The main thing is "not established." Where-as Big N has used MANY proprietary doo-dads in their products, none of them was something along the lines of the whole BluRay/HDDVD fiasco. There's a difference between them using small discs or funky headphone jacks, relatively cheap/minor nuisances, and picking an expensive disc player (for movies) that may become the next BetaMax.
Honestly though, I have to say I'm surprised at Microsoft during this whole thing. I was expecting them to be as assinine as Sony, but they're relatively tame in comparison.
Agreed. If I'm playing NHL Hockey and see some ads along the rink's wall then I don't care if it's a make-believe Cola company ad or a Pepsi ad. Likewise, if I'm street-racing in another game and see a well-placed billboard or a painted building wall, then I don't care.
Just keep it low-key or interesting.
There is no need for something more than 1 GHz for standard office and even programming use.
It depends. If you're just using a small IDE, then yeh that's fine. But try using BEA Weblogic 8.1 with a 1GHz machine and too little RAM; it requires running a hefty app server in dev mode and uses a beafy IDE. Once you get a large enough project going it get's pretty hoggy.
Not everyone gets to work with small HS/College stuff, or scripting languages, or even just small/medium projects. Some things just require a lot of heft.
But even in those cases, 2GHz and plenty of ram should be enough.
OK, don't get me wrong I like my XBox 360. I've decided to primarily game on my 360 and my eventual Nintendo Wii. The 360 is a decent piece of hardware and some of the games are quite fun.
But I've noticed some slowdown and tearing in certain parts of some games; most noticeably certain dark sections of "Dead Rising" and some portions of the new "Test Drive" game, not to mention multiplayer Full Auto. This is running at 720p.
Now, my problem is, if the developers already hitting the limits on this, how much further can they go? Sure, as time goes on they learn to optimize their code for the 360 better, but this is still pretty early. How can they expect to make games "look much better" down the line without killing the performance?
If the games were closer together I'd rather have the episodic games. If 6months was the high-end of the wait period, then great. But 12 months is too much.
My problem is some games start out great, but after a while they sort of taper off. It's almost like the writers/level designers ran out of imagination or got bored and start throwing repetitive garbage at us, or just some horrible gameplay. Look at Halo, with the whole repetitive-loop Library maps and such; almost like the writers were really struggling to give us those x/hours of gameplay.
If they can provide small bundles of fun each time and get them out quick enough, then I'm all for it. But if the lag time is too great (or the quality just isn't there) then forget it.
Since the console is sold at a loss, Sony has to make their profits on the games. They literally can't afford to sell games at lower prices
It's a pickle, I'll give you that. But that's the problem with a competitive market.
If you sell them at too low a price, it will be harder to make your profit back. Essentially each owner will need to buy more games to recoup the hardware loss.
But if you raise the price, fewer people will buy them. This is amplified by a competing product. If your console is more expensive than the competition AND your games are more expensive than your competition then fewer will buy your product. So you either need to stay near your competition's price or offer something substantially better.
Sometimes just adding a few dollars can make a massive different to sales. You have to speculate where the sweet spot is for sales x price.
I didn't mind the ThinkSecret (or whatever) thing so much. After all someone leaked out classified info (thus violating their NDA) and they wanted to know who did it. ThinkSecret didn't do anything wrong by publishing it, but they pissed off Apple by withholding the name of the source by claiming to be protected as a news source. I'd probably go the same way as Apple to find out who was leaking stuff.
But this... eh. On one hand I can see them doing a small portion of this: like preventing another MP3 player from being called the ePod or the tunePod. And maybe after a company for making an aftermarket product like the PodProtector or the PodBud; some company not affiliated with Apple whatsoever using the name that might imply it's an officially branded add-on. After all, they have to protect their brand and people trying to capitalize off it (to an extent).
But the PodCast thing is taking that too far. I agree with other posters saying that they should just be glad the term is getting out there.
Patriotism? No. After my recent problems with a brand-new Cadillac I'm all but convinced any other country can do a better job at designing/manufacturing than the US.
The problem people are having is the $600 pricepoint, some people just can't wrap their heads around it. Considering the "light" system is still pretty recent news, this might start changing people's minds about buying one.
In the US our non-core XBox 360 is about $400USD/$447CAD, assuming you're not buying some sort of bundle. $400 is at the high end in most peoples' eyes, and was still getting reemed in the media for being high when it was released.
The non-core PS3 is still rumored to be about $600USD/$670CAD. That's 50% more for the non-core system! No matter how you cut it, that's a big difference. Hmmm, do I buy a $40k car or a $60k caller? 1505 x (expensive) = very expensive. Because once you start throwing in a game or two, an HDMI cable, maybe another controller you're coming too close to $1,000 for a game system that your kid will want to replace in a few years.
Though the "light" PS3 doesn't look very "light" at all, it actually looks pretty respectable. If the light PS3 is all they say at the $500 pricepoint I might consider getting one.
I thought pre-orders were basically a scam, in that it really doesn't guarantee that they will reserve one with your name on it, all while selling to people who did not pre-order. Hasn't that been the experience of most people who pre-order?
My experiences at different stores:
Whenever I've preordered something (anywhere) it's been held for me so I can get it release day (or afterwards).
There have been times where I did not preorder and when I tried to pickup something on release day they refused, usually claiming that they only had enough stock to satisfy pre-orders. And I know they had them in stock because the guy next to me was able to pick his preorder up.
So it probably depends on the place. For me, I've seen the preorder system work the way it's "supposed" to from both ends.
Meanwhile, the XBox 360 launch was abysmal with preorders. Supposedly those that preordered very early on were given lower priority than those that purchased later (but purchased MORE games/controllers/etc), which is kind of lame. It should be first-come first-serve, not who spends the most.
Luckily for Nintendo, they sold the Gamecube at a profit. It's a little known business trick in the console industry, but not selling your products at a loss is a great way to make money.
Nice little dig, but it makes sense to take a loss in Sony's case because their unit is just so flippin expensive to make.
Imagine if they tried selling it at a profit -- if the production costs are as high as people are saying then it would priced around $800-$1,000 USD. They'd price themselves out of the market since a price like that would absolutely crush demand. Only the most diehard gamers would buy it, it would be NeoGeo all over again. After all, why spend $1,000 on a game system when you can go out and buy a computer.
Meanwhile the Wii costs comparitively little to produce, so selling it a profit is fairly easy. After all a $250 unit (with a game) is pretty good, especially when other new systems are quite a lot higher. At that price point you're still well within the price-range people are willing to pay, but you were only able to do it because your system was cheap (to produce).
So because Sony decided to through everything including the kitchen sink into their box, if they priced it at a profit you'd have to shell out close to A THOUSAND DOLLARS before you even guy any games!?!?!?!? By selling it at a loss, they increase the demand and pray that the increase sales lead to enough gamesAND Blue Ray movies to offset the loss and start leading into a proft.
In the end, the best move would have been to not make such an expensive system. But since they did, they have to hedge their bets on people wanting games and BluRay movies.
On a related note, I was under the impression that the Pirate Bay had been taken down and was now being closely monitored and downloading from them was essentially flagging yourself.
I haven't read that.
While it was taken down, they supposedly got new servers and setup elsewhere. Now, if you don't want to believe that then I don't think anybody can fault you. It's not like the MPAA and such play fair and that would be just the sort of thing they might try. But this is the first I've heard someone say they've heard this elsewhere.
As for me, with Comcast's (buggy) HD DVR I'm hard-pressed to find a reason to download a TV show (which would be the only thing I'd hypothetically get in this manner). I have too many things to worry about than to add "fear of lawsuit" to the list, so I try to stay clear of this whole mess. Though I do enjoy reading about everything that's going on -- it's funny yet disturbing.
So, between a DVR, NetFlix, and iTunes I'm pretty much well covered.
Outlook regularly has my XP box completely out to lunch. Sure, I don't see the BSOD, but if I can't use the machine, what's the difference?
Same thing with Lotus Notes. Every now and then, Notes will kick into high gear, use up 99% of the CPU and a LOT of I/O. It's not just on my system, but a couple of other people as well.
I'm not locked out or anything, and have had the occasional app just start running at 99% for no reason. But combined with the insane I/O usage it takes forever for me to do anything without killing the process.
Geosynchronous satellites reside at roughly 35,786 kilometers altitude. Multiply by two for the round trip, or 71,572 KM. The speed of light is 299,792 kilometers per second. Therefore, it would take light itself (in a vacuum) 239 milliseconds JUST to travel the distance.
You need to actually multiply by 4!
Home to Satellite Satellite to ISP ISP to Satellite Satellite to Home
And as you said, that's on top of the regular latency between the ISP and the game servers.
Why do TiVo, when you can MythTV? Spend $50 on a PVR-150, and record all the shows that you want. Drag them onto your laptop when you get around to it. That, and the other 90% of MythTV really makes the television something interesting again -- it's got shows I want to watch.
Plus, it eats the commercials -- how cool is that?
Requires 2 machines, one of which a laptop or small/quiet desktop
It requires a sliver of IT knowledge
Other reasons
Don't get me wrong, it's a good solution... IF you have the know-how, hardware, and time. And while I'd imagine a lot of slashdotters fit all 3 conditions, they aren't really a good sampling of the general public. Plus, I'm sure a HUGE percent (though still a minority) of slashdotters fail to meet 1 or 2 of the conditions.
I read an article. What brief details were offered, it said the device can let you browse the PCs on your network to stream the video from there. I don't know if this is in addition to internal storage or instead of.
I'd imagine they'd have a quick little piece of software to install on any old Windows or Mac box to allow it to stream to the iTV.
I fly internationally once-or-twice per year. The only time I ever had a problem was at the Zurich airport.
In the US, I only have to wait in those god-awful lines, but there was no problem.
They changed it. For starters, it's now 640x480 (or 480p). That's better than basic shows (unless you have HD, which there are only a new non-premium channels).
And for the screen, you realize you can do a fullscreen... right? Just double-click on the tiny-image at the bottom-left.
Well, many shows have Season Pass available. So if you know off-the-bat that you'll be watching a whole season of a show, you can get a season pass. I believe that it cut the price of individual episodes down a lot, around half. I just don't recall the prices off the top of my head.
Every object has a different terminal velocity, it's not a simple plug-and-play equation. You'll need to calculate the aero-dynamics of the object, looking at such things like mass, surface area, etc.
It's a Software Update, meaning they will push it via XBox Live. Likewise, games also come with various XBox 360 updates for those that can't conenct to the Internet.
You're right about there needing to be standardization. But this situation isn't an example of it.
I remember back when Counter-Strike was "new" (and "beta"). One day I was in "the zone" and the server admin was picking open-maps to just have all-out skirmishes. So both teams were just rushing eachother with little/no strategy except "don't die."
I'd hang back for a minute then go pick-off the remains. I'd sneak around, walking, in the shadows with my carbine. And because everyone left was already pretty hurt it wouldn't take more than a few shots to take them out. After a couple of rounds I was #1 by a fair margin. The admin started kicking me and said I must have been cheating to the other players.
Now, being as I was always playing with the same few dozen people this annoyed me. I mean, I knew most of these people in-person as well as the mod. And while I was not one of the best players, I'd classify myself as pretty good. Fortunately everyone had short memories so it was forgotten by the next day.
But it still annoyed me that my skill and luck got me kicked out of the server constantly and labelled as a "cheater" (short-lived as it was).
If I want an entire album (which happens on occasion) I'd rather go to the BestBuy near my office and rip it. But usually I just want 1 or 2 songs off the album, at which point I'll happily shell out the $0.99 per song. This way in the end I save around $10-$12 by not buying songs I don't like or want.
If they offered higher quality encodings (like the Apple lossless or a high bit-rate mp4) for the same price my opinion might vary. But for now if you want a whole album (or even most of the songs on it) it just makes more sense to buy the physical media.
Slashdot Mirror
The main thing is "not established." Where-as Big N has used MANY proprietary doo-dads in their products, none of them was something along the lines of the whole BluRay/HDDVD fiasco. There's a difference between them using small discs or funky headphone jacks, relatively cheap/minor nuisances, and picking an expensive disc player (for movies) that may become the next BetaMax.
Honestly though, I have to say I'm surprised at Microsoft during this whole thing. I was expecting them to be as assinine as Sony, but they're relatively tame in comparison.
Agreed. If I'm playing NHL Hockey and see some ads along the rink's wall then I don't care if it's a make-believe Cola company ad or a Pepsi ad. Likewise, if I'm street-racing in another game and see a well-placed billboard or a painted building wall, then I don't care. Just keep it low-key or interesting.
Not everyone gets to work with small HS/College stuff, or scripting languages, or even just small/medium projects. Some things just require a lot of heft.
But even in those cases, 2GHz and plenty of ram should be enough.
OK, don't get me wrong I like my XBox 360. I've decided to primarily game on my 360 and my eventual Nintendo Wii. The 360 is a decent piece of hardware and some of the games are quite fun.
But I've noticed some slowdown and tearing in certain parts of some games; most noticeably certain dark sections of "Dead Rising" and some portions of the new "Test Drive" game, not to mention multiplayer Full Auto. This is running at 720p.
Now, my problem is, if the developers already hitting the limits on this, how much further can they go? Sure, as time goes on they learn to optimize their code for the 360 better, but this is still pretty early. How can they expect to make games "look much better" down the line without killing the performance?
Heck, New Jersey is supposedly only 2,000 square miles. A FAR cry less than UK. According to the CIA Factbook, the UK is slightly smaller than Oregon.
If the games were closer together I'd rather have the episodic games. If 6months was the high-end of the wait period, then great. But 12 months is too much. My problem is some games start out great, but after a while they sort of taper off. It's almost like the writers/level designers ran out of imagination or got bored and start throwing repetitive garbage at us, or just some horrible gameplay. Look at Halo, with the whole repetitive-loop Library maps and such; almost like the writers were really struggling to give us those x/hours of gameplay. If they can provide small bundles of fun each time and get them out quick enough, then I'm all for it. But if the lag time is too great (or the quality just isn't there) then forget it.
Well, I know for a while they were releasing new Issues a couple times per year, as well as weekly/monthly updates. Has that stopped all of a sudden?
Sometimes just adding a few dollars can make a massive different to sales. You have to speculate where the sweet spot is for sales x price.
I didn't mind the ThinkSecret (or whatever) thing so much. After all someone leaked out classified info (thus violating their NDA) and they wanted to know who did it. ThinkSecret didn't do anything wrong by publishing it, but they pissed off Apple by withholding the name of the source by claiming to be protected as a news source. I'd probably go the same way as Apple to find out who was leaking stuff.
But this... eh. On one hand I can see them doing a small portion of this: like preventing another MP3 player from being called the ePod or the tunePod. And maybe after a company for making an aftermarket product like the PodProtector or the PodBud; some company not affiliated with Apple whatsoever using the name that might imply it's an officially branded add-on. After all, they have to protect their brand and people trying to capitalize off it (to an extent).
But the PodCast thing is taking that too far. I agree with other posters saying that they should just be glad the term is getting out there.
Patriotism? No. After my recent problems with a brand-new Cadillac I'm all but convinced any other country can do a better job at designing/manufacturing than the US.
The problem people are having is the $600 pricepoint, some people just can't wrap their heads around it. Considering the "light" system is still pretty recent news, this might start changing people's minds about buying one.
In the US our non-core XBox 360 is about $400USD/$447CAD, assuming you're not buying some sort of bundle. $400 is at the high end in most peoples' eyes, and was still getting reemed in the media for being high when it was released.
The non-core PS3 is still rumored to be about $600USD/$670CAD. That's 50% more for the non-core system! No matter how you cut it, that's a big difference. Hmmm, do I buy a $40k car or a $60k caller? 1505 x (expensive) = very expensive. Because once you start throwing in a game or two, an HDMI cable, maybe another controller you're coming too close to $1,000 for a game system that your kid will want to replace in a few years.
Though the "light" PS3 doesn't look very "light" at all, it actually looks pretty respectable. If the light PS3 is all they say at the $500 pricepoint I might consider getting one.
- Whenever I've preordered something (anywhere) it's been held for me so I can get it release day (or afterwards).
- There have been times where I did not preorder and when I tried to pickup something on release day they refused, usually claiming that they only had enough stock to satisfy pre-orders. And I know they had them in stock because the guy next to me was able to pick his preorder up.
So it probably depends on the place. For me, I've seen the preorder system work the way it's "supposed" to from both ends.Meanwhile, the XBox 360 launch was abysmal with preorders. Supposedly those that preordered very early on were given lower priority than those that purchased later (but purchased MORE games/controllers/etc), which is kind of lame. It should be first-come first-serve, not who spends the most.
Nice little dig, but it makes sense to take a loss in Sony's case because their unit is just so flippin expensive to make.
Imagine if they tried selling it at a profit -- if the production costs are as high as people are saying then it would priced around $800-$1,000 USD. They'd price themselves out of the market since a price like that would absolutely crush demand. Only the most diehard gamers would buy it, it would be NeoGeo all over again. After all, why spend $1,000 on a game system when you can go out and buy a computer.
Meanwhile the Wii costs comparitively little to produce, so selling it a profit is fairly easy. After all a $250 unit (with a game) is pretty good, especially when other new systems are quite a lot higher. At that price point you're still well within the price-range people are willing to pay, but you were only able to do it because your system was cheap (to produce).
So because Sony decided to through everything including the kitchen sink into their box, if they priced it at a profit you'd have to shell out close to A THOUSAND DOLLARS before you even guy any games!?!?!?!? By selling it at a loss, they increase the demand and pray that the increase sales lead to enough gamesAND Blue Ray movies to offset the loss and start leading into a proft.
In the end, the best move would have been to not make such an expensive system. But since they did, they have to hedge their bets on people wanting games and BluRay movies.
I haven't read that.
While it was taken down, they supposedly got new servers and setup elsewhere. Now, if you don't want to believe that then I don't think anybody can fault you. It's not like the MPAA and such play fair and that would be just the sort of thing they might try. But this is the first I've heard someone say they've heard this elsewhere.
As for me, with Comcast's (buggy) HD DVR I'm hard-pressed to find a reason to download a TV show (which would be the only thing I'd hypothetically get in this manner). I have too many things to worry about than to add "fear of lawsuit" to the list, so I try to stay clear of this whole mess. Though I do enjoy reading about everything that's going on -- it's funny yet disturbing.
So, between a DVR, NetFlix, and iTunes I'm pretty much well covered.
I'm not locked out or anything, and have had the occasional app just start running at 99% for no reason. But combined with the insane I/O usage it takes forever for me to do anything without killing the process.
You need to actually multiply by 4!
Home to Satellite
Satellite to ISP
ISP to Satellite
Satellite to Home
And as you said, that's on top of the regular latency between the ISP and the game servers.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good solution... IF you have the know-how, hardware, and time. And while I'd imagine a lot of slashdotters fit all 3 conditions, they aren't really a good sampling of the general public. Plus, I'm sure a HUGE percent (though still a minority) of slashdotters fail to meet 1 or 2 of the conditions.
Tivo is rather simple... plug and play.
I read an article. What brief details were offered, it said the device can let you browse the PCs on your network to stream the video from there. I don't know if this is in addition to internal storage or instead of.
I'd imagine they'd have a quick little piece of software to install on any old Windows or Mac box to allow it to stream to the iTV.
I fly internationally once-or-twice per year. The only time I ever had a problem was at the Zurich airport. In the US, I only have to wait in those god-awful lines, but there was no problem.
They changed it. For starters, it's now 640x480 (or 480p). That's better than basic shows (unless you have HD, which there are only a new non-premium channels).
And for the screen, you realize you can do a fullscreen... right? Just double-click on the tiny-image at the bottom-left.
Well, many shows have Season Pass available. So if you know off-the-bat that you'll be watching a whole season of a show, you can get a season pass. I believe that it cut the price of individual episodes down a lot, around half. I just don't recall the prices off the top of my head.
Every object has a different terminal velocity, it's not a simple plug-and-play equation. You'll need to calculate the aero-dynamics of the object, looking at such things like mass, surface area, etc.
It's a Software Update, meaning they will push it via XBox Live. Likewise, games also come with various XBox 360 updates for those that can't conenct to the Internet.
You're right about there needing to be standardization. But this situation isn't an example of it.
I remember back when Counter-Strike was "new" (and "beta"). One day I was in "the zone" and the server admin was picking open-maps to just have all-out skirmishes. So both teams were just rushing eachother with little/no strategy except "don't die."
I'd hang back for a minute then go pick-off the remains. I'd sneak around, walking, in the shadows with my carbine. And because everyone left was already pretty hurt it wouldn't take more than a few shots to take them out. After a couple of rounds I was #1 by a fair margin. The admin started kicking me and said I must have been cheating to the other players.
Now, being as I was always playing with the same few dozen people this annoyed me. I mean, I knew most of these people in-person as well as the mod. And while I was not one of the best players, I'd classify myself as pretty good. Fortunately everyone had short memories so it was forgotten by the next day.
But it still annoyed me that my skill and luck got me kicked out of the server constantly and labelled as a "cheater" (short-lived as it was).
If I want an entire album (which happens on occasion) I'd rather go to the BestBuy near my office and rip it. But usually I just want 1 or 2 songs off the album, at which point I'll happily shell out the $0.99 per song. This way in the end I save around $10-$12 by not buying songs I don't like or want.
If they offered higher quality encodings (like the Apple lossless or a high bit-rate mp4) for the same price my opinion might vary. But for now if you want a whole album (or even most of the songs on it) it just makes more sense to buy the physical media.