Oh, and the eggheads above are talking about combining a bunch of micro-acclerators to create the same velocities you'd find in the huge atom smashers. Their thought is that enough of these mini-accelerators might be able to outperform the Large Hadron Collider being built in France. Which would be rather embarrassing when you consider the billions that have been spent on the project.
We're talking about electron volts. You see, electricity is not the electrons themselves, but rather a wave of energy passing from one electron to the next as they collide with each other. (A bit simplified, but hey.)
You know those desk decorations that have about 5 metal ball suspended from wires? If you lift one and let go, gravity imparts energy on one of those balls. When it hits the next ball, it transfers energy to the other ball, which in turn hits the next ball, transfers its energy, so on and so forth. When the last ball has nothing more to hit, it swings out from the kinetic energy imparted on it. This is pretty much how electricity works.
An electron Volt is a method of measuring the kinetic energy for individual particles. It translates directly to the voltage/joules calculations we all know and love, except that it only involves one particle instead of a wire full of them. Most commonly, this term is used in particle physics where the energy of a single particle matters.
What has been built here is a micro particle-accelerator capable of imparting massive velocities on individual electrons. This is useful for things like advanced medical scanners which bombard a target with a small number of high energy particles in order to get 3D image of the object. With a small enough particle accelerator, we could begin building devices like the medical tricorders you see in Star Trek. That's never been possible before.
When you walked into the store, you knew which games were for the Master System at a single glance.
The SNES and N64 boxes stood out in a similar way, but without using ugly box art. You can see Wikipedia's images of the art for the SNES and Super Famicom here. Note how the border provided the necessary consistency, while genuine art was allowed to take up the rest of the space. Even the dimensions of the box set the games apart and made them very easy to find.
In comparison, the SMS relied on a bit of generic artwork splashed on top of a grid. Sure, you could see that it was an SMS game. Good luck telling which SMS game, though. The simple bit of artwork just wasn't enough to distinguish them from a distance. Which meant that it was difficult to get any particular title to catch your eye. You were stuck in a maze of twisty SMS games, all alike.
It does matter what your source is for news. It always matters.
Uh huh. Okay, next time I'll leave you in the dark. You can run off commenting on a year and a half, mostly debunked story.
In case you're wondering, NO I didn't read it thoroughly. I found the part where they broke the bone for transport, checked the timestamp, and ran with it. Considering that my entire purpose was to debunk the current story, that should have been sufficient. But apparently, the average slashdotter foams at the mouth of evidence if it's reported by a fundamentalist source.
most people aren't going to want to sit down in front of a computer, and deal with streaming issues
Traditionally, that's been true. However, Apple has already got iTunes on people's desktops, AND they have managed to make the movie download one of the most painless processes I've ever seen. It literally works as smooth as their music downloads, only you can start watching while it's downloading.
In addition, Apple is nailing customers in two other ways. The first is the Video iPod for people who want to carry movies/TV Shows with them on the train, bus, or airplane. With the screen being as small as it is, people notice the quality issues even less.
The second method is the upcoming iTV product. With iTV, customers will have the equivalent of a Comcast digital cable box (which Comcast soaks you for on a monthly basis), but with ala carte pricing. Obviously, iTunes will be modified to make this easy to manage through a remote control.
If I'm going to PAY for something I am certainly not going to tolerate anything less than crystal clarity 720x480 on a 60" screeen.
The way I see it, I can either PAY Comcast comtastic rates (what's that sucking sound?) to watch a few shows and movies I like in (OOoooo!) 480p, or I can PAY Apple less money to watch the same shows and movies in 480p at more acceptable, ala carte rates.
I'm pretty sure Joe Average is thinking the same thing. Ask your average man on the street what the difference is between 480i and 720p, and they'll just look at you funny. Ask them if an HDTV is better than a regular TV and they'll tell you, "Sure, it's got a bigger screen." Finally, ask them if they're going to upgrade, and many will tell you, "Maybe later, my current TV still works."
I don't know how else I can say it, but Slashdot does not represent the viewing habits of the public at large. In general, a Slashdotter is more tech-savy, and actually understands why HD is important. They will happily rant and rave, and make rude gestures about how important HD quality is (all while happily watching a crappy TIVO recording), thinking that they're saving the world from the horrors of low quality video.
All of which does nothing to transfer that knowlege into the iTunes target audience. Instead, they see a picture from iTunes that they cannot distinguish from the picture on their TV screen, TIVO, or DVD player. So what is the value proposition to them? iTunes == Less Money + More Covenience - TIVO. Tada!
300MB is for a 45 minute feature. An hour and a half feature is 600MB. That puts the stream rate at somewhere around 900MB/s, which isn't all that bad for an MPEG-4 video. The key issue is the encoder, and how well it avoids artifacting. From what I've seen so far, I'm quite pleased. I wouldn't recommend projecting it onto a 7 foot screen, but it looks more than acceptable on a computer monitor.
No thanks. You can keep it.
No one is twisting your arm to purchase these videos. As I said, they're impulse purchases. If I want to watch Batman Begins, I'm going to go purchase a DVD. IMHO, the movie is good enough/important enough to warrant that sort of attention. If I want to watch the new Pink Panther movie, then I really don't care about the quality being superb. As far as I'm concerned, I just want to view the movie. As long as there are no really bothersome artifacts, I just don't care enough to worry about it. Neither does Joe Average who just wants to watch something to fill up time.
Uuuhhh... I think it's more like "Open iTunes, browser the movie/TV selections, download your movie... wait an hour or two for the download to complete, then watch.
BZZT. Try again. I start watching iTunes downloads within seconds of the download starting. There's usually enough bandwith for full streaming.
I don't care what kind of residential service you have, we're not at the point where you can just click on a movie, and suddenly have DVD quality at home.
You don't really think that Apple is sending MPEG-2 files, do you? From what I understand, they're using far tighter Quicktime/MPEG-4 compression schemes. (Note that not all of their videos use the same scheme.) An hour long TV show (usually about 45 minutes without commericals) is usually only 300MB. Which comes out to (300 * 1024) / (45m * 60s), or 113kb/sec. Most broadband connections can handle that sort of data rate. Even if you can only get, say, 80k/sec, you don't have to buffer for very long before you can start watching.
Digital downloads are the ultimate in impulse purchases. Say, for example, you're sitting at home on a weeknight, there's nothing on TV, and you have too much time on your hands before bed. Do you:
a) Get dressed, get in your car, drive to Wal-mart, purchase a DVD, wait in the checkout line, drive home, and pop it in the DVD player; or
b) Open iTunes, browse the movie/TV selections, download and watch your movie/TV Show
If you've got broadband, "b" is almost always preferential. Option "a" is just too much of a hassle, and the store may be closed anyway. (Especially for those poor late shift workers.) The only thing that holds consumers back on making that sort of purchase is price. No matter what studios think, a digital download does not have as much intrinsic value as a packaged Disc. Which means that if the consumer feels that the digital price is too close to the price of the physical copy, they're not going to spend the money. While studios may think this means that the consumer will go purchase the DVD, more likely it means that they'll purchase NOTHING.
If they wanted the movie bad enough to get a DVD, they would have gotten a DVD rather than a digital download. DVDs have more value as "keepsake" items due to their special features and permanent, physical storage. Thus digital downloads will be likely to complement DVD sales rather than usurp them. Which means that Walmart should keep carrying Batman Begins, but they can drop Ultraviolet.
But the real answer to your quest is that RTGs aren't dangerous, so the entire premise of the question is flawed. A launch failure isn't going to make Florida a radioactive wasteland. We've launched dozens of RTGs in past missions.
Don't forget that we've blown up a few of them, too. The original RTGs were designed to be burned up in the atmosphere. (Russia even burned one up over Canada.) So far, there are no nuclear wastelands because of it. NASA quickly figured out, however, that burning up expensive nuclear fuel in the atmosphere was probably not the best idea. So they started cladding the fuel in tough containers designed to withstand a launch failure.
Those containers have been proven twice. Once on the Nimbus launch vehicle (which was destroyed by the range officer) and the other was the emergency landing of Apollo 13. The Nimbus RTG was recovered from the sea bed, washed off and resused. The Apollo 13 unit fell in the Troga Trench and has been sitting there unpenetrated.
it is a demonstration of Amazon's lack of infrastructure (or management) in their Amazon Advantage program.
I have no idea why people insist on using confusing examples for the Long Tail concept. THIS is the Long Tail. Brand new games created for a system that's 30 years old, with a very specialized fan base. In a traditional market, you would NEVER be able to make money off of this. But in an Internet-enabled environment, you can theoretically reach every member of this esoteric market in every region in the world, with a very small advertising budget.
The only reason why Amazon keeps coming up is that they collectively sell lots of esoteria, thus managing to hit a farther end in the population dropoff (i.e. the longest part of the tail) than a business like AtariAge could reasonably profit from.
However, be honest with yourself. These games largely are not fun anymore.
Speak for yourself. I still think Mario 64 is fun, I still love Mario Party, and I still think Goldeneye is cool. Yes, I have played them recently, so I'm basing this on more than feel-good memories.
The games yes were 3-D but even by standards a year or two after launch looked terrible
Um, the Playstation looked worse, so I'm not sure what your point is. The games were what they were for their generation. I can go back and laugh at the Atari 2600's graphics too, but that doesn't mean that they weren't revolutionary in 1977.
I focus on GoldenEye cause it's the "killer game" for the system that everyone brings up. The controler + bad play control makes the games difficult to play. The bad graphics gave us problems aiming.
Five words: Man with a Golden Gun (BLAM! HEADSHOT!)
Yeah, the graphics were rough on the 64. Again, that's what they were. But I've played Halo, and there's one thing I can say for certain: Sharp graphics or not, I can't hit the broad side of a barn with the XBox's controllers. With the N64, well... BLAM! HEADSHOT!
Playstation did have bad signal to noise ratio. And I don't think it was the best console ever. But, let's be honest. When you've got 100 titles, and 10 killer games, versus 2000 titles, and 50 killer games... you still have 5 times the good games to choose from.
If you want to be honest, let's be honest. The Playstation did not have more qualtiy games than the N64. I can rattle off 25 or so N64 games off the top of my head. More if I look them up. Yet finding the same number of high quality Playstation games is tough. It says a lot when one of the most popular games for the Playstation (Tomb Raider) was a port of a popular PC game!
KI and Wave Race were a lot more fun if you had company over. I had quite a few siblings to play with, so we got a lot more enjoyment out of these titles. Even so, there was still no excuse for not being able to find a fun N64 game. Half those games on the list (e.g. Zelda, StarFox, BlastCorp, Banjo, etc.) are excellent single player titles.:)
Nintendo totally bailed on Rare at the right time.
Yeah, no kidding. Because the loss was internal to Rare. (Is there an echo in here?) Rare lost the programmers that made it Rare, then went down the tube quickly. There was nothing Nintendo could do except unload it. (There's that echo again.)
I don't remember playing much of anything after that.
*deep breath*
Mario Party 1-3, Mario Kart 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong 64, BlastCorp, Diddy Kong Racing, Killer Instinct Gold, Banjo-Tooie, Wave Race 64, Mario Golf, Super Smash Bros., F-Zero X, Hydro Thunder, SF Rush, SF Rush 2049, and that's without even trying.
You must have had your head stuck in the sand to not be able to find a good game, especially considering that the N64 had a much higher signal to noise ratio than the Playstation.
Of course, I still pull out the ol' IntelliVision from time to time and have lots of fun - maybe I'm just getting old and inflexible...
Space Spartans, Shark! Shark!, Beauty and the Beast, Space Battle, Utopia, Thin Ice, Burgertime, Happy Trails, Dreadnaught Factor... yeah, I could go on. What great games those were.
Kudos on your taste in systems! Back in the day, that thing kicked the 2600 in the rear. Even now, it kicks the PS2 up between the ears.;)
The real problem with Gametap is their selection. Playing consol games on a pc is only of limited entertainment value. As long as they refuse to carry "M" rated games, their selection of games is going to lack some of the games that have historically been popular.
Excuse me, but HUH? I don't remember all that many classic PC, NES, SNES, Atari, Genesis, or arcade games that would require the 'M' rating. Of those that would be rated 'M' today, I can't think of any that were actually fun. Even the games with the 'M' rating today, use it as a crappy marketing tool (because tools will buy anything rated 'M') rather than as a way of enhacing gameplay.
The Press the Buttons blog has some additional commentary on Nintendo's first 'meh' console.
I'm not following this sudden 'meh' comment. The N64 was a great machine with a lot of great games. Its only real failing was that it was bloody expensive due to its cartridge format. Nintendo still had a solid base going into the Gamecube. It's just too bad they pissed it away with a poor launch lineup, loss of third party support, and a rather small library of *good* games.
Probably the biggest blow, however, was the loss of Rare and its properties. Rare carried the N64 with its Donkey Kong, Banjo & Kazooie, and Conqeror titles. Unfortunately, the loss was internal to Rare, so there wasn't much Nintendo could do other than unload it.:(
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and the eggheads above are talking about combining a bunch of micro-acclerators to create the same velocities you'd find in the huge atom smashers. Their thought is that enough of these mini-accelerators might be able to outperform the Large Hadron Collider being built in France. Which would be rather embarrassing when you consider the billions that have been spent on the project.
We're talking about electron volts. You see, electricity is not the electrons themselves, but rather a wave of energy passing from one electron to the next as they collide with each other. (A bit simplified, but hey.)
You know those desk decorations that have about 5 metal ball suspended from wires? If you lift one and let go, gravity imparts energy on one of those balls. When it hits the next ball, it transfers energy to the other ball, which in turn hits the next ball, transfers its energy, so on and so forth. When the last ball has nothing more to hit, it swings out from the kinetic energy imparted on it. This is pretty much how electricity works.
An electron Volt is a method of measuring the kinetic energy for individual particles. It translates directly to the voltage/joules calculations we all know and love, except that it only involves one particle instead of a wire full of them. Most commonly, this term is used in particle physics where the energy of a single particle matters.
What has been built here is a micro particle-accelerator capable of imparting massive velocities on individual electrons. This is useful for things like advanced medical scanners which bombard a target with a small number of high energy particles in order to get 3D image of the object. With a small enough particle accelerator, we could begin building devices like the medical tricorders you see in Star Trek. That's never been possible before.
The SNES and N64 boxes stood out in a similar way, but without using ugly box art. You can see Wikipedia's images of the art for the SNES and Super Famicom here. Note how the border provided the necessary consistency, while genuine art was allowed to take up the rest of the space. Even the dimensions of the box set the games apart and made them very easy to find.
In comparison, the SMS relied on a bit of generic artwork splashed on top of a grid. Sure, you could see that it was an SMS game. Good luck telling which SMS game, though. The simple bit of artwork just wasn't enough to distinguish them from a distance. Which meant that it was difficult to get any particular title to catch your eye. You were stuck in a maze of twisty SMS games, all alike.
The original Wing Commander box art was littered with "Actual Screenshot" disclaimers. That was 15-16 years ago.
Here's the cover:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/wing-commander/cove
The disclaimer is on the back, in the lower-left corner:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/wing-commander/cove
Uh huh. Okay, next time I'll leave you in the dark. You can run off commenting on a year and a half, mostly debunked story.
In case you're wondering, NO I didn't read it thoroughly. I found the part where they broke the bone for transport, checked the timestamp, and ran with it. Considering that my entire purpose was to debunk the current story, that should have been sufficient. But apparently, the average slashdotter foams at the mouth of evidence if it's reported by a fundamentalist source.
How pathetic.
Does it matter? Its the same story, verbatim. Don't ask me why it's on top of Google.
This news over a year and a half old!! Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this found to be sensationalist the first time around?
How about an officially sanctioned sequal?
Traditionally, that's been true. However, Apple has already got iTunes on people's desktops, AND they have managed to make the movie download one of the most painless processes I've ever seen. It literally works as smooth as their music downloads, only you can start watching while it's downloading.
In addition, Apple is nailing customers in two other ways. The first is the Video iPod for people who want to carry movies/TV Shows with them on the train, bus, or airplane. With the screen being as small as it is, people notice the quality issues even less.
The second method is the upcoming iTV product. With iTV, customers will have the equivalent of a Comcast digital cable box (which Comcast soaks you for on a monthly basis), but with ala carte pricing. Obviously, iTunes will be modified to make this easy to manage through a remote control.
The way I see it, I can either PAY Comcast comtastic rates (what's that sucking sound?) to watch a few shows and movies I like in (OOoooo!) 480p, or I can PAY Apple less money to watch the same shows and movies in 480p at more acceptable, ala carte rates.
I'm pretty sure Joe Average is thinking the same thing. Ask your average man on the street what the difference is between 480i and 720p, and they'll just look at you funny. Ask them if an HDTV is better than a regular TV and they'll tell you, "Sure, it's got a bigger screen." Finally, ask them if they're going to upgrade, and many will tell you, "Maybe later, my current TV still works."
I don't know how else I can say it, but Slashdot does not represent the viewing habits of the public at large. In general, a Slashdotter is more tech-savy, and actually understands why HD is important. They will happily rant and rave, and make rude gestures about how important HD quality is (all while happily watching a crappy TIVO recording), thinking that they're saving the world from the horrors of low quality video.
All of which does nothing to transfer that knowlege into the iTunes target audience. Instead, they see a picture from iTunes that they cannot distinguish from the picture on their TV screen, TIVO, or DVD player. So what is the value proposition to them? iTunes == Less Money + More Covenience - TIVO. Tada!
300MB is for a 45 minute feature. An hour and a half feature is 600MB. That puts the stream rate at somewhere around 900MB/s, which isn't all that bad for an MPEG-4 video. The key issue is the encoder, and how well it avoids artifacting. From what I've seen so far, I'm quite pleased. I wouldn't recommend projecting it onto a 7 foot screen, but it looks more than acceptable on a computer monitor.
No one is twisting your arm to purchase these videos. As I said, they're impulse purchases. If I want to watch Batman Begins, I'm going to go purchase a DVD. IMHO, the movie is good enough/important enough to warrant that sort of attention. If I want to watch the new Pink Panther movie, then I really don't care about the quality being superb. As far as I'm concerned, I just want to view the movie. As long as there are no really bothersome artifacts, I just don't care enough to worry about it. Neither does Joe Average who just wants to watch something to fill up time.
You *do* realize that on-demand is Option B, right? Just because it's a different service doesn't mean that it's not a digital download.
Why is it that people keep telling me that it's impossible to do what I've already been doing for weeks?!?
Listen, I've already watched:
- Aquaman
- The entire, currently available season of Eureka (10 episodes as of last night)
- Heros
- Various BSG freebies
Each time I've been able to start watching within moments of starting the download. So please, people; STOP TELLING ME IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. M'kay?
BZZT. Try again. I start watching iTunes downloads within seconds of the download starting. There's usually enough bandwith for full streaming.
You don't really think that Apple is sending MPEG-2 files, do you? From what I understand, they're using far tighter Quicktime/MPEG-4 compression schemes. (Note that not all of their videos use the same scheme.) An hour long TV show (usually about 45 minutes without commericals) is usually only 300MB. Which comes out to (300 * 1024) / (45m * 60s), or 113kb/sec. Most broadband connections can handle that sort of data rate. Even if you can only get, say, 80k/sec, you don't have to buffer for very long before you can start watching.
Digital downloads are the ultimate in impulse purchases. Say, for example, you're sitting at home on a weeknight, there's nothing on TV, and you have too much time on your hands before bed. Do you:
a) Get dressed, get in your car, drive to Wal-mart, purchase a DVD, wait in the checkout line, drive home, and pop it in the DVD player; or
b) Open iTunes, browse the movie/TV selections, download and watch your movie/TV Show
If you've got broadband, "b" is almost always preferential. Option "a" is just too much of a hassle, and the store may be closed anyway. (Especially for those poor late shift workers.) The only thing that holds consumers back on making that sort of purchase is price. No matter what studios think, a digital download does not have as much intrinsic value as a packaged Disc. Which means that if the consumer feels that the digital price is too close to the price of the physical copy, they're not going to spend the money. While studios may think this means that the consumer will go purchase the DVD, more likely it means that they'll purchase NOTHING.
If they wanted the movie bad enough to get a DVD, they would have gotten a DVD rather than a digital download. DVDs have more value as "keepsake" items due to their special features and permanent, physical storage. Thus digital downloads will be likely to complement DVD sales rather than usurp them. Which means that Walmart should keep carrying Batman Begins, but they can drop Ultraviolet.
Don't forget that we've blown up a few of them, too. The original RTGs were designed to be burned up in the atmosphere. (Russia even burned one up over Canada.) So far, there are no nuclear wastelands because of it. NASA quickly figured out, however, that burning up expensive nuclear fuel in the atmosphere was probably not the best idea. So they started cladding the fuel in tough containers designed to withstand a launch failure.
Those containers have been proven twice. Once on the Nimbus launch vehicle (which was destroyed by the range officer) and the other was the emergency landing of Apollo 13. The Nimbus RTG was recovered from the sea bed, washed off and resused. The Apollo 13 unit fell in the Troga Trench and has been sitting there unpenetrated.
I have no idea why people insist on using confusing examples for the Long Tail concept. THIS is the Long Tail. Brand new games created for a system that's 30 years old, with a very specialized fan base. In a traditional market, you would NEVER be able to make money off of this. But in an Internet-enabled environment, you can theoretically reach every member of this esoteric market in every region in the world, with a very small advertising budget.
The only reason why Amazon keeps coming up is that they collectively sell lots of esoteria, thus managing to hit a farther end in the population dropoff (i.e. the longest part of the tail) than a business like AtariAge could reasonably profit from.
Speak for yourself. I still think Mario 64 is fun, I still love Mario Party, and I still think Goldeneye is cool. Yes, I have played them recently, so I'm basing this on more than feel-good memories.
Um, the Playstation looked worse, so I'm not sure what your point is. The games were what they were for their generation. I can go back and laugh at the Atari 2600's graphics too, but that doesn't mean that they weren't revolutionary in 1977.
Five words: Man with a Golden Gun (BLAM! HEADSHOT!)
Yeah, the graphics were rough on the 64. Again, that's what they were. But I've played Halo, and there's one thing I can say for certain: Sharp graphics or not, I can't hit the broad side of a barn with the XBox's controllers. With the N64, well... BLAM! HEADSHOT!
If you want to be honest, let's be honest. The Playstation did not have more qualtiy games than the N64. I can rattle off 25 or so N64 games off the top of my head. More if I look them up. Yet finding the same number of high quality Playstation games is tough. It says a lot when one of the most popular games for the Playstation (Tomb Raider) was a port of a popular PC game!
KI and Wave Race were a lot more fun if you had company over. I had quite a few siblings to play with, so we got a lot more enjoyment out of these titles. Even so, there was still no excuse for not being able to find a fun N64 game. Half those games on the list (e.g. Zelda, StarFox, BlastCorp, Banjo, etc.) are excellent single player titles. :)
Yeah, no kidding. Because the loss was internal to Rare. (Is there an echo in here?) Rare lost the programmers that made it Rare, then went down the tube quickly. There was nothing Nintendo could do except unload it. (There's that echo again.)
*deep breath*
Mario Party 1-3, Mario Kart 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong 64, BlastCorp, Diddy Kong Racing, Killer Instinct Gold, Banjo-Tooie, Wave Race 64, Mario Golf, Super Smash Bros., F-Zero X, Hydro Thunder, SF Rush, SF Rush 2049, and that's without even trying.
You must have had your head stuck in the sand to not be able to find a good game, especially considering that the N64 had a much higher signal to noise ratio than the Playstation.
Space Spartans, Shark! Shark!, Beauty and the Beast, Space Battle, Utopia, Thin Ice, Burgertime, Happy Trails, Dreadnaught Factor... yeah, I could go on. What great games those were.
Kudos on your taste in systems! Back in the day, that thing kicked the 2600 in the rear. Even now, it kicks the PS2 up between the ears.
Excuse me, but HUH? I don't remember all that many classic PC, NES, SNES, Atari, Genesis, or arcade games that would require the 'M' rating. Of those that would be rated 'M' today, I can't think of any that were actually fun. Even the games with the 'M' rating today, use it as a crappy marketing tool (because tools will buy anything rated 'M') rather than as a way of enhacing gameplay.
Oh, and this is for you.
I'm not following this sudden 'meh' comment. The N64 was a great machine with a lot of great games. Its only real failing was that it was bloody expensive due to its cartridge format. Nintendo still had a solid base going into the Gamecube. It's just too bad they pissed it away with a poor launch lineup, loss of third party support, and a rather small library of *good* games.
Probably the biggest blow, however, was the loss of Rare and its properties. Rare carried the N64 with its Donkey Kong, Banjo & Kazooie, and Conqeror titles. Unfortunately, the loss was internal to Rare, so there wasn't much Nintendo could do other than unload it.
That's right!
games == teh potatoe : Internet == information super-tubes