Oh please, this isn't the first time something like this has happend, nor is it something unique to Microsoft.
All of the console makers have changed their hardware during their consoles' lifetime. Sony had already released a new model of the PS2 that came with the bundled ethernet adaptor that was CHEAPER than if you had bought an earlier PS2 and the adaptor separately. The monsters!
Still didn't mean that the older games wouldn't work on the newer hardware, or vice versa. It was still a PS2.
It's the same thing here.
No, I honestly don't see Microsoft or anyone else doing something so stupid like releasing a hardware rev mid-cycle that changes the core performance of the box. You aren't going to see a "360+" that comes with more RAM or a faster processor. That would alienate both consumers and developers alike - spelling doom for the console maker.
Supporting HDMI doesn't change the fact that the console STILL works on a SDTV with composite or s-video. Even a non-HDMI 360 will still do 1080p, assuming your TV/monitor can support 1080p via component video or the VGA input.
A larger HDD won't suddenly make games incompatible with older 360s. In fact, Microsoft *REQUIRES* all 360 games to be playable with - OR WITHOUT - the HDD. Granted, it'll be a little difficult to download demos without a HDD but your games will all still work.
Well... The old 360s don't have an HDMI port, for one thing. Not all TVs will support 1080p via their component or VGA inputs, for another.
That said, the only things for the 360 that actually support 1080p would be HD-DVD movies (after you buy the $200 add-on drive) and like 1 or 2 game titles. I don't even think the downloaded video content you can buy from the Xbox Live Marketplace supports 1080p.
The same reason Microsoft went ahead and released a 360 that didn't even HAVE a HDD at all!
Price. Price. Price. Price.
It was very important to Microsoft to have their console priced lower than than Sony's. Although to be honest, I think Microsoft expected Sony to price the PS3 at $400 and $500, instead of the current $500/$600... So now Microsoft can release the 360 Elite, which adds HDMI, comes with a larger HDD AND a HDMI cable while STILL costing less than the PS3.
The 360's HDD can be used to store music (replace the soundtrack of your games with YOUR music), as well as storing content you download from Microsoft's online service. This includes movie trailers, game demos, bonus content for games (levels, items, patches, etc.) as well as full games. These games, however, are not available on DVD. Notable releases include the TMNT arcade game, Street Fighter 2 (now with online play), Worms (now in HD), as well as the very popular Geometry Wars.
And that's even before you consider Microsoft's video service allowing you to download TV shows and movies in HD.
Sony's PS3 can also download trailers, demos, music, TV shows, movies and games as well.
Finally, just because it says "80GB" doesn't mean that all 80GB will be available to the user. On the 360, for instance, about 7GB of the 20GB HDD is reserved for the system, probably for things like caching game data from the DVD, your game saves, etc. I can only assume that a large chunk of the PS3's HDD is similarly reserved.
Besides, you know the rule regarding HDD storage - "large" is never large enough. Data will expand to completely fill any available storage capacity:-)
I thought that NPD's numbers were incomplete as they don't record sales from a number of stores, such as Walmart. Speaking of which, does Walmart even CARRY the PS3? At $600, it'd probably be one of the most expensive items in the store, wouldn't it?
Gaming has not always been an adult hobby. Sure, adults have always played games, but they weren't the majority of the market, not for a long time.
Gaming was for adults, eh?
So, it was *ADULTS* who were plugging quarter after quarter into machines so they could play games like Space Invaders, and then a few years later, PacMan?
And of course, this explains why the adult-oriented store, Toys R Us was the best place to buy computer and console games during the 80s.
Who can forget telling your parents to put down the NES controller and make dinner? Yeah, those were the days...
I don't know what alternate reality you came from, but unlike you, I actually grew up during the video and computer game explosion. The only reason gaming is largely populated by adults NOW is because we were all kids THEN.
I believe Sony also disallowed porno games on the PS1 (and PS2?) as well.
Even if they disallowed porno games on the PS3, Home opens up all sorts of sordid possibilities.
I predict that before Christmas, we'll start hearing about local newscasters doing "Shocking expose'" stories about how the PS3 is a portal for porn and child molesters to access your child.
Gaming is hardly an "adult" hobby, despite the shift in the demographics over the past 10 years.
That said, the concern is a real one. I have a friend who has a 12 year old daughter. While she knows she's not supposed to go looking for certain types of material, every so often she'll get spam or come across something that's wildly inappropriate for her despite her following the rules.
Sony's taking a HUGE risk here by forcing "Home" down everyone's throat, unless there's a way to turn "Home" off completely. But hearing Sony's hype, they consider "Home" very much an integral part of the whole PS3 experience. And of course, what kid isn't going to be interested in online chatting with other (hopefully) kids?
You already have many people who won't play multiplayer because of immature players (who are often kids) who do nothing but yell obscenities. I really don't how Sony is going to be able to adequately moderate Home in this case. I would hope they would use a sort of global rating system, where everyone starts with a rating of "0" but if a user swears a lot, he'll get a higher rating, and others can decide to block any user with a rating higher than a certain value. (Of course, the immature 12 year olds would probably try to compete with one another to see how bad of a rating they could get...)
The major difference here is that if, like comics, such a code were imposed on video games, the response would be to create a sort of "underground" for creating and distributing non-compliant material. The internet excels at this sort of thing, finding all manner of ways to subvert, and circumvent those who would try to censor/control the flow of information.
How the heck did this get marked insightful? +5 Sarcasm is more like it.
Have you ever actually been to a campus computer lab when it's crunch time? Trust me, NO ONE wants to be there. "Bonding" is the last thing on people's mind when trying to get the crummy lab computer to read their floppy disc with their final project/paper on it so they can PRINT IT and GO HOME TO SLEEP. And as someone who both worked at and used campus computer labs during my time in college, I honestly do not call that the best part of my college career. If you do, I really feel sorry for you...
When it wasn't crunch time, the labs would be full of people playing MUD or other games. Trust me, you probably don't want to 'bond' with someone who stays up all night in a lab playing MUD. We had this one person literally LIVE in the lab playing MUD during spring break. At the end of the week, we decided to just throw out the chair, mouse and keyboard rather than even attempt to clean them. The lingering stench took days to dissapate.
Oh yes, and there were sure to have been a few dimwits viewing pr0N as well. Yes, I'm sure that'll make for a fine work environment for those who actually have to use the machines for, you know, class stuff. Careful there, the keyboard might be a little sticky.
I would assume that offcampus students aren't living in dorms, and therefore would not be subject to this inane policy of the U's.
When I went for college orientation, it was made PAINFULLY clear to us that we were now adults and would be treated as such. Adults have to make and live with their own decisions.
It's college, not an extension of your parents. If you can't handle it, go home.
I went to college in the early 90s, when the internet was still pretty unknown, or at best, only something used by the geekier folks in engineering.
Strange how all those folks in the liberal arts colleges had no problems finding ways to fill their latenight hours with activities that would otherwise be called "wastes of time" or even "detrimental" to one's education.
Sony has been plugging the PS3 as a blu-ray player, and Microsoft offers a HD-DVD add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 in addition to its ability to act as a streaming client if you're running the proper version of Windows on your PC.
Basically, both Sony and Microsoft want you to use your game console for more than just games.
There are different types of keyboards available for Japan. One uses pretty much the standard US QWERTY layout with English letters on the keys. You then type in romajii, and the computer tries to guess what character(s) you want to use. Another keyboard has hiragana characters on the keys and acts as you'd expect.
The algorithm used to guess what characters you want to use has gotten pretty sophisticated, using a combination of statistical analysis to keep track of commonly used words (like your name) and limited context parsing, it's gotten a lot better from the early days when you would type in the letter "o" and be presented with 60+ characters;)
Chinese is similiar. You can type in pin-yin or one of the other romanization methods. You can also type in "bo-po-mo-fo" which is a phonetic script that is taught to kindergarten kids to help them learn to pronounce Chinese properly. Like Japanese, the keyboard can come in a US-QWERTY style, or with the "bo-po-mo-fo" characters. There's probably some others as well. I know that the early computer keyboards for Chinese contained keys for every radical from the Chinese characters. To type a single character, you'd punch in the radicals in the order you would normally write, and the computer would assemble them into the desired character.
Russian and other similar languages have their own keyboard layouts. Even French and German have slightly different keyboard layouts from the standard EN-US 101 key QWERTY layout. For fun, try going into Windows' regional settings, and change your victim's keyboard setting. A very nasty trick to play on a touch-typist;)
Japanese has 2 romanization standards, Chinese has at least 2, as well as the "bo-po-mo-fo" method some learned in schools which is itself a non-ASCII character set... And what about languages that have no written form whatsoever? Doesn't Unicode attempt to address these languages as well? Does that mean we could eventually see something like k!ung''.com from a hunter-gatherer tribe in South America?
It's worse than that, actually. Many codepages include double-byte versions of the ASCII characters that, for all intents and purposes, look IDENTICAL to your standard ASCII letters.
An example of this is Japanese's curious, and depreciated, half-width and full-width alpha-numeric characters. Both of these replicates ASCII letters using different code values. So within just Japanese alone, there are three distinct but identical-looking ways to display the letter "a" within a domain name. And other language codepages have this "feature" as well...
Short of being able to decipher raw bytes against a given encoding, you won't be able to tell where that link that says "ebay.com" will take you.
If I wanted to play PS1 or PS2 games, I'd stick with the PS2 which is cheaper than the PS3 and plays a greater number of PS1 and PS2 games compared to either model of the PS3.
The only reason to buy a PS3 is for PS3 games. Where are the RPGs, MMORPGS, platformers, action titles...heck, where are the GAMES? There's what, maybe 2 or 3 decent exclusives for the PS3 right now - one FPS, and 2 racing games. GameRankings.com has yet to show a aggregate score of a 90% or higher for a PS3 game. Most of the exclusives just suck - heck, the Gundam title was voted 'Worst game of the year'. It also doesn't help any that the majority of the PS3's library is currently multi-platform titles that look and play identically on the 360, which costs less.
Honestly now, why would anyone buy a PS3 at this time?
* Rumble is rumored to return, meaning we'll probably see a new controller packaged with future PS3s. If you already bought a PS3, you'll have to buy new controllers if you want rumble. Instead, if you wait, you'll get the new controller with your PS3.
* The big games aren't out yet. Honestly now, is 'Resistance: Fall of man' really worth $800??
* It's $600, and games cost $60. Your layout for a new PS3 is likely to cost about $800. Wait for the price drop. Games aren't going anywhere, and by the time the hardware is cheaper, you should be able to take advantage of PS3 Greatest Hits or at least a decent used market.
Eh? As a potential customer, *I* want a reasonably priced console with good games on it.
The PS3 isn't reasonably priced, and doesn't (yet) have good games.
I don't want a ripoff of Animal Crossing - I already played that game and found it boring. Animal Crossing with more people and ads? Sounds even more boring.
Seriously, if you were a game developer, how exactly does this announcement of Sony's equal good news for you?
Sony's telling game developers that they can look forward to developing small games for their version of Animal Crossing and expecting people to be excited about it?? Honestly, if I were a game developer at GDC, I'd be on the phone to my boss about seriously dropping the PS3 in order to get some REAL revenue from the 360 at this point. Sony's gone off into laa-laa land, and they ain't coming back!
I'm sorry but an ad-driven remake of Animal Crossing is not going to make me want to buy a PS3 at whatever price it is at that time. And I'm pretty sure those who already bought a PS3 so they can play GTA4 (before learning it was multi-platform) aren't going to be interested in this either.
Was this honestly the only thing that Sony presented at GDC? And they got applause for it?!?
What are you talking about? They've basically recreated Animal Crossing, with better chat and multi-user functionality. And *advertising*? you think this is a nifty feature?
I already played Animal Crossing. It also had (hidden) video games, the ability to decorate your own home with various items and rare stuff you can trade with other players.
A used GameCube, or Nintendo DS is much cheaper than a PS3 - and as a bonus, both have a larger library of good games, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please, this isn't the first time something like this has happend, nor is it something unique to Microsoft.
All of the console makers have changed their hardware during their consoles' lifetime. Sony had already released a new model of the PS2 that came with the bundled ethernet adaptor that was CHEAPER than if you had bought an earlier PS2 and the adaptor separately. The monsters!
Still didn't mean that the older games wouldn't work on the newer hardware, or vice versa. It was still a PS2.
It's the same thing here.
No, I honestly don't see Microsoft or anyone else doing something so stupid like releasing a hardware rev mid-cycle that changes the core performance of the box. You aren't going to see a "360+" that comes with more RAM or a faster processor. That would alienate both consumers and developers alike - spelling doom for the console maker.
Supporting HDMI doesn't change the fact that the console STILL works on a SDTV with composite or s-video. Even a non-HDMI 360 will still do 1080p, assuming your TV/monitor can support 1080p via component video or the VGA input.
A larger HDD won't suddenly make games incompatible with older 360s. In fact, Microsoft *REQUIRES* all 360 games to be playable with - OR WITHOUT - the HDD. Granted, it'll be a little difficult to download demos without a HDD but your games will all still work.
Well... The old 360s don't have an HDMI port, for one thing. Not all TVs will support 1080p via their component or VGA inputs, for another.
That said, the only things for the 360 that actually support 1080p would be HD-DVD movies (after you buy the $200 add-on drive) and like 1 or 2 game titles. I don't even think the downloaded video content you can buy from the Xbox Live Marketplace supports 1080p.
Why not a larger HDD from day one?
The same reason Microsoft went ahead and released a 360 that didn't even HAVE a HDD at all!
Price. Price. Price. Price.
It was very important to Microsoft to have their console priced lower than than Sony's. Although to be honest, I think Microsoft expected Sony to price the PS3 at $400 and $500, instead of the current $500/$600... So now Microsoft can release the 360 Elite, which adds HDMI, comes with a larger HDD AND a HDMI cable while STILL costing less than the PS3.
The 360's HDD can be used to store music (replace the soundtrack of your games with YOUR music), as well as storing content you download from Microsoft's online service. This includes movie trailers, game demos, bonus content for games (levels, items, patches, etc.) as well as full games. These games, however, are not available on DVD. Notable releases include the TMNT arcade game, Street Fighter 2 (now with online play), Worms (now in HD), as well as the very popular Geometry Wars.
:-)
And that's even before you consider Microsoft's video service allowing you to download TV shows and movies in HD.
Sony's PS3 can also download trailers, demos, music, TV shows, movies and games as well.
Finally, just because it says "80GB" doesn't mean that all 80GB will be available to the user. On the 360, for instance, about 7GB of the 20GB HDD is reserved for the system, probably for things like caching game data from the DVD, your game saves, etc. I can only assume that a large chunk of the PS3's HDD is similarly reserved.
Besides, you know the rule regarding HDD storage - "large" is never large enough. Data will expand to completely fill any available storage capacity
I thought that NPD's numbers were incomplete as they don't record sales from a number of stores, such as Walmart. Speaking of which, does Walmart even CARRY the PS3? At $600, it'd probably be one of the most expensive items in the store, wouldn't it?
Gaming has not always been an adult hobby. Sure, adults have always played games, but they weren't the majority of the market, not for a long time.
Gaming was for adults, eh?
So, it was *ADULTS* who were plugging quarter after quarter into machines so they could play games like Space Invaders, and then a few years later, PacMan?
And of course, this explains why the adult-oriented store, Toys R Us was the best place to buy computer and console games during the 80s.
Who can forget telling your parents to put down the NES controller and make dinner? Yeah, those were the days...
I don't know what alternate reality you came from, but unlike you, I actually grew up during the video and computer game explosion. The only reason gaming is largely populated by adults NOW is because we were all kids THEN.
I believe Sony also disallowed porno games on the PS1 (and PS2?) as well.
Even if they disallowed porno games on the PS3, Home opens up all sorts of sordid possibilities.
I predict that before Christmas, we'll start hearing about local newscasters doing "Shocking expose'" stories about how the PS3 is a portal for porn and child molesters to access your child.
Gaming is hardly an "adult" hobby, despite the shift in the demographics over the past 10 years.
That said, the concern is a real one. I have a friend who has a 12 year old daughter. While she knows she's not supposed to go looking for certain types of material, every so often she'll get spam or come across something that's wildly inappropriate for her despite her following the rules.
Sony's taking a HUGE risk here by forcing "Home" down everyone's throat, unless there's a way to turn "Home" off completely. But hearing Sony's hype, they consider "Home" very much an integral part of the whole PS3 experience. And of course, what kid isn't going to be interested in online chatting with other (hopefully) kids?
You already have many people who won't play multiplayer because of immature players (who are often kids) who do nothing but yell obscenities. I really don't how Sony is going to be able to adequately moderate Home in this case. I would hope they would use a sort of global rating system, where everyone starts with a rating of "0" but if a user swears a lot, he'll get a higher rating, and others can decide to block any user with a rating higher than a certain value. (Of course, the immature 12 year olds would probably try to compete with one another to see how bad of a rating they could get...)
Yeah, moderators and filters. We all know how well THAT works, right?
I can think of dozens of examples where filtering is going to go awry.
(3v3n \/\/|th0ut l33t-sp34k, d00d!)
The major difference here is that if, like comics, such a code were imposed on video games, the response would be to create a sort of "underground" for creating and distributing non-compliant material. The internet excels at this sort of thing, finding all manner of ways to subvert, and circumvent those who would try to censor/control the flow of information.
How the heck did this get marked insightful? +5 Sarcasm is more like it.
Have you ever actually been to a campus computer lab when it's crunch time? Trust me, NO ONE wants to be there. "Bonding" is the last thing on people's mind when trying to get the crummy lab computer to read their floppy disc with their final project/paper on it so they can PRINT IT and GO HOME TO SLEEP. And as someone who both worked at and used campus computer labs during my time in college, I honestly do not call that the best part of my college career. If you do, I really feel sorry for you...
When it wasn't crunch time, the labs would be full of people playing MUD or other games. Trust me, you probably don't want to 'bond' with someone who stays up all night in a lab playing MUD. We had this one person literally LIVE in the lab playing MUD during spring break. At the end of the week, we decided to just throw out the chair, mouse and keyboard rather than even attempt to clean them. The lingering stench took days to dissapate.
Oh yes, and there were sure to have been a few dimwits viewing pr0N as well. Yes, I'm sure that'll make for a fine work environment for those who actually have to use the machines for, you know, class stuff. Careful there, the keyboard might be a little sticky.
I would assume that offcampus students aren't living in dorms, and therefore would not be subject to this inane policy of the U's.
When I went for college orientation, it was made PAINFULLY clear to us that we were now adults and would be treated as such. Adults have to make and live with their own decisions.
It's college, not an extension of your parents. If you can't handle it, go home.
Back in MY day...
I went to college in the early 90s, when the internet was still pretty unknown, or at best, only something used by the geekier folks in engineering.
Strange how all those folks in the liberal arts colleges had no problems finding ways to fill their latenight hours with activities that would otherwise be called "wastes of time" or even "detrimental" to one's education.
Game publishers think enough people will buy at $60. So long as people buy games at $60, games will remain $60.
If publishers think they could charge $70, $80, $100 and still get the sales, don't you think they would? Of course.
I fail to see why this is such a big revelation to someone like Forbes...
Valve is saying that Episode 2 will support DX 9 AND 10 (AND 8 and...7?) If you have Vista and a DX10 compatible video card you'll be using DX10.
If you're like the rest of the world, and still using XP, you'll use DX9 (or 8 - I guess depending on your video card.)
Right now, there is no way to use DX10 under anything other than Vista.
Well, kids nowadays get much more in allowance, so it's not entirely impossible for them to buy larger ticket items by themselves.
However, I think the study is assuming "ownership" to mean "primary user", regardless of who actually paid for the item.
Sony has been plugging the PS3 as a blu-ray player, and Microsoft offers a HD-DVD add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 in addition to its ability to act as a streaming client if you're running the proper version of Windows on your PC.
Basically, both Sony and Microsoft want you to use your game console for more than just games.
There are different types of keyboards available for Japan. One uses pretty much the standard US QWERTY layout with English letters on the keys. You then type in romajii, and the computer tries to guess what character(s) you want to use. Another keyboard has hiragana characters on the keys and acts as you'd expect.
;)
;)
The algorithm used to guess what characters you want to use has gotten pretty sophisticated, using a combination of statistical analysis to keep track of commonly used words (like your name) and limited context parsing, it's gotten a lot better from the early days when you would type in the letter "o" and be presented with 60+ characters
Chinese is similiar. You can type in pin-yin or one of the other romanization methods. You can also type in "bo-po-mo-fo" which is a phonetic script that is taught to kindergarten kids to help them learn to pronounce Chinese properly. Like Japanese, the keyboard can come in a US-QWERTY style, or with the "bo-po-mo-fo" characters. There's probably some others as well. I know that the early computer keyboards for Chinese contained keys for every radical from the Chinese characters. To type a single character, you'd punch in the radicals in the order you would normally write, and the computer would assemble them into the desired character.
Russian and other similar languages have their own keyboard layouts. Even French and German have slightly different keyboard layouts from the standard EN-US 101 key QWERTY layout. For fun, try going into Windows' regional settings, and change your victim's keyboard setting. A very nasty trick to play on a touch-typist
Japanese has 2 romanization standards, Chinese has at least 2, as well as the "bo-po-mo-fo" method some learned in schools which is itself a non-ASCII character set... And what about languages that have no written form whatsoever? Doesn't Unicode attempt to address these languages as well? Does that mean we could eventually see something like k!ung''.com from a hunter-gatherer tribe in South America?
It's worse than that, actually. Many codepages include double-byte versions of the ASCII characters that, for all intents and purposes, look IDENTICAL to your standard ASCII letters.
An example of this is Japanese's curious, and depreciated, half-width and full-width alpha-numeric characters. Both of these replicates ASCII letters using different code values. So within just Japanese alone, there are three distinct but identical-looking ways to display the letter "a" within a domain name. And other language codepages have this "feature" as well...
Short of being able to decipher raw bytes against a given encoding, you won't be able to tell where that link that says "ebay.com" will take you.
If I wanted to play PS1 or PS2 games, I'd stick with the PS2 which is cheaper than the PS3 and plays a greater number of PS1 and PS2 games compared to either model of the PS3.
The only reason to buy a PS3 is for PS3 games. Where are the RPGs, MMORPGS, platformers, action titles...heck, where are the GAMES? There's what, maybe 2 or 3 decent exclusives for the PS3 right now - one FPS, and 2 racing games. GameRankings.com has yet to show a aggregate score of a 90% or higher for a PS3 game. Most of the exclusives just suck - heck, the Gundam title was voted 'Worst game of the year'. It also doesn't help any that the majority of the PS3's library is currently multi-platform titles that look and play identically on the 360, which costs less.
Honestly now, why would anyone buy a PS3 at this time?
* Rumble is rumored to return, meaning we'll probably see a new controller packaged with future PS3s. If you already bought a PS3, you'll have to buy new controllers if you want rumble. Instead, if you wait, you'll get the new controller with your PS3.
* The big games aren't out yet. Honestly now, is 'Resistance: Fall of man' really worth $800??
* It's $600, and games cost $60. Your layout for a new PS3 is likely to cost about $800. Wait for the price drop. Games aren't going anywhere, and by the time the hardware is cheaper, you should be able to take advantage of PS3 Greatest Hits or at least a decent used market.
Eh? As a potential customer, *I* want a reasonably priced console with good games on it.
The PS3 isn't reasonably priced, and doesn't (yet) have good games.
I don't want a ripoff of Animal Crossing - I already played that game and found it boring. Animal Crossing with more people and ads? Sounds even more boring.
Without gamers, there'd be no game developers.
Seriously, if you were a game developer, how exactly does this announcement of Sony's equal good news for you?
Sony's telling game developers that they can look forward to developing small games for their version of Animal Crossing and expecting people to be excited about it?? Honestly, if I were a game developer at GDC, I'd be on the phone to my boss about seriously dropping the PS3 in order to get some REAL revenue from the 360 at this point. Sony's gone off into laa-laa land, and they ain't coming back!
I'm sorry but an ad-driven remake of Animal Crossing is not going to make me want to buy a PS3 at whatever price it is at that time. And I'm pretty sure those who already bought a PS3 so they can play GTA4 (before learning it was multi-platform) aren't going to be interested in this either.
Was this honestly the only thing that Sony presented at GDC? And they got applause for it?!?
What are you talking about? They've basically recreated Animal Crossing, with better chat and multi-user functionality. And *advertising*? you think this is a nifty feature?
I already played Animal Crossing. It also had (hidden) video games, the ability to decorate your own home with various items and rare stuff you can trade with other players.
A used GameCube, or Nintendo DS is much cheaper than a PS3 - and as a bonus, both have a larger library of good games, too.