I have a 17 inch dell laptop, and yes I do use it on my lap, and no I am not a huge fat guy, I am however tall. It's actually very comfortable to use, more so than my wife's 14 inch dell. So yes I would use a 20 inch laptop.
Personally, work gave me a 14 inch laptop which I thought was absolutely too small until I realized why they gave me a laptop rather than a desktop; I'm on site 2 days a week which means that I carry the lap-top home or to work 4 days a week. What I have found is that a 14 inch laptop is (in a lot of ways) too large and clumsy to carry around on Calgary's busy public transit system and I couldn't imagine how awkward and heavy a 20 inch laptop would be.
In my opinion a 20 inch laptop would be amazing if your goal is to drag it to and from lan-parties once or twice a week in your car, but if you're taking something to and from work every day you'd start to hate the extra size and weight.
I wan't calling you a fanboy, but I was saying that fanboys tend to be irrational and have little understanding of what they're talking about...
I don't deny that my analysis of the PS3 was pretty simplistic, but I don't have enough experience with it to say too much about its specific performance. The intention of my argument was that the combination of space/heat limitations and limitations in the manufacturing process of processors really bounds how powerful the PS3 can be; these bounds are similar to what is available for a standard PC. When I said the GPU would be similar to a PC GPU, my point was that it makes more sense for Sony and Nvidia to capatalize on an existing design (and modify it as needed) then to attempt to start from scratch considering the basic requirements are similar.
The place where Consoles really get a bonus is they can focus on improving perfomance on specific areas that are important to game performance at the expense of general performance; for example Matrix Multiplication, which is heavily used in scene graph management, collision detection, physics and so on. It takes 64 Floating point multiplications and 48 floating point aditions to perform one Matrix multiplication on most processors, if you produce a specific instruction to handle this you can reduce it down to take the time of 4 floating point multiplications and 3 floating point additions; the trade off comes in that you have 16 seperate instruction paths being executed at the same time which greatly increases the ammount of energy your processor is using and you thus must reduce your clockspeed (thereby reducing performance that is not related to Matrix Multiplication). The fact is that Sony didn't choose this route, they split the cell into 7 general purpose pipelines which greatly improves "general performance" but (I suspect) that this was at the expense of greater game performance.
Now, I don't really think how powerful the cell is, is all that important because games today are far more bound to GPU performance than they're to CPU performance and if games continue to support 1080p throughout the lifespan of the PS3 I expect this will always be the case.
I don't think the intention of the previous post was that you could produce a PC that outperforms the PS3 for the same cost as the PS3, but more that there is an annoying habit of fanboys who think that the PS3 is magic and can outperform anything. Now, being that the PS3 doesn't come with an HDTV, and CRT monitors that support 1920x1280 are readily availabe and inexpensive I don't see your point of including a high end, large LCD monitor in the PC price; $250 could easily buy a 17 inch monitor that supports these resolutions.
Please source this. I say that the PS3's architecture is completely different from a PC in no comparable format except real-world tests that aren't even available yet. At the very minimum, people who have seen the PS3 in person running at 1080p have said it's "amazing and fluid". I haven't seen it yet.
IIRC the PS3's GPU has a similar architecture to most readily available graphics cards produced by Nvidia; as a guess, I would say that it was probably a PC GPU that was under development 18-24 months ago that had most of the Legacy support removed from it to keep development costs down. The fact is that the PS3's GPU at best would be similar to the best single GPU graphics card that Nvidia offers, because if Nvidia could produce a better GPU today they would put it on a circuit board and sell it for $500 and advertize how much better their card was then what ATI was producing; if they could produce a sigle GPU which outperformed their SLi setup they would put it on a card and sell it for $700 and advertize that a single card outperformed ATI's crossfire solutions.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you think you'll recieve dramatically better performance from the PS3 than you would from a PC with a decent CPU and good Graphics card I would expect to be disapointed. Consoles (typically) produce great performance for the price, but they're still bound to the same laws of physics that a PC is (and usually consoles have very strict cost/heat/space requirements that a PC doesn't have).
Do you have any idea how long it takes to design and build a gaming system?
Nintendo started design on the Gamecube almost immediately after they completed work on the N64, they started on the Wii (back then Revolution) in 2001 immediately after they completed work on the Gamecube, and I'm pretty sure that they're going to start work on the next generation system right after they release the Wii. Microsoft, as a contrast, produced the XBox in about 18 months and was forced to use (mostly) standard components and could not get decent licencing terms from their hardware suppliers; because of this the XBox was easily hacked, and was expensive to produce (with a limited ability to reduce costs).
In general, this isn't a sign that Microsoft "is already plotting a replacement may manage to further pigeonhole the 360 as old tech". The fact is that if Microsoft wants to produce a cost effective, powerful system, in 2010 or 2011 they had to begin development in 2005/2006.
Xbox was not significantly more powerful than GameCube, certainly nothing even close to the hardware advantages that both shared over PS2.
True enough, in fact it has been said many times that the XBox and Gamecube were very similar in processing power but that they had different advantages; any game that took advantage of the Gamecube's fixed functionality pipline (usually) produced more polygons with greater texture detail than was possible on the XBox, the XBox's programable pipleine allowed it to generate effects which were not possible on the Gamecube.
Anyways...
I think the statement that "Graphics aren't important anymore" is pretty true from what I have seen on the interweb. In 2000 and 2001 you'd see fanboys displaying countless screenshots of games saying "The Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/XBox couldn't run a game that looked like this..." Maybe this still happens, but I haven't seen too much of this so I expect that the Graphics whores are a much smaller group than they were previously. Maybe I'm biased though, I still think that the PS2 and Dreamcast produce graphics at a level which really don't have to be upgraded on (except for a little muddiness and jagginess).
Here's the question though. Is fiction really ment to be interactive? Or is fiction the journey the author leads you on?
I would say that fiction is the journey that the author takes you on, but at the same time there is nothing saying that it can not be interactive. I'm not claiming that games are great works of fiction yet, but they are developing methods where the "author" (designers) produce the story and allow the gamer to discover it.
Personally, I think the worst element of story telling in videogames is (probably) the most popular and that is cutscenes. In my opinion it has far more impact to have someone read a journal, or perform a side-quest, in order to reveal more information about the world that the "reader" finds themself in; cutscenes are too passive, and usually are plagued with poor animation and terrible voice acting.
I'm not going to defend Zonk's posting, but I do think there is a difference between how Nintendo's treated the Virtual Console and Sony's treated their Online System.
Back at E3 in 2005 Nintendo announced that the Virtual Console would give you the opportunity to download and play games from the NES, SNES and N64 (later adding the Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, and Turbographix 16); in one sentence the core idea of the virtual console was described. Certainly, there are dozens of questions people wanted answers to (how much it would cost, which developers would provide games, what games would be available, etc.) but, to a certain extent, those could wait and you still had a basic understanding of what you're getting into.
My memory could be wrong, but IIRC Sony basically said that their online service would be free, require developers to implement their own system, and it would rival XBox Live; which left many people with the question "Huh?". Without further details you can't even make reasonable assumptions on what is going on in Sony's world.
Most of your points are stupid, or not that impressive but I want to comment on this one in particular:
Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft's offerings, Sony doesn't hide the price of items behind an arbitrary "points" scheme
"Points" is a much better way to offer these services to customers in this buisness model. If you consider that not everyone has a credit card, or likes using that information online, a "points" model allows people to buy "points cards" at their local retailer and use them online; this means that everyone from little Jimmy (8 years old) to Nana Smith (72 years old) can access your online content. This also limits the quantity of trafic that your ecommerce site faces because rather than every purchase requiring a credit card check you only require one when people buy new points.
As for the confusing the price, how is having 1 point per yen (in Japan) or 1 point per dime (in the US) a really confusing system; this is Nintendo's Wii points system.
I hope so... Not all the content has to be free.. but I'd like to play online without a monthly subscription. Finally some competition.
I personally don't think XBox Live is the type of service Microsoft is trying to compete on price with; they seem to be more focused on quality of service and increased functionality. By having a charge, Microsoft will be able to provide services that would not be cost effective on a free service; much of this functionality may be of questionable value (gamer-scores and what not) but it is what the service is based on. I would expect that XBox Live would (probably) increase the ammount of services it provides rather than reduce the price.
Back in 2001 I pre-ordered a Gamecube at Futureshop and when I walked in they must have had (at least) 50 Gamecubes in a pile and everyone who pre-ordered ended up with a system; today, the Wii is launching with (about) twice as many systems as the Gamecube did and EB Games are averaging 10 systems per store for to pre-order. It seems that something is off to me, either EB Games is getting screwed on the number of systems they're getting, or they're purposefully limiting pre-orders.
Which brings me up to my other question... Why could I pre-order a Gamecube in July in 2001 at Futureshop, and a month before the system launches I still can't pre-order at Futureshop or Best Buy?
Nintendo will be launching with 1,000,000 consoles which is (about) as many as they can launch with because Retail outlets do not have unlimited shelf space; on top of that Nintendo will (probably) be releasing 1.5 Million units to North America in the six weeks following the launch of the Wii.
Personally, I don't know whether Nintendo has enough systems or whether they're going overboard and would like a pre-order to ensure that I get a system this year; if they're as motivated in real life as they seem to be online, the Hard-Core gamers are a large enough group that they could buy every Wii that is released this year.
There is a difference between having children and being a parent and it is really depressing to see how few people really understand that. If you're a good parent, you don't have to watch your children 24 hours a day to ensure that they are not up to no good. By the time a child is old enough to create a MySpace account and impersonate their teacher they should already understand that it is wrong and that they shouldn't do it.
It is depressing to see that parents are spending so much money buying phones to ensure that they're "connected to their children" or so they can "check up on them" because, if they were actually involved in their children's life, it isn't necessary.
It does more to attract paying students, but not nessesarily 'good' students.
I would be very surprised if 'foodball stadium' listed high on the reasons for attending among the students who go on to do well in ways that reflect on the university.
Well, I'm not so sure a student's interests (outside of academics) really matter too much to how well a student will perform; in fact I'm not too sure that a student's academic performance in high school really matter after watching countless honor students strugle while the slackers performed well. The benefit of a stadium (or high level football program) is that you'll attract 50,000 potential first year students where the school that has better teaching will get 10,000; when you choose your 5,000 first year students from 50,000 you will probably have a better "average" student than the school that only had 10,000 applications regardless of the average quality of application.
If this is a trend, the only thing disturbing is that a new football stadium is probably a higher priority for a University than better network equipment and bandwidth. My undergrad was at the U of MN and they constantly wanted their own football stadium--they would spend any amount of money and create any parking problems necessary to get it.
Well, from the University's perspective a football stadium is probably a better "investment" then better bandwidth. Having a good football program probably does more to attract good students to your campus then good parking, bandwith, and competent instuctors combined.
Anyways, the problem with a competition of this nature is that you can make a lot of money as long as you're at the top of your game. For every person in this league there is (probably) 100 people who are nearly as good and (if they so choose) could easily start challenging you for your spot in the league. In other words you always are at risk of not being good enough to keep your 'job'.
Growing up, I knew a few guys who ended up becomming professional snowboarders; they lasted about 18 months before their sponsership and were 'forced' out. I imagine that, if gaming continues as a 'sport', professional-gamers will have to 'train' for 8 hours a day to stay competitive.
IT may be an insecure field, but I doubt all the jobs will dry up all of a sudden. Much like the gamer in the article, if you feel that your job isn't that secure you should train some skills that are useful both inside and outside of IT (say public speaking) and save up your money in case you suddenly find yourself without a job; this is easily said, and can be accomplished, but rarely will an 18 year old recognize how good he has it until it is gone.
As soon as contract negotiations over royalty payments and distribution expenses come into play, I feel they lose their "artist" status and are "entertainers."
Artists to me are people that attempt to share a unique, creative and inspired vision through sound and vision (or the combination of the two.)
(Yes I realize 'art' is subjective, but I'm talkin strictly to the movie/music type here.)
When it comes to the **AA's and their international counterparts, all we get is rehashed, same old same old in order to service a businesses bottom line.
Honestly, artists and entertainers become conserned with royalty payments and distribution expenses mainly because the labels and studios are trying to screw them over. I'm not an entertainment laywer or anything, but I know that artists do not make anything on the sale of their albums until the record label has broken even; this means that the record label has to make the money back from the video they forced you to shoot before you get paid. Even after you have paid them off, the label takes 25% off the top for recoup costs (like returns and damages) regardless of the format (yes, they charge artists 25% on iTunes downloads which can neither be returned or damaged).
Yeah, I'm pretty tired of hearing about higher speed connections because it will have no impact on me. Back in 1998 I was paying $39.99/Month for 1.5Mb/s ADSL and today I am paying $39.99 for 1.5Mb/s ADSL; it has been 8 years and I haven't seen any improvement in what ISPs are willing to offer.
I know that all the cool kids make fun of Microsoft and their employees but what is there to really "get" about YouTube?
YouTube is a fantastic webapplication that has a lot of potential but lacks any type of business model that would justify the purchase price; on top of that a large percentage of the content will cause the MPAA and RIAA to sue YouTube because they didn't get their cut (and don't forget the vast quantities of movies that are stolen from other websites because YouTube has better bandwith). My only thought is why would google spend $1.6 billion on a company that will face legal doom, when they could have spent $5 Million producing a web application and convinced the MPAA/RIAA that google-tube was the best place for them to have their videos and they should sue YouTube?
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me too much if that was a Sony employee buying a "Playstation 3 Premium System Pre-Order" from himself. The only thing that Sony really has left that could possibly move the Playstation 3 at $500/$600 is pure hype; all the games are announced with all the features known the only thing they can add is an irrational need for someone to buy a PS3.
Personally, I have only ever had a single problem with a Nintendo made product and that was I got a disc-read error on my launch Gamecube about 8 months after I bought it. My dealings with Nintendo's customer service about my broken Gamecube were so good that I have no worries about buying a Wii at launch; essentially, Nintendo just told me where to drop off the Gamecube and they shipped a refurbished Gamecube overnight to their Depot so I only had 1 day without my gamecube.
The PS3, on the other hand, I would be worried about mainly because I have had bad experiences with Sony's customer service in the past and the PS3 has a first generation optical disc drive in it; my memories of first generation CD-RW and DVD/DVD-RW drives tells me that the most you can really expect from a drive like this is (about) 12 months of usage. I never want to have another system (like my PS2) where I own it for 13 months and have to go buy a brand new system (at full price) because of a disc-read error.
Um, no. They are commonplace enough. HDTV sales will outpace SD sales for the first time this year. Morgan Stanley estimates that approximately 26% of households will have at least one set by the end of the year. That number rises to ~68% in 2010.
You can say that 26% this year and 33+% next year isn't wide spread enough, but I beg to differ. Those are also the households with the disposable income to afford not only the console, but the real expense of accessories and games for it.
Nintendo is making a mistake. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean the games won't be fun, but based on perception alone they are missing a major marketing 'checkmark'.
Just as a question, how much of their analysis is dependant on the economic conditions that were present from 2001 to 2006 continuing (that is low unemployment, low interest rates, rising house values and easy to get credit)?
I ask this question because most economists now believe that the United States is heading for an economic downturn that will result in higher unemployment, higher interest rates, falling house values and credit that is harder to get (due to a greater number of bankruptcies); there is massive debate on how severe and long lasting the downturn will be, but the consensus seems to be that it will happen.
Now I could be wrong, but I believe that the number of people who are going to be looking for HDTVs may actually drop in the near future as people become more worried about layoffs and potential long term unemployment.
Wide-spread HDTV penetration will happen when they become commonplace in a variety of retail outlets for a comparable price to what one could purchase a classic CRT-based TV now. Maybe in 4-6 years??? (pure speculation there on my part) By then, Nintendo would recongize that trend and have thier next console take advantage of HDTV resolutions.
The last statistics I heard on HDTV had 1/4 of new TVs being bought were HDTV compatible and 15% of homes had HDTV TVs inside of them; even if HDTV adoption accelerates most homes will not have a HDTV until 2011/2012 when the next generation begins. Whether this would have any effect on Wii sales is largely questionable being that the entire focus of the Wii seems to be drastically different than either the PS3 or XBox 360; both the PS3 and XBox 360 seem to be trying to find a reason to be in your living room (media center extender and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player) whereas the Wii would be happy to be in a Den/Rec-room where you're less likely to have a HDTV anyways.
Now, I know people will think that the lack of "flashy" graphics will hurt Wii sales but I'm not too sure about that myself. With how few pixels are being displayed at 480p (roughy 12.5 Million pixels per second at 30fps/25 Million pixels per second at 60fps) it would be reasonably easy for Nintendo to produce hardware that surpasses the display, with the exception of lacking high quality shaders (which are less noticable at lower resolutions); consider that the Gamecube produced games that produced 15 Million polygons per second and the Wii is rumored to be 2 to 4 times as powerful as the Gamecube (30 Million to 60 Million polygons per second means that, regardless of frame rate, you are producing (mostly) polygons that are smaller than pixels.
"Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems. Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions. They will detect similarities between one level of the game and another, the complex balancing act of global trade mirroring the complex balancing act of building a sustainable environment. And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well."
With such simple, easy to obtain, objective like that I'm sure they will have absolutely no problem living up to people's expectations. After all claiming a compeletly open gameplay experience was easily obtained by Diakatana, and Black and White certainly lived up to people's expectations of a trainable, inteligent agent.
While I agree that there are flaws with the demographics I don't think that is what lead to the cancellation of Family Guy. (And a number of other cancellations of popular shows) Shows like that are cancelled due to the networks quest for the "next big show" Everyone wants to have the next Friends or similarly popular show. Due to this the networks will cancel good shows and put that money into a few new and probably crappy new shows in hopes that one of them will take off and be that next big thing. Family Guy came back because Fox failed miserably at finding that next big thing and fell back to a show that is a solid money show even if it isn't a huge cash cow.
I could be wrong, being that I don't watch much Television, but isn't Family Guy a Fox show? The one thing I know about Fox is that they will pull a show, that may be critically acclaimed or have a growing following, in order to replace it with a clone of a popular show.
Something I don't think is taken into consideration with Nielsen ratings, or is considered by advertizers, is that not all viewership demographics are created equally. Maybe it is just my experience, but I have found that the people who really liked shows like Arrested Development were the type of people who don't watch much television at all; they're the same type of person who finds most comedy shows reasonably boring and predictable. This means that, as an advertizer, you have dozens of opportunities in the week to sell your product to the TV obsessed 'Jerry Springer' watchers but only a handful of opportunities to sell your product to someone who watches 'Arrested Development'; the rarety of opportunity should make those spots more valuble per person watching.
I recongize that it doesn't work that way, nor will it ever work that way, but the current system favours those who watch more television and have already been bombarded with advertizing.
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I have a 17 inch dell laptop, and yes I do use it on my lap, and no I am not a huge fat guy, I am however tall. It's actually very comfortable to use, more so than my wife's 14 inch dell. So yes I would use a 20 inch laptop.
Personally, work gave me a 14 inch laptop which I thought was absolutely too small until I realized why they gave me a laptop rather than a desktop; I'm on site 2 days a week which means that I carry the lap-top home or to work 4 days a week. What I have found is that a 14 inch laptop is (in a lot of ways) too large and clumsy to carry around on Calgary's busy public transit system and I couldn't imagine how awkward and heavy a 20 inch laptop would be.
In my opinion a 20 inch laptop would be amazing if your goal is to drag it to and from lan-parties once or twice a week in your car, but if you're taking something to and from work every day you'd start to hate the extra size and weight.
I wan't calling you a fanboy, but I was saying that fanboys tend to be irrational and have little understanding of what they're talking about ...
I don't deny that my analysis of the PS3 was pretty simplistic, but I don't have enough experience with it to say too much about its specific performance. The intention of my argument was that the combination of space/heat limitations and limitations in the manufacturing process of processors really bounds how powerful the PS3 can be; these bounds are similar to what is available for a standard PC. When I said the GPU would be similar to a PC GPU, my point was that it makes more sense for Sony and Nvidia to capatalize on an existing design (and modify it as needed) then to attempt to start from scratch considering the basic requirements are similar.
The place where Consoles really get a bonus is they can focus on improving perfomance on specific areas that are important to game performance at the expense of general performance; for example Matrix Multiplication, which is heavily used in scene graph management, collision detection, physics and so on. It takes 64 Floating point multiplications and 48 floating point aditions to perform one Matrix multiplication on most processors, if you produce a specific instruction to handle this you can reduce it down to take the time of 4 floating point multiplications and 3 floating point additions; the trade off comes in that you have 16 seperate instruction paths being executed at the same time which greatly increases the ammount of energy your processor is using and you thus must reduce your clockspeed (thereby reducing performance that is not related to Matrix Multiplication). The fact is that Sony didn't choose this route, they split the cell into 7 general purpose pipelines which greatly improves "general performance" but (I suspect) that this was at the expense of greater game performance.
Now, I don't really think how powerful the cell is, is all that important because games today are far more bound to GPU performance than they're to CPU performance and if games continue to support 1080p throughout the lifespan of the PS3 I expect this will always be the case.
I don't think the intention of the previous post was that you could produce a PC that outperforms the PS3 for the same cost as the PS3, but more that there is an annoying habit of fanboys who think that the PS3 is magic and can outperform anything. Now, being that the PS3 doesn't come with an HDTV, and CRT monitors that support 1920x1280 are readily availabe and inexpensive I don't see your point of including a high end, large LCD monitor in the PC price; $250 could easily buy a 17 inch monitor that supports these resolutions.
Please source this. I say that the PS3's architecture is completely different from a PC in no comparable format except real-world tests that aren't even available yet. At the very minimum, people who have seen the PS3 in person running at 1080p have said it's "amazing and fluid". I haven't seen it yet.
IIRC the PS3's GPU has a similar architecture to most readily available graphics cards produced by Nvidia; as a guess, I would say that it was probably a PC GPU that was under development 18-24 months ago that had most of the Legacy support removed from it to keep development costs down. The fact is that the PS3's GPU at best would be similar to the best single GPU graphics card that Nvidia offers, because if Nvidia could produce a better GPU today they would put it on a circuit board and sell it for $500 and advertize how much better their card was then what ATI was producing; if they could produce a sigle GPU which outperformed their SLi setup they would put it on a card and sell it for $700 and advertize that a single card outperformed ATI's crossfire solutions.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you think you'll recieve dramatically better performance from the PS3 than you would from a PC with a decent CPU and good Graphics card I would expect to be disapointed. Consoles (typically) produce great performance for the price, but they're still bound to the same laws of physics that a PC is (and usually consoles have very strict cost/heat/space requirements that a PC doesn't have).
Do you have any idea how long it takes to design and build a gaming system?
Nintendo started design on the Gamecube almost immediately after they completed work on the N64, they started on the Wii (back then Revolution) in 2001 immediately after they completed work on the Gamecube, and I'm pretty sure that they're going to start work on the next generation system right after they release the Wii. Microsoft, as a contrast, produced the XBox in about 18 months and was forced to use (mostly) standard components and could not get decent licencing terms from their hardware suppliers; because of this the XBox was easily hacked, and was expensive to produce (with a limited ability to reduce costs).
In general, this isn't a sign that Microsoft "is already plotting a replacement may manage to further pigeonhole the 360 as old tech". The fact is that if Microsoft wants to produce a cost effective, powerful system, in 2010 or 2011 they had to begin development in 2005/2006.
Xbox was not significantly more powerful than GameCube, certainly nothing even close to the hardware advantages that both shared over PS2.
...
..." Maybe this still happens, but I haven't seen too much of this so I expect that the Graphics whores are a much smaller group than they were previously. Maybe I'm biased though, I still think that the PS2 and Dreamcast produce graphics at a level which really don't have to be upgraded on (except for a little muddiness and jagginess).
True enough, in fact it has been said many times that the XBox and Gamecube were very similar in processing power but that they had different advantages; any game that took advantage of the Gamecube's fixed functionality pipline (usually) produced more polygons with greater texture detail than was possible on the XBox, the XBox's programable pipleine allowed it to generate effects which were not possible on the Gamecube.
Anyways
I think the statement that "Graphics aren't important anymore" is pretty true from what I have seen on the interweb. In 2000 and 2001 you'd see fanboys displaying countless screenshots of games saying "The Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/XBox couldn't run a game that looked like this
Here's the question though. Is fiction really ment to be interactive? Or is fiction the journey the author leads you on?
I would say that fiction is the journey that the author takes you on, but at the same time there is nothing saying that it can not be interactive. I'm not claiming that games are great works of fiction yet, but they are developing methods where the "author" (designers) produce the story and allow the gamer to discover it.
Personally, I think the worst element of story telling in videogames is (probably) the most popular and that is cutscenes. In my opinion it has far more impact to have someone read a journal, or perform a side-quest, in order to reveal more information about the world that the "reader" finds themself in; cutscenes are too passive, and usually are plagued with poor animation and terrible voice acting.
I'm not going to defend Zonk's posting, but I do think there is a difference between how Nintendo's treated the Virtual Console and Sony's treated their Online System.
Back at E3 in 2005 Nintendo announced that the Virtual Console would give you the opportunity to download and play games from the NES, SNES and N64 (later adding the Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, and Turbographix 16); in one sentence the core idea of the virtual console was described. Certainly, there are dozens of questions people wanted answers to (how much it would cost, which developers would provide games, what games would be available, etc.) but, to a certain extent, those could wait and you still had a basic understanding of what you're getting into.
My memory could be wrong, but IIRC Sony basically said that their online service would be free, require developers to implement their own system, and it would rival XBox Live; which left many people with the question "Huh?". Without further details you can't even make reasonable assumptions on what is going on in Sony's world.
I may be wrong, but that is how I see it
I could be wrong but I think the American and Japaneese points are not interchangeable ...
Most of your points are stupid, or not that impressive but I want to comment on this one in particular:
Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft's offerings, Sony doesn't hide the price of items behind an arbitrary "points" scheme
"Points" is a much better way to offer these services to customers in this buisness model. If you consider that not everyone has a credit card, or likes using that information online, a "points" model allows people to buy "points cards" at their local retailer and use them online; this means that everyone from little Jimmy (8 years old) to Nana Smith (72 years old) can access your online content. This also limits the quantity of trafic that your ecommerce site faces because rather than every purchase requiring a credit card check you only require one when people buy new points.
As for the confusing the price, how is having 1 point per yen (in Japan) or 1 point per dime (in the US) a really confusing system; this is Nintendo's Wii points system.
I hope so... Not all the content has to be free.. but I'd like to play online without a monthly subscription. Finally some competition.
I personally don't think XBox Live is the type of service Microsoft is trying to compete on price with; they seem to be more focused on quality of service and increased functionality. By having a charge, Microsoft will be able to provide services that would not be cost effective on a free service; much of this functionality may be of questionable value (gamer-scores and what not) but it is what the service is based on. I would expect that XBox Live would (probably) increase the ammount of services it provides rather than reduce the price.
I honestly don't know what EB Games is up to ...
... Why could I pre-order a Gamecube in July in 2001 at Futureshop, and a month before the system launches I still can't pre-order at Futureshop or Best Buy?
Back in 2001 I pre-ordered a Gamecube at Futureshop and when I walked in they must have had (at least) 50 Gamecubes in a pile and everyone who pre-ordered ended up with a system; today, the Wii is launching with (about) twice as many systems as the Gamecube did and EB Games are averaging 10 systems per store for to pre-order. It seems that something is off to me, either EB Games is getting screwed on the number of systems they're getting, or they're purposefully limiting pre-orders.
Which brings me up to my other question
Nintendo will be launching with 1,000,000 consoles which is (about) as many as they can launch with because Retail outlets do not have unlimited shelf space; on top of that Nintendo will (probably) be releasing 1.5 Million units to North America in the six weeks following the launch of the Wii.
Personally, I don't know whether Nintendo has enough systems or whether they're going overboard and would like a pre-order to ensure that I get a system this year; if they're as motivated in real life as they seem to be online, the Hard-Core gamers are a large enough group that they could buy every Wii that is released this year.
There is a difference between having children and being a parent and it is really depressing to see how few people really understand that. If you're a good parent, you don't have to watch your children 24 hours a day to ensure that they are not up to no good. By the time a child is old enough to create a MySpace account and impersonate their teacher they should already understand that it is wrong and that they shouldn't do it.
It is depressing to see that parents are spending so much money buying phones to ensure that they're "connected to their children" or so they can "check up on them" because, if they were actually involved in their children's life, it isn't necessary.
It does more to attract paying students, but not nessesarily 'good' students.
I would be very surprised if 'foodball stadium' listed high on the reasons for attending among the students who go on to do well in ways that reflect on the university.
Well, I'm not so sure a student's interests (outside of academics) really matter too much to how well a student will perform; in fact I'm not too sure that a student's academic performance in high school really matter after watching countless honor students strugle while the slackers performed well. The benefit of a stadium (or high level football program) is that you'll attract 50,000 potential first year students where the school that has better teaching will get 10,000; when you choose your 5,000 first year students from 50,000 you will probably have a better "average" student than the school that only had 10,000 applications regardless of the average quality of application.
If this is a trend, the only thing disturbing is that a new football stadium is probably a higher priority for a University than better network equipment and bandwidth. My undergrad was at the U of MN and they constantly wanted their own football stadium--they would spend any amount of money and create any parking problems necessary to get it.
Well, from the University's perspective a football stadium is probably a better "investment" then better bandwidth. Having a good football program probably does more to attract good students to your campus then good parking, bandwith, and competent instuctors combined.
Seven years? Man you need a better job ...
Anyways, the problem with a competition of this nature is that you can make a lot of money as long as you're at the top of your game. For every person in this league there is (probably) 100 people who are nearly as good and (if they so choose) could easily start challenging you for your spot in the league. In other words you always are at risk of not being good enough to keep your 'job'.
Growing up, I knew a few guys who ended up becomming professional snowboarders; they lasted about 18 months before their sponsership and were 'forced' out. I imagine that, if gaming continues as a 'sport', professional-gamers will have to 'train' for 8 hours a day to stay competitive.
IT may be an insecure field, but I doubt all the jobs will dry up all of a sudden. Much like the gamer in the article, if you feel that your job isn't that secure you should train some skills that are useful both inside and outside of IT (say public speaking) and save up your money in case you suddenly find yourself without a job; this is easily said, and can be accomplished, but rarely will an 18 year old recognize how good he has it until it is gone.
As soon as contract negotiations over royalty payments and distribution expenses come into play, I feel they lose their "artist" status and are "entertainers."
Artists to me are people that attempt to share a unique, creative and inspired vision through sound and vision (or the combination of the two.)
(Yes I realize 'art' is subjective, but I'm talkin strictly to the movie/music type here.)
When it comes to the **AA's and their international counterparts, all we get is rehashed, same old same old in order to service a businesses bottom line.
Honestly, artists and entertainers become conserned with royalty payments and distribution expenses mainly because the labels and studios are trying to screw them over. I'm not an entertainment laywer or anything, but I know that artists do not make anything on the sale of their albums until the record label has broken even; this means that the record label has to make the money back from the video they forced you to shoot before you get paid. Even after you have paid them off, the label takes 25% off the top for recoup costs (like returns and damages) regardless of the format (yes, they charge artists 25% on iTunes downloads which can neither be returned or damaged).
Yeah, I'm pretty tired of hearing about higher speed connections because it will have no impact on me. Back in 1998 I was paying $39.99/Month for 1.5Mb/s ADSL and today I am paying $39.99 for 1.5Mb/s ADSL; it has been 8 years and I haven't seen any improvement in what ISPs are willing to offer.
I know that all the cool kids make fun of Microsoft and their employees but what is there to really "get" about YouTube?
YouTube is a fantastic webapplication that has a lot of potential but lacks any type of business model that would justify the purchase price; on top of that a large percentage of the content will cause the MPAA and RIAA to sue YouTube because they didn't get their cut (and don't forget the vast quantities of movies that are stolen from other websites because YouTube has better bandwith). My only thought is why would google spend $1.6 billion on a company that will face legal doom, when they could have spent $5 Million producing a web application and convinced the MPAA/RIAA that google-tube was the best place for them to have their videos and they should sue YouTube?
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me too much if that was a Sony employee buying a "Playstation 3 Premium System Pre-Order" from himself. The only thing that Sony really has left that could possibly move the Playstation 3 at $500/$600 is pure hype; all the games are announced with all the features known the only thing they can add is an irrational need for someone to buy a PS3.
Personally, I have only ever had a single problem with a Nintendo made product and that was I got a disc-read error on my launch Gamecube about 8 months after I bought it. My dealings with Nintendo's customer service about my broken Gamecube were so good that I have no worries about buying a Wii at launch; essentially, Nintendo just told me where to drop off the Gamecube and they shipped a refurbished Gamecube overnight to their Depot so I only had 1 day without my gamecube.
The PS3, on the other hand, I would be worried about mainly because I have had bad experiences with Sony's customer service in the past and the PS3 has a first generation optical disc drive in it; my memories of first generation CD-RW and DVD/DVD-RW drives tells me that the most you can really expect from a drive like this is (about) 12 months of usage. I never want to have another system (like my PS2) where I own it for 13 months and have to go buy a brand new system (at full price) because of a disc-read error.
Um, no. They are commonplace enough. HDTV sales will outpace SD sales for the first time this year. Morgan Stanley estimates that approximately 26% of households will have at least one set by the end of the year. That number rises to ~68% in 2010.
You can say that 26% this year and 33+% next year isn't wide spread enough, but I beg to differ. Those are also the households with the disposable income to afford not only the console, but the real expense of accessories and games for it.
Nintendo is making a mistake. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean the games won't be fun, but based on perception alone they are missing a major marketing 'checkmark'.
Just as a question, how much of their analysis is dependant on the economic conditions that were present from 2001 to 2006 continuing (that is low unemployment, low interest rates, rising house values and easy to get credit)?
I ask this question because most economists now believe that the United States is heading for an economic downturn that will result in higher unemployment, higher interest rates, falling house values and credit that is harder to get (due to a greater number of bankruptcies); there is massive debate on how severe and long lasting the downturn will be, but the consensus seems to be that it will happen.
Now I could be wrong, but I believe that the number of people who are going to be looking for HDTVs may actually drop in the near future as people become more worried about layoffs and potential long term unemployment.
Wide-spread HDTV penetration will happen when they become commonplace in a variety of retail outlets for a comparable price to what one could purchase a classic CRT-based TV now. Maybe in 4-6 years??? (pure speculation there on my part) By then, Nintendo would recongize that trend and have thier next console take advantage of HDTV resolutions. The last statistics I heard on HDTV had 1/4 of new TVs being bought were HDTV compatible and 15% of homes had HDTV TVs inside of them; even if HDTV adoption accelerates most homes will not have a HDTV until 2011/2012 when the next generation begins. Whether this would have any effect on Wii sales is largely questionable being that the entire focus of the Wii seems to be drastically different than either the PS3 or XBox 360; both the PS3 and XBox 360 seem to be trying to find a reason to be in your living room (media center extender and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player) whereas the Wii would be happy to be in a Den/Rec-room where you're less likely to have a HDTV anyways. Now, I know people will think that the lack of "flashy" graphics will hurt Wii sales but I'm not too sure about that myself. With how few pixels are being displayed at 480p (roughy 12.5 Million pixels per second at 30fps/25 Million pixels per second at 60fps) it would be reasonably easy for Nintendo to produce hardware that surpasses the display, with the exception of lacking high quality shaders (which are less noticable at lower resolutions); consider that the Gamecube produced games that produced 15 Million polygons per second and the Wii is rumored to be 2 to 4 times as powerful as the Gamecube (30 Million to 60 Million polygons per second means that, regardless of frame rate, you are producing (mostly) polygons that are smaller than pixels.
"Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems. Spore's players will get to experience firsthand how choices made on a local scale -- a single creature's decision to, say, adopt an omnivorous lifestyle -- can end up having global repercussions. They will detect similarities between one level of the game and another, the complex balancing act of global trade mirroring the complex balancing act of building a sustainable environment. And traveling through a simulated universe, from cells to constellations, will, ideally, make them more curious about the real-world universe they already inhabit -- and show them that they have the power to shape that universe as well."
With such simple, easy to obtain, objective like that I'm sure they will have absolutely no problem living up to people's expectations. After all claiming a compeletly open gameplay experience was easily obtained by Diakatana, and Black and White certainly lived up to people's expectations of a trainable, inteligent agent.
While I agree that there are flaws with the demographics I don't think that is what lead to the cancellation of Family Guy. (And a number of other cancellations of popular shows) Shows like that are cancelled due to the networks quest for the "next big show" Everyone wants to have the next Friends or similarly popular show. Due to this the networks will cancel good shows and put that money into a few new and probably crappy new shows in hopes that one of them will take off and be that next big thing. Family Guy came back because Fox failed miserably at finding that next big thing and fell back to a show that is a solid money show even if it isn't a huge cash cow.
I could be wrong, being that I don't watch much Television, but isn't Family Guy a Fox show? The one thing I know about Fox is that they will pull a show, that may be critically acclaimed or have a growing following, in order to replace it with a clone of a popular show.
Something I don't think is taken into consideration with Nielsen ratings, or is considered by advertizers, is that not all viewership demographics are created equally. Maybe it is just my experience, but I have found that the people who really liked shows like Arrested Development were the type of people who don't watch much television at all; they're the same type of person who finds most comedy shows reasonably boring and predictable. This means that, as an advertizer, you have dozens of opportunities in the week to sell your product to the TV obsessed 'Jerry Springer' watchers but only a handful of opportunities to sell your product to someone who watches 'Arrested Development'; the rarety of opportunity should make those spots more valuble per person watching.
I recongize that it doesn't work that way, nor will it ever work that way, but the current system favours those who watch more television and have already been bombarded with advertizing.