He may have somewhat worked hard, and he definitely built a business. But he never released a superior product, and his prices have never been reasonable. All MS/Gates/et al have ever been good at is marketing.
It's quite possible to build a large profitable business without using the despicable tactics used by MS.
Fair enough. But (to borrow just a bit from "ofcourseyouare"), I would say TheSims is one of those exceptions that proves the rule. In this case my point being that females as a general rule put a lot more priority on socialization than males do. Which TheSims still manages to provide plenty of, despite being primarily a single-player game. Also from what I have seen, most of the time when gals do play single-player games, they do it with one or more friends present.
I still disagree with you though on Desperate Housewives. I think that game is going to be another flop that bombs to the bargain bin in a matter of weeks, not months.
Okay, so we've got the perspective of a couple female gamers that like... eh... the same games guys play? So if they like the same games as everyone else, how does their perspective actually tell us much of anything about targeting the females that don't like these kinds of games? Personally, I don't think the problem really is coming up with games that target females. From what I've seen, the situation is that most females simply don't care to play video games in general, and the games available won't really change that a whole lot. However, if there IS a key to getting females more involved with video games, it has to be interaction with other real people in-game. I seriously doubt you'll ever get most them to play single-player games, no matter how 'girly' they are. Machines just don't hold nearly as much interest for females as they do for males. As far as I know, there's only one 'real' (as opposed to simple online games on websites, or similar fare) video game that's ever had mass-appeal for both sexes, and that's World of Warcraft. And look at the huge amount of interaction in that game.
Personally, I'll be extremely amazed if the Desperate Housewives game ever shows itself to be more than yet another Desperate Attempt At Making Money Off A Popular TV Show.
I've known people who had no clue they were leeching/mooching anything off anybody until I told them. People who actually thought that they could buy a wireless card for $40, and get free internet wherever they could find a signal. The people responsible for this mess are the manufacturers - selling routers and access points that are unsecured out of the box is a recipe for disaster (which is what we currently have all over the place) and yet they all do it. That has to change. Or at the very least, they need to include a big bold bright-colored card stating that it's unsecured and that the customer should make securing it his first priority. Most people who buy wireless gear don't know the first thing about security, let alone that their new gear comes set up so anyone at all can connect to it.
I work in a PC repair shop. As you might expect, a good percentage of our work is malware removal. The worst machine we've had in here had upwards of 20,000 files infected with viruses. And we didn't even bother checking for spyware.
Well, it sounds like your J-RPG tastes are pretty much identical to mine, so as a result of your post I probably won't be buying the game.
Personally, I never could figure out why they didn't borrow the battle system from Chrono Trigger for use in the FF series. The random battles in FFVII (and more or less in the rest of the FF series, but FFVII was definitely my favorite) was probably the only thing I didn't like about the game. The battle system I did like.
But if there's no excellent story, no excellent music, and the gameplay is pretty much the same as any MMORPG... why not just play the MMO and actually play with some friends? That's exactly what I'll be doing I think.
EA did destroy "those studios". In the last 10 years or so, pretty much everything EA has released has been bug-ridden garbage. Studios that previously (before they published under EA) had excellent games followed up with trash under EA. And the games that EA themselves have developed recently are the worst of the lot. It's bad enough now that I won't even try their new games that would interest me if published by anyone else.
Ugh... when will/. catch up with 1999 and give us an effing EDIT button?
>And buying a more expensive PC simply to play games on it is better how? Not to mention all the usual Windows problems that goes with it? Service Pack 2 or not, there's always new holes being discovered and you'll never been 100% safe (or, in the case of Windows, even 50% safe I guess).
Very few people buy a PC "simply to play games on." In fact, almost every household that has a recent game console also has a PC. So it's not so much a matter of buying a PC or a game console. It's a matter of buying a game console in addition to your PC, or saving your money and just playing games on what you already have. And yes, for most people the cheap wimpy computer they use to do their email and web-browsing is also good enough to play the games they want to play. And regardless, when you upgrade your PC and spend more money on it, you get just that many more functions that a console can't do.
>I'd rather use consoles to play games, thanks. And with the Wii coming up, it might even beat the old keyboard+mouse combo for some games. As for "PC games", well, there's the Xbox 360.
That's great. For some games, I'd rather play them on a console too. And I'm really excited about the Wii. But consoles are not a replacement for PCs, and no console controller will ever beat a keyboard+mouse for games that keyboard+mouse have always been better at. They might come close for FPS games, but that's still a ways off. For RTS games, not a chance. The huge amount of keys and keyboard shortcuts used by good RTS players completely excludes console controllers from ever coming close to being as useful. And why play stripped-down versions of PC games on a console when you can play the real version?
>And buying a more expensive PC simply to play games on it is better how? Not to mention all the usual Windows problems that goes with it? Service Pack 2 or not, there's always new holes being discovered and you'll never been 100% safe (or, in the case of Windows, even 50% safe I guess).
Very few people buy a PC "simply to play games on." In fact, almost every household that has a recent game console also has a PC. So it's not so much a matter of buying a PC or a game console. It's a matter of buying a game console in addition to your PC, or saving your money and just playing games on what you already have. And yes, for most people the cheap wimpy computer they use to do their email and web-browsing is also good enough to play the games they want to play. And regardless, when you upgrade your PC and spend more money on it, you get just that many more functions that a console can't do.
>I'd rather use consoles to play games, thanks. And with the Wii coming up, it might even beat the old keyboard+mouse combo for some games. As for "PC games", well, there's the Xbox 360.
That's great. For some games, I'd rather play them on a console too. And I'm really excited about the Wii. But consoles are not a replacement for PCs, and no console controller will ever beat a keyboard+mouse for games that keyboard+mouse have always been better at. They might come close for FPS games, but that's still a ways off. For RTS games, not a chance. The huge amount of keys and keyboard shortcuts used by good RTS players completely excludes console controllers from ever coming close to being as useful. And why play stripped-down versions of PC games on a console when you can play the real version?
Well... not entirely unprecedented. Nintendo has made Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance - all of which are backward compatible with the original Gameboy games. So are these just a line of successive consoles with backwards compatibility, or updated versions of the same console with added functionality? Either way, it's the only series with which Nintendo has ever done anything like that.. until now. I sure wouldn't be surprised to see a "Wii Advance" or some such in a few years from now.
I'm primarily a PC gamer, and my monitor is a 19" LCD at 1280x1024. I've never had any trouble playing the old classic split-screen games on a nice 27-30" TV split four ways. Even Mario Kart on SNES worked fine. I'm sure higher rez would be nicer, but low-rez is definitely playable. Definitely agree on the single-player comment though.
TOP-END gaming machine bro. That's what the guy said. Not "really good" gaming machine, or "good enough to play any games" machine, or "very powerful home computer". Top-end gaming machine. That means the fastest CPU, SLI graphics cards, probably a raid-array for hard drives (most likely 3-4 hard drives running), amongst other things. I know a machine with a 400watt power supply won't be pulling 400 watts. You always get a bigger supply than you "theoretically need." But they're making 750watt power supplies now for gaming machines. (I at least don't know too many people who would need an SLI-certified PSU for their server.) Not all decent gaming machines will pull 400+ watts, no, but for a true top-end gaming rig it's very likely, and you can be damn sure they're pulling considerably more than 160 watts.
It uses 380 watts, and that's "much more power than a top-end PC gaming rig"?? Ok then, I guess all top-end PC gaming rigs use 350watt PSUs or smaller?
Someone seriously needs to re-work their math. Top-end gaming PCs (Core Duo machines included) can easily suck down 400 watts or more under load, and power supply sizes are fast heading for the 1KW mark. I'm not sure where they got their 160watt number from, but it sure wasn't from a top-end gaming rig.
it's a lot like the international community demanding we hand over control of our international airlines. After all, look at all those European, Asian, and African people who have to use them to fly into the US!
No?
The US internet is run by private companies for profit, just as the airlines are. Other countries already have their own physical infrastructure set up, and if they chose to could easily set up their own DNS roots and alienate the US if they wanted to badly enough. Heck, all it would take is for the EU to band together, form their own DNS and IP addressing, block the US, and get Japan on their internet. There, now the US is no longer in control of your internet.
It may not be a perfect analogy, but it's not that far off either.
I'm just surprised they didn't take anti-mod actions right from the start. After all, they do lose money on hardware from every Xbox they sell (presumably to be made up in profits from games) and it's fairly safe to assume that people modding their Xbox would be the most likely to not buy retail software for it.
Actually, IP as a whole is bad. You can't "own" an idea. People were coming up with ideas and inventions, and making profit off them long before anyone came up with the idea of patents. The whole idea of IP and Patents does a lot more to hinder progress than help it. Of course, that's just my opinion, but it has as many examples backing it up as any opposing opinion.
Um.. actually, for they price, yes they do use mediocre hardware. They have long been sub-par compared to other high-end manufacturers such as Falcon Northwest, Voodoo, etc. Yes, with Alienware you really are paying an extra $1000 for a $200 case.
Yeah, but Blizzard knew putting points on the card packs for in-game items was the only way the cards would sell. And just like all their in-game methods for getting items, you have to do a whole lot for only a little reward.
They could have easily altered the points required for rewards to a reasonable level. The fact that they chose not to is very despicable. Especially after touting the 'cool rewards' you'd be able to get while withholding the information on how many points you need, KNOWING that people would be buying the cards right away (for the points, not the cards).
No, I myself did not buy any of these cards - I don't care enough about getting 'special' items in game. But it's the principle that matters, not whether I personally got screwed or not.
Apparently Blizzard is really trying hard to kill the golden goose. They haven't quite got there yet, but it's definitely starting to bleed.
The big problem I see is that so many people these days (and big corporations in particular) seem to think they're entitled to make money off whatever idea they come up with, or whatever product they're selling. And if they're not making as much money as they consider themselves to be entitled to, the first thing they do is look for a scapegoat to pay up.
Sorry, that's not even remotely close to capitalism. The way capitalism works is thusly: if you can come up with a good idea and turn it into a profit, that's great. Make as much money as you can. But if someone else sees your idea and manages to make it work better, and makes more profit while causing you to lose profit, that's your problem. No matter how much time you spent coming up with your idea, if someone else does it better, it's your own fault. You either improve your idea and gain back your market-share, or you lose. If you can't beat the competition, then maybe you need to look for a different product to sell.
Nowadays though we're all about reinventing the wheel because someone somehow "owns" the idea that putting two disks on the ends of a pole is a great way to design transportation.
After reading TFA and skimming over the Patriot Alliance Downunder blog attacked by Brian Stokes in TFA, I'd have to say I'm a lot more inclined to believe the blogger's angle. But that's my opinion, read it for yourself.
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He may have somewhat worked hard, and he definitely built a business. But he never released a superior product, and his prices have never been reasonable. All MS/Gates/et al have ever been good at is marketing.
It's quite possible to build a large profitable business without using the despicable tactics used by MS.
Fair enough. But (to borrow just a bit from "ofcourseyouare"), I would say TheSims is one of those exceptions that proves the rule. In this case my point being that females as a general rule put a lot more priority on socialization than males do. Which TheSims still manages to provide plenty of, despite being primarily a single-player game. Also from what I have seen, most of the time when gals do play single-player games, they do it with one or more friends present. I still disagree with you though on Desperate Housewives. I think that game is going to be another flop that bombs to the bargain bin in a matter of weeks, not months.
In hi-tech Japan, HDD slot can access YOU!
Sorry... just couldn't resist...
Okay, so we've got the perspective of a couple female gamers that like... eh... the same games guys play? So if they like the same games as everyone else, how does their perspective actually tell us much of anything about targeting the females that don't like these kinds of games? Personally, I don't think the problem really is coming up with games that target females. From what I've seen, the situation is that most females simply don't care to play video games in general, and the games available won't really change that a whole lot. However, if there IS a key to getting females more involved with video games, it has to be interaction with other real people in-game. I seriously doubt you'll ever get most them to play single-player games, no matter how 'girly' they are. Machines just don't hold nearly as much interest for females as they do for males. As far as I know, there's only one 'real' (as opposed to simple online games on websites, or similar fare) video game that's ever had mass-appeal for both sexes, and that's World of Warcraft. And look at the huge amount of interaction in that game.
Personally, I'll be extremely amazed if the Desperate Housewives game ever shows itself to be more than yet another Desperate Attempt At Making Money Off A Popular TV Show.
I've known people who had no clue they were leeching/mooching anything off anybody until I told them. People who actually thought that they could buy a wireless card for $40, and get free internet wherever they could find a signal. The people responsible for this mess are the manufacturers - selling routers and access points that are unsecured out of the box is a recipe for disaster (which is what we currently have all over the place) and yet they all do it. That has to change. Or at the very least, they need to include a big bold bright-colored card stating that it's unsecured and that the customer should make securing it his first priority. Most people who buy wireless gear don't know the first thing about security, let alone that their new gear comes set up so anyone at all can connect to it.
I work in a PC repair shop. As you might expect, a good percentage of our work is malware removal. The worst machine we've had in here had upwards of 20,000 files infected with viruses. And we didn't even bother checking for spyware.
Well, it sounds like your J-RPG tastes are pretty much identical to mine, so as a result of your post I probably won't be buying the game.
Personally, I never could figure out why they didn't borrow the battle system from Chrono Trigger for use in the FF series. The random battles in FFVII (and more or less in the rest of the FF series, but FFVII was definitely my favorite) was probably the only thing I didn't like about the game. The battle system I did like.
But if there's no excellent story, no excellent music, and the gameplay is pretty much the same as any MMORPG... why not just play the MMO and actually play with some friends? That's exactly what I'll be doing I think.
EA did destroy "those studios". In the last 10 years or so, pretty much everything EA has released has been bug-ridden garbage. Studios that previously (before they published under EA) had excellent games followed up with trash under EA. And the games that EA themselves have developed recently are the worst of the lot. It's bad enough now that I won't even try their new games that would interest me if published by anyone else.
Ugh... when will /. catch up with 1999 and give us an effing EDIT button?
>And buying a more expensive PC simply to play games on it is better how? Not to mention all the usual Windows problems that goes with it? Service Pack 2 or not, there's always new holes being discovered and you'll never been 100% safe (or, in the case of Windows, even 50% safe I guess).
Very few people buy a PC "simply to play games on." In fact, almost every household that has a recent game console also has a PC. So it's not so much a matter of buying a PC or a game console. It's a matter of buying a game console in addition to your PC, or saving your money and just playing games on what you already have. And yes, for most people the cheap wimpy computer they use to do their email and web-browsing is also good enough to play the games they want to play. And regardless, when you upgrade your PC and spend more money on it, you get just that many more functions that a console can't do.
>I'd rather use consoles to play games, thanks. And with the Wii coming up, it might even beat the old keyboard+mouse combo for some games. As for "PC games", well, there's the Xbox 360.
That's great. For some games, I'd rather play them on a console too. And I'm really excited about the Wii. But consoles are not a replacement for PCs, and no console controller will ever beat a keyboard+mouse for games that keyboard+mouse have always been better at. They might come close for FPS games, but that's still a ways off. For RTS games, not a chance. The huge amount of keys and keyboard shortcuts used by good RTS players completely excludes console controllers from ever coming close to being as useful. And why play stripped-down versions of PC games on a console when you can play the real version?
>And buying a more expensive PC simply to play games on it is better how? Not to mention all the usual Windows problems that goes with it? Service Pack 2 or not, there's always new holes being discovered and you'll never been 100% safe (or, in the case of Windows, even 50% safe I guess). Very few people buy a PC "simply to play games on." In fact, almost every household that has a recent game console also has a PC. So it's not so much a matter of buying a PC or a game console. It's a matter of buying a game console in addition to your PC, or saving your money and just playing games on what you already have. And yes, for most people the cheap wimpy computer they use to do their email and web-browsing is also good enough to play the games they want to play. And regardless, when you upgrade your PC and spend more money on it, you get just that many more functions that a console can't do. >I'd rather use consoles to play games, thanks. And with the Wii coming up, it might even beat the old keyboard+mouse combo for some games. As for "PC games", well, there's the Xbox 360. That's great. For some games, I'd rather play them on a console too. And I'm really excited about the Wii. But consoles are not a replacement for PCs, and no console controller will ever beat a keyboard+mouse for games that keyboard+mouse have always been better at. They might come close for FPS games, but that's still a ways off. For RTS games, not a chance. The huge amount of keys and keyboard shortcuts used by good RTS players completely excludes console controllers from ever coming close to being as useful. And why play stripped-down versions of PC games on a console when you can play the real version?
Well... not entirely unprecedented. Nintendo has made Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance - all of which are backward compatible with the original Gameboy games. So are these just a line of successive consoles with backwards compatibility, or updated versions of the same console with added functionality? Either way, it's the only series with which Nintendo has ever done anything like that.. until now. I sure wouldn't be surprised to see a "Wii Advance" or some such in a few years from now.
Good point. Very good point actually. Nintendo is known for releasing updated versions of current consoles. Wouldn't be a surprise at all.
I'm primarily a PC gamer, and my monitor is a 19" LCD at 1280x1024. I've never had any trouble playing the old classic split-screen games on a nice 27-30" TV split four ways. Even Mario Kart on SNES worked fine. I'm sure higher rez would be nicer, but low-rez is definitely playable. Definitely agree on the single-player comment though.
TOP-END gaming machine bro. That's what the guy said. Not "really good" gaming machine, or "good enough to play any games" machine, or "very powerful home computer". Top-end gaming machine. That means the fastest CPU, SLI graphics cards, probably a raid-array for hard drives (most likely 3-4 hard drives running), amongst other things. I know a machine with a 400watt power supply won't be pulling 400 watts. You always get a bigger supply than you "theoretically need." But they're making 750watt power supplies now for gaming machines. (I at least don't know too many people who would need an SLI-certified PSU for their server.) Not all decent gaming machines will pull 400+ watts, no, but for a true top-end gaming rig it's very likely, and you can be damn sure they're pulling considerably more than 160 watts.
It uses 380 watts, and that's "much more power than a top-end PC gaming rig"?? Ok then, I guess all top-end PC gaming rigs use 350watt PSUs or smaller? Someone seriously needs to re-work their math. Top-end gaming PCs (Core Duo machines included) can easily suck down 400 watts or more under load, and power supply sizes are fast heading for the 1KW mark. I'm not sure where they got their 160watt number from, but it sure wasn't from a top-end gaming rig.
it's a lot like the international community demanding we hand over control of our international airlines. After all, look at all those European, Asian, and African people who have to use them to fly into the US!
No?
The US internet is run by private companies for profit, just as the airlines are. Other countries already have their own physical infrastructure set up, and if they chose to could easily set up their own DNS roots and alienate the US if they wanted to badly enough. Heck, all it would take is for the EU to band together, form their own DNS and IP addressing, block the US, and get Japan on their internet. There, now the US is no longer in control of your internet.
It may not be a perfect analogy, but it's not that far off either.
So... why not do that with the Xbox, and make people scared to mod the 360 at all? Or maybe it's just that it's MS that's the noob here...
I'm just surprised they didn't take anti-mod actions right from the start. After all, they do lose money on hardware from every Xbox they sell (presumably to be made up in profits from games) and it's fairly safe to assume that people modding their Xbox would be the most likely to not buy retail software for it.
Actually, IP as a whole is bad. You can't "own" an idea. People were coming up with ideas and inventions, and making profit off them long before anyone came up with the idea of patents. The whole idea of IP and Patents does a lot more to hinder progress than help it. Of course, that's just my opinion, but it has as many examples backing it up as any opposing opinion.
Yeah, but most of Apple's products don't have identical items available from competitors and aren't nearly as much of a niche market.
Um.. actually, for they price, yes they do use mediocre hardware. They have long been sub-par compared to other high-end manufacturers such as Falcon Northwest, Voodoo, etc. Yes, with Alienware you really are paying an extra $1000 for a $200 case.
Yeah, but Blizzard knew putting points on the card packs for in-game items was the only way the cards would sell. And just like all their in-game methods for getting items, you have to do a whole lot for only a little reward.
They could have easily altered the points required for rewards to a reasonable level. The fact that they chose not to is very despicable. Especially after touting the 'cool rewards' you'd be able to get while withholding the information on how many points you need, KNOWING that people would be buying the cards right away (for the points, not the cards).
No, I myself did not buy any of these cards - I don't care enough about getting 'special' items in game. But it's the principle that matters, not whether I personally got screwed or not.
Apparently Blizzard is really trying hard to kill the golden goose. They haven't quite got there yet, but it's definitely starting to bleed.
I couldn't agree more.
The big problem I see is that so many people these days (and big corporations in particular) seem to think they're entitled to make money off whatever idea they come up with, or whatever product they're selling. And if they're not making as much money as they consider themselves to be entitled to, the first thing they do is look for a scapegoat to pay up.
Sorry, that's not even remotely close to capitalism. The way capitalism works is thusly: if you can come up with a good idea and turn it into a profit, that's great. Make as much money as you can. But if someone else sees your idea and manages to make it work better, and makes more profit while causing you to lose profit, that's your problem. No matter how much time you spent coming up with your idea, if someone else does it better, it's your own fault. You either improve your idea and gain back your market-share, or you lose. If you can't beat the competition, then maybe you need to look for a different product to sell.
Nowadays though we're all about reinventing the wheel because someone somehow "owns" the idea that putting two disks on the ends of a pole is a great way to design transportation.
Bleh, forgot the link. http://avoiceofdissent.blogspot.com/
After reading TFA and skimming over the Patriot Alliance Downunder blog attacked by Brian Stokes in TFA, I'd have to say I'm a lot more inclined to believe the blogger's angle. But that's my opinion, read it for yourself.