Sorry, I'm quite happy with all sorts of data costing me money.
Personally I want to see more BSG, Dr Who, Heroes and the like and the only way that happens is when someone pays for it to be produced. I like seeing the writers actors and everyone who has worked on a series rewarded for it rather than having to give up and go and work in burger king because it pays better.
Some way someone (and that is ultimately us the viewers) has to pay for what they watch otherwise it won't get made. We have two choices, we pay a fee for cable or a DVD or we watch adverts. Even worse the programme becomes an advert like the two hours of product placement that was last James Bond film or the words "Nissan Versa" being uttered repeatedly in Heroes.
The issue here is allowing us (particularly those of us outside of the US) to pay a fair price at a fair time for what we want to see rather than having to wait in some cases years to pay double what it costs in the US.
Remember the normal subscription model doesn't entirely apply to Vanguard.
Sony have what they call Station Access (http://station-access.station.sony.com/), for $24.99 a user gets a subscription to Vanguard, EQ1, EQ2, Matrix Online, SWG, Planetside and a few others. Sony do not need Vanguard to be a smash hit runaway success, what they need is for a supply of extra games added to the pass so that:
a) people buy the boxed game ("Hey I'm already paying for the pass so why not give Vanguard a go")
b) people subscribed to one Sony MMO pay the $10 extra for the pass to get the extra value (certainly when I was playing EQ2 heavily I found it worth the extra money for Planetside)
c) the stream of new games locks people in to Sony, you are effectively already paying for vanguard and as long as you keep that pass your old EQ1 character stays live in case you want to drop in and play again.
An inkless printer will never be a viable profit-generating product unless it costs many, many thousands of dollars. Printer manufacturers make most of their money from consumables, and a printer which requires no consumables (even the paper is resuable) will never make it to market.
This is assuming that there is some big conspiracy between every company in the world to keep up the ink cartel.
Personally I would buy one of these things and a lot of other people would too. At that point someone is going to start selling the things because it will make them money. Every other manufaturer then has to follow or get left behind and makes even less because no one will need buy their ink anymore.
The hardware side of the business will then continue to roll on; better print resolutions, cheaper media, someone will get colour working, then photo quality printing and so on.
Well perhaps their full-time testers will get an MMO pretty soon here, and maybe one of those 90+ hour RPGs to boot. That should keep them busy while other games continue getting however little playtime they do.
So the tester works a 40 hour week, that's three weeks to run through even the biggest of games.
Hardly a huge task and I doubt three weeks pay is that much of an expense.
It's certainly not a rigerous prediction but it does show that the Wii has a long way to go to become the market leader, a lot of people seem to forget about the 360's head start.
I'm unsure how much of an effect the production limitations will have in the long run. From what I see in the UK supply at the current rate will eventually satisfy demand. New stock arrivals at for example Amazon are selling out far slower lately. Admittedly it's a matter of hours rather than minutes but if you are willing to try and get a Wii you now will wheras previously chances were minimal. Similarly e-bay prices have dropped to near shop prices.
Perhaps the demand is higher in the US but in the UK I don't see an increase in supply resulting in a long term increase in sales.
"Block consumer choice" is an interesting choice of wording here. I've heard most of these complaints before. Then again, T-Mobile allows me to install third-party apps on my BlackBerry, and I can even use it as a wireless modem if I hook it up to my laptop. Presumably I could then run Skype on the laptop (though how well it would work is another story). Kinda makes me wonder what Skype is actually hoping to achieve.
Not true in the case of T-mobile in the UK who offer one of the more attractive data tariffs and have a 3G network fast enough to support Skype.
Their basic data package costs £7.50 per month, with this you can only access the internet through your phone.
To use your phone as a modem (for example if you have a separate PDA you need this even though the result would be identical to having a combined PDA/Phone). This costs £12.50 per month with a 3Gb per month limit. This service explicitly bans the use of VOIP services.
To use VOIP you need their top plan, this will cost you £22.50 (about $45 US) per month and comes with a 10Gb per month limit.
I thought I'd plug the sales to date and the monthly sales into Excel to see what would happen.
If you correct for the extra week in January the Wii sells 113k more systems than the 360. At that rate it will take another 30 months before the Wii hauls in the 360s head start in sales.
That's not until June 2009. Wii and 360 would have 11.6 million systems out there, PS3 6.5 million.
Even not correcting for the extra week it takes until Januray 2009 for the Wii to take the lead.
I'm aware that Wii sales are limited by production right now but it puts into perspective how far the Wii still has to go and for me puts into doubt a lot of the comments I'm seeing suggesting the Wii will be the sales leader by the end of this year.
The problem with the music analogy is that whereas a song written on a cheap guitar in a couple of hours can become a number one hit, a game written on a cheap computer in the same time can't.
These days to make a big hit in the gaming world takes millions on programmers, artists, musicians and so on.
Sure you can make a flash game that might get popular online but no one is going to produce the next Gears of War, Zelda or Final Fantasy in their garage with a couple of friends.
I wonder if it will have a crafting system.
It might be fun to hang around the labs producing poison tipped umbrellas for other players.
I'm guessing it will make heavy use of instanced missions and probably a fair ammount or PvP, it wouldn't suprise me if they aimed for a City of Heroes/Villans type model.
Slashdot Mirror
Some way someone (and that is ultimately us the viewers) has to pay for what they watch otherwise it won't get made. We have two choices, we pay a fee for cable or a DVD or we watch adverts. Even worse the programme becomes an advert like the two hours of product placement that was last James Bond film or the words "Nissan Versa" being uttered repeatedly in Heroes.
The issue here is allowing us (particularly those of us outside of the US) to pay a fair price at a fair time for what we want to see rather than having to wait in some cases years to pay double what it costs in the US.
Sony have what they call Station Access (http://station-access.station.sony.com/), for $24.99 a user gets a subscription to Vanguard, EQ1, EQ2, Matrix Online, SWG, Planetside and a few others. Sony do not need Vanguard to be a smash hit runaway success, what they need is for a supply of extra games added to the pass so that:
a) people buy the boxed game ("Hey I'm already paying for the pass so why not give Vanguard a go")
b) people subscribed to one Sony MMO pay the $10 extra for the pass to get the extra value (certainly when I was playing EQ2 heavily I found it worth the extra money for Planetside)
c) the stream of new games locks people in to Sony, you are effectively already paying for vanguard and as long as you keep that pass your old EQ1 character stays live in case you want to drop in and play again.
Personally I would buy one of these things and a lot of other people would too. At that point someone is going to start selling the things because it will make them money. Every other manufaturer then has to follow or get left behind and makes even less because no one will need buy their ink anymore.
The hardware side of the business will then continue to roll on; better print resolutions, cheaper media, someone will get colour working, then photo quality printing and so on.
Hardly a huge task and I doubt three weeks pay is that much of an expense.
It's certainly not a rigerous prediction but it does show that the Wii has a long way to go to become the market leader, a lot of people seem to forget about the 360's head start.
I'm unsure how much of an effect the production limitations will have in the long run. From what I see in the UK supply at the current rate will eventually satisfy demand. New stock arrivals at for example Amazon are selling out far slower lately. Admittedly it's a matter of hours rather than minutes but if you are willing to try and get a Wii you now will wheras previously chances were minimal. Similarly e-bay prices have dropped to near shop prices.
Perhaps the demand is higher in the US but in the UK I don't see an increase in supply resulting in a long term increase in sales.
Their basic data package costs £7.50 per month, with this you can only access the internet through your phone.
To use your phone as a modem (for example if you have a separate PDA you need this even though the result would be identical to having a combined PDA/Phone). This costs £12.50 per month with a 3Gb per month limit. This service explicitly bans the use of VOIP services.
To use VOIP you need their top plan, this will cost you £22.50 (about $45 US) per month and comes with a 10Gb per month limit.
I thought I'd plug the sales to date and the monthly sales into Excel to see what would happen. If you correct for the extra week in January the Wii sells 113k more systems than the 360. At that rate it will take another 30 months before the Wii hauls in the 360s head start in sales. That's not until June 2009. Wii and 360 would have 11.6 million systems out there, PS3 6.5 million. Even not correcting for the extra week it takes until Januray 2009 for the Wii to take the lead. I'm aware that Wii sales are limited by production right now but it puts into perspective how far the Wii still has to go and for me puts into doubt a lot of the comments I'm seeing suggesting the Wii will be the sales leader by the end of this year.
The problem with the music analogy is that whereas a song written on a cheap guitar in a couple of hours can become a number one hit, a game written on a cheap computer in the same time can't. These days to make a big hit in the gaming world takes millions on programmers, artists, musicians and so on. Sure you can make a flash game that might get popular online but no one is going to produce the next Gears of War, Zelda or Final Fantasy in their garage with a couple of friends.
I wonder if it will have a crafting system. It might be fun to hang around the labs producing poison tipped umbrellas for other players. I'm guessing it will make heavy use of instanced missions and probably a fair ammount or PvP, it wouldn't suprise me if they aimed for a City of Heroes/Villans type model.
I think they're trying not to go head to head with the imminent Duke Nukem release..