2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.

 

In 2010, there were 16 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 34 posts. There were 3 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 44kb.

The busiest day of the year was July 17th with 3 views. The most popular post that day was PS3 outsells 360 for three straight years worldwide.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were n4g.com, gamekicker.com, reddit.com, forums.gametrailers.com, and gamespot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for most powerful game engine, should i buy a wii, ps3 bluetooth headset review, bfbc2 sales, and ps3 installed base.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

PS3 outsells 360 for three straight years worldwide July 2010
26 comments

2

Analysis of Firmware 3.21 March 2010
14 comments

3

PS3 has larger Install Base than 360 March 2010
26 comments

4

The Xbox 360 is more expensive than the PS3 March 2010
14 comments

5

The 5 most powerful game engines of all time September 2009
7 comments

GT5 is not a racing simulator

I want to make it clear, I am a long time GT fan, and have been following the series since the PS1 days when it first came out. I have bought every single GT game, and GT5 is by far my favorite of the 7 I own. I feel extra close to the GT series because I myself am a race car driver, however only manage to race on my free time. I also wish to make it clear I do not want to start an argument, but am simply stating my opinion on the series, particularly on GT5, and how it has made some claims I don’t feel it lives up too.

Many have claimed that GT5 is the most realistic driving simulator available, which I would have to greatly disagree, and I have a few reasons behind this, mostly relating to the experience beyond getting the fastest lap time, which is only 10% of what real racing involves.

First off, when I am racing in real life, people do not ram into my car when I spin out on a straight away. I am not simply talking about me spinning out right in front of them, as that’s understandable, but when a driver has had 10+ seconds to avoid me, yet still hits me, something’s wrong. Even a female Asian driver can do that.

Now I understand that the AI does improve, however even after level 20 they still made the same moves, just less often. Now, why would the AI be so stupid at the beginning? This is a very poor design decision that PD needs to look into. Made the AI get slower lap times, but don’t make them stupid.

Next I would like to bring up damage, which simple sucks in GT5. Now I understand, some cars have better damage modeling than others, but when you’re going to call a game simulator, I expect my car to be totaled after going 250mph into a wall. If not totaled, at least squish the front end more than the little dents and nicks I see.

Speaking of going really fast, sense when could the Veyron go 270+ mph? This is something I thought GT had right, the feeling of the cars and the cars matching their real life counterparts, but I was sadly wrong. The actual top speed of the Veyron is 253.81 mph, yet I easily got mine going 272, and could have gone higher if I tried.

When it comes to passing, crashing, and more, you start to realize that GT5 is not a simulator, and has made many changes to simply be more fun, which who said that was a bad thing? Just stop calling it the definitive racing simulator; because it’s not, it’s a game. Now go and have fun, and if you want the true simulator, go outside.

GT5 Delayed in the U.S.

GT5 has only had one delay in the United States, but it was one that infuriated a lot of people. It may have been only 14 days, but they have been the longest 14 days in my life.

As you all know GT5 was supposed to come out at midnight on the 24th. Sadly, many game stores, including EB games, and Gamestop are not having midnight launches.  This forces most people to wait till 10:00 a.m. or later to get their copy of the game. This is a highly dissapointing turn of events, and i am sure we will get a lot of hate over this monstrous delay.

Kinect features lag in the official trailer

Project Natal, or as we now know it, Kinect, has had a long and brutal history of development and failures. Microsoft has worked hard to fix most of the problems the system has faced over the years, trying to perfect it for launch, and they are getting closer.

However, one primary problem still remains, lag between the user and the console. You would think however that by now Microsoft would have fixed this problem. While, the Lag is less than before, it still remains. Even more embarrassingly, it remains in the official advertisement for the system. You can see the video below.

As you can see at the 0:44 mark, the kid jumps, and his character jumps almost a while second later on the screen. What does this mean for Kinect? Comment below!

PS3 outsells 360 for three straight years worldwide

Really, do we need an article like this every month? I am getting tired of seeing “Xbox outsells PS3 this month in the US.”  How ignorant can people get, assuming that the united states is all that matters in the gaming market. As an American, i am ashamed that people are so ignorant to assume that US sales are all that matter.

Anyway, back to what i originally was talking about. Year over year the PS3 has outsold the Xbox 360 worldwide, since launch. When will you people get that the Xbox rarely outsells the PS3 world wide? Year by year growth, which is the large scale scheme of things, has shown that the PS3 has outsold the 360, and continues to do so. In short, if the PS3 launched at the same time as the Xbox, Playstation would have a 5 million lead, like the Xbox has right now. Sony is clearly doing something right.

Obviously fanboys are going to go out and cite weekly, or monthly sales, claiming that x out sold y, but when you look at the large scale, the big picture, there is a clear winner to who is selling more.

PlayStation 3 Games are better than PC Games

Judging the title alone, I just know I am going to get a thousand comments saying things like “The PS3 is 4 year old hardware, you cant compare it to the PC.” First off, I am not judging graphics, nore do I care if your PC games has more lighting particles and higher res textures, I still have many valid reasons that PlayStation games surpass the PC.

One of the main things seen in a lot of PlayStation exclusives is the sheer size of the games. The PC offers nothing close to the scale of games like God of War 3, Gran Turismo 5, and LittleBigPlanet. The developers of PS3 have managed to create massive games that we simple don’t see on the PC. There is not a single PC game with boss fights as big as the titans in GOW3, 1000 cars, or 2 million levels. This is hugely influenced by the developers,  and what they have been able to do with the hardware. The extra space of Blu-Ray adds a lot more room to work with that the PC simply does not have, thanks to the fact no one wants to install a 50gb game.

Sony’s first party is outstanding at what they do, with nearly every first party game being critically acclaimed. They push out amazing games that equal or surpass the PC’s offerings. Not many PC games can hold the title of GOTY. Sony’s track record of first party games is also heavily influenced by how they collaborate, sharing technologies and ideas between each over, which is simply not seen between PC developers.

Funding is also a huge factor in creating a games, and Sony’s studios get plenty of it. Not many PC games (Unless developed by Blizzard) have as much polish as games like Gran Turismo 5, or Uncharted. The PC also features a lot of bad games, much more than the consoles because of how easy it is to get a game out on the PC market.  Actually, the PS3’s difficulty to develop for makes  for overall better games, because developers are forced to learn the hardware before they can even start development. Sony also requires approval before the release, where as on the PC any game can hit the market, no matter how bad it is.

Creativity is also much higher on the PlayStation brand, with many more games pushing the boundaries of our imaginations. There is no alternative to the creation abilities of ModNation Racers and LittleBigPlanet on the PC. This genre has proven successful on consoles, and will remain strong for Sony.

Now before all the PC fanboys start posting screen shots bragging about graphics, I need to get this out of the way. PS3 games look plenty good, run in 720p, @30fps constant on 4 year old hardware. I think it does a pretty good job, and the games look plenty good for me to have fun.  Overall PS3 games are simply higher quality, and offer more than the PC.

-Jidery

Microsoft copies Apple with the Xbox 360S



Microsoft has announced a slim Xbox 360 this morning which offers everything the old xbox had, + wifi, and a bigger hard drive, all in a slimmer package. Its also very good looking and is well worthy of a slim model, but this is not what makes me mad. Rather than calling it somthing clever, they officialy named is the Xbox 360S, which is a blatant copy of Apples recent release, The iPhone 3Gs. I have lost all hope for microsoft….

Wii Sports has outsold all of Gran Turismo and Halo COMBINED

The two biggest selling franchises on the Microsoft and Sony platforms have both been outsold by Nintendos new franchise Wii Sports.

Wii sports has been a huge success, selling over 63 million copies, more than any other game in history. Halo has been a chart topper also, but not nearly at the scale of Wii sports, reaching over 30 million. The Gran Turismo series has reached over 50 milion, bringing the combined sales of Gran Turismo and Halo up to 80 million.

However we are factoring in series sales, and the Wii Sports resort brings Wii sports up to 81 million sales. The Margin is small, but Nintendo’s new franchise has managed to beat out generation old best sellers by a long shot, and even when you combine the two, Wii sports resort still manages to sell more copies.

Microsoft’s Strategy is Rapacious

The Xbox 360 is a huge success, mainly because of the strategy microsoft had when launching it, and the way they handle that strategy is working to gain more sales, but in the end it ends up hurting the user, while still getting money from it. Their strategy is very rapacious.

Launching a console at the cheapest price point possible was the first thing they did, and by doing so most of the console features became accessories, which Microsoft overcharges for to regain the costs lost from the console. The Wi-fi accessory is $100, yet you can get one for you computer for under $20. Xbox live is $50 a month, and every other game platform is free. This strategy makes the console appear that the console is a cheap buy, but you end up spending much more money in the long run than the other two consoles.

By rushing the console out to the market so quickly to beat out the competition, they ended up launching a very faulty product with a failure rate in the 30%-50% range. Ultimately this lead to more console sales, as people already have a ton of accessories and games for the system, they send it in, and it breaks shortly later, and this continues until they buy a new console, this yields more money for Microsoft, and more console sales than they should have, making them look good against the competition. Because of the fact that accessories cost so much, and people already have a game library, they don’t switch to another console, they simply buy a new one.

This strategy is also used with games, and is the reason Microsoft has not fixed the circle scratch problem. People buy a game, love it, and then bump their console scratching the disk. They then shrug, and go out buying a new game simply because they want to play it some more, yielding higher sales for games on the system.

In short the reason Microsoft refuses to fix these problems with their console is its unfortunately helping them in the long run, thanks to failures being so high they end up getting higher game and console sales than they should thanks to the stupidity of most people. The even more sad part is if the competition were to have this problem people should frown apon it, where as while the xbox has these problems, people laugh and say “Another read ring, time to buy another console!”.

Check back soon where i analyze Sony and Nintendo’s strategies in the current console generation.

Analysis of Firmware 3.21

Firmware update 3.21 for the PS3 is coming out tomorrow, and its not adding anything new. For people wondering what this is all about, it removed the other os feature from the fat PS3′s, which in short means no more Linux.

Why is Sony doing this?

Sony is simply doing it to prevent the possibility of Piracy in the future. Hackers have proven that through Linux on the PS3 it is possible that custom firmware could be created, opening up piracy on the PS3. Removing this feature is the only Fail-safe.

Why not just patch it?

The problem with patching something like this would require a hardware fix, which is not possible over the internet. The hack is done by literally tweaking and poking the PS3 hardware to be done, so the only fix would be to remove Linux.

What this means for the Gamer:

This update feels pointless, but almost all the people that use their PS3 as a game platform will opt in to do it simply for access to PSN. A large majority of the people who own a PS3 do not use this feature and those who do rarely use the operating system as its slow and clunky and hard to setup. Once it gets going its ok, but the time and effort it takes to get linux on the PS3 is too much for the average user.

What this means for the few who use Linux on their PS3:

Those that use Linux on heir ps3 have a touch choice, to keep Linux and not update, or to update, losing their Linux partition, and gaining back PSN. This group is going to be the most effected by this update, however it is sch a small user base of the PS3 that Sony would rather do the update and prevent piracy and save money in the long run.

What this means for the PS3 Data Farms:

There are a few companies using several PS3′s connected together to calculate data, such as the Air force. This update means very little to those people as they dont need PSN features as their PS3′s boot directly into Linux.

Could this open up to the removal of more features?:

This does not mean that Sony will remove more features from the PS3 in the future, it only proves they can if they want too. It is highly unlikely that Sony would remove any more features from the PS3 as this is the only feature with a major security hole. Sony is a very smart company, and they don’t want a record of removing features on their name, so this is probably the last time you will see something like this.

What about April Fools?

A April fools joke at this scale is highly unlikely, however is still possible. I wouldn’t say it cant happen, but it probably wont.

One week later:

One week from now we will all forget about this and stop complaining and go back to playing the best game console ever created.

-Jidery

Tech Hall is looking for writers! If you are interested please visit: http://techhall.wordpress.com/write-for-us/

Update: For those saying that Sony keeps taking away features, such as Backwards Compatibly,  and SACD, you need to realize how much sony has added to the PS3.

Features added to the PS3 after launch:

-Trophies

-DivX

-3D themes

-Home

-Flash Support

-In game XMB

-new playstation store

-Custom avatars

-Photo gallery

-VidZone

-Faster XMB

-Facebook integration

-Cross game invite support

-In game soundtrack support

-And many more.

Features taken away from the PS3 after launch.

-Linux

-SACD

-Backwards compatibility

-Card reader and USB slots