"ultra-low budget dogs, ports of faded consumer titles, or overpriced white elephants that just don't earn."
Says the man behind Cruisn' USA.
Presumably 'Target: Terror' will be another execrable 2D Operation Wolf clone like the garbage Midway/Atari churn out these days, but with a 'controversial' (i.e. exploitative) theme.
How this is supposed to revitalise the arcade sector is beyond me.
"Consider, for instance, the success of the NES against the Sega Genesis"
Pardon? The Mega Drive/Genesis made the NES virtually obsolete within a year of release.
The point of sticking a PC under the TV isn't about raw performance, it's about having a common platform. Would you deny that with generation the available console platforms have become similar? It's currently mooted that at least two of the three machines in the next generation will use the same CPU.
VIA's system is upgradeable. It's a PC. It would probably work out a shit of a lot cheaper, and at the very least more convenient, than building a second game-capable PC. Same reasons people mod Xboxes - it's already there, and plays movies, emulators and games.
Not having to drag my desk-bound PC into the living room is reason one for me to buy this system. (Provided there are enough suitable games to play on it.)
Okay, I am well aware that posting on a games.slashdot thread makes pissing into the wind look like a noble and life-affirming pursuit, but I'll bite.
From a technical vantage point, the ApeXtreme/Discover/shiny-PC-DVD-gamebox represents the platform that the console market is inexorably heading towards. The only thing that will slow down the migration to a PC-based gaming platform is resistance from the current hardware vendors (well, Sony).
The Xbox is already an x86 PC in a console form factor.
The arcade market is increasingly based around off-the-shelf PC-based solutions.
The Japanese gaming market generally don't want to buy PCs where they can buy consoles, but these boxes at least do away with the size and user-unfriendliness issues.
An increasing number of traditionally console-only Japanese development studios are branching into PC territory: Konami (PES, Silent Hill), Sega (PSO, Sonic), Square (FFXI)... the list goes on.
An increasing number of multi-format console releases are also appearing on the PC, sometimes improving on their console brethren (GTA:VC) - no longer does the PC only get massively-delayed, badly ported efforts (FF7). In part this can be put down to the presence of the Xbox, if you're going to develop a game for the Xbox you might as well put out a PC version as well.
A PC capable of producing respectable graphics at TV resolutions is now cheap (OK, it won't be as cheap as a subsidised console). All the other physical hurdles keeping the PC from the living room have been cleared (controllers, tv-out, size, DVD playback).
When these factors start to snowball, what third party publisher is going to think favourably of another generation of paying hefty licensing fees to platform vendors who split the market three ways? Hell, even Microsoft would probably jump at the chance to not have to bleed money on the Xbox hardware (although still creaming off licensing fees on XP-Embedded or whatever, and publishing their own games).
VIA, Alienware and the rest have seen this. The hardware just needs to be marketed effectively and coherently for the idea to catch on. The general public (who hold the purse strings in the modern games market) need to be shown that sticking the PC in the living room is a no brainer, gives them loads of functionality, more choice, and sweet graphics.
It would also hopefully erode the widespread misconceptions that have been fostered under the current system -- such as 'walled garden' pay-to-play systems like Xbox Live being even remotely desirable, faced with an alternative. I doubt I'm alone in feeling frustrated with the softly-softly approach that the platform vendors have applied to online gaming and other areas.
Of course, switching from a fixed platform to an extendable one isn't going to be without some potential pitfalls, but the PC games market seems to do a reasonable enough job of managing variable end user specs - at least, I can't see the problem being made harder.
Go ahead and scoff though, I don't think I own any consumer electronics item that wouldn't have been scoffed at if it had been suggested five years ago.
p.s. Slashdot really needs to take a long hard look at this trend of editorialising and trying to second guess news items, at least for games stories. The 'Doom3 Vaporware' item was just pathetically inept, and hardly a one-off case. Stick to what you know, guys.
p.p.s. The 'Headline includes word comma word' headlines are incredibly irritating as well.
P.S. Thanks for ruining the PAL version of Ikaruga by not including a 60Hz mode, something that has been a de facto standard on Gamecube games since launch. And don't even get me started on Super Monkey Ball 2 and the numerous Sega GBA games you licensed for Western release and then sat on for several months. Stupid Infogrames.
Perhaps one of you incredibly prescient game critics can answer these questions:
1. What genre of game *would* be more suitable for adapting Fight Club?
2. Why is it assumed that an action game can't have a narrative component? (I guess Shenmue, Deus Ex et al didn't happen?) Because the press release concentrates on the action? I don't recall the trailers for the movie focussing on the anti-capitalism message.
Simple (non-legalese) answer: Because their software products are not games, so they aren't treading on anyone's toes.
Equally amazing are their Action Replay and Freeloader products for the GameCube, where they've actually reverse-engineered Nintendo's proprietary disc format.
This JunkTV sounds like a boon for Sony, as it will drum up interest in two PS2 peripherals (Eye Toy and Network Adapter) that as yet have only been adopted by a minority of PS2 owners (although a minority of 60+ million units is still a lot of users).
I'm getting sick and tired of vacuous arts students plundering gaming's past in the most superficial and obvious ways possible. Attention: the 'witty' observations about the four NES games that were the last games you ever played have already occured to others. Please do not quote the Pac-Man quote again.
Perhaps one day someone will clue them in to the fact that constantly expounding a hopelessly limited and dated perception of games doesn't send out the message that they intend... much in the same way as wearing an Atari t-shirt acts as a good indicator that the wearer isn't qualified to make any kind of relevant observation about the medium.
We can conclude from this that MS did a very thorough job of burying Windows 2000, seeing as it isn't mentioned at all in the above.... and is the best Windows for gaming, way more stable than win9x, and doesn't carry half as much superfluous crap as XP.
"While actively jamming a cell-phone signal is illegal in the US, a distributor reports most of his sales go to US customers, including universities which use the technology to stop students from diddling away on phones during lectures."
Or you could, you know, *ask people to turn off their phones* at the start of the lecture/term.
They had grasped this concept when I was at university five years ago, I would be surprised if there were still pockets of the academic world who hadn't figured this out yet.
Most likely these supposed 'sales to universities' are just some marketing crap that the people selling these illegal and antisocial devices have cooked up to try and give themselves an air of legitimacy or acceptability.
"But in all seriousness, this is good news since the 7650 (same series 60 symbian OS) is a really cool looking and small phone and would benefit from this as well."
'Small' is not a word I'd ever imagined to see being used to describe the Nokia 7650.
Games are priced at a level the market dictates. (i.e. as high as consumers are able and willing to pay.) Average incomes are much lower in China than the other territories. Piracy is not the influential factor here. What's better for Sony and their content providers, to make a few (hundred) thousand legitimate sales and erode the argument that piracy and imports are the only way consumers in the territory can get the games, or let the pirates have their way and make no money there at all?
As to the story's assumption that Chinese consumers will just buy pirated games for their official PS2s, well, I suppose in many cases they will, but bear in mind that the Chinese region PS2 hardware will probably have different protection mechanisms, at the very least requiring new circumvention methods to be developed. And the officially released software is actually translated into Chinese, which is an additional incentive to go legit.
"Not a subscription fee-- but the platform vendor ALWAYS gets a cut of online gaming because the platform vendor is the one selling the network adapter."
The network adapter is a one-off payment though.
"I could be wrong here, but so far I know of no online-capable console that could allow multi-platform online play."
Yep, you're wrong. FFXI allows PS2 and PC players on the same server, for instance. The DC did it with Q3A.
" Its a shame that EA is so greedy. The market games for EA would go up if they agreed to microsofts terms."
EA may be greedy, but they're not stupid.
You realise of course that those terms include such third-party-friendly gems as 'you cannot host games on your own servers', 'all players must pay a subscription fee to the platform vendor', and 'you cannot make Xbox Live games interoperable with other platforms'?
Put yourself in EA's shoes. Would you sign a contract that meant you could never put Ultima X or Sims Online on the Xbox? Or that meant buyers of Xbox Madden 2005 were barred from playing against PS2, PC and GC owners? Only if you wanted to get fired very quickly.
If MS are ever going to make a dent in the console market, they need to learn what Sony figured out straight off the bat (and Nintendo struggled with in the N64 era): you must accomodate third party's needs, not try to impose self-serving terms on them. EA aren't exactly alone in steering clear of Live.
So some bandwidth provider accidentally stuck a site on a blacklist. And then it got fixed. Is there some important angle I'm missing here?
Don't tell me, because of this upset you missed meeting up with four thousand other bored office workers in a public place to do something 'wacky'? Boo freaking hoo.
Slashdot Mirror
"is it really worth all that extra money?"
Why should I care? The network operator foots the bill in massively subsidising the phone.
"ultra-low budget dogs, ports of faded consumer titles, or overpriced white elephants that just don't earn."
Says the man behind Cruisn' USA.
Presumably 'Target: Terror' will be another execrable 2D Operation Wolf clone like the garbage Midway/Atari churn out these days, but with a 'controversial' (i.e. exploitative) theme.
How this is supposed to revitalise the arcade sector is beyond me.
How amusingly quaint.
"Consider, for instance, the success of the NES against the Sega Genesis"
Pardon? The Mega Drive/Genesis made the NES virtually obsolete within a year of release.
The point of sticking a PC under the TV isn't about raw performance, it's about having a common platform. Would you deny that with generation the available console platforms have become similar? It's currently mooted that at least two of the three machines in the next generation will use the same CPU.
VIA's system is upgradeable. It's a PC. It would probably work out a shit of a lot cheaper, and at the very least more convenient, than building a second game-capable PC. Same reasons people mod Xboxes - it's already there, and plays movies, emulators and games.
Not having to drag my desk-bound PC into the living room is reason one for me to buy this system. (Provided there are enough suitable games to play on it.)
Okay, I am well aware that posting on a games.slashdot thread makes pissing into the wind look like a noble and life-affirming pursuit, but I'll bite.
... the list goes on.
From a technical vantage point, the ApeXtreme/Discover/shiny-PC-DVD-gamebox represents the platform that the console market is inexorably heading towards. The only thing that will slow down the migration to a PC-based gaming platform is resistance from the current hardware vendors (well, Sony).
The Xbox is already an x86 PC in a console form factor.
The arcade market is increasingly based around off-the-shelf PC-based solutions.
The Japanese gaming market generally don't want to buy PCs where they can buy consoles, but these boxes at least do away with the size and user-unfriendliness issues.
An increasing number of traditionally console-only Japanese development studios are branching into PC territory: Konami (PES, Silent Hill), Sega (PSO, Sonic), Square (FFXI)
An increasing number of multi-format console releases are also appearing on the PC, sometimes improving on their console brethren (GTA:VC) - no longer does the PC only get massively-delayed, badly ported efforts (FF7). In part this can be put down to the presence of the Xbox, if you're going to develop a game for the Xbox you might as well put out a PC version as well.
A PC capable of producing respectable graphics at TV resolutions is now cheap (OK, it won't be as cheap as a subsidised console). All the other physical hurdles keeping the PC from the living room have been cleared (controllers, tv-out, size, DVD playback).
When these factors start to snowball, what third party publisher is going to think favourably of another generation of paying hefty licensing fees to platform vendors who split the market three ways? Hell, even Microsoft would probably jump at the chance to not have to bleed money on the Xbox hardware (although still creaming off licensing fees on XP-Embedded or whatever, and publishing their own games).
VIA, Alienware and the rest have seen this. The hardware just needs to be marketed effectively and coherently for the idea to catch on. The general public (who hold the purse strings in the modern games market) need to be shown that sticking the PC in the living room is a no brainer, gives them loads of functionality, more choice, and sweet graphics.
It would also hopefully erode the widespread misconceptions that have been fostered under the current system -- such as 'walled garden' pay-to-play systems like Xbox Live being even remotely desirable, faced with an alternative. I doubt I'm alone in feeling frustrated with the softly-softly approach that the platform vendors have applied to online gaming and other areas.
Of course, switching from a fixed platform to an extendable one isn't going to be without some potential pitfalls, but the PC games market seems to do a reasonable enough job of managing variable end user specs - at least, I can't see the problem being made harder.
Go ahead and scoff though, I don't think I own any consumer electronics item that wouldn't have been scoffed at if it had been suggested five years ago.
p.s. Slashdot really needs to take a long hard look at this trend of editorialising and trying to second guess news items, at least for games stories. The 'Doom3 Vaporware' item was just pathetically inept, and hardly a one-off case. Stick to what you know, guys.
p.p.s. The 'Headline includes word comma word' headlines are incredibly irritating as well.
OK genius, what would be acceptable monster designs for a game about a space marine getting sucked through a portal to hell?
How's it going back there in 1997?
A 400 hard disk that can only be used to play music is going to become ubiquitous? Riiight.
P.S. Thanks for ruining the PAL version of Ikaruga by not including a 60Hz mode, something that has been a de facto standard on Gamecube games since launch. And don't even get me started on Super Monkey Ball 2 and the numerous Sega GBA games you licensed for Western release and then sat on for several months. Stupid Infogrames.
I would pity you, but it would be a waste of effort.
Revulsion at Postal 2 isn't indicative of snobbery. It's indicative of consciousness.
The sooner exploitative shills like Running with Scissors are driven out of business the better for everyone.
Nobody? What a surprise...
Perhaps one of you incredibly prescient game critics can answer these questions:
1. What genre of game *would* be more suitable for adapting Fight Club?
2. Why is it assumed that an action game can't have a narrative component? (I guess Shenmue, Deus Ex et al didn't happen?) Because the press release concentrates on the action? I don't recall the trailers for the movie focussing on the anti-capitalism message.
Simple (non-legalese) answer: Because their software products are not games, so they aren't treading on anyone's toes.
Equally amazing are their Action Replay and Freeloader products for the GameCube, where they've actually reverse-engineered Nintendo's proprietary disc format.
This JunkTV sounds like a boon for Sony, as it will drum up interest in two PS2 peripherals (Eye Toy and Network Adapter) that as yet have only been adopted by a minority of PS2 owners (although a minority of 60+ million units is still a lot of users).
"I'm pretty sure a kid shouldn't be playing a game called "King Of Figthers" anyway."
And this is why people with little or no knowledge of games should not have authority over their content.
...or 'crap', for short.
I'm getting sick and tired of vacuous arts students plundering gaming's past in the most superficial and obvious ways possible. Attention: the 'witty' observations about the four NES games that were the last games you ever played have already occured to others. Please do not quote the Pac-Man quote again.
Perhaps one day someone will clue them in to the fact that constantly expounding a hopelessly limited and dated perception of games doesn't send out the message that they intend... much in the same way as wearing an Atari t-shirt acts as a good indicator that the wearer isn't qualified to make any kind of relevant observation about the medium.
We can conclude from this that MS did a very thorough job of burying Windows 2000, seeing as it isn't mentioned at all in the above.... and is the best Windows for gaming, way more stable than win9x, and doesn't carry half as much superfluous crap as XP.
"While actively jamming a cell-phone signal is illegal in the US, a distributor reports most of his sales go to US customers, including universities which use the technology to stop students from diddling away on phones during lectures."
Or you could, you know, *ask people to turn off their phones* at the start of the lecture/term.
They had grasped this concept when I was at university five years ago, I would be surprised if there were still pockets of the academic world who hadn't figured this out yet.
Most likely these supposed 'sales to universities' are just some marketing crap that the people selling these illegal and antisocial devices have cooked up to try and give themselves an air of legitimacy or acceptability.
The 'hilarious' Penny Arcade quote in the sig of the above post is the icing on the cake for me.
I don't think much of the N-Gage, but at least I'm capable of forming my own opinions.
"But in all seriousness, this is good news since the 7650 (same series 60 symbian OS) is a really cool looking and small phone and would benefit from this as well."
'Small' is not a word I'd ever imagined to see being used to describe the Nokia 7650.
Games are priced at a level the market dictates. (i.e. as high as consumers are able and willing to pay.) Average incomes are much lower in China than the other territories. Piracy is not the influential factor here. What's better for Sony and their content providers, to make a few (hundred) thousand legitimate sales and erode the argument that piracy and imports are the only way consumers in the territory can get the games, or let the pirates have their way and make no money there at all?
As to the story's assumption that Chinese consumers will just buy pirated games for their official PS2s, well, I suppose in many cases they will, but bear in mind that the Chinese region PS2 hardware will probably have different protection mechanisms, at the very least requiring new circumvention methods to be developed. And the officially released software is actually translated into Chinese, which is an additional incentive to go legit.
Buy a real graphics card.
"interoperable means that you are not allowed to play other console users; IE xbox players are not allowed to play ps2 users.
it does NOT mean that you are not allowed to make that game online for the other service/console."
Yes. That's exactly what I meant, which is why I used the word. Imbecile...
"Not a subscription fee-- but the platform vendor ALWAYS gets a cut of online gaming because the platform vendor is the one selling the network adapter."
The network adapter is a one-off payment though.
"I could be wrong here, but so far I know of no online-capable console that could allow multi-platform online play."
Yep, you're wrong. FFXI allows PS2 and PC players on the same server, for instance. The DC did it with Q3A.
" Its a shame that EA is so greedy. The market games for EA would go up if they agreed to microsofts terms."
EA may be greedy, but they're not stupid.
You realise of course that those terms include such third-party-friendly gems as 'you cannot host games on your own servers', 'all players must pay a subscription fee to the platform vendor', and 'you cannot make Xbox Live games interoperable with other platforms'?
Put yourself in EA's shoes. Would you sign a contract that meant you could never put Ultima X or Sims Online on the Xbox? Or that meant buyers of Xbox Madden 2005 were barred from playing against PS2, PC and GC owners? Only if you wanted to get fired very quickly.
If MS are ever going to make a dent in the console market, they need to learn what Sony figured out straight off the bat (and Nintendo struggled with in the N64 era): you must accomodate third party's needs, not try to impose self-serving terms on them. EA aren't exactly alone in steering clear of Live.
So some bandwidth provider accidentally stuck a site on a blacklist. And then it got fixed. Is there some important angle I'm missing here?
Don't tell me, because of this upset you missed meeting up with four thousand other bored office workers in a public place to do something 'wacky'? Boo freaking hoo.