Eh, Phil Harrison is hardly a designer, but he had the sense to get actual designers on the stage and have them show cool stuff. And his fluff, the Game 3.0 BS, was still developer-oriented. Even the demos were good for giving ideas and showing strong direction. "Here's what you can do"; this is the sort of stuff that gets developers going "hey, that's cool, if I took that and used it here..." or "how can we be a part of this."
Nintendo just needs to back up the hype about motion sensing being the "next big thing" and "revolutionizing gaming" by actually showing it doing so.
I've heard about constraints on Nintendo giving info due to stock goings-on, but labelling this as "developer-oriented" instead of "boring fluff" is a cop-out. It wasn't interesting: especially to developers. Interesting would be demos of new motion-sensing and touchscreen concepts. Interesting would be the forward direction of Nintendo platforms and the tools Nintendo will be providing. Miyamoto parroting earlier propaganda is not interesting.
World of Warcraft didn't work in WINE or Crossover when I tried it. I didn't get around to messing with it much, to be fair, but I expected the latter to work as it's advertised as one of their primary supported products.
I believe it's one of the primary supported products of Transgaming's Cedega, not Crossover (which is more oriented toward Office compatibility). I have used this myself, and it's pretty easy to get going. Not as easy as if it were native, no: a few more buttons to click, perhaps. But not a hassle.
Seriously, though, if you're into pro audio/video/graphics, and want an easy desktop replacement that does what your Windows box does with zero hassle, go OSX. I'm a diehard Linux user, but it's not for quick and simple hands-off use, and the promedia tools suck. OSX however fills this niche nicely. And I think WoW runs natively.
Linux, the ugly duckling of the pack, yet she loves you completely without resevervation, she doesn't want your for your money or status. She is open and honest. And if you love her you can turn her into the princes of the ball but unlike the pretty windows, the linux girl stays true to you.
Given things like Enlightenment and Beryl, Linux is only as ugly as you let it be. And E (preceded by fvwm-xpm) has been around for just around 10 years now, so it's not anything new, either.
Linux is more like the geeky hot asian girl who can cosplay anything, has all the cool technology, and stays true to you.
While at a glance, it may seem like this is simply "the latest thing google did," and... let's be honest, given the editor in question... this was most likely the reason it made the front page. But while Bianca Shroeder's report, for instance, uses statistics from various unnamed sources and for various unnamed uses, the Google report is interesting because we know exactly where it's coming from and what it's being used for.
Of course, a truly insightful story would have taken this opportunity to compare Google's findings with the others and report on that.
My response to PA, and notes on this review
on
Hotel Dusk Review
·
· Score: 2, Informative
First off, please note one very big missing piece from the review: any hint about the story. For a game that plays like a book, with a supposed emphasis on the story, there should at least be some minor outline of what to expect here. On this note, here's the response I sent to Tycho regarding his comments about "the difficulty of enjoying Hotel Dusk":
Yeah, so I'm having the same problem, and it's not anything about
being essentially in book format. Reading is fine; I have several
bookshelves near the couch that are there just so I can pick up a book
at random and read it cover to cover if I have the sudden urge. This
happens often.
The problem with Hotel Dusk is this: the box, both artwork and
description, imply a strong "film noir" type setting. Gritty
detective, shady hotel. Adventure. Lots of story. Perfect setup.
What could possibly be unattractive about this? In the actual
game, however, I have so far done the following:
Argued with a little girl who wouldn't let me upstairs
Solved her 4-piece jigsaw puzzle
Gotten (shock horror) the _wrong_ _package_ in the mail
(undoubtedly frightening for players who are also employees of UPS or
FedEx)
Gone toe-to-toe with my suitcase in a 2-round match, in which I
ultimately prevailed
Paid for my room
Played the "memory: recap the last 30 minutes" game
Now, yes, there were some hints of backstory. A mysterious girl
appeared who is clearly Rinoa with amnesia. I pushed around a kid
from the streets, and picked up a porn mag. Clearly a "mature" game.
Really, I could accept any of this if there was even the slightest
hint that something mysterious, paranormal, creepy, or cool was going
on. I'm at Chapter 2 now, and I'm having an issue finding a reason to
continue playing. I have no problem reading, and picking up objects
only when you need them is actually *realistic*. (How many people go
around picking up random objects because they might solve a puzzle
later that day?) The problem is that the story is already hinting at
being mundane and will probably involve a warm fuzzy ending. I don't
want to waste my time on low-grade cliche.
At least Touch Detective was charmingly deranged.
Note: I'm a big fan of the adventure genre. I grew up with these games. King's Quest, Space Quest, Indiana Jones, Monkey Island. As a kid we'd make up adventures (like proto-RPG story games). I even enjoyed the really crappy stuff like Hugo, and, despite reviews, I thought Touch Detective was a lot of fun. And yes, as Zonk has said, the UI for the game is pretty good.
But in the end, no one has been able to assure me that yes, the story gets cool. Because the first chapter is very much not what you expect after reading about the game.
I have, however, seen target renders and target render movies for Motorstorm, and the japanese version does most definitely not look like the targets (for example, check out the awesome dust behind the cars in the targets - that's simply not there in the real game). It is a good looking game, but it's not what we've seen in the movies.
That is definitely the case; in fact, Motorstorm (at least from the demo) doesn't really look that great at higher resolutions period (sprites become far more apparent), though it's fairly impressive at lower resolutions. (Compare this with the GT:HD demo, which decent in SD, but amazing in HD.) Add this to the original Virtual Fighter 5 E3 renders which are absolutely nothing like the plastic-looking screenshots I've seen.
This being the case, the original E3 demos were more Sony saying "this is what the PS3 will be capable of," rather than "this is what launch-day games will look like". Clearly, launch-day games don't look like that, but then, compare some PS2 launch-day crap to the demos and to modern stuff and the difference is telling. (Compare GT3, which took over a year to accomplish, to GT4, many years later, too.)
So, while they're full of crap about the current Motorstorm looking like that, it's not difficult to imagine that a few generations of games down the road, Motorstorm 2 will live up to it.
Third, Sony did lie about the PS2 and (to a lesser degree) about the PS3. They lied about the tech specs, and they showed target renders which they must have known were not achievable with the final hardware (I have no yet seen games that look as good as the target renders, but admittedly, I'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt here - they may yet deliver this). Also: they promised WIFI standard, and (which I thought was most interesting) up to 7 controllers.
These are all a myth:
The "target renders" presented on the PS2 is the infamous FF8 dance-scene tech demo. People have said everything from "Sony never delivered" to "looked better than FF8 FMV". Neither of these are true. You can check and compare the screenshots I have stored for posterity. Compare them to the original scene here and here, and it's fairly evident they are nowhere near close. Additionally, compare them to older games like Gran Turismo 3, Jak II, and Final Fantasy X; or newer games like Black, Gran Turismo 4, Shadow of the Colossus; or upcoming games like God of War 2, and they all make that demo look downright primitive.
As for PS3 prerenders, compare Killzone PS3, a claimed prerender, and arguably the flashiest video Sony demonstrated, to Resistance, or Motorstorm, and you can see they're already very very close, if not exceeding, the prerender. And these are launch titles.
Wifi is indeed only in the 60GB model for now, but they have left the ability to later upgrade both HDD and wifi in the systems.
It should be theoretically possible to have 7 controllers, even all wireless. This is the maximum number of bluetooth devices one can attach to a single receiver, and while there may not be 7 lights on the controllers, it's not inconceivable that a firmware upgrade could enable this. Treat the lights as bits, not positions, and you can show up to 16. Also, the PS3 has 4 USB ports, where you can plug in 4 controllers in addition to 4 wireless controllers.
Most claims about "Sony lies!" come from people misremembering, misstating, misunderstanding, or outright lying. Yeah, Sony has changed a few things, but nothing like people would have you believe. They've even added a few arguably more important things: HDMI and HDD to all models, and the ability to upgrade.
Shrug, being a conglomerate does not excuse you from the bad actions of your subsidiaries. I hold Kraft responsible for Philip Morris, because I'm a sane individual that believes in corporate responsibility. You evidentally are not.
Do sane individuals classify those who disagree with them as insane?
I take a more hierarchical view: Sony, parent company, may or may be responsible for its subsidiaries. But I don't hold its subsidiaries responsible for each other. Thus, SCE is not responsible for Sony/BMG. Additionally, because they've relented and---whether by force of law or not---have actually changed their tune, provided refunds, cleanup fees, and replacement discs, they have in essence "paid their debt". Boycotting is nice, but if you boycott even when a company changes, then you might as well not bother, because there is no longer incentive for the company to change.
Now if Sony/BMG was continuing to investigate ways to compromise customer machines, flout the ruling, thumb their nose at society, then holding them responsible would be indeed wise. Had they denied responsibility for Li-ion batteries, not recalled anything, then we might hold them responsible (despite their own warnings to vendors and the fact it was hardly malicious). People make mistakes. Companies make mistakes. The ones you should support are the ones that 'fess up and change.
Not Microsoft.
Don't worry, I don't have a 360 either. I was thinking about one(Microcenter, Premium for $200 after rebates), since MS seemed to have changed over the past few years, then they changed their licensing and we had to do a freakin' company wide audit of what Windows systems are externally accessable, even though we have a global license. And the fact that their OS requires a reboot for a freakin' Time Zone change. BIG headaches. So fuck MS.
Seems to have changed?! Like, still bundling IE and Media Player? Still tying them to the OS? Still funding SCO? Still spreading FUD about Linux? Still quashing open source products? Still promoting proprietary formats? Still refusing to interoperate? Still crushing competitors and illegally leveraging their OS monopoly to dump huge funds into other markets, like, say, the videogame console market, despite zero profitability and huge losses?
How have they seemed to change again?
Anyway, is there anything on your Nintendo does bad list that's A. Actually bad for the customer, and B. not over 17 years old? Because I don't see anything.
Well, I should have been clearer. The original intent was to hilight things that Nintendo has done in the past, and (more) recent poor decisions that have put them into a second-place position. Thus to show that any "good will" and "friendly image" in their part is one of necessity rather than philanthropy.
I don't think Nintendo is evil. Even when they were the bad old Nintendo of yore, they weren't really evil, at least in terms of repeated customer abuse. However, I do get annoyed by all the buy-in to their hype, because, while I'm definitely a Nintendo fan, and hold a special nostalgic place for them, in recent years they simply haven't delivered in the games department. I don't buy that the DS or Wii are in any way revolutionary and world-changing. They're gimmicky: they're meant to attract attention and sell units. That's fine: Nintendo needs to attract attention and sell units. But gamers should realize this and not be slavering hypemonkeys. Use the hype and attention to get non-gamers to play: cool. Throw feces and gibber in the forums because someone says "hey, that PS3 game looks neat": not cool.
[snip] It also created the Playstation, which you love.
I like the Playstation, but---despite the fact I will play devil's advocate, because no one else seems to have the guts or karma---really, the Playstati
Agreed. And hopefully, there will always be at least three major console manufacturers with roughly equal market share. Whoever wins will probably act like a jerk.
From what I've seen, when you have 3 manufacturers, even if they're not equal, but competitive, it's the customers who win... like the price-dropping wars before E3 a couple years ago with the PS2 and XBOX. However, I have only one desire: that Microsoft never come close to winning or holding significant marketshare. Nintendo: I love 'em, they make fun games (though I don't buy into any of their hype). Sony: I don't really feel one way or the other about Sony as a company, but they have platforms with loads of great games, and they try to deliver a solid platform for doing so. Microsoft: Eats markets, crushes competitors, doesn't know how to play by the rules, and turns out crap products. So you can see why I don't want Microsoft to "win".
However, frankly, I can't see how anything Nintendo has ever done comes even close to what Microsoft (killing competitors by abusing their monopoly; lying under oath; forcing hardware manufacturers to not install any OS other than Windows) or Sony (installing rootkits on their customer's PCs; lying about the capabilities of their consoles; regularly updating the firmware in their consoles so homebrew becomes impossible unless you use their screwed up Linux version which runs through a hypervisor) have done.
Well, Nintendo was a real tyrant back in the 80s and 90s. In terms of customer abuse, not so much (at least that I am aware), which is laudable. In terms of developer abuse, lots and lots. We missed out on tons of great games over here which are only now getting ports. Most of Nintendo's problems stem from poor decisions on Nintendo's part. You can't really say they harmed customers, but they've really under-delivered, and have been paying for it. They're trying to ride the hype-wave back to the top, but I'm not sure they have anything besides Mario, Zelda, and Metroid to really give us once they get there.
Microsoft? Nuff said.
Sony? You may hold "Sony" responsible for "Sony/BMG" issues. But it's hard to hold SCE responsible for Sony or Sony/BMG. Knowing people who work there, I know they operate as an entirely separate entity. It's not like Microsoft, where you have everyone on a single campus in a single corporate culture. Maybe it would appease the fanboys if they dropped the "Sony" name, but in most of the world, "Sony" is known as a really solid brand. Additionally, they have never really lied about the capabilities of their console to any real degree; the biggest change of tune was 2 HDMI ports to 1 HDMI port. But then, they said they wouldn't have a hard drive, then delivered it on both models; they said they wouldn't have HDMI on the lower-end model, and did; and they've delivered on basically everything else. And whether original PS3 E3 demos were prerendered or not, it's not like the PS3 isn't actually outputting better visuals than what they originally had (at least in most cases: I think VF5 has fallen short).
So basically, Sony may not be perfect, but they're not nearly as evil as Microsoft.;)
As far as my memory serves me... Absolutely nothing you list in your post is nearly correct at all...
Clearly, this indicates your memory sucks.
Nintendo and Microsoft have done some terrible things, but nothing you mention has anything to do with either company.
That's funny, because they are all actions taken by their respective companies. Would you like to explain how this has nothing to do with either company? Perhaps you're using some funny definition of "nothing" or "has anything to do with"?
The funny one to me is "Entered into contracts with Sony and Philips, later to break the contract (resulting in the Playstation brand)" mainly because Sony demanded that they would be able to get 100% of the Hardware revinues and 50% of the software royalties for the SNES CD and Nintendo (correctly) refused.
Actually, they wanted 100% control over the software that was made for SNESCD. Which was in the contract up front, which Nintendo later decided they didn't like, which lead to Sony developing its own console anyway. It's fairly evident from their actions with the N64, staying with cartridges, that they had no real interest in a CD-based console. Had Nintendo developed the N64 with CDs, Square probably would have made Final Fantasy 7 for the N64, and history would be entirely different.
What I'm saying is that these are decisions Nintendo made, and as a result, Sony developed the Playstation. These decisions cost Nintendo their position as industry leader. The "nice Nintendo" we know now is a product of necessity, to try and regain the developers they alienated and the position they lost. Who knows---maybe it will work---but Nintendo isn't being nice because they're just a really nice company that's always been the warm fuzzy good guy.
Gates, a college dropout, started by stealing code from dumpsters
Microsoft's big contract with IBM was made by screwing over the superior, existing competitor (CP/M) using family connections, to sell vaporware (DOS was bought later)
Windows's primary purpose was to have "MacOS on DOS"
Microsoft continually screwed over competitors over the years (Lotus, Stac, IBM, Netscape,...) by breaking compatibility, bundling, product dumping, breaking contracts, and FUD, and continues to do so
Microsoft continually screwed over customers through lock-in and incompatible formats, and continues to do so
Microsoft was convicted of abusing their monopoly, and has not changed its actions at all
Microsoft supports SCO in their ongoing lawsuit against Linux
Microsoft has released product after product that allow easy security compromise
A few Nintendo facts:
Was heavily monopolistic along with heyday (driving developers to other platforms at first opportunity)
Routinely censored games (which earned it the "games for kids" reputation)
Routinely disallowed localization of (now-popular) games
Entered into contracts with Sony and Philips, later to break the contract (resulting in the Playstation brand)
Made the decision to stick with cartridges with the N64 (leading to technical limitations on the console and the loss of third-party vendors)
Made the decision to remain hard-nosed with N64 developers (furthering its "kiddie" image and driving developers to its competitors), though this later changed
Neither of these companies are perfect. Both have made poor decisions, and had bad business practices. Microsoft, obviously, is the worse offender. They haven't changed, they haven't shown signs of changing, and there doesn't seem to be reason they'll change in the immediate future. They're profiting from it everytime you buy an XBOX, XBOX game, or other Microsoft product.
Nintendo isn't great either: they used to be be almost as bad as Microsoft, in their own industry. Of necessity, they've changed to become the "developer-friendly" company they purport to be. They're still trying to shed the "for kids" stigma. They're trying to change; that's good.
But to blame Sony Computer Entertainment---especially unrelated subsidiaries of the parent company, and their contractors---for things they have admitted as a mistake and helped fix, is simply blind fanaticism. Overall, SCE has delivered two solid consoles with huge game libraries, provided developers with exactly what they've asked for, with a minimum of censorship or heavyhandedness. Are they perfect? Is their parent company perfect? Hardly. But compare them to their competitors whom you might idolize, and they hardly stand out as being overtly evil.
Which is why IT Pros prefer Red Hat Linux or its unencumbered variants link CentOS, White Box, and Scientific. Better testing up front thanks to the Red Hat gang, and longer shelf life. Which is why most commercial software chooses to support it first, it provides a stable base.
Not really. "Pros" typically don't care about platform-delivered apps, and they certainly don't care about crap like various RedHat knockoffs. Stability is OK, but in the end it comes down to one thing: paid support. Which is why commercial vendors produce software for it, because you can then buy support contracts for the entire platform. And it's usually a big chunk of change, which makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy.
If you put graphical considerations aside, you could run an "as broad as conceivable" game on an old Dreamcast.
If you think this, it shows how little you know about development, or games in general. Consider platformers: game object count and interaction level alone could stand vast improvement. If you see an object, you should be able to pick it up, smack it around, stand on it, or otherwise interact with it. Last-gen platformers didn't begin to scratch the surface here. Lots of "invisible walls," frozen scenery, and static props.
While object count on the screen has somewhat to do with rendering capabilities, it also has to do with managing calculations for every object in question. Last-gen games like GTA, Jak, and others, have pulled tricks to emulate a high-population environment, but it's fairly evident that once you turn your head or walk a distance, the object goes away. This makes the world seem to be of much thinner fabric.
Other techniques, like level generation, are only barely being worked with. Games like Dark Cloud or Coded arms are very rudimentary in this regard. Most of this is again due to limited memory, storage, and processing power... they wouldn't have to render any more than your average game. Consider a game with the gameplay depth of Nethack, and the complexity of levels generated for things like Angband or other roguelikes. Now toss that into a fully active 3D world where you need to track many thousands of game objects at all times. Now add networking. You will quickly run to the end of your resource limits.
There are lots of other unexplored avenues, as well. To say that you can 'you could run an "as broad as conceivable" game on an old Dreamcast' is like saying '640k is enough for anyone'. Naive, ignorant, and shortsighted.
The breadth of the world is determined by the developer -- how much work do they spend on the broad expanse, and how much on the fine detail--i.e., the graphics.
Graphical fine detail is up to the graphics artists. Gameplay fine detail is entirely different: can you take two items you find and mix them? Is the battle system a 4-item menu, or can you piece together your attacks based on individual techniques? Is the magic system a few static spells, or an improvisational/programmatic casting system? The list goes on. All of these relate not one bit to graphics: you could apply the questions even to a set of tabletop gaming rules.
Gamers are buying a console for the games and the graphics.
What's under the hood is of secondary, if any, importance. The user experience trumps it every time.
Gamers buy consoles for games. Graphics are secondary; however it's a mistake to think that "what's under the hood" necessarily relates to graphics, especially in the case of the PS3. There are two main things you hear about when you talk about what's under the hood of the PS3: Blu-Ray, and the Cell. Neither of these are directly related to graphics; both are more about the ability to have a deeper game world, whether it's larger levels, more game objects to interact with, or more accurate physics. Not all of these may apply to every game, but at least one of them applies to just about any game you can come up with. Sony isn't touting one primary feature ("wave the stick around!"), they're giving a broad platform with a lot of capabilities for developers to explore. This is what leads to breadth of library, diversity of games, and innovation.
Graphics are just the first thing you see. And yeah they're really nice. But like you said, if there's nothing there to back it up, what's the point? This is why the more interesting things about game trailers like FFXIII or DMC4 are the gameplay: fewer "Attack, Attack, Attack" menu battles for the former, and more Advent-Children-esque battles; and wild fast action with all sorts of abilities for the latter.
Just think: with the Wii, once you get past swinging the controller around, what about the game has really changed? Does it make the world bigger, or the story better, or the characters rounder? How much more does the battle system let you do, and how many more things can you interact with in the level?
First off, there are more than 25 games worth playing on the Gamecube.
Care to list? I just picked up one of the few remaining titles I lacked yesterday (Chibi Robo)... I wouldn't want to overlook something, as stuff gets hard to find quick. (And yeah, maybe there are 25, maybe 30, maybe a few more... but we're still talking about an order of magnitude difference here.)
Second, your post makes you sound like an uninformed Sony fanboy. Would be careful with your wordings next time, they really like to tear into fanboys around here.
Yes, because stating facts make one a fanboy. I see that now. In the future I will be careful to spin the truth, mislead, or outright lie, because some people might not like the facts.
And with my GBC, GBA, 2x GBA SPs, DS Lite, GB Player, GBA Player, 2x NES, SNES, N64 (with expansion pack!), Cube, and Dreamcast, all of which are currently hooked up (except one of the NES's) yes, I'm definitely a Sony fanboy. Yes, I have a couple PS2s... one solely for FFXI... 2x PSPs, and a PS3, but that's hardly the majority of the colllection now, is it? I'm a gamer; I buy consoles for games, and I'm pretty sure I have a handle on the relative merits and library of each.
I imagine the VC is considered separately here, seeing as how the Wii plays every fucking GameCube game. What kind of tool are you?
Well, this still isn't anything to brag about. There are about 25 cube games worth playing. There are about 300 PS2 games worth playing, and another 300 PS1 games worth playing. Now if they sold an adaptor that let you plug in NES, SNES, and N64 carts... that would be damn cool, and something more than comparable.
Seriously, what did you expect? Look back before the PS2 price drop: mere days before, there officially wasn't going to be one. Then it happened.
Anyone would be shooting themselves in the foot to announce a price drop, especially for a product like this, anytime early. What are you expecting? "Yeah, a year from now, it's going to be $299. Why don't you all just hold off buying one til then?" This would kill their market. Idiotic self-deluding fanboy fantasies to the contrary, this isn't going to happen; but that doesn't mean they won't drop the price a year or two from now.
Right now they're sticking to the "this is worth a lot, you're getting a lot when you buy it" mantra, which, mathematically speaking, still holds true.
Well, no, the wii delivers 100% backwards compatibility, and has done so from day 1.
Yes, if by "100% backwards compatibility" you mean "for the 5-10 games you have to re-buy for the VC". Sony clearly has the shadier definition when they say "all the PS1 and PS2 games you already own".
It doesn't matter. What they're doing is underhanded and shady. It doesn't matter how "unbiased" you think the person is, the facts remain:
There is public information Microsoft doesn't like.
They are privately paying a non-affiliated individual to fix it because they have been barred access.
This is, in irc terms, ban evading. It doesn't matter if the guy who banned you was a jerk, you're still ban evading. If they actually cared about "corrections," they'd submit a public correction request to the wikipedia editors detailing what is wrong, why, and the proposed corrections, and subject them to review.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, Phil Harrison is hardly a designer, but he had the sense to get actual designers on the stage and have them show cool stuff. And his fluff, the Game 3.0 BS, was still developer-oriented. Even the demos were good for giving ideas and showing strong direction. "Here's what you can do"; this is the sort of stuff that gets developers going "hey, that's cool, if I took that and used it here..." or "how can we be a part of this."
Nintendo just needs to back up the hype about motion sensing being the "next big thing" and "revolutionizing gaming" by actually showing it doing so.
I've heard about constraints on Nintendo giving info due to stock goings-on, but labelling this as "developer-oriented" instead of "boring fluff" is a cop-out. It wasn't interesting: especially to developers. Interesting would be demos of new motion-sensing and touchscreen concepts. Interesting would be the forward direction of Nintendo platforms and the tools Nintendo will be providing. Miyamoto parroting earlier propaganda is not interesting.
Most people aren't big on censorship until someone says something they disagree with.
I believe it's one of the primary supported products of Transgaming's Cedega, not Crossover (which is more oriented toward Office compatibility). I have used this myself, and it's pretty easy to get going. Not as easy as if it were native, no: a few more buttons to click, perhaps. But not a hassle.
Seriously, though, if you're into pro audio/video/graphics, and want an easy desktop replacement that does what your Windows box does with zero hassle, go OSX. I'm a diehard Linux user, but it's not for quick and simple hands-off use, and the promedia tools suck. OSX however fills this niche nicely. And I think WoW runs natively.
I think the real news here is that Kotaku actually had a reliable source for one of their stories.
Given things like Enlightenment and Beryl, Linux is only as ugly as you let it be. And E (preceded by fvwm-xpm) has been around for just around 10 years now, so it's not anything new, either.
Linux is more like the geeky hot asian girl who can cosplay anything, has all the cool technology, and stays true to you.
While at a glance, it may seem like this is simply "the latest thing google did," and... let's be honest, given the editor in question... this was most likely the reason it made the front page. But while Bianca Shroeder's report, for instance, uses statistics from various unnamed sources and for various unnamed uses, the Google report is interesting because we know exactly where it's coming from and what it's being used for.
Of course, a truly insightful story would have taken this opportunity to compare Google's findings with the others and report on that.
First off, please note one very big missing piece from the review: any hint about the story. For a game that plays like a book, with a supposed emphasis on the story, there should at least be some minor outline of what to expect here. On this note, here's the response I sent to Tycho regarding his comments about "the difficulty of enjoying Hotel Dusk":
Note: I'm a big fan of the adventure genre. I grew up with these games. King's Quest, Space Quest, Indiana Jones, Monkey Island. As a kid we'd make up adventures (like proto-RPG story games). I even enjoyed the really crappy stuff like Hugo, and, despite reviews, I thought Touch Detective was a lot of fun. And yes, as Zonk has said, the UI for the game is pretty good.
But in the end, no one has been able to assure me that yes, the story gets cool. Because the first chapter is very much not what you expect after reading about the game.
That is definitely the case; in fact, Motorstorm (at least from the demo) doesn't really look that great at higher resolutions period (sprites become far more apparent), though it's fairly impressive at lower resolutions. (Compare this with the GT:HD demo, which decent in SD, but amazing in HD.) Add this to the original Virtual Fighter 5 E3 renders which are absolutely nothing like the plastic-looking screenshots I've seen.
This being the case, the original E3 demos were more Sony saying "this is what the PS3 will be capable of," rather than "this is what launch-day games will look like". Clearly, launch-day games don't look like that, but then, compare some PS2 launch-day crap to the demos and to modern stuff and the difference is telling. (Compare GT3, which took over a year to accomplish, to GT4, many years later, too.)
So, while they're full of crap about the current Motorstorm looking like that, it's not difficult to imagine that a few generations of games down the road, Motorstorm 2 will live up to it.
These are all a myth:
Most claims about "Sony lies!" come from people misremembering, misstating, misunderstanding, or outright lying. Yeah, Sony has changed a few things, but nothing like people would have you believe. They've even added a few arguably more important things: HDMI and HDD to all models, and the ability to upgrade.
Do sane individuals classify those who disagree with them as insane?
I take a more hierarchical view: Sony, parent company, may or may be responsible for its subsidiaries. But I don't hold its subsidiaries responsible for each other. Thus, SCE is not responsible for Sony/BMG. Additionally, because they've relented and---whether by force of law or not---have actually changed their tune, provided refunds, cleanup fees, and replacement discs, they have in essence "paid their debt". Boycotting is nice, but if you boycott even when a company changes, then you might as well not bother, because there is no longer incentive for the company to change.
Now if Sony/BMG was continuing to investigate ways to compromise customer machines, flout the ruling, thumb their nose at society, then holding them responsible would be indeed wise. Had they denied responsibility for Li-ion batteries, not recalled anything, then we might hold them responsible (despite their own warnings to vendors and the fact it was hardly malicious). People make mistakes. Companies make mistakes. The ones you should support are the ones that 'fess up and change.
Not Microsoft.
Seems to have changed?! Like, still bundling IE and Media Player? Still tying them to the OS? Still funding SCO? Still spreading FUD about Linux? Still quashing open source products? Still promoting proprietary formats? Still refusing to interoperate? Still crushing competitors and illegally leveraging their OS monopoly to dump huge funds into other markets, like, say, the videogame console market, despite zero profitability and huge losses?
How have they seemed to change again?
Well, I should have been clearer. The original intent was to hilight things that Nintendo has done in the past, and (more) recent poor decisions that have put them into a second-place position. Thus to show that any "good will" and "friendly image" in their part is one of necessity rather than philanthropy.
I don't think Nintendo is evil. Even when they were the bad old Nintendo of yore, they weren't really evil, at least in terms of repeated customer abuse. However, I do get annoyed by all the buy-in to their hype, because, while I'm definitely a Nintendo fan, and hold a special nostalgic place for them, in recent years they simply haven't delivered in the games department. I don't buy that the DS or Wii are in any way revolutionary and world-changing. They're gimmicky: they're meant to attract attention and sell units. That's fine: Nintendo needs to attract attention and sell units. But gamers should realize this and not be slavering hypemonkeys. Use the hype and attention to get non-gamers to play: cool. Throw feces and gibber in the forums because someone says "hey, that PS3 game looks neat": not cool.
I like the Playstation, but---despite the fact I will play devil's advocate, because no one else seems to have the guts or karma---really, the Playstati
From what I've seen, when you have 3 manufacturers, even if they're not equal, but competitive, it's the customers who win... like the price-dropping wars before E3 a couple years ago with the PS2 and XBOX. However, I have only one desire: that Microsoft never come close to winning or holding significant marketshare. Nintendo: I love 'em, they make fun games (though I don't buy into any of their hype). Sony: I don't really feel one way or the other about Sony as a company, but they have platforms with loads of great games, and they try to deliver a solid platform for doing so. Microsoft: Eats markets, crushes competitors, doesn't know how to play by the rules, and turns out crap products. So you can see why I don't want Microsoft to "win".
Well, Nintendo was a real tyrant back in the 80s and 90s. In terms of customer abuse, not so much (at least that I am aware), which is laudable. In terms of developer abuse, lots and lots. We missed out on tons of great games over here which are only now getting ports. Most of Nintendo's problems stem from poor decisions on Nintendo's part. You can't really say they harmed customers, but they've really under-delivered, and have been paying for it. They're trying to ride the hype-wave back to the top, but I'm not sure they have anything besides Mario, Zelda, and Metroid to really give us once they get there.
Microsoft? Nuff said.
Sony? You may hold "Sony" responsible for "Sony/BMG" issues. But it's hard to hold SCE responsible for Sony or Sony/BMG. Knowing people who work there, I know they operate as an entirely separate entity. It's not like Microsoft, where you have everyone on a single campus in a single corporate culture. Maybe it would appease the fanboys if they dropped the "Sony" name, but in most of the world, "Sony" is known as a really solid brand. Additionally, they have never really lied about the capabilities of their console to any real degree; the biggest change of tune was 2 HDMI ports to 1 HDMI port. But then, they said they wouldn't have a hard drive, then delivered it on both models; they said they wouldn't have HDMI on the lower-end model, and did; and they've delivered on basically everything else. And whether original PS3 E3 demos were prerendered or not, it's not like the PS3 isn't actually outputting better visuals than what they originally had (at least in most cases: I think VF5 has fallen short).
So basically, Sony may not be perfect, but they're not nearly as evil as Microsoft. ;)
Clearly, this indicates your memory sucks.
That's funny, because they are all actions taken by their respective companies. Would you like to explain how this has nothing to do with either company? Perhaps you're using some funny definition of "nothing" or "has anything to do with"?
Actually, they wanted 100% control over the software that was made for SNESCD. Which was in the contract up front, which Nintendo later decided they didn't like, which lead to Sony developing its own console anyway. It's fairly evident from their actions with the N64, staying with cartridges, that they had no real interest in a CD-based console. Had Nintendo developed the N64 with CDs, Square probably would have made Final Fantasy 7 for the N64, and history would be entirely different.
What I'm saying is that these are decisions Nintendo made, and as a result, Sony developed the Playstation. These decisions cost Nintendo their position as industry leader. The "nice Nintendo" we know now is a product of necessity, to try and regain the developers they alienated and the position they lost. Who knows---maybe it will work---but Nintendo isn't being nice because they're just a really nice company that's always been the warm fuzzy good guy.
And Microsoft? Give me a break.
A few Microsoft facts:
A few Nintendo facts:
Neither of these companies are perfect. Both have made poor decisions, and had bad business practices. Microsoft, obviously, is the worse offender. They haven't changed, they haven't shown signs of changing, and there doesn't seem to be reason they'll change in the immediate future. They're profiting from it everytime you buy an XBOX, XBOX game, or other Microsoft product.
Nintendo isn't great either: they used to be be almost as bad as Microsoft, in their own industry. Of necessity, they've changed to become the "developer-friendly" company they purport to be. They're still trying to shed the "for kids" stigma. They're trying to change; that's good.
But to blame Sony Computer Entertainment---especially unrelated subsidiaries of the parent company, and their contractors---for things they have admitted as a mistake and helped fix, is simply blind fanaticism. Overall, SCE has delivered two solid consoles with huge game libraries, provided developers with exactly what they've asked for, with a minimum of censorship or heavyhandedness. Are they perfect? Is their parent company perfect? Hardly. But compare them to their competitors whom you might idolize, and they hardly stand out as being overtly evil.
And yet, Sony is still the evil one. Riiight.
Not really. "Pros" typically don't care about platform-delivered apps, and they certainly don't care about crap like various RedHat knockoffs. Stability is OK, but in the end it comes down to one thing: paid support. Which is why commercial vendors produce software for it, because you can then buy support contracts for the entire platform. And it's usually a big chunk of change, which makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy.
If you think this, it shows how little you know about development, or games in general. Consider platformers: game object count and interaction level alone could stand vast improvement. If you see an object, you should be able to pick it up, smack it around, stand on it, or otherwise interact with it. Last-gen platformers didn't begin to scratch the surface here. Lots of "invisible walls," frozen scenery, and static props.
While object count on the screen has somewhat to do with rendering capabilities, it also has to do with managing calculations for every object in question. Last-gen games like GTA, Jak, and others, have pulled tricks to emulate a high-population environment, but it's fairly evident that once you turn your head or walk a distance, the object goes away. This makes the world seem to be of much thinner fabric.
Other techniques, like level generation, are only barely being worked with. Games like Dark Cloud or Coded arms are very rudimentary in this regard. Most of this is again due to limited memory, storage, and processing power... they wouldn't have to render any more than your average game. Consider a game with the gameplay depth of Nethack, and the complexity of levels generated for things like Angband or other roguelikes. Now toss that into a fully active 3D world where you need to track many thousands of game objects at all times. Now add networking. You will quickly run to the end of your resource limits.
There are lots of other unexplored avenues, as well. To say that you can 'you could run an "as broad as conceivable" game on an old Dreamcast' is like saying '640k is enough for anyone'. Naive, ignorant, and shortsighted.
Graphical fine detail is up to the graphics artists. Gameplay fine detail is entirely different: can you take two items you find and mix them? Is the battle system a 4-item menu, or can you piece together your attacks based on individual techniques? Is the magic system a few static spells, or an improvisational/programmatic casting system? The list goes on. All of these relate not one bit to graphics: you could apply the questions even to a set of tabletop gaming rules.
Gamers buy consoles for games. Graphics are secondary; however it's a mistake to think that "what's under the hood" necessarily relates to graphics, especially in the case of the PS3. There are two main things you hear about when you talk about what's under the hood of the PS3: Blu-Ray, and the Cell. Neither of these are directly related to graphics; both are more about the ability to have a deeper game world, whether it's larger levels, more game objects to interact with, or more accurate physics. Not all of these may apply to every game, but at least one of them applies to just about any game you can come up with. Sony isn't touting one primary feature ("wave the stick around!"), they're giving a broad platform with a lot of capabilities for developers to explore. This is what leads to breadth of library, diversity of games, and innovation.
Graphics are just the first thing you see. And yeah they're really nice. But like you said, if there's nothing there to back it up, what's the point? This is why the more interesting things about game trailers like FFXIII or DMC4 are the gameplay: fewer "Attack, Attack, Attack" menu battles for the former, and more Advent-Children-esque battles; and wild fast action with all sorts of abilities for the latter.
Just think: with the Wii, once you get past swinging the controller around, what about the game has really changed? Does it make the world bigger, or the story better, or the characters rounder? How much more does the battle system let you do, and how many more things can you interact with in the level?
Care to list? I just picked up one of the few remaining titles I lacked yesterday (Chibi Robo)... I wouldn't want to overlook something, as stuff gets hard to find quick. (And yeah, maybe there are 25, maybe 30, maybe a few more... but we're still talking about an order of magnitude difference here.)
Yes, because stating facts make one a fanboy. I see that now. In the future I will be careful to spin the truth, mislead, or outright lie, because some people might not like the facts.
And with my GBC, GBA, 2x GBA SPs, DS Lite, GB Player, GBA Player, 2x NES, SNES, N64 (with expansion pack!), Cube, and Dreamcast, all of which are currently hooked up (except one of the NES's) yes, I'm definitely a Sony fanboy. Yes, I have a couple PS2s... one solely for FFXI... 2x PSPs, and a PS3, but that's hardly the majority of the colllection now, is it? I'm a gamer; I buy consoles for games, and I'm pretty sure I have a handle on the relative merits and library of each.
Well, this still isn't anything to brag about. There are about 25 cube games worth playing. There are about 300 PS2 games worth playing, and another 300 PS1 games worth playing. Now if they sold an adaptor that let you plug in NES, SNES, and N64 carts... that would be damn cool, and something more than comparable.
Seriously, what did you expect? Look back before the PS2 price drop: mere days before, there officially wasn't going to be one. Then it happened.
Anyone would be shooting themselves in the foot to announce a price drop, especially for a product like this, anytime early. What are you expecting? "Yeah, a year from now, it's going to be $299. Why don't you all just hold off buying one til then?" This would kill their market. Idiotic self-deluding fanboy fantasies to the contrary, this isn't going to happen; but that doesn't mean they won't drop the price a year or two from now.
Right now they're sticking to the "this is worth a lot, you're getting a lot when you buy it" mantra, which, mathematically speaking, still holds true.
Yes, if by "100% backwards compatibility" you mean "for the 5-10 games you have to re-buy for the VC". Sony clearly has the shadier definition when they say "all the PS1 and PS2 games you already own".
...yet you'll buy an XBOX 360. Or Wii. People are quick to forget the past.
It doesn't matter. What they're doing is underhanded and shady. It doesn't matter how "unbiased" you think the person is, the facts remain:
This is, in irc terms, ban evading. It doesn't matter if the guy who banned you was a jerk, you're still ban evading. If they actually cared about "corrections," they'd submit a public correction request to the wikipedia editors detailing what is wrong, why, and the proposed corrections, and subject them to review.
Someone's competitor plans to launch a product with a 2% advantage over the product you can already get, mere years after something with a 100% advantage was demonstrated, and within only 8 months of something with 200% advantage!