Binge & Purge: Crammin' it into the kids

[Noogle]

Binge & Purge: Crammin' it into the kids by James

PALGN Feature: Arthur C Clarke said something about advanced enough technology can seem like magic. Visionary that he was, he was actually referring to how new technology makes perfectly usable technology disappear like magic.

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[Hyperworm]

A Nintendo fan's answer to this article:

Graphics and greater graphical technology alone are not going to advance the (console) market.
New consoles will have to have unique and innovative features for them to keep selling through generations and to provide customers with a decent reason to upgrade.
DS will have styles of games which simply cannot be done on other platforms that don't have touchscreen / dual screens, whether those other platforms are Nintendo-based or not. The Revolution should do a similar thing.
So, it won't simply be a case of "greater technology" that makes the users upgrade, they will actually have a decent reason that gives them new (but equally as good) gameplay opportunities.

DS and the Game Boy line will run alongside each other, so there shouldn't be any "jumping ship" there... whether the Revolution will be unique enough to allow this to continue with the GameCube and DS is another question.

('Course, then you have the problem of too much choice rather than not enough )
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[onggie]

OK, if I wanted to buy a PS2 or an XBOX I would just buy a computer!

But seriously, the GameCube was the only console, in my eyes that brought out truly unique games.
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"Great Spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"
....Einstein

[Matt]

The Playstation (One) brand still continued on for a few years after the release of the PS2 (it's only just now disappearing from shelves), attracting a few more budget oriented consumers. EA in particular have noted this (heck, they released Madden and FIFA up to 2004 on the system, with respectable results), and have stated that they will be supporting the current generation of consoles well into the next cycle, and I expect that a few of the bigger third parties will be following suit.

Developers have been doing a better job (in their opinion) of preparing for the upcoming generation - they've been able to run on loose specifications of what the machines are capable of, and develop for those. But if we are supposed to believe the stories of Xbox 2 hitting this Christmas, then maybe they've had access to devkits for a while now?

You're being a bit hard on the Dreamcast - even though this is a PAL focused site, where the machine didn't do too well, it really came out fighting in the US, before being crippled by Playstation 2 hype. A lot of the games posted respectable sales figures (5 million+ sellers) and the system performed above expectations for the first year. Unfortunately, it just couldn't keep the momentum.
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Retro Gaming Australia

[ObsoletE]

to me it seems that the next gen PS and XB are becoming more like a PC-lite, which, when you consider the rising development costs/time for a game, might not be such a bad idea, since it would be easier to design a game for 1 platform (PC) and port it to the other 2 (PS3, XB2)...

i know the lack of console unique games has (by and large, obviously Nintendo seem to be te exception that makes the rule) dwindled in recent times, and it has been mentioned in articles on this site, but it only really hit home for me how much when i went over a mates place and saw his Mega-Drive collection, which contained many games i'd not heard of, being a SNES-kid... yet his XBox titles contained many games i've got on PS2... in fact many of his room-mates PS2 games were the same as his XBox games...

this has obviously led to a decline in console-fanboy-ism IMO, maybe it was just me, but when video games were a 2 horse race (Nintendo and Sega) people tended to be a Nintendo person, or a Sega person, whereas now the fanboys are reliant on a specific game franchise (Halo, Gran Turismo, Project Gotham Racing and Final Fantasy... for example)

i know this isn't the point of this article, and it does confuse me somewhat about why would you rush a console if you have no games for it yet? maybe Microsoft has held off the XB2 for this reason... remember everyone was expecting it to be unveiled at the CES conference recently but it was a no-show...

i do understand the first out of the box issue, it does seem (in Australia at least) that the third console out suffers a sort of "yeah whatever, seen them graphics before" mentality when people went nuts over them only 3 months earlier... it is a shame to see console shelf-lives dwindling... i can remember getting Killer Instinct on the SNES and being pretty impressed, along with half the media from memory (the other half was Sega orientated), since the SNES shouldn't have been able to do that, yet there it was...

it sounds like i should have more to say... but i don't... not at the minute anyway...
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My Play-Asia Affiliate Link.

[Matt]

[Noogle]

I recall interviewing Miyamoto-san in 2003 about the Gamecube and the unique feature of the GBA connectivity, in which he said they plan to do a lot more with that. Come 2004 and there was very little exploiting the technology. 2005 and I'm straining to see a game that truly makes use of the feature (apart from extending your map to a small screen on your lap, which seems to be selling the potential of this short).

Another thing to consider is that 2D graphics were not dead - a lot of what's being done out there in the indie scene is pretty damn amazing. But the quick advent of 3D and the developers' urge to go onto that so as to take advantage of new hardware, almost killed the scene. If it wasn't for the GBA, I suspect sprites would have disappeared out of mainstream gaming a long time ago (and it's not just because 3D can be faster to do. If this held true then developers wouldn't spend so much time trying to implement new technology into games, because this does affect the production curve negatively)

I realise that new hardware come with definite perks and new gameplay functions, but I have to question if we're even seeing half of this potential, since we tend to push out new platforms well ahead of a console reaching its maturity. Essentially we are falling for the more powerful hardware and soon we might have a generation of gamers who know nothing else but "the next big thing".