The main question remains, though, what kind of support will those unfortunate few receive? Molly O'Donnell says, 'It's unfortunate and it's important that we get working consoles for those few people who are having problems. We want to get them playing and happy and buying games!'
Actually no, the main question does not remain. It gets a straight answer: Those few who have problems with their Xbox will get a new one. It's pretty simple really.
There is no clarity in regards to accessories that will come bundled with the package, and the optional accessories that you can purchase.
However, there are going to be two versions of the console retailing at $299 and $399, respectively. The $299 will be the base model and will come with a wired controller and perhaps a 20GB hard disk drive.
The $299 version (also known as the Core Package) will perhaps come with a hard drive? What sort of weird speculation is that? The contents of the Core and Premium packages were announced over a month ago, the info is available on Xbox.com, and it's pretty damn clear at this point that the Core version will absolutely NOT come with a hard drive. It doesn't get anymore clear than that.
Microsoft has NOT decided on anything with regards to HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray on Xbox 360. The/. article linked in the summary is erroneous, it was based on a Bill Gates quote that pre-dated it by three months, and all he said was that MS might put a next-gen optical drive in the Xbox 360 after the format war had been settled, if the demand was there.
While the article mentions the fall in profit, it completely fails to mention the fall in revenue, and that number is in no way insignificant.
Nintendo's profit has dropped $120 million, while the revenue has dropped $102 million. While Nintendo's sales have dropped in the last quarter, that is not why their profits are going down. If you are going to use the argument that they aren't selling as much as they did last year then you should see a larger fall in revenue than profits as you take the unit production/marketing/logistics/etc. costs out of the total revenue costs, leaving you with profit.
What was posted was a 1.2:1 decline for profit:revenue - something that is very bizarre to begin with. You should be seeing things like 0.5:1 decline if sales were the primary cause. Even if you get a 1:1 decline, you're sitting pretty as your investment/production/etc. capital is returning double what you invested. This 1.2:1 decline should indicate only 1 thing, Nintendo is spending more.
They are gearing up for the next console generation, that is all.
Actually, what broke Square's back was the Final Fantasy movie. Their game division was and is doing fine, but their loss on the FF movie was well over $100 million. That's what forced them into the merger.
He is a complete tool. Check out his response to this question:
With the next Xbox planned for release prior to Nintendo's and Sony's next systems, the cost of implementing a next-gen media format (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) would be expensive. What do you think if Xbox 2 used the standard DVD format instead of high definition?
Personally, I don't think this is an important distinction. But maybe some early adopters will care about this and at least initially sway market share. HD will only be relevant in the long run if applications like football use it effectively to enable you to see more of the field. But I think the players are already on information overload as it is.
He doesn't know what HD-DVD or Bluray is! He doesn't understand the question!
With regards to his Nintendo prediction, apparently no-one's told him that Ninty has been profitable for 43 years straight, and have something like $8 billion in the bank. Why the hell would they want to sell to Microsoft?
GT4 did not sell a million copies in two days, that's merely the number of copies shipped to retailers. The actual sales figures are around 635.000 copies in the first week, which is still very impressive, and about 15.000 copies more than GT3 sold in its first week.
How on earth is this going to be useful? The GameCube uses a proprietary media format, so in order to boot anything that's not an official game, you need to use the Phantasy Star Online-exploit.
Which means that you would have to boot up the GC like you normally would, load PSO, do the exploit-thingy and then begin streaming Linux to the console from your PC/server/whatever via the Broadband Adapter. Am I the only one who thinks this is way to big of a hassle?
I mean, Linux on the Dreamcast was just a matter of throwing in a DC-Linux cd and hitting the power button. By comparison, this GameCube hack is cumbersome, to put it mildly. Why not just buy an Xbox and screw Microsoft over?
The UN needs a split houses concept similar to the US and other democratic nation. One house gets a number of representatives dependent on a nations population, and in the other house all nations have equal numbers of representatives. This is the ONLY fair way to ensure that all nations are heard regardless of size or population.
Why? Lots of European democracies have just one house, why is there a need for two? As things are right now, all member states have exactly 1 voting seat in the UN General Assembly.
Abolish the security council. It made sense 50 years ago, but not today.
Reforms of the Security Council is currently in the works.
All representatives should be ELECTED by the people in their nations, with reasonably limited terms (5 or six years max). If these people are going to determine my fate and run my Internet, I'd damned well better get a say in who represents me. Undemocratic nations that don't allow their citizens to vote should NOT get voting seats in the UN.
Representatives are appointed by their respective governments. They do not serve in terms. One day you might see Colin Powell address the Security Council, the next day it might be Rumsfeld or George W. Bush himself. This goes for all councils and committees in the UN. This is the exact same way most ambassadors are picked.
It should respect the constitutions of its member nations. The UN should not have the ability to override, veto, or limit decisions or rights made or granted by their sovereign member states.
It does. The General Assembly does not make laws, is has no authority with which it can demand certain actions from any country. Rather, the General Assembly makes standards or recommendations - wether your country chooses to ratify these bills and conventions, and thus obligating itself to follow them, is completely voluntary. For instance, the Unites States has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but has ratified most of the other treaties concerning human rights.
I'm not gonna go into details about the Security Council, but rest assured that they do not have the authority to demand changes in your constitution or anything like that.
To be frank, I don't think you have to fear that the UN will take control of the Internet. As should be evident, the UN is not the kind of organisation that is able to - or wishes to, for that matter - control a certain media outlet and dictate what it can and can't be used for.
This is also News for Nerds, and Buffy has quite a following in that demographic. Besides, if you don't want news about tv-shows, disable the damn category in your preferences. It's not like it's hard or anything.
Both "Day of the Tentacle" and "Sam & Max Hit the Road" first came out in floppies (yes floppies kids!) with CD-ROM versions with full voices a few years later.
Years? Try months, my friend. The Talkie-versions of DOTT (not DoT) and Sam & Max were released no later than 6 months after the floppy versions.
Also, Full Throttle was released before The Dig (1994 and 1995, respectively) and featured Mark Hamill (as in Luke Skywalker) in at least three parts, including the main villain.
The GeForce3 seems to have a very similar level of performance on lower resolution. However, crank it up to 1600x1200x32 and watch it rise above everything else.
GeForce 1 & 2 simply dies in high resolutions and 32 bit color compared to the GeForce 3.
The broken mods are a basicly a non-issue, it's just a question of the authors updating their code when the source is released.
No, the problem is that id has changed the physics in the game. In the previous versions, people have been tweaking quake and all their hardware so that they would be able to sustain a constant framerate of 125 fps. The reason for this was that it enables a player to pull off all sorts of cool jumps and navigate the maps easier and faster.
Changing this nine months after the game is released is considered by many as a Bad Move, and I tend to agree. I have yet to hear from people who like this change.
Top players have been practicing these moves over and over and over again in order to raise their playing level and stand a chance at $100.000 tournaments like those run by The CPL. Basicly, this new patch throws ours of practice out the window, because these tricks become useless...
Not so hard to understand why people are pissed now, is it?
Shows what you know.:) Most european quakers have a ISDN 64k line, at least. ADSL is growing in use too.
And though af 56,1 mb modifikation is a large pill to swallow on a single 64k isdn, you'd be suprised how many people are willing to spend around three hours of downloading it...
Actually, Rage Against The Machine protested against the PMRC in 1993.
On the Philladelphia stop of the Lollapalooza tour, they stood naked on stage for 15 minutes, with duct tape over their mouths and the letters PMRC written on their chests, one letter per band member... Then they left the stage.
Somebody will be hurt in the coming console war. Either Sony, Sega or MS will see their much hyped 2nd gen console fail in a thunderous manner.
History has shown that the market can only support two consoles at a time (in Europe, anyway) and since three consoles will be out by end 2001, one of them will prove financial disaster to the company behind.
Since Sony has already hit jackpot with the PSX2 (one million sales in 3 days) they're pretty sure to not lose the war, but it's a completely different story for Sega and MS.
Sega are shooting themselves in the foot right now because they are overlooking large parts on the european market in their marketing campaigns (ie scandinavia) and are mainly focussing on the UK and a couple of countries similar in size and population. Add the fact that the Dreamcast isn't exactly that hot hardware wise any more...
MS has a completely different problem in the fact that their machine wont be released until next year, and new PCs will be twice as powerfull at that time. And this is MSs first venture into the market.
Slashdot Mirror
The main question remains, though, what kind of support will those unfortunate few receive? Molly O'Donnell says, 'It's unfortunate and it's important that we get working consoles for those few people who are having problems. We want to get them playing and happy and buying games!'
Actually no, the main question does not remain. It gets a straight answer: Those few who have problems with their Xbox will get a new one. It's pretty simple really.
Why is FUD like this allowed to get through?
The $299 version (also known as the Core Package) will perhaps come with a hard drive? What sort of weird speculation is that? The contents of the Core and Premium packages were announced over a month ago, the info is available on Xbox.com, and it's pretty damn clear at this point that the Core version will absolutely NOT come with a hard drive. It doesn't get anymore clear than that.
World of Warcraft has Mac support out of the box.
What impact might this have on Microsoft's decision to use HD-DVD on the Xbox 360?
/. article linked in the summary is erroneous, it was based on a Bill Gates quote that pre-dated it by three months, and all he said was that MS might put a next-gen optical drive in the Xbox 360 after the format war had been settled, if the demand was there.
Microsoft has NOT decided on anything with regards to HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray on Xbox 360. The
More Sources: GamesIndustry.biz/a> and News Corp themselves.
Nintendo's profit has dropped $120 million, while the revenue has dropped $102 million. While Nintendo's sales have dropped in the last quarter, that is not why their profits are going down. If you are going to use the argument that they aren't selling as much as they did last year then you should see a larger fall in revenue than profits as you take the unit production/marketing/logistics/etc. costs out of the total revenue costs, leaving you with profit.
What was posted was a 1.2:1 decline for profit:revenue - something that is very bizarre to begin with. You should be seeing things like 0.5:1 decline if sales were the primary cause. Even if you get a 1:1 decline, you're sitting pretty as your investment/production/etc. capital is returning double what you invested. This 1.2:1 decline should indicate only 1 thing, Nintendo is spending more.
They are gearing up for the next console generation, that is all.
Actually, what broke Square's back was the Final Fantasy movie. Their game division was and is doing fine, but their loss on the FF movie was well over $100 million. That's what forced them into the merger.
He doesn't know what HD-DVD or Bluray is! He doesn't understand the question!
With regards to his Nintendo prediction, apparently no-one's told him that Ninty has been profitable for 43 years straight, and have something like $8 billion in the bank. Why the hell would they want to sell to Microsoft?
GT4 did not sell a million copies in two days, that's merely the number of copies shipped to retailers. The actual sales figures are around 635.000 copies in the first week, which is still very impressive, and about 15.000 copies more than GT3 sold in its first week.
Atari refuses to reveal the buyer, stating "That's up to that party to disclose that", according to HomeLAN Fed.
The GameSpot article linked in the story was posted yesterday, not april 1st.
How on earth is this going to be useful? The GameCube uses a proprietary media format, so in order to boot anything that's not an official game, you need to use the Phantasy Star Online-exploit.
Which means that you would have to boot up the GC like you normally would, load PSO, do the exploit-thingy and then begin streaming Linux to the console from your PC/server/whatever via the Broadband Adapter. Am I the only one who thinks this is way to big of a hassle?
I mean, Linux on the Dreamcast was just a matter of throwing in a DC-Linux cd and hitting the power button. By comparison, this GameCube hack is cumbersome, to put it mildly. Why not just buy an Xbox and screw Microsoft over?
The UN needs a split houses concept similar to the US and other democratic nation. One house gets a number of representatives dependent on a nations population, and in the other house all nations have equal numbers of representatives. This is the ONLY fair way to ensure that all nations are heard regardless of size or population.
Why? Lots of European democracies have just one house, why is there a need for two? As things are right now, all member states have exactly 1 voting seat in the UN General Assembly.
Abolish the security council. It made sense 50 years ago, but not today.
Reforms of the Security Council is currently in the works.
All representatives should be ELECTED by the people in their nations, with reasonably limited terms (5 or six years max). If these people are going to determine my fate and run my Internet, I'd damned well better get a say in who represents me. Undemocratic nations that don't allow their citizens to vote should NOT get voting seats in the UN.
Representatives are appointed by their respective governments. They do not serve in terms. One day you might see Colin Powell address the Security Council, the next day it might be Rumsfeld or George W. Bush himself. This goes for all councils and committees in the UN. This is the exact same way most ambassadors are picked. It should respect the constitutions of its member nations. The UN should not have the ability to override, veto, or limit decisions or rights made or granted by their sovereign member states.
It does. The General Assembly does not make laws, is has no authority with which it can demand certain actions from any country. Rather, the General Assembly makes standards or recommendations - wether your country chooses to ratify these bills and conventions, and thus obligating itself to follow them, is completely voluntary. For instance, the Unites States has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but has ratified most of the other treaties concerning human rights.
I'm not gonna go into details about the Security Council, but rest assured that they do not have the authority to demand changes in your constitution or anything like that.
To be frank, I don't think you have to fear that the UN will take control of the Internet. As should be evident, the UN is not the kind of organisation that is able to - or wishes to, for that matter - control a certain media outlet and dictate what it can and can't be used for.
IO Interactive. Hitman: Over 600,000 units sold. Hitman 2: Over 2 million units sold. 'Nuff said.
This is also News for Nerds, and Buffy has quite a following in that demographic. Besides, if you don't want news about tv-shows, disable the damn category in your preferences. It's not like it's hard or anything.
Years? Try months, my friend. The Talkie-versions of DOTT (not DoT) and Sam & Max were released no later than 6 months after the floppy versions.
Also, Full Throttle was released before The Dig (1994 and 1995, respectively) and featured Mark Hamill (as in Luke Skywalker) in at least three parts, including the main villain.
They had a survey during this past week that told them the see throug drivers were not a good idea.
When I checked the poll this wednesday, some 12.000 people had voted about the issue, with 89% thinking the see-through drivers were a bad idea...
GeForce 1 & 2 simply dies in high resolutions and 32 bit color compared to the GeForce 3.
No, the problem is that id has changed the physics in the game. In the previous versions, people have been tweaking quake and all their hardware so that they would be able to sustain a constant framerate of 125 fps. The reason for this was that it enables a player to pull off all sorts of cool jumps and navigate the maps easier and faster.
Changing this nine months after the game is released is considered by many as a Bad Move, and I tend to agree. I have yet to hear from people who like this change.
Top players have been practicing these moves over and over and over again in order to raise their playing level and stand a chance at $100.000 tournaments like those run by The CPL. Basicly, this new patch throws ours of practice out the window, because these tricks become useless... Not so hard to understand why people are pissed now, is it?
It scares me how uninformed some slashdotters are on topics which they obviously have strong opinions about...
The word from Loki is that the actual game will roll off the presses sometime last week, and start shipping around then.
Uhm... What?
Most european quakers have a ISDN 64k line, at least. ADSL is growing in use too.
And though af 56,1 mb modifikation is a large pill to swallow on a single 64k isdn, you'd be suprised how many people are willing to spend around three hours of downloading it...
Actually, Rage Against The Machine protested against the PMRC in 1993.
On the Philladelphia stop of the Lollapalooza tour, they stood naked on stage for 15 minutes, with duct tape over their mouths and the letters PMRC written on their chests, one letter per band member... Then they left the stage.
Somebody will be hurt in the coming console war. Either Sony, Sega or MS will see their much hyped 2nd gen console fail in a thunderous manner.
History has shown that the market can only support two consoles at a time (in Europe, anyway) and since three consoles will be out by end 2001, one of them will prove financial disaster to the company behind.
Since Sony has already hit jackpot with the PSX2 (one million sales in 3 days) they're pretty sure to not lose the war, but it's a completely different story for Sega and MS.
Sega are shooting themselves in the foot right now because they are overlooking large parts on the european market in their marketing campaigns (ie scandinavia) and are mainly focussing on the UK and a couple of countries similar in size and population. Add the fact that the Dreamcast isn't exactly that hot hardware wise any more...
MS has a completely different problem in the fact that their machine wont be released until next year, and new PCs will be twice as powerfull at that time. And this is MSs first venture into the market.
One of them will see their flagship go down...