The games look a lot simlar, in gameplay and in the name, but I'm sure it's a coincidence. Poor Capcom, getting bashed like that.. Like they've ever rehashed a successful game concept!
They transmit 1080p at 60Hz, ok. But what's the latency? I don't think it's instant. Combined with LCD latency, it might be bad. So, no thanks. As said above, not intended for gamers/engineers, and might not even for watching fast action movies.
Somehow reminds me of that desktop software thingy which was really cluttered and simulated a real, really messy desk, with piles of unordered stuff. The worst of both worlds. If you're gonna play real guitar and the others know how to play stuff too, get together at a bar and play live, it's immensely better than 4 people in the living room. More booze, more chicks, more fun, better atmosphere, unbelievably more rewarding.
.. So that people cheat, others get frustrated by the cheats, all lose interest and maybe MAYBE some of them find something more interesting and productive to do.
I'm wondering when the time will come, when some guys start writing AI to defeat the game with optimal high-score. Even if a coin-op is required, the robot parts to handle input shouldn't be that difficult to program, and would make the whole thing even fancier. Screw chess, arcade AI solvers sound immensely more fun!
I thought it was interesting not from Nintendo's business perspective, but regarding the growth of multisensor-input-enabled applications and research, given that the price is at consumer hardware levels.
I might draw an extreme parallel here, but consider what happened to computer graphics for games and research when the first sort-of-programmable GPUs became supported and affordable (late 90's)
As Kinect seems to be the new hot toy after WiiMote, it will be interesting to see how it ventures in terms of developed applications and research. I think Nintendo did a mistake by ignoring PC support for their gadget.
1. DRM sucks.
2. Drastically reduce prices for digital media, when there's no hardware cost/middlemen involved. The potential customer base is massively bigger so they can afford that, but I guess greed is greed...
3. Put LOTS of tempting offers
4. Aim for the customers' convenience when buying / browsing.
For pc games, in which piracy is rampant, Steam works great. It can't be that difficult to think of something similar..
Oh, and the mined data can be used for all above points.
The separate industries seem either incredibly dumb or incredibly arrogant. Or both. Cause they seem to think 'That won't happen to me - I'm better/different'.
Can't agree more - I always like to hug, cuddle and run around in the fields with my lambs and goats before I slaughter them; I even help with the reproduction procedure if there's a shortage! It's so nice to know that they had a good time before they were butchered. I think I'll patent it : "Happy Meat: Cause it had a good time before you ate and burped it"
..it wouldn't be as dramatic as you make it sound. Consider living in your flat alone without going out for months. And then compare with camping in some really remote place with some friends. It's unbelievably exaggerated, but it's isolation from people and lack of communication that hurts and alienates most, not isolated places.. They should really do some personality compatibility tests to the potential volunteers - it is humans that will go and coexist, not emotionless tools.
I'd expect most people would be disqualified because of their age. You wouldn't send gramps only to have him die really soon; that's selfish of you gramps! Send young people fresh out of unis or with some of the required experience, they'll probably be the most bang for buck. If they are older, they'd better have a lot of experience in something really useful (doctors for example). And judging from the timeframe, the younger candidates can't really have a say right now as they're busy being in school.
Depends on the kind of game & its multiplayer mechanics, really. For example for FPS games you just can't have many players sharing a single screen. For other types of games, if the multiplayer aspect is designed to support many players on a shared screen, then yes that's obvious - no need for split screen.
I'm arguing that when friends come over to casually play a game that you can conveniently play online, then you should be able to conveniently play it all together at home as well, regardless its ability to map many players in a single screen. The implementation is easy, it's not being done for performance reasons. And I'd rather have a "split-screen but it's kinda shitty" option, rather than not having the option at all.
Regarding the alternatives, given a number of options, people most of the time would rather choose the 'convenient' ones rather than the more involved ones ( e.g. setting up stuff, carrying stuff over etc etc) - at least that's what I think.
Some games are fit for shared screen, others aren't. So :
IF you have a game that is NOT FIT for shared screen, BUT you still want to retain the FUN factor of having friends around, AND all this while talking about the COMMON CASE of a few friends coming over, THEN split screen is a perfectly acceptable compromise of quality.
I won't argue this anymore as it's becoming redundant.
When did I ever say that? It's entirely possible to have multiple displays in the same room. Ever heard of a LAN party? Ever heard of attaching multiple displays to a single device?
I'm talking about the common case here - a few friends coming over to your place. Organizing a LAN party is not that common. Don't get me started on the many-display.
Speaking as a games programmer for an AAA game that eventually dropped split-screen support: Can't say I love the fact, but it *kind of* makes sense from a performance standpoint. Consider the following: You have a big bad detailed world to explore. You naturally don't want to keep the areas that the player doesn't see in video memory. Well, if you have split screen, tough luck, you have to keep in memory at worst twice as much, which is pretty bad. Of course you should need half as much detail for each view, but you'd have to implement a proper streaming system for that (like MegaTexture).
Long story short, split screen support nowadays, especially for highly detailed worlds, is not a trivial problem to solve if you want to avoid excess performance costs. And when everybody is connected online anyway, it makes sense (financially) to drop it.
Slashdot Mirror
The games look a lot simlar, in gameplay and in the name, but I'm sure it's a coincidence. Poor Capcom, getting bashed like that.. Like they've ever rehashed a successful game concept!
.. on the Year of the Linux!
They transmit 1080p at 60Hz, ok. But what's the latency? I don't think it's instant. Combined with LCD latency, it might be bad. So, no thanks. As said above, not intended for gamers/engineers, and might not even for watching fast action movies.
Somehow reminds me of that desktop software thingy which was really cluttered and simulated a real, really messy desk, with piles of unordered stuff. The worst of both worlds. If you're gonna play real guitar and the others know how to play stuff too, get together at a bar and play live, it's immensely better than 4 people in the living room. More booze, more chicks, more fun, better atmosphere, unbelievably more rewarding.
.. So that people cheat, others get frustrated by the cheats, all lose interest and maybe MAYBE some of them find something more interesting and productive to do.
I'm wondering when the time will come, when some guys start writing AI to defeat the game with optimal high-score. Even if a coin-op is required, the robot parts to handle input shouldn't be that difficult to program, and would make the whole thing even fancier. Screw chess, arcade AI solvers sound immensely more fun!
I might draw an extreme parallel here, but consider what happened to computer graphics for games and research when the first sort-of-programmable GPUs became supported and affordable (late 90's)
As Kinect seems to be the new hot toy after WiiMote, it will be interesting to see how it ventures in terms of developed applications and research. I think Nintendo did a mistake by ignoring PC support for their gadget.
1. DRM sucks.
2. Drastically reduce prices for digital media, when there's no hardware cost/middlemen involved. The potential customer base is massively bigger so they can afford that, but I guess greed is greed...
3. Put LOTS of tempting offers
4. Aim for the customers' convenience when buying / browsing.
For pc games, in which piracy is rampant, Steam works great. It can't be that difficult to think of something similar..
Oh, and the mined data can be used for all above points.
The separate industries seem either incredibly dumb or incredibly arrogant. Or both. Cause they seem to think 'That won't happen to me - I'm better/different'.
Can't agree more - I always like to hug, cuddle and run around in the fields with my lambs and goats before I slaughter them; I even help with the reproduction procedure if there's a shortage! It's so nice to know that they had a good time before they were butchered. I think I'll patent it : "Happy Meat: Cause it had a good time before you ate and burped it"
..it wouldn't be as dramatic as you make it sound. Consider living in your flat alone without going out for months. And then compare with camping in some really remote place with some friends. It's unbelievably exaggerated, but it's isolation from people and lack of communication that hurts and alienates most, not isolated places.. They should really do some personality compatibility tests to the potential volunteers - it is humans that will go and coexist, not emotionless tools.
I'd expect most people would be disqualified because of their age. You wouldn't send gramps only to have him die really soon; that's selfish of you gramps! Send young people fresh out of unis or with some of the required experience, they'll probably be the most bang for buck. If they are older, they'd better have a lot of experience in something really useful (doctors for example). And judging from the timeframe, the younger candidates can't really have a say right now as they're busy being in school.
Then you can definitely compute the relative marketing costs for each game - reviewer bribery included of course.
. Say, silence alarm by "batting it away"
I'd like to see how that would work with flies flying around you in the summer
Depends on the kind of game & its multiplayer mechanics, really. For example for FPS games you just can't have many players sharing a single screen. For other types of games, if the multiplayer aspect is designed to support many players on a shared screen, then yes that's obvious - no need for split screen.
I'm arguing that when friends come over to casually play a game that you can conveniently play online, then you should be able to conveniently play it all together at home as well, regardless its ability to map many players in a single screen. The implementation is easy, it's not being done for performance reasons. And I'd rather have a "split-screen but it's kinda shitty" option, rather than not having the option at all.
Regarding the alternatives, given a number of options, people most of the time would rather choose the 'convenient' ones rather than the more involved ones ( e.g. setting up stuff, carrying stuff over etc etc) - at least that's what I think.
Some games are fit for shared screen, others aren't. So : IF you have a game that is NOT FIT for shared screen, BUT you still want to retain the FUN factor of having friends around, AND all this while talking about the COMMON CASE of a few friends coming over, THEN split screen is a perfectly acceptable compromise of quality. I won't argue this anymore as it's becoming redundant.
When did I ever say that? It's entirely possible to have multiple displays in the same room. Ever heard of a LAN party? Ever heard of attaching multiple displays to a single device?
I'm talking about the common case here - a few friends coming over to your place. Organizing a LAN party is not that common. Don't get me started on the many-display.
If you really think that the quality of fun with friends is better when they're NOT in the same room, fair enough..
Speaking as a games programmer for an AAA game that eventually dropped split-screen support: Can't say I love the fact, but it *kind of* makes sense from a performance standpoint. Consider the following: You have a big bad detailed world to explore. You naturally don't want to keep the areas that the player doesn't see in video memory. Well, if you have split screen, tough luck, you have to keep in memory at worst twice as much, which is pretty bad. Of course you should need half as much detail for each view, but you'd have to implement a proper streaming system for that (like MegaTexture). Long story short, split screen support nowadays, especially for highly detailed worlds, is not a trivial problem to solve if you want to avoid excess performance costs. And when everybody is connected online anyway, it makes sense (financially) to drop it.