I'm not so sure about that - EA/DICE skipped XP support on Battlefield 3, which was almost explicitly designed to "make bajillions of dollars by taking on the Call of Duty empire". And at least one of Microsoft's PC games is DX10-only (Halo 2), although that was more to push Vista than to push the game.
PS: XP doesn't support DirectX 10, either - DX9 is its limit. Doesn't significantly alter the argument; just clarifying.
Problem is, that assumes you know where the bug is in the source, at least roughly. But say your bug is "configuration file gets corrupted if the user simultaneously enables left-handed mode and three-button-mouse emulation, but only under under Windows"? Do you put the//todo in configuration.c, in config_panel.c, or in platform_windows.c?//TODO (or equivalents - I use//@@@@@ at work, simply because that was the existing convention) works for things you know are wrong. Functions where some or all of the functionality is not yet implemented, for example. But when the bug could be in one of dozens of files (esp. if it's exhibited in one object, but you suspect it's due to a bug in a parent class's method), it kind of breaks down.
Part of that can be blamed on a lengthy console generation. Most games have to sell on the PS3/360, consoles that are now around six years old. Developers aren't going to spend extra millions making a game that can really push modern PC hardware, because that gives them no edge on the more lucrative console market.
When the next generation of consoles comes out, I expect PC games to immediately jump in hardware demands.
It's not entirely based on this, though. Display resolution's another thing - we're getting close to "as good as a game can look in 1920x1080, 60Hz". If 2160p displays suddenly become universal, you'll see the rest of the computer having to work harder to keep up.
While it has been nearly a year since I released, that's mostly because I haven't touched the project in over eight months.
Before that, I did actually manage a few releases. The "zero bugs" was never an issue - between the small size of the project, and the smaller size of the testing corps, there just weren't that many known but unresolved bugs.
I should probably start working on that thing again...
It's news for nerds. Can't argue with that. Sure, it's about something most commonly enjoyed by the lower nerd castes, but it insulted G4 enough to definitely not be an advertisement.
It's the exact opposite of the most widely-derided trend on Slashdot - bad editing. It's *all* editing. It's the sort of investigative journalism/. needs more of. Sure, it's a bit of a rocky start, but I'd definitely rather see more stuff like this than more "the GUBMINT be taken our FREEDOMS!", [company]-bashing, and repetitive {bitcoin|raspberry pi|kickstarter} posts we've been complaining about.
Disabling gadgets is one of the first things I do on any new Windows system. They're never useful, all they do is eat up CPU time or distract you with constantly-moving readouts. Hate those things.
I file mine in my todo.txt, which also includes missing features. Since I don't do a release if there are *any* known outstanding bugs, "bugs" and "incomplete features" are essentially the same for me.
I also log every bug fixed into changelog.txt, which gives a nice history.
Those places were probably built with the expectation of high temperatures, and used asphalt that would function properly at those temperatures and higher.
DC, however, is in that ugly latitude where you get freezing winters (-20C/0F) but burning summers (40C/100F), and (as a man living close enough to DC to die from the fallout when the bombs drop) the last few weeks have been extremely, abnormally hot, and they've maintained that high temperature for a long time. Part of it, I expect, is that even the nights are hot - the asphalt didn't get a chance to cool to 50-60F every night.
Weird, I distinctly remember opting into it. And a bit of Googling brings up the same results.
It actually doesn't even give everyone a chance to opt-in - when they do a new survey, they randomly select people to have a chance to participate. So no, it does not default to spying on you.
My only real complain with steam is that all games are locked to a single account on a single PC (e.g. I can't have two games across one account active on two different systems).
Offline mode. I use it regularly for LAN gaming.
Start Steam on one computer, go into offline mode. Repeat for all (n - 1) remaining computers. Last one can stay in online mode. Start up a local server on any of them, have the rest join. Bam. LAN party on (n) computers with 1 copy of the game.
The only thing offline mode really stops you from doing is updating, chatting or using the server browser (IIRC, you can still directly connect to internet servers). So for single-player games or for LAN, it works perfectly (at least until one of them updates and gets out of synch).
"Innovation." You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You want to out-innovate Apple? Don't make a goal of going head-to-head with them everywhere - that's copying, the exact opposite of innovating. Compete where you actually have a newer, better product than they have. Compete where they have no product. Let them win where you cannot create a better or more innovative product. I'm sure Sun Tzu had something I could quote here, but I can't remember anything offhand.
It doesn't encrypt anything except unreleased, pre-loaded content (which is decrypted when the game is actually released). It allows you to go into offline mode, and to back up your games to DVD. It doesn't itself restrict anything except the.exe - I copied the DLC files from my Steam install of Oblivion to my retail install of Oblivion with no problems (it was cheaper to buy the "Deluxe" all-DLC-included version on Steam than to buy all the DRM alone). It includes a notice on any game that includes additional DRM It doesn't do any spying other than the opt-in Steam Hardware Survey It tries to be a beneficial service, including chat and modding features It hosts, for free and without DRM, user-created mods for several games It supports OS X, and is expected to shortly support Linux It does not in practice restrict what you can do with your data (the ban on sharing, trading or selling accounts is not strictly enforced) Valve has pledged to, should they go out of business, release a DRM-remover for any games they legally can. (and Steam is easily broken, if you wish to)
So given a choice between "not getting the game at all", "pirating the game", "buying it on Steam" or "buying it on some far more DRM-encumbered platform", is it really a wonder that people choose "buy on Steam"?
Yes, in theory, everyone should boycott DRM. But this is the Real World, and out here, you have to make compromises. Steam is the best compromise solution - it eliminates or ameliorates the problems with DRM, but still placates the corporations' concerns about digital distribution and "piracy".
If they know they are highly sought and already have a huge customer base on Steam, why wouldn't they put their games on Steam?
Because they're competing with Steam?
I can predict what the results would be if they tried putting up any game for vote. Battlefield 3 and all the other Origin-only games. Followed by Minecraft and the "Games for Windows"-only titles.
Minecraft sells itself - it doesn't use any "stores", because given how frequently they used to update, no store in their right mind would take them. And now they've found they can sell it themselves without much difficulty.
The others are because the parent corporation (EA and Microsoft) have their own, competing platforms, and either flat-out refuse to put their games on Steam (Microsoft), or deliberately refuse to follow the Steam ToS regarding stuff like "can't use non-Steam sites to sell DLC in-game" (EA). At least Microsoft is honest about it - EA is trying to make Valve out to be the bad guys, but nobody's buying it.
Just a small aside on EA: I'm never buying any of their DLC again, even packaged with the game. When I bought Dragon Age, I bought the "Deluxe" version that included most of the DLC. I had to fiddle for a week to get it to actually let me use the DLC I bought, and it seemed to reset itself every time I *rebooted*. I made the mistake of thinking they'd fixed it when I bought the Deluxe version of Mass Effect 2. That one, I *never* got my DLC working. So yeah, I'm never paying for DLC from them again. And if the game itself is incomplete without the DLC, then I'm just not buying the game, period.
Because the cells are far too weak a magnet for that to work. Any magnet strong enough to pull out the magnetic cells will be strong enough to move *any* water-containing cell.
From reading TFA, it seems they did this by placing samples under a microscope, then slowly rotating a strong magnet beneath it. The magnetic cells rotated with the magnet; the non-magnetic cells did not.
I have a "shitbox" I would use for this. The intent is that it is disposable - both hardware and data. In my case, it's an old, beige Athlon 900 desktop with a fading Windows ME sticker still on it. I've slapped all my old hard drives and OpenBSD on it.
I use it mainly for trying out server shit. Learned how to set up Samba and Apache on it. Tried out several other things, as well.
The only data on it are some SNES ROMs, tertiary backups of non-secret data (source code for various personal shit, it's all stored in two other places), and a rather large collection of porn. I wouldn't really be mad if it all disappeared (even the porn - it means I have an excuse to go smut-hunting again).
So between "even if the virus literally makes it explode, I don't give a shit" and "it's Open-fucking-BSD, who in their right mind would try to write a virus for it?", I would be fully confident plugging a random USB drive into it. More confident than on a virtual, even - what if it connects to the host machine instead, by accident?
Was this a factor leading up to the above ground test ban treaty? I mean it wouldn't be good to accidentally wipe out the world's electronics industry. (Now doing it on purpose, that's something else entirely). The test ban treaty probably stopped the development of "shaped" nuclear charges (blasting a city from an explosion in orbit) and other exotic weapons like fission bomb pumped x-ray lasers. Oh well, let's hope the Aliens are friendly!
Note: I'm going completely off memory here, quite likely to get some details wrong.
This test (and Soviet counterparts) drove a high-altitude test ban treaty (that might actually be the name). They both rather quickly saw that continuing this would bring only ruin to them both.
That probably was a major factor in the later above-ground and then comprehensive test bans, proving that the two countries could write and abide by a treaty limiting nuclear weapons in any way. But those were years later.
Considering most emulators will *play* directly from the ZIP files, I don't think that's necessary. In fact, since I'm on a 32GB uSD card, I rather like it being stored compressed.
so WTF are you going to do with this stuff? put it in your closet, keep it in "mint" condition, kill anyone who dares to touch it and think how worth it everything was?
Well, if I were to have all those games, I'd open a museum. Buy as many consoles + TVs as possible (old CRTs, if possible, for max realism), pop in as many games as possible. Put up a little placard next to each, describing the history and historical importance of the game. Keep the most popular ones on constantly, but rotate out all the rest. Supplement it with other material - old game magazines, videos, etc. Do some proper archival work as well - have all the games backed up militantly, so the games will never truly be "lost" (maybe do the playing on the duplicated copies, if cost-effective).
Charge $5 to $25 to come in and play the games all day. Run some special events, maybe have the Minibosses or the Protomen do a promotional concert every so often.
I had a laptop. It came with Vista. It worked fine. There were a few small complaints, but (at least with SP1) it was a fine OS, far, far better than XP. The only time it had a BSOD, it was because of a hardware problem (hard drive failure the first time; GPU thermal shutdown the second time).
I got plenty of time on various W7 computers. 7 was a bit better than Vista, but not enough to buy. To people upgrading from XP, I recommended 7; to people thinking of upgrading from Vista, I advised against it.
I later got access to a legit, free (as in beer) copy of W7 via MSDNAA. Still not worth the upgrade. The time it would take to do an upgrade would just not be worth it.
Compare ME. I had experience with that one as well. Compared to the contemporary 2K, it was rubbish. Crashed constantly, Unstable, unreliable. Slow - extremely slow. Even compared to 98, it was bad.
Now, maybe Vista really was that bad, pre-SP1. I can't comment on it, because I never used pre-SP1 Vista. But the Vista I used was nowhere near as bad as the ME I used. And I have to question whether all the Vista hate is from people who actually used it regularly, or if it's hearsay from the nontechnischken who were confused by anything that wasn't XP.
Nintendo really dropped the ball on naming the 3DS.
It *isn't* another DS. They tried to associate it with their prior brand for sales purposes, but it isn't. It's as different from the DS as the PS3 is from the PS2 - completely.
The DS was, technologically, about halfway between the SNES and N64. Some N64 games could be played on it, some couldn't. The 3DS is about halfway between the N64 and the Gamecube - I expect we'll see some Gamecube ports for it sooner or later.
IIRC, it only plays DS games by having separate hardware for it. So future hardware iterations could easily drop the DS compatibility for price/power savings. So making "just a DS" game will backfire, both because a 3DS Lite may not play it, and because they're sacrificing all the extra power they could be using.
The 3DS can do much better graphics than the DS. It is a genuinely *new* handheld, unlike the DSi which was just a DS with some new online features. They really would have been better off using a completely new name, or perhaps reviving the Game Boy name. Game Boy 3D - that would have worked well, especially since it *could* be classified as the 3rd Game Boy (Original/Slim/Color, Advance/SP).
I can see what they were aiming for. The DS is (IIRC) the best-selling game system of all time. It's got a very solid brand identity. But because of all the DS variants that were essentially the same thing plus a gimmick (smaller, larger, online, etc.), and having an ad campaign based around what seems to be just a gimmick, they're confusing customers into thinking it is "just another DS", which only hurts Nintendo.
They quite likely *are* hiring good developers, good game designers, to replace their original staff. But they quite likely don't give them the freedom to actually do their jobs properly (especially regarding gameplay/story integration). Even in a Western culture, you would have difficulty going against a senior guy with several million-selling titles under his belt. In a very authoritarian Japanese environment, it would be nigh impossible.
I'm not trying to criticize the Japanese culture itself here. It's just different, and in this case, some of those differences are the cause of some of their problems. Western-culture developers have their own problems that stem from their own culture, but that's just not relevant to this particular post.
The early games were great. But, as inevitably happens, the best people, the ones making the games great, left, one by one. That's why the series peaked at either VI or VII - they would have continued to get better and better had all the original people stayed, or been replaced with equally-talented people. But that didn't happen.
After that, the series stagnated. They had a good design, but nobody really knew how or why it worked (Japanese developers in general seem to have difficulty with the concept of a "game designer", as opposed to "game director" or "producer"). So they didn't change much for VIII, IX, X, X-2... Yes, there were changes, but not significant ones.
But eventually the pressure from fans to "innovate" and their own false confidence led them to change things. And that led to a decline in the actual gameplay.
But Square doesn't get that. Mr. Miyamoto (of Nintendo) has a well-known personal mantra: "find the fun". Square doesn't get that. They don't seem to see games as games, but as interactive stories. That just does not work. That's not just Square - it seems symptomatic of the entire Japanese game industry - but Square has it worst.
What makes it worse is that they "innovate" on the wrong features. The combat system was decent. Not perfect, but pretty good. So it got thrown out and replaced with something terrible. But things that aren't good or don't fit (Chocobos, for example) keep being thrown in, just because the fans buy a lot of merchandise based on them.
Personally, I blame Nomura. The latest Square games are about what you would expect from putting a character designer in charge of the game. It's like putting a costume designer in charge of a movie - it doesn't work. You get crazy costumes, but static, "archetypal" characters and a boring plot.
They also just have massive mismanagement. Reportedly *half* the content made for FFXIII was cut. Now, that figure itself isn't bad - most games cut 90% of their *planned* content. But they cut half the stuff they had already made (and later recycled much of it into XIII-2). That's just terrible management. FFXIV is a train wreck.
They also seem to pick the wrong staff. Their portable division does much better - remember Crisis Core? Even Dissidia was pretty good. Even on a single-person level, Takeharu Ishimoto's a far better composer than Masashi Hamauzu; he's the one who should be writing the music for their big-box console games. (Yes, I'm a FF music nerd who pays attention to all that stuff and can recite both versions of "One Winged Angel" in two languages from memory)
In short, yes, Square may still be profitable. Even many of their other franchises are doing well, not even getting into their Eidos side. But the Final Fantasy series is coasting on it's brand identity. They have two or three more chances to get it *right*, or that brand identity is gone.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure about that - EA/DICE skipped XP support on Battlefield 3, which was almost explicitly designed to "make bajillions of dollars by taking on the Call of Duty empire". And at least one of Microsoft's PC games is DX10-only (Halo 2), although that was more to push Vista than to push the game.
PS: XP doesn't support DirectX 10, either - DX9 is its limit. Doesn't significantly alter the argument; just clarifying.
Problem is, that assumes you know where the bug is in the source, at least roughly. But say your bug is "configuration file gets corrupted if the user simultaneously enables left-handed mode and three-button-mouse emulation, but only under under Windows"? Do you put the //todo in configuration.c, in config_panel.c, or in platform_windows.c? //TODO (or equivalents - I use //@@@@@ at work, simply because that was the existing convention) works for things you know are wrong. Functions where some or all of the functionality is not yet implemented, for example. But when the bug could be in one of dozens of files (esp. if it's exhibited in one object, but you suspect it's due to a bug in a parent class's method), it kind of breaks down.
Part of that can be blamed on a lengthy console generation. Most games have to sell on the PS3/360, consoles that are now around six years old. Developers aren't going to spend extra millions making a game that can really push modern PC hardware, because that gives them no edge on the more lucrative console market.
When the next generation of consoles comes out, I expect PC games to immediately jump in hardware demands.
It's not entirely based on this, though. Display resolution's another thing - we're getting close to "as good as a game can look in 1920x1080, 60Hz". If 2160p displays suddenly become universal, you'll see the rest of the computer having to work harder to keep up.
While it has been nearly a year since I released, that's mostly because I haven't touched the project in over eight months.
Before that, I did actually manage a few releases. The "zero bugs" was never an issue - between the small size of the project, and the smaller size of the testing corps, there just weren't that many known but unresolved bugs.
I should probably start working on that thing again...
You say absolutes; I say hyperbole.
I actually liked this article .
It's news for nerds. Can't argue with that. Sure, it's about something most commonly enjoyed by the lower nerd castes, but it insulted G4 enough to definitely not be an advertisement.
It's the exact opposite of the most widely-derided trend on Slashdot - bad editing. It's *all* editing. It's the sort of investigative journalism /. needs more of. Sure, it's a bit of a rocky start, but I'd definitely rather see more stuff like this than more "the GUBMINT be taken our FREEDOMS!", [company]-bashing, and repetitive {bitcoin|raspberry pi|kickstarter} posts we've been complaining about.
Disabling gadgets is one of the first things I do on any new Windows system. They're never useful, all they do is eat up CPU time or distract you with constantly-moving readouts. Hate those things.
I file mine in my todo.txt, which also includes missing features. Since I don't do a release if there are *any* known outstanding bugs, "bugs" and "incomplete features" are essentially the same for me.
I also log every bug fixed into changelog.txt, which gives a nice history.
Those places were probably built with the expectation of high temperatures, and used asphalt that would function properly at those temperatures and higher.
DC, however, is in that ugly latitude where you get freezing winters (-20C/0F) but burning summers (40C/100F), and (as a man living close enough to DC to die from the fallout when the bombs drop) the last few weeks have been extremely, abnormally hot, and they've maintained that high temperature for a long time. Part of it, I expect, is that even the nights are hot - the asphalt didn't get a chance to cool to 50-60F every night.
Weird, I distinctly remember opting into it. And a bit of Googling brings up the same results.
It actually doesn't even give everyone a chance to opt-in - when they do a new survey, they randomly select people to have a chance to participate. So no, it does not default to spying on you.
My only real complain with steam is that all games are locked to a single account on a single PC (e.g. I can't have two games across one account active on two different systems).
Offline mode. I use it regularly for LAN gaming.
Start Steam on one computer, go into offline mode. Repeat for all (n - 1) remaining computers. Last one can stay in online mode. Start up a local server on any of them, have the rest join. Bam. LAN party on (n) computers with 1 copy of the game.
The only thing offline mode really stops you from doing is updating, chatting or using the server browser (IIRC, you can still directly connect to internet servers). So for single-player games or for LAN, it works perfectly (at least until one of them updates and gets out of synch).
"Innovation." You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You want to out-innovate Apple? Don't make a goal of going head-to-head with them everywhere - that's copying, the exact opposite of innovating. Compete where you actually have a newer, better product than they have. Compete where they have no product. Let them win where you cannot create a better or more innovative product. I'm sure Sun Tzu had something I could quote here, but I can't remember anything offhand.
Because Steam DRM is "consumer-friendly".
It doesn't encrypt anything except unreleased, pre-loaded content (which is decrypted when the game is actually released). .exe - I copied the DLC files from my Steam install of Oblivion to my retail install of Oblivion with no problems (it was cheaper to buy the "Deluxe" all-DLC-included version on Steam than to buy all the DRM alone).
It allows you to go into offline mode, and to back up your games to DVD.
It doesn't itself restrict anything except the
It includes a notice on any game that includes additional DRM
It doesn't do any spying other than the opt-in Steam Hardware Survey
It tries to be a beneficial service, including chat and modding features
It hosts, for free and without DRM, user-created mods for several games
It supports OS X, and is expected to shortly support Linux
It does not in practice restrict what you can do with your data (the ban on sharing, trading or selling accounts is not strictly enforced)
Valve has pledged to, should they go out of business, release a DRM-remover for any games they legally can. (and Steam is easily broken, if you wish to)
So given a choice between "not getting the game at all", "pirating the game", "buying it on Steam" or "buying it on some far more DRM-encumbered platform", is it really a wonder that people choose "buy on Steam"?
Yes, in theory, everyone should boycott DRM. But this is the Real World, and out here, you have to make compromises. Steam is the best compromise solution - it eliminates or ameliorates the problems with DRM, but still placates the corporations' concerns about digital distribution and "piracy".
If they know they are highly sought and already have a huge customer base on Steam, why wouldn't they put their games on Steam?
Because they're competing with Steam?
I can predict what the results would be if they tried putting up any game for vote. Battlefield 3 and all the other Origin-only games. Followed by Minecraft and the "Games for Windows"-only titles.
Minecraft sells itself - it doesn't use any "stores", because given how frequently they used to update, no store in their right mind would take them. And now they've found they can sell it themselves without much difficulty.
The others are because the parent corporation (EA and Microsoft) have their own, competing platforms, and either flat-out refuse to put their games on Steam (Microsoft), or deliberately refuse to follow the Steam ToS regarding stuff like "can't use non-Steam sites to sell DLC in-game" (EA). At least Microsoft is honest about it - EA is trying to make Valve out to be the bad guys, but nobody's buying it.
Just a small aside on EA: I'm never buying any of their DLC again, even packaged with the game. When I bought Dragon Age, I bought the "Deluxe" version that included most of the DLC. I had to fiddle for a week to get it to actually let me use the DLC I bought, and it seemed to reset itself every time I *rebooted*. I made the mistake of thinking they'd fixed it when I bought the Deluxe version of Mass Effect 2. That one, I *never* got my DLC working. So yeah, I'm never paying for DLC from them again. And if the game itself is incomplete without the DLC, then I'm just not buying the game, period.
(besides assembly, but who does assembly?)
You mean besides your compiler?
Maybe it's an info page?
Because the cells are far too weak a magnet for that to work. Any magnet strong enough to pull out the magnetic cells will be strong enough to move *any* water-containing cell.
From reading TFA, it seems they did this by placing samples under a microscope, then slowly rotating a strong magnet beneath it. The magnetic cells rotated with the magnet; the non-magnetic cells did not.
Why bother with virtuals?
I have a "shitbox" I would use for this. The intent is that it is disposable - both hardware and data. In my case, it's an old, beige Athlon 900 desktop with a fading Windows ME sticker still on it. I've slapped all my old hard drives and OpenBSD on it.
I use it mainly for trying out server shit. Learned how to set up Samba and Apache on it. Tried out several other things, as well.
The only data on it are some SNES ROMs, tertiary backups of non-secret data (source code for various personal shit, it's all stored in two other places), and a rather large collection of porn. I wouldn't really be mad if it all disappeared (even the porn - it means I have an excuse to go smut-hunting again).
So between "even if the virus literally makes it explode, I don't give a shit" and "it's Open-fucking-BSD, who in their right mind would try to write a virus for it?", I would be fully confident plugging a random USB drive into it. More confident than on a virtual, even - what if it connects to the host machine instead, by accident?
Was this a factor leading up to the above ground test ban treaty? I mean it wouldn't be good to accidentally wipe out the world's electronics industry. (Now doing it on purpose, that's something else entirely). The test ban treaty probably stopped the development of "shaped" nuclear charges (blasting a city from an explosion in orbit) and other exotic weapons like fission bomb pumped x-ray lasers. Oh well, let's hope the Aliens are friendly!
Note: I'm going completely off memory here, quite likely to get some details wrong.
This test (and Soviet counterparts) drove a high-altitude test ban treaty (that might actually be the name). They both rather quickly saw that continuing this would bring only ruin to them both.
That probably was a major factor in the later above-ground and then comprehensive test bans, proving that the two countries could write and abide by a treaty limiting nuclear weapons in any way. But those were years later.
Considering most emulators will *play* directly from the ZIP files, I don't think that's necessary. In fact, since I'm on a 32GB uSD card, I rather like it being stored compressed.
so WTF are you going to do with this stuff? put it in your closet, keep it in "mint" condition, kill anyone who dares to touch it and think how worth it everything was?
Well, if I were to have all those games, I'd open a museum. Buy as many consoles + TVs as possible (old CRTs, if possible, for max realism), pop in as many games as possible. Put up a little placard next to each, describing the history and historical importance of the game. Keep the most popular ones on constantly, but rotate out all the rest. Supplement it with other material - old game magazines, videos, etc. Do some proper archival work as well - have all the games backed up militantly, so the games will never truly be "lost" (maybe do the playing on the duplicated copies, if cost-effective).
Charge $5 to $25 to come in and play the games all day. Run some special events, maybe have the Minibosses or the Protomen do a promotional concert every so often.
Comparing Vista to ME is unfair to Vista.
I had a laptop. It came with Vista. It worked fine. There were a few small complaints, but (at least with SP1) it was a fine OS, far, far better than XP. The only time it had a BSOD, it was because of a hardware problem (hard drive failure the first time; GPU thermal shutdown the second time).
I got plenty of time on various W7 computers. 7 was a bit better than Vista, but not enough to buy. To people upgrading from XP, I recommended 7; to people thinking of upgrading from Vista, I advised against it.
I later got access to a legit, free (as in beer) copy of W7 via MSDNAA. Still not worth the upgrade. The time it would take to do an upgrade would just not be worth it.
Compare ME. I had experience with that one as well. Compared to the contemporary 2K, it was rubbish. Crashed constantly, Unstable, unreliable. Slow - extremely slow. Even compared to 98, it was bad.
Now, maybe Vista really was that bad, pre-SP1. I can't comment on it, because I never used pre-SP1 Vista. But the Vista I used was nowhere near as bad as the ME I used. And I have to question whether all the Vista hate is from people who actually used it regularly, or if it's hearsay from the nontechnischken who were confused by anything that wasn't XP.
Nintendo really dropped the ball on naming the 3DS.
It *isn't* another DS. They tried to associate it with their prior brand for sales purposes, but it isn't. It's as different from the DS as the PS3 is from the PS2 - completely.
The DS was, technologically, about halfway between the SNES and N64. Some N64 games could be played on it, some couldn't. The 3DS is about halfway between the N64 and the Gamecube - I expect we'll see some Gamecube ports for it sooner or later.
IIRC, it only plays DS games by having separate hardware for it. So future hardware iterations could easily drop the DS compatibility for price/power savings. So making "just a DS" game will backfire, both because a 3DS Lite may not play it, and because they're sacrificing all the extra power they could be using.
The 3DS can do much better graphics than the DS. It is a genuinely *new* handheld, unlike the DSi which was just a DS with some new online features. They really would have been better off using a completely new name, or perhaps reviving the Game Boy name. Game Boy 3D - that would have worked well, especially since it *could* be classified as the 3rd Game Boy (Original/Slim/Color, Advance/SP).
I can see what they were aiming for. The DS is (IIRC) the best-selling game system of all time. It's got a very solid brand identity. But because of all the DS variants that were essentially the same thing plus a gimmick (smaller, larger, online, etc.), and having an ad campaign based around what seems to be just a gimmick, they're confusing customers into thinking it is "just another DS", which only hurts Nintendo.
Something I forgot to put into the above rant:
They quite likely *are* hiring good developers, good game designers, to replace their original staff. But they quite likely don't give them the freedom to actually do their jobs properly (especially regarding gameplay/story integration). Even in a Western culture, you would have difficulty going against a senior guy with several million-selling titles under his belt. In a very authoritarian Japanese environment, it would be nigh impossible.
I'm not trying to criticize the Japanese culture itself here. It's just different, and in this case, some of those differences are the cause of some of their problems. Western-culture developers have their own problems that stem from their own culture, but that's just not relevant to this particular post.
Square's problem is management.
The early games were great. But, as inevitably happens, the best people, the ones making the games great, left, one by one. That's why the series peaked at either VI or VII - they would have continued to get better and better had all the original people stayed, or been replaced with equally-talented people. But that didn't happen.
After that, the series stagnated. They had a good design, but nobody really knew how or why it worked (Japanese developers in general seem to have difficulty with the concept of a "game designer", as opposed to "game director" or "producer"). So they didn't change much for VIII, IX, X, X-2... Yes, there were changes, but not significant ones.
But eventually the pressure from fans to "innovate" and their own false confidence led them to change things. And that led to a decline in the actual gameplay.
But Square doesn't get that. Mr. Miyamoto (of Nintendo) has a well-known personal mantra: "find the fun". Square doesn't get that. They don't seem to see games as games, but as interactive stories. That just does not work. That's not just Square - it seems symptomatic of the entire Japanese game industry - but Square has it worst.
What makes it worse is that they "innovate" on the wrong features. The combat system was decent. Not perfect, but pretty good. So it got thrown out and replaced with something terrible. But things that aren't good or don't fit (Chocobos, for example) keep being thrown in, just because the fans buy a lot of merchandise based on them.
Personally, I blame Nomura. The latest Square games are about what you would expect from putting a character designer in charge of the game. It's like putting a costume designer in charge of a movie - it doesn't work. You get crazy costumes, but static, "archetypal" characters and a boring plot.
They also just have massive mismanagement. Reportedly *half* the content made for FFXIII was cut. Now, that figure itself isn't bad - most games cut 90% of their *planned* content. But they cut half the stuff they had already made (and later recycled much of it into XIII-2). That's just terrible management. FFXIV is a train wreck.
They also seem to pick the wrong staff. Their portable division does much better - remember Crisis Core? Even Dissidia was pretty good. Even on a single-person level, Takeharu Ishimoto's a far better composer than Masashi Hamauzu; he's the one who should be writing the music for their big-box console games. (Yes, I'm a FF music nerd who pays attention to all that stuff and can recite both versions of "One Winged Angel" in two languages from memory)
In short, yes, Square may still be profitable. Even many of their other franchises are doing well, not even getting into their Eidos side. But the Final Fantasy series is coasting on it's brand identity. They have two or three more chances to get it *right*, or that brand identity is gone.