ADN

yeah. and I agree. but well. you pay for technology and ps3 seems to be more future-prone.

xbox 360 rocks; it is hard to think that PS3 will be better - or even comparable

my thinking is that the majority of really great games will be on both platforms... and the xbox360 SO FAR has been preferred by everyone from Armored Core to Assassin's Creed to Crysis...

and the exclusives on 360 (which include Molyneux, Pete Jackson, GTA4 content and more) far outweigh what I have seen coming in for the PS3, which are few and far between and "genre-based" games that have equivalents on the 360.

I really enjoy my 360 as it is... and still have more games coming out than i can afford. but I tend to play and return (have the hook-up at my local shop) - most the games coming out will be old fare in a year, and I could buy them again if I want them.

I just think Sony has larger problems than how to convince people to outperform their production of cell processors and blu-ray drives.

but they are not comparing the PS3 to the 360, because the "PS3 is a computer" and in that respect, it is a computer without a basic word processor... No thanks, I can play 395 NES originals and thousands of other games on my laptop.

and articles like http://www.ps3power.com/xbox-ati-vs-ps3-rsx.htm do nothing to persuade fan-boys that the 360 is comparable or superior to the PS3. and besides, there are just as many pushing back that the PS3 will be on top.

i suspect, Microsoft will get more influence in the market, and sony who is taking a beating will start looking for ways to milk their customer base.

what confuses me is that the PS3 is banking on their blu-ray drive, which is one reason why it is so expensive, even though they promote the idea that the "disk" as a media concept is not going to be around for much longer...

err. one of the only non-genre based games on 360 i know of is Viva Pinata - a game I would love to play.

ps has (had) ico, shadow, okami and it is going to get the next mgs - although I am just playing sons of liberty and am not really liking it, damn the money there.

but well. again. I respect Sony a lot for trying to progress HW: wifi, bluetooth, flash cards, hdd, hdmi 1.3, blu-ray and of course cell. the latter three are brand-new state-of-the-art technology. where did ms innovate with hw?!

connection wise: all respect to MS. they did a damn good job on live. but well, it is one of the (if not The) most experienced companies in internet technology, so it is clear they are more capable. I prefer to play games by myself, but all this community spirit and gamer points do arouse my interest.

all in all - as far as predictions go: I expect Sony to go head-to-head in NA until 2011, with MS marginally beating them: 45%-40%. MS will launch x720 at that moment, which will be too early. Sony will pop out ps4 at least a year later... A different story in Europe where PS3 outsells x360 at 70-18%. JP 50-10. Wii will get very comfortable sales in the US at 15%, the EU at 12% and JP at 40%, making them on-par with Sony in their home territory, mostly due to Wii being cheaper AND bringing the most genuinly new form of interactive digital entertainment.

bleh! :|

Brains,

What have you played on the 360?

Most I have played have a hybrid of at least two genres.

a very sound question with a very easy answer: none. /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

all joking aside: no indeed. I have only played demo pods for a while and the games were not able to draw me in at all.

then again: near none of the games in the last few years have. not on pc, not on ps2, not on xbox, not on any format - or almost none, i'll come back to that later.

i am looking for new experiences... genuinly new experiences and these are so few and far between I am losing all fucking confidence in what the games industry is coming up with. I grew up with games. Ever since being young I was intrigued by them. Ask my parents: whenever we came accross and arcade I wanted to go there. 4-5-6 years old. I am talking about the mechanical games there, with planes on sticks you had to shoot down. I am talking about pong and the rise of space invaders. Instead of wanting a bike for my communion, I was asking for a computer - i think now that was since I was not able to sell the idea of a games console to my parents who both were (and are) very heavily into books, literature, the art of the written word. I was able to sell "computer" - that still had text and writing (called "coding" to the insiders). Why?! It gave me access to games (and the beginners all-purpose symbolic instruction code and assembler with its BNE's and LDA's). I played for hours on end - and programmed in between. I am Dutch, but was able to read technical English magazines when I was 10 (although I only was going to have English courses next year). I got into a games profession. I am quite sure I need to have been "the" first Belgian based journalist writing about games - when it was all still "kiddie" stuff - but changing. I told my parents when I showed them the awesome Vic-20 graphics: "Some day these graphics are going to be indistinguishable from reality" - we are almost there. I told them: "Some day we all will be playing games from time to time." and again, we are almost there.

But being a journo for various magazines and being overloaded with drab and dribble, I lost touch with games. Every single next game was the same as something I have had in the past. New graphics, a new "storyline", "new" technology. Pfffrrrt. Been there. Done that. I seem to be able to get to the bottom of a game in no time - without finishing it. I look at shots, movies and read up on the game's vision... daily. I know there will be amazing games I miss, but there will not be a lot. Up to now - yet still admitting that I am not following them too closely, except for Viva - no x360 exclusives have caught my attention. None. No real PS3 games have either; that's why I pull the technology card all too often and PS's legacy games: ico, shadow, okami, rez (although an initial DC release), vib ribbon, parrapa etc... Seriously, x360 - except for the new online potential - does not cut it. xbox did not and I am not expecting a significant improvement for 360... new content for GTA4?! bleh! Halo 3?! Who the hell cares?! Peter Jackson?! Not if the King Kong game is going to be his contribution. Molyneux?! Yes. He might come up with a surprise. "Dimitri" for example, not Fable 2. But I supported MS's acquisition (read it on ieX) of Lionhead. At least Molyneux will get funded properly and he will be allowed to do his own thing and that is good for gaming.

But well... are there games which I thoroughly enjoyed over the last couple of years?! YES! But I can almost exhaustively sum them up: Ico is one (the artwork and atmosphere is yet to be surpassed). Shadow of the Colossus (although the trial and error sometimes does get on my nerves, but beating Giants is not supposed to be easy). Neverwinter Nights (the original, with the expansion packs bringing nothing new but monsters and textures). Half Life 2 (its set pieces, pace and environments are almost cinema). Quake IV (gung-ho visceral shooting at its best. A damn American game too if I may say so. A good thing it is fantasy.). Fable (very well made story RPG, but it tends to get tedious after a while). While Big Huge Games - a Microsoft studio, pumps out the best RTS's.

Forgive me to be categoric about saying "nay" to x360. I should not really. I have not tried it. Which game should I start with?

raum. did you read that?! it is my longest post yet on aj forums and no comments. :'(

QUOTE(Brains @ Oct 13 2006, 12:26 PM) raum. did you read that?! it is my longest post yet on aj forums and no comments. :'(

i read it, and might be able to get to it in a minute. for now, i'd say Fable is alot more than people give credit for. the alchemy of symbology is intense.

QUOTE(raum @ Oct 13 2006, 09:11 PM) i read it, and might be able to get to it in a minute. for now, i'd say Fable is alot more than people give credit for. the alchemy of symbology is intense.
ok. you are going to reply on only 17 words of about 800. hmm. sad that you won't on the other 783....

but still... I am really curious there. you are an expert on symbology and symbology behind games is a really interesting subject. have not really thought about it before, but from the sound of it, it is intriguing... remeber: i think in concepts not facts. i look at the whole, not the details. i look at the experience, not the set pieces. hence, I am looking forward to you breaking down Fable (a very well made story RPG, but which tends to get tedious after a while... gameplay wise).

QUOTE(Brains @ Oct 13 2006, 01:46 PM) ok. you are going to reply on only 17 words of about 800. hmm. sad that you won't on the other 783....

but still... I am really curious there. you are an expert on symbology and symbology behind games is a really interesting subject. have not really thought about it before, but from the sound of it, it is intriguing... remeber: i think in concepts not facts. i look at the whole, not the details. i look at the experience, not the set pieces. hence, I am looking forward to you breaking down Fable (a very well made story RPG, but which tends to get tedious after a while... gameplay wise).

Fable is about the facilitation of consciousness through personal decision and action, not role models. it's pretty obvious testimony and the game was scaled far down from what it as supposed to be.

but Fable 2 looks outstanding... and I suspect Dmitri is semi-biographical, should be wonderful.

Peter Molyneux is a genius. i can talk more about this later,.. deadlines abound with a short delay every once in a while. thus no big posts today.

btw, video games are a tool for meditation for me. i sit in reverie and consider the implications of the symbology of the characters.

it started as a child, and only got more deep. the monitor gives the stimulus to achieve the alpha state, and from there, I open my mind to a inter-facilitation with diety... and adopt symbology, and play the game around the symbology.

like if you tried to visualize a blue ball, and then made it do tricks in your head... and realized the tricks it did spelled out words that must lie deeper than man's conscious mind.

it's an exercise in synchronicity, if you will, with me at the floating point of relativity.

in a sense, mystic daydreaming with special effects.

i will finish Fable, and break down the whole game... but for now, I say it is epic in its diologue on the human state.