with the introduction of the DS Lite, as it addresses a lot of the biggest issues that the naysayers have (too big, too heavy). Unfortunately, it fails to address my biggest concern with the DS, which is that it's fairly uncomfortable and unergonomic, and the Lite doesn't really look like it changes the shape very much. Then again, I've never played a handheld console that I thought was comfortable to hold for long periods of time.
I laughed when I read this, because I totally understand how my comment could have been interpretted that way. No, what I meant was that FF8 was one of the few games on the PSX that had a moderate amount of success at striving towards some sort of realism. On a side note, it's one of my absolute favorite games, so I may be a bit biased. FFX, interestingly, was made by the same team that did FF8, which is why they aimed at a similar, more realistic graphical style, as apposed to FF9 or FF11.
Okay, I have heard totally the opposite. The last I heard was that developers complained that Nintendo's design was not powerful enough for the games they wanted to create, so Nintendo slightly improved upon the power of the system, but that they're current statements, as of late was "about twice as powerful" as the cube. Now, to be sure, these "x times more powerful" statements are very silly. When I think about it, the PS2 FEELS about twice as powerful as the PS1, and I don't expect the PS3 to feel 34x more powerful, or whatever ungodly number Sony pulled out of their ass a few months ago, so twice as powerful seems like a great bullshit estimate that will definitely satisfy me. Regarding the GameCube power vs. XBox... I actually tend to agree with you on that, I always viewed the two systems to be approximately equal... though I sorta wanted to avoid a flame war, since many XBox fanboys I know pride themselves with having "the most powerful system". The fact is, we really just don't know yet. Nintendo's marketting revolve around what opportunities the new system provides, and not just on arbitrary numbers, as Sony and MS have been basing their marketting around. When all the pieces fall, I could well imagine that the Revolution is every bit as powerful as the other two, though Nintendo will have chosen to play that aspect down from a marketting standpoint.
Yes, but these features, including the Revolution controller (of which I'm extremely excited to get my hands on) are not so much "moving gaming forward" but branching out into side areas. Previous generations were about advancing pre-existing concepts, or perminantly embracing technologies that were were fairly obvious next steps (as with the introduction of the 3D era). Things like experimental contro
I think the biggest problem is that Microsoft really jumped the gun. When every other generation starter was released, the previous systems were already starting to seem quite dated to gamers, and needed an overhaul. The Genesis, the PS1, and Dreamcast: all systems that, when released, had gamers saying not only "wow, that's really cool", but "it's about time!" I just remember the first time someone brought in a new Dreamcast, there was little hype for it's release, but all of us looked stunned when we saw it, and knew that the next generation had REALLY arrived.
With the third generation, the SNES/Genesis era, things like expanded color palettes, sampling synth based sound, and graphical scaling and warping made the systems truely "next generation". These weren't features that the SNES/Genesis could "do better", but things that the previous systems simply couldn't do at all. With the PS1/N64, we saw another huge jump with the edition of 3D graphics. Sure, the SNES had some rudimentary 3D games at the end of it's life (most of which cheated by including 3D graphics chips in their cartridges), but nothing to the extent that the next gen could do.
The 5th gen was a little more illusive, as the PS2/Gamecube/XBox era doesn't exactly add anything completely new that wasn't in the previous generation. But in this case, the pitfalls of the previous gen systems were becoming painfully obvious, and I think the general gaming community agreed that it was time to fix these things. This was the generation of attempting to achieve "realism", something the previous generation could bearily even strive for: the closest thing was probably FF8, but games of that graphical calliber were few and far between, and even in that case, we're still dealing with 2D backgrounds. Thus, it was becoming clear that the things that game manufacturers wanted to be able to do were not possible with the previous generation, so the PS2/GameCube/XBox were a welcomed update.
But the gaming community couldn't be happier right now. PS2 and Gamecube sales are just as strong now as they were 2 years ago, XBox sales were great before the 360s release. I don't see the gaming community in any sort of agreement that we are really in need of an update. The graphical capabilities of the XBox and Gamecube have just bearily begun to be challanged, and while the PS2 is obviously a little dated, most gamers are perfectly happy with the titles available for it. When you have gamers looking in awe at screen shots of Zelda: TTP and FF12, you know its not quite yet the time to release a new system.
I think it's pretty obvious that Microsoft jumped the gun on this one. I think Sony is banking on the gen switch to be ripe by the time they push the PS3 out the door, but they may have also jumped the gun, too. The only one who totally avoids these pitfalls is Nintendo, because the Revolution is not designed to be a replacement for the GameCube in the traditional sense. I think we'll see GameCube titles being released far into the life of the Revolution. It is not "next gen" in the sense of, "the old system was not powerful enough to do the things we want to do", the fact that it's only about twice as powerful as the cube probably puts it closer to the XBox than the 360 or PS3. It's purpose is to introduce another type of gaming, entirely, that you can play along side your traditional GameCube style games.
The bottom line is, these new systems are not promising things that we are not already getting, to a certain degree, with the previous generation, they don't really take gaming to the "next level" like the Genesis, PS1, or PS2 did. The feeling I'll get from playing a game on the PS3 is probably going to be similar to the feeling I've gotten playing a game on the PS2. Where-as the PS2 added enough realism to really delve into new territory in terms of atmospheric elements that really changed the gameplay experience, and you could see that this was coming from before its launch.
This is the first generation in which I truly believe is being lead by Sony and Microsoft, not by the gaming community itself, it's just being forced upon us.
I would rephrase that: it doesn't take an audiophile to notice the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and a CD. But it sure as hell takes one to notice the difference between a 128kbps aac and a CD. Let's be realistic, the AAC format is far ahead of the mp3 format, we shouldn't even be talking about them together. AAC is much closer to OGG in quality (so much so, that there seems to be a never-ending war on which one is better). I can immediately tell when something has been saved as a 128kbps mp3, but it takes me some pretty intense listening if it's an AAC.
That said, the average person DOES NOT CARE, and to be honest, neither do I most of the time, and I'm a professional musician. Remember, it was less than 20 years ago that practically everyone was listening to music on audio tapes, and content listening to scratchy vinyls. In fact, the main reason that everyone switched to CDs wasn't because of quality, it was because of their ease of use, and their supposed resistance to abuse (which we now know better, unfortunately). If you think about it, AACs do lose some quality, but they never will again, whereas CDs eventually get scratched and become unusable. AACs/MP3s/OGGs, being stored on a hard drive, are a much more resilliant form of media than we previously have experienced. There are other issues, of course, but give me a 10 year old AAC any day over a 10 year old CD, it will actually work!
Hell, in 5 years, memory will be so cheap that we'll see iPods with the capability of storing as many apple lossless files as we can store AACs now. Download time would be slower, but by then, we'll all have much faster connections anyway. This is not bound to be an issue forever.
It's the labor of manufacturing the final product that costs the most. This is just another optical drive, like a DVD player or CD player. It will probably require only slightly more manufacturing time than your old CD player. So DVD players cost a lot more than CD players when they first came out... most of that was due to markup, since it was considered a "new technology" people were willing to pay more. In this case, since Sony is simply trying to get the Blu-Ray standard out into the world quickly, its to their advantage to set the price pretty low, especially if their first player is going to be part of their multipurpose game system. Also, since they hold the patents for all the blu-ray standards, they don't have to pay any royalties. Even if it is a little more expensive, they'll make it back in Blu-Ray DVD sales later, like they do with game sales for their consoles. They can afford to chop a significant amount just for that. All these figures seem way off, considering pretty much ALL the parts are being designed and manufactured by Sony, themselves.
What are you smoking? Every game store I've been in has just as many PS2 games as XBox (and 360) games, if not more. It's GameCube games that took a big hit, and are usually deligated to a small shelf in the back, but PS2 games are usually right out front and in great supply.
But otherwise, yes, I think Sony will have a VERY tough time marketting a competing controller to the Revolution. For one, Nintendo are now appearing as the champions of innovation, going against the grain and coming up with something new. This is a huge draw to youth (and adults) who'd rather not feel like they're trapped in a circle of mass-consumerism. This is also a huge reason for Apple's recent success with the iPod, it proudly flew in the face of many of the current trends, and solidified a new market. People LIKE that, they don't just buy into a product for it's functionality, but for what it represents. Currently, companies like Apple and Nintendo have public personae that appear to endorse themes of innovation and individuality. If Sony simply copies Nintendo, even if the actual product is very different, People will ignore it, because what Nintendo's real boon with the Revolution is exactly that, the offering of a gaming Revolution.
Sure, it was a great game, but it's a bit more of a Mario spin-off series, of which there are many. The fact that you don't play as Mario, alone, sorta makes it a non-canon game. It is to the Mario series as Final Fantasy Tactics is to the FF series: great game, but not part of the standard set, due to large departures in basic gameplay.
This is another reason why I think Sony is trying a different (and more intelligent, IMO) strategy by witholding the release date of the PS3 until shortly before its launch. Currently, Microsoft's waiting around for Sony to pin up a release date, so they can prepare the launch of a huge "must-have" around the same time and undermine the system launch. If Sony just keeps quiet, and then suddenly announces that the PS3 will be launched "next week" (a scenario that I think is quite possible), Microsoft will be caught with their pants down. Everyone's expecting Sony to use the same tactics that they have in the past, but if you look at the current situation, it's much different from any of their previous releases. Both the PS1 and PS2 were the first big systems of their generation (except for the Dreamcast, I know, but Sega was already floundering as a hardware company before then, and were of little concern to Sony). Sony was the guy who could step up and offer something far beyond what was currently on the table, and therefor, they boasted about it for months, even years, before their releases. This is a good strategy when you're the first out of the gate, but its not a very good strategy when you're second, because the other guy has a long time to devise a strategy to undermine your launch. Not only that, but you can't hold people's attention for long periods of time by offering them something far beyond what's currently on the market. This is where the N64 failed. Nintendo talked up the new system for over a year before it's release, while in the meantime, Sony and their cronies put forth some of the greatest gaming opportunities in the history of the industry. When the N64 finally launched, the Playstation's developers had had time to get their skills up to almost on par with the new system, so Nintendo had very little to offer in the way of power.
When push comes to shove, the popularity of a game cannot rest on just its name alone, especially if people are considering spending an extra $300 to get the console to play it on. If people hear that it's flashy but not very fun to play, they may have been willing to buy the game at one point, but it's not worth $350 to them. If this was Halo 2, it would be different, since Halo 1 was such a huge hit. But H2 dissapointed a lot of people (everyone I talk to preffers Halo 1 by a large amount), so I think many die hard fans are going to reserve judgement more than they would have. Microsoft had a huge opportunity by holding back a highly anticipated "possible killer-app" like Halo 2 for the 360, but they blew it. H2 is new enough, now, that H3 isn't going to be as anticipated, in fact, there are no extremely highly anticipated games for the 360, which could put the system's future on rocky ground.
The "Gamer" lobby could reach over into industry oversight reform (you're dumping WHAT into the lake? I fish there!).
Haha, when was the last time you saw a gamer outside, let alone FISHING!
I just want them to hurry up and secure a US release for Mother 3! I'd rather not have to play a fan-sub ROM two years later, though I will if I have to!
Earthbound: one of the greatest games ever made.
Agreed. There really haven't been any "normal" side-scrolling Mario games since Mario World. Although Castlevania has some good titles. Oh, and I hear that there's this small, unknown series called Metroid... supposed to have some good scrollers ;)
World's Better? It looks exactly the same, just lighter.
I just recently got a DS, and my ONLY complaint with the system is its ergonomics. It's like if you put shoulder buttons on an NES controller! After about 5 minutes on MarioKart DS, my right hand starts to fall asleep. This is due to the shape of the controller (completely rectangular), not the size or weight. The size and weight are perfect the way they are, it's no heavier than a GameCube controller or a DualShock 2, and the size seems just fine to me. I also have had absolutely no complaints about the screen brightness. The Lite seems like a total waste. Now, if they re-shaped it to be more comfortable to hold, I'd buy one without a second thought.
That would be a huge waste of time and resources; going back and patching hundreds of thousands of units after the fact. Remember that these things are turned out on an assemebly line. The most efficient way of running an assembly line (thus the most ecconomical) will always be to have the final product, in it's final packaging, at the other end. What you're suggesting would require storing thousands of units, having to reopen their packaging, and possibly their casing, patch the unit, and repackage it. This may not sound like much for one unit, but for the hundreds of thousands that will be churnned out, we're talking about a substantial operation. Why not just wait 2 weeks until the AACS patch can be applied to the chips before assembly, thus completely illiminating the need for a complex "re-patching"? The greatest amount of time in production is setting up the assembly system, but once that happens, actual production goes quite quickly. I'm sure they're busting their asses putting the assembly system together (if they haven't already finished). The moment the chips are finalized (AACS included), they can be shipped even faster than the final production line will churn units out, so production can virtually start the moment the first shipment arrives, and continue without stopping.
The second most successfull technology company this year (losing only to Google) was Apple, who have been making miricals, financially, for quite a few years now. iPod marketting has been even more successfull in Japan than in the states, which is really saying something. Their marketting strategy? Wait until the release date (go ahead, say what you will about the actual delivery date, but some do get released on the release date, I got my video iPod only about a week after its release, btw), then launch a huge ad campaign, creating a huge amount of buzz to jumpstart the sales of the new product. Seeing the fairly unsuccessfull overhyped launch of the 360 (compared to other new generation systems), they're going to wait it out.
From our perspective, it may look like a bad idea, and yes, they may lose a few fence sitters to the 360. But on launch day, and the surge of advertising, everyone will completely forget about the lack of hype before-hand, go out and buy it. What we think of the PS3 TODAY means very little if the actual launch is successfull. I'm going to guess they'll start up a huge add campaign within a week of it's release, so that people will at least know it exists on the launch day. These are just speculations, but it's probably a very smart thing to do. Being good at marketting (which, as you commented, Sony is) isn't simply about how much hype stir up, it's about when you do it, and how. Letting out a slow release of moderate press may just reach the same people for a long period of time, while putting all you're energy into one huge add campaign has the likelyhood of penetrating into more diverse audiences. After all, in a crowd, noone but the closest people are going to turn their heads if you slowly let air out of a balloon, but if you pop it...
Woah dude, you're making a WHOLE lot of generalizations there. The PS2 outsold the XBox, worldwide, something fierce. As someone said previously, the PS2 is STILL outselling the 360, and it's still priced pretty high ($125 for a 5 year old console). It's also one of the most well-liked from a user perspective, despite it's being a distant 3rd in terms of power, this generation.
Sure, the 360 was recieved fairly well... but compared to what, though? To be perfectly honest, I've never seen a more flacid system launch, especially a "first of the generation" launch. Hell, I heard more buzz surrounding the VirtualBoy's launch (though that was mostly negative press). The best I've ever heard anyone describe this launch was, "pretty good", but that's kind of an arbitrary statement. I mean, you can sell 3 units and say, "wow! Look, I sold 3 units, that's pretty good!" The measurement I'm going on, since it will reflect both the present and the future of the system, is amount of publicity, and compared to the PS1, PS2, N64, GameCube, DS, XBox, and SNES, this launch was extremely unenthusiastic. Microsoft had a lot going for them on this one: it's been about 4 years since the last major console release, console gaming's numbers have never been better, there have been fairly few big hits or killer apps for a while now so everyone's screaming for something new. It should have been one of the biggest launches EVER. "Pretty good" is fucking terrible if you're the first of the generation because anything better than "totally suck" that follows it is going to drive its sales into the ground.
I work for an NBC station, I run the master control board, I see virtually all of the content of one of the worlds biggest media outlets. I have yet to see a single XBox360 commercial (which continues to baffle me), and just about the only press it got was a short announcement on the launch day, and an endorsement from an old guy on the Today show.
My Prediction
PS3 doesn't blow anyone away. It won't have a $700 price tag, it will look slightly better than the 360, and have better launch titles, but it won't be a spectacular launch. People will be underwhelmed (but not angered) when the controller is just a DualShock 3 with a little more curves, and noone gives a shit about blu-ray. The Revolution, quick on its heals, on the other hand, will be one of Nintendo's most successful launches since the SNES, due to the amount of interest in the new design philosophy, it's lower price following the lackluster launches of the two pricier systems, a few killer first-party launch titles (smash bros has already been confirmed for the launch), and one third-party hardcore FPS designed to turn the heads of the XBox crowd. It will be vilainized by many, and hailed the "greatest system ever" by others, bringing to the surface some pretty large schisms within the gaming community, but at the end of the day, it will generate a fairly substantial amount of indendant press. Slashdot, at the time, will turn into a warzone. The launch will be the most successfull of the three systems, although it's future is up for grabs, depending upon it's longevity and following titles. It has a good chance of outselling both PS3 and 360 over the course of the generation, but it also has a chance of fizzling out. There will be no middle ground for anything, as far as the Revolution is concerned.
It was really cool for the first few hours, and then after a while, it became a total chore: play the wind song, wait 20 seconds for the wind song to play, point in the right direction, put down controller and wait 5-10 minutes, pull up to island. After a while, when you get that song of gails, or whatever the one is that gives you warp spots, it becomes a little faster, but it's also one more song you have to play. After doing this 40-50 times, it gets old really fast, especially in a series where you traditionally have to go back and forth across the map just to figure out what you're supposed to do next, it really killed the joy of adventure.
I don't mind having to go all the way across the map all the time, from one task to another, that's what the series is based on. But give me some terrain, give me something to do, something to look at while I'm doing it. It's difficult to make endless blue ocean, "exciting" or even interesting after you've done it for 10 hours.
Another problem was the abuse of the song playing system. In Ocarina and Majora, the system was near perfect: you only needed to play a song every once in a while, there was something "quick and simple" about it. I found myself having to play the wind changing song, like, every 2 minutes while I was searching out my next objective in WW, and the sequence of playing + animations just seemed to take forever.
The dungeons were on par with the rest of the series, especially the last two regular dungeons, the storyline was fun, the puzzles were great. But I hated the saling, which made me not want to explore, which really sapped a lot of the enjoyment out of the game for me.
Well, in his case, yes, since he's hiring field techs, who will be required to write a lot of handwritten notes. On the other hand, testing an office tech on proficiency with a keyboard + spellchecker, would make perfect sense. Employers should be testing new hires with the tools that 1) they will be working on, 2) what they are used to. If those things do not match, then there's a problem, but every office has a word processor with a spellcheck, and everyone is used to using one, if they can use one efficiently and effectively, that should satisfy the employer's needs.
A good analogy is in the hiring of a mathematician, and basing their being hired on their speed of their computational skills sans calculator. Most of the time spent on various mathematical needs should be in the creative process, and all mathematicians have been using calculators and computers for computation since the late 60s. Obviously, ones computational skills WITH a calculator (ie: knowing how to use a calculator correctly) is important, but knowing that they can divide 5904 by 249875 in their head in under 10 seconds is useless information.
Okay, I admit, I'm a console gamer, former disgruntled PC gamer, I tend to like the style of games that come out on consoles, so I'm a bit biased. But from about 1999-2003, I had a PC (I'm back to Mac for good now), and tried to get into the PC gaming genre. This was probably the most frusterating experience of my life. Every year, I found I was outclassed and couldn't run the latest games. To keep up, I would have had to throw $150 at a video card every year and a half, and $300 on a new motherboard/processor every 3 years. And as we know, upgrading only goes so far, eventually you gotta replace it with a whole new box, which, for a decent gaming PC that won't fall behind in 6 months, is a good $1500.
Last year I bought a GameCube for $100, before that, I bought a used PS2 for $150. For hardware, that's all I've had to spend. The average generation for a console is about 5-6 years (PS2 was released in 2000, GameCube in 2001, if I remember correctly), so if I keep up with even 2 consoles, and buy them at launch cost ($300-$400), I'm spending about half of what it would be to replace a computer every 6 years (and I've never had a computer for 6 years), not including all the upgrades it requires to keep it up to date.
The fact is, PC gaming is EXPENSIVE, very expensive. If the target audience is around 13-18—many of these kids don't have jobs, if they do, they're working at McDonald's for $7/h. It comes down to this: kid finds a game he likes, looks at the box and realizes that his computer can't handle it (this happened to me about 90% of the time growing up). Now, if he's game, he can throw $150 on a new video card, or $150 at a PS2, during mid-generation, and that's that. After years and years of having to make the choice between "throw money at upgrading dohickey" or "buy console and be done with it", as I did, most people finally get smart.
But the other reason PC gaming is "dying" or at least in a slump, is the XBox, which has taken over the genres of games formerly occupied by PCs. The PS2 also moved in to fill some of the gap. FPSs, MMORPGs, these are PC genres, hell, even GTA migrated over... fairly successfully, to put it lightly.
Third, the advent of party gaming. It came into the spotlight with the N64, but with the XBox and GameCube, have grown into a hugely successfull market. Sports games, fighing games—hell, smash bros melee practically stands as a market all on its own—outside of heavilly prepared LAN parties, these are almost impossible to market or play on PC.
But I would say the #1 reason goes back the frusteration of getting a computer to play games, of which I experienced hundreds of hours with growing up. I'm a techy, but I have no interest in adding even MORE hours of troubleshooting to my life than I already do, so I've switched, have you?
Heck, I'm all for that! Especially if it allows them to put some muscle into it and add in a small suite of mini-apps that tend to go along with browsers: email, text editor, address book, calander.
Oh come on, I've heard this arguement more than a few times, only from slashdot. But the other 98% of the population doesn't even know what a "rootkit" is. And "so much attention" is only relative. It got quite a bit of attention on tech sites, but if it wasn't on NBC Nightly News or on the front of a section of the NY Times, it won't even make a dent in sales. I would say, even if it DID make headline news, you might see a 1% sales drop. Most people use consoles for playing games, not viewing media, anyway, most of what Joe Sumer will be hooked with is fancy graphics, a lot of buzz, and news of must-have games. I have little doubt that Sony will be able to deliver those three things just fine, as it did on their last two releases. So no, the rootkit issues is not going to bite Sony.
Don't be two quick to think Apple will let that happen. I agree, that the current iPod will eventually go out of style, but NEVER underestimate Apple's ability to understand cultural trends, and be able to reinvent their image on the fly: it's called Steve Jobs, and it's what makes him a genius. Apple has been able to keep its public image as "the underdog ready to fly in the face of corperate mongers" since it's debut. They hold it today just as much as they did when they launched the super bowl ad back in 1984. Time does not stand still, and I don't think anyone realizes that better than Apple. In fact, it's the one thing that really sets them above the competition. Sure, the next guy will make a shinier product to rival the iPod, but the next day, Apple moves on to something else that turns everyone's heads. Eventually the brand name "iPod" will fall, as a cultural icon, but you know who will be there to replace it? Apple.
My only concern is that all these 3rd party music stores, being locked out of FairPlay, will turn to WMA PlayForSure, and suddenly you'll have AAC being badly overshadowed by the WMA market. Now, Apple's banking on noone getting on board with the other guys, because it won't work on the iPod, but they better make damn sure that it doesn't have the reverse effect. After all, what's more important to them, the iPod or iTMS?
Finally, ya know what's going to be funny? in 10 years, when we're still calling them "MP3 Players" and every company has dropped compatibility for playing mp3s in their players, because noone uses them any more.Sorry dude, you need a computer to use an iPod. Sure, there are a few folks out there who probably have all their music on their friend's computer, but those people are few and far between. Seeing that the iPod demographic, while mainstream, tends to be the technically elite mainstream... and fairly cosmopolitan, it's safe to say that a large percentage of the the demographic has fairly decent internet access. And, so what if it takes 2 hours to download a movie? Many people download things while they sleep, movies would be one of them.
Well, ya learn something everyday. I had no idea about the Metroid Pinball rumblepack. Though, I doubt it would take much to send an on/off message to a computer controlled dynamo. What's the storage capabilities of a GBA cartridge compared to a DS cartridge? This is going to be a BIG issue for a web browser. The protocol would limit the size of the GBA cartridge to a lot less than the DS cartridge, is my guess.
Opera is changing that. Opera Mini is but one example.
Come back and talk to me when it actually changes. Currently, this is all speculation. Currently, it's a niche market in comparison to similar markets... as I said, portable gaming is a bigger market than the console gaming market. We'll talk when Google gets more hits from Opera Mini than Firefox proper.
It [Nintendo] is [an underdog] in the home console market. Everyone's always going on about Sony and Microsoft, often forgetting Nintendo. Until the Revolution was announced, that is...
Now you're basing your arguement on what "everyone" is always going "on and on" about. We all travel in different circles. With the group or friends I have, and the press I tend to read (like Slashdot, Washington Post, various RPG gaming sites), Nintendo comes up very often, I rarely hear about XBox, and usually when I do, it's an article noticing that the 360 launch has been quite unenthusiastic, overall, something even NBC was noting.
Let's also look back on market share. Nintendo is SECOND in world sales, they are ahead of Microsoft, by quite a bit, in fact. Only in the US are they in third place, and they still have a good 20% of the console market here... I usually think of an underdog as something that's been completely overshadowed by another party.
Well known? Where?
Ummm, where have you been, dude? There were SEVERAL slashdot articles that noted it, there was one on 1Up.com, I think. Most gaming sites, when the GameBoy Micro was announced, the first thing they did was take a picture of the micro next to an iPod mini. Sure, we haven't heard from Nintendo, first hand, that the mini was it's inspiration, but considering the fact that they've had their eye on the whole portable electronics market for years, AND they chose virtually the same naming convention, suggests that it's very likely that there was some influence. I don't think I'm going out on a limb here.