Well, my dad works at Nintendo and~: Console Wars Horseshit Megathread

[Maledict]

*shrugs*

I don't get the hate on Gaf. Yes there's a vast number of idiots, but it has such an insanely huge population it's bound to have. There's still a lot of decent conversations there - and it's not like anywhere else doesn't also have it's idiots and terrible threads.

I do find the number of people obsessing over the slightest detail on sonic games or JRPGs slightly unnerving however...

[Fabricated]

Incidentially the VGX or whatever it was happened and...hoo boy. Video games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaCso_b_PtY

[Miasma]

A lot of people seem quite upset Joel McHale mocked such a very mockworthy "event".  I've watched a few of these clip videos of his hosting and I think it was fantastic.

[Jeff Kelly]

This was actually part of what triggered my 'GAF is bullshit!' post.

They all complained that VGX was an embarassement, a corporate shill event and a big circlejerk, yet most complained about McHale's hosting because he 'didn't treat the event and the people  with respect'.

I say that the only way you can approach such events is by mercilessly mocking everyone involved.

[HaemishM]

They all complained that VGX was an embarassement, a corporate shill event and a big circlejerk, yet most complained about McHale's hosting because he 'didn't treat the event and the people  with respect'.

I'm sorry... respect? For what is basically an industry fellating itself on television for its least creative endeavors?

EDIT: Also, was this shit live? Because it was fucking amateur hour and expecting a comic not to go off on it was kind of stupid.

[dusematic]

lol, mchale was so off script and made everyone else so uncomfortable im guessing he was intoxicated.  pretty funny.  "i live in the quantic dreams multiverse." lol

[Yegolev]

He did say he took a shot whenever he heard "next-gen".

[schild]

Incidentially the VGX or whatever it was happened and...hoo boy. Video games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaCso_b_PtY

This is amazing.

[schild]

I don't even know what VGX is or is supposed to be. Does gaming need awards?

Can't we go back to the days when the only public faces of gaming were Miyamoto and Will Wright and they were awkward enough to make everyone else seem normal?

[Paelos]

That coverage of gaming is the best yet. "How much did you pay him?"

I was rolling.

[patience]

This was actually part of what triggered my 'GAF is bullshit!' post.

They all complained that VGX was an embarassement, a corporate shill event and a big circlejerk, yet most complained about McHale's hosting because he 'didn't treat the event and the people  with respect'.

I say that the only way you can approach such events is by mercilessly mocking everyone involved.

Eh it wasn't most. They did a community poll and 60% of them preferred Mchale over Keighley.

[Margalis]

The best thing about VGX talk is the idea that developers were insulted by Joel. Sure, maybe 2 were. I'm pretty sure everyone else took it in stride and understood what was happening.

VGX and it's participants got exactly the amount of respect they deserved.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't get the hate on Gaf. Yes there's a vast number of idiots, but it has such an insanely huge population it's bound to have. There's still a lot of decent conversations there - and it's not like anywhere else doesn't also have it's idiots and terrible threads.

For a community that claims to be passionate about 'gaming' they're too keen on shitting on everything that GAF as a whole doesn't deem to be part of the gaming orthodoxy. The community still perpetuates too much of the 'gamer bullshit' found nearly everywhere in NA gamer culture. Hating on gamers or games that are not 'core', classification of games as 'non-games' just because they don't follow traditional mechanics or difficulty levels, the same misogynistic bullshit I'm entirely tired of reading about, confounding being popular with being great ('a GotY list without Bioshock Infinite and The last of us is worthless') while at the same time hating on AAA culture and the masses gobbling it up (the GAF game of the year thread features a level of cognitive dissonance that is mind boggling), confounding 'hard' with challenging or dismissing 'easy' games as non-games etc. ('should be more like Dark Souls' is seriously a thing over there which is a stupid opinion whether you like dark souls or not)

There are decent conversations but they all degenerate into the usual bullshit once the general population of GAF has found the thread and started shitting it up which for me makes GAF only marginally better than most other forums out there where the neocons of gamers are enforcing the status quo against those pesky casuals and women.

[Job601]

Lately the thing that's driving me crazy about gamer culture is they all think "dark and gritty" means sophisticated and adult, when it actually means "made for teenage boys."

[Goreschach]

Lately the thing that's driving me crazy about gamer culture is they all think "dark and gritty" means sophisticated and adult, when it actually means "made for teenage boys."

Lately?

[tazelbain]

Lately the thing that's driving me crazy about gamer culture is they all think "dark and gritty" means sophisticated and adult, when it actually means "made for teenage boys."

You're just substituting one false generalization for another.

[pxib]

[Jeff Kelly]

CES announcements:

Xbox One sold through to customers 'over 3 million' units in 2013
PS 4 sold through to customers 4.2 million units by Dec. 28th.

PS4 will likely outsell Wii U's lifetime to date sales by end of January.

If I read the numbers correctly PS 4 has on average sold 40% more units than Xbone in every territory where both are available.

Anecdotal evidence from Germany. PS 4 still sold out everywhere, XBox One has been available in large quantities from every retailer since before Christmas. Right now every big box store in my city has at least 30 Xbones, no PS 4.

[Falconeer]

Playstation Now? Do we care?

[schild]

Could be cool. Great for older games.

[Phildo]

Yeah, but I still can't play my old PS2 discs on there, can I?

[schild]

Naw, but whatever.

[Phildo]

Well, I don't currently have a system and if I could just buy a PS4 and get all the functionality out of it, that would be sweet.  Otherwise, I'm off to hunt down a used, backwards-compatible PS3.

[Yegolev]

Phildo.

#0: http://pcsx2.net/

#1: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=23421.msg1230427#msg1230427

#2: http://wiki.pcsx2.net/index.php/GSDX#Quick_guide_to_the_settings

#3: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=23421.msg1232215#msg1232215

[dusematic]

So what are the chances Nintendo meets its target of 9 million Wii U's this fiscal year? 

[Jeff Kelly]

Maybe but Hell has to freeze over first and then some pigs need to fly.

In all seriousness: never, ever will they meet that goal it was always unrealistic.

[dusematic]

Maybe but Hell has to freeze over first and then some pigs need to fly.

In all seriousness: never, ever will they meet that goal it was always unrealistic.

if you want to reach the moon you have to aim for the stars.   

[Jeff Kelly]

That sales target was so ridiculous thatn it raised a lot of eyebrows among investors and industry insiders. Nintendo hasn't released numbers for december yet but the forecasts put Nintendo at 4.5 million consoles lifetime to date as of 31st of december. Iwata would have to move the same amount of merchandise by the end of Nintendo's fiscal year in march - a ridiculous proposition if there ever was one.

In fact missing that goal and finally having to admit that the Wii U is a commercial failure that probably won't even reach Gamecube numbers could lead to a shift in Nintendo's overall strategy and could even lead to some reshuffling of executive positions inside the company. There's even talk that Iwata himself might have to step down once the reality of the Wii U's failure hits.

I don't know what Nintendo's chief executives have been smoking when they made that forecast but it had to be good stuff for them to go so far off the deep end. Nintendo will likely miss the projected sales number by several million units and it will be a very bad day for Nintendo's stock and overall value. I mean Sony sold thze same amount of PS 4 consoles in 6 weeks that Nintendo took more than a year to sell. By march the XBone will also have surpassed Nintendos LTD sales numbers and Nintendo can be very happy whn they reach 10 million units by the time the Wii U get's replaced (if it will be replaced).

[Miasma]

I was thinking about buying Xenoblade Chronicles and since the wiiU is backwards compatable maybe getting one, so I finally took a look at it.  That controller looks, and is, a gimped tablet that only has 3-5 hours of battery life.  Despite the fact that people seem to like that new Mario game a lot they did not create a console bundle for it.  Shipping them out with two choices of system based on a laughably small amount of flash memory, 8 or 32 gig, almost makes me angry.  It costs too much for how weak it is.  Their online system is still badly managed.  I guess I would have to buy a wii controller for some wii games.

If they came out with a bundle that included mario and the much better "pro" controller and reduced the price I might buy one.  It was also painful trying to look up info because they gave it such a stupid name.  A lot of people don't even realize they are different systems.  It is so unpopular google auto "corrected" many of my searches that used "wiiu" to just be "wii" and I had to use the "No search for what I actually typed damn it" option.

Then I found out Xenoblade is some sort of rare hard to find game that sells for twice the original msrp, used, so fuck that.

[Fabricated]

The WiiU was doomed the instant the Xbone and PS4 architectures were decided.

If everyone had stuck with the previous gen designs where it's some wacky cobbled together board based on some custom chip or repurposed PowerPC thing maybe, but now you have two architectures for modern consoles:

PC, PS4, Xbone - x86 architecture, desktop style AMD GPU, lots of RAM.

and

WiiU - Some PowerPC thing again and a custom AMD GPU?

And it's also the least powerful of all the consoles and has a gimmicky ass controller. Not a good recipe for getting multiplatform titles.

[dusematic]

One would think they could do pretty well just copying the competition's hardware and then having their 1st party games on it.  But I guess they feel that strategy sucks after Gamecube.

[naum]

That sales target was so ridiculous thatn it raised a lot of eyebrows among investors and industry insiders. Nintendo hasn't released numbers for december yet but the forecasts put Nintendo at 4.5 million consoles lifetime to date as of 31st of december. Iwata would have to move the same amount of merchandise by the end of Nintendo's fiscal year in march - a ridiculous proposition if there ever was one.

WiiU is doomed, with lackluster sales despite holiday ad blitz (I don't watch much television but it seemed like WiiU ads were everywhere, on networks, on Hulu, etc.…).

If the price was lower, it might be more viable but it's probably too late for that now.

Meanwhile, Nintendo sold ~8M copies of Pokemon X and Pokemon Y in last couple of months and lifetime sales of 3DS now >40M (and I cannot recall ever seeing a TV ad for 3DS though I'm almost certain Nintendo must have done at least a little TV advertising). It doesn't have a robust library of titles either but there are half-dozen to dozen games making it a worthy purchase.

[HaemishM]

The Wii U might have succeeded had it been the hardware they released for the Wii - i.e. an HD graphics capable motion sensor game console. They failed to take any real advantage of the motion-sensing controls when the Wii came out by forcing 3rd party developers to make 1) a game with motion controls and 2) a game without HD graphics in order to be on the Wii. #2 alone meant that any 3rd party dev that wanted a multi-platform game would have to create 2 entirely different versions of the game with the most expensive part of game dev - art assets. I thought not having HD graphics wouldn't hurt the Wii and it didn't - but it DID hurt Nintendo's long-term prospects because of how much distance it put between 3rd party devs and Nintendo.

[Yegolev]

I guess I would have to buy a wii controller for some wii games.

Yes.

The ghost game is very cool.  Not enough software makes use of the pad.

[dusematic]

I guess I would have to buy a wii controller for some wii games.

Yes.

The ghost game is very cool.  Not enough software makes use of the pad.

A little too imbalanced as the ghost.  I've played it a lot with different people and it's extremely rare the ghost loses.