I wasn't trying to imply that it was due to the console division, that's what SAVED Sony. But their stock is falling and was falling before the tech slump (at least the US tech slump). It's been falling for quite a while, with a few rebounds.
GB sells so well for three reasons. One) Pokemon. Two) Pokemon Three) Pokemon
Interesting, then, that they sold 70 or 80 million GBs _before_ Pokemon was even invented. Hell, I have a Gameboy Color, and I have never even played a Pokemon game.
By the way, In the week preceeding Christmas 2000, there were 188,000 PS2s sold and 181,000 N64s. Not too shabby. (Though more PS2s would have been able to sell had they been produced, this is still a good showing for such an old system).
Nintendo is more conservitive, however it wouldn't take a lot of bad quarters to put them in the same place as sega.
Nintendo will be around for awhile. They are actually making money, as opposed to Sega who had been losing money for 4 straight years. If Nintendo starts to lose money like Sega did, at the rate Sega did (and thats a big if) I will believe your prognosis. If they lose money for 3 or 4 years, straight, as Sega did. But I can't see that happening. They have an install base of over 100 millions gameboys to sell to. They have the youth market locked up. They have Pokemon to give them quick cash. All this means money they can use for their console division. In short, they have quite a few pluses on their side.
Another big advantage they have is the fact that there are hundreds of thousands who will buy a Gamecube just to get the next Zelda, more that will do so for the next Pokemon, Mario, etc. This ensures sales. The release of each Zelda game makes N64 sales jump up 5,6 even 7 times their normal rate. It's the same thing with the PS2 and Final Fantasy. The company I'd be worried about is not Nintendo, but MS... They don't have any flagship, exclusive titles (that I've heard about- and Abe's Oddyssey doesn't count).
True, but it's nice to have a huge amount of money in the bank when launching a new console. And Gameboy (15-20% of the worldwide videogame market) doesn't seem to be a fad.
The basic problem here is Nintendo wasn't doing all that much better than Sega.
Are you crazy? They consistantly are in the top of the sales charts, even with an aging system. That aging system _continues_ to sell at a moderate pace, even in the face of Next Gen systems. They have a monopoly on the handheld market, which consists of 15% or so of the whole market. The GBA is the fastest selling console ever-and it is NOT sold at a loss, Nintendo makes a profit on each GBA sold-, there are something like 100 million Gameboy & GB Colors out there. They are buying their stock back, they have so much money, while Sega and Sony's stocks just dive lower and lower. How can you say Nintendo's situation is anything like that of Sega's?
The problem with your theory is that Nintendo is doing fine finacially. They are consistantly at the top of sales charts, even with an aging system, own a multi-billion dollar cash cow (Pokemon) and they have a monopoly on the handheld market, a good 15-20% of the general video game market. They have so much money that, while Sony bleeds red ink, they are buying back their stock. Add this to the fact that they have said that they can bring the Gamecube to market and sell it at a break-even or profitable price, I'd say the future looks good for Nintendo.
Hardware has always been a loss-leader for game sales, at best a break-even proposition.
As I understand it, Nintendo generally prices their consoles so they make a (marginal) profit. I remeber this being one of the facts that Nintendo stalwarts held up when it became evident that the PSX was vastly outselling the N64.
The console business is like the razor blade business. You sell the razor at little or no profit and you make the bucks from sell the razors over and over.
Nintendo doesn't agree with this business plan. They plan to sell the Gamecube for a small profit, and (to my knowledge) have done so with all of their consoles. Well... maybe not Virtual Boy.
Nintendo's been a bit of a loser in the gaming industry for a while now.
Are you on crack? If you said they were "a bit of a loser with the hardcore gaming community", I'd agree... But their games sell, their systems STILL sell (and they have a tradition of not selling consoles as loss leaders) and even if they don't, the handheld market has grow to a nice chunk of the market (I've heard it represents 20% of all sales)... And guess which company has a virtual monopoly on the handheld market? This is also ignoring the Pokemon factor.
Conker's BFD was produced by Rareware (the company that also did Goldeneye). Nintendo may not be blocking adult titles on their system, but neither are they themselves producing them.
Rare is a second party developer. They only develop games for Nintendo and Nintendo either owns a chunk of the company or has extensive, long term contracts. Or more likely, both.
Williams is not the first 'major' author to publish in this fashion. JMS (Babylon 5's creator) published a serial novel to an online site called Bookface.com.
I don't know if I'd consider Tad Williams to be a major author. I DO know that I definitely wouldn't consider they guy that created Babylon 5 to be one.
Josh Sisk
Re:You know, this isn't good news for EVERYONE...
on
Soybean Powered Harley
·
· Score: 1
I have a friend who is allergic to both corn and tomatoes. I myself am allergic to aspartame (nutrasweet).
Though I bet if you had a car like this you could get the oil from the same distributors that resteraunts get their oil from, for much cheaper.
I doubt resteraunts use Wesson, probably a generic bottle that says "oil", and I doubt they buy it in 48 oz bottles... Probably drums or 5 gallon jugs.
Josh Sisk
Re:More ... (spoilers)
on
Review: Blow
·
· Score: 1
What I didn't really like about the movie is that it never encouraged any sort of feeling about the protagonist. The movie tries at points to make you feel sorry for Jung or angry at Jung or understanding, but it never really comes through, because when he's a victim, it's really his own fault, and when he's not the taking advantage of various oppurtunities, you just see them as dumb but acceptable decisions. At the end, when I'm supposed to feel somewhat bad for this man who's lost literally everything, I don't, because everything wasn't taken away; he gave it all away. I end up feeling worse for the father than for anyone else, simply because he's the only one who constantly gets the shaft (by no fault of his own).
Yeah, I was consistantly amazed by the stupid decisions (if they were accurate, and not just Hollywood storytelling) Jung kept making. If I had $60 million dollars, I guarantee I would _not_ keep it all in one place.
It really made all his success look like dumb luck.
All in all I found the film to be pretty average.
It played out like an A & E biography: "I went here, bought some weed, then sold it, then met this girl, then we went to mexico, then I bought more weed, then I went here, then I got beat up, then I went here, then I got beat up again"... It didn't seem like anything I hadn't seen before and what's worse, it kept feeling like- "Okay, NOW it's gonna get good!"... but it never did.
The best parts of the movie dealt with his relationship with his father and daughter... Those were the only scenes were the movie really took off for me. It didn't help that there were so many cliches in the film (which, I guess is not the filmmaker's fault, since it's based on a true story, but really - how many movies have we seen where the criminal gets brought down because he falls in love with a crazy, greedy woman).
The acting was good overall, I don't remeber any truely bad performances- Johnny Depp was good, Paul Reubens was good, even that goofy fat guy from the Kevin Smith movies was okay. Franka Potente pulled off a valley girl accent. Ray Liotta was good- he's been much better lately; he needs to stick to supporting roles and forget about clunkers like "No Escape".
There were a few flairs of really interesting direction/editing, but the movie was mostly a collection of medium shots and two shots. The music was great, but film mostly came off as stiff to me.
All in all, I liked it, but it's probably more of a matinee feature. Don't pay the full price!
Exactly. I many countries, the blank cassette companies give the record companies money, with the assumption that people are using the cassettes to copy CDs.
Another thing to consider, as far as burned CDs go, is that a portion of the price of each blank CD goes to the record industry. This is a sort of "tax", that is there because the assumption is that the CD-R will be used to copy audio. The same thing has existed for awhile in the cassette tape business and I'm pretty sure it has migrated to the blank cd business as well. I remeber articles about how they wanted to charge a fee for each burner sold as well, but I don't know if anything became of that. Anyone know?
Actually, the majority of mine would be legitimate, since I have "the hits" of my cd collection on a machine which plays a shoutcast stream that I can listen to anywhere.
I also compile mix-cds of my vinyl collection (2000+ LPs and 7"s) to play on my radio show, since lugging around all that vinyl is bad for one's back.
Both of these are examples of fair use, incidentally. Also, soon I plan on getting a Nomad Jukebox, or possibly one of those Empeg/Rio car mp3 players... Also a good example of Fair Use.
I'm not the best poster boy for "evil napster users who steal from the bands". This month, so far, I have bought about 30 7" singles and about 15 lp/cds (none from RIAA bands, by the way). I dropped $500 on record order the other day- I'm a music fiend. This doesn't even count my ebay habit- tracking down old releases I missed the first time around- this is all money spent on _new_ stuff.
I do admit to having some Napster tracks for albums I no longer own... I got some old hair metal stuff recently that I hadn't heard since the eighties. I guess I _am_ contributing to the guy from Skid Row not being able to pay his bills... But, it's not like I'd rush out and buy "18 and life" if there was no Napster. I think most people treat Napster like a radio station request line : "Damn, I wanna hear Smoke On the Water right now, lemme download it!" (I know this is how my friends treat it, the other day we got in an arguement about what the best Motorhead song was, so we downloaded a few to compare. I guarantee you I will never listen to those Motorhead tracks again, nor would we have rushed out to buy "the best of Motorhead" for our little contest). If someone likes a band they will buy that band's album, even if they have MP3s of that band. The most traded songs are N SYNC and other teen pop, and those band's record sales have not been hurt whatsoever. If the record companies were smart, they'd start their own Napster and make it almost the same as it is now, except whenever an artists name appeared, you'd have the option to click and buy that cd and have it shipped directly to you. I'm sure there are lots of other ways the record industry could make money of a napster-like service. I can see why they want to be the ones making that money, though, not Napster.
Personally, I'd be very happy if Naptser got rid of all RIAA music entirely... I like Napster because I can find out about obscure indie bands, stuff that doesn't get radio or MTV airplay, and listen before I buy. If all the major label crap was cleared off the servers, then I could find what I like a lot easier. For a lot of these bands, things like Napster are an easy way to get exposure. This is why their "opt-in" plan seems like a bad idea to me... Would every garage band have to tell the RIAA "hey, we want our song on Napster, please let them upload it?"
Personally, I really like the DC controller. Most of my friends don't seem to have a problem with it, either. The Playstation controller always felt too small in my hands. I also don't like the 4 shoulder buttons...
My favorite controller ever was probably the six button Genesis style, or the Saturn controller (which was almost the same thing).
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't trying to imply that it was due to the console division, that's what SAVED Sony. But their stock is falling and was falling before the tech slump (at least the US tech slump). It's been falling for quite a while, with a few rebounds.
Josh Sisk
GB sells so well for three reasons. One) Pokemon. Two) Pokemon Three) Pokemon
Interesting, then, that they sold 70 or 80 million GBs _before_ Pokemon was even invented. Hell, I have a Gameboy Color, and I have never even played a Pokemon game.
By the way, In the week preceeding Christmas 2000, there were 188,000 PS2s sold and 181,000 N64s. Not too shabby. (Though more PS2s would have been able to sell had they been produced, this is still a good showing for such an old system).
Nintendo is more conservitive, however it wouldn't take a lot of bad quarters to put them in the same place as sega.
Nintendo will be around for awhile. They are actually making money, as opposed to Sega who had been losing money for 4 straight years. If Nintendo starts to lose money like Sega did, at the rate Sega did (and thats a big if) I will believe your prognosis. If they lose money for 3 or 4 years, straight, as Sega did. But I can't see that happening. They have an install base of over 100 millions gameboys to sell to. They have the youth market locked up. They have Pokemon to give them quick cash. All this means money they can use for their console division. In short, they have quite a few pluses on their side.
Another big advantage they have is the fact that there are hundreds of thousands who will buy a Gamecube just to get the next Zelda, more that will do so for the next Pokemon, Mario, etc. This ensures sales. The release of each Zelda game makes N64 sales jump up 5,6 even 7 times their normal rate. It's the same thing with the PS2 and Final Fantasy. The company I'd be worried about is not Nintendo, but MS... They don't have any flagship, exclusive titles (that I've heard about- and Abe's Oddyssey doesn't count).
Josh Sisk
True, but it's nice to have a huge amount of money in the bank when launching a new console. And Gameboy (15-20% of the worldwide videogame market) doesn't seem to be a fad.
Josh Sisk
The basic problem here is Nintendo wasn't doing all that much better than Sega.
Are you crazy? They consistantly are in the top of the sales charts, even with an aging system. That aging system _continues_ to sell at a moderate pace, even in the face of Next Gen systems. They have a monopoly on the handheld market, which consists of 15% or so of the whole market. The GBA is the fastest selling console ever-and it is NOT sold at a loss, Nintendo makes a profit on each GBA sold-, there are something like 100 million Gameboy & GB Colors out there. They are buying their stock back, they have so much money, while Sega and Sony's stocks just dive lower and lower. How can you say Nintendo's situation is anything like that of Sega's?
Josh Sisk
The problem with your theory is that Nintendo is doing fine finacially. They are consistantly at the top of sales charts, even with an aging system, own a multi-billion dollar cash cow (Pokemon) and they have a monopoly on the handheld market, a good 15-20% of the general video game market. They have so much money that, while Sony bleeds red ink, they are buying back their stock. Add this to the fact that they have said that they can bring the Gamecube to market and sell it at a break-even or profitable price, I'd say the future looks good for Nintendo.
Josh Sisk
Hardware has always been a loss-leader for game sales, at best a break-even proposition.
As I understand it, Nintendo generally prices their consoles so they make a (marginal) profit. I remeber this being one of the facts that Nintendo stalwarts held up when it became evident that the PSX was vastly outselling the N64.
Josh Sisk
The console business is like the razor blade business. You sell the razor at little or no profit and you make the bucks from sell the razors over and over.
Nintendo doesn't agree with this business plan. They plan to sell the Gamecube for a small profit, and (to my knowledge) have done so with all of their consoles. Well... maybe not Virtual Boy.
Josh Sisk
Nintendo's been a bit of a loser in the gaming industry for a while now.
Are you on crack? If you said they were "a bit of a loser with the hardcore gaming community", I'd agree... But their games sell, their systems STILL sell (and they have a tradition of not selling consoles as loss leaders) and even if they don't, the handheld market has grow to a nice chunk of the market (I've heard it represents 20% of all sales)... And guess which company has a virtual monopoly on the handheld market? This is also ignoring the Pokemon factor.
Josh Sisk
Conker's BFD was produced by Rareware (the company that also did Goldeneye). Nintendo may not be blocking adult titles on their system, but neither are they themselves producing them.
Rare is a second party developer. They only develop games for Nintendo and Nintendo either owns a chunk of the company or has extensive, long term contracts. Or more likely, both.
Josh Sisk
Open source has failed everywhere?
Three Words:
Apache. PHP. MySQL.
Just because Open Source has failed as a business plan for some companies, doesn't mean that Open Source projects aren't successful.
Josh Sisk
Being an unknown is one thing, but WHY DIDNT They try advertising? Why not try to let more people know?
Same reason they closed their doors- not enough money and no more VCs willing to take risks.
Josh Sisk
Well, when I said resteraunts, I meant fast food joints. Not the fancy places.
Williams is not the first 'major' author to publish in this fashion. JMS (Babylon 5's creator) published a serial novel to an online site called Bookface.com.
I don't know if I'd consider Tad Williams to be a major author. I DO know that I definitely wouldn't consider they guy that created Babylon 5 to be one.
Josh Sisk
I have a friend who is allergic to both corn and tomatoes. I myself am allergic to aspartame (nutrasweet).
Josh Sisk
This is a good point. But gas prices are only going to go up in the long term.
Josh Sisk
Though I bet if you had a car like this you could get the oil from the same distributors that resteraunts get their oil from, for much cheaper.
I doubt resteraunts use Wesson, probably a generic bottle that says "oil", and I doubt they buy it in 48 oz bottles... Probably drums or 5 gallon jugs.
Josh Sisk
What I didn't really like about the movie is that it never encouraged any sort of feeling about the protagonist. The movie tries at points to make you feel sorry for Jung or angry at Jung or understanding, but it never really comes through, because when he's a victim, it's really his own fault, and when he's not the taking advantage of various oppurtunities, you just see them as dumb but acceptable decisions. At the end, when I'm supposed to feel somewhat bad for this man who's lost literally everything, I don't, because everything wasn't taken away; he gave it all away. I end up feeling worse for the father than for anyone else, simply because he's the only one who constantly gets the shaft (by no fault of his own).
Yeah, I was consistantly amazed by the stupid decisions (if they were accurate, and not just Hollywood storytelling) Jung kept making. If I had $60 million dollars, I guarantee I would _not_ keep it all in one place.
It really made all his success look like dumb luck.
Josh Sisk
All in all I found the film to be pretty average. It played out like an A & E biography: "I went here, bought some weed, then sold it, then met this girl, then we went to mexico, then I bought more weed, then I went here, then I got beat up, then I went here, then I got beat up again"... It didn't seem like anything I hadn't seen before and what's worse, it kept feeling like- "Okay, NOW it's gonna get good!"... but it never did.
The best parts of the movie dealt with his relationship with his father and daughter... Those were the only scenes were the movie really took off for me. It didn't help that there were so many cliches in the film (which, I guess is not the filmmaker's fault, since it's based on a true story, but really - how many movies have we seen where the criminal gets brought down because he falls in love with a crazy, greedy woman).
The acting was good overall, I don't remeber any truely bad performances- Johnny Depp was good, Paul Reubens was good, even that goofy fat guy from the Kevin Smith movies was okay. Franka Potente pulled off a valley girl accent. Ray Liotta was good- he's been much better lately; he needs to stick to supporting roles and forget about clunkers like "No Escape".
There were a few flairs of really interesting direction/editing, but the movie was mostly a collection of medium shots and two shots. The music was great, but film mostly came off as stiff to me.
All in all, I liked it, but it's probably more of a matinee feature. Don't pay the full price!
Josh Sisk
Actually, the law states you can only listen to an MP3 of a song you own, MADE FROM YOUR COPY.
It's very clear on that issue, which is why MP3.com lost it's lawsuit.
Josh Sisk
Exactly. I many countries, the blank cassette companies give the record companies money, with the assumption that people are using the cassettes to copy CDs.
I should comment- I'm not sure if this is a world wide thing, but they do it in many countries.
Josh Sisk
Another thing to consider, as far as burned CDs go, is that a portion of the price of each blank CD goes to the record industry. This is a sort of "tax", that is there because the assumption is that the CD-R will be used to copy audio. The same thing has existed for awhile in the cassette tape business and I'm pretty sure it has migrated to the blank cd business as well. I remeber articles about how they wanted to charge a fee for each burner sold as well, but I don't know if anything became of that. Anyone know?
Josh Sisk
Actually, the majority of mine would be legitimate, since I have "the hits" of my cd collection on a machine which plays a shoutcast stream that I can listen to anywhere.
I also compile mix-cds of my vinyl collection (2000+ LPs and 7"s) to play on my radio show, since lugging around all that vinyl is bad for one's back.
Both of these are examples of fair use, incidentally. Also, soon I plan on getting a Nomad Jukebox, or possibly one of those Empeg/Rio car mp3 players... Also a good example of Fair Use.
I'm not the best poster boy for "evil napster users who steal from the bands". This month, so far, I have bought about 30 7" singles and about 15 lp/cds (none from RIAA bands, by the way). I dropped $500 on record order the other day- I'm a music fiend. This doesn't even count my ebay habit- tracking down old releases I missed the first time around- this is all money spent on _new_ stuff.
I do admit to having some Napster tracks for albums I no longer own... I got some old hair metal stuff recently that I hadn't heard since the eighties. I guess I _am_ contributing to the guy from Skid Row not being able to pay his bills... But, it's not like I'd rush out and buy "18 and life" if there was no Napster. I think most people treat Napster like a radio station request line : "Damn, I wanna hear Smoke On the Water right now, lemme download it!" (I know this is how my friends treat it, the other day we got in an arguement about what the best Motorhead song was, so we downloaded a few to compare. I guarantee you I will never listen to those Motorhead tracks again, nor would we have rushed out to buy "the best of Motorhead" for our little contest). If someone likes a band they will buy that band's album, even if they have MP3s of that band. The most traded songs are N SYNC and other teen pop, and those band's record sales have not been hurt whatsoever. If the record companies were smart, they'd start their own Napster and make it almost the same as it is now, except whenever an artists name appeared, you'd have the option to click and buy that cd and have it shipped directly to you. I'm sure there are lots of other ways the record industry could make money of a napster-like service. I can see why they want to be the ones making that money, though, not Napster.
Personally, I'd be very happy if Naptser got rid of all RIAA music entirely... I like Napster because I can find out about obscure indie bands, stuff that doesn't get radio or MTV airplay, and listen before I buy. If all the major label crap was cleared off the servers, then I could find what I like a lot easier. For a lot of these bands, things like Napster are an easy way to get exposure. This is why their "opt-in" plan seems like a bad idea to me... Would every garage band have to tell the RIAA "hey, we want our song on Napster, please let them upload it?"
Josh Sisk
Personally, I really like the DC controller. Most of my friends don't seem to have a problem with it, either. The Playstation controller always felt too small in my hands. I also don't like the 4 shoulder buttons...
My favorite controller ever was probably the six button Genesis style, or the Saturn controller (which was almost the same thing).
Josh Sisk