Exactly - when they include puzzle, card and word-games in your 'online gaming' survey, they're going to get results that are going to be used disingenuously.
This is analogous to suggesting that women play the majority of 'games' in real life, because the number of female Bridge clubs vastly outweighs the gender seperation in professional athletics.
The qualification of 'online game' to begin with is the problem.
No-one would likely argue that there is a gender distribution in free low-tech online games roughly consistent with population distribution overall.
The interesting question of 'women in games' is: why aren't women playing console games, massmogs, multiplayer strategy/fps/rpg/etc?
Truly, what end does this survey tell us? That women aren't afraid of the computer or the internet? Did anyone ever assert that being technophobes is responsible for the gender gap in commercial gaming?
Simply, there are more people playing poker on yahoo games alone than are playing counterstrike. There are vastly more people who play games on AOL than all massmogs combined. The male-dominated games become statistically insignificant when the net is cast this wide. Particularly when they obviate distinctions between gamers willing to pay for games, pay monthly for games, and deal with 3d cards and driver updates to play online games.
Again, the only questions that are interesting are: where are the women in commercial online gaming, and why aren't they showing up?
First, I must correct myself. Riding the Bullet was Stephen King's novella published specifically for ereaders. The Plant was his attempt at per-chapter online release via the Street Performer Protcol, and the one I meant to refer to in my analogy.
The very fact that he had managed to sell 3 million copies of each $4 installment of The Green Mile seems to suggest that perhaps I was wrong, that the market doesn't mind episodic content if properly encapsulated. If you can put it on store shelves, you can sell a respectable amount.
Although, opting for online distribution (as any episodic game would likely have to do), even with Stephen King's fanfare, only logged ~200,000 downloads for chapter 1. That's quite a bit of potential market-share lost on distribution concept alone, and his downloads were only on the order of 10s of kilobytes, hardly the massive stuff episodic games would require.
Interestingly, Stephen King has gone on record as saying that the Green Mile serialization wasn't a success by his standards, and that he wouldn't be doing another serial novel again. It would seem that this reinforces the assertion that traditional reproduction and distribution of episodic content is simply not cost effective.
Interestingly, the 66 page Riding the Bullet sold 400,000 copies at $2.50 in the first 48 hours ( i can't find total-to-date figures ). This was a full year before The Plant so one would imagine consumer acceptance of e-content would only increase.
The only objective difference between Riding the Bullet and The Plant is the latter's pay-as-you-go intent. Apparently that alone kept most of King's fans who are willing to pay for an ebook from even downloading the first installment for free.
It wasn't that The Plant didn't suit the fan's tastes, or that it was potentially more expensive - they simply didn't even try the content out. That's a pretty powerful implication, and it strongly supports my point.
Still, feel free to ignore my pocket philosophy regarding the way consumers prefer to consume content. I feel the economics (via King's decision against further serial novels online, or off) still support the same end: episodic content is not the way to go when there is an alternative.
the achievement here is in getting 8GB into a standard-form-factor compact flash slot, and keeping power consumption down to a reasonable amount for portable storage.
They could easily bind 10 of these CF cards together and have roughly the same form factor as the sleekest slimline notebook drives. It'd really just be a matter of addressing if they wanted to release an 80GB solid-state drive.
The first problem though, is the transfer rate bottleneck. CF has access times an order of magnitude lower than even the fastest disk drives (0.000256s vs 0.006s), but its transfer rate is ~25% of current consumer magnetic disk drives. (20MB/s vs 80MB/s)
likely they could work out the transfer rate problem (and in under a year if there was a market), but then we're left with the other major problem. The relatively low write lifespan of flash memory. (between 100k and 1m writes/block)
A system swap file would likely burn through that much faster than the consumer market would tolerate.
The bottom line though, is that it's patented technology. Even if they released an 80 GB drive in a couple years, it wouldn't be priced for the consumer market. Not until a competing technology moves in.
You and I will likely still be waiting for a solid state storage alternative for the next 5 years. Sad but true.
I'd have mod'd your post a troll, designed simply to elicit a railing anti-corporate sentiment from the rabid/. crowd. But you got a +5 Interesting so I'll play along.
the Internet may be nothing more then a controlled system by Hollywood and the like
In short: It can't. Not unless the internet topology itself is radically altered.
So long as anyone can post a web server and serve content with a broadcast license or an expensive broadcasting 'vetting' system, they will. HTTP was dominated by the old guard of media because you and I can publish and consume via HTTP entirely without them, and apparently we netizens value such communication.
So unless 'hollywood' buys the entire fiber backbone, all the comsat time, overthrows ICANN, and starts blocking all IP server traffic from publishers it doesn't personally greenlight - nothing can change.
'Push' as a web technology never took off because no-one likes having to consume content at the schedule of a broadcaster. They tolerate it with TV and radio because there was no alternative. With an interactive alternative, push web technology was DOA.
So as long as there is an alternative, Push will be unable to achieve hegemony in any medium. Unless of course, several currently illegal steps are taken by old media.
please. games won't get shorter with episodic content, they'd get longer.
it would behoove the publisher to milk gamers for as long as possible, to make up for the people who tried a few episodes and left. There'd be next to no finality in such games. Look at popular television series like the X-Files. Clearly that series has been perpetuated past the reasonable point of finality. The movie and final season essentially cleanly wrapped up the story - and yet they forced it. Why? because people were still watching. They'll drive every story into the ground.
Plus you'd only be able to play a particular game 2 hours a month, max. What happens when you're engrossed in the story, and want to continue because you have a couple extra hours to kill on a rainy afternoon? How much anticipation or tension can you maintain for an entire month?
The problem with episodic content in general is that no-one actually buys into it. Episodic content was tolerated in its inception, as the only way to make content digestable via a broadcast medium. Broadcast content must be consumed on the broadcasters schedule, and they quickly discovered that people didn't want to earmark 3 hours on a weeknight just to catch a single story.
So to keep weekday viewers/listeners - they cut it up. But in every other media where people can consume at their own pace: music, literature, gaming - episodic content has been rejected by the consumer.
I just don't know why people keep trying to force a glorified content distribution hack down everyone's throat.
A company can't afford to do all the upfront coding and tech support for a 'free' first episode, only to risk most of their potential audience drifting away. They can minimize this by licensing a proven engine - but it will never go away entirely. they'll still have to do support, and no-one wants to do that without revenue.
Second is distribution. what would a 2 hour episode take to download? 50 meg? 100? 200? Sure, for us hardcore gamers none of that seems unreasonable for a good game. Let steam/kpp/bittorrent/etc download that while i watch south park. no problem.
but what about the majority of game buyers with less-than-broadband? what about the game buyers with no internet access? these people are still out there, and the numbers show that there are many more of them than there are of us.
Barring digital distribution, one must press discs, package, ship, and stock a box every month to be sold for roughly $5. This just isn't going to happen, as any content not headed for the bargain bin costs at least $5 just to ship, stock, and get shelf-space.
So to do episodic content, you essentially limit your target market to broadband owners, and you put almost all your cash investment out up-front, with no guarantee or ability to forecast revenue.
Then there's the content problem. Most casual gamers don't finish most of the games they buy. They buy games based on (comparatively) little research and often find they don't care for a game's style, gameplay, story, etc and simply stop playing. To ask publishers to essentially allow these players to try before they buy, is to guarantee less revenue because most will lose interest and never pay for enough episodes to allow the publisher to cover their costs.
Let's not forget the lesson of Stephen King's 'Riding the Bullet'. That was top-rate content from one of America's most celebrated and popular authors, with a rabid, built-in fan-base.
And what happened? He stopped releasing chapters of his novel, because he wasn't getting enough online revenue to make it worth his while. But it wasn't his paythrough rate that was dropping. His downloads themselves dropped after each chapter he released.
Most people simply drifted off. They decided the story wasn't quite 'for them', or they forgot about it, or who knows what else. They simply stopped showing up.
So if Stephen King can't manage to make it worth his time to dish out episodic content, what chance does a game publisher have? They won't have his exposure, they won't have his fan base, they won't have his potential market, and they won't get the free publicity he got. His cost was merely time, imagination, and a word processor. Game developers have comparatively massive up-front costs.
and King failed.
I personally believe that games, like novels, are media that are desireable to consumers, as they are paced solely by the consumer. You can put it down, pause, pick it back up, or blast through it 6 hours at a time, wholly unlike tv or radio.
Consumers of book and game expect to be able to continue when they're engaged. They don't want to stop - and forcing them to stop essentially puts their excitement on hold, and may lose it entirely.
Episodic content has only ever worked in the broadcast media, because with them there was no other way to do it. Broadcast means people have to alter their schedule to consume the content, and most people aren't about to block off 3 hours of one night for a single story. So they cut up a story into several more reasonable parts.
People put up with 24, 1 hour at a time, not because they want to, but because they have no other choice. If 24 released on DVD at the same time as the first episode was released, what do you think would happen? Most people would buy it, and watch it on their own time, at their own pace.
So if episodic content was simply a business reality, and never about a desireable presentation of content - why do people keep trying to force it?
The browser has become the defacto platform for 'small' games. Wild Tangent's web driver in particular is available for license as well. It's helping bring accessibility for designers back to where a couple guys in a garage could churn out something fun in less than 3 years.
not a plug, just informational cuz everyone's asking.
"Everyone makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun, it's entertainment".
There are two basic types of player-created content. Fun, and Entertainment. Fun is what children have in a sandbox. Fun is what you get when you craft a NWN module or a Sims object. Entertainment is what you get from reading a story, watching a movie, or playing through that NWN module.
Player-created Fun is facilitated through Sandbox-styled games (eg The Sims). The player brings their own goals, and makes their own story - they are the content creator and consumer. In this setting the player Entertains themself - and almost no-one would be Entertained by watching their Fun.
The problem with player-created Fun, is that more people watch movies than make movies; more people read novels than write novels. Given the choice between reading a book or writing a book - only a small market will opt to write. Predicating your game on player-created Fun is a risky proposition at best. Compare the relative success of UO (Fun) vs Everquest (Entertainment). Only Will Wright has made it a smashing success, and it's noteworthy that subsequent versions of his hits have always added more Entertainment, more hand-crafted-story to the mix.
Player-created Entertainment is facilitated by letting players try their hand at stagecraft (eg NWN, halflife, et al). This allows the few content creators to try their hand at creating something to Entertain the masses.
The problem with stagecraft is that most people suck at creating content. Creating entertainment is inherently hard and time-consuming, and it may never find an audience. It's not surprising that most of it either wallows in obscurity or outright sucks.
Stagecraft only works well with a central community. The community allows the minority of content creators to feed the majority of content consumers. Peer-review and competition allows the content-consumer to sift through the deluge of the ho-hum without becoming discouraged, and allows the creator a measure of exposure.
The trick is, Entertainment has always found and held a larger audience than Fun. Hell, you might even say most players don't even seem to 'get' Fun any more, if you listen to the popular sentiment on UO or The Sims.
Player-created content is no silver bullet. It's just getting more lip-service in the face of growing professional content creation costs. It can certainly be a solid feature or subset of the gamespace - but basing your whole game on player-created content is in many ways more difficult and risky than hiring the appropriate talent.
who in the open source community would buy a commercial version of a free toy? unless of course, the commercial version sported worthwhile content not available for free. in that case, who cares if microsoft is putting worthwhile content onto linux?
more likely, they wouldn't advertise a linux port the same way they didn't advertise the windows version, so they'd just be throwing more time and money at a project that would ultimately be a loss. if they weren't going to honestly try to make money off a windows version, i sincerely doubt they'd try to make money off a linux port.
microsoft has never been an opponent of open source software in general. even in their thickest fud they've only labelled it as inappropriate for commercial use.
seeing as how they're releasing this expressly forbidding commercial use, they're still being consistent - though the action does contradict the rabidly anti-MS propaganda that/. has been known to generate.
simply, this is a work of Microsoft Research - and they're forward looking enough to decide to release this to their rabid fan-base, rather than leaving all that fan-content legally actionable.
the license is worded solely to prevent any competitors from profiting directly off MS's innovation, while retaining their existing rights and preventing themselves from being legally actionable should they ever sell another product that used some of that code.
I agree completely and emphatically. Email is not a free-speech/privacy issue, and i think people are forgetting that.
There is no provision in the constitution that guarantees an audience for free speech, yet this is precisely what anonymous email does. It puts a burden on me, the recipient, to sort through the garbage of others.
If you want more anonymous speech, get a blog, post to a web board, post to usenet.
Your freedoms stop when they infringe on the freedoms of others. Your freedom to be heard is wholly consitutionally blocked with my right to post a no soliciting sign.
I see no reason why I can't effectively put a similar sign on my email box. (let alone my meatspace mailbox)
the only reason bulk mail persists, is because it's effectively privately subsidizing the outdated and inefficient USPS. Spam, on the contrary, is wholly an economic drain on the delivery system. there is no benefit to anyone to retain spam, except those corporations who wish to have no responsibility to maintain an honest opt-out policy.
sure, spam finds willing recipients, so someone must want this garbage - but so do door to door salesmen. And I'm perfectly within my rights to forbid them from coming onto my property. a right which does not in any way infringe on their right to be heard, or their ability to simply bug my neighbor.
and then you're down to only worrying about RFID tags in consumer electronic devices that you'd rather not have that close to a pulse that powerful whatsoever.
your ipod, your pager, your cell phone...
of course, if you have a cellphone, big brother already has the capability to know where you go.
The problem with console add-ons is that (relatively) no-one buys them. the historical adoption rates for add-ons is abyssmal.
Developers can't assume the functionality of the add-ons exists, so they generally don't waste coding time to support the ~5% of their users who might have one.
and if most games don't support the functionality, then what's the point of the device at all? why pay $100 for an external HD if only 1 in 40 games supports custom soundtracks/content download?
Add-ons only move when a particular game has so rabid a fanbase that they can financially survive requiring the add-on to play. E.g. Phatasy Star Online's keyboard for various consoles, FFXI/PS2 HD, etc.
If the neXtBox doesn't ship with a HD, I doubt MS will release an external device unless a particular developer is going to require it.
Perhaps if backwards-compatibility was supported only by purchasing the external HD they could move the units by themselves, but newer games almost certainly wouldn't support it as much as current games do. And that would likely arouse much contempt from the playerbase. Particularly seeing as how the XBox itself will likely cost only $100 when the neXtBox hits.
even at consumer prices, for ~$50 you can get a 256mb CF card. That's likely all the space they'd need to include to manage a good amount of save games, and have space left over for backwards compatibility for titles using the HD for swap.
given that the G5s are only architectural siblings to the MS/IBM custom chips - getting the hardware little endian conversion seems likely (the feature that the G5s are missing that makes vPC much faster).
Combine that with MS's purchase of Virtual PC and suddenly emulating x86 on their new processors isn't a big issue, nor does it carry a licensing fee.
it likely all comes down to how much flash memory they can get, cheap enough, so all the xbox titles using the HD for swap can be supported.
as outlined in the wild speculation (err. 'article'), it all comes down to price. I don't think there are any technical limitations to backwards compat, other than those caused by price/storage of Flash memory.
likely, they don't even want to spend $50 on the storage if they can avoid it.
The writer doesn't have to dilineate the rules to maintain consistency. George Lucas never established exactly what powers 'the Force' conferred on its manipulators, yet no-one was particularly bothered by the much more liberal force use in the prequels.
What a storyteller must do however, is to provide consistency and plausibility. The Wachowski brothers explained Neo's vaguely defined super-powers in the Matrix as being the result of his ability to manipulate a false-reality through a form of subconscious computer hacking. People accepted this, as they did 'the Force', without a second thought.
However, at the end of Reloaded, and repeatedly through Revolutions, Neo demonstrated super-human powers even when he was outside of the 'false' reality of the Matrix. Most people felt this 'cheated' them of cinematic weight and emotional investment. Without explanation, without clarification, of why the old rules were able to now be violated, the audience felt as if the change, the surprise, was designed solely to fool them, not to enrich the storytelling experience. This generally arouses naught but contempt in the audience.
Zion was repeatedly established as being 'reality', as being our world - and accordingly we cringed with the characters from the sentinel onslaught. The humans had only one effective weapon against the enemy, and using it would render them helpless to any second wave.
Now however, there were mecha, rocket launchers, mystical powers. Hovercraft used mounted weapons to defeat many more sentinels than the relative few that Morpheus could only repel with an EMP. The audience felt foolish that they ever regarded the sentinels as truly dangerous, now that they could be blasted out of the sky by 19th century technology.
It isn't change itself that offends the audience. It is destructive change, that which retroactively destroys the emotional value of the prior experience.
Audiences revile at the 'it was all just a dream/game/etc'-style surprise endings (e.g. 13th floor). In those types of situations, the change robs the previous content of cinematic weight. The character we used to care about and root for turns out to be nothing more than an avatar in a game, or a shadow of reality. The audience is essentially instructed that nothing in the story prior to the change mattered in any way. The participants were not real, and were not in real danger.
This starkly contrasts even fiction in which the unreality of the setting/participants/story is established at the outset. E.g. the Princess Bride, the Neverending Story. We knew that the story was a fairy tale, and were unsurprised when Wesley was allowed to cheat death in a story that otherwise contained no such fantastical diversions.
Changes in gameplay should be handled according to this well known maxim - changes should be constructive, rather than destructive.
Constructive changes will be things that do not force the fiction back to square 1.
A new level may yield a new weapon or new units that change the players tactics - but it should never render the player's previous choices moot.
Deus Ex shouldn't have a level in which the computer systems are hopelessly alien, effectively destroying any character who chose to specialize in hacking. A roleplaying game should not hand-wave a character's capture and enslavement via cut-scene and remove all their equipment and experience -forcing them to start over. Those changes would obviate the investment of the player.
Tetris might have a change that requires players to match blocks of colors to score, instead of making lines. This could be a constructive change to gameplay that would create more depth in gameplay. Yet if this new goal was switched to without any notification to the player, they would be justly pissed off that their carefully constructed Tetris block was not rewarded. The unforseeable, unavoidable change would have destroyed the prior effort of the player.
Changes can be good. But it, more than most other aspects of storytelling or game design, must be done well to not have a detrimental effect on the experience.
People want to read about the nextgen consoles, and there is no fact - so only wild speculation remains.
some of it is reasonable (cutting HD to save costs) but none of it is insightful.
Honestly, all they need to do is put firewire adapters on the neXtBox. Then they could allow backwards compat (if people buy an addon drive, think 3rd party market)- and they could tie the xbox back into their media hub paradigm.
E.g. allowing people to jack their various firewire media accessories into the xbox to view their vids/pics/tunes on their home theatre.
It would be pretty neat if I could recharge my iPod while it provides a custom soundtrack to Halo3 on the neXtBox.
or, and this has been said before, they simply allow the neXtBox to have the ability to read/write from network shares out of the box. That way, it does not need an internal HD, but it could still maintain backwards compat by using a network share for storage (even if all one has is an old xbox on their network). Keep the functionality, save the cost/space/heat.
of course... all i have is wild speculation. but i sincerely doubt they care about linux. People hacked linux onto the DC, GC, and PS2 after all.
This is starting to feel an awful lot like Crimson Skies. Hoopla, playtesting, major rework, Hoopla, playtesting, major rework.
At least you know Bungie's not just rushing out anything wrapped in the Halo logo to capitalize on the buzz. And they're not blaming it on some half-baked code-leak or anything. (Really, what would Valve have to recode due the leak? the network encryption? That shouldn't take 6 months...)
Well, Crimson Skies turned out to be a damn fun game. So if they're holding Halo2 back to similarly refine the gameplay experience, good on em - I'd rather wait than have a glorified expansion sully the franchise.
I'm just hoping the (xbl) multiplayer is up to snuff, and they hit that 24/server xbl target.
Media renting didn't exist until VHS rental, and consumers picked up pretty fast to the idea of paying less to 'borrow' a copy of a film for a night for significantly less than a movie ticket price.
I don't think it at all unreasonable to assume the consumer could handle another shift in SOP for content rental. Particularly not when it is a net improvement on the old system. There's really no reason traditional rental chains couldn't have become the primary distributors for these discs. The only difference in the whole process at that point would be never having to return it.
Whether you disagree on concept though - you have to admit, it had 0 chance to succeed at $7 for 2 days. And it would have had a vastly better shot at ~$4 - 4.50
The extra $1 - $1.50 i feel would be reasonable given:
- Being nearly certain I will find the movie I intend to rent when i leave my house (high price of rental copies restricts supply, renting a new-release within a week of its distribution is a dubious prospect)
- Having no chance of accidental late fees
- Not having to register for/manage an 'account', or have another layer of clerks trying to cross-sell or up-sell me some promotional garbage.
- Being able to easily 'rent' movies when on vaction or on the road (w/out having to register/maintain an account in whatever town i happen to be in, or rely on the USPS to deliver the return in a timely manner.)
- Not suffering clerical errors that can result in: an erroneous late fee because some shmuck didn't empty the drop-off bin until 3pm, having to exchange an improperly stocked title, having to return a scratched-to-hell disc.
- Having the 48 hour countdown clock not start until i'd actually watched the movie. (Degradation begins when the disc is removed from its sleeve, not at point-of-purcahse. More than one time I've rented a flick only to have some life BS crop up that prevents me from being able to see it without taking the late fee hit.)
- Having an alternative to the rental chain hegemony.
These are benefits that add up, for me, to about a buck or two. Asking me to spend more than twice as much as a standard rental fee for these benefits doesn't quite cut it though. If I wanted to spend $7, i might as well make it $8 and see the damn thing in the theatre.
At $4 they'd still be more expensive than renting from Blockbuster, but in-line with what people are willing to pay for the no-late-fees-ever rental experience through PPV. They'd have had a shot.
at more than double the 'renting from a store' rate they were guaranteeing failure.
It isn't hindsight whatsoever, it's price-sight. If they'd said '$7' when they were talking about the tech everyone would've told them it would bomb. But they kept saying 'for a little more than the price to rent a movie from blockbuster'. which made everyone assume $3-4.
$7 is certainly not 'a little more' than $3.
Perhaps the rental chains squeezed them to stratify the pricing intentionally, i don't know (Blockbuster may have appreciable pressure now that Disney isn't the only kids-content creator in the game). I just know that at $7, they shouldn't have even bothered.
common wisdom has already shown that Microsoft is positioning itself as being in competition with Sony for the top spot, not with Nintendo for second-place. Dropping their price to try to beat Nintendo's second wind growth is highly unlikely.
As is, Microsoft is doing a very good job at getting the attention of hardcore gamers. Quite frankly, Sony has moved 7 PS2s for every Xbox MS moved - and yet they rack up significantly fewer than 7x the game sales each month. It shouldn't even be a remotely fair competition in console software sales month to month for the top 10 spots, and yet it is.
So trying for a huge installed base doesn't really behoove them at this point. Particularly not when they are already losing so much per console, and when Sony is selling loads of consoles to people who frankly aren't buying games. (which is giving them a fairly similar net loss on the hardware)
Sony and MS are in a much tighter competition at this point than anyone expected. They truly don't need to stick their neck out at this point.
That said, if MS bundles dual functionality (eg PVR capability) in the neXtBox, they likely might see the type of insane early-adoption that Sony saw with its dvd player functionality. PVR in 2005, like DVD in 2001, is functionality people want, but aren't willing to pay a high unit price to acquire. If one can capture an early lead, the risk can pay off. But without such killer functionality, MS would likely win few converts, lose people who are holding out for a bigger/better/faster PS3, and would more likely suffer Sega's fate.
Without an ace up their sleeve, some technology that people are clamoring for at consumer price levels, a 2005 release by MS is highly unlikely.
sounds more likely a component layer for using your TV as a display medium for communicating with your home network/Broadband connection.
with all the disparate standards between broadcast media sources (HDbroadcast, VHF,UHF,cable,digital cabel,satellite), broadband access (dsl,isdn,cable,etc), and home networks (ipx,tcp,mac - not to mention network file sharing protocols) a component layer makes perfect sense. Particularly if you're in the business of making a consumer set-top product that is aimed to work with anything.
And a component layer of 'berries' doesn't sound too far outside the expertise of a designer responsible for layers of 'beans' now does it?
Just more of the same intended functionality at the end: mp3s on your home audio system, digital photo slideshow on your TV, mpg viewing, perhaps even some measure of web surfing capability. although it'd be flawed for normal sets (webtv != good surfing), HDTV sets have plenty of resolution to surf adequately. The only difference in this endeavor being abstraction to make functionality expandable independent of compatibility - java for your media.
it only makes sense that Tivo would want their hand in such technology, to enhance their existing offering and one-up Replay.
several games have the capability to type passwords and such. So i don't think it's fair to suggest that it was unjustly removed. Rather, because it wasn't simplistic, they were forced to reevaluate it's worth.
Rather it seems that they decided that in the end, it wasn't an aspect worth the effort. I appreciated that gameplay change in that they didn't expect me to remember and retype a PIN that I'd supposedly 'learned' from a datapad.
So while you may argue that they lost a feature due to console restraints, I argue that they improved the gameplay due the same reasons.
Nevertheless I think that while that's a valid complaint, it's a fairly isolated case. Deus Ex wasn't a great game because it asked us to write down logins and PINs for ATM machines. and Deus Ex 2 wasn't a measureably worse game for not having that same feature.
and imo the Rainbox Six 3 radial method for the xbox is the most effective console 'typing' interface i've ever seen. but that's neither here nor there.
while I'll agree on principal to your desire to see less of a game's mechanics as obvious as they are... changing the rules mid-game is still not a good solution to either problem (static difficulty or visible mechanics).
I'm talking about the difference between a headshot taking out enemies early in the game, to a headshot being insufficient later on. The game establishes an expectation of verisimilitude when the same tactic has the same effect across many enemies. When that tactic is suddenly less effective without in-game context (do these new bad guys have invisible face armor?), it is unacceptable.
Variety is good. unpredictability is good. I -like- the games that purposefully introduce inaccuracy into my character's aim. Just because i can hold my mouse steady shouldn't mean the character can hold an actual rifle steady - particularly not for the 200th shot in an afternoon.
I didn't mind at all that there was no conventional health meter in JP:Trespasser (though the game sucked), and it sounds like Code Veronica does the same thing, with better effect.
But changing the rules of the game and masquerading that as a dynamic 'difficulty' adjustment, or trying to hide the game mechanics by making weapon effects unpredictable is assinine.
adjust the difficulty by giving the enemies armored vehicles, bulletproof vests or better aim. Don't make -their- mp5 magically do more damage than -my- mp5, or have their faces mystically become bullet-resistant.
hide mechanics by hiding the health meter from players and giving them subjective hints (heavier breathing, slower movement, etc). Don't try to prevent min/maxing by adjusting the stopping power of a handgun from shot to shot.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly - when they include puzzle, card and word-games in your 'online gaming' survey, they're going to get results that are going to be used disingenuously.
This is analogous to suggesting that women play the majority of 'games' in real life, because the number of female Bridge clubs vastly outweighs the gender seperation in professional athletics.
The qualification of 'online game' to begin with is the problem.
No-one would likely argue that there is a gender distribution in free low-tech online games roughly consistent with population distribution overall.
The interesting question of 'women in games' is: why aren't women playing console games, massmogs, multiplayer strategy/fps/rpg/etc?
Truly, what end does this survey tell us? That women aren't afraid of the computer or the internet? Did anyone ever assert that being technophobes is responsible for the gender gap in commercial gaming?
Simply, there are more people playing poker on yahoo games alone than are playing counterstrike. There are vastly more people who play games on AOL than all massmogs combined. The male-dominated games become statistically insignificant when the net is cast this wide. Particularly when they obviate distinctions between gamers willing to pay for games, pay monthly for games, and deal with 3d cards and driver updates to play online games.
Again, the only questions that are interesting are: where are the women in commercial online gaming, and why aren't they showing up?
and this survey answers neither.
First, I must correct myself. Riding the Bullet was Stephen King's novella published specifically for ereaders. The Plant was his attempt at per-chapter online release via the Street Performer Protcol, and the one I meant to refer to in my analogy.
The very fact that he had managed to sell 3 million copies of each $4 installment of The Green Mile seems to suggest that perhaps I was wrong, that the market doesn't mind episodic content if properly encapsulated. If you can put it on store shelves, you can sell a respectable amount.
Although, opting for online distribution (as any episodic game would likely have to do), even with Stephen King's fanfare, only logged ~200,000 downloads for chapter 1. That's quite a bit of potential market-share lost on distribution concept alone, and his downloads were only on the order of 10s of kilobytes, hardly the massive stuff episodic games would require.
Interestingly, Stephen King has gone on record as saying that the Green Mile serialization wasn't a success by his standards, and that he wouldn't be doing another serial novel again. It would seem that this reinforces the assertion that traditional reproduction and distribution of episodic content is simply not cost effective.
Interestingly, the 66 page Riding the Bullet sold 400,000 copies at $2.50 in the first 48 hours ( i can't find total-to-date figures ). This was a full year before The Plant so one would imagine consumer acceptance of e-content would only increase.
The only objective difference between Riding the Bullet and The Plant is the latter's pay-as-you-go intent. Apparently that alone kept most of King's fans who are willing to pay for an ebook from even downloading the first installment for free.
It wasn't that The Plant didn't suit the fan's tastes, or that it was potentially more expensive - they simply didn't even try the content out. That's a pretty powerful implication, and it strongly supports my point.
Still, feel free to ignore my pocket philosophy regarding the way consumers prefer to consume content. I feel the economics (via King's decision against further serial novels online, or off) still support the same end: episodic content is not the way to go when there is an alternative.
the achievement here is in getting 8GB into a standard-form-factor compact flash slot, and keeping power consumption down to a reasonable amount for portable storage.
They could easily bind 10 of these CF cards together and have roughly the same form factor as the sleekest slimline notebook drives. It'd really just be a matter of addressing if they wanted to release an 80GB solid-state drive.
The first problem though, is the transfer rate bottleneck. CF has access times an order of magnitude lower than even the fastest disk drives (0.000256s vs 0.006s), but its transfer rate is ~25% of current consumer magnetic disk drives. (20MB/s vs 80MB/s)
likely they could work out the transfer rate problem (and in under a year if there was a market), but then we're left with the other major problem. The relatively low write lifespan of flash memory. (between 100k and 1m writes/block)
A system swap file would likely burn through that much faster than the consumer market would tolerate.
The bottom line though, is that it's patented technology. Even if they released an 80 GB drive in a couple years, it wouldn't be priced for the consumer market. Not until a competing technology moves in.
You and I will likely still be waiting for a solid state storage alternative for the next 5 years. Sad but true.
I'd have mod'd your post a troll, designed simply to elicit a railing anti-corporate sentiment from the rabid /. crowd. But you got a +5 Interesting so I'll play along.
the Internet may be nothing more then a controlled system by Hollywood and the like
In short: It can't. Not unless the internet topology itself is radically altered.
So long as anyone can post a web server and serve content with a broadcast license or an expensive broadcasting 'vetting' system, they will. HTTP was dominated by the old guard of media because you and I can publish and consume via HTTP entirely without them, and apparently we netizens value such communication.
So unless 'hollywood' buys the entire fiber backbone, all the comsat time, overthrows ICANN, and starts blocking all IP server traffic from publishers it doesn't personally greenlight - nothing can change.
'Push' as a web technology never took off because no-one likes having to consume content at the schedule of a broadcaster. They tolerate it with TV and radio because there was no alternative. With an interactive alternative, push web technology was DOA.
So as long as there is an alternative, Push will be unable to achieve hegemony in any medium. Unless of course, several currently illegal steps are taken by old media.
please. games won't get shorter with episodic content, they'd get longer.
it would behoove the publisher to milk gamers for as long as possible, to make up for the people who tried a few episodes and left. There'd be next to no finality in such games. Look at popular television series like the X-Files. Clearly that series has been perpetuated past the reasonable point of finality. The movie and final season essentially cleanly wrapped up the story - and yet they forced it. Why? because people were still watching. They'll drive every story into the ground.
Plus you'd only be able to play a particular game 2 hours a month, max. What happens when you're engrossed in the story, and want to continue because you have a couple extra hours to kill on a rainy afternoon? How much anticipation or tension can you maintain for an entire month?
The problem with episodic content in general is that no-one actually buys into it. Episodic content was tolerated in its inception, as the only way to make content digestable via a broadcast medium. Broadcast content must be consumed on the broadcasters schedule, and they quickly discovered that people didn't want to earmark 3 hours on a weeknight just to catch a single story.
So to keep weekday viewers/listeners - they cut it up. But in every other media where people can consume at their own pace: music, literature, gaming - episodic content has been rejected by the consumer.
I just don't know why people keep trying to force a glorified content distribution hack down everyone's throat.
A company can't afford to do all the upfront coding and tech support for a 'free' first episode, only to risk most of their potential audience drifting away. They can minimize this by licensing a proven engine - but it will never go away entirely. they'll still have to do support, and no-one wants to do that without revenue.
Second is distribution. what would a 2 hour episode take to download? 50 meg? 100? 200? Sure, for us hardcore gamers none of that seems unreasonable for a good game. Let steam/kpp/bittorrent/etc download that while i watch south park. no problem.
but what about the majority of game buyers with less-than-broadband? what about the game buyers with no internet access? these people are still out there, and the numbers show that there are many more of them than there are of us.
Barring digital distribution, one must press discs, package, ship, and stock a box every month to be sold for roughly $5. This just isn't going to happen, as any content not headed for the bargain bin costs at least $5 just to ship, stock, and get shelf-space.
So to do episodic content, you essentially limit your target market to broadband owners, and you put almost all your cash investment out up-front, with no guarantee or ability to forecast revenue.
Then there's the content problem. Most casual gamers don't finish most of the games they buy. They buy games based on (comparatively) little research and often find they don't care for a game's style, gameplay, story, etc and simply stop playing. To ask publishers to essentially allow these players to try before they buy, is to guarantee less revenue because most will lose interest and never pay for enough episodes to allow the publisher to cover their costs.
Let's not forget the lesson of Stephen King's 'Riding the Bullet'. That was top-rate content from one of America's most celebrated and popular authors, with a rabid, built-in fan-base.
And what happened? He stopped releasing chapters of his novel, because he wasn't getting enough online revenue to make it worth his while. But it wasn't his paythrough rate that was dropping. His downloads themselves dropped after each chapter he released.
Most people simply drifted off. They decided the story wasn't quite 'for them', or they forgot about it, or who knows what else. They simply stopped showing up.
So if Stephen King can't manage to make it worth his time to dish out episodic content, what chance does a game publisher have? They won't have his exposure, they won't have his fan base, they won't have his potential market, and they won't get the free publicity he got. His cost was merely time, imagination, and a word processor. Game developers have comparatively massive up-front costs.
and King failed.
I personally believe that games, like novels, are media that are desireable to consumers, as they are paced solely by the consumer. You can put it down, pause, pick it back up, or blast through it 6 hours at a time, wholly unlike tv or radio.
Consumers of book and game expect to be able to continue when they're engaged. They don't want to stop - and forcing them to stop essentially puts their excitement on hold, and may lose it entirely.
Episodic content has only ever worked in the broadcast media, because with them there was no other way to do it. Broadcast means people have to alter their schedule to consume the content, and most people aren't about to block off 3 hours of one night for a single story. So they cut up a story into several more reasonable parts.
People put up with 24, 1 hour at a time, not because they want to, but because they have no other choice. If 24 released on DVD at the same time as the first episode was released, what do you think would happen? Most people would buy it, and watch it on their own time, at their own pace.
So if episodic content was simply a business reality, and never about a desireable presentation of content - why do people keep trying to force it?
Where are the small games? the puzzle games and simple shooters? Here they are.
Popcap
Wild Tangent
The browser has become the defacto platform for 'small' games. Wild Tangent's web driver in particular is available for license as well. It's helping bring accessibility for designers back to where a couple guys in a garage could churn out something fun in less than 3 years.
not a plug, just informational cuz everyone's asking.
"Everyone makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun, it's entertainment".
There are two basic types of player-created content. Fun, and Entertainment. Fun is what children have in a sandbox. Fun is what you get when you craft a NWN module or a Sims object. Entertainment is what you get from reading a story, watching a movie, or playing through that NWN module.
Player-created Fun is facilitated through Sandbox-styled games (eg The Sims). The player brings their own goals, and makes their own story - they are the content creator and consumer. In this setting the player Entertains themself - and almost no-one would be Entertained by watching their Fun.
The problem with player-created Fun, is that more people watch movies than make movies; more people read novels than write novels. Given the choice between reading a book or writing a book - only a small market will opt to write. Predicating your game on player-created Fun is a risky proposition at best. Compare the relative success of UO (Fun) vs Everquest (Entertainment). Only Will Wright has made it a smashing success, and it's noteworthy that subsequent versions of his hits have always added more Entertainment, more hand-crafted-story to the mix.
Player-created Entertainment is facilitated by letting players try their hand at stagecraft (eg NWN, halflife, et al). This allows the few content creators to try their hand at creating something to Entertain the masses.
The problem with stagecraft is that most people suck at creating content. Creating entertainment is inherently hard and time-consuming, and it may never find an audience. It's not surprising that most of it either wallows in obscurity or outright sucks.
Stagecraft only works well with a central community. The community allows the minority of content creators to feed the majority of content consumers. Peer-review and competition allows the content-consumer to sift through the deluge of the ho-hum without becoming discouraged, and allows the creator a measure of exposure.
The trick is, Entertainment has always found and held a larger audience than Fun. Hell, you might even say most players don't even seem to 'get' Fun any more, if you listen to the popular sentiment on UO or The Sims.
Player-created content is no silver bullet. It's just getting more lip-service in the face of growing professional content creation costs. It can certainly be a solid feature or subset of the gamespace - but basing your whole game on player-created content is in many ways more difficult and risky than hiring the appropriate talent.
"First, I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds, and give the other half to my friend Asadulah who works in securities..."
[What do they have to lose?]
/. has been known to generate.
time and effort.
who in the open source community would buy a commercial version of a free toy? unless of course, the commercial version sported worthwhile content not available for free. in that case, who cares if microsoft is putting worthwhile content onto linux?
more likely, they wouldn't advertise a linux port the same way they didn't advertise the windows version, so they'd just be throwing more time and money at a project that would ultimately be a loss. if they weren't going to honestly try to make money off a windows version, i sincerely doubt they'd try to make money off a linux port.
microsoft has never been an opponent of open source software in general. even in their thickest fud they've only labelled it as inappropriate for commercial use.
seeing as how they're releasing this expressly forbidding commercial use, they're still being consistent - though the action does contradict the rabidly anti-MS propaganda that
simply, this is a work of Microsoft Research - and they're forward looking enough to decide to release this to their rabid fan-base, rather than leaving all that fan-content legally actionable.
the license is worded solely to prevent any competitors from profiting directly off MS's innovation, while retaining their existing rights and preventing themselves from being legally actionable should they ever sell another product that used some of that code.
... that i have no mod points.
I agree completely and emphatically. Email is not a free-speech/privacy issue, and i think people are forgetting that.
There is no provision in the constitution that guarantees an audience for free speech, yet this is precisely what anonymous email does. It puts a burden on me, the recipient, to sort through the garbage of others.
If you want more anonymous speech, get a blog, post to a web board, post to usenet.
Your freedoms stop when they infringe on the freedoms of others. Your freedom to be heard is wholly consitutionally blocked with my right to post a no soliciting sign.
I see no reason why I can't effectively put a similar sign on my email box. (let alone my meatspace mailbox)
the only reason bulk mail persists, is because it's effectively privately subsidizing the outdated and inefficient USPS. Spam, on the contrary, is wholly an economic drain on the delivery system. there is no benefit to anyone to retain spam, except those corporations who wish to have no responsibility to maintain an honest opt-out policy.
sure, spam finds willing recipients, so someone must want this garbage - but so do door to door salesmen. And I'm perfectly within my rights to forbid them from coming onto my property. a right which does not in any way infringe on their right to be heard, or their ability to simply bug my neighbor.
as lame as gamepr....
hm...
maybe we shoulda seen that coming
go for the eyes boo, GO FOR THE EYES!
and then you're down to only worrying about RFID tags in consumer electronic devices that you'd rather not have that close to a pulse that powerful whatsoever.
your ipod, your pager, your cell phone...
of course, if you have a cellphone, big brother already has the capability to know where you go.
The problem with console add-ons is that (relatively) no-one buys them. the historical adoption rates for add-ons is abyssmal.
Developers can't assume the functionality of the add-ons exists, so they generally don't waste coding time to support the ~5% of their users who might have one.
and if most games don't support the functionality, then what's the point of the device at all? why pay $100 for an external HD if only 1 in 40 games supports custom soundtracks/content download?
Add-ons only move when a particular game has so rabid a fanbase that they can financially survive requiring the add-on to play.
E.g. Phatasy Star Online's keyboard for various consoles, FFXI/PS2 HD, etc.
If the neXtBox doesn't ship with a HD, I doubt MS will release an external device unless a particular developer is going to require it.
Perhaps if backwards-compatibility was supported only by purchasing the external HD they could move the units by themselves, but newer games almost certainly wouldn't support it as much as current games do. And that would likely arouse much contempt from the playerbase. Particularly seeing as how the XBox itself will likely cost only $100 when the neXtBox hits.
even at consumer prices, for ~$50 you can get a 256mb CF card. That's likely all the space they'd need to include to manage a good amount of save games, and have space left over for backwards compatibility for titles using the HD for swap.
given that the G5s are only architectural siblings to the MS/IBM custom chips - getting the hardware little endian conversion seems likely (the feature that the G5s are missing that makes vPC much faster).
Combine that with MS's purchase of Virtual PC and suddenly emulating x86 on their new processors isn't a big issue, nor does it carry a licensing fee.
it likely all comes down to how much flash memory they can get, cheap enough, so all the xbox titles using the HD for swap can be supported.
as outlined in the wild speculation (err. 'article'), it all comes down to price. I don't think there are any technical limitations to backwards compat, other than those caused by price/storage of Flash memory.
likely, they don't even want to spend $50 on the storage if they can avoid it.
The writer doesn't have to dilineate the rules to maintain consistency. George Lucas never established exactly what powers 'the Force' conferred on its manipulators, yet no-one was particularly bothered by the much more liberal force use in the prequels.
What a storyteller must do however, is to provide consistency and plausibility. The Wachowski brothers explained Neo's vaguely defined super-powers in the Matrix as being the result of his ability to manipulate a false-reality through a form of subconscious computer hacking. People accepted this, as they did 'the Force', without a second thought.
However, at the end of Reloaded, and repeatedly through Revolutions, Neo demonstrated super-human powers even when he was outside of the 'false' reality of the Matrix. Most people felt this 'cheated' them of cinematic weight and emotional investment. Without explanation, without clarification, of why the old rules were able to now be violated, the audience felt as if the change, the surprise, was designed solely to fool them, not to enrich the storytelling experience. This generally arouses naught but contempt in the audience.
Zion was repeatedly established as being 'reality', as being our world - and accordingly we cringed with the characters from the sentinel onslaught. The humans had only one effective weapon against the enemy, and using it would render them helpless to any second wave.
Now however, there were mecha, rocket launchers, mystical powers. Hovercraft used mounted weapons to defeat many more sentinels than the relative few that Morpheus could only repel with an EMP. The audience felt foolish that they ever regarded the sentinels as truly dangerous, now that they could be blasted out of the sky by 19th century technology.
It isn't change itself that offends the audience. It is destructive change, that which retroactively destroys the emotional value of the prior experience.
Audiences revile at the 'it was all just a dream/game/etc'-style surprise endings (e.g. 13th floor). In those types of situations, the change robs the previous content of cinematic weight. The character we used to care about and root for turns out to be nothing more than an avatar in a game, or a shadow of reality. The audience is essentially instructed that nothing in the story prior to the change mattered in any way. The participants were not real, and were not in real danger.
This starkly contrasts even fiction in which the unreality of the setting/participants/story is established at the outset. E.g. the Princess Bride, the Neverending Story. We knew that the story was a fairy tale, and were unsurprised when Wesley was allowed to cheat death in a story that otherwise contained no such fantastical diversions.
Changes in gameplay should be handled according to this well known maxim - changes should be constructive, rather than destructive.
Constructive changes will be things that do not force the fiction back to square 1.
A new level may yield a new weapon or new units that change the players tactics - but it should never render the player's previous choices moot.
Deus Ex shouldn't have a level in which the computer systems are hopelessly alien, effectively destroying any character who chose to specialize in hacking.
A roleplaying game should not hand-wave a character's capture and enslavement via cut-scene and remove all their equipment and experience -forcing them to start over.
Those changes would obviate the investment of the player.
Tetris might have a change that requires players to match blocks of colors to score, instead of making lines. This could be a constructive change to gameplay that would create more depth in gameplay. Yet if this new goal was switched to without any notification to the player, they would be justly pissed off that their carefully constructed Tetris block was not rewarded. The unforseeable, unavoidable change would have destroyed the prior effort of the player.
Changes can be good. But it, more than most other aspects of storytelling or game design, must be done well to not have a detrimental effect on the experience.
People want to read about the nextgen consoles, and there is no fact - so only wild speculation remains.
some of it is reasonable (cutting HD to save costs) but none of it is insightful.
Honestly, all they need to do is put firewire adapters on the neXtBox. Then they could allow backwards compat (if people buy an addon drive, think 3rd party market)- and they could tie the xbox back into their media hub paradigm.
E.g. allowing people to jack their various firewire media accessories into the xbox to view their vids/pics/tunes on their home theatre.
It would be pretty neat if I could recharge my iPod while it provides a custom soundtrack to Halo3 on the neXtBox.
or, and this has been said before, they simply allow the neXtBox to have the ability to read/write from network shares out of the box. That way, it does not need an internal HD, but it could still maintain backwards compat by using a network share for storage (even if all one has is an old xbox on their network). Keep the functionality, save the cost/space/heat.
of course... all i have is wild speculation. but i sincerely doubt they care about linux. People hacked linux onto the DC, GC, and PS2 after all.
This is starting to feel an awful lot like Crimson Skies. Hoopla, playtesting, major rework, Hoopla, playtesting, major rework.
At least you know Bungie's not just rushing out anything wrapped in the Halo logo to capitalize on the buzz. And they're not blaming it on some half-baked code-leak or anything. (Really, what would Valve have to recode due the leak? the network encryption? That shouldn't take 6 months...)
Well, Crimson Skies turned out to be a damn fun game. So if they're holding Halo2 back to similarly refine the gameplay experience, good on em - I'd rather wait than have a glorified expansion sully the franchise.
I'm just hoping the (xbl) multiplayer is up to snuff, and they hit that 24/server xbl target.
Media renting didn't exist until VHS rental, and consumers picked up pretty fast to the idea of paying less to 'borrow' a copy of a film for a night for significantly less than a movie ticket price.
I don't think it at all unreasonable to assume the consumer could handle another shift in SOP for content rental. Particularly not when it is a net improvement on the old system. There's really no reason traditional rental chains couldn't have become the primary distributors for these discs. The only difference in the whole process at that point would be never having to return it.
Whether you disagree on concept though - you have to admit, it had 0 chance to succeed at $7 for 2 days. And it would have had a vastly better shot at ~$4 - 4.50
The extra $1 - $1.50 i feel would be reasonable given:
- Being nearly certain I will find the movie I intend to rent when i leave my house (high price of rental copies restricts supply, renting a new-release within a week of its distribution is a dubious prospect)
- Having no chance of accidental late fees
- Not having to register for/manage an 'account', or have another layer of clerks trying to cross-sell or up-sell me some promotional garbage.
- Being able to easily 'rent' movies when on vaction or on the road (w/out having to register/maintain an account in whatever town i happen to be in, or rely on the USPS to deliver the return in a timely manner.)
- Not suffering clerical errors that can result in: an erroneous late fee because some shmuck didn't empty the drop-off bin until 3pm, having to exchange an improperly stocked title, having to return a scratched-to-hell disc.
- Having the 48 hour countdown clock not start until i'd actually watched the movie. (Degradation begins when the disc is removed from its sleeve, not at point-of-purcahse. More than one time I've rented a flick only to have some life BS crop up that prevents me from being able to see it without taking the late fee hit.)
- Having an alternative to the rental chain hegemony.
These are benefits that add up, for me, to about a buck or two. Asking me to spend more than twice as much as a standard rental fee for these benefits doesn't quite cut it though. If I wanted to spend $7, i might as well make it $8 and see the damn thing in the theatre.
At $4 they'd still be more expensive than renting from Blockbuster, but in-line with what people are willing to pay for the no-late-fees-ever rental experience through PPV. They'd have had a shot.
at more than double the 'renting from a store' rate they were guaranteeing failure.
It isn't hindsight whatsoever, it's price-sight. If they'd said '$7' when they were talking about the tech everyone would've told them it would bomb. But they kept saying 'for a little more than the price to rent a movie from blockbuster'. which made everyone assume $3-4.
$7 is certainly not 'a little more' than $3.
Perhaps the rental chains squeezed them to stratify the pricing intentionally, i don't know (Blockbuster may have appreciable pressure now that Disney isn't the only kids-content creator in the game).
I just know that at $7, they shouldn't have even bothered.
common wisdom has already shown that Microsoft is positioning itself as being in competition with Sony for the top spot, not with Nintendo for second-place. Dropping their price to try to beat Nintendo's second wind growth is highly unlikely.
As is, Microsoft is doing a very good job at getting the attention of hardcore gamers. Quite frankly, Sony has moved 7 PS2s for every Xbox MS moved - and yet they rack up significantly fewer than 7x the game sales each month. It shouldn't even be a remotely fair competition in console software sales month to month for the top 10 spots, and yet it is.
So trying for a huge installed base doesn't really behoove them at this point. Particularly not when they are already losing so much per console, and when Sony is selling loads of consoles to people who frankly aren't buying games. (which is giving them a fairly similar net loss on the hardware)
Sony and MS are in a much tighter competition at this point than anyone expected. They truly don't need to stick their neck out at this point.
That said, if MS bundles dual functionality (eg PVR capability) in the neXtBox, they likely might see the type of insane early-adoption that Sony saw with its dvd player functionality. PVR in 2005, like DVD in 2001, is functionality people want, but aren't willing to pay a high unit price to acquire. If one can capture an early lead, the risk can pay off. But without such killer functionality, MS would likely win few converts, lose people who are holding out for a bigger/better/faster PS3, and would more likely suffer Sega's fate.
Without an ace up their sleeve, some technology that people are clamoring for at consumer price levels, a 2005 release by MS is highly unlikely.
The technology between your desk and couch
sounds more likely a component layer for using your TV as a display medium for communicating with your home network/Broadband connection.
with all the disparate standards between broadcast media sources (HDbroadcast, VHF,UHF,cable,digital cabel,satellite), broadband access (dsl,isdn,cable,etc), and home networks (ipx,tcp,mac - not to mention network file sharing protocols) a component layer makes perfect sense. Particularly if you're in the business of making a consumer set-top product that is aimed to work with anything.
And a component layer of 'berries' doesn't sound too far outside the expertise of a designer responsible for layers of 'beans' now does it?
Just more of the same intended functionality at the end: mp3s on your home audio system, digital photo slideshow on your TV, mpg viewing, perhaps even some measure of web surfing capability. although it'd be flawed for normal sets (webtv != good surfing), HDTV sets have plenty of resolution to surf adequately. The only difference in this endeavor being abstraction to make functionality expandable independent of compatibility - java for your media.
it only makes sense that Tivo would want their hand in such technology, to enhance their existing offering and one-up Replay.
several games have the capability to type passwords and such. So i don't think it's fair to suggest that it was unjustly removed. Rather, because it wasn't simplistic, they were forced to reevaluate it's worth.
Rather it seems that they decided that in the end, it wasn't an aspect worth the effort. I appreciated that gameplay change in that they didn't expect me to remember and retype a PIN that I'd supposedly 'learned' from a datapad.
So while you may argue that they lost a feature due to console restraints, I argue that they improved the gameplay due the same reasons.
Nevertheless I think that while that's a valid complaint, it's a fairly isolated case. Deus Ex wasn't a great game because it asked us to write down logins and PINs for ATM machines. and Deus Ex 2 wasn't a measureably worse game for not having that same feature.
and imo the Rainbox Six 3 radial method for the xbox is the most effective console 'typing' interface i've ever seen. but that's neither here nor there.
while I'll agree on principal to your desire to see less of a game's mechanics as obvious as they are ... changing the rules mid-game is still not a good solution to either problem (static difficulty or visible mechanics).
I'm talking about the difference between a headshot taking out enemies early in the game, to a headshot being insufficient later on. The game establishes an expectation of verisimilitude when the same tactic has the same effect across many enemies. When that tactic is suddenly less effective without in-game context (do these new bad guys have invisible face armor?), it is unacceptable.
Variety is good. unpredictability is good. I -like- the games that purposefully introduce inaccuracy into my character's aim. Just because i can hold my mouse steady shouldn't mean the character can hold an actual rifle steady - particularly not for the 200th shot in an afternoon.
I didn't mind at all that there was no conventional health meter in JP:Trespasser (though the game sucked), and it sounds like Code Veronica does the same thing, with better effect.
But changing the rules of the game and masquerading that as a dynamic 'difficulty' adjustment, or trying to hide the game mechanics by making weapon effects unpredictable is assinine.
adjust the difficulty by giving the enemies armored vehicles, bulletproof vests or better aim. Don't make -their- mp5 magically do more damage than -my- mp5, or have their faces mystically become bullet-resistant.
hide mechanics by hiding the health meter from players and giving them subjective hints (heavier breathing, slower movement, etc). Don't try to prevent min/maxing by adjusting the stopping power of a handgun from shot to shot.