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XBox (Games)

Xbox 360 Has Nothing On Atari 2600 64

Posted by Zonk from the week-after-recriminations dept.
MBCook writes "Forbes has posted their thoughts on the launch of the Xbox 360. They start out with 'Has there ever been as confused a launch as the Xbox 360?' and it continues from there. Citing multiple confusing variations, unoriginal games, expensive bundles, and complexity of controls (among other things) it concludes: 'If anything, the Xbox 360 is aptly named: Microsoft is trying to give gamers the spin.'" Next Generation's not-so-next-gen impressions are similar. From the article: "The games you can buy today for Xbox 360 at your local retailer are not the future. As evidenced by the litany of solid but not outstanding reviews, and, my own hands-on experiences, they are but a whisper of what this machine (or the next generation of hardware as a whole) will ultimately be capable of."
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Xbox 360 Has Nothing On Atari 2600 More

Xbox 360 Has Nothing On Atari 2600

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  • Old systems (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SoCalChris ( 573049 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @12:40PM (#14130383) Journal
    To me, old systems were a lot more fun than any of the new systems. Back when they couldn't rely on good graphics to sell a game, they actually had to have good gameplay. Atari was great, as was the NES. When the Genesis & SNES came out, is when gameplay started going downhill.

    I have no desire for a PS3 or XBox 360. The Revolution might be interesting, it looks like they are actually trying to innovate, and come up with something new, besides fancier graphics. We'll see though. For now, I'm sticking with my NES.
    • I dunno. I mean, I spent hours playing defender and saving up extra lives for bathroom breaks, days trying to figure out what the hell you were supposed to do in Earthworld and Fireworld, and still enjoy popping Adventure in from time to time.

      But many games now allow you build up every aspect of your experience. Grand Theft Auto 3, Dynasty Warriors, any RPG... I've spent far more hours per cart on the newer stuff. A pretty simple benchmark for how fun it is, but applicable.

      Then again, you have the ang

    • Re:Old systems (Score:3, Interesting)

      by theJML ( 911853 )
      I will have to agree with this poster, while there are a few games here and there that are interesting, most of the titles lately are either: A. Obivous sequels adding nothing but another number on the end of the title and promises for better graphics, or B. Wannabe other games. You know, the knock off GTs, or GTAs, the reworked old NES/SNES Game come to next gen consoles, etc...

      Everytime a new console comes out I think "Wow, hopefully this new amazingly fast processor and next gen power inspires people
      • Depends on the screen. If your HDTV anything but CRT you are unfortunately SOL for zapper guns.

        And:

        Of COURSE most titles are reworks and sequels. They sell, they've always sold. There are gems out there, but not every title on the shelf is a new work of art.

        Think of it like this:

        early days of gaming -> everything is NEW
        modern days of gaming -> same number of NEW titles, but lots more sequel titles that drown them out for those without eyes to see
        • " Depends on the screen. If your HDTV anything but CRT you are unfortunately SOL for zapper guns.

          Hey, that just got me thinking. The Revo controller will come in handy when you download Duck Hunt and the old SuperScope games... a good way to relive those games on any new-fangled TV... though for best results it'd be nice to be able to attach the Revo controller to something more gun shaped.

    • Re:Old systems (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Iriel ( 810009 )
      Then again, innovation in the earlier days of gaming was easier in certain ways. Consider this:

      The limitation on what the hardware was capable of was exponentially lower than it is now, but... ...games were not as normal. We expect to use about 10-12 buttons for any given game without including directional pad functions these days. It was always scary to take that bold leap forward, but they hadn't tried as much back then. Now, we complain when a sequel doesn't behave exactly as its predecessor with more fe
      • "Then again, innovation in the earlier days of gaming was easier in certain ways."

        Easier and order of magnitudes cheaper. No one takes a chance because it costs too much to make a game these days. The first Prince of Persia (side scroller) or Commander Keen probably had a handful of people working on 'em. Now you need Sammy L. Jackson to voice act, artists, musicians, etc, etc.

        So who's going to foot the millions when it isn't a sure thing to at least break even? This is the same reson I'm sick of movies t

    • Re:Old systems (Score:5, Insightful)

      by radish ( 98371 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @01:16PM (#14130692) Homepage
      Well, I couldn't disagree more. Sure I like a few old games, Gauntlet has seen some action on my 360 recently (playing online is a hoot), but most of them bore me to tears within a few minutes. I never was any good at Defender, Pacman loses it after a few levels and Space Invaders is hypnotically sleep-inducing. Asteroids was kinda fun in it's day but Geometry Wars 2 takes the same idea and rolls with it, with excellent results.

      When I play a game now I want something else, I want an "experience" (for want of a better word). I like loud noises, music, flashy graphics and online play. I'm sorry if that makes me a lower form of gamer in your eyes, but I play games to be entertained and immersed for a couple of hours. When I get home from work a quick blast of PGR3, or PD0, or Star Wars Battlefront, or even Katamari Damacy does wonders for my relaxation and general well being. If I want intellectual exercise I'll watch a movie or read a book.

      I'm not trying to have a go at the kind of games you like (though I personally think you owe that taste more to fond memories of yesteryear than anything else) but please, leave off the "all modern games suck" cliche. You sound a lot like my parents complaining about this new fangled pop music.

    • Re:Old systems (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson&psg,com> on Monday November 28, 2005 @01:33PM (#14130872)
      apparently you don't remember the HUNDREDS of horrible games released for the NES and Atari (and Intellivision, and Atari consoles, and early computers)

      There are only a handful of good games for any particular generation of gaming console, and there are only a handful of good games for any particular period of time in the desktop computer world.

      horrible games are the norm, and they always have been. Its just that as you get older, you notice the horrible games much easier.

      • Re:Old systems (Score:3, Insightful)

        by PeterFranks ( 523503 )
        horrible games are the norm, and they always have been. Its just that as you get older, you notice the horrible games much easier.

        Actually, I think it goes more like this: horrible games are the norm, and they always have been. It's just that they usually get forgotten after a month or so. The best games are the only ones that actually get remembered, which makes it seem like there were no horrible games in the first place.

        I agree with your sentiment though.
        • This phenomenon is true of just about anything. It explains almost all of the "things used to be built better" arguments. They didn't, but the bad ones are all broken now and only the durable and well-built items remain. Bad games? Forgotten. Good games? Remembered.

  • 'a whisper of the potential' (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28, 2005 @12:44PM (#14130419)
    What, exactly, is this potential? Sharper graphics? More movie cutscenes? Yet another FPS, this time with accurate gibs?

    What matters in a game system is how much fun it is, not the graphics.
    • It lets you play games on the Internet in a centralized, integrated way. Having used both Live and several PS2 online games, I'll take Live any day of the week. With Live, you sign up once and you're set for life*; with the PS2 you have to create an account and log in to every vendor's servers. Live 360 also lets you download free trial versions of games you can buy for a reasonable amount of cash. (I still don't understand how classic games like Gauntlet and Joust ballooned up to 35 MB on Live when the

  • Heh yeah (Score:2, Troll)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 )
    I wonder why these articles don't shut up the "Slashdot is shilling for Microsoft" whiners.
    • They don't even see these articles. The first symptom of whinerism is tunnel vision, the inability to notice things which don't match your opinion.

    • I wonder why these articles don't shut up the "Slashdot is shilling for Microsoft" whiners.

      Because it is not Slashdot (aka the editorial staff) that is shilling?

      If you want to see real shilling, you have to look at the comments on any Microsoft-related story. That's where you will find the shills, and plenty of them too.

      Hell, they even have a nice little cabal of moderators and metamoderators to make sure they retain their +1 bonus. The amount of positive moderation on pro-MS posts and the aggressive m

      • "If you want to see real shilling, you have to look at the comments on any Microsoft-related story. "

        Can't say I've seen much of that. Considering however that BSOD jokes are still 'funny' around here even though BSOD's more or less disappeared in 2000, it isn't the least bit surprising that the anti-MS trolling has finally hit some resistance.

        "But then, you live for trolling on Slashdot, don't you?"

        Mmmm hmmm. I'd be offended by that if you could demonstrate that you knew the difference between a shill and

  • Game developers, not console manufacturers matter (Score:4, Insightful)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @12:52PM (#14130486) Homepage
    We can't rely on game technology to push gaming forward anymore. Quake 4 was greeted with a collective ho-hum. Now that everything has 3D and 5.1 sound, now we only care about how good the gameplay is. And that's not any particular console's fault, is it?
  • like usual. The second article actually seemed positive towards the Xbox 360. It highlighted ease of use and setup and touted the Xbox Live feature of the system. The bias in the summaries and article selection are disappointing if for no other reason than they are commonly misleading.
    • I was thinking the same thing - did the submitter actually READ the Next-Gen article? It was totally positive on the 360, and pointing out that the games are going to just get better and better. (And if the graphics on 360 games get substantially better than PGR3, which is already the best-looking game I've ever seen, I think we're in store for some real visual treats

  • Does anyone else find it odd that only half of the Forbe's article is actually about the Xbox 360, and the other half is a wistful trip down memory lane, longing for the Atari 2600? I agree with their points about the 360 bundles and lack of games, but most of the `criticisms', which the author claims the Atari and "Dragonstomper" performed much better on, are not particular to the Xbox 360 at all, but rather modern gaming systems and games in general. Further, while I'm all for carefully crafted games wh

  • Article or Rant? (Score:3, Funny)

    by DingerX ( 847589 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @01:16PM (#14130694) Journal
    Wow. I wonder a lot about the xbox 360 stuff, and I see the "Core System" model as a mistake-by-committee, but dang, that Forbes article was a rant. Yearning for the lost youth, when the whole idea of games was new? Who isn't? Want something fresh and exciting from an era when there was nothing to make a sequel to? Sure. of course.

    Ending the article by declaring the greatest game of all time to be DragonStomper? Okay, this guy is nuts. I mean hell, for few years of my life I'd run into Steve, and while certainly he was held in high esteemed, and was known for his good works in the game field, nobody ever introduced him as "The genius behind DragonStomper" -- and these were his friends!

    What's that guy smoking?

    The other article is much more sensible and balanced, even if not in a huge national business publication.

  • This article is absolutely terrible (Score:3, Insightful)

    by loomis ( 141922 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @01:29PM (#14130827)
    It's sad to realize that I'm not employed by Forbes to write, even though the writer of this piece (reference intended), Ed Lin, is cashing Forbes paychecks even though his writing is absolutely terrible.

    Let's begin with the gaming controller statements the author makes. The author states that it is a fact that games with more buttons are not as fun as the simple games of yesteryear. While this is true sometimes, it certainly isn't always true.

    The author then exhumes the tired, dead horse, Macintosh one-button mouse example, and states that it "was always easier to use" than the PC two-button mouse. Apparently this is a fact as well.

    The author then states that "The best title ever made in the history of U.S. videogaming was DragonStomper." Was this determined through numerous studies?

    What a joke.

    • Re:This article is absolutely terrible (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's sad to realize that I'm not employed by Forbes to write, even though the writer of this piece (reference intended), Ed Lin, is cashing Forbes paychecks even though his writing is absolutely terrible.

      Perhaps he was hired to write, even though you (whoever you are), loomis, would like to be a writer even though you don't write very well. ... even though you mean well, even though you aren't as good as you think even though you don't think he's as good of a writer as you're clearly not very careful with y

  • Both articles miss many points (Score:5, Insightful)

    by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @01:39PM (#14130934)
    The first article could have been written with xbox 360 replaced with any console from the last 3 generations. Old gamers will generally think the games of their time are the best. In reality, the 2600 had a myriad of horrible games. Out of that there were a few good games. The bad games are fogotten and the good ones embraced.

    Same goes for the NES. I still play NES games on emulators to this day. However, going to vimm.net and playing some of those games makes me shudder. There were some horrible ones.

    The last generation of systems had some terrible games too. But there were some gems. Maybe the idea is that the gems are becoming fewer and far between? I can agree with that. The only company still making a console that I find puts out really enjoyable games is Nintendo. I was playing the new Mario Party the other day and someone brought up a point. On what other system can you spend a whole day enjoying a game designed for 8 year olds? Nintendo still produces games today that I would put head to head in enjoyablity with the 2600.

    As for the second article... Have we missed the whole point of the gaming console? Gaming consoles have one purpose. It isn't the GUI (dvorak). It isn't for the graphics. It isn't for the startup music. It isn't for the cool factor. It's definately not for the weight. It's about games. I bought a PC for my PC needs. I bought a home theater for my multimedia needs. Why is my console going to be judged on the same criteria as the previous two?

    And in reality you can't judge a system in it's first months out of the gate. In ten years, no one's going to care about the initial launch. If the games are still lame in a year, then write the system off. It's really too soon to say.
    • And in reality you can't judge a system in it's first months out of the gate. In ten years, no one's going to care about the initial launch. If the games are still lame in a year, then write the system off. It's really too soon to say.

      There are already non-lame games out. Kameo is quite fun, PGR3 is really amazing (and I didn't touch either of the first two), and for what's fun, the #1 game is the Xbox Live Arcade title Geometry Wars Retro Evolved. Seriously. The best game for the system right now may we
    • As for the second article... Have we missed the whole point of the gaming console? Gaming consoles have one purpose. It isn't the GUI (dvorak). It isn't for the graphics. It isn't for the startup music. It isn't for the cool factor. It's definately not for the weight. It's about games. I bought a PC for my PC needs. I bought a home theater for my multimedia needs. Why is my console going to be judged on the same criteria as the previous two?

      I think a lot of it has to do with the growing trend for all-i
    • On what other system can you spend a whole day enjoying a game designed for 8 year olds? Nintendo still produces games today that I would put head to head in enjoyablity with the 2600.

      I find it to be that Nintendo produces games that (for the most part) you don't have to be any certain age to enjoy, rather than those that pander to a certain age group.
  • It sounds like Microsoft has already nailed down the most effective use for online distribution: low-budget titles and demos. For big releases they offer physical media purchased from a store, something your typical user will demand. I see no flaw with this approach. Considering today's bandwidth, doesn't this already beat what's being offered by Steam or the proposed Phantom?
    • Their selection may already be better than Steam, but the fact that they don't offer major releases via Xbox Live yet is definitely not a plus in my eyes. It's not like you can't go get a copy of half-life 2 from the store if you want. Personally, I bought it off of Steam because I didn't feel like driving out to the store, or having to worry about losing the disk, etc.
      • That's true, but what I was really referring to is the inflexibility that exists with newer Steam titles. Wasn't it impossible to install even store-bought Half-Life 2 without an internet connection and a lengthy download? (I may be misinformed here.) XBox Live is smart in that it does not inconvenience common users. People who download multi-gigabyte games via Steam are not what I would consider a common user.
        • You did need a connection to activate it before you could play the first time, but not a lengthy download. And you're right, most people probably don't want to download multi-gigabyte games, but as broadband penetration and speeds go up it will become a more popular idea. It seems to me like it's bound to become the dominant means for purchasing games at some point. There's really no reason that software needs to come in boxes for people who have an internet connection.

  • Atari 2600 hasn't aged well (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HunterZ ( 20035 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @02:58PM (#14131739) Journal
    Earlier this year I got into eBay and bought an Atari 2600 game lot, more than doubling my collection. I pulled my Atari 2600 - the very one I've had since childhood - out of the closet, dusted it off, hooked it up, and started testing all the cartridges to see which ones still worked... ...And I noticed something: The games weren't nearly as fun any more. As I wandered around the maze in Adventure I realized that my tastes had changed over the years, and the simple gameplay - while still charming and laced with nostalgia - just wasn't as captivating any more as it was 20 years ago. I know that a lot of people will disagree, as evidenced by the popularity of remakes of these games on modern systems and cell phones. In my case however, I gradually gave up my Atari 2600 in favor of more sophisticated PC and Gameboy games. I'm now extremely picky about which games I like - shunning most console titles and playing only a few new PC games each year, along with a growing stash of older titles that still call out to me. I also increased my NES collection via eBay, and it seems to have fared much better in the enjoyment department (so far).

    I still plan to keep my Atari 2600 around, but it will probably not get played very often except perhaps by curious house guests. I imagine that's a better fate than most XBox 360's will see 25 years from now though...
  • I'm one of the freaks who was bidding $800 or so for an Xbox 360. I lost about 6-7 auctions and decided to take a rest.

    Guess what? 3 of those auctions were halted by eBay as fraudulent - how did they know?? - and the other 4 have all come to me because the top bidder - we'll call them the collective "King Crazy" - bailed on paying the $1200-1400 that they bid.

    So - if you want an Xbox 360 before Christmas, just have patience. You'll pay a $100-150 premium but considering this is roughly a 20-30% markup over
    • LOL, Ill see you my premium bundle for $800. I bought it with the intention of ebaying it ( I got two, they are much easier to get where I live ) but have hesitated because I sorta hate ebay.

  • this is to be expected.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @03:10PM (#14131856) Homepage
    Microsoft has never been about innovation. It's always about the package.

    There was absolutely nothing innovative about the original XBox. All of the basic concepts used by MS in it were either heavily derived from earlier systems or grabbed from the PC world.

    The fact is that the success of the XBox can be attributed to the fact that Microsoft bundled all of these ideas into a package in a manner that had never been done before in the console world. Microsoft has always focused on the sum of the parts rather than the parts themselves.

    Windows 95 was the first consumer OS to successfully combine multitasking with a decent GUI. Unix was without a doubt better at multitasking, and most would argue that the Mac OS GUI was a lot more mature than the Win9x GUI... Of course, this is an over-simplification of the facts, but the point stands.

    Halo was far from an innovative FPS. It's incredibly fun because it took the best aspects of all the successful FPS games from the past few years and combined them into one package. If you pick the XBox apart point by point, you can find another console that outdoes the XBox hin that particular category, but once you compare them as a whole, the XBox comes out on top.
    • What exactly do you consider innovation? I would consider taking two ideas, and combining them in an interesting and useful way to be innovation. So if Windows 95 tried to combine the power of Unix and the usability of the Macintosh, I would consider that innovation.

      Xbox Live combines all sorts of network services into one (supposedly) seemless package, to create something nobody has used before. A console gaming portal which lets you play games, chat with friends, buy new games and content, etc. To me t

    • Windows 95 was the first consumer OS to successfully combine multitasking with a decent GUI.

      Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. NEXT!

      What about, oh, the Mac? Or, say, the Amiga? Or, to a lesser extent, the Atari XT? Microsoft's strengths have always been in the marketing of not-so-innovative products as SUPER innovative.
  • With all this buzz over the XBOX360, I remembered that I had an old USB Gravis Eliminator gamepad that I picked up at a computer show in a $1 box, but never put to use -- at the time, no game emulator I had found could handle USB joysticks.

    So I hit Google and found ZSNES, a really nice Super Nintendo Emulator. Onward, I went looking for ROMs of my favorite games, as well as games that I never owned or rented at the time. To my mild surprise, most of the games I scrolled past were pretty terrible. I downl

    • "Though that may sound somewhat optimistic for the 360, I think these new consoles suffer the NeoGeo problem -- Lots of hype, lots of tech, but way too expensive for what you get back, in my opinion. The games sure look shiny, but that only gets you so much."

      But NeoGeo did not have the kind of ridiculous demand that XBOX 360 has...are you suggesting otherwise? Are you even suggesting that the hype for NeoGeo comes anywhere close to that of XBOX 360? Even when PS3 and Revolution come out, I doubt the hype an

  • Fun Games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @04:59PM (#14132822) Journal
    The article in Forbes is obviously both human interest and nostalgic. I'm not sure why a discrete number of buttons is ever considered in rating a game as "fun" or not. Let's face it, if Pac Man had a button and didn't use it, it'd be less fun. If Galaga didn't have the button, but required you tap the joystick down, it'd be less fun. When the buttons match the required utility of a game, the game interface can then be rendered as "natural." Bank Panic and Missile command had Three that were intuitive and felt right. Defender had tons of buttons, including "Reverse," but it was fun to those who played because they learned how to use the complex setup effectively. Since there's the Atari 2600 comparison, Raiders of the Lost Ark required two joysticks for one player because the controller was inadequate.

    I think the real point to walk away with is that a fun game with a bad control scheme is diminished.
  • They're right, I doubt the 360 is going to have ET: The Video Game...
  • So has microsoft decided to take the Xbox down a different path by turning it around 360 degrees?

  • Terrible article! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @09:02PM (#14134457) Journal
    I read the Forbes article and it was terrible! The author complains about how the Xbox 360 was much worse than the Atari 2600. He even mentions that the 2600 was the best console ever - well.. that's probably the NES, given that the progeny of the NES are still being played today, and people are all talking about the Revolution. Can't see anyone mentioning a brand new Atari console coming any time soon.

    The author mentions that the Atari joystick was better because it had one axis and one button, and the Apple mouse is much easier to use because it only has one button. While technically you could say he was speaking the truth, you can't do a lot with only one mouse button (take away a Mac users funky bonus keys on his keyboard then ask him to do something useful with his mouse!) and you can't have intellectually satisfying games with only one joystick button.

    He goes on about how much fun the Atari games were and how he doesn't get any of the same joy from playing 360 games. Well frankly, the article is just misguided. You can't bag the Xbox 360 on the premise it didn't make you 12 years old again, so you can experience all the wonder of discovering computer games once more. But that's just what the author is really doing.

    The Xbox 360 is a great console (despite heat issues, something the PS3 will suffer from as well). It won't make me a kid again. But the games will still be fun to play, and on a face value, I would always choose an Xbox 360 game over Atari. As the consoles have become more sophisticated, people's tastes have followed. Ask anybody you know who's into retro gaming if they've spent an all nighter playing space invaders. Ask any contemporary gamer if, lately, he's stayed up all night playing, say, Civ 4 or any other very addictive new game. I think I know who'll be saying yes.

  • Talkies suck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drewmca ( 611245 ) on Monday November 28, 2005 @09:27PM (#14134552)
    These new "talkie" motion-pictures are horrible! I remember when you had to imagine what people were saying on the screen, or watch ornate subtitle screens with delightful piano music, to follow the plot. And these new plots these "talkies" have: how awful! Whatever happened to tying a damsel to a train track? That little device has a lot of legs on it still, and these "stories" told by "talkies" are just making things more complicated. They take away from why I watch my motion-pictures in the first place!
  • The Xbox is less about games than it is about working out a platform with a totally closed architecture on commodity hardware.

    No one takes games or music seriously, they're just entertainment, so it makes an ideal playground to test out digital restrictions technologies without getting the consumer backlash that happened with Palladium. Since that, it's something that MS would like people to not pay attention to.

    Components of digital restriction technology get added to MS' applications (MS Office 2003,

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