DLP and LCD based televisions, computer displays, and projectors have to scale any image that isn't at their native resolution to their native resolution. The quality of this makes an enormous difference in image quality, and is worth looking into if you plan on ever watching anything on a given display that isn't at, or can't be scaled to, it's native resolution. The consequences of a display doing this poorly are clearly visible. This is what me and the now great-grandparent post were talking about. Or at least what I *thought* we were talking about.
My DVD player has it's own scaler, for obvious reasons.
Only because the scaler is the thing they skimp on when you buy something that's a "good deal". Most HDTV scalers well, sucks ass. ESPECIALLY on cheaper sets, which most people buy. You can tell these people because they think the PS3 makes things look better.
Really, that's not saying much. If scaling was important to you(as it was to me), then you included it as a factor in which display your purchased. Not all of them are bad, and I wouldn't be surprised if the PS3s was not at the top of the charts, especially given the images shown. My projector scales like a champ.
What games? I generally go into a store looking to spend up to a few hundred dollars on games, and I've bought FOUR 360 games. Lost Planet, Gears of War, Dead Rising, and Viva Pinata. My roommates got Forza 2, which isn't my cup of tea(I hate realistic racers/sports titles, give me arcade racers and mutant league football!). I've actually bought far more Wii titles than 360 ones, and even more PS2 titles to keep building that library.
I have no interest in sports titles, and no interest in fpses. Name some high quality games not on arcade, and not conforming to either genre that are out at retail. If you mention a RARE game besides Viva Pinata, I will hate you to death over the internet.
I also have something in the neighborhood of $1600 in home theatre equipment(which was a budget purchase, 720p projector instead of 1080p60 saved something like $3200, DVD instead of an HD format saved $900, and 5.1 instead of 7.1+ saved $300), because I like film, and I like games. I also have an HTPC and some serious storage. Zero interest in a PS3 or next-gen media formats, because DVDs look perfectly fine(and are a fraction of the cost with an INFINITELY better selection) and wonderfully cinematic on my existing setup and there just aren't any games for the PS3. It doesn't provide anywhere near $600 worth of value to me, so I won't purchase it. When you total up the costs for the quality increase, it's just not worth it. I could afford it, sure, but I'd rather let that money work while others adopt it early and possibly get it later when that value proposition changes. I get the feeling the Ultra-HD will come out before then, with something approaching the actual information of 35mm film(which is WELL beyond 1080p).
I also have a *TON* of media that will never see release in EDTV, much less any HD format, and there's still stuff just now coming out on DVD that I've waited for for years. For instance I transfered a ton of MST3K eps onto an HTPC from VHS. A lot of these will never see release on DVD because of rights issues, so all we have are tapes. There's also older television shows that I enjoy that will never, ever, release on DVD at 480p, much less an HD format. And Shaw Bros films, because, well, you gotta kinda dig those, and even the DVDs of them are just straight VHS burns. Animated stuff that simply wasn't animated for anything beyond broadcast quality. There's also a huge back-catalog of film that simply isn't popular enough, or the source prints are too degraded, to remaster into DVD or higher resolutions. An example of that is the ORIGINAL Star Wars trilogy(which isn't even anamorphic), where all we have are the laser disc masters supposedly. So if I bought into the wrong-headed idea that anything not HD is inherently inferior, Greedo shoots first. You don't see AV enthusiasts really panning SDTV and EDTV stuff if they enjoy media unless the option for higher quality is there. There's just too much stuff out there that isn't available at a higher quality level, and if it makes your "eyes bleed" you're *really* missing out, and I really hope you don't have any home movies from the late 80s/early 90s because those might *kill* you. My projector throws an image big enough to fit several top-end non-projector televisions in it, and I've managed to survive thus far(9 feet).
And when we get into games, well, I have a slew of older titles I enjoy, and plan on continuing to enjoy. I hold that games are art akin to traditional non-transient media, and thus do not lose any value once the next thing comes out. I don't buy into the everything made before this sucks idea, that's a blockbuster-film style marketing ploy, and Sony has mastered it, but it's not true. I have no problem with the Wii for example producing "last-gen" graphics as long as the games are enjoyable, and I have no problem continuing to buy PS2 titles from it's massive library. Gameplay > Graphics, and fun factor trumps all. For instance, chess, tetris, visuals do not help there, and can actually detract from the experience(see Battle Chess).
What's happened is a bunch of people have found themselves stuck with a $600 poor purchase and are desperate to justify it. If they get others to buy into this HD is superior, all that has come before sucks idea, then maybe they can persuade just enough people to purchase it for it not to turn out like an overpriced Gamecube -quality first party titles. It has nothing to do with love of media, or value, or anything else, and everything to do with conspicious consumption and buyer's remorse. Plus, there's actually an organized cadre of presumably young fanboys who have formed a crack team of forum posters to defend the console by any means necessary. Look at the phrasing in a lot of "it's a great deal" posts, and the posting history of the posters. It's sad.
Actually, the PS2 really pulled ahead once it hit the $200 price point. Until then it just kinda lazily sold. It also didn't really have much competition, and god did the first year of it's library suck. *Glares at fantavision* And yea, there were some failure stuff, and a lot of bitter Dreamcast people, but nothing like this. And yea, there were some failure stuff, and a lot of bitter Dreamcast people, but nothing like this.
Anyway, it's silly to use the PS2 or PS1 as an indicator for any other console. Things are no where near as they were when the PS1 came out or as they were when the PS2 came out. Sony is facing two extremely tough competitors one of whom has already been out for a year, and who by and large haven't made any massive mistakes, and is doing so with the most expensive console in history(not adjusted for inflation). It has been proven, time and time again, the general public doesn't have brand loyalty to a console maker. If they did, Sony never would've succeeded in the first place.
Yes, it's possible that the PS3 will pull out of this, but each month that passes with news like this and it becomes increasingly unlikely.
Umm... they both play video games. Toothbrushes don't play video games. How are they not competing products? May appeal to different demographics, but they're still in the, ya know, video game market.
Where are you getting independant sales data for Europe? In the NA we have NPD, and in Japan, Media Create, but there's no real good source for European figures outside the companies themselves, so Europe is a black hole and we largely ignore it. Honestly curious.
Awesome. That means the Wii is going to outperform the PS1 and PS2 by enormous margins, right? Since it's outpacing all three? PS3 is made of brown, bloom and fail no matter how you slice it.
I mean, right now, the PS3 is being outsold in the US by the GBA. THE GBA! It's underperforming the gamecube in Japan, hitting sales targets *weeks* after the cube did. And, like the PSP was by the DS, it's being absolutely destroyed by the Wii. And the HD movie market is *NOTHING* compared to the DVD market. It's like a sick joke.
It's very easy and fun to play with sales data and especially pacing and trends. But ultimately, it's meaningless. In what countries, by what metric? Are we adjusting for the increased market size since the X came out?
Well, it better be soon. This is the 4th straight month where the GBA has outperformed the PS3 sales-wise in the US. Yes, that's right, a portable SNES is beating the next-gen powerhouse. And things don't look good in Japan either, where it's slumped into to around 8,000 units per week and has fallen far behind the gamecube in terms of pacing. You won't see many new announcements for PS3 stuff from third-parties while it's putting up those kind of numbers. And it's not like there's anything coming out for a long while to turn that around, or that Sony's partners and shareholders will allow a large enough price drop to turn that around.
More bad news... FFXIII and MGS4 will not be hitting this year....
There is some good news though, little big planet(bet those guys are kicking themselves for going to Sony), home. And some iffy's like Lair, Heavenly Sword, and a bunch of cross-platform stuff. But nothing really good enough to turn the tide. If you like the PS2, it's still doing well, beating the XBox 360, and is still going to be getting titles for a bit.
The only other bright-side is that the Wii news has been really dead for a while.... but there's a series of events this week, and one of the Nintendo franchise mega-bombs just launched a website.
Re:But will they be cheaper?
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Dell Linux Details
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
No linux nerd runs Ubuntu, it's debian for retards and w/o any contributions to the community. Plus you know, apartheid, yay jailing Nelson Mendela. This is aimed squarely in the n00b/"wow linux desktop" market.
The *ONLY* exception to this is for PPC, which Dell doesn't sell.
If you skipped the GBA ones(like I did) there's a lot of new stuff(and over 300 new pokemon). Berries, breeding, etc. etc. Jebus did they complicate this thing since Red + Blue.
I guess if you didn't, the additions are minor. Shrug, the only reason I really picked this up was for the WiFi. That, and pokemon is a great JRPG lite.
Go portable, get a DS. There was and is a sort of renaissance going on in the portable space on the GBA and DS for "older" style games. Side-scrollers, adventures, simple RPGs, and the like. There is a *ton* of SNES-type stuff for the GBA, and some cool quirky things on the DS. For the DS New Super Mario Bros is great, and LoZ: Phantom Hourglass is looking like it's going to be great as well.
There's also the Wii and the Virtual Console, but imo, the DS is probably the best system out atm, especially if you were a huge SNES fan.
Insomniac isn't a second party. They're completely independant.
Sure, they have really, really close relations with Naughty Dog(who are a Sony 2nd party), and are effectively Sony exclusive, but they're still third party(as is Sucker Punch).
I also wouldn't call either Insomniac's(I mean Resistance pretty much just combines every FPS cliche under the sun, and Ratchet/Spyro are basically Mario 64 derivatives) or Retro's stuff full of unique ideas(well, maybe the level of attention to detail, like looking up with the visor when it's raining and the droplets)... but that's another topic. Half-life also wasn't the *first* game to do what it did, but it so defined that style and persisted so long due to modding that I have to give Valve a pass.
And as to Origin, well, Origin produced great games, but they had absolutely no business sense. Garriot and crew's inept management post-aquisition pretty much single-handedly crafted EA into the monstrosity we know today. How was Origin bought? They failed to anticipate a series of events, and some bad luck with timing. What did they do after they were bought? Well, given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, Garriot doubled the staff (from 200 - 400 people), and upped the number of projects to 10-20. Then, they didn't release anything substantial for 2 years(IIRC an Ultima VII expansion, 1992-1994 weren't big Origin years), cancelling half the projects. They were burning money, so EA got heavy-handed.
That's Pascal's Wager, and it's crap. Any entity, divine or not, that predicates judgement based entirely upon belief in said entity, isn't worthy of worship, it is worthy only of contempt. That's petty, and a very human quality to find in a supposedly nigh-ununderstanble divine being.
People only like the dual-shock because they've been using it for so long. Hand someone who isn't a gamer *any* other controller and they'll prefer it. I *despise* the dualshock, it hurts the hell out of my hands after an extended play session, and the only thing it's better at than the more comfortable cube controller is fighters(but that's offset by the load times imo). The wavebird also kicked the crap out of all of the other wireless controllers of last generation.
The dualshock is just an SNES controller with extended grips which had dual-analog literally tacked on in the only place to put it. Nintendo's "classic controller" has similar failings as the dualshock does, but fortunately most of the content available for it atm doesn't require extensive use of the analogs.
And only 3 cube games? See, this is why I hate Sony, because the consumers of their products are freakin' troglodytes. Here's a few traditional cube games: Metroid Prime 1/2, Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, Soul Calibur 2, Viewtiful Joe, F-Zero GX, Tales of Symphonia, Prince of Persia series, etc. SC2 being the only one that arguably suffers for being on the cube, due to the controller, but it makes up for that with lower load times(almost non-existant) and the best exclusive character. Other cross-platform titles are better on the cube than the PS2.
And yes, I own both. Yes, I own more games for the PS2, but the Cube had a respectable library of quality titles that was far greater than 3. The only genre it was really lacking in was JRPGs, and the genre it excelled at was in-person multiplayer(Smash, Warioware, Mario Kart/Golf/Party/etc., etc.).
I never remember the bandwidth itself being all that much. Generally it was leasing the lines or getting access to the network that was the expensive bit.
We were only paying GBLX something like $12 per month per megabit, this was oh, 2003-ish. Of course, global crossing wasn't exactly having the best of times at that time. Haven't really been involved in that part since I left that place though.
Preface: I have 2x NES, SNES, N64, Cube; GBA, SP x2, DS Lite; Dreamcast; 2x PS2, 1 PS2/Slim (gave my PS1 away); 2x PSP; and a PS3. I will be getting a Wii as soon as Paper Mario hits, maybe sooner. I have a solid selection of the best games for all of the above platforms, and I've played (if not finished) just about every SNES and NES game worth playing. I grew up when Atari and Nintendo were big, and am as happy to play an 8-bit game as an HD next-gen game. If that's not "'core", or whatever you kids are calling it, then you're the one with the weaker definition.
Alright, cards on the table time. For some oddly contrived reason you are faced with a choice as to which company: Sony or Nintendo, is allowed to have ever existed in the gaming market. Which would you choose? I can tell you that as someone with a similar background(although I don't own a PSP or a PS3), I'd choose Nintendo, because Sony just doesn't matter as much.
That said, you have no clue if you think Sony is "evil". Nor is Nintendo "evil" anymore; whether this is by necessity or choice is irrelevant. The only thing that killed the Dreamcast was Sega's business prowess. Substandard manufacturing, terrible marketing, and making lots of bad choices along the way. I would much rather see them as the third competitor in the console race than Microsoft (because Microsoft is ongoingly evil), but that's not going to happen soon.
Order of evilness today: Microsoft > Sony > Nintendo Order of evilness in the late 80s/early 90s: Nintendo > Microsoft > Sony
Except then Nintendo was never really horrible to their customers. The worst thing they ever did was set up those Nintendo authorized repair centers and charge a bit too much for repairs related to the design decision of making the NES load like a VCR. Sony and Microsoft have been comparitively horrible to their customers, especially in recent memory.
Care to explain how a company that delivered two massively successful consoles each with a huge library of excellent games is a "big turd"?
Gah, I hate statements like that. It's stealing credit from Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, Atlus, Take 2, EA, and every third party who made great games and apportioning it to Sony for some fucked up reason. Sony didn't make the playstation, the third parties did.
Because almost none of those games are in-house games. Had Sony not been around, they would've been made for the Gamecube or N64 or Dreamcast or XBox. One of the things I truly hate Sony for is their idiotic fanbase. Mainly because they gave me shit for the better part of a decade for daring to enjoy games with color in them. And they'll also criticize the fuck out of a Nintendo title, while praising another titles that's exactly as derivative of the original Nintendo title.
And how does Sony/BMG's contractor have anything to do with Sony Computer Entertainment, which is an entirely different---physical and businessological--- subsidiary?
Sony media calls the shots within Sony proper. Plus, *always* hold a corporate entity as a whole responsible for the actions of their subsidiaries. If you hate phillip morris, you shouldn't buy Kraft food products.
If Lik-Sang failed because they couldn't sell modchips in the UK, then they had more issues than Sony.
Lik-Sang got knocked out by Sony suing them in dozens of territories for importing PSPs before the release date.
Your anger and hatred is misplaced, and more related to a $499-599 pricetag than any real, tangible, logical reason.
Maybe his is, mine isn't. My anger is placed at the credit-stealing, attention whoring, and sheer arrogance of the company and it's fanbase. I don't want to be associated with playstation fans. I don't want to be associated with Sony. They're fucking thieving scum, and maybe you're ok with that but I prefer to reward the guys who come up with and push the concepts rather than the guy who comes in later, mocks an idea only to copy it and tweak it a tad, then declares it his innovation. Sony needs to be put into their place like Nintendo was. The only way to do that is to not buy the thing until that has occured.
And no site that honors that vendor crap has a lick of journalistic integrity. It's a rumor, not prerelease software, a movie, or hardware with an embargo on the release date. The company can say no comment. Hell, the company has little power at all if the journalists collectively tell their PR department to fuck off.
What site without PS, Sony, or Playstation in it's name *doesn't* have an anti-Sony bias these days? Hell, even AVSForums is a bit anti-sony. Is it the few, the proud, the recently made poorer by $600-$700 Sony supporters against the world? Apparently, and apparently all of the bad press is entirely because of this horrible horrible *bias* all of these other places have against Sony. Nothing to do with the reality of the company, their hubris, their backpeddling, their statements that go straight against established facts, and their actions.
Fuck, if this rumor is true, which their actions seem to indicate it is, but we'll find out at GDC, the age old adage "What Nintendo makes, Sony takes" gets the briefly modified to "What Nintendo and Microsoft make, Sony takes." For the umpteenth time they will have panned things their competitors do only to quietly adopt them and claim "It's our innovation!" That's unfrickin' believable.
Well, visible, discernable lines of resolution are about the same between a 35mm print and 1080p. However, neither 1080p or any of the current HD media come close to capturing every bit of info you can get off a film print. Which is why a lot of the places you can find info to back my first statement up include disclaimers like "oh, not scanned" or "oh no, not in a lab." Film has more character to it though, and tends to look better as it's enlarged because grain looks more natural than noise(although the noise in my Canon, regular digital SLR, is a pretty close approximation of the grain found in lower-quality film stock).
This is why I'm not investing in an HD player. It's a scam. Next up is SUPER-HD, then ULTRA-HD, which will have all the info of 35mm film, and then MEGA-ULTRA-HD, which will be half 70mm/IMAX, and then ULTIMATE-HD, which will have full 70mm/IMAX. Then, if they get really desperate, they'll start going for more exotic, higher-resolution formats.
And the other thing is bandwidth. Would you rather have a disc player, or about 11xDVD, or a connection via fibre back to some network attached storage? The telecos and cable cos are rolling out the necessary connections. Verizon's FIOS could handle some quite high-quality video if they wanted to use it that way.
They *are* better than most state universities, but not by the margins most people seem to think they are. And they're also demeaned by "daddy bought a building" syndrome.
Fuck, I could take classes from Harvard right now if I wanted to(and I have, from the extension school, I'd still get a diploma from Harvard if I went for one). No big deal.
Live in the area of the Ivy league and the mystique quickly, quickly wears off.
Actually, Simon's Quest(Castlevania 2) was the first "metroidvania." Of course they then abandoned that formula for a few games(to introduce and build up Alucard I guess), but it was still the first.
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DLP and LCD based televisions, computer displays, and projectors have to scale any image that isn't at their native resolution to their native resolution. The quality of this makes an enormous difference in image quality, and is worth looking into if you plan on ever watching anything on a given display that isn't at, or can't be scaled to, it's native resolution. The consequences of a display doing this poorly are clearly visible. This is what me and the now great-grandparent post were talking about. Or at least what I *thought* we were talking about.
My DVD player has it's own scaler, for obvious reasons.
Only because the scaler is the thing they skimp on when you buy something that's a "good deal". Most HDTV scalers well, sucks ass. ESPECIALLY on cheaper sets, which most people buy. You can tell these people because they think the PS3 makes things look better.
Really, that's not saying much. If scaling was important to you(as it was to me), then you included it as a factor in which display your purchased. Not all of them are bad, and I wouldn't be surprised if the PS3s was not at the top of the charts, especially given the images shown. My projector scales like a champ.
Oh, forgot, or available on the PC.
What games? I generally go into a store looking to spend up to a few hundred dollars on games, and I've bought FOUR 360 games. Lost Planet, Gears of War, Dead Rising, and Viva Pinata. My roommates got Forza 2, which isn't my cup of tea(I hate realistic racers/sports titles, give me arcade racers and mutant league football!). I've actually bought far more Wii titles than 360 ones, and even more PS2 titles to keep building that library.
I have no interest in sports titles, and no interest in fpses. Name some high quality games not on arcade, and not conforming to either genre that are out at retail. If you mention a RARE game besides Viva Pinata, I will hate you to death over the internet.
I also have something in the neighborhood of $1600 in home theatre equipment(which was a budget purchase, 720p projector instead of 1080p60 saved something like $3200, DVD instead of an HD format saved $900, and 5.1 instead of 7.1+ saved $300), because I like film, and I like games. I also have an HTPC and some serious storage. Zero interest in a PS3 or next-gen media formats, because DVDs look perfectly fine(and are a fraction of the cost with an INFINITELY better selection) and wonderfully cinematic on my existing setup and there just aren't any games for the PS3. It doesn't provide anywhere near $600 worth of value to me, so I won't purchase it. When you total up the costs for the quality increase, it's just not worth it. I could afford it, sure, but I'd rather let that money work while others adopt it early and possibly get it later when that value proposition changes. I get the feeling the Ultra-HD will come out before then, with something approaching the actual information of 35mm film(which is WELL beyond 1080p).
I also have a *TON* of media that will never see release in EDTV, much less any HD format, and there's still stuff just now coming out on DVD that I've waited for for years. For instance I transfered a ton of MST3K eps onto an HTPC from VHS. A lot of these will never see release on DVD because of rights issues, so all we have are tapes. There's also older television shows that I enjoy that will never, ever, release on DVD at 480p, much less an HD format. And Shaw Bros films, because, well, you gotta kinda dig those, and even the DVDs of them are just straight VHS burns. Animated stuff that simply wasn't animated for anything beyond broadcast quality. There's also a huge back-catalog of film that simply isn't popular enough, or the source prints are too degraded, to remaster into DVD or higher resolutions. An example of that is the ORIGINAL Star Wars trilogy(which isn't even anamorphic), where all we have are the laser disc masters supposedly. So if I bought into the wrong-headed idea that anything not HD is inherently inferior, Greedo shoots first. You don't see AV enthusiasts really panning SDTV and EDTV stuff if they enjoy media unless the option for higher quality is there. There's just too much stuff out there that isn't available at a higher quality level, and if it makes your "eyes bleed" you're *really* missing out, and I really hope you don't have any home movies from the late 80s/early 90s because those might *kill* you. My projector throws an image big enough to fit several top-end non-projector televisions in it, and I've managed to survive thus far(9 feet).
And when we get into games, well, I have a slew of older titles I enjoy, and plan on continuing to enjoy. I hold that games are art akin to traditional non-transient media, and thus do not lose any value once the next thing comes out. I don't buy into the everything made before this sucks idea, that's a blockbuster-film style marketing ploy, and Sony has mastered it, but it's not true. I have no problem with the Wii for example producing "last-gen" graphics as long as the games are enjoyable, and I have no problem continuing to buy PS2 titles from it's massive library. Gameplay > Graphics, and fun factor trumps all. For instance, chess, tetris, visuals do not help there, and can actually detract from the experience(see Battle Chess).
What's happened is a bunch of people have found themselves stuck with a $600 poor purchase and are desperate to justify it. If they get others to buy into this HD is superior, all that has come before sucks idea, then maybe they can persuade just enough people to purchase it for it not to turn out like an overpriced Gamecube -quality first party titles. It has nothing to do with love of media, or value, or anything else, and everything to do with conspicious consumption and buyer's remorse. Plus, there's actually an organized cadre of presumably young fanboys who have formed a crack team of forum posters to defend the console by any means necessary. Look at the phrasing in a lot of "it's a great deal" posts, and the posting history of the posters. It's sad.
Actually, the PS2 really pulled ahead once it hit the $200 price point. Until then it just kinda lazily sold. It also didn't really have much competition, and god did the first year of it's library suck. *Glares at fantavision* And yea, there were some failure stuff, and a lot of bitter Dreamcast people, but nothing like this. And yea, there were some failure stuff, and a lot of bitter Dreamcast people, but nothing like this.
Anyway, it's silly to use the PS2 or PS1 as an indicator for any other console. Things are no where near as they were when the PS1 came out or as they were when the PS2 came out. Sony is facing two extremely tough competitors one of whom has already been out for a year, and who by and large haven't made any massive mistakes, and is doing so with the most expensive console in history(not adjusted for inflation). It has been proven, time and time again, the general public doesn't have brand loyalty to a console maker. If they did, Sony never would've succeeded in the first place.
Yes, it's possible that the PS3 will pull out of this, but each month that passes with news like this and it becomes increasingly unlikely.
Umm... they both play video games. Toothbrushes don't play video games. How are they not competing products? May appeal to different demographics, but they're still in the, ya know, video game market.
Where are you getting independant sales data for Europe? In the NA we have NPD, and in Japan, Media Create, but there's no real good source for European figures outside the companies themselves, so Europe is a black hole and we largely ignore it. Honestly curious.
Awesome. That means the Wii is going to outperform the PS1 and PS2 by enormous margins, right? Since it's outpacing all three? PS3 is made of brown, bloom and fail no matter how you slice it.
I mean, right now, the PS3 is being outsold in the US by the GBA. THE GBA! It's underperforming the gamecube in Japan, hitting sales targets *weeks* after the cube did. And, like the PSP was by the DS, it's being absolutely destroyed by the Wii. And the HD movie market is *NOTHING* compared to the DVD market. It's like a sick joke.
It's very easy and fun to play with sales data and especially pacing and trends. But ultimately, it's meaningless. In what countries, by what metric? Are we adjusting for the increased market size since the X came out?
Well, it better be soon. This is the 4th straight month where the GBA has outperformed the PS3 sales-wise in the US. Yes, that's right, a portable SNES is beating the next-gen powerhouse. And things don't look good in Japan either, where it's slumped into to around 8,000 units per week and has fallen far behind the gamecube in terms of pacing. You won't see many new announcements for PS3 stuff from third-parties while it's putting up those kind of numbers. And it's not like there's anything coming out for a long while to turn that around, or that Sony's partners and shareholders will allow a large enough price drop to turn that around.
More bad news... FFXIII and MGS4 will not be hitting this year....
There is some good news though, little big planet(bet those guys are kicking themselves for going to Sony), home. And some iffy's like Lair, Heavenly Sword, and a bunch of cross-platform stuff. But nothing really good enough to turn the tide. If you like the PS2, it's still doing well, beating the XBox 360, and is still going to be getting titles for a bit.
The only other bright-side is that the Wii news has been really dead for a while.... but there's a series of events this week, and one of the Nintendo franchise mega-bombs just launched a website.
No linux nerd runs Ubuntu, it's debian for retards and w/o any contributions to the community. Plus you know, apartheid, yay jailing Nelson Mendela. This is aimed squarely in the n00b/"wow linux desktop" market.
The *ONLY* exception to this is for PPC, which Dell doesn't sell.
Digg is in open revolt. This isn't surprising. Funny as hell, but not surprising.
Oh well, it was a horrible site for any kind of discussion anyway.
If you skipped the GBA ones(like I did) there's a lot of new stuff(and over 300 new pokemon). Berries, breeding, etc. etc. Jebus did they complicate this thing since Red + Blue.
I guess if you didn't, the additions are minor. Shrug, the only reason I really picked this up was for the WiFi. That, and pokemon is a great JRPG lite.
Go portable, get a DS. There was and is a sort of renaissance going on in the portable space on the GBA and DS for "older" style games. Side-scrollers, adventures, simple RPGs, and the like. There is a *ton* of SNES-type stuff for the GBA, and some cool quirky things on the DS. For the DS New Super Mario Bros is great, and LoZ: Phantom Hourglass is looking like it's going to be great as well.
There's also the Wii and the Virtual Console, but imo, the DS is probably the best system out atm, especially if you were a huge SNES fan.
Insomniac isn't a second party. They're completely independant.
Sure, they have really, really close relations with Naughty Dog(who are a Sony 2nd party), and are effectively Sony exclusive, but they're still third party(as is Sucker Punch).
I also wouldn't call either Insomniac's(I mean Resistance pretty much just combines every FPS cliche under the sun, and Ratchet/Spyro are basically Mario 64 derivatives) or Retro's stuff full of unique ideas(well, maybe the level of attention to detail, like looking up with the visor when it's raining and the droplets)... but that's another topic. Half-life also wasn't the *first* game to do what it did, but it so defined that style and persisted so long due to modding that I have to give Valve a pass.
And as to Origin, well, Origin produced great games, but they had absolutely no business sense. Garriot and crew's inept management post-aquisition pretty much single-handedly crafted EA into the monstrosity we know today. How was Origin bought? They failed to anticipate a series of events, and some bad luck with timing. What did they do after they were bought? Well, given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, Garriot doubled the staff (from 200 - 400 people), and upped the number of projects to 10-20. Then, they didn't release anything substantial for 2 years(IIRC an Ultima VII expansion, 1992-1994 weren't big Origin years), cancelling half the projects. They were burning money, so EA got heavy-handed.
That's Pascal's Wager, and it's crap. Any entity, divine or not, that predicates judgement based entirely upon belief in said entity, isn't worthy of worship, it is worthy only of contempt. That's petty, and a very human quality to find in a supposedly nigh-ununderstanble divine being.
You people demean god.
People only like the dual-shock because they've been using it for so long. Hand someone who isn't a gamer *any* other controller and they'll prefer it. I *despise* the dualshock, it hurts the hell out of my hands after an extended play session, and the only thing it's better at than the more comfortable cube controller is fighters(but that's offset by the load times imo). The wavebird also kicked the crap out of all of the other wireless controllers of last generation.
The dualshock is just an SNES controller with extended grips which had dual-analog literally tacked on in the only place to put it. Nintendo's "classic controller" has similar failings as the dualshock does, but fortunately most of the content available for it atm doesn't require extensive use of the analogs.
And only 3 cube games? See, this is why I hate Sony, because the consumers of their products are freakin' troglodytes. Here's a few traditional cube games: Metroid Prime 1/2, Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, Soul Calibur 2, Viewtiful Joe, F-Zero GX, Tales of Symphonia, Prince of Persia series, etc. SC2 being the only one that arguably suffers for being on the cube, due to the controller, but it makes up for that with lower load times(almost non-existant) and the best exclusive character. Other cross-platform titles are better on the cube than the PS2.
And yes, I own both. Yes, I own more games for the PS2, but the Cube had a respectable library of quality titles that was far greater than 3. The only genre it was really lacking in was JRPGs, and the genre it excelled at was in-person multiplayer(Smash, Warioware, Mario Kart/Golf/Party/etc., etc.).
I've been ignoring ESR since I first saw this. (Warning: Knowledge of that particular writing will scar the psyche, go here to detox)
I never remember the bandwidth itself being all that much. Generally it was leasing the lines or getting access to the network that was the expensive bit.
We were only paying GBLX something like $12 per month per megabit, this was oh, 2003-ish. Of course, global crossing wasn't exactly having the best of times at that time. Haven't really been involved in that part since I left that place though.
Preface: I have 2x NES, SNES, N64, Cube; GBA, SP x2, DS Lite; Dreamcast; 2x PS2, 1 PS2/Slim (gave my PS1 away); 2x PSP; and a PS3. I will be getting a Wii as soon as Paper Mario hits, maybe sooner. I have a solid selection of the best games for all of the above platforms, and I've played (if not finished) just about every SNES and NES game worth playing. I grew up when Atari and Nintendo were big, and am as happy to play an 8-bit game as an HD next-gen game. If that's not "'core", or whatever you kids are calling it, then you're the one with the weaker definition.
Alright, cards on the table time. For some oddly contrived reason you are faced with a choice as to which company: Sony or Nintendo, is allowed to have ever existed in the gaming market. Which would you choose? I can tell you that as someone with a similar background(although I don't own a PSP or a PS3), I'd choose Nintendo, because Sony just doesn't matter as much.
That said, you have no clue if you think Sony is "evil". Nor is Nintendo "evil" anymore; whether this is by necessity or choice is irrelevant. The only thing that killed the Dreamcast was Sega's business prowess. Substandard manufacturing, terrible marketing, and making lots of bad choices along the way. I would much rather see them as the third competitor in the console race than Microsoft (because Microsoft is ongoingly evil), but that's not going to happen soon.
Order of evilness today: Microsoft > Sony > Nintendo
Order of evilness in the late 80s/early 90s: Nintendo > Microsoft > Sony
Except then Nintendo was never really horrible to their customers. The worst thing they ever did was set up those Nintendo authorized repair centers and charge a bit too much for repairs related to the design decision of making the NES load like a VCR. Sony and Microsoft have been comparitively horrible to their customers, especially in recent memory.
Care to explain how a company that delivered two massively successful consoles each with a huge library of excellent games is a "big turd"?
Gah, I hate statements like that. It's stealing credit from Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, Atlus, Take 2, EA, and every third party who made great games and apportioning it to Sony for some fucked up reason. Sony didn't make the playstation, the third parties did.
Because almost none of those games are in-house games. Had Sony not been around, they would've been made for the Gamecube or N64 or Dreamcast or XBox. One of the things I truly hate Sony for is their idiotic fanbase. Mainly because they gave me shit for the better part of a decade for daring to enjoy games with color in them. And they'll also criticize the fuck out of a Nintendo title, while praising another titles that's exactly as derivative of the original Nintendo title.
And how does Sony/BMG's contractor have anything to do with Sony Computer Entertainment, which is an entirely different---physical and businessological--- subsidiary?
Sony media calls the shots within Sony proper. Plus, *always* hold a corporate entity as a whole responsible for the actions of their subsidiaries. If you hate phillip morris, you shouldn't buy Kraft food products.
If Lik-Sang failed because they couldn't sell modchips in the UK, then they had more issues than Sony.
Lik-Sang got knocked out by Sony suing them in dozens of territories for importing PSPs before the release date.
Your anger and hatred is misplaced, and more related to a $499-599 pricetag than any real, tangible, logical reason.
Maybe his is, mine isn't. My anger is placed at the credit-stealing, attention whoring, and sheer arrogance of the company and it's fanbase. I don't want to be associated with playstation fans. I don't want to be associated with Sony. They're fucking thieving scum, and maybe you're ok with that but I prefer to reward the guys who come up with and push the concepts rather than the guy who comes in later, mocks an idea only to copy it and tweak it a tad, then declares it his innovation. Sony needs to be put into their place like Nintendo was. The only way to do that is to not buy the thing until that has occured.
In a related note, Ken Kutaragi was heard to say, "The next generation doesn't start until Sony says Microsoft and Nintendo have started it."
And no site that honors that vendor crap has a lick of journalistic integrity. It's a rumor, not prerelease software, a movie, or hardware with an embargo on the release date. The company can say no comment. Hell, the company has little power at all if the journalists collectively tell their PR department to fuck off.
What site without PS, Sony, or Playstation in it's name *doesn't* have an anti-Sony bias these days? Hell, even AVSForums is a bit anti-sony. Is it the few, the proud, the recently made poorer by $600-$700 Sony supporters against the world? Apparently, and apparently all of the bad press is entirely because of this horrible horrible *bias* all of these other places have against Sony. Nothing to do with the reality of the company, their hubris, their backpeddling, their statements that go straight against established facts, and their actions.
Fuck, if this rumor is true, which their actions seem to indicate it is, but we'll find out at GDC, the age old adage "What Nintendo makes, Sony takes" gets the briefly modified to "What Nintendo and Microsoft make, Sony takes." For the umpteenth time they will have panned things their competitors do only to quietly adopt them and claim "It's our innovation!" That's unfrickin' believable.
Well, visible, discernable lines of resolution are about the same between a 35mm print and 1080p. However, neither 1080p or any of the current HD media come close to capturing every bit of info you can get off a film print. Which is why a lot of the places you can find info to back my first statement up include disclaimers like "oh, not scanned" or "oh no, not in a lab." Film has more character to it though, and tends to look better as it's enlarged because grain looks more natural than noise(although the noise in my Canon, regular digital SLR, is a pretty close approximation of the grain found in lower-quality film stock).
This is why I'm not investing in an HD player. It's a scam. Next up is SUPER-HD, then ULTRA-HD, which will have all the info of 35mm film, and then MEGA-ULTRA-HD, which will be half 70mm/IMAX, and then ULTIMATE-HD, which will have full 70mm/IMAX. Then, if they get really desperate, they'll start going for more exotic, higher-resolution formats.
And the other thing is bandwidth. Would you rather have a disc player, or about 11xDVD, or a connection via fibre back to some network attached storage? The telecos and cable cos are rolling out the necessary connections. Verizon's FIOS could handle some quite high-quality video if they wanted to use it that way.
The Ivy league is horribly overrated. Seriously.
They *are* better than most state universities, but not by the margins most people seem to think they are. And they're also demeaned by "daddy bought a building" syndrome.
Fuck, I could take classes from Harvard right now if I wanted to(and I have, from the extension school, I'd still get a diploma from Harvard if I went for one). No big deal.
Live in the area of the Ivy league and the mystique quickly, quickly wears off.
Actually, Simon's Quest(Castlevania 2) was the first "metroidvania." Of course they then abandoned that formula for a few games(to introduce and build up Alucard I guess), but it was still the first.