DragonmasterDan

The drives in them were cheap, NCSX.com sold the replacement laser for a while. Due to the unbalenced design of the unit they are bound to fail. While it's great to have a disc swappable system like the 1001 the lack of hardware reliability comes at a steep price.

Correct, like I stated before shipped doesn't necessarily equate sold since just because an item has shipped doesn't guarantee that the item will be paid for at the invoice price if at all. So equating it to sold in accounting terms isn't always correct but like I said before, it's extremely uncommon for more than 10% of total inventory produced to be left unsold for an extended period of time.

A lot of larger retailers will place orders and then if the product doesn't sell after said amount of time at a high enough rate threaten to send it back or request a drop in the invoice price for the product. As an easy example that I can recall of the top of my head is an incident involving the Dreamcast some years ago, and it is what lead to K-Mart being sued by Sega. K-Mart ordered product, was asked to pay for it after a certain amount of time and K-mart (claiming the product hadn't sold well) demanded a discount on what was owed. For larger retailers this is a fairly standard practice to try to squeeze manufacturers or distributors. Usually an order from a retailer results in the promise of payment for a set amount of money, but that does change from time to time in incidents where large amounts of excess inventory is left over. This was actually a problem for the original fat model of the PSP hardware some time ago with a lot of retailers threatening to stop ordering product. Sony responded by crediting retailers based on the amount of inventory still in circulation and shortly thereafter announcing a price drop.

It's very very very very uncommon for more than 15-20% of the run of a game to be returned by retail. Basically a game has to be a cataclysmic flop (based on the expectation of the game) for it to be anything higher than 33%.

The graphics can potentially be better but the main limitation now is the budget to hire artists to create all those assets. Unless you want to start selling games for $100+ dollars I don't see how game budgets can continue to go up so steeply. Exactly, it's a lot of the reason why this generation is likely to last substantially longer than those in the recent past.

I'm not expecting anyone to abandon the disc market, but I expect incentives for buying games online via download (get the game early, extra content etc) it will be another generation or two before downloads become the standard even after then.

No, a million is actually quite a lot even today. Especially for a game like Umbrella Chronicles which is a lightgun game and not a super major release. I think you have to look at the expectations of the individual title. Added in edit: Also sales can be estimated to the public via sales tracking services. For the US NPD is the largest such service serving the video game industry, while they have their flaws and critics their numbers are seen as being reasonably close to actual sell through numbers. In Japan those sales are tracked by Famitsu magazine. In Europe it varies from country to country and as a result European sales are a bit trickier to track. So shipped numbers aren't always the way software figures are determined. There are ways to gauge sell through within a reasonable amount.

I love StarFox 64 I even like the unreleased StarFox 2 a lot. Star Fox Assualt, Command Mission and Adventure are not so hot.

It's way too early to determine much about the next generation. With development costs skyrocketing this may be the longest lasting generation in a while. The average PS3 game has a budget of somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 million dollars US for example. To make games that take advantage of even better technology will take even more money and more time. It's not at all impossible that this generation could last 6-7 years. Also to comment on a few things other people have brought up in this thread. First off, I don't anticipate any of the three major console makers leaving the industry. What amuses me the most is people speculating Nintendo should leave the industry, as it stands right now they're the company that is LEAST likely to exit. Next off, as far as new console makers go. EA is a possibility, and the 3DO was developed by EA founder Trip Hawkins's 3DO company but not actually by EA (Electronic Arts was one of the platforms biggest supporters though) but EA enjoys the comfort of releasing their games on as many platforms as possible and reaping the benefits of multi platform publishing. If Madden only came out on one platform it just wouldn't sell as well and their exclusive NFL license may have limitations regarding just that. I can't see how at this time it would make sense for EA to enter the console business. Apple is another big no no. While as others mentioned Apple is in the process of developing some games for Mac, a console is way out there. And the failure of the Pippin is probably has sealed their interest in pursuing it. If another company were to get into the console business it would more likely to be Toshiba or some other large electronics company than a software publisher. But I don't think either is likely to happen. Added in edit: Another BIG note I left out. In the next generation it's highly likely that all three companies will be pushing the option of having most or all titles available on downloadable games services, it's very possible all three systems will feature a hard drive where you can download the games to or download them to and then burn the game to external media if need be. This allows publishers better control of street dates, patches and allows them to bypass retailers and a number of middle men thus padding their profit margins.

Presently bad 3D control schemes is my current most hated practice. This includes aiming with a stick and not a pointing device. Pressing left making you spin in a circle and not move left. Poorly designed menu systems that take too much time to click through. Lack of control scheme customizability.

SNK made better fighters post 1994 or so. Prior to that it was Capcom.

NES. I like those picking the Neo Geo AES as well since it has a great deal of Charm. TurboGrafx/PC Engine is another great option. But I'd go NES first.

Has anyone tried these on the TV with the video out? Do they look funny becasue of the screen ratio? Tempest I have an original PSP that doesn't have video out, so I never tried. Anyway, you can adjust the ratio from original to stretched.

I have all four Konami Shmup collections. Gradius Collection. Parodius Portable, Salamander Portable and Twinbee Portable. All of them are good buys. My only complaint is the PSP is awkward and hand hurtingly frustrating to control with for extended amounts of time.

It would be really cool if the prizes on the wheel was a Jaguar.... the luxury car of course.

Yes, there does exist an MPEG card.

I have a Goldstar as well, it's nice and reliable. I have an FZ-10 also which I don't like as much but it gets more use due to it being smallr. Also Samurai Shodown has some awful loading times on 3DO.

This is relevant for things like comic books, games typically have plastic surrounded by cardboard. Simply put the game itself is pretty well protected inside the cardboard and other packaging.

It's so hard to make music on it, it's amazing to do anything that sounds remotely decent.

A year or so ago I went around the internet looking for something like it, instead I found a few documentaries about the history of video games with slight mentions or short interviews with guys like Bushnell.

A lot of famiclones also use the 9 pin controllers.

The cartridge slot in the Saturn is notoriously bad. I own FIVE Saturn's for that very reason. It has nothing to do with how well the CD drive will last. the cartridge slot was made cheaply since Sega mostly expected people would buy a memory card or the modem and leave it in their throughout most of the systems life. If you are like me and switch between cards, action replays, RAM carts, the netlink etc it becomes a problem and the pins on the cart slot wear out. Ahh... that makes perfect sense then. I have been quite the switcher over the years. I finally got back to Shining Force 3 but had to go through 4 memory carts to find my old save. I'll bet that's what took it over teh edge. Is it hard to repair? You can try to clean up the contacts but they just become less responsive. It's not really a repairable thing since the cartridge slot doesn't appear to dismount from the board and replacement slots don't exist to my knowledge. That's why I kept buying more Saturns. Ya, my Saturn is back to having problems again. And, this time, the CD drive won't spin the discs. I'm 99% sure the solder job isn't the issue now. Maybe I killed the system somehow or the CD motor finally died. Regardless, it looks like the system is officially dead now. Try gently wiping the lens with a q-tip.

I have it for the PSone, I hate the software available for it and I honestly found it a lot less useful than I expected.

The cartridge slot in the Saturn is notoriously bad. I own FIVE Saturn's for that very reason. It has nothing to do with how well the CD drive will last. the cartridge slot was made cheaply since Sega mostly expected people would buy a memory card or the modem and leave it in their throughout most of the systems life. If you are like me and switch between cards, action replays, RAM carts, the netlink etc it becomes a problem and the pins on the cart slot wear out. Ahh... that makes perfect sense then. I have been quite the switcher over the years. I finally got back to Shining Force 3 but had to go through 4 memory carts to find my old save. I'll bet that's what took it over teh edge. Is it hard to repair? You can try to clean up the contacts but they just become less responsive. It's not really a repairable thing since the cartridge slot doesn't appear to dismount from the board and replacement slots don't exist to my knowledge. That's why I kept buying more Saturns.

Super Mario Galaxy is my pick