30th April 2005, 5:06 PM
Quote:I knew you'd say that, but it doesn't matter. Even if the GBA had come out in 1995 and Yoshi's Island had been ported over that very year, it would still have gotten that "only on GBA" sticker.
And it'd have been just as absurd.
Quote:Now you're talking about listening to marketing to help decide what games to buy, which is not what I was talking about. I was talking about how these different platforms are considered to be (BY THE DAMN INDUSTRY) in separate markets and are NOT directly competiting with each other. This is not a matter of opinion because this is decided BY the games market.
The point is (I thought, anyway) that believing that they are different markets is believing that marketing, so DJ's point there is quite topical...
Quote:In broad terms, the Gameboy Advance is also competing with the IPod, and even BOOKS, because they're all products trying to be sold as entertainment.
True. I guess it depends on how you want to break things down... but there are really two questions here. On the 'porting' issue, it's impossible to port a videogame to a book. The result is a completely different product. But on the 'competition' front, yeah, in the broadest sense everything that you can spend your money on is in competition... saying that one type of that is completely seperate and has no connection to another is kind of silly. What you can say is that you are targetting your product for a different market from other products... which certainly is sometimes true, but in the case of games usually not to the degree that a company like Nintendo seems to want to believe.
Quote:DJ, all three of you have no idea what you are even talking about. When I say "marketing" all you understand is "advertisement", which shows your utter ignorance towards this subject.
Just proving again how bad you are at understanding what others are saying.
Quote:The only people who do that are hardcore PC gamers. Hardcore PC games make up an incredibly tiny fraction of the home console market.
Definitely not. Sure, console game sales are higher than PC sales. But PCs have a broader overall base, or at least the potential for one... after all, most people have a computer. Only people who want to play games have an X-Box. So while I'd expect that sales of Halo for X-Box are higher, don't think like only hardcore gamers would buy it for PC. Quite the opposite, probably... given that hardcore gamers are the most likely to want the game soon, they'd be more likely to get it for X-Box. I'd expect more of the PC sales would be from casual gamers interested because of how much press the game gets.
Quote:Markets are defined by two things, to greatly simplify this for you: 1) the target audience, and 2) the actual buying audience. These two things constantly fluctuate, but in the gamings market it is relatively stable and in unison. With the DS, Nintendo is trying to cater to a different market than their Gameboy or Gamecube. That's why they call it a "third-pillar". In this case the target audience is not in unison with the actual buying audience. So far. E3 will hopefully change our minds about this.
Nintendo is either deluding itsself or making things up. The DS is definitely in the same market as the GBA... the PSP? It's mostly in the same market but it also aims a bit older, in keeping with its Playstation philosophy. But there is no "special audience" for the DS. No more than there is for the GC in comparison to PS2 and X-Box.
Quote:If the home console market were the same as the PC market then I would be a very, very happy man. It would make things much easier for me. But it's not, because they cater to (mostly) very different audiences (markets).
Console things like controls over game sales, etc only matter to developers, not people buying the games... to them they just see boxes on the shelf, both for PC and consoles. The main difference is that since PCs are all different you need to look at the system requirements. But yes, the groups consoles and PCs aim at are different, in some ways... the PC audience has more casual gamers who don't usually play games (The Sims, etc), while consoles have more casual gamers (that is people who do usually play games but can't be called 'hardcore')... but both are part of the game industry and games released on one platform DO affect all of them. Saying that they do not, or that they are distinctly different to the point where it is pointless to compare them, is a misrepresentation of the facts.
Like here.
Quote:*sigh*
You're still not paying attention. Yes, the PC version of Splinter Cell is the best version of the game, but it "doesn't count" in the context of our conversation, which was the merits of the X-Box. The X-Box has the best versions of almost all third-party games, and you don't compare it to the PC versions for the reasons I explained above. If you still cannot understand this then oh well, I tried to educate you.
Saying "no, a different version of the game is better" when someone else says "this is one of the reasons to buy an X-Box over the other systems" is a completely appropriate response. Unquestionably, and beyond any doubt.
We were talking about exclusives. You said Splinter Cell was one. DJ disagreed, saying it's better on PC. You said 'well yes, but that doesn't matter because we're talking about consoles'... but it's the same exact game! It was designed for all systems! Saying that one version doesn't count simply because of the platform it is on is completely absurd... sure, the PC and console markets don't draw from all of the same people. But the games are the same, and lots of people (among hardcore gamers) use both pcs and consoles for games... so saying 'that version doesn't count' is just ridiculous. Of course you can compare the PC version. I can't think of any possible way that DJ's comment is an innapropriate response to yours.
I won't even start on the "education" comment at the end there. Suffice to say, it's just OB1 once again showing himself to believe that he is the perfect one who cannot be wrong and all who disagree with him are fools who must be taught the Way... it gets very old, very fast.
Sure, you might have some good points about marketing. But trying to expand that to the point where you are trying to say that you are unquestionably right about everything is ridiculous.