I'm sorry to be off-topic in replying to your sig, but I felt the need to answer. I don't post with HREF very often. It is not because it is hard or because it is time consuming, afterall I used to write web pages for a living. Rather, I do it because of all the goatse links out there. Let them see the URL before they click it. Can they do it with HREF? Sure, in an extra couple of steps.
In short, please don't belittle a choice like that when there are people doing it out of consideration, not laziness.
"That's all nice and well, but who actually makes the content that fills up those 2GB? You'd need a pretty large team and several months or years to make that much stuff..."
2D and 3D artists make the content that fills that space. The thing to remember is that it isn't necessarily a linear relationship between how much arist time is needed and how much RAM is being taken up. Using 2x the texture size, for example, doesn't take twice as long to generate. A lot of time spent on making 3D art is in shrinking things down to meet the requirements.
Check out this image I made here. (Note: That's not a game model.) *All* of the textures were originally generated at 3072^2 resolution. They were too high for my tiny gigabyte of RAM, so I had to knock them down to 2048^2. If I had started at 2048, it wouldn't have been much faster to generate them. The source imagery was big enough in either resolution, so short of the extra processing time it'd have taken, it would have been pretty much the same.
The real time spent will be in making something more ambitious. Twice as long? I doubt it. Maybe one day when the game machine has specs that exceed the artist abilities, but we are generations away from that. The tools we have today are pretty darned cool, and they're only going to get better as each generation goes by.
In short, these companies already have the talent *today* to put 2 gigs worth of content on the screen.
"Hmmm, you are presuming that the powers that be aren't using fear to gain absolute power?."
I'm not presuming they're not. (I.e. I have no doubt at all that they'd try to keep those powers when the threat has passed.) Right now, though, I think the main focus is in protecting public safely. Don't forget that a lot of people working for our gov't died.
"Nintendo isn't using the "Game Boy" brand name with the DS..."... yet.
For the record, Nintendo hasn't solidified a name yet. It has been confirmed it'll play GBA games, but whether or not it'll play GB or GBC is only speculation at this point. I personally don't think it will for the extra processor reason you mentioned.
"That is what made the 2nd edition Gameboy such a hit... and the 3rd.. and 4th... and #th version of Gameboy because you could still play your old classic games on them."
Err that's not really an apples to apples comparison. There were revisions of the Game Boy. They couldn't make a GameBoy Color that looked and sounded like a Game Boy, but only played GBC games.
The real question is whether or not the GBA would have suffered from lack of backwards compatibility. I'll be honest, I don't think so. Not badly, anyway. Nintendo had a good selection of titles out pretty quick. It was so easy to just forget that the original Game Boy ever existed.
So is MS right or wrong? Heh. I hate trying to answer that. It really does depends on some factors.
- Is the game any different by playing on the new system? Is it enhanced? Is it buggy? If it's enhanced, then that's not so bad, especially if the launch titles suck. Is it buggy? Ack, stop there. Nobody wants to buy a game they can't return if there's a chance it won't work.
- Are there a lot of people out there that kind of wanted an XBOX but never bought one? If the answer is yes, then MS is clearly wrong. Some might buy the XBOX 2 even if the lunch titles suck because they can raid the XBOX bargain bin.
- How much will it add to the cost? Frankly, I think MS would do a LOT better to get the new system at $200. (or $300 WITH a game and an extra controller...) $300 plus backwards compatibility? Ouch. I wouldn't touch that. Can't imagine others would.
- What will MS's launch titles be like? If the XBOX 2 has some real cool titles, they can probably safely do away with BW compatibility. Remember my GBA example. It is probably a good bet that the first batch of people buying XBOX 2's are already XBOX owners. BW compatbility would mostly be useless on them. Instead, they need to feel as though they can adopt this new platform without aching to be on the old one. Nintendo pulled this off with great title selection on the GBA, MS needs to follow suit.
So is MS wrong? Sorry, not enough info. They could be successful either way. It depends on factors that are plainly unknown right now.
Slashdot Mirror
"Two steps, true, but only one extra keystroke: [A HREF="paste"]paste[/a], as in:"
0 7&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=126&tid= 99 for a link to this article.
You mean like this?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/18392
" The greatest stupidity of your point is that the people who actually put the goatsex links are not going to be so kind as to show the full URL."
Thank you for supporting my point.
*Shrug* We at Slashdot are all about security until we can argue with somebody about it.
"Yabut...why cant you just mouse over the HREF'd URL to see what the real URL is, before you click it?"
I dunno, never said it couldn't.
"What browser are you using that doesn't allow you to see the URL before you click on it?"
When did I say a browser couldn't?
I guess nobody read my whole post.
Well that's neat but I'm still not joining the army until they invent the respawn point.
"What do you mean, "next" ?"
Click here for more detailed information about your question.
"Is it so hard to put a URL inside an A HREF?"
I'm sorry to be off-topic in replying to your sig, but I felt the need to answer. I don't post with HREF very often. It is not because it is hard or because it is time consuming, afterall I used to write web pages for a living. Rather, I do it because of all the goatse links out there. Let them see the URL before they click it. Can they do it with HREF? Sure, in an extra couple of steps.
In short, please don't belittle a choice like that when there are people doing it out of consideration, not laziness.
Great. The next big American stereotype will be that we're all 'faggot campers'.
"That's all nice and well, but who actually makes the content that fills up those 2GB? You'd need a pretty large team and several months or years to make that much stuff..."
2D and 3D artists make the content that fills that space. The thing to remember is that it isn't necessarily a linear relationship between how much arist time is needed and how much RAM is being taken up. Using 2x the texture size, for example, doesn't take twice as long to generate. A lot of time spent on making 3D art is in shrinking things down to meet the requirements.
Check out this image I made here. (Note: That's not a game model.) *All* of the textures were originally generated at 3072^2 resolution. They were too high for my tiny gigabyte of RAM, so I had to knock them down to 2048^2. If I had started at 2048, it wouldn't have been much faster to generate them. The source imagery was big enough in either resolution, so short of the extra processing time it'd have taken, it would have been pretty much the same.
The real time spent will be in making something more ambitious. Twice as long? I doubt it. Maybe one day when the game machine has specs that exceed the artist abilities, but we are generations away from that. The tools we have today are pretty darned cool, and they're only going to get better as each generation goes by.
In short, these companies already have the talent *today* to put 2 gigs worth of content on the screen.
"It'd be pretty cheasy to have multiple processes with IPC's to fully load the games, or anything into memory."
;)
Not for us Dual Processor owners.
"BTW don't limit yourself to MS. Feel free to critize any corporation." .. and get an off-topic mod.
"I wonder how many would not buy into Intle knowing that there are these sorts of things built in?"
I find it unlikely Dell customers are buying machines thinking about overclocking.
"Anyone know how much space a show recorder in HDTV actually takes up? I'd be curious.."
I read 19 megabits/s somewhere...
"anyone have a non-subscribe link ?"
NYT doesn't verify anything you give it. So what's the BFD about registerring?
"Hmmm, you are presuming that the powers that be aren't using fear to gain absolute power?."
I'm not presuming they're not. (I.e. I have no doubt at all that they'd try to keep those powers when the threat has passed.) Right now, though, I think the main focus is in protecting public safely. Don't forget that a lot of people working for our gov't died.
"Sound Orwellian?"
Nope. It sounds post 9-11. That's not to say it's better or worse. Simply that the motivation is fear, not in absolute power.
.. I'm gonna buy that $300 Clie that comes with wireless. (Unless somebody can recommend a non-Sony PDA for $300 with built in WiFi...?)
"Nintendo isn't using the "Game Boy" brand name with the DS..."... yet.
For the record, Nintendo hasn't solidified a name yet. It has been confirmed it'll play GBA games, but whether or not it'll play GB or GBC is only speculation at this point. I personally don't think it will for the extra processor reason you mentioned.
You mean I'm gonna have to get a 100ft firewire cable to sync with my BMW? No thanks.
Star Trek: Oz.
"I missed it, what happend?"
Let's just say that if they ever continued the series, they wouldn't have to explain how things started up again.
"Believe it when you see it in the stores or are holding an official MS press release. Until then, this is all speculation."
It also makes for good discussion. MS people are probably reading this right now.
"That is what made the 2nd edition Gameboy such a hit... and the 3rd.. and 4th... and #th version of Gameboy because you could still play your old classic games on them."
Err that's not really an apples to apples comparison. There were revisions of the Game Boy. They couldn't make a GameBoy Color that looked and sounded like a Game Boy, but only played GBC games.
The real question is whether or not the GBA would have suffered from lack of backwards compatibility. I'll be honest, I don't think so. Not badly, anyway. Nintendo had a good selection of titles out pretty quick. It was so easy to just forget that the original Game Boy ever existed.
So is MS right or wrong? Heh. I hate trying to answer that. It really does depends on some factors.
- Is the game any different by playing on the new system? Is it enhanced? Is it buggy? If it's enhanced, then that's not so bad, especially if the launch titles suck. Is it buggy? Ack, stop there. Nobody wants to buy a game they can't return if there's a chance it won't work.
- Are there a lot of people out there that kind of wanted an XBOX but never bought one? If the answer is yes, then MS is clearly wrong. Some might buy the XBOX 2 even if the lunch titles suck because they can raid the XBOX bargain bin.
- How much will it add to the cost? Frankly, I think MS would do a LOT better to get the new system at $200. (or $300 WITH a game and an extra controller...) $300 plus backwards compatibility? Ouch. I wouldn't touch that. Can't imagine others would.
- What will MS's launch titles be like? If the XBOX 2 has some real cool titles, they can probably safely do away with BW compatibility. Remember my GBA example. It is probably a good bet that the first batch of people buying XBOX 2's are already XBOX owners. BW compatbility would mostly be useless on them. Instead, they need to feel as though they can adopt this new platform without aching to be on the old one. Nintendo pulled this off with great title selection on the GBA, MS needs to follow suit.
So is MS wrong? Sorry, not enough info. They could be successful either way. It depends on factors that are plainly unknown right now.
"I think I've played more PS1 games on my PS2 than normal PS2 games."
Think that little tidbit of info will affect whether or not you buy a PS3?