Are you serious? I forget if it was developed in the US or Europe (i _think_ Europe,) but it was produced or developed by Eidos, which is definitely not a Japanese company.
There are also noticeable similarities to the classic original series, as: "The plan calls for the game to start near the original town of Skara Brae, an ancient ruin in the Orkney Islands on the northern tip of Scotland."
Maybe i wasn't paying enough attention at the time, but as best i can remember the original Bard's Tale took place in Skara Brae, but not the actuall real life Skara Brae in Scotland, which would make this game not really like the original at all.
This is beginning to get very interesting. After all, the executive branch is supposed to be the judiciary's teeth for enforcement anyway!
Or, in the words of our illustrious 7th president, Andrew Jackson, "[Supreme Court Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
I want to be free of telemarketers as much as the next person, but i hope the executive branch doesn't defy the Supreme Court if it goes that far.
The trialer for Twin Snakes looked awesome! I'm willing to wait through the delay based on that. When it does come out though it will be a great addition to the pile of evidence against the "GameCube only has kiddie games!" crowd.
Nintendo is having a hell of a time with the Gamecube. you can't throw the gameboy success in with that.
Funny, seeing as how we are talking about _Nintendo_, i fail to see why we can't include a system made by _Nintendo_ in a financial analysis of said company.
And for the record, Nintendo has sold as many or more GameCube consoles as Microsoft has sold XBox consoles, and made a lot more money (ie, a large positive amount compared to a large negative amount) doing so.
The launch, by nearly every definition, was a complete failure. First, there weren't enough games. Then there weren't enough systems. Then there weren't enough memory cards.
Yeah, i remember going around to various malls on opening day looking for a memory card. Target and all the electronics stores were out, but i finally found one at one of those toy stores that carries a small selection of video games.
But anyways, it was a complete failure in every aspect that somehow added up to an astounding success. With all of those problems you would expect rational people to think badly of Sony and the system. Instead people choose to believe that if the system was that hard to find and was being resold for that much, it must be incredibly good. Somehow that marketing perception (fed by the Sony hype machine) overwhelmed all comments about the lackluster starting lineup.
The royally fucked up launch generated huge amounts of publicity, and Sony managed to prove the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" adage to be completly true.
They have been hiring a lot of people for the new office. Of course part of the reason for that is that they've been losing a lot of people as well. And just prior to that they were laying people off because they had "too many" employees.
It's not like they need to poach though. The video game sector is doing better than most, but there are still pleanty of people looking for work. The only reason to try and steal talent from another company is if they think those people have some specific knowledge that would be usefull to them.
Ummm... No. PS2 was a sales success because of the titles offered at launch and the solid reputation as a platform garnered by PS1. Backwards compatibility with PS1 titles and great design didn't hurt either. But to say that its success stems from the fact that it has a DVD player is silly.
Sorry, thanks for playing, but i got a PS2 the day it came out, and got only two games for it, SSX and Kessen. Why did i get only two games? Cause they were the _only_ good games for the PS2 for at _least_ a month after launch. (And even Kessen wasn't really _that_ good)
The PS2 was a success because of Sony's hype machine. They convinced people that it was great to have a DVD player in your console (even though you could have bought a much better quality DVD player for about the same price or cheaper) that it was a wonderfull console (even though it wasn't that much better than Dreamcast) and it was going to have great games (even though almost all the titles available at launch sucked.)
Thanks to the hype the PS2 burst out of the gates, and when the GameCube and XBox came out a year later the PS2 actually had some of the great games they'd been promising originaly. Of course since then the DVD functionality had become even more worthless, and the hardware was inferior to both the GameCube and XBox.
Damn right. I'll read short stories and fanfics and such on the computer, but if i'm going to spend a significant amount of time with it i want it in book format. It's hard to curl up in bed with a laptop. (No, i don't have a PDA, and even if i did i'd still prefer a real book)
I've recently been spending a significant amount of money at Audible.com purchasing audible books. They're not my format of choice, but they're great for listening to while commuting to work, and at $10 each when you sign up for the membership they're a pretty good deal too.
You seem to be missing out on the fact that Microsoft is determined to get more market share in Japan (by releasing a lot more games over there,) and Nintendo is determined to get more marketshare overall (by releasing their next conosle early.) Sony of course is determined not to let either of those happen. If Microsoft, by far and away the one closest to becoming a "niche" market given sales in Japan, is still working on rectifying that manner, why are you so sure that the trend will not only continue but accelerate?
I'll agree that different people have different tastes, but thoses tastes are only partially delineated by geographic boundaries. The market maturing doesn't mean that some companies are going to give up on certain areas. What it does mean is that there are enough users that even niche games can be profitably ported to other teritories.
If your claim was true, we would be seeing less and less games get ported from Japan to the US and vice versa. Instead what we're seeing is _more_ games getting ported. If only one percent of the console owners are interested in a certain game when the market is small, it's probably not worth it to translate. However as the market gets larger companies will be more likely to consider porting the game to get that one percent.
All in all it sound like you just want an excuse to bash Nintendo, as usual.
And your point is? Are you trying to make the correlation that the GameCube is going to go the way of the Dreamcast? If so, how are you making that argument?
All three of the current consoles have cut prices multiple times so far since their release, so why are you singling out the GameCube? Because it was first in this particular round? Sony was the first in other rounds, yet they're still around. Nintendo and Microsoft followed suit in those cuts, and Sony and Microsoft will do the same in this round as the holidays grow nearer. Because it was the first to get below $100? GameCube started out the cheapest, so of course it's going to be the first to go below $100 (unless either Sony or Microsoft had _really_ screwed up)
So what is the rationale for this claim, or are you just being a troll?
Yeah, you're right, i meant Vermont. Actually, i'm just assuming you're right because i've never been able to keep Vermont and New Hampshire straight in my head. They're two tiny almost identical looking states right next to each other on the other side of the country. I guess it must be my friends in the area who live in New Hapshire instead of Vermont, unless i've got them confused too:)
Yeah, Wes Clark looks like a good possibility too, as do Kerry and Kucinich for different reasons. I'm still leaning towards Dean, but the most important thing is to get someone who can actually beat Bush.
What's the term or what's Microsoft's implementation of it?
FUD means "Fear, Uncertainty, Dismay" it's a term for marketing strategies based on spreading (usually) false information designed to make people have negative opinion about a competing product.
I'm using the term slightly wrong, in that Microsoft isn't directly targeting Nintendo, but is doing so by reference. Microsoft is taking the data for America and Europe, and ignoring the data from Japan and probalby a few other places, and using that selective set of data to construe their "facts."
Microsoft would be correct to say that they are #2 in America, but they never say that. Thay always say plain out that they are #2, implying an overall dominance. For whatever reason (i suspect large amounts of cash spent on marketing have something to do with it) the news people have picked up on this and started to refer to Microsoft as #2 in the same unqualified manner.
The point of this of course is that some people allow themselves to be influenced by the popularity of something. If A is more popular than B, A must be better, and they'll go buy A. When the press buys into the same mentality the effect cascades. When just about every journalist talks about how the XBox is in second place ahead of the GameCube, it presents a kind of doom and gloom atmosphere, which is why i consider it to be a mild form of FUD.
Yes, but if you look at the worldwide sales figures, Nintendo is ahead overall by a small margin of 100,000 units or so. Not anything to get really excited about, but enough to make a mockery of Microsoft's FUD that they're in second place.
1) M$ just got done in an interview proclaiming that Nintendo wasn't an issue anymore. If Nintendo wants to beat out the Xbox they're going to have to do it by pushing more boxes out than XBox.
So they don't need to do anything all since they're already pushing more units than Microsoft?:)
The $100 dollar threshold you speak of really could mean next to nothing to a multi billion dollar company.
I'm confused about what you mean. The $100 threshold is significant to the consumer. It's not particularly significant to Microsoft or Nintendo except in the response it elicits from the consumers.
If xbox had more quality games the $100 would mean less than nothing.
Do you mean the $100 price of the GameCube? You seem to be putting forth what is almost a tautology. Yes, if the XBox were enough better than the GameCube, it wouldn't matter what the price of the GameCube was. But likewise, if the GameCube were enough better it wouldn't matter what the price of the XBox was either.
The reality is that the GameCube is perceived as having less vaule than the XBox by a large number of people. The reasons for this are many and have been debated in this and other forums a number of times. Many people agree that the XBox has a limited number of games and many of them suck. Many people agree that the GameCube has a limited number of games and many of those games aren't very "mature." Those of us who have tried the GameCube and like it say that the games are fun and they have good gameplay, and that whether or not they have lots of blood and guns and sex isn't the important thing. Those of us who don't like the GameCube say they can't stand such "kiddy" games.
If the people who like the GameCube are right, then there is no real difference in value between the GameCube and the XBox (at least not in favor of the XBox) and the reason the price is lower is because the hardware is cheaper, and because people think the XBox is cooler. In that case if Nintendo can find the right price and package to get people to buy the system in the first place, they will realize that as well.
Given how narrow the gap is between Xbox and Gamecube sales right now, it is quite conceivable that there will be a point in time where the people who bought XBoxes just to chip them or install Linux on them and never buy any games will be enough to ensure Micorosoft's lead over Nintendo by a very narrow margin and continue to claim they are 2nd in the console wars and have the press believe them (as long as nobody looks anywhere besides America and Europe.)
The PR value of that is worth far more than the money they're losing on the sales of those XBoxes.
Buy it if you want, don't buy it if you want, but don't kid yourself that you're hurting Microsoft by buying it. That myth is a crock founded upon ignoring all market values other than the strict cash value of the hardware and the money exchanged for it.
Microsoft can drop the XBox's price if they're willing to take even more losses, and they probably will. However once you get below $100 you've crossed a certain psychological threshold. Even if the price difference between an Xbox and a Gamecube is no greater than before once Microsoft makes it's own cut, the Gamecube will probably be perceived as a better deal now that it only has two digits in its price (and even though in many places taxes will push it back above $100, it's the sticker price that counts, which is why you always see things for $X.99 of course.)
I don't know if that perceived value will make up completly for the deficiencies, real or imagined, of the Gamecube vs. the Xbox, but it will certainly help.
And if my boss cut my salary and then undid the cut next year, i wouldn't call it a pay raise either. The effect is sort of the same, but only sort of.
If my boss gave everyone in the company a raise one year, and said the next year that the company wasn't doing so well and everyone was going back to the previous years salary, i'd view that differently from my boss telling me personally he was giving me a pay cut but no one else in the company was affected. The fact that i have less money is the same, but a whole host of other details are different.
If i compare apples to oranges i can say that an orange is a very good apple, or a very poor apple. Either way doesn't make it an apple though. Twit, think.
I tried "coffee shops", and the first 25 or so pages it returned were all from "www.laokay.com" because the advertisement link at the bottom of each of the pages had "California Coffee Shops of the 1950's and 60's from the archives of Armet and
Davis" as the alternate text. One of those pages was about coffee shops, the others were about sushi, chicken, gardens, academic libraries, and all other kinds of irrelevant crap.
Clearly they need some kind of ranking system like with the normal search engine.
I haven't checked the exact figures recently, but first world countries in general and the US in particular are responsible for a huge chunk of greenhouse gasses, which means we could make a significant impact on them without affecting third world countries at all. The Kyoto treaty which the US backed out of had provisions for developing countries to escape the more onerous restrictions i beleive.
Yes, everything has unintended consequences, but not doing anything because you fear the unintended consequences of action has unintended consequences itself. "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice."
You obviosuly know very little about the issues or the things Howard Dean has proposed. He has proposed undoing Bush's tax cuts (which is an entirely different matter from proposing new taxes, )which most analysts agree aren't really targeted at the right issue. Although the cuts do affect most people, or at least most people who have children or stock, they're targeted more towards the wealthy, and aren't doing much to stimulate the economy.
Furthermore his proposal for what to do with the money isn't to increase welfare, but to improve health care.
As for answers, how about that he is credited with New Hampshire being one of the few states in the union that actually had a budget surpluss this year instead of a defecit?
I actually have no problem with tax and spend, but Dean is more of a fiscal conservative who believes in a balanced budget. I support him despite the diffrence of opinion on fiscal matters because of his views on social and enviromental issues.
I agree it would be a mistake to say that greenhouse gasses are definitely the problem. However we have a theory about how greenhouse gasses could be causing the problem, and it's something we can take relatively easy steps to correct (as opposed to stopping an alien death ray.)
Therefore it would seem to me to be reasonable to state that greenhouse gasses seem a likely cause and take action to reduce them while simultaneously doing more research on the subject to figure out what the cause is for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you serious? I forget if it was developed in the US or Europe (i _think_ Europe,) but it was produced or developed by Eidos, which is definitely not a Japanese company.
If you're unemployed you don't have any money, if you're employed you don't have any time.
If you're retired, you have (some) money and time, but you're old. If you're young and independently wealthy, you suck and i hate you :)
Maybe i wasn't paying enough attention at the time, but as best i can remember the original Bard's Tale took place in Skara Brae, but not the actuall real life Skara Brae in Scotland, which would make this game not really like the original at all.
Or, in the words of our illustrious 7th president, Andrew Jackson, "[Supreme Court Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
I want to be free of telemarketers as much as the next person, but i hope the executive branch doesn't defy the Supreme Court if it goes that far.
The trialer for Twin Snakes looked awesome! I'm willing to wait through the delay based on that. When it does come out though it will be a great addition to the pile of evidence against the "GameCube only has kiddie games!" crowd.
Funny, seeing as how we are talking about _Nintendo_, i fail to see why we can't include a system made by _Nintendo_ in a financial analysis of said company.
And for the record, Nintendo has sold as many or more GameCube consoles as Microsoft has sold XBox consoles, and made a lot more money (ie, a large positive amount compared to a large negative amount) doing so.
Yeah, i remember going around to various malls on opening day looking for a memory card. Target and all the electronics stores were out, but i finally found one at one of those toy stores that carries a small selection of video games.
But anyways, it was a complete failure in every aspect that somehow added up to an astounding success. With all of those problems you would expect rational people to think badly of Sony and the system. Instead people choose to believe that if the system was that hard to find and was being resold for that much, it must be incredibly good. Somehow that marketing perception (fed by the Sony hype machine) overwhelmed all comments about the lackluster starting lineup.
The royally fucked up launch generated huge amounts of publicity, and Sony managed to prove the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" adage to be completly true.
It's not like they need to poach though. The video game sector is doing better than most, but there are still pleanty of people looking for work. The only reason to try and steal talent from another company is if they think those people have some specific knowledge that would be usefull to them.
Sorry, thanks for playing, but i got a PS2 the day it came out, and got only two games for it, SSX and Kessen. Why did i get only two games? Cause they were the _only_ good games for the PS2 for at _least_ a month after launch. (And even Kessen wasn't really _that_ good)
The PS2 was a success because of Sony's hype machine. They convinced people that it was great to have a DVD player in your console (even though you could have bought a much better quality DVD player for about the same price or cheaper) that it was a wonderfull console (even though it wasn't that much better than Dreamcast) and it was going to have great games (even though almost all the titles available at launch sucked.)
Thanks to the hype the PS2 burst out of the gates, and when the GameCube and XBox came out a year later the PS2 actually had some of the great games they'd been promising originaly. Of course since then the DVD functionality had become even more worthless, and the hardware was inferior to both the GameCube and XBox.
The trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes looks awesome! (Spoilers for anyone who hasn't played the original Metal Gear Solid)
Damn right. I'll read short stories and fanfics and such on the computer, but if i'm going to spend a significant amount of time with it i want it in book format. It's hard to curl up in bed with a laptop. (No, i don't have a PDA, and even if i did i'd still prefer a real book)
I've recently been spending a significant amount of money at Audible.com purchasing audible books. They're not my format of choice, but they're great for listening to while commuting to work, and at $10 each when you sign up for the membership they're a pretty good deal too.
I'll agree that different people have different tastes, but thoses tastes are only partially delineated by geographic boundaries. The market maturing doesn't mean that some companies are going to give up on certain areas. What it does mean is that there are enough users that even niche games can be profitably ported to other teritories.
If your claim was true, we would be seeing less and less games get ported from Japan to the US and vice versa. Instead what we're seeing is _more_ games getting ported. If only one percent of the console owners are interested in a certain game when the market is small, it's probably not worth it to translate. However as the market gets larger companies will be more likely to consider porting the game to get that one percent.
All in all it sound like you just want an excuse to bash Nintendo, as usual.
All three of the current consoles have cut prices multiple times so far since their release, so why are you singling out the GameCube? Because it was first in this particular round? Sony was the first in other rounds, yet they're still around. Nintendo and Microsoft followed suit in those cuts, and Sony and Microsoft will do the same in this round as the holidays grow nearer. Because it was the first to get below $100? GameCube started out the cheapest, so of course it's going to be the first to go below $100 (unless either Sony or Microsoft had _really_ screwed up)
So what is the rationale for this claim, or are you just being a troll?
Yeah, Wes Clark looks like a good possibility too, as do Kerry and Kucinich for different reasons. I'm still leaning towards Dean, but the most important thing is to get someone who can actually beat Bush.
FUD means "Fear, Uncertainty, Dismay" it's a term for marketing strategies based on spreading (usually) false information designed to make people have negative opinion about a competing product.
I'm using the term slightly wrong, in that Microsoft isn't directly targeting Nintendo, but is doing so by reference. Microsoft is taking the data for America and Europe, and ignoring the data from Japan and probalby a few other places, and using that selective set of data to construe their "facts."
Microsoft would be correct to say that they are #2 in America, but they never say that. Thay always say plain out that they are #2, implying an overall dominance. For whatever reason (i suspect large amounts of cash spent on marketing have something to do with it) the news people have picked up on this and started to refer to Microsoft as #2 in the same unqualified manner.
The point of this of course is that some people allow themselves to be influenced by the popularity of something. If A is more popular than B, A must be better, and they'll go buy A. When the press buys into the same mentality the effect cascades. When just about every journalist talks about how the XBox is in second place ahead of the GameCube, it presents a kind of doom and gloom atmosphere, which is why i consider it to be a mild form of FUD.
Yes, but if you look at the worldwide sales figures, Nintendo is ahead overall by a small margin of 100,000 units or so. Not anything to get really excited about, but enough to make a mockery of Microsoft's FUD that they're in second place.
So they don't need to do anything all since they're already pushing more units than Microsoft? :)
!^@$%@%1 Microsoft FUD.
I'm confused about what you mean. The $100 threshold is significant to the consumer. It's not particularly significant to Microsoft or Nintendo except in the response it elicits from the consumers.
If xbox had more quality games the $100 would mean less than nothing.
Do you mean the $100 price of the GameCube? You seem to be putting forth what is almost a tautology. Yes, if the XBox were enough better than the GameCube, it wouldn't matter what the price of the GameCube was. But likewise, if the GameCube were enough better it wouldn't matter what the price of the XBox was either.
The reality is that the GameCube is perceived as having less vaule than the XBox by a large number of people. The reasons for this are many and have been debated in this and other forums a number of times. Many people agree that the XBox has a limited number of games and many of them suck. Many people agree that the GameCube has a limited number of games and many of those games aren't very "mature." Those of us who have tried the GameCube and like it say that the games are fun and they have good gameplay, and that whether or not they have lots of blood and guns and sex isn't the important thing. Those of us who don't like the GameCube say they can't stand such "kiddy" games.
If the people who like the GameCube are right, then there is no real difference in value between the GameCube and the XBox (at least not in favor of the XBox) and the reason the price is lower is because the hardware is cheaper, and because people think the XBox is cooler. In that case if Nintendo can find the right price and package to get people to buy the system in the first place, they will realize that as well.
The PR value of that is worth far more than the money they're losing on the sales of those XBoxes.
Buy it if you want, don't buy it if you want, but don't kid yourself that you're hurting Microsoft by buying it. That myth is a crock founded upon ignoring all market values other than the strict cash value of the hardware and the money exchanged for it.
I don't know if that perceived value will make up completly for the deficiencies, real or imagined, of the Gamecube vs. the Xbox, but it will certainly help.
If my boss gave everyone in the company a raise one year, and said the next year that the company wasn't doing so well and everyone was going back to the previous years salary, i'd view that differently from my boss telling me personally he was giving me a pay cut but no one else in the company was affected. The fact that i have less money is the same, but a whole host of other details are different.
If i compare apples to oranges i can say that an orange is a very good apple, or a very poor apple. Either way doesn't make it an apple though. Twit, think.
Clearly they need some kind of ranking system like with the normal search engine.
Yes, everything has unintended consequences, but not doing anything because you fear the unintended consequences of action has unintended consequences itself. "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice."
You obviosuly know very little about the issues or the things Howard Dean has proposed. He has proposed undoing Bush's tax cuts (which is an entirely different matter from proposing new taxes, )which most analysts agree aren't really targeted at the right issue. Although the cuts do affect most people, or at least most people who have children or stock, they're targeted more towards the wealthy, and aren't doing much to stimulate the economy.
Furthermore his proposal for what to do with the money isn't to increase welfare, but to improve health care.
As for answers, how about that he is credited with New Hampshire being one of the few states in the union that actually had a budget surpluss this year instead of a defecit?
I actually have no problem with tax and spend, but Dean is more of a fiscal conservative who believes in a balanced budget. I support him despite the diffrence of opinion on fiscal matters because of his views on social and enviromental issues.
Therefore it would seem to me to be reasonable to state that greenhouse gasses seem a likely cause and take action to reduce them while simultaneously doing more research on the subject to figure out what the cause is for sure.