The SNES actually won by a sizeable margin. This was discussed on an earlier PS3 thread, do a little search. (BTW, initially I also thought the Megadrive won - it didn't)
Now why doesn't Geometry Wars count? It's the best arcadey-like game I've played in ages. One of the very few modern games that can compare with the originals.
There is no evidence that Sony will be any better - the first year of all Sony consoles has been dominated by yet another boring Ridge Racer game, a Tekken game and little else. Look at the PSP line-up - it is arguably worse than the 360 line-up when you consider how long it has been out.
The Jaguar is remembered for Tempest 2000 and Tempest 2000 only - so I think you're right that it had the weakest software lineup of any (major) console.
I think people are making a mistake by assuming that Sony will win this generation just because they won the last one. PS1-PS2 and NES-SNES were the only times this has happened.
The situation is vastly different than with the PS2. Last time Sony was first, they could afford delays. Now they are already late, and getting later. The price picture is also very different. Many point to the PS2' DVD drive, but remember that there was no format war at the time - DVD didn't have competition, and was clearly superior in every way to VHS.
And although the MS haters are out in force, Sony doesn't have exactly have a consumer-friendly track record lately. They've learned their tricks from the record industry - arguably used to screwing everyone they deal with.
The only major problem I see with the Xbox360 is the lack of imaginative games - Microsoft needs to learn from the Japanese here. I thought the size and design of the console would be a problem - but the PS3 is an even bigger monster than the 360.
The funny thing is that flat screen TVs have hit big time in Europe - actually there are more Plasmas+LCDs being sold in Europe this year than in the US. If next-gen consoles are really linked to big HD displays, then Europe should be a very interesting market for the next-gen consoles. Still, we are being treated like second-rate citizens. Kudos to Microsoft for launching world-wide!
I think people are missing the mark in this case, this is not like the VHS-Beta battle, rather it is like SACD-DVD Audio battle. My money is on both formats losing. DVD will survive. Upconverting DVD is good enough for Joe Sixpack (personally, I think a well-coded DVD looks swell on my 37" LCD). There is a benefit to HD, but not enough to justify $500+ players, the DRM, the HDMI hassle and rebuying all the content.
What happened in audio? CD was good enough for the majority of people, and people actually went DOWN in quality (MP3) to win in convenience.
Forget Beta/VHS, remember that before this no viable video format existed.
When DVD took over, there was one format that had massive quality improvement on VHS, as well as more convenience, not less as in the HD-DVD/Blueray case.
So who will win? Probably downloadable HD video, which is most probably a better idea anyway, and will have a field day in a few years when people have the bandwidth. Adoption will be easier with disk-based competition gone down the drain. In the meantime, there is always bit-torrent...
Well, now GTA is going to lead on the Xbox360, so that may indicate where things are going... You are right about the software, but the problem for the late-comers is that the first year of games are always crap. Seriously, remember the first-year line-up for PS2 and the PSP? All crap. Xbox360 actually had two great launch games (Geometry Wars and PGR3) and one decent one (COD2). Usually, Sony teams up with Namco to bring out some Ridge Racer and Tekken ho-hum. The really great games on the PS2 started coming out quite a while after launch.
MS' main problem is that they are too conventional and focus to much on sports and shooters. If you look at sales over here in Europe, the games that are doing very well are Nintendo's more creative games as well as the "fun with friends" PS2 games such as Buzz, Guitar Hero and Singstar. There are a LOT of casual gamers out there...
OK, I like Nintendo (at least the portables), but Nintendo has only been the world leader in stationary consoles once: the NES. And this was when everybody else had abandoned the "fad" game marked or had gone bankrupt. The SNES and the Genesis/MegaDrive pretty much ended up equal, and afterwards Nintendo has been a minority player. Calling Nintendo the top player is pretty fanboyish.
What I don't understand is why people don't buy hardcase luggage these days. Soft luggage is OK for carry-on, but for checked luggage, you need something that can withstand a forklift (I've seen a bag impaled on a forklift). If you have the dough, aluminium luggage would be the way to go... Still, high-impact plastic hardcase luggage is pretty damn robust, and doesn't really weigh that much either.
This already exists; the Logitech Harmony universal remotes. Granted, it does take quite a lot of work to set up, but when you have set it up, it works exactly like you describe.
Yes, what would have happened? Without DRM, the record companies would have had no alternative to just starting selling MP3s (or perish). If the record companies hadn't played ball with Apple, had this resulted in any worse situation that we have today?
Oh, come on. Capitalism is much more than just pure lasess-faire (sp?) free-for-all economics. That was tried in Britain during the industrial revolution, and lead to a horrible amount of suffering and poverty and gave people like Dickens lots to write about.
Modern-day America has lots of "socialist" policies, not only welfare and the like, but plenty of "incentives" and other policies that benefit corperations. Look at copyright and patents, if this isn't intervention (and therefore anti-capitalist) in a free market, I don't know what is. In fact, the patent system purpotedly gives one party a monopoly; this is very at odds with a totally free capitalistic system.
America (and most of the rest of the world) does practice capitalism to a larger or smaller degree, as a free market economy is the central idea. Very few planned economies (communism) exist anymore. But again, no really totally capitalist states (where the state does not intervene in commercial matters) exist either. It's all shades of gray.
Pretty incredible what people will put up with because of a "threat to society". How many Americans have been killed by terrorists? How does this compare with other violent causes of death?
The big problem is the government treating this like a "war", instead of just branding terrorists as the criminals they are. Of course, they do this so that they can increase their own power. Still, I think that as a real threat, terrorism was worse in Europe in the seventies. There was no single event as big as 911, but much more small ones. Also, the treat was internal (extreme left wing, secession movements).
Let's see, IKEA, Abba, H&M, won the World championships in Ice-Hockey this year. Pretty good for a nation of 7 million people or so.
What has the good ol' US done lately, let's see: Fake elections, make the "land of the free" into one of the more facist states in the western world, invade a third-world country but not manage to control it. Pretty impressive for a country of 300 million people or so.
Convergence: My bet would be that neither HD-DVD nor Blue-Ray will win. Rather, the masses are asses and wouldn't know the difference between HD and SD if it hit them on the head. There's a lot of people out there right now who bought "HD-ready" TVs and think they are watching HD right now, without buying a HD tuner... Besides, a well made DVD is actually pretty good, even on my 37" LCD. I'm betting that a good DVD will still be better than a crappy mastered HD disk, and there will be quite a lot of those. Remember SACD and DVD-audio? Neither of them have been a raging success, have they? People saw the difference between DVD and VHS (besides, they were tired of rewinding the tape). Regardless of the hype, HD video is not that compelling.
Market timing: Most people do not have gaming PCs anymore (if they have ever had them). They are too expensive and too difficult to set up. If anything, MS is making a mistake in targeting the hardcore gamers so much. The people who buy millions of game consoles are ordinary families who want to play Madden, FIFA, Buzz etc. Actually, here Sony has done a much better job, turning out much better games for the PS2 lately than Microsoft's first bunch have been. Party games like Buzz, Singstar and EyeToy appeal to the masses. The hardcore gamers are in the minority, Sony would not have sold 100M+ PS2s if they were the main audience.
I think you're right. These devices already exist, Sony released an almost-PDA sized full PC last year. 20 GB disk, 512M RAM, 800x600 touch-screen. Now if Intel can improve power-consumption beyond the current 2-3 hours, these devices will be all conquering.
Today's PDAs have two main problems: They cannot run standard PC software, and they lack storage (no hard-drive). The last point is also the Achilles' Heel of the PSP, which could have been a hit if Sony didn't spend all their time trying to lock it down.
Nobody is saying Microsoft is corrupt, they are saying that Microsoft is abusing its market position. There's a big difference.
Now, perhaps you could list a list of SPECIFIC cases where the EU is seen as corrupt? Also, please refresh my memory about how the EU is even remotely as bad as the Bush administration (Halliburton, oil companies etc.) in this regard?
I would rather say "1 brilliant engineer can do the work of 11 bad engineer". I've seen plenty of examples of this in practice. Hiring good people really pays for itself (but there are good and bad engineers of every nationality, so you should look at the individual).
Hmmm. I don't think I buy this. The Bush administration has poured billions of dollars into Iraq, and they don't look very subjugated yet. If anything, I think that the post-Cold War era has shown that military force is much less potent than before, and that economic power is the most important variable.
If the US puts even more money into the military than now, it will only serve to weaken the US where it matters. The country will basically go bankrupt, and will not be able to compete with countries who spend much less of their BNP on military matters.
OK, regarding your comment that Rove was not the architect of George W.'s re-election campaign: "President George W. Bush publicly thanked Rove, calling him "the architect" in Bush's 3 November 2004 victory speech, after defeating John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.[42]" from Wikipedia article on Rove. [42] points to the official White House pages: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20 041103-3.html
From the Trivia section of the Wikipedia article: Karl Rove's reputation for political dirty tricks is such that, among both his supporters and critics the phrase "Rovian" has come to be used as a synonym for "Machiavellian". The documentary Bush's Brain "...depicts Rove as the most powerful political consultant in American history and, in essence, a co-president" according to USA Today. [101] [101] links to a USA Today article: http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-03-1 1-southwest-film-fest_x.htm
OK, I would not say that any of these links constitute absolute proof (except for the first one, but this wasn't the main point of our disagreement), but they do indicate that my opinion is not outside mainstream thought. Sorry for not bringing up more articles, but I really do not have a total source list for this matter handy.
Now, if you could find solid proof of the dreaded WMDs that George W. was so worried about before the Iraq invasion (and he still half-heartedly allures that exist), I would be very impressed.
Sorry to nitpick here, but IKEA is not Finnish nor is it Hungarian. It's Swedish, so try terms like "smörgossar" or "mysigt" instead. If you were parodying Nokia instead, however...
A funny side effect of this if the MPAA gets their way is that this could increase the sales of cheap far-eastern players even more (and decrease the sales of the big-name players). A lot of cheap DVD-player manufacturer don't even pay the DVD licensing fees ($5 in licensing costs on a player that is sold for $60 retails does not make much sense).
Why buy big-name players with region-coding when you can buy cheap players without region coding for less?
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The SNES actually won by a sizeable margin. This was discussed on an earlier PS3 thread, do a little search. (BTW, initially I also thought the Megadrive won - it didn't)
There is no evidence that Sony will be any better - the first year of all Sony consoles has been dominated by yet another boring Ridge Racer game, a Tekken game and little else. Look at the PSP line-up - it is arguably worse than the 360 line-up when you consider how long it has been out.
The Jaguar is remembered for Tempest 2000 and Tempest 2000 only - so I think you're right that it had the weakest software lineup of any (major) console.
The situation is vastly different than with the PS2. Last time Sony was first, they could afford delays. Now they are already late, and getting later. The price picture is also very different. Many point to the PS2' DVD drive, but remember that there was no format war at the time - DVD didn't have competition, and was clearly superior in every way to VHS.
And although the MS haters are out in force, Sony doesn't have exactly have a consumer-friendly track record lately. They've learned their tricks from the record industry - arguably used to screwing everyone they deal with.
The only major problem I see with the Xbox360 is the lack of imaginative games - Microsoft needs to learn from the Japanese here. I thought the size and design of the console would be a problem - but the PS3 is an even bigger monster than the 360.
PGR3, Dead Rising, Geometry Wars
And in October: PES6 (the Madden in the rest of the world)
The funny thing is that flat screen TVs have hit big time in Europe - actually there are more Plasmas+LCDs being sold in Europe this year than in the US. If next-gen consoles are really linked to big HD displays, then Europe should be a very interesting market for the next-gen consoles. Still, we are being treated like second-rate citizens. Kudos to Microsoft for launching world-wide!
What happened in audio? CD was good enough for the majority of people, and people actually went DOWN in quality (MP3) to win in convenience.
Forget Beta/VHS, remember that before this no viable video format existed.
When DVD took over, there was one format that had massive quality improvement on VHS, as well as more convenience, not less as in the HD-DVD/Blueray case.
So who will win? Probably downloadable HD video, which is most probably a better idea anyway, and will have a field day in a few years when people have the bandwidth. Adoption will be easier with disk-based competition gone down the drain. In the meantime, there is always bit-torrent...
MS' main problem is that they are too conventional and focus to much on sports and shooters. If you look at sales over here in Europe, the games that are doing very well are Nintendo's more creative games as well as the "fun with friends" PS2 games such as Buzz, Guitar Hero and Singstar. There are a LOT of casual gamers out there...
OK, I like Nintendo (at least the portables), but Nintendo has only been the world leader in stationary consoles once: the NES. And this was when everybody else had abandoned the "fad" game marked or had gone bankrupt. The SNES and the Genesis/MegaDrive pretty much ended up equal, and afterwards Nintendo has been a minority player. Calling Nintendo the top player is pretty fanboyish.
And, of course it keeps the rain out (if you get hardcase luggage with rubber sealing around the edges)
What I don't understand is why people don't buy hardcase luggage these days. Soft luggage is OK for carry-on, but for checked luggage, you need something that can withstand a forklift (I've seen a bag impaled on a forklift). If you have the dough, aluminium luggage would be the way to go... Still, high-impact plastic hardcase luggage is pretty damn robust, and doesn't really weigh that much either.
This already exists; the Logitech Harmony universal remotes. Granted, it does take quite a lot of work to set up, but when you have set it up, it works exactly like you describe.
The two planets would orbit their common center of gravity.
Yes, what would have happened? Without DRM, the record companies would have had no alternative to just starting selling MP3s (or perish). If the record companies hadn't played ball with Apple, had this resulted in any worse situation that we have today?
Modern-day America has lots of "socialist" policies, not only welfare and the like, but plenty of "incentives" and other policies that benefit corperations. Look at copyright and patents, if this isn't intervention (and therefore anti-capitalist) in a free market, I don't know what is. In fact, the patent system purpotedly gives one party a monopoly; this is very at odds with a totally free capitalistic system.
America (and most of the rest of the world) does practice capitalism to a larger or smaller degree, as a free market economy is the central idea. Very few planned economies (communism) exist anymore. But again, no really totally capitalist states (where the state does not intervene in commercial matters) exist either. It's all shades of gray.
The big problem is the government treating this like a "war", instead of just branding terrorists as the criminals they are. Of course, they do this so that they can increase their own power. Still, I think that as a real threat, terrorism was worse in Europe in the seventies. There was no single event as big as 911, but much more small ones. Also, the treat was internal (extreme left wing, secession movements).
What has the good ol' US done lately, let's see: Fake elections, make the "land of the free" into one of the more facist states in the western world, invade a third-world country but not manage to control it. Pretty impressive for a country of 300 million people or so.
And no, I'm not swedish.
Market timing: Most people do not have gaming PCs anymore (if they have ever had them). They are too expensive and too difficult to set up. If anything, MS is making a mistake in targeting the hardcore gamers so much. The people who buy millions of game consoles are ordinary families who want to play Madden, FIFA, Buzz etc. Actually, here Sony has done a much better job, turning out much better games for the PS2 lately than Microsoft's first bunch have been. Party games like Buzz, Singstar and EyeToy appeal to the masses. The hardcore gamers are in the minority, Sony would not have sold 100M+ PS2s if they were the main audience.
And remember, I did not say that Microsoft was corrupt. They might be abusing their market powers, which is what is under investigation.
Today's PDAs have two main problems: They cannot run standard PC software, and they lack storage (no hard-drive). The last point is also the Achilles' Heel of the PSP, which could have been a hit if Sony didn't spend all their time trying to lock it down.
Now, perhaps you could list a list of SPECIFIC cases where the EU is seen as corrupt? Also, please refresh my memory about how the EU is even remotely as bad as the Bush administration (Halliburton, oil companies etc.) in this regard?
I would rather say "1 brilliant engineer can do the work of 11 bad engineer". I've seen plenty of examples of this in practice. Hiring good people really pays for itself (but there are good and bad engineers of every nationality, so you should look at the individual).
If the US puts even more money into the military than now, it will only serve to weaken the US where it matters. The country will basically go bankrupt, and will not be able to compete with countries who spend much less of their BNP on military matters.
Sorry, I'm Norwegian... :-)
From the Trivia section of the Wikipedia article: Karl Rove's reputation for political dirty tricks is such that, among both his supporters and critics the phrase "Rovian" has come to be used as a synonym for "Machiavellian". The documentary Bush's Brain "...depicts Rove as the most powerful political consultant in American history and, in essence, a co-president" according to USA Today. [101] [101] links to a USA Today article: http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-03-1 1-southwest-film-fest_x.htm
"Smoke gets in your Eyes" - New York Times article: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB 0916FB345B0C728FDDA90994DD404482&n=Top%2FReference %2FTimes%20Topics%2FPeople%2FR%2FRove%2C%20Karl
OK, I would not say that any of these links constitute absolute proof (except for the first one, but this wasn't the main point of our disagreement), but they do indicate that my opinion is not outside mainstream thought. Sorry for not bringing up more articles, but I really do not have a total source list for this matter handy.
Now, if you could find solid proof of the dreaded WMDs that George W. was so worried about before the Iraq invasion (and he still half-heartedly allures that exist), I would be very impressed.
Sorry to nitpick here, but IKEA is not Finnish nor is it Hungarian. It's Swedish, so try terms like "smörgossar" or "mysigt" instead. If you were parodying Nokia instead, however...
Why buy big-name players with region-coding when you can buy cheap players without region coding for less?