mdma: Never underestimate the power that a young child has over their parents. Nintendo are THE masters at exploiting this.
You know how many times I've walked into a game store and heard some parent ask a salesperson, "Which machine is best? I dunno what to get my kid for his/her birthday."
I think most game consoles these days, at least at system launch, are bought by teens with their own money.
mikrucio: the ps2 IS the most powerfull.
Careful. It's fair to say the PS2 is the most complex, but power != performance != speed. PS2 is very, very fast when rendering raw polygons, but is pretty awful once you turn all the effects on. The PS2 really isn't a very gutsy system compared to the other two.
Sony's tools are more to blame than the messy architecture, too. Most PS2 developers buy their tools from 3rd party developers. Sony can afford to shift responsibility that way.
It also depends how you harness power. Some of my Dreamcast games look better, and some games load in seconds while others take half a minute. It's kind of pathetic how inconsistent things are on the PS2.
Oh, and what about all those ports they stripped away on later revisions of the console? A few years from now, I doubt the PS3 is still going to have 6 USB ports and 3 ethernet ports. What on Earth is Sony thinking?
coldfish: M$ couldnt be happier that you're pirating Sony property!!! Youre actually helping them weaken Sony revenue!
It's actually debatable whether piracy hurts or helps a platform (and I'm not talking about what the companies think about it).
mikrucio: the xbox is a peecee. and it is easy to program. everyone has access to a peecee. thats why xbox is so popular.
Well, at the least x86 is easy to program in assembler, and has more tools available than any other CPU. I'm not sure how the graphics chip differs from what nVidia has released on the PC.
Darklight: The Amiga 500 was capable (and still is) of more than most people would give it credit for, hence its popularity during its short lifespan.
Short? The OCS chipset was hardly changed throughout the lifespan of the Amiga. I was very, very disappointed with AGA, and knew Commodore was finished at the time I bought my 1200. Commodore knew damn well they had a good chipset and felt no need to improve it.
LinchpiN: Didnt we all make a backup copy of WB?
Yeah, but CDs and DVDs don't wear out like floppies do. :-)
Face it, when was the last time you retired a damaged backup? Unless you're a klutz, of course.
Holley: Supporting MS, Sony, Nintendo, EA or Apple is supporting a company that has tried devious methods to crush others, and all work the system to extract money from the public rather than earning their income by providing genuinely worthwile products.
Thank you. It really ticks me off when people whine about Microsoft. Apple has a long history of dumping products shortly after launch. If Microsoft suported their products the way Apple did, the government would have broken them up a long time ago. Don't get me started about the dreadful MacOS 8.1 "superpatch" before they released 8.5.
Oh yeah, and don't get me started on Sony, either.
fx: PlayStation 3 looks frickin' awesome
Much of what they showed off left me shaking my head. The F1 demo really disgusted me as the physics were attrocious. Killzone is also the ultimate demo -- all staged graphics and no indication that AI is controlling the bad guys. It's like watching those rediculous Ruby demos released by ATI. Games are not movies, and never will be.
I buy game machines to play games, and only after I know what games are going to be available.
I also never buy a system at launch (though I did get my Dreamcast after a few months). There's too many reliability issues.
After a year or so, I might consider a PS3. The original XBox has nothing that interests me, and I might get a used GameCube to play only three titles. I've got more than a dozen PS2 games, and about 30 PSX titles.
I'm no fan of Sony, but I can't say Microsoft or Nintendo did very well over the last few years. I don't see any real changes happening soon. I'm sorely disappointed with Nintendo. Everything went sour with N64 and they just haven't improved.
DonnyEMU: A good game is a masterpiece and should be treated like that.
Have you noticed that despite the invention of memory cards, even the "masterpieces" are too damned short? I like Sly Cooper, but after you take out the cut-scenes (which you can't skip over), it equates to, like, 5 hours of gameplay the first time through, and maybe a half-hour the second time.
I'm boycotting Half-Life 2 because of Steam, but I hear it's in the same camp. 12 hours of gameplay or so.
Where's all this revolutionary AI we hear so much about?