Atari has the greatest logo of all time, if you ask me. I agree that most of the licensed games end up being pretty horrible. I wonder if they maximise profits this way or if they simply don't care. Would the games sell noticeably if more time and money was spent on development? Or is the name all that is needed to recoup the license investment and then some?
Hopefully game development will get closer to the movie business in this regard. Some major titles make a lot of money and enable smaller teams to come out with the underground gems. Some independent films make a lot of money. The others at least make some viewers happy. I wouldn't mind a similar situation with games. I will wait for the 'Rushmore' of the gaming world.
It's more proof, if needed, that many game companies would rather spend millions of dollars on a big-ticket license than spend that money making a truly great game.
Your assessment is definitely correct, however the companies have a pretty good reason for doing such things: Shelling out for the license greatly increases the likelihood of making money. The Matrix game was pre-ordered 4 million times, as far as I know. Without the license nobody would have bought it. The game is okay as it shows another facet of the Matrix universe. On it's own it would be pretty weak.
What I did not understand from reading the article was if the payments to Warner and the Wachowskis were exclusively royalties, or if they were for the work they contributed to the game. The brothers apparently wrote the story, directed the game and created quite a lot of live-action footage as well.
Another thought: Had Ubisoft/Atari spent the same amount on marketing an original game the impact would never have been nearly as big. As it stands they can ride the Matrix hype for free. That makes it a good business decision. Still a mediocre game, but I bought and enjoyed it nonetheless.
I stand corrected. Having only encountered Assimilator as a user I simply wasn't sure (I left school quite a while before they started the deployment of OS X).
When I was at school our Macs were cloned from a master server every shutdown. The software they used was assimilator. I don't really know if the master image has to be OS 9, or if anything will work. You can download assimilator's PDF manual on the page I linked to. Maybe this will help. You would definitely have to get the assimilator executable into the startup or shutdown items folder of the target machine though. But I suppose that would be a lot faster than actually installing OS X.
I think not... I had an interesting(read: asinine) argument with someone once when I was still working at Software Etc. They said that by late 2003 Nintendo would be bankrupt because of the gamecube.
As somebody who owns both a Mac and a GameCube I am happy to find more and more similarities between the two systems: Processors by IBM, graphics by ATI, going out of business constantly...
Isn't it about time that different dollar bills start coming in different sizes? Isn't it pretty standard for counterfeiters to bleach a small denomination bill and print the image of larger ones? Different sizes would at least make this practise a bit more difficult. That doesn't stop forgery in euro-land, but it does make it just a bit more difficult. I thought that holographs would be pretty effective, but in day to day commerce nobody looks to closely. The best way to make sure that your bills are genuine is using ones that are really unpopular. Last weekend was the first time that I saw a 200 Euro bill. And that was one and a half years after the introduction of the currency.
Why won't they be available earlier? I recently saw a limited edition XBox in stores over here (Austria). It has the same transparent green colour as the two S-controllers that come with it. See for yourself. If they can sell the controllers in Europe why would they wait for five months before offering them in America? The limited edition looks like an okay deal, but as long as they don't offer live over here I will stick with my GameCube.
Just saw that Ireland has the same offer. Enjoy the same page as before, but this time in English.
I was curious about the whole FM-remote deal as well. The chart I linked to in my previous post lists two features: Recording FM (yes, via the remote) and recording (yes, via the remote). I can't find any additional info on this fabled remote, though (I didn't look very hard, but it is not listed under the zen's accessories). I would hope that it comes with a line-in port. Without that the recording feature would be rather useless. Recording from radio while on the go is a feature I can't imagine anybody would find even remotely useful.
According to this page the zen is capable of recording when you get the 'optional FM wired remote.' According to this post the iPod is rumoured to be able to do the same via a yet to be announced accessory. What I can't tell you is if either of the gadgets will record into a compressed format. With longer DJ sets that might be the deal-breaker.
According to the article the port will be done by developer Silicon Knights. Their first project was the excellent 'Eternal Darkness', a third person adventure/horror game. That game felt anything but sterile. I never played any of the Metal Gear Solid games, lacking the required consoles (or computers), but as far as I know they were cinematic third person adventures. One of the most impressive facts about Eternal Darkness was the movie like camera. I don't doubt that, with their expertise, the GameCube version will ooze atmosphere.
I don't know about all stores but a cursory glance at amazon.com seems to imply that the average CD costs between $13 and $15. In some cases (e.g. Weezer) that is more than a dollar per song. In some cases it is less. It is however irrelevant since most albums cost $9.99 in the iTunes music store (and in the case of Weezer $9.90 for their 10-Track albums).
In all fairness I have to mention that the 'skip commercial' button is not really hidden. As long as this works as advertised these ads are annoying but still better than pop-ups/unders that spawn new ones upon closing. (I haven't actually seen an urequested pop-up in months, but I remember how much I hated them)
These ads feel like TV-commercials and maybe that is one way to succeed with an internet advertising model. I would rather see more sites that make subscribing worthwhile instead of ones that try to strong-arm me into it using sleazy tactics.
According to this story Apple is just hiring programmers to port iTunes to Windows. According to Steve they plan to introduce the service on Windows at the end of the year. Until you have to be patient or get a Mac. Remember the first Quake 3 test? That was released on Mac first to limit the user-base and thus the overall necessary support. The same thing is one of the reasons to hold back Windows support. Other reasons might include rewarding loyal Apple customers and maybe helping the brand. Macintoshs will be able to do something that PCs can't for the next couple of months.
The so-called 'security number' is something different than the last three digits of your CC-nr. You can usually find it on the backside of the card somewhere close to the signature field. On mine there are the last four digits of the CC-nr. followed by the three digit security code. See if you can find that and then it should work. Good luck.
For what it's worth: I found a couple of albums in the iTunes music store that cost less than individual songs x 0.99. 'Veni Vidi Viscious' by The Hives has 12 tracks and is sold for $9.99; 'Stankonia' by Outkast is 9.99 for 21 tracks; 'Sea Change' by Beck: 9.99. It seems that Apple does not only offer single songs for those that only want that but they offer the whole album cheaper than in a store. For people who aren't buying anyway no deal will ever be good enough but for the rest of us it is great.
When I go to the Music Store in iTunes4 I get the following message:
The iTunes Music Store is not available in your country yet. You will be able to browse music and listen to previews, but you won't be able to purchase music unless your billing address is in the United States.
Bummer. My credit card has been shivering in anticipation for days. I just hope that I (in Austria) will get access to this service before the windows users in the U.S. will.
Nowhere does the article make any claims that this solution will be cheap. He states that the camera will originally be targeted at news outfits, that will appreciate the speed and usually are not cash strapped when it comes to buying equipment.
Redundant should not be used on duplicates in a single thread. It is ideally suited for modding down posts that re-state something said a hundred times before. First posts, in soviet russia jokes and mentioning the legal situation between Apple Computers and Apple Records come to mind. Redundant is usually metamoderated unfair regardless of the way you use it.
There is no simple answer to your question(s). What you stated is basically true.
They cost more.
No doubt about that. Sure--you can compare some high end Dell machine with a high end PowerMac and come up with roughly the same amount, but in general Apple computers are more expensive. Maybe upgrade cycles are longer, maybe the resale value is higher. Up-front they cost a lot more.
There is less software available in the retail markets.
Once again you are correct. That doesn't mean that there are things that you can't do on a Mac, just that in some areas there is less choice. Most people encode their MP3s with iTunes and that's it. Would it be better if I had the choice between dozens of programs to do the same thing? Maybe, but it is not vital. All the content creation tools I can think of are there. Gaming is bad. There are quite a few games available but there seriously is no competition to other platforms.
They are generally slower
In numbers definitely. Basically speed is a perception issue, though. That is not necessarily an argument in favour of the MacOS, but for me a computer is fast enough as long as I can get my work done and earn my living with it. My computer is getting old but when I will eventually get a new Mac this machine will seem plenty fast to me. After all I can only compare the performance to what I have now, not some assumption about other machines. From my point of view I am pretty sure that one of those new 1.42GHz dual machines would blow me away performance wise. And as any Mac-faithful will tell you: 'It's getting better really really soon now, like tomorrow'.
No matter what I say, your points stay valid. But at the end of the day the most important argument for the Mac platform is that it just works. It even worked in the pre-OS X days. Working is enjoyable. Everything is designed to make my life easier. The UI is pretty and functional. Windows might have caught up since the days of 95. But I left that platform behind then and I am never going back. Image is a factor as well. Not being part of the Windows centred world just feels right. Maybe I habitually pick losers, maybe I just have a sweet spot for the underdogs. I had a Dreamcast, a GamCube and a Mac. Maybe I'm weird, but I never regretted not going with Sony or Microsoft.
and well we all know the state of gaming on the mac...
I have to agree that said state is pretty sad right now. But I am pretty sure that Doom III will be released on the Mac because a)Carmack has always made his games as cross-platform as possible and b)the first actual images of DIII were presented at a Mac-expo.
Macs available right now might have a hard time running the game but by the time the port is ready the next generation of PowerMacs might be finally ready. And if you start your Ramen diet now you might even be able to afford one.
Doom III on any console besides the XBox is pretty damn unlikely. The PS2 certainly doesn't have the horsepower needed and even if the Gamecube had it's future is not looking to bright right now. A GBA version would be great fun, though. It seems that 3D engines are getting pretty advanced on the little machine.
Why does this always have to be a black and white issue? Can't you play games and have a life? I never got into miniature-gaming, I did however play a lot of role-playing and trading-card games. Hanging out and having fun with friends is a pretty integral part of what I would call 'a life.'
So you 'wasted' a lot of your time on a free game (that you had to play all by yourself). Others decide to spend money. Not everyone is all that altruistic. Some like to spend the money they (or their parents) earn on themselves. Does that make them bad persons? Not in my book.
Maybe, just maybe, the machine was not literally 'My Father's Computer'. It could have been 'Gropo senior's Computer' or 'Name withheld from public slashdot discussions' Computer'. You pick.
Slashdot Mirror
Atari has the greatest logo of all time, if you ask me. I agree that most of the licensed games end up being pretty horrible. I wonder if they maximise profits this way or if they simply don't care. Would the games sell noticeably if more time and money was spent on development? Or is the name all that is needed to recoup the license investment and then some?
Hopefully game development will get closer to the movie business in this regard. Some major titles make a lot of money and enable smaller teams to come out with the underground gems. Some independent films make a lot of money. The others at least make some viewers happy. I wouldn't mind a similar situation with games. I will wait for the 'Rushmore' of the gaming world.
It's more proof, if needed, that many game companies would rather spend millions of dollars on a big-ticket license than spend that money making a truly great game.
Your assessment is definitely correct, however the companies have a pretty good reason for doing such things: Shelling out for the license greatly increases the likelihood of making money. The Matrix game was pre-ordered 4 million times, as far as I know. Without the license nobody would have bought it. The game is okay as it shows another facet of the Matrix universe. On it's own it would be pretty weak.
What I did not understand from reading the article was if the payments to Warner and the Wachowskis were exclusively royalties, or if they were for the work they contributed to the game. The brothers apparently wrote the story, directed the game and created quite a lot of live-action footage as well.
Another thought: Had Ubisoft/Atari spent the same amount on marketing an original game the impact would never have been nearly as big. As it stands they can ride the Matrix hype for free. That makes it a good business decision. Still a mediocre game, but I bought and enjoyed it nonetheless.
I stand corrected. Having only encountered Assimilator as a user I simply wasn't sure (I left school quite a while before they started the deployment of OS X).
When I was at school our Macs were cloned from a master server every shutdown. The software they used was assimilator. I don't really know if the master image has to be OS 9, or if anything will work. You can download assimilator's PDF manual on the page I linked to. Maybe this will help. You would definitely have to get the assimilator executable into the startup or shutdown items folder of the target machine though. But I suppose that would be a lot faster than actually installing OS X.
Porn? Is that internet speak for pr0n? Does Amazon even carry that?
I think not... I had an interesting(read: asinine) argument with someone once when I was still working at Software Etc. They said that by late 2003 Nintendo would be bankrupt because of the gamecube.
As somebody who owns both a Mac and a GameCube I am happy to find more and more similarities between the two systems: Processors by IBM, graphics by ATI, going out of business constantly...
They could still bleach a larger denomination bill, cut it down to size, and print it with the smaller denomination. The problem still exists.
Funny, funny stuff. Sounds like something Mafia families like the one in 'Ghost Dog' would be likely to do.
Isn't it about time that different dollar bills start coming in different sizes? Isn't it pretty standard for counterfeiters to bleach a small denomination bill and print the image of larger ones? Different sizes would at least make this practise a bit more difficult. That doesn't stop forgery in euro-land, but it does make it just a bit more difficult. I thought that holographs would be pretty effective, but in day to day commerce nobody looks to closely. The best way to make sure that your bills are genuine is using ones that are really unpopular. Last weekend was the first time that I saw a 200 Euro bill. And that was one and a half years after the introduction of the currency.
Why won't they be available earlier? I recently saw a limited edition XBox in stores over here (Austria). It has the same transparent green colour as the two S-controllers that come with it. See for yourself. If they can sell the controllers in Europe why would they wait for five months before offering them in America? The limited edition looks like an okay deal, but as long as they don't offer live over here I will stick with my GameCube.
Just saw that Ireland has the same offer. Enjoy the same page as before, but this time in English.
I was curious about the whole FM-remote deal as well. The chart I linked to in my previous post lists two features: Recording FM (yes, via the remote) and recording (yes, via the remote). I can't find any additional info on this fabled remote, though (I didn't look very hard, but it is not listed under the zen's accessories). I would hope that it comes with a line-in port. Without that the recording feature would be rather useless. Recording from radio while on the go is a feature I can't imagine anybody would find even remotely useful.
According to this page the zen is capable of recording when you get the 'optional FM wired remote.' According to this post the iPod is rumoured to be able to do the same via a yet to be announced accessory. What I can't tell you is if either of the gadgets will record into a compressed format. With longer DJ sets that might be the deal-breaker.
According to the article the port will be done by developer Silicon Knights. Their first project was the excellent 'Eternal Darkness', a third person adventure/horror game. That game felt anything but sterile. I never played any of the Metal Gear Solid games, lacking the required consoles (or computers), but as far as I know they were cinematic third person adventures. One of the most impressive facts about Eternal Darkness was the movie like camera. I don't doubt that, with their expertise, the GameCube version will ooze atmosphere.
I don't know about all stores but a cursory glance at amazon.com seems to imply that the average CD costs between $13 and $15. In some cases (e.g. Weezer) that is more than a dollar per song. In some cases it is less. It is however irrelevant since most albums cost $9.99 in the iTunes music store (and in the case of Weezer $9.90 for their 10-Track albums).
Sorry. I didn't mean to put you down or anything. I simply misunderstood your original post. No harm intended.
In all fairness I have to mention that the 'skip commercial' button is not really hidden. As long as this works as advertised these ads are annoying but still better than pop-ups/unders that spawn new ones upon closing. (I haven't actually seen an urequested pop-up in months, but I remember how much I hated them)
These ads feel like TV-commercials and maybe that is one way to succeed with an internet advertising model. I would rather see more sites that make subscribing worthwhile instead of ones that try to strong-arm me into it using sleazy tactics.
According to this story Apple is just hiring programmers to port iTunes to Windows. According to Steve they plan to introduce the service on Windows at the end of the year. Until you have to be patient or get a Mac. Remember the first Quake 3 test? That was released on Mac first to limit the user-base and thus the overall necessary support. The same thing is one of the reasons to hold back Windows support. Other reasons might include rewarding loyal Apple customers and maybe helping the brand. Macintoshs will be able to do something that PCs can't for the next couple of months.
The so-called 'security number' is something different than the last three digits of your CC-nr. You can usually find it on the backside of the card somewhere close to the signature field. On mine there are the last four digits of the CC-nr. followed by the three digit security code. See if you can find that and then it should work. Good luck.
For what it's worth: I found a couple of albums in the iTunes music store that cost less than individual songs x 0.99. 'Veni Vidi Viscious' by The Hives has 12 tracks and is sold for $9.99; 'Stankonia' by Outkast is 9.99 for 21 tracks; 'Sea Change' by Beck: 9.99. It seems that Apple does not only offer single songs for those that only want that but they offer the whole album cheaper than in a store. For people who aren't buying anyway no deal will ever be good enough but for the rest of us it is great.
When I go to the Music Store in iTunes4 I get the following message:
The iTunes Music Store is not available in your country yet. You will be able to browse music and listen to previews, but you won't be able to purchase music unless your billing address is in the United States.
Bummer. My credit card has been shivering in anticipation for days. I just hope that I (in Austria) will get access to this service before the windows users in the U.S. will.
Nowhere does the article make any claims that this solution will be cheap. He states that the camera will originally be targeted at news outfits, that will appreciate the speed and usually are not cash strapped when it comes to buying equipment.
Redundant should not be used on duplicates in a single thread. It is ideally suited for modding down posts that re-state something said a hundred times before. First posts, in soviet russia jokes and mentioning the legal situation between Apple Computers and Apple Records come to mind. Redundant is usually metamoderated unfair regardless of the way you use it.
There is no simple answer to your question(s). What you stated is basically true.
No doubt about that. Sure--you can compare some high end Dell machine with a high end PowerMac and come up with roughly the same amount, but in general Apple computers are more expensive. Maybe upgrade cycles are longer, maybe the resale value is higher. Up-front they cost a lot more.Once again you are correct. That doesn't mean that there are things that you can't do on a Mac, just that in some areas there is less choice. Most people encode their MP3s with iTunes and that's it. Would it be better if I had the choice between dozens of programs to do the same thing? Maybe, but it is not vital. All the content creation tools I can think of are there. Gaming is bad. There are quite a few games available but there seriously is no competition to other platforms. In numbers definitely. Basically speed is a perception issue, though. That is not necessarily an argument in favour of the MacOS, but for me a computer is fast enough as long as I can get my work done and earn my living with it. My computer is getting old but when I will eventually get a new Mac this machine will seem plenty fast to me. After all I can only compare the performance to what I have now, not some assumption about other machines. From my point of view I am pretty sure that one of those new 1.42GHz dual machines would blow me away performance wise. And as any Mac-faithful will tell you: 'It's getting better really really soon now, like tomorrow'.No matter what I say, your points stay valid. But at the end of the day the most important argument for the Mac platform is that it just works. It even worked in the pre-OS X days. Working is enjoyable. Everything is designed to make my life easier. The UI is pretty and functional. Windows might have caught up since the days of 95. But I left that platform behind then and I am never going back. Image is a factor as well. Not being part of the Windows centred world just feels right. Maybe I habitually pick losers, maybe I just have a sweet spot for the underdogs. I had a Dreamcast, a GamCube and a Mac. Maybe I'm weird, but I never regretted not going with Sony or Microsoft.
and well we all know the state of gaming on the mac...
I have to agree that said state is pretty sad right now. But I am pretty sure that Doom III will be released on the Mac because a)Carmack has always made his games as cross-platform as possible and b)the first actual images of DIII were presented at a Mac-expo.
Macs available right now might have a hard time running the game but by the time the port is ready the next generation of PowerMacs might be finally ready. And if you start your Ramen diet now you might even be able to afford one.
Doom III on any console besides the XBox is pretty damn unlikely. The PS2 certainly doesn't have the horsepower needed and even if the Gamecube had it's future is not looking to bright right now. A GBA version would be great fun, though. It seems that 3D engines are getting pretty advanced on the little machine.
quit gaming and get a life..
Why does this always have to be a black and white issue? Can't you play games and have a life? I never got into miniature-gaming, I did however play a lot of role-playing and trading-card games. Hanging out and having fun with friends is a pretty integral part of what I would call 'a life.'
So you 'wasted' a lot of your time on a free game (that you had to play all by yourself). Others decide to spend money. Not everyone is all that altruistic. Some like to spend the money they (or their parents) earn on themselves. Does that make them bad persons? Not in my book.
Maybe, just maybe, the machine was not literally 'My Father's Computer'. It could have been 'Gropo senior's Computer' or 'Name withheld from public slashdot discussions' Computer'. You pick.