These guys took the more direct approach:
http://www.roxr.com/smashmyxbox/
Posted on 11/23/2005 12:42:11 PM PST by Cagey
The next-gen Nintendo is 100% backwards compatible with all of its games since the companies inception. They might be the upset kid next-gen.
With most of them being devloped on previous platforms and cheaply ported forward. Go check out the review sites, few of these games are getting higher than 7 or 8 ratings on the 360.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
no way the parts cost $477+$55 in it, in quantity.
Not only does he NOT have a picture of the actual unit, he has the gall to ask for $45.00 shipping too!
Being the father of an 8 year old, Nintendo is a company you can count on. Since losing dominace, they have carved out a great niche at the kids gaming, as well as handheld, and defended it well.
The Gameboy has been around since the 80s, and is still going strong... (And you can get an advance for <$55 friday at walmart in case you missed the flyer, from 5am to 11am.) I mean who would think that the same handheld (now with color) I played with as a teen is still being sold and devoured by kids going on 20 years later?
I don't know what revolution will do, but given the NICHE that Nintendo has for itself, its not going anywhere anytime soon. It can only leapfrog or stay where it is. It gets to sit back, make money, and watch Sony and MS fight each other... not a bad place to be.
That is what I call stupid, stupid and stupid for paying those prices.
File this in the category of people with far more money than brains.
Haha. My conservative friends and I at the last company I worked at (there were roughtly 3 of us out of 30) had a great parody of the X-Box called the Freedom-Box as designed by the socialists so that "every child would have the opportunity to play a game". I believe there were roughtly 3 games launched during it's 20 year life-cycle. I'll have to find the bit.
Anyhow, to get back on topic -- I work in the gaming industry, and think HamiltonJay btw is a little off the mark as far as Microsoft vs. Sony. I don't harbor any illusions that XBox will take the #1 spot (I don't think it will, but we'll see) -- but I think as a developer, you have to realize we're all about fed up with Sony for various reasons. One their platform stinks to develop on, and we really don't care about absolute specs at this level of hardware right now. We'd rather spend the time adding content and tweaking details and working on immersion code and not code to figure out how to get umpteen processors communicating efficiently. In an industry as tightly squeezed for deadlines as gaming, that's a killer to your business model.
Until Sony realizes this they are in danger of losing a large portion of their developer pool from PS3 first, to XBox 360 first (and then a substandard PS3 port). The XBox will become the target platform for a bunch of games, from companies that don't have a vested Sony interest.
Sony has also not made any friends recently with all their PR debacles (and their new patent whereas a game bought for your console HAS to be run on that same unit after it has been run once. THAT is going to leave a mark). If it weren't for the success of the PS, I think that company would be in deep doo-doo.
What's a X-Box? Is that something to watch XXX movies on? In that case, I want one.
My 17 year old called our local WalMart at noon. They had 20 machines to sell at midnight, and already 12 people were lined up...I told him he couldn't wait, because he had other responsibilities to fulfill.
My nephew called the Target near him, they had 16 to sell and at noon had 10 people in line.
At 7 PM there were 25 people lined up in front of Best Buy, to purchase systems when they opened at 7 AM (they had 50 units.)
I had told him he could buy one if he wanted...it's his money, but that he had to find a stores with a reasonable wait time (I think 3 hours isn't bad.) We live in a big city and I knew there'd be no way he'd find one without a huge wait.
In a way it's good, "delayed gratification" is always a good lesson to learn. I predict that he won't be able to get one until after the 1st of the year, because when a shipment comes in, I bet they'll sell out in a matter of hours, it will all depend on being at the right place at the right time.
Congrats on finding one.
Exactly.. I only bout a PS1 in like 2002 or 2003... and only have maybe 2 handful of games for it, that I pick up for $5 each used.... I don't game that much, so major investment is foolish.
Besides, I've been playing games since PONG... and while nice graphics are quaint, the reality is GAME PLAY is far more what gaming is about to me than that. I still would rather play original MS PAC MAN, or GALAGA over many of todays epic drama games.
I agree with you that sony has some stupid things.. and if they impliment that runs only on original console CD stuff it will kill their PS3... guaranteed. They are repeating the lessons learned back in the early/mid 80s with copy protection if they try that. Backlash will kill them.
However, to counter your points, which I am not denying... You cannot underestimate installed base. With more than 100 Million world wide units, the sony platform is too large to ignore.
I think Sony's biggest issue is if there is any truth to the report they plan on releasing PS3 at a price point of $600.. that will kill them out of the gate. I can't imagine that Sony would be stupid enough to do that, but you never know.
I can't speak to the internal programming of the PS2/3... haven't programmed games on anything since my C=64 days.. but have 20 years of software development behind me now. Maybe I'll make a switch to game programming... you guys hiring?
It does not work that way for DVD Players. The makers of DVD players don't make money from every DVD sold. If Samsung sold DVD players at a loss they would only benefit Disney, Fox, Warner Brothers, etc. Microsoft makes money from every XBOX game sold trough royalies.
"One idiot on EBay wants to sell one for $6500.00!"
Well, with somewhere like 17,000 available on ebay at the moment that is probably going to be tough. But, if there are no more to be had between now and Christmas then he just might get that price out of some crazy rich guy wanting to please his children.
I think one of the problems Sony has is delusions of grandeur. When the PS2 came out they had a vision of their "Emotion Engine" taking over workstation level computing tasks. Having the specs of the PS2 and the developer manuals before the machine was released, I was a little aghast -- maybe their engineers didn't come up with these boneheaded ideas, but there was no way that thing was going to scale past PCs and into workstation level hardware.
But I agree with you, install base and backwards compatibility is very very important. It's what keeps things like the x86 architecture still kicking around so dominantly!
As far as hiring, why don't you freepmail me your info/resume/CV, and we'll see if there's a fit (I'm the CTO, so I have final say on programming hires). You wouldn't happen to be around the SoCal area would you?
You actually pass the first test, you love the Simpsons. All of our machine names are Simpsons characters. My notebook for instance is uhh Ned. To make up for this, my dev machine is Frink :)
Bargain bin BUMP!
If it's a nice day outside, then 9 or 18 holes will suffice until the price drops below $20 for the games I want.
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