A New and Unique Trend in Game Development And Publishing

[Final-Fan]

KruzeS said:

Final-Fan said:

Au contraire. I agree that Sony focused on cutting-edge hardware so much that it shot itself in the foot. (Cell may be costing them a lot -- I don't know the numbers -- but Blu-ray was a total clusterf*@# for the first few months.) But Microsoft's sin was much, much greater, and carries more potential for long-range negative impact.

I think we're more or less in agreement.

IMO the PS3 is an excelent implementation of a bad design (not at all an "engineering masterpiece"), while the 360 is a awful implementation of a pretty decent design.

And before anyone flames me about the "engineering masterpiece" thing, I'll say that the PS3 absolutely is the fulfillment of an "engineer's (wet) dream". It's one of those things that come out when us geeks literally "look at no cost". But that's not engineering - engineering is first and foremost about working with constraints.

Well ... not quite.

I believe that the PS3 is a textbook example of a product that fails to take market realities into account (shortage of supplies, price), whereas the 360 is a textbook example of a product that fails. product that was not properly tested before being inflicted on the market.

So, we disagree that the 360 had a pretty decent design, because good designs don't cause massive heat death. ... You know, come to think of it, I believe that we are just using the word "design" to mean slightly different things. You know the 360 failure rate is ridiculous, yet you say it had good design. Maybe you mean just the raw hardware, not the final product design. In which case I agree with what you said here.

But in your previous post, you seemed to say that Sony's mistake was greater than Microsoft's. I disagree with that. Sony and Microsoft each made equally huge missteps in different areas of console design. I think that the kind of mistake Microsoft made is more damaging in the long term, but I concede that an intelligent person, faced with the same information, might reasonably disagree.

Whew.

[edit: In other words, Sony has better engineers, Microsoft has better marketing. Nintendo pwns all.]

[re-edit: Not very shocking when the first is a home electronics giant, and the second a computer SOFTWARE giant.]