'98 was in japan in case you were checking wikipedia. It arrived in '99 locally when I was in college at the time.
and yeah, Metal Gear Solid is the worst game ever. Like, Sword of the Berserker totally pwns it dude.
Have to call Kojima on his incredible flops ZOE2, Snatcher, Metal Gear 2, Boktai and Castlevania Lords of Shadow.
it’s not that long when compared to the previous 3 generations: 7 years more or less. The difference this time around is that there has been very little innovation or variety in popular game formats. This is most definitely the COD/sports/sequel/multiplayer generation.
JP September 3, 1998
NA October 21, 1998
EU November 16, 1998
I’m probably thinking of integral, the one that came with both the game and the vr missions disc.
You missed an interesting article on this exact subject just a few weeks ago on Wired.
The videogame console as we’ve always known it actually died a few years ago. It keeled over somewhere around the time that Microsoft redesigned the Xbox 360’s user interface so you had to tab through “Bing,” “Home,” “Social” and “Video” before you got to the tab marked “Games.” Ever since, the big three makers have been bending over backward to show that their boxes aren’t just dumb game players but connected everything-machines that play more Hulu than Halo.
The most obvious disruptor has been mobile apps, which offer pretty good game play on cellphones and tablets for one-tenth or less the price of console games, and very often for free. Other trends include the explosion of social gaming, also mostly free, and the resurgence of PC games, which are now typically cheaper and more flexible than console games, tapping into new online distribution platforms that make them far more convenient to purchase.
None of the game industry insiders Wired interviewed for this story were ready to call the age of the consoles well and truly over. Cinematic graphics, intense play, stories with the narrative sweep and character development of a well-crafted novel: These will keep the fans coming, most argued, in smaller numbers, perhaps, but just as devotedly as ever. At the same time, all of the companies they work for are well underway with plans for radical overhaul, signaling a clear understanding of what is coming — and more to the point, what has already arrived in the market full force.
And so on…
This is an interesting post, I have disagree with your statements, at least from my personal perspective. No amount of storytelling mechanic is going to get me into a game because that’s the area of games that appeals to me the least and where I feel they’re inferior to other mediums. As a big fan of emergent gameplay, procedural generation of content, and strategy games, I feel as though the last couple years have been the start of a new golden age for games.
I don’t post this to argue or say you’re wrong because it’s subjective, I’m just adding a different perspective and wondering if it’s certain types of games, specifically those dominant on the consoles, that are stagnating or struggling? I should add that I play almost all my games on PC, I had a 360 but never really touched it (and yes I realize this is a console thread) because as has been stated upthread, I don’t have interest in COD 26 or Halo 13. What’s killing my interest in most console games is the increasing linearity, same old mechanics, and what seems to be a desire to ape the film experience (frequent cutscenes, stuff like QTEs, etc).
None of what you said disagreed with me, so I’m not sure what argument you think I’m making that’s invalid. Believe me, I dismissed the whole “PC gaming is dying” argument for years, so I know what it’s like on that side of the fence. What finally changed is that people here at QT3 finally were eloquent enough in how they phrased their argument that I finally realized that the vast majority of the people making the argument weren’t really saying the platform is dead or that the platform has no future. They were just expressing fear and frustration that the platform was dead or dying for them because the aspects of the format that they were in it for was changing or going away. PC gaming being doomed has always just been badly worded shorthand. Go ahead and go through the archives at QT3 and web articles. The only people you will find who argue whether or not the platform will continue to exist are the people who are arguing against. It’s easy to argue against an idea that no one is actually arguing for.
I was specifically pointing at that part, the argument that dead genres are a signal for the rest of the platform. Not the rest, the whole pc/consoles are alive/dead/dying.
but that’s astrange way to phrase the argument. I love adventure games, and was sad to see them decline, but that was “the death of adventure gaming” not “the death of the mouse as a gaming tool”
EDIT: I should preface this by saying that my formative PC gaming years were on the Amiga rather than DOS, which had a lot more variety. I considered R-Type, Lotus II and Full Contact to be as integral to PC gaming as Monkey Island, Populous and Megalomania were.
TurinTur: Ah so you just misunderstood just like I used to. I never said dead genres are a signal for the rest of the platform and neither did anyone else that I know of. Sorry I wasn’t clear. In fact, my whole point was the opposite: that dead genres do NOT signal the death of the rest of the platform, just that it does for fans of that genre. If someone was a huge fan of adventure gaming, it’s irrelevant to them whether or not Tribes or Everquest is a hit. Like I said in my last post, the only people even arguing about the state of the platform are ones arguing against it. Even the most recent PC gaming death thread was made by mashakos, who was, you guessed it, arguing against it. And his evidence on why he thought people might be on the other side of that argument? A three year old post by WarrenM who was just trolling people and being a dick, not really making any kind of rational argument about the death if the whole platform.
Agreed. It is a strange way to phrase the argument. That’s why it took me so many years to finally get it.
I was never an adventure gaming fan personally btw. They were way too restrictive and their lack of choices and options was the exact opposite of what I liked about gaming. I only came to appreciate them in the last couple of years after I played Braid, which really open my mind towards all puzzle games and how thrilling they can be when done well.
okay then: if that’s the meaning behind the argument, why switch to consoles? It’s not like you will find Space sims, turn-based RTS and hardcore RPGs thriving on the Wii. That was my understanding behind the proclamations that PC gaming is dead - time to move to other platforms.
Time to move to other platforms for them personally, not for everyone. And the reasons are wide and varied. The most common one I remember is the hassle that comes with PC gaming sometimes. Oops, game won’t run, go mess with drivers, deal with bad power supplies, bad RAM, failing hard drives, etc. For a lot of people it was just frustrating so they’d come here and vent and say they’re switching platforms.
Another one might be that certain genres did start showing up a lot more in other platforms. Tom was always pointing out these great turn based strategy games we’re missing out on by not having a DS or niche titles on the PS2.
Or you might be a fan of Bethesda RPGs like my friends. We were all shocked to discover how much more fun they are as a couch experience as opposed to playing them by yourself in front of the computer. The reasons cited at Qt3 have been pretty varied over the years, but I’ve never heard anyone actually argue that people are going to stop playing games with the mouse on desktops.
The only exception I can think of are people arguing not from the gaming side, but the hardware side. Desktops don’t sell as well as laptops, and now tablets are going to take over, etc. And if you read carefully you’ll notice that even people arguing from the hardware side are not hoping that it will happen, but actually afraid that it will happen and they’re hoping that it won’t.
I couldn’t agree more that every other medium has better stories than video games. That’s what I would like to see change. I think it possible for games to tell great tales and do very unique things.
Also I don’t really mean tight linear games with good stories. What I am talking about is opening it up to the player so an epic tale is weaving around you, but your decisions are affecting how that tale unfolds. In a way I think that is very much in line with the open emergent gameplay you might be talking about.
Also I do recognize that there is loads of unique stuff coming to PC these days. Between the indie scene and kickstarter I agree that if your jam is PC indie games this is the golden age for sure.
However this thread is about console games and that means huge blockbuster games. In my opinion those games are dying on the vine as they are endlessly being remade.
That’s a horrible example. Skyrim is far and away the most popular ES game of all time and each game since Morrowind has sold more than the last. If Skyrim really is just Morrowind with more shiny, which I don’t agree with, it would seem more shiny is working.
Dedicated gaming sales — including living-room consoles and handhelds — are in the midst of a four-year tailspin. You might say that’s because of a bad economy, but then you’d have to explain why movie revenue and cable TV subscriptions have largely stayed the same.
Or why music sales, gutted by online streaming and piracy, have held up better than slumping sales of console games. Or why the popularity of social, mobile and PC games have skyrocketed to unthinkable heights.
The problem seems to be isolated to dedicated video games. Video game industry sales in the United States, including game discs, consoles and accessories, were down 24% in September when compared with the same period last year. Many experts believe these decreases in profits, the rise of casual and social gaming and waning consumer interest are affecting makers of the three big living-room consoles: Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii.
I don’t know why these people don’t see the obvious. Console sales are down because this generation is 8+ years old and people are ready for new consoles. It’s not rocket science to see that this is why there is waning customer interest and declining sales. The reason you don’t see this in movies or music is because they aren’t limited by hardware.
That’s one of the interesting statements coming out of Ubisoft in the last year. That it’s easier to innovate and experiment with new ideas at the beginning of a new generation. So they claim the stagnation is a direct result of this prolonged generation of consoles. The disconnect for me with that argument is that if innovation is low and sequelitis is high because budgets are so huge you’d rather go for sure bets as publishers get more risk averse, then why will going to a new generation change that? Is Ubisoft more willing to gamble on new types of games at the beginning of a generation because the risk is actually lower? Maybe their research shows that early adopters are more willing to give new things a chance.
It’s probably lower because at the beginning of a console cycle because there isn’t a huge backlog of games to compare to and people are desperately looking for games to play on their shiny new console. Just looking at the launch titles for the 360/PS3, most of those games weren’t that great and would probably score 10 points lower, or more, now than when they were released.
I would argue that the player experience is very similar between Skyrim and Morrowind. True Skyrim is far more refined, but basically it is the same type of open world RPG.
I’m not saying that Skyrim is crap, because it’s not. It’s just that it’s kinda a shiny coat of paint on the Elder Scrolls formula. Basically it was “lets remake Oblivion…but bigger, better and more badass.”
Saw the thread title and that was my immediate thought. I’m generally not enthusiastic about console games right now because they are old tech and something much better (technologically anyway) has to be right around the corner. This has been my attitude for over a year. In that time interval I haven’t bought any console games.
I fail to see the problem :)
above pic is from my living room. Even though I’m gaming primarily via gamepad, it’s much worse than M+K, but alas we have to sacrifice for convenience.
but then again, there is the couchmaster… lol
