In Japan, the GameCube sells about as many consoles per week as the Xbox sells in an entire year. Weekly GameCube sales are also on average about 75% the level of PS2 sales. The GameCube isn't doing bad in Japan at all. It would probably be a lot closer to the PS2 if the PS2 didn't have a year and a half jump on the GC.
Bashing GameCube is the trendy thing to do, but it's not very accurate. Nintendo's games and well made 3rd party games (i.e. Soul Calibur 2) sell really well for the GameCube. The only stuff that doesn't sell well on the GameCube is half assed ports of multiplatform games. Publishers get confused and blame Nintendo for the GameCube version bombing when they released it 6 months after the PS2/Xbox versions and it looked better on the PS2 (which is a lot less powerful).
If you want to play 2D games, get a GameCube with a GameBoy Player. That way you get to play both 2D and 3D games on your TV.
If you do that, I'd also recommend getting a Hori controller from Japan. I think they're about $21 shipped from Play-Asia. It's an SNES style controller for the GameCube. It's absolutely perfect for GameBoy games and for NES games running on the GameCube (i.e. Zelda bonus disc, Metroid 1 on Metroid Prime).
I look at it this way: the selling point of the Xbox is online gaming. Despite that, its peak number of online users is a very small fraction of what any one battle.net server has during its lows. PS2's numbers aren't much different.
So if Nintendo did implement online gaming, how many users do you really think would use it? I doubt you'd get enough people to make it worthwhile to even bother trying to use it.
I'd rather wait until the next console when online gaming will make more sense than have crappy online gaming now.
Not implementing online gaming now isn't incompetence, it's smart business sense.
Which is funny, because the N64 had just a tiny fragment of the GameCube's userbase. Eensy weensy. This was mainly because there were far fewer consoles of any type sold back then. Of course, when there are only 50 games for a system, any particular game will have a much higher sell-through rate on that system.
No it didn't. The N64 sold 40 million systems in its lifetime, whereas the GameCube has sold 10-12 million.
The N64 was not a bad console. It just died a long, slow death. The last year and a half to two years of the N64's lifetime weren't very good, but for the first 3 years the N64 sold about evenly with the Playstation.
Although I think Nintendo's trademark stubborness has led to a number of missed opportunities (failing to take would-be blockbusters like Mario Kart online are among the most recent examples),
On the other hand, if Nintendo launches with an online capable Mario Kart very early in the next system's lifespan, it'll be a huge selling factor.
Nothing Nintendo does now will ever get them close to the PS2's numbers, so it's not worth playing all their tricks now. If they launch their next system at the same time Sony does, and pull out a few new tricks, like say online Smash Bros. with an online Mario Kart not too long after, then they'll be in a really good position.
What you're seeing is the problem with virtual memory implemented via paging. It works ok if you're only swapping a little bit, but if you have to swap a lot, its terrible since you're only doing it 4k at a time. Swapping a page to disk is has very high overhead, especially when you factor in the disk seek time. So when you're doing a lot of it, the system grinds to a halt. Pentiums support 4 meg pages, but when you get that big, you end up swapping stuff back in very soon after you swapped it out.
Warp Pipe people are just stupid, aand assumed that the only way Kai could have pulled it off was by ripping off Warp Pipe. There's no evidence at all to support a claim that Kai ripped off Warp Pipe.
I'll second that. I've got 2 Targus bags (one for each of my laptops). One is 4 years old, the other 3 years old. I've never had a problem with either. On one there's a few threads sticking out near the zipper & handle, but the other still looks brand new.
Oh, they keep the laptop pretty dry in heavy rain. I've been caught a few times having to walk a mile in unexpected heavy rain while carrying the laptop. Only once did the laptop show any signs of being wet, and at that it was only very very slightly. I let it dry and didn't have any problems.
Compressing the data on the disc would make console games load faster. It takes very little time to decompress data compared to the time it takes to read it off a disc.
Also, standard practice on the Cube (at least among decent developers) is to simultaneously load data while playing cutscenes. Take Eternal Darkness - no noticable load time other than when you first start playing. Turn the volume down during a cutscene, and you'll hear the laser moving back and forth rapidly between two sections of the disc.
Nintendo doesn't have anything to do with porting the game. You pay Nintendo money to make your discs, and they make them for you.
In case you haven't noticed, Resident Evil is exclusive to the Cube. Nintendo bought Silicon Knights upon seeing Eternal Darkness, and then made it a Cube exclusive. True Crime is out on the Cube.
Nintendo got over the "family friendly games only" phase after the original Mortal Kombat bombed for the SNES. Just because Nintendo doesn't create games with random violence doesn't mean they don't let other people.
MS, here's a clue: Stop using undocumented/proprietary hooks into your OS from your apps.
Linux is the way it is (in reference to the above quote) because people stick to the "API"... partly because there's no other way, but that's another topic/philosophy alltogether.
Ever use Linux around the 1.2 kernel days? It wasn't unheard of for apps to require kernel patches. DOSEmu definately required kernel patches, and I think Wine did too. It's been a lot of years so I don't remember other apps offhand, but I do remember at least a couple others not working without kernel patches.
So it's definately possible to not "stick to the API" in Linux. In fact, in Linux anyone can add their own kernel hooks, as opposed to only MS being able to in Windows. It's just that over the years the Linux crowd has realized they shouldn't be doing it as often as they used to.
According to IGN, Mario Kart: Double Dash sold 528,000 copies so far.
The mainstream media really has something against Nintendo this round. They'll gladly complain that their sales are down over past years, but they'll also ignore the fact that sales below Nintendo norms are still really damn high compared to almost everybody else.
The problem with selling songs individually is the margin per song is very low. You'll sell a lot more individual songs than you would albums, but you make a lot less money per unit sold.
The artists concern is probably because it's a lot harder to make money selling things at $1 compared to selling things at $15-$20. It's a very valid business concern.
I'm sure there are also some artists concerned because they make albums that are meant to be listened to as a whole, but there aren't that many of them these days.
I can buy and refill my Metrocard ANONYMOUSLY. If that wasn't the case -- if I had no other choice than to have it linked to me personally -- then I would still be using those ancient subway tokens.
No you wouldn't. New York stopped accepting Subway Tokens earlier in the year. You have to use a Metrocard now.
Don't forget, if you buy it after Christmas, odds are you're getting the censored version. So if you weren't quite sure before, you better buy it now or you'll be stuck with a crappy version if you change your mind later!
How about Resident Evil? They've redone it so many times. There were several remakes with slightly more features for the PS1, and then there's the GameCube version, which is the same game again but with better graphics and slightly better voice acting.
If you don't have all 3 consoles and are a Sega fan, it would be better if they became exclusive.
Right now their games are distributed amongst all 3 platforms. Very few of their games come out on all three. So you need all 3 systems to play Sega games. If they were exclusive, you'd only need one system.
The big deal is the 2.4 kernel was receiving massive changes (i.e. completely new VM system) in the 2.4.1x range. It really took a while for 2.4 to become a reliable platform. People are scared of the same thing happening here.
I might have bought the Mario games, rehashes that they are, but I'm ticked off that to truly use everything on the cart, I have to shell out for a e-Reader. Why? No technical reason, just that Nintendo wants to sell you an e-Reader.
Yeah, some of the cards contain silly things like "scan this card to add a starman to your inventory." But the other cards actually contain data not on the cartridge. And with the way Nintendo has worked the e-Reader stuff in the past, they'll probably continue making cards with new levels for about a year or so. It's really difficult to include levels on the cartridge that weren't designed until after the game was released.
So here's another game that sounds like it should be playable with just two Gameboys but requires a Gamecube (probably). I am not impressed here at all.
Try reading the reviews of the games. There already is a version of 4 Swords for the GameBoy. This version adds new features that aren't possible solely with a GameBoy. Everything on the TV screen can be seen by everyone, but you can do things there (like enter caves) that drop you down to the GBA, where you can do things you don't want the other players to see.
Not going to stop buying games for my GB but I find myself avoiding Nintendo's first-party games like the plague. I don't have a GameCube, I'm not going to get a GameCube, I don't want a GameCube. (I have a PS2 and if I get a second console it'll be an XBox... or considering the likely timing of that purchase, an XBox 2 if it's reverse-compatible at all.)
Suit yourself. You're missing out on a LOT of good games. Although there are good reasons to complain about Nintendo, your reasons aren't. They're legitimately doing something new and interesting here, and you're complaining because it costs money.
Being forced to include the sales tax in any listed price would make things very difficult. Keep in mind that each state has a different tax rate, and in some states it varies within the state. For example, here in New Jersey, in the more "low class" areas, sales tax is 1/2 what it is elsewhere in order to attract more business to those stores.
Say you're a national store. You can set prices for all your stores and print one ad listing the base price. If you had to print seperate ads with the tax included, you'd have to print well over 50 ads.
I had a friend in college who would jerk the controller around whenever he was doing badly in a multiplayer game. This resulted in my n64 falling several feet to the floor on multiple occasions before I found a good place to put it.
It still mostly works, but a few games like Perfect Dark just wouldn't work in it anymore. It would tend to lockup a lot too. In the end I sold it to him for $30 and bought a new one for $50. Not bad, considering I wanted a new controller anyway, and those cost $30 individually.
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In Japan, the GameCube sells about as many consoles per week as the Xbox sells in an entire year. Weekly GameCube sales are also on average about 75% the level of PS2 sales. The GameCube isn't doing bad in Japan at all. It would probably be a lot closer to the PS2 if the PS2 didn't have a year and a half jump on the GC.
Bashing GameCube is the trendy thing to do, but it's not very accurate. Nintendo's games and well made 3rd party games (i.e. Soul Calibur 2) sell really well for the GameCube. The only stuff that doesn't sell well on the GameCube is half assed ports of multiplatform games. Publishers get confused and blame Nintendo for the GameCube version bombing when they released it 6 months after the PS2/Xbox versions and it looked better on the PS2 (which is a lot less powerful).
If you want to play 2D games, get a GameCube with a GameBoy Player. That way you get to play both 2D and 3D games on your TV.
If you do that, I'd also recommend getting a Hori controller from Japan. I think they're about $21 shipped from Play-Asia. It's an SNES style controller for the GameCube. It's absolutely perfect for GameBoy games and for NES games running on the GameCube (i.e. Zelda bonus disc, Metroid 1 on Metroid Prime).
I look at it this way: the selling point of the Xbox is online gaming. Despite that, its peak number of online users is a very small fraction of what any one battle.net server has during its lows. PS2's numbers aren't much different.
So if Nintendo did implement online gaming, how many users do you really think would use it? I doubt you'd get enough people to make it worthwhile to even bother trying to use it.
I'd rather wait until the next console when online gaming will make more sense than have crappy online gaming now.
Not implementing online gaming now isn't incompetence, it's smart business sense.
Which is funny, because the N64 had just a tiny fragment of the GameCube's userbase. Eensy weensy. This was mainly because there were far fewer consoles of any type sold back then. Of course, when there are only 50 games for a system, any particular game will have a much higher sell-through rate on that system.
No it didn't. The N64 sold 40 million systems in its lifetime, whereas the GameCube has sold 10-12 million.
The N64 was not a bad console. It just died a long, slow death. The last year and a half to two years of the N64's lifetime weren't very good, but for the first 3 years the N64 sold about evenly with the Playstation.
Although I think Nintendo's trademark stubborness has led to a number of missed opportunities (failing to take would-be blockbusters like Mario Kart online are among the most recent examples),
On the other hand, if Nintendo launches with an online capable Mario Kart very early in the next system's lifespan, it'll be a huge selling factor.
Nothing Nintendo does now will ever get them close to the PS2's numbers, so it's not worth playing all their tricks now. If they launch their next system at the same time Sony does, and pull out a few new tricks, like say online Smash Bros. with an online Mario Kart not too long after, then they'll be in a really good position.
Because George W. Bush likes big companies.
See also: Microsoft, Enron
What you're seeing is the problem with virtual memory implemented via paging. It works ok if you're only swapping a little bit, but if you have to swap a lot, its terrible since you're only doing it 4k at a time. Swapping a page to disk is has very high overhead, especially when you factor in the disk seek time. So when you're doing a lot of it, the system grinds to a halt. Pentiums support 4 meg pages, but when you get that big, you end up swapping stuff back in very soon after you swapped it out.
Kai didn't rip off Warp Pipe.
Warp Pipe people are just stupid, aand assumed that the only way Kai could have pulled it off was by ripping off Warp Pipe. There's no evidence at all to support a claim that Kai ripped off Warp Pipe.
Metroid Prime 2 and Metroid Zero Mission. This generation of consoles has been very good for Metroid fans.
I'd say the next Zelda, but I have a feeling it only stands a chance of a 2004 release for Japan.
Well, I have a case with a shoulder strap rather than a backpack. I guess the backpacks aren't as good.
I'll second that. I've got 2 Targus bags (one for each of my laptops). One is 4 years old, the other 3 years old. I've never had a problem with either. On one there's a few threads sticking out near the zipper & handle, but the other still looks brand new.
Oh, they keep the laptop pretty dry in heavy rain. I've been caught a few times having to walk a mile in unexpected heavy rain while carrying the laptop. Only once did the laptop show any signs of being wet, and at that it was only very very slightly. I let it dry and didn't have any problems.
Compressing the data on the disc would make console games load faster. It takes very little time to decompress data compared to the time it takes to read it off a disc.
Also, standard practice on the Cube (at least among decent developers) is to simultaneously load data while playing cutscenes. Take Eternal Darkness - no noticable load time other than when you first start playing. Turn the volume down during a cutscene, and you'll hear the laser moving back and forth rapidly between two sections of the disc.
Nintendo doesn't have anything to do with porting the game. You pay Nintendo money to make your discs, and they make them for you.
In case you haven't noticed, Resident Evil is exclusive to the Cube. Nintendo bought Silicon Knights upon seeing Eternal Darkness, and then made it a Cube exclusive. True Crime is out on the Cube.
Nintendo got over the "family friendly games only" phase after the original Mortal Kombat bombed for the SNES. Just because Nintendo doesn't create games with random violence doesn't mean they don't let other people.
It's all Rockstar's decision.
MS, here's a clue: Stop using undocumented/proprietary hooks into your OS from your apps.
Linux is the way it is (in reference to the above quote) because people stick to the "API"... partly because there's no other way, but that's another topic/philosophy alltogether.
Ever use Linux around the 1.2 kernel days? It wasn't unheard of for apps to require kernel patches. DOSEmu definately required kernel patches, and I think Wine did too. It's been a lot of years so I don't remember other apps offhand, but I do remember at least a couple others not working without kernel patches.
So it's definately possible to not "stick to the API" in Linux. In fact, in Linux anyone can add their own kernel hooks, as opposed to only MS being able to in Windows. It's just that over the years the Linux crowd has realized they shouldn't be doing it as often as they used to.
According to IGN, Mario Kart: Double Dash sold 528,000 copies so far.
The mainstream media really has something against Nintendo this round. They'll gladly complain that their sales are down over past years, but they'll also ignore the fact that sales below Nintendo norms are still really damn high compared to almost everybody else.
Where are you seeing these 1,000,000 write cycle flash cards? 100,000 seems to be the norm from what I see.
The problem with selling songs individually is the margin per song is very low. You'll sell a lot more individual songs than you would albums, but you make a lot less money per unit sold.
The artists concern is probably because it's a lot harder to make money selling things at $1 compared to selling things at $15-$20. It's a very valid business concern.
I'm sure there are also some artists concerned because they make albums that are meant to be listened to as a whole, but there aren't that many of them these days.
I can buy and refill my Metrocard ANONYMOUSLY. If that wasn't the case -- if I had no other choice than to have it linked to me personally -- then I would still be using those ancient subway tokens.
No you wouldn't. New York stopped accepting Subway Tokens earlier in the year. You have to use a Metrocard now.
Don't forget, if you buy it after Christmas, odds are you're getting the censored version. So if you weren't quite sure before, you better buy it now or you'll be stuck with a crappy version if you change your mind later!
How about Resident Evil? They've redone it so many times. There were several remakes with slightly more features for the PS1, and then there's the GameCube version, which is the same game again but with better graphics and slightly better voice acting.
If you don't have all 3 consoles and are a Sega fan, it would be better if they became exclusive.
Right now their games are distributed amongst all 3 platforms. Very few of their games come out on all three. So you need all 3 systems to play Sega games. If they were exclusive, you'd only need one system.
The big deal is the 2.4 kernel was receiving massive changes (i.e. completely new VM system) in the 2.4.1x range. It really took a while for 2.4 to become a reliable platform. People are scared of the same thing happening here.
I might have bought the Mario games, rehashes that they are, but I'm ticked off that to truly use everything on the cart, I have to shell out for a e-Reader. Why? No technical reason, just that Nintendo wants to sell you an e-Reader.
Yeah, some of the cards contain silly things like "scan this card to add a starman to your inventory." But the other cards actually contain data not on the cartridge. And with the way Nintendo has worked the e-Reader stuff in the past, they'll probably continue making cards with new levels for about a year or so. It's really difficult to include levels on the cartridge that weren't designed until after the game was released.
So here's another game that sounds like it should be playable with just two Gameboys but requires a Gamecube (probably). I am not impressed here at all.
Try reading the reviews of the games. There already is a version of 4 Swords for the GameBoy. This version adds new features that aren't possible solely with a GameBoy. Everything on the TV screen can be seen by everyone, but you can do things there (like enter caves) that drop you down to the GBA, where you can do things you don't want the other players to see.
Not going to stop buying games for my GB but I find myself avoiding Nintendo's first-party games like the plague. I don't have a GameCube, I'm not going to get a GameCube, I don't want a GameCube. (I have a PS2 and if I get a second console it'll be an XBox... or considering the likely timing of that purchase, an XBox 2 if it's reverse-compatible at all.)
Suit yourself. You're missing out on a LOT of good games. Although there are good reasons to complain about Nintendo, your reasons aren't. They're legitimately doing something new and interesting here, and you're complaining because it costs money.
Being forced to include the sales tax in any listed price would make things very difficult. Keep in mind that each state has a different tax rate, and in some states it varies within the state. For example, here in New Jersey, in the more "low class" areas, sales tax is 1/2 what it is elsewhere in order to attract more business to those stores.
Say you're a national store. You can set prices for all your stores and print one ad listing the base price. If you had to print seperate ads with the tax included, you'd have to print well over 50 ads.
The N64 itself isn't very durable.
I had a friend in college who would jerk the controller around whenever he was doing badly in a multiplayer game. This resulted in my n64 falling several feet to the floor on multiple occasions before I found a good place to put it.
It still mostly works, but a few games like Perfect Dark just wouldn't work in it anymore. It would tend to lockup a lot too. In the end I sold it to him for $30 and bought a new one for $50. Not bad, considering I wanted a new controller anyway, and those cost $30 individually.