I think it even has some of the codecs built into it (MP3, AVIs, etc.).
I would be really suprised if on eof the first generation players could play MP3s or AVIs... PhotoCDs, and VCDs, sure. The first DVD players were released in the US in early 97 (I had one, it cost $500), and public acceptance/awareness of MP3 was still quite low at that point. 99 was when MP3 blew up, as I recall.
As others have stated, I've had my DS for about 6 months and play regularly, with no scree protector, and have no scratches. I bought my girlfriend one the same day, and she plays hers 2x as much as me, and hers is fine too. I don't think you need a screen protector, unless perhaps you have young kids.
but Nintendo has gone to the "Mario" well a bit too much lately and the poor sales of the cube shows it.
Check the Japanesesalescharts. In the last two weeks, New Mario Brothers for the DS has sold ~1,000,000, one of the (if not THE) fastest selling games ever. The demand for (good) games with Nintendo characters is there. Look at the Best Buy and Amazon.com US sales ranks for some more evidence... (NMB is currently the top selling console game on Amazon.com, and #2 at Best Buy).
Mario's (and other Nintendo properties) over- or under- exposure isn't what hurt the gamecube. The console is neck and neck with the Xbox 1 for global sales (it vastly outsells it in Japan), and that is primarily based on Nintendo 1st party games (Mario, Zelda, etc). What hurt the cube was a lack of any games BUT the Nintendo games (with a few exceptions like RE4. People that love Nintendo games bought the cube. But to compete with the PS2, they needed people who like GTA, Tekken, Elder Scrolls, etc... That's where they failed with the cube.
As far as them exiting the hardware business, they have already stated they will not do that. And why would they? They came out of the last generation with tons of profits - both on the cube and the GBA. Again, the Cube is worldwide neck and neck with the Xbox - and they made a profit on every console sold, unlike MS. If they only do just as well this time, they will still be making profit (and it looks like they might do a lot better than last time).
Right now, they consistantly dominate Japanese sales charts with the DS and DS games - DS games regularly occupy 50% or more of the games charts, and the DS outsells every other console or handheld handily. This is giving them a massive war chest, not to mention a lot of fans of the DS who may be easy to sway over to the Wii... On the flip side, if the weird controller scheme is bad, it will hurt them. And if they don't get 3rd party games, that will hurt them too.
Either way, though, Nintendo isn't going anywhere.
However, do the older consoles even use Component? I mean, I mainly use my switcher so I can still use my NES, SNES, Genesis, etc... I really doubt they even supported component output.
The JVC JX-66 AV Switcher is ~$50 bucks and can apparently switch between 3 different component devices. That turns a 3 device reciever into a 5 device one. A quick google search turned up several other models that do the same for prices that range from $50 to $150 depending on # of devices and so forth.
And, no, a switcher is not a receiver. A powered switcher does just that - switches between devices. It doesn't do any of the signal processing, amplification, or other things that a reciever does.
A/V switchers cost $20-30 and can usually handle 6-8 devices. HOWEVER, you mention digital sound... I imagine switchers that handle that could be more expensive, I don't actually know as I don't use that myself. My switcher was $15 on sale and handles standard RCA-style cables & s-video for up to 8 devices... more than enough for all my consoles & my VCR. My DVD player is hooked directly into my TV.
This is true, it's not like Apple invented podcasting (for example), as much as they now want everyone to think they did. It sprang from the community.
Personally, I think companies should be held liable for bugs in their programs. PC Games would be in dire trouble if this occured.
Why? I would imagine any liability would be related to damages caused due to the bug. In a game, what are the damages? If the liability was equal to the purchase price, then that still wouldn't be atroublesome burden, especially if a claim had to be made where they could prove a bug exists. In a Word Processor, it's easy to prove something is a bug, in a game it might just be "challenging AI". And if someone does manage to prove there is a bug, okay, here's your $50 back.
All that said, this concept does seem like it could hold up. Software providers would just start making you agree to a license (if they don't already) that states that you acknowledge this is a beta product that might have bugs.
Actually that bracket should be "[Expecting me to point out that a device could be modified by homebrew to do something that it's designers didn't intend it to, and don't support]" I was saying that yes, you can modify a DS to play some games, but that's not really the same as saying the DS is truly backwards compatible.
Okay, I guess I should have said that "You can't play any GB game older than GBA on the DS... unless you modify your DS or get some sort of homebrew add on." But c'mon, that's a little ridiculous. Also judging from the page you linked, it's not completely compatible, even with that.
The console's been out for almost five years, so we're nearing the MTBF on the hard drives, and the hard drive locking makes them nontrivial to replace.
I have a friend who replaces Xbox hard drives and other parts for parts+$20/hour. It can't be that hard to do. Besides, they still sell Xboxes, if you are that hard up for one. True, they won't in 10-15 years, but by then, I really doubt people will care that much. Also by then, most of the games will be available as downloads for whatever consoles are the succesors of this current gen.
I would imagine so that a tech can attempt to power a dead one up without uninstalling it from the wall. To see if the PC is broken, or if there is just a problem with the cable...
Yes, among other things, the eyes that have the reflection in them are an indicator that the person (or animal) is a replicant, plus the VK test guages blood vessels in the eye to guage emotional response, also judging if you are a replicant. Tyrell is genetically unfit, perhaps, to go to the offworld colonies because of his obvious genetic eye condition.
Beyond that, the thing that makes you human in the film is your unique experiences - what you have seen in your life. The replicants desperately want those experiences, and collect photos and images to try to pretend they have ones of their own.
Eyes also figure majorly in the opening shot, the eye above the city, Chew is an eye designer ("If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes"), Roy takes Tyrell's eyes... etc, etc...
Whoops, I meant "he". Though I wish I had worked on the movie!
I disagree about the last sequence, because every other oragami Gaff made (at least that I can recall) was a specific comment on Deckard's character... a chicken (you are a coward), a man with erection (I know you are hot for the replicant)... What would the unicorn mean in that context? In the DC, Gaff making an origami of the mythical animal that Deckard sees in his dreams means "I know you're not real"- both because the unicorn is a fake animal, and also because if Gaff knows about Deckard's dream, Deckard can't be real.
As far as your theory about just LA (or other cities) being a cesspool, they make a specific point several times to note that basically no real animals exist anymore. When animals are shown, they repeatedly have characters ask if they are real and then be told "of course not"... even at the vastly wealthy Tyrell Corporation, the idea that their owl might be real is scoffed at. Plus there is the synthetic animal bazaar where we see all sorts of mundane animals replicated at great expense... and of course the VK test which seems to mainly asks questions about animals, which implies that they are highly prized.
We are also told that most people who doesn't have some sort of genetic issue (or is just too poor, perhaps) has left earth for "the outworld colonies".
So... if it's just LA that is messed up, why are all the animals dead? And why do people have to leave the earth, why can't they just drive outside the city? No, the film certainly strongly implies that the whole world is severely polluted/a bad place to be. And the last scene with it's footage of pristine, rolling, beautiful hills completely contradicts this.
It's issuess like this which make me like the DC better. If the TC didn't have the "rolling hills" ending, that alone would make me like it ALOT better. That ending just seems so jarringly out of place.
Well, the directors cut is currently the closest to the movie he wanted to make, so you can't really blame him for fucking up BR... you just don't like the movie we originally made, before it was reedited and had the narration tacked on after filming was done.
As far as the DVD does, I doubt he kept the original from being released, either. If he didn't want it out there, I doubt it would be in this edition. So chalk that up to WB, who have always viewed BR as a red headed stepchild.
SPOILERS
I have a DVD-R of the theatrical release and while it is interesting to watch, it's simply not as good as the directors cut - the unicorn at the end makes no sense out of context, the footage (taken from the Shining) of them driving through the countryside at the end contradicts the whole rest of the movie (wait, i thought the world was polluted and decrepid, not lush and glorious), and the narration in general is pretty poor. It has it's moments, but it also has way to many moments where Deckard describes what is happening on screen even though we can plainly see what is happening. Example, at the end when Beatty is dying and Deckard sits with him as he is dying... the narration says "I sat with him while he died..." etc. Yeah Deck, we know, we are watching that happen. The narration is full of moments like this.
This is only the second DVD edition since 1997 or 98, so I don' see it as being too excessive. The original Bladerunner DVD was one of the first DVDs released (I bought it when I bought my first-gen DVD player the first week that DVD players were on sale in my town) and had a not the best transfer, so a new one will be a blessing - they probably had to do a new one in order ro release a HD version, so that is probably one reason why this is happening.
In terms of versions of the film: the movie has had it's original, studio butchered USA cut, which is very different than Ridley Scott's vision... then a better Euro cut that was closer to what he wanted. This Euro cut was shown in LA and made a suprising amount of money, so the studio gave Ridley Scott a small amount of money to make a new cut, as he had been asking to for years. The 92 directors cut was the result, though it wasn't perfect, it was the best Ridley thought he was likely to get.
Now, Scott is a much bigger name director and the licensing issues that held them back before have been sorted out... so we get to this final cut, which probably only has a few extra shots/scenes that they thought were lost in 1992... or would have been too expensive to include based on the small amount of money WB gave them in 92.
Also, many old people like me have been clamoring for the ability to see the theatrical release for nostalgia reasons. It has been out of print in any format for at least 15 years. This edition will include that, so this is a win-win.
Whether or not Deckard is a replicant won't spoil your enjoyment of the film, because the main thrust of the film has nothing to do with that. They don't even address the question of is he or isn't he until the very end. And it isn't handled in a Sixth Sense-esque twist, it's more like an little extra bit of info about his character. I imagine many people who watch and love the film didn't even notice it.
I signed up for SL just to check it out - I started out with 1000 SL bucks or whatever they are called, or something similar. I went around and bought some things, played some games, goofed off... eventually, no more money. I never logged in again after that one time, just wasn't my thing. But my 1000 spacebucks are still in the economy... I imagine that same scenario plays itself out several thousand times a day.
This 2nd party BS must have been created like this (Because I noticed that quite everybody doing video games seem to have a definition of 2nd party similar to yours):
- Hey Joe, if Nintendo games are 1st party and Rockstar games are 3rd party, what is second party? - Huh, it must be somewhere in the middle. - Great, I'll write that in my blog.
The terminology has been in use since AT LEAST the early 90s, well before blogs existed. I first read a description of what the difference between 1st/2nd/3rd party developers was in NextGen magazine, which went out of business years ago.
There are many examples of terminology that is specific to an industry, trade, or hobby that seems to counter the standard or layman's definition. This is one of them.
We are talking about console game developers here. When you say "1st party developed game", "2nd party developed game", or "third party developed game", does it make sense that any of those could be the player?
No. A second party developed game is a game developed by a company who is closely tied with one of the first parties - Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft - but not fully owned by them.
That definition may not make sense in terms of the standard use of the term, but it has been the industry specific use of the term for probably two decades now.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not get a computer to do both. . .
Because not everyone wants a computer in their living room?
Also, console games are generlaly pretty different from PC games...
I think it even has some of the codecs built into it (MP3, AVIs, etc.).
I would be really suprised if on eof the first generation players could play MP3s or AVIs... PhotoCDs, and VCDs, sure. The first DVD players were released in the US in early 97 (I had one, it cost $500), and public acceptance/awareness of MP3 was still quite low at that point. 99 was when MP3 blew up, as I recall.
As others have stated, I've had my DS for about 6 months and play regularly, with no scree protector, and have no scratches. I bought my girlfriend one the same day, and she plays hers 2x as much as me, and hers is fine too. I don't think you need a screen protector, unless perhaps you have young kids.
but Nintendo has gone to the "Mario" well a bit too much lately and the poor sales of the cube shows it.
Check the Japanese sales charts. In the last two weeks, New Mario Brothers for the DS has sold ~1,000,000, one of the (if not THE) fastest selling games ever. The demand for (good) games with Nintendo characters is there. Look at the Best Buy and Amazon.com US sales ranks for some more evidence... (NMB is currently the top selling console game on Amazon.com, and #2 at Best Buy).
Mario's (and other Nintendo properties) over- or under- exposure isn't what hurt the gamecube. The console is neck and neck with the Xbox 1 for global sales (it vastly outsells it in Japan), and that is primarily based on Nintendo 1st party games (Mario, Zelda, etc). What hurt the cube was a lack of any games BUT the Nintendo games (with a few exceptions like RE4. People that love Nintendo games bought the cube. But to compete with the PS2, they needed people who like GTA, Tekken, Elder Scrolls, etc... That's where they failed with the cube.
As far as them exiting the hardware business, they have already stated they will not do that. And why would they? They came out of the last generation with tons of profits - both on the cube and the GBA. Again, the Cube is worldwide neck and neck with the Xbox - and they made a profit on every console sold, unlike MS. If they only do just as well this time, they will still be making profit (and it looks like they might do a lot better than last time).
Right now, they consistantly dominate Japanese sales charts with the DS and DS games - DS games regularly occupy 50% or more of the games charts, and the DS outsells every other console or handheld handily. This is giving them a massive war chest, not to mention a lot of fans of the DS who may be easy to sway over to the Wii... On the flip side, if the weird controller scheme is bad, it will hurt them. And if they don't get 3rd party games, that will hurt them too.
Either way, though, Nintendo isn't going anywhere.
Nintendo is a privately held company. One of the largest in fact.
From the first line of Nintendo's Wikipedia entry:
Nintendo (Japanese: , Nintend; NASDAQ: NTDOY, TYO: 7974 ) is a multinational corporation
They are on both the Nasdaq and the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Also, from the corporate information sidebar on the same page:
Nintendo Company, Limited
Nintendo Logo
Type Public (NASDAQ: NTDOY)
Founded November 6, 1889
So, yes... you are incorrect.
However, do the older consoles even use Component? I mean, I mainly use my switcher so I can still use my NES, SNES, Genesis, etc... I really doubt they even supported component output.
The JVC JX-66 AV Switcher is ~$50 bucks and can apparently switch between 3 different component devices. That turns a 3 device reciever into a 5 device one. A quick google search turned up several other models that do the same for prices that range from $50 to $150 depending on # of devices and so forth.
And, no, a switcher is not a receiver. A powered switcher does just that - switches between devices. It doesn't do any of the signal processing, amplification, or other things that a reciever does.
A/V switchers cost $20-30 and can usually handle 6-8 devices. HOWEVER, you mention digital sound... I imagine switchers that handle that could be more expensive, I don't actually know as I don't use that myself. My switcher was $15 on sale and handles standard RCA-style cables & s-video for up to 8 devices... more than enough for all my consoles & my VCR. My DVD player is hooked directly into my TV.
whoops, doesN'T. Why can't I ever learn to preview? :/
This is true, it's not like Apple invented podcasting (for example), as much as they now want everyone to think they did. It sprang from the community.
Personally, I think companies should be held liable for bugs in their programs. PC Games would be in dire trouble if this occured.
Why? I would imagine any liability would be related to damages caused due to the bug. In a game, what are the damages? If the liability was equal to the purchase price, then that still wouldn't be atroublesome burden, especially if a claim had to be made where they could prove a bug exists. In a Word Processor, it's easy to prove something is a bug, in a game it might just be "challenging AI". And if someone does manage to prove there is a bug, okay, here's your $50 back.
All that said, this concept does seem like it could hold up. Software providers would just start making you agree to a license (if they don't already) that states that you acknowledge this is a beta product that might have bugs.
But c'mon, [Goomba Color is] a little ridiculous.
Actually that bracket should be "[Expecting me to point out that a device could be modified by homebrew to do something that it's designers didn't intend it to, and don't support]" I was saying that yes, you can modify a DS to play some games, but that's not really the same as saying the DS is truly backwards compatible.
But yeah, you are right about your points.
Okay, I guess I should have said that "You can't play any GB game older than GBA on the DS... unless you modify your DS or get some sort of homebrew add on." But c'mon, that's a little ridiculous. Also judging from the page you linked, it's not completely compatible, even with that.
The console's been out for almost five years, so we're nearing the MTBF on the hard drives, and the hard drive locking makes them nontrivial to replace.
I have a friend who replaces Xbox hard drives and other parts for parts+$20/hour. It can't be that hard to do. Besides, they still sell Xboxes, if you are that hard up for one. True, they won't in 10-15 years, but by then, I really doubt people will care that much. Also by then, most of the games will be available as downloads for whatever consoles are the succesors of this current gen.
You can't play any GB game older than GBA on the DS. I believe you can ONLY play GBA games on the GBA Micro.
Is the PS3 fully compatible with the PS1/2? I had heard it wasn't going to be.
Because all Xboxes magically disappeared the day the 360 came out.
The SNES didn't play NES games, and it wasn't the end of the world. Why? Because everyone who had NES games.... also had an NES.
I would imagine so that a tech can attempt to power a dead one up without uninstalling it from the wall. To see if the PC is broken, or if there is just a problem with the cable...
Yes, among other things, the eyes that have the reflection in them are an indicator that the person (or animal) is a replicant, plus the VK test guages blood vessels in the eye to guage emotional response, also judging if you are a replicant. Tyrell is genetically unfit, perhaps, to go to the offworld colonies because of his obvious genetic eye condition.
Beyond that, the thing that makes you human in the film is your unique experiences - what you have seen in your life. The replicants desperately want those experiences, and collect photos and images to try to pretend they have ones of their own.
Eyes also figure majorly in the opening shot, the eye above the city, Chew is an eye designer ("If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes"), Roy takes Tyrell's eyes... etc, etc...
Wow, my grammar and spelling on this comment were terrible - my apologies.
Whoops, I meant "he". Though I wish I had worked on the movie!
I disagree about the last sequence, because every other oragami Gaff made (at least that I can recall) was a specific comment on Deckard's character... a chicken (you are a coward), a man with erection (I know you are hot for the replicant)... What would the unicorn mean in that context? In the DC, Gaff making an origami of the mythical animal that Deckard sees in his dreams means "I know you're not real"- both because the unicorn is a fake animal, and also because if Gaff knows about Deckard's dream, Deckard can't be real.
As far as your theory about just LA (or other cities) being a cesspool, they make a specific point several times to note that basically no real animals exist anymore. When animals are shown, they repeatedly have characters ask if they are real and then be told "of course not"... even at the vastly wealthy Tyrell Corporation, the idea that their owl might be real is scoffed at. Plus there is the synthetic animal bazaar where we see all sorts of mundane animals replicated at great expense... and of course the VK test which seems to mainly asks questions about animals, which implies that they are highly prized.
We are also told that most people who doesn't have some sort of genetic issue (or is just too poor, perhaps) has left earth for "the outworld colonies".
So... if it's just LA that is messed up, why are all the animals dead? And why do people have to leave the earth, why can't they just drive outside the city? No, the film certainly strongly implies that the whole world is severely polluted/a bad place to be. And the last scene with it's footage of pristine, rolling, beautiful hills completely contradicts this.
It's issuess like this which make me like the DC better. If the TC didn't have the "rolling hills" ending, that alone would make me like it ALOT better. That ending just seems so jarringly out of place.
Well, the directors cut is currently the closest to the movie he wanted to make, so you can't really blame him for fucking up BR... you just don't like the movie we originally made, before it was reedited and had the narration tacked on after filming was done.
As far as the DVD does, I doubt he kept the original from being released, either. If he didn't want it out there, I doubt it would be in this edition. So chalk that up to WB, who have always viewed BR as a red headed stepchild.
SPOILERS
I have a DVD-R of the theatrical release and while it is interesting to watch, it's simply not as good as the directors cut - the unicorn at the end makes no sense out of context, the footage (taken from the Shining) of them driving through the countryside at the end contradicts the whole rest of the movie (wait, i thought the world was polluted and decrepid, not lush and glorious), and the narration in general is pretty poor. It has it's moments, but it also has way to many moments where Deckard describes what is happening on screen even though we can plainly see what is happening. Example, at the end when Beatty is dying and Deckard sits with him as he is dying... the narration says "I sat with him while he died..." etc. Yeah Deck, we know, we are watching that happen. The narration is full of moments like this.
This is only the second DVD edition since 1997 or 98, so I don' see it as being too excessive. The original Bladerunner DVD was one of the first DVDs released (I bought it when I bought my first-gen DVD player the first week that DVD players were on sale in my town) and had a not the best transfer, so a new one will be a blessing - they probably had to do a new one in order ro release a HD version, so that is probably one reason why this is happening.
In terms of versions of the film: the movie has had it's original, studio butchered USA cut, which is very different than Ridley Scott's vision... then a better Euro cut that was closer to what he wanted. This Euro cut was shown in LA and made a suprising amount of money, so the studio gave Ridley Scott a small amount of money to make a new cut, as he had been asking to for years. The 92 directors cut was the result, though it wasn't perfect, it was the best Ridley thought he was likely to get.
Now, Scott is a much bigger name director and the licensing issues that held them back before have been sorted out... so we get to this final cut, which probably only has a few extra shots/scenes that they thought were lost in 1992... or would have been too expensive to include based on the small amount of money WB gave them in 92.
Also, many old people like me have been clamoring for the ability to see the theatrical release for nostalgia reasons. It has been out of print in any format for at least 15 years. This edition will include that, so this is a win-win.
Whether or not Deckard is a replicant won't spoil your enjoyment of the film, because the main thrust of the film has nothing to do with that. They don't even address the question of is he or isn't he until the very end. And it isn't handled in a Sixth Sense-esque twist, it's more like an little extra bit of info about his character. I imagine many people who watch and love the film didn't even notice it.
I signed up for SL just to check it out - I started out with 1000 SL bucks or whatever they are called, or something similar. I went around and bought some things, played some games, goofed off... eventually, no more money. I never logged in again after that one time, just wasn't my thing. But my 1000 spacebucks are still in the economy... I imagine that same scenario plays itself out several thousand times a day.
This 2nd party BS must have been created like this (Because I noticed that quite everybody doing video games seem to have a definition of 2nd party similar to yours):
- Hey Joe, if Nintendo games are 1st party and Rockstar games are 3rd party, what is second party?
- Huh, it must be somewhere in the middle.
- Great, I'll write that in my blog.
The terminology has been in use since AT LEAST the early 90s, well before blogs existed. I first read a description of what the difference between 1st/2nd/3rd party developers was in NextGen magazine, which went out of business years ago.
There are many examples of terminology that is specific to an industry, trade, or hobby that seems to counter the standard or layman's definition. This is one of them.
We are talking about console game developers here. When you say "1st party developed game", "2nd party developed game", or "third party developed game", does it make sense that any of those could be the player?
No. A second party developed game is a game developed by a company who is closely tied with one of the first parties - Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft - but not fully owned by them.
That definition may not make sense in terms of the standard use of the term, but it has been the industry specific use of the term for probably two decades now.