Quote:Original post by Zeraan

Quote:Original post by Daaark

Quote:Original post by Trapper Zoid
This is similar though to the Wii selling. Many of those games that are bought on the Wii such as Wii Fit fall into the same category as the Wii itself. From my own personal experience, I know a lot of people who bought Wii Fit, yet none of them use it. I can't explain it, and maybe I just have the wrong set of friends and acquitances, but they buy the games yet never play them at all.

I see that too and I find it very strange.

It's like the Wii is a some kind of status thing. I see people buy them and then play with them for a day and never touch the thing. They just want to say that they own one. Like a lot of devices that are shiny, new, and in limited supply, everyone ran out to buy one.

The Wii in this house almost never gets touched. It seems like 300$ was spent to play River City Ransom for a few hours. [lol]

Mario Kart Wii was fun for a few days, but I have no urge to ever play it again.

Recently I just bought a Wii from a friend who had an extra one. I'm looking forward to playing it, especially for Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy, Dragon Quest, Wii Play/Sports, etc. And I have a wife to play it with, so I'm sure Wii will last for a while, and actually be used! I guess it depends on each person's preferences.

I've just bought a Wii few days ago (I bought it used, since it seems to be still consistently sold out everywhere, which is pretty amazing for Nintendo) and I love it. Super Mario Galaxy totally rocks, I play it for a few hours every day for past 2 weeks, it's been some time since I've been so addicted to a game. My 3 yr old daughter loves Wii Play. The other consoles don't appeal to me that much, since I have a PC that is more powerful than any of the "next gen" systems (Core 2 Quad, GeForce 98000GTX, 4 GB RAM), and most of the best multi platform (or even Xbox360 exclusive) games are eventually ported to PC (PC also has a few exclusives like all the MMOs and super-eye-candy games like Crysis).

I think Nintendo must be extremely happy this round, since they've been making money even on the hardware since day one, the console sells extremely well, it has a lot of games (although a lot of shovelware). From business point of view, Nintendo is the winner without any question, too bad I don't own any of their stocks :)

Quote:Original post by boolean

Quote:Original post by programmermattc
I'm just not sold on paying for Live which doesn't have any better connection than PSN from what I've recently seen.

The problem with Xbox Live is that games still (OOPS! Add the word don't in) don't let people setup dedicated servers. With Xbox Live nearly everything uses Peer-to-Peer (BF2 is the only one I've seen so far use dedicated servers), so if you are playing GoW and little Billy decides he doesn’t want to lose, he just logs off and shuts the whole server down. Oh did I mention very few games support host-rotation (Halo3/Forza2 are the only ones to support it as far as I know), so if the hosts leaves in a huff the entire game shuts down?

I'm a lot more jaded though because I come from Australia, where Xbox Live costs a little under twice as much as America tax and exchange rate included, and because of the small population most online games are completely empty a few months after launch. When I pick up a new 360 next month, the much cheaper fees might be enough for me to get Xbox Live again, but we'll see.

Yeah, the host migration thing is a problem. GoW and Rainbow Six Vegas were notorious for it, and seeing as RB6 was hopelessly buggy and crashed a lot all it took was the host's game to crash, purely by accident, and everyone loses out. Right now I'm crossing my fingers and hoping Epic have put host migration into GoW2, it was the only thing that was sorely and obviously lacking from the original.

The only games I know of that support it properly are Halo 3, Forza 2 (both of which you said) and Call of Duty 3 supports it too. CoD4 has a half-assed "solution" which, instead of properly migrating the host, it drops everyone back to the same lobby so that they can restart the match and play with the same people again. Hardly ideal really, that's not a useful solution.

I've said this before but I'm getting sick of this, it's causing severe problems on XBL. My solution is for MS to make host migration compulsory; your game must implement it to pass certification. I'm not a licensed developer so I don't have aceess to the SDK, but if there's not a built-in host migration mechanism in the API it might be something for MS to at least think about if they haven't already - making it both easy(ish) to do and compulsory would be a win-win situation for XBL users as well as keeping the developers happy to implement a pre-made solution.

I also agree about dedicated servers; £40 for a glorified P2P network seems a little bit questionable regardless of how well it works. PSN servers are both (usually) dedicated and free, the closest the 360 comes to dedicated servers is BF:BC and the Halo 3 Matchmaking servers, but even all the H3 ones do is set up the game and then shunt it off onto the poor soul with the best connection, the matchmaking servers don't actually host the match whilst running.

Quote:Anyways, I'm kind of a Sony fanboy but I've been considering getting an Xbox for Halo 3, Mass Effect, Fable 2, etc...

part of MSs problem is all those games will appear on the PC later on with a better experience (ie better resolution/AA/framerate/controls etc).
MS should ditch the 'games for windows' all together, theyre only hurting themselves.
the odds are sonys big games eg grand tourismoV, god of war, resistence, killzone2, uncharted etc wont be coming to a PC

Quote:Original post by zedz

Quote:Anyways, I'm kind of a Sony fanboy but I've been considering getting an Xbox for Halo 3, Mass Effect, Fable 2, etc...

part of MSs problem is all those games will appear on the PC later on with a better experience (ie better resolution/AA/framerate/controls etc).
MS should ditch the 'games for windows' all together, theyre only hurting themselves.
the odds are sonys big games eg grand tourismoV, god of war, resistence, killzone2, uncharted etc wont be coming to a PC

Although sometime they only come up a fair ammount later. Halo in particular has only come up so delayed as to be irrelevant whether it's out on the pc or not.

And I'm not sure that I want to reward creating an artificial barrier to porting games. I like being able to choose where I can play my games.

Quote:Original post by Sirisian
MAG is supposed to be tactical like America's Army.

Huh? AA 'tactical'? More like 'tacticlol'. That load of BS Army game is as far from tactical as you can get without being Unreal Tournament.

Quote:Original post by zedz
MS should ditch the 'games for windows' all together, theyre only hurting themselves.

I'm not a 'typical' user of course, but the only reason I have windows on my computer atm is to play games. Everything else is done on a 'nix variant. Wine handles most non-game (and some game) programs well too!

If MS were to pull support from PC games it would be retarded. It really doesn't hurt their consoles at all. My guess is that hardcore PC gamers like myself hate the 360 since it's all the disadvantages, and none of the advantages of a PC. No mods, stupid disc requirements, crippled multiplayer, etc.

Most games 'ported' to PC from the 360 are better. MEPC is a good example. Look at the graphics compared to the 360 version. My 8800GT craps all over the 360 on that game.

Ultimately, Microsoft doesn't have a choice (short of pulling support for D3D from Windows). Most companies will port games to PC if there is a 360 version because it's practically the same code. It was actually a good idea for Microsoft to make the SDK for the 360 similar to PC games.

Quote:Original post by zedz
the odds are sonys big games eg grand tourismoV, god of war, resistence, killzone2, uncharted etc wont be coming to a PC

PC gamers don't care. I, nor anybody I know gives a shit about those games. Let's see here: Racing game zomg, boring 'platformery' game, generic fps, generic fps, crappy indiana jones ripoff. Boring multiplayer, no replayability/mods. Also, playing an FPS with a game controller is more frustrating than Stephen Hawking trying to play basketball.

I certainly understand the appeal of consoles to the 'less sophisticated' gamers. The PS3 is doing bad because of the game selection. Period. The thing is just too non-conventional to program for, and, well, the 360 is pretty run-of-the mill slap some D3D and C++ together. The Wii is great, and the only system in the latest gen that I would consider buying, as it provides something that the PC currently doesn't (easy setup for playing games with other people not over a network).

One thing the consoles really lack is good RTS ports. They will always suck with controllers, and I really don't see why they keep porting RTSs (like cnc3.. wtf). PC is king, and with DoW2 coming out will 'pwn all'.

Fallout 3 will live long on PC after the console kiddies have traded it into their local game ripoff store for 2 bucks (Bethesda... mods...... yeah).

Quote:And I'm not sure that I want to reward creating an artificial barrier to porting games. I like being able to choose where I can play my games.

true a valid choice unfortunately thats not how the market works, if u want something like that choose flash games :) (which is not so bad btw)

Quote:Most games 'ported' to PC from the 360 are better.

not most but ALL games are better, thus why choose to play them on the console in the first place (usually cause theyre first is the only reason that springs to mind) but anyways exactly my point, why should u play them on the xb360, if the pc's gonna give a better experience?
u shouldnt + a lot of ppl dont (hence the rapid market loss of the xb360)
what im saying is they should either
A/ bring the game out on the xbox360 fullstop (ie no port)
B/ bring the game out on the PC

Quote:PC gamers don't care. I, nor anybody I know gives a shit about those games. Let's see here: Racing game zomg, boring 'platformery' game, generic fps, generic fps, crappy indiana jones ripoff. Boring multiplayer, no replayability/mods. Also, playing an FPS with a game controller is more frustrating than Stephen Hawking trying to play basketball.

I certainly understand the appeal of consoles to the 'less sophisticated' gamers. The PS3 is doing bad because of the game selection. Period. The thing is just too non-conventional to program for, and, well, the 360 is pretty run-of-the mill slap some D3D and C++ together. The Wii is great, and the only system in the latest gen that I would consider buying, as it provides something that the PC currently doesn't (easy setup for playing games with other people not over a network).

'less sophisticated' is derogatory as u know but hey, what the hell!

ive never played any of those games I mentioned, but i can agree with what youre saying
me = about those games
( GT = THE driving game, bugger that, i mention it cause it gets mentioned in the outside press. WTF??I dont understand what I just wrote ), god of war = yawn, resistence2 = actually does looks fun to play!!! (surpise) it looks like a good zombie film, killzone2 a very good graphic engine perhaps the best yet (ie it exceeds crysis, thus I can't ignore it ) but from a gameplay POV YAWWWWN, I hate plaform games but the gfx in this are technically very good so hey I throw it in.

the thing why I mentioned those games is they are big but will never see the light of day on the PC, + thats a great selling point for the playstation, the same cant be said of the xbox360 games.
MS should make great games that are xbox360 only "experiences" ie stop bastardizing it, cause whilst perhaps in the sh9ort term, money is good ultimatly u stab yourself in the ass, (c)zz2008 + with a dagger in your ass 'does one sit' or shit

I don't have numbers, but I'm sure microsoft makes more money selling a copy of Windows than selling an xbox. Software vs. Hardware. Even xbox live requires servers and stuff to keep running. Limiting the platform is probably just a 'bad idea'. They seem to do a half limit type of thing. Many of the popular games come out on xbox first and then take up to a year to come out on PC.

I didn't mean 'less sophisticated' gamers in a derogatory way. Many people enjoy playing games more casually and I respect that. Just because someone doesn't build their own computer and know the exact specs of everything on their console doesn't mean they aren't intelligent. Maybe they are only interested in playing games! Which is fine by me :P