PS3 Kiosk Issues Too?

[bapenguin]

Much like the XBox 360 Kiosks, the Playstation 3 Kiosks might be having issues with overheating, or at least lockups. While at Toys R' Us in Times Square NYC yesterday I got a chance to check out the Playstation 3 in person. They had a demo Kiosk with 4 stations on it, one of the stations was turned off, one had Motorstorm and the last 2 had NBA Live 07. I had no interest in the basketball game, though it looked gorgeous, and promptly went to check out Motorstorm. And it promptly locked up. A Toys R' Us employee reset the system and it came back up, a few minutes later it locked up again.

I can't say with any certainty if this was a software, hardware or heat issue; but the fact is the system is in an enclosed bubble for 12 hours a day running. It's not the smartest design, much like the XBox 360 kiosk.

http://static.flickr.com/122/291416697_9e03aee929_m.jpg

[Spigot]

one of the stations was turned of
off... .

[NoName]

off... .
And this is why so many of my posts have misspellings, I read right over that without pausing...

[soco]

not really a surprise. there's not a single system i've seen that didn't have some problems with these things.

did you get to play enough motorstorm to give an impression?

[bapenguin]

off... .

Ugh thanks. I'm running on 4 hours of sleep.

[Megalith]

I quickly stopped by last week just to see the thing in person, and my first reaction was how cheap and stupid the controller was. The L2 and R2 buttons, which are now analog triggers, are laughably bad, and feel like an afterthought. It seems like someone just took a prying tool and pulled the buttons out of a regular dual shock. The thing feels bootleg in general, compared to the 360 controller.

PS3 is worthless until MGS4.

[Spigot]

Ugh thanks. I'm running on 4 hours of sleep.
No prob. Now go get some rest!

[Norse]

No prob. Now go get some rest!

No he shouldn't. He should get home and play Gears of War so he can give a full review tomorrow. :)

[bapenguin]

No he shouldn't. He should get home and play Gears of War so he can give a full review tomorrow. :)

UGH. I sooooo want to. F'n work.

[Spigot]

UGH. I sooooo want to. F'n work.
Well, I was watching AotS last night (ugh) and they were saying it only takes about 7 hours to trundle through on Easy. Go home right after work and play till the wee hours of the morning and THEN write a review.

Then I can have more spelling mistakes to correct in the morning tomorrow.

[bean19]

I found out why Gamestop is getting an exclusive on the Wii, and this is part of it (so says the local Gamestop manager).

1. The Wii-mote doesn't work well with a tether of any sort, so you are required to drop down your license and a credit card before playing it - in case you run off with the Wii-mote.

2. The first batch of these systems aren't designed to stay up 24/7 without overheating.

[Kelegacy]

Well, I was watching AotS last night (ugh) and they were saying it only takes about 7 hours to trundle through on Easy. Go home right after work and play till the wee hours of the morning and THEN write a review.

Then I can have more spelling mistakes to correct in the morning tomorrow.
Pfft, 7 hours? Sounds like a goddamn rental to me.

Jiminy Christ, I hate spending 60 bucks for such short games. On the other hand, if the multiplayer holds up well, I might be game. I'll be anxiously waiting news from the review front.

A developer's huge focus on graphics almost always makes a game far shorter as a result.

[Ph00p]

I found out why Gamestop is getting an exclusive on the Wii, and this is part of it (so says the local Gamestop manager).

1. The Wii-mote doesn't work well with a tether of any sort, so you are required to drop down your license and a credit card before playing it - in case you run off with the Wii-mote.

2. The first batch of these systems aren't designed to stay up 24/7 without overheating.

Well your #1 is old news, its already been stated by someone who did a full preview of it. #2 is that 24/7 playing games? Or 24/7 just doing wiiconnect stuff? It doesn't make sense for nintendo to release a product that touts 24/7ness when it locks up. Maybe he meant 24/7 in an encasement.

PS3s locking up, as everyone will say not an issue when its in a tightly enclose environment, wait for the SONY brand PS3 entertainment center expansion comming in 2007 :P .

[soco]

Well, I was watching AotS last night (ugh) and they were saying it only takes about 7 hours to trundle through on Easy. Go home right after work and play till the wee hours of the morning and THEN write a review.


from what i played of it, the game should not be played in easy (which is named 'casual' ... ) you should immediately bump up the difficulty when you start playing, unless you don't play many games...

[Spigot]

Well, it does have co-op and probably some other multiplayer modes (I'm just going on what I saw last night). They were also saying that it takes about 7 hours to beat it on Easy but when you fire it up to Normal, it's a much slower game (in that you can't just run and gun like on Easy). Supposed to take your average gamer around 12 hours or so on Normal. I'm assuming there's also an even harder difficulty tucked in there too.

If I had a 360, I'd probably rent this. It looks like a great game, but I'd be apt to pick it up half-price in a few months or used somewhere rather than paying full price for a 7-12 hour game.

[Abednigo]

2. The first batch of these systems aren't designed to stay up 24/7 without overheating.

That's the first thing I thought. How many consoles stay running 24/7 in someone's home? None that I know of. I remember extended play sessions on my PS2 (8 hours or more) and it would start to flake out.

[bean19]

Most FPS games are about 6-10 hours long. I would like this one to be closer to the long FPS games 10 hours, but 7 hours is still better than the lower-limit.

There's a reason why you see those maniacs with online speed run-throughs who are able to beat Halo in an hour or Half-Life in 30 minutes.

You're right about it being multiplayer dependent though. That's why I rented so many of the FPS games that came out for the 360 instead of buying them. Without multiplayer to give the game about 50 to a shit-ton hours more gameplay time, they totally aren't worth the $60.

Btw, Gamestop has a deal going on right now where you can trade in ANY 3 titles and get an extra $10 trade-in credit. So get out all your crappy titles that you didn't trade before since they'd only give you about a $1 for them. :)

[Glucose]

That's the first thing I thought. How many consoles stay running 24/7 in someone's home? None that I know of. I remember extended play sessions on my PS2 (8 hours or more) and it would start to flake out.

How many Gamestops run 24/7?

[Norse]

Pfft, 7 hours? Sounds like a goddamn rental to me.

Jiminy Christ, I hate spending 60 bucks for such short games. On the other hand, if the multiplayer holds up well, I might be game. I'll be anxiously waiting news from the review front.

A developer's huge focus on graphics almost always makes a game far shorter as a result.

Kinda agree, but personally I'll rather play an awesome short game over and over again instead of a good game once :)

With co-op you can play the game over and over again with different people and the game will still feel fresh I think.

Also, I don't have the patience to play 20h+ games that often. I want them to finish before I get bored.

[MaiXu]

2. The first batch of these systems aren't designed to stay up 24/7 without overheating.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say (yeah, I know it's never happened before, but) the manager at your GameStop is wrong.

The Wii's tech is not bleeding edge. Without brand-new processors and other unproven tech in the box, I can't imagine Nintendo having a hard time ironing out all of the kinks in this hardware.

And yeah, no store is really going to be running them 24 hours a day, and not lasting 24 hours kinda goes against the whole WiiConnect24 feature.

So yeah ... methinks he's wrong.

[GabeCube]

That's the first thing I thought. How many consoles stay running 24/7 in someone's home? None that I know of. I remember extended play sessions on my PS2 (8 hours or more) and it would start to flake out.

Actually, the design of the system is MADE to run 24/7 - which is part of the WiiConnect24 concept. They called the portable team at Nintendo to transform que inner workings of the GameCube in a low energy consumption die similar to the DS and GameBoy engineering. With that, the console not only needs NO fans, but also stays fully powered at all times.

Part of that has to do with the fact that the processor is working even when it's off. It downloads data AND processes information from other consoles in Sleep Mode. You can read more about that in the Iwata interviews at Wii.com.

[bean19]

And yeah, no store is really going to be running them 24 hours a day, and not lasting 24 hours kinda goes against the whole WiiConnect24 feature.

I said the same thing to him. He said that they get Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft reps in the stores to check to make suer that they are displaying all of the marketing correctly. According to those rep's, even the current-gen systems that are in places that stay open 24/7 - like Wal-Mart are constantly breaking, and they have similar problems at Best Buy and Toys R' Us because their employees are too stupid to turn the systems off at night. Also, we are talking about systems that are constantly running demo discs in stores - not simply being part of the WiiConnect torrent thing. . . that probably doesn't cause nearly as much heat as running a game disc perpetually.

Also, I think you are probably right that Nintendo's Wii will be really durable. I have owned 4 PS2's, 2 Xbox's, and only ONE Gamecube this generation (I know I've had more problems than most people - one PS2 and one Xbox were killed by a power surge in my house - the power brick for my GC was also damaged, but that only cost like $20 to replace). Anyway, yeah, Nintendo products are super durable compared to their competitors.

[GabeCube]

Oh, also:

Gears of War multiplayer rocks HARD. Trust me.

[Kelegacy]

Kinda agree, but personally I'll rather play an awesome short game over and over again instead of a good game once :)

With co-op you can play the game over and over again with different people and the game will still feel fresh I think.

Also, I don't have the patience to play 20h+ games that often. I want them to finish before I get bored.
I know what you mean. I have been enjoying short games more and more lately, but I have trouble paying full price for them. 60 bucks for 7 or 8 hours is abysmal. I rarely replay games, so after I played Dead Rising and played some of the Infinity mode, I never touched it again. I should have rented it, even though I enjoyed it immensely.

I'm starting to think I'll have to resort to renting games instead of purchasing them because of the tendency to release short titles. But on the other hand, games that are far too long I'll never beat. The best way sort of compromise I can think of is just to focus on short or medium lengthed games and just charge less for them. In a perfect world...in a perfect world...

[Salesmunn]

At the Playstation 3 Source event in NYC last week, one PS3 consistently locked up over and over. There was scattered trouble here and there, but that one consistently locked up in the UI, it wasn't loading games.

This WAS after being on about 10 hours though and they were all older early test systems.

[WhiteCrow]

Oh, come on people. The PS3 cannot lock up. Any perceived lock up or crash is not a hardware issue, but actually the cell processor sleeping after a hard day of being Smarter Than You.™

[Jack B]

Pfft, 7 hours? Sounds like a goddamn rental to me.

Jiminy Christ, I hate spending 60 bucks for such short games. On the other hand, if the multiplayer holds up well, I might be game. I'll be anxiously waiting news from the review front.

A developer's huge focus on graphics almost always makes a game far shorter as a result.

You kill me. Easy mode, duh... OK, now come back with why Gears is a rental... I can't wait. I know you'll have reasons.

Forget what could be one of the best implementations of Co-op and Multiplayer and you base you "rental" decision on the length of time for a veteran FPS player to complete it on easy...

What veteran player would play it on easy? My mother would take 7 years on easy mode. If you want 7 hours, by all means go for it. What are looking for an RPG story or a challenge? Rental for sure.

Doom and gloom is your middle name. :p

[Kamalot]

Kinda agree, but personally I'll rather play an awesome short game over and over again instead of a good game once :)

With co-op you can play the game over and over again with different people and the game will still feel fresh I think.

Also, I don't have the patience to play 20h+ games that often. I want them to finish before I get bored.
Woo! You hit the nail on the head. I beat Prince of Persia in 10 hours and it was one of the best gaming experiences ever. I'd MUCH rather hit the end of a game and be left wanting more as opposed to having a game stretched out with crappy filler. Halo, I'm looking at you, bub.

Edit: Also take into account that Kelegacy is very frugal with his $, something I wholeheartedly respect.

[Kelegacy]

You kill me. Easy mode, duh... OK, now come back with why Gears is a rental... I can't wait. I know you'll have reasons.

Forget what could be one of the best implementations of Co-op and Multiplayer and you base you "rental" decision on the length of time for a veteran FPS player to complete it on easy...

What veteran player would play it on easy? My mother would take 7 years on easy mode. If you want 7 hours, by all means go for it. What are looking for an RPG story or a challenge? Rental for sure.

Doom and gloom is your middle name. :p

You take 360 game criticisms much too personally.

Rentals, for me, are based on time I will spend on a game. Dead Rising was supposed to have lots of replayability. Well, I beat it in a weekend and loved it...but it wasn't worth 60 bucks. I know it's a difficult slope to climb when talking about cost per hour basis, but I'm trying not to do that. What I'm saying is I could have rented Dead Rising for 5 or 6 bucks instead of buying it for 60 and playing it the same amount of time.

Now, I don't have XBL Gold because I feel it's ridiculous to ask someone to pay an additional fee on top of your 60 dollar game just to play said game online. But Microsoft has fucked us in a way that the only avenue to take, if you want to play your game online at all, is to pay them more money...and I might just do that if the multiplayer of GoW is worth it. I'll hate giving in, but I'll have no other choice.

For people that just want to play a single player experience (and I'm a SP campaign lover) a rental will see the entire game thrice probably. If you are going to play Gears of War for a month or more consistently, multiplayer or co-op, a purchase is a good idea. Otherwise, like I mentioned, you can see a game in its entirety (even if it's 10 hours) in just a couple afternoons if the game is fun. Feel the need to replay it and you can do so before you return the rental. I'm not a renter by nature, not since I was a kid, but with 360/PS3 games costing 60 bucks a pop and offering fairly short experiences, you can bet that I'm going to turn over a new leaf.

[Jack B]

You take 360 game criticisms much too personally.

Rentals, for me, are based on time I will spend on a game. Dead Rising was supposed to have lots of replayability. Well, I beat it in a weekend and loved it...but it wasn't worth 60 bucks. I know it's a difficult slope to climb when talking about cost per hour basis, but I'm trying not to do that. What I'm saying is I could have rented Dead Rising for 5 or 6 bucks instead of buying it for 60 and playing it the same amount of time.

Now, I don't have XBL Gold because I feel it's ridiculous to ask someone to pay an additional fee on top of your 60 dollar game just to play said game online. But Microsoft has fucked us in a way that the only avenue to take, if you want to play your game online at all, is to pay them more money...and I might just do that if the multiplayer of GoW is worth it. I'll hate giving in, but I'll have no other choice.

For people that just want to play a single player experience (and I'm a SP campaign lover) a rental will see the entire game thrice probably. If you are going to play Gears of War for a month or more consistently, multiplayer or co-op, a purchase is a good idea. Otherwise, like I mentioned, you can see a game in its entirety (even if it's 10 hours) in just a couple afternoons if the game is fun. Feel the need to replay it and you can do so before you return the rental. I'm not a renter by nature, not since I was a kid, but with 360/PS3 games costing 60 bucks a pop and offering fairly short experiences, you can bet that I'm going to turn over a new leaf.

OK, I see what you're saying. My bad.

[Kamalot]

I'm not a renter by nature, not since I was a kid, but with 360/PS3 games costing 60 bucks a pop and offering fairly short experiences, you can bet that I'm going to turn over a new leaf.
I've never been a renter, until this generation of games. There is simply no possible way I can bring myself to pay $60 for a game. I use an online rental service (GameFly) and get a LOT more enjoyment out of my 360 because of it.

[Spigot]

I've never been a renter, until this generation of games. There is simply no possible way I can bring myself to pay $60 for a game. I use an online rental service (GameFly) and get a LOT more enjoyment out of my 360 because of it.
I feel the same way about the 360. I'm looking at it and thinking that there are only a couple games I could even remotely see myself dropping full retail price on.

I've got a rental service and it's good except that I still had games that I wanted in my actual collection, not just as rentals. Thankfully I only have about one more game from the fall rush (FFIII DS) a-waitin', so my wallet can breathe and I can just rent the rest of the games (Splinter Cell: DA, for example) that just weren't in my must-buy pile this fall.

How on earth did a conversation about PS3 Kiosk issues end up turning into a debate about whether Gears of War was a rental or purchase and then into a debate about the merits of rental services? Yeesh.