It's interesting for Jim Allchin to state this, because in terms of performance, security and understanding what the most important problems a customer face, I didn't know Microsoft had a "way" they're somehow losing now. To say that Microsoft has always been lazy in these areas is an understatement.
Now this gets me thinking, because we in FLOSS care a lot about security and performance, but not too much about the end users experience and the applications that are important to them. We all know how Apple just Gets It(tm) and we should, too, if we ever want to expand our installed base and market share beyond geeks and tech savvy users.
"[...]our engineers in less than a day had come up with three solutions; one is filtering and the other is processing and neither one is incrementally an increase in the cost."
There are three kinds of people in the world; those who can count and those who can't.
If you don't like the food, then don't eat it. Very simple fix.
There are some of us that weren't available in the original discussion and have something to say. So, if you already posted or read something about these topics before, then it's very simple for you not to click in the story and not to produce more ad impressions to the oh-so-greedy editors.
Just ignore them, that works quite better than complaining.
Last year, Richard Dawkins, of The Selfish Gene fame, made a documentary about religion called "Root of All Evil?", where he defines faith as "the process of non-thinking" that can lead to even the worst human condition, like murderous thinking when the fundamentalism make people hate and kill each other. Just like what's happening in Israel right now.
One of the most interesting things about it is that he tries to talk with several religious leaders about evolution, and they sistematically avoid any rational discussion and undeniable evidence with the same stupid arguments, equivalent to "my book says this and therefore, it must be true".
He brings forth the question "why can't schools just teach science in SCIENCE class?"
I mentioned it a couple times since last year so I don't need to repeat myself, but I agree with that view about the small developers and media receiving a big blow out of this new E3.
A more intimate event will weed out most of the people that didn't have any business there, but it will also pull out of the radar all those really innovative games that don't come from the big players, and the media interested in them.
It certainly looks bad, but now look at Hollywood, there's no place for small indie films in the big events, theme parks and whatnot, but there are independent film events and the media covers them because there are GOOD MOVIES to be seen there.
What's needed is to fortify and separate the indie game development and let them have their own events. The market for indie gaming will not disappear as long as there are people interested in innovation or are not willing to buy crapware just because it's licensed by the NFL/NBA/FIFA/etc.
Let's face it. We, the people interested in real games represent a very small percentage of the market, but I hope things like the Xbox Live Arcade and the Wii Virtual Console will become a place to showcase those games without having small developers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to E3 just to be "the leftovers".
What I feel the most about is the small media outlets. No more bloggers or small time writers to keep the big guys from becoming even worse than they are today.
Last year I wrote this comment about the current state of E3. Granted, this year went a little better than I expected, but still, I couldn't help but keep having the same feeling since 2001 that companies were throwing their money away in a silly pissing contest to "win the E3". In particular, Sony was a big loser this time around, since they spent tens of millions of dollars just to be bashed and told their strategies were wrong, and leave them with more millions to spend doing damage control. I imagine it'd be very hard for them to do the same thing next year.
I'm somewhat happy that E3, as we know it, is over. I'm also grateful that I had the opportunity to be there so many times while it lasted, it was a very exciting era. It's great that it wasn't allowed to linger in agony much longer.
Now I have some concerns with the new changes. While I agree that it's generally a good thing to make it smaller and prevent illegitimate people to go there next year, the small media outlets and bloggers will be left out, so that the only people allowed are those with financial reasons to be there. My biggest concern is that the media runs the risk to become even more biased than it was, now that companies can address them directly.
It's bad for the fanboys, it's good for developers, and it's paradise for PR.
Former NOA President and founder Minoru Arakawa used to be a very aggressive businessman who, back in the 80's pioneered most of what are considered normal business practices in the whole industry today. Both criticized and admired, he single-handedly revived the videogame industry in America and made NOA what it is.
It was kinda sad to see him replaced by Tatsumi Kimishima, formerly the President of Pokémon USA. NOA has definitely become a lot more passive since then. Not to bash Kimishima, though, because Nintendo continues to be a good business. That hasn't changed one bit and I'm sure that's a very good reason to make Kimishima remain in the top position as CEO.
Now enter Reggie Fils-Aime, who introduced himself to the public as an ass-kicker, name-taker guy. I've met the guy myself a couple times, he's extremely sharp and has a very good forward-thinking attitude. This is the kind of person I'd really like to see driving Nintendo into the future.
I'm happy to see Nintendo rearranging the chain of command to place Reggie in a better position to take decisions about the company's direction.
Everybody here speculating about the japanese side needs to simply stop their crackpot theories about the japanese name of the console and whether it's easy to pronounce or write it.
The name is Wii in all languages, and the japanese don't go for the writing, they simply try to mimic the English pronuntiation and write it so that it reads "uii" (similar to "we" in English, as we already know), they even state it so clearly in their own Japanese website, that it's silly to be speculating at this point.
For those without Japanese skills, it says pretty much the same as the English side (albeit condensed), so I'll spare a full translation, but here's the important part: "In the image of the English 'we' word , [...] we believe the concept of the unique controller [yadda yadda]"
The name of the new console is "Wii" globally, unless Nintendo suddenly changes its mind. Deal with it.
If you see Apple's own SPEC benchmarks for each machine, you'll see that the MacBook Pro has SPECint_rate_base2000 rating of 30.3 and SPECfp_rate_base2000 of 25.6, compared to 32.6 (7.59% higher) and 27.1 (5.85% higher) for the iMac, respectively.
Not that CPU synthetic benchmarks are really something to write home about. But I'd say they do show the difference is not significant. Other components such as the HDD could make the experience different, but you can also change that using a 7200 RPM drive, which could actually be faster than its desktop counterpart, given the higher density on the platter and shorter seeks.
Jokes aside, MP3 playback for Linux actually used to be a headache and helped spur the development of Robert Love's preemptible kernel patches and many other enhancements to the scheduler and reductions of latency from the main Kernel team. You can see MP3 playback was used heavily as a diagnostic tool before these patches ended up in the vanilla kernel.
SMP machines with dual CPUs (or in this case, dual CPU cores) don't tend to have problems like that, so yes, having a dual core actually makes your MP3s sound better =)
Then again, if you're encoding your music collection to a crappy format like MP3, when you could be using far better formats (and more CPU intensive, where having a faster machine helps, too), then you don't really need them to sound better;)
The DS has only 4MB of RAM, hardly enough for complex homebrew applications, compared to the 32MB found in the PSP. You could also have 1GB+ of storage space in your PSP with readily available parts. Basically you just need to keep throwing money at it and it doesn't require hardware mods. Can't say the same for the DS, most of the time you need to mod it or buy hard-to-get equipment to hack it.
Furthermore, most of the libraries needed to run the PSP are already included in the firmware stored in that big NVRAM, so they're readily available to applications, even homebrew. The DS has a very simple firmware and all the libraries need to be extracted or reverse-engineered from the cartridges that contain them, and so far there aren't many games that use Wi-Fi, for example.
That's not to say the DS doesn't have its own advantages, though. The cartridges' memory is directly addressable from the CPU, so it has a very good potential for expansion. The touchscreen, mic and Wi-Fi/Ni-Fi features make it better than the PSP in things like Internet browsing, VoIP and chatting.
It's just that the DS architecture doesn't lend itself to hacking that easily. I hope the Play-Yan gets released in the US and someone hacks it so to make the SD Card accessible to homebrew applications. A non-mod firmware hack would help, too.
People here talking about the executable still being signed and thus not hackable are terribly missing the point.
Team Pi notes that the DATA FILES are not protected. That means that content can be changed and thus the signed executable could be hijacked into loading unsigned code.
This is nothing new. It's exactly what happened in the old Xbox and the game 007: Agent Under Fire. Someone hacked a savefile, which exploited a buffer overrun on the PERFECTLY SIGNED executable from the game and enabled unsigned code (Linux, or a backup game if that's your intention) to run WITHOUT ANY MODCHIP.
You just need a Memory Card to load the hacked savefile from, and the original, signed, protected game.
Team Pi is suggesting that the same idea is possible here, and that's the reason why this ISO is being distributed.
Some say food should be the only top priority for these countries, right? That they need to solve that first before even thinking about using computers, right?
I think that's seriously short-sighted. They need help, food and money, yes, but is it not like they say? "Give a man a fish..."? Food is just a simple short-term relief, and not a solution. They'll eat today, fine, but they'll still wake up hungry tomorrow.
I firmly believe that giving them the technology and education so that the new generations can actually become competitive is equivalent to "teaching them how to fish". Education and technical resources, in the long-term, is what will take those countries out of their poverty status.
Using Free Software is not just an option, it's the only sensible one to choose. Teaching new generations about the freedom that make it possible for them to get everything they need is something so precious that the opportunity simply can't be missed.
I've been attending E3 every year for a very long time now, and there's certainly a change in the mindset of my fellow colleagues, coworkers and mostly every person who's been going there for more than 3-4 years. People in the industry, regardless of citizenship, don't really feel as excited as they did in the previous years. I've seen newcomers get to the end of their first show and leave slightly unimpressed with it overall.
My boss, who attended every CES and E3 until 2000, and then didn't for 5 years in a row, this year he came back and said: "Oh boy! What a load of crap, there's nothing new! It just got louder and more crowded! Ah, yes, these are some nice graphics, right? (looking at Capcom's Ookami)", I don't think he's interested to be there come 2006, since it's far easier for him to set up appointments with the people he needs any other time of the year.
Maybe I could say that the quality of the show has been gradually and consistently decading since 2000. I can cite many factors, but here are some off the top of my mind:
1) Media Badges became soooo easy to get ever since the media explosion from the dot-com era.
Just after Y2K, if you had a media outlet, even an insignificant me-too.com site, you could bring a lot of people with you. I'm not saying names, but there's a mildly popular Nintendo fansite that takes around 20 people to the show. That's right, TWENTY people (if not more) to the show, to cover just ONE of the three main consoles, and a couple of portables. Also remember that the media don't pay for their badges, like regular attendees and exhibitors would.
I've nothing against these guys, but to expect all of them to be treated equally is ridiculous. Some years ago, getting food from the Media Hospitality service became like getting it from an UN truck at a famine-ridden country. I almost got kicked out of the show for HOLDING more than one lunch box while waiting for my friends, that's how bad it is.
2) The industry in general became too mainstream for its own good.
Yes, booth babes and swag are nice, T&A, T-shirs, keychains and all, but this is a trade show that has become overcrowded with freeloading geeks. Imagine a Natalie Portman convention with tens of thousands of/.ers, all chanting for free grits, and that's just the start. There's not nearly enough swag for all of them, not mentioning that the exhibitor/swag ratio has gone down the toilet since 1999 IIRC, because many companies (Microsoft among them) got smart and stopped giving stuff away, including press kits. Now they just give you an URL and rightfully save a million bucks in dead trees and CDs.
But hey! It's all about the games, right? HA! Consider yourself lucky if you got to play Mario Kart DS or Zelda this year if you don't know someone inside Nintendo, ditto for other high-profile games from any other company. The waiting lines take sometimes up to three hours, and there were hundreds of titles this year waiting to be played, never mind the fact that there are now three main competitors and eight mainstream gaming platforms (2 MS, 2 Sony, 3 Nintendo and the PC). The tragedy is that you don't have enough time to see all the stuff you're interested in, so what do you do? You guessed right! Bring more people along and split up the tasks! Tasks like checking out the sequel-itis fest, of course, and leaving almost no time to dig for innovation. You can see it now, an endless vicious circle.
I have really fond memories of the CES and the earlier E3 shows, having a great time with friends, playing nice, innovative games and having time to discuss at the end of the day with a beer in hand. But now I just get excited with anticipation a few days before the show and the hype dies a lot sooner every year. I think it's like being a drug addict with a growing addiction and getting a smaller dose every time.
The MCP is the "Media Communications Processor" that Nvidia developed and Microsoft used for the original Xbox. They refer to it sometimes as MCP-X or XCP, to differentiate it from the regular PC version. I remember joking about that more than 4 years ago. Sorry =(
Just to be on topic, I'd say that the irony here is that, in the movie, Flynn was considered a rogue program (or malware in today's terms), attacking the OS kernel (MCP), who's the bad guy now?
I guess Microsoft Windows has really become a tax, when you see manufacturers doing similar things to what they do to avoid paying a duty and convert that to profit instead of passing the savings unto the customer.
For all we know, it's supposed to be the other way around, because Microsoft shouldn't be offering the nice and heavy OEM discount to Dell anymore since they're violating Microsoft law by not selling PCs exclusively with Windows. Of course, most probably Dell is doing this on purpose, the ulterior motive being to put some pressure on Microsoft or other PC manufacturers.
1) Make technology and take it to market 2) Make something better and expect everybody to replace previous one 3) ???? 4) Profit!
Sorry, but your point is completely bogus, 1.2 and 1.44MB Floppy Drives were not introduced to market just fifteen years ago, that was in 1984 and 1987, respectively. And guess what? They are still in production. Some pretty big manufacturers still offer them in top of the line models. Are they great? Not anymore, but there's still a market for them.
The Compact Disc was introduced in 1982 and the CD-ROM format in 1985. That's not 10-15, but more than twenty years ago.
DVD was introduced in 1996, almost ten years ago, and I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.
It's not about bringing new formats every couple years, the formats need time to mature and penetrate the market, they need a long time for both manufacturers and content companies to get ahold of the technology, offer enough content and really take advantage of economies of scale. Changing factories, manufacturing technology and playback equipment just because you could make it one order of magnitude bigger would be a horribly myopic and stifling thing to do.
It's perfectly fine to expect Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to be around 2015 and beyond, if any of those formats take off in the first place. If they don't, well, they weren't good enough from the very beginning.
HDD presence is not the only obstacle for backwards compatibility. True, the Xbox 360 would most surely need an HDD for compatibility just because the Xbox used the HDD for many things like virtual memory, file saves, custom soundtracks and whatnot. Hey, even some games (Halo included) would copy whole levels and other game assets from the DVD to the HDD in order to speed up load times, thanks to the HDD's faster access time and data transfer speed.
Maybe some games could do fine with just a Ramdisk, due to the 8x RAM increase in the console. But let's also remember where the real problems are: the ISA has changed from x86 to PPC with different memory and cache architecture, and the GPU extensions to the 3D APIs are different from Nvidia to ATI. Even sound and input devices may have differences in the API. Things don't look pretty.
Building an emulator or collection of wrappers is no small feat. I simply don't think it's even possible to make some layer that can run 100% of the current generation games at full speed and glitch-free. The best option, and the one more likely to happen, is that you'll need to download new builds of the game code to the HDD, compiled against a set of compatibility libraries and drivers. These builds don't need to be too big, since all game assets can still be taken from the original disk, but I doubt those could just fit in RAM or a Memory Card.
Even a hybrid approach that combined both emulation/wrapper and compatibility builds is possible. But an HDD would definitely be mandatory if they want to have more than just a handful of games compatible.
The N64 was the last cartridge-based home console Nintendo made, throwing themselves out of the industry throne because of the implications of that choice alone.
Producing the N64's cartridge media was literally hundreds of times more expensive than the PSX's CDs. Thus, to remain profitable, Nintendo had to raise the price of their games up to $70 per cartridge. That just helped Sony to strenghten their position in the industry since they had a far superior bang-per-buck ratio for both users and developers. Nintendo finally settled for a profitable, yet distant second place in that generation of the console wars.
The current consoles from Sony and MS are sold initially below cost (Xbox is still bleeding like in a Tarantino movie), while the development costs are skyrocketing because the market demands higher complexity. I can't help but think this will only get bloodier in the next generation of High-Definition, Online-enabled, high-performance, BT/Wi-Fi, _______ (insert trendy buzzword here) gaming.
I think that the PSP's media prices are already outrageous ($50 for a non-original game!). That fact alone makes me expect things to be worse for next-gen console games.
Nintendo, OTOH, definitely learned something from that awful $70 experience as it showed us with their cheap, powerful AND highly profitable Gamecube, GBA and DS. I certainly hope Revolution games and console are cheaper than the competition. I also hope gamers take notice and stop buying slightly prettier versions of existing games at a $10-$20 premium.
Not only IV was an incredible breakthrough that shook and redefined the whole genre, Square kept adding and reinventing the saga in parts V and VI. Though not everybody really liked FFV, it did help the genre advance to what many people (myself included) is the culmination of the FF series: FFVI.
FFVI had everything that made FFI-FFIV great and none of the so-called flaws of FFV, while retaining its improvements in storyline structure and technical merits, and then went far beyond. It's nice to think Chrono Trigger's was released only months later, with a similar level of excellence.
FFVII was OK, neat and and even overwhelming for its time, but it started the trend to make RPGs more mainstream-friendly, up to the current marketing and merchandise fests we see today in FFX-2, Kingdom Hearts and the such.
I like to see the transition this way, FFI-III defined the series. FFIV-FFVI reinvented it and took it to the highest standards, achieved by very few games even today. FFVII-FFIX made it accessible to the masses. FFX and beyond are definitely taking the genre and the series to a new place again, though I'm not sure I like it, I haven't played FF to the end since part X.
So, yeah, FFIV marked the beginning of the era that ended with FFVI, I certainly agree with it being one of the best games of all time. I hope none ever get remade, only ported like the PSOne versions.
According to this , the database is quite open to abuse. I hope they clean it up, unless the NASA experiment involves spamming other planets and civilizations.
Being that the DS is not region-coded, there are some more multiplayer games you can import from Japan. Some of them will never come this side of the pond and some don't require strong language skills (note that Rakubiki Jiten can actually help you improve said skills).
Jump Superstars (Smash Bros.-style Fighting)
Mr. Driller (Puzzle)
Egg Monster Heroes (RPG)
Lost in Blue (RPG)
Yakuman DS (Puzzle)
Egg Monster Heroes (RPG)
Prince of Tennis (Sports)
Yawaraka Atamajuku (Puzzle)
Rakubiki Jiten (Puzzle)
Ouendan (Action)
The list is not complete and there are more multiplayer games coming soon. Too bad I don't have the time to put an Amazon Japan referral site to make some profit from/. as well =)
I don't believe this is true. I can't remember a single piece of hardware that Nintendo has pushed harder. From launch to selling world-wide in under 4 months? That hasn't happened from the big N.
Were it not for the GBA compatibility feature, I bet the DS wouldn't have been the huge success it is. The games are great, yes, but there are big gaps between them and look at how the PSP is hurting from a situation like that.
By the way, the DS is a success but it hasn't sold as well as the flagship GBA line. Look at the sales figures, the first GBA sold 12 million in the first year (67 million in 4 years), and the DS is well under 7 million for the first year. Both the GBA and the GCN were launched in several markets in a relatively short timeframe.
Furthermore, Nintendo does regard it as experimental (perhaps I emphasized it too much, I'd agree that "just" may not have been the best way to put it) and it goes as far as to call it "Nintendo's Third Pillar" along with the GBA and the GCN. Here's an interesting interview about the new paradigm and an article with Nintendo's president claiming the DS may not be a big seller.
Even Nintendo regards the DS as just a gimmicky, experimental product and pushes it as a separate architecture from their flagship Game Boy line. So, what's really gimmicky here is the GBA backwards-compatibility in the DS, just to provide it with a temporary library of games to start up with.
Just play Pac-Pix or Kirby Canvas Curse and you'll see the DS has a future, albeit in its own niche. Furthermore, the touchscreen and the microphone make the DS better suited for Internet gaming than the PSP, however sexy the latter might be. I know the PSP can use external USB devices, but we all know how the market responds to add-ons.
Sony is just jealous that Nintendo's gimmick product is outselling theirs worldwide, and is actually making a profit. Now imagine when Nintendo announces the next-gen Game Boy.
The big N's next-gen handheld could use an architecture similar to the Gamecube (as has been rumored) so that the development environment can be shared between the GCN, the Revolution and the GBA2. Things are not going to get any easier for Sony. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the PSP2 comes with an embedded mic and a touchscreen.
Now don't take me wrong, I have both devices and love them, but Sony trying to make a stupid comparison at this point can only backfire.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting for Jim Allchin to state this, because in terms of performance, security and understanding what the most important problems a customer face, I didn't know Microsoft had a "way" they're somehow losing now. To say that Microsoft has always been lazy in these areas is an understatement.
Now this gets me thinking, because we in FLOSS care a lot about security and performance, but not too much about the end users experience and the applications that are important to them. We all know how Apple just Gets It(tm) and we should, too, if we ever want to expand our installed base and market share beyond geeks and tech savvy users.
"[...]our engineers in less than a day had come up with three solutions; one is filtering and the other is processing and neither one is incrementally an increase in the cost."
There are three kinds of people in the world; those who can count and those who can't.
If you don't like the food, then don't eat it. Very simple fix.
There are some of us that weren't available in the original discussion and have something to say. So, if you already posted or read something about these topics before, then it's very simple for you not to click in the story and not to produce more ad impressions to the oh-so-greedy editors.
Just ignore them, that works quite better than complaining.
Last year, Richard Dawkins, of The Selfish Gene fame, made a documentary about religion called "Root of All Evil?", where he defines faith as "the process of non-thinking" that can lead to even the worst human condition, like murderous thinking when the fundamentalism make people hate and kill each other. Just like what's happening in Israel right now.
One of the most interesting things about it is that he tries to talk with several religious leaders about evolution, and they sistematically avoid any rational discussion and undeniable evidence with the same stupid arguments, equivalent to "my book says this and therefore, it must be true".
He brings forth the question "why can't schools just teach science in SCIENCE class?"
Quite controversial, I recommend it very much.
I mentioned it a couple times since last year so I don't need to repeat myself, but I agree with that view about the small developers and media receiving a big blow out of this new E3.
A more intimate event will weed out most of the people that didn't have any business there, but it will also pull out of the radar all those really innovative games that don't come from the big players, and the media interested in them.
It certainly looks bad, but now look at Hollywood, there's no place for small indie films in the big events, theme parks and whatnot, but there are independent film events and the media covers them because there are GOOD MOVIES to be seen there.
What's needed is to fortify and separate the indie game development and let them have their own events. The market for indie gaming will not disappear as long as there are people interested in innovation or are not willing to buy crapware just because it's licensed by the NFL/NBA/FIFA/etc.
Let's face it. We, the people interested in real games represent a very small percentage of the market, but I hope things like the Xbox Live Arcade and the Wii Virtual Console will become a place to showcase those games without having small developers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to E3 just to be "the leftovers".
What I feel the most about is the small media outlets. No more bloggers or small time writers to keep the big guys from becoming even worse than they are today.
Last year I wrote this comment about the current state of E3. Granted, this year went a little better than I expected, but still, I couldn't help but keep having the same feeling since 2001 that companies were throwing their money away in a silly pissing contest to "win the E3". In particular, Sony was a big loser this time around, since they spent tens of millions of dollars just to be bashed and told their strategies were wrong, and leave them with more millions to spend doing damage control. I imagine it'd be very hard for them to do the same thing next year.
I'm somewhat happy that E3, as we know it, is over. I'm also grateful that I had the opportunity to be there so many times while it lasted, it was a very exciting era. It's great that it wasn't allowed to linger in agony much longer.
Now I have some concerns with the new changes. While I agree that it's generally a good thing to make it smaller and prevent illegitimate people to go there next year, the small media outlets and bloggers will be left out, so that the only people allowed are those with financial reasons to be there. My biggest concern is that the media runs the risk to become even more biased than it was, now that companies can address them directly.
It's bad for the fanboys, it's good for developers, and it's paradise for PR.
Former NOA President and founder Minoru Arakawa used to be a very aggressive businessman who, back in the 80's pioneered most of what are considered normal business practices in the whole industry today. Both criticized and admired, he single-handedly revived the videogame industry in America and made NOA what it is.
It was kinda sad to see him replaced by Tatsumi Kimishima, formerly the President of Pokémon USA. NOA has definitely become a lot more passive since then. Not to bash Kimishima, though, because Nintendo continues to be a good business. That hasn't changed one bit and I'm sure that's a very good reason to make Kimishima remain in the top position as CEO.
Now enter Reggie Fils-Aime, who introduced himself to the public as an ass-kicker, name-taker guy. I've met the guy myself a couple times, he's extremely sharp and has a very good forward-thinking attitude. This is the kind of person I'd really like to see driving Nintendo into the future.
I'm happy to see Nintendo rearranging the chain of command to place Reggie in a better position to take decisions about the company's direction.
More power to him.
Everybody here speculating about the japanese side needs to simply stop their crackpot theories about the japanese name of the console and whether it's easy to pronounce or write it.
The name is Wii in all languages, and the japanese don't go for the writing, they simply try to mimic the English pronuntiation and write it so that it reads "uii" (similar to "we" in English, as we already know), they even state it so clearly in their own Japanese website, that it's silly to be speculating at this point.
For those without Japanese skills, it says pretty much the same as the English side (albeit condensed), so I'll spare a full translation, but here's the important part: "In the image of the English 'we' word , [...] we believe the concept of the unique controller [yadda yadda]"
The name of the new console is "Wii" globally, unless Nintendo suddenly changes its mind. Deal with it.
Will it confuse "then" with "than" and viceversa like many /.ers here claiming to be programmers? So that it writes "if-than" conditions? =)
If you see Apple's own SPEC benchmarks for each machine, you'll see that the MacBook Pro has SPECint_rate_base2000 rating of 30.3 and SPECfp_rate_base2000 of 25.6, compared to 32.6 (7.59% higher) and 27.1 (5.85% higher) for the iMac, respectively.
Not that CPU synthetic benchmarks are really something to write home about. But I'd say they do show the difference is not significant. Other components such as the HDD could make the experience different, but you can also change that using a 7200 RPM drive, which could actually be faster than its desktop counterpart, given the higher density on the platter and shorter seeks.
Jokes aside, MP3 playback for Linux actually used to be a headache and helped spur the development of Robert Love's preemptible kernel patches and many other enhancements to the scheduler and reductions of latency from the main Kernel team. You can see MP3 playback was used heavily as a diagnostic tool before these patches ended up in the vanilla kernel.
;)
SMP machines with dual CPUs (or in this case, dual CPU cores) don't tend to have problems like that, so yes, having a dual core actually makes your MP3s sound better =)
Then again, if you're encoding your music collection to a crappy format like MP3, when you could be using far better formats (and more CPU intensive, where having a faster machine helps, too), then you don't really need them to sound better
The DS has only 4MB of RAM, hardly enough for complex homebrew applications, compared to the 32MB found in the PSP. You could also have 1GB+ of storage space in your PSP with readily available parts. Basically you just need to keep throwing money at it and it doesn't require hardware mods. Can't say the same for the DS, most of the time you need to mod it or buy hard-to-get equipment to hack it.
Furthermore, most of the libraries needed to run the PSP are already included in the firmware stored in that big NVRAM, so they're readily available to applications, even homebrew. The DS has a very simple firmware and all the libraries need to be extracted or reverse-engineered from the cartridges that contain them, and so far there aren't many games that use Wi-Fi, for example.
That's not to say the DS doesn't have its own advantages, though. The cartridges' memory is directly addressable from the CPU, so it has a very good potential for expansion. The touchscreen, mic and Wi-Fi/Ni-Fi features make it better than the PSP in things like Internet browsing, VoIP and chatting.
It's just that the DS architecture doesn't lend itself to hacking that easily. I hope the Play-Yan gets released in the US and someone hacks it so to make the SD Card accessible to homebrew applications. A non-mod firmware hack would help, too.
People here talking about the executable still being signed and thus not hackable are terribly missing the point.
Team Pi notes that the DATA FILES are not protected. That means that content can be changed and thus the signed executable could be hijacked into loading unsigned code.
This is nothing new. It's exactly what happened in the old Xbox and the game 007: Agent Under Fire. Someone hacked a savefile, which exploited a buffer overrun on the PERFECTLY SIGNED executable from the game and enabled unsigned code (Linux, or a backup game if that's your intention) to run WITHOUT ANY MODCHIP.
You just need a Memory Card to load the hacked savefile from, and the original, signed, protected game.
Team Pi is suggesting that the same idea is possible here, and that's the reason why this ISO is being distributed.
Some say food should be the only top priority for these countries, right? That they need to solve that first before even thinking about using computers, right?
I think that's seriously short-sighted. They need help, food and money, yes, but is it not like they say? "Give a man a fish..."? Food is just a simple short-term relief, and not a solution. They'll eat today, fine, but they'll still wake up hungry tomorrow.
I firmly believe that giving them the technology and education so that the new generations can actually become competitive is equivalent to "teaching them how to fish". Education and technical resources, in the long-term, is what will take those countries out of their poverty status.
Using Free Software is not just an option, it's the only sensible one to choose. Teaching new generations about the freedom that make it possible for them to get everything they need is something so precious that the opportunity simply can't be missed.
I've been attending E3 every year for a very long time now, and there's certainly a change in the mindset of my fellow colleagues, coworkers and mostly every person who's been going there for more than 3-4 years. People in the industry, regardless of citizenship, don't really feel as excited as they did in the previous years. I've seen newcomers get to the end of their first show and leave slightly unimpressed with it overall.
/.ers, all chanting for free grits, and that's just the start. There's not nearly enough swag for all of them, not mentioning that the exhibitor/swag ratio has gone down the toilet since 1999 IIRC, because many companies (Microsoft among them) got smart and stopped giving stuff away, including press kits. Now they just give you an URL and rightfully save a million bucks in dead trees and CDs.
My boss, who attended every CES and E3 until 2000, and then didn't for 5 years in a row, this year he came back and said: "Oh boy! What a load of crap, there's nothing new! It just got louder and more crowded! Ah, yes, these are some nice graphics, right? (looking at Capcom's Ookami)", I don't think he's interested to be there come 2006, since it's far easier for him to set up appointments with the people he needs any other time of the year.
Maybe I could say that the quality of the show has been gradually and consistently decading since 2000. I can cite many factors, but here are some off the top of my mind:
1) Media Badges became soooo easy to get ever since the media explosion from the dot-com era.
Just after Y2K, if you had a media outlet, even an insignificant me-too.com site, you could bring a lot of people with you. I'm not saying names, but there's a mildly popular Nintendo fansite that takes around 20 people to the show. That's right, TWENTY people (if not more) to the show, to cover just ONE of the three main consoles, and a couple of portables. Also remember that the media don't pay for their badges, like regular attendees and exhibitors would.
I've nothing against these guys, but to expect all of them to be treated equally is ridiculous. Some years ago, getting food from the Media Hospitality service became like getting it from an UN truck at a famine-ridden country. I almost got kicked out of the show for HOLDING more than one lunch box while waiting for my friends, that's how bad it is.
2) The industry in general became too mainstream for its own good.
Yes, booth babes and swag are nice, T&A, T-shirs, keychains and all, but this is a trade show that has become overcrowded with freeloading geeks. Imagine a Natalie Portman convention with tens of thousands of
But hey! It's all about the games, right? HA! Consider yourself lucky if you got to play Mario Kart DS or Zelda this year if you don't know someone inside Nintendo, ditto for other high-profile games from any other company. The waiting lines take sometimes up to three hours, and there were hundreds of titles this year waiting to be played, never mind the fact that there are now three main competitors and eight mainstream gaming platforms (2 MS, 2 Sony, 3 Nintendo and the PC). The tragedy is that you don't have enough time to see all the stuff you're interested in, so what do you do? You guessed right! Bring more people along and split up the tasks! Tasks like checking out the sequel-itis fest, of course, and leaving almost no time to dig for innovation. You can see it now, an endless vicious circle.
I have really fond memories of the CES and the earlier E3 shows, having a great time with friends, playing nice, innovative games and having time to discuss at the end of the day with a beer in hand. But now I just get excited with anticipation a few days before the show and the hype dies a lot sooner every year. I think it's like being a drug addict with a growing addiction and getting a smaller dose every time.
The MCP is the "Media Communications Processor" that Nvidia developed and Microsoft used for the original Xbox. They refer to it sometimes as MCP-X or XCP, to differentiate it from the regular PC version. I remember joking about that more than 4 years ago. Sorry =(
Just to be on topic, I'd say that the irony here is that, in the movie, Flynn was considered a rogue program (or malware in today's terms), attacking the OS kernel (MCP), who's the bad guy now?
I guess Microsoft Windows has really become a tax, when you see manufacturers doing similar things to what they do to avoid paying a duty and convert that to profit instead of passing the savings unto the customer.
For all we know, it's supposed to be the other way around, because Microsoft shouldn't be offering the nice and heavy OEM discount to Dell anymore since they're violating Microsoft law by not selling PCs exclusively with Windows. Of course, most probably Dell is doing this on purpose, the ulterior motive being to put some pressure on Microsoft or other PC manufacturers.
It's a strange world we live in...
From what you said, the following is true:
1) Make technology and take it to market
2) Make something better and expect everybody to replace previous one
3) ????
4) Profit!
Sorry, but your point is completely bogus, 1.2 and 1.44MB Floppy Drives were not introduced to market just fifteen years ago, that was in 1984 and 1987, respectively. And guess what? They are still in production. Some pretty big manufacturers still offer them in top of the line models. Are they great? Not anymore, but there's still a market for them.
The Compact Disc was introduced in 1982 and the CD-ROM format in 1985. That's not 10-15, but more than twenty years ago.
DVD was introduced in 1996, almost ten years ago, and I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.
It's not about bringing new formats every couple years, the formats need time to mature and penetrate the market, they need a long time for both manufacturers and content companies to get ahold of the technology, offer enough content and really take advantage of economies of scale. Changing factories, manufacturing technology and playback equipment just because you could make it one order of magnitude bigger would be a horribly myopic and stifling thing to do.
It's perfectly fine to expect Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to be around 2015 and beyond, if any of those formats take off in the first place. If they don't, well, they weren't good enough from the very beginning.
HDD presence is not the only obstacle for backwards compatibility. True, the Xbox 360 would most surely need an HDD for compatibility just because the Xbox used the HDD for many things like virtual memory, file saves, custom soundtracks and whatnot. Hey, even some games (Halo included) would copy whole levels and other game assets from the DVD to the HDD in order to speed up load times, thanks to the HDD's faster access time and data transfer speed.
Maybe some games could do fine with just a Ramdisk, due to the 8x RAM increase in the console. But let's also remember where the real problems are: the ISA has changed from x86 to PPC with different memory and cache architecture, and the GPU extensions to the 3D APIs are different from Nvidia to ATI. Even sound and input devices may have differences in the API. Things don't look pretty.
Building an emulator or collection of wrappers is no small feat. I simply don't think it's even possible to make some layer that can run 100% of the current generation games at full speed and glitch-free. The best option, and the one more likely to happen, is that you'll need to download new builds of the game code to the HDD, compiled against a set of compatibility libraries and drivers. These builds don't need to be too big, since all game assets can still be taken from the original disk, but I doubt those could just fit in RAM or a Memory Card.
Even a hybrid approach that combined both emulation/wrapper and compatibility builds is possible. But an HDD would definitely be mandatory if they want to have more than just a handful of games compatible.
The N64 was the last cartridge-based home console Nintendo made, throwing themselves out of the industry throne because of the implications of that choice alone.
Producing the N64's cartridge media was literally hundreds of times more expensive than the PSX's CDs. Thus, to remain profitable, Nintendo had to raise the price of their games up to $70 per cartridge. That just helped Sony to strenghten their position in the industry since they had a far superior bang-per-buck ratio for both users and developers. Nintendo finally settled for a profitable, yet distant second place in that generation of the console wars.
The current consoles from Sony and MS are sold initially below cost (Xbox is still bleeding like in a Tarantino movie), while the development costs are skyrocketing because the market demands higher complexity. I can't help but think this will only get bloodier in the next generation of High-Definition, Online-enabled, high-performance, BT/Wi-Fi, _______ (insert trendy buzzword here) gaming.
I think that the PSP's media prices are already outrageous ($50 for a non-original game!). That fact alone makes me expect things to be worse for next-gen console games.
Nintendo, OTOH, definitely learned something from that awful $70 experience as it showed us with their cheap, powerful AND highly profitable Gamecube, GBA and DS. I certainly hope Revolution games and console are cheaper than the competition. I also hope gamers take notice and stop buying slightly prettier versions of existing games at a $10-$20 premium.
Not only IV was an incredible breakthrough that shook and redefined the whole genre, Square kept adding and reinventing the saga in parts V and VI. Though not everybody really liked FFV, it did help the genre advance to what many people (myself included) is the culmination of the FF series: FFVI.
FFVI had everything that made FFI-FFIV great and none of the so-called flaws of FFV, while retaining its improvements in storyline structure and technical merits, and then went far beyond. It's nice to think Chrono Trigger's was released only months later, with a similar level of excellence.
FFVII was OK, neat and and even overwhelming for its time, but it started the trend to make RPGs more mainstream-friendly, up to the current marketing and merchandise fests we see today in FFX-2, Kingdom Hearts and the such.
I like to see the transition this way, FFI-III defined the series. FFIV-FFVI reinvented it and took it to the highest standards, achieved by very few games even today. FFVII-FFIX made it accessible to the masses. FFX and beyond are definitely taking the genre and the series to a new place again, though I'm not sure I like it, I haven't played FF to the end since part X.
So, yeah, FFIV marked the beginning of the era that ended with FFVI, I certainly agree with it being one of the best games of all time. I hope none ever get remade, only ported like the PSOne versions.
According to this , the database is quite open to abuse. I hope they clean it up, unless the NASA experiment involves spamming other planets and civilizations.
The list is not complete and there are more multiplayer games coming soon. Too bad I don't have the time to put an Amazon Japan referral site to make some profit from
I don't believe this is true. I can't remember a single piece of hardware that Nintendo has pushed harder. From launch to selling world-wide in under 4 months? That hasn't happened from the big N.
Were it not for the GBA compatibility feature, I bet the DS wouldn't have been the huge success it is. The games are great, yes, but there are big gaps between them and look at how the PSP is hurting from a situation like that.
By the way, the DS is a success but it hasn't sold as well as the flagship GBA line. Look at the sales figures, the first GBA sold 12 million in the first year (67 million in 4 years), and the DS is well under 7 million for the first year. Both the GBA and the GCN were launched in several markets in a relatively short timeframe.
Furthermore, Nintendo does regard it as experimental (perhaps I emphasized it too much, I'd agree that "just" may not have been the best way to put it) and it goes as far as to call it "Nintendo's Third Pillar" along with the GBA and the GCN. Here's an interesting interview about the new paradigm and an article with Nintendo's president claiming the DS may not be a big seller.
Even Nintendo regards the DS as just a gimmicky, experimental product and pushes it as a separate architecture from their flagship Game Boy line. So, what's really gimmicky here is the GBA backwards-compatibility in the DS, just to provide it with a temporary library of games to start up with.
Just play Pac-Pix or Kirby Canvas Curse and you'll see the DS has a future, albeit in its own niche. Furthermore, the touchscreen and the microphone make the DS better suited for Internet gaming than the PSP, however sexy the latter might be. I know the PSP can use external USB devices, but we all know how the market responds to add-ons.
Sony is just jealous that Nintendo's gimmick product is outselling theirs worldwide, and is actually making a profit. Now imagine when Nintendo announces the next-gen Game Boy.
The big N's next-gen handheld could use an architecture similar to the Gamecube (as has been rumored) so that the development environment can be shared between the GCN, the Revolution and the GBA2. Things are not going to get any easier for Sony. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the PSP2 comes with an embedded mic and a touchscreen.
Now don't take me wrong, I have both devices and love them, but Sony trying to make a stupid comparison at this point can only backfire.