In order to protect children from physical or sexual abuse by their parents I suggest we have video cameras installed in every home. In every room. The video feed can be fed into Government servers. If there is an allegation of abuse, the video files can be reviewed. We can trust the honesty and integrity of the Government. To suggest otherwise is treason.
The way I see it, development costs work out this way by console from most expensive to least expensive: 1. PS3, Cell Processor and 25 GBs of space on a disc. PS3 owners are going to expect a lot of pre-rendered high definition content for the $599 they are shelling out. 2. Xbox 360, high defintion console with DVD-ROM 3. Wii, standard definition console 4. Xbox 360 Arcade, games are less than 64 MB each
I think Microsoft should allow games that are as large as 512 MB. The larger games could cost $15 to $25. This would fill out the spectrum between 30 MB fun Arcade games all the way up to multi-DVD RPGs. You would need a hard drive for the larger games which most Xbox 360s have and the Core Xbox 360 owners can always add one if they want to purchase the intermediate games. There are a lot of games that really need to be a few hundred megabytes to be worthwhile, but would have a hard time fighting it out on store shelves. Niche games such as adventure games would be pretty cool.
I think a lot of developers will want to produce Arcade titles. Low cost development, no need to deal with retailers other than Microsoft, no advertising costs and everyone with a Xbox 360 can see your title available for purchase. There is also the advantage that Xbox 360 owners don't even have to go to the store to buy your title on a whim.
So as soon as someone posts copyrighted material on a website, the owner of the website owes money to the copyright owner. I guess it's under the impression that for a brief period of time the website owner made money off ads and the copyright owner should get that ad money. It seems a little like the patent trolls waiting until a company has a successful product. If people want to use a song they will have to wait until the copyright expires.. oh, wait...
I don't get the tens of millions of dollars part though. I've heard of $150 million to $400 million a year in potential revenue for YouTube. I understand it from the greedy record company standpoint, but I can't see it from the actual damages perspective. I guess every single person who saw a video that had a copyrighted song copied the song and E-mailed it to their friends in the Hong Kong Triads who later distributed pirate versions of it throughout Asia.
There is incentive for major content providers to completely destroy user content websites. After all, the content oligarchy would not want competition, even poorly made funny cat video competition.
At $250 it's not that far off the current price of a Xbox 360 core. If Microsoft dropped the price of both SKUs by $50 and threw in Project Gotham Racing 3, the core system would be very competitive. For the Wii60 crowd, it could mean a Premium Xbox 360, a Wii, Wii Sports and Project Gotham Racing 3 for the same price as a premium PS3. Of course, that's just speculating.
Does anyone else think that the console's priced high because of the high price of the PS3? I think that if the PS3 were $400, you would see a $200 Wii with a game. One of the great things about the Wii for the non-Nintendo fans is it will put pressure on other console makers to lower their prices.
I am simply amazed that Nintendo went with the same point structure as Microsoft. Wii points? 500 Wii points for a NES game, 800 for a SNES game and 1000 for a N64 game. 20 bucks for 2000 points. Horse armor for Link?
It's much better than a mandatory high definition drive in the PS3. If the PS3 had a $350 version of the PS3 with a regular DVD-ROM and a Blu-Ray version costing $600, I think a lot of the complaints about price would go away. Even if the Xbox 360 with HD-DVD is $500 or $600, you don't have to buy that version.
I wouldn't want to get one of the formats until I purchased a 1080p TV, which will be no time soon. It seems that a lot of early adopters have been burned by purchases of 720p and 1080i TVs. So if I decide to purchase a Xbox 360, I would probably want one without the HD-DVD drive.
Everything's hacking in the mind of idiots
on
Hacking the Governator
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm just waiting until there's a move by content providers to ban popup blockers because they prevent people from seeing ads... thus costing someone potential ad revenue and when someone is deprived of potential revenue (even if the loss of potential revenue is only in their imagination) it is now the equivalent of theft.
There are quite a lot of people who view competent computer use as a form of magic. They are deeply scared of technology, vote people into office who don't understand technology and expect them to legislate their fears away. So if someone accesses information on a website in an unintended manner, it must be computer hacking. What's really funny is that some people who use the Internet everyday, looking at URLs everyday and think manually changing the URL is hacking.
It is all part of an idea that if you use a product in manner which was not intended by the creator it is some sort of crime. If you look at a website in the wrong way, you're a criminal. The people running the website have no responsibility to keep their private files out of publicly accessible directories. If you use home-brew software on an electronic product, you're a criminal. Most of the time it's about a loss of potential revenue.
More people are buying notebook computers as desktop replacements, notebook computers are generally poor gaming system. If you buy a $500 notebook, it will not play F.E.A.R. very well.
There are a lot of super cheap desktops which difficult to upgrade, for example go to dell.com and look at their cheapest system. If you buy a $300 desktop, it will not play Elder Scroll 4: Oblivion very well.
Many PC configurations in comparison to a single console configuration, when a game says PS2 or Xbox 360 it will almost certainly work on such a system, you don't have to troubleshoot.
Very high system requirements, for example Crysis whose system requirements are so high that it cannot be ported to a PS3 or XBox360
World of Warcraft sucking all of the money out of gamer's pockets and taking up a lot of their time
Note how piracy is not on my list. Piracy has been around for as long as software has been around. There just happens to be a new attitude that every pirated piece of software is a lost sale instead of a sale which probably would have never taken place. There is also an attitude that when consumers can break the law they will. I think this is probably a result of industry trade groups (notably the RIAA and MPAA) holding conferences about piracy and spreading propaganda. Galactic Civilizations II (which I own) has no copy protection and yet it has sold much better than a number of games with strong copy protection.
I think it's difficult to call an industry in decline when one company (Blizzard) spent $50 million creating a product (World of Warcraft) that brings in a $1 billion a year in revenue. Revenue != Profit, but I strongly doubt that they have less than a 20% profit margin.
I also have a question... this thing about 32bit vista not being able to produce true HD resolution with movies.... is that some kind of joke? My computer can already play that resolution, what gives? Is the encoding of the movie that cpu hungry?
Microsoft has stated that 32-bit Windows Vista will not allow high definition playback because apparently software running on a 32-bit CPU can override the DRM, allowing for illegal copying. It has nothing to do with capabilities of a 32-bit system, it is all about Bill Gates orally pleasuring the movie and record industries. There was a slashdot article on it recently.
Actually the exclusive games front is negative news. Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Resident Evil 5 are coming to the Xbox 360 first day. There are exclusive PS3 titles, but no where near as many as their were on the PS2. The PS2 was cheaper than the Xbox 360 and had a lot of exclusive games. There may be exclusive by default games on the PS3 from Japanese developers because the games are developed for Japan. Don't get me wrong Gran Turismo 4, Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 will be system sellers, but most causal gamers will take a wait and see approach because of the $600 price tag (no one wants a crippled console). If the Xbox 360 has a price drop it will hurt Sony badly (except in Japan).
For nearly every product there is negative news, as well as positive news. Where is the positive news for the Sony PS3?
It seems that for the price they want to charge ($499/$599) everyone wants an amazing system. If the Wii ends up only having five good games, it's a pretty cheap system so people won't complain. If the PS3 has only five good games, Sony needs to fireproof their headquarters. The Xbox 360 at $299/$399 is still considered too expensive for most people, most people who like the idea of buying the 360 want a $100 price drop (I'm not saying we'll get it, but we would like it).
Sony has created a console which gives very little room to manuever. It would only be successful under the following circumstances: - the Wii is a failure - the Xbox 360 is a failure - people are happy to pay $700 for a console + game + HD cables - manufacturing is successful at producing large numbers of PS3s
I think Microsoft will drop the price of the Xbox 360 pretty soon to increase their install base. I think quite a lot of people will buy the Wii whether it's $170 or $225. There are a lot of complaints from people who own PS2s about the high PS3 price. Their manufacturing has been less than successful in producing the number of PS3s in the time frame needed.
Personally I will purchase the Xbox 360 when I can get 65 nm version with a hard drive for $300. I wasn't really impressed by the footage of the Wii (IGN has a 20 minute demonstration on their website), but they may release games that appeal to me. The PS3 may be a good deal when it hits $300 for the premium version, but that will be about 3 years from now and there will be new consoles being released.
If anyone has positive news about the PS3, could they please post it.
human stupidity will cut right through it. Why doesn't the bank just leave a few hundred thousand dollars of their customer's money in the middle of the landfill.
Microsoft should make a deal ($$$$$) with Sega and call it a Sega Xbox 360 in Japan. Have a few cosmetic changes and have some Japanese engineers oversee the production of consoles sent to Japan. Japanese gamers may feel that it is Japanese enough to purchase. It is a very large console (until the 65 nm manufacturing sets in), but it is still smaller than the PS3!
Microsoft will have to approach Japanese developers who are creating PS3 exclusive games, but who are not under exclusive contract to Sony. With the fear of a inexpensive Wii and an overly expensive PS3, Microsoft offers them 1.5 x amount of money where x is the cost of porting the PS3 game over to the XBox 360. The developer makes more than their money back on porting it to the Xbox 360 and Microsoft can build it's Japanese game library. Even if this was wildly successful I don't see Microsoft building more than 20% of the Japanese game console market.
Has anyone else seen the ign footage of the Wii in action. It looks kind of interesting, but apparent from Red Steel, all of the games had a kiddie look to them. That WILL hurt the Wii among some gamers.
In the near future, the United States of America may be a country that non-Americans fear to travel to. With the DMCA, the Patriot Act, association with gambling sites, corporate deals with Iran, corporate deals with Cuba... you just simply do not know whether or not you will be arrested when entering the United States. If your non-American company did business with Cuba, could you be arrested? If you engaged in fair use of media in your country, could you be arrested for DMCA violations?
I like the idea of disaster prevention through reading hard disk vibration and all, but isn't this the sort of thing that professionals should be responsible for?
I don't think it was a troll comment, but I do disagree.
I think the major reason that the Xbox 360 is not selling as well as it could is that it is too expensive at $399 for the Premium version. Very few people want to get the inferior one (even though it is upgradeable), so a lot of people are waiting for the price drop.
Despite a small install base, the games are doing quite well. You often see a new Xbox 360 title at number 1 on the console charts (not in Japan of course).
You are correct that people will continue to buy a product that is obsolete. After all I've still seen advertisements for GeForce 5500s even though they are terribly obsolete at this point.
And if Sony didn't want to launch the PS3 around the same time as the Xbox 360, why did they originally state a Spring 2006 launch?
Sony made a decision to sacrifice the Playstation3 on the altar of Blu Ray. If they had released the PS3 with a standard DVD-ROM, it would cut their cost by about $300 dollars (it's estimated by Merrill Lynch that Sony's cost for a Blu Ray drive is $350 a unit). They could easily sell the PS3 for $350 taking less of a loss than they are currently taking per unit. They could have released it at the same time as the Xbox 360 and kicked Microsoft's teeth in. Instead we witness the delays and dramatically cut production.
When most companies release a new product, they don't risk their bread and butter products that make their profits. Microsoft doesn't put the Windows franchise on the line in order to sell their music player (which will probably fail terribly). Nintendo didn't risk the DS on the release of the Wii. If the Wii fails, Nintendo will still have the DS as a profitable part of their company.
If the Playstation3 is brought down by Blu Ray format, it will be a very messy situation for Sony. Sony has setup a situation where the Blu Ray format must succeed. No rational company does this.
Professional shoplifters will target multiple stores, so it would be in the interests of the retail industry to share information. Barring legislation they would have no reason to delete this information. If you act suspiciously once, you could be tagged for life. They could match all of your purchases (even cash purchases) with your face for life. The LCD screen near the entrance could change to match what they want to sell you.
Think data mining in the physical world. It's just going to get worse over time.
A lot of third party developers will be developing for all three consoles. They do not want to risk everything on one console. It is much more uncertain which console will come out on top.
There will be a lot of Xbox360/PS3 dual development. The Wii will take a little more effort to port games to it because of it's controller and lack of HD support.
For example, both the Xbox360 and PS3 have first day Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell:Double Agent, Resident Evil 5 and Grand Theft Auto 4.
There were so many PS2s sold that developers could just develop for the PS2 and forget about other consoles. Because of the high price of the PS3, I don't think that's going to happen.
Wasn't the PS3 supposed to be a fantastic movie player which was a $1000 value for a $600 price? Without games.
HDMI is being forced on the public because of the Image Constraint Token and Sony wants you to pay extra for the privilege.
Maybe someone can post some positive PS3 articles in order to balance out the negative news. In fact, someone can just respond with a number of recent positive developments for the PS3. Oh and re-listing the PS3 stats over and over again doesn't count.
Slashdot Mirror
In order to protect children from physical or sexual abuse by their parents I suggest we have video cameras installed in every home. In every room. The video feed can be fed into Government servers. If there is an allegation of abuse, the video files can be reviewed. We can trust the honesty and integrity of the Government. To suggest otherwise is treason.
The way I see it, development costs work out this way by console from most expensive to least expensive:
1. PS3, Cell Processor and 25 GBs of space on a disc. PS3 owners are going to expect a lot of pre-rendered high definition content for the $599 they are shelling out.
2. Xbox 360, high defintion console with DVD-ROM
3. Wii, standard definition console
4. Xbox 360 Arcade, games are less than 64 MB each
I think Microsoft should allow games that are as large as 512 MB. The larger games could cost $15 to $25. This would fill out the spectrum between 30 MB fun Arcade games all the way up to multi-DVD RPGs. You would need a hard drive for the larger games which most Xbox 360s have and the Core Xbox 360 owners can always add one if they want to purchase the intermediate games. There are a lot of games that really need to be a few hundred megabytes to be worthwhile, but would have a hard time fighting it out on store shelves. Niche games such as adventure games would be pretty cool.
I think a lot of developers will want to produce Arcade titles. Low cost development, no need to deal with retailers other than Microsoft, no advertising costs and everyone with a Xbox 360 can see your title available for purchase. There is also the advantage that Xbox 360 owners don't even have to go to the store to buy your title on a whim.
no text
So as soon as someone posts copyrighted material on a website, the owner of the website owes money to the copyright owner. I guess it's under the impression that for a brief period of time the website owner made money off ads and the copyright owner should get that ad money. It seems a little like the patent trolls waiting until a company has a successful product. If people want to use a song they will have to wait until the copyright expires .. oh, wait...
I don't get the tens of millions of dollars part though. I've heard of $150 million to $400 million a year in potential revenue for YouTube. I understand it from the greedy record company standpoint, but I can't see it from the actual damages perspective. I guess every single person who saw a video that had a copyrighted song copied the song and E-mailed it to their friends in the Hong Kong Triads who later distributed pirate versions of it throughout Asia.
There is incentive for major content providers to completely destroy user content websites. After all, the content oligarchy would not want competition, even poorly made funny cat video competition.
At $250 it's not that far off the current price of a Xbox 360 core. If Microsoft dropped the price of both SKUs by $50 and threw in Project Gotham Racing 3, the core system would be very competitive. For the Wii60 crowd, it could mean a Premium Xbox 360, a Wii, Wii Sports and Project Gotham Racing 3 for the same price as a premium PS3. Of course, that's just speculating.
Does anyone else think that the console's priced high because of the high price of the PS3? I think that if the PS3 were $400, you would see a $200 Wii with a game. One of the great things about the Wii for the non-Nintendo fans is it will put pressure on other console makers to lower their prices.
I am simply amazed that Nintendo went with the same point structure as Microsoft. Wii points? 500 Wii points for a NES game, 800 for a SNES game and 1000 for a N64 game. 20 bucks for 2000 points. Horse armor for Link?
It's much better than a mandatory high definition drive in the PS3. If the PS3 had a $350 version of the PS3 with a regular DVD-ROM and a Blu-Ray version costing $600, I think a lot of the complaints about price would go away. Even if the Xbox 360 with HD-DVD is $500 or $600, you don't have to buy that version.
I wouldn't want to get one of the formats until I purchased a 1080p TV, which will be no time soon. It seems that a lot of early adopters have been burned by purchases of 720p and 1080i TVs. So if I decide to purchase a Xbox 360, I would probably want one without the HD-DVD drive.
I'm just waiting until there's a move by content providers to ban popup blockers because they prevent people from seeing ads ... thus costing someone potential ad revenue and when someone is deprived of potential revenue (even if the loss of potential revenue is only in their imagination) it is now the equivalent of theft.
There are quite a lot of people who view competent computer use as a form of magic. They are deeply scared of technology, vote people into office who don't understand technology and expect them to legislate their fears away. So if someone accesses information on a website in an unintended manner, it must be computer hacking. What's really funny is that some people who use the Internet everyday, looking at URLs everyday and think manually changing the URL is hacking.
It is all part of an idea that if you use a product in manner which was not intended by the creator it is some sort of crime. If you look at a website in the wrong way, you're a criminal. The people running the website have no responsibility to keep their private files out of publicly accessible directories. If you use home-brew software on an electronic product, you're a criminal. Most of the time it's about a loss of potential revenue.
Note how piracy is not on my list. Piracy has been around for as long as software has been around. There just happens to be a new attitude that every pirated piece of software is a lost sale instead of a sale which probably would have never taken place. There is also an attitude that when consumers can break the law they will. I think this is probably a result of industry trade groups (notably the RIAA and MPAA) holding conferences about piracy and spreading propaganda. Galactic Civilizations II (which I own) has no copy protection and yet it has sold much better than a number of games with strong copy protection.
I think it's difficult to call an industry in decline when one company (Blizzard) spent $50 million creating a product (World of Warcraft) that brings in a $1 billion a year in revenue. Revenue != Profit, but I strongly doubt that they have less than a 20% profit margin.
I also have a question... this thing about 32bit vista not being able to produce true HD resolution with movies.... is that some kind of joke? My computer can already play that resolution, what gives? Is the encoding of the movie that cpu hungry? Microsoft has stated that 32-bit Windows Vista will not allow high definition playback because apparently software running on a 32-bit CPU can override the DRM, allowing for illegal copying. It has nothing to do with capabilities of a 32-bit system, it is all about Bill Gates orally pleasuring the movie and record industries. There was a slashdot article on it recently.
Actually the exclusive games front is negative news. Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Resident Evil 5 are coming to the Xbox 360 first day. There are exclusive PS3 titles, but no where near as many as their were on the PS2. The PS2 was cheaper than the Xbox 360 and had a lot of exclusive games. There may be exclusive by default games on the PS3 from Japanese developers because the games are developed for Japan. Don't get me wrong Gran Turismo 4, Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 will be system sellers, but most causal gamers will take a wait and see approach because of the $600 price tag (no one wants a crippled console). If the Xbox 360 has a price drop it will hurt Sony badly (except in Japan).
For nearly every product there is negative news, as well as positive news. Where is the positive news for the Sony PS3?
It seems that for the price they want to charge ($499/$599) everyone wants an amazing system. If the Wii ends up only having five good games, it's a pretty cheap system so people won't complain. If the PS3 has only five good games, Sony needs to fireproof their headquarters. The Xbox 360 at $299/$399 is still considered too expensive for most people, most people who like the idea of buying the 360 want a $100 price drop (I'm not saying we'll get it, but we would like it).
Sony has created a console which gives very little room to manuever. It would only be successful under the following circumstances:
- the Wii is a failure
- the Xbox 360 is a failure
- people are happy to pay $700 for a console + game + HD cables
- manufacturing is successful at producing large numbers of PS3s
I think Microsoft will drop the price of the Xbox 360 pretty soon to increase their install base. I think quite a lot of people will buy the Wii whether it's $170 or $225. There are a lot of complaints from people who own PS2s about the high PS3 price. Their manufacturing has been less than successful in producing the number of PS3s in the time frame needed.
Personally I will purchase the Xbox 360 when I can get 65 nm version with a hard drive for $300. I wasn't really impressed by the footage of the Wii (IGN has a 20 minute demonstration on their website), but they may release games that appeal to me. The PS3 may be a good deal when it hits $300 for the premium version, but that will be about 3 years from now and there will be new consoles being released.
If anyone has positive news about the PS3, could they please post it.
human stupidity will cut right through it. Why doesn't the bank just leave a few hundred thousand dollars of their customer's money in the middle of the landfill.
Microsoft should make a deal ($$$$$) with Sega and call it a Sega Xbox 360 in Japan. Have a few cosmetic changes and have some Japanese engineers oversee the production of consoles sent to Japan. Japanese gamers may feel that it is Japanese enough to purchase. It is a very large console (until the 65 nm manufacturing sets in), but it is still smaller than the PS3!
Microsoft will have to approach Japanese developers who are creating PS3 exclusive games, but who are not under exclusive contract to Sony. With the fear of a inexpensive Wii and an overly expensive PS3, Microsoft offers them 1.5 x amount of money where x is the cost of porting the PS3 game over to the XBox 360. The developer makes more than their money back on porting it to the Xbox 360 and Microsoft can build it's Japanese game library. Even if this was wildly successful I don't see Microsoft building more than 20% of the Japanese game console market.
Has anyone else seen the ign footage of the Wii in action. It looks kind of interesting, but apparent from Red Steel, all of the games had a kiddie look to them. That WILL hurt the Wii among some gamers.
Blue screen of death.
In the near future, the United States of America may be a country that non-Americans fear to travel to. With the DMCA, the Patriot Act, association with gambling sites, corporate deals with Iran, corporate deals with Cuba ... you just simply do not know whether or not you will be arrested when entering the United States. If your non-American company did business with Cuba, could you be arrested? If you engaged in fair use of media in your country, could you be arrested for DMCA violations?
You won't know until you are on American soil.
I like the idea of disaster prevention through reading hard disk vibration and all, but isn't this the sort of thing that professionals should be responsible for?
I'm glad someone got my joke :)
I don't think it was a troll comment, but I do disagree.
I think the major reason that the Xbox 360 is not selling as well as it could is that it is too expensive at $399 for the Premium version. Very few people want to get the inferior one (even though it is upgradeable), so a lot of people are waiting for the price drop.
Despite a small install base, the games are doing quite well. You often see a new Xbox 360 title at number 1 on the console charts (not in Japan of course).
You are correct that people will continue to buy a product that is obsolete. After all I've still seen advertisements for GeForce 5500s even though they are terribly obsolete at this point.
And if Sony didn't want to launch the PS3 around the same time as the Xbox 360, why did they originally state a Spring 2006 launch?
If the Wii is released for $599 ... I think it will fail. Despite the historical giant crabs, real-time weapon change and Ridge Racer.
Sony made a decision to sacrifice the Playstation3 on the altar of Blu Ray. If they had released the PS3 with a standard DVD-ROM, it would cut their cost by about $300 dollars (it's estimated by Merrill Lynch that Sony's cost for a Blu Ray drive is $350 a unit). They could easily sell the PS3 for $350 taking less of a loss than they are currently taking per unit. They could have released it at the same time as the Xbox 360 and kicked Microsoft's teeth in. Instead we witness the delays and dramatically cut production. When most companies release a new product, they don't risk their bread and butter products that make their profits. Microsoft doesn't put the Windows franchise on the line in order to sell their music player (which will probably fail terribly). Nintendo didn't risk the DS on the release of the Wii. If the Wii fails, Nintendo will still have the DS as a profitable part of their company. If the Playstation3 is brought down by Blu Ray format, it will be a very messy situation for Sony. Sony has setup a situation where the Blu Ray format must succeed. No rational company does this.
Professional shoplifters will target multiple stores, so it would be in the interests of the retail industry to share information. Barring legislation they would have no reason to delete this information. If you act suspiciously once, you could be tagged for life. They could match all of your purchases (even cash purchases) with your face for life. The LCD screen near the entrance could change to match what they want to sell you.
Think data mining in the physical world. It's just going to get worse over time.
A lot of third party developers will be developing for all three consoles. They do not want to risk everything on one console. It is much more uncertain which console will come out on top. There will be a lot of Xbox360/PS3 dual development. The Wii will take a little more effort to port games to it because of it's controller and lack of HD support. For example, both the Xbox360 and PS3 have first day Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell:Double Agent, Resident Evil 5 and Grand Theft Auto 4. There were so many PS2s sold that developers could just develop for the PS2 and forget about other consoles. Because of the high price of the PS3, I don't think that's going to happen.
Wasn't the PS3 supposed to be a fantastic movie player which was a $1000 value for a $600 price? Without games. HDMI is being forced on the public because of the Image Constraint Token and Sony wants you to pay extra for the privilege. Maybe someone can post some positive PS3 articles in order to balance out the negative news. In fact, someone can just respond with a number of recent positive developments for the PS3. Oh and re-listing the PS3 stats over and over again doesn't count.