alexsok said:
Would you mind showing me any game on GC/XBOX/DC that has this "living city" feeling while playing?
How does this have anything to do with the platforms? You surely don't want to argue that GTA3 or VC couldn't be ported to GC or XBox, do you? Please keep soft- and hardware seperated from each other in this argument, as you should know there's hardly anything unique to the PS2 hardware that makes games like VC possible, its marketing departments that take care of this exclusiveness of titles.
Sure, the graphics are a bit outdated, but the overall polish of the title is much more than you recognize. Without a doubt, Vice City is an achievement, from many standpoints, ranging from graphics, art, sound, music, gameplay and so on...
True, but wouldn't you agree that GTA3 would deserve the "technical achievement" award more than VC? VC for itself would be an outstanding achievement, but as it is its "just" more of what was already done before, polished and improved.
PS2 is a wonderful machine, but if you want to get the most out of it (which apparently, not many developer houses succeed in doing), you need to invest a large sum of money and have a very talented group of programmers, which brings me to the one major minus of the PS2: the overall complexty of the machine, the way programmers need to write assembly code to get the most out of the system as the compilers pretty much suck ass (one aspect where XBOX/GC suprass it).
Its a question of efficiency, PS2 hardware is powerfull but as you said complicated to fully take advantage off. "Great" hardware shouldn't be complicated and hard to exploit, especially if the end result isn't technically "better" than the competition. Since when are increased development cost, more complicated coding and limitations for artists great? It complicates things and takes up financial and human resources that could very well be used otherwise (e.g. making other games or producing more content). Look at your yearly tax declaration and tell me it would be "great" if you would need to fill out 10 forms instead of 6 to produce the same end result? In the end its the huge PS2 userbase which makes it possible that the increased development costs are worth it. IMHO PS2 hardware is "powerfull and good enough", it's the games and userbase that make it a geat console though.
As I noted previously, the hardware is great, we just need more developer houses investing large money in their games and a talented group of programmers who can tap the real power of the PS2 (which according to certain papers, hasn't been tapped yet).
Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Money is limited, human resources are limited and there's no guarantee for a retun of your investment (unless you're Squaresoft maybe)! But even if that were the case, I have my doubts that the "real power of PS2" that supposedly "hasn't been tapped hyet" is going to offer it any breathtaking suprtiority over the other systems. There are other consoles out there that have these powers right there, ready to use, even for medium and small development houses, so how the heck can it be a good thing that PS2 is such a hard beast to tame?
Its a crappy situation for a small developer you know - you see the huge PS2 userbase and you'd love to make that kick ass idea of yours into a game for the system. Yet, although you have a good art team and decent coders, there are simply no resources to pull of the micro-coding required to achieve the kinds of effects people are used to seeing from Square games (and its not only a question of money, there are probably only a couple coders on this world that know how to really take advantage of PS2 hardware). Well, you could make the game on budget and with all the visuals you have in mind for XBox instead, but then you only have 1/5th or so the potential market.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that what you are trying to sell as a minor hardware weakness, is driving development houses all over workd nuts! Not every developer and/or publisher on this planet has the kinds of resources houses like EA, SEGA or Konami have, yet PS2's hardware approach basically limits the number of developers that can really push the system to a selected few. Which basically sucks IMHO...