The video crashes both Media Player Classic and Nero Showtime part way through. According to the site it's supposed to be 26.4 megabytes, but it's only 4.5. Did it get truncated or something?
Agreed. I've never thought of "the new Atari" as anything but what they really are: Infogrames, a medium-sized French video games publisher. They didn't whore out the name too badly, though, but I'll only be sad to see them go under if they pass on the name to someone who does sully it.
That's just it - they want you to learn to use what they've patented. That way, you either have to license it from them when you want to use it in a real-world application, or you have to pay them a settlement when their lawyers come calling.
There's a much greater level of complexity involved though with more entities such as AI opponents and scripting events to keep track of. It's nowhere near as trivial as Doom was.
That's a valid argument for FPSes in general, but for Halo it's not because all of that functionality was already in the game before they ported it.
Could you actually have 2 mice giving separate inputs?
Yes, but nothing takes advantage of it because nobody has 2 mice connected to their computer (a catch-22).
If not, then one player would have to use a controller and have a relatively inferior playing experience.
I can tell you're not a die-hard console fan:) You wouldn't believe the number of people who have tried to argue to me the superiority of a console controller over a keyboard/mouse combo for first-person shooters.
I said "cooperative multiplayer". I would argue that it was laziness, as cooperative multiplayer has been around since DOOM. They could have at least ported over the split-screen play, which would have still looked better on a PC due to higher resolution graphics.
The fact is, most developers think that slapping deathmatch multiplayer onto an FPS is "enough". However, I was pretty much through with it after Counter-Strike (which was still better than pure deathmatch or even capture-the-flag). The closest thing I've been interested in during the past few years is Unreal Tournament, which I played cooperatively with friends against bots (and even then we mostly played CTF and not deathmatch).
The bottom line is cooperative multiplayer is fun and I wish developers would stop neglecting it, especially in ports of games in which it was a significant feature (e.g. Halo).
As a PC gamer, I waited for Halo 1 to come to PC before playing it (other than casually on friends' XBoxes). After seeing that Bungie was too lazy to port over the cooperative muitiplayer mode, I no longer have any interest in Halo games on the PC.
I'd buy this, other than the fact that the movie industry is also sucking as of late.
Indeed. In fact, I would argue that the movie industry is following a parallel path to the games industry, except that it's currently using remakes as its cash-cow crutch.
The military uses video game technology to train soldiers to kill. They know that video games make violent behaviors come more naturally. It's a proven fact by now, and all the Slashdot posts in the world won't change that.
The military trains soldiers to deal with violent situations in a calm, controlled manner. It doesn't brainwash them to be violent, unpredictable psychopaths.
I might concede that violent media de-sensitizes people to violence - although I still think most people's brains automatically make a distinction between real and pretend violence - but I really don't buy the argument, which has been around forever and changes its targeted medium with each generation.
Great, it's a sure thing now: the MMORPG market is headed for over-saturation.
Given the nature of these games, few people devote their time to more than one. The more games that come out, the fewer number of people there will be playing each. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually it gets to the point where - except for a couple big ones - most MMORPGs shrink back down to the player base of individual Neverwinter Nights servers or the MUDs from which they spawned.
Industry executives obviously missed the memo spelling out the fact that you can't have everyone playing every MMORPG out there - it just isn't gonna happen.
It's been in production for, what, 10 years now? How many engines have they developed with and released screenshots for? It's still in "when it's done" status, and nobody even cares about Duke Nukem any more (if they even remember him).
EA should be the LAST company in the industry to criticize other game publishing/developing companies. They have zero credibility in this area with anyone who has been paying attention in the last year (all of whom, I would hope, are joining me in laughing EA out of the building).
Others have mentioned EA wanting to acquire Ubisoft. I can definitely see Ubisoft as an attractive prospect for EA, as Ubi publishes the same types of games (with less emphasis on run-of-the-mill sports titles of course).
Aside from the controllers not mentioned, I have several other issues with the article: - I don't think the Sega Genesis controller pictured is the original one included with the Genesis, nor is it even the original 6 button one. Also, the original Genesis controller had only four buttons (Start, A, B and C). - They failed to mention how absolutely crappy the N64 controller is. I've never met ANYONE who found it comfortable. Unless you have three hands, you can't reach all the controls. The ones I could reach would cause strain (and pain) in my hands. I found this omission in the article especially aggrivating in light of their mention of user displeasure over the size of the original XBox controller (which, while unweildy, still let me reach all the buttons without causing pain in my hands!). - I don't buy the speculation about why the second analog stick was added to the original PSX Dual Shock, mostly because the two sticks register independently with the system. - I believe the info on the PS2 controller is also incorrect. The original PSX Dual Shock could register pushing down on the analog sticks as L3 and R3 buttons, but few games supported it. I'm pretty sure the PS2 controller actually has touch-sensitive X, O, Square and Triangle buttons, as I recall playing a PS2 launch title beat-em-up by Squaresoft that took advantage of this.
In my opinion (as someone who isn't very interested in any modern consoles to begin with), the article smacks somewhat of pro-Nintendo bias.
Obviously it matters if that's one of the most popular aspects of E3. If the organizers want it to be taken seriously then cracking down on the use of boothbabes is a good idea. Of course, that's assuming that there's anything left of interest afterwards...
That's a bad analogy. It's closer to saying that you don't have the right to lend out your own car. But I know that's still not accurate, so:
It would have been most accurate for you to say that if anyone could build a duplicate of their car with no effort and give it away for free, it wouldn't be legal because you might be depriving Honda of some amount of profit they'd have made from selling them. But if this were possible would you really expect people to pay $10,000 for a car? Where do you draw the line? Why is $10 reasonable but not $10,000?
did something happen in Japan where it's trendy for the guys to look like girls and the girls to look like guys?
Yeah, we dropped an atomic bomb on them.
If a company (from ANY country) made an RPG that made fun of ALL of these things I would buy it in a heart beat
I've had this same conversation with several of my friends over the years. I thought it would be especially cool to have the player start out with the cliche Japanese console RPG party in the cliche war-torn medieval/sci-fi mix world, but then have them get mercilessly slaughtered by something trivial. Then the real game would start, with a party of disenfranchised opportunists who find themselves in the wrong places at the right times and end up saving the world despite their best efforts to simply plunder what they can from both sides.
Slashdot Mirror
The video crashes both Media Player Classic and Nero Showtime part way through. According to the site it's supposed to be 26.4 megabytes, but it's only 4.5. Did it get truncated or something?
Agreed. I've never thought of "the new Atari" as anything but what they really are: Infogrames, a medium-sized French video games publisher. They didn't whore out the name too badly, though, but I'll only be sad to see them go under if they pass on the name to someone who does sully it.
What kind of chariots were they driving around in 800AD that warmed things up so much?
That's just it - they want you to learn to use what they've patented. That way, you either have to license it from them when you want to use it in a real-world application, or you have to pay them a settlement when their lawyers come calling.
There's a much greater level of complexity involved though with more entities such as AI opponents and scripting events to keep track of. It's nowhere near as trivial as Doom was.
:) You wouldn't believe the number of people who have tried to argue to me the superiority of a console controller over a keyboard/mouse combo for first-person shooters.
That's a valid argument for FPSes in general, but for Halo it's not because all of that functionality was already in the game before they ported it.
Could you actually have 2 mice giving separate inputs?
Yes, but nothing takes advantage of it because nobody has 2 mice connected to their computer (a catch-22).
If not, then one player would have to use a controller and have a relatively inferior playing experience.
I can tell you're not a die-hard console fan
I said "cooperative multiplayer". I would argue that it was laziness, as cooperative multiplayer has been around since DOOM. They could have at least ported over the split-screen play, which would have still looked better on a PC due to higher resolution graphics.
The fact is, most developers think that slapping deathmatch multiplayer onto an FPS is "enough". However, I was pretty much through with it after Counter-Strike (which was still better than pure deathmatch or even capture-the-flag). The closest thing I've been interested in during the past few years is Unreal Tournament, which I played cooperatively with friends against bots (and even then we mostly played CTF and not deathmatch).
The bottom line is cooperative multiplayer is fun and I wish developers would stop neglecting it, especially in ports of games in which it was a significant feature (e.g. Halo).
As a PC gamer, I waited for Halo 1 to come to PC before playing it (other than casually on friends' XBoxes). After seeing that Bungie was too lazy to port over the cooperative muitiplayer mode, I no longer have any interest in Halo games on the PC.
I'd buy this, other than the fact that the movie industry is also sucking as of late.
Indeed. In fact, I would argue that the movie industry is following a parallel path to the games industry, except that it's currently using remakes as its cash-cow crutch.
Maybe, but my impression was that it would be more about leading to a higher quality of life, and not necessarily increased longevity.
Jack Thompson, is that you?
I call troll/straw man:
The military uses video game technology to train soldiers to kill. They know that video games make violent behaviors come more naturally. It's a proven fact by now, and all the Slashdot posts in the world won't change that.
The military trains soldiers to deal with violent situations in a calm, controlled manner. It doesn't brainwash them to be violent, unpredictable psychopaths.
I might concede that violent media de-sensitizes people to violence - although I still think most people's brains automatically make a distinction between real and pretend violence - but I really don't buy the argument, which has been around forever and changes its targeted medium with each generation.
Winamp is just a backup player for me now. Mostly I use Media Player Classic because it uses AC3Filter to Dolby-Surround decode my MP3s to 5.1.
ZOMG! Dell, Send sum mor computars to Europe now!!!11 PC r0x0rz & Mac sux!!!
Sorry, the summary sounded a bit melodramatic...
Great, it's a sure thing now: the MMORPG market is headed for over-saturation.
Given the nature of these games, few people devote their time to more than one. The more games that come out, the fewer number of people there will be playing each. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually it gets to the point where - except for a couple big ones - most MMORPGs shrink back down to the player base of individual Neverwinter Nights servers or the MUDs from which they spawned.
Industry executives obviously missed the memo spelling out the fact that you can't have everyone playing every MMORPG out there - it just isn't gonna happen.
I'm reminded of a movie called Revolution OS [revolution-os.com] which enlightened me to Gates' history with hobbyists.
Do you have a Torrent link for that movie? (j/k)
It's been in production for, what, 10 years now? How many engines have they developed with and released screenshots for? It's still in "when it's done" status, and nobody even cares about Duke Nukem any more (if they even remember him).
YES! Mod parent up!
EA should be the LAST company in the industry to criticize other game publishing/developing companies. They have zero credibility in this area with anyone who has been paying attention in the last year (all of whom, I would hope, are joining me in laughing EA out of the building).
Others have mentioned EA wanting to acquire Ubisoft. I can definitely see Ubisoft as an attractive prospect for EA, as Ubi publishes the same types of games (with less emphasis on run-of-the-mill sports titles of course).
Yeah, looks like someone is taking his cues from ol' Jack Thompson.
Aside from the controllers not mentioned, I have several other issues with the article:
- I don't think the Sega Genesis controller pictured is the original one included with the Genesis, nor is it even the original 6 button one. Also, the original Genesis controller had only four buttons (Start, A, B and C).
- They failed to mention how absolutely crappy the N64 controller is. I've never met ANYONE who found it comfortable. Unless you have three hands, you can't reach all the controls. The ones I could reach would cause strain (and pain) in my hands. I found this omission in the article especially aggrivating in light of their mention of user displeasure over the size of the original XBox controller (which, while unweildy, still let me reach all the buttons without causing pain in my hands!).
- I don't buy the speculation about why the second analog stick was added to the original PSX Dual Shock, mostly because the two sticks register independently with the system.
- I believe the info on the PS2 controller is also incorrect. The original PSX Dual Shock could register pushing down on the analog sticks as L3 and R3 buttons, but few games supported it. I'm pretty sure the PS2 controller actually has touch-sensitive X, O, Square and Triangle buttons, as I recall playing a PS2 launch title beat-em-up by Squaresoft that took advantage of this.
In my opinion (as someone who isn't very interested in any modern consoles to begin with), the article smacks somewhat of pro-Nintendo bias.
Nice idea. I don't like the gold selling ads though, and there's also an in-game mod named Yatlas that does something similar.
Obviously it matters if that's one of the most popular aspects of E3. If the organizers want it to be taken seriously then cracking down on the use of boothbabes is a good idea. Of course, that's assuming that there's anything left of interest afterwards...
I'd be highly skeptical of any Microsoft handheld... It's just going to be too DRM-laden to be interesting.
Yes, and now imagine that you can share a toy without giving it up...
That's a bad analogy. It's closer to saying that you don't have the right to lend out your own car. But I know that's still not accurate, so:
It would have been most accurate for you to say that if anyone could build a duplicate of their car with no effort and give it away for free, it wouldn't be legal because you might be depriving Honda of some amount of profit they'd have made from selling them. But if this were possible would you really expect people to pay $10,000 for a car? Where do you draw the line? Why is $10 reasonable but not $10,000?
did something happen in Japan where it's trendy for the guys to look like girls and the girls to look like guys?
Yeah, we dropped an atomic bomb on them.
If a company (from ANY country) made an RPG that made fun of ALL of these things I would buy it in a heart beat
I've had this same conversation with several of my friends over the years. I thought it would be especially cool to have the player start out with the cliche Japanese console RPG party in the cliche war-torn medieval/sci-fi mix world, but then have them get mercilessly slaughtered by something trivial. Then the real game would start, with a party of disenfranchised opportunists who find themselves in the wrong places at the right times and end up saving the world despite their best efforts to simply plunder what they can from both sides.