The Ps3 will not have the ability to use Ps1 or Ps2 memory cards. The bad news is that those of you with lengthy completed games (or games in progress) on ps1/ps2 will have to start from scratch unless you get a Dexdrive or something similar.
The GOOD news is that Ps1/Ps2/Ps3 games will now all use the same card/hard drive for saves which is great since ps1 cards are going to be increasingly hard to come by, and swapping between 3 different formats to save my games would suck.
Wow, way to be behind the times. The Xbox360 plays standard DVDs only. An add on drive was announced a little while ago that would allow one to play HD-DVD's, but this will never, ever be used for games.
I'll agree with you- the cutscenes were nice but the real WOW factor came in for me the first time you're detected in that village and are fighting off a horde of crazed (FAST!) villagers out for your blood- coming in the windows, throwing firebombs, kicking in doors, coming after you with chainsaws...intense, man.
RE4 is a LOT more action oriented than it's slow moving predecessors.
Only if I get to play as the guy running down King in the Van. Is it possible for a book series to jump the shark? If there was one thing that REALLY turned me off to that series (after being a longtime fan) it was seeing Stephen King insert himself in the story as a plot device.
Final Fantasy V was released in the US back in 1999 as part of Final Fantasy Anthology- It was preceded by a release of Final Fantasy Tactics in 1998 which had a more refined version of the Job System, and followed up by Final Fantasy X-2 several years later which also had a tweaked version of the Job system. (FFXI also includes it but as an MMORPG, it's another animal entirely.)
Regardless of the freedom the job system provides in terms of character creation, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy X-2 did NOT have open ended plots- whether your party consisted of white mages with broadswords, Chemist Monks, Dancers who could cast black magic, or any combination thereof there was only one endgame, and you had no choice but to play the Hero and follow a VERY scripted plot.
Flash News: Nintendo has never, in it's whole history, every tried to release the top-performing console. I don't know for the NES, but the SNES was less powerful than the Genesis, the GameBoy was less powerful than the Lynx or the GameGear, the N64 was less powerful than the PlayStation or the Dreamcast, the GameCube was less powerful than the PS2 and the XBOX, the DS was and is less powerful than the PSP. Has that ever stopped every single console of Nintendo from having awesome games and actually turning up a profit for N (as opposed to the XBOX or the PS2, which both losses for their respective manufacturers recouped via license sales)?
Time for a history lesson. At the Time, the NES was the most powerful system on the market. That's not saying much, since most consoles fell victim to the crash of '84. The SNES was DEFINITELY more powerful than the genesis- it handled more colors, fancy scaling effects like mode 7, and had a custom Sony sound chip that absolutely destroyed whatever the Genesis had in it. Certain games (like the EA sports titles) rendered sprites faster on the Genesis, but genesis graphics were always less detailed.
The Gamegear was released in the states 2 years AFTER the gameboy. The Lynx made it's debut in '89 (the same year as the gameboy) but would drain 6AA batteries in about 3 hours of gametime- The Gameboy lacked a color screen vs. the lynx but had the advantage of using LESS batteries for MORE gameplay. This was a VERY big deal back then.
The N64 was more powerful than the Ps1. It handled less raw polygons, but antialising and texturing were much much better, plus- no load times. The Dreamcast was released 3 Years AFTER the N64- of course it was more powerful.
The Gamecube is Far Stronger than the Ps2 is. The differences between it and the Xbox is negligible. The DS is less powerful than the PSP, but again was released 6 months to a year prior. (sorry, no exact dates here.)
The Revolution will mark the first time in the company's history (or any company's, really) that it will follow up a major competitor's console a YEAR later with a LESS powerful system.
At the system's debut it will probably look quite good, but a year or two down the line when Developers are really starting to get the hang of the 360's 3 3GZ double threaded CPU's, or the PS3's dual threaded 3ghz core and 7 SPE's...we'll start to see a serious performance gap.
Sony themselves threatened that the PS3 will be around for atleast the next ten years, completely skipping another launch in five years.
Not entirely accurate- they projected the Ps3 to have a ten year lifespan. for instance, the Ps1 just recently went out of production, despite being released originally in Japan in 1994 and the states in 1995. Since then we've seen the Ps2 debut and mature, and the development and (planned) release of the Ps3 later this year. If the pattern holds true, expect to see a Ps5 entering production when the Ps3 reaches it's end.
If I buy a $200 Blu-Ray player, and it just stops working one day for no apparent reason, the manufacturer will have a lot of explaining to do. It just wouldn't fly.
Then in that case the burden is on the manufacturer to make sure their device is up to the standards set by the Blu-Ray association. Ridiculous or not, license revocation IS DEFINITELY a part of the spec. If a player is found to be easily compromised, the manufacturer will likely have to fix the problem and issue a recall to those affected. BAD for manufacturers, but Good for studios and content producers who constantly worry about piracy.
1080i is nowhere CLOSE to 480p. It's leaps and bounds greater in terms of detail. If you've actually seen 1080i and 480p side by side you'd know this. also, FYI- DVD's aren't 480p either. The images stored on DVD are in interlaced format- your progressive scan DVD player (or television with cinema mode) has to do the job of DE-interlacing the image to approximate a 480p signal.
Actually, the Image Constraint Token (ICT) that downsamples the content is currently only being backed by Warner Brothers- all other major studios have gone on record as saying they will NOT (for the time being, at least) downsample their releases for non HDCP/HDMI devices. So even if you have an analog set, you'll be able to view your releases in full resolution.
one thing that blu-ray has (I'm not sure about HD-DVD here) is the ability to revoke a license on a per player basis. It's not like DVD...if one player by a particular manufacturer is found to be crackable then the license for that player is revoked, and it's useless for all Blu-Ray discs from that point on.
Fair? no. But expect to see more ridiculous DRM like this to combat piracy if it takes off.
There is a certain point of your life where these speculations and questions like, "could superman beat up the incredible hulk" stop being a meaningful investigation into the nature of reality.
Why is asking "could superman beat up the incredible hulk" more of a waste of time than say...setting up and following a fantasy football team, or debating whether Babe Ruth is a better slugger than Hank Aaron? millions of people spend countless hours on that stuff everyday, and no one seems to mind.
One big thing we didn't have "back in the day" was ever-increasingly violent games.
"halloween" and " The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" on the atari 2600 disagrees with you. The first game depicted michael meyers killing children, the second had YOU playing as leatherface, attempting to kill as many people as possible. You could also make the argument that "Custer's revenge" was the 80's equivalent to "hot coffee." Violence and sexual themes in games are nothing new.
Hmmm...I thought I submitted a reply to this...so forgive me if there's a repeat somewhere.
I see the ultra short lifespan of the original Xbox being due to a couple of unique circumstances:
The marketing strategy microsoft adopted for the Xbox was "release more powerful hardware later, and win the console wars on superior specs." this obviously didn't work out so well, since they lost $4 Billion and came in a distant 2nd. (or 3rd, depending who you ask) Their only alternative this go round was to rush production of a successor and beat their competition out of the gate. You can see this in their marketing- a lot of the 360 hype centers around a "Why wait! the Next generation is available NOW!!" mentality.
Also, microsoft goofed when developing the Xbox by building it out of off the shelf parts they didn't own the IP to. Unlike Nintendo and Sony who could consistently redesign their systems to make them smaller and cheaper and reap a profit (yes, sony DOES make a profit on the Ps2 hardware and has for some time now) Microsoft was bleeding money the longer the Xbox was in production. It only made sense to cease production and develop a successor ASAP.
Its too early to say whether the "beat the competition to market" strategy will be successful (IMHO probably not, since it didn't work for the Dreamcast or the Saturn) but they're at least guaranteed to eventually turn a profit on the 360 hardware this go round, and take advantage of the budget gamer/kiddy gamer market that the Ps2 and Gamecube currently have all to themselves in the later years of the system's lifespan.
The base price of the PSP is being lowered (at least in the states) to $199. and $169 in Japan. Not as cheap as a DS, but it's something. Cheaper dev tools are always a good thing for gamers too, since it's more incentive for developers to produce some actual GAMES for it, something PSP owners desperately need right now.
you're dead on- I've "fixed" a few ps2's in my time with nothing more than a couple cotton swabs and some alcohol to clean off the damn lens. even moving the white adjustment gear is rare- its not common that I run across one that's TRULY broken.
you could change your class to your heart's content in FFX-2. On sale now!
What? what do you mean you don't want to "play dress up?" RPG gamers are so fickle...
The easy answer to this is that the Final Fantasy Franchise is HUGE in Japan, and until the 360 starts actually selling there, Square won't be in any rush to put what may be their #1 franchise on it.
As the 360 is currently selling WORSE than the original Xbox in Japan, don't look for this to happen anytime soon.
If I remember correctly- "Vanish" cast on ANY enemy works with 100% accuracy in ff6. It renders them immune to physical attacks but ALL SPELLS hit with total efficiency, even insta-kills like doom, death, etc. Just about anything in ff6 can be killed in seconds via the vanish/death attack.
Disadvantage: you need a memory stick with 1.2 GB of free space to fit all of Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy VII....
Not necessarily. Multi disk games Like FFVII, FFVIII, Metal Gear, etc contained a lot of redundant data so you could do things like revisit earlier areas while on the last disc. compressing the game to a single format would eliminate the need for a lot of that redundant data.
The 60 gig drive in the system is said to be removable- how hard would it be to release say...a 100gig (or higher) "media edition" Drive with a tuner and capture software for those interested in making their PS3 a PVR?
He's talking about the well publicized "Final Fantasy 8 Dance Scene" that was rendered in real time as one of the early demos of what the system can do. Not to hard to find with a quick google search.
It's a VERY impressive demo but there's no way the Ps2 can render anything that detailed during actual gameplay situations. To the best of my knowledge the rest of the demos have been met or exceeded- even the "Face" demo is matched by in game scenes from Silent Hill 3.
I don't know why you would take either side in the Xbox 360 vs. Playstation 3 debate. Even if you don't like Microsoft's buisness practices, Sony has dome some extremly unethical things to customers (Music CDs that install rootkits on your computer, anyone?). And from a Geek perspective, Sony is super annoying (Microsoft actually publishes system specs on it's hardware... where as Sony gives vauge statements about "emotion engines").
The "emotion engine" was just the name of the chip, much like "cell processor." Sony has never been shy about publishing specs- in fact you could accuse them of being a little TOO open about system specs as they tend to publish rather generous (over?)estimates of hardware performance. The performance specs of the Ps3 have been known for months as a quick trip to wikipedia will tell you.
Interestingly enough, the only company who's shown an outright reluctance to publish ANY specs on their new hardware is nintendo.
Slashdot Mirror
The Ps3 will not have the ability to use Ps1 or Ps2 memory cards. The bad news is that those of you with lengthy completed games (or games in progress) on ps1/ps2 will have to start from scratch unless you get a Dexdrive or something similar.
The GOOD news is that Ps1/Ps2/Ps3 games will now all use the same card/hard drive for saves which is great since ps1 cards are going to be increasingly hard to come by, and swapping between 3 different formats to save my games would suck.
Wow, way to be behind the times. The Xbox360 plays standard DVDs only. An add on drive was announced a little while ago that would allow one to play HD-DVD's, but this will never, ever be used for games.
I'll agree with you- the cutscenes were nice but the real WOW factor came in for me the first time you're detected in that village and are fighting off a horde of crazed (FAST!) villagers out for your blood- coming in the windows, throwing firebombs, kicking in doors, coming after you with chainsaws...intense, man. RE4 is a LOT more action oriented than it's slow moving predecessors.
Only if I get to play as the guy running down King in the Van. Is it possible for a book series to jump the shark? If there was one thing that REALLY turned me off to that series (after being a longtime fan) it was seeing Stephen King insert himself in the story as a plot device.
Final Fantasy V was released in the US back in 1999 as part of Final Fantasy Anthology- It was preceded by a release of Final Fantasy Tactics in 1998 which had a more refined version of the Job System, and followed up by Final Fantasy X-2 several years later which also had a tweaked version of the Job system. (FFXI also includes it but as an MMORPG, it's another animal entirely.)
Regardless of the freedom the job system provides in terms of character creation, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy X-2 did NOT have open ended plots- whether your party consisted of white mages with broadswords, Chemist Monks, Dancers who could cast black magic, or any combination thereof there was only one endgame, and you had no choice but to play the Hero and follow a VERY scripted plot.
Time for a history lesson. At the Time, the NES was the most powerful system on the market. That's not saying much, since most consoles fell victim to the crash of '84. The SNES was DEFINITELY more powerful than the genesis- it handled more colors, fancy scaling effects like mode 7, and had a custom Sony sound chip that absolutely destroyed whatever the Genesis had in it. Certain games (like the EA sports titles) rendered sprites faster on the Genesis, but genesis graphics were always less detailed.
The Gamegear was released in the states 2 years AFTER the gameboy. The Lynx made it's debut in '89 (the same year as the gameboy) but would drain 6AA batteries in about 3 hours of gametime- The Gameboy lacked a color screen vs. the lynx but had the advantage of using LESS batteries for MORE gameplay. This was a VERY big deal back then.
The N64 was more powerful than the Ps1. It handled less raw polygons, but antialising and texturing were much much better, plus- no load times. The Dreamcast was released 3 Years AFTER the N64- of course it was more powerful.
The Gamecube is Far Stronger than the Ps2 is. The differences between it and the Xbox is negligible. The DS is less powerful than the PSP, but again was released 6 months to a year prior. (sorry, no exact dates here.)
The Revolution will mark the first time in the company's history (or any company's, really) that it will follow up a major competitor's console a YEAR later with a LESS powerful system.
At the system's debut it will probably look quite good, but a year or two down the line when Developers are really starting to get the hang of the 360's 3 3GZ double threaded CPU's, or the PS3's dual threaded 3ghz core and 7 SPE's...we'll start to see a serious performance gap.
1080i is nowhere CLOSE to 480p. It's leaps and bounds greater in terms of detail. If you've actually seen 1080i and 480p side by side you'd know this. also, FYI- DVD's aren't 480p either. The images stored on DVD are in interlaced format- your progressive scan DVD player (or television with cinema mode) has to do the job of DE-interlacing the image to approximate a 480p signal.
by analog, I meant an HDTV that uses analog ins: i.e. component cable. :) sorry
Actually, the Image Constraint Token (ICT) that downsamples the content is currently only being backed by Warner Brothers- all other major studios have gone on record as saying they will NOT (for the time being, at least) downsample their releases for non HDCP/HDMI devices. So even if you have an analog set, you'll be able to view your releases in full resolution.
one thing that blu-ray has (I'm not sure about HD-DVD here) is the ability to revoke a license on a per player basis. It's not like DVD...if one player by a particular manufacturer is found to be crackable then the license for that player is revoked, and it's useless for all Blu-Ray discs from that point on. Fair? no. But expect to see more ridiculous DRM like this to combat piracy if it takes off.
The marketing strategy microsoft adopted for the Xbox was "release more powerful hardware later, and win the console wars on superior specs." this obviously didn't work out so well, since they lost $4 Billion and came in a distant 2nd. (or 3rd, depending who you ask) Their only alternative this go round was to rush production of a successor and beat their competition out of the gate. You can see this in their marketing- a lot of the 360 hype centers around a "Why wait! the Next generation is available NOW!!" mentality.
Also, microsoft goofed when developing the Xbox by building it out of off the shelf parts they didn't own the IP to. Unlike Nintendo and Sony who could consistently redesign their systems to make them smaller and cheaper and reap a profit (yes, sony DOES make a profit on the Ps2 hardware and has for some time now) Microsoft was bleeding money the longer the Xbox was in production. It only made sense to cease production and develop a successor ASAP.
Its too early to say whether the "beat the competition to market" strategy will be successful (IMHO probably not, since it didn't work for the Dreamcast or the Saturn) but they're at least guaranteed to eventually turn a profit on the 360 hardware this go round, and take advantage of the budget gamer/kiddy gamer market that the Ps2 and Gamecube currently have all to themselves in the later years of the system's lifespan.
The base price of the PSP is being lowered (at least in the states) to $199. and $169 in Japan. Not as cheap as a DS, but it's something. Cheaper dev tools are always a good thing for gamers too, since it's more incentive for developers to produce some actual GAMES for it, something PSP owners desperately need right now.
you're dead on- I've "fixed" a few ps2's in my time with nothing more than a couple cotton swabs and some alcohol to clean off the damn lens. even moving the white adjustment gear is rare- its not common that I run across one that's TRULY broken.
you could change your class to your heart's content in FFX-2. On sale now! What? what do you mean you don't want to "play dress up?" RPG gamers are so fickle...
The easy answer to this is that the Final Fantasy Franchise is HUGE in Japan, and until the 360 starts actually selling there, Square won't be in any rush to put what may be their #1 franchise on it.
As the 360 is currently selling WORSE than the original Xbox in Japan, don't look for this to happen anytime soon.
If I remember correctly- "Vanish" cast on ANY enemy works with 100% accuracy in ff6. It renders them immune to physical attacks but ALL SPELLS hit with total efficiency, even insta-kills like doom, death, etc. Just about anything in ff6 can be killed in seconds via the vanish/death attack.
The 60 gig drive in the system is said to be removable- how hard would it be to release say...a 100gig (or higher) "media edition" Drive with a tuner and capture software for those interested in making their PS3 a PVR?
He's talking about the well publicized "Final Fantasy 8 Dance Scene" that was rendered in real time as one of the early demos of what the system can do. Not to hard to find with a quick google search.
It's a VERY impressive demo but there's no way the Ps2 can render anything that detailed during actual gameplay situations. To the best of my knowledge the rest of the demos have been met or exceeded- even the "Face" demo is matched by in game scenes from Silent Hill 3.
"Most households" won't buy a console at $400 or $500 either. Early adopter households who will are much more likely to have an HDTV in them.
The "emotion engine" was just the name of the chip, much like "cell processor." Sony has never been shy about publishing specs- in fact you could accuse them of being a little TOO open about system specs as they tend to publish rather generous (over?)estimates of hardware performance. The performance specs of the Ps3 have been known for months as a quick trip to wikipedia will tell you.
Interestingly enough, the only company who's shown an outright reluctance to publish ANY specs on their new hardware is nintendo.