Penny Arcade - Comic - Antiquity
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Antiquity
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Law and Order ≠ Justice
that's a long time to not go into a vidya "store"
(That's right, folks, just a little over 15 years ago.)
That's Keazy to you. And you can always catch him down at the Cinnabon, yo.
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth.
They fail to mention a lot of other free stuff they receive, so its more of roulette if you are trying to buy ad space that way.
Is it really surprising to anyone at this point that having the best numbers for a piece of hardware doesn't really matter? Nintendo slaughtered the competition for the handheld space every generation until Sony's PSP, and even that lost badly to Nintendo's opposition. Granted the PSP managed to be a big moneymaker for Sony in spite of that, and it was the first competition to a Nintendo handheld that did not get outsold by an order of magnitude, IIRC. But then look at what a lukewarm reception the Vita has had. PC games have known this since at least Warcraft III and WoW, both of which took a less-is-more approach to their graphics, meaning some of the hottest games in their respective generations didn't need cutting edge hardware.
And home consoles? I genuinely believe a big part of the problem Sony has had trying to reclaim the monodominant position they held during the 5th & 6th generations is because of their fixation with trying to have the best hardware. The PS1 was not all that special when it came out, it was just marginally better than the Saturn, and stronger than the N64 where it counted. The PS2 was better than the Dreamcast, but lesser than the Xbox, and competitive with the Gamecube (which had an extra year's R&D for Nintendo to play catch up). The PS2 seemed like amazing hardware because it was easy to develop for and it's market-share was so vast that practically everyone in the business was making games for it and pushing the boundaries of what it could do from the software side.
But somewhere along the lines Sony got a bug up their ass about having the best hardware out there and we wound up with the PS3. It was so expensive initially that you could get both competitors' platforms for the same price, which made it a tough sell to many consumers. And it didn't help that the PS3's library was nowhere near as competitively strong as previous Sony consoles boasted because it's custom architecture was a real obstacle both for development and for porting titles from other platforms. They walked things back from the ledge with the PS4's very PC-like architecture, but they were still trying to chase top hardware performance when it came out, and their success this generation seems to be more due to the Xbone & Wii-U's miss-steps.
From where I'm sitting, if Sony's approaching VR with a pragmatism-over-performance approach, it's a step back in the right direction for them and a sign that the killers behind the PS1 & 2 might finally be making a comeback.
Why? a lot of them aren't that bad. Especially if you're a regular, or it's a gamestop that bought out the FLGS and they largely kept it the same except for the branding.
Sure, it's no faceless Amazon with a passive discount on purchases and delivery to the location of my choosing... but eh, some people like that human touch.
And I would be inclined to agree with him. Sadly, I also think Nintendo's days making handhelds are numbered. I say sadly, because smartphones input methods limit game design in ways that a dedicated console doesn't have to worry about. But most people aren't going to care about that, and will prefer the convenience and savings of gaming on their phone (or more specifically, gaming for their child's smartphone) to shelling out $100 or more just for the hardware. I think home consoles will hang around, though.