bmac

I'll carry around all the comments I haven't been making around here.

I'd much rather see Nolan's take on Kratos, I think he'd at least look at it as a story and not just a series of special-effects sequences.

Those are great videos indeed, dumb question though; what's wrapped around the drums?
I did notice that he seems to be from the leg-lift school of playing the bass drum though, that has to get exhausting.

"because it's compatible with the games they absolutely want to play."

Holy crap, it's like they're actual gamers or something.

Damn, didn't even realize Burnout was hitting as well; can't wait for Motorstorm though, that shipping confirmation from Amazon is going to be the best email I'll get all week. Then, exactly one week later... sweet sweet GoW2.

It has it's own style and approach, and it does it's thing very well. Like you said, it's a surprisingly cool game to play with friends. Everyone gets into it, and anyone can pick it up and play it. It would be cool if there was more consequence to being attacked by the other creatures, but for the price and what they were aiming for, I think it's great.

Lets look at the whole kotaku thing. Lets say your buddy comes to you, and says "hey, I heard you blah blah blah..."
You say to your buddy "don't tell anyone about that, I don't care where you heard it from."
They go out and tell anyone who will listen.
Are you not going to be upset with them? Kotaku has to realize they were on Sony's good side, and were obviously in a position to get, and to verify, sensitive information. What happens when Sony, although "good" with kotaku again, decides to give another blog the scoop and support for upcoming news?
I'm looking forward to seeing what we'll hear next week. Not overtly so about the whole myspace sort of thing since that side of the web really doesn't do much for me, but from the standpoint of features and support that it will add to future games.
btw, I'm loving this whole "Why isn't Sony's setup more like Microsoft and Nintendo's? Oh, it's going to be? Why the hell is Sony ripping-off Microsoft and Nintendo??"

I like the fact that sony didn't include a headset, because then I get to buy whichever one I want out of the hundreds of bluetooth options available. Those that already had headsets for their cell phones didn't have to buy anything. This is something that I feel Sony did right; they made the system open, and it plays well with others. Any bluetooth headset, any number of usb cameras and other accessories, a HD that can be swapped out for a larger one easily by the user...
The support for online and voice chat could be better, but I'm sure it will be. The system, and online, is still in it's infancy, and apparently after next week, we'll be hearing about some huge changes to the online functionality.
Of course, after playing Need for Speed with my headset... I'm not sure I care to hear what everyone has to say while they play. People say a lot that I doubt they would if they were in the same room, or even on a regular phone. It's not offensive, it just makes my brain hurt to listen to some of these idiots.
As for rumble, I'll stand by my meh. Unless a game comes out that is actually that much better because of it, I won't even give new controllers a second thought.

I've been trying to find numbers for the ps2 in it's first year, but it doesn't seem to be readily available. A lot of what I've found... again, sounds similar to right now.
"The PS2 launch seemed unimpressive and gaffe-prone, compared to the well-planned launch of the Sega Dreamcast, which was making a genuine attempt to woo developers and which had better launch titles.
Yet, the PS2 initially sold well partly on the basis of the strength of the PlayStation brand and its backwards compatibility, selling over 900,000 units in the first weekend in Japan. This allowed the PS2 to tap the large install base established by the PlayStation - another major selling point over the competition. Later, Sony gained steam with new development kits for game developers and more PlayStations for consumers.
Many analysts predicted a close 3-way matchup between the PS2 and competitors Microsoft's Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube (which was the cheapest of the three consoles and had an open market of games)."
The handful of numbers I've found, not even actual sold numbers:
On August 1, 2000, five months after the system's release in Japan, Sony announced it had shipped over 3 million units.
Sony initially shipped 500,000 units of the PlayStation 2 to North American retailers with plans to ship approximately 100,000 additional units per week. Sony estimated that it will have shipped a total of 1.3 million market after only two months of release.
Sony predicted that by March 31, 2001, it will have shipped 3 million units in the U.S. and produced ten million units for the worldwide market.
These aren't sales numbers, just what sony said they wanted to ship. I'm sure with more digging I could come across more, but for some reason there doesn't seem to be a source for "this month, year XX, this many sold"
I'd really like to find that info for all of last generation's consoles, specifically for their first years.

I just think that given the dire predictions we're seeing for the ps3 from so many people, looking at the ps2's first year is interesting from how similar so much of it is. It wasn't this huge success from the start afterall, it was only with time that the many things we attribute to the ps2 and it's domination of the market came forth.
The question I have is whether the ps3 is harder to develop for because it's once again so different, if it's because Sony isn't providing support to it's developers, or if the system is really that badly engineered. I've heard all three from various sources, and I've read several reports saying just the opposite as well.

In the end this is a pretty interesting time to be a gamer, and I think as time passes the result will be improved games and features for all three systems.

I would argue semantics with you about moved vs ported, but that's business more than development problems anyway.
There are just a lot of parallels to the ps2, even down to the dreamcast having been available for a year with happy developers, and complaints about the ps2. I mean, check out some news from back then;
http://news.com.com/Dreamcast+sales+climb+on+eve+of+troubled+PlayStation+2+launch/2100-1040_3-246759.html
Honestly, looking at stuff like this, it sounds like a whole lot of the same doom and gloom we hear now. I've tried finding a couple of articles further detailing the ps2 developer complaints, but few of them go beyond "we've heard from so-and-so it sucks..." So many of these things are hard to get concrete quotes and informtion about, then and now.