Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Here is a very interesting video from a guy with inside sources that claims that there are going to be big problems with the upcoming Xbox One and PS4 launches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6h9l5Gb5hE

To sum it up "Watch_Dogs as well as several other next gen titles delayed because X1/PS4 online networks in shambles, PS4 day 1 update actually disables the same DRM that the X1 had, CoD Ghosts for U native 1080p, 720p on the others."

Not really surprising I guess, since there are always problems with new systems. There have been rumors of a lot of these things so far, even before this video.

Fortunately I never buy systems or portables at launch, so it really doesn't bother me. The last system I bought at launch was the Dreamcast.

It's all the needless useage of online functionality and DRM that creates most of these problems. There was, to my knowledge, only two game systems to launch in the previous century with day one problems, and those were the Sega 32X system add-on and the Tiger Game.Com.

But this century has been plentiful with day one console problems and design flaws beginning with the PS2. A lot of you may not remember this, but lots of launch model Sony PS2's had ODD issues, not in a read error sense as you might be thinking but rather in the "Dear Lord is it going to scratch every single disc I put in it?" sense. One of my friends got ahold of such an affected model and it had carved neat circles into nearly every DVD of Buffy Season 1 before noticing. It was later revealed that this had been an intentional "feature" to mark used games. Due to high volume of complaints in Japan this "feature" was removed in all later revisions.

Nokia Ngage was a colossal failure all around. It's such an abysmal piece of hardware that it's a miracle the company has survived long enough to be bought out by Microsoft. For starters, it was only available as a cell phone, only marketted through one or two cellular carriers nationwide, and unless you wanted to pay $200+ for it and have a one year contract you had tow sign up for a two or more year contract with an overpriced text+data plan. Just want to buy the Ngagae outright, no contracts and no service plans? Not a problem, Nokia will sell it you outright for oooooooooooonly $499.99 + S&H. Secondly, there was the matter of the game cartridge slot being located under the phone's battery. Want to play a different game? Turn off your phone, take off the phone's back cover, remove the battery, change out the game card, re-install the battery, put the cover back on, then wait five minutes for the phone to complete it's reset & security check phase, and enjoy! </sarcasm> Thirdly, it had a postage stamp size screen. Fourthly, the control buttons were obnoxiously placed and doubled as phone buttons. Fourthly, the speaker and microphone were both located in the side panel of the phone, which meant to use the Ngage for actual phone calls required one to perform the act of "Side Talking". All that to say Ngage was a combination of a sub-par cellular phone and a sub-par game system, which all made for a sub-par experience.

Nintnedo DS launched with a couple of design flaws. Volume slider bar had no low level output setting, and the system menu had the option to adjust the backlighting brightness... even though the original model was only capable of two settings, on and off. Then there was the manufacturing flaw of their being two very different model digitizers having been used, with one of the variants being just about useless.

Sony PSP (PSP-1000) suffered from having a rather terrible LCD screen that suffered from the exact same issues that had plagued the Game.Com, an exceptionally poor refresh rate and image ghosting. Problems were further compounded as initial system firmware updates broke system software compatibility with certain launch and early release games and UMD's. And then there was the battery life, or rather how the system operated upon reacing a critical battery level... it shut itself off, no matter what it was you were doing. Unlike the later hardware revisions, PSP-1000 did not have a system save state resulting in a complete power off.

Xbox 360 experienced Xbox Live issues day one, and it took Microsoft two or three days to resolve the problem on their end. And shorty following that, the Red Ring of Death problem became an issue, and was for several months worth of consoles manufactured all because thermal compound was entirely left off or used far to sparingly during manufacturing, that's a massive Q.C. oversight.

Sony PS3 suffered DRM and software issues. System updates would fix one problem, but in doing so would break compatibility with certain games and movies. This went on for about a year post launch.

Good summary Tweeg. I remeber a lot of those launch problems. I agree with you that most of the current system launch problems stem from online and DRM policies and procedures. I foresee a lot of issues with the upcoming console launches. Which is why I'm in no rush to get there.