New Consoles
Wednesday May 18, 2005 - 1:28AM EDT
Mark and I are debating whether the demo videos of playstation 3 games are in game footage or just pretty pre redered demos. Honestly you can't tell. We hope it is in game footage but both think that it is impossible. The only thing that is exciting me now about the new systems is Nintendo's game download ability. How freaking brilliant is that. And their free online game play service. FREE! Also they are using SD to store data, meaning ultra portability instead of the massive harddrives on the other systems. Which I believe in 90% of cases only save game data and are sparsely filled up. Few people are ripping music to their Xbox, that is what a PC is for. I don't know if the approach as home entertainment center is going to work. Besides DVD playback which is key all the extra functions of those systems 90% of people will never use. Like having dual HD streams on the PS3. First of all how many people have two TVs to use for a video game. Second how many have two HDTVs in the same room for a video game. It is a niche feature that will just increase the base prioce of the system. And as to the fact that it outputs 1080p signal that is not even common on high end HDTVs today. Game consoles have the unique place in consumer electronics. They can drive some enhancements and have to wait for others. One thing that consoles can't drive is display technology, they must wait for other content to warrant the need for certain display technologies. They can however drive graphics processing. Also the nature of console are not like that of general use computers so large harddrives don't make much sense to the average gamer. Xbox harddrive was way too big. I can say with confidence that 90% of XBOX owners probably used less than 10% of the space on the drive. With newer games, large harddrives may come into play. But I will wait and see. Besides with online services, there is no reason that you couldn't store data online and just access it when you need it. In fact it would be adventageous to do so. Local storage is always needed so you still need some type local storage. I hope revolution comes in at $150 or less. It will probably be $200.
The old school game download thing will be freaking awesome. I can't wait for that shit. I'd buy the system simply for that. Because we all know that the best games over the past 20 years all came from Nintendo, especially the 8 and 16 bit eras. The overall quality of games in the 32 and 64 bit eras clearly dropped off, though there were gems here and there. But very few captured the fun factor of the old school games. Which couldn't rely on graphics to be interesting. For sure though Nintendo started the whole full 3D genre with Super Mario 64. That game was freaking amazing when it came out. And there have been hordes of clones since.I haven't been this pumped about a game system since super nintendo. And guess what, I'll be able to play all of those super nintendo games. There is one question I do have. I wonder if when they say games will be able to be downloaded if they are talking strictly about games made by Nintendo or will it include ones made by thirds parties. I wonder how the licensing works on those things. Whether the console maker has some kind of control over the game for their console and once they are published can essentially do what they want with them for that particular port. I don't know. I hope every single nintendo game made for every system since 1985 is available. That will be over 100,000 games for sure. Maybe Nintendo recognized the popularity of rom download sites of their old school games and is finnaly creating a conduit to their old library of games. So freaking awesome. Dude, this is so freaking awesome. I don't even play video games that much anymore.