i think i might buy a console system by the end of the year, i'm trying to decide which one i should go with. Xbox seems to be more shoot'em up games and sports games. I love rpg and stragety which i dont' know if the playstation will keep it's dominace in the field. Yeah they got Final Fantasy series, but since the last great one (tactics) I haven't held much confidence (though the new one looks good). WII will be the cheapest, with 2 kids and a nagging wife I"m constantly strapped for cash, and i think it would have more kid friendly games as well.



thoughts?

I'm going to get the wii because I like the controllers. I've been wanting those kind of controllers for years now. Plus it's alot cheaper thn the others.

Second choice is the PS3. I just can't EVER afford it.

Wii first, then I might buy a 360. There is nothing about the PS3 that excites me, nothing that won't have a release on the other consoles. I never got into Final Fantasy, I was too busy playing Zelda. My wife likes the Suikoden games but I can grab her a PS2 to play those on. Well, a PS1 if I am honest; she prefers the older ones to the newer ones.

I played the 360, though I don't like its emphasis on FPS games. If I want an FPS, I will buy it for my PC.

PC.

Best, console, ever.

I already have a great PC, an XBox, and a Gamecube. (just for background)
I have a Wii on reserve. They seem to be more focused on innovation and gameplay, rather than OMFG-GRAFFIX!!!!1
I plan to buy a 360 when they get a larger game base, and I might pick up an old PS2 when they're super-cheap, 'cause they do have some good titles.
A PS3 would pretty much have to fall on me. I don't plan on buying one, ever.

Wii to start with till say 3 or 4 years from now when the PS3 is finally reasonablely priced. till then I'll stay with my PC and PS2 and yes Hocus Pocus I do like FF12

Chances are you won't be able to get a PS3 this year anyway, just considering their ridiculous shortage. 360 and Wii you'll have no problem getting ahold of.

360 will have good rpg and strategy titles, but is really a "boy's club" system just like the xbox was. Depending on your home situation, that could be disruptive.

Wii will have a lot more family friendly games, and will have more of a "toy" feel to it. It's also the only system of the three that doesn't feature a DVD player, if that makes any difference to you.

boy's club?! whatever do you mean? I mean, sure they had that DOA volleyball game...

what's the deal with the controlers of wii?

wii has no dvd player?, been using my PS2 as the dvd player ever since our dvd/vhs one gave up the ghost



PC-i really want to be able to play with my older kid. My wife used to play games while we were going out. I want to try to get her interested (if she ever was to begin with or was just faking) and have something else we enjoy doing together. And the only thing I'ved noticed that i might need to use a PC is online games which I've realised monopolized my time away from the family


overall if i can get a system with alot of kid and family games first, and then my favorites of stragety and rpg along with the cheapest I"d be happy



Final fantasy- never got into it?!?! then you must not have played 1,2,3(the best) i highly reccomend it, then you'll know what a video game masterpiece is yes indeedy!
(oh celes my darling I'm here for you!)

For what it's worth, I'm probably going with a PS3. Amazing first-party titles, backwards compatibility, potential for seven simultaneous players on a single console, and the fact that Team Silent is almost certainly making SH5 for it makes it compelling, and the news that it will apparently be highly general-purpose with a Linux base just barely makes the (extremely high) price swallowable.

~J

1,2,3(the best)



*disclaimer...US versions*







played my final fantasy VI soundtrack today while I was cleaning up the house. Pluperfect masterpiece.

I've been kinda down on pluperfect music lately. Give me a good future perfect album any day.

~J

saw my first wii commercial today. kid was playing a ww2 game and pretending to shoot and punch and the controls responded and the game emulated what he did. Hmm i dunno about that...

read some stories of people camping for the consoles.

Wii, from the reviews I've seen it delivers what it was created to deliever, a new type of gaming experince for both hardcore and casual gamers alike.

The Playstation 3 is tempting, but not until they've worked the bugs out. The PS1and PS2 emulators don't work right, potentially rendering hundreds of popular games unplayable.

Report is that about two hundred games don't work correctly, where "don't work correctly" ranges between "totally unplayable" to "cutscenes don't play sound" (which varies widely in importance by game) to "background music sometimes doesn't play" (which, granted, again can be very important for some games).

As for which games they are, some of them are popular. Most of the ones I've seen, though, I've never heard of, and a decent chunk I'm pretty certain aren't even available outside Japan. If you go for importing, though, that'd be an issue (but your first issue would be, if living outside Japan, getting a Japanese PS3—while PS3 games aren't region-locked, the console apparently obeys the region-locking on PS2 and PS1 titles.), but most people shouldn't be bothered much.

Most of the big-name problems stem from the fact that there's no emulation of the PS2 hard drive. That one's a showstopper for several big games, FFXI most notably.

~J

One of the big problems (I dare say the biggest) is that the emulator isn't really an emulator, it is an interpreter. This is true for all of emulators for all of the later generation consoles simply because emulating advanced graphics hardware is so processor intensive that it isn't feasible on any modern computers. Instead, the "emulators" are programed to interpret the game software and run it on the hardware that is present.

Sony uses their own SDKs as the basis for their interpreter and this is the most obvious solution. The only problem is that many games use nonstandard techniques in order to get the most out of the available hardware. While they would work fine on perfect hardware emulation, one must program the interpreter to recognize those programing techniques.

Because of this, they have to implement customs fixes for every nonstandard programing technique and this takes time.

The PS2 hard drive would have to be emulated, as unless I remember very poorly indeed, the PS2 didn't handle multiple partitions on its hard drives and the PS3 needs its own chunk of the hard drive.

As for PS2 support, it's handled with an entire hardware PS2 (actually, I think calls to video hardware are interpreted). It's not emulated, but there's no interpretation going on there either.

Short answer: apart from the hard drive issue, most major issues are due to developers doing things they shouldn't have been doing. Most developers that are willing to do things they shouldn't be are smaller outfits, hence most games that have trouble are not what you might call "widely known".

~J

At this point, I don't have much interest in any of the new consoles, but I must give kudos to Nintendo for actually making some innovative hardware. None of the games using the technology really interest me right now, but I think it definitely has potential. I hope someone figures out a way to make a game with fun swordplay (Red Steel, from what I hear, failed to deliver in that regard.)

"Innovative" is debatable. It's an idea that's been done before a number of times, Nintendo just is doing it when it's actually feasible (or at least that's what it looks like).

No one used a remote-control interface for the motion-sensing before, granted.

~J

A man in Minnesota was shot and robbed walking out of a Wal-Mart with his new PS3. Fucking. Ridiculous.

I mean, fuck. Where are our damn priorities and how fucked up are our perspectives when we FUCKING SHOOT PEOPLE OVER A DAMN VIDEO GAME MACHINE?????

Disgusting.

There were also three similar incidents in WI, KT, and CT.

Is it bad to say that I am not in the least surprised?

There are probably 50+ awesome games I haven't played for the PS2, all of which could be found used for under 20 bucks at this point, and with the amount I play video games, I'm good for another 10 years or so...

The Wii is amazingly fun. Wii sports are pretty simplistic, but they're designed to be accessible, not 100% realistic. There will be more realistic sports game coming for those who want to worry about the difference between an 8-iron and a 9-iron.
Zelda: Twilight Princess is really fun. I've heard it being critisized as 'dated', but accusing it of being too much like Ocarina of Time, arguably one of the best console games ever made, isn't all that bad.
I'll admit Red Steel isn't quite what I'd hoped it would be, but it is still a lot of fun. Definitely worth renting for the experience of playing it, even if you don't buy it.
The Wii has worse graphics than the other next-gen consoles, and a heck of a lot less processing power, but it is, IMHO, the most fun console I've ever laid my hands on.

If you honestly thought that what Sony did doesn't count as deliberate, maybe you're just not paying attention. Do you really think that nobody at Sony knew, prior to the release date, that having less than a half a million consoles ready to ship at release was a bad idea? Or do you think that nobody bothered to check to see how many there were and how much demand there would be?

These are the guys that made the PS1, the PS2....they're not exactly new to this.

Don't agree if you don't want to, but I don't think I'm the one that has to prove anything here.

I'll ask the naive question, Eidolon. What's the purpose in this? Why create the false shortage? Doesn't that cause them to make less money, by selling less units? If PS3s are selling for $9,000 (I almost put 9000 nuyen) on ebay, Sony isn't seeing anything past their initial sale anyway. So why?

Despite being a Playstation fan and owning a PS2, I weakened and treated myself to a X360 last month (reward for having completed my thesis at last).

First X360 unit was faulty and had to be returned in about a week. Not had that problem with a console before, but the replacement has been fine.

I got it mainly for Oblivion, which I couldn't have run on my PC or laptop without massive investment (that and in some ways I prefer gaming on consoles- it's just a more social activity that way).

The wireless controllers are great. But you'll get them for PS3 as far as I know.

Have played Oblivion for hours and hours. Great game- though would presumably be just as good or better on a top-level PC or PS3.

Borrowed various original xbox games off friends, and managed- for most of them- to do the downloading nonsense necessary to make them playable on the X360. No way to get Chronicles of Riddick working though, which is a shame, as I'd heard good things.

Other X360 games acquired so far: Test Drive Unlimited- which is huge and looks great but hasn't entirely held my attention; Dead Rising- which is fun and wonderfully cinematic, and it's great to see hundreds of zombies on screen at the same time, but it's seriously hampered by almost illegible text (we don't all have HD TV's, Capcom), and an annoyingly sparse savepoint system.

Nevertheless, all these games are good showcases of next-gen console gaming.

Just acquired Gears of War. Yes it's another FPS, albeit with tactics, but it certainly is very very good, beautiful to behold, and almost painfully intense.


So thats the X360. I don't regret buying it, and I think there are some good games out there for it. What worries me about the PS3 is that I haven't seen any particularly appealing games for it yet. But knowing Sony that'll change.

Still, not sure I'll bother getting a PS3 unless I've got an HD TV (which won't be for quite a while) and can take full advantage of the blu-ray. May well pick up a Wii at some point, just because it looks like a fun thing. Will depend on the games though. It's all about the games.

Okay. Agree to disagree.

Whale's vagina.

Could be. I don't know enough to form a strong opinion, so I'll just stockpile rumors in my head.
Personally, I think Sony is going to lose this round of console wars, and their next console won't be called the PS4.
I doubt I'll ever buy a PS3, because for the money I could get 12+ Wii games. I can't say enough good things about the Wii. It's just more fun. (more fun than any other console I've played, although I admit I haven't played a PS3, and have barely touched an XBOX 360, so take that for what it's worth)
Oh, and I picked up Trauma Center: Second Opinion yesterday. I never played the DS version, but this game is also extremely fun.

@Moon-Hawk,

It'd be interesting. I wonder what they'd call it? NPS4?

What games have you played on the Wii so far?


edit: Oops, a few posts up. I can read...

Well, it would be worse than that—it would be how Nintendo "lost" with the N64 (overwhelming market dominance to merely existence within the market). That said, I was trying to clear up whether you meant that kind of loss, the Dreamcast kind of loss, the XBox kind of loss (possibly-pyhrric victory), or the "came in something other than first" kind of loss, as they're all losses of a kind but very different.

Edit: I should add that the Gamecube outsold the XBox by a small margin on the worldwide front, and actually made (as opposed to losing) money. It's far from "definite" that the XBox beat the pants off of it.

~J

I meant something in the Gamecube to N64 level of loss. I guess you're right, N64 is probably a better analogy than Gamecube in some ways. I don't expect Dreamcast levels of loss. Sony can weather one bad console, as long as they don't have two in a row. Nintendo was only able to get away with two weak consoles in a row because they're Nintendo, and I think the Wii is really going to either return them to the head of the pack or boot them out of the console market, 'cause not even Nintendo can handle three weak consoles in a row.
But, from the looks of things so far, Nintendo is going to come out of this round in pretty good shape.

edit: regarding your edit: Good points about the Gamecube. I just always got the impression that the XBox did better. I have both, and I've really enjoyed both.

Sony had troubles with manufacturing, that's a fact. I don't believe they deliberatly delayed release in Europe until March next year. Eidolon is right in a way, though. Because even if they didn't have problems with getting enough components for the blueray player, they would still have had a minor shortage that would have been deliberate. There was a delay with Sony's stand alone blueray player too, so it's not just the PS3. And the lack of a Sony blueray on the market was not a good thing for Sony, as it's their format and there were already HDDVD players out, so that delay was absolutly not deliberate.

Nintendo makes money off of every console they sell, and they rule the handheld market. They're not even bothered by this console war.