CyberPundit - I don’t know jack-and-the-beanstalk about the logistics of console marketing, let alone all the questionable decisions that have come down the pike (really, now, is it a good idea to have your exclusive be Dead or Alive 3?). From what I’ve seen, however, this is what I can tell you:
- If you expect anything in this loopy industry to make sense, prepare to be bitterly disappointed. The Dreamcast was all but unopposed for nearly two years, and it couldn’t get any momentum going. It’s a hell of a system. The earliest PS2 games had no advantage over the DC’s selection. It even had the much-vaunted internet support (heard it was really important; wouldn’t use it on a bet). Multiplayer support standard. And even the paucity of RPGs was never as huge a problem as everyone made it out to be. What the hell happened? I still can’t explain it.
Or how about the PS2. This was the system everyone had to have. This was a system that went for thousands of dollars on E-Bay. A system diehard gamers camped out for hours in front of the store, than fought a bloody battle for the tiny handful of consoles available. Oh, and you remember how hard it was to find a place that had a single PS2, right? Remember when stores would go for monthswithout a single unit, and it got snapped up the instant it was available…no surprise, since hardly anyone had one of these things? Remember when at least 90% of the games were sports, sports, sports? Say, wasn’t it RPGs that were supposedly so vital? And no one had anything bad to say. Here was a system that, for over a year and half, was praised to the moon for NOTHING. And of course, now that it’s actually worth having (we just got our modded system last week), all anyone can say is how it’s too weak and the X-Box is going to take over and blah blah blah.
Nothing makes sense. Nothing. Learn it. Remember it. It’ll save you a ton of bewilderment down the road.
- You know all those ultra-super-megahyped games that everyone knows the name of, right?
Do they deserve the hype? Of course…they’re the kind of games that that kind of gamer likes. What kind? Well, the kind of person who’d camp out for days to be <<THE FIRST!!>> to get a PS2.
I’ll use video game magazines as an example, because they’re on the forefront for this sort of thing. The magazines absolutely love complexity. The harder it is to even walk down the street or pull out a weapon, the better. They also love challenge, by which I mean the amount of torment and pain you have to go through to get anything done. Depth, or replay value, is also a big plus.
Here’s the problem, tho…everyone’s different. You might not like Grand Theft Auto 3. If you don’t, there’s nothing wrong with you; you just don’t go for extremely dangerous missions and having the law constantly on your back and having to learn 200 different weapons and vehicles and enemies and locations.
Any company that’s serious about making their system a success will have a wide variety of games. And make no mistake about it, tremendous processing power and 8MB of memory do not eliminate the need for as many different kinds of games as possible. The PS2 does have games other than Grand Theft Auto 3 and Tekken 4 and Metal Gear Solid 2. I know. I’ve played many of them. I’ve enjoyed many of them immensely. I’m not weird for this, and Sony’s definitely not weird for catering to my tastes.
- Ah, specs. Numbers. Processing power, RAM, megahertz, gigaflops, pixels.
All a colossal waste of time.
But nothing. Numbers are meaningless, and anyone who compares them needs to get a life.
Okay, I know that some systems are more powerful than others. The Super NES, for example, was clearly a better system than the NES (although flying into the teeth of Mortal Kombat-inspired paranoia badly hurt it), the PSX was much better than the Super NES, and the PS2 blew the doors of the PSX. But how, praytell, is the X-Box vastly superior to the PS2? It may be slightly more powerful, but how the hell are you even going to notice? The only way to notice is to bring up the raw numbers…and even they don’t tell the whole story. How many games use all the processing power? How much does the extra memory actually help the loading time? How much of an advantage does the more powerful system give less advanced (okay, “arcade style”) games?
The only differences are the ones you can see and hear. Period. I’m astonished by how so many players are willing to completely abandon their eyes and ears the instant they see the little spec box. Specs are for engineers and advertising agencies. Your role is far simpler.
- There’s a current mentality running around that if you’re a peripheral manufacturer who’s not absolutely under the thumb of the company that created the console, that gives you free reign to unleash the shoddiest, buggiest, crappiest products imaginable.
You think I’m exaggerating, right? I wish. I’ve already bought a joystick that not only took up a ton of space, but the the joystick and buttons were impossible to move, and the program feature didn’t work at all. I exchanged it for a “fighter’s stick”…which featured a stick that was stiffer than a dump truck’s and didn’t have diagonal points. (I was able to get some use out of it, thankfully.) Oh yeah, there was also the pad that would accidentally slip from cardinal points into diagonals. And my Gameshark 2 has periodic crashing problems, the only solution for which is to reset all the codes.
In each and every case, the excuse offered was “Well, it’s not a Sony product, and you never know what you’re going to get from 3rd party manufacturers.” One would think that 3rd party manufacturers wouldn’t like lost sales and bad press any more than any other company, but apparently, they just don’t care.
All I can suggest is that you always be clear on the store’s return policy. Besides that, caveat emptor.
- If you look hard enough, you can safely mod a PS2 to play imports. Let’s be perfectly clear on this. Sony has stemmed the tide with their byzantie regulations, but not stopped it. Where there’s a will, there’s always a way. So don’t be misled by glowing news articles about how Microsoft cracked down on a modchip manufacturer or someone’s installing tough new measures or whatever. You really can’t stop a raging river by throwing a few rocks in.
Of course, caveat emptor applies even more in this case. Even you have access to the chip, you’ll want someone trustworthy putting it in. Don’t try it yourself unless you really know what you’re doing.
Hope this helped. 
