huh?

woah there killer... you're getting all fired up about nothing.

i'm not implying anything about Xbox games and their gameplay, i'm just saying that the most important thing is the gameplay at the end of the day, thats all.

i'm ALSO not assuming that the Xbox games will be inferior to the PS2 games. i don't even own a PS2. i was merely saying that if both are online, it comes down to the gameplay, don't put words in my mouth to fire yourself up.

joshd2012

The most important part of a video game system is the games. The freatures that come with it are a nice addition, but the games are what counts. It is true, that a system needs many "system selling" games. The fact that PSX got FFXII over Nintendo was the pure factor as to why the PSX thrived and the Saturn died. Sales were pretty much even up to that point, but when FFXII came out, it was over for Saturn. Now we see a similar race between two different companies: Nintendo and Microsoft (Sony has to much of a lead for these two companies to catch up). Right now, there is a general lack of system selling games for either system. I mean, come on, when Simpon's Road Rage is in your systems top ten selling games, that is nothing to be proud of.

Microsoft did have one hit with Halo, but that game will be released for the PC (which will be a better version of the game). Games like this will continue to come out for X-Box, but will always eventually make it to the PC because of slow sales in the console market. I believe that Japanesse sales of the X-box were severly hurt by not releasing Halo, and since we are getting closer to the PC release, the want is not as strong.

Nintendo, on the other hand, has many system selling games coming out within the year, and this will really help with sales. That and the fact that the system is cheeper and possibly going down in price makes it a stronger compeditor.

I'm not saying that Microsoft is going to die off, I'm just saying that I see Nintendo taking a strong hold of second place by the end of the year. They will have the games, and the support.

Gallant Pig

A: I'm not fired up.

B: I didn't put words in your mouth, I simply tried to make sense of your post. I agree with what you say about gameplay, but the way you came off it seemed like you implied the Xbox may have good graphics but crappy gameplay. Glad to know that's not the case.

Gallant Pig

2 questions:

What Halo release on the PC? Haven't heard a peep from Bungie on this.

Why would the Japanese want Halo, they hate FPSers?

FonMan

EXACTLY !
I stil believe that MSOFT's strategy is to cultivate the mature gaming market (mature players that is) These people demand a little more sophistication and do not need 500 titles of crap to choose from. XBOX isnt going anywhere, as much as the PS2 fanboys would like everyone to think. I would guess that the average age of the dudes is about 15. This market is dominated by gamers who think that the Final Fantasy #478 is a "killer app"

I also believe that MSOFT knew that it would be largely a failure in Japan. This has nothing to do with its clearly superior machine, it has to do with nationalism and tired sequel titles.

I keep hearing about the big "price drop" that is coming. BFD. If it happens, MSOFT will follow, if not, it wont. $100 would not convince me to go with a system that I wasnt interested in. I personally could be given a GCN for free and it would never get plugged in.

MSOFT is in this for the long haul. Eventually some games will come that offer either broadband support or take full advantage of the technical superiority of the machine. I dont lose sleep that these games will not be there at E3 or any other press event.

jeffdsmith

I was staying out of this thread, but this comment is insane for to many reasons. I'll leave it at that.

Spiderbite

I am trying to not bash consoles here but why is that comment insane? Someone people dislike Nintendo & its library of games.

I have never owned a Nintendo & have never wanted to. I have had friends with them. I have played them. They can be fun from time to time but I have never cared enough to by one for myself. They lost me way back when they starting censoring their games. They cater to a different clientle than myself & most of my friends. As I have aged, most of their games have not. Even their hardware has been tailored to attract the younger/family gamer market with each passing incarnation.

Again, I am not bashing. On this forum, some people hate Nintendo. Most people hate Microsoft. It seems everyone loves Sony (for the moment). To each their own.

jeffdsmith

I am not attacking anyone. I just think thats stupid. How can you say something like that if you have never even tried it? It just seems to be ignorant.

I really dislike MS and I think the games for the xbox arn't reallt anything that great. Halo withstanding. But when I won a xbox from taco bell I wasn't so into my bias that I would refuse to play it.

In fact I saw it as oppertunity to explore my preferences and examine who I was as a gamer. To often people want to be fanboyish towards others and protect their systems "image". It's stupid. By actually giving the xbox a chance I can honestly determine what I like better, not just based on my bias.

I agree that people may not like the GC, and perhaps he has played it already, I didn't factor that in. But the fact is that the GC is going to have a huge variety of games. Not all just from Nintendo. To sit here and tell me you don't like any of them leads me to believe you can't be a gamer at all.

The comment just seems awfully narrowminded to me. I don't mean any personal harm.

PS: Great Gameplay is made for all ages.

joshd2012

Well, I'm sorry you haven't heard about this, but here is a preview which was posted in January...

Halo PC Preview

As for what the Japanesse like, I don't know these things. I assume since it was a hit, that it might have some popularity over there, but who knows really? Couldn't have hurt the launch tho...

Trigger

yeah - and they all know Karate and they all love to eat rice. I'm sure there's at least one or two people in Japan that will like Halo.

Gallant Pig

Did you actually read the article?

Interestingly enough, that promise hasn't been fulfilled. Weird, huh?

joshd2012

Oh, I read the article, but apparently you didn't. Its always nice to take quotes out of context when they work for you, until you get caught. That particular quote was referring to the features which will be included in the game. The development of the game was announced, but the details were not. They were hoping that Bungie would release more details soon.

Gallant Pig

The article was pure speculation, someone could write an article about MGS:X for the Xbox right now and it would be the same amount of accuracy. Both titles were announced and neither title has had a drop of information released since.

belboz

You and your friends are exactly the demographic that Sony, Nintendo, and MS are dying for. Worldwide, there's a market of several million "hard core gamers." These people wait in line for hours on launch day to get their consoles. They usually own more than one console and buy at least one new game per month, often more. But as much money as these people spend on gaming per year, they still only account for a fraction of the $20B spent every year on video games.

The bulk of that annual revenue comes from sales to the "mainstream" or "casual" gamer. While that portion of the market spends far less per capita on games, the size of that market numbers in the many tens of millions range. It's this market that ultimately determines the success of a console, not the hardcore market.

While the hardcore market is certainly influential, a console must break into the mainstream market successfully in order to truely be successful. For example, DC was very successful in the North American hardcore market. It hit the 1 million and 2 million units sold milestones faster than any previous competitor. Unfortunately, the mainstream market had either been burned by Sega too many times or had been enthralled by the tantalising glimpses of PS2. They roundly ignored the DC and thus sales of that console levelled off at something over 4 million; not nearly enough of an installed base for Sega to turn a profit on game royalties to fund the next generation of hardware.

ScandalUMD

PC Halo doesn't really matter. If MS believes releasing Halo on PC will hurt XBox, they won't release it.

The problem is, Halo has sold all the XBoxes it is going to sell, and MS doesn't have anything as big coming down the chute. XBox now has zero chance of ever even coming close to the user base of PS2, in any market.

Microsoft launched the wrong console at the wrong time. MS thought gamers wanted a hard drive. Gamers were turned off by the physically large console such an improvement requires. MS released a more powerful system, but it wasn't enough of a step up, and nobody was awed by the box's power. MS released some great games, but they had no mass-market system seller

What's more, Sony, who already had the system to beat, got incredibly lucky. The plan was that MGS2 would go toe to toe with the XBox launch, but then GTA 3 came out and blew everything out of the water. Instead of talking about XBox, everyone was talking about GTA3. It swept all the "Game of the year" awards.

It was the game everyone wanted to play, and it was only on PS2. XBox vs PS2 turned into "She kicks high" vs "I can set homeless people on fire." There was no contest.

From here on, third parties will go where the money is, and the money is in the pockets of the PS2 owners, who outnumber XBox owners by tens of millions. Microsoft may be able to secure some exclusives by buying up more developers, but that may not be enough at this point. Games make or break a console, but, once the chips have fallen, PS2 may already be made, and XBox may already be broken. With the market committed, there may not be any game that could sell a lot of XBoxes, no matter how good it is.

At this point, I'm not convinced anything short of a $100 price cut could save XBox. At $199, the system might find a new audience. Most of the market is committed, and only a small segment can be convinced, for any reason, to buy a second game console.

belboz

Well, I don't know how many games are in the PS2 library and I'd agree that most of them aren't my cup of tea. However, there are many of them that are indisputably excellent games, and a few that have sold more than the whole XBox and GC libraries combined. But, I get your point.

I'm not sure where you get the impression that there are any PS2 "fanboys" here. I know there have been a lot of posts here that question Microsoft's ability to cut production costs for the XBox, and some that have questioned Microsoft's future in the gaming market. But, I think they have all been fairly well reasoned, reasonably rational, and politely presented arguments. A "Fanboy" by common definition is someone who unswervingly promotes their favored platform mainly by denigrating anyone who disagrees with them and only rarely bothering to offer any kind of support for his or her arguments.

You're almost certainly correct that MS knew that the Japanese launch was going to be very difficult and not very successful initially. While nationalism probably played some role in the disappointing sales, I'm not convinced that it was the root cause.

I think that's a good attitude to take. A lot of PS2 owners were initially very disappointed because it took a long time before many good games became available and even now they're really just starting to realize the full power of the system. That is entirely Sony's fault of course. They designed the PS2 to work in a very unconventional way and then refused to release any libraries to help their developers. To a large degree, the PS2 has succeeded despite Sony's best efforts to their developers' lives miserable.

The XBox is almost totally opposite in this regard. One of the reasons that the idea of getting into console gaming was so compelling to MS was because they already had a very mature and sophisticated gaming API in DirectX. Leveraging that, they knew they could very rapidly get some great looking games out of the gaming community since there are so many developers already familiar with the x86/Windows/DirectX platform.

I think we'll see XBox games get better at taking advantage of the HD, and maybe make better use of the surround audio as well as provide hi-def gameplay, but by and large, I think Halo and DOA3 are pretty close to realizing the XBox's full potential. Maybe developers will get trickier with the vertex shader and certainly that would be good for some very cool effects, but overall your typical mainstream gamer would be hard pressed to see much difference on a regular TV.

belboz

Oh, come on! It's on Flay's list, it must be coming out!

Sorry, I just had to get that dig in. I've got nothing against Flay or Josh, they both do a great job on their respective threads. I just get annoyed by having so many stickies in this forum.

namja, couldn't we just have one sticky thread that links to Josh, Flay and AZero's threads? Their respective release and deal threads could just float and be bumped whenever there's an update.

FonMan

Who said I never tried it?
I said if I was given one for free I would never hook it up. The reasons are many, but I will start with the fact that are no games that interest me. I also dislike the look and philosophy of the system. I'm not bashing it, its just not for me. The point of my message was that I may not like a system, but I'm not going to start spouting off sales number and try to tear the thing down. This is what is amazing about all of the hate that is being thrown at the XBOX. If it was XBOX owners who were displeased, that would be one thing, but all of the PS2 and GCN zealots who cant let one post go without talking about the "doomed" XBOX is getting old and pathetic.

gcribbs

who said it was doomed. I know I said It would slip into third place. however I also said that I believed that microsoft would continue to support it.

I do believe that you can get 99% of the games by owning a PS2 and GC combo since I believe almost all development houses will port over their games to the PS2. In fact I think soon the games destined for the XBox will instead appear on the PS2 first or at the same time as the XBox. with exclusives for Microsoft disappearing in time. It may take a year for this to happen but I do think it will.

I do not think of myself as a fanboy. First I am 40 and have not been a boy for a long time . second because I do not feel that I am unreasoning in my thoughts in regards to the XBox.

I understand that you are just attempting to express yourself in a passionate way. However the use of terms that can be construed as derogatory should be avoided IMO.

Do you think calling someone a "fanboy" or "Zealot" will cause them to listen to your words?

jeffdsmith

If you read what you qouted me as saying I specifically say that you may have tried playing it.

Also, how can you say you don't care for the philophy of the unit, it is a system made to play games, specifically that. Arn't you a gamer?

Finally, I agree, there are way to many people talking about doomesday for no reason. I was not one. So MS sells the least amount of systems, big whoop. I don't care. I will get my games no matter what.

Flay

Oh please. God forbid you have to take a half second to scroll down the page.

It's fine the way it is.

gcribbs

I agree so I started a thread to get this done. I hope they select your idea of one sticky linking them to all three console game threads.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=199619

Gallant Pig

Ugh! No thank you! Flay's thread would be impossible to read unless you can go immediately to his latest post to see what he added. Otherwise it's just a giant list where you can't always see what he's added. Is having 2 sticky threads that big a deal? No it's not.

gcribbs

how is a single sticky that links to his thread any different?

not a single thread with all three in it.

it is to me when it is not needed anymore.

I also think the dreamcast deals sticky needs to be eliminated.

he could do what i did when i ran my pet deals thread. i bumped it when i made changes. people could post if they had questions which would also bump it.

Gallant Pig

See your feedback thread. I think you lost on this one... The DC deals thread should be gone, I agree, but the others should stay stickies.