Hello there, Mr. Bill Gates!;-) I had no idea you read Slashdot!!! Thank you for honoring us lowly "patent infringers" with your presence. Let me be the first to welcome you by telling you that I will not be buying any Microsoft hardware or software until you back down from your patent threats against the open-source community.
I read the reference you sent and it talked about Madden 2008 running at 30 FPS, not 20 (the framerate is 50% faster than you claimed in your post, but I'll try to not cloud your truth with my facts) in 1080p on the PS3. Keep in mind that we're talking about the world's biggest console game port company, EA. They were probably targeting the 360 as the primary platform to make more $$$ from game sales, had to meet a release deadline that one of the suits placed in their calendar, and chose to lock the framerate at 30 FPS to save time when porting the game to the PS3. The article also names Resistance: Fall of man, Motorstorm, and Call of Duty 4 as games that perform better than Madden graphically on the PS3.
I think that the PS3's day will come when the price drops to a reasonable level ($200-$250). I do agree that we're having great Wii and 360 fun right now, but expect that the PS3's graphics will put those two systems to shame in the coming years on HDTVs. I will probably buy a PS3 for the Blu-Ray player and 1080p games. I see no point in buying a 360 for 720p games, because I would only be helping Microsoft fund their FUD campaign against the open-source community.
The newest HDTVs support 120 Hz refresh rates; there are models from major manufacturers (Sony, Toshiba, JVC, Mitsubishi) and Samsung also has a few 120 frame per second models that I'm looking at. The days of the 60 frame per second refresh rate for HDTVs and games are numbered and Microsoft is dreaming if they think that 720p@60hz will last them as long as 480i@30hz lasted the PS2.
I'm no Sony fanboy...as a matter of fact, I'm one of the few gamers who does not own a PS2 and I know I'm in a very slim minority.
Fact is, any console manufacturer would looove to have the PS2's sales lifecycle; it's the best-selling console of all time.
The other fact is that no matter what lies the XBox 360 game boxes tell (i.e. 1080i/p stickers on game boxes), the 360 renders games like Gears of War and BioShock in 720p (at best) and upscales its output to 1080i/p. Graphically, the 360 is an intermediate step between the Wii and PS3.
I am a Nintendo fanboy and hope they put out a next-generation console with improved motion controls and 1920x1080p graphics right around the time that PS3 hardware reaches the mass-market price-point of $200-250. That said, Nintendo has not been first to market with a console since the NES. Nintendo is surely hard at work on their next-generation console, but I will be pleasantly surprised if it sees the light of day before its competitors.
It's really stupid of Capcom to not plan a Wii version. The grappling hook in Metroid Prime works just fine and using my left arm as a primary means of transportation and defense would be fun. It's time for a Wii game with an extendable arm or two.
"It's not like they make any large machines, or systems with any built-in redundancy."
What systems are sold with built-in redundancy (RAIDs, multiple NICs, and multiple storage HBAs aside) and by whom? My sense is that aside from RAID and other internal redundant devices, we add server redundancy through software means (clusters, mirrors, etc) if multiple hosts are purchased for that type of redundancy. I do see the need for products that are sold with built-in redundant systems in some industries (airplanes come to mind), but I did not know that server manufacturers sold hardware with this feature built-in. Is it that the client is also paying a service premium to the OEM to set up and maintain a clustered or mirrored environment made up of multiple hosts?
How would you define a "large machine?" I had to shop for a servers with 64 GB of RAM and > 2 TB of internal storage using 15K RPM SAS drives in a 6U rack footprint and chose Dell at a $30K price per unit when I saw how much the competitors (HP and IBM) charge for equivalent hardware. I also saw that if I wanted to go to 128 GB RAM or more, I would need to buy a full HP rack, which was not an option (too much space for 1 database server). Setting clusters and mainframes aside for now (I have no idea what a high-end mainframe spec looks like), what kind of hardware spec would you consider "large" in a single server?
All I have to do is throw it from my office window and watch as it "flies" down 19 floors to its destruction. "She always wanted to make a big slash on Broadway."
Thanks for the history lesson, Osty. It looks like you know what you're talking about, so I'm going to assume that you were correct on every point, and refer you to my first reply on this subject.
You said, "Obviously an upscaled 1080p image will not be quite as good as a natively-rendered 1080p image, but if you're playing the game rather than counting pixels you're never going to notice." This is similar to the Nintendo argument for not supporting high-definition games on the Wii.
So the Xbox web site is misleading the public when their Gears of War page says that it renders in 1080?
The back of Bioshock's box states 1080p in the features section (I can't find a pic of the back of the box online).
I don't know what's worse, misleading the consumer into thinking that the game they are buying renders at a higher resolution than it actually produces or claiming that a game console is part of the high-definition generation, when it is truly lacks the hardware to render games in 1920x1080 and is actually of the intermediate "enhanced definition" variety.
Gears of War and BioShock are both displayed at a native 1920 x 1080 in progressive scan on my cousin's 360 Elite. The lighting in both games is amazing, as are the visuals, and the gameplay.
The real problem is Halo's graphics engine, which has been too demanding of the graphics card/processor since Halo 1. They're not going to admit that their graphics engine is slow or that the 360's graphics card can't crunch through double-bufferred 1080p using an engine that is maintained at Microsoft.
It goes to show that third-party developers have a better handle on getting the most out of the 360's PC hardware than Microsoft.
I recall their shitty Worldnet dial-up service being worse than AOL's. Whoops! I just violated their terms of service...good thing I dropped them like a bad habit years ago.
You're all absolutely correct about mouse versus joystick for aiming and turning.
The other point to consider is that the entire Unreal series has been heavily modded by the PC gaming community...I recall nude skins and even black skins (invisible in the dark, except for the sniper bullets that fly off you), Simpsons mods, Mario Brothers mods, The Matrix mods, Aliens mods, etc.
Imagine the Republican uproar in Congress (e.g. Lieberman, McCain, et tu Clinton?) or the Florida courts (Jack Thompson) about little Johnny seeing a nude girl jumping around and shooting him while playing on his console...I say screw that. Keep the kiddies with their consoles locked in the original games and make them pay for mods using the Microsoft pay-for-download model...who cares if those clowns don't get community-based mods? EPIC is going to give us the PC version we want, with no filters or limitations, the way they always have.
You tell 'em Luke.
When they drop the price to $200 - $250, I'll buy my shiny new Blu-Ray player for the 50" 1080p HDTV in my living room; and Metal Gear will be the gravy.
Until then, I'll be recording my favorite movies and shows on my DVR.
I played all of the games in the series, but only finished 1 - 4. I did not play part 5 for more than 30 minutes...it did not do anything for me.
My personal favorites were the re-make of "Quest for Glory 1: So you want to be a hero?" and "Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness." I truly enjoyed my nightly rendezvous with Katrina, especially after she had taken off her cloak and exposed her round, soft, delectable breasts.
"Hire someone who worked on ExciteTruck to do it for you."
AMEN, my brutha! Excite Truck's tilt control using the WiiMote is an excellent model for how Sony should implement tilt control on the SixAxis rumble. While Sony gets to work on fixing the issues you listed, I have an item to add to your list:
5) Bring the price down to $250, so I will be willing to buy one for my living room.
I agree with you to a degree...the price difference is definitely a HUGE factor. The magic number for consumers has always been in the ballpark of $200-$250 for a console purchase with a game.
Of course, if Nintendo were selling a shitbox for $250, no one would buy it. In this case, the Wii is a revolutionary console at a lower price than its evolutionary competitors.
The Wii would sell with only Wii Sports, but it launched alongside Zelda. Now we have Metroid...and then there's Resident Evil, Madden, Sonic, Elebits, and Strikers, which are all available for purchase. Upcoming are Mario, Smash Brothers, Soul Calibur, Nights, and many more.
I'm not buying a 360 (due to the MS patent FUD) and will only buy a PS3 for the BluRay player (50" HDTV in my living room) when it comes down to $200-$250. Maybe the PS3 will be ready to compete in the console war when it reaches that price point, but Nintendo may win the current generation's console war before Sony drops the PS3 price enough to reach critical mass.
Slashdot Mirror
Hello there, Mr. Bill Gates! ;-) I had no idea you read Slashdot!!! Thank you for honoring us lowly "patent infringers" with your presence. Let me be the first to welcome you by telling you that I will not be buying any Microsoft hardware or software until you back down from your patent threats against the open-source community.
I read the reference you sent and it talked about Madden 2008 running at 30 FPS, not 20 (the framerate is 50% faster than you claimed in your post, but I'll try to not cloud your truth with my facts) in 1080p on the PS3. Keep in mind that we're talking about the world's biggest console game port company, EA. They were probably targeting the 360 as the primary platform to make more $$$ from game sales, had to meet a release deadline that one of the suits placed in their calendar, and chose to lock the framerate at 30 FPS to save time when porting the game to the PS3. The article also names Resistance: Fall of man, Motorstorm, and Call of Duty 4 as games that perform better than Madden graphically on the PS3.
I think that the PS3's day will come when the price drops to a reasonable level ($200-$250). I do agree that we're having great Wii and 360 fun right now, but expect that the PS3's graphics will put those two systems to shame in the coming years on HDTVs. I will probably buy a PS3 for the Blu-Ray player and 1080p games. I see no point in buying a 360 for 720p games, because I would only be helping Microsoft fund their FUD campaign against the open-source community.
The newest HDTVs support 120 Hz refresh rates; there are models from major manufacturers (Sony, Toshiba, JVC, Mitsubishi) and Samsung also has a few 120 frame per second models that I'm looking at. The days of the 60 frame per second refresh rate for HDTVs and games are numbered and Microsoft is dreaming if they think that 720p@60hz will last them as long as 480i@30hz lasted the PS2.
I'm no Sony fanboy...as a matter of fact, I'm one of the few gamers who does not own a PS2 and I know I'm in a very slim minority.
Fact is, any console manufacturer would looove to have the PS2's sales lifecycle; it's the best-selling console of all time.
The other fact is that no matter what lies the XBox 360 game boxes tell (i.e. 1080i/p stickers on game boxes), the 360 renders games like Gears of War and BioShock in 720p (at best) and upscales its output to 1080i/p. Graphically, the 360 is an intermediate step between the Wii and PS3.
I am a Nintendo fanboy and hope they put out a next-generation console with improved motion controls and 1920x1080p graphics right around the time that PS3 hardware reaches the mass-market price-point of $200-250. That said, Nintendo has not been first to market with a console since the NES. Nintendo is surely hard at work on their next-generation console, but I will be pleasantly surprised if it sees the light of day before its competitors.
That one's only available on the Wii Virtual console these days. ;-)
It's really stupid of Capcom to not plan a Wii version. The grappling hook in Metroid Prime works just fine and using my left arm as a primary means of transportation and defense would be fun. It's time for a Wii game with an extendable arm or two.
"It's not like they make any large machines, or systems with any built-in redundancy."
What systems are sold with built-in redundancy (RAIDs, multiple NICs, and multiple storage HBAs aside) and by whom? My sense is that aside from RAID and other internal redundant devices, we add server redundancy through software means (clusters, mirrors, etc) if multiple hosts are purchased for that type of redundancy. I do see the need for products that are sold with built-in redundant systems in some industries (airplanes come to mind), but I did not know that server manufacturers sold hardware with this feature built-in. Is it that the client is also paying a service premium to the OEM to set up and maintain a clustered or mirrored environment made up of multiple hosts?
How would you define a "large machine?" I had to shop for a servers with 64 GB of RAM and > 2 TB of internal storage using 15K RPM SAS drives in a 6U rack footprint and chose Dell at a $30K price per unit when I saw how much the competitors (HP and IBM) charge for equivalent hardware. I also saw that if I wanted to go to 128 GB RAM or more, I would need to buy a full HP rack, which was not an option (too much space for 1 database server). Setting clusters and mainframes aside for now (I have no idea what a high-end mainframe spec looks like), what kind of hardware spec would you consider "large" in a single server?
All I have to do is throw it from my office window and watch as it "flies" down 19 floors to its destruction. "She always wanted to make a big slash on Broadway."
Thanks for the history lesson, Osty. It looks like you know what you're talking about, so I'm going to assume that you were correct on every point, and refer you to my first reply on this subject.
You said, "Obviously an upscaled 1080p image will not be quite as good as a natively-rendered 1080p image, but if you're playing the game rather than counting pixels you're never going to notice." This is similar to the Nintendo argument for not supporting high-definition games on the Wii.
So the Xbox web site is misleading the public when their Gears of War page says that it renders in 1080?
The back of Bioshock's box states 1080p in the features section (I can't find a pic of the back of the box online).
I don't know what's worse, misleading the consumer into thinking that the game they are buying renders at a higher resolution than it actually produces or claiming that a game console is part of the high-definition generation, when it is truly lacks the hardware to render games in 1920x1080 and is actually of the intermediate "enhanced definition" variety.
What does the back of the Halo 3 box say, 1080p?
Gears of War and BioShock are both displayed at a native 1920 x 1080 in progressive scan on my cousin's 360 Elite. The lighting in both games is amazing, as are the visuals, and the gameplay.
The real problem is Halo's graphics engine, which has been too demanding of the graphics card/processor since Halo 1. They're not going to admit that their graphics engine is slow or that the 360's graphics card can't crunch through double-bufferred 1080p using an engine that is maintained at Microsoft.
It goes to show that third-party developers have a better handle on getting the most out of the 360's PC hardware than Microsoft.
I recall their shitty Worldnet dial-up service being worse than AOL's. Whoops! I just violated their terms of service...good thing I dropped them like a bad habit years ago.
You're all absolutely correct about mouse versus joystick for aiming and turning.
The other point to consider is that the entire Unreal series has been heavily modded by the PC gaming community...I recall nude skins and even black skins (invisible in the dark, except for the sniper bullets that fly off you), Simpsons mods, Mario Brothers mods, The Matrix mods, Aliens mods, etc.
Imagine the Republican uproar in Congress (e.g. Lieberman, McCain, et tu Clinton?) or the Florida courts (Jack Thompson) about little Johnny seeing a nude girl jumping around and shooting him while playing on his console...I say screw that. Keep the kiddies with their consoles locked in the original games and make them pay for mods using the Microsoft pay-for-download model...who cares if those clowns don't get community-based mods? EPIC is going to give us the PC version we want, with no filters or limitations, the way they always have.
You tell 'em Luke. When they drop the price to $200 - $250, I'll buy my shiny new Blu-Ray player for the 50" 1080p HDTV in my living room; and Metal Gear will be the gravy. Until then, I'll be recording my favorite movies and shows on my DVR.
Thanks for the information...I really had no idea about the re-make or parody.
Looks like Tierra changed their name to AGD Interactive and the Quest for Glory 2 remake is a work in progress.
I'll probably download QfG 4.5 to see how good the spoof of part 1 is.
He just keeps very good backups of his game discs and mod chips.
I played all of the games in the series, but only finished 1 - 4. I did not play part 5 for more than 30 minutes...it did not do anything for me.
My personal favorites were the re-make of "Quest for Glory 1: So you want to be a hero?" and "Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness." I truly enjoyed my nightly rendezvous with Katrina, especially after she had taken off her cloak and exposed her round, soft, delectable breasts.
Virtual console Double Dribble
"Hire someone who worked on ExciteTruck to do it for you."
AMEN, my brutha! Excite Truck's tilt control using the WiiMote is an excellent model for how Sony should implement tilt control on the SixAxis rumble. While Sony gets to work on fixing the issues you listed, I have an item to add to your list:
5) Bring the price down to $250, so I will be willing to buy one for my living room.
Darl, YOU who chose to get rid of the Caldera Linux distribution after you were hired in late June 2002. Then, you spit in the face of the community that made your company rich and took on the Nazgul.
You, not your competitors, are the reason why SCO is the joke of the IT industry.
I've never bought a single GTA game, but I may just buy this one just so I can put a virtual bullet in Jack Thompson.
Here's a picture of what it looked like as SCO streaked across the sky and made that big, noxious, radioactive hole in the ground! ;-)
LOL; that's hilarious!!! Clearly, God's intelligent design created CraigsList so that I don't have to spend money to get laid.
HD porn would make the purchase completely justified in my view :-P
It was a joke, but here are some references:
Microsoft Acknowledges 360 Issues, Extends Warranty to 3 Years
Xbox Warranty To Cost $1 Billion, Customer Good Will
Xbox Division Posts Loss of $1.9 Billion
For every Xbox 360 sold at retail, Microsoft ships at least 5 to 10 replacement units.
I agree with you to a degree...the price difference is definitely a HUGE factor. The magic number for consumers has always been in the ballpark of $200-$250 for a console purchase with a game.
Of course, if Nintendo were selling a shitbox for $250, no one would buy it. In this case, the Wii is a revolutionary console at a lower price than its evolutionary competitors.
The Wii would sell with only Wii Sports, but it launched alongside Zelda. Now we have Metroid...and then there's Resident Evil, Madden, Sonic, Elebits, and Strikers, which are all available for purchase. Upcoming are Mario, Smash Brothers, Soul Calibur, Nights, and many more.
I'm not buying a 360 (due to the MS patent FUD) and will only buy a PS3 for the BluRay player (50" HDTV in my living room) when it comes down to $200-$250. Maybe the PS3 will be ready to compete in the console war when it reaches that price point, but Nintendo may win the current generation's console war before Sony drops the PS3 price enough to reach critical mass.