<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Well, to fit the PSO requirement, I'll talk a bit about it first...
PSO is just a cheap Diablo 2 clone. They copied all the essential town functions except making it take 5 times as long. Not enough hotkeys means mages suck. I know all of you are Hunewearl and you only need like Resta, Deban, fluids, and your attack stuff, but I'm a Fonewearl and I've more than 6 spells I've like to use since level 5. I can't use Resta as a hotkey because I will DIE in the time it takes me to cast a Resta when I need one. I play this game online but so far the only difference I can imagine online is that instead of having run out of room every 5 seconds I can stay still and cast spells. Woohoo! Unless the Force class ends up like Diablo 1's Sorcerer that can kill stuff by glaring at them, I don't see why I've to put up with this ridiculous handicap. My spells don't do nearly enough damage to justify my lack of HP/defense, and even if they did, I still have to run out of a room every five seconds to get the enemy to return to their spawning spot.
Okay, done with that rant, I asked my professor about the hardware thing and whether it's profitable. He said clearly hardware themselves aren't profitable. And I think that make sense. Technology does NOT improve that fast. The specs on most of the next gen machines is competitive with top of the line PCs, and yes your PSX2 may not be able to word-process for you, but that's still a lot of firepower for something that's really inexpensive. He explains the reason why people make hardware is not that hardware is profitable, but that if you can make enough hardware (or at least the belief. In DC's case, it didn't work that way) you can sell enough games to cover it. Also the cost of the new hardware is really shared by your 3rd party developers. It's true that they're not paying for the console, but they'd definitely be putting their own money in to help their games sell. When you have enough systems and enough games on the market, the system takes care of itself. This is the case of PSX. With such a huge installed base and a huge selection of games, almost any random thing you pump out as a developer, there'll be someone out there that wants it. Conversely, no matter how strange your tastes are as a gamer, chances are some company out there will make a game that you want.
I asked Professor Prag about whether it's good when you've, say, 7 out of top 10 best seller on N64 is from Nintendo and 8 out of 10 best seller on DC from Sega, and he says this is really a bad sign. If one company is consistently selling all the software, it gives less incentive for 3rd party developer to work for you. Both DC and N64 shows signs of weak 3rd party support since their 1st party is so dominant, and PSX is pretty much the exact opposite.</div>
PSO is just a cheap Diablo 2 clone. They copied all the essential town functions except making it take 5 times as long. Not enough hotkeys means mages suck. I know all of you are Hunewearl and you only need like Resta, Deban, fluids, and your attack stuff, but I'm a Fonewearl and I've more than 6 spells I've like to use since level 5. I can't use Resta as a hotkey because I will DIE in the time it takes me to cast a Resta when I need one. I play this game online but so far the only difference I can imagine online is that instead of having run out of room every 5 seconds I can stay still and cast spells. Woohoo! Unless the Force class ends up like Diablo 1's Sorcerer that can kill stuff by glaring at them, I don't see why I've to put up with this ridiculous handicap. My spells don't do nearly enough damage to justify my lack of HP/defense, and even if they did, I still have to run out of a room every five seconds to get the enemy to return to their spawning spot.
Okay, done with that rant, I asked my professor about the hardware thing and whether it's profitable. He said clearly hardware themselves aren't profitable. And I think that make sense. Technology does NOT improve that fast. The specs on most of the next gen machines is competitive with top of the line PCs, and yes your PSX2 may not be able to word-process for you, but that's still a lot of firepower for something that's really inexpensive. He explains the reason why people make hardware is not that hardware is profitable, but that if you can make enough hardware (or at least the belief. In DC's case, it didn't work that way) you can sell enough games to cover it. Also the cost of the new hardware is really shared by your 3rd party developers. It's true that they're not paying for the console, but they'd definitely be putting their own money in to help their games sell. When you have enough systems and enough games on the market, the system takes care of itself. This is the case of PSX. With such a huge installed base and a huge selection of games, almost any random thing you pump out as a developer, there'll be someone out there that wants it. Conversely, no matter how strange your tastes are as a gamer, chances are some company out there will make a game that you want.
I asked Professor Prag about whether it's good when you've, say, 7 out of top 10 best seller on N64 is from Nintendo and 8 out of 10 best seller on DC from Sega, and he says this is really a bad sign. If one company is consistently selling all the software, it gives less incentive for 3rd party developer to work for you. Both DC and N64 shows signs of weak 3rd party support since their 1st party is so dominant, and PSX is pretty much the exact opposite.</div>
