| deathgod33 said:
what you said is correct, except for the part about wii being the first to create avatars. nintendo didnt create avatars, they were just the first to use them in online networking. |
True, the concept of avatars is prior to consoles. You could argue that nearly anything that gets to consoles was done years (or decades) before. Online gaming, avatars, home, whatever.
There is an inherant difference between the way Nintendo implemented avatars and the way Microsoft/Sony implemented avatars, however.
Nintendo used avatars and avatar creation as a vehicle for getting regular people into games. It makes them more interested in what they're doing and they have a better understanding of who they are in games. This opens gaming up to everyone, plus making lookalike Miis and other things is just fun. Part of the reason it was/is fun is because Nintendo was the first to do it on a home console -- it was sort of novel, especially with their approach.
Microsoft and Sony are using Avatars/home/NXE to drive micro transactions. Microsoft wants to eventually sell you clothes and other items for your avatars and Sony is taking that two steps further by encouraging you to buy branded items both for your residence as well as for your avatar itself. They want you to go to the mall and buy virtual clothes (with real money) as a pass time and they want you to buy fancy houses and furniture not to actually use, but to impress other people.
Nintendo's approach became instantly successful and is one of the driving forces behind the Wii's insane sales. It has pulled non-gamers into games and kept their interest. Now you've got your Mii for Wii Fit, you've got it for Mario Kart (Mario Kart shows you who is playing with you and where they're from on a globe), as well as a variety of other uses.
You are confusing "centralized" servers with "dedicated" servers. Centralized servers, for example, a random Xbox 360 hosting a Halo 3 game, requires all clients to connect to that server and send the server information. The server then sends that information to each client. Centralized servers are, by far, the most popular way for doing large online games like Halo 3 (anything with more than 4 players typically).
Dedicated servers are servers set up professionally with bandwidth dedicated just for hosting your game. So rather than some random Xbox 360 in some guy's house serving as your server, there is a machine in a data center with professional and fast internet hosting serving the game.
It is also worth nothing that whichever Xbox is operating as the server has a "host advantage" meaning they have no Internet latency to themselves whereas everyone else has latency to them. Further, if the host quits during a game you'll find that the game halts and has to select a new host and resynchronize.
Dedicated servers are unquestionably superior to non-dedicated servers. In both cases, you have the same number of "hops" in the sense that you used the word "hop".
