"So who, at the end of the day, will be the also-ran in this generation of consoles? On the global scale, I'd say it could well be neither the PS3 or the Wii, but the Xbox 360. The PS3 will win over the hardcore gamers who have to have the fastest, most amazing machine available. The Wii will skim off the younger players and those who don't have as much money to spend. Both have the advantage of being made in Japan, so they'll crowd the Xbox right out of that market. In the US and Europe, it's harder to say, but I see the Xbox's early start as more of a liability than a benefit."
I don't know what will happen in total sales, but I expect that the so-called "Hardcore" gamer will likely purchase multiple systems and will be very attracted to the Wii because the nature of the titles it recieves; what I mean is that many of the so-called "Hardcore" gamers will buy pretty much any piece of hardware that has enough exclusive games, and pretty much all Wii games are exclusive due to the nature of the console.
The majority of gamers are not hard-core and are no where near as big of graphics whores as some people assume; gaming is probably not their only form of entertainment so they're probably less likely to spend too much money on it. The price of the Wii is probably very attractive to them, but they also haven't played enough games to care about how stagnant the industry has become.
The only time I ever paid for one of these was in High-School when I bought the Radio-Shack headphones...
The headphones cost $15 and the extended warranty was $10 (IIRC) which seems expensive except that the warranty covered everything and was 3 years long; the beauty of it was that I owned a Sony Sports Walkman at the time and ran everyday, took the bus to and from school, and so on so any headphones would last 2 weeks to a month. I must have replaced those headphones 20 times in those three years so the $10 extended warranty was certainly worth it.
On a side note, even though I believe it is a rip-off, if I were buying a PS3/XBox 360 which only had a 90 day warranty I would splurge and get the extra coverage. From what I have seen too many systems which have CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives or Hard-Drives have some sort of failure 3-12 months into the systems life to not have coverage in that time frame. (Note: I excluded the Wii because it has a 12 month warranty).
You can't have accelerate something in all directions at the same time, an object can only be accelerating along a particular 3 dimensional vector at any given time...
If you mean how can it tell where gravity is while you're accelerating it along a different vector, the answer is that it probably can't but that isn't really a problem; essentially, you only have to attempt to re-calibrate for gravity every few seconds (say every 5 seconds) by waiting for a steady acceleration of (approximately) 9.81 M/(s^2) for a particular time frame (1/10th of a second); the ammount of error in the approximation of gravity would not be overly large nor would you expect the error to stay around for very long. Any time you'd probably need a precise orientation for the Wiimote you'd probably be holding it steady enough to get an accurate reading of gravity, or it would be part of a smooth motion where you could estimate the orientation (reasonably accurately) from the motion itself; what I mean is that you're probably not going to have that many really eratic motions which require the orientation of the wiimote to be know accurately.
I'm not talking about "Shortage" as defined in theoritical ecconomics... I'm talking about it in a common-sense fashion...
When you have a product in a market where a poorly performing product will sell 250,000 in the month of November, a typical product will sell 500,000 units in the month of November and a Popular product will sell 1,000,000 units in that month, you can't only supply 200,000 units in that month and proclaim that you're popular because you sold out; unless the demand for the PS3 was far below the worst performing surviving console in the past 10 years the PS3 was ensured to sell out with the number of units supplied.
Essentially, your (remarkably stupid) argument is that if you have a country (like North Korea) that has had a massive drought and famine for 10 years has a shortage of food because demand is so high; the reality is that the demand for food in that country is typical of most countries (possibly less because people have been starving for so long) and a lack of any reasonable supply is causing the shortage.
The problem with it "becoming chaotic" if you sit too closely is that the Wiimote has to see both IR sources at the same time in order to tell where it is pointing; if you go too far away you would have a similar problem as the Wiimote would see both IR sources as one light source (I'd assume this would probably happen at quite a distance. Nintendo designed the Sensor bar to be optimal in most situations (between 6 and 15 feet from the television I would assume) but if that doesn't work well for you (and you're technically inclined) you could easily produce your own sensor bar by using 10 IR LEDs ( http://ledsupply.com/l2-0-ir5th30-1.php ); cut the gap between the IR sources from 1/2-2/3 for sitting close and 1.5 to 2.0 times for sitting far away.
At the same time if you have too many more IR sources in the area (say from the sun on your TV or what not) you could always double up on LEDs and reduce the sensitivity to nothing. It sucks that Nintendo didn't make the bar more adjustable (by increasing the number of LEDs and allowing you to adjust the size), and it sucks that you'd have to create your own if your problems are too consistent, but this doesn't seem like it would be too complicated of a problem that a mod couldn't fix it.
I'm a bit confused. The ability of the Wiimote to sense the angle it's at seems quite consistent, and doesn't appear to be possible to "fool", while the ability to sense motion can be fooled somewhat.
There is a reason for that...
The Force of Gravity will always register as an (aproximately) 9.81 M/(s^2) acceleration to the acclerometers inside of the Wiimote; this means that you should be able to tell it's orientation in comparison to the ground pretty easily.
I'm a bit confused. The ability of the Wiimote to sense the angle it's at seems quite consistent, and doesn't appear to be possible to "fool", while the ability to sense motion can be fooled somewhat.
Personally, I'm not sure what you mean by "fool" the ability to sense motion though... For the most part, the Wii accepts a wide variety of input largely because the games have to be useable with small motions for a 3 foot tall child / little person and also usable with large motions for a 7 Foot tall adult. If Tiger Woods Golf (as an example) had a swing clinic to test your real golf swing, I doubt it would be easy to trick it with a wrist flick.
What the fuck? These two statements mean exactly the same thing. The parent was exactly right: both launches had shortages, as well as Sony execs spewing FUD all over the place. Oh, and don't forget the shitty launch games.
A supply driven shortage is quite a bit different than a demand driven shortage, regardless of whether they sort-of have similar results; a demand driven shortage is caused because a product is so popular you can not meet demand, a supply shortage is where you can not supply enough units regardless of demand. Currently, the PS3 could only meet the demand of the amazingly popular NGage.
How about Disaster Day of Crisis, Project Hammer, and Forever Blue?
The fact is that Nintendo is always producing new genres/franchises... the reason people don't realize this is that none of these games get the press that a new Pokemon, Zelda, Metroid or Mario game will get.
but outside of the core franchises-- Metroid, Mario, and Kirby-- has Nintento announced any 1st party games for the Wii?
Actually, quite a few first party games have been announced (unfortunately with few details on when they will be released)... Disaster: Day of Crisis, Fire Emblem, Project H.A.M.M.E.R, Super Smash Bros: Brawl, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Battalion Wars 2, and Animal Crossing have all been announced (some of which have been released in other regions).
Earlier this year there were quite a few playable games (BWii, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Project Hammer), there are a few games which haven't been released in North America yet (Wii Play, Hajimete no Wii), and Third parties have been announcing games that will be released in Q2 and beyond (Medal of Honor Vanguard, Prince of Persia Rival Swords). [in no way is my list complete]
In general I don't expect a drought in the classical Nintendo drought sense in 2007; at the same time I don't think there has ever been a system which maintained a steady supply of games in its first year.
The PLAYSTATION 3 console plays well over 90 percent of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, allowing converts from the Xbox and GameCube systems to choose from hundreds of by now value-priced titles while waiting for the PS3 killer app. It's like buying a $370 console and getting a $130 PS2 free. Did the 3DO console play any previous console's games or any previous home computer's games?
I understand that you're attempting to make the PS3's library look bigger, and backwards compatibility is a good thing, but PS2 and Playstation games should not really be considered in the PS3's game line-up; I will accept the exception of downloadable content on the PS3/XBox 360/Wii but it should be directly compared to the other console's downloadable content. The fact is that you're spending $500/$600 to play the PS3 games and the ability to play PS2 games is an added bonus. Now, personally I don't expect the PS3 to perform quite as poorly as either the 3DO or Neo-Geo mainly because the PS3 is no where near as expensive (abou $1000 in 2006 dollars); I never owned one, but (from my limited understanding) games were not these systems problems because they both recieved a lot of really good arcade ports.
In general, it is difficult to look through gaming history and find a system like the PS3 mainly because it is awkwardly positioned (in terms of price) between the highest priced modern market leading console (Playstation) and consoles that inspite of good games and great hardware never sold because of their high price (3D0, Neo Geo); it is very similar to the Saturn, but the Saturn was one of the worst handled consoles in history.
I still find it interesting that at 18 you're allowed join the military and die but you're not allowed to drink alcohol.... in the United States of America
Anyways, the problem with the age limit on alcohol consumption is that it gives teens/young adults the impression that drinking excessively is a mature thing to do; most people I have met who have drank from a young age tend to see excessive drinking in a completely different light than those who get to drink when they're 18-21.
I always thought that ads could be a good thing, but it turns out that I was the only one. The area I thought it would be used is that a MMO would add ads when a player logged in (a 30 second McDonalds comercial was always my example) and this would eliminate the need for a monthly fee.
Then you try to compare it to 3D0. How many games play on the PS3? Care to hazard a guess? Anyone? Lets just say that it is, right now, exponentially more than 3D0 EVER had.
Does anyone remember the PS2 launch? Anyone at all? Same pile of shit, different console. Ahh, and look at how the PS2 crashed and burned...riiight.
The PS2 launched with over 700,000 systems in Japan on day one and had sold over 1 Million by the end of its first month (March 00); in North America there were 500,000 systems at launch and they sold over 1 Million by the end of 2000 (2.5 months). The PS2 was unavailable largely because the demand was so great that Sony could not produce them fast enough; the PS3 is unavailable because Sony has produced too few of units.
Sorry, but if a 7-year old kid can swing the controller hard enough to lose her grip, snap the strap, and still nail the TV hard enough to damage the screen, there's something wrong.
I haven't read about a case like this... then again, if you produce a TV that can't withstand the force of a 7 year old throwing something at the screen should you be held accountable? After all a moronic 7 year old might throw the remote at the screen...
It would be one thing if the Wii wasn't intended for children. However, even Nintendo's demo kiosks show happy smiling children and adults swinging their arms with enough force to chuck the remote across the room.
So, since I see comercials of happy adults and children eating potato chips it is the manufacturers fault that I eat 2Kg of chips a day and become 400 lbs?
And even if there wasn't a problem, why did Nintendo release the Wii in Europe with a much thicker lanyard compared to the US and Japan?
Who knows why they changed, maybe the new strap is less fray resistent or maybe their supplier could no longer supply the larger strap. The reason they replaced the strap was because there were reports of people breaking their TVs and Nintendo wanted to limit their liability by ensuring that the only excuse for this ever happening was that the user disregarded their warning screen and didn't have their wrist strap attached.
If your commercials show beautiful people thrashing about in the throes of videogame ecstasy, you have to expect that consumers are going to want to do the same. But those models in your commercials are trained professionals working in a controlled environment. As soon as you take that lethal Wii remote out into the Real World, accidents are possible, even likely.
Does this mean I can sue beer companies when I go drinking, hit-on women and get slapped?
Again, if you're developing for consumers, you need to assume that a significant portion of your buyers will be dummies. Smart companies spend time testing their products in "dummy" sitations precisely for this reason: to figure out what bad things can happen when consumers use their products in a way other than was originally intended around a theoretical white board.
Kudos to Nintendo for trying to fix their fuck-up, but it was a fuck-up, and one that could have been avoided with a better "beta" program.
Honestly, this is something a testing program would never catch...
The strap only breaks when adults (one would assume reasonably large or athletic men) push the limits beyond what most people would feel comfortable with; when someone is testing something for a company (in particular if they are watched testing something) they react to it like it was glass. The limitations of the strap could only be tested by morons who will treat a $40 controller like it was a $2 toy they got with their happy meal.
Last year at this time everyone was bashing how poor the XBox 360 launch and how expensive it turned out, many people even said "Why would you spend $400 on an XBox 360 when you can buy the more powerful PS3 (that comes with a Blu-Ray player) for less?"
It's amazing how much change 12 months can bring...
What did they actually promise? They haven't been hyping any actual numbers or targets. Just an idea. So you can you not live up ot "better graphics" and "more complicated AI". The Ps2 did actually deliver on almost all of it's promises with a bit of a caviet that the AA sucked. Think MGS3, Ico, Shadow of the collosus, FFXII. All delivered solid graphics on ancient hardware.
Sony never delivers on their promise, but thats not saying their hardware is bad...
There were all kinds of promises around the PS2 that were not met; you'll quite often see someone mention how the PS2 was supposed to have "Toy Story graphics in Realtime" or that games like Metal Gear were supposed to be so detailed and interactive that you could "shoot paperclips off of a desk".
I actually saw that quote from a completely different perspective...
After hearing for months about how difficult the PS3 was to program for, I thought the quote almost sounded like he was admiting that the PS3's 'theoritical' performance would be far greater than the PS3's 'Actual' performance...
Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect he meant the quote to be taken as "Think of how great games will be in the future" but I think it really says "You're paying $600 for a system based on promised performance which the PS3 will never meet".
Or, in the alternative, you could maybe not let go! I have a Wii and have played it enereggetically and have never even come close to throwing it across. Now has my 13 year old stepson or my wife or any of the half-dozen other kids and adults who ahve come over and played it.
Don't let go.
If my 8 year old niece can flail her arms for 20 minutes straight while playing Wii Sports Boxing, I think most adults should be able to hold onto it under normal usage. Even if an adult drops the Wiimote under normal usage the strap apears to be able to handle (about) 50lbs of force so the strap should be able to prevent the Wiimote from flying across the room. Even if the strap broke the Wiimote is not heavy enough to break a TV at the speed it would be thrown at under normal use.
The fact that the Wiimote is flying out of people's hands with enough force to break the strap and a person's TV makes me think that these are not normal use. Now, I think it would have been better for Nintendo to provide a strap that can handle even moronic usage, but companies are not responsible for moronic use of their product.
Ah what a great fucking country this is then when the answer to all the problems is "well at least we're not Iran".
How bad do things have to get before you actually do give a shit?
Just because I say the USA isn't as bad as Iran doesn't mean I don't care about the issues, I just don't think that it is reasonable to claim the US' problems are on the same scale as Iran; essentially, the initial comparison was like claiming a C- student (the USA) was as bad as the F average student who murdered his Mother, Raped 3 women and burned down several buildings.
Sometimes American's sound like children who didn't get an XBox 360 rather than the PS3 they wanted for Christmas and then throw a tantrum.
How often does the Government of the United States of America execute Journalists for speaking out against the government? How many citizens have been executed without due-process?
Currenly, every western democracy has problems but in comparison to countries like Iran their problems are nonexistent.
For the most part this is really a non-issue for most game developers...
With the exception of Massive studios, most games that are developed licence a game engine from a third party vendor; large developers will choose the Doom 3, Unreal 3, or Source Engine while smaller studios will look for something less expensive (and most indies moving towards Torque or open source engines). The fact that Microsoft has made cross platform development for the XBox 360 and PC easier only means that Epic will require less time to create an engine; at the same time Epic has the resources to create an engine that works on (practically) all platforms regardless of the cost associated with it.
Slashdot Mirror
"So who, at the end of the day, will be the also-ran in this generation of consoles? On the global scale, I'd say it could well be neither the PS3 or the Wii, but the Xbox 360. The PS3 will win over the hardcore gamers who have to have the fastest, most amazing machine available. The Wii will skim off the younger players and those who don't have as much money to spend. Both have the advantage of being made in Japan, so they'll crowd the Xbox right out of that market. In the US and Europe, it's harder to say, but I see the Xbox's early start as more of a liability than a benefit."
I don't know what will happen in total sales, but I expect that the so-called "Hardcore" gamer will likely purchase multiple systems and will be very attracted to the Wii because the nature of the titles it recieves; what I mean is that many of the so-called "Hardcore" gamers will buy pretty much any piece of hardware that has enough exclusive games, and pretty much all Wii games are exclusive due to the nature of the console.
The majority of gamers are not hard-core and are no where near as big of graphics whores as some people assume; gaming is probably not their only form of entertainment so they're probably less likely to spend too much money on it. The price of the Wii is probably very attractive to them, but they also haven't played enough games to care about how stagnant the industry has become.
The only time I ever paid for one of these was in High-School when I bought the Radio-Shack headphones ...
The headphones cost $15 and the extended warranty was $10 (IIRC) which seems expensive except that the warranty covered everything and was 3 years long; the beauty of it was that I owned a Sony Sports Walkman at the time and ran everyday, took the bus to and from school, and so on so any headphones would last 2 weeks to a month. I must have replaced those headphones 20 times in those three years so the $10 extended warranty was certainly worth it.
On a side note, even though I believe it is a rip-off, if I were buying a PS3/XBox 360 which only had a 90 day warranty I would splurge and get the extra coverage. From what I have seen too many systems which have CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives or Hard-Drives have some sort of failure 3-12 months into the systems life to not have coverage in that time frame. (Note: I excluded the Wii because it has a 12 month warranty).
You can't have accelerate something in all directions at the same time, an object can only be accelerating along a particular 3 dimensional vector at any given time ...
If you mean how can it tell where gravity is while you're accelerating it along a different vector, the answer is that it probably can't but that isn't really a problem; essentially, you only have to attempt to re-calibrate for gravity every few seconds (say every 5 seconds) by waiting for a steady acceleration of (approximately) 9.81 M/(s^2) for a particular time frame (1/10th of a second); the ammount of error in the approximation of gravity would not be overly large nor would you expect the error to stay around for very long. Any time you'd probably need a precise orientation for the Wiimote you'd probably be holding it steady enough to get an accurate reading of gravity, or it would be part of a smooth motion where you could estimate the orientation (reasonably accurately) from the motion itself; what I mean is that you're probably not going to have that many really eratic motions which require the orientation of the wiimote to be know accurately.
I'm not talking about "Shortage" as defined in theoritical ecconomics ... I'm talking about it in a common-sense fashion ...
When you have a product in a market where a poorly performing product will sell 250,000 in the month of November, a typical product will sell 500,000 units in the month of November and a Popular product will sell 1,000,000 units in that month, you can't only supply 200,000 units in that month and proclaim that you're popular because you sold out; unless the demand for the PS3 was far below the worst performing surviving console in the past 10 years the PS3 was ensured to sell out with the number of units supplied.
Essentially, your (remarkably stupid) argument is that if you have a country (like North Korea) that has had a massive drought and famine for 10 years has a shortage of food because demand is so high; the reality is that the demand for food in that country is typical of most countries (possibly less because people have been starving for so long) and a lack of any reasonable supply is causing the shortage.
The problem with it "becoming chaotic" if you sit too closely is that the Wiimote has to see both IR sources at the same time in order to tell where it is pointing; if you go too far away you would have a similar problem as the Wiimote would see both IR sources as one light source (I'd assume this would probably happen at quite a distance. Nintendo designed the Sensor bar to be optimal in most situations (between 6 and 15 feet from the television I would assume) but if that doesn't work well for you (and you're technically inclined) you could easily produce your own sensor bar by using 10 IR LEDs ( http://ledsupply.com/l2-0-ir5th30-1.php ); cut the gap between the IR sources from 1/2-2/3 for sitting close and 1.5 to 2.0 times for sitting far away.
At the same time if you have too many more IR sources in the area (say from the sun on your TV or what not) you could always double up on LEDs and reduce the sensitivity to nothing. It sucks that Nintendo didn't make the bar more adjustable (by increasing the number of LEDs and allowing you to adjust the size), and it sucks that you'd have to create your own if your problems are too consistent, but this doesn't seem like it would be too complicated of a problem that a mod couldn't fix it.
I'm a bit confused. The ability of the Wiimote to sense the angle it's at seems quite consistent, and doesn't appear to be possible to "fool", while the ability to sense motion can be fooled somewhat.
...
... For the most part, the Wii accepts a wide variety of input largely because the games have to be useable with small motions for a 3 foot tall child / little person and also usable with large motions for a 7 Foot tall adult. If Tiger Woods Golf (as an example) had a swing clinic to test your real golf swing, I doubt it would be easy to trick it with a wrist flick.
There is a reason for that
The Force of Gravity will always register as an (aproximately) 9.81 M/(s^2) acceleration to the acclerometers inside of the Wiimote; this means that you should be able to tell it's orientation in comparison to the ground pretty easily.
I'm a bit confused. The ability of the Wiimote to sense the angle it's at seems quite consistent, and doesn't appear to be possible to "fool", while the ability to sense motion can be fooled somewhat.
Personally, I'm not sure what you mean by "fool" the ability to sense motion though
What the fuck? These two statements mean exactly the same thing. The parent was exactly right: both launches had shortages, as well as Sony execs spewing FUD all over the place. Oh, and don't forget the shitty launch games.
A supply driven shortage is quite a bit different than a demand driven shortage, regardless of whether they sort-of have similar results; a demand driven shortage is caused because a product is so popular you can not meet demand, a supply shortage is where you can not supply enough units regardless of demand. Currently, the PS3 could only meet the demand of the amazingly popular NGage.
How about Disaster Day of Crisis, Project Hammer, and Forever Blue? The fact is that Nintendo is always producing new genres/franchises ... the reason people don't realize this is that none of these games get the press that a new Pokemon, Zelda, Metroid or Mario game will get.
but outside of the core franchises-- Metroid, Mario, and Kirby-- has Nintento announced any 1st party games for the Wii?
Actually, quite a few first party games have been announced (unfortunately with few details on when they will be released)... Disaster: Day of Crisis, Fire Emblem, Project H.A.M.M.E.R, Super Smash Bros: Brawl, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Battalion Wars 2, and Animal Crossing have all been announced (some of which have been released in other regions).
Earlier this year there were quite a few playable games (BWii, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Project Hammer), there are a few games which haven't been released in North America yet (Wii Play, Hajimete no Wii), and Third parties have been announcing games that will be released in Q2 and beyond (Medal of Honor Vanguard, Prince of Persia Rival Swords). [in no way is my list complete]
In general I don't expect a drought in the classical Nintendo drought sense in 2007; at the same time I don't think there has ever been a system which maintained a steady supply of games in its first year.
The PLAYSTATION 3 console plays well over 90 percent of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, allowing converts from the Xbox and GameCube systems to choose from hundreds of by now value-priced titles while waiting for the PS3 killer app. It's like buying a $370 console and getting a $130 PS2 free. Did the 3DO console play any previous console's games or any previous home computer's games?
I understand that you're attempting to make the PS3's library look bigger, and backwards compatibility is a good thing, but PS2 and Playstation games should not really be considered in the PS3's game line-up; I will accept the exception of downloadable content on the PS3/XBox 360/Wii but it should be directly compared to the other console's downloadable content. The fact is that you're spending $500/$600 to play the PS3 games and the ability to play PS2 games is an added bonus. Now, personally I don't expect the PS3 to perform quite as poorly as either the 3DO or Neo-Geo mainly because the PS3 is no where near as expensive (abou $1000 in 2006 dollars); I never owned one, but (from my limited understanding) games were not these systems problems because they both recieved a lot of really good arcade ports.
In general, it is difficult to look through gaming history and find a system like the PS3 mainly because it is awkwardly positioned (in terms of price) between the highest priced modern market leading console (Playstation) and consoles that inspite of good games and great hardware never sold because of their high price (3D0, Neo Geo); it is very similar to the Saturn, but the Saturn was one of the worst handled consoles in history.
I still find it interesting that at 18 you're allowed join the military and die but you're not allowed to drink alcohol. ... in the United States of America
Anyways, the problem with the age limit on alcohol consumption is that it gives teens/young adults the impression that drinking excessively is a mature thing to do; most people I have met who have drank from a young age tend to see excessive drinking in a completely different light than those who get to drink when they're 18-21.
I always thought that ads could be a good thing, but it turns out that I was the only one. The area I thought it would be used is that a MMO would add ads when a player logged in (a 30 second McDonalds comercial was always my example) and this would eliminate the need for a monthly fee.
Nevermind that if you look at the PS2 launch price, throw in inflation, and oh looky there! PS3 launch price.
...
PS2 Launch Price 2000 dollars = $300, adjusted for inflation $348.08
Then you try to compare it to 3D0. How many games play on the PS3? Care to hazard a guess? Anyone? Lets just say that it is, right now, exponentially more than 3D0 EVER had.
List of 3DO games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3DO_games
Does anyone remember the PS2 launch? Anyone at all? Same pile of shit, different console. Ahh, and look at how the PS2 crashed and burned...riiight.
The PS2 launched with over 700,000 systems in Japan on day one and had sold over 1 Million by the end of its first month (March 00); in North America there were 500,000 systems at launch and they sold over 1 Million by the end of 2000 (2.5 months). The PS2 was unavailable largely because the demand was so great that Sony could not produce them fast enough; the PS3 is unavailable because Sony has produced too few of units.
I actually wasn't talking directly about the "PS3" as much as I was trying to point out how far people's expectations were from reality.
Sorry, but if a 7-year old kid can swing the controller hard enough to lose her grip, snap the strap, and still nail the TV hard enough to damage the screen, there's something wrong.
... then again, if you produce a TV that can't withstand the force of a 7 year old throwing something at the screen should you be held accountable? After all a moronic 7 year old might throw the remote at the screen ...
I haven't read about a case like this
It would be one thing if the Wii wasn't intended for children. However, even Nintendo's demo kiosks show happy smiling children and adults swinging their arms with enough force to chuck the remote across the room.
So, since I see comercials of happy adults and children eating potato chips it is the manufacturers fault that I eat 2Kg of chips a day and become 400 lbs?
And even if there wasn't a problem, why did Nintendo release the Wii in Europe with a much thicker lanyard compared to the US and Japan?
Who knows why they changed, maybe the new strap is less fray resistent or maybe their supplier could no longer supply the larger strap. The reason they replaced the strap was because there were reports of people breaking their TVs and Nintendo wanted to limit their liability by ensuring that the only excuse for this ever happening was that the user disregarded their warning screen and didn't have their wrist strap attached.
If your commercials show beautiful people thrashing about in the throes of videogame ecstasy, you have to expect that consumers are going to want to do the same. But those models in your commercials are trained professionals working in a controlled environment. As soon as you take that lethal Wii remote out into the Real World, accidents are possible, even likely.
Does this mean I can sue beer companies when I go drinking, hit-on women and get slapped?
Again, if you're developing for consumers, you need to assume that a significant portion of your buyers will be dummies. Smart companies spend time testing their products in "dummy" sitations precisely for this reason: to figure out what bad things can happen when consumers use their products in a way other than was originally intended around a theoretical white board.
...
Kudos to Nintendo for trying to fix their fuck-up, but it was a fuck-up, and one that could have been avoided with a better "beta" program.
Honestly, this is something a testing program would never catch
The strap only breaks when adults (one would assume reasonably large or athletic men) push the limits beyond what most people would feel comfortable with; when someone is testing something for a company (in particular if they are watched testing something) they react to it like it was glass. The limitations of the strap could only be tested by morons who will treat a $40 controller like it was a $2 toy they got with their happy meal.
PS3 being #1 makes sense ...
...
Last year at this time everyone was bashing how poor the XBox 360 launch and how expensive it turned out, many people even said "Why would you spend $400 on an XBox 360 when you can buy the more powerful PS3 (that comes with a Blu-Ray player) for less?"
It's amazing how much change 12 months can bring
What did they actually promise? They haven't been hyping any actual numbers or targets. Just an idea. So you can you not live up ot "better graphics" and "more complicated AI". The Ps2 did actually deliver on almost all of it's promises with a bit of a caviet that the AA sucked. Think MGS3, Ico, Shadow of the collosus, FFXII. All delivered solid graphics on ancient hardware.
...
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Sony never delivers on their promise, but thats not saying their hardware is bad
There were all kinds of promises around the PS2 that were not met; you'll quite often see someone mention how the PS2 was supposed to have "Toy Story graphics in Realtime" or that games like Metal Gear were supposed to be so detailed and interactive that you could "shoot paperclips off of a desk".
Now, the PS3 has had a lot of promises made that may or may not come true
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VRVAVdF8HLc
I actually saw that quote from a completely different perspective ...
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After hearing for months about how difficult the PS3 was to program for, I thought the quote almost sounded like he was admiting that the PS3's 'theoritical' performance would be far greater than the PS3's 'Actual' performance
Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect he meant the quote to be taken as "Think of how great games will be in the future" but I think it really says "You're paying $600 for a system based on promised performance which the PS3 will never meet".
Or, in the alternative, you could maybe not let go! I have a Wii and have played it enereggetically and have never even come close to throwing it across. Now has my 13 year old stepson or my wife or any of the half-dozen other kids and adults who ahve come over and played it.
Don't let go.
If my 8 year old niece can flail her arms for 20 minutes straight while playing Wii Sports Boxing, I think most adults should be able to hold onto it under normal usage. Even if an adult drops the Wiimote under normal usage the strap apears to be able to handle (about) 50lbs of force so the strap should be able to prevent the Wiimote from flying across the room. Even if the strap broke the Wiimote is not heavy enough to break a TV at the speed it would be thrown at under normal use.
The fact that the Wiimote is flying out of people's hands with enough force to break the strap and a person's TV makes me think that these are not normal use. Now, I think it would have been better for Nintendo to provide a strap that can handle even moronic usage, but companies are not responsible for moronic use of their product.
Ah what a great fucking country this is then when the answer to all the problems is "well at least we're not Iran".
How bad do things have to get before you actually do give a shit?
Just because I say the USA isn't as bad as Iran doesn't mean I don't care about the issues, I just don't think that it is reasonable to claim the US' problems are on the same scale as Iran; essentially, the initial comparison was like claiming a C- student (the USA) was as bad as the F average student who murdered his Mother, Raped 3 women and burned down several buildings.
Sometimes American's sound like children who didn't get an XBox 360 rather than the PS3 they wanted for Christmas and then throw a tantrum.
How often does the Government of the United States of America execute Journalists for speaking out against the government? How many citizens have been executed without due-process?
Currenly, every western democracy has problems but in comparison to countries like Iran their problems are nonexistent.
For the most part this is really a non-issue for most game developers ...
With the exception of Massive studios, most games that are developed licence a game engine from a third party vendor; large developers will choose the Doom 3, Unreal 3, or Source Engine while smaller studios will look for something less expensive (and most indies moving towards Torque or open source engines). The fact that Microsoft has made cross platform development for the XBox 360 and PC easier only means that Epic will require less time to create an engine; at the same time Epic has the resources to create an engine that works on (practically) all platforms regardless of the cost associated with it.