Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major feature they don't like. Point #3: Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into. Point #4: Many players will think some poor design choices are good.
Replace the words "virtual worlds" with "any game in a genre, produced by a particular developer, designed by a particular designer, or with any feature which makes it stand out from the crowd. None of this applies simply to virtual worlds alone, but are symptoms of the great tendency to dismiss things out of hand among most modern gamers (and movie watchers, TV viewers and readers, too).
For example: Zelda: Wind Waker's cel shading did absolutely nothing to harm the gameplay, but caused a legion of gamers looking for an excuse to hate to turn up their noses.
I give Zelda as an example because it readily illustrates my point, but some of the best games for all three consoles suffer because of this. This is just another version of the know-nothing (who usually, perversely, thinks he's sufficently clued) who won't even consider playing something like Nethack because of permadeath, utterly unwilling to consider that the whole game is designed around it.
The problem is easier to see in virtual worlds than other games, and communication between players in-game tends to magnify the speed with which they get dismissed, but the phenomenon is not unique to them.
Again according to BoingBoing, Nintendo has apologized to both suicidegirls.com and the member whose profile had the text in question, and has offered both the site and the member a free system and game.
So I suppose the only thing left to add is... how can I start one of these internet ruckuses, so I can get free stuff?
Yes, I'm if you will a Nintendo anti-fanboy. I want to see them die a horrible death, or at least go away for ever.
Uh-oh. Shields up!
They've been using every single strong-arm tactic they thought they could get away with.
The Nintendo of today is considerably humbled versus the Nintendo of the late 80's and early 90's, who did, in fact, use many questionable tactics to continue their stranglehold on the home video game industry.
But Nintendo, even the Nintendo of the early 90's, is a saint compared to Microsoft's entire damn history. Do not forget that. (Of course, this is Slashdot, so it's unlikely that you'd be able to.)
As for the lawyer letter, it turns out that Nintendo didn't know about it, and Nintendo's law firm didn't either.
They threatened emu makers. They threaten sites for merely mentioning their games.
We've already handled the threat. As for emu makers: yes, this is a problem, but it is by no means limited to Nintendo. Remember a little thing called Bleem!, that Sony really took a dim view towards? Microsoft has not been all that happy about people modding their XBoxes, either. This is actually a consequence of the corporate mindset that runs the console (and most other) industries.
They broke trade laws in Europe and actually _planned_ that they'll get fined, but probably will make more money than the fine. (Much to their surprise, the EU had a much nastier bite than they had planned.)
I'm not familiar with that situation, but again, Nintendo is not the big game company that's being bitten worst by the EU -- Microsoft's antitrust case is going (or was, it's been a while I heard) badly for them.
When they were still the number 1 console, they imposed all sorts of surrealistic restrictions on the game devs.
Again, all three companies do this. Development kits are expensive to make, after all. Me, I'm unhappy that the big three game makers tend to be so homebrew unfriendly, but again Nintendo isn't alone in this. And it seems like they're trying to get better -- supposedly they were the ones who contacted Warp Pipe Industries, the guys who made the Gamecube LAN portal, about cooperation between them. That's unprecedented.
(Snipped bit about developers running back to Nintendo.) No, literally.
Hmmm, you sound like you have an axe to grind here. You might convince more people if you, ya know, calm down a little.
I'm not such a big fan of FFVII, so I'm a bit underwhelmed by the news.
At least before FFX, however, Square never made a direct sequel to any of their Final Fantasy games, which at least caused them to *appear* like they cared more about the game's story then involving themselves in the gleeful retroactive wrecking of their plots for the sake of converting gamers' tears at seeing Aeris get iced into $$$.
Nintendo will (like Nintendo always does) create great games that have a child-like sense of pure fun.
This is why I love Nintendo... but in this market, I don't know if it'll help them. It's not "hip" these days to admit you like Zelda's cel-shaded look, or enjoyed Mario Sunshine.
I don't think the PSP will rule over the DS like the PS1 did over the N64, but the jury's still out. One advantage in the DS' favor: portable systems are intrinsically more interesting to kids than adults.
Some of your reasons boil down to personal preference (asthetics) and conjecture (hackability). Also, the N64 and DS both did/do true 3D (or at least as true as you can get without goggles), though their graphics may not be as great as a PSP's. But then again, graphics quality will matter less on a portable because of the screen size; the DS' Metroid Hunters game looks surprisingly close to the Gamecube Metroid Prime, though I don't know how well that appearance would hold up were each of the game's screens on a television monitor.
The battle, in my view, will boil down to: PSP: Processing power (its trump card), graphics power, software size (1.8gb is probably larger than anything the DS can field) and screen size (also good). DS: Touchscreen (this could work well, or developers might end up ignoring it), microphone (will probably not get used too much), dual screens(see touchscreen), built-in communicatios software(much more important than you might think because the DS can be used even without a pack-in game), GBA compatibility (will do what the PS2's PS1 compatibility did for it) and Nintendo's software advantage (considerable, but it didn't do them a whole lot of good against the original Playstation).
I don't know enough about the PSP's wireless to compare it to the DS' yet, but I doubt it's as advanced, the DS' rather ludicrously extensive wireless connectivity probably took them by surprise.
Closed formats are not bad in a Sony vs. Nintendo sense, but they are bad in a Big-Company vs. Li'l-Consumer sense. That's still real bad; it's just not bad in a way that'll hurt them in competing against the DS. If the format were open, then hell, even I would be thinking about getting a PSP.
But what IS bad about the format, and that hurts this particular advantage of the PSP quite a bit, is that you have to buy special disks for it, you can't just port your DVD movies over to their format to watch them on the PSP.
Instead, you have to buy your movies all over again, and those movies, while playable on your PSP, won't be useable on a DVD player.
That's why I'm not all that thrilled about the movie playback in a PSP. Technically even a GBA can play back video (so long as you want to watch Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon or Nicktoons), but you can't play DVDs (aka "real movies") on it, so it amounts to little more than a curiosity, a gimmick to appeal to kids who'll think it's cool their little handheld system can show them cartoons. The PSP may be able to play longer movies, but I don't see that as helping them much.
I don't foresee much of a future for PSP movie software for this reason.
It has a memory stick slot. With flash memory being sub-$100 per gig... I can see using that as the movie medium.
Well that's back in the realm of conjecture, and I doubt the system will willing play back from a user-writable medium.
Hell, Nintendo won't do anything like that either. Their GBA Video carts won't even play on a Gameboy Player, probably to prevent people from using their VCRs to make a copy!
These companies are way too concerned about locking users out from "unauthorized" uses of their media.
Then don't buy it for that kid. Give him etch-a-sketch instead.
Oooh, poor kid!
Anyway, it hasn't been mentioned much so far, but Nintendo is also famous for the quality of their construction. This is less important for a console, granted, but it's absolutely essential for a portable.
GBAs are very durable (I've dropped mine several times, sometimes giving it a painful crack on a hard floor), and the original Gameboy was similar. I don't have an SP so I can't say how durable those hinges it has are, but I consider it likely that it's built with a similar eye to durability.
We don't know yet how the PSP will stack up, but it probably won't be quite as durable, especially with an analog stick and an optical disk mechanism inside the unit.
Because Nintento is dominant there, and they focus more on childish games like Pokemon and it's numerous offsprings?
You fool.
Say what you want about Pokemon's childishness, it is true there's a lot of stupidity surrounding the franchise, but the game itself is very well designed, and I know at least four adults who have been hooked on them.
By outright calling Nintendo childish you are neglecting, perhaps on purpose or perhaps through ignorance, things like Metroid Prime and Eternal Darkness, and imperiously discounting things like Zelda: Wind Waker, which despite its appearance is absolutely awesome, and the Pikmin games, which are really cool in a way few other games are. Perhaps you've just been listening to too many XBox fanboys.
What's that you say? Yeah, I'm a Nintendo fanboy, don't get me wrong, but somehow, when fanboy judgement day comes and we are all weighed on the great fanboy scales up in otaku heaven, I get the feeling we'll be found much less wanting.
People support Kerry not because he's pro-abortion but because he seems like less of a liar than the current guy.
Now now, people support Kerry also because he's unlikely to invade places based in specious evidence, because he's less likely (somewhat) to sign things like the USAPATRIOT Act, he'd be less likely to make use of the act we already have, because he's certainly not likely to do things because God told him to, because he's not in the backpocket of folks like the Enron people, he's far less likely to piss off the rest of the world, he's less likely to act like a spitful dictator, he's less likely to treat winning the election as giving him a "right" to pass out plums to his supporters (though that happens to all presidents to some degree, alas), because he'd probably not flush the environment down the commode (Bush has been an atrocious environmental president), and because he can actually say the word "Nuclear."
There are plenty of other reasons too, but I'm stopping here because thinking about Bush soils my soul.
Most non-Americans favour Kerry over Bush, or at least the ones who know who Kerry even is - I swear half of us would be anti-Bush even if his opponents were Hitler and Stalin, out of sheer ignorance.
Please don't confuse non-U.S. citizens with citizens, those famed products of the vaunted United States educational system. Ignorance is a word that is most accurately applied to Bush voters.
However, we don't have a say in the US election for good reason - we aren't the US.
Ah, so everything the U.S. does doesn't influence the rest of the world? Not that I'm favoring letting, say, the North Koreans vote in U.S. elections, but the plain fact is that the things this country does have a huge impact on the rest of the world, possibly too much of an impact.
We aren't concerned with terrorism, because terrorism is mostly affecting the US.
Despite the United States going out and attacking people who have nothing to do with terrorism.
All most of us think about it that there's a war going on, very possibly with soldiers from our own country, and it ain't our quarrel.
That's mostly because George Bush failed to get much meat on that Collalition of his, and aimed an avian at the United Nations along the way.
Why should we help take out people who want to bomb America? Why can't America do it themselves?
Um, common decency? Good will? The fact that we seem to be doing a poor job of it ourselves (again, thanks in large part to our Commander in Chief and his cronies)?
I would definitely not pay that kind of money for community-created mods, since it destroys the feeling of community among NWN hackers to know that they've appointed a gatekeeper taking tolls. Sifting through thousands of mods on fan sites may not seem worth the time, but there exist multiple sites that rate mods anyway.
The geeks will spend hours looking for clues and via word of mouth, will help make the show more popular.
Not this geek, bunky. I rolled my eyes at the old Perfect Dark web campaign, I'm reacting similarly to the current Metroid 2 campaigh, and for the record I H*A*T*E bees.
I have a strict policy about getting involved in artificial pastimes. I refuse to do things just because they can be done; there has to be some other benefit. In the long run, these types of advertising will merely result in more people like me. That is to say, jaded with 99.99% of the whole freaking world, or at least the freaking parts of it human beings made.
I'm a Nintendo loyalist (though I wouldn't go so far as saying partisian, though sometimes on Slashdot I feel like I'm responding to talking points, oy), but yeah, PS2 beats XBox's lineup handily. Not only is there three times as many interesting PS2 games as XBox, there's probably at least three times as many PS2 *games*.
As I said, I prefer Nintendo, but I'll admit there are a few PS2 games that look very cool.
As BayBlade has already explained, many of these games are not system exclusives -- they're available for the PC, which usually have better hardware. Project Gotham... well, it's a racing game so I discount it almost reflexively, but actually I don't know a lot about it. You are granted Halo -- but I mentioned it in my own comment, I seem to remember, and anyway I'm a FPS hater. Japan is more immune to the genre's charms than the US anyway.
"The best versions of multi-platform games" isn't good enough, alas, and certainly isn't as important as original software. You didn't even mention my favorite X-Box game (the severely underrated, if somewhat over-ghetto, ToeJam & Earl III).
Gamecube easily beats the XBox's lineup even with its meager selection of titles, and lack of a definitive Halo killer. And PS2 also beats it, for although its average game quality is less than first- and second-party Nintendo efforts, there are so many of them that some of them are almost bound to be great. Ico, Disgaea, that weird rolling-around-absorbing-stuff game whose name I always forget, those are the reasons I'd get a PS2 before an XBox, and those are all vey Japanese games.
Finally... well you said it yourself, Japanese RPGs are the system's biggest weakness. This is Japan we're talking about. Simple.
Re:XBox less than 200 units? Is that really accura
on
DS Preorders Outsell PS2
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
XBox is superior hardware, and good gaming library, why is it doing so poorly if not the "We hate the USA" argument, "Stupid americans".
I dispute the "good gaming library" bit. Besides Halo (and Halo 2), there is just not that much good for the system that cannot already be found for a different system. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in putting its library at a distant third place in the race. And considering that this is Japan we're talking about, where Sony, Nintendo, Sega and Squareenix *live*... no, it's not at all surprising they're doing poorly.
The hardware is good, but not that good really, I'm not aware of the XBox being a tremendous improvement over the other consoles available this wave, certainly not enough to make a difference at this point.
Did you miss the part where TechniMyoko said 1 screen the same or larger than the size of the 2 put together?
And did you miss the part when I acknowledged that yes, you could, but the usefulness of two screens, in game design terms, is that they're spaced apart from each other, and form different conceptual units? It is certainly possible to duplicate these attributes with one large screen, but players, not being used to it, will tend to focus on one screen at a time.
I didn't give Punch-Out!! as an example in my favor, but as an example of a largely useless use for a second screen (which I'm sure we'll be seeig a lot of). And as for games like Zelda -- if it's so useful keeping all the info of a subscreen on-screen all the time, when why don't more games do that?
And while you might be able to use one large screen like two smaller ones, on a portable that is more problematic.
I'm not pretending what I'm saying is obvious -- it is not, and I don't blame people if they don't see my point. (If the point were obvious, I probably wouldn't be making it.) And I don't think two little screens is *always* better than one large one. I'm merely saying there *are* hypothetical cases where two little screens *can* be better than one big screen.
So, Shatner is paying a little over 200 grand for a space ride, and that gets him the front page at Slashdot.
Okay granted, a lot of things that Shatner does would make the front page (such as releasing a another record), but it's a great way to get his name back on other headlines besides.
It's just publicity, though it's cool that he knows these people exist. Admittedly, however, as time passes the more I'm starting to think that Shatner sort of deserves his celebrity, the same way Bruce Campbell and Adam West deserve theirs, he's no longer a big-name star but neither is he up to corpulent Brittany Spears levels of narcissism.
Something about the writing style of this story really strikes me as sensationalist.
"Oh woe is me! I have a Mac but someone might (cringe) hack it! And think of all those people who trusted me when I recommended Macs as safe! The world should be ending around 3pm today Eastern Time...."
And it's not even a vulnerability! Geez, it's almost enough to make me think this is just someone grinding an axe.
Slashdot Mirror
Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies
Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major feature they don't like.
Point #3: Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into.
Point #4: Many players will think some poor design choices are good.
Replace the words "virtual worlds" with "any game in a genre, produced by a particular developer, designed by a particular designer, or with any feature which makes it stand out from the crowd. None of this applies simply to virtual worlds alone, but are symptoms of the great tendency to dismiss things out of hand among most modern gamers (and movie watchers, TV viewers and readers, too).
For example: Zelda: Wind Waker's cel shading did absolutely nothing to harm the gameplay, but caused a legion of gamers looking for an excuse to hate to turn up their noses.
I give Zelda as an example because it readily illustrates my point, but some of the best games for all three consoles suffer because of this. This is just another version of the know-nothing (who usually, perversely, thinks he's sufficently clued) who won't even consider playing something like Nethack because of permadeath, utterly unwilling to consider that the whole game is designed around it.
The problem is easier to see in virtual worlds than other games, and communication between players in-game tends to magnify the speed with which they get dismissed, but the phenomenon is not unique to them.
It can be porn even if it doesn't have those listed things. You just have to have no clothes.
Heh, doesn't that mean the natural state is porn?
You outta take a look at the final boss of the new Paper Mario game....
Again according to BoingBoing, Nintendo has apologized to both suicidegirls.com and the member whose profile had the text in question, and has offered both the site and the member a free system and game.
So I suppose the only thing left to add is... how can I start one of these internet ruckuses, so I can get free stuff?
Yes, I'm if you will a Nintendo anti-fanboy. I want to see them die a horrible death, or at least go away for ever.
Uh-oh. Shields up!
They've been using every single strong-arm tactic they thought they could get away with.
The Nintendo of today is considerably humbled versus the Nintendo of the late 80's and early 90's, who did, in fact, use many questionable tactics to continue their stranglehold on the home video game industry.
But Nintendo, even the Nintendo of the early 90's, is a saint compared to Microsoft's entire damn history. Do not forget that. (Of course, this is Slashdot, so it's unlikely that you'd be able to.)
As for the lawyer letter, it turns out that Nintendo didn't know about it, and Nintendo's law firm didn't either.
They threatened emu makers. They threaten sites for merely mentioning their games.
We've already handled the threat. As for emu makers: yes, this is a problem, but it is by no means limited to Nintendo. Remember a little thing called Bleem!, that Sony really took a dim view towards? Microsoft has not been all that happy about people modding their XBoxes, either. This is actually a consequence of the corporate mindset that runs the console (and most other) industries.
They broke trade laws in Europe and actually _planned_ that they'll get fined, but probably will make more money than the fine. (Much to their surprise, the EU had a much nastier bite than they had planned.)
I'm not familiar with that situation, but again, Nintendo is not the big game company that's being bitten worst by the EU -- Microsoft's antitrust case is going (or was, it's been a while I heard) badly for them.
When they were still the number 1 console, they imposed all sorts of surrealistic restrictions on the game devs.
Again, all three companies do this. Development kits are expensive to make, after all. Me, I'm unhappy that the big three game makers tend to be so homebrew unfriendly, but again Nintendo isn't alone in this. And it seems like they're trying to get better -- supposedly they were the ones who contacted Warp Pipe Industries, the guys who made the Gamecube LAN portal, about cooperation between them. That's unprecedented.
(Snipped bit about developers running back to Nintendo.)
No, literally.
Hmmm, you sound like you have an axe to grind here. You might convince more people if you, ya know, calm down a little.
DS carts are a GIGABYTE? Really? I consider that pretty amazing, that's more than a CD-ROM.
I mean, I want it to be true yeah, but where did you hear this, so I can check for myself?
According to this post on BoingBoing, Nintendo's law firm knows nothing about the letter.
I'm not such a big fan of FFVII, so I'm a bit underwhelmed by the news.
At least before FFX, however, Square never made a direct sequel to any of their Final Fantasy games, which at least caused them to *appear* like they cared more about the game's story then involving themselves in the gleeful retroactive wrecking of their plots for the sake of converting gamers' tears at seeing Aeris get iced into $$$.
Probably part of a naked-nintendo-character-website crackdown.
No! Don't say it! You'll spark some poor obsessed gamer's deranged inspiration!
But yeah, Nintendo's SO clearly in the wrong on this one.
Nintendo will (like Nintendo always does) create great games that have a child-like sense of pure fun.
This is why I love Nintendo... but in this market, I don't know if it'll help them. It's not "hip" these days to admit you like Zelda's cel-shaded look, or enjoyed Mario Sunshine.
I don't think the PSP will rule over the DS like the PS1 did over the N64, but the jury's still out. One advantage in the DS' favor: portable systems are intrinsically more interesting to kids than adults.
Some of your reasons boil down to personal preference (asthetics) and conjecture (hackability). Also, the N64 and DS both did/do true 3D (or at least as true as you can get without goggles), though their graphics may not be as great as a PSP's. But then again, graphics quality will matter less on a portable because of the screen size; the DS' Metroid Hunters game looks surprisingly close to the Gamecube Metroid Prime, though I don't know how well that appearance would hold up were each of the game's screens on a television monitor.
The battle, in my view, will boil down to:
PSP: Processing power (its trump card), graphics power, software size (1.8gb is probably larger than anything the DS can field) and screen size (also good).
DS: Touchscreen (this could work well, or developers might end up ignoring it), microphone (will probably not get used too much), dual screens(see touchscreen), built-in communicatios software(much more important than you might think because the DS can be used even without a pack-in game), GBA compatibility (will do what the PS2's PS1 compatibility did for it) and Nintendo's software advantage (considerable, but it didn't do them a whole lot of good against the original Playstation).
I don't know enough about the PSP's wireless to compare it to the DS' yet, but I doubt it's as advanced, the DS' rather ludicrously extensive wireless connectivity probably took them by surprise.
Closed formats are not bad in a Sony vs. Nintendo sense, but they are bad in a Big-Company vs. Li'l-Consumer sense. That's still real bad; it's just not bad in a way that'll hurt them in competing against the DS. If the format were open, then hell, even I would be thinking about getting a PSP.
But what IS bad about the format, and that hurts this particular advantage of the PSP quite a bit, is that you have to buy special disks for it, you can't just port your DVD movies over to their format to watch them on the PSP.
Instead, you have to buy your movies all over again, and those movies, while playable on your PSP, won't be useable on a DVD player.
That's why I'm not all that thrilled about the movie playback in a PSP. Technically even a GBA can play back video (so long as you want to watch Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon or Nicktoons), but you can't play DVDs (aka "real movies") on it, so it amounts to little more than a curiosity, a gimmick to appeal to kids who'll think it's cool their little handheld system can show them cartoons. The PSP may be able to play longer movies, but I don't see that as helping them much.
I don't foresee much of a future for PSP movie software for this reason.
It has a memory stick slot. With flash memory being sub-$100 per gig... I can see using that as the movie medium.
Well that's back in the realm of conjecture, and I doubt the system will willing play back from a user-writable medium.
Hell, Nintendo won't do anything like that either. Their GBA Video carts won't even play on a Gameboy Player, probably to prevent people from using their VCRs to make a copy!
These companies are way too concerned about locking users out from "unauthorized" uses of their media.
Then don't buy it for that kid. Give him etch-a-sketch instead.
Oooh, poor kid!
Anyway, it hasn't been mentioned much so far, but Nintendo is also famous for the quality of their construction. This is less important for a console, granted, but it's absolutely essential for a portable.
GBAs are very durable (I've dropped mine several times, sometimes giving it a painful crack on a hard floor), and the original Gameboy was similar. I don't have an SP so I can't say how durable those hinges it has are, but I consider it likely that it's built with a similar eye to durability.
We don't know yet how the PSP will stack up, but it probably won't be quite as durable, especially with an analog stick and an optical disk mechanism inside the unit.
Because Nintento is dominant there, and they focus more on childish games like Pokemon and it's numerous offsprings?
You fool.
Say what you want about Pokemon's childishness, it is true there's a lot of stupidity surrounding the franchise, but the game itself is very well designed, and I know at least four adults who have been hooked on them.
By outright calling Nintendo childish you are neglecting, perhaps on purpose or perhaps through ignorance, things like Metroid Prime and Eternal Darkness, and imperiously discounting things like Zelda: Wind Waker, which despite its appearance is absolutely awesome, and the Pikmin games, which are really cool in a way few other games are. Perhaps you've just been listening to too many XBox fanboys.
What's that you say? Yeah, I'm a Nintendo fanboy, don't get me wrong, but somehow, when fanboy judgement day comes and we are all weighed on the great fanboy scales up in otaku heaven, I get the feeling we'll be found much less wanting.
People support Kerry not because he's pro-abortion but because he seems like less of a liar than the current guy.
Now now, people support Kerry also because he's unlikely to invade places based in specious evidence, because he's less likely (somewhat) to sign things like the USAPATRIOT Act, he'd be less likely to make use of the act we already have, because he's certainly not likely to do things because God told him to, because he's not in the backpocket of folks like the Enron people, he's far less likely to piss off the rest of the world, he's less likely to act like a spitful dictator, he's less likely to treat winning the election as giving him a "right" to pass out plums to his supporters (though that happens to all presidents to some degree, alas), because he'd probably not flush the environment down the commode (Bush has been an atrocious environmental president), and because he can actually say the word "Nuclear."
There are plenty of other reasons too, but I'm stopping here because thinking about Bush soils my soul.
Most non-Americans favour Kerry over Bush, or at least the ones who know who Kerry even is - I swear half of us would be anti-Bush even if his opponents were Hitler and Stalin, out of sheer ignorance.
Please don't confuse non-U.S. citizens with citizens, those famed products of the vaunted United States educational system. Ignorance is a word that is most accurately applied to Bush voters.
However, we don't have a say in the US election for good reason - we aren't the US.
Ah, so everything the U.S. does doesn't influence the rest of the world? Not that I'm favoring letting, say, the North Koreans vote in U.S. elections, but the plain fact is that the things this country does have a huge impact on the rest of the world, possibly too much of an impact.
We aren't concerned with terrorism, because terrorism is mostly affecting the US.
Despite the United States going out and attacking people who have nothing to do with terrorism.
All most of us think about it that there's a war going on, very possibly with soldiers from our own country, and it ain't our quarrel.
That's mostly because George Bush failed to get much meat on that Collalition of his, and aimed an avian at the United Nations along the way.
Why should we help take out people who want to bomb America? Why can't America do it themselves?
Um, common decency? Good will? The fact that we seem to be doing a poor job of it ourselves (again, thanks in large part to our Commander in Chief and his cronies)?
I would definitely not pay that kind of money for community-created mods, since it destroys the feeling of community among NWN hackers to know that they've appointed a gatekeeper taking tolls. Sifting through thousands of mods on fan sites may not seem worth the time, but there exist multiple sites that rate mods anyway.
The geeks will spend hours looking for clues and via word of mouth, will help make the show more popular.
Not this geek, bunky. I rolled my eyes at the old Perfect Dark web campaign, I'm reacting similarly to the current Metroid 2 campaigh, and for the record I H*A*T*E bees.
I have a strict policy about getting involved in artificial pastimes. I refuse to do things just because they can be done; there has to be some other benefit. In the long run, these types of advertising will merely result in more people like me. That is to say, jaded with 99.99% of the whole freaking world, or at least the freaking parts of it human beings made.
I'm a Nintendo loyalist (though I wouldn't go so far as saying partisian, though sometimes on Slashdot I feel like I'm responding to talking points, oy), but yeah, PS2 beats XBox's lineup handily. Not only is there three times as many interesting PS2 games as XBox, there's probably at least three times as many PS2 *games*.
As I said, I prefer Nintendo, but I'll admit there are a few PS2 games that look very cool.
As BayBlade has already explained, many of these games are not system exclusives -- they're available for the PC, which usually have better hardware. Project Gotham... well, it's a racing game so I discount it almost reflexively, but actually I don't know a lot about it. You are granted Halo -- but I mentioned it in my own comment, I seem to remember, and anyway I'm a FPS hater. Japan is more immune to the genre's charms than the US anyway.
"The best versions of multi-platform games" isn't good enough, alas, and certainly isn't as important as original software. You didn't even mention my favorite X-Box game (the severely underrated, if somewhat over-ghetto, ToeJam & Earl III).
Gamecube easily beats the XBox's lineup even with its meager selection of titles, and lack of a definitive Halo killer. And PS2 also beats it, for although its average game quality is less than first- and second-party Nintendo efforts, there are so many of them that some of them are almost bound to be great. Ico, Disgaea, that weird rolling-around-absorbing-stuff game whose name I always forget, those are the reasons I'd get a PS2 before an XBox, and those are all vey Japanese games.
Finally... well you said it yourself, Japanese RPGs are the system's biggest weakness. This is Japan we're talking about. Simple.
XBox is superior hardware, and good gaming library, why is it doing so poorly if not the "We hate the USA" argument, "Stupid americans".
I dispute the "good gaming library" bit. Besides Halo (and Halo 2), there is just not that much good for the system that cannot already be found for a different system. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in putting its library at a distant third place in the race. And considering that this is Japan we're talking about, where Sony, Nintendo, Sega and Squareenix *live*... no, it's not at all surprising they're doing poorly.
The hardware is good, but not that good really, I'm not aware of the XBox being a tremendous improvement over the other consoles available this wave, certainly not enough to make a difference at this point.
Did you miss the part where TechniMyoko said 1 screen the same or larger than the size of the 2 put together?
And did you miss the part when I acknowledged that yes, you could, but the usefulness of two screens, in game design terms, is that they're spaced apart from each other, and form different conceptual units? It is certainly possible to duplicate these attributes with one large screen, but players, not being used to it, will tend to focus on one screen at a time.
I didn't give Punch-Out!! as an example in my favor, but as an example of a largely useless use for a second screen (which I'm sure we'll be seeig a lot of). And as for games like Zelda -- if it's so useful keeping all the info of a subscreen on-screen all the time, when why don't more games do that?
And while you might be able to use one large screen like two smaller ones, on a portable that is more problematic.
I'm not pretending what I'm saying is obvious -- it is not, and I don't blame people if they don't see my point. (If the point were obvious, I probably wouldn't be making it.) And I don't think two little screens is *always* better than one large one. I'm merely saying there *are* hypothetical cases where two little screens *can* be better than one big screen.
Alvin has taken 12,000 people on over 4,000 dives,....
That should be amended to "12,000 people, plus two lab mice bent on taking over the world."
So, Shatner is paying a little over 200 grand for a space ride, and that gets him the front page at Slashdot.
Okay granted, a lot of things that Shatner does would make the front page (such as releasing a another record), but it's a great way to get his name back on other headlines besides.
It's just publicity, though it's cool that he knows these people exist. Admittedly, however, as time passes the more I'm starting to think that Shatner sort of deserves his celebrity, the same way Bruce Campbell and Adam West deserve theirs, he's no longer a big-name star but neither is he up to corpulent Brittany Spears levels of narcissism.
Something about the writing style of this story really strikes me as sensationalist.
"Oh woe is me! I have a Mac but someone might (cringe) hack it! And think of all those people who trusted me when I recommended Macs as safe! The world should be ending around 3pm today Eastern Time...."
And it's not even a vulnerability! Geez, it's almost enough to make me think this is just someone grinding an axe.