This seems just one more reason to switch to Netflix. I'm currently with Blockbuster Online, only because I can return titles for in-store rentals as you say. I've almost completely exhausted their in-store selection (except the new season of Rome just released, damn you HBO) and I'll be switching to Netflix soon. Just to feel less dirty really. I hate Blockbuster. I'm still bitter about the years of late-fee rape and randomly charging my card (sometimes the full purchase price for movies I actually did return!) and it's quite gratifying to watch them scramble to save their business. I've been running through HBO's awesome library of shows building a collection and actually, Blockbuster has had great turn around for me most of the time. I think it's because I live near their distribution center. At least initially they did. Now my queue is almost all "long waits" and I think this will be my last month.
Anyway I read somewhere that the reason some titles remain "available" but don't get shipped to you is b/c they are at distribution centers far removed from you. If they are on the other side of the country and don't get shipped to any intermediate places they'll essentially never reach you. If that's the case they'd do well to include region in their criteria for availability and I don't know how Netflix does it, but I can't imagine you make customers happy by teasing them like that. Here's to Blockbuster's slow fiery death!
"Hey we made cancer airborne and contagious! You're welcome! We're Science. We're all about coulda not shoulda." - Patton Oswalt - Werewolves & Lollipops
Damn I just remembered something else. Someone was giving a speech at a games conference years ago (like 10 freaking years ago). I think it was someone from id software. Anyway their idea for the future of online gaming was pretty keen. Instead of joining servers, you basically played on one server, then could jump into a teleporter and wind up instantaneously on another different server. Levels were basically all linked together and you could run up to a teleporter and watch the match proceed on a totally different server. Like CCTV. Don't like what's going on here, let's see what's happening next door. Now the graphics tech for that happened in Quake 3. The broadband support is so far MIA. I think the point is, we can't really even grasp what sophisticated online games are because we're still stuck with the same idea of online play as we had when Quake 1 first went online. That's pathetic.
Who's to say you shouldn't be able to host a large server? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty tired of the general attitudes of server admins in the games I play. It seems a rare occasion to find an admin that isn't a power mongering twat because they setup an expensive server to host the game and have all the control. I know it's a free service for me but being a total dick should count as something of a cost. Would be nice to even that playing field as well.
I wish people would just stop defending Jesus or claiming he was this or that and that so and so is misinterpreting the message. Forget it. The guy's life was coopted moreso than any other human in history (they aligned the calendar with his birth for fuck sake) so it is completely impossible to say anything about what the man's attitudes and morals truly were. Legends and folklore are the best manipulators because they involve so much subjective interpretation. I know what you're saying, but the better path would be to plead that we stop elevating a man about whom we clearly know nothing for certain. This is a legend that has been used throughout all of modern recorded history to control, justify, endorse, or condemn countless human activities however atrocious or benevolent. The nature of Jesus is virtually ambiguous at this point. It's been 2000 years. Maybe we should update the mascot. Or grow up.
Remember last presidential election? Someone spending far too much time looking at stats realized that the outcome of the Washington Redskins home football games accurately predicted the win or loss for the incumbent since 1936. This indicated that the incumbent would lose. I knew he stole that election!
Not to say you don't belong here, but clearly you're wasting your talent for vitriolic revenge fantasies. There are plenty of child abuse stories begging for your input.
Yea Flex is cool as hell. I used it to make a level editor for my future Flash games, basically a small vector graphics program (output saved in xml) in no time at all. I was surprised by how fast it all came together. And they have a free compiler for it. If you have any experience with Flash Actionscript you really should try it out. If Adobe could just get the Flash 9 SDK out and Opera was able to update their web browser for the Wii, you could make insanely cool games for the Wii, basically for free. And with AIR, you could make direct ports of your games to every major OS. Sure they're 2D, but it ain't your dadd'y 2D. I honestly don't see this kind of innovation coming from Microsoft anytime soon. Not in such an easy to use and reliable package. But one things for sure, if they want to win, they'll have to fight hard. That could really be a good thing for stale old Microsoft.
But we've never had a single game make or break any of our platforms. No sir, to successfully break a platform takes a concerted effort involving acute arrogance from each and ever one of our divisions combining unwarranted proprietary format rollout, overly expensive product pricing, and the destruction of customer trust through a history of anti-consumer attitudes and unscrupulous use of the latest in invasive DRM technologies. Look, we know what we're doing here. Oh I kid Sony. I kid.
It's the natural consequence of an undeniable fact: The games press is almost entirely dependent on access to information, people, and products that only game publishers can provide. You want the latest details on a game that's still a year away from release? Actually, not really no. I'm quite a frequenter of IGN during times of peak console output (I consider the current lag between console launches and actual quality software to be a real slow time so I haven't been to IGN in months). I just realized though, I never really read stories on upcoming games. I go straight to the reviews. I could care less about the impressions an IGN reviewer has on a game that's 50% done, especially when something as organic as game development can oscillate wildly towards its end level of quality and fun. Those stories are so often filled with light-hearted caveats where the reviewers "assure" the reader that the game isn't quite done and so much could happen to "tweak" the game before release. The camera needs work, the sound could be punched up, the controls feel loose, etc. Are you a reviewer or a beta tester? Then release comes out and they actually refer back to these first impressions and grade the game on its improvement in the areas they have prejudged to be important. One wonders if they just played the final product if they'd even notice these little "flaws" in the first place.
The final reviews, if they happen before release at all, only precede it by mere days. Why not just run a site where you wait for software to come out, buy it and review it without ever contacting the company in question. They have no business collaborating in the first place. Roger Ebert doesn't sit on the set of Spielberg's latest movie making notes for the man. Movie sites usually talk about who's involved in a project, but that's pretty much where it ends. You then judge this movie by your interest in its stars and its creators, which is based on their previous finished work. You usually don't hear some inside jerk discussing the "dailies" and portenting disaster on a movie that has barely begun the birthing process. It's just not a productive activity.
The game press could learn something else from Hollywood. They've got the whole demand equation backwards. Movies beg for publicity. Game companies are supposed to come to the game press for hype. They need buzz more than game magazines need the story. Maybe the problem originates in the readership. Why do we care so much about a game's early development, especially when titles slip their original intended release dates, sometimes by as much as years, and often come out as complete catastrophes making the whole process of prolonged anticipation a really ridiculous affair in retrospect. I'm looking at you, Advent Rising.
I have a number of less tech-savvy relatives who are always complaining of their computers slowing down after a few months of regular use, clogged with all sorts of net garbage. I myself don't care much about net security, it bores the hell out of me and if I ever have any real problem I can easily just wipe my pc and do a fresh install. That said, I never have to do that and I can't figure out what these people are doing to bog down their systems so much. Like I said I can't stand trying to keep up with the newest worms, bugs, what have you and I never use antivirus software. I just don't use IE, I'm all for Opera. And that's all I can think to tell them is stop using IE. It's the only common vector I can find between them. Just stay away from it.
So does the Halo 3 Special Edition console actually come with Halo 3? It doesn't say so, but that just seems stupid to me. If you're into Halo so much you need to totally gay out with a Master Chief console, you're most definitely going to buy the game itself. But then they'd have to increase the price of the console to include the game. They're just trying to make the thing seem $60 cheaper, but really, who's going to buy the themed console and not buy the game as well? They're essentially bundling their schtick for Halo mindshare with your console and using it to market the idea further to your friends. And this is just more of Microsoft splitting up essential pieces of it's system and scattering the price tags to hide real cost. Like their DVD dongle for the original XBox (the damn console had the feature built in, you had to pay to unlock it). This is where those convoluted PS3 vs. 360 comparisons come up around here, where they have to include accessories to align the two feature sets. Sony and Nintendo sell accessories to their console as well, buy they don't dick around like this. Microsoft might as well be selling PCs.
There are indeed channels to operate for oversight, leaking highly secret information to the Media is not one of them. Yea, just ask Frank Serpico. What is it with you people? What possible motives did this guy have for leaking this information beyond concern for his country's well being? That's bona fide patriotism. Remember what that word is supposed to mean? If not the fourth amendment, then exactly which part of the Bill of Rights would you consider precious enough to violate your job contract?
here is such a complaint, straight from the mouth of Sam Houser. I used to think this disc space issue was a silly argument, but then I think of how pathetic the gamecube was when it came to cross-platform games with video (Kelly Slater looked like it had video encoded in Realmedia). I still think procedurally generated textures will save a ton of space in future games, and the choice to include blu-ray inflated the cost of the PS3 to a level that hurts its adoption a great deal. That said, look at each successive generation of video games and you'll see a pattern of exponentially greater storage requirements. Atari games were only a few kilobytes, Nintendo cartridges were a few hundred kilobytes, SNES/Genesis were a few megs, N64 cartridges were 4-64 megs and saturn/ps1 were hundreds of megs (CD-sized), PS2/XBox were CD/DVD and up to ~7 gigs (the gamecube was a less successful and somewhat niche system which used a low-storage proprietary media format that may have indeed hurt them in that generation). In fact, with the exception of the few PS2 games that were CD-based, I think Microsoft is the first company to stay with the same media format (and all its limitations) on a consecutive generation of hardware and it's really one of the reasons I don't think of the 360 as next-gen, maybe half-next (and no i'm not a PS3 fanboy, I'm too poor). I'm not sure if this will hurt Microsoft in the long run or the overall quality of cross-platform games that have to aim for a more common denominator storage requirement. However, It's certainly not something to be dismissed.
I also don't really remember any games for the XBox360 coming out in it's first year that made me want to get one. In fact, there's still no games out for it that make me want to get one. Thank you. I'm not trying to bash 360 in favor of PS3 (I own neither yet), but it really bugs me that people keep pretending the 360 has this mega library of great software. Hell they don't even have Halo, the only real reason to have owned an original XBox (besides Ninja Gaiden for those of us who could put up with the evil difficulty of it). The only company that has ever consistently released great software at launch is Nintendo, and no I don't have a Wii either. You can't argue with SMB, SMW, PilotWings, Mario64, WaveRace64, Rogue Squadron 2 (maybe a stretch here for the poor GC), WiiSports, etc. Sega didn't slouch on launches either, it's these messy newcomers that want so much to make all that video game money but still don't really have an identity. Thanks but no thanks guys. You just make me wait the 1-2 years until third parties make your systems worthwhile to purchase. See you when you're relevant.
How the hell does the theatre have people watching the crowd in a movie so closely that they can spot someone using a camcorder for 20 seconds. I mean I saw her pic in the article and yea, I'd hit that, but come on here. Are there really movie gestapo vigilently scanning the audience for possible copyright violators and if so, how much does that cost? Is that why popcorn is so criminally expensive and I have to sit through 15 minutes of straight up non-movie advertising at the start of each film? I thought theatres were losing money, so how are they hiring dipshits for pirate watch?
Slashdot Mirror
The earlier students choose a major the better. Get them used to the whole cycle of repeatedly switching majors like proper college students.
This seems just one more reason to switch to Netflix. I'm currently with Blockbuster Online, only because I can return titles for in-store rentals as you say. I've almost completely exhausted their in-store selection (except the new season of Rome just released, damn you HBO) and I'll be switching to Netflix soon. Just to feel less dirty really. I hate Blockbuster. I'm still bitter about the years of late-fee rape and randomly charging my card (sometimes the full purchase price for movies I actually did return!) and it's quite gratifying to watch them scramble to save their business. I've been running through HBO's awesome library of shows building a collection and actually, Blockbuster has had great turn around for me most of the time. I think it's because I live near their distribution center. At least initially they did. Now my queue is almost all "long waits" and I think this will be my last month.
Anyway I read somewhere that the reason some titles remain "available" but don't get shipped to you is b/c they are at distribution centers far removed from you. If they are on the other side of the country and don't get shipped to any intermediate places they'll essentially never reach you. If that's the case they'd do well to include region in their criteria for availability and I don't know how Netflix does it, but I can't imagine you make customers happy by teasing them like that. Here's to Blockbuster's slow fiery death!
"Hey we made cancer airborne and contagious! You're welcome! We're Science. We're all about coulda not shoulda."
- Patton Oswalt - Werewolves & Lollipops
Damn I just remembered something else. Someone was giving a speech at a games conference years ago (like 10 freaking years ago). I think it was someone from id software. Anyway their idea for the future of online gaming was pretty keen. Instead of joining servers, you basically played on one server, then could jump into a teleporter and wind up instantaneously on another different server. Levels were basically all linked together and you could run up to a teleporter and watch the match proceed on a totally different server. Like CCTV. Don't like what's going on here, let's see what's happening next door. Now the graphics tech for that happened in Quake 3. The broadband support is so far MIA. I think the point is, we can't really even grasp what sophisticated online games are because we're still stuck with the same idea of online play as we had when Quake 1 first went online. That's pathetic.
Who's to say you shouldn't be able to host a large server? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty tired of the general attitudes of server admins in the games I play. It seems a rare occasion to find an admin that isn't a power mongering twat because they setup an expensive server to host the game and have all the control. I know it's a free service for me but being a total dick should count as something of a cost. Would be nice to even that playing field as well.
I wish people would just stop defending Jesus or claiming he was this or that and that so and so is misinterpreting the message. Forget it. The guy's life was coopted moreso than any other human in history (they aligned the calendar with his birth for fuck sake) so it is completely impossible to say anything about what the man's attitudes and morals truly were. Legends and folklore are the best manipulators because they involve so much subjective interpretation. I know what you're saying, but the better path would be to plead that we stop elevating a man about whom we clearly know nothing for certain. This is a legend that has been used throughout all of modern recorded history to control, justify, endorse, or condemn countless human activities however atrocious or benevolent. The nature of Jesus is virtually ambiguous at this point. It's been 2000 years. Maybe we should update the mascot. Or grow up.
Holy shit do you have a sister? That was exactly the post I was about to make.
Not to say you don't belong here, but clearly you're wasting your talent for vitriolic revenge fantasies. There are plenty of child abuse stories begging for your input.
You obviously don't live in Florida.
Yea Flex is cool as hell. I used it to make a level editor for my future Flash games, basically a small vector graphics program (output saved in xml) in no time at all. I was surprised by how fast it all came together. And they have a free compiler for it. If you have any experience with Flash Actionscript you really should try it out. If Adobe could just get the Flash 9 SDK out and Opera was able to update their web browser for the Wii, you could make insanely cool games for the Wii, basically for free. And with AIR, you could make direct ports of your games to every major OS. Sure they're 2D, but it ain't your dadd'y 2D. I honestly don't see this kind of innovation coming from Microsoft anytime soon. Not in such an easy to use and reliable package. But one things for sure, if they want to win, they'll have to fight hard. That could really be a good thing for stale old Microsoft.
The final reviews, if they happen before release at all, only precede it by mere days. Why not just run a site where you wait for software to come out, buy it and review it without ever contacting the company in question. They have no business collaborating in the first place. Roger Ebert doesn't sit on the set of Spielberg's latest movie making notes for the man. Movie sites usually talk about who's involved in a project, but that's pretty much where it ends. You then judge this movie by your interest in its stars and its creators, which is based on their previous finished work. You usually don't hear some inside jerk discussing the "dailies" and portenting disaster on a movie that has barely begun the birthing process. It's just not a productive activity.
The game press could learn something else from Hollywood. They've got the whole demand equation backwards. Movies beg for publicity. Game companies are supposed to come to the game press for hype. They need buzz more than game magazines need the story. Maybe the problem originates in the readership. Why do we care so much about a game's early development, especially when titles slip their original intended release dates, sometimes by as much as years, and often come out as complete catastrophes making the whole process of prolonged anticipation a really ridiculous affair in retrospect. I'm looking at you, Advent Rising.
I have a number of less tech-savvy relatives who are always complaining of their computers slowing down after a few months of regular use, clogged with all sorts of net garbage. I myself don't care much about net security, it bores the hell out of me and if I ever have any real problem I can easily just wipe my pc and do a fresh install. That said, I never have to do that and I can't figure out what these people are doing to bog down their systems so much. Like I said I can't stand trying to keep up with the newest worms, bugs, what have you and I never use antivirus software. I just don't use IE, I'm all for Opera. And that's all I can think to tell them is stop using IE. It's the only common vector I can find between them. Just stay away from it.
I win!
If you'd played the games based on his movies, you'd understand his anger.
I'm comin' Baby Bear!
So does the Halo 3 Special Edition console actually come with Halo 3? It doesn't say so, but that just seems stupid to me. If you're into Halo so much you need to totally gay out with a Master Chief console, you're most definitely going to buy the game itself. But then they'd have to increase the price of the console to include the game. They're just trying to make the thing seem $60 cheaper, but really, who's going to buy the themed console and not buy the game as well? They're essentially bundling their schtick for Halo mindshare with your console and using it to market the idea further to your friends. And this is just more of Microsoft splitting up essential pieces of it's system and scattering the price tags to hide real cost. Like their DVD dongle for the original XBox (the damn console had the feature built in, you had to pay to unlock it). This is where those convoluted PS3 vs. 360 comparisons come up around here, where they have to include accessories to align the two feature sets. Sony and Nintendo sell accessories to their console as well, buy they don't dick around like this. Microsoft might as well be selling PCs.
Then why did you originally claim it was a time machine for cats? Fraudster!
here is such a complaint, straight from the mouth of Sam Houser. I used to think this disc space issue was a silly argument, but then I think of how pathetic the gamecube was when it came to cross-platform games with video (Kelly Slater looked like it had video encoded in Realmedia). I still think procedurally generated textures will save a ton of space in future games, and the choice to include blu-ray inflated the cost of the PS3 to a level that hurts its adoption a great deal. That said, look at each successive generation of video games and you'll see a pattern of exponentially greater storage requirements. Atari games were only a few kilobytes, Nintendo cartridges were a few hundred kilobytes, SNES/Genesis were a few megs, N64 cartridges were 4-64 megs and saturn/ps1 were hundreds of megs (CD-sized), PS2/XBox were CD/DVD and up to ~7 gigs (the gamecube was a less successful and somewhat niche system which used a low-storage proprietary media format that may have indeed hurt them in that generation). In fact, with the exception of the few PS2 games that were CD-based, I think Microsoft is the first company to stay with the same media format (and all its limitations) on a consecutive generation of hardware and it's really one of the reasons I don't think of the 360 as next-gen, maybe half-next (and no i'm not a PS3 fanboy, I'm too poor). I'm not sure if this will hurt Microsoft in the long run or the overall quality of cross-platform games that have to aim for a more common denominator storage requirement. However, It's certainly not something to be dismissed.
Ahem.
Star Wars Galaxies - 2003
Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace - 1999
Give credit where credit is due.
How the hell does the theatre have people watching the crowd in a movie so closely that they can spot someone using a camcorder for 20 seconds. I mean I saw her pic in the article and yea, I'd hit that, but come on here. Are there really movie gestapo vigilently scanning the audience for possible copyright violators and if so, how much does that cost? Is that why popcorn is so criminally expensive and I have to sit through 15 minutes of straight up non-movie advertising at the start of each film? I thought theatres were losing money, so how are they hiring dipshits for pirate watch?