Zero Satori
Jaguar Ninja
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2006
- Posts
- 2,009
Before going-on, I know that this message is pretty-much "tech-related," but I'm more interested in the social ideas and ramifications of what I'm saying than the nitty-gritty of a design, so I'm putting it in "unrelated."
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If the current generation of consoles has proven anything to me, it's that I'm no longer really willing to shell-out that many hundreds of dollars for a gaming system. Blame it on lack of interest, blame it on upgradable computers, do what you will; but ultimately, I don't have an XBox 360, a PS3, or a Wii because the cost of upgrading has become too prohibitive for my blood. From other threads and other forums, I know I'm not alone in this.
Nevertheless, it's not like change is bad, and after a while, game designers certainly want the ability to do more with their games than would be possible with an older piece of hardware. But when flicking through Saturn games today, I found the now-iconic RAM expansion cart and remember how much of a difference it made for Street Fighter Zero and its kin. On the same note, the N64 had the same idea, replacing the ordinary 1M jumper for four megs of RAM, and playing games like Turok 2 or that-Star Wars game (Rogue Squadron?) was like night-and-day if one had the expansion.
So my question to the free-thinking gamers of Neo-Geo.com is: How would you feel if this trend of "expanding" original systems were in current or future systems? It seems a damned shame to think that, every time a company wants to upgrade, they're dead-set upon releasing a whole new system. Granted, the overall hardware works-out better that way, but the Saturn and N64 are great examples on how pre-envisioned changes can work. (For what it's worth, I'll say that I love my Genesis going beyond a Genesis with the 32X and Sega CD, and the failure of those systems should largely be attributed to being so state-of-the-art that they, like the current generation of systems, were cost-prohibitive upgrades.)
I hope what I'm saying is making sense. Given the closing gap between consoles and computers, maybe the next generation will have simple removable SO-DIMM chips or something and only ship with a gigabyte. But as it stands, I think that the industry could benefit a lot from gamers not having to worry that they'll need to shell-out major dough to play the latest games; they lost me already for that reason.
- - - - - - - -
If the current generation of consoles has proven anything to me, it's that I'm no longer really willing to shell-out that many hundreds of dollars for a gaming system. Blame it on lack of interest, blame it on upgradable computers, do what you will; but ultimately, I don't have an XBox 360, a PS3, or a Wii because the cost of upgrading has become too prohibitive for my blood. From other threads and other forums, I know I'm not alone in this.
Nevertheless, it's not like change is bad, and after a while, game designers certainly want the ability to do more with their games than would be possible with an older piece of hardware. But when flicking through Saturn games today, I found the now-iconic RAM expansion cart and remember how much of a difference it made for Street Fighter Zero and its kin. On the same note, the N64 had the same idea, replacing the ordinary 1M jumper for four megs of RAM, and playing games like Turok 2 or that-Star Wars game (Rogue Squadron?) was like night-and-day if one had the expansion.
So my question to the free-thinking gamers of Neo-Geo.com is: How would you feel if this trend of "expanding" original systems were in current or future systems? It seems a damned shame to think that, every time a company wants to upgrade, they're dead-set upon releasing a whole new system. Granted, the overall hardware works-out better that way, but the Saturn and N64 are great examples on how pre-envisioned changes can work. (For what it's worth, I'll say that I love my Genesis going beyond a Genesis with the 32X and Sega CD, and the failure of those systems should largely be attributed to being so state-of-the-art that they, like the current generation of systems, were cost-prohibitive upgrades.)
I hope what I'm saying is making sense. Given the closing gap between consoles and computers, maybe the next generation will have simple removable SO-DIMM chips or something and only ship with a gigabyte. But as it stands, I think that the industry could benefit a lot from gamers not having to worry that they'll need to shell-out major dough to play the latest games; they lost me already for that reason.