You are correct, but it doesn’t really matter why it wasn’t fiscally successful so much as it simply wasn’t. Most companies aren’t stupid enough to repeat failures of others.
But twice the RAM in the N64 was huge!!!
Not really, but still, bumping up the RAM was great for some games graphically. I only got the RAM upgrade for Majora’s Mask either way, but it did make Pod Racer look smoother.
That’s how companies are going to need to market these upgrades if they do them. Put a killer app out that can only be played with the new upgrade.
Entirely the killer apps are the key. Console upgrades have worked successfully in the past. And still kinda do. It’s the scale of the upgrade that matters. If the Sega cd/32x had had killer apps they would have been better, if only one of them had been released they may well have been fine.
The RAM upgrade for the N64 wasn’t really a failure. But it was a relatively cheap small scale upgrade, bundled with a killer app.
Looking further back, many 2D fighters had RAM upgrades on the Sega Saturn, though they stayed largely in Japan, nevertheless they sold well.
Even further back the SNES had quite a few successful upgrades, they were inside the cartridges co-processors and suchlike, or built in multitaps. Again small scale. Also the user isn’t really aware of the upgrade. This isn’t really possible with optical media.
In more modern times the 360 has had a couple of upgrades: (excluding the HDD) HD-DVD, can’t really be known how it would have done if the format hadn’t failed. I’d also say the kinect is an upgrade it adds functionality the 360 doesn’t have. But again it’s a one off thing, doesn’t really alter the existing hardware and the hardware it adds had already been designed (see cheaper).
Small scale, cheap and infrequent upgrades, or those the end user doesn’t really know about seem to be fine. Large scale expensive upgrades seem to fall down.
Really? I just don’t think that’s true. They scaled down Crysis 2 for consoles, and have done so with a bunch of other titles. That’s certainly true for console ports (like The Force Unleashed…shudder), but not for genuine cross-platform games.
Of course, that’s why its going to be around forever.
N’aww, he’s bagging Macs. Cute. There’s always room for it in every thread I guess. Its generates insta-karma wherever you go.
You can buy a 360 for £100? Really? Christ. We’re still paying ~$500 for the higher spec’d models.
Though then again, at release you’re paying a lot more than that. The PS3 was about $1000 here when it was first released (interestingly, the same price of the N64 when it first came out), and for that you could build a lot of computer. The 360 is rapidly being superseeded by increasingly cheap PC tech, so you could probably build a fairly sweet gaming rig for not much more than £100. Sure, not the same price, but not massively more expensive.
Correct. People will always buy PS3s so long as they hold the IPs of a dozen excellent titles. Exclusivity will always promote demand, even if Microsoft does expand their market to PC gamers.
That’s why it’s a good idea to buy into Nintendo’s consoles regardless of system specs. First party titles have always been the key to success in the console market.
Unfortunately because you think something doesn’t make it true. Don’t believe me? Go and read John Carmack’s opinion on the matter. He’s way smarter than you. 360 is SIX now, yes latest PC harware will outperform it. I said equivalent. That means six year old PC tech, not latest hardware! In fact the 360 is based on 8 year old tech, go ahead build me a pc that good out of 8 year old tech!
Actually Tesco had it for sale for less than £60 (~$90AUD) about 2 months ago. I’d assume they weren’t making a gigantic loss on it. You could probably import it from the UK for less and change the plug. It costs ~$250 AUD here (£170) on amazon for the 250GB HDD model or £135 (~$200AUD) for the 4GB (remember the HDD has no effect on graphics).
So you can’t build it for less? You can’t build an PC equivalent to a 6 year old console, the spec of which was laid down 8 years ago, for less than the console. That’s what I said. Yes you’re correct, tech that is 6 years newer than the 360 is better. Well done. Y’know what, I was still runing XP 6 years ago, that was cutting edge Windows and Ubuntu was only about a year old!
Captain Obvious states the obvious! Also may may surprise you to learn MS have been producing PC games for years, no honestly, I own several!
Another great reason why they should try to make 360 games work with the PC- my fucking 360 overheats every time I turn it on for more than five minutes now. Even when I’ve got a big-ass fan blowing straight on it and nothing else in the area generating heat, it STILL shuts off with two ring parts for the overheat. I’m about ready to sell off all my 360 games and the console to rebuy all the multiplatform stuff for the PS3 because that’s pretty much the console I have now that works properly.