I love how they kept the original bad guy's name of "Big Boss" -- a literal translation of Japanese to English that just didn't work. It's so cheezy, but still sorta pulls at the nostalgia strings.:)
Remember, the games don't get published on Nintendo's console unless Nintendo (a) likes the cut of money they get and (b) agrees that the game can be published. When Nintendo insists on holding the keys to their platform so tightly, it opens them up to criticism when the software is crappy.
The same can be said of Sony and Microsoft. You don't publish for the PS2 or XBox without licensing from them. So are you doing your duty and criticizing MS for Kabuki Warriors?
Besides, the RE re-make was great for me. I never played the original. (only bought PS titles that I thought were *absolutely* necessary -- I hate long load times, which most PS games had in spades)
musicians alwasys made a living. but they werent always some the richest people in society!
Neither were actors. In this day and age, people are willing to pay for celebrities, for some odd reason. Maybe it's because the average citizen has more free time, and is more willing to pay for entertainment?
If so many people are confused as to what broadband means (Which seems to be alot of people posting in this thread, including one persons reply to my first post, no not yourself) how can that possibly help make communication better?
Well, use context. It helps. When someone says "128k isn't broadband," use the context clue of "128k" to mean that they're referring to bandwidth capacity, not broad/baseband and what's actually going over the wire.
If someone says "my broadband connection carries my voice, data, and cable" they more likely are actually talking about the fact that there are 3 signals on the wire.
You wouldn't read "We ran cat-5 to every room in the house" to mean "We ran the feline numbered '5' all over the house," would you?
I think another huge benefit would be that the community would own the infrastructure, keeping you from getting gouged by Adelphia or whatever phone/cable provider is in your area.
Not only that, but it creates local jobs, too -- physical maintenance, system administrators, tech support and such.
So you point to equally biased pieces? These ones are more accurate... because the slant is in the direction you want?
I especially liked the part where Spinsanity quoted Moore as supporting banning of all guns and then "I don't think, ultimately, getting rid of the guns will be the answer." Umm, those aren't conflicting statements, contrary to what the article implies. Maybe getting rid of guns will be part of the answer? Maybe? Can you see his point? Even if you don't agree with it?
I can see when I'm being lied to -- by both sides. What bugs me is people who (wisely) choose to be selective about what they hear from one side, but just follow along like sheep with whatever the other side says or does.
Go read Gamespot or EBGames' user reviews of Zelda: the Wind Waker. While most of them might not have an agenda, per se, most of them made up their minds before even playing the game.
I don't think it's that much different in game reviews. I remember a review of Mischief Makers for the N64 started out as, basically: "you are a maid with a vacuum cleaner, this game sucks." Personally, I found it to be a great action/platformer -- with no vacuum cleaners, ever, leading me to believe that the reviewer hadn't even played the first 2 levels of the game. How many more people might have bought the game if instead, he'd said "this game, while quirky, has great controls and a wide variety of levels. The humor in the game is tough to swallow, but you won't care while you're blasting your way through the 50 stages"?
Fortunately, most reviewers have the sense to give Wind Waker the praise it deserves. But imagine that it was instead developed by Treasure, and wasn't called Zelda: do you think they'd have still given it the playtime necessary to see how good a game it is?
Nintendo holds on to users with their name brand and quality of games. Take the GameCube for example, it can only do about 8 million Polygons a second, and yet it sells well when there is the PS2 that can do up to 75millon a sec, and the XBOX that can do up to 300million a sec.
This pair of sentences is wrong on *so* many levels that it's not even funny.
I hear my CS classmates chuckling about this one all the time and it just makes me sad that they don't understand why. Whatever happened to people digging into documentation and figuring things out?
Non-maskable interrupt/NMI -- look it up and maybe it won't seem so funny anymore.
If you already *have* 11 million (he's got more, I'm sure), that extra 11 million might not be worth risking a more serious and permanent injury.
Hell, if someone offered me 11 million (and I *don't* have that much already; at least not after my last paycheck), but I knew it'd come at the cost of never being able to walk again, I'd tell them to keep their money.
Of all the GDC awards, the one that I was most pleased with was the lifetime achievement award given to Gunpei Yokoi. The NES and (to a lesser extent) SNES game library were equal parts Miyamoto and Yokoi. Metroid, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus... The Game & Watch series, the NES and SNES design, all contributed to (if not outright created) by Yokoi.
Not to mention the whole Gameboy thing... Who'd have thought that ugly Gameboy would pave the way for its successors' complete market dominance.
It's good to see the man honored. It was a tragedy that we lost him so young.
My system (Win2k), with nothing extra on right now but the browser and task manager, is at 21 processes. Naturally, some of those are system processes and won't be using comctl32 or user32, but pretty much every other process will be, and that's nearly a meg saved for every one.
All things considered, the.DLL system isn't perfect. But the only time I've ever run into DLL hell was as a sysadmin for the University of Idaho PC labs, where we had about 500 apps that had to be available on each of our ~700 workstations. As a desktop user, I've had a.DLL conflict only 1 time.
So, all things considered, I think.DLLs serve a useful purpose.
This actually doesn't surprise me much, though I'd have to doubt that it's the norm in the games industry. My reasoning: Why test every path when you expect players to just take the one laid out by the $20 guide that they bought with the ($50) game?
Why not just make the $14.95/month include some reasonable number of emails? Maybe 100? 1000? When user exceeds the threshold, they get an automated response to their mailings that tells them so.
This'll prevent hijacked accounts from accruing hundreds/thousands of dollars in charges. It'll keep the email system "free" for typical users. It'll allow bulk mailers to pay $100/month up front for an extra 100,000 emails.
I've also seen several other responses complaining about micropayments: They seem to work for the phone companies, charging for all those minutes. It's no more difficult in an email system to track # of mails sent and charge the account accordingly.
It's late and I need to get to bed, so I'm not going to look up links for you here, but it's fairly well-known that Nintendo pulls in the highest margins of any video game publisher. (take a look around Planet Gamecube)
I don't quite know what you mean my 'MS and Nintendo need to get their act together' -- MS is working to penetrate the market at all costs (it's working), Nintendo is making money hand over fist by catering to their core demographics (kids, and anyone who just likes fun games).
I liken the PS2's success to Britney Spears'. The first year it was out, there was *nothing* for it worth buying. Yet it sold millions because of clever marketing. In the last 16-18 months it's gotten a lot better, and a lot of good titles have been released, but really not any more than you'll find on the 'Cube. The public's perception is that the PS2 is somehow better than the alternatives, and that's all it takes to make it a winner.
So would you care to mention something about Sony's developer relationships? I don't really know how they're any different than those with developers of XBox and Gamecube software, so I'd like to be enlightened.
Also -- have you heard about the Q fund that Yamauchi created to fund upstart Gamecube developers?
And for your last point: Let me use another Britney analogy. "Britney Spears is musically inferior to (pick talented-but-unknown group/singer), yet continues to net a more than substantial share of the market. This alone, if anything, is a sign that people will buy whatever they are told to buy." (note - not a knock to all PS2 owners -- it's got some great games -- but most PS2 owners just bought it because it was popular)
Also, he gave only one example to back up any of what he said ('GTA was Pac-Man...'), and even that was very nebulous. I don't know whether this is because he was just talking out his ass (likely), or because Gamespot reporters are not journalists (most likely it's a combination of the two).
It's just amazing what people will allow to be spoon-fed to themselves these days. Blackley is the epitome of this.
You missed the last section of the article about pixel shaders. Basically, my understanding of them is that versions 1.1 - 1.3 should all have the same performance, since they take the same number of passes to render a scene. 1.4 is the only one that can cut the number of passes. The only things gained between versions.1 and.3 were features, not performace. So, since we're looking at this from a performance standpoint, it makes sense to ignore them.
Something that many people fail to understand is that tax-deductible *anything* doesn't give you an equal deduction to what you spent.
The whole 3 billion is tax deductible. But only a portion of that is repaid as credits in itemized deductions.
So, let's say that 75% can be credited (which is an *extremely* high estimate), he's still given away $750 million on top of that. In interviews, he's stated that he's giving it all away, minus a couple million for each of his kids, when he and his wife die. You'll also notice that Gates was against repealing the death tax, which will likely cut more from his estate than anyone else's in history.
Your post reeked of as much FUD as most of Microsoft's public correspondence.
Slashdot Mirror
I love how they kept the original bad guy's name of "Big Boss" -- a literal translation of Japanese to English that just didn't work. It's so cheezy, but still sorta pulls at the nostalgia strings. :)
--Jeremy
Remember, the games don't get published on Nintendo's console unless Nintendo (a) likes the cut of money they get and (b) agrees that the game can be published. When Nintendo insists on holding the keys to their platform so tightly, it opens them up to criticism when the software is crappy.
The same can be said of Sony and Microsoft. You don't publish for the PS2 or XBox without licensing from them. So are you doing your duty and criticizing MS for Kabuki Warriors?
Besides, the RE re-make was great for me. I never played the original. (only bought PS titles that I thought were *absolutely* necessary -- I hate long load times, which most PS games had in spades)
--Jeremy
This is obviously FUD. From the FAQ link above...
I think you're confusing 'FUD' with 'urban legend.'
--Jeremy
It's not about "power to the rich" or "power to the intellectuals"...which often wind up being synonymous.
:)
Of course, one look at our current 'nuke-ular' president and wee see a counter example.
--Jeremy
musicians alwasys made a living. but they werent always some the richest people in society!
Neither were actors. In this day and age, people are willing to pay for celebrities, for some odd reason. Maybe it's because the average citizen has more free time, and is more willing to pay for entertainment?
--Jeremy
So a CEO isn't liable for things that their company does, but investors can be held liable for actions of the users of their "investee's" products?
--Jeremy
If so many people are confused as to what broadband means (Which seems to be alot of people posting in this thread, including one persons reply to my first post, no not yourself) how can that possibly help make communication better?
Well, use context. It helps. When someone says "128k isn't broadband," use the context clue of "128k" to mean that they're referring to bandwidth capacity, not broad/baseband and what's actually going over the wire.
If someone says "my broadband connection carries my voice, data, and cable" they more likely are actually talking about the fact that there are 3 signals on the wire.
You wouldn't read "We ran cat-5 to every room in the house" to mean "We ran the feline numbered '5' all over the house," would you?
--Jeremy
I think another huge benefit would be that the community would own the infrastructure, keeping you from getting gouged by Adelphia or whatever phone/cable provider is in your area.
Not only that, but it creates local jobs, too -- physical maintenance, system administrators, tech support and such.
--Jeremy
Languages evolve over time. Deal with it.
Or are you going to insist that all geeks find a different moniker for themselves, because 'geek' is a derogatory term?
--Jeremy
Still, how many people actually play FPS games on console compared to PC? I don't think it would be a drastic thing.
AFAIK, Halo is still the best-selling XBox title. So obviously there's some less-than-fleeting demand for console FPS games.
--Jeremy
So you point to equally biased pieces? These ones are more accurate ... because the slant is in the direction you want?
I especially liked the part where Spinsanity quoted Moore as supporting banning of all guns and then "I don't think, ultimately, getting rid of the guns will be the answer." Umm, those aren't conflicting statements, contrary to what the article implies. Maybe getting rid of guns will be part of the answer? Maybe? Can you see his point? Even if you don't agree with it?
I can see when I'm being lied to -- by both sides. What bugs me is people who (wisely) choose to be selective about what they hear from one side, but just follow along like sheep with whatever the other side says or does.
--Jeremy
Go read Gamespot or EBGames' user reviews of Zelda: the Wind Waker. While most of them might not have an agenda, per se, most of them made up their minds before even playing the game.
I don't think it's that much different in game reviews. I remember a review of Mischief Makers for the N64 started out as, basically: "you are a maid with a vacuum cleaner, this game sucks." Personally, I found it to be a great action/platformer -- with no vacuum cleaners, ever, leading me to believe that the reviewer hadn't even played the first 2 levels of the game. How many more people might have bought the game if instead, he'd said "this game, while quirky, has great controls and a wide variety of levels. The humor in the game is tough to swallow, but you won't care while you're blasting your way through the 50 stages"?
Fortunately, most reviewers have the sense to give Wind Waker the praise it deserves. But imagine that it was instead developed by Treasure, and wasn't called Zelda: do you think they'd have still given it the playtime necessary to see how good a game it is?
--Jeremy
Nintendo holds on to users with their name brand and quality of games. Take the GameCube for example, it can only do about 8 million Polygons a second, and yet it sells well when there is the PS2 that can do up to 75millon a sec, and the XBOX that can do up to 300million a sec.
This pair of sentences is wrong on *so* many levels that it's not even funny.
--Jeremy
CTRL-ALT-DELETE to start-up
I hear my CS classmates chuckling about this one all the time and it just makes me sad that they don't understand why. Whatever happened to people digging into documentation and figuring things out?
Non-maskable interrupt/NMI -- look it up and maybe it won't seem so funny anymore.
--Jeremy
If you already *have* 11 million (he's got more, I'm sure), that extra 11 million might not be worth risking a more serious and permanent injury.
Hell, if someone offered me 11 million (and I *don't* have that much already; at least not after my last paycheck), but I knew it'd come at the cost of never being able to walk again, I'd tell them to keep their money.
--Jeremy
Dude. Paragraphs. Please.
--Jeremy
Of all the GDC awards, the one that I was most pleased with was the lifetime achievement award given to Gunpei Yokoi. The NES and (to a lesser extent) SNES game library were equal parts Miyamoto and Yokoi. Metroid, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus ... The Game & Watch series, the NES and SNES design, all contributed to (if not outright created) by Yokoi.
Not to mention the whole Gameboy thing... Who'd have thought that ugly Gameboy would pave the way for its successors' complete market dominance.
It's good to see the man honored. It was a tragedy that we lost him so young.
--Jeremy
Let's see... I've got one!
.DLL system isn't perfect. But the only time I've ever run into DLL hell was as a sysadmin for the University of Idaho PC labs, where we had about 500 apps that had to be available on each of our ~700 workstations. As a desktop user, I've had a .DLL conflict only 1 time.
.DLLs serve a useful purpose.
comctl32.dll (~500k)
Not to mention user32.dll (~400k)
My system (Win2k), with nothing extra on right now but the browser and task manager, is at 21 processes. Naturally, some of those are system processes and won't be using comctl32 or user32, but pretty much every other process will be, and that's nearly a meg saved for every one.
All things considered, the
So, all things considered, I think
--Jeremy
This actually doesn't surprise me much, though I'd have to doubt that it's the norm in the games industry. My reasoning: Why test every path when you expect players to just take the one laid out by the $20 guide that they bought with the ($50) game?
--Jeremy
Why not just make the $14.95/month include some reasonable number of emails? Maybe 100? 1000? When user exceeds the threshold, they get an automated response to their mailings that tells them so.
This'll prevent hijacked accounts from accruing hundreds/thousands of dollars in charges. It'll keep the email system "free" for typical users. It'll allow bulk mailers to pay $100/month up front for an extra 100,000 emails.
I've also seen several other responses complaining about micropayments: They seem to work for the phone companies, charging for all those minutes. It's no more difficult in an email system to track # of mails sent and charge the account accordingly.
--Jeremy
It's late and I need to get to bed, so I'm not going to look up links for you here, but it's fairly well-known that Nintendo pulls in the highest margins of any video game publisher. (take a look around Planet Gamecube)
." (note - not a knock to all PS2 owners -- it's got some great games -- but most PS2 owners just bought it because it was popular)
I don't quite know what you mean my 'MS and Nintendo need to get their act together' -- MS is working to penetrate the market at all costs (it's working), Nintendo is making money hand over fist by catering to their core demographics (kids, and anyone who just likes fun games).
I liken the PS2's success to Britney Spears'. The first year it was out, there was *nothing* for it worth buying. Yet it sold millions because of clever marketing. In the last 16-18 months it's gotten a lot better, and a lot of good titles have been released, but really not any more than you'll find on the 'Cube. The public's perception is that the PS2 is somehow better than the alternatives, and that's all it takes to make it a winner.
So would you care to mention something about Sony's developer relationships? I don't really know how they're any different than those with developers of XBox and Gamecube software, so I'd like to be enlightened.
Also -- have you heard about the Q fund that Yamauchi created to fund upstart Gamecube developers?
And for your last point: Let me use another Britney analogy. "Britney Spears is musically inferior to (pick talented-but-unknown group/singer), yet continues to net a more than substantial share of the market. This alone, if anything, is a sign that people will buy whatever they are told to buy
--Jeremy
Also, he gave only one example to back up any of what he said ('GTA was Pac-Man...'), and even that was very nebulous. I don't know whether this is because he was just talking out his ass (likely), or because Gamespot reporters are not journalists (most likely it's a combination of the two).
It's just amazing what people will allow to be spoon-fed to themselves these days. Blackley is the epitome of this.
--Jeremy
You missed the last section of the article about pixel shaders. Basically, my understanding of them is that versions 1.1 - 1.3 should all have the same performance, since they take the same number of passes to render a scene. 1.4 is the only one that can cut the number of passes. The only things gained between versions .1 and .3 were features, not performace. So, since we're looking at this from a performance standpoint, it makes sense to ignore them.
--Jeremy
Something that many people fail to understand is that tax-deductible *anything* doesn't give you an equal deduction to what you spent.
The whole 3 billion is tax deductible. But only a portion of that is repaid as credits in itemized deductions.
So, let's say that 75% can be credited (which is an *extremely* high estimate), he's still given away $750 million on top of that. In interviews, he's stated that he's giving it all away, minus a couple million for each of his kids, when he and his wife die. You'll also notice that Gates was against repealing the death tax, which will likely cut more from his estate than anyone else's in history.
Your post reeked of as much FUD as most of Microsoft's public correspondence.
--Jeremy
*PLEASE* use static protection on anything you're repairing or modding.
Do it for the children! Why doesn't anyone think of the children?!
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
--Jeremy