It's too big. In the U. S., this doesn't matter so much. Some people might even think that the big, black XBOX is kind of cool. In Japan, it is taking up too much room in country where wealth used to be measured by the amount of space you had in your living quarters (and may still be).
Besides that, it is going to be hard for anything to make a dent in the Playstation 2's popularity in Japan. Sony is just considered a cool, superior brand over there. Yes, I suppose cultural superiority is a factor, but I don't think that is all of it. I've noticed that when I ask the Asian people I know "Which is cooler, Sony or X?" they invariably say Sony.
I also think that (and I'm no expert, not owning one) the Xbox's lineup has something to do with it. The big system selling game is Halo, a First Person Shooter. First Person Shooters have never been popular in Japan. Ever notice how few Japanese origin FPSs there are for the various Japanese consoles? Even Metroid Prime was made by an American second party using the Nintendo Metroid license. (This is why the N64 also had a tough time over there.) I once remember noting that the Japanese seem to like fighting games the way Americans like FPSs, if I can go by the huge number of fighting games coming out of Japan and the huge number of FPSs coming out of the U. S. (I could be way off on that but I don't think I am.)
Basically, I think that there are cultural reasons why the XBox hasn't caught on in Japan that don't have anything to do with it's relative merits as a console or just cultural superiority.
I noticed that Wizards of the Coast says that "Chainmail is based on D&D." Well, I beg to differ. (I suppose it is possible that the new version is... but the original Chainmail is where D&D and all Role Playing Games come from.)
If you are boycotting Blizzard or don't want to wait, you can head on over to Wizards of the Coast and buy some of their Chainmail sets. Really, Chainmail is where it all started. If only Wizards of the Coast had good IP lawyers, they could sue Blizzard for implementing a version of their Chainmail game as a computer game (as the TSR intellectual property holders. TSR: Tactical Studies Rules, TSR was doing wargames before that whole Dungeons and Dragons thing took off.) Unfortunately, then Wizards of the Coast would have to deal with the Tolkein estate...
A lot of people may not realize this, but Sandy Peterson, level designer for Doom, is a practicing Mormon. I always thought it was annoying that some of the Cult Cop-type Fundies would attack Doom for being Satanic. How is blowing away demons with shotguns and RPGs "Satanic." Black and White should be more objectionable because you can play an evil "Pagan" god, but because Doom fits certain criteria:
1. It's a First Person Shooter.
2. It has great demonic imagery to show on talk shows and sensationalist news reports.
3. It is very well known.
Doom is the game that gets the bad press. (Note: Both games are cool, I would've thought so even back when I was a practicing Catholic.) Really, if Jack Chick made a game, would it be that different than Doom. (Haw, haw!)
On the other hand, all Color Dreams has to do is find Jesus, slightly retool Menace Beach and they have a game they can sell in Christian bookstores Sunday Funday
Zinf is a recursive algorith for the project that was formerly called FreeAmp. What does Zinf mean? Zinf is not FreeA*p
Come to think of it, it seems to me there was another recursive algorithm like that... but I can't seem to remember what it is... (Sorry RMS, I'm just being cute...)
Nintendo has always agressively gone after people who provide unlicensed content for their systems. The managed to get Tengen, after all. I think they only left Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree alone because they didn't want to mess with the Christian Bookstore market. That was way back in the 8-bit days, when there was no question of copyright violations. (Tengen was publishing content with permission of the copyright holders. Even in the case of Tetris, it was just a case of license confusion.)
You have an option if you want a handheld console system that can play homebrew/small studio content, the little handheld from Korea, the GP32. There has been some great homebrew development for that, like a Doom port. Unlike Nintendo, the GP32's manufacturer encourages homebrew content.
Unfortunately, the current console system works too well for most console manufacturers to abandon it, especially when the courts will back them up. I sincerely doubt that the unavailability of the backup cart will mean that Nintendo will lose sales. If Nintendo hadn't gone after the backup carts, what's to stop their licensees from thinking, "Why am I buying a license? Why don't I just produce the cartridges myself and keep all the profits rather than splitting them with Nintendo?"
I would love for things to be different, and for the console market to be more like the PC/PDA market. The only way that would happen is for something like the GP32 to become popular, but that doesn't seem likely at the moment. For console makers it's not just about protecting copyrighted content, it is also about protecting license revenue.
You can make very simple point and click adventures using HTML TADS. Note, this isn't anything like Sam & Max, but you have the powerful TADS text parser along with images, sounds and clickable links. It would be really easy to come up with something good, and I read that there is an X11 HTML TADS project.
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the government can seize property used to commit a crime, even if the owner was innocent of any wrongdoing.
The case involved a Michigan woman whose family car was confiscated when her husband used it for sex with a prostitute. The Court rejected her argument that as an "innocent owner" she was entitled to compensation for her half-interest in the automobile.
Basically, the Constitution is a dead letter, our rights are currently protected only if they are politically popular.
Heh, I had come up with a really long-winded reply and you just nailed it.
I'm glad that my Dad was willing to stick with his hateful, blue-collar job so he could put food on the table, go to night school, and put me through college. Incidentally, he was a cop. Don't believe movies and TV. A lot of that job is crummy, like going to some little old lady's apartment to find her week old corpse. My dad thought Barney Miller was the most realistic cop show he ever saw.
It's kind of funny that for a lot of people their exciting, escapist entertainment is pretending to be a cop, when for my Dad the best thing about it was taking early retirement so he could go to Florida and work on his boat.
As to me, I've got two Bachelors degrees. I got my B.S. in Computer Science going to school part time while working some pretty bad retail jobs. It paid off, and almost everyday I look at how great my current life actually is, especially considering so many of my friends went from their CS degrees back into the food service industry where they worked while they were in college (good money but hard work). However, if someone had come along while I was working at K-Mart and said, "Don't like it? Get a better job, loser!" I might've slugged him.
I had put garbageman rather than cop in my original comment because a lot of people think being a cop is more exciting than it actually is, but garbageman, unglamourous as it is, actually make good money and have good benefits and pensions in New Jersey.
Hmm.... Did you ever watch the BBC TV series Connections? If not you are in for a treat and they probably have it at your local library. Well, when I was a kid, my greatest joy was to stay up late and watch Connections on my local PBS station.
Why am I bringing up Connections? Well, because Connections would trace the connections between various inventions that it would seem had no relation to each other. Many of the inventions the show would showcase as part of the chain would seem frivolous or irrelevent, but finally they would all link up to showcase the major invention of the show (which would be something like the automobile or the satellite dish).
Heh, lately most of the justifications for a space program are based on the idea that innovations that came from the space program led to improvements in medicine, construction or other fields. (Note: if you can't sell people on exploring a new frontier and helping humanity break its earthly bounds, explaining how we wouldn't have Tang is not going to sell them)
But when a game becomes more satisfying than your job, maybe you should think of getting a new career rather than immersing yourself in ever more sophisticated games software.
Talk about your insufferable, upper class twit. This is a few steps below "let them eat cake" on the hate-o-meter, but not all that many, as it comes from the same place. I don't love my job. Some aspects of it are satisfying, even fun. But then there are the days that stretch before me like the Sahara Desert and I just wait for the clock to get to 5:00 PM. I don't have the luxury of having a new career. I have a job that I tolerate and that pays me a lot better than most of my previous jobs. I feel profoundly lucky to be making a decent, middle class income. However, I'm not Lord Salisbury, I'm not doing my job as a dilletante. This was the best job I could find in my area with my education.
Get a new career? Oh yes, everyone should do that. I'm sure that garbage men are in it because they love the excitement of garbage, and not because it is the way they afford food and a roof over their heads. I'm sure that all the janitors in the world feel the same about sanitation. Why doesn't everyone just work doing what they love? I'm sure the world would run swimmingly.
If someone wants to get home from a hard day of work (ever notice how they don't call it happy-fun-time?) and wants to play a game of Splinter Cell why is it the business of some over paid, stuck up, hack who probably wonders why I don't just jet off to Singapore whenever I feel bored?
True, but Game Boy's eating of the Virtual Boy was sort of cannibalistic, after all. No joy for Hiroshi Yamauchi in that.
I feel sorry for Gunpei Yoko, he deserved better than that as his swan song. After all, he did create Metroid...
Wow, hey, he was also responsible for the Wonderswan! So, Game Boy, Metroid, Virtual Boy (well, a low point obviously), and Wonderswan... what a career! If only he hadn't had his life tragically cut short.
I remember a SEGA ad, way back when I was a kid, that was mocking Gameboy owners. Basically, it had a family of people who were meant to look like mentally-challenged degenerates, standing around a bug zapper and cheering whenever a bug would fly into it. Then the commercial asked, "What kind of people are entertained by cheap, mono-colored electronics?" (In those days, the Gameboy was black and white.)
It was an advertisement for Gamegear, SEGA's answer to Gameboy. Where is Gamegear now? For that matter, where is SEGA?
See, but you never played Mary-Kate & Ashley: Magical Mystery Mall (2000), it's actually a very bloody first person shooter, sort of like Postal. As I recall, they got in a lot of trouble for that one, so the sequel was more what you'd expect from the title.
I remember the one scene quite vividly, "I'll see you in Hell, Mary-Kate." "I'm Ashley!!!" blam, blam, blam!!
Well, actually I never played it, but that was the gist of it I got from glancing toward the cover briefly once while I was at the mall. Maybe I was just having a psychotic episode...
I had the same issue as a child, except in my case it was a Magnavox Odyssey. Oh well, at least I had K. C. Munchkin (a better Pac-Man than Atari 2600 Pac-Man, probably why Namco or whoever sued and got it taken off the market) and Quest for the Rings (which was just bizarre).
Besides, I soon had an Atari, the all powerful Atari 800 computer!!! (In some ways I had a really great childhood.)
Think of how glorious it must have been for Hiroshi Yamauchi to watch every competitor over the years fail pitifully to make any dent in the Gameboy market. "Lynx, Turboexpress, GameGear, Wonderswan, Nomad, Neo Geo Pocket? All of them are nothing now, all of them are dust!!!" (Apologies to Lord Garth, "Whom the gods destroy," Star Trek:TOS)
-- Re:I, for one, will be very sad...
My brother graduated from Full Sail's film program. He had a brief, unpaid internship in New York City working on a documentary about the 2000 elections. His most recent job was working at Books A Million, and he's back in school trying to get a worthwhile degree.
I'm not saying it will happen to everyone who goes there, but I think it was a big waste of time and money for my brother.
It seems to me that I see a pattern developing though. When I played MUCKs a lot it was because I had moved to a horrible, hateful little town in Florida. This was a bit jarring for me because I had moved from an urban part of New Jersey, with easy train access to New York City, to a sleepy little retirement hellhole in Southwest Florida. Looking back, I should probably seen if I could have found someplace to live in New Jersey even on my relatively low salary. (However, that would have meant missing out on getting my second college degree in Computer Science.)
I was a college graduate (B.A. in English), but I was working at a sucession of awful, low paying retail jobs. More importantly, while the retail jobs I had been getting in NJ were low paying at least they were a lot of fun. The ones in Florida were like being in some kind of Hell where you were tormented by low class people. I didn't go back to college right away, because I couldn't believe there were no decent jobs around for a college graduate, even in English.
Well, at somepoint my parents got a new computer with Internet access, and that computer became my new friend (though I didn't leave old friends like my and my brother's video game systems completely behind. I can still remember coming home from a long day at K-Mart and playing Final Fantasy III on my brother's Super Nintendo. The simple joys of a pointless life.). Soon we got Internet, and I spend a ton of time on it. Eventually, I started MUCKing.
Sure it took over my life, but at that point my life was a hopeless morass from which there was no escape. Things didn't improve until I moved into a dorm in a bigger city. Then everything got so much better and I eventually gave up MUCKing for real life pursuits.
Besides, I think it was helpful. I hadn't spent that much time on a computer since I was a young boy with an Atari 800, and I think it finally gave me the impetus to firmly decide to go back to school and get my CS degree. That improved my life immesurably, as I was able to get a real job that paid well, and got me out from being dependant on Mom and Dad.
I am so very glad that my grandparents emigrated! (Well, for lots of reasons. Living through the Great Depression beat living through the "Thousand Year Reich," obviously.)
Thank you, Otto von Bismarck! If he had been less of a bastard, I might be thinking The Settlers was the greatest thing since sliced bread today.... well, whoever was born in my place would I mean... Would there even have been a First and Second World War if Bismark was less of a bastard? Oh... alternate history makes my head hurt... maybe Germany would be an extreme libertarian state today...
Slashdot Mirror
Besides that, it is going to be hard for anything to make a dent in the Playstation 2's popularity in Japan. Sony is just considered a cool, superior brand over there. Yes, I suppose cultural superiority is a factor, but I don't think that is all of it. I've noticed that when I ask the Asian people I know "Which is cooler, Sony or X?" they invariably say Sony.
I also think that (and I'm no expert, not owning one) the Xbox's lineup has something to do with it. The big system selling game is Halo, a First Person Shooter. First Person Shooters have never been popular in Japan. Ever notice how few Japanese origin FPSs there are for the various Japanese consoles? Even Metroid Prime was made by an American second party using the Nintendo Metroid license. (This is why the N64 also had a tough time over there.) I once remember noting that the Japanese seem to like fighting games the way Americans like FPSs, if I can go by the huge number of fighting games coming out of Japan and the huge number of FPSs coming out of the U. S. (I could be way off on that but I don't think I am.)
Basically, I think that there are cultural reasons why the XBox hasn't caught on in Japan that don't have anything to do with it's relative merits as a console or just cultural superiority.
Actually, I think here is a more accurate view of the GNU Foundations ideas about Open Source Software.
I noticed that Wizards of the Coast says that "Chainmail is based on D&D." Well, I beg to differ. (I suppose it is possible that the new version is... but the original Chainmail is where D&D and all Role Playing Games come from.)
If you are boycotting Blizzard or don't want to wait, you can head on over to Wizards of the Coast and buy some of their Chainmail sets. Really, Chainmail is where it all started. If only Wizards of the Coast had good IP lawyers, they could sue Blizzard for implementing a version of their Chainmail game as a computer game (as the TSR intellectual property holders. TSR: Tactical Studies Rules, TSR was doing wargames before that whole Dungeons and Dragons thing took off.) Unfortunately, then Wizards of the Coast would have to deal with the Tolkein estate...
1. It's a First Person Shooter.
2. It has great demonic imagery to show on talk shows and sensationalist news reports.
3. It is very well known.
Doom is the game that gets the bad press. (Note: Both games are cool, I would've thought so even back when I was a practicing Catholic.) Really, if Jack Chick made a game, would it be that different than Doom. (Haw, haw!)
On the other hand, all Color Dreams has to do is find Jesus, slightly retool Menace Beach and they have a game they can sell in Christian bookstores Sunday Funday
algorith=acronym... it's too early in the morning
Zinf
Zinf is a recursive algorith for the project that was formerly called FreeAmp. What does Zinf mean? Zinf is not FreeA*p
Come to think of it, it seems to me there was another recursive algorithm like that... but I can't seem to remember what it is... (Sorry RMS, I'm just being cute...)
Well, *inf could be *inf is not freecr*ft
You have an option if you want a handheld console system that can play homebrew/small studio content, the little handheld from Korea, the GP32. There has been some great homebrew development for that, like a Doom port. Unlike Nintendo, the GP32's manufacturer encourages homebrew content.
Unfortunately, the current console system works too well for most console manufacturers to abandon it, especially when the courts will back them up. I sincerely doubt that the unavailability of the backup cart will mean that Nintendo will lose sales. If Nintendo hadn't gone after the backup carts, what's to stop their licensees from thinking, "Why am I buying a license? Why don't I just produce the cartridges myself and keep all the profits rather than splitting them with Nintendo?"
I would love for things to be different, and for the console market to be more like the PC/PDA market. The only way that would happen is for something like the GP32 to become popular, but that doesn't seem likely at the moment. For console makers it's not just about protecting copyrighted content, it is also about protecting license revenue.
You can make very simple point and click adventures using HTML TADS. Note, this isn't anything like Sam & Max, but you have the powerful TADS text parser along with images, sounds and clickable links. It would be really easy to come up with something good, and I read that there is an X11 HTML TADS project.
Senator Hatch STOP
RE: Remotely destroying computers STOP
Go stick your head in a pig. STOP
</TELEGRAM>
No, I haven't actually sent it...but how do you deal with something that moronic?
I'm glad that my Dad was willing to stick with his hateful, blue-collar job so he could put food on the table, go to night school, and put me through college. Incidentally, he was a cop. Don't believe movies and TV. A lot of that job is crummy, like going to some little old lady's apartment to find her week old corpse. My dad thought Barney Miller was the most realistic cop show he ever saw.
It's kind of funny that for a lot of people their exciting, escapist entertainment is pretending to be a cop, when for my Dad the best thing about it was taking early retirement so he could go to Florida and work on his boat.
As to me, I've got two Bachelors degrees. I got my B.S. in Computer Science going to school part time while working some pretty bad retail jobs. It paid off, and almost everyday I look at how great my current life actually is, especially considering so many of my friends went from their CS degrees back into the food service industry where they worked while they were in college (good money but hard work). However, if someone had come along while I was working at K-Mart and said, "Don't like it? Get a better job, loser!" I might've slugged him.
I had put garbageman rather than cop in my original comment because a lot of people think being a cop is more exciting than it actually is, but garbageman, unglamourous as it is, actually make good money and have good benefits and pensions in New Jersey.
Why am I bringing up Connections? Well, because Connections would trace the connections between various inventions that it would seem had no relation to each other. Many of the inventions the show would showcase as part of the chain would seem frivolous or irrelevent, but finally they would all link up to showcase the major invention of the show (which would be something like the automobile or the satellite dish).
Heh, lately most of the justifications for a space program are based on the idea that innovations that came from the space program led to improvements in medicine, construction or other fields. (Note: if you can't sell people on exploring a new frontier and helping humanity break its earthly bounds, explaining how we wouldn't have Tang is not going to sell them)
Get a new career? Oh yes, everyone should do that. I'm sure that garbage men are in it because they love the excitement of garbage, and not because it is the way they afford food and a roof over their heads. I'm sure that all the janitors in the world feel the same about sanitation. Why doesn't everyone just work doing what they love? I'm sure the world would run swimmingly.
If someone wants to get home from a hard day of work (ever notice how they don't call it happy-fun-time?) and wants to play a game of Splinter Cell why is it the business of some over paid, stuck up, hack who probably wonders why I don't just jet off to Singapore whenever I feel bored?
I feel sorry for Gunpei Yoko, he deserved better than that as his swan song. After all, he did create Metroid...
Wow, hey, he was also responsible for the Wonderswan! So, Game Boy, Metroid, Virtual Boy (well, a low point obviously), and Wonderswan... what a career! If only he hadn't had his life tragically cut short.
It was an advertisement for Gamegear, SEGA's answer to Gameboy. Where is Gamegear now? For that matter, where is SEGA?
I remember the one scene quite vividly, "I'll see you in Hell, Mary-Kate." "I'm Ashley!!!" blam, blam, blam!!
Well, actually I never played it, but that was the gist of it I got from glancing toward the cover briefly once while I was at the mall. Maybe I was just having a psychotic episode...
Besides, I soon had an Atari, the all powerful Atari 800 computer!!! (In some ways I had a really great childhood.)
Lucky... the one I played belonged to my cousin....
Come on, Smurfs, you know you want it!!!
I'm not saying it will happen to everyone who goes there, but I think it was a big waste of time and money for my brother.
I was a college graduate (B.A. in English), but I was working at a sucession of awful, low paying retail jobs. More importantly, while the retail jobs I had been getting in NJ were low paying at least they were a lot of fun. The ones in Florida were like being in some kind of Hell where you were tormented by low class people. I didn't go back to college right away, because I couldn't believe there were no decent jobs around for a college graduate, even in English.
Well, at somepoint my parents got a new computer with Internet access, and that computer became my new friend (though I didn't leave old friends like my and my brother's video game systems completely behind. I can still remember coming home from a long day at K-Mart and playing Final Fantasy III on my brother's Super Nintendo. The simple joys of a pointless life.). Soon we got Internet, and I spend a ton of time on it. Eventually, I started MUCKing.
Sure it took over my life, but at that point my life was a hopeless morass from which there was no escape. Things didn't improve until I moved into a dorm in a bigger city. Then everything got so much better and I eventually gave up MUCKing for real life pursuits.
Besides, I think it was helpful. I hadn't spent that much time on a computer since I was a young boy with an Atari 800, and I think it finally gave me the impetus to firmly decide to go back to school and get my CS degree. That improved my life immesurably, as I was able to get a real job that paid well, and got me out from being dependant on Mom and Dad.
Thank you, Otto von Bismarck! If he had been less of a bastard, I might be thinking The Settlers was the greatest thing since sliced bread today.... well, whoever was born in my place would I mean... Would there even have been a First and Second World War if Bismark was less of a bastard? Oh... alternate history makes my head hurt... maybe Germany would be an extreme libertarian state today...