Le grand chien 3.0 - The Bear and Badger

davyK

They are no angels and Nintendo did all sorts of dirty tricks with the retailers etc.

But they created some great product. As did Sega.

Any company would like to see off competition. Sega have only themselves to blame for their implosion. I'm a fan of Nintendo output but I'm not an apologist for them either.

I'm not entirely sure they see MS and Sony as direct competition any more anyhow.

hylian_elf

I’m looking forward to the next round.

Kara_Jane_Addams

davyK wrote:

They are no angels and Nintendo did all sorts of dirty tricks with the retailers etc. But they created some great product. As did Sega. Any company would like to see off competition. Sega have only themselves to blame for their implosion. I'm a fan of Nintendo output but I'm not an apologist for them either. I'm not entirely sure they see MS and Sony as direct competition any more anyhow.

Aye, all companies are money grabbing wankers.

but I've never understood why people keep spinning the line about licensing existing to protect quality.

Competition always benefits the marketplace.

As for blaming a glut of shit games for the video game crash, the film industry has an inordinate amount of shit produced every year and still thrives, weirdly people have always been pretty good at separating good from shit, buying the former and ignoring the latter (except for Just Dance).

The ZX Spectrum probably had more shit games produced for it than any other system in history, yet remained successful.

The '83 crash was caused my market saturation, a lack of innovation, the introduction of affordable home computers and companies charging over the odds for outdated tech.

Nintendo succeeded because it was new and comparatively more powerful, for a similar price.

Nintendo were then content to sit on their laurels and ride the hardware to death, arguably if Sega and NEC hadn't come along there would probably have been another crash in the early 90's.

retroking1981

Kara_Jane_Addams wrote:

but I've never understood why people keep spinning the line about licensing existing to protect quality.

I think at first it was because like Davy said on the previous page...

davyK wrote:

The glut of rubbish for the 2600 was a factor of the crash. There were others (Warners sweating the ancient hardware way past its sell-by date) but expensive poor games were a significant part of it.

So Nintendo saw unlicenced releases as a threat. It could have happened again as far as they were concerned give the general lack of knowledge of the business. And as they were stumping up money to get it going I can see why they did what they did.

It became anti-competitive though - of that there is no doubt.

Like he said at the end though it evolved into something else because like you said, companies are money grabbing wankers.

regmcfly

Locked obv now. Sorry, having dinner. Will collate later

Kara_Jane_Addams

retroking1981 wrote:

Like he said at the end though it evolved into something else because like you said, companies are money grabbing wankers.

It didn't evolve, it was shit from day one.

retroking1981

What part of it exactly?

dynamiteReady

Kara_Jane_Addams wrote:

...but I've never understood why people keep spinning the line about licensing existing to protect quality...

I mean, it's leaving the realm of pure videogame fandom, sure, but try aim that line at the music industry.

Anyway, it was a land grab of sorts. Yamauchi made a fair calculation, and it worked. Granted he padded out his margins a fair amount, but his ideas on platform management have proven to work, are still part of the industry, and, I'd argue, the industry is probably better for it.

So much so, that even a free market like PC games submitted shockingly fast to the introduction of Steam, which is effectively Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo console licensing standards, without the actual... erm... console...

Quality is not just the bit that the journo's commonly report on (though they will ram it in your face when those standards are breached, don't worry about that). Quality is also about insuring that your machine doesn't get bricked, your credit card numbers don't get stolen, and that your kids don't kop an eyeful of their first cock or fanny on some random cart or download... Plenty of other places for them to do that.

That police work costs money.

Look at the shit Facebook is encountering now. That's what a lack of standards leads to.

There's are customers for unregulated marketplaces too, but then people are also willing to spend more for honest, transparent service. And interestingly, such stringent practices do appear to foster the creation of extremely popular games and software (probably extend that to film, books and music et al).

Kara_Jane_Addams

That's all well and good, but I was referring to licensing practices on an 8-bit console in the mid 1980s.

Licences that Nintendo relaxed in the early 90's when faced with competition.

dynamiteReady

Not being crass, just curious... Give a specific example?
Like, how did their standards change in the light of competition?

regmcfly

Utter destruction.

20-6 for the PS4

regmcfly

https://challonge.com/jbk1mlle

regmcfly

PS2 VS PS3 LETS GO

Kara_Jane_Addams

dynamiteReady wrote:

Not being crass, just curious... Give a specific example? Like, how did their standards change in the light of competition?

Following the New York lawsuit in 1992 that stated Nintendo had created and unfair monopoly of the US video game market, Nintendo relaxed their licensing changing it so that a developer now only had to wait two years before porting a game to a rival console, following further lawsuits and the involvement of both the US and Japanese governments they abandoned the restriction entirely.

retroking1981

PS3 +1

Kara_Jane_Addams

PS3

I just can't bring myself to love the PS2 (with the possible exception of the Sakura model)

It was a machine built on lies.

tigersgogrrr

PS2, I guess. Because it was the Pro Evo machine.

g.man

Yup. PS3 was a brilliant console.

Diluted Dante

PS2. I loved the PS3, but PS2 by a country mile.

monkey

tigersgogrrr wrote:

PS2, I guess. Because it was the Pro Evo machine.

Yep but it had loads of bangers as well.

The PS3, despite on paper ending up with a decent library, never properly got going for me. Loads of games were released later, or not at all. The main Sony franchises felt like they were going a bit off the boil. Any cross-platform stuff I'd play on the 360. So it didn't get turned on as much. Which meant when I did, the system updates would take 45 minutes, then bang, that's your game time gone. Which means I didn't turn it on much so when I did, this time, 60 minutes of updates. Then you're on and find the network is down. The first model was a wheezy broken old mess with a dodgy disk drive. The slim was a huge improvement and a thing of beauty. Probably it's top 10 games can compete with any of the later gen consoles. But yeah, a bit of a misfire.

The PS2 was just an everything machine. It had it all. All the games. I vote PS2.

dynamiteReady

Kara_Jane_Addams wrote:

Not being crass, just curious... Give a specific example? Like, how did their standards change in the light of competition?

Following the New York lawsuit in 1992 that stated Nintendo had created and unfair monopoly of the US video game market, Nintendo relaxed their licensing changing it so that a developer now only had to wait two years before porting a game to a rival console, following further lawsuits and the involvement of both the US and Japanese governments they abandoned the restriction entirely.

That's different. That's just woefully evil business practice.
The QA shit though is a boon to the industry on the whole, I'd say.

Tbh, deep down, I hate 'walled gardens' generally.

I'll never buy an Apple phone.

I also, personally, hate working to empirical standards that aren't mine.

But those empirical standards, keep us from getting fleeced, and should, theoretically, ensure that artists are fairly paid... I don't even know if this is about games anymore...

...

Anyway, NES for lyfe'.

Also, fuck the PS?. Didn't feel I was missing out on that at all. Especially having a 360.
Take this as vote for the PS2 over the PS?, anyways.

hylian_elf

I’m gonna do lists of games on each of PS2 and PS3 and then vote. Even though I already know it’s PS2 for me.

hylian_elf

Sorry, I meant PS?, not PS3.

regmcfly

Fwiw on the last vote I probably would have gone

Spoiler:

but I didn't really care either way.

regmcfly

I'm hell bent on this next one.

bad_hair_day

PS flaps.

That's my drunken contribution.

LivDiv

Had both of these, in various iterations as well.
I liked both platforms a fair bit but never loved either. Neither of them were my favourites of their gens.

With both it was great to have a DVD or Blu Ray player but I got much more use out of the PS2's DVD player. I had moved on from physical media for movies by Blu Ray.

Games wise. PS2 had a huge library with some all time classics on it and whiel I would go elsewhere for multi-plat the exclusives and timed exclusives (GTA3) were good enough to justify the console.

PS3. Well it trailed the 360 for nearly it's whole life (although I believe it did eventually outsell the 360). The upshot was multi-plats were more often than not developed with 360 in mind first and the PS3 versions often suffered. They were either held back to 360 levels despite the PS3 offering more, or they were straight up inferior.
Bethesda's output represents some of my favourite games of that gen and fuck playing them on the PS3. Not Sony's fault but stil impacted the console.
PS3 exclusives are decent but I don't think they offered quite as much as PS2.

Another big downer for the PS3 that was Sony's fault was the whole hacking scandal. Not really to do with the console but it was a fucking mess and stopped me playing games online for a fortnight(?), that was a fucking mess that whole ordeal. It can be argued that wasn't to do with the PS3 but it was part of my experience of the console and in a tight race I have to chalk it up as a negative.

PS2 gets my vote.

afgavinstan

PS2, for the amazing library of classic games.

For all the PS3 had, as an early adopter my view looking back is a rather negative one. I never got over the shit controller (mind that time it was just sixaxis', yeah I had two) which in the face of the brilliant 360 one never stood a chance. My 60gb filled so damn quick and constantly needed changing about, then when it came to downloading games and updates, I've no idea to the real reason why, but the PS3 just done everything at a snails pace. Everybody's Golf and mind that fucking Metal Gear Online shite. Days, lost. Watching a progress bar. Took too long to get going, and when it did, the 360 and its far superior controller and UI had me in its grasp.

Sorry PS3, but PS2 wins. It introduced me to PES and Katamari, so it's a wrap.

I vote for PS2.

LivDiv

Oh god I had forgotten about the painfully slow downloads on PS3.

GooberTheHat

regmcfly wrote:

Utter destruction.

20-6 for the PS4

Pretty sure I voted NES too.

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