DeBeers doesn't have an 80% markeshare, hell they don't have a 60% marketshare. And the reason they never put offices in the US was because because a DOJ ban that took effect about fifty years ago against them from entering the retail market in the US. That ban has since lifted and they have opened at least one store in the US so far (as mentioned by another poster here).
The classes were pretty well balanced in Shadowbane. Yes there were weak builds, and there were strong builds. But just about any 'class' could be good, how good depended on gear setup, disciplines, and how you specced your char. But for other games? No, probably not. I don't see why people complain about WoW though, it's a PvE game. There's no risk or reward in the PvP aspect making it largely pointless.
Only thing it seems to me is that this will lower dependancy on the OS. It'll probably hurt OSX, Windows, and Linux, but they'll still be around. The Intel Macs will be capable of running Windows programs through Wine, Vmware, VirtualPC or something. But you still need to buy copies of Windows for those to run (and in the case of VirtualPC, pay the Microsoft tax twice), it's not like Apple is going to pull an OS/2 and put the functionality into the OS. OSX will have just as much if not more Linux compatibility as has had for the last few years anyway. I think this just diminishes the importantance of OSes since it'll be so much easier to port applications.
Honestly I don't think MS could care less. A lot of companies would probably say, why make a port for OSX x86 when they could just run it natively? So they'll probably continue sticking with Windows programs. Dell and Compaq might, but we'll see.
Dude the Chinese government has been trying to put the screws down on this protest since it started. Their not allowing any print or television of the protests for fear that they'll become more widespread. And they're using police in riot gear to try to break up the protests. This isn't a political ploy, Japan is a huge trade partner with China, wtf would their government want to see this continue?
Exactly, moreso than any large PC manufacturer (except maybe Apple but not sure) Dell's advantage is that they've always kept a very, very low inventory. Which means they build only what they need with very little surplus, and when a model goes obsolete they don't need to worry about having three months worth of inventory that they have to sell at cutrate prices. If they added an AMD platform they'd suddenly have to start worrying about more inventory they'd have to keep on hand or wouldn't be able to sell.
Sounds enticing, but I'm going to wait for the post-E3 launch. Really if you think about it that's probably the best time to check this out. If you're in the pre-launch there's just going to be so many crowds and so much hype it's going to ruin this, and the pandering won't be totally honed in. Wait a few weeks for the post-E3 launch and you can finally start seeing some of the more mature games and what developers will be involved and they'll have more information on the future of the PS3. Plus early adopters always get screwed on this, I say wait till they iron out the kinks and get a better marketing product BS.
We see this comment everytime a new revision of OSX comes out. Or a new version of Firefox. Or the latest WinXP bugfix. Does anyone care?
Of course not. These things are commonplace, they're expected (well, perhaps not so expected with WoW since the game has changed so little since release compared to other MMOs). But still, the games section needs stories, no matter how trivial. And WoW is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds. So who cares, if you don't like it, let the few who do get their jollies off.
EQ just had it's six year anniversary last month. So it's not that old. Still pretty old, and a game that didn't even start losing subscribers till last November, and it's still pretty healthy.
Without knowing how much this product will cost I'm skeptical. From other peoples' comments it looks like the daughtercard is just a mini-mobo. Will the savings from having to only stock one type of motherboard and the daughtercard be enough to outweigh charging for features their customers don't need or want? If I was looking for an AMD or Intel system, I probably wouldn't look to be paying a premium for a system I won't use. Will Intel buyers get the option not to take the AMD compatibility with the daughtercard? Will AMD users have to pay an Intel tax?
I actually find just the opposite. When I was young I had less disposable income, I cared about how long a game lasted. I liked a lot of JRPG games back then (back in the NES and SNES days). I didn't care much for most other styles.
Now that I'm a bit older, I have more disposable income. It doesn't really matter if I can beat a game in 10 hours or 40, as long as it is a good game. Most older gamers have less time and more money, I don't think they look at a game and say "Oh, this looks like a lot of fun, but it's not a 60 hour epic RPG, screw it." Some of my favorite games are also the shortest. Even for RPGs, I just can't stand the sophomoric storylines, cookie cutter characters, and inane dialog in JRPGs anymore, the only RPGs I still play are the Troika, Bethesda and Bioware ones.
I really have a hard time understand how a game like Final Fantasy can require more strategy than something like Streetfighter. Any bozo with two brain cells to rub together can beat a FF game. I'm not saying the games you mentioned are very cerebral (but then JRPGs certainly aren't either), but the twitch factor gives them the edge to me. I hate fighter games, and most shooters. But I have to say I feel a lot more challenged when I play something like Halo than when I play a Final Fantasy. Of course, if I really wanted a challenge I'd play a multiplayer strategy game.
JRPGs typically do not stray from the cookie cutter mold. I don't see any reason to assume that this one would be any different. MS bought a JRPG maker, they know what they're getting so why would they have to clamp down the restraints?
I wonder how popular 24 really is. I remember it being kind of a disappoint for ratings in the first season even though it was very critically rated.
I think a huge motivation for keeping the show running is the DVD sales from that show. Similar to the reason Family Guy is being brought back. I tried watching the first season and watched most of it, but then when it came to the second season, I missed a few episodes and was totally lost. Same thing with Farscape, never could catch up with that show. Since the DVDs are reasonably price for TV series, or I could rent them, I just don't even bother watching on TV now. Same thing with Farscape, never could catch up with that show.
Also, I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare a niche sci-fi show to something like 24 which has a large general appeal. It's unlikely I'd but any ST DVDs though just because the quality has been so shoddy of late.
Does the Xbox actually run Windows CE? I thought it ran a variant of NT 5.0. Perhaps you're confusing it with the Dreamcast which was Win CE compatible?
But I don't think Windows compatibility is supposed to be impressive for consumers, I thought it was supposed to be impressive for developers who could us a more familiar and easy to use environment.
Except, Sony didn't have a good machine, they had a good enough machine. Sony waited a year and didn't have much to show for it, they won on hype. They built an incredibly lopsided machine so that they could capitalize on three things they could market very well (polygons, backward compatibility, and DVD playback). I own a PS2, but I'd rather play my Dreamcast or Xbox. Compare the DC and PS2 released at the time, the DC games were usually as good or better. They didn't have as many polygons, but they didn't suffer from fuzziness, jaggies, bad textures and excessive load times.
The PS2 did eventually get better with some of the big name exclusives, but the DC died, so who knows what would've happened there. But the PS2 was not a dramatic leap over the DC, and nowhere near as dramatic as the leap the Gamecube and Xbox took over PS2.
That sounds like Shadowbane actually. Or at least what it wanted to be, how close it got to it's original goals is debateable. I hear that with the expansion packs available it's finally the game it wanted to be.
I remember reading an article about how playing MMORPGs can release neurotransmitters like seratonin and dopamine. In moderation, that might not be such a bad thing, since most pleasurable activities do. But I would think that doing it to excess could have some nasty effects on your brain's chemistry. I should say it's not really just mmorpgs, the same thing could happen with just about anything.
There are drugs they use on drug addicts which can block these neurotransmitters so that they lose all interest in that drug. In that movie Supersize Me, they had a doctor talk about when they gave that drug to a chocoholic the person would lose all interest in chocolate. I wonder if that would work on mmorpg players.
This story reminds me a bit of the conditions right before the collapse of communism. Democratic Senators and the editorial board of The New York Times all said that the Soviet Union was a permenant fixture on the world stage, that co-existence rather than opposition was the only way to deal with it, and that Ronald Reagan was a fool for building up our military and seeking to fight it.
Put down the Freep hash pipe and learn a little history. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 80s, not even your prescient Republicans took him seriously.
Oh yes, and he was a Democrat senator, from New York.
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DeBeers doesn't have an 80% markeshare, hell they don't have a 60% marketshare. And the reason they never put offices in the US was because because a DOJ ban that took effect about fifty years ago against them from entering the retail market in the US. That ban has since lifted and they have opened at least one store in the US so far (as mentioned by another poster here).
The classes were pretty well balanced in Shadowbane. Yes there were weak builds, and there were strong builds. But just about any 'class' could be good, how good depended on gear setup, disciplines, and how you specced your char. But for other games? No, probably not. I don't see why people complain about WoW though, it's a PvE game. There's no risk or reward in the PvP aspect making it largely pointless.
No they'll outsource it to the lowest bidder.
This is an EQ expansion, not an EQ2 expansion.
Only thing it seems to me is that this will lower dependancy on the OS. It'll probably hurt OSX, Windows, and Linux, but they'll still be around. The Intel Macs will be capable of running Windows programs through Wine, Vmware, VirtualPC or something. But you still need to buy copies of Windows for those to run (and in the case of VirtualPC, pay the Microsoft tax twice), it's not like Apple is going to pull an OS/2 and put the functionality into the OS. OSX will have just as much if not more Linux compatibility as has had for the last few years anyway. I think this just diminishes the importantance of OSes since it'll be so much easier to port applications.
Honestly I don't think MS could care less. A lot of companies would probably say, why make a port for OSX x86 when they could just run it natively? So they'll probably continue sticking with Windows programs. Dell and Compaq might, but we'll see.
Dude the Chinese government has been trying to put the screws down on this protest since it started. Their not allowing any print or television of the protests for fear that they'll become more widespread. And they're using police in riot gear to try to break up the protests. This isn't a political ploy, Japan is a huge trade partner with China, wtf would their government want to see this continue?
Exactly, moreso than any large PC manufacturer (except maybe Apple but not sure) Dell's advantage is that they've always kept a very, very low inventory. Which means they build only what they need with very little surplus, and when a model goes obsolete they don't need to worry about having three months worth of inventory that they have to sell at cutrate prices. If they added an AMD platform they'd suddenly have to start worrying about more inventory they'd have to keep on hand or wouldn't be able to sell.
Sounds enticing, but I'm going to wait for the post-E3 launch. Really if you think about it that's probably the best time to check this out. If you're in the pre-launch there's just going to be so many crowds and so much hype it's going to ruin this, and the pandering won't be totally honed in. Wait a few weeks for the post-E3 launch and you can finally start seeing some of the more mature games and what developers will be involved and they'll have more information on the future of the PS3. Plus early adopters always get screwed on this, I say wait till they iron out the kinks and get a better marketing product BS.
We see this comment everytime a new revision of OSX comes out. Or a new version of Firefox. Or the latest WinXP bugfix. Does anyone care?
Of course not. These things are commonplace, they're expected (well, perhaps not so expected with WoW since the game has changed so little since release compared to other MMOs). But still, the games section needs stories, no matter how trivial. And WoW is at the forefront of a lot of people's minds. So who cares, if you don't like it, let the few who do get their jollies off.
EQ just had it's six year anniversary last month. So it's not that old. Still pretty old, and a game that didn't even start losing subscribers till last November, and it's still pretty healthy.
It's still supported, just not very much.
The mac version has all expansions up through PoP. They don't have all of the patches though of course.
C'mon, they've got to get Condoleeze Rice. She even has her own theme song!
Without knowing how much this product will cost I'm skeptical. From other peoples' comments it looks like the daughtercard is just a mini-mobo. Will the savings from having to only stock one type of motherboard and the daughtercard be enough to outweigh charging for features their customers don't need or want? If I was looking for an AMD or Intel system, I probably wouldn't look to be paying a premium for a system I won't use. Will Intel buyers get the option not to take the AMD compatibility with the daughtercard? Will AMD users have to pay an Intel tax?
I actually find just the opposite. When I was young I had less disposable income, I cared about how long a game lasted. I liked a lot of JRPG games back then (back in the NES and SNES days). I didn't care much for most other styles.
Now that I'm a bit older, I have more disposable income. It doesn't really matter if I can beat a game in 10 hours or 40, as long as it is a good game. Most older gamers have less time and more money, I don't think they look at a game and say "Oh, this looks like a lot of fun, but it's not a 60 hour epic RPG, screw it." Some of my favorite games are also the shortest. Even for RPGs, I just can't stand the sophomoric storylines, cookie cutter characters, and inane dialog in JRPGs anymore, the only RPGs I still play are the Troika, Bethesda and Bioware ones.
I really have a hard time understand how a game like Final Fantasy can require more strategy than something like Streetfighter. Any bozo with two brain cells to rub together can beat a FF game. I'm not saying the games you mentioned are very cerebral (but then JRPGs certainly aren't either), but the twitch factor gives them the edge to me. I hate fighter games, and most shooters. But I have to say I feel a lot more challenged when I play something like Halo than when I play a Final Fantasy. Of course, if I really wanted a challenge I'd play a multiplayer strategy game.
JRPGs typically do not stray from the cookie cutter mold. I don't see any reason to assume that this one would be any different. MS bought a JRPG maker, they know what they're getting so why would they have to clamp down the restraints?
Why would a corporation need to vote when it can just buy politicians? This isn't a right granted to most citizens.
And that's what happens when you don't preview your posts.
I wonder how popular 24 really is. I remember it being kind of a disappoint for ratings in the first season even though it was very critically rated.
I think a huge motivation for keeping the show running is the DVD sales from that show. Similar to the reason Family Guy is being brought back. I tried watching the first season and watched most of it, but then when it came to the second season, I missed a few episodes and was totally lost. Same thing with Farscape, never could catch up with that show. Since the DVDs are reasonably price for TV series, or I could rent them, I just don't even bother watching on TV now. Same thing with Farscape, never could catch up with that show.
Also, I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare a niche sci-fi show to something like 24 which has a large general appeal. It's unlikely I'd but any ST DVDs though just because the quality has been so shoddy of late.
Does the Xbox actually run Windows CE? I thought it ran a variant of NT 5.0. Perhaps you're confusing it with the Dreamcast which was Win CE compatible?
But I don't think Windows compatibility is supposed to be impressive for consumers, I thought it was supposed to be impressive for developers who could us a more familiar and easy to use environment.
Except, Sony didn't have a good machine, they had a good enough machine. Sony waited a year and didn't have much to show for it, they won on hype. They built an incredibly lopsided machine so that they could capitalize on three things they could market very well (polygons, backward compatibility, and DVD playback). I own a PS2, but I'd rather play my Dreamcast or Xbox. Compare the DC and PS2 released at the time, the DC games were usually as good or better. They didn't have as many polygons, but they didn't suffer from fuzziness, jaggies, bad textures and excessive load times.
The PS2 did eventually get better with some of the big name exclusives, but the DC died, so who knows what would've happened there. But the PS2 was not a dramatic leap over the DC, and nowhere near as dramatic as the leap the Gamecube and Xbox took over PS2.
That sounds like Shadowbane actually. Or at least what it wanted to be, how close it got to it's original goals is debateable. I hear that with the expansion packs available it's finally the game it wanted to be.
I remember reading an article about how playing MMORPGs can release neurotransmitters like seratonin and dopamine. In moderation, that might not be such a bad thing, since most pleasurable activities do. But I would think that doing it to excess could have some nasty effects on your brain's chemistry. I should say it's not really just mmorpgs, the same thing could happen with just about anything.
There are drugs they use on drug addicts which can block these neurotransmitters so that they lose all interest in that drug. In that movie Supersize Me, they had a doctor talk about when they gave that drug to a chocoholic the person would lose all interest in chocolate. I wonder if that would work on mmorpg players.
This story reminds me a bit of the conditions right before the collapse of communism. Democratic Senators and the editorial board of The New York Times all said that the Soviet Union was a permenant fixture on the world stage, that co-existence rather than opposition was the only way to deal with it, and that Ronald Reagan was a fool for building up our military and seeking to fight it.
Put down the Freep hash pipe and learn a little history. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 80s, not even your prescient Republicans took him seriously.
Oh yes, and he was a Democrat senator, from New York.
What does that make the Vietnam or US Civil War then? Wars of reunification or wars of conquest?