http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3544039.stm

How the hell do you even guess sales figures?

Slightly off-topic: why the hell does Sony leave the reset & eject buttons and the controller & memory card ports black on coloured PS2s? It just looks fucking ugly

Didn't you know? All us British can see into the future. I can predict it now, you don't belive me. =P

Great power of Consumer Whores; combine unto me and unleash thine powerful wrath! "Tomb Raider™ XVII (featuring Lara Croft™ with yet more added jet-black mascara, because she's that down with it, angst fans!): Quest for the Hidden Secret Ancient Legendary Dark Angel Gothic Powerful Homosupremus" Super-beam FIRE!!

XD

OMG it's so great. it just means we'll see crappier games and shallower people playing them; the industry will end up becoming more accessible to people who don't give a fucking shit about games and make us, the people who actually know about it, stop believing in them.

thank god there are still people out there commited to quality as well as profit.

EDIT:
utter shite, these people haven't researched at all. that's the stupidest argument i've heard today. while they do emphasise in quality, by no means do they cut down costs on power. that would be Sony, if anything.

I don't see the problem with PS2 being on top. I don't think it would be any different than if the GC or Xbox were on top, it just would change what system the majority of games are released on. Geez, take a chill pill, Greg!

*takes pill* actually, i'm just pissed off at the fact that EVERYONE dubs PS2 as the best console out there, when it clearly isn't. but then it somewhat makes me feel privileged to be able to distinguish from the mainstream opinion and the "real thing", so me loving Nintendo and everybody else loving Sony just makes me love Nintendo even more.

but anyway, so long as the companies that make quality titles stay in business, even if Nintendo jumps off the hardware wagon, I'll enjoy playing games.

I like playing all of them, therefore making them all equally the best.

Um, Yamauchi pretty much said that.

i recall hearing him say something like that but wasn't he gone before the GCN launched?

Very much the contrary. He stepped down from his main official position, but he still exerts a lot of power; he just doesn't bother with day-to-day operations. He did say he thought up the DS, after all.

ok, kinda like Bill Gates then?

Firstly, predictions are made by current trends in gaming, and each company's announced plans for the future. Since it all looks set to be more of the same, we should expect similarly stagnant market shares.

As for casual gamers, they feed companies like Sega and Capcom who proceed to use the funds from Sonic and Resident Evil to make Rez and Killer 7. They feed money to EA, who just use it to buy more licenses for the casual. Ho hum...

Seriously though, casual gamers have their place, just as I have mine as a casual film fan, a casual TV viewer and a semi-casual music fan. Let me put it to you another way: sports fans buy FIFA yearly because they like football. How is that different from gamers here watching Sonic X because they like Sonic, but often not bothering with things like Friends?


Yup. Unfortunately, those people were never quite so good at that second bit, so there won't be a console from those people next time around. We'll just have to play Sega games on consoles that likely won't even deserve to display the blue and white logo.

That BBC page is total and utter bullshit, it was probably put up there cause SONY is paying them to put it up.

That was the weakest report I've ever seen. And I am not going to buy consoles anymore.

That's what I said a few months ago.

The history of console gaming is filled with unexpected successes though which makes predicting stuff like this quite hard. Nintendo achieved almost complete dominance in the 8-bit era but Sega unexpectedly managed to break their stranglehold with the Megadrive.

Same goes for poor old Sega - despite the Mega CD and 32X debacles I never thought that they'd lose the 32-bit wars so badly and quickly. Sega's had an extremely dominant position in the UK and Europe but fucked it all up almost in the space of a year.

And what about Microsoft and the Xbox? Breaking into the console market and achieving a respectable 2nd place (in sales) is not what many people expected. Normally companies like that have screwed up - remember the 3DO?



EA have a lot to answer for; they used to make good stuff back in the day, whereas now they churn out endless amounts of licensed shit. Capcom have a different problem; they come up with a good original game and then sequelize it to death - think about Street Fighter, Resident Evil etc.