The majority of console buyers don't want a PC wannabe console because they're not PC gamers. They want a simple box they can turn on and play simple games on, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The Xbox 1 or PS4 dont fill this market
Who says? IMHO, console gamers ARE PC gamers, they just prefer a different location and form factor, and have some differences in preferred games. But for most games, it's the same stuff.
The casuals that the Wii targeted are happy playing games on their phones/tablets...that they already have.
Between this and Steamboxen, the Playstation and Xbox will need to change radically to avoid fading into oblivion, both the casual and hardcore gamer will soon have better options
What better options? both this and the Steam machines are vapor till they are actually on the shelf.
Can I play Skyrim or TESO on this or the Steambox....without streaming it from a PC running Windows? Diablo 3/Reaper of Souls?
It's the percentage that matters. So if more console gamers do buy their games full price, even if there are some who do the Greatest Hits thing...the developers notice.
Not just that but with persistent steam sales devaluing gaming, I just don't see 2k doing better in terms of raw revenue either.
Which is why I sometimes uncharitably refer to PC gamers as "Cheap bastards, Euro-pirates and 2nd worlders who don't want to pay for anything"
You can see it on Slashdot with the "I only buy games at Steam Sales" crowd Sure I can see picking up games that are part of your "second tier or third tier" on the cheap, but games in one's favorite genre or by one's favorite developer?
If PC gamers want to know why developers have been focusing more on consoles lately...they only have themselves to blame.
I'm not some 15 year old with a lot of free time during the summer on my hands. The reason why we have pre-made worlds and "modules" in the first place is to lessen the load and preparation time so that people can play more and spend less time bookkeeping.
Now if you're a wannabe fantasy writer with years of notes/stories you've written over the years. well then you can use your notes as basis for a campaign world like M.A.R Barker and Ed Greenwood did....but most of us aren't them.
So, having Krynn, The Realms and Mystara being more fleshed out, meant less work for the DM. Sure there was stuff not covered, but you had more to work with which saved time.
Time is what kills tabletop gaming groups/campaigns more than anything else.
No, it was hackneyed tripe. His RPG mastery book sucked too. The man wasn't so good at names either, or having a coherent world that made sense! Abeir-Toril, Mystara, and Krynn are far far better worlds than the mish-mash of Greyhawk was. Even "Hard Fun" and Planescape with their "Darker and Edgier" 90's aesthetic were better.
You'd actually be irritated instead of imagining a Star Trek 'away team' going off course on The Voyage Home and winding up amidst There and Back Again?
It's been done....by TSR itself in the world of Mystara. Mystara was a nice normal fantasy world...until a star-trek style exploration ship called "Beagle" crash landed on it next to a Kingdom called Blackmoor. The First Contact situation did not end well. Eventually some of the ship's crew sold out and started handing out tech. Blackmoor soon became a high tech civilization building up it's military so that it could rule the planet. However...Mystara's magical nature makes nuclear technology unstable. Blackmoor's nuclear devices went BOOM, changing the planet's entire axis and causing the "Great Rain of Fire" sent the planet back to the stone age pretty much. It also means that some Mystaran creatures aren't "magical" at all, but gamma-world style mutations.
The reason why Mystaran Elves are nature-lovers is Blackmoor! They'd become reliant on Blackmoorean tech and when the axis shifted their lands were near the south pole. A group led by Ilsundal decided to leave and return to the old ways. The high tech elves died out as their devices failed and their power sources (they had to switch to non-nuclear) ran out.
Some of the tech survived... some of it was magically altered, but there's bits and pieces around. Notwithstanding Mystara's own native technology. Mystara is rather high-tech compared to the other TSR fantasy worlds, nearing Renaissance level. Mystara is the only D&D world that has printing presses, for example.
ToH is designed to be fun for the "killer DM", not for the players. I think most used it as a "one off" to see how far they'd get. It's a bad module actually, imbalanced. A good module is "fair enough" without DM meddling.
I don't miss Gygax that much, considering how his intentionally archaic writing style obfuscated some of the rules too much. It also made his Gord books un-fun reads.
"Do I ken the Archimage Zigglwilvkypy? Aye, that worthy is a demiurgic wielder of puissant dweomercraft and thaumaturgy." Course Gygax was such a munchkin with his own characters that half of them were demiurges, half-gods, or were invested with puissant planar energies of some kind. Read the "power-up" scene in the Gord book where Gord gets invested with power from some demi-powers/gods/whatever. That whole "son of the cat lord" thing got out of hand. I remember seeing the cover of the first Gord book and thinking to myself. "That guy reminds me of the Cat Lord"
Medieval Moves Aragorn's Quest Wonderbook series The two Eyepet games. Little Big Planet (including the racing one) Sports Champions Flower Start the Party Katamari Forever
but could Nintendo's problem be that they're still in the mindset of a traditional Japanese company that doesn't really care how much money they make in the US
Yep, Nintendo has NEVER respected the Gaijin market, we're second class citizens to them. Oh they'll take our money but we aren't important enough to really give our market a fair shake on it's own merits.
Sony had a bit of that too, but it was counteracted by the larger number of non-Japanese companies making games for the PS1 and PS2. Crazy Ken Kuturagi got a little crazy though with the PS3 and didn't talk to US developers enough. They fixed that with the PS4. With Mark Cerny as the system architect, it's SCEA, not SCEJ. The PS4 isn't even on sale in Japan yet!
The PS4...is running BSD. Yes, it's locked down...but NOTHING is stopping Sony from releasing a word processor package on the thing that runs the same way a game does. Probably Sony does something like:./configure --arch=PS4 && make && make install-package PS4
They could probably do it tomorrow, if they wanted to and thought there was a demand for it.
Haven't checked to see if Google Docs works in the PS4's web browser.
The only kid-friendly games on the PS3 are Japanese imports.
What? Skylanders? Disney Infinity? Lego "whatever", and tons of stuff on PSN? Now SCEA isn't so smart as Microsoft as to get Wal-mart to put an end-aisle display with "family games" up..but there ARE family/kid games on the PS3.
Well, we respectfully disagree with you too. Now please, shave your beard and trim your hair. No one wants to have a hobo-looking person on their team,
Well it was a 19" HDTV as I said, so not as small or tinny as "monitor" speakers. How else do you explain MP3 files sounding better when played on the PS3, compared to the PC...until I upped the PC's output to 192KHz.
Besides, what if one had a nice surround sound system with quality connected, then you would want the highest KHz your setup would support. So, yes there is a use case for 192KHz audio.
24/192 for home system is... why would it even exist?
HDMI or optical audio. My previous monitor (a cheap 2008 Element 720P 1440x900 HDTV from Wal-Mart) supported 192khz audio over HDMI. Was wondering why music played via my PS3 sounded so much better than music from the PC...until I checked the settings, knocking up the output to 192KHz made everything sound good.
Sad to say but my current monitor. (1080p 1920x1080 HDTV) supports only 48 and 44.1 KHz and doesn't sound near as good.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, little details like how Amazon has this whole business of streaming digital content,
Which is already available on consoles. I can already use the MP3 store and Amazon instant Video on the consoles I currently have.
The majority of console buyers don't want a PC wannabe console because they're not PC gamers. They want a simple box they can turn on and play simple games on, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The Xbox 1 or PS4 dont fill this market
Who says? IMHO, console gamers ARE PC gamers, they just prefer a different location and form factor, and have some differences in preferred games. But for most games, it's the same stuff.
The casuals that the Wii targeted are happy playing games on their phones/tablets...that they already have.
Between this and Steamboxen, the Playstation and Xbox will need to change radically to avoid fading into oblivion, both the casual and hardcore gamer will soon have better options
What better options? both this and the Steam machines are vapor till they are actually on the shelf.
Can I play Skyrim or TESO on this or the Steambox....without streaming it from a PC running Windows? Diablo 3/Reaper of Souls?
Not with ten thousand MSCE's could you do this. It is folly.
and even Google's vaunted Drive services aren't.
Google says that a Linux Google Drive client will come.....someday.
I get it from the repos.
Maybe there were price differences between the US and European markets?
Indeed.
Nobody I knew that had a C64 used floppies, as the floppy drive
In the US, many of the good games were on floppy so C64 owners needed 1541's
It's the percentage that matters. So if more console gamers do buy their games full price, even if there are some who do the Greatest Hits thing...the developers notice.
Not just that but with persistent steam sales devaluing gaming, I just don't see 2k doing better in terms of raw revenue either.
Which is why I sometimes uncharitably refer to PC gamers as "Cheap bastards, Euro-pirates and 2nd worlders who don't want to pay for anything"
You can see it on Slashdot with the "I only buy games at Steam Sales" crowd Sure I can see picking up games that are part of your "second tier or third tier" on the cheap, but games in one's favorite genre or by one's favorite developer?
If PC gamers want to know why developers have been focusing more on consoles lately...they only have themselves to blame.
There have been games that used "embedded Dragon", the PS2's SOCOM series for example, 12 years ago.
they're referring to the farm plow, which is towed behind a tractor, rather than the "snow" plow.
I'm not some 15 year old with a lot of free time during the summer on my hands. The reason why we have pre-made worlds and "modules" in the first place is to lessen the load and preparation time so that people can play more and spend less time bookkeeping.
Now if you're a wannabe fantasy writer with years of notes/stories you've written over the years. well then you can use your notes as basis for a campaign world like M.A.R Barker and Ed Greenwood did....but most of us aren't them.
So, having Krynn, The Realms and Mystara being more fleshed out, meant less work for the DM. Sure there was stuff not covered, but you had more to work with which saved time.
Time is what kills tabletop gaming groups/campaigns more than anything else.
No, it was hackneyed tripe. His RPG mastery book sucked too. The man wasn't so good at names either, or having a coherent world that made sense! Abeir-Toril, Mystara, and Krynn are far far better worlds than the mish-mash of Greyhawk was. Even "Hard Fun" and Planescape with their "Darker and Edgier" 90's aesthetic were better.
You'd actually be irritated instead of imagining a Star Trek 'away team' going off course on The Voyage Home and winding up amidst There and Back Again?
It's been done....by TSR itself in the world of Mystara. Mystara was a nice normal fantasy world...until a star-trek style exploration ship called "Beagle" crash landed on it next to a Kingdom called Blackmoor. The First Contact situation did not end well. Eventually some of the ship's crew sold out and started handing out tech. Blackmoor soon became a high tech civilization building up it's military so that it could rule the planet. However...Mystara's magical nature makes nuclear technology unstable. Blackmoor's nuclear devices went BOOM, changing the planet's entire axis and causing the "Great Rain of Fire" sent the planet back to the stone age pretty much. It also means that some Mystaran creatures aren't "magical" at all, but gamma-world style mutations.
The reason why Mystaran Elves are nature-lovers is Blackmoor! They'd become reliant on Blackmoorean tech and when the axis shifted their lands were near the south pole. A group led by Ilsundal decided to leave and return to the old ways. The high tech elves died out as their devices failed and their power sources (they had to switch to non-nuclear) ran out.
Some of the tech survived... some of it was magically altered, but there's bits and pieces around. Notwithstanding Mystara's own native technology. Mystara is rather high-tech compared to the other TSR fantasy worlds, nearing Renaissance level. Mystara is the only D&D world that has printing presses, for example.
ToH is designed to be fun for the "killer DM", not for the players. I think most used it as a "one off" to see how far they'd get. It's a bad module actually, imbalanced. A good module is "fair enough" without DM meddling.
I don't miss Gygax that much, considering how his intentionally archaic writing style obfuscated some of the rules too much. It also made his Gord books un-fun reads.
"Do I ken the Archimage Zigglwilvkypy? Aye, that worthy is a demiurgic wielder of puissant dweomercraft and thaumaturgy." Course Gygax was such a munchkin with his own characters that half of them were demiurges, half-gods, or were invested with puissant planar energies of some kind. Read the "power-up" scene in the Gord book where Gord gets invested with power from some demi-powers/gods/whatever. That whole "son of the cat lord" thing got out of hand. I remember seeing the cover of the first Gord book and thinking to myself. "That guy reminds me of the Cat Lord"
Medieval Moves
Aragorn's Quest
Wonderbook series
The two Eyepet games.
Little Big Planet (including the racing one)
Sports Champions
Flower
Start the Party
Katamari Forever
Trainer Crono is attacked by a Wild Murlock in The Barrens.
Trainer Crono brings out Parasect, go Parasect.
Parasect uses Spore.
The Murlock falls asleep.
Parasect uses Growth
Parasect uses Growth.
Parasect uses Leech Life.
The Murlock is KO'd.
Trainer Crono recieves 50Yen and a Cap of +1 TrainerSkill
but could Nintendo's problem be that they're still in the mindset of a traditional Japanese company that doesn't really care how much money they make in the US
Yep, Nintendo has NEVER respected the Gaijin market, we're second class citizens to them. Oh they'll take our money but we aren't important enough to really give our market a fair shake on it's own merits.
Sony had a bit of that too, but it was counteracted by the larger number of non-Japanese companies making games for the PS1 and PS2. Crazy Ken Kuturagi got a little crazy though with the PS3 and didn't talk to US developers enough. They fixed that with the PS4. With Mark Cerny as the system architect, it's SCEA, not SCEJ. The PS4 isn't even on sale in Japan yet!
The PS4...is running BSD. Yes, it's locked down...but NOTHING is stopping Sony from releasing a word processor package on the thing that runs the same way a game does. Probably Sony does something like: ./configure --arch=PS4 && make && make install-package PS4
They could probably do it tomorrow, if they wanted to and thought there was a demand for it.
Haven't checked to see if Google Docs works in the PS4's web browser.
The only kid-friendly games on the PS3 are Japanese imports.
What? Skylanders? Disney Infinity? Lego "whatever", and tons of stuff on PSN? Now SCEA isn't so smart as Microsoft as to get Wal-mart to put an end-aisle display with "family games" up..but there ARE family/kid games on the PS3.
Well, we respectfully disagree with you too. Now please, shave your beard and trim your hair. No one wants to have a hobo-looking person on their team,
Ha ha ha ha.
RMS:
https://www.google.com/search?q=rms+stallman&client=firefox-a&hs=zHz&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PkjXUq64JIS3qgGmlIGAAQ&ved=0CLYBEIke&biw=1920&bih=970
John Maddog Hall:
https://www.google.com/search?q=rms+stallman&client=firefox-a&hs=zHz&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PkjXUq64JIS3qgGmlIGAAQ&ved=0CLYBEIke&biw=1920&bih=970#q=john+maddog+hall&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch
Alan Cox:
https://www.google.com/search?q=rms+stallman&client=firefox-a&hs=zHz&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PkjXUq64JIS3qgGmlIGAAQ&ved=0CLYBEIke&biw=1920&bih=970#q=alan+cox&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch
Eric S. Raymond:
https://www.google.com/search?q=rms+stallman&client=firefox-a&hs=zHz&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=PkjXUq64JIS3qgGmlIGAAQ&ved=0CLYBEIke&biw=1920&bih=970#q=eric+s+raymond&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch
Well it was a 19" HDTV as I said, so not as small or tinny as "monitor" speakers. How else do you explain MP3 files sounding better when played on the PS3, compared to the PC...until I upped the PC's output to 192KHz.
Besides, what if one had a nice surround sound system with quality connected, then you would want the highest KHz your setup would support. So, yes there is a use case for 192KHz audio.
This is Slashdot, we should be automating the increase in electricity bills.
watch -n 5 wget --delete-after http://www.openbsd.org/images/rack2009.jpg
Yes, I know that's a sort of "attack" and wouldn't actually do it.
Not only that, but XMMS can actually use Winamp skins.
24/192 for home system is... why would it even exist?
HDMI or optical audio. My previous monitor (a cheap 2008 Element 720P 1440x900 HDTV from Wal-Mart) supported 192khz audio over HDMI. Was wondering why music played via my PS3 sounded so much better than music from the PC...until I checked the settings, knocking up the output to 192KHz made everything sound good.
Sad to say but my current monitor. (1080p 1920x1080 HDTV) supports only 48 and 44.1 KHz and doesn't sound near as good.