Re: Ps3 slim and price cut rumors running rampant.....madden in 2 weeks....coincidenc
For the first time in a while,I totally disagree with you,shayd.First off,to be a stickler,during the first decade of Nintendo's existence,they were producing playing cards and video games weren't even a figment of anyone's imagination,being that the company was founded in the late 1800's.
You're right, I was stupidly referring to their infancy when I meant the infancy of their game division.
Second,I really don't know what games that you think Nintendo made that were the first 3D games on a home console,especially considering that the Intellevision had Tron Solar Sailor,which,albeit,was a very crude 3D game,but 3D nonetheless,and that was years before the first NES system was even plugged into it's first outlet.
Tekken was ported to the PS1 in '95.Killer Instinct wasn't even considered a direct port on the N64 or SNES which might have come out around the same time.
I probably should have defined what a modern 3D game is. Those games are 3D in the sense that the games have characters models that are 3D. However in the truest sense, 3D video games detail worlds the way those characters would be. In technical terms, it means developers choose to render textures, geography, characters, and everything else in the game primarily with 3D polygons, rather than sprites. Sprites are just 2D pictures that simulate what a 3D texture is. The quintessential example of these is the early Duke Nukem games. The enemies in the games were completely constructed using sprites, which, appear 3D, but in the end, you can't go around them, and they always face you. Tron wasn't really 3D at all because the entire "movement" the player experienced in the game was sprite based. Tekken, and to be honest, essentially every similar fighting game (Street Fighter, etc...) have until the Xbox/PS2 era almost exclusive used sprites to create backgrounds and scenery.
The first game that Nintendo created that truly created the 3D console realm was Super Mario 64. That was the first console game that used 3D models to create a world, instead of just a character. The evidence of that was the (at the time) revolutionary addition of the camera system. Outside of a half-assed Virtua-Boy version of Mario, no other game in console history could provide a truly 3D view of the game world. Nintendo built off of that success using Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Mario Kart, and a number of others. It was Nintendo's prowess on consoles that essentially paved the way for 3D FPS games to become so madly popular, and to a lesser degree, the same is true with 3D racing games.
While Sony created and manufactured it's own hardware with the PS1/2,they even did what earlier hardware designers did and got some major help,in their case from Toshiba and IBM in developing the CPU and processor.So while that may have been innovative from a production standpoint with earlier systems,it's pretty much insignificant in the grand scope of game development.
My point about Sony benefiting from the method of manufactoring is that it is essentially what set the precedent for later consoles (and essentially why Microsoft has had one hell of a bad time with the 360).
I'm also gonna kinda disagree with your statement about Sony being just another company when they came out.
They were part of the next generation of gaming at the time.Genesis and SNES were coming to an end and Sony jumped in at precisely the right time.
Part of Sony's success came from the fact that the Sega Saturn was a nightmare for most if not all developers to design games for,and that's just the technical blunders.Sega also didn't market Saturn worth a shit,mainly because of the redesigning of some of the hardware components.I personally think Sega's main fuck up was promising backwards compatibility on the Saturn and not coming through on that promise.
I will admit, Sony truly wasn't "just another company", because they had a solid history of electronics production. However, the same is not true in regard to video game consoles. The PlayStation was relatively unknown until mid '96 when North America finally started popularizing the console.
What I think everyone has forgotten is the fact that Sony entered the console market essentially as a lark. After watching the NES take off in terms of popularity, Sony actually wanted to get a piece of Nintendo's pie with the SNES, specifically they wanted to build a CD player add-on to the SNES. Initially, Nintendo acquiesced to Sonys proposal, however they ended up flaking on Sony in favor of Phillips, which is what initially spawned the idea of the PS1.
I guess I can't overlook the importance of Nintendo's importance on the video landscape.I remember when I was about 13 and my grandmother and I looked in every store that Christmas for a NES,only to come up short every single time.It's popularity rivaled that of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls,I think it was Christmas of '83.
So while Nintendo does have a major role in the evolution of today's gaming,there are still predecessors to it that Nintendo owes a lot to.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that Sony hasn't been a player in the long run, because they have. I'm also not ignoring the fact that Nintendo did in fact build the majority of their empire off of the initial work of other people and companies, some of whom performed their work decades before. However, the impact of Nintendo's work specifically in the modern gaming world is pretty close to impossible to ignore, if only for the presence of true 3D gaming.
Shayd,Microsoft took online gaming and made it organized and fun with xbox live,anyone could have done that......psn is online gaming without the bells and whistles xbox live has and without the price tag. Xbox is glorified for making an impact in the online gaming department no doubt,however their success had alot to do with being at the right place at the right time.
If ps2 released after xbox,which it didnt,then ps2 would be the leader in the online gaming dept or and xbox would be the console with a streamlined service ala psn.
For me, that begs the question, why didn't they? The answer is pretty simple: the other companies really didn't know what they were doing. The Dreamcast was the first true push into online connectivity, but that failed, and hard because 1. It ran primarily on a 56k dial-up connection which had connection issues, latency issues, and the like, and 2. The console treated the connection as an pseudo-virtual machine, meaning the system was slow for the time, and was all around a poor effort, and little more than a means for Sega to sell stuff.
The PS2 did indeed launch before the Xbox (PS2 launched in 2000, the Xbox in 2001), and was built from the get go to enable online connectivity, every PS2 that's ever been built has had a built in Ethernet port. Sony struggled pretty mightily with that, for almost the exact same reason as the Dreamcast, and it wasn't until around 2004 that online connectivity was anywhere near a working feature. Microsoft had been looking into online connectivity all the way back to the Nintendo 64, and there are records of Microsoft attempting to build a very primitive version of Xbox Live for the Dreamcast, but that's about the time that they decided to make a console of their own.
As far as hardware you believe that microsoft did some innovating? Only a few select xbox1 titles looked better than ps2. In the long run ps2 is still selling systems after a decade and being supported with new software.
Xbox1 was another dreamcast but with better games and a bigger library along with a tad bit of a longer life span. Sony did no mimicking,xbox just went to the woodshed looking for more horsepower. They didnt invent technically powerful consoles.
Now we're getting somewhere!
In terms of sheer hardware, Microsoft did very little innovation with the first generation of the Xbox. But the reason why they have the primary role in modern online play is because they by far developed the most efficient and functional system. The only reason (besides the rise in the number of Broadband connections) that online play is even relevant right now is because Microsoft built a tremendiously solid system to play on. Up until the original Xbox, all previous consoles, (including the PS2) tried to provide hardware support of online play through small, specialized caches of memory, which were often too small to support even the most rudimentary form of online interaction. Microsoft since the beginning has designed Live to make use of a larger hard-drive to support interaction, instead of the smaller cache. They also had the better idea to support a bigger built in hard-drive as opposed to using 8-16MB memory cards, a move that Sony has mimicked with the PS3.
In terms of graphics, and I'm trying to be as nice as I can here, the PS2 in general really didn't compare well to the Xbox. There were obvious exceptions to that, but by in large, it's pretty universally recognized that the Xbox looked better.
I respect your opinions 100% especially since you and Shayd keep these talks civil.
And I appreciate that, as well as your and Zells open-mindedness towards the discussion. I sincerely hope that I don't ever come off harshly talking about this stuff, because I genuinely value all of the opinions in here as worthwhile, (except for maybe the "ZOMG PS3 RULEZ or 360 TOTALLY KICKS ASS" sentiments :1orglaugh). After all, it's just video games
As far as online gaming, I'll have to disagree with you on your statement about "if anyone couldve done it they would have". When ps2 came out there was zero market for online games thanks to dreamcast with their dialup only console that failed miserably.Sony looked into online gaming while developing ps2 with little enthusiasm and effort. Nintendo just straight up doesnt believe in it for some reason cause its huge and they still havent caught a ride on the online wagon.
Xbox came along,a year and 1/2 after ps2 released,and ran with the online games idea. Dont get me wrong god bless the fucking hell outa' them for doing it. But once again timing was great for microsoft and if ps2 was in that position they wouldve done the chore.
But see the problem is that Sony was developing online functionality at almost the exact same time as Microsoft, only Sony had already announced a new system. The zero-market issue doesn't really hold any water because Sony had the benefit of knowing that a huge chunk of the population was upgrading to Broadband connections (specifically DSL). Nintendo only really recently with the Wii has even acknowledged online functionality, but then again, perhaps that's because the Gamecube was essentially a multiplayer console first, and a single player second (at least that's how I seem to think of it). And to add to that, Sony even today hasn't gotten close to the efficiency or functionality of Live, so there's really no reason to believe that Sony would have the upper hand in an alternate scenario.
With Graphics,you are absolutely correct the mutiplatform games did look and run alittle smoother on xbox. However,for a system that came out 1 1/2 years after the ps2 and was getting all this hype about its tech,the games should have looked quite a bit better, even the exclusives. I'll put GOdof War up to splinter cell or Riddick any day of the week. Riddick looks incredible for a last gen game however after walking 10 steps in that game you had to look at a loading screen for 3 mins.........
Not to rain on the parade, but that same argument could pretty much be applied regarding the PS3 versus the 360. The PS3 had another year to get ahead, and has still outside of maybe 5 games failed to visually beat the 360.
After rereading my reply and reflecting on what I said,I have to change my opinion and agree with you.It was more about timing than anything else.Here's how I see it all shaking down.
When Xbox created Xbox Live,they knew that there was a slight divide between the PC gamer,most of which play online,and the console gamer,who didn't really care about playing console games online.
Now most of this,I believe,is due to the fact that most PC gamers play either RTS,RPG(MMORPG),and most importantly FPS,primarily online.
with the FPS,most of those guys will say,and even to this day,that they don't like dual analog and would rather play with mouse and keyboard.What Microsoft did was create a network that was the best around for console online gaming,and hope that they could attracts a portion of the hardcore PC gamer.Sony's network pretty much sucked for PS2 and didn't really have a lot of games that were worthy of online support.All they had was SOCOM 1/2 and wasn't Final Fantasy only online?
With such a small lineup of games online for Sony,and with 2 preceding systems that didn't really have that good of a network,Microsoft could learn from both of those system's mistakes and improve on them,so they were in a prime position to strike and promote the systems true strength,it's online network.
The mistakes were already made for Microsoft to correct,they just slid in like a snake in the grass and made online gaming better.If they would have produced Xbox 2 years earlier,Xbox Live wouldn't have been as good as it was when it first came out,and Sony would've probably had the upper hand by making improvements on their own network.So yes,I think you are right on in saying that it was more about timing.
I don't know,but is there much of a difference in either network now,as far as overall quality and reliability?
While I'd tend to agree Microsoft tried to corner the PC gamer, that doesn't really explain why 4 of the top 5 games on Live on the original Xbox were sports games. Also, in terms of Microsoft learning from the mistakes of other, I'm not sure that can really be said, as the PS2s failings were not widely established by the time Live launched, and saying that Microsoft learned from Segas failings is like saying the American economy has been bad the past year or so; that is, it's true, but it's broad enough to really be insignificant.
Well said Sir....As far as overall quality and reliabiltiy,I find that the server based technology that sony uses for their online games is alot smoother than the p2p that xbox uses. In Call of duty on 360 if the host were to quit or get disconnected everyone gets fucked outta' the match,god forbid the dude is using DSL cause thats instant cluster fuck. Also using call of duty as an example, there could be crazy lag at the middle or end of a match and everyone gets fucked again.
I have to admit, it's pretty much my fault, but for the record Live doesn't use P2P. I tried to be careful what I wrote about the technologies earlier, and I'm fairly certain I chose my word poorly. What I was trying to say is that Live is sort of a "pseudo-P2P" in that it deals with each player uniquely, where many online PC games process player info in large clumps from individual servers. Both Live and PsN are server based. Live is pretty widely recognized as a superior service for its efficiencies. Technically speaking, the reason why quitters on the 360 end up ending the game is the decision of Microsoft. All but EA games run on Microsofts servers in Washington, and they've essentially dictated that's the way devs should be building online games. Sony on the other hand has been particularly inept at providing help to devs for online standards, which is pretty much why the PsN has the most variety in terms of how online play is handled, and also the biggest reason why the system is kinda faulty still.
Nothing against it, but I dont need new avatar pants and shirts and slick colorful menus. I cant change my avatars underwear when I'm about to pull the pin on a grenade and send into the Helghasts spawn point. As a matter of fact I find xbox live marketplace an unorganized shambles that takes 4 years to navigate. The psn store is nice and organized without all the info blades you gotta back out of which takes forever. Another nice touch is that you can stream and watch a game video off of psn while its downloading at the same time.
That's sort of funny because everything I've gathered seems to indicate that the PsN is the less intuitive and interactive of the two. But to be honest, I can appreciate your point of view here, as that kind of stuff to me is pretty much a personal call.
And now that I've read through that entire post, I kinda get the feeling that I came off as some psycho fan boy. If I did, I apologize, as truly I am not, and trust me when I say I've got issues with Microsoft and their system(s) as well.
