12th March 2006, 3:43 PM
Quote:The Playstation has become the premier destination of RPGs, action, and racing games. If you're a fan of either genre then it's a no brainer as to what system to invest in.
Racing games no, those others maybe... but racing games? Eh, the N64 beats the PS1 on racing games no question, for one thing...
Quote:Sony has Naughty Dog as a spectacular first party developer. In all seriousness, as the PS2/Xbox/GC generation winds down, Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is still my number one title. Jak II was a little too difficult at times to be entirely enjoyable, but the third game was great. Polyphony and their multimillion selling Gran Turismo franchise (the entire series has sold over 45 million) you won't find anywhere else.
Sony has strong ties with some developers, and because of that you won't see some games on any other system. Insomniac is a second party developer but they seem to enjoy much success on the Playstation so I don't see a reason for them to leave. Sony invested in SquareEnix to pull them out of the rut they were in years ago so I don't see them going anywhere. The Playstation has become the premier destination of RPGs, action, and racing games. If you're a fan of either genre then it's a no brainer as to what system to invest in.
In volume, Sony and Microsoft have very similar ratios of first to third party sales, while Nintendo has much, much higher first-party sales. As a result, I can't see making a clear distinction between Sony and MS on this matter like Lazy does -- MS is trying to copy the Sony formula, not change it.
Quote:Microsoft has also created an unequaled online service. I know people who love it and are hoping that Sony and Nintendo step up with something as great and feature rich.
This is, by far, Microsoft's greatest success with the Xbox and is the most important thing that they are great to be leading the industry to change. Nintendo's old-fashioned internet scepticism, which still shows itsself strongly with things like their ridiculous and almost unusably restrictive online service on the DS, has been and will continue to look increasingly ridiculous over time... Sony has a clue and is trying, but has no coherent strategy, it seems. We'll see if the rumors about Sony's Live-clone are true, but I doubt Sony can pull off something like that.
Of course Nintendo is great in other ways, and has by far the best single-console multiplayer, but still, it's a significant market that Nintendo has so far utterly failed to adaquately address. (and I know, you console gamers haven't played online games, and that lack of knowledge about what a good online service is is part of why Nintendo hasn't been completely laughed at for how stupid DS online is...)
In the past I would have said "hopefully Nintendo is using this as a learning experience and will get better later", but based on their statements I see no sign of that happening.
Quote:If I haven't cared for Mario, Donkey Kong, or Pokemon in the past then what does Nintendo offer? Variety is what got Sony where they are today. The third parties are important, and so is a healthy lineup of exclusive games. Sony has the largest third party support, and depending who you talk to they have a [more than] respectable roster of exclusives.
Those are broad liscences, and Nintendo puts games with the liscences in all kinds of genres, so that's just not true. Nintendo produces games with a massive amount of variety, far, far more than anything Sony or MS would even THINK of releasing... Sony has third party "variety", but that's just variety of scale.
Yeah, yeah, that's something too, but Nintendo consoles have more than enough games to keep anyone busy, so I don't see the problem. Playstation has MORE, but if you've got plenty, why should you really care?
Quote:There are people who just don't care for PC gaming. I'm one of them. If there's a game on the PC I want to play then I look for the console version. If there is no console version then I don't play it. Simple.
Games on both PC and consoles are better on PC every single time that they put any effort into it at all.