When a PDA is better than a GBA for Gaming

An anonymous reader writes "Conventional wisdom says that it's silly to buy a $300+ PDA to play games when a $100 Game Boy Advance SP is going to be better at it. At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2. FiringSquad just posted an ASUS PDA review that focuses on some of the games that only a PDA has the horsepower for, and helps readers figure out how to pick out the right PDA."

Comments

Only buy what you need

[Svet-Am]

If all you want is portable games, buy a portable game device (GBA, NeoGeoPocket, etc)

If you want other functionality, buy a PDA.

Period.

Why is this an issue?

Re:Only buy what you need

[GoofyBoy]

You can get Mame on a PocketPC. Thats a huge library of games there.

Touchscreens are a great substitute for mouse control.

I can play Gameboy or NeoGeo or NES or any 8 bit consoles in emulation mode. I even played Apple ][e games in nuclear green monochrome on my PocketPC.

With removeable memory cards I can carry around a large number of games in the equivlent size of one carterage of a portable game device.

Re:Only buy what you need

[xTown]

That's exactly why I bought a GBA instead of a PocketPC. I was extremely honest with myself, and I knew that the only thing I would buy a PocketPC for was playing games--so I spent the $300 on a GBA and a half-dozen games rather than on a PocketPC and nothing else.

Of course, about a month later I had about five good ideas for PDA applications, but that's another story entirely.

Re:Only buy what you need

[bensagenius]

Because when I'm waiting for a meeting to start, I'd feel like a real asshole whipping out a Gameboy. At least maybe SOMEONE in the room will think I'm using my Palm for legitimate reasons!

Re:Only buy what you need

[kcelery]

If you want a PDA buy a palm, if you have to run Outlook, Office, Excel .. or whatever buy a full version laptop with the right size to fit your need. There is no reason maintaining a half baked excel spreadsheet on a PDA and moving it back and forth between the laptop.

Re:Only buy what you need

[stonecypher]

If all you want is portable games, buy a portable game device (GBA, NeoGeoPocket, etc) // If you want other functionality, buy a PDA. // Period. // Why is this an issue?

Apparently you've never looked at the PPC's game lineup.

Re:Only buy what you need

[cmowire]

If you want to play games while looking like you are doing something productive, get a PDA. ;)

Re:Only buy what you need

[ePhil_One]

. There is no reason maintaining a half baked excel spreadsheet on a PDA and moving it back and forth between the laptop

Actually, I rely on Handago's Documents to Go to keep several spreadsheets syncronized to my Palm. Its a relatively quick lookup and in a pinch I can update the data while I wander the data center. And I'm really like the new Tungsten T3 form factor, I just can't yet justify giving away my original T to buy a T3.

Re:Only buy what you need

[RevAaron]

Touchscreens may make an OK substitute for mouse control, but it makes a horrible substitute for a good d-pad and well-placed A/B buttons. The Zodiac has a button setup prefect for gaming, most PDAs, PocketPC or Palm, do not.

There are all of these emulators for the PalmOS as well. One exception is a GBA emulator- it's slow in coming. I'm not sure what the status of it is on WinCE though either.

But if I were going to spend $300-400 on a PalmOS PDA, and even did just a smidge of gaming I would go for the Tapwave in a heartbeat. A nice 480x320 screen, dual SD (incl SDIO), nice gaming buttons, bluetooth, and the most memory any PalmOS unit can have. No, it doesn't have a camera or a shitty thumboard, but I don't need either of those things and didn't use them even if my PDA had them.

I could see not getting a Tapwave if you were set on a PocketPC, or wanted to spend $200 rather than $300-400. A Dell Axim X3/5 or Tungsten E both can be had for $200 and can be used for emulators of all kinds- MAME, NES, SNES, etc- as well as rad games like Snood for the native platform. Hell, even the new ARM-based b/w Zire could be used for playing games with these emulators for a mere $99.

But then again, I won't touch PalmOS until it can do what I'm used to doing on platforms like the Zaurus or WinCE. But maybe by POS 6 a Palm device will be ready for me.

Re:Only buy what you need

[Eil]

Agreed. Additionally, I'm tired of people comparing PC gaming to console gaming. There is some overlap in terms of the types of genres and games they can (successfully) cover, but THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. I was going to write a long, boring essay on the topic but my time is currently short so I'll summarize it in two bulleted points:

• You don't play Quake on a console.
  
• You don't play Final Fantasy on the PC.
  

And just because you can doesn't mean you should. Case closed.
P.S. I can make an exception for console emulators on the PC.

Re:Only buy what you need

[ardiri]

> Hell, even the new ARM-based b/w Zire could be used for playing
> games with these emulators for a mere $99.

as a game developer for Palm OS, and other handheld platforms - i know first hand the issues with porting/writing emulators for the platform. we have written a GameBoy emulator (yes, to 16Mhz m68k) and an Atari 2600 emulator to multiple platforms - however, the processing power available, in addition to the memory constraints imposed by the operating system (4k stack), no global variables in ARMlets; make it very difficult or, virtually impossible to have emulators run on them.

based on our experience and understanding of the platform, emulation for stuff such as Atari, NES, SNES, GameBoy is definately possible; GameBoy Advance at a full 60fps is possible with high-end PDA's (ie: 200Mhz+) as will coin-op ports. however, something like MAME; with its generic engine - if ported will definately run, but maybe not full speed.

the bottom line is that porting to Palm OS is difficult; hence, why MAME/DooM et al have existed on Symbian, Pocket PC - but, not on Palm :)

the tapwave zodiac is a 200Mhz CPU; and, in our experience we have found the Tungsten|T3 cream all over it for pure CPU power (comparing FPS in our 3D engine). however, it does have a 2D accellerator; that some people may take advantage of - and, is actually more 'geared' towards gaming.

i own a Tapwave Zodiac (two actually), GameBoy advance and over 60 PDA devices (www.ardiri.com/pdas.jpg) - not one device suits my every day needs yet :( i am still waiting for that perfect device *g*

Re:Only buy what you need

[Anonymous Coward]

Period.

Well, I guess that wraps it up guys. Svet-Am has spoken, close the forum and disperse.

Re:Only buy what you need

[Haeleth]

What would you do to me if I told you that I'd played N64 Quake in an emulator?

Re:Only buy what you need

[RevAaron]

Will this situation improve in PalmOS 6?

Yes, I'm somewhat aware of the pains of porting to PalmOS. I code in Squeak Smalltalk, and a lot of Squeak users would like to have it on their PDAs. While a port was done to WinCE, Linux for the PDA and even EPOC32 with relative ease, nothing has surfaced for the PalmOS.

I'm hoping a lot of these issues will be solved in POS 6 so that apps like Squeak- and MAME- can finally be ported. These inadequacies are also why I don't use a Palm device- I demand too much from my PDAs.

No, I haven't found any perfect device yet, although the Newton MP2100 is by far the device which has come closest. My second favorite PDA has been the Jornada 720 Handheld PC, though I would prefer a device that could be converted between "mini-laptop" and "palm" mode, like the Zaurus but with better software. I just got a Sigmarion III, and it's a sweet device. Although, it can't convert between the handheld pc

I never said the Zodiac is perfect. I don't own one, and certainly couldn't make that kind of claim. Things are bound to improve, compatability problems be taken care of, etc etc. Especially with POS6 things should be getting better.

I assume you have them all for testing and such, but if you ever have an old PalmOS device you don't need anymore, drop me a line... I'm looking for one for stealing UI ideas from. Not a copy or anything, but figuring out what would work and what wouldn't. We have an old PalmPro, but it rarely works.

Re:Only buy what you need

[Eil]

Fire up your GPS and give me your exact coordinates. A telefragging is in order.

Not silly?

[Psmylie]

"At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2"

Are you kidding? I see that all the time! On slashdot, even.
Besides, who only spends a grand on a gaming machine?

Re:Not silly?

[Scrameustache]

"At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2"

Are you kidding? I see that all the time! On slashdot, even.
Besides, who only spends a grand on a gaming machine?

Hell, I say it all the time!

Not only that, but the games you buy for PCs are barely working. At least with a console there's a QA systems that forces the developpers and distributors to only release gamnes that actually work/can be finished/won't destroy your machine.

Re:Not silly?

[Smack]

I think it's silly to spend $200 on a vidcard when you can buy a whole gaming system for the same price.

But if you like PC games, what choice do you have?

Re:Not silly?

[cK-Gunslinger]

I think $1000 is about the perfect price for a gaming machine. After that, you start to lose in the price/performance ratio.

I just built my niece a new machine for $950 (sans OS). Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton), 512MB DDR 3200, ATI 9600, Samsung 19" CRT, Logitech 5.1 Speakers, etc. Newegg is your friend. =P

Re:Not silly?

[ChozCunningham]

"shipments of PlayStation 2 consoles in its fiscal year 2002, ending March 2003, totaled 22.5 million units."

That many people disagreed already, and they never even RTFA!

Re:Not silly?

[DrEldarion]

Besides, who only spends a grand on a gaming machine?

You could EASILY get a damn good gaming machine for $1000. Much less if you already have a monitor/keyboard/mouse/case.

Blazing-fast video card - $250
Processor/Mobo combo - $250
Hard Drive - $100
CD Drive - $10
Mouse/Keyboard - $50
Case/PS - $75
17" CRT - $100
Speakers/Sub - $75
Misc: $50

Less than $1000, and I'm overestimating on some of those things (you can get cheaper cases, cheaper speakers, cheaper hard drive, etc)

Re:Not silly?

[Da VinMan]

You do have a choice with PC games. Seriously, just don't buy and play games that do that. Really, how much more fun is Halo on the PC anyway? Or Doom3? My opinion is that one is better off spending time with games that can either degrade gracefully to somewhat older hardware (anything older than 3 years or so and you're kind of out there on your own anyway) or are developed more around being a compelling game (through storyline and/or gameplay). The only reason you would "need" a new graphics card or CPU is to play games that focus gratuitously on graphics. The only exception I can think of would be for games that use a lot of CPU for the AI, but those seem to be in extremely short supply anyway.

Anyway, think about that when you next pass the aisle of $10 games at your local outlet. Those games are 1/5th the typical cost of a new game, will run on hardware that probably costs less than 1/5th of a new machine, and those games still rock if you can focus less on graphics and more on gameplay.

Personally though, I think many people are afraid to go this route. Gaming is a social activity after all, and if everyone is focusing on the new games, then one might fear being left behind by the pack.

Re:Not silly?

[NanoGator]

"Are you kidding? I see that all the time! On slashdot, even."

It's a ridiculous statement anyway.

1.) PC Games are not like PS2 games. Comparing the two is like comparing Deep Space Nine to Babylon 5. Very distinct audiences and tastes here.

2.) Since PC games are so different from console games, people like to indulge a little here in there to make their machine a better game machine. Only they don't spend $1,000 for a game machine, they spend $1,000 on a computer and a hundred bucks here and there to make it a better game machine.

Re:Not silly?

[mugnyte]

This is continuing an already-stupid train of thought. On the contrary, people play games occasionally on the PC because they use it as a multi-purpose machine. Upgrading the video card or adding some memory is what open standards are about. So if someone wants to play RTCW on their PC, why would assume it's going to be buggy and error-prone? PC games simply have to deal with this same mix of hardware, so there's less stability in them, but greefully they can be patched, upgraded and modded way beyond the console's customization abilities.

However, I'll take the multipurpose machine simply because I don't need bleeding edge nor want a basement full of discarded consoles. $199 buys a much better PC for many applications (natural keyboard, wireless mouse, cheap digital cam) instead of another ouch-TV-resolution arcade box. But thats just my preference.

Re:Not silly?

[MoneyT]

How are they different. Be honest here. Name a large difference between console and PC games.

Re:Not silly?

[Gedden]

Anyone who thinks a PS2 or XBox can even come close to what a good computer can do is completely insane. No contest.

Apart from the tons of non-game applications, a computer just flat out has better resolution. Its a barrier that consoles just cant break. Even HD compatable games dont have nearly the same resolution of a good gaming computer.

Also, the defaiult input/interfaces of a console cant possibly match that of a computer. I have a 52" HDTV, XBox and PS2. They are fun, and for light silly brain candy games its good. When I want to seriously play somthing engrossing, I goto the computer. Fast food is ok, but I prefer a nice juicy steak.

Re:Not silly?

[homer_ca]

First person shooters that don't force you to use a gamepad. Hardcore flight sims and racing sims like Jane's F-15, Grand Prix Legends, and GP4. Consoles are catching up with online multiplayer gaming, but PCs have a big lead there.

Re:Not silly?

[GregoryD]

I think it's silly to spend $200 on a vidcard when you can buy a whole gaming system for the same price.

But if you like PC games, what choice do you have?

A big part of the lure of computer games is the multiplayer aspect. I can get a good game at 3am with other insomnaics. I don't believe you can get the same community through a console game that you can through a computer game. Many leagues and a large part of the "fun" of the game is discussing things on message boards and irc. Also I have the same comradery with my clan, as I did during team sports during high school. You just can't get that from a console because all these outside things (message boards, fan sites, leagues, irc) are just as big as the game itself.

I find the single player and console games boring. AI cannot act like a human and I can no way feel superior to a bunch of computer chips. I'd rather beat up a 12 year old from Iowa and say "I ow3ed j00!!!".

Re:Not silly?

[Blob Pet]

i find console game quality has gone down the tubes. Enter the Matrix comes to mind. I know that's on the extreme end, but there are other games that suffer from QA defficiencies.

Re:Not silly?

[Scrameustache]

i find console game quality has gone down the tubes. Enter the Matrix comes to mind.

Movie-franchise games allways have been and allways will be utter crap. My advice is to never, EVER buy one, and only rent one if you loved the movie enough to suffer through the game.

E.T. on Atari 2600 was a trend setter.

Re:Not silly?

[NanoGator]

"How are they different. Be honest here. Name a large difference between console and PC games."

There are a few major differences, I'll list a couple that spring readily into mind:

- Interface. Game pad vs. Keyboard and Mouse. Mario/Zelda-esque games are not very popular on the PC. At the same time, FPS and RTS games on consoles aren't typically high sellers.

- Audience. Though there is a lot of people who play games on PC or console. Think about that for a moment: If a PS2 satisfies all your gaming needs, then why have a $400 video card in your PC? Simple: PC + PS2 = larger gaming library. There are people who like to pick up a game and just play it (consoles make that a no-brainer, no install no nothin) and there are some who want something more involving and complex, thus the PC becomes more effective.

It's hard to generalize about. In the simplest sense, niether the PC nor the PS2 can play every type of game ideally. Even if it could, there's still the matter that games are typically developed to run on slower machines, thus not taking full advantage of the hardware. Console games often feel like you're getting a better gaming experience because these games run consistently across all the machines.

I don't know if that satisfactorally answers your question. I tried.

Re:Not silly?

[Moofie]

The problem is that hardcore simulation games are dying. I can't think of any big ones that have shipped recently.

If it's not a POV shooter, or an RPG, or a RTS, it's not shipping for PC (to a good approximation).

PC games are, unfortunately, stagnating. This is less true of the console market. If you told me five years ago that I'd say this, I'd have laughed at you.

Re:Not silly?

[DunbarTheInept]

I'd rather have a game that's barely working, but intellectually challenging, then yet another brain-dead button mash fest.

Re:Not silly?

[kisrael]

Movie-franchise games allways have been and allways will be utter crap. My advice is to never, EVER buy one, and only rent one if you loved the movie enough to suffer through the game.

I refute it thus: "Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader"
(Counter-refutal: "Rogue Squdron 3: Rebel Strike")

Re:Not silly?

[kisrael]

If you think of a PC as "expensive console," you're probably right. If you think of it as "a machine used for many things that includes gaming" then you've got a much better view.

The question is doubt and uncertainty about what it takes to get a PC up to gaming snuff. I don't know what kind of 3D card my PC has, if any, and I don't wanna know. I like that stuff on consoles.

Some older stuff is fine on PCs, StarCraft, even DOOM, but I just don't want to think about it.

Also I like one screen multiplayer gaming, gather round the couch, which doesn't work so well on PCs.

Re:Not silly?

[DunbarTheInept]

Large difference number 1 - I can't program on my console. It ONLY runs programs other people have made.

Large difference number 2 - Those removable memory cards can't store large savegames, so console programs have to be designed not to save much information, and it shows.

Large difference number 3 - PC's have more memory, and thus can have more complex games with complex data structures.

Large difference number 4 - Keyboard/mouse is a better interface for hitting multiple buttons in conjunction than controller pads are. For example, when platying Thief, I'd often hit Shift/W while rolling the mouse left and holding down the left mouse button to draw an arrow. On a console pad, that kind of action sucks because you need some of your fingers to actually HOLD the controller - they aren't free to hit the pads.

Large difference number 5 - console pads are designed to be used left-handed for some oddball reason, which pisses me off since most console games are dexterity-based rather than intellect-based (such that forcing me to use my left thumb on the movement stick rather than my right makes a very signifigant difference). Keyboard games are configurable to be used either way.

Large difference number 6 - A mouse is a more precise device than the analog stick of a console pad.

Large difference number 7 - A console is more portable, for lan parties (I had to throw in some advantage on the console side.)

Large difference number 8 - In cases where a game exists for the console and not the PC, I usually am not that impressed with it so I don't care (with Vice City being a rare exception - in fact Vice City is what caused me to finally purchase a PS/2). In cases where a game exists for the PC but not consoles, I usually am impressed with the game. In cases where it exists for both, the PC version is usually more intricate.

Re:Not silly?

[Eccles]

Name a large difference between console and PC games.

First party expansion packs. Third party mods. Games designed explicitly for high-resolution.

Re:Not silly?

[Scrameustache]

You got me there, a PC game that you have to work on for days before it works IS more intellectually challenging than a console game that you only have to pop in.

But then again, I'd rather have the actuall content be purposefully challenging than have the medium working against me.

Re:Not silly?

[pebs]

Well, I can see both sides. I used to play both PC games and console games, but then started playing only console games (and now, no games at all). I can see why people prefer console games. PC games ARE buggy and error-prone. Console games offer most of the advantages that PC games once had: network play, high-resolution graphics, etc. If I was serious about gaming, I'd go and spend $100 (or whatever) on a console. I'd connect the console to either my PC monitor or to an HDTV.

However, when you already have several PCs sitting around networked together, why not use them for gaming? And of course, some of those bleeding edge games are really sweet, but I don't have $500 to spend on a video card. Multipurpose PC makes sense, but PC for the sole purpose of gaming generally does not.

Re:Not silly?

[Scrameustache]

Yeah, I had a feeling a SW game would be mentioned.

That's a bit different, because the game is based on the SW universe, but not a direct tie-in to a specific movie.

Therefore, its release date is not determined by the marketing department of the movie, wich I believe is the most important factor that leads games based on movie down the path of mediocrity.

Oh, and I rather liked the original NES game for The Empire Strikes Back, wich was also released years after the movie came out.

Re:Not silly?

[Wah]

Better yet, get the Ur Quan Masters. Heck, that game could be played on a hand-held if they had the story for the voices.

Re:Not silly?

[DunbarTheInept]

You know what I was referring to, liar. PC games are more intellectually challenging TO PLAY.

Re:Not silly?

[Da VinMan]

I went and looked. I did not see a version of the game for any PDA. Did I miss something?

Re:Not silly?

[Scrameustache]

PC games are more intellectually challenging TO PLAY.

Yeah, 'cause fraggin is such a brain teaser...

Re:Not silly?

[Wah]

sorry, I was being obscure.

You were talking about possibility for gamers to pick up quality older titles, miss out on the latest whiz-bang graphics, and save upgrading dollars. The Star Control 2 clone fits the bill for that.

The PDA stuff game as an afterthought when I remembered what the thread was about...and the 640 x 480 graphics on that game (which I've been playing through again...for the first time :-) and thought they would be a good match.

Re:Not silly?

[code_echelon]

"Not only that, but the games you buy for PCs are barely working. At least with a console there's a QA systems that forces the developpers and distributors to only release gamnes that actually work/can be finished/won't destroy your machine."

This statement is absolutely incorrect for most knowledgable PCs users. I used to play console games all the time until I could afford to piece together high end PCs for gaming. PC games always seem to have much more depth, superior graphics(if you can afford the hardware) are longer and most of the time include multiplayer(Internet multiplayer). PCs are much better than consoles for gaming if you are willing to upgrade fairly frequently and are interested in computers and configuration. I agree with one thing that you said, it is a benefit that consoles do have the same architecture as it makes it easier for developers to create games and optimize the code. However, this is not much of a problem currenlty on PC for most users that have a properly configred PC. I have been playing games on a PC for over 2 years now and do not use consoles at all anymore, I find most console games have poor storyline, character development and are lacking in several other ways. I have free access to all games at a local video store and haven't played any console games that have held my attention for more than an hour or so in a long time. Im not saying there aren't a few good titles but most I have found tend to be very dissapointing.

In terms of your last statement I haven't had a game that I couldn't finish because the computer wouldn't let me or had a game that destroys my machine. I have over 60 games and I know quite a few gamers and I have never heard of a game ruining a PC. It might have happened but I would then definately question your ability to put together and configure a PC. Most games recently also seem to be being released on PC, it is also true that PCs have more titles than any console, including emulators that can play many of the consoles you speak of.

Consoles are better for the average joe who justs wants to plug it in and play a few games quickly or someone that is not technically inclined. PCs are far superior if you are willing to upgrade and learn how to set it up properly.

Re:Not silly?

[Da VinMan]

Ok, I get it. I just thought you knew about some PPC or Palm port of the game and that piqued my interest.

Rats! :)

Re:Not silly?

[Lightwarrior]

"If it's not a POV shooter, or an RPG, or a RTS, it's not shipping for PC (to a good approximation)."

Hogwash. #1, you forgot Turn-based strategy games - like AoW:SM, or GalCiv. #2, you forgot Sports games - like Madden NFL 2004 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004. Try GameRankings.com to see what you're missing.

Not to mention all the obscenely obvious stuff - player created mods, faster deployment of additional content, and an incredibly expansive lineup of online multiplayer games. Consoles are still in their online infancy.

You don't like PC games - that's fine. You're of the opinion that they're stagnating - that's fine, too. It doesn't change the fact that many games come out for multiple platforms, and most of the best wind up making the jump at some point - like GTA to PC, and finally to XBox... or SoF2, or R6... I can keep going on.

Simple fact: there are people who don't like playing games six to ten feet away from a grainy television screen displaying low resolution images on an extremely limited controller.

-lw

Re:Not silly?

[Scrameustache]

PCs are far superior if you are willing to upgrade and learn how to set it up properly.

Enough said.

PCs are better if you do not take into account the huge amount of money and effort that you have to constantly keep putting in your PC to keep its hardware and drivers up to date.

Re:Not silly?

[Moofie]

Yes, yes I did forget about sports "games" (particularly team sports games), since they're pretty much the same game with new chrome each year. That is a great example of stagnation (which is even worse on the console titles). Personal bias? You betcha. I think they're stupid.

Yes, there are great sports games out there. Sure, you might like playing them. This is just an opinion.

Look, I'm not saying that I don't enjoy PC games. I do. But there hasn't been a new genre, or a new game-form, introduced in a good long time. Hell, even really well-established game forms (like, say, high-fidelity flight simulations) are dying, since everybody wants to make strategy games and shooters.

I think the best designed game of recent memory was GTA3. I just want to see the same sort of good design coming back to PC games.

Where you sit and what kind of screen you look at are secondary concerns to me. I want good games, and right now, there aren't very many PC games that are worth my time.

Re:Not silly?

[Lightwarrior]

Heh, I've had pretty much the same opinion of sports games until a couple weeks ago. I hadn't touched a Madden football game since 1994 or before, and something possessed a buddy and I to pick up the latest for Xbox. We actually had a bast, but it got returned 7 days later just like every other Xbox title I've rented.

I'm not really sure how to address "lack of innovation". Since I'm not of the opinion that it's impossible to make innovations in an already established genre, I don't know how to convince you otherwise.

The category of "shooter" is just so broad that I'm tempted to say we should have a "game where you click a mouse button" category. What constitutes a shooter? Doom? Half-life? Any game in a first-person mode? What about Thief, Deus Ex, or Savage? What about Max Payne? Does the introduction of new ideas, like Bullet Time in MP, constitute innovation?

What about combining genres, regardless of the way it was implemented? Deus Ex added a pretty standard RPG formula on top of a great FPS plot, and I think it made for a unique and incredible game experience. GTA3 falls into the same category - there's nothing really *new* about it. It was an outstanding game, certainly, but it combined the influences of Carmageddon, third-person shooters, Leisure Suit Larry, and crime dramas into one package.

And, in truth, the same exact thing applies to consoles. There's nothing new that they do - it seems like the majority of console titles are just the next game in a franchise. Link, Mario, Virtua Fighter, Castlevania, Jak, the multitude of sports games....

Unfortunately, a "good game" falls into a very, very specific category from person to person. I'm currently having a lot of fun with FFXI, and am really looking forward to Deus Ex 2. I'm very likely to go back and play GTA:VC for a third time. But some of the games that people say are groundbreaking - like Halo - just don't interest me.

-lw

Re:Not silly?

[yerricde]

Console games offer most of the advantages that PC games once had: network play, high-resolution graphics, etc.

What about the availability of user-created content? Does Half-Life for consoles have TFC or Counter-Strike or any other mod?

Re:Not silly?

[pebs]

What about the availability of user-created content? Does Half-Life for consoles have TFC or Counter-Strike or any other mod?

Yeah, that's one of the things console games probably don't have (AFAIK). Though with the XBox's hard drive or loading over the network, the possibility for this may be there.

I need to get back into PC gaming. If anything for the simple fact that I could throw a decent LAN party with just the machines I have in my home.

Re:Not silly?

[Moofie]

Your points are all well-taken. I certainly won't argue that there aren't a lot of fun games out there.

I would like to see the publishers taking more risks. There hasn't been a new game-form since, Wolf3D and Dune (which were roughly contemporaneous). The overwhelming majority of the top-tier titles out there trace their lineage directly to those two games.

I really want something fresh. If I knew what that was, I'd produce it, but I don't.

Deus Ex was great. Looking forward to the sequel. It was still a POV shooter, albeit with a good story. Max Payne didn't do anything for me.

Halo isn't groundbreaking. I happen to like it some, now that I can play it with a mouse like God intended, but it's not groundbreaking. It's a good shooter, but it's just a shooter.

Vice City has been eating my brain. In my opinion, that's taken an established genre (driving/racing game) to a whole new place. GTA3 was, IMO, one of the most innovative games in recent memory, and Vice City polished the idea 'till it gleamed. I felt the same way about Half Life.

Limitations...

[anaphora]

But can a PS2 play Solitare? Didn't think so.

Everything has limitations.

Re:Limitations...

[damiam]

Yes it can, if you install PS2 Linux.

Re:Limitations...

[stonecypher]

Yes, it can, with its linux distro, or as a hidden game on over a dozen discs.

Nice try, son. Maybe next time try pointing out that a PDA doesn't need a TV or a wall outlet.

Karma whoring "duh" response:

[Anonymous Coward]

I can sit in the back of a crowded presentation at work, or in the back of my math class, with a PDA, doing various things, but if I'm seen sitting there using a GBA, that's somehow "disrespectful". Even though either way I'm clearly not paying attention.

This is why TI Calculator games are the most wonderful thing in the world. No one is going to see anything odd about me pressing buttons on a calculator in a large lecture hall.

Re:Karma whoring "duh" response:

[angle_slam]

This is why TI Calculator games are the most wonderful thing in the world. No one is going to see anything odd about me pressing buttons on a calculator in a large lecture hall.

Unless it's a literature class.

Re:Karma whoring "duh" response:

[kisrael]

Even then, it depends on the game and how slick you are.

Most people don't type in math equations watching the screen constantly, pressing buttons in semi-regular bursts for 10 minutes like they do when they're playing tetris. It's generally pretty obvious when someone isn't paying attention because of a game; most people are just to polite to remark on it.

Re:Karma whoring "duh" response:

[Wog]

Also useful for classes where you already know what's going on, but are required to attend. My PDA is my friend!

Re:Karma whoring "duh" response:

[stonecypher]

No one is going to see anything odd about me pressing buttons on a calculator in a large lecture hall.

Of course, this depends a little bit on how large the "big" lecture hall classes are at your school. At rutgers, you could set up a PS/2 on a big screen TV, come in butt naked with the frat, and give the professor a map to your location, and they still wouldn't notice.

Then again, at OSU, you could probably bring Cleveland.

Re:Karma whoring "duh" response:

[Yuan-Lung]

It's generally pretty obvious when someone isn't paying attention because of a game; most people are just to polite to remark on it.

Actually, in this one structural engineering class I took, most people are playing games on their HP calculators, and the rest are just sleeping.

I think it has something to do with the professor's awesome ability to read from his notes slowly in a consistant monotone.

Re:Karma whoring "duh" response:

[Ratso Baggins]

Unless it's a literature class.

Oh yeah like "for the girls" right? Dude, this is slashdot! Lit? They don't do pr0n lit classes (wtf do I know it's slashdot)

Re:Karma whoring "duh" response:

[stiller]

I can sit in the back of a crowded presentation at work, or in the back of my math class, with a PDA, doing various things, but if I'm seen sitting there using a GBA, that's somehow "disrespectful". Even though either way I'm clearly not paying attention.

You could ofcourse not bother to go to either one if your going to play games anyway, and just use you playtendo instead.

Isn't the PDA dead?

[Thinkit3]

If it doesn't have a cell phone built in, it'll be in a scrap heap soon.

Re:Isn't the PDA dead?

[stonecypher]

Ah yes, I haven't been hearing this for the last ten years. The nGage feel nice around your neck like that?

Here's a hint. If the most successful ergonomics and usage company on earth can't find a control layout that's good both for gaming and phoning, it probably doesn't exist.

Back into the cave for you.

Re:Isn't the PDA dead?

[goofrider]

If it doesn't have a cell phone built in, it'll be in a scrap heap soon.

The Zodiac has Bluetooth, it can communicate with your Bluetooth phone.

Since when

[UrgleHoth]

is wisdom conventional?

Right...

[zyridium]

Does anyone other than noisy, annoying, 10 year old kids really care about the quality of the games on a PDA/GB?

I mean seriously, has anyone here actually played a game for any reason other than being so bored that playing pong would be a relief?

Re:Right...

[zyridium]

Sorry for the long delay, was playing some q3 rocket arena..

I mean playing games on little mobile devices... I have always thought of them as ways to save sanity when in really boring situations...

Re:Right...

[UrgleHoth]

All you needed to clarify was your first sentence ;)

Re:Right...

[PainKilleR-CE]

I play GBA games at almost any given time, though most frequently at the laundrymat (which, as you state, is to save sanity), but often on my GB Player or when watching TV (during commercials, again probably to save sanity as I've noticed my tolerance for commercials has gotten very low the last couple months), or when someone else is watching the TV I have my consoles connected to and I just don't feel like playing a PC game.

On the other hand, I play games on my cell phone only when I'm on a smoke break and no one else is around to talk to. I played them at the laundrymat before I got my GBA, but now it's just habit to put the SP in my pocket when I'm taking the laundry to my car.

Re:Right...

[rufo]

They are handy to carry along for those types of situations, but no, they aren't exclusively for them. There are a lot of great GBA titles out there - some of them are only fit for screaming 10 year olds, but some of them are works of art on par with console games. I've often opted to play my GBA SP instead of my GC or PC - just depends on what game I feel like playing.

'Zat so?

[Anonymous Coward]

Conventional wisdom says that it's silly to buy a $300+ PDA to play games when a $100 Game Boy Advance SP is going to be better at it. At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2.

My impression is that every time person X buys anything person Y doesn't have (console, PC, graphics card, game) person Y insists that it's silly...

Re:'Zat so?

[WegianWarrior]

My impression is that every time person X buys anything person Y doesn't have (console, PC, graphics card, game) person Y insists that it's silly...

And it's certainly true if the item that person X has bought outpermforms and costs less than the item person Y has.

However, this 'wisdom' that is refered to in the ingress is what I like to call 'beancounters wisdom'. While it may appear ecomomicaly reasonable to "save" around 800$ by buying a dedicated gamingconsole instead of a multipurpose computingplatform (ie, a personal computer), I find that it isn't. A PC (or a Mac for that matter) is seldom used solely for gaming - it can be used as a typewriter, to help you organise your life (and remaning money =) ), get you online and so on. That, and a PC will often be superior at certain sorts of games, as well as often arriving with its own display device, which means that mum and dad can watch the news without junior having to break of his game...

That aside, I own myself two PCs (three if you count the old 486), one PSX, one PS2, one Plam and a GBA... so perhaps the wise thing to do is to get them all and use the one best suited at any one task?

Re:'Zat so?

[RowdyReptile]

That, and a PC will often be superior at certain sorts of games, as well as often arriving with its own display device, which means that mum and dad can watch the news without junior having to break of his game...

But on the PC, junior will have to step away from his game so dad can check email, pay bills, etc. From what I've seen, multiple tv's come home long before multiple computers in a typical house.

Re:'Zat so?

[giblfiz]

what about a $100 game cube, and a $500 computer. you just saved $400, and the ability to do two things at once.

Well...PDA/GBA have games in the same genre,,,

[FatSean]

...well, generally. While PC and Console games do overlap, there is enough of a difference in the software library to choose one over the other (or just choose both!). PDAs are clunky. I'd never buy a piece of portable electronics that expensive...my cell phones live a harsh life. A $100 gameboy getting dropped onto concrete is sad but acceptable...a $300 PDA is not.

To play oldschool games?

[icejai]

PDA's are getting pretty powerful these days, but trying to compete with the likes of Nintendo and Sony is just insane.

If I could, I'd make some kind of palm gaming application so that people could download ROMs of their favourite old-school games, kinda analogous to iTunes and their pay-per-download system.

99 cents for all-you-can-play-forever ROMs?

That'd be super sweet.

Re:To play oldschool games?

[EvilSporkMan]

Why pay 99 cents when you could get all-you-can-play-forever ROMs for free?

Re:To play oldschool games?

[anonymous loser]

If you had bothered to RTFA you would know that the Asus can emulate SNES at full speed. Meaning it is already possible to do just what you describe.

It also has a really kick-ass Real-Time Strategy game available that totally blows away anything you could get for a GBA.

Re:To play oldschool games?

[icejai]

I know there are full-speed emulators out there. What I was talking about was the 'actual system'; not the actual PDA application. ie. distributing SNES roms is illegal. They're the creative works of Nintendo. Much like the sharing of certain mp3's.
But, what if there were to legally sell and distribute SNES roms for PDA's, like how iTunes legally sells and distributes downloadable music.

Get what I'm saying now?

Re:To play oldschool games?

[djeaux]

If I could, I'd make some kind of palm gaming application so that people could download ROMs of their favourite old-school games

Depending on how what you mean by "old-school," you may find that it's already been done. I tried the Liberty emulator on an old Palm IIIc & it wasn't much different from an old Gameboy in terms of speed, especially with the Palm overclocked. Not being much for Gameboy games, I treated it as an experiment & moved on.

Considering the the the latest Palm hardware runs a 400 MHz XScale processor, speed ought not to be a concern for emulation now. And the video display is something that a $100 handheld game unit won't be able touch.

Those who are tired of the snake & pong games on their cellphones might like to stick an emulator on this.

Maybe the real question is, "When will game devices start featuring PDA & phone functions?"

Re:To play oldschool games?

[stonecypher]

Except that it never works. That's what Sega Game Channel was, that's what Intro Distro was, that's what the eReader is. People won't buy it if it has a limited life, and people think of things they download as impermanent. For some reason, media matters at one level or another.

Granted, Sega had bigger infrastructure costs than you'd have these days, and the nostalgia is stronger now than it ever has been before. But really, for just how long do you think people will extoll the virtues of Dragon Warrior 1 after they actually start playing it again? I found a copy and a working NES at funco land for $8 together, and I shugged and what-the-helled it.

I got into the first dungeon, and opened the locked trunk that had the key to get me through to the other side. As my inventory was full I could not take the key. I dropped an item, looked in the box again, and it was gone. I fought my way back to ground and then back down; still gone. I'd have to recreate 6 hours of gameplay over that I didn't know there was an inventory limit, much less that trunk contents were a one-time-only grab.

Granted, many games do hold up to the test of time - crysalis, koei games, et cetera - but the market is still too slim.

$10 "greatest hits" discs will always win. Besides, that's $2/rom, and you can take it to friends' houses. Good enough?

Re:To play oldschool games?

[frycarson]

Maybe the real question is, "When will game devices start featuring PDA & phone functions?"

You haven't sent he Ngage yet then... Phone, game system, mp3 player, and probably all sorts of other useless features. Builtin multiplayer makes it look neat, but I don't want to know what the fees would be if they're using the phone network to do it. And I think the pricing starts at around $400...
FrycarSon

Re:To play oldschool games?

[spoco2]

But you said " PDA's are getting pretty powerful these days, but trying to compete with the likes of Nintendo and Sony is just insane."

Whereas if you had RTFA you would have seen the page on games and noted games with graphics like this which really are above and beyond what the GBA can handle... so really, they can be better, and the comparison is very valid.

Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[more]

Both PDA and GBA are silly. Modern people carry their phones around anyway - from young children to elderly. Play with the phone, it is likely to have much more computing resources than the GBA, and about the same as that bulky PDA. Several good games are available for phones already; check out http://www.midlet-review.com for details. N-cage is only one option, most Nokia games and a few other are really incredible platforms for running Java and native solutions. There is a lot of bad games, but that does not mean that all the mobile games are bad.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[icejai]

What? A cellphone is likely to have much more computing resources than the GBA? *and* a PDA?

When was the last time you *used* a PDA? The Palm III from half a decade ago?? Today's PDAs have just about as much computing power as my 450MHz desktop!

Also, your post tells me that you're not that familiar with the "gamer" mindset. Sure, someone could make a portable gaming system that cuts my toenails and combs my hair... and you could use your argument to buy *that* system... but "multi-function" isn't the point here. Gamers want "gaming systems". Not just gagdets that happen to have enough processor power to play amputated, grainy, and filtered versions of console/PC games.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[kisrael]

Right. What sets a game system apart from other game systems is, generally, the console-specific titles.

With these new phone/game combos, the options seems to be ports of old console games (how many damn ports of Tomb Raider, the new Spy Hunter, and Tony Hawk are we going to see??) and games that are obviously "made by hobbyists"...these can be fun sometimes (mmm, Rally 1000 for Palm...) but generally are more time killers than really engrossing games. No company is mustering up enough clout to make the games that will sell their cells. (You'd think there'd be a whole world of online gaming available, but I think the technical issues get in the way of real mind-blowing games in that genre)

Overall, I'm not a big fan of combo hardware, at least not yet. I just have the smallest possible cell, palm, camera, and thinnest wallet I can, and load up my pockets. When one of those elements breaks or is just obsolete, it gets replaced without rocking my whole consumer electronics world.

On the other hand, I do wish I could do quick web access, instant message, and email on my palm...

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[more]

When was the last time you used a good phone? Take a look at the Symbian series 60 phones, run a few benchmarks and come back. These are roughly 20 x faster than a GBA and about 40 % of the fastest PDAs, with 20 times the battery life. BTW, the fastest PDA's have 450 MHz, but are only around 100 MHz (Pentium equivalent) in computing power as the memory subsystem is so slow (minimal caches, narrow bandwidth) -- and even much less for floating point intensive computation.

If you had read my comment, you should have notice that I did not claim that a modern phone has more resources than a PDA, but and about the same computational resources.

Read the comment and check your facts before posting!

I don't like your personal attack. I am the CEO of a game house that has created several globally marketed games, and I know what I am talking about. The phones will be the platform for mobile gaming, especially the multi-player games. N-gage is just showing the direction, but the real, normal, traditional phones will be the gaming platform of the future, no matter if you like it or not. Ten years and gaming without communication can only be found in museums.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[more]

The phones have 40% of the CPU of PDAs and 20x the CPU of GBA. It is sufficient to run most games, especially if compared to the GBA. The power consumption of modern phones for running the games is very, very low. Basically, the phones have a slightly more battery-saving architecture than the PDAs, but the difference in CPU performance is very small.

A Nokia series 40 phone that runs two weeks without reloading runs for 4 days with the CPU fully loaded, and a Symbian series 60 phone runs for 2-3 days with the CPU fully loaded. The batteris are not the problem, I have to admit that the form may be a problem for you. It is not a problem for me or my children.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[icejai]

When was the last time you used a good phone?

See, that's the problem right there. A phone is a phone. What companies like Nokia are doing with N-Gage is an act of desperation to expand to new markets without understanding the customers and the reasons for why they buy what they buy. They think "Hey, GameCube, PS2, XBox are all pretty power machines, and they and their games are selling like hotcakes... so why don't we do the same with our cellphones?"

I don't doubt for a picosecond that gaming with communication will be THE future. It's already starting now. The PS2, XBox, Gamecube all have their network-enabling-addons. The reason it works is because the gaming system is CORE, and the communication is a feature. Not the other way around where the communication system is CORE, and the gaming system is a feature, as it is with NGage.

I know, future cellphone devices may have gaming Cores, but it still won't fly because it will always be thought of as 'something attached to a cellphone'. The public's perception of these cellphone gaming devices will have to change, and it's going to be a very icy uphill battle with Sony, and Nintendo to contend with.

I bet that if two exact mobile-enabled gaming devices were created but contained in a different shell, one labelled Nintendo, the other labelled Kyocera, which do you think will sell? It doesn't matter what's underneath... what matters is what the customer sees and thinks.

Don't believe perception can't bring down a company? Look at the sales figures for Mitsubishi Eclipses and Eagle Talons. *Exact* same car, one car sold for every ten of the other. I'd bet money that you'd know which sold ten and which sold one on your first guess.
Why? Perception... of Japanese made = higher quality.

Plainly put, you're right... the future of portable gaming is most definitely going to be wireless multiplayer games.

But it will be wireless-enable gaming platforms. Not gaming-enabled cellphones.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[Octagon Most]

I just have the smallest possible cell, palm, camera, and thinnest wallet I can, and load up my pockets. When one of those elements breaks or is just obsolete, it gets replaced

I think I understand why your wallet is so thin.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

Judging from the initial sales of the N-gage, you may want to re-evaluate your position. Besides, leap-frog competition will ensure that computational resources will even out. Once that happens, the biggest (hardware) factor that will affect the user's gameplay experience will be screen size. Playing games on a 1-inch square screen just sucks. Any device that incorporates a big screen will look more like a PDA than a cell phone. Admittedly, when this happens, the line between PDA and cell phone will be very blurry indeed.

Another thing - we're been playing multiplayer games on the PC for about ten years now, and single-player gaming is better than ever (Hitman 1&2, Max Payne 1&2). Ten years from now, I think people will still want to play solitare, tetris, snood (or Hitman and Max Payne) on their mobile devices while waiting in line, or whenever they're physically occupied and mentally idling.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[icejai]

And, to add to my previous comment.

Since you're the CEO, I don't see you abandoning your company or making any 180 degree changes with all the investment your company probably already put into its current strategy. But this is where I would re-focus my mobile-game-development company if I were CEO of my own mobile-game company.

First, there are some truths.
a) Mobile platforms will always be playing catchup technically... so there's no point in trying to out-do, or match the most recent console platforms... in term of technology.
b) because of a), there's not much point in porting games from more advanced systems with higher resolutions. Because then, customers will only perceive you as a seller and provider of lower-quality games. You'll be the company who turns good console games into dehydrated shrivelled up version. Why? Because the ports will always be compared to the originals. And you can't beat or match the originals... *especially* on a cellphone.

Second, I'd learn from Nintendo of the 80's.
a) When you're at a disadvantage with graphics, processing power, and the number of buttons, all you have that will work for you will be gameplay. This is one of the reasons why why a two-colour spinach gameboy beat out Sega's portable system, and Neo-Geo's portable system. Both of which were WAAAAY superior, technically at least.

b) Since i) it'd be a waste to port higher quality games, ii) can't port nintendo games (without paying royalties), the only viable long-term strategy is to develop fun, addictive original games.

So that's it.
Your company has to start making mobile games that will attain legendary status like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, bomberman, contra, etc etc.

You're the CEO of not a mobile-gaming company.
You're the CEO of a GAMING company.

So stop showing off the hardware and show us how fun your games are.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[WegianWarrior]

Off course, I may not be in the markedsegment a pda/phone/portable console is aimed at, but as I'm in the markedsegment that will end up paying for it, I feel that I got a right to say a few words...

A phone is for comunicating. Anythign beyond that is a 'bonus' feature. To comunicate, you don't need much in the way of screen nor sound - and I'm more than happy to keep my old Nokia 5110 until it dies, as it gives me both voice and SMS coupled with a longlasting batterylife. In short, it is a good phone even if its a tad large to hold in one hand and cradle against my cheek.

On the other hand, both gaming and a PDA simply screams for large screens, and gaming in particular needs a decent soundsystem. My Palm130 has a screen thats about 5cm square, while my GBA has a screen thats about 6cm by 4cm. The ergometricks of the PDA and the GBA is also radicaly different (the PDA is held in the palm of one hand whiel the other manipulate the stylus, while the GBA is held with both hands, letting ones thumbs do the playing).

Then there is the power of the processors and the batterylife to consider. You may or may not be right that a 'modern' phone is more powerfull than a GBA, but I has a hard time beliving it can outrun a PDA. So you'll have to build the phone around the processor requirering the most powerfull CPU, in other words the PDA-prosessor (unless you make a design with mutiple CPU's). This in turn means that you'll eat up your battery faster than fast - my old phone lasts five to six days between recharging, while I must rechage my PDA about every day (I do use it a lot). If my phone was powered by a PDA-prosessor, I fear I would have to recharge it several times a day (the phone is on all the time when all is said and done).

The point of this rant? The 'intergrtaded device' is a pipedream. The requirements for the portable console, the PDA and the phone are mutualy incompatible - the ergonomics alone means that compromises must be made. Better to keep them seperate I say - that way one of them can break wihtout leaving you completly without mobile computingpower as well.

ps: I've also noticed that while the mobile phone is banned on all flights, and most cabincrew asks you to turn your PDA off if it contains transmitters, no one has yet told me I need to shut my GBA off on long flights... not to mention that keeping them seperate allows me to pick and choose what to have along.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[PainKilleR-CE]

When was the last time you used a good phone? Take a look at the Symbian series 60 phones, run a few benchmarks and come back.

Regardless of other comments, let's take a quick check. I play games, a lot. I have a fairly expensive computer on which I play games, I have 4 current-generation consoles in my home on which I play more games, I have 3 GBAs (1 original version and 2 SPs, one of which I gave to my gf when I decided to buy a black one) on which I play even more games (and those games I play on the Cube as well through the GB Player), and I have a cell phone, on which I play the Othello game that came with it.

You want to know what matters to me when I'm looking at phones? What can I get for less than $100 without switching (or changing) my plan? I've been looking at the Danger Hip-Top (or wtf it's called) for a while now, but I would probably have to change my plan and pay ~$200-250 for the phone. Considering that I've already had to replace my current phone in less than a year, there's no way in hell I'm paying $200-250 for a phone. The phone I have now cost me nothing, and replacing it also cost nothing (because they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it or that anything I had done had caused it to stop working), and the only time gaming on it even comes into question is in ~5 minute bursts when I didn't expect to not be doing anything (because otherwise I'd have a GBA).

These are roughly 20 x faster than a GBA and about 40 % of the fastest PDAs, with 20 times the battery life. BTW, the fastest PDA's have 450 MHz, but are only around 100 MHz (Pentium equivalent) in computing power as the memory subsystem is so slow (minimal caches, narrow bandwidth) -- and even much less for floating point intensive computation.

OK, so now you're saying a cell phone that's 20x faster than a GBA (a 200MHz ARM) is ~40% the speed of a 100MHz Pentium (in other words, a mid to high-end 4x86), so I could probably play Doom to find the rough equivalent of PC games.

If you had read my comment, you should have notice that I did not claim that a modern phone has more resources than a PDA, but and about the same computational resources.

If I read your comment the way it was written (and remember it correctly) you actually stated that cell phones were more powerful than PDAs. Perhaps you simply mistyped, or maybe I'm remembering what I read incorrectly.

I am the CEO of a game house that has created several globally marketed games, and I know what I am talking about. The phones will be the platform for mobile gaming, especially the multi-player games. N-gage is just showing the direction, but the real, normal, traditional phones will be the gaming platform of the future, no matter if you like it or not.

If N-gage is 'showing the direction', then the direction is down the toilet. If it's showing the direction the technology will be going on future cell phones, then people are going to stop buying cell phones until they understand some basics of the way people use phones, and the way people play games (if they actually want people to play games). As it is, Nokia showed a lack of understanding of both sides, as people don't want to use the N-gage for either. As for cell phone games in general, most people seem to want quick games that they can play while barely paying attention, not ports of old console games. I believe someone else already pointed this out. Most of the companies that have actually made money making cell phone games are making games just like that, and are doing them with low budgets and short development times, and that is what it takes for them to make money from those titles. Guess what, that's where it's likely to stay.

Ten years and gaming without communication can only be found in museums.

That's completely unlikely if you're talking about communication in the terms of networking, or multiplayer gaming. No one will ever give up single-player gaming. The PC gamers should have taught everyone th

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[0x0d0a]

I tend to agree that you're right -- about the ten years from now bit. However, the picture today is much different from the picture in ten years...plus, the phone industry is currently pricy and service-oriented instead of product-oriented. Phones aren't going to take over like that.

In Japan, your comments may be more spot-on, where portable devices for mass transit use are more popular.

I am the CEO of a game house

Not to knock you, but...position means very little on Slashdot. You may have set up your own company, but most folks aren't going to care much about titles unless they can be tied to past solid work. Linus Torvalds' name commands respect because of the work he's done. Being CFO of some company does not.

And in the gaming industry, which is rapidly shifting and *full* of bad predictions, this is doubly so. John Romero makes a nice example.

Also, I think more laptop-style functionality will merge with phone form factors well before phones catch on in the gaming market, and that hasn't happened. 802.11b and big screens currently overcome communicate-anywhere and light weight.

Remember satellite phones. They were truly communicate anywhere, but they had other drawbacks, and died. Phones may or may not come out on top. I agree that a small form factor is likely to win, a carry-everywhere style is likely to win, and that such a device will likely have voice communication features. On the other hand, a better input mechanism than a phone keypad is also probably necessary, a bigger viewing system (or goggles) is probably necessary, and more computing power is probably necessary. Rather than saying "phones will win eventually", it's probably more meaningful to say "convergence will win eventually".

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[kisrael]

I think I understand why your wallet is so thin.

Heh, cute.

There is definately some wear and tear for those guys, but the hardware I buy seems to last for a bit and isnt that expensive: a Canon S200, closeout for =~ $200-$250 , jsut replaced my Palm IIIc with a Sony SJ22 for =~ $150, my cell is this 2 or 3 year old tiny Samsung model.

My wallet is a $3 vinyl thing, no bill fold, just a folding piece of black vinyl with two clear plastic pockets, one for cards, the other for bills. Patched with electrical tape :-)

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[pommiekiwifruit]

20x faster than a GBA (a 200MHz ARM) is ~40% the speed of a 100MHz Pentium (in other words, a mid to high-end 4x86),

Woah, can I have your GBA please? Mine is only the standard 16.7Mhz ARM7TDMI and I didn't know you could overclock them like that! I guess 20 times that would be a 333Mhz RISC chip with decent memory - hardly beyond the realms of possibility for a PDA or cellphone.

And yes, PC's 100Mhz (or 133Mhz) busses suck - I reckon if you are thrashing memory a 450Mhz PC can be slower than a zero-wait-state 333Mhz RISC chip (of course the usual answer is "so don't thrash memory then!").

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[PainKilleR-CE]

Why are you introducing this completely artificial price limit on the phone, but do not have similar artificial price limit on the PDA?

Why the price limit on the phone? I have had a cell phone for less than a year and have already had to have it replaced. Why would I want to spend more than $100 on something that might not last me a year? Furthermore, it's a phone, what's the point? It's primary purpose is to make and receive calls, and that is the only thing it's required to do well. If it costs more and actually does that one thing not quite as well as a phone that costs nothing, why would I buy it? As for the PDA portion of the argument, I don't own a PDA, but have been considering it. I haven't decided, yet, what my price limit is on a PDA, but it definitely exists somewhere. I'd have to say that when it comes down to it, I don't want my PDA being repaired when my phone doesn't work or vice-versa, and frankly even the cheap-ass free phone I have now has many of the functions most people buy PDAs to receive (contacts, synchs with Outlook and possibly other programs, for starters).

This is just plain stupid. I prefer to have a new phone over an old one. Also, I prefer to spend my $500 on the phone rather than having a lousy free phone phone and a PDA.

Good for you. Personally, my free phone works great and cost me nothing, and my plan is the best available in my area by far. If I bought an N-gage, it would mean switching plans, if I buy a Hip-Top, which my carrier supports, the plan options aren't completely clear, so before I even think about spending $200-250 I have to make absolutely sure that they won't screw me on the plan. Everything in the middle offers minimal useful functionality above the free phone I have, but costs $50-200. Then there's the fact that there are only about 6 phones (other than the older ones) that my carrier supports in the first place, and, like I already said, between the Hip-Top and what I already have for free, there's minimal gain for a definitive cost. Colour screens and polyphonic ring tones are not what I consider worth $100 or more. Many of the more expensive phones don't even have as much memory as the phone I already have, although it's not like I need 20 million contacts, either.

Let me turn your point completely over to show how silly it is: I actually got my PDA for free and I am not willing to to pay more than 100 euros for a new PDA. A PDA for 100 euros sucks. Thus a modern 500 euro phone is a better solution. Also, my PDA has a gray scale display so it is pretty much useless for gaming.

OK, that's nice, but in what situation would you get a free PDA and/or have anything stopping you from choosing from all PDA models available. In my case, I'm very aware that I haven't even seen a cell phone that works well for gaming, and I have a very limited choice of phones in the first place (or I switch plans and get screwed there), so the cost of the phone is almost completely based on the benefits of the new phone, which are almost none. Then again, I don't know that I'd have any reason for a colour screen on a PDA, either, unless I found one that was good for gaming (and I was looking at the Zodiacs, but I have to play with one before I can make that kind of decision).

Perhaps you should recheck before posting. I have not claimed that cell phones are more powerful than PDAs. It was another person replying to my original message who put that statement into my mouth. In my original post I claimed that the performance is about the same.

You are correct, your original post states: Play with the phone, it is likely to have much more computing resources than the GBA, and about the same as that bulky PDA.

I would simply have to point out that many of the phones that near the power of PDAs are almost equally bulky, though. At that point, it comes to a question of whether or not you want to carry that around if all you need is a phone, but again I haven't spent a lot of time looking at p

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[PainKilleR-CE]

Woah, can I have your GBA please? Mine is only the standard 16.7Mhz ARM7TDMI and I didn't know you could overclock them like that! I guess 20 times that would be a 333Mhz RISC chip with decent memory - hardly beyond the realms of possibility for a PDA or cellphone.

I should've looked before I wrote, but I assumed, and we can all see where that got me. Then again, it has an 8080 chip for GB compatability, too, that's gotta be worth something ;)

And yes, PC's 100Mhz (or 133Mhz) busses suck - I reckon if you are thrashing memory a 450Mhz PC can be slower than a zero-wait-state 333Mhz RISC chip (of course the usual answer is "so don't thrash memory then!").

Yeah, those 100MHz and 133MHz busses, in my computers that are over 2 years old, which ran at 400, 500, 600, and 1000 MHz, all seemed just fine with 256 and 512MB of RAM. Then again, running a significantly faster bus in my current computer (over 1 year old for the motherboard, CPU, and RAM) didn't make nearly as much difference as upgrading the video card from a 64MB GeForce 2GTS to a 128MB GeForce 4Ti. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you crunch the numbers) for most gamers, the GPU is actually more important than the CPU today, though you still need enough of a CPU to get things moving.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[pommiekiwifruit]

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you crunch the numbers) for most gamers, the GPU is actually more important than the CPU today, though you still need enough of a CPU to get things moving.

Woah, but according to Intel's (dong ding dong dit!) TV advertising, if I use their brand of CPU, my internet connection speed will increase, i'll be able to write CD-ROMs and my polygons will be smoother!

The N64 only had a 100Mhz CPU but they sold it on its bus bandwidth (pity it had such a small on-chip texture cache and cartridges) - on my 1000Mhz PC I think someone gave it a teensy cache, so it runs like a dog on certain programs.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[PainKilleR-CE]

Woah, but according to Intel's (dong ding dong dit!) TV advertising, if I use their brand of CPU, my internet connection speed will increase, i'll be able to write CD-ROMs and my polygons will be smoother!

Yeah, if you have a P-100 right now some of this might actually be true.

The N64 only had a 100Mhz CPU but they sold it on its bus bandwidth (pity it had such a small on-chip texture cache and cartridges)

Consoles generally don't sell on technical specs. On the other hand, the 16-bit era established that some things can differentiate the consoles in the minds of consumers, such as 8-bit vs 16-bit vs 32-bit vs 64-bit.

- on my 1000Mhz PC I think someone gave it a teensy cache, so it runs like a dog on certain programs.

All depends on the CPU being used. I never had a problem with my 1GHz P3, until it fried because a screw was dislodged in a move and found it's way into a bad place. If it weren't for that, I'd probably still be using it.

Re:Both PDA and GBA are silly.

[Cychwyn]

Ten-hour flights; Either I chose to play games on my GBA (not SP for obvious reasons...), or I bring a phone (hypothetic, I don't own one and am deliberately staying clear of them) and die of boredom half way through. And I can link up to my fiance for some good fights on the GBA:s - best way to relieve airport-related stress.
My vote is for picking the best tool for the job. That this feeds my gadget-greed is purely incidental. :-)

Cy.

nah...

[herrvinny]

Forget it. If I want to play Command and Conquer, I'll do it on a full blown laptop.

Forget action games

[homer_ca]

I tried gaming on a 400Mhz Dell Axim. Morphgear is a pretty good arcade and console emulator, but it's just a little choppy with the sound on. The big problem is the controls. The directional pad is a little mushy and imprecise. Maybe it's better on other PDAs. The IPAQs I've seen in stores have a more substantial click on the pad. I also don't think the buttons were built to take the constant pounding of gaming and they're obviously not replacable. Still, for non-action games like Final Fantasy or Nethack it works fine.

Re:Forget action games

[cK-Gunslinger]

Instead of PDA + GBA, why has not anyone tried GBA + PDA? I mean, you could just add a touchscreen, stylus holder, flip-down KB, and a small CPU/mem to an ordinary GB Advance. I think that would be more akin to what a "gamer" would want. Perhaps that's what the N-Gage was going for? But why the high prices?

Re:Forget action games

[the morgawr]

If the N-Gage is built like most other cell phones, there is a single GaAs transitor (specifically a MESFET) in there for amplifying the cellular signal. Since the tech to integrate GaAs transitors does not exist and yeilds are low, they are very expensive. That price really is about middle of the road for a cell phone (they probably are selling at a loss). You just don't usually see the price because the various carriers sell the phone on the cheep to get you to use their service.

Re:Forget action games

[homer_ca]

That's true. The cost of phones is subsidized by carriers. Ask for the price of an unactivated phone if you want to know how much they really cost. Be prepared for major sticker shock. Even used mid-range phones sell on Ebay for over $100.

Re:Forget action games

[stonecypher]

why has not anyone tried GBA + PDA?

Because we remember the WorkBoy. There has been much talk of a WorkBoy Advance. I'm pretty happy that it never happened.

Re:Not silly? [OT]

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I find funny is that the same people who think nothing of spending $3000 rather than $1000 on their computer because it's a "gaming rig", even though a console "gaming rig" would cost maybe $150...

are the same people who bitch endlessly about the fact that you can't get a Macintosh for $1000, and to get a passable mac you have to pay $2000 or so.

Now, why is it that the amount of money you spend on your gaming machine is immaterial, but if you have to spend more than $1200 or so on the machine you actually do work and stuff on, well, that's just unacceptable? Is the only reason that they bitch about the Mac price is that it doesn't play games?

(Yes, I realize most people just don't like macs. I'm specifically complaining here about the "who'd spend that much" crowd,not everyone who uses wiows..)

You're ridiculous

[stratjakt]

no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation

I say that all the time. I think it's insane that a friend of mine just spent $500 to upgrade his PC to get Halo playable, when he could have bought an Xbox for about 100 bucks used.

I much prefer sitting on the couch playing games up on the big screen than sitting in a task chair 18 inches from a monitor. I prefer a thumbstick to a keyboard and mouse. I also prefer the types of titles that come out on consoles, and find the console exclusives to be some of the best games around.

More precisely, I generally dont care for FPS titles, and am more interested in a fun game than hi-res eye candy.

The one advantage the PC had for me was online multiplayer. An advantage its rapidly losing as more and more people plug in their Xboxes, PS2s and GCNs.

The console is catching up to the PC graphically as well - it's far surpassed the low-end PC's with so many HDTV ready titles showing up. 720p or 1080i on a big screen for me please.

And of course, the cost of entry is miniscule, compared to PC hardware. Perhaps ATI and nVidia should find a way to subsidize their hardware through software sales to try and close the gap.

Re:You're ridiculous

[XaXXon]

I dunno if you actually played any of those hdtv games for xbox, but I was unimpressed by it.

I bought the kit for pushing component video out of an x-box and took it over to a friend's house who has a 56" Sony HDTV projection screen. I cranked it up to 1080i and pretty much the only thing I saw was that it slowed down. The loading screen with the matrix letters were crisper, but that was it. I noticed no change in-game other than it being slower (noticably chunky in spots that were smooth in standard resolution).

This doesn't really surprise me, though, as all an xbox has is a slightly upgraded geforce3. That card doesn't exactly have an amazing fill rate -- it's 2 generations old. My Radeon 9700, however, pushes 1600x1200 in games quite well. Granted, it cost $200 more than the entire xbox, but that's the price if you want high-res graphics. Just don't be saying that 1080i on an xbox touches my computer.

Everyone whines about cost.. I say get a real job and don't worry about it. Gaming is a hobby. Hobbies take money. Some people work on their car and buy 20" lift kits. Some people fly remote control airplanes. I pimp the hell out of my computer. I buy lights, I buy fans, I drill holes in the case, and I buy damned expensive video cards, and I don't complain about it (well, maybe a little, but I still buy 'em)

I guess it's all about how you want to spend your money. I work hard; I play hard.

Re:You're ridiculous

[stratjakt]

No, I agree, Xbox's lineup of titles has sucked hard. It seems to be getting better, with Grabbed by the Ghoulies, the GTA combo, Crimson Skies, KOTOR.

The Gamecube and PS2 see much more playtime than the xbox.

Re:You're ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's insane that a friend of mine just spent $500 to upgrade his PC to get Halo playable, when he could have bought an Xbox for about 100 bucks used. ......

The console is catching up to the PC graphically as well - it's far surpassed the low-end PC's with so many HDTV ready titles showing up. 720p or 1080i on a big screen for me please.

So you would rather spend $8,000 on a TV that has lower quality resolution and dots per inch than a computer monitor than $500 to upgrade a computer?

I prefer a thumbstick to a keyboard and mouse.

I like you guys. You are easy to kill. Joysticks are slow and unresponsive. Mice are precise and lightning fast.

The one advantage the PC had for me was online multiplayer. An advantage its rapidly losing ....

Yeah right.

Re:You're ridiculous

[damiam]

I think it's insane that a friend of mine just spent $500 to upgrade his PC to get Halo playable

I think it'd take a lot more than a hardware upgrade to make Halo playable.

Re:You're ridiculous

[Frederic54]

yup, and the price for a 60 inches 16:9 HDTV is?

Re:You're ridiculous

[stratjakt]

So you would rather spend $8,000 on a TV that has lower quality resolution and dots per inch than a computer monitor than $500 to upgrade a computer?

I dunno where you shop, but $8000 would get me a 52" widescreen plasma with a full surround sound setup.

Yeah, I'll take the plasma over some silly PC monitor any day of the week. Fuck "dots per inch" "pixels per second". If you're counting dots per inch, the game you're playing must really suck.

I like you guys. You are easy to kill. Joysticks are slow and unresponsive. Mice are precise and lightning fast.

You probably didn't read the part where I said I don't like FPS games. Aside from that or RTS titles (which I don't car for either), where's the mouse advantage?

You and your keyboard and mouse can challenge me in NHL 2004 or Soul Calibur II any day of the week. I find Crimson Skies infinately more playable with the gamepad than it was on the PC.

I spend all day in front of a computer. When I get home, I can't imagine sitting in front of another computer as fun. I want to kick back on the couch, crank the volume, crack open a beer and just play.

Re:You're ridiculous

[stratjakt]

The price is ... well worth it.

The TV is not just for games. What are PCs for? Games and porn. Yah, you keep your blurry little 6" high divx clips, thanks. I much prefer the widescreen image from a progressive scan DVD player.

Of course, you could get a decent 27-33 inch TV for the price of a quality 17" monitor.

There are simply some people who prefer playing console games to PC games. I'm one of them.

Re:You're ridiculous

[stonecypher]

I think it's insane that a friend of mine just spent $500 to upgrade his PC to get Halo playable, when he could have bought an Xbox for about 100 bucks used.

Of course, there's a pretty big difference in the graphics quality between halo/pc and halo/hidef TV, and if you don't have hidef, it's gonna cost you well more than $500 to catch up to being behind.

There's also that, well, really, who wants an XBox? They're uglier than sin, they take up lots of space, and the controllers have to be lashed to the top of my car because they won't fit in the back seat.

Let's not forget that the $500 upgrade to the PC affects all of our other PC games (such as Civ3, the only game I've played for like 6 months now.)

I'll take my PC any day. Sorry, charlie.

Re:You're ridiculous

[stonecypher]

I bought the kit for pushing component video out of an x-box and took it over to a friend's house who has a 56" Sony HDTV projection screen. I cranked it up to 1080i and pretty much the only thing I saw was that it slowed down.

To be fair, very few games for the XBox make much use of HDTV. Worse yet, the ones that do generally do 720p, not 1080i. DragonSlayer 3D does 1080i, but it's not exactly impressive. Syberia also does 1080i, but I've never seen it.

Beware that most sales goons don't know half of what they're talking about. DS3D, Syberia, and The Matrix are the *only* 1080i games for the XBox. That's /it/. I'm a PS2 fan; this is from my coworker. Still, ask the TV if it's getting a 1080i signal, etc, etc, etc. Act like it's some dufus friend's badly set up DVD player; assume it's broken in at least half a dozen ways.

Because whereas neither The Matrix nor DS3D are really graphically impressive, I was able to see the difference quite clearly - the detail with which their mediocre graphics was rendered was quite a difference.

YMMV.

Re:You're ridiculous

[stratjakt]

True enough, the xbox doesn't have as much power as a PC with a $500 GeForceFX. Few games support 1080i anyways.

The sweet spot is 640p, 95% of the games support it, and there's no slowdown in anything I've seen, since the xbox is 640x480 anyways. The difference between 640p and a standard TVs interlaced pseudo-512x384 analog is night and day.

Of course, in a couple years, the next gen of consoles will likely have no problem pushing 1080i, although for my $ 720p looks much better. It's the same amount of pixels, just one is interlaced, the other is not. Once you ditch the interlaced signal, you never want to go back.

It's just a matter of preference. I can't get into PC games, because when I'm sitting in front of the monitor and keyboard, a little voice keeps nagging me "you should be writing code or something, not playing this shit!". Playing games is about escaping for a short while, and I just dont feel it sitting at my desk.

And I've never had an experience where increasing resolution or detail options in a game made it more enjoyable to me. I'm an oldschooler who's played enough nintendo that his eyes are shot, I cant tell 1600x1200 from 800x600.

I have had this conversation numerous times, though:

Me: Unreal 2 sucks.

Friend: You need a new video card.

Me: Why?

Friend: Because I can play it at 1600x1200 with specular highlights and gaussian blooglewhips and high level particle detail and mipmapped megamonster pseudo antiisotropic mega filtered ultraquads!

Me: And that will make the game suck less somehow?

Friend: Did I mention 8x full screen antialiasing and quadmipped mega triadical texture parsing?

Like you said, it's all about preference, and how you want to spend your money.

Re:You're ridiculous

[stonecypher]

somewhat less than a 60-inch 16:9 monitor.

Re:You're ridiculous

[blixel]

And I've never had an experience where increasing resolution or detail options in a game made it more enjoyable to me. I'm an oldschooler who's played enough nintendo that his eyes are shot, I cant tell 1600x1200 from 800x600.

I don't care to get into the heated debate that everyone else is, but that line realy jumped out at me. Being a Flight Sim fanatic, it's all about the resolution. Saying that the difference between 1600x1200 and 800x600 is night/day is a gross understatement. The world you fly in becomes nearly photo realistic when you hit a certain resolution. Whereas it's ugly and clunky looking at the lower resolutions.

I'm not big on the FPS genre, though I think they are interesting to look at, visually. I just don't care to play them really. But I have of course played them. And there again the resolution difference is night/day.

I'm curious what kind of video card you're using? You can get a very inexpensive ($100-$150) NVidia or ATI card that will take advantage of a lot of the visual features that your card might be missing? It's not just about eye candy. At least not with Flight Simulators. It completely changes the experience when you have rich detail. another example

Re:You're ridiculous

[Lumpy]

I prefer a thumbstick to a keyboard and mouse.

I like people like you... in UT2003 and Q3 anr RtCW ET we call you "easy prey"

you CANT play a FPS decently without a mouse or trackball (i know some players that use trackballs exclusively and waste the mouse players easily)

The right controls for the right game... FPS requires lots of keys and a precision pointing device. (best keyboard is the programmable USB keypod)

this is where console games fail. give me a keypod or better yet a yoke with buttons and a mouse/trackball and things get much better on the console.

Re:You're ridiculous

[DunbarTheInept]

More precisely, I generally dont care for FPS titles, and am more interested in a fun game than hi-res eye candy.

And so you prefer consoles, WHY? Console games are all about the eye candy being the most important thing.

Re:You're ridiculous

[DunbarTheInept]

What are PCs for? Games and porn.

If you're use of PC's is that limited, then I'd understand why you don't think they're worth it. But some people here are actual computer geeks and know there are a few more uses than that.

Re:You're ridiculous

[stonecypher]

No, 720 line progressive is not higher quality than 1080 line interlaced. And the reason I wasn't talking about 1080p is that the XBox doesn't do it.

33% more screen space in exchange for slower refresh is and always has been a win, or interlacing wouldn't be well known today. Please reserve the snide comments until you've spent a bit of time thinking them through.

Re:You're ridiculous

[sheetsda]

I prefer a thumbstick to a keyboard and mouse.

I'm one of (apparently a minority) of people who doesn't buy consoles for this reason alone. If consoles offered me the precision of a mouse I'd be much more apt to jump on board. As it stands analog sticks usually control viewpoint velocity (stick in center = 0 viewpoint movement) making it hard to aim (yes, I'm an FPS player), and those that don't force me to hold the stick in position when its trying to move; either way its no good for FPSes. With a mouse however I just whip it into position where I want to look and presto: snipe.

The console is catching up to the PC graphically as well

Indeed. This is an unfortunate consequence of too many game developers trying to maximize their market share by including all the people who never upgrade. If you keep watch on all the graphics demos that NVidia, ATI, et al. release you know what I'm talking about. Modern GFX cards are capable of doing vastly superior effects than what you see in most PC games. (Example screenshot: Rendered real-time, NVidia demo called 'Dawn')

Re:You're ridiculous

[stratjakt]

I have a GeForceFX 5200 right now.

All of it's new features let it render the new DX9 eye candy, but it renders it all too slowly to be playable, so you shut the eye candy off to make the game playable.

In the end it's really no better for gaming than the first generation Radeon I replaced with it.

The point about flight sims makes sense. If that was my bag, I'd probably invest. I'm just more the arcadey, platform-action type, I guess.

Re:You're ridiculous

[DeadScreenSky]

But I play a LOT more genres than just FPS. And most of them control better with a console!

there's a big difference...

[mantera]

There's one important factor that is often ommitted from such considerations; battery life, which is a very finite resource. I personally carry in my bag a cybershot camera that i use to videoblog and a clie, and although convergence devices have hit the market that provide a PDA with video capabilities i'm not so tempted to buy one any time soon for that very same reason. The camera would take just over an hour of video before it runs out of battery, which i personally use almost daily, and that wouldn't affect the PDAs battery at all. Separation of concerns is a good thing, and i'd imagine that gaming that'd be intensive enough to consume a PDAs battery mean it's better to have a dedicated gaming device even if that means carrying two gadgets. PDAs are meant to be reliable and a PDA that's out of battery power isn't reliable at all.

Re:Uh...

[angle_slam]

$500 in upgrades? For what? If for hardware, you don't think you will ever have to buy a new graphics card for your Mac?

My DooM 3 Machine

[dolo666]

Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHz
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English (I'll get a multi-button mouse if I can find one good for gaming, and a gamepad)
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
8GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 8x1GB
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Accessory kit
Mac OS X - U.S. English
APP for Power Mac (w/ or w/o display) - Enrollment Kit
Klipsch ProMedia GMX 5.1 Speakers & Monster 2-meter Cable .Mac Promotional Bundle
Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
iSight
Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel) + Apple DVI to ADC Adapter
DVD Studio Pro 2
Soundtrack
Final Cut Pro 4.0
Shake 3 Mac OS X
AppleWorks 6.2.7
Command and Conquer Generals
BloodRayne
Halo
Masters Of Orion III
Myth III - The Wolf Age
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Star Trek Elite Force 2
Unreal Tournament 2003
WarCraft III
WarCraft III: Frozen Throne
Adobe Creative Suite - Premium
Doom 3 (not included in price)
Snak (not included in price)
$22,089.35
Anything I'm missing?

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[MikeXpop]

Yes. Half Life 2.

Unfortunately, that's going to bump up your price a couple hundred dollars.

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[ivan256]

The memory costs $5000 because it's better than other memory. Really.

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[WIAKywbfatw]

A flying toasters screensaver?

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[BetterThanCaesar]

The look on your face when lightning strikes and your G5 explodes in your face:

priceless.

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[otis wildflower]

Anything I'm missing?

Will Doom3 support 1920x1200 panels natively?

Last time I tried Q3A it only supported 'standard' 4x3 resolutions up to 1600x1200, and a few piddling sub-1280 wide res's.

OTOH nothing would make me happier than seeing widescreen supported properly. The original UT looked pretty good in 1920x1200, and wasn't _THAT_ slow on my Geforce GTS..

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[vidnet]

Anything I'm missing?

A girlfriend?

On the other hand, girlfriends come and go, but the love from a Dual 2ghz G5 is pure and everlasting, until people outspec it on their PDAs next year.

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[schapman]

if you want a good mouse for gaming.. check out Logitech mx700 you can't beat logitech for mice. and they will soon have that mouse in bluetooth w/ a sweet keyboard combo. Logitech(R) diNovo(TM) Media Desktop(TM)

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[AKnightCowboy]

I would've bought a Powermac, but it doesn't support my two favorite games: Half-Life and Battlefield 1942. I don't know why I become addicted to games that are not cross-platform, but for the past 4 or 5 years I've never been fond of a game that was available for both Windows and Macs. Likewise, I played my PS2 for a grand total of 2 weeks after Christmas until I became bored with cheating in Vice City and realized the rest of the games for these consoles suck. I ended up going back to playing Counter-Strike on the PC. How in the hell do people play games that only have 4 or 5 buttons for the controller? With the PC I can map dozens of keys to functions I need. Consoles are nowhere near as good for gaming as PCs are. Macs are useless since there are no good games.

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[rufo]

Q3A does support non-standard resolutions. There's a few config-file options that you can twiddle that make it work.

Many games on the Mac actually do support widescreen, as it's much more common for a Mac to have a widescreen monitor (due to Apple's widescreen laptops and two of their three LCD monitors being widescreen) then for a PC. For example, Warcraft 3 and Diablo II both support them (don't know if the PC versions do or not).

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[stonecypher]

A few wetnaps and a clean pair of underwear, by the sound of it.

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[yomegaman]

Better throw in some renter's insurance, that way you can get a new one after I break into your place and steal it. :-)

Re:My DooM 3 Machine

[Man Eating Duck]

I use one at work (graphics editing), for which it is absolutely spectacular. Comfortable, and good precision.

I borrowed it home to check out it's gaming capabilities, and found it lacking. It seems that it lags and skips just a tad when you turn quickly (because of rf transmission?), and the batteries makes it a little heavy.

For gaming, I prefer the MX300.

Yea

[mao che minh]

A console can still not achieve the versatility of a PC when it comes to gaming. I prefer consoles to PCs due to convienence, but I do recognize that gaming on a console is still laregly confined to the "local area". Only the Xbox has truly brought full-fledged online gaming to the console masses (local storage, patches, large centralized gaming network, etc - basically everything that makes online PC gaming so good).

The problem with this, is that Microsoft has been using its endless bags of cash and an unfair monopoly status to swing this much weight into a new market. If they weren't able to lose hundreds of millions of dollars to do this, it would have never happened. Online console gaming would still be largely non-existent. Just something to think about: is Microsoft good in this case, or are they bad?

Re:Yea

[RatBastard]

Considering that they are actually creating a marketspace rather than taking over an established one, I think they are "good" in this case.

And yes, one could argue that the Dreamcast actually created the online console gaming market, it didn't go anywhere in the USA, or Europe.

My problem with MS isn't when they create new markets, it's when they Wal-Mart an existing market. That and the piss-poor "security" on their Windows products.

Re:Yea

[stonecypher]

A console can still not achieve the versatility of a PC when it comes to gaming.

Whereas this is true, the amount by which it is true shrinks daily. The PC has four big benefits in my mind: ubiquitous keyboards, ubiquitous mice, ubiquitous network connections, and a much higher resolution average screen. All of these benefits will be gone (well, the keyboard and mouse maybe not, but they're $25 each, and cheaper if you use PC parts with the PS/2) within a console generation and a half.

The processing power issue isn't as much of an issue as we've been bred to believe. The Arm7 in the GameBoy Advance is honestly enough to push most non-3d games.

Only the Xbox has truly brought full-fledged online gaming to the console masses (local storage, patches, large centralized gaming network, etc - basically everything that makes online PC gaming so good).

Whereas this is true, it *really* pisses me off. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 worked over the internet with commodity hardware a year before the XBox even came out. Sony hosed this one *badly*.

The problem with this, is that Microsoft has been using its endless bags of cash and an unfair monopoly status to swing this much weight into a new market. If they weren't able to lose hundreds of millions of dollars to do this, it would have never happened.

How quickly they forget that this is exactly the method by which the Colorado Leather Company, Sega, Namco, Bandai, and Sony entered the game. In fact, the only remaining big name that didn't get in this way was the playing card manufacturer Nintendo; they got in through the far more insidious method about concealing the nature of their products during a massive customer disinterest.

Robbie the robot saved videogames! If you don't understand why I said that, read your history before returning to complaining re: Microsoft's entry methods.

Online console gaming would still be largely non-existent.

In America. The Japanese were chuchu-rocket addicts online in early Dreamcast years. We're just way behind. Perpetually.

Just something to think about: is Microsoft good in this case, or are they bad?

Do they have to be either? They're a corporate giant warring with other corporate giants for megacash. They can't do the bullying we so hate with Sony and Nintendo, both of whom are experienced and wealthy bullies in their own right. The only reason I hate the XBox is that it's, er, a laughing stock.

STOP MAKING COMPUTERS OUT OF CANDY. YOU ARE NOT APPLE.

Re:Yea

[drinkypoo]

Patches are not one of the things that are good about PC gaming. You may not have noticed this, but games have gotten less reliable since the widespread adoption of the internet. It's true that games are far more complex today and so they are bound to have more problems, but publishers also seem to simply skimp on QA. (This has happened to nearly every kind of software, of course.)

Microsoft decided to implement network gaming not because they could, but because they thought they could make some money at it. Sony and Nintendo both have solutions for online gaming, but they have not supported it well and developers have been slow to implement support for it. Microsoft is not losing unusual amounts of money per console sold. Their console is superior in many ways to the others, primarily on the price point. Sure the other consoles aren't losing money any more - Microsoft came late to this generation. You lose sales if you're the last one in a generation, but you make up for it by being able to have technical superiority.

Re:Yea

[DunbarTheInept]

(local storage, patches, large centralized gaming network, etc - basically everything that makes online PC gaming so good).

Those are features that make PC online gaming so BAD. They are the reason they have to lock down your box (since some of the checking is done locally, if you could change the local client, you could cheat at the game.) The local patches end up meaning you cannot choose to be in control of your own software you bought - don't patch and you can't play the game at all (since it requires the network the be useful, and the network is going to insist that you patch.) And, the centralized network means the company has you by the balls and you have to keep subscribing to ONE company's service to use the software you already bought into. There is no competition once you pick a game, so there is no market incentive for them to be fair and honest with their pricing or terms of service policies.

Re:Yea

[Lumpy]

Only the Xbox has truly brought full-fledged online gaming to the console masses

LIAR

the PS2 had it first, and still has it.

oh and I don't have to pay a fee to play online with my PS2.

how you got modded up I have no idea, but the Xbox did NOT do it, they copied it.

Re:Yea

[pandaba]

LIAR

the PS2 had it first, and still has it.

oh and I don't have to pay a fee to play online with my PS2.

how you got modded up I have no idea, but the Xbox did NOT do it, they copied it.

You're all idjits... The Dreamcast shipped with a modem built in and had many many games with online capabilities. The Dreamcast had the first Massive-Multiplayer game for consoles. The Dreamcast could even be used as a web browser.

The Dreamcast also shipped a broadband adaptor before anyone else.

Re:Yea

[DunbarTheInept]

Yeah... I don't have "complete" control over the hardware/software with the Xbox, but in the case of Xbox Live, this is a "Good Thing(tm)"

To you, maybe. To me, no. The price paid is too great. I'd rather not have online gaming available at all than have it be the excuse to remove functionality from my (note, MY) machine I bought.

Re:Yea

[Chibi Merrow]

Microsoft is not losing unusual amounts of money per console sold.

You're kidding, right? You do realize the X-Box division has yet to turn a profit? You do realize the X-Box is the most expensive of the big three consoles to make? You do realize there's a REASON Microsoft's going with cheap non-PC (ie: IBM PowerPC) hardware in their next iteration?

Their console is superior in many ways to the others, primarily on the price point.

Oh I get it... I've been trolled... This has to be a troll, right? Superior in many ways? Primarily on the price point? Either you're out of touch with reality or I'm gonna get alot of 'YHBT' messages. The X-Box has managed to be even more of a technological nightmare than the PS2! Sure, it's easy for PC developers to port their software to it, but from a console developer's standpoint the thing's a steaming pile of crap! The most 'superior' technology would probably be GCN with PS2 in a close second, considering how much they get out of the GCN with such a simple design and low cost.
As far as price point: GCN $99, PS2 ~$150, where's the X-Box again?

Sure the other consoles aren't losing money any more - Microsoft came late to this generation. You lose sales if you're the last one in a generation, but you make up for it by being able to have technical superiority.

This wasn't true in the N64's case and it's especially not true in the X-Box's case because it simply does NOT have technical superiority. It's a miniaturized PC, not a console designed from the ground up to play games.

Re:Yea

[drinkypoo]

Xbox provides ethernet and a hard drive for litle more than (once, the same amount as) a PS2 without them. This is why it has a better price. It is also why it is, for the user, a more powerful platform. Yes you can get these things for PS2 but it raises the price tag to ridiculous amounts.

GC doesn't play DVDs. This is not as much of an issue as it once was, but it IS still an issue. Xbox is a better DVD player than PS2 by far. This is the other example of Xbox superiority.

Other than these things, I agree that GC and PS2 have technically sweeter designs, but it's not clear that it lets you make more impressive games. From where I'm sitting, most Xbox games look better or as good (with yes, some notable exceptions.) It's just so much easier to get good results out of the Xbox that given the same amount of time, the Xbox titles are usually slicker, and since every Xbox owner has a hard drive and ethernet, developers have felt freer to support those features than PS2 developers, another win for the user.

Re:Yea

[Chibi Merrow]

Xbox provides ethernet and a hard drive for litle more than (once, the same amount as) a PS2 without them.

Yes, this is a valid point. The X-Box is network enabled out of the box. This has led to the creation of X-Box Live which is the only part of the X-Box line that makes money. The reason the PS2 and GCN aren't pre-packaged with these features is that: 1) Most of the buyers of these two systems will never use them and 2) It would increase the cost of the system. Sony and Nintendo both set out to MAKE money with this generation, where Microsoft set out to lose hundreds of millions... Microsoft can afford to subsidize their expensive mini-PCs to allow them to be somewhat competitive pricewise because they have a monopoly in the PC market to give them the cash to pay for their console division.

GC doesn't play DVDs.

Because GCN is a Game Console not a DVD player. The hardware capability *IS* there to play DVDs, and there's a version sold in Japan that plays DVDs, but the point was they did NOT want to pay the licensing fee to the DVD consortium to allow it to. That would add to the cost of the base unit and does not add any real value since the purpose of the system is to play games.

It's just so much easier to get good results out of the Xbox

Do you have any coding experience on the X-Box versus the Gamecube to back this up? The Cube is a dream to code on. The X-Box is easier than the PS2, but compared to the Cube it's like spending a night in the iron maiden. The Cube was designed from the ground up to be an ideal environment for game development and they almost nailed it.

If I'm wrong, then why does Microsoft have ATI and IBM making their successor to the X-Box for them? Simple: The Cube is so much more well designed, and they know it.

Re:Yea

[yerricde]

Only the Xbox has truly brought full-fledged online gaming to the console masses

And only the children with the wealthiest parents can afford subscribing to cable or DSL at the children's request, especially if they have to move house to get it. Until then, play dates will be the norm.

Yet Another Example

[rastakid]

Here is Yet Another Example (YAE) of playing games on a PDA: I'm the proud owner of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, and I've finished ID's Doom and Lucas Art's Monkey Island I (using ScummVM ported for the Zaurus) on my PDA. Just take a look at the Zaurus Software Index to see which games are available. So yes, I think PDAs are growing more and more into gaming platforms, keep an eye on them. Ow, and besides gaming, you can do a lot other things with PDAs, which you can't with GBAs and others.

Re:Yet Another Example

[X86Daddy]

I too have a Zaurus SL-5500, which is quite capable of running various games processor-wise, but I find the buttons, being designed for PDA navigational use, are not well suited for gaming. I've compared Super Mario Brothers 2 on my Zaurus under ZFCEU to a friend's GBA running the same game, and the GBA just plays better. Even though the buttons are similar in placement and number, they just weren't well engineered for gaming.

As for Doom, congratulations! I use it to show off the Zaurus processing and graphics abilities, but never bothered playing much due to a lack of buttons to assign for strafe, etc... What did you do in the keymapping to make it playable with one hand?

Of course, others have noted similar problems on other PDAs, and there exist gamepad clip-ons for iPaqs now.

Re:Yet Another Example

[micromoog]

When I loaded up the binary for ZFCEU on the Zaurus, as I recall the buttons were left-handed (A and B on the left, D-pad on the right), and not configurable. Is there some better configuration that I missed?

Re:Yet Another Example

[X86Daddy]

Currently, the only thing I see in the .conf file is a setting for last directory (which is ignored)... so AFAIK, no. Maybe next version will have this and my complaint will be less valid. :-)

Or buy both...in one!

[Cpt_Kirks]

The Tapwave Zodiac is no longer vapor. It's shipping now.
Games are problematic, most Palm games should run, others are being worked on. It's pretty open for development, so many emulators are possible.

Specs are:
Memory: Zodiac1 = 32MB*
Zodiac2 = 128MB*
* 12MB reserved for system use.
Processor: Motorola(R) i.MX1(TM) ARM9 processor (200 MHz)
Graphics
Accelerator: ATI(R) Imageon(TM) W4200 graphics accelerator (with 8MB dedicated SDRAM).
Display: 3.8 inch transflective display
480 x 320 (half VGA), 16-bit color backlit display (65,536 colors) Portrait and landscape display capabilities Digitizer for enhanced interactive game play, navigation and text input.
Sound: Yamaha(R) audio component and stereo speakers
Standard 3.5mm stereo headphone plug
Earbud-style headphones included
Support for select third-party portable speakers
Vibration: Supports silent notification and interactive game play.
Controls: Variable pressure analog controller (joystick), 2 triggers, 4 programmable action buttons, 1 special function button,
1 home button, 1 power button, and 1 Bluetooth button.
Expandability: Dual expansion slots for MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital (SD) cards
and SDIO cards, including digital cameras and more.*
Zodiac Connector for additional peripherals.
* Slot #1: supports MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital Cards (SD).
Slot #2: supports MultiMediaCards, Secure Digital Cards (SD), and
SDIO cards.
Wireless Connectivity: Built-in Bluetooth radio with dedicated activation button.
Ideal for multiplayer wireless gaming, sharing information and connectivity to other compatible Bluetooth enabled devices.
PC Desktop Connectivity: USB Cable, USB Cradle (sold separately)
Cover: Protective Flip Cover
Wrist Strap: Convenient strap
Battery: High-capacity Rechargeable Lithium Batteries - 1540 mAh
Power Supply: AC Adapter / Battery Charger (120 volt AC, 60 Hz) International connectivity kit (sold separately)
Size/Weight: 5.6" (143mm) x 3.1" (79mm) x .55" (14mm) / 6.3 ounces
Color: Zodiac1 - Slate Gray, Zodiac2 - Charcoal Gray
Software Specifications
Operating System: Tapwave enhanced Palm OS 5.2T
Writing Software: Graffiti 2
Included Software:
Games: Stuntcar Extreme, AcidSolitaire
Media:
Music: Tapwave MP3 player
Photos: Tapwave JPEG Photo Viewer
Video Playback: Kinoma Player 2
Video Creation: Kinoma Producer (Quickly and easily converts AVI, QuickTime, MPEG1, MPEG4 files for use on the Zodiac entertainment console).*
*QuickTime software required to use Kinoma Producer on PC
eBook reader: PalmReader
Organizer: Address Book, Date Book, To Do List, Memo Pad
Other Stuff:
Alarm Clock (Tapwave Alarm Clock with integrated stopwatch & MP3 music feature),
Wireless-based chat & shared whiteboard (PhatPad by Trumpetsoft)
Graphing Calculator (powerOne by Infinity SoftWorks)
Microsoft(R) Word(R)-compatible Word Processor (WordSmith by Blue Nomad)
Connectivity: Web Browser and SMS client for use with compatible Bluetooth enabled phones (bonus software on CD).

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[stonecypher]

Yeah, everyone in the AGB development community is up in arms about the Tapwave.

I think it's going to fail, for the same reason that the GP32, the Cybiko, the Wonderswan, and the other parade of near misses have. Or, rather, for the list of reasons:

1) Nobody's ever heard of the damn thing. You're on slashdot and people are all "the what?"

2) Tapwave can't undersell the hardware like Nintendo can. $300 for a portable gaming machine has never gone over well, and it never will.

3) This thing isn't getting a game library of any real size.

4) I can buy a tapwave at:
Toys R Us? No.
Babbages? No.
The Mall? No.
Walmart? No. ... anywhere other than mail order? Sorry.

See, being able to sell to kids is kind of important for something like a game platform. The Cybiko had long distance wireless! That should have won them the war! Except it was ugly. I mean, shit, you could get those things in stores that exist in middle America. They had the Cybiko at Walmart for $50. And it still lost.

Why? Because they tried to brag that they had games like stuntcar, klondike, skiing, snake, and checkers.

OMG! Checkers! King me, random person a mile away! I am the master of Draughts! ALL PHEER MY MORRIS SKIZZNILLZ! (don't have much of a ring to it, do it?)

I am happy that this device got off the ground. I am impressed that it can play all dozen of the PalmPilot games in a ridiculous quarter-screen box. Wow, it's even got a graphing calculator, which is clearly the first thing I look for in a system that costs me over four times what the industry leader with all the games wants.

And there is nothing, I say nothing, about Zelda which is anywhere near as cool as Acid Solitaire. Without Acid Solitaire, I'll have no idea what the kids at school are talking about, with Marjora's Mask, which allows you to peek at *two* cards from the top of your draw pile.

The company's too small to court real developers and without real developers its market is too small to attract them on its own. GP32 had the right idea shipping an emulator, but you couldn't buy one without living in Korea, and besides, the GP32 is ugly enough to get you beat up every day.

Adults don't remember how a kid's life works. This thing is doomed. The AGB has only one thing to fear, and that thing is the PSP.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[RevAaron]

The Tapwave has a chance, where the GP32, etc did not. The Zodiac- at $300 and $400 for the 32 MB and 128 MB models respectively- make sense to buy as PDAs. The price is right for similar items in their class, they've some features that most PalmOS PDAs don't have and a few that no other POS PDA has.

It's all about how Tapwave goes about marketing it. If they market is just as gaming device, mostly ignoring the fact that it's ultimately a PDA, a pocket computer it will die. After all, why spend 300-400$ on something like that when you could get a GBA for $80?

But, if they market it as a PDA that has some very convenient perks- like having real gaming controls, dual SD slots, a big screen, a nice "GPU-" then it could succeed, although within a niche. If I were in the market for a PalmOS PDA, there is a very good chance that I would buy the Zodiac. And if I bought a Zodiac, there's only a very small chance I'd buy any Zodiac-specific games- maybe one or two if something really caught my eye, but I'd mostly use it like I use all PDAs I've owned- as very small computer. Coding, SSH/telnet/VNC, writing papers, web, email, etc.

Out of what I do, I spend the least amount on playing games. But part of the reason that is the case is that just about all PDAs up until the Zodiac has shitty controls. Some have a decent d-pad and button placement for gaming, but then you are stuck with the problem of not being able to register more than one button press at a time, among other issues. But, I would play Snood (maybe even register it again!) SimCity, Lemmings and some other games that work on any recent POS device.

The good gaming button setup is a perk for someone like me, a conveinence but not a reason to buy. It may be able to do a little learning if there was another PDA with comparable hardware for the same price, but only if the prices and hardware were almost the same.

That fact that most people can't figure this out for themselves means that Tapwave isn't doing the marketing right, or that most people haven't owned a PDA. I think both are at fault, especially the latter. This thing shouldn't be compared to the GBA so much as it should to other PDAs in its class.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[Steve525]

You are absolutely right, the tapwave is no threat to the GBA. But I don't think that's the point. The question is does it have to threaten the GBA to succeed? I don't think it does. PC games exist separately from console games, and I think the same comparison can be drawn here. PCs are multifunction devices that can be souped up (by added 3-D cards, etc.) to play games well. Similarly, the Tapwave is portable multifunction device that's been souped up to play games well. There's no doubt that there's a market for PC games, but in general the market for console games eclipses it. The same thing could happen in the PDA vs. GBA market.

This product is really aimed at adults, not kids. Keep in mind, that a lot of adults can't justify buying a GBA, since it's really just a toy. (That's not meant as an insult; it's just that all it does is play games). However, if they are going to by a PDA, it is easy to justify getting one that plays games well (and is an mp3 player, too). In addition, people my age may be very interested in emulators, so we can replay our favourite games in a portable format. If Tapwave allows emulators to flourish on their system, this could really work to their advantage. (Although it could backfire with developers).

However, you bring up several disturbing indicators for this product in particular. (Except for the price, which I don't think is out of line when you consider it as a PDA first). They really need to get the product out there and known, and get more developer support. It's still early, so I wouldn't call it dead yet.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[Cpt_Kirks]

Well, for one thing, the GP32 hasn't failed. I have one. You don't have to live in Korea to buy one, I got mine via gbax.com in the UK. There is a European launch planned.

There are *NO* Palm devices with these specs. None. Some of the Clies come close, but suck for gaming.

This is the early deployment stage for Tapwave. You will see Zodiacs in stores by spring. Right now they so many pre-orders they can't ship them fast enough.

You are really, really missing the point. This is *NOT* for kids. The Zodiac is high end Palm PDA with better gaming features than any handheld game I've seen. Let kids have their GBA. I want a PDA that plays 3D games, emulators, videos, mp3s, has bluetooth web and email *AND* will run the 19,000 or so existing Palm apps.

The Zodiac is *OPEN*. Sign up as a developer and get the SDK. Use PRC-Tools. Do you really think Sony is going to allow *ANY* open PSP development? Hell no!

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's going to fail, for the same reason that the GP32, the Cybiko, the Wonderswan, and the other parade of near misses have.

None of the above are fully blown, high-end palm PDAs. Please note that Tapwave has prized the Zodiac comparately to other Palm devices of similar spec. Additionally, it's a game device.

1) Nobody's ever heard of the damn thing. You're on slashdot and people are all "the what?"

On the other hand, just about anyone who has heard of n-gage has heard of the zodiac, as it's mentioned in just about every news report on n-gage.

2) Tapwave can't undersell the hardware like Nintendo can. $300 for a portable gaming machine has never gone over well, and it never will.

Underselling hardware is a myth. Only microsoft, out of all game device manufacturers, has actually undersold entertainment hardware.

3) This thing isn't getting a game library of any real size.

Too early to say. In addition to major companies starting to be interested in it, it is a very open platform where basically anyone can make software. This means ports of open sourced games, emulators, and also hobbyist games.

4) I can buy a tapwave at: (retail chains)

You can, early next year.

In any case you're missing the point in several ways. Zodiac is not a heads-on gameboy competitor. It's not a heads-on n-gage competitor. Heck, it's not even a heads-on PSP competitor. It's something new.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[ardiri]

> But, I would play Snood [snood.com] (maybe even register it again!) SimCity, Lemmings
> and some other games that work on any recent POS device.

um.. as the developer of Lemmings - it doesn't work on Tapwave Zodiac yet.

why? because to get around memory limitations (like, 46Kb dynamic memory on palmos 3.1) we coded the whole game in 16 color mode :) now, every device to date has allowed us to tweak 16 grayscale mode into colors; EXCEPT tapwave. i worked with tapwave extensively, specifically with their digital rights management; and, supporting 4bpp wasn't very high on their "we give a shit" list.

so, officially, Lemmings doesn't run on Tapwave.

of course, we are going to build a special version. its in our road map :) the tapwave device is very nice for games; that require keys. lemmings is really a stylus game. it would play just as well with a cheaper Tungsten|E :P

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[stonecypher]

i'd rather get this thing and play ROMS

Ah, what a surprise, a thief wants a system that facilitates thieving. And this after talking about adulthood. (le sigh)

then i'll watch a movie on it.

I bet you will. Probably five other people in the country too. Did you realize that VCD players have been under $100 at fry's for years? People don't want portable movies like that. They just aren't convenient.

then i'll use it as a PDA.

Wow, you mean you $300 device can do what my $70 and $80 devices do? I don't know what to do.

and i won't be crying when the other kids in your study hall have something different, because i'm not in freaking middleschool.

Ah, yes. And this is why you will never be a successful video game publisher: you don't know your market.

then you will be able to buy it in stores.

They said that about the GP32, the WonderSwan, and the Cybiko. Only the Cybiko ever made it to any store, and then only one non-specialty store, Walmart.

And guess what? That wasn't enough.

Come on, name me one independant video game platform that has ever, ever made it. Just one.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[stonecypher]

The Tapwave has a chance, where the GP32, etc did not. The Zodiac- at $300 and $400 for the 32 MB and 128 MB models respectively- make sense to buy as PDAs.

Well, sure, until you look at what the same prices net you from Sony, or Palm, or Handspring, or Compaq. I mean, yes, in a void, these would be great PDAs for the money. Compared to video game systems, these are excellent PDAs for the money.

And compared to other PDAs, these PDAs are less than lackluster for the money.

Besides, to be brutally frank, I'd prefer a Clie for gaming. It has a keyboard. That's critical to the kind of games I enjoy. Those of us which disagree with me tend to prefer the kind of games that the AGB offers.

Look, when it comes down to it, you can get as much PDA for $200 and you can get way more gaming for $70. Why spend more to fuse them into one case, when the results are disappointing in both ends? Keyboards matter to PDAs and game libraries matter to consoles; the Zodiac has neither.

they've some features that most PalmOS PDAs don't have and a few that no other POS PDA has.

After graphics acceleration, I have a hard time identifying said features. Would you be so kind as to fill me in?

But, if they market it as a PDA that has some very convenient perks- like having real gaming controls, dual SD slots, a big screen, a nice "GPU-" then it could succeed, although within a niche

This is a point we probably diverge on. Palm Pilots are already a niche market, catering largely to CEOs and other power toy people. In my admittedly limited experience, I can think of very few people which belong to both that group and the video game group.

And if I bought a Zodiac, there's only a very small chance I'd buy any Zodiac-specific games

This is a problem. The Clie and Treo are incredibly polished machines. In my opinion, the Zodiac will not be able to compete as a PDA.

Coding, SSH/telnet/VNC, writing papers, web, email, etc.

Without a keyboard? You actually program with graffiti? I have a hard time coding with the little folding *keyboard*.

Out of what I do, I spend the least amount on playing games.

I find that most of the Zodiac partisans are saying this. :(

The good gaming button setup is a perk for someone like me

The real question is whether it's worth your keyboard.

That fact that most people can't figure this out for themselves means that Tapwave isn't doing the marketing right, or that most people haven't owned a PDA. I think both are at fault, especially the latter. This thing shouldn't be compared to the GBA so much as it should to other PDAs in its class.

I disagree. If you're chasing two small markets and don't service either particularly well, and if one is absolutely flooded with devices but the other a virtual monopoly, you go after the monopoly every time. The payoff is much bigger.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[Cpt_Kirks]

Good points, Walt. In case you haven't seen it, check out Zodiac Gamer. Good site.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[wliebkem]

Although you are clearly trolling, it's hard to resist replying to you. I agree that the GBA shouldn't fear the Zodiac. No adult is going to give their kid a $400+ PDA to tote around. My eight-year-old daughter totes a GBA SP. On the other hand, I am buying a Zodiac for myself. I would not carry a game machine around with me. However, I need a PDA and I like the Zodiac's specs, and I love the gaming functionality. I may buy one for my wife. It makes a nice graduation present as well. What makes the Zodiac special is that it is not necessarily a gaming console. I intend to use it in my medical practice. The gaming is just a bonus. As are the mp3s and the videos that you can rip to easilt fit on SD cards. Last time I checked, you can't watch a full-length movie at 480x320 res on the GBA. However, you can fit several on a properly equipped Zodiac. I think that the Zodiac will especially appeal to commuters and others with occasional downtime who need a PDA. Your rabid defense of the GBA superiority has left you blind to the real purpose and intended audience of this device. Walt Liebkemann

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[bhtooefr]

AFAIK, I could buy a GP32 if I wanted one (in the US even! and not from LikSang!), and the Cybiko's appearance wasn't what killed it. The lack of quality software, the kludgy "sync" software, poor PDA integration (the software COULD at least sync it with Outlook), quality control issues (on the Cybiko Classic - the power connector was known to come off the board), the implied advertisements that were false (you could "always get online" (range was 150-300 feet), touchscreen (implied by the design of the device and the fact that it was packaged with a stylus - many a Cybiko screen was ruined by people trying to use the LCD as a touchscreen), the MP3 player (took me MONTHS to get that..., and it was a RAM hog (the Cybiko has 512K RAM and 512K flash - the MP3 player's smartmedia slot was welcome, but the MP3 player's drivers hogged RAM like crazy), only one PCMCIA slot (yes, it WAS PCMCIA - 33.6K PCMCIA modems worked - the OS gave errors consistent with the detection of a modem, but no support) and the prohibitive cost of accessories ($20 for a 1MB RAM/Flash upgrade!)) Other problems: the cost of using B2C apps (Basic compiler - codes were $5 until they went out, and put up a page that had a built-in code generator), kludgy storage (internal flash only held 2-3 games with all of my apps, but they didn't have enough RAM to run with the MP3 player installed, so I'd have to move games onto the MP3 player, move others onto the Cybiko, shut down, remove the MP3, restart, play, shut down, reinsert the MP3, and start back up.), etc., etc.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[bhtooefr]

BTW, the Cybiko had decent backing for what it was - Cybiko managed to get ClearChannel radio ads (I've heard a few - they were only late-night, though). BTW, what do you think Sega was when they released the Master System? The big game console/handheld (back then)/arcade (even more so) tycoon? AFAIK, no. That was Atari (on the console and in the arcades) and Nintendo (more so on handhelds, but somewhat on arcades).

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[RevAaron]

Meh, it was just an example. I don't own a Zodiac or any Palm device at this point (except a barely-working Palm Pro). Lemmings may be a poor example for other reasons- you did a decent job at making it work well on a touch screen, unlike some games. Snood is a game that works better with a mouse or d-pad, IMHO.

I wouldn't be surprised if Lemmings worked on the new ARM-based b/w Zire, but it doesn't mean there aren't better PDAs out there.

BTW- thanks for all the work you did on the Helio. I bought one of those puppies when they first came out with the intention of running Linux. And did for a while using my own app written in Squeak, as none of the Linux GUIs for it were useful at all.

But, until I finished that, I used VTOS, along with some of your apps. Especially great was the GB emu for the Helio, although it was only worth playing a few games because the controls sucked- like they do on most PDAs.

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[iamhassi]

Ok let me get this straight, I could buy a Zodiac1 for $300 and lay down $20-$30 for the very few games currently avaliable, or I could get a 400mhz PocketPC for $300 (or $179 for a refurbished 400mhz Toshiba e740) and play hundreds of shareware titles like Age of Empires and only pay for the games I actually like?

Wow, this is a tough decision, give me a minute will ya?

Re:Or buy both...in one!

[Cpt_Kirks]

You sure can!

Too bad the contols suck ass for gaming, but go for it!

Excuse me, I have to get back to working on emulator ports for the Zodiac...

WindowsCE

[mirko]

The mentioned PDA uses WindowsCE, I consider it annoying as it means it is quite unsync'able with something else than Windows (OK, there's a commercial conduit for OSX but even...).
Now, I'd have been quite happy to see it compared with a Linux PDA :
the GBA has an ARM7500FE while my Zaurus has a StrongARM@202.
I can play Doom (prBoom) and Quake on my Z (OK, let's forget Quake ;) no, why wasn't this comparison more open ?
Maybe because this came from an individual which could not afford anything else than what he actuallly tested.
It's a pity because it just is not exhaustive.

It depends what you're after...

[WIAKywbfatw]

At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2.

Ever tried to find a decent flight simulator on a console? Good luck searching for one. There are plenty of games (and genres of games) that are better on a PC than they are on a console.

Some of us older gamers can remember the time when consoles couldn't even save games unless the cartridge came with built-in storage (ie, almost anything that came before the PS1), and it's only recently that online multiplayer gaming has become possible on the latest generation of consoles.

Still, try finding a real equivalent of Everquest or even Warcraft III on a PS2/X-Box/GC. You can get close, but not close enough to earn you a cigar.

Re:It depends what you're after...

[Nasarius]

How about turn-based strategy? Or non-console-style RPGs (one exception here would be Morrowind, granted)?

Re:It depends what you're after...

[stonecypher]

Ever tried to find a decent flight simulator on a console?

Many of us believe that PilotWings is the greatest flight simulator ever. You're right, though: much like the non-realtime strategy and the non-plot adventure game, vehicle simulators are woefully underrepresented on consoles.

Why? They don't sell. At least, not unless they ship with 414 new missiles! 328 new enemies! 3d phong shaded goraud mapped mip-texelled quincunx vertex eliminating z-ordered hyperclipping asiosphere specular rendering! and 8 new hidden levels!

(even the exclamation points are nessecary.)

Some of us older gamers can remember the time when consoles couldn't even save games unless the cartridge came with built-in storage (ie, almost anything that came before the PS1)

It's amusing that you've said that, given that the second most popular console on earth still works this way, and that the one to which you're probably referring didn't, originally.

and it's only recently that online multiplayer gaming has become possible on the latest generation of consoles.

The Genesis, Dreamcast, TurboGrafx 16, and NeoGeo are all now very angry at you.

Still, try finding a real equivalent of Everquest

How about Everquest?

or even Warcraft III

Er. Granted.

Re:It depends what you're after...

[PainKilleR-CE]

Ever tried to find a decent flight simulator on a console? Good luck searching for one. There are plenty of games (and genres of games) that are better on a PC than they are on a console.

I can't think of the last time I saw a new PC flight simulator on the shelves, either. Perhaps I just need enlightenment. Oh, wait, just remembered that MS releases one every year or so, so now I have to qualify with combat flight simulators, as I don't remember MS continuing their combat series (but I could be wrong). It's really a genre I'm not as interested in as I used to be. On the other hand, Crimson Skies sounds like the kind of game I'd like to play (arcade flight game).

Some of us older gamers can remember the time when consoles couldn't even save games unless the cartridge came with built-in storage (ie, almost anything that came before the PS1), and it's only recently that online multiplayer gaming has become possible on the latest generation of consoles.

Yes, I think most of us can remember the cart saves, just like we know that memory cards only became necessary because of the optical disc. Now, of course, console manufacturers love memory cards because they're cheap hunks of plastic and silicon with a battery that they sell for 10-20x their cost.

Still, try finding a real equivalent of Everquest or even Warcraft III on a PS2/X-Box/GC. You can get close, but not close enough to earn you a cigar.

Well, there's Everquest, but I think everyone already admitted that RTS games and consoles don't work well. There are some developers working on RTS games that have a more console-friendly interface, but I don't think they're out yet (in fact, I think one of them is being made by some developers that left Blizzard which had previously worked on the War/Star-craft games).

Now platform games on the PC? Japanese-style RPGs? Racing titles equivalent to GT3 (and soon GT4)? Arcade racers (Mario Kart, F-Zero)? Fighting games?

We can do this all day, most of us already know which types of games play best on which platforms, and there are only a handful of people trying to make the genres work on the other platform types. Halo was the first FPS I ever played that felt like it really worked on a game pad, not to say that I'd want to play it against PC users online, as I'd rather play on my PC in that environment, knowing that my trackball will stomp the shit out of mice and gamepads alike ;) but rather that the game worked well with the pad as a single player game, unlike most other FPS games. I bought Mortal Kombat 4 for the PC because the graphics were far better, but the gameplay just sucked because gamepads tended to be a rather tricky situation with older versions of Windows (I haven't tried to play it on XP) and playing with a keyboard just wasn't doing it.

I have my consoles for the games that belong on consoles and my PC for the games that belong on PCs. I spend the money I used to spend on video card upgrades on consoles, and only buy new video cards every 18 months or so instead of 6 or 12 months like I used to.

Re:It depends what you're after...

[DunbarTheInept]

How about Everquest?

Are you seriously implying that PS2 everquest is on par with PC everquest? Everquest is mostly a glorified chat program with some munchkin gaming thrown in on top. Chat programs would suck without a keyboard.

Re:It depends what you're after...

[DunbarTheInept]

Do you have a USB keyboard?

No. So how many PS2 games actually let you USE the keyboard, versus being made to only understand the controller pad?

Re:It depends what you're after...

[yerricde]

No[, I don't have a USB keyboard].

How old is your PC to have come with a round-connector keyboard? Apple hasn't shipped round-connector keyboards since mid-1998 when it introduced the iMac computer.

So how many PS2 games actually let you USE the keyboard

WIAKywbfatw asked about EverQuest. I'm sure there are quite a few others, namely the ones where a keyboard would be the most appropriate input device. Likewise, what PS2 games other than the Dance Dance Revolution series let the player use a dance pad meaningfully?

Re:It depends what you're after...

[yerricde]

How about turn-based strategy?

Plenty. Have you ever tried any games in the Chessmaster, Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, or Advance Wars series?

Or non-console-style RPGs

I'm not completely up on things. What exactly determines whether you find an RPG "console style"?

I speak from experience when I say...

[ArbiterOne]

I had a Palm, as well as a Game Boy, and Palm beats GB hands down. Pros of Palm: Thousands of free games (check palmgear.com) Lots of games can be stored at the same time (no need for cartridges) Infrared linking (yes, I know, GBC) Lots of games on one handheld (no need for cartridges) Besides, as for the cost: Cost of Palm Zire: $99 Cost of Game Boy Advance SP: $99 Cost of normal GBA and one game (i.e. Golden Sun): $99 Cost of one GB cartridge $20-$40 Cost of registering KQ, a shareware Palm RPG: $16 Add to that the fact that you can get free games on a Palm, and it's a no-brainer.

Re:I speak from experience when I say...

[Tomeck]

What about the GBA dev scene?

Lots of games on one cart? check.
Free games? Check.
Emulators for gamegear and master system? Check.
Decent control system built for games? Check.
Good battery life? Check.

Get a GAME boy if you want to play GAMES, it's a no brainer.

I have both :)

Meh

[UfoZ]

You can't play good old button-mashing action games on a PDA.

(Besides... Sidetalkin' is where it's at! :D )

Re:Meh

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

You can't play good old button-mashing action games on a PDA.
Well, AtomSmash is the reason why the buttons on my Palm Vx are toast.
Maybe it's more precise to say that you shouldn't play button-mashing games on a PDA.

--

Re:Buy Nothing!

[geoffspear]

And you expect this high-powered jamming device to produce less EM "radiation" than cellphones? Good luck with that.

If you don't want to listen to people talking on the bus, don't ride the bus. If you use public transportation, you'll have to learn to live with the public.

Re:Uh...

[metamatic]

I never have for any previous Mac.

PS2 for games, Mac for everything else.

$500 in upgrades for faster CPUs, graphics cards, bigger hard drives, moving up from CD to DVD, and so on. My brothers are PC gamers, and they're always having to upgrade the machine (or build a mostly new one) to play the latest games.

A question about emulation...

[JAYOYAYOYAYO]

What I would really like to know is when will PDAs be able to smoothly run emulated GBA games, and will that day come before Nintendo introduces the GBA successor?

Re:A question about emulation...

[damiam]

You can do it now. gnuboy runs under Windows CE and under ARM Linux.

Re:A question about emulation...

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Original poster: Is there a Game Boy Advance emulator?
You: Oh, here's one! ...(from site) "gnuboy (all lowercase) is a portable program for emulating the Nintendo GameBoy Color software platform"

GBA != GBC.

But good show!

Actually, if you think about it...

[SuperKendall]

The PC has far less diversity in games. Basically FPS and RTS games, or super accurate driving/flying sims. Consoles get a lot more diverse than that, with much of that content plus other wierder stuff and platforming things you almost never see on the PC.

I can imagine gaming life without a PC (indeed, I only have a Mac and hardly play games on that at all) but I can't imagine gaming life without at least one of the consoles.

Re:Actually, if you think about it...

[E-Rock]

I have yet to play a decent RTS on a console. I'm still waiting for the day when the PC games and Console games can compete head to head and all the kids with mice whip the shit out of the guys with joypads.

Re:Actually, if you think about it...

[scot4875]

Come bring your mouse to my Soul Calibur 2 tournament, and see whose shit gets whipped out of 'em.

--Jeremy

Re:Actually, if you think about it...

[E-Rock]

As soon as SC2 is a FPS you're on.

Re:Actually, if you think about it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The PC has far less diversity in games. Basically FPS and RTS games, or super accurate driving/flying sims.

Actually, there is a lot of diversity on the PC, you just need to look past the big-hyped items. Your list doesn't include MMORPG, single-player RPG, sims, or turn-based strategy, for example. All of these have had major releases in the last year, you might even have heard of one or two. The last FPS I played was Serious Sam SE and RTS has yet to improve on Total Annihilation, IMHO.

Re:Actually, if you think about it...

[SuperKendall]

I was kind of lumping Diablo in with RTS in my mind, but you're right that the whole RPG segment is pretty strong on PC's - though also on consoles (in a bit different way).

I would say Gamestations are also good when you get tired of constantly maintianing a PC. I was updating drivers, buying new video cards, etc. - I just got sick of the time spent.

Why PDAs and PCs will continue to be popular...

[Squeebee]

The thing to also remember is that you can get more games for PDAs and PCs. Why? because the cost of entry for game programming on a PDA or PC is lower. Any joe can get a compiler and write a game for a PC or a PDA. They don't need proprietary development software or testing/emulation systems, they don't need to buy and license ROMs from Nintendo, and they don't need to depend on Wal-Mart and Toys 'R Us for distribution.

The flip side of this is of course the fact that you have a lot of crap to wade through (but we are talking on Slashdot here and are obviously used to it) but there are real gems out there that rise to the top of the independant games.

What we really need is an open alternative to the Gameboy, something that had a free development environment and connects to the PC with a USB cable to download games, yet remains cheap as a GBA (of course, things like the GBA are usually cheap because it is subsidised but you get the idea). You can even still have the rom slot so commercial game companies can still sell boxed games for it.

Re:Why PDAs and PCs will continue to be popular...

[JeffTL]

It's called... the.... Palm Tungsten E. You have a color screen with pretty good resolution, a card slot, USB connectivity to Windows, Mac, and I think Linux...you can develop for free if you want to...all for $199. And you get a cheapo MP3 player, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint compatible office software, and of course an electronic organizer. Touchscreen, too!

Re:Why PDAs and PCs will continue to be popular...

[Squeebee]

I was thinking more along the lines of something that would still look and feel like a GBA with just a direction pad and some buttons. But yes, the Tungsten E is sweet.

Re:Why PDAs and PCs will continue to be popular...

[stonecypher]

The thing to also remember is that you can get more games for PDAs and PCs. Why? because the cost of entry for game programming on a PDA or PC is lower.

Er. GCC, VisualBoy Advance, (checks wallet) = Free.

I would contest that the difference is that people don't have a clue just how easy it is to write GBA games. Go here and learn. (or here or here.)

Any joe can get a compiler and write a game for a PC or a PDA.

It took me almost 20 minutes to get PRC-Tools working. VisualHAM was up and running after the installer, which also has good music. DevKitAdvance and the SGADE are similarly easy to use if your'e already used to GCC.

They don't need proprietary development software or testing/emulation systems

The Palm Pilot SDK is CodeWarrior dependant, actually, which is the reason I avoided it for so long.

they don't need to buy and license ROMs from Nintendo

This is only a problem if you live in the fantasy world of making money off of your video games.

What we really need is an open alternative to the Gameboy, something that had a free development environment and connects to the PC with a USB cable to download games, yet remains cheap as a GBA (of course, things like the GBA are usually cheap because it is subsidised but you get the idea). You can even still have the rom slot so commercial game companies can still sell boxed games for it.

Ah, yes. And we see how well that keeps working. Viva la Indrema! I'm sure someone will get it to work soon.

(sigh) No I'm not.

Re:Why PDAs and PCs will continue to be popular...

[Squeebee]

they don't need to buy and license ROMs from Nintendo This is only a problem if you live in the fantasy world of making money off of your video games. Not so much that as having the common man play the games, I can write a PC/PDA game and your average joe can download it and run the installer and play it. The average joe cannot get my game I developed using the tools you listed (great list BTW, thanks!) onto their GBA. The average Slashdotter can, but not the average joe.

Re:Why PDAs and PCs will continue to be popular...

[akudoi]

What your asking for is pretty much exactly what the GamePark32(GP32) has set out to do! It uses SM cards for holding games/mp3's and can even hook up to your comptuer through USB. And its open to the public to develop on.

http://www.gamepark.co.kr/ Official Site

http://english.gamepark.com/ English Site

Its pretty amazing device, too bad it doesnt get that much attention here.

Re:Why PDAs and PCs will continue to be popular...

[stonecypher]

Well, there's certainly that. If you're about writing freeware games, PDA is possibly a better market than GBA. That said, I honestly wonder if more people use emulators than game on PDAs. I'm involved in development for both, and I see more noise from the GBA camp (and about equivalent noise per person.)

That said, you've got a good argument here.

chess?

[Hollins]

Seems like PDAs are better suited for chess, which is the game I would play the most on a portable. The interface is superior (a stylus and a touch-screen display), and I suspect the extra memory and computing power that is typically available on a PDA makes them better suited for chess. Not to mention the fairly low graphics requirements which means having enough resolution to effectively display the board in grayscale. My old Visor did a decent job at 160x160 until it stopped working.

I think for many people who are looking to be entertained when waiting for a plane, strategy games and puzzles do the trick. They aren't looking for Sonic the Hedgehog XXVII for the GBA. PDAs are more than capable for this segment.

Re:chess?

[stonecypher]

The interface is superior (a stylus and a touch-screen display)

True.

and I suspect the extra memory and computing power that is typically available on a PDA makes them better suited for chess.

Not really. Those physical boards they sold in the 80s and 90s are based on things not a tenth as powerful as the ARM in the AGB, and they're rated sometimes as high as 2100 or 2200. You need a very clueful programmer to write code for the ARM that'll keep up, but that code *will* keep up.

Much more of an issue is the size of the chess playbook. For that, systems which have cartridges - and since SD and so forth are common these days, that does include PDAs - have a big win. This means that the low end Palms are sort of the shitstick, and the problem is, that's where competition with the gameboy ends.

Besides, the Gameboy is just more *comfortable*.

Not to mention the fairly low graphics requirements which means having enough resolution to effectively display the board in grayscale. My old Visor did a decent job at 160x160 until it stopped working.

Of course, for $70 (or $95 backlit) you could have a color 240x160 screen, a good sound card, and a machine which happens to have an otherwise very strong game library.

The loss of the touchscreen does suck, but not *that* much. I mean, the Apple ][ was great for chess, too...

I think for many people who are looking to be entertained when waiting for a plane, strategy games and puzzles do the trick.

Uh, so get strategy and puzzle games. It's not like they're exactly hard to find for the GBA.

PDAs are more than capable for this segment.

I'm not sure that I agree.

Re:chess?

[more]

I prefer playing chess with my mobile phone over playing against a PDA. The modern phone software can beat most of the expert players in chess (elo 2500 is claimed for ChessGenius native version) and even the Java games like Deep Pocket Chess are strong enough for me. Well, to be honest, I have "archived" my PDA, since I have a limited pocket space.

Re:chess?

[Hollins]

Much more of an issue is the size of the chess playbook. For that, systems which have cartridges - and since SD and so forth are common these days, that does include PDAs - have a big win. This means that the low end Palms are sort of the shitstick, and the problem is, that's where competition with the gameboy ends.

You seem to be agreeing with me. The extra memory available with most PDAs give them an edge. I never claimed that 3 year old Palms are ideal for chess, merely that they could handle the graphics. As far as computing strength, more important to me than raw ELO is how 'human' the program can become. Few programs on PC make much headway in this category, much less PDA and even less so on the gameboy.

Of course, for $70 (or $95 backlit) you could have a color 240x160 screen, a good sound card, and a machine which happens to have an otherwise very strong game library.

You also have another clunky gadget to carry around and most adults feel kind of stupid puttering around with a gameboy in public. Modern PDAs exceed the screen resolution of the GBA and the types of games I'm talking about don't require strong animation engines and sound generation.

I stand by the statement that PDAs serve this market very well. There are a lot of Joe Salesman out there who will kill time with their PDA but won't carry around a gameboy. To this day, the most played video game of all time is Solitaire. GBA is overkill for this market.

Re:chess?

[stonecypher]

Much more of an issue is the size of the chess playbook. For that, systems which have cartridges - and since SD and so forth are common these days, that does include PDAs - have a big win.

You seem to be agreeing with me. The extra memory available with most PDAs give them an edge.

Nonono. Playbooks can be in ROM. Gameboy carts are bigger than the RAM available in the tungsten t3. You don't need that much RAM do do a depth-first search of a play tree.

As far as computing strength, more important to me than raw ELO is how 'human' the program can become. Few programs on PC make much headway in this category, much less PDA and even less so on the gameboy.

I feel the same way. That said, this is less about the hardware and more about the software; there are a number of kohonen network chess programs which can have things like greed, vengeance and defensiveness tweaked. If that's what you'd like, you're pretty much tied to the PC at the moment.

You also have another clunky gadget to carry around and most adults feel kind of stupid puttering around with a gameboy in public.

This doesn't defend the Zodiac in any way.

Modern PDAs exceed the screen resolution of the GBA

Actually, if you check Palm's current lineup, more than half of them still have the traditional 160x160 screen, which is smaller than the GBA's 240x160. You don't beat that until you get to the midpoint between the AGB and Zodiac's prices.

Arguably, the video card driving the screen is as important as the screen itself. The tapwave has a huge double win here - in my opinion, its only major win. But you can do a *whole* *lot* *more* with the Gameboy's screen than you can with a normal Palm Pilot.

I stand by the statement that PDAs serve this market very well.

I didn't say they didn't fit the specific needs of chess well. In fact, I admitted that they were slightly better. That said, even though the demographic groups are completely different, check the numbers: far more people carry gameboys than PDAs.

Frankly, as an adult, a software engineer, I feel more confortable using a gameboy than a PDA. I don't do anything that I need a PDA for; I can wait until I get back to the office from lunch to work, and I have a computer at home; I don't need to write code while I'm driving. Plane trips are a nice two hour break, and anyone which tries to steal them from me loses, automatically.

All I ever do is play games on my Palm, and that makes me feel pretentious. And besides, the games suck.

GBA is overkill for this market.

That's true. Here's an observation: a real car would be overkill for the market serviced by Power Wheels. If you can find a whole bunch of businessmen which will shell out $300 to play games they can already play on their laptops and palmtops, great. But the ones which won't carry a Gameboy also won't carry a Zodiac; to look at it you wouldn't think it was a PDA, and that's the thing they're worried about.

I retain my doubts that people which would feel stupid holding a gameboy actually play video games, much less frequently enough to duplicate hardware they almost certainly already have if in the purchaser demographic, wasting $300, just to get a better controller layout.

These are all very pretty arguments. When you put them together, you see your sales demographic shrink to zero. I've already come to the same conclusions on these topics that you have.

In my mind, this is the Zodiac's death knell.

Re:chess?

[more]

You don't need that much RAM do do a depth-first search of a play tree. I disagree with this. Hashing is the key element for doing a fast chess search, and usually adding more RAM is more important to a chess program than improving on the CPU power.

Evaluation hashing and transposition hashing need a lot of memory. Also, just to setup the bitboard mechanism and all of its lookups require a megabyte or two. Without bitboards you lose possibly by a factor of 10 in speed.

I consider the depth of the opening books a much less important issue than having sufficient amounts of RAM available for the chess engine. The most important feature of the opening books is to bring variety into the game (for making the game more fun for human opponents), but that can be achieved with a relatively small opening library.

2 things

[56ksucks]

A) I didn't see any game in this article that isn't possible on the GBA.

B) I never thought I'd see a day when Slashdot would post a Pro-Microsoft article.

----

Re:2 things

[DeltaSigma]

Seriously, the reviewer said the GBA can't do anything like argentum, graphics wise. However, I hear Final Fantasy Tactics has made its way on to the GBA... I'd be surprised if that couldn't compete with Argentum, given the screenshots.

Re:2 things

[stonecypher]

A) I didn't see any game in this article that isn't possible on the GBA.

Of course, such a game isn't hard to come up with. The Civilization series is a good example: a quarter meg of RAM just ain't much.

Re:2 things

[Haeleth]

> The Civilization series is a good example: a quarter meg of RAM just ain't much.

Bad guess!

256 kb may not be much, but Civilization only requires 640 kb of memory, and that's with DOS loaded and a need to load graphics into RAM. GBAs don't run DOS and they can copy graphics straight from ROM to VRAM without passing through RAM, so I shouldn't think there'd be any problem with that.

Try again.

Re:Upgrade factor as well

[I-R-Baboon]

PCs can be upgraded to handle the newer more resource intensive games, so they are never hindered by architecture such as a console is pending the next generation release. This is lacking in GBAs and is a pitiful attempt in most PDAs.

Besides, who wants to spend all that extra money on hardware to get that portable stuff onto your 25" monitor or waste time with it at the airport when you can be reading up on the latest geek books.

Employer will pay for PDA, not GBA

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

C'mon mid-day /. crowd, let's be honest. The company might sign off for a PDA purchase req, but there's no way in hell a GBA purchase req is going to go through.

--

First PDA

[MagerValp]

"My first PDA was the HP 95 LX, the very first palmtop computer featuring 256KB of RAM and DOS 3.22! In fact, this was the first true PDA released to the market, capable of doing more than just the super-sized electronic organizers."

The HP 95 LX was (as far as I can tell) released in 1991. PDAs had been along for a long time by then. I own two Atari Portfolios (80C88 @ 5 MHz, 128 kB RAM, DOS 2.11, released in 1989) myself, but there are even older ones, like the Psion Organiser 1 from 1984.

Re:First PDA

[stonecypher]

Psion not old. Ug woke from sleep, found two potato next to cave. Ug find shiny wires, put them between potatos; get shocked. Ug know potential for 1) potato 2) ??? 3) profit, so ug begin to write games for Potato.

In Dreamcast, Sega license potato from Ug and build VMU around it. Ug make lots of $10. Ug rich enough to eat at resteraunt once. Happy.

(Ten points silently awarded to anyone which understands why I chose the VMU. ;) )

My 17 inch "game boy"

[Megane]

Here's what I use instead of a Game Boy. Just try running Neverwinter Nights on your Lame Boy.

Re:My 17 inch "game boy"

[gvonk]

That's awesome!!!

But, you know what has an even BIGGER screen?

The 95 gameboys you could have bought with the money you spent on that laptop...

Re:My 17 inch "game boy"

[thesolo]

I too have a 17" PowerBook, and I also have a GBA SP. I adore the PowerBook, and yes, it definitely can play games that a Game Boy can't. But, take a look at them side by side.

Now tell me, which one do you think is better for quick gaming on the go? I can fit a GBA in my pocket. I had a hard time even finding a good laptop bag for my PowerBook. Besides, if I break or lose my GBA, I'm out $100 at the most. Not true with the Powerbook. There are tons of reasons why a GBA is better for gaming than a PowerBook, and vice-versa. I use both.

Re:My 17 inch "game boy"

[rufo]

Price of GBA SP: $99.

Price of 17" Powerbook and Neverwinter Nights: $3050.

Saving over $2950 and buying a Tapwave Zodiac, for which Neverwinter Nights will be availiable: Priceless.

(well, maybe not priceless, but how the hell else am I supposed to do an MasterCard impreession?!??) /typing on his 12" PB

Re:My 17 inch "game boy"

[stonecypher]

Ah yes, a Macintosh user trying to tell someone else - anyone else! - that there's a dearth of software on their platform.

Thank you; I needed that. I think there might be more software for the Virtual Boy than there is for the Mawkintush. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised were it that the Game and Watch was a contender.

Don't buy the original GBA.

[rufo]

My advice to you: Avoid the original GBA at all costs. The SP is much more comfortable to hold (for me, anyway), has a 10 to 15 hour rechargeable battery and (most importantly) a lit screen. The original GBA does not have a lit screen, and while it looks fine in sunlight, if you're indoors or on a cloudy day it's a complete bitch to see, even if you're sitting directly beneath a lamp. (Penny Arcade isn't joking in this particular comic) Our family owns both an original GBA and the SP... The original GBA is basically regulated to second-player status in multiplayer games, whereas the SP is used most of the time, mainly because you can't see the original. Go easy on your kid's eyes, get the SP.

Re:Don't buy the original GBA.

[Txiasaeia]

I agree with all the above, and would like to point out that the clamshell screen means that it's much less likely to get scratched if you don't have a case for it. Not only that, but scratches and dust are much less noticable using the SP than viewing the GBA original in direct light.

Re:Uh...

[sahonen]

The bleeding edge of a couple years ago is enough to play most of the latest games today, unless you're playing at 1280x1024 or something. Half-Life 2 is apparently supposed to be playable on a TNT2, which makes me happy because I don't have enough money to upgrade mine. =D

Anyway, point being, you don't need to spend that much money. $500/year sounds about right to keep up with the bleeding edge, but you don't need that unless you're a fanatic.

HP 95LX Not First

[bill.sheehan]

With all respect to the author, the Atari Portfolio antedated the HP 95LX by a good two years. I believe the Portfolio claims the title of the first commercially available palmtop.

Re:HP 95LX Not First

[stonecypher]

Other slashdot posters point out that the Psion 1 predates the Portfolio. I choose simply to question the size of your palm; if you're big enough, ENIAC was a handheld.

Now, where'd I put that absinthe?

Re:HP 95LX Not First

[jonnykelly]

which was beaten to market 9 years earlier by the TRS-80 PC-1

I do

[bkhl]

At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2.

I do. Actually I usually say $100 PlayStation, though.

Zodiac

[Drakker]

Hmmm, Zodiac anyone?

http://www.tapwave.com/product/index.asp

That is the only good gaming PDA. The commercial line up isn't that great so far, but it does play the zillions of Palm games... and it has decent battery life! Which can't be said of pocket pc.

And to make the slashdot crowd even happier, it doesn't run a Microsoft OS. :)

Re:Zodiac

[241comp]

Actually, the battery life on my Axim with a standard battery is about 7-10hrs (depends on usage, 7hrs playing DiVX movies and 10hrs general use) with the processor on Automatic. With the extended life battery that jumps to 12-16hrs. That puts it right in line with the "only good gaming PDA". Now, the Zodiac does have some other advantages - namely the ATI(R) Imageon(TM) W4200 graphics accelerator (with 8MB dedicated SDRAM) and the higher resolution (480x320 instead of 320x240). Of course the 90 day warranty (vs. the Axim's 1 year) which is extendable to 9 months (vs. Axim's 3 year) isn't all that great.

Re:Zodiac

[stonecypher]

Hmmm, Zodiac anyone?

Nope. Sorry. Just you.

$150 for my cell phone

[Xanlexian]

and $35 for a data cable. Contacts, appointments, to-do lists, everything. Including plenty of games.

Functionality, portable color game machine, productivity, and a cell-phone all in one handy device.

Oh, and it also serves as my alarm clock as well. And calculator when I'm grocery shopping.

--Xan

Re:$150 for my cell phone

[stonecypher]

$150 for my cell phone and $35 for a data cable

That's a mighty expensive copy of Snakes you bought. (Nokia now has the gall to call that one of their classic games.) Or bowling. Or whatever the hell else you play with 9 and #.

In the meantime, $185 buys you a gameboy and six games. Go home, chuck, until you make the numbers work. (Also, the screen on your phone sucks. Badly enough that a gameboy enthusiast will point it out. :D )

What you want

[neglige]

At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2.

It heavily depends on what you can do with it besides playing games. Ever tried to write a letter with a PS2? Or run a database? No, modding the XBOX to run Linux does not count. Truth is, it is silly to buy a PC just to play games. But the PC will still be with you a few years from now. And it might even be useful. And you can do more with it than with a console.

The same holds true for PDAs. If you want to store your contacts, adresses and events, a relatively cheap Palm device will do nicely. If you want to have insane multimedia capabilites and all those nice little extras, you want a PocketPC -- which costs about 3 times more (YMMV). And those devices can also play games.

But can the GBA store your appointments?

Re:What you want

[oGMo]

It heavily depends on what you can do with it besides playing games. Ever tried to write a letter with a PS2? Or run a database?

Actually, I would argue this. In fact, I'd argue that getting a console makes more sense for most people:

• Buy a PS2 for $179
• Buy a lower-end PC for $500

  vs

• Buy a higher-end gaming PC for $3000

Which makes more sense? The only time this is not the case is if you're a developer or something who actually needs a lot of power out of a box, not just surfing, writing letters, and maybe hosting your site.

Besides, you could run OpenOffice.org or something on the PS2, although granted it's unlikely. Poeople seem to have something against using a box that looks like it's for games to do "serious work".

No, modding the XBOX to run Linux does not count.

And just why is that?

Truth is, it is silly to buy a PC just to play games. But the PC will still be with you a few years from now. And it might even be useful. And you can do more with it than with a console.

The average lifespan of a console (5-6 years) is much longer than the average lifespan of your average PC (2-3 years). If you're gaming on your PC, make that 6 months to one year. Those $500 graphics card upgrades will buy you 10 newly-released console games.

[snipped same-for-PDAs, PocketPC costs 3x more]

And those devices can also play games.

And mostly crappy ones, at that. The point of a game console is the games. It's not "oh, it can play games, technically, if someone wrote them" or "it's got faster, shinier graphics", it's "it's got better games".

But can the GBA store your appointments?

Yes it does. You'd be suprised what you can do with the GBA. Just go search google for the various PogoShell plugins that have been written.

Re:What you want

[stonecypher]

Ever tried to write a letter with a PS2? Or run a database?

Nothing amazes me more than how quickly you forget that the PS2 sells as a licensed linux box, has USB and FireWire, and so on.

No, modding the XBOX to run Linux does not count.

But buying a Sony Linux PS/2 *does*.

But can the GBA store your appointments?

No. Also, my car doesn't wash clothes. Yes, you can use a palm or a PPC to play games. BUt they all suck.

If you want these things that badly, buy a Zire and an AGB. Together they're smaller than an iPaq, and you can lend the kid the gameboy to shut them up.

Also, you can play Zelda instead of Solitaire.

Re:Not silly? [OT]

[PainKilleR-CE]

The bitter pill about the Mac is, there isn't a cheap entry level option. There isn't a generic option to cut their teeth on, so the only option is the top shelf. I'm a wintel guy as well and before I got my new latop, I was on the fence about an iMac.

Another option missing on the Mac side is the option of choosing every part in the machine and assembling it yourself. There's no real direct route to that point, and many components that I would normally choose not to have in a computer are built into the motherboards for the Macs.

With a laptop, on the other hand, I'd be much more likely to choose a Mac. I don't think there's much chance that I'd choose a laptop to replace my desktop any time soon (except maybe at work, where I'm one of the few people with a desktop anyway, and am not supposed to open up the desktop to add/remove cards), so most of the software and even gaming isn't much of an issue, and I can edit code in a text editor as easily as Visual Studio (not that I'd want to do everything in a text editor for Windows-based software, but I cut my teeth programming in emacs so I can deal with it for the time I'd be using a laptop for that, and I've heard Apple's tools are fairly good for OS X development, though limited in language support).

In other words, my home desktops are built from the basics (the motherboard, cards, CPU, RAM, drives, case) so I know what's in there and have a good idea of which parts are cheap and which are not (and usually none of them are cheap, but that's another story), and I have very little that I don't use (on-board video and sound, which I can't seem to find boards without as often as I used to; and even those I could use for troubleshooting occasionally, or as a fallback if money is tight and something breaks), like a modem and wireless (yeah, my cable modem and router are on the same desk but I need wireless... like a hole in my head, wireless in the other room, on the other hand...). Additionally, after making a very large initial hardware investment 7 years ago on an extremely high-end desktop, I've only made small investments from that point on to upgrade the machine, and even the initial investment was spread out over a few months without dealing with credit (buying parts that I thought would hold their value longest first, and then the least likely to hold their value last, like the video cards and CPU (I saved about $300 on the CPU by buying it last instead of first)).

On the other hand, I'd rather have a Wacom tablet PC, so maybe I'll be waiting a bit longer before I have a Mac in my house.

Re:WTF......Playstation 2 - PC comparison?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Just get the PS2 linux kit and you can do all of those things. Simply because no one you know has the Linux kit does not mean people are not doing word processing, image editing, sending e-mail, surfing the net, etc.

Gamepads are better suited to some games. Mouse and keyboard are better suited for others. Try playing Mortal Kombat with your keyboard against my controller.

Nice troll.

Consoles for games, PCs for work...

[sammaffei]

Am I the only person who does their gaming on consoles and uses the computer (actually PowerBook) for work?

I play games on consoles because it's cheaper than buying a gaming PC. Also, there are a lot of console exclusives I like that don't make it to the PC. A good example of this is the "Buffy the Vampire" games (which are quite good and work well on a console).

Re:Consoles for games, PCs for work...

[valkraider]

Console multiplayer requires people to *gasp* be in the same room, which requires actually knowing and liking people, and vice versa... PC games allow multi-player without having to shower or have any friends.

There are obvious pluses and minuses to each...

Faulty Logic

[trevorrowe]

"... At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2."

There is a big difference here. Going from a PDA to a GBA you are getting better control over the gaming experience. You have more input options on the GBA (joypad, buttons, etc) than on the PDA (a stylus).

Going from a Computer to a console system is the complete opposite. You go from a 100+ key keyboard, with a mouse, inputs for joysticks, game pads, wheels, etc - all the way down to a console system that has a few more buttons than a GBA. So the comparison isn't a fair one. I can get a better gaming experience on the computer not simply becuase of a faster processor and vidcard, but also because I can interface it one of a dozen ways that suit my needs. This expierience is highly customizeable.

So if anyone things that because of a faster processor in a pda they are gonig to have a better gaming expience, put down the gba and grab your stylus...

Yeah, call me...

[mikeg22]

when a console can pull down the vast amount of pron that my computer can...

Not the same, Not the same, Not the same

[muffen]

At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2.

Not the same at all, for the following reasons.

1, Games are different between consoles and a PC.
2, Some games are console games, other are PC games. PC games means games that are better played with keyboard/mouse/monitor, not joypad and TV, games such as Quake, UT, Warlords etc. Console games are games such as Tony Hawk, SSX, Fifa, Tiger Woods etc, they are more fun playing with your friends with a joypad.
3, Most probably you aren't spending 1000 dollars on a PC ONLY because you want to play games. You prolly listen to mp3s, browse the web, watch pr0n in your newsreader, illegally download music etc etc (but no worries, the RIAA will get you ... eventually). :)

Anyways, point being, a console is not comparable to a PC in the same way as a PDA is comparable to a GBA. I got a PDA at work, I used it for about 2 months, but then that chessgame got really boring.

Tapwave Zodiac best Gaming PDA

[i4u]

talking about Gaming PDA, tapwave zodiac Palm based PDA is the new kid on the block: Tapwave Zodiac is the best Palm PDA

To the contrary

[SuperKendall]

See Here

Card games have a venerable history on consoles, actually. The PS2 has about a million forms of Majong (sp?) in Japan.

PC's actually have a smaller range of games, though the niche they carry is really a lot better on the PC. But for a more rounded experience a console (any of the consoles but especially the PS2) is superior.

Re:WTF......Playstation 2 - PC comparison?

[brandorf]

Honestly though, the PS2 Linux kit is worthless as a computer replacement. The monitor cable that comes with the kit works with very few commercial monitors, and the imported cable gives shitty picture quality. We just now have a modern Mozilla build, but the PS2 is just too slow for standard PC tasks, I can browse the web faster on my cell phone. Untill we get more modern (efficient) Linux software, it's pretty useless as a computer.

Re:WTF......Playstation 2 - PC comparison?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

You're quite right but that's not what the parent to my post was asking for. He was merely asking for a mechanism, not a "good" replacement.

Battle Damage!

[Snowmit]

A $100 gameboy getting dropped onto concrete is sad but acceptable...a $300 PDA is not.

It's not even necessarily sad. A month ago, I was running to catch a bus (you know that period of time when the bus is pulling out and you are running alongside it and you're sure the driver can see you in his reaview mirror but he isn't stopping and for some stupid reason you keep running in the hopes that you can reach the front door and knock on it and then he'll be forced to notice you and stop and let you on?).

My GBA SP popped out of my pocket and bounced twice on to the road, where it proceeded to get run over by a bus.

Ruefully, I collected it and turned it on. It works great. The only ill effects were that the cartridge popped out (it also still works great) and some serious scratching on the top cover. I like to think of it as battle damage.

Seriously, these things are like Timex.

Re:Battle Damage!

[renecarlos]

>where it proceeded to get run over by a bus

Front axle, or back axle? An unladen bus can have surprisingly low ground loading, due to the massive tires.
Rene Carlos

Re:Battle Damage!

[Snowmit]

Back Axle. And there weren't many people in the bus either.

Re:Buy Nothing!

[Kulaid982]

A high powered radiation dampener / jamming device ..to save my body from being dowsed in EM radiation

Dude, it's called a tinfoil hat.

Re:Who says ...

[stonecypher]

You might want to stop short of Pneumonia.

PDA platform for gaming

[GodSpiral]

I'm hesitating between Palm and Zaurus as a portable gaming platform. Unlike this reviewer, I've pretty much ruled out PPC because of the lack of freeware. But I'm working only on conjecture.

While the Zaurus has games I know I like such as Nethack, chess, puzzle and card games, and mame (though interest is only mild), palm is cheaper, and looks to have the same game categories, perhaps all more tailored to PDAs. For the same price as a zaurus, OTOH, there's the zodiac, which my wife and kids might be more likely to use.

The problem with GBAs for me, beyond the expense, is the games are targeted at children.

Irrelevant.

[oGMo]

It's a constant factor. You need a display device for your PC, too. What's the cost of a 60" 16:9 LCD? Oh yeah, they don't make them.

You could get a data projector starting at $1200, but the bulb replacement costs are going to kill you. And the image isn't all that great, especially in the low-end models.

Re:Irrelevant.

[barc0001]

What's the cost of a 60" 16:9 LCD? Oh yeah, they don't make them.

What cave have you been living in?

Although you're really not supposed to sit 18 inches from these things, which is one of the reasons there's not much of a market for 60" computer monitors.

Totally!

[Inoshiro]

" A console can still not achieve the versatility of a PC when it comes to gaming. "

That's right, where else can I play only the best first-person shooters, strategy games, or North American-style RPGs?

Oh, wait, what if I want to play platformers, 2D games of any sort, Japanese-style RPGs, adventure games, etc?

The number of these games that come out on PCs is about 1 every 4 years. The only thing the PC has going for it, genre wise, are strategy games.

MS has advanced online for 800,000 people. Then again, when will it be profitable?

Re:Totally!

[DunbarTheInept]

In this debate you must remain honest and define what it is you are arguing about - is it the capabilities of the platform or the MARKET surrounding the platform? They aren't the same thing. The console MARKET is richer, but the PC capabilities are greater. Take Deus Ex for example. The PC version blows away the Playstation version, because of the advantages the PC has over a console. Numbers of games? The console wins. Complexity of the engine within the games that do exist? The PC wins.

$1,000?

[symbolic]

At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games

I might. I was able to put together a very capable system for less than half that (good enough to play PlanetSide without any problems). I guess the price might be somewhere near $1,000 if you absolutely had to have the best graphics card available, but for me (and many others, I suspect) it's an unncessary luxury. 250 fps? Please. Who cares? As long as it does at least 30-40 fps most of the time, the rest is all surplus.

Re:$1,000?

[PatrickThomson]

30-40 fps most of the time, that's assuming you never ever want to buy any new games ever, or you do, and upgrade every 6 months as opposed to 2 or 3 years for a more expensive machine.

Re:$1,000?

[symbolic]

My next upgrade would be a better graphics card, because by then, they would have migrated downward in price. I might eventually end up with one of these high-end cards, but if I play my cards right, I'll be paying substantially less than those who bought early.

not bloody likely..

[Blob Pet]

from the article: My guess is that a good 50% or more of PDA users bought the PDA for playing games.

I find that hard to believe, based off of my personal observations of friends and colleagues who own PDAs and the fact that most PDAs don't have an interface that that is designed for games.

Really, if you're going to do any portable gaming, the GBA and other such devices are better suited if for no other reason than because of the control interface. PDA controls are geared usually towards launching some applications quickly. Running complex PC-style games doesn't make sense for PDAs because many require utilizing keyboards.

Do one thing and do it well. Do too many things, especially on a small platform and you get the N-Gage.

Free BEER!

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

Gameboys are OK for what they do, but with a PDA and wireless I used to eat (and drink) free every wednesday and thursday when the Local Bars had trivia contests. I could even come in after half of the questions had been asked and still smoke everybody else. Everyone was shocked and amazed at my genius - lol. Ahh the joys of Ricochet(paid for itself) & a PDA

Re:Free BEER!

[SomeOtherGuy]

google'in for trivia would get you shot on IRC...lol

Maybe they should

[Jezza]

Maybe it is stupid to spend $1000+ on a PC just to play games.

If all you want are FPS's, platform games, driving games, etc then a PS2 or XBox (for Halo probably) would be better. Of course the GameCube is a steal at it's new price point (Metroid Prime anyone?).

Of course if you're into Flightsims then a PC is a requirement. Personally I think that consoles are often overlooked by PC buyers, a PC to do "light duty" is very cheap (and by "light duty" I mean WP, email etc) you could afford a console and a slew of games with the "change". As I say not much use if you're a flightsim nut.

Re:Maybe they should

[valkraider]

Of course the GameCube is a steal at it's new price point (Metroid Prime anyone?).

I swear this is one of the best games ever made. I have played most of them too, and I probably own close to half of them... Metroid Prime is OUTSTANDING.

zaurus

[selfabuse]

I bought an SL-5500 a while back, so I could have a little linux machine to knock around on. I certianly didn't buy it to play games, but it has the added bonus of having a port of an SNES emulator, a gameboy/gameboy advanced emulator, Exult, and a stack of others. So, I sure wouldn't spend $300 on a PDA solely for video games, but it's nice to get that functionality out of one that you already bought for other reasons.

How about a higher screen resolution for a change?

[melted]

Those PDAs are totally unusable as they are. I'd like to see AT LEAST 640x480 resolution so that more text fits on the screen and Excel isn't such a PITA to work with. Keep the screen size the same, but UP THE FUCKING RESOLUTION!

I've been wondering about this.

[mystery_bowler]

Ok, screen size and sound might be a problem, but I can't phathom why we haven't seen licensed technology coming from Nintendo to get the GBA/GB/Nintendo 8-bit games into PDAs/mobile phones.

Given that the GBA is as small as it is, I can only imagine the form factor of a device needed to play classic 8-bit games can't be bigger.

Nintendo has shown the propensity to re-release content on the GBA (Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the latest in a LONG list of re-releases from the SNES), so I wonder what the hold up is on getting out the classic 8-bit games on mobile phones and PDAs. Too expensive to perform the R&D? Too far away from the core business model?

Haters

[Neuroelectronic]

Whats with all the ill wind towards GBA lately? But, perhaps I'm a little biased since i own three SPs..

Not silly.

[Haeleth]

> I think it's silly to spend $200 on a vidcard when you can buy a whole gaming system for the same price.

I don't.

You see I already *have* a complete PC. So if I spend $200 on a new video card, I'm getting $200-worth of graphics technology, whereas if I spend my $200 on a whole gaming system, I'm getting maybe $100-worth of graphics technology, plus a whole lot of processor, memory, and so on that I don't need.

Not to mention that I already have a rather nice monitor, while to use a console I'd have to fork out another $200 or so for a decent TV...

Re:OT: By the way, is GBA-SP better than regular G

[stonecypher]

The original GBA is an entry level machine that's still being sold because the manufacturing for it is already put together. It's more comfortable for big hands, but the not-backlit screen is a *huge* problem. Actually, the screen is the only way in which the SP is superior; I dislike it otherwise. If you're confident, an Afterburner looks better than the SP's backlight does, but voids your warranty, and if you're not careful you might get an air bubble under your screen (ugly, not damaging.) Moreover, there are palette differences in old games which make them look dumb on new hardware; an afterburner can be turned off, or with creative hardware, even just down.

But if it's for someone else, shell out the extra $20. The backlight is very important. The old AGB is kind of hard to see if you're not in the sun or directly under florescent lighting. Penny Arcade had it right.

Re:Buy Nothing!

[KD5YPT]

High power radiation dampener/jamming device... for your information, a dampener and a jammer are two completely different things. A dampener blocks energy, jammer emits energy that confuses the source.

Re:WTF......Playstation 2 - PC comparison?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

"Does Sony support a linux kit for there PS2? I don't think they do."

You mean "their", not "there." And not only does Sony support the Linux kit - Sony sells it. I think you're confused about what the PS2 Linux kit is. It's not the type of homebrew solution that you find for getting Linux onto the XBox. The Linux kit for the PS2 is a hard drive and Linux distribution sold by Sony and supported by Sony. It's not a "hack" in the sense that you think it is. There's no hardware or software exploit to use in order to get it running. It is fully supported.

The fact that you don't understand this and had no knowledge of it probably means that when you said "I have yet to see anyone do blah blah blah on a PS2" you meant, "You can't do blah blah blah on a PS2." But if you want to argue semantics and take steps backward in your argument, be my guest. Now I'm done feeding you troll.

That's what I said

[SuperKendall]

The PC dominates in FPS and RTS. But that's almost the whole gaming world on a PC!! You have plenty of FPS on consoles (although I also think the gamepad just plain sucks as an input device for a console FPS and have given up on them). But you also get lots of other categroeis of games like DDR or sports games that you just don't see much on a PC, at least not with any quality.

Thus I am not sure you can really say the PC gaming is stronger, if you choose to look at all categories of gaming. If by "games" you mean "FPS", then sure the PC is stronger.

Re:That's what I said

[E-Rock]

Other than FPS and RTS (god forbid they put a Turn Based Strategy game on a console) what is there? Sports games and twitch games (although you might argue that FPS are just a subset of twitch).

Re:That's what I said

[SuperKendall]

Platformers (Rachet & Clank)

Music games (like Dance Dance, or Frequency)

Weird Stuff (Stretch Panic [kind of a platformer])

Adventure/Action games (sort of a subcategory of RPG - Zelda, Devil May Cry)

Arcade style racing games (like FZero or Wipeout)

Games Where The PS2 Watches You Through a Camera (EyeToy)

Wrestling games (ok, kind of a fighter)

Action Horror (Resident evil, Silent Hill, and the ilk)

Puzzle games (like bust-a-move)

The PC has some of those things (actually, probably more puzzle games than consoles) but a lot of those categories are pretty sparse on a PC.

GBA SP vs PDA

[figa]

Back in the day I bought a Casio EM500. It was a cheap PDA, it could run Mame, Doom, and Hexen pretty well, the screen was great, and the buttons worked for gaming (unlike the iPaq at the time). Two months ago I bought a Gameboy Advance SP. Here's why I bought a Gameboy rather than another PDA:

• I didn't feel comfortable flashing the PDA on the train. It's a lot of $$$ to wave around.
• I felt like I was destroying the PDA by using it. Though I was careful, I scratched the screen playing Pocket Slay. I can't stand using a PDA through a sheet of plastic, and at some point I pushed some grit around. When I played Mame games, I felt like I was going to kill the the buttons eventually. This is an unsettling feeling on a $300 device.
• The buttons on most PDAs aren't really configured for gaming. They're normally all on the bottom in a row.
• The PDA form factor is still pretty big, relative to the GBA SP, which is about the size of a big pager. When it's folded, it's pretty sturdy, so I don't have to worry so much about snapping it in half or cracking the screen.
• Gameboy programming looks like a lot of fun. The architecture reminds me of the Amiga. It's a whole other world from writing games for the Pocket PC.
• I found that I never used any of the PDA functionality of the PDA, no matter how hard I tried to incorporate it into my life.
• The GBA SP only set me back $100. My Casio depreciated $200 in the space of two years. The GBA is likely to hold half its value for the next two years for a TCO of $50 versus $200 over the same period.
• People stopped writing apps for the Casio's MIPS processor. That risk is still inherent in the Pocket PC world.

Needless to say, I'm happy with the GBA. There are some things I miss about the PDA, though.

• It would be nice to have compressed video playback. That's not happening on the GBA.
• I'm missing the ability to play NES games and other ported or emulated games. I think there's an NES emulator for GBA, but I don't have a flash cart setup.
• There are very few strategy games for GBA. I'm playing Advance Wars 2, and it's a great game. It's unfortunate there aren't more like it. I may find myself playing Pokemon. The platform is really geared to the 8-12 set.

Re:Not silly? [OT]

[Eccles]

The bitter pill about the Mac is, there isn't a cheap entry level option.

An $800 eMac, "including monitor", isn't that expensive, and comes with reasonably tolerable performance for most purposes. The only real weakness I see is USB 1.1 instead of 2.0, which makes talking to digital cameras slow.

Another one:

[pebs]

Goldeneye. Exception to the rule, of course.

Re:Another one:

[kisrael]

The poster mentioned in his followup that he was thinking more of movies that are time-constrained to be released with the movie...I think GoldenEye came out a long time after.

I can't think of too many concurrent film-based games; maybe Spiderman? That seems to be well regarded, and similarly timed. (But again, that's a property thats existed for decades and has lots of bad guys and general culture to draw on; if you limit it to "games timed to ride or increase movies, and with source material ONLY from those movies" the original poster might have a point, but it's a subtler point than "movie tie-ins suck", which does capture about 90-95% of it.

Re:Another one:

[orac2]

When I was at E3 a couple of years ago, I was talking to the people who develop the Harry Potter games. The schedule was killing them: a game normally takes about 18 months, while the movies only took about a year to produce, plus the games people had to wait till enough art elements (i.e. the exact way the movie people were going to implement Fluffy, or the Basilisk) had been figured out for the movie before they could begin 3-d modelling etc.

I guess the year's hiatus between The Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban will everyone a chance to catch a breath.

Re:Another one:

[MonkeyBoy]

Most license-based movies fail, not only due to time constraints, but also due to budget. They spent a serious amount of coin getting the license, leaving less than usual to spend on the game. This is less true with large publishers like EA, but even they have to play basic economics (profit > license+development+marketing).

FWIW, the engine and basic gameplay in your example, Spider-Man, was based, down to the control scheme & gameplay mechanics, on the SpiderMan game that came out roughly a year earlier (it was based on the comic book and wasn't released on as many platforms). That cuts out a huge part of the development cycle, because you know what you can do, you can use the tools you developed for the older game to make levels, interstitials, etc. for the new game, then deal with porting the game to all the new platforms.

As another poster mentioned, time constraints are often killer for movies in development. With some films artwork is not decided until very late.

A company I worked for had a pretty major movie license (you'd know it if I said it). The movie was being shot during the self-destruction of Orion and completely changed when another company picked it up. Up until Orion blewup, however, we had to redo virtually the entire game as the movie progressed and went through rewrites. Afterwards we had to say "screw it" and do whatever we had, because the new owners took some time to sort through the movie, shooting new scenes, editing for different interpretation, etc. We had little knowledge of what the final product was going to be until the very end. As a result we were one of the few licensed movie games in which the events portrayed in the film had virtually nothing to do with the film, a fact that was mentioned numerous times during reviews of the game.

By and large most movie games are timed to come out with the release of the movie, because then they don't have to spend as much on advertising to make people aware of the title. A new trick I've noticed is for games to be timed around the release of the VHS/DVD, for much the same reasons. Though sometimes I wonder how many drones pick up a PS2/GameCube/XBox game thinking they're getting a DVD, or vice-versa.

Re:Uh...

[stonecypher]

> plus $500 a year in upgrades
> That's why I have ... a Mac.

(blinkblink)

I'm sorry. It's been so long since MS has charged me for my OS upgrades that I'm almost unable to point out how inverted this is.

Please don't make me stick up for M$. Please? I mean, if you're going to be a zealot, could you at least make things a little harder to shoot down?

I hate you.

[runlvl0]

I hate you for making me say this:

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight
(Gimme my Amazon 50 cents!)

Although, in pennance, I'd like to reccomend Flight Gear (and it's free!); also, Leo's Flight Sim works on the Pocket PC, and is also free.

Re:I hate you.

[Moofie]

Well, if it's any consolation (pardon the pun) I won't buy Microsoft products, so that doesn't count. : )

Flanker 2.5 is awesome, but I have trouble reading Cyrillic, and I can't use the English cockpit 'cuz that's cheating.

Yes, I am a psycho.

The author's guess:

[batura]

"My guess is that a good 50% or more of PDA users bought the PDA for playing games."

My guess is that he's wrong. Totally wrong. Buying a PDA for games doesn't seem to make much sense at all. The fact that are games is a nice distant second use, but for most people, I doubt this has any revalence at all. Wall Streeters playing Puzzle Bobble on Lunch? hmm, maybe, but I wouldn't think so.

In Defense of Stability

[cgenman]

Having done QA for both Computers and every major console I can confidently say that computer games aren't buggy due to lack of effort, they're buggy because testing on all permutations are impossible. Is this game stable on Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, XPSP1, XPSP2? Is this game stable on Catalyst 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, and the unreleased 3.8? Pentium 3, 3.1, 4, 4.1? Athalon XP, Thunderbird? Via, nVidia Northbridge? Direct X 8, 9.0, 9.1? The list goes on and on... And these things can't be tested independently of eachother: Total test time and effort is multiplicative of new variables, not additive... And all of this hardware needs to be found. A console QA department can have far fewer people testing than a PC department even if they are testing across all 3 consoles.

I would doubt that games have gotten any less reliable since the internet... somehow I remember getting games to run "back in the day" as an exercise in futility. Perhaps it just seems like there are more problems because people lacked a suitable medium to complain about games. We can all thank Berners-Lee for correcting that problem.

On the other hand, a good thing online patching has added is game balancing. If someone discovers an infinite-hit Dan Combo in Street Fighter Alpha 4, it will stay in and dominate the game until Street Fighter Alpha 5. If someone discovers a way to create a Peasant Sword of Infinite Damage +5 in Everquest, it will be nurfed the following day. Quite frankly, competitive online gaming wouldn't be anywhere near as balanced as it is if it weren't for patching. If serious competition is your thing, online is the place to be... and to a large degree because of patching.

Re:Uh...

[Haeleth]

> I'm sorry. It's been so long since MS has charged me for my OS upgrades that I'm almost unable to point out how inverted this is.

What, you mean they gave you a free upgrade to Windows XP? How did you wangle that?

I gather the differences between MacOS X versions 10.2 and 10.3 are at least as significant as those between, let's cut the marketing crap and use use the internal numbers, Windows NT versions 5.0 and 5.1.

Not so easy to shoot down Macs after all, is it now?

Re: Movie-license games

[syates21]

Four Words:
Return of the King (it doesn't suck).

Re:Uh...

[scosol]

Just cause I'm curious- how in the hell does OSX work with Gentoo?

?????????

Re:If it doesnt play Mario, im not buying it. SIMP

[bhtooefr]

Last I checked, most PDAs could run either GB(P/C/A) emulators, or SNES emulators. If those can't play Pokeyman, Mario, Zelda, or Metroid, then no gameboy or snes could play them either.

Gaming worth a grand.

[DigiShaman]

Hey, I spent just over $1,000 on my new PC *just* so I can play the newer games. And I can personally justify it because gaming is a hobby of mine. I'm sorry if that bothers you, but some people have their Hi-Fi stereo systems, others have their hotrods/rice burners. I'll take the badass fragging-till-your-fingers-hurt rig.

Re:Buy Nothing!

[essreenim]

Actually you are wrong geoffspear. Radiation dameners for example power themselves off the radiation generated by EM rad. producing devices !!

Re:Buy Nothing!

[essreenim]

Thats correct, my dream device combines them both in one delightful package

Re:Buy Nothing!

[geoffspear]

Sorry, essreenim! I didn't mean to get the details of a product that doesn't exist incorrect !!!

A google search for "radiation dampeners" returns 7 hits, all of which seem to have something to do with a role-playing game. "Radiation dampers" do exist, but they're used in ceilings to block heat radiation during a fire. Your spelling, "radiation dameners" returns no hits. In any case, when you develop the technology to run an electronic device powered by ambient EM fields, let me know !!

ahh yes

[comet69]

i agree with pretty everyone who has something to say about the button layout of a PDA as compared to a GBA..

however, PC compared to PS2 is a completely different story.. When you spend $1000 of a PC, you're getting every fuckin game system there ever is.. And shit, you can even buy those handy USB - PS2 controller adapters.. i play GTA with it all the time.. works great..

plus GTA on PC is a millions times better than on a PS2.. car insertation, modifications, etc... all the goodness..

Re: Movie-license games

[Scrameustache]

Well, I'm reserving judgement untill after I've seen the movie and therefore no longer fear the game's spoilers.

GBA strategy games

[Webapprentice]

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis
Advanced Wars
Advanced Wars II
Fire Emblem

There are strategy games available.

Then mash buttons on the floor

[yerricde]

Then perhaps you should try mashing some buttons with your feet instead of with your fingers. I don't know about you, but CowboyNeal could certainly use some Dance Dance Revolution. You'll get your "intellectual challenge" figuring out which way to turn your body to pass each part of "Afronova" or "End of the Century".

Redmond == console makers

[yerricde]

Now game console manufacturers are astroturfing the 'Dot. It was bad enough when only Redmond did it.

Among the game console makers with a major U.S. presence (Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft), Sony is the only one whose U.S. headquarters is not located in Redmond, Washington.

Phones have CPU but lack PPU

[yerricde]

The phones have 40% of the CPU of PDAs and 20x the CPU of GBA. It is sufficient to run most games, especially if compared to the GBA.

Unlike a taco-phone, a GBA system has hardware-accelerated 2D graphics. Taco-phones have Dumb Frame Buffer graphics and have to spend CPU cycles to draw the screen, erasing much of their purported 20-fold advantage. The point here is that it's not always just the CPU but the entire architecture that counts.

What is "real" EverQuest?

[yerricde]

Ever tried to find a decent flight simulator on a console? Good luck searching for one.

Have you ever played Pilotwings, as others have suggested?

finding a real equivalent of Everquest or even Warcraft III on a PS2/X-Box/GC

I've seen an EverQuest brand MMORPG for PS2 in Best Buy. There also exists a Phantasy Star Online brand MMORPG for GameCube. If those aren't the "real" thing, then how would you define "real" in terms of what earns the contestant a fat cancer stick?

gbadev devil's advocate

[yerricde]

Disclaimer: I am a GBA programmer.

GCC, VisualBoy Advance, (checks wallet) = Free.

GBA flash card = easy to obtain ($112 incl shipping), but not free(beer). GBA multiboot slave cable = also easy to obtain ($26 incl shipping) or build, but not free(beer)

[The difficulty of distribution of your program on a Game Pak] is only a problem if you live in the fantasy world of making money off of your video games.

Otherwise, how would a game programmer eat?

Re:WTF......Playstation 2 - PC comparison?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

You try calling up Sony for support on the Linux kit. I have and I know what happens. You obviously don't.

I still maintain you believed that the Linux kit was implemented in a similar method as Linux on the XBox.

Computer hobbyist != hacker but, disregarding that mistake, a hardware hack is quite different from a product designed for "hackers." When you say something is a hack, it means that it is thrown together in a way that it was not designed to handle. For instance, it is a hack to modify a toaster so that it can serve as a home heater. It is not a hack when the hardware is designed to support a hard drive and a keyboard and a mouse. Before the PS2 was released, the Linux kit was given to developers. This is hardly a hack.

Again, just because a product is designed for someone who is a "hacker" does not mean that that product is a "hack." For instance, a hacker may need a soldering iron. Does that mean a soldering iron is a hack? No, it is not.

Your backpedaling is sad. And based on the fact that you have negative karma, I know you're a troll.

Re:WTF......Playstation 2 - PC comparison?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Oh no! You insulted me! :*-(

Re:WTF......Playstation 2 - PC comparison?

[Dave2 Wickham]

Damnit, stop posting stuff which gets modded down unfairly which I then have to metamoderate unfair; It's starting to get annoying having to M2 in favour of a former-foe so many times... :-/

Re:Buy Nothing!

[essreenim]

Geoffspar, You have an imagination, because you tried to tailor a google search, I am impressed as most are too mediocre for this. type "radiation shield" into your search engine. You may be pleasently surprised...

Re:Buy Nothing!

[geoffspear]

Ok, are you talking about the products that block radiation with a material that it can't pass through (the same theory as lining walls with lead) or the completely fraudulent products that claim to block EM radiation from your cellphone from giving you brain cancer (the same theory behind tin foil hats)?

Re:Buy Nothing!

[essreenim]

'fraudulent'

yes, some are, some are not.

In any case go next to
www.themeatrix.com