This is exactly what happens. The guy isn't getting brand new 360s every time - he's always getting someone else's problem unit which hasn't had the core problem fixed yet.
My 360 worked fine until my DVD drive stopped working. I sent it off for replacement. The new one I have locks up at least once a day, and after it does, I have to completely power it off *and* switch controllers, as the old one will power the console on, but it will not sync with it. Also, the replacement Xbox had some markings on the casing, and it was louder than my old one (though not excrutiatingly so).
They really would do better to just fix the problem permanently in production, and then start sending out brand new retail units, to help avoid the churn. The more time people spend away from their 360s, the less they'll spend on games and the marketplace.
And while we're at it, I wish they would just get the fuck over their "not invented here" syndrome and adopt Apple's model of iTunes DRM for the Marketplace downloads. Is playing offline really too much to ask for when my console goes tits-up?
I'm counting the days that this thing goes before it finally RRODs on me, and considering that I keep it in immaculate condition (open-air shelving, nothing on top of it, horizontal, I don't fucking move it ever, let alone when there's a game in it), nobody had better fucking tell me that the failure was my fault.
I can understand there being a ton of excitement over this thing, since it's supposed to do to cellphones what the iPod did to MP3 players.
HOWEVER...
The current state of cellphone service in the US is such that 90% of existing cellular users will not be able to buy this phone, because only a small handful of users will be nearing the end of their existing contracts. Furthermore, the high price of this phone is going to dissuade some people that were on the fence already. Furthermore...Cingular isn't exactly a shining beacon of customer service these days, and their presence in some markets is outright laughable.
I just really don't see how they can expect a lines-around-buildings type of launch for this thing except in a few urban areas in high-profile stores.
Am I interested in the iPhone? You better believe it.
Agreed 100%. Stunt Race FX was a great game for its time. Ninety-Nine Nights was no gem, to be sure, but it wasn't horribly bad either. I wouldn't have finished Inphyy's campaign if it was that bad - I'd have just returned it. I think perhaps the gaming world just overhyped it because it came from Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Instead of being an "average" Dynasty Warriors clone, it was obviously horrible because it came with such high expectations.
...is that they will start taking multiple sets of photographs in the same locations on each street, and then splicing or otherwise removing the people present in the photos.
This was never meant to be an exercise in snooping on people, though it has turned into an artistic representation of real life.
Not that I would consider Flickr to be "cutting edge of technology"...but I think the poster may be indicating that he thinks Yahoo should be blocking China, not the other way around.
Cingular offers reasonably cheap "all you can eat" data plans. I think it's like $20 a month. That's sort of what the intended use of this thing is, so I'd be very surprised if they let someone out of the store without up-selling them to that plan, as it really is intended to run with or without the WiFi, and you'd be a fool to buy one without a data plan.
Monkey Island 3 predicted that Monkey Island 4 would be in 3D, with the option in the Options Menu of activating the "super deluxe 3D mode". Escape From Monkey Island had a similar option which enabled online play.
I just had an idea. It sounds great, which probably means it's awful.
If the duration of a patent is 20 years for a single individual, why not state that the 20 years applies to all people involved in the project, but must be divided amongst them? If a five-man team at a university develops something, give them four years. If a division of a company with 25 people directly involved in a project create some new tech, give them just shy of a year. Include the management that directly oversaw the project, and anyone that attached their names to the patent - if they're really that valuable to the project, then they should be named.
Patent inventions are so miniscule these days that they really shouldn't be active more than a couple of years anyway, but this allows the "little man" the flexibility he needs to compete with the big companies.
Also, make patents non-transferable. You can't suddenly say "I didn't invent that, he did, go pay him." You can license your patent to someone (exclusively if you feel the need to do so) and let him do something with it, but the ability to innovate should not be taken away.
"Illegal file sharing" muddies up the water just as badly. It may be qualifying the term "file sharing", but continually using it paired with "illegal" will make the two synonymous.
Remember that and always ask for both the CIR and MIR when talking to a sales person. If they will not specify a CIR (or don't know what it is), RUN, don't walk for the nearest exit.
What country do you live in where the prices are like that and they use those terms? I've never heard of CIR or MIR, though I obviously recognize the principles they apply to.
Also, I'd say "good luck" to trying to prove that your minimum downstream dropped under 512k, unless you're downloading something directly from your ISP in the middle of the night and the rest of the city is out of power.
It's not hosted, and it never was, except in the Phantasy Star games and Final Fantasy XI. I like Live a lot, but you do have to admit that all the smoke and mirrors about "paying for good servers" is really lame when it's just a peering service like Battle.net.
Unlike the other reply, I'll try to actually help you out here.
What this statement means is that the reporter wants to know if Rockstar might stipulate that GTA IV for the 360 requires the hard disk, meaning that instead of potentially inhibiting the game by designing around a lack of hard disk, they would require the hard disk and simply require Core owners to buy one if they don't have one already. Rockstar has not made any indication about that.
The hard disk is standard in the PS3, so that's a known quantity on the PS3. It isn't required to play almost all the games on a 360 (the only ones I know of that require it are FFXI and the Halo 3 beta, and Halo 3 probably only requires it since the beta content is too big to be stored on a memory card). I don't have any real numbers but anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of Core 360s in the wild without a hard disk attached is very low. Considering the price of the HDD versus the memory card ($100 for 20 GB versus $40 for 0.05 GB), requiring the 360 to have a hard disk would not be an onerous burden for most gamers, I would think.
Add Final Fantasy XI to that list. Square may make the development decisions, but they're partnered with Sony, and Sony provides the game management role, server/network administration, and customer support. Some of this is done under Square's name, but Sony is doing most of the back-end work here.
Considering the business I've seen in the Baton Rouge one in the three times I've been there, it's surprising to me that they're keeping that one open. For pity's sake, there's a Best Buy right down the mall access road which gets at least five times the traffic, even after the Millerville store opened up.
Where did you get confirmation that these two were surviving?
It's worse than that. I've recently encountered a similar problem with MSN - I'm using Windows Live Messenger at work, and I've noticed a conflict between the UI style and over 15 years of expected behavior in Windows. I double-click the MSN buddy icon in the upper-left corner of a chat window, and find out that it's not actually a window icon in the traditional sense - it's a drawn element of the title bar, and so the window maximizes. If there was no icon in that corner, I wouldn't have tried it, but it's of similar proportion and nearly the same size as most window icons, so it contrasts all the previous Windows behavior since back in the days of 3.0!
I own a PSP, and think the analog stick/nub works just fine. I'm not convinced that you've used the PSP first-hand - I don't have a problem moving the nub from, as you say, W to WNW to NW. The analog nub gives me enough fine control in 'GTA: Liberty City Stories' to weave my car through traffic jams at speed. Likewise, I can make distant headshots in 'Star Wars: Battlefront II', which isn't exactly easy. Platforming in 'Daxter' works great.
Sure, you need to get used to the analog nub, but it's basically a new controller so you would expect that. At least, I did.
And yeah, I do use the PSP for web browsing. I do it every day. I have bookmarks to visit my local weather, view the mobile version of slashdot [slashdot.org], read the news [bbc.co.uk], keep up with my favorite project [freedos.org], etc. I also visit graphics-heavy sites on the PSP, but tend to avoid it because the screen size makes sites that use lots of graphics difficult to read. But IMDB, Wikipedia, and other "average" sites work just fine. When I'm not playing games on the PSP, I'll usually keep it near the TV so my wife & I can look up things in IMDB ("Who is that actor/actress? Looks familiar."), So, what's wrong with the PSP browser?
Aside from memory/speed issues in the PSP browser, nothing is inherently wrong with it. I've used it quite a bit at night while lying in bed, and once or twice on IMDB as well.;) It's pretty convenient for that sort of thing.
What I'm referring to is that I've had a frustrating time trying to use the nub to move the cursor around. Try to make a smooth circular motion with it - it's rather difficult. And it's not just my PSP - I actually own two of them, and it works like this on both.
The reason you wouldn't see this behavior in GTA is because you don't use up and down very much on GTA when you're driving - you only do when you're walking. I literally get chills when I'm walking on a dock in Portland Docks because one slight mistake with the nub and I'm sleepin' with the fishes. When I'm driving and just having to make left/right motions, you're right, it works pretty fine.
It's possible that the control itself provides more granular control than the web browser is willing to admit. The cursor only has two speeds in the web browser, but I don't recall only having two speeds of walking in GTA. I have had some times when I've been trying to drive and I've put the wheel to the stops because I *just* passed the middle-region where it seems like it goes from "small movement" to "large movement".
And I'll be honest - I traded in Battlefront II without playing it because I had read the reviews beforehand, and the game was given to me as a gift.
Rock solid defect free hardware - compared to the nightmare failure rate Microsoft still has going on with the 360.Really? I've seen a pair of them at a UPS Store being shipped back to Sony. I've also read reports from people back in December being told not to expect replacements for two months. Of course, I would assume that this estimate has since been revised, what with supply and all...
Absolutely silent operation - bravo Sony engineering!
Ah, yes...Sony engineering, which also gave us the Square button on the PSP and told us that we were wrong for not liking it. Also, the analog nub on the PSP freaking sucks. I'm glad there's only one, because the one that's there isn't very sensitive at all. You try making a circular motion with it sometime - it doesn't work. There are two speeds possible with it (all the way out and part of the way out), and the angular refinement is pretty shoddy. It's very hard to go from, for example, W to WNW to NW. You'll generally skip straight over WNW. Ever try web-browsing on the thing?
BluRay has won the format war with only a couple months after the PS3 release BluRay already outselling the dying HD-DVD format 3-1. And one of the remaining HD-DVD studios just jumped ship to BluRay today. Pretty much all that remains is for Universal to throw in the towel.
Nice for you not to provide a link here where you did everywhere else. Also, describing this as a format war is like calling the Falkland Islands War a war. The remaining 99.99% of the world didn't even notice it was happening. Also, Sony dumping its crappy back-catalog of movies into Blu-Ray, causing a large chunk of new titles to be made available, is not what I call winning - it's what I call "stacking the deck". Despite it's apparent capacity advantage, Blu-Ray is getting lower marks in the picture quality department, which, if you weren't keeping track, is kind of important to the people willing to drop $2000+ on a TV and $500+ on a high-def DVD player.
PS3 has the top selling game in Japan now - Japan will be a fierce battle between Sony and Nintendo. Nintendo really needs to work on their release schedule. Wii owners are getting restless as the novelty of games like Wii Sports is wearing off.
"Top-selling" is hardly the way to put it. With over double the install base of the 360, it hasn't managed to come close to outselling Blue Dragon. Watch next week, as Virtua Fighter 5 drops back to the mid-20's, while Wii Sports and Wii Play continues to sell the same amount each week (which proves that the novelty isn't exactly wearing off).
No...RECENT previews are saying "Hey, this doesn't suck anymore". Early previews said it was complete and utter shit. Oh, and hey - that's the one the Japanese got! I'm sure they love the PS3!
The Playstation Network is cranking out all sorts of very cool indy games like Flow and GripShift and we are only a couple months into adding content.
No...the PlayStation Network is releasing a port of a Flash game that's been out for over a year, and another not-so-great Sony-first-party junker. Oh yeah - and the rubber ducky game.
The one issue with HD tvs and PS2/PS1 games has been fixed and PS3 owners have rock solid 99 percent backwards compatibility with the giant library of PS2 and PS1 games.
It's not 99%. Closer to 90%. Music games are still broken. Also, the "one issue" is actually two issues, one of which has been fixed. Ask a 720p-set owner if they're happy that they can't play in 1080i anymore.
Virtua Fighter just about to hit the shelves.
It did hit the shelves in Japan. It landed with a thud. See above.
GDC sounds like Sony is going to have some pretty big announcements with even more
"We have a hard drive, we have a commerce engine, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out we will have that on the network very shortly."
Define "very shortly". The PSP was supposed to have this functionality for music over a *year* ago. It's been delayed so many times that I think people have largely forgotten about it. Sony was always talking about being able to use Sony Connect to purchase music and possibly videos on/for the PSP (in order to posture the PSP as a competitor to the iPod), but that clearly has not yet taken place. Why should the PS3 be any different?
"About 40" sounds suspiciously like it's trying to be greater than 30, which is known to be the current number of Virtual Console titles available at the Wii's launch. Naturally, this quote is also designed to demean the Wii by decrying some of our old favorite games as "ghetto'ed". And it is released "coincidentally" right after Nintendo's announcement of said titles.
Quit promising the moon, Sony, and just deliver a fucking console already.
Karma bedamned, I have to kinda agree. I had E.T. and it wasn't that bad. I laugh every time I see people bashing it, and there's certainly good reason to do so, like how Atari made more cartridges than there were 2600 units in homes, because the game would be so awesome as to require people to buy consoles to have the game.
Everyone always talks about the pits, but I never really had a problem getting out of them. I wonder what kind of awesome skills I might have repressed inside me for playing UT if I had this special ability to escape pits that nobody else had.
I'm tired of companies charging me yet again [wikipedia.org] for games that I already own; I mean I already have two [gamefaqs.com] copies [gamefaqs.com] of Super Mario World, two [gamefaqs.com] copies [gamefaqs.com] of Super Mario 64, and three [gamefaqs.com] fricking [gamefaqs.com] copies [gamefaqs.com] of The Legend of Zelda and for only 23 more dollars, I can play them all on one console. Hooray for shovelware.
And I'm tired of people complaining because they're being loyal consumers and failing to restrain their own wallets. Your N64 copy of Super Mario 64 probably still works. I don't know why you felt the need to buy another one. If you're hung up about the new levels and mini-games, then sell your old version first and put it toward the price, or factor it into the cost of the game. You already have SM64, therefore the value of SM64DS is strictly based on the new levels, the multiplayer, and the minigames. Is that worth $30 (or less used) to you?
It's not like i am bold enough There's just something about this part of the message that seems like it's trying to tell me something. I just don't really know what.
Indeed, something is rotten in the states of Louisiana, South Dakota, Mississippi, New Jersey... all states with gambling in poor areas.
Don't talk about things you don't know about.
In Mississippi, the vast majority of the casinos were put up on the coast in the more populated areas of the region. I suppose you could say that they're the "poor areas" now that the entire coast has been bushwhacked, but no - there are *WAY* poorer areas than Biloxi, which was probably the fourth or fifth largest city in the state before the casinos, and before Katrina, was easily second. Most of the "large cities" in MS are such because of the existence of an installation or university keeping them that size. Biloxi/Gulfport has only had Keesler AFB and the Seabee training center. The casinos in Vicksburg are of reasonable proximity to Jackson and Monroe, LA. The city basically wouldn't exist without the US Army Corps of Engineers research station, so obviously the existence of the 4 casinos in Vicksburg is due to Jackson and Monroe, but Vicksburg isn't exactly "poor" either (again, because of the research station). The only "Indian" casinos I know of are in Pearl (and it's turned out to be a nice inland resort type of place) and Tunica.
Now then, in Louisiana...where are the casinos? Let's see...Baton Rouge? Check. New Orleans? Check. Shreveport? Check. Hmm. Those are all big cities.
Now, does that mean that NIMBY doesn't apply here? No, it still definitely does. The reason Mississippi voted its casinos to all be dockside was so as to keep them out of Jackson. Of course, Jackson has the Ross Barnett Reservoir where something like that could go (if they could fit two barges in Pearl, they could do it in the reservoir), but that area is pretty much the most affluent suburb of Jackson, so there's no way anyone would allow that. And as far as Baton Rouge goes...well, I've been here over a year, and I know there are casinos here, but I have no idea where they are. I'm sure they're on the river, but I've driven on the highway that runs the river on the way to Angola, and I haven't seen them. So yeah, they're probably not in a great part of town either.
At least as far as Mississippi goes, you're way off the mark. Yeah, they've definitely "rigged" the legislation, but it's not as sinister as it looks.
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This is exactly what happens. The guy isn't getting brand new 360s every time - he's always getting someone else's problem unit which hasn't had the core problem fixed yet.
My 360 worked fine until my DVD drive stopped working. I sent it off for replacement. The new one I have locks up at least once a day, and after it does, I have to completely power it off *and* switch controllers, as the old one will power the console on, but it will not sync with it. Also, the replacement Xbox had some markings on the casing, and it was louder than my old one (though not excrutiatingly so).
They really would do better to just fix the problem permanently in production, and then start sending out brand new retail units, to help avoid the churn. The more time people spend away from their 360s, the less they'll spend on games and the marketplace.
And while we're at it, I wish they would just get the fuck over their "not invented here" syndrome and adopt Apple's model of iTunes DRM for the Marketplace downloads. Is playing offline really too much to ask for when my console goes tits-up?
I'm counting the days that this thing goes before it finally RRODs on me, and considering that I keep it in immaculate condition (open-air shelving, nothing on top of it, horizontal, I don't fucking move it ever, let alone when there's a game in it), nobody had better fucking tell me that the failure was my fault.
I can understand there being a ton of excitement over this thing, since it's supposed to do to cellphones what the iPod did to MP3 players.
HOWEVER...
The current state of cellphone service in the US is such that 90% of existing cellular users will not be able to buy this phone, because only a small handful of users will be nearing the end of their existing contracts. Furthermore, the high price of this phone is going to dissuade some people that were on the fence already. Furthermore...Cingular isn't exactly a shining beacon of customer service these days, and their presence in some markets is outright laughable.
I just really don't see how they can expect a lines-around-buildings type of launch for this thing except in a few urban areas in high-profile stores.
Am I interested in the iPhone? You better believe it.
Am I prepared to get one? Absolutely not.
Agreed 100%. Stunt Race FX was a great game for its time. Ninety-Nine Nights was no gem, to be sure, but it wasn't horribly bad either. I wouldn't have finished Inphyy's campaign if it was that bad - I'd have just returned it. I think perhaps the gaming world just overhyped it because it came from Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Instead of being an "average" Dynasty Warriors clone, it was obviously horrible because it came with such high expectations.
...is that they will start taking multiple sets of photographs in the same locations on each street, and then splicing or otherwise removing the people present in the photos.
This was never meant to be an exercise in snooping on people, though it has turned into an artistic representation of real life.
Not that I would consider Flickr to be "cutting edge of technology"...but I think the poster may be indicating that he thinks Yahoo should be blocking China, not the other way around.
Cingular offers reasonably cheap "all you can eat" data plans. I think it's like $20 a month. That's sort of what the intended use of this thing is, so I'd be very surprised if they let someone out of the store without up-selling them to that plan, as it really is intended to run with or without the WiFi, and you'd be a fool to buy one without a data plan.
Monkey Island 3 predicted that Monkey Island 4 would be in 3D, with the option in the Options Menu of activating the "super deluxe 3D mode". Escape From Monkey Island had a similar option which enabled online play.
I just had an idea. It sounds great, which probably means it's awful.
If the duration of a patent is 20 years for a single individual, why not state that the 20 years applies to all people involved in the project, but must be divided amongst them? If a five-man team at a university develops something, give them four years. If a division of a company with 25 people directly involved in a project create some new tech, give them just shy of a year. Include the management that directly oversaw the project, and anyone that attached their names to the patent - if they're really that valuable to the project, then they should be named.
Patent inventions are so miniscule these days that they really shouldn't be active more than a couple of years anyway, but this allows the "little man" the flexibility he needs to compete with the big companies.
Also, make patents non-transferable. You can't suddenly say "I didn't invent that, he did, go pay him." You can license your patent to someone (exclusively if you feel the need to do so) and let him do something with it, but the ability to innovate should not be taken away.
"Illegal file sharing" muddies up the water just as badly. It may be qualifying the term "file sharing", but continually using it paired with "illegal" will make the two synonymous.
Remember that and always ask for both the CIR and MIR when talking to a sales person. If they will not specify a CIR (or don't know what it is), RUN, don't walk for the nearest exit.
What country do you live in where the prices are like that and they use those terms? I've never heard of CIR or MIR, though I obviously recognize the principles they apply to.
Also, I'd say "good luck" to trying to prove that your minimum downstream dropped under 512k, unless you're downloading something directly from your ISP in the middle of the night and the rest of the city is out of power.
It's not hosted, and it never was, except in the Phantasy Star games and Final Fantasy XI. I like Live a lot, but you do have to admit that all the smoke and mirrors about "paying for good servers" is really lame when it's just a peering service like Battle.net.
Unlike the other reply, I'll try to actually help you out here.
What this statement means is that the reporter wants to know if Rockstar might stipulate that GTA IV for the 360 requires the hard disk, meaning that instead of potentially inhibiting the game by designing around a lack of hard disk, they would require the hard disk and simply require Core owners to buy one if they don't have one already. Rockstar has not made any indication about that.
The hard disk is standard in the PS3, so that's a known quantity on the PS3. It isn't required to play almost all the games on a 360 (the only ones I know of that require it are FFXI and the Halo 3 beta, and Halo 3 probably only requires it since the beta content is too big to be stored on a memory card). I don't have any real numbers but anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of Core 360s in the wild without a hard disk attached is very low. Considering the price of the HDD versus the memory card ($100 for 20 GB versus $40 for 0.05 GB), requiring the 360 to have a hard disk would not be an onerous burden for most gamers, I would think.
Add Final Fantasy XI to that list. Square may make the development decisions, but they're partnered with Sony, and Sony provides the game management role, server/network administration, and customer support. Some of this is done under Square's name, but Sony is doing most of the back-end work here.
The audio subsystem on the DS isn't much better than the GBA, to be honest. Neither of them hold a candle to the SPC-700.
Considering the business I've seen in the Baton Rouge one in the three times I've been there, it's surprising to me that they're keeping that one open. For pity's sake, there's a Best Buy right down the mall access road which gets at least five times the traffic, even after the Millerville store opened up.
Where did you get confirmation that these two were surviving?
It's worse than that. I've recently encountered a similar problem with MSN - I'm using Windows Live Messenger at work, and I've noticed a conflict between the UI style and over 15 years of expected behavior in Windows. I double-click the MSN buddy icon in the upper-left corner of a chat window, and find out that it's not actually a window icon in the traditional sense - it's a drawn element of the title bar, and so the window maximizes. If there was no icon in that corner, I wouldn't have tried it, but it's of similar proportion and nearly the same size as most window icons, so it contrasts all the previous Windows behavior since back in the days of 3.0!
I own a PSP, and think the analog stick/nub works just fine. I'm not convinced that you've used the PSP first-hand - I don't have a problem moving the nub from, as you say, W to WNW to NW. The analog nub gives me enough fine control in 'GTA: Liberty City Stories' to weave my car through traffic jams at speed. Likewise, I can make distant headshots in 'Star Wars: Battlefront II', which isn't exactly easy. Platforming in 'Daxter' works great.
;) It's pretty convenient for that sort of thing.
Sure, you need to get used to the analog nub, but it's basically a new controller so you would expect that. At least, I did.
And yeah, I do use the PSP for web browsing. I do it every day. I have bookmarks to visit my local weather, view the mobile version of slashdot [slashdot.org], read the news [bbc.co.uk], keep up with my favorite project [freedos.org], etc. I also visit graphics-heavy sites on the PSP, but tend to avoid it because the screen size makes sites that use lots of graphics difficult to read. But IMDB, Wikipedia, and other "average" sites work just fine. When I'm not playing games on the PSP, I'll usually keep it near the TV so my wife & I can look up things in IMDB ("Who is that actor/actress? Looks familiar."), So, what's wrong with the PSP browser?
Aside from memory/speed issues in the PSP browser, nothing is inherently wrong with it. I've used it quite a bit at night while lying in bed, and once or twice on IMDB as well.
What I'm referring to is that I've had a frustrating time trying to use the nub to move the cursor around. Try to make a smooth circular motion with it - it's rather difficult. And it's not just my PSP - I actually own two of them, and it works like this on both.
The reason you wouldn't see this behavior in GTA is because you don't use up and down very much on GTA when you're driving - you only do when you're walking. I literally get chills when I'm walking on a dock in Portland Docks because one slight mistake with the nub and I'm sleepin' with the fishes. When I'm driving and just having to make left/right motions, you're right, it works pretty fine.
It's possible that the control itself provides more granular control than the web browser is willing to admit. The cursor only has two speeds in the web browser, but I don't recall only having two speeds of walking in GTA. I have had some times when I've been trying to drive and I've put the wheel to the stops because I *just* passed the middle-region where it seems like it goes from "small movement" to "large movement".
And I'll be honest - I traded in Battlefront II without playing it because I had read the reviews beforehand, and the game was given to me as a gift.
Rock solid defect free hardware - compared to the nightmare failure rate Microsoft still has going on with the 360.Really? I've seen a pair of them at a UPS Store being shipped back to Sony. I've also read reports from people back in December being told not to expect replacements for two months. Of course, I would assume that this estimate has since been revised, what with supply and all...
Absolutely silent operation - bravo Sony engineering!
Ah, yes...Sony engineering, which also gave us the Square button on the PSP and told us that we were wrong for not liking it. Also, the analog nub on the PSP freaking sucks. I'm glad there's only one, because the one that's there isn't very sensitive at all. You try making a circular motion with it sometime - it doesn't work. There are two speeds possible with it (all the way out and part of the way out), and the angular refinement is pretty shoddy. It's very hard to go from, for example, W to WNW to NW. You'll generally skip straight over WNW. Ever try web-browsing on the thing?
BluRay has won the format war with only a couple months after the PS3 release BluRay already outselling the dying HD-DVD format 3-1. And one of the remaining HD-DVD studios just jumped ship to BluRay today. Pretty much all that remains is for Universal to throw in the towel.
Nice for you not to provide a link here where you did everywhere else. Also, describing this as a format war is like calling the Falkland Islands War a war. The remaining 99.99% of the world didn't even notice it was happening. Also, Sony dumping its crappy back-catalog of movies into Blu-Ray, causing a large chunk of new titles to be made available, is not what I call winning - it's what I call "stacking the deck". Despite it's apparent capacity advantage, Blu-Ray is getting lower marks in the picture quality department, which, if you weren't keeping track, is kind of important to the people willing to drop $2000+ on a TV and $500+ on a high-def DVD player.
PS3 has the top selling game in Japan now - Japan will be a fierce battle between Sony and Nintendo. Nintendo really needs to work on their release schedule. Wii owners are getting restless as the novelty of games like Wii Sports is wearing off.
"Top-selling" is hardly the way to put it. With over double the install base of the 360, it hasn't managed to come close to outselling Blue Dragon. Watch next week, as Virtua Fighter 5 drops back to the mid-20's, while Wii Sports and Wii Play continues to sell the same amount each week (which proves that the novelty isn't exactly wearing off).
Early previews are going gaga over Motorstorm with another online win for Sony with another completely lagfree game.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1103341 [hardforum.com]
No...RECENT previews are saying "Hey, this doesn't suck anymore". Early previews said it was complete and utter shit. Oh, and hey - that's the one the Japanese got! I'm sure they love the PS3!
The Playstation Network is cranking out all sorts of very cool indy games like Flow and GripShift and we are only a couple months into adding content.
No...the PlayStation Network is releasing a port of a Flash game that's been out for over a year, and another not-so-great Sony-first-party junker. Oh yeah - and the rubber ducky game.
The one issue with HD tvs and PS2/PS1 games has been fixed and PS3 owners have rock solid 99 percent backwards compatibility with the giant library of PS2 and PS1 games.
It's not 99%. Closer to 90%. Music games are still broken. Also, the "one issue" is actually two issues, one of which has been fixed. Ask a 720p-set owner if they're happy that they can't play in 1080i anymore.
Virtua Fighter just about to hit the shelves.
It did hit the shelves in Japan. It landed with a thud. See above.
GDC sounds like Sony is going to have some pretty big announcements with even more
"We have a hard drive, we have a commerce engine, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out we will have that on the network very shortly."
Define "very shortly". The PSP was supposed to have this functionality for music over a *year* ago. It's been delayed so many times that I think people have largely forgotten about it. Sony was always talking about being able to use Sony Connect to purchase music and possibly videos on/for the PSP (in order to posture the PSP as a competitor to the iPod), but that clearly has not yet taken place. Why should the PS3 be any different?
"About 40" sounds suspiciously like it's trying to be greater than 30, which is known to be the current number of Virtual Console titles available at the Wii's launch. Naturally, this quote is also designed to demean the Wii by decrying some of our old favorite games as "ghetto'ed". And it is released "coincidentally" right after Nintendo's announcement of said titles.
Quit promising the moon, Sony, and just deliver a fucking console already.
They're launching both. It's just that the US isn't good enough for Bomberman '94 (yet).
Karma bedamned, I have to kinda agree. I had E.T. and it wasn't that bad. I laugh every time I see people bashing it, and there's certainly good reason to do so, like how Atari made more cartridges than there were 2600 units in homes, because the game would be so awesome as to require people to buy consoles to have the game.
Everyone always talks about the pits, but I never really had a problem getting out of them. I wonder what kind of awesome skills I might have repressed inside me for playing UT if I had this special ability to escape pits that nobody else had.
I'm tired of companies charging me yet again [wikipedia.org] for games that I already own; I mean I already have two [gamefaqs.com] copies [gamefaqs.com] of Super Mario World, two [gamefaqs.com] copies [gamefaqs.com] of Super Mario 64, and three [gamefaqs.com] fricking [gamefaqs.com] copies [gamefaqs.com] of The Legend of Zelda and for only 23 more dollars, I can play them all on one console. Hooray for shovelware.
And I'm tired of people complaining because they're being loyal consumers and failing to restrain their own wallets. Your N64 copy of Super Mario 64 probably still works. I don't know why you felt the need to buy another one. If you're hung up about the new levels and mini-games, then sell your old version first and put it toward the price, or factor it into the cost of the game. You already have SM64, therefore the value of SM64DS is strictly based on the new levels, the multiplayer, and the minigames. Is that worth $30 (or less used) to you?
No?
Then quit whining.
It's not like i am bold enough
There's just something about this part of the message that seems like it's trying to tell me something. I just don't really know what.
Indeed, something is rotten in the states of Louisiana, South Dakota, Mississippi, New Jersey ... all states with gambling in poor areas.
Don't talk about things you don't know about.
In Mississippi, the vast majority of the casinos were put up on the coast in the more populated areas of the region. I suppose you could say that they're the "poor areas" now that the entire coast has been bushwhacked, but no - there are *WAY* poorer areas than Biloxi, which was probably the fourth or fifth largest city in the state before the casinos, and before Katrina, was easily second. Most of the "large cities" in MS are such because of the existence of an installation or university keeping them that size. Biloxi/Gulfport has only had Keesler AFB and the Seabee training center. The casinos in Vicksburg are of reasonable proximity to Jackson and Monroe, LA. The city basically wouldn't exist without the US Army Corps of Engineers research station, so obviously the existence of the 4 casinos in Vicksburg is due to Jackson and Monroe, but Vicksburg isn't exactly "poor" either (again, because of the research station). The only "Indian" casinos I know of are in Pearl (and it's turned out to be a nice inland resort type of place) and Tunica.
Now then, in Louisiana...where are the casinos? Let's see...Baton Rouge? Check. New Orleans? Check. Shreveport? Check. Hmm. Those are all big cities.
Now, does that mean that NIMBY doesn't apply here? No, it still definitely does. The reason Mississippi voted its casinos to all be dockside was so as to keep them out of Jackson. Of course, Jackson has the Ross Barnett Reservoir where something like that could go (if they could fit two barges in Pearl, they could do it in the reservoir), but that area is pretty much the most affluent suburb of Jackson, so there's no way anyone would allow that. And as far as Baton Rouge goes...well, I've been here over a year, and I know there are casinos here, but I have no idea where they are. I'm sure they're on the river, but I've driven on the highway that runs the river on the way to Angola, and I haven't seen them. So yeah, they're probably not in a great part of town either.
At least as far as Mississippi goes, you're way off the mark. Yeah, they've definitely "rigged" the legislation, but it's not as sinister as it looks.