ultpaladin wrote:
I saw this article on another website
http://www.siliconera.com/2009/11/08/si ... -consoles/I usually buy consoles based off of the RPG library because most other genres are across platforms but this generation has been incredibly weak and disappointing. Its nice having so many RPGs on handhelds but I will always prefer playing games on a screen larger than a postcard. I wonder with the skyrocketing costs of making games for the newest systems if the JRPG genre will state of constant decline for consoles. Even worse, if the next generation of consoles cost even more to develop for, could all but the largest game publishers call it quits for consoles and just work on portables?
I don't have a large-screen console newer than a PS2 for this very reason. Right now, I see untranslated SFC/SNES as our goldmine of
fresh material. Beyond that, maybe the PSx....
One can only assume it's a matter of time until someone creates a workable device or method of feeding an NDS signal into something grander than a peepshow. Rotating 50" plasma monitors, anyone? My gamecube has a connected base that takes GBA chips, but the dual screen concept killed that adaptation with DS, I guess. As long as console designers have their hair on fire to keep pumping out something new every few years - similar to Bill Gates cramming a new O.S. down our throats that we don't want or need - game developers won't have time to take full advantage of an existing platform's potential.
The traditional turn-based RPG (started by DW-I and FF-I) may indeed wither away, leaving an aging, dwindling crowd of what is increasingly being referred to as retro-gamers (although most of us are simply continuing to enjoy what we've been doing all along since the late 80s). I can imagine that a few scattered young people here and there will "discover" emulators and ROMs through the years, both released ports and amateur translations of RPGs. Therefore, classic JRPGs may live on in some fashion with
fresh blood players, but likely just among random mavericks here and there, never again attracting a fairly large fan base that congregates at a few web sites, similar to what some of us did in the late 90s.
Hmmm... On the other hand, perhaps the next generation of Rom hackers will upgrade 16-bit graphics to play in PS3 and XBox emulators, and use our stories and menus along with their own introductions of FMV and voice over! What's left to develop anyway? Perhaps holographic systems and simulated real people in which we scan and inject our own likenesses? At some point, this whole cockamamie
next generation crap has got to level out into something practical, enjoyable, and sustainable - or the whole commercial industry will die. So, I guess I would rather have it in my pocket than not at all.
Shoot, I can see myself playing classic RPGs on a handheld that somehow connects to a big screen in a rest home, hospital room, or assisted living environment someday, during my final years obviously, same as I watched my father and grandfathers pick up a newspaper or flick on a vintage B&W TV western.
"Anything you want us to bring you from home, Great Granddaddy?" I can hear my younger family members saying?"
"Yes," I'll reply. "Bring me my (universal hand-held console that's loaded with fully-functioning real hardware emulators for about 50 systems that extend from 8-bit to the PS9). Make sure my 250 terabyte nano-chip with all of my ROMs, ISOs, and game scripts I'm working on is inserted, and throw in my wireless docking module for the control center of my room's 120" in-wall display."
"Don't you carry that with you everywhere you go, Granddaddy, so you can can write stories on the go with your voice-recognition program?"
*Wildbill, fumbling through his jacket...* "Oh, yeah... Here it is... Seems I'm getting forgetful these days... Yeah, just bring the docking unit. This antiquated system in the room you got me doesn't interface with my account in the voice command satellite!"
"Gawd, Great-Granddaddy...! No one stores personal files in private, detachable media anymore!"
"No, especially since Google gobbled up worldwide control of the whole computer science universe, not to mention gaining political control of entire continents and establishing deploy-able standing armies that are led by the top echelon of Greenpeace, but this way I know that no one will ever steal my work!"