Another factor to consider would be the type of gamer. For example, if a first-person shooter demo is released, there is a segment of the gaming population that will be satisfied with the demo - the type of people who don't really care if they finish a game and instead just want an hour of fun every once in a while.
I've also had the personal experience where I've enjoyed a demo quite a lot and played it for many hours, but subsequently found myself shopping for a game and ended up buying something else on that trip because I wanted to play something different.
Of course, then you have yet another group of people who play the demo in order to tide them over until they can acquire a pirated version of the full game.
Since they're looking to sell the content, the only way episodes of Family Guy (for example) would become available is if a deal is made with Fox or if the compression method (encryption?) was made public or hacked. This model also makes it that much more unlikely that the product will be marketed outside Japan since they would have to set up the service again and obtain permissions for content that would appeal to other markets.
In short, outside of Japan this will likely only appeal to the import/hacking community.
Or who have to run Windows-specific code because of company requirements and don't want to dual-boot Windows? I understand not wanting to run the software yourself, but that doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for someone else to use it. Being blindly dismissive is one attribute of Linux zealots that turns many people - people who would otherwise be interested in learning more about Linux - off.
I would agree that it's a loss leader, except that in this case, instead of wanting consumers to buy games which they can then keep and play anytime they want, the Phantom will require (repeat: REQUIRE) payment of the ongoing subscription in order to function at all. If it does come to market I'm sure that people will find ways to hack them so that they can be used for other things, but as a home console it has ZERO chance for success...Divx (the DVD format, not the video compression scheme) by any other name would smell like a loser.
Ummmm, I did buy a TurboGrafx-16...Of course, the only two games I played on it were Bonk's Adventure (excellent) and Klax (classic), and I then promptly got rid of it. There was nothing deeply wrong with the system except that it had little to no developer support in the US - which, of course, is deeply wrong.:)
Online retailers generally sell their products at a slightly lower price than their offline counterparts as an incentive to buy online rather than offline.
"Slightly" is the key word there. I don't recall any of the current three home consoles selling for two-thirds of their MSRP from any merchants, online or B&M, even after a year of availability (ignoring used/refurbs and changes in the MSRP itself). I don't think there's any question that, as a game console, the N-Gage is failing spectacularly...
"...is this what you'd consider a good use of the Star Wars license?"
Not even close. I can forgive replaying the same old story once per console generation when it's a good upgrade from what has come before (like Rogue Leader, the GC launch title), but it becomes pure whoring when they dip from the same well this often.
Bioware went the right direction by placing us in the familiar Star Wars universe and building a brand new story (not to mention giving us the first single-player Star Wars RPG). Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic not only had that fresh story but solid and engaging gameplay - so good that people have managed to play the game through multiple times despite some truly awful bugs.
If Factor 5 is going to continue doing games about Rogue Squadron, what's wrong with taking the series to the post-trilogy galaxy of The New Republic? There have been several books about Rogue Squadron which, though just average science fiction fare in terms of writing quality (the Star Wars equivalent of those straight-to-paperback military books in the grocery store), include some excellent mission scenarios and over-arching plotlines which would make good fodder for video games.
In short, I think playing a linear video game like this can be fun to a point, but it loses something fundamental when I already know the ending.
So in conclusion, you need to read the sites you cite as support for your argument...
Who says I was making an argument at all? I was merely pointing out websites that seem to be using trademarked names in their URLs - I was making no judgement on their legitimacy, either morally or legally.
You're right. I missed that NASA Tech Briefs is an official NASA publication - since it wasn't immediately apparent and was not on NASA's usual.gov domain, I didn't look very close. Mea culpa.
And I would be really pissed if future games didn't allow a progressive display. The resolution of 1080i is very impressive, but I would still take something like 720p over it any day. Interlacing just sucks. Another important reason to shy away from it is not all HDTV displays support 1080i, so you would be abandoning that (large, by HDTV standards) market.
1. Actually, virtually all HDTV-ready TVs support 1080i and relatively few support 720p. You'd be hard-pressed to find an HDTV that will take a 720p signal and not a 1080i signal, while the reverse is very common - especially in "affordable" HDTVs (affordable to my mind being under $1,500).
2. Interlaced doesn't suck as bad as some think. It was considerably worse on computer monitors (hence souring the group that had to use them) because a) people sit very close to computer monitors, as opposed to TVs where most people sit at least several feet away and b) the interlacing was distracting on a 60-Hz screen displaying static images. With high-motion video, common in video games, interlacing can hardly be noticed, especially at normal TV viewing distances.
Short answer: Go look at a nice TV displaying 1080i, especially for a sports event (basketball season is coming up) - that should convince you that interlacing isn't that big a deal.
IANALAWPTBO. I just thought I'd note that there are indeed sites that have "nasa" included in their URL identifier (NASA Watch and NASA Tech Briefs for example) which aren't a part of NASA. I was also able to find several websites that include the name "walmart" as another high-profile example (such as Wal-Mart Watch).
Now, I suppose that some of these sites are either flying under the corporate radar or are operating under some sort of trademark/copyright exception but I really don't know.
In this particular case, I have to question UC's wisdom in going after this site. I don't see any indication in the "nastygram" (classy nomenclature) that there was offensive material of some sort and I don't expect the students running the site were making a ton of cash on it. It seems like much ado about nothing...unless UC thinks that any student using those initials dilutes their "brand." Does that mean, too, that if University of Chicago puts a U in front of the C on their football team's helmets, they're going to get sued?
Unfortunately, even 720p is a stretch for the video memory in the Xbox when high-resolution textures and anti-aliasing are used. The games so far that have implemented 1080i (Dragon's Lair and Enter the Matrix) have used relatively low-resolution textures or cel shading, typically with no hardware anti-aliasing (admittedly, less of a problem at higher resolutions), to squeeze the higher resolutions into available memory. After all, despite 1080i being interlaced, you still need to render 1440x1080 or 1920x1080 - the two common 1080i resolutions - per frame to get the benefits.
I would prefer that for now they use high-resolution textures and anti-aliasing to achieve nice 480p pictures, rather than applying workarounds to get to the HDTV resolutions. With the next console generation, I expect that all the consoles (at least I hope all, but I'm 99% certain for Xbox2) will have NTSC/480p/720p/1080i options built into nearly every game. I'd rather wait a bit for the real deal rather than get a half-assed result now.
Oh, and while you're reading, I always love plugging this little article. In short, GTA3 much better than GTA:VC, and that's all there is to it. Flame on!:^D
Besides the bugs - many of which I found exceedingly annoying in Vice City - most of that article seemed to be written by someone who was simply nostalgic for the "original" (as original as the third in a series can be), like the people who claim that Pac-Man is superior to Ms. Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with that, since it's always going to be a matter of taste, but Vice City is certainly defensible as a superior game.
Actually, it wasn't an air force tactic per se (though it did involve aircraft), but rather a combined force tactic developed by Hans Guderian in order to take advantage of the then newly developed battle tanks. You can find a bit more information here.
One hopes that they left enough hooks in the game to do that. We know that they set it up to accept "downloadable content," but it's not certain (since Bioware hasn't said) if those updates can affect all the parts of the games needing fixing. It would be nice, even for me, though...I tried to play a fourth time through (the game is REALLY good) and quit because I got so frustrated with the problems.
Well probably find out in a month or two. Bioware has said that they would work on Xbox downloadable content once the PC version was released.
You, seemingly like everyone else, are missing what is probably the real reason that Sega is in doubt about releasing Outrun 2 on consoles - namely, the fact that if they don't build the game into something bigger than the arcade game it simply will not sell. It's nothing new for Sega in recent years. Their 18-Wheeler was a very fun game in the arcade, partially due to the presentation but also because it was a fun arcade ride. Their port to Dreamcast, and subsequently other consoles, was a faithful reproduction of the arcade version but sold next to nothing because it was TOO faithful and didn't add anything big enough to get the home user.
The racing games that sell huge for the home console are those that have a lot to do - buying new cars, buying parts for cars, racing on 20 or more tracks, license drills, etc. These racing games become a near-RPG in the sense that you have to build up your game save over time to progress. Sega already has Sega GT for the Xbox which meets console racing standards and is releasing Sega GT Online next month (essentially an online expansion pack of the previous game), but apart from pack-ins with the Xbox the game didn't sell all that well despite it quality.
I'm with Sega on this. Unfortunately, home console users just aren't as excited about arcade ports anymore. On the Xbox, they would have to compete against Project Gotham Racing 2 and their own Sega GT Online; on the PS2, they would have to compete against Gran Turismo 4; and on the Gamecbue, well...the Gamecube just doesn't look that appealing to developers of racing games, and it wouldn't seem to fit in with Sega's other offerings on that console (Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Super Monkey Ball, etc.).
MAYBE, after they've gotten their fill in the arcade, they could do a quickie $20 port for the Xbox (because of the Xbox-compatible origin) but trying anything more ambitious would require extra development (read: money).
There were indeed many bugs in KOTOR, some situational (such as the Mission/Carth bug mentioned above) and others just plain bad coding or optimization (like a level is loading, it hangs up and just sits there, turn Xbox on and off, it tries to reload at the same spot, hangs again, etc.).
That being said, I still played the game all the way through three times and many others enjoyed the game so much that even talking about bugs pisses them off. Overall, the game is good enough that the bugs can be overlooked, but some of them, even in a game as huge as this one, are inexcusable (again, see Mission/Carth bug).
Oh yeah, and I doubt they'll release a bug-fixed Xbox version until it gets a "Platinum" or "Game of the Year" release - even then, it's probably doubtful.
I never understand people praising the Gamecube controller design. I personally find it quite unpalatable (I have a GC, and I play games on it, but still...). The triggers feel odd like a combination of triggers and buttons, the button layout throws me (probably a bigger problem since I own and play on all three consoles) and the yellow stick is awful. Add in a too-small D-pad and it just feels wrong.
Now, I will admit that first-party Nintendo games seem to take advantage of the controller and are generally as easy to control as anything on the other consoles. But when moving to third-party games, the controller becomes a chore for me, to the point that I won't buy a third-party game for the GC unless its exclusive (a policy I may violate with what sounds like cool GBAGC use in the next console Sims game).
Since I've owned all three consoles, I've come to feel most comfortable for long periods of time using the Xbox controller, with the DualShock second and the GC controller a distant third.
Don't forget that GBA games are cheaper and the GBA has a massive installed hardware base (once combined, the GBA and GBASP outsell every other console, including the PS2, every week), along with the fact that it has relatively little competition in the mass-market handheld arena, even in Japan where they have the Wonderswan. The surprising thing is really that they haven't dominated the software chales charts more often with their GBA titles.
Microsoft is likely just putting in whatever drive happens to be cheapest at the moment and then only enabling the first 8 GB in software. After all, HD manufacturers make what sells and 8/10GB hard drives aren't selling anymore, and there's no compelling reason for Microsoft to have special runs of smaller hard drives produced because it would cost them more money than buying off the shelf.
Oh, definitely. There are so many games out there that could be released for free with no adverse effect to their respective publishers (code is way, way, way out of date and you don't have to go true public domain with your intellectual property) that it could give file-sharing programs a truly great non-infringing use. Hell, if they want to make more money on old/classic games, publishers could team up with Microsoft and release DOS boot CDs (along with a TSR CPU-clogging program so that the game doesn't end in two seconds) with collections of classic games. I can think of at least 20 games I'd buy in that kind of a format, and it wouldn't require me to have a spare 86/286/386/486 hanging around, nor would it require me to spend three hours tweaking DOS configurations to figure out how to make the games work.
Now I'm wondering if I should be writing this in public. It reads to me like an idea that would actually make some nice cash for some folks.:)
I wouldn't get on Sierra too much about not releasing Homeworld for free. It could be that they still consider the first Homeworld a viable product. After all, Sierra is no stranger to releasing old games for free - I've downloaded both Betrayal at Kondor and Red Baron from them in the past.
Now, if we could just get Infogrames to release the stranglehold on the Microprose back catalog...Sorry. I'm an old school Microprose fanboy.:)
Continuing this off-topic line, this particular instance (re- versus ri-diculous) would be a bad one with which to make a case because the "e" and the "i" are both on the same finger and same row for opposite hands and it's very common to make mistakes between the two.:)
It's aimed for people who want a PVR and a way to archive recorded programs on DVD-R, with the inclusion of the PS2 being almost a bonus in the current market (see my message above).
I'll break it down for you, since that's what you seem to want:
DVD-R Drive - It's not considered by many in the same way that DVD itself wasn't considered by many for a while, or even the way that consumer VCRs weren't considered by many.
Huge Hard Drive - Bigger is better and compared to similar units this doesn't seem to impact the final price of the PSX, so what's the complaint?
PS2 - Sure you'll buy a PS3 sometime in the future, but that future isn't here yet. As noted above, you're getting the PS2 functionality for a song. Think of it as a PVR/DVD-R device first, if that helps (Sony is marketing this through their consumer electronics division and not through their gaming division which should tell us something).
TIVO system - This so-much-cash thing just isn't true. In order to buy a Tivo with a lifetime of service (anyone who pays monthly is a sucker, IMHO - I've been using my Panasonic Showstopper/ReplayTV since they first hit the streets so these units can last), you're going to pay $650!! That's for 80 GB of space and no DVD-R capability. Are you telling me that anyone who has bought a Tivo or ReplayTV so far has no time to watch TV? As far as the bigger hard drive goes, the 120 will be more than satisfactory for most people and the 250 is going to be for people who want to spend less on DVD-R media by leaving shows longer on the hard drive.
In short, when you add up the various functions of this unit you end up getting the PS2 part of the unit for virtually nothing. Taking the PS2 out of the equation, the pricing stands up even to units with LESS under the hood.
Maybe a lot of people don't need the capabilities that the PSX provides, but then again I could argue that people didn't need to upgrade to DVD to watch movies, and people don't need to buy a Tivo to watch TV. But for those people who want to move into digital video recording, easier time-shifting of TV and archiving on DVD instead of VHS, the PSX at the moment looks like one heck of a good deal.
My parents were recently looking for an upgrade to the ReplayTV I gave them. They bought the [DishNetwork] DishPVR 721 unit (80+ hours of recording space, two tuners, two-week guide...all the bells and whistles) for $750. They could afford it AND they [obviously] like to watch TV.
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I've also had the personal experience where I've enjoyed a demo quite a lot and played it for many hours, but subsequently found myself shopping for a game and ended up buying something else on that trip because I wanted to play something different.
Of course, then you have yet another group of people who play the demo in order to tide them over until they can acquire a pirated version of the full game.
In short, outside of Japan this will likely only appeal to the import/hacking community.
Or who have to run Windows-specific code because of company requirements and don't want to dual-boot Windows? I understand not wanting to run the software yourself, but that doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for someone else to use it. Being blindly dismissive is one attribute of Linux zealots that turns many people - people who would otherwise be interested in learning more about Linux - off.
I would agree that it's a loss leader, except that in this case, instead of wanting consumers to buy games which they can then keep and play anytime they want, the Phantom will require (repeat: REQUIRE) payment of the ongoing subscription in order to function at all. If it does come to market I'm sure that people will find ways to hack them so that they can be used for other things, but as a home console it has ZERO chance for success...Divx (the DVD format, not the video compression scheme) by any other name would smell like a loser.
Ummmm, I did buy a TurboGrafx-16...Of course, the only two games I played on it were Bonk's Adventure (excellent) and Klax (classic), and I then promptly got rid of it. There was nothing deeply wrong with the system except that it had little to no developer support in the US - which, of course, is deeply wrong. :)
"Slightly" is the key word there. I don't recall any of the current three home consoles selling for two-thirds of their MSRP from any merchants, online or B&M, even after a year of availability (ignoring used/refurbs and changes in the MSRP itself). I don't think there's any question that, as a game console, the N-Gage is failing spectacularly...
Not even close. I can forgive replaying the same old story once per console generation when it's a good upgrade from what has come before (like Rogue Leader, the GC launch title), but it becomes pure whoring when they dip from the same well this often.
Bioware went the right direction by placing us in the familiar Star Wars universe and building a brand new story (not to mention giving us the first single-player Star Wars RPG). Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic not only had that fresh story but solid and engaging gameplay - so good that people have managed to play the game through multiple times despite some truly awful bugs.
If Factor 5 is going to continue doing games about Rogue Squadron, what's wrong with taking the series to the post-trilogy galaxy of The New Republic? There have been several books about Rogue Squadron which, though just average science fiction fare in terms of writing quality (the Star Wars equivalent of those straight-to-paperback military books in the grocery store), include some excellent mission scenarios and over-arching plotlines which would make good fodder for video games.
In short, I think playing a linear video game like this can be fun to a point, but it loses something fundamental when I already know the ending.
Who says I was making an argument at all? I was merely pointing out websites that seem to be using trademarked names in their URLs - I was making no judgement on their legitimacy, either morally or legally.
You're right. I missed that NASA Tech Briefs is an official NASA publication - since it wasn't immediately apparent and was not on NASA's usual .gov domain, I didn't look very close. Mea culpa.
Interstate 76 was my favorite in this vein..."funkay."
1. Actually, virtually all HDTV-ready TVs support 1080i and relatively few support 720p. You'd be hard-pressed to find an HDTV that will take a 720p signal and not a 1080i signal, while the reverse is very common - especially in "affordable" HDTVs (affordable to my mind being under $1,500).
2. Interlaced doesn't suck as bad as some think. It was considerably worse on computer monitors (hence souring the group that had to use them) because a) people sit very close to computer monitors, as opposed to TVs where most people sit at least several feet away and b) the interlacing was distracting on a 60-Hz screen displaying static images. With high-motion video, common in video games, interlacing can hardly be noticed, especially at normal TV viewing distances.
Short answer: Go look at a nice TV displaying 1080i, especially for a sports event (basketball season is coming up) - that should convince you that interlacing isn't that big a deal.
Now, I suppose that some of these sites are either flying under the corporate radar or are operating under some sort of trademark/copyright exception but I really don't know.
In this particular case, I have to question UC's wisdom in going after this site. I don't see any indication in the "nastygram" (classy nomenclature) that there was offensive material of some sort and I don't expect the students running the site were making a ton of cash on it. It seems like much ado about nothing...unless UC thinks that any student using those initials dilutes their "brand." Does that mean, too, that if University of Chicago puts a U in front of the C on their football team's helmets, they're going to get sued?
I would prefer that for now they use high-resolution textures and anti-aliasing to achieve nice 480p pictures, rather than applying workarounds to get to the HDTV resolutions. With the next console generation, I expect that all the consoles (at least I hope all, but I'm 99% certain for Xbox2) will have NTSC/480p/720p/1080i options built into nearly every game. I'd rather wait a bit for the real deal rather than get a half-assed result now.
Besides the bugs - many of which I found exceedingly annoying in Vice City - most of that article seemed to be written by someone who was simply nostalgic for the "original" (as original as the third in a series can be), like the people who claim that Pac-Man is superior to Ms. Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with that, since it's always going to be a matter of taste, but Vice City is certainly defensible as a superior game.
Actually, it wasn't an air force tactic per se (though it did involve aircraft), but rather a combined force tactic developed by Hans Guderian in order to take advantage of the then newly developed battle tanks. You can find a bit more information here.
Well probably find out in a month or two. Bioware has said that they would work on Xbox downloadable content once the PC version was released.
The racing games that sell huge for the home console are those that have a lot to do - buying new cars, buying parts for cars, racing on 20 or more tracks, license drills, etc. These racing games become a near-RPG in the sense that you have to build up your game save over time to progress. Sega already has Sega GT for the Xbox which meets console racing standards and is releasing Sega GT Online next month (essentially an online expansion pack of the previous game), but apart from pack-ins with the Xbox the game didn't sell all that well despite it quality.
I'm with Sega on this. Unfortunately, home console users just aren't as excited about arcade ports anymore. On the Xbox, they would have to compete against Project Gotham Racing 2 and their own Sega GT Online; on the PS2, they would have to compete against Gran Turismo 4; and on the Gamecbue, well...the Gamecube just doesn't look that appealing to developers of racing games, and it wouldn't seem to fit in with Sega's other offerings on that console (Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Super Monkey Ball, etc.).
MAYBE, after they've gotten their fill in the arcade, they could do a quickie $20 port for the Xbox (because of the Xbox-compatible origin) but trying anything more ambitious would require extra development (read: money).
That being said, I still played the game all the way through three times and many others enjoyed the game so much that even talking about bugs pisses them off. Overall, the game is good enough that the bugs can be overlooked, but some of them, even in a game as huge as this one, are inexcusable (again, see Mission/Carth bug).
Oh yeah, and I doubt they'll release a bug-fixed Xbox version until it gets a "Platinum" or "Game of the Year" release - even then, it's probably doubtful.
"Look! I can play Fantavision and it only cost me $500 on eBay! Woot!"
Now, I will admit that first-party Nintendo games seem to take advantage of the controller and are generally as easy to control as anything on the other consoles. But when moving to third-party games, the controller becomes a chore for me, to the point that I won't buy a third-party game for the GC unless its exclusive (a policy I may violate with what sounds like cool GBAGC use in the next console Sims game).
Since I've owned all three consoles, I've come to feel most comfortable for long periods of time using the Xbox controller, with the DualShock second and the GC controller a distant third.
But, maybe it's just me. :)
Don't forget that GBA games are cheaper and the GBA has a massive installed hardware base (once combined, the GBA and GBASP outsell every other console, including the PS2, every week), along with the fact that it has relatively little competition in the mass-market handheld arena, even in Japan where they have the Wonderswan. The surprising thing is really that they haven't dominated the software chales charts more often with their GBA titles.
Microsoft is likely just putting in whatever drive happens to be cheapest at the moment and then only enabling the first 8 GB in software. After all, HD manufacturers make what sells and 8/10GB hard drives aren't selling anymore, and there's no compelling reason for Microsoft to have special runs of smaller hard drives produced because it would cost them more money than buying off the shelf.
Now I'm wondering if I should be writing this in public. It reads to me like an idea that would actually make some nice cash for some folks. :)
Now, if we could just get Infogrames to release the stranglehold on the Microprose back catalog...Sorry. I'm an old school Microprose fanboy. :)
Continuing this off-topic line, this particular instance (re- versus ri-diculous) would be a bad one with which to make a case because the "e" and the "i" are both on the same finger and same row for opposite hands and it's very common to make mistakes between the two. :)
I'll break it down for you, since that's what you seem to want:
DVD-R Drive - It's not considered by many in the same way that DVD itself wasn't considered by many for a while, or even the way that consumer VCRs weren't considered by many.
Huge Hard Drive - Bigger is better and compared to similar units this doesn't seem to impact the final price of the PSX, so what's the complaint?
PS2 - Sure you'll buy a PS3 sometime in the future, but that future isn't here yet. As noted above, you're getting the PS2 functionality for a song. Think of it as a PVR/DVD-R device first, if that helps (Sony is marketing this through their consumer electronics division and not through their gaming division which should tell us something).
TIVO system - This so-much-cash thing just isn't true. In order to buy a Tivo with a lifetime of service (anyone who pays monthly is a sucker, IMHO - I've been using my Panasonic Showstopper/ReplayTV since they first hit the streets so these units can last), you're going to pay $650!! That's for 80 GB of space and no DVD-R capability. Are you telling me that anyone who has bought a Tivo or ReplayTV so far has no time to watch TV? As far as the bigger hard drive goes, the 120 will be more than satisfactory for most people and the 250 is going to be for people who want to spend less on DVD-R media by leaving shows longer on the hard drive.
In short, when you add up the various functions of this unit you end up getting the PS2 part of the unit for virtually nothing. Taking the PS2 out of the equation, the pricing stands up even to units with LESS under the hood.
Maybe a lot of people don't need the capabilities that the PSX provides, but then again I could argue that people didn't need to upgrade to DVD to watch movies, and people don't need to buy a Tivo to watch TV. But for those people who want to move into digital video recording, easier time-shifting of TV and archiving on DVD instead of VHS, the PSX at the moment looks like one heck of a good deal.
My parents were recently looking for an upgrade to the ReplayTV I gave them. They bought the [DishNetwork] DishPVR 721 unit (80+ hours of recording space, two tuners, two-week guide...all the bells and whistles) for $750. They could afford it AND they [obviously] like to watch TV.