Yeah, the poll is missing the I'm not interested in a PS3/PSN version at all but would get it for the other systems.
Uhhh...
I clearly put in a "I want it for PC" and a "I want it for Wii" options.
How is that not the "don't want it for PS3" option?
I just divided it into two options to allow for more information to be given.
And speaking of more information, currently the poll shows MORE people are interested in buying the game for the PS3 than are interested in the Wii version. (Granted, the poll is a little slighted since the thread is titled about the PS3 and not all formats, but still the degree to which the Wii version is out of favor exceeds any reasonable degree to which that result has been slighted, especially since there is such an outstanding number of people voting for the PC.)
Oh, and I'm not a PS3 fanboy.
I just would far rather have the game on my PS3 than on my Wii or my PC.
I know many of you will disagree with me and I'm not about to explain myself fully here, but games just do not last on the PC. I have far too many PC games that cannot be played on my PC because they are too old, including half of my Monkey Island collection, so I'd much rather have an unhindered copy on my console. And the Wii has crap for storage space, and I'd be getting ripped off to have to store the game on an easily lost SD card.
So I'd much rather have the game on the PS3.
I clearly put in a "I want it for PC" and a "I want it for Wii" options. How is that not the "don't want it for PS3" option?
I just divided it into two options to allow for more information to be given.
See like the whole first page of replies to this thread... Such as the comment "I would definitely buy for either Wii or PC, but I don't like PS3" one. You made a poll to judge interest in the PS3 version, so its strangely missing the 'I don't care about a PS3 version at all' option. Dividing that option into the two parts gives more info on the Wii and PC versions than it does on people not caring about the PS3 version.
games just do not last on the PC. I have far too many PC games that cannot be played on my PC because they are too old, including half of my Monkey Island collection, so I'd much rather have an unhindered copy on my console.
That's no different than a game coming out on the PS2 and then you can no longer play it on the PS3 (especially since Sony stopped making backwards compatible PS3's). You're arguing that games don't last on the PC and citing MI games which at earliest are 9 years old; oldest 19 years, while there isn't a PS3 game more than 3 years old? That's a skewed comparison if I ever saw one.
Plus, I have not encountered a single PC game too old that you couldn't download some program to play it on a current PC (including every single MI), but even if that weren't true, the play-life of a game on a PC is way longer than the shift between console generations.
I would get re-buy the game in a PS3 version if it came on DVD/BluRay...I am not a big fan of download-only copies of software/games. I like to have something physical in case I lose the data. That's precisely why I pre-ordered to make sure I get a copy of the PC version's DVD.
Uhhh...
I have far too many PC games that cannot be played on my PC because they are too old, including half of my Monkey Island collection,
ScummVM or DosBox is your friend in this case, the original monkey islands even play better with ScummVM because they deactivated the Codewheel (well not really deactivated you just can use anything and will geht into the game)!
I have yet to find a game which I cannot run on the PC some are harder to run, but most of the times in those cases an emulator does the trick. Ultima7 for instance for many years was the hardest game ever to run due to its own memory manager on top of dos, but even this one nowadays is not a problem thanks to the excellent Exult!
And for Lucasarts, all Lucasarts games except the 2d ones can be run in ScummVM, and Grim Fandango should run fine in DosBox (I have heard running it straight from a PC is a bigger problem because it relies in processor timing and crashes here and then if it does not get the right timing) and EMI is D3D so it should run in Windows!
Heck I even run from time to time the old Infocom adventure games on my PC (I bought a collection in 1990 the last time when Activision rereleased them). I wont even talk about all the other emulation stuff, which is not really in a legal area unless you own the original roms (you can get some legal collections for the amiga and C64 nowadays), but nevertheless great.
That's no different than a game coming out on the PS2 and then you can no longer play it on the PS3 (especially since Sony stopped making backwards compatible PS3's). You're arguing that games don't last on the PC and citing MI games which at earliest are 9 years old; oldest 19 years, while there isn't a PS3 game more than 3 years old? That's a skewed comparison if I ever saw one.
Actually the PS2 backward compatibility problem is one of the main reasons why I am holding back to buy a PS3. I never owned a PS3 and so I should be Sonys ideal audience for a PS3 given that I have a Full HD enabled monitor as well (Samsung T260HD, highly recommendable if you can live with TN panels)
but I do not want a PS3 at the current state of affairs. There are about 10 games on the PS2 which interest me, and about 2-3 on the PS3, I am not interested into hooking another 2 consoles on my monitor (a wii already has its place there) and I am not interested into going the PS2 route, although the console nowadays is cheap, it would mean going over a VGA box (the component entry already is used by the wii)
So PS3 would be neat but not as long as it does not do PS2 games. In the end I know at least a handful of PS2 owners who simply refuse to upgrade for similar reasons.
I would say the drop of backward compatibility (in Europe we never really had it fully, only in the half working software/hardware combination in the beginning) did hurt the PS3 more than the price!
You simply cannot abandon 100 mio existing customers with a snap of the finger than then thinking everyone is going to upgrade. Nintendo has that understood, they try to stay one generation backwards compatible until the gamestock has increased to decent levels (like it happened with the DSI recently)
For the price of a PS3, you can buy a PC that will run EVERY SINGLE GAME better than the PS3 ever could.
A PC has the option for a controller as well, so as far as I see it - there is no reason for me to ever buy a PS3/360/Wii game when it's also available on the PC. Unless the game sucks, but that's an entirely different cookie.
That's no different than a game coming out on the PS2 and then you can no longer play it on the PS3 (especially since Sony stopped making backwards compatible PS3's).
Yes but I have no problems playing a PS2 game on my PS2.
(And BTW, I have a PS3 that plays PS2 games just as well.)
And speaking of, I happen to have Escape from Monkey Island on my PS2, and it runs just fine on my PS2, just as it did the day I bought it.
Now I have Curse of Monkey Island on my PC, and playing it is a MUCH different issue.
It will not run on my PC, and it's already considered old for a gaming PC. So I have to play it on an old PC.
This means I have to the basement, dig out out this giant metal box, dig out a Keyboard with the giant-sized old plug, find a serial mouse, and then disconnect my monitor from my *modern* PC.
Now to be fair, if my PS2 were not hooked up and shelved downstairs, I would have a bit of effort to put it together, but no console I've ever seen is as big and heavy as a standard-sized computer, and plugging a console into my TV is wicked-easier than stealing my computer monitor.
And furthermore, the consoles are all set in stone, but PC's vary widely between each other. Were my equipment to fry, I can shop around and easily replace my consoles with the exact same hardware, because it is all the exact same hardware. The old computer I have downstairs I made by buying three separate machines from a thrift store and combining the working components into a single (and later a second) machine. It took me several days to do it. (being able to play Duke3D again was worth it, though.) And it may indeed play a lot of old DOS/early Windows games, but how well? Especially all of those early 3D games, there is little telling exactly how well the game will run, and what the quality will look like. I have a number of such games that are not capable of utilizing my 3D accelerators, and thus I am forced to run them without one.
And yes, DOS-box and ScummVM are splendid answers to these specific titles we have brought in for example. But they do not work perfectly for all old games. When I bought the Space Quest Collection, I discovered that it was designed to run by implementing Dos-box, but I could only play the latest of the games because all the others ran at too-low of a resolution for my fancy-schmancy LCD monitor to display. (I now use a very heavy CRT instead. Image is better anyway.) An even when using these external applications to emulate old hardware, they require some setup and installation of their own, which increases the hassle.
And moreover, my point is not about playing these old games, but the point is playing modern PC games in ten, fifteen, or however many years down the road. We cannot say for certain what will be available at that time. Oh sure, it is easy to speculate that the most popular games will have some ace programmer tighten the code so that a modern system can run it, but as an overall statement of PC games the only way to be certain it will run is to hold onto all the required old hardware and software.
And between keeping old PC equipment and keeping an old console, the console will store easier.
So THAT's where I'm coming from. I do not say that it is impossible to play old PC games, and I apologize for insinuating that it was, but my point is that in my experience it is much much much easier to play an old console game than it is to play an old PC game. And many of you may enjoy that extra bit of hassle, and since we are clearly talking about the subject of nostalgic gaming I cannot hold that against you. (Hell, I had fun putting together those old computers.) But this is my preference. I want this game on a console. (Assuming it to be ported correctly, and that's a whole different can of worms.)
I may be a PS3 fan, but not a PS3 fanboy. I hope you can understand the difference.
I enjoy having a PS3 and I like to play it, but I'm not going to go around pouting it to be the greatest thing out there. It has flaws. It makes me sad sometimes.
And yes, DOS-box and ScummVM are splendid answers to these specific titles we have brought in for example. But they do not work perfectly for all old games. When I bought the Space Quest Collection, I discovered that it was designed to run by implementing Dos-box, but I could only play the latest of the games because all the others ran at too-low of a resolution for my fancy-schmancy LCD monitor to display. (I now use a very heavy CRT instead. Image is better anyway.) An even when using these external applications to emulate old hardware, they require some setup and installation of their own, which increases the hassle.
Actually Scummvms scalers work quite well, as for dosbox if your monitor cannot handle it anymore you have to play windowed.
In my opinion the scaling problem is way worse with consoles, there are a load of people stuck in the Wii virtual console with titles they cannot play on their LCDs anymore unless they drop the component cable, some titles play well.
Not sure if dosbox does´t have also scalers inside!
Unless you hack your wii and install an emulator you dont get access to those titles anymore which you might have legally purchased.
Nintendo fixed the issue only for a handful of games!
The same goes for people who bought a second generation PS3 they are out of options to play their old PS2 games anymore, unless they add their PS2 to the monitor/tv (which for many is a no option)
In my personal opinion the PC is way more open regarding legacy software than any console, because in most cases the emulators do a decent job to do it!
And even if none of this works out you still can install good ole DOS on an extra partition if you want to go through the hoops!
The current stack of machines still can run it without too much hazzle!
(might change once the machines move over to EFI like apple already has done but for now it works!)
I already bought this game for the PC; however, I don't see any reason why Telltale shouldn't port it to the PS3.
The only reason I can see is porting effort, the PS3 is rather hard to program for... in the long run I am pretty sure they have to port their engine anyway, but it has to pay off!
I already bought this game for the PC; however, I don't see any reason why Telltale shouldn't port it to the PS3.
Agreed.
I'm a huge adventure game fan. I grew up playing all the classics like Zork, Space Quest, Maniac Mansion, etc.
As an adult with 3 children now myself, we have no small amount of entertainment choices in our home. But we don't own PC's... we prefer Mac. We don't own a Wii because (other than it's not HD, which is ridiculous this day and age) I think its titles are lowest-common-denominator entertainment, whereas there are more engaging titles for Xbox 360 (of which we own 1) and PS3 (of which we own 2).
I'd love to introduce my kids to these favorites like Sam & Max, Monkey Island, etc. But I am not in the minority as a Mac user (not anymore), or as a PS3/X360 owner. So sure, I'd prefer the games were available on one (or all) of those platforms.
The only reason I can see is porting effort, the PS3 is rather hard to program for... in the long run I am pretty sure they have to port their engine anyway, but it has to pay off!
Don't buy into the garbage that the PS3 is "hard" to program for. Its hardware and SDK are more sophisticated. But saying it's "harder" to program for is like saying the Wall Street Journal is "harder" to read than the Harry Potter series.
ps3??!?!?!? they will never see my money!!! the PS was the cause they have runed monkey island 4 just to make it playable for the ps version... this is my guess i'm not sure but it looks like.... so they will never have my support, sorry but i'm very disappointed about this arg.
They'd only put it on the PSN (PS3 Network) if it was guranteed to sell well, Sony charge more from teams to host games on the PSN compared to Nintendo and Microsoft, which is why most games arn't on the PSN or arrive at a later date once they have prooved sales on the Wii or 360.
You got that news item wrong. They charge for DOWNLOAD BANDWIDTH while Nintendo and Microsoft don't. So putting up a big demo is expensive and risky on PSN, but putting up an episode where every user has to pay anyway is no more problematic than on any other closed platform.
ps3??!?!?!? they will never see my money!!! the PS was the cause they have runed monkey island 4 just to make it playable for the ps version... this is my guess i'm not sure but it looks like.... so they will never have my support, sorry but i'm very disappointed about this arg.
That's not entirely true. EMI used a modified version of the control scheme from Grim Fandango, which was never ported to any consoles.
That's not entirely true. EMI used a modified version of the control scheme from Grim Fandango, which was never ported to any consoles.
i could be wrong now, but i don't think so if i rememer correctly, the control scheme was designed for a joypad/controller and not point&click using a mouse, so EMI was the first/last monkey episode that was using that kind of controls, and at the same time, it was the first/last (not so sure here about the "last") available for console and in that case, for play station... so that's the reason why i said what i said in my post, if i got wrong i'm sorry but this is what i remember...
About the PS3 in general and ToMI PS3 support in particular.
I, as well as the rest of Europe would welcome it, because right now there's nothing that we grownups can play (yes, I realize the irony of saying this, but at least in Germany Wii and XBox360 are primarily marketed for kids and young adults). Right now the PSN is sadly without any real adventures and while porting the TTT would take a bit more work than for XBox360, I think that TTG's catalog is by now big enough that we can be reasonable sure that porting the engine over would pay off.
I know that I'd repurchase ToMI and very likely Sam and Max... Wallace and Gromit maybe. Just for the comfort of being able to play these games on my PS3.
Don't buy into the garbage that the PS3 is "hard" to program for. Its hardware and SDK are more sophisticated. But saying it's "harder" to program for is like saying the Wall Street Journal is "harder" to read than the Harry Potter series.
It is hard, you have a rather slow processor with insanely fast vector units, and a toolset from hell which does not support you in any way.
Sort of like:"here is some shit, we dont know how to deal with it but you will figure out"
In fact of all platforms the PS3 probably is currently the hardest to develop for!
It is just that the frameworks already are maturing so it becomes easier
(especially the shooter engines) now, but that does not help a company which does use their own toolset.
Porting from the PC to the XBOX is a no brainer, but porting anything to the PS3 is a walk into hell!
It was pretty much was the same with the PS2 (two hard to sychronize mips prozessors doing anything) but the installbase justified to develop the tools!
Don't buy into the garbage that the PS3 is "hard" to program for. Its hardware and SDK are more sophisticated. But saying it's "harder" to program for is like saying the Wall Street Journal is "harder" to read than the Harry Potter series.
Actually, Sony Computer Entertainment's CEO stated they made it hard to program intentionally:
Absolutely foolish and completely disrespectful for developers and final users alike, of course, as many others of Sony's policies.
The PS3 is hard to program for, but that's not a disrespectful or out of malice. It's just continuing the strategy that Sony (probably accidently) started with the PS1 and championed with the PS2. A strategy that worked very well for them in the past and eventhough it's facing a bunch of problems in the current multi-console environment, it's still not a bad strategy.
Sony consoles are meant to stay for much longer on the market than competing consoles and if you want to offer consumers something new after 1, 2 or even 5 years you have to make sure that there's always room for improvement. Sony's architecture will allow developers to make part #2 of "Nazi Zombies from Space" much better looking than part #1, because at that point the developer will have a better understanding of the platform.
Of course, the situation sucks for smaller development studios, but Sony is actually working on that with an army of developers that they send out to studios working with the PS3 for the first time.
It's not perfect, but it's not nearly as unreasonable as many people say. It makes sense, even if you don't like it.
It's not perfect, but it's not nearly as unreasonable as many people say. It makes sense, even if you don't like it.
Ah! I call this utterly nonsense.
It's a bad strategy for me. It doesn't make sense at all, exactly because I don't like it.
I am the potential customer, you know.
It doesn't make sense at all to sympathize with business strategy that takes away from you. :mad: You are the customer, you can choose, and you bloody better should choose what is good for you and help shape the market accordingly, if you're not a bloody masochist.
If all customers had the proper perception of their role and use the power that buy or not to buy give them to support and hence indirectly shape better and more favorable business practices, the market will be a lot nicer to them and bullies like SCE will crumble... Oh, wait, they are crumbling (or at least taking a blow after the other and struggling a lot), aren't they? :rolleyes:
The PS3 is hard to program for, but that's not a disrespectful or out of malice. It's just continuing the strategy that Sony (probably accidently) started with the PS1 and championed with the PS2. A strategy that worked very well for them in the past and eventhough it's facing a bunch of problems in the current multi-console environment, it's still not a bad strategy.
Sony consoles are meant to stay for much longer on the market than competing consoles and if you want to offer consumers something new after 1, 2 or even 5 years you have to make sure that there's always room for improvement. Sony's architecture will allow developers to make part #2 of "Nazi Zombies from Space" much better looking than part #1, because at that point the developer will have a better understanding of the platform.
Of course, the situation sucks for smaller development studios, but Sony is actually working on that with an army of developers that they send out to studios working with the PS3 for the first time.
It's not perfect, but it's not nearly as unreasonable as many people say. It makes sense, even if you don't like it.
Actually the entire quote is just corporate propaganda, they got a lot of critizism that the console is hard to program for. Usually a corporation never freely admits that they have screwed up in some area. The Sony did not intentionally make it hard, the PS1 was easy to program, the Saturn back in those days was really hard (very similar architecturewise to the PS2 and PS3) things started to become messy with the PS2 and their two mips processors doing the heavy lifting and becam worse with the PS3.
Back in those days developers swallowed the PS2 due to its high marketshare and console development generally was lousy. But nowadays Microsoft and Nintendo got their act together and especially Microsoft has a really nice toolchain and good support while Sonys seem to stink.
So they got a load of critizism and they tried to spin it into the right direction.
The truth is over the lifespan of every console things become better due to the fact that over time developers bypass the apis and start to program the hardware directly, but making it harder in the beginning does not give a lot of incentive to even support the console.
It's not corporate propaganda... I've been saying that ever since I took a look at the PS2, well before there was such a quote from Sony itself.
But I guess we should split this whole discussion into two parts.
Software
I never had a chance to work with Sony's SDKs, but from what I hear they definitely need improvements. Especially compared to Microsoft, a company with a history of creating high level abstractions, Sony is very much new to this. In the previous generation of consoles, you gave developers a low-level API and let them develop the tools themselves, but with the XBox360 Microsoft changed the rules. More smaller studios want access to the console market and Microsoft is offering a good package for them. It won't give you the most incredible graphics, but it gives you an easy to use platform.
Hardware
Sony has a history of long-living consoles and the reason is that each generation included features that at the time seemed strange and exotic, but which were put to good use later in the lifecycle. Compare that to the XBox where all generations of games looked more or less the same and you can see the benefit.
Some commenter once described PS3s massive SPU power as a "solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist". And he was right. The thing is that this is really meant to be such a solution. Remember when the first dual core CPUs popped up? People said the same thing. GPUs? See above. Or if you want to go further back the math coprocessor on the Intel DX processors. All of these were first shouted at for not improving performance of /existing/ programs. And yet they each form a vital part of what we now see as "modern computing".
Actually, I do like the result: Having to buy only 1 console every couple of years instead of every 12 months.
I really challenge the reasoning behind this.
If, for given hypothesis, the PS3 hardware is good enough to support game concepts for a few years, what's the good in having games which are-less-good-that-they-could-be through these years? Or to have less games through these years since the developers are scared away?
Or to put it in another light: I really like to see a market driven by game concepts and not the number of lens flares (or whatever) available on screen, the hardware performance should be an issue when the number of lens flares (or whatever) is needed to support the game concept and make that game feasible.
In fact people today are (finally, I dare say) more excited about games themselves than performances.
If the PS3 hardware is good enough for a few years, it should stand on his own legs through these years, without the need of "rationing". We're not talking about something which is consumable here.
Or in another words again: you want my money? Give me substance, not business tricks, or more or less the same game with one lens flare more (or whatever) in each edition!! This is a waste of my money and, worst, my time!
Developers should be able to focus on innovative games concepts, so the be able to offer something substantially ever more satisfying each time through the years... and not wasting time fiddling and struggling to have these ideas come to life... and, forgossake, not be pushed into the way to re-release the same game concept with just one lens flare added (or whatever eye-candy) and call it new because they had to spend one year to figure out how to add one darned lens flare!!
I'm not sure about the reasoning behind that. I mean if you were correct, than why would we ever need to get a new console. The PS2 is plenty powerful enough to allow for pretty much any game "concept". Just not in the prettiest way.
and, forgossake, not be given the shortcut to re-release the same game concept with one lens flare added (or whatever) and call it new!!
Hardware
Sony has a history of long-living consoles and the reason is that each generation included features that at the time seemed strange and exotic, but which were put to good use later in the lifecycle. Compare that to the XBox where all generations of games looked more or less the same and you can see the benefit.
Some commenter once described PS3s massive SPU power as a "solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist". And he was right. The thing is that this is really meant to be such a solution. Remember when the first dual core CPUs popped up? People said the same thing. GPUs? See above. Or if you want to go further back the math coprocessor on the Intel DX processors. All of these were first shouted at for not improving performance of /existing/ programs. And yet they each form a vital part of what we now see as "modern computing".
Well I am not sure if sony really thinks about the possibilities of what they design in their consoles.
The road for the PS3 originally was pretty clear, extend on the PS2. The PS2 hat two mips processors with additional vector units doing basically everything.
The PS3 has a similar architecture but with PowerPC processors and better vector units. The main problem Sony suddenly had was that Microsoft came out with a console with a normal triple core processor and a GPU which blew everything out of the water Sony could achieve with a PS2 like extension the PS3 originally was. So sony threw in an nvidia GPU last minute to cope with this defizit.
Now that physics is taking slowly off the additional vector units are heavens sent because you basically can gain access to physics acceleration that way which vector units fit perfectly in. But I doubt Sony did have the foresight, history of the console does not speak for it they just love the parallel vectorisation units controlling the entire console design.
But the main deficits of the console cannot be bypassed on the hardware side, the price is too high, no backwards compatibility, and ram and the general processor speed are severe limitations, in fact so severe that once the next generation of new consoles hits the shore Sony has to follow as well. In fact most developers have the biggest problem with the lousy general purpose speed, after all you cannot vectorize 99% of all problems and that the ram is significantly lower than on the xbox and the PC (which again causes problems with textures etc...)
Hence I do not buy their 10 year argument at least not from a being the top console point of view. I just buy it from the PS2 argument that the PS2 still is sold as low end offering and probably will be for the next 3-4 years to come!
I'm not sure about the reasoning behind that. I mean if you were correct, than why would we ever need to get a new console. The PS2 is plenty powerful enough to allow for pretty much any game "concept". Just not in the prettiest way.
No. First example that came into my mind: really both immersive and destructible environment was more or less not possible on the PS2.
No. First example that came into my mind: really both immersive and destructible environment was more or less not possible on the PS2.
Ever played Red Faction? One of my favourite PS2 games. You could blow up everything, and I mean everything. It still beats anything I've seen on PS3 and/or XBox so far.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You say graphics improvements aren't important, but game concepts are. And then you say that graphics improvements are a game concept.
Ever played Red Faction? One of my favourite PS2 games. You could blow up everything, and I mean everything. It still beats anything I've seen on PS3 and/or XBox so far.
I see. Would it be possible also on a PS1 or a Spectrum?
Performance can be useful or needed to do something really worth, I'm sure you can come up with your own example.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You say graphics improvements aren't important, but game concepts are. And then you say that graphics improvements are a game concept.
No, I said that graphics improvements are not necessarily a worth improvement.
I see. Would it be possible also on a PS1 or a Spectrum?
That's why I said PS2. I didn't say technology was unimportant (you said that), but we passed the point were technology needed to improve in order to allow for new game concepts on the PS2. There are no new concepts that require better technology on either the PS3 or the XBox360. It's mainly eyecandy now. Higher resolution, better textures, better shadows. The new console generation doesn't offer any new technology-based concepts and it very likely never will.
but we passed the point were technology needed to improve in order to allow for new game concepts on the PS2. There are no new concepts that require better technology on either the PS3 or the XBox360. It's mainly eyecandy now. Higher resolution, better textures, better shadows. The new console generation doesn't offer any new technology-based concepts and it very likely never will.
Not really. Give me a good example of a game where the concept, just the concept, couldn't be done on XBox or PS2.
I dont' need to.
You stated that "we passed the point were technology needed to improve in order to allow for new game concepts on the PS2". It's a very strong statement, and contrary to the commonly held principle that discovers happen and new things different and better than things of the past are created each day.
You stated that "we passed the point were technology needed to improve in order to allow for new game concepts on the PS2". It's a very strong statement, and contrary to the commonly held principle that discovers happen and new things different and better than things of the past are created each day.
The burden of proof is yours.
How come? It was your statement that leaving room for graphical improvements for games of a later generation doesn't make sense. In any case I can't prove a negative. That's like asking me to prove that god doesn't exist. All I can prove is that right now there are no new concepts (that are based on new technology) on any of the next-gen platforms. Only the same old stuff that we've seen a thousand times before and yet next-gen is still selling.
But then there won't be any in the future of that platform. Limiting its lifespan.
That's exactly what I'm challenging.
There are many worth improvements -- or at least we can presume that someone will come up with some of them because, well, someone always did if there's the possibility and a fertile context! -- that can be done even while easily exploiting the hardware from day one.
If developers are forced through hoops to use the hardware, resources are taken away from them to achieve that kind of improvement.
Until the moment that some new concepts would not be feasible on that platform, and hence demand a more powerful one, that platform will live on... and be as good as it could be all the time through!
You never can. But you can extrapolate from what has happened so far and what's happened so far doesn't support your claim that without increase in available resources (yes, by making it hard to use the full resources right from the start) there will be significant improvements for generation 2 games over generation 1 games.
Edit: The problem is that yes, I'm seeing things a bit from a sales perspective. Both due to the fact that I actually am a programmer (although not a console programmer) and therefore generally on the "producing" side and also because I, as a user want to see continues improvement. Not "new console generation is out, now you can wait until the next one to get better games". Wouldn't that perspective bother you as well?
Comments
Uhhh...
I clearly put in a "I want it for PC" and a "I want it for Wii" options.
How is that not the "don't want it for PS3" option?
I just divided it into two options to allow for more information to be given.
And speaking of more information, currently the poll shows MORE people are interested in buying the game for the PS3 than are interested in the Wii version. (Granted, the poll is a little slighted since the thread is titled about the PS3 and not all formats, but still the degree to which the Wii version is out of favor exceeds any reasonable degree to which that result has been slighted, especially since there is such an outstanding number of people voting for the PC.)
Oh, and I'm not a PS3 fanboy.
I just would far rather have the game on my PS3 than on my Wii or my PC.
I know many of you will disagree with me and I'm not about to explain myself fully here, but games just do not last on the PC. I have far too many PC games that cannot be played on my PC because they are too old, including half of my Monkey Island collection, so I'd much rather have an unhindered copy on my console. And the Wii has crap for storage space, and I'd be getting ripped off to have to store the game on an easily lost SD card.
So I'd much rather have the game on the PS3.
Makes me laugh hard
See like the whole first page of replies to this thread... Such as the comment "I would definitely buy for either Wii or PC, but I don't like PS3" one. You made a poll to judge interest in the PS3 version, so its strangely missing the 'I don't care about a PS3 version at all' option. Dividing that option into the two parts gives more info on the Wii and PC versions than it does on people not caring about the PS3 version.
That's no different than a game coming out on the PS2 and then you can no longer play it on the PS3 (especially since Sony stopped making backwards compatible PS3's). You're arguing that games don't last on the PC and citing MI games which at earliest are 9 years old; oldest 19 years, while there isn't a PS3 game more than 3 years old? That's a skewed comparison if I ever saw one.
Plus, I have not encountered a single PC game too old that you couldn't download some program to play it on a current PC (including every single MI), but even if that weren't true, the play-life of a game on a PC is way longer than the shift between console generations.
ScummVM or DosBox is your friend in this case, the original monkey islands even play better with ScummVM because they deactivated the Codewheel (well not really deactivated you just can use anything and will geht into the game)!
I have yet to find a game which I cannot run on the PC some are harder to run, but most of the times in those cases an emulator does the trick. Ultima7 for instance for many years was the hardest game ever to run due to its own memory manager on top of dos, but even this one nowadays is not a problem thanks to the excellent Exult!
And for Lucasarts, all Lucasarts games except the 2d ones can be run in ScummVM, and Grim Fandango should run fine in DosBox (I have heard running it straight from a PC is a bigger problem because it relies in processor timing and crashes here and then if it does not get the right timing) and EMI is D3D so it should run in Windows!
Heck I even run from time to time the old Infocom adventure games on my PC (I bought a collection in 1990 the last time when Activision rereleased them). I wont even talk about all the other emulation stuff, which is not really in a legal area unless you own the original roms (you can get some legal collections for the amiga and C64 nowadays), but nevertheless great.
Actually the PS2 backward compatibility problem is one of the main reasons why I am holding back to buy a PS3. I never owned a PS3 and so I should be Sonys ideal audience for a PS3 given that I have a Full HD enabled monitor as well (Samsung T260HD, highly recommendable if you can live with TN panels)
but I do not want a PS3 at the current state of affairs. There are about 10 games on the PS2 which interest me, and about 2-3 on the PS3, I am not interested into hooking another 2 consoles on my monitor (a wii already has its place there) and I am not interested into going the PS2 route, although the console nowadays is cheap, it would mean going over a VGA box (the component entry already is used by the wii)
So PS3 would be neat but not as long as it does not do PS2 games. In the end I know at least a handful of PS2 owners who simply refuse to upgrade for similar reasons.
I would say the drop of backward compatibility (in Europe we never really had it fully, only in the half working software/hardware combination in the beginning) did hurt the PS3 more than the price!
You simply cannot abandon 100 mio existing customers with a snap of the finger than then thinking everyone is going to upgrade. Nintendo has that understood, they try to stay one generation backwards compatible until the gamestock has increased to decent levels (like it happened with the DSI recently)
A PC has the option for a controller as well, so as far as I see it - there is no reason for me to ever buy a PS3/360/Wii game when it's also available on the PC. Unless the game sucks, but that's an entirely different cookie.
Well, I guess I did see it coming.
Yes but I have no problems playing a PS2 game on my PS2.
(And BTW, I have a PS3 that plays PS2 games just as well.)
And speaking of, I happen to have Escape from Monkey Island on my PS2, and it runs just fine on my PS2, just as it did the day I bought it.
Now I have Curse of Monkey Island on my PC, and playing it is a MUCH different issue.
It will not run on my PC, and it's already considered old for a gaming PC. So I have to play it on an old PC.
This means I have to the basement, dig out out this giant metal box, dig out a Keyboard with the giant-sized old plug, find a serial mouse, and then disconnect my monitor from my *modern* PC.
Now to be fair, if my PS2 were not hooked up and shelved downstairs, I would have a bit of effort to put it together, but no console I've ever seen is as big and heavy as a standard-sized computer, and plugging a console into my TV is wicked-easier than stealing my computer monitor.
And furthermore, the consoles are all set in stone, but PC's vary widely between each other. Were my equipment to fry, I can shop around and easily replace my consoles with the exact same hardware, because it is all the exact same hardware. The old computer I have downstairs I made by buying three separate machines from a thrift store and combining the working components into a single (and later a second) machine. It took me several days to do it. (being able to play Duke3D again was worth it, though.) And it may indeed play a lot of old DOS/early Windows games, but how well? Especially all of those early 3D games, there is little telling exactly how well the game will run, and what the quality will look like. I have a number of such games that are not capable of utilizing my 3D accelerators, and thus I am forced to run them without one.
And yes, DOS-box and ScummVM are splendid answers to these specific titles we have brought in for example. But they do not work perfectly for all old games. When I bought the Space Quest Collection, I discovered that it was designed to run by implementing Dos-box, but I could only play the latest of the games because all the others ran at too-low of a resolution for my fancy-schmancy LCD monitor to display. (I now use a very heavy CRT instead. Image is better anyway.) An even when using these external applications to emulate old hardware, they require some setup and installation of their own, which increases the hassle.
And moreover, my point is not about playing these old games, but the point is playing modern PC games in ten, fifteen, or however many years down the road. We cannot say for certain what will be available at that time. Oh sure, it is easy to speculate that the most popular games will have some ace programmer tighten the code so that a modern system can run it, but as an overall statement of PC games the only way to be certain it will run is to hold onto all the required old hardware and software.
And between keeping old PC equipment and keeping an old console, the console will store easier.
So THAT's where I'm coming from. I do not say that it is impossible to play old PC games, and I apologize for insinuating that it was, but my point is that in my experience it is much much much easier to play an old console game than it is to play an old PC game. And many of you may enjoy that extra bit of hassle, and since we are clearly talking about the subject of nostalgic gaming I cannot hold that against you. (Hell, I had fun putting together those old computers.) But this is my preference. I want this game on a console. (Assuming it to be ported correctly, and that's a whole different can of worms.)
I may be a PS3 fan, but not a PS3 fanboy. I hope you can understand the difference.
I enjoy having a PS3 and I like to play it, but I'm not going to go around pouting it to be the greatest thing out there. It has flaws. It makes me sad sometimes.
Actually Scummvms scalers work quite well, as for dosbox if your monitor cannot handle it anymore you have to play windowed.
In my opinion the scaling problem is way worse with consoles, there are a load of people stuck in the Wii virtual console with titles they cannot play on their LCDs anymore unless they drop the component cable, some titles play well.
Not sure if dosbox does´t have also scalers inside!
Unless you hack your wii and install an emulator you dont get access to those titles anymore which you might have legally purchased.
Nintendo fixed the issue only for a handful of games!
The same goes for people who bought a second generation PS3 they are out of options to play their old PS2 games anymore, unless they add their PS2 to the monitor/tv (which for many is a no option)
In my personal opinion the PC is way more open regarding legacy software than any console, because in most cases the emulators do a decent job to do it!
And even if none of this works out you still can install good ole DOS on an extra partition if you want to go through the hoops!
The current stack of machines still can run it without too much hazzle!
(might change once the machines move over to EFI like apple already has done but for now it works!)
The only reason I can see is porting effort, the PS3 is rather hard to program for... in the long run I am pretty sure they have to port their engine anyway, but it has to pay off!
Agreed.
I'm a huge adventure game fan. I grew up playing all the classics like Zork, Space Quest, Maniac Mansion, etc.
As an adult with 3 children now myself, we have no small amount of entertainment choices in our home. But we don't own PC's... we prefer Mac. We don't own a Wii because (other than it's not HD, which is ridiculous this day and age) I think its titles are lowest-common-denominator entertainment, whereas there are more engaging titles for Xbox 360 (of which we own 1) and PS3 (of which we own 2).
I'd love to introduce my kids to these favorites like Sam & Max, Monkey Island, etc. But I am not in the minority as a Mac user (not anymore), or as a PS3/X360 owner. So sure, I'd prefer the games were available on one (or all) of those platforms.
Don't buy into the garbage that the PS3 is "hard" to program for. Its hardware and SDK are more sophisticated. But saying it's "harder" to program for is like saying the Wall Street Journal is "harder" to read than the Harry Potter series.
You got that news item wrong. They charge for DOWNLOAD BANDWIDTH while Nintendo and Microsoft don't. So putting up a big demo is expensive and risky on PSN, but putting up an episode where every user has to pay anyway is no more problematic than on any other closed platform.
That's not entirely true. EMI used a modified version of the control scheme from Grim Fandango, which was never ported to any consoles.
i could be wrong now, but i don't think so if i rememer correctly, the control scheme was designed for a joypad/controller and not point&click using a mouse, so EMI was the first/last monkey episode that was using that kind of controls, and at the same time, it was the first/last (not so sure here about the "last") available for console and in that case, for play station... so that's the reason why i said what i said in my post, if i got wrong i'm sorry but this is what i remember...
I, as well as the rest of Europe would welcome it, because right now there's nothing that we grownups can play (yes, I realize the irony of saying this, but at least in Germany Wii and XBox360 are primarily marketed for kids and young adults). Right now the PSN is sadly without any real adventures and while porting the TTT would take a bit more work than for XBox360, I think that TTG's catalog is by now big enough that we can be reasonable sure that porting the engine over would pay off.
I know that I'd repurchase ToMI and very likely Sam and Max... Wallace and Gromit maybe. Just for the comfort of being able to play these games on my PS3.
It is hard, you have a rather slow processor with insanely fast vector units, and a toolset from hell which does not support you in any way.
Sort of like:"here is some shit, we dont know how to deal with it but you will figure out"
In fact of all platforms the PS3 probably is currently the hardest to develop for!
It is just that the frameworks already are maturing so it becomes easier
(especially the shooter engines) now, but that does not help a company which does use their own toolset.
Porting from the PC to the XBOX is a no brainer, but porting anything to the PS3 is a walk into hell!
It was pretty much was the same with the PS2 (two hard to sychronize mips prozessors doing anything) but the installbase justified to develop the tools!
Actually, Sony Computer Entertainment's CEO stated they made it hard to program intentionally:
Here's it:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10173656-17.htm
Absolutely foolish and completely disrespectful for developers and final users alike, of course, as many others of Sony's policies.
The PS3 is hard to program for, but that's not a disrespectful or out of malice. It's just continuing the strategy that Sony (probably accidently) started with the PS1 and championed with the PS2. A strategy that worked very well for them in the past and eventhough it's facing a bunch of problems in the current multi-console environment, it's still not a bad strategy.
Sony consoles are meant to stay for much longer on the market than competing consoles and if you want to offer consumers something new after 1, 2 or even 5 years you have to make sure that there's always room for improvement. Sony's architecture will allow developers to make part #2 of "Nazi Zombies from Space" much better looking than part #1, because at that point the developer will have a better understanding of the platform.
Of course, the situation sucks for smaller development studios, but Sony is actually working on that with an army of developers that they send out to studios working with the PS3 for the first time.
It's not perfect, but it's not nearly as unreasonable as many people say. It makes sense, even if you don't like it.
Ah! I call this utterly nonsense.
It's a bad strategy for me. It doesn't make sense at all, exactly because I don't like it.
I am the potential customer, you know.
It doesn't make sense at all to sympathize with business strategy that takes away from you. :mad: You are the customer, you can choose, and you bloody better should choose what is good for you and help shape the market accordingly, if you're not a bloody masochist.
If all customers had the proper perception of their role and use the power that buy or not to buy give them to support and hence indirectly shape better and more favorable business practices, the market will be a lot nicer to them and bullies like SCE will crumble... Oh, wait, they are crumbling (or at least taking a blow after the other and struggling a lot), aren't they? :rolleyes:
Actually the entire quote is just corporate propaganda, they got a lot of critizism that the console is hard to program for. Usually a corporation never freely admits that they have screwed up in some area. The Sony did not intentionally make it hard, the PS1 was easy to program, the Saturn back in those days was really hard (very similar architecturewise to the PS2 and PS3) things started to become messy with the PS2 and their two mips processors doing the heavy lifting and becam worse with the PS3.
Back in those days developers swallowed the PS2 due to its high marketshare and console development generally was lousy. But nowadays Microsoft and Nintendo got their act together and especially Microsoft has a really nice toolchain and good support while Sonys seem to stink.
So they got a load of critizism and they tried to spin it into the right direction.
The truth is over the lifespan of every console things become better due to the fact that over time developers bypass the apis and start to program the hardware directly, but making it harder in the beginning does not give a lot of incentive to even support the console.
But I guess we should split this whole discussion into two parts.
Software
I never had a chance to work with Sony's SDKs, but from what I hear they definitely need improvements. Especially compared to Microsoft, a company with a history of creating high level abstractions, Sony is very much new to this. In the previous generation of consoles, you gave developers a low-level API and let them develop the tools themselves, but with the XBox360 Microsoft changed the rules. More smaller studios want access to the console market and Microsoft is offering a good package for them. It won't give you the most incredible graphics, but it gives you an easy to use platform.
Hardware
Sony has a history of long-living consoles and the reason is that each generation included features that at the time seemed strange and exotic, but which were put to good use later in the lifecycle. Compare that to the XBox where all generations of games looked more or less the same and you can see the benefit.
Some commenter once described PS3s massive SPU power as a "solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist". And he was right. The thing is that this is really meant to be such a solution. Remember when the first dual core CPUs popped up? People said the same thing. GPUs? See above. Or if you want to go further back the math coprocessor on the Intel DX processors. All of these were first shouted at for not improving performance of /existing/ programs. And yet they each form a vital part of what we now see as "modern computing".
I really challenge the reasoning behind this.
If, for given hypothesis, the PS3 hardware is good enough to support game concepts for a few years, what's the good in having games which are-less-good-that-they-could-be through these years? Or to have less games through these years since the developers are scared away?
Or to put it in another light: I really like to see a market driven by game concepts and not the number of lens flares (or whatever) available on screen, the hardware performance should be an issue when the number of lens flares (or whatever) is needed to support the game concept and make that game feasible.
In fact people today are (finally, I dare say) more excited about games themselves than performances.
If the PS3 hardware is good enough for a few years, it should stand on his own legs through these years, without the need of "rationing". We're not talking about something which is consumable here.
Or in another words again: you want my money? Give me substance, not business tricks, or more or less the same game with one lens flare more (or whatever) in each edition!! This is a waste of my money and, worst, my time!
Developers should be able to focus on innovative games concepts, so the be able to offer something substantially ever more satisfying each time through the years... and not wasting time fiddling and struggling to have these ideas come to life... and, forgossake, not be pushed into the way to re-release the same game concept with just one lens flare added (or whatever eye-candy) and call it new because they had to spend one year to figure out how to add one darned lens flare!!
That would be real progress.
Not sure what you're talking about here.
Well I am not sure if sony really thinks about the possibilities of what they design in their consoles.
The road for the PS3 originally was pretty clear, extend on the PS2. The PS2 hat two mips processors with additional vector units doing basically everything.
The PS3 has a similar architecture but with PowerPC processors and better vector units. The main problem Sony suddenly had was that Microsoft came out with a console with a normal triple core processor and a GPU which blew everything out of the water Sony could achieve with a PS2 like extension the PS3 originally was. So sony threw in an nvidia GPU last minute to cope with this defizit.
Now that physics is taking slowly off the additional vector units are heavens sent because you basically can gain access to physics acceleration that way which vector units fit perfectly in. But I doubt Sony did have the foresight, history of the console does not speak for it they just love the parallel vectorisation units controlling the entire console design.
But the main deficits of the console cannot be bypassed on the hardware side, the price is too high, no backwards compatibility, and ram and the general processor speed are severe limitations, in fact so severe that once the next generation of new consoles hits the shore Sony has to follow as well. In fact most developers have the biggest problem with the lousy general purpose speed, after all you cannot vectorize 99% of all problems and that the ram is significantly lower than on the xbox and the PC (which again causes problems with textures etc...)
Hence I do not buy their 10 year argument at least not from a being the top console point of view. I just buy it from the PS2 argument that the PS2 still is sold as low end offering and probably will be for the next 3-4 years to come!
Well, to be fair some models (mine for example) do have PS2 backwards compatibility and all have PS1 compatibility.
I really think that there's a strategy behind this, but I think we won't really ever find a reliable answer confirming or denying that theory.
Edit: nice post BTW.
No. First example that came into my mind: really both immersive and destructible environment was more or less not possible on the PS2.
And also "prettiness" could be part of a concept.
Edited in the meanwhile, it should be clearer.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You say graphics improvements aren't important, but game concepts are. And then you say that graphics improvements are a game concept.
I see. Would it be possible also on a PS1 or a Spectrum?
Performance can be useful or needed to do something really worth, I'm sure you can come up with your own example.
No, I said that graphics improvements are not necessarily a worth improvement.
Not really. Give me a good example of a game where the concept, just the concept, couldn't be done on XBox or PS2.
But they make selling the next generation of games easier, don't they?
Mmmh... No, bear with me, I haven't at all.
If I though technology wasn't important, I wouldn't be here debating the importance of easily allowing to fully exploit an hardware.
I dont' need to.
You stated that "we passed the point were technology needed to improve in order to allow for new game concepts on the PS2". It's a very strong statement, and contrary to the commonly held principle that discovers happen and new things different and better than things of the past are created each day.
The burden of proof is yours.
So what?
Easy of selling should not be your concern (if you're not a seller for a living, of course). Buying things good for you should be your concern.
No. My statement was that to try to force (or not allow) developers to not fully use an hardware that already is available doesn't make sense.
Improvements are always welcome. That's why I want them now, if they are possible, and not "artificially rationed and held back from me".
And if a company tries to shove that down my throat, I will never support them.
Exactly. That's why your argument doesn't stand at all.
Is it just me or are we back to exactly where we started?
Let's just say that I disagree.
That's exactly what I'm challenging.
There are many worth improvements -- or at least we can presume that someone will come up with some of them because, well, someone always did if there's the possibility and a fertile context! -- that can be done even while easily exploiting the hardware from day one.
If developers are forced through hoops to use the hardware, resources are taken away from them to achieve that kind of improvement.
Until the moment that some new concepts would not be feasible on that platform, and hence demand a more powerful one, that platform will live on... and be as good as it could be all the time through!
Well, but of course, that wasn't meant as derogatory at all.
The point was: See? You can't exclude that someone could come up with some new and worthy concept of that kind, if allowed the resources to!
Edit: The problem is that yes, I'm seeing things a bit from a sales perspective. Both due to the fact that I actually am a programmer (although not a console programmer) and therefore generally on the "producing" side and also because I, as a user want to see continues improvement. Not "new console generation is out, now you can wait until the next one to get better games". Wouldn't that perspective bother you as well?