So how much for a HDTV projector? Shouldn't that be a bit cheaper, and ultimately a better buy?
I assume you're referring to front projection, as most HDTVs are projection in some form (DLP and CRT rear-projection). Anyway, front projection has its pros and cons, and you still have the same hoops to jump through. Do you go CRT, which is cheaper, but also bulkier and requires periodic calibration? Do you go with DLP and risk rainbow effects from color wheels? Do you go LCD and risk screendoor effects? Prices aren't too bad, in line with rear projection TVs (generally a bit cheaper), but you're not done once you've bought the projector.
Before you even consider front projection, you need to look at your viewing area. Is it sufficiently dark? Front projectors wash out very easily with very little ambient lighting. If your viewing area isn't dark enough (or can't be made dark enough), don't bother with front projection. Do you have the room for a projector? Theoretically, the size of the image is limitless (within the bounds of the projector's focusing ability and your ability to ignore huge pixels), but if you don't have enough space you're not going to get any larger size that what you could get with a cheaper rear-projection CRT. Did you budget for a good screen? A flat, white wall is a start, but most walls aren't that flat (go look at your walls -- chances are they have some amount of texture, which will cause weird shadowing) and a wall will never be as good as a purpose-built screen. How do you plan to mount everything? If you mount the projector to the ceiling it's no longer easily portable, but if you don't then it's susceptible to vibrations and the image can easily be blocked depending on where you place it.
When it's all said and done, unless you're really hardcore and plan on building a full home theater or portability is a huge priority and you don't care about sacrificing image quality to get it, you're better off with something else. What that something else might be will depend on your budget and the research you do (e.g. even if you can afford it, you probably don't want to buy a plasma TV since plasma is very susceptible to burn-in and has a relatively short lifespan compared to other technologies and can't be extended with a simple bulb change).
Ignoring all of that, front projection isn't any better or less hassle-free than rear-projection or flat-panel technologies. You're still going to have to do your homework on display technology (LCD, CRT, DLP, or plasma), you're still going to have to deal with idiot manufacturers configuring their sets to push red because it's more eye catching in the showroom (good sets let you calibrate that out, bad sets don't), and you'll still want to have your set professionally calibrated after a break-in period (I'd give it about 6 months based on my own viewing habits), and every year or two thereafter.
"AJAX is just an assortment of pre-existing technologies. Nothing to see here
The automobile was just an assortment of pre-existing technologies, and it radically changed the world. It also introduced a whole bevy of new challenges, both technical and otherwise, that we still haven't fully figured out yet. It was not a transportation panacea, and AJAX is no cure-all. But just because it doesn't solve every problem doesn't mean it doesn't have the power to be revolutionary.
The car analogy is close, but you got it wrong. The second camp is not so much saying that this is a bunch of stuff that already existed and is being glued together in new ways. They're saying that the exact same grouping of existing technologies that make up AJAX have existed for years, and that the only thing new is the name.
To fix your automobile analogy, consider that cars existed in one form or another for decades before Henry Ford's Model T (depending on your definition of automobile, you could go all the way back to the 1770s for steam-powered machines, but gasoline-powered ICE-based automobiles have been around since 1886). The Model T is widely credited with bringing the automobile to the masses, but it's absolutely no different than any of the other cars that came before (besides how it was manufactured and that it was more affordable). AJAX is like the Model T, taking an already existing concept and giving it a name and framework to make it more palatable. The people driving cars for decades before the Model T probably felt similarly to those who've been using AJAX long before there was the AJAX name, specifically, "What's the big deal? I've been doing that for years!"
Look through everyone's resumes. Check if one of their employers was a superior at their previous job. That will narrow down the list really quickly.
Not by much. That is how "networking" works, and it's very common to see groups of people move around together. This was especially true for many people at the tail end of dot-com bust. I personally know of at least three different people who've moved to the same company as a superior in their previous job on the recommendation of that superior. Ask around, and I bet you will too.
He's going to get found out soon enough. I give him one more year of secrecy max. I'm willing to bet something too. Do you want to bet something meaningful on it?
People, being people, will eventually make mistakes when trying to hide something this big. The real question is, what will happen if he gets caught? I'm of the opinion that Microsoft is smart enough to realize the PR backlash of firing Mini would be far worse than letting him continue on. A forward-thinking executive may even bump him up to some advisory position, to help guide Microsoft's growth (yeah, like that'll happen!). Then again, I still question whether or not the guy will get caught. If the heat turns up, he can always take a hiatus from blogging with no one the wiser. If he's smart, he'll do that soon. Then again, he did agree to the Business Week interview, anonymous though it was. That's probably the first unwise thing I've seen him do, in terms of revealing his identity. I'd hope he's smart enough not to let the celebrity go to his head and make him slip up sooner rather than later.
As for making a bet, that doesn't usually work out too well electronically.:) Save it for your pals at the pub, making bets around pints.
He is? He's done a pretty good job of not getting caught for over a year. If that's "screwing up", I have no idea what "getting it right" would be.
They will find him, and when they go, I expect he will have a meeting with Ballmer. It will not be pretty.
The guy has never revealed trade secrets, so there's no legal recourse. Worst case, he could be covered as a whistle blower and be legally protected. So what will be ugly? The guy may lose his job, but do you know how many other companies would be fighting to snatch him right up? (Google, Yahoo, Apple, etc.) And that's just the repercussions for him. Microsoft would suffer a huge PR blow if they found out who the guy was and make a big stink about it. I don't see how they could do it quietly, however, because if the guy was caught you know he'd be screaming bloddy murder.
It won't be like Deep Throat, who, even though suspected, managed to not get found out until recently. Even with him, folks had their suspicions.
Deep Throat wasn't "found out". He decided to come forward on his own. If he'd just stayed quiet, nobody would've ever known. The same goes here. If things start getting a little hairy, surely Mini has a plan in place to nuke it all and hide out for a while (in plain sight, as a normal employee).
Especially now that this guy attracts attention. All Ballmer has to do is tell his team of mini-Ballmers, "find him!" and it won't be long.
Getting linked by Slashdot isn't "attracting attention". Getting an article written about him in Business Week is a much bigger deal. However, Mini has been notorious for quite a while now. Business Week and Slashdot are just a drop in the bucket, making sure that he's on the radar of Balmer (I'm sure he was already).
Aside from that, the guy has some very good ideas that any sane executive could get behind (well, mostly). The only sticking point is his insistence on getting rid of Balmer, but then there are others who are much more vehement on that point.
Would it be worth it to me to buy their album as a way of showing my support for their being awesome?
If only there was a way to register a reason why you're buying something when you buy it. Without that, you'd just be adding to the total number of sales, proving to Sony that consumers don't care about, or even like(!), this copy protection BS.
My advice? Don't buy the CD. Even if you're a fan, don't buy it. The artists get barely anything from CD sales. Go see them live, or buy their songs off of iTunes or MSN Music or similar (I have no idea if they're listed on any online music service). The very last thing you should do is buy the CD if you want to show support.
The enemy ships in Galaga were controlled via scripts. Take THAT, you punk kids!
Oh yeah? Well Zork'sZ-machine, designed to run "Zork Implementation Language" code, was written in 1979, a full two years before Galaga shipped in 1981! So there!
Besides, I don't think that anyone (even the author) is trying to sell scripting as a new idea. Rather, I think what *is* new is that general purpose scripting languages are starting to be used.
Maybe, but then again languages like Lua (which could be considered "general purpose") and Lisp (remember Abuse?) have long been used for games. Nothing new here.
I think this really neat because it gives you a pool of modders who won't have the added learning curve of a new syntax. They already know language xyz so now they can concentrate on the learning the pieces unique to the game.
Only if the pool of modders overlaps with the pool of people who already know the language. Then again, games like Quake 2 have used well-known languages like C (in the form of compiled DLLs). You still have to learn how to interface with the game engine.
Isn't the scripting of Quake3 done with interpreted C?
I thought Q3 used normal C? Or was that Quake 2, and Quake 3 returned to the QuakeC idea from the original Quake? Meh. If it was QuakeC, it wasn't exactly interpreted C but a C-like language designed explicitly for use with Quake (lots of stuff for working with "entities" and "cvars", IIRC).
But who cares if it isn't new, I don't think this means this story shouldn't be on Slashdot. It's geeky and an interesting read, so why not?
You forget, this is Slashdot. We nitpick things to pieces, especially when the article claims something that's easily refuted (that game engines haven't been viewed as an "operating system", providing the basic functionality for a game and letting scripting do the rest). Neat idea, but it's already well-known and done in many areas. Maybe not so much in the FPS realm (though the OP's Unreal argument refutes that), but certainly in other genres, with adventure games being some of the best examples. That's probably because the bulk of the work in an adventure game is writing the story, providing the art, and building interesting puzzles. The game engine itself doesn't need to be very complex at all, so it's a prime candidate for abstraction into a virtual machine so you can make a small investment up front and reap the benefits on multiple games (see my SCUMM example). Comparatively, FPS games tend to be in a technological arms race, rewriting engines every couple of years, trying for that ever-elusive "photo-realistic" end point. Developers like id like to throw everything out and start over fresh each time, even to the point of changing how modders interact with the system (Doom wads to QuakeC to DLLs to whatever Q3a did). In that kind of environment, the rest is secondary (*cough*Doom 3*cough*), and so it's no wonder that not a lot of thought is put into making the engine into a sort of virtual machine for game script. Unreal is the lone standout here.
If Stackless Python can make a dent, more power to it. Ultimately, the ideas are not specific to Python or any other language. The only thing it brings is a slight advantage in familiarity. And that's very slight. I hate to keep going back to UnrealScript, but it's very C/C++/Java-ish, such that the syntax was never the real bottleneck. The biggest hurdle is learning how to interact with the system, and knowledge of the general-purpose language doesn't get you nearer to that.
Byte code interpreters suck. They sucked with USCD Pascal, they still suck with java, and they'll suck just as much under all the crls that ms want to throw at you.
This pretty much sums up what's wrong with your argument. You're still stuck in the 80s and early 90s of computing. Java and.NET (and Python and Ruby to some extent) have proven you wrong. Of course, the general sentiment of "suck" isn't very specific. Care to elaborate a bit?
Also, their proposed solution to admin-all-the-time, of having people run as a regular user by default and pop up a dialog box confirming that they want to install software or change things as an admin user is not going to work. Look how many people click OK to everything.
And yet, that's exactly what OS X does, or various Linux desktops. They prompt you for an admin password (or your own password, a la sudo) when you're trying to do something that would need admin access. It's a bit more complicated than just tossing up an OK box that can be easily ignored. I'd love to see a better way of handling this, but right now that model is preferrable to the run-as-admin approach we have today.
The registry problem would be easier to fix by killing off the whole registry.
Replaced by what? Various different text config files using various different syntaxes? The fundamental problem is this: There needs to be a centralized location for storing configuration options in a consistent manner. Whether that's a binary registry like Windows uses or a bunch of XML files stored in the user's $HOME, it's still the same problem -- you as a user should not be writing to global configuration sources (in the registry, that's HKLM; in the filesystem version, that'd be/etc or/usr/local/etc). The solution is not to kill the registry, but to teach developers to do the right thing. You'd laugh at a linux app that required admin privileges because it saved user-specific options in a file in/etc. That's exactly what poorly-designed Windows applications do when they try to write to HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) rather than HKCU (HKEY_CURRENT_USER). Throwing away the registry doesn't solve the problem.
Nah, I still enjoy the ease of use of vim, mc, grep, tin, wget,/etc/,... I just feel that eye candy has taken up too much time and space that should be devoted to other things.
Sounds like you'd be interested in Monad, then. On the other hand, stop being such an anti-GUI bigot.
People haven't changed since Win3.0. They still spend way too much time on fixing their wallpaper, html-izing their email, etc. Its funny to see people wanting 23" wide-screen monitors because they don't have enough room on a 19" monitor to display all the icons on their desktop.
And they're not going to change, either. Try as you might, you're not going to convert Joe Sixpack or Grandma to your vi, wget,/etc command line ways. They don't want to know their computer. They want to use it for specific, targetted applications (emailing pictures of the grandkids, browsing for porn, writing a high school paper), and otherwise go on about their lives. At the same time, they like customization, to make the computer feel like it's "theirs". Why not give them what they want? It comes at no expense to those of us who do like to play around with our computers, and it keeps them happy. Of course, with people like that it's now up to the OS developer to keep them safe (which Microsoft has been getting better at since XP SP2, and is the target of OneCare, for example). You and I don't need the han
I'm not sure if Epic invented it, but I can certainly tell you that microthreading, latent functions (such as the sleep in the door example, or a playanimation method that takes game time to complete), and this general idea has been around since at least the original Unreal Engine in UnrealScript (which is now a rather mature scripting language).
Go back even further than that. The idea of building a game engine that acts as a virtual machine for scripts defining a game is a very old idea. For example, way back in 1987, LucasArts developed SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion), which is little more than an engine that runs scripts the define a game. All of LucasArts' adventure games from Maniac Mansion to The Curse of Monkey Island used SCUMM. After that, they built a new engine (GrimE, Grim Edit) that was used in Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island and followed the same ideas they first built in SCUMM. This time they used Lua, which is a popular scripting language used by many other commercial game engines (such as Bioware's Infinity Engine used for the Baldur's Gate games, the Icewind Dale games, and Planescape: Torment).
Unreal's UnrealScript is a very powerful language within the scope of the Unreal engine, but it's certainly not the first implementation of the "game engine as an abstract operating system for scripts" idea. The technology of the scripting language may change, but the core idea is very old (and very good). There's nothing inherently special about using Python as the scripting language for a game, but it's neat that Python is now capable of doing so.
Guess you weren't aware that Microsoft is scrapping both the dot.NET and Win32 APIs in favour of WinFX...
Sigh. You once again prove you know nothing..NET is an intermediate bytecode language, virtual machine, and library of functionality. It's not being scrapped, and in fact is at the core of Microsoft's strategy going forward (the upcoming.NET 2.0 version is at the core of products like SQL Server 2005 and Vista). What you meant to say is that Microsoft plans to eventually scrap GDI (the native drawing library used by win32 conotrols) and Winforms (the.NET library that wraps win32) in favor of WPF (the device-independent vector-based drawing framework this article is about). WPF is a portion of WinFX (which also includes the Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as Indigo, among other new bits), and it's all predicated upon.NET. So Microsoft is scrapping.NET? I don't think so!
Funny how the biggest deal is about eye candy, rather than fixing the suckage that is Windows.
If you think WPF is only about eye candy, you obviously haven't done your homework. As far as "fixing the suckage", the NT kernel that all Windows versions have been based on since 2000 is a very robust system. "Suckage" comes in several forms, but none of it falls to the kernel level:
Too much stuff is tied directly into the kernel. WPF and LDDM address this.
You have to run as admin all of the time. This is the fault of third-party applications, and will eventually change. NT has been a multi-user operating system since its inception, and playing nicely in a multi-user environment is part of logo certification. The problem is that many applications don't go through logo certification and are full of bad practices like writing to the file system outside of %USERPROFILE% or reading from/writing to the registry in HKLM when they should be using HKCU. Developers have to get their heads out of their asses to fix this problem, and there's only so much Microsoft can do
Internet Explorer has stagnated. IE7 is fixing this, but there's nothing stopping you from installing Firefox or Opera if you so choose. I'll agree that it's bad that IE is still concerned part of the OS rather than a separate application, but one step at a time.
Pretty much everything else I've ever heard people bitch about Windows falls into two other categories: unstable third-party hardware drivers and sucktastic application software. Neither of those are truly fixable by Microsoft, though some of it is in their hands (Office, Visual Studio, etc).
Then again, it's okay for OS X to be all about the eye candy, but not Windows? Hypocrisy at its finest, I guess.
As I said, KDE has had translucent menus, menu shadows, and translucent windows for years, something you STILL don't have, and won't have with Vista unless you get a top-of-the-line machine. Otherwise, you still end up with "Vista Craptic", oh, sorry, "Vista Classic".
Yes, you said that. You were wrong the first time and you're still wrong now. Windows has supported alpha blending natively since Windows 2000. Menus fade in to full opaque so that they're still readable, menus have drop shadows that are subtle and clean, any window can be made translucent with various tools but very few applications do that on purpose because it's not usable, etc. I'd say the fact that you don't notice them is a testament to how well Microsoft has integrated the eye candy experience into the OS. In KDE, the effects hit you over the head with a baseball bat.
Windows 2000's alpha blending worked perfectly fine on my TNT2 way back in the day, and if you're running something less powerful than a TNT2 now you're not running "modern" (as in, built in the last 5 years) hardware. That same hardware will still do alpha blending in Windows, just as it will still do so in KDE, but in both cases you're going to pay a performance penalty.
Anyway, all of your arguments are moot. As the poster you're replying to insinuated (in a little bit of a fanboyish manner), and what you'd get if you'd read the article, this is not and Microsoft porting the Aero/Aero Glass GUI look and feel to other platforms. It's about porting WPF (Windows Presentation Framework, formerly called Avalon), the vector-based, 3D-accelerated GDI replacement for Windows Vista. It's already known that Microsoft will port WPF back to XP and 2003 (it's already available now in beta form). This article is interesting in that Microsoft may port WPF to other platforms (OS X, portable devices). Given that WPF is all about.NET, this means that Microsoft will have to do something about porting.NET to those platforms as well, and that's a good thing.
What is the difference? Why do you care if it's basically the same either way? Why are you objecting to it if getting a "full controller" is no better?
The standard of proof falls on those who wish to change the status quo. If there is no functional difference between a whole new controller and one that requires this wand to be plugged in before it works, why would I choose the latter? It's more complex, and thus more prone to failure, and I still have the same set of drawbacks -- same amount of money spent, same number of useless peripherals laying around after I tire of them.
There have already been enough disappointments (Xbox360 Core...
What are you referring to here?
This sums it up pretty nicely. In a nutshell, the disappointment is a version of the Xbox 360 a) without a hard drive, b) without the promised "everything's wireless out of the box" vision (wired controller in the core package, though the console will still support wireless controllers if you feel like spending $80), and c) without the promised "everything's HD out of the box" vision (no component video, DVI, VGA, or SCART cables in the Core box, which means no HD output for you unless you feel like spending $30). Overall, the biggest disappointment is the demotion of the hard drive from "integral standard piece of equipment" to "very big memory card". I'm sure I'll get over it eventually, but it's a little painful to take a step backwards from the current Xbox design in that area.
Why does it matter either way? In the steering wheel's case, it would be cheaper to mount the controller in the wheel than to buy a new stand-alone accessory.
Somehow I doubt that. The expensive parts of the wheel (sturdy construction material, quality springs in the pedals, force feedback motors, etc) won't be replaced by the Revolution controller. Maybe by doing it this way you get wireless "for free", but that's only around a $10 differential today comparing wired to wireless controllers.
In the case of plugging your controller into the wheel, you wouldn't need to have potentially pricey electronics in the wheel itself to sense rotation; the Revolution controller would already do that for you.
Somehow I doubt that the wheel would use the controllers built-in gyroscopic sensor (partly because wheels don't use a gyroscope to determine movement, and partly because any respectable next-gen system will have to support force feedback).
The whole module idea sounds both neat and silly to me. It's neat, well, because it's neat. I like stuff that plugs together (like Lego!). Silly, because it's not really giving you anything new. If you can buy a module to extend the controller, you could just buy a new controller. The cost will probably be the same, and you'll still have another piece of hardware lying around when it's not in use, so what's the difference? I didn't see anything in the articles about daisy-chaining modules, but we still have to work within the limitation of the human body (I don't know about you, but most people I know only have two hands...). As I said before, the pluggable controller just seems like a gimic, while real "innovation" in this area would involve supporting an arbitrary amount of input methods and buttons. Let the controller tell the console what buttons it has and what they're called, and then let the user set them up as needed for a specific game (the games and the controllers could try to be smart, but ultimately you'd need human intervention). For example, I have a PS2 controller with additional analog triggers, where I can program the triggers to any of the face buttons or analog stick axes. I'd rather the controller tell my PS2, "Hey, I've got two more buttons here you can use, and they're nice spring-loaded triggers. Present them in the controller configuration screen. I call them 'left analog trigger' and 'right analog trigger', and here's a simple black-and-white vector image representation of each you can use as icons if you like." That way I wouldn't have to remember that "right-stick left" is really "right analog trigger" and "right-stick up" is really left trigger (or whatever).
Jokes aside, look at the shape of almost every human tool. What do hammers, wrenches, shovels, and most of the rest have in common? They all have the same basic handle shape.
If you were using this controller to hammer a nail or dig a hole, you might have a point. That's not to say such games couldn't be made (swordfighting, fishing, etc). However, for "traditional" games where you control some avatar on a screen, a hammer-like grip is not the best control method. You have prehensile digits on your hands that are well-suited to tasks requiring fine motor control. In other words, buttons and joysticks work well to control traditional games, and you just can't use them well when you're gripping the controller like a hammer. Think about your DVD player remote control. Chances are it has some directional input (mine has a little control stick, and I used to have one with an iPod-like clicky-wheel, but even "normal" directional buttons would work). Would you consider playing a fast-moving action game like Super Mario Bros. with that kind of input, given the type of grip such a remote requires?
I guess the thing to keep in mind here is that I've mentioned "traditional" games multiple times. Perhaps the Revolution will eschew traditional games in favor of new styles that have never (or rarely) been tried before. Then again, it's supposedly going to be able to play games from all of Nintendo's past consoles, so you'll still need to be able to play traditional games with it. Looking at the pictures, it looks like you could simply rotate the controller 90 degrees and have a reasonable facsimile of an old NES controller (including uncomfortably sharp corners). But how are you going to use it to play SNES games that require more easily-accessible buttons than this has? Or N64 games with their own requirement of buttons and stick? Being modular is kind of cool, but is it really necessary? Why would I buy a steering wheel or dance pad controller that required me to plug it into this controller when I could instead buy a steering wheel or dance pad that connects directly to the console (wireless or otherwise)?
Chances are that the various modules for the controller will cost about the same as a stand-alone controller costs today. Why would I buy an attachment with a stick that connects to the base unit only by a flimsy cable when for the same price I could buy a full controller? This just seems like a gimic to me, and Nintendo could've provided the same functionality by offering multiple controllers for sale and building the Revolution in such a way that its input is extensible. Consider bundles: Nintendo will probably sell an N64-like attachment with a disk containing a couple of N64 games, or an SNES attachment (not sure what that would be) that includes some SNES games. I still have to pay the money and have another piece of equipment lying around, so why not just sell a full controller instead?
For me, I'm going to take the same "wait and see" attitude as I have towards the rest of the next-gen platforms. There have already been enough disappointments (Xbox360 Core, the unbelievable PS3 specs that are nowhere close to reality) and not enough must-have games for me to make a decision yet. I'll most likely end up with all three, but whether I buy at launch prices or wait a while will ultimately depend on the games. If Nintendo can provide something compelling (Wind Waker prompted me to buy a Gamecube), I'll buy. Otherwise, I'll wait.
Does anyone even make adventure games like Sam and Max anymore? The latest console games might be really good, but they're likely not going to appeal to a Monkey Island fan.
Sadly, nobody makes adventure games like Sam and Max any more. However, that's not to say that nobody makes adventure games anymore, or nobody makes games like Sam and Max. For the latter, you should certainly pick up Psychonauts for your favorite platform. It's not an adventure game, but it has some adventure elements to go along with its action.
For adventure games, there are still plenty (though sadly none in the style of LucasArts like S&M, MI, GF, MM, etc):
Indigo Prophecy hasn't shipped yet, but it looks promising (played the demo on the latest Official Xbox Magazine)
All of the CSI and Law and Order games, if you're into those.
All of the Myst games
As you can tell, none of those are anywhere near the level of humor you'll find in an old LucasArts adventure. Luckily, LucasArts still sells their old games, and at least the more recent ones still run just fine (I've been playing through Escape from Monkey Island recently, and have Grim Fandango on order). And if any of the older games don't work, you may be able to use them with SCUMMVM instead (Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island no longer use SCUMM, but are scripted with Lua instead).
More seriously, The Minish Cap, the most recent GBA outing and a fun game. Plays like LttP, looks like WW in 2D (similar to the look of Four Swords).
Of course, those games weren't written by Nintendo (the CD-i games should just be forgotten entirely, and Minish Cap was developed by Flagship), but neither were the other Oracle games you listed (they were done by Flagship as well).
In Microsoft's case, they've made things a pain for developers by having two different models with and without a hard drive.
It's only a pain if developers want to use the hard drive as more than a glorified memory card. Otherwise, there's no problem. Developers have said that Microsoft has been telling them for a while now to design their games to work without the a hard drive. If developers choose to ignore that advice (and it's questionable whether that's just advice or if it's part of the certification program required to release a game for the platform), they have no one to blame but themselves. Consumers have every right to feel screwed by Microsoft making the hard drive optional, but developers have no right to complain. Besides, doubling the RAM from 256MB to 512MB is a much more useful change for developers than a standard hard drive, so they can't complain that Microsoft isn't listening to their feedback either.
In the case of the PS3 and Cell, it is different enough in design from "traditional" architecture that cross platform development for it is going to be a nightmare.
The PS2 is "different enough" as well, and yet that hasn't stopped anybody from building cross-platform games. Frameworks that abstract out the underlying implementation details will pop up soon enough. The real question is whether or not Sony is going to provide a good SDK to get new developers started. They didn't do that with the PS2, which really hurt their launch line-up and had the effect of removing smaller developers from the market because they couldn't afford to take the time to build their own framework or to buy one from someone else. Microsoft has always been very developer-friendly, and one would expect that to continue with the 360. With the next gen consoles being relatively equal in power, providing a good SDK and developer support will be a key factor in getting good games on the new platforms and in winning exclusive third-party games for their respective consoles.
actually you can not. in the future, the "security" of the systems will be greatly increased. we've been fortunate that current systems have been rendered back to their true owners but they were due to weaknesses in the design and exploits of buggy sw/hw.
Now you're just being silly. Everything is breakable. It's just a matter of time. It still stands true that once you've bought the hardware, it's yours to do with as you please. That doesn't mean that the designers have to make it easy for you to do so. You could pull the chips out and string them together in some art project if you so please and nothing could be done to stop it. In the same vein, you're free to look for cracks in the design and do with it as you please.
i want them to be fully accessable from the box. these are not rented devices, they are fully bought.
Accessible for what? These are game machines. Out of the box, they do as advertised -- play games. That they may not play pirated games is immaterial, and if you were actually arguing against region restrictions because you want to play legal imports then you might have some merit. However, that's not your argument. What you're saying is akin to complaining that you can't fit a keg in your refrigerator because of all of those damn shelves. Sure, you could rip them out, but why should you have to? Buy a keg fridge (or in this case, a "normal" computer) if that's what you want. You certainly can turn a normal refirgerator into a kegerator, but that doesn't mean that Frigidaire has to make it easy for you.
i want to make it illegal to pseudo-rent items (it already is if anyone in congress/courts would follow the law). if you want to rent consoles that don't allow full access, by all means, go ahead.
Why must you hide behind the government? We have a free market here (supposedly, anyway). You have the strongest power of all -- to not buy products that you disagree with. Will you be buying an Xbox 360 or a PS3? If so, why? You're just perpetuating the cycle, justifying that which you're railing against. Vote with your wallet, and get as many people as you can to do the same (hint: This probably isn't going to work on Slashdot, and certainly not with your current argumentative approach. You look like a crazy nut troll, and not a rational person that is worth a listen). If enough people feel as you do, then the business model won't work and Sony and Microsoft will be forced to do something else.
they have every right to rent and sell, but to sell you and then defend themselves through a non-contract EULA , is not only illegal but is enough to consider them anti-customer and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (where've you heard that before?).
I guess you missed the point of my previous post. Nobody's going to prosecute you for hacking an Xbox. Not as an individual. As I've already mentioned, there's a grey area around circumventing copy protection devices, but that's not governed by EULA. If by some strange confluence of events you were to be tried on a EULA breach, I think it safe to say you'll come out just fine. Of course, once again that's assuming no laws have been broken, such as copyright infringement (and even then, you're really only at risk of prosecution if you're distributing).
To summarize: Microsoft and Sony are well within their rights to attempt to secure their devices from non-standard usage through any technical means, including encyrption and obfuscation (both of which are fallible) of key software components of the device as well as through hardware components. You as a consumer have the ultimate veto power by not buying the console(s). If you choose to buy anyway, you as the owner of said console are still within your legal rights to modify the hardware in any way you see fit, so long as you stay within legal bounds (eg, not for pirating games). Whether you like it or not, that's the way the system works. If you want to change it, go lobby your congress-persons. Good luck with that, and let us know how it goes.
when the ps3/xbox360/revolution come out soon, you can buy one. but when you buy one, even though you paid for the graphics chip, the sound chip, the cpu, the vector/simd processors, the storage units; these are all off-limits to you, THE OWNER.
(The rest is just blah blah blah)
News flash: The act of modifying a console has never been found illegal. While companies have tried (Sony in Australia, everybody going after Lik Sang, etc), the only cases that ever hold up are those that also involve piracy. Thus, you certainly can hack your Xbox36/PS3/Revolution to your heart's content, so long as you're not doing anything otherwise illegal (using it to pirate movies and games, accessing services that otherwise bar modified consoles like Xbox Live, etc).
There's certainly a grey area around console modification due to the DMCA, but that's about circumventing a copy protection device. If you're modifying your console to run linux, or to play homebrew games, you can argue that you're not breaking the DMCA. If you were to come under fire, which is doubtful as companies like Sony or Microsoft really only target the egregious offenders (people modifying Xboxes and then selling them with pirated games already on the hard drive for example), any competent lawyer should be able to do the right thing so long as there's no evidence of piracy (you mention you don't want to pirate games, so don't fall to that temptation once you do modify your console).
In short, take off the tinfoil hat and realize that there's no way they can stop you from poking around in the internals of your console in the privacy of your own home. You may lose certain services (voided warranty, banned from online play), but in terms of the hardware itself you can do whatever you please.
A $5/mo rent to play a game I already own is $5 too much. This is also the reason that I neer played EQ or its ilk - subscriptions on top of $50/game are just bending consumers over and asking themto open wide.
You're not paying per-game. You're paying for the entire service. It's not $5 for Halo 2, $5 for Rainbow Six 3, $5 for Forza, etc. It's $5. You can't really compare it to Everquest, WoW, or other subscription MMOs because a) Live isn't a "game", but a service that supports hundreds of games, b) it's much cheaper at $5/mo rather than the $10-$15 each MMO wants (and as I already mentioned, it's not per-game), and c) it's not necessary to be able to play the game you've already bought, but it adds life to a game and most people think that multiplayer gaming is fun.
I've never played Halo 2's multiplayer as I don't want to pay for Live.
You're missing 3/4s of the game, then. And why are you so unwilling to pay < $5/mo for Live? The price is extremely cheap, and games like Halo 2, Forza, and PGR2 make it totally worth the price. For less than the price of a Starbucks coffee (or coffee for a week if you're a 7/11 coffee kind of person), you can have the best online console experience.
I can't say I really miss Propeller Arena for the Dreamcast - I have a copy, it was leaked a long time ago (try those "backup" sellers or bittorrents). But still, it's sad that such an awesome game, even completed, was canned.
Having never heard of this game, and only going by the screenshots on that site, I wonder if you've played the Crimson Skies games? One on PC from 2000, much more flight sim-ish; one on Xbox from 2003 (with Live support), much more arcadey. Propeller Arena definitely looks similar, but maybe the similarity is only skin deep.
I thought Freespace1/2 were phenomenally done. Freespace 2 was one of the few game sequels I thought thoroughly improved the previous game in every aspect. Graphics, gameplay, interaction were all great.
Yes! The Freespace series was the spiritual successor to Wing Commander, and I loved it. Sadly, we'll probably never see a Freespace 3 (Volition, the developer and I believe the owner of the Freespace IP, is still around but they're doing crap like the Red Faction series and The Punisher). Luckily, the source for Freespace 2 is available, and there's an active community around it. Maybe we'll never see an official Freespace 3, but I wouldn't be surprised if you see some decent fan-made attempts. (decent? descent? Get it? Because Interplay forced Volition to add the "Descent:" tag on the first Freespace for fear of it not selling without an already well-known name attached, even though Freespace had asbolutely nothing to do with Descent.)
Slashdot Mirror
I assume you're referring to front projection, as most HDTVs are projection in some form (DLP and CRT rear-projection). Anyway, front projection has its pros and cons, and you still have the same hoops to jump through. Do you go CRT, which is cheaper, but also bulkier and requires periodic calibration? Do you go with DLP and risk rainbow effects from color wheels? Do you go LCD and risk screendoor effects? Prices aren't too bad, in line with rear projection TVs (generally a bit cheaper), but you're not done once you've bought the projector.
Before you even consider front projection, you need to look at your viewing area. Is it sufficiently dark? Front projectors wash out very easily with very little ambient lighting. If your viewing area isn't dark enough (or can't be made dark enough), don't bother with front projection. Do you have the room for a projector? Theoretically, the size of the image is limitless (within the bounds of the projector's focusing ability and your ability to ignore huge pixels), but if you don't have enough space you're not going to get any larger size that what you could get with a cheaper rear-projection CRT. Did you budget for a good screen? A flat, white wall is a start, but most walls aren't that flat (go look at your walls -- chances are they have some amount of texture, which will cause weird shadowing) and a wall will never be as good as a purpose-built screen. How do you plan to mount everything? If you mount the projector to the ceiling it's no longer easily portable, but if you don't then it's susceptible to vibrations and the image can easily be blocked depending on where you place it.
When it's all said and done, unless you're really hardcore and plan on building a full home theater or portability is a huge priority and you don't care about sacrificing image quality to get it, you're better off with something else. What that something else might be will depend on your budget and the research you do (e.g. even if you can afford it, you probably don't want to buy a plasma TV since plasma is very susceptible to burn-in and has a relatively short lifespan compared to other technologies and can't be extended with a simple bulb change).
Ignoring all of that, front projection isn't any better or less hassle-free than rear-projection or flat-panel technologies. You're still going to have to do your homework on display technology (LCD, CRT, DLP, or plasma), you're still going to have to deal with idiot manufacturers configuring their sets to push red because it's more eye catching in the showroom (good sets let you calibrate that out, bad sets don't), and you'll still want to have your set professionally calibrated after a break-in period (I'd give it about 6 months based on my own viewing habits), and every year or two thereafter.
The car analogy is close, but you got it wrong. The second camp is not so much saying that this is a bunch of stuff that already existed and is being glued together in new ways. They're saying that the exact same grouping of existing technologies that make up AJAX have existed for years, and that the only thing new is the name.
To fix your automobile analogy, consider that cars existed in one form or another for decades before Henry Ford's Model T (depending on your definition of automobile, you could go all the way back to the 1770s for steam-powered machines, but gasoline-powered ICE-based automobiles have been around since 1886). The Model T is widely credited with bringing the automobile to the masses, but it's absolutely no different than any of the other cars that came before (besides how it was manufactured and that it was more affordable). AJAX is like the Model T, taking an already existing concept and giving it a name and framework to make it more palatable. The people driving cars for decades before the Model T probably felt similarly to those who've been using AJAX long before there was the AJAX name, specifically, "What's the big deal? I've been doing that for years!"
Not by much. That is how "networking" works, and it's very common to see groups of people move around together. This was especially true for many people at the tail end of dot-com bust. I personally know of at least three different people who've moved to the same company as a superior in their previous job on the recommendation of that superior. Ask around, and I bet you will too.
People, being people, will eventually make mistakes when trying to hide something this big. The real question is, what will happen if he gets caught? I'm of the opinion that Microsoft is smart enough to realize the PR backlash of firing Mini would be far worse than letting him continue on. A forward-thinking executive may even bump him up to some advisory position, to help guide Microsoft's growth (yeah, like that'll happen!). Then again, I still question whether or not the guy will get caught. If the heat turns up, he can always take a hiatus from blogging with no one the wiser. If he's smart, he'll do that soon. Then again, he did agree to the Business Week interview, anonymous though it was. That's probably the first unwise thing I've seen him do, in terms of revealing his identity. I'd hope he's smart enough not to let the celebrity go to his head and make him slip up sooner rather than later.
As for making a bet, that doesn't usually work out too well electronically. :) Save it for your pals at the pub, making bets around pints.
He is? He's done a pretty good job of not getting caught for over a year. If that's "screwing up", I have no idea what "getting it right" would be.
The guy has never revealed trade secrets, so there's no legal recourse. Worst case, he could be covered as a whistle blower and be legally protected. So what will be ugly? The guy may lose his job, but do you know how many other companies would be fighting to snatch him right up? (Google, Yahoo, Apple, etc.) And that's just the repercussions for him. Microsoft would suffer a huge PR blow if they found out who the guy was and make a big stink about it. I don't see how they could do it quietly, however, because if the guy was caught you know he'd be screaming bloddy murder.
Deep Throat wasn't "found out". He decided to come forward on his own. If he'd just stayed quiet, nobody would've ever known. The same goes here. If things start getting a little hairy, surely Mini has a plan in place to nuke it all and hide out for a while (in plain sight, as a normal employee).
Getting linked by Slashdot isn't "attracting attention". Getting an article written about him in Business Week is a much bigger deal. However, Mini has been notorious for quite a while now. Business Week and Slashdot are just a drop in the bucket, making sure that he's on the radar of Balmer (I'm sure he was already).
Aside from that, the guy has some very good ideas that any sane executive could get behind (well, mostly). The only sticking point is his insistence on getting rid of Balmer, but then there are others who are much more vehement on that point.
If only there was a way to register a reason why you're buying something when you buy it. Without that, you'd just be adding to the total number of sales, proving to Sony that consumers don't care about, or even like(!), this copy protection BS.
My advice? Don't buy the CD. Even if you're a fan, don't buy it. The artists get barely anything from CD sales. Go see them live, or buy their songs off of iTunes or MSN Music or similar (I have no idea if they're listed on any online music service). The very last thing you should do is buy the CD if you want to show support.
Oh yeah? Well Zork's Z-machine, designed to run "Zork Implementation Language" code, was written in 1979, a full two years before Galaga shipped in 1981! So there!
Maybe, but then again languages like Lua (which could be considered "general purpose") and Lisp (remember Abuse?) have long been used for games. Nothing new here.
Only if the pool of modders overlaps with the pool of people who already know the language. Then again, games like Quake 2 have used well-known languages like C (in the form of compiled DLLs). You still have to learn how to interface with the game engine.
I thought Q3 used normal C? Or was that Quake 2, and Quake 3 returned to the QuakeC idea from the original Quake? Meh. If it was QuakeC, it wasn't exactly interpreted C but a C-like language designed explicitly for use with Quake (lots of stuff for working with "entities" and "cvars", IIRC).
You forget, this is Slashdot. We nitpick things to pieces, especially when the article claims something that's easily refuted (that game engines haven't been viewed as an "operating system", providing the basic functionality for a game and letting scripting do the rest). Neat idea, but it's already well-known and done in many areas. Maybe not so much in the FPS realm (though the OP's Unreal argument refutes that), but certainly in other genres, with adventure games being some of the best examples. That's probably because the bulk of the work in an adventure game is writing the story, providing the art, and building interesting puzzles. The game engine itself doesn't need to be very complex at all, so it's a prime candidate for abstraction into a virtual machine so you can make a small investment up front and reap the benefits on multiple games (see my SCUMM example). Comparatively, FPS games tend to be in a technological arms race, rewriting engines every couple of years, trying for that ever-elusive "photo-realistic" end point. Developers like id like to throw everything out and start over fresh each time, even to the point of changing how modders interact with the system (Doom wads to QuakeC to DLLs to whatever Q3a did). In that kind of environment, the rest is secondary (*cough*Doom 3*cough*), and so it's no wonder that not a lot of thought is put into making the engine into a sort of virtual machine for game script. Unreal is the lone standout here.
If Stackless Python can make a dent, more power to it. Ultimately, the ideas are not specific to Python or any other language. The only thing it brings is a slight advantage in familiarity. And that's very slight. I hate to keep going back to UnrealScript, but it's very C/C++/Java-ish, such that the syntax was never the real bottleneck. The biggest hurdle is learning how to interact with the system, and knowledge of the general-purpose language doesn't get you nearer to that.
This pretty much sums up what's wrong with your argument. You're still stuck in the 80s and early 90s of computing. Java and .NET (and Python and Ruby to some extent) have proven you wrong. Of course, the general sentiment of "suck" isn't very specific. Care to elaborate a bit?
And yet, that's exactly what OS X does, or various Linux desktops. They prompt you for an admin password (or your own password, a la sudo) when you're trying to do something that would need admin access. It's a bit more complicated than just tossing up an OK box that can be easily ignored. I'd love to see a better way of handling this, but right now that model is preferrable to the run-as-admin approach we have today.
Replaced by what? Various different text config files using various different syntaxes? The fundamental problem is this: There needs to be a centralized location for storing configuration options in a consistent manner. Whether that's a binary registry like Windows uses or a bunch of XML files stored in the user's $HOME, it's still the same problem -- you as a user should not be writing to global configuration sources (in the registry, that's HKLM; in the filesystem version, that'd be /etc or /usr/local/etc). The solution is not to kill the registry, but to teach developers to do the right thing. You'd laugh at a linux app that required admin privileges because it saved user-specific options in a file in /etc. That's exactly what poorly-designed Windows applications do when they try to write to HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) rather than HKCU (HKEY_CURRENT_USER). Throwing away the registry doesn't solve the problem.
Sounds like you'd be interested in Monad, then. On the other hand, stop being such an anti-GUI bigot.
And they're not going to change, either. Try as you might, you're not going to convert Joe Sixpack or Grandma to your vi, wget, /etc command line ways. They don't want to know their computer. They want to use it for specific, targetted applications (emailing pictures of the grandkids, browsing for porn, writing a high school paper), and otherwise go on about their lives. At the same time, they like customization, to make the computer feel like it's "theirs". Why not give them what they want? It comes at no expense to those of us who do like to play around with our computers, and it keeps them happy. Of course, with people like that it's now up to the OS developer to keep them safe (which Microsoft has been getting better at since XP SP2, and is the target of OneCare, for example). You and I don't need the han
Go back even further than that. The idea of building a game engine that acts as a virtual machine for scripts defining a game is a very old idea. For example, way back in 1987, LucasArts developed SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion), which is little more than an engine that runs scripts the define a game. All of LucasArts' adventure games from Maniac Mansion to The Curse of Monkey Island used SCUMM. After that, they built a new engine (GrimE, Grim Edit) that was used in Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island and followed the same ideas they first built in SCUMM. This time they used Lua, which is a popular scripting language used by many other commercial game engines (such as Bioware's Infinity Engine used for the Baldur's Gate games, the Icewind Dale games, and Planescape: Torment).
Unreal's UnrealScript is a very powerful language within the scope of the Unreal engine, but it's certainly not the first implementation of the "game engine as an abstract operating system for scripts" idea. The technology of the scripting language may change, but the core idea is very old (and very good). There's nothing inherently special about using Python as the scripting language for a game, but it's neat that Python is now capable of doing so.
Sigh. You once again prove you know nothing. .NET is an intermediate bytecode language, virtual machine, and library of functionality. It's not being scrapped, and in fact is at the core of Microsoft's strategy going forward (the upcoming .NET 2.0 version is at the core of products like SQL Server 2005 and Vista). What you meant to say is that Microsoft plans to eventually scrap GDI (the native drawing library used by win32 conotrols) and Winforms (the .NET library that wraps win32) in favor of WPF (the device-independent vector-based drawing framework this article is about). WPF is a portion of WinFX (which also includes the Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as Indigo, among other new bits), and it's all predicated upon .NET. So Microsoft is scrapping .NET? I don't think so!
If you think WPF is only about eye candy, you obviously haven't done your homework. As far as "fixing the suckage", the NT kernel that all Windows versions have been based on since 2000 is a very robust system. "Suckage" comes in several forms, but none of it falls to the kernel level:
Then again, it's okay for OS X to be all about the eye candy, but not Windows? Hypocrisy at its finest, I guess.
Yes, you said that. You were wrong the first time and you're still wrong now. Windows has supported alpha blending natively since Windows 2000. Menus fade in to full opaque so that they're still readable, menus have drop shadows that are subtle and clean, any window can be made translucent with various tools but very few applications do that on purpose because it's not usable, etc. I'd say the fact that you don't notice them is a testament to how well Microsoft has integrated the eye candy experience into the OS. In KDE, the effects hit you over the head with a baseball bat.
Windows 2000's alpha blending worked perfectly fine on my TNT2 way back in the day, and if you're running something less powerful than a TNT2 now you're not running "modern" (as in, built in the last 5 years) hardware. That same hardware will still do alpha blending in Windows, just as it will still do so in KDE, but in both cases you're going to pay a performance penalty.
Anyway, all of your arguments are moot. As the poster you're replying to insinuated (in a little bit of a fanboyish manner), and what you'd get if you'd read the article, this is not and Microsoft porting the Aero/Aero Glass GUI look and feel to other platforms. It's about porting WPF (Windows Presentation Framework, formerly called Avalon), the vector-based, 3D-accelerated GDI replacement for Windows Vista. It's already known that Microsoft will port WPF back to XP and 2003 (it's already available now in beta form). This article is interesting in that Microsoft may port WPF to other platforms (OS X, portable devices). Given that WPF is all about .NET, this means that Microsoft will have to do something about porting .NET to those platforms as well, and that's a good thing.
The standard of proof falls on those who wish to change the status quo. If there is no functional difference between a whole new controller and one that requires this wand to be plugged in before it works, why would I choose the latter? It's more complex, and thus more prone to failure, and I still have the same set of drawbacks -- same amount of money spent, same number of useless peripherals laying around after I tire of them.
This sums it up pretty nicely. In a nutshell, the disappointment is a version of the Xbox 360 a) without a hard drive, b) without the promised "everything's wireless out of the box" vision (wired controller in the core package, though the console will still support wireless controllers if you feel like spending $80), and c) without the promised "everything's HD out of the box" vision (no component video, DVI, VGA, or SCART cables in the Core box, which means no HD output for you unless you feel like spending $30). Overall, the biggest disappointment is the demotion of the hard drive from "integral standard piece of equipment" to "very big memory card". I'm sure I'll get over it eventually, but it's a little painful to take a step backwards from the current Xbox design in that area.
Somehow I doubt that. The expensive parts of the wheel (sturdy construction material, quality springs in the pedals, force feedback motors, etc) won't be replaced by the Revolution controller. Maybe by doing it this way you get wireless "for free", but that's only around a $10 differential today comparing wired to wireless controllers.
Somehow I doubt that the wheel would use the controllers built-in gyroscopic sensor (partly because wheels don't use a gyroscope to determine movement, and partly because any respectable next-gen system will have to support force feedback).
The whole module idea sounds both neat and silly to me. It's neat, well, because it's neat. I like stuff that plugs together (like Lego!). Silly, because it's not really giving you anything new. If you can buy a module to extend the controller, you could just buy a new controller. The cost will probably be the same, and you'll still have another piece of hardware lying around when it's not in use, so what's the difference? I didn't see anything in the articles about daisy-chaining modules, but we still have to work within the limitation of the human body (I don't know about you, but most people I know only have two hands ...). As I said before, the pluggable controller just seems like a gimic, while real "innovation" in this area would involve supporting an arbitrary amount of input methods and buttons. Let the controller tell the console what buttons it has and what they're called, and then let the user set them up as needed for a specific game (the games and the controllers could try to be smart, but ultimately you'd need human intervention). For example, I have a PS2 controller with additional analog triggers, where I can program the triggers to any of the face buttons or analog stick axes. I'd rather the controller tell my PS2, "Hey, I've got two more buttons here you can use, and they're nice spring-loaded triggers. Present them in the controller configuration screen. I call them 'left analog trigger' and 'right analog trigger', and here's a simple black-and-white vector image representation of each you can use as icons if you like." That way I wouldn't have to remember that "right-stick left" is really "right analog trigger" and "right-stick up" is really left trigger (or whatever).
If you were using this controller to hammer a nail or dig a hole, you might have a point. That's not to say such games couldn't be made (swordfighting, fishing, etc). However, for "traditional" games where you control some avatar on a screen, a hammer-like grip is not the best control method. You have prehensile digits on your hands that are well-suited to tasks requiring fine motor control. In other words, buttons and joysticks work well to control traditional games, and you just can't use them well when you're gripping the controller like a hammer. Think about your DVD player remote control. Chances are it has some directional input (mine has a little control stick, and I used to have one with an iPod-like clicky-wheel, but even "normal" directional buttons would work). Would you consider playing a fast-moving action game like Super Mario Bros. with that kind of input, given the type of grip such a remote requires?
I guess the thing to keep in mind here is that I've mentioned "traditional" games multiple times. Perhaps the Revolution will eschew traditional games in favor of new styles that have never (or rarely) been tried before. Then again, it's supposedly going to be able to play games from all of Nintendo's past consoles, so you'll still need to be able to play traditional games with it. Looking at the pictures, it looks like you could simply rotate the controller 90 degrees and have a reasonable facsimile of an old NES controller (including uncomfortably sharp corners). But how are you going to use it to play SNES games that require more easily-accessible buttons than this has? Or N64 games with their own requirement of buttons and stick? Being modular is kind of cool, but is it really necessary? Why would I buy a steering wheel or dance pad controller that required me to plug it into this controller when I could instead buy a steering wheel or dance pad that connects directly to the console (wireless or otherwise)?
Chances are that the various modules for the controller will cost about the same as a stand-alone controller costs today. Why would I buy an attachment with a stick that connects to the base unit only by a flimsy cable when for the same price I could buy a full controller? This just seems like a gimic to me, and Nintendo could've provided the same functionality by offering multiple controllers for sale and building the Revolution in such a way that its input is extensible. Consider bundles: Nintendo will probably sell an N64-like attachment with a disk containing a couple of N64 games, or an SNES attachment (not sure what that would be) that includes some SNES games. I still have to pay the money and have another piece of equipment lying around, so why not just sell a full controller instead?
For me, I'm going to take the same "wait and see" attitude as I have towards the rest of the next-gen platforms. There have already been enough disappointments (Xbox360 Core, the unbelievable PS3 specs that are nowhere close to reality) and not enough must-have games for me to make a decision yet. I'll most likely end up with all three, but whether I buy at launch prices or wait a while will ultimately depend on the games. If Nintendo can provide something compelling (Wind Waker prompted me to buy a Gamecube), I'll buy. Otherwise, I'll wait.
Sadly, nobody makes adventure games like Sam and Max any more. However, that's not to say that nobody makes adventure games anymore, or nobody makes games like Sam and Max. For the latter, you should certainly pick up Psychonauts for your favorite platform. It's not an adventure game, but it has some adventure elements to go along with its action.
For adventure games, there are still plenty (though sadly none in the style of LucasArts like S&M, MI, GF, MM, etc):
- Still Life
- Syberia and Syberia II
- The Longest Journey, which is supposed to have a sequel soon.
- Indigo Prophecy hasn't shipped yet, but it looks promising (played the demo on the latest Official Xbox Magazine)
- All of the CSI and Law and Order games, if you're into those.
- All of the Myst games
As you can tell, none of those are anywhere near the level of humor you'll find in an old LucasArts adventure. Luckily, LucasArts still sells their old games, and at least the more recent ones still run just fine (I've been playing through Escape from Monkey Island recently, and have Grim Fandango on order). And if any of the older games don't work, you may be able to use them with SCUMMVM instead (Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island no longer use SCUMM, but are scripted with Lua instead).Excellent points that I won't address. Instead, I'm going to be pedantic. You missed a couple games:
- On the CD-i:
- Link: The Faces of Evil
- Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
- Zelda's Adventure
- More seriously, The Minish Cap, the most recent GBA outing and a fun game. Plays like LttP, looks like WW in 2D (similar to the look of Four Swords).
Of course, those games weren't written by Nintendo (the CD-i games should just be forgotten entirely, and Minish Cap was developed by Flagship), but neither were the other Oracle games you listed (they were done by Flagship as well).Oh god, please no voice acting.
Hey!
Listen!
Aaarrrgggghhh!
It's only a pain if developers want to use the hard drive as more than a glorified memory card. Otherwise, there's no problem. Developers have said that Microsoft has been telling them for a while now to design their games to work without the a hard drive. If developers choose to ignore that advice (and it's questionable whether that's just advice or if it's part of the certification program required to release a game for the platform), they have no one to blame but themselves. Consumers have every right to feel screwed by Microsoft making the hard drive optional, but developers have no right to complain. Besides, doubling the RAM from 256MB to 512MB is a much more useful change for developers than a standard hard drive, so they can't complain that Microsoft isn't listening to their feedback either.
The PS2 is "different enough" as well, and yet that hasn't stopped anybody from building cross-platform games. Frameworks that abstract out the underlying implementation details will pop up soon enough. The real question is whether or not Sony is going to provide a good SDK to get new developers started. They didn't do that with the PS2, which really hurt their launch line-up and had the effect of removing smaller developers from the market because they couldn't afford to take the time to build their own framework or to buy one from someone else. Microsoft has always been very developer-friendly, and one would expect that to continue with the 360. With the next gen consoles being relatively equal in power, providing a good SDK and developer support will be a key factor in getting good games on the new platforms and in winning exclusive third-party games for their respective consoles.
Now you're just being silly. Everything is breakable. It's just a matter of time. It still stands true that once you've bought the hardware, it's yours to do with as you please. That doesn't mean that the designers have to make it easy for you to do so. You could pull the chips out and string them together in some art project if you so please and nothing could be done to stop it. In the same vein, you're free to look for cracks in the design and do with it as you please.
Accessible for what? These are game machines. Out of the box, they do as advertised -- play games. That they may not play pirated games is immaterial, and if you were actually arguing against region restrictions because you want to play legal imports then you might have some merit. However, that's not your argument. What you're saying is akin to complaining that you can't fit a keg in your refrigerator because of all of those damn shelves. Sure, you could rip them out, but why should you have to? Buy a keg fridge (or in this case, a "normal" computer) if that's what you want. You certainly can turn a normal refirgerator into a kegerator, but that doesn't mean that Frigidaire has to make it easy for you.
Why must you hide behind the government? We have a free market here (supposedly, anyway). You have the strongest power of all -- to not buy products that you disagree with. Will you be buying an Xbox 360 or a PS3? If so, why? You're just perpetuating the cycle, justifying that which you're railing against. Vote with your wallet, and get as many people as you can to do the same (hint: This probably isn't going to work on Slashdot, and certainly not with your current argumentative approach. You look like a crazy nut troll, and not a rational person that is worth a listen). If enough people feel as you do, then the business model won't work and Sony and Microsoft will be forced to do something else.
I guess you missed the point of my previous post. Nobody's going to prosecute you for hacking an Xbox. Not as an individual. As I've already mentioned, there's a grey area around circumventing copy protection devices, but that's not governed by EULA. If by some strange confluence of events you were to be tried on a EULA breach, I think it safe to say you'll come out just fine. Of course, once again that's assuming no laws have been broken, such as copyright infringement (and even then, you're really only at risk of prosecution if you're distributing).
To summarize: Microsoft and Sony are well within their rights to attempt to secure their devices from non-standard usage through any technical means, including encyrption and obfuscation (both of which are fallible) of key software components of the device as well as through hardware components. You as a consumer have the ultimate veto power by not buying the console(s). If you choose to buy anyway, you as the owner of said console are still within your legal rights to modify the hardware in any way you see fit, so long as you stay within legal bounds (eg, not for pirating games). Whether you like it or not, that's the way the system works. If you want to change it, go lobby your congress-persons. Good luck with that, and let us know how it goes.
(The rest is just blah blah blah)
News flash: The act of modifying a console has never been found illegal. While companies have tried (Sony in Australia, everybody going after Lik Sang, etc), the only cases that ever hold up are those that also involve piracy. Thus, you certainly can hack your Xbox36/PS3/Revolution to your heart's content, so long as you're not doing anything otherwise illegal (using it to pirate movies and games, accessing services that otherwise bar modified consoles like Xbox Live, etc).
There's certainly a grey area around console modification due to the DMCA, but that's about circumventing a copy protection device. If you're modifying your console to run linux, or to play homebrew games, you can argue that you're not breaking the DMCA. If you were to come under fire, which is doubtful as companies like Sony or Microsoft really only target the egregious offenders (people modifying Xboxes and then selling them with pirated games already on the hard drive for example), any competent lawyer should be able to do the right thing so long as there's no evidence of piracy (you mention you don't want to pirate games, so don't fall to that temptation once you do modify your console).
In short, take off the tinfoil hat and realize that there's no way they can stop you from poking around in the internals of your console in the privacy of your own home. You may lose certain services (voided warranty, banned from online play), but in terms of the hardware itself you can do whatever you please.
You're not paying per-game. You're paying for the entire service. It's not $5 for Halo 2, $5 for Rainbow Six 3, $5 for Forza, etc. It's $5. You can't really compare it to Everquest, WoW, or other subscription MMOs because a) Live isn't a "game", but a service that supports hundreds of games, b) it's much cheaper at $5/mo rather than the $10-$15 each MMO wants (and as I already mentioned, it's not per-game), and c) it's not necessary to be able to play the game you've already bought, but it adds life to a game and most people think that multiplayer gaming is fun.
You're missing 3/4s of the game, then. And why are you so unwilling to pay < $5/mo for Live? The price is extremely cheap, and games like Halo 2, Forza, and PGR2 make it totally worth the price. For less than the price of a Starbucks coffee (or coffee for a week if you're a 7/11 coffee kind of person), you can have the best online console experience.
Having never heard of this game, and only going by the screenshots on that site, I wonder if you've played the Crimson Skies games? One on PC from 2000, much more flight sim-ish; one on Xbox from 2003 (with Live support), much more arcadey. Propeller Arena definitely looks similar, but maybe the similarity is only skin deep.
Yes! The Freespace series was the spiritual successor to Wing Commander, and I loved it. Sadly, we'll probably never see a Freespace 3 (Volition, the developer and I believe the owner of the Freespace IP, is still around but they're doing crap like the Red Faction series and The Punisher). Luckily, the source for Freespace 2 is available, and there's an active community around it. Maybe we'll never see an official Freespace 3, but I wouldn't be surprised if you see some decent fan-made attempts. (decent? descent? Get it? Because Interplay forced Volition to add the "Descent:" tag on the first Freespace for fear of it not selling without an already well-known name attached, even though Freespace had asbolutely nothing to do with Descent.)