This is a pretty interesting argument.
It certainly would be pretty jarring to see a final fantasy hero drinking Coca cola.
Lucky for you, there will always be a niche for that type of game, so if the big companies go to the hyper budget games, some upstart will immediately jump in with the next weird RPG. It may not have EA quality code (that was a joke), but it will probably have a chance of being quite good.
Some aspects of video game programming are out of the commoner's reach, such as voice acting, but a lot of it just takes time and effort. This isn't like movies, where you must have millions to make a popular film. Popular game libraries have plenty of new success stories.
So I don't think there will be "no more" LOTR style games. Perhaps they will be less common, even that I doubt.
These companies are supporting the games this guy likes. Each corporation has its own culture and there is nothing wrong with identifying with some of that culture. The Honda Element is something that takes a while to get used to looking at, there's no reason why someone ca't appreciate it more after advertising!
Pointing out that giving money to software companies is effective for advertisign is a great point. I doubt the parent "gobbles up whatever." In fact, that stuff all sounds pretty refined around a certain and small demographic.
You shouldn't have so much hatred for normal human behavior. There is nothing wrong with overt advertising or corporations or liking things that are popular.
And what's a mindless corporate zombie? corporations are about freedom. Your freedom to deal with anyone. You can buy your way into companies you think will do well and gain power in our society. People who hate corporations are crazy. Sure, some of the suck, but that's just plain old life. If corporations (ie, common people who own shares) aren't going to have wealth, then your government and a much smaller number of rich people will have all the wealth. 3 out of 4 penta-millionaires in this country weren't such ten years ago. The rich get richer, and the poor get richer. Yay.
When I drive in a race car game and see the same sorts of ads I'd see as a real race car driver, that immersing. Everyone wins. If GTA IV has billboards from real companies, that's cool too (though no company would dare, you get the point).
In nascar games, walmart often sponsors the player's car. No biggie. It's all about realism, I guess. But you have to admit there is an optimal level where ads are going to not be too frequent. After all, ads are good, and they are real. Out here in the real world, I see billboards.
I think a $60 game that you can play for 100 hours is a hell of a good deal. Beats the hell out of a $15 dollar cd or a $20 blu-ray movie.
I'm just curious what you meant by "closed rental".
People who think Sony would deliberately incorporate the technology to destroy the wifi if you overclocked your PSP were probably paranoid schizophrenics. A lot of people with that illness surf the internet all day. That idea is just absolutely bonkers.
I bet they all run faster without video output too.
I don't see how the is a big "fuckup." If you know how to bring a product to the market that has WAP wifi without taxing the system's architecture or costing money, feel free to bring that product to market. I'll be first in line, buddy.
All the products you listed are awesome products that aren't perfect. That's a banal observation.
If you want a cheap fast portable wifi device that doesn't play games or movies or answer phone calls, just get a damn PDA. But even that PDA would run faster and longer with no wifi.
I wanted to thank you for posting your laundry list. And I'm going to try to reply to it, though I'm not that interested in Sony product I think this is a really interesting look at what's going on with Slashdot.
It's good for people to be able to see what your issues are (and I bet these are the issues people are actually concerned about). Since you provided links, people who aren't sure about Sony can learn more about its history.
I agree that Sony marketing is terrible. You didn't even mention the arrogant comments about taking extra jobs and all that, but lumped together, Sony has no marketing. There's no explanation for it. I see abstract marketing work when something is truly premium. Like BMW. But Sony isn't the BMW of electronics. It tries to be, but things progress so quickly no company can have that position. The marketing never gets the point across. As far as the viral marketing thing, that's lame, but it's a universal problem. the LA Times had an article on Nintendo doing it, and we're inundated with Microsoft's Halo 3 virals. This article itself is following a pretty well accepted trend. Anyway, we agree that Sony's marketing sucks (it's worse than MS or Nintendo). Not germane, but true.
I'm glad Sony joined everybody else suing Lik-Sang. (you did know that Microsoft and Nintendo sued them too, but failed where Sony succeeded, right?) Lik-Sang was an unethical company that existed mainly to help people steal. You can pretend otherwise all your want, but it was about stealing games. I want people to be able to make a living in this industry. That means more more purchases and less stealing. So this in not worth holding a grudge about. In fact, this is probably the same unfairness shown in this article. A symptom, not the disease.
Sony invented the Li-Ion battery. It's an essential part of our world now. Sony made an enormous contribution to our world by bringing us this battery. This battery is the main reason laptops have decent processors and nice screens. Laptops are selling very very well now, and every laptop company owes that in part to Sony's battery. But some of them failed and Sony had to pay a lot of money to fix the problem. It's not a good enough technology and people are coming up with sulphur and other varieties that are better (oddly, General Motors is one at the forefront), but Li-Ion was a huge advance. I think Sony replaced as many as they could, but people should always be mindful that electronics are a bit hazardous, especially when large capacity batteries are involved. Is there any reason to hold a grudge when Sony already had to pay its penalty for this? Of course not. This is ridiculous. When you are at the forefront, things aren't as stable. Sony took risks to make better products. Cars are more dangerous than horse-buggy combos. But that risk is worth the advance. This is relevant insofar as a cutting edge item that Sony makes in the future is also more likely to explode than a less advanced model that isn't cheaply made. The PSP has this battery tech in it, but I'm not familiar with claims that the PSP is unreliable (point this out if it is).
About the root-kit thing: I never buy music cds, and am not an expert on this. Sony did something awful by putting some kind of malware or spyware on people's computers without their permission, right? That's obviously totally unacceptable. My opinion, since I heard about this a million times but am not at all involved with music cds, is that Sony paid a huge public price for its blunder. They also settled a class action lawsuit. But this happened in 2005. And it was in a division of Sony that has nothing to do with the PSP. In fact, it seems likely that this obviously idiotic root-kit never saw Sony's legal department and was probably done by some idiots rather than Sony at large (this guess could be totally, but I bet it's the likely scenario). I think this has nothing to do with the PSP's wifi functionality, or this article's ridiculous slant.
You don't know that, pal.
You can rest assured that they would have it faster if they could have.
Sony has goofed up a lot, there's no doubt about that. Obviously, just looking at this thread, a lot of people hate Sony, and that's obviously partly due to PR issues. But I doubt this that type of problem For all your know, this is a cooling solution (both wifi and processors make heat). For all you know, the best wifi solution happened to have a set bus speed that wouldn't work with 333 mhz (if you build PCs you understand what I mean, and someone already pointed this out below).
Fact is, speed didn't win this battle. The DS is doing really well at a much slower 67 mhz. The problems with the PSP are that the UMDs don't hold PS2 ports very well and the controls aren't wonderful. I think the PSP is pretty good but you have to accept those problems. But of course the pieces are all limiting eachother! Motocycles go faster than cars because they pull less weight. Bomb Squad robots are slower than toy RC cars because they have arms and armor. Complicated systems are less efficient. But wifi was a must in the PSP, so it seems this is a fundamentally misguided criticism. It's like saying that you have less ice cream because it had to fit in a bowl. It's just absurd!
Thanks for the good reply, though.
You've got a point about the paragraphs. My comment is very difficult to read. My bad, dude. I didn't realize I would need to use the paragraph tags.
As far as the shilling goes, I'm not shilling at all. I don't favor Sony over other similar companies whatsoever. You're the shill. In fact, you're acting totally insane. To you, people pointing out what's good about Sony must be die-hard Sony shills. Isn't it possible that companies like Nintendo, Samsung, Sony, and others that have cool products are just cool? I never said you didn't have a valid beef, I said your beef wasn't with the PSP's wifi functionality. In fact, it seems you don't hate Sony at all, but rather just hate people who like Sony!
Tell me what your real problem is, man. Would a Sony shill want to encourage that?
You say that some developer out there probably had a problem because of the slow processor speed. But the PSP has the fastest processor speed of any device of its nature. The DS has pretty great games and its processor is a full third slower (mhz != power, but we can agree that the DS is slower I assume). The DS probably could have been designed with a much faster processorif the touch screen wasn't on or if it lacked wifi. Are those design flaws? That would be as absurd as this article and your interpretation of the PSP.
Sony is ok. Believe me, they don't want to kill your family. They want to make money, so you should be sceptical of how useful their expensive products are, but if they are cool enough to make you happy, there is no evil there. You are helping push technology forward with your money. Nintendo similarly, though they aren't pushing technology in the same way, they are innovating and improving society. I think there is real practical value to Sony and Nintendo making a lot of money. Anyone who wants to work in technology should see value in themselves through these companies.
Instead of posting a reply to my arguments, you chose to insult me. That's the cowardly way. What did Sony do to you? No offense, but you are acting crazy.
I mean yeah, some of y'all don't like Sony and point out everything that happens with this company as though it's a "fuckup" (to take an above commenter's description of this limitation).
But it's a fact that the wifi being on didn't slow down any PSPs on any game ever published. The spin here may be tough for some to see through, but to fac tis simple, all PSP games were running at a set speed of 222 mhz. These games could have wifi on or off. I presume that somehow there is a power limitation or something other limitation that means you can't run full speed with wifi.
I'm sure this isn't design flaw, unless you think every system that could be faster is designed poorly (and virtually every system could be faster). You have to engineer these things.
This announcement is that Sony has now INCREASED the processor speed for non wifi applications. It's a bit of GOOD NEWS. I mean, whoop dee do, who cares, but still, this isn't bad news for anyone. It adds a capability that wasn't there in the past. But here's the spin "WIFI IMPAIRS THE PSP PROCESSOR!!!! NICE DESIGN CHOICE HAHAHA!!!" So strange to twist things that radically.
I just don't get the whacky spinning. What did Sony do to deserve this special treatment? I'm sincerely curious. Sony has been pretty cool about Linux on its systems so long as it doesn't lead to pirated games. Sony is always pushing things to add features and be innovative... often valuing cool novel features over functionality. That's how we get new cool stuff. Everybody out there uses something Sony invented. Things as basic as optical discs and modern batteries were developed or improved by Sony. I would think Slashdot would have a lot of people who like Sony because it's got cool stuff. Albeit the nice stuff is too expensive.
This seems like more than a economic issue. Some of you, and obviously the editor, have a real axe to grind. Reading through these threads, some dude was modded a troll for a single sentence saying "The Cell processor is a really cool piece of technology!"
Anyway, I'd like to hear what the real issue is.
You XBOX shills need to calm down and take a breather. This is a great PR move, and this again highlights that the Cell is a great and versatile processor.
Yeah, I know this is probably just a PS3 running a PS3 game, but from a PR standpoint, using the PS3 as a server makes it sound like a computer and highlights that it has a neat processor.
And frankly, the fact that it has a fast processor is a good reason to own a PS3, even if it doesn't translate into better games (though I'm sure it does). Cool technology is cool to play with. Things like this and folding at home make a difference, and Sony obviously knows that. Remember all the crazy talk about Emotion Engines used for weapons development by Saddam? Yeah, it was silly (though it was also true that Saddam wanted to use them for this for some stupid reason). This story made the playstation seem like an cool piece of technology.
This guy is just pointing out his opinion and is modded down because some clown wants to censor him. That's just crazy. You guys are looking like Ron Paul supporters.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a pretty interesting argument. It certainly would be pretty jarring to see a final fantasy hero drinking Coca cola. Lucky for you, there will always be a niche for that type of game, so if the big companies go to the hyper budget games, some upstart will immediately jump in with the next weird RPG. It may not have EA quality code (that was a joke), but it will probably have a chance of being quite good. Some aspects of video game programming are out of the commoner's reach, such as voice acting, but a lot of it just takes time and effort. This isn't like movies, where you must have millions to make a popular film. Popular game libraries have plenty of new success stories. So I don't think there will be "no more" LOTR style games. Perhaps they will be less common, even that I doubt.
What's wrong with you?
These companies are supporting the games this guy likes. Each corporation has its own culture and there is nothing wrong with identifying with some of that culture. The Honda Element is something that takes a while to get used to looking at, there's no reason why someone ca't appreciate it more after advertising!
Pointing out that giving money to software companies is effective for advertisign is a great point. I doubt the parent "gobbles up whatever." In fact, that stuff all sounds pretty refined around a certain and small demographic.
You shouldn't have so much hatred for normal human behavior. There is nothing wrong with overt advertising or corporations or liking things that are popular.
And what's a mindless corporate zombie? corporations are about freedom. Your freedom to deal with anyone. You can buy your way into companies you think will do well and gain power in our society. People who hate corporations are crazy. Sure, some of the suck, but that's just plain old life. If corporations (ie, common people who own shares) aren't going to have wealth, then your government and a much smaller number of rich people will have all the wealth. 3 out of 4 penta-millionaires in this country weren't such ten years ago. The rich get richer, and the poor get richer. Yay.
You hate good things. And you hate them a lot.
When I drive in a race car game and see the same sorts of ads I'd see as a real race car driver, that immersing. Everyone wins. If GTA IV has billboards from real companies, that's cool too (though no company would dare, you get the point). In nascar games, walmart often sponsors the player's car. No biggie. It's all about realism, I guess. But you have to admit there is an optimal level where ads are going to not be too frequent. After all, ads are good, and they are real. Out here in the real world, I see billboards. I think a $60 game that you can play for 100 hours is a hell of a good deal. Beats the hell out of a $15 dollar cd or a $20 blu-ray movie.
http://www.doomlegends.com/chexquest/frames.html It's actually just a doom wad. Pretty funny.
I'm just curious what you meant by "closed rental". People who think Sony would deliberately incorporate the technology to destroy the wifi if you overclocked your PSP were probably paranoid schizophrenics. A lot of people with that illness surf the internet all day. That idea is just absolutely bonkers.
I bet they all run faster without video output too. I don't see how the is a big "fuckup." If you know how to bring a product to the market that has WAP wifi without taxing the system's architecture or costing money, feel free to bring that product to market. I'll be first in line, buddy. All the products you listed are awesome products that aren't perfect. That's a banal observation. If you want a cheap fast portable wifi device that doesn't play games or movies or answer phone calls, just get a damn PDA. But even that PDA would run faster and longer with no wifi.
I wanted to thank you for posting your laundry list. And I'm going to try to reply to it, though I'm not that interested in Sony product I think this is a really interesting look at what's going on with Slashdot.
It's good for people to be able to see what your issues are (and I bet these are the issues people are actually concerned about). Since you provided links, people who aren't sure about Sony can learn more about its history.
I agree that Sony marketing is terrible. You didn't even mention the arrogant comments about taking extra jobs and all that, but lumped together, Sony has no marketing. There's no explanation for it. I see abstract marketing work when something is truly premium. Like BMW. But Sony isn't the BMW of electronics. It tries to be, but things progress so quickly no company can have that position. The marketing never gets the point across. As far as the viral marketing thing, that's lame, but it's a universal problem. the LA Times had an article on Nintendo doing it, and we're inundated with Microsoft's Halo 3 virals. This article itself is following a pretty well accepted trend. Anyway, we agree that Sony's marketing sucks (it's worse than MS or Nintendo). Not germane, but true.
I'm glad Sony joined everybody else suing Lik-Sang. (you did know that Microsoft and Nintendo sued them too, but failed where Sony succeeded, right?) Lik-Sang was an unethical company that existed mainly to help people steal. You can pretend otherwise all your want, but it was about stealing games. I want people to be able to make a living in this industry. That means more more purchases and less stealing. So this in not worth holding a grudge about. In fact, this is probably the same unfairness shown in this article. A symptom, not the disease.
Sony invented the Li-Ion battery. It's an essential part of our world now. Sony made an enormous contribution to our world by bringing us this battery. This battery is the main reason laptops have decent processors and nice screens. Laptops are selling very very well now, and every laptop company owes that in part to Sony's battery. But some of them failed and Sony had to pay a lot of money to fix the problem. It's not a good enough technology and people are coming up with sulphur and other varieties that are better (oddly, General Motors is one at the forefront), but Li-Ion was a huge advance. I think Sony replaced as many as they could, but people should always be mindful that electronics are a bit hazardous, especially when large capacity batteries are involved. Is there any reason to hold a grudge when Sony already had to pay its penalty for this? Of course not. This is ridiculous. When you are at the forefront, things aren't as stable. Sony took risks to make better products. Cars are more dangerous than horse-buggy combos. But that risk is worth the advance. This is relevant insofar as a cutting edge item that Sony makes in the future is also more likely to explode than a less advanced model that isn't cheaply made. The PSP has this battery tech in it, but I'm not familiar with claims that the PSP is unreliable (point this out if it is).
About the root-kit thing: I never buy music cds, and am not an expert on this. Sony did something awful by putting some kind of malware or spyware on people's computers without their permission, right? That's obviously totally unacceptable. My opinion, since I heard about this a million times but am not at all involved with music cds, is that Sony paid a huge public price for its blunder. They also settled a class action lawsuit. But this happened in 2005. And it was in a division of Sony that has nothing to do with the PSP. In fact, it seems likely that this obviously idiotic root-kit never saw Sony's legal department and was probably done by some idiots rather than Sony at large (this guess could be totally, but I bet it's the likely scenario). I think this has nothing to do with the PSP's wifi functionality, or this article's ridiculous slant.
But you're being
Sorry I goofed up the paragraphs again. God that's annoying.
You don't know that, pal. You can rest assured that they would have it faster if they could have. Sony has goofed up a lot, there's no doubt about that. Obviously, just looking at this thread, a lot of people hate Sony, and that's obviously partly due to PR issues. But I doubt this that type of problem For all your know, this is a cooling solution (both wifi and processors make heat). For all you know, the best wifi solution happened to have a set bus speed that wouldn't work with 333 mhz (if you build PCs you understand what I mean, and someone already pointed this out below). Fact is, speed didn't win this battle. The DS is doing really well at a much slower 67 mhz. The problems with the PSP are that the UMDs don't hold PS2 ports very well and the controls aren't wonderful. I think the PSP is pretty good but you have to accept those problems. But of course the pieces are all limiting eachother! Motocycles go faster than cars because they pull less weight. Bomb Squad robots are slower than toy RC cars because they have arms and armor. Complicated systems are less efficient. But wifi was a must in the PSP, so it seems this is a fundamentally misguided criticism. It's like saying that you have less ice cream because it had to fit in a bowl. It's just absurd! Thanks for the good reply, though.
You've got a point about the paragraphs. My comment is very difficult to read. My bad, dude. I didn't realize I would need to use the paragraph tags.
As far as the shilling goes, I'm not shilling at all. I don't favor Sony over other similar companies whatsoever. You're the shill. In fact, you're acting totally insane. To you, people pointing out what's good about Sony must be die-hard Sony shills. Isn't it possible that companies like Nintendo, Samsung, Sony, and others that have cool products are just cool? I never said you didn't have a valid beef, I said your beef wasn't with the PSP's wifi functionality. In fact, it seems you don't hate Sony at all, but rather just hate people who like Sony!
Tell me what your real problem is, man. Would a Sony shill want to encourage that?
You say that some developer out there probably had a problem because of the slow processor speed. But the PSP has the fastest processor speed of any device of its nature. The DS has pretty great games and its processor is a full third slower (mhz != power, but we can agree that the DS is slower I assume). The DS probably could have been designed with a much faster processorif the touch screen wasn't on or if it lacked wifi. Are those design flaws? That would be as absurd as this article and your interpretation of the PSP.
Sony is ok. Believe me, they don't want to kill your family. They want to make money, so you should be sceptical of how useful their expensive products are, but if they are cool enough to make you happy, there is no evil there. You are helping push technology forward with your money. Nintendo similarly, though they aren't pushing technology in the same way, they are innovating and improving society. I think there is real practical value to Sony and Nintendo making a lot of money. Anyone who wants to work in technology should see value in themselves through these companies.
Instead of posting a reply to my arguments, you chose to insult me. That's the cowardly way. What did Sony do to you? No offense, but you are acting crazy.
I mean yeah, some of y'all don't like Sony and point out everything that happens with this company as though it's a "fuckup" (to take an above commenter's description of this limitation). But it's a fact that the wifi being on didn't slow down any PSPs on any game ever published. The spin here may be tough for some to see through, but to fac tis simple, all PSP games were running at a set speed of 222 mhz. These games could have wifi on or off. I presume that somehow there is a power limitation or something other limitation that means you can't run full speed with wifi. I'm sure this isn't design flaw, unless you think every system that could be faster is designed poorly (and virtually every system could be faster). You have to engineer these things. This announcement is that Sony has now INCREASED the processor speed for non wifi applications. It's a bit of GOOD NEWS. I mean, whoop dee do, who cares, but still, this isn't bad news for anyone. It adds a capability that wasn't there in the past. But here's the spin "WIFI IMPAIRS THE PSP PROCESSOR!!!! NICE DESIGN CHOICE HAHAHA!!!" So strange to twist things that radically. I just don't get the whacky spinning. What did Sony do to deserve this special treatment? I'm sincerely curious. Sony has been pretty cool about Linux on its systems so long as it doesn't lead to pirated games. Sony is always pushing things to add features and be innovative... often valuing cool novel features over functionality. That's how we get new cool stuff. Everybody out there uses something Sony invented. Things as basic as optical discs and modern batteries were developed or improved by Sony. I would think Slashdot would have a lot of people who like Sony because it's got cool stuff. Albeit the nice stuff is too expensive. This seems like more than a economic issue. Some of you, and obviously the editor, have a real axe to grind. Reading through these threads, some dude was modded a troll for a single sentence saying "The Cell processor is a really cool piece of technology!" Anyway, I'd like to hear what the real issue is.
You XBOX shills need to calm down and take a breather. This is a great PR move, and this again highlights that the Cell is a great and versatile processor. Yeah, I know this is probably just a PS3 running a PS3 game, but from a PR standpoint, using the PS3 as a server makes it sound like a computer and highlights that it has a neat processor. And frankly, the fact that it has a fast processor is a good reason to own a PS3, even if it doesn't translate into better games (though I'm sure it does). Cool technology is cool to play with. Things like this and folding at home make a difference, and Sony obviously knows that. Remember all the crazy talk about Emotion Engines used for weapons development by Saddam? Yeah, it was silly (though it was also true that Saddam wanted to use them for this for some stupid reason). This story made the playstation seem like an cool piece of technology. This guy is just pointing out his opinion and is modded down because some clown wants to censor him. That's just crazy. You guys are looking like Ron Paul supporters.