It looks more realistic if you are factoring in the higher prices in other countries. Including tax, British gamers are being asked to pay $366.14 for the cheap and $488.12 for the expensive version and games are $87.15 each (at today's exchange rates).
Flextronics/Solectron are not doing this for free, Microsoft have to pay them. For Sony, it's all in house, so I think they do have a significant advantage there.
The estimates for "Analog IC, ASICs, I/O" after 3 years are $20 for the Xbox and $40 for the PS3. Ignoring the fact that they already itemised USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and controllers so there's bamn little I/O left to account for, where did they pull those numbers from? Sony, with 50 years of consumer electronics experience and in-house assembly lines will end up paying 100% more and Microsoft? Yeah, Right.
Sony will be paying more for 256Mb of Ram than MS will for 512? Laughable!
Microsoft have 1 loss-making console and some keyboards worth of experience manufacturing consumer hardware, while Sony have consistently proved with the PSOne and Slimline PS2 that they can and do trim every last excess cost from a product. They do this sort of thing all the time across their entire product range.
The article also conveniently ignores the fact that for the most expensive part, the CPU, Sony are part of the Cell consortium, have invested in the chip from the start, and are going to build the CPUs for other uses as well, whereas Microsoft are just customers of IBM (a company that probably wants Microsoft to lose the battle and get cut down to size a bit). The same goes for blu-ray, it's a Sony in-house product, so nobody else is getting a cut of the price.
The cost of the case, packaging and distribution are conveniently ignored, presumably because that's another area where Sony's experience and consumer electronics presence will pay off well.
Finally... $100 for a triple-core 3.2 Ghz PPC chip *today*? If that was the case, Apple would never have switched to Intel, and would be shipping 12 core 3.2Ghz boxes for $1999, not 4 core 2.5Ghz ones for $3300!
Either these guys have solved the problem of fan noise that has plagued computers for years, or those 17" whirling blades (and the motor that drives then) are going to make a hell of a lot of white noise along with the brown. This certainly doesn't appear to be an audiophile device to me.
I'm interested in how the device actually works though, since the sound could be generated by reversing the speed of the fan every cycle, or by altering the angle of attack (which strikes me as a much better method since it invovles a lot less overcoming of inertia).
It's a pity there are not figures for how high a frequency this device can generate - I imagine it can't go very high at all, since switching from reducing the air pressure to increasing it (which has to be done every cycle) involves throwing a lot of mechanics and metal around. Maybe it can't get very far into the audio range at all, whic is why it's only been demoed with test tones?
You have an interesting analogy there, but the process behind the "Mega-Bass" button corresponds much more closely to the Gamma-curve adjustment that are popular with players of very dark FPS games - it's a user-controlled decision to boost something they want more of.
HDR corresponds more closely to a musician deciding to play his guitar through an overdrive pedal rather than 'clean', making the quiet parts louder at the expense of the loud parts maxing out the avaialble range. It's a decision made at the author's end, to overload some things to achieve an effect they like.
If you have a library of PS2 games, then surely you also have a PS2 to play them on, and don;t really NEED backwards compatibility?
I'll admit the backwards compatibility was a big influence on my decision to buy a PS2, but in reality I only used it 2 or 3 times to play old games, so this time round I'm not bothered at all.
I was actually far more impressed with (and spent more money on) the improved re-makes of N64 Zelda games for the non-backwards-compatible Game Cube.
the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet
You can't seriously be suggesting ICANN are doing a good job, can you? It's an undemocratic monumental, expensive, indecisive, grindingly slow moving organisation that does nothing at all about cybersquatters and adds new TLDs purely so you have to buy more versions of your existing domain every time they want a bit more cash?
Moving to an international system would make no difference whatsoever to the daily functioning of the net, all that would change is that ICANN would be replaced by something else - and I find it hard to imagine that it could be replaced by anything worse.
Microsoft have been incredibly slow to realise that Windows can always go back to being what it was when it first got really successful at version 3.1, a GUI. Most people don't know what an OS even is, and wouldn't be aware of any difference (except increased stablility) if what they bought from Microsoft was a GUI for Linux instead of an actual operating system with GUI built in. Taking this approach (albeit with a Unix core) hasn't hurt Apple's OSX.
AS soon as Microsoft realise this, they can cut their development costs massively, and keep the same sales figures. I have no idea why their shareholders are not demanding this already!
What would a disbarred and disgraced Jak Thompson be likely to do? He appears to be exactly the kind of dysfunctional person who might take revenge with a big gun.
Let's hope he doesn't realise that this would actually prove his theory that video games can drive unstable people to commit murder!
Press release translated from marketing-speak: "we've built this amazing thing which would generate all the investment capital we could possibly want if we showed it to you, but you can't see it until April 2006 because... erm... the dog ate our camera."
Since their previous device is colour, it would be insane for this one not to be. Almost as insane as putting the 4Gb drive from your wants list in to replace the 40Gb one the old device shipped with!
While there are a lot of things you could do with a slow-refresh display device at this price point, such as animated vehicle paint, billboards, constructing a video dance-mat 300ft wide to play pacman 'for real' and making disneyland look even more like a bad acid trip, producing a newspaper that sells for less than the price of a hardcover book isn't one of them.
According to this BBC story Microsoft have now settled with Real for $761m.
Personally, I'd have held out for a bit more, just to beat the $775 that IBM got. How long before Microsoft's shareholders insist they stop breaking the law?
In the ten years or so I used the net before adblock, I only ever clicked an advert once, and that was a mistake caused by a pop-up appearing as I was aiming for a real link. Sites do not lose any revenue because I block adverts, and now my time/bandwidth isn't wasted by distractions.
As for blocking adverts on TV and in magazines, as far as it's technically possible I already do. I watch mostly BBC channels which are advert free (apart from irritating trails for other BBC programmes), my digital box is set to hide advet-only chnnels (QVC, TV Travel Shop etc.) and I watch the few big American series I like via bittorrent. When I buy a magazine that has leaflets inserted into it, I shake them out before I leave the shop, and with newspapers, I use the adblocked websites instead.
Why are people not up in arms about TV content being damaged by adverts in the same way that we complain about ads obscuring web content? Often when watching an American series us Brits will see a sudden lurch when an advert break has been removed; something interesting is about to happen, then we have a cut to black, the music changes and we get a 2 or 3 second recap. We even get this on advert supported channels, since we allow a much lower percentage of each hour to be adverts over here.
It's a Gameboy Advance Micro. Maybe I've just not been paying enough attention, but I assumed from then name that this was going to be a tiny, cheap Gameboy or Gameboy 'Color', not a tiny expensive Gameboy Advance.
Since the review doesn't mention batteries, can I assume it's got a built in rechargeable, and Nintendo are going to be facing a class action lawsuit in about 2 years when they all die?
It is not Liquid Crystal Display Display. It is not going to work with your PC computer, or your VGA Graphics Adapter that you bought with money from the ATM machine that asked for your PIN number.
Try getting it right, just once, Please? It would make an old grammar nazi nazi very happy.
True, but that didn't help Netscape, did it? Microsoft are notorious scofflaws when it comes to illegal monopoly abuse, and unless they've suddenly developed a conscience I doubt they would have any qualms about reoffending.
1) What grounds would Google have for a lawsuit? Advert-blocking is NOT illegal! No lawsuits have ever been successful against Firefox's adblock plug-in.
2) Why would blocking adverts and pop-ups be a PR nightmare for M$? It certainly isn't for Firefox.
3) If getting round adblock was as simple as switching DNS names, then why are all the advertising companies not already doing this? Filtering on content or adding a RTBL would soon fix this hole, if it even is a hole.
Actually, I don't think they do have to be subtle about it. Adblockers are legal, and it wouldn't surprise me if ad/popup blocking was the most requested feature for IE7.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks more realistic if you are factoring in the higher prices in other countries. Including tax, British gamers are being asked to pay $366.14 for the cheap and $488.12 for the expensive version and games are $87.15 each (at today's exchange rates).
Flextronics/Solectron are not doing this for free, Microsoft have to pay them. For Sony, it's all in house, so I think they do have a significant advantage there.
The estimates for "Analog IC, ASICs, I/O" after 3 years are $20 for the Xbox and $40 for the PS3. Ignoring the fact that they already itemised USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and controllers so there's bamn little I/O left to account for, where did they pull those numbers from? Sony, with 50 years of consumer electronics experience and in-house assembly lines will end up paying 100% more and Microsoft? Yeah, Right.
Sony will be paying more for 256Mb of Ram than MS will for 512? Laughable!
Microsoft have 1 loss-making console and some keyboards worth of experience manufacturing consumer hardware, while Sony have consistently proved with the PSOne and Slimline PS2 that they can and do trim every last excess cost from a product. They do this sort of thing all the time across their entire product range.
The article also conveniently ignores the fact that for the most expensive part, the CPU, Sony are part of the Cell consortium, have invested in the chip from the start, and are going to build the CPUs for other uses as well, whereas Microsoft are just customers of IBM (a company that probably wants Microsoft to lose the battle and get cut down to size a bit). The same goes for blu-ray, it's a Sony in-house product, so nobody else is getting a cut of the price.
The cost of the case, packaging and distribution are conveniently ignored, presumably because that's another area where Sony's experience and consumer electronics presence will pay off well.
Finally... $100 for a triple-core 3.2 Ghz PPC chip *today*? If that was the case, Apple would never have switched to Intel, and would be shipping 12 core 3.2Ghz boxes for $1999, not 4 core 2.5Ghz ones for $3300!
Either these guys have solved the problem of fan noise that has plagued computers for years, or those 17" whirling blades (and the motor that drives then) are going to make a hell of a lot of white noise along with the brown. This certainly doesn't appear to be an audiophile device to me.
I'm interested in how the device actually works though, since the sound could be generated by reversing the speed of the fan every cycle, or by altering the angle of attack (which strikes me as a much better method since it invovles a lot less overcoming of inertia).
It's a pity there are not figures for how high a frequency this device can generate - I imagine it can't go very high at all, since switching from reducing the air pressure to increasing it (which has to be done every cycle) involves throwing a lot of mechanics and metal around. Maybe it can't get very far into the audio range at all, whic is why it's only been demoed with test tones?
You have an interesting analogy there, but the process behind the "Mega-Bass" button corresponds much more closely to the Gamma-curve adjustment that are popular with players of very dark FPS games - it's a user-controlled decision to boost something they want more of.
HDR corresponds more closely to a musician deciding to play his guitar through an overdrive pedal rather than 'clean', making the quiet parts louder at the expense of the loud parts maxing out the avaialble range. It's a decision made at the author's end, to overload some things to achieve an effect they like.
That probably only means that they have optimised the architecture over time
The cynic in me thinks they probably optimised the benchmark.
If you have a library of PS2 games, then surely you also have a PS2 to play them on, and don;t really NEED backwards compatibility?
I'll admit the backwards compatibility was a big influence on my decision to buy a PS2, but in reality I only used it 2 or 3 times to play old games, so this time round I'm not bothered at all.
I was actually far more impressed with (and spent more money on) the improved re-makes of N64 Zelda games for the non-backwards-compatible Game Cube.
the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet
You can't seriously be suggesting ICANN are doing a good job, can you? It's an undemocratic monumental, expensive, indecisive, grindingly slow moving organisation that does nothing at all about cybersquatters and adds new TLDs purely so you have to buy more versions of your existing domain every time they want a bit more cash?
Moving to an international system would make no difference whatsoever to the daily functioning of the net, all that would change is that ICANN would be replaced by something else - and I find it hard to imagine that it could be replaced by anything worse.
Microsoft have been incredibly slow to realise that Windows can always go back to being what it was when it first got really successful at version 3.1, a GUI. Most people don't know what an OS even is, and wouldn't be aware of any difference (except increased stablility) if what they bought from Microsoft was a GUI for Linux instead of an actual operating system with GUI built in. Taking this approach (albeit with a Unix core) hasn't hurt Apple's OSX.
AS soon as Microsoft realise this, they can cut their development costs massively, and keep the same sales figures. I have no idea why their shareholders are not demanding this already!
What would a disbarred and disgraced Jak Thompson be likely to do? He appears to be exactly the kind of dysfunctional person who might take revenge with a big gun.
Let's hope he doesn't realise that this would actually prove his theory that video games can drive unstable people to commit murder!
Press release translated from marketing-speak: "we've built this amazing thing which would generate all the investment capital we could possibly want if we showed it to you, but you can't see it until April 2006 because... erm... the dog ate our camera."
Yeah, riiiiiiight.
Since their previous device is colour, it would be insane for this one not to be. Almost as insane as putting the 4Gb drive from your wants list in to replace the 40Gb one the old device shipped with!
Isn't "Hate" a bit uncharitable?
I'd be much more inclined to wear a t-shirt that said "I pity Jack Thompson", or "I blame Jack Thompson's Parents".
How often are the 'Patents Board' democratically elected, and for how long have they had the power to change the laws of the USA?
really a 'large number'?
While there are a lot of things you could do with a slow-refresh display device at this price point, such as animated vehicle paint, billboards, constructing a video dance-mat 300ft wide to play pacman 'for real' and making disneyland look even more like a bad acid trip, producing a newspaper that sells for less than the price of a hardcover book isn't one of them.
The advantage is that it does not require an additional expensive licence for public performance, which regular RIAA music would.
According to this BBC story Microsoft have now settled with Real for $761m.
Personally, I'd have held out for a bit more, just to beat the $775 that IBM got. How long before Microsoft's shareholders insist they stop breaking the law?
In the ten years or so I used the net before adblock, I only ever clicked an advert once, and that was a mistake caused by a pop-up appearing as I was aiming for a real link. Sites do not lose any revenue because I block adverts, and now my time/bandwidth isn't wasted by distractions.
As for blocking adverts on TV and in magazines, as far as it's technically possible I already do. I watch mostly BBC channels which are advert free (apart from irritating trails for other BBC programmes), my digital box is set to hide advet-only chnnels (QVC, TV Travel Shop etc.) and I watch the few big American series I like via bittorrent. When I buy a magazine that has leaflets inserted into it, I shake them out before I leave the shop, and with newspapers, I use the adblocked websites instead.
Why are people not up in arms about TV content being damaged by adverts in the same way that we complain about ads obscuring web content? Often when watching an American series us Brits will see a sudden lurch when an advert break has been removed; something interesting is about to happen, then we have a cut to black, the music changes and we get a 2 or 3 second recap. We even get this on advert supported channels, since we allow a much lower percentage of each hour to be adverts over here.
It's a Gameboy Advance Micro. Maybe I've just not been paying enough attention, but I assumed from then name that this was going to be a tiny, cheap Gameboy or Gameboy 'Color', not a tiny expensive Gameboy Advance.
Since the review doesn't mention batteries, can I assume it's got a built in rechargeable, and Nintendo are going to be facing a class action lawsuit in about 2 years when they all die?
It is not Liquid Crystal Display Display.
It is not going to work with your PC computer, or your VGA Graphics Adapter that you bought with money from the ATM machine that asked for your PIN number.
Try getting it right, just once, Please? It would make an old grammar nazi nazi very happy.
True, but that didn't help Netscape, did it? Microsoft are notorious scofflaws when it comes to illegal monopoly abuse, and unless they've suddenly developed a conscience I doubt they would have any qualms about reoffending.
1) What grounds would Google have for a lawsuit? Advert-blocking is NOT illegal! No lawsuits have ever been successful against Firefox's adblock plug-in.
2) Why would blocking adverts and pop-ups be a PR nightmare for M$? It certainly isn't for Firefox.
3) If getting round adblock was as simple as switching DNS names, then why are all the advertising companies not already doing this? Filtering on content or adding a RTBL would soon fix this hole, if it even is a hole.
Actually, I don't think they do have to be subtle about it. Adblockers are legal, and it wouldn't surprise me if ad/popup blocking was the most requested feature for IE7.
Simply ship Internet Explorer with a adblock feature that blocks Google's ads, then Google's revenue stream gets turned off overnight.