I mean, come on, Diablo is really just Angband with fancy graphics. Yet, Slashdot feels the need to post on every tiny patch for the Diablo games and Angband doesn't get any mention whatsoever. Jeez.
And, heck, Angband is actually (mostly) FREE SOFTWARE for crying out loud! Doesn't that fit with Slashdot's mission?;^)
Yes, I'm just kidding. But there is a grain of truth...:^D
Tomb Raider 2 was pretty ok, but I was a bit confused to find Lara swimming around Venice shooting thugs.
Tomb Raider 3 had Lara gunning down aboriginals in their own village. It also had a hideous savegame bug that required a complete game restart to fix.
I don't understand what happened at Core, but it looks like they didn't really comprehend what was good about the first one and fell into the trap of pumping out subpar material annually, just in time for the Xmas season. So, we end up with Lara the Murderer and (just recently) a a boring GBA game.
I'm getting ready to play TR: Angel of Darkness, but I have to admit I'm not expecting much, given Core's record. When I heard they were including Kurtis (or whatever the new guy's name is) I immediately thought of Poochie's appearance on Itchy & Scratchy (or Roy's appearance at the Simpsons' dinnertable)...a lame addition to a show that's run out of ideas.
If you're a home user, then this seems like a review you'll find useful.
For serious users who use a computer to get work done, this review is fluff. Maybe I'm just getting more exacting with old age, but when I read a review of a new OS, I don't want to hear about the MP3 player and the neat program you found to change your desktop wallpaper. I want to know if it comes with good development tools, an interface that is uncluttered and easy to navigate without a mouse, documentation for everything installed, and easy tools to administer services I might need. If I'm going to be dealing with documents, I'm going to want to know not if KOffice is cool but whether it will handle serious.doc files sent to me by colleagues. And finally I'd want to know how easy it is to keep the system secure and updated with the latest fixes.
Didn't see a whole lot of that in this review, but I'm sure it helped someone decide to try Mandrake.
A network admin at my former University recently explained on a technical mailing list that roughly half of their bandwidth was being consumed by peer-to-peer client traffic. He indicated that there are universities with student bodies as large as ours but with half the bandwidth, so that P2P traffic was choking out "legitimate" traffic. So I'm not really surprised to find that ISPs are facing the same problem.
It's an unwritten law: the more your game console does besides play games, the less successful it will be.
So, the PS2 can be used as:
a console for PS2 games
a console for PSX games
a DVD player
a Linux terminal with an officially sanctioned Linux distribution
part of a movie streaming station with Qcast (or something like that)
...therefore it is less successful? That seems at odds with reality, if you ask me, and probably not deserving of an "Insightful" mod. Maybe "Informative" for the CD-I stuff, but certainly not for that glaringly wrong statement.
Even if you meant it could have been more successful without any but the first ability, I still dont' believe your statement. The PS2 is the most successful console in the past several years and three years on it is still selling like hotcakes compared to the competition. None of the above secondary abilities (DVD, PSX compatibility, Linux distro) have necessarily made it sell any better (although DVD and PSX were important to me, and others) but they certainly haven't hurt it either.
There have been a lot of complaints about Sony's hardware. Just read USENET newsgroups for a while to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Here's my story, although not all of it has to do with the posted class-action lawsuit.
I stood in line on launch day, 26 October 2000, and got my PS2 at a local Best Buy. Ever since that day, it has traveled four times on trips to visit the in-laws (12 hours away, by car) and over to a friends' apartment several dozen times, always travelling in a padded case. It has always been used standing in the upright position. I have completed several PS2 games and even some PS1 games during that time. I've watched dozens of movies on it.
I've never had a problem playing a game. Well, ok, I did once, but that turned out to be a dirty disc and once cleaned it played without problems.
I've only had trouble with two movies that I can think of. One of them was Jurassic Park 3 and the other was The Mexican. Everything else has worked flawlessly, to my knowledge. The glitches have always been at the layer change. One or both of these might have been before I go the updated DVD drivers with my Sony-made remote control.
Others have had trouble with PS2 consoles. Many also had trouble with PSX consoles. Back then, I suspect much of that was because the machines were put on carpet and didn't have adequate ventilation. I always put my PSX on a hard surface, like a large book or a shelf, and never had trouble with it, after four years of heavy use. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the problems with PS2 consoles you read about on USENET and so forth were from habits similar to those that caused problems with PSX machines.
I've had good luck with my systems, using a little care. Others have had trouble. Perhaps it is Sony's problem, but I've seen more than enough games and hardware that were obviously abused to think that much of the problem could well lie with the consumers. Is there a link to data that shows that it's Sony's problem and not the consumers? Something like "here's a list of movies tried with a just-out-of-the-box PS2. See how they don't play?"
Microsoft is pushing for add-ons and patches, things that will cost a developer money in the long run. Splinter Cell, Mech Assault (to name two) have already had such add-on content and Unreal Tournament has also had patches. There may be others.
I'd be cautious before I said that online service could be added at no cost to them, since Microsoft seems to be pushing for additional work after a game's release.
And here's the gem of the article: 'Consumers might not be responding well to paying individual subscriptions for single online games, but might react better to cable TV-like pricing in which they get access to a number of offerings for a flat fee.' Does anyone see this pricing system as being more successful?
Of course that will be more successful, and that's exactly what Microsoft understands and is trying to promote with their Xbox Live service. Charge people by the month ($6/month) or by the year ($4.17/month) and give people access to a range of online products with no added fees. The question, naturally, is how much more successful and is it the most successful model?
I can see one big "gotcha" with this plan. Cable sells access to the stations but then (most stations) run advertisements in with their programming. So you still pay, by watching commercials, and the individual stations can still make money from ad revenue. It isn't clear how online gaming, as an ongoing revenue stream, pays off for the developers. We don't know how much, if any, of the Xbox Live fees go back to individual developers; my guess is that none of it gets back to them. So that means they make money off the initial sale of the game, and that's it. This doesn't seem to work as well for games as for cable.
They may be able to layer premium games (like MMOGs) on top of the ho-hum online games (like shooters or Tetris) and charge extra for those, as cable companies do with HBO, but it isn't clear that they've got a strong enough user base to support such a move. After all, they're already in uncharted territory trying to charge regular fees for online gaming. Maybe in a year or two, but by then we're looking at a second generation of hardware waiting in the wings, which could keep people from jumping.
Also, Xbox Live will, for the short term, have to compete with the choose-your-own-adventure world of Sony's PS2. Sony's haphazard approach has made it a platform on which anyone can make a game and charge whatever they want. This seems good for the developer, if they have a hit game that pulls in regular subscribers, but then they also have to bear the brunt of the infrastructure costs. It's like network television where you don't put much into it and you don't expect a lot out of it either, but you also don't have to pay monthly for it if you don't want to.
Look, it's a crappy game. That's opinion. You can't bloody argue with it. You liked it. Similarly, opinion, and I'm not arguing with that. But whether the game took itself seriously or not, that's not an opinion.
To that end, see my challenge elsewhere in this thread. Find any interview or article which involves the creators of this game in which they talk about the writing as anything but serious terms. Several interviews talk about how "great" the story is and how much they worked on the story to tell a gritty story. At no point do they indicate that they're doing satire. Read around a bit and you'll start to see that it's funny only because it's poorly done, despite being a serious attempt.
I'm ending this transmission until you get a real account. Anonymous Coward for sure.
So I checked out some interviews with some folks involved in Max Payne and I have yet to find anyone talk about the story in anything but serious terms. I really am not convinced that it was satire. I believe they truly thought they were writing a good story and good dialogue.
I will, however, stay open to concrete evidence to the contrary. (By which I mean someone involved with the game backing up this claim that it's satire or parody.)
Technically speaking, Max Payne isn't first-person; it's more of an over-the-shoulder game.
You got me there. Mea culpa. Now, if only we could edit Slashdot posts...:^) It's in the same family as FPS games, but it's perspective does make it a different style.
Really, you've got a good point. I just couldn't stop laughing during the part where his wife and baby child were murdered. HAHAHAHHA. That was a good one. Blood everywhere. It was awesome. Then later during the bloody maze with the baby crying the whole time? INCREDIBLY FUNNY.
If that's parody, my friend, then you've got some serious issues.
Since you plug your site, I'll bite and give you my two cents. Why oh why do you focus on the negative aspects of everything you review? I mean, I understand the point of your site, but, frankly, after reading your comments on Ape Escape, Zelda and Max Payne, I am beginning to wonder if there is any game you do enjoy.
Simple, really. There is far too much positive, childish, gushing praise for games already.
Since you now understand the tone of the site, you should read the writing there in that context. Just like when I read IGN or GameSpot...they give a game an 8.5, then I'm thinking to myself "Hm, good chance that that's an inflated score." See, for example, Tony Hawk 3 which got a 10 out of 10 on Gamespot. (As a counter argument, you could point out Ico, which earned an 8.5, a score that's far too low, really. See my Ico review for the biggest example of positive, childish, gushing praise on Curmudgeon.) So, knowing that we're going into a game with a critical eye, you should take that approach into account.
Besides, look at the positive comments that are in some of those reviews you point out. Ape Escape is most inventive platformer I've seen and I characterize it as "fun" and "cute". Does that mean it doesn't have flaws or that I should ignore them? No. Was I disappointed with the approach they took in the end to ramp up the difficulty? Yes. Shouldn't I mention that? Of course.
Same goes for Zelda, which makes me forget that I'm playing a game because it's so cleanly rendered. I also enjoyed the three main characters (Link, Aryll, Tetra) a good bit, and said so. In my update (forthcoming) I'll probably ramble on a good bit about just how Link is probably the cutest, most expressive character I've ever met in a game. Should I just forget the technical failings of the game, just because I like other parts? No, I shouldn't, and I won't. They're there just like the positive bits.
Finally, I can't think of anything redeeming to say about Max Payne other than "bullet time was fun". Sorry, but I feel it was a failure for a game, and enjoyed success simply because most people have low standards for story telling and FPS games.
Max Payne was hacky story and one gameplay gimmick (bullet time). Sure, bullet time was fun to do the first three dozen times I used it. But only the most die-hard FPS fans can stand level after level of pedestrian design and endless shooting. When I ended up in a warehouse full of crates...CRATES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD...I knew I'd reached my limit.
To make it worse, the voice acting and writing were awful. It was as if they wanted to sound like a modern Raymond Chandler, but weren't clever enough to know a stupid metaphor if it came running at them screaming like a scaly, hot demon from hell and bit them in the icy, cold ass of writing skills. It's just wrong to subject gamers to tired level design *and* bad writing. The hammy acting didn't help, of course.
Ok, I'll stop there. Max Payne 2...big deal. More complaining here and here.
The best part of this, really, is that maps should be amazingly easy for even a schmuck user to make. I mean, it's on a regular grid with plain-jane textures: no artistic ability required! However, you do need to be clever and have a good feeling for three dimensional worlds, but a well-made map editor should help with the latter. (A brain, naturally, will be required for the former.)
Posted my take on the new system earlier today. The short of it is that the pricing structure is good from a business point of view, as it allows a modest increase in pricing that can be sold reasonably well to the consumer (i.e. the consumer won't feel like they're being completely ripped off and might actually feel they're getting a good deal).
The increase is not just in the starter kit. Renewal is $50, but that's for service only. Remember that the first year was $50 and included a headset and game.
But truly, how excited are you after the somewhat controversial (was it epoch-making, or just decent?) Metal Gear Solid 2?"
Well, frankly, after getting over the initial enjoyment (even playing through and getting many of the dogtags, bonus items, and different animal types for final rankings) I felt MGS2 was a let-down compared to what I enjoyed about MGS. It is a good game, but MGS is better. I wrote about it a while back, and it comes down the better characterization, villains, and story. As I said there, which had more memorable scenes, lines, and characters? MGS, hands down.
Having seen the teaser image was I the only one that thought "Metal Gay Solid 3!"?
Follow id's example
on
Ultima on Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'd like to see more game companies follow the example set by John Carmack and id Software: after the period of greatest commerical gain has expired, release the source to your game, but require it be used with legally obtained data files.
Benefits: - Your game lives forever. When everyone upgrades to the newest Windows and your game doesn't work, someone can fix it. When a new platform arises, someone can port your game for that community of users. - Your game can be extended by any inventive, industrious fans. - You gain a lot of good will with the community of gamers. - Generates interest in your older products, which leads to interest in newer ones.
Potential harms: - Increased potential for piracy. - Increased potentially cheating if an online game (although having the source can mean that anti-cheating measures are easier to implement) - Ugly coding exposed.;^)
Anyway, when I see things like Exult and ScummVM which reverse-engineer game engines, I'm struck by how much easier life would be for all involved if the company simply realized that releasing the source could be a great idea, both for them and their customers.
Ok, I admit it, I just want Lucasarts to release the source to Grim Fandango. So sue me.:^D
IGN is doing something similar just these past few days. Here's their list, which they haven't completely revealed yet (as of this writing): Top 100 Games.
Blah blah blah everyone has an opinion blah blah blah no one can agree on best games blah blah blah it's all subjective.
So here's the question: How will Microsoft price the second year of Live service for first-adopters?
See, if they price it at $10/month, as has been tossed around from time to time, then it seems to me that people would just give up on the whole GamerTag value-add and get another $50 starter kit. Heck, with different games added in and a spare headset, that might not even be a bad idea. Is it really worth $70/year to current subscribers to keep the same handle within the service? Maybe...but I imagine a few will see an advantage to using that $70 savings on a new game (or a couple of used or budget-priced games).
If, on the other hand, they price it at $5/month, then for only $10/year over a starter kit you get to keep your online handle. That's getting much closer to the point at which people might pony up the extra dough.
My prediction is that they're going to shoot for somewhere in the middle, say around $7/month ($84/year) and just count on getting the $50 from the starter kits for those people who can't stomach the full price.
One thing I don't know (and yes, I'm too lazy to research it right now) is whether a Live kit is tied to a specific Xbox. Or, perhaps I should say, once an Xbox has been online with a specific Live kit, whether it can be reinitialized with a new kit (allowing the $50 choice I mentioned above).
Anyway, this is one of the more interesting announcements that I'm looking forward to at E3. Microsoft has apparently put together a good service; now, can they find the right price point to keep people using it?
You seem to take my post in general as negative about Nintendo's recycing of games. I believe you've misread my tone and my criticism of the lackluster quality of some games (NES ports and RE2 & RE3 ports) as a commentary on Nintendo's actions. Here's a clarification: I don't give a damn what Nintendo does with their older games, and in the case of SNES remakes, I'm in favor of them. In fact...get this...I bought like six or seven of the freaking keychains. How about that, huh?
All my post said, in a nutshell, was: - Recycing not new for Nintendo - Here are several examples - Some of the times, their recycled games suck
And, no, I'm not confusing Nintendo and Capcom. I think you can be pretty sure that Nintendo wanted Resident Evil games for their console, and were plenty happy to have Resident Evil 2 and 3 ported. They could have insisted on higher quality and the originally announced lower price, but they didn't. Remember, the games don't get published on Nintendo's console unless Nintendo (a) likes the cut of money they get and (b) agrees that the game can be published. When Nintendo insists on holding the keys to their platform so tightly, it opens them up to criticism when the software is crappy.
I was just about done downloading these to save to 5.25" floppies! My Vic had been on for days doing this, poor little 300 baud modem, and I'd been praying that my wife wouldn't pick up the phone and cause it to hang up. Now they're gone!
Can someone please put them up on a BBS so I can try grabbing them again?
Slashdot Mirror
And, heck, Angband is actually (mostly) FREE SOFTWARE for crying out loud! Doesn't that fit with Slashdot's mission?
Yes, I'm just kidding. But there is a grain of truth...
Tomb Raider, the original, was brilliant.
Tomb Raider 2 was pretty ok, but I was a bit confused to find Lara swimming around Venice shooting thugs.
Tomb Raider 3 had Lara gunning down aboriginals in their own village. It also had a hideous savegame bug that required a complete game restart to fix.
I don't understand what happened at Core, but it looks like they didn't really comprehend what was good about the first one and fell into the trap of pumping out subpar material annually, just in time for the Xmas season. So, we end up with Lara the Murderer and (just recently) a a boring GBA game.
I'm getting ready to play TR: Angel of Darkness, but I have to admit I'm not expecting much, given Core's record. When I heard they were including Kurtis (or whatever the new guy's name is) I immediately thought of Poochie's appearance on Itchy & Scratchy (or Roy's appearance at the Simpsons' dinnertable)...a lame addition to a show that's run out of ideas.
If you're a home user, then this seems like a review you'll find useful.
.doc files sent to me by colleagues. And finally I'd want to know how easy it is to keep the system secure and updated with the latest fixes.
For serious users who use a computer to get work done, this review is fluff. Maybe I'm just getting more exacting with old age, but when I read a review of a new OS, I don't want to hear about the MP3 player and the neat program you found to change your desktop wallpaper. I want to know if it comes with good development tools, an interface that is uncluttered and easy to navigate without a mouse, documentation for everything installed, and easy tools to administer services I might need. If I'm going to be dealing with documents, I'm going to want to know not if KOffice is cool but whether it will handle serious
Didn't see a whole lot of that in this review, but I'm sure it helped someone decide to try Mandrake.
A network admin at my former University recently explained on a technical mailing list that roughly half of their bandwidth was being consumed by peer-to-peer client traffic. He indicated that there are universities with student bodies as large as ours but with half the bandwidth, so that P2P traffic was choking out "legitimate" traffic. So I'm not really surprised to find that ISPs are facing the same problem.
Even if you meant it could have been more successful without any but the first ability, I still dont' believe your statement. The PS2 is the most successful console in the past several years and three years on it is still selling like hotcakes compared to the competition. None of the above secondary abilities (DVD, PSX compatibility, Linux distro) have necessarily made it sell any better (although DVD and PSX were important to me, and others) but they certainly haven't hurt it either.
Which ones are these? I don't have any and I'm not sure which movies are gold-colored DVDs.
There have been a lot of complaints about Sony's hardware. Just read USENET newsgroups for a while to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Here's my story, although not all of it has to do with the posted class-action lawsuit.
I stood in line on launch day, 26 October 2000, and got my PS2 at a local Best Buy. Ever since that day, it has traveled four times on trips to visit the in-laws (12 hours away, by car) and over to a friends' apartment several dozen times, always travelling in a padded case. It has always been used standing in the upright position. I have completed several PS2 games and even some PS1 games during that time. I've watched dozens of movies on it.
I've never had a problem playing a game. Well, ok, I did once, but that turned out to be a dirty disc and once cleaned it played without problems.
I've only had trouble with two movies that I can think of. One of them was Jurassic Park 3 and the other was The Mexican. Everything else has worked flawlessly, to my knowledge. The glitches have always been at the layer change. One or both of these might have been before I go the updated DVD drivers with my Sony-made remote control.
Others have had trouble with PS2 consoles. Many also had trouble with PSX consoles. Back then, I suspect much of that was because the machines were put on carpet and didn't have adequate ventilation. I always put my PSX on a hard surface, like a large book or a shelf, and never had trouble with it, after four years of heavy use. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the problems with PS2 consoles you read about on USENET and so forth were from habits similar to those that caused problems with PSX machines.
I've had good luck with my systems, using a little care. Others have had trouble. Perhaps it is Sony's problem, but I've seen more than enough games and hardware that were obviously abused to think that much of the problem could well lie with the consumers. Is there a link to data that shows that it's Sony's problem and not the consumers? Something like "here's a list of movies tried with a just-out-of-the-box PS2. See how they don't play?"
I sure hope my luck holds.
Microsoft is pushing for add-ons and patches, things that will cost a developer money in the long run. Splinter Cell, Mech Assault (to name two) have already had such add-on content and Unreal Tournament has also had patches. There may be others.
I'd be cautious before I said that online service could be added at no cost to them, since Microsoft seems to be pushing for additional work after a game's release.
I can see one big "gotcha" with this plan. Cable sells access to the stations but then (most stations) run advertisements in with their programming. So you still pay, by watching commercials, and the individual stations can still make money from ad revenue. It isn't clear how online gaming, as an ongoing revenue stream, pays off for the developers. We don't know how much, if any, of the Xbox Live fees go back to individual developers; my guess is that none of it gets back to them. So that means they make money off the initial sale of the game, and that's it. This doesn't seem to work as well for games as for cable.
They may be able to layer premium games (like MMOGs) on top of the ho-hum online games (like shooters or Tetris) and charge extra for those, as cable companies do with HBO, but it isn't clear that they've got a strong enough user base to support such a move. After all, they're already in uncharted territory trying to charge regular fees for online gaming. Maybe in a year or two, but by then we're looking at a second generation of hardware waiting in the wings, which could keep people from jumping.
Also, Xbox Live will, for the short term, have to compete with the choose-your-own-adventure world of Sony's PS2. Sony's haphazard approach has made it a platform on which anyone can make a game and charge whatever they want. This seems good for the developer, if they have a hit game that pulls in regular subscribers, but then they also have to bear the brunt of the infrastructure costs. It's like network television where you don't put much into it and you don't expect a lot out of it either, but you also don't have to pay monthly for it if you don't want to.
Look, it's a crappy game. That's opinion. You can't bloody argue with it. You liked it. Similarly, opinion, and I'm not arguing with that. But whether the game took itself seriously or not, that's not an opinion.
To that end, see my challenge elsewhere in this thread. Find any interview or article which involves the creators of this game in which they talk about the writing as anything but serious terms. Several interviews talk about how "great" the story is and how much they worked on the story to tell a gritty story. At no point do they indicate that they're doing satire. Read around a bit and you'll start to see that it's funny only because it's poorly done, despite being a serious attempt.
I'm ending this transmission until you get a real account. Anonymous Coward for sure.
So I checked out some interviews with some folks involved in Max Payne and I have yet to find anyone talk about the story in anything but serious terms. I really am not convinced that it was satire. I believe they truly thought they were writing a good story and good dialogue.
I will, however, stay open to concrete evidence to the contrary. (By which I mean someone involved with the game backing up this claim that it's satire or parody.)
Thanks for correcting me.
Really, you've got a good point. I just couldn't stop laughing during the part where his wife and baby child were murdered. HAHAHAHHA. That was a good one. Blood everywhere. It was awesome. Then later during the bloody maze with the baby crying the whole time? INCREDIBLY FUNNY.
If that's parody, my friend, then you've got some serious issues.
Simple, really. There is far too much positive, childish, gushing praise for games already.
Since you now understand the tone of the site, you should read the writing there in that context. Just like when I read IGN or GameSpot...they give a game an 8.5, then I'm thinking to myself "Hm, good chance that that's an inflated score." See, for example, Tony Hawk 3 which got a 10 out of 10 on Gamespot. (As a counter argument, you could point out Ico, which earned an 8.5, a score that's far too low, really. See my Ico review for the biggest example of positive, childish, gushing praise on Curmudgeon.) So, knowing that we're going into a game with a critical eye, you should take that approach into account.
Besides, look at the positive comments that are in some of those reviews you point out. Ape Escape is most inventive platformer I've seen and I characterize it as "fun" and "cute". Does that mean it doesn't have flaws or that I should ignore them? No. Was I disappointed with the approach they took in the end to ramp up the difficulty? Yes. Shouldn't I mention that? Of course.
Same goes for Zelda, which makes me forget that I'm playing a game because it's so cleanly rendered. I also enjoyed the three main characters (Link, Aryll, Tetra) a good bit, and said so. In my update (forthcoming) I'll probably ramble on a good bit about just how Link is probably the cutest, most expressive character I've ever met in a game. Should I just forget the technical failings of the game, just because I like other parts? No, I shouldn't, and I won't. They're there just like the positive bits.
Finally, I can't think of anything redeeming to say about Max Payne other than "bullet time was fun". Sorry, but I feel it was a failure for a game, and enjoyed success simply because most people have low standards for story telling and FPS games.
Max Payne was hacky story and one gameplay gimmick (bullet time). Sure, bullet time was fun to do the first three dozen times I used it. But only the most die-hard FPS fans can stand level after level of pedestrian design and endless shooting. When I ended up in a warehouse full of crates...CRATES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD...I knew I'd reached my limit.
To make it worse, the voice acting and writing were awful. It was as if they wanted to sound like a modern Raymond Chandler, but weren't clever enough to know a stupid metaphor if it came running at them screaming like a scaly, hot demon from hell and bit them in the icy, cold ass of writing skills. It's just wrong to subject gamers to tired level design *and* bad writing. The hammy acting didn't help, of course.
Ok, I'll stop there. Max Payne 2...big deal. More complaining here and here.
The best part of this, really, is that maps should be amazingly easy for even a schmuck user to make. I mean, it's on a regular grid with plain-jane textures: no artistic ability required! However, you do need to be clever and have a good feeling for three dimensional worlds, but a well-made map editor should help with the latter. (A brain, naturally, will be required for the former.)
Posted my take on the new system earlier today. The short of it is that the pricing structure is good from a business point of view, as it allows a modest increase in pricing that can be sold reasonably well to the consumer (i.e. the consumer won't feel like they're being completely ripped off and might actually feel they're getting a good deal).
The increase is not just in the starter kit. Renewal is $50, but that's for service only. Remember that the first year was $50 and included a headset and game.
Oh, man, I'd forgotten that. I was looking up Hayter a while back on IMDB and saw that same bit. Thanks for reminding me...what a neat guy.
(Of course, he also co-wrote The Scorpion King. Ha!)
Having seen the teaser image was I the only one that thought "Metal Gay Solid 3!"?
I'd like to see more game companies follow the example set by John Carmack and id Software: after the period of greatest commerical gain has expired, release the source to your game, but require it be used with legally obtained data files.
;^)
:^D
Benefits:
- Your game lives forever. When everyone upgrades to the newest Windows and your game doesn't work, someone can fix it. When a new platform arises, someone can port your game for that community of users.
- Your game can be extended by any inventive, industrious fans.
- You gain a lot of good will with the community of gamers.
- Generates interest in your older products, which leads to interest in newer ones.
Potential harms:
- Increased potential for piracy.
- Increased potentially cheating if an online game (although having the source can mean that anti-cheating measures are easier to implement)
- Ugly coding exposed.
Anyway, when I see things like Exult and ScummVM which reverse-engineer game engines, I'm struck by how much easier life would be for all involved if the company simply realized that releasing the source could be a great idea, both for them and their customers.
Ok, I admit it, I just want Lucasarts to release the source to Grim Fandango. So sue me.
IGN is doing something similar just these past few days. Here's their list, which they haven't completely revealed yet (as of this writing): Top 100 Games.
Blah blah blah everyone has an opinion blah blah blah no one can agree on best games blah blah blah it's all subjective.
So here's the question: How will Microsoft price the second year of Live service for first-adopters?
See, if they price it at $10/month, as has been tossed around from time to time, then it seems to me that people would just give up on the whole GamerTag value-add and get another $50 starter kit. Heck, with different games added in and a spare headset, that might not even be a bad idea. Is it really worth $70/year to current subscribers to keep the same handle within the service? Maybe...but I imagine a few will see an advantage to using that $70 savings on a new game (or a couple of used or budget-priced games).
If, on the other hand, they price it at $5/month, then for only $10/year over a starter kit you get to keep your online handle. That's getting much closer to the point at which people might pony up the extra dough.
My prediction is that they're going to shoot for somewhere in the middle, say around $7/month ($84/year) and just count on getting the $50 from the starter kits for those people who can't stomach the full price.
One thing I don't know (and yes, I'm too lazy to research it right now) is whether a Live kit is tied to a specific Xbox. Or, perhaps I should say, once an Xbox has been online with a specific Live kit, whether it can be reinitialized with a new kit (allowing the $50 choice I mentioned above).
Anyway, this is one of the more interesting announcements that I'm looking forward to at E3. Microsoft has apparently put together a good service; now, can they find the right price point to keep people using it?
You seem to take my post in general as negative about Nintendo's recycing of games. I believe you've misread my tone and my criticism of the lackluster quality of some games (NES ports and RE2 & RE3 ports) as a commentary on Nintendo's actions. Here's a clarification: I don't give a damn what Nintendo does with their older games, and in the case of SNES remakes, I'm in favor of them. In fact...get this...I bought like six or seven of the freaking keychains. How about that, huh?
All my post said, in a nutshell, was:
- Recycing not new for Nintendo
- Here are several examples
- Some of the times, their recycled games suck
And, no, I'm not confusing Nintendo and Capcom. I think you can be pretty sure that Nintendo wanted Resident Evil games for their console, and were plenty happy to have Resident Evil 2 and 3 ported. They could have insisted on higher quality and the originally announced lower price, but they didn't. Remember, the games don't get published on Nintendo's console unless Nintendo (a) likes the cut of money they get and (b) agrees that the game can be published. When Nintendo insists on holding the keys to their platform so tightly, it opens them up to criticism when the software is crappy.
I was just about done downloading these to save to 5.25" floppies! My Vic had been on for days doing this, poor little 300 baud modem, and I'd been praying that my wife wouldn't pick up the phone and cause it to hang up. Now they're gone!
;^)
Can someone please put them up on a BBS so I can try grabbing them again?
Thanks!