I'm sure there are quite a few people out there that would pay $39.99 for all of the GH1 tracks via Xbox Live. Care to guess whether they will ever offer that option? To use your analogy, it would be like going to a car dealership and being forced to pay for the sum of the parts of a car rather than being allowed to buy the whole thing. I'm not saying they won't make the "$39.99 for everything" offer, but I seriously doubt it.
Unless I'm mistaken, I thought that Harmonix hired a house band to perform renditions of the songs, due in part to the fact that the licensing costs were cheaper to go that route. I'd be surprised if the house band retained ANY rights to their performance when they signed the contract to those songs as part of the publishing agreement. What I'm suggesting is that I don't think the performers were in a position to withhold their rights from the royalties from downloads, hence that argument is invalid.
One commenter pointed out that if all the old songs of the original PlayStation 2 version were released on Xbox Live, it would cost significantly more than simply buying both Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II on the PS2. People feel flustered by that. Why are we paying more for old content?
MN: Once again, it's not old content. The contracts have to be renegotiated on a new platform, and it's also involving digital distribution, so there's a lot of things involved.
Major, you are not answering the question that was asked. The question was "Why are we paying more". No one disagrees with the fact that the content is worth something. You failed to answer why it costs MORE than the game.
Packaging, eh? The cost to "package" a download is essentially zero. Someone has to put the songs together into the Xbox360 equivalent of a ZIP file and then post them to the Marketplace. It's different when there is a physical product involved (i.e. sushi or single burnable discs). Comparatively, the packaging and distribution costs of a download are a trivial sum.
I'm not sure whether Redoctane or Microsoft deserves the greater share of the blame here. Whoever is responsible is counting on the customer not to have the same attitude you do - namely that there is a non-trivial cost to packaging and distributing a download. I'm not getting equivalent value for my dollar to download the track versus buying an entire game at retail.
The Guitar Hero II software program launched for $49.99. Let's forget for a moment that the guitar was a separate $30 item since the subject at hand is the cost of the software and music. The program came packed with 40 mainstream songs and 24 "B-List" titles by less popular bands. So there is a licensing cost for those 64 songs. Let's not forget, though, that they also had to go to the trouble of developing the game itself, the models, the menus, graphics, etc..
That means that the total cost of developing the software, licensing the songs, and distributing it to stores was 78 cents per song. And don't forget that includes money to develop and market the game.
How can they not see the disparity here? Anything more than 78 cents per track is too high. Let's throw in 22 cents of Microsoft Tax in there and make it an even One Dollar. That is the price point they should sell these at. Go ahead and bundle them, but charging more than a buck per track is outrageous.
Me? I'll stick to what is best... Music that is freely distributable by bands that don't make their money by sitting in a studio for one album but instead are out there working their asses off touring.
...to hear some new music that you really like from a friend, only to find out that it's a band that's signed to a major label. What does your sense of morals tell you to do in that situation? On the one hand you really liked that song you just heard. Loved it, in fact. But on the other hand, they are "the enemy" and you must resist, since giving even once cent of your money to a record label furthers their cause.
Look, I hate DRM too. And I've supported independent music that I like. But I'm also man enough to admit I have bought albums by major acts at the music store and didn't feel the least bit bad about it. Frankly, until the CD is outlawed (not even DRM can stop you from ripping a CD) there is really no cause for alarm vis-a-vis DRM. Damn shame that DRM-free downloads aren't more popular, but right now there are still alternatives.
And look on the bright side. The tide appears to be turning against record labels. The public is starting to really get the message and it's only a matter of time before the labels either die or figure something out that's fair for everyone.
I'm just wondering either Microsoft or Sony would have some sort of verbiage in the development contract they sign with companies to prevent cross-platform gaming. As much as I'd love to see a game be multiplayer-enabled across PS3, 360, PC, Mac, etc. I have a feeling neither MS nor Sony would allow it.
I think these arguments about the population density are kind of missing the point. For a moment, forget about the fact that Farmer Joe out in rural Idaho can't get a DSL line or cable modem. Look at the state of broadband in major cities.
I live in Kansas City so I'll just use my experience as an example. I can get a cable modem from Comcast for something like $50 a month. I believe that gives me 6 megabits down, 384k up. Comparably priced DSL is a bit slower but not my a huge amount. I live in an upscale neighborhood that is also densely populated. If population density is a primary argument, I think it falls short in metro areas like where I live. Why is it that our speeds (in particular upload speed) are so craptacular and expensive compared to what you would pay in Europe, Japan, or Korea?
Here's a good example of why. There is a competitive cable company in my area called Everest. They have been around a few years now, and seeing as how there is no CLEC-style regulation forcing the cable companies to share their lines, Everest went to the trouble of actually laying cable and building their own infrastructure from the ground up. When Everest went live, they offered a then-unheard of package of cable, Internet, and voice for a reasonable price. Undercutting Southwestern Bell (now AT&T) and Time Warner cable by a decent margin. Time Warner's response was to cut their prices in Everest's admittedly small territory. Just by virtue of living in Everest territory you can get HUGE discounts on Time Warner that aren't available anywhere else in the city. I guess it's good to be king.
In summary, it seems to me that if you want to see why we don't have good broadband, it's because there is no incentive for the telcos and cable companies to really compete since they have effective monopolies. And when an upstart comes along and tries to win, they get muscled out of the market. I really don't know what the answer is, but if you want to know why the state of broadband is so poor (and you live in an urban area) look in your own backyard.
I always assumed that there were bandwidth restrictions concerning how many active sessions you could have on a single satellite. You probably get assigned a timeslice or frequency to the satellite and there is a fixed amount of bandwidth available, like a cell tower. There is only so much spectrum available, which costs money. It's not like you can just lay more wires (DSL) or upgrade your cable plant to fiber. Probably the only way around it would be to put more birds into orbit, which costs an arm and a leg.
On top of that, I hear the latency is pretty high (>500 msec). So much for online gaming, eh?
I never considered satellite to be a serious competitor for broadband for those reasons.
This argument has become something of a meme in the popular culture. People take for granted that "every album that comes out has only 2 good songs on it, and the rest suck/are filler" without even thinking about it or giving the album a chance and being able to speak with some authority on it. Or perhaps listening to some music critic trash the album and never giving it a chance yourself. As a fan of music in general I am tired of hearing it. It's nothing more than a thinly veiled insult at pop music, often lobbed by Gen X-ers (can I still use that term?) like myself looking back at the music we enjoyed growing up as being somehow better or different. As if back in "my day" we didn't have nearly the same amount of so-called overproduced crap as there is today. Like many people, I grew up listening to pop and then moved on as my tastes expanded.
I guess my point is that if you like a song by a particular artist a lot, you should give their album and/or their wider catalog a good hard look before you decide the other songs are crap. Buy the album, and sit down and give the entire thing a listen. Several times. Not skipping any songs. See what grows on you, if anything. I have listened to full albums by one hit wonders - some of which were actually pretty good, even to the point of lamenting the fact that they were never given a chance. Don't call an album "45 minutes of filler" just because the record companies want you to believe that. They don't want you to enjoy all twelve songs on the album because that means you will savor it a bit longer before buying again. The artist probably takes a different view.
Don't misunderstand, I agree that there is plenty of crap out there written and produced by people without a lot of talent. But there is a lot of legitimately good music out there that never gets a chance because of this old tired argument. Decide for yourself whether the music is any good, not what other people think or want you to believe. How many of us have "guilty pleasures" that we never admit to liking in front of our friends?
I can relate to that. I bought a PS1 largely just for FF7, having played the older chapters on NES/SNES back in the day. If I ever do buy a PS3, the exclusivity of Gran Turismo is likely to be the breaking point for me, assuming it lives up to the standard the previous games have set.
The real question I have is why would an independent company sign an exclusivity agreement with a console manufacturer these days? If you are Square-Enix and have a more or less guaranteed blockbuster (FF13) waiting to come out why would you? How much money can Sony possibly pay them to make it financially worth their while to exclude other platforms like the 360/Wii?
Obviously it makes sense for first party titles to be exclusive. But why third parties go for this is beyond me. I wonder how much Sony paid Rockstar for the exclusive rights to the GTA3 franchise (yes, I know they came out on XBOX but not for quite a while after the PS2). After the first title was a smash hit, when Vice City (and later San Andreas) came out if I was Rockstar I would have said "sorry Sony, we're releasing this on the XBOX as well as the PS2 at launch. Cha-Ching!". That must have cost Sony a lot of money.
"Well" she responded, "You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to."
Now I was baffled. "Records never came with any such restrictions," I said.
She replied, "Well they were supposed to, but we weren't able to enforce those licenses back then, and now we can"
Wow. This succinctly sums up everything that's wrong with the online music business, in my opinion. If I am going to pay 99 cents a track, the product I buy needs to be as equivalent as possible to what you get when you buy a physical product from the music store. For that matter one of my main objections to online music stores is the fact that you cannot download lossless-encoded songs (let alone DRM-free).
Along those same lines, another of my favorites is in "Resident Evil" style games:
NPC: "I really need some Medicine to clear up this infection, I can't go with you while I'm injured. I think there is some in the infirmary down the hall."
Player: [walks down hall, opens door to infirmary, then sees Locked Cabinet]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Tries to chop cabinet open using fire axe]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Fires shotgun at lock on cabinet from point blank range]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Graphically, I thought the game was amazing (on a big screen HDTV at 1080i, mind you). I never looked at any of the screenshots you were talking about. I just played the game and was constantly stunned by the visuals. It still amazes me that a console can render such good graphics in real time.
The single player was a blast. I played through the game with a friend in split-screen co-op mode (which is effectively the same as single player) and we had a great time. It was challenging in some parts, easy in others, but overall the story was very engrossing and entertaining. I didn't feel like the game was too short, either. It felt just about right. Anything else would have just dragged on forever.
After I beat the game, I tried out the online play. Most of the matches I have been in were 4 on 4, or 3 on 3, or sometimes 4 on 3. I have never had any problems with online play and have never been disconnected once. I'd say that I've played online perhaps 20 times. Maybe not as many as some people, but I consider 20 to be a lot - with each session lasting maybe an hour, or until I got bored.
Have you actually played the game? Anecdotes are fun.
I see your point, but what about the economics of legal movie downloads? Business models for burn-to-DVD downloads are ramping up and those are much, much larger. A 4.7 GB DVD movie is equivalent to 87 of your 54 Meg FLAC tracks. Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper these days anyway.
How about making tracks available in FLAC or some other lossless format? Right now, I am not aware of any service anywhere that makes lossless tracks available at any price. If I can buy a cd for $10-15 brand new with art and liner notes, I should be able to buy an equivalent product online. To me, that means at the bare minimum lossless encoded tracks without DRM.
Oh, and by the way, how about giving me a discount on the albums while you're at it seeing as how there is virtually distribution cost (only bandwidth is the cost) and I'm not getting a physical product that will last for years if properly taken care of. That should also be worth a bit of a discount.
The chances that I would see this movie just went from slim to none.
But if you don't see the movie, you might miss out on Jean-Robert Bourdage's performance as the hot dog vendor! And you know it's gonna be good, because only him and Matt Lanter have signed on to the production, according to IMDB.
Hot Dog Vendor: Kid, you don't have what it takes to hack into a terrorism-simulation computer. Will Farmer: I'd like mustard and ketchup on my hotdog. Hot Dog Vendor: Will, it's too dangerous!
Your story reminds me of my old HP Deskjet 500C. Reliable as a rock. Solidly built device. Had multiple buttons and indicator lights, not just an idiot light. Worked beautifully until I decided I was tired of switching out black and color cartridges since it only had room for one or the other. I should have just bought a 550C, which had both color and black cartridges at the same time, but I digress. When I was looking at replacements, I decided on the Deskjet 850C. Assumed that it would live up to the high quality standards of my old printer. It was, sadly, a complete piece of crap. Paper would get stuck in it, it would take multiple sheets, all kinds of miscellaneous feed problems developed. That and the ink was ridiculously expensive.
I decided, at long last, to go out and buy a laser printer, eventually settling on an HP LaserJet 1200. No color capabilities, but I didn't print that many photos anymore (so damn expensive with an inkjet!) and have been immensely satisfied. I still have the original toner cartridge in it from 2 or 3 years ago when I bought it. A new toner cartridge would be pennies on the dollar compared to what I would have spent on an inkjet these past few years. The printer has never jammed up on me or caused any problems, either.
Makes me wonder if now that color lasers are in the $400 and less range whether inkjets are going to fall out of style. I have had my eye on a Color Laserjet for a while now.
Bottom line is that inkjets are pretty much crap these days. You can't find a decent one that is solidly built and will last long enough to be worthwhile.
Thus far, the ECU itself is often the culprit behind why engine modifications do not have a lasting effect on efficiency. [...] Direct manipulation of the ECU will likely void any warranty by the manufacturer.
And from the Headline:
Matt conducts some performance tests and uses the results to tweak both his vehicle's engine and his personal driving habits for optimal fuel consumption both on and off road."
After reading the rather lengthy article it read more like a primer on how an engine's ECU manages fuel and airflow rather than - as the headline suggested - " An Alternative to Alternative Fuels and Vehicles".
I was kind of expecting to read that the guy reflashed his ECU and got amazing results and bumped up his mileage some percentage. To read that much and then have a bunch of obvious statements like "drive slower" and "accelarate slower" was kind of a waste of time.
Well, they stagnated. And IE came and IMNSHO, ruined the web experience in the late 90s to early 00s. And during that time Netscape released their code into the Mozilla project. It then got worse. AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape is just a memory.
Yeah, Netscape definitely stagnated back around version 4 or 5 - when the browser was a bloated mess and was in danger of collapsing under its own weight. When IE 4 came out it was quite simply a better browser. It rendered pages faster and had a much better user interface. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that IE "ruined the web experience in the late 90s". They were the best game in town back then.
I made the move to Firefox a few years ago when pop-ups were a huge problem, and discovered that Firefox was about a LOT more than just blocking popups. IE had started to stagnate bigtime. IE5 and IE6 offered no meaningful improvements (although a pop up blocker appeared way late in the game). People knew that IE sucked but the word hadn't spread about Firefox yet. The momentum is clearly shifting towards Firefox now.
I just hope that they don't start to stagnate or bloat up with unneeded features too much. Fortunately they let extensions take care of any "bloat" that a user may want, which I think is good. Just keep a small core set of features and let people add enhancements on as they see fit. So far the history of web browsing has shown that through many generations of innovation come long periods of stagnation. From Mosaic to Netscape to IE to Firefox to ???
I read somewhere that a 30 minute program has only 22 minutes of content. Three commercial breaks is pretty much the standard. Sitcoms are written in 3 acts to support this. I have never actually measured the amount of "content" but my gut tells me it's less than 22 minutes.
I happened upon an old VCR tape of a TV show I taped back in the early 80s. The ravages of time have degraded the tape to a nearly unwatchable level of quality, but it wasn't any worse than a 128k video stream. The 30 minute show I was watching had two very short commercial breaks. I was almost in shock at how short they were and the fact there were only two of them. I think each break must have been no longer than 90 seconds, maybe 2 minutes at the most. And back then that seemed like a long time. I wonder what I would have thought if I was watching a TV show nowadays with much longer breaks, and for there to be three of them in a half hour show! (Four if you count the ads in between shows)
I propose a fairly simple solution. Let's say that right now a nationally televised TV show takes in $1 million of ad revenue in a half hour (I have no idea whether or not this is true or not, just pulling a number out of the air). That's three commercial breaks, a total of 8 minutes. If each commercial is 20 seconds long, that's about $42,000 for a single advertisement.
Why not roll back the amount of advertising to 1983 levels but keep the revenue the same? If back in the early 80s you had 26 minutes of content for each half hour slot, you could charge $83,000 per 20 second slot and still make a million dollars per half hour timeslot. The advertisers would get a lot more exposure since they wouldn't be "lost in the shuffle" to the degree they are today and people would be more inclined to watch them.
The television industry needs to understand that technologies like the VCR and DVR were adopted to the degree they were because of the increasing nuisance of commercials. If you reduce the pain (commercials) to a more reasonable level, the problem will go away.
Ahh, the annual discussion of Thin Clients again. Every year some company gets a hare-brained scheme to reintroduce some variation of thin clients. You can almost set your watch by it. The average buyer can pick up a barebones XP machine for a couple hundred bucks at their local big box electronics store. Who is demanding "Internet Operating Systems"? What's the draw? What can they do that a PC running a web browser can't?
I was going to make a mention of "Street Fighter 2 EX Alpha 2 Turbo Hyper Fighting Zero edition 3 limited" or whatever the name of that game was. Seriously, they had some ridiculously long titles in that series.
Oh, and who could forget the classic Street Fighter:The Movie:The Game? I mean, it was a game about a movie that was based on a game. Has that ever been done before? Movies based on arcade games almost universally suck. And video games based on movies also suck. But a video game based on a movie based on an arcade game? That approaches a level of suckitude that almost cannot be measured. Oh, and getting back on topic: The name sucked too.
The Toshiba HD-DVD player premiered to some pretty scating reviews, with issues like a terrible remote control, a 30 second bootup time, and terrible response time when you pressed play, fast forward, etc.. Not to mention the thing was a behemoth. What can we expect from Sony's offering? A side by side review of the two products (Sony, Toshiba) would be nice as well..
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I'm sure there are quite a few people out there that would pay $39.99 for all of the GH1 tracks via Xbox Live. Care to guess whether they will ever offer that option? To use your analogy, it would be like going to a car dealership and being forced to pay for the sum of the parts of a car rather than being allowed to buy the whole thing. I'm not saying they won't make the "$39.99 for everything" offer, but I seriously doubt it.
Unless I'm mistaken, I thought that Harmonix hired a house band to perform renditions of the songs, due in part to the fact that the licensing costs were cheaper to go that route. I'd be surprised if the house band retained ANY rights to their performance when they signed the contract to those songs as part of the publishing agreement. What I'm suggesting is that I don't think the performers were in a position to withhold their rights from the royalties from downloads, hence that argument is invalid.
One commenter pointed out that if all the old songs of the original PlayStation 2 version were released on Xbox Live, it would cost significantly more than simply buying both Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II on the PS2. People feel flustered by that. Why are we paying more for old content?
MN: Once again, it's not old content. The contracts have to be renegotiated on a new platform, and it's also involving digital distribution, so there's a lot of things involved.
Major, you are not answering the question that was asked. The question was "Why are we paying more". No one disagrees with the fact that the content is worth something. You failed to answer why it costs MORE than the game.
Packaging, eh? The cost to "package" a download is essentially zero. Someone has to put the songs together into the Xbox360 equivalent of a ZIP file and then post them to the Marketplace. It's different when there is a physical product involved (i.e. sushi or single burnable discs). Comparatively, the packaging and distribution costs of a download are a trivial sum.
I'm not sure whether Redoctane or Microsoft deserves the greater share of the blame here. Whoever is responsible is counting on the customer not to have the same attitude you do - namely that there is a non-trivial cost to packaging and distributing a download. I'm not getting equivalent value for my dollar to download the track versus buying an entire game at retail.
The Guitar Hero II software program launched for $49.99. Let's forget for a moment that the guitar was a separate $30 item since the subject at hand is the cost of the software and music. The program came packed with 40 mainstream songs and 24 "B-List" titles by less popular bands. So there is a licensing cost for those 64 songs. Let's not forget, though, that they also had to go to the trouble of developing the game itself, the models, the menus, graphics, etc..
That means that the total cost of developing the software, licensing the songs, and distributing it to stores was 78 cents per song. And don't forget that includes money to develop and market the game.
How can they not see the disparity here? Anything more than 78 cents per track is too high. Let's throw in 22 cents of Microsoft Tax in there and make it an even One Dollar. That is the price point they should sell these at. Go ahead and bundle them, but charging more than a buck per track is outrageous.
Look, I hate DRM too. And I've supported independent music that I like. But I'm also man enough to admit I have bought albums by major acts at the music store and didn't feel the least bit bad about it. Frankly, until the CD is outlawed (not even DRM can stop you from ripping a CD) there is really no cause for alarm vis-a-vis DRM. Damn shame that DRM-free downloads aren't more popular, but right now there are still alternatives.
And look on the bright side. The tide appears to be turning against record labels. The public is starting to really get the message and it's only a matter of time before the labels either die or figure something out that's fair for everyone.
I'm just wondering either Microsoft or Sony would have some sort of verbiage in the development contract they sign with companies to prevent cross-platform gaming. As much as I'd love to see a game be multiplayer-enabled across PS3, 360, PC, Mac, etc. I have a feeling neither MS nor Sony would allow it.
I think these arguments about the population density are kind of missing the point. For a moment, forget about the fact that Farmer Joe out in rural Idaho can't get a DSL line or cable modem. Look at the state of broadband in major cities.
I live in Kansas City so I'll just use my experience as an example. I can get a cable modem from Comcast for something like $50 a month. I believe that gives me 6 megabits down, 384k up. Comparably priced DSL is a bit slower but not my a huge amount. I live in an upscale neighborhood that is also densely populated. If population density is a primary argument, I think it falls short in metro areas like where I live. Why is it that our speeds (in particular upload speed) are so craptacular and expensive compared to what you would pay in Europe, Japan, or Korea?
Here's a good example of why. There is a competitive cable company in my area called Everest. They have been around a few years now, and seeing as how there is no CLEC-style regulation forcing the cable companies to share their lines, Everest went to the trouble of actually laying cable and building their own infrastructure from the ground up. When Everest went live, they offered a then-unheard of package of cable, Internet, and voice for a reasonable price. Undercutting Southwestern Bell (now AT&T) and Time Warner cable by a decent margin. Time Warner's response was to cut their prices in Everest's admittedly small territory. Just by virtue of living in Everest territory you can get HUGE discounts on Time Warner that aren't available anywhere else in the city. I guess it's good to be king.
In summary, it seems to me that if you want to see why we don't have good broadband, it's because there is no incentive for the telcos and cable companies to really compete since they have effective monopolies. And when an upstart comes along and tries to win, they get muscled out of the market. I really don't know what the answer is, but if you want to know why the state of broadband is so poor (and you live in an urban area) look in your own backyard.
I always assumed that there were bandwidth restrictions concerning how many active sessions you could have on a single satellite. You probably get assigned a timeslice or frequency to the satellite and there is a fixed amount of bandwidth available, like a cell tower. There is only so much spectrum available, which costs money. It's not like you can just lay more wires (DSL) or upgrade your cable plant to fiber. Probably the only way around it would be to put more birds into orbit, which costs an arm and a leg.
On top of that, I hear the latency is pretty high (>500 msec). So much for online gaming, eh?
I never considered satellite to be a serious competitor for broadband for those reasons.
This argument has become something of a meme in the popular culture. People take for granted that "every album that comes out has only 2 good songs on it, and the rest suck/are filler" without even thinking about it or giving the album a chance and being able to speak with some authority on it. Or perhaps listening to some music critic trash the album and never giving it a chance yourself. As a fan of music in general I am tired of hearing it. It's nothing more than a thinly veiled insult at pop music, often lobbed by Gen X-ers (can I still use that term?) like myself looking back at the music we enjoyed growing up as being somehow better or different. As if back in "my day" we didn't have nearly the same amount of so-called overproduced crap as there is today. Like many people, I grew up listening to pop and then moved on as my tastes expanded.
I guess my point is that if you like a song by a particular artist a lot, you should give their album and/or their wider catalog a good hard look before you decide the other songs are crap. Buy the album, and sit down and give the entire thing a listen. Several times. Not skipping any songs. See what grows on you, if anything. I have listened to full albums by one hit wonders - some of which were actually pretty good, even to the point of lamenting the fact that they were never given a chance. Don't call an album "45 minutes of filler" just because the record companies want you to believe that. They don't want you to enjoy all twelve songs on the album because that means you will savor it a bit longer before buying again. The artist probably takes a different view.
Don't misunderstand, I agree that there is plenty of crap out there written and produced by people without a lot of talent. But there is a lot of legitimately good music out there that never gets a chance because of this old tired argument. Decide for yourself whether the music is any good, not what other people think or want you to believe. How many of us have "guilty pleasures" that we never admit to liking in front of our friends?
I can relate to that. I bought a PS1 largely just for FF7, having played the older chapters on NES/SNES back in the day. If I ever do buy a PS3, the exclusivity of Gran Turismo is likely to be the breaking point for me, assuming it lives up to the standard the previous games have set.
The real question I have is why would an independent company sign an exclusivity agreement with a console manufacturer these days? If you are Square-Enix and have a more or less guaranteed blockbuster (FF13) waiting to come out why would you? How much money can Sony possibly pay them to make it financially worth their while to exclude other platforms like the 360/Wii?
Obviously it makes sense for first party titles to be exclusive. But why third parties go for this is beyond me. I wonder how much Sony paid Rockstar for the exclusive rights to the GTA3 franchise (yes, I know they came out on XBOX but not for quite a while after the PS2). After the first title was a smash hit, when Vice City (and later San Andreas) came out if I was Rockstar I would have said "sorry Sony, we're releasing this on the XBOX as well as the PS2 at launch. Cha-Ching!". That must have cost Sony a lot of money.
Along those same lines, another of my favorites is in "Resident Evil" style games:
NPC: "I really need some Medicine to clear up this infection, I can't go with you while I'm injured. I think there is some in the infirmary down the hall."
Player: [walks down hall, opens door to infirmary, then sees Locked Cabinet]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Tries to chop cabinet open using fire axe]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Fires shotgun at lock on cabinet from point blank range]
Game: "You need the Blue Key to open this cabinet."
Player: [Points shotgun at own head and fires]
*sigh*
Graphically, I thought the game was amazing (on a big screen HDTV at 1080i, mind you). I never looked at any of the screenshots you were talking about. I just played the game and was constantly stunned by the visuals. It still amazes me that a console can render such good graphics in real time.
The single player was a blast. I played through the game with a friend in split-screen co-op mode (which is effectively the same as single player) and we had a great time. It was challenging in some parts, easy in others, but overall the story was very engrossing and entertaining. I didn't feel like the game was too short, either. It felt just about right. Anything else would have just dragged on forever.
After I beat the game, I tried out the online play. Most of the matches I have been in were 4 on 4, or 3 on 3, or sometimes 4 on 3. I have never had any problems with online play and have never been disconnected once. I'd say that I've played online perhaps 20 times. Maybe not as many as some people, but I consider 20 to be a lot - with each session lasting maybe an hour, or until I got bored.
Have you actually played the game? Anecdotes are fun.
I see your point, but what about the economics of legal movie downloads? Business models for burn-to-DVD downloads are ramping up and those are much, much larger. A 4.7 GB DVD movie is equivalent to 87 of your 54 Meg FLAC tracks. Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper these days anyway.
How about making tracks available in FLAC or some other lossless format? Right now, I am not aware of any service anywhere that makes lossless tracks available at any price. If I can buy a cd for $10-15 brand new with art and liner notes, I should be able to buy an equivalent product online. To me, that means at the bare minimum lossless encoded tracks without DRM.
Oh, and by the way, how about giving me a discount on the albums while you're at it seeing as how there is virtually distribution cost (only bandwidth is the cost) and I'm not getting a physical product that will last for years if properly taken care of. That should also be worth a bit of a discount.
Good point, except this time the guy is actually on record as saying it. Bill Gates never said that infamous quote that is often attributed to him.
The chances that I would see this movie just went from slim to none.
But if you don't see the movie, you might miss out on Jean-Robert Bourdage's performance as the hot dog vendor! And you know it's gonna be good, because only him and Matt Lanter have signed on to the production, according to IMDB.
Hot Dog Vendor: Kid, you don't have what it takes to hack into a terrorism-simulation computer.
Will Farmer: I'd like mustard and ketchup on my hotdog.
Hot Dog Vendor: Will, it's too dangerous!
Your story reminds me of my old HP Deskjet 500C. Reliable as a rock. Solidly built device. Had multiple buttons and indicator lights, not just an idiot light. Worked beautifully until I decided I was tired of switching out black and color cartridges since it only had room for one or the other. I should have just bought a 550C, which had both color and black cartridges at the same time, but I digress. When I was looking at replacements, I decided on the Deskjet 850C. Assumed that it would live up to the high quality standards of my old printer. It was, sadly, a complete piece of crap. Paper would get stuck in it, it would take multiple sheets, all kinds of miscellaneous feed problems developed. That and the ink was ridiculously expensive.
I decided, at long last, to go out and buy a laser printer, eventually settling on an HP LaserJet 1200. No color capabilities, but I didn't print that many photos anymore (so damn expensive with an inkjet!) and have been immensely satisfied. I still have the original toner cartridge in it from 2 or 3 years ago when I bought it. A new toner cartridge would be pennies on the dollar compared to what I would have spent on an inkjet these past few years. The printer has never jammed up on me or caused any problems, either.
Makes me wonder if now that color lasers are in the $400 and less range whether inkjets are going to fall out of style. I have had my eye on a Color Laserjet for a while now.
Bottom line is that inkjets are pretty much crap these days. You can't find a decent one that is solidly built and will last long enough to be worthwhile.
And from the Headline:
After reading the rather lengthy article it read more like a primer on how an engine's ECU manages fuel and airflow rather than - as the headline suggested - " An Alternative to Alternative Fuels and Vehicles".
I was kind of expecting to read that the guy reflashed his ECU and got amazing results and bumped up his mileage some percentage. To read that much and then have a bunch of obvious statements like "drive slower" and "accelarate slower" was kind of a waste of time.
Well, they stagnated. And IE came and IMNSHO, ruined the web experience in the late 90s to early 00s. And during that time Netscape released their code into the Mozilla project. It then got worse. AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape is just a memory.
Yeah, Netscape definitely stagnated back around version 4 or 5 - when the browser was a bloated mess and was in danger of collapsing under its own weight. When IE 4 came out it was quite simply a better browser. It rendered pages faster and had a much better user interface. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that IE "ruined the web experience in the late 90s". They were the best game in town back then.
I made the move to Firefox a few years ago when pop-ups were a huge problem, and discovered that Firefox was about a LOT more than just blocking popups. IE had started to stagnate bigtime. IE5 and IE6 offered no meaningful improvements (although a pop up blocker appeared way late in the game). People knew that IE sucked but the word hadn't spread about Firefox yet. The momentum is clearly shifting towards Firefox now.
I just hope that they don't start to stagnate or bloat up with unneeded features too much. Fortunately they let extensions take care of any "bloat" that a user may want, which I think is good. Just keep a small core set of features and let people add enhancements on as they see fit. So far the history of web browsing has shown that through many generations of innovation come long periods of stagnation. From Mosaic to Netscape to IE to Firefox to ???
I read somewhere that a 30 minute program has only 22 minutes of content. Three commercial breaks is pretty much the standard. Sitcoms are written in 3 acts to support this. I have never actually measured the amount of "content" but my gut tells me it's less than 22 minutes.
I happened upon an old VCR tape of a TV show I taped back in the early 80s. The ravages of time have degraded the tape to a nearly unwatchable level of quality, but it wasn't any worse than a 128k video stream. The 30 minute show I was watching had two very short commercial breaks. I was almost in shock at how short they were and the fact there were only two of them. I think each break must have been no longer than 90 seconds, maybe 2 minutes at the most. And back then that seemed like a long time. I wonder what I would have thought if I was watching a TV show nowadays with much longer breaks, and for there to be three of them in a half hour show! (Four if you count the ads in between shows)
I propose a fairly simple solution. Let's say that right now a nationally televised TV show takes in $1 million of ad revenue in a half hour (I have no idea whether or not this is true or not, just pulling a number out of the air). That's three commercial breaks, a total of 8 minutes. If each commercial is 20 seconds long, that's about $42,000 for a single advertisement.
Why not roll back the amount of advertising to 1983 levels but keep the revenue the same? If back in the early 80s you had 26 minutes of content for each half hour slot, you could charge $83,000 per 20 second slot and still make a million dollars per half hour timeslot. The advertisers would get a lot more exposure since they wouldn't be "lost in the shuffle" to the degree they are today and people would be more inclined to watch them.
The television industry needs to understand that technologies like the VCR and DVR were adopted to the degree they were because of the increasing nuisance of commercials. If you reduce the pain (commercials) to a more reasonable level, the problem will go away.
Ahh, the annual discussion of Thin Clients again. Every year some company gets a hare-brained scheme to reintroduce some variation of thin clients. You can almost set your watch by it. The average buyer can pick up a barebones XP machine for a couple hundred bucks at their local big box electronics store. Who is demanding "Internet Operating Systems"? What's the draw? What can they do that a PC running a web browser can't?
Oh, and who could forget the classic Street Fighter:The Movie:The Game? I mean, it was a game about a movie that was based on a game. Has that ever been done before? Movies based on arcade games almost universally suck. And video games based on movies also suck. But a video game based on a movie based on an arcade game? That approaches a level of suckitude that almost cannot be measured. Oh, and getting back on topic: The name sucked too.
The Toshiba HD-DVD player premiered to some pretty scating reviews, with issues like a terrible remote control, a 30 second bootup time, and terrible response time when you pressed play, fast forward, etc.. Not to mention the thing was a behemoth. What can we expect from Sony's offering? A side by side review of the two products (Sony, Toshiba) would be nice as well..