The most surprising details to me were how finished the much-questioned Playstation Store and online service are. I was fully expecting this to be the flimsiest part of the PS3 offering but it actually seems quite solid. (And I love, love love that Cross Media Bar interface. The X360 dashboard is nice until you have a zillion items that you must grab out of a pull-down menu; then its pure hell.)
Also I think throwing a bluray copy of Talladega Nights into the box - a month ahead of the film's actual release - is quite clever. Let people see what bluray is, if they are lucky enough to have a TV that can play HD. This was a popular promo for the PSP.
Anyone have more details of PSP-to-PS3 functionality? I've read numerous 'possibilities', the remote feature, and the stuff about downloading PS1 games to PSP via PS3, but what about streaming movies etc?
This is something I've wondered about for awhile. So-called next gen (is it this gen yet? are we there yet?) consoles will all have some kind of always-connected status. This has got to have people like Nielsen salivating.
Your Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii will all sit there like lumps on your network, sending whatever they like back and forth to the mothership (yes, I know you have a linux firewall. Most don't.) Nintendo and MS have even touted this as a feature. It makes me a little nervous. If your X360 decided to start telling MS about not just how much time you're playing games, but what movies, which music you are listening to? It is a 'pseudo media PC' after all. Nintendo will obviously only be able to track gameplaying (does the Wii play DVDs?). X360 and PS3, if they are used to play ripped music, show photos, watch downloaded episodes etc could provide a pretty rich set of stats on your habits.
You know what the annoying thing about this is - they could have all my stats if they wanted, just not associated with my name. Really I would not care about anonymous collection of media habits. Hell if it keeps a tampon ad out of my copy of DragonFireMasterKiller VIII or whatever, I'm all for it. But the bastards want my name and my habits, and that I have a problem with.
Every store should have the right (and does in most places) to stock what games or products it wants, and if they think a title is not good for their customers, they don't stock it. Not sure why this is news.
Of course they can carry what they like. The 'news' part is, they've done this without having actually seen the game (banned before it went on sale). So in this sense they can ban all they like, but we know for a fact that this was indeed a kneejerk reaction; they simply decided the controversy would cost more than selling the game. On that one I think they are probably wrong - but this is not a major games chain primarily, so its just WalMart all over again.
I am still curious about Bully, is it realy about school violence? To me getting into a fist fight isn't school violence. School violence involves knives, guns, and sever beatings... Are there any reviews out there on the game yet? or moreo n what the game is HONESTLY like? All I have seen are the numerous articles about that idiot attacking the game, and nothing about what the game is really like.
I can tell you what its really like. Played for hours last night.
First off: it is basically GTA meets Harry Potter. But the violence is nowhere near what GTA was; for instance, nobody ever dies, you can't kill people (near as I can tell). And I didn't see any blood.
What you will see is your protagonist hoodlum kid - who is not particularly likeable - immediately set upon by one of the myriad other cliques in the school (jocks, preps, etc). And yes, they sometimes come at you sporting planks of wood or bricks or slingshots.
And you beat the living crap out of them.
Now, I will leave it as an exercise to the reader if this goes beyond the bounds of 'acceptable' entertainment. I thought it was a blast. It is basically your standard male revenge-fantasy, put into a GTA-like sandbox setting with a lot of crisscrossing plot points that you can pick up and put down at will.
Getting into fights will get you busted by overpowering 'prefects' who are essentially the cops of the game. You 'wake up' at the Principal's Office, or the infimary, etc. when this happens. If you get away, you get away. The only thing you can do to the prefects is a fast kick in the nuts, and then you hoof it out of there (or into a locker, or trash can; many shades of Metal Gear in this part of the game - particularly the hiding in lockers part).
If you attack a girl, she instantly neuters you and runs away at light speed. Then the prefects nab you.
So - its not like Columbine, even remotely. No firearms. No trenchcoats. In the standard Rockstar style, they try to obviate the lighter moral questions by making sure that practically every character in the game is an utter bastard in some respect or another. The prefects are assholes. The nerds are assholes (they can't fight but have other tricks). The teachers are assholes. Everyone is an asshole, including you.
(I tried playing the game initally as a sort of 'noble Bully' and you can do that - but quickly you realise that you are just helping another faction.)
So in the end, the controversy is that kids beat each other up in this game and play mean pranks. That's it. It's rated T for Teen in Canada, and that is a fair rating in my opinion.
All this is going to do is leave the kids with more energy after recess which in turn makes them more disruptive. Their discipline problems will probably increase...
That's ok, just give 'em a case of Coke and a copy of Bully, it'll work itself out.
If a child goes through life placidly believing what their parents tell them, as good as the advice may be, that child is going to grow up to be a worker bee, not challenging authority, just following orders.
Near as I can tell, this is a design goal of the current school system. See: Dickens.
My mother is a kindergarten teacher (this is in Canada). Her school adopted a policy years ago that goes even beyond this: no touching.
That's right. No physical contact of any kind between children at recess. Nothing.
I was stunned when I heard that. I thought banning peanut butter was bad, but I can at least see the health issue (kids trade sandwiches at lunch etc).
But no touching? That's gotta have some serious impact on social development, don't you think?
And its all because of shrieking parents. Every one of these measures can be traced back to some hysterical (rightly or no, depends on situation) parent who reacts strongly. Schools basically can do fuck all about parents who act irrationally, other than buckle and ban things.
Any money you spend on Sony gear goes to pay for DRM, CDs infected with crap and other things we dont want.
Any money you spend on Sony 'gear' goes to Sony Electronics.
Any money you send on Sony BMG discs goes to pay for DRM.
There is a difference. "SONY" is not a unified company like you think it is.
I'm not really saying you should end your boycott, but you should at least understand that when you don't buy a Sony stereo reciver or PS3 or whatever, Sony has no fucking idea that this was because of the rootkit that their content arm released.
You can fit like 70 hours of speech on a single DVD, most games hardly reach 10 hours of speech, so even with a DVD you should have plenty of space for your audio needs. Music itself can be quite easily generated procedurally and if there are some spare CPU cycles left, we might see that again as well.
Ah, thats a bad assumption. Voice requires an extremely narrow band of audio frequency to be clear and legible, but your game's music still requires the space that 5.1 audio would normally. That's why podcasts and such are only 32-64kbit but your songs are all 1280-160kbit+.
So a paid-for movie on BlueRay, combined with a Sony "root-kit-o-matic" Vaio, and a non-HDCP display (which is most displays in homes... heck most displays on the market right now) is going to fail to play. Apparently without an error message. Just craps out.
I share your ambivalence over this thing, but be fair. The supplied disc was HDCP-protected. So it didn't play on an HDCP-monitor. We know how this works (and yeah we don't like it). But that is a far cry from 'can't watch my movies' or 'can't record my TV'. Wait and See is the right attitude here, as we have no idea if the market will accept HDCP-protected content or not. I actually happen to think it won't; people are sick of this crap, but more importantly the displays with HDMI/HDCP are simply not out there in anything resembling a critical mass. I think HDCP is stillborn (in content) due to simple market forces. HDMI will just become 'DVI with audio', just another plug. (IMHO)
And one other nitpick - let's put the rootkit blame where it belongs, shall we? Boycott Sony-BMG, that's where it came from. You can boycott Sony Electronics if you think their quality has gone downhill (and its a fair argument, I'm looking at you laptop batteries). I've personally written off all the hydra heads of Sony except SCEA, who - if I'm fair - has provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment very cheaply, with one bad PS2 laser being the only fly in the ointment (and they fixed it very quickly).
- Then you have the "No output at all without HDCP" problem (although early adopters should know this already)
That does raise some eyebrows - but to be fair you need to detail the rest. There are Component, FireWire (!) and S-Video out ports, and you could adapt the HDMI to DVI cheaply and easily. The supplied BD-ROM had HDMI copyprotection on it, but how many of these are really out there yet?
The fact that the hardware can throw a snit about this is bothersome. Sony has 'promised' (whatever that means) not to enable HDMI copyprotection on their BD movies. (Although my Toshiba standalone PVR will also throw a fit if I try to rip a DVD to its internal harddrive.)
End of the day, as long as you don't buy HDMI-protected titles, there's no issue here. Whether or not this will be a choice in the future is an open question, but I'm sure DVDs will continue to play no matter what.
No no no, it was only the "360" so that they could have that crucial number "3" to compete with PlayStation's... Next generation gaming, welcome the "XBox 420" no next-gen console will be more fully-loaded. They've got real high hopes.
So what we're really looking at here is...
Xbox
Xbox 360
Xbox 2009
Xbox Post Millennium Edition
Xbox ZV
Xbox Scenery
etc
I'm actually not surprised that they are rushing (again), if this article is true...
Raise your hands, everyone who remembers Windows 1.0? Windows 2.0?
IE1? IE2?
(Hm, on second thought, this is maybe not such a good idea to poll this particular group with this particular question... save your responses if you have seen these beasts, I'm illustrating a point.)
Its always v3 MS products that get real attention. Win3.1, IE3, etc.
Or perhaps its just 'hurry up and get the Xbox3 team assembled before out shareholders calculate just how much cash we've blown out our asses on this games thing so far'. That's not meant as a troll, but Xbox has hardly been successful so far in any incarnation. I believe the only time that division ever reported a profit was the quarter Halo 2 was released.
"Nearly all of the growth comes from the portable DS -- without it, the industry would report a mere 1.6 per cent growth over the past nine months."
Xbox management team: you are fired. Seriously. Just got your next-gen ass handed to you by an cheap white handheld with two buttons. Because its more fun.
You are sentenced to go play Katamari Damacy and Brain Age for two years.
Seems like the game industry could benefit from modelling these embryonic shows like E3 into a proper event like a Film Festival. E3 was sort of the Cannes of the game world. That way you could have a week-long multi-venue showing with independant game developers shopping their gems (or not) to publishers, and also give a nice nodal point for big releases to aim for (as E3 was for a time).
(Of course, I say this as someone who has been boycotting my own hometown Festival in Toronto, because it got too stupid/greedy/corporate a few years ago. But I see the advantage of the event to content producers.)
With few exceptions, Sony's lineup has nothing on Nintendo's all-star launch and Microsoft "our system is already out so show up or shut up."
Are you joking? Besides the absolutely enormous back library of PS1 and PS2 titles, I don't see any shortage of big games for this launch. Hell, it looks a lot better than the PS2's initial launch lineup.
Peripherals (like bluetooth TV remotes, headsets, controllers, keyboards / mice (?) etc.
Which are directly tied into the system's success. Peripherals don't sell systems, systems sell peripherals.
Yes, however we know for a fact that the system will do well at launch. That is practically a given. So chicken-and-egg is not really an issue with Sony. Wouldn't stop them at any rate. Or 3rd parties for that matter.
Monthly subs from "premium" online services, whatever they happen to be
They just promised not to have monthly subs. And "premium" services are likely to be one-time purchases, not exactly a cash cow system.
Huh? Sounds alright to me! What, you are suddenly concerned with SCEA's bottom line?
Online games, movies & music promote to buy, rent & (sell?)
Unless Sony has some kind of PS3 Online Arcade system in the works, I'm not seeing this happen anytime soon.
Well I'm not convinced that even the well-executed Xbox Arcade is raking in tons of cash. A fine point, but do you think things like Geometry Wars are really going to make or break a platform?
Blu-Ray movies.
Thats assuming Blu-Ray takes off in the first place.
I do assume this. It is practically a foregone conclusion as far as I am concerned. Its not an ideal situation mind you, not one I'd prefer, but I can see the momentum behund Bluray and it is impressive. Apple, Sony, Disney, + 4 of 5 movie studios are on board with that thing. That's all you need to know.
Increased sales of HD televisions.
Sony is not a major seller of HD-TVs these days. They don't own the patents either. Sharp is destroying Sony (and the rest of the market) in marketshare as well.
Dude, put down the kool aid and go look at the Bravias. They are a huge product, Sony sells tons of them. You are deluding yourself if you do not think this console (and the Xbox360) spur HDTV sales.
Increase sales of LocationFree wireless room-to-room / internet streaming devices.
The only people who would probably benefit from this would be companies like Netgear. People don't exactly think Sony when they buy a wireless router.
I also recommend you look up exactly what LocationFree does; Netgear is not involved. It is not a 'wireless router' it is a 'wireless realtime streaming server'. I'm not convinced of this product's viability.
We are pleased that so many of you have volunteered your hard-earned time and money to be the first to work out all the kinks in this first generation of PlaysDISK READ ERROR
Well, this Nintendo fangirl is grumbling. Happy now?
Um, no. I'm not really looking to piss off Nintendo users.
Ok, I'm not terribly upset about it, but these things seem kinda useless to me. I (and probably many people who are buying Wiis instead the higher-end consoles) have a cheap TV so I doubt I'll be able to see the internet in any functional form on it. Plus, lack of keyboard can't be fun. Weather Channel? Don't most people get that with cable anyways? Photo display? Whatever, I have a computer. I hope some people enjoy these features, but I think Nintendo should have spent their time doing somethign else.
Well think of it this way: its totally optional. I kind of picture this functionality as being vaguely Mac OS X/Dashboard-like in execution. That would be alright, a little customizeable 'desktop' that maybe you look at when you turn it on, before the game loads or whatever. But your point is well-taken; there will be N fans who are not pleased that N is even spending any time at all on these frills.
A weather channel? Displaying digital photos? Opera browser?
This stuff is great. Seriously. I like that they are doing this.
However. I never, EVER want to hear from the Nintendo fanboys about how their favourite console eschews all the 'useless bells and whistles' to focus with laserlike intensity on pure gameplay.
Obviously not. They are as eager to pack on the feature-creep as Sony and MS.
(and to reiterate - i like these features, and I have defended Sony and MS for them. Just stating the common N-fan counterargument is that it was all extra fluff that distracted from the point of the thing.)
Actually that's the way it should be. Allow me to explain the reasoning:
Well those are some interesting contortions you've done defending the inconsistency, but at the end of the day there is really only one thing to consider. The close window button (red X) should close windows. It should only close windows, and not do anything else. Thats what the close window button does. It does not mean quit, it does not mean new project, it means close window.
If any joker with a web site can get ahold of pre-production engineering samples of quad core processors and pop them into a socket and voilà! make an 8 core machine, it seems likely that somebody at Apple with access to the source code that builds (over the years) on at least four architectures might have done something similar, at, oh, say... ANY TIME IN THE LAST TEN YEARS?
Holy crap dude, great post, but you sort of brought a gauss rifle to a knife fight.:)
If you could get Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, Ian Mckellen, and Peter Jackson all together again
Each of those people - and Andy Serkis - have publically committed to doing The Hobbit if Jackson directed. (Sorry, I have no link - read it in a trade mag.) So you may well get your wish.
Slashdot Mirror
Also I think throwing a bluray copy of Talladega Nights into the box - a month ahead of the film's actual release - is quite clever. Let people see what bluray is, if they are lucky enough to have a TV that can play HD. This was a popular promo for the PSP.
Anyone have more details of PSP-to-PS3 functionality? I've read numerous 'possibilities', the remote feature, and the stuff about downloading PS1 games to PSP via PS3, but what about streaming movies etc?
Your Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii will all sit there like lumps on your network, sending whatever they like back and forth to the mothership (yes, I know you have a linux firewall. Most don't.) Nintendo and MS have even touted this as a feature. It makes me a little nervous. If your X360 decided to start telling MS about not just how much time you're playing games, but what movies, which music you are listening to? It is a 'pseudo media PC' after all. Nintendo will obviously only be able to track gameplaying (does the Wii play DVDs?). X360 and PS3, if they are used to play ripped music, show photos, watch downloaded episodes etc could provide a pretty rich set of stats on your habits.
You know what the annoying thing about this is - they could have all my stats if they wanted, just not associated with my name. Really I would not care about anonymous collection of media habits. Hell if it keeps a tampon ad out of my copy of DragonFireMasterKiller VIII or whatever, I'm all for it. But the bastards want my name and my habits, and that I have a problem with.
I very much doubt that the robot which answered your email has any significant sway over board meetings.
Of course they can carry what they like. The 'news' part is, they've done this without having actually seen the game (banned before it went on sale). So in this sense they can ban all they like, but we know for a fact that this was indeed a kneejerk reaction; they simply decided the controversy would cost more than selling the game. On that one I think they are probably wrong - but this is not a major games chain primarily, so its just WalMart all over again.
We send them to play Tag over there, so we don't have to play it here?
(seriously though, your post: +5 OUCH)
I can tell you what its really like. Played for hours last night.
First off: it is basically GTA meets Harry Potter. But the violence is nowhere near what GTA was; for instance, nobody ever dies, you can't kill people (near as I can tell). And I didn't see any blood.
What you will see is your protagonist hoodlum kid - who is not particularly likeable - immediately set upon by one of the myriad other cliques in the school (jocks, preps, etc). And yes, they sometimes come at you sporting planks of wood or bricks or slingshots.
And you beat the living crap out of them.
Now, I will leave it as an exercise to the reader if this goes beyond the bounds of 'acceptable' entertainment. I thought it was a blast. It is basically your standard male revenge-fantasy, put into a GTA-like sandbox setting with a lot of crisscrossing plot points that you can pick up and put down at will.
Getting into fights will get you busted by overpowering 'prefects' who are essentially the cops of the game. You 'wake up' at the Principal's Office, or the infimary, etc. when this happens. If you get away, you get away. The only thing you can do to the prefects is a fast kick in the nuts, and then you hoof it out of there (or into a locker, or trash can; many shades of Metal Gear in this part of the game - particularly the hiding in lockers part).
If you attack a girl, she instantly neuters you and runs away at light speed. Then the prefects nab you.
So - its not like Columbine, even remotely. No firearms. No trenchcoats. In the standard Rockstar style, they try to obviate the lighter moral questions by making sure that practically every character in the game is an utter bastard in some respect or another. The prefects are assholes. The nerds are assholes (they can't fight but have other tricks). The teachers are assholes. Everyone is an asshole, including you.
(I tried playing the game initally as a sort of 'noble Bully' and you can do that - but quickly you realise that you are just helping another faction.)
So in the end, the controversy is that kids beat each other up in this game and play mean pranks. That's it. It's rated T for Teen in Canada, and that is a fair rating in my opinion.
That's ok, just give 'em a case of Coke and a copy of Bully, it'll work itself out.
Near as I can tell, this is a design goal of the current school system. See: Dickens.
That's right. No physical contact of any kind between children at recess. Nothing.
I was stunned when I heard that. I thought banning peanut butter was bad, but I can at least see the health issue (kids trade sandwiches at lunch etc).
But no touching? That's gotta have some serious impact on social development, don't you think?
And its all because of shrieking parents. Every one of these measures can be traced back to some hysterical (rightly or no, depends on situation) parent who reacts strongly. Schools basically can do fuck all about parents who act irrationally, other than buckle and ban things.
Any money you spend on Sony 'gear' goes to Sony Electronics.
Any money you send on Sony BMG discs goes to pay for DRM.
There is a difference. "SONY" is not a unified company like you think it is.
I'm not really saying you should end your boycott, but you should at least understand that when you don't buy a Sony stereo reciver or PS3 or whatever, Sony has no fucking idea that this was because of the rootkit that their content arm released.
Ah, thats a bad assumption. Voice requires an extremely narrow band of audio frequency to be clear and legible, but your game's music still requires the space that 5.1 audio would normally. That's why podcasts and such are only 32-64kbit but your songs are all 1280-160kbit+.
I share your ambivalence over this thing, but be fair. The supplied disc was HDCP-protected. So it didn't play on an HDCP-monitor. We know how this works (and yeah we don't like it). But that is a far cry from 'can't watch my movies' or 'can't record my TV'. Wait and See is the right attitude here, as we have no idea if the market will accept HDCP-protected content or not. I actually happen to think it won't; people are sick of this crap, but more importantly the displays with HDMI/HDCP are simply not out there in anything resembling a critical mass. I think HDCP is stillborn (in content) due to simple market forces. HDMI will just become 'DVI with audio', just another plug. (IMHO)
And one other nitpick - let's put the rootkit blame where it belongs, shall we? Boycott Sony-BMG, that's where it came from. You can boycott Sony Electronics if you think their quality has gone downhill (and its a fair argument, I'm looking at you laptop batteries). I've personally written off all the hydra heads of Sony except SCEA, who - if I'm fair - has provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment very cheaply, with one bad PS2 laser being the only fly in the ointment (and they fixed it very quickly).
That does raise some eyebrows - but to be fair you need to detail the rest. There are Component, FireWire (!) and S-Video out ports, and you could adapt the HDMI to DVI cheaply and easily. The supplied BD-ROM had HDMI copyprotection on it, but how many of these are really out there yet?
The fact that the hardware can throw a snit about this is bothersome. Sony has 'promised' (whatever that means) not to enable HDMI copyprotection on their BD movies. (Although my Toshiba standalone PVR will also throw a fit if I try to rip a DVD to its internal harddrive.)
End of the day, as long as you don't buy HDMI-protected titles, there's no issue here. Whether or not this will be a choice in the future is an open question, but I'm sure DVDs will continue to play no matter what.
So what we're really looking at here is...
Xbox
Xbox 360
Xbox 2009
Xbox Post Millennium Edition
Xbox ZV
Xbox Scenery
etc
Raise your hands, everyone who remembers Windows 1.0? Windows 2.0?
IE1? IE2?
(Hm, on second thought, this is maybe not such a good idea to poll this particular group with this particular question... save your responses if you have seen these beasts, I'm illustrating a point.)
Its always v3 MS products that get real attention. Win3.1, IE3, etc.
Or perhaps its just 'hurry up and get the Xbox3 team assembled before out shareholders calculate just how much cash we've blown out our asses on this games thing so far'. That's not meant as a troll, but Xbox has hardly been successful so far in any incarnation. I believe the only time that division ever reported a profit was the quarter Halo 2 was released.
Ah well, I wish 'em luck.
Xbox management team: you are fired. Seriously. Just got your next-gen ass handed to you by an cheap white handheld with two buttons. Because its more fun.
You are sentenced to go play Katamari Damacy and Brain Age for two years.
(Of course, I say this as someone who has been boycotting my own hometown Festival in Toronto, because it got too stupid/greedy/corporate a few years ago. But I see the advantage of the event to content producers.)
Are you joking? Besides the absolutely enormous back library of PS1 and PS2 titles, I don't see any shortage of big games for this launch. Hell, it looks a lot better than the PS2's initial launch lineup.
Which are directly tied into the system's success. Peripherals don't sell systems, systems sell peripherals.
Yes, however we know for a fact that the system will do well at launch. That is practically a given. So chicken-and-egg is not really an issue with Sony. Wouldn't stop them at any rate. Or 3rd parties for that matter.
Huh? Sounds alright to me! What, you are suddenly concerned with SCEA's bottom line?
Well I'm not convinced that even the well-executed Xbox Arcade is raking in tons of cash. A fine point, but do you think things like Geometry Wars are really going to make or break a platform?
I do assume this. It is practically a foregone conclusion as far as I am concerned. Its not an ideal situation mind you, not one I'd prefer, but I can see the momentum behund Bluray and it is impressive. Apple, Sony, Disney, + 4 of 5 movie studios are on board with that thing. That's all you need to know.
Dude, put down the kool aid and go look at the Bravias. They are a huge product, Sony sells tons of them. You are deluding yourself if you do not think this console (and the Xbox360) spur HDTV sales.
The only people who would probably benefit from this would be companies like Netgear. People don't exactly think Sony when they buy a wireless router.I also recommend you look up exactly what LocationFree does; Netgear is not involved. It is not a 'wireless router' it is a 'wireless realtime streaming server'. I'm not convinced of this product's viability.
We are pleased that so many of you have volunteered your hard-earned time and money to be the first to work out all the kinks in this first generation of PlaysDISK READ ERROR
Um, no. I'm not really looking to piss off Nintendo users.
Well think of it this way: its totally optional. I kind of picture this functionality as being vaguely Mac OS X/Dashboard-like in execution. That would be alright, a little customizeable 'desktop' that maybe you look at when you turn it on, before the game loads or whatever. But your point is well-taken; there will be N fans who are not pleased that N is even spending any time at all on these frills.
This stuff is great. Seriously. I like that they are doing this.
However. I never, EVER want to hear from the Nintendo fanboys about how their favourite console eschews all the 'useless bells and whistles' to focus with laserlike intensity on pure gameplay.
Obviously not. They are as eager to pack on the feature-creep as Sony and MS.
(and to reiterate - i like these features, and I have defended Sony and MS for them. Just stating the common N-fan counterargument is that it was all extra fluff that distracted from the point of the thing.)
Well those are some interesting contortions you've done defending the inconsistency, but at the end of the day there is really only one thing to consider. The close window button (red X) should close windows. It should only close windows, and not do anything else. Thats what the close window button does. It does not mean quit, it does not mean new project, it means close window.
And yes, OS 9 and under were better about this.
Holy crap dude, great post, but you sort of brought a gauss rifle to a knife fight. :)
Each of those people - and Andy Serkis - have publically committed to doing The Hobbit if Jackson directed. (Sorry, I have no link - read it in a trade mag.) So you may well get your wish.