I'm not sure a smaller studio had a chance. Shovelware will be around anywhere it is easy to develop. The Wii gets a load of hassle over shovelware I think purely because it's a very popular console. If you look at Android gaming it's rubbish. Xbox indie games do have some awesome games but there is a load of rubbish there too that doesn't make much money but it is because entry is easy. The PC is the freest system to develop on and reaches the most people. It makes sense for a small developer or larger developers wanting to develop something cheap and quick.
I think a smaller studio would be wise to start on the PC and put quite a lot of effort into making their game known and then if it proves popular choose the Iphone, Xbox live, Wiiware or some other low entry barrier option where people are happy to pay out for games. I just think rising above the shovelware is more about how you sell your game (and making a good game of course) because anything without shovelware is probably going to be hard and expensive to get onto.
what planet are you on? Of course it does. In fact real PC gaming is closer to death than it has been perhaps at anytime where as all the shovelware is exceptionally popular and a huge part of PC gaming these days. Though to be fair it's always been that way. Those old '1,000 games' discs you could buy were most shit.
I've been playing numerous 3DS games without entering a single friend code to play online. Maybe there is a friend code within my 3DS but I've not seen it and it has no problem letting me play with strangers.
Re:Looks like time to find a new search engine
on
Google's New Design
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· Score: 1
Don't get me wrong it is pretty good and it has a lot of good ideas like it's push towards privacy and not doing filtering / personalised results. But if I search for my username I get a lot of my stuff and comments by people who use the same username. There is no mention of the movie. I've never seen the movie btw so my username has nothing to do with it but it should show up rather than a load of comments from blogs and gaming sites. I know I'm probably like one of a handful of people that would search for that but people are complaining about how google returns a lot of blog results. Well returning comments on blogs some of which are coming up on being a decade old and completely ignoring a movie (admittedly a low budget one) that all the other engines pick up seems a bit off.
Searching for Nintendo 3DS handheld didn't show any Nintendo sites in the stop results. Searching for 3DS did bring Nintendo owned sites in the top results but oddly enough nintendo.co.au was the top result. Japan, Europe and US are larger markets so putting the Australian one on top and giving it a big 'official site' button isn't going to be terribly useful to a lot of people.
The search for nintendo 3ds handheld brought up wikipedia and a bunch of blogs - the things people complained about Google doing. The thing is blogs and wikipedia are very prominent on the internet. They will fill up a lot of search results no matter which search engine you use. I don't hold that against Google or DDG. But because DDG can bring up some stuff that seems a bit less relevant and because I can block domains from showing up in Google for the moment I rather stick with Google.
Again I like what DDG is doing and I even like the things like the Jabber bot and I would tell people to consider it but it's not quite there for me to make it my main search engine.
Re:Looks like time to find a new search engine
on
Google's New Design
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· Score: 1
I like duckduckgo but it does need to improve its results to make me switch. As much as people complain about Google's results it's easy to remove the results you don't want.
Google on Android doesn't have the black bar it has a Chrome tab look to the menu where the selected section is a white tab and the others are in a grey bar that doesn't stick out nearly as much. The black bar of the desktop version contrasts too much with the rest of the page.
Corporations get a hard-on throwing money at companies like Oracle. It makes people feel like they've made it since they can piss away big chunks of money on hardware and they can always make savings by cutting pay rises and training.
Likewise when someone says it runs like a POS they should explain what hardware they're using since it is likely the problem and then someone can look into it. Better yet he reports as much detail about the problems and the hardware to the bug tracker and it will benefit him and many others with the same hardware. He may also find he had dodgy hardware and the OS is irrelevant so he could end up saving himself a lot of hassle.
Companies have proven over and over that they will not produce secure software. They won't even make a decent attempt at it. Something needs to be done to put much more pressure on companies to put more focus on security rather than knocking out features every week or using low paid under skilled developers.
Fuck catering to lazy corporations. That sort of thing has damaged the internet enough as it is. Maybe they'll quit buying into rubbish technologies if they can't rely on keeping the same awful browser around for over a decade.
Your comments contain a lot of ifs and buts with not solid facts. For all you know Apple has enough statistics to prove that dial-up users aren't an issue or they'll still sell the OS in another format eventually after experimenting what would happen if they only offered a DL option.
There is no reason to move away from 10.6 either, imo and likewise if you haven't moved up to 10.6 why would you go to 10.7? ALso you can create a install DVD so a clean install probably isn't an issue.
Exactly. I still have my EEE with a 20 gig ssd (well technically a 4gig and 16gig SSD) and that, imo, is better than any new netbook and its traditional drive.
I have a netbook and I do love it but it's a toy. I can't do loads of typing on it because the keys are very small and if I'm not able to really make use of the keyboard then it might as well be a ipad. Mind you there are slightly larger netbooks now than mine and some do solve the keyboard issue but since I bought my 13" macbook pro I don't see the need for a new one. My MBP is a bit bigger than I'd like sometimes but it's still nice and light, the battery lasts forever and it's powerful. If I need room in my bag more than being able to bash out code on the train then I take my EEE.
So a phone users was impressed by a phone someone took the effort to set up, tweak and hand select good apps. That's no surprise. Give them a brand new Android phone and set them loose on the market themselves to wade through the shit.
It doesn't play DVDs. Perhaps there's some homebrew hack to get them working because the discs are similar but out of the box it doesn't do that. The Wii has a flash (lite) enabled browser and a netflix application so I'm sure the Wii U will have at least that and probably more.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure a smaller studio had a chance. Shovelware will be around anywhere it is easy to develop. The Wii gets a load of hassle over shovelware I think purely because it's a very popular console. If you look at Android gaming it's rubbish. Xbox indie games do have some awesome games but there is a load of rubbish there too that doesn't make much money but it is because entry is easy. The PC is the freest system to develop on and reaches the most people. It makes sense for a small developer or larger developers wanting to develop something cheap and quick.
I think a smaller studio would be wise to start on the PC and put quite a lot of effort into making their game known and then if it proves popular choose the Iphone, Xbox live, Wiiware or some other low entry barrier option where people are happy to pay out for games. I just think rising above the shovelware is more about how you sell your game (and making a good game of course) because anything without shovelware is probably going to be hard and expensive to get onto.
what planet are you on? Of course it does. In fact real PC gaming is closer to death than it has been perhaps at anytime where as all the shovelware is exceptionally popular and a huge part of PC gaming these days. Though to be fair it's always been that way. Those old '1,000 games' discs you could buy were most shit.
I've been playing numerous 3DS games without entering a single friend code to play online. Maybe there is a friend code within my 3DS but I've not seen it and it has no problem letting me play with strangers.
Don't get me wrong it is pretty good and it has a lot of good ideas like it's push towards privacy and not doing filtering / personalised results. But if I search for my username I get a lot of my stuff and comments by people who use the same username. There is no mention of the movie. I've never seen the movie btw so my username has nothing to do with it but it should show up rather than a load of comments from blogs and gaming sites. I know I'm probably like one of a handful of people that would search for that but people are complaining about how google returns a lot of blog results. Well returning comments on blogs some of which are coming up on being a decade old and completely ignoring a movie (admittedly a low budget one) that all the other engines pick up seems a bit off.
Searching for Nintendo 3DS handheld didn't show any Nintendo sites in the stop results. Searching for 3DS did bring Nintendo owned sites in the top results but oddly enough nintendo.co.au was the top result. Japan, Europe and US are larger markets so putting the Australian one on top and giving it a big 'official site' button isn't going to be terribly useful to a lot of people.
The search for nintendo 3ds handheld brought up wikipedia and a bunch of blogs - the things people complained about Google doing. The thing is blogs and wikipedia are very prominent on the internet. They will fill up a lot of search results no matter which search engine you use. I don't hold that against Google or DDG. But because DDG can bring up some stuff that seems a bit less relevant and because I can block domains from showing up in Google for the moment I rather stick with Google.
Again I like what DDG is doing and I even like the things like the Jabber bot and I would tell people to consider it but it's not quite there for me to make it my main search engine.
I like duckduckgo but it does need to improve its results to make me switch. As much as people complain about Google's results it's easy to remove the results you don't want.
Google on Android doesn't have the black bar it has a Chrome tab look to the menu where the selected section is a white tab and the others are in a grey bar that doesn't stick out nearly as much. The black bar of the desktop version contrasts too much with the rest of the page.
Shame Bing's results are shit.
Not a bad idea really. If one measly song can be worth so much then surely a person's identity should be worth as much if not more.
Corporations get a hard-on throwing money at companies like Oracle. It makes people feel like they've made it since they can piss away big chunks of money on hardware and they can always make savings by cutting pay rises and training.
That takes all the fun out of commenting.
Likewise when someone says it runs like a POS they should explain what hardware they're using since it is likely the problem and then someone can look into it. Better yet he reports as much detail about the problems and the hardware to the bug tracker and it will benefit him and many others with the same hardware. He may also find he had dodgy hardware and the OS is irrelevant so he could end up saving himself a lot of hassle.
Companies have proven over and over that they will not produce secure software. They won't even make a decent attempt at it. Something needs to be done to put much more pressure on companies to put more focus on security rather than knocking out features every week or using low paid under skilled developers.
15 minute return policy? That's fucking useless.
Yes sticking with IE 6 for over a decade is a tremendously stupid move. MS didn't even want that so there is only people to blame is the user.
Fuck catering to lazy corporations. That sort of thing has damaged the internet enough as it is. Maybe they'll quit buying into rubbish technologies if they can't rely on keeping the same awful browser around for over a decade.
I hope they don't go down in value because of this!
Your comments contain a lot of ifs and buts with not solid facts. For all you know Apple has enough statistics to prove that dial-up users aren't an issue or they'll still sell the OS in another format eventually after experimenting what would happen if they only offered a DL option.
There is no reason to move away from 10.6 either, imo and likewise if you haven't moved up to 10.6 why would you go to 10.7? ALso you can create a install DVD so a clean install probably isn't an issue.
Exactly. I still have my EEE with a 20 gig ssd (well technically a 4gig and 16gig SSD) and that, imo, is better than any new netbook and its traditional drive.
I have a netbook and I do love it but it's a toy. I can't do loads of typing on it because the keys are very small and if I'm not able to really make use of the keyboard then it might as well be a ipad. Mind you there are slightly larger netbooks now than mine and some do solve the keyboard issue but since I bought my 13" macbook pro I don't see the need for a new one. My MBP is a bit bigger than I'd like sometimes but it's still nice and light, the battery lasts forever and it's powerful. If I need room in my bag more than being able to bash out code on the train then I take my EEE.
With a MBP though an ipad just seem pointless.
If everyone isn't talking about it all the time then it's dead. Everyone knows that.
Anyone can sell an Android phone so there is a lot of shit out there.
In the UK, afaik, there is one. The rest are iphone clones.
So a phone users was impressed by a phone someone took the effort to set up, tweak and hand select good apps. That's no surprise. Give them a brand new Android phone and set them loose on the market themselves to wade through the shit.
They'll happily take your opinion but then do what the guy with the most money wants them to do.
It doesn't play DVDs. Perhaps there's some homebrew hack to get them working because the discs are similar but out of the box it doesn't do that. The Wii has a flash (lite) enabled browser and a netflix application so I'm sure the Wii U will have at least that and probably more.