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Games Entertainment

Salon on the XBox 241

Posted by CmdrTaco from the future-of-the-gaming-world? dept.
ozric writes "Salon has a front-page story on the XBox. The writer says the thing will "devastate" the market for PC games, and claims that's a *good* thing due to all the problems of developing for the PC as opposed to a dedicated machine. A little pro-microsoft, but good reading nonetheless." Actually it says a lot of things worth thinking about (complexity and size of the existing PC gamer market, relative niches of existing gaming platforms, and even mentions the Indrema Linux console)
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Salon on the XBox More

Salon on the XBox

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  • Yes, he talks about what a pain it is to develop for the PC, because you have problems dealing with different brands of hardware. But isn't that what the operating system is supposed to take care of?

    In other words, we're supposed to believe that the XBox will solve these problems; yet it's being produced by the same company that's promised, yet failed, to solve them in the past.

  • I haven't read all these comments, so this point may have been made already (hopefully not).
    Salon is DESPERATE for hits on their site. While it has and continues to be well thought of by many people, it's bleeding red ink like crazy. And in this day, the easiest way to get your e-zine, TV show, etc., noticed is to do or say something that gets people emotional - such as publish a pro-Microsoft article in a San Francisco-based e-zine!
    Au's article is just another example of Salon's new willingness to be sensational if it might get them a few more hits. Another example of this is normally-liberal Salon's continued support of the conservative, bomb-throwing columnist David Horowitz. It's not a matter of being balanced (though I wish it were, for then they might get a decent conservative mind to write for them). It's all about the money.
  • Metroid was a trilogy; Super Metroid (the third game) closed out the storyline.
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Hrm. Interesting thought ...

    The Microsoft main campus and the Nintendo main campus are within a mile of each other.

    Food for thought

  • Moderation Totals:Troll=1, Insightful=1, Informative=1, Total=3.

    If you feel this post didn't deserve a 3 rating the correct moderation is "Overrated"

    You can tell a real troll because it has a link to goats.xc

  • I've played every FF game out there (well, not 9 yet, but I don't speak Japanese fluently). And loved every one of them. And I played every one of them on the PC, with higher resolution graphics, and in 8 high res videos and the ability to see the characters expressions in battle is NICE. The PC versions are if anything better. Consoles have their place, but all their games can be ported to PC.
  • You say its about making a "very standardised (sic) PC" but all of your feature requests (being able to plug-in "whatever the hell you want into it", upgradable CPU, GPU, and RAM) make the thing just as un-standardized as a regular PC. Not to mention the fact that the mere act of making it "upgradable" raises the costs considerably - all those extra sockets and connectors instead of hard-soldering components...
    --
  • Just checking - - - is this another online market that MS will claim to conquer then screw up? Uh let's see - Slate, MSN, Travel... Or...

    Is this another MS endevour into hardware that they will screw up or ignore once the pretty intern that suggested it to Bill moves on to a real job?

    Uh - - I guess that running the same old SW on a closed box that lashes you to whatever endless service pack cycle that MS decides to pry out of its ass will somehow be fucking magic. I can just image the bleeding edge graphics gear MS is so famous for, assuming of course you have a quad-P3 running W2K embedded into the biggest damn ROM you've ever seen underneath a quarter gig or so of RAM.

    From the article: "A four-year-old PlayStation still runs the latest Sony game perfectly," observes Keighley. "A four-year-old PC won't even allow you to run 95 percent of the PC games that ship today. If you build a PlayStation game, you know there are upward of 50 million machines ready to run your game. That's not the case with a PC product"

    Of course not. The lunatics you want to let out to run the asylum make it that way. On purpose. Sony recognizes that the PS however expensive is simply a reference platform to develop and distribute the SOFTWARE, the CONTENT. It's the SOFTWARE that makes money.

    So to conclude....Let's give a huge SW company with questionable QA ability a stranglehold over the hardware and somehow, because they're all so independant and free to do whatever they want even if MS begs and pleads and promises to be good, that through some process call it wishfull thinking, good intentions and the fact that the wizard of OZ was really a nice guy deep down, we'll all have great games on great boxes that always work. Albeit they'll work somewhat worse that PC games today and certainly worse than any game boxes like the PS2 - but hey! So what, vaporous mediocrity sells.
  • Personally, I think the Xbox will fail for the reason many have stated - people who have PC's will not buy one, and that's the leading market they need to capture in order to succeed.

    However, there is one intelligent nugget in the X-Box - around the time it comes out, HDTV's with much better resolution than TV's today will be a lot cheaper, and pretty much all of the X-box games will be able to take advantage of that to look "crisper" than other consoles.

    However, this could be offset by the Dreamcast and PS2 having enough power to also be able to do hi-res games - it's just that most of the ones coming out now probably won't be able to take advantage of that.

    On to the second point, graphics power. I think that around the time of the X-box release, the PS2 (and probably Dreamcast) will yield more power for the developer.

    Why? Conisder that by next year, many developers will have a lot more PS2 experience under the belt and be able to take advantage of the different architecure it offers. You'll be seeing impressive third and fourth generation games coming out, showing off some amazing stuff (as has happened on consoles from the dawn of time, it's not just because this is a PS2). The Dreamcast, which has been out longer, will have stuff that probably is on par with the PS2 stuff as well.

    Now on the X-box, people will either be using Direct-3D (which takes some overhead) or trying to write directly for the gEForce card - but that means they are at the start of the ramp-up cycle that developers are through on the other consoles!
    Also, because most likley people will be using Direct3D and not custom hardware features, I'm thinking the games will all have a similar "look" to them. Consoles generally have a great variety of look as well as feel to games, which is a major strength and a reason why I have a console even though I have a PC.

    Microsoft is all about making the developers life easier (in a Microsoft way)- Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound, etc. While making life easy for a developer is good to a point (like making full screen AA easy to do on a PS2!), you also need developers to have some room to develop in unique ways. I think the X-box will seem more of a stright-jacket than a platform for expressive freedom.

    One final point - the X-Box is the first Microsoft console (perhaps you could count the collaberation with Sega as the first). First generation Microsoft things never work out - I might be thinking about an X-box around version four.

    As I said, I have a PC and will be buying a PS2 and possibly a Dreamcast. But I really can't see a good reason to by an X-box!
  • Now that we have Xbox why do we need Windows?
    Could Xbox not be the *REAL* Windows killer?
    :)
  • I agree with some of your points, but not with others:

    Multiplayer is sweet. Use anything from a dial in modem to a full T3. User supplies the bandwidth.

    All the new consoles allow for broadband. So they are pretty much even here.

    Interface. PC has a lot more interfaces to offer from mouse, keyboard to joystick. Ever play the orginal Diablo on Playstation? Diablo sucks without a mouse.

    Absolutely right, There are certain kind of games that are good with a mouse and keyboard, others that are good with a gamepad. However, the DC has a mouse and keyboard... Most likely the other consoles will as well.

    Patches: If you find a bug in a PC game, release a patch, no problem. Find a bug in a console game, huh huh your screwed.

    I think the victory in this arena goes to the consoles because of this, actually. I can't think of a single DC, PSX or Genesis game I own that would need a patch, whereas virtually every PC game needs patching. Many cannot even be beaten out of the box, without a patch. The fact that you can't patch a console game forces the companies to make sure the product is error free.

    Mods: Ever seen a Quake2 mod for the playstation?

    This is a big issue... Counterstrike is at least as popular as Half-Life multiplayer, if not more. Will you be able to add mods to xbox games? Who knows?

    Eye Candy: What can a TV do 320X240 res? Most PC games I play are at 1024X960

    This is a big issue, too. I find that for most console games though, the TV is adequate. But part of that is because console games tend to be less complex, without all the HUDs and various read-outs that are common in PC games.

    Sound: TV speakers aren't the greatest. PC gamers supply there own speakers from that little beep speaker in the case to a $5000 home stero system.

    You're way off on this one. Most people (who are over 18) have much better sound setups for their TV than their computer, especially if they are a movie buff. Many people at least run their TV through their stereo, or have it all combined into one. (Thus the phrase "home theater"). Surround sound, 600 watt amps, etc... This beats out everything but the most expensive computer speakers. And most people will have their console where? Yep, as part of their home entertainment system.

    sure console has the advantage of being able to program for one set of hardware, but with things like Direct X and Glide, is this to much of a concern any more?

    Yes, it really is. A lot of programming for the PC is trying to pander to the lowest set of specs while making sure that some video card won't make the game just not run. Consoles don't have that problem. Of course, they also are locked in, where PCs can get new hardware every few months... if you can afford it. It's a trade off, really.

    I really only see 2 advantages the console market has:

    1) Also sitting on a nice comfortable sofa after a long day of sitting in a stiff chair is a bonus for the console. 2)Also being able to rent full version of console games for $2 is a sweet deal.

    Both of these are advantages, though I tend not to bother renting games.

    Play Diablo on the PC then try playing it on the Playstation, you will be disapointed.

    And try playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater on your PC, and you will be disappointed. Hell, try playing a four player multiplayer game like Mario Kart 64 (actually that type of sitting-on-the-couch-with-your-friends multiplayer experience doesn't exist on the PC... and it's one of the best things about consoles) and you'll be disappointed. You are missing what most people seem to: console games and PC games are very different for very good reasons. They are designed to work with the platforms they were intended for. Of course Diablo is not as fun for consoles! It was designed with a PC interface... would Soccer be as fun to play if you turned it into a water sport? No.

    Console games are generally less complex, easier to grasp... The kind of games where you can sit and play for 5-10 minutes and then do something else. PC games are generally more immersive, have a much greater learning curve but reward the player more. This is a big part of why PC games get such a hardcore following.

    Console games and PC games are very different. I like both. The Xbox won't replace the PC, nor will any other Next Gen console. If a console comes around that does replace the PC, it will do so only by basically turning into a PC... And I don't see how you can call that "consoles destroying the PC market". More like the PC mindset subverting the console market.

    Josh Sisk
  • Imagine how much FUD a bomb squad member experiences. Does this wire cut the power to the timer? Or will it cut a monitor line that will release a switch that will trigger the bomb?

    Love it or not, FUD is a necessary evil.

  • The author points out the many problems encountered when writing software for a PC. I agree with many of them, but did feel some were exagerated. What I want to konw is did the author forget that Windows and DirectX is made by the same company behind the XBox? Windows and DirectX was suppose to allow programmers not to worry about what hardware in the box. Every XBox will be the same, but it will still be running on Microsoft software which means it will still have problems. I really wish Microsoft would pick a market and concentrate on making stable software for that market instead of jumping on every bandwagon and doing a half-ass job.
  • A-FUCKINGmen
  • Casablanca, no CGI there, yet one of the best movies made. Just curious, what doen the 'I' in CGI stand for here? ;)
  • I'm sure that by now there are thousands (well, dozens, at least) of reasons being put forth by Slashdotters as to why the XBox won't kill PC games. Here are mine:

    1. User interface. Have you ever tried playing the Nintendo 64 version of Starcraft? Don't bother, it ain't worth it. Moving a cursor aruond on a screen without a mouse just plain sucks. Sure, when you're going the route of having *every* game be either Driving, Fighting, or Sports, then yes, a console might make sense. The Shoot'em'ups that come out on consoles generally suck compared to the ones on PCs, too, because the user interface sucks. Have you ever tried playing a FPS game that has 2 axis control over the character on a console (Like Quake3, Unreal Tournament and Half Life)? Neither have I, because they don't exist.

    2. Screen resolution. TVs suck. Get used to it. They support something like 800x600 resolution, MAX. Try using WebTV sometime, you will laugh, or cry, depending on whether you have to actually get anything done or not. Games on a TV will never look as nice as games on a PC, and you won't be able to put as much information on the screen at one time.

    3. Internet connection. Sure, the Dreamcast has a modem; but anyone who has tried to play any serious and fast paced multiplayer game over the internet with a MODEM has cried almost as much as I have. The number of games that realistically support modem connections for multiplayer games is quickly dwindling, and I think they will be a thing of the past as soon as next year. DSL and Cable (and T1/T3 if you are actually targetting college students) are necessary for new multiplayer games to work properly. If developers do not support this for the console, it will die.

    That's all I can put into nice and even points, and I'm sure that others have said some of the same things, but that's the way it will be until the designers can overcome those three problems.

  • Microsoft: "ME TOO!"

    the X-Box is nothing- it's impressive, hard-ware wise, but it lacks where other systems in this market flourish- japanese developer support. Sure, PC games are fine without them, but set-top consoles is a japanese market, where all the best games come out of Japanese developers, or at least overseas. Take a look at the top games on all the systems out right now? How many can you count that were developed in America?

    the X-Box is not a good thing. It's another console, when we already have 3 great consoles going at once. Or, to look at it in the 'other' direction, it's a PC without upgradability which isn't what Sony, Nintendo, or Sega are currently 'focused' on... not replacing the PC, but do other things.

    the Console/PC war is rather silly... both systems have their own good points. PC's have incredible customizabily, fan-driven content, and incredible control for First Person Shooters and Real Time Strategy. However, a Console is much better for a Final-Fantasy-Style RPG, a platformer, a Zelda-style adventure game, a 3rd person shooter, or a Metal Gear style action game.

    Why? A keyboard/mouse is good for absoulte movement and direction control (Go here, aim at this point) while the gamepads (which are superior in consoles) are excellent at RELATIVE control (move THIS WAY, aim in THAT direction) - plus, certian things just look better on a TV and some on a monitor.

    This 'hybridisation' is really going to bastardise the industry- if you ahve two things, that are excellent at two different things, why combine them into something that's medocre in everything?
    ----
    Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
  • Was it just me or did the writer of this article sound just a little like a baptist minister?

    [VOICE STYLE="minister from Simpsons]
    I have SEEN-ah the light, and it is-ah the X-box
    [/VOICE]

    Thank Jehovah for impartial media
    ------------------------------------------- -
  • What makes many PC games, such as Quake and Starcraft great is the ability to modify them. In the case of the Quake games quite extremely. RPGs I find make good console games (They also make good PC games, but Nevermind) because they are meant to be played a couple of times and then dropped. A lot of the great PC games what makes them great is the ability to download new levels, and or in the case of Quake the ability to both create and download mods. Without that ability a Console is limited and if that ability becomes introduced to a console, a console becomes a computer, and then we see consoles suffering the same issues as computers do, so why not just buy a computer?
  • I even said as much three months later, between my fifth plate of lousy sushi and my sixth Sapporo

    My congrats to the author of the article for taking a the fine art of minimalism in japanese food and massacring it with gluttony...the kind of self-servitude that Microsoft will undoubtedly perpetrate with any sort of monolopy over tha gaming market. I shudder to think what kind of horrors we'll be seeing if the xbox takes off...

    The saving grace, i suppose, is that developers for the console won't be working directly for Microsoft. Then again, when we put technology into the wrong hands, and give control to the wrong people, you get the wrong solutions. Like in this [slashdot.org] case, for instance (a thread about internet usage).

    All that being said - and me being a hypocrite - if the xbox is all that then i might even cave and pick one up. More likely i'll wait for some cracker to break it wide open for all us Linux people though. ;)

    -j

  • If you want to see a BAD console game, go check out Warcraft for the PSX. The controls are terrible. That type of game (RTS) is WAY better on PC's. Which leads me to my point:

    Didn't ANYONE read the strengths and weakness of PC's and Consoles?

    http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardw are/dcvspc2/ [gamers.com]

    PC's aren't just going to go away and die. Sure game budgets may be getting out of hand (5 - 10 million) but the movie industry went through the same thing after they realized all those special effects can't turn a bad movie into a good one, only make a good one better. (i.e. Waterworld, and Blair Witch)

    Consoles excel at where time is limited. You just jump right and you're playing. But they can't match the depth of customization that PC's have had for years. Look what kept Doom and Quake around ALL these years: user-mods.

    So the next time, someone spouts off "consoles will own pc's", or "console games blow" tell them to THINK about what the PC's and Consoles are BOTH _good_ and _bad_ at.

    But what do I know, I'm just a 3d game programmer...
  • Yep, Commodore decided to create a console with the Amiga API, allowing developers to target both the console and the Amiga computer. Likewise, the consoles (CDTV especially) had some nifty technology, but never achieved the market penetration Commodore hoped for. The money invested ended up sinking the big C=. Ah Micros~, they're catching up to the competition - the gap is now only 10 years.
  • Coudn't have put that better myself. Making a cheap PC is a dead end for a console.

    But, I think it needs to be added that the second nail in the X-Box will be a lack of first-party creativity from MS.

    Right now, they have some really good 2nd & 3rd party software lined up, but these are only a few small dev studios. There is no lead in to new creative ideas from MS. Look at the way Nintendo pushes their own software to show what new and great things can be done. Sony does the same through the large game companies (Square, Enix, etc). MS has nothing to drive game design forward.

    This leaves the outlook for X-Box software as a poor mirroring of PC games. Consequently, I doubt you will see many X-Box only titles.
  • From the aritcle on Salon- "The biggest hit PC game will sell maybe 2 million copies. Half-Life is up at that number now." Is this an old Article, or someone purposely leaving out certain things......Diablo II comes to mind. Diablo II has to have gotten up to, or passed over 2 million by now.

    True. But the average PC game sells pretty poorly, excepting the occasional hit. Hardcore titles commonly sell a whole lot worse than people expect. There are many games for the PC with lots of name recognition, lots of fans, and sales figures in the middling five digits. Why? Part of the problem is that the constant upgrading by the fanboys and game developers makes most games a weak proposition for the average PC out there. You could also argue that a lot of people get put off by having to fiddle with drivers and patch software. If just bought my first PC, with a snazzy video card recommended by magazines--the GeForce 2--and then bought what was supposed to be an amazing new game--Deus Ex (which has received five star reviews left and right)--then I'd be pretty disappointed to find that the game doesn't run on my machine. There will be a patch, or maybe there is one, but that's completely ridiculous. It is much easier to not have to be my own system administator and to just pick up a console that won't give me problems.

    The real question is whether the Xbox is going to continue the rock-solid reputation that has made consoles so popular.
  • :~(

  • PC (Score:1)

    by jbarnett ( 127033 )
    PC have ALOT of offer compared to console:

    Multiplayer is sweet. Use anything from a dial in modem to a full T3. User supplies the bandwidth.

    Interface. PC has a lot more interfaces to offer from mouse, keyboard to joystick. Ever play the orginal Diablo on Playstation? Diablo sucks without a mouse.

    Patches: If you find a bug in a PC game, release a patch, no problem. Find a bug in a console game, huh huh your screwed.

    Mods: Ever seen a Quake2 mod for the playstation?

    Eye Candy: What can a TV do 320X240 res? Most PC games I play are at 1024X960

    Sound: TV speakers aren't the greatest. PC gamers supply there own speakers from that little beep speaker in the case to a $5000 home stero system.

    Did I miss anything?

    sure console has the advantage of being able to program for one set of hardware, but with things like Direct X and Glide, is this to much of a concern any more?

    I really only see 2 advantages the console market has:

    1) Also sitting on a nice comfortable sofa after a long day of sitting in a stiff chair is a bonus for the console. 2)Also being able to rent full version of console games for $2 is a sweet deal.

    Play Diablo on the PC then try playing it on the Playstation, you will be disapointed.


  • Not the existance of the 'XBOX', for I'm sure that roughly 4-6 months after it's scheduled release, it will be released, it will be fast, and it will pretty.

    My biggest problem with the game-consoles in general is the investment. A single tasking, single use box, games that are more expensive then their PC counterparts, no upgradeability, no backward's compatibility, and a it's obsoleted by the next generation in (optimistically) 12-18 months. It costs a couple hundred bucks in itself, and each generation takes up space in my livingroom because I can't/don't want to re-buy all my games for the new platform.

    IMHO, PC's will ALWAYS have a leg up on 'appliances' for that reason.

    The best thing about these is that you can give them to young kids, because they're easier to operate, and harder to break. The down side is the kids don't learn with 'em, like they can w/ a PC (Game consoles don't help you do your homework)

  • I reckon you can hit a randomly chosen gamepad button lots faster than a randomly chosen key. On a decent gamepad (PSX, DC, N64), all the in-game buttons are under a finger or a thumb at all times.

    Of course, both the keyboard and gamepad pale in comparison to the most intuitive, powerful input device ever invented [ign.com].

    As for your comment on AI and CPU performance, you might be surprised at the small percentage of CPU time AI typically gets allocated.

  • "The power of the Xbox will unleash a renaissance of creativity and risk taking." The article doesn't seem to explain very much *why* the Xbox will cause a renaissance of any kind; I can't believe it will be SO much more powerful than current gaming products (PCs included) that game designers will somehow be able to be more creative or riskier.
  • 'Scuse me while I pick one nit. Every aircraft cockpit I've ever seen has exactly that...one control that does nothing but move the landing gear up and down. Some have an auxiliary crank for doing the same thing. So there you have it...TWO controls for something you just have to work with TWO TIMES in any (successful) flight.

    As far as computer flight simulation goes, I'm much more interested in a very realistic flight sim that accurately models the behavior (if not the actual man/machine interface) of the aircraft. Such a sim will never, ever, ever be seen on a game console. That's not to say game consoles are bad, just that their interface technology (and marketing demographics) don't lend themselves to high-fidelity flight sims. (Note: the kick the tires, light the fires, let's go fly "flight sims" available on consoles now are NOT what I'm talking about. I want padlock views, dammit!)

    Complexity can, indeed, get in the way of gameplay. It does NOT get in the way of flight simulation.
  • 3dfx's gay NT server does that too often.
    if its up that is....
    or if it doesn't spew asp errors that is....
  • Before my current job, I worked at a video game store for a few months before committing to a 'real' job. One of the first things I was taught was the Dreamcast equivalent to Control-alt-delete. Push down every button at once and hit start, and you'll reboot the system. We'd need to do that at least once a day with most games.

    Uh, you do know that there is no reset button on the Dreamcast, right? The little method you described is the only way to reset the Dreamcast without powering it down and back up again.

    You worked at a video game store and you didn't realize this? I'm afraid to find out where you're working now.

    We'd need to do that at least once a day with most games. Every few days, it would crash so hard we'd need to pull the plug.

    Based on your little revelation about resetting the Dreamcast, I'd chalk this up to you and your fellow workers being a bunch of idiots. I imagine your knuckles bleed from dragging them while you walk.
  • DirectX, Direct3D, and the best damned libraries of OpenGL. That's why the majorite of games are for Windows. Mac OS can only claim Qd3d, which only seems to accelerate those kids games on the G4 demos. Linux support is even worse, with OSS and OpenGL libraries that haven't escaped the alpha stage yet. Until Linux can get rid of the problem of device lag, there's no hope for it.
  • The big point in MS campaign seems to be the ease of portability of PC games toward the XBox. In fact I think that is the exact thing that will hinder the XBox. XBox games will be really easy to port to the PC, but the opposite won't necessarly be true. WHy? Improvement in PC hardware and the use of input devices such as a mouse of keyboard.

    The XBox will have a PIII 600 CPU and will come out next year. At that time this might well be the minimum requirement for some PC games... so forget the PC to XBox ports... But games running well on the XBox will run even more smoothly on PCs with juicier CPUs.

    Same is true with input devices... As pointed in a post above, lots of games use a huge amount of keys that can barely be handled by a simple gamepad or joystick. And even if MS produces a mouse and keyboard I can use with my xbox, would I really use a mouse sitting on the floor on my living room in front of my TV?

    IMHO what MS claims to be the XBox's strength is in fact it's weakness... noone who already owns a good PC will buy the xbox, same is not true with the PlayStation2.
  • All the arguments how the console (PS2 or XBox or ...) will replace a gaming PC tend to forget a simple fact: all consoles use a TV as their display device. And TVs really suck when used as computer monitors. I mean it. They suck bowling balls through a garden hose. They have ridiculously low resolution, they are blurry, and they flicker at 60Hz. Sorry, I'll pass.


    Kaa
  • No console can really compete with the games for a PC. Plots for console games are normally shallow, with limited forms of input (no keyboard/mouse), and with high speed Internet not available on console boxes, there simply are not the quality indepth and massively multiplayer games for consoles that make PC games so popular

  • BS!! (Score:1)

    by matty ( 3385 )
    If you try to design a game/OS that supports every known keyboard, mouse, monitor, video card, sound card, joystick and fucking VR helmet known to man, you're going to have to make compromises, cut corners, generally throw the Tao of Programming out the window and kludge together what you can.

    I am so sick of hearing this argument! No offense to you directly, grarg, but this argument is just pro-Windows reverse FUD from Microsoft. If making an OS compatible with the 'latest hardware' is why Windows is unstable, why are Linux/*BSD so much more stable?

    What's that you say? "But Windows supports way more hardware!" First of all, Linux hardware support has caught up by leaps and bounds to Windows, and is now nearly on a par. Any exotic/strange hardware may come out on Windows first, but Linux support usually comes 1 or 2 months later.

    And notice this: when Linux does support the new hardware, does it become less stable? Of course not! Linux uptimes still routinely run into the months and years with a default install. You're lucky to make it through an hour's worth of Quake3 or Descent3 without a crash on Windows.

    And don't start on me with talk of Windows 2000. This is not (yet) a true gaming platform, and it won't be until it supports all the same hardware that Windows 98/ME supports. Heck, unless I miss my guess (and please correct me if I'm wrong), even Linux supports more game-specific hardware than Windows 2000 does.

    The bottom line is that Windows' instability is not due to support of a myriad of hardware/apps, it's due to bad OS design. Maybe when (if?) Win2000 and WinME merge, this problem will get better, but not until then. (haven't Win95b, Win98 and Win98SE all been touted as the 'last version of DOS-based Windows'? Again, please correct my if I'm wrong. And please provide links to support your corrections)

    Maybe the XBox won't crash like Windows does, but please forgive me for waiting to see how a (more-or-less) brand new Microsoft platform performs before I buy into it.

    Cheers.....

  • The XBox is basically a console + a hard drive + Windows. Hard drives and Windows are both notoriously prone to failure. Consoles have happily co-existed with PC gaming for about 20 years now, and loading one down with hybridized pc features is more likely to guarantee its doom than its success. The hypothetical successful introdution of the XBox has yet to be proven. Ecstatic and delirious claims of this article to the contrary, reports of the death of PC gaming has been greatly exaggerated.
  • Stories like this pop up about all game consoles. People said it about the Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, and Sony Playstation. Last year Maximum PC ran a story about how the Playstation 2 would redefine the game industry, kill PC gaming, etc.. Now developers are already talking about how the PS2 won't be able to compete because it has a strange architecture and not enough RAM, and it hasn't even been released outside of Japan!

    The X-Box is the same way. People just pay more attention because Microsoft has been all over the news for the last few years. But the X-Box is just another console, and like the others, it will be getting blown away by PC games two years after it ships.

    The worst part is that the intelligent guys at /. link to this sort of drivel. This article doesn't raise anything new, its just another person spouting about the problems in the PC game industry and assuming that a console, doomed to be obosolete and impossible to upgrade meaningfully (Sort of like Windows, no wonder Microsoft is getting into it!).
  • Interestingly enough, Metal Gear Solid is being ported to the PC, and will be released under the monkier of..

    Yes, Microsoft. Click here [mgspc.com] for the offical MGS-PC website, and at the bottom it's copyright "Konami and Microsoft Corporation" so considering Microsoft is bringing out MGS for the PC, why not MGS2 for the X-Box?
    ----
    Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
  • And you do? All I've seen you do is regurgitate some comments from a "buddy" of yours who is doing PS2 development.

    *shrug* I did an evaluation for his shop on how much time and money it would take to get their line onto the Mac OS platform ... I think I have their economics of development down pretty well after that experience. You're free to disagree, of course.

    Your "buddy" obviously has a stake in seeing the PS2 succeed...

    Nope -- PS2 T&L are going to be in maintenance mode in a couple months, so he's looking for new interesting work, actually. This is why I think his evaluation of tying his star to the Xbox is to be considered with some seriousness.

    I don't care about API's. I don't care about any other developer nonsense. I all care about is games. And I suspect they will be there.

    Well, the important thing that you should worry about then is called "Return on Investment". And that depends on game sales, which depends on platform adoption, which depends on games produced, which depends on big game makers having confidence in the platform.

    Or, of course, MSFT just throwing around loads of cash. It's easy to buy friends ... for a little while.
  • yeah it is good to not have competition... wait a minute.. isn't that what forces the market to come out better products?
  • I just want to laugh at you.. first post?? try fifth post.. whatta moron

  • the reason i play console games (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:40AM (#819037)

    I don't want to start some sort of lame US vs. Japan thing, but the reason I play console games is because the games are Japanese in style and content.

    For instance, the Final Fantasy series are an excellent example of this style that appeals to me. I also play the very American Diablo II and Quake, but when I want a deep involving, multi-layered moving story, I play the console RPGs.

    It's also the same reason I prefer to watch Anime as opposed to the American spawned cartoon-crap (with the exception of the Simpsons of a few years ago and Futurama).

    I don't want an X-box. I don't care much for American-style games.

  • Re:No console competes with the genre of games for (Score:3)

    by wnissen ( 59924 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:44AM (#819041)
    If you read the article, PC games *aren't* popular. "Console games can sell a whole bunch more copies," says Keighley. "Console games like Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot have sold about 5, 8, million minimum. The biggest hit PC game will sell maybe 2 million copies. Half-Life is up at that number now. Myst has a bit short of 4 million copies after more than a half-decade." They may be somewhat shallow (although I would argue that good console RPGs are not less deep than their PC counterparts), but they are nothing if not popular.

    Walt

  • IANAME (Score:4)

    by grarg ( 94486 ) <grarg AT lesinge DOT org> on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:44AM (#819042) Homepage

    I'm not a Microsoft employee, and God knows I get as pissed off as anyone by the general shoddiness of Windows but, in their defense, they face the same problem mentioned in the article that developers face, namely compatibility issues, except 100 times worse.

    If you try to design a game/OS that supports every known keyboard, mouse, monitor, video card, sound card, joystick and fucking VR helmet known to man, you're going to have to make compromises, cut corners, generally throw the Tao of Programming out the window and kludge together what you can.

    This is never the case for a console. It won't have a separate graphics/sound card; it'll be made by one company and it'll be integrated right into the motherboard. If the HD is replaceable it will be specially made for the X-box and it will plug in as easily as a games cartridge. There is no need to make it conform to any more than one standard, ditto kb/mouse/control pad design, just like the PSX, DC and N64. The only PC thing about it will be the motherboard which would work just fine if it wasn't for all the stoopid peripherals stuck onto it.

    In short, everything will be far more simply/uniformly designed and will be as likely to crash as any other console, ie, just about never.

    Having said all that, I still wouldn't buy one because I don't fancy lugging X-box + hi-res TV around my pal's house if I want a game of lag-free multiplayer [insert FPS of choice here].

  • Yes I realize that SEGA is doing some MMORPG based on Phantasy Star (one of their earlier console RPG hits), but try to imagine for one second how hard it's going to be for the palyers to communicate with one another without a keyboard.

    A keyboard is a rather simple accessory to add to a console, and, in fact, the Dreamcast has had a nice keyboard available for it for quite some time. If you sign up for Sega Internet access (I forget the name of the service), the keyboard is free, actually. Further, I understand that when Phantasy Star come out, Sega expects to drop the price of the Dreamcast by another $50, and give away the keyboard _and_ offer a $200 rebate to subscribers of their Internet service (on a three year contract). So, the console is effectively free, and you are paying to play the games.

    Anyway, a keyboard isn't an obstacle, and I'm certain that MS won't hesistate to produce one for the X-box. I'll bet that a standard PC keyboard (USB, perhaps) will probably work.
  • The downside is that if a large chunk of the console revenue must be derived from software royalties, it must be made impossible to bypass the console company in the production of a title.

    I can very easily see some of the larger game houses being attracted to the Xbox because of this (and the article seems to support this). It puts them all in the same boat; they all sink or they all float. Of course, MS has the resources to withstand another flop, but a bad investment in technology could sink some of the smaller game makers. And MS has a nasty tendency to back out of development partnerships, leaving the other party holding the bag.

    The whole licensing thing also keeps small competitors out; MS can close whoever it wants out of the development process.
    --

  • Re:PC (Score:2)

    by skoda ( 211470 )
    Your comments also reveal the benefits of consoles. Multiplayer is sweet. - PC multiplayer is usually unknown, unseen people. Console MP is truly interactive, with your friend/foe sitting next to you on the couch. That is much more fun, IMHO. Interface. PC has a lot more interfaces to offer from mouse, keyboard to joystick. A console has a consistent standard interface. A good developer will create a near-perfect control scheme to allow easy play. With a PC, controls vary, so the developer must try and meet all styles, and the user experience will vary depending on their hardware. Patches - Every PC game needs a patch (or eight) today, even those from the top-tier developers. Arguably, most shouldn't even be purchased until they are patched to 1.03. But since consoles can't be patched, they either ship (essentially) bug free, or they don't ship at all. I prefer the latter method generally. Mods - I have not seen a mod for a console game. OTOH, I don't usually find PC mods very interesting, so I don't think that's a great loss. Sound - this cuts both ways. My N64 is connected to my stereo VCR, which is routed through my stereo. My computer has baseline computer speakers (good, but not great). So, my N64 games sound much better than my PC games. In general, the stereo is with the TV/enertainment center. Most PC's are not near a stereo. I'd say most people have better sound for their consoles than their computers. console has the advantage of...one set of hardware...with Direct X and Glide, is this...a concern any more? - Yes. It seems there are still problems getting 3D cards to talk to the games at times. A recent example is UT; the game performed significantly better using Glide than DirectX through several patch levels. Consoles just work. only see 2 advantages - clearly I think there quite a few: no hardware incompatibilities, no patches, more comfortable and interactive settings usually, better sound for many people. And cost; consoles are ~10x less expensive than computers. And a console has a good 4 yr life span, during which it can play every game released for it. A retail computer bought by a mainstream consumer has about a 2 yr game-life, if that, before minimal game requirements start to approach the computer hardware. Don't get me wrong - I like PC games a great deal. But console games offer significant advantages in various respects, and shouldn't be given short thrift.
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • If you want a pro MS slant please feel free to hang out at the ZDNET forums or the fawcette publications forums. You might also want to try any one of the microsoft.public.* newsgroups. It's a big internet and people have congrated around other people who think like them. I think this is what is meant by community by the way.
    Anyway no need to whine just go hang out at the pro MS forums there are a ton of them. Oh one more thing when you are there please freel free to whine about the anti linux bias there too.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • Missed the Halo coming to PC bit. That's great news.. thanks!

  • My take on the X-box (Score:3)

    by Sits ( 117492 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:46AM (#819065) Homepage Journal
    Well I ain't no M$ lacky but I have to admit to being interested in the X-Box. I've just finished reading the latest Edge [edge-online.com] and comparisons to the PS2 are favourable (but then again I may be falling victim to the FUD). At the moment there appear to be a lot of promises of PC style games being swiftly ported over which will raise questions of platform suitability. Unlike a PC, I feel the only periphrals a consumer should have to buy are extra pads.

    However, from a console point of view I would like to see more Japenese firms developing for it. It is unlikely that something like Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2 will be ported to it any time soon and this is the sort of killer app it needs.

    It appears that it will be technically easier to code for than a PS2 which should see a large number of games released for it quickly. Of course, as with all consoles, the real question is will you want to play them? If they are just going to be PC ports then the only benefit will be the ease of use...

    The lack of a back catalogue doesn't really bother me since very few people go and buy a cutting edge console just to play the same old games.

    The hard drive appears to be something of a nice touch but am I going to have to schedule a cleanup defrag every month?

    I dunno, maybe I'm just jaded with Sony at the moment. With any luck, there will be enough room for both players and we'll see better games as a consequence.

  • In fairness, it's not exactly a trivial issue to deal with configuring games to run on all the linux systems out their either. What's funny is that MS is centralized, with no one allowed to make changes unless the designers approve, and yet it has the same problems with different platforms as Linux. For Linux, where anyone can make changes to the system, to be doing only as poorly as MS in terms of consistent configuration is pretty good. Just think of all the different distros out there, and yet most software is easily portable among them.

    Walt

  • Targeted Customers? (Score:3)

    by Lizard_King ( 149713 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:50AM (#819072) Journal
    "Nintendo has traditionally done really well with a particular type of consumer," says Bachus. "Six-to-12-year-olds, let's say. Younger gamers ... We're going after an 18-year-old guy away at college for the first time. That's who the Xbox customer is going to be."

    well, what about myself and others who have stopped smoking pot and playing games at 4 in the morning? This obviously is not a Microsoft supported statement about the X-Box, but I found it interesting. Do you think that Microsoft has realized that there is a hard-core gamer population that is out of college or do you just think the guy who said this is an idiot?
  • Console manufacturers have always insisted on contracts that prevented authors from porting their games to other consoles. It's going to a little more odd here; since the porting would clearly be easy -- but Microsoft will insist on it and the authors will agree to it; or they won't get the money from Microsoft to help with the develoment.

    Microsoft holds all the cards, and can prevent anybody from writing games for the X-Box by any number of means. If one wants to write a game for the X-Box, one will not be able to have it run on PCs.

    thad

  • For the LAST time, for those of you who can't seem to grasp the concept ...

    X-Box is a CONSOLE, and is not a "cheap PC."

    The X-Box is not going to be Windows compatible, it's simply going to be easier for experienced PC programmers to develop for, thanks to the Windows lineage.

    As a matter of fact, the X-Box team insisted on that. And when they met opposition from higer ups at Microsoft, they stuck to their guns. The rest of Microsoft is effectively separated from the X-Box group entirely.

    Jesus, the anti-Microsoft slant in this forum gets really think sometimes ... bad enough to the point where it clouds a non-MS issue.

  • Here's the reason that the console market could never destroy the PC gaming market. People generally play PC games because they'd rather play them on their PC.

    This is why the console gaming market has never destroyed it in the first place. Consoles have generally always sold more games than PC's. Ever since the Atari 2600 and the others around it's time. There weren't even many PC's available.

    Sure there were the Commodore 64/128's, Apple's, Amiga's, etc., all which had immensely popular games, but in contrast, the consoles have always had the bigger market. But, when there's at least a few million who'd rather buy PC games than console games (someone like myself. I don't like sitting in front of my TV playing games. That's the biggest reason I prefer PC games.)

    Though it is and always has been a smaller market, this does *not* mean that making a console that has the same components as a PC is going to eliminate the PC gaming market. That logic makes absolutely no sense.

    I'm not going to buy an Xbox. Plain and simple. Even if the whole PC gaming market DOES go away, I still probably wouldn't buy a console. (I had both a playstation and a N64 at one time, but I've sold them both because I didn't find any games that interest me.) Sure all the 3d graphics look pretty, but what about us that still enjoy a good 2D RTS, or even a turn-based strategy? What about top-down RPG's? What about flight simulators? All of those are very hard to play with a gamepad, be it analog or not. You need a good mouse and keyboard (or a realistic fighter control stick) and even if you can get those for an Xbox, why would you? Then you'd need a desk or something, and you'd basically be back with a PC anyway.

    The PC gaming market will NOT die, and I'll gladly fight anyone to the death who believes otherwise.

  • ** always overlooked ** (Score:5)

    by kwashiorkor ( 105138 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @10:22AM (#819095)
    One always hears about the outputs when discussing gaming rigs. One never hears a discussion regarding the inputs.

    Why is that?

    The inputs are such an integral part of the equation and are what keep me coming back to PC games. I know that they are not as fancy as graphics and sounds, but they play as much a part in game design, if not more, because they dictate the type of interface that you can build, which in turn dictates the type of game mechanics that can be built, which THEN determines the presentation bells and whistles (of course, that's purely theoretical, as most games just follow a successful formula and therefore only concentrate on bigger badder graphics with a few minor twists on the interface/control scheme).

    It's pretty tough to imagine Quake being developed for a console first when you consider that you almost require a keyboard/mouse combination control in order to play it properly. Same thing goes for Dune and War-Craft. If there were only consoles and joypads available, these types of games would -never- have developed to the point they currently are at.
    Until consoles provide more than the Joypad/Analog Stick/8 Button environment, then they will always be severely retarded compared to PCs in terms of the variety of gaming experiences that they can deliver. You will get fighters, platformers, menu driven random combat-fest "RPGs" with no character interaction, puzzlers, and drivers. The other hugely successful gaming genres: First Person Shooters, Real Time Strategy, and Massively Multiplayer RPGs, will remain the domain of the PC until such time as controls better suited to their application appear on the console (namely the keyboard/mouse combination).

    Yes I realize that SEGA is doing some MMORPG based on Phantasy Star (one of their earlier console RPG hits), but try to imagine for one second how hard it's going to be for the palyers to communicate with one another without a keyboard. What will make this a compelling experience, beyond what is already capable on a console, if the players can't easily communicate with one another?

    I also realize that GoldenEye is a great console based FPS, but it dosn't come close to replicating the feel of Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, or QuakeX. Furthermore, when the console FPS crowd eventually go online, they'll have to remain in their own server spaces simply because they won't have a hope in hell against keyboard/mousers. The same thing goes for RTS games.

    Sure, inputs might be the simplest of balances to rectify, but how come they NEVER discuss this topic? It's always about graphics and blah blah blah. So what! All you'll get is better looking versions of games that you already own. And forget about cross-platform development of PC and console games on the X-Box if they do not support similar control options.

    All this grief just adds to the fact that by the time X-Box, GameCube, and the PS2 are released, PCs will be 2 generations ahead technologically... which is all anybody cares about anyways it seems.

    -- kwashiorkor --
    Leaps in Logic
    should not be confused with

  • Re:Did I miss something? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    X-Box will only run binaries that have been digitally signed by microsoft. These executables will not run on a normal PC and can only be decrypted with decryption hardware built into the X-Box chipset.

  • Questionable competition listed. (Score:5)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:53AM (#819100)
    I can rattle off lots of processors that are more efficient than x86 (RISC processors such as PA-RISC, MIPS, SPARC, DEC Alpha ARM, etc.)

    Most of these processors aren't appropriate for a gaming platform.

    PA-RISC, SPARC, and Alpha chips are workstation-class and priced accordingly. They'd cost at least as much as the retail price of your console - not something you can use.

    ARM chips have horrible FP performance (the older versions didn't even have an FPU). This is a deliberate design trade-off; having only integer operations lets you save a lot of silicon and a lot of power. But gaming consoles need floating-point big time for physics, 3D collision detection, and any transformations that aren't handled by the hardware (there will be many). So this too is not something you can use.

    MIPS chips would be an acceptable choice - if you license the core and fab your own chips. But this is expensive, and leads to more effort required in the motherboard design as well. You can do this if you're a console company and are optimized for it - but Microsoft isn't on either count.

    So Intel looks like the best choice for Microsoft just from a price and design effort point of view.

    remember NT came out originally for MIPS, Intel and Alpha. Mips and Alpha are long gone

    And this is another *VERY* big reason for Microsoft to use Intel chips - they don't need to rewrite their operating system from scratch for a new platform. That would take a horrific amount of work, especially since they're porting DirectX as well as the OS itself.

    A gaming console must do one thing and it must do it well, which screams RISC to me

    Modern CISC-ish processors are just as efficient. Instruction decoding is a little hairier, but that's pretty much a solved problem. This is the old "CISC decoder with a RISC core" description that you've been hearing for both Intel and AMD chips (not precisely accurate, but close enough).

    The big flaw in Intel chips is that it has few general-purpose registers, but so far the chips have held up without a vast performance gap.

    I've read the article over at Ars on the Emotion Engine and it looks like if software developers can get their heads around it, the Playstation 2 should lay waste to the Xbox.

    The Playstation 2 is nice, but still have a few serious design flaws. The fact that it has only a miniscule amount of frame buffer memory is the most obvious of these, but I'm a bit skeptical of the bus as well.

    Realistic performance figures that I've heard for the Playstation put the X-box ahead (not surprising, as it has a graphics chip that's a couple of generations later than the Playstation, due to a later release date).

    Software optimization *should* be a solved problem if Sony writes or has written, say, an OpenGL implementation optimized for their hardware.

    I'm not a big fan of the X-box, but I'm afraid that I disagree with several of the points you use in your argument against it.

  • Is MSFT going to stop improving PC APIs all of a sudden when Xbox comes out? Are card makers going to stop improving their video cards? No? Well then. How long are the platforms ACTUALLY going to remain compatible?

    Six months at most is what he gives it, which sounds not unreasonable. That means your window for doing combined Xbox/PC development is one year, at the outside, starting right about now.

    But does it matter if the X-Box and regular PC APIs start to diverge six months out?

    Probably not.

    The divergence at the API level should be small and manageable. A lot of hardware divergence can be hidden beneath the APIs - most 3D games are written to the Direct3D API, not to the hardware spec of the video card, so you can change your video card and expect your software to run and take advantage of the improved performance of your new hardware.

    It will be a long time for the APIs to diverge enough to make porting from Windows to the XBox anywhere near as much work as porting from Windows to (say) the PS2. As long as it is less work to port to the XBox it has an advantage. By the time the APIs were so diverged that there was no advantage, XBox2 will be out, synched up to the then current Windows APIs.

    A common ancestry is a lot better from a developer's point of view than no commonality at all.

  • Yeah, they got a cool box.
    Yeah, they bought up a bunch of companies which have had a run of good games.
    Yeah, they have the money to make a push only Disney could rival.

    Do *I* think it's going to succeed?

    Only a little. Even with a really cool game machine and lots of kewl games, I spend way more time on the computer.

    I have the computer for other reasons and fire up games when I feel like it.

    I'd have thought WebTV would be teaching Microsoft something, since it's got a small population and growth nothing like AOL, there's no real attraction to playing these high quality graphics games on a low quality monitor (TV) let alone trying to surf the web.

    What will it take for it to succeed? At least one truly great game you can't play on anything else. Problem is, you can't force these things, people will like it or pass on it and all the ads and cartoons and cereal box promos and giveaways at McDonald's won't change that.

    Best of luck to them, but I'm just not interested. Also, I think they got a lot of these companies after their peak success.

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
  • That depends. If you want their to be competition in gaming platform hardware, then having one dominating player screws that up. On the other hand if you want to have strong competition at the game development level, then having a stable ubiquitous platform is good. Emphasis on stable here. If it's a flaky hard to work with platform then there is no benefit.

    ---

  • Microsoft is attempting to stop the advancement in gaming hardware technology. These advancements haven't benefited anyone except hardware companies in the past, so M$ is going to mark a line in the sand and say, "This is it! No more advancement, no innovation, until WE say so!" Since M$ is the one true king, they are the ones who should be rightfully able to do this.

    Now that we have that out of the way, I have one question. Instead of chasing the high end, authors could be just as creative using the middle of the road stuff out there, technology that has settle down and has the kinks worked out of it. Microsoft claims that they are doing this, stopping development so that the technology can settle down and get the kinks worked out.

    How are the game designers supposed to become successful all of a sudden? If chasing the high-end is so expensive that it's driving companies to bankruptcy, why are they doing it? Why aren't they getting all creative with what's there now? I have a suspicion that in the factory-line software houses (game A looks just like game B) it is much easier to convince the PHBs to add hooks to the latest hardware than it is to actually allow someone to be creative.

    One more question. 6 months after the X-box is out, it will be mediocre hardware. What's to stop company Y from adding a couple hooks so that it runs better on a regular PC with graphics card Z? Will we see M$ tying developers to the Xbox and not allowing them to move games to other platforms? Game developers, I do not mean to spread FUD, but be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

  • Lowest Common Denominator (Score:3)

    by Markonen ( 56381 ) <markoNO@SPAMkarppinen.fi> on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:11AM (#819110)
    Obviously Xbox and the state of the art in PC game hardware will differ more and more as time goes by. But assuming that Microsoft will be successful in the initial Xbox marketing push (and I have no doubt they will), the market will be filled with millions of boxes with this static hardware/software combination.

    After that, I believe that the supply of games that require more than what Xbox has to offer (in terms of hardware/software) will dry up for a long, long time.

    I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a game industry executive for a second. You are developing a PC gaming title with a fixed development budget. Do you want to include or exclude an installed base of, say, 10 million Xboxes from your target audience? Do you want your title to be compatible or incompatible with the Xbox?

    I thought so.
  • "Plots for console games are normally shallow"
    Not to be confused with the deep and engaging plots of PC games e.g. Doom, Quake, Q3:Arena, Unreal, UT, Earth 2150, etc. :)

    Even the the "deep" games for PC are pretty thin compared to average books.

    Let's maintain some perspective on these things.
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • XBox not up to the level of the Gamecube? That's a joke - the Gamecube is VERY substandard hardware (especially for a 2k1 console). It has less RAM and a slower video processor than the PS2, and FAR less than the XBox (which has nearly 10X the polygon power on paper, and has nearly 3X the memory + a hard drive). The gamecube was originally slated to come out in '99 as a comptetitor to the Dreamcast, and if it had come out then it probably would have been a decent system. As it stands now, it will only survive on the strength of Pokemon.
  • linux console [indrema.com]
    Gates: In a recent interview with Red Herring, [redherring.com]
    gamecub [zdnet.com]
    psx2 [wired.com]

    Funny, no links to directx [www]

    -Jon

  • This is a very true observation. It is because Microsoft lie, cheat, steal and destroy. People with a clue tend not to be 'pro' these things, whether it's Microsoft doing them or, say, Sun. Since Microsoft does them a lot more than any other company I've ever heard of, it's understandable that people will tend to form a bias against them. This bias could be termed 'common sense' or 'ability to learn from experience'.

    The article made me yearn to slap the author around a bit, repeating 'Being open minded is good. Being so open minded your brain falls out is NOT!'. Either the author is a total gullible fool, or a hired gun for Microsoft itself, or perhaps simply a person who bases their entire concept of how the world works off their observations of the computer industry over the last decade or so. Whichever it is, the end result is that the author is nothing more than a propagandist, attempting to argue people into the embrace of yet another 'trust' in the making, harmful to capitalism.

    If not having a choice is so wonderful, why don't we just ditch democracy, crown a King, and nationalise every form of industry so that nobody ever offers a choice again? Doubtless then creativity will simply _burgeon_ :P

    If there's one thing above all else I hold Microsoft responsible for, one sort of damage that I consider most appalling, it is the systematic brainwashing of human thinking into ludicrous, harmful nonsense. Consider:

    • People will be MUCH MORE creative for X-Box
    • -because they will not be presented with any divergent features or unexpected hardware to develop for
    • -and because they will not be expected to produce products for anything beyond the Wal-Mart mentality
    • -and because anybody developing for anything else is doomed, because
    • ...see item one, repeat ad infinitum
    What?? It's flat ludicrous. Most of the factors promised for X-Box (assuming it even ships! "Oh, it turns out if you buy this new version of WINDOWS it's much better than any console... what X-Box?") are _detrimental_ to creativity and advancement of the gaming art. It is a potential of pure mass market pressure _with_ the ability of the console maker to manipulate and control any and all developers. It would be fatal to all but entrenched corporate developers- and even those had better stick to well-established genres and utilise X number of X-Box features just the right way, or risk offending Microsoft, risk not getting the shelf space and promotional perks that would be available. This is a poisoned platform from the outset.

    Hell with it.

  • Xbox is NOWHERE NEAR doomed (Score:3)

    by StaticEngine ( 135635 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @10:30AM (#819125) Homepage
    You know, these complaints, why are they using an Intel CPU, the box is going to stagnate, blah blah blah, are all indicitive of a lack of understanding of efficient development and what makes entertainment successful.

    First of all, OF COURSE it makes sense to use an Intel CPU, and a system close to a current PC. Developers can make games RIGHT NOW, without the final hardware, using the exact same tools they'll use for their final build, even though the GPU is not burned in silicon yet, and even though no boxes with the finalized spec actually exist yet. We can use MSDS and all the tools we're familiar with on a PC right now, and never have a porting headache at the end. That's a good decision.

    As for the so called stagnation, it's misleading to suggest that as technology improves, entertainment improves. Better special effects have not made dramatically better movies. Casablanca, no CGI there, yet one of the best movies made. Likewise, a lot of people will agree that DOOM, a far less technologically advanced game than the Quake series, was a better game than it's successors. Hell, the Infocom interactive text adventures are still listed as favorites by millions worldwide.

    A fixed platform with as much power as the X-Box will allow a HUGE number of developers already familiar with Win32 development to jump into creation with only the slightest learning curve for any platform specific differences. Furthermore, with the power available, even when "latest and greatest" chipsets that follow allow for more special features and polygons, XBox developers will be encouraged to work more on the story, the plotline, the involving drive that draws the players into the game, and this will result in better games for years to come.

    But what the hell do I know? I'm just a game developer.

  • In short, everything will be far more simply/uniformly designed and will be as likely to crash as any other console, ie, just about never.

    Question: have you ever used the Sega Dreamcast extensively? That system is prone to crashing on a regular basis.

    Before my current job, I worked at a video game store for a few months before committing to a 'real' job. One of the first things I was taught was the Dreamcast equivalent to control-alt-delete. Push down every button at once and hit start, and you'll reboot the system. We'd need to do that at least once a day with most games. Every few days, it would crash so hard we'd need to pull the plug. And that's a console system through and through.

    Well, except for one thing. I really don't like to jump on the Windows-bashing bandwagon (I'm a gamer, so I use Windows), but it is interesting to note that Dreamcast games are written using WindowsCE. If you look at any Dreamcast box or game, you'll see a little Windows logo on the back. And the Dreamcast, software written with Windows, is the one console that crashes often under heavy usage. Now that Microsoft is making their own console, using Windows, that trend might just follow. Which would be a shame for them.
  • And the new games on the horizon?

    WarCraft III, Doom III, Return to Castle Wolfenstein...

    Umm... okay, I am looking forward to WarCraft III (as I sit here playing Diablo II), but man, is it retread time, or what?

    It sorta reminds me of the video game arcade scene now. BORING. All they have out there are 1) fighting games, and 2) racing games. Period. That's it. Where is all the originality? Remember back in the 80's? Tempest? Centepede? Asteroids? Robotron? Star-Gate? Super Miss Pac-Gal? A billion different visions and ideas, tons of varying game-play... and it all boiled away into fighting and racing games. No wonder women aren't into arcade games any more (man, they used to be! Remember Crystal Castles? Aracknid? Dig-Dug? Or hell, even on the PC... remember Lemmings?)

    Sigh. The reason the revenues are stagnant is because the games suck and the ideas are boring. We need fresh new blood! New ideas! New Concepts! Something more *abstract* could be nice!

    - Spryguy
  • One thing that doesn't add up -- if everything this guy says is true -- is why console emulators are so popular. OK, lots of them are for _old_ games... my TI-99/4A just doesn't work anymore and I like Parsec, so rather than going to a thrift store and trying to find a working TI, I download an emulator and play (after hunting for ROMs for a week and a half).

    But there's also new emulators, like Connectix's, and the N64 emulators, and the like. I don't know how much money Connectix is making, but they generally seem to be a solid company that knows what they're doing (perhaps their task was made easier by the fact that HW compatibility is easier on the Macintosh). If what this guy was saying is totally true, it would seem emulators wouldn't be popular at all.

    I also don't see how Microsoft is just going to make all other console makers roll over and die. They couldn't do it with the handheld market, because they had determined competition that knew what they were doing. In the console industry, they've got entrenched competition that have been battling hard over the last 15 years. A Microsoft monopoly? Not likely.

    And finally, from the article:

    very time there's a new generation of consoles in the works," says game developer Greg Costikyan," there are stories about how consoles are going to kill the PC as a platform. The fact is, they never have, and never will. There's a larger base of PCs than there is of any console platform. People buy them for reasons other than playing games, but want games to play on them too."

    Yep.

    "Yes, a stable platform makes some aspects of
    development easy. [But] a 'bigger market' will simply drive development budgets higher, driving increasing conservatism."

    This is one reason why Mac gaming isn't bigger. The platform is much more predictable than the PC, because of its closed nature... but the audience is smaller.
  • I dunno, I've never had a problem with my Microsoft Hardware. And I've never seen any of the WinCE-based Dreamcast games crash.

    On the other hand, my roommate did have Final Fantasy 7 hang on him on his Playstation, forcing him to go back to his previous save.
  • For years every console that comes out has been "a PC killer" and people have said "why do I want to buy a PC when my Nintendo/Sega/Super Nintendo/Playstation/N64/Dreamcast/PS2 works better at playing games?" It ain't gonna happen.

    First, you have to have a TV set. How many of us have a TV set in our office? It is a hell of a lot easier to plunk in a game on our PC and then ALT-Tab out of it when the boss walks by, for one thing.

    Consoles have their market and their purpose, just like a real computer does, but to say that either of them is going to smash the other's market share is idiotic at best. The PC world has nothing to fear from the X-Box - the only ones that do have something to worry about are Nintendo, Sega and Sony. Nobody else cares.

  • The divergence at the API level should be small and manageable....A common ancestry is a lot better from a developer's point of view than no commonality at all.

    Now, not meaning to flame you here really, but you don't understand game development at a big shop.

    The games are written to internal APIs, and it's the job of the T&L teams to make sure those APIs work the same on every platform. There are large efficiencies there between PC and Xbox, yes.

    HOWEVER ... the _real_ costs in game development these days are the graphic work. Now, PC models at the time will have how many polygons compared to the Xbox? The correct answer here is "many, many, more".

    As my buddy put it, getting artists to render in different palettes for different platforms is hard enough. Getting them to do two completely different levels of design detail, for every rev of a Xbox/PC game ... naaaaah. So common development gives you a really lame PC game. Ummmm ... that won't cut it.

    Nope, common development is just a nice theory. If there's more than a handful of games that actually end up being done that way, I will be shocked.

  • i will attempt to go through this horrible piece of trash one bit at a time and tear it up...

    An age-old theological debate has finally been resolved: Evil really does have a valuable place in the world.

    no, it doesn't. hitler did a lot of good for germany's economy, does that mean he should be heralded as a great person? he tried to unite the world... that wasn't a Good Thing(tm), yet this article seems to thing Bilbo of the Gatespeople trying to unite the gaming world is just great..

    Because last July, Beelzebub himself -- Bill Gates -- announced that Microsoft will spend half a billion dollars on marketing and sales for its new Xbox game console. Following that decree, he released 1,000 developer kits to game designers.

    yeah, great.. whatever... next..

    Two months earlier, Gates sent shock waves through the gaming community when it was revealed that he had ordered his minions to buy premier computer game studio Bungie Software, creator of the beloved Marathon and Myth series and one of the last independent studios to publish its own titles. Game-loving hobbits and elves could only shudder -- the dark shadow of software's Sauron was inexorably expanding its reach.

    more like bungie sent shockwaves through the industry when they traded in their souls for a wad of cash. i've long since stopped being surprised when M$ buys any company that's willing to sell.

    Indeed, the Chicago company thus sent in exodus to the rain-swept campus of Redmond, Wash., was but the latest to make the unholy alliance, joining Relic, Gas Powered Games, Ensemble Studios (creator of Age of Empires) and highly admired Wing Commander designer Chris Roberts, among others.

    thus destroying the possibility that those studios would do anything interesting... i was looking forward to Dungeon Siege from GPG.. but... the possibility that it will be bug free, run on decent hardware, be innovative at ALL, those are all gone.. and it's a question whether it will come out for the PC at all now..

    But it was good. It was very, very good. Gamers should rejoice.

    WHY?!?! he never once in this entire article supports that statement. he provides no reason we should be glad that M$ is buying up game studios left and right..

    I make this confession at great cost. I've resisted saying it for nearly six months. I didn't even bother attending Gates' unveiling of the Xbox, with its built-in DVD player and internal hard drive (a console first) at the Game Developers Conference in March. No, I was there to see Peter Molyneux, a genuine genius, not Gates, a lucre-obsessed, mediocre coder who'd lucked into some insanely fortuitous timing and software acquisitions to become the richest dandruff victim in human existence. What did I care about this game console of his, some ill-conceived also-ran muscling into an already crowded market?

    back then apparently you hadn't been either roughed up in an alley or handed a wad of cash by some microsoft goon.. the console market IS over-crowded.. sega's certain demise is proof of that.

    I even said as much three months later, between my fifth plate of lousy sushi and my sixth Sapporo, on the eve of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, slushily expounding to a cadre of pained-looking game industry executives, "Everyone who wants to own a console already owns one, and if they get a new one, it'll probably be Sony's PlayStation 2, which can play their old PlayStation games. And the PC gamers won't buy the Xbox because by the time it comes out -- who's going to wait until fall 2001, anyway? -- top-line PCs will be two, three times faster. So who the hell is left to get an Xbox, unless Gates starts giving them away?"

    the last bit here is quite right.. by the time the x-box arrives, everyone who wants a new console will have a PSX2. /everyone/.. what is not mentioned in this article (among feeble attempts to make the PSX2 look unpopular and slight mentions of complaints) is that EVERY FUCKING PLAYSTATION 2 WHICH IS BEING SHIPPED TO THE US HAS ALREADY BEEN SOLD.

    The scales have now fallen from my eyes. In ways that seem all too painfully obvious, there is no option but to accept the coming of the Xbox, which is likely to devastate the market for cutting-edge PC games, not to mention its competitors, and gain a near monopoly on the console market, as surely as Microsoft has with the desktop operating system.

    riiight,... if it's so obvious why don't you tell us? oh you need to blather on for four more pages.. i see. what is painfully obvious is M$ gained its desktop monopoly because it had no competition at the time.

    the x-box is fighting an uphill battle.

    just as msn did. look how wonderfully successful that has been!

    This, however, is an unalloyed good. The power of the Xbox will unleash a renaissance of creativity and risk taking. Meanwhile, it will liberate gamers from the PC and the crack-addict lure of endless new peripherals and CPUs. All computer gamers, then, should welcome Gates' entrance into the market and start saving their money, not for a top-end PC, but for a $200 or $300 Xbox (when it arrives sometime next year) and a high-resolution TV -- all the while cordially reaching out to convince other gamers who might not yet be converted. Spread the gospel: This monopoly will be good for you.

    and you will be able to build a PC with the same hardware (or better) that the X-box is made of for about the same price. :P whoopity doo! it's going to be a PIECE OF SHIT. it will be a STANDARD piece of shit, but it will still be one.

    this whole talk about how making games for PCs is "confusing" for developers because they don't know what their audience will have is a load of crap. if they aim for the x-box's low specs, every PC at the time will be able to run it. sure you'll have to say 'fuck you' to all the people who can't understand OpenGL (or add support for other APIs) but them's the breaks. with the x-box you're saying "fuck you' to everyone who doesn't own an x-box!

    i also find his insisting, basically ASSUMING that we will agree with his stupid opinion infuriating. this guy is a fucking moron.. but we will continue..

    So how did I get here and why should you? The first push down the road to Microsoft love came last year, when a well-paid technical support representative for Sony told me to open my computer and blow on it.

    ok first of all, that guy is getting paid $8/hour and doesn't give a shit. calling technical support is like banging a hammer against your computer. it is not going to help anything.

    this guy claims to be knowledgeable and claims that his friends are, but anyone who is has no trouble getting games to run, sorry. i never have. never. ever. not even when i was twelve years old.

    seriously, i think you have to be a moron to have problems with games nowadays. especially everquest, what the fuck? if you have some non-standard, POS video card of course it's not going to fucking work...

    All I wanted to do was install and run Everquest, by no means the most technically demanding game on the market. And even while my PC easily met the minimum stated hardware requirements, the game simply refused to run. After the log-in screen, it would tantalizingly begin to load but, at the last minute, blink the Wintel equivalent of "Fuck you, pal" and unceremoniously crash back to the desktop.

    this is a problem with windows, dumbass. and yet you are busy licking the shit out of bill gates' sphinctre throughout this entire article.. great.... you are a smart person.

    The technical rep's e-mail response to my query for help was prompt, thorough -- and totally infuriating. It was a litany of annoyances, a laundry list of best-guess fixes, patches and workarounds: Reinstall the game; reinstall the 3-D graphics card drivers; go to the graphics card manufacturer's Web site and see if there's a more recent driver to download; turn the sound card off; buy more RAM; buy another graphics card; reinstall Windows system files. And the final one, the true clincher:

    "If all else fails, you could take the case off your CPU and point a fan at the graphics card. That may seem crazy, but sometimes it works."

    again, you called him, moron. if you can't get it to work on your own,.. how the fuck is some guy far far away getting paid $8/hour going to know how to fix your fucking computer for you over the phone? tech support is there as a comforting thing to idiots. it doesn't work most of the time unless you are just so stupid you're doing something that is obvious (like not plugging your computer in.)

    Crazy, indeed -- and one clear reason why change is needed in the PC gaming world, change that only a Microsoft has the power to deliver.

    yeah because it's their fucking OS that's broken, i am at the point of wanting to strangle this nimrod.

    As "Erik," senior writer for Old Man Murray, a scabrously funny site for hardcore gamer and industry vets, puts it, "No normal person should have the patience to invest the 12 hours a day it takes to stay on top of making your PC, and especially your games, work. And this is why PC games are a mess. A lot of people I know who like games won't touch a PC. And again, they're not dummies. They're smart enough consumers to sense what a big, shitty headache PC gaming is and give it a wide, wide, wide, wide miss."

    the fact that this guy thinks old man murray is hilarious is an indication of how stupid an inept he is.

    OMM's humour is based on exaggeration, he is obviously taking things a little far in this quote... my computer is well over a year old.. i don't spend any time on it, have never had any trouble with it. it takes no effort to 'keep it working'.. unless you are throwing it out of a 2nd story window every day.

    The problem, quite simply, is that PCs are impossible to design for.

    really? is that so?

    well, let's see now... hmm,.. no, i think maybe it's *windows* that's impossible to design for. if you want to make sure a game runs on /most/ people's computers you need to aim lower. the problem is, the gaming industry is in a mode where games are not expected to work when they're released, they are not tested enough. console games generally go through much more testing (and when they don't, they crash just like PC games,.. witness Gran Turismo 2 among many others for the PSX..)

    "Probably something that most gamers don't understand is the difficulty of developing for the PC market," says Ken Levine, general manager at Irrational Games. "A large part of the time spent in testing a product involves endless cycles of figuring out why your character disappears on video card X or the sound crackles on sound card Y." Resolving these conflicts involves clawing through the operating system's guts, and the unique configurations of Compaq, Dell and the myriad other Wintel manufacturers.

    that is because there is a lack of standards, and you dumbshits won't get behind one, forcing the card manufacturers to adopt it (or vice versa.) there is nothing inherently more difficult about programming for PCs, the industry is just in a mess right now because of the explosion it has gone through during the 90s, now you have tons of idiots in it who don't know what the fuck they are doing. john carmack is a /good/ hacker, he is heralded as a messiah because he's one of the very very few programmers in the gaming industry who's any good right now!

    Eliminating these migraines costs time and money -- both of which could be better put to use focusing on the developer's main task: a compelling, creative, emotionally engaging game.


    uhh these are separate roles, or should be, in a good company. you have testers and you have developers. and you have designers. the designers do not waste their time testing, and the testers do not come up with the plot. and the programmers fix the bugs and write the engine. DUH.

    "Other than the huge amount of money that can be made," seethes Erik, "I have no idea why anyone bothers writing games for the PC. From an artistic standpoint, it's like making a movie knowing that every projector will be running at a different speed."

    i get the distinct impression that this numbnuts has a game running behind and this is a good place for him to make excuses for his boss/investors.

    that is the dumbest analogy i've heard in a really, really long time. a reel of film is static, a game doesn't need to be. games from 1982 might not run well on your p3, going a little fast, but that is because they did not anticipate people wanting to play those old games on fast machines... there is no excuse for that kind of bullshit anymore, the ways around it are well documented.

    well i've already spent far too much time writing this, i have made just about every point that needs to be made. this article is a load of bullshit, the x-box is too little too late. a year behind the PSX2... everyone will already have one, and by that time will be awaiting the sequels to their new favourite games come christmas time, they won't be very interested in buying a new system.
    ...dave

  • Console replacing PC games? (Score:3)

    by maninblackhat ( 221616 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:21AM (#819148)
    They're saying the Xbox will spell the end of PC games? Not so long as there is a market for games with complicated user interfaces...such as those requiring typing. Could you imagine trying to play a game like that with only 10 buttons? I can't even play Mechwarrior 3 with only the 10 buttons on my joystick.

    Sure, console games have some advantages. They're faster and smoother and don't crash. And the only ones who can write them are the big companies and software developers. Anyone ever hear of an open-source or shareware Playstation game? I didn't think so. Beware!

  • More Anti-MS FUD (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:22AM (#819150)
    Hard drives and Windows are both notoriously prone to failure.

    I'll have you know that my Windows 2000 box has an uptime of 3 years, and my box running the yet to be released Windows ME has an uptime of 1 year.
  • A little pro-microsoft, but good reading nonetheless."

    Ever notice that anything pro-microsoft is frowned upon in Slashdot? Pro-Microsoft stories are rejected, and Pro-Microsoft replies get troll ratings (as this one will probably get, thanks to the rampant Linux gnomes out there.

  • 1) The X-box *is* a PC.

    2) Therefore, porting games OR pirating them should be trivial.

    3) If I have a PC, why would I ever buy an X-box?

    4) PC's have gotten *easier* to design for; we have consistent APIs for gaming now, like SDL, OpenGL, and OpenAL; Quake III looks beautiful on my new Linux box, but it should look the same on Windows. The same goes for Mozilla...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • We are talking about the Xbox which may be out next year, which may have a bunch of cool games and which may be compatable with PCs?

    So is anyone seriously considering holding off on their purchase of a game console for a year just in case this all turns out to be true? Have developers stopped designing games for the PC in 2001 and 2002? I'll take this seriously when I get my copy of Windows NT 6 that was due out this year.

    Until then, I'll keep playing my PlayStation and maybe consider a PS2 during the post holiday sales. Then I'll see what my nephews and neices get for their birthdays in March and May (so we can share games). Then I'll look at what my little brother and his friends take back to college with them in August. Then I'll take a look at the Xbox if it gets released by then.

    And one final question: Considering the state of Microsoft's licensing questions for Windows, will it be legal to play a game I bought for myself on my friend's Xbox??

    Fight The FUD! Say NO! to Vaporware!


    Viv
    -----------
  • I would rather have a console that was six months less powerfull, but 100% completely open, and that anyone could press games for.

    Thank you!. Finally someone that gets it. I've been saying for some time now that the first company to make a royalty free console with a freely available dev-kit (not necessarily free in price -- just not restricted to those producing "approved" content, although obviously it has to be cheap) will make an absolute killing. Sure, the average quality of games for that console will inevitably decrease, as you'll get the crap that wouldn't normally pass the Sony/Sega/whoever approval process. However, there's no reason to think that the number of quality titles will decrease, and there will certainly be some real gems that wouldn't normally be released. Open it up to fair competition, and let the market decide. The good (like id and Epic) will float, and the bad (like Automata or Ram Jam) will sink without trace, just as it should be. In the olden days, any halfway competent coder could write a game for the Spectrum/C64/Amiga and release it to the world (either through an established publisher, or as shareware/freeware). In fact, I did just that. The low barrier to entry was what created such vibrant communities around these platforms (and that's much of the reason for the success of Linux today). I'd love to see the same happen for a modern day console.

  • Huh!? How could anyone seriously read that article and think the guy was pro-microsoft.

    Sheesh!

  • A PC for $300? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Works for me. Win 2000, a hard drive and probably the probability of opening the hardware and connecting it to your pc, or grabbing the OS, or , or maybe even "trying" to make Linux run on it. Oh well unless it it is some other kind of processor hardware (but then again, how dare Microsoft produces Win 2000 for another hardware setup?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • How do you get six months? Even hard core gamers certainly don't upgrade their video card every six months. My 2 year old TNT still plays all the new games just fine. Sure their will be something faster than Xbox after six months, but that does not mean games will not work on it. As far as API's go, API's are SOFTWARE they can be upgraded at any time, just include different libraries on the game cd, you don't even have to worry about a new DirectX breaking your old games.
    XBox DOES have more than a few things going for it, namely Internet connectivity (who owns IE, MSN, and WebTV?), every popular PC game will be on it since porting to Xbox will be a no brainner.
  • Hardware, schmardware.

    Give me a good game with moderate graphics over a mediocre game with killer graphics any day.

    Starcraft, for example, is 3 yrs old, runs at 640x480 with 2D sprites, and lacks many of the features found in modern RTS games. But I find it far more fun than UT or Q3A, or any of the new-fangled 3D RTS games, like Earth 2150. In fact, I'd generally rather play the four yr. old N64 game 1080 snowboarding game than most of the new PC games.

    It's about gameplay, and Nintendo knows console gameplay. It remains to be seen if MS does too.
    -----
    D. Fischer

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:22AM (#819186)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • John Carmack said, to paraphrase, the PC Gaming market is experimental. Patches for games are released, and bleeding edge features are attempted.

    Think back to buggy console games. I can think of a few times over the period of my entire life that I have trashed a console game. One was Sonic The Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Genesis,where I walked into a wall, and the game froze. The other was Bigfoot on the Nintendo, where I didn't freeze the game,but I was able to win even though I had less money(score? can't remember) by pressing start on the final tally screen before the adding was done.

    In both cases, and especially Bigfoot's, there would probably be an Internet patch.

    Most likely, games will be designed for the PC still, and when all the bugs have been ironed out and the games prove to be good on the market, we'll be seeing Sony and Microsoft trying to bug these companies to port their games- Most likely Microsoft with their marketing strategy promoting that they have easy to port hardware.

    Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that MS will end up making developers sign NDAs that stops them from talking about their porting experiences. I really do not think a moving target like DirectX will stay compatible with the PC stuff forever.

    And I do not see something as low-level as the DirectX APIs making the entire system easy to program bug-free innovative games. Perhaps something like Nintendo did with the N64, where it SEEMS they gave a 3D engine to all the developers, and they worked with it.

    Take a look at Mario 64 and then take a look at Mario Kart. Same engine, different controls. How's that for programming for a non-moving target? Try that, Microsoft.
  • Dreamcast currently has a 56k modem with an upcomming ethernet adapter for broadband capabilities. Its currently has a keyboard with an upcomming mouse. It also has a vga adapter for a pc monitor for games that use 640x480 resolution. So most of the rants about consoles aren't even valid. A hard drive would be interesting to see what they can do with it. BUT, also Iomega is comming out with a zip drive addon for dreamcast which can open the door for a lot of things. Seganet goes live September 7th. And for those who think the dreamcast sucks should honestly try playing it for once. The 8:1 Texture compression and FSAA are feature that PS2 just don't have. The PS2 Lacks memory so it can't even reach its full potential. And i also have a nice 5.1 setup at home that works great with the dreamcast's high quality sound processor (although i use it in 2.0).

  • Xbox is doomed (Score:4)

    by Snocone ( 158524 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:26AM (#819193) Homepage
    This is yet another story that Doesn't Get It.

    I was talking with a buddy who does PS2 stuff at EA about this, and he pointed out that all this stuff about Xbox being a good console compatible with PC platforms is nonsense.

    Is MSFT going to stop improving PC APIs all of a sudden when Xbox comes out? Are card makers going to stop improving their video cards? No? Well then. How long are the platforms ACTUALLY going to remain compatible?

    Six months at most is what he gives it, which sounds not unreasonable. That means your window for doing combined Xbox/PC development is one year, at the outside, starting right about now.

    And when you take that away, what's the Xbox? A pretty good gaming PC, for now. A mediocre gaming PC, when it comes out, not really up to the consoles that will be out at the time like the Dolphin, er, GameCube. And in another six months, a legacy platform.

    Now ... putting that into perspective, do you *really* believe the hype in this article?

  • Intel inside? Doesn't make sense. (Score:3)

    by crgrace ( 220738 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:26AM (#819197)
    What I find so strange about the Xbox is that it is going to have an intel processor inside it. I can rattle off lots of processors that are more efficient than x86 (RISC processors such as PA-RISC, MIPS, SPARC, DEC Alpha, ARM, etc.), but Intel is successful largely because of the installed base, dominant operating system (remember NT came out originally for MIPS, Intel and Alpha. Mips and Alpha are long gone), and huge mindshare. A gaming console must do one thing and it must do it well, which screams RISC to me. On the other hand, the Sega Genesis and Commodore Amiga were amazing with what they could do with a 68000.

    I've read the article over at Ars on the Emotion Engine and it looks like if software developers can get their heads around it, the Playstation 2 should lay waste to the Xbox. Nintendo's Dolphin (or whatever it's going to be called this week) also looks tight with it's PPC core. x86 has been looking tired for several years now and I can't imagine a high-performance graphics machine should be based on it.

    To me, it seems M$ is shooting itself in the foot using an Intel processor considering that the leverage they will get from any installed base will be small given that gamers are used to buying a different architecture each time they upgrade. The fact that so many developers already design games for Windows may help though.

    In summary, I think going with Intel may be a serious technical gaff but we'll have to wait and see if it will be a marketing win. As much as we may dislike M$, they are smart.

  • Developers all want a royalty. NOT. (Score:5)

    by John Carmack ( 101025 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @01:36PM (#819205)
    I don't.

    The argument for royalties is that it allows the console price to be lower, allowing more units to be sold, and theoretically allowing you to sell enough more units to offset the royalty.

    The downside is that if a large chunk of the console revenue must be derived from software royalties, it must be made impossible to bypass the console company in the production of a title.

    This forces them to resort to various copy protection and registered developer schemes, which open the door to all the back room scheming between publishers and the hardware vendor about shipping sequencing, and content aproval.

    I would rather have a console that was six months less powerfull, but 100% completely open, and that anyone could press games for.

    (Indrema has not disclosed me on their hardware.)

    John Carmack
  • In theory, your NTSC set should support something like 435 lines (535 with overscan(?)), but most of the cheap $200 color TVs are only capable of half that resolution. (VHS is only about 170 lines anyway) I picked up some Toshiba professional video monitor, with a token tuner, back in 1983 and it still serves as an excellent set for video games, cable, etc. Granted in y'2000 dollars it would cost close to that $2,000 mark. It would probably do the XBox justice, but it is foremost a monitor.

    At the 2000 CES I had a chance to look at much of the top of the line monitors and HDTV isn't really going anywhere, not unless you're a videophile with deep pockets. I'm afraid, with the public's acceptance of crappy quality video, where it is, HDTV is probably going be have a very marginal existance, if it doesn't die out.

    Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
  • If the XBox is going to have a standard hardware specification, based on basically PC components, there is the possibility that there will be "XBox Compatible" PCs. If I were a PC manufactorer, I would be talking to MS about this idea soon. It would definitely be a plus for that model of PC.

    On the other hand, it is simple to just have a PC port of that same XBOx game. Hell, they could go on the same DVD together.

    Let's just hope the XBox does not crash just as soon as someone is on the last level, about ready to beat the game. That person might have some hardware trouble (smashed XBox) along with that crashed game, haha.

  • All Hype and FUD aside, it is my wish that the X-Box will finally bring to the consumer market something which the PC has gone without for far too long:

    A standardized light gun. Yes, I know there's a few out there that one can pick up for a hundred bucks or so, but there aren't any games available for the, because there's not standard for PC Light Guns.

    There's nothing I love more at the local arcade than plunking down a dollar or so and double-fisting two light guns while blowing away baddies on the big screen. Now if I could only do that in my apartment the guns would pay for themselves inside of one summer...

    --Cycon

  • Re:Xbox is doomed (Score:3)

    by tealover ( 187148 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @09:28AM (#819215)
    Now, not meaning to flame you here really, but you don't understand game development at a big shop.

    And you do? All I've seen you do is regurgitate some comments from a "buddy" of yours who is doing PS2 development. Hardly the objective commentary that I would take seriously. Your "buddy" obviously has a stake in seeing the PS2 succeed so I'm not surprised that he would cast a gloomy picture of the Xbox's future.

    All I know is if the Xbox comes out with kick ass games, I'm going to get one. I especially love the fact that it does HDTV resolution out the box, which the PS2 doesn't.

    I don't care about API's. I don't care about any other developer nonsense. I all care about is games. And I suspect they will be there.

  • Doesn't Make Sense.... (Score:3)

    by Bill Daras ( 102772 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2000 @08:33AM (#819232) Homepage
    The article focuses on the fact the X-Box is so much better than Windows, easier, with less configuration problems, etc. And if Windows didn't suck so much, we wouldn't need the X-Box.

    My question is, why should we pay Microsoft more money to replace something of theirs that should be perfectly capable of dealing with what we demand of it?

    Does anyone else see the screwed logic in this?
  • I don't consider myself very knowledgable about consoles, yet I was pretty disapointed by that article. John Carmack's recently posted talk on the issue was infinitely more perceptive. This guy on the other hand, has clued onto half of what is stunningly obvious, yet completely overlooked the other half (that also seems stunningly obvious) and shoots off into staggering conclusions about how game design creativity depends more on unified hardware than anything else. Has he actually actually played games from several different platforms and target markets?
    I too can make staggering conclusions (that are just as blind), but I wouldn't publish them.

    A bit of Devil's Advocacy on the topic (that complex hardware takes up more programmer hours thus shackling gameplay ideas somehow), complex hardware allows users to make their own quake mods and levels, such that not only can a single game remain fresh and fun for several years (if it's your thing), but cool and zany ideas that a publisher would otherwise not let a house develop, can appear in the user mods, grow in popularity, and are then embraced by dev houses.

    Having just one game keep players occupied for years (via free user-made mods) may well have led to a flat market compared to consoles, precisely because it offers value for money that no console can touch. So to suggest that this constitutes evidence that PC gamers would jump ship is bizarre to say the least. (I think he's also overlooking a similar thing with pircacy - the market is flat because a lot of people buy most games but pirate several on top of that. These people likewise not going to move to a console that lacks such a "bonus").*

    It will be very interesting to see whether the xbox allows user mods. Carmack seems to put odds on it not being the case, and gives some compelling reasons. It wouldn't surprise me however, if a compromise solution was found in order to best the competiting consoles (eg console can download, but only from a proprietary xbox site, thus they can allow user mods and downloads as they wish yet retain absolute control over what users can get without paying).

    *Did I just argue that the PC game market depends on piracy?!? Er, no... I can't have. I'm not suggesting that piracy contributes to the market, I meant that it is a vice that will keep many people hooked on the PC market who otherwise might move to a console.

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