Not to rain on your parade, but it's just as impossible for Sony to launch it's own OS as it would be for a "normal" company.
If the PS3 sells twice as well as the PS2 (which is very unlikely) and does so instantly (which is impossible) that would leave Sony with a small fraction of the total install base of Microsoft. And it would be completely left out of the most important markets, which is the business market.
More tools and, perhaps more importantly, more different kinds of tools for game-makers makes for better games for everybody.
And may I just say that I truly enjoyed your sane, rational response. The interactions on Slashdot of late, particularly in the games section, seem to be more and more irrationally hostile. But here we are having a nice discussion. What a rare pleasure.
You keep talking about these "privately run buses that keep the bums and urine out". I'm wondering how realistic that is...
I'm sympathetic to your idea of appropriately pricing road usage based on demand, I like that. The issue I'd be concerned with there would be privacy, ie. to price that way you have to know who's on the road and when. What gets done with that information could be problematic.
And once road usage is more expensive in money (so that's it's less expensive in time...) I can see the newly increaed demand for mass-transit options quickly expanding those options so that private firms enter the bus market.
But can you honestly see a company refusing service to the smelly and homeless not getting sued into oblivion until they stop "discriminating"?
Maybe I'm conflating another thread in this discussion, but I think there's something here I'm might be missing.
While I agree that the visual aspect of games is an element of immersion and that some might put more of an emphasis on that than on physical immersion, I don't see how increasingly rich and lengthy HD cut-scenes add anything that a "gamer" would enjoy.
If enjoying being immersed in rich visuals and story presented through cinematic cut-scens is the definition of a gamer, then Roger Ebert is a gamer. And so far as I know he doesn't play video games, he just watches the lengthy HD cut-scenes that we traditionally term "movies".
Now I like movies. I like 'em a lot. But they're not games. And sticking them into games doesn't make them games. Metal Gear Solid 2 had easily more cut-scenes than gameplay. They were interesting, if you like that kind of thing, and the game might have made a good movie, but having a good movie interspersed with short bursts of gameplay just ruined the gameplay and the movie.
To me, at least... I really agree with your point that it's a "to each their own" kind of world. You consider yourself a gamer but what you consider gaming, I would consider watching movies. Que cera, cera. You can enjoy the PS3 and I will play with my Wii... wait that came out wrong...
I'll jump in with the answer to the only one of your questions that I know, though I'm interested in all of them.
Out of the box the Wii will include a Wii-mote and a nunchuk attachement. If you buy additional controllers, the Wiimote portion and the nunchuk portion will be sold seperately: the Wiimote for $40, the nunchuk for $20.
Here's hoping someone knows the answer to your other questions...
Don't worry, I got that you're a different AC than the guy I was responding to. Your reasonable tone and lack of arrogant shmuckiness was a dead giveaway.
Anyways. To respond to your point, I'd say your hypothesis for the delay being an intentional response to the 360's launch on Sony's part is incorrect for one primary reason.
And that is that my point about how people currently buying PS2s wouldn't be in the market for a PS3 were it out also applies to the 360, abeit less so. I just don't think there's a large market segment that says, "hmmm. Well, I could buy a 360 for $400 buuuut... maybe I'll go ahead and get that $130 PS2 instead."
People buying PS2s just now are either replacing a broken PS2 in which case they might be the kind of person who buys expensive consoles (since they bought the PS2 when it was expensive) or they're people who like to wait for the very tail end of a console generation to pick up a console and lots of time-tested games for very cheap, in which case they are not in the market for either a 360 or a PS3.
I'm inclined to believe that the market for replacement PS2's is not as massive as the anti-Sony hordes would have us believe. So my guess is that an analysis of those buying PS2s now would have very little overlap with the potential market for either the PS3 or the 360.
Beyond that, I don't understand the logic of Sony "pushing back" their launch to put in "all the stuff they wanted in there to begin with" they're the ones planning their launch and they've been promising the moon since forever. I agree that it's taking them longer than they thought it would to put everything in there, but the launch delay coupled with the slipping specs (not to mention the already astronomical price) suggests that they're having trouble getting everything they want to fit in there and play nicely with each other.
I suppose it's not impossible that Sony feels they can coast on existing PS2 sales for a while while they try to compensate for the various setbacks they're facing with the PS3 launch, but I'd think it unlikely because those PS2 sales would likely be there anyway (due to the very limited overlap in the customer base for a 5-year-old, cheap, fading console and a brand new, expensive state-of-the-art console) and so Sony would only be slowing their recoup of the PS3 costs without gaining anything by it.
No, I rather think that Sony wants the PS3 available as soon as possible but has horribly misplayed this round of the console wars. We'll see if it ultimately sinks them (the extent to which they are faltering as a company and relying on the PS3 should be frightening to them) but the launch most definitely is not proceeding according to some master plan of theirs.
It feels like so long since I've seen anything from you, I'd feared you'd given up the job!
No one would blame you if you had, it must be hard to come up with arrogant sounding pro-Sony stuff when so much continues to go wrong with Sony. Thankfully, you're skills at putting together authoritatively worded yet completely illogical defenses of Sony's fumblings is completely undiminished.
Let's see here:
You're contending that Sony is intentionally delaying the launch of the PS3 to capitalize on unexpectedly strong sales of the PS2? So they are going to delay the recoupment of their massive investment in the PS3 to try and grab the last few scraps of PS2 revenue? This would make sense if people who are buying a PS2 right now would not if the PS3 were in stores. But c'mon, even you, AC Sony Astroturfer, can't with a straight face claim that people buying the extremely marked down remnants of a soon-to-be-replaced console for, what is it now, $130? would instead be paying $500 or $600 for a brand-spanking new state-of-the-art new console?
The only overlap would be, as others have pointed out, gamers who are replacing broken PS2s. People who are just entering the last generation of gaming would not under any circumstances buy the next generation for 5 or 6 times as much money if it were available. That's like saying that the new Jaguar model is being delayed because Ford is busy cleaning up on sales of the Escort.
Sony most definitely dominated with the PS2, no one can take that away from you, AC Sony Astroturfer, but if you can't come up with better astroturf than "Sony isn't releasing the PS3 because they're too busy selling PS2s" then you really need to admit defeat and move onto the next astroturfing client.
This is lamer than your contention when the 8 month delay was first announced that Sony was, at that time, already constructing millions of PS3s and stockpiling them like some kind of James Bond-style super villain's secret army.
Don't get discouraged by the impossibility of your task in defending Sony. Your efforts might sound ridiculous but they're pretty good considering what you have to work with.
And you're always so darned entertaining!
I think I love you Anonymous Sony Astroturfer!
(Still wish you'd sign up for an account so I could catch all your work, though. I'd even promise to not mod you down if you'd do it...)
Let's see, the article's about the EA's support for the Wii so you mention right off how awesome the PS3 is and finish with a superfluous dig at the 360.
You know, I should probably be annoyed at the low level of the astoturfing on display here, but somehow running across your posts always brightens my day!
Thank you Sony-Shill!
(Hey! Here's an idea! How about you register for an account and then I can find your comments more easily! You could even use the name "Sony Shill"! Unless you already registered for an account and were moderated into oblivion [not the 360 game though, because we all know that really super-duper sucks, right?! LOL!] and so had to resort to anonymity to fulfill your contractual astroturfing duties...)
That's why god invented Lik Sang, which my totally wonderful, non-techy girlfriend somehow discovered to get me the navy blue model as a birthday surprise.
It does attract fingerprints, but they wipe easily and it looks like awesome wrapped up to go.
Ah yes! The high probablility of "serious loss" must be why soccer is so popular to the rest of the world!
All those people getting seriously injured and even killed, that must be the appeal!
Or is it the endless sophistication of the game? Not the brain-dead, obviousness of basketball, football and baseball.
Let's see: you guys take this ball, try to get it through that goal. These guys over here are going to try to stop you. Yes, that's a grossly simplified and distorted version of the complexities of soccer, but no more so than your idiotic "take this ball and run until you hit a wall! Not that way, the other way! You're a hero!" rant on football.
Obviously you dislike American culture, which is completely your perogative. The parallels you drew in your rant, however, were ridiculous on their face, making your whole post read like the disdainful yelling of an ignorant child.
Something you might want to avoid in the future.
Back on topic (at least for a moment!) I've thought for some time that Eve looked like by far the most interesting of the MM's and if I didn't already have a thousand things taking up my increasingly limited free time (these slashdot posts don't write themselves, you know!) I'd think about picking it up. Still might if and when I build myself a capable computer.
Alrighty then, what about Prince's phase as "Unpronounceable Symbol"?
I'm not a fan, and I think he still sells a decent amount of records and did even while he was switching to "Unpronounceable", but he's never sold as many as his earlier records. The name-change got him loads of press, not much of it good, and I'd guess no sales outside of his existing fanbase. (who may, for all I know, have loved his craziness with a true passion.)
Great, now I've got Little Red Corvette stuck in my head...
Gas is refined oil. CA has a very specific set of environmental regulations governing the mixture that can be sold, thus you can't import gas from other states, but you are buying the same oil to refine as everybody else.
That oil comes from a lot of places, one of those places is the gulf-coast region's off-shore oil platforms. All of those platforms are currently out-of-commission which negatively impacts the global supply of oil.
(This would be the very same oil that you are competing with everyone else on the planet to buy so you can refine it into your special CA-only gas.)
When the supply of something goes down the price goes up. The supply of oil (consider this pre-refined gas) has gone down, thus the price of the oil (and the gas that it will become) has gone up.
Which is not to say that the oil companies don't cartelize their prices and behave in a monopsonist fashion, just to say that the hurricanes driving up gas prices in CA has a fairly straightforward explanation.
Just imagine how much worse the effect would be if the game did involve sex!!!
Now I understand why the rampant violence and cursing in San Andreas wasn't a problem but unlockable low-rez simulated dry-humping was such a huge deal!
Before I just thought it was uninformed rank lunacy on the part of anti-game zealots and uninformed hypocritcal pandering on the part of politicians but now I see they were just trying to protect us from dying like drug-addicted rats in a cage...
AI is a very good movie (I'm kind of reserved about excellent, though many of Kubrik's films do qualify in my estimation) up until the point (SPOILER!) where the child robot finds the blue fairy at the bottom of the sea.
When the scene faded out from him wishing over and over again I thought it was an absolutely beautiful and profound movie.
Then came the 20 minute welded-on happy ending that completely ruined it for me. I've always wondered if the ending was concocted and hacked on by Spielburg or if Kubrik put it in there himself.
That's the worst definition of winning and losing in free-market transactions that I've ever heard.
Here in the real world if you trade your money for something that you value more than the money you have "won" and the seller, who presumably valued the money more than the sales item, also "won" regardless of what the resale value of the item is.
I suppose when you go shopping for food you feel you've gotten ripped off because after you eat it the resale value is literally shit.
So long as the item is fairly represented prior to sale (so that the consumer knows what he's getting) a free-market transaction by definition makes both parties in it better off. If it didn't then the parties wouldn't have any reason to participate in the transaction.
I understood what you were saying, just thought that "unnecessary fun" was a humorous phrase -- and actually a decent band name now that I think of it.
So if there is active participation by the intended audience that disqualifies it from being art?
Or is it only if the subject matter is violent and the audience participates that it becomes disqualified?
Either way, yours is a pretty limited definition of what constitutes art.
Society should be able to prevent kids from reading violent or overly sexual books, watching violent or overly sexual movies, and viewing violent or overly sexual photographs as well, that doesn't mean that none of them are art.
Do I think paintball is an artform?
No.
But I am not closed to the idea that someone could use paintball as an artform, by constructing something like an immersive play-acting environment that happened to incorporate paintball weapons. That, to my mind, could qualify as art.
Society might be right in preventing kids from participating, but once again just because society decides something is inappropriate for children (or even just inappropriate in general) doesn't mean that it's not art.
That ranks right up there on my personal list of "dumbest things I've ever heard".
Let's float some other equally meaningful statements, for comparison's sake:
Books aren't art or media, they are written possible scenarios not all that different from the contingency plans that the military develops about for possible war scenarios.
Movies aren't art or media, they're a visual communications mechanism not all that different from training videos that the military develops to hone soldiers' skills.
Photographs aren't art or media, they're a visual representation of reality not all that different from the arial targetting shots the military uses in bombing campaigns.
This is actually kind of fun, maybe someday I'll get elected to something and can use this kind of bizarre hyperbole to compare things I don't appreciate or understand to the military.
But my favorite was this quote in the NYTimes: "It will also be able to display images at a high-definition resolution equivalent to that of digital projectors in movie theaters."
I'm not totally up on everything movie-related, but don't the digital projectors in theaters have many, many times the resolution of even the highest-def home TVs?
It strikes me as taking unrealistic marketing-speak to a whole new level to claim that your video game machine is capable of rendering movie-quality computer graphics at movie quality resolutions on the fly.
Slashdot Mirror
If the PS3 sells twice as well as the PS2 (which is very unlikely) and does so instantly (which is impossible) that would leave Sony with a small fraction of the total install base of Microsoft. And it would be completely left out of the most important markets, which is the business market.
More tools and, perhaps more importantly, more different kinds of tools for game-makers makes for better games for everybody.
And may I just say that I truly enjoyed your sane, rational response. The interactions on Slashdot of late, particularly in the games section, seem to be more and more irrationally hostile. But here we are having a nice discussion. What a rare pleasure.
I thank you, sir.
I'm sympathetic to your idea of appropriately pricing road usage based on demand, I like that. The issue I'd be concerned with there would be privacy, ie. to price that way you have to know who's on the road and when. What gets done with that information could be problematic.
And once road usage is more expensive in money (so that's it's less expensive in time...) I can see the newly increaed demand for mass-transit options quickly expanding those options so that private firms enter the bus market.
But can you honestly see a company refusing service to the smelly and homeless not getting sued into oblivion until they stop "discriminating"?
While I agree that the visual aspect of games is an element of immersion and that some might put more of an emphasis on that than on physical immersion, I don't see how increasingly rich and lengthy HD cut-scenes add anything that a "gamer" would enjoy.
If enjoying being immersed in rich visuals and story presented through cinematic cut-scens is the definition of a gamer, then Roger Ebert is a gamer. And so far as I know he doesn't play video games, he just watches the lengthy HD cut-scenes that we traditionally term "movies".
Now I like movies. I like 'em a lot. But they're not games. And sticking them into games doesn't make them games. Metal Gear Solid 2 had easily more cut-scenes than gameplay. They were interesting, if you like that kind of thing, and the game might have made a good movie, but having a good movie interspersed with short bursts of gameplay just ruined the gameplay and the movie.
To me, at least... I really agree with your point that it's a "to each their own" kind of world. You consider yourself a gamer but what you consider gaming, I would consider watching movies. Que cera, cera. You can enjoy the PS3 and I will play with my Wii... wait that came out wrong...
Out of the box the Wii will include a Wii-mote and a nunchuk attachement. If you buy additional controllers, the Wiimote portion and the nunchuk portion will be sold seperately: the Wiimote for $40, the nunchuk for $20.
Here's hoping someone knows the answer to your other questions...
Nonsense. I give up on things because they're difficult all the time!
Anyways. To respond to your point, I'd say your hypothesis for the delay being an intentional response to the 360's launch on Sony's part is incorrect for one primary reason. And that is that my point about how people currently buying PS2s wouldn't be in the market for a PS3 were it out also applies to the 360, abeit less so. I just don't think there's a large market segment that says, "hmmm. Well, I could buy a 360 for $400 buuuut... maybe I'll go ahead and get that $130 PS2 instead."
People buying PS2s just now are either replacing a broken PS2 in which case they might be the kind of person who buys expensive consoles (since they bought the PS2 when it was expensive) or they're people who like to wait for the very tail end of a console generation to pick up a console and lots of time-tested games for very cheap, in which case they are not in the market for either a 360 or a PS3.
I'm inclined to believe that the market for replacement PS2's is not as massive as the anti-Sony hordes would have us believe. So my guess is that an analysis of those buying PS2s now would have very little overlap with the potential market for either the PS3 or the 360.
Beyond that, I don't understand the logic of Sony "pushing back" their launch to put in "all the stuff they wanted in there to begin with" they're the ones planning their launch and they've been promising the moon since forever. I agree that it's taking them longer than they thought it would to put everything in there, but the launch delay coupled with the slipping specs (not to mention the already astronomical price) suggests that they're having trouble getting everything they want to fit in there and play nicely with each other.
I suppose it's not impossible that Sony feels they can coast on existing PS2 sales for a while while they try to compensate for the various setbacks they're facing with the PS3 launch, but I'd think it unlikely because those PS2 sales would likely be there anyway (due to the very limited overlap in the customer base for a 5-year-old, cheap, fading console and a brand new, expensive state-of-the-art console) and so Sony would only be slowing their recoup of the PS3 costs without gaining anything by it.
No, I rather think that Sony wants the PS3 available as soon as possible but has horribly misplayed this round of the console wars. We'll see if it ultimately sinks them (the extent to which they are faltering as a company and relying on the PS3 should be frightening to them) but the launch most definitely is not proceeding according to some master plan of theirs.
The Great AC Sony Astroturfer!
It feels like so long since I've seen anything from you, I'd feared you'd given up the job!
No one would blame you if you had, it must be hard to come up with arrogant sounding pro-Sony stuff when so much continues to go wrong with Sony. Thankfully, you're skills at putting together authoritatively worded yet completely illogical defenses of Sony's fumblings is completely undiminished.
Let's see here:
You're contending that Sony is intentionally delaying the launch of the PS3 to capitalize on unexpectedly strong sales of the PS2? So they are going to delay the recoupment of their massive investment in the PS3 to try and grab the last few scraps of PS2 revenue? This would make sense if people who are buying a PS2 right now would not if the PS3 were in stores. But c'mon, even you, AC Sony Astroturfer, can't with a straight face claim that people buying the extremely marked down remnants of a soon-to-be-replaced console for, what is it now, $130? would instead be paying $500 or $600 for a brand-spanking new state-of-the-art new console?
The only overlap would be, as others have pointed out, gamers who are replacing broken PS2s. People who are just entering the last generation of gaming would not under any circumstances buy the next generation for 5 or 6 times as much money if it were available. That's like saying that the new Jaguar model is being delayed because Ford is busy cleaning up on sales of the Escort.
Sony most definitely dominated with the PS2, no one can take that away from you, AC Sony Astroturfer, but if you can't come up with better astroturf than "Sony isn't releasing the PS3 because they're too busy selling PS2s" then you really need to admit defeat and move onto the next astroturfing client.
This is lamer than your contention when the 8 month delay was first announced that Sony was, at that time, already constructing millions of PS3s and stockpiling them like some kind of James Bond-style super villain's secret army.
Don't get discouraged by the impossibility of your task in defending Sony. Your efforts might sound ridiculous but they're pretty good considering what you have to work with.
And you're always so darned entertaining!
I think I love you Anonymous Sony Astroturfer!
(Still wish you'd sign up for an account so I could catch all your work, though. I'd even promise to not mod you down if you'd do it...)
I always like to follow that line with the other classic: "and she doesn't sweat much, for a fat girl..."
It's just not a console article without you!
Let's see, the article's about the EA's support for the Wii so you mention right off how awesome the PS3 is and finish with a superfluous dig at the 360.
You know, I should probably be annoyed at the low level of the astoturfing on display here, but somehow running across your posts always brightens my day!
Thank you Sony-Shill!
(Hey! Here's an idea! How about you register for an account and then I can find your comments more easily! You could even use the name "Sony Shill"! Unless you already registered for an account and were moderated into oblivion [not the 360 game though, because we all know that really super-duper sucks, right?! LOL!] and so had to resort to anonymity to fulfill your contractual astroturfing duties...)
It does attract fingerprints, but they wipe easily and it looks like awesome wrapped up to go.
All those people getting seriously injured and even killed, that must be the appeal!
Or is it the endless sophistication of the game? Not the brain-dead, obviousness of basketball, football and baseball.
Let's see: you guys take this ball, try to get it through that goal. These guys over here are going to try to stop you. Yes, that's a grossly simplified and distorted version of the complexities of soccer, but no more so than your idiotic "take this ball and run until you hit a wall! Not that way, the other way! You're a hero!" rant on football.
Obviously you dislike American culture, which is completely your perogative. The parallels you drew in your rant, however, were ridiculous on their face, making your whole post read like the disdainful yelling of an ignorant child.
Something you might want to avoid in the future.
Back on topic (at least for a moment!) I've thought for some time that Eve looked like by far the most interesting of the MM's and if I didn't already have a thousand things taking up my increasingly limited free time (these slashdot posts don't write themselves, you know!) I'd think about picking it up. Still might if and when I build myself a capable computer.
They'll just pass that cost right along to thier consumers.
I'm sort of surprised to see him posting under that login again, I thought he'd been modded so far into oblivion that he wasn't bothering anymore.
I'm pretty sure that all of the Sony astoturfing coming from Anonymous Cowards recently is the same guy or at least organization.
I'm not a fan, and I think he still sells a decent amount of records and did even while he was switching to "Unpronounceable", but he's never sold as many as his earlier records. The name-change got him loads of press, not much of it good, and I'd guess no sales outside of his existing fanbase. (who may, for all I know, have loved his craziness with a true passion.)
Great, now I've got Little Red Corvette stuck in my head...
If porn and excercise were equally beneficial I'd be able to juggle 18-wheelers...
That oil comes from a lot of places, one of those places is the gulf-coast region's off-shore oil platforms. All of those platforms are currently out-of-commission which negatively impacts the global supply of oil.
(This would be the very same oil that you are competing with everyone else on the planet to buy so you can refine it into your special CA-only gas.)
When the supply of something goes down the price goes up. The supply of oil (consider this pre-refined gas) has gone down, thus the price of the oil (and the gas that it will become) has gone up.
Which is not to say that the oil companies don't cartelize their prices and behave in a monopsonist fashion, just to say that the hurricanes driving up gas prices in CA has a fairly straightforward explanation.
So what you're saying, if I'm hearing you right, is that it actually could've been "Hot Coffee" that killed him?
Now I understand why the rampant violence and cursing in San Andreas wasn't a problem but unlockable low-rez simulated dry-humping was such a huge deal!
Before I just thought it was uninformed rank lunacy on the part of anti-game zealots and uninformed hypocritcal pandering on the part of politicians but now I see they were just trying to protect us from dying like drug-addicted rats in a cage...
AI is a very good movie (I'm kind of reserved about excellent, though many of Kubrik's films do qualify in my estimation) up until the point (SPOILER!) where the child robot finds the blue fairy at the bottom of the sea.
When the scene faded out from him wishing over and over again I thought it was an absolutely beautiful and profound movie.
Then came the 20 minute welded-on happy ending that completely ruined it for me. I've always wondered if the ending was concocted and hacked on by Spielburg or if Kubrik put it in there himself.
Here in the real world if you trade your money for something that you value more than the money you have "won" and the seller, who presumably valued the money more than the sales item, also "won" regardless of what the resale value of the item is.
I suppose when you go shopping for food you feel you've gotten ripped off because after you eat it the resale value is literally shit.
So long as the item is fairly represented prior to sale (so that the consumer knows what he's getting) a free-market transaction by definition makes both parties in it better off. If it didn't then the parties wouldn't have any reason to participate in the transaction.
I understood what you were saying, just thought that "unnecessary fun" was a humorous phrase -- and actually a decent band name now that I think of it.
Or is it only if the subject matter is violent and the audience participates that it becomes disqualified?
Either way, yours is a pretty limited definition of what constitutes art.
Society should be able to prevent kids from reading violent or overly sexual books, watching violent or overly sexual movies, and viewing violent or overly sexual photographs as well, that doesn't mean that none of them are art.
Do I think paintball is an artform?
No.
But I am not closed to the idea that someone could use paintball as an artform, by constructing something like an immersive play-acting environment that happened to incorporate paintball weapons. That, to my mind, could qualify as art.
Society might be right in preventing kids from participating, but once again just because society decides something is inappropriate for children (or even just inappropriate in general) doesn't mean that it's not art.
Let's float some other equally meaningful statements, for comparison's sake:
This is actually kind of fun, maybe someday I'll get elected to something and can use this kind of bizarre hyperbole to compare things I don't appreciate or understand to the military.But my favorite was this quote in the NYTimes: "It will also be able to display images at a high-definition resolution equivalent to that of digital projectors in movie theaters."
I'm not totally up on everything movie-related, but don't the digital projectors in theaters have many, many times the resolution of even the highest-def home TVs?
It strikes me as taking unrealistic marketing-speak to a whole new level to claim that your video game machine is capable of rendering movie-quality computer graphics at movie quality resolutions on the fly.