[undeaf]

I bet I'm more comfortable than all three of you, I'm writting this from a PC with a dvorak keyboard! Oh, and a trackball.

[EvoG]

...okyy Ijustr wrote thus fromm 47 fewt away from the tv!

[Intrepid Homoludens]

I just typed this in on my laptop, in bed, after I got off the phone from soul bonding with my niece over her life's ambitions, goals, plans to go back to school for her MBA, and the intricacies of relationships and love and how we manage such things in our lives and I don't give a shit about PS3s, Wiis, or X360s at the moment.

[insane_cobra]

PS3s and X360s I can understand, but you don't give a shit about Wiis? Turning a new page in your life, eh?

Anyway, for those folks who do care about HD video, here's a handy list of the best and the worst Blu-ray and HD-DVD releases of this year, chosen by High-Def Digest.

[CrimsonBlue]

Considering the key title for the Wii at the moment is a Gamecube game and the other two key titles won't come out until christmas 2007, I see no reason to buy a Wii unless you're going to enjoy playing shadowboxing and pretend-tennis for 12 months.

(also, I'm getting one soon enough, but I rarely have a reason to buy a console :p)

[insane_cobra]

There's WarioWare: Smooth Moves coming out in three weeks and SSX Blur, Sonic and the Secret Rings (which is allegedly really good) and Prince of Persia: Rival Swords in the following months. But I do agree that the relative lack of compelling games might become one of Wii's biggest problems, at least in the short term.

[Fop]

Originally Posted by undeaf

Lucky for us, JVC got that monopoly instead.

Ugh, yes, but Sony tried.

Originally Posted by undeaf

And just how were they going to make CDs disappear? And what was stopping other companies from making a more compact recordable audio format?

Not CDs, they were going for a monopoly in recordable audio formats. And apparently nothing, which is why Minidisc failed

[CrimsonBlue]

Originally Posted by insane_cobra

There's WarioWare: Smooth Moves coming out in three weeks and SSX Blur, Sonic and the Secret Rings (which is allegedly really good) and Prince of Persia: Rival Swords in the following months. But I do agree that the relative lack of compelling games might become one of Wii's biggest problems, at least in the short term.

Wario Ware is a niche title, and a play through once and sell/throw away. SSX Blur have potential, but I'm afraid the controls are going to be clumsy. After all, it's EA we're talking about here, not the most inventive bunch. Prince of Persia could be good, depends on what they're aiming for. Sonic for the X360 isn't exactly the best game ever (more like the worst Sonic game yet), and Sonic hasn't been on top of the game for years either. I don't hold much hope for that.

But yeah, I'm just afraid it's going the way of the DS, where the touchscreen is basically a gimmick, and mix in Nintendos quality-before-quantity (personally, I'm a firm believer of quality AND quantity) strategy, which basically ruined the Gamecube. Now we suddenly have a rather dark future for the Wii. Not only that, they're also known for jumping ship way too soon. The PS2 still have much life left in it, but the Gamecube was almost dead BEFORE the Wii came out.

[SoccerDude28]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

But so far by the time Sony actually releases the PS3 in Europe there going to be thousands of Wiis & 360s already in homes.

I don't know about the wiis part in that sentence I stood in line twice to get one and twice, I came empty handed. Nintendo is having their own problems with launch as well, though it's not as bad as Sony and Microsoft's launches.

Oh and happy Holidays everybody

[lunarleviathan]

The vast majority of people that hate Sony only do so because they're the biggest kid in the playground. No matter how nice they are, they're always seen as the bully.

The Playstation was vastly important in shaping the modern video games industry. It greatly encouraged 3rd party development.

The Playstattion 2 didn't do all that much, but there was very little going on in terms of innovation at the time anyway. It was all about better graphics, they essentially just upgraded. Note the fact they supported very nearly all Playstation 1 titles.

The Playstation 3 is major for innovation. Don't be fooled by Nintendo, the Wii does nothing for anyone - it's a cheap novelty trick because they can't afford to compete in the main console market. The way things are going, it's all about physics, not graphics. CELL is developed with innovation in mind, just as PC developers are looking towards more physical CPU cores & physics cards to essentially "do more", Sony are doing the same.
Microsoft on the other hand have slipped up big time. The 360 offers a lot, but it offers nothing that isn't already or will not soon be offered from the PS3. Infact they're playing a dirty PR game at the moment, read any comments from Microsoft PR guys about the PS3, it can be quite nasty and riddled with lies.

Also, people are quick to forget the major problems with both Xbox and Xbox 360 hardware. LOTS of 360s have died. Also, Microsoft is clearly supportive of the patching of games, this encourages the same publisher attitude we see on the PC, pushing developers to hit dates and patch later. Sony, having never been part of PC gaming in anyway, are likely to be less supportive of this mentality. Hell, even Gears of War, the 360s killer app, was & is far from bug free.

At the end of the day, Sony have done very little wrong in the past. They've always had bad press, that's just what happens when you're doing better than everyone else and people dispise you for it.
However, the issues with Lik-Sang have made me very angry at Sony. Being in the UK, and very fond of importing games, I was deeply upset to see the site die due to legal pressures from Sony. The reason given is a true statement, but it's clearly not the truth, nor is it a good enough reason to force the company out of business.

Anyway, after a year I've finally decided to buy a 360 - there are a few games out now actually worth buying, and a few I like on the not so far horizon of releases.
The Wii will have to do a LOT to impress me. At the end of the day, it's a novelty thing that brings nothing atall to most genres of game and will hinder third party support on the Wii.
The PS3 has and will have major third party support from Japan, which is pretty much a requirement of success. The Nips are very brand loyal to Nip companies, and while the Wii is and will do well, it isn't a contender as a main console. It is likely that US and European third party support for the PS3 could be slim, but given the way things are going, the PS3 simply offers more possibilities and can more than equal any oppertunity the 360 currently provides. The price is an obvious stumbling block for the European and US markets given that they have no real deep routed brand loyalty either way unlike the Nips. However, the Blu-Ray is not the only reason it costs so much, that's spin that has originated from the anti-Sony types within the gaming media. Sure, the newer the tech, the more it costs, but Blu-Ray is only a fraction of that.

I've got my username reserved forthe PS3 anyway... even though I likely wont buy one for over a year after release here (March) due to lack of decent numbers of decent titles which is a problem with all consoles at launch. I hope they don't delete my account in the time though...

It's also pretty lame how Microsoft have released the HD-DVD add-on purely to contrast the Blu-Ray. They have no reason to support HD-DVD over Blu-Ray. It's just a pathetic PR stunt. Blue-Ray is technically a better format than HD-DVD, there is no arguing this fact. For movies, the potential extra quality of encoding the Blu-Ray affords doesn't matter. For the moment both formats in terms of movies are using identicle encoding and thus give identicly awesome picture quality. The Blu-Ray is a better format still though, there is a LOT of extra capacity per single disc - this has uses in movies, but remember PS3 games are also Blu-Ray vs. the 360s DVD. The games press has reported quite a few times pre-360 release last year that some developers were having to use multiple discs, which is of course more costly to publishers in the long run, non-standard cases may be required as well as more discs. It's highly likely that even the biggest PS3 title will push the limits of the format over to multiple discs - a good thing - it's cheaper too.

I've typed enough now, so... I support Sony more than anyone else, I know they have a good grasp on what they're doing and where the industry is going, at least in terms of Triple-A titles. Microsoft have a good machine on the market, I also support what they're doing, but I am slightly upset at the constant low build quality of their products and bad mouthing of rivals in the press. Nintendo, they're actually not responsible for the reason I hate the Wii. The games media is, it was never intended to be the next big innovation - it's all about trying to get a new market of gamers into "fun"/party games (such as we have seen with various rhythm games in the past) - something that doesn't appeal to me atall. Gamers have and the games press are seeing it as a 3 man war, which it shouldn't be. It's a two man war with Nintendo going for a new market (which I don't think is big enough to work out for them).

None of them are evil, but Sony is getting a lot of bad press they don't deserve. Killing Lik-Sang is about all they've done wrong recently.

[insane_cobra]

[Intrepid Homoludens]

LOL!

I think it's time this thread was either closed or merged with this thread. At this point what's being argued here is no different from what's being argued there.

[Solid Snake]

Fanboy alert.

[Dasilva]

Originally Posted by lunarleviathan

The vast majority of people that hate Sony only do so because they're the biggest kid in the playground. No matter how nice they are, they're always seen as the bully.

As far as I know Microsoft is a bigger company.

[SoccerDude28]

Originally Posted by insane_cobra

but... but... my console is better than your console.

[undeaf]

Originally Posted by Dasilva

As far as I know Microsoft is a bigger company.

Their size doesn't stop lots of people from treating their entries into new markets like some sort of horribly oppressed underdogs, right now this is especially clearly visible with the zune.

And sony is bigger, they've got over twice as many employes.

[Aj_]

Nintendo were dominating the market for quite a long time. I don't remember anyone bashing them, or Sony when the original Playstation was in control.

One more thing to not like Sony for, lying about a consoles power. The ability of the CELL is being incredibly overstated by everyone but the developers. It's quite apparant now that the Xbox360 is ahead, and unless progress in developement slows down, games will stay ahead on the 360. At most, the only statement with a positive on this is that the PS3 peak performance is slightly more than the 360, but it's harder to develope for, so a lot of developers (especially cross-platofrm ones) won't even use that performance.

Using prerendered graphics to hype the PS2 and PS3 to try and get people to wait instead of buying a dreamcast or 360 is bad. The lies about the emotion engine killed the dreamcast, no one but Sony fans are swallowing it for a second time.

I'm not sure how much of my complaints can be levelled at the others. Nintendo and Microsoft threatened lik-sang, and I remember the Halo site using high resolution screenshots (1028x768) of the PC version in the Xbox section of the site.

[CrimsonBlue]

The PS2 lived up to the tech-demos. Find the old PS2 tech-demos and you'll see that the PS2 actually surpassed them. I don't know if the PS3 will perform as well as the tech-demos for it, but I don't see a reason to believe otherwise. Also, people are dumb if they expect the PS3 to perform its best from day 1. It's like english football, when a team gets a new coach.

"OMG, WE LOST THE FIRST GAME, LET'S SACK HIM!"

[SoccerDude28]

By the way, after getting the PS3, I am very impressed with it.

The machine is a beauty, with a very shiny finish of black. The menu bar is very convenient and if you are familiar with the PSP menu, it feels right at home. One brilliant touch they added is that the color of the menu changes based on the time of day, and the month, so at night it's black, in december mornings it's white and in July mornings it's blue.

The multi-media functionality of it is also very well done. The browser is cool, though it does not have support for java yet. The usb connections are very convenient, and I tried exchanging pictures and songs between it and the PSP or iPod with no problems. Connecting your PSP to the PS3 to download PS1 games on your PSP is a nice addition.

Now the games look similar to the 360's, not inferior even at day 1. Resistance is a very well made game that made me excited about FPS'es again and I am really not a big fan of them.

My main complaint so far is the PS3 network. It's functional, but the 360's is definitely much richer and has a better UI, but given the frequent patches in which these consoles are updated, this can be definitely improved upon in the future. But hey, at least it's free.

All I can say is that sometimes people are hating on Sony just for the hell of it. It has similar graphics to the 360 from day 1, richer multi-media functionality, it's more future proof (outputs at 1080p, has HDMI output, has a built-in next-gen DVD player, built-in wi-fi, 40 gigs more of space), and all that added functionality for just 200 dollars more. I really don't think the PS3 is expensive for what it offers.

By the end of the day though, it's all about the games, and so far, third party publishers are equally supportive of both platforms. It's going to probably go down to the individual companies like Sony and MS to distinguish their consoles.

[Dasilva]

Originally Posted by undeaf

And sony is bigger, they've got over twice as many employes.

But whos richer?