Hate to reply to myself, but that reminds me: if Apple comes out with a HD movie store this fall, Blu-Ray is DOA. I'd much rather put an cool Apple device in the living room than the mighty black Sony waffle-iron that they've shown for the PS3 design. Sony is losing all cachet as a premium consumer electronics brand.
The fuss is that their me-too innovation style has killed the interest from the high end and their high price has now killed the interest from the low end.
If you're a gamer that can easily afford a PS3, then you can easily afford to get an XBox 360 today, and might have a high end gaming PC as well. The fact that PS3 gameplay graphics have made people say "looks good, but not great" and the fact that it's the same DualShock gameplay we've had for so long will probably will make you say, Meh. Even if they buy it and like it, can their recommendatons drive mainstream adaption? These are the people who bought original XBox right away, how did that work out?
Now the important part about the price: if you're a gamer that can't easily afford a PS3, what's your reaction? Is it going to be to buckle down, work more hours and save up extra? What if you could work the same amount or less and get the 360 and some games? Would you spend more hours at work based on what Sony's shown us?
So, assuming the logical reaction is to turn to the Wii or the 360 instead of the PS3 what does this do to the public perception of the PS3? It pushes it to the fringes. No one's going to say "the PS3 is way better, but I just didn't have the money" -- no they're going to say "The PS3 is just the same as the 360, but overpriced" or "I really like the innovation in the Wii, the PS3 and 360 are yesterday's systems."
And what do they say about people who do buy PS3s when they themselves can't afford one? Hardcore. Fanboy. Fanatic. Loser.
Loser? Yes. Because it's conspicuous consumption, and no one who isn't in the same boat is going to validate that.
So, what they're doing is killing the Buzz and now, generating Anti-Buzz. People are starting to want this to fail. It's the very definition of a fiasco.
Can they turn it around? Possibly. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
... is "Carl Bialik from WSJ" with e-mail address "wsjarticles@wsj.com" This for an article published on the WSJ web site. I think that about says it all.
What exactly does it say? It says that someone working at the Wall Street Journal was one of the first people to know that article was live and knew it would be interesting to Slashdot. (If it wasn't interesting it wouldn't have gotten posted, right? If there was posting-payola involved they wouldn't have made it so obviously submitted by the newspaper, would they?)
That someone from the WSJ would submit their articles isn't surprising is it? Slashdot has been around for quite a few years now and its original mainstream claim to fame was its large audience(Slashdot effect). There might be a hint of impropriety if the submitter had hidden their identity, but as it is, what's the problem?
However that also carries over to some degree for the new console, as game makers anticipate similar levels of success.
Do they? At the current price point and with all the bad buzz? I don't know, but I do know two things - 1) game publishers have a long memory and the reigning champ has been knocked off the console throne more than once during a transition. 2)US game publishers do serious research before devoting resources, and right now the PS3 looks like a veritable comedy of errors -we just saw some Ubi developers slamming the PS3 today. I'm sure we'll see some wacky ideas thrown out there early on (everyone wants to make the must-have game for any new system), but I don't know that the PS3 has an edge in this. Maybe the Japan factor is enough, beats me - Japanese game developers are a black box to me - they work much differently than their counterparts in other countries.
You are underestimating how quickly you could go beyond DVD limits with HDR kinds of textures (higher bit depths). Yes, I know HDR data is huge, but we're seeing HDR in 360 games right now, and people aren't seeing much if any graphical improvement in PS3 demos over shipping 360 games.
We'll have to wait for shipping PS3s to see how things work out, but I wouldn't assume that we're going to see a repeat of development patterns for the PS3 just because the name starts with "Playstation" --- investment capitol isn't sentimental.
If you're saying that the PS3 will have a wider variety of games just because the PS2 does, you don't understand how the market works. The PS2 has the widest variety of games because they've shipped more than 100 million consoles. That means a publisher can target niches within the market and take more risks with products that don't appeal to everyone (because the total market size is so large).
If the PS3 doesn't dominate the market like the PS2 did, then it doesn't necessarily follow that all the experimental games will be released on the PS3 instead of a different console. Microsoft is actually targeting the indie developers with the XBox Live Arcade, I'm not aware of an effort to reach out to small developers by Sony.
Also, just because Blu-Ray has so much storage doesn't imply developers will use it. Most big money games will probably see both XBox 360 & PS3 releases, so they'll limit themselves to the space available on a 360 disc.
If someone does make a PS3 game that requires all the space on the Blu-Ray disc they're going to set new records for development costs. It could happen, but I don't see anyone setting out with that being their goal.
Oh sorry, I was just referencing all the marketspeak about the "HD Generation of Gaming" that Sony and Microsoft put out. The high cost comes from the fact that the system overall can support more geometry, textures, programable GPU features, etc -- and to be competitive in the Hardcore marketplace you need to push the limit in using those resources.
You're quite right that the fact that the assets are rendered at a high resolution doesn't necessarily mean anything on its own.
Your numbers are a little off. My understanding is that a XBox/PS2/Gamecube title costs $8 - $12 million to produce (with some AAA titles going into the 20s), and last I heard HD games were expected to at least double the costs. (Is it any wonder publishers are afraid to take risks with money like that involved?)
When the XBox 360 was announced you could hear industry insiders talking about the end of life as we know it - without rapid market growth we were looking at financing only 1/2 the total number of games. And market growth was an elusive target, as people started to realize that the number of actual gamers wasn't really growing in the US - they were just spending more money (and how long could we expect that?); and the Japanese market pre-DS was on the verge of collapse from genre exhaustion... well, listening to the Japanese game developers anyway - they always sounded so fatalistic.
Microsoft (for some reason) said that the XNA toolset would bring costs under control for HD games(which doesn't make sense when the art department/sweatshop eats up most of the funds) --- Sony has made no attempt that I know of to address the skyrocketing costs. Nintendo simply isn't taking their next system there.
Yes, sure, it might take more people to program a game for such a complex controller, but you aren't going to need 200 people churning out high res textures that will only be appreciated by people with HDTVs. Nintendo knows what it's doing.
Final Fantasy is a strong brand amongst the current gaming mainstream (different from the general population mainstream) because they have consistly been some of the most emotionally aware games (they actually try to have an emotional impact beyond surprising or scaring the player).
For people who judge games solely on how fun they are to play minute to minute, the brand is weak. For people who have estabilished an emotional connection to Final Fantasy, the brand is strong and that's why they sell a lot of copies. They have established loyalty beyond reason. Good for them! It makes it easier for them to sell their games.
I only bought FF 1 for the NES way back when and Tactics for the GBA; I would have gotten 7 but the PC demo scared me away with long boring animations. So this is an opinion based on how other people talk about the games rather than first hand experience.
Exxon isn't the best example. Anyone remember Senator Jim Exon from Nebraska? He's famous for authoring the Communications Decency Act of 1996 - the law that everyone had all those blue ribbons up on the web to protest.
Anyway, he started off running an office store, Exon Office Supplies and was only able to enter politics when he got a big check from Exxon for the rights to that name. Yes, they aren't spelled the same and they were in different businesses but the Secretary of State thought the names were too similar and wouldn't register the Exxon name in Nebraska until they got permission from Jim Exon. So, even with a strange and artificial name like Exxon doesn't guarantee you'll be free and clear.
If she thought it was a bad name you told her about it wrong. I told my girlfriend that it was named Wii - and quickly added "as in wheeeeee!" --- she thought the name was awesome.
Simply put, the fact that the most exciting and innovative game system in the last 20 years is not targeted at hardcore gamers is a slap in the face to a subculture that takes itself far too seriously. However, since it is the most exciting and innovative system in the last 20 years any hardcore gamer without it has outed himself as something of a fanboy and/or hypocrite. Catch-22, baby!
Cmdr Taco's value-add comment: "The quality is approximately what you would expect from flash video."
It's actually exactly what you'd expect from Flash video, because it is Flash video. That being said, what quality would you expect? I bet it differs quite a bit based on the datarate you encode it at... Perhaps he's saying it's similar in quality to YouTube or Google Video? (We only give you a hard time because we imagine that you have one of the best jobs in the world, so don't take it personally, Taco.)
For people asking about Linux versions of Flash 8 - they've had a separate team working on Flash 9 for quite a while and it's set to be released later this year (it includes significant changes for performance improvement, was in development to some extent in parallel with Flash 8) - and from what I understand as a casual obsverver they're going to release a Flash 9 player for Linux and just skip 8 entirely. This is in part because it's only relativly recently that they've added dedicated Linux staff, and in part beacuse this is the fastest switch between versions (8 to 9) that I can recall, anyway.
The hope is that Linux release will be simultaneous with the Mac/Windows launch, but I don't know if anyone's commited to that yet - or if it's just idle hope.
China is a good example of what happens to media production when piracy is rampant, the only content professionally created is content that the developer is guaranteed to be paid for. In the early 2000's (can't remember the year) I met a representative of a Chinese game company at the GDC. He said that their only hope for staying solvent was to find a US publisher to bring their games to the States because there was no money to be made in China under the traditional game development model. I beleive EA has said publicly that the only reason they release anything in the region (excluding Japan of course) is to "prime the market" for the day when piracy is no longer a problem there - build up the franchises now with subsidies from their successul regions because they were actually losing money with every title they shipped. Casual pirates should look to China to see what the logical end-result of their actions are: no money for new content development.
The Slashdot crowd continues to underestimate Microsoft and misunderstand the market. The reaction to all of this is proof of that.
Quick question: what's more important ease of use or openess of code? (Watch people talk about how you can have both and how their pet project will bring this about.)
Simply put, the web is the biggest threat to Microsoft and they're continuing to neutralize it. This is the same type of smart move they made when they stopped shipping Java because "they were forced to". Consistent ubiquitous client-side technologies that aren't controlled by Microsoft are dangerous to them. This move is all about neutralizing Flash by stacking on some FUD.
"We don't need Flash!", I hear you all scream "We have Ajax!" --- think about it, what's the difference between Flash and a browser? Microsoft controls the browser. (And it's very very unlikely that that will change as long as Windows is the dominant OS.) They're going to continue to make enchancements and include bugs in their browser that will make it less productive to do cross-browser development and then provide tools and features for Windows only use that will sidetrack people doing standards based development.
The web development community is falling into the same trap that Microsoft used to win the first browser war.
Do do you call Comic Books "Sequential art"? Me neither, see how well it worked when they tried the name game?
As impatient as well all are to reshape society, the solution isn't to change the name. New names would only get used by academics and the like. You really have to wait for people to gain their own personal respect for games. Yes, it may take multiple generations, or it may happen as more mainstream oriented and casual games increase the audience, it probably won't happen by trying to give games a new name.
If you believe Microsoft (personal choice if you do or not), then XNA is the high level API that bridges both XBox 360 and Windows Vista. They do have some experinece with such things, if you remember their NT arcitecture. That they restrict game developers to using their APIs and no direct hardware programming is the reason they were able to do software emulation of the original XBox as easily as they were on the 360. (People put off backwards compatibility as easy, but ever PS2 essentially has a mini PSOne inside of it hardware wise - when it's running PS2 games that compontent is assigned other tasks, but when the system is running a PSOne game it's running directly on PSOne hardware. I hate to think of the tangled mess the PS3 is if they've done the same thing again.)
And remember, the original XBox was x86 and the 360 is a PPC machine, so they've already bridged the gap once with their APIs. Food for thought - was the XBox really designed to take over the console market, or was it designed to prevent the console market from permanently undercutting the advantage Windows has over other platforms in games? Amongst gamers who want to switch to Macs or Linux, the availability of software is a tough nut to crack. In the console field, the proprietary nature of the hardware and software is unchallenged, unlike the desktop world.
For the last 3 years, Microsoft has said that they're extending their XBox Live service to Windows when Vista comes out. (No, I don't know why nobody has reported it either; maybe because it still seems so far off. The usb version of the XBox 360 controller [announced at the same time] has already come out.) Anyway, Halo 2 comes to mind when I think of a game that utilizes XBox Live well. It makes sense that they'd use that title to highlight the new features of Windows Vista.
Notice, btw, how they're reinforcing their overall position by leveraging their two platforms in tandem. When some people say cross-platform they're thinking Windows/Mac/Linux. When other people say cross-platform, they're thinking PC/Console. Microsoft is creating an enticing proposition for the content developers.
Honest to God that's not at all what these people are saying. What you've described is the design document for Star Wars Galaxies. (As described by its lead designer before its launch.) We know that doesn't work. What Wright is suggesting is much more interesting, but I can't imagine how you'd adopt it to the MMO framework. (Which isn't a bad thing, why do we have to keep making the same games over and over?)
The question, then, is how much will the growth of Wikipedia negativly effect Google? I know I've started doing Wikipedia searches for things I would have Googled for before.
iTunes recommends songs based on what you've purchased. Unfortunatly, they do a somewhat good job of it and keep recommending albums I already own and have in iTunes. You can click an "I already own that" button, but what a pain! Someone should recommend they add this tracking feature you speak of.
That's the thing that's pissing me off! Comments like that!:) It's not the wrong illustration if you are looking at things from the viewpoint of manufacturer->customer. It boils down to the same difference - loss of income. People get caught up in the absence of molecules and say that it's confusing. Think in terms of transactions, not in terms of boxes.
Honestly, while IP laws are more complex than real property laws, the morality of the thing never has been. The only thing that makes it grey is that so many people choose to ignore the rules that it's become mainstream.
Years ago people said "oh hey, no big deal downloading NES ROMs, there's no way you can buy those games anyway". Now that Nintendo's selling those games as GBA titles, and talking about offering them for sale via the Revolution Console is it suddenly wrong to download the ROMS - or was it wrong all along for someone to presume that they had the right to copy in the first place.
It's a separate issue from Fair Use (which is actualy pretty strict) and how the DMCA restricts Fair Use. The DMCA isn't the only reaction to this trend of unauthorised copying.
A couple years back I talked to someone from a Chinese video game firm who told me that if they couldn't find an American market for their games they would have to close up shop. There was no money to be made in China because everything was pirated. Likewise EA has said that the only reason they sell games into China is to "prime the market" for the days when money can be made there - right now they say they lose money doing a Chinese localization. World of Warcraft follows the software as a service model and they can actually make money in China. Those are a few examples of what happens when pirating goes long-term mainstream; I have to say, I don't like it.
Most of the people installing it on non-apple hardware probably wouldn't purchase apple hardware anyway.
So... is it ok if I steal a new Pontiac Aztec off the lot? They're so unpopular that they've canceled that model, it probably wouldn't have sold anyway. It'll get the Pontiac name out there. They should be happy.
The way most people are morally retrograde about copyright violations (I'm not preventing anyone else from installing OS X) continues to piss me off. No, downloading warez is not the same thing as stealing, but it is just a bad. To say otherwise is to be either willfully ignorant or uninformed.
If Apple wants to give their OS away they will do so; making a half-assed guess about what would make them happy doesn't count as consent.
If the manufacturing breakthough talked about in this article pans out, the cost of Quantum Dot manufacture will drop from $2,000 to $400 per gram. That's huge improvement, but I still wouldn't expect to see Quantum Dot lightbulbs on ThinkGeek anytime soon...
I wrote that Escapist article... My article ran long and so I had to cut quite a bit for space.
I apologize if I'm asking a dumb question, but why was your article cut for space at the expense of clarity when, to the best of my knowledge, The Escapist is 100% digital distribution?
Was it because of the graphic heavy design of the site? I appreiciate their desire to have a website where the pages are as lovely as theirs are, but if that was the case - isn't it the very definition of form over function?
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to reply to myself, but that reminds me: if Apple comes out with a HD movie store this fall, Blu-Ray is DOA. I'd much rather put an cool Apple device in the living room than the mighty black Sony waffle-iron that they've shown for the PS3 design. Sony is losing all cachet as a premium consumer electronics brand.
The fuss is that their me-too innovation style has killed the interest from the high end and their high price has now killed the interest from the low end.
If you're a gamer that can easily afford a PS3, then you can easily afford to get an XBox 360 today, and might have a high end gaming PC as well. The fact that PS3 gameplay graphics have made people say "looks good, but not great" and the fact that it's the same DualShock gameplay we've had for so long will probably will make you say, Meh. Even if they buy it and like it, can their recommendatons drive mainstream adaption? These are the people who bought original XBox right away, how did that work out?
Now the important part about the price: if you're a gamer that can't easily afford a PS3, what's your reaction? Is it going to be to buckle down, work more hours and save up extra? What if you could work the same amount or less and get the 360 and some games? Would you spend more hours at work based on what Sony's shown us?
So, assuming the logical reaction is to turn to the Wii or the 360 instead of the PS3 what does this do to the public perception of the PS3? It pushes it to the fringes. No one's going to say "the PS3 is way better, but I just didn't have the money" -- no they're going to say "The PS3 is just the same as the 360, but overpriced" or "I really like the innovation in the Wii, the PS3 and 360 are yesterday's systems."
And what do they say about people who do buy PS3s when they themselves can't afford one? Hardcore. Fanboy. Fanatic. Loser.
Loser? Yes. Because it's conspicuous consumption, and no one who isn't in the same boat is going to validate that.
So, what they're doing is killing the Buzz and now, generating Anti-Buzz. People are starting to want this to fail. It's the very definition of a fiasco.
Can they turn it around? Possibly. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
... is "Carl Bialik from WSJ" with e-mail address "wsjarticles@wsj.com"
This for an article published on the WSJ web site.
I think that about says it all.
What exactly does it say? It says that someone working at the Wall Street Journal was one of the first people to know that article was live and knew it would be interesting to Slashdot. (If it wasn't interesting it wouldn't have gotten posted, right? If there was posting-payola involved they wouldn't have made it so obviously submitted by the newspaper, would they?)
That someone from the WSJ would submit their articles isn't surprising is it? Slashdot has been around for quite a few years now and its original mainstream claim to fame was its large audience(Slashdot effect). There might be a hint of impropriety if the submitter had hidden their identity, but as it is, what's the problem?
However that also carries over to some degree for the new console, as game makers anticipate similar levels of success.
Do they? At the current price point and with all the bad buzz? I don't know, but I do know two things - 1) game publishers have a long memory and the reigning champ has been knocked off the console throne more than once during a transition. 2)US game publishers do serious research before devoting resources, and right now the PS3 looks like a veritable comedy of errors -we just saw some Ubi developers slamming the PS3 today. I'm sure we'll see some wacky ideas thrown out there early on (everyone wants to make the must-have game for any new system), but I don't know that the PS3 has an edge in this. Maybe the Japan factor is enough, beats me - Japanese game developers are a black box to me - they work much differently than their counterparts in other countries.
You are underestimating how quickly you could go beyond DVD limits with HDR kinds of textures (higher bit depths).
Yes, I know HDR data is huge, but we're seeing HDR in 360 games right now, and people aren't seeing much if any graphical improvement in PS3 demos over shipping 360 games.
We'll have to wait for shipping PS3s to see how things work out, but I wouldn't assume that we're going to see a repeat of development patterns for the PS3 just because the name starts with "Playstation" --- investment capitol isn't sentimental.
If you're saying that the PS3 will have a wider variety of games just because the PS2 does, you don't understand how the market works. The PS2 has the widest variety of games because they've shipped more than 100 million consoles. That means a publisher can target niches within the market and take more risks with products that don't appeal to everyone (because the total market size is so large).
If the PS3 doesn't dominate the market like the PS2 did, then it doesn't necessarily follow that all the experimental games will be released on the PS3 instead of a different console. Microsoft is actually targeting the indie developers with the XBox Live Arcade, I'm not aware of an effort to reach out to small developers by Sony.
Also, just because Blu-Ray has so much storage doesn't imply developers will use it. Most big money games will probably see both XBox 360 & PS3 releases, so they'll limit themselves to the space available on a 360 disc.
If someone does make a PS3 game that requires all the space on the Blu-Ray disc they're going to set new records for development costs. It could happen, but I don't see anyone setting out with that being their goal.
Oh sorry, I was just referencing all the marketspeak about the "HD Generation of Gaming" that Sony and Microsoft put out. The high cost comes from the fact that the system overall can support more geometry, textures, programable GPU features, etc -- and to be competitive in the Hardcore marketplace you need to push the limit in using those resources.
You're quite right that the fact that the assets are rendered at a high resolution doesn't necessarily mean anything on its own.
Your numbers are a little off. My understanding is that a XBox/PS2/Gamecube title costs $8 - $12 million to produce (with some AAA titles going into the 20s), and last I heard HD games were expected to at least double the costs. (Is it any wonder publishers are afraid to take risks with money like that involved?)
When the XBox 360 was announced you could hear industry insiders talking about the end of life as we know it - without rapid market growth we were looking at financing only 1/2 the total number of games. And market growth was an elusive target, as people started to realize that the number of actual gamers wasn't really growing in the US - they were just spending more money (and how long could we expect that?); and the Japanese market pre-DS was on the verge of collapse from genre exhaustion... well, listening to the Japanese game developers anyway - they always sounded so fatalistic.
Microsoft (for some reason) said that the XNA toolset would bring costs under control for HD games(which doesn't make sense when the art department/sweatshop eats up most of the funds) --- Sony has made no attempt that I know of to address the skyrocketing costs. Nintendo simply isn't taking their next system there.
Yes, sure, it might take more people to program a game for such a complex controller, but you aren't going to need 200 people churning out high res textures that will only be appreciated by people with HDTVs. Nintendo knows what it's doing.
Final Fantasy is a strong brand amongst the current gaming mainstream (different from the general population mainstream) because they have consistly been some of the most emotionally aware games (they actually try to have an emotional impact beyond surprising or scaring the player).
For people who judge games solely on how fun they are to play minute to minute, the brand is weak. For people who have estabilished an emotional connection to Final Fantasy, the brand is strong and that's why they sell a lot of copies. They have established loyalty beyond reason. Good for them! It makes it easier for them to sell their games.
I only bought FF 1 for the NES way back when and Tactics for the GBA; I would have gotten 7 but the PC demo scared me away with long boring animations. So this is an opinion based on how other people talk about the games rather than first hand experience.
Exxon isn't the best example. Anyone remember Senator Jim Exon from Nebraska? He's famous for authoring the Communications Decency Act of 1996 - the law that everyone had all those blue ribbons up on the web to protest.
Anyway, he started off running an office store, Exon Office Supplies and was only able to enter politics when he got a big check from Exxon for the rights to that name. Yes, they aren't spelled the same and they were in different businesses but the Secretary of State thought the names were too similar and wouldn't register the Exxon name in Nebraska until they got permission from Jim Exon. So, even with a strange and artificial name like Exxon doesn't guarantee you'll be free and clear.
If she thought it was a bad name you told her about it wrong. I told my girlfriend that it was named Wii - and quickly added "as in wheeeeee!" --- she thought the name was awesome.
Simply put, the fact that the most exciting and innovative game system in the last 20 years is not targeted at hardcore gamers is a slap in the face to a subculture that takes itself far too seriously. However, since it is the most exciting and innovative system in the last 20 years any hardcore gamer without it has outed himself as something of a fanboy and/or hypocrite. Catch-22, baby!
The submitted text:
"it requires Flash 8"
Cmdr Taco's value-add comment:
"The quality is approximately what you would expect from flash video."
It's actually exactly what you'd expect from Flash video, because it is Flash video. That being said, what quality would you expect? I bet it differs quite a bit based on the datarate you encode it at... Perhaps he's saying it's similar in quality to YouTube or Google Video? (We only give you a hard time because we imagine that you have one of the best jobs in the world, so don't take it personally, Taco.)
For people asking about Linux versions of Flash 8 - they've had a separate team working on Flash 9 for quite a while and it's set to be released later this year (it includes significant changes for performance improvement, was in development to some extent in parallel with Flash 8) - and from what I understand as a casual obsverver they're going to release a Flash 9 player for Linux and just skip 8 entirely. This is in part because it's only relativly recently that they've added dedicated Linux staff, and in part beacuse this is the fastest switch between versions (8 to 9) that I can recall, anyway.
The hope is that Linux release will be simultaneous with the Mac/Windows launch, but I don't know if anyone's commited to that yet - or if it's just idle hope.
China is a good example of what happens to media production when piracy is rampant, the only content professionally created is content that the developer is guaranteed to be paid for. In the early 2000's (can't remember the year) I met a representative of a Chinese game company at the GDC. He said that their only hope for staying solvent was to find a US publisher to bring their games to the States because there was no money to be made in China under the traditional game development model. I beleive EA has said publicly that the only reason they release anything in the region (excluding Japan of course) is to "prime the market" for the day when piracy is no longer a problem there - build up the franchises now with subsidies from their successul regions because they were actually losing money with every title they shipped. Casual pirates should look to China to see what the logical end-result of their actions are: no money for new content development.
The Slashdot crowd continues to underestimate Microsoft and misunderstand the market. The reaction to all of this is proof of that.
Quick question: what's more important ease of use or openess of code? (Watch people talk about how you can have both and how their pet project will bring this about.)
Simply put, the web is the biggest threat to Microsoft and they're continuing to neutralize it. This is the same type of smart move they made when they stopped shipping Java because "they were forced to". Consistent ubiquitous client-side technologies that aren't controlled by Microsoft are dangerous to them. This move is all about neutralizing Flash by stacking on some FUD.
"We don't need Flash!", I hear you all scream "We have Ajax!" --- think about it, what's the difference between Flash and a browser? Microsoft controls the browser. (And it's very very unlikely that that will change as long as Windows is the dominant OS.) They're going to continue to make enchancements and include bugs in their browser that will make it less productive to do cross-browser development and then provide tools and features for Windows only use that will sidetrack people doing standards based development.
The web development community is falling into the same trap that Microsoft used to win the first browser war.
Do do you call Comic Books "Sequential art"? Me neither, see how well it worked when they tried the name game?
As impatient as well all are to reshape society, the solution isn't to change the name. New names would only get used by academics and the like. You really have to wait for people to gain their own personal respect for games. Yes, it may take multiple generations, or it may happen as more mainstream oriented and casual games increase the audience, it probably won't happen by trying to give games a new name.
If you believe Microsoft (personal choice if you do or not), then XNA is the high level API that bridges both XBox 360 and Windows Vista. They do have some experinece with such things, if you remember their NT arcitecture. That they restrict game developers to using their APIs and no direct hardware programming is the reason they were able to do software emulation of the original XBox as easily as they were on the 360. (People put off backwards compatibility as easy, but ever PS2 essentially has a mini PSOne inside of it hardware wise - when it's running PS2 games that compontent is assigned other tasks, but when the system is running a PSOne game it's running directly on PSOne hardware. I hate to think of the tangled mess the PS3 is if they've done the same thing again.)
And remember, the original XBox was x86 and the 360 is a PPC machine, so they've already bridged the gap once with their APIs. Food for thought - was the XBox really designed to take over the console market, or was it designed to prevent the console market from permanently undercutting the advantage Windows has over other platforms in games? Amongst gamers who want to switch to Macs or Linux, the availability of software is a tough nut to crack. In the console field, the proprietary nature of the hardware and software is unchallenged, unlike the desktop world.
For the last 3 years, Microsoft has said that they're extending their XBox Live service to Windows when Vista comes out. (No, I don't know why nobody has reported it either; maybe because it still seems so far off. The usb version of the XBox 360 controller [announced at the same time] has already come out.) Anyway, Halo 2 comes to mind when I think of a game that utilizes XBox Live well. It makes sense that they'd use that title to highlight the new features of Windows Vista.
Notice, btw, how they're reinforcing their overall position by leveraging their two platforms in tandem. When some people say cross-platform they're thinking Windows/Mac/Linux. When other people say cross-platform, they're thinking PC/Console. Microsoft is creating an enticing proposition for the content developers.
Honest to God that's not at all what these people are saying. What you've described is the design document for Star Wars Galaxies. (As described by its lead designer before its launch.) We know that doesn't work. What Wright is suggesting is much more interesting, but I can't imagine how you'd adopt it to the MMO framework. (Which isn't a bad thing, why do we have to keep making the same games over and over?)
The question, then, is how much will the growth of Wikipedia negativly effect Google? I know I've started doing Wikipedia searches for things I would have Googled for before.
iTunes recommends songs based on what you've purchased. Unfortunatly, they do a somewhat good job of it and keep recommending albums I already own and have in iTunes. You can click an "I already own that" button, but what a pain! Someone should recommend they add this tracking feature you speak of.
Piracy destroys demand.
Wrong illustration:...
:) It's not the wrong illustration if you are looking at things from the viewpoint of manufacturer->customer. It boils down to the same difference - loss of income. People get caught up in the absence of molecules and say that it's confusing. Think in terms of transactions, not in terms of boxes.
That's the thing that's pissing me off! Comments like that!
Honestly, while IP laws are more complex than real property laws, the morality of the thing never has been. The only thing that makes it grey is that so many people choose to ignore the rules that it's become mainstream.
Years ago people said "oh hey, no big deal downloading NES ROMs, there's no way you can buy those games anyway". Now that Nintendo's selling those games as GBA titles, and talking about offering them for sale via the Revolution Console is it suddenly wrong to download the ROMS - or was it wrong all along for someone to presume that they had the right to copy in the first place.
It's a separate issue from Fair Use (which is actualy pretty strict) and how the DMCA restricts Fair Use. The DMCA isn't the only reaction to this trend of unauthorised copying.
A couple years back I talked to someone from a Chinese video game firm who told me that if they couldn't find an American market for their games they would have to close up shop. There was no money to be made in China because everything was pirated. Likewise EA has said that the only reason they sell games into China is to "prime the market" for the days when money can be made there - right now they say they lose money doing a Chinese localization. World of Warcraft follows the software as a service model and they can actually make money in China. Those are a few examples of what happens when pirating goes long-term mainstream; I have to say, I don't like it.
Most of the people installing it on non-apple hardware probably wouldn't purchase apple hardware anyway.
So... is it ok if I steal a new Pontiac Aztec off the lot? They're so unpopular that they've canceled that model, it probably wouldn't have sold anyway. It'll get the Pontiac name out there. They should be happy.
The way most people are morally retrograde about copyright violations (I'm not preventing anyone else from installing OS X) continues to piss me off. No, downloading warez is not the same thing as stealing, but it is just a bad. To say otherwise is to be either willfully ignorant or uninformed.
If Apple wants to give their OS away they will do so; making a half-assed guess about what would make them happy doesn't count as consent.
If the manufacturing breakthough talked about in this article pans out, the cost of Quantum Dot manufacture will drop from $2,000 to $400 per gram. That's huge improvement, but I still wouldn't expect to see Quantum Dot lightbulbs on ThinkGeek anytime soon...
I wrote that Escapist article... My article ran long and so I had to cut quite a bit for space.
I apologize if I'm asking a dumb question, but why was your article cut for space at the expense of clarity when, to the best of my knowledge, The Escapist is 100% digital distribution?
Was it because of the graphic heavy design of the site? I appreiciate their desire to have a website where the pages are as lovely as theirs are, but if that was the case - isn't it the very definition of form over function?
I just saw this article about Podsafe music, music that can be used in Podcasts, and thought I should add it to the thread.f e-music/
http://www.ipodarmy.com/2005/06/how-to-find-podsa
Unfortunatly it doesn't look like much commercial music is Podsafe.