They had one of these at PAX. Plastic sphere, fairly heavy construction, on some wheels and sensors that allow fairly free rotation. You wore a head-mounted display and had a "gun" peripheral that you could point and shoot. Play time was about 5 minutes and lines were about an hour long.
Guess what? It sucked. Everyone who has considered how to make an immersive VR environment has, at one time, considered sticking someone in a sphere so they can walk around like this. Within 5 minutes, they've also come up with a number of problems with this setup: inertia keeps the sphere going, walking isn't really "flat", you can't run cords into it, and it's expensive and bulky.
I stood in line, figuring they'd come up with solutions to some, or most, of these problems, making it actually usable. They didn't. Stopping and turning was terrible, walking normally took serious focus, and and to top it off, the demo game was unplayably bad: PSX graphics at best, the "which direction is up" calibration was constantly off, it didn't track motion very well, and things just seemed to pop up randomly. And the actual view window was really small. "Immersive" my ass.
This technology isn't worth further investigation until they can prove the above problems are fixable.
Ahhh, but Sony by and large isn't a developer. W/o third party support they're less than nothing.
Er, I think you fail to realize the extent of Sony first-party developers. Sony did Ape Escape. Sony did ICO. Sony did God of War. Sony did Wipeout. Sony is Polyphony Digital, who makes Gran Turismo. Sony is now Naughty Dog, who makes the Jak series, and has made Crash Bandicoot. Sony is Incog Inc., makers of Twisted Metal and Warhawk.
These are not all. It may be they've produced more software for the PS2 than Nintendo did for the Gamecube. They have plenty of developer power in and of themselves to see a solid lineup. Don't think they're going to sit back.
You need look no further than this year's PAX to see that, where in an incredibly heavy gamer area, I think 5 PSPs were seen of which 3-4 were being given away.
I was there. I saw a lot more than 5 PSPs. Many more than I expected, in fact. (I figured the same; this was a high-priced item and these were gamers. I was suprised: there were a lot of gamers who can and would put down the money for it.) Tycho might not have seen more than 5, but then he wasn't out on the floor much, either.
Even here, where you'd think people would be most impressed by whiz-bang tech, the PSP faithful are drastically outnumbered by the DS converts.
Cripe, what is this, some sort of religion? Do you set up a shrine to your DS or PSP or whatever and light a candle every night? These are game consoles. You get them because you can play the games you like on them. Despite what fanboys might want you to believe, they're not a religion you have to convert to.
It's not settled yet, but it will be all but settled by the end of the holiday season.
Holy wars now? I suspect we'll see serious numbers of consoles move this holiday. If I were you, I'd be hoping both portables fly off the shelves, because it'd help kick up the competition a bit; something Nintendo seriously needs.
Even if it's a bang-up smash in Europe if it doesn't seriously start moving here and in Japan it's gonna get dropped like a rock.
Right, because Sony has no vested interest or much money involved, they'll just pull it off the market. Same with all those developers. (Incidentally, same with the DS.)
It's almost as expensive as a console to develop for(while the DS, being so low-powered with only 1Gb of storage is by far cheaper), and it has a really small userbase atm. It would(assuming it pulls a master system) end up as the most expensive portable to develop for in the most expensive market to release in.
Funny, sounds like another console I know too. It's called the PS2.
You have Sony pulling a Baghdad Bob and claiming "HAPPY-FUN" success when they sell out a 185,000 unit launch alottment in a market the DS has already sold almost 10 times that. Then they stick to units shipped as opposed to sold in their marketing. It just looks sad from this camp.
OK first I haven't heard anything about 1.8 million DS's being sold; maybe I just hadn't heard. That is what you get when you multiply 185k by 10. That is also pretty good when you consider a new, high-priced item, released during the low salespoint of the year, with a production shortage, and not a lot of advertising. Hopefully with the holiday season we will see them step things up.
A lot of people on forums are using their PSPs mainly to play decade-old Nintendo games(which just strikes me as perversely wrong for some reason, yet I had no trouble using my GBA for pocketNES, go fig). At least to hear them talk. That's not much of a selling point when to play new PSP games you need to kill that functionality.
They're also using them to play SNES games. And PSX games. And some homebrew games (yay tetris). And browse the web. And watch movies. And read comics.
For any menu-driven or mouse-approximation interface, that touchscreen on the DS makes an analog feel like it came from the 19th century. I can't stand any situation where I need to move a cursor with an analog anymore. I never had much tolerance for it to begin with however.
Ah yes because mouse-like menus are required...
That interface advantage is a biggy. Advance Wars: DS(beats Metal Gear Acid for depth of tactics and multiplayer by far) controls smooth as silk, and the whole RTS/
I don't consider saying I don't like it "bashing" it.
This was actually poorly worded. I didn't even say I didn't like it (this is silly, I haven't played it, how can I tell?), I'm just not interested in it.
Wow. Can you say flame? All hostilities aside, though.
See my sig...;-) Kidding aside, a flame would be more pointless personal insults, I'd think. Nothing wrong with a stinging retort however!
Games that span several Gb are either poorly coded or rely too heavily on expensive photoshop and 3d studio artists. True game programers can reproduce all of the pretty graphics with the some clever coding. I have no respect for Squaresoft's everspanning FMV RPGs. You want to watch a movie, buy a movie. I want to play the game.
This is the only bit I am in contention with. It doesn't matter how good a programmer you are: data takes up space. Lots of polygons, lots of pixels. You can compress things to an extent; however you start trading off quality and CPU cycles to do so. The trick is trading off just enough to get the job done with what you've got. Also, data doesn't compress forever: sometimes you just can't.
It's my guess that current PSP games don't come close to utilizing the full 1.8G. However, that's bound to change in the future. There aren't many dual-disc PS2 games, but there are some. (These aren't simply FMVs, either; Star Ocean 3 has a lot of large areas, voice acting, etc.)
And speaking of movies. $25 for a UMD movie. The same movie I can buy on DVD in the next aisle for half the price. Mmmm. No.
Seriously! I have no interest in UMD movies at this point. Like I said; $5. Give me a UMD with my favorite TV shows for last week, I'd pay you $5. Etc. $25 is right out.
The ability to play my own video from memory sticks isn't too bad, though, although I've never used it. Neat if you set up your PVR to downsample your shows I guess.
And GTA. Am I the only one who's sick of this game? I bought GTA3. I admit it. I played it for 20 minutes. Then I got bored.
I played to the second area. Got bored. Same stuff, over and over. I also bought San Andreas, just because it would probably be a good game, if I took the time to play it. If I had the time to take. (And the camera controls weren't backwards!)
Ok. Java on a PSP. Lame. Lame. Lame.
Yes. Some people like those I guess, so I'm not going to entirely dismiss them.
oGMo, you're bashing Nintendogs again.
I took a look at my post again; I don't consider saying I don't like it "bashing" it. I don't have a problem with Nintendogs; I like some things, other people like other things, and that's why they make more than one type of game.
However, I do find considering the entire handheld race won this generation because of something that's basically a tamagotchi to be a bit silly.
I do wonder, though... What PSP games are actually worth owning after Wipeout, Twisted Metal, and Lumines.
This is like anything else entirely dependant on what you like to play. Metal Gear: Acid rocks if you like tactics games. Or if you're a fan of Metal Gear stories. THUG2 is an excellent port. Having an entire Tony Hawk game on a handheld just rocks. Mercury is old-school fun; lots of levels and challenges, and they're not easy. And it's pretty to look at, too. Untold Legends is satisfactory if you want hack'n'slash Baldur's Gate style. Hot Shots Golf rocks; don't bash it, people have bought PSPs for it, and I've spent far too much time in the past two days learning why. It's fun, and excellently implemented, with huge long-term value. Ridge Racer is a great arcade-style drift racer, but don't expect GT-style simulation driving (wait for GT).
However it may be you don't like any of these genres. That's understandable; there aren't any real RPGs yet, though there are some on the horizon. It's not wo
Let's face it people the PSP has a serious problem with games
It does? Which problem would that be?
this is the same problem you laughed at the Game Cube about, but you defend it now
OK, presumably you mean "the lack of games for the GameCube". However, I have about as many PSP games now as I have bought over the entire life of the Cube. Perhaps you mean "games I like", which may be perfectly valid for you, but irrelevant for the rest of us. No one is forcing you to buy one, but there are tons of games others enjoy.
Nintendo risked a bit with the 2 screens, but notice where they are? Notice they know how to use it. Nintendogs is genius. They tried something big, and it's worked. Sony can't have something like that, they don't have the capablities for it on this system.
That's nice. You like Nintendogs. A lot of people don't have any interest in an oversized tamagotchi. I, for instance, would be more interested in Super Mario Bros, Castlevania, or Advance Wars.
It's also a bit silly to assert you can't have a pet game for the PSP simply because you don't have two LCDs.
It's the same with the Revolution, if Nintendo gets third party in and sees it's a great idea you'll see a shift in power. And they can likely do it. What they need to let out is numbers for the systems and get the dev kits out, I don't know if they have done either, but once that starts it could be something good. It's going to be hard, but let's be honest, if you think games are good now, your kidding yourself, all we are getting are games similar to what we've been seeing for the last 20 years. This might actually give us something different.
Ah yes, if, if, if. If they do all the right things, and happen to generate the right interest, and things happen to fall their way, it'll be great! It's so simple! But it's not. Generalities are nice, but it's actually pulling through in the implementation of them that's difficult. It's easy for an armchair enthusiast to comment about what they'd do, especially when they know nothing about what it takes to actually accomplish it. You seem to think Nintendo is stupid, and that it's not trying to do these things. I'm sure the random advice of a slashdotter would help them immensely.
The problem is PSP should stand for PS Ports. They might have GTA Liberty City Stories but they need more than one unique game to hold this system together and they failed that test so far.
Oh? Which ports would you be referring to? Mercury? Lumines? Metal Gear: Acid? Untold Legends? Wipeout Pure? Twisted Metal: Hands On? Hotshots Golf? Ridge Racer? Yes, a few of these games are sequels or have related series. (But then, the DS does too, right? Yoshi? Mario? Metroid? Castlevania? Advance wars?) There are also a few direct ports: THUG2 and Ape Escape. But I can see why two ports mean the system should be called the "PS Ports".
The only game I want for the PSP is Lumines and maybe Liberty City Stories. Where as the DS definatly has the games, and the backwards compatibility too.
Ah, here's the confusion. "The only game I want." Well, guess what? You're not the only person in the world. Possibly not even the only gamer. The PSP lineup appeals to a lot of people.
Also, the PSP doesn't really have something to be backward-compatible with, yet, but that is a nice feature of the DS. (Although why they elected to disallow multiplayer link games is boggling.)
They should have allowed everyone to put their own apps on the system. Would Java have worked if they locked it down? Imagine if you can run anything on the PSP and enjoy programming for it? but of course Sony doesn't want freedom (remember they have a huge invested
Well to be fair, I'm not saying these are the only things that make a good shooter. These are just the two basic things every shooter should have to qualify as a shooter.
What's truly sad is that something like Darkwatch which, while fun, doesn't have a lot beyond the bare minimum going for it, stands out among FPS's. Something is seriously wrong with the evolution of the genre.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen the mass market dislikes the complicated controller of the newest generation.
I don't know what gives you this idea. 100 million PS2s sold? PS1s? GBAs? SNESs? All of these have basically the same controller layout, give or take a couple face buttons or shoulder buttons.
Nintendo seems to be under the mistaken impression that videogames are still new and unfamiliar to most folks, and that somehow the mass market needs introduced to them. The mass market already knows and plays them. The Revolution controller will do a lot of things, but bring games to the mainstream isn't one of them. Sony did that already with the PS1.
What does this game offer that makes it better than average?
I played this game (PS2 version). I will summarize this in a way that this review takes too many words not to say. Shooters should have two things:
Lots of things to shoot
Lots of things to shoot them with
Now, simply consider every FPS back to Doom 1, and think how many fail one or both of these things. Lots of hallway-running and not enough shooting, or scarcity of ammo, are the two main ways to fail these. It's a shooter. I want to shoot. I don't want to run around or conserve ammo.
Darkwatch, simply, provides both of these. There are lots of things to shoot, and lots of ammo and guns to shoot them with. And it's fun to do.
What the hell is with all the people bashing Zonk in the last couple posts?
Because he seems to post things with an inflammatory bent, espcially pro-Nintendo stuff. Now don't get me wrong: I love Nintendo. I grew up with Nintendo. I still have my NES and most of my carts. But come on.
Things seem to often fall like this: "Microsoft is OK, Sony Sucks, and Nintendo is Where It's At."
Always? No, not always. But enough that some people would be upset enough to bash him, obviously.
I haven't seen many or any people who are really anti-Nintendo, especially on slashdot. So you have to take a serious look at what's going on if a lot of people start complaining about someone who publishes a lot of pro-Nintendo stuff, stuff they don't necessarily disagree with. They have issue then with something else, and maybe it's legitimate.
The man is doing his job, leave him alone. He's supplying information, that's what he's there to do, and he's doing a damn good job, so back off.
Yes, I think despite anyone's particular reservations, this is something that's like "cool, check it out". Whether it works in practice or not we'll see; but it has potential. I definitely "want one".
However, despite fanboys blathering on (replace "Will Wright" with "Nintendo" or "Miyamoto" in this comic) about how this changes the entire world and nothing was ever like it and none of the other platforms have anything like it, remember the EyeToy Demo where the guy used the two cups, in realtime, to control two cups onscreen?
So before you think Nintendo is the only one offering this kind of control next-gen, remember: the PS3 can already do a number of these things. Without a special motion-sensing controller.
Of course, that doesn't mean the Revolution isn't going to be cool and I'm not going to get one. You can bet when it rolls around with the next-gen Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, I'll be right there.
But remember, the Revolution isn't going to be the only one with this kind of control next generation.
The problem simply is, how are you going to pay your bills?
Charge for service. Charge for priority feature requests. Charge for documentation. Charge for things that are limited: time, paper, etc.
No one is saying we should hand out source code instead of money. In fact, I believe I said something about information being an unlimited resource, so using it as currency wouldn't be too wise, would it?
Nor is anyone saying we should do everything for free. We can still make money and survive in Corporate America. But we can also have Free Software and not be at odds with it.
That's why you wouldn't use them. There is no one-rule-that-applies-everywhere-in-all-situations . Some things work sometimes; other things work other times.
Perhaps it would be more prudent to start a company that sells service as opposed to one that sells software, though. Might be cheaper to start and run, not to mention more profitable, but again it would depend on the situation.
Maybe it's because I run my own business or maybe it's because I studied economics in school, but I tend to look at things a bit different than most other Slashdotters. You've all be spoiled by the easy access to pirated software, music and movies. In the real world, things cost producers both time and money to make. The reason why we all don't have to grow our own food, knit our own sweaters, or write our own code is because we've worked out a neat little system of exchange called "currency".
And it's probably because you run your own business and studied economics that you're blinded to other nonstandard possibilities.
This doesn't even appear to be "Free Software" in the way most of us mean. I don't see the ability to download the source, no less under any sort of nonrestrictive license. However, that aside, because you seem to be talking about "real" Free Software, you're overlooking the two most obvious and tangible returns that we get from developing it: recognition, and the time of other developers.
The first is obvious. The second is more valuable than money; you have the possibility of possibly hundreds or thousands of developers looking at your code, offering patches and extensions to it. Use your economics to translate that into dollars; how much would a staff of 100 developers cost to employ and keep happy? More than most people would ever make selling their code to anyone.
People usually write stuff and release it because it was useful to them, and it might be useful to others, so they can benefit from the above returns. Once that happens, it becomes even more personally useful.
Yes, if you're doing business, this might not work; then again, if your business isn't selling software, it very well might.
It's just like the barter system, but a lot easier because currency is universally accepted. You don't have to worry about trying to locate someone who's willing to give you potatoes in exchange for your ability to configure sendmail. I only have a finite number of hours in my day, and a finite amount of resources. If I want to be able to eat, drive a car, and buy other people's software, I need to get someone in exchange for my skills. Elsewise I can't afford to give others something in return for their product/service.
Ah, this is what many economists can't wrap their head around. Information is not a limited resource. It's artificially limited by various laws, but it's not a diminishing resource. It is not "used up". Thus the barter analogy fails: if two people exchange information, they end up with twice as much as they had to begin with.
Time, however, is our most precious and limited resource; sometimes getting someone's time is more than you could afford if you were charged for it.
It's really not a difficult concept to understand, but if you want the Cliff's Notes version of my point: "Nothing in life is free."
Your point is wrong because you misunderstand. Some things are not free because they are limited and thus acquire value based on rarity. Other things are not limited. Information isn't something that is suitable for building an economy on.
If you want to see what happens with a society tries to avoid the basic laws of economics go vacation in North Korea (or to a lesser extent, Cuba).
Ah, the old "those damn commies!" standby. "Basic laws of economics" apply in a standard economy. It is conceivable that there is something nonstandard---possibly even something that is sustainable. However, one example of failure in this regard shouldn't be enough to dismiss everything (or you need a class in logic).
Also, the idea of "basic laws" should be examined under the same light Shoenberg does with the "basic laws of music": there aren't any. Yes, we can listen to some terrible music by someone who has no concept of sound. This doesn't mean there is one set of rules we must follow for making music, however.
Precisely. This is very helpful. Everyone should do it. But they should do it knowing what they represent. (It should go without saying that you need to write good tests, and if you forget to test something, you're not covered.)
I've just finished creating the worlds first working fusion reactor, but hey, whats the fuzz - others have thought of it before me.
So you think an app that maintains a photo gallery is something that hasn't been done a few times? Possibly on every known platform, in every known language, for every known format, both offline and online?
But I see how one might confuse it with a technological breakthrough on the order of a new energy source.
From a developers point of view, the Gallery 2 framework is particularly interesting because it's written with modern programming patterns (OOP, extreme programming, test driven development, MVC, factories, modularity,...) in mind
How is this interesting? So you've got the toys and the buzzwords. Does it solve a problem? This doesn't say a word about macrodesign. Is the overall model elegant? That's the important part. The rest are just some really nice hammers and screwdrivers. They don't automatically make a good building.
which is rather unusual for PHP based projects.
So is this the interesting bit? "We made something that uses a lot of modern stuff, we did it in PHP, and it took us 3 years". Big deal?
Over 1500 unit tests ensure correct functionality
Ah unit tests. First off, 1500 isn't very many. Secondly, as much as I love them, they only test what you thought of. They're a great tool, but they don't ensure correct anything: they just make sure that when you add something, you don't break something else. As long as you thought of "something else".
This sounds like a modified version of various FFXI mechanics (which isn't much suprise). In FFXI, you can get "Exp chains", which means if you kill things fast with little delay, you get bonus experience on the kill. (This only counts for things at or greater than your level.) The required time between kills goes down the more you kill, making it harder to keep them up, and the amount of exp you get eventually caps at 200-350, but it sounds vaguely similar. Different incentive (items vs exp), but it makes more sense in a 1-player RPG that way.
What would be cool is if they keep Skillchains. This is one thing that makes FFXI battles cool: if you use weapon skills in the right sequence, you do additional damage with neat effects. (You can even toss the right spell on the end for a magic burst for even more damage.) It helps encourage coordination between players, and it really helps. Good parties with the right skillchains do a lot better than those without.
If FFXII has some of these battle mechanics, expect a lot more depth. Since they're doing the.hack-style command-your-allies rather than traditional select-everyone's-action, it has a lot of potential. With the recent NPC-friend feature in FFXI (which apparently is working quite well), they may already be experimenting with these mechanics in production.
No, the I recall the most impressive feature was Mode 7. The sound was good, but was definately not touted as "perhaps the most impressive feature of the SNES".
Touted schmouted. Mode 7 wasn't even used by most games. Developers didn't know what to do with it. Chrono Trigger was the first to use it in the racing context that it was later popular for, after that it was picked up a bit. Those games that made extensive use of it for the majority of gameplay (PilotWings, Super Mario Kart) also had an extra DSP or similar processor in the cartridge to achieve all the effects.
And mode 7 isn't too impressive today.
However, the SPU in the SNES was, and is, amazing. It easily rivals the PSX, and even the GBA's SPU is inferior. People use it today for sound synthesis. Regardless of hype, the SNES SPU was indeed its most impressive feature.
"Nintendo's betrayal of a Japanese company in favor of a foreign interloper was a betrayal of the nation's unspoken corporate insularity."
"In other words, everybody ended up a loser...except maybe Nintendo, which was able to maintain control of its precious profits."
I could go on, but it's late and I'm tired. It is abundantly clear from the entire article that the write absolutely loathes Nintendo. Not quite what I'd call a simple "summary of events between Nintendo and Sony leading up to and through the the PS1". Nintendo, by far, is not a perfect company, but to write that Nintendo was such a horribly evil company while Sony is a pillar of divine grace, as the article writer does, is simply laughable.
Unfortunately for everyone, Nintendo did backstab Sony. I'm sorry they didn't paint a pretty picture to make you feel warm and fuzzy about it. Nintendo is not a "pillar of divine grace" and they do wrong: you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
Nor does this paint Sony as perfect, either; it rightly criticizes their initial games lineup, and shows they can play the hardass by not compromising with Nintendo and turning right around themselves.
Nintendo was, however, the monopolist IBM of the gaming world back then. They weren't nice to developers, and they ruled with an iron fist. I'm suprised the article didn't mention this more, as it's part of what drove Sony's success (being much more open with developers).
Of course, I guess actual history would be more Sony fanboyism.
They harbor a social agenda to force you to live your life on their terms. They see the rising costs and pollution from fossile fuels as a lever for gaining the control they need to remake society against most people's free will.
And some people on slashdot are paranoid, but I wouldn't know anyone like that...
It does? The majority of the article is simply a summary of events between Nintendo and Sony leading up to and through the the PS1. How is that fanboyism?
Oh, I forgot, anything on slashdot not denigrating Sony and the Playstation is Sony fanboyism.
MySQL supports all of the Oracle features you need to build and operate an enterprise software system.
HAHA. Right. Tablespaces? Failover? High availability? Row-level locking? Stored procedures? Triggers? Multimaster replication? SQL conformity? I could go on, and on...
MySQL's new administration tools are significantly better than Oracle's out of the box tools (This is why a year ago I refused to use MySQL for production, and now I've switched everything).
MySQL is much easier to manage. I don't know anybody who runs a heavily loaded Oracle server in production without spending significant $$$ on DBAs and commercial tools. I feel quite comfortable doing this with MySQL.
Yes, Oracle's builtin tools suck. However, others are available. This is basically "I'm not an Oracle DBA, but MySQL was easy for me, so it's better than Oracle!"
MySQL performs pretty much the same as Oracle out of the box (and I think it is easier to tune).
Yes, and anyone who's using a db tuned out of the box isn't doing significant work.
[snip whining about blobs]
Blah, blah, Oracle is hard. Get a DBA and a real developer. This is what they're paid for.
I think that anybody deploying Oracle for non-Oracle applications is going to have to very seriously consider MySQL if for no other reason than all the DBA salaries you can get rid of.
Oh, that's right, you want us to get rid of the people with a clue, because you have to pay them. Brilliant! So I guess we'll call you at 3am on Sunday morning when our servers crashed, we have to restore from rollback segments on our failover cluster... oh wait. MySQL can't do that.
If you want to buld a $1M cluser, stick with Oracle (for now). If you want to run application specifically designed by (or for) Oracle, stick with Oracle. Otherwise, switch at the first opportunity.
If you're building a big expensive app, you might look and see if PgSQL can support you. If you're building a crappy little webapp, you might check out PgSQL, because it's fun and you'll get some experience with a real database.
Given PgSQL is free and not all that hard to manage, I can't think of a single reason for switching to MySQL.
Slashdot Mirror
They had one of these at PAX. Plastic sphere, fairly heavy construction, on some wheels and sensors that allow fairly free rotation. You wore a head-mounted display and had a "gun" peripheral that you could point and shoot. Play time was about 5 minutes and lines were about an hour long.
Guess what? It sucked. Everyone who has considered how to make an immersive VR environment has, at one time, considered sticking someone in a sphere so they can walk around like this. Within 5 minutes, they've also come up with a number of problems with this setup: inertia keeps the sphere going, walking isn't really "flat", you can't run cords into it, and it's expensive and bulky.
I stood in line, figuring they'd come up with solutions to some, or most, of these problems, making it actually usable. They didn't. Stopping and turning was terrible, walking normally took serious focus, and and to top it off, the demo game was unplayably bad: PSX graphics at best, the "which direction is up" calibration was constantly off, it didn't track motion very well, and things just seemed to pop up randomly. And the actual view window was really small. "Immersive" my ass.
This technology isn't worth further investigation until they can prove the above problems are fixable.
True, but first we have to determine that our understanding is wrong, and this isn't just an unforeseen/unpredicted case within the current system.
Remember what the CDROM did to Britannica?
Er, I think you fail to realize the extent of Sony first-party developers. Sony did Ape Escape. Sony did ICO. Sony did God of War. Sony did Wipeout. Sony is Polyphony Digital, who makes Gran Turismo. Sony is now Naughty Dog, who makes the Jak series, and has made Crash Bandicoot. Sony is Incog Inc., makers of Twisted Metal and Warhawk.
There is also Sony Online Entertainment, who makes a little thing known as Everquest.
These are not all. It may be they've produced more software for the PS2 than Nintendo did for the Gamecube. They have plenty of developer power in and of themselves to see a solid lineup. Don't think they're going to sit back.
I was there. I saw a lot more than 5 PSPs. Many more than I expected, in fact. (I figured the same; this was a high-priced item and these were gamers. I was suprised: there were a lot of gamers who can and would put down the money for it.) Tycho might not have seen more than 5, but then he wasn't out on the floor much, either.
Cripe, what is this, some sort of religion? Do you set up a shrine to your DS or PSP or whatever and light a candle every night? These are game consoles. You get them because you can play the games you like on them. Despite what fanboys might want you to believe, they're not a religion you have to convert to.
Holy wars now? I suspect we'll see serious numbers of consoles move this holiday. If I were you, I'd be hoping both portables fly off the shelves, because it'd help kick up the competition a bit; something Nintendo seriously needs.
Right, because Sony has no vested interest or much money involved, they'll just pull it off the market. Same with all those developers. (Incidentally, same with the DS.)
Funny, sounds like another console I know too. It's called the PS2.
OK first I haven't heard anything about 1.8 million DS's being sold; maybe I just hadn't heard. That is what you get when you multiply 185k by 10. That is also pretty good when you consider a new, high-priced item, released during the low salespoint of the year, with a production shortage, and not a lot of advertising. Hopefully with the holiday season we will see them step things up.
They're also using them to play SNES games. And PSX games. And some homebrew games (yay tetris). And browse the web. And watch movies. And read comics.
Ah yes because mouse-like menus are required...
This was actually poorly worded. I didn't even say I didn't like it (this is silly, I haven't played it, how can I tell?), I'm just not interested in it.
See my sig... ;-) Kidding aside, a flame would be more pointless personal insults, I'd think. Nothing wrong with a stinging retort however!
This is the only bit I am in contention with. It doesn't matter how good a programmer you are: data takes up space. Lots of polygons, lots of pixels. You can compress things to an extent; however you start trading off quality and CPU cycles to do so. The trick is trading off just enough to get the job done with what you've got. Also, data doesn't compress forever: sometimes you just can't.
It's my guess that current PSP games don't come close to utilizing the full 1.8G. However, that's bound to change in the future. There aren't many dual-disc PS2 games, but there are some. (These aren't simply FMVs, either; Star Ocean 3 has a lot of large areas, voice acting, etc.)
Seriously! I have no interest in UMD movies at this point. Like I said; $5. Give me a UMD with my favorite TV shows for last week, I'd pay you $5. Etc. $25 is right out.
The ability to play my own video from memory sticks isn't too bad, though, although I've never used it. Neat if you set up your PVR to downsample your shows I guess.
I played to the second area. Got bored. Same stuff, over and over. I also bought San Andreas, just because it would probably be a good game, if I took the time to play it. If I had the time to take. (And the camera controls weren't backwards!)
Yes. Some people like those I guess, so I'm not going to entirely dismiss them.
I took a look at my post again; I don't consider saying I don't like it "bashing" it. I don't have a problem with Nintendogs; I like some things, other people like other things, and that's why they make more than one type of game.
However, I do find considering the entire handheld race won this generation because of something that's basically a tamagotchi to be a bit silly.
This is like anything else entirely dependant on what you like to play. Metal Gear: Acid rocks if you like tactics games. Or if you're a fan of Metal Gear stories. THUG2 is an excellent port. Having an entire Tony Hawk game on a handheld just rocks. Mercury is old-school fun; lots of levels and challenges, and they're not easy. And it's pretty to look at, too. Untold Legends is satisfactory if you want hack'n'slash Baldur's Gate style. Hot Shots Golf rocks; don't bash it, people have bought PSPs for it, and I've spent far too much time in the past two days learning why. It's fun, and excellently implemented, with huge long-term value. Ridge Racer is a great arcade-style drift racer, but don't expect GT-style simulation driving (wait for GT).
However it may be you don't like any of these genres. That's understandable; there aren't any real RPGs yet, though there are some on the horizon. It's not wo
It does? Which problem would that be?
OK, presumably you mean "the lack of games for the GameCube". However, I have about as many PSP games now as I have bought over the entire life of the Cube. Perhaps you mean "games I like", which may be perfectly valid for you, but irrelevant for the rest of us. No one is forcing you to buy one, but there are tons of games others enjoy.
That's nice. You like Nintendogs. A lot of people don't have any interest in an oversized tamagotchi. I, for instance, would be more interested in Super Mario Bros, Castlevania, or Advance Wars.
It's also a bit silly to assert you can't have a pet game for the PSP simply because you don't have two LCDs.
Ah yes, if, if, if. If they do all the right things, and happen to generate the right interest, and things happen to fall their way, it'll be great! It's so simple! But it's not. Generalities are nice, but it's actually pulling through in the implementation of them that's difficult. It's easy for an armchair enthusiast to comment about what they'd do, especially when they know nothing about what it takes to actually accomplish it. You seem to think Nintendo is stupid, and that it's not trying to do these things. I'm sure the random advice of a slashdotter would help them immensely.
Oh? Which ports would you be referring to? Mercury? Lumines? Metal Gear: Acid? Untold Legends? Wipeout Pure? Twisted Metal: Hands On? Hotshots Golf? Ridge Racer? Yes, a few of these games are sequels or have related series. (But then, the DS does too, right? Yoshi? Mario? Metroid? Castlevania? Advance wars?) There are also a few direct ports: THUG2 and Ape Escape. But I can see why two ports mean the system should be called the "PS Ports".
Ah, here's the confusion. "The only game I want." Well, guess what? You're not the only person in the world. Possibly not even the only gamer. The PSP lineup appeals to a lot of people.
Also, the PSP doesn't really have something to be backward-compatible with, yet, but that is a nice feature of the DS. (Although why they elected to disallow multiplayer link games is boggling.)
What's truly sad is that something like Darkwatch which, while fun, doesn't have a lot beyond the bare minimum going for it, stands out among FPS's. Something is seriously wrong with the evolution of the genre.
I don't know what gives you this idea. 100 million PS2s sold? PS1s? GBAs? SNESs? All of these have basically the same controller layout, give or take a couple face buttons or shoulder buttons.
Nintendo seems to be under the mistaken impression that videogames are still new and unfamiliar to most folks, and that somehow the mass market needs introduced to them. The mass market already knows and plays them. The Revolution controller will do a lot of things, but bring games to the mainstream isn't one of them. Sony did that already with the PS1.
I played this game (PS2 version). I will summarize this in a way that this review takes too many words not to say. Shooters should have two things:
Now, simply consider every FPS back to Doom 1, and think how many fail one or both of these things. Lots of hallway-running and not enough shooting, or scarcity of ammo, are the two main ways to fail these. It's a shooter. I want to shoot. I don't want to run around or conserve ammo.
Darkwatch, simply, provides both of these. There are lots of things to shoot, and lots of ammo and guns to shoot them with. And it's fun to do.
Because he seems to post things with an inflammatory bent, espcially pro-Nintendo stuff. Now don't get me wrong: I love Nintendo. I grew up with Nintendo. I still have my NES and most of my carts. But come on.
Things seem to often fall like this: "Microsoft is OK, Sony Sucks, and Nintendo is Where It's At." Always? No, not always. But enough that some people would be upset enough to bash him, obviously.
I haven't seen many or any people who are really anti-Nintendo, especially on slashdot. So you have to take a serious look at what's going on if a lot of people start complaining about someone who publishes a lot of pro-Nintendo stuff, stuff they don't necessarily disagree with. They have issue then with something else, and maybe it's legitimate.
It seems a number of people disagree.
Yes, I think despite anyone's particular reservations, this is something that's like "cool, check it out". Whether it works in practice or not we'll see; but it has potential. I definitely "want one".
However, despite fanboys blathering on (replace "Will Wright" with "Nintendo" or "Miyamoto" in this comic) about how this changes the entire world and nothing was ever like it and none of the other platforms have anything like it, remember the EyeToy Demo where the guy used the two cups, in realtime, to control two cups onscreen?
So before you think Nintendo is the only one offering this kind of control next-gen, remember: the PS3 can already do a number of these things. Without a special motion-sensing controller.
Of course, that doesn't mean the Revolution isn't going to be cool and I'm not going to get one. You can bet when it rolls around with the next-gen Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, I'll be right there.
But remember, the Revolution isn't going to be the only one with this kind of control next generation.
Charge for service. Charge for priority feature requests. Charge for documentation. Charge for things that are limited: time, paper, etc.
No one is saying we should hand out source code instead of money. In fact, I believe I said something about information being an unlimited resource, so using it as currency wouldn't be too wise, would it?
Nor is anyone saying we should do everything for free. We can still make money and survive in Corporate America. But we can also have Free Software and not be at odds with it.
Perhaps it would be more prudent to start a company that sells service as opposed to one that sells software, though. Might be cheaper to start and run, not to mention more profitable, but again it would depend on the situation.
And it's probably because you run your own business and studied economics that you're blinded to other nonstandard possibilities.
This doesn't even appear to be "Free Software" in the way most of us mean. I don't see the ability to download the source, no less under any sort of nonrestrictive license. However, that aside, because you seem to be talking about "real" Free Software, you're overlooking the two most obvious and tangible returns that we get from developing it: recognition, and the time of other developers.
The first is obvious. The second is more valuable than money; you have the possibility of possibly hundreds or thousands of developers looking at your code, offering patches and extensions to it. Use your economics to translate that into dollars; how much would a staff of 100 developers cost to employ and keep happy? More than most people would ever make selling their code to anyone.
People usually write stuff and release it because it was useful to them, and it might be useful to others, so they can benefit from the above returns. Once that happens, it becomes even more personally useful.
Yes, if you're doing business, this might not work; then again, if your business isn't selling software, it very well might.
Ah, this is what many economists can't wrap their head around. Information is not a limited resource. It's artificially limited by various laws, but it's not a diminishing resource. It is not "used up". Thus the barter analogy fails: if two people exchange information, they end up with twice as much as they had to begin with.
Time, however, is our most precious and limited resource; sometimes getting someone's time is more than you could afford if you were charged for it.
Your point is wrong because you misunderstand. Some things are not free because they are limited and thus acquire value based on rarity. Other things are not limited. Information isn't something that is suitable for building an economy on.
Ah, the old "those damn commies!" standby. "Basic laws of economics" apply in a standard economy. It is conceivable that there is something nonstandard---possibly even something that is sustainable. However, one example of failure in this regard shouldn't be enough to dismiss everything (or you need a class in logic).
Also, the idea of "basic laws" should be examined under the same light Shoenberg does with the "basic laws of music": there aren't any. Yes, we can listen to some terrible music by someone who has no concept of sound. This doesn't mean there is one set of rules we must follow for making music, however.
Precisely. This is very helpful. Everyone should do it. But they should do it knowing what they represent. (It should go without saying that you need to write good tests, and if you forget to test something, you're not covered.)
So you think an app that maintains a photo gallery is something that hasn't been done a few times? Possibly on every known platform, in every known language, for every known format, both offline and online?
But I see how one might confuse it with a technological breakthrough on the order of a new energy source.
How is this interesting? So you've got the toys and the buzzwords. Does it solve a problem? This doesn't say a word about macrodesign. Is the overall model elegant? That's the important part. The rest are just some really nice hammers and screwdrivers. They don't automatically make a good building.
So is this the interesting bit? "We made something that uses a lot of modern stuff, we did it in PHP, and it took us 3 years". Big deal?
Ah unit tests. First off, 1500 isn't very many. Secondly, as much as I love them, they only test what you thought of. They're a great tool, but they don't ensure correct anything: they just make sure that when you add something, you don't break something else. As long as you thought of "something else".
That's nice. How?
This sounds like a modified version of various FFXI mechanics (which isn't much suprise). In FFXI, you can get "Exp chains", which means if you kill things fast with little delay, you get bonus experience on the kill. (This only counts for things at or greater than your level.) The required time between kills goes down the more you kill, making it harder to keep them up, and the amount of exp you get eventually caps at 200-350, but it sounds vaguely similar. Different incentive (items vs exp), but it makes more sense in a 1-player RPG that way.
What would be cool is if they keep Skillchains. This is one thing that makes FFXI battles cool: if you use weapon skills in the right sequence, you do additional damage with neat effects. (You can even toss the right spell on the end for a magic burst for even more damage.) It helps encourage coordination between players, and it really helps. Good parties with the right skillchains do a lot better than those without.
If FFXII has some of these battle mechanics, expect a lot more depth. Since they're doing the .hack-style command-your-allies rather than traditional select-everyone's-action, it has a lot of potential. With the recent NPC-friend feature in FFXI (which apparently is working quite well), they may already be experimenting with these mechanics in production.
Flamebait? More like (-1, Idiot).
We've all seen Firefox/Mozilla/Konqueror/etc. bugs. What we like is that we also see the fixes really quick, too.
Touted schmouted. Mode 7 wasn't even used by most games. Developers didn't know what to do with it. Chrono Trigger was the first to use it in the racing context that it was later popular for, after that it was picked up a bit. Those games that made extensive use of it for the majority of gameplay (PilotWings, Super Mario Kart) also had an extra DSP or similar processor in the cartridge to achieve all the effects.
And mode 7 isn't too impressive today.
However, the SPU in the SNES was, and is, amazing. It easily rivals the PSX, and even the GBA's SPU is inferior. People use it today for sound synthesis. Regardless of hype, the SNES SPU was indeed its most impressive feature.
Unfortunately for everyone, Nintendo did backstab Sony. I'm sorry they didn't paint a pretty picture to make you feel warm and fuzzy about it. Nintendo is not a "pillar of divine grace" and they do wrong: you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
Nor does this paint Sony as perfect, either; it rightly criticizes their initial games lineup, and shows they can play the hardass by not compromising with Nintendo and turning right around themselves.
Nintendo was, however, the monopolist IBM of the gaming world back then. They weren't nice to developers, and they ruled with an iron fist. I'm suprised the article didn't mention this more, as it's part of what drove Sony's success (being much more open with developers).
Of course, I guess actual history would be more Sony fanboyism.
And some people on slashdot are paranoid, but I wouldn't know anyone like that...
It does? The majority of the article is simply a summary of events between Nintendo and Sony leading up to and through the the PS1. How is that fanboyism?
Oh, I forgot, anything on slashdot not denigrating Sony and the Playstation is Sony fanboyism.
HAHA. Right. Tablespaces? Failover? High availability? Row-level locking? Stored procedures? Triggers? Multimaster replication? SQL conformity? I could go on, and on...
Yes, Oracle's builtin tools suck. However, others are available. This is basically "I'm not an Oracle DBA, but MySQL was easy for me, so it's better than Oracle!"
Yes, and anyone who's using a db tuned out of the box isn't doing significant work.
Blah, blah, Oracle is hard. Get a DBA and a real developer. This is what they're paid for.
Oh, that's right, you want us to get rid of the people with a clue, because you have to pay them. Brilliant! So I guess we'll call you at 3am on Sunday morning when our servers crashed, we have to restore from rollback segments on our failover cluster... oh wait. MySQL can't do that.
If you're building a big expensive app, you might look and see if PgSQL can support you. If you're building a crappy little webapp, you might check out PgSQL, because it's fun and you'll get some experience with a real database.
Given PgSQL is free and not all that hard to manage, I can't think of a single reason for switching to MySQL.