The X Box Quagmire

gchamish · Post by **gchamish** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 6:56 am

Thought that this may be of interest to the members of this excellent board .

link: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1091618,00.asp

perry · Post by **perry** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 8:24 am

[quote="That idiot wrote]Sega got scared and abandoned its nifty Dreamcast, and Sony countered with the powerful but expensive PlayStation 2. Nintendo came out with the GameCube, targeted little kids, and further exploited Mario.
[quote]

Im sure this single sentance, shows how retarded the person that wrote that was...especially the part about the 'Powerful PS2'

VB_User · Post by **VB_User** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 8:45 am

this whole board is a bunch of ps2 haters.........goofs

Veggita2099 · Post by **Veggita2099** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 10:09 am

Some people, yea they just hate Sony in general. But a lot of us just dislike how Sony does the gameing world. They have the most expensive system, the most poorly built system, and the least powerful system on the market. Sony themselves don't really make that good of games, its only 3rd party games that really keep it going. Now imagine those 3rd party games on GC or Xbox where the developers could have twice as much power to work with.

I said this in another thread, but with the PS2 being out there it is holding back a lot of 3rd party developers. It is easier for a developer to make a multiconsole game capable of running on the ps2 then it is to make it better then downgrade it later on to work on PS2. If the PS2 had never been created, or it had been a more powerful machine chances are a lot of games out there would look a lot better. Imagine if the new GTA games was on xbox or GC how much nicer they would have looked from the beginning. Remember both those games was designed with the PS2 specs in mind. Yea they upgraded them slightly for PC, but they still could only do so much. If they had originally made them on Xbox Im sure it would have looked a lot better, thus making the PC version a lot better.

Also your EA sports games are the same way. All your Madden games are designed with the PS2 specs in mind, thus they end up on Xbox and GC basically the same way. Acclaim is one of the worst for doing this, but then again most of there games suck anyways. Its not all Sonys fault no, but still when all these people own a PS2 its foolish to make games JUST for Xbox or GC.

Nico0020 · Post by **Nico0020** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 11:24 am

I have always "planed" on get a PS2 as my next console, when the price goes down. but there is nothing that I have seen that really wows me into getting it. Every system I have gotten had a game that made me want to get it. PS2 doesnt. a lot of their games I just dont find fun.

Skater_dusto · Post by **Skater_dusto** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 2:51 pm

I just want the freakin ps2 games to go down in price! New ones cost over $70 and they're crap, older ones like ffx and kingdom hearts can be $30 if they're used... that's still too expensive for half-assed games. Sony really screwed us over with the ps2.

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 3:03 pm

this whole board is a bunch of ps2 haters.........goofs

He was right. The PS2 was underpowered for the timeframe it was released in. It should of been somewhere inbetween the Xbox/GameCube and the Dreamcast, but instead it was pretty damn close to Dreamcast level, and in some ways worse.

Not to say it's a terrible system, but Sony blew it with hardware design pretty bad. I'm glad Microsoft is losing money on the xbox. If I have to pick between Microsoft or Sony, I guess I pick Sony. I'd rather Nintendo pull ahead though, but it doesn't look like that will happen.. Too bad...

farrell2k · Post by **farrell2k** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 3:58 pm

Veggita2099 wrote:Some people, yea they just hate Sony in general. But a lot of us just dislike how Sony does the gameing world. They have the most expensive system, the most poorly built system, and the least powerful system on the market. Sony themselves don't really make that good of games, its only 3rd party games that really keep it going. Now imagine those 3rd party games on GC or Xbox where the developers could have twice as much power to work with.

I said this in another thread, but with the PS2 being out there it is holding back a lot of 3rd party developers. It is easier for a developer to make a multiconsole game capable of running on the ps2 then it is to make it better then downgrade it later on to work on PS2. If the PS2 had never been created, or it had been a more powerful machine chances are a lot of games out there would look a lot better. Imagine if the new GTA games was on xbox or GC how much nicer they would have looked from the beginning. Remember both those games was designed with the PS2 specs in mind. Yea they upgraded them slightly for PC, but they still could only do so much. If they had originally made them on Xbox Im sure it would have looked a lot better, thus making the PC version a lot better.

Also your EA sports games are the same way. All your Madden games are designed with the PS2 specs in mind, thus they end up on Xbox and GC basically the same way. Acclaim is one of the worst for doing this, but then again most of there games suck anyways. Its not all Sonys fault no, but still when all these people own a PS2 its foolish to make games JUST for Xbox or GC.

If the PS2 had never been created, an even less powerful system, the DC, would probably still be going strong.

CoasterKing · Post by **CoasterKing** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 5:12 pm

man with wig wrote:Nintendo came out with the GameCube, targeted little kids, and further exploited Mario

No need to read the rest of that crappy biased article then.

someoneElse · Post by **someoneElse** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 4:45 am

I'm surprised Dvorak is writing stuff like that...

curt_grymala · Post by **curt_grymala** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 7:18 am

Guys, I don't know how many of you remember this, but the PS2 was slated to come out at the same time as the Dreamcast. The only reason it didn't was because of short supply in the factory (at least, that's what they say. I think it had more to do with the release of the Dreamcast, and Sony just wanted to wait long enough to crush all of our dreams. They probably had all of the PS2's sitting in a factory, just waiting for the Dreamcast to falter, ever so slightly, before they flooded the market with inferior pieces of crap). Sony realized that they did not have enough parts in the factory to put together as many PS2's as they would need. I remember being able to reserve a PS2 at the same time I reserved my Dreamcast (but, of course, I chose the Dreamcast, "The Greatest System On Earth", because I have always been a huge fan of Sega). So, for the people saying "It should have been somewhere between the Dreamcast and the XBox and GameCube, please remember that the PS2 was actually created around the same time as the DreamCast. Also, we should never expect anything from Sony to compare to anything made by Microsoft. Sony - a bunch of guy sin a boardroom who know how to fit 10 gallons of water in a five gallon bucket (by making the water smaller of course). Microsoft - a bunch of people who have spent their entire lives programming computers, and even helped create the computer as we know it, and will continue programming for computers, at least until their 30th birthday when they retire, and eat, sleep and breathe programming. I believe that the only possible way we could see a better system than that of Microsoft would be if Apple/Macintosh were to release a system. Of course, then it would cost $500 to own the damn thing, and each game would be around $150. So, for all of you naysayers out there, I believe (if you ever do get tired of your Dreamcast, which I never will) you should get the XBox and quit your whining about the PS2. Enjoy.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 9:23 am

Actually, the PS2 was supposed to come out later than the DC anyway. Like over a year later. And it's specs weren't finalised until fairly late. But the hype started long before they'd even finished designing the thing, and you could pre-order a console which technically didn't even exist yet.

nymus · Post by **nymus** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 11:29 am

I think PS2 (and pretty much all of the others too) was designed with the goal of overshadowing Dreamcast rather than providing innovation. Dreamcast set a standard for next-generation gaming and all the rest had to do was improve.

Sony, being second runner, just added more memory, DVD, and a quickly patched up CPU for show!

Gamecube was probably more thought out than PS2 since they didn't go with the DVD hype or oversell polygon counts....

XBox was just a quick, let me in! let me in! It didn't take much thought to build the thing. Just take the leading high-end graphics card of the time(NVIDIA), the leading CPU of the time(Pentium 3), the standard size for a Hard drive(10GB-2GB) and you have XBOX. Oh yeah and don't forget all the hype about "Unified RAM" nooooo

And for good measure, just make sure its more than what "the others" are offering which also happened to be about standard for an average PC of the time (64MB). VOILA! Next-Generation gaming redefied!

Dreamcast is the only "true" next-generation system! Not because it has a faster CPU. Not because of memory. It's because of the concepts that gamers should have embraced back in 1999! Thanks to idoits at Sony, people are only just getting into online gaming (THREE #@&^^%#&^ YEARS AFTER DREAMCAST STARTED IT ALL

), three years later, people are appreciating Shenmue! WTF

Dreamcast may or may not be able to render 6 million polygons per second, but I would much rather own a system built on an honest, inspired foundation, than one built for cash. SEGA even thought about pricing. The other systems entered the market at $299! Dreamcast was only $199 even at launch!
I could go on and on... but that wouldn't make people see into the swirl.

Dreamcastin2k2 · Post by **Dreamcastin2k2** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 12:55 pm

Here's the thing, the PS2 is not the most POWERFUL but it is the most RELIABLE system on the market, especially compared to the dreamcast.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Dreamcast as much as anyone else but Sega ruined their public image by abandoning other systems.
The reason the playstation 2 is so popular is because, like nintendo years ago, playstation has become synonomous with videogames. Think about how many little kids you know that say "I'm playing videogames" while they pick up their dualshock 2 controller...
Playstation 2 surpassed sega because sony is reliable, they put the original playstation on the market and supported it for years so people automatically assume that they will support ps2 for years too...think about it, when Dreamcast was realeased there was all this negative "will sega abandon us again" hype and that really hurts you when notoriously realiable Sony and Nintendo show up with PS2 and Gamecube....

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 6:34 pm

Here's the thing, the PS2 is not the most POWERFUL but it is the most RELIABLE system on the market, especially compared to the dreamcast.

Actually, I would consider Nintendo to have the best reputation for that. The NES lived almost 12 years, the SNES 7ish. Yes, the N64 didn't have a long life, but it lasted around 5 years didn't it?

And either way, the PS2 is the least reliable as far as BREAKING goes. It's the most fragile console ever made, at least that I know of.

The Kron · Post by **The Kron** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 7:21 pm

Dreamcastin2k2 wrote:Here's the thing, the PS2 is not the most POWERFUL but it is the most RELIABLE system on the market, especially compared to the dreamcast.

I rarely swear but to be honest this is utter Bullshit.

PS2 is the most reliable system?

....Hardly

PS2's have a guaranteed usage life, after a certain amount of use there is guaranteed disc read errors (be it cd or DVD), failure to load games, continual crashing, music skipping.

If anything the PS2 is the most UNreliable gaming system created.

No wonder the sales figures are still extrordinarily high, people are buying a 2nd to replace the broken one, of the 8 people I know who own a PS2 they all (including myself) have had the typical failing lens/drive can't read disc etc (and thats a Mixture of PAL,NTSCJ and NTSCU machines).

Seriously annoying.

curt_grymala · Post by **curt_grymala** » Sun Jun 08, 2003 8:26 pm

Also, let'st think back a minute. Yes, Sega did eventually abandon the Genesis, but how long was it around before it hit the trash pile? I believe it survived almost as long as the NES (if not longer). The only reason Sega abandons projects is that they are working on new, innovative stuff. When the Genesis came out, it was the first 16-bit system out there, and the games and graphics were leaps and bounds ahead of anything Nintendo released. When the Game Gear was released, it was generations ahead of the GameBoy (well, the original GameBoy). The GameBoy Advance was the first Nintendo handheld console to surpass the quality of the GameGear. When Sega CD was released (which, by the way, was a nice "add-on" to the existing Genesis, and did not represent an abandonment of the system) I believe it was basically the first system to use CD. Wasn't Sega also the first system to attempt porting popular PC games to the system (like Doom, etc.)?
Of course, Sega products will never be as popular as Nintendo products, but they definitely deserve a place in the console hall of fame. Sega will always be tops on my list. Unfortunately, most people are impressed by the hype generated by the press, and so Sega always gets left behind, while inferior products like the Playstation jump ahead. Did you ever ask yourself why the Playstation survived as long as it did? Probably beccause Sony didn't feel like doing anything new.
I agree with Nymus: I think that the Dreamcast is the only true "next-generation" system out there. Give them an opportunity, and I am positive that Sega will rise from the ashes at least one more time with something truly amazing. I just hope that we have not all wasted our money on crap when it finally happens.

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 12:55 am

Sega had 3 catastrophic failures in a row. That's why people didn't trust them with the DC.

Sega CD, 32x (even if they're just addons, they cost almost as much as a new system) and the Saturn all bombed.

BTW, the Genesis lasted from 1989 to 1997 I believe (possibly 1998), making it one of the longer lived systems, though not quite up to the NES' 12 years or the Neo Geo's arguable 14 (home system was 1991, but the mostly identical arcade unit was 1989, and it is still alive, sort of).

Sir Slash · Post by **Sir Slash** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 1:49 am

Lartrak wrote:Sega had 3 catastrophic failures in a row. That's why people didn't trust them with the DC.

Sega CD, 32x (even if they're just addons, they cost almost as much as a new system) and the Saturn all bombed. .

well Dreamcast actually sold very good..sega couldn't afford to keep it alive though..... it sold better then people like to believe

zero · Post by **zero** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 9:24 am

what i think will happen (well i hope it does), is sega will keep making games on other systems for awhile, to make themselfs some more money, and also to get sony fanboys nintendo fanboys etc into there games, and for them to start seeing what they where missing, then when the time is right, and sega is selling enough games and have made enough money, they will jump back into the console world with a system that will wipe the floor with everything else, how will they know the specs and stuff for this system, cos they will have inside info since they most likely would of been expected to make games for the systems, then sega will bring out there new console, all the ps2 fanboys and nintendo fanboys wont be able to call sega games shit no more since they would of played them and properly became a big fan of them too, so they and a lot of other people will buy segas new console and sega will be back, i really do hope thats what segas plan is, cos i know if it was me, that would be my plan

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The X Box Quagmire

The X Box Quagmire

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