Through a glass,darkly-or the mad musing of a gamefreak
When you finally look at your console you cant help wondering why there should be such hoopla about it.It doesn't look much,it sure weighs less than it look(thank heavens)...on the plus side,I think SONY did well to make it backward compatible with the old PSX library and add value to it by the DVD player function.Surely any discerning gamefreak should be sick and tired of SEGA and NINTENDO coming up with new players every other year and then slowly abandoning them.
Some game designers are such a lazy lot that their PSX2 titles suffered horribly from aliasing and flickering.This was the reason for many gamers being not-so-enthusiastic about PSX2 games.It's funny to think that these guys hold back on design!They even talk about "untapped vector banks" and how second /third generation games are going to look brilliant.Personally I think that's a lot of horse poo.The PSX2 features the regional lockout,too.Why should companies do this?Doing so,SONY has given the incentive to interested third parties to reverse engineer the inner workings and do large-scale piracy on its software.(I can't help admiring the HongKong hackers who do this stuff-talk about perseverence and talent!)Should we have marketing execs telling us what games we can play or not?Did we bargain for to be left out on certain games or to be delayed on others??Why should Japanese game players have an elitist edge over the rest of us when we pay the same amount(or more!) for the same console???
Then there is the issue of game pricing;they are so obscenely expensive it is almost criminal to expect a kid to come up with the money for it!One reason for this may be the fact that companies try to recover the R & D costs in a hurry rather than spreading it out thin on new games.Game publishers routinely state that it is so expensive to develop and market games-well,they are if your programmers are busy buying racing cars(ring a bell?) or so lazy that they can put out a game only around x-mas time!!Cut down on the publicity stunts and fancy packaging and you can come up with something for a reasonable price.Solution:issue a bare-bone game package for the budget buyer and issue fancy custom made boxes and added extras for those with excess shelfspace and limited wallet-space.
Wouln't it be cool if PSX2 supported MP3 and VideoCDs??If SONY woulnd't make an accessory to do it,some third party from HongKong or Taiwan will,I guess.
GET BACK