@AMiGR

I found that the muscle cars felt more like autocampers. Furthermore both next-gen console versions of the game have frame rate issues - especially in the down-hill section.

I thought the car modelling was pretty fun, but when I realized it was the most fun I could have in the game disappointment set in.

@clebin

Quote:

In the last generation, we saw extremely weak early PS2 games

I don't know, haven't followed the Playstation scene for years but God of War 2 looks good, almost NG.

http://media.1up.com/media?id=3115667&type=lg

In other news Kingdom Hearts III is being worked on for the PS3.

@DaveyD

Quote:

I have a question, at such a highres as 1080 lines will anyone be able to see a difference between interlaced (1080i) and progressive (1080p)? I doubt it.

From what I've read even the difference between 720p and 1080p is pretty much invisible unless you have a *huge* TV and you're sitting very close.

Quote:

Also not many flatscreens can handle 1080p, only the really expensive ones.

I looked around a while back and couldn't find any 1080p TVs in the UK at all!, that seems to have changed now but they *start* at £1300

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Whyzzat?

@Trezzer

Quote:

If it were we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. Thus my point about the one year old titles that don't perform as well today as they did a year ago on supposedly superior hardware.

I think the hype definitely surrounds this issue. We see 2 levels of hype here. One is the SonyFanboys. A year ago they jumped up and down proclaiming the PS3 would beat the 360 due to quality of launchgames and shortages of consoles they saw with the 360. We then have Sony who for the last year spent way more effort to dis the 360 then Microsoft did against the PS3. (Not that Microsoft didn't do that it's just part of Sony's hype was to build themselves up by knocking others down.)

A year later what does Sony give the world? A system that's under there original spec -- no dual HDMI for example. A system that has it's own shortages. A system that seems ill tested - examples would be the GUI, warmed over PSP, lack of a lockable video scaler, crappy cables in the package. Launch games that are, as a group, not as diverse or impressive as the 360.

The PS3 is no doubt a decent system. But many SonyFanboys have crow to eat and the press, who historically service Sony's good side, are a bit disappointed.

A game designer's perspective on Wii, PS3 and XBox 360.

Ernest Adams of Bullfrog:

"So who, at the end of the day, will be the also-ran in this generation of consoles? On the global scale, I’d say it could well be neither the PS3 or the Wii, but the Xbox 360. The PS3 will win over the hardcore gamers who have to have the fastest, most amazing machine on available. The Wii will skim off the younger players and those who don’t have as much money to spend.!"

@MikeB

Quote:

Ernest Adams of Bullfrog: "So who, at the end of the day, will be the also-ran in this generation of consoles? On the global scale, I’d say it could well be neither the PS3 or the Wii, but the Xbox 360. The PS3 will win over the hardcore gamers who have to have the fastest, most amazing machine on available. The Wii will skim off the younger players and those who don’t have as much money to spend.!"

PS3 for hardcore gamers? Certainly there will be some on both consoles. Somewhere it said the 360 has the highest game count per console so it's not like we're not seeing hardcore gamers buy that package.

Wii skimming off players w/o much money? You can find Xbox360 Premium packages for $299 in the USA. Microcenter was one place that had the $400 premium w/ a $100 rebate. Also there's a line of Xbox games for $10-$20 which will work and Xbox360 games now at $30.. I think next Christmas you'll likely see similar deals on the 360 and it may take a bite out of that part of the Wii market.

@MikeB

At the top end it depends on the PS3 showing this superiority. At the bottom end it depends on the next wave of Wii titles, and also whether we'll see a price cut to the 360 before next Christmas. If Microsoft wants it enough, they'll cut the price.

He's right that the 360 is sandwiched between Wii and PS3, but many buyers are probably sandwiched between the stereotype of hardcore and casual themselves. I think the PS3 will end up outselling the 360 because the brand is strong and the machine isn't broken.

Success for the 360 would be two halve Sony's lead and then some. Success for the Wii is (EDIT: hmm..maybe) more about a steady stream of good games, but being 2nd place in sales would help that cause. It sounds a bit wishy-washy to say that they could all succeed, but if Microsoft and Nintendo carve out equal shares of Sony's lead, that probably true.

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 22-Dec-2006 at 04:14 PM.

@clebin

Quote:

It sounds a bit wishy-washy to say that they could all succeed, but if Microsoft and Nintendo carve out equal shares of Sony's lead, that probably true.

And if all three get a fair market share (or just large enough numbers) we're also likely to see more exclusive titles that take advantage of each specific system. It's still too early to see whether that will truly be a benefit with regards to PS3/360, but keeping Wii development on its own track is certainly necessary unless we're talking very simple titles.

The Wii is likely to have awesome third party support at least for the first year or two. Whether it will continue depends on the success of the concept as a whole. Support for 360 is already massive and Sony will do well enough by the power of the brand itself. It's not as if it will crash and burn, but who knows how many need to be sold to get Sony back in black again? Either way they all have challenges.

I pretty much see Wii as the return of the king. Nintendo is back to kick #### and take names. Microsoft is doing what they do best - give the market what they want at an affordable price and gain market share for each generation. Sony is ... well, I'm not sure what they're doing any more. They have great engineering still, but unfocused in other areas. But like I mentioned before the brand name alone is probably enough to keep them afloat and maybe even take the lead - although currently my bets are on Wii - even if I'm not as keen as I was on it.

Last edited by Trezzer on 22-Dec-2006 at 06:25 PM.

@Trezzer

Quote:

The Wii is likely to have awesome third party support at least for the first year or two. Whether it will continue depends on the success of the concept as a whole.

If you look at the DS as an example Nintendo makes the vast majority of games for it's own console. My feeling is since the PS3/360 are so close developers will tend to do those 2 consoles if they want to be cross platform. In the end I think we'll see Nintendo making 80-90% of all games on the Wii, similar to the DS platform.


Quote:

who knows how many need to be sold to get Sony back in black again

A sh*tload assuming the estimates of $300-$400 loss per PS3 is happening. Assming Sony profits 50% on each game (unlikey) that means each person needs to spend $600 or buy roughly 10 games each. I think that is highly unlikely.

However, this is the reason Sony included Blu-Ray. Sony owns movies and receives licensing for Blu-Ray. Thus, if you encourage the customer base to buy the new movie format you have another avenue of revenue besides games for your console. If Blu-Ray catches on that $300 loss will likely be nullified by games+Blu-Ray sales. Right now w/ the majority of homes w/ SDTV it's unlikely that bet will pay off in the short term.

@BrianK

Quote:

If you look at the DS as an example Nintendo makes the vast majority of games for it's own console. My feeling is since the PS3/360 are so close developers will tend to do those 2 consoles if they want to be cross platform. In the end I think we'll see Nintendo making 80-90% of all games on the Wii, similar to the DS platform.

I'm sorry, but you've got that pretty wrong. Nintendo does deliver a healthy dose of games for the DS - not least amongst the best-selling titles- but third-party support is extremely strong and most developers are on Wii as well. Several developers have set up development houses exclusively for Wii because simply porting games made little sense.

Have a quick look at the Nintendo DS game list or Wii games list to see for yourself. Unfortunately the Wii list is a bit harder to check up on because the DS list has most developers listed while the Wii list doesn't.

There are some 600+ released titles for DS (titles released in three territories count as three) - Nintendo would have a hard time developing them all

Last edited by Trezzer on 22-Dec-2006 at 07:58 PM.

@BrianK

Quote:

. I think next Christmas you'll likely see similar deals on the 360 and it may take a bite out of that part of the Wii market.

I think a price cut will happen in the near future, but Nintendo has enough room to cut prices as well. They did not have to spend much on R&D, in fact the idea of adding motion sensing abilities to game consoles has been around for many years.

The PS3 isn't broken, I think they will iron out most remaining issues in time before going global. The pixel flipping issue with some games, remaining 2% compatibility to take care of and cross media bar multitasking during gameplay.

Speculation: Adding HD-DVD to substitute the XBox 360's DVD drive may prove to be difficult. I believe the current HD-DVD addon option is only a x1 speed drive, pretty slow for games but enough for playing HD-DVD movies, but unless they somehow can spin discs faster (I don't think so) it's far too slow to read the current DVD disks at ordinary gaming speeds. The XBox 360 has to spin DVDs like crazy to reduce loading times (Harddrive is not a default minimum-spec option for gamers...), HD-DVD drives and Blu-Ray drives spin at much slower (including the x2 drive found in the PS3), they achieve high read speads at low spin counts due much higher disc data density. 1 spin equals more data being read.

If at some point they release a newly designed faster drive, current HD-DVD buyers won't benefit unless buying a new console or maybe add-on another drive.

Last edited by MikeB on 22-Dec-2006 at 08:57 PM.

Sony has upped the output of PS3 hardware to the Japanese market as well.

Media Create Co. on Fri. reported that the PS3 sold 70,942 units from Dec. 11 to Dec. 17. By comparison, the PS3 sold 50,171 units the week prior.

So it's outselling the PSP and PS2 which this output. Despite the release of Blue Dragon the Xbox360 is lagging behind with 17,168 units sold for the week.

So PS3 total number in Japan is now at least 308,949 units. As the PS3 already outsold the XBox 360's one year lead for Japan in a matter of hours, it IMO seems very unlikely the console will become anything of significance on the Japanese market.

@MikeB

Quote:

Adding HD-DVD to substitute the XBox 360's DVD drive may prove to be difficult. I believe the current HD-DVD addon option is only a x1 speed drive

That's assuming they wouldn't just put a faster one in there. Or that it can't read dvds faster than it reads HD-DVDs (i.e. just spin faster while playing games dvds).

For the record 1x HD-DVD is equivalent to 1x BluRay, 29.9x cd-speed or 3.3x dvd-speed (4.36 megs per second)

@MikeB

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As the PS3 already outsold the XBox 360's one year lead for Japan in a matter of hours

It didn't. In 2005 360 sold 81,770 and 163,014 this year. It was a little over 190k combined after PS3 launched. The PS3 sold almost 190k, so it was close but no cigar. It has since surpassed by far, but that is hardly surprising in Japan. It's been Playstation-land for generations and isn't likely to change even if Microsoft manages to gain a larger market share in other territories. At best they can hope for a GameCube-like performance in Japan.

None the less I'm sure they're thrilled with 17k sold units (added to last weeks' numbers) since the regular sales numbers are between 1000 and 4000 a week. Microsoft have to keep pushing titles like Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Lost Planet and Lost Odyssey (getting Lost are we?) out to gain the respect of Japanese gamers. It will take generations but they're already off to a better start than with the original Xbox, which is what they intended.

@Trezzer
Thanks for the listing. However, for what reason, when I think of Nintendo. Looking at the list other companies make them but it seems Nintendo publishes most of them, so there's where I'm likely confusing myself.

@MikeB
You're right Nintendo didn't spend much on R&D on what is essentially a Gamecube2 w/ a fancy controller. However, they're unlikely to do price cuts a year later. Microsoft has a 1 year lead and bigger pockets. If a price cut is coming I'd bet on the 360 vs the Wii.

PS3 isn't broken. LIkely in a year they'll iron out the issues they didn't find in the last 2 years of work.


Your speculation on the HD-DVD in the 360 is incorrect. HD-DVD speed is the same as Blu-Ray. They can use an HD-DVD at the same rate of speed as the Blu-Ray drive. Yes it won't be quite as fast as the DVD drive. But, a slightly slower rate for a quieter and 1 unit system would likely be acceptable to users.

You are right current HD-DVD users and owners won't benefit from this inclusion but then again it's not meant to benefit them. Though we could be wrong about this - Microsoft could extend an exchange program of sorts. Heck even if Microsoft didn't likely Gamestop would purchase your old console and sell you a new one.

When the 360 goes to 65nm I really hope Microsoft does this. I can think of a number of people that would like a quieter system and would step up spending for a included HD-DVD drive.

@Trezzer

The PS3 2x Blu-Ray drive reads at a minimum 72 Mbps, this equals 9 MB/s. The DVD/CD given reading/writing speeds are max speeds. The minimum data transfer required for playing Blu-ray movies is 54Mbps according to Blu-ray.com, so the PS3 is faster than required.

The XBox 360 core, does not come with a harddrive making the disc reading speed more important.

@MikeB

Quote:

I don't agree, neither version looks like crap IMO. Sure I think Formula 1 looks like more fun:

Wow, that looks awful. Seriously, I had to check that it wasn't a PS2 title. GT3 and $ bon PS2 both look better than 'Formula 1'

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@Trezzer

According to Famitsu Marketing data survey this month 113,000 Xbox 360 units had been sold in Japan earlier year. 176,000 Xbox 360 consoles had been sold in Japan in total. The Japanese did not like the original XBox which sold better, but never received content of interest to the Japanese. I think many people dislike the fact that the prior console was discontinued, before there was anything of interest to most owners.

@MikeB

Quote:

The PS3 isn't broken, I think they will iron out most remaining issues in time before going global. The pixel flipping issue with some games, remaining 2% compatibility to take care of and cross media bar multitasking during gameplay.

And upscaling of PS2 games, and bringing back force feedback/rumble...hopefully. Both of those MS has kicked Sony's butt on, period, and for some, it may well make a difference, moreso when the 360 is cheaper (as a console).

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@thread

BTW, Sony has made _some_ additional systems go into the pipeline. However, some number of retailers including Wal-Mart, Comp-USA, etc are now forcing bundling on customers and NOT selling the consoles separately for the most part, instead bundling with 5-10 $40-$60 items, bringing your pruchase price to over $1000. perhaps good for retailers, bad for consumers.

Ahh well, no PS3 for me until well after Xmas with that scam going on....

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!