Smoke and Mirrors from Sony and Microsoft 581
An anonymous reader writes "History tells us: Don't believe what you're hearing about the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.There was a lot of hype last week about the next generation of game machines. Microsoft said the Xbox 360 will ultimately reach 1 billion consumers worldwide, while Sony gave a laundry list of features for the PlayStation 3, showing some jaw dropping footage along the way. (Nintendo promised a Revolution, but didn't go much further than that.)
I hate to be a wet blanket, but it's time to come back to reality."
Can get better later (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not though? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is completely wrong of them to use pre-rendered images, and say it is actual gameplay footage (killzone, anyone?), but I can't imagine that this early on the developers have even gotten close to figuring out the nuances of the systems.
It all comes down to the games. If a console has powers like a supercomputer, it still won't be fun if the games are terrible.
You don't play the hardware in the console, you play the games. That's all there is to it.
This isn't a troll, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
HYPE (Score:2, Insightful)
That is the beauty in smoke and mirrors.
Verging on plagiarism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't a troll, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
not to be an whiny guy (Score:3, Insightful)
Reporting Games (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA:
"It's not hard to forgive the hardware publishers for a little bit of hyperbole at E3, the annual trade show of the video game industry. It is, after all, their moment in the sun. But now that the crowds have gone home and the booth babes have changed back into street clothes, it's time to recognize that a fair number of the promises made last week will quietly fade away."
The best time to report critical insights, especially those counter to PR claims, is during the "moment in the sun". When everyone's paying attention. Otherwise, reporting is a footnote, and the PR floods the media. Result: most people believe the unopposed PR. Gaming coverage has been improving, as competition heats up in a bigger market of people with competing interests, not just gaming.
To see how badly "reporting" can go wrong, just look at the synthetic world of national and international affairs in the mass media, rarely insightful, and totally distorted in representing reality. With games becoming ever more realistic, and reality ever more bent to our imaginations, it's ironic that reporting on reality becoming more of a fantasy game, while gaming reporting becomes more realistic.
Re:This isn't a troll, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:3, Insightful)
E3 babes and the decline of console gaming (Score:1, Insightful)
"As I watched the bored-looking "babes" strut across the stage at the Tecmo booth, I thought about what the industry has done when fans have occasionally tried to take creative ownership of the games they adore. Recently a bunch of college kids set up a site called NinjaHackers.com, where they shared home-brewed "skins" for the players of a Tecmo volleyball game. The skins were free, and they gave players more options for dressing (or undressing) the game characters. But of course, Tecmo threatened to sue. Even though the skins were hardly a substantive replacement for the game - indeed, you'd have to buy the game to use them - the company wouldn't stand for it." ( http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/22092/ [alternet.org] )
However, the original post by CmdrTaco merely seeks to convey rhetoric of "Warning: don't do what you already won't do" and comes off as a transparent anti-hype advertisement.
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Nintendo hears what you're saying, and tries to be creative in a lot of ways. That sort of gets overlooked, however, because they tend to then brand all of their ideas with their big franchises, Mario being the number one example. So the PS and Xbox fanboys rant about how 50% of the games available for the GC are just mario games, ignoring the fact that there's a whole lot of variety within the Mario universe.
I don't have anymore of an idea what Nintendo's big Revolution is going to be than any other random guy on the street, but I have found their games to be fairly consistently fresh and fun.
Re:This isn't a troll, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a huge fan of both consoles and PCs, they both have their place. I would never try to play an FPS on a console. I tried getting along with it for months with Halo 2, but it was like trying to ride a monkey instead of a horse. It's just not meant to be. I also would never want the "latest and greatest" cutting edge game to be on the console - why? Because the graphics aren't going to look nearly as good - how can they, when the video card is about 3 or 4 years old?
Making blanket statements isn't going to work. Consoles do some things well, PCs do some things well. Until I can treat a console like a PC (ie: hook it up to an extremely high resolution monitor and have the option to use a keyboard and mouse), for me, it's going to be my second choice system. With that said, trying to have all my friends huddle around my monitor as we play Double Dash isn't going to work either. There's certain pros and cons to each, and it's up to the individual to decide what they like more - high powered FPS games with input devices that allow for much higher response times, or something that always "just works", can be played with tons of friends, everyone sitting around the living room drinking some beers.
Re:Can get better later (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it's XBox 1.5 anyway, but what about Cell? (Score:3, Insightful)
The interesting one is the PS3 both in terms of the Cell and the BluRay. Now that's some real new toys. Obviously BluRay sounds rad especially since it's meant to be writeable from day one. That's a welcome change in the optical market. But what about the Cell?
Just in the last day or so there was a blurb on the Cell and Open Source over at the EETimes. Of course the announcement about opening the specs is great and welcome and exciting. But at the same time there were some things that didn't sound too hot. Or more accurately, sounded a bit too hot and power hungry.
I was excited about that new AMD Geode running at 500Mhz at one freakin watt. Now that is the kind of thing that I see as exciting. Sure, one of them might be nothing, but at one watt you could have eighty of those things running instead of a single Cell running at 3.2Ghz.
And although they said the Cell could be clocked beyond 3.2Ghz, the EETimes seemed to be suggesting that it couldn't be configured to run that fast and still be air coooled. Whoa, that doesn't sound so good.
I'd say these kinds of issues that we're seeing in the PC market about power consumption at these ultra high clock speeds are going to be the same for games. These seem to be limits to CMOS manufacturing, not some vendo specific limitations.
If that's the case, then the CNNMoney article is probably quite correct that there's going to be some disappointment in the cards. A nice little warm-up for the Longhorn debut.
Re:Indeed. And don't forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
That wasn't really anywhere near the point I was trying to make, but ok.
And your quote is what the Microsoft spokesperson said, not what C|Net said. The "very specific hardware" is the fucking G5 processor, the goddamned heart of the Mac. No, I'm not saying they should have built their own reference platform and OS just to do Xbox 360 R&D, but this is a Big Deal, even if only for the irony.
And yes, it is "shocking" that all development, R&D, and demos for Microsoft's premier next generation gaming console are running on Apples. It's not just "coincidence" and dumb happenstance that Apple is using the PowerPC 970, and Microsoft is using a variant thereof: it's a damned good processor. And yes, to echo your first statement, if the offerings from AMD and Intel are so fucking great (and much cheaper in all quantities than the PowerPC, I might add), then why is Microsoft not using it in Xbox, especially given that Microsoft has been almost synonymous with x86, hardware wise, for over two decades? It is most certainly a big deal: it shows that the PowerPC architecture is *so good* for some tasks that even Microsoft itself uses it, even when cheaper and supposedly "better" (e.g., Intel/AMD, at least as trumpeted by others) architectures - indeed, ones its been using and programming for since its beginnings - are available. (Note: I'm not saying that Intel and AMD "sucks" or anything like that; in fact, I'm saying quite the opposite: that PowerPC *doesn't* suck, and if people won't accept other benchmarks from PowerPC and POWER over the years, certainly something as big this this proves it. After all, everyone says it's "games" that drive the performance in computing; if that's true, it appears that all of the next generation consoles have turned to one place: PowerPC.)
And then, a *rumor* that Apple *might* use an Intel chip in something - not even a processor, mind you - comes to light, and everyone from CNN to the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to FOX News goes apeshit, but Microsoft is using Apple Power Mac G5's you can actually see in their fucking booth at E3 [anandtech.com], and you don't think it's newsworthy?
Sorry, gonna have to disagree there.
Couldn't agree more... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't a troll, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. People often spend $$$$ on tricked out PCs for a wide variety of functions. Gaming is just one of those, but a PC tricked out for damn near anything these days will play the odd game or two just as well as a 'gaming' machine.
2. The games are of a different scope than consoles. Also, shall we have the mouse + keyboard vs. two sticks debate, anyone?
Re:Game Industry Identity Crisis... (Score:2, Insightful)
A pox on those who mod the parent up.
Re:Indeed. And don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, Dave, we all know you're the world's biggest Apple fanboy, so if it gets you excited that the Xbox 360 uses an IBM processor from the same family as the one in the G5, that's great. Seriously, why does the rest of the world care? Apple doesn't make the processors in Macs, nor does Microsoft make the processors in PCs.
Is it ironic? I guess so, but I'm not sure it's quite the watershed moment you think it is. MS went with the company that could give them the fastest multicore processor for the least money. It was IBM. The only major company using those processors is Apple. So they used Apples to develop on. End of story.
Why does everything to be some kind of schlongs-and-rulers war with Mac types?
Re:I've said it several times .. (Score:2, Insightful)
True, yes... but more applications will be developed for a platform that makes it easier to write good applications. In this case, if a console maker puts out a kick-ass SDK they are more likely to have new developers making software for their system.
Re:Verging on plagiarism (Score:2, Insightful)
How are slashdot editors supposed to know ? :)
Moreover there's no submitter comments at all. He just inserted two links "under" (should it be hyper ?) the article text
Upgrade Hell - Re:This isn't a troll, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
And I'm sick to death of it.
My copy of Tomb Raider for the PC doesn't run on anything I own. My copy for my Playstation still runs just fine. The same can be said for every other Playstation, Dreamcast, and XBox game I own. As long as the console itself works and the media isn't damaged the games keep working.
Add to that the fact that I know that the game will work out of the box. I don't have to worry about downloading a driver update that kills other games, nor that my video card is one generation too old or some other BS.
I remember the days of farting around with memory configs and creating boot floppies to get various games running under DOS and I don't miss those days at all.
Re:Can get better later (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets see here. Focus on kids. Number of kids in the world growing. How is that ever dwindling?
Actually (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately lots of journalists felt it was more of a headline to infer that Microsoft themselves felt they could reach a billion people.
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, actually what you wrote has nothing to do with consoles. What you want are more innovative and quality games. I do want my consoles to have hi-def, better sounds, new features. You don't need to write a letter to Sony and Microsoft because (for the most part) they don't make games. You can write a letter to Nintendo because they still make a lot of games. And yes, there are innovative games on the PS2 like Katamari Damacy. But with genres maturing there are going to be a lot more games that are going to have a similar feel. This is great for most people because they can get games they know they will probably like based on genres and reviews. Every now and then there will be innovative gem of games. You know why it seems like there are less innovative games these days? Because gaming isn't new anymore. Any game you used to make was innovative because it was a new media. There are more great games out there than any employed person has to time to play...if you can't find innovation, you aren't looking hard enough.
Re:Game Industry Identity Crisis... (Score:3, Insightful)
And the only console we know absolutely nothing about. Oh wow, it can emulate previous game titles? Show it to me! You can't, because it doesn't exist yet. Seriously, it is ludicrous to be picking a console before you know what games are going to be on it and how well it will perform. You are just a Nintendo fanboy spouting the same garbage every other fanboy is. You try to argue that less features makes better games. These two things are not related. Software companies make good games. Hardware doesn't matter as long as it is powerful enough, and from the sounds of it, Nintendo will have the least powerful system...but we don't know yet, so let's find out when these things freaking exist. You can make a case that you enjoy Nintendo games more than other games...that's fine, no arguments. But to argue a non-existant product is better than two other non-existant products because it is has less capabilities is just ridiculous. Gaming consoles are just very standardized PCs. Why should it surprise anyone that people are adding more capabilities to it?
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, don't expect a new console to bring it to you. Quake is a rare example of a game that was revolutionary because of hardware. The rather basic concept behind Quake had been running around for years, and the hardware finally caught up. But now that we've made the jump to 3D, new console generations bring little more than prettier pictures, and more "stuff" on the screen. Rarely is that enough to make a revolutionary idea possible.
Revolutionary ideas show up only rarely (and a lot of them suck). And they are rarely timed to new console generations. So you are about as likely to see something genuinely new next year as you were to see it this year.
Re:Game Industry Identity Crisis... (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the stupid curved sufaces on both the new Xbox and the PS3, the answer would appear to be yes.
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:2, Insightful)
30, earning over that. Most folk I know have a PS2/Xbox/GC gen system, not one of them is into Mario or the like. Sports, driving, first-person, third-person etc all those kinds of things. Can't think of anyone that still has their Game Cube, but I know at least one who used to. I'm not talking hardcore gamers, just joe average, one system, 4-6 games.
30 year old boys want gameplay value, not mindless violence.
Just a couple of examples, jesus, what's with the pigeon-holeing? Not all the games I've listed are violent, but you gotta admit it does sell. Look at the movie box office, where many of the movies are restricted by ratings to only adults.
I'm talking games with thought and depth, not jumping platform to platform to save the ever distressed pricess. Yeah, Nintendo do have some games like that on their systems, but not to the level of Sony/MS. There's also the niche things like the iToy, I know at least 3/4 households who have bought a PS2 just for that and/or dance mats as well.
The people on Slashdot don't seem to realise they are in the minority. When something hits the mainstream, most manufacturers tend to go for main stream. This is why Sony is running away with it just now.
Why is it so hard to accept that prodominately child-like games is not a sound marketing strategy in an increasingly competative market? Sega have already bailed on a lot of things, and Nintendo are a shadow of themselves as well. Everyone needs to take a chill pill and stop getting so fucking up tight. It's a TOY!!
Re:Here's my reality... (Score:1, Insightful)
These folks grew up on gaming and aren't going to stop. Most want the likes of GTA and Resident Evil.
That's interesting. I always assumed only insecure male preteens played those games. I grew up on gaming. I'm 26 years old. Currently playing: Donkey Konga, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing. I'm sure that I'll still be playing Nintendo's game even after I've turned 30. Simply because they're the most fun to play. Most of my friends own Cubes, too, and even though they own games like Resi 4 or Need For Speed Underground, Super Monkey Ball 2 remains one of the all-time favourite games among my pals.
When I was a kid, I thought Mortal Kombat on the Game Boy was the sweetest game ever. After all, it features decapitation! What else does a game need? Well, I also thought Steven Seagal was the most aweseome actor, and I listened to Knight Rider tapes. I've grown up a bit since then.
I don't give a flying fuck about whether there are zombies or blood in my games. I want them to be fun and playable, and I want to be able to play them together or against my friends. Nintendo provides that to me, so I buy their games.
lkm [watashi.ch]