f13.net

Link is here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19090812/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19090812/)

I found this part really interesting:


So basically, the 360 is outselling the PS3? For some reason that surprises me.

Why is that interesting? I doubt PS3 sales had that much to do with it - particularly with the PS2 in the top 3 every month. Sony has LOTS of fat to cut off. Particularly in marketing. They need to fire everyone that didn't make the This is Living ad.

That's in the US only.  I assume that Europe is probably about the same.  Japan is different, but the Wii is destroying everybody there (the 360 hardly exists).  I don't know why it should be surprising though...  The 360's cheaper and has a better line up at the moment.  That's a formula for beating the competition if there ever was one.

I think Riggs was just surprised because the 360 is nearly 2 years old.  I'm just surprised to still see "WTF my goddamn 360 died!" posts.

Really, for the small additional cost I'd buy a PS3 first.. since it seems like the fucker won't melt on me.

The PS3 is the best made console I've ever seen.

Fucking strange coming from Sony.

I dunno man, my Super Nintendo was a tank.  Pretty much indestructible.  The N64 was pretty strong too.  Hell, I knocked the JP N64 plastic bits out with a hammer and chisel, so I could play NA games. If you want to say, among consoles with lasers, the PS3 ranks high, ok.

I'm on my third PS2.  The others just died through normal use, no hammers.  About to be on my second 360, I think it's days are numbered (I have to start it multiple times  to get past the red circle, and the foreign onscreen error message).  I've had to replace my PS1 and xbox as well.  Most CD/DVD consoles seem assified. 

Never had trouble with my Gamecube, and because it is a top-loader, I don't treat it with very much respect.  I just open the lid, grab the disk while it's still spinning, Gamecube muscles through it.  My point I guess, is that Nintendo makes burly consoles.  We have a Wii in the house, it hasn't shit yet, but it's not mine so I don't feel qualified to comment on its quality.

(http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4622/wiiuto0.jpg)

Sorry, I've been dying to work that in somewhere.

Didn't MS just release a new "version" of the 360 recently though? I would guess that a lot of the 360 fanbois bought one of those (I know a couple of people who were talking about it before it happened) which would make it selling a decent amount not that surprising.

Not just fanbois bought them. People who wanted HDMI out of a 360 bought one too and black is just so much sexier. I need to get one so it matches my desktop.

They can kiss my ass just because of that "crying baby doll" PS3 ad.  The whole thing just screamed "We're completely fucking out of touch with what fun is, BUT WE ARE SONY, YOUR GOD!  EAT OUR SHIT AND CALL IT FINE CHOCOLATE!"

This is Living is an awesome ad. I'm sorry.

The PS3 really needs to start getting some fucking games. Well, ditto for the Wii too. Actually, the Wii especially.

The 360 has an interesting lineup but not a goddamn thing that makes me want to buy the system. Not a thing. Sorry, played Gears, it sucked.

You're special though. I thought it was meh. The banned jump in ad was much better.

This is lvining as in the European campaign? Are you serious? This is the most ridicolous and wtf marketing campaign ever. The one with the hotel with the football dude jerking off to the game and so on...

Yes. The european one. Dead serious, I thought it was incredible. Simply as a piece of film. I never care what an ad is selling. That could have been an ad for fucking ramen and it would have been awesome.

Basically, ads fail completely on me. That's why I think ad blocking on the internet is for assholes. :)

With the chick giving the monologue about her dead mother... while taking a dump in the toilet? Dude, you're the first person I know that liked those adds.

Since you're a fan - here is the EXTREMLY NSFW  version of the add - http://kotaku.com/gaming/this-is-nudity/ps3-meltdown-266623.php

Uh, no. Not the one with the chick on the toilet. I'm talking specifically about the 2 in the hotel. The one with the grenade and money and the one with the bellhop giving the monologue in the hallway. Alternatively, you could say the ones starring Clifton Collins Jr.

The rest of the campaign, not so much.

But then, some of those BMW Films from 2003-2004 sucked also.

Woman on a toilet?  Bellhop monologue?  What the fuck?

No wonder their pretentious megabucks god-machine is getting it's cock ripped off and shoved up it's ass by a souped-up Gamecube.  Maybe they should have tried showing off some of those graphics we were supposed to want to sell a kidney for, instead of fucking around playing auteur.

But hey, squandering a once-dominant position in the console market was totally worthwhile in order to push Betamax.  I mean Blu-Ray.

Yeah, that whole ad campaign sucks ass.  The people who made it need to have their offices burned down as a lesson.

Even before the Elite released, the 360 was outselling the PS3 in the US by a good sized margin.  If anything, the announcement of the Elite slowed down sales in March and most of April as people held off on purchasing systems in order to wait for the Elite.  The NPD numbers for April include about the first week or so of the Elite's release, but we won't have a good idea of how whether or not it's release lead to an increase in 360 sales until the May numbers are released.

The big cage at my local best buy where they store all the expensive or easily stolen sytems is jammed with PS3s, they can't fit anymore in there.  I have yet to see a wii available for sale though.

Layoffs in a corporation of that size have everything to do with expected stock price and little, if anything, with things that regular consumers see.  Things are done based on what industry analysts think rather than how much money is coming in, since the People In Charge get their money from dividends instead of payroll.  Thus stock price is king.

That's exactly it Merusk. I figured most people who wanted a 360 would already have on, so to see it still outselling the PS3 surprised me but at the same time made me somewhat happy since I'm hoping to see Blu-ray be still born. (I don't like having a product shoved down my throat.)

Blu-Ray wasn't stillborn. Somehow, by a twist of fate, despite the name, HD-DVD was. Blu-Ray is kicking HD-DVDs ass all over the marketplace. Up, down, inside-out. And the adoption rate will slowly pick up as the price of HDTVs becomes "affordable."

That statement does not match reality. The This is Living campaign, especially the Euro hotel one, were just fucking awful goddamn ads. Faux wannabe Avant-garde trash meant that didn't even bother to show screenshots of the product in action. TOTAL SHIT.

That's debatable. HD-DVD was winning before the PS3. Then there was a surge in Blu-ray but now HD-DVD seems to be picking back up and the players seem to be still outselling Blu-Ray players.

What part of "I don't care what it was advertising" was confusing?

If you don't care what it was advertising, IT FAILED. It's quite simple. You can make the most incredible film ever, that wins all sorts of art fag honors and is widely loved by the masturbatory pinheads out there who care more about winning awards with ads than making ads that work.

But if the ad leaves you not caring what it advertised, it is a failure as an ad because the whole point of the ad is to get you to feel favorably about the product its hawking. It tried so hard to be so clever that it forgot the main point of advertising, selling a product. It was that arrogant douchebag in the corner wearing the beret talking about eating God and laughing at you because you just "don't get it, man." Meanwhile, he's living off whatever MILF he can gigolo out of this week's rent and some money for blow.

If I didn't get a painting, that's one thing. If I don't get advertising, then the advertising failed to sell me something, whether that something is a product or a feeling about the product.

Does anyone else get the feeling that, whenever the PS3's "dominance" is questioned, Schild suddenly tans and sprouts a green beret?

You know, something like this...

(http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/1166/iimmd0.th.jpg) (http://img503.imageshack.us/my.php?image=iimmd0.jpg)

Yeah, it's kind of fun watching though. Though the combination of art faggy ad with the PS3 means he's about to hit some critical meltdown level. Fun for all!

(http://gallery.7mph.com/albums/userpics/10002/derail.jpg)

Great, it fails as an ad. Now I get it. My mistake, I cared those other two times I said I didn't.

Don't be retarded. This isn't art [advertising] theory. Just because it fails at selling me something, doesn't mean it fails to entertain.

I just saw the hotel ones for the first time.

Those are fucking cool. They don't make me want to buy a Playstation 3, but they're cool as independent pieces of cinema.

It entertains YOU, but it's an ad, not cinema. Since we are talking about Sony folks (possibly marketing folks) losing their jobs, entertaining you obviously was a side effect of a failed product. I'm sure those folks will feel good that they made your tickle box jiggle.

I don't care what those folks think? Did the BMW ads make you want a BMW or did they make you want to be Clive Owen?

Bought my 360 last month. Was waiting for the new version for the HDMI output, as Schild mentioned. The HD-DVD thing was no big deal to me, as I figure we are a good year or two from the formats sorting themselves out anyways. Plus I don't buy many mainstream DVDs - the stuff I buy isn't typically available on either yet.

Oh yea, and honestly the two main other reasons I went 360 - GTA4 will be on it, and Mass Effect.

Neither. They also didn't make me want to stab the art director responsible through the throat with a spade either. So it was an expensive wash. I'm not a big fan of that type of "advertising" in general. It's for creative directors who failed to break into the film business or who are trying to break into the film business. It sucks as advertising.

This needed to be quoted for posterity.

Part of being Clive Owen was driving the BMW like a badass. The BMW was a tool.

This could have been a ad for Tampax. Beautiful ,but a wasted  effort.

Wait!  It's just like the PS3! :rimshot:

I kid . . .

I agree, since it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

Maybe you meant to say it's an awsome piece of film or "ahrt"? As an ad its worse than a failure, it only highlights that Sony is out of touch and arrogant.

The partisanship is cute.  :heart:

One might say that you're not in the best position to be impartial on this matter. Also, the Sony ad was cinematic bile.

Wrong, Closer was cinematic bile. this was 7 minutes of gorgeous cinematography.

I was transfixed by the ad and watched it with rapt attention but only because I was trying to figure out where it was going with all the people and events, then it wound up going nowhere.  The ad was so powerfully disjointed that I'm pretty sure it deeply wounded my psyche somewhere, the injury has yet to manifest itself and I dread the day it bursts forth.

That's the sign of good art.

Sounds like you had an experience akin to watching a Beckett play.

The only thing I can compare it to is the movie Seven.  Very good, extremely strong film - but I really wish I had never seen it.

Edit: Though it was of course only a shadow of Seven's power.

It was dumb. It wasn't about anything. It would have been cool as a film short or something....

But it was supposed to be selling a PS3. How is this campaign supposed to accomplish its goals?

I dunno to get people talking about the ad and mention PS3 over and over on the interwhosit?

 :-o

Gorgeous cinematography? It was abstract and faux-arty without every providing the visual treats of Lynch, the dark comedy of Gilliam, or the personal honesty of Godard. Its like painting a piece of canvas bright red and calling it modern art. Shite.

GTA4 is going to be on PS3 as well.

It was an accurate representation of the product.

Thank you. Just when I was about to go all caps on the thread :)

And me.

You know, if they'd just left off the 'This is living' tag line at the end of the segments, and just put up the PS3 logo alone, the whole campaign would have been cool in its bewildering goals. But with that silly tagline, it veers off the cliff into artsy fartsy territory. Grand statements always put people off.

Just do it.
Get in the game.
The more you know.
Challenge Everything.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Where do you want to go today?
Think Different.
Solutions for a small planet.
A diamond is forever.
Be all you can be.
Reach out and touch someone.
We try harder.
When you care enough to send the very best.
Rising.
Do more.
Where good things happen.
We Mean Business.

They sure do.

See, for the most part, those catch phrases remain focused on the product itself.  Although "Just Do It' is of course an exhortation to seize the day, it doesn't tell the viewer what 'reality' is. The PS3 ads paint a picture, then tell the viewer that that is life. Its a fine distinction, but one that for me crosses the line from 'look how this product could change your outlook' to 'Our reality is better than your reality', the stuff of pretentious artistes all over.

Insofar as they are watched, and discussed, I don't see the adverts as a failure. A failure would be an advert you didnt remember or a campaign you never noticed.

(http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/images2/usad.jpg)

What can Brown do for you?

Personal favorite:
Some days are better than others.

The PS3 will go down as one of the biggest fuckups by a major player in the history of the console market.  Nintendo went from literally owning almost the entire market in the NES era, to having some real competition from the Genesis, to being peckerslapped by the PS1, to third-place bitchdom after Microsoft entered the fray, but at least that was something of a gradual fall.  Sony just screamed "You're not buying a game console, you're buying potential!" and dived off a fucking cliff in one generation.

The magic 8-ball says, "Too early to tell, you're fucking nuts."

I've heard it's basically selling at the same rate the 360 did when it first came out, despite being more expensive and having fewer games.  They'll probably do just fine once they actually get some decent games.  As soon as they do at least a $100 price cut a whole lot of people are going to say "yeah, fuck it, I'll get one".

Also the market for video gaming has changed since the SNES days, it's now big enough to easily accommodate three successful platforms, especially since one of them is trying to get non-typical gamers.

The problem is that the 360 library has large gaps that can only be filled by something not a Wii and like a PS2 but better.  That would be the PS3.  Yes, it's currently potential but it will only be a miss if MicroSoft somehow manages to suddenly have more than three RPGs in its lineup.  GTA4 being cross-platform from the get-go (IIRC) will save the 360 from taking a big schlong in the ass this holiday season.

You know what I really want to do is use these three consoles to make a Super Cassanova Frankenstein Console.  Basically it would be a PS3 that used the 360 controller and had a light-gun.  Not strapped to the 360 controller.  I might say it should also have XBL but I'm hoping that Home will be better than XBL and I have a wait-and-see attitude.

I thought the ads were entertaining, but not stellar.  I certainly wouldn't seek it out.  And it didn't make me anymore enthused about the PS3.

I'm surprised the PS3 is still doing so poorly.  And part of me still thinks it's going to turn it around someday.  A lot of people absolutely revile Sony but I just don't think schadenfreude is enough to carry this console generation.  Once it gets stuff like MGS, Final Fantasy, and Devil May Cry (you know, games which make me want to put my balls in a blender but for some reason are insanely popular), and has a less astronomical price maybe things will return to normal.

Yea. I know. Why would MGS, Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry be popular. They totally suck.

What are you smoking? I hate MGS in every way imaginable and I'll still play MGS 4.

I am apparently a bad person and so will be avoiding the PS3 and obtaining a DS shortly.

Well, MS already has Devil May Cry coming to the 360. If I was MS I'd go to the MGS and Final Fantasy guys and lay down a check big enough for them to retile their entire dev house in solid gold and say "we just want it on our console too."

I understand why they're popular, in fact I even admitted as much in my post.  They're console sellers was my point.  I just don't have any interest in them.  My post was more about how I think when the big titles come out though PS3 will regain it's position.  Probably not as dominant a position as it had the last two generations, but much better than it's doing now.

X360 doesn't have RPG's (Yet, coming soon hopefully) and doesn't have platformers.

That's enough reason to get a PS3 and/or a WII right there.

This post doesn't make sense to me.

I'm confused.  :|

What is The Elder Scrolls IV considered then?

I believe he wants to know where the RPGs and platformers are for Wii.  Please don't suggest Paper Mario unless you have played it.  It's a half-ass that is made up of two dissimilar quarter-asses.  Naturally, the saving grace for PS3 today is that is is a wonderful PS2 emulator.  October, Ratchet & Clank and Home, probably some other shit too.  I'm on a buying freeze until October.

EDIT: TESIV is considered the only RPG for 360.  I guess you like Oblivion a lot if you consider it better than all the RPGs that will be arriving on PS3 put together.  Morrowind didn't save the Xbox from "it don't got no RPGs" being tossed at it.

TESIV is not the only RPG for the 360.

Enchanted Arms, while Mediocre, was a reasonable display of graphics in terms of JRPG standards. And had some really really REALLY nice summons.

Now as for platformers and RPGs. The PS3 and 360 will have them in spades LONG before the Wii. You have to remember, Nintendo is practically forcing the Wiimote down the industry's collective throat right now - much like SCEA did with 3d during the PS1 and 2 era. The Remote/Chuck combo doesn't translate favorably to twitchy exact shit like a regular controller does - so good platformers are largely out. As for RPGs. Comeon. The Wii's graphics suck my dick. It's a waste of effort.

After seeing the Gun Con for the PS3 and playing Folk's Soul, it's occurred to me that the Wiimote would be a HELLA LOT more fun if the console output hi-def. Probably would have been the most expensive controller ever, but the precision would have been AWESOME. Right now it's nothing more than an idea that somehow took form.

Thought we were talking about the present time, but I will see your future and raise you a Fable 2 and Lost Odyssey.

Not that I care, I am in the process of boxing up my 360 so I can trade it in for a DS and the ability to investigate the skirts of young women.

I'm praying Blue Dragon doesn't suck. If someone's going to reply with a gripe about the art style "lol-keke-doe-eyed-anime"; save it.  If I can like this shit without liking anime (well, I just don't have an informed view of it, I've seen like 3 movies), so can you.

Great.  It's got two RPG's and no platformers.  MUCH BETTAH!

Yah, but.. where's the plethora of that for the Wii or PS3?  Help me understand your logic.  Please? I'm having a bad day. 

So we should buy a PS3 which has... the same two RPG's as the 360 and fewer RPG's on the way this year?

They have the HUEG libraries from their predecessors.  This is a particularly attractive proposition for the PS3 due to the upscaling.  It's also fairly attractive for the Wii because it's, you know, cheap.

So you're in essence changing your argument from "buy a PS3 and Wii for platformers and RPG's", to "buy a PS3 for upscaling and a Wii because it's cheap"?

Um, no?  They have loads of RPG's and platformers because because they play their predecessors games AND they have benefits (Upscaling or Cheap).

Not a difficult concept.

I wrote a long post but I don't care anymore, Murgos can run with it.  I will just agree that there aren't any niche-filling PS3 games today, but I will mention that I have more fantastic games that play -- and play fucking well -- on my PS3 than on the other two consoles.  If the 360 takes up the slack in the PS3's absence, great, whatever, but I just don't see it happening.  River King on 360?  Rule of Rose?  Shin Megami Tensei?  Okami?  Bushido Blade?  Any KOEI game?  Perhaps, but I'm skeptical.  Those games will be on the 360 before they are on the Wii.

I will predict, though, that if PS3 sales don't pick up in Japan then we will certainly have cats and dogs living together.

I'm still burnt that the Wii didn't have a built in GBA player. Means I can't get rid of my damn cube yet.

Yeg, KOEI loves the 360. Gundam was a one-off. Atlus is probably going to support the 360 eventually. It's pretty much inevitable. Wait, were you saying that? I don't even get your post. Lol.

Yeah, let me just write Sony that $600 check so I can play through the RPGs and platformers I already have again, but upscaled this time.  Look, there's no shame in just admiting it when you post some stupid shit without thinking.  It happens to the best of us.

No, that would be the fact that the Wii is selling 2x to 3x more consoles than the "next-gen" platforms.


So the primary measure for RPG quality is graphical? Whuuu?

What's the difference? You just paid $250 to play Gamecube games again. At least I can play PS3 and Blu-Ray games with my PS3. I'm really not understanding your argument. I'm not trying to be a dick, but you and I both know that every Wii title that's been released has simply been a port from the cube. And it's going to stay that way through Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 - both originally Cube titles.


Yes, that's what I said. Don't be a donk.

Don't forget all those cool movie trailers you can download off of PSN.

Hey, you can knock that. But you know what you can't do with a Wii? Download movie trailers. Among 400 other things. But ya know what, you can swing a fucking racket. Immersion. My little character made of 2 testicles really breathes life into my gaming.

Like I said, whichever system gets the best games will get my support. But the writing is on the fucking wall here. I expect Nintendo's hi-definition Wii-Release (lol pun) to be far superior and have a much more precise wiimote for gaming that is actually fun. Right now they've convinced the (cheap/poor/tight/whatever) public to be beta testers. Well played, Nintendo, well played.

Thanks, but I already did.

(http://photo.gangus.com/d/26764-2/zing.jpg)

Sorry to hear you're having financial issues.

I don't own a PS2 atm.  Why should I buy one when I can get a PS3 (again upscaling and also Blu-Ray which I forgot about earlier and hey, someday PS3 games)?  Because you got the hairs on your ass twisted up so that they pinch?  Nah.

If someone doesn't own a PS2, I can't imagine why'd they have such a crushing need to play RPG's and Platfomers that they're:

a) Unable to wait a few months for the more than half dozen RPG's scheduled for release on the 360 this year.

and

b) Would rather pay $600 instead of $129 for the benefit of playing last-gen games upscaled.

Sorry that you feel that getting suckered into buying a PS3 for everything other than actually playing PS3 games is some sort of grand investment because "zomg, you can play last-gen games and they're slightly better looking!"

Doesn't make your statement about no RPGs and Platformers on the 360 making PS3 a must-purchase any less stupid.

Edit: Hence why you keep throwing other stuff into your argument, like playing PS2 games, upscaling, and now you're even throwing Blu-ray in there.  You're trying to turn it into a pro/anti-PS3 argument.

I think in the short term Nintendo is sort of painting themselves into a corner.  They're concentrating on casual gaming to the exclusion of all else (witness mini-game hell), but by their very nature casual gamers are fickle and will eventually abandon you.  It happened with the 2 big video game crashes and it'll happen again.  A novelty can only ride a wave for just so long, and Nintendo will still be stuck with the "not a serious console" moniker when it does crash.

Meanwhile, we've got studios and producers devoting themselves to braindead "see how fast you can wiggle your remote!" games because they're A)cheap to produce, and B) can temporarily rake in cash from the unwashed.  This is the equivalent of reality TV in the video game sphere.  Right now it's great, but it will end badly.

I assume that the glut of minigames will force some publishers to try something else. Also minigames are fast to make, so when the Wii became a hit you saw those hitting the shelves quickly. Due to the size of the installed base it will make sense to create traditional "hardcore" games on the Wii.

EA is a good example of this. They were banking on PS3 and now realize the Wii is big. The first games that come from them will be games that take 6 months to make, but there will be other games later.

As far as backwards compatibility goes, it is a bonus, but not a reason to buy a system. Neither is downloading trailers. A hamburger with a lot of lettuce and tomotoes and onions is still kind of sucky when it comes without the bun and the meat.

You know, 3rd party games for the Wii will be PS2 crossplatform. You know which one is going to sell more EVERY time?

Even when Sony loses, they win.

Next thing you know, you'll start pimping NetApp stock.

Schild's just pissy because Sony's six-hundred dollar dust-gatherer is proof that marketing to him is folly.

I haven't thrown anything into my argument.  You're the one who keeps looking for something more so that I have to go back and add in things for YOU.

I don't have a PS2 now.  I have before.  I would like to play RPG's and platformers.  I can't on the X360 I own.  This makes me think buying a PS3 (or a Wii on impulse if there was one in stock) right now might not be a bad idea.

Why this is such a hard concept for you is beyond me.

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Maybe you'll get it now?

I think theres a picture hidden in that block of text.  Maybe if I cross my eye's while looking at it........

I don't get my post either.  You should have read the one I deleted.  Murgos is making my point but using actual human language.  He even is someone that once owned a PS2 and now wants a PS3 to play those same games so he's pretty much living my life here... although I do have a PS2 laying around but not plugged in.  I'd rather play PS2 games on the PS3 now, for various reasons.  Those reasons boil down to the fact that it is a much, much better machine; I mean better than _____, not just better than the PS3.  Shame about the sales figures.

So the games, KOEI, etc.  Today the selection is pretty slim and I'm going to come right out and admit that KOEI games are too much for me within my current lifestyle.  The 360 has plenty of other things going for it, but really those things don't include certain game genres.  I'm someone that will play an Atlus or NIS game on whatever platform, and that's sort of why I was saying if the PS3 doesn't start selling more then we are going to have those games divided between two consoles with the majority going to the suckier one with a larger install base.  That would be the 360, if you weren't keeping track.  Oddly parallel to the PS2 performance against the Xbox and Cube, with MS assuming Sony's position from the last few years.  Cats and dogs living together.  I can't see past the nexus.

I'm not trying to console (ha!) myself over the price, either.  I spent $300 on a pair of sunglasses just two weeks ago, so I obviously don't give a fuck about price if it's something I feel warrants the money.  As far as I can tell, complaints about the PS3 can be summarized as: "I can't afford one" or "PSN is dildos" or "not enough games".  I can only shrug at #1, #2 will hopefully be fixed in October, and #3 doesn't bother me because I don't feel like I have to play PS3 games on my PS3 since I just see it as a Playstation Mark 3.  The PS3 library is balls right now but since the PS3 will play PS and PS2 games frawressry (better than the original systems in fact, in most cases), I feel like it is an unfair comparison when I can't count God of War, Odin Sphere and Atelier Iris 3 as part of the library: three PS2 games that I have played without ever inserting them into a PS2 console.

On the other hand, you can't legitimately count the Xbox library as part of the 360 library.  Maybe the Haloes, but fuck Halo.  You can count the Cube library as part of the Wii library except there's that issue with me needing four different controllers for one console.  This weekend I will be giving my WaveBird to Killjoy; he still runs a Cube.

As for your GBA-in-the-Wii comment... thanks for giving me something else to rue.

In that post, you said nothing else about RPG's but about how much the Wii's graphics suck. So a reasonable assumption is that you only give a shit about an RPG if the graphics are high-res and come on a Blu-Ray disc. One can assume you also want a decent story in the RPG, but that wasn't what you said, and since you love JRPG's so much, one shouldn't even assume that.

Also, I fail to see why minigames engender so much hate around here. If they are fun, who cares? They are easy and cheap to make, they appeal to people who aren't traditionally game purchasers, meaning there's more money coming into the industry from places that the industry wasn't pulling before which means EVERYBODY WINS.

I actually like the approach EA is taking with FIFA 08. They are giving you the same FIFA action you'd normally get in this year's version, and they are adding a multiplayer minigame in Ronaldhino's Footii Party. While I may play it once and pass on it, others might be attracted to just that part of it. Everybody wins.

I find it difficult to care much about RPG's on consoles or on PC's anymore, because most of them have evolved about as much as MMOG's. I'm actually burned out on RPG's, especially fantasy types. I can't even bother to play Oblivion on my PC. All I see if shiney shiney pixel shader shiney foozle kill level cutscene fin. Mass Effect has me intrigued if only for it being Sci-Fi, but I won't be getting a 360 before Xmas at the earliest so /meh.

Correction: The Wii is currently outselling the PS3 five-to-one in Japan, and will only pull further ahead when all the current PS2 developers follow the money.

Disgaea 3 as a Wii exclusive? I wouldn't be that surprised.

(As for MGS4...take a look at the recent 'remix' of the existing trailer and see if you can see what has mysteriously disappeared from the credits, compared to the older version ;)).

Metal Gear has shown up on Xboxen before. It would not shock me.

The Wii outselling the PS3 five to one in Japan really doesn't mean anything. PS2 games will always outsell it and they ARE from the same generation. NIS will probably stick with the PS2 and go to the 360 later (since Idea Factory and their other partners are). Atlus is probably going to the PS3. Gust probably will also. The transition will be slow though. There's simply no reason for smaller devs to go to the Wii when they can stick with the PS2 - a system they KNOW.

Edit: Repetition.

Who's going to dominate the market is still largely undecided. I'm not surprised the Wii is selling better than the PS3, it's still living on the hype. And lets be honest, if you have a PS2 there's little reason to own a PS3 at this point unless you really have the money to spend. In fact, you should be surprised the PS3 is even selling as good as it is with it's current line up and bad press. However, Sony as a dev house is a force to be reckoned with, which might very well make the PS3 the winner down the road. The 360 is looking stronger and stronger, if they can manage to get some kick ass exclusives from genres they currently suck at they might win this generation. The only way for the Wii to win is if Sony or Microsoft fucks up. It's still a wonder to me how people can label it as a good buy at this point.

Sony shot themselves in the foot when they didn't do whatever it was going to take to get Guitar Hero II, God of War II and FFXII as launch titles for the PS3.  There was no reason not to promise those dev houses whatever they wanted just to get them there.  I think that having those three games promised for launch or shortly thereafter would have sold a few million [more] PS3's.

The Wii, I think, is going to do great for the next two years and then the lack of HD is going to start being a problem as HDTV's become ubiquitous in homes.  Of course, by that time there may be so many installed that devs would be dumb not to develop for the platform and it may win by default (cause console history has shown that gamers follow the games, period).

HD is a real problem, I already don't want to watch anything not in HD and I've only had my TV a few months.  Heck, if it wasn't for Deadliest Catch and Mythbusters I wouldn't be watching anything not in HD as it is.  I will check every single HD channel before even contemplating going into the SD channels.

I totally agree here. If Sony would've have those 3 as launch titles labeled as exclusives they would no doubt be fighting at the top right now. Why God of War II didn't become a PS3 exclusive is beyond me, it's after all developed by Sony iirc. Of course the game sales for GoW II wouldn't have been nearly as good if it were a PS3 exclusive though.

This is all pretty much a moot point.  When's the last time a Nintendo system had a good, exclusive RPG that wasn't on one of its handhelds? And yah, I'm pretty sure any RPG coming out exclusively for the Wii would look like crap to the point of having the "Arcanum" effect.


If Ronaldhino's Footii party appeals to you in the slightest, just turn in your gamer card now.  Yah, that's what soccer game's need, little cutesy, crap mini games.  Minigames are universally derided here because most of us aren't between the ages of 8-14 anymore and also because they're repetitive crap we've already seen in another wrapping.  Minigames are fun if you're stuck playing a handheld on your commute or when you're trying not to work at the office.  Otherwise, they get old.  My nephews though, can't get enough of minigames and adore Mario Party.  At least they also like Smash Bros Melee and tend to play that more, so.. there's hope. 


Can you give me your sleeve length for your straight jacket? Seriously, you're working off bad info man.  It's like you're writing your post with nothing but refrigerator magnets.

So we want more minigames in our MMOG's, but adding minigames into other games like the FIFA thing is bad?

Also, minigames are good party games, for people who are, you know, not hardcore buy anything with big doe-eyed short-skirted women and angsty fem boys gamers. I'm certainly not going to be paying $50 for Rayman Raving Rabbits, but I don't have a religious objection to the existence of said games on a system I own.

Yeah, it's not like the Wii had 8 titles in the top 50 sales for the 6/4 - 6/10, as opposed to the PS2's 3 titles.  Yep, the PS2 games sure are posing a big challenge to Wii software sales.

We do?  More minigames would be a means to an end, but not a goal.  And minigames + MMO sometimes can do more harm than good, ie EQ2 crafting.

A minigame makes is a good addition if it allows for more strategy, user interaction, and less dependency on a combination of repetition and dice rolls. With the FIFA example, it's just fluff. It's a spoiler on your riding lawnmower.

YTD puts Wii and PS2 neck and neck.  About half the sales are Wii Sports/Wii Play, so if you take that out it gives PS2 over Wii at 2:1.  If you think this shows the strength though, you're quite mistaken; the install base of the PS2 is over 20 times that of the Wii in Japan.  Meaning, the Wii is selling 10x more games per console than the PS2.  Worse, the PS2 sales are dropping.  PS3 sales are dropping (oh, and sales of Wii to PS3 are 5:1in favor of the Wii, excluding the above 2 items).  Wii software sales are climbing.

Also, you really don't want to bring secondary products into the mix.  The DS counts for over half of total software sales in Japan.  The real clincher is that the PS3 really needs to do well in Japan, because this is home turf.  The 360 is unlikely to ever take off there, so Sony only has to work with Nintendo.  This is a huge reputation hit, and that's something you cannot afford there. 

You people are talking how badly PS3 is losing out to Wii in Japan, but actually in the US it's barely any better. Below are the May 2007 US hardware sales published by NPD group (and c&p from Gamespot):


Wii outsells PS3 4 to 1 in the US, in fact it even sells considerably more then PS2 and PS3 combined. And things aren't much brighter in the portable market. Even if the Wii is a short-lived fad, the 360 still outsells the PS3 2 to 1.

And for those who think those PS2 titles are shifting so many more units then the Wii titles (though the ranking if Wii Play is a bit strange ...):


It's still early days, but it sure doesn't look very good for Sony at the moment. PS2 sales will only go downwards from now on and PS3 remains at the bottom of the sales ranking.

The best selling game this year will still be Madden for the PS2. Followed by the 360 version.

Do you see what you just posted, those are all first party games. It's The Gamecube Redux. It's the exact same way the Cube burst out of the gates. It's like owning a Mac. You buy the Mac for Mac software and other shit. You buy a Nintendo for Nintendo shit. Whenever a new Mac product comes out, sales are strong as a motherfucker. Then it tapers off (excluding the Ipod and DS/GBA - leaders of their field). Once everyone who wanted that Mac and frothed for it gets it, it's not going to be on the list like that. Same thing will happen with the Wii. Third parties simply aren't going to support it. There's a reason why there was SHOCK AND AWE when RE4 was announced as a Cube exclusive. And there's a reason it came out on the PS2. All of the biggest titles in the world are graphic whore titles anyway (FF, RE, etc) and the Wii simply isn't the system for them.

Either way, whatever. I could care less what PS3 sales are right now and I couldn't care less about the people who knock it because of the price. Fuck'em. That system is the single most solid piece of electronics I've ever owned, works FLAWLESSLY, and awesome game support is guaranteed. Sony's first and second party stuff these days is better than Nintendo's anyway - that being Jaffe, Ueda, Insomniac, etc.

Heh, that's exactly how I watch TV.  Channels 770-780 FTW!  I'll cycle through those, and most likely land on Discovery HD.  SD channels make me want to take a shower.

Charter just needs to get off it's ass and start picking up more HD programming.

Um... I'm guessing Halo 3 has a good chance at beating both the PS2 and 360 versions of Madden combined.  Last year the PS2 version sold 1.6 million and the 360 version sold 760,000.  Meanwhile Gamestop/EBgames announced last month that they had 4 million pre-orders of Halo 3.

...at the moment. Seriously, did anybody outside of the most rabid, die-hard Nintendo fanboi expect to see sales charts like the one below for console sales?
(http://xs116.xs.to/xs116/07246/Maychart.JPG) (http://xs.to)
If anyone had said, 18 months ago, that Nintendo's new console would be outselling the PS3 & the 360 combined two-to-one, the men in white coats would have been called. Therefore, the current crop of games were mostly developed for the PS3 & 360, and ported to the Wii. Now? The 3rd party developers will sign up for the Wii...frankly, they can't afford not to.

This thread has developed into very much a "My console of choice will rule all and the Wii is just a fad because it does not have 'good graphics' ".

Somewhat entertaining, but very much not a bellweather as to how the entire console plot will unfold. Nintendo did not roust Atari in a year, Sony did not beat Nintendo in a year, and there have been cases where a console did very well at launch and for a while after and then lagged behind (Sega Genesis).

Rome was not built in a day folks, and it also took several hundred years to finally collapse on itself.

(http://members.optusnet.com.au/alphawolfau/Funny_shit/captain_obvious.jpg)

I pondered what to write for a while and tried some stuff out, but instead I'll just post what makes me chuckle. 

Thank you, I'll be here all weeek.

 :-D

So wait, the Wii is outselling the PS3 by a 5 to 1 margin in Japan?

As in "Oh noes, no HD and people finally care!" could cut Wii sales in half, while "Hey we cut the price and finally made some games!" could double PS3 sales, and the Wii would still be in the lead?

Bwaaahahahahaha.

Are you the idiot I had the discussion with about rates of change being more important than specific data points?  If not, you should go look into it.

These console dick-measuring/circle-jerk/doomcasting threads should really be merged to create a monster to rival the varios SWG threads.

The changing/new facts (ie sales figures) areinteresting to read, but the arguments and opinion remain pretty much the same from month to month, thread to thread.

I'm sure there will be an HD capable wii, in 2-5 years when the market penetration of HDTV grows. SOE may have (stupidly) believed they could make a console that would stand unchanged for 10 years, but nintendo has no reason to follow that plan when they *make money* on selling new consoles.

SCEA, not SOE.

GC didn't bust out of the gates.  It had a launch that wasn't bad, but wasn't better than the PS2.  In contrast, the Wii has sold over a third of the total units that the GC did over its entire life, and has numbers at 5 months that the PS2 still hadn't reached after a year.  This is nothing like the GC launch.


It's an incredible piece of hardware, no doubt.  Doesn't matter if no one is buying them.  The problem is that while Sony is facing the possibility of a 5m install base by Christmas, Nintendo is looking at 20m.  Developers of big AAA titles are going to be attracted to the PS3, but with such a limited install base, there is huge risk by going exclusive.  If Sony can't capture at least some exclusives, they'll watch as the 360 tears into their profits on high end games.  They'll also be undercut by Nintendo who's busy eating up everything that *isn't* a $10m production.  Oh, and they get to benefit every time they want to tie in anything they can into DS. 

The PS3 has... a massive, MASSIVE engine that is geared to run extremely expensively produced games.  That few people are willing to pony up the money for, because there are so few customers ready to buy them.  What Sony has forgotten is a very basic business tenant; that even if your goal is to sell product X, you also have to sell products A, B, and C.  Not because you give a shit about those items, but becuase you need to stock your shelves with enough stuff to get people in the door.  Because even if A only sells 1% of what X (the thing you really care about) does, you have 1000x times the number of "other stuffs" compared to the Xs.  Your large library of smaller titles is used to get people in the door.  The 'hardcore' types only care about the Xs, but that's ignoring the rules of business; that even if those customers are your MVPs, you can't fund the production of what they want without also catering to a much larger customer base.

I really want to see the third party attach rates for the DS, PSP, PS3, and Wii.

I suspect that even the DS' attach rates don't touch the PSPs. Even with 10M+ more in the hands of the people.

No matter how you slice it, your equation is missing the Big N, which is the variable by which Nintendo is going to kick your ass if you produce something for their system.

I'm still convinced the Wii will turn into GameCube 2 unless they turn around and start pulling big third-party games out of their ass.

The 360 doing well in America is gonna fuck the Wii here in my opinion since the PS3/360 are on relatively equal footing in power, thus meaning that the game design/art assets don't have to be fiddled with as much for ports. The Wii's lack of horsepower is going to kill chances for a lot of ports (and maybe even some middleware, period).

Unless Nintendo is gonna just start busting out a constant stream of first-party titles, the Wii will eventually end up "Box that Plays Smash Brothers" v2.0.

Not that it prevented me from putting hundreds of hours into Smash Brothers Melee with my friends. Nintendo doesn't make much money from me playing a single title and nothing else though.

In the US, the DS attachment rate is 2:1 that of the PSP.  The Wii is 2:1 that of the PS3.  In Japan, the DS and PSP are somewhat close, though with the DS leading.  The Wii is crushing the PS3 - it's a no contest.  This holds true whether you look at recent software sales vs total install base, or total software sales vs install base.

Third party. Not first party. I wager, you take a look at the third party numbers (a number you're never ever going to find), it's not the same.

I'm pretty sure the 360 attach numbers are a stagging 4.4 or something at this point. And it's nearly all third party. MGS, Bungie and Lionhead simply haven't produced jack shit yet.

Does 3rd party stuff not sell well because of competition from Nintendo, or does it not sell well because there just hasn't been a lot of good 3rd party games developed for Nintendo systems in the past 2 generations?  I'm sure RE4 sold pretty well on the GC (and would have sold even better if Capcom hadn't announced the PS2 version until after the game was released), and so far the Wii version is selling pretty well in Japan.  I'm guessing FFXII: RW and DQIX are going to do well on the DS.

Nintendo games aren't really flooding the market in the US to the point where people are buying those up rather than 3rd party games.  It's just that most of the stuff released so far have been rush jobs from developers who didn't think the Wii was going to be as big a hit as it's been.

Looks like we'll be able to see if Blu-Ray helps sales any, now that it seems to have won the format war. (http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=6670960)  Yeah, it's only one announcement, but it's a big'un.  Particularly since they mention Blu-Ray was being rented 70% of the time over HD-DVD (Though one might think that's because of the movies offered more than the format itself.)

In the long run I don't think either format will matter when it comes to movie viewing.  I bought an upscaling DVD player for $70, and frankly I can't tell the difference between movies on that and movies on one of the HD channels my cable provider has.

Either HD format is expensive and the studios are again playing the idiotic "split up the offerings between two incompatible formats" game.  Regular old DVD's ubiquity trumps that every time.

Studios don't really have a choice, given that they're not the ones inventing the technology.  All they can do is follow the lead that's set; pick one, or both, but you can't afford to ignore HD.  And really, studios don't want to because it means they get to sell the same movies to customers a third(+) time.

Since I sometimes love this console dickslapping - and today is one of those days - here's a Gamasutra analysis of sales numbers.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14341

360/PS3 titles doesn't need to be as expensive to produce as it is if rightly priced middleware would appear. That's what's going to revolutionize the industry and lower the high development costs to manageable levels again, perhaps even lower. Just look at Cryengine & UE3. I don't know any other industry where it's common practise to reinvent the wheel on a project to project basis.

Also, HD enabling the Wii isn't as easy as just ducktaping a HDMI port on the back of it and call it a day. It will requiring new hardware and the games aren't designed for being played on HD.

The system war doesn't really start for real until christmas time this year.

Oh, I have no doubt that the studios would like to double (triple?) dip us while they still have the chance, but we're at the brink of physical media's death.

We'll have HD video, it just won't come on plastic.

People holding off upgrading their hand-helds for a year or so to see whether the Sony PSP would have many games of merit. Nope. Better get a DS then.

So how's the NW-HD1 doing against the Zune and iPod?

The PSP is going to come back in the big way.

When the new revision comes out?

I'd like to like the PSP, but I just cant make myself care about handhelds...

Same thing here.  What would I use one for?  To keep myself occupied on the once yearly trip to the Secretary of State's to renew my license/plates?

I don't ride the school bus anymore, and even then I could always torment the other kids.  Zero need/desire for a handheld here.

I doubt it.  The preponderance of new titles are for the DS.  I've been considering both of them for months now and the PSP->PS3 thing is interesting but without the games I just don't see it.  The games thing is a feedback loop, once good stuff starts coming out more people buy the system meaning more developers want to develop for it and thus more people want to buy it.  Once one side starts to dominate it's all over but the 'might have beens'.

Of course my point of view for buying either one is for business trips and when taking the subway.  YMMV if you want to watch movies or whatever.

If you are making a wager, I would take you up on it since I can't imagine how the PSP could sell six million units at this point.  Sony would have to make a new PSP with two nubs, three clamshells, motion-sensing, integrated Pokemon, and sell it for $99.  I still would not get one.  Unless it also had a laser pointer so I could ruin movies, and was also a touch-screen cell phone with the speaker/mic on the edge.  Then probably.

It is possible that Sony is going to do a Crystal-Chronicles thing with the PSP and integrate it with the PS3, but the problem you have there is the PS3's low install base.

Of course. Which means the same thing I've been saying all along. Nintendo will release an HD-capable console with more refined motion-sensitive controls in 2009-2010. I would add the caveat "provided they survive until then" but with the assraping the DS is giving the handheld market and the fact that the Wii is outselling everything else over 2:1 AND every console sold is profitable, I don't think that's needed.

The Wii is a 2-3 year life cycle machine. That should be obvious.

EDIT: Forgot to add "and it'll cost less than $300."

Well, see, "improvements" to the Gameboys are done to sell more units rather than to improve it drastically since it has no competition.  Compare DS and DS Lite; that's mostly a cosmetic update.  Also DS Micro.  Style is what they are doing.  The first Wii revision will be new colors, and if it ends up dominating the market in 2009 then so will the second revision.  Perhaps a Hello Kitty Wii.  Better Wiimote?  Long shot.

It's doing plenty good enough right now, it's just that the DS is doing really, REALLY well.

I don't have a good feeling about the PSP re-design that's in the works though since I'm sure Sony will make it a moot point by pricing it too fucking high (and also by making it ridiculously hard to reflash/mod).

The 2009/2010 revision won't be a revision. It'll be a new console. The Wiimote will be better because it'll be more precise, and have almost 3 years of feedback going into refining the design, as well as having more pixels to play with because it'll be HD.

Who gives a fuck. That doesn't make the Wii worthwhile now.

Edit: Wii hasn't been turned on since a week after launch, we are now at 8 months.

I'm going to paste a Carnac turban on your avatar, Haem.  I just don't see it, unless you count the Wii as a new console when compared to the Cube.  As for the Wiimote being more precise, I hope so.  The DS Lite did have some improvements over the original, such as adjustable brightness and rechargeable battery, but I would hesitate to call it a new machine.  Even if the second Wii is a vast improvement and is renamed Thay, I'm skeptical on the "whole new machine" thing.

For the record, remember I am also skeptical of the PSP revision.  I am an equal-opportunity pisser.

I don't think the PSP will ever catch up with the DS - at least not in Japan, MAYBE IN EUROPE, they like this that's not fun. But! With a proper revision, and games like God of War 2 and Final Fantasy VII spinoffs coming out, I see it making a rush in the market.

I'm not arguing that, actually.  If it has PS3 interoperability, I will probably get one.  DS = WoW, competition needs to differentiate.

The Wii IS a new console when compared to the Cube. New box, new marketing push, new controllers. New new new. So what if it's guts are just an upgraded Cube processor and video card? This is hardly new to the console industry, as many new consoles have been updated versions of old hardware, with perhaps a new type of sound chip added, or a new graphics process. I remember the SNES being touted as revolutionary because it had a SCALING chip which allowed it to do hardware scaling instead of software scaling. WOO HOOOO!!!!!

Fuck, PC users have been buying upgraded versions of the same processors for years now. You don't have to completely reinvent the wheel each time to make a new console. The X-Box was an underpowered PC in a black box with a slimmed down version of an Nvidia PC graphics card, and there were a shitload of good games on the system. And it was considered new.



Thankfully, that's an opinion and not fact.

Rather than argue what constitutes "new", what sort of improvements do you think we can expect in the next one?  I might agree we will see an improved Wiimote or even HD, but the thing that keeps me from really believing any of it is the strong suspicion that the Wii will have an install base rivaling the PS2 in 2009.  The PS2 Lite was created to save money on manufacturing, or so I believe, and I expect something similar from Nintendo when put into a similar situation.  Really, why innovate when you don't need to?  Just make it smaller, cheaper and cuter.  If Nintendo once again becomes ubiquitous then innovation stops until the next challenger shows up.  Your SNES example supports my assertion.

Not a chance in hell. The moment the PS3 and 360 get a price drop, Nintendo needs to come up with some shit FAST. At least in America. Once again, Japan doesn't mean shit.

Edit: Nintendo knows this though. The Wii exists solely to undercut the competition and beta test the wiimote - an HD equipped Ninty is guaranteed in a few years.

The 2009 Wii will be fully backwards compatible, so having a massive, PS2-sized install base would be just another feature for the new Wii, just like PS1 and PS2 compatibility was for the PS2 and PS3 respectively.

It won't have a PS2 sized install base. You're out of your fucking gord if you think the numbers are going to keep climbing after the other consoles drop their prices. A massive part of the current growth trend is the fact that mos people can only afford a Wii right now. This Christmas HDTVs are going to be fucking huge. HUGE. Stores will blow those fuckers out! And then it's only a matter of time.

Also, 3rd party support still does and will continue sucking ballsack.

Seems like Sony is the one with the ball here.  The 360 has not dropped price because they don't need to yet, and I figure the only thing that will lower the price of a 360 is a $500 PS3.  Shit, we might need a $400 PS3 to lower the 360's price.  Microsoft, the way I see it, had two choices: lower price on the 360 or make a premium unit that was more comparable (on the surface) with the PS3.  You know, black with integrated WiFi.

I'd agree that N would need to put out a HD Wii pretty quickly after that, but these are the same geniuses that made all those boneheaded decisions we grumble about.  The improved Wiimote does not have to be coupled with a new console, as far as I can tell.  Put out a package with new IR bar and not-dildos Wiimote and there you go.  Hell, pack some minigames in there, too; that shit is like fucking Jello.

Once the PS3 sales pick up, yeah, I'm going with what you both are saying.  How long will that take, though?  Could be this October, could be October 2008.  Until then, I'm going to doomcast based on DS precedent with the understanding that I am taking a decidedly negative view.

I would like to think I live in a world where BC isn't a bulleted feature so much as a given, at least from November 2006 onward.  Hopefully MS and N are both paying attention to how Sony does BC.

Here's your improved Wiimote:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1494/wheres_the_wiimote_using_kalman_.php

I promise to never have real math on the frontpage (well, no math without a snarky comment about... math).

Were we ever in danger of math being on the front page?

Now you are.

I spent some time as a math major.  Proven calculus by starting off with the definition of a real number.  So, perhaps.

That's actually not totally true (unfortunately).

Anecdotal "Stephen numbers" : production (meaning art, and level design when appropriate) is normally 55-70% of the total cost of AAA titles. As much as I'd love to say that low cost engine middleware would help this signifigantly, that's exactly what GG sells and we haven't honestly seen that much of a change. Our XB360 platform layer for TGE-A has been available for use at a pretty signifigantly lower price (than the engines you mention) for more than a year and a half, and all comparisons with the top end engines aside, it's drawn much less console developer interest than you would expect. Even with the signifigant savings, studios still have to produce the art, and that's where the work and cost really lies.

That being said, we'll see what happens in the next several months.

I'd be ecstatic if the Wii was just better at anti-aliasing.  I'm not interested in moving away from the Nintendo color palette.

Anti-aliasing would be good. Of course, you can do that in software too, we'll just have to see if any developers give enough of a shit to try. Most probably won't.

Technically, you can do everything an NVIDIA 8800 Super Duper edition can do (and LOTS more) in software.  Doesn't make it a good idea.

Good tools can really help speed up content creation though. And rolling up a decent engine takes quite some time. In fact I'm a part of a small studio which is going to buy TGE-A next week, even if we could develop everything which TGE-A offers, it would take to much time. We rather buy TGE-A and modify the pieces we don't like.

UE3 & Cryengine is at a diffrent point, as I'm sure you can agree on. I'm pretty certain what really puts UE3 & Cryengine above TGE-A for AAA studios though is the fact that there's been AAA games released/in development which really shows of the quality of the engines. A company with a shitload of money rather spend more money and play with something which has some kind of track record. Also, the low price of TGE-A while really appreciated by smaller studios scares larger ones off. It's the same in the webdev industry, if you're dealing with larger customers they will think you're not serious if you don't give them a high enough price.

I don't think your 360 layer will take off until there's been something kick ass released with it, showing the GG logo on start up to make people aware. The hobbyists are more likely to go for XNA at this point.

True in all industries, actually.  Management around here looks at the company and if it is too small or young, they don't get the contract.  Went through this recently for some NAS equipment and a smaller company with a better and cheaper product lost to EMC because, well it's EMC.  Those guys aren't going anywhere.  Other than that, low bidder will generally get it.  Generally.

Really good points, and I have a lot of thought on them, but I always feel so guilty derailing threads to talk about /mole stuff.

If they show up on their own I'll certainly jump in :)

Understandable, however the LOTR thread turned into a hamburger thread and the Sigil thread turned into a EVE DB architecture thread, and there has been worse examples. I don't think you would have to feel bad about it  :-P

The first sentence is what Vanguard (and many current MMO's especially) looked for as their primary reasons for engine licensing--and it's a very valid point. Stray Bullet Games has made the same decision (go for the tools as primary differentiator), and I honestly hope it turns out to be the best decision for them.

The second portion is what in my mind much of the market just doesn't get--from indies all the way up to the AAA studios. When generic developer XXX thinks of an "engine", they think "oh, I can throw together Ogre3D, ODE, Python, and compile and I'll have everything engine XXX has except tools"--and that's just not the case. A game engine may have nice tools, or incredible rendering, or amazing AI, or feature YYY, or any combination thereof, but if the underlying systems and system managers aren't proven and up to snuff, taken as a game engine it's just not going to meet your needs.

The other issue is that people many times take the concept of a game engine too far--they really want (subconsciously at least) a game maker, which has already coded the "unique" game mechanics and systems they want--levelling, skills, advancement, whatever. We get this all the time--either

A) Torque doesn't do XXX and therefore it sucks
B) Torque only does (starter.fps), so I can't make RPG game YYY with it. It's an FPS engine.

There is a very, very big difference between engine technology, and game maker technology, and until you know what it is you are actually buying, you are going to be dissapointed no matter what you go with.


That right there is exactly what Torque is all about--and with that understanding, you guys should do very well (and be at least comfortable with your decision). It's a rare understanding.


100% true on both calls--I've actually been told point blank by both very large non-gaming (simulation) companies, as well as game deve studios that if Torque cost $100k instead of $1K (commercial licensing), it would have been chosen. I have however also had many (high name) companies select Torque (and IBM is one of them) exactly because of the low cost--they realize that sometimes a wrench is a wrench (tool metaphor ftw!), regardless of how much it costs.

The other big advantage of the higher priced engines is their integrated tools pipeline. At our price point, we simply cannot afford to pump the R&D into a fully integrated "press one button" pipeline without destroying the availability of the engine itself to self-funded indies. Once understood, the Torque art pipeline is not only extremely flexible and powerful, but also designed specifically for large studios (Dynamix wasn't small-->290 employees near the end) to be able to work on any aspect of the pipeline, or all simultaneously. It's not however exactly trivial to learn or learn well, and that's a downside we are very aware of.

We've made strides with this, not only did we spend > 3 man-years putting Constructor (a brush based editor, similar to QuArK and Hammer, but written in Torque and designed for Torque) up (for free), but we've also published resources for alternate modelling formats (polysoup rendering/collision as a resource for example), but it's still a long road.


This is another one of those "but it doesn't do x, y, and z so we can't use it" situations as well. Simply spending the research time to learn XBox360's rendering in and outs would cost more than the entire Torque 360 license (and that doesn't even factor in actually implementing that research, but instead of taking what's there and building on it, companies tend to shy away, and are willing to spend 100 times (not an exageration) the cost for a more enhanced set of features that ultimately will still need to be redesigned and re-engineered for their needs



Fortunately for us at least, there are some very high name companies that have XB360 titles in late stages of development that we should see in the next several seasons.

Latest rumour: (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=166192) Sega, Namco/Bandai & Capcom are shifting development away from the PS3/PSP and towards the Wii/DS.

Ok, I've spent some time digging around for third party numbers for all three consoles.  In raw attachment rate, the Wii has the 360 at 2:1, which in turn is over the PS3 by about a bit (~10-20%).  The Wii's domination, as anyone knows, is heavily biased at the moment towards Nintendo stuff: as in, around 60% of all sales are Nintendo.  Microsoft is doing pretty well on the 360 too, taking in about 40% of sales.  Sony... isn't.  They get about 20%.  That leaves the Wii and 360 almost dead even in terms of 3rd party sales, and the PS3 up over either of them by 20%.  That might suggest it's better to toss titles on the PS3.  Not really, because in terms of raw third party sales, the Wii beats the PS3 about 2:1 and the 360 over the Wii 2:1 again, all of which lines up reasonably close to the total hardware sales.

There are two other points to note.  One, the rate of growth for the Wii is far above either the 360 or PS3 (it is outselling both combined).  The 360 is also doing well, but the PS3 is selling dangerously short; the GBA is outselling it at this point, and although very remote, the possibility of being outsold by the discontinued Gamecube actually exists.  This trend will likely continue at least until Christmas, by which time the Wii will will have cut the 360's lead in half. 

The other point to note is that there are no 'must have' third party titles even on the Wii yet.  Most developers seem to have written Nintendo off entirely early on, and once they realized their mistake late into the game pumped out ports and party games.  Several stories are or have been circulating about dev houses shifting large percentages of their resources onto Nintendo development.  Consequently, this means far fewer resources being devoted to either the 360 or PS3 over the long term.  If the PS3 does not capitalize heavily on titles already in the pipe targeted for this Christmas, it could very well seal the fate of the PS3 being nothing more than a place for 360 ports, as it has already demonstrated Sony is incapable of putting lots of high demand 1st party exclusives on it.  The only real pluses remaining in the PS3's column at the moment is Blu-Ray, which seems to be stomping HD-DVD, and brand recognition due to the PS1/PS2. 

All of this is US only.  The Wii is the only thing of consequence in Japan except for the DS, which has become a national sport.  Once you throw Japan into the mix (which is ~2/3 the size of the US market) the numbers are much more skewed in favor of the Wii, either for hardware or third party.  The Wii is selling more hardware than every other single console or handheld combined, excluding the DS.

Because the Wii hardware and software is around 2:1 over the PS3, is not only growing in install base over the PS3 but accelerating that growth, and because it has a power vacuum of solid third party titles, the Wii is in an incredible position to make money for third party devs.  Because the 360 has made the PS3 its bitch in the high end market, the PS3 is going to attract almost nothing in the way of exclusives.  This leaves games being made to the lowest common denominator, which is the 360 (or Wii - the tradeoff here is graphics for install base obviously, and most people seem to prefer to make a Wii version over using Wii as the baseline, at least so far).  This means many AAA titles will not be making the most of Blu-Ray, or the HD.  The PS3 version will use them, but only after being designed to fit within the constraints of the 360.  Expect more press releases by Sony about how devs are only using "20% of the available hardware" (or whatever metric they wish to throw out), because it is not worthwhile for devs to put in the large amounts of effort required to work with Sony's hardware.  They'll work with Microsoft's hardware, then port.  This Christmas is very likely the last chance Sony has of pulling itself out of last place in the US.

Oh, and for one more kick in the pants:  in the US, the GC has a larger market share of 6th gen titles than the PS3 has of the 7th gen. 

Nintendo briefly outstrips Sony in market value. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070625/tc_nm/nintendo_sony_dc_3)  Wow.

Schild defense of the PS3 incoming in 3...2...1...

ETA: On a more serious note I'm not quite ready to declare the PS3 a failure but it's not looking good. Right now, in my city, 360s are harder to find on store shelves than PS3s. Every store I go to has at least 2-3 PS3s in stock.

It's too early to bury the PS3.  Price will drop, library will grow, sunrise, sunset.

The wet blanket on that is that Sony is much more diversified in their product line than Nintendo, in that if Sony sucks it with the PS3/PSP, they are still a serious contender in the console market if they want to be, much in the same way MS is with the 360.  Other product lines can bolster up a weak one if there is a desire to lose money on it for strategic gains (for example, to help Blu-Ray).  Nintendo doesn't have that, as everything outside their game line is less than 1% of their company revenue.  The good thing about that is that it makes Nintendo much more focused on their product.

Riggs/Yeg:  I'm not saying the PS3 is a failure.  I would say it has failed to meet expectations so far, and is not *at all* in a happy place.  Outlook is not good, but even if the PS3 muddles on where it's at for the rest of the console cycle, that still might not be a failure for Sony if you can argue it helped win Blu-Ray for them.  It would just mean one product leaned into the strike zone for another.  That's bad for gamers, though.  The PS3 is a better system and better features/dollar, but that doesn't mean jack if Sony can't get hardware into consumer hands, and a huge library for people to pick from.  Even worst case though, Sony is in the same spot Nintendo was last gen and looking for a comeback in the 8th gen.  I don't see a price drop helping the PS3 at this point though; the 360 and Wii will follow suit, leaving everyone back at their starting positions.  The 360 and Wii will still have a larger install base, larger libraries, and more games in the pipe.

That's actually what surprised me the most, that a company which just makes games is worth as much as the vast Sony empire.

In other words, Sony is likely to have to really sweet talk 3rd party developers into making PS3 exclusive games to drive the install base up. Every big title they put out on the PS3 that is also on the 360 is a loss for them. Blu-Ray is their only competitive advantage in the market right now, because I can only think of one current PS3 game (Resistance) that is even close to being a system seller.

No, I don't count @Home, because for all its shiney, it isn't something you buy a system for. You buy a system for kickass games that you can't get anywhere else, whether that be Wii-ish party/multiplayer games, or 360 FPS or Metal Gear Solid 4. Sony has some aces in the hole, such as MGS4, GTHD (or whatever it's called now - GT5), the next Final Fantasy game, something hot from Capcom. But the longer it takes for those games to come out, the worse their position will be. They really do need a strong, strong Christmas 2007. Maybe it's a good thing that the PS3 was built to last 10 years, because it may be that long before they get a sizeable enough install base to compete.  :evil:

Or they could just lower the fucking price by $150-$200, eat the extra loss and move some fucking machines.

Not this generation. This generation you buy the Wii so you can join the club.

It sure as fuck isn't for kickass games.

And it's depressing the hell out of me.

My Wii kicks ass. Yours must be borken.

Having played Wii Sports at a friend's place recently (I admit, its a great time waster when you get knocked out of the poker game early), I really have to wonder how much of Nintendo's base is going to be like my friend's situation. It was a cheap enough machine that they could just buy it and Wii Sports and be happy. I really don't see them in investing in new games down the line.

Based on the huge software attachment rates, no one of consequence is just settling with Wii Sports.  Wii owners actually own more titles/unit than either of the other two consoles.  I do think a large percent of the Wii install base are of a similar initial mindset to your friend - they just change their mind and decide to get more titles later.  That Wii titles are on average cheaper than either 360 or PS3 titles helps in that respect too.

Sony's vast empire has had parts of the company that have been dismal for years now though.  The Playstation line was hiding a lot of their failings, and as the PS3 stalls a little Sony's worth is coming more into line with where the rest of the company has been for the last decade.

I thought I'd heard that FF13 wasn't going to be a Sony-exclusive. Back around april/ may.

Rumors have been kicked around about this, but the official line is that it's still a PS3 exclusive.  Supposedly the White engine is cross platform, but it won't be used that way.  Instead, SE is going to use Unreal 3 for future development.

Edit: Oh, also they're looking to do a lot of "13" titles.  THE FF13 is still planned to be PS3, but there are other games that will have similar names on other consoles (I don't think anything has been scheduled for the 360 though... just Wii and mobile stuffs).

Probably should bold PE also.

Edit: That PS2 stuff, btw, HILARIOUS. I bet it's more accurate than the wiimote also.

Edit 2: Sorry. EGM Rumor Mill, August 07. Tends to be Right.

What?  No AC/DC luv?  I saw them for the Razors edge tour in '91.  What's his name, the 40 year old guy (then), in the school boy outfit dropped his pants and was wearing boxers with hearts on it.

Hilarious.  Like a Benny Hill show.

Also, Alice in Chains opened for them, they were some up band who had that fucked up "Man in the Box" single.  And then Layne Staley and the other guys came down and sat in the about four rows over from me and my buddies.  We said "yo, good set" and they said, "Thanks man."

True story.

Angus Young

When I posted the bit about Sony settling with Immersion, I never expected a "waggle-wand" for PS2.  However this falls out, hilarity will ensue.

Reeks of desperation, to answer the question "OH SHIT NOW WHAT?"

What? Why? $99.

$99.

The poor derelicts people have spoken.

To the tune of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qAadfsJrmM).  Everybody sing.

The fun is back, oh yessiree
It's the Playstation Two from So-oh-ny
It's the video system with classics galore
From Guitar Hero, to God of War
A real hip wagglestick controls the screen
Kingdom Hearts is hot, and GTA is mean
And one more thing, it's got a special low price
Under a hundred bucks
"Hundred bucks?!"
Now isn't that nice
The fun is back, oh yessiree
It's the Playstation Two from So-oh-ny

 :roll:

Because it would be as well thought out as the Sixaxis.

Because the vast library of games isn't designed with this waggle-stick in mind.

The one thing that keeps me from agreeing with you 100% is the fact that Sony has made nice -- real nice -- with Immersion.  They are working together now.  I actually blame the lawsuit for the craptacular Sixaxis and I have always viewed it as a temporary controller, either until Logitech makes one or Sony does.  There's no fucking excuse for the Sixaxis sucking more than the 360 controller except for either laziness or as a temporary solution to get the PS3 on shelves ASAP.

I'm no fan of controller-waggling, Christ knows, but it does have a chance of not sucking as much as the Wiimote.  Of course, it would not be hard to improve the Wiimote if a company was willing to invest the R&D and perhaps take a loss or lower margin to gain market share; as neat and new as it is, it still feels like they could have done it better.  Right now I can imagine that Sony is just buying Immersion's R&D time and simply sent an email saying "YOU MAKE WIIMOTE GO BYE BYE".  But will it work?

The logitech PS3 controller, while not Bluetooth, feels a good deal tighter than the Logitech PS2 controller.

I wasn't aware there was one on the market, will have to check that out.  In October, no earlier.  If I had at least a good, dated rumor about a Sixaxis redesign, I'd be more comfortable with buying another controller.

This news of a PS2 waggle machine does not make me happy.  I just don't see games *I* want to play coming out of this. 

I don't see ANY games coming out for a PSWiggler. What's the point of putting a wiggler on the PS2? Is Sony going to mandate developers make games for it? If they don't do that, it'll be super gimmicky. And even if they do mandate some games use it, they'll either be trash ports, or so minimal that all the bitches you guys have about Wii mini-games will count double for the PS2.

The $99 is a good deal. The waggle only means shit if there are games for it, and I mean games designed to make that thing sing. If the Madden 08 for the PS2 uses it, that'll be fantastic. If it's more Raving Rabbits... /meh. I already have a Wii.

Again, introducing a new knock-off peripheral years and years after release when a successor system has already been released is pure desperation.

Yea, I know, Microsoft sure is desperate when they release shitty products to compete with the iPod.

I think you all are missing the point. The Wii is a fart more powerful than the PS2. The PS2 has better games than the Wii will EVER HAVE. The PS2 has better online capability. The PS2 will have 120M+ installed during this Christmas. A waggle wand on the shelf cheaper than the Wiis. And you can be Damn Sure Sony will be paying people to make cross platform titles. Thereby making the Gamecube 2 the obsolete piece of dogshit it is.

of course, that's all if the rumor comes to fruition. If it doesn't, well, I'll say that the EGM rumor guy is a better business type than the people running SCEA.

With less games, most likely. Sony can pay people all they want. I don't think the developers will be able to make enough waggle content before Christmas to compete with the Wii's waggle content at the same time, on quality or quantity.


One only needs to look at the marketing materials for the PS3 to believe that.

So now you're hanging your hopes for Sony back on the PS2?  The PS2 has a ton of great games, but how many can be made for a waggle controller by Xmas?  Or more directly, how many good ones that aren't just remakes of existing ones with some waggle controls shoehorned in?

Seriously man, I think you're over reaching on this one. If things keep going the way they are for Sony, I think I'll have to suggest that you get a scrip for Xanax -- it may be the key to your head not exploding. :D

All this talk of throwing money at people's waggle wands makes me think this thread is some kind of hidden Viagra advertisment.  :|

Why am I reaching? It's the most plausible solution. And designing a waggle wand equal to if not better than the Wii one would be a joke for Immersion.


You mean exactly like the Wii that everyone is buying like it's better than sex? Not many. That's what makes all of this so hilarious. All that happens at the end of the day is Sony has the only system that's proven itself, on store shelves, with 1200 games, for under $100 and it now has a waggle wand. Amazing. This is why they're Sony.

Apparently it's not (http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/06/sony-ps2-motion.html).

Well that didn't last long, though I suspect EGM knows more than Wired (even though it is Chris Kohler...) ever would or even any publicist at Sony. We'll see. Though a $99 PS2, maybe with 2 controllers or a game would be pretty damn amazing. Despite the PS3 being better at PS2 games, the PS2 is still the best value for a gaming system we're going to see for at least a generation or two.

Still hoping for a new Sixaxis... Sevenaxis?

Nah, I just want Folklore and Heavenly Sword. My needs are so simple that I can rely on companies like Game Republic and Ninja Theory to fulfill them.

(http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/07-minister.jpg)

Paying people to make titles for the console you are trying to replace - brilliant strategy. Maybe Sony should just dump the PS3 entirely...

I don't get this logic.

The Wii is quite literally, a rectangular gamecube. All they did was beef it up a couple hundred mhz, increase the disc space, and add a controller that's been good for nothing but mini-games.

And yet, you rag on Sony.

Right.

Huh? The original design does not have *any* networking capabilities built into it, not even a phone modem.

I didn't say Anything about the original design.

But you keep throwing out the installed base of PS2s. How many of those either are the new design or have the networking adapter?

Given the reliability of the original - I'd say, more than Enough to Put the Hurt on Nintendo.

You're reaching.. a bit.  Maybe a lot.  If you're right, I will call you "the Master, Eric Schild" until eternity.

Why does Nintendo market penetration matter that much anyhow? We won't know if it's a positive or negative (to the gamer) for a while.

You're right. I always assume the worst with gaming though, it leaves me pleasantly surprised most of the time.

On that same note, I was talking to the manager at my EB today, and he's started getting Wiis traded in from all of his "Gamer" type customers (people like myself). None of them have brought back their PS3. Completely anecdotal bullshit, but it would support what I said nearly a year ago.

The PS3 is rocketing towards flop status because it's too god damned expensive, and Sony's reaction is to lower the price... of the PS2.  Of course we're ragging them.  It's fucking hilarious.  It's gonna be 2017 and they're gonna be selling the PS2 for seven bucks a pop to people who are using them to prop up coffee tables and as doorstops and shit, while Schild sits in the Furherbunker and crows about how many consoles they're moving.  Meanwhile the PS5 will have sold about three or four units, despite having more processing power than Skynet, because it costs fifty-thousand dollars.

It doesn't make any sense to lower the PS3 price until after they get some damn games/applications anyway.  Dumbass early-adopter types like me will get them for $600 anyway.  That might be a lot of money for a PS1/PS2 emulator with integrated BluRay player and music/video streaming... or maybe not.  Not sure what the price on three appliances that did the same thing would cost.  The PS3 only costs $111 more than the 360 if you want wireless capability, and is one penny cheaper if you want the HD-DVD player.  The PS3 also reads CF, SD, USB flash drives, and Memory Sticks while the 360 will, at best, only give you problems with the USB flash drive.  I really don't think the PS3 is overpriced so much as most people would rather drive a Civic than a Cadillac.

The market stratification thing is a proven way to make money, which is why you see seven flavors of Pert on the shelf at the grocery store.  Selling a cheapo console alongside an expensive one is not a bad idea, but I'm not sure about how the overlap affects things.  The GameBoy/DS does not overlap the Cube/Wii, at least now that there is no DS-in-the-Wii functionality.  The problem is more with what you can do with a PS3 that you can't do with a PS2 or 360, and people generally don't realize that MS is going to nickel-and-dime you to death with 360 accessories.  They just see a $400 game console and a $600 game console, and figure Timmy can play Asteroids on the $400 unit just fine.

Well, for me and alot of gamers I know it is more like, they're both Civics, but one has chrome everywhere and a 5 disc changer in the trunk that only plays CDs of a format I'm not ready to commit to until I know if it or the other new CD type wins.


Don't forget that the $400 console has you know...games. And a larger installed base. All my friends who game have 360s. (Except one and he's sort of becoming too lazy and anti-social to game.). None has a PS3. One has a Wii and two more of us will get one when we can find it.

Why?

I honestly want to know what would drive you to get one after you just said the PS3 has no games.

I have access to and used all 3 consoles, the PS3 gets more use than the other 2 together easily, even if mostly as a PS2 emulator. The difference in quality between the PS3 and the 360 is enormous, the Wii doesn't even deserve a mention. It's apparent that while MS has tried to save $$$ on all components the PS3 is built for quality first and $$$ secondly. Yes it's expensive if you compare it to the competition, but as said before, you certainly get more bang for the buck hardware wise with the PS3.

Also, I can't see how someone intrested enough in games to hang on this board can bitch about the price unless he's unemployed/student. If I had worked on McD the price tag would still be affordable, it's all about prioritizing and $600 isn't a lot for a grown up.

I'm curious about this too. I've had the opportunity to try out a Wii quite a few times, and I've been very underwhelmed. Maybe if I didn't have my 360 I'd be more interested.

I am suspicious that you have neither played a PS3 nor driven a Cadillac.  Your format argument is valid, as is the games complaint (in my opinion), but then you ruin that my saying you are going to buy a Wii.  Unless you like party games that much or have lots of non-gamer friends.  My friends use my Wii more than I do.

Too lazy and anti-social to sit on his couch and put and a headset and game?  Like not even MMO anti-social?

For some reason I'm disturbed by this.  Or, is this code for 'he got a girlfriend and found something better than to do on Friday night than the guitar hero cheeto challenge!!!"?

Because it is like the gamecube, a fun party machine for when friends are over, but with the wiimote it gets even more interesting. See my answer to Yeg below for more details.


Actually, all of my friends are gamers from very, very hard core to casual (due to money/time issues.). And like most gamers we enjoy variety. The 360 is great for hard core gamers, the Wii is great for taking a break and acting silly and having fun. Besides, my girlfriend is convinced it'll be good excersize for us to play Wii sports. I have played a PS3, not for hours mind you, about 30 minutes, and the difference wasn't big enough at first blush for me to want to spend $600. Combine that with no games and the PS3 is a losing option. Even one of my friends who is a hardcore Sony guy, who hated the XBOX and loved the PS2 is leaning towards the 360 now. (he still hasn't commited to a next-gen console yet.)

 I will probably get a PS3 if Blu-ray wins the format wars, since it is much easier for me to justify the price then. Before I do I have other things to upgrade however, like my home theater reciever and (eventually) satellite speakers.

Nope. He had a girlfriend, he was head over heels with her, and then she dumped him and moved to another state. (She was cool but also a wee bit insane, in a mostly fun way. She had huge commitment/relationship issues.) After she left he sort of withdrew. He is playing a little LOTRO right now but is mostly soloing and barely talks in Kinship chat. In fact, out of our gaming group he is the only one who is not married or at least has a girlfriend. Actually, one of our other friends just dumped his girlfriend but he'll have another in about a month or so knowing him.

Ironically, out of all of us, he has the most money, since he makes about 30k more a year than the next highest earner among us, but he has the least impressive electronic equipment. (other than his home theater system which I'm intensely jealous of, though it's wasted when combined with his 32" TV.)

Did you smack her upside the head and send her off the gym when she said that? 

Nah, her other idea was Dance Dance Revolution. Heh. Besides, I have a girlfriend who played co-op Gears of War/Halo/Rainbow Six Vegas/Dynasty Warriors/etc etc with me. If she wants to use a video game to excersize rather than forcing me to the gym I just need to be thankful for her existence.

Maybe you don't realize that an Original Recipe 360 plus HD-DVD unit will cost you $600?

So, really, the Wii does just make people stupid. That's what it is. It's poison in the village well.

Obviously, we know who's behind it now:

(http://www.toadking.com/6x9=42/kefka.gif)

I do realize that. And I haven't bought the HD-DVD unit so I'm not sure where you're going with this other than I didn't have to spend $600 and I didn't.

I'm not going anywhere with anything.  I'm genuinely curious.

This is quality work here. Well played.

The continuing sales of the PS2 is not something Sony is likely to be happy about, there's no money in it and it reduces one of the PS3's few strengths, the huge list of PS2 games. Encouraging new development for the console (re. the waggle stick) sounds like a desperation move.

Still, it really is amusing that we are having this discussion. Nintendo was destined to be the also-ran for this console generation, largely ignored by developers.

Sony is the odd man out of this generation right now. The PS3 doesn't do anything that the 360 doesn't do, and the 360 has the bigger and better library. A lot of games that formerly might have been PS3 exclusives are now coming to the 360 as well.

The PS3 looks like it may end up as the N64/Gamecube of this generation - a system with a few exclusive 1st and 2nd party games and little else.

Really the problem for Sony and the PS3 is not Nintendo, it is MS. MS is their direct competitor. If you aren't interested in waggle controls and casual games you *still* don't buy a PS3.

Which is only marginally more useful than reading UMD discs, Minidiscs or fish sticks.

If there were a cheaper version of the PS3 sans Blu-Ray, Sony probably wouldn't be getting stomped this hard.

It's amazing how you could be so close to answering your own question, and yet be so far off.

We don't really want to do a break-down of the 'average' household to explain why $600 really IS a lot, do we?  Didn't think so.

Keep in mind median household income in the US is around $46k before you say "it's not a lot."

This is, quite possibly, one of the most senseless things I have ever read.

Why is it so much? I bet you spend more money on a TV, your sound system and a whole lot of other shit in your house which isn't necessary for living. And $600 for a console which will most likely see many times that in software is somehow to much cash to spend on a console?

I've never spent more than $600 on anything that wasn't a computer. Since I work from home and sometimes not, a desktop and a laptop are both necessary for living. $600 for a console is almost three times the cost of my monthly car payment.

Maybe you make some obscene amount of cash, but others of us have kids and whatnot -- and don't make a ton of money on top of that. 

And it's not really just $600 either, you would probably buy another controller and at least two or three games to make the purchase worthwhile.  Maybe you have to upgrade your router to wireless, I'd probably buy a couple blu-ray movies to see what all the fuss is about.  I'd have to buy an HDMI switcher because my TV only has one port.  With taxes that pushes the purchase into four digit land for me, once we get into that range whole new levels of mental oversight get activated in my head.  My impulse-buy demon gets shouted at and goes to mope in the corner.  It would have to actually be worth a thousand dollars and it just isn't.

Once it gets a nice library, in another year or so, by which time the price will probably have dropped I'll buy one.  I'd also buy one right now if it had recording capability.

Edit: And I mean straight burn to DVD recording, not some convoluted streaming to the hard drive hacked up by a few guys in their basement.

Didn't you work as a lawyer? Also, I wonder what kind of sallaries you have in the states if $600 is so unbearable. I could easily put away $200 a month and that's living as a student with no extra jobs. I'd just have to skip getting drunk a couple of weekends.


Aren't you planning on getting more than two or three games on the console anyway?

At this point in time it might not be worth $600 for the gaming, unless you want a BD player. However once the games starts to flow it's not that high of a price.

You're a student.  All of your income is disposable, and likely provided by mommy & daddy or student loans. Get off of your high horse, because you'll quickly realize that things are a bit different in the real world. Oh yeah, did I mention I'm trying to build a college fund for my daughter and a retirement plan for me and my wife?  It's not as simple as "not getting drunk a couple of weekends."

I have student loan payments, a car payment, rent, a kid to raise, bills, etc. I also am attempting to grow my own practice as opposed to working for someone else.  It's not going as well as I'd hoped and the job market is such that it's a bit tough for me to find one of those "magical high paying jobs." (Not for lack of effort either.) Grow up a bit and get some perspective before you go around telling people what is or isn't expensive. 

Like Miasma said, a PS3 purchase isn't simply $600.  There's controllers, games, and for me, an HDTV. That puts it well into the four figures category. Regardles of whether someone plans to buy games or not, that's not the point. It's not a cheap startup cost by any means.

You know why the PS3's price seems so crazy?

It isn't so much that $600 is a lot of money for people, though it is a lot of money for 1 luxury purchase that will probably get upgraded/replaced in 5 years or less. It's that the perception of the VALUE of the console is bad. You have less than 100 games, many of which look like shinier HD versions of last gen's games. Sure, it's got a Blu-Ray player, but were you really looking to upgrade your movie-watching machine? It's perceived value is not $600. At the same price as the 360, it MIGHT start looking like a better deal. Hell, at the $400 range, it starts looking like a great deal, because it's a built-in Blu-Ray player as opposed to the 360's add-on drive. At that price point, the Blu-Ray becomes a feature rather than a luxury. The 360 would still beat it on games, but that 1-year head start is huge.

In short, other than Blu-Ray which isn't perceived as a must-have yet, it has nothing worth mentioning over the 360, which is perceived as being $200 less expensive with more games. The motion-detection controls? Nothing anyone talks about uses them. I'd wager most casual console buyers don't even know the PS3 has it.

Hey man, it wasn't a punch at you, I was simply asking since I seem to recall you were into the law. I've had a working life for some time before I became a student and have been in the so called "real world". It's a bit diffrent here in Sweden, the goverment pays for studies and gives you part subsidy, partly really beneficial study loans. Do you think your current economical situation is that of the average working American? I think not. Look, I'm not saying $600 is peanuts that I throw around every month at stuff, I'm saying if you can afford a decent TV, a decent car, a decent whatever, then a bunch of year investment of $600 for your hobby should be fucking doable. My buddy who's 22 with a kid to support working as nurse with a low payed girlfriend has a PS3.

At this point in my life, the average working American has more money than I do. 

To go a bit further on what CmdrSlack said:

600 dollars isn't chump change, and I do farily well financially.  There's a whooole lot of variables that goes into being an "adult" with real jobs:

Mortgage
Insurance
Home owners insurance
Car payments
Car insurance
Feeding a family of four (myself, wife, 7 mo old baby, 1 yr old boxer)
Vet bills
Animal rescue work we participate in
Charity donations
Incidentals for home and autorepair that I can't do myself
Gas
Utilities (cable, power, water, gas)
Outside interests:  Golf, fishing, gym memberships, tennis club memberships
Savings accounts
401K accounts, stock purchases, other investments for me, wife, child
Dinners out for me, wife, child


Yeah, we make more money than a college student, but we have more 'bills', some of which we can do without, some we can't.  It's all a matter of priority / perception.

Didn't you have like 30 SWG accounts at one time?   :-D

Nah, most I ever had was three, I think. 

Your buddy sacrificed something to do that, or built-up the savings because to him it was worth it. For the rest of us, with houses, kids, cars, loans, etc it's not.  From the sales figures of the PS3 we're not alone here, but getting the rest of you to realize that is like getting W. to admit he's wrong.

I'm very tempted to do a break-down at the median level for things.  $600 is a LOT of money for a lot of people, particularly families.  The people who have the decent tv, car, house, etc are also most likely still paying for them, whether it is credit cards or loans.  The budget I ran here using my own ballparking put that family at $1,375 a month left to pay income tax, doctor/ dentist bills, clothing, daycare, water/ sewer, garbage collection and household maintainence.. not including the stuff like savings and retirement and who else knows what I forgot.  Taxes alone will eat up most of it (~$900).

Ed: I  posted anyway even after I saw SC had posted.  I'd been ballparking and was going to post it but said fuckit.   He did tick one thing I forgot.. insurance. Damnit.

As I said before, it's all about prioritizing. I don't know, but I would think most people here would have gaming as their main hobby. There's numerous things on that list that isn't must haves. A decent golf bag and the money spent on golfing is easily in the same ballpark as gaming, if not more expensive. Yes my buddy didn't have to get a PS3, and I agree that the PS3 isn't worth it as a gaming machine atm. But just as some of you buy Wii for potential, some people buy the PS3 for potential.

I bought my Wii for what it had at launch, as well as its potential. I'm one of those crazy fuckers who like Zelda and LOVE Red Steel.

Nobody believes you.

Nobody.

Not even Jesus.

And Jesus believes in everyone.

Arguing about whether the PS3 is too expensive or not is a matter of perspective. For me, it's too expensive because I already have a 360 and the games I'm interested in are largely going to be released on the Xbox. Right now, $600 isn't a bad price at all for a PS3 if you go in with the understanding that you're not just getting a gaming machine, but you are early adapting the Blu-Ray format. For someone who just wants a gaming machine, the 360 at $200 cheaper IS a better deal.

Whether or not Sony messed up by have the BR built in, that's the discussion imo.

If you want *just* Blu-Ray, the PS3 is a good deal.  If you want Blu-Ray and gaming, the PS3 is a great deal.  If you just want gaming, PS3 is a shitty deal.  If you don't have an HD TV, the PS3 isn't even worth discussing.

You've already noted that your education is largely subsidized by the state, which must be nice. It may be true that it's about priorities, but I have to say that mine lie with keeping my daughter clothed, fed and housed. The rest is just necessary spending to make sure the rest of that happens (i.e. without a car, I can't get to half the work that I do -- the not at home stuff).  When the PS3 pays for her college education, puts food on the table and pays the rent, I guess it'll be worth making a priority. Until then, I'll be content to not be a real gamer, I guess....heck, my PS2 library is under 30 games -- and I bought most of those while I was still single.

And Sony hasn't done anything to make spending $600 a priority for most people (and they especially haven't done anything to make it a priority for people who didn't buy into the PS2 until it was between $179-129).  Even for people who love gaming, there's just better ways to spend our money right now.

$600 is a lot - for a piece of crap. $600 is not a lot for a new house but it sure is for a system that does nothing existing systems don't already do better.

Come again?

Apparently the Wii does something better than other systems. I'm not sure what it is. But it does something.

I don't give two fucks if you believe me. I LOVED RED STEEL. I want Red Steel 2. I want that game to be refined, so that the flaws it had are removed or reduced. It wasn't a perfect game. It wasn't robot jesus. But it kicked all kinds of ass, IMO. YMMV.

Actually, I think it's Your Mileage May Vary, and only yours, since everyone else I know - and the rest of the Wiitardnet - hated the damn thing.

Also, interesting responses in a thread over at NeoGAF about the constant patching these days of games, in particular:


Indeed.

By which you apparently mean that you found some random guy on the Internet that agrees with your point of view.  Um... congrats?

Actually, I'd never called it a luddite movement. Not once. By which I meant, interesting perspective.

I'm glad I dropped out of this portion of the conversation.

It's really funny to watch this develop.

Haemish declares his love for a game most people hated, Schild going progressively  further off the deep end with his hatred of the Wii,  coupled with the belief that Sony evidently does no wrong or something. (Not trying to put words in your mouth, it's just how it looks)

Now enter the "I've got  $600 bucks in my couch cushions / poor people ruin it for everyone" battle with the " I've got a family and can't blow  a grand on something which doesn't really do a whole lot right now" forces.

(http://www.stamfordhistory.org/images/rr_wreck35.jpg)

May as well add some gasoline:

Analyst: Fraction Of Console Owners Using Video Capabilities (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14513) (Gamasutra)

It's not interesting though.  It's really, really not.  It's just namecalling and it's not even wrapped around any sort of a solid point.

Isn't there a stat that says something like 66% of HDTV owners don't even have them hooked up to do HD?

Anyway my point above was that arguing about whether $600 is too much is silly - $600 is way too much for some things and a great deal for other things. At this point the PS3 does nothing either the 360 or Wii does better, so $600 is too much. It is clearly the inferior product at this point. And again, the real competitor here is MS. If you want a "hardcore" system the system to buy is the 360.

Look, it's pretty simple. The 360 costs the same or less and is better to boot.

They would, because Sony dropped the Exclusive Ball and are a year behind the 360.  Hardware costs are about the same with similar functionality despite perspectives, but XBL is fully armed and operational while PSN isn't really worth looking at, and Zee Games are not on PS3.  This holiday season will hopefully rectify both of those issues but time will tell.  Home needs to beat Achievements as well as the game offerings on XBL; the reason I got the 360 version of Oblivion was due to the download situation!  Getting exclusives worth a damn will take longer, I think.

That Gamasutra article is unsurprising.  I have a DVD player already, so I am not going to bother with using one of the consoles unless it breaks.

(http://files.samhart.net/humor/fail.jpg)

Sony has done tons of wrong. The PS3 is the most well put together, full-featured console I've ever seen. It doesn't have enough games.
 
Nintendo simply hasn't proven the Wiimote to me. At all. The Wii is a gamecube with a spoiler. It doesn't have enough games.

Stop surfing 4chan.

*removed some stuff*

I"m sure they'll do just fine, it's just going to be a year or two for  it to pick up.

I'm making a shirt with that image on it.

That image is teh win.

It IS about prioritizing, and a PS3 isn't going to gain priority of ANYTHING (and beyond) what I mentioned above.

I'm a gamer at heart.  I love playing games on the PC and xbox360.  

About the only thing on that list that isn't a 'must have' are my gym memberships, dinners out for the clan, and animal rescue bills.  But those are priorities over a gaming machine.  I'm not about to tell the wife "No, we can't go have a nice dinner because I bought a PS3", or "Sorry, I can't take in that abused, neglected boxer and rehab her because I want/bought a PS3".

Everything else?

A must have.

Once you get a little older, your priorities shift and become more realistic.  

Well, if you just must have BluRay now, when the price is artificially high due to 99% of early BD drives in limited production shipping to Sony for PS3 use, perhaps. But it would be like paying $1000 for an early model CD player from Philips or Sony back when CD first came out. Every few months the price dropped and the quality of the playback mechanisms improved. You would be better off buying a fifth generation mechanism (with BD we're on 2nd generation now) once they drop under $200 at the entry point. Then $600 will buy you the equivalent of an audiophile product. By that point the software will have both matured and grown to an adequate range.

No... the quote is an illustration of how fucking out of touch console manufacturers are with the consumer.  (Not that this isn't par for the course for Sony, there's been several articles discussing that before.)   If I own a DVD player already, I don't give a fuck if my game-machine does it.  It likely doesn't do it as well as my DVD player, or doesn't work with my universal remote - not to mention I have to buy a remote separately in the first place.  Additionally, machine-as-player is seen as a low-rent solution by the consumer.  I couldn't even talk previous co-workers who OWNED ps2s to just play their DVDs on them instead of buying a separate player.

I use my PS2 as my DVD player - my friends laugh at me, especially when I tell them to "press X."

We did upstairs until dual-layer DVDs started pwning it. 

So golf & tennis membership are must haves?

What do you know about my priorities and how they will change when I get older? I plan to continue spending cash on my main hobby, namely games.

You keep thinking that. . .

I don't buy every game system and game that comes out.  I used to be a consumer whore when I was younger and wanted to experience as much as possible.  Nowadays, I've played a lot of games and really only look out for the highest quality experiences because most other games that come out are drivel.  As an example, after playing WoW, I ran through about a dozen different MMOs and none could really match the experience of WoW, so until a good MMO comes out (It doesn't HAVE to be WoW, but god damn it it needs to be a compelling experience), I don't see myself playing any other MMOs.

I think about stuff like houses and all that, when I didn't use to before.  So my priorities are shifting at 26, but nothing where I have to give up anything yet.  I don't have to worry about most of what you guys do but I also live in an incredibly expensive area of the country.

Maybe the problem is that you play MMOGs.

Wait, no, that's definitely the problem. ^_^

There comes a time for every man where his priorities change, the world starts passing by faster, he realizes he is in debt and has not saved a dime for retirement or a rainy day, he loses his job, and he says FUCK WHY DID I SPEND THAT 600 BUCKS ON A SILLY PASTIME!?!?!

Enjoy your hobby while you can, as every other man trying to keep afloat post college with bills and stuff has attested so far, your outlook will change when you least expect it to.

I already have a lot of money saved from when I worked, I take no loans while studying and will never loan for anything but must haves, which means pretty much house only. The difference between me and for example SnakeCharmer is that I skip the golfing & tennis and there by can afford the super expensive luxurious $600 console called Playstation 3. Also, audiophiles, car enthusiasts and a truckload of other people doesn't exist, there simply is no way one can afford doing something that expensive for a hobby.

Stop being stupid. How many times do I have to say that talking about $600 as cheap or expensive is folly? Would you pay $600 for a corn dog? How about for a private jet?

The point is value. $600 is a steal for a jet, not so good for a corn dog considering you can buy other corn dogs for $2. Whether or not you want a PS3 or can afford one? Who cares? I could buy 10 tomorrow no sweat. But the value isn't there. Compared to what else you can get for the same or less it isn't attractive. That doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it, or that you don't want it, or that you can't afford it. It just means that there is a good reason why other people aren't buying it - better alternatives exist that cost the same or less.

The question is, would you pay $600 for something, or $600 or *less* for something better? Tough one. Especially if you do have a limited budget.

Edit: This isn't rocket science. It costs more and is worse. Wow, it is a flop HOW SURPRISING!!!

You just called the PS3 worse than the alternatives.  I think I hear some heads asploding.

The only fact in this matter is that the PS3 is a steal for the hardware in it. Iirc you're intrested in the Wii which in my opinion using the same logic is freaking expensive.

LOL reach much? I hear that video game systems exist not simply to exist, but to play these things called "games."

The Wii is at least better than the PS3 in some ways, or at the very least not directly comparable. You can't get a system comparable to the Wii for any amount of money. Again, the real competition here is with the 360. You can get a system comparable to the PS3, in fact better, for less money.

You can say the Wii is overpriced for the hardware, which may be true, but you can't find a system that does the same thing but better for less money. That is exactly the situation the PS3 is in with regards to the 360 - the 360 is both better and cheaper. Depending on whether or not you like the Wii it's either your second or third system choice behind the 360.

I'm no MS fan, in fact I hate MS, but I have trouble understanding why anyone would own a PS3 and not a 360 other than rabid brand loyalty.

The PS3 doesn't break. It doesn't falter. The firmware updates make significant changes to the quality of the OS and gaming on the system. Blu-Ray is awesome. Folk Lore has already done things that simply haven't or can't be done on the 360. There's lots of reasons.

... but none of those reasons relate to games, which is the main reason people buy consoles.

You can't play hardware. Hardware sits there and looks shiny and gathers dust until software comes along. If the only software that comes along is shitty shit shit shit, the greatest hardware in the world is worth less than shitty shit shit shit. I don't give a flying rat fuck if it's the obisidian obelisk from 2001 in that bitch, the games available RIGHT FUCKING NOW for the system aren't worth $600 for the hardware.

The Wii isn't worth $250. I'm a gamer. $250 is chump change to me at console launch. If the Wii was worth $250, I'd HAPPILY ADMIT IT. It'd be the best deal in gaming. It's not. Nowhere near. Minigames not Games. They're Almost Games. I don't play almost games. Just like you don't bake bread to win.

I agree with that totally, it's all about the software. As I've said, I wouldn't buy the PS3 at this point for the games, but just as people buy the Wii for potential it's the same with PS3. Even if it's a crime to say but innovation is fucking overrated, the shit that has been done in the name of innovation is overwhelming. I just want quality games and that's the reason for why I'm intrested in the PS3, the games which are scheduled for it intrests me a lot more than those for the 360 or Wii.

The reason for why I even brought up the hardware argument is because that's the only concrete fact that there is to go on. We can argue all day which console is the best, but the hardware in the PS3 costs more to produce than what you pay for it, which isn't the case afaik for the Wii.

Are you accusing Sony of dumping? That's a serious allegation.

It's a pretty well known fact I belive http://www.isuppli.com/news/default.asp?id=6919 (http://www.isuppli.com/news/default.asp?id=6919), there's been a lot of news about it. I belive it was the same with the 360 in the beginning.

Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD is the format war nobody outside of technophiles gives a shit about.  As far as the average non-hardcore consumer is concerned, Sony may as well have jacked up the price of the PS3 by an extra $200 for fucking nothing.

Woah - those prices are trying to suggest that Sony buys hardware in the retail chain one unit at a time? Hilarious. I can even see prices in there that I can beat on Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148088

The reality is that the people who *really* know how much it costs to manufacture consoles aren't talking.

How many DS's have you owned, again?

Anyway summary time: Sony gambled that consumers would be willing to pay a $200 premium over the competition for blu-ray functionality. Turns out that most people won't.

Whoops.

Eh? I've owned 4 DSs. One I slammed in a car door. One I simply returned on a replacement plan to go from Blue to Red. And then, of course, I bought a Lite when it came out. The brighter screen was worth the price of admission. I still own the red one. I have not had a problem with my DSs.

I think he was implying that DS games are all about the minigames.

My take was that it was more of a corporate mandate that BluRay be included in all units rather than having it optional, naturally to assist in the uptake of the new standard.  Obviously if they wanted to sell units, they should have done more to compete with the 360, such as provide a $400 unit sans BRP.  If they did that, the 360's price advantage goes poof.

As for DS games, most of them are shitty.  A few are awesome.  The awesome ones don't use the stylus in stupid ways, or at all.  The saving grace is the cheapness.

And I'll say it again. I didn't buy the Wii for innovation. The two games I lusted for on the Wii at release were Red Steel and Madden 07, and I loved them both, despite their flaws. I've played some mediocre games on the Wii, and have said so when I played them. I have yet to play a SHITTY Wii game, but then I haven't played them all, so I can't speak to every game being shitty. But the games I bought the system for delivered the goods, as did Zelda.

And even moreso, do you really think the majority of people who bought the Wii bought it for potential games? No, you see casual gamers and people who are not hardcore EGM readers do not do this. They buy for the right now, for the games they can get when they pick up the system. Mostly they don't buy on release day, and yet they did. Casual gamers, the Wii's target audience, do not buy based on potential.


Fair enough. All of one game currently out on the PS3 interests me in the slightest, Resistance. Everything else, I'd either get on another platform (sprots games I'd get for the Wii) or don't give a shit about.


And your point is... what? That the Wii makes a profit. I don't have a problem with that. I never have. Sony might have been able to make a profit on each PS3 had they not tried to force Blu-Ray down gamer's throats. The value in the hardware isn't in whether or not the components cost more than the system's price, it's in whether the games are any good. And by your own admission, the system doesn't have enough good games right now. It might in the future. Which means you bought your console for potential, AND paid almost 3 times what I paid for the console I bought based on the games it had at release.

I thought that at first, but it was so stupid that I didn't know what to say. So I gave a straight answer.

$10/week to your 401k is a lifesafer. I started at age 20. Now I'm supposedly on track to be a millionaire at 60. Hooray. People who have these sort of sob stories now are complete morons who cannot prepare adequately for the future. Sorry. I really have no sympathy for this argument. I make $11.50/hr USD and that equals out through incentives to be around $25000 USD/yr. I have a pretty nice apartment, I pay for my own schooling at a state university, a dog, two cats, two gaming rigs, and two current-gen consoles. I also have a 401k. By budgeting correctly and making decently sound financial investments (aka this rig that I'm on now that has lasted me four years and still plays up-and-coming games), I live pretty comfortably.


In response to Schlid's post about the Wii not being worth $250, no matter how loud you yell, it doesn't negate the popularity of the Wii. The numbers, in my opinion, speak for themselves. When I walk into any local game store, local Target type store, or anywhere that I could possibly buy a gaming system, I see the PS3 on the shelf and no Wiis in sight. Why is this? I think it is because the average gamer: doesn't give two shits about blu-ray; thinks $600 is a huge barrier to entry just to play a few games; and also thinks that Wii mini-games are a fun way to spend a Saturday night with a case of beer. Perhaps I'm in a bad cross-section of society considering I am twenty-one and in college, but I can only name one person I know who owns a PS3 whereas I can cite at least twenty that own Wiis. Obviously, many "gamers" (and if you want to argue that people who think that the Wii is fun aren't gamers then you're being puerile) think that the Wii is in fact worth the $250.

I'm not going to argue with you about the PS3's build quality or future quality because I agree with you. Maybe Sony busted on Blu-Ray, but I know they will shell out some good games for it -- their track record has shown as much. All in all though, the Wii rocks the shit out of the PS3 right now. Refusing to interpret the market data and hold up a banner that says PS3>Wii is analogous to the crazies on the side of the road telling me the world is ending tomorrow -- it just isn't true.

To derail momentarily into something, y'know, interesting.. this has always bothered me a bit.  We keep telling folks to save, save, save.. but if everyone has a million at 60, well then.. we're all fucked.

Me, I'm going to start to tell more people, "It's not worth it.. dude the market sucks. Rember what happend to you in 2000? Save it somewhere else!"

Save more then the other shmoe then.  Not to wave epeens but I max the 401k and a Roth IRA contributions every year, along with the company match I should be quite comfortable regardless of inflation.  Also, there is something to be said for how you manage the money in the accounts that will show up at the finish line.  If you're putting it all into safe 4.5% bonds well, don't be surprised when Pablo The Lawn Boy tells you he has no job openings available for a 70 yr old.

I actually make about $400 more a paycheck in the deferred tax savings due to the 401k.  Sure I can't touch that money untl I retire but, that's what it's there for, I'll takeFuture Worth Value at 8 - 10% (or more, go go index funds!) over the next 20+ years for the win Alex!.

I should get on the 401k horse. I'm not getting any younger.

Aye. The pre-tax breaks for me more or less save me about $1000 overall because my company I work for tacks on a free $750 at the end of the year to my 401k completely tax free.


Yes, it is in fact, FTW. Not enough people know about the Roth IRA. I think it should stay that way.

Yeah you should.  Do some research and put something away.

Not really, but the thing to note is that a million bucks 30 years from now won't be worth as much as a million today.  It'll be closer to $400k in today's money which, while not pennies, isn't a ton to live on for a few decades.

Note again that $400,000 USD > $0.00 USD.

Hard to argue that logic...




Anyway, glad to see I don't need to waste time arguing with Sairon, since others have done it better than I could have.


You'll pay taxes on it later, trust me.  There isn't a single thing out there that qualifies as 'tax free'....

I'm fully aware some people get the Wii for its current games, even if the only game who's scored a decent score is a gamecube game. That's the reason for why I said I think that most people buy it for the potential.   Of the 2 games you mentioned 1 is a multiplatformer and another one is a game which has been slaughtered by the majority.

Read my post again. CASUAL GAMERS DO NOT PAY FOR POTENTIAL. MOST OF THE WII USERS ARE CASUAL GAMERS.

In other words, to use schild's logic about the Wii, people who buy a system for mini-games aren't wondering when the next Rayman Raving Rabbits is coming out. If it's in the store, they buy it. If it's not, they don't. For them, there is no potential, only the now.

Casual Gamers. Har.

Really now.

Casual Gamers?

We've been over this. It's the price point, not the attraction of minigames. The sell-through rate on most of that shit has been total trash.

It's the total package.  People aren't buying the Wii because it's cheap.  They're buying it because it's affordable and reasonably priced for what it offers (fun games).  The PS3 is either not affordable, or not reasonably priced for the majority of gamers.  If people didn't like the games that were on it, they wouldn't buy it, cheap or not.  Your thinking is fundamentally broken.

Mario Galaxy, Metroid, SUPER SMASH BROTHERS MELEE.

The Wii is winning on Zelda and (according to Schild) trash right now.

The lead is suddenly going to get SMALLER when the flagship products come out?  Those three games alone give Nintendo a window to maintain (or expand) the lead until the rest of the dev houses have time to make the high-end stuff.

When I'm living in Japan circa 2009, I'll send Schild PS3 games I find half-submerged in urine in Tokyo subway station bathrooms.   

Playing the Wii as a gamer of 20 some years was a breath of fresh air.  360 and PS3 are more of the same traditional style of console gaming.  So I'd really like to get a Wii.  The reason I haven't dropped for one (and the same for the PS3) is that there just aren't enough games on the system.  The fact that 3rd party developers are shifting over to Wii development is good because I think Nintendo's primary problem with their system is that not enough games come out for it.  Their flagships are good but you still usually get through them in a month (and that says something about them!), but there are 9 other months in the year.

I didn't pick up the 360 until late July 2006, when the crop of triple-A titles was coming out.  Chromehounds, Dead Rising, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Rainbow Six.  I actually bought a big-screen TV just so I could play Gears of War on it As It Was Meant To Be.

I'm afraid that not even Metal Gear 4 is going to get me to buy the system.  I'd rather save $600 and play it at my company's break room.

You and your roommates should all take out life insurance policies on each other.  It'll make living in the same house interesting and edgy.  Make me the executioner of your will, too.  I'll avenge you!  (http://www.dark-smilies.de/pics/Metzel/metzel039.gif)

If it were just me, I wouldn't have gotten a Wii when I did for the same reason.  The reason I got it when I did is because the wife was all over it, and gaming with the wife is  :heart:.  I'm wanting either a 360 or PS3 (I don't see reason to get both), but need a HDTV first.  Maybe this Christmas.  It will probably be 360 just because the games are there - Fall of Man is about it for the PS3, and Gears looks so much better.

The Wii definitely becomes more of a must-have if you have friends that come over and hang out and play.  We had a party at my friend's house who had a 56" or some other human-sized television set with Wii Sports on it, and while we were playing poker it had been on all night keeping people entertained.

Maxing sounds great and all.. but that's a HUGE chunk of my paycheck.. like "go live under a bridge" huge.  For SOME crazy reason I'd rather keep my kids in a house.   Instead I max the company 50% match, plus a little extra.  Yeah, it's not going to be a huge amount later, but fuckit.  I'd rather die than live in a nursing home, and I've seen what happened to my grandparent's estates when taxes hit, so I know that 401(k) money is going to the gub'ment later.

Besides, Angry.bob's revolution should hit before then, so it'll all be wasted money anywho.  :-D

Do brains taste better if you remove the head from the body before eating them?  :vv:

Exactly, either that or the chicken little "the sky is falling" due to whatever environmental calamity is the cool trend at the moment.  I've been wasting my money by maxing out my RRSPs (Canadian equivalent of 401K/IRA) and doubling up my mortgage payment to pay it off faster.  Now I'm going to spend my money on cocaine and fast cars instead!

Has anyone invested in the iShares stuff from Barclays?  Specifically I'd like to know if there is any way that the assets could be wiped out due to some dodgy accounting at a cut-throat investment bank like Barclays.  I wouldn't think so since they are all just index funds which should be buying the appropriate underlying securities...

It seems quite difficult for fund managers to beat the indexes so I might as well invest in the indexes themselves and enjoy the benefits of an extremely low MER.

I'm still waiting for Mass Effect. That's the point at which I finally cave and get a 360. Unless Signe caves first.

At some undetermined future point, I'll spring for a 360, but it'll be after I get an HDTV of some kind. Maybe Christmas, probably next year. A PS3? I've yet to see one good reason I should even consider it.

I've seen one game that I would really like to play on the PS2 and that's just not enough to inspire me to buy one.  We got our big screen HDTV a few years ago, cheap because everyone wanted a plasma and we didn't care so much.  When we buy a house, I probably won't want such a big thing in our living room so maybe then we'll upgrade.  This monster suits us fine for now and I'm going through a cheapy stage in my life and Righ is going through a spendy stage.  I don't know what the hell is going to happen!  We should try and go through our stages together, sort of like us women and our monthly curse.

And now there may be one less reason (http://wii.ign.com/articles/800/800761p1.html), bringing the total to -1.

Katamari isn't a system seller. So sorry.

What's weird is before the katamari, I knew nothing about Katamari on the PS3, all I knew was there was going to be a Loco Roco. I thought the next Katamari was a X360 exclusive - not that it matters, since the original people aren't involved.

What about the Metroids and Super Smash Brothers?

Aren't those system sellers? Super Smash Brothers with nunchuks sounds amazing.

Metroid hasn't really ever been a system seller. Weirdly enough. It's the nichiest of the Ninty games. Pretty sure the Advance Wars stuff outsold it. Not Battalion Wars.


Don't be gay.

To each his or her own, but I know I always sucked at the original and GC Smash Brothers although I had a good time playing.

The People's Revolutionary Justice Council will still honor people's 401k's. The fact I keep my annual contribution at the cap each year made that an easy decision. Seriously, put every cent you can into your 401k.

Awesome.

And again, I'd max if i could. But the max contribution would be 35% of my annual gross salary. That just doesn't fly.

Those ads don't even deliver entertainment, much less promote the PS3.  Sony's marketing sucks, their vaunted PS3 is too expensive and their company is ran by slack-jawed elitist pricks.  They are completely out of touch with the consumer since only the 'elite' (read: the idle rich) can afford their system.  Which has very few titles anyway.

Hey Sony...
1. Drop the price of your system
2. Get some titles
3. Profit.

Sony is in the downward slide because of their befuddled management and I'm happy as hell to see it.  I'm not buying a Wii because I like modern graphics but I understand their strategy.  I like my 360, except that in order to keep it running I can't play movies in it. You know....like it was MEANT to do.

This current generation sucks, let's hope for the Wii Wii and the NeXt box.  Forget the PS4, it'll cost two kidneys and your house.

If the PS3 represents supercomputer performance for ONLY $600, the PS4 will be so powerful that Homeland Security will ban it for fear of rendering military grade encryption useless. So no need to worry about the cost then.

PS3 is a technological masterpiece for the price, but I personally only know of one person who bought one to play games on it. If it's possible to connect multiple systems to play games Sony needs to woo some developers that are willing to make games that scale up to support it. Even then, the above-average consumer isn't going to shell out in excess of $1200 for gaming hardware bliss without a good base of titles that can make awe-inspiring use of it.

Sony could get into the distributed architecture hardware business and start selling systems pre-configured with Linux to better leverage private sector and government sales but it's a tough sell to get money for serious computer hardware called a Playstation when it's a brand name most of the people signing the checks associate with games that their children or grandchildren play.

I respect Sony's ambition and I'm glad to see distributed architectures gain more traction, but it seems like a schizophrenic design.

No, they couldn't. They could build something entirely different with no BD drive and more than one network port and people might be interested if the price was right. But honestly, the only bit that anybody might want is the IBM Cell BE processor as a floating point node, and they probably don't have the deal to sell that for non-PS applications. Their deal with IBM and Toshiba probably gave them those markets.

I enjoy watching Schild squirm and mouth "We didn't need that game anyway!" as development focus swings away from the PS3 and towards the Wii.  I'll probably get to see it a lot in coming months, too.

You're trying too hard.  We get it already.

As much as you would like this to be to spite Schlid, as long as game developers think they can sell games on the PS3, it will still get dev focus. Note that the new Katamari was scrapped due to porting issues.

If the sales numbers were reversed, I somehow think they would have found a way to work through the "porting issues" involved.

Maybe, but I would like to think in my pretty world that companies are learning not to release complete shit in a box. Or it could just be that I'm still mad at McQuaid for fucking my face for a grand total of close to $86.95.

My point in bringing up maxing the contribution to the 401k earlier was that there is a hidden (sort of) benefit in the tax savings.  When I went from just doing the company match to maxing it my contribution went up A LOT but the hit to my paycheck, while not trivial, was not nearly as severe as I had expected.  I look at is as the government providing a match as well as my company.

I have 200 bucks less a week to screw around with but when I'm staring at retirement I'll be a lot happier, I think it's worth a bit of scrimping.  Plus, it's fun to watch the numbers grow, and they grow pretty quick when you are saving that much.

We finally got our 401K earlier this year, but I've been socking money into Vanguard IRA's on my own for a while now, and it is fantastic.  I'd sock more into the 401K, but I'm hoping that I'll be self-employed here shortly, so I'll just stick with the Vanguard account.

I looked into the 401k as a self-employed thing (cause, you know, eventually...) you can do you're own company match and do a contribution up to 45k a year with the 2006 changes.  Pre-Tax!!!  I've seen a few things that suggest the 401k (even with the 2006 changes) isn't entirely optimal as some other, more involved plans, but, I dunno, being able to sock away that kind of money AND lower your tax burden significantly seems pretty good.

Dude, I don't disagree at all, but I make $43k a year.  $15.5k is the max contribution to a 401(k).  I simply CAN NOT pay for my house, student loans, kids, and medical/dental/life insurance on $27.5k a year pre-tax - and that's ALL I'd be paying, no luxuries at all.  I'd be at government-assistance level of income. 

"It's only $200 a week" is fucking hilarity at this income level.  Fuck I'd be elated to have an additional $100 every two weeks. I fucking laugh every time someone so far above the median income says "Max your contribution."  Maybe I would if you and Mrs. Antoinette would care to work the fields a bit.

<rerail>

Sony just got a pretty big win in terms of adult gaming. The next Quantic Dreams game (previously made Omikron and Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit) is a PS3 exclusive.

Not sure if it's an unannounced game or Heavy Rain. All I know is that Fahrenheit was ALMOST a revelation (the ending sucked the wind out of the other 6 hours of gameplay :( :()

I liked when Farenheit turned into a Dragonball Z game.  Granted I eat that stuff up, Matrix/DBZ style fights, but that was unexpected.

You shut the hell up or they'll do that shit again.

Well....fuck!

Oh I hope they do! Just not in that game.  I like that style of fighting they did but it was so opposite what the game was.  It's like if a Star Wars adventure game suddenly broke out into a hillbilly dancing segment.

They have just said that there is no Supernatural shit in this game.

YAY.

I hope that rules out AI run amok.

As long as they remove the necrophilia, it might have a chance. That just totally took me out of the Indigo Prophecy story.

Wow, I must have missed that plot branch.

I immediately linked this to the 380 games by March statement and assumed Sony got desperate and were going to port a bunch of fucking Hentai games.  No pun intended.

The main character "dies" before the last series of battles. I think this is what he was referring to. Other characters even note that his skin is "ice cold." I was mostly pissed that nipples had to be removed when the game was imported to America.


I'll tell you what, there are one or two Hentai games that are actually interesting adventure games, despite all the other stuff. Yeah, I've been known to play them once or twice, I'm a horny male, sue me.

Screw that, there's a whole shitload of good stuff in Japan we should see this gen.

Look, desperation brought us Final Fantasy.

It's a good thing, perhaps the best of things.

Necessity is the mother of invention.  I'd play a hentai game if it was fun, but that's a big if.

A fun hentai game rather elminates the poitn of being a hentai game.  Theres a reason most - if not all - have a 'hands free' mode, eh.  Fun means you'd be playing with it instead of yourself.

Sounds like WMP is a hentai game, then.

Yes, that's what I was referring to. The chick humps a dead guy, then has a baby by him. I didn't mind the matrix-y combat part, though it was pretty abrupt. The zombie boffing, though, was just a bit off for me. Otherwise, the game was pretty decent.

The chick who had made no previous forward advances suddenly has abrupt sex in a subway before the final level. It was awkward to watch and seemed really tacked on. That, or they had a bunch of plot that never made it into the game...

What happened in here?  :|

From what I recall reading, something like a 3rd of the game ended up having to be cut, which is why the last parts of the game were rather rushed feeling. 

Zombies. :vv:

Yeah, you can tell. In the beginning of the game things feel much more organic. I was actually into doing all the little things, playing basketball for cash, using the yo-yo to think, etc. Then...pow...mad rush to a final confrontation.

Speaking of zombies, World War Z is a fucking amazing book.  Read it to remove the bad taste of Fahrenheit's ending

I agree. I read it on the plane the last time I had to travel and still have the last third to get through. You can tell the author spent a lot of time thinking about the contingencies during a disaster and human nature in the face of adversity. The characters are really well done and make it seem like a true documentary.

451? How did that have a bad ending?

That was the non-American name for Indigo Prophecy.

Goddamn my ethno-centrism. I'm gearing up to meet with my thesis advisor today so the Lit is on the brain.

Did you watch Equilibrium?

Looks interesting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_%282002_film%29 . The premise of combining all the dystopian aspects of the novels into one for a movie sounds great. Do you know where I can get a copy of the movie other than illegally? (I actually believe in non-piracy)

Unfortunately, no. I really would like to see a good movie adaptation of The Giver though. I always liked Jonas as a character.

Rumors floating around re: $499 price for PS3 soon (http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16721).  Add some games worth playing and I'm sold.  :)

Not enough of a price cut.  If I wanted a PS3 at $500, I would have picked up the 20GB model when it was still available.

Rumour is being denied by Sony's president on Reuters: "At present we have no plans"

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUST5013420070706?src=070607_0814_INVESTING_comment_n_analysis (http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUST5013420070706?src=070607_0814_INVESTING_comment_n_analysis)

Considering the still high production costs I don't think Sony can cut the price by much anyhow ...

Equilibrium is a woefully underappreciated flick.  In the category of "thinking man's action movies" it's roughly the equal of the first Matrix, and far superior to the other two.

No, I'm pretty sure I watched Killjoy's copy.  He buys wacky things is weird places.  I think he found Old Boy in Wal*Mart.

The funny thing is that selling a model of PS3 without a hard drive, unlike the 360, would be not as bad an idea since you can put any 2.5" in it.  It's like Bizzaro World.  Sony needs to educate the public rather than confuse them via advertising, but a price drop should help sales anyway.

No amount of Sony re-education of the public is going to help them sell a $600 console. The public just doesn't see that as a value-oriented proposition. At $500, maybe. At $400, education is possible. It doesn't matter if you can put any 2.5" hard drive in the system, because Joe Public won't do that anyway. It's against the nature of the typical Joe Public console buyer, who buys the console to just work as is with little additional hardware expenditure. Buying a lightgun is something Joe Public gets. Buying a hard drive is something geeks do.

Your argument is still predicated on the absolute measurement of $600 as "too much money".  Your Joe Public argument is good, but that segment is resistant to education anyway, responding best to flashy lights and lies.  I'm mostly talking about the people that are looking to get either a 360 or PS3 and think things like "de 360 has dat dere extry hard drive ye can get", but then we go back to the fact that the PS3 doesn't have any games.  If you are going to buy a console that doesn't have any games, you might as well get a Wii.

I still think that most people are unaware of the things the PS3 does, while most of the 360 functionality is better known.  /shrug

Anyway, seems like the price will drop before the end of the month if Internet Rumors are to be trusted, so we should get to find out how things go at $500.

Just now at lunch I bought some stuff at Best Buy and as I was checking out at that little manager's desk two people in front of me were buying Wiis and a bunch of nunchucks and games.  First time I've ever seen this store have them in stock.  They were older Asian women, this "aim for a broader audience" thing is working gangbusters for Nintendo.  After checking out they got on their cell phones and called their friends to let them know a few were in stock and asked wether or not they should pick up a couple more.

I didn't buy one even though they had them however, meh.

Ok...I found an article. The source is some dude who posts on a few forums that in the past has given very respectable information about sales at electronics merchandisers. Gamespot is saying that the guy has been right in the past but he also only mentions Circuit City having an ad coming soon with that price. So they think it is probably a sale at Circuit City and not an overall price cut.

A "price break" which is what the ads show, is not the same as a "sale." A "price break" is normally a permanent thing in retailer nomenclature.

Honestly, I'd love to think that it is a "price break". I might buy a PS3 at that price, but somehow I think Sony is too arrogant to do that.

Aaannnd that's a big no to the price drop.

Linky (http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUST5013420070706)

Sega denied the Dreamcast price cut the day before they did it. Denials mean nothing until E3.

Apparently, the "deny on friday, make cut on sunday" logic applied to this, according to that WSJ article that was posted in a new thread a minute ago which I am too lazy to find and link.

Heh. Hilarious.

Meh, well so much for that. Other thread wasn't there when I posted that, because I actually looked.