Tuesday, April 10, 2007

A 'Sober' Look

Paul Thurrott really made an idiot out of himself when he claimed the Wii is a joke, nice one dude. Of course a person who works as a Microsoft apologist obviously has never really touched a games console for more than 20 minutes hence it is no wonder he finds himself qualified enough to discuss such matters and think people would take him seriously.

Of course we might have considered taking Mr. Thurrott seriously, if, and only if, he didn't lay this shell shocker on us,
If you absolutely must have the best pure gaming experience, the PS3 should ultimately win out, especially when developers begin to figure out how to unlock the console's most impressive capabilities. A year from now, I expect PS3 games to absolutely blow away anything available on the 360.
Oh really? 'Pure gaming experience'? Lets see what Sony has to say about how much of a 'pure gaming experience' the Playstation 3 is going to be.

From the horses mouth (or should we just say Kutaragi's mouth? Don't want to disrespect said horse): I "promise" an AV-centric PS3. Wait, did he say 'gaming centric' or did he say 'av centric'? So much for pure.

When Kutaragi was asked about the CELL processor, and if it was concieved for gaming he replied
No, it is for computing-but I wanted to change the concept of computers. The name of our company is Sony Computer Entertainment; I wanted to merge computer technology and entertainment. It may be regarded as game applications for the time being, but I wanted to realize the day when "computer entertainment" would mean all such entertainment applications, including games.
I guess thats just the final nail in your coffin.

Back to Mr. Thurrot,
As for the Wii, I'm going to have to disagree with the consensus and call it as I see it: Unless you have very young kids with no video game experience at all, skip out on this console. The Wii is a joke, a novelty console that doesn't offer much staying power. Either the 360 or PS3 would be a better choice for almost anyone.
A novelty console without much staying power, again? You know when the Wii was first announced people like you said the same thing, when it blew everyone away at E3 peoplel ike you said the same thing, when the launch numbers blew everyone away people like you said the same thing, and now, all this time after launch as the Wii continually sells by the bucket loads, people like you are still saying the same thing. Getting repetitive some?

The fact of the matter is the Wii is a good console, it doesn't have the best graphics but it has a novelty everyone loves and can't get enough of. Put simply, the Wii is for anyone who isn't a graphics whore and can appreciate doing something new.

12 comments:

maurice1705 said...

You seriously hate the PS3 right?

Ahmed said...

umm, no, not really, I would hate it except it has a couple of exclusive games I really like.

I was merely pointing out the obvious with Paul Thurott and his 'pure gaming experience' comment, the Playstation 3 is not menat to be a purely gaming experience, he just doesn't know what he's talking about and I'm making it blatantly clear.

maurice1705 said...

Well Actually I have to agree with him because at the moment the Wii is pure hype. There are not nearly enough good games to support 6 milion users.

I really think 60% of the people that bought a Wii saw it at their nephew or something and though they also want one.

And why would you hate the PS3 so much? It's not like sony made a machine that is trying to rip you off or something... It's just (too) expensive at the moment.

Ahmed said...

Remember the Xbox 360 which reached about 8 million before a single 'decent' next gen game came out on it?

Honestly it's the same thing over and over again, the 'it's all hype' has been going on since forever and the only thing thats happening is that the Wii is selling more and more, it has found this niche that caters to the largest demographic of all three consoles and provided Nintendo can make good on the software, and keep it coming at a decent pace sales won't slow down, simple as that.

I don't hate the Playstation 3, if you can find an instance of me saying it by all means show me.

maurice1705 said...

"umm, no, not really, I would hate it except it has a couple of exclusive games I really like."

Ahmed said...

Umm, yeah, I did say 'except'. The Playstation 3 for me is a games system, I would hate it if it sold and had no games and nothing else running for it, simple as that. Obviously with games like 'Heavenly Sword', 'Final Fantasy 13' 'Metal Gear Solid', 'White Knight Story' amongst others this is not the case.

maurice1705 said...

I think we can agree that this is going to be one of the best console wars to date?

MS has had a steady stream of good games for some time. Sony's wheels are starting to turn with games like little big planet and FF etc. And (I hope) the Nintendo hope will fade away in a few months. Although that's not likely.

Btw on your other post about all the fanboys. You were talking about how Cell and blu ray make the PS3 to what it is? without Cell and blu ray the PS3 would be another xbox only a year late but with the Cell and blu ray they can do things in the future that will not be possible on the 360.

Ahmed said...

Personally I think best console wars belongs to the Sega VS Nintendo with Genesis and snes.

Nintendo's hope will not fade away, if anything it will further reinforce its position as the console in everybody's home and the second console in every other persons home. I think the only thing that could kill the Wii is HD, and even that is taking it a bit too far, I wouldn't be surprised if Wii 2 is first released next-gen, before the xbox 720 and ps4, will probably be the only console to be fully backwards compatible too making it a natural extension of the Wii further solidifying Nintendo's position in the market.

I wrote about how fanboys keep justifying the failings of the Playstation 3 continuously and constantly with no remorse and I compared that to XBox and Nintendo fanboys, Xbox fanboys are the most self critical and Nintendo fanboys are a distant second.

Only Sony fanboys do not at all admit to any problems with their beloved console.

As for Blu-Ray and CELL, honestly, it isn't going to make a difference. If history has anything to show it's that graphics don't sell consoles. Every generation the technically inferior system always dominates.

I know a lot of people bounce up and down pointing out the snes was more powerful than the genesis, might I point out Sega had the leading market share over Nintendo for quite a while, they lost market share after the Sega CD was released, which made the Genesis more powerful than the snes. It is an interesting bit of trivia but I think it is put simply the best example of how technology does not sell a console, games do.

With that, all I can say is that CELL and Blu-Ray isn't going to make the Playstation 3 significantly more powerful and worthy over the 360, by the time programmers figure out how to use CELL proper provided the theory translates to practicality, the 360 will have way too large a market lead for developers to simply ignore. We'll have what we had with the xbox vs ps2 thing, sure the xbox was significantly more powerful, but the ps2 install base was too big, so what do we get? ps2 ports on the xbox.

We are already beginning to see that with multiplatform games, seen splinter cell double agent? Ridge Racer 6 too...

maurice1705 said...

Cell does more then making PS3's graphics better. I think that Cell can offer better AI and for example more people on screen etc. That does give an extra edge to gameplay. I think that if your fighting like 50+ soldiers at once it will keep you on the edge of your seat and I think that is what cell will offer.

I agree with you on blu ray. Blu ray will give you a 1 disc solution for your game and it will probably do some extra content for multiplatform games. For PS3 exclusives blu ray could do a lot but that would be speculating. We would have to wait for MGS and FF to see what kind of advantage blu ray will really bring.

I am just wondering how big of a lead sony had when MS released the xbox.

Ahmed said...

AI has never been something to strain hardware in any game, ever. There is plenty of headroom in the 360 cpu to run 50+ characters, as is in CELL, but thats hardly getting at anything significant. AI never strains hardware, at worst nav meshes do, but thats last gen stuff, this gen it shouldn't be a problem at all.

Not much of a lead actually, the Xbox actually had a bigger launch than the Playstation 2. WHat pulled the ps2 ahead was software, either exclusives or multiplatform at a lower console price. The ps3 obviously isn't going to have nearly as many exclusives this gen, not to mention the fact the multiplatform titles will be cheaper had on the 360.

maurice1705 said...

actually the PS2 was already 10million up in Japan when xbox launched. Offcoarse that is Japan but if PS2 already sold 10 million in Japan then it would probably be at around 20million worldwide.

is AI really that easy on hardware? didn't know that but still. PS3 does have 1+ on the CPU. the PS3 will always be able to do more things with physics, number of units etc. The 360 makes up with the GPU which is probably a bit better then the RSX.

Ahmed said...

I don't ever recall AI being held up because of hardware limitations, ever. Except for with Killzone, they tried using a nav mesh, which isn't AI so much so it is a method in which characters navigate areas.

Even with physics, I really doubt the CPU on the 360 is going to at all be a limiting factor, but we'll see when we see.