It’s been great except for the lame skits but WHAT THE HELL WAS UP WITH MR. BLOODY NOSE?
That was just plain creepy. They should’ve cut away to something else fast once they realized he was there.
Has there been any mention that the PS3 press conference videos that they were all ga-ga over was all pre-rendered?
That’s a great interview and made me even more excited for the PS2.
I’ve actually enjoyed their coverage but I don’t like how they have a tendency to try to interrupt each other, which I especially notice everytime Morgan has something to say.
On tuesday’s show, they brought up that all the games were likely pre-rendered but at the same time, they didn’t care because atleast they showed “next gen” games unlike Microsoft and Nintendo.
Yeah, you’d have to admit that Killzone was exciting despite it not being real-time.
On tuesday’s show, they brought up that all the games were likely pre-rendered but at the same time, they didn’t care because atleast they showed “next gen” games unlike Microsoft and Nintendo.[/quote]
Er… what about the games MS showed? GR3? PGR3? Full Auto? Kameo?
Probably weren’t “pretty” enough, and looked too much like the current Xbox. Hence the Xbox 1.5 complaints… I dunno though I thought the Square Enix tech demo was pretty impressive. They should have been pimping Dark Sector like crazy, cause that also looked very nice.
On tuesday’s show, they brought up that all the games were likely pre-rendered but at the same time, they didn’t care because atleast they showed “next gen” games unlike Microsoft and Nintendo.[/quote]
That’s just it, though, they’re not showing “next gen” games. Their showing what the graphics can output if all you have to do is feed it polygons. It’s like looking at one of the NVidia tech demos (on any of their cards) and claiming that games will look like that.
Unless you’re arguing that Killzone was next gen for some reason other than that it looked kickass. All that physics, all the explosions and the clutter and the vehicles decomposing in midair and raining shrapnel down on you that (IMO) make it next gen actually were just pre-planned.
I’m not saying it’s not going to be a great system, or that it’s not going to be the most powerful, but anyone who believes that’s indicative of the next gen because they can divorce the graphics from the rest of the engine and render it (even with the PS3 graphics hardware) is setting themselves up for a potentially huge disappointment. For example:
All the talk and the coolness of “realistic actors” fades into “realistic actor”. It’s taking substantial amounts of processor power to render one (admittedly fantastic looking) realistic NPC. So anyone having visions of navigating through a city populated by characters with accurately lit faces, pore-depth details, and semi-transluscent scattered ear-lobes is in for a disappointment. Yet the press conference never said “This is what all the resources of the machine can do; in a real game, though, things would look more like this…”
Here’s what I expect the incentive to be:
Yeah, it’s $300. But it’s your home AV system replacement. Rip your music too it, no more fumbling for CDs. Rip your DVDs to it and watch your favorite movies from the hard drive. Or just put in new DVDs. Hook it up to a broadband connection and experience voice chat and web surfing and picture chat and for a small nominal fee downloadable casual games. Oh yeah, did we mention that you can play XBox 360 games on it on occasion too, if you want to? With wireless controllers.
It’s pretty clear (on both MS and Sony’s part) that they’re positioning things as home entertainment devices, not game consoles. Browse your TV from here while using XBox live to discuss the latest episode of survivor with folks. In between during commercials, pop over to that game of Puyo Pop you have running and play a few rounds while the TV screen is a small window up top. When the commercial is over, pop back. In the meantime, here, take a look at the digital photos I took of that party the other night… just let me pop in my USB drive… ah, here you go.
It’s pretty clear (on both MS and Sony’s part) that they’re positioning things as home entertainment devices, not game consoles. Browse your TV from here while using XBox live to discuss the latest episode of survivor with folks. In between during commercials, pop over to that game of Puyo Pop you have running and play a few rounds while the TV screen is a small window up top. When the commercial is over, pop back. In the meantime, here, take a look at the digital photos I took of that party the other night… just let me pop in my USB drive… ah, here you go.
Everything you list about sounds really cool if you are the techy/nerdy type. But come on, that kind of crap isn’t going to appeal to the mainstream public. Your argument is totally contradictory with everything you’ve been saying. They are going for a more mainstream crowd with their games, but a less mainstream more tech savy group with video conferencing and ripping cd’s & dvd’s?
Errr… I have one friend who plays games, but everyone I know rips their own music. Now, the video conference thing I see your point, but it’s only nerdy now because you have to have a computer and you have to set it up. If you had a box on your TV, and you plugged it into the wall, into the camera, and into the internet, and that was it, it wouldn’t really be tech type.
I think you’re confusing who currently uses stuff like this with who would if it was utterly accessible. It used to be that only geeks used digital cameras, but when they became ubiquitous enough even normal people begin to move over to flash cards and such. The above isn’t Ma & Pa kettle type appeal, but in a world where you can buy refridgerators with built in computers, plugging in a home electronics console and a couple accessories probably isn’t too far into the “geek threshold” to be feasible. Especially with the right marketing.
All the talk and the coolness of “realistic actors” fades into “realistic actor”. It’s taking substantial amounts of processor power to render one (admittedly fantastic looking) realistic NPC. So anyone having visions of navigating through a city populated by characters with accurately lit faces, pore-depth details, and semi-transluscent scattered ear-lobes is in for a disappointment. Yet the press conference never said “This is what all the resources of the machine can do; in a real game, though, things would look more like this…”
That’s the same as any graphics card demo. I don’t see the big deal. The gameplay demos shown are a representation of what PS3 games will look like. Sony certainly has more time then MS does now that they’re aiming for an 06 launch.
I ran into Adam the other day and spoke to him briefly. He completely bought into all their paper specs, and refused to believe that nearly the entire reel of “coming franchises” was prerendered (it was, but nobody seems to press the developers on this to find out).
Meanwhile, Microsoft has Xbox 360 games playable on the floor, and they’re not looking nearly so hot (esp. compared to prerendered “we swear the games will look like this thing we did in 3ds Max” stuff). Which is because they’re all running on alpha dev kits - every single one - which has two seperate Power PC CPUs (not dual-core, and certainly not three-core), very limited bandwidth from the CPU to the GPU, and a Radeon X850 graphics card with 256MB. A few of the MS game presenters are making mention that these alpha kits are about 30% the power of the final system, but most don’t even say anything so everyone thinks Xbox 360 games are gonna look like nice PC games.
Microsoft is in that “we have a real system coming out in three territories and real software to show” stage that is kind of rough, and not really an enviable place to be in. Sony is in the “look at our stuff on paper and listen to our promises of the amazing things it could do” stage that they were so successful with before the PS2 launched. They have tech demos, no games that you can actually play, and some prerendered stuff that they don’t bother to mention is prerendered.
In other words, Sony has done a great job of raining on Microsoft’s parade.
Just to note: I’m not trying to be an MS fanboy or Sony hater or anything here. I think both systems will have great games and really be fairly comparable in terms of what they can put on the screen in a real game situation. I just don’t like it when the media gets so easily sidetracked by a well crafted marketing message.
Umm… wait… so you recognize that it’s the same as a graphic card demo (i.e. it shows you one very pretty thing that no game can ever include in a meaningful way), so the pre-renders were somehow a “representation” of what PS3 games will look like?
What definition of ‘representative’ are you looking at? I’m pretty sure Killzone will include humanoid figures that move at least as well as PS2 graphics, so in that way they’re “representative”. In terms of looking like what the actual game can as it’s running, however, I just don’t get what you’re basing that opinion on other than hope and buying into the hype.
Microsoft is in that “we have a real system coming out in three territories and real software to show” stage that is kind of rough, and not really an enviable place to be in. Sony is in the “look at our stuff on paper and listen to our promises of the amazing things it could do” stage that they were so successful with before the PS2 launched. They have tech demos, no games that you can actually play, and some prerendered stuff that they don’t bother to mention is prerendered.
Such is the nature of the hype beast. You’re right in that MS is in a difficult situation where they’re at the stage of actual developed games that run sub par due to the lack of real hardware. But hell you’d think they would have learned their lesson with E301. How about showing some projected vids of a new Halo or Ninja Gaiden or some other cool Xbox game? There’s no reason why they couldn’t have done that. Heck Nintendo did it with the Gannon/Link duel in the Cube’s unveiling and it worked great.
Can’t blame the journalists for getting excited at something that looked exciting and not being blown away by stuttering framerates, even with all the caveats. Of course at the end of the day this all means very little. Halo did abysmally at E301 and it seemed to have done OK.
Umm… wait… so you recognize that it’s the same as a graphic card demo (i.e. it shows you one very pretty thing that no game can ever include in a meaningful way), so the pre-renders were somehow a “representation” of what PS3 games will look like?
I’m distinguishing between the tech demos (ducks, doc ock, floating chick) and the gameplay demos (the ubi soft one, killzone, GT5, etc). I wouldn’t exepect a game world full of people with the same detail of alfred molina but I’ll hope to play that guns akimbo game in the near future.
Ah. I see what you mean. I tend to believe the game “demos” were more toward the Alfred Molina end of the spectrum than the “this should be doable” end of the spectrum. Some weren’t, of course. But the ones that stuck out to me had a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that I know is computationally insanely expensive, easily the equivalent of subsurface scattering for lighting.
Dark Sector does look nice but it doesn’t look any more impressive to me than Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Riddick both of which are aready on the current Xbox in fine form.
What I don’t get is why didn’t MS just output each frame from those non-interactive demos and recompile it into a movie? It would have eliminated the framerate stutters and shown an excellent example of what the game would look and play like on the final 360. Its what some of the Sony demos did (Heavenly Sword in particular).
For example, the Gears of War movies look to be about 10-20 fps and it takes a lot away from the visual impact.
The only logical conclusion is that MS is taking the high road of honesty and moral integrity. Yeah, I know, come back once you’re done laughing. ;)
Far be it for me to tell MS how to market their products, but it seems to me like they’re trying too hard on the wrong demographic. Now, in full disclosure I haven’t kept up much this week on the press surrounded the PS3 and the new GameCube, but the Xbox 360 seems to have a lot more of an adult feel for it since apparently it has a lot of entertainment-center features. From what I understand they want to make the Xbox 360 become your living room media center, not just your gaming machine, and that strikes me as a product that I as a 32 year old would be way more into than a 17-21 year old. Plus MS has more adult cache than they do with the younger crowd, I’m guessing (I’m just pulling this out of thin air), and it seems smarter to me to leverage that.
But then again the new hip thing in marketing is to market to the teenage crowd because somehow they’re the ones with all the money. I worked in marketing for three years and I still don’t understand that. I thought I was the one with the money and discretion to spend it, and they had to ask Mommy and Daddy for it?
I kind of disagree with you that all of that stuff is too tech savvy for the mainstream crowd. How many commercials are you seeing these days for mainstream devices that allow you to make your own home movies, view your pictures and your movies on your HD TV, etc.? I don’t think that stuff is inherently too far above the mainstream crowd – I think it’s the implementation of those things, how easy they’ll be to do on the Xbox 360, that matters. And I think the implementation is getting much easier across the board. Much of that stuff I just don’t think is relegated to the tech-savvy anymore. And by virtue of a console’s design and use, they would have to be pretty easy to do on the Xbox 360 as opposed to, say, your PC and trying to hook up a wireless network to your stereo to play your mp3s.
I don’t know that the MTV style marketing campaign is really designed only for the teen crowd. I know that’s the impression folks around here have and such, but I don’t know how true it is, frankly. I grew up with MTV… if I liked current music at all, I’d probably still watch it. VH1 (which I would watch far more often, if I actually had these channels on cable right now) isn’t that far away from the same advertising style. And I’m in the same demographic as you.
I don’t think it’s age based. It may be family situation based, though. I would suspect a 32 year old mother, for instance, would be far less turned on by that ad campaign. But my guess is that they’re not aiming for 32 year old mothers primarily. (Their husbands, on the other hand…)