"- The controllers (extra buttons make it flexible for use in a number of roles, like the N64's was, and the GameCube's isn't) - I'm not sure what a mechanical eject lever is, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 has one too now. Not that there was anything wrong with a completely ordinary DVD-drive tray"
GCN controller has the same number of buttons as the N64... they just rolled the C-Buttons into a stick... The C-Buttons were designed to be camera control buttons, but got outfitted to a numerous amount of other uses.
The problem with the dvd-drive is that the motor wears out. My PS2 which I've only had for 3 years is making this weird grinding noise whenever it ejects. I've seen PC CD-ROM drives go longer than that without grinding noises.
I think he's saying that Twilight Princess is being developed with the ability to use the Rev. controller. Which is interesting because this is the second time a rumor on the internet was repeatedly denied and then later confirmed (DS Redesign/Lite anyone?) in recent months.
I'm not surprised by this. Nintendo is notorious for having games near the end of the life cycle of one system having some extra functionality coded in for the newer systems. A lot of early Game Boy Color games did this, the two Zelda Ages games for GBA had an extra store that only appeared if you were using a GBA, and let's not forget the Super Game Boy peripheral for the SNES that enhanced the sound on some games (Kirby's Dream Land 2, Donkey Kong) or unlocked extra stuff (Space Invaders for true Arcade rendition, or Wario Blast for up to 4 players on one cart).
I think it would be cool if they had little patches you could download to play GCN games with the Revolution controller, although I don't know how well that will work with some since you are going to end up sacrificing many of the buttons on the GCN controller in the switchover. However, certain games could and should definitely have the option to convert. Since Metroid Prime 2 was adapted to use the controller as part of their e3 tech demos, I have no doubts that and the first game would be high on the list of conversions.
*shrugs* They built that bay in the back just for the hard drive. Also weren't the PS2 Linux kits available before FFXI? Did those make use of the HD as well?
They still shipped the PS2 without a hard drive knowing full well that Final Fantasy XI was coming down the pike for the system. That didn't stop them from including it.
"More interestingly, the article claims that PS3 will ship with a 60-gig hard drive, built-in network card, and Linux!"
Wrong! They have not said if the system will include the hard-drive, although they are encouraging developers to make use of it.
Between hearing that, the downloadable games, the new online service, etc. I'm really wondering how on earth they're ever going to ship the silly thing if they're going to try and add ever new feature than MS and Nintendo come up with.
If the whole Sony-BMI thing had actually been covered in the mainstream press it would've caused a much bigger snafu than just a few thousand geeks getting up in arms.
This week in tech did a pretty good amount of coverage on it, I played that for some family members and they were appalled at it.
Most people out there still have no clue about DRM. Yet they all know about the evils of piracy. Media companies control the information access. Go figure.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who took off the blinders and realized that Blu-ray isn't just Sony. No one else is reporting issues with the spec, and are still on track for the May debut. There has to be other reasons afoot.
Maybe the fact that analysts are only expecting 5 - 10 launch titles? *crosses fingers for "The Bouncer 2"*
They're planning on launching Vaio's with BR drives by middle of the year? Funny that the Vaio team isn't having DRM problems.
Oh wait. "The first consumer Blu-ray Disc players are due on May 23 when Samsung Electronics launches a player. On the same day Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Lionsgate Films will launch several movies on Blu-ray Disc."
I so hope this isn't the big announcement that was expected for tomorrow... or is it already tomorrow in Japan?
I wonder what these delays related to the copy-protection mean? Are they trying to make it sneakier by any chance? Kinda fitting that DRM would bite them in the rear for a second time in under 6 months...
All hard drive diagnostics I've thrown at this haven't given any problems. Both hard drives are Seagate PATA drives, so I can use their SeaTools to run some hardware level diagnostics. No problems detected by them. The only thing windows has ever reported is some minor problems with the NTFS records on occasion, but I believe thats from the crashing and stuff.
For anyone keeping score here's a dump of the hardware in my system:
Did that a long while ago which was helpful in diagnosing some driver issues... The joys of the 8x series of Nvidia drivers mixed with a Geforce 6600GT. Along with some fairly unstable beta drivers from Creative at the time.
Trust me, I've been around when this thing has rebooted. I've seen it pull a reboot when closing Firefox and once when I clicked a link. No warning, no BSOD, just flat out reboot.
I dunno know about everyone else but I absolutely cringe at thinking of the poor souls who would decide to download Final Fantasy XII, let alone Final Fantasy VII. I'm pretty sure it a good couple of hours just for me to download each of the pre-loads for Half-Life 2, and then still had to download some more once the game came out.
Not to say this isn't a bad idea, but its borderline "too early" for this, at least in the states where DSL saturation is nowhere near what it is in Japan.
At least the revolution you're talking downloads of maybe 100 megs or so for N64, and that's assuming no compression. You can fit early SNES games on a floppy disk.
Defrag last week. No problems. Caps could be an issue. But the system is less than a year old, so unless I've got a lemon or a power surge I wasn't aware of I can't think of why caps could be the culprit. Won't hurt to take a look though.
Memtest86 was run a month or so back, no problem found.
Swapfile limit is currently set to 3 gb on one drive, 3gb on another drive. 1 gb of RAM. I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be a problem based on everything I've read about the Windows swap file
I've been thinking about thermal issues but I've checked the internal monitoring software and everything looks normal. Also, I haven't been seeing reboots when playing games like UT2004 which will push my rig towards the limit.
I'm gonna re-enable the on-access scanning at the end of the week and see if the problem re-appears.
My computer started rebooting randomly a week or so ago, and is something I've been trying to combat for a while. It would do it when idling or when I was in the middle of websurfing.
I find it interesting that once I disable Mcafee's on-access scanner the system stabilized itself and has been running without a problem for about a week now (I had seen it reboot about 3 times in one day).
Seeing this article makes me more suspicious of the scanner now.
Actually its a well established fact by Nintendo that the current kits are modded GCN dev kits. I can't remember any of the press releases/hype machines that have been issued so far but this isn't something IGN is pulling out of their a** (for once).
But common sense tells me if you don't like how someone is running their business voice your opinion with your wallet. In other words, if you don't like Google rolls; drop their stock.
Maybe this is part of MS's plan to infiltrate the Japanese market? As if having Sakaguchi on board wasn't enough, this is their trump card to clinch the deal?
If this was something on the Revolution I'd care (it'd be a great use of the controller). This is just an publicity stunt. Straight up on the rocks.
This is just a thinly veiled attempt to see if R* can sell non-GTA games. They have other franchises they could do this with. If they actually put some effort into Midnight Club maybe they could actually offer something other than GTA.
Good point. I was really wondering what they were talking about in terms of price fixing. I thought 99c was what they finally figured people were willing to pay to download a song rather than steal it. Basically it was the compromise point between corporate profit and user willingness. The only thing I'm not entirely sure about is the price of buying an album wholesale though. I'm pretty sure everything I've looked at on iTunes is cheaper to buy the album, but I'm wondering if any exceptions exist.
If cell phone companies actually empowered normal consumers to hook up their phones to a computer ringtone prices would plummet, IMHO. But, I'm not sure if this inquiry is looking at cell phone providers as well as the usual suspects.
Slashdot Mirror
"- The controllers (extra buttons make it flexible for use in a number of roles, like the N64's was, and the GameCube's isn't)
- I'm not sure what a mechanical eject lever is, but I'm pretty sure the PS2 has one too now. Not that there was anything wrong with a completely ordinary DVD-drive tray"
GCN controller has the same number of buttons as the N64... they just rolled the C-Buttons into a stick... The C-Buttons were designed to be camera control buttons, but got outfitted to a numerous amount of other uses.
The problem with the dvd-drive is that the motor wears out. My PS2 which I've only had for 3 years is making this weird grinding noise whenever it ejects. I've seen PC CD-ROM drives go longer than that without grinding noises.
I think he's saying that Twilight Princess is being developed with the ability to use the Rev. controller. Which is interesting because this is the second time a rumor on the internet was repeatedly denied and then later confirmed (DS Redesign/Lite anyone?) in recent months.
I'm not surprised by this. Nintendo is notorious for having games near the end of the life cycle of one system having some extra functionality coded in for the newer systems. A lot of early Game Boy Color games did this, the two Zelda Ages games for GBA had an extra store that only appeared if you were using a GBA, and let's not forget the Super Game Boy peripheral for the SNES that enhanced the sound on some games (Kirby's Dream Land 2, Donkey Kong) or unlocked extra stuff (Space Invaders for true Arcade rendition, or Wario Blast for up to 4 players on one cart).
I think it would be cool if they had little patches you could download to play GCN games with the Revolution controller, although I don't know how well that will work with some since you are going to end up sacrificing many of the buttons on the GCN controller in the switchover. However, certain games could and should definitely have the option to convert. Since Metroid Prime 2 was adapted to use the controller as part of their e3 tech demos, I have no doubts that and the first game would be high on the list of conversions.
*shrugs* They built that bay in the back just for the hard drive. Also weren't the PS2 Linux kits available before FFXI? Did those make use of the HD as well?
They still shipped the PS2 without a hard drive knowing full well that Final Fantasy XI was coming down the pike for the system. That didn't stop them from including it.
"More interestingly, the article claims that PS3 will ship with a 60-gig hard drive, built-in network card, and Linux!"
Wrong! They have not said if the system will include the hard-drive, although they are encouraging developers to make use of it.
Between hearing that, the downloadable games, the new online service, etc. I'm really wondering how on earth they're ever going to ship the silly thing if they're going to try and add ever new feature than MS and Nintendo come up with.
Let DRM be a problem for them for something.
If the whole Sony-BMI thing had actually been covered in the mainstream press it would've caused a much bigger snafu than just a few thousand geeks getting up in arms.
This week in tech did a pretty good amount of coverage on it, I played that for some family members and they were appalled at it.
Most people out there still have no clue about DRM. Yet they all know about the evils of piracy. Media companies control the information access. Go figure.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who took off the blinders and realized that Blu-ray isn't just Sony. No one else is reporting issues with the spec, and are still on track for the May debut. There has to be other reasons afoot.
Maybe the fact that analysts are only expecting 5 - 10 launch titles? *crosses fingers for "The Bouncer 2"*
Agreed. They're called a "plot device", outside of Asimov's books they have no meaning whatsoever.
Yay for more smoke being blown at us by Sony.
7 8
- launch-blu-ray-vaio-pcs-in-mid.php
They claim that Blu-Ray is the problem, yet they're selling Blu-Ray DVR's in Japan? Give me a break. http://www.japan-direct.com/cartitem.asp?prodid=5
Or how about this: http://www.blu-ray-technology.com/2006/03/sony-to
They're planning on launching Vaio's with BR drives by middle of the year? Funny that the Vaio team isn't having DRM problems.
Oh wait. "The first consumer Blu-ray Disc players are due on May 23 when Samsung Electronics launches a player. On the same day Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Lionsgate Films will launch several movies on Blu-ray Disc."
So what's the real reason Ken?
I so hope this isn't the big announcement that was expected for tomorrow... or is it already tomorrow in Japan?
I wonder what these delays related to the copy-protection mean? Are they trying to make it sneakier by any chance? Kinda fitting that DRM would bite them in the rear for a second time in under 6 months...
All hard drive diagnostics I've thrown at this haven't given any problems. Both hard drives are Seagate PATA drives, so I can use their SeaTools to run some hardware level diagnostics. No problems detected by them. The only thing windows has ever reported is some minor problems with the NTFS records on occasion, but I believe thats from the crashing and stuff.
For anyone keeping score here's a dump of the hardware in my system:
AMD Ahtlon64 3500+, Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT, Epox 9NPA+SLi, 1 gb PC3200 Crucial RAM, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, SeaGate ST380021A (80 GB), SeaGate ST3200822A (200 GB), Windows XP SP2 (All latest updates)
Did that a long while ago which was helpful in diagnosing some driver issues... The joys of the 8x series of Nvidia drivers mixed with a Geforce 6600GT. Along with some fairly unstable beta drivers from Creative at the time.
Trust me, I've been around when this thing has rebooted. I've seen it pull a reboot when closing Firefox and once when I clicked a link. No warning, no BSOD, just flat out reboot.
1 GB Crucial RAM. System has never hit 1 GB usage ever to my knowledge.
I dunno know about everyone else but I absolutely cringe at thinking of the poor souls who would decide to download Final Fantasy XII, let alone Final Fantasy VII. I'm pretty sure it a good couple of hours just for me to download each of the pre-loads for Half-Life 2, and then still had to download some more once the game came out.
Not to say this isn't a bad idea, but its borderline "too early" for this, at least in the states where DSL saturation is nowhere near what it is in Japan.
At least the revolution you're talking downloads of maybe 100 megs or so for N64, and that's assuming no compression. You can fit early SNES games on a floppy disk.
Defrag last week. No problems. Caps could be an issue. But the system is less than a year old, so unless I've got a lemon or a power surge I wasn't aware of I can't think of why caps could be the culprit. Won't hurt to take a look though.
Memtest86 was run a month or so back, no problem found.
Swapfile limit is currently set to 3 gb on one drive, 3gb on another drive. 1 gb of RAM. I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be a problem based on everything I've read about the Windows swap file
I've been thinking about thermal issues but I've checked the internal monitoring software and everything looks normal. Also, I haven't been seeing reboots when playing games like UT2004 which will push my rig towards the limit.
I'm gonna re-enable the on-access scanning at the end of the week and see if the problem re-appears.
That was my first guess... Seagate's SeaTools found nothing, same with CHKDSK in Windows Recovery console
Puzzling.
My computer started rebooting randomly a week or so ago, and is something I've been trying to combat for a while. It would do it when idling or when I was in the middle of websurfing.
I find it interesting that once I disable Mcafee's on-access scanner the system stabilized itself and has been running without a problem for about a week now (I had seen it reboot about 3 times in one day).
Seeing this article makes me more suspicious of the scanner now.
Actually its a well established fact by Nintendo that the current kits are modded GCN dev kits. I can't remember any of the press releases/hype machines that have been issued so far but this isn't something IGN is pulling out of their a** (for once).
But common sense tells me if you don't like how someone is running their business voice your opinion with your wallet. In other words, if you don't like Google rolls; drop their stock.
Maybe this is part of MS's plan to infiltrate the Japanese market? As if having Sakaguchi on board wasn't enough, this is their trump card to clinch the deal?
If this was something on the Revolution I'd care (it'd be a great use of the controller). This is just an publicity stunt. Straight up on the rocks.
This is just a thinly veiled attempt to see if R* can sell non-GTA games. They have other franchises they could do this with. If they actually put some effort into Midnight Club maybe they could actually offer something other than GTA.
Chalk this and the MS anti-trust suit up to the ineffectiveness of the Rockefeller Anti-trust Legislation...
Good point. I was really wondering what they were talking about in terms of price fixing. I thought 99c was what they finally figured people were willing to pay to download a song rather than steal it. Basically it was the compromise point between corporate profit and user willingness. The only thing I'm not entirely sure about is the price of buying an album wholesale though. I'm pretty sure everything I've looked at on iTunes is cheaper to buy the album, but I'm wondering if any exceptions exist.
If cell phone companies actually empowered normal consumers to hook up their phones to a computer ringtone prices would plummet, IMHO. But, I'm not sure if this inquiry is looking at cell phone providers as well as the usual suspects.