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Marek

"Game journos go where the wind blows?" aka console war thread #137

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Right so first everyone is like Wiiiiii omg it will own, PS3 too expensive lol Kataguri am cry, giant enemy crab!!!

Then the three Wii events happen and everyone is like "oh shit it's $30-40 more expensive than I thought, Nintendo failure, plus it's not that exciting anyway and the launch games we previously said were awesome are now not new anymore therefore meh, 360 for the win".

Then TGS happens and everyone goes "HOLY SHIT PS3 VICTORIOUS, 360 has given up Japan (apparently by announcing several Japenese RPGs), and Wii sucks anyway, say hi to our 1080p overlord!!"

I'm guessing everything will shift back to 360 after X06 (i.e. tonight)?

So I'm obviously bored and trolling a bit, but I really get the impression that a lot of writers are responding directly to the events and not putting it into a larger perspective. I'm not saying you should have one opinion and then stick to it forever, but the flip-flopping that's occuring in the blogosphere/journosphere (:shifty:) is kinda annoying.

I have always said that Wii is going to do great, 360 is going to do great everywhere except Japan, and PS3 will do kind of okay and grab its piece of the pie (as in, it's not an N-Gage) but will be a failure in corporate terms and in overall developer support, and I really can't say any of the events since E3 have changed my perspective other than substracting or adding minor percentages of confidence for the three platforms. Is it really that easy for companies to sway public opinion like that?

I should probably get back to my job now.

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I think that's kinda the nature of the blogosphere (and by extension the journosphere, since so many sites seem to want to imitate blogs these days). Its mechanics (the incredibly short shelf-life of any story) rewards and encourages this amnesiac approach of posting today's events and then posting a quick shallow opinion on them, without any effort to find context.

It sucks. I'm bored of having every internet fanboy believe that their opinion now carries some weight because they have a .com address or a Joystiq/Kotaku/whatever posting account, and because their populist rants get picked up by aggregating sites like Digg. I'm hoping that the coming console battle proves so different from what these 'pundits' predict that they acknowledge their irrelevance and disappear back to the message boards from whence they crawled.

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blogosphere/journosphere

There is a simpler term: wankosphere. Why can't we just call it 'journalism' and be done?

I'm hoping that the coming console battle proves so different from what these 'pundits' predict that they acknowledge their irrelevance and disappear back to the message boards from whence they crawled.

What?! They'll just flip-flop again and claim they were always right, even when you point out their original posts evangelising to the contrary. Tosspots.

But it's a fair observation; it's the fickle nature of online reporting, because it can be consumed so rapidly - and people are so hungry for the latest scraps of information - that profit-turning game sites will and do wax lyrical about whatever's currently in vogue. Then something better comes along.

And that article about Microsoft giving up on Japan is utter tripe; I didn't see anyone accusing Nintendo of blowing out Japan, because they decided to make their announcements just a handful of days before TGS. What's more it isn't like MS turned up empty handed and just talked sales projects etc. either; the games shown look very promising and are sure to have excited plenty of Japanese gamers, especially with Blue Dragon being a pack-in title and Lost Odyssey looking The Shit. Fucking moron -- makes my piss boil so it does...

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That's not what I was saying. Of course you can adjust or even completely reverse your opinion if there is sufficient basis to do so. But really it just seems like some people have low attention spans and let their opinion go in every direction all the time depending on what information came last, not the sum total of information.

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I'm pretty irritated by the opinion swinging too. Every site/blog seems to become a fanboy resource for a different console on a weekly basis, and it's impossible to work out what the true opinions of the writers actually are. Bloggers also seem to be easily swayed by small tokens (Free Wiimote!!!!!!!!!!), resulting in yet more skewed opinion.

I have faith in the Wii, but the Xbox 360 has a very important place in the future of gaming too. They are two very different consoles that I think will carve their own distinct audiences over time and both do well; I think a few more writers need to recognise this and stop playing them off against each other, although I must say with the recent PlayStation 3 backlash that has lessened somewhat.

The PlayStation 3 I am less confident about since it seems very similar to the Xbox 360 in a lot of ways. I find it kind of annoying that while you can easily describe the differences between two as "One delivers a play experience like never before in how you physically interact with the games, the other delivers a play experience like never before in the presentation and ability to handle larger, richer gameplay", with the other two it's more like "One has Halo, the other has Metal Gear Solid".

The only defining trait between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is pretty much the games themselves, and not the way you play them; I'm don't think the technological differences between the two consoles won't pan out into having that much affect overall. I'm not sure the industry should still be like this, and Nintendo obviously recognises this.

Man, I love tangents.

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The unique selling point of the Xbox 360 is really the 360 operating system in combination with Xbox Live. It includes the smooth online play, online game store, downloadable content, a strong competitive social element ('oh shit I can see my friend is still playing Oblivion! better catch up') and strong promotion of specific titles through demos. (Dead Rising and Fight Night's successes depended heavily on this.) The whole connectivity thing through XBL is something that gives the platform focus and is easy to communicate and demonstrate to consumers. It changes the way you play games.

Sony would like the PS3's USP to be BluRay (and 1080p) but I think it's harder to convince people of its importance. And despite what they want people to think, they do not have "their own version of Xbox Live", but something that is going to be inferior.

Of course there are other factors such as brand power and games lineup but I think these are, for a large part, consequences of the focus/positioning of the platform and the level of support given to developers. Both Wii and 360 have a focal point and excellent developer support, while PS3 seems like an expensive high-end jack-of-all-trades with poor developer support and questionable concept approval from Sony.

This is for instance why SquareEnix is likely to move Dragon Quest to Wii, i.e. the effects of a platform's positioning gradually trickle down to the lineup. Of course you can try to sell anything to consumers with great ads and marketing and a bunch of paid exclusives and be succesful to some degree, but your product positioning still matters above all. PS3 is poorly positioned to be the leading platform this gen, and while it will find a large audience, 360 and Wii are the ones that will be calling most of the shots in terms of innovation and penetrating new markets on their merit as products alone.

Woo, tangent time!

I hope what I wrote made any sense.

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Marek. You have posted enough in this thread to make a new article ¬¬ . Also, I agree with you.

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My thoughts: It's rather difficult to get back to the Thumbs main page once you go to the forums. Maybe it shouldn't be, since this place is pretty fresh.

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I don't think it's so much the "journalists" or the weblogs, or online media in general, that is responsible (though they don't help matters). I think it's more to do with the nature of the majority of the fanbase. The industry throws around claims that the average gamer is ridiculously (:period:) old in an effort to establish itself and make it seem legitimate, but those numbers are bullshit. The majority of the industry still revolves around teenagers. Teenaged boys. And the majority of the buzz and hype still emanates from their greasy pores.

Hell, I was one once and I can attest to the fact that I had bad taste and I couldn't keep my mind straight on anything.

The study, whose sample is comprised of 16,670 participants between ages six and 44, found that 45 percent of the study’s “heavy gamer” segment and nearly one-third of its “avid console gamer” segment (the largest group in the study) were between the youthful ages of six and 17. The findings contradict the wide belief that the most committed gamers fall in the coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic.

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Heh, well hopefully Nintendo can broaden that fanbase somewhat. It's what they seem to be driving for, anyway. It can't be denied that those who've grown up with gaming are getting older though, and there must be an extremely large volume of people in their 20s/30s. Unless they're what Nintendo has termed a "lapsed gamer" anyway. ;)

By the way n0wak n0wak, it's spelt "ridiculous". Just so you don't make that mistake somewhere important in the future like in an internet argument. :tup: :tup:

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The unique selling point of the Xbox 360 is really the 360 operating system in combination with Xbox Live. It includes the smooth online play, online game store, downloadable content, a strong competitive social element ('oh shit I can see my friend is still playing Oblivion! better catch up') and strong promotion of specific titles through demos. (Dead Rising and Fight Night's successes depended heavily on this.) The whole connectivity thing through XBL is something that gives the platform focus and is easy to communicate and demonstrate to consumers. It changes the way you play games.

That's the reason I finally caved and got a 360. I was skeptical until I tried out Live at a friend's house a couple months back. After that, it was only a matter of time until I got a paycheque large enough for me to consider dropping the cash. Got a raise at the end of August, got a 360 first week of September. I was that convinced.

PS3 has yet to show me anything that makes it necessary. I'll admit that the TGS show did give it a bit more lustre in my eyes, but there's still really nothing that great. Everyone is talking about White Dragon, but after watching the vid, I feel kinda underwhelmed by it. Gimme Blue Dragon any day though, looks great. After all these months of Sony fucking up over and over and over, it'll take more than one decent showing to sway me. I'm also having a lot of trouble understanding why the wankosphere (great word, Wrestlevania. I think I'll steal it.) seems to have no long term memory. And any time that the PS3 starts to tempt me, I can always remind myself that Gran Turismo HD is shipping without any fucking cars.

By the way, Thrik, proper grammar does not involve writing the name of the person you're addressing twice. :period:

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Clearly an oversight. :fart:

I was pointing out n0wak's mistake since it seems to be an incredibly common error and presumably one he habitually makes. I'd imagine he wouldn't want to use it in articles and whatnot throughout life like I used to with "identicle". Man that was lame.

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Everyone is talking about White Dragon, but after watching the vid, I feel kinda underwhelmed by it.

You know this already, Miffy, but it's a good opening to redirect people's attention to my thoughts on The White Knight.

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BONUS ROUND!

While the PlayStation 3 and 360 versions of Assassin's Creed are virtually identical, Raymond did say that on the 360 the team is putting a special emphasis on achievements. The hardware also allows for improved threading, which will improve even further the crowd AI.

Blogs ready ... FIGHT!

(But really, this is pretty interesting. Poor AI performance was one of the things that Chris Hecker and others raised an early alarm on at a theoretical level, and people have kinda forgotten about that particular line of debate. I want to know whether this is marketing smacktalk or whether the theoretical predictions have come true.)

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Differences such as having Achievements or not having Achievements between the different formats are completely irrelevant to my mind. What will matter, however, is the next-gen gaming experience; more organic, natural experiences are one of the key apects of this, so platform differences -- i.e. the competance and believability of the AI -- will matter. At least for me they will. :hmph:

I'm not prepared to believe anything about PS3 vs. X360 at this point until we have complex titles for direct comparison across both formats; Assasin's Creed looks like being the best early yardstick we'll get.

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