It turns out my last anti-Sony rant, while beautifully written, may have been premature and unfounded. So the downloads may be optional. Ok, that's actually a nice feature, then.
To make up for posting the positive news, I'll link to these three stories from Evil Avatar about Sony's online plan. Which apparently is non-existant, or at least so convoluted that none of the developers can actually agree on how to use it. All you have to do is read about EA's online service for the 360 to know what can happen when a developer tries to do its own thing. With the 360 it just doesn't make sense, because from all accounts the XBox Live service is fantastic. For EA to ignore it is just plain stupid. On the PS3, developers don't really have a choice. So instead of an online system that runs smoothly with most games, you'll have a mish-mash of services that may or may not be ideal for playing games. It could work, but what a pain in the ass. Again, it's just extremely complicated for a console. The whole point of a console is simplicity.
Add to that this developer's opinion that the 360 and PS3 are nearly identical in power. Take that, Sony! Your system comes out a year later and costs $200 more, it had damn well be a more powerful system on all levels. Instead, the power gap is marginal at best. This opinion comes from someone at Silicon Knights, a company that gives a lot of credence to gaming power. I know this because they abandoned Nintendo for a more powerful system, the jerks.
There's nothing in the PS3 that seems to create confidence for the consumer. I believe anyone who buys this system on day one is a sucker. This is a system that needs to be observed from a distance before any amount of money is spent on it.
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In an unrelated, but related, story...
So I picked up Final Fantasy XII, and have really been enjoying it, but the coupling of strategy guides to make money has become so insane. EB did this midnight release in my area, and they had a few door prizes (one of which was the collectors guide and one of which was the regular guide). Now, FF XII came in two versions a regular version and a collector's edition that by all rights had some really cool things with it.
The collector's strategy guide came with an art book and that sort of thing has never really justified $30 just for a walkthrough...at least for me. The people in line were eating the thing up, buying both the CE of FFXII and the limited edition guide. That's like $90+ of final fantasy XII.
Any way, to get more to the point of what I really wanted to talk about rather than how much money people spent on this game...I ended up getting one of a handful of the regular guides in the raffle drawing they did. I was pretty pleased to say the least, but as I was playing and using the guide every so often I noticed a special bulletin. It said "Don't Open that Chest Number 1-4," and of course this caught my attention.
Turns out there are 4 different instances in which one chest or a collection of chests are linked to the most powerful weapon at the end of the game. If you open these chests, you don't get the weapon later on. Games like this have always had sort of obscure side-quests and items, but I've never played one where looting a few chests early on prevented me from getting an ultimate item. Frankly, it’s a good thing the Internet and gamefaqs exists or millions of people would be missing out. Just another example of making in-game options to help sell strategy guides.
~Brian
That's been one of my main issues with the new Final Fantasy games. You shouldn't have to use a strategy guide to get the most out of it. A good game should be able to be figured out through play, not have some convoluted secret that could only be found by accident.
Game design like that is only motivated by greed.
I think my biggest problem with recent final fantasy games has been the voice acting. I'm all for cut scenes and FMV and what not, but seriously they don't have to go UGH or AGH or UNF every time they have one. Also, did you see where the head of XBox Live is giving EA a WTF?!
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