Mon 26 Mar 2007
PlayStationary
Posted by anaglyph under In The News, Silly, Technology, Tragedy
[22] Comments
The Sony PlayStation 3 was launched to scenes of mass apathy in Sydney last night, with the anticipated clamouring hordes of customers being outnumbered by press, security and salivating retailers.
Sony must have been disappointed, as would have been the stores, but where did the tragedy strike hardest? Let me quote a little from the Sydney Morning Herald coverage:
At midnight, about 40 PS3 buyers had arrived to collect their consoles, causing distress for the army of camera crews who turned up expecting to capture launch mayhem.
Distress? Awwww. Poor paparazzi poppets. I guess they stayed up well past their bedtimes and, dang, it was a fizzer!
I can only imagine the scenes of sobbing and consolation going on around water coolers in press offices all over Sydney this morning. I hope they’re getting proper counselling.
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At the $999.00 that you’ll have to fork out for a PS3 in Australia, Sony will need to do a lot of convincing to compete with Xbox & Wii… Good luck chaps.
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Im sure th crowdsll be out when they release th new HAL 10000.
Only if it comes with a Pod Bay Door override.
were all 40 of these cool kids waiting patiently under the appropriate SGM sign?
The ps3 is not selling so well over here, either. I’ve seen it in stores all over the place. Overpriced and not nearly as fun as the wii.
Th old HAL 9000 already had a Pod Bay Door ovrride, but t use it you had t listn to a rathr disturbin rendition o “Bicycle Built Fer Two.”
I heard for for you guys they were going to try and make the name more appealing and competitive. Instead of the PS3, they want to market it as the piii.
But… but… but… If you’re not buying, the terrorists win!
That’s what’s our presidink sez anyhow.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/feature/story.cfm?c_id=1501154&objectid=10430442
and this is free…..
http://www.mata.co.nz/matai.html
Nurse Myra: Hard to know what the appropriate SGM sign would be. A weeping SGM? SGM with sore thumbs? A disappointed SGM?
jmf: Plus it’s so much fun saying ‘wii’.
Joey: It also had a rather offputting tendency to kill people.
Casey: Yeah, well it would reflect the fact that you are piii-ing away your hard earned cash.
Phoebe Fay: Yeah, and when you do buy you can train up to be an A1 Terrorist Eliminator! Buying the PS3 helps you become a responsible modern citizen!
Wolfman: That free one is still superior to most of the daft ‘First Person Shooters’ anyway IMO.
A thousand bucks. And, frighteningly, some kids will get one for Xmas.
I’ve got an xBox sitting in the living room doing nothing. Despite a steadily dwindling modicum of hope every time I bought a game (never full price, always on special or secondhand), I have yet to really be engaged fully by any game I’ve played on it. Some had potential (Thief, Dark Corners of the Earth, Call of Duty) but without fail they devolved into repetitive shoot-or-sneak-em-ups.
It’s such a shame, because games like Myst and Riven showed us the possibilities, before even that company (Cyan) got seduced by real-time 3D and forgot the importance of story. Now games are so expensive to produce, companies are afraid to make something that doesn’t please the lowest common denominator.
However, in a change from my usual negativity, I predict a renaissance. I think gamemaking will eventually go the way of filmmaking, and eventually the tools to make them will become so affordable and easy to use that people will begin creating their own and making them available on the net. These expensive behemoths of game consoles are the last gasp of multinationals like Sony and Microsoft, and much as the huge record companies are being forced to face the reality of bands releasing their own material online, so gamers will start taking things into their own hands and creative people will start telling their own stories in game form. It’s already happening in the adventure gaming genre, where very small companies are making their own adventure games in the tradition of Myst.
That’s my prediction!
I think Sony realizes that which is why they’re pitching for the PS3 as a ‘complete entertainment centre’. It’s not meant to be a gaming platform so much as a whole ‘lifestyle’ platform. But someone is already chipping into that market much more successfully (except, notably, for the games side). Apple.
I know who I’ll be spending my bucks with.
UH: Are you referring to the Adventure Company and their games? How can you argue about games being “repetitive” and lacking the “importance of story” when all their games suffer the same problem? They’re still: Point. Click. Solve puzzle. Point. Click. Watch full motion video sequence. Point. Click. Solve puzzle…
As far as games go for the Xbox, I HIGHLY recommend that you try Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It’s an RPG, so it’s not a Myst game, but the story is awesome and the plot twist is arguably the best I have ever experienced in a game (I never saw it coming).
I completely agree with you jedimacfan – however the point I was making was more that adventure games can now be made by very small operations for reasonable cost (because the 3D and programming tools are widely available), and that while the vast number of adventure games are as you describe, if that trend continues, we’ll see games of *all* sorts being made by smaller companies that are more concerned with interesting game experiences rather than “we must sell 100 million of these to justify the advertising budget!”.
I have Knights; I’m sorry to say I got bored pretty quickly – I’ll have to give it another go.
Talking about that game Thief – I remember playing the first Thief game for the first time and actually waiting in the shadows of a corridor for long periods of time while I worked out the movements of guards, or finding myself physically leaning in my chair when I looked around a corner onscreen. One brief experience of total immersion in a game.
Another problem I have with gaming in general is that the games are so long – not a common complaint I know, but few people past their twenties have 40 hours free to play a game through. And a lot of that 40 hours is repetitive padding anyway. I’d rather see shorter, cheaper games – or another thing that will become more common in the future – being able to download ‘episodes’ of a game online.
Anyway, give me a boardgame any day of the week – far more fun and much more sociable!
And the ‘Point. Click. Solve puzzle.’ adventure style games are as tedious as the shooters when they have no complex story.
A good example of this is the difference between Riven and Exile (not coincidentally the two games standing on either side of the Cyan departure). The Riven story is fascinating and complex, and unfolds like a drama. Exile is just a series of complicated puzzles joined up by a flimsy plot. Hardly anyone seems to understand how this works, including the games designers themselves.
And Universal Head, I have to disagree on your point about the games being too long – they’re only too long if they’re dull… I purposely spun Riven out because I didn’t want to finish it. That’s the kind of game we’re all looking for.
UH: Give Knights another go. It gets much better once you get force powers and a lightsaber. But I thought that the plot was great. You’re going to need a lot of time to play it, though, which may be why you don’t like it.
I like your thoughts about indy games coming out. I’d really like to see that, too. My favorite Mac game is Enigmo, and it’s from Pangea and only $20. Great game. You can try like 10 levels for free, too, in case you want to try it before you buy it.
I would REALLY like to see a return of the adventure game. Sam and Max is back with downloadable episodes from GameTap, but I have not played them. I would really like another Day of the Tentacle or a game like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Heck, with the Disney Pirates movies being to popular, I’d even enjoy another Monkey Island game. Those games are the most fun for me.
Oh – I like Enigmo too. Kinda Zen. Thanks for sending me the link jmf.
(It’s here if anyone wants to try it)
OMG- I have no idea WTF any of you are talking about.
The last video game we bought was Atari*.
-C.C.
*which it turned out, was not Japanese, but a California company’s idea to sound Japanese. Since then we got turned off and only watch old b&w movies from the 40s. But then the Red Sox** spent a half-million bucks on Dice-K, and suddenly we are all Japanese again.
**American Base-brawl team of long history of ill-fortune; favorite of C.C. since he was a lad in the 60s listening each night on the radio. Can still quote Yaz and Reggie Smith’s 1969 batting averages, and Jim “Lonny” Longborg’s 1971 ERA, though a variety of drug-induced regimenes are battling this issue.
It has always been a source of mirth to me that Ridley Scott predicted (in Blade Runner) that Atari would be around in the year 2014. His vision was right in so many other things, but he pulled a Kubrik with that one (Kubrik of course dropped the ball with Pan Am in 2001)
Why didn’t Sony just do what Target did? Breathless news reports (yes – real Evening News news) said the Stella McCartney capsule collection for Target sold out in twenty minutes, complete with film of women thrusting, grabbing & thrashing in their shopping frenzy. I went to Target four days later & there were rack & racks of Stella McCartney garments. Rack & racks. So Sony should have done the same & claimed it was a huge sell-out.
Anaglyph: Actually, Atari is still around today. They just happen to publish games instead of make consoles/computers. (But I know what you meant.)
Oh, I realise that – but the ‘Atari’ brand is not likely to be found emblazoned in neon on the side of big buildings as it was in Blade Runner…
$1000 for a PS3? Just to play games? Ya right. Funny about the paparazzi. I guess at midnight there isn’t a lot of people who care if they get the first ones. Give it a month and the game will be on sale.