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Ah, so that's why you only like PC games.

Matt pretty much said what I said but with more words and I agree. PCs are great to play on but they are not cheaper.

PS1 was manufactured and sold for about 10 years. Sony is planning the same for PS2 which is the only last gen console to still be sold. I don't remember if it's still outselling PS3 and 360, was a few months since last I checked. Games are still coming out on the PS2 because it has the largest user base by far, more then twice that of Wii, PS3 and 360 combined. The PS2 is like having an outdated PC with the difference that you can actually play new games on it.

If you want to play the latest PC games at the highest settings then you need to upgrade once every year for a small fortune or if you settle for less you can do it every 2 years or buy only last gen stuff. You can't count in the cost of HDTV or Surround sound to the cost of a console. Those brings extra value to your entertainment or you could simply play on your monitor (which should at least do 720p) with stereo speakers or headphones like a regular PC.

There's a reason why those are so cheap--- their Metacritic ratings stink

Gears of War came out in 2006 and is still $60 here.

Here's a little 6 year example for you:

Console: $600, Game: $60
PC: $1200, 2 upgrades: $800, Game: $40

Cost difference
Hardware $1400, Games: $20

As you can see you must buy more then 70 games over 6 years for the PC to pay off, according to this example. That's 1 game a month. There are cheaper games for both formats, like first party 360 and PS3 games are only $40 IIRC.

Do EB buy used PC games? If not then when you sell back those console games to EB I think you can count away all or at least half the difference. Half then you are up to 140 games, or 2 every month.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already, but the Wii has sold more copies in it's first month than the PS3 and the Xbox 360 combined.

Sinani, it's been mentioned. But you aren't to blame! The problem is is that nearly every fact in this thread has been mentioned at least once in the past. I swear people just can't stand to see Geek Culture without a console war thread. As soon as the old one drops off page 1 someone posts up a new way to start a debate!

I think we should have a console war game on the forums. Or do it UN style. Each camp creates a resolution which is amended and dissed to oblivion by the other camps.

Perfect Dark 3 is set for August release and will be shown off at E3, I know that definately. Same with Banjo Kazooie 3.
Gears of War 2 was mentioned as an off-hand comment or atleast according to Gamespy.. only one not really firmly official that I'm going on rumour is Mass Effect 2, but given they're getting a trilogy out by 2010; I'd say it's quite likely we'll see the second one this year, like expanded content with some minor changes (kinda like how Kotor 1 and 2 were) then the final installation of this human saga they'll take like 2 years on to really send the 360 out with a bang.

All of them are in development, that's a given as is news of them within the next few months. I'm hoping they will hit at the end of the year, cause it'll make it quite momumental.

You hear Tim Sweeny's comment that he is going to make Gears of War the new Halo? And that he'll keep making them until people get bored of them. (bit like Unreal Tournament lol)
So firmly think Gears is here to stay really, and probably 2 year dev cycles.

As for my comments about the PS3.
Well I'll put it quite plainly. They're experiencing what is known as the "top-dog" effect, every single generation since consoles and home computers have hit the markets in the early 80s for the masses not just the rich; the machine that is the most technically superior always experiences the worst sales.

It's like some sorta curse.
This nearly killed Nintendo, it did take down Atari, it also took down Sega.

Have you seen how popular the Playstation 2 still is? Until last Christmas it was actually still out-selling both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. This didn't happen with the PSOne, which was retired 6months after the Playstation 2 world-wide release.. Sony have just launched a new version of the PS2 Slim.

I'm not suggesting they went the same route as Nintendo by simply doubling processor performance, memory and throwing in a current-generation graphics processor underclocked to again have double the speed of the previous version.

I do think they shouldn't have wasted millions screwing around with a working formula. The playstation worked cause it was basically cheap, simple hardware that developers found it easy to get their software running on.

Think about this for a second, the Playstation 3 is entirely new hardware design; instruction set; and setup.
From a developer point-of-view it's like you've been programming in DarkBASIC for the past 12years, then all of a sudden Lee decides to change the entire syntax to C++. Sure you understand a little bit of what's going on, but it's going to take a good while to truely understand the changes.

Even more so is that he not only changed the syntax but did it all on a budget, so all those cool amazing new features have quirky limitations that force you to use another aspect of the language you really have never done before and is going to cost you through the nose with time, effort and hardware.

This is what Sony have basically done with the PS3. They couldn't have changed more if they had actually intended to.

I can see why they did it tbh, they're trying to make their console less about games and more about the home multimedia experience but in doing so they've basically shot their biggest money making aspect in the knee caps; hoping this new guy BluRay will make up for it, and that maybe the population is ready to actually use Linux as their main OS so they can compete against the PC.

Right now, all they are doing is coasting on their name, bluray and the hope people think "oh the most power machine! awesome!"

They are going to have to make a choice at some point though.
Do they want to take on Microsoft for the PC/MediaPC market or do they want to take them on in the gaming market?

We can't count the Wii here, because this is all over the hardcore gamers; most of whom if they do buy a Wii also own either the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3... sometimes both. Sony have dropped the ball on their games because they've not really thought of their developers properly, and it's very obvious they want to capture the MediaPC market; but don't have the balls to fully commit themselves.

They will have to make that choice though. Do they want to take on Windows, or Xbox? Cause they can't do both.
Microsoft know this, which is they the Xbox 360 is so radically different from a PC with Windows unlike the original Xbox.

It gives you a few of the same options and does inter-connect, but really they're two extremely different beasts that are well developed to give the best experience to both end-user and developer.

Sony need to make this decision, or really keep backing what will just suck so much money that the brand WILL die. There are no two ways around this. You can only coast on your name and a handful of big titles for so long before gamers cry out for those hundreds of 3rd party titles that basically made the Playstation 2 such a big product and brand name. MediaPC owners will keep crying out for more applications, which Sony are very strictly controlling something you just can't do if you want that aspect to grow. Especially with the Linux community the way it is.

The Playstation 3 won't last a decade. It just won't, no matter the power it has there will be such a technology jump that unless it's upgradable it will be left in the dust.

Graphics performance jumps by a factor of 2x every 12months now. Add to this the new multicore, and multi-card solutions; the Playstation 3 just won't be able to compete without utilising the Folding@Home crap that allows more than one console to combine resources, but then who here will buy more than one Playstation 3 just to play games on-par with what the next-generation Xbox 360 will run?

Even with such a powerful graphics processor, the PS3 is still limited by how NVIDIA GPUs work; as they waste so much performance.
It's very rare for them to ever be working at 100%, even with a full workload; because even the 8-Series don't delegate their streaming processors to work as multi-processors but a single processor to get lots of job queues through quickly.

I mean the best way to look at it, is the difference between a Pentium D and Core 2 Duo.

With the Pentium D, while yes it has two hardware threads just like the Core 2 Duo; the problem is it basically still works like a unicore processor. So you have the same instructions going in, then being split between the hardware threads; and lots of sync waiting so it call finishes when it needs to.

Where-as the Core 2 Duo will basically use a seperate core for each set of instructions; so they can work completely independantly of each other to do physically twice the work, not do the same the at a quicker speed cause it has two people working on it.

I mean the only way I can dumb this down even more is let's say you have to move about 60x 12x12x3" brick pavers, obviously with one of you it'll take a while.
Well the Pentium D would basically be both of you would take one at a time, so easing up how much each weighed a bit meaning you moved it slightly quicker.

Where-as the Core 2 Duo would have both of you moving seperate pavers at a time, so one wasn't slowed up by the other. Sometimes this is quicker sometimes it isn't, but no matter how stupid one person got trying to shift more than one paver at a time; this doesn't slow down the other person.

And this is the same as how these graphics processors tend to work. NVIDIA has always been great at shifting that heavy data quickly, but when you get lots of little data it still focusing on each bit as if it was all heavy. Where-as the ATI one deligates to get the job done as quickly as possible.

So while sure the RSX does have better technical specs on paper, but almost double; the Xenos often can do just as much as the RSX can. So graphically speaking, right now the consoles are equal as is basically. Processing wise again, you have the same sorta thing; only while each VMX is very quick at it's job, Sony have limited how many pavers are in each of their piles. So it then has to wait until more can be brought out for it if it finishes.

On the whole while you can say the Playstation 3 is never running at full capacity, fact is unless you hit very specifical and special circumstances it just never will. The Xbox 360 on the other hand is capable of using or not whatever is available.

The Playstation 3 could be powerful, but Sony have just limited it by design, by cut-backs for the console market budgets, and simply down to the hardware used. As it is basically on-par with the 360, despite bustling with power just don't see it lasting a decade. It might take that long for people to figure out what those special circumstance to take advantage of the power is mind.



Oh no, the price of a game each year to use so many features in online games that 90% of PC games don't have built-in on stable servers with game servers that match skill levels of games so you don't get pwn'd constantly by those no-life college students and asians.

Whatever shall we do!
You sodding tight git... if there was a service on Windows that offered the same stuff, I'd bloody pay for that too. You know what I actually do; cause Live is on Windows and I do pay for it

You know, I quite like paying knowing I'm getting quality of service mate. Unlike whenever I play on the PS3 or Steam games where I wonder if the game will be laggy cause some retard hosting the game has his bit-torrent going on in the background downloading movies (which btw ISP companies in the UK are now going to start banning people who do it from March on-ward, so if I see you disappear really won't be surprised)



Where the hell do you shop?
I got a new PC fairly recently:

AMD Phenom 9500
2GB DDR2 667MHz
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB PCI-e
320GB Hitachi SATA2 HDD
BluRay ROM/DVD-RW Drive

All together £340
It runs Windows Vista (which isn't included in the cost as I had a copy, but Ultimate OEM goes for about £65ish)

That runs everything except Crysis, even DirectX10 games like Lost Planet at 30fps+ @ 1280x720p 4xAA 8xAF output to HDMI

As for game prices, they vary wildly really.
Windows titles can be £19.99 - 39.99 for just released, where-as Xbox 360 titles generally go for £29.99 - £39.99.

Both seem to settle at £34.99 on adverage unless I pre-order and get like £5-10 off cause of ordering through Game.co.uk

I will have to upgrade both, in about 3-4years time; but generally speaking both will age quite well considering. Hell until this year I was still getting reasonable performance of 30fps with everything turned down with an FX5200 I had since DBP was released, which is what 6years? for a bloody budget card then.

So you know, it's not a case that hardware ever really goes out instantly so to speak. It's always phased out for the newer hardware.

You'll only spend alot upgrading both consoles and computers if you absolutely MUST be the first to own something, and the best of it.

Personally I tend to prefer to go mid-range, as often it's only slightly worse than the top-end can you can always upgrade later.
Hell now with Windows cards, you can just buy another budget get more performance and still spend less than the top-end card.

I agree, that consoles are more financialy sound, to startup, But what can i say....I just love to play games, using the best avaliable technology.

BTW, ive got gears of war, and it works fine. Ive never come accross any bugs.:/

According to the latest Game Developer magazine, the PS3 sales over the holiday season were decisevly behind the PS2, worldwide. I just read it, but I left the article at work so I don't remember the exact numbers. But in order of sales:

1. Nin DS
2. Wii
3. 360
4. PS2
5. PS3
6. PSP

Actually I don't remember if the Wii or DS was number 1, except that Nintendo held the top two spots.

Why does everyone want a wii? I know the controller is unique, but its a bit like the nentendo power glove, its not practical, or responsive. Also, i hope im not the only one to say that the wii's graphics suck ass from a twrly straw.

- Yeah, but in 2004, you would have had to have bought an normal xbox, or ps2. And by now you would have had to have bought an xbox360 or ps3 to play the latest games. Whats the diffrence?

Have you even played a wii? Or used a powerglove?

The power glove didn't even work half the time. The wii mote works, and it's fun.

I wish that the 360 would just get a bloody wii-mote and nun-chuck. It enhances shooters so much. I'd be pwning all the Halo noobs who use auto aim simply by the accuracy of the wii-mote.

And the wii's graphics don't have to suck. It is totally capable of nice high quality stylized graphics. Super Smash Brothers, Mario Galaxy, Red Steel, Metroid Prime 3 to name a few. They all look great. Maybe not next-gen but who really cares? The games are fun (with the exception of some of the issues in Red Steel)

Exactly!!!
Who cares about stupid graphics? As long as it's not in black-and-white or bad quality, it really doesn't matter.I used to have a PS2, should I buy a PS3 for more money, but just better graphics?
NO!!
I got rid of my PS2, because I got the Wii, and it's much better because of it's unique control style.

97.5% of the population care about the graphics.

Me, I prefer fun games AND great graphics. Who would have thought those two don't have to be mutually exclusive? The next-gen haters always use the leaky argument that 360 and PS3 games are just eye candy and nothing else-- that couldn't be further from the truth.

Believe me, I've tried dozens of crap mini-game collections on the Wii that were PSP or PS2 ports with Wii control tacked on as an afterthought. The Wii is to blame for some of the most atrocious games to come out this year, cashing in on soccer moms and old ladies. (Jenga World Tour, anyone?)

I wholeheartedly agree with you Jeku, but the games that come out for the Wii where the developers actually try hard to make a great game are generally really good all around. There's just not enough of them. I really hope that the next generation of consoles have the option of motion sensing controls or traditional along WITH great graphics.

Hence why I said:

I think you missed the analogy. Assume the PS2 were released in 2004 and it makes the arguement a heck of a lot more sound, or that I bought a brand new computer when a new console were released, either way you'll see my point. A console can run brand-new games as-is, without modification or upgrade, whereas you'll most certainly upgrade your PC to stay ahead of the curve.

I wanted to reply to your post Raven, but there is just too much there and I don't want the usual heated discussion. Personally I think Sony have been quite brave by going for completely new hardware and a new way of working. They could have just put in a better graphics chipset, faster processor, etc. but they have gone for a route which takes development in a new and more expansive direction. Once people are used to programming for the SPU architecture its not harder than programming for other processors - just different. Then in the future, devices could come out with more and more SPU's or perhaps other architectures which palm work off in a similar way. The way they can be told to perform tasks individually or combined for more power is clever and a step towards a better way of processing IMO. Its steps in new directions like this which made computing evolve so quickly and prevents it going stale.

You mention Sony strictly controlling what applications run on the PS3. I think this is incorrect, or at least they control it less than other consoles. This is demonstrated by their freely available boot loader and that they allow users to run or even install and dual boot other operating systems. So if you want a new media centre system based on Linux, that's okay - and you can still keep your normal PS3 OS for gaming. You want to develop your own software without the official SDK? Well you can do that too by booting to Linux and writing your stuff in C or whatever. There are even free games coming out written by hobbyists where you actually boot to a tiny Linux distro which the game runs on. A very cool idea.

You also mention the quality of service by paying for your 'Live' account. Sadly, paying for something doesn't mean you get a better service which has been proven by all the downtime of 'Live' over recent months, the law suit about it and the freeby game MS gave away to all subscribers as an apology (although they called it a loyalty thank you).

I have tried a wii, and a power glove. I agree the power glove basicly dosent work, but the wiimote is so inresponsive - half the time u do one thing, but the game does another its so annoying.

Anyway try playing rts's on a console. lmao

I'll take a few days of downtime over a service that doesn't have proper friends lists, notification, messaging, chat, and achievements any day I've yet to see anyone who has tried both online systems claim the PS3s has a better system for arranging to play a game with a bunch of friends. A while ago I was watching a movie on my 360 and got invited to play Halo 3 with a friend. I paused the movie, hit the home button, and voice chatted with him to politely decline. We were both in entirely different applications. Can you do that on the PS3? I rest my case.

Erm... if you are at the desktop, playing music, downloaded videos or browsing the Web then yes you can. You can send and receive messages with people on your friends list and voice or video chat with them. At present you don't receive popup messages from friends while inside games (not always a bad thing) but its an update that's being worked on. We all know about the extra features like achievements in 'Home' when it comes so I won't talk about that.

When 'Live' goes down you are totally screwed for all of your XBox online games. Is it worth the money when PSN seems more stable and is free? No. Not in my opinion.

But you can't send an "invite". Sure, you can message each other until the cows come home. But then you have to go into the game, go into the lobby or whatever, and then invite your friends from there who all have to already be in the game. On the 360 I can receive an invite, click Accept, and go right into the game with him. It's very different!



Myself, I never experienced over 30 minutes of downtime. And that was only ONE time since I used Live (since end of 2002). The most it went down was, as far as I read, 2 days. Whoop-de-doo. Like I said, nobody who has played online on both systems can even compare the two. If you're like me, you listen to all the big podcasts and read the mags, etc, and the editors all agree with me too. Yes, they have compared the two several times.

For example I can't count the amount of times I heard someone ask "Did you play it on PS3 or 360?" and the other guy says "360 for the achievements, and all my friends are on the Live so it's easier to get a game going." The proof's in the pudding. Yes, this is worth $60 a year.

By the way a little bird told me MS will open up Live Gold for free soon

How many game disks does your 360 hold inside? I am guessing if you receive an invite you still need to pop in the disk and run the game. I don't see how this is much slower than someone messaging you and saying "I am just going to play MotorStorm now. Wan't to join me?". Definately not worth $60 a year. Was that the only reason these reviewers said it was better than PSN?
You have to take into account the fact that PSN isn't locked down as much as Live too which is how companies like Epic can offer user generated content for download (also for free). I have also read that there is a 150MB download limit on Live Arcade making life more difficult for developers (link) and it looks like this was originally 50MB in order to fit downloads on a 64Mb memory card (link). PSN apparently has a 5GB limit.

That's an entirely different topic, and has nothing to do with Xbox Live Gold. Anyone can download XBLA games without having a Gold account



Again, you're missing my point. A unified friends list that has no boundaries (games, movies, etc.) I can be in Halo 3 and get an invite for UNO, which is on the hard drive, so no I don't have to switch discs. It will drop me immediately into a round. Again, I'm guessing you haven't spent much (if any) time with Xbox Live to see its merit over PSN, because you're the only person I've seen argue for it (other than Matt Rock, who doesn't even have a PS3).

And on PSN if you're on a busy game like COD4, you have to find your friend's game in a long list of servers, etc. On Live, like I said, you just go right into the action or the lobby itself that your friend is hosting. Yes, this more convenient.

Also, the PSN speed are *ridiculously slow*. It took me hours to download a 1GB demo. On Live it took about 10% of the time, and anyone that has a 360 with an Internet connection can download them without paying the a Gold account. Also, on the PS3, you have to install each game before you play it, so when you download a PSN demo you have to also install it which can take 5-10 minutes. The Devil May Cry 4 install is just over 22 minutes It obviously thinks it's a PC

But the limits apply to Xbox Live Gold too, so it is relevant. I have spent some time with Xbox Live and I have to say, the stuttering 'blades' which seems to freeze for several seconds while in a game, and the other popup messages kind of annoyed me. Obviously that's a personal preference though.

The PS3 has a unified friends list. An example of its use is its availability within "Resistance: FoM". If other games choose to use their own 'friends lists' or not link to it then its their choice. Not restricting the developers to a centrally controlled friends list is not a fault of PSN.

They can be slow I agree. Especially with new and popular downloads. You can of course set things to download in the background so you can go off and play games or whatever while it comes down. With videos you can also watch what has downloaded so far - you don't have to wait till its completed.

Well, every demo I have downloaded (and that's quite a lot) only take a couple of minutes maximum to install. Is that a major problem? It means downloads are smaller and you can still easily remove them afterwards.

That is the full game though and not the demo. The demo installs very quickly. I still don't understand why they did this unless they intend to have updates/addons available later on (although they have previously said they wouldn't). I guess they thought trimming the loading times was worth it but I don't know. Like you say, PC users are used to this kind of thing and don't moan about it but I hope it doesn't spread to other PS3 games.

PSN is still in it's infancy compared to XBL, much of what XBL have I'm sure PSN will support sooner or later. Personally I think that paying $5 a month for unlimited online play on good servers for all games is worth it. I don't know what Sony have planned for PSN to combat this. Will PSN have servers for all games or must developers host their own servers?

The Phantom is the clear winner. Jeez.

Xbox Live is only worth the money if you use it... There are people, like me, who play online once in a blue moon. The features that Live has over a free service don't matter, since most of the time playing online doesn't involve playing with friends, or I've already contacted friends to play with and it was scheduled ahead of time. Most of my gaming, especially around consoles, I couldn't care less about the online functionality and features.

Why do people keep comparing the Wii to the other two consoles? I'm a Nintendo fan (although I believe I'm too rational to be a fanboy), and I do like it, but it's in a totally different league to the other two. Out of the 3, I currently only own a Wii, but I'm hoping to get a 360 soon to satisfy my graphically, hardcore-game starved side.
The Wii is for my more casual side, exactly what it's aimed at, especially considering I don't have the time nor patience a lot of the time to spend on non-casual games. As for 360 vs PS3, I've only played the 360, I liked it, liked the games, and haven't seen anything from the PS3 that would encourage me to buy one of those instead. Feel free to try and persuade me though

Virtual Console, gamecube?

Where have they kicked you in the teeth? Ninty is stronger than ever, its great, I've never had a problem with them and never will, constant innovation. Sure they're appealing to a new market, to bring them in slowly and introduce the hardcore to them, I can assure you their clout is still intact, without nintendo gaming wouldn't have caught on as much as it has IMO.

From what I heard they're changing it to be the same as the Games for Windows Live!, where Silver members get limited options for hosting games and can't use match-making; and Gold members can choose to allow Silver members.

XNA however is abolishing all of their charges for XNA Connect later this year though.

That's about all I know about it mind, if they do abolish the charges for Gold the likelihood is that they're software sales have reached a point it can keep paying for the service now... which wouldn't surprise me given how much they make from XBLA, Movies and XBOG.

I mean I'm really beinging to like the selections of original Xbox titles on Live Marketplace now, recently purchased Pirates! for £10 couldn't be happier if they had altered them to support the new Xbox 360 aspects of Live.



This limitation is only for Xbox Live Arcade titles.
Downloadable Content
Demos
Original Xbox Titles
and the soon to be added Downloadable Titles

all have no limits
Some Xbox titles (which are full games) are as large as 6GB

None of these titles require installing (or unpacking) either, you simply download and you can start them immediately.

A good example of the DLC system is Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, where you can download the full Shivering Isles and 9 Kings add-on packs. Both of these add-ons can be purchased, downloaded and actived while still playing the game.

Same with the add-on packs for Final Fantasy XI, although that does force you back to Play-Online this is a limitation Square-Enix have forced rather than Microsoft.

As far as content for Marketplace itself goes, companies are completely free to add what they choose. If Epic wished to add the extra 5 chapters the PC has to Gears of War (total of 2.5GB extra content) there is nothing stopping them from doing so.



Point is, the with the 360 content you download is complete.
No installations
No seperate download -> game aspects (i.e. download cache)

What you download is what you run, and the instant it finishs the Xbox even asks if you want to play it; simply pressing the Guide button allows you to accept this, or ignore it and continue what you were doing.

This is the main bonus with the Xbox 360 Live system over Playstation Network. It's the simplicity.

Yes, Resistance was one of the games that showed that PSN was capable of similar stuff; but because Sony do not enforce or provide their own library to do this stuff out of the box, it means only developers who feel the extra time and effort to develop their own or worth the money to license such a library from others will do it.

So PSN games on the whole suffer with their online aspect.
Sony did this exact same thing with the Playstation 2's version of PSN. On the whole, people just didn't play online much.

Yes, HOME is on the way to help bridge the feature gap like achievements, and parties. Yet the issue is still this doesn't carry between games without going back to one persons "home", and by having it 3D basically they're making a Second Life system to make it look good while still not providing what the Xbox does at the touch of a button.

Sure the guide doesn't instantly open sometimes, but it's still a damn sight quicker than exiting a game completely or jumping right back to the home menu then finding the friends menu to message people.

Instead you see a message, press the guide button and whatever that message is related to you're instantly given access to it no matter what you're doing on the console. It's just easier and simpler, and all in one place.

Some of us don't have the luxury of time to spend 20minutes sorting out a party, messaging everyone... waiting for responses, etc...

Instead while you're playing send out a bunch of invites, if you all decide to change game the party leader can simply change the game and invite the entire party.

What's more with games like Halo 3, Bungie have shown you can add additional aspects to the guide specific to the game; like you can scope out who's in a given party (so if you don't like someone you can decline it) or see someones gaming history, and files they want to share with you.

Microsoft are officially adding file sharing between Xbox 360 and Live Messenger sometime in Q3 2008, allowing so much versitility with pictures, live spaces, etc.. Mostly to help people share their XNA titles really but you can share music, videos, and such.

While we can sit around saying "well PSN is still young, let it grow", at the same time Live has found it's feet and is also constantly growing. Sony are still playing catch-up to something Microsoft have been improving for a long time. They were fully aware of the features and how popular it has been, really is no excuses for them not to provide the same sort of support.

To me PSN is just another example of Sony adding something in a half-arsed way. They're trying to add too much to compete with everyone, as if the whole world is against them and not really shining through on anything.

As I said before, they should've focused on improving a winning formula like Microsoft did... not changing it all hopeing that people will like it and that their name will just help get people attached.

To me HOME has always seemed like a stupid idea, mainly because Playstation owners have always been less social on the whole. Nintendo owners have always been the most social, and despite constant out-crys from the user base and support for it Nintendo refused to believe there was an online market.

Sony for the most part only acknowledged it, rather than accepting it as being a huge part of gaming.

Microsoft from the start have firmly believed it's a HUGE part of gaming, and this believe has really paid for itself in dividends since. Now the other two are playing catch-up when they just can't.

What Sony should do right now is invest in Steam. The Playstation 3 with Steam quite frankly would be able to actually give Live a run for it's money. After all, Steam on the PC right now is what Games for Windows Live should be.

To me that would make sense. Then again I don't run Sony, and personally I never would've gambled my whole game industry fortune on a brand new design. Especially not one based on a PC, who's gaming industry is slowly declining to the console market.



The Virtual Console is nice, but too expensive.
I can actually get the original console and games for less than what Nintendo charge!

GameCube .. I already had one long before my Wii. In-fact I have a fairly large library of ~80 titles for it... which is still growing whenever I find new and interesting ones.

So the only thing the Wii really provides imo, is well Wii-mote games which quite frankly I'm bored of. I just want new titles with both Wii-mote and Controller support.

Frankly I found nothing confusing about the old control system. For people to say the Wii-mote works fine, sure compared to the Power Glove.
It still has a habit of half the time not doing what you tell it, or jumping around the screen; particularly when the extremely short battery life is coming to a close.

This issue isn't so much with the Wiimote or Reciever bar either, because I've got some very good drivers for the PC where it works like a dream; the issue is entirely with the Nintendo drivers for it.

Even if it was perfect though, I would seriously choose a controller over it anyday. Sorry but it's nice for a short time, and for some party games; but as a full-time control system it gets tiresome very quickly, killing my gaming spirit.

Seriously I couldn't even be arsed to finish Zelda, until I traded it in for the GC version; and Mario Galaxy will forever remain on the shelf gathering dust as far as I'm conserned until they patch it to have controller support.

I've been gaming on consoles since my NES days, always found controllers to really shine for the games made for them; but at the same time I've always been irritated by motion-sensor stuff being "always active". It's good for a few titles or a few aspects of games but not everything.

I do like how you can choose not to use it on the PS3, but still doesn't help when 90% of it's games are just crap. More of a shame when that final 10% are nothing to really shout about, especially as two of them are so short you can set the sunday roast going in the morning and when it's done by lunchtime you've completed them.

@Raven, you never answered my question, and I'm sure you wont bother responding to this post. I'd love it if you did respond to my post about game release dates though, as I'm actually interested in where you got the release dates for those games. I'D ACTUALLY LIKE TO KNOW IF THAT'S TRUE, IT WOULDN'T BE THAT HARD TO SAY WHERE YOU FOUND THAT INFO. I don't care if you, lied, but I want an answer.

...I guess because you don't like it, its not successful.

Interesting note. Xbox Live hit 1 million users in 2004. PSN hit 2.8 million users in North America alone this month.

Xbox Live, in 2004, was pay *only*. There was no free version. Anyone with a PS3 and a network cable can plug into PSN.

Right now anyone with a 360 can use Xbox Live without paying.

Your stats don't make any sense, actually. That's like saying there's more PS2 games bought today than PS1 games bought 5 years ago. Ok--- wow.

wait...live is free???

*runs for an ethernet cable* whoohoo, bills have no more effect on my RB jamming.

Live Silver is free, yes. Live Gold is not. This is nothing new.

Could've sworn I covered how as much as I'm allowed to last post.
Mass Effect 2 (Rumour), but they're showing it off at E3/GDC and it's on the release schedual under Q4 this year.

Gears of War 2 (Rumour), CliffyB and Tim Sweeny have both mentioned they looking to release this year; as well as focus on the console market over the PC.

Perfect Dark 3 and Banjo Kazooie 3 both projects are schedualed for a Holiday release; but that said you never quite know how well development will go. Can't say much more than that, nor can I say anything about additional projects that might be on interest right now cause they've not even been announced yet. NDAs suck sometimes.

Lost Odessy is well out sometime next month (can pre-order) so not exactly a big surprise. Actually one that is quite interesting and I've only seen rumours for is that Final Fantasy XII and XIII will make it to 360.

But those last ones are more rumours than much else at this point. The other titles I know ARE under development, just the release dates that need to be confirmed; which GDC (next month) and E3 (June) will be doing.

^_^ I'm certainly looking forward to all of the titles.

You can pretty much guarantee a sequel for any successful game. You don't have to be a neuro-surgeon to claim Mass Effect, Gears of War, and Assassin's Creed will have sequels. Those are about as obvious as EA doing another NCAA Football game (yes, it's true )

Well, the downloading on the PS3 is only one more step. When the demo is downloaded it appears as an icon in your games area. You click it and it installs and you can play. Simple. Its one extra click, that's all. I wouldn't be surprised if the 360 did exactly the same but automatically run the install/decompress as soon as it has downloaded without asking. Downloading things uncompressed would be silly and vastly increase download times.
That's not true. Epic had lots of discussions with Microsoft and MS want to keep complete and total control over Live. They refuse to give anyone else any control over anything downloadable or that runs through Live. This means Epic cannot offer stuff to download themselves for the 360, they would have to get everything checked, okayed and delivered by MS and I dare say pay through the nose for the privilege.
Sony don't provide the stuff to do this? I find that hard to believe. The argument will be irrelevant soon anyway as they are working on making the XMB available at all times - including inside games. This has been requested for a while and Sony have said they are working on it now.
Thats a ridiculous statement seeing as the social side of the network has only been available so far from inside games. You should play some PS3 games online with chat. Its a very social and fun thing to do. When HOME comes out it will be huge. That's my opinion, and the opinion of the majority of PS3 users.
Eh? Are you saying that the PS3 is more like a PC than the Xbox? You say it was a big gamble using brand new hardware with one breath, and then say they shouldn't have based it on a PC! Bizarre.

I like XBOX Live better.

Okay... Before the 360 launched there were about 2 million Live users. A year later there were 4 million, worldwide. A a few months later (roughly the same amount of time PSN has been around) 6 million, worldwide.

And I wouldn't actually be surprised if the majority of the reason why Live has so many "users" today, then it did with the original Xbox, is because of Silver Memberships.

My point being, is there are more people who aren't willing to spend money on the service. And please, do not tell me Silver accounts are an alternative. Microsoft tries to encourage upgrading by punishing you for being a Silver member.

Well that's just logical. I could say the same for PSN users. It's free, so there are many of them.



Isn't that just business? The same thing happens to me when I use shareware--- it will nag or cripple itself in such a way that it is extremely limited. If MS didn't do that then nobody would upgrade

If the PSN network eventually catches up to Live (which I hope it does), then either a.) MS will be forced to make it 100% free, or b.) Sony will charge for it because it's lost revenue. Bandwidth is expensive for millions of players, which is why free-to-play online games inevitably shut off after a few years. Sony is smart. They cheaped out on the PS2 BC chip, and I wouldn't put it past them to charge for or severely limit online play.

I agree with Jeku, if PSN is to offer the same online play capabilities as XBL Gold then Sony will most likely charge for that. HOME of course will be for free, it uses micro transactions and advertisements. No point for them to talk about it though, having it free is a huge marketing advantage.

Thanks raven. Sorry if I missed it in an earlier post. I knew that they were coming out, but I was wondering where you got the rumored release dates for the ones that didn't already have official ones (I've been following Lost Odessy for a while). Thanks.

Lost Odyssey is out in Australia already... It's awesome....

Actually you're completely off the mark on how Microsoft handles Marketplace.

While yes, there are a few hoops to jump through to get additional content for games online; these are the exact same standards that the original titles themselves must adhear to.

There are ZERO fees for adding content, no matter the space requirements to Live Marketplace. In-fact the only time Microsoft do charge a company is when that company charges themselves. You are obligated to pay a 10% charge on overall sales each month, this is actually less than if you decided to retail in stores or hell just pay for servers to hold the content in most cases.

The only aspect I can see anyone having an issue with is Microsoft do reserve the right to take down any content that is contested (i.e. possible legal issues to themselves)

Epic current provide a HUGE host of DLC for Gears of War, with Themes/Pictures/Videos/Levels (including additional achievements for these levels) .. most is free, other aspects are for purchase.
That is entirely up to Epic however.

I seriously doubt anyone would be against paying say 400-800 Microsoft Points for the addition of an hours worth of gameplay to a 5-7hour long game. The ball really stops with Epic on this, not with Microsoft.

Also bare in mind that recent comments from Epic top-dogs have them bitching that most games favour mouse control, like point'n'click ones which is why Gears of War sold fairly poorly on the PC.

However given Orange Box, and Call of Duty 4 have absolutely blitz the PC charts with sales in the millions not hundred thousands like Gears.. perhaps it's the fact that Gears is bug-ridden (even still!), you can't play against your 360 friends which many were looking forward to AND it requires the same computer handed down from the gods to run that Crysis does.

Atleast Crytek aren't surprised their game isn't exactly a best seller.

I honestly thing that Epic are just looking for others to blame for the fact they created this technology for the Consoles; and ported to PC and it's just not quite as good on the PC as they had hoped. Unreal Tournament 3 is alright, but on larger maps with lots of players really suffers especially on Vista because of loading. The issue here isn't Windows, it's their programming; when everything is going Epic's way they'll sing peoples (mainly their own) praises; when it isn't they throw a hissy fit and blame everyone else.

If you can't get a game like Gears running on technology far superior, at a decent performance.. it certainly ain't Microsofts fault given it's the same damn technology. End of.



Will it though?
Look at the sales for the cross-platform titles like Call of Duty 4, and Orange Box. These titles have HUGE online followings on both Xbox 360 and Windows PC.

The Playstation 3 sales for these games, even if you brake it down into regional (for say United States) where these games shift the most units; the Playstation 3 is still far behind, despite what Sony claims that they have a fairly equal online community.

Whenever I play online, on my 360 or Windows PC. I can guarentee any time, day or night. I'll find thousands of players to go up against. On my Playstation 3 however, only one or two games ever seem popular.. right now it's Unreal Tournament 3, but even that has a very small online community for PSN currently.

In-fact the largest selling games on the Playstation 3 right now are all single player ONLY.

But you know, don't take my word for it...

http://vgchartz.com/

Take the independant hardware and software sales website's statistical word on it. Quite simply the fact of the matter is despite the recent sales, the PS3 still is trailing software wise; software being bought is obviously not for online use, hell due to recent sales I'd actually hazard a guess most are just being used as bloody BluRay players to be honest.

Sony are doing their best to spin what looks like good news with Toshiba officially stopping production on HD-DVD, and the PS3 finally out-selling the 360.

Fact is though, it means absolutely nothing without the software sales to back it up. Top titles absolutely bombing recently doesn't really give that nice affirming nod that everything is a-ok in the Sony camp.

I still believe that HOME keeps getting pushed back for release, not because it isn't finished; but because there just aren't enough people to really make setting it up worth while. Seriously wouldn't be surprise if that was the case.

Sony have been recently pulling nearly everything they can to get the drop on Microsoft; and I think both sides are keeping alot from us about what they plan in the second half of this year. Thing is Microsoft really is a much stronger position.

Sony might have 6million (although couldn't find anywhere to confirm that) users with accounts on their PSN service.
Last time I checked (which was back at E3 2007), Microsoft had 11+ million users on Xbox Live who were ACTIVELY using it's services.

There were no numbers given to how many of those were Gold subscribers (aka Online Gamers), however they did say that their revenue from Live was the equivilant of each active member purchasing 5 Xbox Live Arcade games a month.

It is also obvious from the Christmas "blackout" fiasco which only really affected a handful of people to any real extent that obviously Microsoft's Live servers at the time were not designed to handle the number of online gamers. As it was online games NOT Live Marketplace that was affected by the service going down.

I would love to know the official stats on both services, but impression wise; I'd say Xbox Live right now even though you have to pay to me seems more lively at times than even Windows online gaming does... and no one had paid for that in years unless it's an MMO.

Something that does lead me to a very valid point.
7 million online gamers currently pay the equivilant of £15/month for an online game called World of Warcraft.

If gamers were so opposed to paying for online gameplay, MMO games would've died out long long ago.

Raven wins.

Well played.

Its not the normal downloadable content I am referring to. Its the fact that for some reason MS won't allow Epic to let people download user generated content, i.e. the user made levels for UT3. Its definitely not Epic's fault as they have done this for the PS3 without any hassle at all - in fact Sony welcomed it. After all, the more free content you can provide, the more games and consoles will be sold and the more players will be online. Everybody wins.
Epic also released the utilities to convert user created UT3 maps to the PS3 format for free and you can stick them on a USB memory stick to play them on your console. I would say they are going out of their way to try and make it easy for the players.
VGChartz go by the number of games manufactured, not sold. They also gather random data from a sample of retailers, and they admit its a small sample. The regions defined by each console company is different too so comparing those is inaccurate. Everything they state is estimated if you look at their methodology, so I wouldn't pay too much attention to their figures. Instead, try looking at ChartTrack/ELSPA who use the real sales figures from Amazon.co.uk, Argos, ASDA, Blockbuster, Chips, ChoicesUK.com, Comet, Currys, Dixons.co.uk, Forbidden Planet, Game Group, Gameplay.com, Gamestation, HMV, John Lewis, Morrisons, PC World, Play.com, Sainsburys, ShopTo.com, Staples, Tesco, TGrav, W H Smith, Woolworths, Zavvi and independents.
If you look at the all formats UK chart, "Call of Duty 4" on the PS3 was consistently in the top ten for as long as the 360 version was. The week before last there were more PS3 games in the top 10 than 360 games - and that's going by units sold. Last week and this weeks chart there were the same number. The amount of online games compared to single player games is the same too. With games like CoD4, Turok and Burnout Paradise all being online and the only single player game in the last few weeks being Devil May Cry 4.

Actually they have done a lot of improvements to Home since its last delay. The world has lots more in it now but isn't as widely spaced out so you don't have to travel too far to get from one place to another. The entry location is now out in the open and much larger, everything has been upscaled including the movie theatre which has had a bowling alley and arcade added. Home development kits have been sent out to developers so all new games will function with it nicely and patches will be released for current games. It is apparently very near release and everybody who isn't anti-PS3 is waiting for it.
By the way, the in-game access to the desktop area for chatting with friends and such is now completed and will be in an update shortly. Yay!

Thats because there isn't a FREE alternative which is as good. The same cannot be said for 'Live'

The Xbox 360 has a 16.4% failure rate