I'm a supporter! I think the Playstation 3 actually has wonderful potential to be the top notch gaming system in the next couple of years, once developers have learned to better utilize its hardware. It's price point is a turn off, sure, but that will come down...and developers will still be making games for it at that point.
But the thing is, if there are no killer games on the PS3, people won't buy it, so there's no incentive for developers to learn how to program it correctly. I think for the foreseeable future - and maybe for the entire lifetime of the system - most really good games will come out of Sony's own dev studios. The PS3 seems to become this generation's Gamecube.
I think its great that games developed for the Wii probably won't be ports from other systems (in the future), because the control scheme is simply too different...
Yeah, most probably won't be, but interestingly, some ports arrived with really great results - Godfather, for example.
I think its just going to take a while for developers to really make this new way of playing games work.
...as seen with the DS.
That being said, the activity involved isn't a real selling point for me. While I can't speak for anyone else on Slashdot, I suspect I'm not alone when I say I get enough physical activity on my own for said activity to be required when I want to sit down and game.
Frankly, I think most/. posters probably have a similar lifestyle to mine: Sit in front of a screen for most parts of the day. I'm happy to embrace any activity that will get me out of my couch at home. Right now, I'm playing a lot of Kinetic Combat, which must be one of the crappiest games I've ever played, but at least it makes me sweat.
Back to the PS3, well, I think the SIXAXIS controller is great.
I never liked the Playstation controllers. The shape is awkward for adults with larger hands (I'm basically holding the thing with my middle and ring fingers), the button names are stupid (the Cube got that very, very right, since you immediately know what button to push if it's shown on screen, due to the distinct shapes). The dual analog sticks are in the wrong position for every game except Katamari Damacy. In addition, the Sixaxis is too light, the lower should buttons are slippery, and it has no vibra. Oh, and the lights are ordered in the wrong direction. If you look at your hands, player four has the leftmost light active, and player one has the rightmost light active. Lots of little things that add up to the worst controller of this and the last generation.
It is the perfect shape for utilizing motion sensing for driving or flying games, as you can "turn" it, rather than wave a wand to simulate a driving experience. I'm not knocking the Wii, I'm just stating that a rectangular controller isn't ideally suited for driving or flying simulators...
Excite Truck steers a lot better than the motion steering in Motorstorm. That's really all I can say on this topic. You don't have to "wave a wand to simulate a driving experience," you hold it like a normal controller, sideways. I'm not sure I understand your complaint, maybe you've never played a driving game on the Wii?
As a relative newcomer to Slashdot, I don't understand all the hatred out there for Sony.
That's not relly hard to understand. Sony used to be a great company, one you could rely on to get good hardware at a somewhat high, but fair price. During the last decade, they've slowly morphed into something different. They try to push proprietary, overpriced media formats on you (Minidisc, UMD, Memory Stick). They ignore what users want for what they want (ATRAC instead of MP3). They listen to their content arm instead of making the best hardware possible. They actually sell CDs with rootkits on them. And they insult their customers (we'll sell 5 mill
For comparison, the Wii was at 2,949,774 units sold the week before last. Given that they've been consistantly selled 70k+ per week, the Wii probably surpassed 3 million consoles last week. The Xbox 360 has yet to break 400k units.
Even more astonishing: The Wii is only constrained by production, not by demand. Nintendo could probably sell about twice as many if they managed to get production capacity up.
It seems to me that it doesn't matter if Enemy AI is out of sync when the two characters are far away from each other. All that matters is that the two character's stats are synchronized, right?
If you're a reasonable Apple user who doesn't like Apple products because you like the brand you should find it as funny as anyone else.
No. I find it not funny that I'm contantly portrayed as a cult follower or as a mindless fanboy, simply because I chose to buy a computer manufactured by Apple instead of one manufactured by Dell.
Apple has always had an history of not fixing bugs until they received enough publicity or until customers complained enough
They *are* known for continuously lying about performance numbers, marketing figures and not disclosing fatal flaws in their products (anything that would help than build up the hype)
I've spoken to people on this site who argue about how local vulnerabilities don't matter (on Macs), how market share isn't the reason for there being fewer OS X vulnerabilities, etc, etc.
Please show me these discussions. So far, all I'm seeing is "Mac fanboys are stupid LOL."
Most of all we all rip on Windows when a vulnerability is found, so don't take it personally when the same happens to your OS.
It's not "my OS." And you don't rip on Mac OS X. You rip on people who allegedly claim the vulnerabilities don't matter. And I don't see these people anywhere.
Yes I am one of those cult infidels or traitors who flooded those forums because his mind couldn't handle all those non logical junk there. Now, I am happily missing.
Here's a serious question for you: Are you stupid? Did you read anything I wrote? Are you answering to my post simply to proof that I was right? Okay, three questions. And no, you don't have to answer.
Worst security nightmare is having some issues on host operating system and whoever tells such flaws gets burned by some zealot cult. I hate fanboys because they risk my OS security.
Yeah. What fanboys? Reading through this discussion, I see dozens and dozens of people complaining about Apple fanboys. Yet I do not see a single post of one of these hypothetical Apple fanboys claiming that "Mac OS X can't be penetrated" or that "this security issue is actually a good thing."
I'm not sure what your issue is, really. Why do you feel the need to make up stories about these hypothetical Mac users?
Nobody claims that security researchers shouldn't keep software developers on their toes. But they should at least give them a chance to fix issues before reporting them to the world.
Apple has always had an history of not fixing bugs until they received enough publicity or until customers complained enough. They *are* known for continuously lying about performance numbers, marketing figures and not disclosing fatal flaws in their products
I can see why you're posting as an AC. You're obviously an idiot, and you don't want people to know. Which leads me to the question: Why post at all if you don't have anything to say, other than lies and trolling?
I think Mac users are generally more enthusiastic towards updates. There are often small new features thrown into those Mac updates, and Mac users love that kind of thing:-)
All Mac users I know run software update daily or weekly and often install updates as soon as they are available (sometimes to bad results:-).
The only people I always see spouting such crap are the people who claim to hate Apple fanboys. I've never seen an Apple fanboy make absurd claims like yours. This is like a fucking self-fullfilling prophecy. Every damn article about Apple is run over by stupid Anti-Apple trolls who write hundreds of comments laughing about imaginary Apple fanboys and the imaginary stupid things they say.
Here's an idea: Shut up, and let those who are interested in the article discuss it. Thanks.
That's funny. An Apple hater pretends to be an Apple fanboy. Some other Apple hater is so oblivious of reality, and thinks Mac users are sto stupid and will say absolutely anything, that he thinks person 1 actually is a fanboy (and seemingly even takes person 1 as a reason to increase his own hate).
I think this is how Apple hating usually works, actually. Since it's hard to actually find a real-life crazy Mac user who pretends that Mac OS X is completely secure and that every bad thing happening to Apple is actually good, you just have to make up such a person to justify your Apple hating.
The interesting thing is that the first Sonic game wasn't a particularly fast game. There are parts of the game where you go fast, but for large parts, it plays similarly to early Mario games, with lots of enemies, and jumping from platform to platform. Later Sonic games started to emphasize "Fast!" more and more.
I think the difference is that most Mario games realize that they're somewhat stupid. I just loved the Luigi side story in one of the Paper Mario games, where he starts out complaining that Mario always gets to rescue the princess, but later gets his own princess to rescue, going through bizarro versions of Mario's adventures, crossing paths with him from time to time, and even writing books about his experiences, which you can find as items and read. Mario games realize that they're not serious.
It also means that you don't have to take yourself seriously when playing Mario games. There's no issues with adults playing Mario games, because of the slightly ironic take that the devs and writers seem to have on most Mario concepts. Most Mario games are like a Pixar movie: Good entertainment for children, but with a lot of not-so-obvious jabs and ideas that make it enjoyable for adults, too.
Sonic, on the other hand, desperately tries to be a serious game, going as far as introducing realistically rendered human characters which have weird love relationships with Sonic. That's just disgusting, and it's dumping crap on our childhood memories.
Most recent Mario games are intelligent, fun and slightly ironic. Most recent Sonic games are just stupid, not to mention that they fail in the gameplay department, too.
Companies like Atari, Sega or Nintendo don't really have a choice. Make hardware or become a software-only company? They'll try number one as long as they can. Microsoft, on the other hand, does have a choice. Axing the Xbox will only improve their finances.
I think keeping the 360 is just throwing good money after bad money, and Microsoft probably knows it.
I think to figure out what is going on with the 360, we have to go back a bit and consider why Microsoft launched the Xbox. I think the reason was that they were afraid of Sony gaining a foothold in content distribution. Microsoft made a strong push towards DRM, hoping to get content providers to distribute content using Microsoft's technologies, therefore helping its Windows monopoly. Meanwhile, Sony was incredibly successfull with the PS1 and then the PS2. Microsoft must have perceived that as a threat: There's somebody else who can distribute content for content providers into every home. And even worse, their box is hooked up to a TV, where - surprise - most people actually watch their content.
So Microsoft must have decided that, in order to ensure their content distribution monopoly, they needed to get rid of Sony by building their own box sitting in people's living rooms. And they did. But what they did not notice was that Sony wasn't the only competitor. While Microsoft was busy going after Sony, Apple started using Windows. They managed to put iTunes on a huge number of Windows computers, thereby usurping Microsoft's DRM monopoly.
So in a way, the Xbox is obsolete. People are using iPods and iTunes and maybe even AppleTV to get to their content. They aren't using the PS3.
Which leaves us with the question: Does it make sense to keep pouring money into the 360 if the actual threat is the iPod? Microsoft decided to go ahead with the 360, but also start going after the iPod with the Zune. I'm guessing they will keep this strategy for now, but I'm also guessing that Microsoft realizes that
Sony maybe isn't such an important threat as they initially thought
Apple is a much bigger threat
the biggest thread is the move away from DRM
Without DRM, there is no monopoly for Microsoft. Maybe in the end, all that money was wasted anyway.
The only people I've seen who care about the price of Live are those coming from an environment without a cohesive online story (Sony fanboys, mostly).
I'm not a Sony fanboy. In fact, I think the PS3 is an overpriced, underperforming, oversized piece of crap with not enough games and lots of crappy ports. Yet I bought a PS3 instead of a 360, and one of the reasons is the fact that I'm not going to pay for online gaming.
Why? I don't play a lot of online games. In fact, I play a few hours of online games a month. When Mario Kart DS came out, I played that for a week or so, until everyone else was so good that I couldn't win anymore. When Mario Strikers came out, I played a bunch of online matches. When Motorstorm came out, I drove a few online races.
I don't have time to play games too often anymore. I can't compete with all the people playing Halo. I like online gaming, but I don't have the time to play it often, or be good enough to compete after the first few weeks a game is out.
And I'm not going to pay 50 or so bucks just so I can play 20 or 30 hours of online games a year.
I imagine most gamers actually behave similarly to me. I know a lot of gamers, but I don't know anyone who puts a lot of hours into online games. By charging for online gameing, Microsoft actually makes sure that people like me - people who want to play a few online matches from time to time, but not regularly - simply won't even consider the 360.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a supporter! I think the Playstation 3 actually has wonderful potential to be the top notch gaming system in the next couple of years, once developers have learned to better utilize its hardware. It's price point is a turn off, sure, but that will come down...and developers will still be making games for it at that point.
But the thing is, if there are no killer games on the PS3, people won't buy it, so there's no incentive for developers to learn how to program it correctly. I think for the foreseeable future - and maybe for the entire lifetime of the system - most really good games will come out of Sony's own dev studios. The PS3 seems to become this generation's Gamecube.
I think its great that games developed for the Wii probably won't be ports from other systems (in the future), because the control scheme is simply too different...
Yeah, most probably won't be, but interestingly, some ports arrived with really great results - Godfather, for example.
I think its just going to take a while for developers to really make this new way of playing games work.
...as seen with the DS.
That being said, the activity involved isn't a real selling point for me. While I can't speak for anyone else on Slashdot, I suspect I'm not alone when I say I get enough physical activity on my own for said activity to be required when I want to sit down and game.
Frankly, I think most /. posters probably have a similar lifestyle to mine: Sit in front of a screen for most parts of the day. I'm happy to embrace any activity that will get me out of my couch at home. Right now, I'm playing a lot of Kinetic Combat, which must be one of the crappiest games I've ever played, but at least it makes me sweat.
Back to the PS3, well, I think the SIXAXIS controller is great.
I never liked the Playstation controllers. The shape is awkward for adults with larger hands (I'm basically holding the thing with my middle and ring fingers), the button names are stupid (the Cube got that very, very right, since you immediately know what button to push if it's shown on screen, due to the distinct shapes). The dual analog sticks are in the wrong position for every game except Katamari Damacy. In addition, the Sixaxis is too light, the lower should buttons are slippery, and it has no vibra. Oh, and the lights are ordered in the wrong direction. If you look at your hands, player four has the leftmost light active, and player one has the rightmost light active. Lots of little things that add up to the worst controller of this and the last generation.
It is the perfect shape for utilizing motion sensing for driving or flying games, as you can "turn" it, rather than wave a wand to simulate a driving experience. I'm not knocking the Wii, I'm just stating that a rectangular controller isn't ideally suited for driving or flying simulators...
Excite Truck steers a lot better than the motion steering in Motorstorm. That's really all I can say on this topic. You don't have to "wave a wand to simulate a driving experience," you hold it like a normal controller, sideways. I'm not sure I understand your complaint, maybe you've never played a driving game on the Wii?
As a relative newcomer to Slashdot, I don't understand all the hatred out there for Sony.
That's not relly hard to understand. Sony used to be a great company, one you could rely on to get good hardware at a somewhat high, but fair price. During the last decade, they've slowly morphed into something different. They try to push proprietary, overpriced media formats on you (Minidisc, UMD, Memory Stick). They ignore what users want for what they want (ATRAC instead of MP3). They listen to their content arm instead of making the best hardware possible. They actually sell CDs with rootkits on them. And they insult their customers (we'll sell 5 mill
Even more astonishing: The Wii is only constrained by production, not by demand. Nintendo could probably sell about twice as many if they managed to get production capacity up.
- God Hand ...
- Any THQ or Bandai game for the SNES or Gameboy
- Some Mortal Kombat games
- Stubbs the Zombie
- Redneck Rampage
-
It seems to me that it doesn't matter if Enemy AI is out of sync when the two characters are far away from each other. All that matters is that the two character's stats are synchronized, right?
I hate all that whining about all that whining in forums. Whining is what forums are for, so stop whining!
No. I find it not funny that I'm contantly portrayed as a cult follower or as a mindless fanboy, simply because I chose to buy a computer manufactured by Apple instead of one manufactured by Dell.
Here:
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "thank-you note," but Apple always credits security researchers who report issues to them.
I have evidence to back me up.Bring it on.
I stand corrected. At least one comment was patently stupid:
I still don't see how a bunch of idiots warrant spamming an article like this one with comments like yours, especially if the comments are unprovoked.
Dude, my eyes are wide open. Everything I'm seeing after this article are "Apple fanboys are stupid" posts.
Please show me these discussions. So far, all I'm seeing is "Mac fanboys are stupid LOL."
Most of all we all rip on Windows when a vulnerability is found, so don't take it personally when the same happens to your OS.It's not "my OS." And you don't rip on Mac OS X. You rip on people who allegedly claim the vulnerabilities don't matter. And I don't see these people anywhere.
No. In my experience, they only exist inside the heads of people like you.
Here's a serious question for you: Are you stupid? Did you read anything I wrote? Are you answering to my post simply to proof that I was right? Okay, three questions. And no, you don't have to answer.
Worst security nightmare is having some issues on host operating system and whoever tells such flaws gets burned by some zealot cult. I hate fanboys because they risk my OS security.Yeah. What fanboys? Reading through this discussion, I see dozens and dozens of people complaining about Apple fanboys. Yet I do not see a single post of one of these hypothetical Apple fanboys claiming that "Mac OS X can't be penetrated" or that "this security issue is actually a good thing."
I'm not sure what your issue is, really. Why do you feel the need to make up stories about these hypothetical Mac users?
Nobody claims that security researchers shouldn't keep software developers on their toes. But they should at least give them a chance to fix issues before reporting them to the world.
I can see why you're posting as an AC. You're obviously an idiot, and you don't want people to know. Which leads me to the question: Why post at all if you don't have anything to say, other than lies and trolling?
I think Mac users are generally more enthusiastic towards updates. There are often small new features thrown into those Mac updates, and Mac users love that kind of thing :-)
:-).
All Mac users I know run software update daily or weekly and often install updates as soon as they are available (sometimes to bad results
Spammer.
2. Why is that bad? Who should get it, the lowest bidder?First, the company that can actually fix the issue. Then, everyone.
The only people I always see spouting such crap are the people who claim to hate Apple fanboys. I've never seen an Apple fanboy make absurd claims like yours. This is like a fucking self-fullfilling prophecy. Every damn article about Apple is run over by stupid Anti-Apple trolls who write hundreds of comments laughing about imaginary Apple fanboys and the imaginary stupid things they say.
Here's an idea: Shut up, and let those who are interested in the article discuss it. Thanks.
That's funny. An Apple hater pretends to be an Apple fanboy. Some other Apple hater is so oblivious of reality, and thinks Mac users are sto stupid and will say absolutely anything, that he thinks person 1 actually is a fanboy (and seemingly even takes person 1 as a reason to increase his own hate).
I think this is how Apple hating usually works, actually. Since it's hard to actually find a real-life crazy Mac user who pretends that Mac OS X is completely secure and that every bad thing happening to Apple is actually good, you just have to make up such a person to justify your Apple hating.
E3 told the mainstream media that gaming was about fat teenagers playing violent games, and scantily clad booth babes. It was not good for gaming.
The interesting thing is that the first Sonic game wasn't a particularly fast game. There are parts of the game where you go fast, but for large parts, it plays similarly to early Mario games, with lots of enemies, and jumping from platform to platform. Later Sonic games started to emphasize "Fast!" more and more.
I think the difference is that most Mario games realize that they're somewhat stupid. I just loved the Luigi side story in one of the Paper Mario games, where he starts out complaining that Mario always gets to rescue the princess, but later gets his own princess to rescue, going through bizarro versions of Mario's adventures, crossing paths with him from time to time, and even writing books about his experiences, which you can find as items and read. Mario games realize that they're not serious.
It also means that you don't have to take yourself seriously when playing Mario games. There's no issues with adults playing Mario games, because of the slightly ironic take that the devs and writers seem to have on most Mario concepts. Most Mario games are like a Pixar movie: Good entertainment for children, but with a lot of not-so-obvious jabs and ideas that make it enjoyable for adults, too.
Sonic, on the other hand, desperately tries to be a serious game, going as far as introducing realistically rendered human characters which have weird love relationships with Sonic. That's just disgusting, and it's dumping crap on our childhood memories.
Most recent Mario games are intelligent, fun and slightly ironic. Most recent Sonic games are just stupid, not to mention that they fail in the gameplay department, too.
A lot of the Paper Mario ideas are very much out there, too... It doesn't respect the Mario gospel too much.
Companies like Atari, Sega or Nintendo don't really have a choice. Make hardware or become a software-only company? They'll try number one as long as they can. Microsoft, on the other hand, does have a choice. Axing the Xbox will only improve their finances.
I think keeping the 360 is just throwing good money after bad money, and Microsoft probably knows it.
I think to figure out what is going on with the 360, we have to go back a bit and consider why Microsoft launched the Xbox. I think the reason was that they were afraid of Sony gaining a foothold in content distribution. Microsoft made a strong push towards DRM, hoping to get content providers to distribute content using Microsoft's technologies, therefore helping its Windows monopoly. Meanwhile, Sony was incredibly successfull with the PS1 and then the PS2. Microsoft must have perceived that as a threat: There's somebody else who can distribute content for content providers into every home. And even worse, their box is hooked up to a TV, where - surprise - most people actually watch their content.
So Microsoft must have decided that, in order to ensure their content distribution monopoly, they needed to get rid of Sony by building their own box sitting in people's living rooms. And they did. But what they did not notice was that Sony wasn't the only competitor. While Microsoft was busy going after Sony, Apple started using Windows. They managed to put iTunes on a huge number of Windows computers, thereby usurping Microsoft's DRM monopoly.
So in a way, the Xbox is obsolete. People are using iPods and iTunes and maybe even AppleTV to get to their content. They aren't using the PS3.
Which leaves us with the question: Does it make sense to keep pouring money into the 360 if the actual threat is the iPod? Microsoft decided to go ahead with the 360, but also start going after the iPod with the Zune. I'm guessing they will keep this strategy for now, but I'm also guessing that Microsoft realizes that
Without DRM, there is no monopoly for Microsoft. Maybe in the end, all that money was wasted anyway.
I'm not a Sony fanboy. In fact, I think the PS3 is an overpriced, underperforming, oversized piece of crap with not enough games and lots of crappy ports. Yet I bought a PS3 instead of a 360, and one of the reasons is the fact that I'm not going to pay for online gaming.
Why? I don't play a lot of online games. In fact, I play a few hours of online games a month. When Mario Kart DS came out, I played that for a week or so, until everyone else was so good that I couldn't win anymore. When Mario Strikers came out, I played a bunch of online matches. When Motorstorm came out, I drove a few online races.
I don't have time to play games too often anymore. I can't compete with all the people playing Halo. I like online gaming, but I don't have the time to play it often, or be good enough to compete after the first few weeks a game is out.
And I'm not going to pay 50 or so bucks just so I can play 20 or 30 hours of online games a year.
I imagine most gamers actually behave similarly to me. I know a lot of gamers, but I don't know anyone who puts a lot of hours into online games. By charging for online gameing, Microsoft actually makes sure that people like me - people who want to play a few online matches from time to time, but not regularly - simply won't even consider the 360.