It's easy to make too much of this, given the part that Grid promises to play in PS3. Butterfly's technology advantage is primarily that smaller developers can share processor power among their servers. Hence, it's cheaper for them to get into. It won't make games run better than they do as optimized on conventional servers by major publishers.
"Those of us who dislike government monopolies are left hoping either News or GE wins this one(if a sale even takes place)."
-Umm...if you hate _only_ government monopolies, maybe there's some sense in that. But if you think there's a problem with unregulated monopolies you don't wanna be rooting for News Corp.; not that they are a monopoly, but they are an ultra-reactionary right wing entity.
I always liked the Disinfo.com Fox News tee-shirts:
http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/prod.aspx?p=disinfo.27 19244
You are not correct. The hardware costs more to manufacture than the wholesale price. This situation changes after a console's been on the market a few years, but for the time being they are losing money on each unit.
The wholesale price is close enough to the retail price that, when you factor in overhead and shipping, there is zero profit on the boxes. You can see this reflected in publicly available documents from the retailers. The benefit of console sales is greater topline revenue, and more importantly, future sales of software.
Do you remember when 3DO had a model requiring third-parties to build consoles to their spec and they ended up being ridiculously expensive?...Because the third parties couldn't defray the cost of hardware based on future software licensing fees. Because you LOSE MONEY ON THE CONSOLE.
The reason previews are almost always positive (or, at least neutral) generally isn't that the writers haven't seen the games. It's just that there has to be an assumption on the writer's part that the game will improve by the time of its release. -If it's buggy or poorly balanced, or just boring, the developers still should have the elbow room to correct before release (otherwise they'd have to be nuts to show early versions).
Also, game reviewers tend to be gamers first, and writers second, so I have a hard time imagining that they're not playing the games.
That said, Next Gen was my fave, and I'm looking forward to the start of my import subscription to Edge magazine (Imagine still rules, you just have to import it).
Slashdot Mirror
It's easy to make too much of this, given the part that Grid promises to play in PS3. Butterfly's technology advantage is primarily that smaller developers can share processor power among their servers. Hence, it's cheaper for them to get into. It won't make games run better than they do as optimized on conventional servers by major publishers.
"Those of us who dislike government monopolies are left hoping either News or GE wins this one(if a sale even takes place)." -Umm...if you hate _only_ government monopolies, maybe there's some sense in that. But if you think there's a problem with unregulated monopolies you don't wanna be rooting for News Corp.; not that they are a monopoly, but they are an ultra-reactionary right wing entity. I always liked the Disinfo.com Fox News tee-shirts: http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/prod.aspx?p=disinfo.27 19244
You are not correct. The hardware costs more to manufacture than the wholesale price. This situation changes after a console's been on the market a few years, but for the time being they are losing money on each unit. The wholesale price is close enough to the retail price that, when you factor in overhead and shipping, there is zero profit on the boxes. You can see this reflected in publicly available documents from the retailers. The benefit of console sales is greater topline revenue, and more importantly, future sales of software. Do you remember when 3DO had a model requiring third-parties to build consoles to their spec and they ended up being ridiculously expensive?...Because the third parties couldn't defray the cost of hardware based on future software licensing fees. Because you LOSE MONEY ON THE CONSOLE.
The reason previews are almost always positive (or, at least neutral) generally isn't that the writers haven't seen the games. It's just that there has to be an assumption on the writer's part that the game will improve by the time of its release. -If it's buggy or poorly balanced, or just boring, the developers still should have the elbow room to correct before release (otherwise they'd have to be nuts to show early versions).
Also, game reviewers tend to be gamers first, and writers second, so I have a hard time imagining that they're not playing the games.
That said, Next Gen was my fave, and I'm looking forward to the start of my import subscription to Edge magazine (Imagine still rules, you just have to import it).
-Ozzie