Quote:Just as Microsoft's about to introduce a new Xbox 360 SKU, Sony's announced they're removing one from the marketplace. Sony Computer Entertainment America announced today they've officially dropped the PlayStation 3 20GB SKU and will no longer be offering the cheaper, Wi-Fi less model to North American retailers. Sony says a 10-to-1 retailer demand for the 60GB SKU has prompted the move.
Don't panic, though, as 20GB owners will continue to receive the same customer service support they were guaranteed upon purchasing the machine. The architecture between the 20GB and 60GB SKUs are the same, save for a few feature differences, so the shift is minimal from a customer relations and development perspective -- unlike Microsoft, who cannot drop support for the Core SKU, as that model doesn't come with a built-in hard drive.
"At launch, we offered two separate models of PLAYSTATION 3 to meet the diverse needs and interests of our PlayStation fan base. Initial retail demand in North America was upwards of ninety percent in favor of the 60GB sku, so we manufactured and shipped-in accordingly. Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America," said SCEA senior director of corporate communications Dave Karraker.
"In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model," he concluded.
And so it's official -- less than six months after the launch of the PS3, the 20GB SKU is officially dead.
"Retailer demand", hah... we all know better. It's because the profit margin is larger on the $600 model.
(via http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150343 ... neogaf is good for news, but for 'replying to long posts', it doesn't do well at all... too many posts for threads to last long without constant posting... there's a balance somewhere between here and there that would be nice, I think. Where you get the news and discussion, without things vanishing to page two after an hour of posting in them... :))
The list in the original post is horrible... while half of it is decent, the sheer volume of nintendo-bashing, and N64-bashing, in the other parts negate any good points in the article. On the good side, the point I most strongly agree with is the online gaming one. Nintendo has a truly awful online gaming policy, no question about it. Lack of a decent online gaming service for the Western market is probably the issue Nintendo on the strongest (there are reasons to explain why they have the policy they do, though. Not going to get into it here, but it has to do with differences between what Japanese people want from online gaming and what Western audiences want -- Nintendo isn't designing the service for the West.)... The Virtual Boy and Mortal Kombat I can also understand (though other than losing Gunpei Yokoi, the Virtual Boy debacle didn't really matter at all in the long run; the MK thing was more influential, and Nintendo's censorship needed to stop, though its impact was as much about Sony and Sega's successful efforts to capitalize on it was it was about Nintendo's actual actions.), and maybe the third parties issue (when it was on top Nintendo certainly did treat third parties quite badly -- falling behind was a wake-up call Nintendo needed. They had been so arrogant and monopolistic in the NES days... that's not a good thing for any company.), but nothing else. Numbers 1 and 2 are completely, utterly wrong, and numbers 2 and 7 just stupidly bash the N64 controller and the Wii, with absolutely no justification.
The Wii will die off and it was a mistake? That sounds like something people were saying a year ago... but given its massive success now and clear signs that that's not about to change, it's ridiculous to even try to say it now.
The N64 controller was bad? No it wasn't. It's my favorite gamepad ever, actually, and for many good reasons. Six buttons, awesome dpad (underused perhaps, but great quality), great analog stick (yes, it degrades fast. It's still the best.), trigger button (triggers >>> shoulder buttons)... what more can you ask for from a gamepad? Dual analog and two shoulder buttons per side? Dual analog is not overly useful and two shoulder buttons per side is one of my least favorite gamepad "innovations" ever...
The N64 should have had a CD drive? No to that too. Oh, yes, if the N64 had had a CD drive, Nintendo well might have won the console generation because they might not have lost Square and Enix. But... Mario 64 with early-PSX-game load times and area size restrictions because of CD speed and loading? Load times in N64 games? NO! No, I like it the way it is... yes, Nintendo lost because of it, but the benefit of less loading makes it worth it.
The SNES CD with Sony should have been released? At Number One? Ah, that was not going to happen, period, ever. Nintendo would have had to be insane to continue on with it with what Sony wanted to do... and you even mention why. Sony wanted complete control over game relases -- all the rights, etc. Nintendo could have gotten shut out of games on their own system, perhaps... Nintendo and Sony had irreconcilable views on the money and rights issues, and Sony wasn't just going to give in to Nintendo. Given that fact, how can this be a 'mistake'? Nintendo wouldn't have won much of anything worth having from the deal... So Nintendo abandoned the issue. As for Phillips, et al, as Nintendo looked into it more and realized that a CD drive really wasn't what they wanted after all... and as I said in the last paragraph, they were right. :) (and as I said earlier, it allowed Nintendo to rethink its business, and the industry, and finally come up with the product to change things, the Wii. Which most definitely will NOT fail like this article suggests.)
Games Radar Wrote:The N64 may have spawned some of the best games ever made, but honestly, how many systems can make the same claim? Sure we adore Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye 007 and Super Mario 64, but most of the other titles are crap. This entire console generation was like watching a king get quartered in front of the entire village. And you know what? Our number one mistake explains why it's all Nintendo's fault.
I won't even begin on this particularly stupid bit of Nintendo trolling... the N64 was a great console, with a large library of good and great games. Pretend that they didn't exist all you want, but it certainly doesn't make a comment like that defensible. The Nintendo 64 is my favorite console, I think... or at least one of the best, certainly. Despite the graphics in some games, its games are mostly just as fun now as they ever were... great system... :)
As for a list, I think that there are two completely different kinds of lists that can be made, depending on what you consider a "mistake". Is a "mistake" "something which harms Nintendo's market share", or "something they did that you don't like"? By the first defintion, the SNES/N64 CD would probably have to come in first -- losing Square and Enix doomed them, and with a CD drive they might have been able to keep at least one. But by the second definition, I wouldn't even put that on the list... I like the N64 the way it is, darnit! :)
Anyway... my list, using mostly the SECOND definition. (the numbers don't really mean much)
1. Denial of online gaming. This has been addressed before here and elsewhere, but it's a huge, huge problem... maybe some day NOA will actually manage to convince NCL that Western audiences DO expect competent online services (my model would be Battle.net, but Xbox Live is great too), but until that day comes, this is a huge, huge issue right now. DS online is horrible, and Wii online like that would be truly tragic.... :( This won't affect Nintendo's success in Japan much, I think, but it eventually will factor in in the West.
3. Angering the third parties. Had Nintendo's relations with Square actually been GOOD in 1996, maybe they wouldn't have completely stopped making any games for Nintendo platforms, cartridges or not... but no, Square's leadership and Yamauchi developed up a big feud, and they had had problems for some time, so that was impossible. Stupid restrictive stuff like "you can only release five games per year" and "you can't release games on competing systems" that they did in the NES days sure didn't help either. Nintendo has done a lot to mitigate this problem in more recent years, so it's not nearly so big of an issue anymore, even if it's not completely gone.
3. Not having any games out in Japan for the N64 for several months after launch. A lot of people bought it, played Mario 64, and ... then what? Sold it. They needed momentum there that they never got... the N64 was fairly successful in the US (look at total sales charts -- the N64 sold just a few million fewer units less in the US than the SNES had. Of course, the PSX ended up selling many more, but compared to other Nintendo systems, it's the NES to SNES drop that is the largest, followed by the N64 to GC one...), but elsewhere... maybe this is representative of the "angering the third parties" thing and the "Nintendo's arrogance wasn't gone and they could not quite see that their policies were flawed" point I made earlier, but it's true.
4. Ignoring Europe, I guess. Everyone did it, and many still do, but Nintendo was worse... yes, Nintendo certainly could have tried a LOT harder (or tried at all, really). As it was, they deserved to lose every console generation there... if you release games that late, what do you expect people do to? Go buy Sega Master Systems, evidently.
5. Dropping their second parties. So... the companies made Eternal Darkness (my favorite GC game), Excitebike 64 (exceptional game!), and the Rare N64 classics, and you get rid of them all? What the heck? Oh, I know the reasons, but still, I don't think they did the right thing there in the end...
What else... hmm, can't think of anything... I could say "the Gamecube", but that was a first attempt at what they perfected with the DS and then the Wii -- something to attract anyone. It's not Nintendo's fault that it didn't catch on; Nintendo's support for the GC was strong, even if many of the games weren't as original as their previous N64 versions. There's not much you can do about that really... and I didn't mind the original non-backlit GBA...
In comparison, here's my "What Nintendo Should Have Done To Succeed More List".
1. Do whatever it takes to keep Square in 1996. ("Lower fees? CD drive? Okay!")
2. Failing that, do anything to keep Enix, despite Square's pressure on Enix to follow them away from Nintendo. (Enix likely would have accepted carts at the right price...)
3. DVD playback in the GC. Irrelevant in practice, but it'd have been a great PR move. "Gaming only" didn't work.
4. More hardware plants, so they could better keep up with DS and Wii demand. Supplies could be higher while still maintaining the "it is hard to find" thing... Nintendo is too conservative here.
5. Actually try to succeed in Europe and take the region seriously. They didn't even win with the NES there as far as I know!
Other than #1 (ie, if it had required a N64 CD that I wouldn't want), I wouldn't mind if they had done/do those things...
In short, due to the way Oblivion handles assigning every generated object an ID code and the way some new AI scripts (mal)function, a save file can be destroyed. There is HOPE! Just not for 360 players...
On the other end of the scale is the "Oblivion for Oblivion" mod, which sets out to add the Oblivion keyblade to Oblivion (it was MEANT to BE!).
... after a few weeks waiting (including a delay), my new computer finally arrived... it'll be quite a big hassle for some time to get stuff installed on it and all that, and it's not ALL new because I didn't get a new monitor or speakers/headphones (so I'm using the same old 17" Dell CRT and my 2 speakers which I usually don't use in favor of some decent headphones I have), but I think it's a very nice system indeed...
Motherboard - Asus P5N-E SLI
Pentium Core2 Duo 2.40Ghz (E6600)
2GB DDR2 DRAM
NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320Mb
2x320GB SATA II HDDs (600GB actual total space)
Creative Labs SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Windows Vista Home Premium
DVD +/-RW drive
3.5" floppy drive (yup! :))
flashcard reader (SD, CF, etc)
Cost nearly $2000 including shipping, not that I paid for it myself(it's a graduation gift from last summer I put off on getting for various reasons, essentially).
... since I got it from a site that allows extensive customization (cyberpower.com) I selected all the parts - the case, motherboard, various accessories, etc, but I'm not going to list everything...)
... and it came with a free copy of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, too.
This is looking good for several reasons. One, we're getting two exclusives on Wii. Two, it's going to really push lazy developers to up the graphics front end of their projects.
Data for Resident Evil 4: Wiimake
(Obvious) new control schemes using the wiimote and nunchuck. (a rumor that Nintendo is also releasing the 'Blaster' (the new zapper) coincides with the release of RE4:W).
New playable characters/missions
Lots of new bonuses, weapons, capcom says 'way above and beyond the PS2 bonuses'.
Shiny new effects, more enemies on screen, new areas to explore.
*raises hand* Sold.
RE:UC has me confused, so far its pretty. All the richly crafted nice-nice of REbirth in fully realized 3-D, no static backgrounds. As well as covering like what, the stories and characters from like 9 of the games in the series? So we could see areas from RE3, CV, etc. Sounds good. But.... i'm hearing its an 'on-rails' first person game... that shit make me vomit. :love:
Check out the screens, the RE:UC screens look grainy to me, but that's cuz Capcom's VP in marketing is retarded and probably applied a filter to make it look grittier, I expect smoothnessity as in RE4 but, we wait and see.
That one post is a scam, and it's obscuring all my other posts, and it won't let me delete it. This is the HTML... can you guys make anything of it, or find a way to delete it?
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