Actually, NWN2 and Oblivion are two of the more system demanding games out there (and they aren’t all that old). The example is a very good one.
Just adding fuel for the OP, I was in Best Buy today and they had at least 50 PS3s for sale. I asked a clerk when they came in and he said 2 or 3 days ago. They were telling people to show up before the store opened on the 21st if they wanted a Wii however.
Thing is, though, you can still play games made on the PC years into the future, just not at the highest possible settings.
Console technology doesn’t advance. The XBox you get in 2001 is the same Xbox you get in 2005. The games and graphics technology are the same. You get no upgrade in performance in years.
But most/all PC games are designed to be very scalable to run on older hardware. So, if you get a PC, you can do the same thing - not get new hardware all the time, and just bump down the settings when you need to. And this is effectively the same thing as owning a console - your graphics technology is at a set level, and doesn’t advance.
You’re effectively listing the inability to advance in technology as a plus consoles have over PCs, when it’s really a disadvantage.
Imagine they came out with a new model of xbox every year, that played the same games, but each time, looked better than the previous ones. You could either choose to buy the new model every year, or just keep your old model, and play the same games, and just not have them look better. It’s pretty much the same thing, except in reality the PC allows you to keep up with technology, and not wait years for an upgrade in technology.
I was at my local Best Buy early yesterday and they must’ve had 2,000 PS3s. They had taken to building an exact scale model of Venice.
Pretty impressive, imo.
Round here, they’re grinding down PS3s and using them in cattle feed. Meanwhile, anyone who’s even seen a Wii is automatically granted a knighthood.
Knighthood? You should hold out for more. I’m now Baron Just Some Guy.
Of course the PS3s are now so plentiful they have replaced urinal cakes.
Around here, they’re burning unsold PS3s in generators to generate power to satiate the massive strain on the power grid caused by Wii’s being used 24 hours a day.
Here many PS3s have been converted to George Foreman grills. The conversion is simple - just attach a steel plate to it and turn it on. If done correctly, you can play games and cook a meal at the same time.
For having a Wii available for my family on Christmas morning, I was crowned king of my own country! KNEEL BEFORE ME, PEASANTS! 
As long as we’re so wonderfully on-topic, what’s the projection for the Xbox 360?
I’ve got the original Xbox. My favorite gams on it have been… oops, I meant to say “games,” but as far as gams go, the girls of DOAX have pretty nice ones.
Anyway, my favorite games have been Halo, Dark Alliance, DOA, and Morrowind (which I now also own and prefer on PC). I liked renting Burnout, but didn’t buy it. I had one of the baseball and football games for it, though I forget which titles — haven’t played in a while.
I’ve put off getting a 360 because none of the games really reach out and grab me. Well, that, and it’s four hundred bucks.
What’s on the horizon? A price drop? New games coming out? Cool stuff? Is it worth the upgrade if I’ve already got a gaming PC?
Tough call on the XBox 360.
Going for it: There are now 10 million of them. It’s a critical mass of systems that insure that development is going to continue on it. People who weren’t planning on getting one because of the price are now being driven to it by the PS3 pricing. The upcoming game line up looks bright, especially for the kind of games that were done well on the original XBox. Finally, the Wii’s position in the market isn’t solidified yet and Microsoft may be able to take advantage of that to cut out a more significant market share. The online play is by far the best of any console out there.
The problems that the XBox 360 has to overcome: That $400 price tag seems reasonable next to the PS3 but it isn’t at a level that will make systems fly off the shelves. The Japanese market is pretty much completely dead; the US might be the single largest market now but Japanese publishers aren’t going to look to the XBox 360 for exclusive titles or even their target development platform. They may be relying too much with the online experience which hasn’t really caught on with console gamers outside of a rather small circle.
Microsoft is doing a lot of things right with the 360 and I think they’re going to be rewarded with a larger market share than the original XBox had. I don’t see a complete market split happening like in the SNES/Genesis era and I don’t think they’re going to overcome the Wii in the long run, but they’ll carve out a respectable portion of the US and European markets.
The 360 has a few much-hyped and very killer-looking exclusives on the horizon like Bioshock, and it’s going to have the next Grand Theft Auto at the same time as the PS3. I think that the GTA4 release is going to be the “tipping point” (to borrow from professional douchebag Malcolm Gladwell) for many gamers - they’ll realize that now they really need a next-gen system, and the 360’s the obvious choice over the PS3 for the vast majority of gamers.
However…
The 360 has a few serious hardware problems that need to be addressed, most notably the well-documented overheating problem. The system overheats even when placed in a well-ventilated area, and players have already reported system deaths and component failures as quickly as hours after taking it out of the box. You know it’s a bad scene when there are already several aftermarket coolers for the system - one of which is notorious for melting onto the back of it, it gets so hot!
I’m going to predict that the 360 will win this round of the console wars. Even with the problems with its hardware that people have pointed out, it’s a system that’s comparable to the PS3 in terms of power and graphics and the PS3’s $600 price tag makes the 360’s $400 look like a bargain. I’m sure Microsoft will get the hardware problems ironed out eventually.
I think that a lot of people see the Wii as a novelty or a family system, as opposed to the 360 which looks like a serious gamer’s system. I think that the Wii will sell gangbusters, but globally I think that the 360 is going to beat it.
It’s a good thing Nintendo isn’t trying to compete with Sony and Microsoft this time around.
Personally, I see value in having both a Wii and a 360. There’s very little overlapping of features in each; the Wii has the more interesting control system and Nintendo-brand games, while the 360 has the more hardcore games and HD quality video. And you can get both for the price of one PS3.
I’m with you - barring some major PS3 price drop or hardware overhaul (a blu-ray-less version?), I imagine that I’ll be getting an Xbox 360 (once they fix the overheating problem) to add to my Wii. There’s nothing on the system yet that screams “must-have,” but once the next Grand Theft Auto is on the market, we’ll see.
Right there you’ve touched on two major problems that Nintendo has to overcome to be crowned winner of this generation. Nintendo sold the Wii on the strength of that controller and it was the right strategy because it sold the distinctive features of the system. The problem is that the Wiimote isn’t just a motion sensing stick and a lot of people don’t realize that. The Wiimote and nunchuck give you an analog stick and twelve buttons to use in a game (the PS2 has 13 buttons counting the directional pad on the controller); it’ll work just fine for the same kind of games that have been around before. Without the nunchuck you’ve got a digital pad and six buttons. More than any platform before it developers on the Wii need to really think about how they’re implementing the control scheme. There are games that will take advantage of the Wiimote and until the Wii builds its own critical mass of customers those games will be the system sellers, but not every game has to track motion.
And it doesn’t help that there’s a lot of “Nintendo is for kiddies!” sentiment out there that has been running around for a long time that at this point is completely without merit. Convincing the teenage boys that currently dominate the market that Wii is the platform for them is going to be the trick.
Personally I think Nintendo can do it. They’re positioned well in the market, the developers are shifting gears fast to provide more Wii games and I think one killer ap being ported to the Wii is all it will take to send the hesitant into Nintendo’s arms. I think Metroid Prime 3 could do it, but it’s going to be next December before we really see how things are shaking out.
I haven’t picked up a Wii yet (but I will Sunday morning), and I’ve only fiddled with it in some game stores, but are the twelve buttons really accessible the way a PS3’s thirteen are? It seems that if you’re using the Wiimote and Nunchuk at the same time there are some buttons that practically become inaccessible.
I think the Madden controls are a decent compromise between old school and new school. It basically controls like a normal football game with movement on the analog stick and turbo and dive buttons and all that. The motion comes in with throwing passes – a quick gestures gets you a bullet, a slow gesture gets a lob. This works really well, but can still be done while sitting way back on the couch. No flailing around necessary. They don’t make you steer your player around with the wiimote or anything like that. Kicking field goals actually requires a tiny bit of skill now.
It’s been a while since I’ve given a crap about a Madden game, but this version is different enough that it isn’t just a $50 roster update.
Four are accessible without second thought (A and B on the Wiimote, C and Z on the Nunchuck). Six more are accessible without really shifting your hand though I welcome disagreement on this since I’m also the guy who thought the original XBox controller was the right size (the directional pad at the top of the Wiimote, minus, and plus). Two more require enough movement to not really be instantly accessible (1 and 2 on the Wiimote), but are more like the Start button on the PS2 controller in terms of accessibility. So four that are in a natural and immediate feeling position, six that require some thumb movement but not so much that they can’t be used for quick actions in games, and two that are best used for utility functions.
In case you were wondering, the Home button is always mapped to the Wii’s OS and the power button certainly wouldn’t count.
It’s a set up that can work very well for the vast majority of the games that were released last generation, but at the same time it means that anyone who was going to just use the Wiimote and Nunchuck as a standard controller still needs to put some thought into the user interface.
If the 360 doesn’t start making some serious numbers in Japan, I seriously doubt it. Even with the release of Japanese-friendly titles like Blue Dragon, the 360 is still lagging seriously behind the Wii and the PS3.
(And for those who haven’t seen it, the Japanese video game market is 98% Nintendo at this point. Last week’s top ten video game sales list avoided being a total Nintendo blowout only because Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops managed to get #7…)