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Sony, Nintendo Announce 'Fixes' For Their Consoles
Gamasutra reports that both Nintendo and Sony still have a few kinks to work out from their newly launched systems. It may seem funny to an onlooker, but the spectacular Wii strap blowouts are being taken very seriously by Nintendo. People are evidently 'even more excited' by playing the little white console than the company anticipated, and they're investigating the possibility that the straps aren't strong enough. Meanwhile, Sony has updated the PS3's firmware to 1.30 in an effort to take care of the much-complained-about resolution scaling issues. Ars Technica (and several other sites) are saying that the fix doesn't really do anything, despite Sony's reassurances. From that article: "The priority of resolutions has been changed, putting 1080i over 720p. So if you prefer 720p as a resolution, be sure to uncheck 1080i as a possible resolution on your television, or else games that support both resolutions will automatically display at 1080i. Of course, if you uncheck 1080i as a resolution, your Blu-ray movies will display at 480p. So you'll have to just manually switch the resolution yourself depending on what you're doing ... If you have a 720p set, not only has Sony not fixed the scaling issues, they've made the process of playing games and watching movies less user friendly. Sony really wants you to upgrade into a 1080p set, and they seem to want to punish you if you don't have one."
Sony, fix the price first!
Okay, so before it was: "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 720p, and 1080i (only) is screwed". Now it's "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 1080i, and everyone else is screwed".
So it went from a minor annoyance to a severe problem?
Who put Don Rumsfeld in charge of patches?
Sony actually has good hardware with the PS3, despite all the FUD. But if they don't pull their heads out of the sand and overhaul the software, they're going to lose a lot of customers.
I am a PS3 owner. Wake up, Sony.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Even by Zonk standards, this is some impressive spinning -- it's not a defect, it's just that the fantasticness of the Wii is so all-encompassing that the designers couldn't have anticipated how much players would love it!
Microsoft should have come up with that: "Players are so exhilarated by the 360 that they can sometimes set the carpet on fire!"
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If you look at a wiimote from the more recent batches (especialy if its one that got sent by nintendo because of a defect or another, as a replacement), and compare the straps, the newer wiimotes have much, much better straps. So its already fixed in the newer batches, as far as I can tell.
If you're honestly worried about the strap breaking on your Wiimote, check out this quick how-to on flickr. Just use some heavy duty fly fishing line to reinforce it.
My work here is dung.
Welcome to the world of console gaming, now with patches.
There's a warning screen before each game to tightly grip the Wiimote. I wouldn't blame Nintendo for my inability to grip an object. On a related note, society on the whole is far to sue happy and I'm of the opinion that they should institute a mandatory penalty for bringing frivolous law suits.
Suggesting that Nintendo needs to be sued because people misuse the product, to a degree far enough beyond sensibility that it is almost laughable, makes me want to suggest suing microwave manufacturers because microwaving a baby makes a real mess.
No, I'm sorry, but I don't agree at all that this is some type of spin. Nintendo designed the Wiimote to what they felt would be appropriate safety standards when used responsibly and with a modicum of common sense. How exactly it is their fault that a bunch of people are far too overzealous for their own good? The strap is there for backup. The Wiimote should never have left the people's hands in the first place.
This whole thing might convince me to put some adhesive rubber strips on the Wiimote for a better grip, (get your minds out of the gutter, guys...) but it's not Nintendo's fault if I act like a freaking maniac and the Wiimote flies out of my hand because I'm swinging it faster than I should or need to.
As far as I'm concerned, Nintendo is taking the high road by saying that they're going to look at making the wrist straps more secure whereas they could just as easily say, "The Wiimote wrist strap was not designed for people who don't know how to control themselves properly" and leave it at that.
And, no, that's not a troll or a flame. I'm just so tired of people pushing things beyond their limit of tolerance due to their own lack of self-control and common sense then blaming the manufacturer for it. If you buy a car, never take it out of first gear, red-line the engine by going 50 MPH, and end up in the hospital when the engine explodes, that's not the car manuacturer's fault for not making the engine more tolerant of your bad actions.
Nintendo just gained some credibility in my book.
As for Microsoft, I'm not as willing to let them off the hook. People have been putting consoles on the floor since the days of the Atari 2600, so that is not an unrealistic expectation. Yet Microsoft designed the 360 and its power supply to be a small toaster oven. They could have put a bit more planning into the heating/cooling system of the 360.
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