Right, it's easy to pick the biggest stinkers of the last year, but you've got to go by the broader strokes of the industry.
DVD pricing is predicated upon a movie having a chance to make its money in a theater. If Spider-Man makes $400M in the theater, selling the DVD for $15 is gravy money. That being the case, they're never going to sell copies of Swept Away for $30 just because it didn't make money theatrically -- they've got to sell it for what it'll sell for (supply and demand).
Those movies are selling at the standard price for DVD movies and the soundtracks are selling at the standard price, painful as it might seem, for soundtracks. They don't price them individually based on what they brought in (or didn't) theatrically.
Fine. Be that way. You asked for it.
Uh... sure. Either you accidentally left off the <Comic Book Guy> tags or you're 12. I'll presume the former.
To be fair, both of those movies got to collect $200M+ in theaters before you have the opportunity to buy them for $18-20 a throw. Market isn't the same for music.
I'm 30. I had an NES when I was a kid. For me, it's not an issue of "duh, blood and crashing cars" is cool (after all, the Xbox only got Grand Theft Auto last week). Not sure there are a lot of games on the Box that fit that description. There are a lot of first-person shooters, true, but not a lot of what I'd describe as gratuitous violence for violence sake.
Either way, it's just a matter of taste. I prefer more realistic racers like Rallisport Challenge, Project Gotham and Sega GT to the likes of F-Zero (which I've played and thought was okay). Something about the Nintendo goofiness just kinda gets on my nerves -- the little animations the characters make in Mario Golf after they hit a shot, for example, just seems a little (I gotta say it) kiddie. Same thing with The Wind Waker -- KOTOR and Morrowind are just more my kind of game, not for blood and crashing cars, but because they have adult characters and more complex gameplay.
The problem for Nintendo, is a matter of choice. If you don't like The Wind Waker, your choices of RPGs are pretty slim. If you don't like F-Zero, there aren't a lot of other racers for you. If you don't like Madden, there aren't any other football games. Same for baseball, hockey, fighters, shooters... But if you *do* like Nintendo's first party stuff, you're in good shape.
But hey, it's all good. It's a big gaming world and different people like different stuff. Good that people our age can argue about the important things, right?:)
(As an aside, if Nintendo made a side-scrolling Mario game again, that might make me repurchase a GC more than nearly anything. Those games were great.)
Really? You prefer a system that you have to pay extra for vs. free online play?
Gotta be honest, $50 once a year really isn't that big a deal. The nice thing is, if I'm playing Crimson Skies (published by Microsoft) and a buddy of mine wants to invite me into a game of Ghost Recon (published by UBI) or a game of ESPN Football (published by Sega), all of the people I play with and all the games I play interoperate. It's a service that's worth a couple bucks a month. I mean, it's the cost of a single game over the course of a year.
In the end, though, it's all about what you have fun with. If you like the PS2, that's all good. There's just a lot of FUD out there about the Xbox -- it's actually a pretty sweet console and not having to upgrade my PC gaming rig every couple months has saved me a bundle.
So, you're honestly trying to say that Resident Evil Zero isn't a sequel to Resident Evil? Dude. C'mon. Episode I, as a movie, is a sequel to Star Wars, regardless of where it falls in the chronology of the story. Same with Zero. And Zero didn't sell up to expectations and even at a bargain price, 2 and 3 barely sold at all, nor did Eternal Darkness.
But regardless...
Check it out... from prawth.net: "Recently, the remake of Resident Evil was released in Japan and the USA for the GameCube. While it is no secret that Resident Evil (knows as Biohazard in Japan) has a huge following, sales of the game in Japan were just north of dismal. While sales are looking a little better in the USA, this probably won't be enough to stay Capcom's hand."
Want more? From GameRankings: "As reported by Bloomberg Japan, Capcom's losses for the 2002 fiscal year were even worse than anticipated... The profit plunge was attributed in part to the middling sales of three of Capcom's most anticipated games: Resident Evil 0 for Gamecube, which sold 1.12 million copies against a projected 1.42 million..."
Look, all I'm saying is that the GameCube is primarily marketed toward children. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the system or with you because you prefer it. But there's a reason that there are few fighting, driving and RPG-type games and lots of platformers, kids games and Mario-themed games -- adults tend to prefer the former group, while kids tend to prefer the latter and Nintendo plays to that base. Good for them.
The GameCube is a powerful system (and I used to have one), but there just weren't enough unique games on it that appeal to me.
The fundemental flaw with the XBox still is games.
I just don't get that. Put it this way... there are, according to GameRankings, 98 games on Xbox that scored 80% or better and 12 that scored 90% or better. For GameCube, there are 72 games that scored 80% or better and 16 that scored 90% or better. Xbox has its share of exclusives (the past two weeks have seen Crimson Skies, Top Spin and Rainbow Six with Ninja Gaiden, Counter Strike and Project Gotham 2 coming out int he next couple of weeks), and, in almost every case, the best version of most cross-platform games.
What does this mean? Nothing really; just that neither system lacks for good titles and that any console owner probably has more options for good games than they could ever afford to actually play.
My point, though, is that Nintendo primarily aims the system at kids. It's not like it's a dirty secret or anything -- with the cutesy characters, it's clearly the primary audience they're going after. Adult-themed games (all of the Resident Evil sequels, Eternal Darkness) just haven't sold as well, so they're playing to their core with games like Kirby Air Ride, Mario Party and Mario Kart. Nothing wrong with that.
It's very true, though, that Xbox Live is rife with losers -- gotta play with friends to make it worthwhile.
Nintendo doubled its marketshare for a single month's sales -- it still lags the Xbox by a million-ish consoles.
For the stated mission argument, the three consoles seem to be positioned such that:
PS2: Widest variety of games GameCube: Cheap, aimed primarily at kids Xbox: Networked, best technology
What is there that you can do with an Xbox that you can't do with other stuff?
That's true of most consoles -- the difference is that you don't have to have an insane rig to play Halo on an Xbox. From everything I've read, even P4 3.0's are taxed to the max running that game. Most people don't play games on PCs because it's a pain in the ass to keep up with drivers and it's expensive as all get-out.
And for networked gaming, Live is really unequaled -- every game uses the same basic interface, shared friends, voice chat. I used to play a lot of Unreal on the PC, but this is a much more integrated, easy experience.
Surely -- it goes both ways. He shouldn't be reviewing XP either. I'm not accusing him of being anti-Microsoft, just of being unflinchingly pro-Apple (which makes writing an impartial review more of a challenge). Surely there are journalists who can write a reasoned review of a product who aren't also living off of the teat of the product they're reviewing.
Yeah, but, to be fair, Pogue writes books about the operating system that he's reviewing. It's in his best financial interest for people to adopt the new OS. I've always found it really dubious that the Times lets him report on the Mac since he's not exactly what you'd call a neutral observer.
What's next? Harry Knowles writing reviews of Tarantino movies for Entertainment Weekly?
On the other hand, the question of whether MS is in compliance isn't a fact -- it's an interpretation of law, which is really nothing more than what a judge "believes." It's a little different from the examples you gave (where people are clearly in possession of beliefs that are contradicted by hard facts).
Seems to work great so far -- my only beef (and it's one that will probably keep me in WMP for the time being) is that iTunes doensn't support "watched folders" (which automatically import music that you drop within them). It's really handy when you're, err, downloading music and you don't have to reimport manually each time.
Even my favorite jukebox of old (Media Jukebox) didn't have that as of V.9. Had to tell them bye-bye.
I guess that makes sense... although if the components were buggy in the first place, why buy them again? Why not just keep using the ones you're using now and not upgrade?
And while the Flash Professional thing is kinda silly, you do still have the option to buy the lower-priced version.
It still seems to me that if Dreamweaver MX (for example) is doing the job for you, there's no reason to upgrade to MX 2004. If you need the functionality in 2004 (that's not in MX), then Macromedia is doing its job and providing additional value-add(-edness?) in its new product.
"Forcing" you to do something by releasing an improved product isn't strong-arming in the way I typically would imagine it. But I do understand where you're coming from.
In Adobe's case, the cost of the RAW plugin they were selling for $99 -- and now including in the CS upgrade -- is almost as much as the cost of the upgrade itself. Doesn't seem such a bad deal if you want that functionality.
The sad thing about all of this is that these companies are trying to find ways of forcing people to upgrade. Macromedia is especially guilty to this I think - it is trying myriad ways of squeezing more money out of the purchasers of their software. Well, I for one am not playing their game - I don't like being strong armed into purchases.
I've always had trouble getting the notion of being "forced" and "strong-armed" into upgrading a product. How do you feel like someone is trying to force you into buying an upgrade to Photoshop? Adobe's offering it and you have a choice as to whether to buy it or not -- your old version doesn't time out or stop working; they're just trying to sell a new version. "Squeezing money out of the purchases of their software," a.k.a., making an upgrade that has functionality that people think is worth buying, is how most software companies make money, and I'm not sure there's anything nefarious there.
Not trying to pick any kind of argument here; I just hear people say things like that and I've never understood what kind of pressure they feel under from these companies to upgrade.
I wanted to replace the mice, but they were worried that conventional nice would look tacky with the kiosks. I tried to get them to buy the hard-to-find MS "Special Edition" IntelliMouse that coordinates with the iMac, but they were worried that something third-party wouldn't look as good.
There are really two questions here: a right mouse button and the whole Apple mouse-as-a-button concept. The former may or may not (I'd still argue that it does) have merit, but the latter issue is a really significant ding on Mac usability.
We've been using iMacs as museum kiosk workstations and you constantly see children and inexperienced adults unable to separate the act of clicking from the act of dragging, meaning that every link they try to click, they end up dragging the image across the screen because they don't realize that by resting their hand on the mouse and adding a slight amount of downward pressure, they're still "clicked."
Or, worse yet, if they are trying to drag something and reach the end of the table, it's not at all clear to them to grip the sides of the mouse to "hold" the click. It ends up causing us no end of headaches.
"But the clear plastic is so pretty! They coordinate so well with the computers!":-/
The threads over at Macintouch on non-first party RAM seems to suggest that, for stability's sake, you're best off buying genuine Apple RAM. Many a user has claimed that random crashes were fixed by yanking out apparently functional third-party RAM.
MS will give you a cash refund for any retail product you buy within thirty days -- I used it for Office XP (didn't like the way it handled LDAP) and they sent a check back. Your Windows ME people just waited too long or were too lazy.
All North American retail Microsoft software comes with a 30-day, Microsoft money back guarantee. Retail products can most easily be returned through the retailer where the product was purchased, subject to that retailer's return policy, or directly to Microsoft, subject to the policy below.
First of all, Apple has a flat-rate price of $10 per album for most albums, no matter how many songs they have. I've gotten a few albums with 16 or 18 songs for $10.
Not true... click around a bit more... Ice Cube's Greatest Hits is $14.98. In fact, lots of albums are more than $10. Added to that, many of them don't let you buy the album because a track or two is missing.
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Right, it's easy to pick the biggest stinkers of the last year, but you've got to go by the broader strokes of the industry.
DVD pricing is predicated upon a movie having a chance to make its money in a theater. If Spider-Man makes $400M in the theater, selling the DVD for $15 is gravy money. That being the case, they're never going to sell copies of Swept Away for $30 just because it didn't make money theatrically -- they've got to sell it for what it'll sell for (supply and demand).
Those movies are selling at the standard price for DVD movies and the soundtracks are selling at the standard price, painful as it might seem, for soundtracks. They don't price them individually based on what they brought in (or didn't) theatrically.
Fine. Be that way. You asked for it.
Uh... sure. Either you accidentally left off the <Comic Book Guy> tags or you're 12. I'll presume the former.
To be fair, both of those movies got to collect $200M+ in theaters before you have the opportunity to buy them for $18-20 a throw. Market isn't the same for music.
I'm 30. I had an NES when I was a kid. For me, it's not an issue of "duh, blood and crashing cars" is cool (after all, the Xbox only got Grand Theft Auto last week). Not sure there are a lot of games on the Box that fit that description. There are a lot of first-person shooters, true, but not a lot of what I'd describe as gratuitous violence for violence sake.
:)
Either way, it's just a matter of taste. I prefer more realistic racers like Rallisport Challenge, Project Gotham and Sega GT to the likes of F-Zero (which I've played and thought was okay). Something about the Nintendo goofiness just kinda gets on my nerves -- the little animations the characters make in Mario Golf after they hit a shot, for example, just seems a little (I gotta say it) kiddie. Same thing with The Wind Waker -- KOTOR and Morrowind are just more my kind of game, not for blood and crashing cars, but because they have adult characters and more complex gameplay.
The problem for Nintendo, is a matter of choice. If you don't like The Wind Waker, your choices of RPGs are pretty slim. If you don't like F-Zero, there aren't a lot of other racers for you. If you don't like Madden, there aren't any other football games. Same for baseball, hockey, fighters, shooters... But if you *do* like Nintendo's first party stuff, you're in good shape.
But hey, it's all good. It's a big gaming world and different people like different stuff. Good that people our age can argue about the important things, right?
(As an aside, if Nintendo made a side-scrolling Mario game again, that might make me repurchase a GC more than nearly anything. Those games were great.)
Really? You prefer a system that you have to pay extra for vs. free online play?
Gotta be honest, $50 once a year really isn't that big a deal. The nice thing is, if I'm playing Crimson Skies (published by Microsoft) and a buddy of mine wants to invite me into a game of Ghost Recon (published by UBI) or a game of ESPN Football (published by Sega), all of the people I play with and all the games I play interoperate. It's a service that's worth a couple bucks a month. I mean, it's the cost of a single game over the course of a year.
In the end, though, it's all about what you have fun with. If you like the PS2, that's all good. There's just a lot of FUD out there about the Xbox -- it's actually a pretty sweet console and not having to upgrade my PC gaming rig every couple months has saved me a bundle.
So, you're honestly trying to say that Resident Evil Zero isn't a sequel to Resident Evil? Dude. C'mon. Episode I, as a movie, is a sequel to Star Wars, regardless of where it falls in the chronology of the story. Same with Zero. And Zero didn't sell up to expectations and even at a bargain price, 2 and 3 barely sold at all, nor did Eternal Darkness.
But regardless...
Check it out... from prawth.net:
"Recently, the remake of Resident Evil was released in Japan and the USA for the GameCube. While it is no secret that Resident Evil (knows as Biohazard in Japan) has a huge following, sales of the game in Japan were just north of dismal. While sales are looking a little better in the USA, this probably won't be enough to stay Capcom's hand."
Want more?
From GameRankings:
"As reported by Bloomberg Japan, Capcom's losses for the 2002 fiscal year were even worse than anticipated... The profit plunge was attributed in part to the middling sales of three of Capcom's most anticipated games: Resident Evil 0 for Gamecube, which sold 1.12 million copies against a projected 1.42 million..."
Look, all I'm saying is that the GameCube is primarily marketed toward children. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the system or with you because you prefer it. But there's a reason that there are few fighting, driving and RPG-type games and lots of platformers, kids games and Mario-themed games -- adults tend to prefer the former group, while kids tend to prefer the latter and Nintendo plays to that base. Good for them.
Read more carefully -- RE:make sold well, but the *sequels* to it haven't sold well at all.
The GameCube is a powerful system (and I used to have one), but there just weren't enough unique games on it that appeal to me.
The fundemental flaw with the XBox still is games.
I just don't get that. Put it this way... there are, according to GameRankings, 98 games on Xbox that scored 80% or better and 12 that scored 90% or better. For GameCube, there are 72 games that scored 80% or better and 16 that scored 90% or better. Xbox has its share of exclusives (the past two weeks have seen Crimson Skies, Top Spin and Rainbow Six with Ninja Gaiden, Counter Strike and Project Gotham 2 coming out int he next couple of weeks), and, in almost every case, the best version of most cross-platform games.
What does this mean? Nothing really; just that neither system lacks for good titles and that any console owner probably has more options for good games than they could ever afford to actually play.
My point, though, is that Nintendo primarily aims the system at kids. It's not like it's a dirty secret or anything -- with the cutesy characters, it's clearly the primary audience they're going after. Adult-themed games (all of the Resident Evil sequels, Eternal Darkness) just haven't sold as well, so they're playing to their core with games like Kirby Air Ride, Mario Party and Mario Kart. Nothing wrong with that.
It's very true, though, that Xbox Live is rife with losers -- gotta play with friends to make it worthwhile.
Nintendo doubled its marketshare for a single month's sales -- it still lags the Xbox by a million-ish consoles.
For the stated mission argument, the three consoles seem to be positioned such that:
PS2: Widest variety of games
GameCube: Cheap, aimed primarily at kids
Xbox: Networked, best technology
What is there that you can do with an Xbox that you can't do with other stuff?
That's true of most consoles -- the difference is that you don't have to have an insane rig to play Halo on an Xbox. From everything I've read, even P4 3.0's are taxed to the max running that game. Most people don't play games on PCs because it's a pain in the ass to keep up with drivers and it's expensive as all get-out.
And for networked gaming, Live is really unequaled -- every game uses the same basic interface, shared friends, voice chat. I used to play a lot of Unreal on the PC, but this is a much more integrated, easy experience.
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
Surely -- it goes both ways. He shouldn't be reviewing XP either. I'm not accusing him of being anti-Microsoft, just of being unflinchingly pro-Apple (which makes writing an impartial review more of a challenge). Surely there are journalists who can write a reasoned review of a product who aren't also living off of the teat of the product they're reviewing.
Do they let him review Microsoft products? There's a difference between reporting and reviewing.
If the answer is yes, then they shouldn't do that either.
Yeah, but, to be fair, Pogue writes books about the operating system that he's reviewing. It's in his best financial interest for people to adopt the new OS. I've always found it really dubious that the Times lets him report on the Mac since he's not exactly what you'd call a neutral observer.
What's next? Harry Knowles writing reviews of Tarantino movies for Entertainment Weekly?
On the other hand, the question of whether MS is in compliance isn't a fact -- it's an interpretation of law, which is really nothing more than what a judge "believes." It's a little different from the examples you gave (where people are clearly in possession of beliefs that are contradicted by hard facts).
"$song_name could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats."
Seems to work great so far -- my only beef (and it's one that will probably keep me in WMP for the time being) is that iTunes doensn't support "watched folders" (which automatically import music that you drop within them). It's really handy when you're, err, downloading music and you don't have to reimport manually each time.
Even my favorite jukebox of old (Media Jukebox) didn't have that as of V.9. Had to tell them bye-bye.
Except that's not the name of the product...
.NET from the name many months ago.
Windows Server 2003 -- they dropped the
I guess that makes sense... although if the components were buggy in the first place, why buy them again? Why not just keep using the ones you're using now and not upgrade?
And while the Flash Professional thing is kinda silly, you do still have the option to buy the lower-priced version.
It still seems to me that if Dreamweaver MX (for example) is doing the job for you, there's no reason to upgrade to MX 2004. If you need the functionality in 2004 (that's not in MX), then Macromedia is doing its job and providing additional value-add(-edness?) in its new product.
"Forcing" you to do something by releasing an improved product isn't strong-arming in the way I typically would imagine it. But I do understand where you're coming from.
In Adobe's case, the cost of the RAW plugin they were selling for $99 -- and now including in the CS upgrade -- is almost as much as the cost of the upgrade itself. Doesn't seem such a bad deal if you want that functionality.
The sad thing about all of this is that these companies are trying to find ways of forcing people to upgrade. Macromedia is especially guilty to this I think - it is trying myriad ways of squeezing more money out of the purchasers of their software. Well, I for one am not playing their game - I don't like being strong armed into purchases.
I've always had trouble getting the notion of being "forced" and "strong-armed" into upgrading a product. How do you feel like someone is trying to force you into buying an upgrade to Photoshop? Adobe's offering it and you have a choice as to whether to buy it or not -- your old version doesn't time out or stop working; they're just trying to sell a new version. "Squeezing money out of the purchases of their software," a.k.a., making an upgrade that has functionality that people think is worth buying, is how most software companies make money, and I'm not sure there's anything nefarious there.
Not trying to pick any kind of argument here; I just hear people say things like that and I've never understood what kind of pressure they feel under from these companies to upgrade.
Before you get too excited, so does Apple:
For the last quarter:
Research and development: $120M/7.8% of net sales
Selling, general, and administrative expenses: $299M/19.4% of net sales
That includes some non-advertising, retail-related expenses, but it's almost 3x as much. All those commercials ain't cheap.
Not that I'm saying that it's a bad thing -- I'm just saying that's it's probably true for pretty much any company.
Source: Apple's 10-Q
I wanted to replace the mice, but they were worried that conventional nice would look tacky with the kiosks. I tried to get them to buy the hard-to-find MS "Special Edition" IntelliMouse that coordinates with the iMac, but they were worried that something third-party wouldn't look as good.
Not whining; it's just reality, yo.
There are really two questions here: a right mouse button and the whole Apple mouse-as-a-button concept. The former may or may not (I'd still argue that it does) have merit, but the latter issue is a really significant ding on Mac usability.
:-/
We've been using iMacs as museum kiosk workstations and you constantly see children and inexperienced adults unable to separate the act of clicking from the act of dragging, meaning that every link they try to click, they end up dragging the image across the screen because they don't realize that by resting their hand on the mouse and adding a slight amount of downward pressure, they're still "clicked."
Or, worse yet, if they are trying to drag something and reach the end of the table, it's not at all clear to them to grip the sides of the mouse to "hold" the click. It ends up causing us no end of headaches.
"But the clear plastic is so pretty! They coordinate so well with the computers!"
The threads over at Macintouch on non-first party RAM seems to suggest that, for stability's sake, you're best off buying genuine Apple RAM. Many a user has claimed that random crashes were fixed by yanking out apparently functional third-party RAM.
MS will give you a cash refund for any retail product you buy within thirty days -- I used it for Office XP (didn't like the way it handled LDAP) and they sent a check back. Your Windows ME people just waited too long or were too lazy.
Here you go...
All North American retail Microsoft software comes with a 30-day, Microsoft money back guarantee. Retail products can most easily be returned through the retailer where the product was purchased, subject to that retailer's return policy, or directly to Microsoft, subject to the policy below.
Capcom's certainly rethinking their relationship with Nintendo...
e ct ion_name=pub&aid=1472
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?s
"Poor retail performance spurs re-think of Cube exclusivity plans"
Honestly, you can't look at the third party software for PS2, Xbox and Gamecube and tell me that Gamecube stacks up.
Is that why Sega canned their entire line of sports games for Nintendo?
And you couldn't be more wrong about third parties on Nintendo -- third parties are dropping Nin like flies because the titles aren't selling.
First of all, Apple has a flat-rate price of $10 per album for most albums, no matter how many songs they have. I've gotten a few albums with 16 or 18 songs for $10.
Not true... click around a bit more... Ice Cube's Greatest Hits is $14.98. In fact, lots of albums are more than $10. Added to that, many of them don't let you buy the album because a track or two is missing.