I'm hoping and praying that it's a LONG time before we see any 360 modchips. Because the longer it takes, the longer before we have to deal with the obnoxious anti-social hackers and modders who are only interested in ruining Xbox Live for everyone else.
Personally, if every modded Xbox out there exploded and put the people using it in the hospital for 6 weeks, I would do a happy dance at all the cheaters and losers who would get to suffer.
Additionally, with a 20 GB HD, an Xbox 360 would be a slightly more expensive, larger, and significantly less portable iPod or MP3 player.
The HD is actually attaches onto the Xbox 360, and can be removed - meaning that you can tote the HD around to other Xbox 360s. Yes, still not a real MP3 player, but I could haul my custom soundtracks over to a friend's house for playing games there, or just for playing through the stereo if theirs is hooked up.
Yeah, it's limited in value compared to MP3 players and such, but remember that we're not sacrificing capabilites in the 360 for this - it's just a bonus feature.
The Xbox 360 is already going to support connecting to various music players via USB - and this includes an iPod. So people will be able to transfer their music (in appropriate formats) to the 360 without having to rip the CDs and tag them by hand, the way the current Xbox does. At least that's the plan as I understand it.
With such support, it would make sense to be able to buy music online with the 360.
But I do want to say that the work environment and the people I work with and everything make this easily the most enjoyable and interesting job I've ever had, and I have no plans to leave the company.
Well, there are some hair colors that try and look natural yet have some purple hues in them, so I guess it's not a big jump going to purple - and when you put purple streaks in with black hair, it can look REALLY good.
I'm just so loving doing the colors that I couldn't stick with just one - each time I go in, I think there's a greater number of colors the girl puts in my hair. I'm wondering how long until she finds a way to use all of them at once.:)
I have realized that when you have unnatural colors done by someone who knows what they're doing, they can look good - I've had so many compliments on my hair since I started doing this. But I'm not doing it at home and ending up with a crappy dye job that looks like ass.
This is why I love the Seattle area. Nobody around here seems to think the 30 year-old chick with unnatural hair colors is anything too wierd - which is exactly how I want it to be.
There's also the fact that I work somewhere which is very much the opposite of stuffy most of the time. (Yeah, I won't mention it here, else I might get called evil.)
Use a natrual hair color if you want to die your hair.
Hehe, depends on the place.
In the last 6 months, I've had many hair colors. I started with black and purple, added burgundy at the roots, went blue and green, and currently have blue and pink. I've never had any problems at work, and actually have had multiple compliments. I've also found that it makes me more memorable - which is good when I'm doing good work.
Some places are still just fine with such things.
I'm going to add a couple upper ear piercings, along with a couple tattoos. Not a single thing that I haven't already seen others do there. Heck, my old manager has visible tattoos and piercings.
Well, there are still ways to do it. I think one way is to get on at a time when fewer people are playing in your area (middle of the night, for example), and make sure to have a group of people together. If you were to, say, form two 4 person teams with the same highest ranking player, and manage to start looking for a game about the same time, the odds are much higher that you'll get matched up with each other.
If you can play around with switching people on teams and starting games at the same time when there are fewer people on, you can manage to consistently get paired with the same people.
I'm not sure of the exact details, since I haven't thought it out all the way yet, but it's still done. I ran into someone recently that boosted their Team Slayer rating from 25 to 50 in one sitting. Fortunately, Bungie has blacklisted him from the leaderboard, since the rating wasn't properly achieved.
A number of guys that made it to the finals boosted their way there. You can check some of the match histories for the gamertags and see the boosting that's happened.
Kinda ruins the whole thing when you can't trust that the people who should have been at the top actually were.
Congrats, you don't like Halo or Halo 2. That doesn't mean that nobody else does - judging by the popularity of it over Xbox Live, plenty of people do. That includes me, and I spent countless hours on Quake/Quake 2/Quake 3 in the past, the game that more or less defined the FPS. So it's not like I'm clueless or misunderstand games.
Remembering that everyone eles is not like you goes a long way.
Not to mention that a lot of people have said it won't be backwards compatible, or will only be partially backwards compatible (I can't recall if this was ever confirmed as certain or not).
The 360 will be emulating the Xbox, and those working on the emulator are specifically focusing on making sure that many of the top games and most demanding games are working correctly, knowing that a huge majority of the rest will be fine if they can get the big ones taken care of.
So yes, the 360 will be backwards compatible, and yes, it will be that way for more than a handful of games - but a very large portion of the library, guaranteed.
Well, first of all, the 360 will always be Xbox Live aware (unless you specifically disconnect), so your friends will be able to see you online along with what game you're playing, send you messages, talk to you via voice, and even send game requests - all in ANY game. So you can play offline games without worries about missing your online friends.
Second, I believe all games are supposed to give you various "awards" for game accomplishments, which go into your online gamer card. So even if you can't play the game online, you can still show off what you've done to other gamers.
Third, I have a hard time believing that only a small fraction of 360 games will take advantage of Xbox Live online play. Since Xbox Live is such a key part of the Xbox 360 experience - to the point that they're offering some of it free to everyone - I think that almost every game with mutliplayer will offer online play. Those that don't will likely lose out in the marketplace to those that do, unless they've got something big to draw people anyway.
My only real worry regarding Xbox Live and online play is how the various games will accomplish it. I've played a few games on Xbox Live, and the only one that I've found that seemed to do things really well has been Halo 2 - the playlists make it easy to find games to hop into, the rankings system guarantees that I'll be finding people around my level to play against (which is MUCH more fun than playing against insanely good people when you're not one of them), and it's easy to hop into games with friends. Others are much more cumbersome - I've just about given up on Burnout 3 online, and I've only tried it a couple times. It just doesn't integrate with the rest of the game well, and it's tough to try and find a game.
I've spent years playing games online, and I can say that I feel that Halo 2 over Xbox Live is by far the best online experience I've ever had - Diablo II over Battle.Net is probably the only thing that I've found has been close.
Well, you see, that's what most innovation is - just copying existing things and putting them together in a new way.
I think Spore definitely qualifies as innovative from everything I've seen about it. That's because it's not just copying and rehashing, but building off of existing concepts in unexpected and previously unattempted ways.
Halo 2 sword flying is still in the game, only restricted to single player. They decided it was interesting enough for people to play around with in the campaign, but not a glitch that was appropriate for multiplayer.
I'd rather there was no hard drive. It keeps the developers out of the patch mentality
I see your point here - we want them to make sure the bugs are fixed BEFORE the game goes gold.
However, being able to patch can also be very useful in some cases - consider Halo 2, where people found and abused some obscure glitches in multiplayer, and they were able to FIX them because of the ability to patch.
I don't want developers to shove something out early to meet a deadline, with the intent to patch later - but those idiots shouldn't force the rest of us to not be able to have obscure problems being abused patched to keep the game fun.
It just seems to me like asking the meat packing plants to make an effort not to get shit all over the meat isn't too much to ask.
And perhaps if enough people knew that they didn't bother trying to prevent it, and sold shitty meat, that people might put enough pressure on things to get it changed.
Yeah, it's never all going to be gone, but a little effort on their part may reduce the number of people that get sick from eating shitty meat. And then we can debate irradiation on its own merits, instead of as a means to get around reducing the shit content of beef.
Nuclear power is greener, irradiated food is safer, and a nuclear rocket could get us to Mars in weeks instead of years. Use any, and so-called "environmentalist" come out of the woodwork with their comic book science education, and make the best conceived nuclear project politically untenable.
Just to clear up the "irradiated food" point here.
Neither I, nor many people I know, have a problem with irradiated food based only on the irradiation. We know we won't get sick from it. However, the companies that want to irradiate their meat only want that to be the case so they don't have to make an effort to keep the feces out of the production lines.
I don't know about you, but irrated shit is still shit. Safe or not, it's still fucking disgusting.
Oh, BTW, 50% of all commercial ground beef tests positive for E. Coli. E. Coli in ground beef comes from cow feces. So half of all ground beef out there is beef + shit.
Apparently either they're not verified, or they've found a way to hack that also - cause it's happened.
I know Bungie has stated that they can detect when people use the hacked profile, and ban people for that. I'm hoping they can do the same with the maps - though those are a little less horrid, since the hacked weapons affect both teams equally.
Hack the data files, then turn it to "unmodded mode", and you've still got your hacked files.
For example, Halo 2 is being plagued by both a hacked player profile that gives a person instant reloads (WTF is this adjustable in the player profile anyways, Bungie??), and now that we have our first downloaded maps, hacked map files that alter the weapons and weapon function on the map. Both of those can be used in RANKED matchmade games.
Once you've modded your Xbox, it should never, ever, ever be connected to Live again.
You know, if people want to mod their machines to do other things with them, then fine, go for it. Just make sure the modchips are designed so that people cannot connect to Live with them.
Oh, and reality contradicts your statement about Xbox Live being for kiddies - there are plenty of adults that play on there and enjoy the fact that we can play various Xbox games with a rather simple and smooth multiplayer experience. Halo 2's MP play is simpler than any other online game I've ever played, PC or console.
It allows first-class jackasses to get on Xbox Live and ruin everyone else's fun.
You know, I'd be perfectly fine with Xbox 360 modchips that were designed to render the thing unable to work online. But no, it can't work that way, because people want them either to cheat massively, or just to ruin the frickin' games for everyone else.
Such people should be beaten viciously with their Xboxes, then forced to eat the broken remains of the box to help their now twisted and broken body regain some semblance of health.
Remember the "Atari Video Computer System"? That's right, the Atari 2600 was marketed at first as a computer system. It even had "Basic Programming" on it, with those little keypads you had to buy and were good for like 3 carts.
We've gone nowhere in regards to that. Marketing is an inane as ever, just flashier and more aggressive.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm hoping and praying that it's a LONG time before we see any 360 modchips. Because the longer it takes, the longer before we have to deal with the obnoxious anti-social hackers and modders who are only interested in ruining Xbox Live for everyone else.
Personally, if every modded Xbox out there exploded and put the people using it in the hospital for 6 weeks, I would do a happy dance at all the cheaters and losers who would get to suffer.
Additionally, with a 20 GB HD, an Xbox 360 would be a slightly more expensive, larger, and significantly less portable iPod or MP3 player.
The HD is actually attaches onto the Xbox 360, and can be removed - meaning that you can tote the HD around to other Xbox 360s. Yes, still not a real MP3 player, but I could haul my custom soundtracks over to a friend's house for playing games there, or just for playing through the stereo if theirs is hooked up.
Yeah, it's limited in value compared to MP3 players and such, but remember that we're not sacrificing capabilites in the 360 for this - it's just a bonus feature.
The Xbox 360 is already going to support connecting to various music players via USB - and this includes an iPod. So people will be able to transfer their music (in appropriate formats) to the 360 without having to rip the CDs and tag them by hand, the way the current Xbox does. At least that's the plan as I understand it.
With such support, it would make sense to be able to buy music online with the 360.
Umm... *blush*
:)
Thanks.
Does it help more to know that I'm a major gaming geek?
Hehehe... yeah, not that hard to figure out.
But I do want to say that the work environment and the people I work with and everything make this easily the most enjoyable and interesting job I've ever had, and I have no plans to leave the company.
Well, there are some hair colors that try and look natural yet have some purple hues in them, so I guess it's not a big jump going to purple - and when you put purple streaks in with black hair, it can look REALLY good.
:)
I'm just so loving doing the colors that I couldn't stick with just one - each time I go in, I think there's a greater number of colors the girl puts in my hair. I'm wondering how long until she finds a way to use all of them at once.
I have realized that when you have unnatural colors done by someone who knows what they're doing, they can look good - I've had so many compliments on my hair since I started doing this. But I'm not doing it at home and ending up with a crappy dye job that looks like ass.
This is why I love the Seattle area. Nobody around here seems to think the 30 year-old chick with unnatural hair colors is anything too wierd - which is exactly how I want it to be.
There's also the fact that I work somewhere which is very much the opposite of stuffy most of the time. (Yeah, I won't mention it here, else I might get called evil.)
Use a natrual hair color if you want to die your hair.
Hehe, depends on the place.
In the last 6 months, I've had many hair colors. I started with black and purple, added burgundy at the roots, went blue and green,
and currently have blue and pink. I've never had any problems at work, and actually have had multiple compliments. I've also found that it makes me more memorable - which is good when I'm doing good work.
Some places are still just fine with such things.
I'm going to add a couple upper ear piercings, along with a couple tattoos. Not a single thing that I haven't already seen others do there. Heck, my old manager has visible tattoos and piercings.
Well, there are still ways to do it. I think one way is to get on at a time when fewer people are playing in your area (middle of the night, for example), and make sure to have a group of people together. If you were to, say, form two 4 person teams with the same highest ranking player, and manage to start looking for a game about the same time, the odds are much higher that you'll get matched up with each other.
If you can play around with switching people on teams and starting games at the same time when there are fewer people on, you can manage to consistently get paired with the same people.
I'm not sure of the exact details, since I haven't thought it out all the way yet, but it's still done. I ran into someone recently that boosted their Team Slayer rating from 25 to 50 in one sitting. Fortunately, Bungie has blacklisted him from the leaderboard, since the rating wasn't properly achieved.
A number of guys that made it to the finals boosted their way there. You can check some of the match histories for the gamertags and see the boosting that's happened.
Kinda ruins the whole thing when you can't trust that the people who should have been at the top actually were.
Congrats, you don't like Halo or Halo 2. That doesn't mean that nobody else does - judging by the popularity of it over Xbox Live, plenty of people do. That includes me, and I spent countless hours on Quake/Quake 2/Quake 3 in the past, the game that more or less defined the FPS. So it's not like I'm clueless or misunderstand games.
Remembering that everyone eles is not like you goes a long way.
Not to mention that a lot of people have said it won't be backwards compatible, or will only be partially backwards compatible (I can't recall if this was ever confirmed as certain or not).
The 360 will be emulating the Xbox, and those working on the emulator are specifically focusing on making sure that many of the top games and most demanding games are working correctly, knowing that a huge majority of the rest will be fine if they can get the big ones taken care of.
So yes, the 360 will be backwards compatible, and yes, it will be that way for more than a handful of games - but a very large portion of the library, guaranteed.
Surely you do realize that Halo 2 sales upon release day topped the opening weekend box office take of the top movie of all time, don't you?
Well, first of all, the 360 will always be Xbox Live aware (unless you specifically disconnect), so your friends will be able to see you online along with what game you're playing, send you messages, talk to you via voice, and even send game requests - all in ANY game. So you can play offline games without worries about missing your online friends.
Second, I believe all games are supposed to give you various "awards" for game accomplishments, which go into your online gamer card. So even if you can't play the game online, you can still show off what you've done to other gamers.
Third, I have a hard time believing that only a small fraction of 360 games will take advantage of Xbox Live online play. Since Xbox Live is such a key part of the Xbox 360 experience - to the point that they're offering some of it free to everyone - I think that almost every game with mutliplayer will offer online play. Those that don't will likely lose out in the marketplace to those that do, unless they've got something big to draw people anyway.
My only real worry regarding Xbox Live and online play is how the various games will accomplish it. I've played a few games on Xbox Live, and the only one that I've found that seemed to do things really well has been Halo 2 - the playlists make it easy to find games to hop into, the rankings system guarantees that I'll be finding people around my level to play against (which is MUCH more fun than playing against insanely good people when you're not one of them), and it's easy to hop into games with friends. Others are much more cumbersome - I've just about given up on Burnout 3 online, and I've only tried it a couple times. It just doesn't integrate with the rest of the game well, and it's tough to try and find a game.
I've spent years playing games online, and I can say that I feel that Halo 2 over Xbox Live is by far the best online experience I've ever had - Diablo II over Battle.Net is probably the only thing that I've found has been close.
Well, you see, that's what most innovation is - just copying existing things and putting them together in a new way.
I think Spore definitely qualifies as innovative from everything I've seen about it. That's because it's not just copying and rehashing, but building off of existing concepts in unexpected and previously unattempted ways.
Halo 2 sword flying is still in the game, only restricted to single player. They decided it was interesting enough for people to play around with in the campaign, but not a glitch that was appropriate for multiplayer.
I'd rather there was no hard drive. It keeps the developers out of the patch mentality
I see your point here - we want them to make sure the bugs are fixed BEFORE the game goes gold.
However, being able to patch can also be very useful in some cases - consider Halo 2, where people found and abused some obscure glitches in multiplayer, and they were able to FIX them because of the ability to patch.
I don't want developers to shove something out early to meet a deadline, with the intent to patch later - but those idiots shouldn't force the rest of us to not be able to have obscure problems being abused patched to keep the game fun.
It just seems to me like asking the meat packing plants to make an effort not to get shit all over the meat isn't too much to ask.
And perhaps if enough people knew that they didn't bother trying to prevent it, and sold shitty meat, that people might put enough pressure on things to get it changed.
Yeah, it's never all going to be gone, but a little effort on their part may reduce the number of people that get sick from eating shitty meat. And then we can debate irradiation on its own merits, instead of as a means to get around reducing the shit content of beef.
Nuclear power is greener, irradiated food is safer, and a nuclear rocket could get us to Mars in weeks instead of years. Use any, and so-called "environmentalist" come out of the woodwork with their comic book science education, and make the best conceived nuclear project politically untenable.
Just to clear up the "irradiated food" point here.
Neither I, nor many people I know, have a problem with irradiated food based only on the irradiation. We know we won't get sick from it. However, the companies that want to irradiate their meat only want that to be the case so they don't have to make an effort to keep the feces out of the production lines.
I don't know about you, but irrated shit is still shit. Safe or not, it's still fucking disgusting.
Oh, BTW, 50% of all commercial ground beef tests positive for E. Coli. E. Coli in ground beef comes from cow feces. So half of all ground beef out there is beef + shit.
Enjoy those summer cookouts.
Apparently either they're not verified, or they've found a way to hack that also - cause it's happened.
I know Bungie has stated that they can detect when people use the hacked profile, and ban people for that. I'm hoping they can do the same with the maps - though those are a little less horrid, since the hacked weapons affect both teams equally.
Hack the data files, then turn it to "unmodded mode", and you've still got your hacked files.
For example, Halo 2 is being plagued by both a hacked player profile that gives a person instant reloads (WTF is this adjustable in the player profile anyways, Bungie??), and now that we have our first downloaded maps, hacked map files that alter the weapons and weapon function on the map. Both of those can be used in RANKED matchmade games.
Once you've modded your Xbox, it should never, ever, ever be connected to Live again.
You know, if people want to mod their machines to do other things with them, then fine, go for it. Just make sure the modchips are designed so that people cannot connect to Live with them.
Oh, and reality contradicts your statement about Xbox Live being for kiddies - there are plenty of adults that play on there and enjoy the fact that we can play various Xbox games with a rather simple and smooth multiplayer experience. Halo 2's MP play is simpler than any other online game I've ever played, PC or console.
The #1 reason I hate modchips.
It allows first-class jackasses to get on Xbox Live and ruin everyone else's fun.
You know, I'd be perfectly fine with Xbox 360 modchips that were designed to render the thing unable to work online. But no, it can't work that way, because people want them either to cheat massively, or just to ruin the frickin' games for everyone else.
Such people should be beaten viciously with their Xboxes, then forced to eat the broken remains of the box to help their now twisted and broken body regain some semblance of health.
Hehe, I was thinking the same thing. Has Slashdot gone nuts with the # of accounts so that six digits is low?
:)
I love my 5 digit UID.
d00d.
Remember the "Atari Video Computer System"? That's right, the Atari 2600 was marketed at first as a computer system. It even had "Basic Programming" on it, with those little keypads you had to buy and were good for like 3 carts.
We've gone nowhere in regards to that. Marketing is an inane as ever, just flashier and more aggressive.