So, in reality, Microsoft dropping the XBox so soon after the 360 is a move that ISN'T the norm in the gaming industry. Some might say Sega did this, but Sega seems to have had a history of dropping support for a system the moment it's popularity declines beyond a certain level. Some people think they should have stuck it out with the Dreamcast even though we all know they had to think of their investors first.
The article clearly shows that the Xbox is supported for a year after the 360's release. There are games scheduled to launch all the way up to October 2006 (that is, a year after the 360 launch). Anything after that gets into year two of the 360, and very few console makers have supported an old console that long (the GBA not withstanding, since Nintendo has said the DS is not a GBA replacement). Sure, the number of games is trending downward, but that's to be expected.
Nintendo and Sony will release Gamecube and PS2 games throughout next year, but that's within the first year of their next generation. Microsoft probably won't release any Xbox games next year because they're into the second year of 360. Unless you plan to hold Nintendo and Sony to the same two-year obsolecence commitment, I don't see how you can say Microsoft is bad for ramping down Xbox production after a year of 360.
The rest of your post turned into an anti-Microsoft troll, so I'm going to ignore it.
I'm pretty sure there might be an extension that does this. Anyway, in Opera, bookmarks have a description field that is autofilled based on the metatag of the page IIRC. The manage bookmarks tab or panel has a quicksearch field that also searches that.
It's been a while since I've used Opera (I played around with one of the 9.0 betas when it was briefly supported by live.com, but live.com has since broken their Opera support and I haven't bothered to fire up Opera again), so it's very likely that it does what I want and I just don't know it.
And don't most history views show the date visited? Granted, searching by date is more like browsing for/by date, but it's listed. Opera in quicksearch of the history tab/panel will search by title I think, and shows the date visited on the right, with # of visits.
History view without date makes no sense, obviously:). However, what I was calling out is that IE has no search and Firefox's search doesn't group results by date (when no search filter is active, everything is properly grouped by date). Once again, it sounds like Opera does exactly what I want, here. Now if only more websites didn't fail in Opera (usually through that website's fault and not Opera's).
I think the GP wasn't stating that there was any problem with bookmarks. The problem was in bookmarks and Google search being the only ways his parents know how to navigate the web. Unlike merely using bookmarks as a convenience, that's a serious problem.
But why does it need to be? If users use a product in a way that the developers didn't intend, is the user wrong or is the product trying to solve the wrong problem? I went on a tangent proposing some possible solutions that don't involve telling the parents to suck it up and live with it because that's the way it is. Maybe the GP should suck it up and fix the browser rather than the user? (in jest, of course, but I think my ideas are good. Of course, I don't think my shit stinks, either...)
That's not to say that users are always right. They're often very, very wrong. But if somebody is using a piece of software in a way that's natural to them and you see that as a problem, the issue is more likely that the software simply isn't tackling the right set of problems.
They also use bookmarks. That one took a LONG TIME to break. I can not tell you how many people I've seen with that one.
What's wrong with using bookmarks? Perhaps you should say overuse of bookmarks without any sort of organization is bad, but bookmarks by themselves are not. I'd say the real problem here is the browser (any browser). When I'm reading a book, a bookmark is temporary to keep my place when I come back to the book. Once I've come back, the bookmark is gone. Perhaps browsers need a single-use bookmark concept?
Organization of bookmarks is painful in most browsers. Why not couple a bookmark system with meta data from a search engine to automatically categorize your bookmarks? That would require some work from the search engine to categorize a web site, which could be difficult. A manual tagging system would be a good first start, especially if it was easily searchable (the idea of bookmarks as menu items just isn't going to work in the long run), but the fundamental truth about any manual organization system is that users aren't going to use it. Right now, I'd love to have a combination of IE7's "Favorites Center" and Firefox's Bookmarks Sidebar. The former shows and hides like a menu, but in the normal sidebar place (it can be pinned in place, but my point here is that I don't want something taking up valuable screen space when I need it only infrequently). The latter must always be visible to use it, but has a nice search feature. If IE7 would put a word-wheeling search on their Favorites Center, I'd be a happy man.
It'd also be nice to have a better history view, as well. I might remember that I visited some page on Sunday, but unless I can remember the title of the page I'm still going to have to manually search through the history. Firefox is better about this, but search results don't tell me when I visited a page.
Of course this wouldn't be a problem is MS stuck with / as a path separator for DOS just like UNIX used, but that's another argument.
It's also an invalid argument, as DOS used \ for a good reason. At the time, DOS (and CP/M on which the concepts of DOS were loosely based) used / to specify parameters to applications. Since / was already in use, \ was chosen as the path separator. If they had used - for parameters, they probably also would've used / for path separation, but then again they may have gone with : like Apple. / is really only universal as a path separator today because of the web (or more specifically, URIs). Maybe it was chosen because of its *nix heritage, but that just reflects the experiences of the people writing the original RFCs rather than some intrinsic value of / as a path separator.
To make matters worse, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Firefox (and anything that uses the standard file dialog common controls, as those embed Explorer) don't much care whether you use / or \. Try it out. Open up the run box and type "c:/program files". It works. Open up IE or Firefox and type "http:\\slashdot.org". That also works. so yes, you can interchange / with \ more or less indiscriminately (cmd.exe cares, but are your parents really going to use cmd.exe? I didn't think so...).
does the gamecube vga lead use the "digital" port?
The Gamecube has a vga connector? As for the "digital" port, that's what Nintendo calls it. Obviously the signal output is not digital (component is analog, just like VGA). One would assume they called it "digital" to diffentiate it from the "analog" output (composite, s-video, stereo audio), regardless of whether or not the signal was actually digital.
The reality is that few sets support 1080p, and without the ICT bullshit, there's no real need to have HDMI. For the vast majority of SUV-Driving Big-Screen TV Yuppie Suburboid Cultureless Assholes, the $500 PS3 will make a perfectly fine HD player and is not a "tard-box" at all. {And I think you undermined a pretty good post by insisting on using that term.}
Yes, few sets support 1080p. However, ICT also applies to 720p. With the ICT flag switched on, the best you can get over component is 540p (1080i with reduced vertical resolution). As for calling it a tard-box, I'm just calling it like it is. Just like you used "SUV-Driving Big-Screen TV Yuppie Suburboid Cultureless Assholes". (for the record, I don't drive an SUV, nor would I ever do so by choice)
If you're sitting there with a expensive 1080p TV pissing-and-moaning about $100, then I apologize.
I'm not. I found it more cost effective to buy a 720p set (that does support HDMI, though that wasn't necessarily a requirement). Also, I'm not moaning about $100. I'm moaning about $600. Sure, the PS3 tard-box is pretty much the functional equivalent of the Xbox 360 premium at only $100 more, but the psychological fact of the matter is that $400 appears much more affordable than $500, let alone $600 (some would say even $400 is too high, and I would tend to agree).
I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that most console purchasers don't buy it at launch. The real sales come 2-3 years down the road when the price drops. Eventually it will hit $300-$400 and said Yuppie could see HD Movies/Games as a good deal at that price. [Also the PS2 was a lousy deal for a DVD player 1-2 years after launch and I doubt that sold many units in the big picture.]
When the PS3 hits $300-400, its competition will be in the $200-300 range (or less), which will still make it comparatively too expensive. As for the PS2, it was always a lousy DVD player, but it was good enough and priced low enough that people who bought it mainly for games found it useful as a DVD player as well. I don't know of anybody who consciously chose a PS2 over a stand-alone DVD player back in 2000 or 2001, but it was a pretty good bonus to get a DVD player with your PS2 if you didn't already have one. Of course, DVD didn't have a format war, and was much more reasonably priced when the PS2 shipped (as I said, an average player was around $500, rather than the planned $1000 for a Blu-Ray player), so it was a no-brainer that it would beat VHS. This time around, nobody knows who'll win between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and many people are just going to stand back and let both of them fail while waiting to see which one wins.
Format wars are stupid, but Sony has to have its proprietary crap (see Beta, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, etc). They'll never learn until a failed format hurts their bottom line enough to make them take notice.
Wait a minute, this low end PS3 is getting slammed for not having HDMI but none of the other consoles have it either? WTF?
Back to silly console business. The Wii is not HD and that is defended because not enough people will have HD tv's for this console generations lifespan. The low end PS3 does not have HD and is slammed for not being future proof?
The tard-box PS3 is getting slammed for not having HDMI for two reasons:
Sony promised not one, but two HDMI outputs on the PS3. We all know Sony lies through their teeth when promising system features, but if they're going promise it then they should be prepared for people to call them on the missing features.
Sony is trying to position the PS3 with respect to Blu-Ray in the role the PS2 played for DVD.
By not putting HDMI on the tard-box PS3, they severely limit the tard-box's potential as a quality Blu-Ray player. Sure, this ICT pact may mean that the tard-box will play BDs at 1080p, but for how long? Anyway, Sony only has it half right this time around. The PS2 was an attractive DVD player because it was $300 at launch, not $600. Sure, the price difference is the same percentage-wise (an average of $500 for a stand-alone DVD player vs. $300 for a PS2, an expected average of $1000 for a stand-alone Blu-Ray player vs. $600 for a PS3), but they misjudged what consumers consider "affordable". At $300, people would look at the PS2 and say, "$300 for a game machine that also plays DVDs? Sign me up!" At $600, people are looking at the PS3 and saying, "Is this game or that movie worth $600?"
The Wii has its own set of problems with respect to HD signals. Sure, Nintendo is banging the drum about gameplay, which is all well and good. However, one can't help but think that their justification that HD is unnecessary because most people don't care is predicated on the lousy sell-through of Gamecube component cables. Why did Gamecube component cables sell so poorly? Because Nintendo, in their infinite wisdom, decided that they would only sell those cables directly. Unless you happened to live in the Redmond, WA, area where you could visit Nintendo's store (which is very well hidden, BTW), the only way to get your 480p on with the 'cube was to order online and wait 6-8 weeks for delivery. They used the same justification to remove the digital output port from the cube in later revisions ("Nobody's buying the component cable, so nobody must want 480p. If nobody wants 480p, let's save a couple bucks per cube sold and get rid of the port entirely"). I bought my cube for Metroid Prime, and though I rarely play it anymore I'm glad I bought it when I did. Had I waited another year or so, I'd be stuck with composite or s-video outputs and that just sucks (it's more difficult for me to properly hook up hardware using s-video or composite than using component because I already have all of my multiplexing set up with component. For component-signal hardware, it's plug and play, without even having to change inputs on my receiver or TV. Just power on the console and the mux does the rest. Anything else requires navigating a rat's nest of cables that I should clean up some day, or sacrificing audio quality and connecting everything directly to my TV...)
While the 360 isn't perfect, keep in mind that Microsoft backs HD-DVD, which doesn't do 1080p. Since there's no HD-DVD in the 360 out of the box, one would assume that the planned HD-DVD expansion would provide HDMI output (perhaps using a pass-through like the old 3Dfx Voodoo cards did to pass through a 2D signal). Since Microsoft hasn't done much beyond simply announcing the existence of said expansion, anything at this point is pure speculation. Finally, if you look at the Xbox's life span (4 years almost to the day between the release of Xbox 1 and Xbox 360) and extrapolate forward, you can expect another Xbox console (Xbox 3? Xbox 720? Xbox Next?) in 2009, just in time for this ICT cut-over. Whether a 4-year life cycle for a console is good or bad is left up to the reader to decide.
Plasma gas leaks over time causing dulling - replace your TV time.
What? No. Plasma displays use phosphors to generate color, just like a CRT. Also, just like a CRT, those phosphors decay over time. They're prone to burn-in, just like a CRT. Think of a plasma display like a mix between CRT and LCD. You have a grid of individual subpixels just like an LCD, but those sub pixels are are made up of light-emitting phosphors just like a CRT. How those phosphors are energized is different (that's where the plasma comes in to play), but the ultimate effect is the same -- the set is generating color through the use of a consumable substance, and over time that substance will be consumed. ("consumable" isn't the right word, but it gets the idea across.)
If plasma displays use the same technology as CRTs, why do they have a much shorter half-life? I don't know, but I would suspect the main culprit is user error. You'll get very long life with no risk of burn-in if you properly calibrate a CRT (get it out of the factory-default torch-mode contrast, if nothing else), and I suspect you'd get the same from a plasma. However, proper calibration tends to mute brightness and colors (actually bringing them down to correct, realistic levels), and that's the last thing a new plasma owner wants if he was sold on the "vibrant" and "rich" color of the display (never mind that it's all way overblown and needs to be adjusted down to look good, never mind for the health of the display).
I bought a Samsung DLP unit, but had to return it due to strobing rainbow effect. It was a really great image, though that was in part because Samsung was doing a very high level of algorithmic sharpening, which can cause halos around some images. But I really couldn't move my eyes across it without seeing the trailing rainbows.
Different people are more or less susceptible to the rainbow effect. Personally, the only time I ever notice it is if I try to play Doom 3 on my Samsung DLP. The combination of a very dark image and fast horizontal movement makes everything crawl with rainbows. Interestingly enough, I haven't noticed it on any other first-person shooter games (Halo 2, Perfect Dark Zero, BF2:MC, Metroid Prime) or any other games (racing, sports, RPGs, etc). I can force myself to see the rainbow effect if I put in a movie, go to a dark scene, and rapidly move my head back and forth. Since that's not my normal viewing style (spastic head movement is not normal), I'm happy with my DLP.
I didn't see this effect in the store at all, but at home the awareness of it really did build up.
Store displays are set up in such a way as to minimize the rainbow effect (has to do with store lighting, demo material, etc). If you can see it on a set in the store, you're going to constantly see it at home and should stay away from that model. If you're concerned about rainbow effect, find a friend or colleaque with a DLP and see if they'll let you demo it in your home. That's the best way to know if you'll see it or not. Of course, if you're going to demo stuff in-store, you should bring in your own viewing material. When I go TV shopping, which admittedly doesn't happen all that often, I like to carry a couple DVDs (something with action, like Saving Private Ryan, and Avia at the very least). If a store won't let you demo a set with your own material, go somewhere else. Also, if a store won't negotiate on price, go somewhere else. By bringing in internet-based pricing on the 50" Samsung DLP I was looking at (in-store price $2100, online price $1800), I was able to negotiate a free stand ($300 value) while buying the TV at the in-store price (thus essentially paying $1800 for the TV, without having to pay for shipping).
If you are interested in DLP, you might look at the new units that use high speed LED arrays instead of a high intensity white light bulb to handle the color.. these new ones still flash the colors in sequence, but the sequencing is much faster, and it really and truly is supposed to be below the perceptual threshold for everybody.
Newer equipment is always better than older equipment, even if you still go with a traditional color wheel and bulb. for example, from the HL-P series to the HL-R, Samsung added more color sections to the wheel and made it spin faster, thus significantly reducing the possibility of rainbow effect for most people. The morale of the story is to know what model you want to buy (usually the newest, not last year's model), and make sure that's the one you're actually buying (big box stores like Best Buy are notorious for selling sets from two model years ago at current model prices).
I wound up getting a Sony SXRD LCoS set swapped out for the Samsung DLP.. the SXRD was more expensive, but the resolution was higher (true 1920x1280p)
I assume you mean 1920x1080p, not 1280p. But anyway, I'm not sure now is the right time to go 1080p. The price of 1080p sets is still significantly higher than a 720p set, and you're going to have a hard time finding 1080p sources (assuming you buy a set that can actually accept 1080p signals...). If you're buying the TV to be a dedicated PC monitor, that'll work all right. Otherwise, any signal you're going to use will have to be upconverted by the TV, with
That's why XBConnect and XLink Kai exist. Maybe some of us don't want to pay to play games we've already paid for.
XBConnect and XLink Kai rely on games having "System Link" support, which is just local LAN play. Since the assumption with System Link is that it's local, few developers bother to optimize System Link for laggy network conditions (yes, even for broadband. Your average 4Mbps/384Kbps cable connection pales in comparison to a local 100mbps switched network). That means the gameplay experience you'll get over one of those services is nowhere near the quality of play you'll find on Xbox Live. As well, you don't have integrated services like voice chat in all games (depends on if the game you're playing did voice chat for System Link, or if you're using an external app on a PC), integrated friends list within the game itself, consistent matchmaking within the game, etc.
Also, you're not paying to play games you've already paid for. You're paying for access to the network and services provided by Live. Besides, it's only $5/mo (less if you pay for a year at a time rather than monthly). That's 1/3rd the price of WoW, and it applies to all games on the console (with the exception of Phantasy Star Online or FFXI).
Yes, in their internal court. Sentence: Lifetime ban from the Live service.
Nope. They ban the specific Xbox, perhaps the Live account, and maybe the credit card in extreme cases, but there's nothing stopping you from getting a non-modified Xbox, a new Live account, and using a different credit card if necessary. Anyway, getting banned from Live is nothing even close to legal prosecution.
I only started using it again when I decided to mod it to run unsigned binaries like XBMC on it. An interesting side effect was that I was able to copy my until recently unusable games to the hard drive to actually get to play them without the system locking up with an "Unable to read disc" message all too often.
Of course, with a modified system you would no longer be able to play on Live. Whether that matters to you or not is a different issue.
The problem with your DVD drive was unfortunately common, and I'm surprised you never got a real repair for it (or at least a refurbished console). That said, the "correct" fix is to replace your crappy DVD drive (probably a Thomson) with one of the better drives from Phillips, Samsung, or Hitachi. Like you, my original Xbox had a piece of crap Thomson, but I fixed it by replacing it with a Phillips and everything was better (the DVD drive doesn't factor in to the identity of the console like the hard drive and motherboard do, so it's not seen as a hack and bannable offense). The Phillips drive did eventually die from natural causes, at which point I replaced the drive again, this time with a Samsung. Since the second replacement was not needed until I could buy a complete used Xbox for the price of a DVD drive at llama.com, I just went down to the local Game Crazy and opened Xboxes until I found one with a drive I wanted. After swapping the drives, my old box with all of my non-transferable saves was back in business. No modchip necessary, though now I have a spare Xbox in which I could put an old flakey Thomson (because the Phillips was really dead, not just flakey) that might be worth modding some day.
Its not exactly technical support, but I DID actually call them for support on my Xbox360 in an effort to recover the copy of HexicHD that I deleted (as many others have) in an effort to reclaim some space on the HDD (expecting the game to take up the 7 gigs of space that was missing from the 20GB drive).
Either you can't read, or you can't do math.:) When you go to delete anything from the hard drive, you can see exactly how much space it takes (in KB or MB, depending on the item). Even if you saw that Hexic is ~30MB and didn't realize that it was accurate, you're never going to get 20GB out of that hard drive. First off, 20GB == 18.6GiB (silly hard drive marketing using the SI definition of GB, while Microsoft displays "GiB" as "GB" on the dashboard). From that, subtract another 4GiB for game buffers (same deal as in the original Xbox, though they never told you the exact size there. Everything was in "blocks"), some amount of space for Xbox emulation, filesystem overhead, and the dashboard, OS, and related resources, and it makes perfect sense that you only get ~13-14GiB of usable space on a 20GB/18.6GiB drive.
Oh, yeah, if you haven't heard back from support, call them again. They're people, too, and it's not unheard of for people to forget things once in a while. You just may be unlucky.
Does that mean Microsoft is actually respecting the owner's right to own the console unlike they did with the Xbox? I'm fine with companies saying that its no longer covered by them if you tinker with it, but when they attempt to go beyond that line (ie: claiming DCMA violations, claiming the owner has no right to do what they want with their console) its gone way too far.
Can you point to even one case where Microsoft prosecuted an individual for modding his Xbox? Sure, they and Sony went after Lik-Sang for selling mod chips, but not the people who use them. They've attacked sellers who sold modified Xboxes with 100s of pirated games, but that was because of the pirated games, not the modchip. They patched holes in games and the dashboard that allowed for soft-modding, but that's their perogative and your fault for buying a re-release of a game or signing in to Xbox Live (and if it was IE or Windows, you'd be bitching if they didn't patch the holes...). They banned modified Xboxes from Xbox Live, but they have the right to choose who uses their service and who doesn't (and once you're banned, you no longer have to pay for it). Read the TOS you agreed to when signing up. Microsoft has never stopped anybody from installing a mod chip and running Linux.
Expect all of the same to happen now, too. In fact, I'm surprised that their only response was to remind you that you void your warranty with this hack. The current hack is only useful for playing pirated games. You can't use it for homebrew software or to run Linux, so there's no legitimate justification to shield it. When (not if) a real hack or mod chip appears, expect to get banned from Xbox Live for using a modified console (which will be much worse this time around, since Live is so much more important to the core experience of Xbox 360). Expect Microsoft to continue to go after people selling consoles with pirated games. And expect them to stay out of your business if all you want to do is run Linux and stay the hell off of Live.
The modchip industry is pretty damn innovative! You have a huge multi-billion dollar company in a huge multi-billion dollar industry designing these consoles to be hackproof, yet a few guys in a garage can hack them in under a year. That is technological innovation, too, it's just not in a way that Microsoft can stifle and control. It is open innovation, published and available to all.
This is the classic dilemma of anybody doing anything security-related. If you're defending, you havet o protect the entire system against any possible hole, usually with limited man power (yes, even in the OSS world), and under a time constraint to get the software/hardware out (you may patch it later, but you need "good enough" from the start). If you're attacking, you just need one tiny little hole, and you have all the time in the world to do it. And, you're working with essentially infinite man power (while you're focusing on one hole, another attacker somewhere else is focusing on a different one). Innovation here lies in how long you can keep your system unhackable.
Integrity like scratching discs to unpreadability?
It's your own damned fault if you don't understand the physics of a spinning disk and try to reorient your Xbox 360 while a disk is playing. Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have made the Ring of Light adjust with the orientation of the console, as that would keep the sheeple from screwing up their games because they want to see the pretty lights. Not a design flaw (go try it with a PS2 -- you'll have the same problem. Nobody was ever stupid enough to do it with a PS2 because there is no Ring of Light on the front).
Quality like overheating and frequent crashes?
I can't help but think the overheating issues were way overstated by early adopters and the media. By all accounts, my own 360 is "launch window" (build date of early December, purchased mid-December), and I've yet to run into an overheating issues. Then again, I don't box my 360 up in an enclosed media center, with no airflow around the console or the power supply. You wouldn't put a PC in an enclosure with poor circulation, so why would you do that with an Xbox? There was a verified problem with a bad batch of power supplies, but you could get that replaced under warranty (but not if you modded!). Not to mention the many cases where crashes were attributed to overheating when the real culprit was a poorly-connected power supply (you have to push it in until it clicks and the little clip catches. Otherwise, you're not going to have a solid power connection and could easily crash the box because of it).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the modders and makers who designed ways to cool the power supplies and devices?
You're both right and wrong. Modders did design ways to cool the 360, though none of them were particularly innovative (if you can't cool it better than Microsoft did in the same form factor, it's not an innovation). However, those modifications are unnecessary with a little common sense, and potentially a power supply swap.
You want to talk about innovation? Okay. Go build a comparably-powered PC in the same form factor or smaller. I bet you can't do it. No, Mini-ITX.com doesn't count, because those PCs are nowhere near as powerful as a 360 (they make great media centers, though!). Even Sony can't do it. The PS3 is going to be huge. The 360 is no larger than a PS2. Don't believe me? I'll take a picture. I have my PS2 standing right next to my 360, and the 360 is approximately.5 inch taller due to the hard drive, and no wider. It's a little deeper by about 1.5 inches, but that's less than the old Xbox and much less than my cable box or my DVD player.
Fuck that you wouldn't be playing a game if you wanted realism for crying out loud.
Not necessarily true. The parent mentioned PGR (Project: Gotham Racing). Most of us can't go out and buy several $100+K cars and then go race them, so we turn to video games instead (because $60 for a video game you can play any time you like is much cheaper than $200 for an afternoon at the track with your daily beater). Depending on how you like your racing games, you may prefer realism (Gran Turismo, Forza, GTR), and there's nothing wrong with it because it's something you enjoy that you can't go out and do every day. Perhaps calling it "simulation" is more clear, because the games are not realistic in the sense that you can't do in real life what you can do in the game.
You guys sure seem to cry hard enough when it comes to seeing more and more ads in the movie theater and other places and you're actually going to sit back and say you ENJOY seeing ads in games?
Depends on the game. I would expect to see ads in a football game, as there are ads lining the stadium (which sucks, but that's "realism"). Similarly, in a racing game on real tracks, I'd expect to see ads along the tracks. Now just to be clear, I'm not asking to be advertised at, at least no more than I would be if I attended a stadium or track in real life. What I'm looking for is realism in an experience that I can't have in real life (no way am I going to be able to toss a pigskin in the NFL or compete in an ALMS race). What I don't want is ads in the interface. The HUD, UI, etc, should not be "brought to me by Samsung" or have Burger King logos all over the place. EA is the worst in this regard (NFS:MW actually embedded a Cingular ad into the HUD!)
The ads I'm talking about really aren't ads or product placements. In fact, for developers to do it right they'll probably have to pay licensing fees to use the ads.
If it's product placement in like.. GT5 where you can buy a GReddy turbo what ever.. I can *put up* with that.
That's not really product placement, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had to pay Greddy to use their name and logo. Now if Greddy was the only brand of turbocharger you could buy in the game (look at Need For Speed: Most Wanted, for example), that would be product placement. In GT4, it's "realism". Perhaps only Greddy supplies a turbo for the car you're trying to modify, so the only turbo you can buy is a Greddy. Modify another car and you may have a choice of different brands, or Greddy may not even make an appropriate turbo so they're not listed.
The same is true for the cars. It's not product placement to be able to drive a Honda Civic or a Ford Mustang. It's "realism", and Polyphony Digital paid for a license to use those cars. If you were playing Ford Racing 3, that's advertising. Ford paid to have that game made using only Ford products. And it's not just cars and car parts. Real-life tracks in games like Gran Turismo have the same problem of advertising vs. licensing. Polyphony Digital can't just go and take pictures of the track and use them for textures, because those textures may contain real ads that PD doesn't have the rights to use. If they want to use all of the same ads as the real life track, they're going to have to go to each advertiser and try to get the rights (either convince the company to pay for the ad space in the game, which they probably won't go for, or pay the company a licensing fee to use their already-existing advertising). That's why you'll see a lot of "placeholder" ads with stuff like "Sony" or "GT" on them (or "Microsoft" or "Xbox" in the case of Forza), because they couldn't get the rights to display the real ads. In this case, though the ads are still advertisements in the real world, they're not advertisements in-game. If Polyphony Digital or Turn 10 (the Forza developers) took the EA route, they'd just replace all real-world ads with the ads of companies who paid them. You'd get to race at "Burger King Laguna Seca" instead of "Mazda Laguna Seca", and that would just suck.
NOA has historically been a stickler about who can become a licensed developer, requiring a business and marketing plan and an approved title before developers can even begin to investigate the technical aspects of the platform.
With good reason, considering the commonly held belief that a key component of the 80s game crash was the glut of crap games due to unfettered console development access (no idea if it's true or not, but it's what people believe). Microsoft is also particular about who they license, but they're at least open to the idea of indies on XBLA. What the article said about companies having such a backlog of ideas that they can never get through holds just as true for XBLA game proposals.
However, all hope is not lost. You just need to be smart about how you go about it. For example, go get yourself a license to one of GarageGame's engines, build your game for PC, and it's a simple matter to get a 360 license for the engine (minimal to no porting required, though you'll probably still have work to do to integrate Live functionality) if you do happen to make it through the XBLA process. You're much better off going in with a completed game (or at least a very compelling demo). If all you have is an idea, or even a written down plan but no working demo, just forget about it.
Hmm it seems to me that you just found it for the $400 price point. The costco link is for a bundle with the x360 with 20 GB HD, a game (retails for $50), and an extra controller ($30). Add that up and you get the cost of the bundle.
You forgot another $20 for the play 'n charge kit they're including in the bundle, and you're under-pricing the extra wireless controller. That $490 bundle actually gets you a premium console ($400), a game ($50, since it's a Microsoft game, $60 for non-Microsoft games), an extra wireless controller ($50), and a play 'n charge cable ($20) for a grand total of $520 worth of stuff, or a $30 savings.
Considering what some people were willing to pay for their XBOX360s on release, I doubt $600 will be much of an inhibitor.
Most people who were paying $600+ for a 360 at launch were buying bundles including multiple games and controllers. The console itself was still $399. We're talking $599 for just the console with the PS3, which means a $1000 bundle with a $399 360 and 10 $60 games will only get you a PS3 console and 6 games. It's still $1000, but it's much less value for your money.
I'm ignoring the ~40,000 or so 360s sold up on ebay, but even many of those were bundles of games and controllers rather than just the console. I assume the ebay-factor is why Sony's going with an open-pricing scheme for Japan with their premium console. That wouldn't fly in the States (ask JC Penny when they tried to sell the $399 premium 360 at $800 for just the console). If someone's going to screw us, we'd rather it be "regular" people on ebay rather than those sneaky bastards at the store.
I watched the video and I know that it was pre-rendered and all. But I still remember the roar of the crowd when the realistic Zelda-for-GC-pre-rendered-movie debuted at E3 years ago. People went crazy when they saw that. Not the same from what I could hear.
Not "pre-rendered" (I have no idea if any of the demos were pre-rendered. I suspect the MGS trailer was, while GTHD was not for example), "direct-feed". In other words, rather than filming the screen the presentation was being projected upon in the presentation room, they cut to the video directly. That's why you didn't hear any crowd noise (mumbling, shuffling, or even cheering) during the videos. Because of the cut to direct-feed video, there very well may have been cheering. There probably wasn't, but unless you were in the crowd you wouldn't know for sure.
I do agree that the demos and trailers didn't go over all that well. I suspect Konami was expecting some sort of emotional response when Snake put the gun in his mouth. They didn't get it. We'll see what the "analysts" say, but after watching the whole 2+ hour presentation (online) my feeling is that it was a flop. If the lackluster demos and trailers didn't do them in, the price anouncement surely did.
Where was the roar of the crowd when super-popular games like MSG and FF came on the screen?
If you were watching a web feed (like from gamespot), they cut to direct-feed video for MGS and FF which would explain why there was no crowd roar (not saying there was any crowd roar, but...).
O to be Nintendo at this moment.
Or even Microsoft. Nothing shown by Sony trumps the 360 so far, and that controller is very reminiscent of something I assume Microsoft has already patented. Since Nintendo has suggested they're trying to carve out their own niche with the Wii, where a "hardcore" gamer would likely buy the Wii and another console, Microsoft looks set to win this time around. Nintendo will "win" by playing a completely different game, and good for them.
I already have a 360, and I'm currently planning on buying a Wii (on the fence leaning towards "buy", but we'll see what Nintendo's press conference has in store tomorrow). I'll probably buy a PS3 at some point in the future, but at this rate that won't be for some years from now. Little innovation (copying Microsoft's Xbox Live and Nintendo's Wii-mote) coupled with a yawn-inducing game line-up and an astronomical price has put me off of even considering a PS3 for now.
What about the dirty disk errors that pop up at random? (the oblivion tech forum is rampant with them, so I know it wasn't just the two machines I tried). Yah, I know how to clear the cache, but have you tried riding a horse? The loading every 3 seconds is unbearable. And the fact that with a PC with similar specs to the 360 gets farther grass draw distance is perplexing.
I must be extremely lucky. After > 100 hours of Oblivion on the 360, completing all achievements, I've never once run into a dirty disk error. I've also not run into any of the more heinous quest-blocking bugs. I have had a few freezes, but those have come after extended play sessions without stopping to clear the cache. I'm not saying Oblivion isn't buggy. Far from it. The game is a bugfest. I'm just saying that every bug I've run into could be traced right back to their shitty cache management, and a bit of preventative maintenance would keep them from happening.
I disagree, the fan noise is very noticable (it is an annoying whirling sound) when playing some games. I can somewhat forgive the DVD noise, but why couldn't they have included a 60gig drive (not much more expensive than a 20) so some games parts could be loaded onto it? (perhaps the batch was bad, as the two xboxes were from the same shipping batch, but I doubt it). The PC version of oblivion loads twice as fast. I hope the PS3 doesn't make the same mistake and allows games to be loaded onto the hard drive.
Either I have a better console (not likely, as mine was built in early december and would qualify as a "launch" console), I have bad hearing (also not likely), or you had a bad console (sadly, likely). I keep my 360 in my "component rack" (a set of Ikea metal shelves) near the TV. My couch sits a good 8+ feet away. I can distinctly hear the DVD-ROM spinning while playing a game. I can't hear any fan noise at all unless I get within a foot or two of the console. What fan noise I can hear at that distance is easily drowned out by drive noice. I'm not saying that it's ideal to have such a loud drive, just that the noise most people attribute to fans is really the DVD drive.
As for loading games on the hard drive, did you not see the complaints about Final Fantasy XI's installation? Console games should not need installation. They should certainly not need a 4 hour long installation. The 360 hard drive does provide 4GB of space for games to use as cache, just like the original Xbox did. And just like on the original Xbox, every developer but BethSoft is fine with that. Bethsoft just can't stop corrupting their cache (Morrowing on Xbox suffered from the same cache corruption as Oblivion, but had no easy way of clearing the cache). If I had to install games, I'd rather just play on a PC.
From the MS 360 website: "But Xbox 360 is also the center of your digital entertainment world." This is a hard feat to achieve if it supports only MS formats (plus mp3) and doesn't support the most popular format for digital video.
Over-zealous advertising. An extender can't be "the center of your digital entertainment world" by definition -- the "center" would be the media center PC feeding the extender. I do think it's crap that the 360 can't play DivX videos or other codecs, but I assume this is a limitation of being an extender. The video is decompressed on the extender, not the media center, so the extender would need to have the codecs. I don't know what the licensing fees would be to include a bunch of codecs like DivX, but if it costs more than a couple dollars total I can see that easily getting cut. Maybe we'll be able to download codec packs through the Marketplace some day?
Thanks, that is my next investment. I got the PS2 for romance of the three kingdoms, which still uses SNES era graphics, so I figured component would be moot.
Slashdot Mirror
The article clearly shows that the Xbox is supported for a year after the 360's release. There are games scheduled to launch all the way up to October 2006 (that is, a year after the 360 launch). Anything after that gets into year two of the 360, and very few console makers have supported an old console that long (the GBA not withstanding, since Nintendo has said the DS is not a GBA replacement). Sure, the number of games is trending downward, but that's to be expected.
Nintendo and Sony will release Gamecube and PS2 games throughout next year, but that's within the first year of their next generation. Microsoft probably won't release any Xbox games next year because they're into the second year of 360. Unless you plan to hold Nintendo and Sony to the same two-year obsolecence commitment, I don't see how you can say Microsoft is bad for ramping down Xbox production after a year of 360.
The rest of your post turned into an anti-Microsoft troll, so I'm going to ignore it.
It's been a while since I've used Opera (I played around with one of the 9.0 betas when it was briefly supported by live.com, but live.com has since broken their Opera support and I haven't bothered to fire up Opera again), so it's very likely that it does what I want and I just don't know it.
History view without date makes no sense, obviously :). However, what I was calling out is that IE has no search and Firefox's search doesn't group results by date (when no search filter is active, everything is properly grouped by date). Once again, it sounds like Opera does exactly what I want, here. Now if only more websites didn't fail in Opera (usually through that website's fault and not Opera's).
And Nintendo did that at least three times (NES to SNES, SNES to N64, N64 to Gamecube), but they're still alive and kicking.
But why does it need to be? If users use a product in a way that the developers didn't intend, is the user wrong or is the product trying to solve the wrong problem? I went on a tangent proposing some possible solutions that don't involve telling the parents to suck it up and live with it because that's the way it is. Maybe the GP should suck it up and fix the browser rather than the user? (in jest, of course, but I think my ideas are good. Of course, I don't think my shit stinks, either ...)
That's not to say that users are always right. They're often very, very wrong. But if somebody is using a piece of software in a way that's natural to them and you see that as a problem, the issue is more likely that the software simply isn't tackling the right set of problems.
What's wrong with using bookmarks? Perhaps you should say overuse of bookmarks without any sort of organization is bad, but bookmarks by themselves are not. I'd say the real problem here is the browser (any browser). When I'm reading a book, a bookmark is temporary to keep my place when I come back to the book. Once I've come back, the bookmark is gone. Perhaps browsers need a single-use bookmark concept?
Organization of bookmarks is painful in most browsers. Why not couple a bookmark system with meta data from a search engine to automatically categorize your bookmarks? That would require some work from the search engine to categorize a web site, which could be difficult. A manual tagging system would be a good first start, especially if it was easily searchable (the idea of bookmarks as menu items just isn't going to work in the long run), but the fundamental truth about any manual organization system is that users aren't going to use it. Right now, I'd love to have a combination of IE7's "Favorites Center" and Firefox's Bookmarks Sidebar. The former shows and hides like a menu, but in the normal sidebar place (it can be pinned in place, but my point here is that I don't want something taking up valuable screen space when I need it only infrequently). The latter must always be visible to use it, but has a nice search feature. If IE7 would put a word-wheeling search on their Favorites Center, I'd be a happy man.
It'd also be nice to have a better history view, as well. I might remember that I visited some page on Sunday, but unless I can remember the title of the page I'm still going to have to manually search through the history. Firefox is better about this, but search results don't tell me when I visited a page.
It's also an invalid argument, as DOS used \ for a good reason. At the time, DOS (and CP/M on which the concepts of DOS were loosely based) used / to specify parameters to applications. Since / was already in use, \ was chosen as the path separator. If they had used - for parameters, they probably also would've used / for path separation, but then again they may have gone with : like Apple. / is really only universal as a path separator today because of the web (or more specifically, URIs). Maybe it was chosen because of its *nix heritage, but that just reflects the experiences of the people writing the original RFCs rather than some intrinsic value of / as a path separator.
To make matters worse, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Firefox (and anything that uses the standard file dialog common controls, as those embed Explorer) don't much care whether you use / or \. Try it out. Open up the run box and type "c:/program files". It works. Open up IE or Firefox and type "http:\\slashdot.org". That also works. so yes, you can interchange / with \ more or less indiscriminately (cmd.exe cares, but are your parents really going to use cmd.exe? I didn't think so ...).
The Gamecube has a vga connector? As for the "digital" port, that's what Nintendo calls it. Obviously the signal output is not digital (component is analog, just like VGA). One would assume they called it "digital" to diffentiate it from the "analog" output (composite, s-video, stereo audio), regardless of whether or not the signal was actually digital.
Yes, few sets support 1080p. However, ICT also applies to 720p. With the ICT flag switched on, the best you can get over component is 540p (1080i with reduced vertical resolution). As for calling it a tard-box, I'm just calling it like it is. Just like you used "SUV-Driving Big-Screen TV Yuppie Suburboid Cultureless Assholes". (for the record, I don't drive an SUV, nor would I ever do so by choice)
I'm not. I found it more cost effective to buy a 720p set (that does support HDMI, though that wasn't necessarily a requirement). Also, I'm not moaning about $100. I'm moaning about $600. Sure, the PS3 tard-box is pretty much the functional equivalent of the Xbox 360 premium at only $100 more, but the psychological fact of the matter is that $400 appears much more affordable than $500, let alone $600 (some would say even $400 is too high, and I would tend to agree).
When the PS3 hits $300-400, its competition will be in the $200-300 range (or less), which will still make it comparatively too expensive. As for the PS2, it was always a lousy DVD player, but it was good enough and priced low enough that people who bought it mainly for games found it useful as a DVD player as well. I don't know of anybody who consciously chose a PS2 over a stand-alone DVD player back in 2000 or 2001, but it was a pretty good bonus to get a DVD player with your PS2 if you didn't already have one. Of course, DVD didn't have a format war, and was much more reasonably priced when the PS2 shipped (as I said, an average player was around $500, rather than the planned $1000 for a Blu-Ray player), so it was a no-brainer that it would beat VHS. This time around, nobody knows who'll win between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and many people are just going to stand back and let both of them fail while waiting to see which one wins.
Format wars are stupid, but Sony has to have its proprietary crap (see Beta, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, etc). They'll never learn until a failed format hurts their bottom line enough to make them take notice.
The tard-box PS3 is getting slammed for not having HDMI for two reasons:
By not putting HDMI on the tard-box PS3, they severely limit the tard-box's potential as a quality Blu-Ray player. Sure, this ICT pact may mean that the tard-box will play BDs at 1080p, but for how long? Anyway, Sony only has it half right this time around. The PS2 was an attractive DVD player because it was $300 at launch, not $600. Sure, the price difference is the same percentage-wise (an average of $500 for a stand-alone DVD player vs. $300 for a PS2, an expected average of $1000 for a stand-alone Blu-Ray player vs. $600 for a PS3), but they misjudged what consumers consider "affordable". At $300, people would look at the PS2 and say, "$300 for a game machine that also plays DVDs? Sign me up!" At $600, people are looking at the PS3 and saying, "Is this game or that movie worth $600?"
The Wii has its own set of problems with respect to HD signals. Sure, Nintendo is banging the drum about gameplay, which is all well and good. However, one can't help but think that their justification that HD is unnecessary because most people don't care is predicated on the lousy sell-through of Gamecube component cables. Why did Gamecube component cables sell so poorly? Because Nintendo, in their infinite wisdom, decided that they would only sell those cables directly. Unless you happened to live in the Redmond, WA, area where you could visit Nintendo's store (which is very well hidden, BTW), the only way to get your 480p on with the 'cube was to order online and wait 6-8 weeks for delivery. They used the same justification to remove the digital output port from the cube in later revisions ("Nobody's buying the component cable, so nobody must want 480p. If nobody wants 480p, let's save a couple bucks per cube sold and get rid of the port entirely"). I bought my cube for Metroid Prime, and though I rarely play it anymore I'm glad I bought it when I did. Had I waited another year or so, I'd be stuck with composite or s-video outputs and that just sucks (it's more difficult for me to properly hook up hardware using s-video or composite than using component because I already have all of my multiplexing set up with component. For component-signal hardware, it's plug and play, without even having to change inputs on my receiver or TV. Just power on the console and the mux does the rest. Anything else requires navigating a rat's nest of cables that I should clean up some day, or sacrificing audio quality and connecting everything directly to my TV ...)
While the 360 isn't perfect, keep in mind that Microsoft backs HD-DVD, which doesn't do 1080p. Since there's no HD-DVD in the 360 out of the box, one would assume that the planned HD-DVD expansion would provide HDMI output (perhaps using a pass-through like the old 3Dfx Voodoo cards did to pass through a 2D signal). Since Microsoft hasn't done much beyond simply announcing the existence of said expansion, anything at this point is pure speculation. Finally, if you look at the Xbox's life span (4 years almost to the day between the release of Xbox 1 and Xbox 360) and extrapolate forward, you can expect another Xbox console (Xbox 3? Xbox 720? Xbox Next?) in 2009, just in time for this ICT cut-over. Whether a 4-year life cycle for a console is good or bad is left up to the reader to decide.
What? No. Plasma displays use phosphors to generate color, just like a CRT. Also, just like a CRT, those phosphors decay over time. They're prone to burn-in, just like a CRT. Think of a plasma display like a mix between CRT and LCD. You have a grid of individual subpixels just like an LCD, but those sub pixels are are made up of light-emitting phosphors just like a CRT. How those phosphors are energized is different (that's where the plasma comes in to play), but the ultimate effect is the same -- the set is generating color through the use of a consumable substance, and over time that substance will be consumed. ("consumable" isn't the right word, but it gets the idea across.)
If plasma displays use the same technology as CRTs, why do they have a much shorter half-life? I don't know, but I would suspect the main culprit is user error. You'll get very long life with no risk of burn-in if you properly calibrate a CRT (get it out of the factory-default torch-mode contrast, if nothing else), and I suspect you'd get the same from a plasma. However, proper calibration tends to mute brightness and colors (actually bringing them down to correct, realistic levels), and that's the last thing a new plasma owner wants if he was sold on the "vibrant" and "rich" color of the display (never mind that it's all way overblown and needs to be adjusted down to look good, never mind for the health of the display).
Different people are more or less susceptible to the rainbow effect. Personally, the only time I ever notice it is if I try to play Doom 3 on my Samsung DLP. The combination of a very dark image and fast horizontal movement makes everything crawl with rainbows. Interestingly enough, I haven't noticed it on any other first-person shooter games (Halo 2, Perfect Dark Zero, BF2:MC, Metroid Prime) or any other games (racing, sports, RPGs, etc). I can force myself to see the rainbow effect if I put in a movie, go to a dark scene, and rapidly move my head back and forth. Since that's not my normal viewing style (spastic head movement is not normal), I'm happy with my DLP.
Store displays are set up in such a way as to minimize the rainbow effect (has to do with store lighting, demo material, etc). If you can see it on a set in the store, you're going to constantly see it at home and should stay away from that model. If you're concerned about rainbow effect, find a friend or colleaque with a DLP and see if they'll let you demo it in your home. That's the best way to know if you'll see it or not. Of course, if you're going to demo stuff in-store, you should bring in your own viewing material. When I go TV shopping, which admittedly doesn't happen all that often, I like to carry a couple DVDs (something with action, like Saving Private Ryan, and Avia at the very least). If a store won't let you demo a set with your own material, go somewhere else. Also, if a store won't negotiate on price, go somewhere else. By bringing in internet-based pricing on the 50" Samsung DLP I was looking at (in-store price $2100, online price $1800), I was able to negotiate a free stand ($300 value) while buying the TV at the in-store price (thus essentially paying $1800 for the TV, without having to pay for shipping).
Newer equipment is always better than older equipment, even if you still go with a traditional color wheel and bulb. for example, from the HL-P series to the HL-R, Samsung added more color sections to the wheel and made it spin faster, thus significantly reducing the possibility of rainbow effect for most people. The morale of the story is to know what model you want to buy (usually the newest, not last year's model), and make sure that's the one you're actually buying (big box stores like Best Buy are notorious for selling sets from two model years ago at current model prices).
I assume you mean 1920x1080p, not 1280p. But anyway, I'm not sure now is the right time to go 1080p. The price of 1080p sets is still significantly higher than a 720p set, and you're going to have a hard time finding 1080p sources (assuming you buy a set that can actually accept 1080p signals ...). If you're buying the TV to be a dedicated PC monitor, that'll work all right. Otherwise, any signal you're going to use will have to be upconverted by the TV, with
XBConnect and XLink Kai rely on games having "System Link" support, which is just local LAN play. Since the assumption with System Link is that it's local, few developers bother to optimize System Link for laggy network conditions (yes, even for broadband. Your average 4Mbps/384Kbps cable connection pales in comparison to a local 100mbps switched network). That means the gameplay experience you'll get over one of those services is nowhere near the quality of play you'll find on Xbox Live. As well, you don't have integrated services like voice chat in all games (depends on if the game you're playing did voice chat for System Link, or if you're using an external app on a PC), integrated friends list within the game itself, consistent matchmaking within the game, etc.
Also, you're not paying to play games you've already paid for. You're paying for access to the network and services provided by Live. Besides, it's only $5/mo (less if you pay for a year at a time rather than monthly). That's 1/3rd the price of WoW, and it applies to all games on the console (with the exception of Phantasy Star Online or FFXI).
Nope. They ban the specific Xbox, perhaps the Live account, and maybe the credit card in extreme cases, but there's nothing stopping you from getting a non-modified Xbox, a new Live account, and using a different credit card if necessary. Anyway, getting banned from Live is nothing even close to legal prosecution.
Of course, with a modified system you would no longer be able to play on Live. Whether that matters to you or not is a different issue.
The problem with your DVD drive was unfortunately common, and I'm surprised you never got a real repair for it (or at least a refurbished console). That said, the "correct" fix is to replace your crappy DVD drive (probably a Thomson) with one of the better drives from Phillips, Samsung, or Hitachi. Like you, my original Xbox had a piece of crap Thomson, but I fixed it by replacing it with a Phillips and everything was better (the DVD drive doesn't factor in to the identity of the console like the hard drive and motherboard do, so it's not seen as a hack and bannable offense). The Phillips drive did eventually die from natural causes, at which point I replaced the drive again, this time with a Samsung. Since the second replacement was not needed until I could buy a complete used Xbox for the price of a DVD drive at llama.com, I just went down to the local Game Crazy and opened Xboxes until I found one with a drive I wanted. After swapping the drives, my old box with all of my non-transferable saves was back in business. No modchip necessary, though now I have a spare Xbox in which I could put an old flakey Thomson (because the Phillips was really dead, not just flakey) that might be worth modding some day.
Either you can't read, or you can't do math. :) When you go to delete anything from the hard drive, you can see exactly how much space it takes (in KB or MB, depending on the item). Even if you saw that Hexic is ~30MB and didn't realize that it was accurate, you're never going to get 20GB out of that hard drive. First off, 20GB == 18.6GiB (silly hard drive marketing using the SI definition of GB, while Microsoft displays "GiB" as "GB" on the dashboard). From that, subtract another 4GiB for game buffers (same deal as in the original Xbox, though they never told you the exact size there. Everything was in "blocks"), some amount of space for Xbox emulation, filesystem overhead, and the dashboard, OS, and related resources, and it makes perfect sense that you only get ~13-14GiB of usable space on a 20GB/18.6GiB drive.
Oh, yeah, if you haven't heard back from support, call them again. They're people, too, and it's not unheard of for people to forget things once in a while. You just may be unlucky.
Can you point to even one case where Microsoft prosecuted an individual for modding his Xbox? Sure, they and Sony went after Lik-Sang for selling mod chips, but not the people who use them. They've attacked sellers who sold modified Xboxes with 100s of pirated games, but that was because of the pirated games, not the modchip. They patched holes in games and the dashboard that allowed for soft-modding, but that's their perogative and your fault for buying a re-release of a game or signing in to Xbox Live (and if it was IE or Windows, you'd be bitching if they didn't patch the holes ...). They banned modified Xboxes from Xbox Live, but they have the right to choose who uses their service and who doesn't (and once you're banned, you no longer have to pay for it). Read the TOS you agreed to when signing up. Microsoft has never stopped anybody from installing a mod chip and running Linux.
Expect all of the same to happen now, too. In fact, I'm surprised that their only response was to remind you that you void your warranty with this hack. The current hack is only useful for playing pirated games. You can't use it for homebrew software or to run Linux, so there's no legitimate justification to shield it. When (not if) a real hack or mod chip appears, expect to get banned from Xbox Live for using a modified console (which will be much worse this time around, since Live is so much more important to the core experience of Xbox 360). Expect Microsoft to continue to go after people selling consoles with pirated games. And expect them to stay out of your business if all you want to do is run Linux and stay the hell off of Live.
This is the classic dilemma of anybody doing anything security-related. If you're defending, you havet o protect the entire system against any possible hole, usually with limited man power (yes, even in the OSS world), and under a time constraint to get the software/hardware out (you may patch it later, but you need "good enough" from the start). If you're attacking, you just need one tiny little hole, and you have all the time in the world to do it. And, you're working with essentially infinite man power (while you're focusing on one hole, another attacker somewhere else is focusing on a different one). Innovation here lies in how long you can keep your system unhackable.
It's your own damned fault if you don't understand the physics of a spinning disk and try to reorient your Xbox 360 while a disk is playing. Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have made the Ring of Light adjust with the orientation of the console, as that would keep the sheeple from screwing up their games because they want to see the pretty lights. Not a design flaw (go try it with a PS2 -- you'll have the same problem. Nobody was ever stupid enough to do it with a PS2 because there is no Ring of Light on the front).
I can't help but think the overheating issues were way overstated by early adopters and the media. By all accounts, my own 360 is "launch window" (build date of early December, purchased mid-December), and I've yet to run into an overheating issues. Then again, I don't box my 360 up in an enclosed media center, with no airflow around the console or the power supply. You wouldn't put a PC in an enclosure with poor circulation, so why would you do that with an Xbox? There was a verified problem with a bad batch of power supplies, but you could get that replaced under warranty (but not if you modded!). Not to mention the many cases where crashes were attributed to overheating when the real culprit was a poorly-connected power supply (you have to push it in until it clicks and the little clip catches. Otherwise, you're not going to have a solid power connection and could easily crash the box because of it).
You're both right and wrong. Modders did design ways to cool the 360, though none of them were particularly innovative (if you can't cool it better than Microsoft did in the same form factor, it's not an innovation). However, those modifications are unnecessary with a little common sense, and potentially a power supply swap.
You want to talk about innovation? Okay. Go build a comparably-powered PC in the same form factor or smaller. I bet you can't do it. No, Mini-ITX.com doesn't count, because those PCs are nowhere near as powerful as a 360 (they make great media centers, though!). Even Sony can't do it. The PS3 is going to be huge. The 360 is no larger than a PS2. Don't believe me? I'll take a picture. I have my PS2 standing right next to my 360, and the 360 is approximately .5 inch taller due to the hard drive, and no wider. It's a little deeper by about 1.5 inches, but that's less than the old Xbox and much less than my cable box or my DVD player.
Not necessarily true. The parent mentioned PGR (Project: Gotham Racing). Most of us can't go out and buy several $100+K cars and then go race them, so we turn to video games instead (because $60 for a video game you can play any time you like is much cheaper than $200 for an afternoon at the track with your daily beater). Depending on how you like your racing games, you may prefer realism (Gran Turismo, Forza, GTR), and there's nothing wrong with it because it's something you enjoy that you can't go out and do every day. Perhaps calling it "simulation" is more clear, because the games are not realistic in the sense that you can't do in real life what you can do in the game.
Depends on the game. I would expect to see ads in a football game, as there are ads lining the stadium (which sucks, but that's "realism"). Similarly, in a racing game on real tracks, I'd expect to see ads along the tracks. Now just to be clear, I'm not asking to be advertised at, at least no more than I would be if I attended a stadium or track in real life. What I'm looking for is realism in an experience that I can't have in real life (no way am I going to be able to toss a pigskin in the NFL or compete in an ALMS race). What I don't want is ads in the interface. The HUD, UI, etc, should not be "brought to me by Samsung" or have Burger King logos all over the place. EA is the worst in this regard (NFS:MW actually embedded a Cingular ad into the HUD!)
The ads I'm talking about really aren't ads or product placements. In fact, for developers to do it right they'll probably have to pay licensing fees to use the ads.
That's not really product placement, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had to pay Greddy to use their name and logo. Now if Greddy was the only brand of turbocharger you could buy in the game (look at Need For Speed: Most Wanted, for example), that would be product placement. In GT4, it's "realism". Perhaps only Greddy supplies a turbo for the car you're trying to modify, so the only turbo you can buy is a Greddy. Modify another car and you may have a choice of different brands, or Greddy may not even make an appropriate turbo so they're not listed.
The same is true for the cars. It's not product placement to be able to drive a Honda Civic or a Ford Mustang. It's "realism", and Polyphony Digital paid for a license to use those cars. If you were playing Ford Racing 3, that's advertising. Ford paid to have that game made using only Ford products. And it's not just cars and car parts. Real-life tracks in games like Gran Turismo have the same problem of advertising vs. licensing. Polyphony Digital can't just go and take pictures of the track and use them for textures, because those textures may contain real ads that PD doesn't have the rights to use. If they want to use all of the same ads as the real life track, they're going to have to go to each advertiser and try to get the rights (either convince the company to pay for the ad space in the game, which they probably won't go for, or pay the company a licensing fee to use their already-existing advertising). That's why you'll see a lot of "placeholder" ads with stuff like "Sony" or "GT" on them (or "Microsoft" or "Xbox" in the case of Forza), because they couldn't get the rights to display the real ads. In this case, though the ads are still advertisements in the real world, they're not advertisements in-game. If Polyphony Digital or Turn 10 (the Forza developers) took the EA route, they'd just replace all real-world ads with the ads of companies who paid them. You'd get to race at "Burger King Laguna Seca" instead of "Mazda Laguna Seca", and that would just suck.
With good reason, considering the commonly held belief that a key component of the 80s game crash was the glut of crap games due to unfettered console development access (no idea if it's true or not, but it's what people believe). Microsoft is also particular about who they license, but they're at least open to the idea of indies on XBLA. What the article said about companies having such a backlog of ideas that they can never get through holds just as true for XBLA game proposals.
However, all hope is not lost. You just need to be smart about how you go about it. For example, go get yourself a license to one of GarageGame's engines, build your game for PC, and it's a simple matter to get a 360 license for the engine (minimal to no porting required, though you'll probably still have work to do to integrate Live functionality) if you do happen to make it through the XBLA process. You're much better off going in with a completed game (or at least a very compelling demo). If all you have is an idea, or even a written down plan but no working demo, just forget about it.
You forgot another $20 for the play 'n charge kit they're including in the bundle, and you're under-pricing the extra wireless controller. That $490 bundle actually gets you a premium console ($400), a game ($50, since it's a Microsoft game, $60 for non-Microsoft games), an extra wireless controller ($50), and a play 'n charge cable ($20) for a grand total of $520 worth of stuff, or a $30 savings.
I agree. This goes much better with the aesthetics of the console.
Most people who were paying $600+ for a 360 at launch were buying bundles including multiple games and controllers. The console itself was still $399. We're talking $599 for just the console with the PS3, which means a $1000 bundle with a $399 360 and 10 $60 games will only get you a PS3 console and 6 games. It's still $1000, but it's much less value for your money.
I'm ignoring the ~40,000 or so 360s sold up on ebay, but even many of those were bundles of games and controllers rather than just the console. I assume the ebay-factor is why Sony's going with an open-pricing scheme for Japan with their premium console. That wouldn't fly in the States (ask JC Penny when they tried to sell the $399 premium 360 at $800 for just the console). If someone's going to screw us, we'd rather it be "regular" people on ebay rather than those sneaky bastards at the store.
Not "pre-rendered" (I have no idea if any of the demos were pre-rendered. I suspect the MGS trailer was, while GTHD was not for example), "direct-feed". In other words, rather than filming the screen the presentation was being projected upon in the presentation room, they cut to the video directly. That's why you didn't hear any crowd noise (mumbling, shuffling, or even cheering) during the videos. Because of the cut to direct-feed video, there very well may have been cheering. There probably wasn't, but unless you were in the crowd you wouldn't know for sure.
I do agree that the demos and trailers didn't go over all that well. I suspect Konami was expecting some sort of emotional response when Snake put the gun in his mouth. They didn't get it. We'll see what the "analysts" say, but after watching the whole 2+ hour presentation (online) my feeling is that it was a flop. If the lackluster demos and trailers didn't do them in, the price anouncement surely did.
If you were watching a web feed (like from gamespot), they cut to direct-feed video for MGS and FF which would explain why there was no crowd roar (not saying there was any crowd roar, but ...).
Or even Microsoft. Nothing shown by Sony trumps the 360 so far, and that controller is very reminiscent of something I assume Microsoft has already patented. Since Nintendo has suggested they're trying to carve out their own niche with the Wii, where a "hardcore" gamer would likely buy the Wii and another console, Microsoft looks set to win this time around. Nintendo will "win" by playing a completely different game, and good for them.
I already have a 360, and I'm currently planning on buying a Wii (on the fence leaning towards "buy", but we'll see what Nintendo's press conference has in store tomorrow). I'll probably buy a PS3 at some point in the future, but at this rate that won't be for some years from now. Little innovation (copying Microsoft's Xbox Live and Nintendo's Wii-mote) coupled with a yawn-inducing game line-up and an astronomical price has put me off of even considering a PS3 for now.
I must be extremely lucky. After > 100 hours of Oblivion on the 360, completing all achievements, I've never once run into a dirty disk error. I've also not run into any of the more heinous quest-blocking bugs. I have had a few freezes, but those have come after extended play sessions without stopping to clear the cache. I'm not saying Oblivion isn't buggy. Far from it. The game is a bugfest. I'm just saying that every bug I've run into could be traced right back to their shitty cache management, and a bit of preventative maintenance would keep them from happening.
Either I have a better console (not likely, as mine was built in early december and would qualify as a "launch" console), I have bad hearing (also not likely), or you had a bad console (sadly, likely). I keep my 360 in my "component rack" (a set of Ikea metal shelves) near the TV. My couch sits a good 8+ feet away. I can distinctly hear the DVD-ROM spinning while playing a game. I can't hear any fan noise at all unless I get within a foot or two of the console. What fan noise I can hear at that distance is easily drowned out by drive noice. I'm not saying that it's ideal to have such a loud drive, just that the noise most people attribute to fans is really the DVD drive.
As for loading games on the hard drive, did you not see the complaints about Final Fantasy XI's installation? Console games should not need installation. They should certainly not need a 4 hour long installation. The 360 hard drive does provide 4GB of space for games to use as cache, just like the original Xbox did. And just like on the original Xbox, every developer but BethSoft is fine with that. Bethsoft just can't stop corrupting their cache (Morrowing on Xbox suffered from the same cache corruption as Oblivion, but had no easy way of clearing the cache). If I had to install games, I'd rather just play on a PC.
Over-zealous advertising. An extender can't be "the center of your digital entertainment world" by definition -- the "center" would be the media center PC feeding the extender. I do think it's crap that the 360 can't play DivX videos or other codecs, but I assume this is a limitation of being an extender. The video is decompressed on the extender, not the media center, so the extender would need to have the codecs. I don't know what the licensing fees would be to include a bunch of codecs like DivX, but if it costs more than a couple dollars total I can see that easily getting cut. Maybe we'll be able to download codec packs through the Marketplace some day?
I remember the firs