I submit this to you: How can you have a game that sells over a million copies on a specific console when you don't even have a million copies of that console sold?
Halo 1 didn't sell it's first million copies in the first months either.
Now that the 360 has a few millions in installed user base, you can expect to begin to see a first few million seller games coming around. It is absurd to think that you can sell millions when the hardware is barely out.
None of the language you listed is as easy as the old BASIC, which you could access directly from the command line on most computers.
Nowadays most languages requires downloads (java, php), installation procedures (java, php, visual basic), having to learn development tools as well as the language itself (visual basic), a compiler (C, visual basic, java) and whatnots...
Those that don't require complex set-ups require the knowledge of another language to work properly (vbscript, javascript require HTML/CSS knowledge).
Other even need a server set-up properly before you can use them (PHP, ASP).
Even something like Python needs additional package set-up. Python documentation is also not the easiest to find (beginner books and easy tutorials are rare).
PC gaming was easy. Not console-easy. But easy. Not a single person who got a game like Doom, Wolfenstein, Falcon 3.0 and Sim City had trouble making it work (there's always the exception). default settings were usually ok for configuring sound cards for most PCs and sound cards were really the only problem.
The base memory problem existed only on some later games that came just prior to Win95. Those games were the exception but i consider that it was at that point that PC gaming started to lose it.
As for your comment: "Games are getting worse across the board. The barrier for entry into "the games market" used to be a few days of BASIC instruction, and some creativity. Now it requires a few hundred-thousand dollars and an expert team, and some of the biggest most successful games these days have budgets that are millions of dollars"
You contradict yourself. Games are getting better and better not worse. That's the reason why games are becoming so expansive to produce. There's no arguments that an old game written in a few lines of basic is worse than an other games that was put out recently. The latest racing game is definitely better than Pole Position or Gran Prix. The latest FPS is definitely better than Wolfenstein 3D and the latest space sim is definitely better than the old Space Attack.
People tend to forget that what makes a good game isn't originality and new ideas. Originality helps, but alone it's worthless. Life Line, a voice-controlled game was original and new, yet the game was so bad almost no one noticed it. Halo is not original and brought very few new ideas, yet is fun and is very popular.
Also, i think you missed the point of the post. PC gaming market is more risky than console gaming for developpers. They simply make less money there. WoW is the exception for PC games, not the norm. This means that only the genre that seem to work get made anymore on PC. Genres that sell less are simply not made anymore. RPGs are fewer, as are simulations, racing, beat 'em ups and all others (where on consoles, they still thrive as they come out on a regular basis and in more sheer number).
PC gaming is now focused on very specific crowds that like the direction of the PC gaming industry. Painting with a wide brush they are: - MMO fans. - RTS fans. - The casual gamer who's satisfied with simple puzzle games, flash games, popcap games, etc.
Diminishing genres that still exist: - Western RPG fans are getting fewer as consoles now have more and more Western RPGs coming. - FPS fans are also getting fewer as consoles FPS are getting better and more FPS are released on consoles than on PC. - Flight sims fans are getting smaller simply because there are almost no more new flight sims being made.
Most of the other fans have switched their attention to consoles where their games are now located. This is why PC gaming has problems and is becoming niche. They target only very specific crowds of gamers that like a game genre that is still found on PC that need to be more and more computer savvy to make their game work. The same crowd that knows how to find illegal copies over the net and pirate the games (but that's another story).
PC gaming is becoming niche. More so every passing year.
A) Like others have mentionned, PC gaming USED TO be easy to install and play. Doom, for example, didn't require huge computers when it was released. Now games are starting to require at minimum 1 gig of ram and a top end video card with a very specific processor (Pentium or AMD, forget the rest). Also forget laptops since some games don't work well under laptop-based video cards. Now it's a hassle just to get most games to run.
B) In the mid-90s, you had numerous RPGs coming for PC, as well as numerous FPS, RTS, adventure games, sim games, racing games, flight sims and even the occasional beat 'em up (even if they wern't up to par with console games, it still got Battle Arena Toshinden 1&2, One must fall, a couple of Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats. Nowadays, we get tons of The Sims copy cats, RTS are fewer in number every year, racing and sports games are on the decline, adventure games become rarer, flight sims are now almost inexistant beside the few surviving franchises. Only the almighty FPS seems to still exist as it was on PC.
C) (most important) MMO games. You have that "newer" genre exploding on PC. Does this single type of game enough to justify PC gaming as a whole? You have a few games that work really well and that reflects the ENTIRE problem with PC gaming. Yes WoW have millions of adepts. Guild Wars have a good amount too. City of Heroes and Villains get up a fair share too. Those few games that work really well grab around 90% of the cash that can be made on PC by developpers. That leaves about 10% of the market to the "others", all genre mixed-up. So you get a few developpers which were "lucky" enough to score the big one that sold millions of copies. If you're part of the vast majority of developpers that wern't that lucky, you start to lose profits on each game you make until you find out that consoles have bigger markets and more profit potential even if you don't create the next console "Halo" or "Final Fantasy" game.
Console games are just less of a risk for developpers than PC games.
So PC games focus more on MMO, FPS and the occasional RTS for players that have huge specs for their computers that are DEDICATED to gaming. To me, this is indeed becomming niche.
The article plainly states that some motion have trouble being recognized and the enormity of the problem just hit me.
Recognizing a specific move from a human hand is much like voice recognition (bear with me in this explanation):
There are millions of ways a human can make a word sound like. We all know how voice recognition works only from time to time. I still have nightmares of the game: Life Line, that was 99% controlled through voice recognition:
Those really happened to me in Life Line on numerous occasions (and they are just samples): Player: "stop moving". Girl on screen: "yes..." Girl on screen: -starts to litterally run in circle around the table in the living room.
And my favorite: Player: "look at the mirror" Girl on screen: -takes her gun and shoot the mirror, destroying it.
Or even: Player: - tried several times to make her understand: "look at the table." Girl on screen: "i don't understand... You're awfully bad at giving orders."
Now about motion recognition, well there are millions of ways on how a human can make a swinging motion. I can just imagine this in that Marvel game: Player: - swing from close to his chest and outward oblique to the right and up. Wolverine: - slashes his claws in an upward pattern. Player: - make the same motion again: swing from close to his chest and outward to the right and up. Wolverine: - slashes his claws right to left. Player: - make the same motion again for a third time: swing from close to his chest and outward to the right and up. Wolverine: - slashes in an oblique way, upward and to the left.
Same move made three times, interpreted three differents ways by the game.
This could become a major stopper in numerous games. Unless the characters like Wolverine only get's one or two kinds of basic attacks. If games that uses the Wii-mote requires only basic moves to solve that problem, that may cut seriously back on the type of games that could take advantage of this.
I now fully expect to see tons of games with problems regarding this. Unless they tie the entire upper-body of the character to the controller where it completely moves with the player, which will make for quite dorky characters on screen and will cause other problems by itself.
Really, Blizzard is a company that creates great games that are praised by everyone.
Diablo, Diablo 2, Diablo 2: expansion, StarCraft, StarCraft: expansion, WarCraft, WarCraft 2, WarCraft 2 expansion, WarCraft 2 weird online something edition, WarCraft 3, WarCraft 3 expansion, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft expansion (pick a number)
Let's make something original and turn our franchises into something different: WarCraft Adventures... canned. StarCraft Ghost... put on hold indefinitely.
Really, they make good games, but in over 13 or so years, they actually brought only 7 games out, 3 of them were sequels. In all that, only 3 intellectual properties / universe (at least to the best of my knowledge).
So if next year they are going to announce their new project, then i don't expect to see it (with their usual delays) until 2009 or 2010. I'm really serious with this one.
I think your concerns are somewhat irrelevant [mind it's my opinion].
If the price for the game starts at 50$ and then they charge more, at one point, the games will start to be too expansive for most people's taste and they'll stop buying them. When enough people stops buying them, the prices will go down again.
The gamers will decide the price, not the gaming companies.
In short, it's not the same situation as the gas prices. Gas is an essential for most people to go to work, shop and make groceries. A video game is not an essential and there are alternatives for entertainment out there.
What happens if after you buy a game on live with regards to "your copy"? If your hard drive fails can you download it again on a new machine or do you have to repurchase it?
What about if you sign into live on another persons xbox? Can you download it again there? Sort of like Steam allows?
Yes you can re-download again.
The downloaded content is tied to your xbox "gamertag" or "identity". You can play it an another person's xbox. You can also put it on a memory card and bring it with you to your friend's.
Really this is just an online verion of episodic content like Half-Life 2: episodes and SIN: episodes.
The only difference is that you get to buy all the episodes at once instead of having to wait a year between each episodes.
I'd also like to point out that the Live model on the xbox is actually CHEAPER than the retail version. PSP Lumines = 40$ XBLA version = 25$ (with all the content)
Lumines for Xbox Live = 25$ with all options in (if this "rumor" is to be beleived, cause this news is only at rumor status right now).
Where do the customer get screwed? with MS or with Sony?
Answer: nowhere near those two companies. If you're not happy with the price, go see the company that actually makes Lumines and complain to them. It's their product and they set the price.
Halo was good because everything it did, it did well. There were no really "bad" points to it, which is why it came out great.
- Playable and enjoyable on a console. - Vehicles that are actually fun and not just "annoying" sequences like other titles. - A very good story with good and enjoyable characters that looks like they belong in a military unit (no cheesy sentimentality found in other games). Includes alien villains that actually are something more than: "let's kill all humans for the heck of it". - A military atmosphere that actually made you thought that you were in a war, with dozens of ennemies and allies in the same battle. - A solid "feel" for the gameplay. - A great musical score that was not overbearing and overused. - A good feeling of exploration in an unknown world. You couldn't guess where you actually were, yet things didn't seem out-of-place.
Half-Life 1 fell in the same category. It didn't invent anything that wasn't done before. Story? Unreal 1 came before and had a story that was as developped as Half-Life, if not more. The only true innovative things Half-Life did was bring a nice package of everything good, leave out the bad and provide a solid gameplay experience.
You don't need innovations to make a good game. You simply need a good game.
Although in the case of Halo, it's major innovation that contributed greatly to it is the shield system. You could always die just around the next corner so you always were being careful. If you got hit, you could just back-up a little and hide to regenerate your shield. No need to figure out clever ways of placing med-kits and armor shards everywhere like Doom or Quake every few door or corridors, which added to the "immersion" factor. Along with the checkpoint system that saved frequently by itself before every major encounter (no need to press a "save" button that brings you back for a second to the "real" world), it made progress seamless.
I'd like to point to a few thing to balance it out though.
PC upgrade cost is more than a console. It is not limited to only the video card that you paid "only" 200$. RAM, Processor and whatnots also come into account. You will need to upgrade those at least twice during the same lifespan as the console. Making the console the definite bargain when it comes to gaming hardware.
PC gaming is a shadow of it's former self. A few racing games, FPS, a few sims, a bunch of RTS, a bunch of western RPGs and your micro-management games (like Civilisation and Tycoon games).
A big problem of the PC is compatibility with the hardware. I recently bought the game "paradise" for my PC. I had all the requirements, the program said i was ok to install it, then the in-game FMV sequence are out of synch with the sound. The sound stutters and the game cannot display the movie properly. Since the game box is opened, i'm screwed unless i upgrade my PC, which i really don't want. I had a similar problem with the game MechCommander 2 some years ago. The copy protection used had a bug with some CD drives. It kept asking me to insert my original CD in the drive. The game was an original (not a copy) i purchased in a legal fashion at the computer store, yet i had to crack it to play the game i bought. I have similar stories with Myst IV on my parent's computer. Everything is supported on their laptop computer from looking at the box. Then the game simply won't play, with tons of visual bugs showing. Looking in the MANUAL, i found that some versions of the ATI video card used in their laptop wouldn't work with it. Well why didn't it said so on the box! Now the box was opened and the game unplayable. Luvkily, in that case, some patches were released MONTHS after we bougth it that started to make it work.
When i buy a game and possess the minimum specs, i expect the game to play correctly. This is not always the case on PC and i'm sick of being screwed away of my money for games that just won't work.
Consoles have more variety and more in sheer quantity. RPGs (both western and eastern), FPS, platformers, adventure games, action games, sports games, racing games, fighting games. It's currently lacking only in RTS (though there are a few) and micro-management games.
Gamers choose console for 3 reasons: - more titles. - don't need upgrading. - never had a problem making a game work.
you said: But I think the amount of free games I can get more than justifies the cost of hardware. Illegal copies and software piracy is one of the big reason why the PC gaming market has gone WAY down....just a thought.
I mean any site that big must be collecting statistics, e-mail addresses and what nots, and in the case of/.: opinions.
All that has a monetary value. Does/. sell that info? I honestly don't know, but it could be. Would it be THAT surprising?
As for MS and EA, i never put my credit card info in my console. XBOX Live is a great service, but i'm not about to provide my credit card account to the world on it.
Just buy a card at your local retailer and input the code in your console. That's all that's required.
The problem with tinkering with the console isn't that you mess around with a MS / Sony / Whatever product. It's that since the console is now online, YOUR tinkering on YOUR console can actually affect the gameplay of OTHERS.
Action Replay can mess-up online gaming in some games. It is a form of cheating.
I think you're partly wrong and off-base in your arguments.
A mom would prefer a 12 button, 2 sticks, 1 dpad controller for a game BEFORE she would use a mouse / keyboard combo.
Most games on PC uses esoteric or complicated button configurations on the keyboard. The mouse / keyboard combo takes a longer time to get used to than anything that can be put on a modern controller.
If you're strictly talking about point and click adventure games, then yes. The PC versions might be better and more intuitive. Would a mom prefer that over console? Far from sure... I know a bunch of people who can't even get Myst to run on their PC because of hardware problems and complicated install procedures (yes having to press "next" a couple of times and a radio button to "agree to the license" can be messed-up by anyone that doesn't know computers. I know this first hand.).
The difference in controls difficulty for those kind of games (on consoles or PC) is minimal at best.
As for the title "360 selling worse than the xbox", that's biased and purposefully ignoring correct statistics to prove the opposite. By that logic, i can also prove that DVD players were selling worse than VHS players when the DVDs first came out. 360 sale numbers will need to be compared with Wii and PS3 sales numbers, once they come out. Any other statistics is useless.
Another example is saying: "PS2 is selling more than 360". Trying to prove that the 360 is not good. Well a 100$ PS2 with games available that are sold for less than 10$ is outselling a newer 360 at 400$ with games that are sold for 40$. It's obvious that the PS2 sells more just for the price only. As i said, you need to compare consoles of a similar generation for sale numbers to mean anything.
The article tried to verify if the console was "mom" friendly, as stated by MS.
I think the conclusion might be that MS was right (even if it wasn't obviously stated in the article): The 360 IS mom friendly.
She wouldn't buy a 360 by herself, but she would play it if it was in the house. The MS comment was that "your mom will play it". Well looks like they were right. That mom would play it if it was in the house.
The article itself has some methodology problems though, It started correctly, with her having to install and plug the 360, then having to configure her user id. Then it degenerates in a bunch of "reviews" of games she was handed to play. The more correct approach would maybe have been to present her with a bunch of XBLA titles and a numerous amount of games and letting HER decide what to play. Don't force her to play the games YOU want HER to play. The results might have been more significant.
My argument was limited to answering the following comment: "yeah all those xboxs games out there with mom friendly written all over it..."
In that regard the comment was wrong. There are "mom friendly" games on the 360. They are mostly not located in retail outlets, but are available through the Live Arcade service.
As to if a "mom" is going to buy a 360 for herself for 400$ that she could play on a PC... (not talking about a Palm because i think she has even less chance than a 360 of buying that for gaming). I never said anything for or against.
What i will say is that while she is not going to buy a 360 for her personal use, once it came to choosing a console for her kids or giving an opinion to a console her husband/boyfriend might want, she might use her influence for going for the 360 instead of the competition because it has games she might want to play too (if she know they exist, there is a current lack of publicity about those 360 functionalities among the general mass. That is another debate).
Nope, none of the titles you mentionned are "mom" friendly.
however, if we're talking about the 360 here, you have games like:
- Hardwood backgammon - Hardwood Spades - Hardwood Hearts - Uno - Billiards - Bejeweled - Hexic HD - Zuma - list goes on...
XBox Live Arcade is full of Mom friendly games.
PC gaming is the same. Hundreds of cards and board games on services like Yahoo, MSN and tons of Flash games. Those arn't the games that "gamers" play, but people like "moms" play all the time. There is a market for them.
With the 360, for the first time, that market comes to consoles.
It's funny to note that the following companies founded the DVD consortium:
Hitachi, Ltd.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Electronic Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics N.V. Sony Corporation
Thomson
Time Warner Inc.
Toshiba Corporation
Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC)
Note the little "Sony".
Then Sony came in with BluRay and offered an alternative to the "standard" that was supposed to be HDDVD. Going against the wishes of the consortium they helped to create in the first place.
whoah hold on... i did not attack you or anything:) I just mentionned a few things about the concerns you mentionned about online distribution on consoles.
I never said if it was better or worse. I just said that the fear of losing your game because your harddrive has failed (or some other hardware failure) is not justified because you can basically copy the game on any 360 harddrive and any memory card. It's not tied to a single console. If your console dies and you never copied it to a memory card, you have the option of finding your game online again.
You can also bring it to a friend's house with no problem.
That was the only concerns i think you originally mentionned and those concerns arn't justified because they are basically not true, as i explained.
As for not being able to play your games if Microsoft stops it's online service. Well you'll still be able to play them unless you deleted them, have a hardware failure or didn't copy them to a memory card. At this point though, i think it's the equivalent of saying that a CD with your game on it is damaged and the game is so old that it's impossible to find again.
The downloadable model of the xbox 360 for downloadable content and live arcade games is NOT tied to a machine, but to a specific user.
If something happens to your machine, you can download it again at no cost on your new machine, provided you have the same user id (i.e., you remember your password and username). Same thing if you delete content by accident.
You buy a license to "use" the code, not the rights to "own" the compiled code. There's a world of difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Absurd,
I submit this to you:
How can you have a game that sells over a million copies on a specific console when you don't even have a million copies of that console sold?
Halo 1 didn't sell it's first million copies in the first months either.
Now that the 360 has a few millions in installed user base, you can expect to begin to see a first few million seller games coming around. It is absurd to think that you can sell millions when the hardware is barely out.
None of the language you listed is as easy as the old BASIC, which you could access directly from the command line on most computers.
Nowadays most languages requires downloads (java, php), installation procedures (java, php, visual basic), having to learn development tools as well as the language itself (visual basic), a compiler (C, visual basic, java) and whatnots...
Those that don't require complex set-ups require the knowledge of another language to work properly (vbscript, javascript require HTML/CSS knowledge).
Other even need a server set-up properly before you can use them (PHP, ASP).
Even something like Python needs additional package set-up. Python documentation is also not the easiest to find (beginner books and easy tutorials are rare).
I disagree with your comments.
PC gaming was easy. Not console-easy. But easy. Not a single person who got a game like Doom, Wolfenstein, Falcon 3.0 and Sim City had trouble making it work (there's always the exception). default settings were usually ok for configuring sound cards for most PCs and sound cards were really the only problem.
The base memory problem existed only on some later games that came just prior to Win95. Those games were the exception but i consider that it was at that point that PC gaming started to lose it.
As for your comment:
"Games are getting worse across the board. The barrier for entry into "the games market" used to be a few days of BASIC instruction, and some creativity. Now it requires a few hundred-thousand dollars and an expert team, and some of the biggest most successful games these days have budgets that are millions of dollars"
You contradict yourself. Games are getting better and better not worse. That's the reason why games are becoming so expansive to produce. There's no arguments that an old game written in a few lines of basic is worse than an other games that was put out recently. The latest racing game is definitely better than Pole Position or Gran Prix. The latest FPS is definitely better than Wolfenstein 3D and the latest space sim is definitely better than the old Space Attack.
People tend to forget that what makes a good game isn't originality and new ideas. Originality helps, but alone it's worthless. Life Line, a voice-controlled game was original and new, yet the game was so bad almost no one noticed it. Halo is not original and brought very few new ideas, yet is fun and is very popular.
Also, i think you missed the point of the post.
PC gaming market is more risky than console gaming for developpers. They simply make less money there. WoW is the exception for PC games, not the norm.
This means that only the genre that seem to work get made anymore on PC. Genres that sell less are simply not made anymore. RPGs are fewer, as are simulations, racing, beat 'em ups and all others (where on consoles, they still thrive as they come out on a regular basis and in more sheer number).
PC gaming is now focused on very specific crowds that like the direction of the PC gaming industry. Painting with a wide brush they are:
- MMO fans.
- RTS fans.
- The casual gamer who's satisfied with simple puzzle games, flash games, popcap games, etc.
Diminishing genres that still exist:
- Western RPG fans are getting fewer as consoles now have more and more Western RPGs coming.
- FPS fans are also getting fewer as consoles FPS are getting better and more FPS are released on consoles than on PC.
- Flight sims fans are getting smaller simply because there are almost no more new flight sims being made.
Most of the other fans have switched their attention to consoles where their games are now located. This is why PC gaming has problems and is becoming niche. They target only very specific crowds of gamers that like a game genre that is still found on PC that need to be more and more computer savvy to make their game work. The same crowd that knows how to find illegal copies over the net and pirate the games (but that's another story).
PC gaming is becoming niche. More so every passing year.
A)
Like others have mentionned, PC gaming USED TO be easy to install and play. Doom, for example, didn't require huge computers when it was released. Now games are starting to require at minimum 1 gig of ram and a top end video card with a very specific processor (Pentium or AMD, forget the rest). Also forget laptops since some games don't work well under laptop-based video cards.
Now it's a hassle just to get most games to run.
B)
In the mid-90s, you had numerous RPGs coming for PC, as well as numerous FPS, RTS, adventure games, sim games, racing games, flight sims and even the occasional beat 'em up (even if they wern't up to par with console games, it still got Battle Arena Toshinden 1&2, One must fall, a couple of Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats.
Nowadays, we get tons of The Sims copy cats, RTS are fewer in number every year, racing and sports games are on the decline, adventure games become rarer, flight sims are now almost inexistant beside the few surviving franchises. Only the almighty FPS seems to still exist as it was on PC.
C) (most important)
MMO games. You have that "newer" genre exploding on PC. Does this single type of game enough to justify PC gaming as a whole? You have a few games that work really well and that reflects the ENTIRE problem with PC gaming.
Yes WoW have millions of adepts. Guild Wars have a good amount too. City of Heroes and Villains get up a fair share too.
Those few games that work really well grab around 90% of the cash that can be made on PC by developpers. That leaves about 10% of the market to the "others", all genre mixed-up.
So you get a few developpers which were "lucky" enough to score the big one that sold millions of copies. If you're part of the vast majority of developpers that wern't that lucky, you start to lose profits on each game you make until you find out that consoles have bigger markets and more profit potential even if you don't create the next console "Halo" or "Final Fantasy" game.
Console games are just less of a risk for developpers than PC games.
So PC games focus more on MMO, FPS and the occasional RTS for players that have huge specs for their computers that are DEDICATED to gaming.
To me, this is indeed becomming niche.
The article plainly states that some motion have trouble being recognized and the enormity of the problem just hit me.
Recognizing a specific move from a human hand is much like voice recognition (bear with me in this explanation):
There are millions of ways a human can make a word sound like. We all know how voice recognition works only from time to time. I still have nightmares of the game: Life Line, that was 99% controlled through voice recognition:
Those really happened to me in Life Line on numerous occasions (and they are just samples):
Player: "stop moving".
Girl on screen: "yes..."
Girl on screen: -starts to litterally run in circle around the table in the living room.
And my favorite:
Player: "look at the mirror"
Girl on screen: -takes her gun and shoot the mirror, destroying it.
Or even:
Player: - tried several times to make her understand: "look at the table."
Girl on screen: "i don't understand... You're awfully bad at giving orders."
Now about motion recognition, well there are millions of ways on how a human can make a swinging motion. I can just imagine this in that Marvel game:
Player: - swing from close to his chest and outward oblique to the right and up.
Wolverine: - slashes his claws in an upward pattern.
Player: - make the same motion again: swing from close to his chest and outward to the right and up.
Wolverine: - slashes his claws right to left.
Player: - make the same motion again for a third time: swing from close to his chest and outward to the right and up.
Wolverine: - slashes in an oblique way, upward and to the left.
Same move made three times, interpreted three differents ways by the game.
This could become a major stopper in numerous games. Unless the characters like Wolverine only get's one or two kinds of basic attacks.
If games that uses the Wii-mote requires only basic moves to solve that problem, that may cut seriously back on the type of games that could take advantage of this.
I now fully expect to see tons of games with problems regarding this. Unless they tie the entire upper-body of the character to the controller where it completely moves with the player, which will make for quite dorky characters on screen and will cause other problems by itself.
Japan is only the third market in importance for videogames.
NA is the leader,
Europe comes in second.
"the rest put together" (no offense to them) is the fourth.
I always wonder why people say that a console cannot succeed if Japan is not a success when it's not even the dominating market?
Really, Blizzard is a company that creates great games that are praised by everyone.
Diablo,
Diablo 2,
Diablo 2: expansion,
StarCraft,
StarCraft: expansion,
WarCraft,
WarCraft 2,
WarCraft 2 expansion,
WarCraft 2 weird online something edition,
WarCraft 3,
WarCraft 3 expansion,
World of Warcraft,
World of Warcraft expansion (pick a number)
Let's make something original and turn our franchises into something different:
WarCraft Adventures... canned.
StarCraft Ghost... put on hold indefinitely.
Really, they make good games, but in over 13 or so years, they actually brought only 7 games out, 3 of them were sequels. In all that, only 3 intellectual properties / universe (at least to the best of my knowledge).
So if next year they are going to announce their new project, then i don't expect to see it (with their usual delays) until 2009 or 2010. I'm really serious with this one.
First it was in the form of a seemingly harmless online comic...
Then i found out they invaded the marketplace of my 360...
Then they came to invade my gaming table in the form of a Penny-Arcade card game...
Now they'll take over my mouse and keyboard!!!
Oh the humanity! is there no end? Will somebody please think of the children?
I think your concerns are somewhat irrelevant [mind it's my opinion].
If the price for the game starts at 50$ and then they charge more, at one point, the games will start to be too expansive for most people's taste and they'll stop buying them.
When enough people stops buying them, the prices will go down again.
The gamers will decide the price, not the gaming companies.
In short, it's not the same situation as the gas prices. Gas is an essential for most people to go to work, shop and make groceries. A video game is not an essential and there are alternatives for entertainment out there.
What about if you sign into live on another persons xbox? Can you download it again there? Sort of like Steam allows?
Yes you can re-download again.
The downloaded content is tied to your xbox "gamertag" or "identity". You can play it an another person's xbox. You can also put it on a memory card and bring it with you to your friend's.
Really this is just an online verion of episodic content like Half-Life 2: episodes and SIN: episodes.
The only difference is that you get to buy all the episodes at once instead of having to wait a year between each episodes.
I'd also like to point out that the Live model on the xbox is actually CHEAPER than the retail version.
PSP Lumines = 40$
XBLA version = 25$ (with all the content)
So really, why is everybody complaining?
Lumines for PSP = 40$
Lumines for Xbox Live = 25$ with all options in (if this "rumor" is to be beleived, cause this news is only at rumor status right now).
Where do the customer get screwed? with MS or with Sony?
Answer: nowhere near those two companies. If you're not happy with the price, go see the company that actually makes Lumines and complain to them. It's their product and they set the price.
But the thing is that "points" are used because of international currency.
The price of the points vary depending on your country, but their online point cost doesn't.
It makes for a simpler marketplace online.
So while it does have that "casino chips" effect, i think it's more a "side-effect" to internationalization procedures.
Halo was good because everything it did, it did well. There were no really "bad" points to it, which is why it came out great.
- Playable and enjoyable on a console.
- Vehicles that are actually fun and not just "annoying" sequences like other titles.
- A very good story with good and enjoyable characters that looks like they belong in a military unit (no cheesy sentimentality found in other games). Includes alien villains that actually are something more than: "let's kill all humans for the heck of it".
- A military atmosphere that actually made you thought that you were in a war, with dozens of ennemies and allies in the same battle.
- A solid "feel" for the gameplay.
- A great musical score that was not overbearing and overused.
- A good feeling of exploration in an unknown world. You couldn't guess where you actually were, yet things didn't seem out-of-place.
Half-Life 1 fell in the same category. It didn't invent anything that wasn't done before. Story? Unreal 1 came before and had a story that was as developped as Half-Life, if not more. The only true innovative things Half-Life did was bring a nice package of everything good, leave out the bad and provide a solid gameplay experience.
You don't need innovations to make a good game. You simply need a good game.
Although in the case of Halo, it's major innovation that contributed greatly to it is the shield system. You could always die just around the next corner so you always were being careful. If you got hit, you could just back-up a little and hide to regenerate your shield. No need to figure out clever ways of placing med-kits and armor shards everywhere like Doom or Quake every few door or corridors, which added to the "immersion" factor. Along with the checkpoint system that saved frequently by itself before every major encounter (no need to press a "save" button that brings you back for a second to the "real" world), it made progress seamless.
Well you certainly gave a pro-PC view of things.
...just a thought.
I'd like to point to a few thing to balance it out though.
PC upgrade cost is more than a console. It is not limited to only the video card that you paid "only" 200$. RAM, Processor and whatnots also come into account. You will need to upgrade those at least twice during the same lifespan as the console. Making the console the definite bargain when it comes to gaming hardware.
PC gaming is a shadow of it's former self. A few racing games, FPS, a few sims, a bunch of RTS, a bunch of western RPGs and your micro-management games (like Civilisation and Tycoon games).
A big problem of the PC is compatibility with the hardware. I recently bought the game "paradise" for my PC. I had all the requirements, the program said i was ok to install it, then the in-game FMV sequence are out of synch with the sound. The sound stutters and the game cannot display the movie properly. Since the game box is opened, i'm screwed unless i upgrade my PC, which i really don't want.
I had a similar problem with the game MechCommander 2 some years ago. The copy protection used had a bug with some CD drives. It kept asking me to insert my original CD in the drive. The game was an original (not a copy) i purchased in a legal fashion at the computer store, yet i had to crack it to play the game i bought.
I have similar stories with Myst IV on my parent's computer. Everything is supported on their laptop computer from looking at the box. Then the game simply won't play, with tons of visual bugs showing. Looking in the MANUAL, i found that some versions of the ATI video card used in their laptop wouldn't work with it. Well why didn't it said so on the box! Now the box was opened and the game unplayable. Luvkily, in that case, some patches were released MONTHS after we bougth it that started to make it work.
When i buy a game and possess the minimum specs, i expect the game to play correctly. This is not always the case on PC and i'm sick of being screwed away of my money for games that just won't work.
Consoles have more variety and more in sheer quantity. RPGs (both western and eastern), FPS, platformers, adventure games, action games, sports games, racing games, fighting games.
It's currently lacking only in RTS (though there are a few) and micro-management games.
Gamers choose console for 3 reasons:
- more titles.
- don't need upgrading.
- never had a problem making a game work.
you said:
But I think the amount of free games I can get more than justifies the cost of hardware.
Illegal copies and software piracy is one of the big reason why the PC gaming market has gone WAY down.
I mean any site that big must be collecting statistics, e-mail addresses and what nots, and in the case of /.: opinions.
/. sell that info? I honestly don't know, but it could be. Would it be THAT surprising?
All that has a monetary value. Does
As for MS and EA, i never put my credit card info in my console. XBOX Live is a great service, but i'm not about to provide my credit card account to the world on it.
Just buy a card at your local retailer and input the code in your console. That's all that's required.
Action Replay is a really bad example.
The problem with tinkering with the console isn't that you mess around with a MS / Sony / Whatever product. It's that since the console is now online, YOUR tinkering on YOUR console can actually affect the gameplay of OTHERS.
Action Replay can mess-up online gaming in some games. It is a form of cheating.
I think you're partly wrong and off-base in your arguments.
A mom would prefer a 12 button, 2 sticks, 1 dpad controller for a game BEFORE she would use a mouse / keyboard combo.
Most games on PC uses esoteric or complicated button configurations on the keyboard. The mouse / keyboard combo takes a longer time to get used to than anything that can be put on a modern controller.
If you're strictly talking about point and click adventure games, then yes. The PC versions might be better and more intuitive. Would a mom prefer that over console? Far from sure... I know a bunch of people who can't even get Myst to run on their PC because of hardware problems and complicated install procedures (yes having to press "next" a couple of times and a radio button to "agree to the license" can be messed-up by anyone that doesn't know computers. I know this first hand.).
The difference in controls difficulty for those kind of games (on consoles or PC) is minimal at best.
As for the title "360 selling worse than the xbox", that's biased and purposefully ignoring correct statistics to prove the opposite.
By that logic, i can also prove that DVD players were selling worse than VHS players when the DVDs first came out.
360 sale numbers will need to be compared with Wii and PS3 sales numbers, once they come out. Any other statistics is useless.
Another example is saying:
"PS2 is selling more than 360".
Trying to prove that the 360 is not good.
Well a 100$ PS2 with games available that are sold for less than 10$ is outselling a newer 360 at 400$ with games that are sold for 40$. It's obvious that the PS2 sells more just for the price only.
As i said, you need to compare consoles of a similar generation for sale numbers to mean anything.
The article tried to verify if the console was "mom" friendly, as stated by MS.
I think the conclusion might be that MS was right (even if it wasn't obviously stated in the article):
The 360 IS mom friendly.
She wouldn't buy a 360 by herself, but she would play it if it was in the house.
The MS comment was that "your mom will play it". Well looks like they were right. That mom would play it if it was in the house.
The article itself has some methodology problems though,
It started correctly, with her having to install and plug the 360, then having to configure her user id.
Then it degenerates in a bunch of "reviews" of games she was handed to play.
The more correct approach would maybe have been to present her with a bunch of XBLA titles and a numerous amount of games and letting HER decide what to play. Don't force her to play the games YOU want HER to play.
The results might have been more significant.
You are extrapolating what i said.
My argument was limited to answering the following comment:
"yeah all those xboxs games out there with mom friendly written all over it..."
In that regard the comment was wrong. There are "mom friendly" games on the 360. They are mostly not located in retail outlets, but are available through the Live Arcade service.
As to if a "mom" is going to buy a 360 for herself for 400$ that she could play on a PC... (not talking about a Palm because i think she has even less chance than a 360 of buying that for gaming). I never said anything for or against.
What i will say is that while she is not going to buy a 360 for her personal use, once it came to choosing a console for her kids or giving an opinion to a console her husband/boyfriend might want, she might use her influence for going for the 360 instead of the competition because it has games she might want to play too (if she know they exist, there is a current lack of publicity about those 360 functionalities among the general mass. That is another debate).
Nope, none of the titles you mentionned are "mom" friendly.
however, if we're talking about the 360 here, you have games like:
- Hardwood backgammon
- Hardwood Spades
- Hardwood Hearts
- Uno
- Billiards
- Bejeweled
- Hexic HD
- Zuma
- list goes on...
XBox Live Arcade is full of Mom friendly games.
PC gaming is the same. Hundreds of cards and board games on services like Yahoo, MSN and tons of Flash games.
Those arn't the games that "gamers" play, but people like "moms" play all the time. There is a market for them.
With the 360, for the first time, that market comes to consoles.
^^^ sorry. Forgot the point of my post :/
Was just that the DVD consortium might be the closest thing you can have about a "community" to decide the format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Forum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
It's funny to note that the following companies founded the DVD consortium:
Hitachi, Ltd.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Electronic Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics N.V.
Sony Corporation
Thomson
Time Warner Inc.
Toshiba Corporation
Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC)
Note the little "Sony".
Then Sony came in with BluRay and offered an alternative to the "standard" that was supposed to be HDDVD. Going against the wishes of the consortium they helped to create in the first place.
whoah hold on... i did not attack you or anything :) I just mentionned a few things about the concerns you mentionned about online distribution on consoles.
I never said if it was better or worse. I just said that the fear of losing your game because your harddrive has failed (or some other hardware failure) is not justified because you can basically copy the game on any 360 harddrive and any memory card. It's not tied to a single console. If your console dies and you never copied it to a memory card, you have the option of finding your game online again.
You can also bring it to a friend's house with no problem.
That was the only concerns i think you originally mentionned and those concerns arn't justified because they are basically not true, as i explained.
As for not being able to play your games if Microsoft stops it's online service. Well you'll still be able to play them unless you deleted them, have a hardware failure or didn't copy them to a memory card. At this point though, i think it's the equivalent of saying that a CD with your game on it is damaged and the game is so old that it's impossible to find again.
Not justified.
The downloadable model of the xbox 360 for downloadable content and live arcade games is NOT tied to a machine, but to a specific user.
If something happens to your machine, you can download it again at no cost on your new machine, provided you have the same user id (i.e., you remember your password and username). Same thing if you delete content by accident.
You buy a license to "use" the code, not the rights to "own" the compiled code. There's a world of difference.