I had such high hopes for the M2. I admire the whole 3DO idea. License out the hardware and such. The M2 had impressive specs, and I think there were even prototypes. It was such a bold vision. Unfortunately it seems to have vanished like most dreams.
I love the Gentoo long compilation jokes. I'm a frequent Gentoo user, and it just goes to show the power of Gentoo. Sure, it may take a few days (quite literally) to compile your app. Or you could wait for a precompiled binary. When's that coming again? No one knows? Oh, I guess that means it could be never?
Gentoo is not for everyone, I even find it frustrating occasionally, but my package management (or source management) has never been simpler.
I was annoyed by my silly "ring tones" also, and pretty much everyone elses out there. So I recorded a.wav of me saying "ring" in the dullest voice I could muster every three seconds or so and uploaded to my phone as an mp3. Take that The Man!
It's not catching on? I don't have any hard facts, but I can go into Best Buy and there is a whole UMD section. I even saw one at my local K-Mart. For a disc that can only be used on one player by one manufacturer, that's pretty impressive. They're not going to outsell DVDs, nor is that the intent, but it looks good from this consumer's eye. This is despite the fact that I have a PSP and have never even considered buying a UMD.
Now, as as PSP owner, I would consider buying a DVD/UMD combo. If the cost were the same or marginally higher.
The one thing most of these posts don't see is the potential for *rentals*. I still believe these would be perfect for Airports. Rent in your departing city, drop off in mail bin netflix-style in your arriving city. Hell, you could even offer them on the plane if you'd like. They're certainly small enough.
Well, the trick is to remove the stigma. My brother, who's a high-level corporate guy, has no problem playing solitaire or sumsuch small "game" on his Blackberry. I don't think I've ever got him to touch any of my consoles. Once he picked up the PSP, but the DS was just too much "I'm not an adult" for him.
In America, games==not adult. This may not be true for many of the slashdot crowd, but go try and play a DS in a business suit in your company lunch room. No one will say a word, but you will be thought of differently. Shame that.
Seriously, and I've said this before, the XBox 360 is not unfindable. It's difficult, and apparently largely dependant upon where you are, but they are out there. I still see five or six boxes at my local Toy's R Us, and I saw some at wal-mart too. This may not be true in your area, but they are there.
Re:Ok, can we just put more empty space in now?
on
Intel Makes 45nm Chip
·
· Score: 1
Wow, I must have sounded like I was ranting. You're the only one that got my point. Are there times when I want the fastest greatest CPU? Sure, there's lots. I do quite a bit of image editing for photo's a web design, and I know that yes, they can never be fast enough. There will always be a market for smaller, faster, more gigahertz etc.
The thing the sibling posters don't get is that *there already is a market for you*. Every major manufacturer out there is dying to eek out an extra few K per second of bandwidth/processing power etc.
I'm saying that VIA is doing what I, and many others, would like. I was simply wondering if we had a market for us? There's whole magazines and websites devoted to smaller, quiter, small-purpose computing. Can't we have a market too?
Ok, can we just put more empty space in now?
on
Intel Makes 45nm Chip
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Seriously? Can't I have a chip that runs relatively fast, does everything a modern computer is used for, sans games, and I *don't* have to water-cool? Something like what the VIA Epia series does, but with Intel's backing?
Is it just me, or is web-browsing and document writing fast enough? It seems like 99% of the time these days I just want something smaller and quieter. If I want pretty shiny games, I'll play them on my xbox390 or sumsuch. Sure you can make bunches of chips for gamers, but give me a slimline chip and I, like many others would flock to it.
I'm writing this on my 733Mhz laptop, bought for college way back when, and my typing fingers really don't recognize the lack of dual cores.
They *were* losing money? Last I checked, I saw no official announcement that Xbox1 production had ceased. That would be a disaster eh? It would be like MS said, hey, get your 360 now, cuz we're pretty much done with X1.
To me, that's the most dangerous thing MS has done, show that it thinks the usual console lifecycle we've all gotten used to should be a good year or two shorter.
Here's what I *don't* need: Upgrading my console more than my PC.
Sibling poster is correct that the parent poster is likely fradulent. The user is at best a rabid fanboy, but it looks more like he's using dual accounts to mod himself.
Yeah, the DS, although I love it, has some very small design flaws.
My biggest is using the touch screen as an analog pad, it's not possible for me to stretch my thumb comfortably. Luckily, few games use this feature.
My second biggest is volume control. You're right, it's impossible to get something that you can hear, but is not too loud. Or any tiny change for that matter. The same thing was true of my GBA SP though really. What ever happened to notched-dial wheels? They worked just fine.
Lastly, is the overall comfort of the device. Sometimes, I'd like to lay on the couch or bed and play, but the damn thing can't be held in any sideways manner (while on your side.) Actually, the *only* way that works is directly in your lap or in front of you, preferably with a pillow or something taking the weight of it.
My game-racing knowledge is a bit long in the tooth (still enjoying GT:A-spec) but I believe GT is billed as a *driving simulator" which it does well. PGR, from what I understand, could be billed as a *crashing simulator*, and still do well.
That said, I really wish we could have both. I don't even need that much damage modeling. I don't need to see the differential spinning away during a crash, but if I hit a wall at 140 or 150mph, throw some particle debris at me or something. Damn. Turn the textures black. Just something that doesn't make it look like my car (and all it's decals) are made of adamantium.
I've seen this link cited before but never really read it. How accurate can this claim to be? 121 XBoxes sold in the entirity of Japan last week? One hundred and freaking twenty one? I knew the situation in Japan was extremely bad for MS, but I had no idea they were selling like 1 console per city.
<clippy>It looks like you are trying to do "research" (clippy winks). Would you like to use MSN Search to find more (clippy raises an eyebrow) material?</clippy>
By the way, I saw a similar "clippy" joke somewhere before...hrm, it might have even been on slashdot. I'll consider that a cite, and welcome our new plaguirism overlords.
Yep. I don't need every game to be a Katamari Damacy. It just has to have some new energy and thinking behind it a new way to interact. If you think about it, that's what 'game' means. If you can boil you're game down to FPS or TPS, then you've essentially got a derivative game with a new story. While this is all fine and good, it get's old. That's where FEAR and RE4 come in.
As to the RTS, yep I'll take StarCraftDS any day, spruce it up a bit. I'll take the Myst suggestion too, as I was preoccupied with other stuff to play those.
Now to the marketing execs reading this thread brought to the by their research teams: This does not mean rehash everything and anything.
I'm sure he did know it, but I believe I read this the same way as the grandparent post. I'm no marketing genious, but with the PS3 and Revolution to both launch this year, and console gaming undergoing one of it's most radical changes ever, I personally can't see any way to predict anything at this point with reasonable accuracy. Current variables with no known good trends:
Networked consoles:Only the XBox has really done this, with an impressive yet scarce penetration. Any data is at best 3 years old, not enough to predict trends.
Consoles that do more than gaming:How important is it that your console play your mp3s? How about your videos?
Format War: Related to the 'more than gaming' If a console plays movie-discs, will formats (HDDVD/BR) add/subtract from console sales figures?
Powerful, expensive handhelds:Handhelds, the PSP and DS, are now as pricey, if not more so, then their console bretheren, and actually offer new features. How many people will forgo purchasing a console for a handheld? Will owning a PSP correlate to a desire for a PS3? How about the NDS/Revolution?
PS3:Launch date still unknown, features still not quite locked down, price unknown. How many will it sell? A billion? Twenty? I don't even know if I'm getting one, and I'm close to the key demographic, and a longtime gamer.
Revolution:Completely new input device, will people embrace it? Online looking to deliver some of the best selling video games of all time. Pricing still up in the air, launch date unknown.
Look at it this way, if we looked at the DS six months ago, and projected how it would do a year later, how accurate would *that* be? I think that was the spirit of the post.
You know what we be cool to put on that bookshelf? An Encyclomedia PC! This is by far the nicest form-following function I've seen home-brewed in a long time. I couldn't resist the chance to plug it.
I've built 3 mythTV based Linux boxes now, and I'm always interested in the different configurations. If he truly got this MSI box (which I've seen before), it would be nice to see if he got the LCD to do anything useful besides the time, and does the volume knob actually work. He also ignores the remote, and how he actually controls the thing on TV. Even with wireless, a keyboard and mouse on your TV are far inferior to a good UI with a remote control.
To the author: Go back and get some more specifics, then revisit your article. Linux people are devils, we're all about the details.
I don't know what you mean about bundles. I mean you can get a great deal right now on a 360. Hell, if you buy that system with the extra third wireless controller, you *save*! By my calculations you Toys R Us saves you exactly erm...$0. That's not the point though, you can have your XBox360 now!! Limited time only!
At that point, I don't care about the story, the graphics, the sound, or anything. The game is absolutely unplayable.
Wow. That's why I'm glad that you're not an actual reviewer. There are so many problems with that statement it's hard to even know where to begin. A *game* is supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to conform to things you're used to in order to be entertaining. As a matter of fact, it's usually better when it doesn't. That said, you have every right to dismiss games like this if you like. I won't stop you and certainly could care less. It's a shame for you though, as there are many games that you probably won't even see the beauty of because of your knee-jerk reaction.
Just for kicks, let's see what you may have missed of some common things:
prockcore's review of "Viewtiful Joe" Let me start by saying, *the graphics look like they are a cartoon*. Read that again. I pretty much walked away at that point. I don't care about the stylish art, the retro-styled gameplay, or amazing amount of fun it may have.
prockcore's review of "The Nintendo DS" This thing has a *touch screen*. I pretty much walked away at that point. What possible use could a thing like that have for games? It won't matter to me that there are entirely new possibilites for games that are extremely innovative and unique.
prockcore's review of "XBox360" The power brick is massive. I don't understand why anyone walking erect could buy something like this. Nothing else matters.
prockcore's review of "The Mona Lisa" Let me start by saying, *the bitch ain't even really smiling!*. Read that again. I pretty much walked away at that point. At that point I could care less about the textures, color, or timelessness it may have.
Let me sum up by saying, I'm not really a Resident Evil fan, I played the original, and it was fun, but lost interest after that. RE4 however, is a very solid game. Maybe not best game ever, but pretty good. On the point of being able to move and shoot, it's a choice designers made, and I like it myself.
I can't tell you how many times I hate playing some WW2 multiplayer game and I see people not just walking and shooting but *jumping*, almost skipping, sometimes with actual rocket launchers. You know what though? Despite how silly it looks, some of the games are still pretty damn good. See, I "got over it" and tried to evaluate the game as a whole. For your own enjoyment, I would suggest being a little less rigid in your ideas of what makes a game good. That's just me though, so enjoy them however you like.
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed that too. It's very odd. It's as if a million slashdotters suddenly were silenced....
I had such high hopes for the M2. I admire the whole 3DO idea. License out the hardware and such. The M2 had impressive specs, and I think there were even prototypes. It was such a bold vision. Unfortunately it seems to have vanished like most dreams.
Yes. I am indeed a moron. My apologies Mr. Torrent. Er, Torvalds. Dammit.
I also fondly remember that day. The voice that emerged from my speakers said:
"My name is Linux Torvalds and I pronounce Linux Lee-nooks"
And I'm like WTF? I thought Lin-ukks was a friggin atrocity to call my new Lie-nux installation. Now it's got nooks? This is just lue-duk-cruss.
I love the Gentoo long compilation jokes. I'm a frequent Gentoo user, and it just goes to show the power of Gentoo. Sure, it may take a few days (quite literally) to compile your app. Or you could wait for a precompiled binary. When's that coming again? No one knows? Oh, I guess that means it could be never?
Gentoo is not for everyone, I even find it frustrating occasionally, but my package management (or source management) has never been simpler.
I was annoyed by my silly "ring tones" also, and pretty much everyone elses out there. So I recorded a .wav of me saying "ring" in the dullest voice I could muster every three seconds or so and uploaded to my phone as an mp3. Take that The Man!
Management just finds a chipped employee and drags him up by the scruff, the slams him up to the reader.
It's not catching on? I don't have any hard facts, but I can go into Best Buy and there is a whole UMD section. I even saw one at my local K-Mart. For a disc that can only be used on one player by one manufacturer, that's pretty impressive. They're not going to outsell DVDs, nor is that the intent, but it looks good from this consumer's eye. This is despite the fact that I have a PSP and have never even considered buying a UMD.
Now, as as PSP owner, I would consider buying a DVD/UMD combo. If the cost were the same or marginally higher.
The one thing most of these posts don't see is the potential for *rentals*. I still believe these would be perfect for Airports. Rent in your departing city, drop off in mail bin netflix-style in your arriving city. Hell, you could even offer them on the plane if you'd like. They're certainly small enough.
Well, the trick is to remove the stigma. My brother, who's a high-level corporate guy, has no problem playing solitaire or sumsuch small "game" on his Blackberry. I don't think I've ever got him to touch any of my consoles. Once he picked up the PSP, but the DS was just too much "I'm not an adult" for him.
In America, games==not adult. This may not be true for many of the slashdot crowd, but go try and play a DS in a business suit in your company lunch room. No one will say a word, but you will be thought of differently. Shame that.
Seriously, and I've said this before, the XBox 360 is not unfindable. It's difficult, and apparently largely dependant upon where you are, but they are out there. I still see five or six boxes at my local Toy's R Us, and I saw some at wal-mart too. This may not be true in your area, but they are there.
Wow, I must have sounded like I was ranting. You're the only one that got my point. Are there times when I want the fastest greatest CPU? Sure, there's lots. I do quite a bit of image editing for photo's a web design, and I know that yes, they can never be fast enough. There will always be a market for smaller, faster, more gigahertz etc.
The thing the sibling posters don't get is that *there already is a market for you*. Every major manufacturer out there is dying to eek out an extra few K per second of bandwidth/processing power etc.
I'm saying that VIA is doing what I, and many others, would like. I was simply wondering if we had a market for us? There's whole magazines and websites devoted to smaller, quiter, small-purpose computing. Can't we have a market too?
Seriously? Can't I have a chip that runs relatively fast, does everything a modern computer is used for, sans games, and I *don't* have to water-cool? Something like what the VIA Epia series does, but with Intel's backing?
Is it just me, or is web-browsing and document writing fast enough? It seems like 99% of the time these days I just want something smaller and quieter. If I want pretty shiny games, I'll play them on my xbox390 or sumsuch. Sure you can make bunches of chips for gamers, but give me a slimline chip and I, like many others would flock to it.
I'm writing this on my 733Mhz laptop, bought for college way back when, and my typing fingers really don't recognize the lack of dual cores.
They *were* losing money? Last I checked, I saw no official announcement that Xbox1 production had ceased. That would be a disaster eh? It would be like MS said, hey, get your 360 now, cuz we're pretty much done with X1.
To me, that's the most dangerous thing MS has done, show that it thinks the usual console lifecycle we've all gotten used to should be a good year or two shorter.
Here's what I *don't* need: Upgrading my console more than my PC.
Sibling poster is correct that the parent poster is likely fradulent. The user is at best a rabid fanboy, but it looks more like he's using dual accounts to mod himself.
Yeah, the DS, although I love it, has some very small design flaws.
My biggest is using the touch screen as an analog pad, it's not possible for me to stretch my thumb comfortably. Luckily, few games use this feature.
My second biggest is volume control. You're right, it's impossible to get something that you can hear, but is not too loud. Or any tiny change for that matter. The same thing was true of my GBA SP though really. What ever happened to notched-dial wheels? They worked just fine.
Lastly, is the overall comfort of the device. Sometimes, I'd like to lay on the couch or bed and play, but the damn thing can't be held in any sideways manner (while on your side.) Actually, the *only* way that works is directly in your lap or in front of you, preferably with a pillow or something taking the weight of it.
My game-racing knowledge is a bit long in the tooth (still enjoying GT:A-spec) but I believe GT is billed as a *driving simulator" which it does well. PGR, from what I understand, could be billed as a *crashing simulator*, and still do well.
That said, I really wish we could have both. I don't even need that much damage modeling. I don't need to see the differential spinning away during a crash, but if I hit a wall at 140 or 150mph, throw some particle debris at me or something. Damn. Turn the textures black. Just something that doesn't make it look like my car (and all it's decals) are made of adamantium.
I've seen this link cited before but never really read it. How accurate can this claim to be? 121 XBoxes sold in the entirity of Japan last week? One hundred and freaking twenty one? I knew the situation in Japan was extremely bad for MS, but I had no idea they were selling like 1 console per city.
And yes, I know they sold like 12K 360s. Still.
<clippy>It looks like you are trying to do "research" (clippy winks). Would you like to use MSN Search to find more (clippy raises an eyebrow) material?</clippy>
By the way, I saw a similar "clippy" joke somewhere before...hrm, it might have even been on slashdot. I'll consider that a cite, and welcome our new plaguirism overlords.
Yep. I don't need every game to be a Katamari Damacy. It just has to have some new energy and thinking behind it a new way to interact. If you think about it, that's what 'game' means. If you can boil you're game down to FPS or TPS, then you've essentially got a derivative game with a new story. While this is all fine and good, it get's old. That's where FEAR and RE4 come in.
As to the RTS, yep I'll take StarCraftDS any day, spruce it up a bit. I'll take the Myst suggestion too, as I was preoccupied with other stuff to play those.
Now to the marketing execs reading this thread brought to the by their research teams: This does not mean rehash everything and anything.
You sir, are a true gamer. Going where the gameplay lies. As I have now had a few beers, I salute you.
I'm sure he did know it, but I believe I read this the same way as the grandparent post. I'm no marketing genious, but with the PS3 and Revolution to both launch this year, and console gaming undergoing one of it's most radical changes ever, I personally can't see any way to predict anything at this point with reasonable accuracy. Current variables with no known good trends:
Networked consoles:Only the XBox has really done this, with an impressive yet scarce penetration. Any data is at best 3 years old, not enough to predict trends.
Consoles that do more than gaming:How important is it that your console play your mp3s? How about your videos?
Format War: Related to the 'more than gaming' If a console plays movie-discs, will formats (HDDVD/BR) add/subtract from console sales figures?
Powerful, expensive handhelds:Handhelds, the PSP and DS, are now as pricey, if not more so, then their console bretheren, and actually offer new features. How many people will forgo purchasing a console for a handheld? Will owning a PSP correlate to a desire for a PS3? How about the NDS/Revolution?
PS3:Launch date still unknown, features still not quite locked down, price unknown. How many will it sell? A billion? Twenty? I don't even know if I'm getting one, and I'm close to the key demographic, and a longtime gamer.
Revolution:Completely new input device, will people embrace it? Online looking to deliver some of the best selling video games of all time. Pricing still up in the air, launch date unknown.
Look at it this way, if we looked at the DS six months ago, and projected how it would do a year later, how accurate would *that* be? I think that was the spirit of the post.
You know what we be cool to put on that bookshelf? An Encyclomedia PC! This is by far the nicest form-following function I've seen home-brewed in a long time. I couldn't resist the chance to plug it.
I've built 3 mythTV based Linux boxes now, and I'm always interested in the different configurations. If he truly got this MSI box (which I've seen before), it would be nice to see if he got the LCD to do anything useful besides the time, and does the volume knob actually work. He also ignores the remote, and how he actually controls the thing on TV. Even with wireless, a keyboard and mouse on your TV are far inferior to a good UI with a remote control.
To the author: Go back and get some more specifics, then revisit your article. Linux people are devils, we're all about the details.
I don't know what you mean about bundles. I mean you can get a great deal right now on a 360. Hell, if you buy that system with the extra third wireless controller, you *save*! By my calculations you Toys R Us saves you exactly erm...$0. That's not the point though, you can have your XBox360 now!! Limited time only!
At that point, I don't care about the story, the graphics, the sound, or anything. The game is absolutely unplayable.
Wow. That's why I'm glad that you're not an actual reviewer. There are so many problems with that statement it's hard to even know where to begin. A *game* is supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to conform to things you're used to in order to be entertaining. As a matter of fact, it's usually better when it doesn't. That said, you have every right to dismiss games like this if you like. I won't stop you and certainly could care less. It's a shame for you though, as there are many games that you probably won't even see the beauty of because of your knee-jerk reaction.
Just for kicks, let's see what you may have missed of some common things:
prockcore's review of "Viewtiful Joe"
Let me start by saying, *the graphics look like they are a cartoon*. Read that again. I pretty much walked away at that point. I don't care about the stylish art, the retro-styled gameplay, or amazing amount of fun it may have.
prockcore's review of "The Nintendo DS"
This thing has a *touch screen*. I pretty much walked away at that point. What possible use could a thing like that have for games? It won't matter to me that there are entirely new possibilites for games that are extremely innovative and unique.
prockcore's review of "XBox360"
The power brick is massive. I don't understand why anyone walking erect could buy something like this. Nothing else matters.
prockcore's review of "The Mona Lisa"
Let me start by saying, *the bitch ain't even really smiling!*. Read that again. I pretty much walked away at that point. At that point I could care less about the textures, color, or timelessness it may have.
Let me sum up by saying, I'm not really a Resident Evil fan, I played the original, and it was fun, but lost interest after that. RE4 however, is a very solid game. Maybe not best game ever, but pretty good. On the point of being able to move and shoot, it's a choice designers made, and I like it myself.
I can't tell you how many times I hate playing some WW2 multiplayer game and I see people not just walking and shooting but *jumping*, almost skipping, sometimes with actual rocket launchers. You know what though? Despite how silly it looks, some of the games are still pretty damn good. See, I "got over it" and tried to evaluate the game as a whole. For your own enjoyment, I would suggest being a little less rigid in your ideas of what makes a game good. That's just me though, so enjoy them however you like.