Abscissa

"What does the date of the article have to do with anything?"

That's what I was wondering when you said this: --> "Why are there Bioshock spoilers/comparisons in an article that came out years before it?"

This article didn't come out years before Bioshock.

Read the date on the article.

I loved the gameplay of MGS2 (*cough* what little of it there actually was *cough*), but absolutely hated the whole cutscene-mania of it.

I really didn't mind Raiden, though. I mean honestly, I really don't see any reason to actually care if the player's character is Snake, Raiden, or even My Little Pony, for that matter. Gameplay's what counts.

All of them *INCLUDING* Nintendo. (And the Wii is the only current-gen console I own). I loved my Gamecube, but this entire generation disappoints me immensely.

But really, it's gotten to the point that the only game company I trust anymore is Treasure. That's it.

Wow, didn't realize so many Nintendo gamers were such douchebags. Kinda makes me ashamed to be part of the Nintendo scene.

I think the reasoning behind your argument against the feasibility of the current DVD model being applied to videogames is flawed:

As the DVD model already indicates, there's nothing about the idea of a standard that prohibits extra features. DVD Video *IS* a standard. Your argument seems to assume (if not outright state) that "standard" implies "they all must be identical - no extra features". But you can still get a DVD player with or without certain extras. So clearly this isn't the case. A standard *can* prohibit extra features if that's what the creators of the standard want (buy why would they?), but a standard can also be drafted to merely provide a certain minimum plus a common mechanism for expandability.

When you start seeing the same extra feature implemented different ways (even though it's through the standardized expansion interface): First of all, that's a condition that really only affects the media creators (in this case, the game developers). Secondly, when that that scenario occurs, that's when you draft v2 of the spec, ie the next generation.

While the new spec, ie new generation, is being drafted, the hardware manufacturers say "You know what? Console sales have started dropping. As long as we're updating the spec, let's kill two birds with one stone and add these other new features to get people buying consoles again."

Or, it could go the other way around, they decide that declining console sales indicate a need for a new features/new version of the spec, and while they do it, they standardize the existing extras. They do that because by this point, they all have their own version of the same extra anyway - so standardizing it doesn't take away their competitiveness on that particular feature (since they all have their own version of it by that point). Instead, it just makes life easier for the content creators (game developers), which in turn is good for both console manufacturers and gamers.

So you *don't* end up with the little changes adding up and segmenting the standard into separate incompatible platforms. In fact, the PC is proof of this: Johnny A has an ATI card and an Intel CPU, Johnny B has an NVidia card and an AMD CPU, but they can both buy the same version of the same game and run it on their own systems.

Of course, someone might read that above paragraph and say "Yea, but PC gaming is dying!" Maybe, but even if that's the case, it's due primarily to reasons that stem from the PC 1. being a general-purpose computing device rather than a dedicated gaming machine and 2. being totally open to all developers (this is part of where the DRM issue comes in).

True, it can be very difficult for PC game developers to deal with variances in hardware. But the only reason that problem exists in the first place is because the people writing the drivers for companies like ATI, NVidia, Intel, etc, have been shitting all over the DirectX and OpenGL interface standards (ex: making the driver lie about the device's capabilities), and for some bizarre reason, nobody has been enforcing those particular standards.

Flawed metaphor. Windows is a platform that's only made by one company.

I'd like to be excited about this, but I'm just jaded enough to think "Meh, they'll find some way to screw it up". The WarioLand game on DS was extremely mediocre. Most of the platforming parts of Super Paper Mario were extremely bland, and it was too story/cutscene-oriented to really be considered a platformer anyway (not that it was trying to be a true platformer, I found out to my disappointment). My money's on the whole "shake" thing being overused and getting old/annoying really quickly.

Heh, best joke I've heard in a while :)

I want a DVD player that only plays a third of all the movies on the market. That way I would have to buy three different DVD players before I could watch my entire movie collection. Thank goodness the video game industry was forward-thinking enough to make my dreams of incompatibility a reality.

Besides, everyone knows that having a standard platform completely destroys competition and innovation. For example, did you know that not a single feature has ever been added to DVD players since the very first one? Things like progressive-scan, component/HDMI-output, upscaling, MP3/DIVX playback, memory card image viewing, and record-directly-to-DVDR? All of those features have always been in DVD players! Really! Even the very first ones! They all had every single one of those. Yup. Sure did.