Nokia are of course going to jump all over something like this, seeing as they make a staggeringly huge profit on their own-brand batteries and peripherals.
It's like third party PlayStation memory cards - maybe some really cheap ones are unreliable, but Sony would have you believe that in 99% of cases if it doesn't have an official logo then it'll burn down your house.
(P.S. You can put your phone into *analog* mode?! Maybe you should get a camera peripheral to share your cave paintings with friends.;)
Insert Credit does occasionally sound like it's written by a team of Lucas Barton clones trying to outsmart each other, but it's still entertaining.
Which is more than can be said of GameGirlAdvance, GameForms, Ludology, Buzzcut, and all the other chinstroking, poloneck-wearing arseholes who have never played a game properly and can't write.
Yes, you can make objective statements about whether a game contains X or Y in certain amounts, but you can't put a number on whether it's fun, or imaginative, or addictive, or whatever.
The best a reviewer can do is put across their take on the game and try to give the reader some contextual information (have you played X? Do you like the genre? Do you find this feature annoying on general principle?) to give them some idea as to whether they're likely to reach the same conclusion.
They're not reviewing toasters or pieces of hardware where you can make a clear cut objective analysis.
Okay, let's see what insightful comments a bunch of high school kids have to grace us with today.
"Nintendo is kiddie!!!1"
"Teh Xbox is big!!!1"
"Sony liek hype!!!1"
A shame they didn't think of evaluating the ACTUAL GAMES available for each of the machines, or how they've performed commercially in the three main territories. Or failing that, tried to be funny.
Not entirely sure why this is newsworthy, as professionally-run, sponsored LAN events have been breaking the 1,000 user mark for years now. The main difference I can see with this one is that there are a larger number of sponsors allowing the ticket price to be lower.
I'm confused. Where in intellectual property law does it say that copyrights and trademarks are only valid if the property in question is still "current and successful"?
I can understand people getting the wrong end of the stick, and thinking that this is some kind of DMCA issue (it rather looks like IDSA just sling out vague cease-and-desists on the off-chance of catching the occasional ROM site), but trying to argue the guy's innocence by devising some fantastical, subjective version of How Copyright Law Should Be is spectacularly stupid.
I don't understand how restricting the sale of violent videogames to minors has to be jumped on as a 'freedom of speech' issue. It seems to me that taking this tack plays into the hands of the industry's representative (read: lobbying) bodies, who do not necessarily have the best interests of the development community (let alone society at large) at heart (read: they'd sell their grandmothers for a quick buck).
Aiming violent games at kids (even in an indirect way) may be profitable but it's a guaranteed way to ensure that video games (the medium as a whole- as casual observers do not make distinctions between good and bad) continue to be viewed as cynically exploitative and not worthy of the same standard of intellectual appraisal as other media. This perception is more of a handicap to the medium's evolution than any number of vague retail laws.
What we need now is a reward that recognises functionality and efficiency. Ive/Apple's designs wouldn't even be shortlisted for such a thing.
The original iMac was hailed (by some) as a 'design classic'. Surely if this were actually the case, it would have had a lifespan of longer than five years?
So... one bunch of no-talent hacks tried to poke fun at another bunch of no-talent hacks using someone else's intellectual property.
So their legal fees will be just one more thing that they can beg for money for, along with the livelyhood they sponge off of humourless, fanart-quality web comics. Sad.
That's correct, Sony and Nintendo have fewer titles on their systems with online support at this time. But then they're not promoting online gaming as some kind of revolution. And neither party needs to bet the farm on online gaming, they are happy to let content providers drive their efforts forward when they see there is actual consumer demand.
Oh, and Sony have sold far more PS2 online kits (with little promotion) than MS have sold Xbox Live kits (but conversely, a greater proportion of the smaller Xbox user base have bought online kits).
Xbox Live was intended to be the unique selling point of the Xbox. Microsoft assumed that their competitors would be to slow (and lacking in experience) to get behind online gaming, and therefore that they could dictate terms to third party publishers and consumers. (In short, that they could own online console gaming -in market terms- in the way Sony own traditional console gaming.)
There were two flaws in this plan. The first is that the Xbox, even after having more money thrown at it than Mike Tyson, still hasn't reached a decent level of market penetration. (Why develop an online game that can only ever expect a much smaller users base than one on the PC or PS2?) It was DOA (and I'm not talking volleyball;) in Japan, and struggling in Europe.
The second is that Sony and Nintendo are using open systems for online gaming, which are much more attractive to third party publishers (because they don't have to share a one-size-fits-all subscription system with the platform vendor, plus about a million other reasons, e.g. cross platform games are allowed).
So in short, Microsoft were caught with their pants down again, because they didn't take into account the fact that they'd have to compete.
Please refer to the surrounding 200+ posts for variations of the same idiotic, luddite American bleating about how 'cellphones' are SO EVIL.
You're pathetic. What the fuck are you doing using a computer, let alone reading Slashdot, if you think useful, accessible and empowering advancements in technology should be scorned and feared?
Guess what guys? We've heard your fascinating anecdotes about how some lady in the grocery in Buttpoke, OH was shouting into her phone about the tins of tuna she was buying. Because you've been bleating about it like whining, inept little pissants since about 1994. Get over it. Mobile phones are here to stay, the more you carp about them the more of an inconvenient, unemployable, fat annoyance you will be seen as by the rest of the world.
...designed by and for out-of-touch, braying, soulless marketing cretins. I hope it dies on its arse like Microsoft Bob.
"Unlike Bob, however, threedegrees has been created and tweaked by the same kinds of people who will use it."
I'm-so-wacky corporate freaks? Guess what you jackasses, instant messanging already provides all the functionality you describe with none of the empty-headed bullshit!
I for one will not be validating the pathetic excretions of these creativity-free oxygen thieves with my attention or CPU cycles.
This entire concept manages to be far more offensive to my sensibilities than the most devious of DRM plots. There's nothing worse than greedy suits pretending to be 'down with the kidz': Just look at J Allard.
Dragon's Lair was an interesting technical experiment without a game attached, from a time when such mistakes could be more easily forgiven (because no one had made them before). The fact that the developers of the game have continued to flog the same pretty but gameless dead horse for the following 20 years (Dragon's Lair and its equally non-interactive ilk tainting every platform from the 3DO to the Game Boy) strikes me as an unprecedented marathon of creative bankrupcy.
Interesting how nostalgia can be based entirely on looks. (Myst- another tedious waste of polyurethane and aluminium- has a similarly inexplicable cult following.)
Although I expect this will fall on deaf ears, I would prefer if anonymous/. users would refrain from reposting my writing verbatim. Go abuse someone else's copyright, freak.
Why are Reuters printing a description of EA's offices and an extended press release as news?
Why are Slashdot reprinting it? (Oh right, it's supposedly a games story, so up to/.'s usual standard of gaming reportage, i.e. crap.)
Thought provoking? Hardly. Perhaps a mention of the growing number of classic developers EA have bought and sucked dry (Bullfrog, Origin, Maxis, next stop Westwood) that have paid for these fancy offices would be in order?
Don't forget to include the $500 million that they spent in marketing the machine before and during the launch period. Which was spent slightly more wisely than Sega used to, but not by much.
Whether MS decide to continue pouring money into the xbox black hole is entirely there business, what we should really be focussing on is their SOLE reason for developing* the machine in the first place (as covered by the Takahashi book mentioned above): to hurt Sony. The consumer gets zero attention (despite 'J' Allard's effusive and wholly transparent protestations to the contrary) and the results are abundantly clear in the end product- expensive, all-things-to-all-men, with a paucity of worthwhile original content, and an online system that is little more than a honey trap for the more greedy and myopic publishers.
There is certainly money to be made from the Xbox for somebody, but it seemingly has bugger all other use.
*if you can call such a sloppy, frankensteinian hack-job 'developing'
"Incompatible with some sites built for Internet Explorer"
It's strange that I've not managed to find a site that Mozilla can't render correctly for the last six months or so. Do C|Net's reviews get to use a different version or something?
Any commercial website that does not operate correctly on non-IE browsers is cutting a swathe out of its customer base. This is why you will be hard pushed to find any. It really is that simple.
Beyond its skins and pop-up-killing abilities, however, Mozilla 1.0 doesn't do much more for the average Web surfer than Internet Explorer does.
A strange complaint, when these two features alone massively enhance the usability of the product. I simply cannot use IE anymore, rather like the majority of apps that last had any new meaningful features added circa 1996. The Mozilla Organisation at least seems to value the end user over the Spam/Web-advertising lobby, unlike some.
As for CNET: It's sad that these people call themselves journalists. Oh well.
Woo, a slagging match where the Xbox-zealot describes Nintendo games as 'kiddie'. Which immediately rules out him having played or appreciated any of them. (As for the 'same old Mario' comment- care to name another game franchise that spearheaded as significant a technological leap as Mario World --> Mario 64? Hmm? Thought not.)
Xbox is tanking outside of North America. Even though this in itself is no judgement on the quality of the machine's games (as we all know the Dreamcast had a stellar library but sold poorly), sadly the Xbox doesn't have the games to pull it through. I see magazines making a great deal of noise about Xbox titles that would hardly be a big deal if released during the previous console generation. The price cuts just add to the atmosphere of desperation, MS making a last ditch effort to keep the machine from oblivion.
Looks like you backed the wrong horse, unless you like sports franchises. And thousands of... less discerning... gamers do. Don't be ashamed.
Slashdot Mirror
Nokia are of course going to jump all over something like this, seeing as they make a staggeringly huge profit on their own-brand batteries and peripherals.
;)
It's like third party PlayStation memory cards - maybe some really cheap ones are unreliable, but Sony would have you believe that in 99% of cases if it doesn't have an official logo then it'll burn down your house.
(P.S. You can put your phone into *analog* mode?! Maybe you should get a camera peripheral to share your cave paintings with friends.
Insert Credit does occasionally sound like it's written by a team of Lucas Barton clones trying to outsmart each other, but it's still entertaining.
Which is more than can be said of GameGirlAdvance, GameForms, Ludology, Buzzcut, and all the other chinstroking, poloneck-wearing arseholes who have never played a game properly and can't write.
You don't get it.
Yes, you can make objective statements about whether a game contains X or Y in certain amounts, but you can't put a number on whether it's fun, or imaginative, or addictive, or whatever.
The best a reviewer can do is put across their take on the game and try to give the reader some contextual information (have you played X? Do you like the genre? Do you find this feature annoying on general principle?) to give them some idea as to whether they're likely to reach the same conclusion.
They're not reviewing toasters or pieces of hardware where you can make a clear cut objective analysis.
"Nintendo is kiddie!!!1"
"Teh Xbox is big!!!1"
"Sony liek hype!!!1"
A shame they didn't think of evaluating the ACTUAL GAMES available for each of the machines, or how they've performed commercially in the three main territories. Or failing that, tried to be funny.
At least the domain name was accurate.
Not entirely sure why this is newsworthy, as professionally-run, sponsored LAN events have been breaking the 1,000 user mark for years now. The main difference I can see with this one is that there are a larger number of sponsors allowing the ticket price to be lower.
The Tom's Hardware article is pure advertorial.
I'm confused. Where in intellectual property law does it say that copyrights and trademarks are only valid if the property in question is still "current and successful"?
I can understand people getting the wrong end of the stick, and thinking that this is some kind of DMCA issue (it rather looks like IDSA just sling out vague cease-and-desists on the off-chance of catching the occasional ROM site), but trying to argue the guy's innocence by devising some fantastical, subjective version of How Copyright Law Should Be is spectacularly stupid.
OK: Please show me a counterfeit GameCube game.
In HK, organised piracy is rife for PS2 and Xbox titles, but non-existant for the GC. Hardly what I would call shooting oneself in the foot.
I don't understand how restricting the sale of violent videogames to minors has to be jumped on as a 'freedom of speech' issue. It seems to me that taking this tack plays into the hands of the industry's representative (read: lobbying) bodies, who do not necessarily have the best interests of the development community (let alone society at large) at heart (read: they'd sell their grandmothers for a quick buck).
Aiming violent games at kids (even in an indirect way) may be profitable but it's a guaranteed way to ensure that video games (the medium as a whole- as casual observers do not make distinctions between good and bad) continue to be viewed as cynically exploitative and not worthy of the same standard of intellectual appraisal as other media. This perception is more of a handicap to the medium's evolution than any number of vague retail laws.
What we need now is a reward that recognises functionality and efficiency. Ive/Apple's designs wouldn't even be shortlisted for such a thing.
The original iMac was hailed (by some) as a 'design classic'. Surely if this were actually the case, it would have had a lifespan of longer than five years?
http://news.gametab.com/files/wolfet.exe.torrent
I haven't tried it yet, so download at your own risk.
So... one bunch of no-talent hacks tried to poke fun at another bunch of no-talent hacks using someone else's intellectual property.
So their legal fees will be just one more thing that they can beg for money for, along with the livelyhood they sponge off of humourless, fanart-quality web comics. Sad.
Oh, and Sony have sold far more PS2 online kits (with little promotion) than MS have sold Xbox Live kits (but conversely, a greater proportion of the smaller Xbox user base have bought online kits).
There were two flaws in this plan. The first is that the Xbox, even after having more money thrown at it than Mike Tyson, still hasn't reached a decent level of market penetration. (Why develop an online game that can only ever expect a much smaller users base than one on the PC or PS2?) It was DOA (and I'm not talking volleyball ;) in Japan, and struggling in Europe.
The second is that Sony and Nintendo are using open systems for online gaming, which are much more attractive to third party publishers (because they don't have to share a one-size-fits-all subscription system with the platform vendor, plus about a million other reasons, e.g. cross platform games are allowed).
So in short, Microsoft were caught with their pants down again, because they didn't take into account the fact that they'd have to compete.
'Lucky Wander Boy'? 'Araki Itachi'? Nostalgia instead of appreciation? Oh... just, *cringe*
Please refer to the surrounding 200+ posts for variations of the same idiotic, luddite American bleating about how 'cellphones' are SO EVIL.
You're pathetic. What the fuck are you doing using a computer, let alone reading Slashdot, if you think useful, accessible and empowering advancements in technology should be scorned and feared?
Guess what guys? We've heard your fascinating anecdotes about how some lady in the grocery in Buttpoke, OH was shouting into her phone about the tins of tuna she was buying. Because you've been bleating about it like whining, inept little pissants since about 1994. Get over it. Mobile phones are here to stay, the more you carp about them the more of an inconvenient, unemployable, fat annoyance you will be seen as by the rest of the world.
...designed by and for out-of-touch, braying, soulless marketing cretins. I hope it dies on its arse like Microsoft Bob.
"Unlike Bob, however, threedegrees has been created and tweaked by the same kinds of people who will use it."
I'm-so-wacky corporate freaks? Guess what you jackasses, instant messanging already provides all the functionality you describe with none of the empty-headed bullshit!
I for one will not be validating the pathetic excretions of these creativity-free oxygen thieves with my attention or CPU cycles.
This entire concept manages to be far more offensive to my sensibilities than the most devious of DRM plots. There's nothing worse than greedy suits pretending to be 'down with the kidz': Just look at J Allard.
Dragon's Lair was an interesting technical experiment without a game attached, from a time when such mistakes could be more easily forgiven (because no one had made them before). The fact that the developers of the game have continued to flog the same pretty but gameless dead horse for the following 20 years (Dragon's Lair and its equally non-interactive ilk tainting every platform from the 3DO to the Game Boy) strikes me as an unprecedented marathon of creative bankrupcy.
Interesting how nostalgia can be based entirely on looks. (Myst- another tedious waste of polyurethane and aluminium- has a similarly inexplicable cult following.)
Although I expect this will fall on deaf ears, I would prefer if anonymous /. users would refrain from reposting my writing verbatim. Go abuse someone else's copyright, freak.
6 42 6
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=124
The most shameful game that I think most gamers can think of right now would have to be Acclaim's paean to adolescent stupidity, BMX XXX.
Presumably Gamespy have stuck with prehistoric titles to avoid offending any of their advertisers.
Another topic features mobile phones, another 5,000 Americans who don't have them yet bitching about how phone users are so 'uncouth'.
Chill out guys. You'll get a working phone network and SMS one day. Phones won't seem so scary and out of the ordinary then.
Until then of course it's incredibly funny reading supposedly tech-savvy people whining about (not really all that new) technology.
Why are Slashdot reprinting it? (Oh right, it's supposedly a games story, so up to
Thought provoking? Hardly. Perhaps a mention of the growing number of classic developers EA have bought and sucked dry (Bullfrog, Origin, Maxis, next stop Westwood) that have paid for these fancy offices would be in order?
Surely the headline for this item should be "Hudson Soft make first ever announcement that has nothing to do with Bomberman"? =)
Don't forget to include the $500 million that they spent in marketing the machine before and during the launch period. Which was spent slightly more wisely than Sega used to, but not by much.
Whether MS decide to continue pouring money into the xbox black hole is entirely there business, what we should really be focussing on is their SOLE reason for developing* the machine in the first place (as covered by the Takahashi book mentioned above): to hurt Sony. The consumer gets zero attention (despite 'J' Allard's effusive and wholly transparent protestations to the contrary) and the results are abundantly clear in the end product- expensive, all-things-to-all-men, with a paucity of worthwhile original content, and an online system that is little more than a honey trap for the more greedy and myopic publishers.
There is certainly money to be made from the Xbox for somebody, but it seemingly has bugger all other use.
*if you can call such a sloppy, frankensteinian hack-job 'developing'
It's strange that I've not managed to find a site that Mozilla can't render correctly for the last six months or so. Do C|Net's reviews get to use a different version or something?
Any commercial website that does not operate correctly on non-IE browsers is cutting a swathe out of its customer base. This is why you will be hard pushed to find any. It really is that simple.
Beyond its skins and pop-up-killing abilities, however, Mozilla 1.0 doesn't do much more for the average Web surfer than Internet Explorer does.
A strange complaint, when these two features alone massively enhance the usability of the product. I simply cannot use IE anymore, rather like the majority of apps that last had any new meaningful features added circa 1996. The Mozilla Organisation at least seems to value the end user over the Spam/Web-advertising lobby, unlike some.
As for CNET: It's sad that these people call themselves journalists. Oh well.
Woo, a slagging match where the Xbox-zealot describes Nintendo games as 'kiddie'. Which immediately rules out him having played or appreciated any of them. (As for the 'same old Mario' comment- care to name another game franchise that spearheaded as significant a technological leap as Mario World --> Mario 64? Hmm? Thought not.)
Xbox is tanking outside of North America. Even though this in itself is no judgement on the quality of the machine's games (as we all know the Dreamcast had a stellar library but sold poorly), sadly the Xbox doesn't have the games to pull it through. I see magazines making a great deal of noise about Xbox titles that would hardly be a big deal if released during the previous console generation. The price cuts just add to the atmosphere of desperation, MS making a last ditch effort to keep the machine from oblivion.
Looks like you backed the wrong horse, unless you like sports franchises. And thousands of... less discerning... gamers do. Don't be ashamed.