Unfortunately for me, they are ruining one of my favorite genres. RPG - I am big fan of Baldurs Gate (1&2), Planescape Torment, NWN etc...
If "they" refers to "the gamers who voted with their wallets and didn't buy those games", then you'd be right. If "they" is supposed to be Bioware, keep in mind that they are a company that needs to make money to survive. If nobody's buying a certain type of game, they have no incentive to build another game of that type.
RPG: Ruined (for me) by FP/TP view.
Did you try KOTOR or Jade Empire? That's pretty much what Mass Effect should be like. If those gave you motion sickness, then it sucks to be you.
Adventure: Basically dead.
They're not quite deadyet. The new Sam & Max games seem to be doing quite well. I was disappointed that the Bone games didn't do better, but SM makes up for it.
I'll bet it has. Make sure all that surveillance and control architecture is in place before people get to use it, right?
You do realize it was the government, in the form of military and publicly-funded universities, that created the "first" internet, right? I'm as cynical as the next guy, but if they didn't build surveillance and control architectures into the "first" internet, I'm not sure they'd get away with doing it in the "next" internet either.
You never know. The guys raising money for this will beat the pr0nography and DRM drum enough that some politicians will be impressed and throw some of (your) money at it.
Without pr0n, the "new" internet will go nowhere. Pr0n drives innovation!
I don't buy that for one second. There is no way homebrew will provide any amount of competition to professional publishing houses, with their multi-million-dollar budgets and professional artists, composers, and so forth. Hell, just look at the Linux/Windows open-source game market... oh, right, there isn't one (aside from the odd exception, like Tux Racer or Frozen Bubble).
Who said anything about open source? Homebrew doesn't have to be open source at all, and there are a number of extremely talented people working on different projects. Check out GBADev.org, for example. They released a cart full of quality homebrew titles a little while ago. Or look at what's going on with XNA development. This video is from an in-development homebrew game, built with XNA and running on an Xbox 360. Judging from the gameplay shown, I'd pay money for that.
This looks interesting at first but the arbitrary limitations placed on the PS3 seems to be a show stopper.
I mean why pay $600 for a "performance" machine that isn't even given the chance to live up to its specs?
Those "arbitrary" limitations aren't so arbitrary. Sony intentionally limited PS3 Linux in order to prevent competition from homebrew games. Sony's taking a big dollar loss per console sold, and their bread-and-butter to make that up is game licensing fees. If PS3 Linux had access to the full power of the PS3, the homebrew scene instantly becomes a major threat to Sony's cash flow.
Interestingly, Microsoft's XNA is going the complete opposite direction. They do have some arbitrary restrictions (access to Xbox Live, difficulties in sharing your games), but those are in place for technical reasons rather than business -- XNA is still very young, and Microsoft wanted to get it out there so people could play with it even though they hadn't had a chance to sort out security issues with some features. XNA game packaging and Xbox Live access are coming.
Bob was a flop, and one I commonly mock. However I promise you, that the concept will be revisited and better marketed the second time around. Honestly, I imagine that Second Life will become, or inspire the next generation of Bob, allowing us all to make virtual spaces, which in turn will link to applications and activities within this virtual world.
The concept of Bob was definitely a flop, but the technology behind it was well ahead of its time (well, for PCs, anyway). The UI was rendered completely using resolution-independent vectors which, while NeXT was doing this for years before Bob, is really something that has only become truly practical in the latest generation of operating systems (OS X and Vista) that can offload the cost to advanced GPUs.
Also, as much as people hate Clippy (and I'm happy the Office Assistant is finally, truly dead with Office 12), Microsoft got a lot of mileage out of that portion of Bob. It also introduced the concept of different users to a market sector that was still all about single-user computing (yes, the Bob profiles were superficial and ran on top of the single-user Win3.x, but at the time I would suspect the average home user had never heard of or used NT or a multi-user *nix). Given the configurability of spaces in Bob, I suspect today's Myspace crowd would've loved it:).
If you've never tried Bob, it runs quite well in Virtual PC (I'm sure you can easily find a copy of Bob and Win3.x or Win95 out there on the interwebs...). Apparently it's also still fully functional on XP. You should try it, if only to see first-hand why it sucked so much.
Dude, I think he understands what WarioWare: Smooth Moves is. The fact is, no, it wasn't really all that great of a game. It was lots of fun for a couple of hours, but soon all my friends and I go back to smash bros or watching each other play Zelda (which is fun in of itself). The GameCube version was much more condusive to party play, and let's face it... we don't buy WarioWare for the single-player mode.
The "Gamecube version" was a poor port of the GBA version. Aside from that version, Warioware has never been about party play. I buy Warioware for quick bursts of fun (which is much more useful on a portable system).
And I'd say that I pretty much enjoyed every hour of FF12 more than every hour of WarioWare, so I'm not thinking that WW was exactly the best value for its money. Don't get me wrong, its a great concept, and includes a couple hours of real fun, but after that... "meh".
Depends on the player, of course. I tired of Zelda after less than a week, and I never bought FFXII because I've been bored of FF games since VII. So for my dollars, it's:
Warioware: $50, 12-15+ hours
FFXII: $60, 3-4 hours and bored
Ahhhh, but there's a pretty simple answer to that question: the inevitable post-launch draught. Epic games take A LONG TIME to make, so of course the first things to hit the shelves are the easy to produce, quick to throw away, minigame collections and arcade titles.
And not all gamers care for epic games. In fact, I'd suggest that the more casual target audience of the Wii will be turned off by such games. Personally, I fall somewhere between hardcore and casual, but I've found myself spending more time on XBLA and Virtual Console games than anything else. A lot of those are "pick-up and play for 5 minutes" type of games, which suits me right now.
Next week, we get Super Paper Mario... the second "epic-sized" game to hit the Wii. It should all be uphill from here.
I'll probably buy it. And then, just like with Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, I'll get bored of it in a week or two and it'll go up on the shelf to collect dust. In the meantime, I'll still be busting out some WarioWare or Wii Sports when I have a spare 15-30 minutes.
Minigames are great as a free pack in game to show off what the system can do, but shes not going to pay for a minigame collection.
Have either of you ever played the GBA or DS Warioware games? Yes, it's a collection of 5-second minigames, but the whole is quite a bit more than the sum of its parts. While in general I would agree about not paying for a bunch of mini games (why I won't buy any Mario Party title, Fuzion Frenzy, etc), Warioware is a special case. Especially since it's also a great demo of what can be done with the Wiimote, from "normal" uses like "remote control" to really whacky uses like "the elephant". You can take a look through the manual, but it's really worth playing the game. If nothing else, consider renting it.
She was a big ssx fan on last gen systems and had high hopes for the wii version of that, but it only got mediocre reviews. Her dad is a golfer and liked toying around with wii sports golf, so I kept my eye on wii tiger woods but that didn't get reviewed all that well either.
If I may make a suggestion, you really ought to at least rent some of the Wii games you're interested in. I get the feeling that reviewers haven't quite grasped how to review Wii games yet (for example, Warioware has an average 82% rating over at GameRankings, but to me it's a much better game than 82% represents). Reviewers might start to "get it" in the coming months, but in the meantime you're really going to have to play the games yourself to make an informed opinion.
she can't find a 2nd game worth buying, and frankly I can't either.
Try Rayman, Warioware, Trauma Center, or Cooking Mama. You have to go a little off-beat with the Wii, and the best use of the Wiimote right now is with short minigame-style gameplay.
If you don't find Warioware Smooth Moves enjoyable, then you're both crazy! It's the game that really shows off what can be done with the Wiimote.
Clearly people want it, and clearly people have been finding the technology to be adding to the gaming experience on the wii.
Comparing what Microsoft might do to the Wii is a little disingenuous. I suspect any motion-sensing controller for the 360 will look much more like Sony's SIXAXIS (or Microsoft's own old Sidewinder Freestyle Pro) than Nintendo's WiiMote. Add to that the fact that this is inherently an add-on and add-ons generally don't do well (the only mid-life controller-functionality change I can think of that actually caught on was the PSX Dual Shock), and it really doesn't make much sense for Microsoft to do a motion-sensing controller right now.
It makes more sense for Microsoft to bide their time and spend the next couple years researching the technology rather than try to rush out a "Me too!" motion-sensing controller. The 360 is complementary to the Wii, and has the PS3 beat on controller functionality (rumble beats controller-form-factor motion sensing any day -- I'd much rather have rumble feedback for a racing game than the ability to turn the controller like a steering wheel, for example). The next Xbox is probably only 3 years away (2010), which gives Microsoft plenty of time to find the right combination of technologies for a truly next-generation control scheme (how about an EyeToy/Xbox Live vision camera input system that actually works?).
Please try running Vista on a computer with 512MB of RAM. I have. Have you?
Why bother? RAM is cheap. Right now, I'm running Vista on a laptop I upgraded from 1GB to 2GB, a media center that I left at 1GB (because all it does is download the ocassional torrent and plays videos and music), and a workstation that came with 2GB. I haven't used any computer with less than 1GB in the past ~3 years, whether running XP, 2003, or Linux. Why would I ever consider using less than 512MB for Vista?
Okay, I need to work on reading comprehension:). I read that as using "50% of CPU" not system RAM. As others have pointed out, Vista works much more like Linux than XP with respect to RAM -- it will use as much as it can for buffers and caches, and relinquish it as necessary. Unused RAM is a waste, so why shouldn't Vista use it while it can?
I evaluated Vista on a mild machine - Dual Core Pentium D, Intel 950 graphics, 1 GB memory. Surprisingly, 50% of my system memory was being used by Windows and Aero. That was pretty much all I needed to know that I was sticking with XP for a little while longer.
See what I highlighted in bold. Intel's integrated graphics chips generally suck. While the 950 can run Aero, it really shouldn't. As you found out first-hand, the 950 offloads shader processing to the CPU, thus completely defeating the point of an independent GPU. Try turning off Aero and see how it behaves. I suspect you'll have a much better experience.
The other day I came to a T intersection. As I drove up, I had a green light. It had been green for a while, and it was still very much green as I started to go through and turn left. A big old hummer that very much had a big old red light that had been red for as long as my light had been green apparently decided that he didn't need to stop for red lights and blasted right through the intersections. He missed chopping my car if half by about 2 feet.
And that's why drivers should be taught to drive defensively (note: "defensive driving" doesn't necessarily mean "slow". It means being aware of your surroundings and always thinking several steps ahead to counter whatever drivers around you might possibly do). Why did that Hummer miss you when it ran the red light? Either you were already through the intersection, in which case it's a non-event, or you were able to accelerate out of danger. If you weren't through the intersection and couldn't accelerate to avoid the accident, you're just as much at fault for blocking the intersection and putting yourself in that situation to begin with. Yes, the Hummer shouldn't have run the light. At the same time, you shouldn't have been in a position to be hit by him in the first place.
The point is that jack asses will be on the road. In all likelihood, if you drive in high traffic areas you will be in an accident in your life time, and there is a fair chance that you won't be at fault. Jack ass hummers that blast through red lights or uninsured women who rear end you when you are at a dead stop at a stop light (had that one happen to me) are going to make safety a question not of your driving ability, but of the safety features of your car.
Had that Hummer hit you, I doubt you'd be much better off in an SUV than in a passenger car. Also, how is an SUV going to make you safer from a 5mph collision from the dumb lady in front of you backing up? I will agree that there are jackasses on the road, and I will also agree that safety features of your vehicle are important. I will disagree that you can't do anything about the jackasses (when you're driving, drive. Don't do Sudoku, put on makeup, eat, etc), and I will vehemently disagree if you're suggesting that SUVs are safer than passenger cars.
Short of banning all non-compact cars at once off the road and causing a revolt in the US, any eco-friendly car needs to be roughly as safe as any other car on American roads.
Absolutely, but that falls under the category of "practical". My only disagreement was with the incorrect assumption that SUVs are safer than the average compact or mid-size sedan.
Seems like the popular POV is to let the OTHER car do the crumpling AND better for it to be YOUR (not mine!) internal organs, hence the SUV and Hummers;).
Assuming you don't decapitate me in the process, I would suspect I'll be better off in my Boxster than you would in your Hummer if we were to collide. Why? My Boxster was designed to crumple while maintaining the integrity of the cockpit. Your Hummer was designed to be as rigid as possible. My car will be written off, but I won't suffer anything more than some burns from the airbag. You'll have whiplash, back problems, and who knows what else.
Anyway, IMO, in event of a car accident it is usually better to have the impact energy transferred to your vital organs than having bits of metal "transferred" into your vital organs. Most people can survive fairly high instantaneous Gs, but they don't tend to live very long after getting squished or impaled in vital areas.
No car would make it through safety testing if the passenger area was compromised during a "normal" crash (where "not normal" would be something like "wrapping your car around a tree at 150mph"). On the other hand, a truck or truck-based SUV does not have the same crash rating requirements, and in all likelihood would crush your legs in the event of a higher-speed (say, 35mph) head-on collision. Browse the web and take a look at the passenger compartments of wrecked autos. You'll find that for most cars, the cockpit is rarely compromised and if it wasn't for having to tear the car apart to extract the occupants the interior wouldn't look so bad at all. Then look at the truck cockpits, where the cockpit has essentially shrunk by half or more. There's a great picture floating around showing the front-end crash testing of a Mini vs. an older (early-2000s?) F150. It's a side-view, where you can clearly see how the Mini protects the driver and the F150 doesn't.
So yes, in the case of flying shrapnel you're correct. In any other scenario, and especially the scenarios you're most likely to encounter, I'd rather have the car absorb the impact energy rather than my kidneys or spleen.
Lets face it, the reason why a lot of people are driving big SUV's and suffering with 20 MPG highway 15 MPG city is because of the marvelous 5 STAR safety rating these vehicles provide.
Most SUVs, especially truck-based SUVs, are much less safe than normal passenger cars. A low center of gravity plus properly designed crumple zones to absorb energy will always fare better than a tall rigid design like an F150. Even better, smaller cars are more maneuverable, providing "active" safety (the ability to avoid an accident entirely) rather than "passive" safety (the ability to walk away from an accident). The only thing making SUVs "safer" than average passenger cars is that everybody bought into the BS that SUVs are "safer". It's become an arms race, and if you don't have a jacked up monster then you risk decapitation if a SUV hits you from the side.
The roads are (in America) getting more crowded by the day, the law of tonnage rules and small guys get eaten alive in wrecks.
Crowding has nothing to do with it. In fact, in a crowded situation a smaller care may be even safer because it gives you the ability to squeeze into smaller areas for avoidance that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.
Is it really worth it to be driving around in a vehicle that gets 30, 40 or even a 100 MPG HWY if it gets compacted like a soda can if merely bumped?
That's exactly the point. Cars crumple to absorb energy that would otherwise transfer into your internal organs. Your best bet is to learn how to drive and avoid such situations in the first place. If you can't handle that, you really shouldn't have a license in the first place.
Piracy is only realy a wide-spread problem after games are succesful enough to be widely pirated - otherwise it's too hard for the average user to find a pirated copy. By this point, the game has made enough revenue to be profitable.
Unless you're id, Epic, or other big-name developers and publishers, in which case your reputation in the market is enough for people to pirate your game on day one (or day zero, even), robbing you of that profitable "build-up to success".
IMHO, the solution is not to keep fighting fire with fire. Instead, it's to get into a different game. MMOs are one example. Another example would be similar to what Stardock does. When you buy Galactic Civilizations 2, there is no DRM at all. Instead, you get a serial number that entitles you to game updates. This wouldn't work at all for a typical EA game ("punt it out the door and start working on next year's version"), but it works great for smaller developers with a loyal fanbase. The game of GalCiv2 as it stands today is quite a bit different from how it shipped about a year ago, but if you pirate the game you would not have access to any of those game updates. Also, I'm not talking about intentionally leaving in bugs or any of that crap. You ship as good of a game as you can, and then you support it through its lifetime with feature enhancements (GalCiv2 AI or ship builder enhancements, for example).
Apparently the Japanese creator of Sudoku has claimed that computer-generated puzzles lack the charm and personality of human-created ones. Whether this is true or not, I don't know.
So do both. Provide a couple hundred hand-created puzzles alongside a generator so that you get both the "charm and personality" of hand-create puzzles and the longevity of machine-generated puzzles with the excellent handwriting recognition and presentation of the Brain Age interface. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
What's wrong with the one in Brain Age? I think it's pretty good....
The Brain Age implementation has limited puzzles. It's quite possible to generate an almost infinite number of Sudoku puzzles on the fly, and several games have done that. However, none of those games have had the excellent input and display of the Brain Age implementation. My perfect Sudoku game would be the Brain Age presentation backed by a game generator so I don't have to keep playing the same puzzles over and over.
That, and they seem to have obtained the rights for the Sonic games, being the only console where Sonic games are available (Sega hasn't offered a new console system since the Dreamcast, I want to say 1998 or so). Apparently Nintendo licensed either the characters or the games themselves...
Maybe the older games, but newer Sonic games have shown up on the PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 (most recently with "Sonic the Hedgehog", the 3D game with the same name as the original 2D game). As of right now, 2D Sonic games have only shown up on Nintendo platforms (Virtual Console, GBA).
As for the latest consoles, Nintendo is *THE* only console I know of offering an input system that uses free motion and inertia as input (not to mention being exclusively wireless by default).
Huh? The PS3 has the SIXAXIS controller that uses motion sensing, and Microsoft tried the same thing on PCs way back in 97 or 98 (look up the Sidewinder Freestyle). The 360 and PS3 aren't exclusively wireless, but their wireless is built-in just like the Wii's, and as long as you don't buy the Core 360 pack they're all wireless out-of-the-box. While wireless is great, I like the fact that you can use wired peripherals on a 360 because it broadens the available third-party options. The only thrid-party controller I've heard of possibly coming to the Wii is a DDR dance pad. I don't know if that'll be wireless or if it'll use one of the Wii's USB ports.
Having played with the Wii for the first time last night, I have to admit I was very much hooked; even already knowing the basic concept, you have to play with it to truly understand the significance of the wireless, gyroscopic, free-space control system.
I've owned a Wii since the console launch (well, okay, I didn't get mine until the Monday after the Friday launch). I "get it". At the same time, I find myself spending much more time with my 360 than my Wii. The 360, at least for me, has done a very good job of stringing hits together -- I was hooked on PGR3 until Oblivion shipped. I was hooked on Oblivion until Dead Rising shipped. I was hooked on Dead Rising until Gears of War shipped. I was hooked on Gears of War until Crackdown shipped. And I was hooked on Crackdown until Castlevania: Symphony of the Night shipped. Of course, I've been addicted to Geometry Wars since day one and continue to be addicted now:). The Wii, on the other hand, hooked me for about a week with Zelda before I got bored. I still go back to Wii Sports every now and then, but Warioware has been the only Wii game to keep my attention for more than a week.
I guess my point is that right now the Wii is still sitting in gimic land. It has a metric pantload of potential, and not just with the Wiimote (I personally think the Virtual Console is more important than the Wiimote). Nintendo doesn't have to "win" to be successful, but they do need to step up a bit. Where's Metroid Prime 3? Where's Mario Galaxy? Why can't they supply enough Wiis to satisfy more of the demand?
A lot of people prefer to play FPS on PC because mouse/keyboard provides much better response and control than an analog stick and a trigger. All Nintendo needs to do is get one good FPS with great precision control using the Wii-mote and the nunchuck
I'm not sure that's really going to be happen. The Wiimote is only mouse-like as long as it's pointing at the screen. Point it away (say, to turn) and it stops acting like a mouse (it lost its IR signature). I'm not saying that it's impossible to design a good Wiimote control scheme for FPS games. I'm just saying that they don't have that sorted out right now and the task is not as simple as, "Let's treat the Wiimote like a mouse!".
The extra $80 also gives you an Xbox Live headset, something the standard bundle doesn't.
I assume you're referring to the $399 "premium" 360, given the $80 price difference you quote. The only problem is that it does include the Xbox Live headset. At least, it does so in the US. I assumed the package was the same across the world (ignoring special bundles like the Blue Dragon bundle in Japan), as far as accessories were concerned. Do Australian premium 360s really not come packed with an Xbox Live headset?
Myself, I'm more miffed at the stupidly high price of the 120gb Hard Drive. They're using laptop HDDs, thus the higher price, but even standard 120gb drives in that form factor are about half as much as they're asking for the add-on. As a reasonably early adopter of the 360, I don't really like feeling that I've been disadvantaged for jumping on early, and the price of extras gives me that feeling.
Ignoring the price, I'd definitely upgrade to the 120GB drive on my current 360 just so long as they give you a way to easily transfer the contents of your old drive to the new one (no, copying files over by memory card doesn't count, especially since many games lock their saves to the storage device such that you can't copy them). I'd even shell out an extra $20 for a dock that I could plug two drives into and copy the contents from one to the other. Then again, at the rumored price for the 120GB drive it really should come with such a tool pre-packaged.
I think they would care: someone who only owns a Wii is going to buy a lot more Wii games than someone who owns a Wii and a 360.
Not necessarily true. First, keep in mind that the core gamer demographic is now in their mid- to late-20s and early-30s. That means disposable income. Second, the Wii's bread-and-butter games aren't going to be the same titles you find on Xbox 360 or PS3. I suspect you'll be seeing more titles like Wii Sports, WarioWare Smooth Moves, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Cooking Mama, Trauma Center, etc. "Gimic" games like these will be huge (just wait for DDR on the Wii where you have to dance on a pad and swing the wiimote at the same time!), and you won't be able to get them anywhere else but the Wii (forget the SIXAXIS, it's just not the same). By that same token, gamers will generally buy shooters or sports titles on the 360 or PS3 rather than the Wii because beautiful graphics and "traditional" gameplay just work better there. Finally, going back to the first point, Nintendo's sitting on a gold mine with their Virtual Console. They've got their entire back library of NES, SNES, and N64 games to capture the nostalgic 20-something gamers. 360's XBLA will give them a run for their money, but for every Symphony of the Night on XBLA (which rocks, BTW -- SOTN should be a 360 system seller) you'll be able to get a Mario Kart 64, Super Mario Bros., and Link to the Past on the VC.
How strange will it be if the "battle" for next-gen supremacy comes down to low-fi games on XBLA (and XNA), VC, and whatever Sony offers? People bought Wiis for Zelda: TTP, they'll buy 360s for Halo 3 and PS3s for MGS4, but the real win will be from cheap, accessible games you can buy (or build!) in the comfort of your living room.
One of the major reasons I signed up wth Sonic three years ago was that having Sonic means never having to put up with PacBell's/SBC's/ATT's horseshit. Sonic runs interference for you all the way. They have the technical competence to shout the telco idiots down -- the ones who think they can wear you out with finger-pointing, telling you to reinstall your OS and similar crap. When there's a problem, Sonic can diagnose where it lies and will fix it themselves on their end (on the rare occasion that it's their own problem) or call the telco and tell the telco techs what they need to fix it on the telco's end.
I've heard all the bad stories about CLECs and ILECs, but my experiences with Covad and Verizon were always positive. They were always ahead of schedule on loop installs, and they never tried to shift the blame to someone else when it was their problem (although I never had a problem with any loop -- it was always Speakeasy trying to tell me that it was a loop problem when in actuality it was either a problem on their end or with my modem). Had my new house been in DSL range, I probably would've switched over to Covad's DSL offerings and ditched Speakeasy anyway. As it worked out, I've been with cable far longer than I was ever on DSL and it's been much better aside from the one minor hiccup I already mentioned at the start of my contract (the previous owners of my house used satellite and dialup, so the water damage problem likely had been there for quite a while before I moved in).
Sadly, all of this took place in Speakeasy's home city, the Seattle area. I realize my single data point is one bad mark in a sea of good marks for Speakeasy, but if they can screw up so royally in the city where they got their start then I shudder to think what their service is like elsewhere in the country.
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If "they" refers to "the gamers who voted with their wallets and didn't buy those games", then you'd be right. If "they" is supposed to be Bioware, keep in mind that they are a company that needs to make money to survive. If nobody's buying a certain type of game, they have no incentive to build another game of that type.
Did you try KOTOR or Jade Empire? That's pretty much what Mass Effect should be like. If those gave you motion sickness, then it sucks to be you.
They're not quite dead yet. The new Sam & Max games seem to be doing quite well. I was disappointed that the Bone games didn't do better, but SM makes up for it.
You do realize it was the government, in the form of military and publicly-funded universities, that created the "first" internet, right? I'm as cynical as the next guy, but if they didn't build surveillance and control architectures into the "first" internet, I'm not sure they'd get away with doing it in the "next" internet either.
Without pr0n, the "new" internet will go nowhere. Pr0n drives innovation!
I'd hope you could play Maniac Mansion with SummVM, considering "SCUMM" means "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion".
Who said anything about open source? Homebrew doesn't have to be open source at all, and there are a number of extremely talented people working on different projects. Check out GBADev.org, for example. They released a cart full of quality homebrew titles a little while ago. Or look at what's going on with XNA development. This video is from an in-development homebrew game, built with XNA and running on an Xbox 360. Judging from the gameplay shown, I'd pay money for that.
Those "arbitrary" limitations aren't so arbitrary. Sony intentionally limited PS3 Linux in order to prevent competition from homebrew games. Sony's taking a big dollar loss per console sold, and their bread-and-butter to make that up is game licensing fees. If PS3 Linux had access to the full power of the PS3, the homebrew scene instantly becomes a major threat to Sony's cash flow.
Interestingly, Microsoft's XNA is going the complete opposite direction. They do have some arbitrary restrictions (access to Xbox Live, difficulties in sharing your games), but those are in place for technical reasons rather than business -- XNA is still very young, and Microsoft wanted to get it out there so people could play with it even though they hadn't had a chance to sort out security issues with some features. XNA game packaging and Xbox Live access are coming.
The concept of Bob was definitely a flop, but the technology behind it was well ahead of its time (well, for PCs, anyway). The UI was rendered completely using resolution-independent vectors which, while NeXT was doing this for years before Bob, is really something that has only become truly practical in the latest generation of operating systems (OS X and Vista) that can offload the cost to advanced GPUs.
Also, as much as people hate Clippy (and I'm happy the Office Assistant is finally, truly dead with Office 12), Microsoft got a lot of mileage out of that portion of Bob. It also introduced the concept of different users to a market sector that was still all about single-user computing (yes, the Bob profiles were superficial and ran on top of the single-user Win3.x, but at the time I would suspect the average home user had never heard of or used NT or a multi-user *nix). Given the configurability of spaces in Bob, I suspect today's Myspace crowd would've loved it :).
If you've never tried Bob, it runs quite well in Virtual PC (I'm sure you can easily find a copy of Bob and Win3.x or Win95 out there on the interwebs ...). Apparently it's also still fully functional on XP. You should try it, if only to see first-hand why it sucked so much.
The "Gamecube version" was a poor port of the GBA version. Aside from that version, Warioware has never been about party play. I buy Warioware for quick bursts of fun (which is much more useful on a portable system).
Depends on the player, of course. I tired of Zelda after less than a week, and I never bought FFXII because I've been bored of FF games since VII. So for my dollars, it's:
And not all gamers care for epic games. In fact, I'd suggest that the more casual target audience of the Wii will be turned off by such games. Personally, I fall somewhere between hardcore and casual, but I've found myself spending more time on XBLA and Virtual Console games than anything else. A lot of those are "pick-up and play for 5 minutes" type of games, which suits me right now.
I'll probably buy it. And then, just like with Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, I'll get bored of it in a week or two and it'll go up on the shelf to collect dust. In the meantime, I'll still be busting out some WarioWare or Wii Sports when I have a spare 15-30 minutes.
Have either of you ever played the GBA or DS Warioware games? Yes, it's a collection of 5-second minigames, but the whole is quite a bit more than the sum of its parts. While in general I would agree about not paying for a bunch of mini games (why I won't buy any Mario Party title, Fuzion Frenzy, etc), Warioware is a special case. Especially since it's also a great demo of what can be done with the Wiimote, from "normal" uses like "remote control" to really whacky uses like "the elephant". You can take a look through the manual, but it's really worth playing the game. If nothing else, consider renting it.
If I may make a suggestion, you really ought to at least rent some of the Wii games you're interested in. I get the feeling that reviewers haven't quite grasped how to review Wii games yet (for example, Warioware has an average 82% rating over at GameRankings, but to me it's a much better game than 82% represents). Reviewers might start to "get it" in the coming months, but in the meantime you're really going to have to play the games yourself to make an informed opinion.
Try Rayman, Warioware, Trauma Center, or Cooking Mama. You have to go a little off-beat with the Wii, and the best use of the Wiimote right now is with short minigame-style gameplay.
If you don't find Warioware Smooth Moves enjoyable, then you're both crazy! It's the game that really shows off what can be done with the Wiimote.
Comparing what Microsoft might do to the Wii is a little disingenuous. I suspect any motion-sensing controller for the 360 will look much more like Sony's SIXAXIS (or Microsoft's own old Sidewinder Freestyle Pro) than Nintendo's WiiMote. Add to that the fact that this is inherently an add-on and add-ons generally don't do well (the only mid-life controller-functionality change I can think of that actually caught on was the PSX Dual Shock), and it really doesn't make much sense for Microsoft to do a motion-sensing controller right now.
It makes more sense for Microsoft to bide their time and spend the next couple years researching the technology rather than try to rush out a "Me too!" motion-sensing controller. The 360 is complementary to the Wii, and has the PS3 beat on controller functionality (rumble beats controller-form-factor motion sensing any day -- I'd much rather have rumble feedback for a racing game than the ability to turn the controller like a steering wheel, for example). The next Xbox is probably only 3 years away (2010), which gives Microsoft plenty of time to find the right combination of technologies for a truly next-generation control scheme (how about an EyeToy/Xbox Live vision camera input system that actually works?).
Why bother? RAM is cheap. Right now, I'm running Vista on a laptop I upgraded from 1GB to 2GB, a media center that I left at 1GB (because all it does is download the ocassional torrent and plays videos and music), and a workstation that came with 2GB. I haven't used any computer with less than 1GB in the past ~3 years, whether running XP, 2003, or Linux. Why would I ever consider using less than 512MB for Vista?
Okay, I need to work on reading comprehension :). I read that as using "50% of CPU" not system RAM. As others have pointed out, Vista works much more like Linux than XP with respect to RAM -- it will use as much as it can for buffers and caches, and relinquish it as necessary. Unused RAM is a waste, so why shouldn't Vista use it while it can?
See what I highlighted in bold. Intel's integrated graphics chips generally suck. While the 950 can run Aero, it really shouldn't. As you found out first-hand, the 950 offloads shader processing to the CPU, thus completely defeating the point of an independent GPU. Try turning off Aero and see how it behaves. I suspect you'll have a much better experience.
And that's why drivers should be taught to drive defensively (note: "defensive driving" doesn't necessarily mean "slow". It means being aware of your surroundings and always thinking several steps ahead to counter whatever drivers around you might possibly do). Why did that Hummer miss you when it ran the red light? Either you were already through the intersection, in which case it's a non-event, or you were able to accelerate out of danger. If you weren't through the intersection and couldn't accelerate to avoid the accident, you're just as much at fault for blocking the intersection and putting yourself in that situation to begin with. Yes, the Hummer shouldn't have run the light. At the same time, you shouldn't have been in a position to be hit by him in the first place.
Had that Hummer hit you, I doubt you'd be much better off in an SUV than in a passenger car. Also, how is an SUV going to make you safer from a 5mph collision from the dumb lady in front of you backing up? I will agree that there are jackasses on the road, and I will also agree that safety features of your vehicle are important. I will disagree that you can't do anything about the jackasses (when you're driving, drive. Don't do Sudoku, put on makeup, eat, etc), and I will vehemently disagree if you're suggesting that SUVs are safer than passenger cars.
Absolutely, but that falls under the category of "practical". My only disagreement was with the incorrect assumption that SUVs are safer than the average compact or mid-size sedan.
Assuming you don't decapitate me in the process, I would suspect I'll be better off in my Boxster than you would in your Hummer if we were to collide. Why? My Boxster was designed to crumple while maintaining the integrity of the cockpit. Your Hummer was designed to be as rigid as possible. My car will be written off, but I won't suffer anything more than some burns from the airbag. You'll have whiplash, back problems, and who knows what else.
No car would make it through safety testing if the passenger area was compromised during a "normal" crash (where "not normal" would be something like "wrapping your car around a tree at 150mph"). On the other hand, a truck or truck-based SUV does not have the same crash rating requirements, and in all likelihood would crush your legs in the event of a higher-speed (say, 35mph) head-on collision. Browse the web and take a look at the passenger compartments of wrecked autos. You'll find that for most cars, the cockpit is rarely compromised and if it wasn't for having to tear the car apart to extract the occupants the interior wouldn't look so bad at all. Then look at the truck cockpits, where the cockpit has essentially shrunk by half or more. There's a great picture floating around showing the front-end crash testing of a Mini vs. an older (early-2000s?) F150. It's a side-view, where you can clearly see how the Mini protects the driver and the F150 doesn't.
So yes, in the case of flying shrapnel you're correct. In any other scenario, and especially the scenarios you're most likely to encounter, I'd rather have the car absorb the impact energy rather than my kidneys or spleen.
Most SUVs, especially truck-based SUVs, are much less safe than normal passenger cars. A low center of gravity plus properly designed crumple zones to absorb energy will always fare better than a tall rigid design like an F150. Even better, smaller cars are more maneuverable, providing "active" safety (the ability to avoid an accident entirely) rather than "passive" safety (the ability to walk away from an accident). The only thing making SUVs "safer" than average passenger cars is that everybody bought into the BS that SUVs are "safer". It's become an arms race, and if you don't have a jacked up monster then you risk decapitation if a SUV hits you from the side.
Crowding has nothing to do with it. In fact, in a crowded situation a smaller care may be even safer because it gives you the ability to squeeze into smaller areas for avoidance that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.
That's exactly the point. Cars crumple to absorb energy that would otherwise transfer into your internal organs. Your best bet is to learn how to drive and avoid such situations in the first place. If you can't handle that, you really shouldn't have a license in the first place.
Unless you're id, Epic, or other big-name developers and publishers, in which case your reputation in the market is enough for people to pirate your game on day one (or day zero, even), robbing you of that profitable "build-up to success".
IMHO, the solution is not to keep fighting fire with fire. Instead, it's to get into a different game. MMOs are one example. Another example would be similar to what Stardock does. When you buy Galactic Civilizations 2, there is no DRM at all. Instead, you get a serial number that entitles you to game updates. This wouldn't work at all for a typical EA game ("punt it out the door and start working on next year's version"), but it works great for smaller developers with a loyal fanbase. The game of GalCiv2 as it stands today is quite a bit different from how it shipped about a year ago, but if you pirate the game you would not have access to any of those game updates. Also, I'm not talking about intentionally leaving in bugs or any of that crap. You ship as good of a game as you can, and then you support it through its lifetime with feature enhancements (GalCiv2 AI or ship builder enhancements, for example).
So do both. Provide a couple hundred hand-created puzzles alongside a generator so that you get both the "charm and personality" of hand-create puzzles and the longevity of machine-generated puzzles with the excellent handwriting recognition and presentation of the Brain Age interface. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
The Brain Age implementation has limited puzzles. It's quite possible to generate an almost infinite number of Sudoku puzzles on the fly, and several games have done that. However, none of those games have had the excellent input and display of the Brain Age implementation. My perfect Sudoku game would be the Brain Age presentation backed by a game generator so I don't have to keep playing the same puzzles over and over.
Maybe the older games, but newer Sonic games have shown up on the PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 (most recently with "Sonic the Hedgehog", the 3D game with the same name as the original 2D game). As of right now, 2D Sonic games have only shown up on Nintendo platforms (Virtual Console, GBA).
Huh? The PS3 has the SIXAXIS controller that uses motion sensing, and Microsoft tried the same thing on PCs way back in 97 or 98 (look up the Sidewinder Freestyle). The 360 and PS3 aren't exclusively wireless, but their wireless is built-in just like the Wii's, and as long as you don't buy the Core 360 pack they're all wireless out-of-the-box. While wireless is great, I like the fact that you can use wired peripherals on a 360 because it broadens the available third-party options. The only thrid-party controller I've heard of possibly coming to the Wii is a DDR dance pad. I don't know if that'll be wireless or if it'll use one of the Wii's USB ports.
I've owned a Wii since the console launch (well, okay, I didn't get mine until the Monday after the Friday launch). I "get it". At the same time, I find myself spending much more time with my 360 than my Wii. The 360, at least for me, has done a very good job of stringing hits together -- I was hooked on PGR3 until Oblivion shipped. I was hooked on Oblivion until Dead Rising shipped. I was hooked on Dead Rising until Gears of War shipped. I was hooked on Gears of War until Crackdown shipped. And I was hooked on Crackdown until Castlevania: Symphony of the Night shipped. Of course, I've been addicted to Geometry Wars since day one and continue to be addicted now :). The Wii, on the other hand, hooked me for about a week with Zelda before I got bored. I still go back to Wii Sports every now and then, but Warioware has been the only Wii game to keep my attention for more than a week.
I guess my point is that right now the Wii is still sitting in gimic land. It has a metric pantload of potential, and not just with the Wiimote (I personally think the Virtual Console is more important than the Wiimote). Nintendo doesn't have to "win" to be successful, but they do need to step up a bit. Where's Metroid Prime 3? Where's Mario Galaxy? Why can't they supply enough Wiis to satisfy more of the demand?
I'm not sure that's really going to be happen. The Wiimote is only mouse-like as long as it's pointing at the screen. Point it away (say, to turn) and it stops acting like a mouse (it lost its IR signature). I'm not saying that it's impossible to design a good Wiimote control scheme for FPS games. I'm just saying that they don't have that sorted out right now and the task is not as simple as, "Let's treat the Wiimote like a mouse!".
I assume you're referring to the $399 "premium" 360, given the $80 price difference you quote. The only problem is that it does include the Xbox Live headset. At least, it does so in the US. I assumed the package was the same across the world (ignoring special bundles like the Blue Dragon bundle in Japan), as far as accessories were concerned. Do Australian premium 360s really not come packed with an Xbox Live headset?
Ignoring the price, I'd definitely upgrade to the 120GB drive on my current 360 just so long as they give you a way to easily transfer the contents of your old drive to the new one (no, copying files over by memory card doesn't count, especially since many games lock their saves to the storage device such that you can't copy them). I'd even shell out an extra $20 for a dock that I could plug two drives into and copy the contents from one to the other. Then again, at the rumored price for the 120GB drive it really should come with such a tool pre-packaged.
Not necessarily true. First, keep in mind that the core gamer demographic is now in their mid- to late-20s and early-30s. That means disposable income. Second, the Wii's bread-and-butter games aren't going to be the same titles you find on Xbox 360 or PS3. I suspect you'll be seeing more titles like Wii Sports, WarioWare Smooth Moves, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Cooking Mama, Trauma Center, etc. "Gimic" games like these will be huge (just wait for DDR on the Wii where you have to dance on a pad and swing the wiimote at the same time!), and you won't be able to get them anywhere else but the Wii (forget the SIXAXIS, it's just not the same). By that same token, gamers will generally buy shooters or sports titles on the 360 or PS3 rather than the Wii because beautiful graphics and "traditional" gameplay just work better there. Finally, going back to the first point, Nintendo's sitting on a gold mine with their Virtual Console. They've got their entire back library of NES, SNES, and N64 games to capture the nostalgic 20-something gamers. 360's XBLA will give them a run for their money, but for every Symphony of the Night on XBLA (which rocks, BTW -- SOTN should be a 360 system seller) you'll be able to get a Mario Kart 64, Super Mario Bros., and Link to the Past on the VC.
How strange will it be if the "battle" for next-gen supremacy comes down to low-fi games on XBLA (and XNA), VC, and whatever Sony offers? People bought Wiis for Zelda: TTP, they'll buy 360s for Halo 3 and PS3s for MGS4, but the real win will be from cheap, accessible games you can buy (or build!) in the comfort of your living room.
I've heard all the bad stories about CLECs and ILECs, but my experiences with Covad and Verizon were always positive. They were always ahead of schedule on loop installs, and they never tried to shift the blame to someone else when it was their problem (although I never had a problem with any loop -- it was always Speakeasy trying to tell me that it was a loop problem when in actuality it was either a problem on their end or with my modem). Had my new house been in DSL range, I probably would've switched over to Covad's DSL offerings and ditched Speakeasy anyway. As it worked out, I've been with cable far longer than I was ever on DSL and it's been much better aside from the one minor hiccup I already mentioned at the start of my contract (the previous owners of my house used satellite and dialup, so the water damage problem likely had been there for quite a while before I moved in).
Sadly, all of this took place in Speakeasy's home city, the Seattle area. I realize my single data point is one bad mark in a sea of good marks for Speakeasy, but if they can screw up so royally in the city where they got their start then I shudder to think what their service is like elsewhere in the country.