Actually, I think it would be a Bad idea for Apple to produce a games system (regardless of whether they bought a company or not) but it could be a good idea for them to partner with a company.
From my very limited understanding the most effective way to sell something is to give someone first hand experience with it, followed by word of mouth, followed by recomendation from a trusted 'neutral' resource, followed by good research materials (mostly web-based now a days), and then finally active marketing. People tune out comercials unless they are highly interested in the product.
I suspect that why companies want people who have bought their product to feel secure about their purchase is that they will then let other people use their product (come over play my PS3), or they will recommend the product to their friend (wow the PS3's visuals are so amazing).
I don't think Nintendo ever claimed that there was going to be 1,000,000 systems on launch day; I think there were a lot of rumors and speculation that if Nintendo was trying for 2,000,000 by January 1st that 1,000,000 of those would apear on the first day.
From what I understand Nintendo Shipped about 400,000 to 500,000 on day one with 200,000 to 250,000 every week following that; I have also heard that NPD's sales numbers for november end on November 26th so it is possible that they're missing 4 days of sales (and potentially 1 shipment), I don't know if this is true. All I know is that I have a friend who has been keeping touch with several retailers and is going back to stores several times a week (after they are supposed to get a shipment) but being that he can't get there when the store opens he has yet to be able to get a Wii. It seems that Nintendo is supplying a lot of units but can not match demand.
A long time ago (probably a few years ago anyways) I was talking to someone in marketing about how most car comercials were awful and didn't make me want to spend $25,000+ and her reply was "Most comercials are not about attracting customers but are actually about making existing customers secure in their decision"
The fact is that there are so many PS3 comercials because Sony wants to make the fanboys think that the $600 they spent makes them own a cool product.
Well, if you consider that the combined sales of the PS2 and PSP do not surpass 333,000 units per month (on average) in Japan it may be more difficult than you think; their combined total so far this year has been 3,069,000 making for an average of 279,000 ( http://www.vgcharts.org/japyearly.php ). Also consider that the PS2 (the most successful console in Japaneese history ) has sold 22 Million Consoles since it was released on March 2000 (meaning that it has been out for 5 years 8 months, or 68 months) only averaged 323,000 units per month.
It will be a very long time before the PS3 outsells the XBox 360 if it ever does...
... that it is the UI that distinguishes this consol the most from others given Nintindo's past failures to do the same on it's original console. Nintindo's ingenuity in this respect is not new--remember the Power Glove? I bought one of those... man that was a waist of a $100.
Well, Nintendo has attempted a lot of different user interfaces...
Nintendo has had some pretty good ideas in the past and the only (real) interface failure they had (the Virtual Boy) was caused more by limitations in technology than that it was a bad idea. In 5-15 years (when small LCD screens are high enough quality and inexpensive enough) I expect to see another major manufacturer attempt a virtual-reality console; this time I expect they will ensure that it is a light weight head set that people wear rather than a porthole people look into which gives them a neckache.
On a side note, I personally think that if you look at the ammount of processing power in the PSP (and how nice the PSP screen is) as a company it would make sense to start R&D on a Virtual Reality console today for it to be ready when the component cost comes down.
I don't know what the number is, but once you get a lead of a certain size you can essentially run away with the generation; after your userbase lead is large enough you will get all cross platform development and you're likely to get most of the exclusive content as well.
The PS2 had a 80 Million unit lead because they started off getting a 10 Million unit lead...
It doesn't really matter how you get to be the leading console as long as you're leading (See PS2)... Technological advantage is meaningless when a developer is trying to make a buisness case to te publisher to create an exclusive game for your platform; all that matters is how large of a userbase the system has, and how many potential sales you will lose by not developing it for another system.
I was doing the arithmetic a couple of days ago and realized that, if Microsoft and Sony both meet sales projections, Microsoft will have an 8 Million unit lead worldwide. This lead would mean that Sony would have to sell (about) 333,000 more PS3 systems than Microsoft sells XBox 360 systems for the next 2 years to catch up to Microsoft; in order to lead in all regions almost all these sales would have to come from North America and Europe. Until the PS3 matches the sales of the XBox 360 they will have difficulty getting exclusive game development for the system making it very difficult to sell systems.
Make the worst beta testers. I hope to go bungie looks at the people who signed up near the middle first. They are more likely to give honest feed back about what is wrong with the game.
Well, the problem is the people you would want to be part of the Beta test are probably the least likely to sign up for a beta test.
When do we say enough is enough and just stop this cancerous shrinkage? How small do transistors really have to be?!
We can say enough is enough when I have more processing power than I know what to do with it in a laptop that is small, lightweight and has 18 hours of battery life. Ultimately, I think we'll get there in 10 to 15 years.
I think that if it is effective and they are using this non-lethal weapon in place of a lethal weapon then it is a good idea. The question is whether they can develop other non-lethal weapons which are as effective (or more effective) that do less long term damage.
Personally, as a long time PC gamer I can honestly say that "resolution" has never been that much of a consern for me; the thing that bothers me is the artifacts that typically come from low-resolution images. As a result of this I tend to play most of my games at a resolution between 800x600 and 1280x1024 with 8xAA and 8xAF...
I know this goes against what some people will say but I would rather run a game at 800x600 with 8xAA and 8xAF then have the same game at 1280x1024 with no AA and AF.
"For a long time now, researchers and scientists have used computer simulations in the physical sciences: physics, chemistry, and engineering. But what about biology?"
When I read that it seemed to me that there was an implication that simulations involving Biology were a new thing; my point was to say "hey look, Biology has been looked at for awhile!" I realize that the early work in Biology was mostly pretty limited in use or understanding, but I still believe that the connection between Biology and Computer Science isn't a new thing it has just recently matured.
The argument for climate change and human influence thereof is not remotely based on that sort of juvenile argument. Asserting so is now getting to be a dangerous libel. Would people make similar assertions about the results of biochemistry over the last 30 years? No. Would Slashdot writers make similar assertions about how those engineers were just fooling themselves about how semiconductors worked?
There is a fundamental difference between the Science of Bio-Chemestry/Engineering and the "Science" of Climate-Science: in Bio-Chemestry/Engineering you produce a hypothesis (possibly creating a computer model), you collect data and test your data against your hypothesis, demonstrate that your hypothesis is true (by creating a biological compound/semi-conductor), and then publish your findings where they are rigorously tested for validity by your "peers"; in Climate Science you come up with a hypothesis, produce a computer model, publish your findings where the your "peers" who are part of the "consensus on climate change" accept your findings almost automatically.
Don't for a second think that the review of Climate-Science is anywhere near as tough as most other scientific fields; in order to demonstrate that your biological compound has an effect on a disease, you have to demonstrate a quantitative effect within 1% 99 times out of 100 whereas in Climate Science there is no need to be accurate with your claims regardless of whether you're making a short term or long term prediction (whether you claim that the world is cooling in the 1970's or that 2006 will have 17 named tropical storms with no consequences). In general, Climate Science is like the "Independant" studies of herbal medications that take 20 people and give them the medication (with no control group) and claim that there was an effect from the drug.
I'm not arguing that "Long term Global Climate Change isn't happening" or that "Global Warming is not man made" but I am saying that these claims have not been proven (or statistically demonstrated) and if this were any other field people would be looking at these claims with great skepticism. Trust me, I have read many of the papers and am familiar with most of the arguments about climate change and there is no proof of their claims; there are lots of arguments with loose correlations which could all be challenged if someone were motivated enough. Does an argument being challenged make it wrong? No, but it would enable a lot more trust in the science behind it; basically, no field should have papers that are not discredited and the more discredited papers you find on a subject the more you can trust the "valid" ones.
Bioinformatics has been a growing area of research in Computer Science for over a decade now...
Everything from developing algorithms to produce leafs/trees (for graphics) and to model pond-slime growth (for optimization problems) has been studied for awhile; hell, genetic algorithms and neural networks have been around for awhile.
Well, obviously there's a liberal bias to science. How exactly would you have conservative science? It wouldn't really be science if we just stuck to tradition and never tried anything new.
Or were you saying that people in Academia are more likely to be Democrats and thus you have an irrational belief that their science is wrong and biased?
In modern politics "Conservative" and "Liberal" have very little to do with the beliefs of the parties which claim those names (or are associated with those views). I can't speak about American politics but in most countries the Conservative Party holds views that were traditionally associated with Liberals, and the Liberal Party holds very traditional Socialist Views.
Outside of practical fields of study (Buisness, Engineering, and Computer Science), and Ecconomics, most Academics have an anti-corporate outlook largely because they're sheltered from buisness; even in Computer Science there are lots of professors who think OSS is morally good whereas For-Profit software is evil. This slant is what is typically refered to as the "liberal-bias".
The problem isn't that the science being done is "liberal" or "conservative", but that there is an unchecked bias which may impact results which exists at (pretty much) every major university.
Sarcasm aside, the idea that we cause Global Warming is just as absurd as the idea that we can stop it. Best we can do is adapt and invest in beach-front property on the Nevada border.
Well, saying that we have an impact on our environment and our actions may have an impact on the whether is not as foolish as you may think; I think the foolish part is that before we've come up with conclusive evidence (or at least a very compelling argument) that we are undergoing a long term climate change, we have concluded that we're the cause of it through the use of Green-House gasses.
By loggin large portions of the world, dumping chemicals through out the ocean, filling the sky with polution, and sending tons of dust in to the atmosphere (through nuclear tests) we have had a massive impact on the enviroment. The question is, even if the world's temperature is increasing how do we know what it was caused by? If we don't know what it is caused by how do we know that it is bad?
There are two main problems I see with climate change science, one is that there is a belief that scientific consensus is the same as scientific proof (if this were true the world would have been flat in the 1400's) and the other problem is that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence.
The fact is that even the evidence that shows we are undergoing a warming trend fails to demonstrate that this is a long term warming trend, that the warming trend is man-made, or that green-house gasses have had an impact on the temperature change. The argument is usually along the lines "We have demonstrated that the Earth's temperature has risen 1 degree in the past 100 years, and at the same time man-made green house gasses have increased 10 times so the impact from man made greenhouse gasses is." In many cases you could replace "Increase in Man made greenhouse gasses" with "Reduction in Pirates" and conclude that the world is warming because we lack pirates.
What really bothers me is that whenever anyone attacks a study that makes questionable claims people automatically question their motives; all good science can withstand attacks from anyone regardless of their motives. The fact that these studies are treated like they're glass really makes me doubt how valid they are.
Every day there is an argument as to why someone should care whether their gaming company of choice should turn a profit, and I think Sega demonstrates why it is important. Back in the Genesis days Sega was nearly as good as Nintendo was at producing a large number of high quality titles; as the Sega CD, Sega 32X, and Sega Saturn drained Sega of their profitability the quality of their product diminished because they could no longer afford to produce the high quailty games. The Dreamcast had many gems, but most of Sega's games demonstrated their problem in that they were reasonably unique but lacked the polish to get the most out of the game.
Today Sega's games are (pretty much) released 'on schedule' whether or not they're complete or not; this means that Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog are terrible games that never stood a chance of being good in the first place.
Yeah, just like nobody bought the PS2 for it's DVD player capabilities (with the games being a bonus) in the system's early years.. Oh wait, that's wrong, a lot of people did!
History proves you wrong. This is the exact same situation and Sony is betting on it.
So if Sony had released the PS3 with a Uber Holographic-Movie Disc (which will work on your Holographic-TV that will be relased in 2020) for only $20,000 you think people will line-up to buy one?
The fact is that the PS2 sold as a DVD player because DVD was taking off (at the time my local Blockbuster was carying a handful of DVD's for every new-release movie), everyone wanted a PS2, and the PS2 was within the typical price range of a videogame console. Essentially, the PS2 worked as a DVD player because it was a DVD player and a videogame console that was the same price as a DVD player and a traditional price for videogame console at a time when everyone wanted a DVD player.
Blu-Ray/HD-DVD are not popular mainly because there are too few movies, the movies are too expensive, and they're not readily available to buy or rent; the PS3 as a movie player is more expensive than a HD-DVD player, is much more expensive than the traditional game console, at a time where people don't care about HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players.
I wasn't really intending for those questions to be answered... they were mostly examples of what Sony should be answering...
Anyways, I could be completely uninformed but I thought the purpose of the XNA creators club was a very inexpensive way for hobbiest/indie developers to get access to the XBox 360 to develop products that could eventually be released on XBox Live. Sonys Other OS Installer isn't really about this from what I gather...
I'm not sure if the graphics would necessarily be cheaper. You still have to hire graphic and 3D artists to design them, but they're more constrained. Perhaps they don't have to spend as much time on detailing a texture, or adding more polygons, I dunno. Maybe someone in the industry could elaborate on this?
Since moving to 3D games every generation of hardware leads to Game Development Costs becoming about 4 times as expensive as they were in the previous generation. There are two reasons for this, the content becomes much more detailed and you require far more content to make the game feel right.
In the N64/Playstation era. most models were simple and only had one very simple texture. You could re-use the same "soldier" model (or whatever) over and over because no one really noticed the repetition. Also an office was a room with a desk, chair and a file cabinet.
In the Gamecube/PS2/XBox era. models became more complex (hey, that guy actually has fingers) and used multi-texturing and some effects (bump mapping) to create a model. Re-using models continued at a much lower level than in the previous generation because people started to notice "clones" if they were over-used. Also an office was a room with a desk, chair, file cabinet, computer, desk lamp, garbage can and book shelf.
In this upcomming generation (PS3/XBox 360) models are far more complex, textures are far higher resolution, and the models are covered in texture based effects (normal maps, material properties, etc.). Re-using models is a massive problem because people will automatically pick up on the fact that you're using the same character model (or book shelf model) all the time. A office in this generation is a desk, chair, file cabinet, computer, telephone, desk lamp, book shelf, pens, coffee mug, paper, photos of a person's family, calendar, and all the drawers in the desk are filled with misc. items.
From a porting perspective, it would probably be far easier to generate your content for the Wii and upgrade everything for the PS3/XBox 360 than to go the other way; the reason for this is that it is easier to add complexity than it is to take compelexity away.
Sony started to turn a profit on each PS2 quite a while ago, but the total profits from hardware alone would be tiny in comparison to licencing fees from software. Last time I checked there were close to 750,000,000 copies of PS2 games sold world wide, with Sony making about $6 to $8 on licencing each game (for a grand total of about $5 Billion); to get similar profits from hardware Sony would have had to make a $50 profit from every PS2 shipped.
What I was talking about when I was refering to Nintendo's business strategy being different than Sony is that Nintendo sold about 100,000,000 pieces of first party software on the Gamecube, which means that Nintendo brought in about $3 Billion from first party sales alone on one of the least popular consoles (that survived) in history. I wasn't knocking Sony or anything, but I don't believe that Sony would be profitable if there system was selling in the same range as the Gamecube was.
Sony has not let its buyers down with a console yet.
Everyone who buys a Sony console knows there will be many games for it. With that kind of franchaise amd market mementum, there is no way sony will skip releasing a Paystation 4.
The only question is when will technology that is exciting enough to display the new games be ready?
This may be true, but the same could have been said about Nintendo when they were wrapping up the SNES. You could say there's a first time for everything...
I know that Sony likes to hype early and hype often but they really should be focusing their hype on the PS3. Why do I care about Blu-Ray or The Cell processor? What about the PS3 makes it worth more than the XBox 360? What about the PS3 justifies the price tag?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I think it would be a Bad idea for Apple to produce a games system (regardless of whether they bought a company or not) but it could be a good idea for them to partner with a company.
From my very limited understanding the most effective way to sell something is to give someone first hand experience with it, followed by word of mouth, followed by recomendation from a trusted 'neutral' resource, followed by good research materials (mostly web-based now a days), and then finally active marketing. People tune out comercials unless they are highly interested in the product.
I suspect that why companies want people who have bought their product to feel secure about their purchase is that they will then let other people use their product (come over play my PS3), or they will recommend the product to their friend (wow the PS3's visuals are so amazing).
I don't think Nintendo ever claimed that there was going to be 1,000,000 systems on launch day; I think there were a lot of rumors and speculation that if Nintendo was trying for 2,000,000 by January 1st that 1,000,000 of those would apear on the first day.
From what I understand Nintendo Shipped about 400,000 to 500,000 on day one with 200,000 to 250,000 every week following that; I have also heard that NPD's sales numbers for november end on November 26th so it is possible that they're missing 4 days of sales (and potentially 1 shipment), I don't know if this is true. All I know is that I have a friend who has been keeping touch with several retailers and is going back to stores several times a week (after they are supposed to get a shipment) but being that he can't get there when the store opens he has yet to be able to get a Wii. It seems that Nintendo is supplying a lot of units but can not match demand.
A long time ago (probably a few years ago anyways) I was talking to someone in marketing about how most car comercials were awful and didn't make me want to spend $25,000+ and her reply was "Most comercials are not about attracting customers but are actually about making existing customers secure in their decision"
The fact is that there are so many PS3 comercials because Sony wants to make the fanboys think that the $600 they spent makes them own a cool product.
Well, if you consider that the combined sales of the PS2 and PSP do not surpass 333,000 units per month (on average) in Japan it may be more difficult than you think; their combined total so far this year has been 3,069,000 making for an average of 279,000 ( http://www.vgcharts.org/japyearly.php ). Also consider that the PS2 (the most successful console in Japaneese history ) has sold 22 Million Consoles since it was released on March 2000 (meaning that it has been out for 5 years 8 months, or 68 months) only averaged 323,000 units per month.
It will be a very long time before the PS3 outsells the XBox 360 if it ever does...
... that it is the UI that distinguishes this consol the most from others given Nintindo's past failures to do the same on it's original console. Nintindo's ingenuity in this respect is not new--remember the Power Glove? I bought one of those... man that was a waist of a $100.
...
...
Well, Nintendo has attempted a lot of different user interfaces
The d-pad (game & watch / NES)
Light Gun (NES)
Shoulder Buttons (SNES)
Analogue Stick (N64)
Rumble (N64)
VR (Virtual Boy)
Dual Screen (Nintendo DS)
Touch Screen (Nintendo DS)
Also Mattel produced the Power Glove
Nintendo has had some pretty good ideas in the past and the only (real) interface failure they had (the Virtual Boy) was caused more by limitations in technology than that it was a bad idea. In 5-15 years (when small LCD screens are high enough quality and inexpensive enough) I expect to see another major manufacturer attempt a virtual-reality console; this time I expect they will ensure that it is a light weight head set that people wear rather than a porthole people look into which gives them a neckache.
On a side note, I personally think that if you look at the ammount of processing power in the PSP (and how nice the PSP screen is) as a company it would make sense to start R&D on a Virtual Reality console today for it to be ready when the component cost comes down.
I don't know what the number is, but once you get a lead of a certain size you can essentially run away with the generation; after your userbase lead is large enough you will get all cross platform development and you're likely to get most of the exclusive content as well.
...
The PS2 had a 80 Million unit lead because they started off getting a 10 Million unit lead
It doesn't really matter how you get to be the leading console as long as you're leading (See PS2) ... Technological advantage is meaningless when a developer is trying to make a buisness case to te publisher to create an exclusive game for your platform; all that matters is how large of a userbase the system has, and how many potential sales you will lose by not developing it for another system.
I was doing the arithmetic a couple of days ago and realized that, if Microsoft and Sony both meet sales projections, Microsoft will have an 8 Million unit lead worldwide. This lead would mean that Sony would have to sell (about) 333,000 more PS3 systems than Microsoft sells XBox 360 systems for the next 2 years to catch up to Microsoft; in order to lead in all regions almost all these sales would have to come from North America and Europe. Until the PS3 matches the sales of the XBox 360 they will have difficulty getting exclusive game development for the system making it very difficult to sell systems.
Make the worst beta testers. I hope to go bungie looks at the people who signed up near the middle first. They are more likely to give honest feed back about what is wrong with the game.
Well, the problem is the people you would want to be part of the Beta test are probably the least likely to sign up for a beta test.
When do we say enough is enough and just stop this cancerous shrinkage? How small do transistors really have to be?!
We can say enough is enough when I have more processing power than I know what to do with it in a laptop that is small, lightweight and has 18 hours of battery life. Ultimately, I think we'll get there in 10 to 15 years.
I think that if it is effective and they are using this non-lethal weapon in place of a lethal weapon then it is a good idea. The question is whether they can develop other non-lethal weapons which are as effective (or more effective) that do less long term damage.
Personally, as a long time PC gamer I can honestly say that "resolution" has never been that much of a consern for me; the thing that bothers me is the artifacts that typically come from low-resolution images. As a result of this I tend to play most of my games at a resolution between 800x600 and 1280x1024 with 8xAA and 8xAF ...
I know this goes against what some people will say but I would rather run a game at 800x600 with 8xAA and 8xAF then have the same game at 1280x1024 with no AA and AF.
My comment was mostly from the quote:
"For a long time now, researchers and scientists have used computer simulations in the physical sciences: physics, chemistry, and engineering. But what about biology?"
When I read that it seemed to me that there was an implication that simulations involving Biology were a new thing; my point was to say "hey look, Biology has been looked at for awhile!" I realize that the early work in Biology was mostly pretty limited in use or understanding, but I still believe that the connection between Biology and Computer Science isn't a new thing it has just recently matured.
The argument for climate change and human influence thereof is not remotely based on that sort of juvenile argument.
Asserting so is now getting to be a dangerous libel.
Would people make similar assertions about the results of biochemistry over the last 30 years? No.
Would Slashdot writers make similar assertions about how those engineers were just fooling themselves
about how semiconductors worked?
There is a fundamental difference between the Science of Bio-Chemestry/Engineering and the "Science" of Climate-Science: in Bio-Chemestry/Engineering you produce a hypothesis (possibly creating a computer model), you collect data and test your data against your hypothesis, demonstrate that your hypothesis is true (by creating a biological compound/semi-conductor), and then publish your findings where they are rigorously tested for validity by your "peers"; in Climate Science you come up with a hypothesis, produce a computer model, publish your findings where the your "peers" who are part of the "consensus on climate change" accept your findings almost automatically.
Don't for a second think that the review of Climate-Science is anywhere near as tough as most other scientific fields; in order to demonstrate that your biological compound has an effect on a disease, you have to demonstrate a quantitative effect within 1% 99 times out of 100 whereas in Climate Science there is no need to be accurate with your claims regardless of whether you're making a short term or long term prediction (whether you claim that the world is cooling in the 1970's or that 2006 will have 17 named tropical storms with no consequences). In general, Climate Science is like the "Independant" studies of herbal medications that take 20 people and give them the medication (with no control group) and claim that there was an effect from the drug.
I'm not arguing that "Long term Global Climate Change isn't happening" or that "Global Warming is not man made" but I am saying that these claims have not been proven (or statistically demonstrated) and if this were any other field people would be looking at these claims with great skepticism. Trust me, I have read many of the papers and am familiar with most of the arguments about climate change and there is no proof of their claims; there are lots of arguments with loose correlations which could all be challenged if someone were motivated enough. Does an argument being challenged make it wrong? No, but it would enable a lot more trust in the science behind it; basically, no field should have papers that are not discredited and the more discredited papers you find on a subject the more you can trust the "valid" ones.
Bioinformatics has been a growing area of research in Computer Science for over a decade now ...
Everything from developing algorithms to produce leafs/trees (for graphics) and to model pond-slime growth (for optimization problems) has been studied for awhile; hell, genetic algorithms and neural networks have been around for awhile.
Well, obviously there's a liberal bias to science. How exactly would you have conservative science? It wouldn't really be science if we just stuck to tradition and never tried anything new.
Or were you saying that people in Academia are more likely to be Democrats and thus you have an irrational belief that their science is wrong and biased?
In modern politics "Conservative" and "Liberal" have very little to do with the beliefs of the parties which claim those names (or are associated with those views). I can't speak about American politics but in most countries the Conservative Party holds views that were traditionally associated with Liberals, and the Liberal Party holds very traditional Socialist Views.
Outside of practical fields of study (Buisness, Engineering, and Computer Science), and Ecconomics, most Academics have an anti-corporate outlook largely because they're sheltered from buisness; even in Computer Science there are lots of professors who think OSS is morally good whereas For-Profit software is evil. This slant is what is typically refered to as the "liberal-bias".
The problem isn't that the science being done is "liberal" or "conservative", but that there is an unchecked bias which may impact results which exists at (pretty much) every major university.
Sarcasm aside, the idea that we cause Global Warming is just as absurd as the idea that we can stop it. Best we can do is adapt and invest in beach-front property on the Nevada border.
Well, saying that we have an impact on our environment and our actions may have an impact on the whether is not as foolish as you may think; I think the foolish part is that before we've come up with conclusive evidence (or at least a very compelling argument) that we are undergoing a long term climate change, we have concluded that we're the cause of it through the use of Green-House gasses.
By loggin large portions of the world, dumping chemicals through out the ocean, filling the sky with polution, and sending tons of dust in to the atmosphere (through nuclear tests) we have had a massive impact on the enviroment. The question is, even if the world's temperature is increasing how do we know what it was caused by? If we don't know what it is caused by how do we know that it is bad?
There are two main problems I see with climate change science, one is that there is a belief that scientific consensus is the same as scientific proof (if this were true the world would have been flat in the 1400's) and the other problem is that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence.
." In many cases you could replace "Increase in Man made greenhouse gasses" with "Reduction in Pirates" and conclude that the world is warming because we lack pirates.
The fact is that even the evidence that shows we are undergoing a warming trend fails to demonstrate that this is a long term warming trend, that the warming trend is man-made, or that green-house gasses have had an impact on the temperature change. The argument is usually along the lines "We have demonstrated that the Earth's temperature has risen 1 degree in the past 100 years, and at the same time man-made green house gasses have increased 10 times so the impact from man made greenhouse gasses is
What really bothers me is that whenever anyone attacks a study that makes questionable claims people automatically question their motives; all good science can withstand attacks from anyone regardless of their motives. The fact that these studies are treated like they're glass really makes me doubt how valid they are.
Every day there is an argument as to why someone should care whether their gaming company of choice should turn a profit, and I think Sega demonstrates why it is important. Back in the Genesis days Sega was nearly as good as Nintendo was at producing a large number of high quality titles; as the Sega CD, Sega 32X, and Sega Saturn drained Sega of their profitability the quality of their product diminished because they could no longer afford to produce the high quailty games. The Dreamcast had many gems, but most of Sega's games demonstrated their problem in that they were reasonably unique but lacked the polish to get the most out of the game.
Today Sega's games are (pretty much) released 'on schedule' whether or not they're complete or not; this means that Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog are terrible games that never stood a chance of being good in the first place.
Yeah, just like nobody bought the PS2 for it's DVD player capabilities (with the games being a bonus) in the system's early years.. Oh wait, that's wrong, a lot of people did!
History proves you wrong. This is the exact same situation and Sony is betting on it.
So if Sony had released the PS3 with a Uber Holographic-Movie Disc (which will work on your Holographic-TV that will be relased in 2020) for only $20,000 you think people will line-up to buy one?
The fact is that the PS2 sold as a DVD player because DVD was taking off (at the time my local Blockbuster was carying a handful of DVD's for every new-release movie), everyone wanted a PS2, and the PS2 was within the typical price range of a videogame console. Essentially, the PS2 worked as a DVD player because it was a DVD player and a videogame console that was the same price as a DVD player and a traditional price for videogame console at a time when everyone wanted a DVD player.
Blu-Ray/HD-DVD are not popular mainly because there are too few movies, the movies are too expensive, and they're not readily available to buy or rent; the PS3 as a movie player is more expensive than a HD-DVD player, is much more expensive than the traditional game console, at a time where people don't care about HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players.
I wasn't really intending for those questions to be answered ... they were mostly examples of what Sony should be answering ...
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Anyways, I could be completely uninformed but I thought the purpose of the XNA creators club was a very inexpensive way for hobbiest/indie developers to get access to the XBox 360 to develop products that could eventually be released on XBox Live. Sonys Other OS Installer isn't really about this from what I gather
I'm not sure if the graphics would necessarily be cheaper. You still have to hire graphic and 3D artists to design them, but they're more constrained. Perhaps they don't have to spend as much time on detailing a texture, or adding more polygons, I dunno. Maybe someone in the industry could elaborate on this?
Since moving to 3D games every generation of hardware leads to Game Development Costs becoming about 4 times as expensive as they were in the previous generation. There are two reasons for this, the content becomes much more detailed and you require far more content to make the game feel right.
In the N64/Playstation era. most models were simple and only had one very simple texture. You could re-use the same "soldier" model (or whatever) over and over because no one really noticed the repetition. Also an office was a room with a desk, chair and a file cabinet.
In the Gamecube/PS2/XBox era. models became more complex (hey, that guy actually has fingers) and used multi-texturing and some effects (bump mapping) to create a model. Re-using models continued at a much lower level than in the previous generation because people started to notice "clones" if they were over-used. Also an office was a room with a desk, chair, file cabinet, computer, desk lamp, garbage can and book shelf.
In this upcomming generation (PS3/XBox 360) models are far more complex, textures are far higher resolution, and the models are covered in texture based effects (normal maps, material properties, etc.). Re-using models is a massive problem because people will automatically pick up on the fact that you're using the same character model (or book shelf model) all the time. A office in this generation is a desk, chair, file cabinet, computer, telephone, desk lamp, book shelf, pens, coffee mug, paper, photos of a person's family, calendar, and all the drawers in the desk are filled with misc. items.
From a porting perspective, it would probably be far easier to generate your content for the Wii and upgrade everything for the PS3/XBox 360 than to go the other way; the reason for this is that it is easier to add complexity than it is to take compelexity away.
Sony started to turn a profit on each PS2 quite a while ago, but the total profits from hardware alone would be tiny in comparison to licencing fees from software. Last time I checked there were close to 750,000,000 copies of PS2 games sold world wide, with Sony making about $6 to $8 on licencing each game (for a grand total of about $5 Billion); to get similar profits from hardware Sony would have had to make a $50 profit from every PS2 shipped.
What I was talking about when I was refering to Nintendo's business strategy being different than Sony is that Nintendo sold about 100,000,000 pieces of first party software on the Gamecube, which means that Nintendo brought in about $3 Billion from first party sales alone on one of the least popular consoles (that survived) in history. I wasn't knocking Sony or anything, but I don't believe that Sony would be profitable if there system was selling in the same range as the Gamecube was.
Sony has not let its buyers down with a console yet.
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Everyone who buys a Sony console knows there will be many games for it. With that kind of franchaise amd market mementum, there is no way sony will skip releasing a Paystation 4.
The only question is when will technology that is exciting enough to display the new games be ready?
This may be true, but the same could have been said about Nintendo when they were wrapping up the SNES. You could say there's a first time for everything
I know that Sony likes to hype early and hype often but they really should be focusing their hype on the PS3. Why do I care about Blu-Ray or The Cell processor? What about the PS3 makes it worth more than the XBox 360? What about the PS3 justifies the price tag?