I haven't played D&D Online, but I do play Lord of the Rings Online, which is also a Turbine game, and I believe the free / pay sub model works similarly.
I'm a paying subscriber to LOTRO. As a paying sub, I get no limits on gold, bank use, auctions, etc. I also get 500 Coins a month to spend in the LOTRO Store.
This does NOT get me all the content. Want Mines of Moria? That's extra. Want Mirkwood Forest? That's extra. Want Rise of Isengard? That's extra.
But you know what? Say I'm a World of Warcraft subscriber. Want Outland? That's extra. Want Northrend? That's extra. Want Cataclysm? That's extra.
Being a paying subscriber to Turbine games doesn't get you the expansions free. However, you CAN buy the expansions with Coins. The Coins that you get for free for being a paying sub. And it's not all that many. If you don't spend them on cosmetic things, you'll easily have enough to buy the expansion when you get to the relevant level. (I don't think Isengard is on the store for Coins yet, but it's brand-new.)
So in effect, I got the Mirkwood expansion for free, because I used 'bonus points' from being a paid sub to get it. And I wasn't anywhere near level to get into Mirkwood yet.
And again I don't play DDO, but in LOTRO you can earn coins in-game. If you're willing to grind Deeds, it's possible to buy all content and play the entire game without spending any real money. But you'll spend a lot of time on things like 'Kill 100 Goblins in the Shire'.
As I understand it the C&D wasn't for modifying Android, it was for bundling the Google Apps in with the modified Android. (You can still get them with Cyanogenmod, but now they're a separate download.)
I was able to play MP3s (in mono!) on my Amiga 3000 T. That was a 25 MHz 68040; given the difference in architecture, a 486/50 should be able to handle it. I know a 486/75 can handle MP3s; that's what's in my old Thinkpad.
Video's a matter of choosing an appropriate format. Quicktime 2, anyone?
Only if you also have a landline phone. In a lot of areas, subsidized phones are cellular, not landline; and even if a person isn't getting a subsidized phone, if money's tight they're likely to only have a cell because they're much more useful in an emergency.
I used to get up at two or three in the morning and go fishing before school.
Seems like a perfectly valid reason to be out of the house after midnight to me.
Just because YOUR teen-hood was so dull you didn't have a reason to be out late doesn't mean there aren't reasons. Hell, I had a couple of friends who would take late-night walks in the cemetery and write angsty bad poetry. Weird? Maybe. Worth arresting them over? No.
It doesn't say the drive doesn't use DVD or BluRay technology.
It says the machine won't do DVD or BluRay movie playback.
At 25 GB per disc, it's probably a single-layer BluRay disc. They're just not paying the license fees for the software to play back BR movies.
My understanding is that DVD player and BR player license fees are roughly ten bucks each, so if your console plays DVDs and BRs, it costs $20 per unit more to ship.
Steam's offline mode is far from perfect. I've lost count of the number of times I've had games cease working until I went online, even if they showed 'ready to play' in Offline Mode.
Yes, even single-player games with no internet functionality at all.
It's also really annoying that there's no way to throttle Steam's download speed, since it's capable of completely saturating my net connection so no one in the house can even check their email.
And it detects all the software bandwidth throttles I've tried to use and ceases downloading at all until I turn them off and let it have every byte it can slurp.
Then there's also that if Steam knows there's a patch, but it's not downloaded, you can't start the game even in offline mode until you download the patch.
I've played through the demo on the PC, and it's about what I thought it would be. It's neither amazingly good nor bad gameplay wise; it's typical shooter gameplay with some goofy weapons and a sophmoric sense of humor.
That's because there are now software PhysX drivers.
Originally you needed a dedicated hardware PCI card that did PhysX and nothing but PhysX.
The problem there was that so few people had the hardware that no one would develop games for it, and since there were no games for it no one bought the card. The point of software PhysX was to let people without the card run the games, so the developer's investment in PhysX wasn't a total waste... and then there'd be enough PhysX games to get people to buy a PhysX card.
It didn't work out that way, especially after nVidia bought Ageia.
Somehow, the demo for Brutal Legend managed to entirely avoid mentioning that the game is actually a mediocre RTS. The demo was just a third-person action-combat segment.
It's not trivial. the SID is a cast-iron bitch to emulate. You can write an emulator that theoretically ought to be perfect, and could match the SID 'reference' perfectly.. but it wouldn't sound right, because the SID was notoriously variable, had a lot of internal interference and crosstalk, and in general had a unique sound that's a pain to try to emulate.
Heck, even different SID chips from the same _batch_ would sound different, and there were different models of SID in the 'breadbox' C64s and the slip C64C/C128.
This guy doesn't have the license for AmigaOS 4. It's a whole legal mess, but in all important ways Amiga, Inc has lost the rights to the Amiga OS, and Hyperion Entertainment isn't about to license it; and the "Workbench" trademark is actually owned by Cloanto, who make the official, legal Amiga emulator package.
If it can't run AmigaOS or at least something else called 'Workbench' you'd have a hard time selling it as an Amiga.
Er, they released a firmware update to fix the software issue, and while they did say they haven't gotten all that many complaints about the hinges, they do appear to be fixing/replacing them for people with a bad hinge.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't played D&D Online, but I do play Lord of the Rings Online, which is also a Turbine game, and I believe the free / pay sub model works similarly.
I'm a paying subscriber to LOTRO. As a paying sub, I get no limits on gold, bank use, auctions, etc. I also get 500 Coins a month to spend in the LOTRO Store.
This does NOT get me all the content. Want Mines of Moria? That's extra. Want Mirkwood Forest? That's extra. Want Rise of Isengard? That's extra.
But you know what? Say I'm a World of Warcraft subscriber. Want Outland? That's extra. Want Northrend? That's extra. Want Cataclysm? That's extra.
Being a paying subscriber to Turbine games doesn't get you the expansions free. However, you CAN buy the expansions with Coins. The Coins that you get for free for being a paying sub. And it's not all that many. If you don't spend them on cosmetic things, you'll easily have enough to buy the expansion when you get to the relevant level. (I don't think Isengard is on the store for Coins yet, but it's brand-new.)
So in effect, I got the Mirkwood expansion for free, because I used 'bonus points' from being a paid sub to get it. And I wasn't anywhere near level to get into Mirkwood yet.
And again I don't play DDO, but in LOTRO you can earn coins in-game. If you're willing to grind Deeds, it's possible to buy all content and play the entire game without spending any real money. But you'll spend a lot of time on things like 'Kill 100 Goblins in the Shire'.
Several of my coworkers have gotten their kids an iPod Touch to play games on.
So yeah, I'd say the market's not only there, it's already being reasonably well served.
This raises the question of 'How did they do this in World War II, before we had GPS?'
Fancy modern crap breaks sometimes. This is why we have amazing technology called 'maps'.
As I understand it the C&D wasn't for modifying Android, it was for bundling the Google Apps in with the modified Android. (You can still get them with Cyanogenmod, but now they're a separate download.)
I was able to play MP3s (in mono!) on my Amiga 3000 T. That was a 25 MHz 68040; given the difference in architecture, a 486/50 should be able to handle it. I know a 486/75 can handle MP3s; that's what's in my old Thinkpad.
Video's a matter of choosing an appropriate format. Quicktime 2, anyone?
Only if you also have a landline phone. In a lot of areas, subsidized phones are cellular, not landline; and even if a person isn't getting a subsidized phone, if money's tight they're likely to only have a cell because they're much more useful in an emergency.
I used to get up at two or three in the morning and go fishing before school.
Seems like a perfectly valid reason to be out of the house after midnight to me.
Just because YOUR teen-hood was so dull you didn't have a reason to be out late doesn't mean there aren't reasons. Hell, I had a couple of friends who would take late-night walks in the cemetery and write angsty bad poetry. Weird? Maybe. Worth arresting them over? No.
Every PS3 model has an HDMI port. While they were considering releasing a model without it, every shipped PS3 has one.
While an e-book reader with always-on 3G doesn't really make browsing any easier, it certainly makes impulse buys of books dead simple.
There are a crapload of people who were BORN in rural areas who don't make enough money to MOVE to the city.
And even if they did move to a city, are there jobs there?
I'm in a suburb (not a rural area!) with no wired broadband. I'd love to move somewhere else. But it's just not financially feasible.
Nonstandard movie formats just don't fly. People don't want movies that can only be played on one particular gizmo.
Seen many UMD movies lately? No? There's a reason for that.
There were TV show cartridges for the Game Boy, but I've never seen a movie released for the DS. You could fit a feature film on a DS cart.
It doesn't say the drive doesn't use DVD or BluRay technology.
It says the machine won't do DVD or BluRay movie playback.
At 25 GB per disc, it's probably a single-layer BluRay disc. They're just not paying the license fees for the software to play back BR movies.
My understanding is that DVD player and BR player license fees are roughly ten bucks each, so if your console plays DVDs and BRs, it costs $20 per unit more to ship.
Steam's offline mode is far from perfect. I've lost count of the number of times I've had games cease working until I went online, even if they showed 'ready to play' in Offline Mode.
Yes, even single-player games with no internet functionality at all.
It's also really annoying that there's no way to throttle Steam's download speed, since it's capable of completely saturating my net connection so no one in the house can even check their email.
And it detects all the software bandwidth throttles I've tried to use and ceases downloading at all until I turn them off and let it have every byte it can slurp.
Then there's also that if Steam knows there's a patch, but it's not downloaded, you can't start the game even in offline mode until you download the patch.
I've played through the demo on the PC, and it's about what I thought it would be. It's neither amazingly good nor bad gameplay wise; it's typical shooter gameplay with some goofy weapons and a sophmoric sense of humor.
Which is what I expected from a Duke Nukem game.
The current version of Lotus Symphony is a fork of OpenOffice that IBM did quite a bit of work on. It's actually pretty nice.
I've only needed to defrag a Linux box when the hard drive was allowed to get too full. But OSX? Yes.
In fact, the page you linked to reported performance improvements in Spotlight and Mail after defragmenting with iDefrag.
Wait, what? How would Apple letting people buy something from Apple and make their own disc on an Apple using software provided by Apple be illegal?
That's because there are now software PhysX drivers.
Originally you needed a dedicated hardware PCI card that did PhysX and nothing but PhysX.
The problem there was that so few people had the hardware that no one would develop games for it, and since there were no games for it no one bought the card. The point of software PhysX was to let people without the card run the games, so the developer's investment in PhysX wasn't a total waste... and then there'd be enough PhysX games to get people to buy a PhysX card.
It didn't work out that way, especially after nVidia bought Ageia.
Because the price of the console is largely in the parts and manufacturing.
The price of the game is largely labor.
Game prices ARE comparable to what they were 'back when'.
Adjusted for inflation, Pitfall! for the Atari 2600 was a $66 game. Centauri Alliance for the C-64 was $60.
And even if you don't adjust for inflation, some Super Nintendo titles were over $70.
For you, maybe. I really enjoy some of the special features on my DVDs.
I don't often watch the movie with a commentary track enabled, but I really like Making Of.. features, and the like.
And the bloopers reel on Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas was really, really funny.
Somehow, the demo for Brutal Legend managed to entirely avoid mentioning that the game is actually a mediocre RTS. The demo was just a third-person action-combat segment.
It's not trivial. the SID is a cast-iron bitch to emulate. You can write an emulator that theoretically ought to be perfect, and could match the SID 'reference' perfectly.. but it wouldn't sound right, because the SID was notoriously variable, had a lot of internal interference and crosstalk, and in general had a unique sound that's a pain to try to emulate.
Heck, even different SID chips from the same _batch_ would sound different, and there were different models of SID in the 'breadbox' C64s and the slip C64C/C128.
This guy doesn't have the license for AmigaOS 4. It's a whole legal mess, but in all important ways Amiga, Inc has lost the rights to the Amiga OS, and Hyperion Entertainment isn't about to license it; and the "Workbench" trademark is actually owned by Cloanto, who make the official, legal Amiga emulator package.
If it can't run AmigaOS or at least something else called 'Workbench' you'd have a hard time selling it as an Amiga.
Er, they released a firmware update to fix the software issue, and while they did say they haven't gotten all that many complaints about the hinges, they do appear to be fixing/replacing them for people with a bad hinge.
'Downplays' may be putting it a bit too strongly.