As if MLG players don't already have big enough egos as it is. Now we'll do even more to make them even more full of themselves. I think the first requirement for anyone who wishes to be part of MLG is to announce, frequently and loudly, how they're better than anyone else just because they're "pro".
I had enough of this MLG crap when I was playing Halo 2. I hope they stay there while the rest of us move on to other games.
Xbox Live Arcade. Bejeweled, Hexic, Hardwood Backgammon/Spades/Hearts, Zuma, etc. More PopCap games and other casual and puzzle games on the way.
I've heard quite a few cases of guys that bought a 360, showed their wife the arcade games... and found themselves having to wait to get on the console. So they're getting the market for the casual women gamers that way.
(Of course, the serious female gamers don't need those sorts of games, though we do play them. I'm much more interested in other games - DOA4, Full Auto, PDZ, etc)
Yeah, and that only matters to those people who read the magazine and bother to snap a shot of their screen. That guy out there who smashes everyone's scores, but doesn't go and do such a thing, ends up not being known.
Xbox Live leaderboards take care of all of it for you. If you're connected, your best scores will be up there no matter what. And how do you compare yourself to all your friends with the photo method? It's possible, but more annoying.
I don't see why you think a higher-effort lower-exposure method is preferrable.
It does. I have gotten a quite a few messages since I got my 360 based on leaderboard position and the like. I had a LOT of people sending friend requests and messages when I was in the top 10 on Geo Wars (days long past, sadly). I've made a couple friends due to that. And I know the entire top Geo Wars crowd has gotten to know each other on Bizarre's forums and the like, shared videos of their scores, etc.
All of that really helps make Xbox Live feel even better with the 360. Of course, there are still tons of idiots out there. You just leave them feedback and go on with life.
This is a HUGE point - and combine that with the ability to instantly compare yourself to another plauer. I can see, for example, that I'm much better at Geo Wars than you are (I have 200 of 200), but that you're well past me on many other games. You can "brag" about finishing COD2 on veteran, and I can double check it and see - that yes, you've done just that.:)
No more having people talk crap when they can't back it up, cause you can just check it out and see who the idiots are and who's got the stuff they claim.
There are modchips that can be turned off before connecting to Live. You turn it on, hack a save game file or such, then turn it off. Then you go online and cheat. It's been done.
Besides, a 360 doesn't need to be hacked to play MP3s or movies. Mine has already replaced my CD player. I actually gave it away to a friend, since now I can just stream all my music from my PC.
OK, fair enough, I over-generalized. Of course there would still be free content. But I would suspect that your view - that you'd rather have no proprietary content than have DRM - while popular here on Slashdot, isn't the prevailing opinion overall. And it's not like Microsoft not supporting DRM would prevent it from happening - look at iTunes.
And remember, one of the reasons that Microsoft backs HD-DVD over Blu-Ray is that HD-DVD restrictions are not as severe as those for Blu-Ray. The consumer ends up with more restrictions - more severe DRM - with Blu-Ray.
The price of the Xbox dropping just wasn't going to happen. You know why? That hard drive they put in there, the one they moved externally and everyone attacked them for. Hard drives don't go down in price, just up in size. There's a minimum that they're going to cost, and that puts a higher floor on Xbox prices as compared to other hard drive-less consoles.
And a little thing to note - Forza is not a cruddy racing game, but actually pretty darn good.
My understanding is that Microsoft sees that the recording/movie/television industries aren't going to make content available to people without DRM, and given the choice between having DRM content available, and not having content at all, would rather have the former. Would you rather have no content at all? Honestly?
And yes, I'm sure this will be seen as a security issue, assuming there's any such issues here. Remember that the important issues here are preventing the copying of games, the hacking of games and game saves that allow cheating, and cheating over Xbox Live. Unfortunately, protecting against such things pretty much rules out homebrew development. I really do suspect that if there was some sort of means that they could use to prevent piracy and cheating, and yet allow end users to do homebrew development, then they'd do it.
It's mostly an easy game... or at least the achievements are easy. I got the game the night it was released, and by the next morning, had all 12 achievments. Only a few were even any real effort. All I had to do was camp the levels on standard difficulty, and got most achievements that way.
Going for high scores isn't that much fun either, since you camp again, just on the hardest difficulty.
I know plenty of people who want Xbox 360s, but can't find them to buy them. Someone I know got one last week - buy waiting outside a Costco for it to open. He got one, but the line outside the store was larger than the number of consoles they had available.
Perhaps there are scattered places where they have some sitting around, but they're in the minority.
Oh, and don't forget how Xbox Live can also determine your skill level relative to other players, and use that to match you up with people close to your ability so as to make the games challenging without being too hard. I can't emphasize just how great of a feature that is - knowing that the odds are good when you play a ranked game on the 360 that you're going to have a fair chance to win the game, but without it being too easy.
You're always pushed just enough that you have to work hard to win, but rarely are you stuck in a game that you can't possibly win.
Well, one of the ways to avoid such things is to use systems like the article mentions, or like Xbox Live has - you can't just give feedback on anyone out there. The article limits it to someone who's been in your group for X amount of time, and XBL requires you to have played against someone online. This all the begging and pleading of some idiot to his friends to give you bad feedback isn't going to work, since they aren't allowed to do it just because they know your name.
If they have a good enough memory, perhaps they can get you later to do it, but likely it's not worth the trouble over a single piece feedback that, by itself, won't do anything.
Hypothetical situation. I form a group, recruit people who want to do (insert dungeon here). Halfway through the run I realize one of the member is incompetent. I remove him and flag him "incompetent". Out of spite he returns the favor and flags me something negative. Yet I've only done what was best for the success of the run, I wasn't using abusive language, I didn't do anything wrong.
Your entire group gives him bad feedback. He gives the entire group bad feedback. You each have 1 bad feedback. He has a lot more. He still loses out in the end, and unless you're regularly an idiot, you have so little that it doesn't really affect things.
This part of the equation isn't really a problem. Yeah, people can and will reciprocate, but they can't affect a single person that much, but can be hit by collective bad feedback if they deserve it.
I don't think it's fair to categorize it with "shmups". Almost that entire category is based on scrolling games, with almost all of your enemies scrolling on the screen, etc, etc.
The single playfield with enemies spawning around it, combined with the dual-joystick steer/shoot combo, turns it into an entirely different play mechanic.
Last.fm TRACKS what users play. That doesn't mean that once a user plays it, that Last.fm can stream it.
They have a large library, and the means for artists and labels to sign up to upload their own music to the site. So any artist that wants to make their music streamable on Last.fm can do so, and there are quite a few small artists that have.
Us automoderators on Last.fm are encouraging the staff to add some means for us to clean up the bad data. The old moderation system that took care of artist misspellings was removed as they revamped the site, and we're waiting for something new to come on line.
Believe me, we're aware of all the bad data, and I'd love to help clean it up if I could.
Last.fm's recommendations actually account for the overall popularity of an artist. If an artist is popular through a larger part of the Last.fm userbase, then it won't get recommended from other artists unless the connection between the two is substantially stronger that from most other artists. Otherwise you'd reach a point where Radiohead was recommended for most other artists on the site.:)
I've had wonderful experiences with Last.fm offering up recommendations to me that have been pretty darn good. And because of it, my tastes are heading AWAY from the mainstream, not toward it.
It's totally irrelevant now. The Iraq War is letting the administration sink a bunch of money into defense contractors and companies, so they don't need some radndom project as an excuse to pay those companies. The same objective has been accomplished.
It was never about an actual, working shield. Everyone knew that such a thing is nearly impossible at this time.
Here's a little trick: use BOTH Launchcast and Last.fm. Someone put together a small program that reads what you're listening to through Launchcast, and submits it to your Last.fm profile. So while you listen to Launchcast, Last.fm will learn your tastes and interests, and then after a while, you can start streaming from Last.fm, as the site will also know your tastes.
Last.fm is about so much more than streaming music. I barely ever stream, but have been tracking my music plays for well over a year. My music tastes have changed dramatically since I started using Last.fm - the recommendations slowly moved me into entirely new types of music.
So what you're saying is that even when it's free, Microsoft can't convince more than 50% of Xbox 360 owners to use Live?
I'd be interested in seeing the numbers of people that have high-speed internet access. That's a prereq to being on Live, and I know of a few people that have 360's but haven't connected to Live because they can't. That's a whole group of people that need to be removed from the equation - I wonder how many are left that could do it but don't bother.
In the long run, I know the percentages are going to come down as the console becomes more widely available. But I really think it will remain substantially higher than in the Xbox 1 days. And I'm not talking about silver + gold accounts - I think more people will get gold accounts than conneted to XBL in the past, because there's more you can do, as many more games are making use of it. In fact, I don't think there's a single Xbox 360 game that doesn't make use of XBL in some way.
Slashdot Mirror
As if MLG players don't already have big enough egos as it is. Now we'll do even more to make them even more full of themselves. I think the first requirement for anyone who wishes to be part of MLG is to announce, frequently and loudly, how they're better than anyone else just because they're "pro".
I had enough of this MLG crap when I was playing Halo 2. I hope they stay there while the rest of us move on to other games.
No, it's not that color beige.
It's not perfectly white, intentionally, but it's definitely closer to that than to that old PC beige.
Xbox Live Arcade. Bejeweled, Hexic, Hardwood Backgammon/Spades/Hearts, Zuma, etc. More PopCap games and other casual and puzzle games on the way.
I've heard quite a few cases of guys that bought a 360, showed their wife the arcade games... and found themselves having to wait to get on the console. So they're getting the market for the casual women gamers that way.
(Of course, the serious female gamers don't need those sorts of games, though we do play them. I'm much more interested in other games - DOA4, Full Auto, PDZ, etc)
Yeah, and that only matters to those people who read the magazine and bother to snap a shot of their screen. That guy out there who smashes everyone's scores, but doesn't go and do such a thing, ends up not being known.
Xbox Live leaderboards take care of all of it for you. If you're connected, your best scores will be up there no matter what. And how do you compare yourself to all your friends with the photo method? It's possible, but more annoying.
I don't see why you think a higher-effort lower-exposure method is preferrable.
It does. I have gotten a quite a few messages since I got my 360 based on leaderboard position and the like. I had a LOT of people sending friend requests and messages when I was in the top 10 on Geo Wars (days long past, sadly). I've made a couple friends due to that. And I know the entire top Geo Wars crowd has gotten to know each other on Bizarre's forums and the like, shared videos of their scores, etc.
All of that really helps make Xbox Live feel even better with the 360. Of course, there are still tons of idiots out there. You just leave them feedback and go on with life.
This is a HUGE point - and combine that with the ability to instantly compare yourself to another plauer. I can see, for example, that I'm much better at Geo Wars than you are (I have 200 of 200), but that you're well past me on many other games. You can "brag" about finishing COD2 on veteran, and I can double check it and see - that yes, you've done just that. :)
No more having people talk crap when they can't back it up, cause you can just check it out and see who the idiots are and who's got the stuff they claim.
There are modchips that can be turned off before connecting to Live. You turn it on, hack a save game file or such, then turn it off. Then you go online and cheat. It's been done.
Besides, a 360 doesn't need to be hacked to play MP3s or movies. Mine has already replaced my CD player. I actually gave it away to a friend, since now I can just stream all my music from my PC.
Umm... people that aren't concerned with pirating games and hope to have as cheat-free of an online experience as possible?
OK, fair enough, I over-generalized. Of course there would still be free content. But I would suspect that your view - that you'd rather have no proprietary content than have DRM - while popular here on Slashdot, isn't the prevailing opinion overall. And it's not like Microsoft not supporting DRM would prevent it from happening - look at iTunes.
And remember, one of the reasons that Microsoft backs HD-DVD over Blu-Ray is that HD-DVD restrictions are not as severe as those for Blu-Ray. The consumer ends up with more restrictions - more severe DRM - with Blu-Ray.
The price of the Xbox dropping just wasn't going to happen. You know why? That hard drive they put in there, the one they moved externally and everyone attacked them for. Hard drives don't go down in price, just up in size. There's a minimum that they're going to cost, and that puts a higher floor on Xbox prices as compared to other hard drive-less consoles.
And a little thing to note - Forza is not a cruddy racing game, but actually pretty darn good.
My understanding is that Microsoft sees that the recording/movie/television industries aren't going to make content available to people without DRM, and given the choice between having DRM content available, and not having content at all, would rather have the former. Would you rather have no content at all? Honestly?
And yes, I'm sure this will be seen as a security issue, assuming there's any such issues here. Remember that the important issues here are preventing the copying of games, the hacking of games and game saves that allow cheating, and cheating over Xbox Live. Unfortunately, protecting against such things pretty much rules out homebrew development. I really do suspect that if there was some sort of means that they could use to prevent piracy and cheating, and yet allow end users to do homebrew development, then they'd do it.
It's mostly an easy game... or at least the achievements are easy. I got the game the night it was released, and by the next morning, had all 12 achievments. Only a few were even any real effort. All I had to do was camp the levels on standard difficulty, and got most achievements that way.
Going for high scores isn't that much fun either, since you camp again, just on the hardest difficulty.
Yeah, whatever.
I know plenty of people who want Xbox 360s, but can't find them to buy them. Someone I know got one last week - buy waiting outside a Costco for it to open. He got one, but the line outside the store was larger than the number of consoles they had available.
Perhaps there are scattered places where they have some sitting around, but they're in the minority.
Yeah, that makes awesome business sense.
Only in Slashdot land would someone think that selling FEWER of a product might be good for a company.
I don't see the conflict in the article.
One group is saying the PS3 is hard to program for.
The other group is happy that it's so much better than the PS2.
It can be both. Quite difficult is still better than insanely difficult.
Oh, and don't forget how Xbox Live can also determine your skill level relative to other players, and use that to match you up with people close to your ability so as to make the games challenging without being too hard. I can't emphasize just how great of a feature that is - knowing that the odds are good when you play a ranked game on the 360 that you're going to have a fair chance to win the game, but without it being too easy.
You're always pushed just enough that you have to work hard to win, but rarely are you stuck in a game that you can't possibly win.
Well, one of the ways to avoid such things is to use systems like the article mentions, or like Xbox Live has - you can't just give feedback on anyone out there. The article limits it to someone who's been in your group for X amount of time, and XBL requires you to have played against someone online. This all the begging and pleading of some idiot to his friends to give you bad feedback isn't going to work, since they aren't allowed to do it just because they know your name.
If they have a good enough memory, perhaps they can get you later to do it, but likely it's not worth the trouble over a single piece feedback that, by itself, won't do anything.
Hypothetical situation. I form a group, recruit people who want to do (insert dungeon here). Halfway through the run I realize one of the member is incompetent. I remove him and flag him "incompetent". Out of spite he returns the favor and flags me something negative. Yet I've only done what was best for the success of the run, I wasn't using abusive language, I didn't do anything wrong.
Your entire group gives him bad feedback. He gives the entire group bad feedback. You each have 1 bad feedback. He has a lot more. He still loses out in the end, and unless you're regularly an idiot, you have so little that it doesn't really affect things.
This part of the equation isn't really a problem. Yeah, people can and will reciprocate, but they can't affect a single person that much, but can be hit by collective bad feedback if they deserve it.
I don't think it's fair to categorize it with "shmups". Almost that entire category is based on scrolling games, with almost all of your enemies scrolling on the screen, etc, etc.
The single playfield with enemies spawning around it, combined with the dual-joystick steer/shoot combo, turns it into an entirely different play mechanic.
Last.fm TRACKS what users play. That doesn't mean that once a user plays it, that Last.fm can stream it.
They have a large library, and the means for artists and labels to sign up to upload their own music to the site. So any artist that wants to make their music streamable on Last.fm can do so, and there are quite a few small artists that have.
Us automoderators on Last.fm are encouraging the staff to add some means for us to clean up the bad data. The old moderation system that took care of artist misspellings was removed as they revamped the site, and we're waiting for something new to come on line.
Believe me, we're aware of all the bad data, and I'd love to help clean it up if I could.
Last.fm's recommendations actually account for the overall popularity of an artist. If an artist is popular through a larger part of the Last.fm userbase, then it won't get recommended from other artists unless the connection between the two is substantially stronger that from most other artists. Otherwise you'd reach a point where Radiohead was recommended for most other artists on the site. :)
I've had wonderful experiences with Last.fm offering up recommendations to me that have been pretty darn good. And because of it, my tastes are heading AWAY from the mainstream, not toward it.
It's totally irrelevant now. The Iraq War is letting the administration sink a bunch of money into defense contractors and companies, so they don't need some radndom project as an excuse to pay those companies. The same objective has been accomplished.
It was never about an actual, working shield. Everyone knew that such a thing is nearly impossible at this time.
Here's a little trick: use BOTH Launchcast and Last.fm. Someone put together a small program that reads what you're listening to through Launchcast, and submits it to your Last.fm profile. So while you listen to Launchcast, Last.fm will learn your tastes and interests, and then after a while, you can start streaming from Last.fm, as the site will also know your tastes.
Last.fm is about so much more than streaming music. I barely ever stream, but have been tracking my music plays for well over a year. My music tastes have changed dramatically since I started using Last.fm - the recommendations slowly moved me into entirely new types of music.
So what you're saying is that even when it's free, Microsoft can't convince more than 50% of Xbox 360 owners to use Live?
I'd be interested in seeing the numbers of people that have high-speed internet access. That's a prereq to being on Live, and I know of a few people that have 360's but haven't connected to Live because they can't. That's a whole group of people that need to be removed from the equation - I wonder how many are left that could do it but don't bother.
In the long run, I know the percentages are going to come down as the console becomes more widely available. But I really think it will remain substantially higher than in the Xbox 1 days. And I'm not talking about silver + gold accounts - I think more people will get gold accounts than conneted to XBL in the past, because there's more you can do, as many more games are making use of it. In fact, I don't think there's a single Xbox 360 game that doesn't make use of XBL in some way.