I have to agree there. I don't see PCs having as much of a pull on the HD-DVD Vs. Blue Ray war as consoles will (Xbox 360 Vs. PS3).
PCs won't have much effect on this until Apple ships a Blu-ray drive.
You may scoff, but they have a long history of doing just that. And with Apple sitting on the Blu-Ray board, and Jobs basically being new High Overlord at Disney, I think Apple may be the piece of the highdef format wars that people are overlooking. If there are a flood of MacTels and PS3's with Blu-ray all of a sudden, that will play a significant factor.
And from that point forward, my bad experiences with their stuff just kept piling up. I've been 'done' with Sony since about 5 years ago. Now I just wait for them to die.
You're going to wait a long time. I have a Sony radio on my shelf, it was built in 1962. Sony is not going anywhere.
Unless you are some kind of console fanboy, why on earth would you want them to die rather than simply improve?
Someone like my mother will go buy a new television - HDTV. She'll upgrade her cable box to HDTV. When it comes time to buy a new DVD player which do you think she'll pick? HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?... Of course she'll pick the HD-DVD because it sounds like it will work with her system.
That could happen... or just maybe, she goes and buys a Sony television, and a Sony player to match?
I don't understand what it is that Apple needs to do to improve 'Mac gaming' other than what they have been trying to do for years: increase marketshare.
They plug the hell out of what games are available for the Mac currently, and have made some interesting contributions to the scene (Netsprockets a while back, firm OpenGL support, writing drivers for videocards, etc). Heck we even have them (amongst others, don't get me wrong) to thank for pushing widescreen resolutions.
What else could they do to try and spur development, other than sell more Macs?
I'm guessing the mods lack a (-1, Misinformed).
The PDF format is open, like many previous comments have pointed out. The situation with the Russian programmer, while detestable, was only tangentially related to PDF (it was their DRM'd ebook format).
I did mention the fact that it was open (just not all features, thus the 'sorta kinda'). The Russian situation was used to illustrate Adobe's fiercely protective attitude. I guess I could have been more specific.
Apple's not breaking any rules - and likely what Microsoft is trying to do is drop PDF in favour of a Microsoft portable document format. Only guessing here, but the article is pretty speculative as well.
I agree. I didn't say they broke any rules, in fact I commend their initiative. Adobe wanted way too much money for Display Postscript.
... and roll their own PDF compatibility. The format is 'open' (sorta, kinda). Adobe has been famously protective of PDF before, what with arresting Russian programmers and whatnot. Who knows what kind of terms they want for the license.
On a slightly related note, I still think its really odd that the bundled Preview app in OS X just completely smokes Acrobat Reader, in terms of display speed.
If the government is permitted to know our every thought, word, phone call, and whereabouts then we should be able to do the same to them. After all, we are the employers and they are the employees. In fact, it's more critical for us to know their every action and movement because they are such lazy, rotten, unscrupulous, and sometimes just plain evil buggers. If we can't and don't keep an exact eye on them, they'll certainly get up to no good.
That's why, when someone asks why I encrypt things, I say its a Matter of National Security. Its about Stopping Terrorism. It's Classified, the reason why I encrypt things. And its Treason to ask me why I am even doing that. And you are Giving Comfort To The Enemy by even mentioning the fact that I encrypt my information.
All in the name of Securing the Fatherla... er, Homeland. Oh wait, I'm in Canada.
Wow being Republican is easy, i think the general rule is that anything like privacy, free speech and peace you just have to pretend its not important while anything to do with sex, sexual equality, sex on tv, sex in peoples private lives etc is a matter of life or death.
In 1996, I would have laughed at this post, and gone on my merry way.
In 2006, this is fucking scary, because I can't tell if its a joke or not.
Considering the framerates I get at 1280x1024 on my far from epic gaming rig, I imagine getting a paltry 30fps (highest uncompressed bandwidth offered at 1080p) out of a 1920x1080 rig would be very doable.
You might be surprised - it is almost never a linear progression between resolution and framerate. All sorts of issues; bandwidth of the AGP slot, CPU overhead, etc. Your point is well-taken; I just don't think you can claim (for sake of simplicity) that a game running at 1024x768 @ 60 FPS will translate directly to double that resolution at half the frame rate. In fact certain cards scale better than others; ATI usually does OK but nVidia cards are *very* resolution-optimized.
True the games are compressed many times. I'll conceed that it may not be possible to shoehorn a current uncompressed game onto a single DVD but is a technology that hasn't even been released yet the answer here? And why isn't the 360 particularly concerned about this right now?
My guess would be economics, pure and simple. Microsoft chose the 'safe' path on practically every decision with the X360's design. They took a long hard look at including HD-DVD drives but decided to do it later. Belive me, they wish they could have had them (in their current price point of course) at launch.
You can have my geek badge. If my hours spent building a super gun (JAMMA to TV converter), stuffing MAME in an arcade cabinet, or taking apart those crappy straight to TV games and adding REAL arcade controls to them aren't as important as silly nonsense like HDTV, then being a geek just isn't what it used to be and I want no part of it.
Oh, well you are an Old Skool Console Geek, why didn't you say so.:)
Insane? I've been playing similar resolution games on my PC for quite some time now and we've managed to get by on DVD-ROM and CD-ROM discs. Only recently am I starting to see titles that span more than one DVD. Sure, having a lot of potential room for the games to grow is a good idea but this resolution argument is hogwash.
Not really.
First off, let me congratulate you on what must be an epic game rig; I don't play anything at 1920x1080 pixels. This does in fact strike me as quite a high resolution. Most people I know play at 1280x1024, or some widescreen variant thereof.
Secondly, don't forget that many of these PC games are *compressed* onto a dual-layer DVD, and expanded to a larger size on your harddrive as it installs.
Thirdly, turn in your geek badge for arguing against higher resolution on anything.:)
TO: mucketymuck@adagency.com
FROM: sjobs@apple.com
SUBJECT: My Glass Toy Needs Coverage, Assholes
PRIORITY: Ludicrous
Phil,
My magnificent glass box elevator in New York, which is in no way derivative of the crystal pyramid entrance to the Louvre in Paris, did not receive quite enough press coverage at the unveiling.
Please arrange to have someone locked in until they shit their pants.
So, think of your $600 PS3 as a way of supporting the little guy in China. The Chinese government can attempt to suppress its people, but the more trade it has with the rest of the world, the more uppity its people get as they get richer and the more difficult it is for the government to do something stupid without tanking their own economy.
Explain to me the part where my money somehow travels from Japan to China? We are talking about Sony.
(HD-TV is and will remain for some time a minuscule portion of the market, whatever the early adopter contingent like to think)
I like to think I'd do a bit of research before making such an egregious comment.
Forrester Research: "39% of consumers say their next TV will be a flat-panel plasma or LCD TV set."
Variety: "Elsewhere in its 'The State of High Definition Television 2006' report, Kagan estimated that 9.1 million HD sets will be sold to consumers this year, compared with 3.4 million and 5.6 million bought in 2003 and 2004, respectively."
You were right to be skeptical of HDTV up until two years ago, but now we are seeing a curve similar to DVD adoption. I would submit that your position is no longer supported by the sales figures.
It won't cost nearly as much to develop for the Wii as it will for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 - the development costs have been spiraling up for years, as the complexity and artistic demands of the system keep spiraling upwards. Plus with the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation, they're now crowing for better AI (yeah, sure, I'll do that next week), better physics (easy, right?)... all things that take time, and a lot of effort.... Which means that their margins get thinner, and it's a lot riskier to put out things that you're not sure will sell, and in addition, the games won't come nearly as quickly.
You sidestepped the question. Think of it from a game developer's point of view. They get maximum ROI on games that can be released for the greatest number of consoles (ensuring the greatest possible sales). When a property is in development, they decide what platforms to support before they get rolling on the project. If this means that the game they were planning (using classic type controls) will work fine on PS3 and X360, but will require retooling for the control scheme (and lower graphical quality) for the Wii, that makes it less attractive to develop for.
Conversely, a game that can only be effectively controlled using a Wii remote, is less likely to find a home on the other two consoles. This might be a short-term (effectively "exclusive") benefit for Nintendo in the short term, but they have to have an array of Wii-specific games equal to the combined libraries of Sony and Microsoft. I'm not saying its not do-able - indeed, its a calculated gamble that I applaud for its riskiness. But as for addressing the 'problem' that Nintendo themselves have cited - lack of 3rd party support - I fail to see how the Wii is anything but a step backwards in this specific regard.
Don't lets forget the awful but profane "South Park" games and the awesome but filthy "Conker's Bad Fur Day" for N64, and the gory "Resident Evil" titles for the 'cube complete with my favorite blood-covered-chainsaw -shaped controller. I feel dirty invoking anything Acclaim-realted, but this would be incomplete without a mention of the much-overhyped "BMX XXX," which had topless female bike riders and FMVs of strippers uncensored for Gamecube and Xbox, while Sony censored the nipples out of their version.
See, that's where Nintendo is going wrong. They are featuring the wrong sort of sex and violence. Who cares about BMX riders and zombies/chainsaws?
Show me Mario backing over a naked Princess with his Kart, high on Magic Mushrooms, and then we'll talk.
"Hey, guys, this is boring. Fuck y'all, I'm gonna go home and play with my wii until I fall asleep." What teenager or video-game playing adult doesn't appreciate a good penis joke now and then?
*raises hand*
While I may be ostracizing myself from the group here.... its true. Every now and then, I don't enjoy a penis joke. Like, say, after I've heard it only once. And particularly if its not funny.
Why do the name detracters keep wording it so strangely?
Don't be dense. It's because the word sounds like another common word in english. That is the entire problem. It becomes a third-ran vaudevillian routine.
"What do we want to play?"
"Wii"
"Yes, us, we, which console?"
etc. Its a bad name. When you need a pagelong press release to explain your branding, you have failed.
To put it bluntly, I lost all interest in the GameCube the day I played Luigi's Mansion....
Just to add my own personal feelings on the launch of the GameCube, I (and I'm sure many others) REALLY wanted a Mario game.
Would you have played it if it had been 'Mario's Mansion'? I find that seriously weird dude. Who cares if its the same damn plumber again, or his green-er brother? I thought that game was a blast.
(And I'm really not a big Nintendo fan; I have respect, but the games have a very short shelf-life for me personally.)
Then again, I'll take Wipeout over Mario Kart any day of the week so perhaps I am not in Nintendo's targeted demo.
Ok, but forgetting the 'exclusive' part for a second, why do we think the Wii will do any better on 3rd party support than the GameCube? The controller is so unique that it screams for original/innovative support, and that will not translate well from 3rd party titles that want to appear on all three major consoles...?
Note that XP and OS X (as of 10.3) get this badly wrong - the file copy dialog in both tends to be slow to repaint itself or to respond to window messages, and if you use a separate explorer/finder window to try and access the destination you're copying to, the window lurches slowly to try and redraw.
Haven't noticed anything like that in either XP or OS X...?
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly what I was gonna say. Made some great points, but "look how that worked out"? Fuckin' fantastic, that's how!
PCs won't have much effect on this until Apple ships a Blu-ray drive.
You may scoff, but they have a long history of doing just that. And with Apple sitting on the Blu-Ray board, and Jobs basically being new High Overlord at Disney, I think Apple may be the piece of the highdef format wars that people are overlooking. If there are a flood of MacTels and PS3's with Blu-ray all of a sudden, that will play a significant factor.
You're going to wait a long time. I have a Sony radio on my shelf, it was built in 1962. Sony is not going anywhere.
Unless you are some kind of console fanboy, why on earth would you want them to die rather than simply improve?
That could happen... or just maybe, she goes and buys a Sony television, and a Sony player to match?
Its because Zonk likes to rile the fanboys.
They plug the hell out of what games are available for the Mac currently, and have made some interesting contributions to the scene (Netsprockets a while back, firm OpenGL support, writing drivers for videocards, etc). Heck we even have them (amongst others, don't get me wrong) to thank for pushing widescreen resolutions.
What else could they do to try and spur development, other than sell more Macs?
I did mention the fact that it was open (just not all features, thus the 'sorta kinda'). The Russian situation was used to illustrate Adobe's fiercely protective attitude. I guess I could have been more specific.
Apple's not breaking any rules - and likely what Microsoft is trying to do is drop PDF in favour of a Microsoft portable document format. Only guessing here, but the article is pretty speculative as well.
I agree. I didn't say they broke any rules, in fact I commend their initiative. Adobe wanted way too much money for Display Postscript.
I wonder who I'm supposed to be 'flaming'.
On a slightly related note, I still think its really odd that the bundled Preview app in OS X just completely smokes Acrobat Reader, in terms of display speed.
That's why, when someone asks why I encrypt things, I say its a Matter of National Security. Its about Stopping Terrorism. It's Classified, the reason why I encrypt things. And its Treason to ask me why I am even doing that. And you are Giving Comfort To The Enemy by even mentioning the fact that I encrypt my information.
All in the name of Securing the Fatherla... er, Homeland. Oh wait, I'm in Canada.
In 1996, I would have laughed at this post, and gone on my merry way.
In 2006, this is fucking scary, because I can't tell if its a joke or not.
You might be surprised - it is almost never a linear progression between resolution and framerate. All sorts of issues; bandwidth of the AGP slot, CPU overhead, etc. Your point is well-taken; I just don't think you can claim (for sake of simplicity) that a game running at 1024x768 @ 60 FPS will translate directly to double that resolution at half the frame rate. In fact certain cards scale better than others; ATI usually does OK but nVidia cards are *very* resolution-optimized.
True the games are compressed many times. I'll conceed that it may not be possible to shoehorn a current uncompressed game onto a single DVD but is a technology that hasn't even been released yet the answer here? And why isn't the 360 particularly concerned about this right now?
My guess would be economics, pure and simple. Microsoft chose the 'safe' path on practically every decision with the X360's design. They took a long hard look at including HD-DVD drives but decided to do it later. Belive me, they wish they could have had them (in their current price point of course) at launch.
You can have my geek badge. If my hours spent building a super gun (JAMMA to TV converter), stuffing MAME in an arcade cabinet, or taking apart those crappy straight to TV games and adding REAL arcade controls to them aren't as important as silly nonsense like HDTV, then being a geek just isn't what it used to be and I want no part of it.
Oh, well you are an Old Skool Console Geek, why didn't you say so. :)
Not really.
First off, let me congratulate you on what must be an epic game rig; I don't play anything at 1920x1080 pixels. This does in fact strike me as quite a high resolution. Most people I know play at 1280x1024, or some widescreen variant thereof.
Secondly, don't forget that many of these PC games are *compressed* onto a dual-layer DVD, and expanded to a larger size on your harddrive as it installs.
Thirdly, turn in your geek badge for arguing against higher resolution on anything. :)
FROM: sjobs@apple.com
SUBJECT: My Glass Toy Needs Coverage, Assholes
PRIORITY: Ludicrous
Phil,
My magnificent glass box elevator in New York, which is in no way derivative of the crystal pyramid entrance to the Louvre in Paris, did not receive quite enough press coverage at the unveiling.
Please arrange to have someone locked in until they shit their pants.
thx - Steve
Explain to me the part where my money somehow travels from Japan to China? We are talking about Sony.
I like to think I'd do a bit of research before making such an egregious comment.
Forrester Research: "39% of consumers say their next TV will be a flat-panel plasma or LCD TV set."
Variety: "Elsewhere in its 'The State of High Definition Television 2006' report, Kagan estimated that 9.1 million HD sets will be sold to consumers this year, compared with 3.4 million and 5.6 million bought in 2003 and 2004, respectively."
You were right to be skeptical of HDTV up until two years ago, but now we are seeing a curve similar to DVD adoption. I would submit that your position is no longer supported by the sales figures.
You sidestepped the question. Think of it from a game developer's point of view. They get maximum ROI on games that can be released for the greatest number of consoles (ensuring the greatest possible sales). When a property is in development, they decide what platforms to support before they get rolling on the project. If this means that the game they were planning (using classic type controls) will work fine on PS3 and X360, but will require retooling for the control scheme (and lower graphical quality) for the Wii, that makes it less attractive to develop for.
Conversely, a game that can only be effectively controlled using a Wii remote, is less likely to find a home on the other two consoles. This might be a short-term (effectively "exclusive") benefit for Nintendo in the short term, but they have to have an array of Wii-specific games equal to the combined libraries of Sony and Microsoft. I'm not saying its not do-able - indeed, its a calculated gamble that I applaud for its riskiness. But as for addressing the 'problem' that Nintendo themselves have cited - lack of 3rd party support - I fail to see how the Wii is anything but a step backwards in this specific regard.
See, that's where Nintendo is going wrong. They are featuring the wrong sort of sex and violence. Who cares about BMX riders and zombies/chainsaws?
Show me Mario backing over a naked Princess with his Kart, high on Magic Mushrooms, and then we'll talk.
*raises hand*
While I may be ostracizing myself from the group here.... its true. Every now and then, I don't enjoy a penis joke. Like, say, after I've heard it only once. And particularly if its not funny.
Don't be dense. It's because the word sounds like another common word in english. That is the entire problem. It becomes a third-ran vaudevillian routine.
"What do we want to play?"
"Wii"
"Yes, us, we, which console?"
etc. Its a bad name. When you need a pagelong press release to explain your branding, you have failed.
"Each new Nintendo Wii will come with a grab-bag of rubies! Order today!"
Also they are only released in 2nd-world countries, and only as 2nd-person shooters.
Just to add my own personal feelings on the launch of the GameCube, I (and I'm sure many others) REALLY wanted a Mario game.
Would you have played it if it had been 'Mario's Mansion'? I find that seriously weird dude. Who cares if its the same damn plumber again, or his green-er brother? I thought that game was a blast.
(And I'm really not a big Nintendo fan; I have respect, but the games have a very short shelf-life for me personally.)
Then again, I'll take Wipeout over Mario Kart any day of the week so perhaps I am not in Nintendo's targeted demo.
Ok, but forgetting the 'exclusive' part for a second, why do we think the Wii will do any better on 3rd party support than the GameCube? The controller is so unique that it screams for original/innovative support, and that will not translate well from 3rd party titles that want to appear on all three major consoles...?
Haven't noticed anything like that in either XP or OS X...?