I don't know if it's fair to assume that games like JSRF and Panzer Dragoon Orta would have sold better on the Cube, but I agree that Sega really hurt themselves by splitting their game library. They should have just picked one of the big three and gone exclusive, instead of splitting their fanbase.
Personally, I agree that the GameCube would have been the best fit. Obviously the Sega sports lineup fit the Xbox userbase better, but in retrospect Sega probably should have stayed out of sports this generation anyway. I'm not sure if JSRF, PDO, Otogi, Gunvalkyrie, ToeJam & Earl, or Crazy Taxi would have been hits on the GC, but from what I understand, none of them sold too well on the Xbox. Given the success of Sonic, SMB, and PSO on Nintendo's console, I think the overall benefit would have been greater than a multiconsole split. Sega's games could have given the GC a much-needed "mature" edge, and they probably would have been given more attention by the media.
Although, Sega's games would have undoubtedly seen moderate success on the PS2. But as others have pointed out, the Dreamcast had just been hyped to death by Sony's marketing department and Sega would never have given up to Sony that quickly or easily.
"So any suggestion that PC games are dying (or whatever) is just silly. More people are playing videogames on PCs than ever before in the history of games. How is that "dying"?!"
Half-Life, Myst, and The Sims have each sold around 8-10 million copies. I don't know what the numbers are on HL2, Doom 3, etc, but I'm pretty sure none of them have passed that mark yet. Also, sales of one specific game don't really mean anything. Halo 2 has sold something like 6 million copies, which is much more than the average PS2 game, but that hasn't stopped the PS2 from outselling the Xbox by a 20:1 ratio.
"By the way, would you actually want to try playing WoW or Counterstrike on a freaking console?! What a nightmare that would be!"
This kind of argument is just silly. Of course you wouldn't, at least without some big modifications to the controls. But likewise, I've played Halo on the PC, and it sucks compared to the Xbox version. If I ever tried to play Zelda or Resident Evil 4 with a keyboard and mouse, I'd probably hate them both. You can't argue the superiority of a system based on the playability of a theoretical port of one one specific game.
"Oh, and last time I checked, NTSC wasn't something I'd want to spend long periods of time staring at. Interlaced 640x480 != high quality."
Call it what you may, but most every American spends many hours a week staring at it. And again, if resolution is one of the top reasons for PC gaming, doesn't that say something about the quality of games? If a developer can't figure out how to make a decent game in 640x480, frankly they don't deserve to be making games. I'm not discounting PC games, but surely you can find a better reason to support them.
"Whatever. Sonic and Mario walk and jump in THREE dimensions. That's a HUGE gameplay improvement. Pardon me if I'm not turgid with excitement."
Typing something in capital letters doesn't make it any less of an improvement. I could argue that mouselook doesn't matter in FPSs, but we both know I'd be lying. If you don't think 3D games have had an effect on the industry, you're kidding yourself.
Or because they're all FPSs. Contrary to popular belief, the first person shooter isn't the ideal game to most people. Not only that, but PC games have a pretty high price of entry to the average gamer, while the price of Halo could be as little as $25 for a controller and the gas money to a friend's house. Not everyone wants to soup up their computer with a nice graphics card, a bunch of RAM and a fast network connection just to play CS:Source. Halo is about a hundred times more accessible to any average person with a few friends.
This might not be the case, but I would assume that if the game is based on a "fun" idea, it should be relatively easy to fix once the team realizes that it's not fun. Whether it needs a change in control, a different level of difficulty, some revamped missions, those should all be pretty easy to spot and modify before release.
On the other hand, if the game's premise was already horribly flawed to begin with, someone should have caught that before they started writing the game. I'm not a game developer, but from what I understand, they usually outline the game very specifically in some kind of design document. If a game idea inherently sucks, you'd hope that someone on the team has the brains to figure that out from the beginning.
But for the most part, game ideas are pretty good. It's the execution that tends to break down. The controls are shaky, the camera is glitched, there's a huge fetch-quest mission that nobody wants to play. Those can all be ironed out later in the development process. Like Shigeru Miyamoto once said, "A delayed game is eventually good, but a bad game is bad forever."
The only similarity between Animal Crossing and a typical RPG is the camera angle. I don't know if I'd call the game as a whole innovative, but it has a lot of clever ideas. It's definitely not an RPG, though.
And while Nintendogs may be the spiritual successor to Dogz, it's only the fifth game to receive a perfect score from Famitsu, one of Japan's harshest and most respected publishers. It's implementation of voice recognition, touch screen interaction, and wireless interaction make it the one of the most innovative games in recent years, and a huge leap over previous "virtual pet" games.
I can't speak for Killer 7, but I've heard from several people that it's a very interesting game. You assume that its cel-shading is the only form of innovation it contains, and from what people have told me, that's just the beginning.
It sounds to me like you haven't played any of these games you're so quick to dismiss. Any one of them looks pretty average in screenshots, but innovation doesn't always jump out of every scene like it does in Katamari.
And I agree with the GP about Katamari's "overratedness". It's a very fresh and interesting game, but it's gotten a ridiculous amount of media attention while other similarly innovative games have gone completely overlooked. The game's distinctly unique style may have contributed to media perception, but I think its "innovation" has been exaggerated a bit, especially now that its sequel is using a nearly identical formula.
Care to elaborate on that one? The biggest PC games of last year were three FPSs and an MMORPG. Doesn't really scream "innovation" to me. Sure, they each introduced their own little changes to each genre, but for the most part they were refined, evolutionary sequels. If PC gaming does in fact innovate, it's only in a few genres, and only in a few games within each of those genres.
The PC might be more versatile, but that doesn't automatically breed innovation. The problem is that nothing is standardized besides a mouse and keyboard. For example, the PC has had microphone support for years, yet Xbox Live and the Nintendo DS have recently utilized microphones in far more effective ways than PC games have ever done, simply because everyone can use them.
In the early days of gaming, PCs innovated simply because they were the only available platform. But since then, they've hosted mostly evolutions of their core genres, and virtually ignored any others.
"now, suddenly consoles can do 'hd' resolutions, which are basically what we've had on PC's for the past 7-8 years:"
If the best argument for the PC is its resolution, the PC market is pretty dead. Resolution means nothing. At least back in the day you could argue that a PC could handle higher poly counts, better lighting, bigger textures, etc., but if you have to fall back on pixel counting, I'd say there's a problem with your argument.
If you're defending the PC, at least mention some meaningful games, like Spore, The Sims, WoW, or Half-Life 2. The PC market is still innovating, even if it's not quite as much as the console market. No video game platform can survive on graphics alone. It's the petty arguments over resolution and RAM that cause people to believe that PC gaming is only for tech-obsessed nerds. Without good games, great hardware is useless.
"He's right, as most peoples PC's are being continuously upgraded and replaced, the market for PC games continues to stay steady, whereas with consoles only being replaced every 7-8 years, they gradually loose their selling power in the couple of years before they are replaced"
Which is why Halo 2 and GTA:SA were two of the best-selling games this generation, and why Zelda: Twilight Princess is one of the most anticipated games in the last five years. All of those titles have released (or will release) within two years of the "death" of their home console. Consoles have almost always been replaced on a 5-year cycle, but some of the best-selling games often debut toward the end of that cycle. When you throw in backward compatibility, which is going to be a standard in the next generation, the transition will be smoother than ever. I've heard quite a few people say they're planning to buy a Revolution for this year's Zelda, or that they want a PS3 to play some PS2 games they missed.
And the PC market goes through fluctuation just as much as the console market. Until last year's Far Cry, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and WoW, I can't think of a single "big" PC game in the last three years. PC game releases tend to bunch up around the launches of new hardware, causing a fairly predictable cycle.
"After all, they have shown nothing of the Revolution, they have published no specs, they have not released the final design of the console, so why would they be talking about it besides hype? They have shown an empty box and said they're focusing on the games. That's their form of hype."
By that definition, any next-gen related talk is hype. This is basically the extent of Nintendo's "hype":
* The Revolution will be able to download older games. This is most likely true.
* The Revolution will have a unique new controller. This is also probably true.
* Nintendo is working on Smash Bros, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Mario, and some new franchises for the Revolution. I think that's probably true.
* They showed a mock-up of the console, which they explicitly said may or may not be the final design.
No flaunting numbers, no comparisons to the capabilities of the human brain, no mocked-up tech demos that were proven to be FMVs. Nintendo hasn't claimed anything that they can't follow up on. Their entire stance on the Revolution is to not announce anything that's not finalized. Sony has already dropped features from the PS3 and claimed absurd things like "HD-aging" to convert standard video to HD-quality.
Microsoft has done a better job, showing mainly in-game footage and having playable games. We'll see how their claims hold up, but at least their specs seem reasonable. Microsoft and Nintendo are marketing; Sony is hyping.
Are you suggesting that an average person can't aim and fire a rocket launcher with pinpoint accuracy while jumping up and down and sprinting from side to side? What kind of gamer are you, man?
"The "superior" graphics and memory capacity introduced two flaws that really demarcated 8-bit from 16-bit adventure games: automatic maps and noticeable "flaws" to tell you how to advance. (Drop a bomb here on this cracked rock!). I did not care for these innovations."
It's all a matter of preference, I suppose. Personally, I hated having to bomb/burn every tile in the original Zelda and Metroid in the hopes of randomly stumbling onto a secret that probably wasn't worth it. Super Metroid and LttP rewarded gamers with an eye for detail, whereas Zelda and Metroid rewarded gamers with, I don't know... way too much time on their hands?
Exploration-based games like those have always been way too expansive for the gamer to assume something is hidden behind a specific tile without some specific clue to its existance.
That poster (Nintendoian666) is obviously a devout worshipper of Satan, and therefore should not be compared with other Nintendo fans.;)
Re:Some good points, but here's my $0.02
on
The Handheld War
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"Sure, the DS may have TWO screens, one of them being a touch screen, allowing developers to get a bit creative, but it's just a matter of time for the novelty effect to wear off and for people to realize that these features do not actually enhance the gaming experience by much."
A touchscreen is much more efficient for any menu-based game, any game requiring a virtual keyboard, games with user-created content, "hands-on" games like card games and board games, and any PC-based genres like RTSs and FPSs. The second screen, while not entirely necessary, will nevertheless be useful for displaying stats, navigating menus, providing a map, and many other functions that would clutter the HUD in a typical game. Not only that, but the built-in mic will be almost necessary for online communication, provided that Nintendo utilizes it. Between the mic and the onscreen keyboard, the DS lends itself to networked games far better than the PSP does. Now it's up to developers to support it, but with Nintendo finally taking some initiative, third-parties will join in time.
Yeah, and what's up with the charts on this page? Somehow they predict that the PSP will magically quadruple its sales in the next 12 months, while the DS will maintain the exact same sales rate? Did he get this from an analyst, or just make it up on the fly?
There's also a problem with his theory that the PSP will win because of easy ports. In the recent article State of the Handheld Industry, handheld developers seem to believe that Sony won't tolerate console-to-PSP ports. It sounds to me like they're fine with console franchises on the PSP, but they don't want straight ports. If developers have to rebuild the game for the PSP anyway, there's no financial advantage to developing for it.
I have a feeling that "Max Steele" doesn't really know all that much about the handheld war at all, especially if he's crediting Nokia with the win. Any joker with a remote interest in video games and access to Google could have written the same article.
Max out.
Re:Okay, I have to continue my commentary...
on
The Handheld War
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· Score: 1
"When can we start measuring success in games sold, not consoles? It's the games where the money is made after all..."
I agree. Box office sales aren't ranked by the number of theaters a movie played at; they're ranked by number of tickets sold (or by the money made from those tickets). By the game industry's current logic, gadgets like iPods, cell phones, and graphing calculators are completely destroying the PS2 in terms of system sales. But it doesn't matter, because few people use them for games. Developers don't care how many PSPs are sold if everyone is using it solely as a movie player. That's a completely different market. Developers and publishers need to know which platform will sell more games, not the hardware stats.
I'm wondering what the point of that is. The DS's touchscreen begs to be used as a keyboard, and in many cases it is. (Pictochat, Animal Crossing,...Ping Pals *shudder*)
Wouldn't that just foster more "kiddie" game arguments? It's bad enough in America, but I couldn't imagine having to hear "that game is for three-year-olds!" every time I fire up Zelda.
Yeah, maybe if they would suck it up and sell music with explicit lyrics and adult video games, Wal-Mart could be a multibillion dollar corporation. Oh wait...
First of all, you don't use "cliffhangers" in movies. That's something for a cheesy daytime drama. If I go to see a movie, I expect to see a full story. Sure, it could have a clever little lead-in to the next film after the big finale, but Halo 2 didn't even have a big finale. It just ended. An example of a good sequel-friendly ending: Metroid Prime. It had definite closure, but if you beat the game on 100%, you got to see the little cutscene that leads into MP2. It still feels like a finished game, though.
Secondly, the story was hardly the biggest problem with Halo 2. Bungie promised a bunch of stuff like destructable terrain, but it never happened. The whole game felt like Halo 1 with more weapons, different levels, and slightly prettier graphics. Quite similar to your complaints about GT4, I think. Look, Bungie themselves admitted that the game was rushed toward the end, and it clearly shows. There are graphical glitches, animation glitches and weapons imbalances that weren't present in Halo 1. As a whole it's a less complete product, and that's why a lot of my friends (myself included) who were casual Halo players won't even touch Halo 2 anymore.
And to segue back into the original topic... this seems to be the direction MS is heading in the next generation as well. Bigger and prettier sequels. Xbox games may have been relatively original, but that's because MS didn't have any existing franchises to work from. Contrast Microsoft's latest sequels with those of Nintendo, or to a smaller extent, Sony. The original three Super Mario Bros. games were incredibly varied compared to the Halo series or PGR. Maybe consumers can still tolerate the same old game with prettier graphics, but unless Microsoft makes some fundamental changes (for the better) in some of their big franchises, I doubt that sales will increase. The best-selling games each generation tend to be new franchises or innovative, re-imagined familiar ones.
"frankly, as long as consoles are DRM-crippled, they cannot even hope to compete with PCs on any level."
Riiight. Console games have consistently outsold PC games for many years because they're so crippled and inferior. Maybe it hurts your mind to comprehend this, but some people buy and play games for fun, not for bragging rights or the ability to install Linux on their game system of choice. Frankly, as long as PCs have such a limited selection of games and surprisingly non-versatile control setup, they cannot even hope to compete with consoles on any game-related level.
"PCs will be around loooong after the crooked console business is bankrupt."
That's irrelevant. PC's have a much broader purpose than game consoles. Of course they'll have wider consumer appeal, but that doesn't somehow make them any better for gaming.
From the article: "You'd swear that was an actual photo, though I would assume it is just really high-quality artwork."
That's pretty darn high-quality. I sure couldn't draw that nice of a reflection in MS Paint. They must have some real talented Photoshop artists up in Redmond.
"...and the HUD would have worked as well as it did in first person as an overlay to a third-person view"
Not very well. The entire point of the visor was to reinforce the illusion that you are Samus, guided by nothing but your suit's onboard computer and your own sense of adventure. Had Retro created a third-person game, much of what makes the game unique would have been sacrificed. The whole concept of "visors" would have been completely out of place, which would be a shame because the x-ray and thermal visors were some of the coolest powerups in any game. What's more, the entire game was designed as a first-person title. Hallways were narrow, ceilings were short, and the tension caused by a swarm of enemies springing out on all sides of you could never be matched in a third person view. The game would have been a disaster with an external camera, or at the very least a poor sci-fi Zelda clone.
Hudson has already released a DS Bomberman, although it supported only local multiplayer. From what I've read, it's a blast for multiplayer, but kind of a dud as a single player game (puns intended). Hudson is currently working on an online Bomberman game, so I'm holding out for that one. It'll probably end up to be a slight upgrade over this one.
Personally, I'm eagerly anticipating Worms for DS and PSP. If they support cross-platform online play, I'll be hooked for a long time. Portable Worms would be beautiful with the DS's touch screen.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if it's fair to assume that games like JSRF and Panzer Dragoon Orta would have sold better on the Cube, but I agree that Sega really hurt themselves by splitting their game library. They should have just picked one of the big three and gone exclusive, instead of splitting their fanbase.
Personally, I agree that the GameCube would have been the best fit. Obviously the Sega sports lineup fit the Xbox userbase better, but in retrospect Sega probably should have stayed out of sports this generation anyway. I'm not sure if JSRF, PDO, Otogi, Gunvalkyrie, ToeJam & Earl, or Crazy Taxi would have been hits on the GC, but from what I understand, none of them sold too well on the Xbox. Given the success of Sonic, SMB, and PSO on Nintendo's console, I think the overall benefit would have been greater than a multiconsole split. Sega's games could have given the GC a much-needed "mature" edge, and they probably would have been given more attention by the media.
Although, Sega's games would have undoubtedly seen moderate success on the PS2. But as others have pointed out, the Dreamcast had just been hyped to death by Sony's marketing department and Sega would never have given up to Sony that quickly or easily.
"So any suggestion that PC games are dying (or whatever) is just silly. More people are playing videogames on PCs than ever before in the history of games. How is that "dying"?!"
Half-Life, Myst, and The Sims have each sold around 8-10 million copies. I don't know what the numbers are on HL2, Doom 3, etc, but I'm pretty sure none of them have passed that mark yet. Also, sales of one specific game don't really mean anything. Halo 2 has sold something like 6 million copies, which is much more than the average PS2 game, but that hasn't stopped the PS2 from outselling the Xbox by a 20:1 ratio.
"By the way, would you actually want to try playing WoW or Counterstrike on a freaking console?! What a nightmare that would be!"
This kind of argument is just silly. Of course you wouldn't, at least without some big modifications to the controls. But likewise, I've played Halo on the PC, and it sucks compared to the Xbox version. If I ever tried to play Zelda or Resident Evil 4 with a keyboard and mouse, I'd probably hate them both. You can't argue the superiority of a system based on the playability of a theoretical port of one one specific game.
"Oh, and last time I checked, NTSC wasn't something I'd want to spend long periods of time staring at. Interlaced 640x480 != high quality."
Call it what you may, but most every American spends many hours a week staring at it. And again, if resolution is one of the top reasons for PC gaming, doesn't that say something about the quality of games? If a developer can't figure out how to make a decent game in 640x480, frankly they don't deserve to be making games. I'm not discounting PC games, but surely you can find a better reason to support them.
"Whatever. Sonic and Mario walk and jump in THREE dimensions. That's a HUGE gameplay improvement. Pardon me if I'm not turgid with excitement."
Typing something in capital letters doesn't make it any less of an improvement. I could argue that mouselook doesn't matter in FPSs, but we both know I'd be lying. If you don't think 3D games have had an effect on the industry, you're kidding yourself.
Or because they're all FPSs. Contrary to popular belief, the first person shooter isn't the ideal game to most people. Not only that, but PC games have a pretty high price of entry to the average gamer, while the price of Halo could be as little as $25 for a controller and the gas money to a friend's house. Not everyone wants to soup up their computer with a nice graphics card, a bunch of RAM and a fast network connection just to play CS:Source. Halo is about a hundred times more accessible to any average person with a few friends.
This might not be the case, but I would assume that if the game is based on a "fun" idea, it should be relatively easy to fix once the team realizes that it's not fun. Whether it needs a change in control, a different level of difficulty, some revamped missions, those should all be pretty easy to spot and modify before release.
On the other hand, if the game's premise was already horribly flawed to begin with, someone should have caught that before they started writing the game. I'm not a game developer, but from what I understand, they usually outline the game very specifically in some kind of design document. If a game idea inherently sucks, you'd hope that someone on the team has the brains to figure that out from the beginning.
But for the most part, game ideas are pretty good. It's the execution that tends to break down. The controls are shaky, the camera is glitched, there's a huge fetch-quest mission that nobody wants to play. Those can all be ironed out later in the development process. Like Shigeru Miyamoto once said, "A delayed game is eventually good, but a bad game is bad forever."
The only similarity between Animal Crossing and a typical RPG is the camera angle. I don't know if I'd call the game as a whole innovative, but it has a lot of clever ideas. It's definitely not an RPG, though.
And while Nintendogs may be the spiritual successor to Dogz, it's only the fifth game to receive a perfect score from Famitsu, one of Japan's harshest and most respected publishers. It's implementation of voice recognition, touch screen interaction, and wireless interaction make it the one of the most innovative games in recent years, and a huge leap over previous "virtual pet" games.
I can't speak for Killer 7, but I've heard from several people that it's a very interesting game. You assume that its cel-shading is the only form of innovation it contains, and from what people have told me, that's just the beginning.
It sounds to me like you haven't played any of these games you're so quick to dismiss. Any one of them looks pretty average in screenshots, but innovation doesn't always jump out of every scene like it does in Katamari.
And I agree with the GP about Katamari's "overratedness". It's a very fresh and interesting game, but it's gotten a ridiculous amount of media attention while other similarly innovative games have gone completely overlooked. The game's distinctly unique style may have contributed to media perception, but I think its "innovation" has been exaggerated a bit, especially now that its sequel is using a nearly identical formula.
"PC Gaming is why we have innovation,"
Care to elaborate on that one? The biggest PC games of last year were three FPSs and an MMORPG. Doesn't really scream "innovation" to me. Sure, they each introduced their own little changes to each genre, but for the most part they were refined, evolutionary sequels. If PC gaming does in fact innovate, it's only in a few genres, and only in a few games within each of those genres.
The PC might be more versatile, but that doesn't automatically breed innovation. The problem is that nothing is standardized besides a mouse and keyboard. For example, the PC has had microphone support for years, yet Xbox Live and the Nintendo DS have recently utilized microphones in far more effective ways than PC games have ever done, simply because everyone can use them.
In the early days of gaming, PCs innovated simply because they were the only available platform. But since then, they've hosted mostly evolutions of their core genres, and virtually ignored any others.
"now, suddenly consoles can do 'hd' resolutions, which are basically what we've had on PC's for the past 7-8 years:"
If the best argument for the PC is its resolution, the PC market is pretty dead. Resolution means nothing. At least back in the day you could argue that a PC could handle higher poly counts, better lighting, bigger textures, etc., but if you have to fall back on pixel counting, I'd say there's a problem with your argument.
If you're defending the PC, at least mention some meaningful games, like Spore, The Sims, WoW, or Half-Life 2. The PC market is still innovating, even if it's not quite as much as the console market. No video game platform can survive on graphics alone. It's the petty arguments over resolution and RAM that cause people to believe that PC gaming is only for tech-obsessed nerds. Without good games, great hardware is useless.
"He's right, as most peoples PC's are being continuously upgraded and replaced, the market for PC games continues to stay steady, whereas with consoles only being replaced every 7-8 years, they gradually loose their selling power in the couple of years before they are replaced"
Which is why Halo 2 and GTA:SA were two of the best-selling games this generation, and why Zelda: Twilight Princess is one of the most anticipated games in the last five years. All of those titles have released (or will release) within two years of the "death" of their home console. Consoles have almost always been replaced on a 5-year cycle, but some of the best-selling games often debut toward the end of that cycle. When you throw in backward compatibility, which is going to be a standard in the next generation, the transition will be smoother than ever. I've heard quite a few people say they're planning to buy a Revolution for this year's Zelda, or that they want a PS3 to play some PS2 games they missed.
And the PC market goes through fluctuation just as much as the console market. Until last year's Far Cry, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and WoW, I can't think of a single "big" PC game in the last three years. PC game releases tend to bunch up around the launches of new hardware, causing a fairly predictable cycle.
"After all, they have shown nothing of the Revolution, they have published no specs, they have not released the final design of the console, so why would they be talking about it besides hype? They have shown an empty box and said they're focusing on the games. That's their form of hype."
By that definition, any next-gen related talk is hype. This is basically the extent of Nintendo's "hype":
* The Revolution will be able to download older games. This is most likely true. * The Revolution will have a unique new controller. This is also probably true. * Nintendo is working on Smash Bros, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Mario, and some new franchises for the Revolution. I think that's probably true. * They showed a mock-up of the console, which they explicitly said may or may not be the final design.
No flaunting numbers, no comparisons to the capabilities of the human brain, no mocked-up tech demos that were proven to be FMVs. Nintendo hasn't claimed anything that they can't follow up on. Their entire stance on the Revolution is to not announce anything that's not finalized. Sony has already dropped features from the PS3 and claimed absurd things like "HD-aging" to convert standard video to HD-quality.
Microsoft has done a better job, showing mainly in-game footage and having playable games. We'll see how their claims hold up, but at least their specs seem reasonable. Microsoft and Nintendo are marketing; Sony is hyping.
"You've never fired a gun, have you?"
Are you suggesting that an average person can't aim and fire a rocket launcher with pinpoint accuracy while jumping up and down and sprinting from side to side? What kind of gamer are you, man?
"The "superior" graphics and memory capacity introduced two flaws that really demarcated 8-bit from 16-bit adventure games: automatic maps and noticeable "flaws" to tell you how to advance. (Drop a bomb here on this cracked rock!). I did not care for these innovations."
It's all a matter of preference, I suppose. Personally, I hated having to bomb/burn every tile in the original Zelda and Metroid in the hopes of randomly stumbling onto a secret that probably wasn't worth it. Super Metroid and LttP rewarded gamers with an eye for detail, whereas Zelda and Metroid rewarded gamers with, I don't know... way too much time on their hands?
Exploration-based games like those have always been way too expansive for the gamer to assume something is hidden behind a specific tile without some specific clue to its existance.
That poster (Nintendoian666) is obviously a devout worshipper of Satan, and therefore should not be compared with other Nintendo fans. ;)
"Sure, the DS may have TWO screens, one of them being a touch screen, allowing developers to get a bit creative, but it's just a matter of time for the novelty effect to wear off and for people to realize that these features do not actually enhance the gaming experience by much."
A touchscreen is much more efficient for any menu-based game, any game requiring a virtual keyboard, games with user-created content, "hands-on" games like card games and board games, and any PC-based genres like RTSs and FPSs. The second screen, while not entirely necessary, will nevertheless be useful for displaying stats, navigating menus, providing a map, and many other functions that would clutter the HUD in a typical game. Not only that, but the built-in mic will be almost necessary for online communication, provided that Nintendo utilizes it. Between the mic and the onscreen keyboard, the DS lends itself to networked games far better than the PSP does. Now it's up to developers to support it, but with Nintendo finally taking some initiative, third-parties will join in time.
Yeah, and what's up with the charts on this page? Somehow they predict that the PSP will magically quadruple its sales in the next 12 months, while the DS will maintain the exact same sales rate? Did he get this from an analyst, or just make it up on the fly?
There's also a problem with his theory that the PSP will win because of easy ports. In the recent article State of the Handheld Industry, handheld developers seem to believe that Sony won't tolerate console-to-PSP ports. It sounds to me like they're fine with console franchises on the PSP, but they don't want straight ports. If developers have to rebuild the game for the PSP anyway, there's no financial advantage to developing for it.
I have a feeling that "Max Steele" doesn't really know all that much about the handheld war at all, especially if he's crediting Nokia with the win. Any joker with a remote interest in video games and access to Google could have written the same article.
Max out.
"When can we start measuring success in games sold, not consoles? It's the games where the money is made after all..."
I agree. Box office sales aren't ranked by the number of theaters a movie played at; they're ranked by number of tickets sold (or by the money made from those tickets). By the game industry's current logic, gadgets like iPods, cell phones, and graphing calculators are completely destroying the PS2 in terms of system sales. But it doesn't matter, because few people use them for games. Developers don't care how many PSPs are sold if everyone is using it solely as a movie player. That's a completely different market. Developers and publishers need to know which platform will sell more games, not the hardware stats.
That's amazing. An emulator that only runs FMVs, and at less than 10% of their original framerate. "It's a start" is right.
I'm wondering what the point of that is. The DS's touchscreen begs to be used as a keyboard, and in many cases it is. (Pictochat, Animal Crossing, ...Ping Pals *shudder*)
Wouldn't that just foster more "kiddie" game arguments? It's bad enough in America, but I couldn't imagine having to hear "that game is for three-year-olds!" every time I fire up Zelda.
Yeah, maybe if they would suck it up and sell music with explicit lyrics and adult video games, Wal-Mart could be a multibillion dollar corporation. Oh wait...
First of all, you don't use "cliffhangers" in movies. That's something for a cheesy daytime drama. If I go to see a movie, I expect to see a full story. Sure, it could have a clever little lead-in to the next film after the big finale, but Halo 2 didn't even have a big finale. It just ended. An example of a good sequel-friendly ending: Metroid Prime. It had definite closure, but if you beat the game on 100%, you got to see the little cutscene that leads into MP2. It still feels like a finished game, though.
Secondly, the story was hardly the biggest problem with Halo 2. Bungie promised a bunch of stuff like destructable terrain, but it never happened. The whole game felt like Halo 1 with more weapons, different levels, and slightly prettier graphics. Quite similar to your complaints about GT4, I think. Look, Bungie themselves admitted that the game was rushed toward the end, and it clearly shows. There are graphical glitches, animation glitches and weapons imbalances that weren't present in Halo 1. As a whole it's a less complete product, and that's why a lot of my friends (myself included) who were casual Halo players won't even touch Halo 2 anymore.
And to segue back into the original topic... this seems to be the direction MS is heading in the next generation as well. Bigger and prettier sequels. Xbox games may have been relatively original, but that's because MS didn't have any existing franchises to work from. Contrast Microsoft's latest sequels with those of Nintendo, or to a smaller extent, Sony. The original three Super Mario Bros. games were incredibly varied compared to the Halo series or PGR. Maybe consumers can still tolerate the same old game with prettier graphics, but unless Microsoft makes some fundamental changes (for the better) in some of their big franchises, I doubt that sales will increase. The best-selling games each generation tend to be new franchises or innovative, re-imagined familiar ones.
"frankly, as long as consoles are DRM-crippled, they cannot even hope to compete with PCs on any level."
Riiight. Console games have consistently outsold PC games for many years because they're so crippled and inferior. Maybe it hurts your mind to comprehend this, but some people buy and play games for fun, not for bragging rights or the ability to install Linux on their game system of choice. Frankly, as long as PCs have such a limited selection of games and surprisingly non-versatile control setup, they cannot even hope to compete with consoles on any game-related level.
"PCs will be around loooong after the crooked console business is bankrupt."
That's irrelevant. PC's have a much broader purpose than game consoles. Of course they'll have wider consumer appeal, but that doesn't somehow make them any better for gaming.
From the article:
"You'd swear that was an actual photo, though I would assume it is just really high-quality artwork."
That's pretty darn high-quality. I sure couldn't draw that nice of a reflection in MS Paint. They must have some real talented Photoshop artists up in Redmond.
"...and the HUD would have worked as well as it did in first person as an overlay to a third-person view"
Not very well. The entire point of the visor was to reinforce the illusion that you are Samus, guided by nothing but your suit's onboard computer and your own sense of adventure. Had Retro created a third-person game, much of what makes the game unique would have been sacrificed. The whole concept of "visors" would have been completely out of place, which would be a shame because the x-ray and thermal visors were some of the coolest powerups in any game. What's more, the entire game was designed as a first-person title. Hallways were narrow, ceilings were short, and the tension caused by a swarm of enemies springing out on all sides of you could never be matched in a third person view. The game would have been a disaster with an external camera, or at the very least a poor sci-fi Zelda clone.
Hudson has already released a DS Bomberman, although it supported only local multiplayer. From what I've read, it's a blast for multiplayer, but kind of a dud as a single player game (puns intended). Hudson is currently working on an online Bomberman game, so I'm holding out for that one. It'll probably end up to be a slight upgrade over this one.
Personally, I'm eagerly anticipating Worms for DS and PSP. If they support cross-platform online play, I'll be hooked for a long time. Portable Worms would be beautiful with the DS's touch screen.