It was the 1st, but weakest machine between it, the Xbox, and the Gamecube, but it played DVDs back when a lot of people didn't have DVD players. It was a brilliant strategy...between that and whatever they did that the others didn't to lock up the right exclusive games from the right 3rd parties.

redandguilty said:

It was the 1st, but weakest machine between it, the Xbox, and the Gamecube, but it played DVDs back when a lot of people didn't have DVD players. It was a brilliant strategy...between that and whatever they did that the others didn't to lock up the right exclusive games from the right 3rd parties.

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the article in the onion av club claims that it also had more and better games than either of those. plus it had almost all those games (e.g. GTA III) first because of the easier route for developers.

screw the machine's capabilities... I care about whether the games I'm playing keep my interest. The only real win for the xbox was halo. That's why the PS2 was so successful

you're right though too that the DVD thing was a factor, but I still don't think it was that big.

Xbox played DVD's also, assuming you spent $30 for the little remote and sensor.

The problem I always had with the PS2 was no HDD. Nothing worse then looking to save on MLB the Show and searching through a handful of flash memory chips, hoping one if the right one.

The advantage being Sony kept supporting PS2, while Microsoft dropped everything Xbox as soon as the 360 became available.

I have both a PS2 and an Xbox, and I never bought any 3rd gen consoles, and never plan to. IMO PC will always beat them.

Halo however isn't just a game, it put Xbox ahead of the competition. I mean 1 game swinging a market share is unheard of. And Halo 4, just made it so the next gen systems will favor the Xbox again. Halo 4 was the best selling of the series and sold the most out of any Xbox games this year. And the new Halo comes out on the next system. Microsoft just brilliantly hooked its lion share of the next gen console sales.

michchamp said:

the article in the onion av club claims that it also had more and better games than either of those. plus it had almost all those games (e.g. GTA III) first because of the easier route for developers.

screw the machine's capabilities... I care about whether the games I'm playing keep my interest. The only real win for the xbox was halo. That's why the PS2 was so successful

you're right though too that the DVD thing was a factor, but I still don't think it was that big.

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It had a lot more games and more of the best games. I do think some of the games actually made by Nintendo are as good as anything out there, but that's a small number of games compared to what the ps2 had.

...and I think the DVD thing was a part of what got the initial sales burst. The ps2 price was competitive with dvd players when it came out, one year later, or when the Xbox came out, that wasn't the case anymore. So I'd agree that it wasn't a long term driver for sales, but I do think it had a big impact on the 1st year sales and I think that ended up being big deal in the long run. Game makers make games for the systems people already own. The other systems had more power, but game makers designed for the ps2 because that what the key demographic had.

zoombabyzoom said:

Halo however isn't just a game, it put Xbox ahead of the competition. I mean 1 game swinging a market share is unheard of. And Halo 4, just made it so the next gen systems will favor the Xbox again. Halo 4 was the best selling of the series and sold the most out of any Xbox games this year. And the new Halo comes out on the next system. Microsoft just brilliantly hooked its lion share of the next gen console sales.

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Halo is a freak. It's not just crazy how big an impact that game had, it's crazy that it did it at a time when the market already had similar things available. I see like the ipod. Nothing new, they're just the ones that got it right.

I think a big factor in PS2 was also that lots of people has PS1's and since the games were forward compatible, many people just looked at it like an upgrade.

And while nowhere near as popular as Halo, I know people who specifically bought PS2/3's just because of Gran Turismo.

Similar to people I know who bought Wii's just because of Mario platforms.

My favorite part was how you could mod it and burn copies of games.

schles192 said:

My favorite part was how you could mod it and burn copies of games.

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you could do what now?

schles192 said:

My favorite part was how you could mod it and burn copies of games.

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You mean Xbox right?

IIRC, playstation drives spin in reverse, making it more difficult to use a pc based CR/DVD+R to copy.

Wait now that I think about it it was the ps1 grey with the round pop top, used to borrow friends games then copy them. Ah the good old days of pirated vids. Now with everything on line it makes it easier to get banned.

Thumb said:

You mean Xbox right?

IIRC, playstation drives spin in reverse, making it more difficult to use a pc based CR/DVD+R to copy.

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Yeah. I think the Xbox was best system for mods between the 3. That's my impression anyway; I never modded anything myself.

Xbox was easy to mod, literally took less than an hour once you had all the tools and equipment. I remember me and my buddies in the house we lived in all had ours modded. And we would download the games via a torrent and it would save itself onto our hard drives. Any game we want, we could have it within minutes.

zoombabyzoom said:

Xbox was easy to mod, literally took less than an hour once you had all the tools and equipment. I remember me and my buddies in the house we lived in all had ours modded. And we would download the games via a torrent and it would save itself onto our hard drives. Any game we want, we could have it within minutes.

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Yeah, but you forget to mention that also gets that console banned from Xbox Live.


Kind of a strange addendum here, but I used to play an MMO (Asheron's Call by Microsoft/Turbine) around 2001-2004ish and in the guild I was in one of our officers was the guy who was project lead for Xbox Live. He and his wife both worked for MS, and it was pretty cool to hear about before it ever went live. I had an Xbox then, but sadly no broadband back then, even though if I did I'd still have to pay full price, he was saying how even he didn't get a discount.

If only I could get the hours back I spent playing gta 3.

Diggler Cometh said:

If only I could get the hours back I spent playing gta 3.

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why? I enjoyed it. For years afterward, booting it up and playing it would take me back to winter 2001-2002 in my college apartment. ahhh memories...

GTA: Vice City I thought had the best plot. I was more or less engrossed in beating that game for a week and a half every day after work.

San Andreas had the most replay value I thought because you could do so much more.

never got PS3, so I never played IV.

Thumb said:

IMO PC will always beat them.

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this. i have a ps3, but i dont even use it anymore (partially because the blu-ray laser in it is dead and ive been far too lazy to take the one from my brothers old ps3 to replace it). i dont do online shooters and barely have any games for it, ive played consoles less and less as i get older and the games get shittier. PC all the way for me. i have WAY more games just on steam than i do for ps3 (or did for the ps2, but that was more me being broke back then).


also, i despise halo. never has a more mediocre game gotten so damn popular than that (except maybe the recent CoD games, except that those are terrible rather than just mediocre). dont get me wrong, i liked the first one...when they put it on PC, and i didnt love it. any game where the basic pistol is one of the best weapons and can be used to snipe is a fairly badly balanced/designed game. i like that it was first to really limit what weapons you can carry at any one time, and i definitely liked the story, but cmon. aside from the badly balanced weapons, most of the environments (especially the interior ones) were just lazily copied endlessly. i played and hated a few more and ignore the franchise now. its probably partially because i think the most overrated part of halo is the multiplayer. it never impressed me, and as the campaigns got fucking stupid, the games got worse. same reason i hate all CoD games since the first MW. absolutely shitty and short campaigns and boring copy-pasted MP from MW from year-to-year.


/end rant. i get easily frustrated about games nowadays because the number of quality original games is plummeting as gaming gets more mainstream and the big developers just copy/paste old shit to keep making money. i got so bored with new games that i recently made a win98 virtual machine on my computer so i could play some old DOS games and lode runner.

Diggler Cometh said:

If only I could get the hours back I spent playing gta 3.

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Me too.

I can still probably quote half the Head Radio's show from the game I used to hear it so much.

spockmaster said:

... i got so bored with new games that i recently made a win98 virtual machine on my computer so i could play some old DOS games and lode runner.

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I've been playing some old NES and Genesis games on my laptop a lot lately.

amazing what they did with plot and gameplay when they didn't have so many shiny graphics and cut scene video to play with...