Interesting turn of history

[dream431ca]

Read this article on when the PS2 first came out:

http://archive.salon.com/tech/log/2000/10/27/playstation_rant/index.html

Now, read the altered article (exchanged PS2 with PS3 and Dreamcast with 360). Deja vu?

"Whether or not Sony was sincere in its claim that a supply crisis led it to cut its initial shipments of the PlayStation3 to just 500,000 units, there's little question that the corporation was successful in the arena of hype marketing. Lines of obsessed PlayStation fans were a news staple Wednesday. But is the so-called superconsole really worth staying up all night for?"

"No. The PS3 is not the revolutionary device that Sony's marketing department would have you believe. Don't get me wrong; it's definitely the most powerful video-game machine on the planet right now. But that's not enough."

"The PS3's stats are certainly impressive; it's got hardware power to burn. But so what? There's just not much software available that can take advantage of it. The games that are being released at the same time as the system don't rise much, if at all, above games available for Microsoft's rival (and cheaper)Xbox 360video-game system."

"And don't expect a huge number of quality games anytime soon. Sony has reversed positions withMicrosoft and stupidly released a system that is in many ways a game developer's nightmare. MS, learning from itsXbox debacle, went out of its way to make the360 easy to develop games for. But Sony, intoxicated with success from the PlayStation 2, forgot the first rule of the video-game industry: Software sells systems. If you make it hard for developers to produce good games then there's no reason for people to buy the system. This oversight has already cost Sony some goodwill -- developers are howling about how hard it is to create games for the system. In an interview with Time magazine, John Carmack, one of the developers behind such massively popular games as Doom and Quake, said that the 'PS3 is definitely more powerful than 360. But it's less convenient to extract performance from it.'"

 

[Iced_Eagle]

History doesn't exactly repeat itself though.

Just because it happened once and developers dealt with it then, doesn't mean they will be forgiving in this generation. It's even MORE difficult now a days to create good games, so perhaps the pains of developing are finally pushing people away from the system.

Also, Microsoft has learned from the mistakes of the original Xbox and improved things for the 360, so we'll see... Sure the story sounds familiar, but it doesn't mean it will have the same ending.

 

[dream431ca]

History doesn't exactly repeat itself though.

Just because it happened once and developers dealt with it then, doesn't mean they will be forgiving in this generation. It's even MORE difficult now a days to create good games, so perhaps the pains of developing are finally pushing people away from the system.

Also, Microsoft has learned from the mistakes of the original Xbox and improved things for the 360, so we'll see... Sure the story sounds familiar, but it doesn't mean it will have the same ending.

Agreed. It can go either way now. I was just surprised to see the similarities.