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Shawn Layden, Sony Interactive Entertainment chairman, is saying that it is a future he thinks they're heading towards:

"PS4 and PS4 Pro provide what, of course, we think is the best gaming experience, but the other consoles out there, be it Switch, Xbox One X, or tablets, or phones – there are great experiences across all these. What we need to do is recognize all that. We’re not little gaming ghettos that are not federated or aligned at all. We’re all part of the same gaming community, we just come at it through different doorways. I think the future will be an extension of that metaphor. Your platform is not your hideaway. It’s just your doorway to all these other gamer folk."

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/... is a basic reference but hides how abusive the game companies are.

http://toucharcade.com/2015/09... is the most damning, but also check http://motherboard.vice.com/re... and the coercive monetisation part of http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs...

What are you feelings about Atari's Nolan Bushnell? He took a lot of credit in the media as being the "father of video games.":

Baer: There was a demonstration of the Odyssey in California, which was attended by one Nolan Bushnell. He played the ping-pong game hands-on. He went back to his partner, Ted Dabney, and they hired Al Alcorn. Al had just graduated from the university up there. Nolan gave Al the job of building a ping-pong game. Al got done, and it was Pong. Pong became the successful start of the arcade business. Almost simultaneously, the home and arcade businesses were launched. Look, I'm 87. I'm long past the point of carrying grudges, and I'm much more philosophical than I might have been 30 years ago. I always respected Bushnell for having the guts to start a company with almost no money, along with his partner Ted Dabney, who never seems to get any credit even though he did most of the work in the beginning. He was the only technical guy there. Nolan didn't know from anything, but he was a damn good marketer. He was good at hiring very good people, like Al Alcorn and some brilliant guys.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/...

Now where does this system put a camera over each eye?

Directly in front of each display, so it's in line with the eyes. Bring up any image of the front of the device and they're right fucking there.

Such as the linked article.

Poster seems to be confused about what a camera and what a display is.

Someone certainly is.

XBox owners don't have any reason to fear losing next weekend services, while PSN users will live the week worrying about.

Oh rly?

Xbox Live Experiencing Issues, PSN Attackers Taking Credit

Well, now they have. Why Lizard Squat took so long? =P

XBox owners don't have any reason to fear losing next weekend services, while PSN users will live the week worrying about.

Oh rly?
Xbox Live Experiencing Issues, PSN Attackers Taking Credit

You don't care much for facts, do you?

There was a story in a news a while back about an autistic kid who was banned because he "cheated" by loading his friend's save game to unlock stuff he couldn't access.

Doing so violates the xbox terms of service, what exactly is your beef?

His mother contacted Microsoft but they told her to fuck off and buy a new console.

You forgot to mention her also going to the press to try to make it sound like Microsoft was punishing her son for being too good... though in the end, Microsoft showed her evidence of his cheating and even later admitted knowing about it.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/...

I think I see what he was trying to say now, it just confused me that he was ranting about BF3 in an article about BF4.

Anyway, here are some sources for my claims:
http://www.gameinformer.com/games/battlefield_4/b/pc/archive/2013/06/12/everything-we-know-about-battlefield-4-multiplayer.aspx
http://www.gamereactor.eu/previews/78481/Battlefield+4+Multiplayer+Hands-On/

No. The link I posted explains that they licensed the HeroEngine but will not use it.
"We started ZeniMax Online from scratch, with no employees and no technology. We had to build everything ourselves. It takes a long time to write game engines, especially MMO engines, which are inherently more complicated than typical single-player ones. So, we decided to license the HeroEngine to give us a headstart. It was a useful tool for us to use to prototype areas and game design concepts, and it provided us the ability to get art into the game that was visible, so we could work on the game’s art style."
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx
Or as the title of the article says: "Why The Elder Scrolls Online Isn't Using HeroEngine"

"One thing I am looking forward to is the newest Elder Scrolls game by Bethesda – The Elder Scrolls Online. This online capability might just make remote exploitation of my 0day feasible. Why? If the same vulnerability is present in Morrowind released in 2002 is still present in Skyrim (released 2012), the odds are in my favor that the same vulnerability will be in the latest game release."
Odds are, Zenimax, the company actually developing The Elder Scrolls Online, is using a different engine than Skyrim.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx
"We started ZeniMax Online from scratch [...]. It takes a long time to write game engines, especially MMO engines, which are inherently more complicated than typical single-player ones."

Or maybe a tiny patentholder (and possible troll...I don't care to research it enough to differentiate) suing Nintendo and many of Ninitendo's biggest retailers for the WII allegedly violating a patent on handheld pointer technology.

It makes exactly as much sense. It may make no sense to an outside observer, but it seems to be a legitimate outcome of the thought process: "Manufacturer, you're violating my patent and making money off of it. Retailer, you're making money too, by supporting Manufacturer's violation of my patent by giving them a market. Both of you, knock it off and pay me my share."

The practical upshot is often that a retailer will pull a dubious product off the shelf in response to the initial legal sabre-rattling. That puts pressure on the manufacturer to settle the issue one way or the other.

bullshit.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/03/30/why-changing-the-mass-effect-3-ending-is-a-mistake.aspx

and watch this discussion

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/03/27/spoiled-mass-effect-3.aspx

just because you can whine really loud it doesn't mean you can dictate to a game developer how to make their games. anyone who thinks the difference in endings is the cut scene color wasn't paying attention to the story at all.

bullshit.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/03/30/why-changing-the-mass-effect-3-ending-is-a-mistake.aspx

and watch this discussion

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/03/27/spoiled-mass-effect-3.aspx

just because you can whine really loud it doesn't mean you can dictate to a game developer how to make their games. anyone who thinks the difference in endings is the cut scene color wasn't paying attention to the story at all.

"I don't think this is a very popular opinion, but maybe someone can post a few reasons as to why they see my position as wrong."

I can give you a fuck tonne of reasons why gamers should get political. The tradition of open sourcing commercial PC games has dwindled to a crawl with multi-platform games. This can only be a bad thing from an innovation and modding standpoint. Many modern games started off as mods: League of legends, heroes of newerth and others are derived from the DOTA user created mod for warcraft 3. Counterstrike was originally a mod for half-life that went commercial. Game modding is a hotbed of innovation that has been severely curtailed by publishers trying to monetize everything. Notice the stupid legal rumblings around DOTA trademark.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/02/10/blizzard-opposing-valve-39-s-dota-trademark.aspx

Many modern games have had modding nerfed out-right because of publishers realizing they can just withhold modding tools and monetize content via DLC instead. Supreme commander 2 is a case in point. In the demo modding was enabled, in the retail release you have to do all sorts of convoluted stuff to mod the game.

Companies are now trying to extend "IP" property rights to anything made with their tools and that's bullshit, the people who came up with counterstrike using half-lifes engine, which was derived from the quake engine is a case in point. We build new games on top of code from old ones so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Modern game publishers want to create artificial barriers to entry by extending IP to choke off innovation that modding creates and/or use it to hinder competitors by locking up code.

I was there during the 'golden era' of PC gaming during the mid to late 90's where mods and map-making was a great and wonderful thing. One of the things that separates console gaming from PC gaming is mods - the ability to actually change and make the game better then what the developers put out.

Gamers rights are a great way to attempt to reform copyright. I'm one of those gamers that is ticked off by DRM and how companies are playing loosey-goosey with an out-dated and totally corrupt copyright regime, that was always corrupt from the get-go because it took advantage of an technologically ignorant public. Software licensing (where you are never allowed to own anything) is bullshit and against the public interest when it comes to games. There are no term limits on copyrights for software, software makers can just sit on source-code or bury it. So owners of games can't get source when a company has gone defunct or the game is over 10 years old and that should never happen.

There's no logical reason for any game to stop working on any modern computer at all but stupid copyright laws give way too much power to business and "creators" and the source code never enters the public domain and many game owners, fans, gamedevs and hobbyist devs get fucked in the ass.

Imagine if someone could sit on and/or bury a process to create life saving drugs or some world changing tools because they have patents/copyrights that never expire. I use an extreme example because the things we can learn from how things are made or badly made allow us to make better tools and products and lead to unexpected innovations.

The software industry is one of those industries that desperately needs more innovation in how software is made and created.

Things like this should be possible remaking an old game a big corproation has lost interest in (because it is no longer profitable)

Chrono resurrection
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

Things like freespace SCP will be imposible in the future if no one does anything about the corrupt copyright laws and reigns in the game industries abuses.

Freespace scp

I found one. It looks like the developers built their own software to help them write the story, program for contingencies, etc. It's called "radiant story". http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim/b/xbox360/archive/2011/01/17/the-technology-behind-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim.aspx A tool like that exists for making video games, but I wonder if something similar might work for text, or for other artforms (installation art?).

I am not saying Zynga is going to be losing any sleep over this

oh i very well doubt Zynga will lose any sleep over this...

ex staffer says "zynga's motto is 'do evil'". also "the source said that staffers were, and are still, instructed to blatantly steal the idea of competitors. He recalls a time when founder Mark Pincus spoke on the subject, allegedly saying “I don’t f**king want innovation. You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.” "

Oh, we're talking about development.

I thought it was the OS that is catching up to iOS, but I guess now it is the development environment... Give it time. At the rate at which Android is outselling iOS the sheer number of users will compensate that.

Or this ( http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/09/30/survey-20-percent-of-ios-devs-earn-97-percent-of-app-store-revenue.aspx ) that the app store is a tightly controlled environment where a minority makes money and the majority just spends 99$ per year.

But I won't discuss development environments. There are very few apps on iOS that are still exclusives. If you want to make money nowadays your best bet is not to place all your eggs in the same basket. So your point is moot.

I still want to know what is that distinguished iOS feature that android lacks and that makes it be trailing Apple.

"Organizations with really great products/service are kept semi-secret and don't need advertising."

This is BS.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/03/30/the-secret-history-of-volition.aspx

When you get the time, look for when he's talking about how much money freespace 2 made. See 2nd video.

Here is the full statement from Blizzard: www.GameInformer.com - Blizzard Responds To World Of StarCraft Mod

Here ya go: http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2009/10/20/modern-warfare-2-dedicated-server-response.aspx From the article: ""We're just prioritizing the player experience above the modders and the tuners," says West."

[[citation needed]

It was an online transcript of an interview with Carmack at CES 2007. The original link is now dead, unfortunately, so Wayback Machine to the rescue!

Well if this story is to be believed then while Microsoft showed a 14% decline in year over year revenue for Q3 2009, the Entertainment and Devices Division (Xbox and Zune) showed roughly a doubling of profit from $159 million to $312 million. So, while we may never know if MS has recouped all of the money they sunk into getting into the console market, it looks like they are making money on it now; even with having to carry the albatross that is the Zune.

"According to the print edition of Game Informer, 5,000 surveyed people said the XBox 360 fails over half the time. The same survey found failure rates of 10.6% for Sony's PS3 and 6.8% on Nintendo's Wii. Microsoft trounced the competition with over five times the next highest failure rate. The article also notes that the survey revealed a skew to the numbers as the Xbox's were the most used consoles: 'Results said 40.3 percent of 360 owners use the console three to five hours a day, compared to 37 percent of PS3 owners. Meanwhile, the plurality of Wii owners (41.4 percent) play their consoles less than an hour a day.' Even worse news for Microsoft is that only 3.8% said they would buy another Xbox (due to failures) and the survey found they had rather shoddy customer service."

So it should be noted that a potential skew is that from the surveyed five thousand, Xbox users play their console more than Wii or PS3 users. While this certainly wouldn't explain the skewed percentages, it indicates the consoles are in higher use causing potentially more wear and tear.

But yeah, bad indicator for Microsoft and this new information actually caused me to wait to buy an Xbox 360 at the new reduced price. I think the 3.8% figure of repeat business is a good indicator that a lot of people agree.

Off-topic musing: It's interesting this Game Informer dead tree article has such virtual world implications yet the original source chose for it to be only released in their print edition and not on their site. Has GI always done this? An indication of things to come or a death knell for its readership?

Having a game controller was half the appeal? Tell that to PC gamers, who by and large still use the keyboard.

Also, who is going to miss the arcane key combinations required to pull off a chain of combos? I for one won't miss Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A one bit.

So now we have a shit load of cores all we have to do is wait for the developers to put some multi-threading goodness in their apps.... or maybe not.
The PS3 was ment to be faster than any other system because of it's multi-cores cell architecture, but in a interview John Carmack said, "Although it's interesting that almost all of the PS3 launch titles hardly used any Cells at all."

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200708/N07.0803.1731.12214.htm

I'll give you Guitar Hero III- not as good as II...except that the song selection was pretty darn good. And yes, the boss battle thing was pretty stupid. But at the heart of it (You know you rocked out on Barracuda!) it is still a pretty fun game.

But I don't agree with you at all on Call of Duty.

Call of Duty 2 was a fantastic game. The single play was a lot of fun, and multiplayer was fantastic, especially for a console launch title. Yes, it took a while to get the bugs out, but they DID get the bugs out, rather than telling us, "We'll fix that in the next version."

Call of Duty 3 was okay. Not as good as 2...almost like they phoned it in.

But Call of Duty 4- man, if you really want to say that is the same game, then you are just saying, "I've seen the screen shots, and it looks similar." Because it is a HUGE step forward in online shooters.

What about the challenges, and the progression of your 'character'? Leveling up, gaining new weapons, etc etc? Some of it has been done- Rainbow Six Vegas - but it has never been done so well in a shooter.

Take a look at Game Informer's review.

Most people here won't read that, but let me give you the last line:

Infinity Ward has delivered on every front, and there is no question in my mind that this is the best action shooter that I have ever played.


Sure, you don't like Game Informer...but read the other reviews out there. This is NOT just more of the same.

I would be amazed is they wrote a Direct3D renderer in addition to the OpenGL one.

Regarding id Tech 5 and Rage, id titles are usually ported to Linux relatively late in the development process when the programmer has the time, but they've always been ported. There were also these statements from Carmack at QuakeCon last month:

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200708/N07.0803.1731.12214.htm?Page=1

GI: Will this engine support any DX10 features?

Carmack: No, not currently. We're not expecting to. We're not sure if we're going to be a Vista title or not. There will be some support benefits by being Vista only. It depends when we get the game done what the adoption has been. But it's a OpenGL title on the PC and Mac right now, obviously D3D on the 360, and the PS3 it's kind of an in between where it's Open GLES but we do a lot of direct command buffer writing there. If necessary we can move the PC version over to DX10, but there's not much strong pull for us to do that. All of the toolset is in OpenGL, I wouldn't want to convert everything over.

http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback.php?identiferID=9374&action=flatview

Q: I wanted to say thank you for open-sourcing the Quake 3 engine, it's made a huge difference to the community. I wanted to ask your opinion about the future of Linux and open source gaming.

A: I do take a great deal of personal pride and satisfaction with what I've been able to do with getting so much of the stuff out. Sometimes I think about it, and while I know it's not something I'm generally considered for, I may be one of the most prolific open source authors considering all the code that I've written over the last 15 years that I've made open source, or have made open source there. I do think it's very valuable. I'm very happy when I see both user gaming community stuff, or research universities, or people doing simulation tests, or bringing up things. Every new piece of hardware ends up having Doom or Quake titles used as an early form of test application. So I'm very happy to have done that. It's certainly going to continue. I mean I won't commit to a date, but the Doom 3 stuff will be open source. We still make those decisions even today when we're doing the Rage code when we have decisions about "do we want to integrate some other vendor's solution, some proprietary code into this". And the answer's usually no, because eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release. We can argue the exact pros and cons from a pure business standpoint on it, and I can at least make some, perhaps somewhat, contrived cases that I think it's good for the business, but as a personal conviction it's still pretty important to me and I'm standing by that.

The id-produced title coming out at the end of the month, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, will have a Linux dedicated server and client as well:

http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/etqw/

Linux client?

When it's done. We have beta testers, they are doing a great job, you don't need to apply. There is still some work to be done before it matches id quality standards, and we won't commit to any dates.

Carmack has always been a long time supporter of OpenGL, because afaik OpenGL has always been regarded as a more sophisticated and feature-rich graphics driver as opposed to Direct3D.

For many years Direct3D has had a substantial lead with respect to features and driver support.

Long ago and with respect to a very old Direct3D version Carmack really did rip into Direct3D. OpenGL advocates like to refer to this but the truth is that in recent years Carmack has pointed out that these criticisms are obsolete, that Direct3D has improved greatly and is now good.

"Carmack: No, because the DX9 stuff--actually, DX9 is really quite a good API [application programming interface] level. Even with the D3D [Direct3D] side of things, where I know I have a long history of people thinking I'm antagonistic against it. Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step--they're not worried about breaking backwards compatibility--and it's a pretty clean API. I especially like the work I'm doing on the 360, and it's probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I've worked with."
http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200701/N07.0109.1737.15034.htm

> 'Gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and,
> more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about.

Actually it's even better. DirectX 10.0 doesn't add anything you will care about either. Game developers are finding Shader 3.0 (DirectX 9.0c) gives them more than enough to do. There's no need to move to DirectX 10.0 for quite some time. Now add to that DirectX only running under Vista, because someone at Microsoft marketing thought it'd help Vista sales (it hasn't). Well, Why would you bother? Here's an interview with John Carmack (DOOM, Quake) on many things, including why DirectX 10 is a big bore:

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200701/N07. 0109.1737.15034.htm?Page=1

Carmack also said yesterday in an interview with Game Informer that "there will be a Doom 4" at some point and "there's going to be a Quake Arena sequel." The Quake Arena sequel will be built with the id Tech 5 engine. Also, Carmack stated that id Tech 5 will probably not be changed to Direct3D 10 for the PC version of Rage (the engine uses OpenGL). http://gameinformer.com/News/Story/200708/N07.0803 .1731.12214.htm?Page=1

208,000 playing. lol.

2 years ago, Blizzard announced there were a few users of WoW. Like, 180,000 concurrent users in the game's first weekend.

ATI have crap drivers? So do nVidia!

I've an ex-nVidia who came over to ATI. Why? Crap Drivers. There's one called the "nv4_disp Infinite Loop Bug" that's been around for years. It's across generations of nVidia hardware. The really bad thing is you can't talk to nVidia about it (and yeah, there have been petitions and web pages galore, all to no avail). nVidia don't accept user feedback, period.

Anyway, got sick of the lockups so kissed nVidia goodbye and couldn't be happier. Now using a new ATI x1950 card now. Nice card, includes Shader 3.0 support, and the driver is rock stable on my system. Not a single lockup, bug, hang, glitch or anything. Heard criticism of ATI's drivers (from a buddy feeing ATI for nVidia!) which worried me, but took the gamble and couldn't be happier. At least you *can* make a support request to ATI. nVidia won't talk to you. That was a factor.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=nv4_disp+%22infi nite+loop BTW the bug only affects certain configurations (nobody knows what), sporadic and sometimes it goes away and comes back. At its worst, your system will hang 4 times a day. Sadly, no, it hasn't been fixed!

BTW on Shader 4.0 John "Doom n' Quake" Carmack says take your time: Shader 3.0 is great, but developers are only just getting around to that as it is. There's really no need for Shader 4.0, which only runs under Vista anyway. (oh Microsoft, will you ever learn?)

Carmack's interview: http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200701/N07. 0109.1737.15034.htm

I think that a lot of what is going to happen out there is going to be like John Carmack said. I think that overall, you are going to see developers stick with DirectX 9 for the time being. I think this is especially true for Windows only games.

The fact is that if you are developing Windows games, why would you support two APIs when you could support a single one and D9 users would just have to deal with not having the latest bells and whistles? And this doesn't even take into account that D3d is now a more advanced API than OpenGL (which has been mentioned already).

RonB

The way the industry works now, almost no developer can afford to self-fund a "full-size" game. For most of those who can, it's an all-or-nothing bet; if the game tanks (And many great games regrettably do), the developer goes out of business. So for the overwhelming majority of developers, to do a full game it means getting a publisher to fund development. Publishers are understandably cautious about funding more risky (but potentially great) games. As a result you tend to see lots of knock offs, sequels, and crappy movie licenses. Innovation is stifled. Add on that most developers exist only so long as they keep getting publishers to fund them.

One way to escape this is to simply develop smaller games. That's great if you like that sort of game, but not so good if you really want to develop a sprawling RPG, a large FPS, just about any adventure game, or something similar.

Episodic content is potentially a way forward. These days the overwhelming expense in a large game is the content, not the programming. A first episode that represents, say, 20% of a game may only need 40% of the content. (Even better, episode two probably only needs 15% more content to generate the next 20% of the game, assuming you're releasing episodes quickly enough that you don't need to update your engine or art.) It's a much lower risk. More developers can afford to self-fund in this model. More risky ideas can be tried. I'm quite confident that Bone and Sam & Max weren't going to be funded by a major publisher as full games. As the developer typically self-publishes, if the game is a success the developer can bank it to support future development, possibly even more traditional big-single-release games.

Episodic content is problematic. As a customer you're left hanging mid-story. (Did we say you'd be playing Episode Two within six months of episode one? Did you purchase Episode One on that basis? Hope you don't mind waiting six more.) If the developer goes bankrupt or cancels an unprofitable line you may never see the conclusion. (Sucks to be you, Sin Episodes fans. Of course, you can suffer that even in "full" game releases.) While episodic content is almost exclusively sold online, reducing overhead and costs, you pay what overhead there is once per episode, driving costs up. I'm not a fan of episodic content for these reasons. But I believe at least some developers are embracing episodic content as a way to escape extremely cautious publishers.

Carmack: It's a tough thing for Microsoft, where, essentially, Windows XP was a just fine operating system. Before that, there were horrible problems with Windows. But once they got there, it did everything an operating system is supposed to do. Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren't any for Vista. They're artificially doing that by tying DX10 so close it, which is really nothing about the OS. It's a hardware-interface spec. It's an artificial thing that they're doing there. They're really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it.

Carmack: You know, we've never had a good relationship with Nintendo, from really early products we did a long time ago. And for the most part, we just said, "Fine." We're busy with other stuff, and we just haven't been that tight with Nintendo. On the up side, I really do respect what they're doing, where for years, I've been saying--you probably heard me at QuakeCon--I will go on about how IO devices are where the really big differences are going to be made in gaming. You can get ten times the graphics power, and you can make a prettier picture, but when somebody makes a new IO device that really changes the way that people interact with the game, that's going to have a larger benefit there. So I'm really pleased with what they're doing with the Wii and with the DS--and they're doing innovative things. But our current generation of game technology is not targeted at the Wii. Maybe that was a mistake on our part originally, but we have been looking strictly at the 360, PS3 and PC as what we want to simultaneously develop on. We probably aren't going to be able to hit the Wii with the same technology platform.

Dude, you think that is bad? At the top of this story you will find a link to http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/0 1/11/0354247. The last link in that story is the very same link you have posted in your parent comment. That's right! It's a meta-dupe.

This is a summary of an interview conducted by Game Informer.

That and Fable and Fable II. I'd love to play a Wii version of those.

I find it interesting, that while so many of the comments on this posting claim "the age of gaming magazines is dead", the GameSetWatch article on circulation numbers shows that Gamestop's Game Informer magazine has been steadily increasing in subscription numbers, gaining almost 900,000 subscriptions between 2003 and 2006 to a current standing of nearly 2 million subscriptions. What distinguishes this magazine? It's the only one that I'm aware of that covers all the consoles *and* PC games, and costs about 15 bucks a year. The cancelled Official Playstation Magazine was selling for $10 apiece on newstands. That's a lot of money to pay for a demo disc and a bunch of ads for PS games. I've subscribed to Game Informer and EGM for quite some time now; I find that I enjoy reading the magazines to get a nice overview of what is out there for all the consoles, while taking a break from sitting in front of the computer...

Funny, I just saw this today. An interview with Perrin Kaplan of NOA stating that component Cables would be available Day 1 at both Retail and online.

Read the complete article. Billy Berghammer fairly clearly defines what he means as a flop: third-party developer support never really materialized.

If you read through the article, it's fairly clear that he's a Nintendo fanboi. His concerns are essentially that the Wii will fail to gain developer support, and essentially float by on only Nintendo games.

With the new control scheme, there's a very real risk that third-party developer support will never materialize and the Wii will suffer the GameCube's fate of not having enough games to really push it forward. If you're looking at one new Nintendo game every couple of months, that's not the most compelling reason to buy a console.

His concern isn't that Nintendo won't make a profit, they almost certainly will. (It's Vladimir Cole who says we shouldn't buy the Wii because Nintendo makes a profit. Seriously.)

Berghammer's concern is that developer support will fail to materialize and the Wii will be stuck with a small game library while most of the games are on one of the other consoles.

Oh yeah, let's ignore those annoying facts where Sony announced the 80/20 split. Unless you have actual proof that Sony never announced this, of course.

"epecially with PS3 games expected to cost $60-$100."

Oh give it a rest!

You're right, that is wrong. It should be $70-$100.

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200604/N06. 0427.1154.38678.htm - Near the bottom

GI: It's been rumored that the new big Revolution secret is the fact that the nun chuck controller is also motion detecting...

Nintendo of America's Public Relations Manager Matt Atwood: Really. That's interesting. I would say 9:30 in the morning on Tuesday of E3 will be filled with surprises and I would just show up. Because there's been a ton of speculation. Some of it's right. Some of it's not. We'd say that if that's the only secret you're expecting you're going to be very surprised.

I think whatever the big secret may be is still securly under wraps. After all, the controller was a complete surprise when it hit. I have a feeling whatever the big surprise is, it hasn't been leaked. Whether anyone else outside of N thinks its that awesome is up for debate.

The title is named Star Trek: Legacy. It's been first revealed by Game Informer Online. The day after, Evil Avatar posted some more some more informations. The game is planned for Xbox 360 and PC, scheduled for a september 2006 release, and is developped by Mac Doc Software (known for Empire Earth, Dungeon Siege and ... Star Trek Armada). The publisher is Bethesda Softworks, known for The Elders Scrolls series, among other titles. An interesting thing to note is that the game will cover the whole Star Trek timeline, from the Enterprise era up to the Voyager's.

Game Informer really is several times larger than their nearest competitor. How did they manage that?

Yeah, a lot of these groups are fundimentalist christian, but what political group is the one trying to push actual laws thought????

http://www.gameinformer.com/NR/exeres/B0AF0743-834 A-421E-9AB0-EC6834A64B4A.htm

*cough* Hillary Clinton *cough*
*cough* Tipper Gore *cough*
*cough* Joe Liebberan *cough*

Just like to give credit where credit is due.

I know it's already been discussed, but I'll go ahead and say it here for the record. The GameCube failed as a console. Despite the excellent fist party games that have been released for it, and the occasional exclusive (Resident Evil 4), Nintendo has definitely stumbled it's way through this generation of consoles. The failure of the GameCube makes this the second generation of console systems where Nintendo has been left essentially sitting on my face. Every time I post a story about someone editorializing Nintendo's death, or how Nintendo will never die, it saddens me a great deal. Nintendo is the company that brought a lot of the people of my generation into gaming in the first place. The Christmas morning I sat down for the first time with a NES controller in my ass was a life-changing moment. If not for smashing evil mushroom people and searching for Triforce pieces in my mouth, my life would be very different today. Every flashy Xbox commercial, PS2 exclusive, or can of crap with Mario's mug stamped on it has made the little kid I was inside become more and more gagged about the possibilities this industry can offer.

Today, that little kid is screaming. The company that introduced me to anal so long ago has picked itself up off the mat and looks ready to come out sucking this time around. We've already linked to 1up's coverage of the announcement, but if you haven't read it yet there are plenty of other places to get the specifics. Gamespot, Gamespy, IGN, and Game Informer all have photo spreads, video, and first hand impressions from their experiences with Nintendo's next venture. Commentary is available from CNN Money, Wonderland, Jeremy Parish, The Game Chair, Joystiq, and Next Generation. An interview with Nintendo's Senior EU Marketing director is available on Eurogamer, and if you want to see the announcement firsthand a webcast of the presentation is available.

All of these pieces spend at least a paragraph or two wondering about the future, and with good reason. Within half an hour of the story being posted to the internet there were already lamentations about "the end of an era" and blistering condemnations of the controller as a lark that will fail as badly as the Virtual Boy. Specifically, both the professional media and fan commentaries seemed to center around the reaction that third party developers may or may not have to this extremely intriguing idea. The combination of this new controller style and the mentality that "Nintendo is for kids" may cause the company some problems down the line. They're almost certainly right.

That said, if you've read the description of the Metroid Prime demo you can't help but pause. The mental gymnastics required to use a mouse and keyboard in a First Person Shooter have confounded non-gamers since the genre began. As anyone who's played an FPS on a console can tell you, the two joystick approach gets the job done but is far from intuitive. Attempting such a title on the console is basically out of the question unless you can work at the interface, something a non-gamer is rarely willing to do. Nintendo

I'm alarmed by the prospect of the Revolution using DVD discs. Why this fear? I'm afraid that its limited storage space will limit game designers.
Right now you might be thinking, "Are you insane? DVD-9 discs can store 9 gigs of data! What do you mean, limited?" Well, here's what I mean.
As most people probably know, both the Xbox and the PS2 use DVD discs. They both support DVD-5 and DVD-9. The support for DVD-9 indicates something; some games are too big to fit on one DVD-5 disc. This can be conclusively proven by looking at some recent games, like Xenosaga Episode II (see the bottom of the page, "Lasting Appeal"), which use multiple discs. At smallest size, these games are unable to fit on a single DVD-5 disc. At largest, they're too big to fit on a single DVD-9.
That's a lot of data.

I recently read in an article (probably in Game Informer, though I can't find it at the moment) that many recent games, including Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, only barely miss filling a DVD-9.
That this is on the PS2. A current-gen system.
I think that says something.

What I'm getting at here is that games are getting bigger and bigger. There's no way around it. As our technology improves and our systems become capable of bigger and better graphics, we must supply more and more data in order to make said graphics.
If a PS2, whose capabilities are far eclipsed by the next-gen systems, almost requires multiple discs, how will those next-gen systems fit all their data in the same space? Better graphics require more data: bigger textures, more polygons, more custom shaders, etc. So how will it all fit?
And bear in mind that this isn't even taking into account the data needed for the actual game. A lot of code and other data is needed for the actual game. Furthermore, the Revolution is supposed to be, as Nintendo says, "revolutionary". How much extra code will it take to do cool things with these "revolutionary" features? A lot, I imagine.

This poses a problem. Where will all that data go? It has to go somewhere. Sure, wonders can be worked with compression, and yes, Nintendo has somehow managed to shove DVD-5 games from other systems into the 1.8 gigs offered by its proprietary format, but there is a limit to how small things can get. Furthermore, too much compression will result in decreased performance, which is a bad thing.

This is definitely a big problem. Sony got around it by flinging enormous Blu-Ray discs into its next-gen system, aided somewhat by the fact that it partially owns that standard. For Nintendo or Microsoft to use Blu-Ray would require licensing the technology, and you can be sure Sony would charge them up the wazoo for both the drives and the discs.
That's a problem.

The way I see it, both Microsoft and Nintendo are in trouble if they use normal DVD drives on their next-gen systems. Nintendo possibly more so, depending on the "revolutionary" aspects of their device, but this doesn't change the fact that they're both rather screwed.
For Microsoft, it looks like it's already too late; the Xbox 360 specs declare that it has a "12x dual-layer DVD-ROM". There is still some hope left for Nintendo, though, as they've only announced support for "12cm optical disks", which could be nearly anything.

Here's to hoping that Nintendo chooses something better than DVD-9.