Consumers and Developers avoided it like the plague because of Sega's track record at that point, having earned little to no 3rd party support and subsequently dumping the Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn midlife people were expecting the same fate of the Dreamcast and it became a self fulfilling prophecy....
The Dreamcast when it launched was the fastest and most successful selling console launch to Date- better than the Ps1, N64, NES, Genesis...you name it. Customers weren't "avoiding it like the plague" by any means. Third party support was substantially higher than the N64 or (possibly) the Gamecube- and since SEGA had such strong first party development to supplement their system, this really wasn't an issue.
It certainly didn't help that most of the 3rd party games that DID make it to the console were PS1 ports which in tern cause people to think it was more a competitor of the PS1 then it was of the PS2... As a result their sales in the first year weren't as much as the PS2 in the first couple of months even with the shortages...
Totally False. Blue Stinger. Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Dead or Alive 2. Grandia 2. Half Life. Soul Calibur. Jet Grind Radio. Quake III Arena. Metropolis Street Racer. Power stone 1 and 2. The DC had a substantial lineup of EXTREMELY impressive exclusive third party games that simply COULD NOT be done on the Ps1 without severe compromises. Soul Calibur 1 in particular was widely considered THE 3-D Fighter to beat until it's sequel released years later. SEGA lacked support from EA, but Sega's own NFL2K1 series was a highly regarded competitor that actually managed to OUTSELL Madden that year.
Your assumption that the PS2's sales in a couple months exceeded DC sales for it's first year are also completely off. The DC had sold 4.1 million consoles in the US and Japan (NOT including Europe) by the time the Ps2 launched. (source: www.vgcharts.org) Those sales are hardly anything to sneeze at and easily comparable to Sales of the Xbox and GC during their respective first years. The DC also did not drop to $50 us until the very end of it's lifecycle. Definitely NOT In January 2001.
It wasn't lack of sales or games that killed the DC, but the fact that sega was bleeding money as a result of a faulty business model and in some cases poor marketing. Microsoft lost 4 BILLION on the original Xbox. Had SEGA been in a similar position to keep blowing cash as microsoft is, we likely would have seen the DC perform similarly to the GC and Xbox.
To be fair, Atari didn't have anywhere NEAR the brand success Nintendo and Sony currently have. Nintendo's been a dominant player in the field since 1985 with no less than four profitable consoles. An argument can be made that they've been substantially less successful in that area since the SNES, but even so the SNES and NES and the properties established on those systems were so popular it can be argued they've been coasting on them ever since. I remember reading an article once where Mario had surpassed mickey mouse worldwide in terms of recognizability. You can't buy that kind of brand loyalty and recognition.
Until the PSP launched, The Gameboy had virtually no competition at all and was practically a money factory. Other attempts at competition (Lynx, N-Gage, Turbo Express, Game Gear..) quickly became niche handhelds and died quick deaths, regardless of technical superiority. Simply put, You had a handheld system from 1990-2005, you had a Nintendo. End of Story.
Since 1994 when the playstation launched in Japan, Sony managed to ship/sell (let's not get into that argument today) nearly 210 MILLION consoles. The Playstation is far and away the most recognizable and best selling system in history and a runaway success for nearly 12 solid years. The 2600 isn't even in the same league.
Atari may have been a pioneer, but they didn't dominate the market anywhere near as well as These two companies have.
Consumers and game makers alike had the choice of: Buy/make games for PS2 or don't do anything at all. This is what Bushnell meant when he says it was a success based on timing.... Sony owned the market because they had no competition.
Why does everyone forget about the Dreamcast when making statements like this? The DC was very much alive and competitive up to a full year before the PS2 launched with comparable hardware and some pretty stellar games. (Soul Calibur 1, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure, Seaman, Rez...)Even AFTER SEGA threw in the towel after the Christmas 2000 Season, the console was an excellent deal and could be had for a THIRD of the cost of a retail PS2 for some time- at least until the Xbox and GC launched, IIRC.
The PS2's success is due to many factors, but "lack of competition" was not one of them.
Kind of funny that the two big system movers both end up being futuristic combat titles
It is not really funny but makes a good argument for people who say that the videogame industry is becomming far more generic as development costs increase.
I'd say it's more an example of tastes just changing, and maybe a short memory on the part of some slashdotters.
Pre-crash "system movers" were simple arcade ports like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. 8-bit "system movers" were platformers i.e. Mario 3. The 16 Bit Gen saw a glut of mascot platformers (Bubsy, Aero, Sonic, Rocky Rodent, Ristar ad nauseum) but interest declined and fighters grabbed a lot of attention- Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat ended up being the killer apps for that gen.
Gran Turismo was the system seller for the PSX (far and away the market leader of that gen), but RPG's like final fantasy VII and FFVIII sold strongly with nearly 10 million copies sold EACH. New Genres like "survival horror" and "stealth action" (Resident evil, Metal gear) sold a lot of systems too.
This past gen, racing games still sold strongly (GT3 alone sold nearly as much as Halo and Halo 2 combined!) but the top sellers weren't RPG's, Racers, FPS or survival horror but Grand Theft Auto and it's sequels, which created a new "sandbox" genre and spawned countless imitators.
So it's shortsighted to say the industry has gotten "more generic"..what sells has really changed with each gen as the audience matures, and in most cases the real "killer" games didn't show up until well after launch. Now PC gaming, that's another story...
CD's and DVD movies look alike but that's about where the similarity ends. Large hollywood blockbusters (the "$50 millions to make films..") have usually already made back their budget and then some via box office sales in the US and abroad. DVD sales are essentially pure profit after that, so they can afford to be priced much more reasonably than CD's, which have only direct to consumer sales as a source of revenue. Without box office revenue DVD prices would be sky high.
Even direct to DVD films (which operate on MUCH MUCH smaller budgets closer to that of a major CD release) still have the rental market as well as the sale of broadcast and cable rights to carry them. (if they're any good, that is.)
Console games don't work that way. Game content will be cached as needed to the drive and read from there, and deleted by the game when no longer necessary. Come on now, look at the original Xbox. it's not like this is a new thing.
I don't know what the data rate is on the BluRay drives in the PS3 but no matter how high they are there's going to be serious amounts of loading from disc.
Did everyone forget all versions of the Ps3 come standard with hard drives? Load time will not be an issue this gen.
It's already done, actually. If you've used the PSP it allows you to type messages out as one would via cellphone text messaging. Not as fast as using a keyboard, obviously, but light years better than the typical "virtual keyboard" setup. Per the Eurogamer article a couple of days ago that spotlighted the PS3's online service, the PS3 will use something similar in case one does not have/does not want to use a USB keyboard.
ah, but that's what the purpose of a metamod system is. If an individual truly IS a fanatic with an agenda, he/she will find themselves unable to moderate for much longer. Plus, if mods are browsing at -1 as they should be insightful comments unfairly modded down should be modded back up in short order.
just a correction: both controllers for the ps3 "core" and "premium" will be wireless. so the only differences are the built in wifi, larger hard drive, and chrome trim.
actually, I'm using the current version of Eloader on my PSP (firmware v.2.60) to play NES/SNES Roms, and it 1.) requires no editing of savegames and 2.) Requires no copy of GTA.
Sony IS developing a PSX emulator for the PSP, due to release later this year around the Ps3 launch. It will cost money, (obviously) but you DID say you'd be willing to pay for the software...
Sony's dropping the price of the PS3 to $410 six months AFTER they should have dropped it to $399 is a day late and a dollar short.
They've already lost not just mindshare - of hardcore and midcore gamers - they've lost Developer mindspace, as many have already rejigged their games to make sure they now are releasing Wii games.
To be fair, only the hardest of the hardcore gamers who follow this kind of news religiously even has any IDEA of what the various versions of the Ps3 cost, and their minds were likely made up a loooooooong time ago. Your average japanese gamer won't have any idea until the advertising blitz starts in late october/early november.
Developer wise, given the TREMENDOUS performance gap between the Wii and the Ps3, I find it unlikely that something on the level of resistance: fall of man or metal gear solid 4 could simply be "rejigged" in a few months into a Wii game, especially over a matter of a couple of dollars. Developers aren't idiots. They knew the hardware was likely to be pricey.
They still have games that cost $10 extra than what a Wii game does.
We've yet to see any solid pricing on games for the Ps3 OR the Wii, other than a months old quote that essentially said "I don't know, it could be more than 50." In any case, gamers who are REALLY concerned about a $10 difference will likely wait a couple weeks for the inevitable price drops, rent, or trade something in.
They still have an overly FPS and Sports focus that gives them no growth areas, while the Wii is expanding into uncharted territory and even importing Japanese and Chinese games into Euro and US markets.
overly FPS and Sports focus? the Ps3 so far has lost ZERO of its developers from the Ps2, and even has team ninja developing games for them again. Every significant developer in every genre you can think of is on board. As for "importing japanese and chinese games" the Wii is doing no such thing, while the Ps3 actually IS region free for games.
They still have the DRM and Blu-Ray mentality that just makes everyone want to do something else - anything else - to avoid them.
Every console ever made has DRM built into it. Think nintendo wants you to copy it's Gamecube and Wii games? Think again. the rest of your post is so error ridden and full of unwarranted speculation it's not worth refuting.
Of the 11 people I know who purchased a PS2 at launch, 8 of them have had to replace their systems over the past 3 years...
The plural of anecdote is not "data." Of the 6 or 7 individuals I know who own a PS2, only one has had to replace his and that guy's a slob. Regardless, there's a 60-70 million unit gap (depending on how you interpret shipped vs. sold) between the Ps2 and the GC or Xbox. to put it in perspective, even the NES only managed to sell about 70 million or so during it's entire lifetime. You can't attribute all of that to broken consoles. Sony clearly did something right with the Ps2, and consumers are happy with it, still buying over 30,000 of them a week.
The video at TGS shows a cheetah running down some sort of antelope, (at one point from a first person perspective) which is close enough. It may not be the type of game that gets the fanboys foaming at the mouth i.e. Halo, but it definitely has my interest up.
I'm too lazy to link to it, but the video trailer for "Afrika" is positively mindblowing. I'm not sure what kind of game it will eventually BE (will you play as one of the animals? As an unseen explorer?) But I don't think I've seen anything THAT detailed on any system- PC OR console. If these are what first gen Ps3 games are capable of, I can't wait to see what's coming next.
So apparently this is only for people who have connected their PS3 to the internet in some fashion? We're not exactly at the point where everybody around can plug a cat-5 cable into something to get broadband, so it seems that this distributed application is only for a subset of PS3 users. Kind of a shame.
I shouldn't have to point this out, but gamers tend to have a broadband attach rate that's many, many times higher than the general population. Someone willing to shell out $500-$600 per console and $50 per game isn't likely to be still using dialup unless geography is a factor. (very rural areas, etc.) At minimum, we're talking a number that's in the millions if not TENS of millions worldwide, and at a rate that outperforms even top of the line PC's at doing the same task.
Who modded this insightful? Shadow of the Colossus was developed by a wholly owned subsidiary of SCEA. It's not third party. Same with Gran Turismo, SOCOM, the Ratchet and Clank Games, Killzone, and some other very highly rated properties.
Now that you can get huge non-HD TVs at walmart for cheap and $50 DVD players...
Actually, you can't. Congress mandated all TV's over a certain size be High Definition. Try looking around for a new non high def screen over 36 inches. they don't exist anymore, and soon it will be the same story for your 36 inch and 32 inches, etc...
This makes sense.. during the whole PS2 era, I've only bought maybe three new games in all that time. I usually only buy off the used racks or trade with friends, which I imagine doesn't put that money in Sony's pocket again.
On the contrary. By buying off the used racks, you're making it possible for those who purchase new to continue doing so. Joe Gamer is more likely to purchase Madden 200X at $50 new if he can trade in the last two new games he purchased for credit; credit which comes from you buying used games. So, indirectly, Sony still sees your money.
no, not a double blind test, but from personal experience when I used to sell electronics in college. (1999-2002, FYI.) I got the opportunity to play around with quite a bit of equipment I otherwise could not have afforded(especially when something new came in) and got a chance to do side by side comparisons on a daily basis. Sometimes for customers, but mostly because I was just curious.
And from personal experience no matter what kind of equipment I used, (CRT, Plasma, DLP) I got a better picture using a digital (HDMI/DVI) cable over analog component cable. It's the same reason why buying expensive HDMI cables makes no sense, because the signal isn't subject to the same degradation that S-video, component, and composite are.
Stop foaming at the mouth...not everything's about DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally False. Blue Stinger. Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Dead or Alive 2. Grandia 2. Half Life. Soul Calibur. Jet Grind Radio. Quake III Arena. Metropolis Street Racer. Power stone 1 and 2. The DC had a substantial lineup of EXTREMELY impressive exclusive third party games that simply COULD NOT be done on the Ps1 without severe compromises. Soul Calibur 1 in particular was widely considered THE 3-D Fighter to beat until it's sequel released years later. SEGA lacked support from EA, but Sega's own NFL2K1 series was a highly regarded competitor that actually managed to OUTSELL Madden that year.
Your assumption that the PS2's sales in a couple months exceeded DC sales for it's first year are also completely off. The DC had sold 4.1 million consoles in the US and Japan (NOT including Europe) by the time the Ps2 launched. (source: www.vgcharts.org) Those sales are hardly anything to sneeze at and easily comparable to Sales of the Xbox and GC during their respective first years. The DC also did not drop to $50 us until the very end of it's lifecycle. Definitely NOT In January 2001.
It wasn't lack of sales or games that killed the DC, but the fact that sega was bleeding money as a result of a faulty business model and in some cases poor marketing. Microsoft lost 4 BILLION on the original Xbox. Had SEGA been in a similar position to keep blowing cash as microsoft is, we likely would have seen the DC perform similarly to the GC and Xbox.
To be fair, Atari didn't have anywhere NEAR the brand success Nintendo and Sony currently have. Nintendo's been a dominant player in the field since 1985 with no less than four profitable consoles. An argument can be made that they've been substantially less successful in that area since the SNES, but even so the SNES and NES and the properties established on those systems were so popular it can be argued they've been coasting on them ever since. I remember reading an article once where Mario had surpassed mickey mouse worldwide in terms of recognizability. You can't buy that kind of brand loyalty and recognition.
Until the PSP launched, The Gameboy had virtually no competition at all and was practically a money factory. Other attempts at competition (Lynx, N-Gage, Turbo Express, Game Gear..) quickly became niche handhelds and died quick deaths, regardless of technical superiority. Simply put, You had a handheld system from 1990-2005, you had a Nintendo. End of Story.
Since 1994 when the playstation launched in Japan, Sony managed to ship/sell (let's not get into that argument today) nearly 210 MILLION consoles. The Playstation is far and away the most recognizable and best selling system in history and a runaway success for nearly 12 solid years. The 2600 isn't even in the same league.
Atari may have been a pioneer, but they didn't dominate the market anywhere near as well as These two companies have.
Why does everyone forget about the Dreamcast when making statements like this? The DC was very much alive and competitive up to a full year before the PS2 launched with comparable hardware and some pretty stellar games. (Soul Calibur 1, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure, Seaman, Rez...)Even AFTER SEGA threw in the towel after the Christmas 2000 Season, the console was an excellent deal and could be had for a THIRD of the cost of a retail PS2 for some time- at least until the Xbox and GC launched, IIRC.
The PS2's success is due to many factors, but "lack of competition" was not one of them.
I'd say it's more an example of tastes just changing, and maybe a short memory on the part of some slashdotters.
Pre-crash "system movers" were simple arcade ports like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. 8-bit "system movers" were platformers i.e. Mario 3. The 16 Bit Gen saw a glut of mascot platformers (Bubsy, Aero, Sonic, Rocky Rodent, Ristar ad nauseum) but interest declined and fighters grabbed a lot of attention- Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat ended up being the killer apps for that gen.
Gran Turismo was the system seller for the PSX (far and away the market leader of that gen), but RPG's like final fantasy VII and FFVIII sold strongly with nearly 10 million copies sold EACH. New Genres like "survival horror" and "stealth action" (Resident evil, Metal gear) sold a lot of systems too.
This past gen, racing games still sold strongly (GT3 alone sold nearly as much as Halo and Halo 2 combined!) but the top sellers weren't RPG's, Racers, FPS or survival horror but Grand Theft Auto and it's sequels, which created a new "sandbox" genre and spawned countless imitators.
So it's shortsighted to say the industry has gotten "more generic"..what sells has really changed with each gen as the audience matures, and in most cases the real "killer" games didn't show up until well after launch. Now PC gaming, that's another story...
CD's and DVD movies look alike but that's about where the similarity ends. Large hollywood blockbusters (the "$50 millions to make films..") have usually already made back their budget and then some via box office sales in the US and abroad. DVD sales are essentially pure profit after that, so they can afford to be priced much more reasonably than CD's, which have only direct to consumer sales as a source of revenue. Without box office revenue DVD prices would be sky high.
Even direct to DVD films (which operate on MUCH MUCH smaller budgets closer to that of a major CD release) still have the rental market as well as the sale of broadcast and cable rights to carry them. (if they're any good, that is.)
The low end version of the Ps3 is upgradable to Wifi via USB. It's not crippled by any means.
Resistance: Fall of Man is absent from your list but is widely considered to be the system seller at launch.
Console games don't work that way. Game content will be cached as needed to the drive and read from there, and deleted by the game when no longer necessary. Come on now, look at the original Xbox. it's not like this is a new thing.
It's already done, actually. If you've used the PSP it allows you to type messages out as one would via cellphone text messaging. Not as fast as using a keyboard, obviously, but light years better than the typical "virtual keyboard" setup. Per the Eurogamer article a couple of days ago that spotlighted the PS3's online service, the PS3 will use something similar in case one does not have/does not want to use a USB keyboard.
ah, but that's what the purpose of a metamod system is. If an individual truly IS a fanatic with an agenda, he/she will find themselves unable to moderate for much longer. Plus, if mods are browsing at -1 as they should be insightful comments unfairly modded down should be modded back up in short order.
just a correction: both controllers for the ps3 "core" and "premium" will be wireless. so the only differences are the built in wifi, larger hard drive, and chrome trim.
actually, I'm using the current version of Eloader on my PSP (firmware v.2.60) to play NES/SNES Roms, and it 1.) requires no editing of savegames and 2.) Requires no copy of GTA.
Sony IS developing a PSX emulator for the PSP, due to release later this year around the Ps3 launch. It will cost money, (obviously) but you DID say you'd be willing to pay for the software...
To be fair, only the hardest of the hardcore gamers who follow this kind of news religiously even has any IDEA of what the various versions of the Ps3 cost, and their minds were likely made up a loooooooong time ago. Your average japanese gamer won't have any idea until the advertising blitz starts in late october/early november.
Developer wise, given the TREMENDOUS performance gap between the Wii and the Ps3, I find it unlikely that something on the level of resistance: fall of man or metal gear solid 4 could simply be "rejigged" in a few months into a Wii game, especially over a matter of a couple of dollars. Developers aren't idiots. They knew the hardware was likely to be pricey.
We've yet to see any solid pricing on games for the Ps3 OR the Wii, other than a months old quote that essentially said "I don't know, it could be more than 50." In any case, gamers who are REALLY concerned about a $10 difference will likely wait a couple weeks for the inevitable price drops, rent, or trade something in.
overly FPS and Sports focus? the Ps3 so far has lost ZERO of its developers from the Ps2, and even has team ninja developing games for them again. Every significant developer in every genre you can think of is on board. As for "importing japanese and chinese games" the Wii is doing no such thing, while the Ps3 actually IS region free for games.
Every console ever made has DRM built into it. Think nintendo wants you to copy it's Gamecube and Wii games? Think again. the rest of your post is so error ridden and full of unwarranted speculation it's not worth refuting.
--The video at TGS shows a cheetah running down some sort of antelope, (at one point from a first person perspective) which is close enough. It may not be the type of game that gets the fanboys foaming at the mouth i.e. Halo, but it definitely has my interest up.
I'm too lazy to link to it, but the video trailer for "Afrika" is positively mindblowing. I'm not sure what kind of game it will eventually BE (will you play as one of the animals? As an unseen explorer?) But I don't think I've seen anything THAT detailed on any system- PC OR console. If these are what first gen Ps3 games are capable of, I can't wait to see what's coming next.
Six time oscar winning film "Chicago" disagrees with you....
I shouldn't have to point this out, but gamers tend to have a broadband attach rate that's many, many times higher than the general population. Someone willing to shell out $500-$600 per console and $50 per game isn't likely to be still using dialup unless geography is a factor. (very rural areas, etc.) At minimum, we're talking a number that's in the millions if not TENS of millions worldwide, and at a rate that outperforms even top of the line PC's at doing the same task.
Who modded this insightful? Shadow of the Colossus was developed by a wholly owned subsidiary of SCEA. It's not third party. Same with Gran Turismo, SOCOM, the Ratchet and Clank Games, Killzone, and some other very highly rated properties.
On the contrary. By buying off the used racks, you're making it possible for those who purchase new to continue doing so. Joe Gamer is more likely to purchase Madden 200X at $50 new if he can trade in the last two new games he purchased for credit; credit which comes from you buying used games. So, indirectly, Sony still sees your money.
no, not a double blind test, but from personal experience when I used to sell electronics in college. (1999-2002, FYI.) I got the opportunity to play around with quite a bit of equipment I otherwise could not have afforded(especially when something new came in) and got a chance to do side by side comparisons on a daily basis. Sometimes for customers, but mostly because I was just curious.
And from personal experience no matter what kind of equipment I used, (CRT, Plasma, DLP) I got a better picture using a digital (HDMI/DVI) cable over analog component cable. It's the same reason why buying expensive HDMI cables makes no sense, because the signal isn't subject to the same degradation that S-video, component, and composite are.
Stop foaming at the mouth...not everything's about DRM.