@Jorge

Quote:

I'd like to see this kind of comment from you once for a MS marketing bubble comment. Please don't take this to personal, but it is usually this one way street "bashing" what I dislike and I use your comment only as an example (it might describe the feeling I get on a number of biased comments all the time).

Good comment. But something to think about don't people like cheering for the last place guy? Xbox was not a great selling console and barely got their feet wet. Coming from last place to a decent competitor is impressive for a console.

Of course with the behemouth power of Microsoft behind you it is a bit easier.

Quote:

Wake me up, when 4 or 8 core solutions reach $600

As you noted there now a $500 Dual Core. What is Dual Core 2 years old? That sort of timeline means we'll be waking you shortly I think my 2-3 year estimate is still pretty likely for quad core to fall to current PS3 pricing levels.

Quote:

yeah, porn on a 60" 1080p Plasma, while the kids are playing

Porn has had a large input into technology. It's one reason the internet is faster as it's still one of the leading uses for the internet. Porn was very important in deciding VHS over BetaMax. Porn ships more titles per year then Hollywood. Porn is a multi-Billion dollar industry. No matter if you hate it porn or not it does have an impact on technology.


@Tigger
Thanks for the points on CES. I think I had already made your Blu-Ray player count will be much higher point. Nice side point on HD-DVD not being better then Blu-Ray. Each is a media and what is important is the end result to the user. The media does matter a bit, but so do encoding. Blu-Ray started out a bit backwards using an older compression Mpeg-2 and subsequently those movies got worse rating for quality vs HD-DVD's use of VC-1. Now that Blu-Ray has started using VC-1 the 2 media types have shown to be pretty equivalent. I've seen more reviews still go to HD-DVD but not in such a way that I'd want to say one was necessarily better then the other. Using VC-1 those 2 media types are pretty equivalent in reference to output quality.

And post 1001.....

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@Trezzer

Quote:

That you think PS2 games look like next-gen games really puts everything you've said into perspective.

Just have a look at this God of War 2 interview, I think they have really pushed the PS2 to its limits with this one:

http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/811/811719/vids_1.html

You can fight in real-time this collosus boss early in the game. Way beyond anything of the 'bosses' seen in Gears of War. Just have a look, I figure this is going to sell quite a few PS2s and demonstrate the true power of the PS2. I consider this PS2 game well worth the purchase for PS3 owners!



The Nintendo Wii, XBox 360 and PS3 are great consoles, but don't count out the PS2 just yet. I think the console will at least have one more impressive year. Kudos to Sony for ensuring extremely long console lifecycles.

Large 1.5MB gif animation removed, please think about dialup users when embeddeding large files. Click Here to view animation

Just look at all the stuff that's going on in God of War 2 simultaneously, with the big bird flying in the distance, windows breaking, dust clouds, great lighting & shadows, archers firing on the top floor, a huge battle with burning arrows and towns in the background, the collosus angrily trowing 3 archers at you which fall apart into body parts, the wheel wreckage when the collosus pulls out his stuck arm, etc.

I am just as impressed by how they pushed the hardware, as I was with Turrican 2 on the c64. IMO with well over 110 million PS2s sold to consumers and performance like this the PS2 has well lived up to its hype!!

Last edited by DaveyD on 15-Jan-2007 at 08:56 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 13-Jan-2007 at 11:43 AM.

Earlier in this thread I dissapointingly wondered if Gears of War was really conisdered to be the best game of the year by so many media.

At least IGN has awarded the PS2 game Okami as actually being 2006's game of the year, with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as runners up, sadly I haven't extensively played neither of them, but this sounds a lot more trustworthy to me! I guess when the hype wears off and you actually completed the game by yourself, you will have a more informed opinion on this game as a whole.

http://bestof.ign.com/2006/overall/39.html

Gear of War overall is a good game and I would have praised the game more for certain aspects if not for the overhype mania, which really got my hopes up way too high. Resistance was overall more impressive and enjoyable for me.

BTW, Dave Jaffe the creative director of the first 'God of War' game had this to say about the PS3 on his personal blog:

"So speaking of PS3, I played ALOT of PS3 this weekend. I finally had some time to spend with the consumer model and I have to say, I am really impressed. If you can, forget that I WORK for Sony. And try to remember that on more than one occasion I have professed a love for my 360 and my excitement about getting a Wii (if I can ever find one). These are NOT fanboy rants.

Keep those things in mind when I tell you that I played lots of Resistance, GO! SUDOKU, and GRIPSHIFT and had a blast; that I surfed the web on my PS3 and really dug the experience (although, how the #### do I resize the screen so it all fits on my SD tv screen?!?). There's something different about the PS3 than the 360...it's a real difference but I can not figure out what it is. There IS an elegance about the PS3 that is missing from the more workhorse, blue collar (in a great way!) 360 experience. Sure, I wish some of the amazing games I've seen behind closed doors would be OUT already! And I wish the stuff we have all seen (Motorstorm; Heavenly Sword;MGS4) would be out already...but on first blush- as just a consumer- I have to say, I'm excited about this system. And when I hook it up to my new 1080p Bravia, I'm sure it'll get even better! I LOVE how I can go from a blu-ray game, to a downloaded game, to messaging people on my buddy list, to surfing the web all in the same session...and imagining doing all that in 1080p (when my living room gets set up) is like: sweet! So it was a good time and I'm looking forward to more PS3."

Last edited by MikeB on 13-Jan-2007 at 12:32 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

adly I haven't extensively played neither of them, but this sounds a lot more trustworthy to me!

I'm not at all surprised that you think that.

I've played two of the three (Zelda and Oblivion) and while they were great games it was just more of the same. Okami was certainly a breath of fresh air visually, but then again so was Gears of War even if in a more subtle manner. After reading the reviews of Okami I lost interest though. It just seemed like a regular game with a couple of gimmicks (painting) and interesting visuals bolted onto it.

Quote:

Gear of War overall is a good game and I would have praised the game more for certain aspects if not for the overhype mania, which really got my hopes up way too high.

Well, it was certainly one of the best games of the year. If all you ever did was play it on co-op it could easily go from one of the best to *the* best. As I've mentioned before my personal favourite so far is Viva Piñata though.

So far the majority of game sites still give the award to Gears of War, and while I think it's good that IGN goes against the grain with this, I don't really trust their opinion much, but ultimately the choice comes down to a matter of taste - and maybe they felt like highlighting another game now that GoW has had as much recognition as it has.

Other great games that were released this year that are worthy of consideration are: Company of Heroes, We Love Katamari (more recycling though), LocoRoco (short but sweet), Viva Piñata (sadly overlooked), Dead Rising (fun with fun on top) and Elite Beat Agents (even if it's a mere shadow of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!).

@MikeB


Jan 1- Jan 7 Japanese Sales
- DS Lite: 344,878 up 168,659 (95.71%)
- Wii: 195,331 up 98,999 (102.77%)
- PSP: 118,186 up 49,511 (72.09%)
- PS3: 69,944 DOWN 1,733 (2.42%)
- PS2: 52,037 up 13,868 (26.65%)
- Xbox 360: 18,235 up 1,326 (7.84%)
- Game Boy Micro: 3,311 up 1,229 (59.03%)
- GBA SP: 2,364 up 621 (35.63%)
- Gamecube: 1,258 up 411 (32.67%)
- DS Phat: 75 down 27 (26.47%)
- GBA: 57 up 6 (11.76%)

One week obviously doesn't make a year. But, I am bit surprised to see the PS3 down. Anyone know if Sony is having production issues that might have caused this? I thought they said they were fixed and on goal.

I know you think Resitance is better then GoW they are different genre's and different games but the Japanese Famitsu gaming mag has rated GoW higher. The top of their scale is a 10 and they have 4 people reviewing games. Resistance got a 9,8,8,8 and GoW a 10,9,9,9. Resistance's ratings were in a prior issue. GoW in the current.

Last edited by BrianK on 13-Jan-2007 at 03:55 PM.

@Trezzer

Quote:

Dead Rising (fun with fun on top)

I played the demo and liked it.

Although I have seen a lot of anti-PS3 XBox fanboyism online from XBox 360-only people, there seem to be quite a few PS3 owners who previously also bought a XBox 360 and counter them. Some hardcore gamer setup:

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8580/p1020088qz7.jpg
http://chris.idlethumbs.net/Shack/consolesetup.jpg
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e366/antpod/DSC00509.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y12/aktham/IMG_2481.jpg

Dutch guy, being a bit precarious by placing his PS3 on top of a stool:
http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/3196/dscf0541qk8.jpg

Of course for students a PS2/Wii combination may be more realistic:
http://users.tpg.com.au/112358/gamingsetup2007.jpg

Last edited by MikeB on 13-Jan-2007 at 05:01 PM.

@MikeB

Heh, almost sad that I don't have a set-up that's easy to take a picture of. My TV is in a large piece of furniture with Xbox, N64, Saturn, PS2, Mac Mini, CD32, Dreamcast, NeoGeo CD, SNES around it (the 360 is hooked up elsewhere to a monitor). I just wish I had room enough to have the rest of them set up :-/

@BrianK

I already posted those figures.

Quote:

- PS3: 69,944 DOWN 1,733 (2.42%)

Actually it's slightly up from 61,250 the week before, according to my data.

There can be many reasons why sales figures fluctuate, a popular retail channel selling out, holiday season, shops closed or extra shopping time, killer game, distribution shifting to other countries (North America,Taiwan, Hong Kong), etc.

As of the 10th of January around 570,000 PS3s have been sold in Japan. Even at a rate of "only" 69,944K per week there will be around 1.4 million PS3s sold in Japan by the 31th of March. The PS3 will probably really start to take off in Japan with release of the next Final Fantasy though.

Last edited by MikeB on 13-Jan-2007 at 04:29 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 13-Jan-2007 at 04:16 PM.

Regardless of which platform you choose, I'm pretty sure OLED technology will make it more enjoyable.

@MikeB

Quote:

Gear of War overall is a good game and I would have praised the game more for certain aspects if not for the overhype mania, which really got my hopes up way too high.

Hmm... "overhype mania, which really got my hopes up way too high"...

Why does that concept sound so eerily familiar to me? I think I should look up my earlier posts in this thread, maybe it was somewhere there...

@jtsiren

Well a game is pretty much 'as is' and will usually only see limited updates and extensions eventually.

For the PS3 this is a little different though, at least if for instance Killzone blows your socks off you can't blame Sony for not warning you!

A comment from a guy working at Atomix Magazine / Total PlayStation in reply to David Jaffe.

Quote:

Quote: Posted by davidjaffe: Cory was the lead creative visionary and lead a team of very, very talented folks to make GOW II what it is (which, as it turns out, is quite amazing). Hey crazy Jesus-time, when you get back to our fair state, tell Cory that he's a #### for his insano boss battles. Also, I'm playing your fancy-pants game and I think I'm about 10 minutes from making love to this disc. I hate you Jaffe. You didn't even direct this game and your Balrog of an animation savant is making me feel emotionally attached to a piece of pressed plastic.

http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/article/730/730402/god-of-war-ii-20061111063144504.jpg

You have been warned...

@MikeB

Quote:

at least if for instance Killzone blows your socks off you can't blame Sony for not warning you!

Fair enough. Looking forward to that.

@MikeB

Quote:

For the PS3 this is a little different though, at least if for instance Killzone blows your socks off you can't blame Sony for not warning you!

No. No. That is quite true.
In fact anything less than a lethal shock won't be quite enough.

God of War 2 looks good like its predecessor. I just wish they'd gone next-gen already. On the other hand I'm sure PS2 gamers will be happy.

@Trezzer

I think Microsoft should release some new larger harddrives. 20 GB just isn't enough, not even for storing all the available demos, many of which are more than 1GB big. For streaming HD movies their service is currently not fast enough, if they expect people to store them onto harddrive you run out of space quickly.

@MikeB

Quote:

I think Microsoft should release some new larger harddrives.

It definitely wouldn't hurt to do so. Likely there will be larger harddrives coming.

Quote:

20 GB just isn't enough, not even for storing all the available demos, many of which are more than 1GB big.

A demo is for demonstration purposes. The demo theory for me is not to download and keep every demo. Instead it's to try the game and delete the demo if I don't want to play it or if I want to buy the game.

For someone that might want to save every stinking demo there already is a couple of solutions available. One solution is to buy addition 20GB harddrives and switch drives when you want to switch demos. Another solution is to buy the XSATA product and save the demos on a PC and off the Xbox. Yet another solution is to delete the demo then download it again if you want it. I can see your desire for larger drives but there is ways around it today.

Quote:

For streaming HD movies their service is currently not fast enough,

The first inital HD content I downloaded was not impressed. Later one's have gone near the speed of my connection. Surely this will be upgraded as things grow and change. You have to appreciate their effort and making one of most used online content stores. This stuff is new you've got to expect some growing pains. Many pains were taken care of immediately and with the dedication they have to Live Services they will continually be addressed in the future.

Quote:

if they expect people to store them onto harddrive you run out of space quickly.

No doubt HD content is about 6-8GB in size. Definitely eats that harddrive. Again one plus is that once you buy it there is unlimited downloads.

Something to consider though would seriously be the Datael XSATA product. It's fairly speedy, USB 2.0 is 480mbps. The first reason is at some point your single drive is never going to be big enough no matter how large of a drive is available. Off loading the content to a storage server allows you a near unlimited drive size. Of course with the penality that you have to copy the content back to your system when you need it. The second reason is protection -- do you really want to use the new 1TB drive on your system? It sounds all well and good until the drive dies on you. Then you have to recover the 1TB of data from off the internet? ICKY! Offloading the content to a storage server allows you to build a RAID device to protect your content. Since the drives are redundant when one fails you simply replace it. Adding on to this once moved to the storage server you can backup the storage server giving you a method of recovery if you somehow blip the storage server.

Now I'm using storage server generically as the PC which stores your content this could be a desktop or notebook system w/ a consumer OS it doesn't have to be an expensive server.

Sorry all I'm not trying to sound like a commerical, though doing a fairly good job at it. I'm trying to explain to users out there why one might want such a beast and it's available today. Unfortunately the larger HD solution is a wait.

Now, of course the nice thing would be if Microsoft themselves allowed you to query and external storage server from the 360. Just think of the fun if you could go out and buy a 45TB Snap Appliance or 420TB Netapp and have your disk over IP! Screw the puny single HD solution.

Think the Wii is the quietest console and 360 is the noisiest?

One guy tried it and came to an interesting conclusion.

@Trezzer

Actually, there is something I've noticed with the Wii that that person has to take into account. The Wii drive vibrates ****a lot**** while running. If it's on a solid surface, I found the system to be dead silent. On wood, however, the whole surface acts as a loudspeaker and the whole thing gets REALLY loud.

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