with only about 1.5-2 million (total) users out there paying for online gaming, why in the hell would any straight thinking company invest a ton of money into developing online games? when you consider that there are probably 120-150 million nextgen consoles (ps2,gcn,xbox) total, that is a VERY small percentage of users actually going online.
makes sense to me that nintendo is holding out until the number make a little more sense. unfortunately, it kinda sucks for us gcn gamers that'd like to give it a try...
but they are implemented in the strangest and shittiest ways possible. when you want to join the parade, go buy a real instrument. armfarting isn't going to win you a grammy.
my site has a neat featured section all about grant morrison, specifically doom patrol but we do have a lot of his other work on there. it is a work in progress, but more feature-filled than most other sites on him (aside from bullough's)... take a look.:)
i'd say it is having to buy an expensive (and often equally difficult to follow) book for every little thing because much of the interface is far from intuitive. windows ain't great, but most folks can start using it in a few hours w/o needing help.
also most newbies need to befriend a guru to help them over the biggest hurdles. i'd say this is true for most folks w/ most operating systems, but try explaining to someone that they need to recompile a kernal to get soundcard support and they will look at you funny...
back in the days of win3.1 when ibm was trying to push os/2 2.1 they used their 'crash protection' as a selling point. i always got a kick out of that. though, i will say, compared to win3.1, os/2 was pretty damned solid...
sony's method of marketing is annoying as hell. the annoying part isn't that they promise the moon and deliver a pile of rocks. the annoying part is that people buy into the hype. sony, like many electronics companies, promises all sorts of features and then blames the market when they fail to deliver a product that lives up to their claims.
for instance, all this talk about the cell processor for the ps3 seems awefully reminiscent of the talk about the rendering capabilities of the ps2. you can talk about vector capabilities until you are blue in the face, but the fact is that the system is designed by engineers for engineers. most game programmers aren't yet capable of vector programming. sony should have known this, but instead, they used it as a selling point (read: hype). how many games actually take advantage of the ps2's vector processing? very, very few. they should have engineered some full screen antialiasing in there instead. at least it would have gotten used. god knows it needs it...
oooh, yeah that'd be fun. twas a great movie. for those that aren't familiar with it, it is sort of a french version of terry gilliam's umm... everything.
on similar notes...
dark city the maltese falcon (done ala indy/atlantis style) brotherhood of the wolf
though i'm sure some smartass will note the similarities of 28dl to resident evil, there really is a movie here. and i agree, it could actually be made into a fun game. it would have to deal very closely with characters that you care about, as in the movie. it would also need to have the expansiveness feeling like in the movie. i felt that was one of the most effective elements of the film in that it felt like it was pretty hopeless.
enter the matrix was 'okay' for a game that was 70% complete before they went to market with it... a better title would have been 'finish the matrix' and then release it open source...
or subscribe to widescreen review and sound & vision to start off with... there's a zillion different magazines on the rack that are good starter points...
apex is nice for general use w/ regular crt tv's, but once you put one of them in line w/ a nice home theatre system, their limitations become apparent very quickly.
for instance, in our setup at home, we have a large 12' projection screen and projector setup w/ 6.1 audio, the quality of the apex breaks down in both picture quality and slight sonic distortion.
i'd buy one for a kids room w/o thinking about it as they are a good value for what they are (cheap, plasticy, good features, made in china), but... they are what they are. they are priced at the general consumer and they do well there. however, until we start seeing the same types of hidden capabilities (to the same extent that the apex has) in higher end equipment, the apex will be relegated to the shelves of costco and sam's club...
good show sony, this is freakin' hilarious. this story is nothing more than early buzz and an attempt to stir up speculation,with their 'off hand comment' about the new factory, on the ps3 and psp and everyone is repeating it lemming-like... hook, line, sinker. *yawn* not all that interesting on the palm side of things, really...
if you are looking into finding out about the quality of ld, dvd and d-vhs releases you need to subscribe to this magazine: Widescreen Review. it has reviews of just about every release and is for video and audiophiles. subscribers also get access to their website (which isn't the prettiest thing, but it does have a ton of useful information). i can't recommend it enough.
we have a large a/v room in our home with a projection system and a very large projector screen on the wall. crap sources are very evident and the magazine is good for these types of situations where the picture might look fine on a 30" tv, but edge enhancement, jaggies, and poor color reproduction are very evident. they do detailed technical reviews on each movie and note problems with each release. saved us a pile of money on buying poor transfers...
hmm... with all of the interesting stations being swallowed and assimilated by the borg that are clear channel and inifity, i don't see the problem with interference. it's basically the same damned stuff on every channel nowadays...
the colecovision was the best console system out at the time until the nes ran away with the show. i still have mine with a large pile of games. god i love that machine.
one potential problem is controlling cheaters on servers you host yourself. as we've seen in a few other stories about online gaming, it has ruined some games...
nintendo is in business to make money for their shareholders. they are doing that. perhaps they could make more by taking bigger risks. nintendo is an old company like ibm, and tends to stay on the side of minimal risk taking. if it works, it works...
please let's not forget sony has a similar attitude towards online gaming, only they support it with their own titles. for 3rd party stuff, they tell them they are on their own...
sega cd, atari jaguar cd, sega saturn, cd-i, 3do...
most of them were flops. on hindsight nintendo may have made the wrong move, but at the time it seemed right. sony was new to the videogaming business and could very likely have failed in the market like many others before it.
Slashdot Mirror
with only about 1.5-2 million (total) users out there paying for online gaming, why in the hell would any straight thinking company invest a ton of money into developing online games? when you consider that there are probably 120-150 million nextgen consoles (ps2,gcn,xbox) total, that is a VERY small percentage of users actually going online.
makes sense to me that nintendo is holding out until the number make a little more sense. unfortunately, it kinda sucks for us gcn gamers that'd like to give it a try...
but they are implemented in the strangest and shittiest ways possible. when you want to join the parade, go buy a real instrument. armfarting isn't going to win you a grammy.
my site has a neat featured section all about grant morrison, specifically doom patrol but we do have a lot of his other work on there. it is a work in progress, but more feature-filled than most other sites on him (aside from bullough's)... take a look. :)
ibm and motorola make powerpc processors. mac's also run linux and bsd just fine too...
yeah, it won't be long before dvorak starts blowing hot air: "nintendo is dead". oy.
for the average linux newbie...
i'd say it is having to buy an expensive (and often equally difficult to follow) book for every little thing because much of the interface is far from intuitive. windows ain't great, but most folks can start using it in a few hours w/o needing help.
also most newbies need to befriend a guru to help them over the biggest hurdles. i'd say this is true for most folks w/ most operating systems, but try explaining to someone that they need to recompile a kernal to get soundcard support and they will look at you funny...
for all of you youngin's out there...
back in the days of win3.1 when ibm was trying to push os/2 2.1 they used their 'crash protection' as a selling point. i always got a kick out of that. though, i will say, compared to win3.1, os/2 was pretty damned solid...
sony's method of marketing is annoying as hell. the annoying part isn't that they promise the moon and deliver a pile of rocks. the annoying part is that people buy into the hype. sony, like many electronics companies, promises all sorts of features and then blames the market when they fail to deliver a product that lives up to their claims.
for instance, all this talk about the cell processor for the ps3 seems awefully reminiscent of the talk about the rendering capabilities of the ps2. you can talk about vector capabilities until you are blue in the face, but the fact is that the system is designed by engineers for engineers. most game programmers aren't yet capable of vector programming. sony should have known this, but instead, they used it as a selling point (read: hype). how many games actually take advantage of the ps2's vector processing? very, very few. they should have engineered some full screen antialiasing in there instead. at least it would have gotten used. god knows it needs it...
oooh, yeah that'd be fun. twas a great movie. for those that aren't familiar with it, it is sort of a french version of terry gilliam's umm... everything.
on similar notes...
dark city
the maltese falcon (done ala indy/atlantis style)
brotherhood of the wolf
just a few ideas...
though i'm sure some smartass will note the similarities of 28dl to resident evil, there really is a movie here. and i agree, it could actually be made into a fun game. it would have to deal very closely with characters that you care about, as in the movie. it would also need to have the expansiveness feeling like in the movie. i felt that was one of the most effective elements of the film in that it felt like it was pretty hopeless.
enter the matrix was 'okay' for a game that was 70% complete before they went to market with it... a better title would have been 'finish the matrix' and then release it open source...
i suppose you prefer to think different, huh?
or subscribe to widescreen review and sound & vision to start off with... there's a zillion different magazines on the rack that are good starter points...
apex is nice for general use w/ regular crt tv's, but once you put one of them in line w/ a nice home theatre system, their limitations become apparent very quickly.
for instance, in our setup at home, we have a large 12' projection screen and projector setup w/ 6.1 audio, the quality of the apex breaks down in both picture quality and slight sonic distortion.
i'd buy one for a kids room w/o thinking about it as they are a good value for what they are (cheap, plasticy, good features, made in china), but... they are what they are. they are priced at the general consumer and they do well there. however, until we start seeing the same types of hidden capabilities (to the same extent that the apex has) in higher end equipment, the apex will be relegated to the shelves of costco and sam's club...
good show sony, this is freakin' hilarious. this story is nothing more than early buzz and an attempt to stir up speculation ,with their 'off hand comment' about the new factory, on the ps3 and psp and everyone is repeating it lemming-like... hook, line, sinker. *yawn* not all that interesting on the palm side of things, really...
if you are looking into finding out about the quality of ld, dvd and d-vhs releases you need to subscribe to this magazine: Widescreen Review. it has reviews of just about every release and is for video and audiophiles. subscribers also get access to their website (which isn't the prettiest thing, but it does have a ton of useful information). i can't recommend it enough.
we have a large a/v room in our home with a projection system and a very large projector screen on the wall. crap sources are very evident and the magazine is good for these types of situations where the picture might look fine on a 30" tv, but edge enhancement, jaggies, and poor color reproduction are very evident. they do detailed technical reviews on each movie and note problems with each release. saved us a pile of money on buying poor transfers...
hmm... with all of the interesting stations being swallowed and assimilated by the borg that are clear channel and inifity, i don't see the problem with interference. it's basically the same damned stuff on every channel nowadays...
the colecovision was the best console system out at the time until the nes ran away with the show. i still have mine with a large pile of games. god i love that machine.
atari made the 5200 pretty close to their arcade system. not quite the same hardware, but close...
how about 'SuperDuperDrive' ;p
that is the current 'bait' price. expect the price of live to go up in the near future...
one potential problem is controlling cheaters on servers you host yourself. as we've seen in a few other stories about online gaming, it has ruined some games...
nintendo is in business to make money for their shareholders. they are doing that. perhaps they could make more by taking bigger risks. nintendo is an old company like ibm, and tends to stay on the side of minimal risk taking. if it works, it works...
please let's not forget sony has a similar attitude towards online gaming, only they support it with their own titles. for 3rd party stuff, they tell them they are on their own...
yeah but look at some earlier examples...
sega cd, atari jaguar cd, sega saturn, cd-i, 3do...
most of them were flops. on hindsight nintendo may have made the wrong move, but at the time it seemed right. sony was new to the videogaming business and could very likely have failed in the market like many others before it.