"We're wondering how Jaffe intends to make us cry without playing up the story elements, but we're interested in seeing him try"
1) Hire people to hype the game over the internet and in the medias. 2) Increase the price of the game by 20$. 3) Make the game unbeleivably hard. 4) Make the end of the game unneccesary boring. 5) Make the game very short.
The results: Millions of copies sold for an overhyped, overpriced game and millions of people crying for their lost money.
I swear, if Square decides to do a racing game, they'll put "Final Fantasy" on the cover and use Chocobos instead of racing cars just to make a bit more money off the license. wait... _________________________ The thing is, i keep track of the videogame industry and even i am starting to have trouble with Final Fantasies. They put the FF title on so many different things it's getting ridiculous.
There's just too many to keep track of unless you're an avid fan.
FF1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10-2, 11, 11-2, 12, 13, Tactics, Tactics 2, Legend, Legend 2, Legend3, + Gamecube one, + at least 1 other whose tile i have forgotten (crystal something?)
We had a joke some time ago about Hollywood sequels. There was so many we called the next one: "The return of the revenge of the brain-teaser 2... part one".
When is Return of the revenge of Final Fantasy XI 2 part one gonna be released? We're sure close to it...
Sutherland is a good enough actor, but my first (and only) experience of him as a voice actor was in the form of Armitage the Third: Poly-Matrix.
Simply put, he was AWFUL. I have honestly hardly ever heard anyone as bad as he was for voice-overs. Lacked ANY sense of emotion in his Ross Syllibus character.
I still remember the trailer to that movie: Every major character had his voice actor named and we heard it's voice thereafter BUT for the Syllibus character, which showed him(the character) on screen after the Sutherland credit, yet the character was completely silent. It felt out of place that he didn't talk like the others in the trailer. When i watched the movie with a bunch of friends, we all have understood why he was silent.
Actually, LoTR was originally only ONE book.
The publisher told Tolkien that it was too big and that he had to cut it. Tolkien just took the number of pages and divided roughly by three (which is why vol. 1 and 2 ends weirdly. Vol 1's doesn't have any sense of closure as it ends in the MIDDLE of an action scene, [Boromir he dies in the first chapters of volume 2], volume 1 ends just abruptly).
As for episodic games, the thing is completely different than a book. Books usually have closure between it's volumes (LOTR notwithstansing as it's a special case). Episodic games don't and WILL cheat the players into never seiing an ending.
I see a bunch of episode 1s out on shelves with no ep. 2 coming out because the first one didn't sell as much as they wanted.
I also see less and less profits for each "sequels". The only people purchasing ep.2 are those who have ep.1 and had enough fun for the sequel. The only people purchasing ep. 3 are those who have ep.2 and are not bored with the game's mechanics already. etc.
Correct me if i'm wrong but didn't Romero work on level design in the mentionned games
"Doom, Quake, & Wolfenstein 3D"?
Add Daikatana to that and ALL of them have the worst level designs made:
Bases that make no sense, cave tunnels and sewers connecting to high-tech computer rooms and house with doors on the second floors that required people to jump from over the OTHER building in order to enter them with not even an unopenable door on the first floor and so on...
I mean, who in their right mind place an office workplace right next to a sewer? Or a lava-filled room?
Even in the classic "DOOM", great game... The levels don't make ANY kind of sense though... just a bunch of rooms with no purposes patched together with corridors and random lighting elements.
Other factors needs to be examined, such as the fact that we are in a generation transition in console gaming.
In generation transition, the old consoles don't get the attention of the major developpers and the new consoles don't get many games sold because there are not a lot of consoles sold overall.
See the games coming for the old XBOX, GC and PS2. They are mostly mediocre (take a look at the most of the reviews). There are no AAA titles (with a possible exception or two) for those old consoles.
Most of the big anticipated titles are for PS3/Wii/360. However, the sales of those titles are in direct proportions with the number of those consoles sold. There are less 360 on the market now than old xboxes, so overall less sales.
The fact that you have to buy a 500$ console might also explain why there are fewer games bought. People's budget for gaming can only go so high. The fact that the 360 and the PS3 are capable of HD means that some people will also buy an HDTV, meaning even less money left for game purchase.
So is MMORPG the reason why console game sales are down? To make that analysis, we'd have to take a look at sales number during a time where the number arn't screwed by this generation change. Scratch that... sale number don't mean anything. We'd need a serious study with sample gamers that have adopted MMORPGs and see if they trully have changed their purchasing habits.
Just the fact that Thompson is a lawyer makes me doubt his true intentions.
He passed the last few years convincing people who don't / can't know better that video games are "evil" and managed to pass a law that is debatable to no end.
A) The law itself will be contested.
B) The Law is vague enough that any game banned for minors will be contested.
C) Games not banned for minors might be contested by supposedly outraged parents and/or anyone.
Depending on the interpretation of this law, a game like Tetris can get banned because it doesn't provide any educational value, etc. Even it's "artistic" value can be debatted on...
So everything in this can be contested to no end...
Who wins from that situation? Parents? Gamers? Store? The game industry? not one of them gains anything from continually arguing in court.
Yep you guessed it, the lawyers during all that time receive money to no end because anyone can contest anything in this law.
Who pays the lawyers during all that nonsense?
We do.
(Thompson's colleagues must be happy to no end).
The game was a bit less good than it's precursors. I wouldn't call it exactly a "downfall".
The only thing i had with thief 3 was the city "hub". Because of seemless transitions between levels, you always had too many equipment/arrows/etc. on you for the mission, you never felt like you were gonna lack anything.
You could basically take your time and kill everyone you saw.
And as for the record, Thief's legacy lives on in other games.
Oblivion features sneaking missions in which the sneaking mechanics looks a lot like those of Thief. Hide in the dark places, don't run to make too much noise, guards coming to check where the noise came from, then the inevitable "it must have been a rat"... Oblivion's few sneaking missions are VERY similar to those of Thief's.
"Pong" was far from the first videogame. It was part of the first "arcade" games and for most people, the first videogame they ever saw. Also one of the first to be actually playable by the general public.
Almost on a daily basis someone in a forum will say that games are stagnant and lack innovation.
To that i say bull...
Games don't lack innovation, people fail to even try the most innovative games or to even find the innovation in a game.
People always seem to think that "innovation" should equal "revolution" in gaming. People are just waiting for the "next" big thing that is just isn't coming anytime soon: - Text-based games to static-graphic games. - Static-graphic games to dynamic 2D graphics with sound. - Dynamic 2D graphic with sound games to polygonal "3D" games. - Polygonal "3D" games to ??? It's the ??? that people confuse with innovation.
True "Innovation" comes in small doses... A game like Halo: yes, it's YET another FPS. It introduced a couple of concepts that made for overall good gameplay. A game like the Original Doom: very similar to other games that came before, it introduced better level designs and a perspective of height. The game Life Line: Used almost exclusively vocal commands to control a character in a survival horror game. Innovative... even if it failed to work properly. The game Indigo Prophecy: Multiple endings to every scene. Player action impact on overall story. It was done before, but this game took it to an entire new level. It was a main aspect of the game rather than a simple afterthought.
Other developpers take these small innovations and include them in their games... Over the course of years, this is the innovation that amount to something. Comparing Top Spin 2 to the old Tennis game on the NES, i can't help but think that it's not only graphics that have changed. The gameplay has too.
"(1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence."
- funny, as Jack keeps on going that the ESRB is broken and not working while it's rating system is based solely on the opinions of the general population, or in other words: community standards. It seems he only wants to enforce a system that is his own.
More seriously though,
"(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
- The problem is: define "lack of literary, artistic, political or scientific value". It seems he only wants educational games for minors because going with that reasoning, we should ban the sale of Tetris to minors since it doesn't have any literary, political or scientific value. The artistic values of "tetris" can also be debated...
As always, Jack is painting with a brush as wide as his ego.
PS2 games all come on DVDs as it's the standard on the machine. It's not to the choice of the developpers that are the ones that need the disc space.
PC games, where format is left to the developpers, still come more than frequently on CD. Why? the only reason is that they don't need the DVD extra space yet, let alone a Blu-Ray disc.
If a massive game like Oblivion can run on a console with a single disc, where only half the size of the game taken by game data, the rest by digitized speech you can guess that every other single game made is still very far from filling-up a complete disc.
"When Microsoft makes HD-DVD optional - it's a mistake." - when you are pro PS3
"When Sony includes it - it's a mistake." - when you are pro 360
I myself fall into the category that thinks Sony made a mistake from a consumer perspective. Blu-Ray won't bring anything to most people who want a PS3. I have no doubts that Blu-Rays are overkill for games. As it has been pointed out, most games still come on CDs let alone DVDs. Those few games that use more than 1 DVD are usually made that way to fool the consumer to think that the game is huge.
Remember Final Fantasy VII on 3 CDs? The entire game was found on all CDs. The only difference was the FMV content on each disk. You could swap the CDs mid-game and nothing bad would happen to your game but the fact that the wrong FMV could play when it was triggered.
Remember Phantasmagoria on 7 CDs? The entire game could have been kept on a single CD (maybe two at max). The same graphic data was copied over and over on each CD.
Sony however did not make a mistake from a marketing point of view. They want Blu-Ray to succeed and have taken every measure to "prove" to us (the consumers) that Blu-Ray and PS3 is the ONLY way to go.
The reason there are so much anti-Sony comments right now is that some people do not believe the marketing division of Sony at face value and are more in touch with what's good for THEIR own need and not those of Sony.
Blu-Ray should have been optional... It's my strong opinion that most people don't care about HD. Maybe two years down the road, then people might want to plug-in an extra "option" to their old console. I don't want to buy a 200$ player that i will MAYBE use in two year's time.
- Basically you dish the Wii because it is not as powerful as the other. Other says it's one of it's strength because that being "not as powerful" means it's not expansive to buy. You'll be able to get two Wiis (and possibly a game or two) for the price of a single PS3.
- You say the big weakness of the 360 is that it doesn't have anything over the other two. That it's less powerful than the PS3... (just before saying this: "In short the real weakness of the PS3 is that it might just not be able to actually produce any games that are richer then the 360 or even worse, the Wii.")
That is completely ignoring it's online functions: not just multiplayer games, but the marketplace, achievements and leaderboards in an unified function. The PS3 is rumored to have something similar, yet i have seen nothing about this that came out of E3.
- The PS3? Well it's the only console where i have to agree with you on it's "weakness". But i don't think you nailed it's weakness correctly. I think it's weakness is that it will do everything the other two console do, but in less good ways. I view it as the "expansive jack of all trades"... it displays HD graphics, but they are looking similar to those on the 360... it has motion detection in it's controllers, but the ones in the Wii are better... it has online, but since we still don't know much about it, (i assume that 360 will have a better one)... it has a blu-ray player, but the cheaper PS3 won't do HD for the movies. The premium one may have problems with most HDTV sold when it comes to movies. A regular Blu-Ray player will be better and less troublesome in that regard.
Opening the 360 to install something (i.e. a mod chip) is not something the 360 was designed for. You're not supposed to open the 360, hence it's a "misuse"
As it has been suggested, Microsoft will probably lock the hacked 360s from Live.
Well i got news for you: unlike the original XBOX, a 360 with no Live is a crippled 360, even with only the silver account that is free:
- No download service for game patchs;
- no Live marketplace (which will exclude Live Arcade games);
- no original xbox backward game compatibility;
- no achievements,
- no leaderboards.
So it's not only online gaming that get's cut down...
If you buy a new car and replaces parts with third partys, most dealers will void your warranty.
I fully support Microsoft in their war against hackers... - Prevent cheaters online. - Prevent illegal copying of games. The software designers have to be paid so they can bring me more games.
Basically:
"At present we have no announced plans to bring Oblivion to any platforms other than PC or Xbox 360." - Bethesda staff
Let's wait before "official" news come in before we get hyped about Oblivion on PS3.
Games are getting more and more complicated and sofisticated every year.
But games always had bugs. Take perhaps the most successful game in history, Super Mario Bros. Walking through walls, getting stuck on a pixel...
It's not NEW that games are buggy. You have hundreds of different possible system configurations on PC that can lead to bugs. Games like any Elder Scrolls have an almost limitless number of player driven possibilities. Is it possible to find every single bug in them before release? Not unless the developpers would hire say 500 000 play testers (about the number that would be required for a game like Morrowind, DaggerFall or Oblivion) and push back the game over 2 years just to be sure the game is bug free.
Most games are playable and enjoyable even with a few bugs. A few are totally broken and it's usually mentionned in their reviews.
So fact that games can be patched is a "good" thing, not necessarilly a proof of developpers lazyness. They brought out a playable and enjoyable game and i play it and have fun with it. If it's patched later on, so much the better for me.
... actually i think it's a misconception too, but it has it's basis in truth.
Cars, mp3 players and video games are different things.
Entertainment media is very different from elsewhere in the globe. American cartoons don't go very well in Japan VS their own manga style for example.
The same is true for video games. FPS and shooters arn't very much liked in Japan and japanese style RPGs are. Weird puzzle games and "pets" games that we never get outside Japan are liked too. Sony has the console that has the most interesting library of games for their taste.
They prefer japanese GAME companies, not japanese CONSOLE companies. Sony just happen to have the majority of the japanese developpers, hence the majority of japanese gamers on it's side.
As some people have already pointed-out, this "information" don't relate the facts. This is just an interpretation of possible results from those facts.
The interpretation is NOT the fact. It just makes for more "entertaining" news to say that an evil company will own you in the future. Usually "evil company" is equal to "biggest company" in a given field. In this case Microsoft.
With this charge i think most people are just afraid that the games will have an "hidden" cost they will "have" to pay to enjoy their games and that the games they purchase will not be complete unless they buy it all.
To this I just say: do a bit of research and read reviews before buying a game and you will know if the game you want has enough content to satisfy you. Don't judge a game by it's pretty box or by the hype.
I really don't have a problem with mods that are not free and that you can use at will. If they are not to your taste or too expansive, then just don't buy it.
The Kameo winter pack is a similar mod, priced the same thing and avaialable at the 360 launch day and no one said anything about it. Most people did not even buy it. Why is this horse mod any different?
I actually have more of a problem with the price system of MMORPGs (buy our 50$ game... and THEN pay an extra 10$ per month just so you can play your 50$ game that is useless without a subscription.)
____________________
Also a few pointers to some posts, PC official mods are not free and XBOX Live marketplace is free of charge (no monthly subscription to Live required)
Slashdot Mirror
"We're wondering how Jaffe intends to make us cry without playing up the story elements, but we're interested in seeing him try"
1) Hire people to hype the game over the internet and in the medias.
2) Increase the price of the game by 20$.
3) Make the game unbeleivably hard.
4) Make the end of the game unneccesary boring.
5) Make the game very short.
The results:
Millions of copies sold for an overhyped, overpriced game and millions of people crying for their lost money.
^^^ lol
I swear, if Square decides to do a racing game, they'll put "Final Fantasy" on the cover and use Chocobos instead of racing cars just to make a bit more money off the license. wait...
_________________________
The thing is, i keep track of the videogame industry and even i am starting to have trouble with Final Fantasies. They put the FF title on so many different things it's getting ridiculous.
Well, Michelle has grown-up since her "Buffy" and "Harriet the spy" days...
I'm not as sure as you that she couldn't have made a good Tika in a live movie.
Music last 45min. in average for 20$.
A game last around 15 hours, in average, for 60$.
For value/money, i'd get my games thanks.
Also, music may "sell" more copies, but overall i think the game industry generates way more money than the music industry.
Is this an old news, or a new one?
There's just too many to keep track of unless you're an avid fan.
FF1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10-2, 11, 11-2, 12, 13, Tactics, Tactics 2, Legend, Legend 2, Legend3, + Gamecube one, + at least 1 other whose tile i have forgotten (crystal something?)
We had a joke some time ago about Hollywood sequels. There was so many we called the next one:
"The return of the revenge of the brain-teaser 2... part one".
When is Return of the revenge of Final Fantasy XI 2 part one gonna be released? We're sure close to it...
Sutherland is a good enough actor, but my first (and only) experience of him as a voice actor was in the form of Armitage the Third: Poly-Matrix.
Simply put, he was AWFUL. I have honestly hardly ever heard anyone as bad as he was for voice-overs. Lacked ANY sense of emotion in his Ross Syllibus character.
I still remember the trailer to that movie: Every major character had his voice actor named and we heard it's voice thereafter BUT for the Syllibus character, which showed him(the character) on screen after the Sutherland credit, yet the character was completely silent. It felt out of place that he didn't talk like the others in the trailer.
When i watched the movie with a bunch of friends, we all have understood why he was silent.
Actually, LoTR was originally only ONE book. The publisher told Tolkien that it was too big and that he had to cut it. Tolkien just took the number of pages and divided roughly by three (which is why vol. 1 and 2 ends weirdly. Vol 1's doesn't have any sense of closure as it ends in the MIDDLE of an action scene, [Boromir he dies in the first chapters of volume 2], volume 1 ends just abruptly). As for episodic games, the thing is completely different than a book. Books usually have closure between it's volumes (LOTR notwithstansing as it's a special case). Episodic games don't and WILL cheat the players into never seiing an ending. I see a bunch of episode 1s out on shelves with no ep. 2 coming out because the first one didn't sell as much as they wanted. I also see less and less profits for each "sequels". The only people purchasing ep.2 are those who have ep.1 and had enough fun for the sequel. The only people purchasing ep. 3 are those who have ep.2 and are not bored with the game's mechanics already. etc.
Correct me if i'm wrong but didn't Romero work on level design in the mentionned games "Doom, Quake, & Wolfenstein 3D"? Add Daikatana to that and ALL of them have the worst level designs made: Bases that make no sense, cave tunnels and sewers connecting to high-tech computer rooms and house with doors on the second floors that required people to jump from over the OTHER building in order to enter them with not even an unopenable door on the first floor and so on... I mean, who in their right mind place an office workplace right next to a sewer? Or a lava-filled room? Even in the classic "DOOM", great game... The levels don't make ANY kind of sense though... just a bunch of rooms with no purposes patched together with corridors and random lighting elements.
We can't go further than a maybe...
Other factors needs to be examined, such as the fact that we are in a generation transition in console gaming.
In generation transition, the old consoles don't get the attention of the major developpers and the new consoles don't get many games sold because there are not a lot of consoles sold overall.
See the games coming for the old XBOX, GC and PS2. They are mostly mediocre (take a look at the most of the reviews). There are no AAA titles (with a possible exception or two) for those old consoles.
Most of the big anticipated titles are for PS3/Wii/360. However, the sales of those titles are in direct proportions with the number of those consoles sold. There are less 360 on the market now than old xboxes, so overall less sales.
The fact that you have to buy a 500$ console might also explain why there are fewer games bought. People's budget for gaming can only go so high. The fact that the 360 and the PS3 are capable of HD means that some people will also buy an HDTV, meaning even less money left for game purchase.
So is MMORPG the reason why console game sales are down? To make that analysis, we'd have to take a look at sales number during a time where the number arn't screwed by this generation change.
Scratch that... sale number don't mean anything. We'd need a serious study with sample gamers that have adopted MMORPGs and see if they trully have changed their purchasing habits.
Just the fact that Thompson is a lawyer makes me doubt his true intentions. He passed the last few years convincing people who don't / can't know better that video games are "evil" and managed to pass a law that is debatable to no end. A) The law itself will be contested. B) The Law is vague enough that any game banned for minors will be contested. C) Games not banned for minors might be contested by supposedly outraged parents and/or anyone. Depending on the interpretation of this law, a game like Tetris can get banned because it doesn't provide any educational value, etc. Even it's "artistic" value can be debatted on... So everything in this can be contested to no end... Who wins from that situation? Parents? Gamers? Store? The game industry? not one of them gains anything from continually arguing in court. Yep you guessed it, the lawyers during all that time receive money to no end because anyone can contest anything in this law. Who pays the lawyers during all that nonsense? We do. (Thompson's colleagues must be happy to no end).
The game was a bit less good than it's precursors. I wouldn't call it exactly a "downfall". The only thing i had with thief 3 was the city "hub". Because of seemless transitions between levels, you always had too many equipment/arrows/etc. on you for the mission, you never felt like you were gonna lack anything. You could basically take your time and kill everyone you saw. And as for the record, Thief's legacy lives on in other games. Oblivion features sneaking missions in which the sneaking mechanics looks a lot like those of Thief. Hide in the dark places, don't run to make too much noise, guards coming to check where the noise came from, then the inevitable "it must have been a rat"... Oblivion's few sneaking missions are VERY similar to those of Thief's.
"Pong" was far from the first videogame. It was part of the first "arcade" games and for most people, the first videogame they ever saw. Also one of the first to be actually playable by the general public.
Almost on a daily basis someone in a forum will say that games are stagnant and lack innovation.
To that i say bull...
Games don't lack innovation, people fail to even try the most innovative games or to even find the innovation in a game.
People always seem to think that "innovation" should equal "revolution" in gaming. People are just waiting for the "next" big thing that is just isn't coming anytime soon:
- Text-based games to static-graphic games.
- Static-graphic games to dynamic 2D graphics with sound.
- Dynamic 2D graphic with sound games to polygonal "3D" games.
- Polygonal "3D" games to ???
It's the ??? that people confuse with innovation.
True "Innovation" comes in small doses...
A game like Halo: yes, it's YET another FPS. It introduced a couple of concepts that made for overall good gameplay.
A game like the Original Doom: very similar to other games that came before, it introduced better level designs and a perspective of height.
The game Life Line: Used almost exclusively vocal commands to control a character in a survival horror game. Innovative... even if it failed to work properly.
The game Indigo Prophecy: Multiple endings to every scene. Player action impact on overall story. It was done before, but this game took it to an entire new level. It was a main aspect of the game rather than a simple afterthought.
Other developpers take these small innovations and include them in their games... Over the course of years, this is the innovation that amount to something.
Comparing Top Spin 2 to the old Tennis game on the NES, i can't help but think that it's not only graphics that have changed. The gameplay has too.
"(1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence."
- funny, as Jack keeps on going that the ESRB is broken and not working while it's rating system is based solely on the opinions of the general population, or in other words: community standards. It seems he only wants to enforce a system that is his own.
More seriously though,
"(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
- The problem is: define "lack of literary, artistic, political or scientific value". It seems he only wants educational games for minors because going with that reasoning, we should ban the sale of Tetris to minors since it doesn't have any literary, political or scientific value. The artistic values of "tetris" can also be debated...
As always, Jack is painting with a brush as wide as his ego.
PS2 games all come on DVDs as it's the standard on the machine. It's not to the choice of the developpers that are the ones that need the disc space.
PC games, where format is left to the developpers, still come more than frequently on CD. Why? the only reason is that they don't need the DVD extra space yet, let alone a Blu-Ray disc.
If a massive game like Oblivion can run on a console with a single disc, where only half the size of the game taken by game data, the rest by digitized speech you can guess that every other single game made is still very far from filling-up a complete disc.
Nope... the question is:
"When Microsoft makes HD-DVD optional - it's a mistake."
- when you are pro PS3
"When Sony includes it - it's a mistake."
- when you are pro 360
I myself fall into the category that thinks Sony made a mistake from a consumer perspective. Blu-Ray won't bring anything to most people who want a PS3.
I have no doubts that Blu-Rays are overkill for games. As it has been pointed out, most games still come on CDs let alone DVDs.
Those few games that use more than 1 DVD are usually made that way to fool the consumer to think that the game is huge.
Remember Final Fantasy VII on 3 CDs? The entire game was found on all CDs. The only difference was the FMV content on each disk. You could swap the CDs mid-game and nothing bad would happen to your game but the fact that the wrong FMV could play when it was triggered.
Remember Phantasmagoria on 7 CDs? The entire game could have been kept on a single CD (maybe two at max). The same graphic data was copied over and over on each CD.
Sony however did not make a mistake from a marketing point of view. They want Blu-Ray to succeed and have taken every measure to "prove" to us (the consumers) that Blu-Ray and PS3 is the ONLY way to go.
The reason there are so much anti-Sony comments right now is that some people do not believe the marketing division of Sony at face value and are more in touch with what's good for THEIR own need and not those of Sony.
Blu-Ray should have been optional... It's my strong opinion that most people don't care about HD. Maybe two years down the road, then people might want to plug-in an extra "option" to their old console. I don't want to buy a 200$ player that i will MAYBE use in two year's time.
So...
.. it displays HD graphics, but they are looking similar to those on the 360. .. it has motion detection in it's controllers, but the ones in the Wii are better. .. it has online, but since we still don't know much about it, (i assume that 360 will have a better one). .. it has a blu-ray player, but the cheaper PS3 won't do HD for the movies. The premium one may have problems with most HDTV sold when it comes to movies. A regular Blu-Ray player will be better and less troublesome in that regard.
- Basically you dish the Wii because it is not as powerful as the other. Other says it's one of it's strength because that being "not as powerful" means it's not expansive to buy. You'll be able to get two Wiis (and possibly a game or two) for the price of a single PS3.
- You say the big weakness of the 360 is that it doesn't have anything over the other two. That it's less powerful than the PS3... (just before saying this:
"In short the real weakness of the PS3 is that it might just not be able to actually produce any games that are richer then the 360 or even worse, the Wii.")
That is completely ignoring it's online functions: not just multiplayer games, but the marketplace, achievements and leaderboards in an unified function. The PS3 is rumored to have something similar, yet i have seen nothing about this that came out of E3.
- The PS3? Well it's the only console where i have to agree with you on it's "weakness". But i don't think you nailed it's weakness correctly. I think it's weakness is that it will do everything the other two console do, but in less good ways. I view it as the "expansive jack of all trades".
Well you just said it...
"Nor does it cover consumer misuse..."
Opening the 360 to install something (i.e. a mod chip) is not something the 360 was designed for. You're not supposed to open the 360, hence it's a "misuse"
As it has been suggested, Microsoft will probably lock the hacked 360s from Live. Well i got news for you: unlike the original XBOX, a 360 with no Live is a crippled 360, even with only the silver account that is free: - No download service for game patchs; - no Live marketplace (which will exclude Live Arcade games); - no original xbox backward game compatibility; - no achievements, - no leaderboards. So it's not only online gaming that get's cut down...
^ Not true...
If you buy a new car and replaces parts with third partys, most dealers will void your warranty.
I fully support Microsoft in their war against hackers...
- Prevent cheaters online.
- Prevent illegal copying of games. The software designers have to be paid so they can bring me more games.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/703/703224p1.html
Basically:
"At present we have no announced plans to bring Oblivion to any platforms other than PC or Xbox 360." - Bethesda staff Let's wait before "official" news come in before we get hyped about Oblivion on PS3.
Games are getting more and more complicated and sofisticated every year.
But games always had bugs. Take perhaps the most successful game in history, Super Mario Bros. Walking through walls, getting stuck on a pixel...
It's not NEW that games are buggy. You have hundreds of different possible system configurations on PC that can lead to bugs. Games like any Elder Scrolls have an almost limitless number of player driven possibilities. Is it possible to find every single bug in them before release? Not unless the developpers would hire say 500 000 play testers (about the number that would be required for a game like Morrowind, DaggerFall or Oblivion) and push back the game over 2 years just to be sure the game is bug free.
Most games are playable and enjoyable even with a few bugs. A few are totally broken and it's usually mentionned in their reviews.
So fact that games can be patched is a "good" thing, not necessarilly a proof of developpers lazyness. They brought out a playable and enjoyable game and i play it and have fun with it. If it's patched later on, so much the better for me.
... actually i think it's a misconception too, but it has it's basis in truth.
Cars, mp3 players and video games are different things.
Entertainment media is very different from elsewhere in the globe. American cartoons don't go very well in Japan VS their own manga style for example.
The same is true for video games. FPS and shooters arn't very much liked in Japan and japanese style RPGs are. Weird puzzle games and "pets" games that we never get outside Japan are liked too. Sony has the console that has the most interesting library of games for their taste.
They prefer japanese GAME companies, not japanese CONSOLE companies. Sony just happen to have the majority of the japanese developpers, hence the majority of japanese gamers on it's side.
This is typical anti-everything journalism.
As some people have already pointed-out, this "information" don't relate the facts. This is just an interpretation of possible results from those facts.
The interpretation is NOT the fact. It just makes for more "entertaining" news to say that an evil company will own you in the future. Usually "evil company" is equal to "biggest company" in a given field. In this case Microsoft.
With this charge i think most people are just afraid that the games will have an "hidden" cost they will "have" to pay to enjoy their games and that the games they purchase will not be complete unless they buy it all. To this I just say: do a bit of research and read reviews before buying a game and you will know if the game you want has enough content to satisfy you. Don't judge a game by it's pretty box or by the hype. I really don't have a problem with mods that are not free and that you can use at will. If they are not to your taste or too expansive, then just don't buy it. The Kameo winter pack is a similar mod, priced the same thing and avaialable at the 360 launch day and no one said anything about it. Most people did not even buy it. Why is this horse mod any different? I actually have more of a problem with the price system of MMORPGs (buy our 50$ game... and THEN pay an extra 10$ per month just so you can play your 50$ game that is useless without a subscription.) ____________________ Also a few pointers to some posts, PC official mods are not free and XBOX Live marketplace is free of charge (no monthly subscription to Live required)