Yeah that's what I've heard. I wish I had a 3000 but couldn't justify the upgrade just for a better d-pad.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
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Yeah that's what I've heard. I wish I had a 3000 but couldn't justify the upgrade just for a better d-pad.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
I owned a PSP 2000 and got rid of it. It's not for me. I could break down each thing one by one, but ultimately it's going to come down to "your preferences vs. my preferences." I hated playing games that required a proper TV on such a small screen. Burnout, Wipeout, Syphon Filter, whatever, devs went for games that needed detail. Compare that to Batman on the Game Boy, which is perfectly fine in its small screen format.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Ports are great, but when the entirely library is primarily ports with little else, what's the purpose? I tried years ago to dig deep into the library, but out of the two dozen or so, more than half were garbage in portable form. Good games were hard to find.
Also, you seemed to miss my point about ports. I don't mind when a system has ports, as sometimes those ports are the definitive version. But no game on the PSP is the definitive version by default because it's a handheld. Modern games look like complete shit on handhelds.
The cramped hands issue happened to me too on my PSP 3000, because of how slim it is. The solution, fat battery with fat battery cover and D-Pad overlay to fatten PSP up. And presto, no more cramped hands.Quote:
Originally Posted by o.pwuaioc
http://nesp.tighelory.com/images/2006-04-03/dpad.jpg
Can't find a pic of the extra fat battery cover I use. It's rare as it came in a PSP accessory bundle that had D-Pad overlay too. And I'm to lazy to snap shot my PSP and upload for show.
Dark Mirror took a year and a half to get to PS2 and Logan's Shadow took almost 3 years. That's hardly immediately, and in both cases the PS2 versions aren't rated as highly. Lumines Plus for PS2 came out two years after the original Lumines on PSP and isn't even exactly the same game. Dracula X Chronicles was one of my biggest wants for the PSP when I finally got one; it was nice to have Rondo in English and get it for $20 instead of $150. Similarly I was very grateful for the PSP port of Persona 2: Innocent Sin, it was so nice to finally have that game in English after having been disappointed years back. Another port that was very worthwhile on the PSP was Final Fantasy IV, by far the best version of the game to date IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by o.pwuaioc
The PSP wasn't just a port machine, some of its most famous titles were sequels and spin-offs to existing franchises. Crisis Core, MGS Portable Ops, Daxter, Secret Agent Clank, Ys 7, Rock Band Unplugged, Wipeout Pulse, Phantasy Star Portable, Ape Escape On the Loose, Hammerin' Hero -- these games are worthwhile if you care for the series they come from. And it had its share of originals too. I honestly didn't care much for the PSP library early on, but it picked up steam later. I didn't get one until it was being phased out, because I had been waiting for the rumored PSP-4000 model that never showed up. That was disappointing, because that model was supposedly going to support PS3 controllers and HDMI out. Personally I don't really care about portability, I treat the PSP as if it were another console, and I still find its library worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, the PSP does have many unnecessary ports, but I just skip those and still find enough other stuff to play. The GBA was the same way; I never cared for the endless parade of Genesis/SNES ports, most of which didn't compare well to the originals, because "but now it's portable" never sold me on anything. But there was still lots and lots of other stuff, and I love the GBA library.
This was actually the reason I got the PSP. I didn't love After Years, though, so one time through was enough for me. I'm happy now with my original release and my translated ROM of hard-type.Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
Yeah, I do feel you on the GBA library. So much of it is garbage. I mostly own it for the backlight and rechargeable battery, otherwise I would have gotten a backlit GBC or something. The GB Boy is pretty good, too, though.Quote:
The GBA was the same way; I never cared for the endless parade of Genesis/SNES ports, most of which didn't compare well to the originals, because "but now it's portable" never sold me on anything. But there was still lots and lots of other stuff, and I love the GBA library.
If I still had, I would give that a try. Looks legit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief
I couldn't bring myself to continue playing FFIV on PSP just to reach the after years. FFIV just isn't for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by o.pwuaioc
Crisis Core. Now there's the game that should have been remastered and ported. Not that FF Type-0 bullshit. CC:FF7 was Fuckface Tabata's only good Final Fantasy related title. XV isn't even finished.
Square Enix should just give the franchise over to Hiroyuki Ito and Naoki Yoshida.
I want to see another Lost Odyssey game personally.
Best FF game I've played since FFXII (which is a very different kind of beast). I liked it much better than FF X as well.
After Years was... not amazing, but worth playing through. And it was better on PSP with the interlude than on Wiiware. Even disregarding the After Years, I still feel the PSP version is superior. The original is still ok, but the improved translation makes a difference to me. The PS1 version has some issues and the GBA version is garbage. I also didn't care for the DS remake of FFIV at all. It's hard to put my finger on, but it just felt really weird.Quote:
Originally Posted by o.pwuaioc
Graphics, maybe? I couldn't stand it either, but I do prefer the original aesthetic, and I liked the charm of the original translation (and updated translation as well). I think it's because when I played it as a kid, the translation didn't bother me at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
Besides, it was my first JRPG, and one always has nostalgic feelings about the original.
X was OK. Linear but made up for it with a lot of depth to the sphere grid shit going on. X-2 was Motomu Toriyama bringing his franchise killing weeaboo pandering vision into the mix. The same guy who built the Chick-version of Cloud, Lightning into that abomination trilogy. Can't forget Parasite Eve 3rd birthday either.Quote:
Originally Posted by EclecticGroove
Square Enix lost more than a decade to his garbage vision, Microsoft had Sakaguchi crank out one good FF-like game then took a decade off. FFXIV MMORPG had to be recreated from scratch by someone who knows other games like World of Warcraft existed.
What a fucking mess for the franchise that carries the genre. No wonder weeaboo trash took over and nobody cares anymore.
Just seems you go on a bit of a rant and also not being quite fair. You praise the Gameboy, which its self not only had a tiny low res screen but also it's self was full of ports, even some of its best sellers were ports like Tetris being a classic example, never mind games like Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid. And also sorry to me Lumines on the PSP was the definitive version and also liked having a system I could take anywhere and play on a pretty amazing screen back in 2005. If one looks at the Dremcast then most of its line up it either ports or as now been ported to other systems or its own ports were far from the definitive version like with Sega Rally II, that really shouldn't take away from the system and the same goes for the PSP.Quote:
Originally Posted by o.pwuaioc
That's what one expects you expect a tradeoff for mobile systems, its like expecting a Laptop/Tablet to outclass and out do a modern day gaming PC Tower. It's just not going to happenQuote:
Modern games look like complete shit on handhelds
It's true, you can still see threads of people complaining about it on PSO-World:Quote:
Originally Posted by BonusKun
http://www.pso-world.com/content.php...istmas-updates - States Xmas is being turned on for GC and BB in 2006, and Xbox is celebrating the first year anniversary of Eternal Christmas
http://www.pso-world.com/forums/show...o-xbox-servers - Thread discussing it, eventually its determined that it's Microsofts issue.
http://forums.sega.com/showthread.ph...-shutting-down - Sega announced Eternal Christmas will finally be coming to an end in 2008, due to the servers shutting down.
It's still a pretty hilarious thing considering how simple it is to change the holiday themes in that game. Think about it, the game was stuck on Christmas for 3 years straight because people at Microsoft "lost the server files" to control that.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Hilarious?
Yes!
Did MS and SEGA give a crap about the handful of people still playing it on Xbox?
No.
The Xbox audience obviously didn't care for the title enough for them put resources towards it.
Actually Sega did still care to some degree. The servers were simply out of their hands. You can see numerous threads on the official Sega forums discussing the issue with Sega's employees expressing thier disappointment in the situation. The fact that Sega still cared to keep the servers they controlled up to date with support all the way up to shut down is proof they still cared about those games till the bitter end when less than 100 people were playing. They were even still maintaining Japanese Dreamcast V1/V2 servers up to 2007.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
The Xbox version was simply out of their control beyond the initial development. And Microft didn't care from the get go to give it the support it needed.
So then why did you try to bring it up as a good example of games to appeal to Japanese gamers? And going further, I'd say the audience was there, but considering the other servers were getting better support most probably jumped ship early or just went straight for the other version. The fact Phantasy Star Universe did rather well on Xbox 360 with Sega in control of those servers I'd say is proof there was an audience for that kind of game on Xbox if it was handled better. And that's really saying something, because the support I'm talking about from Sega on their PSO servers and later western PSU servers was absolute bare minimum. Microsoft couldn't even do that with Xbox PSO.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
How many players are we talking about when the Xbox version was at its peak?Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Who are these Sega employees that you're talking about?
The 360 sold better than the Xbox and Dreamcast in Japan, and is a top 5 best selling console of all-time. Even if 1% of Xbox 360 owners played PSU, it would be a larger user base than if 3% of Xbox owners played PSO.
I can say from my own experience from playing online games with the Dreamcast and the original Xbox, that a lot of games had online players dropping off in droves to play only the most popular games after several months. You couldn't find anyone to play Star Lancer a few months after its release and even Daytona dropped off several months after its release. Meanwhile NFL2K1 was quite busy up until NFL2K2 was released. Outrun 2 was pretty dead within a month of its release, while the Star Wars Battlefront games were always busy.
I brought up PSO for the Xbox, as an example of MS giving Japanese developed games a chance on the console. As you've pointed out, it didn't do as well as the Gamecube version, and I'm guessing that the GC version probably didn't do was well as the DC version either. Still, according to J Factor on this thread, MS actually sold a bundled version of PSO with the Xbox LIVE in Japan, so you can't say they didn't give it a fair shot.Quote:
So then why did you try to bring it up as a good example of games to appeal to Japanese gamers? And going further, I'd say the audience was there, but considering the other servers were getting better support most probably jumped ship early or just went straight for the other version. The fact Phantasy Star Universe did rather well on Xbox 360 with Sega in control of those servers I'd say is proof there was an audience for that kind of game on Xbox if it was handled better. And that's really saying something, because the support I'm talking about from Sega on their PSO servers and later western PSU servers was absolute bare minimum. Microsoft couldn't even do that with Xbox PSO.
I'm honestly not sure as I didn't play on Xbox, only know from friends who played it and what was being posted on the forums at the time. I know Gamecube at it's peak was pretty popular with most ships having a quite a few people on them. Regardless of how many people were playing, Microsoft didn't really do much more than sell the game to get people to want to play that version. They're support was worse than Sega's bare minimum support from the get go. That kind of stigma early on is hard to shake off and it can easily kill an online game.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
The GMs who ran the servers. You could regularly find them in game and they regularly posted on the official forums as well as on fan sites such as PSO-World.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
PSU was announced for the 360 early on before the system really took off and got the huge install base it got. We're talking around 2005/2006 here. Sega took quite a risk with that one and it paid off. Considering how poorly Xbox PSO did why would they take that risk if they themselves didn't care about that market? The main difference with 360 PSU was that Sega ran those servers and supported them better than Microsoft supported Xbox PSO.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
PSO however is an MMORPG. Those games typically have more loyal population because they suck you and are a tad bit addictive. They require putting in quite a bit of time to get the most out of them so you typically don't see drop offs every time some new big thing happens. It might dip for a week but then it comes back.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Fair shot in my book would have been competently supporting the game. If they weren't up to the job they should have let Sega run the servers. As for GC vs DC PSO if I remember correctly they sold pretty similarly. Dreamcast may have sold a tad more because it came out first, but server population I think they were pretty similar at their peaks.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
My experience with the original PSO was that the servers were very busy for the 1st 6 months and then you saw a significant drop off in the amount of servers available. It got to the point that the Japanese servers weren't busy enough (small user base) so they started showing up on the North American servers. I don't believe what happened several years later on the Xbox servers had any impact on the sales of the game 3 years later; the people that were playing it were already there year one. Considering that Ver.2 was a pay to play each month, and there were a ton more free to play games on Xbox Live, I can't imagine that the game had any chance on that platform, compared to the GameCube and people still playing it on DC.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
I played PSU on the PS2. The game saw a significant drop in users within 6 months of its release. I think that the servers for the PS2 and PC versions were shut down less than 5 years after the game's release and the user base for those were much larger than PSO for the Xbox.Quote:
PSU was announced for the 360 early on before the system really took off and got the huge install base it got. We're talking around 2005/2006 here. Sega took quite a risk with that one and it paid off. Considering how poorly Xbox PSO did why would they take that risk if they themselves didn't care about that market? The main difference with 360 PSU was that Sega ran those servers and supported them better than Microsoft supported Xbox PSO.
I've seen much bigger MMORPGs die within a few of years of release, because something better came along. I was a player of Star Wars Galaxies, which had much deeper content than any Phantasy Star Online game. Even with the game being in the Star Wars Universe, the user base started dropping off several years later, and even the large clan that I was in was gone by year 3. I dropped out of it, but SOE continued to run the servers for many years later and released a couple of more expansions. The subscription service was the only thing keeping it going for that long. SWG was not a multi-million selling title.Quote:
PSO however is an MMORPG. Those games typically have more loyal population because they suck you and are a tad bit addictive. They require putting in quite a bit of time to get the most out of them so you typically don't see drop offs every time some new big thing happens. It might dip for a week but then it comes back.
PSO Ver.2 was never as popular as the original PSO on the Dreamcast. The servers were definitely not as busy as the original, and I believe that Sega had a problem getting people that were playing the original PSO to switch over to Ver.2, because they did not want to pay a monthly fee to play it. The same thing happened with NFL2K2.Quote:
Fair shot in my book would have been competently supporting the game. If they weren't up to the job they should have let Sega run the servers. As for GC vs DC PSO if I remember correctly they sold pretty similarly. Dreamcast may have sold a tad more because it came out first, but server population I think they were pretty similar at their peaks.
Why would MS give a shit about a game that had a really small online user base, when they were better served by supporting more popular online titles like Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Battlefield 2 and Halo 2? Did Sega offer to line their pockets to do that?
Microsoft wouldn't allow Sega the option of supporting the servers themselves. They wouldn't let any third-parties either run servers outside of Xbox Live or do their own separate thing within Xbox Live. The only partial exception they ended up making was for EA Sports, and not until 2004. If you're going to force every game into a unified service, and allow neither third-parties nor users any remedy, you should be ready to maintain support for every also-ran game that hardly anyone plays. It's only fair, IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
I played GC online from about 2003 to 2007. Yes the server population did start to go down, but all the servers were still there to choose from. If anything it was the opposite of what you stated, people were going to the Japanese servers because more people were on those servers. In fact, the most populated private GC PSO server these days is a Japanese only one. What really killed Gamecube PSO was the release of PSO:BB. People were putting up with the other issues but once PSO:BB was released with the promise of no more destructive hacking (corrupting memory cards, NOLing characters, etc.) that sold it for many people playing the console versions.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
And it wasn't just the Eternal Christmas issue on Xbox. The servers in general just didn't get the same level of support that Sega's got. And Sega's was bare minimum support at best. That from the get go had an impact. As for pay to play, Gamecube and Dreamcast V2 were also pay to play. So again I'd say if people didn't have an issue paying on those platforms I don't see why they would on Xbox. Again 360 users did it for Phantasy Star Universe.
And do you know why that is? Within 6 months of launch some bad exploits were found that caused people to do mass item duping and meseta duping which completely tanked the games economy. That game had a player shop system which was supposed to provide a good player based economy for you to easily buy and sell items to each other. When some people have infinite money and others don't, it causes a problem. Sega fixed the issue and did rollbacks on the Japanese servers. On the US servers they did implement the fix but didn't do the rollback to undo the damage. That caused players to quit in droves and move to either the 360 servers or the Japanese PC/PS2 servers. And those servers did stay up longer until September of 2012, after PSO2 came out.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
If you want an example of server population, here's the Japanese PC servers on the last day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN55vLUx5pA
And PSO from having played it for quite a long time I can tell you the GC version did have a steady population until Blue Burst came out. US Blue Burst didn't keep as big of a population, but the Japanese servers had quite few people playing on them. Same with PSU and PSO2. What killed server populations after GC PSO was separating the servers by region that started with PSOBB. No one wanted to play on servers that got slower updates and worse support. People started playing on the Japanese servers instead which got updates faster and had more content.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
That all said, you can still find quite a few people playing Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PSOBB on a few private servers these days.
And by the time GC and Xbox PSO came around, the only option was pay to play. That didn't stop GC from having a solid population up until PSO:BB came out.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
If they didn't want to run it they could have handed it back over to Sega why they didn't is beyond me. But that poorer support is good reason why PSO Xbox was never as popular as the Gamecube version. The PSO fanbase when given the option of one server that's convenient vs another server that's better supported and more up to date, will almost always take the better supported and more up to date server. We've seen it with PSO:BB, PSU, and now PSO2. The same was true with GC vs Xbox PSO.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
They also allowed Square with FF 11, but SEGA never had the pulling power of EA or Square and tbh It's not like SEGA needed the extra hassle or expensive of running PSO servers on the XBox . Plus I was told that MS Japan gifted SEGA a cool $200,000 just for porting the game to XBox LIVE. Not bad at all if it was trueQuote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
FFXI wasn't until the Xbox 360 many years later. By that time things changed. Sega was able to run the Phantasy Star Universe 360 servers themselves after all. They just didn't pull enough power to have unified servers like Square was able to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
MS really wanted Final Fantasy on the console and Square were and are a bigger deal and draw than SEGA. It wasn't so just the servers as most X Box LIVE games were nothing more than P2P but the need to link EA or Square separate online accounts to LIVE that was the big deal and where the likes of EA or Square didn't back down and MS was forced to allow it to happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
I doubt SEGA would have done much better given the low sales and interest myself in PSO by that stage (even SEGA was moving on from PSO to PSU) . I was still huglly upset and let down SEGA pulled the ChromHound servers, even with faily decent sales ; That to me is the best LIVE game ever and so long from a Remake or sequel.
I think you're missing a point here. Yes, Square was a big deal, but the deal they got with Microsoft was the ability to have the 360 port of FFXI connect to the same servers as the PC/PS2 versions. The older policy we were talking about concerning Xbox PSO having to be maintained by Microsoft was gone. That went away with the release of the Xbox 360. No special deals needed to be done for that. Phantasy Star Universe 2006 was able to have it's servers run by Sega. Sega just didn't pull the power to get them on the same servers as the PC/PS2 version. So the servers were separate. They were still however maintained by Sega themselves unlike PSO on the original Xbox.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
By the time the policy changed, probably not as the damage was already done. What we were talking about was from when Xbox PSO came out in 2002 when that older policy of all games have their servers controlled and maintained by Microsoft. If that had been different and Sega had been running the servers themselves from the get go things could have been different. Granted Sega's support for their own PSO servers wasn't great, it was the absolute bare minimum. But that bare minimum was still more than what Microsoft gave the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Basically, the entire issue with Square Enix and FFXI was so many years later from Xbox PSO that it's not relevant to the conversation. It was a different console with different policies.
Yes but LIVE was well and truly established then tbh. When trying to launch LIVE in Japan and get it off the ground . MS Japan just looked around the safest and easy bet like PSO on the XBox, gave SEGA a sum of money and everyone happy. I think you're making a little too much over PSO on the XBox it was a bit of a niche game on a total niche system in Japan, It was always going to face uphill battle, more so given Broadband costs in Japan in those daysQuote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Quite and you're right. MS still had an issue with LIVE subscribers having to join and pay for Square online network to use on LIVE. Square and EA could always play more hardball, I mean it hurt me, that MS dropped XSN Sports for EA on LIVE. XSN was really ahead of its time and I thought it was a fab feature unique to the Xbox.Quote:
Basically, the entire issue with Square Enix and FFXI was so many years later from Xbox PSO
I've always wondered why FF11 was ported to the 360 years after the fact. Maybe that policy change was the reason, and why it didn't get a more timely port for the original Xbox.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
It had quite a few people playing it on the other systems. It's sequel on 360 had quite a significant population too, as did the PC/PS2 version in Japan. And PSO2 has over 4 million people playing it these days. So I wouldn't really say it was that niche.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
The issue was that the Xbox server was inferior and seen that way early on, so people didn't want to play on it. Microsoft either needed to give the servers the same commitment Sega gave to them, or just let Sega manage them. I get they had their policies, But when we ask why Xbox PSO was in such a worse state than other versions the answer is those policies shot it in the foot. I don't care how niche it may or may not have been, that's irrelevant to the conversation when we have proof other versions were doing better.
That's today though, its completely different in terms of a number of people online back in 2001 it was quite a different. SEGA faced a big battle and I still remember people calling MS mad when they made the XBox Broadband only back inthe day . If you look at PSO Dreamcast sales in Japan it was never much more than 200,000 copies, that was back in the days of a when AAA console game was expected to and could sell over a million copies in Japan alone. So it wasn't a massive game in Japan and then having a pretty niche game on a total niche system was never going to set the world alight. I agree with you MS could and should have done better with PSO, but it really wasn't going to make much difference, if they did.Quote:
It had quite a few people playing it on the other systems. It's sequel on 360 had quite a significant population too, as did the PC/PS2 version in Japan. And PSO2 has over 4 million people playing it these days. So I wouldn't really say it was that niche.
Now for me SEGA totally messing up PSO these days, To Have PSO II Asia only makes no sense as does to limit it to the PC in Japan for much of its life and a pretty basic PS4 port years later. Its should be worldwide (that's the magic of the original PS) not just on PC but all the consoles. SEGA went from the pioneers with Online RPG's to know letting Capcom and Fromsoftware take over