Is Gamecube Gonna die?

[MrMacabre]

Originally posted by skitz
there is too much competition for any of the major consoles to take the majority since all everyone's products are similar.

That's why PSX vs N64 worked so well.

It was CD vs Cartridge; with cartridge users opting for the (questionably) better graphics and durability of cartridges (to be honest, they would pack it in from dust anyway) and cd users opting for the 'digital' preference, and the ability to play music CD's and watch streaming Video.

[regiebabe]

Originally posted by MrMacabre
It was CD vs Cartridge; with cartridge users opting for the (questionably) better graphics and durability of cartridges (to be honest, they would pack it in from dust anyway) and cd users opting for the 'digital' preference, and the ability to play music CD's and watch streaming Video.Well that's a warped version I must say, cartridges are compleatly digital! It was size Vs speed mainly (Cartridges being much faster then CDs especially since the PSX/PS1 has only a 2-Speed CD-ROM)! The other advantage is that you don't need to buy memory cards to save games. The reason N64 has better graphics then PSX is because it has 6:1 pal. compression which is inbuilt and allows the graphics to load faster and so there can be more of them (see this is one of the things I was telling you about earlier, PSX/PS2 don't have any hardware compression it all has to be done with software compression - and no one seems to do it with software compression).

Nintendo units also have a filter to smoth the graphics so they don't look so distinct. But this has nothing to do with the media format.

[linton]

I see nintendo going down in a blaze of glory just like the 64.

With the australian market not big enough (not enough comsumers) to support 3 consoles, one of them has to lose. And with the x-box and the PS2 both supporting DVD and a larger cataloge of adult aimed games (lets face it. theres just as many Over 18 gamers and under 18) the gamecube will lose out at the end of the day.

Also the lack of piracy for the Gamecube will also hurt it. both PS2 and X-box games can be copied, and a lot of people will go for either one of these consoles before the camecube because of that.

[MrMacabre]

Originally posted by linton
I see nintendo going down in a blaze of glory just like the 64.


I didn't know the n64 went down in a 'blaze of glory' :eek: ;)

[linton]

Ok, wrong choise in words. How about phisle out like the 64. :p :D

[MrMacabre]

Originally posted by linton
Ok, wrong choise in words. How about phisle out like the 64. :p :D

I'll agree there :p

One minute Nintendo 64 was going fine - even released a new WWF game called No Mercy then a couple of months later it's as dead as a doornail. :eek:

Actually, dead is the wrong term. It was retired by Nintendo in favour of the new Gamecube. Probably the best way for a console to go. :dD

[skitz]

it had a good run tho.....much fun was had by all....especially me since i didnt have to pay for mine :p

[regiebabe]

Originally posted by linton
Also the lack of piracy for the Gamecube will also hurt it. both PS2 and X-box games can be copied, and a lot of people will go for either one of these consoles before the camecube because of that. That's b##**#t, none of my friends go for piracy. Piracy does not effect it's popularity. 64 did far better then PSX and it's not hard to work out why: 1. you had to buy the games, 2. It had better graphics and faster load times and all around better gameplay. 3. the meduim was safer (CDs get scratched easier). You can see Nintendo thought of this when making the GC disc so much smaller.

[linton]

Originally posted by regiebabe
That's b##**#t, none of my friends go for piracy. Piracy does not effect it's popularity. 64 did far better then PSX and it's not hard to work out why:
1. you had to buy the games,
2. It had better graphics and faster load times and all around better gameplay.
3. the meduim was safer (CDs get scratched easier). You can see Nintendo thought of this when making the GC disc so much smaller.

Hahaha, so nintendo made the discs smaller so they wouldn't get scratched as much??? That's some logic.

I'm just telling it how it is. Its too easy to see that the Playstation kicked the ass of the 64 not only for its own merits but piracy as well.
I'd say at least 2 in every 3 Playstaions got modded, maybe not just for pirated games but also other region games. For the 64 to play NTSC didn't you have to buy a totally new console from that region?
Where's the upside to this? Nintendo might have done well from selling a few more consoles, but lost many customers in the process. Things like this turn people away to start with. You can't sell people a controller to a console they don't have.

Memory cards where also a great idea. They open up the possibilty for an unlimited amout of saves for the one game. Cartridge couldn't offer this.
I'm not a big fan of piracy, But there are people who don't want to spend $100 for a game they might finish in a couple of weeks.

Just face it. The nintendo 64 was in no way as good as the Playstation (which is still going strong with new games being released).

And just personally, I favour FMV's over cartoony graphics any day.

[doctor ownage]

Firstly, the PS2 is a 128 bit console whereas the GameCube and the X-Box are 256. Why anyone would choose to buy a substandard system is beyond me. Then again, it's beyond me as to why anyone would buy any of these consoles to begin with if they already have a PC, unless their PC is very outdated. The X-Box contains a 733mhz processor *yawn*. This processor is way outdated by todays standards. Yet this represents the most powerful console on todays market. Not to mention the fact that the majority of games available for consoles are single player. Once you have experienced multiplayer online gaming it's extremely difficult to appreciate a game which uses nothing but artificial intelligence.

Sony has it's main following in Japan. X-Box has it's major following in Western nations and Nintendo has a diverse following between the two. Just because 1 company may sell more in some geographical location than another means very little. Look at these names: Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft. Do you really think any of these companies' consoles are actually going out of business? To think so is very ignorant indeed. They are all very succesful in their own markets and will be around for as long as any of them feel the need to be so.

[linton]

Originally posted by doctor ownage
Firstly, the PS2 is a 128 bit console whereas the GameCube and the X-Box are 256.

I'd like to know where you pulled this from??
The X-box has 256bit sound, Is this where your getting confused? I was positive that this generation of consoles where all 128 bit.
If one was 256 this would certainly hold it above the others in terms of sales, But I wasn't aware of this.


:confused: :confused:

[doctor ownage]

I could be wrong, been a while since I checked out the console specs. I'll do some research and get back to you.

[doctor ownage]

You're right, I was incorrect as far as the bits go per console. Still everything else applies. Here is a really good link as to specs of all the different consoles:

http://www.pcvsconsole.com/features/consoles/

You can see the X-Box contains a 733mhz cpu, compared to the GameCube's 485mhz and the PS2's (pitiful) 295mhz.

I guess one main issue I didn't mention is money. If you want a cheap way to play average games you get a console. If you are prepared to pay a lot more money and want to play the latest cutting edge games then you get a PC.

I played the leaked Doom3 demo on my pentium4 1.7ghz with Geforce4 MX440 and 512mb DDR RAM, and even on this system the game grinded my system down so much I was lucky to be getting anything more than 10fps when there was any action on the screen. Can you imagine trying to run such a game on any of today's current consoles? It would be impossible.

[regiebabe]

"Hahaha, so nintendo made the discs smaller so they wouldn't get scratched as much??? That's some logic."

They are smaller, if you leave them lying around the place it's harder to accidently knock them around and stuff, I know they dammage just as easily but... I don't know, I find myself knocking over a lot more CD cases then floppy disks and stuff.

"For the 64 to play NTSC didn't you have to buy a totally new console from that region?"

No, in fact to modify it you didn't even need a special chip, just normal stuff you can buy at any electronics store.

"The nintendo 64 was in no way as good as the Playstation"

I disagree, I think it was much better. Better graphics, better gameplay and the storage medium was silicon and not optical discs. Memory cards weren't really an "idea" for PSX, they were nessasary to save games, you'll notice they are a silicon cartridge - something that all N64 games are to begin with.

Doc O; "The X-Box contains a 733mhz processor"

This is what hit me, I thought "this so-called-console is just like a PC only with functionality ripped out of it". Consoles are for GAMES and are designed for playability, and X-Box is not designed for playability at all!! I was shocked that it runs off a cut-down version of windows (and quite horrified too), and I thought people who've had problems with hard disks int he past would also hate it (I've never had a Hard disk last more then 3 years without getting bad sectors... 3 years and the console has a bad part that's not something I'd be willing to allow). It's like putting a good motor in a car, the car has to be designed to use that motor and -- ack I'm so sick of the X-Box!

"this represents the most powerful console on todays market"

It's not the power it's the gameplay. You'll notice X-Box is 248MHz faster then CG, and yet it still dosen't have any better gameplay.

"Can you imagine trying to run such a game on any of today's current consoles? It would be impossible."

Ahh, but the games are designed for the console specifically so they will work on the console. SNES is <4MHz (3.75 or something I forget exactly) and it still managed games that the PC-equlivent needed 30, 40 or 60MHz for...

RegieBabe

[linton]

Originally posted by regiebabe

"this represents the most powerful console on todays market"

It's not the power it's the gameplay. You'll notice X-Box is 248MHz faster then CG, and yet it still dosen't have any better gameplay.



This all comes down to the game producers, not necessarily the console. I believe They have no way near pushed the limits of any of the three consoles, however the best I have seen so far would be Final Fantasy 10. The whole game of that lengh with speach and seamless game-to-FMV cuts (which were awesome).

The game designers don't seem to want to spend as long developing the games for console, I think maybe because of the fact they have to program it for that same level of hardware and hope its still around in the year or two it might take to really produce a good system-pushing game.

This is where the PC game designers have the luxury. They know computers will still be there, just with more power. The program code dosn't change like it does with generations of consoles.

They have the computers of tommorow to program on, so when the game is finally released, the technology is there to support it. Look at games like warcraft 3. They started it as soon as they knew for sure warcraft 2 was huge and had a following, and yet took them close to 5 years, with them taking it back to work on it some more just as we thought it was going to be released.

So all in all, I'd love to have the cash to upgrade my PC every time a new graphics or sound card comes out, but I don't have that luxury. Instead I went for the PS2, before that the Playstation, and before that, the SNES.
I admit back in the days of the SNES, cartridges where the way to go, with the amount of space required for the games very small (the carts only held 4 meg!!), but as soon as the games became more advanced, and CD's more widly available and used, the cartridge was time to be retired. For some unkown reason Nintendo thought they'd keep with them, and in the long run the amount of 64 consoles sales compared to PS proved this.

Why they thought they could fit they games that where being released at the time on cartridge, I have know idea. They may have got the size up to about 40 meg I think, but still not enough. fair enough, they where a lot more durable (dust still stuffed them up a fair bit though) but I feel it was a bad move to stick with them. I'd like to see them try and put the games of today on cartridge. :p :D

Mmm, this is turning into a bit of a novel, once you get started it's hard to stop. I commend the peoples that read this far without a drink break. :D :D

[MrMacabre]

Originally posted by regiebabe
I disagree, I think it was much better. Better graphics, better ameplay...

I'll agree too; the N64 was awesome. The WWF games on it were better than their PSX counterparts.

The only downfall N64 had (in my eyes) was the lack of a Cricket game. :(

[regiebabe]

Super Mario 64 was crammed down to like 4.6 Meg, the size of the Cart and the optional battery-backed memory can be changed easily enough. And it's a lot faster then CD and the drives to read the carts are cheaper to produce then CD-ROMS. You can get USB (silicon) thumb drives for PC that hold like 128MB of EDITABLE memory (ROMS are cheaper)...

"This all comes down to the game producers"

Not really, you'd think they could use software compression to improve the graphics on PSX and PS2 to the N64/GC standards (which has inbuilt 6:1 hardware compression) but they don't and as a result Nintendo units have smother graphics on floors, walls, characters, etc. Super Street Fighter II (my favorate arcade fighting game) is 22MB big (using pkzip you can compress it to 10) and ran on a 12MHz CPU. I mentioned the compressed size because Nintendo data is stored in a fomat that is both compressed and faster to read (a bit like PKlike if anyone remembers it, it would comress DOS exe files which then at 40% the original size or whatever compression you acheived would also run faster because they were optimised).

Nintendo data is written in this way which is what makes it possible for a big game like Super Mario 64 to be crammed into not even 5MB of space! And you don't litterally have to uncompress it, it runs as it is in its optimised form. So when people say "PS2 can read quad layed DVDs and GC can only read its little 1.5GB discs" I say "so what? that's all that's needed!!" I know some people think that because quad layered DVDs can hold about 18GB of data it's somehow going to be 12 times better then GC but the facts are: the load times will be 12 times faster and the game will still fit!

[doctor ownage]

Originally posted by regiebabe
Ahh, but the games are designed for the console specifically so they will work on the console. SNES is <4MHz (3.75 or something I forget exactly) and it still managed games that the PC-equlivent needed 30, 40 or 60MHz for...


They aren't the same as the games ran on a PC. A console is still a piece of hardware set by rules and limitations. Games played on top end PC's which are then converted to console are minus the higher resolutions and a multitude of other graphic features present on the PC version so that they are able to be run on a console.

[DigitalG]

Originally posted by MrMacabre
I'll agree too; the N64 was awesome. The WWF games on it were better than their PSX counterparts.

The only downfall N64 had (in my eyes) was the lack of a Cricket game. :(

um, NO, smackdown 1 & 2 revolutionized the world of wrestling games and 64 copied of them in the season mode department, also the titon trons,(music videos) plus it had better gameplay :p :p

[MrMacabre]

Originally posted by Digital G
um, NO, smackdown 1 & 2 revolutionized the world of wrestling games and 64 copied of them in the season mode department, also the titon trons,(music videos) plus it had better gameplay :p :p

Haha; hardly.

WCW / nWo Revenge on n64 was the first to have a kick @$$ season mode. Obviously not as advanced as these days, but still a decent start.

Smackdown 1 and 2 were great in regards to match types, but it had a bit of a comical feel to it, with the animation not being as smooth as that on the 64.