@fentris: You sound like you're implying that most people have the same mindset as trackers and journalists. If that's the case then that's highly doubtful. You're also making some great leaps by saying that the major appeal in the PS2 was the DVD player and that budget conscience parents were the driving force. In doing so you fail to acknowledge the fact that a major chunk of those adults and parents were gamers that grew up with Atari, Nintendo, Sega and coin-ops and were continuing to game as well as introduce gaming to their kids. There was also the fact that Sega was dying quickly, Nintendo was shooting themselves in the foot and XBox didn't show up until halfway-ish through the 6th generation, leaving the PS2, which was enjoying a solid legacy left by the PS1, to stretch out and sell like crazy. If there's anything that suits your argument of budget conscious parents buying consoles for their kids it would be handhelds, not home consoles. Giving parents the ability to occasionally quiet and appease kids as well as not have them take up an entire TV and for less money than handheld's larger counterparts was and still is a major draw as evident from the gameboy and DS sales. There was also the fact that they were pretty awesome devices for their time.
As far as how you look at it, Nintendo has a great deal more consoles in their catalogue than Sony has and had been major players and in fact the driving force in the console market two generations before Sony showed up, so yes, of course Nintendo would have more on the list, yet somehow when it comes solely to home consoles their best selling one ranks as #4. That says a lot about both companies. Concerning portables, the PSP sold well but it was never going to be on the DS's level, and we all know what kind of a hot dumpster fire the Vita turned out to be. Portables just aren't Sony's thing and they should probably let it stay dead, but by any metric they've shown a fairly strong mastery of home console gaming. Microsoft looked like they were moving that way but then Kinect and XB1... But yes, in the market that Sony is actively competing in (home consoles) they top the charts which is why this is a significant achievement.
@just1mohr: lol Talk about salty. You're about to have a stroke from all that sodium.
The funny thing is that your saying that a significant number of people use the PS4 as a media center, which is exactly what Microsoft put emphasis on when pushing the XB1 at the beginning of the generation and fell flat on their face doing. So by a logical extension of your own statement, XB1 failed as the media center they were pushing and as the gaming device that fans were expecting, while Sony was wildly successful as both while only significantly pushing the gaming side, therefore offering a two-for-one defeat. Ouch... I see why you're so salty. Carry on.
@fentris: You sound mad that Sony has dusted the competition. Everyone and their mother already knows that the Vita was driven into the ground by Sony and their mismanagement of the product, but at this point no one cares. Nintendo has always been the OG king of handheld gaming and that's not going to change anytime soon. They have a better grasp of the market and they get games that suit portables better. In the grand scheme of things though, most people don't mentally put portable and home consoles in the same category. Their game production values are different, the price points are usually at least a $100-$150 apart which contributes to portables selling faster, and the two just offer completely different gaming experiences overall. Even including portables, the PS4 and PS only drop down to #4 and #5, behind the DS and original Game Boy. Not exactly a beating. Of the top 7 spots Sony owns 4 of them and Nintendo owns 3 with only 1 of theirs being a home console. Being able to say that only one other home console has ever outsold a Sony home console (and even then it was the console that Sony stumbled out the gate with) still deserves some serious kudos, especially considering that one of those was the original PS that knocked Nintendo and Sega off their thrones on Sony's first attempt, something that at the time seemed impossible. Even the XBox 360 being in the top 10 is a feat, especially for a sophomore console with that kind of history to fight against.
For some reason I had it in my head that the Wii sold more than that. Congrats to Sony for owning spots #1 (PS2), 2 (PS4) and 3 (PS). That is fairly epic in this industry.
An entire movie centered around Madison? Yikes. She was tolerable when played against the other personalities in the core group but by the time Columbus was over it and annoyed by her, the audience was pretty much feeling the same way. Two hours of Madison sounds unbearable.
@ahpuck: E3 is on the chopping block, as it should be. Misleading trailers, questionable board leadership, questionable deals between publishers and the gaming press. We could all do with out it in its current form.
@deviltaz35: Actually, some of the combat concepts in the Arkham series were ripped from the idea of something like a spider-sense, down to the wavy lines that appear above your head when an attack is targeting you. They may appear similar on the surface (I thought the same thing at first) but Arkham games and Spider-Man's combat plays out very differently. Arkham combat is very much rhythm based with attacks actually queuing up behind the scenes, where as the combat found in SM is more chaotic, volatile and definitely faster paced, especially at higher difficulty levels, which is great because it suits the nature of SM's suite of powers and matches his fighting style in the comics. There are of course basic similarities but I went back and replayed Arkham Knight right after I got the platinum in SM and found that I had to switch up my combat style (again). Arkham games have never been hard but it was ridiculously easy and sluggish after playing SM. Bottom line is that Rocksteady just beat people to the punch on that style of combat system but Insomniac removed the rhythm aspect and made it their own with the SM.
Concerning puzzles, yeah... Spider-Man isn't a detective like Bats so having a larger puzzle aspect would have felt very out of place. Batman is all about brains to match the brawn and detective work via ridiculous deductive reasoning skills, but Spider-Man is far more about speed, agility and incredible movement with combat to match. Parker's a genius but he's strictly a science nerd and I'm happy with the limited science puzzles they had in the game, because ultimately when a dev has nailed the character down the way Insomniac did you really just want to get back to being Spider-Man.
As for the web slinging, there's definitely more control in Spider-Man 2, no doubt, but given the kinds of attacks you face in Marvel's SM while you're swinging and the new style of traversal, I don't think being that granular with the swinging controls would have been a good thing, especially with a lot of the timed challenges.
It kind of sounds like you were stuck on Arkham comparisons and that my have soured your experience with SM. Sure there are some surface-level similarities but try and put those down and give the game another look on its own merits.
@playstationzone: Why would Spider-Man 2 or another Rachet and Clank game be out of the question? The very company that they exclusively made the games for just bought them and those games have been very lucrative for Sony. If anything they would be encouraged to make those games. The whole "explore new worlds" statement is probably referring to them having the freedom and leverage to work on new IP but they'll always be able to expand upon existing successful series, and in the case of Spider-Man, be expected to.
@dts15: Internet anonymity breeding unnecessary hostility and disrespect. Unfortunately, a common thing among gamers who think too highly of their own opinion or that something like the casual discussion of video games should become an arena of insults.
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