Honestly, it really depends on the type of content you're trying to identify and how much time/processing power you have...
With text it should be pretty easy and there are products on the market which will search the web to see if part of a paper was copied from a web-based source so that professors can ensure that the paper properly cited their sources...
Music (I would imagine) would be somewhat easy to determine if a file was a copyrighted song as long as you had the original source; a quick method I can think of off of the top of my head would be to split the song into 1 second segments, use a wavelet to determine how many segments were in the file in which order, and determine whether the file is too similar to the original song (say if 95% of the segments were found in the file in the correct order).
I don't have a clue how you'd approach video though...
All of these methods would have flaws, and all would require a lot of processing power; which is fine as long as you're not trying to create a system where 100,000+ files can be uploaded in a given day, all possibly copyrighted material where you may not have the original source material.
But I thought the standard logic in Police States (we can argue whether the US is a Police state another time) was that if you were unwilling to lose your privacy you must have something to hide. Hypothetically speaking, if you (heaven forbid) were a minority which could perhaps be from a Terrorism supporting country and you payed by cash wouldn't that ensure that you got the long trip through security?
Buying a PSP with your main purpose not being to play games sounds like the dumbest idea ever.
This is why the next year should be interesting...
The DS has created quite a large margine in hardware sales worldwide and is outselling the PSP in all regions; on top of that the DS has far less expensive development as compared to the PSP. Over the next year the DS will probably recieve far more game development from third party developers because the risk is far lower.
It's true that the price drop likely won't come until the next holiday season, but that's because of the way electronics sales work, not because Sony wants to hold off on it. And when it does come, it will likely be quite large.
The price drop may come next holiday season (or in mid 2008) but I suspect that it won't be all that large for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that Sony has never (really) competed on Price. Consider the PSP which has been selling far worse than the Nintendo DS since the DS Lite was launched; most people would argue that Sony should drop the price of the $199 PSP to be closer to the $129 DS Lite but Sony hasn't. If you look at the history of Sony products, they have never worried too much about selling a product at a far higher price then their competition.
The other reason why you wouldn't see too big of a price drop is that it offends customers who have bought your product. Consider how you would feel if you bought a PS3 in September for $600 and in November it was priced at $300 or $400. Microsoft ended up doing exactly this in Europe with the original Xbox and was forced to give away games to people who had previously bought the system to save face.
Essentially, don't expect more than a $100 (maybe up to $150) price drop per year on the PS3...
Mario Bros. (NES): Not, I feel, the best title to bundle with the NES. Once the novelty of the side scrolling wears off, you realize pretty quickly that this game is essentially just an exercise in pressing buttons and timing. I've not played an electronic game yet that's really convinced me of this new form of entertainment's merits.
Talldega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby (PS3): Not, I feel, the best title to bundle with the PS3. Once the novelty of Will Ferrell wears off, you realize pretty quickly that this game is essentially just a movie in High Definition.I've not played an electronic game yet that's really convinced me of this new form of entertainment's merits.
Sorry...
But seriously though... Wii sports is a lot better of a bundled game that what the Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, XBox, Gamecube, XBox 360 or PS3 have had at launch (if you don't understand what I'm saying, the Wii is the only system to have a game bundled at launch since the SNES). Wii sports was never supposed to be an overly complicated simulation and I suspect it was bundled so that everyone with a Wii could introduce their non-gamer friends to the Wii through a very non-threatining game; first hand experience with a videogame system will sell far more systems than any ad campaign ever will.
Now, for those people who wanted deeper simulation from Wii Sports, I suspect EA or another company will be excited to port the PS2/XBox/Gamecube versions of Tennis, Boxing, Bowling, Golf and Baseball (with the necessary graphical enhancements) and (probably) extend the basic controls of Wii Sports; at the same time, I'm certain Mario Golf, Mario Baseball, Mario Strikers or Mario Tennis will be released in 2007/2008 for more of a party game (with an outside chance of Nintendo producing Mario Boxing or Mario Bowling).
Honestly, from the view of anyone under the age of 30 (or so) there is a different expectation on the rate of progress than the generations that came before them.
For people who were growing up in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's the world was changing at a rapid rate and people were expecting that the investment in Space Exploration would have pay-offs in their lifetime. People who were raised in the 80's (and I suspect the 90's) look at the world as being far more stable because most of the advancement has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. To a certain extent, older people expect science fiction levels of space travel in the next century, whereas people under 30 see it in the distant future.
Well, indirectly it says something which everyone knows yet doesn't say...
Gamers are looking for a sense of achievement meaning they don't actually have to achieve anthing to feel fulfilled with a game. I have noticed (personally) that when I am playing a MMORPG the game is a lot of fun until I get to the point where I see no worthwhile accomplishment left to complete; essentially, where the game has become mostly about grinding and nothing else.
The RIAA sucks because it is an association that is designed to protect the interests of large music corporations by ensuring that their broken buisness model continues to exist.
The reality of the situation is that current technology is scary to RIAA members because a band/artist doesn't need a label quite like they used to (and as time goes on and the technology advances they don't need a label at all). Consider:
A band can now record an album on their own time in an inexpensive home studio; the quality of equipment that you can get for $10,000 today (with effort) can rival the production of a Million dollar studio the labels have
You can self promote your band through the internet; as time goes on sites like Youtube may be able to provide inexpensive access for a band to find an audience, and an audience to find a band
You can sell your album online for a fraction of what the label will charge and still make more money off of the sale; if you were to charge $0.25 per song and $2.00 for the full album you would make (a lot) more money than the label would give you for the same music
Being that merchandise (like T-Shirts/posters) can easily be produced and ordered online (to be sold on your web-store and at your show), and you can self promote your shows, a hard-working band can make a decent living without needing a label; they may never get to the same level of fame that a label will get you, but you also don't need the same size of an audience to make playing music your life.
Re:I'm cynical
on
Plasma or LCD?
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Honestly there is no consequence for a consumer to buy the 'wrong' technology when it comes to TVs so I really don't see the need to pick the 'winning' technology. The unfortunate thing is LCD is not winning out because it is a 'better technology' as much as it is winning out because it is being used in many more applications (Cell phones, Gaming devices, Computer Monitors) and is getting far more research because of it. With that said, from my very limited understanding, Plasma and LCD each offer benefits to the user depending on your home theater set-up; there are dozens of popular sites which will tell you what works best for your setup.
Well, I went looking for a definition of Innovate and what I got was:
To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.
What bothers me with this list is that most of the products can not really be classified as inovative; the list might be alright if it was the 10 most important products released in 2006, or the 10 most improved product lines of 2006, but 10 most innovative is a big stretch. Now, I recognize that this is partially my love of the Wii speaking but the Wii is (from my understanding) the only product on that list which really brings anything new; the others may bring a lot of improvement to their product lines, but they don't bring much that is really new.
I understand what you're asking, all I am saying is that there is nothing about this story which could be verified (regardless of whether it is true) and there is very little about this story which would make me doubt that it is true; I have personally seen a frozen PS3 unit on display and I have seen in store Company Representative make remarkably stupid statements.
Now, as for why this is on Slashdot...
The fact is that over the past 18 months Sony has alienated a large portion of their loyal userbase and their potential userbase; personally, Sony lost me before that but that is another story. A year and a half ago the PS3 was the system everyone wanted, the XBox 360 was an overly expensive console produced by an evil coporation, and the Revolution was exciting to Nintendo fans with massive disinterest for everyone else; today the PS3 is an overly expensive console produced by an evil coporation, the XBox 360 is exciting to XBox fans with massive disinterest for everyone else, and the Wii is the system everyone wants.
Basically, Sony burned a lot of bridges and people want to hear negative stories about the PS3 because they hate Sony.
Being that it was a "Sony Rep" rather than a well known Sony executive means that the story could very well be true...
A retail level representative is essentially just a sales person with little or no technical understanding of what they're selling. When a representative is asked a question they're always supposed to spout the company line when they can, and always make every answer positive for Sony. Being that Sony probably hasn't come up with a company line for why the PS3 keeps freezing a (dumb) representative spouted that "They were designed to do that."
Developer/Publisher level representatives are (usually) far better informed and far more honest.
Well, it depends on whether you want your "Realistic Racing Simulation" to have realistic racing simulated well...
Gran Turismo is a game where there is a massive ammount of attention to detail in practically every portion of the Graphics and Sound but when it comes to the actual racing simulation it lacks a lot of realism that SNES/Genesis games had. The fact is that there is no damage, or consequences, for getting into a collision with another driver; remember a valid strategy in GT has been to bank off of other cars to get ahead of them.
I'm not a racing game fan, but from what I understand GT is not a game that is above reproach when it comes to gameplay.
I heard someone talking about the guys from Bizarre(Project Gotham Racing) got their first look at the demo and are despondent. Not really surprising when an early demo comes out and your own fans are going nuts over the driving model and graphics.
I simply don't believe you... As a general rule, anything an Anonymous Coward says on Slashdot which doesn't have a source is a lie.
They had to run PGR3 in low rez(1024x600) just to get the game to run at 30fps and now GT is running at 1080p and 60fps and graphically blows it away. That's over three times the resolution for GT.
I don't know too much about PGR3 specifically, but I do remember that up until the final month before the XBox 360's launch most developers were still using their "Alpha Dev-kits" (PowerPC 970MP dual core and Radeon based GPU) which would compile the same code but were very different in performance than the XBox 360; being that PGR 3 was a launch game it wouldn't surprise me to find out they didn't have the opportunity to optimize the engine to the system before it was released (meaning it underperformed by quite a bit).
It is scary to think what PS3 games are going to look like a year from now.
We have hit a point of diminishing returns in graphics, even if you had a system that was 4 times as powerful as the PS3 you probably would not notice a dramatic improvement in the graphics of games being released for it. The PS3 and XBox 360 will have games which look (basically) identical on both systems because neither system is that much more powerful than the other.
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are not consumer driven technologies even though there are some consumers who have been waiting for High-Def content for nearly a decade. These formats are being driven by media companies (who need you to re-buy ET, Starwars and The Fifth Element every few years to boost their profit margin) and electronics manufacturers (who lost a lot of money when people stoped buying Sony DVD players and started buying Apex Digital DVD players).
The question is whether the existence of a HD format will drive people to want a HD format? There are previous formats (DVD-Audio, SACD, Laser Disc) which failed to be adopted even though they were being pushed by electronics and media corporations.
And whats wrong with being like ever other game system.
There is nothing wrong with being exactly like every other gaming system but it does make you easily replaceable.
Game systems have evolved to the point their at for a reason. Should we all just spontansioullly evolve a third arm with seven fingers on it just becuase its new and might be useful in some situtations. Its taken game system developers years to find the perfect balance. The controller (Which is the only unique thing about the wii) has evolved over the years to meet the needs of the widest area of game types, and I think the current format used by Microsoft & Sony while not perfect is a lot better general use controller.
I have to disagree with you on this one, largely because game controllers have not really evolved to meet game requirements as much as games have evolved around the limitations of the controller. Consider that FPS, Flight Games, Racing Games, Fighting Games and Rythm games all have specialized input devices which emulate the activity far better than any game pad and that most other games don't replicate the activity they're attempting to well at all (sports games). People have (since the dawn of videogames) been posed with the question of how do you map complicated activities to simple button presses and (over time) have become very successful, but this does not imply that the button presses were ever a good way to do things.
Ninentdos contoller is fun for certain types of games speciifically designed for it, but I think its going to end up being an annoance for most games in the long run.
Ever played the same FPS on a console as on a PC?
I'm willing to bet that you were reasonably annoyed with the controls on the Console version as compared with the PC version.
Could you imagine playing World of Warcraft on your PS3?
I couldn't imagine how Blizzard would map dozens of activities to a controller that has such limited functionality; if they were remotely successful I'm willing to be that you would be reasonably annoyed with the controls on the Console version as compared with the PC version.
The fact is that any game that is not designed for a certain input method is (likely) not going to be very enjoyable using that input. The advantage of the Wii is that it has far more input potential than a conventional controller does (both in the number of activites and the complexity) so it is likely that it will be easier to port controls to the Wii than away from the Wii. Consider that with a tennis game you could have a lob, regular shot, or smash handled by the direction of the swing with the rotation of the hand through the swing handling top-spin, bottom spin, regular spin; essentially you get 9 variations of shot which would be reasonably difficult on the XBox controller.
To be honest, the reason I believe that Nintendo has been so successful (so far) with the Wii is that they recognized a need in the market and they built a system to fill that need. Essentially, Nintendo thought that there was a need for an inexpensive, easy to develop for, arcade-like system that could provide a new game play experience; and that is what they delivered.
Not to be too negative about the PS3, but the PS3 is designed to be "Exactly like every other system in history... only better" whereas the Wii is designed to be "Something different". In my opinion the Wii is successful because of how unique it is.
I don't think anyone should be surprised that the new Xbox sales are lagging behind the first one's.
That used to be true, but since the XBox 360 has gotten it's supply problems taken care of it has been selling better and has amost recovered from the bumpy first several months.
. Or that the two weeks before Christmas there are giant stacks of unsold Xbox 360s at their local Frys as of yesterday.
Show me a system which has been out for a year and doesn't keep their system in stock over the holiday season...
The benefit of being an established system is that your supply problems have been worked out and you can ensure a supply of Millions of units for the christmas season; if the XBox 360 was sold out it would show remarkably bad management.
You would think the obscene flood of marketing money would get Microsoft something better.
Outside of Japan they seem to be doing pretty decently... Maybe not the most successful platform in the world, but it is profitable and reasonably popular...
For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher
Nine named storms and five hurricanes formed this season, and just two of the hurricanes were considered major. That is considered a near-normal season -- and well short of the rough season government scientists had forecast.
I do remember several news outlets taking this story and running it as "Global Warming predicted to cause Busy Hurican season." The resulting below normal season was news on (pretty much) every major news site and is being used by many to demonstrate that political motivations (not science) are driving the global warming debate.
I think (in many ways) it is much simpler than that...
Nintendo could have quite easily produced a console which had similar technical abilities as the XBox 360/PS3 and still cost less money; if they took something similar to a PowerPC 970MP dual core processor at 2.5 GHz and paired it with something similar to a Radeon X1800 GPU their performance would have been close enough to the PS3 and XBox 360 that (most) people wouldn't notice the difference.
The problem is Nintendo was very successful at producing very high performance, low cost, hardware with the Gamecube and it didn't make nearly the impact that Nintendo wanted; it sold poorly mainly because they could not gain third party development because of Sony's massive head start and Microsoft's willingness to buy development.
The Wii (in my opinion) needed to have far lower technical specifications to keep development costs down so that Nintendo could attract development to their system. If the Wii sold at half the rate of their competition, being that development costs were 1/4 of the PS3/XBox 360 development costs developers/publishers would still be developing Wii games because the risk was far lower; at the same time, Nintendo can devote the same ammount of resources as Sony/Microsoft and get 4 times as many games out of it.
Dude, this stuff isn't that hard. Your school probably has Econ classes, go take one. Then you might actually understand what I'm saying.
You think "Shortage", "Supply" and "Demand" were defined originally in ecconomics?
I took ecconomics, I graduated with my degrees (math and computer-science) several years ago and as I said before I'm talking about this in a common sense fashion not the theoritical ecconomics fashion; and in ecconomics they're very careful to use the terms "Quantity Supplied" and "Quantity Demanded" because of the confusion caused by the common sense understanding of "Supply" and "Demand".
In theoritical ecconomics, selling out of candy-canes in North America at Christmas is the same as a long term famine in that the Quantity Demanded exceeded the Quantity Supplied and the Price of the Candy Canes (or all food) should have been increased in order for the Quantity Supplied to meet the Quantity Demanded.
Oh yeah... if I can't use terms as they're generally used outside of ecconomics you may not use Neighborhood to mean the community in which you live because in Mathematical analysis they refer to a collection of points which surround a point of interest.
*If* the Wii really starts kicking ass (and I'm not convinced yet, it's still far too new... all consoles sell out in the first month, even crappy ones), then you'll see Microsoft and Sony rushing to replicate Nintendo's advantage leaving Nintendo as an also-ran without any unique features to compete, except their first-party games. The controller is a great way for them to distinguish their product from the pack, but it's very easy for the pack to add to their consoles. I hope Nintendo has a plan B.
I'm surprised no one has responded to you yet...
The reality is that it is not going to happen regardless of whether it is a possibility. With very few exceptions Add-on devices simply do not sell and companies are reluctant to produce them. On top of that the Wii's limited technical specifications are going to be the reason why developers are willing to produce risky new input methods; if you're spending 4 times as much to develop a game you want to stick to tried and tested gameplay mechanics.
As I said before, I don't really know how well each system will end up selling and I don't think anyone really can make an accurate prediction...
What I can say is that in both the Sony PSP vs. Nintendo DS and Sony PS2 vs. Micrsoft XBox/Nintendo Gamecube "console wars" Graphics, AI, Physics, Media Playback and Internet Capabilities meant very little to the average consumer and the system that "won (is winning)" was the worst system in most of these ways. Gamers buy gaming systems to play games, the system that has the most games that fit their desired playstyle tends to attract them.
In general I would say that the XBox 360 is at a disadvantage because it lacks Japaneese development and Japaneese developers (unlike North American/European developers) tend to produce their games as console exclusives.
The Wii appears to have one fundamental problem now that I've been around multiple people who have the system, including myself. The novelty wears off pretty quickly. For some people it takes only a few minutes, for others maybe a couple of weeks. But it seems like everyone has a moment where the Wii goes from 'amazing and revolutionary system with a controller that has unlimited possibilities' to 'eh, just a GameCube with a pointer for a controller that doesn't really work very well for most games'.
I'll try to remember that to get people to stop asking me to bring my Wii to their Christmas party... "Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll says that the Novelty wears off pretty quickly, so I don't think I should bring it over."
So far I have not seen anyone play with my Wii and not be immediately engaged. Honestly, from what I have seen, the novelty of shiny graphics wears out far faster than the Wiimote does; I've seen crowds gater for 5 minutes to check out the graphics of the XBox 360/PS3 only to disperse immediately to do something better with their time.
Most people don't care all that much about graphics when they're enjoying the game they're playing; in fact if you're enjoying the game you will probably not be paying too much attention to any of the graphical effects that are happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, it really depends on the type of content you're trying to identify and how much time/processing power you have ...
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With text it should be pretty easy and there are products on the market which will search the web to see if part of a paper was copied from a web-based source so that professors can ensure that the paper properly cited their sources
Music (I would imagine) would be somewhat easy to determine if a file was a copyrighted song as long as you had the original source; a quick method I can think of off of the top of my head would be to split the song into 1 second segments, use a wavelet to determine how many segments were in the file in which order, and determine whether the file is too similar to the original song (say if 95% of the segments were found in the file in the correct order).
I don't have a clue how you'd approach video though
All of these methods would have flaws, and all would require a lot of processing power; which is fine as long as you're not trying to create a system where 100,000+ files can be uploaded in a given day, all possibly copyrighted material where you may not have the original source material.
I could be wrong ...
But I thought the standard logic in Police States (we can argue whether the US is a Police state another time) was that if you were unwilling to lose your privacy you must have something to hide. Hypothetically speaking, if you (heaven forbid) were a minority which could perhaps be from a Terrorism supporting country and you payed by cash wouldn't that ensure that you got the long trip through security?
Buying a PSP with your main purpose not being to play games sounds like the dumbest idea ever.
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This is why the next year should be interesting
The DS has created quite a large margine in hardware sales worldwide and is outselling the PSP in all regions; on top of that the DS has far less expensive development as compared to the PSP. Over the next year the DS will probably recieve far more game development from third party developers because the risk is far lower.
It's true that the price drop likely won't come until the next holiday season, but that's because of the way electronics sales work, not because Sony wants to hold off on it. And when it does come, it will likely be quite large.
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The price drop may come next holiday season (or in mid 2008) but I suspect that it won't be all that large for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that Sony has never (really) competed on Price. Consider the PSP which has been selling far worse than the Nintendo DS since the DS Lite was launched; most people would argue that Sony should drop the price of the $199 PSP to be closer to the $129 DS Lite but Sony hasn't. If you look at the history of Sony products, they have never worried too much about selling a product at a far higher price then their competition.
The other reason why you wouldn't see too big of a price drop is that it offends customers who have bought your product. Consider how you would feel if you bought a PS3 in September for $600 and in November it was priced at $300 or $400. Microsoft ended up doing exactly this in Europe with the original Xbox and was forced to give away games to people who had previously bought the system to save face.
Essentially, don't expect more than a $100 (maybe up to $150) price drop per year on the PS3
Mario Bros. (NES): Not, I feel, the best title to bundle with the NES. Once the novelty of the side scrolling wears off, you realize pretty quickly that this game is essentially just an exercise in pressing buttons and timing. I've not played an electronic game yet that's really convinced me of this new form of entertainment's merits.
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... Wii sports is a lot better of a bundled game that what the Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, XBox, Gamecube, XBox 360 or PS3 have had at launch (if you don't understand what I'm saying, the Wii is the only system to have a game bundled at launch since the SNES). Wii sports was never supposed to be an overly complicated simulation and I suspect it was bundled so that everyone with a Wii could introduce their non-gamer friends to the Wii through a very non-threatining game; first hand experience with a videogame system will sell far more systems than any ad campaign ever will.
Talldega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby (PS3): Not, I feel, the best title to bundle with the PS3. Once the novelty of Will Ferrell wears off, you realize pretty quickly that this game is essentially just a movie in High Definition.I've not played an electronic game yet that's really convinced me of this new form of entertainment's merits.
Sorry
But seriously though
Now, for those people who wanted deeper simulation from Wii Sports, I suspect EA or another company will be excited to port the PS2/XBox/Gamecube versions of Tennis, Boxing, Bowling, Golf and Baseball (with the necessary graphical enhancements) and (probably) extend the basic controls of Wii Sports; at the same time, I'm certain Mario Golf, Mario Baseball, Mario Strikers or Mario Tennis will be released in 2007/2008 for more of a party game (with an outside chance of Nintendo producing Mario Boxing or Mario Bowling).
Honestly, from the view of anyone under the age of 30 (or so) there is a different expectation on the rate of progress than the generations that came before them.
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For people who were growing up in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's the world was changing at a rapid rate and people were expecting that the investment in Space Exploration would have pay-offs in their lifetime. People who were raised in the 80's (and I suspect the 90's) look at the world as being far more stable because most of the advancement has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. To a certain extent, older people expect science fiction levels of space travel in the next century, whereas people under 30 see it in the distant future.
That's just my theory of course
Well, indirectly it says something which everyone knows yet doesn't say ...
Gamers are looking for a sense of achievement meaning they don't actually have to achieve anthing to feel fulfilled with a game. I have noticed (personally) that when I am playing a MMORPG the game is a lot of fun until I get to the point where I see no worthwhile accomplishment left to complete; essentially, where the game has become mostly about grinding and nothing else.
That is an easy question to answer
The RIAA sucks because it is an association that is designed to protect the interests of large music corporations by ensuring that their broken buisness model continues to exist.
The reality of the situation is that current technology is scary to RIAA members because a band/artist doesn't need a label quite like they used to (and as time goes on and the technology advances they don't need a label at all). Consider:
Being that merchandise (like T-Shirts/posters) can easily be produced and ordered online (to be sold on your web-store and at your show), and you can self promote your shows, a hard-working band can make a decent living without needing a label; they may never get to the same level of fame that a label will get you, but you also don't need the same size of an audience to make playing music your life.
Honestly there is no consequence for a consumer to buy the 'wrong' technology when it comes to TVs so I really don't see the need to pick the 'winning' technology. The unfortunate thing is LCD is not winning out because it is a 'better technology' as much as it is winning out because it is being used in many more applications (Cell phones, Gaming devices, Computer Monitors) and is getting far more research because of it. With that said, from my very limited understanding, Plasma and LCD each offer benefits to the user depending on your home theater set-up; there are dozens of popular sites which will tell you what works best for your setup.
Well, I went looking for a definition of Innovate and what I got was:
To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.
What bothers me with this list is that most of the products can not really be classified as inovative; the list might be alright if it was the 10 most important products released in 2006, or the 10 most improved product lines of 2006, but 10 most innovative is a big stretch. Now, I recognize that this is partially my love of the Wii speaking but the Wii is (from my understanding) the only product on that list which really brings anything new; the others may bring a lot of improvement to their product lines, but they don't bring much that is really new.
I understand what you're asking, all I am saying is that there is nothing about this story which could be verified (regardless of whether it is true) and there is very little about this story which would make me doubt that it is true; I have personally seen a frozen PS3 unit on display and I have seen in store Company Representative make remarkably stupid statements.
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Now, as for why this is on Slashdot
The fact is that over the past 18 months Sony has alienated a large portion of their loyal userbase and their potential userbase; personally, Sony lost me before that but that is another story. A year and a half ago the PS3 was the system everyone wanted, the XBox 360 was an overly expensive console produced by an evil coporation, and the Revolution was exciting to Nintendo fans with massive disinterest for everyone else; today the PS3 is an overly expensive console produced by an evil coporation, the XBox 360 is exciting to XBox fans with massive disinterest for everyone else, and the Wii is the system everyone wants.
Basically, Sony burned a lot of bridges and people want to hear negative stories about the PS3 because they hate Sony.
Being that it was a "Sony Rep" rather than a well known Sony executive means that the story could very well be true ...
A retail level representative is essentially just a sales person with little or no technical understanding of what they're selling. When a representative is asked a question they're always supposed to spout the company line when they can, and always make every answer positive for Sony. Being that Sony probably hasn't come up with a company line for why the PS3 keeps freezing a (dumb) representative spouted that "They were designed to do that."
Developer/Publisher level representatives are (usually) far better informed and far more honest.
Well, it depends on whether you want your "Realistic Racing Simulation" to have realistic racing simulated well ...
Gran Turismo is a game where there is a massive ammount of attention to detail in practically every portion of the Graphics and Sound but when it comes to the actual racing simulation it lacks a lot of realism that SNES/Genesis games had. The fact is that there is no damage, or consequences, for getting into a collision with another driver; remember a valid strategy in GT has been to bank off of other cars to get ahead of them.
I'm not a racing game fan, but from what I understand GT is not a game that is above reproach when it comes to gameplay.
I heard someone talking about the guys from Bizarre(Project Gotham Racing) got their first look at the demo and are despondent. Not really surprising when an early demo comes out and your own fans are going nuts over the driving model and graphics.
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I simply don't believe you
As a general rule, anything an Anonymous Coward says on Slashdot which doesn't have a source is a lie.
They had to run PGR3 in low rez(1024x600) just to get the game to run at 30fps and now GT is running at 1080p and 60fps and graphically blows it away. That's over three times the resolution for GT.
I don't know too much about PGR3 specifically, but I do remember that up until the final month before the XBox 360's launch most developers were still using their "Alpha Dev-kits" (PowerPC 970MP dual core and Radeon based GPU) which would compile the same code but were very different in performance than the XBox 360; being that PGR 3 was a launch game it wouldn't surprise me to find out they didn't have the opportunity to optimize the engine to the system before it was released (meaning it underperformed by quite a bit).
It is scary to think what PS3 games are going to look like a year from now.
We have hit a point of diminishing returns in graphics, even if you had a system that was 4 times as powerful as the PS3 you probably would not notice a dramatic improvement in the graphics of games being released for it. The PS3 and XBox 360 will have games which look (basically) identical on both systems because neither system is that much more powerful than the other.
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are not consumer driven technologies even though there are some consumers who have been waiting for High-Def content for nearly a decade. These formats are being driven by media companies (who need you to re-buy ET, Starwars and The Fifth Element every few years to boost their profit margin) and electronics manufacturers (who lost a lot of money when people stoped buying Sony DVD players and started buying Apex Digital DVD players).
The question is whether the existence of a HD format will drive people to want a HD format? There are previous formats (DVD-Audio, SACD, Laser Disc) which failed to be adopted even though they were being pushed by electronics and media corporations.
And whats wrong with being like ever other game system.
There is nothing wrong with being exactly like every other gaming system but it does make you easily replaceable.
Game systems have evolved to the point their at for a reason. Should we all just spontansioullly evolve a third arm with seven fingers on it just becuase its new and might be useful in some situtations. Its taken game system developers years to find the perfect balance. The controller (Which is the only unique thing about the wii) has evolved over the years to meet the needs of the widest area of game types, and I think the current format used by Microsoft & Sony while not perfect is a lot better general use controller.
I have to disagree with you on this one, largely because game controllers have not really evolved to meet game requirements as much as games have evolved around the limitations of the controller. Consider that FPS, Flight Games, Racing Games, Fighting Games and Rythm games all have specialized input devices which emulate the activity far better than any game pad and that most other games don't replicate the activity they're attempting to well at all (sports games). People have (since the dawn of videogames) been posed with the question of how do you map complicated activities to simple button presses and (over time) have become very successful, but this does not imply that the button presses were ever a good way to do things.
Ninentdos contoller is fun for certain types of games speciifically designed for it, but I think its going to end up being an annoance for most games in the long run.
Ever played the same FPS on a console as on a PC?
I'm willing to bet that you were reasonably annoyed with the controls on the Console version as compared with the PC version.
Could you imagine playing World of Warcraft on your PS3?
I couldn't imagine how Blizzard would map dozens of activities to a controller that has such limited functionality; if they were remotely successful I'm willing to be that you would be reasonably annoyed with the controls on the Console version as compared with the PC version.
The fact is that any game that is not designed for a certain input method is (likely) not going to be very enjoyable using that input. The advantage of the Wii is that it has far more input potential than a conventional controller does (both in the number of activites and the complexity) so it is likely that it will be easier to port controls to the Wii than away from the Wii. Consider that with a tennis game you could have a lob, regular shot, or smash handled by the direction of the swing with the rotation of the hand through the swing handling top-spin, bottom spin, regular spin; essentially you get 9 variations of shot which would be reasonably difficult on the XBox controller.
To be honest, the reason I believe that Nintendo has been so successful (so far) with the Wii is that they recognized a need in the market and they built a system to fill that need. Essentially, Nintendo thought that there was a need for an inexpensive, easy to develop for, arcade-like system that could provide a new game play experience; and that is what they delivered.
... only better" whereas the Wii is designed to be "Something different". In my opinion the Wii is successful because of how unique it is.
Not to be too negative about the PS3, but the PS3 is designed to be "Exactly like every other system in history
I don't think anyone should be surprised that the new Xbox sales are lagging behind the first one's.
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... Maybe not the most successful platform in the world, but it is profitable and reasonably popular ...
That used to be true, but since the XBox 360 has gotten it's supply problems taken care of it has been selling better and has amost recovered from the bumpy first several months.
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=X3
. Or that the two weeks before Christmas there are giant stacks of unsold Xbox 360s at their local Frys as of yesterday.
Show me a system which has been out for a year and doesn't keep their system in stock over the holiday season
The benefit of being an established system is that your supply problems have been worked out and you can ensure a supply of Millions of units for the christmas season; if the XBox 360 was sold out it would show remarkably bad management.
You would think the obscene flood of marketing money would get Microsoft something better.
Outside of Japan they seem to be doing pretty decently
everyone predicted this would be a quiet season.
m
Everyone?
For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2634.ht
Nine named storms and five hurricanes formed this season, and just two of the hurricanes were considered major. That is considered a near-normal season -- and well short of the rough season government scientists had forecast.
I do remember several news outlets taking this story and running it as "Global Warming predicted to cause Busy Hurican season." The resulting below normal season was news on (pretty much) every major news site and is being used by many to demonstrate that political motivations (not science) are driving the global warming debate.
I think (in many ways) it is much simpler than that ...
Nintendo could have quite easily produced a console which had similar technical abilities as the XBox 360/PS3 and still cost less money; if they took something similar to a PowerPC 970MP dual core processor at 2.5 GHz and paired it with something similar to a Radeon X1800 GPU their performance would have been close enough to the PS3 and XBox 360 that (most) people wouldn't notice the difference.
The problem is Nintendo was very successful at producing very high performance, low cost, hardware with the Gamecube and it didn't make nearly the impact that Nintendo wanted; it sold poorly mainly because they could not gain third party development because of Sony's massive head start and Microsoft's willingness to buy development.
The Wii (in my opinion) needed to have far lower technical specifications to keep development costs down so that Nintendo could attract development to their system. If the Wii sold at half the rate of their competition, being that development costs were 1/4 of the PS3/XBox 360 development costs developers/publishers would still be developing Wii games because the risk was far lower; at the same time, Nintendo can devote the same ammount of resources as Sony/Microsoft and get 4 times as many games out of it.
Dude, this stuff isn't that hard. Your school probably has Econ classes, go take one. Then you might actually understand what I'm saying.
... if I can't use terms as they're generally used outside of ecconomics you may not use Neighborhood to mean the community in which you live because in Mathematical analysis they refer to a collection of points which surround a point of interest.
You think "Shortage", "Supply" and "Demand" were defined originally in ecconomics?
I took ecconomics, I graduated with my degrees (math and computer-science) several years ago and as I said before I'm talking about this in a common sense fashion not the theoritical ecconomics fashion; and in ecconomics they're very careful to use the terms "Quantity Supplied" and "Quantity Demanded" because of the confusion caused by the common sense understanding of "Supply" and "Demand".
In theoritical ecconomics, selling out of candy-canes in North America at Christmas is the same as a long term famine in that the Quantity Demanded exceeded the Quantity Supplied and the Price of the Candy Canes (or all food) should have been increased in order for the Quantity Supplied to meet the Quantity Demanded.
Oh yeah
A few such exceptions: GunCon, EyeToy and the Guitar Controller for Guitar Hero all on PS2. Also the Keyboard for the Dreamcast.
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None of those are really valid exceptions because there are no more than a dozen games which take advantage of these add-ons
A valid exception would be the XBox 360 hard-drive
*If* the Wii really starts kicking ass (and I'm not convinced yet, it's still far too new... all consoles sell out in the first month, even crappy ones), then you'll see Microsoft and Sony rushing to replicate Nintendo's advantage leaving Nintendo as an also-ran without any unique features to compete, except their first-party games. The controller is a great way for them to distinguish their product from the pack, but it's very easy for the pack to add to their consoles. I hope Nintendo has a plan B.
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I'm surprised no one has responded to you yet
The reality is that it is not going to happen regardless of whether it is a possibility. With very few exceptions Add-on devices simply do not sell and companies are reluctant to produce them. On top of that the Wii's limited technical specifications are going to be the reason why developers are willing to produce risky new input methods; if you're spending 4 times as much to develop a game you want to stick to tried and tested gameplay mechanics.
As I said before, I don't really know how well each system will end up selling and I don't think anyone really can make an accurate prediction ...
What I can say is that in both the Sony PSP vs. Nintendo DS and Sony PS2 vs. Micrsoft XBox/Nintendo Gamecube "console wars" Graphics, AI, Physics, Media Playback and Internet Capabilities meant very little to the average consumer and the system that "won (is winning)" was the worst system in most of these ways. Gamers buy gaming systems to play games, the system that has the most games that fit their desired playstyle tends to attract them.
In general I would say that the XBox 360 is at a disadvantage because it lacks Japaneese development and Japaneese developers (unlike North American/European developers) tend to produce their games as console exclusives.
The Wii appears to have one fundamental problem now that I've been around multiple people who have the system, including myself. The novelty wears off pretty quickly. For some people it takes only a few minutes, for others maybe a couple of weeks. But it seems like everyone has a moment where the Wii goes from 'amazing and revolutionary system with a controller that has unlimited possibilities' to 'eh, just a GameCube with a pointer for a controller that doesn't really work very well for most games'.
... "Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll says that the Novelty wears off pretty quickly, so I don't think I should bring it over."
I'll try to remember that to get people to stop asking me to bring my Wii to their Christmas party
So far I have not seen anyone play with my Wii and not be immediately engaged. Honestly, from what I have seen, the novelty of shiny graphics wears out far faster than the Wiimote does; I've seen crowds gater for 5 minutes to check out the graphics of the XBox 360/PS3 only to disperse immediately to do something better with their time.
Most people don't care all that much about graphics when they're enjoying the game they're playing; in fact if you're enjoying the game you will probably not be paying too much attention to any of the graphical effects that are happening.