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That is not my argument. My argument is that the top 10 games in a year represent a significant portion of most people's gaming time and for the most part, that situation is not very bad for Mac users. The casual gamer can easily find 1 to 3 games to play in a year and that is all most people buy. If their tastes are average, they're even better off. I don't think the games available are a large deterrent to the average person, even if it is the the relatively small hardcore gamer market. This isn't even taking into account the console gaming market's mitigating effect.

That would have fitted with the theme of popping mushrooms and jumping through fluffy clouds! Or are you forgetting U R MR GAY? I didn't even know whether to believe that one, but I picked up a copy of Super Mario Galaxy in store and the hidden message really is there.

Submitting graphic gay porn to the court docket (which is publicly available information) without the permission of the court & to make an opposing lawyer look bad, is generally a bad idea. He's pretty much fucked considering he's already pissed off the judge who will be presiding over his disbarment.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/26/jack-thompson-submits-gay-porn-to-court-judge-not-amused/

I agree. Submitting gay porn to the court in order to make the attorney that is practicing against you look bad is generally frowned upon.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/26/jack-thompson-submits-gay-porn-to-court-judge-not-amused/

Jeff Bell is that you?

"Jeff Bell asks message board user: "And your contribution to society is ... what?"
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/18/jeff-bell-asks-message-board-user-and-your-contribution-to-soc/

The DS definitely has the most education software. Tons of Brain Training sequels and clones, and a bunch of maths, reading and language training games aimed at younger kids. Some of these are only available in Japan, but a lot make it to the US or Europe (and you can import Europe releases to the US and play them on US DSs).

There are a few brain training clones on the PSP, but they are few and far between.

But maybe the best solution would be a "real" computer like the OLPC box. You can even easily create your own learning tools on the OLPC, and your kids may even learn a bit about programming.

Yeah. I bought my PSP (+ 4GB Memory Stick) as a PMP. Couldn't beat it (Though transcoding was annoying if I'd just finished downloading/recording something and I needed to run out the door and wanted to watch it then). My VAIO VGN-UX17GP is pulling PMP duty nowadays, but I wouldn't have even bought the VAIO if I'd been able to get a keyboard for the PSP. I mean, c'mon! WiFi + browser + keyboard. The thing would rock. Damn you for killing the Logic 3 keyboard Sony!

I don't really agree with the idea that XBox was a failure (though for different reasons than you I suspect), but is it really that alien to you that someone might think so? Just to play devil's advocate, here are some very good reasons a person might consider it a failure:

• It was a finacial failure
• Though very popular in North America it was a distant third in most other markets, especially Japan
• It was largely seen pre-launch, with plenty of help from MS, as the Playstation killer; the box that would do to Sony what had been done to Nintendo a generation earlier. This, of course, was nothing like what actually transpired.

I want him to explain this!

Here ya go

The data shows attach rate on 360 doubles the PS3, and more than doubles the Wii. At an average of $60 a game for this gen, that's some extra $120 spent per console that's going towards (most probably) 3rd party publishers.

Because it's not great enough? This is especially true given the massive FUBAR MS committed with 360 hardware. They're spending an ass-load of cash repairing crapped out 360s, and that's hitting their bottom line. That, however, doesn't change the fact that 360 owners are buying *far* more games than the competition, which for publishers can only mean good things. In the end a console lives and dies by its 3rd party publisher support, which is why Nintendo isn't quite out of the woods yet - if they can't get 3rd party games on the platform the Wii's popularity will peak sooner than later.

Deal, can we get *you* to shut the fuck up now? :)

I don't use Vista and wouldn't recommend most people would, at least until hardware catches up, and Vista SP2.

However, lots of FUD has spread about Vista:

If my system is running DRM, it uses more CPU power when I do anything with video. So i use Win2k on my render machines.

First of all DRM takes a toll on your HDMI enabled hardware, and less so on your CPU. You buy more expensive hardware for the extra chip and protection to do the crypting.

But there's no DRM applied to plain video. It's simply not, never was (can't say never will).

Second, rendering video is even less relevant to playback of DRM-ed video. DRM in Vista means absolutely nothing for your rendering machines.

I simplified my rant too much apparently. In general terms, Vista uses more system resources no matter what you are doing than XP or Win2k. The more free resources, the better the system runs applications. on the DRM issue, i'll just give you a few links to follow, ok? here is one on how Vista DRM causes system slowdown no matter what you are doing; The next related issue is with Distributed rendering, or rendering a animation on several network machines at the same time. While there is a fix for both these issues(that a lot of people are reporting doesn't work), the Vista DRM system has been linked to slowdowns in copying files, and reducing network speed to about 5% of normal; you can read about that here. There is also a issue that hasn't been fully nailed down yet where whenever you access a "registered" codec (like, you know, when you are rendering?) the DRM system on Vista goes nuts and slows things down. that particular error only seems to be effecting some some people and not others, andd has not been conclusively proven to be DRM/Vista related. yet.

I also like to play games. The less bullshit my computer has to deal with in the way of DRM, non-needed glitz & glow, the better it will run games. So I use Win2k for games, and sometimes run them on my Windows XP MCE laptop.

Again DRM, no DRM is applied from Vista on *games*. DirectX adds new shader capabilities which game producers may opt to use or not use. If they use them it's to make games look better.

Or you'll tell me now you prefer games look same as in the pre-DirectX days.

Some pre-directX games are pretty darn nice in the graphics department, and I would prefer OpenGL to DirectX in general, but that isn't what I was talking about. I wasn't specifically implicating DRM in making games slow, it was more the "Vista uses more system resources" thing I mentioned above; the less resources your system uses to just sit there, the more it has for applications. There is also that whole "DRM system polling every piece of hardware 30 times a second" thing; I have to think that, on comparable systems, the one NOT doing that would be a bit faster.

Essentially, unless you have a 64-bit processor or an older "Hyper-threading" CPU, you will be better off running Windows 2000 than XP or Vista; your system will be able to work better and will give you less problems.

XP is just a minor revision of 2000. Is the skin that makes you feel bad about XP? It can be completely disabled. I run XP and it's disabled. It lookslike Windows 2000.

It may look like it, but its not. Windows XP comes with integrated DRM; Win2k doesn't. XP has product activation that can kill your system when you make changes to it. whether or not you disable the crap, XP still uses more system resources than win2k. and there is that whole networking & thread limiting thing. But i actually don't have anything against

I'm sorry, I must have messed up my citation and sources. I mean besides the wikipedia article there's only this:

The Wii Really Is an Updated GameCube
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/11/the_wii_really.html

And this:

Wii "hardware is basically a GC," says Miyamoto
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/04/wii-hardware-is-basically-a-gc-says-miyamoto/

Yeah, I must be mistaken.

What the Wii did was introduce a really different way of playing the games, and in the process has tapped into a market the ps3 and 360 couldn't dream of. Ergo, the impact of the Wii on the console gaming genre is larger even through the technological advances involved aren't.

I'm sure I'll get modded down for saying so, but that's a lot of bullshit and marketing crap right there. The Wii targeted non-gamers who, by definition, don't buy games. They bought it for Wii Sports and little else. I have one, and it's collecting dust right now alongside a heavily-used Xbox 360. The Wii has suffered a dearth of compelling 3rd party titles (no, you're not allowed to break out your list of things that might come out, we're talking past and present) and has very few first-party titles worth owning at present. To date, most of the motioned controlled crap that they're passing off as "revolutionary" on the Wii-mote happens to substitute swinging the thing instead of pressing the button. That's not revolutionary, that's just swinging-the-remote-instead-of-pressing. In my opinion, the most compelling use of the Wii-mote to date has been Wii Bowling, which is rather sad, since Wii Bowling was fun for a few months. The rest of it just sucks.

I liked the idea of the Wii and bought one on day one, but its underpowered-ness (no, I'm not talking about graphics whoring, I'm talking about not being able to carry out next-gen gameplay ideas like the fantastic Dead Rising for the 360, which couldn't handle that game if it wanted to) and so-so Wiimote implementation really have me wishing that Nintendo had bundled power *and* a Wiimote instead of just duct-taping 2 gamecubes together.

I feel like it'd be preferable to just have the two controllers dock

For those who don't get it: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/18/u-r-mr-gay-message-discovered-in-super-mario-galaxy-box-art/

I think SCEA beat Nintendo to the punch, although their product was designed for females.

I personally can't wait for Street Fighter 2 HD, here's a graphic comparison of Akuma. I don't even have a PS2 or XBox and am excited about this release.

It's coming to the Wii and DS.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/05/26/geometry-wars-wii-ds-details-emerge/

Does this mean that they are goign to release Halo DS?

Everyone know that the Wii is really two Gamecubes duct taped together. Maybe the original poster can't add fractions.

Oddly, I dont think it recieved nearly the attention of Manhunt. Maybe its because Manhunt is by those horrible purveyors of filth that are threatening to bring table tennis to the Wii.

It was plain to see when Mark Rein gave this interview it wasn't going to be put in: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/03/joystiq-interviews-unreal-tournament-3s-mark-rein/ Me and a couple of friends had a chat with him literally right after he did this interview at devcon judging by that pic, he got about 10 feet before we pounced on him lol. Very friendly guy, we just walked up to him and he chatted with us for a bit despite just having done that interview and probably already answering all the dumb questions we asked him 3 minutes previous. I think his exact words were "whats the fucking point?" when someone mentioned cross platform play. The guy's right, there is basically no benefit for either group of users (xbox, pc or ps3) in being able to play the others. Why do I care if the guy I just shot / who just shot me was playing on an xbox or ps3? The pc version runs a little quicker game speed wise, ie players run / rockets fly a bit faster, and you're either going to have to slow down or speed up the game on one platform to sync with the others. Doesn't sound like a great idea to me. Lots of effort to get it working, for basically no real benefit for the end user.

I don't think Mario is going to object, after seeing this.

Well, I can see one scenario where TV makes a lot of sense - MTV. They own Guitar Hero. And given that the expansion pack went multi-platinum, and Rock Band is about to ship with oodles of DLC, wouldn't it make sense to have the competition as a big ad for downloadable content? MTV started out as a big ad for music, why not continue that? how about a Guitar Hero reality show - The Ultimate Fighter mixed with American Idol but for guitar hero?

I'd love to watch two guitar hero masters try out songs they've never played before...

Link about Guitare Hero DLC...
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/11/guitar-hero-ii-dlc-goes-multi-platinum/

Even Nintendo didn't bet on doing this well,

Indeed, I don't think Nintendo expected cruise ships wanting Wii's or people purchasing multiple consoles for home and travel.

Out of curiosity, I talked to a GameStop employee and asked him how the Wii was doing? Long story short, he claims they get an average of 25 units a week and sell out within 48 hours. 25 units a week (for one store) and they're still selling out months later. It is pretty surprising.

Of course, the real under-rated news is not the Wii but the DS. For all the people I know who won a Wii, I know twice as many who also have a DS. People who wouldn't buy a Wii as even that is too much 'video game' for them. Those "brain" games (Brain Age, Big Brain Academy) is by far the sleeper "killer ap". Who would have thunk that someone would drop $120 just to do some math equations? =P

Though, the DS does have a lot of great (and cheap) games. The Wii? Zelda, Mario Party, Metroid, Raymon, Wii Sports/Play... I've not been impressed with a whole lot else. So, that does say something about the unique frenzy the Wii is causing. Or maybe it's because I'm spending more time playing the Virtual Console? =P (yes, I've been playing on emulators on my PC since 2000, I still prefer the VC)

Cheers,
Fozzy

IMO firing with the right hand in front with my left hand on the back will be awkward and I believe will reduce the immersiveness of the game rather than just using the 2 seperate controllers. I would rather have a pistol grip attachment with trigger so I could aim better and have the nunchuk hang from that.

IMO firing with the right hand in front with my left hand on the back will be awkward and I believe will reduce the immersiveness of the game rather than just using the 2 seperate controllers. I would rather have a pistol grip attachment with trigger so I could aim better and have the nunchuk hang from that.

You learn how to tighten up those graphics!

Probably somebody had to start a gaming site dedicated to casual gaming and casual reviews.

For example me, after gaming on PC for more that 15+ year, see most console games as total suckers. And mostly they are - thankfully to terrible game utility (e.g. no save/load functionality), overloaded controls and too much backward franchises (accompanied by flameboys).

But recently, in large thanks to Nintendo and its Wii, there were surge of pretty good playable and enjoyable games even on consoles. I normally tend to ignore console games and write off console gamers as people who grew to live in denial. But I hope that can change.

Some casual reviews already started showing up - as for example Variety's MP3:C review. (Flamed by fanboys here). Thanks to the review written in plain human words I would save my 50 for something better than MP3:C when it hits Europe. On on side. On another side, the review had bunch of hints for hardcore folks who have time the game requires to learn to play it.

Split - hardcore vs. casual - is inevitable. It is just better to be prepared. I would side with casual folks, since what they say makes much much more sense. And there is no the elitism aura around them too.

What I'm trying to get to here is that probably if you would grab a random guy from street and give him PS3 + Lair to play for some time - he might like it. Not necessarily he would want to invest $600+ into something like that. Yet. To hardcore folks easy game play (or what I call "enjoyable") is of course no-go.

Well, as Wii fan, I would omit the question about controls. Needless to add that IMNSHO classical controller - main that makes console the suckers - sucks big time.

P.S. Notice how skillfully I have managed in the post avoid saying that console games sucks... Uhm. Stop. ... (rereading post)... Uhm. Never mind.

Ah, interesting.. An article on Blues News refers to this interview over at Joystiq where this is stated :

Given the internets and what they are -- with their tubes and all -- I want to sort of talk about the concerns people have. We take the concerns people have very seriously. There's been some concern like, "What happens if it's three years from now, or ten years from now, when I want to play this game. And, you know, Irrational Games has been hit by a meteor?" We will unset the online activation at some point in the future -- we're not talking about when. If people have concern about that they shouldn't be worried about that. This activation is for the early period of the game when it's really hot and there are people really trying to find ways to play the game without buying it. Of course, there are a lot of people who are legitimately trying to play it. We're not trying to be Draconian, we're trying to find a balance.

Well, perhaps I will buy the game.. After I see this activation thing being disabled...

I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality, but we're not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships

WHO isn't at that point? I can think of two mainstream, A-list games, off the top of my head, that casually included heterosexual AND homosexual relationships:

• Bully
• Fable (last paragraph)

I've never played the Sims, but I imagine it lets you create gay characters too.

Perhaps the problem is with Mr. Egglebert and Factor 5, not with the industry at large...?

I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality, but we're not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships

WHO isn't at that point? I can think of two mainstream, A-list games, off the top of my head, that casually included heterosexual AND homosexual relationships:

• Bully
• Fable (last paragraph)

I've never played the Sims, but I imagine it lets you create gay characters too.

Perhaps the problem is with Mr. Egglebert and Factor 5, not with the industry at large...?

But I think it's fair to blame this on the PS3, because their stupid architecture is the one that deviated from the standard.

Who said there was a "standard" gaming architecture? What part of the PS3 is not standard? It has a processor, a motherboard, a hard drive (hell, the 360 doesn't even adhere to that standard), RAM, a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray disc drive. I know, it's the wireless card that's throwing Rockstar off!

Want to dive in deeper? You have to deal with threading in the cell, core duo (2), and of course the PowerPC. The only difference is the division of the work to the cells, and Sony has released software to help deal with that. The 360 has that newfangled Unified Shader pipeline versus the PS3's traditional pixel/vertex pipeline.

So what's exactly not standard? The fact that you have those mysterious cells that no one knows what to do with? It's all API'd out at this point. Sony released help for developers at the GDC six months ago. So I don't think it's really a good argument to say that it's such a craaaazy hard platform to program for anymore. There's help there if they want this.

Even Pachter said, this was a failure of management to figure out that it was taking so long. They should have known this weeks ago. I personally was surprised to find out that they were going to be able to develop this game so quickly - look at MGS and FFXIII, they're taking much longer.

A potentially relationship-ending addiction?

A potentially relationship-ending addiction?

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/23/joystiq-intervie ws-sceas-phil-rosenberg-and-john-koller/

I can't validate the link, but if you go back on Joystiq to 07 23 you should be able to find it if I mistyped it.

"We've always wanted a two SKU strategy in the marketplace. When we introduced the 20GB, but without the memory slots, and without the wi-fi, the value proposition simply wasn't there"

Sorry but go FUD someone else please, mkay?

Ooopsie forgot the link.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/18/peter-moore-to-g et-1-5-million-bonus-550-000-salary/

The fact is that only a very small number of XB360s fail

"Very small"? Denial ain't just a river, you know.

MS themselves admitted the number of faulty systems is "meaningful" (their word, not mine) and that the flaws in the system were "significant", were "design issues", and were "multiple" in number. You can read all this yourself straight from the horse's mouth here. Read that call transcript and educate yourself. These are things MS cannot lie about lest they risk a shareholder lawsuit and SEC investigation.

AND, they have handled their defective units in a far more upright fashion than other companies have done, I might add

Nintendo recalled every single Famicom on the market when they realized it suffered from a design flaw. They waited 6 months before they were confident they had fixed it, then they re-launched the system.

A 3 year warranty on a system with admitted significant design flaws (again, MS's own words) is a "far more upright fashion" of dealing with the problem than a recall?

MS will laugh all the way to the bank

To the tune of $7 billion in losses and counting, I guess.

Peter Moore was fired. I like the guy, but he was fired, and probably over the RROD fiasco.

From a PR perspective, I completely agree that Sony has screwed the pooch on managing consumer opinions, at least within the industry. Outside, however, the average consumer just sees a $499 60GB PS3 on sale.

I disagree with the people that insist Sony is driving for some "magic" $599 price point. If it were, I think the sales spike the will see from this price drop will convince them otherwise. The reality for Sony is that they have a huge number of 60GB systems collecting dust on store shelves. The still-born 20GB is largely vanished, and the 80GB isn't even available yet.

Now, if Sony was to announce the 80GB system at the same $499 that the 60GB has just been reduced to, how many of those 60GB systems would they be likely to sell, now or in the future? Not many, I'd wager, unless they planned to drop the price on those even further. The company would be foolish to do that, especially since the 80GB won't be around until August. The smart thing to do -- and what I suspect is Sony's plan all along here -- is to release the 80GB at $599 with the no-longer-in-production 60GB at $499 until the 60GB units are either depleted or nearly impossible to find (as opposed to now, where it's the only thing available!), then get another PR boost with another price drop lowering the 80GB to $499 as well.

So if an extra 20GB is worth an extra $100 or a few months waiting for you, go for it. For me, 60GB is plenty, and the hard drive is already pretty damn easy to upgrade way past the 80GB anyway, if one were so inclined.

I hate to disappoint you, but it has been stated that Rock Band will work with Guitar Hero controllers. See this story.

Also, Guitar Hero 3 is going to have downloadable content as well, so I'm not sure why you'd be irritated by Rock Band having it but not GH3.

Look at the sales rate on that graph. If your statement were entirely true, then as soon as more supply became available, the Xbox 360 would have seen a large spike in sales, but the sales trend continues at the same pace until the Christmas season when you see the sharp increase. I imagine that Sony will experience something like this with the PS3 and then fall back to normal, as did the Xbox 360.

~10,000/week isn't completely dire, I suppose, but I don't think the Playstation clobbered the Saturn quite as hard in Japan as the Wii is clobbering the PS3 (due in part to the Saturn's heavy 2D game focus).

Back in May there were articles floating around that Microsoft expected the Xbox division to be profitable in 2008. However, they've recently decided to offer an extended warrenty to customers in order to deal with the high failure rate of the Xbox 360. An earlier Slashdot article has this estimated to cost Microsoft around one billion dollars.

The earliest reports pegged the Xbox as costing about five hundred through seven hundred dollars to manufacture, a loss of a few hundred dollars on each console sold. This article published around the time of the PS3 launch puts the cost of Xbox 360 components at around seventy dollars under the final unit cost (manufacturing and other costs were not calculated into this figure so it may be safe to assume that they were breaking even or close to it at that time).

With the costs of the new warrenty (in addition to any costs that can be associated with the honoring existing warrenties to cover the high failure rates of the console) and cutting the price which changes the profitability on each unit sold, when does Microsoft now expect their Xbox division to become profitable?

I'll bite:

* Microsoft has no solution to the hardware failures - system bought this month are still failing

Their solution is the warranty program and hardware changes (maybe heatsinks, maybe something else) will undoubtedly show up soon. The financial onus is now squarely on Microsoft to reduce hardware problems.

* Microsoft has no solution to the disc scratching problem - you aren't covered under this billion dollar's worth of repairs for anything other than the specific RRoD problems

But you would be covered under the 1-year console warranty. I've known someone who this specific issue applied to and got it fixed.

* The system is the loudest ever due to the crappy 12x speed DVD drive and fans

No argument there.

* Forced to pay 50 dollars a year for online play that adds 250 dollars to the price of the console over five years

And it adds 500 over ten years and 5000 over one-hundred years. Look, multiplayer isn't free, but you aren't forced to pay for it, and you aren't forced to pay up front. All other online services are free to other players.

* No dedicated servers - laggy games that aren't even hosted by Microsoft

The entire system is managed by Microsoft and has an impressive track record. Games might be peer-to-peer, but I've never seen lag and voice chat works in every 360 game I've played. What kind of connection do you have?

* Low player count games - Gears of War only could handle 8 players, Halo 3 can only handle 16 - that is pathetic in 2007

How is that an indictment of Microsoft or their console? Neither developer has said that Xbox Live was a restriction for multiplayer match size.

* Halfassed backwards compatibility - Microsoft tried to get away with skipping it and they were forced to put in an amateur effort where even the games that 'work' don't really work or have major issues

I found their advertising fairly clear on this. While I wish all games would work, 90% of my old Xbox games work fine. Go read the compatibility list, it isn't small. This becomes less of an issue as the system gets older.

* Absurd peripheral prices

Whose aren't? That hardly sways me from one console to another.

* No ability to upgrade the harddrive - you are forced to only upgrade to one size drive and you have to pay twice as much money as it's worth

That might be the only accurate thing you said, but again, you aren't forced to upgrade. You aren't even forced to use the HDD at all.

* No HD movie playback - Microsoft decided to throw a tantrum over BluRay's Java layer and gamers lost out

The 360 has the best downloadable HD movie option available at the moment. It also has an HD-DVD drive option, which isn't standard, but the 360 costs $200 less than a PS3 anyway. I don't feel limited by the lack of it.

* Pathetic storage medium - the 360 is the first console to ever have LESS storage than a previous generation - 7 gigs for the 360 versus 8 gigs for the Xbox. And open world games have to use only a single layer due to the 100 ms layer switch penalty thus limiting games like GTA to only 3.5 gigs

I've never heard of this. Oblivion seemed pretty expansive to me, I'm so sad for GTA's worries.

* Botched graphics system - can't handle 1080p in real next gen games like Lair on the PS3 due to the retarded 10 megs of EDRAM that were designed for 480p

You are starting to show your true fanboy. The 360 can output in 1080p and was designed for 720p, which it looks great at. Check out the 360 to PS3 graphics compariso