in Japan. Where Animal Crossing[Forest] is pulling another Nintendogs and widening the gap even further. Nov 21 - 27.
Huh? They sold 1.6 million this year, vs 2.2 million DS's. That's a gap of less than 500k, and these are devices that cost considerably more. The chart shows they've sold more than the PS2! So you look at a 7-day period and claim the sales are better? I'm sure we can find an arbitrary 7-day period where the PSP sold more, too.
Slow out the gate? Wtf? Slow out the gate is having your console selling game released 6 months AFTER the system is released. Having a PS2 port come out a YEAR after the system is released is trying to breath life into the dead.
What, exactly, does this sentence mean... in English? "Having your console selling game released 6 month after the system is released"? What PS2 port came out a year after the system was released? The system hasn't even been out for a year.
Sony just plain mismanaged the PSP. The movies offer little that DVDs don't outmatch, let alone the bonuses.
Except now you can pick them up for $5-10 from Frys and watch them on a device that's easy to carry on the bus or plane. (Same with TV shows.)
The games are few, far and are often times nothing more than ports.
This, of course, is bullshit. See the following:
Darkstalkers: Chronicles
Twisted Metal: Head On
Metal Gear Acid
Legend of Heroes ("The Garghav")
Kingdom of Paradise
Wipeout: Pure
Mercury
Lumines
Hot Shots Golf
Untold Legends
Ridge Racer
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Tokobot
Lord of the Rings Tactics
Need for Speed Underground Rivals
The Con
Gripshift
MediEval: Resurrection
Death Jr.
Coded Arms
Burnout Legends
Infected
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo
These are fully PSP originals (though some may be sequels or have a related franchise). For games that include ports or remakes:
Tony Hawk Underground 2: Remix (extended version of THUG2)
Ape Escape
PoPoLoCrois
Note that PoPoLoCrois has never been released here, and is thus a "new" game to most people who would be playing it in the US.
Additionally, there are titles that are "cross-platform", that is, appearing close to or simultaneously with the game as released on other platforms, such as X-Men Legends II, and various sports games I don't know enough about to list properly.
Yes, there could be more; there will be more. But compared to the PS2's first 6-12 months, we're doing pretty good already. And there have been far more B to A titles for the PSP than there were for the PS2. So don't give me this "there are no games" BS. There are plenty of games.
Online capabilities is a joke, and trying to stop the PSP hackers has more or less alienated the PSP as a portable hackable Xbox.
Huh? The online capabilities of the PSP rock. It's got a builtin web browser that works very well. It's trivially easy to configure. You can play almost everything over the internet or ad-hoc. Power usage is reasonable and latency is great. Most games support at least some form of online play (the RPGs being the biggest exception).
As for trying to stop people from hacking the device, what do you expect? Sure, it'd be great if they released an SDK... I'd be all for that. But who else has done that? Nintendo? Hah. Microsoft? Hah.
In any case, the 1.5 and 2nd generation of games are starting to come through, and I've still got most of the existing ones to finish. The next-gen handheld race has hardly begun.
"First, no one from Sony ever claimed it could render Toy Story."
Really?
Yes, really. "Sony claims" is no better than your original quote. Find an actual quote from a Sony spokesperson that claims this. Otherwise, it's just someone saying Sony claimed that. (The original story, from what I've heard, is that the quote is actually from an XBOX engineer about the capabilities of an XBOX, pre-release, which somehow got shifted to Sony making this claim about the PS2. I don't have any quotes to back this up, though, so it's just as apochryphal.)
I was referring to Gradius III & IV, a PS2 launch title (complete with $50 price tag). And, yes, a PSX game could look better than that.
OK, this isn't exactly fair, since these were originally SNES games, and were just ported, not remade. I mean, you could point at NES ports to the GBA and say "wow, look at those 3rd-generation GBA games, the NES could do that". Yeah, sure, but it can and has done better, too; see the links to the games I posted which are also first-gen games.
Shadow of the Colossus specifically, was made by a very dedicated developer, and quite literally maxes out what the PS2 can do. Graphically, that's as good as it gets, the hardware simply isn't capable of anything else.
Eh. SotC isn't that great. Yeah, it does some neat stuff. But compare it to, say, God of War, Jak3, Gran Turismo 4, FFXII, Dragon Quest 8, and some other Nth generation games, and it's actually not all that great. Yes, it has beautiful moments. No, it's not the best the PS2 has.
Even the first/second party developers were never really able to bring the most out of the system, and Microsoft abandoned it before it could be pushed that far.
I dunno. See, it had 4 years. In a mere two years, the PS2 went from "wow, this is hard to code for, sorry about the aliasing" to Metal Gear Solid 2, Gran Turismo 3, and ICO. These were graphically amazing games that people thought pushed the architecture to its limit. A few years later, we have games like the ones mentioned above, which put those to shame. This is on a box that's supposedly the most difficult to program console ever.
The XBOX has had 4 years. It looked shiny when it came out, it still looks shiny, but not much improved. This is a box that, supposedly, everyone knows how to develop for, and is really easy to program. Microsoft has many in-house resources including Bungie and Rare (who made the graphically stunning fetch-quest for the Cube, Starfox Adventure.) So what happened? Surely in 4 years there has been time for one amazing, outstanding game that shows just how graphically advanced the XBOX's limits can be stretched to?
Meanwhile, Nintendo's primary game developer is Nintendo itself, and they will push the hardware. Better graphics have a lot to do with what hardware is available, and how easy/hard it is to program, but even more to do with how much work the developer is willing to put into hacking the hardware and making it work for them.
So what happened to the first-party MS developers?
The Xbox could easily match, and exceed what the GC can do, but no one's been willing to bother with it so far.
"Supposedly," perhaps. Maybe it has benchmarks which indicate this might be possible. Maybe not. But if no one is willing, and it's that easy, then something is wrong; after all, the PS2 has come a huge way despite its supposed difficulty.
I specified "first generation PS2 games." From back in the days of "It can do Toy Story 2 in real time! Oh yeah, and here's Gradius." I think a PSX game with a little make-up can top that.
Then you have a bad memory, or you weren't there. First, no one from Sony ever claimed it could render Toy Story. If you think otherwise, I suggest you find a real quote; all the pre-launch articles are still around, it should be somewhere.
Second, Gradius V is actually a later-generation game that looks pretty cool. It's great fun if you want a 2-player game, I highly recommend it.
Third, first generation games included Dark Cloud and SSX, whose screenshots I have conveniently linked. If you think they look likePS1games I recommend you have your eyes checked. (Also, check out the videos, which can be more telling for things like texture and motion.)
Hey, this might be a dumb question, but how do you get to the bootup menu when playing a PS1 game?
I just got a PS2 a few months ago, but I do have R-Type Final and Einhander, so it would be awesome if it could upsample them a bit or something.
Hmm, don't have a PS2 on me right this second, but I think when you boot up there is "Browser" and "Settings" or something. At the bottom of the screen, it also says you can hit triangle for some other stuff. Hit triangle, and there should be an option about PS1 emulation or similar. You can toggle smoothing and disc speed from here.
The thing to look for if you're not sure what's happening with smoothing is to check out the textures pre and post. Without any smoothing, you will notice that you can see each "pixel" (or texel or whatever) as a square. With smoothing, the texture should be smoothed, no hard edges on the pixels.
Some translation issues are still there, but I believe this is due to precision limits on the PS1... not something you can easily get around, regardless of how powerful your hardware is.
Is Sony going to follow suit this time with the PlayStation 3? Will PSOne games at least look better?
Sony had the option of doing something similar with the PlayStation 2 (think Bleemcast), but then they were faced with the prospect of PSX games looking just as good as first-generation PS2 games.
Huh? "Follow suit?" The PS2 did texture smoothing for the PS1 (and also faster disc speed), which you can turn on from the PSX menu option on bootup. (Although, annoyingly, you have to set it every time.) Setting these options break compatibility with a few games (and are thus optional), but on the whole it's a major improvement. Dragon Warrior 7 looks like utter crap if played normally; with texture smoothing on it looks quite nice (as PSX games go).
As for "looking as good as first-generation PS2 games", this is a joke. Even today's PSX emulators (which work quite well) that can do resolution boosting and antialiasing don't look as good as PS2 games... simply because the polygon count and texture resolution is low. They do look a hell of a lot better though.
In any case, hopefully the PS3 will offer further load time improvements for PS2 games (though this is not really a problem with modern games), and possibly antialiasing in various forms (texture AA would be the most welcome). I'm not sure how high-level this data is processed, though, or whether this would be possible.
Then I suggest you open your eyes and see some more. Take, for example, PGR3. Whilst in PGR2 (a pretty damn fine looking game by last-gen standards) they used 10,000 polys per car, in PGR3 it's closer to 100,000 on average. To me, 10x increase != "slight improvement". Add the fully scaled reflections, HDR lighting, amazingly detailed buildings and you have something way beyond anything capable on last-gen hardware.
"But it's shinier!" is hardly a decent argument against "slight improvement". So it's shinier. 10k polys? 100k polys? You call a single order of magnitude increase anything more than incremental? Call me back when you can't look at the edges of an object and see the polygonal edges (visible even in the screenshots you posted). And what's with the intense edge aliasing, especially in PGR3? Did they waste all their horsepower on a few more polygons and shinier textures? Where are the pervasive particle effects?
Maybe I'm just not picky, but I haven't really been terribly upset with the Cube's graphics.
Nor am I; although it could stand higher-resolution output. Otherwise, it's pretty much fine.
The Xbox 360 I would say, from what I've seen, is barely hitting that metric, except of course it can do HD, which really only matters for 5-10% of gamers anyway.
Pretty much. What I've seen has been pretty much crap compared to the current generation. Slight improvements at best; no high-poly models, particle effects, etc.
Sure it's early, and I'm sure by the time we're almost done with the 360 it'll far surpassed anything I can differentiate (would anyone have possibly imagined a game that looks as good as Shadow of the Collosus could have come out of the PS2 when it launched in 2000?)
People still complain that the FF8 demo was faked, yet we have games like Jak 3, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and others that far surpass it. Even the Cube has had various graphically awesome works (despite the involvement of some bafmodads). Unfortunately, the XBOX never really got that much spectacularly better than its first generation; maybe it never had the time to mature, or maybe there was just nothing else there. In the same way, maybe the 360 will... but maybe it won't, too. Especially if it'll only last another 4 years.
but we're hitting the photorealistic barrier pretty hard as it is.
OK, this I have to quibble with. Even various PS3 trailers, regardless of your opinion on their veracity---while amazingly better than what we're used to---are still not photorealistic. I point you at, for instance, the Yafray gallery, which has some fairly amazing pieces. I don't believe the PS3 even claims realtime radiosity and raytracing, which we'll want to see before we truly claim photorealism. And there's a ways to go beyond that.
(This is one reason the Cell, despite not being the PS3's main GPU, is exciting; radiosity and raytracing can be done in amazing parallel. The more CPUs you throw at it, the faster you can do it, down to the pixel. Wouldn't it be fun to build such an engine on a box with 4-8 cells? All those independent SPEs... tasty.)
However, hype is everything, and having an "underpowered" console isn't going to help Nintendo regain their hardcore group. It seems like they've given up on them anyway. Which is fine, they aren't terribly good gamers anyway.
I think we have different definitions of "hardcore" here. "Hardcore" gamers are not the sort whose first game was Halo in the frathouse. Hardcore gamers are the sort who still get out their NES, and have the imagination to play tabletop games. These are the sort Nintendo is still catering to.
Of course, if all they make is party games, and don't start putting out a serious library, they'll never get anywhere. This is Nintendo's main problem right now. Not how many pixels they can push; how many games they can make.
Maybe those of us boycotting the entire company because of last month's debacle should adjust things a bit?
Ya think? I mean, it's like not having anything to do with Joe because his cousin Bob robbed the 7-11 and went to jail. But he's got the same last name, so let's ostracize him! Punish the right people for the right crime, or you turn into the same blind, hatred-spewing zealots you most likely despise.
There's no guarantee that libxyz_plugins.so.1.2.4 is compatible with libxyz.so.1.2.3.
Theoretically, but minor versions... especially patch versions... should not break binary compatibility. (And the main thing that breaks binary compatibility is mucking with struct sizes. If you're doing that, please increment your versions sufficiently. Or better yet, wrap them in an API so that it doesn't matter.)
Common sense tells me that my idea of a reasonable amount of abuse differs from yours. Common sense tells me that it is probably a bad idea to fuck with something while it is moving.
Moving? To the common person, nothing appears to be moving. They may be aware a disc is spinning inside, but then, a disc spins inside a portable cd player, or portable dvd player, and this plays DVDs, so what's the big deal? Not everyone can quote you numbers on how many RPMs the disc inside is spinning at. Most people don't care.
I bet you get pissed off that VCRs break if you put a pb&j sandwich in the slot too.
Ah, must we resort to ad hominem attacks? You seem to have a vested interest in this, and know a whole lot about the specifics, do you work for the 360 team? Your perspective seems to be skewed. A proper attitude would be "ah, yeah, maybe we should make it so you don't have to keep the unit absolutely stationary or it ruins your games".
I wonder what biased Slashdotters would say if Nintendo fakes a shortage of Nintendo Revolution when they launch time approaches.
My guess is that the M$-bashers would believe there really was a shortage of Revolution (since Nintendo is such an awesome company and they aren't some evil corporation, right?).
Nice strawman. Nintendo hasn't had a shortage of any console. NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, GBA SP, N64, GCN, DS. Attacking a theoretical future pulled out of your ass might seem to be a valid argument, but it's not. Thanks for playing.
Why do Slashdotters (Especially those M$-bashers) have to be so god-damned biased????
You're correct, the 360 is built to STAND in either orientation. The unit isn't designed to MOVE while playing a game. It isn't build to withstand some dumbass showing his friends how cool it is that the green light changes its location when he rotates the unit around.
Hey, I'm not talking how it's currently designed. That's pretty much a given: you move it, it destroys your games.
I'm talking about how, if Microsoft had a hair of forethought, they would have done what every successful console manufacturer has done, and design a console to withstand "normal" abuse. I'm not talking about dropping it off a table, but the reality is, kids are going to have this thing on the floor, the power supply is going to be on the floor, it's going to get pushed around and manipulated while in play.
It doesn't matter what they write in the manual in big red letters. Hell, most of the time, what they write in there comes down to "YOU MUST NOT EVER USE THIS FOR ANY PURPOSE AND IF YOU DO AND IT BURNS DOWN YOUR HOUSE, IT'S NOT OUR FAULT". People don't pay attention to that. People expect their console to be an appliance, not a highly sensitive PC that must be treated with the utmost care lest it destroy your media or overheat. (This is another reason Nintendo stuck with cartridges, despite it ultimately being a poor choice.)
The manual tells you not to it. Common sense tells you not to it. Physics tells you not to it. Don't do it, and you won't fuck up your game disc. Crying about how much of a dumbass you are isn't going to help.
The manual tells you not to do a lot of things. Common sense tells me this should withstand a reasonable amount of abuse. Physics? Most people don't know how fast the disc spins on their blackbox console, they just know they put in the shiny CD and the game plays. After all, your portable cd player never had any trouble!
This comes down to simply not being appropriate for the intended audience. You can build a car and write all sorts of things in the manual, but if you constantly have to monitor the gauges and be sure not to turn too fast, it's going to break. Not because the driver was stupid, because the designer was stupid.
The PS2 doesn't spin the disc very fast. If you change orientation fast enough while the disc is spinning you will scratch the disc in the drive. People have done it, and they have complained about it just like these dumbasses.
I have done it, and I haven't had any problems. Sure, I didn't shake it as hard as I could, and I treat my PS2s with hard drives a bit more carefully, but I haven't ruined any games because of it. I have two first-gen PS2s, and they still run fine, despite normal day-to-day wear and tear. There are no massive complaint threads about ruined games. (Disc Read Errors, yes, but Sony fixed that, too.)
Unix systems gladly replace system libraries that are in use
Define "in use". If it's a program that's currently running and using it, no it doesn't. Even if the old library gets unlinked (deleted) it doesn't go away until the last process using it has exited. New libraries are named by their version (foo.so.X.Y.Z). Old ones go on living and things that are using them keep on using them.
Even programs that depend on older major versions of the library can coexist without anything special; minor versions are assumed to be binary compatible (and should be), but even if not you can manually specify which library to link if it comes down to that (like, if you broke the box and you need to rebuild it without rebooting).
Most 12x DVD drives aren't in a consumer console that are typically subject to appliance-like treatment, not to mention an appliance that's built to stand either way. I have, for instance, moved my PS2 between upright and flat multiple times during play, and have experienced no such problems. If it's that big a problem, the 360 should detect when it's jarred or moved and immediately spin down the drive.
Bug fixes can be usually be checked into source control immediately (obviously depending on the amount of code that needs to be altered). But *testing* that this fix works on 3 different architectures (x86, x64, ia64), 6 different Windows versions (2000, 2000 Server, XP Pro, XP Home, 2003 Server, XP 64-bit), and doesn't regress any other Windows component or 3rd party application takes LOTS of time. It would involve coordinating with multiple test teams across multiple Windows divisions, all of whom are undoubtedly working on something different. And even after a patch has gone through this huge test matrix, there is still a risk that it will break something, making MS reluctant to patch all but the most serious problems.
This is obviously indicative of a overcomplex poorly-designed system with far, far too many interdependencies. Well-designed systems do not have this problem. Regardless of the excuse, this is still Microsoft's fault, in the end.
I'm not sure what industry you work in, but this sequence is normal in most industries. While a product is under development, the majority of bug reports are generated by the development/test teams. But once it has been released to the public, the product teams move on to a new project and no longer concentrate on finding bugs in the released product. Instead, post-release bug reports come from end-users and resellers. These bugs are filed, verified, triaged, and possibly fixed as deemed appropriate by product support personnel.
I'm talking about releasing a security advisory and temporary workarounds shortly after finding or learning of the bug. This is responsible, and what responsible companies, both in the computing industry and other industries.
It sounds like you work at Microsoft (as you seem to have fairly intimate knowledge of their practices, or perhaps you have a "friend" who works there), and assume Microsoft practices are industry standard. This is typical Microsoft arrogance: other companies and development teams fix their bugs and maintain their code, and don't "go on to other things". I'm sure others here can attest to that as well.
Perhaps you're holding Microsoft to a different standard here?
If it were any other industry, Microsoft would have its head on a block. Cars with even minor problems have recalls issued at the expense of the manufacturer. Architecture with structural issues would be career-ending. Toys with issues, whether safety or reliability, would be recalled. Electronic hardware with widespread issues would be recalled.
If Microsoft is held to a different standard, it's a much lower standard.
This definition doesn't rely on "beauty" or subjective notions, and you can pretty much find a 1:1 mapping between it and something you consider art.
"Excellence of craft" simply speaks to execution: is it well-done, or is it sloppy? Note this doesn't exclude things which are "artistically sloppy" or similar: they should also be executed excellently! This doesn't preclude subject matter.
"Meaning at multiple levels" means, if you have, say, a picture, that which is portrayed in the picture should not be the only meaning behind it. Deeper themes, references, or implication should be present.
Using this, look at ICO: excellently-executed game, in gameplay, graphics, sound, and even story. We have meaning at multiple levels: you have simply what's happening, with the puzzles and areas, the (slightly) deeper story about what's going on behind the scenes (and things implied by the girl's unknown language), and deeper thematic elements about life, struggle, and friendship. ICO is definitely a work of art.
Other games... say, Doom 3... have pretty graphics engines, but fall short in other areas, like story, or level design (with a few minor exceptions). Some may consider these decent, but definitely not excelling in the area. And deeper meaning? You blow things away as they jump out of the dark. There may be heavy-handed overtones about messing with things Man Should Not Know, or whatever, but it's pretty flat.
In summary, defining art isn't difficult; just don't rely on definitions which are highly subjective. That's the main problem when discussing art.
As much as we may despise it, Windows is a very large, complex piece of software. As bugs are fixed and features added, more bugs are created and so the cycle goes on.
...does not imply this:
This is the reality of software development.
This is not the reality of software development. This is the reality of incompetent developers and management perhaps: making technical decisions based on how to lock in your customers, work around lawsuits, and shove software out the door to crush the competition.
Plenty of systems---yes, open source ones are good ones to look at---are not so bug-ridden and complex that they can't stay ahead of the curve and react quickly. If you write good software, if you're at least decent at what you do, that is the reality of software development.
Does he really think that if Microsoft could fix every bug they wouldn't do it?
But, they don't. They have reports of bugs for months, often, and do nothing until it's publically reported and/or there's an exploit in the wild. Does it take Microsoft 6 months to come up with a patch for a single buffer overrun? Or are they just too arrogant and think they're above doing anything about problems until they're exposed?
How often do we see bug reports from Microsoft about a critical vulnerabilities, compared to third-party reports?
Now that I'm 41, oooooooh geez, I now realize what a typical arrogant, idiotic, irritating, annoying, ignorant young punk I was.
And because you were, everyone else is also. At least you've gotten over "young punk". However, you should have taken a course in logic along the way.
And if someone disagrees with me who is older than that, then you must've not grown up yet.:)
"Anyone who disagrees doesn't count" isn't a very convincing argument.
Part of what you're saying may be correct for a lot of people... but there are six billion people on the planet right now, in many cultures, and we've got recorded history going back for thousands of years. I think it's a bit arrogant to assume everyone of those trillions and trillions of people are just the same as you. In this day and age, many people lead a very sheltered life; in other times and cultures, people have been forced to "grow up" at a much earlier age.
While this "simulator" is basically an emulation of the Cell hardware, it won't allow people to run games at full speed.
Yeah, remember, the cell is just one component, you've got the GPU to worry about too, and make sure you can match the other system component performance (RAM bus and the like). Not impossible, but consider it took/takes a 100-200MHz intel system to emulate a 3MHz SNES. While other techniques are available (like dynamic recompilation and the like), these only go so far. If you could get the same performance out of lesser parts, there would be no reason to upgrade.
So, basically they come at you saying that they'll install this security system worth $1,000 free for you, all you have to do is sign up for 3 years of service at just $200 a month!
They're actually saying that instead of paying $1000 up front, you can pay $7200 in the long run. And like you said, they'll cut corners to minimize the $1000, too.
Precisely; additionally, I forgot to note, if you cut the contract short you end up paying for the phone when you terminate (usually a $100-$200 termination fee), something around the regular subsidized amount.
Crazy, all of my cell phones have been sold to me at a loss so that I would buy the service.
Wrong. The hardware manufacturer sells them at cost. The service provider may subsidize the phone for you, but the manufacturer isn't losing money. (With the price of phones, they're probably making ridiculous profits.) The service provider has just adjusted their prices so you pay the $200 back in the plan.
It's a perfectly valid and legal business model, as long as you don't have monopoly power in the market.
MS had (and still has, though I believe it is eroding) monopoly power in the desktop OS market. It does not in the gaming-console market.
Eh, I'm pretty sure it's "if you don't have a monopoly on any market". After all, they didn't have a monopoly on the browser market. Leveraging your monopoly to break into other markets where you would otherwise not have been reasonably able to do so is, I believe, illegal. (Although IANAL.) This is, of course, exactly what they're doing with the XBOX/XBOX360. Using and losing hundreds of millions from their OS/Office monopoly to fund this venture.
Of course, the fact Sony or Nintendo haven't sued seems more like they're not worried about competition in the area.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? They sold 1.6 million this year, vs 2.2 million DS's. That's a gap of less than 500k, and these are devices that cost considerably more. The chart shows they've sold more than the PS2! So you look at a 7-day period and claim the sales are better? I'm sure we can find an arbitrary 7-day period where the PSP sold more, too.
What, exactly, does this sentence mean... in English? "Having your console selling game released 6 month after the system is released"? What PS2 port came out a year after the system was released? The system hasn't even been out for a year.
Except now you can pick them up for $5-10 from Frys and watch them on a device that's easy to carry on the bus or plane. (Same with TV shows.)
This, of course, is bullshit. See the following:
These are fully PSP originals (though some may be sequels or have a related franchise). For games that include ports or remakes:
Note that PoPoLoCrois has never been released here, and is thus a "new" game to most people who would be playing it in the US.
Additionally, there are titles that are "cross-platform", that is, appearing close to or simultaneously with the game as released on other platforms, such as X-Men Legends II, and various sports games I don't know enough about to list properly.
Yes, there could be more; there will be more. But compared to the PS2's first 6-12 months, we're doing pretty good already. And there have been far more B to A titles for the PSP than there were for the PS2. So don't give me this "there are no games" BS. There are plenty of games.
Huh? The online capabilities of the PSP rock. It's got a builtin web browser that works very well. It's trivially easy to configure. You can play almost everything over the internet or ad-hoc. Power usage is reasonable and latency is great. Most games support at least some form of online play (the RPGs being the biggest exception).
As for trying to stop people from hacking the device, what do you expect? Sure, it'd be great if they released an SDK... I'd be all for that. But who else has done that? Nintendo? Hah. Microsoft? Hah.
In any case, the 1.5 and 2nd generation of games are starting to come through, and I've still got most of the existing ones to finish. The next-gen handheld race has hardly begun.
Yes, really. "Sony claims" is no better than your original quote. Find an actual quote from a Sony spokesperson that claims this. Otherwise, it's just someone saying Sony claimed that. (The original story, from what I've heard, is that the quote is actually from an XBOX engineer about the capabilities of an XBOX, pre-release, which somehow got shifted to Sony making this claim about the PS2. I don't have any quotes to back this up, though, so it's just as apochryphal.)
OK, this isn't exactly fair, since these were originally SNES games, and were just ported, not remade. I mean, you could point at NES ports to the GBA and say "wow, look at those 3rd-generation GBA games, the NES could do that". Yeah, sure, but it can and has done better, too; see the links to the games I posted which are also first-gen games.
Eh. SotC isn't that great. Yeah, it does some neat stuff. But compare it to, say, God of War, Jak3, Gran Turismo 4, FFXII, Dragon Quest 8, and some other Nth generation games, and it's actually not all that great. Yes, it has beautiful moments. No, it's not the best the PS2 has.
I dunno. See, it had 4 years. In a mere two years, the PS2 went from "wow, this is hard to code for, sorry about the aliasing" to Metal Gear Solid 2, Gran Turismo 3, and ICO. These were graphically amazing games that people thought pushed the architecture to its limit. A few years later, we have games like the ones mentioned above, which put those to shame. This is on a box that's supposedly the most difficult to program console ever.
The XBOX has had 4 years. It looked shiny when it came out, it still looks shiny, but not much improved. This is a box that, supposedly, everyone knows how to develop for, and is really easy to program. Microsoft has many in-house resources including Bungie and Rare (who made the graphically stunning fetch-quest for the Cube, Starfox Adventure.) So what happened? Surely in 4 years there has been time for one amazing, outstanding game that shows just how graphically advanced the XBOX's limits can be stretched to?
So what happened to the first-party MS developers?
"Supposedly," perhaps. Maybe it has benchmarks which indicate this might be possible. Maybe not. But if no one is willing, and it's that easy, then something is wrong; after all, the PS2 has come a huge way despite its supposed difficulty.
Then you have a bad memory, or you weren't there. First, no one from Sony ever claimed it could render Toy Story. If you think otherwise, I suggest you find a real quote; all the pre-launch articles are still around, it should be somewhere.
Second, Gradius V is actually a later-generation game that looks pretty cool. It's great fun if you want a 2-player game, I highly recommend it.
Third, first generation games included Dark Cloud and SSX, whose screenshots I have conveniently linked. If you think they look like PS1 games I recommend you have your eyes checked. (Also, check out the videos, which can be more telling for things like texture and motion.)
Hmm, don't have a PS2 on me right this second, but I think when you boot up there is "Browser" and "Settings" or something. At the bottom of the screen, it also says you can hit triangle for some other stuff. Hit triangle, and there should be an option about PS1 emulation or similar. You can toggle smoothing and disc speed from here.
The thing to look for if you're not sure what's happening with smoothing is to check out the textures pre and post. Without any smoothing, you will notice that you can see each "pixel" (or texel or whatever) as a square. With smoothing, the texture should be smoothed, no hard edges on the pixels.
Some translation issues are still there, but I believe this is due to precision limits on the PS1... not something you can easily get around, regardless of how powerful your hardware is.
Huh? "Follow suit?" The PS2 did texture smoothing for the PS1 (and also faster disc speed), which you can turn on from the PSX menu option on bootup. (Although, annoyingly, you have to set it every time.) Setting these options break compatibility with a few games (and are thus optional), but on the whole it's a major improvement. Dragon Warrior 7 looks like utter crap if played normally; with texture smoothing on it looks quite nice (as PSX games go).
As for "looking as good as first-generation PS2 games", this is a joke. Even today's PSX emulators (which work quite well) that can do resolution boosting and antialiasing don't look as good as PS2 games... simply because the polygon count and texture resolution is low. They do look a hell of a lot better though.
In any case, hopefully the PS3 will offer further load time improvements for PS2 games (though this is not really a problem with modern games), and possibly antialiasing in various forms (texture AA would be the most welcome). I'm not sure how high-level this data is processed, though, or whether this would be possible.
"But it's shinier!" is hardly a decent argument against "slight improvement". So it's shinier. 10k polys? 100k polys? You call a single order of magnitude increase anything more than incremental? Call me back when you can't look at the edges of an object and see the polygonal edges (visible even in the screenshots you posted). And what's with the intense edge aliasing, especially in PGR3? Did they waste all their horsepower on a few more polygons and shinier textures? Where are the pervasive particle effects?
Nor am I; although it could stand higher-resolution output. Otherwise, it's pretty much fine.
Pretty much. What I've seen has been pretty much crap compared to the current generation. Slight improvements at best; no high-poly models, particle effects, etc.
People still complain that the FF8 demo was faked, yet we have games like Jak 3, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and others that far surpass it. Even the Cube has had various graphically awesome works (despite the involvement of some bafmodads). Unfortunately, the XBOX never really got that much spectacularly better than its first generation; maybe it never had the time to mature, or maybe there was just nothing else there. In the same way, maybe the 360 will... but maybe it won't, too. Especially if it'll only last another 4 years.
OK, this I have to quibble with. Even various PS3 trailers, regardless of your opinion on their veracity---while amazingly better than what we're used to---are still not photorealistic. I point you at, for instance, the Yafray gallery, which has some fairly amazing pieces. I don't believe the PS3 even claims realtime radiosity and raytracing, which we'll want to see before we truly claim photorealism. And there's a ways to go beyond that.
(This is one reason the Cell, despite not being the PS3's main GPU, is exciting; radiosity and raytracing can be done in amazing parallel. The more CPUs you throw at it, the faster you can do it, down to the pixel. Wouldn't it be fun to build such an engine on a box with 4-8 cells? All those independent SPEs... tasty.)
I think we have different definitions of "hardcore" here. "Hardcore" gamers are not the sort whose first game was Halo in the frathouse. Hardcore gamers are the sort who still get out their NES, and have the imagination to play tabletop games. These are the sort Nintendo is still catering to.
Of course, if all they make is party games, and don't start putting out a serious library, they'll never get anywhere. This is Nintendo's main problem right now. Not how many pixels they can push; how many games they can make.
Ya think? I mean, it's like not having anything to do with Joe because his cousin Bob robbed the 7-11 and went to jail. But he's got the same last name, so let's ostracize him! Punish the right people for the right crime, or you turn into the same blind, hatred-spewing zealots you most likely despise.
Theoretically, but minor versions... especially patch versions... should not break binary compatibility. (And the main thing that breaks binary compatibility is mucking with struct sizes. If you're doing that, please increment your versions sufficiently. Or better yet, wrap them in an API so that it doesn't matter.)
Moving? To the common person, nothing appears to be moving. They may be aware a disc is spinning inside, but then, a disc spins inside a portable cd player, or portable dvd player, and this plays DVDs, so what's the big deal? Not everyone can quote you numbers on how many RPMs the disc inside is spinning at. Most people don't care.
Ah, must we resort to ad hominem attacks? You seem to have a vested interest in this, and know a whole lot about the specifics, do you work for the 360 team? Your perspective seems to be skewed. A proper attitude would be "ah, yeah, maybe we should make it so you don't have to keep the unit absolutely stationary or it ruins your games".
Nice strawman. Nintendo hasn't had a shortage of any console. NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, GBA SP, N64, GCN, DS. Attacking a theoretical future pulled out of your ass might seem to be a valid argument, but it's not. Thanks for playing.
I could ask the same about trolls being idiots.
Hey, I'm not talking how it's currently designed. That's pretty much a given: you move it, it destroys your games.
I'm talking about how, if Microsoft had a hair of forethought, they would have done what every successful console manufacturer has done, and design a console to withstand "normal" abuse. I'm not talking about dropping it off a table, but the reality is, kids are going to have this thing on the floor, the power supply is going to be on the floor, it's going to get pushed around and manipulated while in play.
It doesn't matter what they write in the manual in big red letters. Hell, most of the time, what they write in there comes down to "YOU MUST NOT EVER USE THIS FOR ANY PURPOSE AND IF YOU DO AND IT BURNS DOWN YOUR HOUSE, IT'S NOT OUR FAULT". People don't pay attention to that. People expect their console to be an appliance, not a highly sensitive PC that must be treated with the utmost care lest it destroy your media or overheat. (This is another reason Nintendo stuck with cartridges, despite it ultimately being a poor choice.)
The manual tells you not to do a lot of things. Common sense tells me this should withstand a reasonable amount of abuse. Physics? Most people don't know how fast the disc spins on their blackbox console, they just know they put in the shiny CD and the game plays. After all, your portable cd player never had any trouble!
This comes down to simply not being appropriate for the intended audience. You can build a car and write all sorts of things in the manual, but if you constantly have to monitor the gauges and be sure not to turn too fast, it's going to break. Not because the driver was stupid, because the designer was stupid.
I have done it, and I haven't had any problems. Sure, I didn't shake it as hard as I could, and I treat my PS2s with hard drives a bit more carefully, but I haven't ruined any games because of it. I have two first-gen PS2s, and they still run fine, despite normal day-to-day wear and tear. There are no massive complaint threads about ruined games. (Disc Read Errors, yes, but Sony fixed that, too.)
Define "in use". If it's a program that's currently running and using it, no it doesn't. Even if the old library gets unlinked (deleted) it doesn't go away until the last process using it has exited. New libraries are named by their version (foo.so.X.Y.Z). Old ones go on living and things that are using them keep on using them.
Even programs that depend on older major versions of the library can coexist without anything special; minor versions are assumed to be binary compatible (and should be), but even if not you can manually specify which library to link if it comes down to that (like, if you broke the box and you need to rebuild it without rebooting).
Most 12x DVD drives aren't in a consumer console that are typically subject to appliance-like treatment, not to mention an appliance that's built to stand either way. I have, for instance, moved my PS2 between upright and flat multiple times during play, and have experienced no such problems. If it's that big a problem, the 360 should detect when it's jarred or moved and immediately spin down the drive.
This is obviously indicative of a overcomplex poorly-designed system with far, far too many interdependencies. Well-designed systems do not have this problem. Regardless of the excuse, this is still Microsoft's fault, in the end.
I'm talking about releasing a security advisory and temporary workarounds shortly after finding or learning of the bug. This is responsible, and what responsible companies, both in the computing industry and other industries.
It sounds like you work at Microsoft (as you seem to have fairly intimate knowledge of their practices, or perhaps you have a "friend" who works there), and assume Microsoft practices are industry standard. This is typical Microsoft arrogance: other companies and development teams fix their bugs and maintain their code, and don't "go on to other things". I'm sure others here can attest to that as well.
If it were any other industry, Microsoft would have its head on a block. Cars with even minor problems have recalls issued at the expense of the manufacturer. Architecture with structural issues would be career-ending. Toys with issues, whether safety or reliability, would be recalled. Electronic hardware with widespread issues would be recalled.
If Microsoft is held to a different standard, it's a much lower standard.
This definition doesn't rely on "beauty" or subjective notions, and you can pretty much find a 1:1 mapping between it and something you consider art.
"Excellence of craft" simply speaks to execution: is it well-done, or is it sloppy? Note this doesn't exclude things which are "artistically sloppy" or similar: they should also be executed excellently! This doesn't preclude subject matter.
"Meaning at multiple levels" means, if you have, say, a picture, that which is portrayed in the picture should not be the only meaning behind it. Deeper themes, references, or implication should be present.
Using this, look at ICO: excellently-executed game, in gameplay, graphics, sound, and even story. We have meaning at multiple levels: you have simply what's happening, with the puzzles and areas, the (slightly) deeper story about what's going on behind the scenes (and things implied by the girl's unknown language), and deeper thematic elements about life, struggle, and friendship. ICO is definitely a work of art.
Other games... say, Doom 3... have pretty graphics engines, but fall short in other areas, like story, or level design (with a few minor exceptions). Some may consider these decent, but definitely not excelling in the area. And deeper meaning? You blow things away as they jump out of the dark. There may be heavy-handed overtones about messing with things Man Should Not Know, or whatever, but it's pretty flat.
In summary, defining art isn't difficult; just don't rely on definitions which are highly subjective. That's the main problem when discussing art.
This is not the reality of software development. This is the reality of incompetent developers and management perhaps: making technical decisions based on how to lock in your customers, work around lawsuits, and shove software out the door to crush the competition.
Plenty of systems---yes, open source ones are good ones to look at---are not so bug-ridden and complex that they can't stay ahead of the curve and react quickly. If you write good software, if you're at least decent at what you do, that is the reality of software development.
But, they don't. They have reports of bugs for months, often, and do nothing until it's publically reported and/or there's an exploit in the wild. Does it take Microsoft 6 months to come up with a patch for a single buffer overrun? Or are they just too arrogant and think they're above doing anything about problems until they're exposed?
How often do we see bug reports from Microsoft about a critical vulnerabilities, compared to third-party reports?
And because you were, everyone else is also. At least you've gotten over "young punk". However, you should have taken a course in logic along the way.
"Anyone who disagrees doesn't count" isn't a very convincing argument.
Part of what you're saying may be correct for a lot of people... but there are six billion people on the planet right now, in many cultures, and we've got recorded history going back for thousands of years. I think it's a bit arrogant to assume everyone of those trillions and trillions of people are just the same as you. In this day and age, many people lead a very sheltered life; in other times and cultures, people have been forced to "grow up" at a much earlier age.
We should strive to grow until the day we die.
Yeah, remember, the cell is just one component, you've got the GPU to worry about too, and make sure you can match the other system component performance (RAM bus and the like). Not impossible, but consider it took/takes a 100-200MHz intel system to emulate a 3MHz SNES. While other techniques are available (like dynamic recompilation and the like), these only go so far. If you could get the same performance out of lesser parts, there would be no reason to upgrade.
They're actually saying that instead of paying $1000 up front, you can pay $7200 in the long run. And like you said, they'll cut corners to minimize the $1000, too.
Precisely; additionally, I forgot to note, if you cut the contract short you end up paying for the phone when you terminate (usually a $100-$200 termination fee), something around the regular subsidized amount.
Wrong. The hardware manufacturer sells them at cost. The service provider may subsidize the phone for you, but the manufacturer isn't losing money. (With the price of phones, they're probably making ridiculous profits.) The service provider has just adjusted their prices so you pay the $200 back in the plan.
Eh, I'm pretty sure it's "if you don't have a monopoly on any market". After all, they didn't have a monopoly on the browser market. Leveraging your monopoly to break into other markets where you would otherwise not have been reasonably able to do so is, I believe, illegal. (Although IANAL.) This is, of course, exactly what they're doing with the XBOX/XBOX360. Using and losing hundreds of millions from their OS/Office monopoly to fund this venture.
Of course, the fact Sony or Nintendo haven't sued seems more like they're not worried about competition in the area.