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"Anolouge" controllers
I was listening through the "Peter Main" comfrence from IGNCube when I noticed something that I have NOT seen on other sites yet...the accuracy of the "anoluge" buttons.Aparently there are 255 different "pressures" of which you can hold the "L" & "R" buhttons!!! (It diddn't say about the "A","B","X" or "Y" buttons) this is an AMAZING leap from the "on/off" button style of everything before it!
The exact phrase was:"The controller has 2 analogue joy sticks, with an integrated built in rumble motor and left and right buttons which have a range of 255 distinct increments between off and fully pressed.".-Webmaster.


My Thaughts On The Controller
My thaughts on the controller:
Well at first wheni saw the controller desigh i thauhgt:"cool,2 controll sticks,and not much else",but now its like woh how did they do that? After you really concentrate on all of the aspeks like: #1 The size,ok it looks big but really it is tiny and for having 12 buttons (with 6 anolouge),2 controll sticks,built in rumble and something Nintendo havent released yet makes it the best and if you look carefully,you will notice that the controll stick is actually a different type to the N64's but i cannot commment on this for i (along with 99.9% oh humanity) have never touched a N-Cube controller.and have you noticed that the "L" and "R" buttons are toatally new? they have cind if curves in them ,yet more proof that Nintendo put LOTS of work into this controller.By the way...those "L"and"R" buttons do you think they are digital (there os "pressed" and "not pressed") or anolouge (255different pressures) well the y have 255 pressures. (im not sure with the "A","B","Y","X")


Another of sony's great downfalls:
You must already know that sonys new machine is 100% backwards compatible, this includes all the peripherals as well as the games. This on top of the DVD play back surely means the system could possible be too strong for the Game Cube!! But it isn't. Let me explain with one word: PIRACY
now alot of people have been telling me how difficult it will be to pirate the ps2's propriety DVD's, and its true, its almost as difficult to pirate as the Cubes discs. However its the backwards compatibility that is their downfall. WHY? The ps2 can play CDroms, its first crop of titles are gonna be on CDROMS, and everyone knows how easy it is to copy psx games, which just happen to be on CDROMS!!

Even when they go on to the much larger DVD's, all they have to do is strip off all the cinemas, which is what will fill up the 4.7gb of space on. Most games use under 500Mbs of space so copying ps2 DVD's on CD's will be relatively easy!!!
Copying will be as rampant on the ps2 as the psx!!!!

So what you may say, it hasn't affected the psx in the past. This is true, with sony estimated lossing around 1 third of its games profits to piracy. But with a majority share of the games market, it could absorb the loses.

Another reason why piracy had little effect on psx is that the developers had little or no choice about it. They were losing money to piracy but what could they do, make the games for saturn??? It was dying. Make for N64? Too expensive. So they had to bite their lip and bear it.

With Nintendo coming out with all guns blazing, with their GAme Cube, companies have the option of bearing the losses from piracy, or going to NGC which piracy will be very difficult to pirate. With direct control over the 1.5gb disc, it will be very hard for pirates to obtain or produce (you can't play any other format on NGC but the 1.5gb discs). If you don't believe me why are there little to no pirate cartridges?? Its the same concept with NGC.

Secondly sony will lose out due to its 100% backwards compatibility on its peripherals. Though its great for psx owners wanting to upgrade to ps2. However its bad for sony. WHY? Who is gonna buy a brand new ps2 controller when you can use an old psx controller (there exactly the same afterall!)? How about steering wheels or light guns, are they gonna shell out more money if they already have these peripherals and know this?

What this means is the sony will lose money on their peripherals, third party peripheral developers may shun it considering this.

The possibilty of losing millions due to combined piracy and peripheral compatibility, do you see why I believe the ps2 will fail and the Game Cube coming out on top!!

Remember, sony is not going to make much money back on the actual machine (ps2) during its launch but most of the money they earn is from the games and peripheral sales, if these are being affected by piracy and the 100% backwards compatibility of peripherals then they will lose out

go Game Cube!!

the above info is from the forums at TendoBox



5 reasons why the ps2 might suceed...and 10 why it wont:

5 reasons PS2 might succeed:

1) Hype. PS2's current preorder count alone guarantees a successful launch.
2) The brand name, Sony. People trust their money to such a successful company. Not to mention PlayStation was one of the best consoles ever released, and they handled licensing and distrubution very well.
3) PS2 is one full year in front of NCube and Xbox which will give it time to both build a diverse library and pricedrop.
4) 3rd party exclusiveness. While they may port to other consoles later, PS2 is guaranteed a full year of exclusive software from companies like Squaresoft and EA.
5) DVD. While its selling PS2's the wrong audiences, its one thing NCube cannot do.

10 reasons PS2 might not succeed:

1) The price. PS may have launched at but it didn't become truly popular until the price dropped. Gameboy, the most successful console of all time, is an 8-bit system surviving in a 128-bit world largely beause of its low pricetag. 3D0 was much more powerful than the competition but sold poorly due to a high price. Both examples prove people care far more about afforability than raw hardware power.

2) DVD mismarketing. Sony has to keep track of how many PS2's are bought per area and by what audiences to know how many and what type of games the console needs. With people who care nothing about videogames buying PS2 as a cheap DVD player, confusion jeapordizes Sony's control.

3) Its harder to program for than N64. While the restrictive and expensive cartridge medium was ultimately the N64's greatest repelant to developers, being difficult to program for also hurt game production. Sega Saturn was in many ways more able than the PlayStation but, because few could harness its complex dual processors and make great games, the system died early. This shows that power alone will not justify the fact taht PS2 is difficult to program for.

4) Low VRam. Call it a minor graphical fluke if you will, but insufficient VRam is causing developers significant problems. Both Capcom and Konami (major 3rd parties) have complained thus far. While its not a huge deal, it is something to keep an eye on.

5) 3rd parties will want more money. After NCube and Xbox are released, 3rd parties will be tempted to port their PS2 software to consoles these consoles which conveniently also use DVD, to make millions of dollars more. Without inhouse development, PS2's exclusive 3rd party software is all their software, and if it becomes unexcslusive, their will be zero reason for consumers to buy PS2 at all. Sad but true.

6) Two controller ports. It might not sound like a big deal, but N64 owes a lot of its success in the US to multiplayer games. Multitaps are inconvenient to find and buy, proven by the fact that before N64, they were seldom bought.

7) NCube. It might be coming out a full year later, but Nintendo has a few things Sony doesn't. First and foremost, it has inhouse development, among which many argue to be the finest in the world. Without the burden of cartridges, 3rd party developers will have no reason to avoid publishing for NCube. And a hard-to-program PS2 could make it an attractive alternative. Secondly, Nintendo's brandname summons some of the most loyal gaming fans in the world, for better or worse. There was a time, if you remember, when the very word Nintendo was synonymous with videogames.

8) Sega Dreamast. The fact that PlayStation sold better than the N64 despite weaker hardware proves that Dreamast's comparably inferior specs are nothing to worry about. Anyone who has lived through console wars before knows that some games will inevitably be made for both DC and PS2 (sports games for example) and it is this gamer's speculation that many of them will look very similar, as did some PS and N64 games. Dreamcast has had a full year to prepare a library to battle PS2 and it has used that time well. Many believe Dreamcast's present library is of the highest quality of any console for its time. With dozens of A games, its not hard to see why.

9) Overconfidence. Nintendo was so confident that N64 would be successful that they became lazy. PlayStation 2 is no less lazy or unoriginal a name than Nintendo 64, and Sony itself seems very confident taht people will buy PS2. They were even too lazy to come up with a different controller or system name. Overconfidence is rarely an effective attitude.

10) Finally, is Sony even really a videogame company? Sure they pay other companies to make games for them, but couldn't ANYONE with cash do this? Why not just have a Cocacola system. If Coke paid Square to make FF's on it, you can bet people would still buy it. How many good PS games have you played that were made by Sony? ZERO you say? No way... Nintendo and Sega might be out just to make money also, but at least they have a passion and skill for making videogames at all, and thats what makes a game company. Companies like Sony and Microsoft won't necessarily succeed just because they're rich - look what happened to Panasonic with 3D0. Having companies like this, which are irrelevant to the industry to begin with, is just plain bad for the gaming economy from a consumer's point of view. 3rd parties would, afterall, be more effective producing next to effective inhouse teams. Haven't you wondered why Super NES just seemed better than PlayStation? There's your reason.





Polygon Count:
Well we can now assure you that the Dolphin will have a polygon rate of 30 millions polygons with all effects on (that's 80 million with all effects off. So how does this compare with Sony. Well Sony will have a polygon rate of about 20 million polygons with all effects on (about just short of 70 million with all effects off). And Dreamcast sucks so much it can't even compare. So now you know. This means that the Dolphin will have the best in 3D graphic entertainment of all of the next-generation consoles. So is this IGN's secret, well we think so. But we're proud to say that we have released the info before them.
One last note, the Dolphin will also feature a dedicated sound ship that will bring you only the best in next-generation gaming sound quality. Combined (the polygon rate and the dedicated sound chip), the Dolphin will bring you the best in 3D animation and sound quality.

Console Comparison:


Well a new generation of hardware is upon us and with it the verbal carnage that ensues, a situation in which weighing the hardware's strengths and weaknesses is the order of the day. But in doing so it always raises a question, "why do systems have flaws or weaknesses to begin with"? Is it lazy developers? Incompetent designers? In actuality it's most cases it's none of the above. Rather it has more to do with the simple fact that the majority of consoles are "main stream" or designed for the mass market. Meaning they must come in at a certain price point.

Lets take for example the PS2, it has a main processor that comes in at just under 300mhz which in its own right is tremendous power for a video game machine plus it has the coveted DVD playback, Backwards compatibility, and can pump millions of Polygons per Seconds. Hey and it will cost about 300 bucks. Not bad ha? However, in order to make that price point the Big Wigs at Sony will take a loss, because they will undoubtedly make money on software sales, (and DVD movies). Beyond that though there are more subtle ways that costs were cut. The most glaring is the 4 MB of Video Ram, I mean come on! The Dreamcast has 8 MB and is a year older! In truth, even though this does handicap the systems power to some extent it's really just more of a hassle to software developers because they must keep moving data quickly through the VRAM rather then working with larger and less frequent transfers. Now to those who followed the development of the PS2 closely might know something of the "vector units" that are utilized by the system. Personally, they sound like something out of a Star Trek episode, but in fact they enhance the power of the machine, because they have the ability to handle relatively small tasks, thus freeing up the main CPU for more advance AI. While the graphic chip can focus on the raw graphical power rather then worry about say, lighting effects and the mathematical implication s therein. Thus, you have a cheaper why to create more power. The draw back, it makes the life of the programmer less then stellar, which is why for the most part the vector units have all but been ignored by developers to this point. Now I don't mean to pick on just the PS2, but the same could be said for N64's lack of any dedicated sound memory, or the minimal texture RAM which can sometimes give the appearance of washed out textures. The ever popular PS is not without its flaws as well, which include: incredibly small amount of RAM, and the fact that almost no graphical features are supported, such as anti-aliasing and bitmapping. This gives a lot of their games that "jaggy" look as well as pixilated graphics at close range, respectively. Of course the Nintendo Dolphin/Starcube has no weakness, for the simple reason that we have very limited information about it. But you can rest assured it won't be perfect either. It really comes down to the hardware developers deciding what is most important to include w hile always keeping a mindful eye on the cost to the consumer. Remember the SNES? It was a great machine with scaling and rotation built into the hardware, had a color pallette of over 32,000 colors to pick from, while displaying at a high resolution. But did you ever notice the CPU clocked in at a whopping 3.58mhz? Which is why early games were plagued with Slow-down when the action heated up. Hey and we can't forget the Dreamcast, I for one am fairly impressed with the hardware especially the ease of programming, and the quality of the textures, and anti-aliasing features. But lets face it the Graphics chip was somewhat under powered when it was released, only 3 Million Polygons (per second) in raw tests.

In the end if a machine had everything the heart could desire, or as they say in Jurassic Park, "spared no expense" on development then the only person playing it would be Bill Gates, and those new .com millionaires.

the above info is from www.nintendodolphin.com




OVER 20 GAMES!!!


At the pre-ects conference Mr Merrick said : "There are over two dozen companies currently making games for Gamecube, but I am not at liberty to disclose who those are." said Merrick. "There has been software in development for Gamecube for over a year - from both first, second and third party developers."




Miyamoto Speak's To The Press


In a Japanese press conference at Spaceworld, legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto had some interesting things to say concerning the Gamecube and Nintendo's future plans. Some highlights of the press conference can be found below:

Press: Once the disc-media announcement was made, Mr. Miyamoto, you said that once ROM cartridges go away you'll probably get annoyed once you run into problems with load time. How has that been shaping up?
Miyamoto: That's still there, definitely. But we've found ways to get rid of it. And, sure, I'm still worried about it, but more than that, I've always been worried about how much RAM is in the system more than anything else. How much you can load in at one time. Now that the Gamecube is on disc media, we'll be able to do that much more with the space. So now we're building up know-how with regards to load speed, so I'm sure it'll turn out all right.

Press: And as for the development kits...
Miyamoto: Oh, right, right. I've dealt with them a fair amount, but I'll let PR handle this one.
PR: They've been publically released.

Press: To the third parties?
PR: Well, not just second parties. Of course, people close to our company have begun their development already, the third parties. I'm not entirely sure who's going to be a third party and who's not, but in Miyamoto's announcement yesterday, a lot of what he was saying was toward licensees, in the content. There was a lot geared toward game creators. Many only come in once they see the stance and ideas of the company. As for any concrete dates, no one has released anything on that yet.
Miyamoto: I don't know. (laughs). Straight from PR.
PR: Our current stance is first to make games that stand upon themselves, to show what you can make with the system, to show that Nintendo means business.
Miyamoto: Are you doing anything?
PR: Hmm?
Miyamoto: We're going to be holding announcements and meetings for the third parties, right? Is any of that planned yet?
PR: Yeah. We'll be dealing with that around September.
Miyamoto: Yesterday was the starting point, so. Once we get into next year I think we'll be getting to a fair amount of people. Obviously, in the end, we can't do it all by ourselves. The designers, all of them, want the development kits. If a team has 50 people then they want 50 kits, but with 50 kits 10 different companies can do development work. And once they come out in volume, development becomes faster. On the other hand, if you release kits too fast then they're usually imperfect and hard to use. That just makes third parties mad at us when they buy them. So, I think that development kits will be perfect once next year comes along, but it'll get gradually better and better as this year goes on. People might think we're doing horrible if you write it like that, so make sure you confirm that with PR.

Press: So kits are already being given to third parties?
Miyamoto: It's going fine. The chips are working fine and everything. We're using them, too



Nintendo Releases Pics On The Size of "THE CUBE":
The pics are here: