I have had conversations from people who were more casual gamers who complained that Sony is producing a controller that has non-chargeable/non-replaceable batteries, that the controller has lost rumble, and that to take advantage of the features in the PS3 they'd need to spend thousands of dollars on a TV. Mind you, these people were aware of the price and (as I've said before) people usually decide what they want and then justify the purchase; they may have decided they couldn't afford a PS3 and then looked into why they didn't like it.
Anyone who thinks that a gaming company can't lose is a fanboy. The real question is whether Sony has already lost with the PS3; I would say no, but I'm not writing an article for a website.
What I think is interesting is the Playstation brand has been searched less than the Nintendo brand over the past 6 months:
Not really representative of anything except that the Wii and Nintnedo DS has attracted more attention to Nintendo than the PS3 and PSP have for the Playstation name.
Note: Please don't do any searches with PS2 in them to demonstrate dominance of Sony, PS2 is used in a lot of searches (like PS2 Keyboard, PS2 Mouse) and google trends can not split them. If you compare PS3, Wii, PSP, and DS you get the following
Generating more revinue is not the same as being consumed by more people...
Consider that most games cost about $50 and the cost to see a movie at the theater is about $12.50 which means that you would need 4 times as many people to go see a movie than to buy a game to have similar revinue numbers. Now, remember you're comparing Videogames to box office and not the total movie industry which includes rentals and DVD sales and pay-per-view so (all in all) it would not be too unreasonable to assume that 10 times as many people watched movies than played videogames.
I do think my point was missed though so I'll ask you a couple of questions, how many people do you know that don't watch television or movies? How many people do you know who don't play videogames? Odds are that you know far more people who don't play videogames than you know who don't watch movies or television. The point was that as long as the majority of people have little interest in the gaming industry it will be very difficult to protect it from political attacks.
The system mover for the PS3 is Resistance: Fall of Man.
Kind of funny that the two big system movers both end up being futuristic combat titles
It is not really funny but makes a good argument for people who say that the videogame industry is becomming far more generic as development costs increase.
I honestly don't think that the political problems surrounding content in videogames has anything to do with the average (or assumed average) age of gamers; the real problem is that (inspite of what we gamers think) videogame playing is really not a mainstream activity.
If you want to understand what I mean, compare videogames to watching Movies/TV and you'll notice how widespread Television and Movie consumption is compared to videogames; I spent a year without watching any television and movies (largely because of school and social life) and I could hardly talk to people I didn't know because I had never seen the latest TV shows (Smallville and 24 at the time). Videogames (as a guestimate) are probably played by only 25%-33% of the population of North America, this means that 66%-75% of people see little value in them and are probably not going to help you protect them.
Kicking up a storm only serves to sell more copies of the game.
"Shock Marketing" is only really effective if your product gets a lot of coverage in the mainstream media and becomes a topic of conversation at the water-cooler or coffee machine; Jack Thompsons, by him self, doesn't have enough influence to make a tame (by today's standards) videogame like Mortal Kombat sell well. The reason Jack Thompson is doing this (and all of his grandstanding) is because it increased name recognition and furthers his political career.
I know that this may seem like a foreign concept for many of us, but there are Millions of people who know so little about modern videogames that when they hear about the "Hot-Coffee Mod" they think that Rockstar is selling a sex simulator to their children; when they hear about "Oblivion Nudity Mods" they think that Bioware is selling a game with rampant Boobies to their children; and when they hear about this they will think that Midway created a character exactly like Jack Thompson to violently attack him. Most people don't understand what a mod is and don't understand how character creation (and customization) works.
What should really scare you is that Jack Thompson is effective and his grandstanding has a lot of fans; just look for blogs against violence in videogames. I may be wrong, but if it wasn't for his temper I expect that he would probably run for office and win largely on a "Save the Children" social conservative platform.
I could be wrong, but I heard several years ago that the majority of automobile advertizements on TV had very little to do with attracting new customers and were more about making people feel secure with their purchase; basically, you wanted someone to feel proud and important because the car they just spent $25,000 on had the highest safty rating among American cars in its class. In the long run this encourages sales because (if done well) you've created a "fanboy" who believes that they made the correct decision and will encourage everyone to make the same decision; I really don't know if it works.
I think you missed my point...
All my sales were specific to North American Nintendo published software where your numbers represent World Wide Sales of all software released for the PS2; it you don't see the difference I think there is a pretty big problem. What I was trying to demonstrate was how agressive Nintendo was being with its software line-up being that they were releasing so many of their top franchises; the only Million selling games (in North America) that are not on the list are are Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and Mario Party of which the only one that hasn't been announced is Mario Kart (there is speculation that the other two will be playable at E3 and possibly be released in Q4 of 2007).
Basically, imagine if Sony had announced that they were releasing Killzone, Socom, Gran Turismo, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus/ICO, Ratchet and Clank, Dark Cloud, and Jak and Daxter in a 12 month period; even without third party support (which the Wii seems to have more of than any Nintendo system since the SNES) you'd be pretty excited of the line-up.
The Wii isn't serious competition for Microsoft because they're not targeting the same gamers. Consider the core games of the 360's lineup over the next year or so: Madden/etc, Gears of War, Halo. Do you think people who are into those types of games are going to play Pokemon?
They may not play Pokemon, but they may play Madden, Zelda, Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel...
The fact is that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all in competition for the same gamer-dollar. If Nintendo sells more than 15,000,000 copies of first part Nintendo DS software and more than 15,000,000 copies of first party Nintendo Wii software in North America in 2007 (which if you look at their line-up is a possibility) Nintendo published software would represent nearly 50% of all software sold that year; if every second game sold is a Nintendo game you're probably going to sell a lot of Nintendo Hardware.
Now I'm not saying that I expect that Nintendo will sell that much software, just that it is a possibility when you look at the Gamecube:
Super Smash Bros Melee: 3,765,500
Super Mario Sunshine: 2,886,000
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker: 2,435,500
Metroid Prime: 1,492,500 (Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: 758,000)
Pokemon Colosseum: 1,165,000
Total: 11,744,500
The total is just under 12 Million for sequels to the five games I listed; I don't think it is too much of a stretch to think that the other 6 to 12 games announced could come to a total of nearly 3 Million units...
I don't want Microsoft to be utterly dominant in yet another industry without serious competition (which I don't think Nintendo is at this point, even with the Wii).
Just one question, why don't you think Nintendo can be serious competition?
You never really explained that...
It just seems like a comment that I regularly saw before the PSP was released that people were worried that Sony would dominate the handheld market because Nintendo couldn't be serious competition; and we all know how that is turning out. The most interesting thing about the Wii is not the Wiimote but is the agressive strategy that Nintendo is using for it's first party titles; in 12 months Nintendo will have release Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Mario, Super Smash Bros, and Mario Party. With the exception of Animal Crossing and Mario Kart (which could still be announced at E3 2007), Nintendo will have released a sequel to nearly every Million selling Nintendo made Gamecube game.
It is quite possible that in November of Next year we could be commenting on a story that talks about Nintendo's unprecidented and unexpected performance over the past year; which (of course) mentions the unexpected quantity of high quality Million Selling first party games.
Unless you're buying stock in the company, their profit/loss statements don't matter. From a strictly financial standpoint it would make more sense to buy the PS3, which Sony is subsidizing, rather than the Wii, which Nintendo makes a profit on. But finance has no relevance to gaming; people will buy the system that has the games they want to play.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that it cost money to develop (and market) videogames...
The fact is that the Dreamcast failed in the market place (mostly) because Sega didn't have enough money to market the system effectively or encourage (bribe) EA into developing games for it; a position Sony isn't in yet, but the example is there as a demonstration as to why finances matter.
Now, the comment "From a strictly financial standpoint it would make more sense to buy the PS3, which Sony is subsidizing, rather than the Wii, which Nintendo makes a profit on." is completely false in my opinion because it is the games (not the technology) that matters in gaming. If Nintendo invests $100 per system in game development and Sony invests $100 per system into technology I expect that the Nintendo system will have more good games while the Sony system will play a movie format I have no interest in.
What is really stupid about this is that their methodology is probably as accurate as doing preview scores for every game...
Basically, most Game Review scores are less about the actually quality of a game and is far more about how it compares to other games on the same platform; the reality is that their estimate of 10% of games will recieve a 90% or higher score could be easily interpreted as "1 in 10 games will be dramatically better than the competition to the extent that it will justify a score of 90% or higher".
Personally, I believe that the average-average score is probably more telling of the quality of a launch because the average score of the average game will probably be effected more by how it compares to games on other platforms; for example, many PS2 launch games looked as bad as playstation games and were probably butchered in their reviews for not looking as good as they could.
Don't take people's IP without their permission. Class dismissed. You all can thank me for saving you 74 minutes of your lives.
I agree with you 100%, that this is a simple issue and we shouldn't take people's IP without their permission, now we just have the amazing semantic problem of what it means to take something that is (essentially) a thought.
Now I think we can all agree that listening to an artists music on the radio would not be immoral, but what about if we record that show (commercials and all)? How about if we lend that recording to a friend? How about if we sell the recording at the cost to produce it? How about if we sell it at a profit? How about if we create a computer program that eliminates the comercials so we don't have to listen to them? How about if we lend this commercial free version of the recording to our friend? How about if we sell it for the cost to produce this recording and eliminate the comercials? How about if we sell this recording at a profit?
I think most people will agree that many of the issues I presented were wrong, and many other issues were fine (with some being a grey area) and this was a very simple example; when you start mixing issues from different areas of IP you get an ugly jumble (consider that in music "sampling" another person's recording is acceptable, now would it be acceptable to "sample" another person's program or algorithm in software developmen? Why?).
IP is probably the most complicated product that a person can own in legal, ethical and moral terms because it is a product that doesn't physically exist. I expect that it will take our society decades (or centuries) to come to some sort of consensus on what it means to take IP.
True enough, the importance of an issue is largely subjective...
Another way to look at issues is how time critical are the issues at hand, and one thing you'll notice is that the most time critical issues (genocide for example) are usually the ones that fall lowest on the national/international radar. Gay marriage will be heavily debated both inside and outside of the media where (regardless of the outcome) ten years from now the day to day lives of those involved in this issue will remain (essentially) the same; genocide (on the other hand) will not be a focus of any news report (or debated much by anyone) yet every day that passes means that hundreds or thousands of people die as a consequence of doing nothing.
Or is it more unethical to have access to information that threatens us all and not say anything for fear that some "bad guy" might use it against us? The truth is that some "bad guy" is already sitting around thinking up ways to to use the information or writing the information down for himself from scratch. Security through obscurity never works for long.
You're correct in saying that Security through obscurity never works but the question is what is the correct way to approach a security problem?
Personally, I think that broadcasting the information is a highly risky approach and should only be done after you've exausted most private channels; for example, if you knew of a factoring method that made 1 in 16 RSA keys insecure it would make more sense to contact RSA and inform them of this weeks/months before you publish the method because it will take time for them to adapt their system.
The reality is that it will take less time for a hacker to take advantage of a potential exploit then it will for a company to fix an exploit so you should give a company the opportunity to fix the problem before you announce it to the world.
Honestly, a service pack is a pretty good opportunity to perform a more significant refactoring of a system then you'd want to on a weekly/monthy patch. Basically, if you have a security flaw (for example) a patch would plug the hole trying to limit the risk associated with this flaw whereas a service pack would actually try to fix the problem. The reason you'd want to do it in two stages is to increase the ammount of testing that is done on the larger fix.
Because you should definitely listen to cigarette companies when they tell you cigarettes are not only safe, but also not addictive.
Seriously, though, I was with you up to that point. I am not an expert in the field, but I have gone to listen to experts speak about the subject. From what I understand, there is no "evidence". Evidence requires experimentation, and we're living in the only known experiment RIGHT NOW.
What I was saying is less "there is no global warming, listen to the oil companies" and more that "only one side of the issue is really getting listened to". No scientist disputes that we're not at a historical high temperature (the earth was warmer durring the middle age warm period), the earth hasn't been increasing at an unprecidented rate (there have been decades where the world has increased at a more rapid rate), and there is no direct connection between greenhouse gases and the temperature increase that we have seen; it has, however, been demonstrated that the temperatures are closely related to solar activity and that Mars in undergoing a period of global warming.
Basically, I was using Global Warming as an example of how there is usually no real discussion or information exchange on political issues; usually people have made up their mind before they go to a conference and look for validation of their beliefs. If tomorow God said that global temperatures were increasing because of Solar Activity (which humans have no impact on) there would still be Millions of people who were trying to meet the kyoto targets; at the same time if there was conclusive evidence that CO2 was the only thing effecting Global Warming there would still be Millions of people who claimed that lowering greenhouse gasses was pointless.
I can't speak for the Alaskan pipeline, but here in Alberta the Oil pipelines are owned by companies that are seperate from the oil companies; they tend to ensure that their oil pipelines are well maintained (in school I worked at a welding gas warehouse and we, on average, had 100 welders come in a day to pick up materials and head out to fix sections of various pipelines).
The fact is that shipping oil is far more risky than using a pipeline under similar levels of maintainance; there are tons of examples of poorly maintained oil tankers that leak tons of oil in transit and are just waiting to burst. Also, when oil pipelines have leaks, they have a localized effect and can (mostly) be cleaned up afterwords; obviously some soil will become toxic waste but there are new cleaning methods every year that get closer to resolving these problems.
It really doesn't matter if the gaming companies attend or not because they are not going to be listened to anyways...
This is very similar to what happens whenever an Oil company shows up to an environmental meeting, which believe it or not happens quite often; oil companies hire dozens of environmental scientists to ensure that they're doing as little environmental damage as is possible. (On a side note, most environmental damage is done because of govenmental decisions; oil is shipped from Alaska rather than piped through Canada because the US govenment's regulations, and shipping is prone to accidents). No matter what evidence they demonstrate to show that there is no connection between CO2 and global warming nothing they show will ever be listend to.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the Gaming Industry could show up to an event like this and have God as a witness and no one there will listen to them when they say videogames do not cause children to perform violent acts.
The PS3 will still sell out, despite Sony's recent evil. Those 'few' customers will buy anything they can get their hands of for the first few months. And the XBox 360 hasn't hit 'any impressive milestone'... ? It has out-sold the PS2 in it's first 7 months, compared to the PS2's first 7 months. If that's not a sign that it's plenty successful, I don't know what is.
First off, as anyone said you're wrong in assuming that the XBox 360 has been selling better than the PS2... It has been sitting around 5 Million units world wide for a while now and it doesn't look like they will hit the 10 Million mark by the new year.
What I was talking about (initially) was that the PS3's shipments have dropped from 4 Million in 2006 (at E3), to 2 Million in 2006 (at TGS), and now they're saying they will probably not make those numbers; a good guestimate would put them at shipping 1 Million worldwide in 2006.
If you have just spent $15 Million to $25 Million to create a videogame are you going to release it in a time where ony 6 or 7 Million people can buy it (considering that if you're lucky 25% or 1.25 Million copies will be sold)? In order to justify the costs of next-generation game development a company has to sell (at least) 2 Million copies of a game and they're not going to take a massive risk and release a game until the userbase is there to support it.
No, likely they've realized that Sony's devkit is harder to work with than they expected, and it's taking them longer to produce a quality game. So they did the smart thing and announce a new date LONG before the original date. Fewer customers will be annoyed, and the team has time to make the game right.
That is a possibility, but consider that this is Ubisoft who licences all of their game engines from Epic and A.C. is probably a Unreal 3 engine game; and epic already has the Unreal 3 engine running pretty smoothly on the PS3. If they're delaying this for development reasons that would (probably) imply serious content problems which would (probably) mean bad things for the quality of this game.
With how few PS3s will be in consumer's hands in the first half of 2007, and with how the XBox 360 has yet to get to any impressive milestone, I wouldn't be surprised to see several big named games get their release date pushed back until they have the opportunity for better sales.
I don't doubt that you could get an OK or even good script by committee, but I think to get a great movie, you need one mind unhindered by others. (But you also get A LOT more junk that way)
I think you can produce a workable script through committee writing, but there are going to be serious tradeoffs when you produce a script this way; most really stupid ideas will be noticed early on and eliminated (the immaculate conception of Darth Vader), but at the same time the more people you add the more generic the script will be. You could eliminate this if you have an editor who controls and directs the writing of the script, but finding a volunteer to do this (who was capable) would be difficult.
The fact is pirates are enjoying the fruits of someone else's labor without compensating them for the price they are charging. There is no way that the piracy apologists can get around it, so they resort so stuff like this, and downplay any statistics they don't like.
Well, I have already paid for the music I put on my CDs or iPod because the Recording industry forced a tax on these devices (it works out to be a couple of dollars per iPod and cents per cd); according to my legal system it is absolutely legal for me to download any music because I already paid for it through this tax.
Selling out of pre-orders when you're shipping so few systems at launch (400,000) and most companies are being really conservative about how many pre-orders they take is not all that impressive.
Personally, I came to the conclusion after the XBox 360's launch that if you can't supply enough units that a person can walk into a store and buy a system 6 weeks after launch you were unprepared to release your system and should have probably pushed it back until you could supply enough units.
One thing you have to consider is that 9 times out of 10 price differences in a country are directly related to the cost of doing buisness in that country. Look at this chart ( http://images.forbes.com/media/2006/05/Overall_Tax _Burden_Governemt_Spending.pdf ) when you average the total tax burden of European countries you get a rate in the 40%-45% range, when you look at North America the united states is the primary consern at 25.5% (Canada actually has a pretty decent Corporate tax rate because we have bad personal income tax rates), and Japan rests at about 25%. Since Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo all have to pay an additional 15%-20% tax in the European region they need to charge 15%-20% more on their items to make the same profit from their products.
Always remember, no company pays corporate taxes their customers pay corporate taxes; if you want low cost affordable products lower your corporate tax rate.
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I have had conversations from people who were more casual gamers who complained that Sony is producing a controller that has non-chargeable/non-replaceable batteries, that the controller has lost rumble, and that to take advantage of the features in the PS3 they'd need to spend thousands of dollars on a TV. Mind you, these people were aware of the price and (as I've said before) people usually decide what they want and then justify the purchase; they may have decided they couldn't afford a PS3 and then looked into why they didn't like it.
Anyone who thinks that a gaming company can't lose is a fanboy. The real question is whether Sony has already lost with the PS3; I would say no, but I'm not writing an article for a website.
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What I think is interesting is the Playstation brand has been searched less than the Nintendo brand over the past 6 months:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Playstation%2C+Nin
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Playstation%2C+Nin
Not really representative of anything except that the Wii and Nintnedo DS has attracted more attention to Nintendo than the PS3 and PSP have for the Playstation name.
Note: Please don't do any searches with PS2 in them to demonstrate dominance of Sony, PS2 is used in a lot of searches (like PS2 Keyboard, PS2 Mouse) and google trends can not split them. If you compare PS3, Wii, PSP, and DS you get the following
http://www.google.com/trends?q=PS3%2C+Wii%2C+PSP%
Although PSP probably gains from "Product Service Plan" and other acronyms.
Generating more revinue is not the same as being consumed by more people ...
Consider that most games cost about $50 and the cost to see a movie at the theater is about $12.50 which means that you would need 4 times as many people to go see a movie than to buy a game to have similar revinue numbers. Now, remember you're comparing Videogames to box office and not the total movie industry which includes rentals and DVD sales and pay-per-view so (all in all) it would not be too unreasonable to assume that 10 times as many people watched movies than played videogames.
I do think my point was missed though so I'll ask you a couple of questions, how many people do you know that don't watch television or movies? How many people do you know who don't play videogames? Odds are that you know far more people who don't play videogames than you know who don't watch movies or television. The point was that as long as the majority of people have little interest in the gaming industry it will be very difficult to protect it from political attacks.
The system mover for the PS3 is Resistance: Fall of Man.
Kind of funny that the two big system movers both end up being futuristic combat titles
It is not really funny but makes a good argument for people who say that the videogame industry is becomming far more generic as development costs increase.
I honestly don't think that the political problems surrounding content in videogames has anything to do with the average (or assumed average) age of gamers; the real problem is that (inspite of what we gamers think) videogame playing is really not a mainstream activity.
If you want to understand what I mean, compare videogames to watching Movies/TV and you'll notice how widespread Television and Movie consumption is compared to videogames; I spent a year without watching any television and movies (largely because of school and social life) and I could hardly talk to people I didn't know because I had never seen the latest TV shows (Smallville and 24 at the time). Videogames (as a guestimate) are probably played by only 25%-33% of the population of North America, this means that 66%-75% of people see little value in them and are probably not going to help you protect them.
Kicking up a storm only serves to sell more copies of the game.
"Shock Marketing" is only really effective if your product gets a lot of coverage in the mainstream media and becomes a topic of conversation at the water-cooler or coffee machine; Jack Thompsons, by him self, doesn't have enough influence to make a tame (by today's standards) videogame like Mortal Kombat sell well. The reason Jack Thompson is doing this (and all of his grandstanding) is because it increased name recognition and furthers his political career.
I know that this may seem like a foreign concept for many of us, but there are Millions of people who know so little about modern videogames that when they hear about the "Hot-Coffee Mod" they think that Rockstar is selling a sex simulator to their children; when they hear about "Oblivion Nudity Mods" they think that Bioware is selling a game with rampant Boobies to their children; and when they hear about this they will think that Midway created a character exactly like Jack Thompson to violently attack him. Most people don't understand what a mod is and don't understand how character creation (and customization) works.
What should really scare you is that Jack Thompson is effective and his grandstanding has a lot of fans; just look for blogs against violence in videogames. I may be wrong, but if it wasn't for his temper I expect that he would probably run for office and win largely on a "Save the Children" social conservative platform.
I could be wrong, but I heard several years ago that the majority of automobile advertizements on TV had very little to do with attracting new customers and were more about making people feel secure with their purchase; basically, you wanted someone to feel proud and important because the car they just spent $25,000 on had the highest safty rating among American cars in its class. In the long run this encourages sales because (if done well) you've created a "fanboy" who believes that they made the correct decision and will encourage everyone to make the same decision; I really don't know if it works.
I think you missed my point ...
All my sales were specific to North American Nintendo published software where your numbers represent World Wide Sales of all software released for the PS2; it you don't see the difference I think there is a pretty big problem. What I was trying to demonstrate was how agressive Nintendo was being with its software line-up being that they were releasing so many of their top franchises; the only Million selling games (in North America) that are not on the list are are Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and Mario Party of which the only one that hasn't been announced is Mario Kart (there is speculation that the other two will be playable at E3 and possibly be released in Q4 of 2007).
Basically, imagine if Sony had announced that they were releasing Killzone, Socom, Gran Turismo, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus/ICO, Ratchet and Clank, Dark Cloud, and Jak and Daxter in a 12 month period; even without third party support (which the Wii seems to have more of than any Nintendo system since the SNES) you'd be pretty excited of the line-up.
They may not play Pokemon, but they may play Madden, Zelda, Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel
The fact is that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all in competition for the same gamer-dollar. If Nintendo sells more than 15,000,000 copies of first part Nintendo DS software and more than 15,000,000 copies of first party Nintendo Wii software in North America in 2007 (which if you look at their line-up is a possibility) Nintendo published software would represent nearly 50% of all software sold that year; if every second game sold is a Nintendo game you're probably going to sell a lot of Nintendo Hardware.
Now I'm not saying that I expect that Nintendo will sell that much software, just that it is a possibility when you look at the Gamecube:
The total is just under 12 Million for sequels to the five games I listed; I don't think it is too much of a stretch to think that the other 6 to 12 games announced could come to a total of nearly 3 Million units
I don't want Microsoft to be utterly dominant in yet another industry without serious competition (which I don't think Nintendo is at this point, even with the Wii).
...
Just one question, why don't you think Nintendo can be serious competition?
You never really explained that
It just seems like a comment that I regularly saw before the PSP was released that people were worried that Sony would dominate the handheld market because Nintendo couldn't be serious competition; and we all know how that is turning out. The most interesting thing about the Wii is not the Wiimote but is the agressive strategy that Nintendo is using for it's first party titles; in 12 months Nintendo will have release Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Mario, Super Smash Bros, and Mario Party. With the exception of Animal Crossing and Mario Kart (which could still be announced at E3 2007), Nintendo will have released a sequel to nearly every Million selling Nintendo made Gamecube game.
It is quite possible that in November of Next year we could be commenting on a story that talks about Nintendo's unprecidented and unexpected performance over the past year; which (of course) mentions the unexpected quantity of high quality Million Selling first party games.
Unless you're buying stock in the company, their profit/loss statements don't matter. From a strictly financial standpoint it would make more sense to buy the PS3, which Sony is subsidizing, rather than the Wii, which Nintendo makes a profit on. But finance has no relevance to gaming; people will buy the system that has the games they want to play.
...
Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that it cost money to develop (and market) videogames
The fact is that the Dreamcast failed in the market place (mostly) because Sega didn't have enough money to market the system effectively or encourage (bribe) EA into developing games for it; a position Sony isn't in yet, but the example is there as a demonstration as to why finances matter.
Now, the comment "From a strictly financial standpoint it would make more sense to buy the PS3, which Sony is subsidizing, rather than the Wii, which Nintendo makes a profit on." is completely false in my opinion because it is the games (not the technology) that matters in gaming. If Nintendo invests $100 per system in game development and Sony invests $100 per system into technology I expect that the Nintendo system will have more good games while the Sony system will play a movie format I have no interest in.
What is really stupid about this is that their methodology is probably as accurate as doing preview scores for every game ...
Basically, most Game Review scores are less about the actually quality of a game and is far more about how it compares to other games on the same platform; the reality is that their estimate of 10% of games will recieve a 90% or higher score could be easily interpreted as "1 in 10 games will be dramatically better than the competition to the extent that it will justify a score of 90% or higher".
Personally, I believe that the average-average score is probably more telling of the quality of a launch because the average score of the average game will probably be effected more by how it compares to games on other platforms; for example, many PS2 launch games looked as bad as playstation games and were probably butchered in their reviews for not looking as good as they could.
Don't take people's IP without their permission. Class dismissed. You all can thank me for saving you 74 minutes of your lives.
I agree with you 100%, that this is a simple issue and we shouldn't take people's IP without their permission, now we just have the amazing semantic problem of what it means to take something that is (essentially) a thought.
Now I think we can all agree that listening to an artists music on the radio would not be immoral, but what about if we record that show (commercials and all)? How about if we lend that recording to a friend? How about if we sell the recording at the cost to produce it? How about if we sell it at a profit? How about if we create a computer program that eliminates the comercials so we don't have to listen to them? How about if we lend this commercial free version of the recording to our friend? How about if we sell it for the cost to produce this recording and eliminate the comercials? How about if we sell this recording at a profit?
I think most people will agree that many of the issues I presented were wrong, and many other issues were fine (with some being a grey area) and this was a very simple example; when you start mixing issues from different areas of IP you get an ugly jumble (consider that in music "sampling" another person's recording is acceptable, now would it be acceptable to "sample" another person's program or algorithm in software developmen? Why?).
IP is probably the most complicated product that a person can own in legal, ethical and moral terms because it is a product that doesn't physically exist. I expect that it will take our society decades (or centuries) to come to some sort of consensus on what it means to take IP.
You left off the words "to me".
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True enough, the importance of an issue is largely subjective
Another way to look at issues is how time critical are the issues at hand, and one thing you'll notice is that the most time critical issues (genocide for example) are usually the ones that fall lowest on the national/international radar. Gay marriage will be heavily debated both inside and outside of the media where (regardless of the outcome) ten years from now the day to day lives of those involved in this issue will remain (essentially) the same; genocide (on the other hand) will not be a focus of any news report (or debated much by anyone) yet every day that passes means that hundreds or thousands of people die as a consequence of doing nothing.
Or is it more unethical to have access to information that threatens us all and not say anything for fear that some "bad guy" might use it against us? The truth is that some "bad guy" is already sitting around thinking up ways to to use the information or writing the information down for himself from scratch. Security through obscurity never works for long.
You're correct in saying that Security through obscurity never works but the question is what is the correct way to approach a security problem?
Personally, I think that broadcasting the information is a highly risky approach and should only be done after you've exausted most private channels; for example, if you knew of a factoring method that made 1 in 16 RSA keys insecure it would make more sense to contact RSA and inform them of this weeks/months before you publish the method because it will take time for them to adapt their system.
The reality is that it will take less time for a hacker to take advantage of a potential exploit then it will for a company to fix an exploit so you should give a company the opportunity to fix the problem before you announce it to the world.
Honestly, a service pack is a pretty good opportunity to perform a more significant refactoring of a system then you'd want to on a weekly/monthy patch. Basically, if you have a security flaw (for example) a patch would plug the hole trying to limit the risk associated with this flaw whereas a service pack would actually try to fix the problem. The reason you'd want to do it in two stages is to increase the ammount of testing that is done on the larger fix.
Because you should definitely listen to cigarette companies when they tell you cigarettes are not only safe, but also not addictive.
Seriously, though, I was with you up to that point. I am not an expert in the field, but I have gone to listen to experts speak about the subject. From what I understand, there is no "evidence". Evidence requires experimentation, and we're living in the only known experiment RIGHT NOW.
What I was saying is less "there is no global warming, listen to the oil companies" and more that "only one side of the issue is really getting listened to". No scientist disputes that we're not at a historical high temperature (the earth was warmer durring the middle age warm period), the earth hasn't been increasing at an unprecidented rate (there have been decades where the world has increased at a more rapid rate), and there is no direct connection between greenhouse gases and the temperature increase that we have seen; it has, however, been demonstrated that the temperatures are closely related to solar activity and that Mars in undergoing a period of global warming.
Basically, I was using Global Warming as an example of how there is usually no real discussion or information exchange on political issues; usually people have made up their mind before they go to a conference and look for validation of their beliefs. If tomorow God said that global temperatures were increasing because of Solar Activity (which humans have no impact on) there would still be Millions of people who were trying to meet the kyoto targets; at the same time if there was conclusive evidence that CO2 was the only thing effecting Global Warming there would still be Millions of people who claimed that lowering greenhouse gasses was pointless.
I can't speak for the Alaskan pipeline, but here in Alberta the Oil pipelines are owned by companies that are seperate from the oil companies; they tend to ensure that their oil pipelines are well maintained (in school I worked at a welding gas warehouse and we, on average, had 100 welders come in a day to pick up materials and head out to fix sections of various pipelines).
The fact is that shipping oil is far more risky than using a pipeline under similar levels of maintainance; there are tons of examples of poorly maintained oil tankers that leak tons of oil in transit and are just waiting to burst. Also, when oil pipelines have leaks, they have a localized effect and can (mostly) be cleaned up afterwords; obviously some soil will become toxic waste but there are new cleaning methods every year that get closer to resolving these problems.
It really doesn't matter if the gaming companies attend or not because they are not going to be listened to anyways ...
This is very similar to what happens whenever an Oil company shows up to an environmental meeting, which believe it or not happens quite often; oil companies hire dozens of environmental scientists to ensure that they're doing as little environmental damage as is possible. (On a side note, most environmental damage is done because of govenmental decisions; oil is shipped from Alaska rather than piped through Canada because the US govenment's regulations, and shipping is prone to accidents). No matter what evidence they demonstrate to show that there is no connection between CO2 and global warming nothing they show will ever be listend to.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the Gaming Industry could show up to an event like this and have God as a witness and no one there will listen to them when they say videogames do not cause children to perform violent acts.
The PS3 will still sell out, despite Sony's recent evil. Those 'few' customers will buy anything they can get their hands of for the first few months. And the XBox 360 hasn't hit 'any impressive milestone'... ? It has out-sold the PS2 in it's first 7 months, compared to the PS2's first 7 months. If that's not a sign that it's plenty successful, I don't know what is.
... It has been sitting around 5 Million units world wide for a while now and it doesn't look like they will hit the 10 Million mark by the new year.
First off, as anyone said you're wrong in assuming that the XBox 360 has been selling better than the PS2
What I was talking about (initially) was that the PS3's shipments have dropped from 4 Million in 2006 (at E3), to 2 Million in 2006 (at TGS), and now they're saying they will probably not make those numbers; a good guestimate would put them at shipping 1 Million worldwide in 2006.
If you have just spent $15 Million to $25 Million to create a videogame are you going to release it in a time where ony 6 or 7 Million people can buy it (considering that if you're lucky 25% or 1.25 Million copies will be sold)? In order to justify the costs of next-generation game development a company has to sell (at least) 2 Million copies of a game and they're not going to take a massive risk and release a game until the userbase is there to support it.
No, likely they've realized that Sony's devkit is harder to work with than they expected, and it's taking them longer to produce a quality game. So they did the smart thing and announce a new date LONG before the original date. Fewer customers will be annoyed, and the team has time to make the game right.
That is a possibility, but consider that this is Ubisoft who licences all of their game engines from Epic and A.C. is probably a Unreal 3 engine game; and epic already has the Unreal 3 engine running pretty smoothly on the PS3. If they're delaying this for development reasons that would (probably) imply serious content problems which would (probably) mean bad things for the quality of this game.
With how few PS3s will be in consumer's hands in the first half of 2007, and with how the XBox 360 has yet to get to any impressive milestone, I wouldn't be surprised to see several big named games get their release date pushed back until they have the opportunity for better sales.
I don't doubt that you could get an OK or even good script by committee, but I think to get a great movie, you need one mind unhindered by others. (But you also get A LOT more junk that way)
I think you can produce a workable script through committee writing, but there are going to be serious tradeoffs when you produce a script this way; most really stupid ideas will be noticed early on and eliminated (the immaculate conception of Darth Vader), but at the same time the more people you add the more generic the script will be. You could eliminate this if you have an editor who controls and directs the writing of the script, but finding a volunteer to do this (who was capable) would be difficult.
The fact is pirates are enjoying the fruits of someone else's labor without compensating them for the price they are charging. There is no way that the piracy apologists can get around it, so they resort so stuff like this, and downplay any statistics they don't like.
Well, I have already paid for the music I put on my CDs or iPod because the Recording industry forced a tax on these devices (it works out to be a couple of dollars per iPod and cents per cd); according to my legal system it is absolutely legal for me to download any music because I already paid for it through this tax.
Selling out of pre-orders when you're shipping so few systems at launch (400,000) and most companies are being really conservative about how many pre-orders they take is not all that impressive.
Personally, I came to the conclusion after the XBox 360's launch that if you can't supply enough units that a person can walk into a store and buy a system 6 weeks after launch you were unprepared to release your system and should have probably pushed it back until you could supply enough units.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=212
One thing you have to consider is that 9 times out of 10 price differences in a country are directly related to the cost of doing buisness in that country. Look at this chart ( http://images.forbes.com/media/2006/05/Overall_Tax _Burden_Governemt_Spending.pdf ) when you average the total tax burden of European countries you get a rate in the 40%-45% range, when you look at North America the united states is the primary consern at 25.5% (Canada actually has a pretty decent Corporate tax rate because we have bad personal income tax rates), and Japan rests at about 25%. Since Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo all have to pay an additional 15%-20% tax in the European region they need to charge 15%-20% more on their items to make the same profit from their products.
Always remember, no company pays corporate taxes their customers pay corporate taxes; if you want low cost affordable products lower your corporate tax rate.