I don't get it either. Why anyone in the consumer space would want to use XP over Vista is beyond me at this point.
At this point I have been using Vista for over a year. Anytime I have to go back and use XP it feels like an out-dated system. For one, the lack of an integrated desktop search client is a huge productivity loss. It's like using a Mac without Spotlight, who really wants to do that anymore?
Secondly, desktop composition in Vista also vastly improves the windows switcher by providing live previews of the windows instead of undescriptive application icons.
Overall I find Vista to be a huge step forward in usability over XP.
At my house we typically use between 10-30 GB total (upstream + downstream) each month. That includes usage for online gaming, game demoes and videos from Xbox Live, online data transfer from home to work (e.g. Live Mesh), Skype, digital music and video purchases, and plenty of web browsing. With my current plan my ISP gives me a 100 GB cap a month. Unless there is a dramatic shift in my usage habits, that 100 GB a month is effectively unlimited. I have never had to worry about going over it.
Re:Vista is the ultimate Apple marketing program
on
Windows Vista Annoyances
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· Score: 2, Informative
And correct me if I'm wrong but OS X doesn't have DRM at the OS layer. Apple is no fan of DRM, and has only reluctantly played along with the music companies on this. Microsoft, on the other hand, has embraced them.
The only reason that Apple does not have HDCP in Mac OS X is because they do not support playback from any high-definition optical discs. When Apple supports Bluray or HD-DVD you can bet HDCP is going to be there.
Apple® announced that it will release its second software update for Mac® OS X today, which together with a simultaneously-released update to iTunes will add the ability to burn custom music CDs on Mac OS X. Both software updates will be released at noon today and will begin automatically notifying users and updating their copies of Mac OS X over the Internet during the coming week.
Being somewhat of a diehard I stuck with Mac OS X 10.0 from the beginning but the experience was far from pleasant. Several of my friends downgraded from Mac OS X 10.0 and even 10.1 to Mac OS 9.2 due to a myriad of incompatibilities, performance issues, and lost features. It was not until Mac OS X 10.2 that OS X became prefered over Classic for most Mac users.
Although such people may exist, I have not met anyone who was discouraged about losing Mac Classic OS to the point where they turned to Windows.
That is because Mac Classic was so far behind what a modern OS should be that Mac users were willing to put up with the growing pains of OS X. You have to remember we Mac users can be a zealous group so we will but up with a lot of BS from Apple and tell everyone it's wonderful. Windows users tend to be a lot less forgiving.
"Gee, I would like the market leader to squander their advantage by breaking compatibility with old hardware and software. Make things more complicated, add in some DRM, slow it all down, and let the poor customer sort out the mess."
Ironically no-one paid much attention to Apple until they did just that by moving from Mac OS Classic to OS X and iTunes became huge.
I really enjoyed Tomb Raider Legends, and I wish it would have taken that long to finish. Instead for me it took 7 hours on the hardest difficulty on the first run through the game. Those were a fun seven hours, but I was sure glad I rented it because for $60 (Xbox 360 version) I expect more than seven hours of game-play.
If anything this shows how incredibly difficult it is for a developer to evaluate the length of time a game will take to finish. It's entirely dependant on the player's skill. In some games this can be accounted for by increasing the difficulty so that a range of players get a decent amount of time out of the game, but in Tomb Raider case this strategy was ineffective. Even on the hardest difficulty there were few enemy encounters that provided any significant challenge. There is also no method to scale the difficulty of the platform puzzles in the game either, and since this makes up a majority of the game-play an adept gamer can blow through the game really quickly.
What is a developer to do in this case? The best they can do is try to make the game appeal to the largest audience possible. It's going to be impossible to satisify everyone. Even though I did not buy the game and instead rented it, I thought Edios did a great job in that regard.
That allows independent developers to build and share code and executables on the Xbox 360 over Xbox Live. It's in beta right now, but it would certainly make home brewed games a lot easier to create. Not sure about what kind of support they are offering with non-standard input devices though.
Actually a peer-to-peer model is better than a centralized network for fighting games where frames need to be synced between two client boxes. If they added a centralized host information would just have to travel and be processed at another node, which would actually increase the latency of the packets traveling between the two Xbox 360's.
A centralized server does make a lot of sense when the game has more than two players though, since all the server processing can be down by the server box which leaves the client machines free to process more game data, and typically centralized server's can be put on low-latency high-bandwidth connections which are still lacking in consumer broadband. Somebody has to pay for the centralized servers and the game-traffic though. Maybe they can use in-game advertising for that, but I would rather ISPs just continue to upgrade their networks.
Game controllers are great for action/arcade style games... but for FPS and RTS games, extreme precision is needed -- the kind of precision that is impossible with a gamepad. Auto-aim is a ridiculous concept that exists because console controls are so sub-par at controlling First Person Shooters.
What does precision aiming have to do with a game being fun? I've played a lot of FPS games on both PC and console, and the most fun I have had has been playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live or over System Link. Sure the aiming is not as pixel perfect precise on a console but there is still a skill involved and it's a lot of fun.
Your post in general has an angry biased tone. Just chill. If you do not like playing FPS games on consoles that is fine, that's all you had to say.
Tycho, of Penny-Arcade, wrote about Gears of War after he played it at E3. He came away quite impressed, and usually he's fairly spot on. The following quote was taken from this page. (Note: Mark Rein of Epic was quoted in a recent interview as saying all the E3 stuff, what Tycho experienced, was running on a single-threaded renderer, but the final version of the game is running on their multi-threaded, Gemini, renderer which makes things a lot smoother+prettier.)
Typically, the spectacle of the Electronic Entertainment Expo is such that each sequential event compresses the one before it, leaving me with three compacted days that begin inflating on the plane ride back and leave me a drooling wretch by Monday. This time is different; I have complete access to the entire week just as though I were lazily thumbing through a file drawer. For example, I knew the moment that I gripped the controller for Gears of War that I was in front of the game of the show. Nothing obscures that information. Gears is really at a "Halo" level of platform definition, and when your hands close around the gamepad on "emergence day," please remember I said so.
When we came out of the room where we had been playing it, a kind of illicit zone like an Opium Den, Kiko and I immediately began to discuss how profound the experience was. At the same time, Mike and Gabe (two separate people!) felt like it was pretty good, but bemoaned its rough framerate and constant tearing. It is our theory that perhaps some boxes were set to 1080i and some to 720p possibly creating performance disparities, because Keek and myself experienced no framerate abberations worth discussing. We did briefly experience a vision of a future where we spend every night playing Gears of War online, but I'm not sure that's connected to the vertical resolution.
If I had to say what defines it, I would say that "everything in the game world feels unrelentingly massive." This is a simulated environment that feels very confident, in that it is about huge armored men hiding behind sturdy cover while bursts of machinegun fire savage your solid fortifications. Everything you do is made to "feel" large, and when you throw yourself against a hunk of ruined automobile you are not left to wonder whether or not you are a bad ass. It is clear from the word "go." A kind of brutal platformer, Gears of War is about leaping from safety to safety, and everything reinforces it. It feels classic instantly. Indeed, you could call it Frogger Plus Firearms and not get it wrong.
The Wii is definitely trying something new and I think that could be exciting. But I think the "slightly upgraded Gamecube" comment stands. If you look at the preview shots for a game like Call of Duty 3 and compare the Wii screenshots to the Xbox 360 or PS3 screenshots there is a big difference. Improved graphics and audio do increase the level of immersion in the game. It's true that the Wiimote will do that too, but to what extent?
Let me ask you if instead of releasing the Wii, Nintendo instead released a Wiimote-style controller for the Gamecube would anyone be excited about that?
Maybe I'm just too much of a graphics whore. I was already growing fatigued of looking at the Xbox graphics a year ago, and do not want to have to be staring at the same level of graphical fidelity for the next 5-6 years.
This is probably not the outlet to express such opinions, but while I am interested to see what is actually going to come of the Wii I am still really skeptical about the system. To me it seems more like a slightly upgraded Gamecube with a new controller. I'm not sure if that is worth $200 or more.
It is just far to early to be making any judgments about the Wii. The system is all about game-play and we do not really have any experience with the Wii's game-play to make any judgments about it. Is the game-play going to improve enough to make up for the difference in graphical prowess that the Wii lacks when compared to the other two next-gen systems? I'd like to believe that Nintendo can pull it off, but I'm not convinced yet.
I'll be sitting on the fence until after the system has been released.
I have had Shaw's (a Canadian cable company / ISP ) Xtreme-I premium service for almost two years now. It's rated at 7 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. Most of the time I actually get the bandwidth they advertise. Of course my speeds depend on the server I am downloading from and torrents never go that fast anymore since they implement packet prioritization. So I am really happy with the bandwidth of the connection but the latency is... poor.
A friend of mine play online games with each-other a lot. We both have the Xtreme-I service and we live about 5 km away. Typically we see latencies in excess of 100 ms between our two machines, both of which have external IPs. It's really frustrating because for a lot of games this latency results in a VERY perceptible lag in the game-play. We've both called Shaw several times in the past but the techs never give us any answers, and most of the time they do not even understand what latency is versus bandwidth. It's incredibly frustrating for both of us, especially since the Xtreme-I service used to be low-latency.
There's nothing either of us can really do to get around the problem either. Complaining for months on end hasn't gotten us anywhere, and neither of us can switch to DSL since it isn't in our areas. Shaw used to be a good ISP, but now I just cannot wait until I get free myself from them.
It'll be the only console the smaller studios will be able to turn out good games for.
I stopped reading when you said this. Anyone ever here of Marble Blast Ultra or Geometry Wars for the Xbox 360? Both really good, unique games, one of which is made by an indie developer. So your point is already invalid.
Microsoft is all about making game development easier with it's XNA tools and is hunting down indie developers to put new games on Xbox Live Arcade. You may want to hate on Microsoft, but they have already demonstrated that they what gamers want and have already delivered products that meet that need.
People talk like only Nintendo innovates these days, and it simply is not true.
Problem is that $2.50 is not exactly a micropayment. When I think micropayment I think of something that costs less than a candy bar. If Bethesda had priced the horse armor at 20 MSP or less than 25 cents than a lot fewer people would be complaining about it.
Even at 25 cents though the horse armor is way overpriced relative to the game content. If you consider that there are 4000 in game items in Oblivion, and if we just use that as our benchmark, than each item is worth about 1.5 cents. So for a set of horse armor a fair price would be about 3 cents, or 2-3 MSP. Now that would be a microtransaction I could get behind.
Yeah but you have to figure if somebody is tech savvy enough to want to buy an iPod to watch movies on will probably have broadband. Right now if you want to watch anything on your iPod, broadband is pretty much a requirement.
While an interesting idea I am not sure the dialup and iPod markets overlap enough for this to be worth Apple's trouble.
Redefined? Really? I thought the real innovations came from the Doom's and Quake's, not another FPS clone.
I always thought anyone who really found the Halo's to be truely revolutionary has never played an FPS on a computer -- there really wasn't anything unique about the game.
That is a fairly condenscending opinion don't you think? I have been playing FPSes on both PC and console since Marathon and Wolfenstein 3D, and in my opinion Halo 2 is at the top of the craft.
Oh and games that are simply "FPS clones" are not played competitively, like in the MLG for instance.
It's fine with me if you do not like Halo 2, but at least give the game its due respect.
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
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· Score: 1
I don't want other people knowing that my most listened to album is Tom Dooley and Other Hits by The Kingston Trio.
I hear this all the time, and people say it like it is some huge insight. It is almost like it is fashionable to be a next-generation of consoles hater.
Since the first Nintendo I have been playing and buying consoles, and I think you could make the same statement about every generation of consoles since them. Even the leap from 2D to 3D you could describe as a evolutionary enhancement of the graphics.
What do you really expect from a next-generation console?
If there are complaints about the "evolutionary" nature of this next-generation as opposed to previous console generations please point it out. They look pretty similar to me.
Really? I play my Xbox 360 on a "non-widescreen non-HD tv" and I think it looks breathtakingly fabulous. Sure it is not as nice as it would be on an HD-TV but the graphics quality is a tremendous leap from last generation. An HD-TV is definitely not a requirement to enjoy the new graphics.
Two years ago I became interested enough in DVORAK to actually learn the layout. It would have been very frustrating to have to relearn command key placements like you say, but at least in Mac OS X, the system I was using, there is a keyboard layout called "Dvorak - Qwerty Command". This feature implements the Dvorak keyboard layout, but when the command key is pressed it reverts to the Qwerty layout so that all the command keys are the same as you are used to in Qwerty.
After using this layout for several months, the only programs that didn't accept it were Microsoft applications, which seemed to randomly decide if they would follow the Qwerty or Dvorak layout for command keys. If you are on Mac OS X there really isn't a lot of disadvantages to trying Dvorak out if you are free from MS applications (I haven't tried Mac Office 2004 to see if this problem persists).
The only bad thing about learning Dvorak is that when you go back to a regular keyboard you are basically back to hunt and peck. I found it really difficult to be able to switch between the two and maintain typing speed; I can type at over 100 wpm on either layout after sufficient time is given for me to adjust. That said I would way rather use Dvorak it just feels nicer on your hands, you can type faster, and I found I made less typos.
I believe the crash you are talking about happened during a demo of Forza Motorsport which is coming out for Xbox 1 in a couple of months. As far as I know Microsoft didn't demo any Xbox 2 stuff at CES 2005.
Perhaps it's because I have been a Bungie fanboy since the Marathon series, but even coming from a history filled with PC FPS games I found Halo to be totally awesome. The story of the game, and the game-play were enough to draw me in, and get me past the more repetitive levels, like the library.
To say that the graphics, sounds, weapons, and game-play were bland is a bit unfair I think. The game was one of the first to extensively use shaders, and the lighting was fairly well done for the time. The sound had support for Dolby 5.1, which made some of the levels more eerie as you could hear noises and ambience in all directions as you played. The weapons were cool I thought as well. There was your standard selection of human weapons, such as the shotgun, pistol and rocket launcher. But the plasma based weapons, and sticky grenades were a fun addition. The gameplay was far from bland. Halo was one of the first games to use vehicles extensively. How could you possibly think that driving the warthog around as the gunner on the back mows through Covenant hordes bland? I suppose riding a Scorpion tank into the heart of a fortified Covenant position, and taking out enemy artillery with your long-range canon is boring too? Of course having an aerial dog fight in a Banshee is pretty boring too right?
Maybe I'm just too easily pleased but I thought there was a lot of great innovative stuff in Halo. It's one of the few FPS that I'll still fire up and play even after beating the game several times through. I can't think of a single FPS game that I've played on PC that had a single-player experience captivating enough to keep me coming back, time and time again.
"It used to be that conole games didn't need updates or didn't need add-ons."
Rather I think it is that they couldn't have update or couldn't have add-ons because there was no way to deliver new content. Now that a system exists to deliver new content online I see no reason why console developers shouldn't take advantage of this opportunity to give fans a little more.
Anybody that has played Ninja Gaiden knows that the game was darn near perfect. This Hurricane Pack was not "needed" at all; it's a little extra for all those fans out there. It should also be noted that this pack is being released forthe second round of the Master Ninja Tournament, to add something fresh and more difficult for this round of competition.
With respect to patches and updates for console games, I think it is something that should be expected when gaming goes online. In most cases the shear amount of play that goes into an online game will reveal new bugs or game balance issues that were not seen during testing. The amount of testing before release to fix most of these issues would be unreasonably long. Heck they are still working out bugs and game balance issues in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and those games have been around for years now. Developers should just be ready to deliver fixes for problems that appear after release (unlike Ubisoft).
"And personally, I would feel ripped off if I bought the game and didn't get these addons because I had to sign up for X-box Live."
The fees that people pay for Xbox Live help pay for the development of new content. Xbox subscribers should feel ripped off if they paid for new content like this that was delivered to everyone freely.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't get it either. Why anyone in the consumer space would want to use XP over Vista is beyond me at this point.
At this point I have been using Vista for over a year. Anytime I have to go back and use XP it feels like an out-dated system. For one, the lack of an integrated desktop search client is a huge productivity loss. It's like using a Mac without Spotlight, who really wants to do that anymore?
Secondly, desktop composition in Vista also vastly improves the windows switcher by providing live previews of the windows instead of undescriptive application icons.
Overall I find Vista to be a huge step forward in usability over XP.
At my house we typically use between 10-30 GB total (upstream + downstream) each month. That includes usage for online gaming, game demoes and videos from Xbox Live, online data transfer from home to work (e.g. Live Mesh), Skype, digital music and video purchases, and plenty of web browsing. With my current plan my ISP gives me a 100 GB cap a month. Unless there is a dramatic shift in my usage habits, that 100 GB a month is effectively unlimited. I have never had to worry about going over it.
OK.
DRM is in the kernel.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/01/0421248&from=rss
FairPlay DRM is in Quicktime a major OS component.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay
The only reason that Apple does not have HDCP in Mac OS X is because they do not support playback from any high-definition optical discs. When Apple supports Bluray or HD-DVD you can bet HDCP is going to be there.
Ha! Did you even run Mac OS X 10.0?
That OS was dog slow and not even burn CDs. That feature was released later on in an update.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/may/1macosx.html
Being somewhat of a diehard I stuck with Mac OS X 10.0 from the beginning but the experience was far from pleasant. Several of my friends downgraded from Mac OS X 10.0 and even 10.1 to Mac OS 9.2 due to a myriad of incompatibilities, performance issues, and lost features. It was not until Mac OS X 10.2 that OS X became prefered over Classic for most Mac users.
That is because Mac Classic was so far behind what a modern OS should be that Mac users were willing to put up with the growing pains of OS X. You have to remember we Mac users can be a zealous group so we will but up with a lot of BS from Apple and tell everyone it's wonderful. Windows users tend to be a lot less forgiving.
Ironically no-one paid much attention to Apple until they did just that by moving from Mac OS Classic to OS X and iTunes became huge.
I really enjoyed Tomb Raider Legends, and I wish it would have taken that long to finish. Instead for me it took 7 hours on the hardest difficulty on the first run through the game. Those were a fun seven hours, but I was sure glad I rented it because for $60 (Xbox 360 version) I expect more than seven hours of game-play.
If anything this shows how incredibly difficult it is for a developer to evaluate the length of time a game will take to finish. It's entirely dependant on the player's skill. In some games this can be accounted for by increasing the difficulty so that a range of players get a decent amount of time out of the game, but in Tomb Raider case this strategy was ineffective. Even on the hardest difficulty there were few enemy encounters that provided any significant challenge. There is also no method to scale the difficulty of the platform puzzles in the game either, and since this makes up a majority of the game-play an adept gamer can blow through the game really quickly.
What is a developer to do in this case? The best they can do is try to make the game appeal to the largest audience possible. It's going to be impossible to satisify everyone. Even though I did not buy the game and instead rented it, I thought Edios did a great job in that regard.
What about XNA Game Studio Express?
That allows independent developers to build and share code and executables on the Xbox 360 over Xbox Live. It's in beta right now, but it would certainly make home brewed games a lot easier to create. Not sure about what kind of support they are offering with non-standard input devices though.
Actually a peer-to-peer model is better than a centralized network for fighting games where frames need to be synced between two client boxes. If they added a centralized host information would just have to travel and be processed at another node, which would actually increase the latency of the packets traveling between the two Xbox 360's.
A centralized server does make a lot of sense when the game has more than two players though, since all the server processing can be down by the server box which leaves the client machines free to process more game data, and typically centralized server's can be put on low-latency high-bandwidth connections which are still lacking in consumer broadband. Somebody has to pay for the centralized servers and the game-traffic though. Maybe they can use in-game advertising for that, but I would rather ISPs just continue to upgrade their networks.
What does precision aiming have to do with a game being fun? I've played a lot of FPS games on both PC and console, and the most fun I have had has been playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live or over System Link. Sure the aiming is not as pixel perfect precise on a console but there is still a skill involved and it's a lot of fun.
Your post in general has an angry biased tone. Just chill. If you do not like playing FPS games on consoles that is fine, that's all you had to say.
The Wii is definitely trying something new and I think that could be exciting. But I think the "slightly upgraded Gamecube" comment stands. If you look at the preview shots for a game like Call of Duty 3 and compare the Wii screenshots to the Xbox 360 or PS3 screenshots there is a big difference. Improved graphics and audio do increase the level of immersion in the game. It's true that the Wiimote will do that too, but to what extent?
Let me ask you if instead of releasing the Wii, Nintendo instead released a Wiimote-style controller for the Gamecube would anyone be excited about that?
Maybe I'm just too much of a graphics whore. I was already growing fatigued of looking at the Xbox graphics a year ago, and do not want to have to be staring at the same level of graphical fidelity for the next 5-6 years.
This is probably not the outlet to express such opinions, but while I am interested to see what is actually going to come of the Wii I am still really skeptical about the system. To me it seems more like a slightly upgraded Gamecube with a new controller. I'm not sure if that is worth $200 or more.
It is just far to early to be making any judgments about the Wii. The system is all about game-play and we do not really have any experience with the Wii's game-play to make any judgments about it. Is the game-play going to improve enough to make up for the difference in graphical prowess that the Wii lacks when compared to the other two next-gen systems? I'd like to believe that Nintendo can pull it off, but I'm not convinced yet.
I'll be sitting on the fence until after the system has been released.
I have had Shaw's (a Canadian cable company / ISP ) Xtreme-I premium service for almost two years now. It's rated at 7 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. Most of the time I actually get the bandwidth they advertise. Of course my speeds depend on the server I am downloading from and torrents never go that fast anymore since they implement packet prioritization. So I am really happy with the bandwidth of the connection but the latency is ... poor.
A friend of mine play online games with each-other a lot. We both have the Xtreme-I service and we live about 5 km away. Typically we see latencies in excess of 100 ms between our two machines, both of which have external IPs. It's really frustrating because for a lot of games this latency results in a VERY perceptible lag in the game-play. We've both called Shaw several times in the past but the techs never give us any answers, and most of the time they do not even understand what latency is versus bandwidth. It's incredibly frustrating for both of us, especially since the Xtreme-I service used to be low-latency.
There's nothing either of us can really do to get around the problem either. Complaining for months on end hasn't gotten us anywhere, and neither of us can switch to DSL since it isn't in our areas. Shaw used to be a good ISP, but now I just cannot wait until I get free myself from them.
It'll be the only console the smaller studios will be able to turn out good games for.
I stopped reading when you said this. Anyone ever here of Marble Blast Ultra or Geometry Wars for the Xbox 360? Both really good, unique games, one of which is made by an indie developer. So your point is already invalid.
Microsoft is all about making game development easier with it's XNA tools and is hunting down indie developers to put new games on Xbox Live Arcade. You may want to hate on Microsoft, but they have already demonstrated that they what gamers want and have already delivered products that meet that need.
People talk like only Nintendo innovates these days, and it simply is not true.
Problem is that $2.50 is not exactly a micropayment. When I think micropayment I think of something that costs less than a candy bar. If Bethesda had priced the horse armor at 20 MSP or less than 25 cents than a lot fewer people would be complaining about it.
Even at 25 cents though the horse armor is way overpriced relative to the game content. If you consider that there are 4000 in game items in Oblivion, and if we just use that as our benchmark, than each item is worth about 1.5 cents. So for a set of horse armor a fair price would be about 3 cents, or 2-3 MSP. Now that would be a microtransaction I could get behind.
Yeah but you have to figure if somebody is tech savvy enough to want to buy an iPod to watch movies on will probably have broadband. Right now if you want to watch anything on your iPod, broadband is pretty much a requirement.
While an interesting idea I am not sure the dialup and iPod markets overlap enough for this to be worth Apple's trouble.
That is a fairly condenscending opinion don't you think? I have been playing FPSes on both PC and console since Marathon and Wolfenstein 3D, and in my opinion Halo 2 is at the top of the craft.
Oh and games that are simply "FPS clones" are not played competitively, like in the MLG for instance.
It's fine with me if you do not like Halo 2, but at least give the game its due respect.
Well they certainly know about it now.
I hear this all the time, and people say it like it is some huge insight. It is almost like it is fashionable to be a next-generation of consoles hater.
Since the first Nintendo I have been playing and buying consoles, and I think you could make the same statement about every generation of consoles since them. Even the leap from 2D to 3D you could describe as a evolutionary enhancement of the graphics.
What do you really expect from a next-generation console?
If there are complaints about the "evolutionary" nature of this next-generation as opposed to previous console generations please point it out. They look pretty similar to me.
Really? I play my Xbox 360 on a "non-widescreen non-HD tv" and I think it looks breathtakingly fabulous. Sure it is not as nice as it would be on an HD-TV but the graphics quality is a tremendous leap from last generation. An HD-TV is definitely not a requirement to enjoy the new graphics.
Actually MS announced earlier this year that the Xbox 1 would be supported with new titles through 2007.
http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000770039609/
http://games.kikizo.com/news/200504/038.asp
Two years ago I became interested enough in DVORAK to actually learn the layout. It would have been very frustrating to have to relearn command key placements like you say, but at least in Mac OS X, the system I was using, there is a keyboard layout called "Dvorak - Qwerty Command". This feature implements the Dvorak keyboard layout, but when the command key is pressed it reverts to the Qwerty layout so that all the command keys are the same as you are used to in Qwerty.
After using this layout for several months, the only programs that didn't accept it were Microsoft applications, which seemed to randomly decide if they would follow the Qwerty or Dvorak layout for command keys. If you are on Mac OS X there really isn't a lot of disadvantages to trying Dvorak out if you are free from MS applications (I haven't tried Mac Office 2004 to see if this problem persists).
The only bad thing about learning Dvorak is that when you go back to a regular keyboard you are basically back to hunt and peck. I found it really difficult to be able to switch between the two and maintain typing speed; I can type at over 100 wpm on either layout after sufficient time is given for me to adjust. That said I would way rather use Dvorak it just feels nicer on your hands, you can type faster, and I found I made less typos.
I believe the crash you are talking about happened during a demo of Forza Motorsport which is coming out for Xbox 1 in a couple of months. As far as I know Microsoft didn't demo any Xbox 2 stuff at CES 2005.
Perhaps it's because I have been a Bungie fanboy since the Marathon series, but even coming from a history filled with PC FPS games I found Halo to be totally awesome. The story of the game, and the game-play were enough to draw me in, and get me past the more repetitive levels, like the library.
To say that the graphics, sounds, weapons, and game-play were bland is a bit unfair I think. The game was one of the first to extensively use shaders, and the lighting was fairly well done for the time. The sound had support for Dolby 5.1, which made some of the levels more eerie as you could hear noises and ambience in all directions as you played. The weapons were cool I thought as well. There was your standard selection of human weapons, such as the shotgun, pistol and rocket launcher. But the plasma based weapons, and sticky grenades were a fun addition. The gameplay was far from bland. Halo was one of the first games to use vehicles extensively. How could you possibly think that driving the warthog around as the gunner on the back mows through Covenant hordes bland? I suppose riding a Scorpion tank into the heart of a fortified Covenant position, and taking out enemy artillery with your long-range canon is boring too? Of course having an aerial dog fight in a Banshee is pretty boring too right?
Maybe I'm just too easily pleased but I thought there was a lot of great innovative stuff in Halo. It's one of the few FPS that I'll still fire up and play even after beating the game several times through. I can't think of a single FPS game that I've played on PC that had a single-player experience captivating enough to keep me coming back, time and time again.
"It used to be that conole games didn't need updates or didn't need add-ons."
Rather I think it is that they couldn't have update or couldn't have add-ons because there was no way to deliver new content. Now that a system exists to deliver new content online I see no reason why console developers shouldn't take advantage of this opportunity to give fans a little more.
Anybody that has played Ninja Gaiden knows that the game was darn near perfect. This Hurricane Pack was not "needed" at all; it's a little extra for all those fans out there. It should also be noted that this pack is being released forthe second round of the Master Ninja Tournament, to add something fresh and more difficult for this round of competition.
With respect to patches and updates for console games, I think it is something that should be expected when gaming goes online. In most cases the shear amount of play that goes into an online game will reveal new bugs or game balance issues that were not seen during testing. The amount of testing before release to fix most of these issues would be unreasonably long. Heck they are still working out bugs and game balance issues in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and those games have been around for years now. Developers should just be ready to deliver fixes for problems that appear after release (unlike Ubisoft).
"And personally, I would feel ripped off if I bought the game and didn't get these addons because I had to sign up for X-box Live."
The fees that people pay for Xbox Live help pay for the development of new content. Xbox subscribers should feel ripped off if they paid for new content like this that was delivered to everyone freely.