1) Just upping the resolution doesn't mean much. If all the textures are still designed for 640x480, the image quality doesn't get better and of course the disk space used doesn't go up. Quake 2 didn't have anywhere near the level of detail of today's games - it was designed when having 2 texture units was considered high end, wasn't it? 2) Compression. PC games are decompressed from a CD/DVD to a hard drive. Console games are generally streamed from the disk during play, limiting the amount of compression that can be used.
it's about having up to 1080p movies built into the game;
I was hoping that the power of the next-gen consoles would mean developers finally stop using cut-scene movies and do everything in the game engine. Why waste disk space on movie files when doing it with the game engine is smaller and better for immersion?
There are several email addresses forwarding to that one, one of which was openly available in a public directory at a university for years and gets a lot of spam. A lot of the spam was directed towards aliases I used to subscribe to FOSS project mailing lists, interestingly.
That was what I meant by indirect costs of spam, having to worry about where your email is published.
With a well-trained Spamassassin filter, Postfix's UCE controls and Mail.app's junk filtering, about 10-20 spam a day made it into my inbox, out of maybe 300-400 total. I just switched to my ISP's servers with their filters instead and I see about the same numbers.
The annoying thing is not so much the direct effects of spam as the indirect things like the fact that I can't use a wildcard address because it will be bombarded with dictionary attacks, or the possibility of false positives.
You make a good point. But unless import/export is perfect, doesn't the disadvantage of using a limited web-based tool all the time to edit outweigh the advantage of occasionally being able to work on another computer?
Also, the internet connection is the single least reliable part of most people's computer setup.
While that is true for many things, isn't part of the reason the rate of technological change these days? It doesn't matter to a consumer if their iPod only lasts three years if they can buy a new one with twice the battery life and capacity anyway. It's the same with computers, mobile phones etc.
Its mainstream status has nothing to do with it: WoW was the first MMORPG I played and my free month ran out yesterday, I'm hardly an MMORPG elitist.
It's just a mindless game and I have a stack of much better games to play. I play other RPGs (Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia etc) because they have story, puzzles and an interesting world. WoW replaces all that with mob hunting using a fairly dull combat system. In a way I think it's sad that so many people are paying so much money to feed an addiction to "the next ding".
I have to agree. I played 30 hours of WoW (level 20 hunter, level 8 Warlock) after reading so much about it. It finally dawned on me that it wasn't going to get any more interesting and that 7 million people really do like playing a game where your time is split between watching your avatar on auto-run and mindlessly pressing the same sequence of buttons hour after hour. It is addictive in that there always appears to be something more exciting round the next corner, but as a game it's terrible.
IIRC from the days when I was a subscriber, Sky One is almost entirely American content, with a very little, poor quality, British stuff squeezed in between - it's owned by Rupert "Fox Channel" Murdoch. It's the same with a lot of 'British' TV: More4 even shows The Daily Show for some bizarre reason.
That does seem logical - presumably people buy more games when their console is new (got to have something to play on that shiny new thing). Anybody have any figures on attach rates over console lifetimes?
Exactly. Selling 6 million PS3s gives Sony a large install base to wave around in PR, attract developers with and earn licensing fees from. Far worse would be to sell only 500,000 consoles or something: that would destroy Sony's revenue stream and the Playstation brand as well.
Agreed, I would never think of trying to switch a Windows user to Ubuntu in one go, you'd be bound to cause more problems than you solved. Hardware incompatibilities, the fact that they can't install any of the commercial software they see at PCWorld, they are bound to have some trouble with a website or file someone sends them at some point etc. Much better to let them switch gradually through Windows FOSS.
Come on, I bet if you split the past two decades up into two or three year 'ages', the fraction of great, good, mediocre and crap games would be fairly constant.
I wouldn't call this a golden age, but things certainly aren't as bad as some people make out. Apart from anything else, sequels aren't always a bad thing (Pikmin 2, for example).
Madden will die when American Football dies. People clearly want football games: EA only releases every year because people keep buying it. Should EA refuse that profit so that they can make games that don't sell as well?
I think trying to classify something as large as the games industry into "sucks" and "doesn't suck", or to trying to define a "golden age" just isn't possible.
Looking back, things always seem better because you tend to remember the good bits more than the mediocre. There are some really great games out there. Sure, there are lots of sequels and generic FPSs, but you don't have to play them.
I would imagine that Nintendo has amassed a large amount of data about console price elasticity, game attach rates over console lifetimes etc. and set the Wii price to maximise their profit.
Metroid Prime 3 isn't on the Japanese launch list, unfortunately. It's still not a bad list, as long as Red Steel is reasonable and Elebits is as much fun as it looks.
Looking at the summary here and here, the pictures seem to indicate that the Wii doesn't ship with a Nunchuk attachment in the box, it's sold seperately for 1,800 Yen. That seems a bit odd, given how many games we've seen that use it. Can anybody who reads Japanese clarify that?
I have to say the rest of the demonstration looks pretty impressive, though.
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Several reasons:
1) Just upping the resolution doesn't mean much. If all the textures are still designed for 640x480, the image quality doesn't get better and of course the disk space used doesn't go up. Quake 2 didn't have anywhere near the level of detail of today's games - it was designed when having 2 texture units was considered high end, wasn't it?
2) Compression. PC games are decompressed from a CD/DVD to a hard drive. Console games are generally streamed from the disk during play, limiting the amount of compression that can be used.
it's about having up to 1080p movies built into the game;
I was hoping that the power of the next-gen consoles would mean developers finally stop using cut-scene movies and do everything in the game engine. Why waste disk space on movie files when doing it with the game engine is smaller and better for immersion?
There are several email addresses forwarding to that one, one of which was openly available in a public directory at a university for years and gets a lot of spam. A lot of the spam was directed towards aliases I used to subscribe to FOSS project mailing lists, interestingly.
That was what I meant by indirect costs of spam, having to worry about where your email is published.
My old local pub quiz in London was always full of teams using mobiles to cheat anyway, I doubt this will make it worse.
With a well-trained Spamassassin filter, Postfix's UCE controls and Mail.app's junk filtering, about 10-20 spam a day made it into my inbox, out of maybe 300-400 total. I just switched to my ISP's servers with their filters instead and I see about the same numbers.
The annoying thing is not so much the direct effects of spam as the indirect things like the fact that I can't use a wildcard address because it will be bombarded with dictionary attacks, or the possibility of false positives.
Maybe he was dictating?
Indeed - haven't Nintendo been saying how well Wii production is going and that they have millions more units ready for launch than they expected?
That said, I still pre-ordered my Wii at the weekend (UK). Just like I pre-ordered my DS Lite. I'm a born-again fanboy, I can't help it.
You make a good point. But unless import/export is perfect, doesn't the disadvantage of using a limited web-based tool all the time to edit outweigh the advantage of occasionally being able to work on another computer?
Also, the internet connection is the single least reliable part of most people's computer setup.
I see a lot of women in my local GAME shop, but that's a mainstream chain - I think the shop the blog is about is a smaller independent store.
While that is true for many things, isn't part of the reason the rate of technological change these days? It doesn't matter to a consumer if their iPod only lasts three years if they can buy a new one with twice the battery life and capacity anyway. It's the same with computers, mobile phones etc.
Its mainstream status has nothing to do with it: WoW was the first MMORPG I played and my free month ran out yesterday, I'm hardly an MMORPG elitist.
It's just a mindless game and I have a stack of much better games to play. I play other RPGs (Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia etc) because they have story, puzzles and an interesting world. WoW replaces all that with mob hunting using a fairly dull combat system. In a way I think it's sad that so many people are paying so much money to feed an addiction to "the next ding".
I have to agree. I played 30 hours of WoW (level 20 hunter, level 8 Warlock) after reading so much about it. It finally dawned on me that it wasn't going to get any more interesting and that 7 million people really do like playing a game where your time is split between watching your avatar on auto-run and mindlessly pressing the same sequence of buttons hour after hour. It is addictive in that there always appears to be something more exciting round the next corner, but as a game it's terrible.
IIRC from the days when I was a subscriber, Sky One is almost entirely American content, with a very little, poor quality, British stuff squeezed in between - it's owned by Rupert "Fox Channel" Murdoch. It's the same with a lot of 'British' TV: More4 even shows The Daily Show for some bizarre reason.
That does seem logical - presumably people buy more games when their console is new (got to have something to play on that shiny new thing). Anybody have any figures on attach rates over console lifetimes?
Exactly. Selling 6 million PS3s gives Sony a large install base to wave around in PR, attract developers with and earn licensing fees from. Far worse would be to sell only 500,000 consoles or something: that would destroy Sony's revenue stream and the Playstation brand as well.
Agreed, I would never think of trying to switch a Windows user to Ubuntu in one go, you'd be bound to cause more problems than you solved. Hardware incompatibilities, the fact that they can't install any of the commercial software they see at PCWorld, they are bound to have some trouble with a website or file someone sends them at some point etc. Much better to let them switch gradually through Windows FOSS.
Does the 360 even have the fill rate available to do 1080p with a decent amount of textures and effects?
Come on, I bet if you split the past two decades up into two or three year 'ages', the fraction of great, good, mediocre and crap games would be fairly constant.
I wouldn't call this a golden age, but things certainly aren't as bad as some people make out. Apart from anything else, sequels aren't always a bad thing (Pikmin 2, for example).
but, for Christ's sake, when will it die?
Madden will die when American Football dies. People clearly want football games: EA only releases every year because people keep buying it. Should EA refuse that profit so that they can make games that don't sell as well?
I think trying to classify something as large as the games industry into "sucks" and "doesn't suck", or to trying to define a "golden age" just isn't possible.
Looking back, things always seem better because you tend to remember the good bits more than the mediocre. There are some really great games out there. Sure, there are lots of sequels and generic FPSs, but you don't have to play them.
and the average gas mileage of a new, light-duty vehicle was 21 mpg.
Clearly no one in the US really cares about gas prices that much.
I would imagine that Nintendo has amassed a large amount of data about console price elasticity, game attach rates over console lifetimes etc. and set the Wii price to maximise their profit.
I'd rather have 576p at 60Hz than 480p at 60Hz, given the choice.
Metroid Prime 3 isn't on the Japanese launch list, unfortunately. It's still not a bad list, as long as Red Steel is reasonable and Elebits is as much fun as it looks.
Looking at the summary here and here, the pictures seem to indicate that the Wii doesn't ship with a Nunchuk attachment in the box, it's sold seperately for 1,800 Yen. That seems a bit odd, given how many games we've seen that use it. Can anybody who reads Japanese clarify that?
I have to say the rest of the demonstration looks pretty impressive, though.