Morrowind! Yay!
Well, there goes my next month and a half!
And Justice League Heroes... I wonder if its been discounted yet... :-)
Still missing some real jewels, though.
Starting with DeusEx: Invisible War. That's probably the best game still off the list now that Morrowind made it in...
(I'll have to look into transfering some of my saved games from the old Xbox to the 360...)
BioShock is due in three weeks, no?
Air Combat is due in October and got a small mention.
...and was mildly surprised that in a show ostensibly geared to the press, MS was clearly and obviously focused on gamers and developers. Especially the latter.
They lost the press' attention the moment they said they would only be presenting games shipping by XMAS because that meant the press pretty much knew what was coming (with a few minor surprises like Scenit and Part Animals...)
However, the presentation was clearly and strongly focused on two messages and the media seems...
As I pointed up above, broadband internet isn't the only way to get video downloads; the cablecos and telcos are moving to a downloadable VOD model to replace the existing VOD tech. So we're not just talking MS vs the world; we're talking MS *and* the world.
Second, even the slowest broadband conections are...adequate...to the job. I have cheapie DSL myself (768Kbps) mostly cause except for a couple movie rentals a month I don't really need more bandwidth. What I do is either s...
And they're one of the masterminds behind BD+, the second layer of DRM in Blu-ray disks.
Best guess is that, counting every last PS3 sold, there are about 4 million BD players out there. Credible reports have pegged the movie attach rate for BD players at 1:1 so that means that in a bit over a year, BD had sold $100Million worth of movies (average street price of $25).
Well, MS just announced that Video Markeplace had moved $110 million worth of content in 8 months.
That'...
1- Their box isn't powerful enough to decode and display HD video
2- They don't offer a HDD yet so there is no place to hold the video even if it could
3- Nintendo has no connections in the media world (like Sony and MS) so they wouldn't know where to start to get access to the videos, even if they had a HDD and the box could handle it
4- The Wii usage model isn't compatible with video downloads anyway. To make video dl's work, you need the console to be permanently conne...
"We don't care that we're going to lose our shirts, MGS4 will stay on PS3 only. Oh, and we're filling for chapter 11 tomorrow." ;-)
The Video Marketplace HD dls can look amzingly good, or just slightly better than DVD. It depends on your personal taste to a large extent and the the "look" of the movie itself. Some movies are shot with visible grain and/or soft focus as a stylistic choice while others are razor sharp by design. Guess which looks best as a DL? ;-)
Want to see how hood the DLs can be?
Easy; got to Video Marketplace-->Movies---> Clips
Pick out any or all of the HD Matrix c...
Did Kim just Osborne the 360?
Announcing a price cut without announcing the date is basically telling would-be buyers: "Don't buy. Wait."
Not wise, Mr Kim.
The price cut now has to be announced sooner rather than later.
Friday?
The media seems to have this stereotype of "hard core" gamers in mind that just doesn't line up with reality. There is a split among buyers but its not a cultural split as they try to make it out to be. Its not about hardcore vs casual at all. The split is all about price.
When the media divides the gamer community into hardcore and casual they're really talking about affluent and less-affluent, about those that can afford to drop $400-$600 on a console, another hundr...
...but *if* (big if) the telcos are going to be distributing XBOX hardware as the high-end IPTV STB, they may want a version of the hardware tweaked to their specs, say a 200GB HD and a custom Dashboard.
Still, it is just as likely somebody painted a 360 gray and put it on display on purpose to mess with people's minds. ;-)
I like two theories:
1- its the monthly rental IPTV version
2- its a reworked Core to replace the existing white Core.
But most likely its just a new version SDK box.
Two worlds for PS3 exists only as an idea; they're "looking into it". They haven't started coding.
You willing to wait til XMAS 08? Surely by then you'll have moved on, no? ;-)
Maybe the sequel...
...includes all the small downloads (Wizard's Tower, Spell Tomes, Mehunes Razor, etc) that add up to $14, plus Shivering Isles, $30, plus the Core Oblivion, so $50 is hardly outrageous. ($6 for the packaging and manual is plenty reasonable.)
Surely you guys can get $6 for the used original disk, no?
And yes, the add-ins are worth their individual prices; they're lots of fun. Especially, Shivering Isles.
And, of course, if you don't have it yet, then it is an outright ba...
...but Sony is known for playing games, right?
The combo of price drop *and* new, barely different SKU at the old price smells to me like "inventory clearance" pricing. They do this all the time with other products in their line of business; drop the price on last year's model, stop producing it, and then slot in the new model at the same price. Common practice in HDTVs, PCs, and other businesses. No real evil, just not exactly honest, if you expect the older product to hang ...
Given the fine print/sub-text on the PS3 "drop" (the $499 price is for the existing 60GB model--read: unsold inventory piled up on shelves--you gotta wonder if there will be a shortage of the 60GB PS3s like there was a "shortage" of the 20GB model until such a time as they can drop the 80Gb model to $499) one might reasonably wonder if MS will simply follow suit with a summer cut to move inventory to clear room for the Falcons and then play another card (bundles, most like...
...Its already been delayed all it was going to be delayed. ;-)
(Originally it was a Fall 06 game, and then it slipped to spring.)
Here's a thought: games that ship in august have to go Gold (manufacturing) *now* and games that ship in oct can wait til sept. Maybe the publisher is waiting to see what E3 brings? 8-|
The danger to PS3 here is that some of the publishers might be delaying not because the game isn't ready, but hoping for a price cut/larger installed b...
MS knows that for the next couple of years the vast majority of consumers, when faced to choose a disk-based video delivery mechanism will choose good old DVD. For starters, they already own the players. And the movies run as low as $5 each for back catalog and $12-15 for new releases. DVD is a $20 Billion a year business unto itself. Blue laser movies so far are on a pace to deliver, maybe, 1% of that volume.
In other words, the masses aren't buying BD or HD-DVD and they won't. For a ...
HDMI smooth jaggies?
On what hardware?
Sorry, but, if anything, HDMI *introduces* jaggies that aren't there on antialiased games.
You ever hear of overscan? It totally kills anti-aliasing. And the majority of HDMI-equipped HDTVs out there stupidly overscan everything except VGA.
Of course, for some reason, PS3 developers *don't* appear to use anti-alisiasing at all, which makes things worse once overscan on HDMI and component kicks in. Wish somebody would e...
...to go with Blue Dragon, his traditional JRPG...
That and his reputation had me interested.
Then I played the Blue Dragon demo.
Good grief!
People *like* this stuff?
Have they ever played a modern rpg at all? Sorry, but after two KOTORS, Jade Empire, two Elder Scrolls, and a whole bunch of action-rpgs I have no patience for this ritualized linear-to-the-hilt...stuff.
If I want stylized combat, I'll play chess, thank you very much.
...