Much easier to add 1000 points/week to the kid's account and let them stockpile points for things they want than have to have them run to you for each purchase. It's the same reason parents give kids the allowance, it let's them learn money management on their own through trial and error, instead of preaching parents.
One of the reasons I like Sony's PSN Store is that it uses local currency.
The kids can still stockpile "allowance" money, but they better recognize how it relates to the non-virtual allowance they get. I've even been toying with just giving them one regular allowance, and acting as banker for them to load up whatever they want/can afford into their PSN account.
They made those choices. It isn't simply more verbose because their are being dutiful in informing me. They are being verbose to discourage me from leaving. I object to the whole ordeal and the suspected motive.
Reminds me of how difficult it used to be to cancel AOL service.
I imagine with the Xbox marketplace people tend to make small purchases here and there, not a bunch of little purchases in the same day. So you prepay and the credit card transaction happens just once.
Okay, lets try a more related system then, Sony's PSN Store.
They have a minimum transaction fee of $5, so if you buy something small, then you'll sit with a credit, but if you are purchasing anything >=$5, you can pay the exact price.
No reason MS couldn't do the same thing, have a minimum transaction fee (in points maybe), but otherwise, you only buy what you need.
The ONLY reason for things being the way the are, is that MS gets to keep all of those little credits, and put invest them while you are waiting to decide what to buy with your points.
Anyone that has used Live to play games with friends for any length of time sees the value in it. You can cobble together a facsimile for PC that still misses out on the total integration that Live has. The PS3 and Wii dont' even come close as well.
I'll agree that Live! has the best integration, right now, out of any platform, however while Nintendo doesn't seem to see any problem with its cobbled together mess of "Friend Codes", Sony seems to be working hard to build up the infrastructure that the XBox 360 built up from experience with the original XBox Live! service.
To lump Sony with Nintendo's abysmal offering is an insult to what Sony actually offers.
Also, considering the leaps and bounds Sony has made updating their XMB in the past year, I wouldn't be surprised if their PSN was much more competitive with Live! over the coming year.
Too True. Especially since the new TiVos include MUCH bigger hard drives (the Series 3 can do ~180Hrs of Standard Def or ~20Hrs of Hi-Def) and they've turned on the External STAT port on the Series3 and TiVoHD that about double that. Thats a lot of movies and programming that is sitting around, waiting for you to watch it, whenever you want.
Not to mention the deal between AmazonUnbox and TiVo, and it essentially becomes a VOD box.
Want to watch an episode of Stargate:Atlantis you missed? Easy!
New episodes show up as available for purchase within ~2 days. Purchase the episode for $2. Set it to download to your TiVo, and it usually takes ~1 hour or so. Sans-Comercials. I've done it twice this season so far, and it worked wonderfully. When I'm done, I just delete it to clear up space. Yes, technically I could redownload it, but I doubt I will. On the other hand, its much cheaper than going to the movies.
Which is sad because there have been a few movies that came out from Paramount and Dreamworks that I would have happily bought if they had been available in Blu-Ray format.
Since I have a Blu-Ray player with my PS3, I see no reason to go out and purchase an HD-DVD player. I also see less reason to purchase DVDs when I have the option to purchase a higher quality transfer (and there is already more than enough stuff on cable already that I don't "Need" to buy it).
I doubt that I'm the only one who can count sales that Paramount and Dreamworks have both lost (along with Universal).
No. I just think Nintendo have done far more to make fun interesting games than Microsoft or Sony have. Plus I've never bought a music CD protected by a Nintendo rootkit or stayed up into the small hours reinstalling Nintendo Windows XP on a relative's PC because of viruses and spyware.:-)
I'm not sure about that, but Nintendo HAS done far more to pursue the casual game market than either MS or Sony has.
BTW, I've never bought a music CD protected by a Sony rootkit or stayed up into the small hours reinstalling MicroSoft's Windows XP on a relative's PC because of viruses and spyware.... I'd suggest better tastes in Music, and better education/prevention for the relative's PC.:)
Okay, so basically this article says that the PS3 is the most powerful and open console of this generation and people keep digging at Sony?
At this point its mostly meme. I tried the Wii again last Thanksgiving. Yeah both my nephews have one, but they also had a Gamecube so to them it was the logical extension, but I just don't see what all the hype was about.
The controls were sloppy and trying to use the Wii-mote as a pointer was painful as heck.
Yes, a good question. I want to know if those critical of Israel will do business with a country that ordered 6 month jail and 90 lashes to a rape victim for being in a car with non male relative, then upon appeal upped the lashes to 200 for talking to the media. A country that routinely seizes the Bibles at airports and shreds them. And so on. The truth is Israel gets a lot of flack while countries like Sudan which doesn't lift a finger to stop a genocide get a pass.
The enemies of the Sudanese don't have deep pockets filled from selling Oil to the West.
What is interesting to me, that no one seems to have brought up, is that the Court itself seems to have offered the opportunity for the Defendant to respond anonymously.
I don't think there would even be the consideration of something like this in the U.S. (not sure about other countries).
Slim PSP... $170 Manhunt 2 for the PSP... $30 Plane ticket to Miami... $300 Car Rental while in town... $200 Playing Manhunt 2 in the Gallery while Jack Tompson gets Disbarred... Priceless.
So, since you don't have to pay for packaging, a physical disc, or any manuals, inserts, or other crap, or any of the other stuff that goes with it (like royalties for artists, production costs for any of the above, silk printing), the games bought online are going to be a whole bunch cheaper, right?...Right?
Considering that most of the games that have come out on the PlayStation Network are around $5-$10, while the ones in the store run $30-$60, yeah, they already are, and probably will be a whole bunch cheaper.
The latest R&C is loads of fun (I've been playing it for the past week or so). It is probably the single best Single Player title out of the PS3 right now.
I'd also toss in that Warhawk is great multiplayer mayhem.
BD+ is just cracked. Regular BD has been cracked for a while. BD+ was an extra security measure added to BluRay "just in case" regular BD was cracked. If BD+ is properly cracked, it's game over for BluRay, just like it is already game over for HD DVD.
As an added note. The reason "Regular BD" and HD DVD are both already cracked, is that they both used the same protection scheme.
As you mentioned, BD+ was an additional Blu-Ray only protection scheme.
Of course, if BD+ is cracked, it doesn't mean it's "game over", only that people can now get either format, without worrying about having their media locked down (similar to how people NOW view DVDs).
Blockbuster already has the content via subscription model with their Blockbuster Online operation; TIVO has the pieces for d/l and storing content for TV viewing; and MS makes cell phone OS's so they are familiar with the loss leader hardware to sell services model.
BlockBuster is late to the party.
TiVo is rumored to have a deal with NetFlix, and they already have a deal in place with Amazon-UnBox (who also has a Windows based player).
Amazon is where I usually get the episode or two I miss due to technical reasons (cable channel changed without notice, news break-in).
At $2 a pop its reasonable enough for me and I enjoy watching TV on my TV, especially without commercials.
The fact that I can use my TiVo as the vehicle for this (along with all the usual features I am used to, FF,REW, Pause), is what finally sold me on this as a distribution mechanism.
The only team that competed last year, and the only team that came close to winning the Stage 1 this year, are led by a programmer and sponsored by nVidia, and people are complaining?:)
"The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth. The Geek Shall Inherit the Stars"
No because the other 5/6ths of the weight might be needed for things like a larger enclosed cabin for the crew, supplies, a moon rover, return storage (rocks, aliens, odd black monoliths).
In this case, its extra payload space/capacity that is unneeded in an Earth lander (within the definitions of the contest), but would be very useful in a Moon lander.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the reasons I like Sony's PSN Store is that it uses local currency.
The kids can still stockpile "allowance" money, but they better recognize how it relates to the non-virtual allowance they get. I've even been toying with just giving them one regular allowance, and acting as banker for them to load up whatever they want/can afford into their PSN account.
Reminds me of how difficult it used to be to cancel AOL service.
Okay, lets try a more related system then, Sony's PSN Store.
They have a minimum transaction fee of $5, so if you buy something small, then you'll sit with a credit, but if you are purchasing anything >=$5, you can pay the exact price.
No reason MS couldn't do the same thing, have a minimum transaction fee (in points maybe), but otherwise, you only buy what you need.
The ONLY reason for things being the way the are, is that MS gets to keep all of those little credits, and put invest them while you are waiting to decide what to buy with your points.
I'll agree that Live! has the best integration, right now, out of any platform, however while Nintendo doesn't seem to see any problem with its cobbled together mess of "Friend Codes", Sony seems to be working hard to build up the infrastructure that the XBox 360 built up from experience with the original XBox Live! service.
To lump Sony with Nintendo's abysmal offering is an insult to what Sony actually offers.
Also, considering the leaps and bounds Sony has made updating their XMB in the past year, I wouldn't be surprised if their PSN was much more competitive with Live! over the coming year.
Yes, its worth every penny I don't give MS.
Too True. Especially since the new TiVos include MUCH bigger hard drives (the Series 3 can do ~180Hrs of Standard Def or ~20Hrs of Hi-Def) and they've turned on the External STAT port on the Series3 and TiVoHD that about double that. Thats a lot of movies and programming that is sitting around, waiting for you to watch it, whenever you want.
Not to mention the deal between AmazonUnbox and TiVo, and it essentially becomes a VOD box.
Want to watch an episode of Stargate:Atlantis you missed? Easy!
New episodes show up as available for purchase within ~2 days.
Purchase the episode for $2.
Set it to download to your TiVo, and it usually takes ~1 hour or so. Sans-Comercials.
I've done it twice this season so far, and it worked wonderfully. When I'm done, I just delete it to clear up space. Yes, technically I could redownload it, but I doubt I will. On the other hand, its much cheaper than going to the movies.
Which is sad because there have been a few movies that came out from Paramount and Dreamworks that I would have happily bought if they had been available in Blu-Ray format.
Since I have a Blu-Ray player with my PS3, I see no reason to go out and purchase an HD-DVD player.
I also see less reason to purchase DVDs when I have the option to purchase a higher quality transfer (and there is already more than enough stuff on cable already that I don't "Need" to buy it).
I doubt that I'm the only one who can count sales that Paramount and Dreamworks have both lost (along with Universal).
That depends. Do you want to watch it Live/Streaming, or do you have a local device that will download/cache it for play?
For the later, yes, for the former, no way.
I'm not sure about that, but Nintendo HAS done far more to pursue the casual game market than either MS or Sony has.
BTW, I've never bought a music CD protected by a Sony rootkit or stayed up into the small hours reinstalling MicroSoft's Windows XP on a relative's PC because of viruses and spyware.
ex.
Anyone with the above lines of code in their Perl scripts must immediately cease and desist their use of my Copyrighted material.
Okay, so basically this article says that the PS3 is the most powerful and open console of this generation and people keep digging at Sony?
At this point its mostly meme. I tried the Wii again last Thanksgiving. Yeah both my nephews have one, but they also had a Gamecube so to them it was the logical extension, but I just don't see what all the hype was about.
The controls were sloppy and trying to use the Wii-mote as a pointer was painful as heck.
The enemies of the Sudanese don't have deep pockets filled from selling Oil to the West.
What is interesting to me, that no one seems to have brought up, is that the Court itself seems to have offered the opportunity for the Defendant to respond anonymously.
I don't think there would even be the consideration of something like this in the U.S. (not sure about other countries).
I was thinking more along the lines of:
... $170 ... $30 ... $300 ... $200 ... Priceless.
Slim PSP
Manhunt 2 for the PSP
Plane ticket to Miami
Car Rental while in town
Playing Manhunt 2 in the Gallery while Jack Tompson gets Disbarred
Considering that most of the games that have come out on the PlayStation Network are around $5-$10, while the ones in the store run $30-$60, yeah, they already are, and probably will be a whole bunch cheaper.
and what sort of receiver setup is needed?
You're a bit mixed up.
McGyver made a van out of carbon nanotubes and duct tape.
The A-Team used carbon nanotubes and a welding torch.
Since he's already left terrestrial radio, how long till we can get him to permanently leave Terra?
The latest R&C is loads of fun (I've been playing it for the past week or so). It is probably the single best Single Player title out of the PS3 right now.
I'd also toss in that Warhawk is great multiplayer mayhem.
MGS4 will sell just fine without it being the "Holiday Season".
We have therefore decided to push the release date back so as not to compete for people's money.
We will use the extra time to polish the game, since we have the time anyway.
As an added note. The reason "Regular BD" and HD DVD are both already cracked, is that they both used the same protection scheme.
As you mentioned, BD+ was an additional Blu-Ray only protection scheme.
Of course, if BD+ is cracked, it doesn't mean it's "game over", only that people can now get either format, without worrying about having their media locked down (similar to how people NOW view DVDs).
BlockBuster is late to the party.
TiVo is rumored to have a deal with NetFlix, and they already have a deal in place with Amazon-UnBox (who also has a Windows based player).
Amazon is where I usually get the episode or two I miss due to technical reasons (cable channel changed without notice, news break-in).
At $2 a pop its reasonable enough for me and I enjoy watching TV on my TV, especially without commercials.
The fact that I can use my TiVo as the vehicle for this (along with all the usual features I am used to, FF,REW, Pause), is what finally sold me on this as a distribution mechanism.
Exactly.
:)
The only team that competed last year, and the only team that came close to winning the Stage 1 this year, are led by a programmer and sponsored by nVidia, and people are complaining?
"The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth. The Geek Shall Inherit the Stars"
Exactly. Every race will have specification and restrictions of some sort.
I for one hope we get to the point of implementing the full IGPX/IGN ruleset sometime soon.
No because the other 5/6ths of the weight might be needed for things like a larger enclosed cabin for the crew, supplies, a moon rover, return storage (rocks, aliens, odd black monoliths).
In this case, its extra payload space/capacity that is unneeded in an Earth lander (within the definitions of the contest), but would be very useful in a Moon lander.