Heh, I still own and use the Lame Boy. Actually, my girlfriend picked it up the other day to play Zelda, and...
GF: "Where's the backlight?" Me: "There is no backlight." GF: "Don't be a prick. Seriously, where's the button?" Me: "I'm totally serious. That's as bright as it gets."
I was in trouble until a trusted source could verify that yes, Nintendo did something incredibly stupid when they made that console.
On the bright side, I can charge up a couple of Ni-MH batteries and run it for about a year. As long as it plays Four Swords Adventures I'm happy.
Movie studios love piracy. It's not seriously cutting into their profits, and it gives them an excuse for poor sales. Ask any movie executive why Gigli failed financially, and they'll tell you it was piracy. Same with House of the Dead or Deuce Bigalow. "Oh, everybody 'downloaded' it before it even hit theatres. Damn shame. We didn't even have enough money to pay the carpenters, set designers, makeup people, caterers... actually, the only people who got paid were me, the star and the director. Isn't that funny. Man, I wanna get those crooks."
So the DS' first-party titles will not have any kind of voice chat. That's fine with me - otherwise Nintendo would have to moderate every voice message to check for inappropriate language. Perhaps 3rd-party developers will allow unmoderated voice. If the game is rated M then who has the right to complain? However, I certainly hope that Nintendo creates some kind of headset for the Revolution. Playing with other people is nice but how are you going to coordinate strategy or hurl insults?
Several of the gas stations in Toronto already have their own keychain RFID paypasses. You register for your free keychain and give them your CC details (can be Visa or Mastercard). IIRC some McDonald's restaurants downtown licensed the system as part of a short pilot. I don't know if they still have the readers. I guess if you have to have your Big Mac right now it's the best way to go.
All of the 7-Elevens in my part of Toronto (Scarborough) closed and disappeared on the same weekend! Now if I want a delicious Slurpee, Double Gulp or Bawls, I have to take a 1-hour trip downtown. You don't really appreciate how much better they are than most convenience stores until they're not an option.
Nintendo has a dedicated fanbase. I don't just mean that they'll log onto forums and post "Anyone who plays [Platform X] is gay." I mean that they'll buy every handheld, console, controller and game that comes out of Nintendo. They will then proceed to talk about how great the stuff is to their friends/family/coworkers.
Nintendo is the only company that's really working and succeeding at getting casual gamers. This is a very valuable (and neglected) segment of the market. Nintendo will never die as long as they can keep pulling in Bejeweled players who want something to do on the go.
Nintendo is one of the best game developers in the world. Microsoft owns Bungie. Wow, Halo. Great. The fact of the matter is that Miyamoto could say, "We need a game that simulates making photocopies of your butt," and Nintendo's engineers would produce something that's really fun, has intuitive controls, is accessible to all ages, has no load screens, and comes with 20 great unlockable party games.
Call me a fanboy. Whatever. Nintendo's been very good to me. I always come away from them feeling like I've gotten an excellent value for my money. Also, their tech support line (only had to call it once in 15 years) is the best I've ever encountered.
No, they failed. They went from "Nintendo number 1 in the games market", to "Nintendo, beaten by a newcomer to the games market twice in a row" As it's already been mentioned, Nintendo was the only one to make a profit last quarter. The games industry is a place where you really can succeed by throwing away a few million/billion bucks. Sony and Microsoft are willing to run their games divisions at a loss until they've "won" (i.e. they have a total monopoly). If they achieve that, they'll start jacking up prices - it's they both operate. However, they can't even think about that until Nintendo is dead. If Microsoft had its monopoly the XBox 360 would be $800 and the games would cost $120. Also, didn't we just find out that Sony has been bribing radio stations to get its music played? Doesn't it seem like the Playstation gets a disproportionate amount of non-stop, hyped-up, fanboy press attention? Just a thought.
Having been a customer of both Rogers and Bell, I can honestly say that this news disturbs me. I'd sort of been hoping that the City of Toronto might start its own wireless ISP but this sort of kills that idea. Rogers sucks. They play ads while they keep you on hold for their billing department. And I don't mean ads for their other services - I mean Rolaids, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. Plus they've just installed this crappy voice recognition system that (like most voice recognition systems) doesn't work. I watched my girlfriend have the following interaction with her cell phone: "Tech support. TECH. SUPPORT. TECH SUPPORT!!! TECH SUPPORT!!! TECH SUPPORT!!! AIIIIEEEERRRGGHHHH!!!!!!" Rogers: "I'm sorry! I couldn't quite catch what you were saying! Please try again!"
I gave HL2 a miss because I was running GNU/Linux at the time and Valve made it pretty clear that they had no interest in alternative platforms. Well, I finally got a copy of WinXP from my school, so I borrowed HL2 from a buddy of mine. First of all, the thing wouldn't install because I didn't want Counter Strike. However, instead of forcing you to install it, it just blows up the installer on disc 4 of 5. Great job, Valve. I guess nobody in QA thought that there are people out there that don't play CS. Then I thought (stupidly) that Steam would be smart enough to detect that 4/5 discs' worth of data had been copied, and that it would be able to continue downloading the rest from the 'Net. Maybe that's how those nutbars at Guild Wars do things, but at Valve they start fresh when things screw up! When the dang thing was finally installed, I had to wait another 45 minutes for the game to be decrypted and updated. HL2 was cool. Very cool and lots of fun. But Steam sucks. I was absolutely ready to buy the Gold Edition and Lost Coast, but Steam honestly ruined it for me. No cash for them. Wake me when UT2007 comes out.
I predict that we will see 3rd-party, wireless SNES controller clones for those interested in playing old ROMS on the Virtual Console. I can also certainly see why they bothered to include ports for hooking up Gamecube controllers. The Revolution controller is AMAZING but it's going to be awkward unless games are designed with it in mind.
Why didn't they start this when the original owners registered gmail.com? This isn't about infringing on their trademark, protecting their rights, etc. This is happening because they decided that they could get a nice settlement out of Google. They're following the RIAA's model and have changed their business model to a litigious one.
Heh, I'm working on it. I've been volunteering with the NDP since I've turned 18. Our share of the vote goes up every election, but we're just not winning seats. I also write to both of my representatives (both "conservative Liberals", what a country!) about issues like this whenever they come up for a vote. My provincial rep never writes back, and my federal rep's last reply was to tell me that I was being stupid (for being concerned that XM and Sirius will only be required to provide 8% Canadian content). Unfortunately most voters seem to be fine with the government saying "we're working on it," with regards to such promises as proportional representation, transit funding, health care reform, etc. I now regard Chretien as "pretty good" (at least compared to Martin), but even he promised to abolish the GST for about 15 years without doing anything. The sad truth is that the Liberals and Conservatives are not held accountable for anything in this country... and if the NDP screws up we pay for it for about 3 - 6 generations it seems.
It's not that people hate the game. It's that Sony doesn't care to be seen as providing a platform that carries innovative games. Sony wants people to look at the PS2 (or upcoming PS3) and think "Final Fantasy. GTA. Resident Evil. Metal Gear." They most certainly do not want you to think, "Oh, this is that system that has that quirky little Katamari game... that was pretty fun." So, the cool, innovative titles for PS2 aren't given much credit because Sony is working to foster a community that doesn't care for these titles. Frankly I think that Parappa and Katamari would get a lot more (positive) attention if they were coming out on Nintendo systems. The fanbase knows how to react to the Animal Crossings and Pikmins of the world and is generally more interested in trying something new.
From Skype's Terms of Service 8.1 Further, as stated in the Privacy Policy, Skype and/or its local partners may need to provide such data to designated competent authorities upon request, or may need to enter into further activities due to local regulations, for example with regard to the interception of communications, if requested by such authorities.
So basically the government just has to send some kind of official request to Skype and they'll do all the legwork.
You have now entered MarioKartDS-US-1 MarioBot: Welcome to the online chat! racerx: so who r u all voting 4? proluigi: cheney mryoshi: cheney ya gamemasta: i wish we could vote 4 bush again! collegedude: i like the look of clinton's platform actually collegedude has been banned by MarioBot (no political discussion please!)
I lead a pretty simple lifestyle. I don't drink, smoke or drive, so my expenses are pretty low. Basically I just want something in IT where I don't have to deal with psychopaths and office politics. Then I just want to have enough time to see my family, ride my bike and play Nintendo at the end of the day. Does such a job exist? Corporate? Non-profit? Education? Government?
that I can't resell my copy of HL2 when I get bored with it This is absolutely, 100%, completely and unquestionably the reason why publishers have implemented CD keys in the first place. The used market costs them way more than "piracy." If you go into EB you'll get a lot more for trading in, say, the Gamecube version of Splinter Cell than the PC version. This is because a consumer has no way of knowing whether someone else out there is already using the PC version's CD key. The game won't play online unless the user has exclusive access to it.
Boy, I steered clear of Wind Waker because of all the bad things I heard about it. However, I hit a bit of a slow period and a friend of mine loaned it to me. I really regret my decision to pass it up. It's seriously one of the best games I've ever played. In fact, I think if it hadn't been a Zelda game, the industry would be raving about its innovative gameplay and terrific graphics. Unfortunately it seems like the community really wanted OoT on steroids. Well, that's what it's getting with Twilight Princess. I'm sorry to read that Miyamoto wasn't happy with WW, but I certainly got a lot of fun out of it.
New Orleans didn't have to be a disaster. What's the right blaming it on? The gays. Loss of life certainly could have been prevented. So either blame the government (for not being prepared) or God (for killing thousands of innocent people to get at a few homosexuals). Don't blame the storm.
Every time the PS3 becomes more expensive, people become more eager to sell their old Nintendo stuff.
Right before the PSP came out, my friend picked up a used Gamecube, some controllers and a big stack of great games for under $100 CDN. I hope that kid is still enjoying Lumines because the Gamecube is certainly getting a lot of use.
I doubt they have much to worry about. Despite the efforts of some enthusiastic fans, Revolution is the least-hyped system on the horizon (even though it will likely be the most financially successful). So far Nintendo has promised that the controller will be something that people will want to pick up and play with. Frankly I don't think this will be a difficult promise to keep. Nintendo's controllers are always the most innovative and interesting in every generation. And it doesn't have to be weird. It just has to be cool. Dumping the D-pad seems logical. Its primary purpose seems to be providing four extremely awkward buttons. However, adding a touchscreen would just make the controller prohibitively expensive. Also, touchscreens and thumbs don't tend to work together. First of all, fingers don't register very well - that's why the DS has a stylus. Second, touchscreens don't have any feedback to confirm that you've actually pressed what you meant to. Finally, people like to be pretty rough with their controllers, especially when they're stressed/excited. You just can't button mash with a touchscreen.
Let me explain something to you: Do you know why video games, TV shows and novels get turned into such terrible movies? It's because the film industry wants to punish you for spending your time and money on video games, TV shows and novels. This really is once instance where it's not too hard to vote with your wallet. Frankly I don't want to see a single "Bloodrayne was really bad" comment on Slashdot. I want to see, "Oh, I don't know if it was any good or not - I don't watch Uwe Boll movies."
What's with the long queues? In Guild Wars, you pick the type of PvP arena you'd like to enter, click Enter Mission, and you're playing in 30 seconds or less. What makes the battlegrounds on WoW so much slower?
Why not have a counselor? Starfleet seems pretty stressful. The last thing you want is for someone to crack, grab a phaser rifle and waste the entire preschool class.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, I still own and use the Lame Boy. Actually, my girlfriend picked it up the other day to play Zelda, and...
GF: "Where's the backlight?"
Me: "There is no backlight."
GF: "Don't be a prick. Seriously, where's the button?"
Me: "I'm totally serious. That's as bright as it gets."
I was in trouble until a trusted source could verify that yes, Nintendo did something incredibly stupid when they made that console.
On the bright side, I can charge up a couple of Ni-MH batteries and run it for about a year. As long as it plays Four Swords Adventures I'm happy.
Movie studios love piracy. It's not seriously cutting into their profits, and it gives them an excuse for poor sales.
Ask any movie executive why Gigli failed financially, and they'll tell you it was piracy. Same with House of the Dead or Deuce Bigalow. "Oh, everybody 'downloaded' it before it even hit theatres. Damn shame. We didn't even have enough money to pay the carpenters, set designers, makeup people, caterers... actually, the only people who got paid were me, the star and the director. Isn't that funny. Man, I wanna get those crooks."
So the DS' first-party titles will not have any kind of voice chat. That's fine with me - otherwise Nintendo would have to moderate every voice message to check for inappropriate language.
Perhaps 3rd-party developers will allow unmoderated voice. If the game is rated M then who has the right to complain?
However, I certainly hope that Nintendo creates some kind of headset for the Revolution. Playing with other people is nice but how are you going to coordinate strategy or hurl insults?
Several of the gas stations in Toronto already have their own keychain RFID paypasses. You register for your free keychain and give them your CC details (can be Visa or Mastercard).
IIRC some McDonald's restaurants downtown licensed the system as part of a short pilot. I don't know if they still have the readers. I guess if you have to have your Big Mac right now it's the best way to go.
All of the 7-Elevens in my part of Toronto (Scarborough) closed and disappeared on the same weekend! Now if I want a delicious Slurpee, Double Gulp or Bawls, I have to take a 1-hour trip downtown.
You don't really appreciate how much better they are than most convenience stores until they're not an option.
Call me a fanboy. Whatever. Nintendo's been very good to me. I always come away from them feeling like I've gotten an excellent value for my money. Also, their tech support line (only had to call it once in 15 years) is the best I've ever encountered.
No, they failed. They went from "Nintendo number 1 in the games market", to "Nintendo, beaten by a newcomer to the games market twice in a row"
As it's already been mentioned, Nintendo was the only one to make a profit last quarter.
The games industry is a place where you really can succeed by throwing away a few million/billion bucks. Sony and Microsoft are willing to run their games divisions at a loss until they've "won" (i.e. they have a total monopoly). If they achieve that, they'll start jacking up prices - it's they both operate. However, they can't even think about that until Nintendo is dead. If Microsoft had its monopoly the XBox 360 would be $800 and the games would cost $120.
Also, didn't we just find out that Sony has been bribing radio stations to get its music played? Doesn't it seem like the Playstation gets a disproportionate amount of non-stop, hyped-up, fanboy press attention? Just a thought.
Having been a customer of both Rogers and Bell, I can honestly say that this news disturbs me. I'd sort of been hoping that the City of Toronto might start its own wireless ISP but this sort of kills that idea.
Rogers sucks. They play ads while they keep you on hold for their billing department. And I don't mean ads for their other services - I mean Rolaids, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. Plus they've just installed this crappy voice recognition system that (like most voice recognition systems) doesn't work. I watched my girlfriend have the following interaction with her cell phone:
"Tech support. TECH. SUPPORT. TECH SUPPORT!!! TECH SUPPORT!!! TECH SUPPORT!!! AIIIIEEEERRRGGHHHH!!!!!!"
Rogers: "I'm sorry! I couldn't quite catch what you were saying! Please try again!"
I gave HL2 a miss because I was running GNU/Linux at the time and Valve made it pretty clear that they had no interest in alternative platforms.
Well, I finally got a copy of WinXP from my school, so I borrowed HL2 from a buddy of mine.
First of all, the thing wouldn't install because I didn't want Counter Strike. However, instead of forcing you to install it, it just blows up the installer on disc 4 of 5. Great job, Valve. I guess nobody in QA thought that there are people out there that don't play CS.
Then I thought (stupidly) that Steam would be smart enough to detect that 4/5 discs' worth of data had been copied, and that it would be able to continue downloading the rest from the 'Net. Maybe that's how those nutbars at Guild Wars do things, but at Valve they start fresh when things screw up!
When the dang thing was finally installed, I had to wait another 45 minutes for the game to be decrypted and updated.
HL2 was cool. Very cool and lots of fun. But Steam sucks. I was absolutely ready to buy the Gold Edition and Lost Coast, but Steam honestly ruined it for me. No cash for them.
Wake me when UT2007 comes out.
I predict that we will see 3rd-party, wireless SNES controller clones for those interested in playing old ROMS on the Virtual Console.
I can also certainly see why they bothered to include ports for hooking up Gamecube controllers.
The Revolution controller is AMAZING but it's going to be awkward unless games are designed with it in mind.
In this case, the owners of the Garfield comic were offering free webmail to fans. So it was the same market. See the Wikipedia article on Gmail.
Why didn't they start this when the original owners registered gmail.com?
This isn't about infringing on their trademark, protecting their rights, etc. This is happening because they decided that they could get a nice settlement out of Google. They're following the RIAA's model and have changed their business model to a litigious one.
Heh, I'm working on it. I've been volunteering with the NDP since I've turned 18. Our share of the vote goes up every election, but we're just not winning seats.
I also write to both of my representatives (both "conservative Liberals", what a country!) about issues like this whenever they come up for a vote. My provincial rep never writes back, and my federal rep's last reply was to tell me that I was being stupid (for being concerned that XM and Sirius will only be required to provide 8% Canadian content).
Unfortunately most voters seem to be fine with the government saying "we're working on it," with regards to such promises as proportional representation, transit funding, health care reform, etc. I now regard Chretien as "pretty good" (at least compared to Martin), but even he promised to abolish the GST for about 15 years without doing anything.
The sad truth is that the Liberals and Conservatives are not held accountable for anything in this country... and if the NDP screws up we pay for it for about 3 - 6 generations it seems.
It's not that people hate the game. It's that Sony doesn't care to be seen as providing a platform that carries innovative games. Sony wants people to look at the PS2 (or upcoming PS3) and think "Final Fantasy. GTA. Resident Evil. Metal Gear." They most certainly do not want you to think, "Oh, this is that system that has that quirky little Katamari game... that was pretty fun."
So, the cool, innovative titles for PS2 aren't given much credit because Sony is working to foster a community that doesn't care for these titles.
Frankly I think that Parappa and Katamari would get a lot more (positive) attention if they were coming out on Nintendo systems. The fanbase knows how to react to the Animal Crossings and Pikmins of the world and is generally more interested in trying something new.
From Skype's Terms of Service
8.1
Further, as stated in the Privacy Policy, Skype and/or its local partners may need to provide such data to designated competent authorities upon request, or may need to enter into further activities due to local regulations, for example with regard to the interception of communications, if requested by such authorities.
So basically the government just has to send some kind of official request to Skype and they'll do all the legwork.
You mean Fox now pwns my DS?
You have now entered MarioKartDS-US-1
MarioBot: Welcome to the online chat!
racerx: so who r u all voting 4?
proluigi: cheney
mryoshi: cheney ya
gamemasta: i wish we could vote 4 bush again!
collegedude: i like the look of clinton's platform actually
collegedude has been banned by MarioBot (no political discussion please!)
I lead a pretty simple lifestyle. I don't drink, smoke or drive, so my expenses are pretty low. Basically I just want something in IT where I don't have to deal with psychopaths and office politics. Then I just want to have enough time to see my family, ride my bike and play Nintendo at the end of the day.
Does such a job exist? Corporate? Non-profit? Education? Government?
that I can't resell my copy of HL2 when I get bored with it
This is absolutely, 100%, completely and unquestionably the reason why publishers have implemented CD keys in the first place. The used market costs them way more than "piracy."
If you go into EB you'll get a lot more for trading in, say, the Gamecube version of Splinter Cell than the PC version. This is because a consumer has no way of knowing whether someone else out there is already using the PC version's CD key. The game won't play online unless the user has exclusive access to it.
Boy, I steered clear of Wind Waker because of all the bad things I heard about it. However, I hit a bit of a slow period and a friend of mine loaned it to me. I really regret my decision to pass it up. It's seriously one of the best games I've ever played.
In fact, I think if it hadn't been a Zelda game, the industry would be raving about its innovative gameplay and terrific graphics. Unfortunately it seems like the community really wanted OoT on steroids. Well, that's what it's getting with Twilight Princess. I'm sorry to read that Miyamoto wasn't happy with WW, but I certainly got a lot of fun out of it.
New Orleans didn't have to be a disaster. What's the right blaming it on? The gays.
Loss of life certainly could have been prevented. So either blame the government (for not being prepared) or God (for killing thousands of innocent people to get at a few homosexuals). Don't blame the storm.
Every time the PS3 becomes more expensive, people become more eager to sell their old Nintendo stuff.
Right before the PSP came out, my friend picked up a used Gamecube, some controllers and a big stack of great games for under $100 CDN. I hope that kid is still enjoying Lumines because the Gamecube is certainly getting a lot of use.
I doubt they have much to worry about. Despite the efforts of some enthusiastic fans, Revolution is the least-hyped system on the horizon (even though it will likely be the most financially successful).
So far Nintendo has promised that the controller will be something that people will want to pick up and play with. Frankly I don't think this will be a difficult promise to keep. Nintendo's controllers are always the most innovative and interesting in every generation. And it doesn't have to be weird. It just has to be cool.
Dumping the D-pad seems logical. Its primary purpose seems to be providing four extremely awkward buttons.
However, adding a touchscreen would just make the controller prohibitively expensive. Also, touchscreens and thumbs don't tend to work together. First of all, fingers don't register very well - that's why the DS has a stylus. Second, touchscreens don't have any feedback to confirm that you've actually pressed what you meant to. Finally, people like to be pretty rough with their controllers, especially when they're stressed/excited. You just can't button mash with a touchscreen.
Let me explain something to you:
Do you know why video games, TV shows and novels get turned into such terrible movies?
It's because the film industry wants to punish you for spending your time and money on video games, TV shows and novels.
This really is once instance where it's not too hard to vote with your wallet. Frankly I don't want to see a single "Bloodrayne was really bad" comment on Slashdot. I want to see, "Oh, I don't know if it was any good or not - I don't watch Uwe Boll movies."
Disclaimer: I have not played WoW.
What's with the long queues? In Guild Wars, you pick the type of PvP arena you'd like to enter, click Enter Mission, and you're playing in 30 seconds or less. What makes the battlegrounds on WoW so much slower?
Why not have a counselor? Starfleet seems pretty stressful. The last thing you want is for someone to crack, grab a phaser rifle and waste the entire preschool class.
Like in my Geordi fanfic!