Assuming they once again include a network adapter, not including a hard drive could be turned into a nice thing for gamers. What if the Xbox OS allowed you to set aside a fixed amount of space on the hard drive of another PC and access that just as we currently can the Xbox HD? That would allow the same facilities in terms of ripping songs for custom soundtracks, saving games, etc., and it would make the next Xbox cheaper [to build] with one less part to fail. They've already tested this to some extent with their Music Mixer software which allows the transfer of pre-existing music files on a PC over to the Xbox.
Yeah, except voicemail attached to an anonymous video game userID with no provision of personal information. It would permit you to leave a buddy a message telling them when you'd be online, or leaving a buddy a message about a high score, bad player, etc. Since Microsoft is avoiding the keyboard for Xbox, it makes a lot of sense. It also makes sense from a security point of view because, again, no personal information ever has to change hands in order to get some offline communication going.
It's really difficult for me to tell whether you're joking or not. The first sentence is obviously hilarious, but then you go on to seemingly try to make a real point based on a movie written and directed by a man who knows f***-all about big business (and is more than a little nuts - love his movies, but he went around the bend a long time ago).
Comcast doesn't want to cannibalize Disney - I'm sure there are areas that could be trimmed (true of any conglomerate), but you don't "go after" a reasonably healthy and HUGE company in order to break it apart. If you really watched Wall Street, you'd have noticed that Gecko went after companies in real trouble, companies that would go under without big changes or help...A situation that Disney isn't in.
If you were joking around, then I applaud you for getting me to reply against my better judgement.:)
While Comcast delivers internet service to a lot of people, they are not an "internet company" per se. In the theoretical realm, Comcast is a better match for Disney than AOL for TW because Comcast already specializes in delivering exactly the content that Disney produces - movies and television. Whether they're a good match in the real world is a far more complex, nuts-and-bolts question that I'm not equipped to answer.
Look, though, at how small Gameboy Advance cartridges already are. The media could be twice as large and still not effect a large penalty in terms of the size of the console. It's not just hardware (internals, screen, media) that dictates the limits of how small a portable gaming device can be - it's also about how small you can make it before it becomes uncomfortable to play with.
1) It's immediately identifiable as a forest to me.
2) The game isn't due for at least six months (probably more like nine).
3) It's a 640x448, 39.44KB JPEG - not exactly high-fidelity. One could get a better capture from a 1-megapixel digital camera aimed at the monitor.
Big difference: X-Files was owned lock, stock and barrel by Fox - production, first-run episodes, DVD sales, etc. Angel's production lies with Fox as well, so The WB doesn't get the big slice of pie with that show that they get with, for example, Smallville. If Angel was a wholly owned Warner Brothers product, they'd probably already have a deal in place with Mutant Enemy for seasons 6 and 7, and an option for 8.
Patching within a "couple of months"? What planet are you living on? Most PC games of any note have a patch out within a couple of weeks, sometimes even days.
I'd like to know how parents here can accept their children storing away money from weeks of allowance to purchase a video game, especially a game that has promotes so many things that we feel out children ought to not be exposed to in the glorified way video games promote them.
What I'd like to know is how someone can get this worked up over one sentence in a two-page article? Particularly a sentence which is not detailing any kind of statistical information to verify the truth of the statement. Even more significantly, that sentence didn't indicate children saved up $50 to buy an M-rated game, or even a T-rated game with excessive violence.
Obviously, I take issue with your implicit assumption that all video games promote "so many things we feel out [sic] children ought not to be exposed to..." Surely The Sims (a game talked about in the article) doesn't expose children to anything evil unless they make decisions to do bad things with or to their little characters. Would you get this worked up over a child saving $50 (well, actually $40) to buy Animal Crossing, with its cute animals and inoffensive gameplay where you don't even kill the fish you catch from the water?
In other words, take a Valium and relax. Save your outrage for something a little more ontopic and/or real.
I think Final Fantasy's astronomical growth rate demonstrates that the current MMORPG market is not saturated.
No. It demonstrates that the worldwide MMORPG is not saturated. For English speakers, though, there are plenty of MMORPGs available (I'll leave the question of whether they're good or not to others).
Unfortunately, the MMORPG market seems to be locked into a painful, stagnating track. Specifically, everyone sees the success of Everquest and wants to attract the people who like that game. Thus, every game seems to be emulating EQ with relatively minor tweaks (probably inspired by reading threads written by people who are angry about something in Everquest). The problem with being on this track is that people who didn't enjoy, or got tired of, Everquest see little reason to try the latest, greatest MMORPG given how much they all tend to resemble each other.
Me, I'm just going to bide my time until they get about two years into Star Wars Galaxies. With spaceships and the inevitable balancing/tweaking/content additions, I'm pretty sure I could enjoy it.:)
if he stole hardware from Cisco, that's another matter that I'm not going to weigh in on.
That's hilarious. So, you just ignore some of the charges which sent the guy up the river and declare the sentence "WAY too harsh"? It's like declaring a life sentence too harsh for a burglar who kills the homeowner during the burglary because you've decided not to "weigh in on" the murder charge.
It seems that this Slashdot submission ignores the part of the article that probably contributed the most towards the 4+-year sentence:
"Mr. Breen also admitted that he had illegally used an online customer account of Cisco Systems to order hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware by falsely posing as one of Cisco's existing customers." "After receiving the hardware, Mr. Breen sold it on the grey market at a heavy discount off the normal price of the hardware, prosecutors say."
He was stealing real physical property in addition to his software piracy. The fact that it was worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars" made the copyright violations almost superfluous. In light of those violations, the sentence doesn't seem harsh at all.
It's not so much that savings will get passed down to the consumer - keep in mind that video game prices have remained pretty constant for a good number of years. The real reason to root for good advertising deals (coupled with unobtrusive, integrated placement) is that it defrays the ever-increasing costs associated with video game development. Advertising people are naturally going to start with the biggest fish in the pond (EA) that doesn't need the money that badly, but over time - if they're convinced the advertising is worthwhile - they'll spread money around to smaller companies for whom those advertising dollars could mean the difference between getting their game solidly to market and ending up either going out of business or being swallowed up by a big company.
Listen. If a character in a movie has to buy something relevant to the plot, why not get some cash from Visa for the character to use it? If a basketball player in a video game is wearing a uniform (they would have to, or it would be rated M/AO), then what's wrong with Nike paying top dollar for their "Swoosh" to be on the jersey and/or shoes?
People in real life use real products. Doesn't it detract from realism and immersion when movie and video game characters (those in realistic/modern situations, anyway) use odd, generic brands?
As long as product placement isn't insane (like big crowds of extras all drinking Pepsi or Captain Bly as captain of a Criscraft), I don't see the problem. In fact, product placement is a GOOD thing if it lends to realism, such as video game sports venues with real advertising instead of "Sega" or "EA Sports" all over everything.
That's not true at all. If it were, then having two apples in each hand would not "for sure, without doubt" be a total of four apples without the application of "faith." I don't need to have faith to know for sure that I have four fingers and a thumb on each of my hands, nor do I need to have faith to know for sure that the sun is very hot.
Now, if you mean to say that no "man of science" could claim to know everything, that's what we in the third grade would call a big "DUH" and hardly worthy of your time posting...or mine reading and replying...yet I did so anyway. Go figure.
Actually, your entire premise is faulty. Besides the fact that this story didn't originate at MSNBC (thus invalidating your entire point), it would be counterproductive for MS to do it anyway. The story doesn't accuse Google of doing anything illegal, or even improper. Instead, it points out that Google is a very powerful tool with which to search out information on the internet - hardly something that would cause Microsoft to put out a press release.
Plasma still exists because it has one advantage over LCD/DLP in the price/performance war: Bigger direct-view screens that can be easily mounted on a wall. Rear-projection LCD/DLP units give better value in terms of screen area but they take up more space. In other words, it's a style-over-substance issue.
HDTV is not even remotely standard, and that is highly unlikely to change in the immediate future. I think that if the next round of consoles assumes HDTV will be standard, that they are in for a rude surprise.
They're not going to assume that "HDTV will be standard" in the sense of only supporting HDTV, but they'll almost certainly support HDTV by including 720p/1080i output in virtually every game - the inevitable increase in graphics processing power will make it silly not to do so.
You're exactly right. The only purpose for this is to service people who TRULY only want to use the Xbox for running Linux, MAME and the rest; and who don't realize that they can probably get better performance and customizability for similar prices by staying in the PC world. Even people interested in playing stolen games want their games to work right, so those folks are left out as well.
This isn't truly changing weather. This is more on the order of ameliorating a bad weather side effect. The moisture still comes down to earth, but it does so in a less destructive fashion.
Sure. Just like people still care about Tribes and its sequels. Most people wouldn't know about other games, however, because they don't show up on their Counterstrike server list.
I could see this but for the fact that minimum system requirements tend to list pretty low values. For example, how much money are hardware manufacturers going to make if a bunch of people decide to upgrade to a 1.2-GHz machine and/or a GeForce4MX (those being examples of "minimum" computer specs common on current games)? That's rhetorical, but I'll answer it anyway: Not much at all.
The REAL truth is even simpler: Game companies will tend to list the lowest requirements which allow the game to run (in at least a playable, if not pretty, fashion) in a relatively low resolution with many - or most, or all - of the graphical details turned down/off. Why? Because the lower the system requirements listed on the box, the more people who will feel comfortable buying the game. This, of course, also leads to many complaints of frame rate chugging on even higher end systems when all the graphical details are turned on/maxed out. "If the minimum is 700 MHz, then my 1.8 GHz will be friggin' awesome!"
Now, that's not to say that you can't run a game in playable fashion with less powerful systems than the listed minimums. That doesn't mean that the minimums are inflated - instead, it means that the game company is being conservative...and that's a GOOD thing.
What you're describing is the search function built into IE, which is a horse of an entirely different color from redirecting the google address to something else. Yes, entering just "google" into the IE address bar can (depending on individual settings) result in an MSN search...then again, if one can't figure out how to put "www." in front and ".com" behind, one probably doesn't know enough to "google" in the first place.
PS- I'm "stuck" at a Windows machine every day and my browser doesn't do anything really odd...Of course, it has a pretty red flaming icon, too.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming they once again include a network adapter, not including a hard drive could be turned into a nice thing for gamers. What if the Xbox OS allowed you to set aside a fixed amount of space on the hard drive of another PC and access that just as we currently can the Xbox HD? That would allow the same facilities in terms of ripping songs for custom soundtracks, saving games, etc., and it would make the next Xbox cheaper [to build] with one less part to fail. They've already tested this to some extent with their Music Mixer software which allows the transfer of pre-existing music files on a PC over to the Xbox.
Yeah, except voicemail attached to an anonymous video game userID with no provision of personal information. It would permit you to leave a buddy a message telling them when you'd be online, or leaving a buddy a message about a high score, bad player, etc. Since Microsoft is avoiding the keyboard for Xbox, it makes a lot of sense. It also makes sense from a security point of view because, again, no personal information ever has to change hands in order to get some offline communication going.
Comcast doesn't want to cannibalize Disney - I'm sure there are areas that could be trimmed (true of any conglomerate), but you don't "go after" a reasonably healthy and HUGE company in order to break it apart. If you really watched Wall Street, you'd have noticed that Gecko went after companies in real trouble, companies that would go under without big changes or help...A situation that Disney isn't in.
If you were joking around, then I applaud you for getting me to reply against my better judgement. :)
While Comcast delivers internet service to a lot of people, they are not an "internet company" per se. In the theoretical realm, Comcast is a better match for Disney than AOL for TW because Comcast already specializes in delivering exactly the content that Disney produces - movies and television. Whether they're a good match in the real world is a far more complex, nuts-and-bolts question that I'm not equipped to answer.
Look, though, at how small Gameboy Advance cartridges already are. The media could be twice as large and still not effect a large penalty in terms of the size of the console. It's not just hardware (internals, screen, media) that dictates the limits of how small a portable gaming device can be - it's also about how small you can make it before it becomes uncomfortable to play with.
1) It's immediately identifiable as a forest to me.
2) The game isn't due for at least six months (probably more like nine).
3) It's a 640x448, 39.44KB JPEG - not exactly high-fidelity. One could get a better capture from a 1-megapixel digital camera aimed at the monitor.
It's like a morbid version of the Oompa Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (emphasis mine)
Big difference: X-Files was owned lock, stock and barrel by Fox - production, first-run episodes, DVD sales, etc. Angel's production lies with Fox as well, so The WB doesn't get the big slice of pie with that show that they get with, for example, Smallville. If Angel was a wholly owned Warner Brothers product, they'd probably already have a deal in place with Mutant Enemy for seasons 6 and 7, and an option for 8.
Patching within a "couple of months"? What planet are you living on? Most PC games of any note have a patch out within a couple of weeks, sometimes even days.
What I'd like to know is how someone can get this worked up over one sentence in a two-page article? Particularly a sentence which is not detailing any kind of statistical information to verify the truth of the statement. Even more significantly, that sentence didn't indicate children saved up $50 to buy an M-rated game, or even a T-rated game with excessive violence.
Obviously, I take issue with your implicit assumption that all video games promote "so many things we feel out [sic] children ought not to be exposed to..." Surely The Sims (a game talked about in the article) doesn't expose children to anything evil unless they make decisions to do bad things with or to their little characters. Would you get this worked up over a child saving $50 (well, actually $40) to buy Animal Crossing, with its cute animals and inoffensive gameplay where you don't even kill the fish you catch from the water?
In other words, take a Valium and relax. Save your outrage for something a little more ontopic and/or real.
No. It demonstrates that the worldwide MMORPG is not saturated. For English speakers, though, there are plenty of MMORPGs available (I'll leave the question of whether they're good or not to others).
Unfortunately, the MMORPG market seems to be locked into a painful, stagnating track. Specifically, everyone sees the success of Everquest and wants to attract the people who like that game. Thus, every game seems to be emulating EQ with relatively minor tweaks (probably inspired by reading threads written by people who are angry about something in Everquest). The problem with being on this track is that people who didn't enjoy, or got tired of, Everquest see little reason to try the latest, greatest MMORPG given how much they all tend to resemble each other.
Me, I'm just going to bide my time until they get about two years into Star Wars Galaxies. With spaceships and the inevitable balancing/tweaking/content additions, I'm pretty sure I could enjoy it. :)
That's hilarious. So, you just ignore some of the charges which sent the guy up the river and declare the sentence "WAY too harsh"? It's like declaring a life sentence too harsh for a burglar who kills the homeowner during the burglary because you've decided not to "weigh in on" the murder charge.
"Mr. Breen also admitted that he had illegally used an online customer account of Cisco Systems to order hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware by falsely posing as one of Cisco's existing customers."
"After receiving the hardware, Mr. Breen sold it on the grey market at a heavy discount off the normal price of the hardware, prosecutors say."
He was stealing real physical property in addition to his software piracy. The fact that it was worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars" made the copyright violations almost superfluous. In light of those violations, the sentence doesn't seem harsh at all.
It's not so much that savings will get passed down to the consumer - keep in mind that video game prices have remained pretty constant for a good number of years. The real reason to root for good advertising deals (coupled with unobtrusive, integrated placement) is that it defrays the ever-increasing costs associated with video game development. Advertising people are naturally going to start with the biggest fish in the pond (EA) that doesn't need the money that badly, but over time - if they're convinced the advertising is worthwhile - they'll spread money around to smaller companies for whom those advertising dollars could mean the difference between getting their game solidly to market and ending up either going out of business or being swallowed up by a big company.
People in real life use real products. Doesn't it detract from realism and immersion when movie and video game characters (those in realistic/modern situations, anyway) use odd, generic brands?
As long as product placement isn't insane (like big crowds of extras all drinking Pepsi or Captain Bly as captain of a Criscraft), I don't see the problem. In fact, product placement is a GOOD thing if it lends to realism, such as video game sports venues with real advertising instead of "Sega" or "EA Sports" all over everything.
Now, if you mean to say that no "man of science" could claim to know everything, that's what we in the third grade would call a big "DUH" and hardly worthy of your time posting...or mine reading and replying...yet I did so anyway. Go figure.
Actually, your entire premise is faulty. Besides the fact that this story didn't originate at MSNBC (thus invalidating your entire point), it would be counterproductive for MS to do it anyway. The story doesn't accuse Google of doing anything illegal, or even improper. Instead, it points out that Google is a very powerful tool with which to search out information on the internet - hardly something that would cause Microsoft to put out a press release.
Plasma still exists because it has one advantage over LCD/DLP in the price/performance war: Bigger direct-view screens that can be easily mounted on a wall. Rear-projection LCD/DLP units give better value in terms of screen area but they take up more space. In other words, it's a style-over-substance issue.
Much like a dog staring at a shiny object, I'm fascinated by this but I don't understand it.
They're not going to assume that "HDTV will be standard" in the sense of only supporting HDTV, but they'll almost certainly support HDTV by including 720p/1080i output in virtually every game - the inevitable increase in graphics processing power will make it silly not to do so.
You're exactly right. The only purpose for this is to service people who TRULY only want to use the Xbox for running Linux, MAME and the rest; and who don't realize that they can probably get better performance and customizability for similar prices by staying in the PC world. Even people interested in playing stolen games want their games to work right, so those folks are left out as well.
This isn't truly changing weather. This is more on the order of ameliorating a bad weather side effect. The moisture still comes down to earth, but it does so in a less destructive fashion.
Sure. Just like people still care about Tribes and its sequels. Most people wouldn't know about other games, however, because they don't show up on their Counterstrike server list.
The REAL truth is even simpler: Game companies will tend to list the lowest requirements which allow the game to run (in at least a playable, if not pretty, fashion) in a relatively low resolution with many - or most, or all - of the graphical details turned down/off. Why? Because the lower the system requirements listed on the box, the more people who will feel comfortable buying the game. This, of course, also leads to many complaints of frame rate chugging on even higher end systems when all the graphical details are turned on/maxed out. "If the minimum is 700 MHz, then my 1.8 GHz will be friggin' awesome!"
Now, that's not to say that you can't run a game in playable fashion with less powerful systems than the listed minimums. That doesn't mean that the minimums are inflated - instead, it means that the game company is being conservative...and that's a GOOD thing.
PS- I'm "stuck" at a Windows machine every day and my browser doesn't do anything really odd...Of course, it has a pretty red flaming icon, too. ;)