They went with UMD because of the price/GB ratio, flash based media wasn't quite there yet. IIRC 1GB MS Duo's were over $100 when the original PSP was launched. Now you can buy 2GB Duo's for $25, or less.
Music lessons cost money. Money that less affluent parents don't have.
I went to a school in a rural district in Central Illinois, town of just under 2000 people. They offer band as an extracurricular starting in what some call junior High, that would be 5th grade. So when I hit that age, 10 years old, my parents took me to the sign up for band orientation. So we were all ready to sign on the bottom line when the band instructor says, here's the fees involved.
Instrument rental, plus the school had a limited number of instruments so depending on that, you might have to buy one. And of course you had to choose your instrument without knowing if you'd like it or find out you'd prefer another.
Mandatory separate music lessons
"Band fee" and insurance.
It all added up to more than my parents could afford. They were very pissed off, at first I thought they were angry at me for some reason and started crying a little, but then they explained that they weren't mad at me at all. They then let the band instructor guy have a piece of their mind. They asked why there were not scholarships or why the school didn't have more instruments to rent, etc. They were fucking mad, I'll tell you. And from then on, the band instructor gave me and my family dirty looks every time he saw us.
Something similar happened in high school. One day the guidance counselor called my parents in and then called me to his office. I was wondering what was up and he said that I was qualified for an open spot at what became the ILMSA (Illinois Math and Science Academy) and could have the spot ASAP. My parents and I were overjoyed. Then the counselor said, "you'll have to get him up there every day, of course, we can't supply transportation." The school was about 2 hours away.
"don't they have dorms for the kids that live farther away?" "No." (they eventually did, but at this time the school was primarily for the "enriched" kids of the affluent in the suburbs and everyone knew it) "Do you know someone who works up there, who could take him?" "No, what kind of idiot would live 2 hours away from their job?" "Got any relatives he could stay with? Could you move up there?" "No. Why couldn't he stay with a teacher?" "That's not allowed."
It doesn't matter how motivated you are, without opportunity and resources.
Camera control? Analog aiming in third person and first person shooters? Analog gas/braking in Gran Turismo? You also get another action button with it (aka R3).
It's as I've said before, thanks to the PS1 and Sega's missteps with the 32X, Sega's audience was reduced to the hardcore arcade amd fighting game fanboys. And no matter how vocal they are on the internet, including Slashdot discussions of the Dreamcast where they still believe it was "Sony hype" that killed the DC, there aren't actually enough of them to sustain a system.
I thought the DC was interesting, with that planetweb browser and built in modem. But the mistakes they made with the controller (waaaay too big and lacking a second analog stick), and that battery sucking low capacity VMU, turned me off. As well as the games. There were only 2 games that interested me, Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star Online. And even with PSO they made the mistake of making a Diablo clone, pay-to-play.
I consider failure of disc drives to be far more common and much more likely than failure of a pressed disc. The smart thing to do would have been to try a different disc on the other machines to rule out hardware failure.
When you bought SupCom, you didn't actually buy it, you bought a license to use it. You didn't buy a license to fully install it on other people's computers. Why didn't they buy their own copies? You might want to double check that they actually have DVD drives, there's still plenty of computers out there, especially older ones that people with low budgets might have.
What, did they melt? Because just exposure to sunlight wouldn't hurt pressed discs, especially if they were in their cases.
I'm all for fair use, but we both know that some of these people talking about "backups" of their commercial media don't actually own the original disc media in the first place. And for some others it's basically "I need to make backups so I can share them for free with my friends and the world"
I've never had a pressed disc fail on me in normal use. I've had pressed audio CD discs survive a flood, and CD's are the least physically strong of the disc formats. DVD's and Blu-ray discs are even tougher.
Oh please, it wasn't any hype by Sony that led gamers to not buy the Dreamcast, it was Sega themselves.
They focused so much of their game efforts on pleasing their hardcore testosterone fighting and sports game only fanboys that they didn't have much else to appeal to anyone else. Games like the Metal Slugs, 2D shmups or fighting games with a bajillion moves whos names are kept in Japanese in the US versions appeal to only a small minority of gamers.
I didn't help that the majority of good 32 bit platformers and RPG's were Playstation games
The PS2 beats the dreamcast easily tech wise. The PS2 has a CPU that's almost 50% faster, it can do more GFLOPS, has twice the main RAM and even though it has less VRAM all the PS2's RAM is faster.
Also the Dreamcast can only do 640x480, while the PS2 can do 1280x1024. The Dreamcast has no surround sound support whatsoever. The Dreamcast also doesn't have USB. GD-ROM"s also hold much less data than PS2 DVD's do, and it's even less than a UMD holds. Dreamcast VMU's only hold 128KB of data compared to the 8MB of PS2 Memory Cards.
The PS2 is also more versatile, can the Dreamcast play Saturn games, no it cannot, but the PS2 can play PSone games.
You're right, only the NTSC-J 1000 and 3000 models have it. Though I would have sworn they released the 1000 type model in the US. I remember all the gaming magazines raving over the fact it had standard outputs for standard cables, but that may have been before the NTSC-U/C launch. I don't have the launch model personally.
Well, a lot of people do have their HDTV too far away from their sitting position. The real advantage is the smaller HDTV's often have VGA in as well as HDMI, meaning they can also have a PC hooked up to them. Or you can put them on a desk and use the versatility of the older PS3's to run LInux.
Slashdot Mirror
early model PS1's were known for their low quality disc mechanisms. It's not a "Bricking" but mechanical failure.
Maybe you should check your video cable connections before complaining about Sony?
And then perhaps do the full poweroff reset trick? (hold the power button for 5 seconds when you turn it on.
Never attribute to malice, something that could be done via ignorance or incompetence. Here is what I figure probably happened:
Sony Music Exec: Quick, we need copy protection.
Sony Engineer: Can't do it that fast, but there's companies that can make it faster than we can.
Sony Music Exec: Buy it and use it, ASAP.
Sony Engineer: We should probably double check the software.
Sony Music Exec: Not enough time, our media needs protection now! Use it!
Sony Engineer: Okay, if you say so.
Claws Mail?
They went with UMD because of the price/GB ratio, flash based media wasn't quite there yet. IIRC 1GB MS Duo's were over $100 when the original PSP was launched. Now you can buy 2GB Duo's for $25, or less.
Music lessons cost money. Money that less affluent parents don't have.
I went to a school in a rural district in Central Illinois, town of just under 2000 people. They offer band as an extracurricular starting in what some call junior High, that would be 5th grade. So when I hit that age, 10 years old, my parents took me to the sign up for band orientation. So we were all ready to sign on the bottom line when the band instructor says, here's the fees involved.
Instrument rental, plus the school had a limited number of instruments so depending on that, you might have to buy one. And of course you had to choose your instrument without knowing if you'd like it or find out you'd prefer another.
Mandatory separate music lessons
"Band fee" and insurance.
It all added up to more than my parents could afford. They were very pissed off, at first I thought they were angry at me for some reason and started crying a little, but then they explained that they weren't mad at me at all. They then let the band instructor guy have a piece of their mind. They asked why there were not scholarships or why the school didn't have more instruments to rent, etc.
They were fucking mad, I'll tell you. And from then on, the band instructor gave me and my family dirty looks every time he saw us.
Something similar happened in high school. One day the guidance counselor called my parents in and then called me to his office. I was wondering what was up and he said that I was qualified for an open spot at what became the ILMSA (Illinois Math and Science Academy) and could have the spot ASAP. My parents and I were overjoyed. Then the counselor said, "you'll have to get him up there every day, of course, we can't supply transportation." The school was about 2 hours away.
"don't they have dorms for the kids that live farther away?"
"No." (they eventually did, but at this time the school was primarily for the "enriched" kids of the affluent in the suburbs and everyone knew it)
"Do you know someone who works up there, who could take him?"
"No, what kind of idiot would live 2 hours away from their job?"
"Got any relatives he could stay with? Could you move up there?"
"No. Why couldn't he stay with a teacher?"
"That's not allowed."
It doesn't matter how motivated you are, without opportunity and resources.
Sony hasn't missed the point, because that's how the PSN store works. Haven't you used it?
You mean the war of Southern Asshattery, Johnny Reb. It was your boys who fired first.
For Camera control? What koosbane are you on? Digital doesn't work so well for camera control.
Any PSP owner can tell you that is not as good as two analog sticks are. You also lose the use of the buttons for other functions.
Too much resistance, and less play than the stick, though the DualShock3 is improved somwhat in this regard. USB Racing wheel's the best though.
Camera control? Analog aiming in third person and first person shooters? Analog gas/braking in Gran Turismo? You also get another action button with it (aka R3).
It's as I've said before, thanks to the PS1 and Sega's missteps with the 32X, Sega's audience was reduced to the hardcore arcade amd fighting game fanboys. And no matter how vocal they are on the internet, including Slashdot discussions of the Dreamcast where they still believe it was "Sony hype" that killed the DC, there aren't actually enough of them to sustain a system.
I thought the DC was interesting, with that planetweb browser and built in modem. But the mistakes they made with the controller (waaaay too big and lacking a second analog stick), and that battery sucking low capacity VMU, turned me off. As well as the games. There were only 2 games that interested me, Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star Online. And even with PSO they made the mistake of making a Diablo clone, pay-to-play.
I consider failure of disc drives to be far more common and much more likely than failure of a pressed disc. The smart thing to do would have been to try a different disc on the other machines to rule out hardware failure.
Burned discs on the other hand.....
When I was a child, when my sister and myself were told not to mess with stuff (and told the reason why) we didn't mess with stuff.
It IS possible for children to learn to NOT mess with things. Those who believe otherwise have too low expectations.
When you bought SupCom, you didn't actually buy it, you bought a license to use it. You didn't buy a license to fully install it on other people's computers. Why didn't they buy their own copies? You might want to double check that they actually have DVD drives, there's still plenty of computers out there, especially older ones that people with low budgets might have.
What, did they melt? Because just exposure to sunlight wouldn't hurt pressed discs, especially if they were in their cases.
I'm all for fair use, but we both know that some of these people talking about "backups" of their commercial media don't actually own the original disc media in the first place. And for some others it's basically "I need to make backups so I can share them for free with my friends and the world"
I've never had a pressed disc fail on me in normal use. I've had pressed audio CD discs survive a flood, and CD's are the least physically strong of the disc formats. DVD's and Blu-ray discs are even tougher.
Pets yes, children no. But any young children would have been taught to not mess with the disc cases.
Yeah, I have an external drive hooked to my PS3. The factory default on it was NTFS, but I had to make it FAT32 so GameOS could read and write to it.
By "backups" you mean those .mkv files you torrented? Take good care of your discs like any regular person would and you won't need backups.
Oh please, it wasn't any hype by Sony that led gamers to not buy the Dreamcast, it was Sega themselves.
They focused so much of their game efforts on pleasing their hardcore testosterone fighting and sports game only fanboys that they didn't have much else to appeal to anyone else. Games like the Metal Slugs, 2D shmups or fighting games with a bajillion moves whos names are kept in Japanese in the US versions appeal to only a small minority of gamers.
I didn't help that the majority of good 32 bit platformers and RPG's were Playstation games
The PS2 beats the dreamcast easily tech wise. The PS2 has a CPU that's almost 50% faster, it can do more GFLOPS, has twice the main RAM and even though it has less VRAM all the PS2's RAM is faster.
Also the Dreamcast can only do 640x480, while the PS2 can do 1280x1024. The Dreamcast has no surround sound support whatsoever. The Dreamcast also doesn't have USB. GD-ROM"s also hold much less data than PS2 DVD's do, and it's even less than a UMD holds. Dreamcast VMU's only hold 128KB of data compared to the 8MB of PS2 Memory Cards.
The PS2 is also more versatile, can the Dreamcast play Saturn games, no it cannot, but the PS2 can play PSone games.
People who don't have or don't want to spend that kind of money, or don't have the space to put 3(!) 40+ inch HDTV's. You are not the norm, my friend.
Never had a Genesis, and the N64's connections are the same as the SNES's.
SNS-001
Though I could be mistaken, I admit, on what the pack-in cable was. It's been years.
You're right, only the NTSC-J 1000 and 3000 models have it. Though I would have sworn they released the 1000 type model in the US. I remember all the gaming magazines raving over the fact it had standard outputs for standard cables, but that may have been before the NTSC-U/C launch. I don't have the launch model personally.
Well, a lot of people do have their HDTV too far away from their sitting position. The real advantage is the smaller HDTV's often have VGA in as well as HDMI, meaning they can also have a PC hooked up to them. Or you can put them on a desk and use the versatility of the older PS3's to run LInux.