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Revolution Least Expensive Next-Gen Console
exdeath writes "Today, one of Nintendo's most public faces said the Revolution
will stand out from its competition for a reason besides its innovative controller: price.
Speaking to CNN/Money correspondent Chris Morris Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing,
predicted that the Revolution would be cheaper than both the Xbox 360
and the PlayStation 3. How low will Nintendo go? It's hard to tell.
Microsoft is selling two Xbox 360 SKUs--the no-frills $299 core Xbox
and the $399 standard model with hard drive and wireless remote. In his interview with Morris, Fils-Aime also reiterated that the
Revolution will not support high-definition televisions. 'What we'll
offer in terms of gameplay and approachability will more than make up
for the lack of HD,' he said. Both Microsoft and Sony are making much
of the 360 and PS3's HD capabilities. Fils-Aime also implied that the DS will see redesigns, just as the Game Boy Advance has."
Nintendo, of the three, targets children better than any other of the big three console developers. The average parent doesn't want to spend $400 to keep their child happy (nevermind that the odds that the child will use the majority space of the harddrive on the xbox360 is slim to none). They did it with the DS (unintentionally?) and it's helped them as well. It's now a semi-proven model of competition for them that works.
When you look at the specs of the PS3 or Xbox 360, it appears to me that your money is getting you a better system. With the Revolution not supporting high-definition, it should be discounted. I'm sure it will be better than the gamecube, but it just seems odd to me that they wouldn't support HD. When I bought my television last year, suddenly my PS2 got a lot fewer hours on it. The Xbox just looked so nice. And after all, I paid enough money for the TV that I want to see it the way it is intended.
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Considering the $50+ price tag of new games, is the console price really that important?
1. You are a minority.
2. Nintendo doesn't cater to the hardcore.
HD, in this case = "High Definition", not "Hard Drive".
Dare I say, RTFA friend?
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As important as it is to lowball the competition when you're coming in from a niche angle like Nintendo is with the Revolution, it certainly isn't everything. GameCube was $100 cheaper, and all it really did was convince all of the consumers that it wasn't as technically able or as good an investment as PS2 or Xbox.
While the cheaper price will help, I think the only way it'll become useful in the marketplace is if Nintendo successfully distinguishes it and its remote-like controller from the competition. If they can pull off a positive impression from the public, mix in some media hype, and simultaneously be able to get into more households via the accessible price, they'll probably be in business. Not looking like a purple lunch box will probably also help them carve out their own new little market to get out of the pissing contest Microsoft and Sony are throwing all their money at in preparation of.
Of course, what's really to be seen is how well HDTV is adopted by people and how many gamers will be alright with the fact that few if any Revolution games will output any higher than 480p. They might look beautiful on standard TVs, but once the console has been out a couple years and HDTV adoption rates are more pervasive, it'll probably bring the console to a screeching halt similar to what the GameCube is experiencing.
-Juice
I don't care that much about HD, but I would like to see routine support for widescreen and progressive scan
Regardless, your point does stand, and it's true that the lack of a hard drive may be a huge setback to developers - However, developers will also have to grapple with this issue on the X-Box 360, since the customer may or may not have a hard drive (depending on which bundle they purchased.)
Honestly, I believe that the lack of Hi-Def support will be a bigger drawback than the hard drive issue.
But, as the article says, is that enough for Nintendo? Gamecube was/is priced considerably lower than the PS2 and Xbox, but doesn't have nearly the mindshare (not even mentioning the marketshare). I'm not planning on getting either PS3 or Xbox 360 until they reach price points comparable to what the Revolution will launch at; for me, $200 is the sweet spot. Any more and I won't buy it.
Personally, I'm most excited about the possibilities of the Revolution (the controller, download old games, internet play, Super Smash Bros. Revolution Online, etc.) but I fear that it might be too little too late.
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640x480 should be enough for anyone.
Good think you don't matter to Nintendo, then. It would have been a disaster is their business model depended entirely on you.
Most people don't even have HDTVs nor surround sound nor a computer that can handle high end games at that resolution. You're a huge minority, especially considering Nintendos "casual gamer" target demographic.
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Having started playing FPS's at 1920x1200 and 1600x1200 on my 6800, I don't think it would be possible for me to go back to NTSC resolution for modern games.
Well I'm still using an old 15' CRT television to play my games and I'm more that satisfied with it. I've tried HD TV, and I don't see that benefits in the increase in resolution offset the enormous costs of
a) Purchascing such a device
and
b) The loss of CPU and GPU cycles to increasing resolution that could be put to better uses eleswhere, like gameplay or AI.
You may have enjoyed the 1600x1200 resolution, but I seriously doubt you enjoyed it at the same framerate or lighting quality or perhaps even texture and model quality as someone who was using good old 1024x768 resolution. There's a payoff here, and in terms of what makes a game look better, increasing resolution beyond 1024x768 ranks pretty low on the list of options.
Of course the number one way of making a game look better is better art design. This fact slips past most developers.
May the Maths Be with you!
Some people associate cheaper price with lower quality so unless the price is so low that people would just buy it anyway it could backfire. Remember Beta was cheaper than VHS and didn't sell nearly as much.
I sincerely doubt that the Revolution will be of any less quality. They may not support high def, but they definitely use quality components.
Also, the system is supposed to come with 512MB of flash memory for downloading content online.
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I know of quite a few people who bought a GC to go alongside a PS2 or an Xbox, because of its comparatively low price. Perhaps Nintendo noticed this and is aiming the Revolution to be everyone's "other" next-gen console, given their emphasis on different kinds of games than the indistinguishable powerhouses from MS/Sony.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Memory:
But I still think my point stands as it being something of an artificial limit, much like the 100 song limit on the ROKR. Something that developer's shouldn't have to grapple with, but they'll end up battling somewhere down the line.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I suspect that Nintendo's argument is that they want to appeal not just to the predominantly teenage male "hardcore" market.
Rather than entering the hardware arms race of Microsoft and Nintendo to see who can create the most realistic, or at least visually impressive game experience, Nintendo seem to want a more modest aesthetic and rely more on interesting game designs. Whether or not that will work, who knows - but I do at least applaud their attempt at diversifying the game market.
Not everyone wants to play Need for Bling Underground Xtreme 2007, you know.
Well I don't really care about the graphics because I want the console to play the old games I used too and these definitively don't support HD and in that case it won't matter. I will also be playing the new games (Zelda, Metroid) and the graphics quality of the cube is enough for me. And they can make interesting games with the new controller without the need to have HD.
It's Not a SONY.
Those numbers are pretty ugly when you think about it. Two out of 12 people give a damn enough to buy a brand new TV and one of those two bothered to buy the component cable. By the way, the one who bought the HD cable also sold his HDTV because he just doesn't watch TV enough to justify a gigantic TV in his condo.
I don't think that HDTV/console gaming is at a big enough saturation to compel Nintendo to include HDTV support. They make money hand over fist so I'm sure they believe this is the best way to market the machine but I can only guess that adding HDTV support and just selling the cable seperately would only tack on an extra $10-15 bucks.
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"What half-@$$ed hardware is in there, cheap production, and buggy software."
What hardware problems have Nintendo had in the past? What buggy software? You pulled that statement out of no-where, didn't you.
My personal (read ignore at will) console history for breakages goes: My PS1 broke (No longer read discs), my PS2 broke (Just died), my Dreamcast reboots randomly. My SNES, GB, Gamecube, GBA and DS all still run perfectly.
Meh.
Ars Technica had a good piece related to this. Very briefly, they point out that most titles are written to be cross-platform, thus erasing a lot of the relative hardware benefits of each platform.
r ossplatform.ars
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/c
I think Nintendo is on to a winner; we'll see if the execution is as good as their ideas.
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a huge minority huh? is that like a definite maybe?
Nintendo has stated that on regular TVs, Revolution will be nearly indistinguishable from HD. Now, I don't know about you, but I certainly don't have an HD set and probably won't for several years - poor soon-to-be graduate student and all.
What the Revolution will be about is a new way of playing games, not the glowiest explosions. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are more or less equivalent in the games they'll let you play. The Revolution will be able to handle those games (albeit not in HD) but also open up lots of new possibilities for new games too while adding new control options to the traditional genres (RTS, FPS especially). As a gamer since I was a little tadpole, I don't see how people could not be at least a little excited about what Nintendo's doing.
Nintendo won't cut production values, because they've been about high production values and lower cost than the competitors for a while now.
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Bad hardware sounds more like a Sony issue to me. I've never had to replace a Nintedo system, yet I've owned two Playstations and two PS2s. I do own a Gamecube, by the way, with which you could have used this same argument when they launched with a dramatically lower price tag. It has always run fine.
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With a low price-point, it sounds like they want to clean up in the Chinese market that's sprouted up this time 'round. And it's not like they have a lot of HDTVs.
... I've seen what it can do, and it doesn't seem to be that great of an advancement to me. Besides, a non-HD Nintendo means beautiful frame rates ... and games with a cell-shaded look to them will look the same whether on HD or regular TV.
Personally, I could care less about HD
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I agree. Even though I have an HDTV, I could care less about HD support as long as it supports progressive scan and widescreen. I don't see a big enough reason to make the HD jump with current technology. System power would be better spent rendering special effects, lighting, bump mapping, upping poly count, etc. Why spend extra system power to bump up the resolution when you can still count the poly's in the majority of games on the market?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
There are some other markets which aren't so fussed about flashy graphics, for example current non-gamers probably have no idea about the graphical arms race. That's certainly been Nintendo's target market with the DS, and they've been shouting from the rooftops about the Revolution supposedly being less intimidating for outsiders.
I think you underestimate the young demographic's thirst for good visuals: just look at the number of tennage oiks on forums ranting on about how much more powerful Next Gen Console X is than all the others.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Correction!
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They have two SD slots on the revolution.
That should be more than enough for any storage needs.
Journalists were playing Revolution games at the TGS; they even had a Metroid Prime demo on show. Dev kits shipped a short while back and are based on the GameCube APIs. Perhaps you should, you know, actually check these things.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Meryl Lynch reported that the Xbox 360 could be as low as $250 this spring and MS would still make a profit. The revolution won't be out that soon, and when it does come out, chances are MS will only be charging a couple hundred dollars at the most. So unless the revolution starts at $100 at release, it will most likely be the same or more then the Xbox 360.
n dex.php
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/11/03/console/i
That's a slippery slope if I've ever heard one.
If you want a rundown on the hardware here ya go (link lifted from a previous slashdot post).
The reduced price is of course justified as mentioned above, you're not getting nearly as much hardware for the buck as the revolution is sans: Hardive, 802.11g, HDTV input, CPU clock. However the interesting thing to note as the article points out is the speculative large(r) size of L2 cache. I don't feel like quoting it so have a read yourself and take notes on how "less features" does not correlate to "poor quality".
Nintendo's 'problem', if you can call it that, is that they don't target people who don't already play games. I don't know many people who bought a GC as their only console, and almost everyone I know who did buy a GC bought one because they were fans of an existing Nintendo franchise (Mario, Zelda) and wanted the newest title in the range.
The new input device looks to be a way to introduce non-gamers to the machine, but it may look a little gimmicky to them. I'm not a Nintendo fan (I got my GC for Monkey Ball!), but I hope they stick around. At least they're a bit different.
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Sure it cuts price, but who wants something that won't sparkle and shine in a couple years as HDTVs become more commonplace?
That's true. but it's also true that HDTV's aren't likely to become commonplace till well after 2010, by which time the next generation of console will be approaching it end of life.
Point of note here. What type of television is little Johhny or Mary more likely to have in their bedrooms with the console. A cheap and robust CRT, or a $2000 HDTV set?
May the Maths Be with you!
Not to knock Nintendo here, but I'll probably never own one. The reason is simple. The problem is not the controller (I have to admit, it's a neat idea, although I'm skeptical about how comfortable it is), or the hardware, or even the fact that it's Nintendo. It's Nintendo's target audience. The games designed by Nintendo are primarily for kids. We can expect to see more of the cute loveable nintendo icons in many of their titles reincarnated a few thousand times more. These aren't the titles I want out of a console, and this will probably be the only reason I'll get an xbox 360 and skip the revolution all together. To me, price won't be the determining factor. The titles availabale will be.
The same thing happened initially when I got a portable. First I got a DS, however after 6 months of ownership I realized that Nintendo wasn't going to deliver on any of the game types I wanted to see. I sold my DS and got a PSP and haven't looked back since. The PSP simply has more titles which will appeal to the 30+ age group. Especially those who are tired of mario and friends.
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The bar by which one measures whether a game console is worth buying is a very flexible one... I don't think this will actually steal business away from XBOX360 or PS3, but it *may* make a difference in how many people own a Revolution alongside their other next-gen console.
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Well, 1024x768 is a HUGE improvement on the standard NTSC resolution.
I think you underestimate the young demographic's thirst for good visuals: just look at the number of tennage oiks on forums ranting on about how much more powerful Next Gen Console X is than all the others.
Teenagers will rant about how X is better than Y regardless of the domain. Its just what they do!
I think Nintendo is aiming even lower than that. Get the really young kids hooked and the hand that rocks the cradle is the one that owns the pre-teens into their teenage years.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
SD looks like crap on HDTV's. Seriously. If any of your friends have HDTV, ask them. And a lot of people are saying that production of HDTV's in 2006 will be much higher, ergo, the price will be lower, and a lot of people will be introduced to HDTV for the first time. BAD time to release a console that all those new HDTV owners will think looks like crap. You don't need 1080p, 1280x720 is the minimum that XBox 360 will do, and it wouldn't be so bad if Revolution at least said that they'd support that for some games. I guarantee you that 85% of HDTV owners, if they're choosing between the Revolution and a different console, will choose the other console.
With the DS Nintendo have officially stopped playing Sony/Microsoft's game. They can clearly see that games are being put in a box now with nothing but graphics improving, so they picked up there ball and started a new game. Sony and Microsoft can stay with the graphics grind where as Nintendo will start making some intresting games and change the scene.
Maybe it'll be a hit (like the DS), maybe it'll fail. It's a new direction and a some fresh blood in the old games markets heart. It's not going to hurt Nintendo any if they screw this up because the DS will keep them a float. The cube has a dedicated fanbase (I love mine) which wants to play fun games and graphics don't matter all that much to them. These are the same people who will buy the revolution and love it.
Nintendos job in this "generation" is to try something new, keep their fans happy and forget about Sony and Microsoft. The PSP VS DS "battle" so far has been pretty much 99% in Nintendos favour. Theres a few PSP fans but mostly people have no intrest or are disapointed by their handheld. If it had been GBA Mark 2 VS PSP then the PSP would of won hands down. Yet Nintendo changed the entire game and have so far (Nintendogs being a major part of it) totally owned Sony.
As long as Sony and Microsoft keep throwing thud around about "Hard drive this" and "Media centre" that they'll never beat Nintendo. They may sell more consoles or make more money, but people will only go "ooohhh shiny" so often.
I like muppets.
Sony developed an entirely new CPU architecture for the PS3.
Microsoft went well beyond the current state of the art for desktops: three custom PowerPC cores on one die, running at 3+ GHz.
And honestly, that's where much of the expense is coming from. It's not like SEGA (with the Genesis) or Nintendo (with the SNES or GC or GBA) or even Sony in the days of the PS1 decided to go with custom processors, let alone processors that shoot for the ultra-high end. Consoles have always been about custom hardware for some things, lowish-end commodity parts for everything else.
Progressive Scan does not get you ANYTHING at all unless you have a TV that can play that progressivly scanned DVD.
Progressive Scan DVD players are called that because they can output at 480p (some can even do 720p). As you may have guessed, the p is where the progressive comes in. Where as standard NTSC resolution is 408i (or interlaced).
So you see, your clamoring for progressive scan and not caring about HD support doesn't really make any sense, as they are one in the same.
Have you ever really compared the difference between a WMVHD file at 1080p with a DVD movie at 480p?
5 &p=5
For those that haven't what you will notice is that the 1080p image is crisper but nothing to really get too excited about; 480p to 1080i or 720p is barely noticable on most displays. Now I know what you're thinking, a real-time generated 3D image produces artifacts that make it no where near the quality of a DVD image; after all at 1600x1200 a PC game still has jaggies without AA, and the textures are blurry without AF. What you don't realize is that by increasing the resolution they may (in fact) be lowering the image quality and performing at a far worse level. The reason is simple, as shading hardware becomes more powerful, and shaders become more complex, the greater the performance hit will be from increasing the resolution by even a small ammount. If you look at most benchmarking of new games you will notice that (almost) all games have dramatically better performance at 1024x768 with 8xAA and 8xAF than they do at 1600x1200 with no image processing; at 480p I suspect that (on equal hardware) you could have 16xAA and 16xAF and have a much higher framerate than you could at 1080i or 720p.
Just look at FEAR:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=257
At 1280x1024 (a good estimate of HD resolutions) you're getting between 20-40 FPS on most new hardware [in this test]; using the same cards at 640x480 (a good estimate of 480p) you're getting between 50-100 fps. I'm willing to bet money that the main reason the XBox 360 looks like "the XBox at high resolutions" is that it is highly difficult for a developer to produce a game, use high quality shaders / textures and models and maintain a decent framerate.
I never really looked at it that way. Interesting. Perhaps Nintendo is investing in brand loyalty.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
D00D!!! I would so totally play Need for Bling Underground Xtreme 2007!!!!11!one
When does that shit come out? Do I really have to wait until 2007??? Yes! This is gonna be saaweeeet!
First of all, it should be clear that the Rev. will support 480p and component cables. It would be stupid to think that they'd go below what the GCN already supports. A lot of aricles get that wrong, though, and someone new to this story following our posts might not understand that.
Second, I'm not following the whole 512 MB USB stick thing... but as for why you'd remove HD support from 3rd party developers is because of the hardware costs. To render a full screen (assuming no overlap of polygons, which is laughable) at 640x480 and 60 fps requires an 18 megapixel fill-rate. To do it at 1280x720 (720p) takes 55 megapixels (about 3x the fill rate), and 1920x1080 (1080p/1080i) takes 124 megapixels (about 6.8x the fill rate). And that's just the bare minimum required just to draw the screen, much less do anything worthwhile with it. This should make it clear that supporting higher resolutions requires more powerful graphics processors, which in turn cost more money. I think it's obvious that the only real reason they have to hold the support back entirely is so that they can keep the console's price point at about $200 (using the MSRP for the N64 and Gamecube as a predictor) because increasing resolution means increasing fill rate, which means higher priced GPUs.
I think that for the majority of people (who don't have or don't have access to HDTV monitors), the lack of HD support will mean nothing whatsoever. They still will support component cables, which means I can wire it up like an HD device (which simplifies my home theater), and that's all I really care about.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
I think Nintendo has a lot to compete against. You need to come out with something great or they're going to lose a lot more market share.
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I think HDTV gameplaying may happen at a slower rate than HDTV adoption. In our house the game system (a gamecube) is relegated to the den on a second TV. When we get a big HDTV its going in the family room and I'm not going to let the kids usurp this TV all day to play games. While this comment clearly puts me in the "video games are for kids" camp, I still think this is the predominant demographic. There's a market for adult game playing and it's growing and I'm sure there is money to be made there, but I still think alot of game systems get relegated to secondary TVs in other rooms. In other words this market is maturing and fragmenting into different niches.
I could care less about HD support as long as it supports progressive scan and widescreen.
Select N64 games all the way back to Goldeneye have supported 16:9 display mode, and Metroid Prime for GameCube can do 480p on compatible TVs and compatible GameCube systems.
You must be shrooming. 720p on a good HDTV makes DVD look like ass.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
I've heard that the revolution is going to have VGA out. I'm not sure if this is true, or what resolutions it will support, but it will be nice. I'm not interested in buying a hi-def tv just to get hi-def games. I already own a monitor capable of some very high resolutions. And if i'm sitting 3 feet from it, it doesn't have to be 60 inch, 19 is enough at that distance.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Most people don't even have HDTVs
At this point, yes... but why would anybody even consider buying a non-HD TV for their main living room set these days? Any old-format TV is going to need a separate tuner in a couple years to even get over-the-air broadcasts.
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I'm buying a revolution simply because Mario and Zelda are two of the best series I've ever played... I would pay $200 just for the new zelda coming out on the gamecube.
Do you know who introduced me to the NES as it was something they themselves were enjoying? My grandparents! Yes that is right they didn't just buy us an NES for Christmas they had it and were playing it (still do actually) so saying it was for kids is just wrong!
Nintendo has always catered to people that want to play & enjoy their games and not for people that want to drool at pretty graphics.
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Progressive Scan does not get you ANYTHING at all unless you have a TV that can play that progressivly scanned DVD.
Some monitors support progressive scan but do not support the higher frequencies of HDTV.
So you see, your clamoring for progressive scan and not caring about HD support doesn't really make any sense, as they are one in the same.
When contrasted with "high definition", "progressive scan" usually means "enhanced definition" or 480p. "High definition" is usually 720p or 1080i.
Well I think you should look up the specs for your TV before posting something like this next time. Even if you are one of the people that currently own an HDTV set ( despite the mind blowing lack of programming )your TV still runs at a much lower resolution than the one that you use for playing games on your PC (at least in your case). However your TV set is setup so that the difference is not as noticeable as it would be on your computer monitor. Plus last I checked noone really watches TV 15" away from the screen ;)
All that said I couldn't care less if Revolution will cost less than PS3 and xbox360. The games are shit and there is no hdd. Oh yeah and not to forget the weirdest controller ever made. What else could they have going against them ...
Personally I don't even *know* anyone who still watches over-the-air broadcasts.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
As a Nintendo fan boy who loves his Game Cube and owns a HDTV the Revolution not supporting HD has me considering other consoles. Coupled with the fact this looks like it's going to be the last to come out of the big three consoles for this generation I may find myself going with something else.
An 8 year old doesn't care about HD (High Definition as opposed to Hard Drive as some posts didn't read the actual article) at all. If fact, there isn't one friend of my teenagers whom cares one bit if a show is in HD or not! None of the individuals I work with care and nor do any of my relatives.
HD is not a technology being pushed by the end user in any real commercial way. The "masses" aren't shouting for it in any country anywhere. Instead it is a technology being pushed by the U.S. and the companies which stand to profit from new hardware sales.
Hardware hasn't mattered for a long time in this market. Positioning and sales have been based on marketing and software saturation. If you market a product properly it can beat out a better competitive product. It happens all the time! Add in a better selection, in the case of consoles, of games and you will end up with a larger market share.
The Revolution (a.k.a whatever they really end up calling it) won't in the end suffer from not having HD except for in a very few cases. Where it will suffer is strictly in the area of poor marketing and game titles. If they can avoid those 2 pitfalls, which they have managed to walk right into blindly for a while now, their new console should be much more of a mover and a shaker in the next console war.
most people are saying the reason it's not hd capable is because they are not even using a tv with this thing. perhaps a visor ala "On" or a steroscopic projection which many are also saying. i do believe they certainly have a trick up there sleave, why else would we not have seen ANY screen shots of any games that will be releasing in under 7 months. it just doesn't make sense. i'll tell you y, it's cuz the don't microsoft or sony to copy them and make a similar peripheral. i'm telling ya that the controller was and is not the BIG secret.
OK Nintendo. There is NO reason not to support High Definition. Zero. The rumored hardware should handle it easily. It's seems like Nintendo is chosing not to support it just so they can say " Hey look, no fancy buzzwords here grandma!"
;p) but I won't be buying a Revolution, at least for a while due to the lack of HD support. I simply cannot go back to NTSC 480i hell.
:-( I cannot stress enough how bad a 480i signal looks on an HDTV. And if it ends up supporting 480p, while an improvment, just isn't enough.
However, for many people who own an HDTV, not supporting is going to be the reason I don't get it. Let me elaborate...
I bought a nice 51" Sony WEGA about 5 months ago. It's rear projection, but for $1600 I got 480i, 480p, *real* 720p, and 1080i support, and every connector imaginable up to HDMI.
HD shows looked fantastic! Watching Baseball, football, and shows like LOST has been totally great. You know what hasn't been great?
Games.
Iv'e tried using my PS2 (with component cables) as well as my xbox (also with component cables) and not couting GranTurismo 4's "1080i mode" (which appears to be some kind of upscan trick) everything is in 480p, which, while still better than 480i, still looks *horrible* on an HD set. I gave up playing games on this set and moved my consoles to the 27" TV in the bedroom.
So I had a great TV that I couldn't really game on. But only for 11 more days. Iv'e had an Xbox 360 on preorder for a while. ALL titles support *at least* 720p (1280x720) and some may support 1080i (1920x1080)! This will make full use of my TV's capabilities, and will look absolutely stunning.
That being said, I do like Nintendo. Iv'e owned ALL of thier consoles and handhelds (including the VirtualBoy
For those that say HDTV's aren't that prevailant now, i'd say they are a LOT more common than even just a year or so ago, and with more and more HD programming coming, and (relativly) cheap prices compared to the past (a decent 27" set can be had arount $500 if you look around), HD set's should sell like mad this Christmas and next, in part fueled by the Xbox 360 and the upcoming PS3!
By not even having HD as an option, Nintendo may come off to many as not being a "serious" console with staying power. As more and more people pick up HD sets, the more and more people won't be buying a Revolution. And it seems that's where they want to be. The "non-scary buzzword your grandma can play it" system. But, they are turning away the people that grew up with the NES, in exchange for the non-techie gaming newcomer. I want to support Nintendo, but the lack of vision in not supporting some form of HD is a killer for me
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By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Metroid Prime at 480p looks pretty darn good, GT4 for the PS2 at 1080i is ok, Halo at 480p is probably the worst out of these three examples. When you are 18" from the monitor, high resolution is important. When you're sitting 8' away from your 48" TV, higher resolutions aren't as ground breaking.
I think Nintendo will do just fine, as long as they support 16:9 mode. BTW, game developers, if you offer split mode game play, make use of the 16:9 screen and let me split the screen side by side instead of just top/bottom.
What, me worry?
Cable costs money, and generally gives you lower quality than HDTV broadcasts.
House, Lost, HDTV sports, and pretty much everything on the PBS Digital broadcast is fantastic entertainment, looks great on my massive projector screen, and free free free!
Anything else I want to watch (Sopranos, etc.) I can see on DVD via NetFlix, along with my movie rentals.
So why would I even want to consider paying for a cable subscription?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
This is what it really breaks down to for me:
There is the Xbox 360, which brags about it's HDD support but does not make the HDD a standard option. How many 3rd party devs are going to support a peripheral that maybe a third or less of the market has? Obviously some will, but most won't bother. Plus, it's Microsoft, and they just piss me off.
Then there's the Playstation 3. Made by Sony, a company who installs rootkits on people's PC's, settles for poorly manufactured digicam CCD's, and has generally been riding their name for the past 3 years or so (Hey, we're Sony! People will buy our crap regardless of how craptastic it is!). Sony pisses me off.
Last but not least, we have the Nintendo Revolution, which is not only the least expensive of the three, but is likely to bring about a wave of excellent new gameplay styles with their innovative new controller format (btw, for those who still complain and want their old-style controllers, Nintendo is making one). Most importantly, Nintendo hasn't done anything to piss me off lately.
Disclaimer: If a really good new Ratchet and Clank game comes out for it...I might end up with a PS3 anyway. Damn that addictive Lombax!
The Russian Mafia will mod you down just to see if the Moderate button works.
Hmm. As they write, of course the maker-specific titles are going to be exclusive (and that of course includes a slew of - likely - very creative Nintendo titles making use of the wand).
But any one console, as long as it's half-way successful (as all three likely will be), will be too large a market to ignore for many houses. The big impact will be in things like creating things like the graphics, models and level data sizes and so on in such a way that the data is useable on all platforms. And if any one platform has an edge over the other ones, that will likely go underutilized.
And this is coming from a hardcore Nintendo fan. I've been playing Nintendo since I was five years old, and I've actually been inside Nintendo's corporate headquarters in Kyodo, Japan (don't tell the police).
I pass by what I think is their headquarters every week on the train (large off-white square building in southern Kyoto); I'd love to take a tour someday!
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
It's not because you haven't seen it that it doesn't exist. After all, nintendo have always been ultra secretive (and perhaps too much to your taste). Also, please keep in mind that the future of nintendo revolve entirely around their next gen move, unlike microsoft and sony. So chances are, there is such a thing as a revolution prototype with next-gen games running on it, they just don't want to show it to the public yet.
Ahh the voice of reason! There it is.. all the way at the bottom of the thread.
Lets not forget one more important thing as well. If the Revolution is going to put a lot into emulations of their past systems, pushing the HD is kind of stupid anyhow. Black bars on the sides of screens, or stretched out visuals aren't that great, and as you pointed out the vast majority of people don't own HDTV monitors, so they won't be missing anything.
I can see little Timmy right now, very excited about the XBox 360 he just bought at Best Buy seeing the demo unit, and when he plus it into his television, he's like "Ohhh Fudge."
Of course, having an HDTV I wouldn't have minded the support.
But you can not view 480p on a standard TV, you at least need some sort of support, be it HDTV or a lesser TV, just not your standard TV.
Also a 512 MB onboard flash rom drive. I ask ... to the end user, does it make a lick of difference that the onboard storage is a flash rom instead of a spinning disk? I really doubt it. Sure, you can't do game pre-loading like on the X-Box, but GCN load times from the disc were still better than X-Box load times from the hard drive, so I'm not worried.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Which really seems right insane to me (in Microsoft's case). It just seems like Microsoft wanted to put in lots of big numbers. Sony wants to push Cell through the door, and they wanted a whole lot of computing power. Sony's architecture has always favoured lots of number crunching, as traditionally, their GPU's have been fairly weak or non-existant. Making the CPU required for graphics work. This time, they actually do seem to have included a powerful GPU, making one wonder why they need that much computing power?
Microsoft just seems interested in competing with Sony on every front, regardless of reason.
Nintendo, doesn't see a point in having that much computing power when a GPU is far more useful in an actual game. As a result, they have much less computing power than either Microsoft or Sony, but they seem to have a more powerful GPU than either of them, judging from leaked specs. The leaked specs also indicate a PPU (Physics Processing Unit), which could be used to offload a LOT of work from the CPU, keeping Nintendo on par with the others at a much cheaper price.
Once again, Nintendo is using efficiency to combat their foes. And it's always worked for them in the past. Make no mistake. Nintendo are the MASTERS at hardware design. Seriously, take a look at their consoles sometime. N64 is about the single exception to their mastery. (N64 was an absolute nightmare to code for, as Nintendo wanted to keep smaller developers off the console to increase the quality of games overall. They've eradicated that policy since then, and their consoles are the easiest to code for now).
When one visits Nintendo, it's like visiting a relatively small company that does stuff like collect cloisonne plates for the walls, and everyone seems to know everyone else. Microsoft is like visiting a big business. Sony is like visiting a big business at war with itself. Somehow, the Nintendo consoles and games seem to reflect this difference. I don't know how it spills over to the games, since they're made by third parties, but the general environment seems to work quite well for them. The games seem to work at any scale.
It can't be that old if it is 15 feet from corner to corner.
Both Sony and Microsoft are buying their chips of IBM, and they are not even close to state of the art (except probably power consumption). This is just the first time such large multi-core chips have been put in a consumer device, and because of their unique design they will be significantly harder to program for, so don't expect many cutting edge games in the first year.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I'm amazed that so many people are chiming in to insist that the term "HD" means "Hard Disk Drive". One post asserts that "HD in this article meant Hard Disc, not Hi-Definition". I don't think the term "HD" even appears in the article and if you read the sentence before the first use of the term "HD" in the summary you can be in no doubt as to what it means. How little do you need to read in order to make that mistake? I know, this is Slashdot. RTFA isn't even approprate in these cases, tho - more like F***ing Read Something!
:-)
Or is this some kind of brain-melting troll style that I'm not familiar with?
To get on-topic, I reckon that Nintendo are on a pretty safe bet in leaving out HDTV support; it's a long way from being standard here in Europe, at least, and still has to overcome some content delivery hurdles (DRM lobbying and implementation and its nett cost to the customer) before it'll be seriously considered by a public that are still paying off their lower-res widescreen TVs. AFAIK there's a sort of countdown to the time everyone must use a digital decoder to view TV (at least, in some countries); people won't like being forced to fork out again for new hardware, especially if they expect it to cost them more to run than their current setup. Of course, if they're given no choice, they'll do it...
Sorry, drifting off-topic again
Because you can watch the Sopranos is HD if you have cable.
DVDs are not HD...
No reason to lie.
Your statement that the Revolution won't have 802.11g is correct but misleading. It will have 802.11b which, frankly, should be far more than enough for its needs (both for downloading content for the virtual console and for internet/LAN play).
No offense intended, just wanted to clear things up.
Meryl Lynch reported that the Xbox 360 could be as low as $250 this spring and MS would still make a profit.
Doesn't mean it will. The goal of a for-profit corporation is not just to make profit but to maximize profit. Remember that Microsoft is using artificial scarcity to hype up its console in order to keep a 300-400 USD price point for a long time.
As far as black bars and image stretching on emulation ... HD support is not necessarily the same as widescreen support. I hope that even without support for 720p and 1080i, developers will see fit to have a widescreen and 4:3 mode on all their games (widescreen support must be handled in the software, there's no automatic way to do it in hardware). Ideally, their emulators should be able to switch back and forth at the user's will.
I also have an HDTV and I wouldn't have minded the support, but I think I'll still be happy at 480p as long as they start using antialiasing and anisotropic filtering.
The best they could do to pull the rug out from under Sony and MS would be to make the hardware support HDR rendering very well, and then make their SDK very HDR friendly. (and I don't mean cheesy glow effects, I mean real honest HDR rendering)
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Think that not supporting HDTV output will have two benefits.
1) Reduction in console cost for Nintendo (and hopefully the customer) at the cost of a feature that very few people actually use. I'm sure the percentage of the population that own an HDTV is small ( less than 5%). The percentage of HDTV owners who are interested in the revolution but won't buy one because of its lack of HDTV output is even smaller. Not to mention that the Revolution isn't targeted at your typical HDTV owner, it's targeted at families who may not want to dump out $2000 for a TV for the kids.
2) Game development costs go down. Microsoft requiring all games to be HDTV ready is going to increase development costs. Since there is no such thing with the Revolution, hopefully that will result in a lower standard MSRP (I believe both Sony and Microsoft have said they want to raise game prices).
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
Just wanted to point out that they've stated countless times they dont specifically target any gaming audience. They make their systems for EVERYONE to play. Young and Old. The original NES was never made for kids, it was made for everyone. And it worked. I remember spending days playing MegaMan with my friend and his dad. The whole 'Nintendo is for kids' is such an ignorant statement, you can easily tell who the uninformed gamers are. Anyone who has any inkling of gaming history knows that Nintendo is for everyone. If games appear to be more simple, or less violent, it isn't just for the kids, its for the people who are actually MATURE enough to not need this stuff to make a game great.
See page 10 of this report. In the US, HDTVs are ~25% of total TV's. Not to mention that the amount of HDTV content s is quickly increasing, constantly increasing the incentive to buy an HDTV. It's a bit of a chicken-n-egg thing, but at some point, take-up is going to increase pretty quickly.
Low resolution is not the problem with video games these days.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
I'll tell you why.... price. A lot of people may want a console, but don't want to pay a shit ton to play it on the fancy new HDTV. You think within 5 years time HDTV will be as pervasive as regular tvs? Heck even if it was that is around the time that Nintendo will be releasing there new console and I'm sure it will have HD support if the technology has become pervasive. I think this is a smart move. One of the reasons I own a gamecube was because I could get it for under a hundred dollars. I never would have gotten it if it was the same price as the XBox. Driving up the cost for a minority market technology is not a smart move.
Go Illini!!!
Because you can watch the Sopranos is HD if you have HD Digital cable, which costs extra... and pay for the "premium" HBO subscription on top of that.
At those costs, I think I'll limp along with the DVD's for the one or two shows I like which are not broadcast for free.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm well aware of this. They removed support because very few people actually used it. If you call the number, they'll offer to replace your gamecube with one that has component video out or slap the port back on. Having been released in 2001, the GCN went the majority of its time with component video support.
And the simple fact of the matter is that the underlying DOL-101 hardware is still capible of doing 480p, it's just that they opted not to solder on the port for the component cables.
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I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
Is a 7800GT twice as powerful as a 6600GT video card? No, it's more powerful for certain, but not twice as powerful. It costs twice as much, though. You pay a very high premium for "the best" hardware. Nintendo could easily make a machine that is 75% as fast/powerful/whatever as MS for 50% of the price.
I have an HD TV, and while I think it is really amazing, I also think that a high quality 480p source can look GOOD ENOUGH (DVDs come to mind here).
...and I've never been able to figure out why people would want frame rates faster than their monitor can scan!
I didn't ask why anybody would buy a non HD console. I asked why anybody, in this day and age, would buy a new non HD TV set for their main viewing room.
Another year or two, and you probably won't even be able to even if you did want one.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Really, there are so many ignorant people out there. I'm glad you got marked troll, because thats exactly what you are doing. Nintendo has always said they make their games for everyone. Mature people dont need edgy violence and crap to make fun games. They just make good gameplay. If good gameplay isnt enough for you, then you should probably not be buying games to begin with.
Looked at the prices of HD and non-HD TVs lately? You're talking the difference between spending $150 for a standard and $1000 (minimum - All those sub $1000 sets have no tuner) for a set in the 27" range.
Non-HD sets are *cheap*. HD sets will be a luxury-only item for years to come.
You won't be playing your emulation games after you're forced to update your PSP to 2.0+ to play GTA. Nice try though.
And there is a definite difference between 720 and 1080 as well. I noticed when I first started watching NFL in HD. One of the broadcasters would broadcast in 720 (Fox, I think) and another (CBS?) would broadcast in 1080. The 1080 definitely looked TONS better.
I know I'm being trolled and this is majorly off topic, but what the hell. The DS is an older console compared to the PSP; how did the DS owners feel at the equivalent time in the DS' lifetime?
Also, consider Burnout Legends, Star Wars Battlefront II, Medevil and GTA San Andreas. Four excellent games, IMHO.
Slightly more on topic, I will probably be getting a Revolution. The controller intrigues me and I don't really care about the lack of HD support. I agree with the parent that Nintendo are the only innovators left in the industry.
I think Nintendo is courting older gamers with this system. People who don't have tons of time to invest in gaming because of work and family. Hense the price and their features.
They offer their entire first party back catalog for the nastolgic at a reasonable price. I know kids are going to put up with the graphics from the first Zelda when they've been playing WoW and Doom 3. And who cares that you can't play Mariokart 64 at 1080p resolution?
i totally agree about the PSP being a peice of shit.
It feels like SONY has completely abandoned the dam thing.
The PSP is a GREAT hand held but SONY lacks the vision or BALLS to turn the PSP into a phenominal portable device.
SONY's first mistake was not including a pointer pen.
The PSP could have been the be all, end all to MP3, PDA, VIDEOGAMES, MOVIES and INTERNET all in one hand held device.
Sony fucked the PSP and they continue to do so.
As lots of people tend to forget (even people WITH HDTVs):
* the difference between broadcast NTSC or composite NTSC and studio/dvd-quality NTSC (via s-video) is dramatic and noticeable.
* the difference between studio/dvd quality NTSC via s-video ("480i60") and 480p60 is night and day. Someone who just had PRK/LASEK the previous day could still tell the difference between the two on a 27" TV twenty feet away in a smoke-filled room.
* On a natively 720p60 set, 720p60 looks noticeably better than 480p60. On a natively 1080i60 set, 720p60 is almost indistinguishable from 480p60 because the TV downsamples to 540 scanlines, then kell-filters them to prevent flicker. The net result is almost the same amount of vertical detail as 480p60, with only slightly more horizontal detail. Meanwhile, the GPU and CPU are working almost twice as hard.
* On a natively 720p60 set, 1080i60 is nearly indistinguishable from 480p60, because the TV just throws away half of the scanlines, resamples the 540 that remain up to 720, then resamples the alleged 1920 horizontal pixels to 1280. On a natively 1080i60 set, 1080i60 COULD exhibit greater detail than 480p60... except for the tiny problems of interline twitter (requiring kell filtering), inadequate GPU/CPU power to really pull off their best work at 1920x1080, and the fact that programmers fundamentally don't understand the realities of computer-generated interlaced video and inevitably produce games that look great on the progressive-scan monitors connected to their dev boxen, but have glaring artifacts and deficiencies when viewed on a real interlaced display.
In short, 1080i60 doesn't have a whole lot to offer more than 480p60 for action-related games due to all the filtering necessary to prevent interline twitter, and inadequate raw GPU/CPU horsepower to really handle 1920x1080 properly. 720p60 has definite potential to offer better-looking games because 1280x720 is still a reasonable resolution as far as the GPU/CPU is concerned... but at the moment, natively 720p60 TVs only represent about 1/3 of the total in America (unfortunately), and 720p60 looks like $#!+ on most natively 1080i60 TVs.
At the implementation level, upgrading chips capable of 480p60 to 1080i60 is a comparatively small tweak, because most of the increased bandwidth goes into permitting faster pixel-to-pixel color changes. The actual scanrate (~33.75KHz) isn't a whole lot higher than 480p60's (~31.5kHz). Unfortunately, you can't fool Mother Nature... making the leap to 720p60 requires ~45KHz, because the real or metaphorical electron beam has a LOT more ground to cover in the same amount of time. Put another way, you can do some nasty hacks and claim that a given circuit is technically capable of "1080i", even if its REAL capabilities aren't much better than 480p because the horizontal detail will be all smeared and blurred due to inadequate bandwidth... but making the leap to 720p requires real upgrades that cost real money. And ultimately, the 2/3 majority of American HDTV owners whose sets are inherently 1080i won't see much of an improvement anyway, and will probably bitch about games that only support 480p and 720p.
The REAL surge in "HDTV" console gaming will come in another 2-4 years, once natively-720p TVs have displaced enough older 1080i TVs (at least among gamers who know the difference and care), and Nintendo's NEXT console WILL support 720p (but probably won't bother with 1080i, leading to more waves of grousing and complaining about its lack of "true" support for HDTV).
The latest Walmart flyer has brand-name HD sets starting at $500 US (with built-in tuners.) 52 inch projection sets at $990 US, also with tuners. This train has left the station.
As for not even being able to in 1-2 years, not likely. People have been saying that for years now and it's just not happening. They're still far too expensive for a mass adoption.
*rollseyes* there have been demos.
I think it is because if you have a high frame rate normally, then we the scenes get more complicated, you are more likely to run at an acceptable frame rate still. If you are just getting by with the normal scenery, frame rate wise, the complicated scenery will completely bog things down, and make it choppy
It is most likely that I will buy a Revolution towards the end of next year.
/family/, maybe the console will be in another room on another display that is unlikely to be HD for a long time. But what about the 25-35 market of men and their expensive toys? I'm sure a reasonable amount of them would have considered a Revolution for the fun games it'll have, but if they will look like blocky turd on their >35" HDTV ...
I don't have a HDTV currently, but I will probably buy one within 2 years. It'd be a shame if I couldn't play, e.g., Mario Kart Revolution, in high resolution on the TV with other people. I assume that it'd still be capable of 480p however, so it is some kind of improvement over 480i currently.
Is the graphics hardware really so weak that it can't handle 1280x720p? Hell, how about 640x720p? Or is it merely the console's outputs?
Of course, for the average
It has been argued before that HD support could give an unfair advantage to those people without HD-capable televisions. This action by Nintendo is ACTUALLY just a way to level the playing field! Heh. Yeah, right. When you are talking about buying a system that should last you a few years, promoting the fact that it is the cheapest of the systems is the last thing you want to do. Need a solid show to back this up. That said, even if Revolution gameplay is heads and tails above anything on the other two systems, you'll always have monkeyheads clamouring for the Splinter Cell: Idaho and Halo 3.
So, if you assume that people buy a new TV every 10 years (possibly a little conservative), that means that in 2004, 2.2% of existing US TV owners upgraded to HDTV, and in 2005, an additional 2.7% of existing US TV owners upgraded to HDTV, and in 2006, an additional projected 3.7% of existing US TV owners upgrade to HDTV.
So, by the time the Revolution is out, market penetration will be ~8.5% in the US. In Japan, market penetration will be a fair bit higher, because they're buying HDTV's at a faster rate. And note that not everyone who has a TV will buy a console, gamers tend to be more tech oriented, so the number of console users who own an HDTV will be a higher percentage.
Merrill Lynch aren't journalists, they aren't a video game company. They aren't Microsoft. They aren't Sony. They aren't accountable to anyone. They're analysts. They guess. If they're wrong, there are no consequences to them.
Merrill Lynch also seems to make awfully consistent guesses about the next generation, specifically: Whatever is good for Microsoft. The persistent claims in the last several months that the Playstation 3 will cost exorbant amounts of money also, if you follow sources, inevitably stem from guesses by Merrill Lynch. Contrast this with Merrill Lynch's guesses in 1999, which predicted the ps2 would sell for well more than it ever did.
Other recent winning predictions by analysts about the video game industry have been that the PSP would be a smash success and knock the Nintendo DS and Game Boy outside of the market (it's outsold neither); that Nintendo would die every year for the last five; that Apple would die every year for the five before that; that Nintendo DS online would launch with free VOIP; and that the PS3 will launch in 2007.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I for one will not be buying an HDTV until they come down in price to near what regular TVs are now. And I'm guessing that by that time there will be a new Gen of consoles out.
Because a main viewing room size HDTV costs $1000+ and a decent CRT costs $200-300.
Seven years ago the first, expensive DVD players arrived. Somewhere around two years ago, VHS no longer mattered. Five years ago, writeable DVDs were $25 or more. Now they're well under $1 each. Costs come down, and hi-res displays are among the fastest droppers now. That 50" plasma that was $11,000 not long ago is now $3,000. We're not arguing about what will happen, we're arguing about when. Granted, I'm UMC, but I was planning on buying a fancy big screen before the end of this year until I bought a surplus VGA res projector from my office.
One thing to remember is that the compactness of flat screens makes them a popular replacement with wives who don't want that huge RPTV dominating the living room. That's even more an issue in space-constrained Japan.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Projection TVs are an option, but they start around $1000 as well. You're really not getting into HDTV for less than a grand.
You may have enjoyed the 1600x1200 resolution, but I seriously doubt you enjoyed it at the same framerate or lighting quality or perhaps even texture and model quality as someone who was using good old 1024x768 resolution. There's a payoff here, and in terms of what makes a game look better, increasing resolution beyond 1024x768 ranks pretty low on the list of options.
Your assertion is valid only if the 1600x1200 caused any noticable slow down. With modern machines, modern games can easily reach 70 FPS at 1600x1200 with x2 antialiasing...70 fps is a good number, because very few humans can actually tell the differences beyond that.
Nintendo is running in the ballpark of a 4-5 year console turnaround. The next console after Revolution won't hit the market until well after 2010.
By early '06 Dish Network and DirectTV will be offering over 100 HD channels. Digital cable companies will not be far behind due to the constant battle going on in that industry. HDTV's are dropping like rocks in price. These will be the standard within 2 years.
Nintendo could be a 'niche' console if they stray too far from Nintendo and Sony. Why? There are still a ton of games made for all 3 consoles and many of these companies may choose to stop supporting Nintendo. Making a game for the 360 and PS3 will be easy (support the same technoligies and relatively the same power), but Revolution will be drastically different and may not be worth the price.
How am I supposed to justify buying an HDTV that makes all my current videos and movies look like crap?
Seriously, HD is neat, but it's not exactly a required feature for video games.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Frankly, when games are so damn fun, the only way I could give a damn about the graphics is if make my eyes FUCKING BLEED or if it has below 20 FPS. Shit dude, that's a nice TV but meh? I'm sorry you feel HD is so important that you'd shun Nintendo despite apparently enjoying their games.
So, go get the X360 or PS3. Enjoy your shiny, crisp graphics from games you've already played. Generic FPS on the X360? YAY. Shiny car simulator on the PS3? YAY. Hopefully, I'll be playing Mario Kart 64 with decent framerates online.
No one is arguing that costs come down eventually. But saying "within the next year or two you won't be able to get a standard TV" is ridiculous. Costs may be coming down relatively fast on HDTVs, but the absolute cost is still quite high. DVD players aren't a very good comparison. I bought my first DVD player in 1998 for $250 (Philips 825). Now they're cheaper than VCRs. The sweet spot to swing adoption was when they dropped below $100 and were competive with good VCRs. HDTVs need to drop to that sweet spot too. Not below $100 obviously, but competitive with good CRT TVs. They still need more than a few years to do that.
Why the hell you are modded "insightful" is beyond me, you aren't even aware of the fact that Nintendo _DOES_ have a working prototype.
Moderators on crack, and you're a fucktard.
-- Linux user #369862
So you see, your clamoring for progressive scan and not caring about HD support doesn't really make any sense, as they are one in the same.
CPUGuy-why not look at it from the CPU's perspective? It takes a lot less CPU to provide a 480p resolution than it does a 720 or 1080 HD res. You get a much smoother picture, and it costs virtually nothing for Nintendo or 3rd party developers to offer progressive scan resolutions. Contrast that with the Xbox, which supports HD resolutions, but no developers use it because of the resource cost.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
"Kids want fun games, not necessarily photo-realistic graphics." Tell that to the mobs of kids that come to our house to play on my son's Xbox. Their parents say they barely touch their Gamecubes. All they want to play is Halo2. In another example a kid told me the only reason he plays his Nintendo is because his dad is always on the Xbox.
http://www.techyrants.com
Could you care more? This may be trollish but I've never understood the americanism of "could care less", which should actually read "couldn't care less" o_0
which is totally what she said
If Nintendo was really targetting the casual gamer, they would build in more of the features like DVD players and the like that would appeal to people who aren't that into games. Thus far, Nintendo's systems have been more likely than their competitors to be bought only by the more serious gamer. Someone who researches games and wants to explore the most interesting and novel games might buy a GameCube so that they can play games like Donkey Kongo or Pikmin. Someone who doesn't is more likely to buy a PS2 because they'll see its DVD playing abiilities and its much wider selection of games (even if a much greater percentage of PS2 games are crap).
Now, Nintendo has said that they're trying to grow the gaming market by making novel games which are approachable to beginners which is part of the point of the controller for the revolution, but this is more an attempt to convert non-gamers into gamers than it is about targetting just the casual gamer. By innovating, they're clearly expecting this innovation to be supported by a certain portion of the serious gamer market. Existing casual gamers are much less likely to be willing to try out things like freaky new controllers.
Keith
Then you are most definitely not a Nintendo fan boy. True Nintendo Fan boys purchase all things that Nintendo brings to the gaming community. You should also be rationalizing and downplaying any perceived misteps by Nintendo as the desires of hardcore gamers who only want to play first person shooters with plots about shooting hookers. You are what we call a straw man.
The whole 'Nintendo is for kids' is such an ignorant statement, you can easily tell who the uninformed gamers are.
thats fine. Deny that the Gamecube is marketed towards kids. Go ahead! Deny it!
Now lets look at the amount of games that have a mature rating on the gamecube vs. ps2 and xbox.
Come back when you're done.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
It does sound like the Revolution is pretty much a Gamecube on steroids with some extra features - an obvious choice for Nintendo given their choice of PowerPC in the Gamecube all that time ago.
It probably isn't very hard to adapt a Gamecube game to be a native Revolution game running on a (5x?) faster processor with (10x?) more graphics power available. We might get a lot of Revolution games with a 'free' version of the older game bundled in (like Zelda - Windwaker + Zelda - Ocarina of Time pack except it will be really easy). Either that, or lots of 'enhanced' versions with more polygons, nicer graphical effects and maybe enhanced resolution if the Revolution hardware and outputs support it (even if it won't be mandatory).
Wow, what a dumbass. Were you under a rock when Nintendo unvieled the new controller and let journalists play Metroid Prime 2 with it?
Another dwindling X-Box fanboy, it seems.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Good point. Perhaps I need to aim my "kids" comment to an even younger data set?
Or maybe its the much older kids (30+ year olds) who have tolerance for less high definition in exchange for gameplay?
Perhaps I need to revise my "thesis"...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Sure, 1600x1200 on a 15" CRT may be no big deal, but have you seen 1600x1200 thrown up on an 8' diagonal projection screen? Talk about being immersed in the game. I was playing HL1:TFC at 800x600 thrown up on a 6' diagonal screen and I was absolutely thrilled, despite the low resolution. It can only get better from there. Can you imagine playing the Raventhorn level from HL2 in a dark room with full surround sound on a 720p projection screen at a 10' diagonal? Amazing. Or racing games... or anything. It would be great. The higher resolutions allow you to have a bigger screen without losing quality.
Gamecube already has support for widescreen and progressive scan. In fact, a huge percentage of gamecube games support progressive scan. Like, a lot higher percentage than on PS2. Check out hdgames.net and hdtvarcade.com to see some lists. I don't think we need to worry about the revolution in this respect, thought it'd be nice if they mandated it as a requirement.
People who aren't that much into games and want a DVD player either already have one, or will buy a DVD player instead of a gaming console. Being able to play DVD's might have been a selling point last-gen, but this is 2006 (2005 for Xbox360), and people who currently don't own a DVD player either don't want one, or can't afford a gaming console anyway (plus, I bet the combined price of a DVD player and a Revolution will still be lower than a PS3 or Xbox360).
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Gamecube supports progressive scan on some titles. Revolution will be 480p across the board, IIRC.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Am I the only one confused by the fact that the Gamecube supported HD, but the "next-gen" console does not? That seems like a strange move for Nintendo, IMO.
I don't know about you guys, but I've never played video games on my family's main TV (main tv == the newest most expensive one). My Nintendos have lived in the basement, my bedroom, and now my dorm room, but never in the living room where the niceest TV is. It's always been attached to an older one. I bet most Revolutions will be in a similar situation. I doubt that many Revolutions will be attached to HDTVs.
when i was a kid, my parents actually wanted to watch the good TV, so my nintendo or atari was always hooked up to the TV in their bedroom. i'm sure there are plenty of HD-owning households that will do the same, and so the actual percentage of people playing these new consoles on an HD TV might be smaller than the % ownership.
They were playing tech demos with the revo controller. The demos were running on gamecube-level hardware. Perhaps you should, you know, actually check these things. :p
"unless mine get to doing some chores, theyll have an etch-a-sketch."
Can it do 720p? What framerate can your kids draw at?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Because I live in an area where I can't get any HDTV signals. And by 2009, when the new regs finally go in place, it'll be about time for a new TV anyway. So, why bother buying an extra-expensive TV I can't use right now?
...and like the world's tallest midget.
720p projectors are becoming affordable, and 480 lines just aren't enough for a 90" screen.
Just because a game doesn't have a mature rating doesn't mean it is targeted at children, does a game that is enjoyable for adults have to have blood and gore or other things that will earn a mature rating? The answer to that is a clear no!
In the drops - An Aussie's musings on all things cycling
If you're going to play the stereotype game...
If you ask some average Joe which of two TVs is "Better," he's going to point to the bigger one, not the one with the high def picture. If he's got $1000 to spend on a TV, which do you think he'll get? The 27" HD tube, the 36" Trinitron SD model, or the 45" SD rear projection? I bet money that nine times out of ten the answer is "The biggest one that will fit in the available space, HD or otherwise."
Given the uncertain state of copy protection legislation, you'd be stupid to buy an HD set right now anyway. All the early adopters that bought TVs before HDCP now have a 2 year old, $10,000 obsolete piece of junk. If new broadcast flag legislation gets passed, that could happen again.
As the owner of a 55inch Sony WEGA HD widescreen, I'd like to qualify that. Traditional SD content like a VHS or an old movie or or old TV show does look like crap. However digital SD satellilte content, my 480i XBOX games and my and GameCube (which is 480p most of the time) look excellent. 480i can look good as long as the source is good. Component video on most consoles is crisp and clean enough that they look good. I'm not saying they look as good as HD content, but in the case of video games, I'd challenge most people to see the difference.
For what its worth, Cube widcreen games look much better than my XBOX widescreen titles. The XBOX ones stretchcontent, where as the cube ones actually are 16:9.
but have you seen 1600x1200 thrown up on an 8' diagonal projection screen?
That sounds nice but I seriously doubt this setup will fit on the table at the foot of my bed for the foreseeable future.
May the Maths Be with you!
Umm, 1080i is 540 lines of content, lower visual quality that 720p. It may be that the affiliate or the encoding was bad. 720p is "High Deffier"
You threw up so much techno-jargon, I almost forgot your point. But with all the cash you have to blow on the latest and greatest, I think you'll be in Best Buy (or whatever upscale tech store you go to) shopping for a new Xbox 360 or PS3 game and look over at the Revolution and go "Why not?" and buy it anyway.
Then it will go into the 27" TV in the bedroom and you'll amuse yourself playing Nintendo's back catalog on their newest system.
And as the slashdot crowd says, Nintendo profits!
This is not the way I want to purchase a game. Do you want to put a new dvd disk in your drive every time you want to use another program? I want all of my games available from a menu and stored on a hard drive. I want to purchase them online and have demo version available so I can look before I purchase them. I want a game that will be updated and the update be available online for little or now additional cost to me. I am not looking for any game that requires fast reflexes either. I want a card/board game that will engage me in intelligent conversation and will analyze my moves in order to make my play better. I tried online version of these games but quickly got discouraged because so many would play for a few minutes and than just leave after they started to lose either at the game or just any interest. Improving on these are far more important to me than high definition.
The phrase is "couldn't care less", only idiots who've misheard say "could care less". Ignore them.
I am trolling
And Hi-Def is no where near those resolutions anyways. I don't see why you're singling out Nintendo, which is also going to have standard monitor out jacks.
It may not be HD, but the higher DPI on monitors will make up for it.
Insert Sig Here
Clearly you've never watched higher frame rate movies. The human eye can measurably see improvement in smoothness at up to *at least* 72fps, even on video with motion blur. Movies at 24fps look jerky, it's only because we see so many of them that it's considered acceptable.
I've always preferred to think of "I could care less" as a shorter way of saying "I *could* care less, but I'm so disinterested in the subject that adjusting my level of caring would take more energy than I care to expend."
But perhaps that's just me...
I wonder whether that is really true. In fact I would say it is the opposite, since most of the other game consoles show off the "how many people can we kill" type games. Nintendogs as an example is actually a game that has actually brought a number of non-gamers into the fold.
Most of the other platforms seem to be sticking to what they know and are not really trying much that is new, if at all. What they are parading is more performant systems, $$$$ network play and a hard-disk. While I do feel that the revolution could have benefitted from an HD, especially for MMORPGS, I would be curious to see why they decided not to go with one. The Revolution actually has two USB 2.0 sockets which could actually be a better solution for expansion. This would potentially allow you to plug in any HD, or solid state storage, you want and not be limited by want the manufacturer forces upon you.
The truth is the market has already shown that what we thought was true may not be true tomorrow. I would like to see Nintendo do well because of their innovations and encouraging people to play different. At the same time the other platforms certainly have the macho type "bigger is better" approach. What will make the difference is marketing and what games come out. Nintendo already said in the past the many people buy their console because of one game, and it would seem that other companies recognise this in ensuring they have exclusive games for their platform.
For me everybody has got a running chance. All we have up to now is vapour, and only time will tell which system is the best. I'll buy the platform with the games that suit my tastes best.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I'd say that's more likely, just from an attention standpoint. Kids are more likely to be taken in by flashy graphics and gimmicks, the same way toys, kids cartoons, movies, etc. have gotten more flashy and gimmicky lately. It's not that they can't enjoy something older, I have turned the kids of a couple family friends on to classic NES games and they love them, but getting them to stay interested long enough to get to the "meat" of classic games can be hard. Likewise, I think older people have the patience to keep at something to enjoy it rather than dismiss it out of hand because of a 16 color 32x32 sprite with four frames of animation. Not to mention they're more likely to have grown up with at least the awareness of them, if not actually playing them, so they're more likely to enjoy it.
(That's not to say older people can't be taken in by flashy gimmicky things with no substance. Look at BMW's iDrive system for an example. Almost universally panned but BMW can't make enough of them)
Later GameCubes don't have the port that is required to use progressive scan.
True. I'nm thinking about getting a Playstation 2 because a) it's becoming cheap, b) it runs Linux, c) backwards compatibility means that Final Fantasy Tactics will probably run and d) I can't emulate Guilty Gear XX. I'm a retrogamer. If they released a console that plays PSX*, NES, SNES, GB, GBA, C64 and A500 games I'd be all over it. Yes, I know that the GP32 pretty much fits that description (and it's successor even more so), but I can't afford it.
* I'm referring to the Sony Playstation, not the Sony PSX. Thanks to Sony for using a common abbreviation for an older console as the name of a new one...
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I was going to buy a PlayStation 3, but I'm afraid the games will come infected with DRM like the sony music discs. I can't run the risk of a company telling me I can only play the games I bought on the console in my house a set number of times before the disc expires. Even worse would be if the PS3 left my home stereo system infected with DRM.
So, I guess I better start getting excited about the new nintendo console.
Ummm, 1080i is 1080 lines of content rendered at 60 fields (half-screens) per second. Just because they're not renedred in the manner you prefer doesn't mean the data don't exist.
So why would I even want to consider paying for a cable subscription?
Because in order to get residential broadband, you have to have either landline voice service or cable TV from the incumbent carrier.
HD broadcast over the air is better quality than cable supplied HD.
I haven't sampled DirecTV HD content but since they don't supply local HD content, what's the point? I can get local HD content over the air in perfect quality.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
By skimping on cache and using chips with no branching predictor, PS3 and 360 are "getting rid of the whole hardware capability. It won't be harder to implement a feature, it will be impossible."
From current rumored specs and Nintendo's gameplay-over-graphics mentality, Revolution will likely have some combination of a larger CPU cache, a 970-based CPU (instead of the PPE used in the PS3 and 360), and an Ageia physics processor.
None of these would improve streaming media performance (the main focus of the competitors' hardware), but any of these would make the Revolution the most powerful console on the block for branching-intensive code; code for things like AI, physics, and game-control code.
That said, 360 and PS3 will dominate in the streaming media applications they're designed for; likely enough to match or surpass the Revolution's graphics at the much higher resolutions required for HD support.
Sources:
PPE's poor branching performance
Advantages of large cache or 970-based CPU
Revolution Ageia rumor
Could you find a link backing that claim up? I can't find a definitive answer.
You put the projector at the foot of the bed and have it send the image to the far wall.
I'nm thinking about getting a Playstation 2 because ... it runs Linux
Linux (for PlayStation®2) does not run on the slimline PlayStation 2 console, which has no official way to connect a hard drive. Or did you plan on buying a used original PlayStation 2 console?
Actually, the only idiots we should be ignoring are the ignorant fucks that don't google something to see if they're right before posting wrong information and looking like a dumbass:
The American Heritage® Book of English Usage.
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
78. could care less / couldn't care less
"I could care less! you might say sometime in disgust. You might just as easily have said I couldn't care less and meant the same thing! How can this be? When taken literally, the phrase I could care less means "I care more than I might," rather than "I don't care at all." But the beauty of sarcasm is that it can turn meanings on their head, thus allowing could care less to work as an equivalent for couldn't care less. "
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
You put the projector at the foot of the bed and have it send the image to the far wall.
You assume sir, that the walls of my room are clean.
May the Maths Be with you!
Which nobody has answered yet, even though it's in the open.
Prepping a game for HD, means way more detailed models/backgrounds/whatever. Easy. Nintendo is rejecting this for several reasons, 2 reasons are public, and one reason is my personal speculation.
Confirmed ones first.
#1. Not needing the ultra detailed models will keep development costs down, keeping prices lower and profits higher. Seems reasonable for a business.
#2. The HD models will require additional loading time. Nintendo is trying to keep loading time at a minimum. Again, very reasonable. Now, how much of an advantage this will be, we'll need to see next-gen loading times of course. But it's a wait and see thing.
And my speculation, considering the Ars Technica article on potential Revolution specs.
#3. Using system memory in resources for HD, the Revolution just isn't designed for. The system is designed to maximize non-graphical computations, making for better AI and physics. Personally, when it comes to gaming I'm more than willing to take a graphics hit for better AI and physics.
PS2 fanboy alert
Of actual games in development, or just the quick and dirty tech demos that Nintendo put together for magazines?
Links? I'm not trolling, I'd legitimately like to see them.
I stand corrected.
However, for the Great grandparent's posts purposes, it is argued that sports look better in progressive scan opposed to the flicker of interlacing. (See question two in the first link)
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6449-6361600-1.html
http://www.avsforum.com/hdtvfaq/HDTV-FAQ.htm
You can get HDTV CRTs. And the prices on those are comparitive with good NTSC CRTs.
/. lies in the logical slide that we tech-geeks get into whereby when we think "HD", we immediately think "large-screen flat-panel". The truth is, an HDTV doesn't need to be big and it doesn't need to be flat-panel.
About 15 months ago I bought a Sony 27" flat-tube NTSC CRT with all the bells and whistles for about $500.
Yesterday I saw an RCA 27" HD CRT for $500, and that was not a "sale price".
Granted, we're comparing RCA to Sony. But the fact remains that you can get a "cheap" HDTV for not much more than a "good" NTSC TV. And the vast majority of people who own TVs don't really care that much if their TV is from RCA, as long it works.
Our problem here at
To satsify the HD roadmap, all we need are small, cheap HD CRTs. They're already small, and those are getting close to cheap. I'd say 2 years is probably fairly reasonable to expect those prices to reach what NTSC CRTs have traditionally been.
There's no way it was being said sarcastically, nor have I ever seen it used as such. The book's got it wrong.
I am trolling
...people already associate Nintendo with lower cost and better games so I don't see how it can backfire unless they actually fail to get developers to produce good games.
Arguing with a Nintendo fanboy about the Revolution is like arguing with a proponent of Intelligent Design. Do you realize that your entire post neglected to refute my claim that actual Revolution systems do not even exist yet?
We already know what the Nintendo Revolution's game lineup is going to be:
Plus Madden 2006, NBA 2006, and NHL 2006. The titles might be slightly different, but I'm pretty sure that'll be the game library.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Because a main viewing room size HDTV costs $1000+ and a decent CRT costs $200-300.
So get a CRT-based HDTV.
A quick Froogle search reveals that you can get a nice Samsung 30" HDTV for about $600, built-in HD tuner and all. The same monitor without the tuner can be had for a mere $450. I'm willing to bet that a more aggressive search could reveal even better deals than that.
So, why exactly would anybody want to waste $300 on a TV that will be completely obsolete in a couple years, when less than a grand buys a TV that will remain useful for the entire life of the tube?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I want a card/board game that will engage me in intelligent conversation...
/. folks already read Megatokyo.
Jeez, why don't you just insist on a robot girl as a dating sim accessory* while you are at it?
*Spare me the wiki link. Most
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I don't think anyone knows about HD CRTs. Seriously. I never see them, and no one seems that interested in selling them. When people think "old school" big screen they think projection. CRTs may in fact be a good option, but it seems a bit late to start that push now.
the vast majority of people who own TVs don't really care that much if their TV is from RCA, as long it works.
Wouldn't the same reasoning go for HDTV and NTSC? Do you think the majority of people who own TVs care if it's HD or not? We just bought my father a new TV for his birthday. It was big - I think 36", NTSC and it was under $400. It wasn't a Sony, maybe an RCA or Toshiba, can't remember right now, but it was probably half the price or less than a comperable HD model. He has satellite, so the HD isn't an issue for him.
Actually, what we need are relatively big (27"-36"), cheap HD CRTs, and much cheaper plasma/lcd/flat screen models. I still have a CRT for my PC because of the price issues.
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Since my widescreen TV treats any 480p signal as widescreen, having 480p without widescreen support is pretty much worthless to me, because everything ends up stretched. So I often have to use 480i for GameCube games that nominally support 480p. With widescreen becoming more and more standard, all game systems should support widescreen, ideally by generating a 16:9 image or, if there is some good reason not to do that, by providing pillarboxing.
Why god gave you sheets, kid. And thumbtacks. And cheetos, but don't pry about that one.
but why would anybody even consider buying a non-HD TV for their main living room set these days?
Why would anyone even consider buying a HD TV? Absolutely no-one has them, no-one broadcasts in it, what's the point? It's just more expense. Cheaper to get a digital box thing, or Sky digital.
HD tv sales are at 25% because of the good old FEMA checks. When I would go to the store after Hurricane Rita, all you saw were people snatching up the tv's, and all of them were HD. Good old FEMA.
-- Yes, I work for the government, and yes I am watching you.
So you see, your clamoring for progressive scan and not caring about HD support doesn't really make any sense, as they are one in the same.
Strictly speaking, they are not. There are a fair number of TVs out their that will display ED (progressive) but not HD. My TV is capable of HD, but I find that the perceptual jump in quality is much greater from SD to ED (and from narrow to widescreen) than from ED to HD. This is particularly the case for video games, where the limiting factor of perceived image quality tends to be the geometric detail of the models, not the resolution of the display.
Agreed. I think, for example, Bourne Supremecy would have been more
watchable in a 60FPS medium. At 24FPS, the action scenes were just a
blur.
I've seen some great arguements against nintendo's system, but all the ones modded up have been pro-nintendo or anti-sony/microsoft. Very much like apple posts. Everyone says the same thing and all get modded up for it. "Nintendo's not just for kids," "new games suck only nintendo can innovate," "you don't need fancy features, just a barebones game system," etc. There are great arguements against these, but no one seems interested.
Have you ever considered that people might buy one to PLAY GAMES on it, rather than think about the resolution?
Nintendo has the only profitable console because they're more interested in making it enjoyable to play, not aiming it at anorak-wearing geeks who spend their entire lives tweaking FPSs to get higher framerates.
Is this gaming experience worth the combined investments of the console plus the game? That's a system-seller.
For my, I bought an Xbox for Jet Set Radio Future. I loved JSR on the Dreamcast (although it wasn't a system seller for me there), and I was really looking forward to playing the crap out of its sequel. So for me, the cost of JSRF was around 400$ -- 300$ for the Xbox, 70$ for the game, and taxes.
Compare this to people like Zonk who talk about upgrading their PC to play a new game, like getting a 700$ US 7800GT for FEAR. It's the same idea, it's just that in the console world, you don't rebuy the same console within a window of a certain number of years (otherwise you pull a Sega and put out too many things at the same time), and you can be sure that the games will run reasonably well (Doom 3 on Xbox = sexy).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"At the implementation level, upgrading chips capable of 480p60 to 1080i60 is a comparatively small tweak, because most of the increased bandwidth goes into permitting faster pixel-to-pixel color changes. The actual scanrate (~33.75KHz) isn't a whole lot higher than 480p60's (~31.5kHz). Unfortunately, you can't fool Mother Nature... making the leap to 720p60 requires ~45KHz, because the real or metaphorical electron beam has a LOT more ground to cover in the same amount of time. Put another way, you can do some nasty hacks and claim that a given circuit is technically capable of "1080i", even if its REAL capabilities aren't much better than 480p because the horizontal detail will be all smeared and blurred due to inadequate bandwidth..."
Why is the horizontal deflection always such huge deals with TVs (at least that's the picture I get from reading stuff on the net)? My ten-year old mid-grade monitor goes up to 110KHz.
Read the above comment in Comic Book Guy voice.
That's what most of this discussion sounds like to me: a load of nerds droning on and on about something else that 99% of people don't give a damn about.
At the current rate, in 2009 when they realise there still isn't significant penetration, they'll roll back the date yet again. HDTV is one of those things thats pretty much dead in the water- very few people are willing to pay extra for it. That means it won't get penetration until it becomes a freebie, and then it will take years for old equipment to be replaced, and TVs last a long time (hell, the last time my parents replaced a TV, the old one was over 20 years old).
So Nintendo is probably doing the right thing here. It helps keep the price of the console down, and more importantly the price of developing games down. Less work on this for the devs means more time to play with the controller mechanics.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Looks like this happened to both of us. I fail to see how my message was trolling; probably just modded down by a bunch of kiss-ass Nintendo fanboys. Typical slashdot tyranny: nothing to see here. :P
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The DVD comment made sense last generation, when DVD players were still expensive and somewhat rare. I bought a PS2 first, because it gave me two for the price of one (and could play PS games, a generation I missed as college poor). Now? Everyone has a DVD player. Its not going to drive people to buy it over the competition.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
not if you are getting Qwest DSL
How much did it cost to move to a geographic area whose ILEC is Qwest? Or if you were born and raised there, what solution do you propose for people who were born and raised in areas where the ILEC ties its DSL Internet access to its POTS?
"I think it's also a safe bet to assume that both Microsoft and Sony will have very playable and fun games that load quickly."
Try playing the last couple of Burnout games, or GTA games (these are just 2 examples, there are many more). I don't see anything that says things will change.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Actually, according to the ESA you are part of the minority, as more than 60% of video game players are over 18 years old.
http://hughgordon.com/
Don't get me wrong. I'm aware of the problems with interlacing and I would have preferred it had no interlaced standard had ever been implemented in the ATSC standard. It would have been much better had 720p at 60 Hz been adopted as the mainstream standard (considering the progress of displays in terms of capability and price) with 1080p at 60 Hz available to ATSC in the upgrade path. But, that bridge has already been burned behind us.
No, this is the case on a lot of widescreen TVs. It reflects the fact that standards were never developed as to which component--display or signal source--should be responsible for aspect ratio control on widescreen TVs. For this reason, many devices, including some DVD players and HD receivers and DVRs, provide aspect ratio control for TVs that presume that any ED or HD signal is 16:9.
Two things.
p s2_power_recall/ )
.'
a) Your right Nintendo have great build quality.
PS1's had a recorded problem with there CD drives producing loads of jitter I know two people who had that problem and it was really annoying.
The PS2 has compatibility issues with the PS1 and also has a tendancy to try burn your house down. ( http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/09/13/sony_
The X-Box incredibly has the same try burn your house down issue.
(Does anyone else find that seriously worrying. We know things have set things alight. Have people died or been seriously injured? Why the hell have both Sony and MS just been allowed to throw out some replacement crap. Shouldnt they both be hammered in to the ground for this?)
I rember my old Megadrive had something in it that when the system got jarred would cause it to screw up. (Which thanks to an overzealous dog it did.)
I have a brick boy a NES and borrowed a SNES once. My NES fell off beds got kicked and thrown around never had an issue. My Brickboy still works and that has been punished like mad its even got a small dent in the screen from when it fell out of my bag while I was on a bike. Not a problem.
The SNES that I borrowed was lugged around in a ruck sack and in my short time of owning it got a hell of a lot more punishment than my megadrive incident. It seems clear to me that Nintendo build there consoles to a high spec.
b) Although its admitedly still not as solid as Nintendo consoles the dreamcast is a tough box. The random reboots arnt a total failure and, well, hell I love the dreamcast so I can forgive it.
'You have to take the modem out and remove the top half of the DC's case, the board you want is the one to the left of the rom drive. unplug the little cable to the top left and unscrew the board now carefully unclip and lift the power supply board off the six pins near the bottom left of the DC which are the problem clean them with something like a bit of WD40 or just a gental wipe with a cotton bud or something be carefull not to mess up the serfice or leave any fluff or anything on them,if you are brave you could allso bend them slightly towards the front to ensure better contact but cleaning them should do the job.Then tair up you now invalid warrenty .
I do not think hitting the DC is a good idea but it probly dislodged the dirt
Its only happened to my housemates DC so far (Man did he pummel the crap out of it to keep it working see hitting point in the quote.), mine has run solidly thankfully and looks sooo good with its lovely VGA box. But Ill stop lovin on my dreamcast and getting off the topic thats already off topic.
To summarise, Nintendo build quality = great.
Yes. And it does. For now. But the FCC has laid out a roadmap for ceasing NTSC broadcasts. Which means that sooner or later, NTSC TVs will not be sold any longer. The only real barrier to doing this right now is price. HDTVs are currently more expensive than CRTs. So if the cheap TVs suddenly disappeared a lot of people would be pretty angry.
But the price difference is not as large as was implied by the poster that I was replying to. Small CRT HDTVs (and I don't consider 36" to be small) are not exorbitantly priced anymore, for a "lesser brand". And these small ones are the bulk of what the price-over-quality people are buying.
Yes, they still are more expensive. But soon it will be to the point where retailers can just stop selling NTSC (before it becomes to devalued by HD), and the people who look at price before quality won't even notice anything has happened, because the prices will all stay just about the same. My post was just saying I don't think it will take more than a couple years for this to begin.
a huge minority huh? is that like a definite maybe?
No, silly, it's like Star Jones.
Damn. Diet Coke all over my keyboard.
You deserve both of the "Funny" mod points the parent post got.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Once again, I'm not talking about big screen. I'm talking about "normal" TVs that blue-collar families concerned about prices have in their living rooms. I'm thinking in the 19" to 29" range. They are the bulk of the market, and CRT is the only cost-efficient option here. HD at this size is still uncommon, but that's because it doesn't matter to the consumer at that level, the extra cost is still too high. But it's getting close, as I noted with my 27" example.
Here is what I'm getting at...
The people who are worried about price more than quality aren't paying attention to the fact that the thing is HD, just that it costs $200 more. But that difference is shrinking every day. And soon, retailers can just drop the NTSCs (before they become too devalued), and consumers will just keep on paying what they've always paid, but now they'll have HD instead of NTSC. This phase-out has to happen sometime, because NTSC broadcasts are going to stop eventually.
You're talking the difference between spending $150 for a standard and $1000 (minimum - All those sub $1000 sets have no tuner) for a set in the 27" range.
Bzzzt!
I Froogled it: Samsung has a 30" HDTV, with HD built-in tuner, for just over $600. There are 27" sets to be had for considerably less (in the $450 range.)
Sure, you gotta go over $1000 if you insist on flat-panel or projectors, but that's true of SDTV systems too.
(or would be, if anybody still made high-end SD sets anymore.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Nintendo did something really brilliant by going with ATI for the graphics in their system (Sony used nvidia right??) by having the same GPU as their competitors they encourage cross compatibility.
And as any PC gamer can tell you, games are NOT limited by CPU.
Plus isn't Nintendo supposed to be really easy to program for?
If you don't understand it, why are you responding to it? Definately a case of "better to keep your mouth closed and appear a fool then to open it and remove all doubt".
Cost, and Joe Sixpack's stupidity.
:-(
.20mm dot pitch because it would be unacceptably dark due to the holes in the mask being so small, and would be gross overkill at that size and resolution anyway.) If I were going to buy a CRT-based HDTV, it would almost definitely be one of theirs for that precise reason.
:-)
Bandwidth-wise, 1080i60 and 540p60 are indistinguishable. 540p60 requires ~33.75KHz, while 480p60 requires the same as plain VGA: ~31.5KHz. In a CRT, this basically means the manufacturer can push a few components to the bounds of their tolerance and get away with using a single flyback transformer to handle both 480p60 and 1080i60. Since 720p60 requires ~45KHz, there's no way to fake it... you need an upgrade to handle at least two radically different scanrates. Which leads us to the second problem...
What do multisync monitors do when you radically switch display modes (say, between full-screen "DOS" and whatever resolution you normally run Windows at)? That's right... the screen turns black, a relay thunks, and the display comes back a second or two later. Unfortunately, Joe Sixpack isn't sophisticated enough to understand the engineering rationale behind the thunk-blink, and views it as a drawback. Especially when he's surfing between WWF Wrestling (in glorious 480i60) and ABC (in 720p60).
So, the way HDTV manufacturers look at it, they can make a TV that natively supports 480i60, 480p60, 720p60, and 1080i60, charge $20 more to cover the $2 extra it cost them to natively support 720p60 in addition to the rest, and then deal with endless bitching from unsophisticated customers who are mad because their TV goes "thunk" and blacks out when they're channel-surfing. Or, they can omit 720p60, pocket the savings, and be mostly left alone because average ignorant consumers wouldn't know the difference between 720p60 and 1080i60 if their lives depended on it
The ONLY company I know of that makes TVs that NATIVELY support 480i60, 480p60, 720p60, AND 1080i60 is Monivision. Their CRT-based HDTVs are basically big multisync monitors with increased dot pitch (it's not practical to make a 35" CRT with
Of course, there's a good solution to the "thunk" problem when channel-surfing: leave the TV's display mode alone and hack-convert everything to that mode while surfing, THEN (optionally) pick the best native display mode once the user hits another button on the remote. That way, Joe Sixpack can enjoy thunk-free surfing, and WE can enjoy HDTV programs at their native scanrates
The good news is that natively-progressive TVs are slowly edging out natively-interlaced HDTVs. The arrival of 1080p HD-DVDs will abolish any remaining demand for 1080i60 TVs among high-end users, and the flood of affordable 720p60 DLP, LCoS, and Plasma sets will edge them out among mid-range users. The remaining ones, who'll end up buying sub-32" CRT sets for years to come, will basically have TVs that display 480p60, even if they're technically doing 1080i60. With screens that small, the added horizontal detail of anything higher than 480p is lost and smeared anyway, and the scanlines are close enough together that the difference between 1080 sharp interlaced scanlines and 540 blurred progressive scanlines is academic (it's one of the reasons why it's practically impossible to look at a 27" "HDTV" set and figure out whether it's displaying something as 480p or 1080i... with low-end CRT-based HDTVs, the shadow mask is coarser than the nominal vertical resolution, and adjacent scanlines between fields end up lighting up the same phosphor triads anyway).
But the FCC has laid out a roadmap for ceasing NTSC broadcasts. Which means that sooner or later, NTSC TVs will not be sold any longer.
I anticipate this will be longer rather than sooner. I don't know what the numbers are, but I would imagine that cable/satellite TV viewers are a significant portion, if not a majorty of US TV consumers. Their ability to use their current sets is not going to change. I don't believe either DirectTV or DishNetwork have the bandwidth yet to broadcast an HD signal for all channels, and I can't see the majority of people getting too worked up over HD until most of their programming is available in that format.
mall CRT HDTVs (and I don't consider 36" to be small) are not exorbitantly priced anymore, for a "lesser brand". And these small ones are the bulk of what the price-over-quality people are buying.
I will trust you in your statement concerning pricing small HD vs NTSC models, I haven't looke lately. OTOH, I don't agree that the price-over-quality people are only interested in small TVs. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, but it doesn't make any sense to me at all. The vast majority of Americans are 'price-over-quality people' at least to an extent. You can see it everywhere. Where I live people pay for houses primarily on square footage, not on quality of construction, materials or anything else. The biggest house they can get for the money is what they will buy. Why would these same people think differently when purchasing a TV?
But soon it will be to the point where retailers can just stop selling NTSC (before it becomes to devalued by HD), and the people who look at price before quality won't even notice anything has happened, because the prices will all stay just about the same. My post was just saying I don't think it will take more than a couple years for this to begin.
Thing is, NTSC is already devalued by HD. On top of that CRT is devalued by LCD. Just a few years ago a 27" TV NTSC CRT was $500-$600. Now you can buy one for $150. When I was in high school having a big screen projection was a huge deal, now you can buy one for $800. Everyone wants a flat screen HD TV and CRT prices have fallen as a result. Eventually retailers will stop selling NTSC, but like I said before, HD isn't going to directly effect most cable and satellite customers, so there will be a market for NTSC models, as long as they are cheaper. Once HD models get competitive then NTSC will go away. Likewise, as soon as LCD is as cheap as CRT, CRT will dissappear. I don't know how soon this will happen, I don't see it happening in the next couple of years, but who would have thought DVDs would take over the market as quickly as they did.
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I think the word you were looking for is "who". Which makes you a prime example of an "ignorant fuck" that should be ignored.
Also, got to agree with the sibling on this one, the only idiots who say "could care less" are the ones misspeaking the phrase. That dictionary's got it wrong. If there ever was anyone who intentionally misused it they certainly aren't around now.
The Farewell Tour II
1080i60 = 1920 x 1080 @ 60 interlaced fields/second (540 scanlines redrawn every 1/60th sec)
720p60 = 1280 x 720 @ 60 progressive frames/second (all 720 scanlines redrawn every 1/60th sec)
480p60 is kind of messy.
There's the square-pixel variant, whose resolution is 640 x 480 @ 60 progressive frames/second.
There's also the rectangular-pixel 16:9 variant, whose resolution is (704 | 720) x 480 @ 60 progressive frames/sec. Offhand, I don't remember which one is the official one.
I think 480i60 has the same square-pixel (4:3) and rectangular-pixel (16:9) variants as 480p60.
Perhaps some of us are planning on using computer monitors (which the Revolution will natively support, anyway)...
If you haven't played Castlevania DS yet go buy it right now because it's freaking good.
I wouldn't say the PSP is a piece of shit. It's a sweet handheld with only a few decent games (most of which I can play better versions of on the PS2, but that's besides the point)..
Although I will say one thing. Our PSP has never left the house. It might get scratched haha.. Also I own about 15 games for my DS and just about every single one of them has logged more hours then every game on our PSP combined.
I guess fun > pretty.
Well, it's up to you if you want to play kickass games on some shitty 5" screen in your bed. Personally, I play games to have fun, not because I'm so addicted that I'm playing every night as I try to fall asleep. And it's not that expensive, nor does it require grand living rooms with vaulted ceilings. People play on projectors right in their dens or whatever. And with systems like the xbox 360 going for $400, and games going for $50 each, spending $500 on a decent projector doesn't sound that bad anymore. You better hope you can get some HD action on that thing (although it's not actually HD, at least it's higher than NTSC).
And if you haven't actually tried playing on a properly set up system and projector, you have no idea what you are missing. I'd suggest checking it out.
When you grow up and stop wetting your diapers and buy a house and all that, you want games that you can enjoy with your spouse. Gaming is such a solitary activity, and dumping 2 hours a night into a game to finish it isn't in. I hope that the new Nintendo system has some revolutionary games that everyone can enjoy. I like the idea of the new controller, it promises a whole new genre of games that havn't been thought up yet. If you're a pimply teenager first-person shooters and RPGs are fun, you can spend hours a day in your parents basement playing against other pimply losers online. I want a game I can pick up and be playing in seconds, not 5 minutes. I want a game my wife can enjoy along with me.
I was referring to the load times.
Miss the point much?
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
I personally prefer 1024p capable LCD widescreens, not plasmas, not CRTs.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
if they really worked it, 3fph: frames per hour.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
I don't really feel stupid. I'm really enjoying my PSP. I totally gave up on my gameboy, AND i love HOMEBREW. Changing backgrounds, movies on the go and mp3 capabilities are just icing on the cake. I was really disappointed with how cheap the DS felt and how big it was after the SP. The DS seemed like a huge dinosaur, with two differently functioning screens. I guess maybe the DS 2 will be smaller and have two touch screens :)
I hadn't considered this. I would definitely be surprised if it were really a high percentage. I guess I'm biased in this respect. I spent most of my life without cable. I have "basic cable" now only because I can't get over-the-air channels with an antenna in my apartment. I really have no desire to have an extended TV service of any sort at this point, even though I could fairly easily afford it. I suppose if indeed a high percentage of people have cable or satellite TV of some sort, then you're probably right about how long NTSC TVs will remain on the market. Though I suspect at some point not far off they will be so devalued that all but the poorest people will be willing to buy a small HD TV instead.
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, but it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
I suppose it's anecdotal. I just haven't met many people at all who make under $50k a year who have TV's any bigger than 31".
I don't agree that the price-over-quality people are only interested in small TVs.
They're not, directly. They're interested in affordable TVs. And small TVs are much more affordable than big ones.
The vast majority of Americans are 'price-over-quality people' at least to an extent.
I certainly wouldn't make that argument... But even within the context of America, there is still a large population of people who just don't have the funds to care that they don't have a big-screen TV.
Where I live people pay for houses primarily on square footage, not on quality of construction, materials or anything else. The biggest house they can get for the money is what they will buy. Why would these same people think differently when purchasing a TV?
Well, for one thing, having enough living space is a basic human need. A "small" TV is a minimal hindrance during only the fraction of time spent on entertainment. I don't see where this would be incompatible with what I'm saying. It's a question of priorities. The average American has a huge number of things to pay for that are more important than getting that extra few square feet of screen space.
I would claim that a dev kit and some tech demos are sufficient to confirm a console's existence. The idea that a console should not be reported upon until the final hardeware is finished seems a trifle ludicrous to me.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I find that I cannot play Resident Evil 4 in 480p mode, because it does not generate a true widescreen image without letterboxing. My TV treats any 480p signal as widescreen, so the image is horizontally stretched and looks ugly. I've been thinking about possibly getting rid of my GameCube copy of this game and buying the PS2 one for this reason.
So you've stated a case that HD is important... for you. Because you shelled out the big bucks on an HD set. *applause*
HD isn't a factor in the game purchases I make today. I don't have an HD set, but I am planning on buying one prior to the Revolution's and the PS3's launch. However, I will still buy a Revolution before either the PS3 or the X360. I am not a Nintendo "fanboy" either. I simply make my purchases (not just video game stuff) based upon who has the more interesting product.
So far Nintendo sounds like they are doing the unique thing. I want to support that line of thinking. If the new controller is a miss for them, the machine still has GC controller ports, I'm sure there will be "regular" games, it runs GC games, you can download their back library... it is still a far more flexible machine and far more intriguing machine to me.
I want a game console that at the very least promises to try and go above and beyond "Oo, pretty things." The Nintendo Revolution has done a far better job of that inspite of it lacking HD output.
No sig for you!!
I am currently in a game development class taught by an EA lead developer, and one of the things he has taken pains to show us is ways to handle multiplatform programming without hugely increasing the time and effort spent making the game multiplatform. While, of course, there are certain hurdles to multiplatform development, it's not clear that in order to manage it, the companies need to ignore the advantages of the various platforms.
I agree.
I sold off my Xbox long ago, and my Sony PSP last week because when all was said and done, there just weren't many games I wanted to play on them.
I'm pretty sure I'm buying a Revolution. I've already gotten a sampling of what they can do with motion sensing, thanks for Warioware Twisted! for the GBA and I like it.
Oh, right, load times aren't even remotely relative to content. ;P
I spent most of my life without cable. I have "basic cable" now only because I can't get over-the-air channels with an antenna in my apartment.
I may be biased as well. Where I live we are about 50 miles from the nearest network broadcast, so the signal is sucky. Cable or satellite is about the only way to get an acceptable signal, so everyone pays for TV. Perhaps if you live closer to the transmitters the signal is good enough that you don't need cable. I would say it's a fair bet that there is a significant market share that has cable/sat from the fact that ABC/Disney is going to move Monday Night Football, and American institution for nearly 30 years, to ESPN - a channel that requires cable/sat.
Well, for one thing, having enough living space is a basic human need.
The example I brought up wasn't about a basic human need. What's happening here is people are buying 3,500 square foot houses that are crap rather than buying the 2,500 square foot house that's well built. Why, because it's bigger and bigger is better. A 2,500 square foot house is adequate for most families of four or less.
The average American has a huge number of things to pay for that are more important than getting that extra few square feet of screen space.
The average American has a credit card. We are addicted to Entertainment. I've known plenty of people that didn't have a decent couch to sit on but had the biggest TV and loudest stereo money could buy. We all have plenty of things to pay for, but that doesn't mean we don't get the luxury items we want.
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Sony is being a jackass with their 'let developers do whatever the fuck they want with their online models and leave the bullshit sorting to the gamers.' Throw in their hardware pissing contest with Microsoft and their recent DRM attempt, and you've got a VERY angry geek community.
Microsoft is the natural enemy of Slashdot. Throw in the Joe Average confusing Xbox360 packages, the recently announced artifical shortage and the fact that its really nothing more than a graphical upgrade in terms of gaming potential and you can see why gamers don't like the Xbox360.
Nintendo is being a weirdo (as always) with their controller and are refusing to play the hardware game, but other than that they're doing nothing to piss people off. On top of that, Nintendo is being the only innovator here (better graphics does not make innovation), is foregoing plugging into a router and going straight to wireless Wi-Fi (read: major geek points), and is now saying 'on top of all this, we're gonna have the cheapest price!'
There is definitely a discernable difference between 24 FPS (film) and 30 FPS (video). Have you ever noticed a TV show that is shot in 24 FPS to look more "movie-like"? Any reality show / game show / etc that is shot on video has a different look to it, you can tell just by watching it that it was shot on video rather than film.
Not sure exactly about the scientific basis behind why 24 FPS looks cinematic and 30 FPS immediately looks like it was shot on home video... this link has some interesting info about FPS.
PS2 fanboy alert
(Sarcastic) Yep, that's me, PS2 fanboy.
Or maybe I was just trying to poke fun at Nintendo for humor's sake. PS2 fanboy? Half the comments in my original post aren't even in reference to the GameCube -- they're in reference to the N64, and SNES -- it's simply a joking chronicling of some of Nintendo's more interesting business decisions.
I think a more telling statement would be Nintendo fanboy alert! The post was supposed to be funny, not a serious dig at Nintendo. Jeez.
Having worked for Electronic Arts on a next-gen title, I don't think HD will play a large role for this generation of consoles, especially during the first 3-5 years. The Xbox 360 Devkit, which was a PowerMac G5 with the M$ dev software installed, touted a lot of power, but our game brought it to its electronic knees.
Consider textures. There is a lot of talk about dynamic lighting for next-gen consoles. Say you want to use normal maps. Now you go from one texture map to 3 or 4 (the base texture map, the normal map, possibly a specular map, and maybe a depth map). That will result in a 3-4X increase in texture space. And that is not even considering that you would probably want to up-rez the textures. Heck, you would need to up-rez to support HD. So you double the resolution. You now have a 4X increase in the size of each texture. Not looking good.
There are things that can be done to save some of this space, such as folding different texture types into one texture by being cleaver with how you use the RGBA channels. Still, it will be on average a 4-6X increase in overall texture space. Processor speed and memory aside, how to you pull that data in from disk fast enough? Your code it going to have to get really smart to do the kinds of predictive loading/unloading it needs to do to get those textures where they need to be at exactly the right time (otherwise you quickly run out of texture memory).
From just this simple example concerning one area of game production, the problems caused by HD are many. You also have to render more screen space at higher densities. HD is just flat out computationally expensive. It is expensive for the productions since artwork has to be developed to support HD resolutions. That impacts production pipelines because the datasize has increased. It just keeps going. How many developers do you think will flock to HD when the problems it causes are large and the financial gains are small?
And that is the rub. It is going to take developers 2-4 years just to get down the basics of making next-gen games. Until then, you are going to see a lot of ports. That is exactly what I was working on. Taking an existing game, art content and all, and porting it to Xbox 360. We worked to up-rez textures. We had to change completely how characters got modeled because we wanted lots of photo real char stuff that doesn't mesh well with current methods for modeling. Games involve lots of "cheats" in both tech and art. Many of those "cheats" are incompatible with next-gen content creation.
So Nintendo made the right choice. While Sony (who none of us should be considering buying from) and Microsoft (ditto) chase after the bleeding edge of tech, Nintendo will trail a short way behind making games the other 90% of the world might enjoy. I love my WoW as much as the next geek, but that experience does not minimize what Nintendo continues to do for the gaming world. It brings in new customers. That can only be good for all of us.
--kev
So, really, if they are wrong (bad analysis), there are indeed consequences for them (they get fired).
I'm not saying this means they know what they are talking about, but rather that it is highly likely they are performing serious analysis and not just pulling these numbers and theories out of their arse. . .
Coming back into this late, sorry. Anyway it's about 80% of households in the US, and it's only increasing.
And with systems like the xbox 360 going for $400, and games going for $50 each, spending $500 on a decent projector doesn't sound that bad anymore.
Actually, that sounds rather ludacrious in the face of a $150 22" CRT television I can play with the lights on, and without taking the shelves off my wall.
May the Maths Be with you!
I double checked your Froogling. You're wrong.
$661.49 at "Tech for Less" was the cheapest price. (Ok, that's "just over $600" by some definition I suppose), but! It's open box with "minor cosmetic blemishes".
The chepest new-in-box version of that model from a reputable vendor was from Sears for $850. Still a far cry from $150.
Still well below your "$1000 - minimum", and three inches bigger than the 27" screen you set as your benchmark.
These sets have been getting cheaper very quickly, and will continue to do so. Within another couple years, pretty much all big CRT's will probably be HD sets.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you spend nearly as much time on loads or have time to go make a meal, IMO that takes away from the fun of the content. GTA:SA isn't bad once it's loaded, but even using a HDD Loader I want it to start up faster. Burnout games have had some really bad load times and the HDD loader makes it bearable. With the changes in Burnout Revenge you almost do spend as much time on screens outside the races/crashes then you do playing them.
Plenty of games use graphics or other tricks to try to hide the load times. Take some recent survival horror games. The game would be so much better more immersive if they could somehow eliminate the 10-45 second (sometimes longer, but I haven't
timed them with a watch)load screen.
Maybe you like them. Maybe you believe that they are no longer an issue. I went out and got an HDD and the loader software, because some of the games I enjoy most on the PS2 had annoying load times. I don't see any evidence that there has been a great improvement in this and nothing about the design of the PS3 tells me things will change. I hope for it to change or be eliminated as an issue int he future though.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
yeah, you two are right and all these dictionary's are wrong... maybe you two should get together and write your own reference books.
damn trolls
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
If you're going to play the stereotype game...
If you ask some average Joe which of two TVs is "Better," he's going to point to the bigger one, not the one with the high def picture. If he's got $1000 to spend on a TV, which do you think he'll get? The 27" HD tube, the 36" Trinitron SD model, or the 45" SD rear projection? I bet money that nine times out of ten the answer is "The biggest one that will fit in the available space, HD or otherwise."
Given the uncertain state of copy protection legislation, you'd be stupid to buy an HD set right now anyway. All the early adopters that bought TVs before HDCP now have a 2 year old, $10,000 obsolete piece of junk. If new broadcast flag legislation gets passed, that could happen again.
There is a very clear difference in picture quality when using a DVD player/DVI or S video cables and a HD-TV vs a conevtional TV. Of sets of the same size, the average joe will pick the HD-TV. For a luxury item (that is what TV's are) many people, including my parents and relatives, will spend more to get better perceaved quality.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Now assume he predicts the first 100 rolls perfectly, and then on the last 900 he falls back to random chance getting getting one in six right (150 of the last 900 correct at random). So in total he got 250 right and 750 wrong. That test is a positive confirmation, and it has a statistical signifigance of about 1 in 10^78.
This is where your analysis fails. Even though the probability of getting 100 out of 100 rolls is 1 in 10^78, that does not hold true if you look at 1000 rolls. The probability of getting 100 rolls right out of 1000 is 1 in 10^9.
Yes his answers on the later rolls were completely worthless noise, but the test itself is indisinguishable from perfect confirmation.
The reason this is wrong is because as you change the number of total rolls, the probability distribution changes. If there is just one roll, there are two possibilities:
But there is only one way you can call it right, but there are five ways you can call it wrong. Therefore the odds of calling it right are 1 in 6 (about 17%), and the odds of calling it wrong are 5 in 6 (about 73%).
Now let's look at two rolls. We can identify three possibilities:
With two rolls, there are 36 possible outcomes. But there is only one way to get both right: the odds are therefore 1 in 36 (about 3%). However, there are lots of ways to call both wrong. In fact, for each roll, there are 5 ways to call it wrong, resulting in 25 total ways to get both rolls wrong if there are two rolls. So the odds of getting both rolls wrong are 25 in 36 (about 69%). So far we have accounted for 26 (1+25) of the 36 possible combinations of rolls. That leaves 10 out of 36 (or about 17%) for the final possibility for getting only one of the two rolls right.
In the first case (1 roll), the odds of getting 1 roll right is about 17%. In the second case (2 rolls), the odds of getting 1 roll right is about 28%. There is no such thing as an absolute probability of getting X rolls right outside of the context of how many total rolls there are.
Let's jump ahead to 10 rolls. There are eleven possible outcomes. I will list the odds for each
In this case, the odds of getting 1 roll right is about 32%. So are the odds of getting 1 roll right 17%, 28% or 32%?
The same holds true for getting 100 rolls right:
Notice that, to some extent, it gets easier to guess 100 rolls the more rolls you do. My point is that when you say the odds of guessing 100 rolls of the die, it depends on how big the field of total rolls is.
S
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.