Just like when Nintendo charged $300 for the N64 (I couldn't find them anywheres around here for less) even though both their previous systems sold for $200
The N64 launched at $200. You went to some sucky stores if they charged $300.
OK, so explain how making the binary available as a no-charge download contributes more money to their bottom line than releasing it as open source or free software would.
Sun doesn't make money directly from the Java downloads, but the company's reputation is largely built around Java.
Let's say Sun open sources Java, and RedHat tweaks it to work better with the version of Eclipse they ship. These changes accidentally break something in Sun's NetBeans. No one notices until after the RedHat ships a release. Sun now looks bad because their own Java products don't work well. The user's first impression is going to be that Sun is at fault, not RedHat, thereby reducing Sun's reputation because of RedHat's errors.
And for those who say that a bug like that would be caught in time, let's not forget that Fedora Core 5's initial release didn't work with binary drivers such as the nVidia drivers.
Hmm... you're right on that. They said they were moving them into the regional, and I could've sworn they did. They must have recently moved them back.
There are 5 music stations with commercials...
11 Nashville 21 Kiss 22 Mix 24 Sunny 161 WSIX
I have no idea what WSIX is, and never knew it existed until just now. It's one of only 2 stations in the Regional category.
I'm guessing ClearChannel complained about their stations being moved to a seperate category, and must've had enough contractual leverage to force XM to do something about it.
ClearChannel has 4 music stations on XM, plus some talk stations. Due to ClearChannel's recent lawsuit, they now have commercials on their stations. As such, XM has placed "cm" after the station name to indicate "Commercial Music". Also, all over ClearChannel's stations have been moved into a new category "Regional Talk, News, and Music" or something like that. XM has done everything they could to marginalize the stations.
What capabilities does the Wii command that are unachievable on the GameCube today? I think nintendo is just releasing the obligatory new platform as a method to increase saturation of it's 'wiimote' controller. They should have just bundled the controller with whatever handful of games they plan to have it work with and called it a day.
I think that was originally Nintendo's plan. A few years ago Nintendo was talking about coming out with a new accessory for the GameCube that would extend it's life for several years. They didn't really say much more about it after the initial mention.
It looks like Nintendo realized that the GameCube just didn't sell well enough to make that strategy work. They realized that having a purple system as the focus of their advertising wasn't a good idea and helped contribute to the negative image of the GameCube. They decided they'd stand a better chance of success if they released a new system focused on the new controller rather than trying to sell it as a GameCube addon.
Furthermore, I'm not even sure it would have been possible for the Wiimote to simply be an add-on to the GameCube. And even though many people have commented that the games shown at E3 don't look much different than GC games coming down the pike now, one things has to be considered:
The first few rounds of Wii dev kits where just GameCubes with new controllers. It's only recently that they've started sending out kits with better internals.
And Nintendo also managed to drive away Silicon Knights shortly after the Metal gear port was done.
Nintendo and Silicon Knights were a HORRIBLE match for each other. If you read interviews with Dennis Dyack, he goes on and on about how storytelling and presentation are what matters about games, and practically dismisses gameplay as meaningless. If you play Eternal Darkness, you'll realize rather quickly that the game is all about the story, and that the gameplay is very simplistic.
Nintendo is constantly talking about how gameplay is what matters, and worries less about technology.
They probably just got tired of bickering over their conflicting approaches and decided to split ways.
The lead producer of Smash Bros left Nintendo (the HAL division specifically) within the past few years. Nintendo didn't ask him to head the new Smash Bros project until after their announcement last year that there would be a new Smash Bros at launch. They didn't even start forming a development team until about a year ago, so it was extremely optimistic to expect the game to be ready in time for the launch. SSBM was an *extremely* well polished game, so I really doubt they'd want to rush the followup.
The only reason Smash Bros Melee wasn't a GameCube launch title was because at the last minute Nintendo realized they would sell more copies of games like Luigi's Mansion and Wave Race if Smash Bros wasn't available on launch day. It still came out about 2 weeks later, which is close enough to count it as launch.
The inability to blow up scenery has more to do with level design than anything else. It's damn hard to keep things interesting if you allow the player to just blow up anything in their way.
Your sports game scenario won't work well either. You put your backup player in the game and have him violently take out the other team's staring QB. The other team is screwed for the season, but you're simply out your worst player. It's something that's cool once but takes away from the game past that.
For your car crash scenario, that could be done now. You'd just have to sacrifice graphical detail in other areas to do it. Based on what sells, people would rather have better looking scenery or more detailed cars than more detailed damage.
With your RPG comments, I agree completely. But that seems to be the entire basic concept RPGs are built around. I personally don't see the appeal at all, but some people do. It's probably why RPGs are really popular with Slashdot type people, but very few of them get any mainstream attention.
Your comment on computer teams switching cities and changing logos probably won't ever happen. I doubt the licenses with the sports league would allow that.
For your platformer comments, branching level paths have been done plenty of times. Super Mario World 15 years ago was a rather prominent one. About a third of the levels had multiple exits, which opened up different branches on the world map. They also had a level broken into 4 parts. Each part had about 3 possiblies. Which one you were given depended on what you did in the previous one. It was a nice change, but would've gotten annoying fast if they did it often.
That's not quite how it works. I haven't played the game, but this is what I've gathered from reading the author of the mod's comments.
Most games handle clothing by making it directly part of the character model. Oblivion models character bodies and clothing seperately. Although this approach increases the complexity of the graphics, it allows more reuse of art assests. With this approach, you can mix and match body types and clothing without having to redo the artwork for the different combos. This patch simply removes the clothing layer.
Also, according to the mod author's comments, the topless women don't quite look right. The models were designed to look right wearing clothing, not bare.
The red title means the story is under construction. I'm assuming that means the story is in the middle of being edited. I saw a few stories like that last week on the front page. Stories that show the writeup will have the under construction notice.
Ah, yes, aiming your product for those indivuduals who have spent thousands of dollars, or even tens of thousands on games and game systems in their lifetimes is quite silly. The smart thing is to hope that someone walking by who has never spent a dime on games will suddenly shell out hundreds of dollars for the "Wii". That's the ticket.
It's worked well with the DS. Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, and Brain Training have really driven sales among people outside the normal demographics.
Besides, the people who want to play Smash Bros, Zelda, and whatever else are going to buy the system no matter what it's called. Anyone refusing to buy it because of the name was just looking for an easy excuse to justify not buying it.
These people need to have someone (like a son or daughter) to run things past before final decisions are made, especially for products that will be used primarily by people under the age of 21, which is Nintendo's primary market.
Have you been paying any attention? The entire point of the Revolution and (to a lesser degree) the DS is to attract people who aren't traditionally gamers. Young people aren't what Nintendo is aiming at here. They're aiming at the people who normally stand back and say "That's too complicated for me, I don't want to play."
Also, in the past the only things Nintendo has targeted at young demographics are Pokemon and Kirby. Most of their games aren't targeted at any particular age group by are intended to be enjoyed by all. Kinda like Pixar movies - they may be kid friendly animated movies, but they attract crowds of all ages.
The 360 still has the best games sold/console ratio in the history of games.
That number is always higher early in the life of a console. Generally speaking, the hardcore gamers who buy lots of games buy the system first. The casual games who don't buy many games wait until at least one price drop to start buying.
In this case, there have been heavy supply shortages of the 360, resulting in stores only selling the system in bundles, further limiting the system to the people willing to spend the lots of money on it.
Once 360's become easy to find, that ratio is going to drop. When the price drops come, it will drop further.
PPTP sucks if you're behind a NAT. You tend to get issues where you can connect fine once, but then you can't connect again properly for hours. I think what happens is the NAT can't always tell when the PPTP connection ends and keeps the ports tied up on the router, preventing another connection from succeeding. I haven't tried very hard to find out what the exact problem is though, as it's not very obvious.
On a conference call to discuss the results, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said iPod gross margins were above 20% during the quarter, and that according to NPD Techworld, the company now holds 78% of the U.S. market for MP3 players.
The point isn't whether Iraq had chemical WMDs in the past or not. Yes, they had them in 1988. But that's 18 years ago. The weapons they used have a shelf life in the neighborhood of 3 years. You need reason to believe they were still making the weapons in recent years before you can claim they have weapons.
Is it a good game if you have to hunt down and install countless mods, all with unknown side-effects, just to make the game enjoyable?
Hey, look at the average FireFox advocate. "FireFox is the best, just install these 5 extensions to get the functionality that Mozilla and/or Opera include with the base install."
If it works right out of the box, it doesn't qualify for the Slashdot Seal of Approval.
There is no "light gun" function in the Revolution controller. It's all done with the position sensing features. The screenshots show crosshairs to indicate the aim.
Bad example. Last year Linksys replaced Linux with VxWorks and cut the RAM down to 8 megs in the process. Also dropped the flash rom to 4 megs from 8/16 (depending on model).
Granted, the Linux routers worked better than the VxWorks one, but Linux wasn't cost efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like when Nintendo charged $300 for the N64 (I couldn't find them anywheres around here for less) even though both their previous systems sold for $200
The N64 launched at $200. You went to some sucky stores if they charged $300.
OK, so explain how making the binary available as a no-charge download contributes more money to their bottom line than releasing it as open source or free software would.
Sun doesn't make money directly from the Java downloads, but the company's reputation is largely built around Java.
Let's say Sun open sources Java, and RedHat tweaks it to work better with the version of Eclipse they ship. These changes accidentally break something in Sun's NetBeans. No one notices until after the RedHat ships a release. Sun now looks bad because their own Java products don't work well. The user's first impression is going to be that Sun is at fault, not RedHat, thereby reducing Sun's reputation because of RedHat's errors.
And for those who say that a bug like that would be caught in time, let's not forget that Fedora Core 5's initial release didn't work with binary drivers such as the nVidia drivers.
No, it wasn't modified. The early Rev kits were just GameCubes with wired Rev controllers. It's just a controller...
Later versions added beefier hardware, but all the early stuff was really done with GameCubes.
Hmm... you're right on that. They said they were moving them into the regional, and I could've sworn they did. They must have recently moved them back.
There are 5 music stations with commercials...
11 Nashville
21 Kiss
22 Mix
24 Sunny
161 WSIX
I have no idea what WSIX is, and never knew it existed until just now. It's one of only 2 stations in the Regional category.
I'm guessing ClearChannel complained about their stations being moved to a seperate category, and must've had enough contractual leverage to force XM to do something about it.
ClearChannel has 4 music stations on XM, plus some talk stations. Due to ClearChannel's recent lawsuit, they now have commercials on their stations. As such, XM has placed "cm" after the station name to indicate "Commercial Music". Also, all over ClearChannel's stations have been moved into a new category "Regional Talk, News, and Music" or something like that. XM has done everything they could to marginalize the stations.
What capabilities does the Wii command that are unachievable on the GameCube today? I think nintendo is just releasing the obligatory new platform as a method to increase saturation of it's 'wiimote' controller. They should have just bundled the controller with whatever handful of games they plan to have it work with and called it a day.
I think that was originally Nintendo's plan. A few years ago Nintendo was talking about coming out with a new accessory for the GameCube that would extend it's life for several years. They didn't really say much more about it after the initial mention.
It looks like Nintendo realized that the GameCube just didn't sell well enough to make that strategy work. They realized that having a purple system as the focus of their advertising wasn't a good idea and helped contribute to the negative image of the GameCube. They decided they'd stand a better chance of success if they released a new system focused on the new controller rather than trying to sell it as a GameCube addon.
Furthermore, I'm not even sure it would have been possible for the Wiimote to simply be an add-on to the GameCube. And even though many people have commented that the games shown at E3 don't look much different than GC games coming down the pike now, one things has to be considered:
The first few rounds of Wii dev kits where just GameCubes with new controllers. It's only recently that they've started sending out kits with better internals.
And Nintendo also managed to drive away Silicon Knights shortly after the Metal gear port was done.
Nintendo and Silicon Knights were a HORRIBLE match for each other. If you read interviews with Dennis Dyack, he goes on and on about how storytelling and presentation are what matters about games, and practically dismisses gameplay as meaningless. If you play Eternal Darkness, you'll realize rather quickly that the game is all about the story, and that the gameplay is very simplistic.
Nintendo is constantly talking about how gameplay is what matters, and worries less about technology.
They probably just got tired of bickering over their conflicting approaches and decided to split ways.
The lead producer of Smash Bros left Nintendo (the HAL division specifically) within the past few years. Nintendo didn't ask him to head the new Smash Bros project until after their announcement last year that there would be a new Smash Bros at launch. They didn't even start forming a development team until about a year ago, so it was extremely optimistic to expect the game to be ready in time for the launch. SSBM was an *extremely* well polished game, so I really doubt they'd want to rush the followup.
The GBA had a pretty good homebrew scene. A few homebrew titles even got picked up by commercial publishers.
The only reason Smash Bros Melee wasn't a GameCube launch title was because at the last minute Nintendo realized they would sell more copies of games like Luigi's Mansion and Wave Race if Smash Bros wasn't available on launch day. It still came out about 2 weeks later, which is close enough to count it as launch.
The inability to blow up scenery has more to do with level design than anything else. It's damn hard to keep things interesting if you allow the player to just blow up anything in their way.
Your sports game scenario won't work well either. You put your backup player in the game and have him violently take out the other team's staring QB. The other team is screwed for the season, but you're simply out your worst player. It's something that's cool once but takes away from the game past that.
For your car crash scenario, that could be done now. You'd just have to sacrifice graphical detail in other areas to do it. Based on what sells, people would rather have better looking scenery or more detailed cars than more detailed damage.
With your RPG comments, I agree completely. But that seems to be the entire basic concept RPGs are built around. I personally don't see the appeal at all, but some people do. It's probably why RPGs are really popular with Slashdot type people, but very few of them get any mainstream attention.
Your comment on computer teams switching cities and changing logos probably won't ever happen. I doubt the licenses with the sports league would allow that.
For your platformer comments, branching level paths have been done plenty of times. Super Mario World 15 years ago was a rather prominent one. About a third of the levels had multiple exits, which opened up different branches on the world map. They also had a level broken into 4 parts. Each part had about 3 possiblies. Which one you were given depended on what you did in the previous one. It was a nice change, but would've gotten annoying fast if they did it often.
Greedo didn't shoot, but he was sitting there with a gun pointed at Han saying "I'm going to kill you."
Han killing Greedo before Greedo can get a shot off doesn't make Han a bad ass, it just makes Greedo an idiot.
That's not quite how it works. I haven't played the game, but this is what I've gathered from reading the author of the mod's comments.
Most games handle clothing by making it directly part of the character model. Oblivion models character bodies and clothing seperately. Although this approach increases the complexity of the graphics, it allows more reuse of art assests. With this approach, you can mix and match body types and clothing without having to redo the artwork for the different combos. This patch simply removes the clothing layer.
Also, according to the mod author's comments, the topless women don't quite look right. The models were designed to look right wearing clothing, not bare.
The red title means the story is under construction. I'm assuming that means the story is in the middle of being edited. I saw a few stories like that last week on the front page. Stories that show the writeup will have the under construction notice.
Ah, yes, aiming your product for those indivuduals who have spent thousands of dollars, or even tens of thousands on games and game systems in their lifetimes is quite silly. The smart thing is to hope that someone walking by who has never spent a dime on games will suddenly shell out hundreds of dollars for the "Wii". That's the ticket.
It's worked well with the DS. Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, and Brain Training have really driven sales among people outside the normal demographics.
Besides, the people who want to play Smash Bros, Zelda, and whatever else are going to buy the system no matter what it's called. Anyone refusing to buy it because of the name was just looking for an easy excuse to justify not buying it.
These people need to have someone (like a son or daughter) to run things past before final decisions are made, especially for products that will be used primarily by people under the age of 21, which is Nintendo's primary market.
Have you been paying any attention? The entire point of the Revolution and (to a lesser degree) the DS is to attract people who aren't traditionally gamers. Young people aren't what Nintendo is aiming at here. They're aiming at the people who normally stand back and say "That's too complicated for me, I don't want to play."
Also, in the past the only things Nintendo has targeted at young demographics are Pokemon and Kirby. Most of their games aren't targeted at any particular age group by are intended to be enjoyed by all. Kinda like Pixar movies - they may be kid friendly animated movies, but they attract crowds of all ages.
The 360 still has the best games sold/console ratio in the history of games.
That number is always higher early in the life of a console. Generally speaking, the hardcore gamers who buy lots of games buy the system first. The casual games who don't buy many games wait until at least one price drop to start buying.
In this case, there have been heavy supply shortages of the 360, resulting in stores only selling the system in bundles, further limiting the system to the people willing to spend the lots of money on it.
Once 360's become easy to find, that ratio is going to drop. When the price drops come, it will drop further.
PPTP sucks if you're behind a NAT. You tend to get issues where you can connect fine once, but then you can't connect again properly for hours. I think what happens is the NAT can't always tell when the PPTP connection ends and keeps the ports tied up on the router, preventing another connection from succeeding. I haven't tried very hard to find out what the exact problem is though, as it's not very obvious.
which means the games won't be all about the graphics, we may see some kickass storyline games that are well-written around this system.
Screw storyline. If that's what you want, you're better off going with the systems with tons of storage and graphics capabilities.
How about instead we hope for games that are fun to play. Heavy emphesis on the storyline tends to put more limits on the gameplay.
Found the quote in this article: http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?
I'd consider that to be making goood money off the main device.
The point isn't whether Iraq had chemical WMDs in the past or not. Yes, they had them in 1988. But that's 18 years ago. The weapons they used have a shelf life in the neighborhood of 3 years. You need reason to believe they were still making the weapons in recent years before you can claim they have weapons.
Is it a good game if you have to hunt down and install countless mods, all with unknown side-effects, just to make the game enjoyable?
Hey, look at the average FireFox advocate. "FireFox is the best, just install these 5 extensions to get the functionality that Mozilla and/or Opera include with the base install."
If it works right out of the box, it doesn't qualify for the Slashdot Seal of Approval.
There is no "light gun" function in the Revolution controller. It's all done with the position sensing features. The screenshots show crosshairs to indicate the aim.
Bad example. Last year Linksys replaced Linux with VxWorks and cut the RAM down to 8 megs in the process. Also dropped the flash rom to 4 megs from 8/16 (depending on model).
Granted, the Linux routers worked better than the VxWorks one, but Linux wasn't cost efficient.