such is due to pubescence. kids who want to act older and don't want to look like they are playing with toys like their little brothers and sisters.
for example, i'm betting lots of teenagers look at the movie 'finding nemo' and say it is a kids movie. however, it is a family movie. nintendo, like pixar, is in the business of making products that appeal and are appropriate to a wide range of ages. sometimes that makes them seem like 'kiddy companies' to those that are so concerned about their image, worried that they'll look like they are having fun, like a grown man playing with star wars action figures.
interestingly, a grown man playing with a lego mindstorms set is called an engineer, in some circles.
i actually agree w/ nintendo for their 'wait and see' approach to online gaming. if microsoft were to charge customers what it really cost for their network, and then a little more for profit, it would likely be prohibitively expensive for most gamers. keep in mind, most households don't have broadband (which is the only choice for xbox, though i'd say it was probably a good one for the most part).
i'm betting we'll hear sometime in the future the real numbers as to how much ms is losing on their xbox division (per system), as well as their xbox live division (per online subscriber). i'll bet they never make a dime off it. not because it isn't popular, but because they are choosing to sell it at such a loss that they'll never recoup their costs just for the sake of securing a position in the gaming industry. perhaps to better their chances at hitting a #1 selling console for xbox2. who knows, i may be way off.
keep in mind, sony isn't taking that much of a different approach to online than nintendo. they've not launched a 'ps2 live' like service. they are telling 3rd parties they are on their own as to what they want to do with online titles. i'm not sure why people forget that fact... that is not to even mention sega's seganet et al.
actually, they sell these things like hotcakes in places like china and russia where the newer systems are too expensive and harder to get a hold of for most folks...
actually, i really like this idea. one of the problems with mmorpg's is that there is no real tracking of history. if i enter a game that started 1 year ago, it would be interesting to know the major events, if any, that occured in the storyline since then. it is kind of like playing a 3d shooter that makes all the bodies disappear after a run and gun...
last i heard, motorola was focusing more on delivering powerpc's for cisco to use in firewalls and routers or somesuch instead of focusing on apple. btw, as far as i know, apple is only using motorola chips in their laptops while they are using ibm in their desktops. please correct me if i've got that wrong (i'm sure someone will...)
wa3 is way slooooow on my old 450mhz k6-2... sucks cuz 2 runs nice and fast. kinda kills the tradition of fast code they've had for a long time. i remember running winamp on my 100mhz machine several years ago sans problems. a shame really.
soo... because it is closed source, you aren't going to write drivers for it? mmmkay.
i'll bet dollars to donuts that if you wanted to work on a driver that needed access to lowlevel plumbing, these guys would go out of their way to help you. if they are smart, that is...
btw, people bitch and whine all the time about drivers for linux. if not the lack thereof, then the quality.
colecovision, introduced in '82. had better games than an atari 2600, better ports of arcade games and with an expansion unit, you could play 2600 games on it. until nintendo released the nes, it was the best game system on the block, and it sat in my living room. it is still near and dear to my heart (and still works, along with about 20 games!).:)
aside from my suspecting there is more to this story, or that it isn't entirely factual...
it is rather interesting that wd escaped this round. i used to reccomend and buy wd drives primarily because they were very reliable. however, i have had a number of them die in the last 7 years and for that reason, i've reccomended against them for quite some time. their standards seemed to have dropped a while back and never really recovered.
that being said, the most recent drive purchases i've made for my own machine at home were an ibm 20gig 75gxp which last year had a lot of people up in arms about them failing, though ibm claimed there was nothing wrong. knock on wood, i've not had any problems with it. i also bought a maxtor 80gig 7200rpm drive after deciding against buying another ibm drive (i bought ibm due to knowing they have some of the most sophisticated drives on the market and do most of the research in the field of high density storage technology). i like my maxtor drive and fear that it could possibly be a victim of this new batch of claimed bad drives. knock on wood again, but so far so good, and that was over a year ago.
this stuff happens, but as many folks have said, drive manufacturers need to stand behind their product, and in my book, 1 year warranties are not a good way of encouraging confidence in your product or your company...
economics 101, never ever, ever pump your own money back into your dieing company. find the problem with the company and fix it. if you can't fix it yourself, you get someone who can.
throwing money at a problem doesn't always make it go away. look at aol time warner for an excellent example of that type of mess.
we have a theatre room in our house and this past weekend had a bunch of people over for a gaming party. a friend of mine brought over the new matrix game, and we were pretty excited to see it, even though we all thought the movie pretty much sucked. so he pops it in and starts showing us how the game works.
well my first impression was that the game was very dark and lacked detail in the levels. the details of the levels looked about like a really good quake 1 3rd party map. next he shows us the bullet time effects and superslow (or fast depending on your perspective i suppose) fighting moves. the bullet time stuff looked better in max payne, and the slowmo stuff looked really craptacular as your punches and kicks rarely land squarely on (or even close to) your enemy. then look at your players body animation. going back to quake 1, hell even doom animation seemed better. your player runs like he has a board attached to his back and his arms don't look right. the whole feeling to the animation is entirely off and isn't lifelike whatsoever.
just about everyone in the room was laughing at how silly it looked. i couldn't help feeling like i played this game about 5 years ago when it felt state-of-the-art instead of tired and generic.
i dunno, i have more to say, but meh... overall it seemed bland and not very exciting for a game that cost a supposed $20m to make and $60m to secure the license for.
don't believe the hype, rent first and see what i mean.
you froget their are trade laws and treaties that govern stuff like this. oh yeah, and we could just tell them to buzz off by not exporting our stuff to them...
Slashdot Mirror
yeah and i love how you can just pop in one of the zillion different gameboy games in it and go.
who the hell wants to linkup to a pc to download games on a portable gaming system? it's a portable gaming system stupid, not a pda.
perhaps this is the reason why gamepark sells worse than the virtualboy in the states...
I'm just waiting for Bruce Schneier (author of Applied Cryptography and founder of Counterpane Internet Security. Oh yeah, and author of the Twofish and Blowfish algorithms to boot.) to comment on this in the next Cryptogram...
;)
I'm sure he'll have some interesting things to say.
such is due to pubescence. kids who want to act older and don't want to look like they are playing with toys like their little brothers and sisters.
for example, i'm betting lots of teenagers look at the movie 'finding nemo' and say it is a kids movie. however, it is a family movie. nintendo, like pixar, is in the business of making products that appeal and are appropriate to a wide range of ages. sometimes that makes them seem like 'kiddy companies' to those that are so concerned about their image, worried that they'll look like they are having fun, like a grown man playing with star wars action figures.
interestingly, a grown man playing with a lego mindstorms set is called an engineer, in some circles.
i actually agree w/ nintendo for their 'wait and see' approach to online gaming. if microsoft were to charge customers what it really cost for their network, and then a little more for profit, it would likely be prohibitively expensive for most gamers. keep in mind, most households don't have broadband (which is the only choice for xbox, though i'd say it was probably a good one for the most part).
i'm betting we'll hear sometime in the future the real numbers as to how much ms is losing on their xbox division (per system), as well as their xbox live division (per online subscriber). i'll bet they never make a dime off it. not because it isn't popular, but because they are choosing to sell it at such a loss that they'll never recoup their costs just for the sake of securing a position in the gaming industry. perhaps to better their chances at hitting a #1 selling console for xbox2. who knows, i may be way off.
keep in mind, sony isn't taking that much of a different approach to online than nintendo. they've not launched a 'ps2 live' like service. they are telling 3rd parties they are on their own as to what they want to do with online titles. i'm not sure why people forget that fact... that is not to even mention sega's seganet et al.
just remember not to blame nintendo for that. blame the developer or publisher.
nintendo doesn't hold a gun to the head of the publisher and demand a defined msrp...
actually, they sell these things like hotcakes in places like china and russia where the newer systems are too expensive and harder to get a hold of for most folks...
yes, because space marines killing hellspawn isn't tired yet... (doom1-3,quake1-3) *yawn*
sometimes you go to the movies for the film, sometimes you go for the popcorn. it's up to you.
thanks for the clarification. ;)
as if the 'enter the matrix' game wasn't bad enough... can't wait to see the pile of patches this puppy is going to need a day after its release.
actually, i really like this idea. one of the problems with mmorpg's is that there is no real tracking of history. if i enter a game that started 1 year ago, it would be interesting to know the major events, if any, that occured in the storyline since then. it is kind of like playing a 3d shooter that makes all the bodies disappear after a run and gun...
last i heard, motorola was focusing more on delivering powerpc's for cisco to use in firewalls and routers or somesuch instead of focusing on apple. btw, as far as i know, apple is only using motorola chips in their laptops while they are using ibm in their desktops. please correct me if i've got that wrong (i'm sure someone will...)
not slashdotted, yanked. look again.
wa3 is way slooooow on my old 450mhz k6-2... sucks cuz 2 runs nice and fast. kinda kills the tradition of fast code they've had for a long time. i remember running winamp on my 100mhz machine several years ago sans problems. a shame really.
but how they feel about software, too
;P
yeah, like how they feel about those wacky scientologists mucking up windows.
soo... because it is closed source, you aren't going to write drivers for it? mmmkay.
i'll bet dollars to donuts that if you wanted to work on a driver that needed access to lowlevel plumbing, these guys would go out of their way to help you. if they are smart, that is...
btw, people bitch and whine all the time about drivers for linux. if not the lack thereof, then the quality.
This is obviously keeping up with the 'shiny things' network.
master yoda doesn't want his bling-bling stoled, yo.
colecovision, introduced in '82. had better games than an atari 2600, better ports of arcade games and with an expansion unit, you could play 2600 games on it. until nintendo released the nes, it was the best game system on the block, and it sat in my living room. it is still near and dear to my heart (and still works, along with about 20 games!). :)
On the other hand, today's games are more about the art and less about the technology and I suppose that's the way it should be.
gee, and i thought it was about the gameplay. silly me.
my pal future wrote this review of sam and max: surfin' the highway. we've got all sorts of fun popculture crap on there as well. take a look :)
aside from my suspecting there is more to this story, or that it isn't entirely factual...
it is rather interesting that wd escaped this round. i used to reccomend and buy wd drives primarily because they were very reliable. however, i have had a number of them die in the last 7 years and for that reason, i've reccomended against them for quite some time. their standards seemed to have dropped a while back and never really recovered.
that being said, the most recent drive purchases i've made for my own machine at home were an ibm 20gig 75gxp which last year had a lot of people up in arms about them failing, though ibm claimed there was nothing wrong. knock on wood, i've not had any problems with it. i also bought a maxtor 80gig 7200rpm drive after deciding against buying another ibm drive (i bought ibm due to knowing they have some of the most sophisticated drives on the market and do most of the research in the field of high density storage technology). i like my maxtor drive and fear that it could possibly be a victim of this new batch of claimed bad drives. knock on wood again, but so far so good, and that was over a year ago.
this stuff happens, but as many folks have said, drive manufacturers need to stand behind their product, and in my book, 1 year warranties are not a good way of encouraging confidence in your product or your company...
economics 101, never ever, ever pump your own money back into your dieing company. find the problem with the company and fix it. if you can't fix it yourself, you get someone who can.
throwing money at a problem doesn't always make it go away. look at aol time warner for an excellent example of that type of mess.
we have a theatre room in our house and this past weekend had a bunch of people over for a gaming party. a friend of mine brought over the new matrix game, and we were pretty excited to see it, even though we all thought the movie pretty much sucked. so he pops it in and starts showing us how the game works.
well my first impression was that the game was very dark and lacked detail in the levels. the details of the levels looked about like a really good quake 1 3rd party map. next he shows us the bullet time effects and superslow (or fast depending on your perspective i suppose) fighting moves. the bullet time stuff looked better in max payne, and the slowmo stuff looked really craptacular as your punches and kicks rarely land squarely on (or even close to) your enemy. then look at your players body animation. going back to quake 1, hell even doom animation seemed better. your player runs like he has a board attached to his back and his arms don't look right. the whole feeling to the animation is entirely off and isn't lifelike whatsoever.
just about everyone in the room was laughing at how silly it looked. i couldn't help feeling like i played this game about 5 years ago when it felt state-of-the-art instead of tired and generic.
i dunno, i have more to say, but meh... overall it seemed bland and not very exciting for a game that cost a supposed $20m to make and $60m to secure the license for.
don't believe the hype, rent first and see what i mean.
but i wonder when they'll release the source so the dev community can fix the rest of the bugs. ;P
you froget their are trade laws and treaties that govern stuff like this. oh yeah, and we could just tell them to buzz off by not exporting our stuff to them...
i'll bet they could prolly learn how to program c and make duke nukem forever using the released dn source before 3drealms brings theirs to market...