The ZX Spectrum had two games Skool Daze and a sequel Back to Skool which more or less encapsulate the same ideas found in Bully - disrupting school, punching people, stealing stuff, using a catapault, detention etc. If a certain litigious asshole wants to launch lawsuits, I suggest he start flinging them at the various Spectrum sites that host these "columbine simulators" since Bully is clearly just the spiritual successor to those early pioneers.
iTV - $299, Mac Mini $599. A total of $900 minimum to stream upscaled movies to my TV from a device sitting in the next room. The next question is why on Earth would I want to do that? And how is it even the slightest bit different from what you can do today with an Xbox 360 + Windows Media Center.
Besides, it seems pretty dumb to have to have two machines turned on just to play movies. Something like a Viiv designed to sit under the TV makes more sense. Or a PS3. The movie should be stored on the device connected to the TV, not beamed in from somewhere else. That doesn't make much sense at all.
Having used IE7 on Vista, my opinion is that it's better than IE6 but that's about it. The user interface is atrocious, breaking every rule in the book with some hideous franken-navigator-menu-bar-thing that tosses all UI guidelines out the window and sets fire to them for good measure. Even if you enable the "classic" mode, the menu bar goes *below* the navigator bar. It just looks silly. As a browser it's fine, but I don't think the tabbed behaviour or the general browsing experience is as pleasant or accesible as Firefox.
You presume that there are enough games to have 3 months worth of fun, that the kit works faultlessly, that the controller is as good as the hype, that the online services (are there any?) don't crash under the load, that the Wii is going to be "better" subjectively than the other consoles. If it's that much fun then it will be that much fun in a few months time when there might be a few more titles. Meanwhile as you say, you've got an XBox360 so I assume there are plenty of titles popping out around Christmas for that (e.g. Gears of War) to keep you going.
If you have a 360 I don't see the point of getting a PS3 as well since most of the port / franchise games will play almost identically on both. But if I had neither and assuming the PS3 provides the goods, then I wouldn't have any objection to paying $500-600 for something which is far more than just a games console.
Luckily, Ubuntu will still ship with Firefox so not an issue (even though it is a Debian distro).
Pragmatism is what is so great about Ubuntu - it sheds the tedious GNU politics of Debian but keeps the good work they've done and wraps it up in a nice user friendly package. If Debian wants to mess around with Firefox then fine, change the branding chrome and other settings, but they shouldn't be shocked that Mozilla says they can't use the Firefox brand on it. Even Debian has a trademark on their name (and their logo?), so it's hard to get what their point is. Most other dists are just happy to work with Mozilla.
At the end of the day it is Debian users that will suffer since they now have to maintain their own browser, apply their own security patches etc. All for the sake of a few icons and settings.
Anyone who buys a console on day 1 needs their head examined. Aside from bragging rights, or sell the thing on ebay, what is the point? If a console is THAT GOOD, it will be just as good a few months down the road. Then you can make an informed purchase decision in the absence of hype and with a good chance of getting a replacement if the thing turns out to be broken.
This applies equally to the Wii, or any other shiny overhyped piece of kit (e.g. anything made by Apple). Never buy version 1.0 of anything
Additional downloaded content defeats piracy
on
Pirates Vs. Publishers
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The best way to prevent piracy is to put a game out that is incomplete without registering.
I can see why some publisher who wants just to shove a game out of the door and forget about it might think anti-pirate CDs are a good idea, but any multi-player game, or indeed any game were content is expandable, unlockable or downloadable should not need anti-pirate measures. You need to access the web anyway, so why not check the CD serial key. Then you can reward your genuine customers with additional content, maps, objects etc. and shut out the freeloaders by barring them from the servers and so on. So they get to play a bugged 1.0 for a while. So what? Meanwhile your customers are on 1.5 happily playing the cool new levels you just released.
Games that force me to insert a CD really piss me off. I end up going to gamecopyworld or similar to acquire the crack. And that's the thing. Pirates can rip the copy protection in seconds and then dump the whole game up for download or provide a crack. So why bother with it anyway? Copy protection licence fees are still money down the drain when the pirates simply rip it out. That money would be better invested in keeping customers happy and "training" them through a positive experience as to why they should buy your game.
Sony have very successfully introduced firmware enhancements to the PSP, so what's the big story here? Of course the firmware at TGS was unlikely to be the final version because there is no final version. There is nothing to stop Sony from supplying a firmware update on the game discs or when you log on to the net. Either way, the firmware gets enhanced over time to fix bugs, plug any security holes and add new functionality.
It would be stupid if the PS3 didn't do it. Not only would it mean you'd be stuck with bugs forever, but you never get new features. The PSP got some substantial new functionality such as web browser, AAC playback, location free etc. through firmware. I'd be pissed if a console in this day and age *didn't* offer it.
The EU fracas has been going on for years. They've known it has been going on, they've known what they had to do to avoid continuing fines and other trouble. They have no excuse for Vista, especially as they've gone even further to exclude third party products.
The very first thing you see in Vista are links to Windows Live and Windows Live Onecare. This is obviously going to suffocate sales for other security products, as well as forcing other products to use a security model that is preferential to OneCare. MS have been slapped hard for this before, e.g. putting MSN links onto Windows 95, and yet here they are doing it again. Here's hoping they get bogged down with one lawsuit after another until they learn.
By pumping out bland games, serving up the same warmed up shit year after year, not taking risks, canning profitable but niche game series, treating their staff like slaves, buying exclusive rights to major sports events, preparing to add in-game advertising and generally having a chilling effect on creativity and the industry as whole.
I can't understand why anyone would be "happy" to be subjected to a six month delay of their console, but I can understand that they might be grateful if the PS3 launch turns out to be an unmitigated disaster, or the PS3 is going to experience a price drop soon after.
Having said that, I really don't know why anyone would want to own *any* console in its first few months of life. There no console in the world that justifies an instant purchase. Not one. Most even offer a level of backwards compatibility so chances are you'd be playing stuff you already own. If its a great console, it will still be a great console a few months from launch when there might be a few games to choose from and a chance that the thing will work out of the box.
People who buy a new system in the days preceding a launch are morons. It doesn't matter if it's a Wii or PS3. Buying something sight unseen is just stupid.
UMD is fine for games, it failed miserably for video because Sony thought they could sell UMDs for more than DVDs. Utter stupidity. I couldn't care less that it's a proprietary format (all console discs are proprietary to some extent to prevent piracy), but I'd have to be insane to pay 20 euros for a movie than I can buy for 10 on DVD. On the plus side, the PSP has excellent support for playing music and videos so you can rip and play your own content.
I expect that Sony would love people to buy movies online and I would be surprised if the PS3 didn't make it incredibly easy to do. But they had better price the things at $10 or less (and $5 or less for rental) or no one will bother with it.
What struck me from the demos at X06 was how it was described as a stop-and-pop kind of game, and boy did the demo drive that home. The main character (seen from over the should so it's not a FPS) spent most of their time running from one piece of cover to another and it wasn't clear where the fun was meant to be. The demo was pretty limited so it probably has a lot more to offer.
Another game that it is frequently compared to is Resistance: Fall of Man. That goes completely over the top with action and explosions everywhere. In it's own way that could be just as annoying as it was in Call of Duty 2. I hope it's not another COD2 because that game really stunk on ice once you realised everything around you was scripted and you may as well be playing a rail shooter. Even if Resistance is script heavy the makers claim it can support up to 40 players in multi-player which might be interesting to see. Not even many PC games have that many players, and frequently suffer from impasse when they do (i.e. neither side making any headway).
Good. If I spend $500 on something (or $400), I want something that can do more than play games. As the PS3 looks from all impressions to be able to play music, pictures, and video clips, and to stream them throughout the house if you wish and have a web browser, and play HD content, and support bluetooth & USB devices, and still be a kick ass console, I'd say the thing is going to do very well. I expect that Sony intends to gain revenues not just from games but from bluray disks, and music & video downloads, so it's not a dumb idea either assuming they don't screw it up.
Note that the XBox 360 can do some of these things too, but its been crippled to make Windows Media Center look better. At one point it was being touted as a digital media hub but it's really a slave to Windows Media Center for a lot of its functionality such as video content. Perhaps Sony really are trying to make the PS3 the hub, and they don't have an albatross like WMC to think about when they do it.
Nintendo fan(boys) claim Wii is strictly a games console but even it has some aspirations to do other things, for example it has a browser and a photo / video clip viewer. It doesn't mean that doing one thing it is somehow better than either the 360 or PS3. Even Nintendo people think of it as an enhanced Gamecube.
The game lineup for Xbox vs PS2, and probably 360 vs PS3 is virtually indistinguishable. There is almost a 1:1 mapping in many cases. I think thus far, Microsoft's problem is they haven't put enough space between their offerings and Sony. The Xbox certainly had more first person shooters than the PS2, but I doubt the PS3 will be short of them. I expect most games, especially the franchises will be lazy ports from one to the other and in most cases will look and feel identical.
I have to wonder about Nintendo. They've certainly hit on a good model - emphasize fun but put it out on underpowered hardware that costs nearly as much as the next-gen competition. Even Miyamoto says the Wii is basically an enhanced Gamecube. The Wii isn't even out and it's already looking obsolete. I expect people will buy it in droves.
Sony is screwed... I'll still be buying a PS3 though. No 1st gen title will be able to match something as good as gears of war (or as good as it should be). I see no reason for someone to buy a PS3 over a 360 this holiday season unless they already own a 360 (which I'm sure most of the first PS3 buyers will).
Sony could be screwed, but the PS3 does seem to shaping up as good as and probably better than the 360. Resistance: Fall of Man looks mighty fine, as does Motorstorm, so I don't think the PS3 has any problems at all in the graphics department.
As for buying a PS3 over a 360, I suppose the better question is why you would pick an XBox 360 instead of a PS3 or a Wii. The Wii is cheaper and more fun (or so Nintendo would claim). So if money is an issue you'd buy a Wii. If money isn't an issue, why not splash out the extra and benefit from the better HD support, bluray player, games with more content, video playback, browser, content streaming, better controller, PS2 game compatibility and the other things that an extra $100 would buy you over the 360 premium.
Personally I think anyone who buys a console on the first day is asking for trouble since they never live up to the hype. Better to wait until the dust has settled, production issues are resolved and then walk into a store when there is plenty of stock and plenty of games to choose from.
I don't think the PS3 will be as disastrous as some people are saying. One thing is sure: it won't enjoy anywhere close to the massive runaway success that the PS2 enjoyed, but it will still be the market leader for the next generation at least.
It won't be. In game footage from Motorstorm and other titles is nothing short of staggering. The PS3 is going to be a kickass system. It grinds the Wii into the dust and looks more capable than the XBox 360 too with enough features to more than justify spending an extra $100 over a 360 premimum.
Also note that Zonk (moderator for/.) only ever approves negative news about the PS3, so you'd be better off going to 1up.com or similar where you will get the good, the bad and the ugly upon which to base a decision. They also have an excellent 30 minute video cast which shows footage of the Nintendo, TGS and X06 events.
Having said that, I see no reason to buy one on day 0 and be subject to the production issues and lack of titles that every new console suffers from. Seems more prudent to wait for games to appear and supply vs demand to equalize so that at least if the box is broken you stand a good chance of getting a replacement. Other people can gamble their money and their expectations on hype - I'll wait for anandtech et al to give the thing a thorough going over.
Geez, if these things are that heat senseitive they probbaly are not going to work in a closed-door stereo cabinet.
That assumes that a) there is a significant heat problem rather than wild speculations, and b) that it affects you and your cabinet, as opposed to a few PS3s amongst many that were set up in glass boxes under hot lights in a hot conference hall to run demanding demos for 15 hours non-stop.
I hope the game is more interesting than recent demos which make it look like most of your life is spent running from one pillar to the next. Bioshock looks far more interesting that Gears of War.
Most MMPORGs drop their price to zero after a while. EQ plus a bunch of expansions was on the front cover of a PC magazine recently. Probably desperation has something to do with these moves, but I don't understand why they don't do it anyway.
If they're expecting people to fork out $15.99, then the game should be free, or the retail version should cost little more than the 30 days you get with it. If they've dropped the retail price to $19.99, that would meet that requirement, but they should give away the client for free through other channels with no extra gameplay, or just a few day's worth.
And even AJAX has had it's day. Flex is the new buzzword. My management has caught the "thin is in" vibe which is fine if not for the fact that our existing product manages hundreds of billions of dollars and requires lots of complex database queries. Trying to replicate that in thin client would be great no doubt but it means producing literally hundreds of web service calls and convincing our clientèle that they don't really want to see all their records at once.
By the time we get around to producing a thin client, they'll suddenly decide they want to support Sparkle or something.
Is the PS3 really that much better than an Xbox 360?
Subjective reports from the Tokyo Game Show say yes it is. I watched a feature produced by the 1up.com site about the TGS and they were raving about the graphical performance of titles like Motorstorm & Virtua Fighter, bandying words around like 60fps, "arcade perfect" etc. The long and short of it was in their opinion the PS3 was graphically far more impressive than the 360.
Whether Oblivion is will be another matter. Somehow I doubt it will look much different from the existing versions.
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The ZX Spectrum had two games Skool Daze and a sequel Back to Skool which more or less encapsulate the same ideas found in Bully - disrupting school, punching people, stealing stuff, using a catapault, detention etc. If a certain litigious asshole wants to launch lawsuits, I suggest he start flinging them at the various Spectrum sites that host these "columbine simulators" since Bully is clearly just the spiritual successor to those early pioneers.
Besides, it seems pretty dumb to have to have two machines turned on just to play movies. Something like a Viiv designed to sit under the TV makes more sense. Or a PS3. The movie should be stored on the device connected to the TV, not beamed in from somewhere else. That doesn't make much sense at all.
Having used IE7 on Vista, my opinion is that it's better than IE6 but that's about it. The user interface is atrocious, breaking every rule in the book with some hideous franken-navigator-menu-bar-thing that tosses all UI guidelines out the window and sets fire to them for good measure. Even if you enable the "classic" mode, the menu bar goes *below* the navigator bar. It just looks silly. As a browser it's fine, but I don't think the tabbed behaviour or the general browsing experience is as pleasant or accesible as Firefox.
Probably excrutiatingly boring. I've never, ever seen any show featuring competitive gaming segements which was even slightly interesting to look at.
If you have a 360 I don't see the point of getting a PS3 as well since most of the port / franchise games will play almost identically on both. But if I had neither and assuming the PS3 provides the goods, then I wouldn't have any objection to paying $500-600 for something which is far more than just a games console.
Pragmatism is what is so great about Ubuntu - it sheds the tedious GNU politics of Debian but keeps the good work they've done and wraps it up in a nice user friendly package. If Debian wants to mess around with Firefox then fine, change the branding chrome and other settings, but they shouldn't be shocked that Mozilla says they can't use the Firefox brand on it. Even Debian has a trademark on their name (and their logo?), so it's hard to get what their point is. Most other dists are just happy to work with Mozilla.
At the end of the day it is Debian users that will suffer since they now have to maintain their own browser, apply their own security patches etc. All for the sake of a few icons and settings.
This applies equally to the Wii, or any other shiny overhyped piece of kit (e.g. anything made by Apple). Never buy version 1.0 of anything
I can see why some publisher who wants just to shove a game out of the door and forget about it might think anti-pirate CDs are a good idea, but any multi-player game, or indeed any game were content is expandable, unlockable or downloadable should not need anti-pirate measures. You need to access the web anyway, so why not check the CD serial key. Then you can reward your genuine customers with additional content, maps, objects etc. and shut out the freeloaders by barring them from the servers and so on. So they get to play a bugged 1.0 for a while. So what? Meanwhile your customers are on 1.5 happily playing the cool new levels you just released.
Games that force me to insert a CD really piss me off. I end up going to gamecopyworld or similar to acquire the crack. And that's the thing. Pirates can rip the copy protection in seconds and then dump the whole game up for download or provide a crack. So why bother with it anyway? Copy protection licence fees are still money down the drain when the pirates simply rip it out. That money would be better invested in keeping customers happy and "training" them through a positive experience as to why they should buy your game.
I fully expect that the pirates / homebrewers will manage to brick a few systems just like they did with the PSP but that will be their own fault.
It would be stupid if the PS3 didn't do it. Not only would it mean you'd be stuck with bugs forever, but you never get new features. The PSP got some substantial new functionality such as web browser, AAC playback, location free etc. through firmware. I'd be pissed if a console in this day and age *didn't* offer it.
The very first thing you see in Vista are links to Windows Live and Windows Live Onecare. This is obviously going to suffocate sales for other security products, as well as forcing other products to use a security model that is preferential to OneCare. MS have been slapped hard for this before, e.g. putting MSN links onto Windows 95, and yet here they are doing it again. Here's hoping they get bogged down with one lawsuit after another until they learn.
By pumping out bland games, serving up the same warmed up shit year after year, not taking risks, canning profitable but niche game series, treating their staff like slaves, buying exclusive rights to major sports events, preparing to add in-game advertising and generally having a chilling effect on creativity and the industry as whole.
Having said that, I really don't know why anyone would want to own *any* console in its first few months of life. There no console in the world that justifies an instant purchase. Not one. Most even offer a level of backwards compatibility so chances are you'd be playing stuff you already own. If its a great console, it will still be a great console a few months from launch when there might be a few games to choose from and a chance that the thing will work out of the box.
People who buy a new system in the days preceding a launch are morons. It doesn't matter if it's a Wii or PS3. Buying something sight unseen is just stupid.
I expect that Sony would love people to buy movies online and I would be surprised if the PS3 didn't make it incredibly easy to do. But they had better price the things at $10 or less (and $5 or less for rental) or no one will bother with it.
Another game that it is frequently compared to is Resistance: Fall of Man. That goes completely over the top with action and explosions everywhere. In it's own way that could be just as annoying as it was in Call of Duty 2. I hope it's not another COD2 because that game really stunk on ice once you realised everything around you was scripted and you may as well be playing a rail shooter. Even if Resistance is script heavy the makers claim it can support up to 40 players in multi-player which might be interesting to see. Not even many PC games have that many players, and frequently suffer from impasse when they do (i.e. neither side making any headway).
Note that the XBox 360 can do some of these things too, but its been crippled to make Windows Media Center look better. At one point it was being touted as a digital media hub but it's really a slave to Windows Media Center for a lot of its functionality such as video content. Perhaps Sony really are trying to make the PS3 the hub, and they don't have an albatross like WMC to think about when they do it.
Nintendo fan(boys) claim Wii is strictly a games console but even it has some aspirations to do other things, for example it has a browser and a photo / video clip viewer. It doesn't mean that doing one thing it is somehow better than either the 360 or PS3. Even Nintendo people think of it as an enhanced Gamecube.
I have to wonder about Nintendo. They've certainly hit on a good model - emphasize fun but put it out on underpowered hardware that costs nearly as much as the next-gen competition. Even Miyamoto says the Wii is basically an enhanced Gamecube. The Wii isn't even out and it's already looking obsolete. I expect people will buy it in droves.
It sure sounds like fud. Games editors are starting to rave about the thing now they're getting to play around with it.
Sony could be screwed, but the PS3 does seem to shaping up as good as and probably better than the 360. Resistance: Fall of Man looks mighty fine, as does Motorstorm, so I don't think the PS3 has any problems at all in the graphics department.
As for buying a PS3 over a 360, I suppose the better question is why you would pick an XBox 360 instead of a PS3 or a Wii. The Wii is cheaper and more fun (or so Nintendo would claim). So if money is an issue you'd buy a Wii. If money isn't an issue, why not splash out the extra and benefit from the better HD support, bluray player, games with more content, video playback, browser, content streaming, better controller, PS2 game compatibility and the other things that an extra $100 would buy you over the 360 premium.
Personally I think anyone who buys a console on the first day is asking for trouble since they never live up to the hype. Better to wait until the dust has settled, production issues are resolved and then walk into a store when there is plenty of stock and plenty of games to choose from.
It won't be. In game footage from Motorstorm and other titles is nothing short of staggering. The PS3 is going to be a kickass system. It grinds the Wii into the dust and looks more capable than the XBox 360 too with enough features to more than justify spending an extra $100 over a 360 premimum.
Also note that Zonk (moderator for /.) only ever approves negative news about the PS3, so you'd be better off going to 1up.com or similar where you will get the good, the bad and the ugly upon which to base a decision. They also have an excellent 30 minute video cast which shows footage of the Nintendo, TGS and X06 events.
Having said that, I see no reason to buy one on day 0 and be subject to the production issues and lack of titles that every new console suffers from. Seems more prudent to wait for games to appear and supply vs demand to equalize so that at least if the box is broken you stand a good chance of getting a replacement. Other people can gamble their money and their expectations on hype - I'll wait for anandtech et al to give the thing a thorough going over.
That assumes that a) there is a significant heat problem rather than wild speculations, and b) that it affects you and your cabinet, as opposed to a few PS3s amongst many that were set up in glass boxes under hot lights in a hot conference hall to run demanding demos for 15 hours non-stop.
I hope the game is more interesting than recent demos which make it look like most of your life is spent running from one pillar to the next. Bioshock looks far more interesting that Gears of War.
If they're expecting people to fork out $15.99, then the game should be free, or the retail version should cost little more than the 30 days you get with it. If they've dropped the retail price to $19.99, that would meet that requirement, but they should give away the client for free through other channels with no extra gameplay, or just a few day's worth.
By the time we get around to producing a thin client, they'll suddenly decide they want to support Sparkle or something.
Subjective reports from the Tokyo Game Show say yes it is. I watched a feature produced by the 1up.com site about the TGS and they were raving about the graphical performance of titles like Motorstorm & Virtua Fighter, bandying words around like 60fps, "arcade perfect" etc. The long and short of it was in their opinion the PS3 was graphically far more impressive than the 360.
Whether Oblivion is will be another matter. Somehow I doubt it will look much different from the existing versions.