The 360 thread!

[Flabio]

It has been quite interesting to see that the number of Japanese games being nominated for our game of the year vote is way down on previous years. There's a rumbling that I've seen a few Japanese devs mention that they're starting to think they can't hack the technical side of pushing the 360 and ps3. Almost like a self-fulfilling sense of defeatism. Not sure how much truth there is in that, but the output we're seeing does point in that direction (Square in particular have put out quite a few Unreal engine based games this year and it's clear they don't understand it's limitations at all well).

There's still time of course, this 'generation' is set to last far longer than the previous ones did. Sony can't afford a huge R&D push at the moment and MS have always played a reactive rather than proactive game so I doubt we'll see new hardware from them until it becomes clear that some other player is doing something along those lines.

In 2009 the UK is predicted to fall from 3rd to 5th in terms of revenue created by it's dev teams, I wonder if the same study has a fall for Japan too? (the big risers in the list being France and Canada, co-incidentally both countries with governmental incentives for game dev to locate there...)

[axel000]

The 360 launched about a year ahead of the PS3 though didn't it ? Beyond the incremental next release of the xbox and playstation brands though I do wonder what Nintendo is going to do to recreate Wii level buzz. Thats got to be hard to pull off.

Adding a HDD and hi-def isn't going to do it, it has to be bigger than that. Maybe they'll launch a proper live-like service with a family focus.

[Flabio]

The MD launched a year ahead of the SNES, and the Dreamcast launched well ahead of the PS2. Doesn't matter hugely in the long term who goes first. I just don't think either MS or Sony will be throwing the huge dev cost of a new console down when they're losing out to the Wii anyway. The next move is basically Nintendo's to make.

[Deckard]

Anyone seen any recent sales figures for xbox vs ps3 lately - global and uk ? As every kid I know who hasnt got one is getting a 360 this Xmas, not one a PS3.

[Flabio]

The numbers don't tend to be publicly made available for the UK. VGChartz has figures, but not sure how they source them. The black Friday sales figures should appear on there by the end of this week.

MS are claiming they've had a massive spike in sales in Europe since the price drop though.

[Deckard]

I'm not surprised - I'll buy a PS3 when they drop to 120ish (if only as as a blu-ray player) but the current price is just a piss take frankly.

[HGFB]

A couple of times over the last week or so I've seen parents in shops with their kids (Maybe 10 or 11) and buying PS3s for them. I'm left wondering why? Especially when the 360 is so much cheaper.

[WiredWorm]

I'm not surprised - I'll buy a PS3 when they drop to 120ish (if only as as a blu-ray player) but the current price is just a piss take frankly.

Especially seeing as the cost for a blu-ray standalone player are coming down. Amazon were flogging a Sony model for £160 last week.

[benedictw]

I'm not surprised - I'll buy a PS3 when they drop to 120ish (if only as as a blu-ray player) but the current price is just a piss take frankly.

Agreed. At the current price, there isn't enough software to make it worthwhile. BluRay? Curious about it, but it doesn't add any value for me.

[Mark]

Shameless plug time - one of today's new releases on XBLA is Powerup Forever, which I worked on as designer (it wasn't my original idea btw - I just had to try to turn the original concept into a playable game). It's a twin-stick shooter, it tries a few new things (or at least a few old things differently ), it's really rather pretty, and hopefully plays fairly well too.


Please give the trial a pop, and I'd love to know what you folks think.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games ... 258410934/

If any PS3 owners have stumbled in here by mistake it will be coming to PSN at some point soon (I hope), but it got delayed due to a trivial technicality.

[fog]

I'm not surprised - I'll buy a PS3 when they drop to 120ish (if only as as a blu-ray player) but the current price is just a piss take frankly.

You said you were getting one at Christmas.

[WiredWorm]

Maybe he was assuming that Sony might cave in and actually cut the price of the PS3?

At the moment they're being stubborn and sticking to their guns. I'm quite keen to get a BluRay player to be honest - but I can't justify the price difference between a £150 Sony BDPS350 and a £280 PS3. I'm more likely to end up getting a standalone player.

In fact, i've just realised that for the cost of a PS3 I could buy a reasonal Xbox 360 bundle AND also a BluRay player.

[Rod_S]

Shameless plug time - one of today's new releases on XBLA is Powerup Forever, which I worked on as designer (it wasn't my original idea btw - I just had to try to turn the original concept into a playable game). It's a twin-stick shooter, it tries a few new things (or at least a few old things differently ), it's really rather pretty, and hopefully plays fairly well too.


Please give the trial a pop, and I'd love to know what you folks think.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games ... 258410934/

If any PS3 owners have stumbled in here by mistake it will be coming to PSN at some point soon (I hope), but it got delayed due to a trivial technicality.

Finding a lot of the enemy bullets hard to dodge in this, they're launched extremely close to my ship and travel at what seems like 10 times faster than I can go, with the large size of the player ship it feels like I'm a bit of a bullet sponge. Had a lot of collisions with enemy missiles that I'd say were impossible to avoid. Am I missing a speedup? The Plasma Arc is a bit fiddly to use when you're thinking about three different directions at once - movement - firing - shield position.

[Mark]

Shameless plug time - one of today's new releases on XBLA is Powerup Forever, which I worked on as designer (it wasn't my original idea btw - I just had to try to turn the original concept into a playable game). It's a twin-stick shooter, it tries a few new things (or at least a few old things differently ), it's really rather pretty, and hopefully plays fairly well too.


Please give the trial a pop, and I'd love to know what you folks think.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games ... 258410934/

If any PS3 owners have stumbled in here by mistake it will be coming to PSN at some point soon (I hope), but it got delayed due to a trivial technicality.

Finding a lot of the enemy bullets hard to dodge in this, they're launched extremely close to my ship and travel at what seems like 10 times faster than I can go, with the large size of the player ship it feels like I'm a bit of a bullet sponge. Had a lot of collisions with enemy missiles that I'd say were impossible to avoid. Am I missing a speedup? The Plasma Arc is a bit fiddly to use when you're thinking about three different directions at once - movement - firing - shield position.

For a bunch of reasons (not all of them within my power to change) you will probably take hits that you have little chance of avoiding (unless you're an absolute demon with the shield). Once you know how the enemies behave you can lessen that considerably, but it'll probably still happen from time to time. The game has been designed with that in mind though - hence the recharging health system. Also bullets do very little damage generally, so you should only really have a real problem with bullet damage with enemies that spam loads of the things, and they should behave more predictably anyway.

The Plasma Arc takes a bit of getting used to, but the pay-off is that it can be incredibly useful - especially later on. The best way to use it is to aim at the target using your regular bullets, then double-tap the toggle button with enough of a delay to allow one shot of plasma arc out. The plasma arc doesn't inflict a massive amount of damage to any one target but will hurt everything in its blast radius equally. So generally one shot does what you want - clears most regular enemies, or stuns bigger ones. For big enemies your cannon or lasers will be more effective at finishing it off quickly.

[Deckard]

I'm not surprised - I'll buy a PS3 when they drop to 120ish (if only as as a blu-ray player) but the current price is just a piss take frankly.

You said you were getting one at Christmas.

I was but then the complete lack of games and the stupid price convinced me otherwise.