They're not going to add a major input device to the system this late in its lifetime. Period. And there's little reason to revise the PSP, which is already quite tightly packed in. It has to be a certain minimum size to support a sizable screen, and a smaller screen ain't going to fly, especially not at PSP prices. I think the whole thing is a bunch of crap:) With that said, how far off can the PSP's successor be?
I think a PSP with a detachable or separate UMD would be an enormous improvement . Allow users to plug their UMD reader to the PSP, copy the game or movie to some persistent memory and detach. The PSP is lighter, uses less power and the games load faster. With some clever design you could even incorporate the UMD drive into a charging stand.
I expect you could save at least 1/3 by volume and weight from doing such a thing.
Well yes it does. You get to roam public and private spaces, play the mini games, talk shit with other PS3 owners, make friends, form groups, congregate in special interest areas etc. Of course it's got advertising, but then it's free so what do you expect? The danger to Sony is that all of the above has to be attractive to players - it has to load fast and offer compelling functionality despite the ads. If it's just a hollow exercise halls in flogging billboard space (and metric tracking reports of how often they're in view etc.) then the thing will tank and rightly so.
More concerning is the trend to put advertising into things you've already paid for. For example Crackdown has live advertising thanks to Massive - Microsoft's in-game marketing functionality.
Sony will have to get their priorities right Home will work if they get the balance. You claim it's a 12 year old girl's fantasy, but if Home allowed clans to set up meeting rooms, some idle amusements like small games, bowling, pool, movie trailers etc. and offered some form of integration with games, then I see no reason it couldn't work. Even allowing people to visit each other's rooms and talk shit would be an attraction to some.
Obviously if it were just some hollow, pointless affair that lived separately from your gaming experience it probably will fail (or be revamped). Let's hope Sony know what they're doing.
Unless Apple partner up with some telco's, the iPhones future is determined - it will fail. While I'm sure a few posers will fork out $600 for a phone, most people will continue to use their heavily subsidized phones that the networks provide for a fraction of the price.
I do this also on my pages. I also mangle certain things like affiliate links, AdSense ids etc. not for any particular reason except I don't like the idea of any search engine inadvertantly indexing them.
First of all, not everything that is a law is fair and just. If its an entirely legitimate law, then I say the law and the lawsuit are bullshit. There's nothing "grey" about importing that wasn't made up by huge powerful companies and forced into law.
Are you saying companies should not be able to control how their products are sold when there is a law there to assist them in doing it?
Second, Lik-Sang's entire business is importing. If they're sued over importing, what exactly do they have left to fall back on? Its a no brainer that they would close up shop.
Funny, but plenty of companies make a legitimate business from importing goods. In the computer & video game space you have play-asia.com for example, plus countless eBay based outfits. Perhaps because they have the sense to do it legally, and comply with cease and desist notices. If Lik-Sang felt like building their house on sand then that's too bad for them. It isn't like it's the first time they've been in legal hot water with console makers either.
Third, they didn't show up for the legal preceedings because it was blindingly obvious that there was no way they would be able to defend against it, when they're being sued in practically every EU country.
That's a pretty feeble cop-out. They could have protected their chief market of the UK if they felt like and set a precedent for the others. They could have even taken it you the Europen Court for a definitive ruling (EU courts trump national courts). They didn't turn up at all. It's not like they didn't have EU presence since they had a large warehouse operation running in Germany.
Nintendo suing Lik-Sang doesn't make it right either.
Nintendo within their rights too. While personally I think mod-chips have some legitimate uses, they also have plenty illegitimate uses too. And while personally I think the problem is of the console company's own making for introducing regional coding, that does not grant a licence for others to sell chips that aid piracy. I expect Lik-Sang were sent cease and desist notices about selling mod chips too until they were stamped on. They could have complied then too.
In short, yes, it was bullshit. I'm not giving Sony a free pass because their PR team tries to spin it as a fair and just ruling.
It was fair and just. Sony told them to cease and desist. A whole year later and they still hadn't. If Lik-Sang had any chance of winning they would have shown up in court. Instead they cut their losses and ran. It wouldn't surprise me if the same people involved weren't amongst those selling on eBay right now.
No, the lawsuits were entirely legitimate. The EU has laws concerning the import of "grey" merchandise (i.e. without the manufacturers consent), and Sony exercised their rights to have the matter brought to court.
Lik-Sang were sent a cease and desist nearly a full year before hand so it's not like they didn't see it coming. Even before their laid off staff even had the chance to get pregnant. Besides, Lik-Sang didn't even show up for the legal proceedings and shut shop voluntarily. They could have carried on in business simply by discontinuing selling grey imports when they were requested.
It's not like Microsoft or Nintendo aren't dancing on their graves either. Both took Lik-Sang to court beforehand.
Actually I believe Zonk is generally anti Sony, but neither Nintendo nor Microsoft produced any earth shaking announcements at the GDC, so what to you expect the headlines to say? Sony is the news because unveiled two extremely massive things while competition shoved out a few extra video clips. The headlines reflect that.
While your notebook may not have any problems with sleep it is probably the exception. Lots of windows boxes will sleep but when you bring them back up sound won't work or usb ports won't work. It's a pain.
Usually true for desktop PCs, but most laptops appear to sleep / hibernate just fine. I have an IBM laptop which I hibernate every night. It literally goes months between reboots.
My experience of XP and Vista hibernate on the desktop is not so good. Under XP desktop machine hibernate used to throw an error. Under Vista it does appear to work, but sometimes the Sleep function hibernates and then wakes up instantly which is extremely annoying when I discover my machine still turned on after I told it to turn off.
But the interface of Office 2007 is vastly different from that of OpenOffice. Those students may eventually be employed by someone who uses Office 2007 internally within their organization, and wants new employees to be familiar with it without any training, mandating prior experience. In this sense, the students being allowed to buy Office 2007 for cheap is a Good Thing for them.
I think that's a pretty tenuous justification for using Office over some other product. If these people are students then presumably it is because they're obtaining a higher education, not some office typists job.
Anyway as students, I wonder if even $75 is too much. I have a well paid job and I don't feel motivated to use MS Office for my day to day home use. I actually have a properly licenced copy of Word that I got with my last PC but I haven't been inclined to install it on my current PC because OpenOffice really does the job quite well. It's not perfect and some parts frankly suck balls, but overall the experience is fine and things like built-in PDF support are great.
Having said that, if a student told me they had to write long papers I would probably advise them to use MSO. OO has some outlining abilities but its pretty poor compared to Microsoft's. Otherwise I don't see much justification, even for cheap.
You're the one using the word "stole", he said "ripped off".
"I tell you, Sony's arrogance is truly something to behold. The irony is that they're competing against MS, which had traditionally been known for stealing ideas. This time, it's Sony who appears to be stealing everything. And they don't even appear to be implementing anything particularly well."
And yes, the motion controller deal, Sony just has this funny habit of seeing a competitor's work and coming out with something similar a few months later.
Do you seriously believe Sony started work on this Home idea in November? Funnily enough if you go Googling for "E3 cyber world Sony" you'll see they've been mulling the idea in public as long back as 2004, and probably longer in private.
Did any of those say that they originated these ideas? Does Forza say "THE FIRST REALISTIC RACING GAME, EVER" on the box? Does Blue Dragon ever clain innovation in the RPG world? I don't think so. Oh, and the gamecube network adapter came out christmas of '02, while Xbox Live went live November of '02. I bet it was in production for more than a month, eh? And yes, the motion controller deal, Sony just has this funny habit of seeing a competitor's work and coming out with something similar a few months later. And the main selling point of the iPod was a hard drive in something that size (gee, that's pretty new) and its slick interface (completly new!), not that it plays MP3s.
In what reality does a fully networked virtual world take a "few months" to do. Don't you understand that Sony have been working on this a long time? Years probably.
I see no resemblance to the Wii or Mii in what they produced. The Mii is Mr Potato Head that you can play in a couple of games. Sony's Home appears to more resemble 3D lobbies with no in-game avatar functionality. And the avatar customisation is different too (more akin to MMPORG character generation). Home also has little in common to XBox Live. Trophies are certainly comparable to achievements, but then there is the whole 3D paradigm of placing them in a virtual room. And achievements are just extensions of things games have been doing for a while anyway (e.g. Insane stunts in GTA).
I think a stronger comparison can be made to Second Life, in terms of presentation. But Second Life isn't new either. I've commented on Second Life a few times in the past (way before this Sony stuff came up), and pointed out that I played Second Life 15 years ago - it was called TinyMUD. Second Life is TinyMUD with VRML on top. Or if you prefer to take the tone of the GP and accuse them of stealing, look no further than Active Worlds which came out way before Second Life ever did.
Simply put you can't accuse Sony of stealing and then make excuses for others whose products were similarly influenced by others before. It doesn't make any sense.
No my "denial" is based on the fact that the avatars in the Wii are not "system wide". Only a few games choose to use them and the rest don't and can't. On top of that plenty of games, and other software has featured customisable avatars including customisable features way before the Wii turned up. Furthermore, the Wii avatar is just a computerised Mr Potato Head. There is no virtualised world to roam, no significant interaction, no emoticons and very little else in common with Sony Home. To claim that the Sony is "stealing" from Nintendo is utter nonsense.
You would have more of a case to claim Sony are stealing from Second Life, but even that is just an extension of an idea which has been around a very long time. Customizable worlds and avatars have been knocking around for 15 years or more.
Chose to use it or was permitted to use it? My understanding from recent news clippings is that no 3rd party game has been permitted to access the Mii avatar because there is no API available to do so. And of 1st party games only two use it - Wii Sports and the excrable Wii Play. That's hardly some claim to fame.
Okay, first of all they rip off Second Life and The Sims--only with annoying ads flashing everywhere and the "opportunity" to give them money to buy virtual crap for your generic apartment, with no REAL customization (i.e. letting you build your OWN stuff, like in Second Life). Then they tout it like THEY discovered this whole idea (as if about 100 other online worlds hadn't been doing it for YEARS). Then, for a topper, they throw in their obvious knockoffs of the "Mii" and the 360's achievements.
What the hell are you smoking? Most products whether you care to admit it or not are ripped off or heavily influenced by products that preceded them. You claim Sony "stole" Second Life, but the fact is that Second Life ripped off from The Sims Online, VRML (and wannabes), IRC, various 3D IRCs and MUDs. And by your reasoning The Sims "stole" from Little Computer Person which "stole" it's ideas from pet ownership. You claim Sony "stole" from the Mii, yet it's funny you don't mention countless MMPORGS that offered customisable characters way before the Mii turned up. Or Mr Potato Head if you care to go that far back. You claim they're knocking off achievements, yet achievements are just an extension of the sort of stats that you could see in GTA III, way before XBox Live popularised them. Or medals / awards in every day life if you care to think that way.
And if you're complaining about Sony "stealing", why not complain about Microsoft or Nintendo stealing. After all Microsoft is producing knockoffs of Gran Turismo with Forza, or GTA with Crackdown, or Pokemon / Dragonball Z with Blue Dragon? And couldn't you claim Nintendo is "stealing" by adding networking to their console after it proved successful in the XBox? Or Nintendo "stealing" a motion controller even though Sony has the patent on it? Or Apple "stealing" ideas from MP3 players which appeared way before the iPod ever did. etc.
The fact is that Sony's think melds and borrows from lots of sources but in that regard it is no worse than any other producer. So why single them out for the bitching? Why claim they're "stealing everything" when it is not obvious at all that they are or have. I wouldn't look at Sony Home and think "they're stealing", it's simply a progression from many things from before. It sure as hell isn't like the Mii or XBox Live Achievements. It's way beyond either and distinct by a long shot.
Microsoft can get away with that kind of shit on the XBox 360 because it is a closed system. Everything that runs on it must be approved by MS and meet their platform specifications. MS control what runs, how you buy it and how you play it. Want to chat online with your friends? Screw you pay MS. Want to set up a game? Screw you pay MS. Want to "exclusive content"? Screw you pay MS.
The same is not true on PC (much though MS would wish otherwise). There are countless online systems available, and countless ways that games use those systems or integrate with their own. I really don't see many companies being interested in this unless MS waves a big fat paycheck under their nose. The Valves, Blizzards and NCSofts of this world aren't suddenly going to dump their products just because MS is trying to muscle in. And I don't see the likes of Gamespy or XFire disappearing either unless MS engage in some extremely anticompetitive behaviour to kill them off.
In fact I see next to no reason for users to be interested either. Unless you own a 360 already and therefore get Windows Live Gold for free, where is the incentive. What is so compelling about the MS service to justify forking out $50 to use it when the same can be had for free elsewhere?
Sometimes you have to timestamp with whatever format the subsytem expects. Sometimes you have to assume the timezone of the timestamp because it doesn't say, or you have to convert because the system makes an assumption. Sometimes the subsystem is made by a 3rd party vendor or is otherwise physically out of your control.
It would be nice if you could dictate from end to end to use UTC but the real world doesn't always allow for it. And even if it did, you'd *still* need to verify your systems were DST compliant and patched so you're in the same mess either way.
Linux apps are not somehow magically immune to breakage from DST patches. The simple fact is that if your computer solution comprises software from multiple vendor / maintainers then you should be extremely concerned about the DST change whether you're using Linux, Unix, OS X or Windows. Not only do you have to patch each system, but somehow verify to your own satisfaction that those patches actually work.
Especially if proper timestamping is a mission critical requirement, such as for real time systems, financial trading etc. In fact it's even worse for something like trading since you may be talking about literally hundreds, or thousands of distinct subsystems passing timestamps around between each other.
Apple sells proprietary hardware and a proprietary operating system. Microsoft just sells a proprietary operating system and leaves the hardware up to literally thousands of vendors large and small. There is absolutely no way Apple will ever "win" on the desktop, and if it did I fail to see how having one company monopolizing software AND hardware is an improvement.
Besides, having used Vista for two weeks now, I reckon Microsoft have covered their asses. The OS still requires a service pack or two because things like UAC are a pain in the backside but otherwise the desktop experience is actually pretty exemplary. Aero is a very nice UI indeed.
It can be argued whether Kotaku was smart to act the way they did, but they are certainly right - and Sony wrong - from a moral perspective. The big mistake was the Sony PR guy threatening to blackball. To Kotaku, that must have been a sure sign they were sitting on some hot stuff. It would have been stupid not to publish at that point.
It's called quid pro quo. Kotaku gets invited to all kinds of swanky launch parties, previews, exclusive interviews etc. In return they're expect to obey rules about embargoes and so forth just like every other outfit that is extended these privileges. Sony asked them to not talk about the rumour (obviously because it has some basis in fact) but they go ahead and publish. Sony pull their privileges.
Kotaku isn't being "moral" here. They went ruined one of Sony's most anticipated keynotes for quite some time and Sony were well within their rights (and justifiably) to yank Kotaku's privileged access to Sony info. It's too bad they didn't follow up on the threat.
Or that it's exactly what it is and it makes people realizing they are ripping off the other two consoles.
You can probably accuse them of ripping off achievements, however somebody on NeoGaf mentioned that they have been working on this for at least 9 months and possibly more. I.e. way before launch. Therefore it's highly unlikely that they ripped off the Mii.
I have no idea what it will look like, but part of me thinks it will resemble Puzzle Pirates or Sims Online. In Puzzle Pirates you can buy a "shack" and decorate it. If you have more money you can upgrade to other kinds of houses, buy fine furniture etc. Then you can invite other people into your house and have a party or whatever.
I think Sony Home will resemble this where you may be able to pick a house from various starter designs and then it either grows with achievements, or you get points for achievements to decorate / upgrade it, or you buy stuff to fill it. Then people can turn up and you can arrange voice / text chat, and perhaps even arrange ad hoc network games. What would be really cool is if you could play music, or even video in your house and have it stream to everybody else standing around.
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Follow that to its logical conclusion and we should all be playing Pong.
I think a PSP with a detachable or separate UMD would be an enormous improvement . Allow users to plug their UMD reader to the PSP, copy the game or movie to some persistent memory and detach. The PSP is lighter, uses less power and the games load faster. With some clever design you could even incorporate the UMD drive into a charging stand.
I expect you could save at least 1/3 by volume and weight from doing such a thing.
Well yes it does. You get to roam public and private spaces, play the mini games, talk shit with other PS3 owners, make friends, form groups, congregate in special interest areas etc. Of course it's got advertising, but then it's free so what do you expect? The danger to Sony is that all of the above has to be attractive to players - it has to load fast and offer compelling functionality despite the ads. If it's just a hollow exercise halls in flogging billboard space (and metric tracking reports of how often they're in view etc.) then the thing will tank and rightly so.
More concerning is the trend to put advertising into things you've already paid for. For example Crackdown has live advertising thanks to Massive - Microsoft's in-game marketing functionality.
Obviously if it were just some hollow, pointless affair that lived separately from your gaming experience it probably will fail (or be revamped). Let's hope Sony know what they're doing.
Unless Apple partner up with some telco's, the iPhones future is determined - it will fail. While I'm sure a few posers will fork out $600 for a phone, most people will continue to use their heavily subsidized phones that the networks provide for a fraction of the price.
I do this also on my pages. I also mangle certain things like affiliate links, AdSense ids etc. not for any particular reason except I don't like the idea of any search engine inadvertantly indexing them.
Evil IBM "pressured" companies to dump SCO by offering better, more reliable, standards compliant software for less money. Curse you IBM!!!
Are you saying companies should not be able to control how their products are sold when there is a law there to assist them in doing it?
Second, Lik-Sang's entire business is importing. If they're sued over importing, what exactly do they have left to fall back on? Its a no brainer that they would close up shop.
Funny, but plenty of companies make a legitimate business from importing goods. In the computer & video game space you have play-asia.com for example, plus countless eBay based outfits. Perhaps because they have the sense to do it legally, and comply with cease and desist notices. If Lik-Sang felt like building their house on sand then that's too bad for them. It isn't like it's the first time they've been in legal hot water with console makers either.
Third, they didn't show up for the legal preceedings because it was blindingly obvious that there was no way they would be able to defend against it, when they're being sued in practically every EU country.
That's a pretty feeble cop-out. They could have protected their chief market of the UK if they felt like and set a precedent for the others. They could have even taken it you the Europen Court for a definitive ruling (EU courts trump national courts). They didn't turn up at all. It's not like they didn't have EU presence since they had a large warehouse operation running in Germany.
Nintendo suing Lik-Sang doesn't make it right either.
Nintendo within their rights too. While personally I think mod-chips have some legitimate uses, they also have plenty illegitimate uses too. And while personally I think the problem is of the console company's own making for introducing regional coding, that does not grant a licence for others to sell chips that aid piracy. I expect Lik-Sang were sent cease and desist notices about selling mod chips too until they were stamped on. They could have complied then too.
In short, yes, it was bullshit. I'm not giving Sony a free pass because their PR team tries to spin it as a fair and just ruling.
It was fair and just. Sony told them to cease and desist. A whole year later and they still hadn't. If Lik-Sang had any chance of winning they would have shown up in court. Instead they cut their losses and ran. It wouldn't surprise me if the same people involved weren't amongst those selling on eBay right now.
Lik-Sang were sent a cease and desist nearly a full year before hand so it's not like they didn't see it coming. Even before their laid off staff even had the chance to get pregnant. Besides, Lik-Sang didn't even show up for the legal proceedings and shut shop voluntarily. They could have carried on in business simply by discontinuing selling grey imports when they were requested.
It's not like Microsoft or Nintendo aren't dancing on their graves either. Both took Lik-Sang to court beforehand.
Usually true for desktop PCs, but most laptops appear to sleep / hibernate just fine. I have an IBM laptop which I hibernate every night. It literally goes months between reboots.
My experience of XP and Vista hibernate on the desktop is not so good. Under XP desktop machine hibernate used to throw an error. Under Vista it does appear to work, but sometimes the Sleep function hibernates and then wakes up instantly which is extremely annoying when I discover my machine still turned on after I told it to turn off.
OLPC. I would buy a consumer version of one of those in an instant.
So they can coin it in when he is resurrected.
I think that's a pretty tenuous justification for using Office over some other product. If these people are students then presumably it is because they're obtaining a higher education, not some office typists job.
Anyway as students, I wonder if even $75 is too much. I have a well paid job and I don't feel motivated to use MS Office for my day to day home use. I actually have a properly licenced copy of Word that I got with my last PC but I haven't been inclined to install it on my current PC because OpenOffice really does the job quite well. It's not perfect and some parts frankly suck balls, but overall the experience is fine and things like built-in PDF support are great.
Having said that, if a student told me they had to write long papers I would probably advise them to use MSO. OO has some outlining abilities but its pretty poor compared to Microsoft's. Otherwise I don't see much justification, even for cheap.
"I tell you, Sony's arrogance is truly something to behold. The irony is that they're competing against MS, which had traditionally been known for stealing ideas. This time, it's Sony who appears to be stealing everything. And they don't even appear to be implementing anything particularly well."
And yes, the motion controller deal, Sony just has this funny habit of seeing a competitor's work and coming out with something similar a few months later.
Do you seriously believe Sony started work on this Home idea in November? Funnily enough if you go Googling for "E3 cyber world Sony" you'll see they've been mulling the idea in public as long back as 2004, and probably longer in private.
Did any of those say that they originated these ideas? Does Forza say "THE FIRST REALISTIC RACING GAME, EVER" on the box? Does Blue Dragon ever clain innovation in the RPG world? I don't think so. Oh, and the gamecube network adapter came out christmas of '02, while Xbox Live went live November of '02. I bet it was in production for more than a month, eh? And yes, the motion controller deal, Sony just has this funny habit of seeing a competitor's work and coming out with something similar a few months later. And the main selling point of the iPod was a hard drive in something that size (gee, that's pretty new) and its slick interface (completly new!), not that it plays MP3s.
In what reality does a fully networked virtual world take a "few months" to do. Don't you understand that Sony have been working on this a long time? Years probably.
I see no resemblance to the Wii or Mii in what they produced. The Mii is Mr Potato Head that you can play in a couple of games. Sony's Home appears to more resemble 3D lobbies with no in-game avatar functionality. And the avatar customisation is different too (more akin to MMPORG character generation). Home also has little in common to XBox Live. Trophies are certainly comparable to achievements, but then there is the whole 3D paradigm of placing them in a virtual room. And achievements are just extensions of things games have been doing for a while anyway (e.g. Insane stunts in GTA).
I think a stronger comparison can be made to Second Life, in terms of presentation. But Second Life isn't new either. I've commented on Second Life a few times in the past (way before this Sony stuff came up), and pointed out that I played Second Life 15 years ago - it was called TinyMUD. Second Life is TinyMUD with VRML on top. Or if you prefer to take the tone of the GP and accuse them of stealing, look no further than Active Worlds which came out way before Second Life ever did.
Simply put you can't accuse Sony of stealing and then make excuses for others whose products were similarly influenced by others before. It doesn't make any sense.
You would have more of a case to claim Sony are stealing from Second Life, but even that is just an extension of an idea which has been around a very long time. Customizable worlds and avatars have been knocking around for 15 years or more.
Chose to use it or was permitted to use it? My understanding from recent news clippings is that no 3rd party game has been permitted to access the Mii avatar because there is no API available to do so. And of 1st party games only two use it - Wii Sports and the excrable Wii Play. That's hardly some claim to fame.
Are you seriously claiming that there was no such thing as an avatar or a customisable character before the Mii turned up?
What the hell are you smoking? Most products whether you care to admit it or not are ripped off or heavily influenced by products that preceded them. You claim Sony "stole" Second Life, but the fact is that Second Life ripped off from The Sims Online, VRML (and wannabes), IRC, various 3D IRCs and MUDs. And by your reasoning The Sims "stole" from Little Computer Person which "stole" it's ideas from pet ownership. You claim Sony "stole" from the Mii, yet it's funny you don't mention countless MMPORGS that offered customisable characters way before the Mii turned up. Or Mr Potato Head if you care to go that far back. You claim they're knocking off achievements, yet achievements are just an extension of the sort of stats that you could see in GTA III, way before XBox Live popularised them. Or medals / awards in every day life if you care to think that way.
And if you're complaining about Sony "stealing", why not complain about Microsoft or Nintendo stealing. After all Microsoft is producing knockoffs of Gran Turismo with Forza, or GTA with Crackdown, or Pokemon / Dragonball Z with Blue Dragon? And couldn't you claim Nintendo is "stealing" by adding networking to their console after it proved successful in the XBox? Or Nintendo "stealing" a motion controller even though Sony has the patent on it? Or Apple "stealing" ideas from MP3 players which appeared way before the iPod ever did. etc.
The fact is that Sony's think melds and borrows from lots of sources but in that regard it is no worse than any other producer. So why single them out for the bitching? Why claim they're "stealing everything" when it is not obvious at all that they are or have. I wouldn't look at Sony Home and think "they're stealing", it's simply a progression from many things from before. It sure as hell isn't like the Mii or XBox Live Achievements. It's way beyond either and distinct by a long shot.
The same is not true on PC (much though MS would wish otherwise). There are countless online systems available, and countless ways that games use those systems or integrate with their own. I really don't see many companies being interested in this unless MS waves a big fat paycheck under their nose. The Valves, Blizzards and NCSofts of this world aren't suddenly going to dump their products just because MS is trying to muscle in. And I don't see the likes of Gamespy or XFire disappearing either unless MS engage in some extremely anticompetitive behaviour to kill them off.
In fact I see next to no reason for users to be interested either. Unless you own a 360 already and therefore get Windows Live Gold for free, where is the incentive. What is so compelling about the MS service to justify forking out $50 to use it when the same can be had for free elsewhere?
It would be nice if you could dictate from end to end to use UTC but the real world doesn't always allow for it. And even if it did, you'd *still* need to verify your systems were DST compliant and patched so you're in the same mess either way.
Especially if proper timestamping is a mission critical requirement, such as for real time systems, financial trading etc. In fact it's even worse for something like trading since you may be talking about literally hundreds, or thousands of distinct subsystems passing timestamps around between each other.
Besides, having used Vista for two weeks now, I reckon Microsoft have covered their asses. The OS still requires a service pack or two because things like UAC are a pain in the backside but otherwise the desktop experience is actually pretty exemplary. Aero is a very nice UI indeed.
It can be argued whether Kotaku was smart to act the way they did, but they are certainly right - and Sony wrong - from a moral perspective. The big mistake was the Sony PR guy threatening to blackball. To Kotaku, that must have been a sure sign they were sitting on some hot stuff. It would have been stupid not to publish at that point.
It's called quid pro quo. Kotaku gets invited to all kinds of swanky launch parties, previews, exclusive interviews etc. In return they're expect to obey rules about embargoes and so forth just like every other outfit that is extended these privileges. Sony asked them to not talk about the rumour (obviously because it has some basis in fact) but they go ahead and publish. Sony pull their privileges.
Kotaku isn't being "moral" here. They went ruined one of Sony's most anticipated keynotes for quite some time and Sony were well within their rights (and justifiably) to yank Kotaku's privileged access to Sony info. It's too bad they didn't follow up on the threat.
You can probably accuse them of ripping off achievements, however somebody on NeoGaf mentioned that they have been working on this for at least 9 months and possibly more. I.e. way before launch. Therefore it's highly unlikely that they ripped off the Mii.
I have no idea what it will look like, but part of me thinks it will resemble Puzzle Pirates or Sims Online. In Puzzle Pirates you can buy a "shack" and decorate it. If you have more money you can upgrade to other kinds of houses, buy fine furniture etc. Then you can invite other people into your house and have a party or whatever.
I think Sony Home will resemble this where you may be able to pick a house from various starter designs and then it either grows with achievements, or you get points for achievements to decorate / upgrade it, or you buy stuff to fill it. Then people can turn up and you can arrange voice / text chat, and perhaps even arrange ad hoc network games. What would be really cool is if you could play music, or even video in your house and have it stream to everybody else standing around.