Everyone's waiting to buy Blu-Ray disks!
on
Everyone Hates UMD
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· Score: 1
That's the same situation as is happening with recently released DVDs... coincidence? I think not.
See, the thing is, we're all saving up $600 for a PS3 and another $1400 for a Sony flat panel so we can then pay lavish amounts of money to re-purchase our entire movie libraries in Sony's brand new Blu-Ray format! Is Sony the only company that groks this obvious market mechanic??
We don't have time to devote to purchasing Sony's previous attempt to leverage market position in the game world into a win over video standards, because we're waiting with baited breath for the next time around. It's that simple!
Forcing the cost of blueray into your next gen system with be the death of both..
Sony's M.O. with the PS3 is awfully simple: they desperately want to "leverage" their existing PS/PS2 market dominance to win the next-generation DVD standard war. Sure, they needed to come out with another console, because the market expected one -- but if there's anything on Sony's corporate mind other than a win for Blu-Ray, I don't see it. Everything else about the PS3 is more of the same.
They clearly won't ditch the Blu-Ray side of things without a major, catastrophic event to teach them why they need to do it.
Even then I wouldn't expect a timely decision. We should expect Sony to have learned this lesson about standard formats why? Many decades after Betamax, this company is still trying to sell us memory sticks, different camcorder compression, and so on; they're making the same mistake over and over and over again. They always try to coerce the market using their market share, and it bites them more often than not. They just keep coming back.
you need to understand that this program never happened, it was proposed.
Whereas evidently the NSA did implement, shortly after 9/11, a far more invasive program, which we're seeing in the news this week.
Personally I find the evidence of this old, potential, nixed program reassuring in some ways. It sure looks like the NSA and those overseeing it were trying to balance security and constitutional concerns, doesn't it? Our./ article describes "political" infighting killing the potential program -- which means someone was checking on the NSA and deciding that certain behaviors were unacceptable. Maybe the horrible old politicos botched something, but it's not like the executive branch was acting entirely without congressional involvement in violation of the constitution.
The contrast with the Bush-Cheney doctrine of executive prerogative couldn't be more striking. These are people who think the make-up of the group of people who set their energy policy is sufficiently sensitive that neither congress nor the American people deserve to see the list of names -- leaving alone their notions about what they can do in the name of national security (following a disaster on their watch that was at least partly due to their own negligence, no less).
Just because video games as an entertainment/art form are in their infancy doesn't mean they can't grow up and portray the same subjects that the more established arts do.
Good point. Roger Ebert is basically begging the industry to think of itself that way.
How many of us saw this article and had an extremely specific idea of what the resulting game would probably be like? That's a measure, I think, of just how limited the range of games is at this point. If the comparison was to literature, games right now are basically along the lines of a pre-teen or teen series like the "Sweet Valley High" books. The more natural comparison would be to movies in terms of production costs and the process of producing the final work of art -- and even next to Hollywood movies, video games are tremendously narrow in their ambitions. Holy cow. I'm thinking about it, and movies like "Poseidon," the remake of "The Poseidon Adventure," start to look reasonably creative by comparison. If someone came out with a game in that setting, we'd think they were breaking the dang mold!
Just about the only area where games are transcending those limitations is in MMORPGs, where they're more of a social experiment -- and how moving, exactly, is a leveling-up model? How much does it tell us about the human condition when a guild goes mafia and requires protection money to get wood under someone's badly-balanced economic model?
Did anyone have, at first blush, the idea that this Columbine game might really startle us in any way other than by being so crass and exploitive it made us cringe? Seriously -- it's almost inconceivable. Whereas I anticipated Art Spiegelman's book about 9/11 because it could've really been... whatever, "moving." And even considering it a minor disappointment, I know his intentions were honorable.
Among the most Orwellian moments I've had in the past several years -- and we've had our share of "the new people will go by 'Total Security Agency'" moments, haven't we? -- was the time when my ex-brother-in-law explained that the only way to tell an intelligence agency was succeeding was when you knew nothing about it at all.
In this person's world, by definition, the public should never be able to point to an intelligence accomplishment. Our best response to the existence of stuff like these NSA capers is to keep our heads down. So said my brother-in-law, who had previously explained to me his rationale by which Nixon was the best President we've ever had.
One can see the obvious stepping off point to "the real traitors are the ones who *reveal* our secret, extra-constitutional prison system."
Confronted with evidence of past incompetence on the part of the CIA -- I mentioned the massive expense of the Glomar Explorer misadventure, which got us basically nothing new (old details about an aging vintage Soviet sub) for the staggering money involved -- John simply suggested that there must've been a lot more to the story, and that it obviously succeeded because we didn't know about the successful parts. (Whereupon he spun straw into gold and disappeared like Colonel Flag on M*A*S*H -- "like the wind" -- from our family. I believe he's living as an expat in China now.)
Sony was trying, trying to do here what Steve Jobs did back when he described Apple's product line as being like BMW's.
What a completely awful analogy, though, and still a telling one. Hello -- think quickly of the type of food you might eat while you're sitting around the living room with a handful of friends, playing a video game. Is it a) penne, broccoli, and sun-dried tomatos sauteed lightly in olive oil with a fine levain bread and some balsamic vinaigrette; or b) a big old pizza? They're both Italian food. Which one goes with a video game?
We might like option a) -- I cook that sometimes -- but "video game" does not naturally bring fine dining to mind for anyone.
And the fine dining price isn't $600; it's more like two grand after you've got in the restaurant door with your HD monitor.
Sony's plain going to blow up trying to extend its Playstation brand to get this win over Blu-Ray. That's all this price is. They may as well have the new system use Memory Sticks and charge extra for the privilege.
Personally I think both MS and Sony have anticipated the HD market and gotten caught in a reach.
Given the ALA membership's vociferous objections to the Patriot Act, how could anyone expect that legislation restricting something as broad as social Web sites could ever work in libraries? These are the same librarians who wouldn't filter pRon.
Not that anyone who's blathering about this bill even cares about the practicalities of implementing it. They don't care if it passes, even. In some ways it'd be better for the Dennis Hasterts of the world to have it fail miserably, so they could run on the "We are Christians being oppressed" platform. Or better yet, it could pass and then be declared unconstitutional -- surely it would, right? Those men in black robes again! We should get some sort of constitutional amendment going.
it looks like the (C)hristian right's prediliction for censorship is starting to ruffle his feathers.
Murdoch's various media outlets cosy up to authoritarian parties wherever they go -- explaining the Fox-Republican mind meld, okay. He also happens to be quite satisfied with the regime in China, though, now you mention that "great firewall."
The People's Daily Online, March 16, 2005: "In a meeting with Murdoch here Wednesday, Liu Yunshan, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, and also head of the Public Department of the CPC Central Committee, thanked Murdoch for his "active efforts and strenuous work in advancing cooperation with China's news media."
Those comments about the motion-sensitive controller not being good for this signature game are kind of interesting. What title in Nintendo's own stable seems like it's meant more for a sort of wild, frenetic party atmosphere? Super Smash Brothers should involve some smashing, and yet here's the developer saying it gets in the way of the game?
At least he said the "too much" part. Hopefully people who use the Wii controller will have some sort of fun with it and N's just working on getting things just so.
Also: great, it's a surprise press conference -- apparently because it wasn't ready for prime time? All they have is the promo video, too.
A couple of flaws in the Nintendo makeup for E3, anyway.
It does take some cajones to go against the grain this way, but as it's playing right now Nintendo seems to see a "sweet spot," for both developers and consumers, that its two competitors have lost sight of almost completely.
Maybe Sony and MS are being reckless, where Nintendo is simply recognizing the market better at this moment and taking risks that are both more interesting and more sensible.
It seems to me like Sony is intent on "leveraging" its Playstation market position into a win over the Blu-Ray DVD standard. That and the age of the PS2 seem to be the raison d'etre for the PS3 system. The XBox 360 is about market share (again) for MS, and that explains the early-above-all-else strategy. But if there's something really new there, what is it?
Meanwhile Nintendo really did decide to broaden their market. They seem to "get" that seeing Shaquille O'Neal's sweaty forehead in scary detail is not going to bring more people into the market at a $600 (+ HD monitor cost) price. The pricing, the development costs, and the controller all sort of fit together for Nintendo -- that sweet spot -- whereas the other two companies are out on the margins in several ways, cost being the most conspicuous.
Maybe the other two companies are jumping off a cliff. You know what your mom would say about that.
Sega was a huge name back then, and had been for a long time - the only company you could mention as on a par with Nintendo. Sony was still a comparative upstart, with only 1 console to their name.
Anyone who thinks "Playstation" was not by far the biggest name in consoles when the PS2 came out is confused. By comparison the Dreamcast came from a known name that had fallen on hard, hard times, and it never had anything like the name recognition of "Playstation."
"Playstation" was by far the most well-established brand. Where your options are just about even, you'll choose the established option that seems like a safer bet.
For my money -- literally, for my money -- there is a price threshold beyond which brand loyalty will not win the consumer over. Between MS and Sony, I'm not sure who's proving this point with more determination right now. The sales figures for the 360 are maybe not as anemic as sometimes gets suggested, but this is a next-generation machine with a year's head start that is about to face competition for the first time; it'd be surprising if it suddenly became the "It" option. That wave broke last Christmas. Their time to gain marketshare without competition is almost over, and the PS2 is still outselling them. In Japan the dang Gamecube is beating the 360. Sony's attempt to "leverage" its console dominance into a Blu-ray DVD standards win is possibly going to sink the company.
(Meanwhile Nintendo has all the buzz in the world with a machine that's going to be significantly cheaper, still profitable [unlike the others' loss leaders], watchable on people's existing TVs without another $1500 expense, and actually a little bit different and kind of fun looking. Gee. How hard is this choice? For me, not at all.)
Wow, whaddaya know -- a massively multiplayer role playing game. Another bleeding-edge innovation from those folks at Microsoft. What will they ever think of next?
Classically, the mentions of good games in this article have to do with the manufacturers trying to reach thresholds at which game manufacturers will develop "their best games" and with Halo driving Xbox sales. The WSJ also manages this amazingly lame description of the Wii controller:
In a recent interview, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said the company is eager to expand the game market by appealing to consumers who don't normally play videogames with features such as a game controller for the Wii that functions like a television remote control.
Yeah, it works just like a remote control. That's why it's a big deal. Gotta buy me one o' them fancy ree-motes.
(The WSJ is always an interestingly mannered read even in stylistic terms, isn't it? Phrases:
The company is expected to show for the first time Halo 3...
Behind the new features will be one message:...
...the company has shipped to stores around 3.3 million Xbox 360 consoles...
Arsy-versy sentences like that read like the "News... On the March!" half-parody newsreel at the beginning of Citizen Kane.)
The 2004-5 generation of EA sports titles was absolutely obnoxious with that trait. It came enabled by default, and made for countless vein-bulging moments as your NBA team, out ahead by 30 points in the fourth quarter, suddenly couldn't get a layup to go down. Meanwhile the other team's oafish third-string center is inexplicably draining deep three-pointers to close the gap. Not only was it frustrating, it just plain didn't look or feel like the game it was meant to imitate.
EA games have extreme play balance problems in maybe two of three years, partly because sports in general are so familiar that we expect pacing and so on to feel just so and when they tweak some lame thing to give us new features things get out-of-whack. The answer, though, is not to cheat the player. If your football title is routinely resulting in scores of 100 to 86, you need to fix something more fundamental.
I can't deny I'm slightly dissapointed with the gameplay graphics, they seemed a little too cartoonish (specially the Wii Sports and WarioWare).
Good sir or madam, Wario is a video game character from the Mario franchise. What a realistic-looking Wario would look like, I don't want to consider.
The sports one does underscore that, when they could choose a few different styles, Nintendo is still going to entertain cartoony, kid-style graphics, that's very true. If I had to choose I'd prefer that they go that way, rather than trying to be "Xtreme" like the Xbox.
The original Myth bridge sequences, in simple stylized animated style, were elegant and well-made, and had a real cinematic feel. Their level narratives were wonderfully paced, and the soundtracks to the Myth games were good enough to be sold separately.
Bungie's ham-fisted. Just listen to the voice acting on, say, Warcraft II, and tell me it wasn't painful. No way can that stand up to an hour and a half at theater volumes. I could hardly stand it for thirty seconds at a time in the game, just to hear the goals for that map.
Seriously, wait for PS3 to launch, and since it packs everything you need in your life so "tightly" and you can't afford one, put money together with some friends and Buy One!
Personally, I think China is far more likely to invade a secular democratic nation than the US is
Iraq was secular, but not democratic, so I guess you got me there. The world is not carefully looking for both those criteria when it decides which reckless leaders it fears, however. I've traveled a little in the muslim world, and people dreaded us, even before W. Gee, I wonder why.
(In retrospect, the Intellivision controller was a lot closer to a remote control than anything until this Wii one, now I think of it... Actually looked more like an iPod, with the circular pad for your thumb and a standard number pad you slid the individual game's little plastic sheet onto. Holy cow.)
Names rapidly do just as you say. For example, I was married for some years to a woman named Virginia before I realized that, duh, I'd grown up on Virginia Avenue. She had to point it out to me, actually, on a visit home to my parents'. She noticed the sign.
In the case of one of my kids, his name for a certain generation of people was reminiscent of a television character. When I first mentioned the kids' names, a whole bunch of people immediately made jokes about that... And it hasn't ever come up again. (In any case the kids' own generation hasn't seen the same sit coms, and it sure hasn't come up with them.)
(Personally I think Wii is a decent attempt to refer to both the new controller and the networked aspect of the new console. "Revolution" was essentially meaningless and could have applied to anything.)
As far as the mode of locomotion goes, I'd hit DARPA up for funding if we could. (Squid run on jet engines, of course -- water jets.)
The Monterey Bay Aquatic Research Institute (MBARI) is basically state of the art for submersibles. If I remember my interviews with Bruce Robison right, they've got stuff that's far quieter than previous generations of remote vehicles, so as not to scare off anything sensitive. If you want to see the weird critters swimming around in the midwater, MBARI is the place to visit.
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See, the thing is, we're all saving up $600 for a PS3 and another $1400 for a Sony flat panel so we can then pay lavish amounts of money to re-purchase our entire movie libraries in Sony's brand new Blu-Ray format! Is Sony the only company that groks this obvious market mechanic??
We don't have time to devote to purchasing Sony's previous attempt to leverage market position in the game world into a win over video standards, because we're waiting with baited breath for the next time around. It's that simple!
Or, just perhaps, Sony could be wrong about that.
Sony's M.O. with the PS3 is awfully simple: they desperately want to "leverage" their existing PS/PS2 market dominance to win the next-generation DVD standard war. Sure, they needed to come out with another console, because the market expected one -- but if there's anything on Sony's corporate mind other than a win for Blu-Ray, I don't see it. Everything else about the PS3 is more of the same.
They clearly won't ditch the Blu-Ray side of things without a major, catastrophic event to teach them why they need to do it.
Even then I wouldn't expect a timely decision. We should expect Sony to have learned this lesson about standard formats why? Many decades after Betamax, this company is still trying to sell us memory sticks, different camcorder compression, and so on; they're making the same mistake over and over and over again. They always try to coerce the market using their market share, and it bites them more often than not. They just keep coming back.
Hey, Bush always has been clumsy with the language. Maybe it's an honest mistake.
Whereas evidently the NSA did implement, shortly after 9/11, a far more invasive program, which we're seeing in the news this week.
Personally I find the evidence of this old, potential, nixed program reassuring in some ways. It sure looks like the NSA and those overseeing it were trying to balance security and constitutional concerns, doesn't it? Our ./ article describes "political" infighting killing the potential program -- which means someone was checking on the NSA and deciding that certain behaviors were unacceptable. Maybe the horrible old politicos botched something, but it's not like the executive branch was acting entirely without congressional involvement in violation of the constitution.
The contrast with the Bush-Cheney doctrine of executive prerogative couldn't be more striking. These are people who think the make-up of the group of people who set their energy policy is sufficiently sensitive that neither congress nor the American people deserve to see the list of names -- leaving alone their notions about what they can do in the name of national security (following a disaster on their watch that was at least partly due to their own negligence, no less).
Good point. Roger Ebert is basically begging the industry to think of itself that way.
How many of us saw this article and had an extremely specific idea of what the resulting game would probably be like? That's a measure, I think, of just how limited the range of games is at this point. If the comparison was to literature, games right now are basically along the lines of a pre-teen or teen series like the "Sweet Valley High" books. The more natural comparison would be to movies in terms of production costs and the process of producing the final work of art -- and even next to Hollywood movies, video games are tremendously narrow in their ambitions. Holy cow. I'm thinking about it, and movies like "Poseidon," the remake of "The Poseidon Adventure," start to look reasonably creative by comparison. If someone came out with a game in that setting, we'd think they were breaking the dang mold!
Just about the only area where games are transcending those limitations is in MMORPGs, where they're more of a social experiment -- and how moving, exactly, is a leveling-up model? How much does it tell us about the human condition when a guild goes mafia and requires protection money to get wood under someone's badly-balanced economic model?
Did anyone have, at first blush, the idea that this Columbine game might really startle us in any way other than by being so crass and exploitive it made us cringe? Seriously -- it's almost inconceivable. Whereas I anticipated Art Spiegelman's book about 9/11 because it could've really been... whatever, "moving." And even considering it a minor disappointment, I know his intentions were honorable.
In this person's world, by definition, the public should never be able to point to an intelligence accomplishment. Our best response to the existence of stuff like these NSA capers is to keep our heads down. So said my brother-in-law, who had previously explained to me his rationale by which Nixon was the best President we've ever had.
One can see the obvious stepping off point to "the real traitors are the ones who *reveal* our secret, extra-constitutional prison system."
Confronted with evidence of past incompetence on the part of the CIA -- I mentioned the massive expense of the Glomar Explorer misadventure, which got us basically nothing new (old details about an aging vintage Soviet sub) for the staggering money involved -- John simply suggested that there must've been a lot more to the story, and that it obviously succeeded because we didn't know about the successful parts. (Whereupon he spun straw into gold and disappeared like Colonel Flag on M*A*S*H -- "like the wind" -- from our family. I believe he's living as an expat in China now.)
Sony's asking you to eat at a $150-a-plate fundraiser for its Blu-Ray victory campaign. That's just about the right analogy.
What a completely awful analogy, though, and still a telling one. Hello -- think quickly of the type of food you might eat while you're sitting around the living room with a handful of friends, playing a video game. Is it a) penne, broccoli, and sun-dried tomatos sauteed lightly in olive oil with a fine levain bread and some balsamic vinaigrette; or b) a big old pizza? They're both Italian food. Which one goes with a video game?
We might like option a) -- I cook that sometimes -- but "video game" does not naturally bring fine dining to mind for anyone.
And the fine dining price isn't $600; it's more like two grand after you've got in the restaurant door with your HD monitor.
Sony's plain going to blow up trying to extend its Playstation brand to get this win over Blu-Ray. That's all this price is. They may as well have the new system use Memory Sticks and charge extra for the privilege.
Personally I think both MS and Sony have anticipated the HD market and gotten caught in a reach.
Not that anyone who's blathering about this bill even cares about the practicalities of implementing it. They don't care if it passes, even. In some ways it'd be better for the Dennis Hasterts of the world to have it fail miserably, so they could run on the "We are Christians being oppressed" platform. Or better yet, it could pass and then be declared unconstitutional -- surely it would, right? Those men in black robes again! We should get some sort of constitutional amendment going.
Murdoch's various media outlets cosy up to authoritarian parties wherever they go -- explaining the Fox-Republican mind meld, okay. He also happens to be quite satisfied with the regime in China, though, now you mention that "great firewall."
The People's Daily Online, March 16, 2005:
"In a meeting with Murdoch here Wednesday, Liu Yunshan, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, and also head of the Public Department of the CPC Central Committee, thanked Murdoch for his "active efforts and strenuous work in advancing cooperation with China's news media."
Whatever's motivating him, Censorship ain't it.
At least he said the "too much" part. Hopefully people who use the Wii controller will have some sort of fun with it and N's just working on getting things just so.
Also: great, it's a surprise press conference -- apparently because it wasn't ready for prime time? All they have is the promo video, too.
A couple of flaws in the Nintendo makeup for E3, anyway.
Maybe Sony and MS are being reckless, where Nintendo is simply recognizing the market better at this moment and taking risks that are both more interesting and more sensible.
It seems to me like Sony is intent on "leveraging" its Playstation market position into a win over the Blu-Ray DVD standard. That and the age of the PS2 seem to be the raison d'etre for the PS3 system. The XBox 360 is about market share (again) for MS, and that explains the early-above-all-else strategy. But if there's something really new there, what is it?
Meanwhile Nintendo really did decide to broaden their market. They seem to "get" that seeing Shaquille O'Neal's sweaty forehead in scary detail is not going to bring more people into the market at a $600 (+ HD monitor cost) price. The pricing, the development costs, and the controller all sort of fit together for Nintendo -- that sweet spot -- whereas the other two companies are out on the margins in several ways, cost being the most conspicuous.
Maybe the other two companies are jumping off a cliff. You know what your mom would say about that.
Anyone who thinks "Playstation" was not by far the biggest name in consoles when the PS2 came out is confused. By comparison the Dreamcast came from a known name that had fallen on hard, hard times, and it never had anything like the name recognition of "Playstation."
For my money -- literally, for my money -- there is a price threshold beyond which brand loyalty will not win the consumer over. Between MS and Sony, I'm not sure who's proving this point with more determination right now. The sales figures for the 360 are maybe not as anemic as sometimes gets suggested, but this is a next-generation machine with a year's head start that is about to face competition for the first time; it'd be surprising if it suddenly became the "It" option. That wave broke last Christmas. Their time to gain marketshare without competition is almost over, and the PS2 is still outselling them. In Japan the dang Gamecube is beating the 360. Sony's attempt to "leverage" its console dominance into a Blu-ray DVD standards win is possibly going to sink the company.
(Meanwhile Nintendo has all the buzz in the world with a machine that's going to be significantly cheaper, still profitable [unlike the others' loss leaders], watchable on people's existing TVs without another $1500 expense, and actually a little bit different and kind of fun looking. Gee. How hard is this choice? For me, not at all.)
The article says the Wii controller "functions like a remote control." That alone should tell us exactly how seriously the WSJ took this one.
Classically, the mentions of good games in this article have to do with the manufacturers trying to reach thresholds at which game manufacturers will develop "their best games" and with Halo driving Xbox sales. The WSJ also manages this amazingly lame description of the Wii controller:
Yeah, it works just like a remote control. That's why it's a big deal. Gotta buy me one o' them fancy ree-motes.
(The WSJ is always an interestingly mannered read even in stylistic terms, isn't it? Phrases:
Arsy-versy sentences like that read like the "News... On the March!" half-parody newsreel at the beginning of Citizen Kane.)
The 2004-5 generation of EA sports titles was absolutely obnoxious with that trait. It came enabled by default, and made for countless vein-bulging moments as your NBA team, out ahead by 30 points in the fourth quarter, suddenly couldn't get a layup to go down. Meanwhile the other team's oafish third-string center is inexplicably draining deep three-pointers to close the gap. Not only was it frustrating, it just plain didn't look or feel like the game it was meant to imitate.
EA games have extreme play balance problems in maybe two of three years, partly because sports in general are so familiar that we expect pacing and so on to feel just so and when they tweak some lame thing to give us new features things get out-of-whack. The answer, though, is not to cheat the player. If your football title is routinely resulting in scores of 100 to 86, you need to fix something more fundamental.
And you, friend, lose just loads of reading comprehension points.
Good sir or madam, Wario is a video game character from the Mario franchise. What a realistic-looking Wario would look like, I don't want to consider.
The sports one does underscore that, when they could choose a few different styles, Nintendo is still going to entertain cartoony, kid-style graphics, that's very true. If I had to choose I'd prefer that they go that way, rather than trying to be "Xtreme" like the Xbox.
Bungie's ham-fisted. Just listen to the voice acting on, say, Warcraft II, and tell me it wasn't painful. No way can that stand up to an hour and a half at theater volumes. I could hardly stand it for thirty seconds at a time in the game, just to hear the goals for that map.
Seriously, wait for PS3 to launch, and since it packs everything you need in your life so "tightly" and you can't afford one, put money together with some friends and Buy One!
Glass house. Stones. Throwing discouraged.
Iraq was secular, but not democratic, so I guess you got me there. The world is not carefully looking for both those criteria when it decides which reckless leaders it fears, however. I've traveled a little in the muslim world, and people dreaded us, even before W. Gee, I wonder why.
SIX! OH-CLOCK!
(In retrospect, the Intellivision controller was a lot closer to a remote control than anything until this Wii one, now I think of it... Actually looked more like an iPod, with the circular pad for your thumb and a standard number pad you slid the individual game's little plastic sheet onto. Holy cow.)
In the case of one of my kids, his name for a certain generation of people was reminiscent of a television character. When I first mentioned the kids' names, a whole bunch of people immediately made jokes about that... And it hasn't ever come up again. (In any case the kids' own generation hasn't seen the same sit coms, and it sure hasn't come up with them.)
(Personally I think Wii is a decent attempt to refer to both the new controller and the networked aspect of the new console. "Revolution" was essentially meaningless and could have applied to anything.)
The Monterey Bay Aquatic Research Institute (MBARI) is basically state of the art for submersibles. If I remember my interviews with Bruce Robison right, they've got stuff that's far quieter than previous generations of remote vehicles, so as not to scare off anything sensitive. If you want to see the weird critters swimming around in the midwater, MBARI is the place to visit.