The issue isn't that the control isn't precise. The issue is that it's not always obvious how to control things. For example:
- Did you know that you can put spin on the ball in Wii Tennis by turning the controller while hitting the ball? - Did you know that you can make uppercuts and hit from the side in Wii Boxing?
The Wii Remote is actually pretty precise, but lobbing a ball in Tennis isn't just pressing B anymore, so you have to spend some time with the games and get to know the control.
Yeah, the Wii gets a lot of crap games, but it's not true that there are no games coming out that make good use of the Wii Remote. Dewy's Adventure is one of the newer ones.
Personally, I'd be more worried about the studios who hitched their train to PS3. Given North American numbers, I don't think a single PS3 software title has sold even a quarter-million units.
Wow, you're right. VGChartz says that only two PS3 games have sold >1 million world-wide: Motorstorm (1.28) and Resistance (1.72). The Wii, OTOH, has 8 >1 million sellers, including two third-party games. Zelda is the largest seller after Wii Sports and Wii Play, and it sold 3.78 million copies.
One final reason that I'm a bit pissed about the Wii is that I bought a bunch of Virtual Console titles I was looking forward to playing, yet there's a bug that's existed since release effecting EU PAL consoles and the virtual console whereby many games don't work correctly with HD displays over Nintendo's component cable
Oh man, that is pissing me off so much. Other from not being able to launch game from the SD card, this is my single issue with the Wii. I bought Super Metroid last week. Why the hell do I have to plug the Wii into the video port of my beamer in order to play it? It looks like crap that way! Nintendo, fix this. I don't need USB keyboards and all that other crap, I just want to launch VC games from the SD card, and play all VC games using component cables on my HD beamer. Thanks a bunch!
And yeah, a new Pikmin on the Wii would be awesome.
I think they did the right thing by going wifi by default instead of ethernet by default. There's an Ethernet adapter you can buy, if you prefer Ethernet.
The Duck game. Sucks, but cheap, so I got it anyways
The Tetris game with eggs. Not so cool, either, but okay if you like the genre
flOw: Much hype, no actual game
Loco Roco Cocoreccho: What the hell did they do to one of my favourite games???
Calling all Cars: Fun for 15 minutes, I guess, if a few friends are around
Warhawk: Now we're talking. Awesome game
The Ski game: WTF??? Well, it's cheap, so I guess it was worth the 3 or so bucks just for the laughs
Pixeljunk Racers: Fun, but too shallow
Everyday Shooter: Doesn't live up to the hype, in my opinion
Of course, there are also a bunch of downloadable PS1 games:
Cool Boarders: Why in the world did I ever think this game was good? Piece of shit.
Wipeout: Wow, and we used to think this could compete with F-Zero 64. The tearing makes this unplayable for me.
Castlevania: SotN. Clearly one of the best games ever; only issue: the recent release of Super Metroid on the Wii VC tops this in the Metroidvania genre
While the Wii's game selection is nothing to brag about, it beats the PSN both online and offline, even without any original online games. Of the originall PSN games, only Warhawk is a must-have. Some are decent, but most are pretty crappy.
I just got skate for the PS3, so I'm hoping it'll occupy some of my time, but apart from Warhawk, the PS3 really has no good game. Motorstorm is cool, but it has far to little content. Resistance is neat, but I don't like FPS and only play it in co-op mode. What else have we got... Calling all Cars? Sure, for a quarter of an hour if a few friends are over. What else? Beats me.
Recently, I've mainly been playing DS and Wii games. Zelda, Undercover, Jam Sessions on the DS, Paper Mario, Metroid 3 and Mrio Football on the Wii. Oh, and the VC games. Super Metroid, obviously, and a few Japanese games. Missed Lost Levels, unfortunately:-(
Why would I get Madden for the Wii when I could play it in HD?
I'm in Europe and have no clue about how this American Football thing works, but I'm guessing you might want to go with the Wii version because it just might be the better game; see: Godfather, Tennis, Golf or many other games available on the Wii as well as on other consoles.
The thing is that Wii software sales aren't poor. They're actually better than the PS3's, and on par with what the 360 had a year after launch. And that is even with the crappy third-party support the Wii has as of now.
Nintendo's mistake might be that many of the games people are looking forward to aren't coming out until after Christmas.
How is that a mistake if Wiis will be sold out during Christmas anyway? I think it's a great idea to launch AAA titles early next year to get yet another sales boost after Christmas. Kids need to spend all the money they got for Christmas, right?
Nintendo ships a million Wiis a month. They aren't holding back shipments, and they aren't creating an illusion of excessive demand. There simply is excessive demand. They've overtaken the 360, which had a year headstart, within less than a year (10 months or so, I think).
Halo is to Prime as Contra is to Metroid. Metroid is a FPS in that it's First Person and you can Shoot, but it isn't a FPS in the same way that Zelda isn't a Third Person Shooter, but an Action-Adventure.
There are two ways too look at it. Yes, it's in First Person, and yes, you shoot. So it's a First Person Shooter. However, the games we generally put in the FPS genre are all quite different from Prime and Prime 2. Prime and Prime 2 are Zelda games with First Person Views, and we generally don't call Zelda games Third Person Shooters, even though Zelda is third person and you shoot.
So Prime isn't an FPS the same way that Zelda isn't a TPS.
Professional editing of full-length video is NOT a normal access pattern.
A lot of people using Macs make use of iMovie. It comes for free with new Macs, after all. And even cutting a half-hour vacation movie easily eats up dozens of gigabytes of often-changing disk space.
Ah, I see. The advantage that Snapshots provide over "plain" backup is that you can run snapshot backups in the background while you keep changing files. You generally do not want to do that with plain backup because you could end up with an inconsistent backup. That's actually a good point.
The "eat disk space like crazy" comment is hardly a lie. Even when only storing deltas, creating snapshots means that the data in the snapshot can never be released unless the snapshot is deleted, which will quickly fill your disk if you're working with large files that change often.
Also, I was wrong when I said that MacJournals claimed that Sun said that backups were free. Here's the quote from MWJ Jun 11 07:
Signatures only make sense for backups, since you want the
signature to verify that no one changed the data since it was
backed up. You may recall that ZFS proponents insist you get
"backups for free," which is why they keep screeching that it's
the only sensible foundation for Time Machine, the new backup
feature in Mac OS X 10.5. That goes back to the copy-on-write
methodology. And no, Tiger isn't fully 64 bit, but Leopard is supposed to be, except for Carbon apps.
So what you're saying is that the analogy is: The iPhone needs just a few changes to be the perfect phone; and Nick shows need just a few changes to be perfect porn?
You're wrong, of course. While it makes no sense to expect Nick to produce porn, it does make sense to want Apple to make a few changes to the iPhone to make it so much better.
You are not part of Apple's target demographic for the iPhone.
Exactly. But I really want an iPhone because it does everything right that all the other cell phones do wrong (and in fact, I do own a hacked iPhone, and it's the best phone I've ever owned - I just wish I wouldn't have to give up support from Apple in order to change the 2% of the phone that I don't like but really need). So I complain about the things I don't like, hoping that maybe Apple will fix them.
We can speculate on why, but it would just be speculation. It could be that AT&T demanded the phone be locked down. It could be that Apple rushed the phone out and didn't have time to add features allowing 3rd party applications while maintaining stability. It could be that they are all just a bunch of miserable pricks who wouldn't know a good business decision if it bit them in the ass.
Which is why we, their (potential) customers, need to tell them what we would like to see changed. Apple actually does listen to the people who buy their stuff from time to time. Not often, but it's not unheard of:-)
The important thing is that you are not their target demographic. Getting angry at Apple for this is a bit irrational. Do you hate Nickelodeon for not producing good, quality porn? I mean, you supported them by watching their crappy Canadian-produced shows back when you were a kid.
Well, first of all, I'm not angry. It's a cell phone, not the end of the world. And no, I don't complain that Nick doesn't produce pron, but I do complain if I see something in a Nick show that I don't like (not that I watch them anymore, but I would if I did).
But that is what Apple's update already does. The problem is that the SIM unlock changes the firmware of the modem in a way that seems to be incompatible with Apple's new iPhone software. Do you propose that Apple flashes all firmwares of all components in the phone whenever there's a n update?
A corporation would be stupid to give in to that, but it seems what Apple is doing lately. Depends. I certainly can't fault K-Mart's execs for buying Sears and then basically liquidating the company. Really, K-Mart could not compete with Wal-Mart and a graceful liquidation sure gets the investors more bang for their buck than bankruptcy. I don't really see how locking down the iPhone hurts Apple in the long term.
It hurts them because
They are selling less hardware than they would have sold unlocked
They are annoying their most loyal customers, the very people who sell other people on Apple's hardware
They are missing a Business Opportunity: Selling third-party software
Basically, Apple gave up goodwill, sales and money from software sales in order to gain money from AT&T. It's a short-term gain that sacrifices the long-term gain.
I disagree that what kept Apple (barely) alive was their focus on users. Instead, it was their niche in graphics design and education.
Apple's education market was basically dead for the last decade and is only now starting to come back, and the graphics design market isn't too big, and about 50% Windows anyway. Apple stayed alive by selling to the people who care about design and usability, who make informed decisions when buying Computers (and don't just get the cheapest no-name Windows box in their local electronics store), and who are willing to spend money in order to get a better experience.
And now Apple seems to be destroying that very thing which allowed them to remain in the market.
Really they have only been delivering "better" products over the last 5 or 6 years, and those have all been pretty locked-down. OSX is, as a practical matter, tied to Apple's hardware.
I don't see how this is locked down. You buy a Mac. It's not locked down, it's open. You can run anything you want on it. Mac OS X is only locked down if you don't give Apple your money.
The iPod is not extensible,
How is the iPod not extensible? No other MP3 player has more stuff you can extend it with.
cannot run 3rd-party apps,
Actually does run Linux and other OSs. And you can mount it in the Finder and hack it to your heart's contents, you have direct access to the file system. The iPod is not locked down in any way.
and really has access to only Apple's music store.
And emusic.com, and the Amazon MP3 store, and every other store which sells unprotected audio.
The iPhone is not really any big change for Apple.
It actually is. Even a year ago, Apple released the AppleTV. It's basically a standard OS X box with a custom interface. You can easily hack it, add disks, even install a standard copy of OS X on it, run Apache, whatever. The iPhone could have been like that, and it's not.
Finally, I don't see how your argument even applies. I'm complaining about Apple because I don't like what they are doing. Whether it makes financial sense for them to do so is absolutely immaterial to me. I don't care. I think they're missing an opportunity at making even more money here, but even if that was not the case, what Apple is doing would still suck.
My thought on this is simple: I switched from a Symbian phone (a P990i) to the iPhone because Symbian is, frankly and unfortunately, a crappy OS. The iPhone sports a usable, snappy, pretty, stable OS. For 95% of what I use a phone for, the iPhone beats any Symbian-based phone. The only thing I miss from the P990i is ScummVM.
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The issue isn't that the control isn't precise. The issue is that it's not always obvious how to control things. For example:
- Did you know that you can put spin on the ball in Wii Tennis by turning the controller while hitting the ball?
- Did you know that you can make uppercuts and hit from the side in Wii Boxing?
The Wii Remote is actually pretty precise, but lobbing a ball in Tennis isn't just pressing B anymore, so you have to spend some time with the games and get to know the control.
Yeah, the Wii gets a lot of crap games, but it's not true that there are no games coming out that make good use of the Wii Remote. Dewy's Adventure is one of the newer ones.
The Wii has many smaller and quirkier games, which get worse ratings. Even the crappy PS3 games generally get 70-80% on graphics alone.
Wow, you're right. VGChartz says that only two PS3 games have sold >1 million world-wide: Motorstorm (1.28) and Resistance (1.72). The Wii, OTOH, has 8 >1 million sellers, including two third-party games. Zelda is the largest seller after Wii Sports and Wii Play, and it sold 3.78 million copies.
Oh man, that is pissing me off so much. Other from not being able to launch game from the SD card, this is my single issue with the Wii. I bought Super Metroid last week. Why the hell do I have to plug the Wii into the video port of my beamer in order to play it? It looks like crap that way! Nintendo, fix this. I don't need USB keyboards and all that other crap, I just want to launch VC games from the SD card, and play all VC games using component cables on my HD beamer. Thanks a bunch!
And yeah, a new Pikmin on the Wii would be awesome.
I think they did the right thing by going wifi by default instead of ethernet by default. There's an Ethernet adapter you can buy, if you prefer Ethernet.
Both Red Steel and Rayman have sold >1 million.
Of course, there are also a bunch of downloadable PS1 games:
While the Wii's game selection is nothing to brag about, it beats the PSN both online and offline, even without any original online games. Of the originall PSN games, only Warhawk is a must-have. Some are decent, but most are pretty crappy.
I just got skate for the PS3, so I'm hoping it'll occupy some of my time, but apart from Warhawk, the PS3 really has no good game. Motorstorm is cool, but it has far to little content. Resistance is neat, but I don't like FPS and only play it in co-op mode. What else have we got... Calling all Cars? Sure, for a quarter of an hour if a few friends are over. What else? Beats me.
:-(
Recently, I've mainly been playing DS and Wii games. Zelda, Undercover, Jam Sessions on the DS, Paper Mario, Metroid 3 and Mrio Football on the Wii. Oh, and the VC games. Super Metroid, obviously, and a few Japanese games. Missed Lost Levels, unfortunately
I'm in Europe and have no clue about how this American Football thing works, but I'm guessing you might want to go with the Wii version because it just might be the better game; see: Godfather, Tennis, Golf or many other games available on the Wii as well as on other consoles.
Wow, I didn't even realize it played GBC games. I just ordered one. I wish my micro would play the GB and GBC Zeldas :-(
The thing is that Wii software sales aren't poor. They're actually better than the PS3's, and on par with what the 360 had a year after launch. And that is even with the crappy third-party support the Wii has as of now.
How is that a mistake if Wiis will be sold out during Christmas anyway? I think it's a great idea to launch AAA titles early next year to get yet another sales boost after Christmas. Kids need to spend all the money they got for Christmas, right?
There are a bunch of great third-party Wii games announced, Monster Hunter 3 for example.
Nintendo ships a million Wiis a month. They aren't holding back shipments, and they aren't creating an illusion of excessive demand. There simply is excessive demand. They've overtaken the 360, which had a year headstart, within less than a year (10 months or so, I think).
Halo is to Prime as Contra is to Metroid. Metroid is a FPS in that it's First Person and you can Shoot, but it isn't a FPS in the same way that Zelda isn't a Third Person Shooter, but an Action-Adventure.
There are two ways too look at it. Yes, it's in First Person, and yes, you shoot. So it's a First Person Shooter. However, the games we generally put in the FPS genre are all quite different from Prime and Prime 2. Prime and Prime 2 are Zelda games with First Person Views, and we generally don't call Zelda games Third Person Shooters, even though Zelda is third person and you shoot.
So Prime isn't an FPS the same way that Zelda isn't a TPS.
A lot of people using Macs make use of iMovie. It comes for free with new Macs, after all. And even cutting a half-hour vacation movie easily eats up dozens of gigabytes of often-changing disk space.
It's not just the iPhone. It's also stuff like the iPod cables. Apple isn't evil (yet), just getting too greedy for its own good.
Haven't seen that one.
The "eat disk space like crazy" comment is hardly a lie. Even when only storing deltas, creating snapshots means that the data in the snapshot can never be released unless the snapshot is deleted, which will quickly fill your disk if you're working with large files that change often.
Also, I was wrong when I said that MacJournals claimed that Sun said that backups were free. Here's the quote from MWJ Jun 11 07: Signatures only make sense for backups, since you want the
signature to verify that no one changed the data since it was
backed up. You may recall that ZFS proponents insist you get
"backups for free," which is why they keep screeching that it's
the only sensible foundation for Time Machine, the new backup
feature in Mac OS X 10.5. That goes back to the copy-on-write
methodology. And no, Tiger isn't fully 64 bit, but Leopard is supposed to be, except for Carbon apps.
So what you're saying is that the analogy is: The iPhone needs just a few changes to be the perfect phone; and Nick shows need just a few changes to be perfect porn?
You're wrong, of course. While it makes no sense to expect Nick to produce porn, it does make sense to want Apple to make a few changes to the iPhone to make it so much better.
Exactly. But I really want an iPhone because it does everything right that all the other cell phones do wrong (and in fact, I do own a hacked iPhone, and it's the best phone I've ever owned - I just wish I wouldn't have to give up support from Apple in order to change the 2% of the phone that I don't like but really need). So I complain about the things I don't like, hoping that maybe Apple will fix them.
We can speculate on why, but it would just be speculation. It could be that AT&T demanded the phone be locked down. It could be that Apple rushed the phone out and didn't have time to add features allowing 3rd party applications while maintaining stability. It could be that they are all just a bunch of miserable pricks who wouldn't know a good business decision if it bit them in the ass.Which is why we, their (potential) customers, need to tell them what we would like to see changed. Apple actually does listen to the people who buy their stuff from time to time. Not often, but it's not unheard of :-)
The important thing is that you are not their target demographic. Getting angry at Apple for this is a bit irrational. Do you hate Nickelodeon for not producing good, quality porn? I mean, you supported them by watching their crappy Canadian-produced shows back when you were a kid.Well, first of all, I'm not angry. It's a cell phone, not the end of the world. And no, I don't complain that Nick doesn't produce pron, but I do complain if I see something in a Nick show that I don't like (not that I watch them anymore, but I would if I did).
But that is what Apple's update already does. The problem is that the SIM unlock changes the firmware of the modem in a way that seems to be incompatible with Apple's new iPhone software. Do you propose that Apple flashes all firmwares of all components in the phone whenever there's a n update?
It hurts them because
Basically, Apple gave up goodwill, sales and money from software sales in order to gain money from AT&T. It's a short-term gain that sacrifices the long-term gain.
I disagree that what kept Apple (barely) alive was their focus on users. Instead, it was their niche in graphics design and education.Apple's education market was basically dead for the last decade and is only now starting to come back, and the graphics design market isn't too big, and about 50% Windows anyway. Apple stayed alive by selling to the people who care about design and usability, who make informed decisions when buying Computers (and don't just get the cheapest no-name Windows box in their local electronics store), and who are willing to spend money in order to get a better experience.
And now Apple seems to be destroying that very thing which allowed them to remain in the market.
Really they have only been delivering "better" products over the last 5 or 6 years, and those have all been pretty locked-down. OSX is, as a practical matter, tied to Apple's hardware.I don't see how this is locked down. You buy a Mac. It's not locked down, it's open. You can run anything you want on it. Mac OS X is only locked down if you don't give Apple your money.
The iPod is not extensible,How is the iPod not extensible? No other MP3 player has more stuff you can extend it with.
cannot run 3rd-party apps,Actually does run Linux and other OSs. And you can mount it in the Finder and hack it to your heart's contents, you have direct access to the file system. The iPod is not locked down in any way.
and really has access to only Apple's music store.And emusic.com, and the Amazon MP3 store, and every other store which sells unprotected audio.
The iPhone is not really any big change for Apple.It actually is. Even a year ago, Apple released the AppleTV. It's basically a standard OS X box with a custom interface. You can easily hack it, add disks, even install a standard copy of OS X on it, run Apache, whatever. The iPhone could have been like that, and it's not.
Finally, I don't see how your argument even applies. I'm complaining about Apple because I don't like what they are doing. Whether it makes financial sense for them to do so is absolutely immaterial to me. I don't care. I think they're missing an opportunity at making even more money here, but even if that was not the case, what Apple is doing would still suck.
My thought on this is simple: I switched from a Symbian phone (a P990i) to the iPhone because Symbian is, frankly and unfortunately, a crappy OS. The iPhone sports a usable, snappy, pretty, stable OS. For 95% of what I use a phone for, the iPhone beats any Symbian-based phone. The only thing I miss from the P990i is ScummVM.