Console Wars: The Clone Wars

[asleepathewheel]

CoD4: Awesome game. I've had it since dec, but haven't played until yesterday. Wow. I really love the frequent checkpoints, as I have a supreme tendency to get blown up by grenades.

Deserves all of its sales.

[Asher]

The production values are immense.

I'm also enjoying Burnout Paradise...there's some obvious design flaws with the open world concept, but fundamentally it's solid.

The online play I particularly think is well implemented...from inside the game you use the d-pad to pull up online challenges, then other people join your world. There's typical races, but what's innovative and fun is the "Freeburn Online"...you all race in the same Paradise City and you can work together or against eachother to accomplish "challenges". For instance, all drive on the I-88 freeway into oncoming traffic at the same time and narrowly miss 5 consecutive cars.

I had a blast. I was just going to check it out last night and ended up playing for hours into the night cause I ended up with a great group of guys and we blasted through about 20 challenges together.

[DrSpike]

I don't like the open world approach that much, and I'm giving it a miss.

CoD4 though is

[Asher]

It takes some getting used to and is only frustrating when you want to do one specific event and re-try it. I was a bit put off by it at first but came not to mind it to enjoying it over my ~20 hours of gameplay in it right now -- particularly when you know the city like the back of your hand through all of the events and just exploring.

There's just a ton of gameplay here for completionists...it'd take over 100h to fully 100% complete the game I'd reckon. I got to the credits have 20h but I've still got a TON of events to do, about 30 cars still to unlock (I've got 50ish out of 80), 300 someodd online challenges.

So while the learning curve is higher than before and there are some design flaws, I found it highly enjoyable.

[asleepathewheel]

You have the wheel, don't you? Do you prefer that to using the controller?

[Asher]

The wheel is good for casual play, for competitive play the controller is a bit more precise.

[lord of the mark]

"Citing NPD numbers, Microsoft released a statement today saying Xbox 360 sold $184 million worth of games in February, with Wii selling $130 million and PS3 selling $97 million. About $159 million of Microsoft's $184 million in game sales were from third-party games, which the company said represented 45 percent of third-party market share among current-generation consoles"

those numbers would confirm that Wii SW strength is far understated by the top ten, no?

Wii numbers would indicate a tie ratio not that much worse than 360s - but thats including WiiPlay I presume, and of course SMG which probably was strong despite not making the top ten.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
once again 360 loses on HW, cleans up on SW.

Only in the US.

Outside the US, the Xbox is a marginal player, especially in Japan. I know you Americans like to think that the rest of the world does not count in some strange way, but there are many more of them than there are of you, and the game market is worldwide.

What this really is, is Xbox 360's last stand. It's been hammered outside North America, and now Sony is ramping up to take the North American market too. Xboxes are a North American thing. No one else really cares.

Microsoft had a whole year's head start with no competitor. They had another year where their main competitor was expensive and couldn't match their game catalogue. Despite all of this, the PS3 is being adopted at a faster rate than the Xbox 360.

It's already over. The PS3 won months ago. The North American press simply can't see that, since they mostly look at their own (anomalous) back yard.

Only an idiot would buy a 360 now. It has no blu ray drive, expensive wireless, poor media centre capabilities (due to the ridiculous fans), proprietary storage, and most of the decent exclusives for it are or will be available for the PC. Add to that a 30% failure rate and the thing is just a gigantic toilet. Better to buy a product from a company that actually understands how to design hardware.

I hardly use mine now, although I bought it long before the PS3 was available.

[Asher]

Yes, this is the Xbox 360's last stand.

Let's ignore the fact that the Xbox family has just had its best Holiday season ever, best January ever, and best February ever despite shortages...yes, the 360 is really screwed, Warhawk is better than Halo 3, no 360s work, no one plays Halo 3 any more (ignore the millions of games played daily, kthx), etc ad naseum. You flat-out lie on these forums, you say the most flat-out stupid things on these forums, and you run away with your tail between your legs for months at a time before you collect all of the stupidity around you and pour it into these posts.

It's already over. The PS3 won months ago.

Why do you waste your time posting when anyone who reads it would deduce you are mentally deficient or on a payroll?

I am genuinely amazed anyone can be this stupid. It must be some kind of troll, but there's nothing amusing about it, it's just unabashedly pathetic. What is wrong with this world we live in?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Agathon


Outside the US, the Xbox is a marginal player, especially in Japan.

Last I checked, the ps3 was largely a marginal player in Japan as well, so I'm not sure I would be using that as a supporting point for your arguments.

[Asher]

Because some times a simple graph is more fun than words

Originally posted by Agathon
What this really is, is Xbox 360's last stand.

...

It's already over. The PS3 won months ago.

[Asher]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel



Last I checked, the ps3 was largely a marginal player in Japan as well, so I'm not sure I would be using that as a supporting point for your arguments.

He's disconnected from reality. The 360 isn't a dominant console at all in Japan, but it doesn't have to be. The 360 won't be the #1 console in Europe, but it doesn't have to be.

If the 360's gamerbase is in English-speaking country, then the games coming out for that platform are going to be ones targeted to that demographic. The 360's non-success in Japan means I'm less likely to get games like Japanese Schoolgirl Skirt Adventures 391, but doesn't affect me getting games like Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Burnout Revenge, GTA4, NHL, Assassin's Creed, etc.


What matters to virtually everyone on this site, except Agathon, is how the game consoles do in the English-speaking world: USA, Canada, UK, Australia, etc. In these territories, the 360 is the dominant platform and will remain the dominant platform for any reasonable forecast this generation. This means the 360 will continue to get the games that the English-speaking market prefers.

Agathon can argue til he's red in the face that Japan is utterly important, but that's not the case. Look at the success of the 360's software. That's all you need to know.

The 360 has been out for 2.5 years and it's still selling more each year -- even though it's only dropped in price $50!. This is unprecented in the console space. MS is consistently making sizable profits on Xboxes for the first time in its history. MS has a lot of latitude in terms of pricepoint that Sony has already used up in massive pricecuts. To get any reasonable adoption rate, Sony has had to spend billions to bribe studios to make Bluray the standard and Sony has had to lose billions of dollars in lost hardware costs with insanely aggressive pricepoints. This isn't the market talking, the PS3's sales only took off when Bluray was the victor of the format war, which tells you exactly why people are buying it -- and it's not as a game console.

There were issues with the first gen 360s with reliability (I don't think 30% is unreasonable). But by any reasonable account, MS has stepped up with an unprecedented warranty program to fix this for no charge at all. We also know the new 360s from the past 8+ months are far more reliable as well, even though they still get the insane warranty that the PS3 lacks.

The 360 is far from dead. It might be in Japan (I don't even follow the sales there but I'm guessing 360 is way way dead last still), but that doesn't mean **** to anyone here but Sony fans and Japanese people. It is the next-gen gaming platform in English-speaking countries. Sorry, Aggie.

[flash9286]

As long as the 360 still has the best games, and it looks like it will in 08, who cares if the ps3 outsells it by a couple units.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Agathon


Only in the US.

yeah well this was about the NPD results. The NPD SW results paint the best possible picture for the 360, since its not only their best market, but its the top ten and favors the block busters that appeal to its core demo, not the scattered casual and niche games for say the Wii.

To do a real overall picture of the global console market would require regular and repeated attention not so much to Japan (where no one has ever really expected the 360 to be a player, and the real story has been the strength of the Wii, IIUC) but especially the European market. And we just dont have the traffic to keep up such a discussion.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


Exactly. Thanks to the voracious appetite of the 360 userbase (****, I have I think 18 games now, and I've just had the 360 since early oct),

"where do you find the time to play so many games?"