Zack&Wiki. SMG. At least look at Elebits, Trauma Center (both of them), RE4 Wii, Guitar Hero, Geometry Wars,... there's tons out there. It's hard to say what exactly you'll like best. There's more RPGs coming, supposedly.
Vim's not a very good vi. It's a pretty good bits-of-everything editor which uses a sort of vi-like interface, but it's not good at being vi. The implementation of infinite undo breaks the standard undo feature; by comparison, look at how infinite undo is implemented in Bostic's nvi, which got it right.
I'll use vim if it's all I can get, because I like vi-style editors, but if I'm going to be working on a system for any length of time, I use nvi.
Yeah, yeah, syntax coloring. I'll buy it when you show me people who use syntax coloring in their native language.
Re:Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
·
· Score: 1
I think the price cut was absolutely essential to any hope of making money in the future on the product. They read the market wrong, and they got smacked for it. Hard.
So I think cost reduction helps, but frankly, if they could have gotten the cost reductions they needed without sacrificing features, I think they would have. The feature loss tells us they're desperate -- and that means they're probably still eating a substantial loss on the console, because if they weren't, they'd have lowered the price more to compete.
Re:Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
·
· Score: 1
I don't doubt that Sony makes money on the PS2 *now*. But that's the thing; you're using the golden years of the console, when they've been able to redesign tons of things using newer fab processes and such, as evidence about the question of whether they were losing money *when it came out*, and it's just not relevant.
I do doubt that they made money on hardware even as early as three or four years in. Looking at their frenetic efforts to scrap features to get the PS3's cost down, it seems pretty clear that they are losing money hand over fist. Now, if they can sell a bunch of games, they can make a lot of that back... But I think it's pretty likely that the net total of the cost of every PS2 made to Sony is not much below what they brought in on them.
That's why it's outselling the competition by large margins, and could be outselling them both combined next year if Nintendo gets production in gear.
[b]People. Like. Toys.[/b]
The PS3 and 360 are also just toys; the difference is that they don't know it.
Re:Are the underwear gnomes in charge?
on
Where are Wii?
·
· Score: 1
Actually, the belief is that [b]Sony and Microsoft[/b] lose money on consoles. And that hasn't been debunked, probably because every available shred of evidence points to it being true.:)
But yes, Nintendo makes money. I saw an article claiming that they were going to launch at $200, without a game, but they were pressured by US retailers to include something. But assume that they were, a year ago, able to make a profit at $200. Since then, they've sold 15+ million systems, and gotten a lot of economies of scale going, and probably renegotiated contracts with "look, we can promise we'll buy you 10M more, how about a break"... And prices, of course, have dropped.
Meaning they're making, in all probability, [b]way[/b] more than $50/system.
If supply ever catches up, all they have to do to rule the world is ramp up production further and reduce the fact. (They've said their plan is to just stick with the 1.8M/month until they get caught up. That could take a while.)
You should, of course, list the component video cable for the PS3, too -- or HDMI, your pick. Certainly, not the composite cable that comes in the box. Similarly, extra controllers. Furthermore, you haven't made it clear why you're comparing a four-remote Wii to the price of single-controller systems with no bundled game.
At $250, you have something you can take home, plug into a television, and have a blast playing. You can, if you want, spend more -- but Wii Sports is not a sucky game at all. I'd rather have Wii Sports than Motorstorm or Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
That said, I did roughly the same computations last year, and decided I'd rather have a Wii with three remotes and three nunchuks, plus a couple of games, than a 60GB PS3.:)
Except the PS3s for sale now no longer play all those PS2 games; the high-end systems play "most" PS2 games "with some glitches". The low-end ones don't play any PS2 games at all.
Honestly, if we were comparing consoles at an equal price, Wii'd still be my first choice. It's fun. My PS3 runs Linux, and that's great, but I'm assuming we're talking about gaming.
Not the same as "Smith and Tinker's", who make a really nice word-bubble art program. (This is a surprisingly hard job to get software to do well -- I like their program.)
I agree that they probably didn't make as much money as Nintendo did, but basically, if you sum their game division profits and losses... Of course, it's hard to tell what's PS1 and what's PS2. I don't think the PS2 made MUCH money, but the recent huge losses appear to have to do with the PS3, and with the huge cost of developing it.
Actually, it seems quite likely they did stockpile some -- they may have had production ramped up this far as early as August, and they weren't selling that fast in September and October.
Percentages aren't the same as numbers. Without a specific count of units sold somewhere in the picture, "tripling" tells us nothing. We don't know whether that's ten thousand units more than the 5k they sold before, or four hundred thousand more than the 200k they sold before.
They're doing well in Japan, finally, but I think the only reason they're outselling the Wii is that the latter is supply-constrained; next spring, when the US shopping rush is over, Nintendo will finally be able to saturate the Japanese market.
Then, presumably, they'll ramp up production again, and lower the price.:)
Well, that's the thing. Unified architecture can save space, but divided architectures can, under a broad array of circumstances, give you massive improvements in functional bandwidth, as you get the simultaneous full bandwidth of both. So, for instance, on the PS3, the CPU can write to the GPU's memory, so it can feed data to the GPU as needed, but the GPU can run without interfering with the CPU, and the CPU can run without interfering with the CPU.
Overall, I think it's a substantially better architecture for performance, but it sacrifices some simplicity of construction -- which is sort of the PS3's underlying goal.
In any event, I think the mere fact that nearly all computers use non-unified GPU/CPU memory architectures suggests that there is some advantage to them.
Slashdot Mirror
Zack&Wiki. SMG. At least look at Elebits, Trauma Center (both of them), RE4 Wii, Guitar Hero, Geometry Wars, ... there's tons out there. It's hard to say what exactly you'll like best. There's more RPGs coming, supposedly.
Bill's married. It will never work.
Vim's not a very good vi. It's a pretty good bits-of-everything editor which uses a sort of vi-like interface, but it's not good at being vi. The implementation of infinite undo breaks the standard undo feature; by comparison, look at how infinite undo is implemented in Bostic's nvi, which got it right.
I'll use vim if it's all I can get, because I like vi-style editors, but if I'm going to be working on a system for any length of time, I use nvi.
Yeah, yeah, syntax coloring. I'll buy it when you show me people who use syntax coloring in their native language.
I think the price cut was absolutely essential to any hope of making money in the future on the product. They read the market wrong, and they got smacked for it. Hard.
So I think cost reduction helps, but frankly, if they could have gotten the cost reductions they needed without sacrificing features, I think they would have. The feature loss tells us they're desperate -- and that means they're probably still eating a substantial loss on the console, because if they weren't, they'd have lowered the price more to compete.
I don't doubt that Sony makes money on the PS2 *now*. But that's the thing; you're using the golden years of the console, when they've been able to redesign tons of things using newer fab processes and such, as evidence about the question of whether they were losing money *when it came out*, and it's just not relevant.
I do doubt that they made money on hardware even as early as three or four years in. Looking at their frenetic efforts to scrap features to get the PS3's cost down, it seems pretty clear that they are losing money hand over fist. Now, if they can sell a bunch of games, they can make a lot of that back... But I think it's pretty likely that the net total of the cost of every PS2 made to Sony is not much below what they brought in on them.
Give away the razor, sell the blades. It works.
Of course it's just a toy.
That's why it's outselling the competition by large margins, and could be outselling them both combined next year if Nintendo gets production in gear.
[b]People. Like. Toys.[/b]
The PS3 and 360 are also just toys; the difference is that they don't know it.
Actually, the belief is that [b]Sony and Microsoft[/b] lose money on consoles. And that hasn't been debunked, probably because every available shred of evidence points to it being true. :)
But yes, Nintendo makes money. I saw an article claiming that they were going to launch at $200, without a game, but they were pressured by US retailers to include something. But assume that they were, a year ago, able to make a profit at $200. Since then, they've sold 15+ million systems, and gotten a lot of economies of scale going, and probably renegotiated contracts with "look, we can promise we'll buy you 10M more, how about a break"... And prices, of course, have dropped.
Meaning they're making, in all probability, [b]way[/b] more than $50/system.
If supply ever catches up, all they have to do to rule the world is ramp up production further and reduce the fact. (They've said their plan is to just stick with the 1.8M/month until they get caught up. That could take a while.)
Nice spin.
:)
You should, of course, list the component video cable for the PS3, too -- or HDMI, your pick. Certainly, not the composite cable that comes in the box. Similarly, extra controllers. Furthermore, you haven't made it clear why you're comparing a four-remote Wii to the price of single-controller systems with no bundled game.
At $250, you have something you can take home, plug into a television, and have a blast playing. You can, if you want, spend more -- but Wii Sports is not a sucky game at all. I'd rather have Wii Sports than Motorstorm or Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
That said, I did roughly the same computations last year, and decided I'd rather have a Wii with three remotes and three nunchuks, plus a couple of games, than a 60GB PS3.
Except the PS3s for sale now no longer play all those PS2 games; the high-end systems play "most" PS2 games "with some glitches". The low-end ones don't play any PS2 games at all.
Honestly, if we were comparing consoles at an equal price, Wii'd still be my first choice. It's fun. My PS3 runs Linux, and that's great, but I'm assuming we're talking about gaming.
I heard that anecdotal evidence could be pretty good sometimes.
BTW, I didn't see anything saying that only "realistic" media had this impact.
Not the same as "Smith and Tinker's", who make a really nice word-bubble art program. (This is a surprisingly hard job to get software to do well -- I like their program.)
http://www.smithandtinkers.com/
I rather liked the music in 3DO's _Starfighter 3000_.
Teach principles. Software's an implementation detail.
I agree that they probably didn't make as much money as Nintendo did, but basically, if you sum their game division profits and losses... Of course, it's hard to tell what's PS1 and what's PS2. I don't think the PS2 made MUCH money, but the recent huge losses appear to have to do with the PS3, and with the huge cost of developing it.
I haven't seen convincing evidence that Sony didn't make a couple-few billion on the PS2. Less if you look at the "losses" of the PS3 dev cycle...
Actually, it seems quite likely they did stockpile some -- they may have had production ramped up this far as early as August, and they weren't selling that fast in September and October.
I KNEW that would hapen. [oh, !@#*!@#, not again.]
"discreet".
(I'm not even TRYING to fix the new typo this time.)
I think you mean "descreet".
If it wasn't copied, it cannot violate copyright, even if it ends up being exactly the same set of characters.
Copyright covers copying. It does not cover invention; for that, you'd need a patent.
You didn't read carefully enough.
Sony didn't give numbers; Sony gave percentages. The article guessed at what the numbers would probably be based on indirect sources like NPD.
Percentages aren't the same as numbers. Without a specific count of units sold somewhere in the picture, "tripling" tells us nothing. We don't know whether that's ten thousand units more than the 5k they sold before, or four hundred thousand more than the 200k they sold before.
They're doing well in Japan, finally, but I think the only reason they're outselling the Wii is that the latter is supply-constrained; next spring, when the US shopping rush is over, Nintendo will finally be able to saturate the Japanese market.
:)
Then, presumably, they'll ramp up production again, and lower the price.
Tripling as opposed to last year's supply-constraints is hardly informative.
Note that Nintendo gave concrete numbers, not ratios as compared to unknowns...
Yeah. The original 512/256 design would have been fine, and it's generally easy to reduce VRAM usage -- just shrink a couple of textures.
Well, that's the thing. Unified architecture can save space, but divided architectures can, under a broad array of circumstances, give you massive improvements in functional bandwidth, as you get the simultaneous full bandwidth of both. So, for instance, on the PS3, the CPU can write to the GPU's memory, so it can feed data to the GPU as needed, but the GPU can run without interfering with the CPU, and the CPU can run without interfering with the CPU.
Overall, I think it's a substantially better architecture for performance, but it sacrifices some simplicity of construction -- which is sort of the PS3's underlying goal.
In any event, I think the mere fact that nearly all computers use non-unified GPU/CPU memory architectures suggests that there is some advantage to them.