There's an interesting editorial today in IGN from Ryan Geddes who ruminates over the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would be going multiplatform and how it actually stirred him to purchase a PS3
Editorial: Why I Purchased a PS3
"something about a proper new Final Fantasy game appearing on the Xbox 360 felt horribly wrong, like dropping a Ferrari engine into a Buick body. Sure, she'll run, but the soul of the machine would just be off somehow."
This statement in particular got me thinking, especially being a Nintendo fanboy of old, In the older generations especially the 16 and 32/64bit generations console exclusives pretty much defined your choice of system, you weren't going to play Mario anywhere but on a Nintendo machine, you couldn't play the latest Sonic game unless you had the Saturn (BTW did anyone in Australia own a Saturn? I saw one in a shop one time, but it was really invisible throughout the 90s)
Final Fantasy is a game which lived out its formative years (the first 6 games) on Nintendo consoles but when Nintendo locked in a cartridge format for the N64, Square (the makers of Final Fantasy) jumped to Sony to continue their series. I remember this was hhugely controversial at the time and a rift between Nintendo and Square carried on and wouldn't be smoothed over until the GameCube.
Square's issue with the N64 was with the cartridge format, which turned out to be the system's achillies heel, the cartridges had a capacity up to 64MB, by contrast a Compact Disc can hold about 700MB, even DS games can carry about 128MB of information, so the N64 was running new technology on yesterdays medium, Square couldn't make the game they wanted with the memory available.
The recent controversy is over the fact that both Final Fantasy XIII and the latest Metal Gear Solid game will no longer be Playstation Exclusives. Both games are by third party publishers but both have also become synonymous with the Playstation brand (despite the fact that both got their start in the 8-Bit era on the Famicom and MSX respectively)
I can understand why people are annoyed by these storied franchises making appearances on the XBox 360 but this is an irrational feeling, the publishers are only going multiplatform because they want to make money.
The truth is publishers will go where the sales are and any casual reading of sales figures in the past two years will show you that the XBox 360 has a much higher turnout than the PS3 for Multiplatform releases. It's not just the fact that there are slightly more XBox 360's than PS3's in the world (a lot of those could be RRoD replacements!) but the XBox 360 has a phenomenal attach rate (meaning the number of games purchased per system)
I'll be interested to see the sales figures for Final Fantasy XIII in March to see if this trend continues or if the Sony fanboys have got it right with this one!
Showing posts with label xbox360. Show all posts
Showing posts with label xbox360. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Nintendo Fanboy who grew up...
I gotta hand it to Microsoft, when they first vaulted into the Video Game Market (back here in 2002) I wrote them off as a trojan horse for PC Gaming, at the time nothing annoyed me more than the self-righteous computer gaming evangelists who would spit on your copy of Goldeneye 64 and sing the praises of keyboard controls, it nauseated me every time.
So when XBox debuted in 2002 I took a pass and opted instead for a Nintendo Gamecube, a compact little box of a machine with very few bells and whistles but with the guarantee of Mario, Zelda and even now Sonic!
I had a great time with it - for two years until new releases seemed to dry up, the PS2 started eating into its space on the rental shelves and big chains like Kmart and BigW started dropping it altogether.
Eventually I had kids and a lot less time for games, eventually my children started taking notice of the games machines and wanted to see them in action, so began my refamiliarisation with the consoles, while I enjoyed playing through some of those N64 classics again, something was missing when it came to the Cube, I have some great titles for that machine, Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Smash Bros, Soul Calibur II but when I played them again it was like I'd lost the passion for it.
My actual GameCube game collection
My wife, who never understood my Nintendo obsession, one afternoon in 2008 mused that we should get a PlayStation 2. I had been steadfastly against it in the past, I remember arguing that they only ever have a handful of quality games.
I was speaking from experience, during the 5th generation I bought a chipped PlayStation for the sole purpose of playing Tekken 3 imported straight from Japan (it was either than or sink even more money into that blasted machine at the arcade!) I played some nice games, PS had the best fighters, SoulBlade was sublime, Metal Gear Solid was an incredible game, and Driver was the start of something special but ultimately (in my view) the N64 had much more going for it, in hindsight mostly due to the greatness of Rare, a developer whose absence was keenly felt on the GameCube.
My wife wanted the PS2 to play Singstar, a non-game video game, Singstar, Buzz, Eyetoy all probably contributed more to the PS2's sales numbers than anybody acknowledges. To be sure - the singing games were fun and my snap decision to purchase the PS2 turned out to be a good one.
I got only one actual hardcore game for the system
Tekken 5! Still stuck in the past I guess, but that was all about to change...
That December, December 2008, I bought my wife a new Singstar title, to reciprocate she insisted on getting me a game, not knowing what the hell was good on PS2 (yes I was that out of touch with the games industry) I randomly picked a game thinking alound "I think I've heard of this, not sure, but I think it's supposed to be good!
That game, incase you were wondering, was Grand Theft Auto San Andreas!!
For a random, uninformed punt - it was about as good a one as I could've ever made!
Beleive the hype...
GTA was a phenomenon that had completely passed me by, I'd obviously heard enough about it to recognise it as a quality game, but I had no idea what kind of game, with the attention to detail and the realism, that I was getting myself into.
Cut to a year later and I still haven't finished San Andreas (it's a big game, and I can only play these MA15 games at night when the kids are in bed!) I have every GTA PS2 release bar GTAIII and GTA Chinatown Wars for the DS, along with a slew of other games for the PS2. The machine singlehandedly revived my interest in gaming, where the GameCube almost killed it.
But something was still missing. By this point I was well aware that the console arms race had moved on and the PS2 was increasingly becoming a haven for shovelware and kids titles, but the new generation of systems is an even harder choice than the last one.
Although most great games in the sixth generation saw a release across all platforms and all three systems (PS2, GCN, XBox) were very comparable in their processing power, the new generation presents 3 very different systems with very different strengths and weaknesses. If I wanted to move onto the next gen, I had to make some hard choices.
I'd read countless blogs in the past year about the XBox 360 being a precarious device prone to hardware failure on the scale of a second hand PC, frankly it put me off the machine for quite a time, that and Microsoft's reputation, until I actually got to play one, it was a much more impressive console than I imagined.
The PS3 is a technical marvel but with it's reputation for being difficult to program and having a poor online function I wasn't sure it was the way to go - and not being compatible with the PS2 is a big black mark in my opinion.
The Wii seems to be pitched at the same people who buy a leapster, all simple games, kids games and worse - mini-games, after I learned the hard way with the GameCube - Mario and Zelda alone - aren't enough to carry a system.
So the choice for me was between the 360 and the PS3 and then Microsoft went and made my decision for me, with the Arcade SKU dropping to a low $A198 in several major chains across the country during the boxing day sales, I gotta take back my original assessment of Microsoft, I now don't think they were looking to replicate the PC experience so much as supplant it by delivering a machine that takes all of the PC's advantages (online play, Hard Drive, Hi Res Graphics, more FPS than you can poke a stick at) and trump it by putting it on your TV for an affordable price with good controls (sorry dudes keyboards are for typing!).
Kudos XBox and for that matter Sony, you got this fanboy to finally grow up :D
So when XBox debuted in 2002 I took a pass and opted instead for a Nintendo Gamecube, a compact little box of a machine with very few bells and whistles but with the guarantee of Mario, Zelda and even now Sonic!
I had a great time with it - for two years until new releases seemed to dry up, the PS2 started eating into its space on the rental shelves and big chains like Kmart and BigW started dropping it altogether.
Eventually I had kids and a lot less time for games, eventually my children started taking notice of the games machines and wanted to see them in action, so began my refamiliarisation with the consoles, while I enjoyed playing through some of those N64 classics again, something was missing when it came to the Cube, I have some great titles for that machine, Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Smash Bros, Soul Calibur II but when I played them again it was like I'd lost the passion for it.
My actual GameCube game collection
My wife, who never understood my Nintendo obsession, one afternoon in 2008 mused that we should get a PlayStation 2. I had been steadfastly against it in the past, I remember arguing that they only ever have a handful of quality games.
I was speaking from experience, during the 5th generation I bought a chipped PlayStation for the sole purpose of playing Tekken 3 imported straight from Japan (it was either than or sink even more money into that blasted machine at the arcade!) I played some nice games, PS had the best fighters, SoulBlade was sublime, Metal Gear Solid was an incredible game, and Driver was the start of something special but ultimately (in my view) the N64 had much more going for it, in hindsight mostly due to the greatness of Rare, a developer whose absence was keenly felt on the GameCube.
My wife wanted the PS2 to play Singstar, a non-game video game, Singstar, Buzz, Eyetoy all probably contributed more to the PS2's sales numbers than anybody acknowledges. To be sure - the singing games were fun and my snap decision to purchase the PS2 turned out to be a good one.
I got only one actual hardcore game for the system
Tekken 5! Still stuck in the past I guess, but that was all about to change...
That December, December 2008, I bought my wife a new Singstar title, to reciprocate she insisted on getting me a game, not knowing what the hell was good on PS2 (yes I was that out of touch with the games industry) I randomly picked a game thinking alound "I think I've heard of this, not sure, but I think it's supposed to be good!
That game, incase you were wondering, was Grand Theft Auto San Andreas!!
For a random, uninformed punt - it was about as good a one as I could've ever made!
Beleive the hype...
GTA was a phenomenon that had completely passed me by, I'd obviously heard enough about it to recognise it as a quality game, but I had no idea what kind of game, with the attention to detail and the realism, that I was getting myself into.
Cut to a year later and I still haven't finished San Andreas (it's a big game, and I can only play these MA15 games at night when the kids are in bed!) I have every GTA PS2 release bar GTAIII and GTA Chinatown Wars for the DS, along with a slew of other games for the PS2. The machine singlehandedly revived my interest in gaming, where the GameCube almost killed it.
But something was still missing. By this point I was well aware that the console arms race had moved on and the PS2 was increasingly becoming a haven for shovelware and kids titles, but the new generation of systems is an even harder choice than the last one.
Although most great games in the sixth generation saw a release across all platforms and all three systems (PS2, GCN, XBox) were very comparable in their processing power, the new generation presents 3 very different systems with very different strengths and weaknesses. If I wanted to move onto the next gen, I had to make some hard choices.
I'd read countless blogs in the past year about the XBox 360 being a precarious device prone to hardware failure on the scale of a second hand PC, frankly it put me off the machine for quite a time, that and Microsoft's reputation, until I actually got to play one, it was a much more impressive console than I imagined.
The PS3 is a technical marvel but with it's reputation for being difficult to program and having a poor online function I wasn't sure it was the way to go - and not being compatible with the PS2 is a big black mark in my opinion.
The Wii seems to be pitched at the same people who buy a leapster, all simple games, kids games and worse - mini-games, after I learned the hard way with the GameCube - Mario and Zelda alone - aren't enough to carry a system.
So the choice for me was between the 360 and the PS3 and then Microsoft went and made my decision for me, with the Arcade SKU dropping to a low $A198 in several major chains across the country during the boxing day sales, I gotta take back my original assessment of Microsoft, I now don't think they were looking to replicate the PC experience so much as supplant it by delivering a machine that takes all of the PC's advantages (online play, Hard Drive, Hi Res Graphics, more FPS than you can poke a stick at) and trump it by putting it on your TV for an affordable price with good controls (sorry dudes keyboards are for typing!).
Kudos XBox and for that matter Sony, you got this fanboy to finally grow up :D
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