Ladies and gentlemen, exhibits one and two:

http://www.eidosinteractive.co.uk/gss/dxiw/

http://www.eidos.co.uk/gss/thief_ds/

Okay, so it's developers who make the games and developers who decide what platforms they want their games on and yes it's developers who went and dummed down DE2 and Thief 3... but it's all the XBox's fault really.

Consoles are clearly where the money's at if you're making games these days. Consoles are far cheaper than PCs, consoles are cool and you can play console games with your mates. Thus consoles sell. Thus consoles attract developers. Thus games get made for consoles. Natch.

Enter XBox. Now look carefully though because you might mistake it for a console. It's really not. It's actually a *whisper it* PC in disguise.

*gasp*

Okay. I won't rant. And I'll do my best to stop trying to sound cretinous. Just... I have something massive against the XBox and against developers who go for profit and make games for PCs and try to make them work for consoles, dumbing down the PC version in the process.

In my experience the best console games are the games made for the console. The best PC games never even appear on console. Halo doesn't work on PC because it's just too basic. On XBox it's awesome. Deux Ex 2 is good, but it doesn't even compare to the origional.

So why the XBox? Surely Sony are just as bad. Really the only console we see trying to stick to the old ways is the Gamecube and it's floundering in the current market. Well I don't know. It's a personal thing. And it's probably an anti-Microsoft thing. I just don't see Sony as so blatantly trying to muscle in on the market as Microsoft clearly are. And it's market domination that scares me. Especially when it's leading to the creation of crap end products.

But buy XBox. Buy as many as you can. Just make sure you keep it in its box away from any games. I hear with price cuts Microsoft are losing almost $100 per console now.

invisiblee war left me seriously disapointed :( the first deus ex was brilliant and then we get this thanks to the xbox.

ion storm constantly promised they wouldnt dumb the game down for the xbox. shower of bastards lied!!

Jedichef spouted:
shower of bastards lied!!

They be responsible for Thief 3 too.

I miss Looking Glass Studios...

stoke_fields spouted:
I just don't see Sony as so blatantly trying to muscle in on the market as Microsoft clearly are.
Yeah, because Sony went from being a nonentity in the console market a few years ago to totally dominating it completely by accident didn't they...

And I've got news for you stoke. All console manufacturers sell their machines at a loss, not just Micro$oft. Its been standard practice for years.

harry007jnr spouted:
Yeah, because Sony went from being a nonentity in the console market a few years ago to totally dominating it completely by accident didn't they...

Actually looking into this a little more it's quite startling to what degree they now control the market. Take these statistics for example:

Nintendo has sold 10.5 million GameCube machines worldwide, 2.67 million of them in Japan, 5.68 million in North America and 2.1 million elsewhere. PlayStation 2 global sales total 62.6 million, with 14 million in Japan. The Xbox has sold 9.4 million worldwide, 450,000 of them in Japan.

I may have been a tad cruel to Mickysoft.

harry007jnr spouted:
And I've got news for you stoke. All console manufacturers sell their machines at a loss, not just Micro$oft. Its been standard practice for years.

Actually GameCubes are currently breaking even for hardware costs/sales. No idea on PS2s. Even if you're right though there is no comparison compared with the MASSIVE losses Microsoft are putting up with to keep their foot in the door.

stoke_fields spouted:
Actually GameCubes are currently breaking even for hardware costs/sales. No idea on PS2s. Even if you're right though there is no comparison compared with the MASSIVE losses Microsoft are putting up with to keep their foot in the door.
They certainly weren't a time of release, although as the technology has aged production costs may have come down. But then again so has the retail price.

No console manufacturer makes a profit on hardware, why do you think the Japanese companies are so pissy about releasing 3rd party dev kits (they're very expensive to aquire), and insist on producing games in house?

It's because software is where the moneys at baby, the hardware is subsidised to ensure a large user base. Microsoft are just playing them at their own game.

stoke_fields spouted:


They be responsible for Thief 3 too.

I miss Looking Glass Studios...

if thief 3 arrives in the same sorry state as deus ex 2 i will not be happy. shit like this is one of the reasons i download games. dont get me wrong deus ex 2 was enjoyable enough. but not as good as the first and no where near as good as it should have/could have been. flashy graphics and nice effects are fuck all to me. its a nice bonus but without the gameplay factors its no where near enough.

i still play loads of games from years ago as even though they looked bad they played great. the annoying thing about the xbox is that the machine is capable of doing these games justice. if only the target market wasnt retarded teenagers who baulk at the thought of a game requiring some intelligence to play. i can count on my fingers the console games in recent years i'd buy rather than rent.

Blaming the dumbing down of games on just one console is a bit short sighted really. I reckon it all stated back with the original Playstation. The games were incredibly simplistic and required not much thought or effort to finish. The only differnce npw is the consoles have prettier pictures which doesn't neccesarily trnaslate to good games.

Well this my thoughts:

The console market has always been and will always be a market for kids and some anyone who wishes to put a cd in and play away and have a fun,action experience with little thought since they are aimed at teenagers. So the need for diverse worlds,graphics,story lines and complicated puzzles are not needed in a console world and will never be.

The current PC gaming market is slowing down all the time, and PC developers are putting massive effort in for little back, so to stop themselves going under they have been adding more and more PC/Console ports. Which you can't blame them for that , if they just supported the PC market they would be finding it very hard to make any $$$. So really without the consoles the PC market would be very dry as more developers go under,make less games etc...

You can't really blame the xbox and after all i'm suprised it isn't doing well, since there is a massive hole in the market at the moment with the slowing of the PC gaming market, it should be a ideal situation for the xbox to work in.

Anyway it does sadden me that game ports are now a reality and are infecting alot of the big titles,But that is a reality for the time being unless there is a boom back in the pc gaming industry, But that is unlikely, my hert dropped out of my arse when I was reading about E3 and they were showing the xbox version of Doom 3, infact it kinda put me on a downer for the rest of the day. If anything was going to give a boost to the pc gaming community then we need the best titles to be on the PC and exclusive to the PC, but saying that it would need a developer to have the balls to risk their flagship game on just one market, So we are caught in a loop really arent we.

What our community really need was Half Life 2, Doom 3 to be PC only, totally designed for a PC environment like their originals, to bring aid to our cause! Everyone in the world knows what Half Life and Doom are. And the pc community really needed them both to be PC only and create a massive interest in pc gaming again so we can return to the good old days.

Sorry if I've gone on but if Half Life 2 gets 'dumbed' down in anyway shape or form to accomadate a console release then its the end of pc gaming as we know it :(

the problemm isnt the dumbing of games cause consoles cant handle what we want. its the dumbing of games to make them appeal to more simple minded gamers. if they made games better then they would get bought more. simple as that. ion storm who made deus ex 2 and thief 3 constantly promised the game would not be dumbed down any from the first game. this obviously didnt happen. thats why the people who waited so long for the game were pissed off. they were lied to. if they had said this would happen there would have been disapointment yes but not the level of betrayal felt by all the promises being broken.

im a nintendo extremist.

bugger the Xbox i say. Nintendo have always made more stimulating, fun games and always will.

obviously thats just a personal opinion, but i think most gamers know where their loyalties lie, nintendo are the origional and the best. they were here first and took console gaming from 8 bit cartoonism to 128 bit extravaganzas.

It took sony 2 good goes to get it right anyway, and the people still look like clusters of polygons.
not to mention the hours of loading.

/me scuttles off to play zelda.

sirk spouted:
Blaming the dumbing down of games on just one console is a bit short sighted really.

No, I already explained. It isn't short sightedness. I just have a petty grievance with the XBox that I desperately want to justify.

:)

Did you read the eBay mug punter thread then? Sure that would've put a smile on your face.

Interestingly, Microsoft have given a sub-company of theirs the go ahead to develop for the Nintendo DS. This might be for two reasons:
They don't have a handheld games console
It'll hurt sony's console which they'll prefer

netniV spouted:
Interestingly, Microsoft have given a sub-company of theirs the go ahead to develop for the Nintendo DS. This might be for two reasons:
They don't have a handheld games console
It'll hurt sony's console which they'll prefer

Reckon its reason 1 with the qualifier being 'yet'. Reason 2 is probably just a bonus for them.

I agree with the comment about the PlayStation. The games on that seemed more about the graphics than anything else, and is still true with the PS2. Its a bit like a modern day CD-i, and we all know what happened with that. I think the PS2 is owned by two types of people. Those who own it purely for the Final Fantasy games, and those who got one because console gaming got "cool". My brother has all three, we "aquired" the PS2, and he got the GameCube and X-Box for two christmasses. We only ever use the PS2 when our cousin brings the Eye-Toy over. I dont rate it as a games machine. I conclude that it was the PlayStation, not the X-Box that bought about the dumbing down of games.

Yes, I agree with this. Trouble is it's a double edged sword. With Sony, the playstation became a phenomenon due to excellent marketing, nobody can fault the economic successs of the playstation but with a few notable exceptions most of the games became formulaic after about two years.On the other side of the coin is Nintendo, Nintendo's main problem has long been a lack of good marketing, making the N64 and the GC outside players. The games are generally excellent with most of their in house developed games being very playable(I still don't rate metroid prime though)
In all I think I prefer Nintendo's approach as it means that I get games which last me a while and I don't get bored of BUT Nintendo will not survive like this. I can see them finding a halfway house when the GCNext comes out and releasing a few more third party games, if they don;t they are giong to go the way that Sega went which would be a sad day for the video gaming community.

ok me a bit of a geekette over this.. i've never had a console but me sister is nuts on em. i prefer a pc for games, try running combat flight sim 3 on a console..

Anyway, the best games i've ever played were on the old 8 bit machines, especially whent eh likes of the atari st and amega were about. you have naff grahpics and naff sound compared to them.. so you had a great game to compensate. hell i still play 'neather earth' and 'critical mass' under emulation.

tis not consoles that spoiled things its the focus on looks over substance

In all I think I prefer Nintendo's approach as it means that I get games which last me a while and I don't get bored of BUT Nintendo will not survive like this.

Many people keep predicting the imminent demise of Nintendo, but the simple truth is they have an enormous user base in Japan, plenty to keep them afloat for ever if needs be, even if they never sold another console in the west.

I agree tho, Nintendo have *always* produced the best and most innovative games - I'm amazed it was Sony that brought out the Eye Toy to be honest, that seemed a very 'Nintendo' idea to me.

To me, as someone who never plays PC games, that market seems even more stagnant than the PS2, XBox etc. Oh another generic FPS or Mine stuff and kill stuff strategy game. Yay.

GSB

I'm amazed it was Sony that brought out the Eye Toy to be honest, that seemed a very 'Nintendo' idea to me.

The Eye Toy was developed *for* the PS2 and not by Sony. Presumably it was the fact that it was relatively easy to program a USB webcam to work on a PS2 which comes with the slots and software to support them as standard. Unlike the NGC.

First of all I'd like to say that not all teens are morons, I am not. Secondly I will not try to defend teens for the vast majority of them are indeed completely brainless. Third I think the term dumbing down can only be used to describe the decline of some genres. Role Playing games are little more than moviews in which you press x to advance the plot and they have not suffered as harshly as other genres, for the advancing graphics and ability to program actual voices into the game helped make a much more engrossing plot. It brings a tear to my eye to see that beatiful games that I grew up with will never be replicated because my peers have no intention of going through rigorous games such as *sob* goldeneye for the N64 and *gasp* they're too cool to advance a plumber or a hedgehog across a two dimensional plain of color and whimsy. I have a plan my friend a plan that will set this generation staight and bring back our fabled days of lore. The answer is farming, put a kid on a tractor for 6 hours and when he comes home he wants to do the least uniform thing he can think of hes had enough of plowing staight lines, he wants to fly in a spaceship aas a fox with his frog and his rabbit wingmen. Yes my friend farming is the answer.

Lylat wars? With regards to my previous post, the type of gamer who only got PS/2 because gaming got cool would struggle with Zelda, which is unfairly seen as a kids game. A game doesn't need gratuitous violence or women with breasts the size of the moon or fantasmagical graphics to be any good. I'm still playing the orginal Mario that came out on the NES all those years ago.

I'm still playing the orginal Mario that came out on the NES all those years ago.

I dont blame you, the original mario games on the NES and SNES are incredible.

Agh Windwaker as the same tedious puzzle repeated a thousand times with pretty graphics and minimal story. Agghghghghghghhh!!!!!11!11!