...which existing customers could buy as an upgrade for their PS2.
The HD-DVD Xbox 360 would add built-in HD-DVD *video disc playback*. Games would still come on DVDs. Can you please tell me who gets screwed and who doesn't?
I think it becomes a problem if the gaming audience is fragmented. As long as the upgrade doesn't prevent existing customers from buying new games, it's not too bad. As soon as new games start to take advantage of the upgrade in a way that makes existing customers lose gaming features compared to new customers, it's bad.
As far as I can see, it's definitely not a given that the HD-DVD drive will only be used for movies.
That alone will trump all else, sell systems in droves, and will do so worldwide
Uhm, no, it won't. I live in Europe. Most of my friends are gamers, yet I know exactly one person who owns an American Football game. For his Sega Genesis (or MegaDrive, as it is known over here).
Americans care about American Football. Europeans mostly don't give a shit.
Consumers LIKE new hardware revs. How many folks bought that cute miniature PS2?
The smaller PS2 didn't change any of the games-related functionality of the PS2. It's just a smaller version of the PS2, not an upgraded PS2. Same applies to all the Advance updates.
If Microsoft suddenly decides to update the 360 to HD-DVD, that's an entirely different thing. Will new games be sold on HD-DVD? That would mean that everyone who bought an Xbox 360 before the HD-DVD version is screwed. Consumers don't like being screwed.
It's hard to hype an original title before launch. Street Fighter 360 makes for better press than Famu Street Brawler 360. Once the system is near the shelves and they're ready to get in-depth we should see more of the original titles.
I think the opposite is true. Usually, the launch of a new system is a great time to introduce new franchises. People are excited about "newness", and there aren't many established franchises to compete against.
If there are any new franchises for the 360, right about now would be a great time to tell people about them, get people excited about them.
Everything shred of new info about the 360 gets first-page-treatment in most gaming mags/sites. If you want to introduce a new franchise, do it now when people care. Not a few months after the 360 launches and the game shelves are filled with sequels.
As an example, the launch of the DS allowed entirely new franchises like Project Rub or Polarium to get media attention they would never have received under normal circumstances.
I know perfectly well what you said. You, however, did not read my post. You said that Apple made almost no money on their Mac hardware compared to iTunes and iPods. That is wrong, as I've shown. Apple makes no money on iTunes and more money on Mac hardware than on iPod hardware, as you can see from their Q3 report, which is publicly available.
Apple makes almost no money off of their Mac hardware compaired to iPods and iTunes.
This is utterly, absurdly wrong (and I will show you why that is at the end of this post), and since the rest of your post is based on this weird claim, I expected it to be just as utterly and absurdly wrong.
However, I was amazed to find that you actually have a point: Mac OS X works so well partly because the hardware which it needs to support is quite stable and not very diverse. I probably helps that the peopel building the hardware are in the same company as the people building the software.
Just to quickly come back to your claim that Apple makes "almost no money of their hardware": During Q3 05, Apple sold "1,182,000 Macintosh units and 6,155,000 iPods" (see for yourself). The average selling price (the price at which Apple sells it, not at which you buy it) for a desktop Mac is over 1000 US$. The average selling price for an iPod is quite a bit below 200 US$. Apple doesn't say what its exact margins on iPods are, but they seem to be almost 10% lower than on Macs. Still, let's assume they're equal, and let's assume Apple sells iPods for 200 US$ and Macs for 100 US$. So Apple has to sell 5 iPods for each Mac it sells to make the same amount of money. Hence, actual numbers show us that Apple makes about as much money on Macs as they make on iPods - probably more, as I rounded all numbers in favour of the iPods.
As for iTunes: Apple doesn't make any money selling music, they barely break even. iTunes sells iPods. iPods make money. iTunes doesn't.
I realize that their vastly different games, but nintendo is still pggybacking on the popularity of thier established brands.
They're creating new franchises, too, but even so: How is using your franchises for new games a problem? Fact is: People would have bought less copies of Donkey Konga if it had used a new franchise but otherwise been the same game.
This is so stupid, it's hard to imagine how it got into that press release. It's so stupid, it's even hard to imagine how it was considered Slashdot-worthy.
Yes, it's a PPC chip, so Apple could release Tiger for it. No, they're not going to do it.
Let's consider the facts:
Apple makes money selling hardware. They don't want 300-buck-Macs from Sony taking away their hardware sales.
Apple is moving away from the PPC, not towards it.
Apple would never let Sony release news like this in a meager press release.
Sony simply wrote about what their processor could do, not about what they're going to do. Linux? Maybe, they did it before. Mac OS? Definitely not.
In addition, I can't take this thing online. And the controller feels like it's made for the hands of small children. Even my 10 year old son wouldn't put up with this crap.
I feel kind of weird writing an answer to this because parent is probably a Nintendo fanboy making fun of Sony fanboys, but I want to address this one point anyway since it comes up quite often.
I have both a PS2 and a Cube, and my bro has an Xbox (currently collecting dust since he's constantly playing Mario Golf on the Cube). Of all the controllers, I like the Cube controller the most, and I have quite large hands. The PS2 controller is cramped, and the symetric analog sticks are bad for most games since you usually use one analog stick and the buttons, which forces you to hold the controller in a really weird way.
The Xbox controller is a bit better, but somewhat too big, and the buttons feel really weird. Some of the buttons are hard to reach, and all of them are too small and weirdly-spaced: the space between the buttons doesn't feel right (although that I might get used to if I played it more often).
The cross and the Z-Button suck on the Cube controller, but other than that, I think it's the most comfortable controller of the current gen.
Luigi's mansion = Mario
Donky Konga = (suprise!) Donky Kong
Aw, come on. You're making this far too easy for me. Have you even played those games? I'd be surprised if you have. Luigi's Mansion has nothing in common with any Mario game except the cast. Luigi can't even jump. If anything, it's a cute version of Resident Evil minus the weird control.
Donkey Konga, again, has nothing in common with any other Donkey Kong game except the monkeys. It's an entirely different game! It's a freaking bongo music game.
Jesus Christ people, the Revolution is going to be amaterish just like the Game Cube is now with games for 12 year olds.
Akin to Godwin's Law, I propose a further law: It states that
"Every stupid comment on Slashdot must inevitably be responded to with a comment commenting on its parent's merrit. Said second commenting comment includes at least one additional moronic stereotype and always ends up being even more stupid than the first comment."
Because Apple is lying. Or rather, they're stating the truth at the unusually high optimism that we've come to expect from salesmen, marketers and other people involved in public promotions.
Based on the transition from 68k to PPC, I'd say you're very wrong. I believe Apple can pull this off because they've already done the same thing once before (twice, if you count Mac OS 9 -> Mac OS X).
My first Mac was a 68k machine, my second a PPC machine. All of my applications continued to run. The only ones that caused problems where the two using the FPU, and both of them had versions which didn't require and FPU.
First, The Incredibles was a movie before it was a video game so it doesn't count. Mario and Luigi are not superheroes. Wario is not a superhero.
Just to remind you about what the issue was: The grandparent claimed that he knew of no fat, balding superhero game characters. The Incredibles most certainly are superhero game characters, even though the games are based on a movie. And for the love of me I can't see how you can claim that characters like Super Mario (who even has "super" in his name), Wolverine or Wario are no superheros.
Either way, whether they are superheros or not has nothing to do with what the discussion was at the beginning, which was about role models in games.
And if you seriously claim that all main guys in DBZ look buff, you've never seen DBZ.
Yeah, in that you could jump, and you had to search for several shines inside the same level.
Other than that, it's quite different from Mario 64. The Water Nozzle changed the gameplay mechanisms, because you could fly and shoot. It's really not too similar to Mario 64, even if it does share a lot with it.
Most 3D platformers (such as Rayman) are a lot more similar to Mario 64 than Sunshine is.
Wind Waker was an updated version of Zelda 64.
Wish it were:-)
Occarina did so many things right that most modern adventure games use these gameplay mechanisms. Wind Waker is an adventure, so it took L-Targeting, Inventory, Items and other features over from Occarina. Games like Beyond Good & Evil and Starfox Adventures use these features, too. I'd say Wind Waker was definitely a fresh take on the Zelda franchise. Maybe too fresh: Seems like Nintendo is taking a few steps back with the new Gamecube Zelda, making it more similar to the N64 versions.
Pikmin 2, of course, was very similar to Pikmin 1. In my opinion, that wasn't a bad thing, though. I love both Pikmins.
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender. sexism
You can't say "It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes" and then pretend you know what sexism is.
(...) some of us are defective (...) our imaginations are superior to the idiots of the world who don't exercise their brains (...)
I challenge you to go to a movie and not find a stereotype about women that's far worse than anything in a video game.
That would be easy, but it's not the point. I agree that most movies are even worse than games, but it hardly matters as it doesn't make games any better.
Most games are sexist, whether movies are sexist or not.
The stereotypes in games are that your fate is completely dictated by your appearance - UNLESS you're female. In which case it's dictated by your outfit.
I'm afraid I don't quite understand your point. How is Mario's fate dictated by his fatness? how is Killer7's Smith's fate dictated by the fact that he's old, disabled and in a wheelchair? How is Wario's fate dictated by his ugliness?
The only person here being sexist is you, because YOU are the one implying that any kind of treatment of women that isn't flawless is gender-biased.
That is utterly absurd. First of all, it's not "any kind of treatment". It's consistent sexism. Second, you can't pretend that the fact that all girls are pretty and slender while there are all kinds of males in games isn't "gender-biased".
Mod me down all you want for this, I'm sick of people leaping into an argument about gender and claiming to be the knight in shining armor just to gain the favor of the female audience.
That is even more absurd. The only females on Slashdot are males pretending to be females:-)
Besides, it's utterly pointless to gain favor of the female audience since I'm never going to see them in real life anyway.
Maybe that's hard for you to understand, but it really is my opinion that it's wrong to only show females in sexist roles. That doesn't make me any less functional than you. I love to look at scantily clad chicks with big boobs, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have more diverse roles for female characters in games.
There are the old witches in Zelda 64, all those strange round headed middle-aged women in Wind Waker, tiny wisps of anime girls in RPGs, Princess Peach's strangely bell-shaped body...
You're right about the Zelda games, the females are pretty diverse there. In most anime RPGs, the girls are sexy, though. And you're wrong about Peach: Her skirt is bell-shaped, but she's definietly hot. You'd know if you'd played a Mario Party game or NBA Street 3:-)
There's Samus. Hot, but completely hidden from view.
Yeah, but still hot.
It's really a pretty decent variety. I'd say it compares favourably to movies.
Sure, movies are even worse, but that doesn't make games better.
There's also a purely anatomical problem. Women do have breasts. Breasts are fairly obvious things. Even when they're tastefully hidden in a game like Beyond Good and Evil, they're pretty obvious. Women also have hips, and you certainly can't hide those when you've got a character jumping all over the place in a third-person view.
Aw, come on, I hardly ever see a girl with breasts as big as Jade's. Most girls aren't slender like Jade (even sportive ones), either, and BG&E is one of the better games in that regard.
The issue there is that a woman's anatomy is inherently considered a symbol of sex in our culture. There isn't an equivalent thing to do for men. If you try to imagine some way that you could create a game that equally exploited the visual sexual possibilities of men, I think you'll find that the only images that come to mind have a certain flavour of homoeroticism.
So you're saying that sexism is Okay because games are aimed at males, anyway?
The question to consider are these: How would you create a game in which none of the women ended up being accidental sex symbols?
That's not necessary. It would be a good start to not have almost all of them being sex symbols.
You'll find that with women it's very hard. It would have to be the primary goal, the goal of a zealot. With men it's a piece of cake, practically automatic. This is clearly a bad thing, but it's not a problem with games specifically. I highly doubt the solution will come primarily from the world of games. We aren't sticking to stereotypes, we're lacking in archetypes.
You're right, of course. Most game designers don't start out by saying "let's make a sexist game". And you're right, it's not only in games, it's everywhere. But that doesn't mean we can just pretend it's not there.
Contrast this with games and xenophobia. Movies are sometimes xenophobic. Independence Day, War of the Worlds, the Hunt for Red October. Games are xenophobic almost without exception. There's generally some group of sentient beings which is by definition abominable, and of whom you must kill as many as you can.
True, that's another problem, and possibly a worse one than the sexism, but the article was about sexism, and that's why I wrote about sexism, not xenophobia.
Give it fifty years. If games are lagging behind society then, we'll have something to address. In the meantime, let's not sit around navel-gazing and trying to force a visual equality where none yet exists.
Nobody wants to force a visual equality where none exists. I would like to see a conceptual equality: Male and
The Incredibles (she's hot, he's fat and balding). Mario and Luigi (he's fat, she's hot). Captain Olimar from Pikmin: Fat and bald. Killer7: Old, disabled. Wario: Fat and ugly. Most male Dragon Ball characters are bald and ugly, none of the female cast is ugly. X-Men: Xavier, Blob, Wolverine: Ugly (well, Wolverine isn't ugly in the movie). Female cast: Pretty.
It's not like their biceps are bigger than all of me curled up in a ball, with veins as thick as my fingers.
Sure, most characters are caricatures. But males and females aren't caricatured equally: There are all kinds of male stereotypes in games: Small fat ones, tall thin ones, big fat ones, ugly ones... There's only one stereotype for female characters.
It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes.
Maybe you don't know what the word "sexist" means.
The only way Nintendo could get me even slightly excited for their new system, is the promise of "new" games. Not remakes, nor sequels.
Right, because Super Mario Sunshine was just an updated version of Super Mario Bros.
Come on, the fact that Nintendo puts its successfull characters on many games doesn't mean that they're "just sequels". "Wind Waker" has about as much in common with "The Legend of Zelda" as "Ikaruga" with "River Raid".
Besides, even though Nintendo uses its "old" characters in a lot of its games, it's not like they didn't invent any new franchises - Pikmin, Animal Crossing or Geist are a few for the Cube, and on the DS, there are more to come.
WTF?? How does making two buttons look like one, make this more intuitive? Elegant, maybe; intuitive, no fucking way.
It seems that by default, it will act like a one-button-mouse, but those who want to can change it to act like a two-button-mouse. No need to get angry:-)
I'm sure you're a good engineer. You're thinking straight, and you want rational ads which explain products so you can make decisions about them.
Unfortunately, that makes you a crappy advertiser.
Ads are about emotion. Let's face it, most products we buy are very similar to other products in the same category. Nike's shoes aren't better or worse than Puma's. Chiquita's bananas taste the same as Del Monte's. Toyota's cars are bound by the same speed limits as Porsches. People don't buy Nike's shoes because they're better than a pair of no-name shoes which cost a tenth. They buy it because of the emotions these shoes evoke. It's an ad's task to make sure a product evokes the right emotions.
I bought the DS because I think its games are more interesting than the PSP's games. Most people don't work that way. Boys aren't going to ask their parents to buy them a DS because the games are more interesting, they're going to ask their parents to buy them a DS because the console is "cooler". It's all about emotions.
This ad is perfect in what it aims for: It makes the DS look cool.
Facts are not only useless, they're actually harmful to this message.
Slashdot Mirror
...which existing customers could buy as an upgrade for their PS2.
I think it becomes a problem if the gaming audience is fragmented. As long as the upgrade doesn't prevent existing customers from buying new games, it's not too bad. As soon as new games start to take advantage of the upgrade in a way that makes existing customers lose gaming features compared to new customers, it's bad.
As far as I can see, it's definitely not a given that the HD-DVD drive will only be used for movies.
Uhm, no, it won't. I live in Europe. Most of my friends are gamers, yet I know exactly one person who owns an American Football game. For his Sega Genesis (or MegaDrive, as it is known over here).
Americans care about American Football. Europeans mostly don't give a shit.
The smaller PS2 didn't change any of the games-related functionality of the PS2. It's just a smaller version of the PS2, not an upgraded PS2. Same applies to all the Advance updates.
If Microsoft suddenly decides to update the 360 to HD-DVD, that's an entirely different thing. Will new games be sold on HD-DVD? That would mean that everyone who bought an Xbox 360 before the HD-DVD version is screwed. Consumers don't like being screwed.
I think the opposite is true. Usually, the launch of a new system is a great time to introduce new franchises. People are excited about "newness", and there aren't many established franchises to compete against.
If there are any new franchises for the 360, right about now would be a great time to tell people about them, get people excited about them.
Everything shred of new info about the 360 gets first-page-treatment in most gaming mags/sites. If you want to introduce a new franchise, do it now when people care. Not a few months after the 360 launches and the game shelves are filled with sequels.
As an example, the launch of the DS allowed entirely new franchises like Project Rub or Polarium to get media attention they would never have received under normal circumstances.
I know perfectly well what you said. You, however, did not read my post. You said that Apple made almost no money on their Mac hardware compared to iTunes and iPods. That is wrong, as I've shown. Apple makes no money on iTunes and more money on Mac hardware than on iPod hardware, as you can see from their Q3 report, which is publicly available.
This is utterly, absurdly wrong (and I will show you why that is at the end of this post), and since the rest of your post is based on this weird claim, I expected it to be just as utterly and absurdly wrong.
However, I was amazed to find that you actually have a point: Mac OS X works so well partly because the hardware which it needs to support is quite stable and not very diverse. I probably helps that the peopel building the hardware are in the same company as the people building the software.
Just to quickly come back to your claim that Apple makes "almost no money of their hardware": During Q3 05, Apple sold "1,182,000 Macintosh units and 6,155,000 iPods" (see for yourself). The average selling price (the price at which Apple sells it, not at which you buy it) for a desktop Mac is over 1000 US$. The average selling price for an iPod is quite a bit below 200 US$. Apple doesn't say what its exact margins on iPods are, but they seem to be almost 10% lower than on Macs. Still, let's assume they're equal, and let's assume Apple sells iPods for 200 US$ and Macs for 100 US$. So Apple has to sell 5 iPods for each Mac it sells to make the same amount of money. Hence, actual numbers show us that Apple makes about as much money on Macs as they make on iPods - probably more, as I rounded all numbers in favour of the iPods.
As for iTunes: Apple doesn't make any money selling music, they barely break even. iTunes sells iPods. iPods make money. iTunes doesn't.
They're creating new franchises, too, but even so: How is using your franchises for new games a problem? Fact is: People would have bought less copies of Donkey Konga if it had used a new franchise but otherwise been the same game.
This is so stupid, it's hard to imagine how it got into that press release. It's so stupid, it's even hard to imagine how it was considered Slashdot-worthy.
Yes, it's a PPC chip, so Apple could release Tiger for it. No, they're not going to do it.
Let's consider the facts:
Sony simply wrote about what their processor could do, not about what they're going to do. Linux? Maybe, they did it before. Mac OS? Definitely not.
I feel kind of weird writing an answer to this because parent is probably a Nintendo fanboy making fun of Sony fanboys, but I want to address this one point anyway since it comes up quite often.
I have both a PS2 and a Cube, and my bro has an Xbox (currently collecting dust since he's constantly playing Mario Golf on the Cube). Of all the controllers, I like the Cube controller the most, and I have quite large hands. The PS2 controller is cramped, and the symetric analog sticks are bad for most games since you usually use one analog stick and the buttons, which forces you to hold the controller in a really weird way.
The Xbox controller is a bit better, but somewhat too big, and the buttons feel really weird. Some of the buttons are hard to reach, and all of them are too small and weirdly-spaced: the space between the buttons doesn't feel right (although that I might get used to if I played it more often).
The cross and the Z-Button suck on the Cube controller, but other than that, I think it's the most comfortable controller of the current gen.
Aw, come on. You're making this far too easy for me. Have you even played those games? I'd be surprised if you have. Luigi's Mansion has nothing in common with any Mario game except the cast. Luigi can't even jump. If anything, it's a cute version of Resident Evil minus the weird control.
Donkey Konga, again, has nothing in common with any other Donkey Kong game except the monkeys. It's an entirely different game! It's a freaking bongo music game.
Akin to Godwin's Law, I propose a further law: It states that
This comment is not exempt from this law.
Based on the transition from 68k to PPC, I'd say you're very wrong. I believe Apple can pull this off because they've already done the same thing once before (twice, if you count Mac OS 9 -> Mac OS X).
My first Mac was a 68k machine, my second a PPC machine. All of my applications continued to run. The only ones that caused problems where the two using the FPU, and both of them had versions which didn't require and FPU.
Just to remind you about what the issue was: The grandparent claimed that he knew of no fat, balding superhero game characters. The Incredibles most certainly are superhero game characters, even though the games are based on a movie. And for the love of me I can't see how you can claim that characters like Super Mario (who even has "super" in his name), Wolverine or Wario are no superheros.
Either way, whether they are superheros or not has nothing to do with what the discussion was at the beginning, which was about role models in games.
And if you seriously claim that all main guys in DBZ look buff, you've never seen DBZ.
Uhm, yeah. That's the point. He's male, and he's neither pretty nor strong.
not really.
Yeah, in that you could jump, and you had to search for several shines inside the same level.
Other than that, it's quite different from Mario 64. The Water Nozzle changed the gameplay mechanisms, because you could fly and shoot. It's really not too similar to Mario 64, even if it does share a lot with it.
Most 3D platformers (such as Rayman) are a lot more similar to Mario 64 than Sunshine is.
Wish it were :-)
Occarina did so many things right that most modern adventure games use these gameplay mechanisms. Wind Waker is an adventure, so it took L-Targeting, Inventory, Items and other features over from Occarina. Games like Beyond Good & Evil and Starfox Adventures use these features, too. I'd say Wind Waker was definitely a fresh take on the Zelda franchise. Maybe too fresh: Seems like Nintendo is taking a few steps back with the new Gamecube Zelda, making it more similar to the N64 versions.
Pikmin 2, of course, was very similar to Pikmin 1. In my opinion, that wasn't a bad thing, though. I love both Pikmins.
Just to be sure:
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
sexism
You can't say "It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes" and then pretend you know what sexism is.
I find it fascinating that your offensive drivel got rated "Insightful" while my post pointing out the difference in how genders are portrayed got rated "Troll" and "Flamebait". You're right, some of us are obviously defective.
That would be easy, but it's not the point. I agree that most movies are even worse than games, but it hardly matters as it doesn't make games any better.
Most games are sexist, whether movies are sexist or not.
I'm afraid I don't quite understand your point. How is Mario's fate dictated by his fatness? how is Killer7's Smith's fate dictated by the fact that he's old, disabled and in a wheelchair? How is Wario's fate dictated by his ugliness?
That is utterly absurd. First of all, it's not "any kind of treatment". It's consistent sexism. Second, you can't pretend that the fact that all girls are pretty and slender while there are all kinds of males in games isn't "gender-biased".
That is even more absurd. The only females on Slashdot are males pretending to be females :-)
Besides, it's utterly pointless to gain favor of the female audience since I'm never going to see them in real life anyway.
Maybe that's hard for you to understand, but it really is my opinion that it's wrong to only show females in sexist roles. That doesn't make me any less functional than you. I love to look at scantily clad chicks with big boobs, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have more diverse roles for female characters in games.
You're right about the Zelda games, the females are pretty diverse there. In most anime RPGs, the girls are sexy, though. And you're wrong about Peach: Her skirt is bell-shaped, but she's definietly hot. You'd know if you'd played a Mario Party game or NBA Street 3 :-)
Yeah, but still hot.
Sure, movies are even worse, but that doesn't make games better.
Aw, come on, I hardly ever see a girl with breasts as big as Jade's. Most girls aren't slender like Jade (even sportive ones), either, and BG&E is one of the better games in that regard.
So you're saying that sexism is Okay because games are aimed at males, anyway?
That's not necessary. It would be a good start to not have almost all of them being sex symbols.
You're right, of course. Most game designers don't start out by saying "let's make a sexist game". And you're right, it's not only in games, it's everywhere. But that doesn't mean we can just pretend it's not there.
True, that's another problem, and possibly a worse one than the sexism, but the article was about sexism, and that's why I wrote about sexism, not xenophobia.
Nobody wants to force a visual equality where none exists. I would like to see a conceptual equality: Male and
The Incredibles (she's hot, he's fat and balding). Mario and Luigi (he's fat, she's hot). Captain Olimar from Pikmin: Fat and bald. Killer7: Old, disabled. Wario: Fat and ugly. Most male Dragon Ball characters are bald and ugly, none of the female cast is ugly. X-Men: Xavier, Blob, Wolverine: Ugly (well, Wolverine isn't ugly in the movie). Female cast: Pretty.
Have you actually ever played a video game?
Hey, it's the only reason I keep my VCS 2600 - that, and Pitfall! :-)
Sure, most characters are caricatures. But males and females aren't caricatured equally: There are all kinds of male stereotypes in games: Small fat ones, tall thin ones, big fat ones, ugly ones... There's only one stereotype for female characters.
Maybe you don't know what the word "sexist" means.
Right, because Super Mario Sunshine was just an updated version of Super Mario Bros.
Come on, the fact that Nintendo puts its successfull characters on many games doesn't mean that they're "just sequels". "Wind Waker" has about as much in common with "The Legend of Zelda" as "Ikaruga" with "River Raid".
Besides, even though Nintendo uses its "old" characters in a lot of its games, it's not like they didn't invent any new franchises - Pikmin, Animal Crossing or Geist are a few for the Cube, and on the DS, there are more to come.
It seems that by default, it will act like a one-button-mouse, but those who want to can change it to act like a two-button-mouse. No need to get angry :-)
Online gaming is still crap. I'll make an exception for Mario Kart and Animal Crossing, though :-)
Just kidding. Hopefully, this will get more people to play online. And hopefully, it won't just be an excuse for crappy AI in Mario Kart.
I'm sure you're a good engineer. You're thinking straight, and you want rational ads which explain products so you can make decisions about them.
Unfortunately, that makes you a crappy advertiser.
Ads are about emotion. Let's face it, most products we buy are very similar to other products in the same category. Nike's shoes aren't better or worse than Puma's. Chiquita's bananas taste the same as Del Monte's. Toyota's cars are bound by the same speed limits as Porsches. People don't buy Nike's shoes because they're better than a pair of no-name shoes which cost a tenth. They buy it because of the emotions these shoes evoke. It's an ad's task to make sure a product evokes the right emotions.
I bought the DS because I think its games are more interesting than the PSP's games. Most people don't work that way. Boys aren't going to ask their parents to buy them a DS because the games are more interesting, they're going to ask their parents to buy them a DS because the console is "cooler". It's all about emotions.
This ad is perfect in what it aims for: It makes the DS look cool.
Facts are not only useless, they're actually harmful to this message.
Do you happen to know what the PS3 is going to use? Something from IBM?