Plus the nice shiny disk will keep working even if you change your internet plan or cancel the service entirely - AND you can always sell it, lend it, or trade it.
However, the fact that they are launching their service tells me that they somehow solved that problem and can make a profit off their service
No, it doesn't tell you squat about whether they solved the profit problem. Just look at all the dot-com bombs. In this case, they have no choice except to launch and hope to keep investor money flowing chasing fictitious hopes of profits.
Why anyone would bother with this service when consoles are dirt cheap, and you don't have to keep paying a monthly fee to keep renting the same game over and over is beyond me, and probably beyond most people who actually, you know, spend real money on games.
Chasing people who are too cheap to buy a console and a game on disk is a losing market strategy - talk about loser business plans when your target market is self-selected to be too cheap to buy what you're selling. If the person can't afford a console, they most likely can't afford high-speed internet and have more pressing needs, like making their next rent payment. The ONLY market for this is the "rent-to-own" welfare/ssi/perma-debt crowd.
Your downloaded content isn't completely tied to the hardware - if your hardware goes bad, and you send it to them, they'll fix it up so that you can re-download it to another console. But yes, more browser options would be better - probably in the Wii2 (or would that be WiiII or WII or WiiWii or WiiSquared or WiiHD or Wii++ or WiiSharp?)
If he do not have a PC already I don't think this would be where he asked the question.
Good point, except maybe he's posting it from a Wii? They have 2 USB ports on the back, and you CAN post to slashdot from a Wii.
One advantage to a Wii over a PC for surfing the net in your TV room is that the Wii is a LOT quieter than most PCs (except laptops with solid-state drives). Think of it as a dedicated webtv appliance, with a game console thrown in, if that helps.
So get a Wii, spend 500 Wii points ($5) for Opera for the Wii, and surf the net, manage your netflix queue, play games, and watch YouTube on your TV w/o having the cost and power consumption of a PC.
Not that we want to know the why of what they do... and pity anyone who ends up with that as a research assignment. "Today, I have to interview this really big asshole - no, not Rush Limbaugh - and if you thing THAT's shitty, you ain't seen nothin' yet!"
Sorry, but you aren't getting a real full power server for $69/mo. Either somebody is selling you some snake oil, or they have some Really Big customers subsidizing everyone else. That monthly price doesn't even make enough money to cover replacement costs for a half decent laptop.
Nope - it's a full server, you're in complete control of the box, the only user, etc. Do what you want with it. Who it is is one of the industry's best-kept secrets, because a LOT of server proveders are really just reselling them. And no, they're not an American company, they have access to some of the world's cheapest electric power, and they're better located geographically than some of Google's proposed mega data centers in terms of proximity to major markets, support personnel, cheap and stable housing and land costs, and infrastructure. THAT is why they can go up to half-price and still make more money than the US-based competition. I'm slowly switching everything there as each domain comes up for renewal.
Oh, and yes, they have some REALLY BIG customers...
Only if you are pulling in a lot more than $69/mo per box, or if you're cheaping out somewhere else can you afford those nice 'extras'.
When you're paying less for land, for electricity, a LOT less for health benefits, etc., it would be stupid not to use the advantage to grab market share. The "single-payer" system for health care gives *nudge nudge* certain countries *wink wink* advantages in terms both of operating costs and of general health (lower mortaility rates, for example). Keep your HMOs and your 1/3 who lack decent (or any) coverage. You're only hurting yourselves.
The question isn't whether producers of stuff deserve to be compensated - the question is whether newspapers and other aggregators and distributors are all that relevant any more.
The main-stream media has to take a LOT of the blame for the current financial crisis, for blindly parroting the National RealtWhore's line that "housing will never crash." Those of us who predicted it in 2006 couldn't help but wonder whether it was because of a conflict of interest - do proper research and pronounce the rise in housing an unsstainable bubble, and watch all those ad dollars go to your competitor.
Same thing with the predictions that two of the big three would go bankrupt. I've been saying it since 2001, (though I had said GM and Ford, not GM and Chrysler). It was obvious that GM couldn't continue to stay ahead of Toyota back then, but anyone reporting on the multiple vulnerabilities of GM would have seen those ad dollars also go bye-bye.
The MSM got it wrong because they were willfully blind. Why? Advertising dollars. Follow the $$$$, and keep in mind that there's no whore like an old whore.
And BTW, artists mostly *didn't* "pay the bills even 600 years ago - the stereotype of the starving artist was just as true then as it is today. Art is a luxury, and in bad times, it gets cut back, same as other luxuries. And since the barrier to entry is so low (anyone can produce bad^Wmodern art) it's not like there's much possibility of creating an artificial shortage.
Nobody's saying we can't pay content producers... but why pay, for example, continue to fund any news organization (or the media that subsidizes them) that has broken the public's trust repeatedly by ignoring the three biggest stories of this century (their reluctance for years to hold Bush's feet to the flames wrt the phony pretext for the war, the housing bubble and its' fraudsters like Angelo "Orange Ma" Mozilo, and the absolute certainty of a GM bankruptcy because of decades of benefits underfunding, lousy design and build quality, and vulnerability to an oil shock)? I won't go out of my way to give them money - in fact, if they croak, maybe it will clear the way for the next big thing. Or at lest something better.
Within a few years, only old people and Koreans will still get their news off a TV or newspaper.
News flash - soap operas have always been where television profits are - low cost to produce, dependable audience, advertisers love the gullible consumers... (and no, this is not sexist - there are guys who are just as hooked on the soaps, but they won't admit it).
It's called "rubbing their nose in it." You'd be surprised how many people keep on buying crap because they don't believe the nice person is really a scammer. "But the nice salesperson said this $4,000 bed would help my diabetes." WTF???
At least sit them down and have them watch "Matchstick Men." And fit a filter on their TVs so that they can no longer receive CNN, Fox, or the shopping network.
No, real individual servers, your own individual server box, 10mb direct connection to the internet, with 100mb available for $10 more per month... the virtual deals are something like $70 a YEAR (lower with a long-term commitment).
And I've been in one of their buildings (they have 3 locally) - VERY nice, modern, independent power, and calls to tech support at 3am get answered by a human being. When you have tens of thousands of REAL individual servers (not virtual) on one location, you can afford those nice extras.
As for the content, who gives a fuck about most of the "content" out there? TV shows? I haven't even used my dish since December. Radio? One day I got tired of listening to the same crap all the time and just turned it off. Life is too short to waste on shit like American Idol. I'd rather read a book, and I pay for my books, so I support the authors I like. One day, I'll probably become a convert to downloadable books, but only because print will die out - in which case, why not patronize the authors directly?
You miss the point - big media are being "disintermediated" all the time. Why do I need a book publisher when physical books are becoming obsolete? So they'll pay me for my work? Get real - most books don't earn their advance, which is usually so small that the the author would be better off washing floors for minimum wage. Most authors write first and foremost because they WANT to - not because someone is paying them to. They have a story to tell.
Same with music - most people don't learn an instrument because they want to make money, but because they want to play music. Music won't disappear if suddenly the market for paid music collapsed.
Same with art. How many artists died in abject poverty, only to have their works finally rise in value well after they croaked?
Heck, since this is slashdot, let's use a more accessible example - the person who writes code solely because they're paid to is going to produce crap in comparison to someone who is writing code first and foremost because they enjoy the creative process, and the money is just an added bonus that lets them scratch their itch.
Since the beginning of the Web, things have largely been free. Free cannot last forever. Ads will not continue to pay for bandwidth, servers, people, etc.
... when you can get 10 Tb of transfer a month for $69, servers and bandwidth are essentially free. If you can't make a profit from it, then please be free to drop dead. Not my problem that you can't find a buisness model that makes a profit in an industry with low barriers of entry.
Newspapers are not free, books are not free, movies are not free. All these mediums have people behind them. People like you that like to eat. To buy clothes. To ensure their kids have a great Christmas.
... and the same was true with buggywhip manufacturers, and telephone operators who manually connected every phone call, and GM. Why should I have to bail them, or you, out?
It's about time that things were not free. I disagree with free webmail. The amount of spam would go way down if people had to pay.
I already pay. I pay my ISP. I pay for my servers. I hate spam as much as the next person, but I also don't want yet another hand in my pocket, running yet another "protection racket." Want to eliminate spam? Have a system of fines for people stupid enough to buy shit off them - and a 3-month jail term for a 3rd offense. Spam works because people are stupid, lazy, and greedy.
Nothing in this world is free. People have to get paid.
There are plenty of things in this world that are free - that's why they're priceless. It's not all about money, and it's not all about your (or anyone else's) "right" to make money. You have the right to fail in business, same as everyone else. Not everyone puts up a website to make money from ad dollars - there are legit sites that offer customer support, online ordering, etc. So take your adwords accounts and "seo optimization" and go fuck yourself, if you can't provide a legit service.
I have Zelda - just haven't had much time to play it (so many games, so little time:-) Got stuck with the horse in the corral - can't jump the fence, and I REALLy hate how the manuals are all fine print and low contrast. Sure, it helps deter piracy, but they're not really deterring the pirates/modders so much as penalizing their paying customers.
Well, maybe I'll just scan them in and blow them up to readable size/contrast.
Perhaps the new remote sensor could help- anyone know if it helps old games or do games have to be programmed for the enhanced sensor?
It won't do a thing for old games. When you load a game, you're also loading the game's operating system (which runs under the consoles' monitor program). That's why games can't be patched - at least not with the current console. Perhaps the WII2 will allow for loading the whole game image into memory at one time and patching it on the fly with updates off the net...
Two other games that are sitting on my shelf waiting for free time to try out are Naked Brothers Band and American Idol (no, I have NEVER watched American Idol in my life - I bought it so that when others come over, they will see the familiar name and perhaps try it). As you say, it's an investment in fun for the group, not just one person at a time. And like you, if they release more pinball games, I'm in line.
First, not all the games require the wii fit balance board - but some do, and for those, you need to buy it, same a buying a joystick for flight simulators.
Second, if you want to play with 4 people, they're going to need controllers, same as any other platform, including the PC.
Third, you can buy the motionplus bundled with games (about $10 more than the game without) - so my plan is to buy 4 different motionplus game bundles. It's the logical thing to do.
As for total cost, I've already spent over $2k on it in 5 months, and I'm happy with my purchase - I'll be buying a 50" plasma TV expressly for game playing in September. I figure that my time is worth enough so that, when I DO find time to play games, I want it to be fun. This is the first console I've bought since the original Nintendo, and I intend to get my money's worth by having enough games and accessories so that my friends can actually enjoy it, whatever their gaming tastes. That's why, for example, I picked up Lego Star Wars - not something I would personally pick, but I know at least one friend who I correctly guessed would be "into" it.
"Stop looking at my cans!"
"We're combing the desert - we didn't find shit!"
"I'm surrounded by Asshoes!"
"No sir, I didn't see you playing with your dolls!"
"No, this is Mr. Coffee. THIS is Mr. Radar."
"Scotty beamed us last night!"
"Why didn't someone tell me my ass is so fat?"
"Go chew your gum!"
"Are you CHICKEN. Colonel Saunders?"
"He's jamming our radar!"
"That makes us NOTHING!"
"She's a druish princess!"
"Amazing. That's the same combination I have on my luggage!"
"We're not doing it for the money, Barf. We're doing it for a SHITLOAD of money!"
"Sorry - it has a mind of its' own."
"Check, please!"
"Spaceballs - oh, shit! - there goes the neighbourhood!"
"Self-destruct in 10 seconds, 9, 8, 6" "6? What happened to 7" "Just joking, 7, 6, 5..."
"They've gone plaid."
"I can't breathe in this thing!"
Yahoo and Bing both assume I can't spell and that I forgot the space between the 'bug' and 'check'.
Of course they assume their users can't spell - their target market is composed of a bunch of yahoos and people who think Internet Exploder == teh Intert00bs. Spell? Heck, many of them can barely read!
3 years have passed and I can name 3 games that I'm glad I bought. I can also name off a dozen names I deeply regret having ever bought/rented.
So please name them...
I bought a Wii at the end of February, and in my 30-disk library (all legit, bought and paid for - my Wii isn't modded), I'd have to say that at least half the games are "I'd recommend them".
Examples: Mario Kart (everyone likes it), Pinball Hall of Fame (a must-have - noisy), Pop Star Guitar (very addictive air guitar), Trivial Pursuit, Namco Museum Remix, Boom Blox (you'll get a work-out), AMF Bowling, Super Mario Galaxy, Prince of Persia, Shaun White Snowboarding (you really need the wii fit to use this one), Speed Racer (for mindless crash-n-burn vegging out), Blazing Angels.
The people I've seen complain about their Wii don't spend money on games and accessories, then wonder why they don't enjoy it. Buy 4 remotes, 4 wheels, 4 nunchuks, get a decent library of games (catering to various tastes/ages), and you'll see that people will actually PLAY it when they come over. That's the way to get your money's worth out of the console. Not "Oh, the freebie games ere fun, and I rented a couple others, and bought one or two that sucked, so the console is a piece of crap!"
Hey, cousins marry all the time in the rest of the world. Studies have demonstrated no genetic "inbreeding" issues arise from first cousins having children.
Slashdot Mirror
Plus the nice shiny disk will keep working even if you change your internet plan or cancel the service entirely - AND you can always sell it, lend it, or trade it.
AC shilled ...
No, it doesn't tell you squat about whether they solved the profit problem. Just look at all the dot-com bombs. In this case, they have no choice except to launch and hope to keep investor money flowing chasing fictitious hopes of profits.
Why anyone would bother with this service when consoles are dirt cheap, and you don't have to keep paying a monthly fee to keep renting the same game over and over is beyond me, and probably beyond most people who actually, you know, spend real money on games.
Chasing people who are too cheap to buy a console and a game on disk is a losing market strategy - talk about loser business plans when your target market is self-selected to be too cheap to buy what you're selling. If the person can't afford a console, they most likely can't afford high-speed internet and have more pressing needs, like making their next rent payment. The ONLY market for this is the "rent-to-own" welfare/ssi/perma-debt crowd.
Your downloaded content isn't completely tied to the hardware - if your hardware goes bad, and you send it to them, they'll fix it up so that you can re-download it to another console. But yes, more browser options would be better - probably in the Wii2 (or would that be WiiII or WII or WiiWii or WiiSquared or WiiHD or Wii++ or WiiSharp?)
Somehow, I think the thousands of dollars I've spent on Wii games since February wasn't for stuff kludged together from javascript and flash 7 ...
Good point, except maybe he's posting it from a Wii? They have 2 USB ports on the back, and you CAN post to slashdot from a Wii.
One advantage to a Wii over a PC for surfing the net in your TV room is that the Wii is a LOT quieter than most PCs (except laptops with solid-state drives). Think of it as a dedicated webtv appliance, with a game console thrown in, if that helps.
So get a Wii, spend 500 Wii points ($5) for Opera for the Wii, and surf the net, manage your netflix queue, play games, and watch YouTube on your TV w/o having the cost and power consumption of a PC.
Not that we want to know the why of what they do ... and pity anyone who ends up with that as a research assignment. "Today, I have to interview this really big asshole - no, not Rush Limbaugh - and if you thing THAT's shitty, you ain't seen nothin' yet!"
"Murdoch said. 'Quality journalism is not cheap, but I am. Step 1. Profit! There IS no step 2 ..."
The question isn't whether producers of stuff deserve to be compensated - the question is whether newspapers and other aggregators and distributors are all that relevant any more.
The main-stream media has to take a LOT of the blame for the current financial crisis, for blindly parroting the National RealtWhore's line that "housing will never crash." Those of us who predicted it in 2006 couldn't help but wonder whether it was because of a conflict of interest - do proper research and pronounce the rise in housing an unsstainable bubble, and watch all those ad dollars go to your competitor.
Same thing with the predictions that two of the big three would go bankrupt. I've been saying it since 2001, (though I had said GM and Ford, not GM and Chrysler). It was obvious that GM couldn't continue to stay ahead of Toyota back then, but anyone reporting on the multiple vulnerabilities of GM would have seen those ad dollars also go bye-bye.
The MSM got it wrong because they were willfully blind. Why? Advertising dollars. Follow the $$$$, and keep in mind that there's no whore like an old whore.
And BTW, artists mostly *didn't* "pay the bills even 600 years ago - the stereotype of the starving artist was just as true then as it is today. Art is a luxury, and in bad times, it gets cut back, same as other luxuries. And since the barrier to entry is so low (anyone can produce bad^Wmodern art) it's not like there's much possibility of creating an artificial shortage.
Nobody's saying we can't pay content producers ... but why pay, for example, continue to fund any news organization (or the media that subsidizes them) that has broken the public's trust repeatedly by ignoring the three biggest stories of this century (their reluctance for years to hold Bush's feet to the flames wrt the phony pretext for the war, the housing bubble and its' fraudsters like Angelo "Orange Ma" Mozilo, and the absolute certainty of a GM bankruptcy because of decades of benefits underfunding, lousy design and build quality, and vulnerability to an oil shock)? I won't go out of my way to give them money - in fact, if they croak, maybe it will clear the way for the next big thing. Or at lest something better.
Within a few years, only old people and Koreans will still get their news off a TV or newspaper.
News flash - soap operas have always been where television profits are - low cost to produce, dependable audience, advertisers love the gullible consumers ... (and no, this is not sexist - there are guys who are just as hooked on the soaps, but they won't admit it).
It's called "rubbing their nose in it." You'd be surprised how many people keep on buying crap because they don't believe the nice person is really a scammer. "But the nice salesperson said this $4,000 bed would help my diabetes." WTF???
At least sit them down and have them watch "Matchstick Men." And fit a filter on their TVs so that they can no longer receive CNN, Fox, or the shopping network.
No, real individual servers, your own individual server box, 10mb direct connection to the internet, with 100mb available for $10 more per month ... the virtual deals are something like $70 a YEAR (lower with a long-term commitment).
And I've been in one of their buildings (they have 3 locally) - VERY nice, modern, independent power, and calls to tech support at 3am get answered by a human being. When you have tens of thousands of REAL individual servers (not virtual) on one location, you can afford those nice extras.
As for the content, who gives a fuck about most of the "content" out there? TV shows? I haven't even used my dish since December. Radio? One day I got tired of listening to the same crap all the time and just turned it off. Life is too short to waste on shit like American Idol. I'd rather read a book, and I pay for my books, so I support the authors I like. One day, I'll probably become a convert to downloadable books, but only because print will die out - in which case, why not patronize the authors directly?
You miss the point - big media are being "disintermediated" all the time. Why do I need a book publisher when physical books are becoming obsolete? So they'll pay me for my work? Get real - most books don't earn their advance, which is usually so small that the the author would be better off washing floors for minimum wage. Most authors write first and foremost because they WANT to - not because someone is paying them to. They have a story to tell.
Same with music - most people don't learn an instrument because they want to make money, but because they want to play music. Music won't disappear if suddenly the market for paid music collapsed.
Same with art. How many artists died in abject poverty, only to have their works finally rise in value well after they croaked?
Heck, since this is slashdot, let's use a more accessible example - the person who writes code solely because they're paid to is going to produce crap in comparison to someone who is writing code first and foremost because they enjoy the creative process, and the money is just an added bonus that lets them scratch their itch.
I already pay. I pay my ISP. I pay for my servers. I hate spam as much as the next person, but I also don't want yet another hand in my pocket, running yet another "protection racket." Want to eliminate spam? Have a system of fines for people stupid enough to buy shit off them - and a 3-month jail term for a 3rd offense. Spam works because people are stupid, lazy, and greedy.
There are plenty of things in this world that are free - that's why they're priceless. It's not all about money, and it's not all about your (or anyone else's) "right" to make money. You have the right to fail in business, same as everyone else. Not everyone puts up a website to make money from ad dollars - there are legit sites that offer customer support, online ordering, etc. So take your adwords accounts and "seo optimization" and go fuck yourself, if you can't provide a legit service.
So what shade of grey was Michael Jackson, before decomposition set in and he started turning green?
I have Zelda - just haven't had much time to play it (so many games, so little time :-) Got stuck with the horse in the corral - can't jump the fence, and I REALLy hate how the manuals are all fine print and low contrast. Sure, it helps deter piracy, but they're not really deterring the pirates/modders so much as penalizing their paying customers.
Well, maybe I'll just scan them in and blow them up to readable size/contrast.
It won't do a thing for old games. When you load a game, you're also loading the game's operating system (which runs under the consoles' monitor program). That's why games can't be patched - at least not with the current console. Perhaps the WII2 will allow for loading the whole game image into memory at one time and patching it on the fly with updates off the net ...
But I *WANT* the pinball to be noisy :-)
Two other games that are sitting on my shelf waiting for free time to try out are Naked Brothers Band and American Idol (no, I have NEVER watched American Idol in my life - I bought it so that when others come over, they will see the familiar name and perhaps try it). As you say, it's an investment in fun for the group, not just one person at a time. And like you, if they release more pinball games, I'm in line.
First, not all the games require the wii fit balance board - but some do, and for those, you need to buy it, same a buying a joystick for flight simulators.
Second, if you want to play with 4 people, they're going to need controllers, same as any other platform, including the PC.
Third, you can buy the motionplus bundled with games (about $10 more than the game without) - so my plan is to buy 4 different motionplus game bundles. It's the logical thing to do.
As for total cost, I've already spent over $2k on it in 5 months, and I'm happy with my purchase - I'll be buying a 50" plasma TV expressly for game playing in September. I figure that my time is worth enough so that, when I DO find time to play games, I want it to be fun. This is the first console I've bought since the original Nintendo, and I intend to get my money's worth by having enough games and accessories so that my friends can actually enjoy it, whatever their gaming tastes. That's why, for example, I picked up Lego Star Wars - not something I would personally pick, but I know at least one friend who I correctly guessed would be "into" it.
"Stop looking at my cans!" ..."
"We're combing the desert - we didn't find shit!"
"I'm surrounded by Asshoes!"
"No sir, I didn't see you playing with your dolls!"
"No, this is Mr. Coffee. THIS is Mr. Radar."
"Scotty beamed us last night!"
"Why didn't someone tell me my ass is so fat?"
"Go chew your gum!"
"Are you CHICKEN. Colonel Saunders?"
"He's jamming our radar!"
"That makes us NOTHING!"
"She's a druish princess!"
"Amazing. That's the same combination I have on my luggage!"
"We're not doing it for the money, Barf. We're doing it for a SHITLOAD of money!"
"Sorry - it has a mind of its' own."
"Check, please!"
"Spaceballs - oh, shit! - there goes the neighbourhood!"
"Self-destruct in 10 seconds, 9, 8, 6" "6? What happened to 7" "Just joking, 7, 6, 5
"They've gone plaid."
"I can't breathe in this thing!"
Of course they assume their users can't spell - their target market is composed of a bunch of yahoos and people who think Internet Exploder == teh Intert00bs. Spell? Heck, many of them can barely read!
So please name them ...
I bought a Wii at the end of February, and in my 30-disk library (all legit, bought and paid for - my Wii isn't modded), I'd have to say that at least half the games are "I'd recommend them".
Examples: Mario Kart (everyone likes it), Pinball Hall of Fame (a must-have - noisy), Pop Star Guitar (very addictive air guitar), Trivial Pursuit, Namco Museum Remix, Boom Blox (you'll get a work-out), AMF Bowling, Super Mario Galaxy, Prince of Persia, Shaun White Snowboarding (you really need the wii fit to use this one), Speed Racer (for mindless crash-n-burn vegging out), Blazing Angels.
The people I've seen complain about their Wii don't spend money on games and accessories, then wonder why they don't enjoy it. Buy 4 remotes, 4 wheels, 4 nunchuks, get a decent library of games (catering to various tastes/ages), and you'll see that people will actually PLAY it when they come over. That's the way to get your money's worth out of the console. Not "Oh, the freebie games ere fun, and I rented a couple others, and bought one or two that sucked, so the console is a piece of crap!"
Bullshit!
http://books.google.ca/books?id=tTz4-MmNwzkC&pg=PA285&lpg=PA285&dq=first+cousins+recessive+genes&source=bl&ots=zmwsEcZ601&sig=29u4SAuwaRFyznVKYwH0XEXs57c&hl=en&ei=VztwSoPtEJ-qtgflqf39DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3
The actual figure, from the study, is that it doubles the risk of recessive genes being expressed.
Areas Yahoo dominates? Where? What?
Wouldn't it make more sense to say "considering how Google is an also-ran in many of the areas that Microsoft dominates"?