Famitsu on next gen survey

[wazoo]

[ The people watch TV, see the good adverts, look at what's cool and interesting for them according to what the advert tells them, then go out and buy the thing.
The people actually spending time looking at reviews and thinking about what the buy (further than listening to what marketing tells them i mean) before they do are actully a very small percentage, in the sea of ignorance we are bathed every day.

Totally agree.

Actually, it seems the average gamer likes the PS2 and dislikes both of the others.

Agree. Even more, when you consider japan (of course) and Europe (more and more, the private garden of Sony).

 

[jvd]

[ The people watch TV, see the good adverts, look at what's cool and interesting for them according to what the advert tells them, then go out and buy the thing.
The people actually spending time looking at reviews and thinking about what the buy (further than listening to what marketing tells them i mean) before they do are actully a very small percentage, in the sea of ignorance we are bathed every day.

WHich is why launching first is important .

If ms launches for x mass 2005 here in the states they will have a christmass of being the newest system , which means they get all the press to themselves and all the comercials they put on .

So not only will someone have will and grace on and see the xenon comercials , but then they will watch the 11 oclock news and hear how hard it is to find the xenon .

Then in the second christmass with the ps3 and ns5 out they will have to out spend sony on adds . BUt not adds at retarted times .

They need to focus in on the age groups that will play it for each of the comercials . Put multiplayer fighting and fps games on during adult swim (Beats letterman and that other dude ) , put sonic and kid game comercials on at 3-5 when kids come home from school and watch tv .

They just have to be smart about it , spending 500million on an add campain doesn't matter when they are advertising on the wrong thing s.

That and they need a solid launch line up and first year run with at least one very high profile game every other month to keep it in the gaming mags as must own

 

[Acert93]

I think if Xbox2 releases in 2005 they would have a lot of momentum. Like JVD said, they would be the only kid on the block. With a few killer apps they could create a shortage on the 1 or 2 million they would be able to sell.

They they have the extra year to build a game library. While in a perfect world it is games that make a system go, that is not the entire story. BUT considering Ms market position a bad game library would hurt them (I think Sony can get away with this more... e.g. the PS2 launch). Anyhow, with a year lead and a lot of buzz, they could then counter the PS3 launch with Halo 3. Even if the PS3 is more powerful, the extra year of Xbox2 development would go a far way towards improvements in X2 games. While I am not too keen on the Xbox having a 4 year life cycle, I can see where MS is coming from. The Xbox is costing a lot of money and they do not plan to shrink it down. IF the Xbox 2 is backwards compatible (big if) they can kind of justify a shorter life cycle. Ironically, if we see the PS3 in fall of 2006 that means the PS2 had a 6 year life cycle. That is pretty good for PS2 consumers. Anyhow, I think a X2 in fall of 2005 could really be a good move from a marketing standpoint, would build on the Halo 2 frenzy, and give MS a chance to prepare for the PS3 launch by having a bigger game library.

I think it would be a pretty nasty scene of X2, PS3, and Revolution all released in the US fall 2006. Now that would be interesting

 

[Proforma]

Actually, it seems the average gamer likes the PS2 and dislikes both of the others.

It seems to me you are still stick in 2001. It's 2005 my friend.
The PS2 is still big, but the xbox has been outselling the PS2 for awhile.

Not that anything like that actually matters as there are far too many PS2's that have been sold and that is because the PS2 got an extra year head start and the PS ONE already had a strong base as well.

oh and by the way, welcome to 2005. ;-)

 

[rabidrabbit]

Has it really? How long?
Any numbers to back up that claim?

 

[Fodder]

It seems to me you are still stuck in 2001.

I suppose everyone who owns a PS2 and not an XBox is too.

 

[GwymWeepa]

Not sure what cars have to do with it, but i think buying out Sega could have helped MS if Sega also started to release interesting titles, which they have failed to do for the last 3 years or so. Other than that, it's just the name, a very expensive name, with average games, apart from the very very few exceptions.

For a second there I could have sworn you were talking about Rare

 

[London Geezer]

Not sure what cars have to do with it, but i think buying out Sega could have helped MS if Sega also started to release interesting titles, which they have failed to do for the last 3 years or so. Other than that, it's just the name, a very expensive name, with average games, apart from the very very few exceptions.

For a second there I could have sworn you were talking about Rare

Same. MS's pockets might be huge, but buying out studios for extremely large sums of money and not turning a profit out of it is still bad.

 

[cthellis42]

It seems to me you are still stick in 2001. It's 2005 my friend.
The PS2 is still big, but the xbox has been outselling the PS2 for awhile.

You do realize that barring a few months during the year (around price reductions, for instance) it hasn't, right? The PS2 sold (or at least "shipped" so you're free to argue how much that amounts to, but considering how squeezed the retail channels have been of late, they really can't have much stock lying around) 10 million more units in 2004.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Xbox is outselling the PS2 in the US now. No big suprise really. A critical mass of good games exist for the system now.

 

[cthellis42]

I know. That's part of the "few months during the year" and the latest ones are the most affected by the PS2 production squeeze (and trying to drain the old stock first while the PSTwo is winking at people from the sidelines). A few months are a far cry from "has been outselling the PS2 for awhile," which is what I was talking to Proforma about.


On that note, when are the December NPD's likely to be released?

 

[Teasy]

Xbox is outselling the PS2 in the US now. No big suprise really. A critical mass of good games exist for the system now.

You mean Halo 2 exists for the system

 

[Akumajou]

I feel that N allowed themselves to be type cast as an "Evil Empire" and that cost them the N64.

Funny how many people seem to believe that "the people" (Not us, i mean the other 5 or so billion people out there who don't know what a texel is) buy things out of long periods of thought.
That's not how it works. The people watch TV, see the good adverts, look at what's cool and interesting for them according to what the advert tells them, then go out and buy the thing. That's the whole point of Marketing, not being targetted at the people "in-the-know" but at the people who have no clue.
The people actually spending time looking at reviews and thinking about what to buy (further than listening to what marketing tells them i mean) before they do are actully a very small percentage, in the sea of ignorance we are bathed every day.

Which is why Dreamcast failed, why XBox if launched in 1999 or 2000 would have also failed and why it took so long for our reality's 2001 launched XBox to make a statement in the last 2 months of 2004.

WOW, you got it!!! I mean, WOW!!! Why are you not working for Nintendo?! I mean you have the solution to their problems right there!!! :?

And you would say otherwise??, really just think about it, the GC's specs are obviously far superior to PS2 and having a DVD drive and normal media would have brought in more 3rd parties to Nintendo than XBox.

Of course the only reason N did what they did in reality was based on avoiding piracy that technically is still being violated with the console and mod happy modding pirates.

That and "probably" that N wanted to avoid little Jimmy from getting a copy of Jenna Jameson's Aventures in the A or Private Films world class erotic entertainment DVDs causing Lil's Jimmy's parents to go sue happy.

People bitch about MS buying devs then turn around saying they should have bought more?? Buying devs out is not the only way to secure games to one's console you know, or every dev out there would be a first party studio to whoever bought them first...

Well, do you think that MS could have secured exclusive agreements with Konami (MGS 2 and 3), Eidos (Tomb Raider), Square (FFX), etc??

Or they could have gone shopping for Japan devs, just 2 or 3 really that would work on RPGs, Dating sims, and then some standard action adventure games as well as court Bandai so that Mobile Suit Gundam (major Japanese anime franchise) first person shooter would show up on XBox with system link to help sell consoles.

I agree, somewhat. They should have made the Xbox a more Japanese friendly platform. They only pushed on the tech capabilities of the hardware on every front, on their marketing, on their games, on everything, when people (the same people i was talking about at the beginning of my post) don't really care about how many bumps your average normal mapped pixel shaded character has.

I agree, but not only that, I feel that people back then really did not know just how important transform & lighting, enviroment bump mapping and pixel and vertex shaders were because they were really looking forward to MGS 2, any game with Square as a publisher slapped on it, FFX, and other stuff.

Not sure what cars have to do with it, but i think buying out Sega could have helped MS if Sega also started to release interesting titles, which they have failed to do for the last 3 years or so. Other than that, it's just the name, a very expensive name, with average games, apart from the very very few exceptions.

Are you saying that Panzer Dragoon Orta, Virtua Fighter 4/Evo, Sonic Adventure series ports, both Shenmues, SEGA arcade ports, etc would not have been interesting games even if they were exclusive to XBox??

GwymWeepa
For a second there I could have sworn you were talking about Rare

In terms of size, Rare cannot be confused, nor compared to SEGA as a dev, just look at the number of SEGA ports and exclusives spread out on all 3 consoles compared to Rare just being purchased, scrapping NGC SDKs and having to learn MS XBox SDKs to make ports of original games intended for another console.

Now lets say MS would have bought SEGA and all of those SEGA prototype Dreamcast games became exclusive XBox titles, then add to that SEGA's library of Arcade games to port as exclusives to XBox and pretty much the XBox would have been swamped with so many SEGA titles, many a fan would have just slapped a SEGA sticker on their XBox consoles.

 

[London Geezer]

Which is why Dreamcast failed, why XBox if launched in 1999 or 2000 would have also failed and why it took so long for our reality's 2001 launched XBox to make a statement in the last 2 months of 2004.

Ok.

And you would say otherwise??, really just think about it, the GC's specs are obviously far superior to PS2 and having a DVD drive and normal media would have brought in more 3rd parties to Nintendo than XBox.

Of course the only reason N did what they did in reality was based on avoiding piracy that technically is still being violated with the console and mod happy modding pirates.

That and "probably" that N wanted to avoid little Jimmy from getting a copy of Jenna Jameson's Aventures in the A or Private Films world class erotic entertainment DVDs causing Lil's Jimmy's parents to go sue happy.

Your post was ok up until that part... What on earth would Nintendo care about what movie people would play on their GC if it had DVD features??? So, parents would actually go out and sue Nintendo cause their son played porn DVD on his GC?
I've never heard of parents suing Sony or MS or Panasonic or Philips or JVC or any other company becasue "their son was watching porn on their DVD players"...
Remember, there IS a GC with DVD capabilities. It never made it out of Japan, sadly.

Well, do you think that MS could have secured exclusive agreements with Konami (MGS 2 and 3), Eidos (Tomb Raider), Square (FFX), etc??

Are you asking me in MS could do that? How would i know? If Sony could do it less than 10 years ago, many others could, with the right attitude and vision. MS obviously entered this market witht he wrong attitude, as we have all seen.

I agree, but not only that, I feel that people back then really did not know just how important transform & lighting, enviroment bump mapping and pixel and vertex shaders were because they were really looking forward to MGS 2, any game with Square as a publisher slapped on it, FFX, and other stuff.

True. And today's not all that different. Remember, we're talking about the casual gamers who do not know what a pixel shader is.

Are you saying that Panzer Dragoon Orta, Virtua Fighter 4/Evo, Sonic Adventure series ports, both Shenmues, SEGA arcade ports, etc would not have been interesting games even if they were exclusive to XBox??

PDO is exclusive, and Xbox has a few arcade exclusives. Obviously having more games, from Sega too, would have "helped". The point was, would it be enough for the Xbox to actually make its mark and take a significant share of the market from Sony? That's arguable, out of all the latest Sega titles, i can only see very few that would have "sold systems". They might be good games, but not system sellers. Especially the latest Sonic titles, very underwhelming, but then again, the Sonic franchise hasn't been great since the Genesis days.

Now lets say MS would have bought SEGA and all of those SEGA prototype Dreamcast games became exclusive XBox titles, then add to that SEGA's library of Arcade games to port as exclusives to XBox and pretty much the XBox would have been swamped with so many SEGA titles, many a fan would have just slapped a SEGA sticker on their XBox consoles.

Well that's obvious. Who likes Sega games will buy the systems where they can play Sega games.

The point was, would it be enough to "beat Sony"? That's the discussion here.

 

[Jacob]

And you would say otherwise??, really just think about it, the GC's specs are obviously far superior to PS2 and having a DVD drive and normal media would have brought in more 3rd parties to Nintendo than XBox.

Xbox has a DVD drive and not only has better specs than PS2, but also GC. Nintendo's 3rd party support was already low in the N64 days, Microsoft had one of the biggest hits this gen released at launch (Halo), had more western support (but lacked japanese support), an online plan, and Microsoft's brand and money behind it (we've bottomless pockets, we dominate everything!).

GC having a DVD drive would have helped, no doubt, but the only thing that Nintendo really needed was... wait for it... games. They didn't have one of their triple A titles at launch like they usually do, and when their flagship titles were released they didn't live up to people's expectations (they released some great new titles like Pikmin, though). For the last two generations, the main reason to buy a Nintendo system has been playing Nintendo's first party titles. If their quality slips, it makes the possible purchase of the system less appealing (which at the same time reduces the potential market for 3rd parties). It's a combination of factors what has allowed Microsoft to fight on equal ground with Nintendo in the console race.

BTW, the average gamer knows nothing about specs; at best, they know that bigger is betterâ„¢. There're people out there who genuinely believe that PS2 is the most powerful system (nowdays, they're outweighed by the ammount of people who firmly believe that the PS2 is crap for having 2000 tech in it though; damn, Sony was it that hard to make a little time travel?).

Now lets say MS would have bought SEGA and all of those SEGA prototype Dreamcast games became exclusive XBox titles, then add to that SEGA's library of Arcade games to port as exclusives to XBox and pretty much the XBox would have been swamped with so many SEGA titles, many a fan would have just slapped a SEGA sticker on their XBox consoles.

I still don't get what's the point of making "what if" scenarios about things that have already happened. I know someone in real life who does exactly that everytime he loses at something (anything): "if I had just turned a little faster...", "if I had just done B instead of A...", "if I had bought the other one...". It's extremely easy to make "what if" scenarios in which company Z could have just stomped the competition, but there's something called reality and a context that you can't just remove from the equation without entering the realm of pure fantasy.

I agree, but not only that, I feel that people back then really did not know just how important transform & lighting, enviroment bump mapping and pixel and vertex shaders were because they were really looking forward to MGS 2, any game with Square as a publisher slapped on it, FFX, and other stuff.

Damn the people, looking forward to play games instead of realizing how cool environment bump maps are. The game industry is going to hell, I tell you.

 

[jvd]

Well that's obvious. Who likes Sega games will buy the systems where they can play Sega games.

The point was, would it be enough to "beat Sony"? That's the discussion here.

No , it wouldn't be .


Actually there isn't any one move since the staturn that could have beat sony .

The one move would have been launching a more capable 3d system instead of the saturn . That would have taken aways sonys winds in its sales .


But now ms needs to do alot of things

They need more first part titles and exclusives that are popular .

Getting sega would have helped this and would have brought over a decent sized chunk of sega fans and still could but that isn't an option anymore .

Pay money to get the big franchises onto the xbox .


Imagine xenon launching with grand theft auto 4 exclusive , An exclusive metal gear solid game and then a few months down the line a new halo .

This would help ms sell alot of new systems and perhaps keep the spread this next generation much smaller than it currently is


(also buying nintendo wouldh elp them alot )

 

[hovz]

and rid us of a useless console and not force us to buy fisher price toys to play metroid.

 

[cthellis42]

<sigh> Yes. This thread is jumping up in quality fast.

 

[TheMightyPuck]

because microsoft is new, theres no bad history of it with gamers. the average gamer LIKES the xbox and DISLIKES the gamecube.

The average gamer needs to get laid.

 

[Jacob]

<sigh> Yes. This thread is jumping up in quality fast.

Don't worry, cthellis.

We'll be having a lot of these threads in the next 2-3 years. Fboy's hearts across the world are already tingling with excitement at the thought of a thousand flame wars, trolling attempts, advanced preemptive damage control tactics, ownage-fests, borderline-psychotic denial, massive bannings and just pure mindless fun that the next gen of gaming will bring into our everyday discussions. 1999-2001 all over again, aren't you excited?

We'll survive the massacre just fine.

The average gamer needs to get laid.

So true it hurts.