@BrianK

perhaps MS needs to change their marketing to :

@Lou

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @KrasH Quote: tend to think blu-ray is good for games, and I'd hate to swap game disks when playing Oblivion 200+ hours of gameplay on a single DVD. Is swapping discs when you perhaps get food or use the toliet really really that bothering? Perhaps you have a refridgerator by your toliet in front of your HDTV?

I wish.

_________________
Amiga 4000 CSPPC [retired]
Intel i7 3930K @ 4.3Ghz / Corsair H100 / Asus Rampage IV Extreme / 16 GB / 2 x 240GB Corsair Force GT SSD / 2 x EVGA 2GB 680GTX SC Sig / 3 x Benq XL2420T
27" iMac / i7 @ 3.4 / 680mx / 3TB Fusion / 32GB RAM

@jtsiren

Quote:

Well, wouldn't it have been more fruitful to post your response to those sites then?

Don't worry, I did and I have.

Last edited by KrasH on 19-Apr-2007 at 10:05 PM.
Last edited by KrasH on 19-Apr-2007 at 10:03 PM.

_________________
Amiga 4000 CSPPC [retired]
Intel i7 3930K @ 4.3Ghz / Corsair H100 / Asus Rampage IV Extreme / 16 GB / 2 x 240GB Corsair Force GT SSD / 2 x EVGA 2GB 680GTX SC Sig / 3 x Benq XL2420T
27" iMac / i7 @ 3.4 / 680mx / 3TB Fusion / 32GB RAM

March NPD numbers for USA:

Nintendo DS: 508K
Sony PlayStation 2: 280K
Nintendo Wii: 259K (2.1 million total)
Microsoft Xbox 360: 199K (5.3 million total)
Sony PSP: 180k
Nintendo Game Boy Advance: 148K
Sony PlayStation 3: 130K (1.2 million total)
Nintendo Gamecube: 22K
Microsoft Xbox: N/A

Software:

God of War II (PS2): 833K
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 (Xbox 360): 394K
Guitar Hero II w/guitar (Xbox 360):291K
Wii Play w/remote (Wii): 273K
Motorstorm (PS3): 199K
Diddy Kong Racing (DS): 189K
Spectrobes (DS): 165K
Major League Baseball 2K7 (Xbox 360): 165K
MLB '07: The Show (PS2): 164K
Def Jam Icon (Xbox 360): 148K

Note: March is a 5 week month. Total industry sales were up 33% over last year.

Judging by the Wii numbers, I would say Nintendo is/was stockpiling some Wii's for the Super Paper Mario launch in April. This falls in line with the comments from Gamestop's CEO last month.

Also not that Diddy Kong Racing on the Nintendo DS is a RARE title. Yes, RARE, who is owned by Microsoft. It makes me wonder it the two companies could collaborate enough to get a couple of classics like the N64's Killer Instinct Gold and Golden Eye on the Virtual Console. Due to licensing issues, I think Golden Eye would be a $20 title. They would invole Nintendo, Microsoft, the current owners of the James Bond license on home consoles and the owners of the James Bond i.p..

Motorstorm didn't seem to impact PS3 sales at all.
The 360 platform consistently has alot of overall software sales.

@Lou

Quote:

The 360 platform consistently has alot of overall software sales.

The 360 has one of the largest games per console # in the industry. People were predicting it would be bad but as long as the 360 continue to sell even if that drops a bit I don't see how it could be bad.

The next 360 update has ~25 new backward compatible titles. Including Jet Set Radio Future and Panzer Dragoon Oorta. Basically at this point I can scrap my Xbox and play all the games on a 2nd 360. The only thing I've left on the Xbox is some Namco Collections. One problem with VISTA is they changed how Media Center interfaces to Extenders. The Xbox isn't being updated to do it in that manner. So I'm down the ability to extend Media to the Xbox in a different part of the house but needed it for those 2 games in particular. Sounds like a used 360 from a new Elite owner may be up my alley for the replacement.

@Lou

Quote:

March NPD numbers for USA

Lower than expected "next gen" Wii, PS3 and 360 sales. PS3 a little up from last month, Wii and 360 sales being way down.

Motorstorm did less well than expected with according to VGChartz as of the 15 of April roughly 223,795 copies sold in North America, a big dissapointment compared to European sales which still has a smaller install base than in North America. Resistance is still going strong with as of the 15 of April roughly 651,534 copies sold in North America.

With regard to home consoles the PS2 performed very well, probably largely due to the release of God of War 2.

It appears some XBox 360 replacements due to hardware failure are being counted as actual newly sold units:
http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=233

@MikeB

Quote:

It appears some XBox 360 replacements due to hardware failure are being counted as actual newly sold units:

I'm glad you are showing concern for us poor Xbox 360 owners in that VGChartz comment thread too!

Actually, to some extent, I really think it is good you are showing concern. Much like many people against Amiga Inc. have been showing concern about various issues with that company. Microsoft should be held accountable. I guess the only question is: are they already been held accountable enough (they do honour and have extended warranties) and what the real statistics are.

Last edited by jtsiren on 20-Apr-2007 at 12:43 PM.
Last edited by jtsiren on 20-Apr-2007 at 12:18 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: Lower than expected "next gen" Wii, PS3 and 360 sales. PS3 a little up from last month, Wii and 360 sales being way down. ...snip... With regard to home consoles the PS2 performed very well, probably largely due to the release of God of War 2.

As I mentioned in the original post, this was a 5 (FIVE, cinco, cinq) week month, hence PS3 number were down on a per-week basis. Also, like I mentioned before, Gamestop's CEO's reasoning may be correct and we should see higher Wii numbers for April, once again - due to the release of Super Paper Mario and Nintendo wanting sufficient stock for it's major releases...which is a tactic it also employs on the DS with regards to shipments. You can easily see this by following the weekly Japanese numbers for the DS.

Also, since Foxconn (the company that builds Wii's) just picked up a PS3 contract, it may be more profitable for them to manufacture PS3's instead of Wii's. So they may have held back shipments. Nintendo also announced that they are looking for a second manufacturer at the end of March...this could be the reason why they'd need one.

I wonder if this contract by Sony to Foxconn (or FoxComm, however it's spelled) is a ploy to limit Wii supplies even further so people just give up and settle for a PS3... It seems they are pulling a 90's Microsoft tactic...

I forgot about GoW2. That would definitely explain the huge jump in PS2 sales. Between PS2 profits and PSP profits, Sony might have broken even factoring in PS3 losses...though I expect the PS3 to be losing less money these days. The lower cost unit has been in production for a couple of months now.

Last edited by Lou on 20-Apr-2007 at 12:40 PM.

@jtsiren

Quote:

I'm glad you are showing concern for us poor Xbox 360 owners in that VGChartz comment thread too!

FYI, my sister's XBox 360 died a sudden death. We will likely have it repaired later this month and then sell the console together with the games, additional gamepad, memory card, etc as second-hand. Maybe we'll buy her a Nintendo Wii or a PS3 instead.

@BrianK

Quote:

Oblivion 200+ hours of gameplay on a single DVD. Is swapping discs when you perhaps get food or use the toliet really really that bothering? Perhaps you have a refridgerator by your toliet in front of your HDTV?

You can have 1000+ hours of gameplay on a single CD, many Amiga classics like Populous 2 and Powermonger had many hours of gameplay on a single Double Density diskette.

The advantage of Blu-Ray technology not only regards disc swapping, this also regards developing companies having less reasons to make sacrifices, as they want to ship on as few discs as possible. With Blu-Ray disc there's less reason storage-wise not to include the best possible sound and graphics. Sustained reading speeds helps with regard to predictability when you stream data off the disc, scratch resistance helps from a consumer perspective as well.

@jtsiren

Quote:

What I'm not so sure about is, did Sony make the right choice by sticking to Blu-ray in terms of how much market they will be able to gather this time around. If Microsoft continues to move faster, be more agile (maybe release the next gen sooner) and with the Wii monster out there, the price of Blu-ray has cost Sony too. Blu-ray probably won't be that significant for games (maybe only for the odd exclusive here and there) and the movie player benefit for sales will only last a short while until stand-alones get way cheaper. Don't get me wrong. That is one nice box in many ways and whatever happens on the market probably won't affect a multi-platform player like myself that much. But I do enjoy dissecting these issues and when all is said and done, PS3 like Xbox 360 certainly has its controversial sides too worthy of conversation.

If Microsoft at some point do release a next generation successor I strongly think they will add a next gen drive. IMO a Blu-Ray drive together with a Cell processor would be a possible or even likely solution, but it would be interesting to see how the current fanbase would react to such a thing.

@MikeB

Quote:

If Microsoft at some point do release a next generation successor I strongly think they will add a next gen drive.

I'm 99% sure they will. It ain't 2005 in two or three years time (well, duh). It could be HD DVD, it could be Blu-ray.

@MikeB

Quote:

FYI, my sister's XBox 360 died a sudden death.

That's too bad.

I have only this experience to tell of: The two launch-day Xbox 360's I personally know of (one which is mine) and use from time to time are both running just fine and have been all this time. Any other Xbox 360 user I know personally at least hasn't told me of broken units. OTOH, based on Internet I certainly believe there are quality issues so I'm in no way disputing that.

Speaking of quality, two trends on PS3 have began to emerge: some Canadian and now also Finnish forums are complaining of whining noises (in Canada it was related to some batch perhaps, but now some Finns are complaining about it too). Also some are complaining their machines have died. These may be very isolated cases for all I know, just that I've run into these postings this week.

I think overall PS3 has been good in quality so far. Mine is certainly working great.

Last edited by jtsiren on 20-Apr-2007 at 02:56 PM.
Last edited by jtsiren on 20-Apr-2007 at 02:23 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

It appears some XBox 360 replacements due to hardware failure are being counted as actual newly sold units: http://www.vgchartz.com/news/news.php?id=233

Boy you like to publish hersay of hersay. Here we have an article by some anonymous person claiming that he asked some anonymous Best Buy supposed Manager about some guess. Also notice he failed to query if this was normal or abnormal for the industry. Not news simply a link to rumor mongering.

@MikeB

Quote:

The advantage of Blu-Ray technology not only regards disc swapping, this also regards developing companies having less reasons to make sacrifices, as they want to ship on as few discs as possible.

Which is a cost sacrifice to the business currently as 1 BR typically costs more then 2 or 3 DVDs to produce. Likely this will change when BR becomes more popular.

Quote:

With Blu-Ray disc there's less reason storage-wise not to include the best possible sound and graphics.

You have the most powerful consoles on the planet and one can't use lossless compression? IMO you are making a mountain out of a mole hill on this point reading.

Quote:

Sustained reading speeds helps with regard to predictability when you stream data off the disc,

And how many games continously stream off of a DVD? Yeah none there's lots of random accesses on games. This is where the current BR players fall down. That's why Oblivion has multiple copies of the game on the disc. The extra space was used to offset the issues of random access needs for gaming.

Quote:

scratch resistance helps from a consumer perspective as well.

While not a requirement DVDs can use this scratch resistance component too. In fact I just bought some 100 year archival quality DVDs for storing my important family digital photos. Guess what they have the magic coating on them. It's a coating a great idea BR made it a requirement. But it can be used by developers in other DVD, HD DVD, CD, or mini CDs if the developer wants to include it.

@BrianK

Quote:

It's a coating a great idea BR made it a requirement. But it can be used by developers in other DVD, HD DVD, CD, or mini CDs if the developer wants to include it.

Sure, but since it isn't a requirement it is unlikely we'll see, say, Xbox 360 games using it. I guess that would take a major trend-change in production of DVDs as whole. It is good BD has it as standard from a technical point of view, the price part of the issue is another topic of course.

@BrianK

Quote:

You have the most powerful consoles on the planet and one can't use lossless compression? IMO you are making a mountain out of a mole hill on this point reading.

Sure, Motorstorm is mostly compressed 2:1 ratio, still the game won't fit on a DVD.

Quote:

And how many games continously stream off of a DVD? Yeah none there's lots of random accesses on games. This is where the current BR players fall down. That's why Oblivion has multiple copies of the game on the disc. The extra space was used to offset the issues of random access needs for gaming.

Do you have a link with regard to the data duplication? I only read that the devs looked at this.

In any case one important reason why Oblivion on the PS3 not only loads much faster but also gaming will be stopped less often by texture loading, is due to enhanced texture streaming.

Gears of War makes heavy use of texture streaming, Lair is also heavily dependent on sophisticated texture streaming, Insomniac's new games will make heavy use of this method as all. But it's not only textures which can be streamed but other game data as well, audio streaming is pretty common in modern games.

@MikeB

Quote:

Do you have a link with regard to the data duplication? I only read that the devs looked at this.

It can be found a various places. Though in searching for it I've found that Bestheda says its' exaggerated. (But note not denied) It appears another boost they've done to compestate for Blu-Ray speed is to cache multiple gigs of data. They mention it's not different then the 360 method. But, it seems it's likely large amounts of cache is being used.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/rpg/theelderscrollsivoblivion/news.html?sid=6165505

Though he didn't seem to mention your claim of enhanced texture streaming. I believe the textures are compressed and for sure speedtree is used to render trees so they can't be streamed as such.


BTW: I knew your sister's 360 would go belly up just was nice enough to not post it.

@BrianK

Quote:

Though in searching for it I've found that Bestheda says its' exaggerated

Thanks for finding this, I thought this to be the case.

Quote:

BTW: I knew your sister's 360 would go belly up just was nice enough to not post it.

I did, just not within this thread here at AmigaWorld:

(NeoGAF, 04-15-2007)

"My sister's XBox 360 finally died after issues of screen distortions and some other minor issues (like games crashing) over a longer period of time, but not much usage at all."

(NeoGAF, 04-17-2007)

"We are probably going to repair my sister's XBox 360 and then try to sell the system together with the games we've already bought. I don't know if it was a co-incidence but most of the troubles started after doing a system software update."