Casual players won't pick up a 600 dollar console. Fanboys will have read Sony's interviews about them and will have lost respect for it.
No one has ever held onto the top spot for three console generations. They get too blinded by success, too afraid to take risks, and they lose it. I wish Sony the best of luck, as they have some great people working there, but I too will be on the sidelines until a game so great that it justifies the price comes along.
There are far more / less than 2 categories, unless your categories are "likely to like this game" and "unlikely to like this game." There are people with lots of time. People with little time. People with a mature view of that particular genre. People who are just picking up that genre for the first time. People who would be offended by sexuality in games. People who would be attracted by it. People who want to race virtual cars. People who want to shoot virtual guns. People who crave new and original designs. People who need familiar designs to feel comfortable playing. People who have to make sure the games their playing are girlfriend / boyfriend / child friendly. People who need a complex escape from a simple life. People who need a simple escape from a complex life.
The list goes on and on.
Quite frankly, if I hear another publisher say "yes, but how does your game draw in the casual gamer," I'm going straight to Capcom. What Does That Even Mean?
If we're going to ban dangerous forms of sexual imagery, can we please get rid of the starving anorexics in clothing advertisements inside of women's magazines? Your child is almost definitely not going to get killed from internet pornography, but they have a surprisingly high chance of developing an eating disorder thanks to this crap.
We do know that many violent burglars started with looking at violent movies.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to being a burglar then viewing this material can push him over that line.
We do know that many terrorists started with writing anti-US material.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to being a terrorist then writing this material can push him over that line.
We do know that many grotesquely obese people started with eating birthday cake.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to obesity then eating this material can push him over that line.
We do know that many unwanted pregnancies started with having sex.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to unwanted pregnancies then having sex can push him [her] over that line.
We do know that many logical fallacies started with associations rather than causal relationships.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to logical fallacies then looking for justifications for a particular answer rather than a correct answer can push him over that line.
My girlfriend and I have violent sex. And it's really good. And we like it. Just like practicing martial arts vs beating people up, there is nothing wrong with consentual alternative sexualities, just the non-consentual kind.
There is no reason to do anything for real if you can fake it in gaming. There is no reason to fully and accurately render a 3D scene if you can just make it a hand-painted image and agree not to move the camera. There is no reason to render the molecular behaviors of individual pieces of glass when a "shattered" texture would suffice. Mario doesn't obey the laws of physics.
And really, the only reason to raytrace is so that your artists don't need to make and optimize a million reflection and shadow maps... But they'll still have to make bump maps, normal maps, etc.
I'm talking about game complexity. I'm talking about things like coordinating 40 people for a complex battle, I'm talking about squaring off against other players. I'm talking about having a richly varied universe to play around in.
But certainly not all games. For a counter example, well just look at what is either on it's way to, or already the most profitable game of all time: World of Warcraft (pulling over $1 billion/year and rising). The game is anything but simple.
You're kidding, right? I mean, it's not tetris simple, but it's wander-from-place-to-place-kill-anything-that-move s-for-gold simple. It's certainly not 5,000 hours of gameplay complex, but most mid-90's offline RPG's rival it for actual complexity. Just look at the quest system.
WoW IS simplified from a lot of what is out there. That's why it took off.
Everyone always takes credit for developing the game. It's a cold-water shower the first time you see your publisher take credit for making the game you're slaving away at, but it's what happens every time. Likewise the developer will take full credit whenever possible for the success of a game, even though it may be deeply related to creative advertising and strokes of distribution genious by the publisher... not to mention them seeing the potential in the design and actually funding the thing. The developers will claim glory for the brilliant art, even though it was all outsourced. The publishers claim glory for online buzz, even though it was thanks to a funny fan video on YouTube. Listening to the presidents of both companies, you'd think they built the thing by hand themselves.
And when a game fails, it's because the other team didn't carry their weight.
It's not related to advertising. It's just S.O.P..
Vendor independance This can be achieved with closed source as well. I can choose a closed source OS from one vendor and any number of closed source applications from other vendors as well. Writing this in your requirements wouldn't rule out closed source software.
Actually, it does for platform. You can choose a closed source OS from one vendor, but you can never then choose a compatible closed source OS from another vendor, with the exception of DOS. So unless you're on an open source (or BSD-licensed) OS, you're vendor locked-in.
Now for software, what you're looking at is primarily file compatibility. And I agree that there are a lot of closed source office suites that have perfectly acceptable degrees of file compatibility. But except for the rare installation of Word Perfect, in practical terms you're talking about MS Office. And MS Office file format compatibility is legendarily bad and worth avoiding. But you've already ruled out Windows and OSX as available platforms, and there hasn't been a Word Perfect for Linux in years, so you're looking at free or open source applications anyway, or possibly Star Office which isn't a bad choice.
For e-mail clients you could go a lot worse than Outlook for future compatibility, but again, Windows has been ruled out due to vendor lock-in, so Outlook has been ruled out.
ability to control your own destiny This sounds like something from The Matrix. I'm not sure what you're trying to convey with this.
My sister has all of her old college papers on an OS6 mac floppy disk. Written in an early version of Symantec Greatworks. We've had some luck getting the disk to read on Windows machines, but we haven't found anything that will read any of the formatting / line breaks / etc... it looks like someone added random noise to every other line, and would take us forever to clean up by hand.
If she had written it on BSD and formatted it in LaTex, it would still be as usable today as it was ten years ago. I dread to think of how my MSWord docs from 6 years ago will age upon future OS changeovers.
possibility to independantly audit code Again, this doesn't rule out closed source software. Many vendors will provide licensed source code (Microsoft included).
Please. Try this. As a small school district in India, ask for MS's source code.
Could the best solution be 100% open source products? Absolutely. Could the best solution be a mixture of closed source and open source products? Absolutely. Could the best solution be 100% closed source products? Absolutely.
In theory, all of the above are correct. Again, though, realize that the Indian state IS making a call on what it thinks the best use of quite limited district funding is. And it thinks that moving away from proprietary file formats and software is important. Now, there is no replacement for Mathematica, or several other key pieces of software, but they probably realize that K-12 will never hit that software.
Governments make calls all the time on the best use of limited educational funds. This doesn't seem like the moral call that people are making it out to be, but rather a very practical decision about the current best way to meet the technological needs of a cash-strapped school system. And the day that closed source vendors start focusing on futureproofing their files and interoperability with other closed-source vendor software, that decision will be obsolete. But that day is a long way off.
I will say I'm just as in favor of getting rid of Microsoft as just about everyone around here...but considering that most businesses currently use MS Office, as well as a host of other MS products, that maybe the people in charge want to train the kids on what businesses actually use?
I hear this argument a lot. The counter argument is simply that if you learn one word processor, you're stuck, but if you've learned two word processors, you've learned them all. And if you need to use any partiular feature that isn't universal to them all, you'll need special training anyway.
Kids are using Windows at home. If they use Windows at school too, they'll grow up in a mono environment where there is only one way to do things. If, however, they use a different environment at school, they should become broad enough to deal with any computing environment, be it the next generation of Windows, OSX5, Solaris, or whatever OS is going to dethrone Windows down the road.
Windows is everywhere. Saying that you're going to teach Windows to kids is like saying you're going to teach them to use a television. They know that. Teach them something they can use when the environment changes.
Or someone can start giving USB drives to your employees, pose as a remote contractor over the phone and get a password, target a custom AIM virus/trojan, use a telescope through an open window, etc.
If you can't secure a wireless network to the point where there are much bigger security issues than someone attempting to wardrive it, you shouldn't be defining a company's construction plans.
The 5 employees were actually at the retail stores, not developers.
But it's still stupid. They're not accused of uploading anything, just downloading. It's not a stolen copy, it's a developer copy. They're going to have to sell this thing in a few weeks, and there aren't exactly any surprises in it.
The first time I assembled this computer, it didn't work. I unplugged all of the devices one at a time. Still didn't work. Set it to a minimum configuration that should work. Didn't work. I disassembled the computer entirely, to test it. The parts all worked fine in a different computer. I plugged everything back together, and it didn't work.
Long story short... there is one screw in the motherboard that if I tighten it down... the motherboard doesn't work. You can't believe how long it took to find one screw in a sea of possible errors.
Also, I used to have to put my PS1 up on frozen peas for it to work. It didn't like other frozen vegetables, just peas.
There are a lot of general inaccuracies and slants in the article, but the one that bothers most is saying that Spotlight is a rip off of Vista's search.
Apple's OS's have had the ability to do instantaneous system-wide searches since OS7. None of this "where is that MP3... wait... wait... wait... wait..."
Quite frankly, this will be the benefit of Vista search for most people: search quality equivalent to that of Apple 1993.
Similar to, say, the analog buttons that shipped with Street Fighter 1 to the arcades in the 80's?
Yeah, no prior art there.
BTW, the analog buttons don't get much use in gaming because they're really not that consistent. Sure, they may report a few hundred distinct pressure levels, but the best you're getting out of them at any accuracy level is "pushed really hard," and "tapped kinda light." This harks back to both implementation-on-a-budget problems, and the problem that people just don't pay that much attention to how hard they press buttons.
It's really too bad that Capcom has the habit of releasing games before they're done. Street Fighter Alpha was derided as being sloppy and unbalanced, with unfinished art requirements and not enough balancing time. But Street Fighter Alpha 2 was completely solid, and Alpha 3 was one of the best in the series. Likewise SFIII was an unfinished mess the first revision, but III 2 was actually good and III 3 was probably the most technical fighter released in years.
I've sparred with Booth in Turbo recently. His reflexes are still pretty darned sharp... he never stopped playing. I'd consider myself a top 1% player, but Booth is probably still one of the top 100 in the country.
We've nitpicked versions of Street Fighter 2 Turbo (or Hyper Fighting, or Turbo Hyper Fighting, or whatever you want to call it) in the past... comparing Turbo Duo / SNES / Genesis revs with the arcade, pads vs sticks, etc. This minutiae tuning is exactly the sort of thing he lives for in the game, and really does determine the difference between a clean control and a sloppy loss when playing with good players.
That having been said, he's basically right. The controller lag is noticeable even on single player... I'd estimate it at a full 10th of a second above the base arcade configuration. The Xbox D-pad is far too diagonal prone for this type of play. The shoulder buttons are even worse than the SNES shoulder buttons. I haven't had a chance to play online yet, but lag on any online game usually precludes tight fighting interfaces, especially as you speed up gameplay.
It's still a good game. And XBL arcade rocks. And he's picking it apart over things a new Street Fighter player might never even notice. But he's basically right.
Re:I welcome the exit, if true...
on
The End of E3?
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· Score: 1
If it weren't for the galvanizing effect of E3, I doubt many games would get finished. First you build a demo for a publisher. Then you make some progress, polish that up, and call it an E3 Demo. Then you slam a lot more content into it, make some last minute additions / polish, and release it to the public.
If it weren't for E3, way too much of the development cycle would take place pie-in-the-sky.
Not if the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA have their way,you won't. You'll RENT software, not own it, you'll pay-for-play music and video, and you will be THANKFUL for the privilege of doing so!
At this point, the RIAA needs to convince people that it's worth paying anything, let alone per-play. In this one particular situation we happen to have the power.
As a side note, you've really made me want to write a punch-card based MP3 player.
You won't lose your money if you invest in oil companies. You won't lose your money if you invest in tabacco companies. You wont lose your money if you invest in alcohol companies. You wont lose your money if you invest in surveillance companies.
"Yeah. You know that whole Watergate hotel thing you guys are investigating? I'm going to have to ask you to stop. New policy, you know. You got that memo, right? Great. So if you could just not look into that, that'd be great." - Nixon
We, in the US, never saw quite a few of the releases. For much the same reason - we are seen as too stupid. Later releases have been adjusted to meet both our markets.
Final Fantasy 7 was actually significantly improved for the US version. Not only were random enemy encounter rates cut to about 1/3rd what they were in the japanese version, but two insanely difficult "mega weapon" optional final bosses were added.
This was later released in Japan as Final Fantasy 7: international edition and proved incredibly popular as the Japanese were as sick of random enemy encounters as we were. Since then Square has released several "international" versions of Final Fantasy games back home in Japan, bringing the circle to a close.
Square had tried with Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest to create a "stepping stone" RPG for the American market, so that players unfamiliar with the conventions could be brought into the fold, then could buy the more complicated regular RPG's. The feeling was not "Americans are dumb" but that the games had evolved over thousands of titles to involve highly specialized skills, like fighting games. And those skills needed to be built up a bit before players would really buy and enjoy RPG's. Cartridges were not only expensive to manufacture, but data-hungry RPG's were far more expensive than most, and many companies lost their shirts trying to bring quirky japanese RPG's out in the US. Look at how Shining Force did here. Unfortunately Mystic Quest was terrible, and tanked badly. Fortunately Square took another chance with FFIII, and has brought out every Final Fantasy here since then.
And say what you will, RPG's are still not as popular here as they are in Japan. When a new major-title RPG is released in Japan, work comes to a standstill across the country. Here, only the hardcore even know the names of anything but Final Fantasy, let alone would camp out overnight to get one. I still haven't come across many people who have played Dragon Warrior for the PS2.
You could run around a 270-degree curve of hallway on level ground and not intersect the same bit of hallway you were travelling down before you hit the curve.
Slashdot Mirror
Good assessment:
Casual players won't pick up a 600 dollar console. Fanboys will have read Sony's interviews about them and will have lost respect for it.
No one has ever held onto the top spot for three console generations. They get too blinded by success, too afraid to take risks, and they lose it. I wish Sony the best of luck, as they have some great people working there, but I too will be on the sidelines until a game so great that it justifies the price comes along.
There are far more / less than 2 categories, unless your categories are "likely to like this game" and "unlikely to like this game." There are people with lots of time. People with little time. People with a mature view of that particular genre. People who are just picking up that genre for the first time. People who would be offended by sexuality in games. People who would be attracted by it. People who want to race virtual cars. People who want to shoot virtual guns. People who crave new and original designs. People who need familiar designs to feel comfortable playing. People who have to make sure the games their playing are girlfriend / boyfriend / child friendly. People who need a complex escape from a simple life. People who need a simple escape from a complex life.
The list goes on and on.
Quite frankly, if I hear another publisher say "yes, but how does your game draw in the casual gamer," I'm going straight to Capcom. What Does That Even Mean?
If we're going to ban dangerous forms of sexual imagery, can we please get rid of the starving anorexics in clothing advertisements inside of women's magazines? Your child is almost definitely not going to get killed from internet pornography, but they have a surprisingly high chance of developing an eating disorder thanks to this crap.
We do know that many violent burglars started with looking at violent movies.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to being a burglar then viewing this material can push him over that line.
We do know that many terrorists started with writing anti-US material.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to being a terrorist then writing this material can push him over that line.
We do know that many grotesquely obese people started with eating birthday cake.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to obesity then eating this material can push him over that line.
We do know that many unwanted pregnancies started with having sex.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to unwanted pregnancies then having sex can push him [her] over that line.
We do know that many logical fallacies started with associations rather than causal relationships.... I heard one shrink that made the argument that if you have someone that is predisposed to logical fallacies then looking for justifications for a particular answer rather than a correct answer can push him over that line.
My girlfriend and I have violent sex. And it's really good. And we like it. Just like practicing martial arts vs beating people up, there is nothing wrong with consentual alternative sexualities, just the non-consentual kind.
There is no reason to do anything for real if you can fake it in gaming. There is no reason to fully and accurately render a 3D scene if you can just make it a hand-painted image and agree not to move the camera. There is no reason to render the molecular behaviors of individual pieces of glass when a "shattered" texture would suffice. Mario doesn't obey the laws of physics.
And really, the only reason to raytrace is so that your artists don't need to make and optimize a million reflection and shadow maps... But they'll still have to make bump maps, normal maps, etc.
I'm talking about game complexity. I'm talking about things like coordinating 40 people for a complex battle, I'm talking about squaring off against other players. I'm talking about having a richly varied universe to play around in.
Fought in any MUD's lately?
But certainly not all games. For a counter example, well just look at what is either on it's way to, or already the most profitable game of all time: World of Warcraft (pulling over $1 billion/year and rising). The game is anything but simple.
e s-for-gold simple. It's certainly not 5,000 hours of gameplay complex, but most mid-90's offline RPG's rival it for actual complexity. Just look at the quest system.
You're kidding, right? I mean, it's not tetris simple, but it's wander-from-place-to-place-kill-anything-that-mov
WoW IS simplified from a lot of what is out there. That's why it took off.
Everyone always takes credit for developing the game. It's a cold-water shower the first time you see your publisher take credit for making the game you're slaving away at, but it's what happens every time. Likewise the developer will take full credit whenever possible for the success of a game, even though it may be deeply related to creative advertising and strokes of distribution genious by the publisher... not to mention them seeing the potential in the design and actually funding the thing. The developers will claim glory for the brilliant art, even though it was all outsourced. The publishers claim glory for online buzz, even though it was thanks to a funny fan video on YouTube. Listening to the presidents of both companies, you'd think they built the thing by hand themselves.
And when a game fails, it's because the other team didn't carry their weight.
It's not related to advertising. It's just S.O.P..
Vendor independance
This can be achieved with closed source as well. I can choose a closed source OS from one vendor and any number of closed source applications from other vendors as well. Writing this in your requirements wouldn't rule out closed source software.
Actually, it does for platform. You can choose a closed source OS from one vendor, but you can never then choose a compatible closed source OS from another vendor, with the exception of DOS. So unless you're on an open source (or BSD-licensed) OS, you're vendor locked-in.
Now for software, what you're looking at is primarily file compatibility. And I agree that there are a lot of closed source office suites that have perfectly acceptable degrees of file compatibility. But except for the rare installation of Word Perfect, in practical terms you're talking about MS Office. And MS Office file format compatibility is legendarily bad and worth avoiding. But you've already ruled out Windows and OSX as available platforms, and there hasn't been a Word Perfect for Linux in years, so you're looking at free or open source applications anyway, or possibly Star Office which isn't a bad choice.
For e-mail clients you could go a lot worse than Outlook for future compatibility, but again, Windows has been ruled out due to vendor lock-in, so Outlook has been ruled out.
ability to control your own destiny
This sounds like something from The Matrix. I'm not sure what you're trying to convey with this.
My sister has all of her old college papers on an OS6 mac floppy disk. Written in an early version of Symantec Greatworks. We've had some luck getting the disk to read on Windows machines, but we haven't found anything that will read any of the formatting / line breaks / etc... it looks like someone added random noise to every other line, and would take us forever to clean up by hand.
If she had written it on BSD and formatted it in LaTex, it would still be as usable today as it was ten years ago. I dread to think of how my MSWord docs from 6 years ago will age upon future OS changeovers.
possibility to independantly audit code
Again, this doesn't rule out closed source software. Many vendors will provide licensed source code (Microsoft included).
Please. Try this. As a small school district in India, ask for MS's source code.
Could the best solution be 100% open source products? Absolutely. Could the best solution be a mixture of closed source and open source products? Absolutely. Could the best solution be 100% closed source products? Absolutely.
In theory, all of the above are correct. Again, though, realize that the Indian state IS making a call on what it thinks the best use of quite limited district funding is. And it thinks that moving away from proprietary file formats and software is important. Now, there is no replacement for Mathematica, or several other key pieces of software, but they probably realize that K-12 will never hit that software.
Governments make calls all the time on the best use of limited educational funds. This doesn't seem like the moral call that people are making it out to be, but rather a very practical decision about the current best way to meet the technological needs of a cash-strapped school system. And the day that closed source vendors start focusing on futureproofing their files and interoperability with other closed-source vendor software, that decision will be obsolete. But that day is a long way off.
I will say I'm just as in favor of getting rid of Microsoft as just about everyone around here...but considering that most businesses currently use MS Office, as well as a host of other MS products, that maybe the people in charge want to train the kids on what businesses actually use?
I hear this argument a lot. The counter argument is simply that if you learn one word processor, you're stuck, but if you've learned two word processors, you've learned them all. And if you need to use any partiular feature that isn't universal to them all, you'll need special training anyway.
Kids are using Windows at home. If they use Windows at school too, they'll grow up in a mono environment where there is only one way to do things. If, however, they use a different environment at school, they should become broad enough to deal with any computing environment, be it the next generation of Windows, OSX5, Solaris, or whatever OS is going to dethrone Windows down the road.
Windows is everywhere. Saying that you're going to teach Windows to kids is like saying you're going to teach them to use a television. They know that. Teach them something they can use when the environment changes.
- C
Or someone can start giving USB drives to your employees, pose as a remote contractor over the phone and get a password, target a custom AIM virus/trojan, use a telescope through an open window, etc.
If you can't secure a wireless network to the point where there are much bigger security issues than someone attempting to wardrive it, you shouldn't be defining a company's construction plans.
According to the RedOctane website, the GH2 bundle ships with their SG controller.
The 5 employees were actually at the retail stores, not developers.
But it's still stupid. They're not accused of uploading anything, just downloading. It's not a stolen copy, it's a developer copy. They're going to have to sell this thing in a few weeks, and there aren't exactly any surprises in it.
Don't punish your most ardent, outspoken fans.
The first time I assembled this computer, it didn't work. I unplugged all of the devices one at a time. Still didn't work. Set it to a minimum configuration that should work. Didn't work. I disassembled the computer entirely, to test it. The parts all worked fine in a different computer. I plugged everything back together, and it didn't work.
Long story short... there is one screw in the motherboard that if I tighten it down... the motherboard doesn't work. You can't believe how long it took to find one screw in a sea of possible errors.
Also, I used to have to put my PS1 up on frozen peas for it to work. It didn't like other frozen vegetables, just peas.
There are a lot of general inaccuracies and slants in the article, but the one that bothers most is saying that Spotlight is a rip off of Vista's search.
Apple's OS's have had the ability to do instantaneous system-wide searches since OS7. None of this "where is that MP3... wait... wait... wait... wait..."
Quite frankly, this will be the benefit of Vista search for most people: search quality equivalent to that of Apple 1993.
Similar to, say, the analog buttons that shipped with Street Fighter 1 to the arcades in the 80's?
Yeah, no prior art there.
BTW, the analog buttons don't get much use in gaming because they're really not that consistent. Sure, they may report a few hundred distinct pressure levels, but the best you're getting out of them at any accuracy level is "pushed really hard," and "tapped kinda light." This harks back to both implementation-on-a-budget problems, and the problem that people just don't pay that much attention to how hard they press buttons.
It's really too bad that Capcom has the habit of releasing games before they're done. Street Fighter Alpha was derided as being sloppy and unbalanced, with unfinished art requirements and not enough balancing time. But Street Fighter Alpha 2 was completely solid, and Alpha 3 was one of the best in the series. Likewise SFIII was an unfinished mess the first revision, but III 2 was actually good and III 3 was probably the most technical fighter released in years.
I've sparred with Booth in Turbo recently. His reflexes are still pretty darned sharp... he never stopped playing. I'd consider myself a top 1% player, but Booth is probably still one of the top 100 in the country.
We've nitpicked versions of Street Fighter 2 Turbo (or Hyper Fighting, or Turbo Hyper Fighting, or whatever you want to call it) in the past... comparing Turbo Duo / SNES / Genesis revs with the arcade, pads vs sticks, etc. This minutiae tuning is exactly the sort of thing he lives for in the game, and really does determine the difference between a clean control and a sloppy loss when playing with good players.
That having been said, he's basically right. The controller lag is noticeable even on single player... I'd estimate it at a full 10th of a second above the base arcade configuration. The Xbox D-pad is far too diagonal prone for this type of play. The shoulder buttons are even worse than the SNES shoulder buttons. I haven't had a chance to play online yet, but lag on any online game usually precludes tight fighting interfaces, especially as you speed up gameplay.
It's still a good game. And XBL arcade rocks. And he's picking it apart over things a new Street Fighter player might never even notice. But he's basically right.
The name of the game was Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. It is the stuff of legend. If you find it, You're Not Winner.
If it weren't for the galvanizing effect of E3, I doubt many games would get finished. First you build a demo for a publisher. Then you make some progress, polish that up, and call it an E3 Demo. Then you slam a lot more content into it, make some last minute additions / polish, and release it to the public.
If it weren't for E3, way too much of the development cycle would take place pie-in-the-sky.
Not if the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA have their way,you won't. You'll RENT software, not own it, you'll pay-for-play music and video, and you will be THANKFUL for the privilege of doing so!
At this point, the RIAA needs to convince people that it's worth paying anything, let alone per-play. In this one particular situation we happen to have the power.
As a side note, you've really made me want to write a punch-card based MP3 player.
You won't lose your money if you invest in oil companies. You won't lose your money if you invest in tabacco companies. You wont lose your money if you invest in alcohol companies. You wont lose your money if you invest in surveillance companies.
People said the same thing about Enron.
"Yeah. You know that whole Watergate hotel thing you guys are investigating? I'm going to have to ask you to stop. New policy, you know. You got that memo, right? Great. So if you could just not look into that, that'd be great." - Nixon
We, in the US, never saw quite a few of the releases. For much the same reason - we are seen as too stupid. Later releases have been adjusted to meet both our markets.
Final Fantasy 7 was actually significantly improved for the US version. Not only were random enemy encounter rates cut to about 1/3rd what they were in the japanese version, but two insanely difficult "mega weapon" optional final bosses were added.
This was later released in Japan as Final Fantasy 7: international edition and proved incredibly popular as the Japanese were as sick of random enemy encounters as we were. Since then Square has released several "international" versions of Final Fantasy games back home in Japan, bringing the circle to a close.
Square had tried with Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest to create a "stepping stone" RPG for the American market, so that players unfamiliar with the conventions could be brought into the fold, then could buy the more complicated regular RPG's. The feeling was not "Americans are dumb" but that the games had evolved over thousands of titles to involve highly specialized skills, like fighting games. And those skills needed to be built up a bit before players would really buy and enjoy RPG's. Cartridges were not only expensive to manufacture, but data-hungry RPG's were far more expensive than most, and many companies lost their shirts trying to bring quirky japanese RPG's out in the US. Look at how Shining Force did here. Unfortunately Mystic Quest was terrible, and tanked badly. Fortunately Square took another chance with FFIII, and has brought out every Final Fantasy here since then.
And say what you will, RPG's are still not as popular here as they are in Japan. When a new major-title RPG is released in Japan, work comes to a standstill across the country. Here, only the hardcore even know the names of anything but Final Fantasy, let alone would camp out overnight to get one. I still haven't come across many people who have played Dragon Warrior for the PS2.
You could run around a 270-degree curve of hallway on level ground and not intersect the same bit of hallway you were travelling down before you hit the curve.
Not until you got to 360, at least...