Amen. UMD movies are a bad joke. I can only imagine the thought process that people would go through in buying one...
"Hmmm. Well. Here I am at the old game store and there's still no more PSP games out. On the other hand, there are some UMD movies here. Yeah. I think I'll spend my money on a movie with fewer features than a DVD with worse audio/visual quality. It's a good deal because the price is only a LITTLE higher than DVD and I can play the movies on my PSP...well, only my PSP...Come to think of it, I think I'll head over to Blockbuster and get some DVDs."
I doubt that the PS2 version of FFXI "needed" a hard drive. Square probably just didn't want to optimize for running from DVD - it's far simpler to decompress everything once during install, and with hard drive access you've got a much better speed cushion. As one example, Sony's own EQ Online Adventures ran straight from DVD on the PS2 and used memory cards for patches/network/login info.
As for "making all assets twice," that's not really how it works. After all, you don't need to make all assets twice (or many times) for a PC game that will run from 800x600 to 2048x1536 on computers running a myriad of different video cards and a wide range of CPUs. Art assets (which take up the majority of space) can fairly easily be scaled down. Even the MMOG game engine itself requires much less space than those in single-player games because the majority of computations are done on the game server, not the client.
Makes it that much more hilarious that the link provided SAYS "Marvel/NCSoft Litigation Update" right at the top of the page. It keeps getting better, too, in that Zonk "edited" both this post AND the earlier one. Seriously, editors, you could AT LEAST visit and skim the provided links before putting up the story...
I've ordered from Delivered Dish many, many times - love it. They have a ridiculous variety of restaurants (and they add new ones often), the minimum order and delivery fee are reasonable, and they handle special instructions nicely. For those in Portland, OR who want non-pizza-type food delivered, I don't know of anything better - and I'm a fat man, so you can trust me on the subject...
Oh, get over yourself. Gamers have been engaged in modern combat in the middle east since long before the current conflict. Your logic is the kind used by the anti-gaming putzes every time they use words like "murder simulator."
Ken Kutaragi is a friggin' genius. I don't know if all his smack talk will have any positive effect on PS3 sales or negative effect on Xbox 360 sales, but he is just entertaining as hell. He's a lot more fun than J. Allard who too often seems intent on making the Xbox (and now the 360) look like it was designed for the entertainment of rock stars, actors and professional sports players. Allard bores me to tears.
Ken comes off as a guy who cares about winning and is ready to say anything to help make that happen. What's not to like about that? Speaking for myself, an American, I think winning is more fun than just about anything not required for continuation of the human race.
I'm an Xbox fan. I have all three consoles, but I feed more games to my Xbox than the other two consoles combined. I like the games that come out, I like the graphics and I like (love) the sounds (I bought my first DVD player way back when to get Dolby Digital; letterboxed movies were a secondary consideration). I went so far as to wait for its Xbox release before playing the latest GTA game - I've had to fight off some withdrawal-type symptoms, but I made it.
All the above being true, I want to hear MORE Xbox 360 slams from Mr. Kutaragi. He makes me smile...and not in an ironic, "oh look at the silly monkey" way. No, he entertains me the same way one of the aforementioned Xbox-playing sports stars does when he goes crazy and guarantees a win or puts down an opposing team. It's just plain fun.
Even his incoherent ramblings about the PS3 and Cell are a blast. I mean, come on: "However, if you look closely, the difference between things that are being calculated and things that are simply being changed and moved is clear." I, for one, will be less than a foot from my TV screen when I eventually hook up a PS3 just to see the amazing differences between motion capture and the magical Cell real-time calculations. I LOVE IT!
Ken, you're out of your mind and I can't get enough. Go, man, go!
PS- I get similar tingles when one of the Nintendo nuts goes on and on about their magical gameplay. You know, because giving Mario a water cannon revolutionized (apologies) gaming.:)
I certainly can't disagree with the idea of a union for game programmers and the like considering the abuses that have been described recently.
On the voice-acting topic, though, I think you're basing too much on the big licensed games. Actors who have their voice AND likeness used (Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man videogame, for example) are already being paid a LOT more for their services - it wouldn't surprise me if they often DO get royalties based on sales. I would also agree that in those types of licensing situations it is indeed extremely valuable to get the original person to voice their character in the game.
However, that situation is not the norm in the industry. Despite the fact that licensed properties often get a lot more ink than "original" (definitions, definitions) games, many more of the latter are released than the former. Talking again about the game I mentioned in my original post, Jade Empire has an "appearance" by John Cleese in it. Now, the character he plays bears no resemblance to him visually and the character itself isn't specifically related to anything he has done in the past. So, how much value should be attached to John Cleese's voice? On the one hand, it's John Cleese so he should be paid a premium over and above someone who has no name recognition. On the other hand, the character could be played by anyone (or, anyone with a credible English accent) and still work since the character is brand new.
Hey, I'm just one gamer. I suppose if there IS a work stoppage and games are released without union talent, we'll find out just how important the [theoretically] higher quality voice acting is to videogames. In the meantime, though, maybe I'll look around to see if I can cash in on my decent non-union voice/acting talents as a scab.:)
How is it that the market disagrees with me when the union hasn't even tallied the votes on a potential work stoppage in relation to videogame developers/publishers and nothing, so far, has changed? Did you RTFA? Or ANY FA?
Some unions go to far beyond protecting their workers into, essentially, extorting money from corporations. This is a perfect example. $275 per hour, whatever the profession, should be more than sufficient. If a voice actor doesn't get enough work to make that a living wage, I call that "tough shit." There are doctors who don't make that kind of money - forget about teachers, cops and fire fighters - and they pay through the nose and spend many years getting an education before they can even start making a living wage.
Then there's the fact that even a very good voice actor has far less to do with the success of a game than the artists/designers involved. This is a far cry from live-action films, or even straight-up, non-interactive animation, where an actor can make or break a project.
As an example, I just finished (and will play again soon) Jade Empire. I thought the voice work in that game was outstanding. Still, it's very possible that I won't hear even HALF of that outstanding work on my next trip through the game...why? Because it's the gameplay that's going to bring me back - the work of the designers, programmers and graphic artists - and not Armin Shimerman or Nathan Fillion. On the other hand, when I watch Deep Space Nine or Firefly those two actors will be absolutely essential to my enjoyment.
In short, the unions could price themselves right out of the market. If they demand profit participation in video games, it will be far more cost effective to hire non-union voice actors at a higher wage to do an adequate job instead of hiring high-quality union actors with points to do a great job. The unions just don't have the leverage against the videogame industry that they do against the movie industry since a good game with bad voice acting is still going to sell.
Oops. Four of the titles I mentioned above in the Xbox 360 lineup ARE listed for 2006 dates. The other 45 are apparently tentatively scheduled to be out by the first of December.
That is inded just sad, and points out that Gamespy's list isn't at all definitive, though I suspect Gamespy would love to fill out Nintendo's list if it was possible.
Another chronically inaccurate, though still interesting, page I looked at was the EBGames.com list of upcoming releases. The Gamecube has 72 items projected between now and the end of the year. As you'd expect, PS2 and Xbox have a lot more, but the surprising one is that the Xbox 360 page has 49 titles listed! Now, obviously, it's unlikely all those will see the light of day before 2006 (EB has them all listed as arriving 11/01/05 which seems just a tad optimistic) but it's still telling that GC has only about 50% more on it's "coming soon" plate than a console that, at best, is just starting production.
Ah, well. Maybe Revolution will give Nintendo the miracle they seem to need in the home console race.:)
Because a year after the console is released, when its hardware is now old-spec and new PC hardware is still right at the bleeding edge, the PC will out-game the console.
NO. In the situation you describe, the PC can, given hardware upgrades, out-GRAPHIC the console. I just bought Jade Empire and Forza Motorsport (Xbox) this week, and while somebody with a nice video card and Half-Life 2 can see prettier graphics at a higher resolution, I certainly don't feel "out-gamed."
It is indeed possible that this is not an FTC rule, though that is what I had been given to understand over the years. Either way, it seems like that particular issue has been settled and moot for quite a while now.
To be fair, the FTC does require advertisements for CRT monitors to include the actual viewable screen size. I think we're left with the 15-, 17-, 21-, etc. inch categories as a convenience and tradition at this point.
Why would a gaming consumer care a whit about a company's profitability as long as they know the company is going to stay "in the game." The most Nintendo's profits mean to me is that I know there will be Mario and Zelda games every couple years. Other than that, who cares?
It may give Nintendo fans a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that Nintendo makes a bunch of profit, but how much good does that warm and fuzzy feeling do if someone with a Gamecube wants to play NFL 2k5? Or GTA3? Or, to use an upcoming multi-platform-but-not-on-Gamecube example, Destroy All Humans?
Head on over here to see why non-Nintendrones consider Gamecube something of an overall failure. To summarize that link, in June the PS2 has 13 US releases coming, the Xbox has 12, and the Gamecube has a paltry 4. Now, that's certainly not to say that all those 12-13 titles for the Xbox and PS2 are destined for gaming greatness but, then again, three out of the four listed Gamecube releases are available on BOTH the Xbox and PS2 as well (with Digimon World 4 apparently being an exclusive). As something of a gaming afficionado (read "addict"), even tossing out the one-console exclusives (Halo, Ratchet and Clank, etc.), I certainly couldn't get by with a Gamecube alone.
The Gamecube is surely a success in terms of profit for Nintendo, and it's great to know that they're going to keep plugging away (I like Nintendo quite a lot, though not to fanboyish extremes); but, the Gamecube is a failure in terms of overall market penetration and developer support outside of Japan.
Even Sony's own games didn't prominently push the hard drive with "cool" features. Their own MMOG, Everquest Online Adventures, didn't require it either.
Memory cards and controllers are the only peripherals that sell consistently with console gaming systems - the former because they're required (at least for Gamecube and PS2) and the latter because people want to play with friends and controllers are the most likely component to break down.
If Sony expects to sell a significant number of add-on hard drives, they're out of their collective mind. Even Microsoft is going to have trouble selling bigger hard drives for the 360 unless they provide truly compelling features that utilize the extra space - and I don't extra storage for video is going to be that compelling to 360 buyers since a) streaming would let them use their PC's storage which would come cheaper and b) unless they really sell the add-on HDs cheap, DVR-type functions (assuming they go for that) are better handled by a TiVo which can be had at bargain basement prices and has excellent functionality. Heck, MS is already marginalizing the use of the HD even for custom soundtracks by supposedly allowing streaming from an MP3 player.
It really makes me wonder what the marketing people see to make them believe that these add-ons can work. Time and time again, we've seen add-on devices - even decently supported ones like the 32x and SegaCD (one could argue about the level of support, but Sega made a bunch of games for both) - fail to gain significant traction with either consumers or developers. Even Nintendo, with their ridiculously huge installed base of GBAs, has gotten few developers to provide anything more than token support of GBA->GC connectivity; their own Zelda provided little impetus for hooking up. Of course, with wireless becoming standard on handheld consoles this might become a more widely used feature...even then, a handheld console provides significant benefits on its own, while a hard drive peripheral without something to hook it up to is nothing at all.
I'd buy a PS3 without a hard drive if the games were compelling - the same standard I'd apply to any console. But unless the hard drive gives me something "insanely great," or it is cheaper than a memory card, I'll likely take a pass.
Re:CRTs still rule some markets
on
Are CRTs History?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So, in response to a guy who tells the story of his 11-year-old CRT that works perfectly, you "absolutely guarantee" that LCDs will outlast CRTs? That's pretty cool. I assume that you're offering this guarantee in the form of cash back to anyone who buys an "average" CRT and an "average" LCD today and then has the LCD fail first?
It's cool that folks like LCDs, but all the bullshit just gets in the way. I've seen people here claim that color reproduction on LCDs is better than that of CRTs (huh?), that LCD monitors are great for gaming (maybe a few but the majority still "streak"), and now an absolute guarantee that LCDs will outlast CRTs (it may be true - I'm certainly not an expert - but where are the data?).
Me, I'd love to get these two CRTs (or at least one) off my desk. LCDs are more compact and use less power. They have the added bonus that I won't get a hernia if I have to change my setup. But, at the moment, I would have to spend a goodly amount of cash to make the switch and get the same satisfaction (the goodly amount of cash being spent to make absolutely certain that my gaming experience isn't going to be adversely affected). In the meantime, I'll keep muddling through with my apparently soon-to-fail, 6+-year-old, no-name 17" monitor.
The x's when comparing CD-ROM and DVD-ROM speeds are data transfer rates. When comparing CD-ROMs to each other, or DVD-ROMs to each other, they can also indicate rotation speeds.
DVDs pack more data than a CD into the same physical space. Thus, a laser pointed at a particular amount of surface area on a DVD is going to "see" more data than the same surface area on a CD. As long as the data "seen" can be processed (within the drive, then through the interface to the motherboard), DVDs will give more data per rotation than a CD.
Short version: Anyone who avoids DVD-ROM because "16x is slower than 52x" is making a concerted effort to fit on the short bus.
I'd like to see them come up with a time travel paradox story line that messes things up so bad it can't be undone, effectively rebooting the whole thing.
You just described why Trek fans were so resentful of Enterprise in the first place. Berman apparently figured that he could introduce "the unknown future" with his idiotic "temporal cold war" and it just made a mess of the series - well, that plus writing that was just plain awful.
If folks want to make science fiction that doesn't have, or fit into, a previously well-established universe/continuity, I wish they'd just make something NEW. Trying to remold the Star Trek universe as you describe is just pointless. While you might - if the show is good - get the non-Trek folks interested, you'll alienate just as many of the people who were already fans. Once you do that, you've thrown away any good reason there might be to use the name in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hmmm. Well. Here I am at the old game store and there's still no more PSP games out. On the other hand, there are some UMD movies here. Yeah. I think I'll spend my money on a movie with fewer features than a DVD with worse audio/visual quality. It's a good deal because the price is only a LITTLE higher than DVD and I can play the movies on my PSP...well, only my PSP...Come to think of it, I think I'll head over to Blockbuster and get some DVDs."
As for "making all assets twice," that's not really how it works. After all, you don't need to make all assets twice (or many times) for a PC game that will run from 800x600 to 2048x1536 on computers running a myriad of different video cards and a wide range of CPUs. Art assets (which take up the majority of space) can fairly easily be scaled down. Even the MMOG game engine itself requires much less space than those in single-player games because the majority of computations are done on the game server, not the client.
In Soviet Russia, limitations statute you!
1. Change CPU socket(s) on motherboards. 2. Change BIOS. 3. Plug in new CPU(s). 4. Install Mac OSX for x86.
I...am...stupefied!
I must be blind - that link was actually INSERTED by Zonk himself. Dude, seriously......
Makes it that much more hilarious that the link provided SAYS "Marvel/NCSoft Litigation Update" right at the top of the page. It keeps getting better, too, in that Zonk "edited" both this post AND the earlier one. Seriously, editors, you could AT LEAST visit and skim the provided links before putting up the story...
I've ordered from Delivered Dish many, many times - love it. They have a ridiculous variety of restaurants (and they add new ones often), the minimum order and delivery fee are reasonable, and they handle special instructions nicely. For those in Portland, OR who want non-pizza-type food delivered, I don't know of anything better - and I'm a fat man, so you can trust me on the subject...
Oh, get over yourself. Gamers have been engaged in modern combat in the middle east since long before the current conflict. Your logic is the kind used by the anti-gaming putzes every time they use words like "murder simulator."
You know, there was enough Kool-Aid here for everyone before you showed up. Why did you have to drink ALL of it?
Ken comes off as a guy who cares about winning and is ready to say anything to help make that happen. What's not to like about that? Speaking for myself, an American, I think winning is more fun than just about anything not required for continuation of the human race.
I'm an Xbox fan. I have all three consoles, but I feed more games to my Xbox than the other two consoles combined. I like the games that come out, I like the graphics and I like (love) the sounds (I bought my first DVD player way back when to get Dolby Digital; letterboxed movies were a secondary consideration). I went so far as to wait for its Xbox release before playing the latest GTA game - I've had to fight off some withdrawal-type symptoms, but I made it.
All the above being true, I want to hear MORE Xbox 360 slams from Mr. Kutaragi. He makes me smile...and not in an ironic, "oh look at the silly monkey" way. No, he entertains me the same way one of the aforementioned Xbox-playing sports stars does when he goes crazy and guarantees a win or puts down an opposing team. It's just plain fun.
Even his incoherent ramblings about the PS3 and Cell are a blast. I mean, come on: "However, if you look closely, the difference between things that are being calculated and things that are simply being changed and moved is clear." I, for one, will be less than a foot from my TV screen when I eventually hook up a PS3 just to see the amazing differences between motion capture and the magical Cell real-time calculations. I LOVE IT!
Ken, you're out of your mind and I can't get enough. Go, man, go!
PS- I get similar tingles when one of the Nintendo nuts goes on and on about their magical gameplay. You know, because giving Mario a water cannon revolutionized (apologies) gaming. :)
On the voice-acting topic, though, I think you're basing too much on the big licensed games. Actors who have their voice AND likeness used (Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man videogame, for example) are already being paid a LOT more for their services - it wouldn't surprise me if they often DO get royalties based on sales. I would also agree that in those types of licensing situations it is indeed extremely valuable to get the original person to voice their character in the game.
However, that situation is not the norm in the industry. Despite the fact that licensed properties often get a lot more ink than "original" (definitions, definitions) games, many more of the latter are released than the former. Talking again about the game I mentioned in my original post, Jade Empire has an "appearance" by John Cleese in it. Now, the character he plays bears no resemblance to him visually and the character itself isn't specifically related to anything he has done in the past. So, how much value should be attached to John Cleese's voice? On the one hand, it's John Cleese so he should be paid a premium over and above someone who has no name recognition. On the other hand, the character could be played by anyone (or, anyone with a credible English accent) and still work since the character is brand new.
Hey, I'm just one gamer. I suppose if there IS a work stoppage and games are released without union talent, we'll find out just how important the [theoretically] higher quality voice acting is to videogames. In the meantime, though, maybe I'll look around to see if I can cash in on my decent non-union voice/acting talents as a scab. :)
How is it that the market disagrees with me when the union hasn't even tallied the votes on a potential work stoppage in relation to videogame developers/publishers and nothing, so far, has changed? Did you RTFA? Or ANY FA?
Then there's the fact that even a very good voice actor has far less to do with the success of a game than the artists/designers involved. This is a far cry from live-action films, or even straight-up, non-interactive animation, where an actor can make or break a project.
As an example, I just finished (and will play again soon) Jade Empire. I thought the voice work in that game was outstanding. Still, it's very possible that I won't hear even HALF of that outstanding work on my next trip through the game...why? Because it's the gameplay that's going to bring me back - the work of the designers, programmers and graphic artists - and not Armin Shimerman or Nathan Fillion. On the other hand, when I watch Deep Space Nine or Firefly those two actors will be absolutely essential to my enjoyment.
In short, the unions could price themselves right out of the market. If they demand profit participation in video games, it will be far more cost effective to hire non-union voice actors at a higher wage to do an adequate job instead of hiring high-quality union actors with points to do a great job. The unions just don't have the leverage against the videogame industry that they do against the movie industry since a good game with bad voice acting is still going to sell.
Oops. Four of the titles I mentioned above in the Xbox 360 lineup ARE listed for 2006 dates. The other 45 are apparently tentatively scheduled to be out by the first of December.
Another chronically inaccurate, though still interesting, page I looked at was the EBGames.com list of upcoming releases. The Gamecube has 72 items projected between now and the end of the year. As you'd expect, PS2 and Xbox have a lot more, but the surprising one is that the Xbox 360 page has 49 titles listed! Now, obviously, it's unlikely all those will see the light of day before 2006 (EB has them all listed as arriving 11/01/05 which seems just a tad optimistic) but it's still telling that GC has only about 50% more on it's "coming soon" plate than a console that, at best, is just starting production.
Ah, well. Maybe Revolution will give Nintendo the miracle they seem to need in the home console race. :)
NO. In the situation you describe, the PC can, given hardware upgrades, out-GRAPHIC the console. I just bought Jade Empire and Forza Motorsport (Xbox) this week, and while somebody with a nice video card and Half-Life 2 can see prettier graphics at a higher resolution, I certainly don't feel "out-gamed."
God, I hope not. It's creepy enough seeing some guy touching the OUTSIDE of his pants in public...
It is indeed possible that this is not an FTC rule, though that is what I had been given to understand over the years. Either way, it seems like that particular issue has been settled and moot for quite a while now.
To be fair, the FTC does require advertisements for CRT monitors to include the actual viewable screen size. I think we're left with the 15-, 17-, 21-, etc. inch categories as a convenience and tradition at this point.
It may give Nintendo fans a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that Nintendo makes a bunch of profit, but how much good does that warm and fuzzy feeling do if someone with a Gamecube wants to play NFL 2k5? Or GTA3? Or, to use an upcoming multi-platform-but-not-on-Gamecube example, Destroy All Humans?
Head on over here to see why non-Nintendrones consider Gamecube something of an overall failure. To summarize that link, in June the PS2 has 13 US releases coming, the Xbox has 12, and the Gamecube has a paltry 4. Now, that's certainly not to say that all those 12-13 titles for the Xbox and PS2 are destined for gaming greatness but, then again, three out of the four listed Gamecube releases are available on BOTH the Xbox and PS2 as well (with Digimon World 4 apparently being an exclusive). As something of a gaming afficionado (read "addict"), even tossing out the one-console exclusives (Halo, Ratchet and Clank, etc.), I certainly couldn't get by with a Gamecube alone.
The Gamecube is surely a success in terms of profit for Nintendo, and it's great to know that they're going to keep plugging away (I like Nintendo quite a lot, though not to fanboyish extremes); but, the Gamecube is a failure in terms of overall market penetration and developer support outside of Japan.
Memory cards and controllers are the only peripherals that sell consistently with console gaming systems - the former because they're required (at least for Gamecube and PS2) and the latter because people want to play with friends and controllers are the most likely component to break down.
If Sony expects to sell a significant number of add-on hard drives, they're out of their collective mind. Even Microsoft is going to have trouble selling bigger hard drives for the 360 unless they provide truly compelling features that utilize the extra space - and I don't extra storage for video is going to be that compelling to 360 buyers since a) streaming would let them use their PC's storage which would come cheaper and b) unless they really sell the add-on HDs cheap, DVR-type functions (assuming they go for that) are better handled by a TiVo which can be had at bargain basement prices and has excellent functionality. Heck, MS is already marginalizing the use of the HD even for custom soundtracks by supposedly allowing streaming from an MP3 player.
It really makes me wonder what the marketing people see to make them believe that these add-ons can work. Time and time again, we've seen add-on devices - even decently supported ones like the 32x and SegaCD (one could argue about the level of support, but Sega made a bunch of games for both) - fail to gain significant traction with either consumers or developers. Even Nintendo, with their ridiculously huge installed base of GBAs, has gotten few developers to provide anything more than token support of GBA->GC connectivity; their own Zelda provided little impetus for hooking up. Of course, with wireless becoming standard on handheld consoles this might become a more widely used feature...even then, a handheld console provides significant benefits on its own, while a hard drive peripheral without something to hook it up to is nothing at all.
I'd buy a PS3 without a hard drive if the games were compelling - the same standard I'd apply to any console. But unless the hard drive gives me something "insanely great," or it is cheaper than a memory card, I'll likely take a pass.
It's cool that folks like LCDs, but all the bullshit just gets in the way. I've seen people here claim that color reproduction on LCDs is better than that of CRTs (huh?), that LCD monitors are great for gaming (maybe a few but the majority still "streak"), and now an absolute guarantee that LCDs will outlast CRTs (it may be true - I'm certainly not an expert - but where are the data?).
Me, I'd love to get these two CRTs (or at least one) off my desk. LCDs are more compact and use less power. They have the added bonus that I won't get a hernia if I have to change my setup. But, at the moment, I would have to spend a goodly amount of cash to make the switch and get the same satisfaction (the goodly amount of cash being spent to make absolutely certain that my gaming experience isn't going to be adversely affected). In the meantime, I'll keep muddling through with my apparently soon-to-fail, 6+-year-old, no-name 17" monitor.
DVDs pack more data than a CD into the same physical space. Thus, a laser pointed at a particular amount of surface area on a DVD is going to "see" more data than the same surface area on a CD. As long as the data "seen" can be processed (within the drive, then through the interface to the motherboard), DVDs will give more data per rotation than a CD.
Short version: Anyone who avoids DVD-ROM because "16x is slower than 52x" is making a concerted effort to fit on the short bus.
Sure, but if they're not "fans" then the name isn't going to attract them. That was the point I was making.
You just described why Trek fans were so resentful of Enterprise in the first place. Berman apparently figured that he could introduce "the unknown future" with his idiotic "temporal cold war" and it just made a mess of the series - well, that plus writing that was just plain awful.
If folks want to make science fiction that doesn't have, or fit into, a previously well-established universe/continuity, I wish they'd just make something NEW. Trying to remold the Star Trek universe as you describe is just pointless. While you might - if the show is good - get the non-Trek folks interested, you'll alienate just as many of the people who were already fans. Once you do that, you've thrown away any good reason there might be to use the name in the first place.