Forward two years from then, and it's Nintendo press conference that made it to the front page, while Sony and Microsoft are nowhere to be found. How things changes...
Nowhere to be found, eh? Microsoft's conference was last night. Nintendo's was this morning. Sony's is next. Slashdot will cover all three.
If it's going to be Vista-only I'll be waiting for the inevitable "unofficial" XP patch before I buy it.
Did you listen to CliffyB? He clearly said "XP and Vista". Please don't jerk your knee so hard next time.
I might consider it but I've heard that lots of my existing games *won't* work on Vista - as a gamer, why would I want to spend money on that?
Some older (usually poorly-written) games have problems running in a restricted mode, but setting app compat for that game to XP generally does the trick. Aside from that, the #1 biggest problem with Vista is the immaturity of the drivers. Once ATI and nVidia hit their stride, Vista gaming should be in a much better place.
One of the biggest things that was expected was for Microsoft to announce was that they were cutting the price of the 360.
Why should they cut their price? The Elite version is still cheaper than a PS3. They're kicking ass in terms of media downloads (Disney is a huge win) and XBLA. They're getting exclusive games for the 360 and getting other companies to break their exclusivity (Resident Evil, Devil May Cry). Live subscriptions are way up, even if total console sales didn't quite hit the mark. They've even earned a fair amount of good will with their ring of death mea culpa and extended warranty. By all counts, the 360 is doing quite well and doesn't really warrant a price cut. The savings might be enough to start showing a profit on hardware at the current price, which would be great press for Microsoft and fantastic news for shareholders (it might even get the stock price back above $30).
That said, it's rumored that the new 65nm process will be up and running soon (Fall), which will reduce the build price of the console. It's quite possible that there still may be a price cut looming for the holiday if they can get the 65nm boxes out in time. Then again, they may be better off pocketing the savings rather than cutting prices so long as the cheapest PS3 is more expensive than the most expensive 360.
Nobody's expecting Nintendo to cut the price of the Wii to $200. Why should Microsoft cut the price of the 360 just because Sony did so with the PS3?
After the cinematic masterpiece that was DooM, I just can't wait for the Halo movie.
Haven't you heard? The Halo movie was put on indefinite hold a while back. That said, it looks like they still have Neill Blomkamp in their corner, judging by the short they showed tonight. If you haven't already, you should check out some of his stuff, especially Alive in Joburg. He's a very talented director and cinematographer, and many people were excited to hear that he was going to helm the Halo movie. On top of that, IMDB currently lists Alex Garland (28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later) as the writer for the Halo movie, which shows promise. And finally, Bungie has a huge bible of Halo lore that they use for the games and books, which gives the Halo movie a fighting chance compared to Doom (which only had a story in order to justify why you were hunting for keys and killing demons). If they ever decide to go forward with the movie, I'll be cautiously excited.
I hope they release it in blu-ray or HD-DVD, so I can watch it in all its HighDef glory.
But Blu-Ray is Sony! Eww! Obviously they'll release it as an HD download on Xbox Live instead.:)
Minidisk, Memory Stick, and now this. Sony seems to have its mind set on producing a medium that is more expensive than any of the competition, doesn't add anything significant feature-wise and is totally incompatibile with the rest of the world.
Don't forget BetaMax and Blu-Ray. Sony has a long history of NIH syndrome. They also have a long history of losing to more open formats. In their defense, Blu-Ray is quite a bit more open than any of their previous attempts, but I still expect it to lose because of Sony's controlling nature.
It wouldn't be so bad if MIcrosoft wasn't pushing XBLA as hard as they are. How can I expect to play SF2' Hyper Fighting with a 360pad?
Like this? I do agree, though. There's a distinct lack of fighting sticks for the 360 (the old Hori DOA4 stick was produced in limited quantities, so good luck finding one). Right now, the only real option is to buy or build a stick and hack an Xbox 360 controller into it. Hopefully we'll eventually get some better sticks for 360, especially if we keep getting fighting games on XBLA.
But am I the only one that finds the 360s selection of games really dull? It seems like there are a lot of FPS and sports games, and not a heck of a lot else.
When someone says this, I can't help but ask, "What are you looking for?" Sure, there are a fair number of FPS and sports games on the 360, just like on nearly every platform (even the Wii). There are plenty of other games as well. A sibling poster mentioned Oblivion, which was excellent (while many people prefer it on the PC due to modability, it plays perfectly on the 360 without forcing me to upgrade my PC). If you're looking for role-playing games, you're not going to find Final Fantasy, but there are several upcoming games that you might really like, such as Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata (both JRPG-style games), Mass Effect, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Two Worlds and more either out now or coming soon. If you want racing, Forza 2 out-does Gran Turismo and DiRT is great as the latest in the Colin McRae series. There are RTS games (C&C3, BFME2, the upcoming Halo Wars, etc), action/adventure games (I'm currently enjoying Overlord), rhythm games (GH2 is arguably better on 360 rather than PS2), and more. And that's before you really get into the XBLA games, where you can find puzzlers, board games, and card games alongside classic arcade games and original platformers and shooters.
Well, I guess the Live! Arcade games are. But all of those games could be done on the Wii, easily. Never mind the emulated games, which I refuse to pay for because I've been playing them for free for almost a decade now via PC emulators.
"Could be done" and "have been done" are two different things. Geometry Wars is coming to Wii (and DS), but I question whether or not it'll control as well without two analog sticks. I never thought that would happen, so maybe Catan, Carcassone, Boom Boom Rocket, Pac-Man CE, and others will eventually make their way over to the Wii with the new WiiWare program. I'm not holding my breath, and instead will enjoy the games available on XBLA right now.
As for emulating some of the games on XBLA, that's true. I'm not a big fan of many of the classic titles on XBLA, as I much prefer original titles or full-on remakes (the new Prince of Persia, or Pac-Man CE). I did enjoy Symphony of the Night on XBLA, as I never had a chance to play it on PS1. XBLA's strength going forward will be in original games or re-imagined classics, not the "old game with a splash of new sprites" we've seen so far. And with XNA picking up steam, the whole community will be able t
Why wouldn't I want to buy one now that not only supports HD games, but I can also get the advantage of HD movies
If you're looking for something to play games, you have to compare what's available for the system and what will be out in the short term (in the long term, you can wait for another price drop). That's the biggest problem with the PS3 right now -- there's no system seller game that makes any price worth it. If you're buying it as a Blu-Ray player, $500 is competitive to stand-alone Blu-Ray players and may be worthwhile. If you just want generic "HD movies" rather than following certain studios to one of the two formats, the Xbox 360 without HD-DVD is a better deal (online downloads of HD movies, streaming video and media center functionality at a lower price than PS3) or you'd wait until the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray issue sorts itself out.
With bad press on Xbox 360 system reliability right now
A 3 year warranty for ring of death issues is pretty generous. Reliability would not be my biggest concern about buying a 360 right now. If I was in the market for a 360, I'd be wondering whether or not Microsoft will respond to Sony's price drop with a cut of their own. Sony might succeed in making some people wait on 360 purchases to see if there's a price drop coming, but I doubt they'll convert many of those people to PS3.
Sony willing to at least listen a little from it's consumer base about price issues
This feels more like Sony being pressured into a price drop due to poor sales more than anything else. If it was a "listening to the customer" deal, Sony would be shouting it loud all over the place. As it is, there's no mention of the price drop on the official PS3 blog, which would be the first place I'd expect this to show up if it was Sony "listening to customers".
while MS after having their system out for 2 years now almost only was willing to drop their price because a competitor forced their hands (that is if they are even wiling to drop the price).
Why should MS drop their price? They're still priced below the PS3 even with their top offering (the Elite at $480). People are still buying, there's no credible threat from PS3, and there's no way for MS to drop prices into Wii territory. Maybe this Sony price drop will cause enough of a stir to force MS to drop prices as well. Maybe not. At this point, it's pure economics -- if demand at the current price is too low, Microsoft will drop the price. If it's not, they won't. There's nothing "good" or "bad" about it.
I will admit that I briefly considered buying a PS3 with this new price drop, but I've ultimately decided against because $500 is still too much for the available games and I don't care about Blu-Ray yet (I'll wait for a clear winner to emerge). Another $100, bringing the 60GB down to $400, and I'd probably buy it. For now, I'll wait until there's a system seller that I have to have. From here on out, I can only save money by waiting.
It's true that the Wii is 100% backwards compatible, even with peripherals.
GBA Player? LAN Adapter? Modem?
Fair enough, though I don't think you need the LAN adapter or modem on a Wii since it already has a net connection. Whether or not that's exposed to the GC hardware, I don't know because I've never played a GC game with online content:).
Wrong on some counts. The Wii probably have caught up to the games portfolio XBox 360 has thanks to perfect retro compatibility and most of all, Virtual Console. And yes, Virtual Console sells millions of games.
I assume you mean "backward compatibility with the GameCube" when you say "retro compatibility". It's true that the Wii is 100% backwards compatible, even with peripherals. While the 360 is not dead yet in terms of backwards compatibility (Microsoft continues to make updates), we're nearing the point in the life of the 360 where backwards compatibility no longer matters. Once Halo 3 ships, you no longer need Halo 1 and 2 which honestly are the biggest reason for BC with the Xbox 1.
If you're going to mention the Virtual Console, you also have to mention Xbox Live Arcade. Both are very strong, but cater to somewhat different tastes. The VC is all about nostalgia, playing on the current 18-34 year olds' rememberance of old systems (SNES, Genesis, and N64 games). On the other hand, XBLA focuses both on retro arcade classics and brand new games. While Nintendo plans to have original offerings on the VC eventually, they just can't compete with games like Geometry Wars or Catan if you want something new. While I love the concept of revisiting my childhood on the Wii, I've only purchased three VC games while I've purchased over ten XBLA games. For my casual gaming dollars, the 360 is the place to be.
Xbox 360 upscales DVDs and video files/streams to 1080i just great.
Only if you use the VGA cable. There's no upscaling on the standard component connection. Not sure about the Elite's HDMI connection.
It is very unfortunate that it only support streaming from Windows based computers, but that's a side effect of it being made by Microsoft.
Not so. The Xbox 360 acts as a standard UPnP streaming media consumer. Any software that can stream music or videos to a UPnP media client can feed the 360. In Windows, that would be WMP11 or Windows Media Connect. On Mac, Connect360 works just fine. On Linux, you can use GeeXbox uShare. The 360 still mostly prefers Microsoft-specific formats (though it should do h.264 now), but as long as you have media in a format it wants it's not difficult to serve it up.
There's no question that the PS3 has a ton more potential for new games than the Xbox 360 has. Unfortunately potential means jack and shit if you don't have the games and the features, so lets just see if they can deliver.
I'm not sure I'd say "a ton", though the BD format does have some potential over what the 360 can provide. Technically, the 360 and the PS3 are pretty much on par, with the PS3 being just slightly more powerful and the 360 being easier/nicer to work with. The 360's biggest asset is Xbox Live, and I just don't see Sony catching up any time soon (they killed themselves last generation when they refused to define a real online strategy and just gave up the market to Xbox Live). I could see a crazy future where full retail games are delivered via Xbox Live, stored on hard drives, and swapped around with the 360's removable hard drive.
Microsoft has sold something along the lines of 10 million 360s. That thread has 400 comments (rounding to an easy number). That's a 0.004% failure rate (yes, I know that thread doesn't represent all customers with failed consoles). The industry standard failure rate is usually quoted as somewhere between 3-5%, which means anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 failed consoles out of 10 million is "acceptable". Only Microsoft knows what their true failure rate is, as extrapolating from internet bitching doesn't work.
The internet is a place for people to come and gripe. Nobody starts a poll thread saying, "My Xbox 360 is still working. Is yours?" The people with working consoles are playing games. The people with broken consoles are going on the internet to complain. Obviously it's going to look like a huge problem, because there's no opposing viewpoint in threads like what you posted. People aren't looking for explanations. They're looking to blow off steam.
While it sucks for the person in the article who has gone through 11 xboxes, statistics tells you that's going to happen to somebody. Sucks to be him, but if it wasn't him it would've been somebody else.
Just for the record, I'm currently waiting on my second repair to return. My launch window console finally threw a ring of death this past spring, and the replacement console's DVD-ROM drive died after only three weeks. But I'm not out on the internet bitching because it doesn't do any good.
Where were they during the 5 years of Vista's development? Microsoft was touting the integrated, universal search abilities pretty much since day 1 of Vista development. There's no excuse for Google not to know about this, since there were preview and beta builds of Vista available for nearly two years prior to release. If they had a problem with this feature, they should've brought it up then, not 5 months after Vista shipped.
I rip DVDs and watch them on Linux. Often, someone in the house will rent a DVD for everyone to watch, but I'm busy, so I rip it and watch it later, once the disc is back in the store. I acknowledge that all of this is illegal, and if caught, I may well go quietly. I am deliberately disobeying this law, however, to express that I do not agree with it -- and to do the things I should be able to do anyway.
Civil disobedience and the concept of fair use would protect you right up to the point where you mentioned ripping rental copies. If you don't have time to watch a movie within the rental period, too bad for you. Maybe you should consider using a rental plan with no time limit, like Netflix.
Just like Rosa Parks on the bus. You can argue magnitude if you like -- that I could just choose not to watch DVDs, or I could choose to use Windows and approved, DRM-enabled solutions. Right -- and Rosa Parks could've chosen to not ride that bus, or to give up her seat.
Rosa Parks was discriminated against by a government-run institution (mass transit) that provides an essential service (the ability to travel freely), all because of the color of her skin. You're equating that with ripping rental movies because you didn't have time to watch it within the agreed-upon rental period. Yeah, I can see how they're exactly the same thing...
So, I guess the final verdict is that yeah, it looks better, but don't expect something that will blow your mind from the beta.
There's actually quite a bit more subtle stuff going on. For example, H3 has HDR lighting. When you're on High Ground, pay attention to the transitions between light and dark areas. On Snowbound it's blindingly obvious (literally) -- when you spawn outdoors, you're essentially snow-blind for a second or two as your "eyes" adjust to the lighting. Other than the strong glare on spwan, the rest of the HDR implementation has been so natural that I didn't even realize it was there until I paid attention. I think that's how a lot of next-gen games are really going to be -- the lack of some effect will be more obvious than its presence. After playing the H3 beta, I have a hard time going back to Halo 2, both graphically and gameplay-wise (pickup/reload on the bumpers significantly changes the gameplay).
Also, keep in mind that you're only seeing three maps in the beta. There should be 6 or 7 in the finished game that you haven't seen yet, and they may totally rock (nobody knows, because they haven't seen them yet). Art in a Halo game has always been more about rolling hills and sweeping vistas (or alternatively, organic, alien corridors and claustrophobia), rather than awesome models and particle effects. As such, there's likely still a lot you haven't seen in the final game that may blow you away.
Just a quick follow-up on my previous post regarding UAs. If you set Opera to identify as IE or Firefox via the per-site preferences (details here), it renders Live Maps almost perfectly. Compare:
Opera 9.10 identifying as Firefox viewing the Microsoft campus in bird's eye mode (I specifically closed the scratchpad, as I was unable to remove items from it and really didn't want to post my own address on the interwebs even in picture form)
Playing around with Live Maps in Opera-as-Firefox, I noticed the following few issues:
Scroll-wheel zoom doesn't work. Scroll-wheel zoom does work in Opera on Google Maps, so this is not a problem native to Opera (such as not exposing events to hook scrolling).
There are obvious layout problems, but only with the floating controls. IMHO, those need to be cleaned up and re-arranged anyway, so I don't mind them being in the wrong places.
Some hover controls are missing. Hovering over an item in the scratchpad doesn't produce the popup that allows you to clear the entry, for example.
Missing close controls on some items. Specifcally, the "Welcome" box is missing its closed "X".
Aside from the scroll-wheel zoom, all other functionality works, and actually works quite well. More importantly, if 95% of the site works in Opera, I'd be willing to bet that 95% of the site works in Konqueror/Safari or any other modern browser. What's left is a matter of a few specific fixes for minor functionality, some layout adjustments that could serve as a catalyst for a better interface, and a move away from UA reliance.
Interesting, it didn't work for me with Firefox 2.0. But I looked at the useragent, and apparently FF 2.0 uses a useragent like BonEcho/2.0.0.1, instead of Firefox/2.0.0.1. When I changed it to Firefox (like it was in previous releases) it worked fine. With BonEcho it just showed a small, boring looking map. Same thing with Opera. I wonder why the Mozilla folks changed the useragent in 2.0.
I don't believe you're actually using Firefox 2.0. Or rather, you're using a very old alpha release (Bon Echo was the Firefox2 codename in development). Upgrade your browser:).
That said, this seems typical for Microsoft. They "get" that they need to support Firefox and other non-IE browsers, but they do so in the crappiest of ways -- using UA string detection. UA detection is obvious and "easy". It basically creates a "fail by default" model, where if you're not doing exactly what is expected then it just refuses to work. This is easier to build and test than a proper object detection mechanism which may have strange edge cases when the objects you need are supported in a browser but don't quite act the same way. It's possible to do, but it's a lot of work to get right and I bet that the Windows Live guys decided that just getting it working was more important than getting it right. If you use your BonEcho UA on other Live properties (Spaces, live.com, Expo, QnA, etc), they'll probably fail in a similar fashion.
I've fought that fight several times myself, and each time I end up losing because doing the right thing is hard and there's just no time to do it and all of the other high-priority work items. The only way to ever win that argument is to change priorities -- if working on all possible browsers was priority #1, there'd always be time to do it right even if another feature or two had to wait for a later release. If working on IE6/7 is pri1, working on Firefox (but not other Gecko-based browsers, like Seamonkey, Galleon, or K-meleon, even though if you did the right thing they'd just work) is pri2, and working on anything else is pri3, guess what'll happen? Yep, a quick regex against the UA for "Firefox", and if you don't find it then bail out.
ts not exactly the same thing, but MS's map thing (whatever they call all their MSN/"Live" stuff these days), does have what they call "birds eye" view. It only works in IE, and its not ground level, but it still works fairly well. You can easily see landmarks and stuff to help you find places.
You lost me at IE...
That's too bad, because the bird's eye view works just fine in Firefox (not in Opera, though, and I don't have a way to test against Safari/Konqueror at the moment). I just verified it, and you can, too. Here's Microsoft's headquarters, in bird's eye view. View the link in Firefox, and all is good.
Bird's eye view is just using different images for the tiles, and the only limitation is whether or not Microsoft (or whoever they buy their data from) has flown planes over the area to take pictures. As the grandparent said, it's not the same as being street level, but it's still quite detailed -- I can clearly see my truck parked outside of my house in bird's eye view. The same truck just looks like a white blob in aerial or hybrid view.
What an idiot. He could donate them to libraries, schools, prisons, whatever. He could also just recycle the paper. Burning them pollutes and adds to the CO2 loading. I hope someone from the EPA will be there to slap him with some nice fines for smoke and such and someone from the fire department to nail him if he doesn't have proper safeguards in place.
Way to RTFA! He did try donating them, I assume to local libraries, schools, thrift shops, etc. Nobody wanted them. And then when he tried to burn them, the fire department put out his bonfire after 50 minutes because he didn't have a permit.
As for the additional CO2 from burning 20,000 books (he didn't actually burn 20,000 at once, but probably just a few hundred -- the article claim he intends to have monthly bonfires until the books are all gone), I doubt it's really going to add all that much CO2 into the atmosphere. What CO2 it does add will be relatively localized, and disperse pretty quickly.
If you want to be concerned about a by-product of the burning, worry about releasing all of the chemicals in paper that are added to make it last longer. Burning a book is quite a bit dirtier than burning some cut firewood, even if they do release the same amount of CO2.
That's nine managers and six developers. No wonder the team "hustles for resources." They're probably going broke paying management wages to sixty percent of the staff. It says three more people aren't pictured -- we can bet that two of them are more managers.
You're obviously not familiar with Microsoft position nomenclature. Of the names listed, there are three real managers -- the GPM, the PUM, and the Engineering Manager. You're confusing "Program Manager" and "Product Manager" as actual managers. They aren't.
Program managers "manage the program", not people -- they write specs, interface with customers, etc.
Product managers "manage the product", and are purely marketing. Again, they don't necessarily manage people.
Program managers and product managers are roughly on par with developers and test developers. They don't make the same big bucks as GPMs or PUMS.
Second, the cars you're defending are usually first gen Dodge Neons painted in "ass kicking" primer color and they don't go over 55 mph unless it's down hill with a STRONG wind behind them.
Because you didn't read my post, you wouldn't have known that I wasn't defending the ricers/tunerz. I was only defending the legitimacy of using a wing on a FWD car in a high-speed application.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when does Sega make the PSP?
Nowhere to be found, eh? Microsoft's conference was last night. Nintendo's was this morning. Sony's is next. Slashdot will cover all three.
Yes, yes they are. That's why CoD4 will now be set in modern times (thus the "Modern Warfare" subtitle). Your reading comprehension rocks!
What does that have to do with anything? Do you seriously not understand economics?
Did you listen to CliffyB? He clearly said "XP and Vista". Please don't jerk your knee so hard next time.
Some older (usually poorly-written) games have problems running in a restricted mode, but setting app compat for that game to XP generally does the trick. Aside from that, the #1 biggest problem with Vista is the immaturity of the drivers. Once ATI and nVidia hit their stride, Vista gaming should be in a much better place.
Why should they cut their price? The Elite version is still cheaper than a PS3. They're kicking ass in terms of media downloads (Disney is a huge win) and XBLA. They're getting exclusive games for the 360 and getting other companies to break their exclusivity (Resident Evil, Devil May Cry). Live subscriptions are way up, even if total console sales didn't quite hit the mark. They've even earned a fair amount of good will with their ring of death mea culpa and extended warranty. By all counts, the 360 is doing quite well and doesn't really warrant a price cut. The savings might be enough to start showing a profit on hardware at the current price, which would be great press for Microsoft and fantastic news for shareholders (it might even get the stock price back above $30).
That said, it's rumored that the new 65nm process will be up and running soon (Fall), which will reduce the build price of the console. It's quite possible that there still may be a price cut looming for the holiday if they can get the 65nm boxes out in time. Then again, they may be better off pocketing the savings rather than cutting prices so long as the cheapest PS3 is more expensive than the most expensive 360.
Nobody's expecting Nintendo to cut the price of the Wii to $200. Why should Microsoft cut the price of the 360 just because Sony did so with the PS3?
Haven't you heard? The Halo movie was put on indefinite hold a while back. That said, it looks like they still have Neill Blomkamp in their corner, judging by the short they showed tonight. If you haven't already, you should check out some of his stuff, especially Alive in Joburg. He's a very talented director and cinematographer, and many people were excited to hear that he was going to helm the Halo movie. On top of that, IMDB currently lists Alex Garland (28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later) as the writer for the Halo movie, which shows promise. And finally, Bungie has a huge bible of Halo lore that they use for the games and books, which gives the Halo movie a fighting chance compared to Doom (which only had a story in order to justify why you were hunting for keys and killing demons). If they ever decide to go forward with the movie, I'll be cautiously excited.
But Blu-Ray is Sony! Eww! Obviously they'll release it as an HD download on Xbox Live instead. :)
Don't forget BetaMax and Blu-Ray. Sony has a long history of NIH syndrome. They also have a long history of losing to more open formats. In their defense, Blu-Ray is quite a bit more open than any of their previous attempts, but I still expect it to lose because of Sony's controlling nature.
Like this? I do agree, though. There's a distinct lack of fighting sticks for the 360 (the old Hori DOA4 stick was produced in limited quantities, so good luck finding one). Right now, the only real option is to buy or build a stick and hack an Xbox 360 controller into it. Hopefully we'll eventually get some better sticks for 360, especially if we keep getting fighting games on XBLA.
When someone says this, I can't help but ask, "What are you looking for?" Sure, there are a fair number of FPS and sports games on the 360, just like on nearly every platform (even the Wii). There are plenty of other games as well. A sibling poster mentioned Oblivion, which was excellent (while many people prefer it on the PC due to modability, it plays perfectly on the 360 without forcing me to upgrade my PC). If you're looking for role-playing games, you're not going to find Final Fantasy, but there are several upcoming games that you might really like, such as Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata (both JRPG-style games), Mass Effect, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Two Worlds and more either out now or coming soon. If you want racing, Forza 2 out-does Gran Turismo and DiRT is great as the latest in the Colin McRae series. There are RTS games (C&C3, BFME2, the upcoming Halo Wars, etc), action/adventure games (I'm currently enjoying Overlord), rhythm games (GH2 is arguably better on 360 rather than PS2), and more. And that's before you really get into the XBLA games, where you can find puzzlers, board games, and card games alongside classic arcade games and original platformers and shooters.
"Could be done" and "have been done" are two different things. Geometry Wars is coming to Wii (and DS), but I question whether or not it'll control as well without two analog sticks. I never thought that would happen, so maybe Catan, Carcassone, Boom Boom Rocket, Pac-Man CE, and others will eventually make their way over to the Wii with the new WiiWare program. I'm not holding my breath, and instead will enjoy the games available on XBLA right now.
As for emulating some of the games on XBLA, that's true. I'm not a big fan of many of the classic titles on XBLA, as I much prefer original titles or full-on remakes (the new Prince of Persia, or Pac-Man CE). I did enjoy Symphony of the Night on XBLA, as I never had a chance to play it on PS1. XBLA's strength going forward will be in original games or re-imagined classics, not the "old game with a splash of new sprites" we've seen so far. And with XNA picking up steam, the whole community will be able t
If you're looking for something to play games, you have to compare what's available for the system and what will be out in the short term (in the long term, you can wait for another price drop). That's the biggest problem with the PS3 right now -- there's no system seller game that makes any price worth it. If you're buying it as a Blu-Ray player, $500 is competitive to stand-alone Blu-Ray players and may be worthwhile. If you just want generic "HD movies" rather than following certain studios to one of the two formats, the Xbox 360 without HD-DVD is a better deal (online downloads of HD movies, streaming video and media center functionality at a lower price than PS3) or you'd wait until the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray issue sorts itself out.
A 3 year warranty for ring of death issues is pretty generous. Reliability would not be my biggest concern about buying a 360 right now. If I was in the market for a 360, I'd be wondering whether or not Microsoft will respond to Sony's price drop with a cut of their own. Sony might succeed in making some people wait on 360 purchases to see if there's a price drop coming, but I doubt they'll convert many of those people to PS3.
This feels more like Sony being pressured into a price drop due to poor sales more than anything else. If it was a "listening to the customer" deal, Sony would be shouting it loud all over the place. As it is, there's no mention of the price drop on the official PS3 blog, which would be the first place I'd expect this to show up if it was Sony "listening to customers".
Why should MS drop their price? They're still priced below the PS3 even with their top offering (the Elite at $480). People are still buying, there's no credible threat from PS3, and there's no way for MS to drop prices into Wii territory. Maybe this Sony price drop will cause enough of a stir to force MS to drop prices as well. Maybe not. At this point, it's pure economics -- if demand at the current price is too low, Microsoft will drop the price. If it's not, they won't. There's nothing "good" or "bad" about it.
I will admit that I briefly considered buying a PS3 with this new price drop, but I've ultimately decided against because $500 is still too much for the available games and I don't care about Blu-Ray yet (I'll wait for a clear winner to emerge). Another $100, bringing the 60GB down to $400, and I'd probably buy it. For now, I'll wait until there's a system seller that I have to have. From here on out, I can only save money by waiting.
Fair enough, though I don't think you need the LAN adapter or modem on a Wii since it already has a net connection. Whether or not that's exposed to the GC hardware, I don't know because I've never played a GC game with online content :).
I assume you mean "backward compatibility with the GameCube" when you say "retro compatibility". It's true that the Wii is 100% backwards compatible, even with peripherals. While the 360 is not dead yet in terms of backwards compatibility (Microsoft continues to make updates), we're nearing the point in the life of the 360 where backwards compatibility no longer matters. Once Halo 3 ships, you no longer need Halo 1 and 2 which honestly are the biggest reason for BC with the Xbox 1.
If you're going to mention the Virtual Console, you also have to mention Xbox Live Arcade. Both are very strong, but cater to somewhat different tastes. The VC is all about nostalgia, playing on the current 18-34 year olds' rememberance of old systems (SNES, Genesis, and N64 games). On the other hand, XBLA focuses both on retro arcade classics and brand new games. While Nintendo plans to have original offerings on the VC eventually, they just can't compete with games like Geometry Wars or Catan if you want something new. While I love the concept of revisiting my childhood on the Wii, I've only purchased three VC games while I've purchased over ten XBLA games. For my casual gaming dollars, the 360 is the place to be.
Only if you use the VGA cable. There's no upscaling on the standard component connection. Not sure about the Elite's HDMI connection.
Not so. The Xbox 360 acts as a standard UPnP streaming media consumer. Any software that can stream music or videos to a UPnP media client can feed the 360. In Windows, that would be WMP11 or Windows Media Connect. On Mac, Connect360 works just fine. On Linux, you can use GeeXbox uShare. The 360 still mostly prefers Microsoft-specific formats (though it should do h.264 now), but as long as you have media in a format it wants it's not difficult to serve it up.
I'm not sure I'd say "a ton", though the BD format does have some potential over what the 360 can provide. Technically, the 360 and the PS3 are pretty much on par, with the PS3 being just slightly more powerful and the 360 being easier/nicer to work with. The 360's biggest asset is Xbox Live, and I just don't see Sony catching up any time soon (they killed themselves last generation when they refused to define a real online strategy and just gave up the market to Xbox Live). I could see a crazy future where full retail games are delivered via Xbox Live, stored on hard drives, and swapped around with the 360's removable hard drive.
Yep.
Microsoft has sold something along the lines of 10 million 360s. That thread has 400 comments (rounding to an easy number). That's a 0.004% failure rate (yes, I know that thread doesn't represent all customers with failed consoles). The industry standard failure rate is usually quoted as somewhere between 3-5%, which means anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 failed consoles out of 10 million is "acceptable". Only Microsoft knows what their true failure rate is, as extrapolating from internet bitching doesn't work.
The internet is a place for people to come and gripe. Nobody starts a poll thread saying, "My Xbox 360 is still working. Is yours?" The people with working consoles are playing games. The people with broken consoles are going on the internet to complain. Obviously it's going to look like a huge problem, because there's no opposing viewpoint in threads like what you posted. People aren't looking for explanations. They're looking to blow off steam.
While it sucks for the person in the article who has gone through 11 xboxes, statistics tells you that's going to happen to somebody. Sucks to be him, but if it wasn't him it would've been somebody else.
Just for the record, I'm currently waiting on my second repair to return. My launch window console finally threw a ring of death this past spring, and the replacement console's DVD-ROM drive died after only three weeks. But I'm not out on the internet bitching because it doesn't do any good.
Where were they during the 5 years of Vista's development? Microsoft was touting the integrated, universal search abilities pretty much since day 1 of Vista development. There's no excuse for Google not to know about this, since there were preview and beta builds of Vista available for nearly two years prior to release. If they had a problem with this feature, they should've brought it up then, not 5 months after Vista shipped.
Civil disobedience and the concept of fair use would protect you right up to the point where you mentioned ripping rental copies. If you don't have time to watch a movie within the rental period, too bad for you. Maybe you should consider using a rental plan with no time limit, like Netflix.
Rosa Parks was discriminated against by a government-run institution (mass transit) that provides an essential service (the ability to travel freely), all because of the color of her skin. You're equating that with ripping rental movies because you didn't have time to watch it within the agreed-upon rental period. Yeah, I can see how they're exactly the same thing ...
There's actually quite a bit more subtle stuff going on. For example, H3 has HDR lighting. When you're on High Ground, pay attention to the transitions between light and dark areas. On Snowbound it's blindingly obvious (literally) -- when you spawn outdoors, you're essentially snow-blind for a second or two as your "eyes" adjust to the lighting. Other than the strong glare on spwan, the rest of the HDR implementation has been so natural that I didn't even realize it was there until I paid attention. I think that's how a lot of next-gen games are really going to be -- the lack of some effect will be more obvious than its presence. After playing the H3 beta, I have a hard time going back to Halo 2, both graphically and gameplay-wise (pickup/reload on the bumpers significantly changes the gameplay).
Also, keep in mind that you're only seeing three maps in the beta. There should be 6 or 7 in the finished game that you haven't seen yet, and they may totally rock (nobody knows, because they haven't seen them yet). Art in a Halo game has always been more about rolling hills and sweeping vistas (or alternatively, organic, alien corridors and claustrophobia), rather than awesome models and particle effects. As such, there's likely still a lot you haven't seen in the final game that may blow you away.
Just a quick follow-up on my previous post regarding UAs. If you set Opera to identify as IE or Firefox via the per-site preferences (details here), it renders Live Maps almost perfectly. Compare:
- Opera 9.10 identifying as itself
- Opera 9.10 identifying as Firefox viewing the Microsoft campus in bird's eye mode (I specifically closed the scratchpad, as I was unable to remove items from it and really didn't want to post my own address on the interwebs even in picture form)
Playing around with Live Maps in Opera-as-Firefox, I noticed the following few issues:- Scroll-wheel zoom doesn't work. Scroll-wheel zoom does work in Opera on Google Maps, so this is not a problem native to Opera (such as not exposing events to hook scrolling).
- There are obvious layout problems, but only with the floating controls. IMHO, those need to be cleaned up and re-arranged anyway, so I don't mind them being in the wrong places.
- Some hover controls are missing. Hovering over an item in the scratchpad doesn't produce the popup that allows you to clear the entry, for example.
- Missing close controls on some items. Specifcally, the "Welcome" box is missing its closed "X".
Aside from the scroll-wheel zoom, all other functionality works, and actually works quite well. More importantly, if 95% of the site works in Opera, I'd be willing to bet that 95% of the site works in Konqueror/Safari or any other modern browser. What's left is a matter of a few specific fixes for minor functionality, some layout adjustments that could serve as a catalyst for a better interface, and a move away from UA reliance.I don't believe you're actually using Firefox 2.0. Or rather, you're using a very old alpha release (Bon Echo was the Firefox2 codename in development). Upgrade your browser :).
That said, this seems typical for Microsoft. They "get" that they need to support Firefox and other non-IE browsers, but they do so in the crappiest of ways -- using UA string detection. UA detection is obvious and "easy". It basically creates a "fail by default" model, where if you're not doing exactly what is expected then it just refuses to work. This is easier to build and test than a proper object detection mechanism which may have strange edge cases when the objects you need are supported in a browser but don't quite act the same way. It's possible to do, but it's a lot of work to get right and I bet that the Windows Live guys decided that just getting it working was more important than getting it right. If you use your BonEcho UA on other Live properties (Spaces, live.com, Expo, QnA, etc), they'll probably fail in a similar fashion.
I've fought that fight several times myself, and each time I end up losing because doing the right thing is hard and there's just no time to do it and all of the other high-priority work items. The only way to ever win that argument is to change priorities -- if working on all possible browsers was priority #1, there'd always be time to do it right even if another feature or two had to wait for a later release. If working on IE6/7 is pri1, working on Firefox (but not other Gecko-based browsers, like Seamonkey, Galleon, or K-meleon, even though if you did the right thing they'd just work) is pri2, and working on anything else is pri3, guess what'll happen? Yep, a quick regex against the UA for "Firefox", and if you don't find it then bail out.
That's too bad, because the bird's eye view works just fine in Firefox (not in Opera, though, and I don't have a way to test against Safari/Konqueror at the moment). I just verified it, and you can, too. Here's Microsoft's headquarters, in bird's eye view. View the link in Firefox, and all is good.
Bird's eye view is just using different images for the tiles, and the only limitation is whether or not Microsoft (or whoever they buy their data from) has flown planes over the area to take pictures. As the grandparent said, it's not the same as being street level, but it's still quite detailed -- I can clearly see my truck parked outside of my house in bird's eye view. The same truck just looks like a white blob in aerial or hybrid view.
Way to RTFA! He did try donating them, I assume to local libraries, schools, thrift shops, etc. Nobody wanted them. And then when he tried to burn them, the fire department put out his bonfire after 50 minutes because he didn't have a permit.
As for the additional CO2 from burning 20,000 books (he didn't actually burn 20,000 at once, but probably just a few hundred -- the article claim he intends to have monthly bonfires until the books are all gone), I doubt it's really going to add all that much CO2 into the atmosphere. What CO2 it does add will be relatively localized, and disperse pretty quickly.
If you want to be concerned about a by-product of the burning, worry about releasing all of the chemicals in paper that are added to make it last longer. Burning a book is quite a bit dirtier than burning some cut firewood, even if they do release the same amount of CO2.
You're obviously not familiar with Microsoft position nomenclature. Of the names listed, there are three real managers -- the GPM, the PUM, and the Engineering Manager. You're confusing "Program Manager" and "Product Manager" as actual managers. They aren't.
Program managers "manage the program", not people -- they write specs, interface with customers, etc.
Product managers "manage the product", and are purely marketing. Again, they don't necessarily manage people.
Program managers and product managers are roughly on par with developers and test developers. They don't make the same big bucks as GPMs or PUMS.
Because you didn't read my post, you wouldn't have known that I wasn't defending the ricers/tunerz. I was only defending the legitimacy of using a wing on a FWD car in a high-speed application.