I really wish that these places would let you customize what ads you see. Most common example - males have absolutely no use for ads about feminine hygiene products.
I also don't drink, so all beer/booze ads are also pointless.
I do like movies and eat out a lot, so movie previews and local restaurant ads would be appreciated.
Macy's telling me that all summer dresses are 30% - not so useful.
Don't show me the same set of ads over and over again. Yes, I know Comcast is "comcastic", you told me that 5 times during the last break, and the break before that, and the one before that and probably about 300 times last week!
And I don't care HOW cute/funny/amusing an ad is, after the 5th time, it's boring and annoying.
In other words, if you want me to watch ads, at least send ads that I may actually be interested in, and give me VARIETY - don't just take the same 20 ads and put them on shuffle!
If Tivo can do keyword categorization with TV shows, why can't these VOD systems do the same with commercials?
You forget that more shows are taking the movie route by slipping in not-so-subtle product placements. Not to mention direct references, such as that episode of Friends where they had a scene discussing Tivo.
However, these TV studios seem to have forgotten one thing: They can't make me watch.
Even if they succeed in forcing us back into the early 70s, before the VCR, where we can only watch their shows on THEIR schedule and with THEIR ads, I'm still in control of the TV. Even if they take the next logical steps - preventing me from changing the channel, muting the volume, or even turning the TV off during a commercial, they still can't prevent me from leaving the room, or pulling the plug and mailing THEM my TV in a bunch of itty bitty boxes, all COD.
Perhaps this is all a conspiracy theory by the government to get us to lose weight by getting us to hate TV so much that we all go outside and do something healthy for a change. Ooh, those sneaky SOBs!;)
Eh, the wife and I are throughly indoctrinated by Tivo now. We just pause when we want if we have to do something else (bathroom break, grab food, phone, etc.) We use the 30 second skip to "pikupikupikupiku" through commercial breaks.
Good to see I'm not the only one annoyed by Comcast's "comcastic" "news" segments...
Like you, I'm also fed up with Comcast's rising costs. Our regular cable bill is over $50/mo and that's just for basic+extended cable. Digital and all that would add another $40-50 to our bill, and even though Comcast does carry Chinese language stations that would be nice for us to record for the inlaws, at nearly $100/mo(!!) it's cheaper for us to just have their relatives back home send over (legit, commercial) VCDs/DVDs of popular dramas.
The only thing I have to figure out is...Dish or DirecTV? We'll end up losing the Tivo either way, unfortunately.
Comcast and the local providers get paid to run ads from local businesses. The feeds they get contain blanks that say "INSERT AD HERE" for this purpose. (the national ads are already in the feed I believe)
This is rather annoying since about 30% of the ads that are run in my area are for Comcast's advertising services for local companies. Apparentally business isn't that good, or, Comcast just likes the sound of their ads as they'll often override a local commercial with one of their own.
It's also annoying that Comcast broadcasts their asinine 'Comcast Community' garbage on CNN Headline News, insuring you always miss the same part of the CNN news cycle over...and over....and over. I really don't care what some community service project this person is championing. Get your own channel, darnit!
Um...if there are no native drivers, and you have to disable many of Vista's features just to use the working drivers from XP, remind me again - WHY USE VISTA IN THE FIRST PLACE?
All article I've read about Vista vs. games has harped on unstable or outright MISSING drivers. I'm sure these issues will get solved eventually, but remind me again, if my hardware no workie under Vista, WHY USE VISTA IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Even when the reviewers had a mostly stable, working setup, there were still many games that just flatout wouldn't work right under Vista. Do I really need to say it again?
Um, this isn't a sports car or a general computer. It's an appliance, like your toaster.
You buy a toaster based on how well it makes toast (or other toast-like pastry products)
Likewise, you buy a game console....based on the GAMES it plays.
Yes, I know that Sony said they could sell 5 million PS3s with no games, but I think as history has shown them, that isn't remotely the truth. No games, no sale.
Sony lost sight of this (or intentionally ignored it) and now are dealing with the consequences.
BTW, if Oblivion was the game you wanted to play, you could have saved $200 and gone with a 360. Same game, same features, same graphics.
High-Def video is totally irrelevent to like 90% of the market. Sony pushing Blu-Ray won't change that. If anything, Sony should be pushing their HDTVs more than Blu-Ray.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are bickering over a tiny part of the afficianado subset of the market - and even most of THEM are staying away because it just isn't worth the risk and money to get involved with in a format war.
As for the games, if you look back at the PS2 and PS1 (even probably even further) you'll see that developers also complained about how "different" or "difficult" it was to program for this console or that console. Some said it would take them YEARS to figure out the PS2, and then a month later that same company kicks out a top-selling PS2 title.
Money talks. Given a large enough market, developers will shut up about "how hard" something is, and get the job done. Now this is dangerous for the PS3 because if it doesn't have the perceived market, developers aren't going to spend as much time on ports or even original titles - why should they? This could lead to a bunch of mediocre looking games that probably could have looked better on the PS3 if only it was profitable to spend the effort to do so.
Some companies declare a "sale" when they ship a unit to a retail store. It doesn't matter at that point whether the store sticks it on a shelf for a consumer to buy, or if they stick in their warehouse. The manufacturer (Sony, Apple, etc.) use that number to declare how many they've sold, and declare their revenue.
Now the problem with this is that it's possible to "over sell" - also called stuffing the channel. When this happens, stores stop ordering units - which means no revenue. Worse, if the product really isn't moving, the store may ship stuff back to the manufacturer for a refund, which can cause the company to have to restate their earnings, since that 10,000 unit sale they had back in March suddenly turned into a 7000 unit refund in May...
Even a $100 price cut won't do much for the PS3. Even the 360 Elite would still be cheaper - and let's not forget the games.
Even if Sony managed to drop the price of the PS3 to $400 - matching the 360 Premium - I still have doubts that it will sell as anything more than a dedicated blu-ray player to the ignorant and impaitent.
Sony still has the problem that there just aren't many good exclusive games for the PS3 and what we've seen so far has just been "OK" to "Good" at best. There isn't a "SSX" in terms of gameplay, or a "DOA2" in terms of graphics for the PS3. Worse still is the fact that many of the PS3's games are also available on the 360, with virtually no difference in graphics, gameplay or content. When there are differences, the advantage almost always goes to the 360.
Finally, there's strong rumors that Microsoft has gotten their manufacturing costs down to the point where they may actually be making a small profit on each 360 they sell. If this is true, they could easily match any price drop by Sony, if not exceed it.
From what I understand, when the police/FBI investigated the people caught by these traps, they usually came up with other evidence - kiddie porn on the computer, etc. So it's not just the "intent to meet a minor" thing that gets them into trouble.
It's usually not worth the effort to turn them in - at best it makes you a whistleblower and might make other companies nervous about hiring you. At worst, the ensuing legal battles could keep you in court for years. Sure, you could probably launch some lawsuits of your own, but what do you do in the meantime?
Make your refusal in writing - it carries more weight (figuratively, literally, and legally) than email. If they still push, take vacation - unpaid if you have to - and start that job search.
Although the content wouldn't have to be recreated, there are still significant differences in the architectures, drivers and APIs that would require some tweaking, no? I'll grant that it's become a lot easier to do a port over the years, but it's still not as simple as just recompiling for the different platform, and sending the result to manufacturing.
One of the complaints from the PS2/Xbox generation was that many of the games ported to the Xbox were done very hurriedly, without any extra optimization or effort to take advantage of the Xbox's hardware.
The PS2 had a few bad ports as well - such as Grandia2. The game looked superb on its native Dreamcast, but the same care wasn't taken when ported to the PS2 resulting in subpar performance and other issues.
Of course, these problems would go away with a unified platform and would also give developers more time - and incentive - to try to push the hardware to its maximum.
Oh, please. There's hardly anything that's "standard" when it comes to a PC.
Anyways, the standard game console thing is already begining to happen.
Games are just getting too expensive to produce, and it's just not economical to simply release your game exclusively for one platform. Even though it's still early for this generation, we're already seeing a large number of multiplatform games, and, unlike previous generations, the differences in the graphics on the different platforms is almost negligble.
At this rate, if two (or more) different platforms have nearly the same library, why not go the last step and just create a unified console? The developers would probably go for it - less work, more profit.
If you think about it, just about every other electronics device we use only has one standard - like DVD. When multiple standards are introduced, it just makes a mess of the market, as illustrated by HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
Such games already exist - Playboy Mansion? BMXXX? What about that game where you had to repeatedly "photograph" models to make them take their clothes off? (Seriously - that was the description on the box!) None of these games were trying to pretend to be something they weren't. Ok, I take that back. They were all pretending to be "good games", but they certainly don't pretend to be for all-ages.
Also, all of those games carried an "M" rating, so there should be no excuse for mistaking them for being for kids of all ages.
I really don't see a game publisher trying to mis-represent their game. What do they gain? Their true audience might fall for the "fake" advertising and not buy the game, and you can be sure that if a busy-body parent feels s/he's been lied to, there's going to be a lawsuit.
ESRB or no, it should always be the parent's responsibility to check out the games their kids want to buy. I furthermore encourage them to not even trust the ESRB's blanket rating on the front of the package. Read the game's description and the more detailed rating on the back of the box and make your own decision.
The ESRB is better than nothing, but it's far from perfect. If you want a quick example, check out what the ESRB (esrb.org) has to say about gambling in games. Now check out all the poker games for sale on EBGames.com and note what their ratings are. I find it odd that a multiplatform Poker game will have different ratings across the different platforms. This is, after all, POKER we're talking about here. Definitely not the most challenging thing to program.... Even my family's Apple ][ had a couple of Poker games available for it.
There was the dimwitted grandma who tried to sue Rockstar Games after the Hot Coffee incident because she bought GTA for her 10 year old grandson.
Even before that, there were parents testifying before the congress after Columbine that even with the ESRB ratings, that violent games were being inappropriately targetted at children and that it was "too difficult" for parents to determine what was appropriate or not. As an example, she brought in one of the figurines from Duke Nukem - you know, the ones that say right on the package "NOT A TOY", and "Figure from a mature-rated game - may not be suitable for children".
In conclusion, the best rating system in the world isn't going to cure the real problem here - Stupidity.
Both the MPAA and ESRB are voluntary groups, and are not responsible for any sort of enforcement of their rating systems.
Like you, I've never seen a theater refuse a kid a ticket to an R movie, but others have.
Likewise, I've never seen a game store refuse to sell a kid a M game, but others have.
You could argue that it's not the store/theater's place to make these judgements.
Basically, this whole issue ignores the fact that ultimately, it has to be the PARENTS who make the decision.
The Senator was clearly exaggerating with his comment about an 800 hour game, but you have to admit that just about every modern game is going to last more than the few hours you'll need to watch a movie, or even read a book. The game companies really have nothing to gain by trying to disguise their latest military slaughter simulator as 'pink pretty prancing ponies V' but that doesn't mean that someone might find something offensive in hour 35 out of 40 in a RPG.
Anyways, FFX felt like a strange amalgam of every FF I'd played up to that point. Reworked music, themes, the obligatory Chocobo games and Airship piloted by Cid. As for Wakka, considering he was one of the few characters who could hit a flying enemy, what did you expect him to attack with? His 'There's Something About Mary' hair spike?
If you want silly attacks, check out the first Shadow Hearts game. The heroine of the game wields a bible, of all things. I never got tired of watching her run up to a monster, only to smack it on the nose (if it had a nose...)
You forgot Ratchet & Clank. FFXIII - exclusive or not - isn't realistically due out until next year, and even then, might not come to the US until late 2008, or even 2009.
As for multi-platform games, so far, the graphics and game play have been nearly identical between the PS3 and 360. If anything, reviewers have given a slight edge to the 360 in a few cases.
With the Xbox and PS2, multi-platform games did look better on the Xbox, so there was at least a bit of an edge to buy a Xbox, or at least, buy your multi-platform games for your Xbox.
But with the 360 vs. the PS3...there isn't such an edge - AND - the PS3 is $200 more expensive than the 360.
Ok, sure, you can compare exclusive games, but even there, the PS3's current library looks pretty weak compared to what the 360 has. Granted, the 360 has a 1 year lead on the PS3. As you point out, many of the PS3's big titles haven't come out yet.
Which then brings me to my final question - how long do you think the publishers are going to wait for PS3 sales to pick up? Poor sales will lead more publishers to reconsider making exclusives for the PS3. No one will buy a console with a poor exclusives library, which again leads to poor sales which again leads to the publishers getting more reluctant to release games for the PS3, and so on.
The PS3 may be the "better" machine, but right now, based on the games that are on the market, I don't see it. Everything the PS3 can do, the 360 does at least as well, for less money. And in some areas, such as online support, the 360 does it BETTER. Sony has a lot of ground to cover if they want to have a chance at giving Microsoft a serious run for its money at this point. I wish them the best of luck.
"It annoys me how long blacklists will keep you on, even after they haven't gotten any reports of spam from your IP range. Why is this so?"
Laziness. If these are locally maintained lists, the admin undoubtedly has something better to do than to monitor which IP#s are still sending spam after "X" number of weeks.
So, yes, it really is 'file it and forget it'.
The larger more popular blacklists tend to be maintained more throughly in that they allow entries to 'age' off the list as well as listen to cases made by admins in the same position as the parent.
On the other end of the spectrum you have ranges that are so overrun with spam, such as China and Korea, that it just isn't worth the extra effort to ask the admin of every IP# "are you a spammer?" I'm sure that 99.99% of China's population doesn't spam in any manner, but it's just not worth my time to figure out who to whitelist and blacklist. As far as I'm concerned, if it came from China, it's not worth reading.
I hadn't thought about the PSP... However, the card reader for the PS3 does not cover PS1/PS2 memory cards - that's a separate product that isn't even included with the $600 model. The card reader only supports things like Sony Memory sticks, SD cards, etc. - not Playstation Memory Cards (TM)
(yes, I realize the term "memory card" is severly overused here.)
As for memory in the system, my understanding is that the 360 has twice the memory of the PS3, although the PS3's memory is faster. However when you couple that with the PS3's slower media drive, it seems to me that more memory would have helped. (then again, isn't more memory always a GOOD thing?;) With the 360, games can't assume they have a HDD to use for caching purposes, whereas every PS3 will have a HDD available. I've heard that Oblivion on the PS3 has faster laodtimes than the 360 because of this, but neither are as good as a good gaming PC which seems to be a better buy than a PS3 nowadays:-)
Does the software emulator actually upscale the graphics? I know that originally, Sony wanted to use a software emulator, and that it was planned to upscale the PS2 game graphics.
When they couldn't get adequate performance from the emulator in time for the launch, they switched to the hardware solution. With the European launch they switched back to the emulator but I haven't heard it does anything for the games.
Even if this were true, you're still looking at a trade off: Better compatibility (hardware solution) or better graphics (software emulator). Currently the emulator only supports a small percentage of the total number of titles available. Depending on how you count, it's even worse than the Xbox 360's emulator. Even then, the PS3's hardware solution still had problems with many PS2 games.
Either way, it really seems like people will be holding on to their PS2s a lot longer than they did for their PS1's.
Personally, I've never seen a theate turn away a group of kids from buying tickets to an R movie even though there wasn't an adult and the oldest couldn't have been more than 15. This has held true for theaters in and around Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and San Jose (CA). I've also never seen a store state that it wouldn't sell a M game to someone under 17.
I know that some stores and theaters make the effort, but it's been my experience that most of them do not.
It's clear that it idiots involved here don't know anything about the video game industry. Reminds me of how Hillary Clinton went public with her anger that video games weren't under the same sort of scrutiny as movies were. Apparentally no one had told Hillary about the ESRB, or the fact that video games are under MORE scrutiny than movies, with requirements to put ratings on the front of boxes (do you see DVDs with ratings on the front?), as well as requiring stores to carry huge cardboard cut-outs of the ESRB ratings to be publically posted around the store, in addition to other flyers, post-its, etc. that are plastered on the shelves...
This is just another politician trying to do a popularity grab by decrying "Its for the children!"
Nowadays it's video games. Before it was D&D, comic books, Rock&Roll... You'd think the generation that went through having its music heavily criticized and outright banned in some places would have learend a thing or two.
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I do that too.
I really wish that these places would let you customize what ads you see. Most common example - males have absolutely no use for ads about feminine hygiene products.
I also don't drink, so all beer/booze ads are also pointless.
I do like movies and eat out a lot, so movie previews and local restaurant ads would be appreciated.
Macy's telling me that all summer dresses are 30% - not so useful.
Don't show me the same set of ads over and over again. Yes, I know Comcast is "comcastic", you told me that 5 times during the last break, and the break before that, and the one before that and probably about 300 times last week!
And I don't care HOW cute/funny/amusing an ad is, after the 5th time, it's boring and annoying.
In other words, if you want me to watch ads, at least send ads that I may actually be interested in, and give me VARIETY - don't just take the same 20 ads and put them on shuffle!
If Tivo can do keyword categorization with TV shows, why can't these VOD systems do the same with commercials?
You forget that more shows are taking the movie route by slipping in not-so-subtle product placements. Not to mention direct references, such as that episode of Friends where they had a scene discussing Tivo.
;)
However, these TV studios seem to have forgotten one thing: They can't make me watch.
Even if they succeed in forcing us back into the early 70s, before the VCR, where we can only watch their shows on THEIR schedule and with THEIR ads, I'm still in control of the TV. Even if they take the next logical steps - preventing me from changing the channel, muting the volume, or even turning the TV off during a commercial, they still can't prevent me from leaving the room, or pulling the plug and mailing THEM my TV in a bunch of itty bitty boxes, all COD.
Perhaps this is all a conspiracy theory by the government to get us to lose weight by getting us to hate TV so much that we all go outside and do something healthy for a change. Ooh, those sneaky SOBs!
Eh, the wife and I are throughly indoctrinated by Tivo now. We just pause when we want if we have to do something else (bathroom break, grab food, phone, etc.) We use the 30 second skip to "pikupikupikupiku" through commercial breaks.
Good to see I'm not the only one annoyed by Comcast's "comcastic" "news" segments...
Like you, I'm also fed up with Comcast's rising costs. Our regular cable bill is over $50/mo and that's just for basic+extended cable. Digital and all that would add another $40-50 to our bill, and even though Comcast does carry Chinese language stations that would be nice for us to record for the inlaws, at nearly $100/mo(!!) it's cheaper for us to just have their relatives back home send over (legit, commercial) VCDs/DVDs of popular dramas.
The only thing I have to figure out is...Dish or DirecTV? We'll end up losing the Tivo either way, unfortunately.
Comcast and the local providers get paid to run ads from local businesses. The feeds they get contain blanks that say "INSERT AD HERE" for this purpose. (the national ads are already in the feed I believe)
This is rather annoying since about 30% of the ads that are run in my area are for Comcast's advertising services for local companies. Apparentally business isn't that good, or, Comcast just likes the sound of their ads as they'll often override a local commercial with one of their own.
It's also annoying that Comcast broadcasts their asinine 'Comcast Community' garbage on CNN Headline News, insuring you always miss the same part of the CNN news cycle over...and over....and over. I really don't care what some community service project this person is championing. Get your own channel, darnit!
Um...if there are no native drivers, and you have to disable many of Vista's features just to use the working drivers from XP, remind me again - WHY USE VISTA IN THE FIRST PLACE?
All article I've read about Vista vs. games has harped on unstable or outright MISSING drivers. I'm sure these issues will get solved eventually, but remind me again, if my hardware no workie under Vista, WHY USE VISTA IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Even when the reviewers had a mostly stable, working setup, there were still many games that just flatout wouldn't work right under Vista. Do I really need to say it again?
Um, this isn't a sports car or a general computer. It's an appliance, like your toaster.
You buy a toaster based on how well it makes toast (or other toast-like pastry products)
Likewise, you buy a game console....based on the GAMES it plays.
Yes, I know that Sony said they could sell 5 million PS3s with no games, but I think as history has shown them, that isn't remotely the truth. No games, no sale.
Sony lost sight of this (or intentionally ignored it) and now are dealing with the consequences.
BTW, if Oblivion was the game you wanted to play, you could have saved $200 and gone with a 360. Same game, same features, same graphics.
High-Def video is totally irrelevent to like 90% of the market. Sony pushing Blu-Ray won't change that. If anything, Sony should be pushing their HDTVs more than Blu-Ray.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are bickering over a tiny part of the afficianado subset of the market - and even most of THEM are staying away because it just isn't worth the risk and money to get involved with in a format war.
As for the games, if you look back at the PS2 and PS1 (even probably even further) you'll see that developers also complained about how "different" or "difficult" it was to program for this console or that console. Some said it would take them YEARS to figure out the PS2, and then a month later that same company kicks out a top-selling PS2 title.
Money talks. Given a large enough market, developers will shut up about "how hard" something is, and get the job done. Now this is dangerous for the PS3 because if it doesn't have the perceived market, developers aren't going to spend as much time on ports or even original titles - why should they? This could lead to a bunch of mediocre looking games that probably could have looked better on the PS3 if only it was profitable to spend the effort to do so.
Some companies declare a "sale" when they ship a unit to a retail store. It doesn't matter at that point whether the store sticks it on a shelf for a consumer to buy, or if they stick in their warehouse. The manufacturer (Sony, Apple, etc.) use that number to declare how many they've sold, and declare their revenue.
Now the problem with this is that it's possible to "over sell" - also called stuffing the channel. When this happens, stores stop ordering units - which means no revenue. Worse, if the product really isn't moving, the store may ship stuff back to the manufacturer for a refund, which can cause the company to have to restate their earnings, since that 10,000 unit sale they had back in March suddenly turned into a 7000 unit refund in May...
Yeah, because, $600 is a bargin so you can play Mortal Kombat again...
Don't forget that the 360 and Wii also have their own game download services.
Each one has it's interesting titles, but seriously? $250-600 is a lot to pay for the right to download old video/console games for $2-5 a pop.
Even a $100 price cut won't do much for the PS3. Even the 360 Elite would still be cheaper - and let's not forget the games.
Even if Sony managed to drop the price of the PS3 to $400 - matching the 360 Premium - I still have doubts that it will sell as anything more than a dedicated blu-ray player to the ignorant and impaitent.
Sony still has the problem that there just aren't many good exclusive games for the PS3 and what we've seen so far has just been "OK" to "Good" at best. There isn't a "SSX" in terms of gameplay, or a "DOA2" in terms of graphics for the PS3. Worse still is the fact that many of the PS3's games are also available on the 360, with virtually no difference in graphics, gameplay or content. When there are differences, the advantage almost always goes to the 360.
Finally, there's strong rumors that Microsoft has gotten their manufacturing costs down to the point where they may actually be making a small profit on each 360 they sell. If this is true, they could easily match any price drop by Sony, if not exceed it.
From what I understand, when the police/FBI investigated the people caught by these traps, they usually came up with other evidence - kiddie porn on the computer, etc. So it's not just the "intent to meet a minor" thing that gets them into trouble.
You would be surprised at how small a world it can be - especially if the OP goes looking for another job in the same industry, or geographical area.
Unfortunately, it's also been my experience that many places WILL call your former employer - even if you explictly tell them not to.
It's usually not worth the effort to turn them in - at best it makes you a whistleblower and might make other companies nervous about hiring you. At worst, the ensuing legal battles could keep you in court for years. Sure, you could probably launch some lawsuits of your own, but what do you do in the meantime?
Make your refusal in writing - it carries more weight (figuratively, literally, and legally) than email. If they still push, take vacation - unpaid if you have to - and start that job search.
Although the content wouldn't have to be recreated, there are still significant differences in the architectures, drivers and APIs that would require some tweaking, no? I'll grant that it's become a lot easier to do a port over the years, but it's still not as simple as just recompiling for the different platform, and sending the result to manufacturing.
One of the complaints from the PS2/Xbox generation was that many of the games ported to the Xbox were done very hurriedly, without any extra optimization or effort to take advantage of the Xbox's hardware.
The PS2 had a few bad ports as well - such as Grandia2. The game looked superb on its native Dreamcast, but the same care wasn't taken when ported to the PS2 resulting in subpar performance and other issues.
Of course, these problems would go away with a unified platform and would also give developers more time - and incentive - to try to push the hardware to its maximum.
Oh, please. There's hardly anything that's "standard" when it comes to a PC.
Anyways, the standard game console thing is already begining to happen.
Games are just getting too expensive to produce, and it's just not economical to simply release your game exclusively for one platform. Even though it's still early for this generation, we're already seeing a large number of multiplatform games, and, unlike previous generations, the differences in the graphics on the different platforms is almost negligble.
At this rate, if two (or more) different platforms have nearly the same library, why not go the last step and just create a unified console? The developers would probably go for it - less work, more profit.
If you think about it, just about every other electronics device we use only has one standard - like DVD. When multiple standards are introduced, it just makes a mess of the market, as illustrated by HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
Such games already exist - Playboy Mansion? BMXXX? What about that game where you had to repeatedly "photograph" models to make them take their clothes off? (Seriously - that was the description on the box!) None of these games were trying to pretend to be something they weren't. Ok, I take that back. They were all pretending to be "good games", but they certainly don't pretend to be for all-ages.
Also, all of those games carried an "M" rating, so there should be no excuse for mistaking them for being for kids of all ages.
I really don't see a game publisher trying to mis-represent their game. What do they gain? Their true audience might fall for the "fake" advertising and not buy the game, and you can be sure that if a busy-body parent feels s/he's been lied to, there's going to be a lawsuit.
ESRB or no, it should always be the parent's responsibility to check out the games their kids want to buy. I furthermore encourage them to not even trust the ESRB's blanket rating on the front of the package. Read the game's description and the more detailed rating on the back of the box and make your own decision.
The ESRB is better than nothing, but it's far from perfect. If you want a quick example, check out what the ESRB (esrb.org) has to say about gambling in games. Now check out all the poker games for sale on EBGames.com and note what their ratings are. I find it odd that a multiplatform Poker game will have different ratings across the different platforms. This is, after all, POKER we're talking about here. Definitely not the most challenging thing to program.... Even my family's Apple ][ had a couple of Poker games available for it.
There was the dimwitted grandma who tried to sue Rockstar Games after the Hot Coffee incident because she bought GTA for her 10 year old grandson.
Even before that, there were parents testifying before the congress after Columbine that even with the ESRB ratings, that violent games were being inappropriately targetted at children and that it was "too difficult" for parents to determine what was appropriate or not. As an example, she brought in one of the figurines from Duke Nukem - you know, the ones that say right on the package "NOT A TOY", and "Figure from a mature-rated game - may not be suitable for children".
In conclusion, the best rating system in the world isn't going to cure the real problem here - Stupidity.
Both the MPAA and ESRB are voluntary groups, and are not responsible for any sort of enforcement of their rating systems.
Like you, I've never seen a theater refuse a kid a ticket to an R movie, but others have.
Likewise, I've never seen a game store refuse to sell a kid a M game, but others have.
You could argue that it's not the store/theater's place to make these judgements.
Basically, this whole issue ignores the fact that ultimately, it has to be the PARENTS who make the decision.
The Senator was clearly exaggerating with his comment about an 800 hour game, but you have to admit that just about every modern game is going to last more than the few hours you'll need to watch a movie, or even read a book. The game companies really have nothing to gain by trying to disguise their latest military slaughter simulator as 'pink pretty prancing ponies V' but that doesn't mean that someone might find something offensive in hour 35 out of 40 in a RPG.
I'd almost forgotten about Quenya.
Anyways, FFX felt like a strange amalgam of every FF I'd played up to that point. Reworked music, themes, the obligatory Chocobo games and Airship piloted by Cid. As for Wakka, considering he was one of the few characters who could hit a flying enemy, what did you expect him to attack with? His 'There's Something About Mary' hair spike?
If you want silly attacks, check out the first Shadow Hearts game. The heroine of the game wields a bible, of all things. I never got tired of watching her run up to a monster, only to smack it on the nose (if it had a nose...)
You forgot Ratchet & Clank. FFXIII - exclusive or not - isn't realistically due out until next year, and even then, might not come to the US until late 2008, or even 2009.
As for multi-platform games, so far, the graphics and game play have been nearly identical between the PS3 and 360. If anything, reviewers have given a slight edge to the 360 in a few cases.
With the Xbox and PS2, multi-platform games did look better on the Xbox, so there was at least a bit of an edge to buy a Xbox, or at least, buy your multi-platform games for your Xbox.
But with the 360 vs. the PS3...there isn't such an edge - AND - the PS3 is $200 more expensive than the 360.
Ok, sure, you can compare exclusive games, but even there, the PS3's current library looks pretty weak compared to what the 360 has. Granted, the 360 has a 1 year lead on the PS3. As you point out, many of the PS3's big titles haven't come out yet.
Which then brings me to my final question - how long do you think the publishers are going to wait for PS3 sales to pick up? Poor sales will lead more publishers to reconsider making exclusives for the PS3. No one will buy a console with a poor exclusives library, which again leads to poor sales which again leads to the publishers getting more reluctant to release games for the PS3, and so on.
The PS3 may be the "better" machine, but right now, based on the games that are on the market, I don't see it. Everything the PS3 can do, the 360 does at least as well, for less money. And in some areas, such as online support, the 360 does it BETTER. Sony has a lot of ground to cover if they want to have a chance at giving Microsoft a serious run for its money at this point. I wish them the best of luck.
"It annoys me how long blacklists will keep you on, even after they haven't gotten any reports of spam from your IP range. Why is this so?"
Laziness. If these are locally maintained lists, the admin undoubtedly has something better to do than to monitor which IP#s are still sending spam after "X" number of weeks.
So, yes, it really is 'file it and forget it'.
The larger more popular blacklists tend to be maintained more throughly in that they allow entries to 'age' off the list as well as listen to cases made by admins in the same position as the parent.
On the other end of the spectrum you have ranges that are so overrun with spam, such as China and Korea, that it just isn't worth the extra effort to ask the admin of every IP# "are you a spammer?" I'm sure that 99.99% of China's population doesn't spam in any manner, but it's just not worth my time to figure out who to whitelist and blacklist. As far as I'm concerned, if it came from China, it's not worth reading.
I hadn't thought about the PSP... However, the card reader for the PS3 does not cover PS1/PS2 memory cards - that's a separate product that isn't even included with the $600 model. The card reader only supports things like Sony Memory sticks, SD cards, etc. - not Playstation Memory Cards (TM)
;) With the 360, games can't assume they have a HDD to use for caching purposes, whereas every PS3 will have a HDD available. I've heard that Oblivion on the PS3 has faster laodtimes than the 360 because of this, but neither are as good as a good gaming PC which seems to be a better buy than a PS3 nowadays :-)
(yes, I realize the term "memory card" is severly overused here.)
As for memory in the system, my understanding is that the 360 has twice the memory of the PS3, although the PS3's memory is faster. However when you couple that with the PS3's slower media drive, it seems to me that more memory would have helped. (then again, isn't more memory always a GOOD thing?
Does the software emulator actually upscale the graphics? I know that originally, Sony wanted to use a software emulator, and that it was planned to upscale the PS2 game graphics.
When they couldn't get adequate performance from the emulator in time for the launch, they switched to the hardware solution. With the European launch they switched back to the emulator but I haven't heard it does anything for the games.
Even if this were true, you're still looking at a trade off: Better compatibility (hardware solution) or better graphics (software emulator). Currently the emulator only supports a small percentage of the total number of titles available. Depending on how you count, it's even worse than the Xbox 360's emulator. Even then, the PS3's hardware solution still had problems with many PS2 games.
Either way, it really seems like people will be holding on to their PS2s a lot longer than they did for their PS1's.
Personally, I've never seen a theate turn away a group of kids from buying tickets to an R movie even though there wasn't an adult and the oldest couldn't have been more than 15. This has held true for theaters in and around Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and San Jose (CA). I've also never seen a store state that it wouldn't sell a M game to someone under 17.
I know that some stores and theaters make the effort, but it's been my experience that most of them do not.
Even Toys R Us in my area carries GTA and Halo.
It's clear that it idiots involved here don't know anything about the video game industry. Reminds me of how Hillary Clinton went public with her anger that video games weren't under the same sort of scrutiny as movies were. Apparentally no one had told Hillary about the ESRB, or the fact that video games are under MORE scrutiny than movies, with requirements to put ratings on the front of boxes (do you see DVDs with ratings on the front?), as well as requiring stores to carry huge cardboard cut-outs of the ESRB ratings to be publically posted around the store, in addition to other flyers, post-its, etc. that are plastered on the shelves...
This is just another politician trying to do a popularity grab by decrying "Its for the children!"
Nowadays it's video games. Before it was D&D, comic books, Rock&Roll... You'd think the generation that went through having its music heavily criticized and outright banned in some places would have learend a thing or two.