Do you know what all the paging tone songs are? I can only figure out #1 of 8 which is The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.. I've been trying too hard to figure it out.. Maybe some of those iPhone apps that take the mic input to return a song/artist name would help
Thought it was an ARM9 and an ARM7 (the ARM7 being identical to the GBA chip). Either chip can be used for either screen or use both for one for cutscenes or so..
Make it $0.99 and have 15 cents go to the service provider (KaZaA), 45 cents go to the RIAA, 35 cents to the artist and 4 cents to tax or however the break down is
Yeah I'm reading this and finding things just from my memory that are incorrect. (So yeah if I'm wrong, a little wikipedia would help that)
1985 - Nintendo releases the Famicom (Family Computer) in Japan priced at 54,800 yen. Designed by Masayuki Uemura, it is released with 20 software titles, including a home port of Donkey Kong. The machine was originally beige and maroon and its game cartridges had to be slotted in through the top.
It was released in Japan in 1983 with three games. Donkey Kong, Mario Bros. and maybe Donkey Kong, Jr. (That's something to check on wikipedia)
Trivia - The Legend Of Zelda was a launch title for the NES in North America. It came encased in special gold cartridges containing an internal battery to facilitate save games - the first game cartridge to offer this.
Pretty sure it was 87-88 - aka definitely not a launch title.
1987 - The Famicom is released in the US and Europe as the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Selling for $300, it would sell 60 million units worldwide.
You already mentioned the 1985 release (no idea about Europe), but I'm more than sure that every Nintendo home console except the Wii has been launched at $199 USD.
1991 - After a collaboration with Sony to help develop a CD add-on for the SNES turns sour, Nintendo decides to partner with Sony's rivals, Philips Electronics NV. Nintendo grants the company permission to use Mario and Zelda in a series of games for the Philips CD-i console, and in exchange Philips agrees to work on a CD add-on for the SNES. But the add-on is later dropped.
I want to say that the CD add on development started later than that, but 1991 then switching to Phillips in 1992, back to Sony in 1993 and then Sony releasing the PSX in 1994 after being thrown out sort of makes a reasonable timeline..
Ok I think that's enough nitpicking. Most of the other stuff sounds right even if it isn't:P Or I don't remember enough to point it out.
I shouldn't have all this shit in my brain, but it's there... Totally agree that it didn't need to be 8 pages, but adblock helps.
Well I made another comment in this story about the Civic Hybrid being equivalent to a Civic in terms of driving (just not acceleration true). Which if you've tried a Civic, hopefully it counts as fun. It does for me and I love the Civic Hybrid.
One thing I wish I had known about the Civic Hybrid before buying it though: There is a 395 kg weight limit for passengers/cargo. I'm a fatty and over 110 kg alone so it's tough:P Also for comedic reasons, towing a trailer would void my warranty...:P
What is this "fun to drive" metric? Well it's not a metric:P You have to buy a hybrid with the mindset that you will not drag race or street race. Theory goes you should also buy a regular vehicle under that same premise. Driving within the laws of the road better be fun under that metric.
I drove a Prius and a Civic Hybrid (should have tried a Camry Hyrbid, but it was probably too expensive) and the result?
The Prius felt like a different kind of car. I test drove a Civic EX-L the day before I did a Hybrid and they were pretty similar.. You know except for the 158 V battery behind the back seat.
I LOVE that the Civic Hybrid looks like a normal freaking Civic.. aka a normal car. For some reason, the Prius felt weird and looked weird:P Maybe it's just not to my tastes, but having a car that is normal, but secretly is a hybrid (unless you read the emblem on the rear of the car) is nice. Toyota's have that weird LCD screen too and maybe I'm just not used to that, it was distracting.. It showed where the flow of power came from in the car - gasoline engine or electric motor.. The Civic hybrid has a bar on the right side of the tachometer which makes it more a normal display, but still watchable without too much distraction..
I like the concept of having a hybrid (yeah even though it's "more expensive" or whatever (the damn Honda dealership in South Calgary tried getting me off buying a hyrbid[!])). Government rebates are a pretty good thing to look into.. ecoAuto is the one for Canada, but only applied to 2006-2008 models. It got me $2000 which put the pricing back to an EX-L instead of an Si. Various provinces and states have their own rebates too.. Not Alberta who needs the Oil industry:P
Here's hoping to see the redesign isn't too bad and you can actually see out of the rear view mirror... And don't get me started on a smart car.. I'm too addicted to a normal shaped car body... (Oh yeah since I didn't mention it.. I bought a Civic Hybrid:P)
I work for IBM (well the network services got sold to AT&T, but whatever.. the transition just happened June 1) and IBM uses its 9 address space as one big company wide NAT. Every IBMer in the world gets a 9 IP when they VPN or at a company site. It's a pretty cool setup from what I know of it, but then again: when you go to the internet, I'm at a 32.x.x.x IP which is AT&T. Now I don't know how it works, but a VPN into AT&T's network gives you a 135 ish/32 address. But pretty sure IBM could just NAT into 10 and be just fine, but it's at least 30 years of equipment being on a 9 address. Laziness is best when it's their address space anyway. Kinda rambly, but just trying to report what it's like..
So what happens if it's sent by registered mail, you sign for it and there is an EULA type document on the inside saying you agree to yadda yadda yadda by signing for this document?:P
Yeah I'm a Canadian and don't like to be forgotten about, but that Rock Band nonsense last Christmas was ridiculous.
To give numbers to your comment, US population should be about 300M. Canadian population is over 30M, but good enough to make 10% more of the US market assuming the same purchasing trends. So 110% of $10.7B USD is ~$11.8B USD. It's bad enough that the figure used is USD. Perhaps unit sales would be better to rate it since a unit in Japan, North America or Europe is the same and not a variable 1.2 or 1.5 bit chunk.
Would be better if all numbers conformed to reporting North American sales stats, but yeah.
Here's something on Square Enix's worldwide performance in FY2007 which I find interesting (I'm a big Dragon Quest fan). But of course, those are UNIT sales which is different. It's an exercise for the reader to get a list of all the games SE released in each region with sales figures and multiply by the cost of the game (or even better the profit margin for SE).. But too much work.
Long story short, next year, the North American market will seem bigger again due to GTA IV (just like how SE's data showed a drop from FY06 without FFXII being released). Whether it was bigger continuously through all this time or was smaller than Europe or Japan is yet to be seen I think.
I hate hearing the whining of the article repeated elsewhere: "We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere." That link I just posted says Japan is #1 in sales at $11.5 B USD, Europe is #2 at $11.4 B USD and US only pulled in $10.7 B USD. So companies aren't ignoring their largest market; they're giving the leftovers to the third largest market. Deal.
So there are other web sites out there doing good FF history stuff. Look at GameTrailer's Final Fantasy Retrospective. It's not 20th anniversary, but whatever. It describes in video and narrative pretty well every FF game there is.
Disclaimer: I actually like FFXI and I prefer the Tales series and more importantly, the DQ series
Yeah it'll take me about that long to sift through all my RPGs... FFXI, FFXII, SO3, Disgaia 1/2, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle, DDS1/2, Radiata Stories... zomgz... Currently stuck on Persona 3..
Oh yeah the EE and GS were on separate chips back in the day. The combo chip EE+GS was what made the slim PS2s possible. I would have thought that the fabrication line for the GS would have died out, but it's crazy enough how they are doing business atm without trying to figure them out..
If you ever get back to this story, please answer me this: with the reduction of the EE and GS to one chip and to 90 nm (iirc), how did they not just have the EE+GS chip in the PS3s? I want to assume then that the EE+GS is in the NTSC PS3s released in 06, but how did they just install the GS in the PAL PS3s? They just have a huge stock of old chips or what..?
In Asia Pacific? Well Japan has FTTH for cheap.. Um... I know the US has made sure India has cheap enough internet access... So forget Asia, let's make cheap broadband here. Not $40/month for 3Mbps or 5Mbps. How about $20? Or how about $40/month for 10Mbps? I know you like holding onto your money, but faster kthx
Huge fibre backbone in Alberta to connect the province. Supposedly after all the infrastructure and money and smarts going into the project, the conclusion of why they couldn't implement multicasting was that it was "too hard".
I don't know if that's just complaining about multicasting, a (time) cost vs benefit analysis or just simply pure scaling difficulties, but I guess multicast sucks at being usable...
The European PS3 doesn't have the PS2's processor or graphics processor. I guess it was only a matter of time before they took it out... In theory, after 1.6 I think it was, the PS2 games stopped looking like crap on US/Japanese PS3s.. Haven't heard what it really is like in Europe.
Yeah a good question. Vib Ribbon never showed up as well as the 2D Tales games... Sadness.
I also had good fun buying all the crap Sony put out for the PS2.. I got a network adaptor, HDD, DVD remote, stand... And then two guitars, dance pads, beatmania controller.. *shrugs*
The HDD really burned because it was shown at E3 2001 and came out three years later... And sucked hardcore.
The PS2 costs $129.99 USD and CAD which means the EE+GS (Emotion Engine + Graphics Synthesizer chip (prolly at least at 90 nm) - aka the CPU/GPU of the PS2) is also dirt cheap. At most it would be $50 USD to produce and I'm sure that's really exaggerated. Also the PS2 is still making money/units/games at least until this Christmas so the chips are still being produced.
(The actual question)
Why did the EE+GS get removed from the PS3 for Europe already and how soon (if that is part of the plan) before it gets removed from the PS3 in Japan and North America?
(More rambling) It could not have been much of a cost cutting measure (time will fix the bluray laser cost) and in the eyes of many, it hurt the image and usefulness of the PS3. (One of Sony's promo videos at retail stores touts the PS3 as being the only next gen console designed with backwards compatibility.. worded someway to exclude the 360 and Wii)
We've seen how spotty backwards compatibility is with the 360 in software and how good the compatibility was with PSX games on the PS2 (clever Sega style use of the former CPU).. So it boggles my mind as to why that would be done...
Also kudos for being the most optimistic guy I have ever heard. You must be earning your keep from Sony with all the positive spin you can generate.
quoting your GP: What smaller stores can offer is a store by gamers, for gamers -- with employees who understand what the games are about (c'mon, finding gamer employees can't be that hard). Gamestop and similar stores can attract customers by just providing better service.
and you: REally, it's a matter of finding one of the stores that has a good staff.
The problem isn't finding people to work there. I work at an EB Games in Calgary and went through some random papers up by the till that were left to rot... A stack of at least 20-30 resumes were in there and the District Manager snatched them all up for the new store opening up in a week.
What EB needs to do, is treat their employees better, pay them more and actually have an interest in keeping them. I'd like to think I know enough about games. I like customers who come in and tax my knowledge. They are great to talk to and keep me energized about the job. If I could be rewarded for being such a nerd, perfect. But instead, it's just a case of dealing with the crap customers and the average joe. Of course, perhaps EB isn't best known for games with their $10 higher than others and holier than thou attitude... Alot of things to fix, but right now, it makes them money and that makes it not matter.
I do want to make my store seem like a good place to buy games from, but our hours for the store were cut and so it's spread thin enough as it is... I won't be there much longer anyways and it will be a good thing too as I've been stretched to the limit of wanting so desperately to like my job, but have it suck.
(Yeah I'm posting this because it was DOL-001 that had digital out, but still - and some of the slim line PS2s [75000, 77000] have backwards compatibility issues and even issues with PS2 games)
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Do you know what all the paging tone songs are? I can only figure out #1 of 8 which is The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.. I've been trying too hard to figure it out.. Maybe some of those iPhone apps that take the mic input to return a song/artist name would help
Thought it was an ARM9 and an ARM7 (the ARM7 being identical to the GBA chip). Either chip can be used for either screen or use both for one for cutscenes or so..
Make it $0.99 and have 15 cents go to the service provider (KaZaA), 45 cents go to the RIAA, 35 cents to the artist and 4 cents to tax or however the break down is
Nope. Jack Thompson got disbarred for life though
It was released in Japan in 1983 with three games. Donkey Kong, Mario Bros. and maybe Donkey Kong, Jr. (That's something to check on wikipedia)
Pretty sure it was 87-88 - aka definitely not a launch title.
You already mentioned the 1985 release (no idea about Europe), but I'm more than sure that every Nintendo home console except the Wii has been launched at $199 USD.
I want to say that the CD add on development started later than that, but 1991 then switching to Phillips in 1992, back to Sony in 1993 and then Sony releasing the PSX in 1994 after being thrown out sort of makes a reasonable timeline..
:P Or I don't remember enough to point it out.
I shouldn't have all this shit in my brain, but it's there... Totally agree that it didn't need to be 8 pages, but adblock helps.
Ok I think that's enough nitpicking. Most of the other stuff sounds right even if it isn't
Well I made another comment in this story about the Civic Hybrid being equivalent to a Civic in terms of driving (just not acceleration true). Which if you've tried a Civic, hopefully it counts as fun. It does for me and I love the Civic Hybrid.
One thing I wish I had known about the Civic Hybrid before buying it though: There is a 395 kg weight limit for passengers/cargo. I'm a fatty and over 110 kg alone so it's tough :P Also for comedic reasons, towing a trailer would void my warranty... :P
What is this "fun to drive" metric? Well it's not a metric :P You have to buy a hybrid with the mindset that you will not drag race or street race. Theory goes you should also buy a regular vehicle under that same premise. Driving within the laws of the road better be fun under that metric.
I drove a Prius and a Civic Hybrid (should have tried a Camry Hyrbid, but it was probably too expensive) and the result?
The Prius felt like a different kind of car. I test drove a Civic EX-L the day before I did a Hybrid and they were pretty similar.. You know except for the 158 V battery behind the back seat.
I LOVE that the Civic Hybrid looks like a normal freaking Civic.. aka a normal car. For some reason, the Prius felt weird and looked weird :P Maybe it's just not to my tastes, but having a car that is normal, but secretly is a hybrid (unless you read the emblem on the rear of the car) is nice. Toyota's have that weird LCD screen too and maybe I'm just not used to that, it was distracting.. It showed where the flow of power came from in the car - gasoline engine or electric motor.. The Civic hybrid has a bar on the right side of the tachometer which makes it more a normal display, but still watchable without too much distraction..
I like the concept of having a hybrid (yeah even though it's "more expensive" or whatever (the damn Honda dealership in South Calgary tried getting me off buying a hyrbid[!])). Government rebates are a pretty good thing to look into.. ecoAuto is the one for Canada, but only applied to 2006-2008 models. It got me $2000 which put the pricing back to an EX-L instead of an Si. Various provinces and states have their own rebates too.. Not Alberta who needs the Oil industry :P
Here's hoping to see the redesign isn't too bad and you can actually see out of the rear view mirror... And don't get me started on a smart car.. I'm too addicted to a normal shaped car body... (Oh yeah since I didn't mention it.. I bought a Civic Hybrid :P)
Yeah #5 should be explosive profit.. but then it would be closer to the top... Making the punchline before the joke....
I work for IBM (well the network services got sold to AT&T, but whatever.. the transition just happened June 1) and IBM uses its 9 address space as one big company wide NAT. Every IBMer in the world gets a 9 IP when they VPN or at a company site. It's a pretty cool setup from what I know of it, but then again: when you go to the internet, I'm at a 32.x.x.x IP which is AT&T. Now I don't know how it works, but a VPN into AT&T's network gives you a 135 ish /32 address. But pretty sure IBM could just NAT into 10 and be just fine, but it's at least 30 years of equipment being on a 9 address. Laziness is best when it's their address space anyway. Kinda rambly, but just trying to report what it's like..
So what happens if it's sent by registered mail, you sign for it and there is an EULA type document on the inside saying you agree to yadda yadda yadda by signing for this document? :P
Yeah I'm a Canadian and don't like to be forgotten about, but that Rock Band nonsense last Christmas was ridiculous. To give numbers to your comment, US population should be about 300M. Canadian population is over 30M, but good enough to make 10% more of the US market assuming the same purchasing trends. So 110% of $10.7B USD is ~$11.8B USD. It's bad enough that the figure used is USD. Perhaps unit sales would be better to rate it since a unit in Japan, North America or Europe is the same and not a variable 1.2 or 1.5 bit chunk.
Would be better if all numbers conformed to reporting North American sales stats, but yeah.
Here's something on Square Enix's worldwide performance in FY2007 which I find interesting (I'm a big Dragon Quest fan). But of course, those are UNIT sales which is different. It's an exercise for the reader to get a list of all the games SE released in each region with sales figures and multiply by the cost of the game (or even better the profit margin for SE).. But too much work.
Long story short, next year, the North American market will seem bigger again due to GTA IV (just like how SE's data showed a drop from FY06 without FFXII being released). Whether it was bigger continuously through all this time or was smaller than Europe or Japan is yet to be seen I think.
Turns out Europe overtook the US gaming market for FY2007.
I hate hearing the whining of the article repeated elsewhere: "We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere." That link I just posted says Japan is #1 in sales at $11.5 B USD, Europe is #2 at $11.4 B USD and US only pulled in $10.7 B USD. So companies aren't ignoring their largest market; they're giving the leftovers to the third largest market. Deal.
So there are other web sites out there doing good FF history stuff. Look at GameTrailer's Final Fantasy Retrospective. It's not 20th anniversary, but whatever. It describes in video and narrative pretty well every FF game there is. Disclaimer: I actually like FFXI and I prefer the Tales series and more importantly, the DQ series
Yeah it'll take me about that long to sift through all my RPGs... FFXI, FFXII, SO3, Disgaia 1/2, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle, DDS1/2, Radiata Stories... zomgz... Currently stuck on Persona 3..
Oh yeah the EE and GS were on separate chips back in the day. The combo chip EE+GS was what made the slim PS2s possible. I would have thought that the fabrication line for the GS would have died out, but it's crazy enough how they are doing business atm without trying to figure them out..
If you ever get back to this story, please answer me this: with the reduction of the EE and GS to one chip and to 90 nm (iirc), how did they not just have the EE+GS chip in the PS3s? I want to assume then that the EE+GS is in the NTSC PS3s released in 06, but how did they just install the GS in the PAL PS3s? They just have a huge stock of old chips or what..?
In Asia Pacific? Well Japan has FTTH for cheap.. Um... I know the US has made sure India has cheap enough internet access... So forget Asia, let's make cheap broadband here. Not $40/month for 3Mbps or 5Mbps. How about $20? Or how about $40/month for 10Mbps? I know you like holding onto your money, but faster kthx
My VoIP teacher told me about someone he knew working on the Alberta Supernet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Supernet
Huge fibre backbone in Alberta to connect the province. Supposedly after all the infrastructure and money and smarts going into the project, the conclusion of why they couldn't implement multicasting was that it was "too hard".
I don't know if that's just complaining about multicasting, a (time) cost vs benefit analysis or just simply pure scaling difficulties, but I guess multicast sucks at being usable...
Barely touched the stuff in CCNP school courses
Yeah I know I'm late to the party, but..
The European PS3 doesn't have the PS2's processor or graphics processor. I guess it was only a matter of time before they took it out... In theory, after 1.6 I think it was, the PS2 games stopped looking like crap on US/Japanese PS3s.. Haven't heard what it really is like in Europe.
Well technically 'tsunami'.. That's what cisco branded wireless routers default to
Yeah a good question. Vib Ribbon never showed up as well as the 2D Tales games... Sadness.
I also had good fun buying all the crap Sony put out for the PS2.. I got a network adaptor, HDD, DVD remote, stand... And then two guitars, dance pads, beatmania controller.. *shrugs*
The HDD really burned because it was shown at E3 2001 and came out three years later... And sucked hardcore.
I only browsed at +4, but still:
The PS2 costs $129.99 USD and CAD which means the EE+GS (Emotion Engine + Graphics Synthesizer chip (prolly at least at 90 nm) - aka the CPU/GPU of the PS2) is also dirt cheap. At most it would be $50 USD to produce and I'm sure that's really exaggerated. Also the PS2 is still making money/units/games at least until this Christmas so the chips are still being produced.
(The actual question)
Why did the EE+GS get removed from the PS3 for Europe already and how soon (if that is part of the plan) before it gets removed from the PS3 in Japan and North America?
(More rambling)
It could not have been much of a cost cutting measure (time will fix the bluray laser cost) and in the eyes of many, it hurt the image and usefulness of the PS3. (One of Sony's promo videos at retail stores touts the PS3 as being the only next gen console designed with backwards compatibility.. worded someway to exclude the 360 and Wii)
We've seen how spotty backwards compatibility is with the 360 in software and how good the compatibility was with PSX games on the PS2 (clever Sega style use of the former CPU).. So it boggles my mind as to why that would be done...
Also kudos for being the most optimistic guy I have ever heard. You must be earning your keep from Sony with all the positive spin you can generate.
quoting your GP: What smaller stores can offer is a store by gamers, for gamers -- with employees who understand what the games are about (c'mon, finding gamer employees can't be that hard). Gamestop and similar stores can attract customers by just providing better service.
and you: REally, it's a matter of finding one of the stores that has a good staff.
The problem isn't finding people to work there. I work at an EB Games in Calgary and went through some random papers up by the till that were left to rot... A stack of at least 20-30 resumes were in there and the District Manager snatched them all up for the new store opening up in a week.
What EB needs to do, is treat their employees better, pay them more and actually have an interest in keeping them. I'd like to think I know enough about games. I like customers who come in and tax my knowledge. They are great to talk to and keep me energized about the job. If I could be rewarded for being such a nerd, perfect. But instead, it's just a case of dealing with the crap customers and the average joe. Of course, perhaps EB isn't best known for games with their $10 higher than others and holier than thou attitude... Alot of things to fix, but right now, it makes them money and that makes it not matter.
I do want to make my store seem like a good place to buy games from, but our hours for the store were cut and so it's spread thin enough as it is... I won't be there much longer anyways and it will be a good thing too as I've been stretched to the limit of wanting so desperately to like my job, but have it suck.
Here's a fun site I found awhile ago that told me that GB Micro link cables exist. I know where $50 CDN Famicom editions can be found in town :P
http://maru-chang.com/hard/dol/english.htm
(Yeah I'm posting this because it was DOL-001 that had digital out, but still - and some of the slim line PS2s [75000, 77000] have backwards compatibility issues and even issues with PS2 games)