Nun ja, es ist Englisch, aber alles zu uebersetzen, ist mir zu schwierig, zeitaufwaendig und zu bloed
Der Artikel gibt Gruende an, warum es bald wieder zu einem Zusammenbruch des Spielkonsolenmarktes kommen. Sehr lesenswert, ist zwar eher als Spass gemeint, aber so ueberspitzt die Argumentation auch ist, manche Dinge sind einen zweiten Gedanken wert.
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Who am I? I am the creator of a certain video game console. I don't want to toot my own horn, but let's just say that profits from this machine were four billion dollars higher than the Microsoft XBox.
My console consisted of a plastic milk crate with a kitten placed inside. The controller was a wooden rod that could be used to poke the kitten. I sold zero of these consoles, which cost me zero to manufacture. Therefore my profits were zero. The XBox, however, LOST four billion dollars. Click the red words if you don't believe me. I'll wait.
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...and think about how Sony plans to take a $400 to $500 loss on every single damned PS3 they sell for the first few years. Oh, I know they can make that money back on the games... if the consoles sell like hotcakes in a colony for hotcake addicts during a hotcake shortage. But only if.
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Which brings us to today. We've now advanced from realistic 3D to slightly prettier 3D and... even slightlier prettier 3D with slightly better reflection effects and slightly better animated water ripples and - oh, look! This game has the most realistic fog yet!
See the problem?
What does an art form that relies on novelty do when it can no longer offer up anything novel?
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But now Sony is asking us to pay $600 for the PS3, a machine that really needs a $2,000 television to work, on the promise that it will "...be able to simulate cloth and fluid" like never before.
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The competition here, then, is Hollywood. When teens are in the mood for a mobster story, the game industry hopes you'll be in the mood to play The Godfather game rather than watch the movie. The problem is that people can watch the movie version over and over and over again, there is a human element to the story that lets a person enjoy it all over again, 20 years later. Games really don't give you that.
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It's unfair to compare any movie game to a movie because films are relying on an art form (drama) with a thousand years of popularity under its belt. You put sympathetic humans on screen and tell a well-paced, exciting story and we escape into their adventure. But the director controls how the story unfolds, controls what you see and, if he knows what he's doing, delivers it to an audience based on a centuries-old formula designed to engage the emotions.
Games try to trump that with interactivity, letting you control the outcome. But the more control the gamer has, the more the pacing is ruined by brainless repetition (leaving the task to the gamer presents the possibility the gamer will fail 30 times in a row).
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But each event in that game is still carefully scripted. Run up to the busted-out brick wall. Truck pulls up. Six enemy troops spill out. Shoot them. Run down the hallway... get killed. Start over. Run up to the busted-out brick wall again. Again wait for the truck to pull out. Kill the six enemy troops. Run down the hallway. Pick up the First Aid Kit...
Rinse. Repeat. Memorize.
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If we play it on the cheap side and get a $2,000 HDTV, and then buy our $600 PS3 console and two games and an extra controller... we're $3,000 into our next-gen investment.
I know there are people willing to pay that. Their gleaming SUV's pass me on the highway every day. But think about this. The most popular console in history, the Sony PS2, has shipped 103 million units as of the writing of this article. Of those, 70 million were sold after Sony dropped the price to $199 in May of 2002.
Get the picture? They dropped the price because sales were falling. Sales were falling because there were only 30 million customers willing to pay $300 for a game console. And now they're asking us to make ten times the investment most of us wouldn't make the first time?
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