Julian Eggebrecht

[staticneuron]

Time magazine, Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006 "TO PLAY'S THE THING The big story in computer games this year was HOW TO BLOW A HUGE LEAD, by Sony. Its PlayStation 2 was the champ in the last round of the console wars. This time Sony bet on a chip called the Cell and a disc format called Blu-ray. They're probably awesome, but how would anybody know? The PS3 is hideously expensive--it goes for up to $600--and Sony manufactured only a piddling few hundred thousand for the U.S., fewer for Japan. Plus it's hard to write games for; the launch titles were lame. You know you're in trouble when you get beat by something called a Wii." Time magazine, Monday, Oct. 30, 2000 "Even before this Thursday's official launch, Sony has lost goodwill, not to mention sales, for PlayStation2 with its glitchy product rollout. The company's recent announcement that it was cutting the number of PS2s available on launch day by 50% was a cruel blow to parents who had promised Junior one of the first units. And it is a headache for the 20,000 retailers selling PS2s--many of which began taking orders six months ago. The stores are bracing for hordes of irate customers."There will be people lined up in front of the doors," sighs Dan DeMatteo, president of Babbage's Etc., the nation's largest specialty video-games retailer. Babbage's has prepaid orders from five times as many customers as it will have units for this week. Sony won't explain what went wrong. Sony Computer Entertainment president Kazuo Hirai will say only that PlayStation2 is a "very complex machine that requires a lot of components." But the guessing in Japan is that the company botched the production of graphics chips. No modem is included with PS2, which puts it behind Sega's Internet-ready Dreamcast. But PS2 does have one feature parents will appreciate: it is backward compatible, meaning it can play the original PlayStation's 800 existing games. But many of the most eagerly anticipated titles, like Metal Gear Solid 2 and the Bouncer, won't be available until spring at the earliest. The early word on the playing experience--outside of Sony's launch party--is not particularly enthusiastic. "There is nothing on the PS2 that I've seen that gave me that jaw-dropping feeling I got with the Sega Dreamcast last year," says Dan Clark, 29, CEO of a New Hampshire credit union and an active gamer. Madden NFL 2001 is good, he says, but no better than games currently available on Dreamcast. Part of the reason for the underwhelming array of games, gamemakers say, is that PS2 is hard to program for. "The PS2 is definitely more powerful than Dreamcast," says John Carmack, the multimillionaire, ponytailed master gamer behind legendary shooters like Doom and Quake. "But it's less convenient to extract performance from it." "The PlayStation2 doesn't live up to Sony's hype," says Carmack. "It's just a next-generation machine, and they were acting like they'd invented the steam engine." But the biggest prize of all lies in turning gaming consoles into broad-ranging entertainment centers. Sony acknowledges this future by calling PS2 not a game console but a "computer entertainment system." And Sony, with its wealth of consumer-electronics devices and enormous movie and music businesses, may have the most to gain by branching out. Count on it to use PlayStation2 in the future as a platform for an array of synergistic nongaming applications, from editing digital movies made on Sony camcorders to downloading Sony-brand music and music videos. "PlayStation2 seems to be no more than a DVD player that can play games," grumbles Mike Roberts, an 18-year-old gamer from Missouri who says he won't be buying a PS2. "It should be the other way around." Deja Vu anyone? I especially want to point out carmacks statements. He came back around and made disparaging comments about the PS3 as well. Keeping in mind that Gabe was the biggest wii fan you can imagine...... before the system was even released. I am going to take his comments with a grain of salt. These american devs who normally make games for the PC spoke in the past on consoles and were wrong. Why on earth does anyone care now?