The lastest screenshots have shown great improvement. We might be lucky enough to have an emu by mid 2005.
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The lastest screenshots have shown great improvement. We might be lucky enough to have an emu by mid 2005.
To be honest I am suprised that sony doesnt make one themselves, A GOOD emulator would sell good, and I would be more than willing to pay $60 for a Good emulator for my pc......
SONY wants to sell hardware as well. do not forget that.
but I bet they would get more money [from] the emulator than they would the actual unit. I won't buy a ps/2 because the platform sucks, its too slow, and not worth $200 to me, now ~$60 to play their games on a real system... thats worth the money.
--edit--
Plus they would probably get a much nicer profit margin from selling a cd than from the entire hardware kits that they keep having to fix.... we are at what generation now dealing with dvd player failures? 7 finaly fixed it right?
Actually, Lefteris_D, most game console companies make hardly any money on the hardware. They often even lose money on them (Microsoft loses money on each X-Box they sell).
But there's no point in them making an emulator for the consoles because it would make the console obsolete, which would in turn make the need for a console obsolete, which would in turn cause the entire console game industry turn to solely making PC games. The reason they make their own proprietary hardware systems is that, if they are able to become the dominant company in the industry, as Nintendo is with handhelds, they can make more and more money on their games. The amount it costs them to manufacture the hardware and develop the software decreases over time, and so their marginal profits can be turned into huge ones three years later. Look at the GameBoy product line and the original PlayStation. By the time the GBA came out, Nintendo had literally thousands of titles available for it which now cost them a tiny tiny fraction of the original manufacturing costs. They were able to churn tons of games based on what they knew from ten years of market experience to be successful formats (in other words, the continuation of the Mario franchise with games that are original enough to not just be rip-offs, while still sticking to the basic run-and-jump formula that made the first few such big hits), as well as ports of games for other consoles. When you really look at it, Nintendo has hardly made any forward progress in the field of handheld gaming technology; it took them 10 years to go from a black & white 8-bit system to a full color 16(or is it 32?)-bit variation. That's really quite ridiculous when you consider that Sega had their Game Gear -- a virtually flawless handheld console -- out only what, a few years after their comparable home console system. It's because they had a monopoly on the market, and so they were able to make a considerable profit on technology that was basic enough to cost them hardly anything. Sony did the exact same thing with the PlayStation: they were churning out games for it long after it had been "replaced" by the PlayStation 2, and while the latter console was very popular when it launched, I'd be willing to bet that Sony was making more actual profit on the sale of PlayStation 1 games than PS2 hardware or software for at least a year after the PS2's launch.
Anyway, if they made emulators, it would be alot easier for other companies to reverse-engineer their systems and cut in on their markets. As long as the game companies make consoles, the only factor that matters is how much money they're willing to throw at it to "win" the console wars. When the X-Box came out, it nearly flopped. The only reason it didn't was that Bill Gates was so intent on overtaking the video game market. This is the exact same reason Nintendo is selling their GameCubes for $99 now.
Making a console has one purpose, to have a platform that is easy to use for everyone. If that was not true everyone would develop PC games instead.
i guess.... but I still wont buy a console.... the dreamcast was my last one
to be honest I don't see a point in them, you buy a console when it hits the market (sony PS/2) and a year later find out that the DVD player was shitty and takes 6 generations to fix.
or better yet, buy the xbox which was supposed to be state-of-tha-art, and had frame rate issuses with their primary game (which just happened to be bought up by MS before it hit the market, and ported from PC to XBOX) - yes I mean HALO - and right now, 3 years later, they seem to be cutting back on the hardware to make the box cheaper to manufacture (the celeron chip instead of the real pentium) whats the point? If I burn music, I can't play it in the xbox as most of them wont read cdr's..... its not worth it.
Quote:
Originally posted by Lefteris_D@Jan 4 2004, 12:04 AM
Making a console has one purpose, to have a platform that is easy to use for everyone. If that was not true everyone would develop PC games instead.
Wrong. Did you not read what I said at all? Sure, some of it is opinion, but most of it is essentially factual (like my description of the Game Gear as virtually flawless; the only problem with it was the battery life).
The problem with PC gaming (and the reason that it is dominated by only a few game genres and crowds) is that the market there is much more volatile. The hardware is always changing, and the gamers demand so much more from their games. If a company has one or two failures, they're basically done for (see whats-his-name with Daikatana). The console market, on the other hand, is much more forgiving. Once customers have purchased a console, they've made an investment. They're not going to be as quick to change allegiances if that particular console has a bad quarter or two (just look at the huge Dreamcast following, years after it was taken off of the market; Sega's not really making money off of it anymore, but if they continued to manufacture games for it, they would still be making a slight profit). With the PC, the consumer isn't making an investment in a particular company's games (with the exception of the "never-ending-expansion-pack-series" like The Sims and many RPGs).
Edited to include a quote of the post i was replying to.
There are companies that have - and will continue to support pc's .... hell silicone knights was one of them, I dont know if you remember Cyber Empires from the 386 days, but that was the shit then, and I still love it for that matter, but the point is they are back (suprisingly enough) and the most violent game on GC was made by them - granted it was for GC but nevertheless, they didn't die.... Blizzard is another example of a company that just won't die... although after starcraft I don't know why it didn't
but I guess I like the Idea that I can go out pay $80 for a Gefore FX 5200 and suddenly I can play a whole new string of games, Tron 2.0, UT2k3/ut2k4, rise of nations etc.
I dont feel limited by the pc market, and I will admit that sony did a good thing by producing the first console that allowed you to upgrade and STILL use the old games on it.... but that is a rare thing.... nintendo for example, snes, n64, gc all different media.... I just can't stand it, I can still play Privateer from my 386 box on my new xp box at 1600+ w/o any problems at all.........
--quick note--
the sega nomad was a hell of a lot cooler, allowing you play console games in a handheld unit was a great idea.
