The PS3 isn't so different from the PS2 in those respects. The PS2 used a DVD drive, while DVD's were just beginning to become popular (just as the PS3 uses a Blu-Ray drive just as Blu-Ray starts to become popular (which is the truth, Blu-Ray sales are increasing at a ridiculous rate, more than 700% since the release of the PS3 and now outselling HD-DVDs)).
"The PS2 has a DVD player and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray player so they are the same" argument is flawed.
DVD was released late 1996/early 1997 and the PS2 was released 3 years later
DVD movies were available for (almost) every new movie at many/most video rental stores
The PS2 launched at the traditionally acceptable price of $300 US
Besides resolution and Sound Quality the DVD format offered several benefits to everyone who would buy it (not just early adopters who had high end TVs and Surround Sound Systems
The PS2 was by far the most difficult console to develop for. It was downright painful. The gamecube and xbox were far easier to develop for, and yet the PS2 still came out on top. Sony has sold more PS2's than almost all previous consoles combined (not counting the PS1, which sold nearly as many as the PS2). They easily outsold the xbox and gamecube by more than 10 to 1.
Well, the PS2 outsold the Gamecube and XBox by a margin closer to 4:1 and that doesn't include the number of PS2s that were replaced; personally, after my 3rd PS2 broke, my Sony TV broke after 2 years and my Sony DVD player broke after 13 months I decided never to buy another Sony product (suprisingly enough, my Gamecube and Samsung/Toshiba products have all lasted several years). The thing people never take into consideration is that the PS2 had (essentially) "won" before the Gamecube and XBox were released; the PS2 sold 5.5 Million units in Japan, 6.5 in North America and (IIRC) 4 Million in Europe before either the Gamecube or XBox were released. The PS2 had sold 20 Million units worldwide by the end of 2001 whereas the Gamecube and XBox were sitting at 2 to 4 Million units; at that point every third party developer in the world supported the PS2 and Nintnedo and Microsoft were forced to fight for development (Nintendo used licencing agreements and Microsoft used money to attract development but neither could surpass the pull of the PS2).
Sony can probably sell the number their aiming for (6 million by march) based on that alone
Can't see the "one console in ten years" happening, either.
If it does happen I fear for the health of the industry...
As it has been talked about inside of the industry many times, when you have one platform which is as dominant as the PS2 is/was you end up in a very bad position; you have (basically) no choice but to produce a game for that platform which makes the company who produces the platform grow arogant and stop meeting your needs. If you look at the PS3 you can see the consequences of Sony's success with the Playstation and PS2; a Blu-Ray player which increases the cost of the syste, Blu-Ray discs which increase the production cost of every game, a complicated (difficult to develop for) platform with an inadequate tool set.
Something I have seen commented on several times is that Nintendo has the most insightful and entertaining public speakers in the entire videogame industry.
A friend of mine who is a developer for a company which "Works Closely" with Microsoft on XBox 360 games saw Iwata's keynote (2 years ago I think) and he said when the presentation was done he wanted to stop developing FPS and create some unique game for the DS; he didn't, but it was how he felt. Honestly, I can't wait to see what he talks about and shows off... I imagine he will argue that unique games which people find fun sell well not shiny graphics; he will demonstrate this trend by showing DS and Wii sales.
Personally, I see that there are two possible ways companies can produce episodic content; a company can build a complete game and then add expansions for it at a miminal cost or a company can charge you multiple times for the same ammount of content you'd originally get in a game.
Burning Crusade and The Sims expansions represent a "good form" of episodic content because the games came complete and the content that is added seems (mostly) worthwhile to the target audience. On the other hand charging for horse armor or a 5 minute quest is shameful...
Nintendo has pushed better graphics in the past, and I don't disagree that better graphics would be nice, but I think you over estimate the benefits of "Next-Generation Hardware".
Physics: Sometime between the N64 and Dreamcast processors became powerful enough to handle Newtonian Physics; by the time the Gamecube and XBox were released we had enough processing power to handle most of the game impacting physics simulations we use today. The XBox 360 and PS3 offer a lot more processing power to handle physics but (for the most part) it makes a cool tech demo of 1024 rubber duckies in a bath tub but offers very little added benefit in terms of gameplay.
AI: This may shock you, but you will see little in the way of an improvement in intelligent AI from the increase in processing power; the fact is 99% of "intelligent AI" are scripted events which are far more limited by the quality of the person handling the scripting than by processing power.
bigger and more complex game environments: Certanly, you can have bigger and more complicated game enviroments but that means that your development team will have to grow and your budget will explode; Konami will be able to afford a 90-120 man team working for 3 years to develop metal gear solid (or approximately $27-$36 Million) but I'm certain the average game will be trying to make a game on a fraction of that budget.
procedural content generation: Procedural content generation simply means that a computer (not a person) generates the content. Most of the better methods I have seen of this done end up using an insanely powerful computer working for hours to generate content that would be stored on the game disk; most of the time they involve input from the designer in order to ensure the content is correct and interesting. The PS3 and XBox 360 have an advantage in that they can procedurally generate a Wood Texture (as an example) but you can make a much better wood grain on a grid of 16 high-end workstations (working for 10 minutes) while they simulate tree growth than you can on a pixel shader in 1/60th of a second.
I think that is an interesting point... One question would be what is the nature of the relationship
Child Obesity -> (causes) videogame playing
One way this could work is that overweight children tend to have difficulty performing physical activity and thus choose to play videogames; many overweight children's lack of physical fitness will prevent them from being good at a sport (as compared to their peers) and would make them choose activities where their weight would not limit them.
videogame playing -> (causes) Child Obesity
Hypothetically speaking, playing videogames could be directly linked to snacking more and being less active which would lead children to becoming overweight.
Over protective parents -> (cause) Child Obesity/Videogame Playing
This is my personal belief... If you notice at any school the second the day ends there is a line-up of cars of parents who are afraid to let their children play at the park or walk home. When home children are far more likely to choose an inactive activity (playing videogames) and to snack which leads to child obesity.
What amazed me is that 48% of kids apparently don't listen to music.
I think there's something wrong with the study, or else 48% of mothers don't know what their kid is up to, but they bought them a PS3 so they must be playing videogames.
What you have to remember is this study is for children between the ages of 2 and 14...
If you have access to children (either being an Uncle/Aunt or parent) you'll notice that a lot of younger children (up to 9 or 10) do not actively listen to music; they may listen to it in the car but they are unlikely to sit quietly/play and listen to music at the same time. In the Tween/Teen years many children's interest in music explodes.
I suspect the main reason they choose 30 is to ban violent videogames without actually banning violent videogames...
Even though there are lots of gamers over 30, and the average age of gamers is quite high, the quantity of games played by a gamer decreases with age; as a guess I would say you probably buy/rent twice as many games at 15 as you do at 25, and you buy/rent twice as many games at 25 as you do at 35. If you could successfully prevent 66% of game sales from occuring in the age of the $20 Million game you will successfully prevent any company from attempting to make one of these games (because you simply can not be profitable).
Personally, I suspect that 8 Million users will upgrade to Burning Crusade within weeks/months whereas few will move towards Windows Vista because Burning Crusade has added value.
In my personal experience, it seems like Windows lack of focus on gaming is largely in response to the videogame industry reducing emphasis on PC gaming; there are very few games that are released for the PC in a given year that will not find their way to a console. The (interesting) thing is that this could kill Windows as being the dominant platform (or at least being as dominant of a platform) as Vista is adopted because the main reason people choose Windows over Mac OSX or Linux is that Windows has way more games available.
What about current games about the current US "war" in Iraq? I'd bet every nickel that I own that in 100 years, history textbooks will discuss the US genocide in Iraq and the war crimes that Bush is guilty of. It's pretty horrible, gruesome, and pointless, but there are tons of games celebrating it out now.
First off I think you should spend some time and learn what genocide means in order for you to understand why the war in Iraq can not be considered a genocide.
Now using the American Heritage Dictionary definition of War Crime:
"Any of various crimes, such as genocide or the mistreatment of prisoners of war, committed during a war and considered in violation of the conventions of warfare."
The main argument that could be made for the US commiting warcrimes would be "mistreatment of prisoners of war" which I think is a bit of an exaggeration; I don't disagree that prisoners of war have been mistreated, but in comparison to prisoners in previous wars (and most prisoners of war through-out the world) I would say that the mistreatment is not grounds for the use of the term War Crime.
Now, I don't play many "War Games" so I couuld be wrong but I suspect that these games revolve around killing insurgents and terrorists which (for most of the world) is acceptable.
Disclaimer: I'm neither American nor did I support the US going to war in Iraq but I do think it would only cause further damage to the area for the US to withdraw their forces at this time.
I could be wrong, but I imagine that the problem is the context of the Violence/Killing...
Few people would have a problem with a World War 2 game, whether you're playing for the American, Canadian, British, Russian, Austrailian, German, or Japaneese armies because in the context of war it's kill or be killed; in other words, society in general does not see a problem with killing an opposing soldier when you're a soldier at war.
In contrast I suspect that people would be outraged if you produced a game where you're a german soldier at Auschwitz and you're required to kill jewish prisoners.
2006 was the warmest year ever recorded in North America
I would (personally) like to know more about how this study was carried out; mainly I would like to know whether this was measured using land-based weather stations. The main issues with land based weather stations is that there has been far more growth in weather stations in urban areas as compared to rural areas (for weather reports), and urban areas are heavily influenced by the parking lot effect (where the massive ammount of concrete and asphvalt stores more energy increasing the average temperature by a few degrees).
Anyways, I don't see how any scientific group could suggest that someone should be kicked out for not following the dogma that "Man Made Global Warming Will Destroy the World" when they have no problem allowing people to claim that short term climate variation (like a warm winter, wet summer, early spring, late fall) are caused by global warming; the fact is that if you hear someone say that an unusually warm winter is caused by Global Warming it demonstrates that they don't understand what Global Warming is.
As a guess, I would assume that this would involve much further study to determine why the enzyme was so successful in the first place and then try to make it much more potent; essentially, they see the possibility of making a cure from this but it is not ready yet.
I think that what you would find (if you could do the research) is that there are localized pockets where the PS3 is (absolutely) sold out, and localized pockets where the PS3 has a massive overstock, but in general the PS3 is available if you're ready to look for it. In fact you have been able to order a PS3 online for a couple of weeks now (with free shipping) implies that the Quantity Supplied essentially matches the Quantity Demanded.
How many of the 100+ Million PS2 systems are people's second/third systems, are used to pirate games, or have only been used as a DVD player?
Now, did Sony ever advertize that the number of people who were active gamers on the PS2 was only 2 times (to pick a number) as large as the XBox/Gamecube active gamer userbase?
rm999 said this, and I believe it is quite valid for your argument: Your argument has been repeated ad nauseam for a long time now, but the inflection point has hit where it is no longer even remotely valid. My blockbuster already rents out about 40 HD movies. As I recall, DVD players became mainstream within a year of this occurring (about 8 years ago).
Just a point
"June 21, 2003
"DVD rentals outpaced videocassette rentals last week for the first time, the Video Software Dealers Association reported."
"The BVA also reports sales over the last 12 months in Britain of a record total of 122 million videos - more than 30% of which were in the DVD format."
DVD was finalized in September 1996, and DVD players began to be produced in early 1997 and the DVD format only (really) started taking off in 1999/2000; remember that DVD was considered one of the fastest adopted formats because everyone could gain the benefits without needing a new TV and there was only one format.
Now, I'll explain again my objections with saying that now is the time to adopt HD:
No rentable content: in Canada (currently) both Blockbuster and Rogers Video have no plans to begin renting out HD movies (in any format) in the near future; the answer I have been able to get from them is that they "will start carying small quantities of certain titles in both formats sometime in 2007."
Expensive broadcast content: locally I have to spend $600 on a HD-Digital Cable box in order to be able to receive HD-TV and that only includes 6 basic channels; they sell HD-Channel packages so your cable bill will go up by $10-$20 per month for HD-TV.
Expensive equipment: $1000 to $2000 for a TV and $500 to $1000 for a HD-Player may not sound like a lot of money, but it is more than I can justify when I know I have a $1150 rent payment at the end of the month.
No Content: Currently there are almost 100 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies, there are thousands of DVD movies, even if I could rent every HD-Movie there is not enough content at the moment to make any purchase reasonable.
Now, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that the vast majority of people are going to be looking to upgrade their entertainment centers at this point in time because it is too expensive, with too little benefit. In 2009 we will be looking at a different situation (likely dual format players for $200 and 30inch LCD HDTVs for $500) but today, unless you want to waste your money, you should wait for the prices to come down and the quantity of content to increase before you buy in.
You can buy a Full HD LCD-TV (1920x1080) at about $1000-$2000 so there is really no reason to wait.
Unless you don't see the point in spending $2000 on a TV, $500-$1000 on a movie player, and $20 a movie (because I can't rent them currently) to gain access to a small library of content.
Obviously, the quantity of sales of a new game system in its first 6 months do not represent that large of a portion of its userbase but they're still important. Typically if a console sells well for the first several months after it has been released its sales will continue throughout its lifespan; on the other hand if a console sells well and then drops off of the radar it will typically sell poorly throughout its life.
I find it interesting that Slashdotters, for some reason, draw the line at making money off of someone else's work. Stealing it is okay, but selling it afterward is crossing the line?
There are two definitions of steal that seem appropriate to this discussion
To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
To present or use (someone else's words or ideas) as one's own.
Now the first definition is what you're applying to downloading, but a lot of people have problems calling 'Downloading' 'Stealing' because the owner of the music does not lose possession of the property and you (typically) have been given permission to obtain the music through other channels; you can tape music off of the radio for personal use and most albums will have (at least locally) been played on the radio when they're released.
The second definition is directly related to what has been claimed that timbaland has done.
There is room for debate on the download and no room for debate on the Timbaland situation.
Name a type of music that has been more influential in the last 30 years..
Well... Define "influential"...
If you consider music sales Rock music is more popular than Rap, Hip-Hop, R&B and Urban combined. If you look at critical acclaim Rap music has only been receiving critical acclaim and awards (outside of specific genre awards) in the past 5 or so years.
And what does it matter if a musical style has been "influential" if the initial argument was that it was unoriginal? You can be very generic (and even steal other people's ideas) and still be "influential".
Lately I've been looking into the history of man kind and it seems like at any point in time people were certain that the end of the world was only a generation or two away.
I think it is about time everyone started to ignore anyone who claimed the world was about to end and listened to more rational voices.
Any (intelligent) email client should not automatically open an attachment (even PDF) for security reasons, and every user should be trained not to open any unexpected attachments; this means that even though PDF/DOC can be read on the majority of computers they can not be sent as an email. This means that you have to send all the formatting inside of the character string that makes up the body of the email; there are several ways you can format text by simply passing ASCII/UTF characters but the way that is supported by the largest number of computers is HTML.
I really doubt that Blu-Ray is dead or has been killed, but I do think a lot of Sony's recent decisions (Root-Kit, Laptop Battery Fire, Lik-Sang Lawsuit, and PS3 Price) have made many potential consumers very angry.
Ultimately, in 24 months every HD-DVD player will play Blu-Ray movies and the 'format war' will have been a massive waste.
Slashdot Mirror
"The PS2 has a DVD player and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray player so they are the same" argument is flawed.
The PS2 was by far the most difficult console to develop for. It was downright painful. The gamecube and xbox were far easier to develop for, and yet the PS2 still came out on top. Sony has sold more PS2's than almost all previous consoles combined (not counting the PS1, which sold nearly as many as the PS2). They easily outsold the xbox and gamecube by more than 10 to 1.
Well, the PS2 outsold the Gamecube and XBox by a margin closer to 4:1 and that doesn't include the number of PS2s that were replaced; personally, after my 3rd PS2 broke, my Sony TV broke after 2 years and my Sony DVD player broke after 13 months I decided never to buy another Sony product (suprisingly enough, my Gamecube and Samsung/Toshiba products have all lasted several years). The thing people never take into consideration is that the PS2 had (essentially) "won" before the Gamecube and XBox were released; the PS2 sold 5.5 Million units in Japan, 6.5 in North America and (IIRC) 4 Million in Europe before either the Gamecube or XBox were released. The PS2 had sold 20 Million units worldwide by the end of 2001 whereas the Gamecube and XBox were sitting at 2 to 4 Million units; at that point every third party developer in the world supported the PS2 and Nintnedo and Microsoft were forced to fight for development (Nintendo used licencing agreements and Microsoft used money to attract development but neither could surpass the pull of the PS2).
Sony can probably sell the number their aiming for (6 million by march) based on that alone
PS3 In Stock; Possible Sign of Weaker Demand
Report: Sony's Global PS3 Sales to Miss Target by 25%
After seeing Steve Ballmer dance I'm pretty sure Reggie could take his name.
Can't see the "one console in ten years" happening, either.
...
If it does happen I fear for the health of the industry
As it has been talked about inside of the industry many times, when you have one platform which is as dominant as the PS2 is/was you end up in a very bad position; you have (basically) no choice but to produce a game for that platform which makes the company who produces the platform grow arogant and stop meeting your needs. If you look at the PS3 you can see the consequences of Sony's success with the Playstation and PS2; a Blu-Ray player which increases the cost of the syste, Blu-Ray discs which increase the production cost of every game, a complicated (difficult to develop for) platform with an inadequate tool set.
Something I have seen commented on several times is that Nintendo has the most insightful and entertaining public speakers in the entire videogame industry.
... I imagine he will argue that unique games which people find fun sell well not shiny graphics; he will demonstrate this trend by showing DS and Wii sales.
A friend of mine who is a developer for a company which "Works Closely" with Microsoft on XBox 360 games saw Iwata's keynote (2 years ago I think) and he said when the presentation was done he wanted to stop developing FPS and create some unique game for the DS; he didn't, but it was how he felt. Honestly, I can't wait to see what he talks about and shows off
Personally, I see that there are two possible ways companies can produce episodic content; a company can build a complete game and then add expansions for it at a miminal cost or a company can charge you multiple times for the same ammount of content you'd originally get in a game.
...
Burning Crusade and The Sims expansions represent a "good form" of episodic content because the games came complete and the content that is added seems (mostly) worthwhile to the target audience. On the other hand charging for horse armor or a 5 minute quest is shameful
Nintendo has pushed better graphics in the past, and I don't disagree that better graphics would be nice, but I think you over estimate the benefits of "Next-Generation Hardware".
Physics: Sometime between the N64 and Dreamcast processors became powerful enough to handle Newtonian Physics; by the time the Gamecube and XBox were released we had enough processing power to handle most of the game impacting physics simulations we use today. The XBox 360 and PS3 offer a lot more processing power to handle physics but (for the most part) it makes a cool tech demo of 1024 rubber duckies in a bath tub but offers very little added benefit in terms of gameplay.
AI: This may shock you, but you will see little in the way of an improvement in intelligent AI from the increase in processing power; the fact is 99% of "intelligent AI" are scripted events which are far more limited by the quality of the person handling the scripting than by processing power.
bigger and more complex game environments: Certanly, you can have bigger and more complicated game enviroments but that means that your development team will have to grow and your budget will explode; Konami will be able to afford a 90-120 man team working for 3 years to develop metal gear solid (or approximately $27-$36 Million) but I'm certain the average game will be trying to make a game on a fraction of that budget.
procedural content generation: Procedural content generation simply means that a computer (not a person) generates the content. Most of the better methods I have seen of this done end up using an insanely powerful computer working for hours to generate content that would be stored on the game disk; most of the time they involve input from the designer in order to ensure the content is correct and interesting. The PS3 and XBox 360 have an advantage in that they can procedurally generate a Wood Texture (as an example) but you can make a much better wood grain on a grid of 16 high-end workstations (working for 10 minutes) while they simulate tree growth than you can on a pixel shader in 1/60th of a second.
I think that is an interesting point ... One question would be what is the nature of the relationship
... If you notice at any school the second the day ends there is a line-up of cars of parents who are afraid to let their children play at the park or walk home. When home children are far more likely to choose an inactive activity (playing videogames) and to snack which leads to child obesity.
Child Obesity -> (causes) videogame playing
One way this could work is that overweight children tend to have difficulty performing physical activity and thus choose to play videogames; many overweight children's lack of physical fitness will prevent them from being good at a sport (as compared to their peers) and would make them choose activities where their weight would not limit them.
videogame playing -> (causes) Child Obesity
Hypothetically speaking, playing videogames could be directly linked to snacking more and being less active which would lead children to becoming overweight.
Over protective parents -> (cause) Child Obesity/Videogame Playing
This is my personal belief
What amazed me is that 48% of kids apparently don't listen to music.
...
I think there's something wrong with the study, or else 48% of mothers don't know what their kid is up to, but they bought them a PS3 so they must be playing videogames.
What you have to remember is this study is for children between the ages of 2 and 14
If you have access to children (either being an Uncle/Aunt or parent) you'll notice that a lot of younger children (up to 9 or 10) do not actively listen to music; they may listen to it in the car but they are unlikely to sit quietly/play and listen to music at the same time. In the Tween/Teen years many children's interest in music explodes.
Personally I was going to say ...
"A relatively low number of computer users are likely to get Vista by buying it in store.
Seriously, what is the benefit of adopting a new operating system with in 12 to 18 months of it being released?
I suspect the main reason they choose 30 is to ban violent videogames without actually banning violent videogames ...
Even though there are lots of gamers over 30, and the average age of gamers is quite high, the quantity of games played by a gamer decreases with age; as a guess I would say you probably buy/rent twice as many games at 15 as you do at 25, and you buy/rent twice as many games at 25 as you do at 35. If you could successfully prevent 66% of game sales from occuring in the age of the $20 Million game you will successfully prevent any company from attempting to make one of these games (because you simply can not be profitable).
Personally, I suspect that 8 Million users will upgrade to Burning Crusade within weeks/months whereas few will move towards Windows Vista because Burning Crusade has added value.
In my personal experience, it seems like Windows lack of focus on gaming is largely in response to the videogame industry reducing emphasis on PC gaming; there are very few games that are released for the PC in a given year that will not find their way to a console. The (interesting) thing is that this could kill Windows as being the dominant platform (or at least being as dominant of a platform) as Vista is adopted because the main reason people choose Windows over Mac OSX or Linux is that Windows has way more games available.
What about current games about the current US "war" in Iraq? I'd bet every nickel that I own that in 100 years, history textbooks will discuss the US genocide in Iraq and the war crimes that Bush is guilty of. It's pretty horrible, gruesome, and pointless, but there are tons of games celebrating it out now.
First off I think you should spend some time and learn what genocide means in order for you to understand why the war in Iraq can not be considered a genocide.
Now using the American Heritage Dictionary definition of War Crime:
"Any of various crimes, such as genocide or the mistreatment of prisoners of war, committed during a war and considered in violation of the conventions of warfare."
The main argument that could be made for the US commiting warcrimes would be "mistreatment of prisoners of war" which I think is a bit of an exaggeration; I don't disagree that prisoners of war have been mistreated, but in comparison to prisoners in previous wars (and most prisoners of war through-out the world) I would say that the mistreatment is not grounds for the use of the term War Crime.
Now, I don't play many "War Games" so I couuld be wrong but I suspect that these games revolve around killing insurgents and terrorists which (for most of the world) is acceptable.
Disclaimer: I'm neither American nor did I support the US going to war in Iraq but I do think it would only cause further damage to the area for the US to withdraw their forces at this time.
I could be wrong, but I imagine that the problem is the context of the Violence/Killing ...
Few people would have a problem with a World War 2 game, whether you're playing for the American, Canadian, British, Russian, Austrailian, German, or Japaneese armies because in the context of war it's kill or be killed; in other words, society in general does not see a problem with killing an opposing soldier when you're a soldier at war.
In contrast I suspect that people would be outraged if you produced a game where you're a german soldier at Auschwitz and you're required to kill jewish prisoners.
Actually, it is worse than you think ...
2006 was the warmest year ever recorded in North America
I would (personally) like to know more about how this study was carried out; mainly I would like to know whether this was measured using land-based weather stations. The main issues with land based weather stations is that there has been far more growth in weather stations in urban areas as compared to rural areas (for weather reports), and urban areas are heavily influenced by the parking lot effect (where the massive ammount of concrete and asphvalt stores more energy increasing the average temperature by a few degrees).
Anyways, I don't see how any scientific group could suggest that someone should be kicked out for not following the dogma that "Man Made Global Warming Will Destroy the World" when they have no problem allowing people to claim that short term climate variation (like a warm winter, wet summer, early spring, late fall) are caused by global warming; the fact is that if you hear someone say that an unusually warm winter is caused by Global Warming it demonstrates that they don't understand what Global Warming is.
As a guess, I would assume that this would involve much further study to determine why the enzyme was so successful in the first place and then try to make it much more potent; essentially, they see the possibility of making a cure from this but it is not ready yet.
I think that what you would find (if you could do the research) is that there are localized pockets where the PS3 is (absolutely) sold out, and localized pockets where the PS3 has a massive overstock, but in general the PS3 is available if you're ready to look for it. In fact you have been able to order a PS3 online for a couple of weeks now (with free shipping) implies that the Quantity Supplied essentially matches the Quantity Demanded.
How many of the 100+ Million PS2 systems are people's second/third systems, are used to pirate games, or have only been used as a DVD player?
Now, did Sony ever advertize that the number of people who were active gamers on the PS2 was only 2 times (to pick a number) as large as the XBox/Gamecube active gamer userbase?
Just a point
" June 21, 2003
"DVD rentals outpaced videocassette rentals last week for the first time, the Video Software Dealers Association reported."
Link
" December 19, 2006
"For the first time, DVD players were found in more U.S. households compared to VCR players, according to new research."
Link
" January 4, 2002
"The BVA also reports sales over the last 12 months in Britain of a record total of 122 million videos - more than 30% of which were in the DVD format."
Link
DVD was finalized in September 1996, and DVD players began to be produced in early 1997 and the DVD format only (really) started taking off in 1999/2000; remember that DVD was considered one of the fastest adopted formats because everyone could gain the benefits without needing a new TV and there was only one format.
Now, I'll explain again my objections with saying that now is the time to adopt HD:
Now, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that the vast majority of people are going to be looking to upgrade their entertainment centers at this point in time because it is too expensive, with too little benefit. In 2009 we will be looking at a different situation (likely dual format players for $200 and 30inch LCD HDTVs for $500) but today, unless you want to waste your money, you should wait for the prices to come down and the quantity of content to increase before you buy in.
You can buy a Full HD LCD-TV (1920x1080) at about $1000-$2000 so there is really no reason to wait.
Unless you don't see the point in spending $2000 on a TV, $500-$1000 on a movie player, and $20 a movie (because I can't rent them currently) to gain access to a small library of content.
Yippie!
Obviously, the quantity of sales of a new game system in its first 6 months do not represent that large of a portion of its userbase but they're still important. Typically if a console sells well for the first several months after it has been released its sales will continue throughout its lifespan; on the other hand if a console sells well and then drops off of the radar it will typically sell poorly throughout its life.
There are two definitions of steal that seem appropriate to this discussion
Now the first definition is what you're applying to downloading, but a lot of people have problems calling 'Downloading' 'Stealing' because the owner of the music does not lose possession of the property and you (typically) have been given permission to obtain the music through other channels; you can tape music off of the radio for personal use and most albums will have (at least locally) been played on the radio when they're released.
The second definition is directly related to what has been claimed that timbaland has done.
There is room for debate on the download and no room for debate on the Timbaland situation.
Name a type of music that has been more influential in the last 30 years..
... Define "influential" ...
Well
If you consider music sales Rock music is more popular than Rap, Hip-Hop, R&B and Urban combined. If you look at critical acclaim Rap music has only been receiving critical acclaim and awards (outside of specific genre awards) in the past 5 or so years.
And what does it matter if a musical style has been "influential" if the initial argument was that it was unoriginal? You can be very generic (and even steal other people's ideas) and still be "influential".
I don't know ...
Lately I've been looking into the history of man kind and it seems like at any point in time people were certain that the end of the world was only a generation or two away.
I think it is about time everyone started to ignore anyone who claimed the world was about to end and listened to more rational voices.
Any (intelligent) email client should not automatically open an attachment (even PDF) for security reasons, and every user should be trained not to open any unexpected attachments; this means that even though PDF/DOC can be read on the majority of computers they can not be sent as an email. This means that you have to send all the formatting inside of the character string that makes up the body of the email; there are several ways you can format text by simply passing ASCII/UTF characters but the way that is supported by the largest number of computers is HTML.
I really doubt that Blu-Ray is dead or has been killed, but I do think a lot of Sony's recent decisions (Root-Kit, Laptop Battery Fire, Lik-Sang Lawsuit, and PS3 Price) have made many potential consumers very angry.
Ultimately, in 24 months every HD-DVD player will play Blu-Ray movies and the 'format war' will have been a massive waste.