After excitedly heading down to the local gamestop the day Dead Rising was released, and being told in no uncertain terms that they wouldn't sell one without a pre-order in hand (despite a huge pile of them sitting in the counter behind the desk) I fired off this email to both Gamestop and Capcom:
---- I just wanted to let Gamestop know how grateful I am about their store policies for not selling new-release games without a preorder. I was in Store #1049 on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, NY yesterday to purchase a few XBox360 games, most significantly the new title Dead Rising. However, despite the box being prominently displayed for sale and a multitude of copies behind the counter, I was denied the sale because I had not pre-ordered mine.
Not only did this save me the 59.99 for the new game, but I was able to save even more money by not buying preowned copies of Tomb Raider: Legend and Condemned as well. My impulse purchases left behind, I went home and signed up for a much less expensive Gamefly.com account.
Thanks again!
Loyal Gamestop Customer since it was called Babbages in 1985. ---
Every time I read a story like this I think of Cory Doctorow's Anda's Game. It's an interesting thought-experiment for both sides of the issue. While I certainly don't condone game currency sales, it's not a terrible way to get another perspective on who is really affected by it all.
Taking into account all the fanboi anguish, let me point out the very simple fact that now ATI no longer directly competes with NVidia. You could say that the competition would be between AMD and NVidia now, but that's not quite right either. The fact is that the market has become so diverse that all these companies were already competing with each other, despite partnerships and deals.
AMD, ATI, NVidia and Intel *all* make motherboard chipsets. ATI, Nvidia and Intel all make video processors. So do SIS, S3, and VIA.
Yet they all work (relatively) well with each other.
This isn't about marketshare, it's about technology. ATI does something that AMD wants, so AMD is acquiring the company for the tech. The market won't feel a thing, I promise you. Competition will continue, just like it did when Micron acquired Rendition (wipes a tear for his Verite v2200) and when NVidia bought out 3dfx (wipes another for his Banshee).
Since everyone's got their prognosticator's caps on today, I'm going to come out and say that, within 5 years, we'll be seeing GPU processors integrated into the motherboard, accessable to both ATI and NVidia (and Matrox, and S3, and...) The power and bandwidth demands for next gen GPUs are becoming more than expansion boards can handle. Instruction sets are becoming extremely CPU-like. Since the whole universe seems to be moving into Multi-processor designs anyway, perhaps we'll even see some kind of GPU-MMX style expansion of the x86 instruction set (call it v86 for now).
I think we're seeing a move back to specialization. We've already got separate Audio chips, separate networking chips, even chips to handle I/O for RAID and such. With the new market for Physics co-processors, I'm sure we'll only see more for tasks such as AI, and when the next big UI design is unleashed (either some kind of brain-reading technology, or a true 3d input system -- the WII is just the tip of the iceberg!) another co-processor will be made to handle that. With AMD's focus on integrating external processors with technologies such as HyperTransport, undoubtedly they'll be able to compete for a long time.
And the best part is, we get to choose from strong market competitors. As long as there is innovation, we win.
While I'd like two say that you're right, that it's to hard to get the meaning of all homonyms right all the time, I really think that modern spell checkers and grammar checkers should be able too distinguish (from context) which version too use.
I was one of those 16-Bit RPG fans that paid as much as $79 back in 1989 on games such as Phantasy Star II.
Unfortunately, the market dictates the price, and ultimately if the fans want it badly enough they'll pay.
That doesn't mean this is a pleasant turn of events. People are used to the normal $49 pricepoint since the days of Atari, and even getting used to $59 will take some time.
Furthermore, if you'd rather buy Ultraviolet than Serenity, Apollo 13 or Bourne Supremacy then, well, I pity your taste.
Curiously, none of your films feature Milla Jovovich. Now I have to question *your* taste.
FYI, 5th Element is also Blu-Ray. I think we have a winner!
Nostalgia for the Sounds of the Early Computer Age
on
2.5" Drives On the Desktop
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I may just be getting long in the tooth, but I'm starting to get nostalgic for the old sounds of the the early computer age. Back when you could put your hand against the heavy steel chassis and listen and feel to exactly what your computer was doing.
Gone is the satisfying click-click-click feedback of the heavy tactile keyboards. Gone is the deafening WHEEEEE-WHEEEEEE-WHEEEEEE of the dot matrix printer. Gone is the atmospheric chuk-chuk-chuk grind of the hard disk. Gone is the ultrasonic whistle of the screen changing resolutions. Gone is the inquisitive thuka-thuka-thuka of a floppy disk scan on bootup. Gone is the warm handshake WEEE-ERRR-HISS of the modem.
If the POST BEEP ever dissapears, I think the beauty and mystique of a computer coming to life will have been lost forever.
I understand very well, which is why the Itunes infrastructure comparison makes perfect sense from a business perspective. Everything from microtransactions to video downloads to DRM and interface is already invested and implemented. Downloading encoded "roms" to the local hardware would be handled exactly like buying a song from Itunes, simply and conveniently. Hook up an iPod to one of those usb ports and now you've got even more offline storage. It'd be even sweeter if they let you download the raw.NSFs to play on the iPod as well, game music tracks ripped raw from the rom.
Calling it Intendo associates it with the ease and simplicity of the Itunes look-and-feel, yet keeps it separate it from the "music" aspect of the other. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but if the GP wanted a "killer app" as a reason behind this merger, I can't think of a better one.
It just wouldn't make sense unless they had some mutually envisioned killer app sitting in the wings.
Intendo -- using the Itunes system for buying and playing old games on the new console. It would totally "revolutionize" the online distibution and billing systems for consoles in a heartbeat. If the retro emulation's one of the main focii of the Wii, it'd be the obvious solution.
Seriously, that headline sounds like something straight from the front page of The Onion. I mean, if that doesn't elbow you in the ribs right away then RTFA'ing won't let you in on the joke.
...but these "conditions" are the most vague, debatable, and questionable set of standards I've ever seen codified in law.
(1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence.
"Average" compared to what? Don't forget that 50% of the population is below average. "contemporary community standards" in whose community? Do we apply the same community standards of a small town, bible belt parish to a neighboorhood in San Francisco? "Minor" by age standard, where you can vote or serve in the military but can't buy a beer? "violence" by whose standard? Is jumping on mushrooms with faces considered a violent act? How about sending 300lb collinding into each other at full speed in an attempt to steal a oblong pigskin?
(2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors
See: Above
(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
"Literary, artistic" the cutscenes in GTA are no less well written and directed than scenes from Goodfellas or Boys N Da Hood or Taxi Driver. And yet those films are considered by many to be amongst the pinnacle of modern american cinema. I saw Taxi Driver in a psychology class in High School.
Whose artistic vision are we judging these standards to? One of DaVinci's most famous drawings is of a nude man. It's prominently displayed on the best selling book of the past few years. If a game features the Venus Di Milo, is that inappropriate for children?
"Political" for whose politics? Are we worried about offending children now with images of war, that would make CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for mature adults only? What about the nightly news? What about images of the 9/11 planes? What about games that question authority? Should the Federalist Papers be considered too mature for school grade reading, for advocating social unrest and revolt against government?
"Scientific" is also questioned when talking about a government that tried to apply that title to Intelligent Design. If the Big Bang is a promient plot element, does that insult to fundamentalism constitute a mature rating?
...my favorite is still Castlevania II - Simon's Quest. For it's time it was the perfect blend of Action/RPG. A huge world to explore, items to find, towns to wander through, and lots and lots of secret passages -- like Metroid, set in Transylvania.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as I finally get to shoot that damn dog!
Vidi, Vici, Veni.
Lets see what's In the box...
Nothing!
Stu-paaaaaaaad! You're so Stu-paaaaaaaaaad!
There is nothing more liberating than being able to tell someone else No.
After excitedly heading down to the local gamestop the day Dead Rising was released, and being told in no uncertain terms that they wouldn't sell one without a pre-order in hand (despite a huge pile of them sitting in the counter behind the desk) I fired off this email to both Gamestop and Capcom:
----
I just wanted to let Gamestop know how grateful I am
about their store policies for not selling new-release
games without a preorder. I was in Store #1049 on
Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, NY yesterday to purchase a
few XBox360 games, most significantly the new title
Dead Rising. However, despite the box being
prominently displayed for sale and a multitude of
copies behind the counter, I was denied the sale
because I had not pre-ordered mine.
Not only did this save me the 59.99 for the new game,
but I was able to save even more money by not buying
preowned copies of Tomb Raider: Legend and Condemned
as well. My impulse purchases left behind, I went
home and signed up for a much less expensive
Gamefly.com account.
Thanks again!
Loyal Gamestop Customer since it was called Babbages
in 1985.
---
Every time I read a story like this I think of Cory Doctorow's Anda's Game. It's an interesting thought-experiment for both sides of the issue. While I certainly don't condone game currency sales, it's not a terrible way to get another perspective on who is really affected by it all.
Taking into account all the fanboi anguish, let me point out the very simple fact that now ATI no longer directly competes with NVidia. You could say that the competition would be between AMD and NVidia now, but that's not quite right either. The fact is that the market has become so diverse that all these companies were already competing with each other, despite partnerships and deals.
...) The power and bandwidth demands for next gen GPUs are becoming more than expansion boards can handle. Instruction sets are becoming extremely CPU-like. Since the whole universe seems to be moving into Multi-processor designs anyway, perhaps we'll even see some kind of GPU-MMX style expansion of the x86 instruction set (call it v86 for now).
AMD, ATI, NVidia and Intel *all* make motherboard chipsets.
ATI, Nvidia and Intel all make video processors.
So do SIS, S3, and VIA.
Yet they all work (relatively) well with each other.
This isn't about marketshare, it's about technology. ATI does something that AMD wants, so AMD is acquiring the company for the tech. The market won't feel a thing, I promise you. Competition will continue, just like it did when Micron acquired Rendition (wipes a tear for his Verite v2200) and when NVidia bought out 3dfx (wipes another for his Banshee).
Since everyone's got their prognosticator's caps on today, I'm going to come out and say that, within 5 years, we'll be seeing GPU processors integrated into the motherboard, accessable to both ATI and NVidia (and Matrox, and S3, and
I think we're seeing a move back to specialization. We've already got separate Audio chips, separate networking chips, even chips to handle I/O for RAID and such. With the new market for Physics co-processors, I'm sure we'll only see more for tasks such as AI, and when the next big UI design is unleashed (either some kind of brain-reading technology, or a true 3d input system -- the WII is just the tip of the iceberg!) another co-processor will be made to handle that. With AMD's focus on integrating external processors with technologies such as HyperTransport, undoubtedly they'll be able to compete for a long time.
And the best part is, we get to choose from strong market competitors. As long as there is innovation, we win.
Now where did I park my car again?
Are you aware that the PS3 is going to be bigger than even the original Xbox?
From the article:
PlayStation 3 - 8726.9 cm^3
Xbox - 7727.4 cm^3
Xbox 360 - 6616.9 cm^3
PlayStation 2 - 4179.1 cm^3
Gamecube - 2656.5 cm^3
Mac mini - 1384.7 cm^3
PStwo - 978.9 cm^3
Wii - 955.5 cm^3
While I'd like two say that you're right, that it's to hard to get the meaning of all homonyms right all the time, I really think that modern spell checkers and grammar checkers should be able too distinguish (from context) which version too use.
Yeah, everyone in New York (and some people in NJ) knows it's pronounced "Cuah"
Shhh, just don't give all the hippes and yuppies driving VW Beetles history lessons.
I was one of those 16-Bit RPG fans that paid as much as $79 back in 1989 on games such as Phantasy Star II.
Unfortunately, the market dictates the price, and ultimately if the fans want it badly enough they'll pay.
That doesn't mean this is a pleasant turn of events. People are used to the normal $49 pricepoint since the days of Atari, and even getting used to $59 will take some time.
A Sadist and a Masochist are making love.
The Masochist moans, "Hurt me!"
The Sadist replies, "No."
...and Denise Richards...
/drops all his money in a drooling stupor
Furthermore, if you'd rather buy Ultraviolet than Serenity, Apollo 13 or Bourne Supremacy then, well, I pity your taste.
Curiously, none of your films feature Milla Jovovich. Now I have to question *your* taste.
FYI, 5th Element is also Blu-Ray. I think we have a winner!
I may just be getting long in the tooth, but I'm starting to get nostalgic for the old sounds of the the early computer age. Back when you could put your hand against the heavy steel chassis and listen and feel to exactly what your computer was doing.
Gone is the satisfying click-click-click feedback of the heavy tactile keyboards.
Gone is the deafening WHEEEEE-WHEEEEEE-WHEEEEEE of the dot matrix printer.
Gone is the atmospheric chuk-chuk-chuk grind of the hard disk.
Gone is the ultrasonic whistle of the screen changing resolutions.
Gone is the inquisitive thuka-thuka-thuka of a floppy disk scan on bootup.
Gone is the warm handshake WEEE-ERRR-HISS of the modem.
If the POST BEEP ever dissapears, I think the beauty and mystique of a computer coming to life will have been lost forever.
Lawsuits, like paraffin, never worked for them.
I understand very well, which is why the Itunes infrastructure comparison makes perfect sense from a business perspective. Everything from microtransactions to video downloads to DRM and interface is already invested and implemented. Downloading encoded "roms" to the local hardware would be handled exactly like buying a song from Itunes, simply and conveniently. Hook up an iPod to one of those usb ports and now you've got even more offline storage. It'd be even sweeter if they let you download the raw .NSFs to play on the iPod as well, game music tracks ripped raw from the rom.
Calling it Intendo associates it with the ease and simplicity of the Itunes look-and-feel, yet keeps it separate it from the "music" aspect of the other. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but if the GP wanted a "killer app" as a reason behind this merger, I can't think of a better one.
It just wouldn't make sense unless they had some mutually envisioned killer app sitting in the wings.
Intendo -- using the Itunes system for buying and playing old games on the new console. It would totally "revolutionize" the online distibution and billing systems for consoles in a heartbeat. If the retro emulation's one of the main focii of the Wii, it'd be the obvious solution.
Seriously, that headline sounds like something straight from the front page of The Onion. I mean, if that doesn't elbow you in the ribs right away then RTFA'ing won't let you in on the joke.
I just load it into Photoshop and crop out the section I want!
...but these "conditions" are the most vague, debatable, and questionable set of standards I've ever seen codified in law.
(1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence.
"Average" compared to what? Don't forget that 50% of the population is below average.
"contemporary community standards" in whose community? Do we apply the same community standards of a small town, bible belt parish to a neighboorhood in San Francisco?
"Minor" by age standard, where you can vote or serve in the military but can't buy a beer?
"violence" by whose standard? Is jumping on mushrooms with faces considered a violent act? How about sending 300lb collinding into each other at full speed in an attempt to steal a oblong pigskin?
(2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors
See: Above
(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
"Literary, artistic" the cutscenes in GTA are no less well written and directed than scenes from Goodfellas or Boys N Da Hood or Taxi Driver. And yet those films are considered by many to be amongst the pinnacle of modern american cinema. I saw Taxi Driver in a psychology class in High School.
Whose artistic vision are we judging these standards to? One of DaVinci's most famous drawings is of a nude man. It's prominently displayed on the best selling book of the past few years. If a game features the Venus Di Milo, is that inappropriate for children?
"Political" for whose politics? Are we worried about offending children now with images of war, that would make CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for mature adults only? What about the nightly news? What about images of the 9/11 planes? What about games that question authority? Should the Federalist Papers be considered too mature for school grade reading, for advocating social unrest and revolt against government?
"Scientific" is also questioned when talking about a government that tried to apply that title to Intelligent Design. If the Big Bang is a promient plot element, does that insult to fundamentalism constitute a mature rating?
...my favorite is still Castlevania II - Simon's Quest. For it's time it was the perfect blend of Action/RPG. A huge world to explore, items to find, towns to wander through, and lots and lots of secret passages -- like Metroid, set in Transylvania.
After that, just one castle was never enough.
Probably more like the Constructicons combining to form Devastator.