Re: 10 Reasons why PS3 is Superior to Xbox

On Sep 10, 1:00 pm, slayerma...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

<snip>

It doesn't matter, you're talking about the most popular and most
played FPS in the history of gaming, EVER. It doesn't matter if there
was no demo.

Counter-strike is the most played online FPS game, but there's more to
a complete FPS game than just the online multi-player aspect.

Show me where you can find a statistic that says that Counter-strike
is the most popular FPS game, online or not, ever. After that, show me
where you can find a statistic that says that Counter-strike is the
most played FPS game.

Actually, the second statistic is impossible because you can't track
how many hours people have poured into single-player, offline FPS
games. Who knows how many hours people have spent playing Doom,
Resistance or Halo's single-player campaign?

FPS games have always been traditionally very big on the PC. It wasn't
until Halo came out that most gamers would even consider playing a
console FPS.

<snip>

CS is not as good a game as Halo 2? What a total joke. That is so
funny that you think that. Once again, we are talking about the most
popular FPS ever. Good is an opinion, and people who play it must
think it's good. You put two and two together and four times as many
people think CS is STILL a more fun game than H2.

Again, show me anything that comes even close to proving that Counter-
strike is more popular and has been played more than any FPS in
history. You can't possibly come up with whether time spent on online
multiplayer games of Counter-strike outweigh time spent on single-
player games or off-line multiplayer games of other FPS titles.

Can you show me sales statistics for Counter-strike compared to sales
statistics for Halo on both the Xbox and PC and Halo 2 on both the
Xbox and PC?

CS is NOT a free game. CS does NOT
come with Halflife on Steam.

What are you talking about? I played Counter Strike on the PC and I
never paid any money for it above and beyond the initial investment in
Half-Life. You may have to pay for it now, but Counter Strike was
originally an unofficial modification, not a standalone retail
product.

Yea, and long before H2 came out it was bought and moved over to the
list of retail games on Steam.

ROTFLMAO

You DO realize that even when Valve turned Counter-strike into an
official boxed product, you could still download it for absolutely
NOTHING, right?

The retail version was for the average gamer who may not have known
how to apply the mod to Half-Life and also included some stuff you'd
normally have to download to make it at least somewhat worth the
buyer's while.

Dated graphics sure, yet millions of
games are still played everyday. The point is and always has been, UT3
will not be as popular on 360 as it will be on PC. I would stake a
million dollars on that.

When did you ever make that point? You never once said that anywhere
in this entire thread. It's obvious that UT3 will not be as popular on
the Xbox 360 as on the PC. There are many more PC gamers than there
are Xbox 360 gamers, and the Unreal franchise is a PC franchise that
happened to be ported a couple of times to the Xbox and PS2.

Now you are starting to see that point, even though you may not
realize it. If the most popular FPS in the history of gaming does
shitpoor on the console port, what chance does UT3 stand? A good one
to be sure, no one can disagree with that, but all I am debating at
this point is the 'it would be throwing money to NOT develop a 360
UT3'.

Counter-strike first came out on June 18, 1999 for free. I believe it
was released as a retail download in October of 2003 but it may have
been a little earlier. Even today, you can download it for free and
play on Valve's network as long as you have a valid Half-Life CD KEY.

Counter-strike for the Xbox came out on November 18, 2003 for $30-40
over 3 years later. The port is a near perfect job which means the
graphics are 4 years old. You needed to pay for the Xbox Live service
if you didn't already have it.

Unreal Tournament 3 comes out on the PC and PS3 in late November of
this year. The Xbox 360 version has been in development for some time
now and will be released early next year, only a few months later. The
graphics for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will be BETTER than the
graphics for the PC version for MOST PC players.

This is not a traditional PC to console port where the console version
comes out a year or two later with appropriately dated graphics. The
PC and console versions were developed concurrently or at least
partially concurrently and the graphics will be even better on the
consoles since most people won't have powerful enough PCs to beat out
the consoles.

You guys don't seem to understand that this (along with all game
development) is a gamble.

What's the gamble when there's already a console version coming out
and it's on the console with the smaller install base? There's no
reason to believe that PS3 players will snatch this up and Xbox 360
players won't. The reasonable assumption is that the game will sell
much better on the 360 because the install base is so much bigger.

The financial and time investment is quite small so if you crunch the
numbers there really isn't a gamble at all.

Your point in this branch of the thread was that Counter Strike on the
Xbox flopping somehow meant that UT3 would require tons of financial
and time investment to be ported to the Xbox 360 from the PC which is
just not true. You still have not stated anything that even remotely
comes close to proving that original point.

How are you still THAT far away from what I'm saying? CS flopping on
Xbox was simply to show that even a seemingly foolproof money making
port will fall to nothing if it isn't thought out well enough.

The port of Counter-strike to the Xbox was NOT foolproof in any way,
shape or form. When it came out, there were very few successful FPS
games on any console. It came out with graphics 4 years too old. It
came out on the console with the much smaller install base. That
console had a great online gaming service but not that many people had
it.

Compare that to now, when there have already been quite a few very
successful FPS games on consoles (so much so that now there's even
talk that a gamer using a console gamepad was able to beat out gamers
using the traditional mouse and keyboard set-up). The graphics will be
better than most PC gamers' rigs can handle. The Xbox 360 has a much
larger install base than the PS3. Xbox Live has an unprecedented
number of Gold members and tons of people are playing online games
everyday.

They
LOST money on that port. I have never said a single number in relation
to how much 360 UT3 is going to cost, all I have ever said is that the
money money they spend on it, the more money they would lose by
releasing it along with the PS3 and PC version, thus the reason PS3 is
getting it first. Two COMPLETELY different arguments you somehow
mashed into one.

Your statement makes no sense. Regardless of when the Xbox 360 version
comes out, any money they've spent on development of that version is
gone. If they spend more money to develop the game, it's lost whether
the Xbox 360 version comes out day and date with the other 2 versions
or six months later.

I THINK you were trying to say that there's a higher risk with
releasing it in November when Halo 3 may still be hogging the
spotlight, but I can't be certain.

Anyway, none of what you said is "the reason PS3 is getting it first."
Unreal Tournament 3 wasn't even slated to come out on the Xbox 360
originally. For the longest time, it was being planned only for
Windows and the PS3.

Epic has been very public with the reasons why the Xbox 360 version is
coming out later.

Further, the essentially singular issue you state above (not enough
modes of input to represent the hot keys in the PC version of the
game) is an issue with porting from PC to consoles, not specifically
Xbox. The issues would have been there with the PS2 as well.

100% correct. However, the Xbox and PS2 controllers are very similar
compared to the Sixaxis and 360 controller.

Yes... and?

Part of the controls for UT3 are being worked with the Sixaxis' motion
detection system, which the 360 controller does not have. If the PS3
controller has to be tilted to move in a direction (on certain
vehicles) and the 360 has to use one of the thumbsticks then there is
a problem. That would mean that the PS3 would have two devices
(tilting and a thumbstick) to control movement of a vehicle and the
other thumbstick for weapons, while the 360 has one thumb for moving
and one for shooting. A situation this would be game breaking in would
be flying something like a helicopter.

Haha... you put WAY too much faith in the Sixaxis. Thus far, the
Sixaxis tilt mechanism has been shown to, in no uncertain terms, suck.
This would just replace one of the thumbsticks leaving the PS3
controller's other thumbstick pretty useless.

The PC doesn't have tilt control so in your scenario the PC version
would be gimped controlwise. The Xbox 360 version can just use both
thumbsticks as it usually does.

Then your barking up the wrong tree, because I have never said it was
going to be painful at all.

This whole time, you've been saying how difficult things are going to
be when they create the Xbox 360 version. If it isn't that big a deal
(in other words, the financial and time investment AREN'T that great
as I've said over and over again), then all this lost money you keep
talking about amounts to a hill of beans.

You admitted yourself that
you think Halo 2 is a better game than Counterstrike, while the higher
numbers of people playing CS than H2 would disagree with you (opinions
opinions, but I am making a point).

Again, Counter-strike is only half a game. There is no single-player
aspect (just playing the multi-player game with bots).

Again, you'll never be able to find statistics that show that people
have spent more time playing Counter-strike than Halo 2 because you
can't track offline data.

Show me any reviewer who thinks that Counter-strike is a better game
than Halo 2 and maybe we can talk.

Now think, another beloved PC game
is put onto a console with Halo 3 already out on it. Do you honestly
think they decided to work on the 360 version without blinking an eye?

Of course not. It wasn't planned for the Xbox 360 until a year or so
down the line when they saw what a flop the PS3 had been. Do you
honestly think when they saw how well the Xbox 360 was doing and how
poorly the PS3 was doing that they didn't decide to work on the 360
version, which is essentially a glorified port of the PC version with
some minor design changes already worked out on the PS3 version and
thus hardly a cost at all, without blinking an eye?

When the number of potential customers is so much higher on the Xbox
360 and you already have a hit game on that system and there isn't
much cost involved, there isn't really much debating... you're going
to make the game.

OF COURSE it's a good investment for the game starved PS3. The 360 has
alternatives.

The PS1 and PS2 proved that more alternatives is better. More
alternatives means a buyer is more likely to go with the Xbox 360
which means you need to have your game on that system to make money
from that buyer.

A few years? You're joking, right? Game development began in 2005 and
only took that long because the team had to learn an entirely new
console architecture (the PS3 which is not very similar to and much
more complex than the PS2). If there wasn't a PS3 version, the team at
Epic could have simply developed the PC and Xbox 360 versions
concurrently, although they probably wouldn't have because the Xbox
360 hadn't even been launched yet and could have been a massive
failure.

Neither had the PS3.

I know that. The point was that most people assumed the PS3 would be
THE system of this generation. The Xbox had not done so well. The PS2
was a hit. Sony had the new Cell processor which was supposed to be
the sh1t. The Xbox 360 was going to use a more traditional processor.
I believe this was also before everyone realized that the PS3 could
never match the Xbox 360's graphics technically because of the
graphics bandwidth bottleneck.

All things pointed to the PS3 to be the console to work on which is
why Epic originally decided to forego development on the Xbox 360.

And the game was ANNOUNCED in early 2005. Anyone
who follows the UT series knows that they were kicking around ideas
and working on skins LONG before then.

Ideas and skins are irrelevant when it comes to whether to develop a
game for a particular platform. It's when those ideas are solidified
into more concrete concepts that game design and development truly
begins.

Sure there was no hard code,
but coming up with the ideas is half the battle. Games have always
been worked on before they are announced because companies would look
stupid if they announced something and then found out later that it
wouldn't work.

You're absolutely right, but "kicking around ideas" is hardly the
beginning of development of any sort. When we start forming an idea
for a new application, it's just to see if something is even viable
(so we won't "look stupid" as you put it). It's not until we start
formalizing those ideas in a specification document that we say that
we've started development. It's the same with any development company
I've worked for. People can come up with tons of ideas but it's not
until you have a working concept that you're actually doing a project.

A port from the PC to the Xbox 360 will never take "a few years."

Yea... because they already have all the ideas, artwork, skins, and
everything else minus code. Thank you for restating my point?

Then I fail to see the point of your original statement, which was
that the only reason the port would take a few months instead of a few
years is because they already had the ideas, artwork, skins, etc.
Well, if you're doing a port, you're going to have all those things
already... if you don't have any of that stuff, you're not porting a
game, you're developing a new one.

"Make bank?" You have a grossly exagerrated idea of what game
developers make.

You're talking about arguably the most skilled game development team
in the world right now, not just some average 'game developer'. Almost
everyone on the UT3 team worked on some part of the series meaning
they've been around for a while. Senior level employee's are not
cheap.

I never said they were cheap, I said you have a grossly exaggerated
idea of what they make. Game developers, no matter how long they've
been in the industry and how good they are, are NEVER going to make
more money than, say, a developer on Wall Street whose work involves
billions of dollars.

That is, of course, unless you're John Carmack who founded the
company.

Cliffy B has been with the Unreal series since the beginning. How much
money do you really think he makes? He started as just a lowly level
designer, remember.

The game industry isn't some magical place where people get raises
that increase their salaries by leaps and bounds. Most game developers
come in making in the $60ks. If you're really, really good, you'll
make in the low to mid $100ks if you're with a company that has seen a
lot of success and is NOT owned by a bigger company (say, EA).

Most developers aren't doing game development because of more money...
they're doing it because they love games. They could make a LOT more
money working in other industries.

When did I ever say anything about cost other than: cost > 0. The
whole cost thing was tacked on to show how even MORE foolish it would
be to release the 360 UT at the same time as the others. If
development costs one dollar, it makes it one dollar more foolish. If
it costs a billion dollars it makes it a billion dollars more foolish.
The number is somewhere between those two and guess what? It's that
much more foolish.

LOL - Whatever you say, dude.

Nice ambiguous response when you can't think of anything else to say.

You're right that I can't think of anything else to say because your
original statement is so nonsensical. One dollar you spend is one
dollar foolish? That makes no sense at all. Something is foolish only
if it doesn't give you a return on your investment.

If you invest $1000 in the stock market and get back $2000, was it
foolish for you to invest any portion of that money? And don't pull
something out of left field like "well, if my grandmother was sick and
needed the money..."

.