For example, I'm Japanese, and I can tell you that plenty of Japanese "Occidentalists" would criticize the West for its emphasis on permanence, to name one example, over acceptance of transience.
It's a valid criticism. That said, "acceptance of transience" is a very central function of Eastern philosophy and religion, so anything less than slavish devotion to the concept is bound to be seen as a radical divergence.
As a novice to Japanese culture (I've been going back to college specifically for night classes in Japanese, and visited for the first time this Spring), I find it hard to argue that the particular cocktail of Shinto and Buddhism practiced in Japan is a roadmap to contentment when Japan's suicide rate is currently so shockingly high. There are obviously a lot of people in Japan who are currently failing to find a lot of reasons to go on living.
Many Orientalists, I'm sure, as well as modern Japanese citizens would criticize our kamikaze ancestors' tradition of loyalty to the Emperor over rationality and individualism.
It's a hard value to shake, I'm sure. Devotion and Loyalty served Japan very well up until the Pacific war, when a scraggly bunch of Judeo-Christian, brash, emotional cowboys managed to out-produce, out-wit, and out-fight the finest military machine Empirial Japan had ever managed to assemble.
But credit Japanese culture with this much: They bounced back from total and absolute defeat faster and better than just about any nation in history. The reconstruction of Japan is one of the great triumphs of the 20th Century.
Now if they could just figure out how to bury their power lines. It's absurd that a country with advanced subway systems blasting their way through every volcanic mountain has to cover every inch of every city with a big, steel & rubber spider web.
I can't, because you clearly believe in the idea that a social construct such as freedom of speech has some fundamental, inherent "rightness", and I do not.
To paraphrase Voltaire:
You are a complete idiot, but I respect your right to express your dumbass opinion, even if you are too stupid to realize that you have such a right. If it ever becomes needed, I'll willingly go to war against tyranical states in order to defend your right to foolishly assert that foreign tyrants are doing nothing wrong by suppressing speech.
That's why I tag some article summaries (not this one) with "orientalism" and "culturalbias." These tags haven't quite caught on yet, as far as I can tell.
Maybe those tags haven't caught on because most people understand that objections to the Chinese government are all about hatred for communist tyranny, not bigotry against those with thin eyes.
Utter hatred of the PRC and North Korean governments is a sign of genuine love for the people who they are rolling the tanks over (both figuratively and literally).
You seem to think you are contradicting what I said, but you're not.
I never said "Linux is not ready for the desktop."
I said that Linux will not conquer the desktop market because those who are not using it don't seem to feel they have any compelling reason to change to it. Most people are fine with staying on Windows, and most of those who aren't are very happy with OS X.
A few years ago, XP had not yet arrived and Macs were "way too expensive." It was a perfect environment for people to get excited about alternative OS options.
You are absolutely right that Linux is way better now than it was then, but times have changed, and people are not starving for another OS option the way they once were. That is why the dream of a Linux Revolution is pretty much over.
Okay, so everybody with memories of playing "lightsaber fights" with their flashlight beams when they were little kids hears about a Jedi game for the Wii and thinks "oooo! That's perfect! The wireless Wii motion sensor will work just like a lightsaber! What could be more intuitive????"
But wait a sec. There are a few details to work out.
1. If controller motion indicates what you are doing with your weapon, what indicates where you move and where you are standing? The thumb buttons?
2. If you swing your lightsaber and your opponent blocks it, but you follow through on your swing... where is the lightsaber? Still pinned against the block? Do you need to bring your hands back up to that aproximate location to move it? Or do you now need to keep your hands down by your knees for the rest of the fight?
I'm not saying such issues can't be worked out somehow, but unless you put the controllers into big plastic tubes, and attach several more motion sensors to your head, torso, and limbs, it's kind of hard to indicate that you block one swing, duck under the next, leap over the one after that, then circle around so your opponent's back is to the Sarlac Pit (or whatever) without resorting to old-fashioned button-mashing as part of the interface.
'sokay. I just can't bring myself to pass up a good "Kum Bah Ya" joke.
Raging Linux zealotry just ain't what it used to be. It seems that the real way to get savaged by screaming lunatics who lash out at you through tear-stained eyes is by daring to say something along the lines of:
"I don't think the Nintendo Wii is likely to change anybody's lives or anything. It's just a low-res game console with a funky new controller design."
There was a time on Slashdot when a gentle criticism along those lines of Linux would have you branded a traitor. Now people actually respond with honest debate.
Perhaps that's an indicator that Linux managed to impress enough non-zealots that (almost) nobody feels insecure about it anymore. I dunno.
Anyway, like I was saying, the days of dreaming that Linux will capture the desktop OS market are pretty much over. People have other priorities.
Besides, the Linux desktop revolution is pretty much over anyway, isn't it?
I wouldn't call the Linux desktop dead until people stop sinking money into it.
*sigh* I just knew I'd be pecked at from people who didn't actually pay attention to what I said.
Where did I call the Linux desktop "dead"? Nowhere. It's alive and well. Go sing Kum Bah Ya with your friends knowing that some guy you never meet on slashdot does not hold the opinion that Linux is dead.
Most people I've heard from who hacked their X-Boxen to be Media systems used Linux to do so. Either way, XBMC is kind of a fringe player compared to MythTV, which I've seen in homes of people who never touched Linux prior to wanting a DVR solution.
Okay, let me be crystal clear here, because I'm not trying to start some "My Favorite OS Has The Biggest Dick" flame-war.
I'm not saying that Linux desktop solutions are not good. Some of them are darn good. For certain users, it's a terrific choice.
I'm saying that there isn't the rising tide of interest in it that their once was.
Let's look at some of the forces behind people wanting a Linux desktop back around 1998 or so, and what has happened since then:
1. An affordable alternative to Microsoft.
Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the Mac has become more affordable while improving is several other important ways. Microsoft haters can pick up a $600 mini from their local store that does pretty much everything they want to do.
2. Better security
Okay, Microsoft still kind of sucks at security, but if you run an external firewall and keep your patches up to date, you're not nearly as vulnerable on a networked Windows box as you were eight years ago.
3. "Free as in Speech"
The fact that Darwin, the BSD Layer of OS X, is open source is enough for most people. It means that Apple is wisely subjecting the underpinnings of their OS to peer review and gaining most of the wins of using open source. A few hard-core Stallmansits probably feel very differently about it, but Free Software bigotry is not really enough to drive a popular movement.
4. *nix at home
OS X and various flavors of BSD provide plenty of opportunity for that, and even Windows has emulation tools. A would-be BOFH in training could learn an awful lot of what they need to know about *nix simply by monkeying on a Windows PC.
5. New life to old hardware.
"Old" hardware these days is pretty darn beefy stuff. When you can buy an XP-capable used PC or an OS X-capable used Mac for under $100, there really isn't a compelling reason to squeeze a little more life out of that old 386 in the garage.
The value of the box that can't run one a modern commercial OS at this point is pretty much measured in the price and quantity of the metals used to build it, minus the cost of disposing of any hazzardous materials. (A number which is not always higher than zero.) Plus, when parts burn out, it's almost never worth the time and trouble to repair them.
So my point is, while Linux has made some great strides to become more user-friendly than it was back in the day, the emergence of OS X and the improvements of Windows have taken away most of the reasons for people to switch.
There is one home use for Linux which doesn't seem to be going away soon: Media Room computers!
Every Windows solution I've seen costs a fortune and works like ass.
I have a Mac driving my HDTV, and love it, but it's still a more expensive solution than a MythTV set-up would have been.
If any company starts making enough money by selling Linux distributions, that's not an indication that the movement is "over." It's an indication that the movement is "complete."
By calling somebody "the Microsoft of Linux", perhaps they mean that one vendor is dominant enough to dictate industry standard practices, such as it once seemed would be the case with the Red Hat package manager. While it would certainly be possible for somebody to come along and push things in a certain direction, standards-breaking usually works against your best interests.
Besides, the Linux desktop revolution is pretty much over anyway, isn't it? The vast majority of those who want a *nixy desktop can just buy a Mac these days. There will still be a large cult of die-hards runing Gentoo as their day-in and day-out personal workstation OS, just as there were those in the late 90's who would cling for dear life to their OS/2 and Amiga boxen, but it seems like it's been a couple years since there has been any real appearance of growing momentum behind putting Linux on everybody's desk.
Linux these days is an incredibly well-respected enterprise OS... to the point that it has driven several "real" POSIX-compliant Unices out of existance. But as a desktop solution, it never really advanced beyond the playgrounds of serious geeks, and it doesn't really look to me like it ever will.
Kindly name two species on animals that can survive in the vacuum of deep space for an extended period without our help. We can overcome the challenges of our environment in ways which other species simply can't. End of debate.
If the quote "lighten up, Francis" is too obscure of a pop-culture reference for you, then I'm guessing you're either very young or else you simply don't get out much.
It's your right to think all nintendo produces is hello kitty games or whatever.
I never said that. And furthermore, if that was what I thought, I'd probably want one.
Wow. Thank you for being just about the only person in the entire thread to respond to my post without getting his panties in a knot over the fact that I dared to suggest that the Wii might be something less than earth-shattering.
I don't know if the Wii will catch on with casual gamers or not, but it's obvious that it's already won the hearts and minds of the Slashdot Gestalt.
At the most generous end of the spectrum the remainder comes to 3%. This seems very small. The 'undecided' figure is usually bigger than this
Not when about 90% answered the same way, it's not.
If you were to ask 1000 men, "do you feel the need to have a sex change?" the "undecided" percentage would probably be less than one percent.
If you asked 1000 women, "are you currently in or near the third trimester of a pregnancy?" I bet you would get an even smaller percentage of "undecided" answers.
If I were to ask you, "would you like me to punch you right in the throat with an extended knuckle?" the chances of you saying you were "undecided" are statistically insignificant.
So, what are you saying, that in 2006 women no longer carry handbags?
I don't think you've been to a mall lately.
Handbags are incredibly utilitarian, especially in this day and age, when people are carrying phones and music players with them everywhere they go.
The only reason men haven't caved in and started carrying them is because men often carry laptop bags, which is really just a big square purse that you can put a computer in.
See, the thing is, I don't think the controller is the obstacle.
Sure, my X-box controller baffled my 65-year old dad, but he would not have any interest in owning a DS either.
Look at the controller for the Game Cube. It looks about as complicated as the toy piano my little neice likes to pound on with a plastic hammer. You can't tell me that "intimidation" by that controller is what kept non-gamers away from the cube, and a TV remote controll held sideways is suddenly going to make it all clear to them.
The DS is not being sold to non-gamers. It's being sold to new gamers. It's a purse-friendly device which allows people who got hooked on playing simple games on their cell phones to play better games with controlls that are easier than their phone's number pad.
Those same college girls who I see everywhere playing Animal Crossing on the DS are not neccesarilly going to rush out to install a game system on their living room TV sets. A living room console game doesn't give them something to do while waiting in line at class registration or the DMV, or keep them amused while they wait for a friend to finish their 11:00 class and join them for lunch. They don't need an activity like an EA Sports sim to serve as an excuse to hang out with their friends and visit for a few hours the way their male counterparts do.
Yes, Lara Crofts boobies might be part of the reason why consoles are more popular with men than women, but it ain't the whole reason. There are lifestyle factors involved which a clever new controller design is simply not going to address.
Not really. I'm just passing time during process-imposed "downtime" at the office by discussing a few things that strike me as odd about the Wii strategy, and the popular theories about why it's going to take off and reclaim market dominance from Sony.
I'm not really trying to "win" the argument, so much as challenge those of you who think the Wii is hot stuff to explain why it's such a "revolution" to have a slightly different controller and slightly less impressive graphics than the competition on what appears to be a perfectly ordinary game console.
Except the DS did not emerge in an established market which was exclusively popular with a specific demographic.
Before the DS and the PSP, there was only the GameBoy, which wasn't hugely popular with adults, but did rather well with both men and women.
It seems to me that the thing that makes DS games so popular with women is: No hand-held game is small enough for your back jeans pocket, but the DS fits in a purse.
I have a PSP (mainly for airplane travel amusement), and I've seen purses that are smaller than this thing, especially with the hard drive & extended battery attached. There's no way any woman could toss it in her handbag with her phone, money, keys, make-up, etc. unless she was carrying on of those big honkin' messenger bags, in which case she might as well take a whole freakin' laptop.
But the DS is only slightly larger than a typical make-up case. A woman who is already carrying around a half-full purse won't even notice the addition of a DS until the mood strikes her to take it out and play it.
Most men, meanwhile, need to minimize clutter, as even belt pouches are viewed by a great deal of society as a rather "metrosexual" accessory to be lugging around. After the wallet and keys, a "soap-bar" sized cell phone and maybe an iPod is pretty much the upper bounds of what most guys want to carry around all day in their pockets, especially during the summer, when you don't have all those extra jacket pockets to throw stuff in (and some of your work-out shorts lack pockets entirely.)
Which might be one more reason why men like playing console games in the living room: Current "portable" systems are not as portable for men as they are for women.
If the other niches are "being served," why are video game purchases still dominated by 20-something guys?
This remains true in spite of Nintendo targeting everybody else for several years now. It could very well be that adult men are actually more intersted in console gaming than other people.
That's not automatically a function of games being targeted at them.
It might also, for example, be a funciton of the fact that the majority of prime-time TV is targeted at women. Given a choice between watching "Gilmore Girls" or some other female-targeted drama on TV or playing "Lego Star Wars" or some other simple game on the console, the male and female demographics are likely to respond very differently from each other. It doesn't make "Katamari Darmacy" a game which is targeted at men, it just makes it a game that men are more likely to play when "Gray's Anatomy" is on.
(Disclaimer: If you're male and actually like "Gilmore Girls" or "Gray's Anatomy", I'm not saying you're any less of a man for it. You just keep doin' your own thing, chief.)
You sound like a politician who is behind in the "likely voter" polls, insisting that they will draw from the MASSIVE pool of traditional non-voters to put themselves over the top.
It pretty much never works, because the funny thing about non-voters is: They typically don't vote.
There might be a few people out there who don't play console games because they don't like the genres or the controllers.
But most people who don't play console games are people who are NOT INTERESTED in playing console games. If they didn't give a shit about Mario before, a new controller and an improved networking solution won't change that. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
They're trying to appeal to people who don't play games on the current consoles because they are too intimidating, complex or alienating.
People who found the N64, GameCube, PS, PS2, and X-Box "intimidating, complex, or alienating" are not going to look at the Wii and say "Wow! Wireless motion-sensor control! That changes everything! I want I want I want!"
So far, everybody who has expressed a lot of excitement about Wii has been previous-generation Nintendo owners. Not that that's a bad target market. Add up all the Nintendo consoles over the years (including the days before Sony came along and stole their market dominance) and you're talking about a lot of gamers who have warm, fuzzy feelings about Princess Peach Toadstool.
But you're kidding yourself if you think soccer moms are suddenly going to give up playing flash-based games on their PC web browsers to play a truck stunt-jumping game on a console, no matter how "advanced" the controller is said to be.
Everybody who's cheering for Nintendo (and I'd just like to say: I get it... They are the only non-evil company making consoles, so they are easy to r00t for, if you'll pardon the pun) keeps trying to make the point that it was some stroke of genius for them to keep the console "Low-Def" for the sake of cheaper game development and to keep the cost of the console itself down.
But here's the thing that doesn't fit about that:
If I want a cheap console with lots of third-party support and no HD support, I can buy an old PS2.
What's so wonderful about a new-generation console with previous-generation performance? Why buy a new console that doesn't offer any new performance boost?
Wouldn't it have been even cheaper for Nintendo to just sell a motion sensor that you can plug in to an X-Box, PS2, or GameCube, and develop games for that???
Sure, not everybody has an HDTV and not everybody needs cutting-edge graphics... but those who don't have the need for ultra-smooth HD graphics already have three perfectly good consoles to choose from, each with a 5-year library of fun games already developed for them and being sold for about $20 a pop in many cases. Unless you're filthy rich, there's no way you already own and have played every single available PS2 game. (And if you are that filthy rich, you are probably one of those HDTV owners currently playing Call of Duty 2 on the X-Box 360.)
In other words, the Wii doesn't seem to fill any niche that isn't already served.
And speaking of that controller:
Imagine holding your TV remote control by its ends and pretending it's a steering wheel.
That's exactly what every non-fanboy was imagining the moment photos of the Wii controller came out. No surprise there at all.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, I'm Japanese, and I can tell you that plenty of Japanese "Occidentalists" would criticize the West for its emphasis on permanence, to name one example, over acceptance of transience.
It's a valid criticism. That said, "acceptance of transience" is a very central function of Eastern philosophy and religion, so anything less than slavish devotion to the concept is bound to be seen as a radical divergence.
As a novice to Japanese culture (I've been going back to college specifically for night classes in Japanese, and visited for the first time this Spring), I find it hard to argue that the particular cocktail of Shinto and Buddhism practiced in Japan is a roadmap to contentment when Japan's suicide rate is currently so shockingly high. There are obviously a lot of people in Japan who are currently failing to find a lot of reasons to go on living.
Many Orientalists, I'm sure, as well as modern Japanese citizens would criticize our kamikaze ancestors' tradition of loyalty to the Emperor over rationality and individualism.
It's a hard value to shake, I'm sure. Devotion and Loyalty served Japan very well up until the Pacific war, when a scraggly bunch of Judeo-Christian, brash, emotional cowboys managed to out-produce, out-wit, and out-fight the finest military machine Empirial Japan had ever managed to assemble.
But credit Japanese culture with this much: They bounced back from total and absolute defeat faster and better than just about any nation in history. The reconstruction of Japan is one of the great triumphs of the 20th Century.
Now if they could just figure out how to bury their power lines. It's absurd that a country with advanced subway systems blasting their way through every volcanic mountain has to cover every inch of every city with a big, steel & rubber spider web.
I can't, because you clearly believe in the idea that a social construct such as freedom of speech has some fundamental, inherent "rightness", and I do not.
To paraphrase Voltaire:
You are a complete idiot, but I respect your right to express your dumbass opinion, even if you are too stupid to realize that you have such a right. If it ever becomes needed, I'll willingly go to war against tyranical states in order to defend your right to foolishly assert that foreign tyrants are doing nothing wrong by suppressing speech.
That's why I tag some article summaries (not this one) with "orientalism" and "culturalbias." These tags haven't quite caught on yet, as far as I can tell.
Maybe those tags haven't caught on because most people understand that objections to the Chinese government are all about hatred for communist tyranny, not bigotry against those with thin eyes.
Utter hatred of the PRC and North Korean governments is a sign of genuine love for the people who they are rolling the tanks over (both figuratively and literally).
You seem to think you are contradicting what I said, but you're not.
I never said "Linux is not ready for the desktop."
I said that Linux will not conquer the desktop market because those who are not using it don't seem to feel they have any compelling reason to change to it. Most people are fine with staying on Windows, and most of those who aren't are very happy with OS X.
A few years ago, XP had not yet arrived and Macs were "way too expensive." It was a perfect environment for people to get excited about alternative OS options.
You are absolutely right that Linux is way better now than it was then, but times have changed, and people are not starving for another OS option the way they once were. That is why the dream of a Linux Revolution is pretty much over.
So then are you taking the position that the high esteem for free speech is *not* a value that should be universally shared?
That it's not okay to speak out against the values of the culture you are in?
Somebody mod this guy down!!!
Er... wait...
Guitar Hero : Actual guitar playiing :: DDR : Performance dance.
It's not the same thing at all, really.
That doesn't mean it can't be fun for the person doing it, whether they know how to do the "real" task or not.
Okay, so everybody with memories of playing "lightsaber fights" with their flashlight beams when they were little kids hears about a Jedi game for the Wii and thinks "oooo! That's perfect! The wireless Wii motion sensor will work just like a lightsaber! What could be more intuitive????"
But wait a sec. There are a few details to work out.
1. If controller motion indicates what you are doing with your weapon, what indicates where you move and where you are standing? The thumb buttons?
2. If you swing your lightsaber and your opponent blocks it, but you follow through on your swing... where is the lightsaber? Still pinned against the block? Do you need to bring your hands back up to that aproximate location to move it? Or do you now need to keep your hands down by your knees for the rest of the fight?
I'm not saying such issues can't be worked out somehow, but unless you put the controllers into big plastic tubes, and attach several more motion sensors to your head, torso, and limbs, it's kind of hard to indicate that you block one swing, duck under the next, leap over the one after that, then circle around so your opponent's back is to the Sarlac Pit (or whatever) without resorting to old-fashioned button-mashing as part of the interface.
'sokay. I just can't bring myself to pass up a good "Kum Bah Ya" joke.
Raging Linux zealotry just ain't what it used to be. It seems that the real way to get savaged by screaming lunatics who lash out at you through tear-stained eyes is by daring to say something along the lines of:
"I don't think the Nintendo Wii is likely to change anybody's lives or anything. It's just a low-res game console with a funky new controller design."
There was a time on Slashdot when a gentle criticism along those lines of Linux would have you branded a traitor. Now people actually respond with honest debate.
Perhaps that's an indicator that Linux managed to impress enough non-zealots that (almost) nobody feels insecure about it anymore. I dunno.
Anyway, like I was saying, the days of dreaming that Linux will capture the desktop OS market are pretty much over. People have other priorities.
I wouldn't call the Linux desktop dead until people stop sinking money into it.
*sigh* I just knew I'd be pecked at from people who didn't actually pay attention to what I said.
Where did I call the Linux desktop "dead"? Nowhere. It's alive and well. Go sing Kum Bah Ya with your friends knowing that some guy you never meet on slashdot does not hold the opinion that Linux is dead.
Sheesh.
Most people I've heard from who hacked their X-Boxen to be Media systems used Linux to do so. Either way, XBMC is kind of a fringe player compared to MythTV, which I've seen in homes of people who never touched Linux prior to wanting a DVR solution.
Okay, let me be crystal clear here, because I'm not trying to start some "My Favorite OS Has The Biggest Dick" flame-war.
I'm not saying that Linux desktop solutions are not good. Some of them are darn good. For certain users, it's a terrific choice.
I'm saying that there isn't the rising tide of interest in it that their once was.
Let's look at some of the forces behind people wanting a Linux desktop back around 1998 or so, and what has happened since then:
1. An affordable alternative to Microsoft.
Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the Mac has become more affordable while improving is several other important ways. Microsoft haters can pick up a $600 mini from their local store that does pretty much everything they want to do.
2. Better security
Okay, Microsoft still kind of sucks at security, but if you run an external firewall and keep your patches up to date, you're not nearly as vulnerable on a networked Windows box as you were eight years ago.
3. "Free as in Speech"
The fact that Darwin, the BSD Layer of OS X, is open source is enough for most people. It means that Apple is wisely subjecting the underpinnings of their OS to peer review and gaining most of the wins of using open source. A few hard-core Stallmansits probably feel very differently about it, but Free Software bigotry is not really enough to drive a popular movement.
4. *nix at home
OS X and various flavors of BSD provide plenty of opportunity for that, and even Windows has emulation tools. A would-be BOFH in training could learn an awful lot of what they need to know about *nix simply by monkeying on a Windows PC.
5. New life to old hardware.
"Old" hardware these days is pretty darn beefy stuff. When you can buy an XP-capable used PC or an OS X-capable used Mac for under $100, there really isn't a compelling reason to squeeze a little more life out of that old 386 in the garage.
The value of the box that can't run one a modern commercial OS at this point is pretty much measured in the price and quantity of the metals used to build it, minus the cost of disposing of any hazzardous materials. (A number which is not always higher than zero.) Plus, when parts burn out, it's almost never worth the time and trouble to repair them.
So my point is, while Linux has made some great strides to become more user-friendly than it was back in the day, the emergence of OS X and the improvements of Windows have taken away most of the reasons for people to switch.
There is one home use for Linux which doesn't seem to be going away soon: Media Room computers!
Every Windows solution I've seen costs a fortune and works like ass.
I have a Mac driving my HDTV, and love it, but it's still a more expensive solution than a MythTV set-up would have been.
If any company starts making enough money by selling Linux distributions, that's not an indication that the movement is "over." It's an indication that the movement is "complete."
By calling somebody "the Microsoft of Linux", perhaps they mean that one vendor is dominant enough to dictate industry standard practices, such as it once seemed would be the case with the Red Hat package manager. While it would certainly be possible for somebody to come along and push things in a certain direction, standards-breaking usually works against your best interests.
Besides, the Linux desktop revolution is pretty much over anyway, isn't it? The vast majority of those who want a *nixy desktop can just buy a Mac these days. There will still be a large cult of die-hards runing Gentoo as their day-in and day-out personal workstation OS, just as there were those in the late 90's who would cling for dear life to their OS/2 and Amiga boxen, but it seems like it's been a couple years since there has been any real appearance of growing momentum behind putting Linux on everybody's desk.
Linux these days is an incredibly well-respected enterprise OS... to the point that it has driven several "real" POSIX-compliant Unices out of existance. But as a desktop solution, it never really advanced beyond the playgrounds of serious geeks, and it doesn't really look to me like it ever will.
How is 480p widescreen a performance boost over the 5-year old X-Box, which does 720p widescreen for some games?
Kindly name two species on animals that can survive in the vacuum of deep space for an extended period without our help. We can overcome the challenges of our environment in ways which other species simply can't. End of debate.
Is Francis an insult or someone you think I am?
If the quote "lighten up, Francis" is too obscure of a pop-culture reference for you, then I'm guessing you're either very young or else you simply don't get out much.
It's your right to think all nintendo produces is hello kitty games or whatever.
I never said that. And furthermore, if that was what I thought, I'd probably want one.
Wow. Thank you for being just about the only person in the entire thread to respond to my post without getting his panties in a knot over the fact that I dared to suggest that the Wii might be something less than earth-shattering.
I don't know if the Wii will catch on with casual gamers or not, but it's obvious that it's already won the hearts and minds of the Slashdot Gestalt.
At the most generous end of the spectrum the remainder comes to 3%. This seems very small. The 'undecided' figure is usually bigger than this
Not when about 90% answered the same way, it's not.
If you were to ask 1000 men, "do you feel the need to have a sex change?" the "undecided" percentage would probably be less than one percent.
If you asked 1000 women, "are you currently in or near the third trimester of a pregnancy?" I bet you would get an even smaller percentage of "undecided" answers.
If I were to ask you, "would you like me to punch you right in the throat with an extended knuckle?" the chances of you saying you were "undecided" are statistically insignificant.
So, what are you saying, that in 2006 women no longer carry handbags?
I don't think you've been to a mall lately.
Handbags are incredibly utilitarian, especially in this day and age, when people are carrying phones and music players with them everywhere they go.
The only reason men haven't caved in and started carrying them is because men often carry laptop bags, which is really just a big square purse that you can put a computer in.
See, the thing is, I don't think the controller is the obstacle.
Sure, my X-box controller baffled my 65-year old dad, but he would not have any interest in owning a DS either.
Look at the controller for the Game Cube. It looks about as complicated as the toy piano my little neice likes to pound on with a plastic hammer. You can't tell me that "intimidation" by that controller is what kept non-gamers away from the cube, and a TV remote controll held sideways is suddenly going to make it all clear to them.
The DS is not being sold to non-gamers. It's being sold to new gamers. It's a purse-friendly device which allows people who got hooked on playing simple games on their cell phones to play better games with controlls that are easier than their phone's number pad.
Those same college girls who I see everywhere playing Animal Crossing on the DS are not neccesarilly going to rush out to install a game system on their living room TV sets. A living room console game doesn't give them something to do while waiting in line at class registration or the DMV, or keep them amused while they wait for a friend to finish their 11:00 class and join them for lunch. They don't need an activity like an EA Sports sim to serve as an excuse to hang out with their friends and visit for a few hours the way their male counterparts do.
Yes, Lara Crofts boobies might be part of the reason why consoles are more popular with men than women, but it ain't the whole reason. There are lifestyle factors involved which a clever new controller design is simply not going to address.
I bet you're having tons of fun.
Not really. I'm just passing time during process-imposed "downtime" at the office by discussing a few things that strike me as odd about the Wii strategy, and the popular theories about why it's going to take off and reclaim market dominance from Sony.
I'm not really trying to "win" the argument, so much as challenge those of you who think the Wii is hot stuff to explain why it's such a "revolution" to have a slightly different controller and slightly less impressive graphics than the competition on what appears to be a perfectly ordinary game console.
Except the DS did not emerge in an established market which was exclusively popular with a specific demographic.
Before the DS and the PSP, there was only the GameBoy, which wasn't hugely popular with adults, but did rather well with both men and women.
It seems to me that the thing that makes DS games so popular with women is: No hand-held game is small enough for your back jeans pocket, but the DS fits in a purse.
I have a PSP (mainly for airplane travel amusement), and I've seen purses that are smaller than this thing, especially with the hard drive & extended battery attached. There's no way any woman could toss it in her handbag with her phone, money, keys, make-up, etc. unless she was carrying on of those big honkin' messenger bags, in which case she might as well take a whole freakin' laptop.
But the DS is only slightly larger than a typical make-up case. A woman who is already carrying around a half-full purse won't even notice the addition of a DS until the mood strikes her to take it out and play it.
Most men, meanwhile, need to minimize clutter, as even belt pouches are viewed by a great deal of society as a rather "metrosexual" accessory to be lugging around. After the wallet and keys, a "soap-bar" sized cell phone and maybe an iPod is pretty much the upper bounds of what most guys want to carry around all day in their pockets, especially during the summer, when you don't have all those extra jacket pockets to throw stuff in (and some of your work-out shorts lack pockets entirely.)
Which might be one more reason why men like playing console games in the living room: Current "portable" systems are not as portable for men as they are for women.
If the other niches are "being served," why are video game purchases still dominated by 20-something guys?
This remains true in spite of Nintendo targeting everybody else for several years now. It could very well be that adult men are actually more intersted in console gaming than other people.
That's not automatically a function of games being targeted at them.
It might also, for example, be a funciton of the fact that the majority of prime-time TV is targeted at women. Given a choice between watching "Gilmore Girls" or some other female-targeted drama on TV or playing "Lego Star Wars" or some other simple game on the console, the male and female demographics are likely to respond very differently from each other. It doesn't make "Katamari Darmacy" a game which is targeted at men, it just makes it a game that men are more likely to play when "Gray's Anatomy" is on.
(Disclaimer: If you're male and actually like "Gilmore Girls" or "Gray's Anatomy", I'm not saying you're any less of a man for it. You just keep doin' your own thing, chief.)
You sound like a politician who is behind in the "likely voter" polls, insisting that they will draw from the MASSIVE pool of traditional non-voters to put themselves over the top.
It pretty much never works, because the funny thing about non-voters is: They typically don't vote.
There might be a few people out there who don't play console games because they don't like the genres or the controllers.
But most people who don't play console games are people who are NOT INTERESTED in playing console games. If they didn't give a shit about Mario before, a new controller and an improved networking solution won't change that. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
They're trying to appeal to people who don't play games on the current consoles because they are too intimidating, complex or alienating.
People who found the N64, GameCube, PS, PS2, and X-Box "intimidating, complex, or alienating" are not going to look at the Wii and say "Wow! Wireless motion-sensor control! That changes everything! I want I want I want!"
So far, everybody who has expressed a lot of excitement about Wii has been previous-generation Nintendo owners. Not that that's a bad target market. Add up all the Nintendo consoles over the years (including the days before Sony came along and stole their market dominance) and you're talking about a lot of gamers who have warm, fuzzy feelings about Princess Peach Toadstool.
But you're kidding yourself if you think soccer moms are suddenly going to give up playing flash-based games on their PC web browsers to play a truck stunt-jumping game on a console, no matter how "advanced" the controller is said to be.
Everybody who's cheering for Nintendo (and I'd just like to say: I get it... They are the only non-evil company making consoles, so they are easy to r00t for, if you'll pardon the pun) keeps trying to make the point that it was some stroke of genius for them to keep the console "Low-Def" for the sake of cheaper game development and to keep the cost of the console itself down.
But here's the thing that doesn't fit about that:
If I want a cheap console with lots of third-party support and no HD support, I can buy an old PS2.
What's so wonderful about a new-generation console with previous-generation performance? Why buy a new console that doesn't offer any new performance boost?
Wouldn't it have been even cheaper for Nintendo to just sell a motion sensor that you can plug in to an X-Box, PS2, or GameCube, and develop games for that???
Sure, not everybody has an HDTV and not everybody needs cutting-edge graphics... but those who don't have the need for ultra-smooth HD graphics already have three perfectly good consoles to choose from, each with a 5-year library of fun games already developed for them and being sold for about $20 a pop in many cases. Unless you're filthy rich, there's no way you already own and have played every single available PS2 game. (And if you are that filthy rich, you are probably one of those HDTV owners currently playing Call of Duty 2 on the X-Box 360.)
In other words, the Wii doesn't seem to fill any niche that isn't already served.
And speaking of that controller:
Imagine holding your TV remote control by its ends and pretending it's a steering wheel.
That's exactly what every non-fanboy was imagining the moment photos of the Wii controller came out. No surprise there at all.