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Games Entertainment

The PS2 - A Betamax In the Making? 254

Posted by Hemos from the what-to-make-of-this dept.
Feedmag is running an article that talks about the "openness" of the PS2, as well as the upcoming competition with the widely anticipated X-Box. Well thought out and interesting.
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The PS2 - A Betamax In the Making? More

The PS2 - A Betamax In the Making?

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  • Last time I checked my PC has a very nice sounding Klipsch Promedia setup. I could hook it up to something nicer but I dont have the money. As far as less expensive stuff sounds you can do extremely good for $150-200 if you get a couple regular 2.1 setups. Wait! No! Then you get a 4.2 setup. Oh well better then plain stereo and better then the dolby pro logic you get from the PS2.
  • I get the feeling that there are a few holiday
    shoppers who will return DOA2 and X-Squad for
    not being the type of "Hardcore" they were
    expecting.
  • They make the same betamax to PS2 insinuations in this article: http://www.daily rad ar.com/features/game_feature_page_853_1.html [dailyradar.com]

  • Ps2 (Score:1)

    by msim ( 220489 )
    i remember when the first playstation came out, well, kinda, but look at how far they have taken the platform so far. But there has been a helluva lot more awareness of the Xbox and the PS2 than i was ever aware of for the PSX, think about it, there were those rumors and stories early on about the exporting of the PS2 to certain being forbidden due to the hardware specifications for 3d calculations, etc.. (yeah im gonna buy a ps2 and strap it into the front of a nuclear missle).

    But i digress, i think that ps2 is going to go at a hell of a pace forwards in popularity. to be trailed by the Xbox, who knows what's going to happen with them, as someone else mentioned before, the dreamcast, i only vaugely heard stuff about that, mainly from one guy at work here who ended up getting bored with it and the stiff prices on the games, he ended up selling it for a couple hundred bucks (Australian) to someone else and just tried to forget he ever bought the thing.

    Heres to sony, the one and only.

    and no i don't work for sony!
    --
  • Although Sega's consoles and games have always been an exciting crossover from the arcades, in the past they have never put enough weight on the console market. Just think of the Sega Saturn that failed miserably in North America, despite extremely sturdy controllers and great games. You just don't see Sega commercials on TV anymore (remember the yelling "Sega" dog?), as opposed to Sony's incredibly retarded Playstation ads where they basically just throw any unrelated crap at your senses and cram that ugly PS logo at the end. Sega's marketing is just too honest and not aggressive enough to keep up with the other mind-raping giants of the industry. Their stronghold has always been the arcades and they seem reluctant to shift their investment toward the console. The dreamcast is a nice all-around box but it won't go far unless they change their marketing strategy.
  • Flashback a couple years:

    "Why would any kid want a 'Sony' when compared to the huge brandnames of Nintendo and Sega?"

    The problem with your argument is that the core audience is 13 years old and doesn't have much brand loyalty or even brand knowledge at all. In fact being a known brand might even translate into "old and bad" to this crowd. (For them, 2 years ago might as well have been in the seventeenth century for all they know.)
  • Yes, lets all believe this article and forget about the facts... Sounds like microsoft's work already.

    First off, the single biggest reason that BETA lost the war was due to the half-as-long-as-VHS tapes. While that wasn't the situation for long, it was a problem at a key point in consumer adoptation. Similar problem with VCDs. This arguement might apply to DreamCast v. PS2 or X but the storage space on X and PS2 is identical.

    Another point brought up is that the X box does not require developer's licenses, but this has been the situation with PC gamming from the beginning and yet consoles still rule. Sounds like their "facts' just don't hold up.

    Then there are several things they conviently avoid... It may be easy to port PC games to X but it *should* not require any porting at all! It is just using PC hardware... It's onl microsoft's propritary OS that leads to any trouble at all.

    Finally, Processing power! The PS2 is a minature CRAY supercomputer and the X-Box is a minature 600MHz PC. Does that even compare?

    Only advantage I see to the X-box; a week after the X-box comes out we'll have hacks to run Linux on it!
  • i think making emulators for the MS xbox should
    be pretty easy ..since its architecture is
    like a PC

    making emulators for the PS2 should be waaaay
    harder since ..its got weird or "obscure"
    hardware architecture ..same for nintendo

    i think MS should make legal xbox emulators for
    lets say 1/5 the price of the xbox and sell
    em legaly ..else we will see lots of xbox
    emulators for free
    the rom ...hah ...they always get the rom somehow

    they emulated amiga ..they can emulate anything

    who are they ?? ...we dont know thats why we call em they

    i want to be a haxor .. >:)
    i will control the net ..and rule the worledz

    LOVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

    cya
  • And the winner is...

    Well its pretty hard to call. PS2 is out the door but the horse is limping. The inital crop of games induced a few "wow's!" but more than a few "whatevers", as developer knowledge of the platform increases the quality of product will improve, but still, right now the dreamcast is the platform running the best titles.

    When the XBox comes out it'll be winning hardware wise, have an impressive roster of people developing for it and half a billion dollars of a marketing budget. Microsoft may be prone to buggy software, but consider that this is a closed box, lots of nastiness with incompatibility (the source of many a game developers woe's) and a favoured set of api's will greatly reduce instability.

    G

  • Re:PS2 will take some time to mature. (Score:3)

    by wct ( 45593 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @08:31PM (#674976)

    Looking back at the run of the original PlayStation, it's very clear that the games have become better and better visually as time has progressed, and the programmers have learned to better utilise the hardware and it's abilities. I only hope for Sony's sake that they can do that again.

    Of course, this always happens with console platforms. For example, compare

    • Early C64 games (Commodore Soccer) with later games (Uridium)
    • Early Amiga games (Marble Madness) with later ones (Elfmania, Stardust)
    • Early SNES games (Mario) with later ones (Donkey Kong Country)
    • Early Saturn games (Daytona) with later ones (Panzer Dragoon)
    • Early PS games (Destruction Derby) with later ones (Gran Turismo)
    • Early Nintendo64 games (Mario64) with later ones (Zelda)

    As developers familiarise themselves and build up/optimize their platform skills, the amount of performance they wrench out can be amazing. You should have seen the Spectrum port of Chase HQ - it's unbelievable how much they crammed into that crappy little box!

    The real deciding factor tends to be the gap in technologies at deployment. The most successful consoles had a combination of far superior technology and good early games. That's why the SNES killed the Genesis, and the Playstation killed the Saturn. N64 was hampered by a late arrival and fairly insignificant graphical advances. More pointedly, the Sega 32-bit upgrade didn't really offer much above the SNES so it flopped. So the question is - how much better (tech wise) is the PS/2. I can't really say - initially it looked like the tech would blow everything out of the water, but now I'm not so sure. All I know is, if it flops, there goes another victim of the RAMBUS touch of death. :)

  • "Don't call it a PS2!!!

    I prefer PSX2    "

    Uh-hu. I suggest you had better discuss this with Sony (you know, the makers of the PS2). For after all, it is they themselves who refer to the product via the abbreviation "PS2". They even went as far as writing "PS2" in teh form of a logo on the PS2 itself!

    However, I am sure that if you tell them you don't like it, they will change the name specially for you and recall all existing PS2s so they can change the logo...
  • Two weeks ago, Seamus Blackley (who designed Flight Unlimited and who is in charge of Xbox development) visited my campus. According to him, the Xbox uses a completely different bus than the PC (it's much wider and faster). He also mentioned that as far as licensing goes, the top developers (ie SquareSoft, EA) get their dev kits at very high discounts while smaller, less known developers have to pay the full price. Microsoft is following the same policy. As far as "openness" goes, I think what Microsoft (or Seamus at any rate) means is that because the Xbox is so similar to PCs, people developing for it will know what's going on inside rather than having to completely rely on say, Sony's documentation.
  • The Sega Dreamcast runs a custom variant of Windows CE.
    --
  • Perhaps not, but a gaming machine was the designers' original conception of it. They weren't even going to put a keyboard on it at first!
  • I think the Dreamcast will fall into the same pit every other Sega console system has fallen into: bad, bad games. (well, Sega's master system wasn't bad, but it just didn't catch the way nintendo did.) Nintendo has controlled the market on console systems for one simple reason: they had the best games. Sure there's a couple of Sega titles that stick out, but Nintendo's had nearly every fighting game (Sega's orginal design for the 3-button pad on the genesis was terrible for fighting games... hitting select to switch between punches and kicks is not cool! They later tried to amend this with their six-button controller, but it came to late to beat out the SNES's hold on the market) and such memorable titles as: Megaman, Final Fantasy (personally, i buy wherever Squaresoft goes... that can at least guarantee you some good games), Castlevania, Mario (though the sonic series is great... one of the only fast games), Metroid, Contra, Donkey Kong Country... and many many more. After the NES and SNES, the upstart Sony Playstation picked up the torch (Grand Turismo and Final Fantasy are just the beginning). Once again, they had the good games, and so they succeeded. N64, with all its hype, has very few good games. Goldeneye 007 is great, but Mario 64 and Zelda 64 lacked the magic of their earlier counterparts. Personally, i'm putting my money on PS2... the hardware specs look good, and Squaresoft's supporting them. At the very least, i'll get a couple great games out of the deal :-) The bottom line is, the market will go where the games are... and Dreamcast doesn't have them.
  • Hey! I thought all the slashdot people were so called tech-savvy. Who are we kidding? The PS2 is a big failure already. No Anti Aliasing??? (and don't give me that "PS2 can do that in software... my *spectrum* can do AA in software!) Hard to program for, non standard components, mediocre games. Sony had no idea what they were doing. DC is a much better designed machine, gamecube (love that IBM chip) looks well designed as well and XBox also has all the right bells (established technology). Since when do we slashdotters believe the hype?????
  • If the dev kit is free, how's Microsoft going to make money off the Xbox? After all, they are heavily subsidizing the hardware.

    A guy on the Xbox team (Seamus Blackely) gave a talk at my college two weeks ago and he said quite explicitly that Microsoft will be charging considerable amounts for the dev kit. Select developers (SquareSoft, for example) will receive big discounts.

    Also, the Xbox will use a proprietary DVD based format. Even if you developed a game, you still have to find a way to burn a DVD
  • My local Best Buy and CompUSA were the same. The guy at Best Buy said that people started lining up at 7:00 last night. They had something like 50 consoles in, but there must have been at least that many people in line at 10:00 this morning.

    Playstation is really kind of odd, in that the hype about it seems to transcend from geeks and games to almost everyone. CNN.com had a front page story on it this morning, for Christ sake. My parents would give me blank stares if I tell them about Dreamcast, X-Box, or GameCube. But they sure as hell know what a Playstation is. Sony has done a brilliant job marketing both this and the PS1.

    *sigh* Hopefully Sony will stick to their 100k consoles a week until Christmas promise, and I can get one in a couple weeks. DOA2 and NHL2001 are calling me.
  • AFAIK, the Sony Playstation 2 cannot encode 5.1 Dolby in hardware, making the optical outputs primarily for passing along 5.1 mixes in FMV sequences or DVD movies (or Pro Logic mixes).

    OTOH, NVIDIA's newly announced sound chip for the Xbox will feature Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding, hopefully allowing for true surround sound in games.

  • I have a real problem with the DVD portion of these machines. I know that the PS2 and X-Box are primarily for game use, but a lot of my friends have expressed interest in getting them for the DVD movie playback abilities. Being a huge DVD fan I know that one of the biggest features of DVD is Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS sound output. None of these machines even talk of the support of these audio standards. It seems that those who are buying these machines will be out of luck when they try to get the digital sound for their home theatre system. Seeing that both systems specs (X-Box [xbox.com] and PS2 [scea.com] ) don't list these standards I really feel sorry for those gamers who wish to get true digital sound from the movies being currently released on DVD. Even the majority of computer packages don't support the standard either.

    Even the samurai
    have teddy bears,
    and even the teddy bears

  • for cryin' out loud. stop making the damn boxes. they're already taking a loss -- just make some really nice graphics APIs. if they make the money off of licensing and game sales anyway, having the boxes be the limiting factor only hurts them.
  • I think you mean principle, unless you have some weird gaming relationship with that dude who runs the school.

  • Re:PS2 (Score:1)

    by Mr Z ( 6791 )

    Thanks! Every time I see PS2, I wonder "What does this have to do with mouse and keyboard connectors?" (...which is the only lasting impression the PS/2 made on the world. Sorry, MCA may have been better than ISA and even EISA, but EISA had backward compatiblity.)

    --Joe
    --
    Program Intellivision! [schells.com]
  • Then, what does it say? I have loads of people commenting on this sig, but none of them have ever said what the correct translation is.... I might change it to: Kan du lese dette er du skandinavisk!

  • The coming Video Game Wars (Score:3)

    by savvy ( 8628 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @06:54PM (#674991) Homepage
    Today is a great time to be a gamer!!

    I work at a EB in my town, and I hear all sides of how people are looking at the next round of console wars. Basically, there are a few groups that pretty much everyone can be put it.

    A) The platform loyalists.     I have heard people come in and say they will buy whatever Sony/Nintendo/Sega/Microsoft/Grandma/Acme puts out and they have no doubts that it will be the system that destroys all others.

    B) The patient waiter. These are the people that are going to wait for the next 3 systems to be released and then buy the one (ones) that have the best games. This seems to be the most logically one, but these days, whats logic anyways)

    C) The misinformed. You would be amazed at what some people think about the various systems. This is where the hype really plays in, and these are the people that marketing folks just LOVE.

    Unfortunately, it seems that most people fall into category C. Some peolpe think the PS2 is more powerful than a $3000 PC. Others think the GameCube is less powerful than the Dreamcast. Others still will try and convince you that Superman for the N64 is a good game.

    The Betamax comparison is completely off base here. The reason being that Betamax was actually better quality than VHS, but VHS still won the war. If anything, in the coming months Sony and its PS2 will be the VHS of the upcoming console shoot out, and it will be up to their marketing department to make the PS2 the mainstream machine.

    Everyone here knows that superior tech wont mean squat if you don't have a compelling reason to use it. On consoles this means exclusive games. Its looking like the PS2 is not going to get those exclusive titles from third parties like Oddworld 2 (recently announced to have switched to XBox exclusively), and instead they are going to have to rely on their in house dev teams (there is only ONE Sony brand launch title) to draw people to their platform.

    These upcoming console wars are going to be interesting indeed.
  • upto this point, nintendo has come through with one thing that few others have: quality games!
    I think you're assuming that what you find to be a quality game is the same as what others find to be a quality game. Obviously not everyone likes the same types of games and it's an unfair statement to say that only Nintendo comes out with quality games. Anyway, if we are talking about game quality, that's not quite the same thing as consoles themselves, considering it's not Nintendo that makes all the games for their machines. Also, many games are ported to multiple consoles so that's also a factor.

    Anyway, while I won't say one console creates quality games compared to other consoles, I will say that different consoles have different markets. For example, Sega has a repuation for having good sports games. Nintendo tends to be targetted for a younger audience (like, 10 year olds) that goes for action/adventure games (mario, zelda, bond, whatever). Sony, on the other hand, have a very large RPG market which is probably for an older crowd (teenagers). (Probably due to memory limitations of a cartridge compared to CDs. Those nice RPG movie sequences require space). Anyway, the point is, Nintendo doesn't have better games than other consoles, but they do have different games.

  • Well while many of you are shelling out up to $700 for your very own PS2 before having even bought it, I'd like to say one thing... The estimate of $199 by next christmas in this article is WAY off. You can already get them for as little as $40 (US) in Japan. Why you ask. Because it sucks. Plain and simple. Games are going for as little as ooh $20 average... It is not fully backwards compatible with PS1 games... infact just search the web and you will already find lists of incompatible games... oh but wait it plays DVDs right??? Well not ALL DVDs... don't ask me how this happened, but it doesn't even play the Matrix... oh hmm... must still be alright though right because this is Sony... wrong.. the pure lack of 3D hardware makes this baby awful... take my advise and either buy a PS1 for $99, wait for a game cube, or wait for the PS2 to reach the sub $100 level... Sony pulled a Sega Saturn boys and girls.
  • My parents got our beta in the early 80s so it had a 'sleek, modern design.' It was the same size as a VHS and the slot where you popped in the tape appeared to be the same as a VHS (rectangular slot with a little flap that hinges into the machine). It lived through 3 rambunctious kids (starting at ~7 years old) and still works fine today. In the same span of time I think we went through 2 or 3 VHSs (mid-grade Panasonics and the like). We also have a beta video camera :) and a fine collection of John Hughes flicks which were picked up for practically nothing.
    But getting back to the point, quality of the machine means nothing compared to the modules the machine plays. I too followed Square, and I'll stick with Sony as long as Square does. And anyone who's played console games knows, say, playing Final Fantasy on a PC just isn't the same (some say it's better, I say pbbbt ! there's a reason why they sell console style controllers for PCs). I guess it's the same reason why I still haven't picked up FF Anthology, I don't want to play FF6(3) on a playstation when I've still got my SNES.
  • Had you read the article, you might've noticed that the X-Box is going to be open sourced, so that (ideally) anyone can write software to it. If you're looking for a Linux based system, take a look at the Indrema. There was something about it on this sight a couple weeks ago.
  • Untill I can emulate them. Yeah. That should do the trick. Lesse here, 5 years between consoles, that's, hmmm, about 10x computing power compared to today. So reasonably I should be running a 8Ghz with 1.28 gigs of ram, a 300 gig hard drive... hmm. Yep. Emulation is the way to go. Not now, but later...
  • True. And don't forget that the PS2 will be backwards compatible with old PS games. Parents will definately like that. Granted no kid is going to want to play NHL 2000 when NHL 2001 is out, but parents and other buyers will at least feel better about not having to toss those old games. And they can always just rent their kids The Matrix on DVD to shut them up. The PS2 plays those too.

    Besides, I'm sick of all those whiny punks playing all my favorite mods (especially CS). I don't need Gran Turino or Final Fantasy XXI to come out for the PC. Leave those to the console kiddies.

  • ...I mean, didn't you manage to whine your way into a front-page article on K5 [kuro5hin.org] to the effect of...
    I recently left slashdot, in part over the moderation system. I thought that now that everything is settled and squared, it would be a good time to do a writeup on what group-think is, how FUD works, and how to be persuasive in any crowd. Click on the widget to read my screed.

    Or was that, like just about everything else you seem to write, another totally self-serving, manipulative pile of crap meant to cash in on the "Slashdot sucks, we K5 readers are more intelligent than that" mentality?

    Oh wait, never mind. If you read his user profile [slashdot.org] he's apparently letting anyone use his account for karma whoring and trolling.

    Either that or it's his excuse for ending his pretense at "groupthink experimentation" and going back to being a shamelss karma whore / troll... argh, I've spent too much time thinking about this already...

    Jay (=
  • Screw affording them, can a man keep that much crap in his living room? My little brother has a playstation, genesis, dreamcast, and N64 hooked up to his tv and it's like a shuttle launch when you try to play a game. Flip this, plug in that, move this, grab those controllers...

    God forbid you want to watch TV

    I really wanted a PS2 today, but couldn't bring myself to drop $500 for a usable system (ps2, controller, memory, games), plus the time to sit in line...

  • I know that the majority of the people out there paying for console devises don't care. but Honestly, do you really think that the PS2 based on linux will loose out to XBox based on windows? So I could have a stable console game machine to play with...or the mini-computer in a box that has a tendancy to crash on me...

    I don't know about anyone else, but I have a computer, and if I want to play a pc game I'll get it and play it on my pc. I am not buying a seperate peice of hardware to play something I can play now.

    PS2 is going like mad right now...I've seen several people who were in line at the stores to get theirs...

    Sony has done good, and will still do good, the ps1 was a good console box...and I have yet to find a lack of games or junk to go with it.

    Just my $0.02
  • First off, the way I hear it, Betamax lost to VHS for technical reasons... VHS was first to market that would fit a whole movie on one tape. I think if Sony loses, it will be for the same reason. Compared to X-Box, PS2 is not so great.

    On the other hand, if PS2 wins, it will be because the open development model of X-Box leads to a glut of crappy games, while Sony gets good developers with at least some minimal quality assurance. That's how Nintendo beat Atari so many years ago.

    Personally, I think M$ will win, because Sony is pushing PS2 as a desktop computer replacement, a role for which it is completely unsuitable. It doesn't matter; if we manage to send either Sony or MS down the tubes, we're left with one larger evil corporate monopoly that wants to take over the world, instead of two smaller ones.

  • "I don't care about the logo, I'd just rather people call it the PSX2"

    Too bad, because Sony (you remember, the makers of the PS2 - they can call it what the hell they like, it's their machine) call it the PS2. Seems they are ignoring you - maybe you should hassle them some more?

    While you are here, have a look at www.sony.com [sony.com] and look at the pic on the top right - oh look! It refers to "PlayStation2" and "PS2" but not "PSX2".

    Now do a search on the Sony site for "PSX2" - to save you the hassle, here is the link to the results of such a search - Sorry, there were no matches for your search. [sony.com]

    Looks like you are outvoted by Sony themselves, I'm afraid.
  • I'm sorry, I'm venting about the lack of anything resembling standards (or even PROOFREADING) in web news sites nowadays.
    they've already set their "sites" on the PlayStation3

    So all of Sony's websites, after PS2 is released here, will be hyping PS3?

    Sony's design for the PS2 is both sophisticated and elegant, comprised of four separate processors: the "Emotion Engine," a microprocessor far more sophisticated than the Pentium III; a "Graphics Synthesizer" capable of blasting polygons to the television; and two "Vector Units," which haven't been seen before except on exotic supercomputers such as Cray's Y-MP. It's not just a video-game console, it's a cheap supercomputer.

    Way to stay objective. Never mind the fact that if all you did was dedicate the P3 to outputting games to a 600x400 TV screen, you'd rip up framerate wise as well. Hence the X-Box.

    upstart video-chip developer Nvidia, who swept in from obscurity a little over a year ago
    Obscurity? nVidia hit the scene a lot earlier that "a little over a year ago". The Riva128 was a VERY talked about card. And the TNT became a Voodoo2 killer (though not an SLI killer). This was back in August/September of 1998. Apparently, to this guy, they didn't exist before the TNT2 Ultra.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  • In theory it's not bad technology, but the memory latency is huge and this is a major problem for most code. The bandwidth doesn't do you any good unless you use liberal prefetching and huge cache lines. Perhaps for console systems this will become the norm. As it stands in the PC market, programs aren't designed for this type of memory situation and thus they run slowly.
  • First, DC uses DirectX as an API. Second, the only "goofy chip" to learn on the XBox is the video hardware. The amount of dev time getting a poly pipeline set up is insignificant to things like game logic or asset creation for a title.

    Current compilers are uber-optimized already for the x86. The bulk of game code can be written in C++ with an assurance of reasonable performance.

    Does that mean that X-Box will do better than the PS2? Who knows?
  • The Xbox is a PC!!!!!!!! It's using standard parts! People are so damned lazy.

    -motardo
  • Of course, this always happens with console platforms. For example, compare
    • ...
    • Early Amiga games (Marble Madness) with later ones (Elfmania, Stardust)
    • ...
    You really want to start an Amiga flamewar, don't you?

    The Amiga is/was NOT only a game machine dammit!

    :)

  • Ooh Sorry but I must disagree big time here. Look at the dreamcast section on gamespot. See how many titles are above 9?!? Sega has got great games for the dreamcast. They always had great games but yeah sometimes they clucked up. Now the NES/SNES were great but then didnt Nintendo cluck up just as big with the N64 (CD's will never be popular...) Sony hit it big cos they got people who arent really interested in video games to buy their console. They captured the average joe on the street and got his money. There are some really great games out for the Playstation but there is a LOT of crap and I dont think that the top games for the Playstation outshine the Dreamcasts. Now as for the PS2...the first set of games do *not* match up to Sega's present offerings in any shape or form. Soul Edge vs Tekken? SE wins. Madden vs NFK2k1? NFLetc is the better *game*. Touch passing man! Ridge Racer looks good mind you :) Personally, I think the PS2 will rise because they have the hype with them and their kit is a step above the Dreamcast. If that had come with DVD as standard I think it might have been different. Guess we shall see!
  • I think that what it'll take to make the XBox a success is not so much marketing/public mindshare as much as developer mindshare. Note, too, that this doesn't mean "most developers win". This might eb true in the PC/Corporate market, but in the console market, the platform with the most *good* games will walk away the winner. So what MS needs to do is concentrate on getting the likes of the Steve Wostons of the world to notice the platform. Surely, people like Woston already have preview versions of the Xbox. The question is, will they prefer them over other platforms and write games accordingly?
  • Just thought I would mention that I just walked in from the Toronto Maple Leaf trouncing of the expansion Minnesota Wild and, like the geek I am, surfed on to Slashdot immediately. Lo and behold, my night has been centered around PS2. I think it was the major sponsor at the game tonight, pushing its new titles - Tony Hawk is still the best - and then some. Anyway, it actually crossed my mind that PS2 could go in a similar direction as Beta has so I wanted to share my enthusiasm with you folk. What's your favorite title by the by?

    1. My Second Vote Was For Gore [mikegallay.com]
  • Jet Set Radio, Virtua Tennis, Crazy Taxi, Phantasy Star Online, Sonic, Samba de Amigo, F355 Challenge, Virtual On, Eternal Arcadia, House Of The Dead 2, Shen Mue. Each of these is original, fresh, polished and a lot of fun. That's the output of a single company in a single year. So here's my question: Are you *completely mental*? The market has completely failed to go where the games are. The public at large is currently showing a distressing prediliction for third-rate driving games and clones of clones of clones.

  • Dreamcast (Score:4)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @06:36PM (#675013)
    Personally, I'm putting my early money on the Dreamcast. Sega has always put innovation before profits, and games like the new Ecco and Jet Grind Radio are no exception.

    Plus, you *have* to play NFL2K1. The gameplay and artificial intelligence are outstanding.

  • The incredible complexity of the PS2 is also Sony's Achilles' heel. Manufacturing difficulties with the Emotion Engine have forced Sony to cut back on the number of PS2s that will ship before Christmas -- not that a shortage has ever made any hot toy anything but hotter (consider the Furby), but, more alarmingly, game programmers, reared in a world where they only had to worry about one processor on a console, are now recoiling in horror as they struggle through the elements of parallel processing, high-performance computing architectures, and technical documentation that has been politely described as "obscure."

    But completely irrelavent.

    The betamax lost for one reason only, MARKETING.

    That's how it works. There is a reason noone is using CP/M anymore. The Betamax had hardly any movies released.

    This article is a worthless Piece of Shit.

    --

  • >of course, we will never see sony, nintendo, or microsoft ever do anything like that ;) how much you want to bet the XBox will have some type of microsoft bios/rom that will make it impossible to install linux on it? :)


    Say... Something like a little message on the screen saying.

    "By attempting to install an alternate Operating System on your Xbox you have violated the terms and conditions for using this Computing device. While you were reading this your hard disk has been formatted and your bios erased. Thank you for choosing the Xbox, have a nice day

    ****PLINK****
    --
  • The PS2 is a great deal, and it deserves to catch on--if development for it is opened up. If it remains proprietary too long, I think the platform will falter. The reason is that many of the best and most innovative games come from people that don't have huge amounts of money to invest up front.

    But Microsoft has its own problems. The X-Box looks like it's going to be both expensive (because of its reliance on PC technology) and significantly behind the curve in terms of performance. And from what it looks like so far, the X-Box software architecture isn't exactly going to be pretty either; close ties to Windows APIs are both a blessing and a curse.

    I think whichever box ends up more open and more hackable will win in the market, if for slightly different reasons. I hope Sony figures this out before it's too late. Microsoft, with their choice of fairly standard PC technologies, may end up not being able to do anything about winning in the market that way, but their victory may be Pyrrhic, as they see their nice X-boxes turned into even nicer, Microsoft-subsidized Linux machines.

  • Epiphany (Score:5)

    by Jordy ( 440 ) <.moc.pacons. .ta. .nadroj.> on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @07:02PM (#675026) Homepage

    At first I was going to wait for the Nintendo 64, then I was going to wait for the Dreamcast, then I was going to way for the Playstation 2, and now I'm thinking of waiting for the X-Box, but it finally hit me.

    Man can own multiple console machines at the same time.

    Apparently, there is no crime against owning both a Playstation 2 and a Dreamcast at the same time or even, dare I say it, a Nintendo 64, Playstation 2 and Dreamcast at the same time.

    Now, I'm not sure why I thought that I couldn't own two consoles at the same time. I guess it just feels a bit wrong owning two machines which do basically the exact same thing only because sony, sega and nintendo can't get it through their heads that the money is in the software.
  • I work for an advertising agency in Canada (I know, I know, only half a step removed from the Devil), and one of our major clients now is Sony. One of our staff decided that it was very important for us to better understand the client's products, and acquired us a grey-import PS2. And it's fun. And hardly anyone plays on it any more, preferring someone else's office-residing Dreamcast.

    The main reason we're all playing on the Dreamcast rather than the PS2 is that the games are currently *far* more impressive on that platform. Many an afternoon is wasted^H^H^H^H^H^Hdedicated to competitive research of games such as SoulCalibur, Crazy Taxi, Sega Rally, and so on. Clearly, it's far easier for us to get games for the DC because of the fact that it's been around over here for a while, but still, we have 4 games for the PS2. And the only one of those that is even vaguely fun is the soccer game we have. It's also the game with the most realism (we have a racing game that is more realistic, but it's realistic to the point of unplayability). The games we have are visibly early-adoption titles.

    I have a feeling that if the PS2 really is going to be the trojan horse of the home entertainment market, the games developers are going to have to mature their games very quickly indeed. Looking back at the run of the original PlayStation, it's very clear that the games have become better and better visually as time has progressed, and the programmers have learned to better utilise the hardware and it's abilities. I only hope for Sony's sake that they can do that again.

  • Parallel processing is nothing new (Score:3)

    by KNicolson ( 147698 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @07:03PM (#675030) Homepage
    but, more alarmingly, game programmers, reared in a world where they only had to worry about one processor on a console, are now recoiling in horror as they struggle through the elements of parallel processing, high-performance computing architectures, and technical documentation that has been politely described as "obscure."

    I imagine it's true for the PSX and other 1st gen consoles, but even back in the Amiga days you could get the best performance by directly addressing the graphics chip to do parallel processing, etc.

    Hell, the same could even be said for the Pentium with its multiple pipelines, and with the fancy graphics cards, but the majority of developers just forget about it and let DirectX or the compiler work out how to do it well enough, or they just go and licence the Quake, etc, engine where someone else has gone to the trouble of hand-optimising.

    As with all new systems, there's going to be a learning process. Go back to the launch of the PSX and look at some of the games you went WOW over, and compare them with the speed and complexity of new titles for exactly the same handware, now that developers have had a chance to work out how to squeeze every last drop out of the system.

    And given the success of Linux, obsucre technical documentation seems to be no hurdle to the average programmer...

  • More accurately, the Dreamcast CAN run a custom variant of WinCE. It more commonly runs it's own little OS. But WinCE is great for quick ports of win apps.
  • The prices I have heard for the X-box were around $400-500. And that's roughly what this kind of box should cost; after all, that's roughly what a low-end, somewhat subsidized PC costs, and that's what this thing is.

    As for speed, the PC and Pentium architecture is burdened with a lot of stuff that's completely irrelevant to game or console development. The PC and Pentium architecture are adapted to a market that consists of zillions of custom systems, made from cheap if suboptimal components.

    With the PS2 Sony has its own volume market. They can dedicate the same chip area that the Pentium dedicates to compromises and backwards compatibility to performance. If Sony hasn't screwed up (and I doubt it--their engineers are good), the PS2 should perform better at a lower cost than a 700MHz PIII (which itself is hardly state of the art anymore) and some nVidia chip.

    As for software, I find the Microsoft tools and platform plenty "goofy" and "quirky", so being based on Windows to me is more of a disadvantage. I haven't seen the PS2 APIs, but the situation is probably similar to WinCE vs. PalmOS: WinCE is burdened by its heritage, while PalmOS is well adapted to just the tasks it is supposed to do (even if PalmOS is, by now, showing its age).

    Finally, what does Sony benefit from opening up the platform? Nothing if you think that the PS2 is only about commercial console games: then it really just comes down to who markets better to teenagers and who makes better deals with game developers. But if that's all the PS2 is about, it will be irrelevant soon, given the stiff competition. That's the mistake I hope Sony won't fall into.

    If, on the other hand, the PS2 becomes an actual home computing platform, an alternative to the PC, then Sony stands to gain a lot if lots of people develop software for it.

  • Where did the acronym PSX come from? The PS makes sense, but what does the X mean?

    It doesn't mean anything. The letter X is commonly used as a filler when one wants a Three Letter Acronym, and only has a two word name.

  • History indicates that the market can really only support one console at a time for a 5 year period. That means 3 out of the 4 "eighth generation" systems are going to die a ugly or perhaps just a mediocre death.

    However, never in history has the home gaming market been so large. A market this large has room for niches: for example the Saturn remained the machine of choice for 2D fighting game nuts long after the Playstation had trounced it out of the mainstream market. Nintendo's loyal following means that N64 games are still coming out and making money (Mario Tennis promises to be a treat; Mario Golf has given me hours of top-notch entertainment, and I've only played it at friends').

    We will see a clear winner, but this will only be a major problem for the companies who've based their business model on getting a near-monopoly (i.e. the companies who don't just want to sell a few games - they want to become the hub of worldwide home-entertainment). Sega and Nintendo have less to lose; they can fill niches and continue to make money. MS and Sony have more riding on this, and one of them will win, one of them will lose.
    --

  • PS2 has optical digital outs (Score:4)

    by bbk ( 33798 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @07:05PM (#675061) Homepage
    The PS2 has a TOSLINK (optical digital) on the back for digital audio and can do AC3 and DTS out to an external decoder just fine.

    It's in the specs somewhere. Games will be able to use this as well - it'll be nice to have full home theatre surround instead of the tinny 4 speaker setups that most PC surround sound is today.

  • Re:Obvious parallel (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe you missed why they used the betamax comparison:

    "Twenty years ago, Sony tightly controlled the titles made available for its technically superior videocassette player -- specifically, no adult content -- and found themselves quickly locked out of an incredibly lucrative market for adult and family content. If Sony keeps a tight grip on the PS2 [as far as licensing fees go], they may actually help Microsoft create the new VHS."
  • In fact, the PS2 having a builtin DVD is the only way there is going to be ANY DVD player in my house. This is a brilliant move on the part of Sony, who will have to erase the market for current release VHS before I switch out of that format for a format which does not allow recording, is region-encoded, will not seriously boost sound or video quality on my piss-poor TV (the only solution there is a new TV), won't play any of my large library of VHS tapes, and won't allow me to go find rare releases from the last 20 years and have a chance of being able to watch them. However, as soon as I buy a PS2 so that I can play some killer new game, I will also be able to play my old PSX games, and I'll have access to the DVD market as a bonus. Now, unless I'm a modern gaming fanatic, you tell me why would I buy any other console?
  • I don't know, the SNES and Genisis/MegaDrive were really one generation.... not really segmented.... who could forget Street Fighter II Turbo on SNES vs Street Fighter II Special Championship Edition fighting it out.... well, most people actully.... :)

    However, the one little thing I loved about the end of the SNES's life cycle was the fact that at the end of 1994, Donkey Kong Country was a bigger seller then the entire new 32-bit generation (Saturn/PSX).

    Anyway, back onto topic - I believe the market can support 2 consoles. The Nintendo 64 was supported though this generation - the companies make their money from software sales, not hardware sales. Look at the Top 10 games sales lists. New 1st and 2nd party N64 software is constantly in the top positions. People buy the software, N64 games sell incredibly well. The Ocarina of Time was a huge seller (and a damn great game too).

    2 consoles can survive, this has been shown. And, in this next generation, 3 might squeeze in. The PS2 is here, if only due to it's hype machine fooling the public that it is a great consol (it's not imho). The Gamecube will be at least as successful as the N64 (and the N64 made Nintendo money), if not more (it is FAR easier on 3rd parties to code for then the N64 or PS2). Nintendo always manage some classic games, ALWAYS. And, I think Microsoft will squeeze the X-Box into the market, mainly because they could make no money at all this generation just to push the X-Box into the market as part of a long-term (next or 2 generations time), or it might just be successful this time.

    Well, I've ranted, hope it makes some sence. I have my 1st VCE (final year of high school in the Victorian [state of Australian] education system) exam in 11 hours. It's an English exam. I should have been revising. All well. Hope I can write a nice piece on Montana 1948 and Cabaret then.... :)

    I should get some sleep....
  • ...which is of course why it will never ship. It not only threatens PC markets, it threatens the Windows market. Every X-Box that shipped could be a Windows license gathering dust somewhere. Plus, the profit margin on consoles is... not as good as on, say, Windows. (That's a hell of an understatement).

    So in spite of this, does anyone still think Microsoft is going to choose to make less profit and cut into potential Windows marketshare out of the goodness of their own hearts and a love of spiffy technology?

    :)

    However- it does make _great_ vaporware to try and cut off Sony's air supply with, and the risks of faking demos for it are much less than the risks of faking demos in court! So you'll be hearing a LOT about the wonderful X-Box.

    Just don't bank on ever _buying_ it. That is not its purpose.

  • The PS1 may have been a bitch at first too, but who cares when there are great games like Gran Turismo 2.

    Actually, the PS1 wasn't a bitch at first. Programmers had a very easy time with getting good results out of the PS1; it was Sega's Saturn that gave them so much difficulty. Eventually the Saturn titles got a lot better, but not after a great deal of work. The PS2 is likely to get a lot better also, but it will take effort - and probably more effort than the developers will need to get similar results on other systems.

  • There's a very small 4th group that is there too.

    D) The consumate gamer. They don't care what platform it is, if the games are good, they'll get it.

    I fall into that category. The way I see it, the platform doesn't make the games, the games make the platform.

    Of course, I have a good income, a Visa, and a penchant for impulse buying, so that may be part of it too :)

  • Here`s why you`d develop for the xbox:

    The PSX2 has an impressive feature set, but this time,
    sony isn`t betting on games alone. The games that are
    allready out there are specifically tailored to psx2,
    and ho would expect otherwise, yes. But this also means
    there is little more room left for gradually stepping
    up the game quality of the next series of games.

    When the first psx came out, developers still had to
    find out how it worked from scratch, this time things
    are different. Some preferred Japanese teams have direct
    support while other companies need to go out and pay for
    'obscure' documentation, and then hope they can make the
    best of it. Some of the games out now allready make very
    heavy use of the new dedicated hardware. This also means
    the lifespan of interest in the psx2 will not last as
    long, and that is why Sony absolutely needs to turn the
    psx2 into a fullblown homecomputer.

    Betting your game development on psx2 NOW is tedious.
    Chances of standing out with your game on a technical
    perspective are slim. PSX2 is allready past it`s hype
    while xbox still has to appear, and it won`t be until
    people experience the hard framerates that the hype
    around it will subdue.

    On the other hand, you have the xbox. Here, too, there
    are issues. Microsoft allready bought Bungie and knows
    how to create games on the pc platform. This time, they
    control the hardware, andthe software, which makes you
    wonder about their api`s and the REAL openness.

    So, while they say their api`s are open, the reality
    learns us that they are charging money for it. Still
    the chances that you can score on xbox are
    potentially higher because the platform is not out
    yet, and there`s room for follow-ups in case the
    game should proove to be enhanceable.

    On a sidenote, it`s interesting to see that while Oni
    (by bungie) was due to be released earlier this year,
    it`s obvious that Bungie will want to publish the title
    on xbox first. Clearly, Microsoft wants to enter the
    fight with a major kick-off.

    So if I had to choose now, I`d choose the xbox. It`s
    PC related, and the games you write for xbox are
    portable to the PC, making sure they address a
    microsoft accustomed crowd.

    what do you think ?
  • There are four consoles coming out in roughly a period of two years starting this past winter and running through next winter. The Sega Dreamcast, the Sony Playstation2, the Nintendo GameCube, and the Microsoft Xbox.

    I for one do not think that the market can stably support 4 consoles given current development and distribution models. Console game development is expensive in ramp-up learning time, and therefore companies will need to make decisions on what console they will make games for.

    So now the question is, who will survive to the next iteration (it's approximately a 5 year cycle, so who will still be around in 6 years?). My money is on Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. Sony and Nintendo for I think they will both make a lot of money off of their consoles, and Microsoft because while I don't necessarily think that they will make as much money, they can afford for at least one iteration not to.

    Currently, at least, that's my guess...but then again, maybe the market CAN support 4 consoles and I am wrong....or perhaps I am still wrong, and it can only support 2?...

  • Re:The X-box is not as clean as you think. (Score:3)

    by Trepalium ( 109107 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @09:15PM (#675087)
    The real coders will, in fact be figuring out how to write DIRECTLY to the new chip nVidia is developing for the system, thus they WILL have to learn a new "goofy graphics chip" in order to produce good games.

    Then Microsoft will have the same problem Sony had where developers were bypassing their published SDK, writing directly to hardware and creating games that were incompatible with certain model PSX's. Not a pretty site, and could be a PR disaster. Sony cracked down on it hard and fast, telling developers in no uncertain terms that they were to use the SDK at all times. When programmers write to the so-called "bare metal", you lose the ability to correct errors and flaws in the underlying hardware and software.

    In a war of FUD, don't you think Nintendo could trump even MS and the X-box?

    FUD? FUD doesn't apply to a world where sales are predominantly decided by children. In that world, whatever has the best graphics, games and commercials (and to a lesser extent, price) is the one that will sell, and the others will vanish into the woodwork. Probably the most important factor will be the fact that console games and PC games have been traditionally vastly different in varieties, and gameplay. There has been some crossover, notably Quake, Final Fantasy and a few others, but for the most part the crossover versions paled in comparison to the native versions. I have a feeling that the X-Box will be more of a threat to the traditional PC gaming markets than the console markets. Remember that Microsoft also doesn't have the Japanese game designers that have made most of the games you'd commonly associate with console machines, but rather has US-based developers who are more often than not more familiar with PC games. I can see it cutting heavily into the PC markets and making a lot of Microsoft's OEM partners very angry.

  • And on the other hand, you have a CPU and system archetecture that's carrying baggage from twenty years ago, running Windows, that's going to piss off all of MS's OEMs that are trying to sell sub-$1000 machines to consumers with less money than the average PC owner.

    I don't know if you've noticed, but console games are traditionally a lot different from PC games. Although it might be an easy port from PC to X-Box, the opposite will almost definately not be true. The so-called "openness" of a console is a rather silly arguement. No console up until this point has had an open design that anyone could develop for, and I don't expect it to change anytime soon. The fees for licensing the development kits and for manufacturing it on licensed media has tended to prevent entry for those who aren't qualified to work on it. I personally don't subscribe to the notion that "Open Source" or free software works for all forms of programs, and games are one I believe only work well from commercial companies that employ artists and designers instead of enthusiasts.

  • Anyone notice the striking similiarities between this and just before the crash of the 1980s? What with unlicensed games (which resulted in an incredible glut of low quality crap and atari porno games (really!)) and the idea of turning your video console into the home computer. It didnt work then, what makes them think it'll work now? History repeating itself...
  • Neither the PS2 or the XBox has an architecture for the ages, so either one could be the BetaMax.

    + Sony has spread some PR about the PS2 being the next great home computer. However, the Playstation 2, being a closed and proprietary platform, will never attract broad applicaiton support beyond games and maybe a web browser.

    You guys think Windows is a closed system, but at least someone doesn't have to buy $20K of custom hardware and sign a stack of NDAs to build an app for it.

    + The XBox, even thought it's based on PC hardware, *is not a PC*, and does not have the advantages of a PC. When you are marketing to lower middle-class parents buying a toy for their 12 year olds, you can't rev the hardware every 18 months like the PC world tends to do.

    That means that what MS has announced is what you are going to get, for the next 3 years. Just like Sony.

    On top of that Microsoft has no real coherent interactive TV strategy (XBox != WebTV) or application strategy to go along with the XBox. Meaning that this will never be more than a game box either.

    There's probably a few people here who remember the days when they chucked their 2600s and ColecoVisions and went on with life gaming on Atari 800s, C-64s, and Apples. And, what do you know, those platforms are still around to some extent and getting press on Slashdot. Maybe this is a fading hope, but someday someone will realise that there is a huge market out there for a *real* home computer, that is very cheap, simple, runs personal applications, and is also a kick-ass game machine. Sony won't do it, and Microsoft can't.
  • The problem isn't that the PS2 is hard to program. It's that it's hard to design software for. Those specialized vector units need to be kept busy, and this is a major limit on performance. The obvious approach is to let the 3D engine use the vector units and do the rest of the game on the main CPU, but that's suboptimal. You might have to do game physics in the vector units to get really good performance, and that warps the software design. In particular, porting to the PS2 and realizing its top performance is tough.

    The X-box is much more conventional - it's an x86 machine with an nVidia graphics chip. What Microsoft is banking on is that by the time the X-box has to go into volume production, it will be possible to build a $300 PC. You can't do that yet, which is why the PS2 has to use wierd hardware.

    Bear in mind that the X-box really is a $300 PC, built from parts Microsoft doesn't make. If the X-box can be sold for $300, so can commodity PCs. That opens up some interesting options.

  • Will this stupid myth [urbanmyths.com] please die soon?

    From the urban myths [urbanmyths.com] writeup:

    3). "Betamax failed in spite of the fact that it was a superior technology."

    False. Comparisons between VCRs with similar features showed no significant differences in performance. In fact, most of the differences could only be seen with sensitive instruments, and likely would never show up on most consumer grade television sets. . In particular, the qualitative differences between the two formats were less than the differences between any two samples from the same manufacturer. It was only the later (and more expensive) versions of Beta which noticeably improved the quality, as commercial and broadcast outlets turned to Beta as a standard. In fact, at that time Beta was an inferior technology because VHS allowed for longer recordings. Early beta technology allowed for one-hour recordings, while VHS allowed two hours.

    In the final analysis, the world decided it didn't really need two kinds of video tape--Betamax, say hello to eight track tape.

    The real reason was there wasn't enough pr0n on Betamax!
  • Taping a show was an interesting exercise. You first had to flip open a door and manipulate the huge LED clock to set the right time for the VCR to start. THEN you had to set the main power switch to auto record, THEN you had to hit the record and play button, and then hope for the best.

    This type of programming was not a Betamax-specific "feature". My parents just last year *finally* replaced their old VHS VCR (possibly Magnavox?) that they've had since the early-to-mid-80's, and it had the same "flip door" (although the door was long ago broken off) where there were little buttons, dials, and switches to schedule recordings. Seems to me that this isn't something the Beta should be bashed for per se since it was probably how many VCR's of that era, both Betamax and VHS, were programmed.

  • Re:PS2 (Score:2)

    by RedX ( 71326 )
    <i>But only when it's sold as a game console will Sony make money. I read an article somewhere that said people in Japan were buying to PS2 mainly as a cheap DVD player. It might be the case in the US as well.</i><br><br>

    That won't be the case in the US for quite a while, considering the Playstation2 retails for $299 (if you can even get one) while there are many basic DVD players available for under $150. Of course the Playstation2 will inevitably come down in price, but so will DVD players. Personally, the Playstation2's ability to play DVD's will probably put me in the market for one for my currently DVD-less home, but only because the DVD feature will give me an excuse for the wife as to why I'm buying it.

  • Re:PS2 - Not worth it (Score:4)

    by Yardley ( 135408 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @09:32PM (#675118) Homepage
    You are way off. I quote from Sony's website:

    Official PlayStation 2 Release: October 26/2000 at a price of $299 USD.

    $299 for a DVD player with digital sound (Dolby 5.1), FireWire, USB, game controller, 3.5" drive bay, backwards compatibility with PSX games, and an intitial selection of more than 30 games, [scea.com] including Unreal Tournament. (There are only about 7 obscure PS1 games which won't play. All current DVDs including the Matrix do play.) Here's the list of games:

    Consumers can find the following titles in October at more than 20,000 retail locations
    (listed in alphabetical order):

    • Armored Core 2, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
    • Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, published and developed by Tecmo
    • Dynasty Warriors 2, published and developed by Koei
    • ESPN International Track & Field, published by Konami and developed by KCEO
    • ESPN X Games Snowboarding, published and developed by Konami
    • Eternal Ring, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
    • Evergrace, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
    • FantaVisionÔ , published by SCEA
    • Gun Griffon Blaze, published by Working Designs and developed by Game Arts
    • Kessen, published by Electronic Arts and developed by Koei
    • Madden NFL 2001, published and developed by EA Sports
    • Midnight Club: Street Racing, published by Rockstar Games and developed by Angel Studios
    • Moto GP, published and developed by Namco
    • NHL 2001, published and developed by EA Sports
    • Orphen, published by Activision and developed by Kadokawa Shoten
    • Q-Ball Billiards Master, published and developed by Take 2 Interactive
    • Ready 2 Rumble"! Boxing: Round 2, published and developed by Midway
    • Real Pool, published and developed by Infogrames
    • Ridge Racer V, published and developed by Namco
    • SSX, published and developed by Electronic Arts
    • Silent Scope, published and developed by Konami
    • Silpheed: The Lost Planet, published by Working Designs and developed by Game Arts
    • Smuggler's Run, published by Rockstar Games and developed by Angel Studios
    • Street Fighter® EX3, published and developed by Capcom
    • Surfing H30, published and developed by Take 2 Interactive
    • Summoner, published by THQ and developed by Volition, Inc.
    • Swing Away Golf, published by Electronic Arts and developed by T&E Software
    • Tekken Tag Tournament, published and developed by Namco
    • TimeSplitters, published by Eidos and developed by Free Radical Design, Ltd.
    • Top Gear Daredevil,published and developed by Kemco
    • Unreal Tournament, published by Infogrames and developed by Epic Games
    • Wild Wild Racing, published by Interplay and developed by Rage Software
    • X-Squad, published by Electronic Arts and developed by EA Square

    More than 10 additional titles are expected to be shipped in November and at least 9 titles in December, totaling more than 50 PlayStation 2-specific software titles in market by the holidays.

    November 2000 releases include (listed in alphabetical order):

    • Disney' s Donald Duck Goin' Quackers, published by Ubi Soft and developed by Disney Interactive
    • FIFA 2001 Major League Soccer, published and developed by EA Sports
    • F1 Racing Championship, published by Ubi Soft and developed by Video System
    • Gradius 3 & 4, published and developed by Konami
    • NASCAR 2001, published and developed by EA Sports
    • Rayman® 2 Revolution, published and developed by Ubi Soft
    • Super Bust-A-Move,published by Acclaim Entertainment and developed by Taito
    • The Sky Odyssey, published and developed by Activision
    • Theme Park Roller Coaster, published and developed by Electronic Arts
    • World Destruction League: Thunder Tanks, published and developed by 3DO

    December 2000 releases include (listed in alphabetical order):

    • Army Men - Air Attack 2, published and developed by 3DO
    • Army Men - Sarge' s Heroes 2, published and developed by 3DO
    • Carrier Morphed, published and developed by Jaleco
    • Formula 1 2000 CE, published and developed by EA Sports
    • MDK"! 2: Armageddon, published by Interplay and developed by BioWare
    • NBA Live 2001, published and developed by EA Sports
    • Oni, published and developed by Rockstar Games
    • Star Wars Starfighter, published and developed by LucasArts Entertainment Company
    • Warriors of Might & Magic, published and developed by 3DO

    First quarter of 2001 titles include (listed in alphabetical order):

    • 4 X 4 Evolution, published and developed by GOD (Gathering of Developers)
    • All Star Baseball"! 2002, published and developed by Acclaim Sports
    • Army Men Vikki's Adventures, published and developed by 3DO
    • Dark Angel Vampire, published and developed by Metro 3D
    • Driving Emotion Type-SÔ , published and developed by Square EA developed by Square
    • ESPN MLS Game Night, published and developed by Konami
    • Fur Fighters, published by Acclaim Entertainment and developed by Bizarre Creations
    • Gauntlet®: Dark Legacy"!, published and developed by Midway
    • Gran TurismoÔ 3, published by SCEA and developed by Polyphony Digital
    • High Heat Baseball 2002, published and developed by 3DO
    • Kengo, published by Crave and developed by Lightweight
    • NBA® Hoopz, published and developed by Midway
    • Onimusha"!: Warlords, published and developed by Capcom

    First quarter of 2001 titles continued (listed in alphabetical order):

    • Star Wars Super Bombad Racing, published and developed by Lucas Learning
    • The BouncerÔ , published by Square EA and developed by Square/Dream Factory
    • Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2001,published and developed by EA Sports
    • Ultimate Fighting Championship, published and developed by Crave
    • World Destruction League: WarJetz, published and developed by 3DO


    --
  • And also don't forget who is going to BUY these boxes. The parents. But they aren't going to buy them because they've researched the different console options and decided on one. No, they are going to buy it because little johnny wants a Nintendo/Playstation/Sega for Christmas. The names of the three big consoles have been entrenched for years in the minds of kids. Many [if not most] of these kids have already been playing the last generation of consoles. They are going to want the same company's next generation because they know the games and they know the styles of the console.

    If MS successfully releases the XBox, say before next Christmas, how many kids do you think are going to ask Santa/Mom/Dad for one compared to how many ask for a PS2, Dreamcast or Dolphin?
    I for one won't be putting my money on the Xbox...as a matter of fact, I WILL be buying a PS/2.

    Now I'll admit that Sony was the newcomer with the Playstation, but at the time the PS was way ahead of the competition [SuperNES] at the time, and they had great games and it was stable. MS *might* be able to get some good games, but I honestly don't have much faith in them developing a STABLE platform. And if the kids have problems with it, they won't play with it. And if Johnny doesn't like his XBox, his friends aren't terribly likely to want one then either.

    Ender

  • Not dedicated hardware - firmware (Score:3)

    by bbk ( 33798 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @08:00PM (#675131) Homepage
    The differences between the US and Japanses PS2's are that the US has a drive bay in the back for a hard disk/ ethernet card instead of the PCMCIA slots that the Japanese one had, and the US one has the DVD playing software in ROM instead of as a file on the memory card, so it can't be corrupted by games, which was a big fiasco over there (Ridge Racer broke the DVD player when it saved). Cool that you can execute stuff off the memory card though...

    It still decodes in software, it's just that the software is in ROM, not on the memory card.

    BBK

  • Re:Why build for the Xbox??? (Score:3)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @06:40PM (#675151)
    Why build for the XBox?

    - Standards-compliant PC hardware.
    - Fixed form the same as a console.
    - Consistent C++ programming language with no major differences (easy to port to from PC).
    - Stellar graphics hardware from NVidia, especially at TV resolutions.
    - A groundbreaking amount of voices on the soundcard.

    If you were a developer and got a chance to play with this toy, would you turn it down? PS2 is good and all, but to say XBox is going to be bad because "it's using standard parts" is, in your words "so damned lazy".

  • Re:PS2 - Not worth it (Score:3)

    by Kragma ( 160238 ) <kragma@NOspAM.alltel.net> on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @09:57PM (#675152)
    I can't stop myself from replying to lists. Call it a compulsion...

    Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, published and developed by Tecmo
    I liked this game better when I played it on Dreamcast six months ago. And it even had better, less jagged graphics then. New costumes though...

    Eternal Ring, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
    Evergrace, published by Agetec and developed by From Software
    FantaVisionÔ , published by SCEAM
    I have a really hard time even telling these games apart. Fantavision is such a yawn-fest that some places are requiring you buy the game to get the system.

    Gun Griffon Blaze, published by Working Designs and developed by Game Arts
    Wow, a 2D shooter with 3D graphics. Where have I seen this before?

    Kessen, published by Electronic Arts and developed by Koei
    It's Romance of the Three Kingdoms with graphics ripped out of Shogun. Neat idea, but Americans hate these kinds of games. Myself included.

    Ridge Racer V, published and developed by Namco
    I think I played this game a couple years ago, when it was called R4. Nice shiney, jagged, plastic cars though. Think I'll go back to F355, a superior game in every imaginable way.

    Street Fighter® EX3, published and developed by Capcom
    I think it's been pretty much established that this game is crap. It was ported from a PSX-based arcade machine. And 3D street fighter was a bad idea to begin with...

    Summoner, published by THQ and developed by Volition, Inc
    Wow, they fixed the jaggies...to bad about the game itself though...

    Tekken Tag Tournament, published and developed by Namco
    I think when this game was called Tekken 3 it...oh fudge it...

    Unreal Tournament, published by Infogrames and developed by Epic Games
    Very nice tech demo. Really shows off what the machine can do with a one year old PC game. The lack of a modem means you'll be playing with yourself though... Kinda guts the whole concept of this game.

    I'll stop there, it's getting silly. My point is, the games just aren't worth the $400 (system, game, memory card, retailer gouging, etc) price of entry. Especially when Dreamcast is keeping me more than busy enough.

  • The PS2 is hard to program because it is a *new* system and there aren't lots of experts to run to and "How to Program the PS2 for Dummies" books at Barnes & Noble.

    Is DirectX easy to use from a programmer's point of view? Is the Win32 API? MFC? C++? X11? No, no, no, no, and no. The PS1 may have been a bitch at first too, but who cares when there are great games like Gran Turismo 2.
  • The Amiga is/was NOT only a game machine dammit!

    Neither was the C64, which also appeared in his list.

    I think what he meant to say was "this only happens in FIXED platforms". That is, platforms whose hardware capabilities remain constant or nearly constant over time. Consoles certainly fit that bill, as do long-lived proprietary computer/OS platforms like the C64, the Amiga, the Atari series, and others (if I left out your favorite, don't flame me).

  • BTW, maybe you can answer a question for me...

    Where did the acronym PSX come from? The PS makes sense, but what does the X mean?

  • Good (Score:2)

    by xant ( 99438 )
    While you were reading this your hard disk has been formatted and your bios erased.

    Good, that'll save me some time. It's always best to install Linux on a clean hard drive.
    --

  • This is too true, on both parts.

    1) There is no reason for a console company to open source their SDK. After all, it's been pointed out way too many times that they simply don't make any money off the console itself, as in hardware, and sometimes even take a loss. Sure, Sony makes some games, but their real money comes from licensing the SDK and putting their <patented>Stamp of Approval</patented> on the games. It's not the consumers (directly anyways) that they make the real money from, it's the Squaresofts, Capcoms, and Konamis. By open sourcing the SDK, they would risk the potential of having another SDK or even modified SDK released, and that could be trouble even if they drag the people through court.

    2) Games don't translate well (usually) from console to PC or the other way around. Sure, you could play Diablo 2 on a console, but the die hard gamers play it on PC. Why? Because that little controller doesn't do the game justice, I mean, how are you going to use any hotkeys? I'd imagine it's tuff to get far without being able to 1-9 hotkey those potions of health and mana. And on the other side of the fence, people on consoles get games because they aren't generally as complex, key wise, and it's just "Pop it in and play" and when you're pissed at that wyvern on level 7 for killing you for the hundreth time you just shut it off. There are some really involved console games, but the majority are fast action button crunching fun! Not learn 500 key combinations so that you can do that jump-spin-switch to railgun in midair-frag all while grabbing that extra health pak and landing on a moving platform-press hotkey for taunt and laugh at your oppenent move. They are different platforms for entertainment.

  • The X-box is not as clean as you think. (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @08:08PM (#675177)
    Actually, the Playstation development was opened to some degree - you could buy a $700 system called the Net Yarouse [slashdot.org] (the link is a slashdot story in fact about a GPL'ed development document for the Playstation!!!!).

    But that is beside the point, as I'm not sure the existance of the Net Yarouse really helped moved the Playstation all that much (I never owned a PS, but will be getting a PS2).

    As for the X-box points you make however, you have a number of flawed assumptions.

    As far as being ahead in performance - from the numbers, sure, it sounds like the X-Box must be miles ahead of published specs for the PS2, the Dreamcast, and the Gamecube. However we all know how specs can lie, right? You take a standard PC platform with a few custom chips and all of the various bottlenecks like memory and PCI bus, against three systems stuffed to the gills with high-bandwith buses, and vastly more customized chips. I'm not saying the X-box will not be more powerful but it might not be the leap you'd think from the numbers.

    Also, I have to say that all of the X-box movies I've seen (pretty much all from Daily Radar [dailyradar.com]) have really left me cold. They do not seem to show much going on, and simply look rather bland. That could definatly just be a problem with the demo, but long before the PS2 came out I was seeing movies of stuff generated by the system that impressed me a lot more.

    Ethernet is the one thing I'll agee on you with. Sony was silly not to include it in the box, though I think they have a pretty good chance at a high sell-though rate on the HD/Ethernet adaptor.

    Now about the "no goofy graphic chip to learn". Yes, that is true for games that use DirectX. But will those be system seller games? I have my doubts. The real coders will, in fact be figuring out how to write DIRECTLY to the new chip nVidia is developing for the system, thus they WILL have to learn a new "goofy graphics chip" in order to produce good games. Don't believe me? Read this review [dailyradar.com] with Michael Abrash from the Xbox technology group. One of the telling things he says, and I quote, is:

    "The coolest thing about my job is that Xbox is a fixed platform. Performance is my favorite thing, and for the first time since the original 4.77 MHz PC, I can actually justify taking the time to understand things down to the metal and figure out how to really optimize, because the machine is never going to change."

    So as you can see, there are developers that will be programming as far down as they can go, they will take some time to understand the chip. I'm not saying that's bad - I'm just saying the X-box turns out to be little different than a console with a good library.

    Now as far as it being more expensive, who can say? I'd personally bet it comes out at $300 just because it pretty much has to. But, I also wouldn't be surprised to see $400. Either one might be real trouble if the Gamecube is coming out about the same time for a smaller price. In a war of FUD, don't you think Nintendo could trump even MS and the X-box?

    And for worries even from developers using the system, try out the interview [dailyradar.com] with Scott Miller from 3D Realms. He has some serious doubts about the X-box being so close to the PC as well.

  • Rambus uses less pins so it's cheaper. (Score:4)

    by bbk ( 33798 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @08:08PM (#675178) Homepage
    Rambus uses less connections/chip, so it can be packaged smaller, and more channels per chip can be used - the PS2 uses 4 channels of RDRAM for 3.2 GB/s of bandwidth, using fewer pins than the 1.066 GB/s PC133 SDRAM bus in most PC's. Fewer pins means fewer traces and that makes boards cost less. It was the only way that Sony could get the bandwidth it needed for the PS2 while still staying in budget.

    The N64 uses an early form of RDRAM as well, one of the first uses of the technology.

    It's not that it's bad technology, just misapplied to PC's when supply was not availible,and managed by a company with a overzealous legal department.

    BBK

  • Stop being pigheaded folks. For argument's sake, say all the PS2 games either suck or don't exist. You're paying $299.99 for a late-model Sony DVD player with optical audio output. THat doesn't sound too bad to me, maybe not great, but not far off either.

    Add into it that this $299.99 DVD Player also has an expansion bay for HDD/Ethernet... has builtint Firewire/USB... can load software... has memory cards, controllers, plays a huge market of PS1 games.....

    The system is well worth it as an alternative to a DVD player, even if no PS2 specific game titles ever existed. No doubt there will be a ROM update, a memory card image, or a CDROM for it soon enough that will have webtv-like software...

    Get over it people. I was a hardcore enough Nintendo fan to stick to my N64 (and older ones) through all other systems. I _never_ bought a PS1. But even _I_ have to admit that this system is the thing to buy.

  • The PS2 is hard to program for:
    1. Because it's new, obviously, and therefore there is a lack of developers with PS2 experience

    But is that a reason for a programmer who already knows Windows to never trying writing code for Linux? Of course not. The PS2 is hard to program for, yes, but that's true of anything new. Wanna-be-techies are using the "hard to program" issue as fuel against the PS2, which is misplaced.

    A guitar is hard to play, too, if you don't know how to play guitar. I submit this as evidence that there will never be any good guitar players.
  • The reason the PS/2 is going the way of the Betamax isn't about technology, it's about marketing. You see, Sony kept the Betamax proprietary and the industry shruged at it, and the customers never became interested. The same is true with the PS/2. They enter a market with a huge base of good, cheap hardware (ISA) and try to sell a totally incompatible yet technically superior system (microchannel) and nobody understands why they should buy all new equipment. Had IBM made the microchannel standard available to manufacturers at a reasonable cost instead of only allowing super-expensive cards to enter the market, it could have taken over ISA in a heartbeat. Just like the betamax, people don't want expensive and superior, they want cheap and adequate.

    Huh? Oh, you mean that OTHER PS2... bah!

  • There are important differences between the two! (Score:4)

    by Anne Marie ( 239347 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @06:45PM (#675197)
    When Sony killed [rr.com] the betamax format, the vcr market was still a very very new and undeveloped market. The same can hardly be said about the videogame console market, which sony currently dominates and has had years of experience dominating.

    The second important difference to note is that Sony completely screwed up the marketing/promotion side for betamax. Sony actually cut back marketing expenditures when sales initially rose and failed to raise them when vhs started making headway. But if you've seen any of Sony's marketing efforts recently, you know there's been a lot of change.

    The industry is a different place from what it was back in 1975. PS2 might still fail, but if it does, it won't be because it too much resembled betamax.
  • The name isn't "Dolphin" anymore. It's GameCube [nintendo.com]... I thought everyone knew that by now. ;^)

  • Re:Epiphany (Score:3)

    by soulsteal ( 104635 ) <(soulsteal) (at) (3l337.org)> on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @08:17PM (#675201) Homepage
    [D]oes man have enough self-disipline to not waste money on too many games on all those consoles at the same time?

    That's what woman is for...

  • what about nintendo? (Score:3)

    by agent oranje ( 169160 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @10:30PM (#675203) Journal
    nintendo's new console gamecube is coming out in the not-too-distant future(fall 2001 for americans), probably before x-box for that matter. sure, its a year away, but upto this point, nintendo has come through with one thing that few others have: quality games! and games are what people own consoles for, not their ability to imitate computers. check out cube.ign.com [ign.com] for more information, and video clips of what this thing can do... its pretty damn impressive in my opinion. -agent oranje

  • You missed an important point in the article. Under Sony's current scheme, if I want to write a game I have to pay them a lot of money, like $25000. Under the X-box scheme, all I have to do is get a compiler. MS compilers are typicly $100-$1200 depending on who you are and how many features you want. The "professional" version is usually somewhere in the middle of that range, and is probably what most game developers would use. Also, the MS architecture will be open like a PC, so you could probably port gcc to it and not pay *anything* for the compiler.

    Now, assuming Sony doesn't change their business model, which one is going to have more games written for it?

  • The N64 was a dismal failure in Japan, and has long been a mixed bag in the US. Nintendo exists today primary due to the Gameboy variations and by extention, Pokemon and all of the merchandising surrounding that.

    At any rate, its funny that you ask "why wouldn't I stick to the successful past of PSX and N64"? After slagging Sega (who deserve it, somewhat)... The Genesis was king of the consoles in its time, just proving that a successful past doesn't count for _that_ much in the console world.. It helps get developers pumped (especially when something is as successful as the original PSX), but doesn't guarantee success.

    Its also generally agreed that Sony's pretty much botched the roll out of the PS2, which may hurt its long terms sales once all the hardcore gamers buy theirs...

  • History indicates that the market can really only support one console at a time for a 5 year period. That means 3 out of the 4 "eighth generation" systems are going to die a ugly or perhaps just a mediocre death.

    Only three consoles have been real certifiable hits on that level: The Atari 2600, the original NES, and the Sony Playstation. (You could make an argument for the Genesis and the SNES, but the SNES started late and the Genesis died early.)
  • The quality of 2nd and 3rd generation Betamax VCRs is well in excess of VHS VCRs made 15 years later. It isn't just the better resolution, it's also the far superior sound reproduction (VHS sounds like $&!@ if you hadn't noticed) and better color bandwidth.

    Believe me, if I hook up a decent quality 15 year old Betamax up side by side with a modern VHS VCR, the quality difference will be clearly visible. If you look at a really good Betamax it will approach SVHS quality.

    The failure of Beta was part technical (lack of long tapes) and part marketing. Don't be fooled by "myths" about it's quality though--there is a good reason that Betamax VCRs still sell in the hundreds of dollars on Ebay.
  • After reading through all these comments (many quite good) I realized that a lot of the people posting were (probably) born *after* the halcyon days of Pong and the original Atari. That's pretty weird.

    I mean, the Atari, Intellivision, and (later) ColecoVision -- and going to the Aladdin's Castle at the mall to play stuff like Donkey Kong and Pac Man and (my fav) Tron -- were staples of my later "kid" years.

    I remember, too, picking up some cheesy pong game at Radio Shack. It was basically pong and some weird shoot-the-TV screen gun game.

    And, of course, I remember many days in Sears playing the Sears-branded version of Atari.

    Wow.
  • Definitely Sony. I can picture the X-Box crashing at the worst possible time. Fighting the end boss of the last level, almost beat him 1% health left... um.. it hangs? I have seen the Dream cast hang too... but not as often as my windows system (granted that the console system doesn't run as many processes as the windows os, but still it's the principal).

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