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That explains the initial shortage. But the Wii has been out for almost eight months, now. One would hope they would have been able to at least begin to address the shortage problems, but not much seems to have changed. At the very least, after being blindsided by the popularity of the DS, Nintendo just looks foolish to find themselves in pretty much the same situation with the Wii. In light of Nintendo's past history of engineering shortages (which I mentioned upthread, and is talked about in more depth here or here), there seems plenty of reason to be skeptical, even though I admit there's nothing conclusive about it.

You're joking, right? You honestly don't know about Nintendo's notorious business practices and censorship back in the day?

(Why those URLs both happen to refer to cartoons or comics I have no idea -- the material they link to is factual.)

Well currently they are still winning w/their PS2 console.

"We listen to our players," Bill White, a Nintendo executive, told the press in 1989, "They tell us they are extremely happy with the existing system and are totally involved with the games. We haven't maxed out our 8-bit system yet." This attitude would leave Nintendo in the dust of the coming 16-bit revolution.

Of course, Nintendo wasn't hurt long term by their hestiation to innovate, but NEC got a good few months of sales out of their TurboGraphix-16 as a result, and even Sega's Genesis beat the Super Nintendo to the shelves... Ultimately, brand name recognition wins out though, and Sony has that right now if they have anything at all.

You realize that this looks absolutely nothing like this , right? The original Zelda, compared to RPGs of the time, had a cartoon look, and there was also a popular cartoon made out of the video game. Wild Walker definitely looks different than the original Zelda, but is more true than the new screenshots.

WTF are you smoking?

Try this
Or this

All of those newer systems like NES, SNES, etc. are not gaming "history", they're just fancy Fairchild/A2600 systems.

I suppose you think Street Fighter is a classic historical video game, eh? Young'uns... so lame.

Wow, in the time it took you to probably type that snide comment, I found this. Did you register your NES decks, and did you purchase them between June 1, 1988 and December 31, 1990?

• FreeCiv - free Civ 1/2 clone
  
• Tux Racer - downhill racing game
  
• Tux Typing - typing tutor
  
• IceBreaker - Jezzball clone
  
• Maelstrom - networkable, cool Asteroids clone
  
• Angband - best dungeon crawl ever!
  
• Chromium BSU - neat-o OpenGL 2D shooter
  

Riiiiiiight

Unless you were being facetious. Then it's funny.

Remember the late 80's? Nintendo was practically vile.

Nintendo has never resorted to price Whoring

No, they've just fixed prices, induced intentional game shortages, screwed developers, intimidated retailers and misled consumers about the advantages of 16 bit consoles

But no price whoring there, no sir!

How quickly we forget what a monster Nintendo was in the late '80's...

Again, are you really willing to claim that you don't care about products liability?

No, but that wasn't the original point.

The simple fact of the matter is that software that is released to the public either from a corporation or from a group, community, or individual will almost assuredly have bugs that slipped passed all the fail-safes in spite of great effort and attention. It's just not realistic to think you can make it otherwise. Corporations typically stop checking for bugs when they feel their software is "good enough" and they don't want to throw more money at them. Groups/Individuals and community driven software more often than not have to make releases in order to get any sort of real testing at all. Some bugs will just be beyond what the individual or group can test.

(A personal example I have of this is the fact that one of the projects I'm in charge of, Tux Typing managed to get to a 1.0 release before any DebianPPC users tried the software out, and managed to catch a PPC related bug that we never would have been able to catch on our own [for lack of the hardware to test on, or even the inkling that such a problem would arise]).

There is a lot of prior art as in MP3 files, but not as in MP3 players and encoders.

Have you noticed the incredible lack of free (both as in Freedom and as in Price) MP3 encoders out there? Do you ever wonder why?

Just take a look at the Ogg Vorbis FAQ. A few years ago, the owners of the MP3 patent came down upon all the "unsanctionned" mp3 encoders out there. This desimated quite a few of the projects since the developers could not pay the licensing fees. Those that have survived have done so only because of legal loopholes, geographic local (sometimes tentitave), or chance.

So the patent holders have done more than "veiled threats"... they've destroyed quite a few projects.

This extends not just to MP3 encoders, but to MP3 decoding libraries. For example, I am an Open-Source/Free-Software "edutainment" developer. In an upcoming title I am working on, I need higher quality audio with smaller file sizes (i.e., something like MP3 or Ogg Vorbis). However, this project would be in jeopardy if I did decide to use MP3 over Ogg Vorbis simply because the patent holders of the MP3 format could step in at any time and kill the MP3 libraries I use, kill the MP3 files I use, or even kill my project for using MP3s altogether.

I personally think your experience is not indicative of open-source culture, but rather of human nature.

Some people just suck.... they are prideful, think they're better than everyone else, or are just plain idiotic. It doesn't matter whether they are an open-source guru, or a closed-source coding machine.... they're just people, and have the same frailties and shortcomings we all have..

I am an open-source/free-software developer, and I have had nothing but positive responses from my former employers (Univ of AZ, Intel, etc). I left each former employer on amicable terms. Granted I haven't had a "real" job in 4 months now (just minor consulting work) but that's due more to the downturn in the tech sector than any negative vibes between me and my former employers ;-)

or just plain unemployed

Actually, with the tech sector hit as hard as it has been across the board... this last one is very likely.

I am a talented developer... manage a few successful open-source projects... and I have been unemployed for 4 months now. Sure, I have managed to pull a few consulting gigs here and there... but nothing "real" has surfaced...

I think the original poster (the guy who works at Midway) should start checking around some of the open-source developer job hangouts... Like Mojolin and Hot Linux Jobs. Personally, I have worked with quite a few open-source games and manage a fairly successful one myself... and I'd love to get a job working on games "for a living"... I'm just yet to get the phone-call/e-mail ;-)

Recall that the Saturn was introduced at $500 (or was it $600?)

That's not true. The Saturn did debut high... but all new consoles do as well.... And even at these high prices, the consoles are almost always taking a hit (it just goes without saying that consoles don't make money their first few years of production).

But it is the games that make the gaming companies money.... The games (especially CD games) are cheap to produce, and yet sell for large sums of money. The simple fact was that Sega (for the Saturn) did not have the games.

They did have quite a few games that became cult favorites (Panzer Dragoon, Nights, etc.), but none of their "big titles" showed up. When the N64 came out it debuted with Mario64... which was a big hit (the game... many still feel it's one of the N64's finest). At the same time that Mario64 came out, Crash Bandicoot came out for the PSX. So here you had two consoles with big mascot games.

Meanwhile, back in the Sega camp the creator of Sonic had been working on this top secret game... Nights.... which was not a Sonic game and was not advertised much at all. The video game press raked them across the coals for this blunder... At a critical time when the Saturn needed a flagship title they failed to deliver.

The simple fact is that games sell the systems and support the systems. The Saturn had relatively few... and the really good ones were rare.

I think you (and most other people talking about video game history) oversimplify. There is never any one thing that brings a console, game or company down. It's always a large number of things.

I am someone who has researched this stuff quite a bit and even something of a historian on the subject.... And I am constantly amazed at how rich and complicated the history of gaming is.

I'm hoping gamers looking for a GameCube won't move towards the Xbox. I just don't like Microsoft in the game counsel market. They've invaded my home enough already.

I agree.... I would suspect that Microsoft could do worse things to the consumer than Nintendo ever did in the 8-bit era.

I mean, take their business model now and extend it into the console gaming market... It would make the Nintendo "intimidation era" look like a good thing.

There was an article published a while back about how a large diversity of gaming systems tends to slow/squash game development, and from there, slows down system development.

Woah.... Where was this article?

Actually, it has been shown time and time again that single console markets lend themselves to abuse of the customers and that you get very rapid game development, deployment, and innovation (ick, not that word again!) in multi-system markets.

Competition fuels innovation.

There was an article published a while back about how a large diversity of gaming systems tends to slow/squash game development, and from there, slows down system development.

Woah.... Where was this article?

Actually, it has been shown time and time again that single console markets lend themselves to abuse of the customers and that you get very rapid game development, deployment, and innovation (ick, not that word again!) in multi-system markets.

Competition fuels innovation.

• No "big mascot" games. Sonic was nowhere to be seen (except in compilation discs, and non-Sonic style games [eg, Sonic R and Sonic 3D Blast]). Sony had Crash, Nintendo had Mario64.. and Sega had Nights (which was a pretty neat game, but wasn't Sonic).
• Poor advertising. Sega had the resources, and initially they had the market share (there were over 1 million Saturns sold the first couple of years). But they were overconfident and rarely (if ever) advertised their big hits. (Tho, to be fair, this started back with the Genesis... Anyone ever see a commercial or other advertisement for Gunstar Heroes, one of the best Genesis games ever?)
• Library hogging. This was probably the big thing that did them in. The Saturn was a dual-processor monster (at a time when nothing else was). It was very difficult to fully utilize from a developer prospective. Most Saturn games only ever used one of those processors... and looked poor compared to their PSX cousins.
  
  Sega had libraries which allowed for easier use of both processors, but they didn't release these libraries to third-party developers until it was too late (I think they finally released them within a year of the Saturn's demise). As a result, Sega brought out some awesome games for the console... but most third-party games kind of blew.

• No "big mascot" games. Sonic was nowhere to be seen (except in compilation discs, and non-Sonic style games [eg, Sonic R and Sonic 3D Blast]). Sony had Crash, Nintendo had Mario64.. and Sega had Nights (which was a pretty neat game, but wasn't Sonic).
• Poor advertising. Sega had the resources, and initially they had the market share (there were over 1 million Saturns sold the first couple of years). But they were overconfident and rarely (if ever) advertised their big hits. (Tho, to be fair, this started back with the Genesis... Anyone ever see a commercial or other advertisement for Gunstar Heroes, one of the best Genesis games ever?)
• Library hogging. This was probably the big thing that did them in. The Saturn was a dual-processor monster (at a time when nothing else was). It was very difficult to fully utilize from a developer prospective. Most Saturn games only ever used one of those processors... and looked poor compared to their PSX cousins.
  
  Sega had libraries which allowed for easier use of both processors, but they didn't release these libraries to third-party developers until it was too late (I think they finally released them within a year of the Saturn's demise). As a result, Sega brought out some awesome games for the console... but most third-party games kind of blew.

• No "big mascot" games. Sonic was nowhere to be seen (except in compilation discs, and non-Sonic style games [eg, Sonic R and Sonic 3D Blast]). Sony had Crash, Nintendo had Mario64.. and Sega had Nights (which was a pretty neat game, but wasn't Sonic).
• Poor advertising. Sega had the resources, and initially they had the market share (there were over 1 million Saturns sold the first couple of years). But they were overconfident and rarely (if ever) advertised their big hits. (Tho, to be fair, this started back with the Genesis... Anyone ever see a commercial or other advertisement for Gunstar Heroes, one of the best Genesis games ever?)
• Library hogging. This was probably the big thing that did them in. The Saturn was a dual-processor monster (at a time when nothing else was). It was very difficult to fully utilize from a developer prospective. Most Saturn games only ever used one of those processors... and looked poor compared to their PSX cousins.
  
  Sega had libraries which allowed for easier use of both processors, but they didn't release these libraries to third-party developers until it was too late (I think they finally released them within a year of the Saturn's demise). As a result, Sega brought out some awesome games for the console... but most third-party games kind of blew.

This isn't necessarily true.... Nintendo recently has been producing quite a few "adult" titles. Anyone heard of Conker's BFD?

The thing is that's very interesting is that 7-10 years ago, this was true.... They were blocking "adult" games right and left back in the SNES days.... (anyone remember the whole Mortal Kombat fiasco?). Then, when they realized this wasn't making friends either with the developers or with the gamers, they did an about-face and started embracing "mature" titles.

Now I'll admit that the choice in using cartridges for the N64 has really prevented quite a few great "mature" or "adult" titles from being made on the system (I also have many other reasons to hate carts ;-)... but they have had their share of "mature" and "adult" titles.

(Note that I am in no way a big Nintendo advocate.... but I do have to be fair...)

Actually, no, the 3DO came out in 1993... and survived on its small scale for quite some time before the deal with Panasonic.

It was not a quick and painful death (neither was the Dreamcast's, the console [not the games] was outselling the N64 last year).

The problems with 3DO happenned after the Panasonic deal. Before that, they were still working on such a small scale that they were able to tred water and survive. But add the extra weight of trying to be a "player" in the market that comes with support from Panasonic and the console sank.

Most people actually don't even remember that 3DO was around for a few good years before the Panasonic deal... as I'm sure was why you didn't know this.

Check your facts ;-)

There is one thing you do have to realize about Sega's misadventure... Sega had been trying for years to get a hit console.

Back in the very early 1980s they had a box to compete with the Atari 2600... this box failed.

Then, in the mid-80s they had the Sega Master System which was in direct competition to the NES. Most people agree this box was actually more powerful than the NES. However, this box failed.

The Genesis in 1989 was a big success... but subsequent money-pits Sega put a lot of backing behind such as the Sega CD and the 32X (both, actually quite nice enhancements to the Genesis) really hurt them due to their poor sales.

After the Genesis, Sega came out with the Saturn (to compete with the PS1). The Saturn was (again) a decent enough system... but Sega made some real blunders with it. For one, they never brought out a 3D game for their Mascot (and SonicR doesn't count ;-). For another, they hardly advertised this system at all. Even more, the system was dual-processor, and very difficult to develop for... but Sega never released their in-house power-tools to third-party developers to help them code for the platform. The Saturn died a horrible death.

By the time the Dreamcast was released, the only thing keeping Sega alive was their arcade games... and their arcade "empire" was starting to collapse (actually, arcade game sales have been decreasing quite a bit in the last few years).. The Dreamcast was nice hardware... and they finally were realizing they needed their "star" characters to make appearances in their console games. But by now, it was too little, too late.

The Dreamcast has been selling, but not enough for a company as massive as Sega to continue to support.

The problem here? Sega is too big. They need the big hits and the cash-cows in order to survive.

What are you missing? Well... small game houses can survive on low game/platform sales... provided they keep their low profile. An excellent example of this was the 3DO. Anyone remember the 3DO? It was a nifty little 32-bit machine that came out shortly after the SegaCD. It retailed for $700 (originally) and sold very poorly (compared to the main consoles at the time). But the system managed to survive because 3DO had a fairly low profile (but Panasonic, which had a 3DO platform as well is another issue entirely ;-) 3DO is still around today, and happily making games. (albeit for other systems ;-)

So a system like the Indrema, or this TuxBox (lowsy name) can survive, provided it doesn't try to take over the console market. If it just fills its little niche, and doesn't try to aim any higher than that, it will do fine. Indrema took themselves too seriously. If they would have not shot for the moon... and stayed more realistic.... they could have survived....

Check out A Brief History of Home Video Games for more info on some of the stuff I've mentioned here.

There is one thing you do have to realize about Sega's misadventure... Sega had been trying for years to get a hit console.

Back in the very early 1980s they had a box to compete with the Atari 2600... this box failed.

Then, in the mid-80s they had the Sega Master System which was in direct competition to the NES. Most people agree this box was actually more powerful than the NES. However, this box failed.

The Genesis in 1989 was a big success... but subsequent money-pits Sega put a lot of backing behind such as the Sega CD and the 32X (both, actually quite nice enhancements to the Genesis) really hurt them due to their poor sales.

After the Genesis, Sega came out with the Saturn (to compete with the PS1). The Saturn was (again) a decent enough system... but Sega made some real blunders with it. For one, they never brought out a 3D game for their Mascot (and SonicR doesn't count ;-). For another, they hardly advertised this system at all. Even more, the system was dual-processor, and very difficult to develop for... but Sega never released their in-house power-tools to third-party developers to help them code for the platform. The Saturn died a horrible death.

By the time the Dreamcast was released, the only thing keeping Sega alive was their arcade games... and their arcade "empire" was starting to collapse (actually, arcade game sales have been decreasing quite a bit in the last few years).. The Dreamcast was nice hardware... and they finally were realizing they needed their "star" characters to make appearances in their console games. But by now, it was too little, too late.

The Dreamcast has been selling, but not enough for a company as massive as Sega to continue to support.

The problem here? Sega is too big. They need the big hits and the cash-cows in order to survive.

What are you missing? Well... small game houses can survive on low game/platform sales... provided they keep their low profile. An excellent example of this was the 3DO. Anyone remember the 3DO? It was a nifty little 32-bit machine that came out shortly after the SegaCD. It retailed for $700 (originally) and sold very poorly (compared to the main consoles at the time). But the system managed to survive because 3DO had a fairly low profile (but Panasonic, which had a 3DO platform as well is another issue entirely ;-) 3DO is still around today, and happily making games. (albeit for other systems ;-)

So a system like the Indrema, or this TuxBox (lowsy name) can survive, provided it doesn't try to take over the console market. If it just fills its little niche, and doesn't try to aim any higher than that, it will do fine. Indrema took themselves too seriously. If they would have not shot for the moon... and stayed more realistic.... they could have survived....

Check out A Brief History of Home Video Games for more info on some of the stuff I've mentioned here.

You deserve the plug! Your efforts over the years put all us wannabes to shame! ;-)

In the time that it has taken me to get Tux Typing to 0.7, you have started a bunch of projects (one of which, Circus-Linux! even went from creation to a 1.x stable release) as well was continued to support your other titles...

I honestly don't know where you find the time/energy....

redundant to Transgaming's work in porting the DirectX multimedia API for Wine?

SDL has been in the making for many many years. Transgaming, for all their promises, is a very new project and is still in its infancy.

Over the years, SDL has evolved into a very stable and powerful multimedia library with some very nice functionality (especially when all the add-on libraries are taken into account).

As far as platform support, SDL has it in spades... SDL runs quite nicely on BeOS, Win32, MacOS and pretty much every *nix variant.

I would wager that SDL is the most used Linux multimedia library. The games and applications listed on the SDL site are but a drop in the bucket compared to those that I have found listed on Freshmeat and even projects on SourceForge.

I, myself, have had quite a bit of experience with SDL. My educational typing game, Tux Typing is powered by SDL. I have also begun writing some little example apps in SDL (including a multi-windowed SDL app).

While I agree this was a pretty stupid question to be featured on the "Ask Slashdot" section... from the many inane and less-than-informed comments I can see that quite a few people really don't know what SDL is, what it is being used for, and where it is going.

So, to anyone interrested, I'd say take a look at the doc pages, code tutorials here, as well as checking out the latest stable release version 1.2.

redundant to Transgaming's work in porting the DirectX multimedia API for Wine?

SDL has been in the making for many many years. Transgaming, for all their promises, is a very new project and is still in its infancy.

Over the years, SDL has evolved into a very stable and powerful multimedia library with some very nice functionality (especially when all the add-on libraries are taken into account).

As far as platform support, SDL has it in spades... SDL runs quite nicely on BeOS, Win32, MacOS and pretty much every *nix variant.

I would wager that SDL is the most used Linux multimedia library. The games and applications listed on the SDL site are but a drop in the bucket compared to those that I have found listed on Freshmeat and even projects on SourceForge.

I, myself, have had quite a bit of experience with SDL. My educational typing game, Tux Typing is powered by SDL. I have also begun writing some little example apps in SDL (including a multi-windowed SDL app).

While I agree this was a pretty stupid question to be featured on the "Ask Slashdot" section... from the many inane and less-than-informed comments I can see that quite a few people really don't know what SDL is, what it is being used for, and where it is going.

So, to anyone interrested, I'd say take a look at the doc pages, code tutorials here, as well as checking out the latest stable release version 1.2.

I go out into the Big Blue room to be retro, and do some shopping in this place called a store, and when I get back, what do I see?

Anyhow, my two bits of webbased strips:

Sabrina -(mirror here) - Life as a dedicate Amiga user, etc.

Vinny The Vampire - Almost everyone is a hollywood classic monster of one sort or another. But other wise it is a more or less "normal" world.

Supermegatopis - the worlds largest open air insane asylum

FreeFall - Space Opera Lite

GeekComics - 'nuff said

>Anyone have any ideas for an alternative to bake-off?
How about "cooking the DB"..
I even have a spokesperson for it.. a carrtcier on Strenua Inertia Mr.DB

>Anyone have any ideas for an alternative to bake-off?
How about "cooking the DB"..
I even have a spokesperson for it.. a carrtcier on Strenua Inertia Mr.DB

I don't know if a Linux-jobs-only setting is the way to go.

It would certainly give us an environment where we don't start fresh every week explaining why Linux would be a better choice for this project or that. It would also be nice to have an environment where it is possible to collaborate with people working on other systems without the threat of being assimilated. And for once it would just be nice to use the words Slashdot, User Friendly, Strenua Interia, and Freshmeat without getting blank looks. ;-)