The interesting thing about WoW is that it didn't refine it more than it dumbed it down. Everyone else was fighting to make their game more challenging, more epic in scale, and more intense graphics. Blizzard in turn made their game easier to access, smaller in scale and easier to travel due to easy transportation, and less intense graphics.
In turn they opened the door to the average Joe who always secretly though D&D and online gaming might be fun if it wasn't for the "nerds" and the amount of time it would take out of their life. They also set the system specs low enough to where anyone with a somewhat modern computer could play it. However, through this "dumbing down" (which I'm not using as a derogatory statement, I'll be the first to say that a lot of MMO's are unnecessarily difficult in a lot of respects) they alienated a lot of the original core audience of MMORPG's. For every WoW player (well, maybe not every seeing that there's so many of them) that makes an joke about EverQuest players, you can be assured that there's an EQ player that's making a crack about WoW "carebear" players.
The core problem is that you'll always have 3 core audiences: Casual players, power levelers/stat whores, and RPGers who are all looking for distinctly different gaming experiences and because of this there's never going to be the typical progression path for the genre. I think because of this, articles that talk about "rethinking the genre" have it all wrong. How do you rethink a genre that everyone wants to jump into, yet appeals (in different ways) to such a diverse audience? Do we rethink the genre or do we finally give up on trying to appeal to everybody and focus on certain core audiences? I think that's the one thing that Blizzard did get right on WoW...they went out of their way to appeal to the casual gamer. Until someone designs a game grand enough in scale to encompass a caste system to divide and account for different play styles or creates a game with seperate servers that drastically alter the game play for each type of player, I think we're better off picking a target audience and sticking with it.
Could this be because people are switching over to music services such as Yahoo! Music Unlimited? I pay roughly $7 a month for this service and it satisfies most of my "impulse buy" urges when I go to the music store. I still buy cds by my favorite artists, but I'm much less tempted to buy a cd just for "something new to listen to" when I can just go home (or to work the next day, for that matter) and get my "something new to listen to" fix. The only real place I can't listen to online music is my car and the gym...and that's no big deal because I can just listen to a cd or talk radio.
If nothing else, I'm thankful for these services so I don't waste my money on crappy cds anymore. It seems like everytime a major label scoops up on of my favorite artists, it all goes downhill.
It would have made since for PC builders to supply OO on new computers last year. It would have given the user added value for free. It's a great suite of tools. Even though I have Office at work, there's I still use OO for certain applications.
The problem with OO right now is that, even though OO is a great substitute and can use Office files...it CANT use Office 2007 files. People are going to be saving files with.docx by default in 2007. This creates a huge compatibility void until someone creates an open source DTD for OO to open and render.docx files. No matter how good OO gets, Office is THE standard. If it can't keep up with Office compatibility (and I'm sure it eventually will catch up), it's about as useful as WordPerfect (i.e., it's fine as long as you don't have to use anybody elses files).
Your best bet is probably to call a MS sales associate and tell them your situation. Maybe they can slide some licenses under the door, seeing that you're already a user and I'm sure your office already has full deployment of a suitable (ahem...::cough::) Office product.
I think it's fairly ironic that the guy works for the company that makes The Sims, one of the ugliest, most technologically behind games I know of that just happens to be addictive and have a crazy following, yet he blasts Nintendo, company that makes the most technologically behind game systems that just happens to be addictive and have a crazy following.
It sounds like Sony has lost total grasp of the industry they're in, the "videogame" industry. What *I* want to see are the games. I'm stuck in a hard place now. I want to buy an Xbox 360 or a PS3. My knee jerk reaction is to go with Sony because they will probably provide more of the games that I want to play in the long run, but in the short term (next 2 years) it's looking sorta grim. I'm sure this new service by Sony will be great, it sounds like it mixes the social aspects of Wii's with the gamer oriented aspects of Xbox Live. Okay, so Sony waited to see what their competitors did and combined it and made something great. I can understand that, if I was Sony I'd play it safe and wait so I could outdo my competitors too. But instead of using this to support the games, they're using this to supplant the games and sell the system based on what it CAN do but isn't instead of what it IS DOING. And there lies the crux. Sure, I'll eventually get a 360 or a PS3, but not until the smoke settles. It's too much of an investment to get the top end of either system. Besides, I'm having too much fun with my Wii now and it didn't break the bank either. Hopefully the PS3 will be in a better position in a couple years when (if?) the novelty of the Wii runs out.
Sorry to break the news to you, but the second the "world ending" asteroid is announced, all your money becomes null and void. At that point, you'd better hope you have a buddy who owns or works at a liquor store, cause it's going to be chaos. Heck, I know if I knew the world was going to end in a year, I'd just go home from work right now. I'd probably start biking to places I haven't been and find ways to eat off the land. I hate to say it, but there's not going to be much of a demand for technical writers if the products I'm writing manuals for would never even see the light of day.
Which is exactly why religion has been used to oppress the poor over the course of history. Give the worker grunts something to believe in and work towards and they put up much less of a fight when they realize they're doing hard work for a crust of bread (be them legitimate workers or slaves). I think it's more inline to say that religion serves as a point of self-validation when you see what you don't have and, bitterly enough, a way of justifying and repressing ill sentimates towards others have more than you do. This is a very simplistic breakdown, and I'm certainly not hinting at the fact that this is why people accept religion into their life or that there is no God(s) (I'm openly agnostic). But, when you see a phenomena such as religion across the entire world, even in cultures that have been isolated from other cultures for long periods of time, you have to start making logical breakdowns.
I think it's sad that theologians try to skirt around science so hard, when a discovery such as this (if the theory is correct), something deep rooted in the human genome, is as much a win for science trying to understand human nature as it would be for a theologians. After all, if you created life on a planet and wanted to stay out of its way to see how it developed, wouldn't you want to at least give what you've created a clue that you're out there? Maybe it was a mistake, look at the bloody history of religion throughout the world, but could you honestly say that you may not have made the same mistake if you created life?
Do you realize what the number one played game in the world is? Mario? Think again. Halo 2? Think again. Pokemon?? Think again.
Try Solitaire built into Windows. Solitaire. And you think people are gonna forget about "minigames" once the PS3's ultimate graphics take over the world! Heh, that's just silly.
Really, if you criticize the "Game Boy" for having too many revisions, you're really only criticizing it's popularity as a platform over the years. As it has been stated before, every revision and new product (discounting the Micro, which was never planned to replace the GBA SP...merely be an alternate version to appeal to the trendy crowd) has been due to consumer demand. I'm sure making more money has something to do with it, but even the new DS Lite was put out 1) Because consumers complained the LCD screen wasn't as good as the PSP's screen and 2) It looked like a cross between a UFO and a Fisher Price toy and 3) Because Nintendo had a hit on their hands and decided that they would put out the product revision before the system hit critical mass. Nintendo could have kept peddling the old DS only to release the DS Lite a year or two down the road to make even more money and maximize "double purchases" if they had wanted to. I'm pretty sure Nintendo didn't plan on releasing the new version of the DS in a little over 2 years after release from the start, but what would you do if your competitor released a system with a better screen and a sleeker look, even if you were clearly in the lead?
I mean, come on, if you're holding out for the ultimate "Game Boy" experience, wait 20 years for the 10 screen, surround sound version. We all know that...
Fear, uncertainty, doubt...exactly what the post I replied to was full of. I can't help that someone is afraid that their console of choice is off to a rocky start and feels the need to try and convince the rest of the world in hopes that it changes peoples opinions. Either that or the person is blind to reality.
VF5 is out in Japan and is only the top selling game by 3k units, it's opening week. Can I make it any clearer for you? How about by posting some hard figures on 1st week sales of the VF series (blatently ripped from user dohhyulittle at www.gamesarefun.com):
Virtua Fighter series First Week Sales: (Famitsu) 11/21/1994: SAT Virtua Fighter - 64,718 (Saturn Launch title) 11/27/1995: SAT Virtua Fighter 2 - 540,539 11/23/1998: DC Virtua Fighter 3tb - 97,659 (DreamCast Launch title) 1/28/2002: PS2 Virtua Fighter 4 - 356,897 2/5/2007: PS3 Virtua Fighter 5 - 48,346
It's clearly the slowest selling VF game ever. Read into this as you will. As far as the rest of my "fanboy" tantrum? All I did was respond point to point to your Sony "fanboy" tantrum. When you make blanket statements with no substance to back it up, expect someone to shoot you down.
Is this all sarcasm that's lost over the interweb? A few things.
1) Everytime I try the PS3 in a department store, it freezes or is already froze due to overheating.
2) Silent operation? Not sure about that. But, have you seen the insides of a PS3? It's 50% heatsink. Sure, it might run quiet, but even with the massive heatsink, it still overheats...and the trade off is the size of the system. It's absolutely massive.
3) Last I checked, my local target had 5 PS3's, the EB across the street actually has a unit they've had since the first of the year, most stores I go to have "PS3 now in stock" signs (coincidentally right next to the "Wii currently unavailable signs"). Face, it, the PS3 is in stock everywhere. People who say otherwise live in an area that's having a spike in sales/popularity or an area that's getting below average allocations. FUD.
4) BlueRay has far from won the format war. HD DVD was winning the war by a long shot until recently. It's yet to be seen whether the current spike in BlueRay sales has anything to do with the free movie Sony was giving away with PS3's or any of the current buy one get one free BlueRay DVD incentives that have been going on (most definitely Sony throwing fuel on the fire to hype their format...they're dead in the water if it fails).
5) Virtua Fight 5 is already out in Japan. While it did top the charts with 48,346 in sales, It was only 3000 units ahead of Wii Sports, a game that's been on the market for over 2 months. Opening week big sellers typically always go to the 100k sales range the first week.
6) Europe is not going crazy with preorders. This is FUD. If you want a UK news site's opinion on this, try this article: http://news.spong.com/article/11800
7) You say "PS3 has the top selling game in Japan now " and then you say "Virtua Fighter is almost out." Are you just making things up, because Virtua Fighter IS out and IS the top selling game in Japan. Again, however, only by 3k units, being trailed closely by a game that's been out for months.
FUD FUD FUD
The PS3 will have it's heyday in the future when the price comes down and there's compelling titles. Until then, I suggest that you don't fall for Sony marketing FUD and live up to the reality that it's underperforming in the marketplace right now, even by it's skeptics predictions.
Or you could do like me and play WoW inside Second Life. Yeah, I found a little house in the middle of nowhere. It's kind of low key at this point, but I expect that it'll really take off soon. They have WoW emulator clients on one side of the room and live german scheizer sex shows on the other.
I think one of the problems, in the case of WoW, is that leveling is so absurdly easy going either route (quest vs. grind) that it doesn't really matter if one is faster than the other, they're both quick...which takes some of the pull away from questing. In a game where scoring the next level is actually a challenge and actually takes good chunk of time to achieve, even if it takes more time to level via questing, the game stays more interesting by questing instead of grinding. You'll also make use of the quested items in a slower game. Warcraft, for example, you outgrow your items so quickly that there's no point in questing for gear until the end game.
Granted, there's always the argument of forcing people to experience content through slower progression (think currently of Vanguard) vs. concentrating on end game content and using the first 1/2 - 3/4 of the game as a teaching tool for the end game (think currently of Warcraft and, even more relevant, Guild Wars). At least there's a clear split in the market now, each with die hard followers, and companies are less and less trying to cater towards a middle ground of different play styles.
"why not make a product that people can enjoy now, and enjoy more later?"
Because I'd rather pay $300 for a product that can do what I have the ability to display now and then $300 for an even better system than today's $600 system 4-5 years from now when I actually have the ability to use said technology. I think 1080p out of the Xbox 360 is going to negatively affect games with complex graphics, because developers will have to cut back in poly count, effects, etc. that would run just fine in 720p just to make them work in 1080p. Really, I'd much rather see companies design games for 720p now (seeing that most HD monitors on the market now are geared for 720p and 1080i) and the extra processing power to make the games look EVEN better at that lower resolution than having to figure out ways to milk the hardware for all it's worth just to make it display 1080p at a respectable framerate.
I would be somewhat hesitant about a modchip like the WiiKey that can be firmware upgradable via DVD. What's to stop Nintendo from including a flash in future games and/or WiiConnect24 update that would flash the mod to render it useless?
* Most PS3 owners have used the system to watch Blueray movies.
I hope so, especially seeing that the US PS3 came with a free copy of Talladega Nights.
* 80% of PS3 owners plan on buying/watching Blueray dvd's in the future.
No duh? I hate to sound sarcastic here, but what's the sense in buying a $600 piece of hardware if you don't plan on using all the features. Everybody watches DVDs these days. I imagine if I had a BlueRay DVD player sitting there, I'd plan on buying/watching at bare minimum my FAVORITE movies on that format instead of regular DVD. I'd venture the people who said no were those who don't have an HDtv...which makes me wonder why the heck they're even being early adopters seeing that they can't even make use of the HD graphics. That's like insisting on having the best hifi audio rig possible when you wear hearing aids.
You're right on the money. It makes me cringe everytime I see someone open up their browser (their default page being MSN), go to the search box on the page, and type in "google" or even type in www.whatever.com instead of going to the address box and just putting in the search engine. People don't understand or really care that one way is a better or worse way to navigate the webthan another, so long as their way works.
Slashdot Mirror
The interesting thing about WoW is that it didn't refine it more than it dumbed it down. Everyone else was fighting to make their game more challenging, more epic in scale, and more intense graphics. Blizzard in turn made their game easier to access, smaller in scale and easier to travel due to easy transportation, and less intense graphics.
In turn they opened the door to the average Joe who always secretly though D&D and online gaming might be fun if it wasn't for the "nerds" and the amount of time it would take out of their life. They also set the system specs low enough to where anyone with a somewhat modern computer could play it. However, through this "dumbing down" (which I'm not using as a derogatory statement, I'll be the first to say that a lot of MMO's are unnecessarily difficult in a lot of respects) they alienated a lot of the original core audience of MMORPG's. For every WoW player (well, maybe not every seeing that there's so many of them) that makes an joke about EverQuest players, you can be assured that there's an EQ player that's making a crack about WoW "carebear" players.
The core problem is that you'll always have 3 core audiences: Casual players, power levelers/stat whores, and RPGers who are all looking for distinctly different gaming experiences and because of this there's never going to be the typical progression path for the genre. I think because of this, articles that talk about "rethinking the genre" have it all wrong. How do you rethink a genre that everyone wants to jump into, yet appeals (in different ways) to such a diverse audience? Do we rethink the genre or do we finally give up on trying to appeal to everybody and focus on certain core audiences? I think that's the one thing that Blizzard did get right on WoW...they went out of their way to appeal to the casual gamer. Until someone designs a game grand enough in scale to encompass a caste system to divide and account for different play styles or creates a game with seperate servers that drastically alter the game play for each type of player, I think we're better off picking a target audience and sticking with it.
Could this be because people are switching over to music services such as Yahoo! Music Unlimited? I pay roughly $7 a month for this service and it satisfies most of my "impulse buy" urges when I go to the music store. I still buy cds by my favorite artists, but I'm much less tempted to buy a cd just for "something new to listen to" when I can just go home (or to work the next day, for that matter) and get my "something new to listen to" fix. The only real place I can't listen to online music is my car and the gym...and that's no big deal because I can just listen to a cd or talk radio.
If nothing else, I'm thankful for these services so I don't waste my money on crappy cds anymore. It seems like everytime a major label scoops up on of my favorite artists, it all goes downhill.
It would have made since for PC builders to supply OO on new computers last year. It would have given the user added value for free. It's a great suite of tools. Even though I have Office at work, there's I still use OO for certain applications.
.docx by default in 2007. This creates a huge compatibility void until someone creates an open source DTD for OO to open and render .docx files. No matter how good OO gets, Office is THE standard. If it can't keep up with Office compatibility (and I'm sure it eventually will catch up), it's about as useful as WordPerfect (i.e., it's fine as long as you don't have to use anybody elses files).
The problem with OO right now is that, even though OO is a great substitute and can use Office files...it CANT use Office 2007 files. People are going to be saving files with
Your best bet is probably to call a MS sales associate and tell them your situation. Maybe they can slide some licenses under the door, seeing that you're already a user and I'm sure your office already has full deployment of a suitable (ahem...::cough::) Office product.
I think it's fairly ironic that the guy works for the company that makes The Sims, one of the ugliest, most technologically behind games I know of that just happens to be addictive and have a crazy following, yet he blasts Nintendo, company that makes the most technologically behind game systems that just happens to be addictive and have a crazy following.
Foot, meet mouth.
It sounds like Sony has lost total grasp of the industry they're in, the "videogame" industry. What *I* want to see are the games. I'm stuck in a hard place now. I want to buy an Xbox 360 or a PS3. My knee jerk reaction is to go with Sony because they will probably provide more of the games that I want to play in the long run, but in the short term (next 2 years) it's looking sorta grim. I'm sure this new service by Sony will be great, it sounds like it mixes the social aspects of Wii's with the gamer oriented aspects of Xbox Live. Okay, so Sony waited to see what their competitors did and combined it and made something great. I can understand that, if I was Sony I'd play it safe and wait so I could outdo my competitors too. But instead of using this to support the games, they're using this to supplant the games and sell the system based on what it CAN do but isn't instead of what it IS DOING. And there lies the crux. Sure, I'll eventually get a 360 or a PS3, but not until the smoke settles. It's too much of an investment to get the top end of either system. Besides, I'm having too much fun with my Wii now and it didn't break the bank either. Hopefully the PS3 will be in a better position in a couple years when (if?) the novelty of the Wii runs out.
Sorry to break the news to you, but the second the "world ending" asteroid is announced, all your money becomes null and void. At that point, you'd better hope you have a buddy who owns or works at a liquor store, cause it's going to be chaos. Heck, I know if I knew the world was going to end in a year, I'd just go home from work right now. I'd probably start biking to places I haven't been and find ways to eat off the land. I hate to say it, but there's not going to be much of a demand for technical writers if the products I'm writing manuals for would never even see the light of day.
So what...next we'll require all work related conversations to be recorded and retained for a set amount of time?
Which is exactly why religion has been used to oppress the poor over the course of history. Give the worker grunts something to believe in and work towards and they put up much less of a fight when they realize they're doing hard work for a crust of bread (be them legitimate workers or slaves). I think it's more inline to say that religion serves as a point of self-validation when you see what you don't have and, bitterly enough, a way of justifying and repressing ill sentimates towards others have more than you do. This is a very simplistic breakdown, and I'm certainly not hinting at the fact that this is why people accept religion into their life or that there is no God(s) (I'm openly agnostic). But, when you see a phenomena such as religion across the entire world, even in cultures that have been isolated from other cultures for long periods of time, you have to start making logical breakdowns.
I think it's sad that theologians try to skirt around science so hard, when a discovery such as this (if the theory is correct), something deep rooted in the human genome, is as much a win for science trying to understand human nature as it would be for a theologians. After all, if you created life on a planet and wanted to stay out of its way to see how it developed, wouldn't you want to at least give what you've created a clue that you're out there? Maybe it was a mistake, look at the bloody history of religion throughout the world, but could you honestly say that you may not have made the same mistake if you created life?
Do you realize what the number one played game in the world is? Mario? Think again. Halo 2? Think again. Pokemon?? Think again.
Try Solitaire built into Windows. Solitaire. And you think people are gonna forget about "minigames" once the PS3's ultimate graphics take over the world! Heh, that's just silly.
Really, if you criticize the "Game Boy" for having too many revisions, you're really only criticizing it's popularity as a platform over the years. As it has been stated before, every revision and new product (discounting the Micro, which was never planned to replace the GBA SP...merely be an alternate version to appeal to the trendy crowd) has been due to consumer demand. I'm sure making more money has something to do with it, but even the new DS Lite was put out 1) Because consumers complained the LCD screen wasn't as good as the PSP's screen and 2) It looked like a cross between a UFO and a Fisher Price toy and 3) Because Nintendo had a hit on their hands and decided that they would put out the product revision before the system hit critical mass. Nintendo could have kept peddling the old DS only to release the DS Lite a year or two down the road to make even more money and maximize "double purchases" if they had wanted to. I'm pretty sure Nintendo didn't plan on releasing the new version of the DS in a little over 2 years after release from the start, but what would you do if your competitor released a system with a better screen and a sleeker look, even if you were clearly in the lead?
I mean, come on, if you're holding out for the ultimate "Game Boy" experience, wait 20 years for the 10 screen, surround sound version. We all know that...
I for one welcome our new, Mountain Dew and Cool Ranch Dorito consuming, surgical overlords!
I don't care about his attitude, just as I don't care about yours. The numbers speak for themselves.
Fear, uncertainty, doubt...exactly what the post I replied to was full of. I can't help that someone is afraid that their console of choice is off to a rocky start and feels the need to try and convince the rest of the world in hopes that it changes peoples opinions. Either that or the person is blind to reality.
VF5 is out in Japan and is only the top selling game by 3k units, it's opening week. Can I make it any clearer for you? How about by posting some hard figures on 1st week sales of the VF series (blatently ripped from user dohhyulittle at www.gamesarefun.com):
Virtua Fighter series First Week Sales: (Famitsu)
11/21/1994: SAT Virtua Fighter - 64,718 (Saturn Launch title)
11/27/1995: SAT Virtua Fighter 2 - 540,539
11/23/1998: DC Virtua Fighter 3tb - 97,659
(DreamCast Launch title)
1/28/2002: PS2 Virtua Fighter 4 - 356,897
2/5/2007: PS3 Virtua Fighter 5 - 48,346
It's clearly the slowest selling VF game ever. Read into this as you will. As far as the rest of my "fanboy" tantrum? All I did was respond point to point to your Sony "fanboy" tantrum. When you make blanket statements with no substance to back it up, expect someone to shoot you down.
Is this all sarcasm that's lost over the interweb? A few things.
1) Everytime I try the PS3 in a department store, it freezes or is already froze due to overheating.
2) Silent operation? Not sure about that. But, have you seen the insides of a PS3? It's 50% heatsink. Sure, it might run quiet, but even with the massive heatsink, it still overheats...and the trade off is the size of the system. It's absolutely massive.
3) Last I checked, my local target had 5 PS3's, the EB across the street actually has a unit they've had since the first of the year, most stores I go to have "PS3 now in stock" signs (coincidentally right next to the "Wii currently unavailable signs"). Face, it, the PS3 is in stock everywhere. People who say otherwise live in an area that's having a spike in sales/popularity or an area that's getting below average allocations. FUD.
4) BlueRay has far from won the format war. HD DVD was winning the war by a long shot until recently. It's yet to be seen whether the current spike in BlueRay sales has anything to do with the free movie Sony was giving away with PS3's or any of the current buy one get one free BlueRay DVD incentives that have been going on (most definitely Sony throwing fuel on the fire to hype their format...they're dead in the water if it fails).
5) Virtua Fight 5 is already out in Japan. While it did top the charts with 48,346 in sales, It was only 3000 units ahead of Wii Sports, a game that's been on the market for over 2 months. Opening week big sellers typically always go to the 100k sales range the first week.
6) Europe is not going crazy with preorders. This is FUD. If you want a UK news site's opinion on this, try this article: http://news.spong.com/article/11800
7) You say "PS3 has the top selling game in Japan now " and then you say "Virtua Fighter is almost out." Are you just making things up, because Virtua Fighter IS out and IS the top selling game in Japan. Again, however, only by 3k units, being trailed closely by a game that's been out for months.
FUD FUD FUD
The PS3 will have it's heyday in the future when the price comes down and there's compelling titles. Until then, I suggest that you don't fall for Sony marketing FUD and live up to the reality that it's underperforming in the marketplace right now, even by it's skeptics predictions.
Or you could do like me and play WoW inside Second Life. Yeah, I found a little house in the middle of nowhere. It's kind of low key at this point, but I expect that it'll really take off soon. They have WoW emulator clients on one side of the room and live german scheizer sex shows on the other.
I think one of the problems, in the case of WoW, is that leveling is so absurdly easy going either route (quest vs. grind) that it doesn't really matter if one is faster than the other, they're both quick...which takes some of the pull away from questing. In a game where scoring the next level is actually a challenge and actually takes good chunk of time to achieve, even if it takes more time to level via questing, the game stays more interesting by questing instead of grinding. You'll also make use of the quested items in a slower game. Warcraft, for example, you outgrow your items so quickly that there's no point in questing for gear until the end game.
Granted, there's always the argument of forcing people to experience content through slower progression (think currently of Vanguard) vs. concentrating on end game content and using the first 1/2 - 3/4 of the game as a teaching tool for the end game (think currently of Warcraft and, even more relevant, Guild Wars). At least there's a clear split in the market now, each with die hard followers, and companies are less and less trying to cater towards a middle ground of different play styles.
"why not make a product that people can enjoy now, and enjoy more later?"
Because I'd rather pay $300 for a product that can do what I have the ability to display now and then $300 for an even better system than today's $600 system 4-5 years from now when I actually have the ability to use said technology. I think 1080p out of the Xbox 360 is going to negatively affect games with complex graphics, because developers will have to cut back in poly count, effects, etc. that would run just fine in 720p just to make them work in 1080p. Really, I'd much rather see companies design games for 720p now (seeing that most HD monitors on the market now are geared for 720p and 1080i) and the extra processing power to make the games look EVEN better at that lower resolution than having to figure out ways to milk the hardware for all it's worth just to make it display 1080p at a respectable framerate.
Possibly it was just the initial wave of PS3's or only the 60gb models. The movie was included in the box with my friends launch day PS3.
I would be somewhat hesitant about a modchip like the WiiKey that can be firmware upgradable via DVD. What's to stop Nintendo from including a flash in future games and/or WiiConnect24 update that would flash the mod to render it useless?
* Most PS3 owners have used the system to watch Blueray movies.
I hope so, especially seeing that the US PS3 came with a free copy of Talladega Nights.
* 80% of PS3 owners plan on buying/watching Blueray dvd's in the future.
No duh? I hate to sound sarcastic here, but what's the sense in buying a $600 piece of hardware if you don't plan on using all the features. Everybody watches DVDs these days. I imagine if I had a BlueRay DVD player sitting there, I'd plan on buying/watching at bare minimum my FAVORITE movies on that format instead of regular DVD. I'd venture the people who said no were those who don't have an HDtv...which makes me wonder why the heck they're even being early adopters seeing that they can't even make use of the HD graphics. That's like insisting on having the best hifi audio rig possible when you wear hearing aids.
"Want to Take On An Open/Unsolved Problem?"
Sounds like every relationship I've ever been in. Sure, I'll give her a spin.
"One game is never going to turn a console from an abject failure into a success all by itself."
Halo. It saved the original X-Box from failure in the US.
You're right on the money. It makes me cringe everytime I see someone open up their browser (their default page being MSN), go to the search box on the page, and type in "google" or even type in www.whatever.com instead of going to the address box and just putting in the search engine. People don't understand or really care that one way is a better or worse way to navigate the webthan another, so long as their way works.