RAGE, from what I understand, won't have anything like deathmatches; last I heard, it would have a two-player co-op mode, and some head-to-head racing. Dedicated servers may simply be overkill in that situation. I think this may be a big ado over nothing.
And I agree with you. Crowds are a useful for reducing inaccuracies, such as with your jelly bean example. But there are circumstances where the majority of the crowd is biased or uninformed in a systematic fashion... and in that case, a larger sample just gets you a more accurate incorrect answer.
I suspect that crowds might be useful for classifying music, but not really that useful for recommending music. You can pick two fans of a very narrow, specific, musical genre, and they may like entirely different songs from that set.
Very possibly, but even if it's totally non-commercial there's still valid reasons for wanting to track where your traffic is coming from. It's probably marketing of some kind, but maybe not sold and paid for.
I'm not sure how that's possible when the Wii is 480p and any other modern game console is capabale of offering 720P or higher.
That's just resolution. Yeah, that's just an opinion, but I'm not the only one that feels that way. RE4 was on a number of consoles, and the Wii combines the best parts of all of them, and adds an ideal control scheme. RE4 plays better and is more fun on the Wii than RE5 is on the PS3 or 360; RE5 on teh 360/PS3 LOOKS like a step forward in graphics, but FEELS like a step backward.
The anecdote about Monster Hunter Tri is here: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2007/10/10/afx4204151.html. 'Due to high development cost of titles for PS3, we have decided to switch the platform to which we release our Monster Hunster 3 title,' Capcom managing corporate officer Katsuhiko Ichii said.
Did he not want cutsy looking, or did he not want childish? They're two very different things. Besides, Monster Hunter 3 is NOT 'cutsy' by any definition, and Crystal Chronicles is taking the series in a much more realistic style than previous entries.
RE4 is a port, but is far better than other versions. House of the Dead:OVerkill isn't a port. Silent Hill isn't a port, it's a complete rewrite only vaguely based on the first.
You are right about Left for Dead; I meant Dead Rising:Extraction. Which isn't a port.
People can also build up rational fears of what they do understand. There's a lot of that on slashdot, too. Overcomplicated overengineering is something much of slashdot has experience with.
Yeah, there's a lot. And, keep in mind that some 'childish looking' games are absolutely very appropriate for adults. "A Little Kings Story" looks like a cross between Pokemon and a Fairy Tale, but has very sophisticated gameplay and humor.
Some of the games for the Wii you could consider 'mature' in the gritty/violent sense are: No More Heroes. The Conduit. Madworld. Resident Evil 4. House of the Dead: Maximum Overkill. Dead Space: Extraction. Left for Dead. Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers (I LIKE that one!).
Games that are good, but not packed with sex/violence, are: Fire Emblem. Phantom Brave. A Little Kings Story. Murumasa. A Boy and his Blob. Super Mario Galaxies. Metroid Prime 3. Tales of Symphonia: A New World. Okami.
Upcoming games that look to be good: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Final Fantasy:Crystal Chronicles:The Crystal Bearers (two colons in that one). Metroid: Other M. No More Heroes 2. Red Steel 2. Monster Hunter 3. Dragon Quest X.
I kind of went overboard responding to you, because experience tells me that there will be all sorts of posts saying that the Wii has no games, and probably complaining about the inch of dust that's accumulated. If you look, there are plenty of decent games.
A failed test doesn't mean the next one won't work, because it's a constantly shifting set of conditions. The Wii is still selling 350-400 thousand units a week, almost as much as the PS3 and 360 combined. In other words, if two games come out six months apart, there's another 8-10 million Wiis on the market to sell to. Combine that with the reduced expense of game development on the Wii (I think it averages about a third or a fourth of the cost of the other two consoles for a typical 'big' game), and it just seem inevitable that more games will come.
I think the greatest problem is that once a company decides to make a title for the Wii, they tone it down, slash the production values and the budget, and find it STILL sells well; the popularity and low cost of development leads to a flood of cheap shovelware. There's all sorts of great games on the Wii, mature or not, but they are in danger of being overlooked amidst the crap.
Monster Hunter Three is an interesting example. It's a pretty 'hardcore' game, if you label games as such, and traditionally offered on Sony consoles. It was going to be on the PS3 this gen; but the developers looked at the multimillion dollar expense of creating it on that console, and decided to switch to the Wii. It might sell less, and yet be more profitable at the same time.
Christ, you would think they would be able to narrow down PI to within 5%. Maybe with the next batch of supercomputers, we'll get more precise than "3.1 something".
Two years ago I worked with my son to build a Lunar Lander program on his TI calculator; it was pretty much his introduction to programming. Good times.
True, but the 2nd changed the basic message of the series from "you can't change your fate" to "you can change your fate". I'm not sure why the 3rd should be more condemned than the second for that. I don't particularly like the 3rd, but not for that reason.
It seems that if the conditions permit certain strains of bacteria to live for a while, that almost guarantees that a million years later the planet would be covered with bacteria perfectly adapted for the environment. The harsher conditions and greater difficulty pulling energy out of the environment might result in equilibrium being reached at a much less active biosphere than on Earth, but it seems almost inevitable. I guess the critical question is how realistic is it that bacteria have survived the trip from Earth to Mars on the backs of meteorites?
It's worth pointing out, because if their next gaming device cost $90, $50, or $20 a month to use its features, it would fail miserably. I don't think Nintendo is competing with the iPhone at all; but if it is, it's by owning the audience from 8 to 18 years old, and then holding on to them as they age.
Nintendo is a smart and conservative company, and they're looking at the long haul. Apple's model is far more unstable; it'll collapse again as soon as the fashion tides change.
No, I bought it. The license bit is just a power grab. I can't help it if the courts have sometimes made incorrect decisions. Doesn't change what's right.
If I signed a contract, whether with a book or an operating system, I would be bound by it; but it certainly isn't settled law that a EULA is actually a contract. It has significant differences, such as being presented AFTER purchase, and being entirely unilateral.
I bet it's a social experiment, not tech. There are all sorts of obvious ways to get people to work together, but how can you eliminate bad actors and false data?
If you have a central clearing house, the data can be stolen by others. If the submitted data is kept private, then the participants need to have a high level of trust in the central organizers. You also need to be resistant to spoofing from other parties, including potentially organized efforts by other groups trying to win the prize.
My best idea would be that the contest needs to be taken up by a web site that already has a large web of trust; large enough that they can be trusted, and that they can get enough data that anomalies and deception become evident. The prize money could be redistributed among the first N people that accurately reported a balloon... or, a lottery could divide the prize among N number of people who submitted accurate information. The second makes more sense to me.
It's Apple's OS, they developed it, spend years and millions of $$$ making it - why shouldn't they be allowed to say what machines can and can't run it?
Because the COPY of the OS the customer purchased is OWNED by the customer. They can do whatever they want with it, short of redistributing copies. It should be no different than if I bought a book; I could quote from it, cross out lines, and even read it back to front if I wanted. Yes, I know that the courts don't treat it the same; that's because the courts are wrong.
These arguments about "I'd buy a Mac if it had exactly X configuration, but seeing as they don't I'll just pirate it on my own system" have absolutely zero merit.
I absolutely agree. But the argument "I own a copy of the OS, and I own a computer with exactly X configuration, so I'm going to put my copy of the OS on my computer" DOES have merit.
Slashdot Mirror
RAGE, from what I understand, won't have anything like deathmatches; last I heard, it would have a two-player co-op mode, and some head-to-head racing. Dedicated servers may simply be overkill in that situation. I think this may be a big ado over nothing.
The 360 launched in two versions, "core" for $299 and "elite" for $399. The initial 20gb PS3 sold for $499, and the 60gb for $599.
You perhaps could argue whether it was $100 or $200 more expensive, but it was clearly more.
Thank you for getting my post.
And I agree with you. Crowds are a useful for reducing inaccuracies, such as with your jelly bean example. But there are circumstances where the majority of the crowd is biased or uninformed in a systematic fashion... and in that case, a larger sample just gets you a more accurate incorrect answer.
I suspect that crowds might be useful for classifying music, but not really that useful for recommending music. You can pick two fans of a very narrow, specific, musical genre, and they may like entirely different songs from that set.
Very possibly, but even if it's totally non-commercial there's still valid reasons for wanting to track where your traffic is coming from. It's probably marketing of some kind, but maybe not sold and paid for.
Anybody who thinks 'the wisdom of the crowds' could be used for anything useful should be thoroughly modded down.
But "Slashdot.org" is more ideologically pure than "Slashdot.com". Get your priorities straight.
I'm not sure how that's possible when the Wii is 480p and any other modern game console is capabale of offering 720P or higher.
That's just resolution. Yeah, that's just an opinion, but I'm not the only one that feels that way. RE4 was on a number of consoles, and the Wii combines the best parts of all of them, and adds an ideal control scheme. RE4 plays better and is more fun on the Wii than RE5 is on the PS3 or 360; RE5 on teh 360/PS3 LOOKS like a step forward in graphics, but FEELS like a step backward.
[citation required]
For which part?
The sales figures can be found here: http://www.vgchartz.com/chartsindex.php
The anecdote about Monster Hunter Tri is here: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2007/10/10/afx4204151.html. 'Due to high development cost of titles for PS3, we have decided to switch the platform to which we release our Monster Hunster 3 title,' Capcom managing corporate officer Katsuhiko Ichii said.
Did he not want cutsy looking, or did he not want childish? They're two very different things. Besides, Monster Hunter 3 is NOT 'cutsy' by any definition, and Crystal Chronicles is taking the series in a much more realistic style than previous entries.
RE4 is a port, but is far better than other versions. House of the Dead:OVerkill isn't a port. Silent Hill isn't a port, it's a complete rewrite only vaguely based on the first.
You are right about Left for Dead; I meant Dead Rising:Extraction. Which isn't a port.
That is what I meant, thanks. Too many games with "Dead" in the title... for some reason, there's a LOT of zombie killing games on the Wii.
And they've approved and even created themselves other games that use the remote to emulate stabbing weapons.
People can also build up rational fears of what they do understand. There's a lot of that on slashdot, too. Overcomplicated overengineering is something much of slashdot has experience with.
Gee, really? What were you really trying to say?
Exactly that, obviously.
Yeah, there's a lot. And, keep in mind that some 'childish looking' games are absolutely very appropriate for adults. "A Little Kings Story" looks like a cross between Pokemon and a Fairy Tale, but has very sophisticated gameplay and humor.
Some of the games for the Wii you could consider 'mature' in the gritty/violent sense are: No More Heroes. The Conduit. Madworld. Resident Evil 4. House of the Dead: Maximum Overkill. Dead Space: Extraction. Left for Dead. Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers (I LIKE that one!).
Games that are good, but not packed with sex/violence, are: Fire Emblem. Phantom Brave. A Little Kings Story. Murumasa. A Boy and his Blob. Super Mario Galaxies. Metroid Prime 3. Tales of Symphonia: A New World. Okami.
Upcoming games that look to be good: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Final Fantasy:Crystal Chronicles:The Crystal Bearers (two colons in that one). Metroid: Other M. No More Heroes 2. Red Steel 2. Monster Hunter 3. Dragon Quest X.
I kind of went overboard responding to you, because experience tells me that there will be all sorts of posts saying that the Wii has no games, and probably complaining about the inch of dust that's accumulated. If you look, there are plenty of decent games.
A failed test doesn't mean the next one won't work, because it's a constantly shifting set of conditions. The Wii is still selling 350-400 thousand units a week, almost as much as the PS3 and 360 combined. In other words, if two games come out six months apart, there's another 8-10 million Wiis on the market to sell to. Combine that with the reduced expense of game development on the Wii (I think it averages about a third or a fourth of the cost of the other two consoles for a typical 'big' game), and it just seem inevitable that more games will come.
I think the greatest problem is that once a company decides to make a title for the Wii, they tone it down, slash the production values and the budget, and find it STILL sells well; the popularity and low cost of development leads to a flood of cheap shovelware. There's all sorts of great games on the Wii, mature or not, but they are in danger of being overlooked amidst the crap.
Monster Hunter Three is an interesting example. It's a pretty 'hardcore' game, if you label games as such, and traditionally offered on Sony consoles. It was going to be on the PS3 this gen; but the developers looked at the multimillion dollar expense of creating it on that console, and decided to switch to the Wii. It might sell less, and yet be more profitable at the same time.
Christ, you would think they would be able to narrow down PI to within 5%. Maybe with the next batch of supercomputers, we'll get more precise than "3.1 something".
Two years ago I worked with my son to build a Lunar Lander program on his TI calculator; it was pretty much his introduction to programming. Good times.
"Virtual" because it's on a computer, duh. "Cyber" would be an acceptable alternative prefix.
"2.0" could be added as a suffix, if it used Javascript.
True, but the 2nd changed the basic message of the series from "you can't change your fate" to "you can change your fate". I'm not sure why the 3rd should be more condemned than the second for that. I don't particularly like the 3rd, but not for that reason.
It seems that if the conditions permit certain strains of bacteria to live for a while, that almost guarantees that a million years later the planet would be covered with bacteria perfectly adapted for the environment. The harsher conditions and greater difficulty pulling energy out of the environment might result in equilibrium being reached at a much less active biosphere than on Earth, but it seems almost inevitable. I guess the critical question is how realistic is it that bacteria have survived the trip from Earth to Mars on the backs of meteorites?
It's worth pointing out, because if their next gaming device cost $90, $50, or $20 a month to use its features, it would fail miserably. I don't think Nintendo is competing with the iPhone at all; but if it is, it's by owning the audience from 8 to 18 years old, and then holding on to them as they age.
Nintendo is a smart and conservative company, and they're looking at the long haul. Apple's model is far more unstable; it'll collapse again as soon as the fashion tides change.
No, I bought it. The license bit is just a power grab. I can't help it if the courts have sometimes made incorrect decisions. Doesn't change what's right.
If I signed a contract, whether with a book or an operating system, I would be bound by it; but it certainly isn't settled law that a EULA is actually a contract. It has significant differences, such as being presented AFTER purchase, and being entirely unilateral.
I bet it's a social experiment, not tech. There are all sorts of obvious ways to get people to work together, but how can you eliminate bad actors and false data?
If you have a central clearing house, the data can be stolen by others. If the submitted data is kept private, then the participants need to have a high level of trust in the central organizers. You also need to be resistant to spoofing from other parties, including potentially organized efforts by other groups trying to win the prize.
My best idea would be that the contest needs to be taken up by a web site that already has a large web of trust; large enough that they can be trusted, and that they can get enough data that anomalies and deception become evident. The prize money could be redistributed among the first N people that accurately reported a balloon... or, a lottery could divide the prize among N number of people who submitted accurate information. The second makes more sense to me.
It's Apple's OS, they developed it, spend years and millions of $$$ making it - why shouldn't they be allowed to say what machines can and can't run it?
Because the COPY of the OS the customer purchased is OWNED by the customer. They can do whatever they want with it, short of redistributing copies. It should be no different than if I bought a book; I could quote from it, cross out lines, and even read it back to front if I wanted. Yes, I know that the courts don't treat it the same; that's because the courts are wrong.
These arguments about "I'd buy a Mac if it had exactly X configuration, but seeing as they don't I'll just pirate it on my own system" have absolutely zero merit.
I absolutely agree. But the argument "I own a copy of the OS, and I own a computer with exactly X configuration, so I'm going to put my copy of the OS on my computer" DOES have merit.