Console wars in 2009

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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:40 am

With 2009 merely hours away, Ive been thinking about how far technology in games has come in the last 20 years. When I was a lad (no, not that kind of lad Laughing

) I had an NES, a Sega Master System, and a Sega Mega Drive.

Since then, Ive stuck with Sony. The PS1 and PS2 have been in my house since 1998, but recently, Ive been converted.

Santa brought me a Wii, and Im totally sold on it. Even the simple games like Wii sports are fantastic, and by the looks of things there are alot of good games on their way in 2009 (Dead Rising, Prison Break etc) and with the Virtual Console, I can go all Nostalgic and show my daughter what games I played when I was wee.

I was tempted to go for an Xbox 360, but I opted for the Wii as its wireless enabled straight from the box, and there are no subscription fees to pay.

At the moment, the PS3 is totally out of my price range and doesnt have enough good games to merit buying one. If it went down in price, I may consider it, but that probably wont be for a while yet.

So, at the moment, Im a Wii man (no jokes please lol). What is everyone else alligning themselves with for the coming year?

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:54 am

I am a PC gamer. I shall remain so until I get fed up with the problems it presents.

Master Baiter Joined: 23 Sep 2008 Posts: 236

I'm more of a console watcher myself, but I'm a PS3 girl (well, and Nintendo DS Smile

)

The Wii is a bit gimicky for me, there's no real serious plotty games that I know of, its just about the control system. But for parties and the like, its great fun (we have one for the new years party tonight on a 50" TV at a friends house Smile

)

The Xbox 360 has better games, but we borrowed one from a friend, and we had to nursemaid that thing something chronic. It was this friends 4th, and everytime it made the slightest strange noise, or hung on something for too long, we had to turn it off.

PS3 has good games, Home is showing some promise, and its got a built in blue ray player. It is more expensive than the other consoles, but I do think that it has good value for money.

And that's my 10p on the subject Very Happy

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:41 pm

Same as Ex. so I'm getting a new desktop next month.

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:47 pm

Wii. I don't do much gaming, but for parties nothing beats the Wii. Playing bowling or other fun games where you can beat the (@#$(&* out of your friends while intoxicated is great fun.

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:55 pm

Quote:

other fun games where you can beat the (@#$(&* out of your friends while intoxicated is great fun.

You should try a game we invented, its a bit like boker but involves alcohol and a carpet runner.

Its fun until someone loses an eye!

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:57 pm

When I was a kid, we would play stick-ball. Laughing

Last console I had was the N64 about ten years ago now... I used to get 3 friends around and we'd get drunk and hunt each other down on "Goldeneye" before trying not to break into fights over "Super Mario Kart". I spent way too much time on it, so I got rid of it and haven't owned one since.

I had a go on GTA San Andreas on a colleague's PS2 at work some years ago... my god, you could lose weeks of your life on that thing. I just don't have that sort of time that I can afford to waste. I'm too busy stealing cars and beating people up in real life.

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:55 pm

A friend of mine bought his nephew a Wii, his sister said it was broken so he went to take a look, she had it set up upside down, with the suction cups facing up Rolling Eyes

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 3:06 pm

A PS3 is a great buy if you want the system and do not own a Blue-Ray Player yet..

Plus you can download/rent movies on it too!

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:45 pm

Playing ball hockey on the street still tops my list. Never have been much of a gamer. there were always too many girls to chase. The kids are focusing seriously on the Wii. However, they still like to keep the N64 plugged in to play Zelda.

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 5:07 pm

[rant]
I've seen the rise and fail of the computer, the first ones, huge and slow, programming with cardboard cards with holes punched in it, one mishap, card gone, cards not in the right order, nervous breakdown of the computer Laughing

Then the MSX computers, hooked up to the TV, data on a cassette deck, took a hour to load a sizable program and with only 8mb to play with, write them carefully and clean. The Atari ST with the first floppy, the MBI series with a hard disk of 5Mb. This was going to chance the world! All houses on a computer that will control everything just the way you want it.
And now with 1000 gig storage, 3000Mhz fast or faster, an entertainment center where you can play pre-programmed games until you drop. They don't learn anything, can't even control a switch to my coffee maker when it hears me getting up in the morning, even repetitive actions are too hard to learn. I'm disappointed in the development there, they are faster, but I'm still waiting for them to finish whatever they do. Confused

And then those frigging criminals with their scams, they are the only ones that actually have profited from the Internet. Rolling Eyes

[/rant]

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 5:53 pm

DITTO!!!!

Some days I just need to go outside and putter in the garden.....

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

The Man wrote:

I don't do much gaming, but for parties nothing beats the Wii.

Same here, I don't have any of those toys, but I was at a party last week and we were in the basement playing Wii tennis, it was remarkably fun. But after swinging around a 4 ounce chunk of plastic for several hours I found it difficult to lift my arm the next morning. Very Happy

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

I have fond memories of playing Atari2600 as a kid. We currently have a PS2 and barely touch it, though I've been known to occasionally kick some butt at Guitar Hero. Cool

(Go ahead and pick on me again, Jojo).

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:51 pm

(Off topic slightly)
@Ima: There was a rather fiery discussion on a guitar board that I frequent just recently.
The OP had the opinion that kids who play guitar hero should maybe try picking up a real guitar and learning to play on 22 frets and 6 strings, rather than just 5 plastic buttons, then they might really see what it takes to be a "guitar hero". He got flamed like mad! I was really surprised, many of the guitar players basically said "it's just a kids game, let them play".
I actually felt bad for the OP, it sometimes seems that things come too easily for kids nowadays. Miserable git that I am! Laughing

Don't get me wrong... I see the appeal of a bit of harmless fun, I just thought he might have a point.

(On topic): My first computer game was played on the Sinclair ZX81... it was a daft maze thing in black and white, and I was unimpressed. The Spectrum came along very soon after... all that buzzing and whining while the tape player took 30 minutes to (sometimes) successfully load your game. But what an improvement. Colour, sound, a bit of graphics!

It does still amaze me what new consoles can do and how far they've come.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

I do think kids spend too much time with electronic gadgets these days, video games included. Real experience over virtual should be more encouraged.

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 7:46 pm

Santa left 'guitar hero world tour' for my kid this year. Although he is having real guitar lessons as well, I've never had him see have some much fun with his xbox 360, playing a complete band with three of his friends, Bass, guitar, drums and singing all together at the same time. That, and online fighting guitar or drumming battles, I sometimes wish I was still a kid. Gaming has come a big way since the commodore 64 I adored in my youth.

Juan's stalker Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 1423

We really enjoyed "The Legend of Zelda Twi1ight Princess" on the Wii.
I was really sad when my son beat it and it was over. He also had a Mario one I liked too. Mario Galaxy I think was the name.
I beat him every time in bowling tho . They can be very addicting. But so can baiting Very Happy

I enjoyed the Atari when I was younger too.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

I played ping-pong when it was a slot machine. and my first personal computer had 256 bytes of memory.

The PS3 has the obvious edge in terms of technology, and I'm a technology geek. I just can't afford one and I'm too much of a technology geek and a Microsoft hater to buy anything else.

I would lay odds that the PS3 is not subsidised. It is that price because that is what it costs. That's certainly how Sony handled the PS1 and PS2. Unfortunately Microsoft do not have the same marketing plan, and can discount so far that Sony are losing out heavily. Unless Sony change their minds the PS3 is going the same way as Betamax - that was Sony too - and 2009 is probably when it will happen.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 2:14 am

The PS3 is good in terms of capabilities, even though the Xbox has a better video card. However, Xbox is actually more user friendly and offers better games, which is the core purpose of the systems. PS3 tries to sell itself as a home entertainment system, not a video game system, which is why it's failing. As I stated above, PC loses a lot of hassle involved with consoles and creates new hassle as well.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 2:28 am

@Ex. : AFAIK PS3 has the best video card (even 2 cards in SLI if I remember correctly), so technically superior.

As I see it: the wii is the family game console. The one that gets you actively involved in games by the way of controlling games with the wiimote.

The xbox is the hard core gamer console, and the PS3 the hard core gamer + multimedia adept, but that has it's price.

(side note: I've never seen my kid more physically active involved playing the drumkit in guitar hero 4 on the xbox more than any wii games he played)

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:40 am

I learned on punch cards also but love the consoles. I bought a Wii a few years ago from a big box store. I saw a pallet of them and put one in my cart while watching 7 being taken. I love everything about it except the resolution. This year I watched a pallet load of PS3s sitting in the same big box store for a month. I bought one simply to make the time at home memorable for the kids. The PS3 really needs a HD monitor that has a HDMI connector to show what it can do.

Edit to add: I know nothing about XBox 360.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:40 am

@ Dutch

Sir I believe you are mistaken.

http://www.edepot.com/playstation3.html#PlayStation_3_Hardware

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1818127,00.asp

The Xbox 360 has 512 MB GDDR3 of VRAM with a 256-bit bus clocked at 700 MHz whereas the PS3 has half the amount of memory with half the bus size although clocked at the same speed. The Xbox 360 puts out 25.6 GB/s while the PS3 lags at 22.4 GB/s. 256 MB GDDR3 (e.g. Geforce 8600 GT) is the standard for PCs today. Mid range PC video cards are 512MB (Geforce 9600 GT) while the top of the line are 1GB (GTX 280). The fact that Sony achieves the graphics it does now is amazing me actually, as they can't do much more with it. In Microsoft's case, they could easily blow PS3 graphics out the water, but due to cooling restraints and possible anti-trust lawsuits, they keep the graphics modest enough to make the two similar. Plus, Xbox 360 uses DX9 compared to PS3's OpenGL. Clearly, Xbox 360 is the greater console.

As far as the criteria of the uses of both systems, Xbox has better games hands down. PS3's releases can barely compare, with Resistance 2 being the only PS3 game in the top ten sold, while Nintendo and Xbox 360 ravage the sales and reviews. The PS3 is a good home entertainment device, but is lacking on the gaming front. However, with Xbox 360's new GUI, the NXE, they have extended the media capabilities of it greatly, and the Xbox can also stream media content straight from your PC via networking. The PS3 may have Blu-Ray, but the 360 allows people to rent brand new movies in HD straight from the Internet and their homes, which is actually pretty nifty. If they do decide to make Blu-Ray compatible for Xbox 360, the USB bus will be than enough to handle it.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 12:50 pm

i use my ps3 for talking to my bro`s. i`ve been playing lots of cod4. waiting for killzone 2. i`ve been doing drive by`s with my mate in gta.
-typical conversation
me- hows the wife and kids?
him- fine, jack a car and shoot some guys
me- can we race,
him- as long as we do atleast a few drive bys...
me -sure thing !

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 1:11 pm

I still consider myself a PC gamer foremost. The consoles I have are the older PS, PS2, Nintendo, and Super Nintendo. I've got an atari but can't seem to get it to work Crying or Very sad

I just moved the storage box containing the Commodore 128, some day I'll find some space and set it up. If I had the extra money, I think I'd choose the Wii for my, er, the family's next console.