Well, perhaps I wouldn't have if street fighter II was out already and Oblivion wasn't such a bugfest (and runs suprisingly slow at times for a 360 game).
While Oblivion does have its share of bugs, the only slowness I noticed was after playing for a while and letting the game cache get fragmented. There's a work-around to clear the cache by holding down any button on the controller when you start the game (hold it through the BethSoft logo. Once the 2K logo displays, you can let go). Not the best solution, but it is a solution. I'm right there with you, wishing for SFII. What ever happened to shipping it in March?
The machine is noticibly loud (I even took it back and got another and it was still loud).
You should clarify that the DVD-ROM is loud when it's spinning at full speed. The machine itself (fan noise) is very quiet, and the DVD-ROM is also quiet while watching DVDs. There's not a whole lot you can do about drive speed when it's running that quickly (the 360 DVD-ROM is something like 16x, compared to the 4x in the Xbox or PS2).
But the biggest factor was that the 360 sucks as a media center, and it couldn't replace my hacked xbox with Xbox Media Center. Lack of divx support and video only available to MS XP Media Center Edition killed it as a media center. My TV only has a couple componenet video inputs, so my decision was to keep the xbox and take back the 360
You're dinging the 360 for not doing something it never claimed to do. The 360 is a Media Center Extender. In other words, it's completely dependent on a Windows Media Center PC to feed it media. It sounds like you want the 360 to be a stand-alone media player (or mostly stand-alone, while occassionally pulling media from the network).
As for having limited component video inputs, get yourself a mux. I'm preferential to Audio Authority's 1154A, but you don't need to spend > $200 on a mux. You can find decent ones (minus auto-switching, audio format conversion, and the cool rack-friendly form-factor) for less than $50. You do realize the PS2 can do component output, right? The graphics will still look PS2-bad, but the color and sharpness will be better (and if you have a game that can support 480p, like GT4, you can only do that over component).
add more games to xbox live (porting abandonware would be cheap and make a killer system IMO).
There is no such thing as "abandonware", legally. Either the games are released to the public domain, or they're not (or they're released under a license that makes it possible to port them without legal troubles). "Abandonware" games that are still technically under copyright cannot be ported without proper consent. The question is, who gives that consent? How do you get permission to port a game that's been out of print for 15 years, and the original developer/publisher has been out of business for 10? Who currently owns the property? You have to track down the series of sales of IP until you hopefully find the right company you need to deal with. This is painful.
I do agree Microsoft needs to add more games to XBLA, but I don't think that's really going to be a problem for them. I think we're just in the lull before the storm right now, having not had any new XBLA games since Jewel Quest. Prepare to be bombarded (good thing I just finished up Oblivion, so I'll be ready to play some new arcade games)!.
I don't think that you find people complaining about how/. looks
Apparently you don't spend much time in the sections. The main "Slashdot green" pages aren't too bad, but then you run into the eye-stabbingly bad Your Rights Online or BSD sections, or the baby poop-colored IT section, etc.
Complaining about Slashdot's look and feel isn't a major thread of discontent around here, but it definitely happens.
Could these companies, and their risk-averse cultures, just be the wrong worlds from which these new platforms need to be born? Is there a more radical product that's not getting the attention it needs to catch on because it's upstaged by the big failures, in the media and in the market?
I think there are two sides to the story, here. On the one side, I think you're correct in your assesment of risk-adverseness. Big corporations like Microsoft, Sony, and Intel have too much too lose (or believe they do, anyway). Because they make big targets, they're going to submit to all of the MPAA/RIAA DRM bullshit because they don't want to risk letting those groups into their deep pockets. They may make some decent products (I think Windows Media Center's "10 foot" UI is very good, and works really well with their remote control), but they ultimately fall short by not providing features that users want (for example, the Microsoft DVR from Motorola doesn't have a 30 second skip-forward function, because that would make it too easy to skip commercials). This is where small startups like Tivo can really win. Microsoft has tried three times to make a Tivo killer (the now-dead Ultimate TV for use with DirectTV, the current Windows Media Center, and the current set-top box solution they license out to manufacturers like Motorola for cable), and have failed each time. Tivo's been around since 1997, and nobody's yet built a better DVR interface..
On the other hand, we're still missing some core pieces of technology before a media center PC will truly be viable. For example, let's look at my own scenario. I have a Tivo on a basic analog cable line, a Microsoft-based Motorola DVR on my premium digital cable line that's capable of recording HD streams, and a Windows Media Center PC that's currently not connected to any TV input at all. Why is my media center PC not doing any TV recording? Because 1) there's still no viable method of recording cable-based HD streams on a media center (I've tried QAM decoders, but they're apparently not compatible with the local Comcast streams, and they're currently not supported in Media Center anyway), and 2) when I added a splitter onto my cable line so I could run cable to the PC as well as the HD DVR, I got such bad signal loss that I was unable to watch HD streams on my DVR STB, let alone the PC. And my house was built in 1997, so it's not like I'm dealing with a decades-old cabling job. Part of that is surely user error (I don't care enough to figure out what's wrong with my wiring), but part of that is technology as well.
For now, I'm holding out for a PCI Cable Card supporting bi-directional signals and a version of Media Center supporting that. Supposedly that should all be available by the end of this year, at which point I'll revisit my wiring problems and hopefully get my media center up and running as the HDTV powerhouse it was meant to be. Until then, I'll continue to love my Tivo and tolerate my Microsoft DVR only because it can record HD and my Tivo can't.
I think this is yet another huge misstep by the Xbox team. Non-technical people don't traditionally do well with different but very similar products. I'm sure they'll get all games to work on both models, but I have a feeling some will recommend running on the faster one only.
As others have pointed out, don't expect to see a speed increase from this process change. Instead, this will allow for more stable and cheaper consoles (cheaper for Microsoft; who knows when they'll give us a price drop?).
However, with the xbox 360, propietary everything, the people with first rev 360's might feel frozen out, and might feel forced into buying a new version. You don't want to alienate your customers, especially when you have competion in the future.
What does proprietary vs. non-proprietary have to do with it? The original Xbox was "proprietary", even though it was based on standard parts (the CPU was a one-off design, the GPU was a one-off design, and everything was surface-mounted. You couldn't swap the CPU, GPU, or add more memory unless you were awesome with soldering). Anyway, you do realize that the original Xbox went through eight different "versions" ("revisions" may be a better word), right? Aside from getting screwed with a Thompson DVD drive (the version had little bearing on what drive you'd get, but that Thompson drives stopped shipping with later versions), all versions work exactly the same. In fact, the only reason you'd care about what version you have is if you need to do repairs yourself and need specific parts, or if you want to mod the box and need to make sure you get the right modchip package.
More importantly, this kind of product revision has always happened with consoles. Even Nintendo did it, way back with the NES. Sony does it, and obviously Microsoft does to. Expect to see a number of revisions of the 360 over the years, and unless they really screw something up (like Sony did with the PSTwo revision) you should expect all consoles to be equivalent.
How does Bonjour compare to Univeral Plug-n-Play (besides probably being more secure, given UPnP's reputation)?
UPnP is insecure because of its reputation? Aside from a little bit of GRC grand-standing, UPnP is perfectly safe (with normal precautions you'd take for anything network-related, of course). Sure, there were a few flaws in Microsoft's implementation of a UPnP IGD (Internet Gateway Device) for use in conjunction with ICS (Internet Connection Sharing, or "NAT" as the rest of us know it), which is something you probably shouldn't use anyway (consumer-grade routers have better connection sharing). Enabling UPnP on your router for use with UPnP-aware applications like Xbox Live, MSN Messenger, Azureus, Media Center Extenders, etc, is perfectly safe. If you use a Linux box as a NAT router, you can even install an IGD daemon for Linux (of course, you'll want to make sure it's not broadcasting on your public interface).
Others have mentioned that Rendevous/Bonjour is not a competitor to UPnP. I'm talking about the perceived threat of UPnP, and the unfortunate damage that idiot GRC did five years ago by spouting off about crap he didn't understand.
And yet - they have a $400 console, the games for the system so far are a lot of FPS games, then there's Condemned, and Dead or Alive 4
Eh? First off, Condemned == FPS. But that's not my point. Let's look at some games, shall we? Let's start with the current Recent Top Games for 360 from GameRankings (this list may change, of course):
Oblivion - not an FPS, though it is from a first-person perspective.
GRAW - Third-person shooter. I don't much care for the Ghost Recon series, so I don't know if it's playable from a first-person perspective this time around.
Burnout Revenge - Crash simulator (I would call it a "racing game", but it's not). Not an FPS, though you could play it from a first-person perspective
Fight Night Round 3 - Boxing. not an FPS. There is some first-person perspective bits, but that's not the normal camera mode.
Tomb Raider: Legend - Third-person adventure.
Marble Blast Ultra - Maybe you're not counting XBLA games, but if not you should. Definitely not an FPS.
Far Cry Instincts Predator - The first real FPS on the list!
Top Spin 2 - Tennis. Not an FPS
The Outfit - Third-person squad-based tactical shooter. More RTS than FPS, really.
Full Auto - "racing" game with guns. As with all racing games, you may play from a first-person perspective, but that doesn't make it an FPS.
The current "Most Popular" list only includes one other FPS, BF2MC. Doesn't really seem like an over-abundance of FPS on the 360 to me, even if you do count GRAW as an FPS. Of course, that's also making the assumption that "hardcore" == "FPS", which is not true either. Would you consider games like Gran Turismo or Forza to be "hardcore"? I would, as they're dedicated racing simulators and certainly not as accessible as an arcadey racer like Burnout or Ridge Racer. But then again, they're not first-person shooters, so they can't be hardcore, can they?:)
So far, I'd say that if Microsoft intends for the 360 to be a "non-hardcore" system, then so far they're doing a crappy job of it. Right now, it *defines* the hardcore console gamer.
"Non-hardcore" != "targetting the kids". In fact, I'd consider non-hardcore to be more about targetting casual gamers rather than getting the 6-year-old crowd. In that respect, the 360 is doing an awesome job with Xbox Live Arcade. Maybe the mainstream titles don't appeal to non-hardcore gamers (which I would argue should not be the case -- for every BattleField 2, there's a Top Spin 2 or Fight Night Round 3 that a non-hardcore gamer could love), but your non-hardcore gamers aren't nearly as likely to spend $60 on a game anyway. They'll spend the same amount of money on $5-10 casual games, though, which is where XBLA comes in.
It seems to work with Nintendogs on low end hardware (Nintendo DS with 4MB memory). I suspect the secret is having a limited number of things to match - for example a voice menu with limited options in each context that sound very different.
But in Nintendogs, you're talking to a dog. It's okay if it doesn't quite understand the first time. In fact, that's expected and part of the "charm" of the dog. I don't mind telling my dog to "sit" a couple times, but if I had to tell my computer to "save" three or four times before it actually saved I'd be really pissed (or worse, if it acted like a real dog and tried to do something else to see if that's what I'm asking. "Roll over. Roll over. No, that's 'play dead'. Roll over." "Save. Save. No, that's 'reboot'. Save.")
(Caveat: I haven't played Nintendogs, and it's been a while since I've had a dog of my own. However, I have very good friends with dogs, and even when well-trained they may take two or three repetitions of a command to do the right thing.)
Part of what made Morrowind so fun was the ability to steal without getting caught in a realistic way.
If you're getting caught stealing in Oblivion, you're doing something wrong. Use sneak mode and make sure nobody sees you taking stuff. If nobody sees it happen, you get no bounty. If you have no bounty, guards won't try to arrest you. Sure, you still can't sell stuff to normal shops, but it's easy to join the Thieves' Guild to get access to fences (you have to advance in the guild to get access to better fences).
In all, I like Oblivion's theft implementation a little bit better. Sure, I have to seek out a fence to sell my stuff, but at least I know exactly what stuff is stolen and I don't have to keep track of who I stole it from. In Morrowind, the same "Stolen Property" flag was there, but hidden. If you didn't keep good track of what you stole and kept, you could find yourself weaponless or armorless if you ever got caught by a guard (because they took all of your stolen merchandise, just like in Oblivion). More importantly, if you stole an item from a shopkeeper, you could never sell that type of item to them again (whether it was the same item you stole from them or not). Even worse than that, some NPCs would even refuse you service if you ever stole from them (most notably enchanters, where they would refuse to enchant items for you if you stole from them -- whether you were caught or not).
Is it realistic that guards know exactly what you've stolen at all times, even if it was something you stole many game-months before? No. Does it hurt gameplay? Not really. Not nearly as much as it did in Morrowind.
As for iTunes, it's not the interface, it's the features. Most of the time, I use it on my Powerbook. The rare (2x times a year) time I use it on Windows, it's close enough, and supports the same playlists, streaming radio, streaming to AirTunes enabled speakers, etc, that I use. Again, you're totally ignoring my use case in favour of your view of what the world Should Be (TM). I expect such arrogance on Slashdot, though, so I'm sure I can forgive you.
iTunes' features aren't enough to justify its horrible interface on Windows. It makes sense that you want iTunes, coming from your Powerbook as your 95% use case and only using Windows occassionally. That's perfectly fine, but then you're not the average Windows user (or really, you're not a Windows user at all). Your use case is irrelevant.
Consider a scenario where a popular Windows application gets ported over to OS X. If the app is ported to look and act exactly as it does on Windows, you're not going to be happy with it. It doesn't fit in with the look and feel of any of your other apps, it expects you to have a two-button mouse, it doesn't recognize standard option-click and shift-click behaviors, etc. Unless that app is the only one to do what it does, you're probably not going to use it. iTunes is that scenario, just the other way around. It's an OS X application that just happens to run on Windows, and that's wrong. Microsoft can manage to make Office look and feel like an OS X app when they port to Mac. Adobe can make Photoshop look and feel like a Windows app when they port to Windows. Apple should not be exempt from that level of judgement. iTunes may be a very good OS X app, adhering to OS X UI standards and behaviors. It's not a very good Windows app, and that's the problem.
Again, using the theoretical example of a popular Windows app ported to OS X, I would probably use it and enjoy it because I'm a Windows user 95% of the time. My feelings about the app are unimportant to the larger picture, however, because I'm not the target audience of the port. Your feelings about iTunes on Windows are unimportant, because you're not the target audience of that port. It sounds bad, but it's the truth.
(BTW, this argument is one of the big problems with Java/Swing apps. They have the same look and feel across all environments, and fit into none. Java/SWT is better, being implemented on native widgets, but it also has the same problem to some extent. You use an app like Azureus because it's one of the best at what it does, not because it has a good interface or fits well with your OS. Maybe people believe that iTunes' features are enough to overcome its crap interface, but I don't.)
Not my Windows. Windows 2000 does not have any archiving tools, nor does it have remote desktop support out of the box. That's why you need WinRAR and TightVNC. The Windows XP and up GUI terminal client doesn't seem as flexible as TightVNC, although I have used it.
It's been nearly five years sice I used Windows 2000, so as I mentioned I could be wrong about it including Zip Folder support. However, Terminal Server is in Windows 2000 (yes, even in Pro), though you may have to dig a little bit to turn it on. That you didn't know that is understandable, but to claim that it doesn't have it at all because you didn't know that is not right.
You mention a lot of things in WinXP+ that I simply don't use, because those newer versions of Windows have that activation bullshit attached to them. I get them for "free" because I'm an upper-year CS student, but it's not worth the hassle.
If you're getting a site licensed version of XP, there is no activation. So what are you complaining about?
As for IE: any program that isn't dangerous if you use it "for only a few websites" is a program too dangerous to run on machines with access to my network. FireFox tends to get security updates with a day of there being an issue, and it's rarely used for browsing on the Windows machine anyway -- Unix exploits are much rarer than any other kind, giving me further protection:)
I didn't say IE was safe "for only a few websites". I said it's safe if you are "a little careful in your browsing". Stay away from pr0n and w4r3z sites, don't go following obvious phishing links, etc, and you'll be fine. Also, I'd just like to point out that it's a little hypocritical of you to claim you use Firefox because of security updates but then continue using Windows 2000 which is just about dead (2005 was the end of its active support life, with 5 more years of passive support meaning only the most critical of critical issues will get patched). You can't have your cake and eat it to. Complaining about IE because you're still using Win2K is like bitching about Firefox 0.8 running on Redhat 6.0. Upgrade to XP SP2, and make sure you patch IE up to 6.0 sp2 or 7.0 Beta 2. Then feel free to continue to bitch, but at least you'll be able to support your position better.
I'm not sure why you don't like iTunes. Although replication of playlists/data is not so good (because my Powerbook goes with me, it's not always around the network, but I would like the network to have a duplicate of that data), it is a great ripper, playlist organizer, and also handles streaming well (either from other iTunes sources, or to my Airport Express). I can also copy music from other people when they bring their shared iTunes to the same subnet. I don't think WMP has that support.
My problem with iTunes is that Apple doesn't know the first thing about writing Windows applications. For this argument, let's set aside the fact that buying an iPod ties you to iTunes, or that QuickTime is a huge piece of crap (that also suffers from some of the same iTunes problems I'll get into), or the fact that if you just want QT without iTunes Apple makes you have to really dig for it on their web site. So, ignoring all that, my problem with iTunes is that Apple doesn't respect Windows UI guidelines at all. When Microsoft writes apps for OS X (MSN Messenger aside), they follow all of Apple's guidelines. Why, then, won't Apple follow Microsoft's? Instead, we get this ugly brushed metal thing that looks completely out of place. We get unintuitive ctrl-click and shift-click semantics that don't make sense on a Windows machine. We get comlpetely re-implemented common controls (like a ListView) that have accessibility problems. Some of this would be forgiveable if iTunes was fast, but it's not.
Yes, WMP and Winamp also have skinned interfaces, but they're
* WinRAR. Yup, Windows doesn't ship with a decent compression tool.
Depends on your definition of "decent", of course. Windows since XP (and perhaps 2000? I don't quite recall) can open ZIP files from explorer without a third-party app. Sure, it won't open RAR, but then neither does WinZip, gzip, bzip, etc.
* PuTTY. No SSH included either.
Agree. PuTTY is teh awesome.
* Cygwin. Basics command environment, for working with the rest of your tools in a normal way.
Meh. Learn that Windows != Unix and you'll do fine. The cmd.exe environment may not be the most powerful, but it works in its own way. Think of it like tcsh for *nix. You may not really want to use it as your shell or for scripting, but you could if you had to. You may also consider 4NT or Monad/MSH. If you're suggesting Cygwin for scripting purposes, that just shows you know nothing about Windows. Scripting in Windows is just as powerful as in *nix, if not moreso, but you're going to have to get comfortable with jscript or vbscript and COM/ActiveX.
* TightVNC. Windows is not network aware out of the box.
Bullshit. First off, "not network aware" is the wrong way to describe this problem. Second, Terminal Server is built into Windows. You may have to turn it on (or jump through some hoops to turn it on, as in XP Home or MCE), but it's there. (In fact, it can't not be there, as XP's Fast User Switching is based on it, and any time you log into a WinXP or Win2K3 machine you're actually on a terminal server session that just happens to be local.) VNC is nice, but RDP is quite a bit better (unless you're working over dial-up, in which case VNC sucks but just not as bad).
* Daemon tools. Much like MacOS, Windows doesn't have a good loopback tool. Daemon tools fixes this.
And it also breaks quite a few games, especially those using StarForce. DRM and copy protection sucks, and StarForce is the worst of the bunch, but it's the price you pay if you want to play games.
* iTunes. Yes, I install it on all Windows installations:)
Because nothing says "Windows" like a badly written, poorly-ported Mac program:). Honestly, I'd rather use Windows Media Player or Winamp than iTunes. But then, I don't have an iPod either, so I'm not forced into using iTunes.
* Azureus. How else do you download files nowadays?
One of the better BitTorrent clients. Good UPnP integration, too. Not really a Windows app, though, as it's all Java/SWT.
* FireFox. IE is not an option.
Meh again. FireFox is nice, IE isn't nearly as bad as you seem to believe (0-day exploits aside, anyway, which you'd never run into if you were a little careful in your browsing). IE7 is getting much better, as well. Competition is good, zealotry isn't.
Once GhostRecon comes out. I'm in the States, not Japan, I'd like to point out, but GhostRecon's latest offering seems like a very attractive title. And, of course, now that Oblivion is out...
So you're picking one up, right? Because GRAW has been out for a couple weeks now. Also, the 360 stocking situation has improved significantly, so you have a very good chance of finding one without having to camp.
I've been enjoying Oblivion on my 360 for the past week. No way would that run on any of my PCs.
Why not? No 3D drivers for your graphics set? Just curious.
Actually, I haven't even tried. It's an ATI x300 mobile chipset, which I guess might work with ATI's opengl drivers. I should've said more along the lines of, "OpenGL acceleration would be less-performant than on Windows," given that ATI's drivers generally perform worse on Linux than on Windows (compared to nVidia's, which perform the same or better). That's a problem with ATI and not Linux, and was only meant to be an example of how DosBox may perform differently on different operating systems even though it's the same underlying code and hardware.
I just checked the DosBox website; it says that Arena runs just fine. Some of the user comments make it sound like you've gotta have a monster machine to be able to emulate a fast enough box to run the game smoothly, or else be willing to have a high frameskip setting.
I can believe that. DosBox is about up to 1994-96 level of speed for games. Daggerfall pretty much maxes it out, while Arena should be playable (maybe adjust the in-game detail slider a bit). I went ahead and set up Arena last night on my laptop (1.7GHz P4m) and it was a little chunky. Raising the cpu cycles beyond 15,000 didn't really do anything for me, as I believe I was maxing out my processor already. I'll have to try it again while watching CPU usage. I didn't play too long on the game, as it's pretty bad with a trackpad. For now, I'm having too much fun playing Oblivion, but at some point I'll go back and finish up Morrowind, and play some of Arena just for history's sake.
(Note: I'm doing this on Windows. DosBox should be just as stable under Linux, but may have better or worse performance depending on the underlying OS and display mode. For example, I choose to use OpenGL as DosBox's display mode. If I was running linux on this laptop, I wouldn't be able to get OpenGL accelerated and would suffer for that even though the game itself doesn't use 3D acceleration.)
1080p is the highest resolution there will be for at least 10-15 years. Why buy a set which you'll have to junk when you have upgrade lust?
But 1080p as a standard is not fully fleshed out, you have to really hunt to find a TV that will actually accept a 1080p input, and even then it may not accept a non-HDCP input (1080p only being supported via HDMI). Good luck getting a PC to display a 1920x1080 signal with HDCP.
I'd rather save $1000-2000 now and buy a 720p set, and then upgrade to 1080p in a couple years when the standards have been hashed out, the technology has actually caught up (full horizontal resolution rather than wobulation, accepts 1080p signals on all relevant inputs, no HDCP requirement, etc), and content exists (Blu-ray or HD-DVD, game consoles actually supporting 1080p (I don't really believe the PS3 will), etc). If I bought a 1080p set today, I'd have to buy a new one in a couple years anyway, so why waste the money?
I also see they updated Forza, which had some minor slowdowns, and when racing at 150 mph, that did not help my already questioable racing skills.
The only slowdown I saw on Forza prior to this update was when I raced in an in-car view with the rearview mirror turned on (which is how I race, so it happened all the time). Turning off the rearview mirror removed all of the slowdown issues I had. This update fixed the issue so now I can race with my rearview mirror turned back on, but the game was definitely playable before. You just to be OCD about looking behind you since you had no rearview mirror.
I was thinking of getting a 360 to play XBL Call of Duty with the nephews, but they'll have to live with Halo 2 until I get a HD 1080p set..
Why would you waste your money on a 1080p set when the Xbox 360 only does 720p/1080i? Not only that, (practically) nothing else does 1080p either, and most 1080p TVs don't accept 1080p signals even if you had a source to drive them. Worse, for those few sets that do handle 1080p input, the framerate of 1080p is around 25fps-30fps. Sufficient for TV and movies, not so great for video gaming. Finally, add in the fact that scaling can take some time (milliseconds, but enough to lag audio or gameplay) depending on the set, and that there's nothing available in the TV's native 1080p source, you're basically never going to use the TV in it's most optimal native mode.
And that's not even getting into any of the other issues, like 1080p sets that aren't even 1080p (or, they are 1080p in that they have a full 1080 pixel vertical resolution, but use a technique called "wobulation" to fake 1920 horizontal pixels using a DMD (Digital Micro Device, the display source for DLP sets) with only 960 horizontal pixels).
I'm all for being an early adopter. I bought an HDTV way back in 2001 (and replaced it with a 720p DLP set this past November), which may not have been right on the bleeding edge but it was close. However, I just can't see spending $1000-2000 more to be an earlier adopter of 1080p when I'm virtually guaranteed to have to replace the set in 2-3 years since what I buy today isn't really 1080p at all.
The installer.exe from their site says that it's a win32 program and can't be run in dos if you try to use it in dosbox. It's been a while since I tried, I can't remember if Cedega could run the installer but not the game itself, or if it wouldn't even run the installer.
The installer executable from Bethesda is a simple self-extracting archive in RAR format. Any decompression tool that understands RAR should be able to read it (such as the shareware RAR for Linux). It should also run just fine under WINE or the Cedega branch of WINE. The game itself is a DOS executable, which I'd be surprised if WINE/Cedega could run that.
I'd bet that Oblivion will be mostly or entirely fuctional within 6 months.
That's assuming that Oblivion is functional at all:). Bethesda as a history of ambitious but buggy games, though they're also pretty good about patching the worst problems. Of course, I don't have a machine that's beefy enough to run Oblivion, so I'm playing it on my Xbox 360 instead. Very satisfying. Much better than Morrowind was on Xbox (I ended up getting that for PC since the Xbox version was so much crap).
Please, if you don't understand copyright/trademark licensing, don't spread misinformation. Unless you know the conditions under which the owners of the Bond license, er, licensed them to Nintendo/Rare when Goldeneye was made, you have no right to say you know what's going on.
It may be speculation, but it's not my speculation. Read. Here's the relevant portion, in case you don't want to read.
Perhaps most importantly of all the seminal Goldeneye will also be MIA, unless both Rare and new license holder EA manage to agree a deal.
I added Nintendo and Microsoft to the list of involved parties, because a) it's Nintendo's service, and b) Microsoft owns Rare, so any deal will be made through them.
For Arena and DaggerFall, try DosBox. I'm pretty sure DosBox is Bethesda's preferred method of running Arena, and since DaggerFall is also a DOS game I'd start there rather than trying to get it to run under WINE (does WINE emulate Windows' DOS emulation?).
Patch up Morrowind and you shouldn't run into too many crashes (I've run into a few after multi-hour-long play sessions), but make sure you save often. No idea how it runs on Linux, so I'll take your word for it. Good luck getting Oblivion to run under WINE.
I really liked the ability to buy horses with wagons, houses, and boats (I haven't played Oblivion yet so I'm not sure if they brought those features back).
Horses are back, though without wagons, but the fast travel feature makes them pretty much redundant. Houses are also back, though there are only one or two available to purchase per town (unlike a game like Fable, where you could kill the current owner of a house and it would come on the market and rent it out -- the Oblivion houses are more analogous to Fable's "newlywed" houses). Ships aren't purchaseable or sailable. But then, I haven't played Daggerfall (yeah, I know, I suck), so I don't know exactly how these features were implemented there.
Microsoft wont let Rare's games be on Nintendos Virtual Console. It is OK for Rare to make GBA and DS games because those systems arnt competiting against Microsofts XBOX. The Virtual Console is.
There's also the added complication of licensing. Even if Rare wanted to release GoldenEye on the Revolution, and Microsoft would let them, EA owns the Bond license now and Rare, Microsoft, and Nintendo would all have to come to an agreement on the usage of that license.
It would be pretty sweet to get some of Rare's old stuff on XBLA. I wonder if they own the rights to Killer Instinct, or if that's a Nintendo property? Or go even further back and let's get some R.C. Pro-Am and Battletoads action up on the Arcade, with Live play!
MS tried the same, first party games as 50 and we know how it ended.
All we know at this point is that third-party 360 games tend to be $60 because everybody's following EA's lead. We don't know how this increase in price affects quarterly earnings, and it'll probably take at least one more quarter to find out since the limiting factor of Q3 FY06 is lack of 360s in the channel, possibly artificially limiting the number of games sold.
Chances are the $60 price will stick, but we can still hope that the price increase doesn't make up for decrease in demand and the publishers get the idea that $60 == too damn much for a non-special edition game.
No it is not insightful, it is a senseless question. ASP is server side. "AJAX" is just javascript, its purely client side. Nothing about IE7 (or any other IE version) has anything to do with ASP.
A useful question might be whether Microsoft's Atlas library (ASP.NET 2.0 client-side AJAX stuff) works on browsers other than IE. And the answer is, "Yes!". If you don't believe me, head on over to Live.com in Firefox and tell me if it works. Yes, yes it does. And Live.com is running on an older version of Atlas than the CTP that was just released at MIX06. Live.com does support IE6, IE7, and Firefox, and supported the Opera 9 betas at one point (it seems that the early-March site re-launch broke Opera support), but not Safari. However, as I understand it the Opera and Safari non-support are problems which Live.com needs to solve on their own and not something inherently wrong with Atlas.
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Just some nitpicking:
While Oblivion does have its share of bugs, the only slowness I noticed was after playing for a while and letting the game cache get fragmented. There's a work-around to clear the cache by holding down any button on the controller when you start the game (hold it through the BethSoft logo. Once the 2K logo displays, you can let go). Not the best solution, but it is a solution. I'm right there with you, wishing for SFII. What ever happened to shipping it in March?
You should clarify that the DVD-ROM is loud when it's spinning at full speed. The machine itself (fan noise) is very quiet, and the DVD-ROM is also quiet while watching DVDs. There's not a whole lot you can do about drive speed when it's running that quickly (the 360 DVD-ROM is something like 16x, compared to the 4x in the Xbox or PS2).
You're dinging the 360 for not doing something it never claimed to do. The 360 is a Media Center Extender. In other words, it's completely dependent on a Windows Media Center PC to feed it media. It sounds like you want the 360 to be a stand-alone media player (or mostly stand-alone, while occassionally pulling media from the network).
As for having limited component video inputs, get yourself a mux. I'm preferential to Audio Authority's 1154A, but you don't need to spend > $200 on a mux. You can find decent ones (minus auto-switching, audio format conversion, and the cool rack-friendly form-factor) for less than $50. You do realize the PS2 can do component output, right? The graphics will still look PS2-bad, but the color and sharpness will be better (and if you have a game that can support 480p, like GT4, you can only do that over component).
There is no such thing as "abandonware", legally. Either the games are released to the public domain, or they're not (or they're released under a license that makes it possible to port them without legal troubles). "Abandonware" games that are still technically under copyright cannot be ported without proper consent. The question is, who gives that consent? How do you get permission to port a game that's been out of print for 15 years, and the original developer/publisher has been out of business for 10? Who currently owns the property? You have to track down the series of sales of IP until you hopefully find the right company you need to deal with. This is painful.
I do agree Microsoft needs to add more games to XBLA, but I don't think that's really going to be a problem for them. I think we're just in the lull before the storm right now, having not had any new XBLA games since Jewel Quest. Prepare to be bombarded (good thing I just finished up Oblivion, so I'll be ready to play some new arcade games)!.
Apparently you don't spend much time in the sections. The main "Slashdot green" pages aren't too bad, but then you run into the eye-stabbingly bad Your Rights Online or BSD sections, or the baby poop-colored IT section, etc.
Complaining about Slashdot's look and feel isn't a major thread of discontent around here, but it definitely happens.
I think there are two sides to the story, here. On the one side, I think you're correct in your assesment of risk-adverseness. Big corporations like Microsoft, Sony, and Intel have too much too lose (or believe they do, anyway). Because they make big targets, they're going to submit to all of the MPAA/RIAA DRM bullshit because they don't want to risk letting those groups into their deep pockets. They may make some decent products (I think Windows Media Center's "10 foot" UI is very good, and works really well with their remote control), but they ultimately fall short by not providing features that users want (for example, the Microsoft DVR from Motorola doesn't have a 30 second skip-forward function, because that would make it too easy to skip commercials). This is where small startups like Tivo can really win. Microsoft has tried three times to make a Tivo killer (the now-dead Ultimate TV for use with DirectTV, the current Windows Media Center, and the current set-top box solution they license out to manufacturers like Motorola for cable), and have failed each time. Tivo's been around since 1997, and nobody's yet built a better DVR interface..
On the other hand, we're still missing some core pieces of technology before a media center PC will truly be viable. For example, let's look at my own scenario. I have a Tivo on a basic analog cable line, a Microsoft-based Motorola DVR on my premium digital cable line that's capable of recording HD streams, and a Windows Media Center PC that's currently not connected to any TV input at all. Why is my media center PC not doing any TV recording? Because 1) there's still no viable method of recording cable-based HD streams on a media center (I've tried QAM decoders, but they're apparently not compatible with the local Comcast streams, and they're currently not supported in Media Center anyway), and 2) when I added a splitter onto my cable line so I could run cable to the PC as well as the HD DVR, I got such bad signal loss that I was unable to watch HD streams on my DVR STB, let alone the PC. And my house was built in 1997, so it's not like I'm dealing with a decades-old cabling job. Part of that is surely user error (I don't care enough to figure out what's wrong with my wiring), but part of that is technology as well.
For now, I'm holding out for a PCI Cable Card supporting bi-directional signals and a version of Media Center supporting that. Supposedly that should all be available by the end of this year, at which point I'll revisit my wiring problems and hopefully get my media center up and running as the HDTV powerhouse it was meant to be. Until then, I'll continue to love my Tivo and tolerate my Microsoft DVR only because it can record HD and my Tivo can't.
As others have pointed out, don't expect to see a speed increase from this process change. Instead, this will allow for more stable and cheaper consoles (cheaper for Microsoft; who knows when they'll give us a price drop?).
What does proprietary vs. non-proprietary have to do with it? The original Xbox was "proprietary", even though it was based on standard parts (the CPU was a one-off design, the GPU was a one-off design, and everything was surface-mounted. You couldn't swap the CPU, GPU, or add more memory unless you were awesome with soldering). Anyway, you do realize that the original Xbox went through eight different "versions" ("revisions" may be a better word), right? Aside from getting screwed with a Thompson DVD drive (the version had little bearing on what drive you'd get, but that Thompson drives stopped shipping with later versions), all versions work exactly the same. In fact, the only reason you'd care about what version you have is if you need to do repairs yourself and need specific parts, or if you want to mod the box and need to make sure you get the right modchip package.
More importantly, this kind of product revision has always happened with consoles. Even Nintendo did it, way back with the NES. Sony does it, and obviously Microsoft does to. Expect to see a number of revisions of the 360 over the years, and unless they really screw something up (like Sony did with the PSTwo revision) you should expect all consoles to be equivalent.
UPnP is insecure because of its reputation? Aside from a little bit of GRC grand-standing, UPnP is perfectly safe (with normal precautions you'd take for anything network-related, of course). Sure, there were a few flaws in Microsoft's implementation of a UPnP IGD (Internet Gateway Device) for use in conjunction with ICS (Internet Connection Sharing, or "NAT" as the rest of us know it), which is something you probably shouldn't use anyway (consumer-grade routers have better connection sharing). Enabling UPnP on your router for use with UPnP-aware applications like Xbox Live, MSN Messenger, Azureus, Media Center Extenders, etc, is perfectly safe. If you use a Linux box as a NAT router, you can even install an IGD daemon for Linux (of course, you'll want to make sure it's not broadcasting on your public interface).
Others have mentioned that Rendevous/Bonjour is not a competitor to UPnP. I'm talking about the perceived threat of UPnP, and the unfortunate damage that idiot GRC did five years ago by spouting off about crap he didn't understand.
Eh? First off, Condemned == FPS. But that's not my point. Let's look at some games, shall we? Let's start with the current Recent Top Games for 360 from GameRankings (this list may change, of course):
The current "Most Popular" list only includes one other FPS, BF2MC. Doesn't really seem like an over-abundance of FPS on the 360 to me, even if you do count GRAW as an FPS. Of course, that's also making the assumption that "hardcore" == "FPS", which is not true either. Would you consider games like Gran Turismo or Forza to be "hardcore"? I would, as they're dedicated racing simulators and certainly not as accessible as an arcadey racer like Burnout or Ridge Racer. But then again, they're not first-person shooters, so they can't be hardcore, can they?
"Non-hardcore" != "targetting the kids". In fact, I'd consider non-hardcore to be more about targetting casual gamers rather than getting the 6-year-old crowd. In that respect, the 360 is doing an awesome job with Xbox Live Arcade. Maybe the mainstream titles don't appeal to non-hardcore gamers (which I would argue should not be the case -- for every BattleField 2, there's a Top Spin 2 or Fight Night Round 3 that a non-hardcore gamer could love), but your non-hardcore gamers aren't nearly as likely to spend $60 on a game anyway. They'll spend the same amount of money on $5-10 casual games, though, which is where XBLA comes in.
But in Nintendogs, you're talking to a dog. It's okay if it doesn't quite understand the first time. In fact, that's expected and part of the "charm" of the dog. I don't mind telling my dog to "sit" a couple times, but if I had to tell my computer to "save" three or four times before it actually saved I'd be really pissed (or worse, if it acted like a real dog and tried to do something else to see if that's what I'm asking. "Roll over. Roll over. No, that's 'play dead'. Roll over." "Save. Save. No, that's 'reboot'. Save.")
(Caveat: I haven't played Nintendogs, and it's been a while since I've had a dog of my own. However, I have very good friends with dogs, and even when well-trained they may take two or three repetitions of a command to do the right thing.)
If you're getting caught stealing in Oblivion, you're doing something wrong. Use sneak mode and make sure nobody sees you taking stuff. If nobody sees it happen, you get no bounty. If you have no bounty, guards won't try to arrest you. Sure, you still can't sell stuff to normal shops, but it's easy to join the Thieves' Guild to get access to fences (you have to advance in the guild to get access to better fences).
In all, I like Oblivion's theft implementation a little bit better. Sure, I have to seek out a fence to sell my stuff, but at least I know exactly what stuff is stolen and I don't have to keep track of who I stole it from. In Morrowind, the same "Stolen Property" flag was there, but hidden. If you didn't keep good track of what you stole and kept, you could find yourself weaponless or armorless if you ever got caught by a guard (because they took all of your stolen merchandise, just like in Oblivion). More importantly, if you stole an item from a shopkeeper, you could never sell that type of item to them again (whether it was the same item you stole from them or not). Even worse than that, some NPCs would even refuse you service if you ever stole from them (most notably enchanters, where they would refuse to enchant items for you if you stole from them -- whether you were caught or not).
Is it realistic that guards know exactly what you've stolen at all times, even if it was something you stole many game-months before? No. Does it hurt gameplay? Not really. Not nearly as much as it did in Morrowind.
Not necessarily. Maybe they got into it to tighten up the graphics on level 3.
iTunes' features aren't enough to justify its horrible interface on Windows. It makes sense that you want iTunes, coming from your Powerbook as your 95% use case and only using Windows occassionally. That's perfectly fine, but then you're not the average Windows user (or really, you're not a Windows user at all). Your use case is irrelevant.
Consider a scenario where a popular Windows application gets ported over to OS X. If the app is ported to look and act exactly as it does on Windows, you're not going to be happy with it. It doesn't fit in with the look and feel of any of your other apps, it expects you to have a two-button mouse, it doesn't recognize standard option-click and shift-click behaviors, etc. Unless that app is the only one to do what it does, you're probably not going to use it. iTunes is that scenario, just the other way around. It's an OS X application that just happens to run on Windows, and that's wrong. Microsoft can manage to make Office look and feel like an OS X app when they port to Mac. Adobe can make Photoshop look and feel like a Windows app when they port to Windows. Apple should not be exempt from that level of judgement. iTunes may be a very good OS X app, adhering to OS X UI standards and behaviors. It's not a very good Windows app, and that's the problem.
Again, using the theoretical example of a popular Windows app ported to OS X, I would probably use it and enjoy it because I'm a Windows user 95% of the time. My feelings about the app are unimportant to the larger picture, however, because I'm not the target audience of the port. Your feelings about iTunes on Windows are unimportant, because you're not the target audience of that port. It sounds bad, but it's the truth.
(BTW, this argument is one of the big problems with Java/Swing apps. They have the same look and feel across all environments, and fit into none. Java/SWT is better, being implemented on native widgets, but it also has the same problem to some extent. You use an app like Azureus because it's one of the best at what it does, not because it has a good interface or fits well with your OS. Maybe people believe that iTunes' features are enough to overcome its crap interface, but I don't.)
It's been nearly five years sice I used Windows 2000, so as I mentioned I could be wrong about it including Zip Folder support. However, Terminal Server is in Windows 2000 (yes, even in Pro), though you may have to dig a little bit to turn it on. That you didn't know that is understandable, but to claim that it doesn't have it at all because you didn't know that is not right.
If you're getting a site licensed version of XP, there is no activation. So what are you complaining about?
I didn't say IE was safe "for only a few websites". I said it's safe if you are "a little careful in your browsing". Stay away from pr0n and w4r3z sites, don't go following obvious phishing links, etc, and you'll be fine. Also, I'd just like to point out that it's a little hypocritical of you to claim you use Firefox because of security updates but then continue using Windows 2000 which is just about dead (2005 was the end of its active support life, with 5 more years of passive support meaning only the most critical of critical issues will get patched). You can't have your cake and eat it to. Complaining about IE because you're still using Win2K is like bitching about Firefox 0.8 running on Redhat 6.0. Upgrade to XP SP2, and make sure you patch IE up to 6.0 sp2 or 7.0 Beta 2. Then feel free to continue to bitch, but at least you'll be able to support your position better.
My problem with iTunes is that Apple doesn't know the first thing about writing Windows applications. For this argument, let's set aside the fact that buying an iPod ties you to iTunes, or that QuickTime is a huge piece of crap (that also suffers from some of the same iTunes problems I'll get into), or the fact that if you just want QT without iTunes Apple makes you have to really dig for it on their web site. So, ignoring all that, my problem with iTunes is that Apple doesn't respect Windows UI guidelines at all. When Microsoft writes apps for OS X (MSN Messenger aside), they follow all of Apple's guidelines. Why, then, won't Apple follow Microsoft's? Instead, we get this ugly brushed metal thing that looks completely out of place. We get unintuitive ctrl-click and shift-click semantics that don't make sense on a Windows machine. We get comlpetely re-implemented common controls (like a ListView) that have accessibility problems. Some of this would be forgiveable if iTunes was fast, but it's not.
Yes, WMP and Winamp also have skinned interfaces, but they're
Depends on your definition of "decent", of course. Windows since XP (and perhaps 2000? I don't quite recall) can open ZIP files from explorer without a third-party app. Sure, it won't open RAR, but then neither does WinZip, gzip, bzip, etc.
Agree. PuTTY is teh awesome.
Meh. Learn that Windows != Unix and you'll do fine. The cmd.exe environment may not be the most powerful, but it works in its own way. Think of it like tcsh for *nix. You may not really want to use it as your shell or for scripting, but you could if you had to. You may also consider 4NT or Monad/MSH. If you're suggesting Cygwin for scripting purposes, that just shows you know nothing about Windows. Scripting in Windows is just as powerful as in *nix, if not moreso, but you're going to have to get comfortable with jscript or vbscript and COM/ActiveX.
Bullshit. First off, "not network aware" is the wrong way to describe this problem. Second, Terminal Server is built into Windows. You may have to turn it on (or jump through some hoops to turn it on, as in XP Home or MCE), but it's there. (In fact, it can't not be there, as XP's Fast User Switching is based on it, and any time you log into a WinXP or Win2K3 machine you're actually on a terminal server session that just happens to be local.) VNC is nice, but RDP is quite a bit better (unless you're working over dial-up, in which case VNC sucks but just not as bad).
And it also breaks quite a few games, especially those using StarForce. DRM and copy protection sucks, and StarForce is the worst of the bunch, but it's the price you pay if you want to play games.
Because nothing says "Windows" like a badly written, poorly-ported Mac program :). Honestly, I'd rather use Windows Media Player or Winamp than iTunes. But then, I don't have an iPod either, so I'm not forced into using iTunes.
One of the better BitTorrent clients. Good UPnP integration, too. Not really a Windows app, though, as it's all Java/SWT.
Meh again. FireFox is nice, IE isn't nearly as bad as you seem to believe (0-day exploits aside, anyway, which you'd never run into if you were a little careful in your browsing). IE7 is getting much better, as well. Competition is good, zealotry isn't.
So you're picking one up, right? Because GRAW has been out for a couple weeks now. Also, the 360 stocking situation has improved significantly, so you have a very good chance of finding one without having to camp.
I've been enjoying Oblivion on my 360 for the past week. No way would that run on any of my PCs.
Actually, I haven't even tried. It's an ATI x300 mobile chipset, which I guess might work with ATI's opengl drivers. I should've said more along the lines of, "OpenGL acceleration would be less-performant than on Windows," given that ATI's drivers generally perform worse on Linux than on Windows (compared to nVidia's, which perform the same or better). That's a problem with ATI and not Linux, and was only meant to be an example of how DosBox may perform differently on different operating systems even though it's the same underlying code and hardware.
I can believe that. DosBox is about up to 1994-96 level of speed for games. Daggerfall pretty much maxes it out, while Arena should be playable (maybe adjust the in-game detail slider a bit). I went ahead and set up Arena last night on my laptop (1.7GHz P4m) and it was a little chunky. Raising the cpu cycles beyond 15,000 didn't really do anything for me, as I believe I was maxing out my processor already. I'll have to try it again while watching CPU usage. I didn't play too long on the game, as it's pretty bad with a trackpad. For now, I'm having too much fun playing Oblivion, but at some point I'll go back and finish up Morrowind, and play some of Arena just for history's sake.
(Note: I'm doing this on Windows. DosBox should be just as stable under Linux, but may have better or worse performance depending on the underlying OS and display mode. For example, I choose to use OpenGL as DosBox's display mode. If I was running linux on this laptop, I wouldn't be able to get OpenGL accelerated and would suffer for that even though the game itself doesn't use 3D acceleration.)
But 1080p as a standard is not fully fleshed out, you have to really hunt to find a TV that will actually accept a 1080p input, and even then it may not accept a non-HDCP input (1080p only being supported via HDMI). Good luck getting a PC to display a 1920x1080 signal with HDCP.
I'd rather save $1000-2000 now and buy a 720p set, and then upgrade to 1080p in a couple years when the standards have been hashed out, the technology has actually caught up (full horizontal resolution rather than wobulation, accepts 1080p signals on all relevant inputs, no HDCP requirement, etc), and content exists (Blu-ray or HD-DVD, game consoles actually supporting 1080p (I don't really believe the PS3 will), etc). If I bought a 1080p set today, I'd have to buy a new one in a couple years anyway, so why waste the money?
The only slowdown I saw on Forza prior to this update was when I raced in an in-car view with the rearview mirror turned on (which is how I race, so it happened all the time). Turning off the rearview mirror removed all of the slowdown issues I had. This update fixed the issue so now I can race with my rearview mirror turned back on, but the game was definitely playable before. You just to be OCD about looking behind you since you had no rearview mirror.
Why would you waste your money on a 1080p set when the Xbox 360 only does 720p/1080i? Not only that, (practically) nothing else does 1080p either, and most 1080p TVs don't accept 1080p signals even if you had a source to drive them. Worse, for those few sets that do handle 1080p input, the framerate of 1080p is around 25fps-30fps. Sufficient for TV and movies, not so great for video gaming. Finally, add in the fact that scaling can take some time (milliseconds, but enough to lag audio or gameplay) depending on the set, and that there's nothing available in the TV's native 1080p source, you're basically never going to use the TV in it's most optimal native mode.
And that's not even getting into any of the other issues, like 1080p sets that aren't even 1080p (or, they are 1080p in that they have a full 1080 pixel vertical resolution, but use a technique called "wobulation" to fake 1920 horizontal pixels using a DMD (Digital Micro Device, the display source for DLP sets) with only 960 horizontal pixels).
I'm all for being an early adopter. I bought an HDTV way back in 2001 (and replaced it with a 720p DLP set this past November), which may not have been right on the bleeding edge but it was close. However, I just can't see spending $1000-2000 more to be an earlier adopter of 1080p when I'm virtually guaranteed to have to replace the set in 2-3 years since what I buy today isn't really 1080p at all.
The installer executable from Bethesda is a simple self-extracting archive in RAR format. Any decompression tool that understands RAR should be able to read it (such as the shareware RAR for Linux). It should also run just fine under WINE or the Cedega branch of WINE. The game itself is a DOS executable, which I'd be surprised if WINE/Cedega could run that.
That's assuming that Oblivion is functional at all :). Bethesda as a history of ambitious but buggy games, though they're also pretty good about patching the worst problems. Of course, I don't have a machine that's beefy enough to run Oblivion, so I'm playing it on my Xbox 360 instead. Very satisfying. Much better than Morrowind was on Xbox (I ended up getting that for PC since the Xbox version was so much crap).
It may be speculation, but it's not my speculation. Read. Here's the relevant portion, in case you don't want to read.
I added Nintendo and Microsoft to the list of involved parties, because a) it's Nintendo's service, and b) Microsoft owns Rare, so any deal will be made through them.For Arena and DaggerFall, try DosBox. I'm pretty sure DosBox is Bethesda's preferred method of running Arena, and since DaggerFall is also a DOS game I'd start there rather than trying to get it to run under WINE (does WINE emulate Windows' DOS emulation?).
Patch up Morrowind and you shouldn't run into too many crashes (I've run into a few after multi-hour-long play sessions), but make sure you save often. No idea how it runs on Linux, so I'll take your word for it. Good luck getting Oblivion to run under WINE.
Horses are back, though without wagons, but the fast travel feature makes them pretty much redundant. Houses are also back, though there are only one or two available to purchase per town (unlike a game like Fable, where you could kill the current owner of a house and it would come on the market and rent it out -- the Oblivion houses are more analogous to Fable's "newlywed" houses). Ships aren't purchaseable or sailable. But then, I haven't played Daggerfall (yeah, I know, I suck), so I don't know exactly how these features were implemented there.
There's also the added complication of licensing. Even if Rare wanted to release GoldenEye on the Revolution, and Microsoft would let them, EA owns the Bond license now and Rare, Microsoft, and Nintendo would all have to come to an agreement on the usage of that license.
It would be pretty sweet to get some of Rare's old stuff on XBLA. I wonder if they own the rights to Killer Instinct, or if that's a Nintendo property? Or go even further back and let's get some R.C. Pro-Am and Battletoads action up on the Arcade, with Live play!
All we know at this point is that third-party 360 games tend to be $60 because everybody's following EA's lead. We don't know how this increase in price affects quarterly earnings, and it'll probably take at least one more quarter to find out since the limiting factor of Q3 FY06 is lack of 360s in the channel, possibly artificially limiting the number of games sold.
Chances are the $60 price will stick, but we can still hope that the price increase doesn't make up for decrease in demand and the publishers get the idea that $60 == too damn much for a non-special edition game.
A useful question might be whether Microsoft's Atlas library (ASP.NET 2.0 client-side AJAX stuff) works on browsers other than IE. And the answer is, "Yes!". If you don't believe me, head on over to Live.com in Firefox and tell me if it works. Yes, yes it does. And Live.com is running on an older version of Atlas than the CTP that was just released at MIX06. Live.com does support IE6, IE7, and Firefox, and supported the Opera 9 betas at one point (it seems that the early-March site re-launch broke Opera support), but not Safari. However, as I understand it the Opera and Safari non-support are problems which Live.com needs to solve on their own and not something inherently wrong with Atlas.