I imagine there's a much larger existing userbase for input devices for the disabled in the PC world. What prevents someone from using one of these devices for gaming? I'm not too familiar with this kind of stuff but I'm sure there's a sort of trackball . keyboard combo that could be used. You might not innately be as quick as you used to be (or as other players), but you'd be surprised...
When I went to college a fellow student at the end of the hall was very big into games. I believe his console of choice was the Saturn and he played it with an arcade-style joystick. What's surprising about him is that he had a pretty serious congenital disorder: he was born without arms, and just small, working hands at the end of his shoulders. I believe he moved the joystick with his mouth. He was a pretty good player too.
Worthy of mention too, is Pin Interactive's Terraforma, which is a game designed both for sighted and unsighted gamers. Even for sighted gamers, the game offers a high-contrast mode. A playable demo is available.
I'm glad that attention is being paid to this. I don't think it will mean increased business for Nintendo in any measurable term, but then everything isn't about revenue.
profit is the only proof of a product's viability -- if people are willing to pay you to perform a service or build a product, your ability to profit proves if the product/service is worthy of your time.
What you say is true. However, profit is the end result of a number of different factors, not including marketing/promotion, pricing, distribution, quality, etc. If there's profit, you're doing well. If there's not, you're not.
What I'd like to know is what will happen to the Aibo knockoffs (the $20-$100 RoboDogs and iDinos that you see at Radio Shack for example). Will those companies continue making them now that what they're imitating doesn't exist anymore?
I don't read Kanji, but my friend does. He said Nintendo specifically mentions a smaller size and easier usability so that more women and seniors buy it.
I find trying to pick exactly what a genre a song belongs to ends up with you making up really weird genres that only bloggers reference (and that's because they got it from verbose music critics). Case in point, today's featured Pitchfork review is summarized as "indie-yuppie soul/country" whatever that means. Are you going to have a folder for indie-yuppie soul? Then one for indie-yuppie country? Then one for them mixed? At what point does the madness end?
I do divide by genre, but very broadly, and only with sporadic precision. Tag it with what you think it is, and then go on from there.
Skateboarding and football are completely different because they exist in the real world (or meatspace, if you're so inclined). Those are sort of physical activities / sports all in general. Golf, ultimate fighting, handball, crew, jai alai, ice hockey, futbol, table tennis, etc. Video games are not this.
And poker is something completely different. Yes, it's not a sport in the physical sense. But it's a specific card game that has existed in one form or another for close to two centuries. I fail to see similar interest in televised bridge, backgammon, Magic the Gathering, Chinese Checkers, Settlers of Catan, gin rummy, spades, etc. Sure, some of these have had televised specials, but the fact that there's not multiple series covering every aspect of the World Series of Parcheesi should clue you in that only select board/parlor/card games can succeed.
Video games may get to be as popular as poker or skateboarding as TV. But as mucha s prime-time football? MNF regularly got around 15-16 million viewers each week. That's not going to be feasible.
"Professional Gaming has Arrived!" has been a headline I've seen for a dozen years, if not more. It's not going to happen, because there's no audience for it. At best, it will be something like a movie critic. You can't go to movie critic school and have offers ready for you when you graduate. You make it on your own. I think pro gaming, if and when it ever arrives, will be very similar.
I didn't see 60 Minutes, but did they mention Golden Tee Golf at all? I know there's people that play that in leagues and make $15,000+ per year. Not income-worthy, but that's a pretty good supplement for the average joe.
Just set it up. Tell a few people about it and see if it gets going. What I've found is that you need a very highly dedicated group of people who add and change information. If these people aren't already doing it informally, then it is unlikely that this will happen with new free software.
TWiki is incredibly easy to set-up and use. I would set it up and see what happens. If it doesn't develop, it wasn't mean to be.
Thankfully, his legacy now lives on with today's youth; they are reminded of the man through music videos featuring performers waving green bank notes bearing his lithograph and referencing his name. Yes, indeed, it is all about the Benjamin.
Re:Patented business methods -- find me some VC!
on
Web 3.0
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· Score: 2, Funny
You mean Web 3.11 for Workgroups? After all, it's e-robustness gives it a best-of-breed i-enterprise synergy.
Its all in the *games* guys... and so far the delivery of good games just hasn't happened.
There's plenty of good games on the 360. Counting arcade games, I'd say there's about 10 solid, good titles. About three of those are exclusive to the console. This puts it above other console in terms of good launch titles. The problem is there's no great launch title.
For example, Apple iTunes already lets you send a song as a gift. Any future DRM-system is sure to have implemented gift cards. And in the case of something like (the new) Napster, well, there's no "giving out" songs as a gift. For any more complex matters (grandma doesn't know how to download), the companies will probably not care.
Game Informer really is several times larger than their nearest competitor. How did they manage that?
Very easily. For a long time, you got a free subscription to Game Informer whenever you signed up for the Used-Games club at GameStop (a very large national retailer with many, many small neighborhood shops). So, for a year or so, I got the magazine in the mail. I actually liked it better than websites when it talked about games. Obviously, for E3 news, print will always lag behind, but it's nice to sit down for 20 minutes and know what's in store in gaming for a whole month. No need to check a site three times a week, ten minutes at a time.
Although for some this might be obvious, there's a very good reason that magazines do whatever they can to keep you as a reader/subscriber. The more readers they have, the higher rates for advertising they can charge. If you look at their media kit (PDF), they even take it a level further, promoting the "synergy" with GameStop that gives you (the advertiser) a "win/win" when it comes to readership.
Hence, they can command such lofty advertising rates. IDG's publication GamePro garners $30,000 for a one-off advertisement as the 2nd cover spread in the magazine. That same ad in Game Informer would cost you (the advertiser) over $100,000! And how many of those are readers like me, who get the magazine for free but maybe aren't as interested in games as much as someone who subscribes because they wanted to? (An aside: Realistically, only suckers pay the "retail" price found on Rate Cards. Between antsy account representatives, specials, bypassing agency commissions, and slow ad months, you can easily get 10-50% off from the posted amounts).
And then you wonder why games are so highly priced. A well-written editorial on Penny Arcade coupled with 4-5 links and discussions on other sites would probably net you just as much, if not better, results.
Re:Article is front-page news, summary is not
on
CNN On The $500 PS3
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· Score: 1
Well, obviously I meant the death knell for MS's Xbox division... If the PS3 is priced below AND Halo 3 turns out to be a disaster (both highly unlikely) that would be the last of the Xbox, I'd imagine. But as it stands those are the only things I can see needed to have the Xbox fail.
Article is front-page news, summary is not
on
CNN On The $500 PS3
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· Score: 2, Interesting
From TFA:
None of the developers, by the way, echoed my hypothetical theory that Sony might be pulling a head-fake on Microsoft with the high price warnings...
Sony, while [PSP price speculation] went on, smiled enigmatically and did nothing to dissuade anyone that the device would be $300 or more. It launched at $249, still incredibly expensive by handheld standards, but lower than some consumers were expecting.
We're seeing much the same thing with the PS3. After an onslaught of information last May, the company hasn't released any information of substance. Even at CES, the device was an essential no-show. (A hardware design was there to be gawked at and a video loop of potential gameplay footage, but no new information was announced.)
There's one other possibility about the PS3 that few people have discussed: Dual-pricing strategies. It's frustrating from a consumer standpoint, but Microsoft proved it can work - at least in the U.S. Whether Sony's willing to risk fragmenting the market by offering both "bare bones" and "bells and whistles" versions of the PS3 is another matter.
Pricing the PS3 below the price of the Xbox 360 (or at the same price as the $299 Core version) may very well sound the death knell for MS. As great as the Xbox 360 is in many things, it cannot in any way compete with a Blu-Ray player that is $100 less. Sony, not being smart, or perhaps not wanting to fight against cash-rich Microsoft or not wanting to lose out on automatic profit, won't go that route. They're also not giving pricing information out because they want to let the market figure out pricing. Obviously, people ARE willing to pay $700 for a console. (Check ebay the weeks after the 360). Sony could well sell the PS3 for $699 with a game and two controllers and wait 6 months for a price drop. I have no doubt that even at $999, it would sell like sugar-fried hotcakes. At least to the fanboys and/or early adopters. Is that a smart long-term strategy? No.
How have PC magazines been doing reviews all this time? Surely not everyone is playing games with a TNT2 Ultra and PII-400.
What about DVD reviews? Surely someone will say something like "the new DTS-ES 6.1 surround sound track sounds amazing!" I'm not going to fault them for testing it on a setup I don't personally have.
Reviewing a video game on an HDTV, which is equipment commonly available in the $500-$1500 range, doesn't sound outlandish. I would want the reviews to be done on the best equipment possible so they can really discern all the differences. That doesn't mean they need a three-gun Runco projector or a 35.1 D-D-Dolby Sound System. But the Xbox 360, for better or for worse, is marketed as the first HD gaming console. Let's not ignore those capabilities. If I hear complaints about graphics or sound, I want it to be the cause of the software, not the equipment the console is connected to!
Powerstone was my favorite title on the Dreamcast. There was a very similar game, although more adventurish, that took place on a cruise with a bunch of bad guys, and possibly mutants. In that one, anything laying around was a weapon. And I mean anything. Fish, lamps, tables, chairs... it was pretty good fun.
Neither of those two titles are really traditional fighting games. Compared to Street Fighter, Soul Calibur (1 and 2, don't know about 3), Mortal Kombat, Tekken... DOA is VERY interactive.
I was visiting one of the Wizard Guilds and stopped to talk to a wizard who had a bunch of the very very nice magical jewels on her table. I jumped on the table then looked down while I talked to her. I was able to grab a whole lot of loot from there without her finding out. Eventually that allowed me to permanent-enchant a sword with life drain with a radial effect. So I would hit one enemy and drain the life of him and anyone around him. At that point the game became completely unrealistic as I was invincible. Daedras would fall, guards died in seconds. Not wanting to play the game and further, I gathered all my belongings and hid them in a swamp. Then I unequipped everything and teleported to some random desert. If I want to play the game again I'd have to make it out of the desert alive with no weapons, armor, or spell and then find my stuff.
With twice the resolution of 1080i, in demonstrations the motion of the videos have made viewers nauseous due to how their brains were fooled by the realism.
I heard this, almost to a T, about 11 years ago when NYT's Science Times described HD-TV. (People were fooled by a fake fishtank, you could see the makeup on actor's faces, etc.) HDTV is nice, but it's not that good. I'm going to venture and say that the above statement does include some hyperbole.
As far as Blue-Ray vs. HD-DVD vs. the realm beyond that... The problem here is that the limit we're hitting is the display devices. First off, getting 4x the resolution on a 30" TV isn't going to do that much... Getting 4x the resolution on a 90" projected image is going to do wonders. But how many people own projectors? 0.5% of people would probably be an overstatement. Even HDTVs and LCDs and plasmas which all have dropped immensely in price are still a special buy for someone, being anywhere from two to ten times the price of a regular TV.
And what about software?
I've personally invested a good amount of time and money at getting a fairly sizeable DVD catalog. I have no problem leapfrogging a generation or two and waiting until the next-next- or next-next-next big thing, whether that be Holographic Video Discs or something else.
Sure, I'd love to have a cleaner, sharper version of Bringing Up Baby, or the LotR movies. But what I have right now is pretty good, too.
Re:Respond to comments in a good way?
on
Amazon Connect
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Authors are already commenting on things in Amazon. The most famous (to me at least) is Anne Rice, she of Interview with the Vampire. She even defended her own book and rated the movie based on her book. Amazon took the listing down for a bit but now it's back. (Look under the reviews in The Blood Canticle, her review is from Sep. 6th). To her credit, as weird and emotional as her response was, she offered anyone money back for the book if they didn't like it and I believe she sent all the unwanted books to the troops.
(I'm by no means an Anne Rice reader, I've never read a single paragraph of her work, but this obviously stood out in my memory).
"Most online activities, like standard websurfing, are not significantly sped up by high-bandwidth connections, and the few that are, such as downloading, are not typically time-sensitive anyway."
Excuse me? Downloading... not time-sensitive? If downloading isn't time sensitive, I don't know what is. Even for leisurely things like movie trailers, I don't want to wait more than is necessary. For people who transfer large files as part of their job, download and upload time is even more important.
Slashdot Mirror
I imagine there's a much larger existing userbase for input devices for the disabled in the PC world. What prevents someone from using one of these devices for gaming? I'm not too familiar with this kind of stuff but I'm sure there's a sort of trackball . keyboard combo that could be used. You might not innately be as quick as you used to be (or as other players), but you'd be surprised...
When I went to college a fellow student at the end of the hall was very big into games. I believe his console of choice was the Saturn and he played it with an arcade-style joystick. What's surprising about him is that he had a pretty serious congenital disorder: he was born without arms, and just small, working hands at the end of his shoulders. I believe he moved the joystick with his mouth. He was a pretty good player too.
Worthy of mention too, is Pin Interactive's Terraforma, which is a game designed both for sighted and unsighted gamers. Even for sighted gamers, the game offers a high-contrast mode. A playable demo is available.
One of the lead developers of Terraforma mentions in this article that there are other games for the disabled - he specifically mentions MUDs as well as some really neat off-the-wall concepts like games that use a "breating interface".
I'm glad that attention is being paid to this. I don't think it will mean increased business for Nintendo in any measurable term, but then everything isn't about revenue.
profit is the only proof of a product's viability -- if people are willing to pay you to perform a service or build a product, your ability to profit proves if the product/service is worthy of your time.
What you say is true. However, profit is the end result of a number of different factors, not including marketing/promotion, pricing, distribution, quality, etc. If there's profit, you're doing well. If there's not, you're not.
What I'd like to know is what will happen to the Aibo knockoffs (the $20-$100 RoboDogs and iDinos that you see at Radio Shack for example). Will those companies continue making them now that what they're imitating doesn't exist anymore?
I don't read Kanji, but my friend does. He said Nintendo specifically mentions a smaller size and easier usability so that more women and seniors buy it.
That's right. Your grandman's getting a DS.
I find trying to pick exactly what a genre a song belongs to ends up with you making up really weird genres that only bloggers reference (and that's because they got it from verbose music critics). Case in point, today's featured Pitchfork review is summarized as "indie-yuppie soul/country" whatever that means. Are you going to have a folder for indie-yuppie soul? Then one for indie-yuppie country? Then one for them mixed? At what point does the madness end?
I do divide by genre, but very broadly, and only with sporadic precision. Tag it with what you think it is, and then go on from there.
Picking nit, but here goes anyways:
Skateboarding and football are completely different because they exist in the real world (or meatspace, if you're so inclined). Those are sort of physical activities / sports all in general. Golf, ultimate fighting, handball, crew, jai alai, ice hockey, futbol, table tennis, etc. Video games are not this.
And poker is something completely different. Yes, it's not a sport in the physical sense. But it's a specific card game that has existed in one form or another for close to two centuries. I fail to see similar interest in televised bridge, backgammon, Magic the Gathering, Chinese Checkers, Settlers of Catan, gin rummy, spades, etc. Sure, some of these have had televised specials, but the fact that there's not multiple series covering every aspect of the World Series of Parcheesi should clue you in that only select board/parlor/card games can succeed.
Video games may get to be as popular as poker or skateboarding as TV. But as mucha s prime-time football? MNF regularly got around 15-16 million viewers each week. That's not going to be feasible.
They could've made it 69.44.123.70...
CHLOE: "Jack tell me your IP address so I can upload this decryption program."
[ The memoirs of PRESIDENT PALMER are hidden from view because he changed the font! ]
JACK BAUER: "OK, it's 292, dot, 162, dot, 12, dot, 2."
CHLOE: "Thanks!"
I guess in the future world of 24 we're on IPv8.
"Professional Gaming has Arrived!" has been a headline I've seen for a dozen years, if not more. It's not going to happen, because there's no audience for it. At best, it will be something like a movie critic. You can't go to movie critic school and have offers ready for you when you graduate. You make it on your own. I think pro gaming, if and when it ever arrives, will be very similar.
I didn't see 60 Minutes, but did they mention Golden Tee Golf at all? I know there's people that play that in leagues and make $15,000+ per year. Not income-worthy, but that's a pretty good supplement for the average joe.
Just set it up. Tell a few people about it and see if it gets going. What I've found is that you need a very highly dedicated group of people who add and change information. If these people aren't already doing it informally, then it is unlikely that this will happen with new free software.
TWiki is incredibly easy to set-up and use. I would set it up and see what happens. If it doesn't develop, it wasn't mean to be.
Thankfully, his legacy now lives on with today's youth; they are reminded of the man through music videos featuring performers waving green bank notes bearing his lithograph and referencing his name. Yes, indeed, it is all about the Benjamin.
You mean Web 3.11 for Workgroups? After all, it's e-robustness gives it a best-of-breed i-enterprise synergy.
But if we find out if someone has gotten it, we won't know who.
Its all in the *games* guys... and so far the delivery of good games just hasn't happened.
There's plenty of good games on the 360. Counting arcade games, I'd say there's about 10 solid, good titles. About three of those are exclusive to the console. This puts it above other console in terms of good launch titles. The problem is there's no great launch title.
For example, Apple iTunes already lets you send a song as a gift. Any future DRM-system is sure to have implemented gift cards. And in the case of something like (the new) Napster, well, there's no "giving out" songs as a gift. For any more complex matters (grandma doesn't know how to download), the companies will probably not care.
Very easily. For a long time, you got a free subscription to Game Informer whenever you signed up for the Used-Games club at GameStop (a very large national retailer with many, many small neighborhood shops). So, for a year or so, I got the magazine in the mail. I actually liked it better than websites when it talked about games. Obviously, for E3 news, print will always lag behind, but it's nice to sit down for 20 minutes and know what's in store in gaming for a whole month. No need to check a site three times a week, ten minutes at a time.
Although for some this might be obvious, there's a very good reason that magazines do whatever they can to keep you as a reader/subscriber. The more readers they have, the higher rates for advertising they can charge. If you look at their media kit (PDF), they even take it a level further, promoting the "synergy" with GameStop that gives you (the advertiser) a "win/win" when it comes to readership.
Hence, they can command such lofty advertising rates. IDG's publication GamePro garners $30,000 for a one-off advertisement as the 2nd cover spread in the magazine. That same ad in Game Informer would cost you (the advertiser) over $100,000! And how many of those are readers like me, who get the magazine for free but maybe aren't as interested in games as much as someone who subscribes because they wanted to? (An aside: Realistically, only suckers pay the "retail" price found on Rate Cards. Between antsy account representatives, specials, bypassing agency commissions, and slow ad months, you can easily get 10-50% off from the posted amounts).
And then you wonder why games are so highly priced. A well-written editorial on Penny Arcade coupled with 4-5 links and discussions on other sites would probably net you just as much, if not better, results.
Well, obviously I meant the death knell for MS's Xbox division... If the PS3 is priced below AND Halo 3 turns out to be a disaster (both highly unlikely) that would be the last of the Xbox, I'd imagine. But as it stands those are the only things I can see needed to have the Xbox fail.
Pricing the PS3 below the price of the Xbox 360 (or at the same price as the $299 Core version) may very well sound the death knell for MS. As great as the Xbox 360 is in many things, it cannot in any way compete with a Blu-Ray player that is $100 less. Sony, not being smart, or perhaps not wanting to fight against cash-rich Microsoft or not wanting to lose out on automatic profit, won't go that route. They're also not giving pricing information out because they want to let the market figure out pricing. Obviously, people ARE willing to pay $700 for a console. (Check ebay the weeks after the 360). Sony could well sell the PS3 for $699 with a game and two controllers and wait 6 months for a price drop. I have no doubt that even at $999, it would sell like sugar-fried hotcakes. At least to the fanboys and/or early adopters. Is that a smart long-term strategy? No.
How have PC magazines been doing reviews all this time? Surely not everyone is playing games with a TNT2 Ultra and PII-400.
What about DVD reviews? Surely someone will say something like "the new DTS-ES 6.1 surround sound track sounds amazing!" I'm not going to fault them for testing it on a setup I don't personally have.
Reviewing a video game on an HDTV, which is equipment commonly available in the $500-$1500 range, doesn't sound outlandish. I would want the reviews to be done on the best equipment possible so they can really discern all the differences. That doesn't mean they need a three-gun Runco projector or a 35.1 D-D-Dolby Sound System. But the Xbox 360, for better or for worse, is marketed as the first HD gaming console. Let's not ignore those capabilities. If I hear complaints about graphics or sound, I want it to be the cause of the software, not the equipment the console is connected to!
Powerstone was my favorite title on the Dreamcast. There was a very similar game, although more adventurish, that took place on a cruise with a bunch of bad guys, and possibly mutants. In that one, anything laying around was a weapon. And I mean anything. Fish, lamps, tables, chairs... it was pretty good fun.
Neither of those two titles are really traditional fighting games. Compared to Street Fighter, Soul Calibur (1 and 2, don't know about 3), Mortal Kombat, Tekken... DOA is VERY interactive.
I was visiting one of the Wizard Guilds and stopped to talk to a wizard who had a bunch of the very very nice magical jewels on her table. I jumped on the table then looked down while I talked to her. I was able to grab a whole lot of loot from there without her finding out.
Eventually that allowed me to permanent-enchant a sword with life drain with a radial effect. So I would hit one enemy and drain the life of him and anyone around him. At that point the game became completely unrealistic as I was invincible. Daedras would fall, guards died in seconds. Not wanting to play the game and further, I gathered all my belongings and hid them in a swamp. Then I unequipped everything and teleported to some random desert. If I want to play the game again I'd have to make it out of the desert alive with no weapons, armor, or spell and then find my stuff.
I would like to know what this "Tiananmen Square" is, but alas, your links lead to Wikipedia.
Signed,
An Inquisitive Chinese 'Net User
I heard this, almost to a T, about 11 years ago when NYT's Science Times described HD-TV. (People were fooled by a fake fishtank, you could see the makeup on actor's faces, etc.) HDTV is nice, but it's not that good. I'm going to venture and say that the above statement does include some hyperbole.
As far as Blue-Ray vs. HD-DVD vs. the realm beyond that... The problem here is that the limit we're hitting is the display devices. First off, getting 4x the resolution on a 30" TV isn't going to do that much... Getting 4x the resolution on a 90" projected image is going to do wonders. But how many people own projectors? 0.5% of people would probably be an overstatement. Even HDTVs and LCDs and plasmas which all have dropped immensely in price are still a special buy for someone, being anywhere from two to ten times the price of a regular TV.
And what about software?
I've personally invested a good amount of time and money at getting a fairly sizeable DVD catalog. I have no problem leapfrogging a generation or two and waiting until the next-next- or next-next-next big thing, whether that be Holographic Video Discs or something else.
Sure, I'd love to have a cleaner, sharper version of Bringing Up Baby, or the LotR movies. But what I have right now is pretty good, too.
Noticed on Penny Arcade that HardOCP is doing this for real.
And yes, it does void your warranty.
Authors are already commenting on things in Amazon. The most famous (to me at least) is Anne Rice, she of Interview with the Vampire. She even defended her own book and rated the movie based on her book. Amazon took the listing down for a bit but now it's back. (Look under the reviews in The Blood Canticle, her review is from Sep. 6th). To her credit, as weird and emotional as her response was, she offered anyone money back for the book if they didn't like it and I believe she sent all the unwanted books to the troops.
(I'm by no means an Anne Rice reader, I've never read a single paragraph of her work, but this obviously stood out in my memory).
Excuse me? Downloading... not time-sensitive? If downloading isn't time sensitive, I don't know what is. Even for leisurely things like movie trailers, I don't want to wait more than is necessary. For people who transfer large files as part of their job, download and upload time is even more important.