Sunday link dump
November 13th, 2005 -- by Augie De Blieck Jr.
* More of the greatest bugs of all time.
* I don’t know what’s sadder — that Nintendo executives believe part of the reason the GameCube isn’t #1 is because its design looks childish, or that they’re right and gamers really are that superficial.
* The Toyota Prius gets an update, with tons of spiffy new features. Pictures at the link.
November 14th, 2005 at 9:42 am
The sad thing is that I think a lot of gamers HAVE beome very superficial. It seems the latest trend is to go for the mature rated game with lots of violence. It seems these days that if a games does not have that M or looks the least bit cartoony, then most older gamers (and some younger teenagers who think mature games are awesome) are not interested in them. And it also seems that if the game does not have the top of the line graphics then it sucks. Personally, I am 29 years old and have been playing games sine the Atari 2600 days. I play some mature rated games, but generally am not as interested in these games. I have found that I enjoy Nintendo games a lot, despite their looks and themse. I would much rather have a cartoony game with an awesome hook and fresh gameplay than a carbon copy, crappy game covered up with gorgeous graphics anyday.
November 14th, 2005 at 10:24 am
Josh - I saw an XBox 360 demo set up in Best Buy. I didn’t play it at all, but it looked very nice. They were showing off some war time FPS game, but that’s the problem: It’s the same game all over again, but just with slightly better graphics. A few more polygons does not a gaming system make.
I hope.
I’ll be proven wrong in the next couple of weeks, though. ::sigh::
November 14th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
I think you’re being unfair to gamers, Josh. One of the biggest games of last year was rolling around a sticky ball over the planet and picking things up. No violence, no gore, no boobies, nothing.
November 15th, 2005 at 12:23 am
Yeah, Katamari Damacy (the game Beau refers to) was pretty popular last year.
KD also won TOP designing awards from a videogame developer’s conference not long ago…
This year’s sequel to KD, “We Love Katamari,” has also been doing well.
I have to admit that personally my big bias AGAINST X-Box has been the over-reliance on ports of FPS from the PC and lackluster first-party games. Other than Dead or Alive and a few MS exclusives, what does this system really have that DIDN’T come out first on PS2? X-Box is a big “following act” to PS2 and really doesn’t have a lot of grab-you titles. Certainly nothing as funky as half the PS2 developers or Nintendo titles!
My prediction is that if X-360 doesn’t do SIGNIFICANTLY better than X-Box 1, MS is going to drop out of the console market. They lost well over $2 billion on X-Box. They made VERY little profit on that system and that’s only within the past year or so!
I have a GameCube as well as a PS2, but really I play the PS2 a LOT more because of the fact that Third Party support is so much better on that system than the GC. Yes, Nintendo still develops fine game and IS the best First Party developer on the planet, BUT they can’t be the sole supporters for their own system.
You still need decent third party support to be number one and THE mainstream system on the market.
So far, only Sony has done a good job with this the past ten years…