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"My opinion of Sony and the PS2"

Right, after spending 4 months with the PS2, I can say that I am somewhat dissappointed with the PS2 I got way back 5 months ago on launch day November 24th 2000. I bought 4 games then- SSX, Tekken Tag Tournament, Smugglers Run and Ridge Racer 5 and these games I all completed after 2 weeks. You can say that I was somewhat disappointed. And then I find out that the dream month which was to be this month with games like Gran Turismo 3- A Spec, Wipeout Fusion, the Bouncer, Zone of the Enders and so on and so forth all due out in the same month, I was quietly optimistic about some worthy games to add to my collection all I had to do was be patient. Then came the delays. To be honest, the way that Sony and its third party developers are acting producing delay after delay in order to get their games perfect( get real - NOTHING'S perfect!!!) it very frustrating. The result- GT3- June maybe later, The Bouncer- TBA(even though its out in the US and Japan), Wipeout Fusion- September and so on. It looks all like what happened with the N64- a machine that also was very hard to develop for(come on- PS2 owners have to come out of the clouds and admit that their console never has been easy to program for- and being a programmer myself I can understand that it will take longer to produce games for it) but its no excuse for delay after delay just tinkering with the visuals, which overall in a game are nothing without the gameplay. All in all, I hope that Sega make a better job with Virtua Fighter 4 and Crazi Taxi for the PS2 because I think we need a fresh face on the PS2 scene to make all the others buck their ideas up! Im not complaining about MGS2 though, at least that game is going to be released in Europe ahead of schedule! I think that the future is bright for the PS2 though- the X-Box looks incredibly likely to fail because of Japanese hostility toward the machine and the lack of Japanese companies willing to sign up for it and the Japanese delay of the Gamecube so that can have enough games for it(all credit to Nintendo, they are at LEAST learning from their mistakes). All in all, 2001 is Sony's year but the question is- is the curtain about to fall for Sony, is it their last act?

Right, after spending 4 months with the PS2, I can say that I am somewhat dissappointed with the PS2 I got way back 5 months ago on launch day November 24th 2000. I bought 4 games then- SSX, Tekken Tag Tournament, Smugglers Run and Ridge Racer 5 and these games I all completed after 2 weeks. You can say that I was somewhat disappointed. And then I find out that the dream month which was to be this month with games like Gran Turismo 3- A Spec, Wipeout Fusion, the Bouncer, Zone of the Enders and so on and so forth all due out in the same month, I was quietly optimistic about some worthy games to add to my collection all I had to do was be patient. Then came the delays. To be honest, the way that Sony and its third party developers are acting producing delay after delay in order to get their games perfect( get real - NOTHING'S perfect!!!) it very frustrating. The result- GT3- June maybe later, The Bouncer- TBA(even though its out in the US and Japan), Wipeout Fusion- September and so on. It looks all like what happened with the N64- a machine that also was very hard to develop for(come on- PS2 owners have to come out of the clouds and admit that their console never has been easy to program for- and being a programmer myself I can understand that it will take longer to produce games for it) but its no excuse for delay after delay just tinkering with the visuals, which overall in a game are nothing without the gameplay. All in all, I hope that Sega make a better job with Virtua Fighter 4 and Crazi Taxi for the PS2 because I think we need a fresh face on the PS2 scene to make all the others buck their ideas up! Im not complaining about MGS2 though, at least that game is going to be released in Europe ahead of schedule! I think that the future is bright for the PS2 though- the X-Box looks incredibly likely to fail because of Japanese hostility toward the machine and the lack of Japanese companies willing to sign up for it and the Japanese delay of the Gamecube so that can have enough games for it(all credit to Nintendo, they are at LEAST learning from their mistakes). All in all, 2001 is Sony's year but the question is- is the curtain about to fall for Sony, is it their last act?

I think that the X-box will do well in America and Europe but I think the Japanese are not such a big issue for it as developers like capcom and namco are developing games for them. I don't think that Bill even needs the Japnese Market and for once, for once we have a none Japanese console. Look what they did to our PS2s. I dont think that the Game cube will not suceed as even the launch day for the console is unknown and probably reflects on how their games will be released. And I have to say that at least Sony never keeped on changing their launch day like this even though they never had enough consoles. And also my best consoles are Ps2 and the X-box which I will soon have them both. But f*** Nintendo and their Gamecube, its s*** and will have almost the same games as N64 like one things for sure Super Mario is going to be back and other childish games (usual Nintendo) with only having a few good games for hardcore gamers.

I wasn`t going to bother replying to this, but then I realised I had time to waste...

damospud wrote:
> Right, after spending 4 months with the PS2, I can say that I am
> somewhat dissappointed with the PS2 I got way back 5 months ago on
> launch day November 24th 2000.

Why did you take a month off? Perhaps that would have been an inspiring month...
Don`t be so "dissappointed" with a console that is so young.

> I bought 4 games then- SSX, Tekken
> Tag Tournament, Smugglers Run and Ridge Racer 5 and these games I
> all completed after 2 weeks.

I can believe most of that except that I will be very surprised if you have Dr B on TTT. Also, not everyone would have completed them in two weeks. It just depends how many hours in the day you spend on them.

> You can say that I was somewhat
> disappointed. And then I find out that the dream month which was to
> be this month with games like Gran Turismo 3- A Spec, Wipeout
> Fusion, the Bouncer, Zone of the Enders and so on and so forth all
> due out in the same month, I was quietly optimistic about some
> worthy games to add to my collection all I had to do was be patient.
> Then came the delays. To be honest, the way that Sony and its third
> party developers are acting producing delay after delay in order to
> get their games perfect( get real - NOTHING'S perfect!!!) it very
> frustrating.

They are not making them perfect, just improving them as much as they can. It would not be wise to release rubbish when these games are really heavily hyped. I prefer delays to poor games.

> The result- GT3- June maybe later,

Some still think April/May, with a June as the latest possibility. I doubt it`d be anything beyond that. Your statement was merely a way to try and back up your argument.

> The Bouncer-
> TBA(even though its out in the US and Japan),

The reviews showed it had some problems to be sorted out before the UK release, so they delayed it to do some tweaking. Hopefully that will improve the gameplay.

> Wipeout Fusion-
> September and so on.

September? I had heard it was delayed until late 2001, but not a specific date such as this.

It looks all like what happened with the N64- a
> machine that also was very hard to develop for(come on- PS2 owners
> have to come out of the clouds and admit that their console never
> has been easy to program for-

Come out of the clouds? This bit really made me angry with you. Every PS2 owner on here with any knowledge of the machine knows that the difficulties with develpement are the main reason that companies such as the one behind Abe decided to ditch.

> and being a programmer myself I can
> understand that it will take longer to produce games for it)

Was this just to show off that you were a programmer? I hardly think you have to be an expert in that field to know that.

> but its
> no excuse for delay after delay just tinkering with the visuals,
> which overall in a game are nothing without the gameplay.

Bach to the Bouncer. The visuals are already the best looking on almost any game to date. The tweaking is for the gameplay hopefully.

> All in
> all, I hope that Sega make a better job with Virtua Fighter 4 and
> Crazi Taxi for the PS2 because I think we need a fresh face on the
> PS2 scene to make all the others buck their ideas up!

I'm sure Sega will help a great deal, though I do not think that developers need to "buck ther ides up". That`s a little naive even for a programmer. There are plenty of good ideas, and great games to come.

> Im not
> complaining about MGS2 though, at least that game is going to be
> released in Europe ahead of schedule!

I am pleased about its 2001 release as well, though again I do not think that the release date is what makes the game great.

> I think that the future is
> bright for the PS2 though-

So basically what you wrote above was for nothing then huh...

> the X-Box looks incredibly likely to fail
> because of Japanese hostility toward the machine and the lack of
> Japanese companies willing to sign up for it

I think there are a lot of people over in the FOG or the X-box forum that would disagree, though I don`t know enough to comment.

> and the Japanese delay
> of the Gamecube so that can have enough games for it(all credit to
> Nintendo, they are at LEAST learning from their mistakes). All in
> all, 2001 is Sony's year but the question is- is the curtain about
> to fall for Sony, is it their last act?

That makes sense how? 2001 has a long way to go, so if you think it is Sony`s year, then I don`t think the curtain is about to drop.

Well, that was fun. Another waste of space topic on the PS2 forum.

>> and being a programmer myself I can
>> understand
>> that it will take longer to produce games for it)

>Was this just
> to show off that you were a programmer? I hardly think you have to
> be an expert in that field to know that.


As a programmer myself, *I* know that you should - if you're any good - only have a 'problem' with any particular issue once.

After that, you've either solved the problem, or you have a routine of code to work around it. Either way, it's only a delay the first time you encounter it.

Or you end up succumbing to external forces (those damn finance people!), who persuade the head honchos to release something with known problems still in place....

I'm not a Microsoft employee! ;-p

I will start off by saying that I don't know a thing about programming and have not attempted it, apart from that yabasic thing.

I am finding it hard to understand how the Playstation2 is hard to make games on.

I have had my PS2 for around four months now and have got SSX and Timespliters, both have good graphics. When I first played SSX I was gob smacked by how beautiful the graphics were. And considering that this was a launch game, I thought EA sports done a brilliant job. They couldn’t have had that long developing it could they?

Also I have watched a MGS2 movie trailer, and the graphics were out of this world. When the PS2 is pulling off graphics like that, it makes me think, “is the PS2 that hard to develop for"

I apologise now if I have got it completely wrong.

WM - shame on you if you were! ;o

Anyone want to come out of the closet?

"Welcome to todays Bugaholics Anonymous meeting. Would you like to start?"

"Yes, I admit it, I work for Microsoft. I've been trying to quit for some time, but just can't break away. My friends despise me, my wife has left me, and the dog won't even sit in the same room as me."

You're not wrong, M16.

Some developers are whining about the 'difficulties', while others are saying they're having no problems.

The only thing that is certain about coding for PS2 is that you have to go about it differently.

The makers of TimeSplitters (Free Radical Design) are on record in one of the PS2 mags (I think it was an older issue of PSM2) as saying that the PS2 *is* a bit of a sod if you want to take the easy route of porting games directly from other formats.

However, they also stated quite clearly that if you do the job 'properly' - i.e. code for the PS2 from the beginning of your project - it is actually quite straightforward, and you get significantly better results.

Which does make a lot of sense. If you run generic code on any system, it will be less efficient. For example, I could write a routine in MS Visual Basic which reads from one file, does a bit of processing with the data, and writes it back to another file, and it may take around (for example) 10 seconds to run.

At work, I code mostly in UniBasic, which is specifically designed for database handling, and has some extremely powerful file reading/writing and processing commands. In this language, coding the same task in the same way may take 15 seconds to run. However, if I 'optimise' the code by adapting it to specifically use UniBasic's file-handling commands, that same process will take only 2 seconds.

In addition, it would probably take me less time to re-write the code specifically in UniBasic than it would to port the Visal Basic code and adapt it. I believe that the ame applies with coding games on the PS2.

So, in summary, the problems that some companies are claiming to encounter *could* be largely down to the way they are approaching the system.

I'm no PS2 coding expert, but it is known that PS2 does things a little bit differently. Therefore, if you want to get the best out of it, you probably need to adapt your way of thinking. One thing's for sure - judging by some of the games due out soon, it's not *that* difficult to do.

Thank you Wòókiee Møn§†€R, you have been most helpful.

So will it be a hard job to get Crazy Taxi onto the PS2 then?