Could it be because they're not actually that great when it comes to gaming? Could it be that, *gasp*, like some other gaming groups and clans of females, they're really just hired models, funded by a corporation, designed to invoke the "oh, HOT!" response in the male crowd?
Find yourself a chance to play with some of the top girls in our clan, and say that again. After you've been seriously pwn3d, that is.
While being great at gaming is not a requirement to get into PMS (though a good attitude and sportsmanship IS), there are plenty of gals in PMS that seriously can kick some ass. And even those of us who aren't quite as amazingly good are still serious hard-core gamers. We're in the clan because we love gaming, and love having a bunch of other girls to play with instead of having to deal with masses of braindead idiots out there.
And BTW, if you're suggesting that the Frag Dolls are just hired models, think again - 3 of them are PMS members (one is the other founder of PMS), and they are far from hired models. I watched them win the GR2 tourney at PAX, for instance.
And you'll notice it requires a hard drive, which is something that we were told earlier in the week we wouldn't need. Good times.
It has actually been known for months that backward compatibility would require a hard drive. At least since they revealed the two-SKU approach they're following. If you thought otherwise, then you misread or misunderstood what was being said in interviews.
GMail had more space and a better UI, so I went with it... still have my hotmail, and may go back if the new UI they're doing is as easy to use as it looks.
I also use WinAmp over WMP, cause the MMD3 skin allows me to keep it in a nice little toolbar on the top of one of my monitors, where I can get to all the controls and info, but doesn't use up too much space. WMP doesn't have something as convienent...
And even Firefox, since tabbed browsing is just that great.
I don't get too down on mainstream stuff, but I do realize that most people just don't have enough exposure to a good variety to find some of the less-popular stuff that they'd also like. I know this because I was there once, before finding means to discover new, less well known artists.
As an alternative, I would recommend checking out Last.fm. The site allows users to track all the music they listen to on their PC, and it processes the data to create "similarity" data between artists based on what people actually listen to, instead of just purchasing data.
It will also find a user a set of musical "neighbors", other people with similar artist interests, and recommend new music based on those neighbors.
I've found a TON of new stuff through the site, and highly recommend it to anyone else who listens to music on the PC. It's so easy to use (sign up, install a plugin, enter username/password, and forget about it) it's almost silly NOT to use it.
Yeah, it's not bad... though I entered "The Eyes of Truth" by Enigma, and got a crapload of Disco thrown back at me by the place. Gawd, did I hate that! It's kinda soured me on the whole thing.
Last.fm, however, I'm nuts over. It uses listen data to recommend new artists, not purchase data - so it does a good job of connecting artists. I've found a ton of new music through using the site - the bulk of what I'm listening to now is stuff I didn't even know about a year ago.
A lot of people will be disappointed when they opt for the cheaper model and find out a few hours later that they still need to spend another 40 bucks before they can save their game.
Yeah, we see how badly that hurt the PS2 sales when people realized they had to buy a memory card for it.
The guy got ten years older, and in the process ended up looking ten years YOUNGER. Most of the people I know would LOVE to end up doing a similar thing - I know I sure as hell would!
Besides, who actually wants to look like a corporate drone?
Hmmm... thinking about what most of my fellow Microsofties wear, perhaps quite a few people do...:/
Technically, all games took advantage of the HD. For saving settings data, save games, and some amount of built-in caching. These same things will likely be done with the 360 if you have a HD.
However, the number of games that were written to do anything significant with the HD was very, VERY small.
1) Downloadable content for games. Not just a little, as will fit on a memory card, but lots and lots of it. Especially important for any patches.
2) Downloadable media - game trailers and the like.
3) Backward compat. Because the original Xbox has a HD and did not abstract it away, all Xbox 1 games will require a HD to run at all.
4) Games CAN use it. They just won't require it. There are games that will release on or close to launch day that will make use of the HD to improve the game experience.
There is plenty of reason to get the HD, and it's more or less a necessity of you plan on playing over Live (a memory card will work, but the experience will be pretty piss-poor, I'd guess).
I actually got to play the demo level of Kameo, and it looks, sounds, and plays quite nicely. I'm much more interested in it now that I've had a hands-on with the game.
And PGR3 looks so incredible from the footage I've seen that I may have to pick that up too.
My understanding is that there are loopholes in German law which has somehow been used by Uwe Boll and his financiers. Essentially, they make the movie, it tanks horribly, they're able to take some sort of tax write-off which in the end allows them to MAKE money. In other words, they intentionally made the movies so completely bad.
However, this loophole is supposed to be closed next year, so we may see Uwe Boll out of a job, and gamers around the world rejoicing.
I belive there's something about it on Wikipedia, but the site's not responding for me at the moment...:(
Actually, the music in Revenge is much more tolerable than the crap in Takedown. I haven't really hit anything that I just felt the need to turn off yet, and some of them are even growing on me. It's still music befitting EA shovelware, but it would be much worse.
I'd say the decision should be influenced by whether or not you play on Xbox Live. Burnout 3 is much cheaper and still a ton of fun, but there's really nobody left online to play against, and those that are, are really good at the game.
Revenge, on the other hand, has a lot more people playing, and a nice variety of skill levels to make sure you're not going to get crushed by others. Besides, the game seems to handle online play a heck of a lot better in general - still nowhere near as good as Halo 2's amazing implementation, but good enough. And Live really is fun enough to make it worth playing online.
Microsoft didn't make a big deal out of it - the media did, especially Xbox-oriented gaming sites. They hyped it all up, so if it's a disappointment, blame the ones that did the hype.
Yes, you are correct - you can play MMORPGs on the Xbox 360 without having to sign up for an Xbox Live Gold account. That one is only needed for playing mutliplayer with your standard games. Any game that charges on it's own for multiplayer play will not require payment to Xbox Live.
The fact that PS3 will run the dozens of thousand of PS2 games while Xbox 360 is not backwards compatible to Xbox1 is merely a side issue.
The fact that this has repeatedly stated to be false makes this a non-issue, except for the rabit anti-Microsoft bashers around here. The 360 has back compat through emulation, and while it won't be 100%, the number will only increase over time. All the big games will be running at launch, and probably a lot more.
I'll judge the PS3 when they actually get close to shipping something, so I can see what the actual specs are going to be, not the hyped specs that have no chance in being real. They've already shed some things from the E3 claims, and I'm sure more will be coming - only closer the PS3 launch, so they can distract as many people as possible with how amazing the machine supposedly will be, only to find lots of stuff disappearing not long before actual launch.
There has been no announcement about which games are back compat for a reason - they're trying to get as many as possible to run.
What they're doing is going after making sure a few of the popular - and system demanding - titles are working, knowing that by getting those to run flawlessly, they're going to get a LOT more games to run just because those games will use a subset of what the other games did.
I'm sure we won't see 100% back compat, cause surely a few titles here and there are going to give problems, but not be popular enough to justify spending the time making them work. Heck, the PS2 wasn't 100% back compat. But I expect a large majority to be running right from the start, not just a few popular titles.
The Jaguar has five processors which are contained in three chips. Two of
the chips are proprietary designs, nicknamed "Tom" and "Jerry". The third
chip is a standard Motorola 68000, and used as a coprocessor. Tom and
Jerry are built using an 0.5 micron silicon process. With proper
programming, all five processors can run in parallel.
- "Tom"
- 750,000 transistors, 208 pins
- Graphics Processing Unit (processor #1)
- 32-bit RISC architecture (32/64 processor)
- 64 registers of 32 bits wide
- Has access to all 64 bits of the system bus
- Can read 64 bits of data in one instruction
- Rated at 26.591 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 26.591 MHz
- 4K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
- Performs a wide range of high-speed graphic effects
- Programmable
- Object processor (processor #2)
- 64-bit RISC architecture
- 64-bit wide registers
- Programmable processor that can act as a variety of different video
architectures, such as a sprite engine, a pixel-mapped display, a
character-mapped system, and others.
- Blitter (processor #3)
- 64-bit RISC architecture
- 64-bit wide registers
- Performs high-speed logical operations
- Hardware support for Z-buffering and Gouraud shading
- DRAM memory controller
- 64 bits
- Accesses the DRAM directly
- "Jerry"
- 600,000 transistors, 144 pins
- Digital Signal Processor (processor #4)
- 32 bits (32-bit registers)
- Rated at 26.6 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 26.6 MHz
- Same RISC core as the Graphics Processing Unit
- Not limited to sound generation
- 8K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
- CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo)
- Number of sound channels limited by software
- Two DACs (stereo) convert digital data to analog sound signals
- Full stereo capabilities
- Wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis, FM Sample synthesis, and AM
synthesis
- A clock control block, incorporating timers, and a UART
- Joystick control
- Motorola 68000 (processor #5)
- Runs at 13.295MHz
Actually, it's hard to know what the machine was capable of - they didn't have great development tools available, and half the games were little more than 16-bit ports that did little more than use the 68k chip, leaving the rest of the power unused. Was it exaggerated? Well, we'll never really know. (To be fair, what console hasn't exaggerated?)
And I would actually say that your cell phone can work as a digital camera - not a good one mind you, but it's there.
Okay, so Atari didn't get out of the hardware business entirely after the XE. With the PlayStation and Saturn launches two years away, Atari took another stab at the US market with the ill-conceived Jaguar, which was 64-bit in the same way that the TurboGrafx-16 was 16-bit (it wasn't).
*sigh*
It's been over a decade, yet game journalists KEEP REPEATING THIS %*$#ING LIE. Yes, it was 64-bit. Multiple chips were 64-bit, along with some system busses. They called it 64-bit BECAUSE IT IS.
I have about 5 gigs of capacity left on my 30gb iPod, at which point I'll have to start removing the stuff I'm not as interested in having on there. That's after having my iPod for about 5 months. So yeah, I see why the Nano can easily have enough capacity for most people.
When I got my 30gb, I was even looking at the 60gb, but decided to pass. I can't possibly imagine now what I'd have to do to fill THAT one up...
Of course thats why I enjoy playing video games instead of watching someone play because I'll be jumping up and down screaming "NO NO NO!! Pick up the Redeemer! It's right there you fool!!!"
People enjoy watching professional sports, even when they play those sports themselves, because it can be enjoyable to watch the sport played at a skill level that most people can never even hope to attain. You won't see a Michael Jordan on your local basketball court, or a Sammy Sosa in your recreational softball league.
I've watched some video games played at a skill level above mine, and when you know the game decently, it can be quite exciting - and even more so when you know the people playing. I'd never seen Ghost Recon 2, but I watched a friend's team playing at a tournament at PAX, and did find it quite enjoyable to watch. And I have videos on my computer here at work of Halo matches from some of the best players - and it's exciting, and even educational in some ways to notice the differences between how I play and how they do.
How are you going to afford games after buying the PS3? Kutaragi's already bragged about how people are going to have to work extra hours just to afford the thing... you'll probably have to sell an organ to actually get games for the thing after spending your life savings on the console...
Slashdot Mirror
Could it be because they're not actually that great when it comes to gaming? Could it be that, *gasp*, like some other gaming groups and clans of females, they're really just hired models, funded by a corporation, designed to invoke the "oh, HOT!" response in the male crowd?
Find yourself a chance to play with some of the top girls in our clan, and say that again. After you've been seriously pwn3d, that is.
While being great at gaming is not a requirement to get into PMS (though a good attitude and sportsmanship IS), there are plenty of gals in PMS that seriously can kick some ass. And even those of us who aren't quite as amazingly good are still serious hard-core gamers. We're in the clan because we love gaming, and love having a bunch of other girls to play with instead of having to deal with masses of braindead idiots out there.
And BTW, if you're suggesting that the Frag Dolls are just hired models, think again - 3 of them are PMS members (one is the other founder of PMS), and they are far from hired models. I watched them win the GR2 tourney at PAX, for instance.
And you'll notice it requires a hard drive, which is something that we were told earlier in the week we wouldn't need. Good times.
It has actually been known for months that backward compatibility would require a hard drive. At least since they revealed the two-SKU approach they're following. If you thought otherwise, then you misread or misunderstood what was being said in interviews.
Hehe, you're not the first to mention that...
GMail had more space and a better UI, so I went with it... still have my hotmail, and may go back if the new UI they're doing is as easy to use as it looks.
I also use WinAmp over WMP, cause the MMD3 skin allows me to keep it in a nice little toolbar on the top of one of my monitors, where I can get to all the controls and info, but doesn't use up too much space. WMP doesn't have something as convienent...
And even Firefox, since tabbed browsing is just that great.
Seems appropriate for the /. crowd, but definitely not my music.
I don't get too down on mainstream stuff, but I do realize that most people just don't have enough exposure to a good variety to find some of the less-popular stuff that they'd also like. I know this because I was there once, before finding means to discover new, less well known artists.
As an alternative, I would recommend checking out Last.fm. The site allows users to track all the music they listen to on their PC, and it processes the data to create "similarity" data between artists based on what people actually listen to, instead of just purchasing data.
It will also find a user a set of musical "neighbors", other people with similar artist interests, and recommend new music based on those neighbors.
I've found a TON of new stuff through the site, and highly recommend it to anyone else who listens to music on the PC. It's so easy to use (sign up, install a plugin, enter username/password, and forget about it) it's almost silly NOT to use it.
Yeah, it's not bad... though I entered "The Eyes of Truth" by Enigma, and got a crapload of Disco thrown back at me by the place. Gawd, did I hate that! It's kinda soured me on the whole thing.
Last.fm, however, I'm nuts over. It uses listen data to recommend new artists, not purchase data - so it does a good job of connecting artists. I've found a ton of new music through using the site - the bulk of what I'm listening to now is stuff I didn't even know about a year ago.
A lot of people will be disappointed when they opt for the cheaper model and find out a few hours later that they still need to spend another 40 bucks before they can save their game.
Yeah, we see how badly that hurt the PS2 sales when people realized they had to buy a memory card for it.
Huh?
:/
The guy got ten years older, and in the process ended up looking ten years YOUNGER. Most of the people I know would LOVE to end up doing a similar thing - I know I sure as hell would!
Besides, who actually wants to look like a corporate drone?
Hmmm... thinking about what most of my fellow Microsofties wear, perhaps quite a few people do...
Technically, all games took advantage of the HD. For saving settings data, save games, and some amount of built-in caching. These same things will likely be done with the 360 if you have a HD.
However, the number of games that were written to do anything significant with the HD was very, VERY small.
Reasons for a HD:
1) Downloadable content for games. Not just a little, as will fit on a memory card, but lots and lots of it. Especially important for any patches.
2) Downloadable media - game trailers and the like.
3) Backward compat. Because the original Xbox has a HD and did not abstract it away, all Xbox 1 games will require a HD to run at all.
4) Games CAN use it. They just won't require it. There are games that will release on or close to launch day that will make use of the HD to improve the game experience.
There is plenty of reason to get the HD, and it's more or less a necessity of you plan on playing over Live (a memory card will work, but the experience will be pretty piss-poor, I'd guess).
I actually got to play the demo level of Kameo, and it looks, sounds, and plays quite nicely. I'm much more interested in it now that I've had a hands-on with the game.
And PGR3 looks so incredible from the footage I've seen that I may have to pick that up too.
My understanding is that there are loopholes in German law which has somehow been used by Uwe Boll and his financiers. Essentially, they make the movie, it tanks horribly, they're able to take some sort of tax write-off which in the end allows them to MAKE money. In other words, they intentionally made the movies so completely bad.
:(
However, this loophole is supposed to be closed next year, so we may see Uwe Boll out of a job, and gamers around the world rejoicing.
I belive there's something about it on Wikipedia, but the site's not responding for me at the moment...
Actually, the music in Revenge is much more tolerable than the crap in Takedown. I haven't really hit anything that I just felt the need to turn off yet, and some of them are even growing on me. It's still music befitting EA shovelware, but it would be much worse.
I'd say the decision should be influenced by whether or not you play on Xbox Live. Burnout 3 is much cheaper and still a ton of fun, but there's really nobody left online to play against, and those that are, are really good at the game.
Revenge, on the other hand, has a lot more people playing, and a nice variety of skill levels to make sure you're not going to get crushed by others. Besides, the game seems to handle online play a heck of a lot better in general - still nowhere near as good as Halo 2's amazing implementation, but good enough. And Live really is fun enough to make it worth playing online.
Microsoft didn't make a big deal out of it - the media did, especially Xbox-oriented gaming sites. They hyped it all up, so if it's a disappointment, blame the ones that did the hype.
They had this at PAX this year.
There are some pictures of it on Flickr - I'm sure there are more.
Yes, you are correct - you can play MMORPGs on the Xbox 360 without having to sign up for an Xbox Live Gold account. That one is only needed for playing mutliplayer with your standard games. Any game that charges on it's own for multiplayer play will not require payment to Xbox Live.
The fact that PS3 will run the dozens of thousand of PS2 games while Xbox 360 is not backwards compatible to Xbox1 is merely a side issue.
The fact that this has repeatedly stated to be false makes this a non-issue, except for the rabit anti-Microsoft bashers around here. The 360 has back compat through emulation, and while it won't be 100%, the number will only increase over time. All the big games will be running at launch, and probably a lot more.
I'll judge the PS3 when they actually get close to shipping something, so I can see what the actual specs are going to be, not the hyped specs that have no chance in being real. They've already shed some things from the E3 claims, and I'm sure more will be coming - only closer the PS3 launch, so they can distract as many people as possible with how amazing the machine supposedly will be, only to find lots of stuff disappearing not long before actual launch.
There has been no announcement about which games are back compat for a reason - they're trying to get as many as possible to run.
What they're doing is going after making sure a few of the popular - and system demanding - titles are working, knowing that by getting those to run flawlessly, they're going to get a LOT more games to run just because those games will use a subset of what the other games did.
I'm sure we won't see 100% back compat, cause surely a few titles here and there are going to give problems, but not be popular enough to justify spending the time making them work. Heck, the PS2 wasn't 100% back compat. But I expect a large majority to be running right from the start, not just a few popular titles.
Actually, it's hard to know what the machine was capable of - they didn't have great development tools available, and half the games were little more than 16-bit ports that did little more than use the 68k chip, leaving the rest of the power unused. Was it exaggerated? Well, we'll never really know. (To be fair, what console hasn't exaggerated?)
And I would actually say that your cell phone can work as a digital camera - not a good one mind you, but it's there.
Okay, so Atari didn't get out of the hardware business entirely after the XE. With the PlayStation and Saturn launches two years away, Atari took another stab at the US market with the ill-conceived Jaguar, which was 64-bit in the same way that the TurboGrafx-16 was 16-bit (it wasn't).
*sigh*
It's been over a decade, yet game journalists KEEP REPEATING THIS %*$#ING LIE. Yes, it was 64-bit. Multiple chips were 64-bit, along with some system busses. They called it 64-bit BECAUSE IT IS.
I have about 5 gigs of capacity left on my 30gb iPod, at which point I'll have to start removing the stuff I'm not as interested in having on there. That's after having my iPod for about 5 months. So yeah, I see why the Nano can easily have enough capacity for most people.
When I got my 30gb, I was even looking at the 60gb, but decided to pass. I can't possibly imagine now what I'd have to do to fill THAT one up...
Of course thats why I enjoy playing video games instead of watching someone play because I'll be jumping up and down screaming "NO NO NO!! Pick up the Redeemer! It's right there you fool!!!"
People enjoy watching professional sports, even when they play those sports themselves, because it can be enjoyable to watch the sport played at a skill level that most people can never even hope to attain. You won't see a Michael Jordan on your local basketball court, or a Sammy Sosa in your recreational softball league.
I've watched some video games played at a skill level above mine, and when you know the game decently, it can be quite exciting - and even more so when you know the people playing. I'd never seen Ghost Recon 2, but I watched a friend's team playing at a tournament at PAX, and did find it quite enjoyable to watch. And I have videos on my computer here at work of Halo matches from some of the best players - and it's exciting, and even educational in some ways to notice the differences between how I play and how they do.
How are you going to afford games after buying the PS3? Kutaragi's already bragged about how people are going to have to work extra hours just to afford the thing... you'll probably have to sell an organ to actually get games for the thing after spending your life savings on the console...