You are so far off its not even funny. The casual gamer doesn't get told anything about games. The casual gamer knows Grand Theft Auto, Madden, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The casual gamer doesn't get told anything about any console because they don't read the mags or research the stuff online. That is what defines casual.
The only hype a casual gamer gets is from TV and what they see in the store. On TV is GTA, and thats about it during prime time television, so they know that and they know what platforms they need to play it. When they go to the store sometimes and SEE the Gamecube, they see that it comes in silly colors, has displays with cartoony animals, and is priced less than the other consoles so to them it is obviously inferior. No PS2 or XBOX hype created this second situation, Nintendo did.
First you say that the casual gamer doesn't get told anything about the consoles or games, and then you detail how the casual gamer is told stuff about consoles and games. Great move there.
The parent poster said image was the important thing. What else do commercials and box art try to impart other than the intended image? The casual gamer isn't reading mags or checking reviews, they're just watching tv and looking at the boxes, you're completly agreeing with what he said.
Nintendo is talking out of both sides of its mouth here. You say the GC is not just for kids, but all your commercials and displays feature Mario and friends acting silly? The only current Nintendo commercial I see running right now is Mario Golf, and KOTOR makes that look pretty stupid, not to mention the Vice City ads which are STILL running almost 11 months after release. This is what the casual gamer knows.
Hmmm, you then detail how Nintendo is hurting itself by projecting the wrong image to the casual gamer. Care to agree with the parent a little bit more?
Can we end the perception arguement now? There is no perception problem. Nintendo IS for kids. Look at their actions, not their words. They DID do it deliberatly. That's what they want, and that's fine, but lets acknowledge that Nintendo's target niche and the "casual" gamer no longer overlap *in the US*, and all will be clear.
That's why they're deloping/releasing games like Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil, and BMX XXX? Those are targeted at kids? How about Mortal Kombat, Bloodrayne, Dead to Rights, Huner, and Blood Omen 2? Seems like someone has a skewed perception of the system because of the image with which it is being portrayed. The only commercials you see are for Mario Gold, so you perceive that the GameCube is only for kids.
You guess correctly. SSB:M isn't half of what the original is. All the characters are nothing but doubles of eachother and you spend more time trying to keep yourself alive while the levels try ceaselessly to kill you than you do smashing your opponents. The N64 SSB is a true classic. The sequel is a joke and is one of the reasons I haven't bought my own GC yet. (Although, Metroid Prime is quite tempting.)
Are you sure you learned how to play the game? You clearly didn't spend more than five minutes trying it out.
I spend pleanty of time smashing people. A few of the levels are kind of annoying, but the majority of them aren't actively hostile. Personally i think it's a nice break to spend a round once in awhile trying to franticaly keep myself onscreen while also trying to do incidental damage to the other players and screw with their efforts to do the same. However if that totally puts you off, you can turn off the levels that do that move, spin, or whatever.
As for character doubling, all the original characters are there, so you certainly haven't lost anything. They've approximatly doubled the number of characters, and although about half the new ones are doubles of pre-existing characters, the other half aren't. If you are somehow offended that by the existance of doubles, just don't play with Bowser, Gannondorf, Marth(or Roy, pick one) Pichu, Falco, or Dr. Mario.
However just because some of the characters are doubles is no justification not to use the original characters, as well as Zelda, Peach, Roy (or Marth, pick one =) the Ice Climbers, Mewtwo, or Game & Watch. (I may have missed a few on either side, but the general rule holds true)
Melee is just as good as the original if not better. I like a lot of the quirky new characters, and a lot of the new mini games are cool and colleting trophies is an amusing diversion.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. If that's the case then i guess they're not wrong, just slightly misleading by not specifying that's what they mean by sales in the article. Which is better than just being outright wrong... maybe?
I own a GameCube, why the hell are you trying to convince me? Do you even realize what the problem is?
To quote myself...
Regardless of how this fucked up perception came about, no amount of pointing out the strengths of the GameCube, real or imagined, and no amount of pointing out the inequality of the treatment will change anything.
Do you really think that the truth matters? I know the GameCube has kickass games, but what really matters is the perception of the average consumer, who sees a lack of games, and specificaly a lack of mature games.
People have ALWAYS said Nintendo didn't have mature games, ever since they edited the first Mortal Kombat for the SNES. So they made a mistake - they have plenty of "mature" titles now
So they need to make even more mature games and market them better. The marketing on the mature titles they already have hasn't been that hot to date.
We're not talking about how to make the GameCube better. The news article wasn't about that and the discussion was never about that. We're talking about how to make it sell.
Update: 08/05 20:43 GMT by S: According to this Reuters report, Nintendo sold just 80,000 GameCubes to retailers worldwide, not 800,000.
Can that number really be right? According to this chart at MagicBox the GameCube sold 4,500 unites the week of May 19th - May 25th. This Dengeki Chart says the GameCube sold 13,000 units in Japan for the week of July 21st through July 27th. So we know that sales have increased since the 4,500 a week amount, so let's say that 4,500 is the average for April - June, which is still probably low.
4,500 units a week over 12 weeks gives 54,000 units. They sold 54,000 units in Japan and only 26,000 in the entire rest of the _world_?
I think Reuters screwed up, and of course no one will read the correction they post later. Just one more bit of evidence for the percieved bias against the GameCube. What do you want to bet that if they'd made the same mistake for XBox someone would have stopped to question such an absurdly low number before the article was printed/put up?
As someone else has pointed out, everything about the XBox is golden to the media, whereas the GameCube is always on the edge of disaster with them.
I don't know why that is, maybe they want to see the "big guy" fail and the underdog come out on top, although no one who's been paying attention at all would think Nintendo has been the "big guy" since the SNES days, and they'd have to be insane to think of Microsoft as the underdog even if they've only just now entered the console biz.
Regardless of how this fucked up perception came about, no amount of pointing out the strengths of the GameCube, real or imagined, and no amount of pointing out the inequality of the treatment will change anything.
A lot of the population is influenced by the media. If this goes on for long enough, people will buy into the idea that the GameCube is toast and sales will go down, and then the media will have something real to hang their predjudices on.
The only way Nintendo can beat this bad rap is to turn things around and do so well that no one can deny that they're beating the XBox. Until they can do that they will always be a failure in the media's eyes.
They need a price cut before christmas, i don't care if they've been reluctant to do that in the past, they need to get over that. Being priced the same as the competition only works if you're percieved as well or better than them. The GameCube price should be $100. As someone else pointed out the $150 with a free game works out to the same value, but Nintendo needs to rub people's faces in it. They can also have the $150 with game version include a $25 mail in rebate. As people on slashdot have complained before, those things are a ripoff, but they do help sales, and at not much cost to the bottom line.
Nintendo needs to beg, borrow, or buy more 3rd party developers. They need to improve their reputation and relations with outside coompanies and get more games on the system.
They need to get more mature games on the system and kick the kiddy image. I know, sex and violence does not make a good game, but it does affect sales. Miyamoto doesn't have to make the games himself, Ninetndo can get 3rd parties to make them, but the games need to get made.
They damn well better be working on the GameCube2 or whatever it's called! It needs to be backwards compatible, and it can't have the usually Nintendo slippage. If they can beat the PS3 and XBox2 to market by a few weeks (this is critical, if they release it too far ahead, Sony and Microsoft will go the "wait a bit longer for better technology" spiel) and have a ton of GameCube games that work on it, they could pull off some major sales and get a head start in the next round.
1) Nintendo has gotten themselves into a pricing dilemma. Right now you get a game with the GC with purchase. A $49.99 bonus with the purchase of a GC ($149.99). That makes the price $100 for a GC. That would make the GC the same price as a GBA SP! As the GBA SP is selling like hotcakes, they won't drop the GC unless they drop the GBA SP price.
They should just ditch the free game and make the price $100 for the system alone. That $100 price tag will attract more people than the free game i think. People aren't very rational. They can continue to offer the bundled version as well for $150 too i suppose. Maybe even offer a $25 mail in rebate for it *eg*
They're a little old, but Myth and Myth 2 are very good for net play. Especially when you start downloading all the fan-created maps.
I remember a really cool Pool Party one with mostly dwarves and wights. It would rain on and off, so big piles of bombs would collect when the fuses were getting put out, then the rain would stop or a bomb would manage to go off...
Yeah, Bungie was really great back then, before getting bought out by Microsoft. Any word on if they're ever going to come out with Halo for PC like they said? And will there be a Mac version?
It's not _just_ ads, although that's certainly part of it. The pre-release review copies offered by game companies to those review mags/sites they get along with are also a big factor.
How long do you think before drugs and other methods of reducing or eliminating the causes and symptoms of aging are available for general use?
For example, methods for restoring telomere length, reversing the effects of glucose binding, correcting genetic damage, and promoting the growth of new neurons.
How long do you think life can be extended by these and other methods? And to step briefly away from the science aspect, how do you think the results of this research will be offered to the public? Will it be available as part of the average health plan, or only for the uber-wealthy?
That's because they hadn't learned about washing their hands with soap yet, not because they drank beer.
Yeah, that's it, it was all cause of soap. If we sent a few hundred tons of soap back to 3000 BC everyone would suddenly start living into their 80s.
Sorry, lack of soap had something to do with it, but so did lack of other sanitary measures, regular outbreaks of war, the ground stone that made it's way into the flour they cooked bread with, spending their off seasons pushing large blocks of stone up pyramids, and among a myriad of other such similar details, the lack of a good diet.
So no, drinking beer alone probably won't kill you at 40, neither will not washing your hands before meals for that matter. For the Egyptians brewing bread and barley into beer was a good because it helped preserve food that might have spoiled otherwise, but for modern people in first world contries the alternative to beer is not moldy and maggot filled bread and grain. Even with the option of the comparitively healthy Egyptian beer, you'd probably be better off going down to the supermarket and buying some fresh food with a wider nutritional profile. Given the nutritional "value" of a lot of modern beers, you'd probably be better off getting some fast food.
The real objection of course is that just because the ancients did something doesn't mean that it's good for you. All it means is that, with a few obvious exceptions, it probably won't kill you too quickly. There are some things the ancients did that was probably pretty good for them, but there were a lot that were neutral or downright bad for them. In some cases they didn't know any better, in others they didn't have any better alternatives.
It was originally concieved as a way to preserve grains that would otherwise rot through the winter. Beer is rich in carbs and B vitamins. You could live for months on beer alone if you had to. It certainly has a place in a healthy diet. I think wine might be better for you though...
Let's get the facts straight. Beer was a food. In Sumaria and Egypt the main staples of their diet was bread and beer. However the beer was made of a combinations of fermented bread and barley. It was actually a thickish mush, a little bit like alcoholic oatmeal, that they would drink through a straw.
So if you want to ferment your oatmeal and get out a straw, feel free to call it breakfast. Keep in mind though that the people who lived on this diet had an average lifespan of 40 or 50 years at best, and that's with averaging the upper classes in as well.
Of course it's impossible to achieve a completely dynamic plot in a CRPG; however, there's a rich gradient between the poles of static and dynamic plotlines. Just within this/. topic, we're seeing people arguing the merits of games which fall all over the place within that gradient.
I don't have a problem with more interactive games being developed, as long as there are still "normal" CRPGs around. In effect, i'll agree with your original statement if by "games should be striving for fully interactive plotlines" you mean some games, and by some games, you mean some RPGs.
Framing your position as being "interested in elaborate storylines" is a little misleading, because I think gamers on both sides of this debate want elaborate storylines. The difference is the desired level of interactivity. And to suggest that a storyline's quality declines as interactivity rises, well... I can't agree. I think there are ways to approach this problem which haven't been explored yet. Ion Austin and Rockstar North are definitely heading in the right direction.
I wouldn't really consider it misleading because i see the detail of the storyline and the amound of interactivity with the storyline as being almost diametrically opposed.
Without the presence of a human GM to decide what effect the actions of the player have, the developers have three options that i can see, they can limit the actions the player can take, they can limit the detail of the plot so that the player's actions can be incorporated into it, or they can allow nonsensical behavior to occur.
This problem is further compounded of course because the developer has to make these decisions in advance, and predict what important decisions the player will want to make and choose to allow for them or not, and if allowed, spend time detailing what happens as a results of those actions.
To take a stereotypical example, the king summons the player's party to his castle and tells them a great evil is upon the land, yadda yadda. The players decide the king is a bore, and attack him and kill him. If that's allowed, the developer then has to have a whole plot set out around the player being evil and what happens in that case. Since the divergence happend right at the begining, in effect two entire plots have to be constructed in the same amount of time as was original allocated for one plot, and thus we'd expect each plot to have about half the detail that the original would have had.
That's obviously an exagerated case, but i believe that the same is true in microcosm. The more possibilities the designers have to consider the less detailed the resulting plot will be, due to both time and resource constraints, and due to preventing conflicts from appearing if the player makes certain choices.
We've already seen this issue rear it's head in a limited form with the transition from catridge based games to cd-based games, and the coinciding inclusion of pre-rendered cutscenes. For example, Final Fantasy 5, FF6, and Chrono Trigger all had ways in which the ending of the game could be altered. FF 7 and 8 and Xenogears did not. Since i wasn't on the development team i can't say for sure why that was the case, but i can make a pretty good guess.
Chrono Trigger had more than 12 endings (exact number depends on how you count) which the later games to do similarly would have required 12 different cutscenes, something that would have been prohibitively expensive both in money/rendering time and in disk space. (I believe that for the PSX remake they left all the endings in rather than face a fan-revolt, but only two got the pre-rendered cutscene treatment.)
FF5 and 6 varied the ending based on which characters were killed in the final battle, or which characters were never rescued respectively. This was acomplished both by playing alternate scenes in some areas, and by swaping out which chracter sprites were playing in others (a little of this was done in Chrono Trigger as well, especially as r
(BTW, perhaps unfortunately for some, my profession is game design, so I am in some sense "the one making decisions". Although I don't see games getting as plotline-interactive as *I* would like for a long time, for a host of reasons.)
Perhaps fortunatly for some, or unfortunatly for you, or something, my profession is game programming, so i'll just tell you that what you're asking for is impossible and propose a more "reasonable" solution;)
Besides, regardless of what any one designer or programmer desires, the entire game industry does not hinge on their position. There will continue to be semi-linear RPGs for quite some time, probably for as long as i and others like me continue to be interested in elaborate storylines.
And that's precisely the difference between a static narrative (movie or play) and an interactive narrative (a "game"). When I play a rold-playing game, I want to play someone I'm not, but that doesn't mean I want my decisions made for me. There's a tremendous difference there.
You're putting the cart before the horse. A movie or play is not defined as a static narative. There have been a lot of plays with audience participation that can control the outcome, and a few movies as well. True, those mediums are better suited towards a static narrative, but that's not what they _are_.
Likewise, a game is well suited for an interactive narrative, but by the criticisms you make most games _aren't_. Even the crappy RPGs have more interaction than the average fighter or racer or what have you. And as stated before, even the best of them don't hold a candle to real role playing. Being told "Hi, I need your help" and being given the choices of "A: Be Good, B: Be Neutral, C: Be Evil," isn't really the pinacle of roleplaying.
Not that having those options is bad, but if that's the best thay're able to do with current technology, it seems silly to critisize some games for focussing on telling a good story rather than spending development time to give you a very limited set of options to influence the outcome of things.
As far as I'm concerned, games should be striving for fully interactive plotlines.
Well fortunatly for the rest of us, you're not the one making decisions. I'm quite happy with what is effectively an interactive novel. If some companies want to work on "fully interactive plotlines," (which means what exactly?) that's fine, but not _all_ games should be striving for that.
Yeah, choosing a ROLE to PLAY in a GAME sucks. Who wants to PLAY a ROLE in a GAME when the developer can choose for you. I'd rather watch a movie about myself too.
The actors who PLAY ROLEs in movies or plays, don't get much choice about how their character acts, or rather, they don't get to choose the major events, the just have some influence over delivery of lines. So it's still a ROLE you're PLAYing in the GAME, even if you didn't choose the ROLE yourself.
Even the western CRPGs i've played don't give you much freedom of choice when compared to a pen and paper RPG. It's nice when they include the ability to influence outcomes, which a lot of JRPGs do (FF5 and FF6 are only the first that pop to mind,) but i'd rather have a good storyline with a linear plot then a less interesting story line with the pretense of free action.
SO if you want a real ROLE to PLAY, i suggest you get together with some real people and play a real ROLE PLAYing GAME.
Looking at those graphs is depressing. If Nintendo has any miracles to pull out of their pockets they better get started now.
On the bright side, for some of the companies there were a few peaks where the GameCube was dominating the XBox, so maybe they're just in a temporary downswing, but the pessimistic side of me has trouble believing that.
there are other products out there that do the same thing. Search eBay for an "iRock".
Next time, you might want to try reading the _whole_ comment. Although occasionally i may be talking just for the sake of spewing forth additional words, sometimes important information occurs _after_ the first sentence. In this particular case, the relevant bit of information you apparently missed was:
"I've got an Otis player and have been considering getting a fm transmiter for it, but as the iTrip site boasts, they only do stations in the 88's, which are all taken up here."
In fact, i have looked at the iRock, as well as the Kima Link-It, both of which are only good on 88.1, 88.3, 88.5, and 88.7. I've also looked at ThinkGeek's FM Transmitter, which doesn't specify how many stations it has available, but "simply dial in the proper frequency on your FM tuner" doesn't give me a lot of hope.
So, unless you're proposing to personaly take out the local transmiter towers on those frequencies just as a favor for me, your "advice" isn't really much help.
Assuming you don't think it's worth doing time in federal penitentiary to help me out, the only usefull responses i can think of is to say A: the iTrip does or doesn't work with certain other players (particularly the Audible Otis which is obiously my primary concern) or B: to suggest a specific alternate FM tunner that you happen to know does stations other than those in the 88.x range.
Anyone know if the iTrip works for any other players besides the iPod? I've got an Otis player and have been considering getting a fm transmiter for it, but as the iTrip site boasts, they only do stations in the 88's, which are all taken up here.
I know they're aiming it for the iPod market, but it really hurt them to list some basic compatibilities? I'm not going to buy in iPod just to use this thing, so all they're doing is cutting themselves off from any potential sales.
At Pomona, there was a dorm called Oldenborg filled with perhaps the most socially secluded bunch of nerds and geeks on campus. Those kids would send e-mail to one another rather than walk down the hall and talk.
It's also quite a maze of twisty passages and very easy to get lost in. Perhaps that had something to do with why they'd rather send email than venture outside their rooms?:) Of course the maze-like cooridoors aspect was adapted to the TV Borg as well.
Slashdot Mirror
The only hype a casual gamer gets is from TV and what they see in the store. On TV is GTA, and thats about it during prime time television, so they know that and they know what platforms they need to play it. When they go to the store sometimes and SEE the Gamecube, they see that it comes in silly colors, has displays with cartoony animals, and is priced less than the other consoles so to them it is obviously inferior. No PS2 or XBOX hype created this second situation, Nintendo did.
First you say that the casual gamer doesn't get told anything about the consoles or games, and then you detail how the casual gamer is told stuff about consoles and games. Great move there.
The parent poster said image was the important thing. What else do commercials and box art try to impart other than the intended image? The casual gamer isn't reading mags or checking reviews, they're just watching tv and looking at the boxes, you're completly agreeing with what he said.
Nintendo is talking out of both sides of its mouth here. You say the GC is not just for kids, but all your commercials and displays feature Mario and friends acting silly? The only current Nintendo commercial I see running right now is Mario Golf, and KOTOR makes that look pretty stupid, not to mention the Vice City ads which are STILL running almost 11 months after release. This is what the casual gamer knows.
Hmmm, you then detail how Nintendo is hurting itself by projecting the wrong image to the casual gamer. Care to agree with the parent a little bit more?
Can we end the perception arguement now? There is no perception problem. Nintendo IS for kids. Look at their actions, not their words. They DID do it deliberatly. That's what they want, and that's fine, but lets acknowledge that Nintendo's target niche and the "casual" gamer no longer overlap *in the US*, and all will be clear.
That's why they're deloping/releasing games like Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil, and BMX XXX? Those are targeted at kids? How about Mortal Kombat, Bloodrayne, Dead to Rights, Huner, and Blood Omen 2? Seems like someone has a skewed perception of the system because of the image with which it is being portrayed. The only commercials you see are for Mario Gold, so you perceive that the GameCube is only for kids.
Are you sure you learned how to play the game? You clearly didn't spend more than five minutes trying it out.
I spend pleanty of time smashing people. A few of the levels are kind of annoying, but the majority of them aren't actively hostile. Personally i think it's a nice break to spend a round once in awhile trying to franticaly keep myself onscreen while also trying to do incidental damage to the other players and screw with their efforts to do the same. However if that totally puts you off, you can turn off the levels that do that move, spin, or whatever.
As for character doubling, all the original characters are there, so you certainly haven't lost anything. They've approximatly doubled the number of characters, and although about half the new ones are doubles of pre-existing characters, the other half aren't. If you are somehow offended that by the existance of doubles, just don't play with Bowser, Gannondorf, Marth(or Roy, pick one) Pichu, Falco, or Dr. Mario.
However just because some of the characters are doubles is no justification not to use the original characters, as well as Zelda, Peach, Roy (or Marth, pick one =) the Ice Climbers, Mewtwo, or Game & Watch. (I may have missed a few on either side, but the general rule holds true)
Melee is just as good as the original if not better. I like a lot of the quirky new characters, and a lot of the new mini games are cool and colleting trophies is an amusing diversion.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. If that's the case then i guess they're not wrong, just slightly misleading by not specifying that's what they mean by sales in the article. Which is better than just being outright wrong... maybe?
To quote myself...
Regardless of how this fucked up perception came about, no amount of pointing out the strengths of the GameCube, real or imagined, and no amount of pointing out the inequality of the treatment will change anything.
Do you really think that the truth matters? I know the GameCube has kickass games, but what really matters is the perception of the average consumer, who sees a lack of games, and specificaly a lack of mature games.
People have ALWAYS said Nintendo didn't have mature games, ever since they edited the first Mortal Kombat for the SNES. So they made a mistake - they have plenty of "mature" titles now
So they need to make even more mature games and market them better. The marketing on the mature titles they already have hasn't been that hot to date.
We're not talking about how to make the GameCube better. The news article wasn't about that and the discussion was never about that. We're talking about how to make it sell.
Can that number really be right? According to this chart at MagicBox the GameCube sold 4,500 unites the week of May 19th - May 25th. This Dengeki Chart says the GameCube sold 13,000 units in Japan for the week of July 21st through July 27th. So we know that sales have increased since the 4,500 a week amount, so let's say that 4,500 is the average for April - June, which is still probably low.
4,500 units a week over 12 weeks gives 54,000 units. They sold 54,000 units in Japan and only 26,000 in the entire rest of the _world_?
I think Reuters screwed up, and of course no one will read the correction they post later. Just one more bit of evidence for the percieved bias against the GameCube. What do you want to bet that if they'd made the same mistake for XBox someone would have stopped to question such an absurdly low number before the article was printed/put up?
I think you've got an extra term in there. Any girl who manages to meet the first four of those criteria has every right not to meet the fifth :)
I don't know why that is, maybe they want to see the "big guy" fail and the underdog come out on top, although no one who's been paying attention at all would think Nintendo has been the "big guy" since the SNES days, and they'd have to be insane to think of Microsoft as the underdog even if they've only just now entered the console biz.
Regardless of how this fucked up perception came about, no amount of pointing out the strengths of the GameCube, real or imagined, and no amount of pointing out the inequality of the treatment will change anything.
A lot of the population is influenced by the media. If this goes on for long enough, people will buy into the idea that the GameCube is toast and sales will go down, and then the media will have something real to hang their predjudices on.
The only way Nintendo can beat this bad rap is to turn things around and do so well that no one can deny that they're beating the XBox. Until they can do that they will always be a failure in the media's eyes.
They need a price cut before christmas, i don't care if they've been reluctant to do that in the past, they need to get over that. Being priced the same as the competition only works if you're percieved as well or better than them. The GameCube price should be $100. As someone else pointed out the $150 with a free game works out to the same value, but Nintendo needs to rub people's faces in it. They can also have the $150 with game version include a $25 mail in rebate. As people on slashdot have complained before, those things are a ripoff, but they do help sales, and at not much cost to the bottom line.
Nintendo needs to beg, borrow, or buy more 3rd party developers. They need to improve their reputation and relations with outside coompanies and get more games on the system.
They need to get more mature games on the system and kick the kiddy image. I know, sex and violence does not make a good game, but it does affect sales. Miyamoto doesn't have to make the games himself, Ninetndo can get 3rd parties to make them, but the games need to get made.
They damn well better be working on the GameCube2 or whatever it's called! It needs to be backwards compatible, and it can't have the usually Nintendo slippage. If they can beat the PS3 and XBox2 to market by a few weeks (this is critical, if they release it too far ahead, Sony and Microsoft will go the "wait a bit longer for better technology" spiel) and have a ton of GameCube games that work on it, they could pull off some major sales and get a head start in the next round.
They should just ditch the free game and make the price $100 for the system alone. That $100 price tag will attract more people than the free game i think. People aren't very rational. They can continue to offer the bundled version as well for $150 too i suppose. Maybe even offer a $25 mail in rebate for it *eg*
*waits*
I'm very disapointed that none of you are giving me money for nothing.
So they hope at least. There are times that the offical guides are just plain wrong about stuff.
I remember a really cool Pool Party one with mostly dwarves and wights. It would rain on and off, so big piles of bombs would collect when the fuses were getting put out, then the rain would stop or a bomb would manage to go off...
Yeah, Bungie was really great back then, before getting bought out by Microsoft. Any word on if they're ever going to come out with Halo for PC like they said? And will there be a Mac version?
No one is allowed to release any more MMORPGs until a few of the old ones have died off, we're running out of colors to chart them with.
It's not _just_ ads, although that's certainly part of it. The pre-release review copies offered by game companies to those review mags/sites they get along with are also a big factor.
For example, methods for restoring telomere length, reversing the effects of glucose binding, correcting genetic damage, and promoting the growth of new neurons.
How long do you think life can be extended by these and other methods? And to step briefly away from the science aspect, how do you think the results of this research will be offered to the public? Will it be available as part of the average health plan, or only for the uber-wealthy?
Yeah, that's it, it was all cause of soap. If we sent a few hundred tons of soap back to 3000 BC everyone would suddenly start living into their 80s.
Sorry, lack of soap had something to do with it, but so did lack of other sanitary measures, regular outbreaks of war, the ground stone that made it's way into the flour they cooked bread with, spending their off seasons pushing large blocks of stone up pyramids, and among a myriad of other such similar details, the lack of a good diet.
So no, drinking beer alone probably won't kill you at 40, neither will not washing your hands before meals for that matter. For the Egyptians brewing bread and barley into beer was a good because it helped preserve food that might have spoiled otherwise, but for modern people in first world contries the alternative to beer is not moldy and maggot filled bread and grain. Even with the option of the comparitively healthy Egyptian beer, you'd probably be better off going down to the supermarket and buying some fresh food with a wider nutritional profile. Given the nutritional "value" of a lot of modern beers, you'd probably be better off getting some fast food.
The real objection of course is that just because the ancients did something doesn't mean that it's good for you. All it means is that, with a few obvious exceptions, it probably won't kill you too quickly. There are some things the ancients did that was probably pretty good for them, but there were a lot that were neutral or downright bad for them. In some cases they didn't know any better, in others they didn't have any better alternatives.
Let's get the facts straight. Beer was a food. In Sumaria and Egypt the main staples of their diet was bread and beer. However the beer was made of a combinations of fermented bread and barley. It was actually a thickish mush, a little bit like alcoholic oatmeal, that they would drink through a straw.
So if you want to ferment your oatmeal and get out a straw, feel free to call it breakfast. Keep in mind though that the people who lived on this diet had an average lifespan of 40 or 50 years at best, and that's with averaging the upper classes in as well.
I don't have a problem with more interactive games being developed, as long as there are still "normal" CRPGs around. In effect, i'll agree with your original statement if by "games should be striving for fully interactive plotlines" you mean some games, and by some games, you mean some RPGs.
Framing your position as being "interested in elaborate storylines" is a little misleading, because I think gamers on both sides of this debate want elaborate storylines. The difference is the desired level of interactivity. And to suggest that a storyline's quality declines as interactivity rises, well... I can't agree. I think there are ways to approach this problem which haven't been explored yet. Ion Austin and Rockstar North are definitely heading in the right direction.
I wouldn't really consider it misleading because i see the detail of the storyline and the amound of interactivity with the storyline as being almost diametrically opposed.
Without the presence of a human GM to decide what effect the actions of the player have, the developers have three options that i can see, they can limit the actions the player can take, they can limit the detail of the plot so that the player's actions can be incorporated into it, or they can allow nonsensical behavior to occur.
This problem is further compounded of course because the developer has to make these decisions in advance, and predict what important decisions the player will want to make and choose to allow for them or not, and if allowed, spend time detailing what happens as a results of those actions.
To take a stereotypical example, the king summons the player's party to his castle and tells them a great evil is upon the land, yadda yadda. The players decide the king is a bore, and attack him and kill him. If that's allowed, the developer then has to have a whole plot set out around the player being evil and what happens in that case. Since the divergence happend right at the begining, in effect two entire plots have to be constructed in the same amount of time as was original allocated for one plot, and thus we'd expect each plot to have about half the detail that the original would have had.
That's obviously an exagerated case, but i believe that the same is true in microcosm. The more possibilities the designers have to consider the less detailed the resulting plot will be, due to both time and resource constraints, and due to preventing conflicts from appearing if the player makes certain choices.
We've already seen this issue rear it's head in a limited form with the transition from catridge based games to cd-based games, and the coinciding inclusion of pre-rendered cutscenes. For example, Final Fantasy 5, FF6, and Chrono Trigger all had ways in which the ending of the game could be altered. FF 7 and 8 and Xenogears did not. Since i wasn't on the development team i can't say for sure why that was the case, but i can make a pretty good guess.
Chrono Trigger had more than 12 endings (exact number depends on how you count) which the later games to do similarly would have required 12 different cutscenes, something that would have been prohibitively expensive both in money/rendering time and in disk space. (I believe that for the PSX remake they left all the endings in rather than face a fan-revolt, but only two got the pre-rendered cutscene treatment.)
FF5 and 6 varied the ending based on which characters were killed in the final battle, or which characters were never rescued respectively. This was acomplished both by playing alternate scenes in some areas, and by swaping out which chracter sprites were playing in others (a little of this was done in Chrono Trigger as well, especially as r
Perhaps fortunatly for some, or unfortunatly for you, or something, my profession is game programming, so i'll just tell you that what you're asking for is impossible and propose a more "reasonable" solution ;)
Besides, regardless of what any one designer or programmer desires, the entire game industry does not hinge on their position. There will continue to be semi-linear RPGs for quite some time, probably for as long as i and others like me continue to be interested in elaborate storylines.
You're putting the cart before the horse. A movie or play is not defined as a static narative. There have been a lot of plays with audience participation that can control the outcome, and a few movies as well. True, those mediums are better suited towards a static narrative, but that's not what they _are_.
Likewise, a game is well suited for an interactive narrative, but by the criticisms you make most games _aren't_. Even the crappy RPGs have more interaction than the average fighter or racer or what have you. And as stated before, even the best of them don't hold a candle to real role playing. Being told "Hi, I need your help" and being given the choices of "A: Be Good, B: Be Neutral, C: Be Evil," isn't really the pinacle of roleplaying.
Not that having those options is bad, but if that's the best thay're able to do with current technology, it seems silly to critisize some games for focussing on telling a good story rather than spending development time to give you a very limited set of options to influence the outcome of things.
As far as I'm concerned, games should be striving for fully interactive plotlines.
Well fortunatly for the rest of us, you're not the one making decisions. I'm quite happy with what is effectively an interactive novel. If some companies want to work on "fully interactive plotlines," (which means what exactly?) that's fine, but not _all_ games should be striving for that.
The actors who PLAY ROLEs in movies or plays, don't get much choice about how their character acts, or rather, they don't get to choose the major events, the just have some influence over delivery of lines. So it's still a ROLE you're PLAYing in the GAME, even if you didn't choose the ROLE yourself.
Even the western CRPGs i've played don't give you much freedom of choice when compared to a pen and paper RPG. It's nice when they include the ability to influence outcomes, which a lot of JRPGs do (FF5 and FF6 are only the first that pop to mind,) but i'd rather have a good storyline with a linear plot then a less interesting story line with the pretense of free action.
SO if you want a real ROLE to PLAY, i suggest you get together with some real people and play a real ROLE PLAYing GAME.
On the bright side, for some of the companies there were a few peaks where the GameCube was dominating the XBox, so maybe they're just in a temporary downswing, but the pessimistic side of me has trouble believing that.
Next time, you might want to try reading the _whole_ comment. Although occasionally i may be talking just for the sake of spewing forth additional words, sometimes important information occurs _after_ the first sentence. In this particular case, the relevant bit of information you apparently missed was:
"I've got an Otis player and have been considering getting a fm transmiter for it, but as the iTrip site boasts, they only do stations in the 88's, which are all taken up here."
In fact, i have looked at the iRock, as well as the Kima Link-It, both of which are only good on 88.1, 88.3, 88.5, and 88.7. I've also looked at ThinkGeek's FM Transmitter, which doesn't specify how many stations it has available, but "simply dial in the proper frequency on your FM tuner" doesn't give me a lot of hope.
So, unless you're proposing to personaly take out the local transmiter towers on those frequencies just as a favor for me, your "advice" isn't really much help.
Assuming you don't think it's worth doing time in federal penitentiary to help me out, the only usefull responses i can think of is to say A: the iTrip does or doesn't work with certain other players (particularly the Audible Otis which is obiously my primary concern) or B: to suggest a specific alternate FM tunner that you happen to know does stations other than those in the 88.x range.
I know they're aiming it for the iPod market, but it really hurt them to list some basic compatibilities? I'm not going to buy in iPod just to use this thing, so all they're doing is cutting themselves off from any potential sales.
I think they're aiming to cut into Nokia's market for their upcoming N-Gage
It's also quite a maze of twisty passages and very easy to get lost in. Perhaps that had something to do with why they'd rather send email than venture outside their rooms? :) Of course the maze-like cooridoors aspect was adapted to the TV Borg as well.