What was the previous number. I am note sure how they read this but it is a weekly number. Now it had been something like this, week 42 +4% 43 +4.5% 44 +4% and then week 45 -0.5% THEN that is significant. It means instead of growing it actually shrunk.
Of course just for one week is not very important, maybe something happened like a holiday?
But if it is the sign that the growth is already out of iTunes sales then it is significant. Especially since the iPods themselves still sell like hotcakes. Hotcakes without a HUGE PRICETAG even.
Figures in this post are purely fictional and only used to illustrate how a half percent might be significant.
Sell this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Musume/ and make my day. Your dollars might be safe but a fair number of fanboys will lap it up. For that matter, remove the fucking country barrier. Sell everything to everyone. The Global Economy.
Just sell me stuff that I cannot find in every damn local recordshop at cheaper prices. You know, the kind of weird stuff we used to pull of napster.
I got myself an iPod video because nobody loves me like I do. Not 350 euro's worth anyway. The dutch gift day is the 5th of decemeber, christmas is more about some dude on a crutch.
Anyway I of course installed iTunes, since replaced by anapod, went to the store and found absolutely nothing. No tv shows, no rare music, no bubbly jpop. So my ipod is now loaded with crap jpop and all the weird live recordings I got ages ago in the good days of napster.
Frankly all that is on iTunes is the bog standard stuff I either already had on cd (and that is a long time since I bought those) or crap I just don't care about. My music tastes are offbeat to be sure but iTunes is not exactly deep either. I can find a better music selection in any good music store.
The iPod is an amazing device but iTunes is just like every mediocre music store that just sells the same generic stuff that everyone else sells.
Not that I am saying it is bad music, just that I am not buying it.
Oh and to show how bad my taste is, go find me a good copy of John Denvers Black Bird. This will probably get me banned for good.
I think means meet in the middle + embrace. So where the one takes on elements of the other.
What is a movie? It is a story telling with the camera used to accentuate or even replace words you would use in a book or audio story. The movie willow instead of saying "the band of adventures travelled for many days across the land" instead has a travelling shot.
Movies are told through the camera.
Traditional games like say eh mario game are far different. 99% of the time no story is being told and the camera is just a way to display the action. There are no dramatic cuts and zooms.
Now take a game like GTA. On the PSP there is a jump you can make of a cliff, the moment you do it the camera angle changes to one far below so you see your car/bike flowing overhead in slow motion. That is a think what they mean. The camera changes from the purely functional to a story telling device accentuating the bigness of the jump.
Jedi Knight Acadamy did the same by going do a slow-motion circle whenever an enemy jedi died.
Other games have of course done similar things to greater or less extent.
Doom and later quake always had the same camera angle, doom3 cuts far more to other angles allowing the telling of a story. Simple stuff from cutting to a door you just remotly opened to the complete cutscenes in engine.
It is the change from the purely functional camera view you had in the Space Invaders to the kind of camera views that a director would use to show you what is going on.
The FMV you describe was an early example of this when the ingame graphics were still to poor to pull it off but the recent F.E.A.R. showed what before would have been cutscenes as part of the gameplay.
The mix is both good and bad. Few people will deny that F.E.A.R. has a better story then say Doom where most people never even read the textfile that contained the plot.
On the other hand fear has far less replay value since you know what is going to happen so all the story telling levels are just actionless maze runs now. First level? Just run up to where you get whacked.
I think true convergence of game making and movie making will mean that we no longer simply get a cutscene at the end of a level but where move through a story. So not like the 7th guest but like F.E.A.R. or Deus EX etc. Games but with story telling in them.
The fact that 1 has appeared in a tv-ad and the other is on an extras page means nothing. These are extroverts. People that like to be in the limelight. Same reason almost all the celebs can usually be found to have done in their younger years stuff like tv-ads or appearing on childeren programs in the audience.
Now if they had gone to acting school or been in some real productions of even multiple minor roles that would be something. But a single ad and an extras page. Nah, just normal for the kind of people.
The BBC could pull a double hoax but not channel 4. To much a risk people boycott the channel in anger.
The "set" of the shuttle is the one from Space Cowboys according to the wikipedia article. Movie sets are made from wood wich seems to be confirmed. Now I don't know much about the real shuttle but I have always presumed that it would be something like a normal aircraft. You know, not made out of plywood?
Movie sets always have that element like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom blooper where the huge unmovable boulder rocks at the lightest touch?
Surely you would realize that your in a set that just doesn't feel solid enough to go up into space?
The fact that some of the contestants have previous acting experience means nothing. Countless people sign themselves up as extra's and the kind of extroverts that would be selected for a reality show especially. Introverted nerds would not be accepted or even apply. Same reason there are no "leaked" photos of bill gates posing nude to pay his rent before he made it big (like 99% of female celebs)
Oh well it sounds like an insane stunt yet it being the audience being fooled can't be discounted. I has been done before on the BBC where they faked a fake haunted house that turned out to be real. Or so the audience thought. I just like to know how they are going to explain the contestants never actually seeing the rocket.
360 is sold out in the US and EU with even pre-orders not being fullfilled. Where as it seems you can just go to a shop in japan and pick it up.
At current supply levels it will be a while before you can just go to a western shop and pickup a 360.
That I think is very telling that right now the 360 is not a hot item in japan.
Of course there is one tiny little difference. It is the holiday season in the west, the time to give expensive gifts to your loved ones or even your kids.
Do the japanese have a similar season or have they adopted christmas for that purpose?
I find MS comments that hopefully DOA4 will cause sales to pickup funny. If you cannot shift a mere 150.000 consoles in japan on launch you have lost that market. Maybe the japanese are just upset at being last this time. Usually it is the EU that has to wait.
Anyway who cares. Instead of constantly chasing a market you cannot win focus on the US and EU market. Better OWN those markets totally instead of wasting resources on a half-assed conquest of japan. It is the smallest of the 3 markets.
I am an avid pc gamer, I do not like games like GTA SA because I think it goes to far, it takes the fun out of being a baddy. Kinda like if Close Combat had a victory screen for the german side were you are congratualated for having gassed X more people at auswitch.
The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.
H.J. FBI statistics show that youth crime is at an all time low.
Counterclaim. Statistics can show anything. Can this be accounted for by A: judging minors as adults and therefore getting some serious crime out of the statistics B: things like abortion being legalized C: things like stealing CD/records dropping because piracy makes it physical stealing no longer worth it.
Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.
H.J. claims that these studies are limited and done wrong.
Counterclaim. Do them youreselve then "properly" and publish the results.
Children are the primary market for video games.
H.J. claims that the game market is growing up as the first generation is growing up (I an old far myself who played on the Commodore 16 and still does today so it could be true)
Counterclaim. So game makers will not object to every game with violence in it getting an 18+ rating.
Almost no girls play computer games.
H.J. Claims that 40% of girls play games.
Counterclaim that is still less then half of the boy percentage and H.J. himself points out that girls play different games, webbased online games. Not violent shooters.
Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.
H.J. claims that just there is a different in context then real military training and that people can spot the difference.
Counterclaim there really isn't one I can say with a straight face. I went through military training and shooting a FPS rifle is nothing like doing it in real life. Not even the best soldier sim comes anywhere close to simulating a real field excersise let alone (I presume) real war.
Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
Not even going to touch this one. Art is not my subject sorry.
Video game play is socially isolating.
H.J. claims that games can be social.
Spending time with online friends is not the same as with real people and the growing number of male geeks who cannot easily socialize with their desired sex proofs this. Especially important since online girls and boys move in different circles. Important part of socializing, for heterosexuals, is meeting members of the opposite sex and a quake session is not the most likely place no matter how friendly.
Video game play is desensitizing.
H.J. claims that there is a difference between play fighting and real fighting.
Counterclaim this is true but the original claim was that over exposure to violence may cause that line to blur. Where the kid in the example does no longer realize that punching a doll is different from doing it to a real human being. Worse, every small child DOES NOT know this automatically and will go through a kicking phase where it does not yet understand that other people can feel pain.
So this article does nothing except make a few people feel good about themselves. The Jack Thompsons of this world will just shrug it off and come up with far better sounding arguments on tv.
The real question is this. Should we ban every human being from doing something because a tiny percentage can't handle it? Should we ban alcohol because some people drink and drive? Ban guns (for you americans) because some people murder? Ban mixed sex train carriages (for you japanese and italians) because some people grope?
Millions of people play all kinds of games with no effect on their lives they cannot deal with. Then again we do have a ban on driving without a seatbelt because we do not as a society want to deal with those people who get into crashes without a seatbelt.
Perhaps game companies should rate violent games higher and really restrict their sales to adults only. Oh and stop pulling stupid shit like the Hot Coffee mod. Geez talk about shooting youreselve in the foot.
If you mean that 90+40 == 130 percent then you are misunderstanding him.
He means that out of a 100 boys 90 of them play games and that out of 100 girls 40 play.
Meaning that 60% if girls do not play games and 10% of boys do not.
Wether this is true? Who knows. Trust it like any statistic.
There is a group think enforcement on places like/. where we mod up the posts that say what we want to hear and mod down those who do not.
This story tells us what we want to hear. It may even be true but that does not mean we do not have to ask wether certain games cross the line. Take the games you mention. I would say that there is a huge difference between doom/quake and GTA. In doom and quake your a hero, a marine who is going to safe the world from being taking over by the legions of hell.
In GTA you are scum with no moral values who kills for a few dollars.
Also that whole crap about crime figures going down. I seen these kind of thing before. You simply stop counting some things as crime and voila, reduced crime figures. Are those kids who are judged as adults still counted in juvenile crime figures for instance? What effect has the legalisation of abortion had. And so on.
In the article he says that those who committed crimes had in fact less media exposure. Mmm, well lets go with this. Then the question becomes, wich media were they exposed to. Are the non-violent kids taking in a larger dose of games but more balanced or perhaps, shock&horror, less violent games while the crime committers take in a smaller dose but of purely violent games.
So "normal" kid a play 1 hour doom, 1 hour the sims, 1 hour everquest and 1 hour of need for speed. So he plays 1 clean cut hero, 1 builder, 1 slaughter everything for xp and 1 sorta criminal. Now the "crime" kid plays 3 hours of GTA rampage mode. Can you see the difference?
It is the difference between watching a porn movie and ONLY watching porn movies.
Violent youth play violent video games is not important. If only it was true and to opposite was also true then we could clearly target them. The question the popular media is running with is this. Do violent games make violent kids more violent. This article does not answer that.
On the other hand the so called "problem youths" hanging around malls upsetting other people are obviously not at home playing games. If they were they would not be outside disturbing the so called peace.
A true study should examime what "normal" persons are exposed to and in what measure vs what "violent" persons are exposed to. Even that should be more detailed. In the game GTA you can of course actually try to avoid pedestrians. Do the violent persons perhaps even swerve to hit extra pedestrians?
What "justification" do you have for driving over polygon people instead of trying to avoid them. It is not real? I am roleplaying a gangster and it is in his nature to do so, or I like the way they bounce of the hood if only I could get away with in real live. Same act but I would say that it makes a hell of a difference.
Both sides of the argument about violent games are at the moment made by zealots and I don't trust zealots.
As for my personal prefference in games? GTA crosses the line for me. Although SA mostly in cheesyness. It is so over the top that I can only laugh at it. I mean your rapper friend is upset about not getting a gig and you go out and commit a double murder because of it? (driving the manager and his gf of the end of a pier) Get a sense of proportion.
Then again my first "movie" in the movies was a slasher movie so who knows. Perhaps all this crap about violence is just something that has always been there part of human society and trying to explain it is like trying to explain why people fall in love.
If you get your shiny new linux distro one of the first things you might do is go out and try everything. Install KDE and Gnome and Enlightenment and xfce and FVWM and the dozen of others and try them all to see wich will be the magic bullet.
Answer not a single one of them unless your very lucky.
The "big" ones get their power from being customizable and the install you just done usually has the most basic of 'skins' wich means you are barely tapping into its full power. Worse you will usually have come from a different desktop (the number of first time PC users who choose a linux desktop can be safely ignored I think but lets not start a flamewar on that shall we?) and you will want to use your old knowledge instinctivly and be "upset".
For instance I like to have virtual desktops so I have the web on 1, irc on 2, work on 3 and 4 etc. HOWEVER the simple act of changing between these virtual desktops is handled diffrently on each gui. XFCE for instance supports the mousewheel and CTRL-F1. Other gui's require you to click a button or some other combo. Simple differences but annoying to get used to. This can often make a "new" desktop seem more of hazzle then it is and lead you to not use it again and simply go back to the old desktop.
Or am I the only opera user who constantly tries to use mouse moves in IE/firefox? It is not that I hate firefox but I just can't get the mouse moves to work fast enough before I give up and just install opera.
So people get "used" to their desktop, frustated when they try another and you got the makings of a nice holy war. A post above had people argue that KDE was for geeks and Gnome for casual users while the next post argueed the exact opposite.
So the real secret to finding the best desktop? Is not to install and give it a wirl but to "force" youreselve to use the desktop until you have become familiar with it and stop thinking, Oh why don't they just do it like my old desktop. Only then can you truly judge wether the different way KDE or Gnome does things is right for you. Amazing advice eh? That properly reviewing a product takes a lot of time. Must be why proper consumer reviews do not test if a car door open and closes but what happens if you open and close it 100.000 times.
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Do not ask for a boss with a brain, the idiots are so much easier to manage and can be told that sites like/. are important tech information sites you need to visit to stay current in your field.
Every x-box game played is not a PS2 game played. There is one tiny little difference between Sony/Nintendo and MS. MS doesn't need to make a profit on the x-box/360. With its cash cows windows and Office it can afford to loose money on an awfull lot of other product lines and has.
Why is MS in the console market in the first place? Lets not forget that the x-box is directly competing with MS own product windows. Yes windows is a game platform as well and MS itself produces games for that platform. Exclusive games even that are not available on consoles not even its own. They are still doing it now even with the arrival of the 360.
I think the entire reason is that MS is desperate to spread out its wings. Focussing on one or two key products wich make all your money leaves you incredibly vulnerable to changes. Bill Gates probably knows like nobody else how easy it is to replace the market leader in the Word processing/Spreadsheet market or even the OS market. You youngesters may not know this but there was a day when suggesting you buy MS for a business enviroment had roughly the same reaction as suggesting linux a few years ago.
One of MS dreams has been to get a share (the lionshare) of the mythical living room entertainment hub whatever that maybe. At the moment the PC usually stands in the corner if it isn't banned to the bedroom or some pokey hobbyroom. The Internet TV was one attempt at getting the PC into the living room. It bombed but the idea remained and the very popular consoles are now being seen as the next battleground as to who will control the living room.
iTunes if anything has proven that there is a point. How many people here run iTunes because they bought an iPod? Would you have used iTunes if you bought say a Zen instead? Might it be possible that if you owned the living room entertainment center to then put something like iTunes on it and control the distribution of digital media into the living room? Can you say commercial wetdream?
The x-box was not an attempt to beat sony at making a good game console. It was an attempt to control peoples entertainment. The 360 is the same. The battle is on for who own the living room PC, the desktop PC has been won. Why do you think Sony actually sold a linux extension to their PS2? Because they are such nice people who like the whole opensource movement? Or because they are experimenting with turning their game consoles into a more PC like device.
I seen rumours about the PS3 actually running linux as either its core operating OS or at least being capable of doing so for certain tasks. If you look at the design of the cell processor it certainly seems designed far more for multitasking, essential for a desktop not for gaming.
What would happen if people actually could really surf the net (or better a subset of the net filled with your own sales channels) and everything else via their entertainment center? Oh I am not talking about people here but those people who have only got an old virus and spyware laden 98 15" CRT machine in the bedroom and a shiny new PS3/360 in their living room hooked up the a widescreen HD. It certainly seems to have MS worried that it might not be their logo on the software.
So MS doesn't care about profits. Yet. It cares about nobody but them owning this "new" market. Wether they are right or not and wether they succeed or not does not matter. They believe it is a battle to be fought same as for the Internet TV and same as with PDA's and same as with Mobile Phones. Internet TV bombed all around, PDA's MS sorta kinda won and mobile phones is unique because the phone makers do NOT want MS to muzzle in on their business.
Sony too must be smart enough to realize that MS is its true enemy, nintendo is just a competitor but MS is out to destroy it. But sony despite having a far wider customer base then MS is doing very badly. Some people even suggest that the PS2 might have won in sales numbers but it just hasn't made Sony the kind of money it needs.
Japanese drama's do this too occasionally but only the lower budget ones. If it was done for advertising reasons then anime shows would be a far better target yet anime shows are generally known for having a wide selection of specially made music and can easily fill 2-3 OST cd's. Granted of course that may be done to sell a maximum number of music cd's if the show becomes popular. Hmmm, fiendish those tv producers.
Never thought of it like this before. It doesn't however make much sense since by the end of a korean series (wich tend to drag on a bit) you would be totally sick of the tune and hardly go out and buy it. While a song you hear once and is perfectly matched with a good scene you might want to hear again and go buy it.
After all you got that whole patent pending line you see so often.
What seems a bit bigger of an obstacle is how do you get a device cheap enough that can actually handle playing a movie.
The cheapest device at the moment must be the GBA micro and that still is 100 dollars. Of course you could deduct Nintendo's and the retailers profit from it but how low could you possibly get?
Current happy toys are cheap chinese made plastic toys costing less then a dollar for the most ambitious campaigns.
Surely they know that any free tech device of any capacity is going to be hacked?
As for kids remembering to bring their player with them. A bit hopefull. Lending the device out temporarily would also be prone to cheating and asking for a deposit would effectively double the cues at the till for people wanting to give the device back after eating.
Nice idea but wouldn't it be simpler to put the media player in the table? That techonology can be readily bought from airline seats supliers.
Here is one possibility that hasn't been considered yet. The last launch happened during an economic upturn when everyone was happy and money was no object. The world is different now and money is thighter all around.
Secondly both the 360 and PS3 are far less impressive if you play them on your old fashioned tv. Real HD tv's aren't selling yet.
This bit comes from the struggle between those who wish to cancel analog tv broadcasts and go digital completly (saves cost and avoids dragging the conversion on for decades) vs those who do not with to burden every household with the costs of a new expensive hd tv.
What if the public (no not people who post here) decided to buy neither of these consoles? What if they remain with the current hardware and instead of buying a 360 and next christmas a PS3 instead give their kids a nice bundle of games? Games that can be played on the old console and the old tv in the kids room (so dad can watch soccer on the living room tv in peace).
360 sales have been limited to say the least. Of course there is a shortage but with the numbers mentioned in the article it would have to have been very bad for the 360 if there hadn't been a shortage.
Could the big number, the number of customers that made the PS2 stand so far ahead in sales stay away? Hardcore gamers will buy anything and they can be significant but not enough to make a profit. When you read that a 1:2 ratio for handhelds:games is not bad it explains those gamers I know that got a GBA in every color.
What if the x-box and nintendo sales were the core dedicated gamer market, who also own a PS2 and the difference between those and the PS2 sales was the rest of the market that is currently in the stores deciding what goes under the christmas tree? For how many x-box/gamecube owners was that their only console?
Not having the actuall 360 on the shelves makes it easy to decide not to buy that one this year. Next time for such a purchase in normal households would be a kids birthday. Only those kids lucky enough not to be born near the holiday season however. Then the PS3 will be coming closer and closer making it easier to postpone a 360 purchase to see what the PS3 will do. And then it will be time for the 360 to make a price cut so lets wait till then.
Is this likely? Well no perhaps not but I find it intruguing. It has happened with other replacement techs were the consumer just did not pick it up. Granted the 360 is not to the x-box what the mini-disc was to the cd but still. Wouldn't it be fun if all the consoles bombed.
1. Installable on whose OS?
2. MS has had similar campaings with its butterfly logo.
3. MS even had fake evidence in an actual court. Much of the x-box early material was later shown to be faked as well.
4. At least Sony keeps them running, MS just cancels its MMO's.
No sony is just still a padawan, MS is the true dark lord of the sith.
Geez, get this into your heads slashdot readers. Not everyone is a cashstrapped teenager. Also compared to such other hobbies as diving let alone sailing a top of the line PC is peanuts. I got a co-worker working on his boat and it is a cheap one. Only costing about as much a small mercedes. He spend his weekends in the summer sanding it and painting it. You would not believe what marine quality paint costs and how much goes on a small boat.
Nah, PC is a cheap hobby. An uncle of mine used to collect model trains. They are just pieces of plastic with an electric motor yet cost as much as a top of the line GPU.
Should I talk about people that follow their favorite soccer clubs to other countries? 12 hour drives just to sit on a plastic seat and back again? For that matter just a pair of concert tickets to a mainstream band. Thank god I don't like them because I am not plunking down the price of a mobo to stand among teenagers.
Once you become an adult and get a real job you will realize that you will have money to burn (provided you don't get kids who will burn it for you) on your chosen hobby. For some that is gaming.
Re-reading I realize it makes it appear as england was part of the axis. Anyway I left out many examples. If you don't like the england india/pakistan example then how about what they pull in ireland?
As for democratically elected? I remember comments from russian reporters who had just finished reporting on the collapse off the soviet union and were now part of the brave new free press reporting on the american election between I think Clinton and Whats-his-name, they found themselves odly at home. 2 candidates with virtually the same agenda both put forward by the party with limited access by the press and only with pre-approved questions. Oh sure, the differences between the soviet union and the US, and parts of europe are huge. Just sometimes you need reminding.
First of it has eight cores with 1 central core wich is the boss and who runs the "application" and wich then hands out tasks to the other cores. The remaining 7 cores are said to have multimedia specific capabilties wich I think means that the master core does not and is perhaps more a regular cpu optimized for the controlling of the others.
So the big difference is that the 360 is more like current multicore PC's while the PS3 seems to lean more towards a cluster setup like openmosix.
As to wich is better? Well look at recent PS2 games. They show such graphical improvement that it might be true that PS2 still has untapped capabilties. The X-box on the other hand is pretty much at its limit. This was clear by developers complaining the PS2 was hard to develop for and the x-box was easy. Same with the next generation.
Given that the cores have the same basic design (64bit power) and Sony claims the same or even higher clockspeeds it would be easy to assume that 7+1 core > then 3 cores. I also seen larger cache sizes being claimed and even faster bus speeds. Is it all true? And even if it is will game developers succeed in tapping those resources? And even if they do, will that result in fun games?
Remember that currently the fast majority of games do not take advantage of dual core PC's even hyperthreading is rarely supported worse having it on can sometimes degrade performance. Now imagine having to write your code in such a way that it can be split across 7 processors. OR is that central core in te Cell processor capable of splitting up non- threaded applications? (Just random quesswork). After all it is supposed to be become more then the current PS3 chip it is supposed to be included in the next generation of TV's and other entertainment products.
That would be a huge advancement. The holy grail of grid computing (the cell is supposed to be like that) were you no longer have to worry about the specifics of your enviroment but can just run your code and the system will take care of it.
What I find a far more intresting proposition that with the PS3 supposedly so powerfull yet also so similar to the 360 is that it might just be possible to run 360 games on the PS3.
As for using consoles for number work. Already being done with both systems. They are so cheap yet so powerfull that all you have to do is wait for someone to break them open. Same as PC GPU's are being used for number crunching work. However GPU's is no problem wereas circumventing the PS3 or 360's protections might be in more repressive goverments (such as found in the west).
All off the above is just random speculation based on hilarious press reports. Any resemblance to the facts is unlikely.
I am amazed at the gigantic level of fanboyness on both sides. Lets face it. The x-box was supposed to have the higher tech and the live advantage and it bombed. Nintendo and Microsoft were left fighting for the number two spot while Sony was lightyears ahead. Some people even claim that Nintendo is the real winner as it was the only one to make a profit on both hardware and software (I got no clue wether this is true or not but it would explain why they are still in business and Sony is struggling economically, MS of course has deep enough pockets to be able to give it all away free and still come out rich).
But mentioning live as the deciding factor is ignoring history. The x-box had it and it didn't sell. Nobody has ever in my opinion come up with a satisfactory reason for the failure of the x-box. The gamecube is easy. It just didn't have the right image. While I thought about 1 or 2 games as worth playing that was it. The rest I considered to cutsey and consoly for my tastes. I don't mind this on my handhelds where it actually helps (don't want to scream like a girl playing fear in public) but not at home.
Another one that amazed me is that one post said the x-box had signed the big names. Bungie and EA. Wtf? Bungie IS NOT a big name. They got 1 game and that is it. EA is big but EA signs on to anything. Getting EA to endorse your new console is like getting a hooker to go out with you for money. Even/.ers should be able to manage that.
The only real advantage that MS has over both Sony and Nintendo that MS doesn't have to win the money race. They can afford to loose money on this generation and the next and the next.
As for the graphics being amazing. Oh please. I already play at higher resolutions on my now 2yr old PC. Richer friends won't accept anything less then 1600x1200 while sony's own games like eq2 can already make use of 512mb video cards despite the fact they were not even out. Other recent games to can make use of hardware features that even top of the range pc's don't have let alone these weak consoles.
I still remember console fans being excited over star fox while I was playing x-wing.
No saying that anyone is going to win the current battle is insanity. The 360 is lacking launch titles and has not got the mindshare with the general public. The PS3 is an unknown quantity and Sony's reputation might be damaged (but this should equally have counted against MS with the X-box) and Nintendo seems to try another gamecube wich didn't work well the first time. The PC (often not counted) has such titles as WoW wich simply cannot run on any of the consoles yet is a huge earner for its parent company. Oh and has all that live crap except at no-charge.
Frankly I find these discussions very amusing but only as an outsider. I remember people defending their console in each of the battles and use the same arguments regardless of the wether they made sense before.
Console fans are like generals. Always willing to fight the last war again regardless of the outcome.
The PlayStation 3 will be made by Sony, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet.
As oppossed to Microsoft maker of windows?
Geez, sure sure xp and 2k3 are nowadays a lot more stable then the crash fest that the 9x series and ME well lets just not go there. Yet it is still Windows that is THE zombie paradise. Oh and on wich OS did the sony rootkit install anyway? I wonder wich company distributes software that allows just anyone to install a rootkit?
Frankly if you are talking evil empires then this is like choosing between the nazi's and the japs. With nintendo perhaps being the italians.
Perhaps the dreamcast relaunch mentioned earlier is d-day?
Oh and the 360 stability. I seen it in 3 stores. 2x it was in a crashed state. Wonderfull.
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Of course just for one week is not very important, maybe something happened like a holiday?
But if it is the sign that the growth is already out of iTunes sales then it is significant. Especially since the iPods themselves still sell like hotcakes. Hotcakes without a HUGE PRICETAG even. Figures in this post are purely fictional and only used to illustrate how a half percent might be significant.
Just sell me stuff that I cannot find in every damn local recordshop at cheaper prices. You know, the kind of weird stuff we used to pull of napster.
Anyway I of course installed iTunes, since replaced by anapod, went to the store and found absolutely nothing. No tv shows, no rare music, no bubbly jpop. So my ipod is now loaded with crap jpop and all the weird live recordings I got ages ago in the good days of napster.
Frankly all that is on iTunes is the bog standard stuff I either already had on cd (and that is a long time since I bought those) or crap I just don't care about. My music tastes are offbeat to be sure but iTunes is not exactly deep either. I can find a better music selection in any good music store.
The iPod is an amazing device but iTunes is just like every mediocre music store that just sells the same generic stuff that everyone else sells.
Not that I am saying it is bad music, just that I am not buying it.
Oh and to show how bad my taste is, go find me a good copy of John Denvers Black Bird. This will probably get me banned for good.
What is a movie? It is a story telling with the camera used to accentuate or even replace words you would use in a book or audio story. The movie willow instead of saying "the band of adventures travelled for many days across the land" instead has a travelling shot.
Movies are told through the camera.
Traditional games like say eh mario game are far different. 99% of the time no story is being told and the camera is just a way to display the action. There are no dramatic cuts and zooms.
Now take a game like GTA. On the PSP there is a jump you can make of a cliff, the moment you do it the camera angle changes to one far below so you see your car/bike flowing overhead in slow motion. That is a think what they mean. The camera changes from the purely functional to a story telling device accentuating the bigness of the jump.
Jedi Knight Acadamy did the same by going do a slow-motion circle whenever an enemy jedi died.
Other games have of course done similar things to greater or less extent.
Doom and later quake always had the same camera angle, doom3 cuts far more to other angles allowing the telling of a story. Simple stuff from cutting to a door you just remotly opened to the complete cutscenes in engine.
It is the change from the purely functional camera view you had in the Space Invaders to the kind of camera views that a director would use to show you what is going on.
The FMV you describe was an early example of this when the ingame graphics were still to poor to pull it off but the recent F.E.A.R. showed what before would have been cutscenes as part of the gameplay.
The mix is both good and bad. Few people will deny that F.E.A.R. has a better story then say Doom where most people never even read the textfile that contained the plot.
On the other hand fear has far less replay value since you know what is going to happen so all the story telling levels are just actionless maze runs now. First level? Just run up to where you get whacked.
I think true convergence of game making and movie making will mean that we no longer simply get a cutscene at the end of a level but where move through a story. So not like the 7th guest but like F.E.A.R. or Deus EX etc. Games but with story telling in them.
Now if they had gone to acting school or been in some real productions of even multiple minor roles that would be something. But a single ad and an extras page. Nah, just normal for the kind of people.
The BBC could pull a double hoax but not channel 4. To much a risk people boycott the channel in anger.
Movie sets always have that element like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom blooper where the huge unmovable boulder rocks at the lightest touch?
Surely you would realize that your in a set that just doesn't feel solid enough to go up into space?
The fact that some of the contestants have previous acting experience means nothing. Countless people sign themselves up as extra's and the kind of extroverts that would be selected for a reality show especially. Introverted nerds would not be accepted or even apply. Same reason there are no "leaked" photos of bill gates posing nude to pay his rent before he made it big (like 99% of female celebs)
Oh well it sounds like an insane stunt yet it being the audience being fooled can't be discounted. I has been done before on the BBC where they faked a fake haunted house that turned out to be real. Or so the audience thought. I just like to know how they are going to explain the contestants never actually seeing the rocket.
At current supply levels it will be a while before you can just go to a western shop and pickup a 360.
That I think is very telling that right now the 360 is not a hot item in japan.
Of course there is one tiny little difference. It is the holiday season in the west, the time to give expensive gifts to your loved ones or even your kids.
Do the japanese have a similar season or have they adopted christmas for that purpose?
I find MS comments that hopefully DOA4 will cause sales to pickup funny. If you cannot shift a mere 150.000 consoles in japan on launch you have lost that market. Maybe the japanese are just upset at being last this time. Usually it is the EU that has to wait.
Anyway who cares. Instead of constantly chasing a market you cannot win focus on the US and EU market. Better OWN those markets totally instead of wasting resources on a half-assed conquest of japan. It is the smallest of the 3 markets.
H.J. FBI statistics show that youth crime is at an all time low.
Counterclaim. Statistics can show anything. Can this be accounted for by A: judging minors as adults and therefore getting some serious crime out of the statistics B: things like abortion being legalized C: things like stealing CD/records dropping because piracy makes it physical stealing no longer worth it.
H.J. claims that these studies are limited and done wrong.
Counterclaim. Do them youreselve then "properly" and publish the results.
H.J. claims that the game market is growing up as the first generation is growing up (I an old far myself who played on the Commodore 16 and still does today so it could be true)
Counterclaim. So game makers will not object to every game with violence in it getting an 18+ rating.
H.J. Claims that 40% of girls play games.
Counterclaim that is still less then half of the boy percentage and H.J. himself points out that girls play different games, webbased online games. Not violent shooters.
H.J. claims that just there is a different in context then real military training and that people can spot the difference.
Counterclaim there really isn't one I can say with a straight face. I went through military training and shooting a FPS rifle is nothing like doing it in real life. Not even the best soldier sim comes anywhere close to simulating a real field excersise let alone (I presume) real war.
Not even going to touch this one. Art is not my subject sorry.
H.J. claims that games can be social.
Spending time with online friends is not the same as with real people and the growing number of male geeks who cannot easily socialize with their desired sex proofs this. Especially important since online girls and boys move in different circles. Important part of socializing, for heterosexuals, is meeting members of the opposite sex and a quake session is not the most likely place no matter how friendly.
H.J. claims that there is a difference between play fighting and real fighting.
Counterclaim this is true but the original claim was that over exposure to violence may cause that line to blur. Where the kid in the example does no longer realize that punching a doll is different from doing it to a real human being. Worse, every small child DOES NOT know this automatically and will go through a kicking phase where it does not yet understand that other people can feel pain.
So this article does nothing except make a few people feel good about themselves. The Jack Thompsons of this world will just shrug it off and come up with far better sounding arguments on tv.
The real question is this. Should we ban every human being from doing something because a tiny percentage can't handle it? Should we ban alcohol because some people drink and drive? Ban guns (for you americans) because some people murder? Ban mixed sex train carriages (for you japanese and italians) because some people grope?
Millions of people play all kinds of games with no effect on their lives they cannot deal with. Then again we do have a ban on driving without a seatbelt because we do not as a society want to deal with those people who get into crashes without a seatbelt.
Perhaps game companies should rate violent games higher and really restrict their sales to adults only. Oh and stop pulling stupid shit like the Hot Coffee mod. Geez talk about shooting youreselve in the foot.
If you mean that 90+40 == 130 percent then you are misunderstanding him. He means that out of a 100 boys 90 of them play games and that out of 100 girls 40 play. Meaning that 60% if girls do not play games and 10% of boys do not. Wether this is true? Who knows. Trust it like any statistic.
This story tells us what we want to hear. It may even be true but that does not mean we do not have to ask wether certain games cross the line. Take the games you mention. I would say that there is a huge difference between doom/quake and GTA. In doom and quake your a hero, a marine who is going to safe the world from being taking over by the legions of hell.
In GTA you are scum with no moral values who kills for a few dollars.
Also that whole crap about crime figures going down. I seen these kind of thing before. You simply stop counting some things as crime and voila, reduced crime figures. Are those kids who are judged as adults still counted in juvenile crime figures for instance? What effect has the legalisation of abortion had. And so on.
In the article he says that those who committed crimes had in fact less media exposure. Mmm, well lets go with this. Then the question becomes, wich media were they exposed to. Are the non-violent kids taking in a larger dose of games but more balanced or perhaps, shock&horror, less violent games while the crime committers take in a smaller dose but of purely violent games.
So "normal" kid a play 1 hour doom, 1 hour the sims, 1 hour everquest and 1 hour of need for speed. So he plays 1 clean cut hero, 1 builder, 1 slaughter everything for xp and 1 sorta criminal. Now the "crime" kid plays 3 hours of GTA rampage mode. Can you see the difference?
It is the difference between watching a porn movie and ONLY watching porn movies.
Violent youth play violent video games is not important. If only it was true and to opposite was also true then we could clearly target them. The question the popular media is running with is this. Do violent games make violent kids more violent. This article does not answer that.
On the other hand the so called "problem youths" hanging around malls upsetting other people are obviously not at home playing games. If they were they would not be outside disturbing the so called peace.
A true study should examime what "normal" persons are exposed to and in what measure vs what "violent" persons are exposed to. Even that should be more detailed. In the game GTA you can of course actually try to avoid pedestrians. Do the violent persons perhaps even swerve to hit extra pedestrians?
What "justification" do you have for driving over polygon people instead of trying to avoid them. It is not real? I am roleplaying a gangster and it is in his nature to do so, or I like the way they bounce of the hood if only I could get away with in real live. Same act but I would say that it makes a hell of a difference.
Both sides of the argument about violent games are at the moment made by zealots and I don't trust zealots.
As for my personal prefference in games? GTA crosses the line for me. Although SA mostly in cheesyness. It is so over the top that I can only laugh at it. I mean your rapper friend is upset about not getting a gig and you go out and commit a double murder because of it? (driving the manager and his gf of the end of a pier) Get a sense of proportion.
Then again my first "movie" in the movies was a slasher movie so who knows. Perhaps all this crap about violence is just something that has always been there part of human society and trying to explain it is like trying to explain why people fall in love.
Answer not a single one of them unless your very lucky.
The "big" ones get their power from being customizable and the install you just done usually has the most basic of 'skins' wich means you are barely tapping into its full power. Worse you will usually have come from a different desktop (the number of first time PC users who choose a linux desktop can be safely ignored I think but lets not start a flamewar on that shall we?) and you will want to use your old knowledge instinctivly and be "upset".
For instance I like to have virtual desktops so I have the web on 1, irc on 2, work on 3 and 4 etc. HOWEVER the simple act of changing between these virtual desktops is handled diffrently on each gui. XFCE for instance supports the mousewheel and CTRL-F1. Other gui's require you to click a button or some other combo. Simple differences but annoying to get used to. This can often make a "new" desktop seem more of hazzle then it is and lead you to not use it again and simply go back to the old desktop.
Or am I the only opera user who constantly tries to use mouse moves in IE/firefox? It is not that I hate firefox but I just can't get the mouse moves to work fast enough before I give up and just install opera.
So people get "used" to their desktop, frustated when they try another and you got the makings of a nice holy war. A post above had people argue that KDE was for geeks and Gnome for casual users while the next post argueed the exact opposite.
So the real secret to finding the best desktop? Is not to install and give it a wirl but to "force" youreselve to use the desktop until you have become familiar with it and stop thinking, Oh why don't they just do it like my old desktop. Only then can you truly judge wether the different way KDE or Gnome does things is right for you. Amazing advice eh? That properly reviewing a product takes a lot of time. Must be why proper consumer reviews do not test if a car door open and closes but what happens if you open and close it 100.000 times.
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Do not ask for a boss with a brain, the idiots are so much easier to manage and can be told that sites like /. are important tech information sites you need to visit to stay current in your field.
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Why is MS in the console market in the first place? Lets not forget that the x-box is directly competing with MS own product windows. Yes windows is a game platform as well and MS itself produces games for that platform. Exclusive games even that are not available on consoles not even its own. They are still doing it now even with the arrival of the 360.
I think the entire reason is that MS is desperate to spread out its wings. Focussing on one or two key products wich make all your money leaves you incredibly vulnerable to changes. Bill Gates probably knows like nobody else how easy it is to replace the market leader in the Word processing/Spreadsheet market or even the OS market. You youngesters may not know this but there was a day when suggesting you buy MS for a business enviroment had roughly the same reaction as suggesting linux a few years ago.
One of MS dreams has been to get a share (the lionshare) of the mythical living room entertainment hub whatever that maybe. At the moment the PC usually stands in the corner if it isn't banned to the bedroom or some pokey hobbyroom. The Internet TV was one attempt at getting the PC into the living room. It bombed but the idea remained and the very popular consoles are now being seen as the next battleground as to who will control the living room.
iTunes if anything has proven that there is a point. How many people here run iTunes because they bought an iPod? Would you have used iTunes if you bought say a Zen instead? Might it be possible that if you owned the living room entertainment center to then put something like iTunes on it and control the distribution of digital media into the living room? Can you say commercial wetdream?
The x-box was not an attempt to beat sony at making a good game console. It was an attempt to control peoples entertainment. The 360 is the same. The battle is on for who own the living room PC, the desktop PC has been won. Why do you think Sony actually sold a linux extension to their PS2? Because they are such nice people who like the whole opensource movement? Or because they are experimenting with turning their game consoles into a more PC like device.
I seen rumours about the PS3 actually running linux as either its core operating OS or at least being capable of doing so for certain tasks. If you look at the design of the cell processor it certainly seems designed far more for multitasking, essential for a desktop not for gaming.
What would happen if people actually could really surf the net (or better a subset of the net filled with your own sales channels) and everything else via their entertainment center? Oh I am not talking about people here but those people who have only got an old virus and spyware laden 98 15" CRT machine in the bedroom and a shiny new PS3/360 in their living room hooked up the a widescreen HD. It certainly seems to have MS worried that it might not be their logo on the software.
So MS doesn't care about profits. Yet. It cares about nobody but them owning this "new" market. Wether they are right or not and wether they succeed or not does not matter. They believe it is a battle to be fought same as for the Internet TV and same as with PDA's and same as with Mobile Phones. Internet TV bombed all around, PDA's MS sorta kinda won and mobile phones is unique because the phone makers do NOT want MS to muzzle in on their business.
Sony too must be smart enough to realize that MS is its true enemy, nintendo is just a competitor but MS is out to destroy it. But sony despite having a far wider customer base then MS is doing very badly. Some people even suggest that the PS2 might have won in sales numbers but it just hasn't made Sony the kind of money it needs.
So MS has the simple opti
Never thought of it like this before. It doesn't however make much sense since by the end of a korean series (wich tend to drag on a bit) you would be totally sick of the tune and hardly go out and buy it. While a song you hear once and is perfectly matched with a good scene you might want to hear again and go buy it.
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Nope wrong again.
All of sudden those Star Trek jokes where they still have not found a cure for the common cold is not so funny eh?
I am not going to make any usefull comments of course. Virusses of a different kind I know something about. I am not even sure what causes a cold.
What seems a bit bigger of an obstacle is how do you get a device cheap enough that can actually handle playing a movie.
The cheapest device at the moment must be the GBA micro and that still is 100 dollars. Of course you could deduct Nintendo's and the retailers profit from it but how low could you possibly get?
Current happy toys are cheap chinese made plastic toys costing less then a dollar for the most ambitious campaigns.
Surely they know that any free tech device of any capacity is going to be hacked?
As for kids remembering to bring their player with them. A bit hopefull. Lending the device out temporarily would also be prone to cheating and asking for a deposit would effectively double the cues at the till for people wanting to give the device back after eating.
Nice idea but wouldn't it be simpler to put the media player in the table? That techonology can be readily bought from airline seats supliers.
Secondly both the 360 and PS3 are far less impressive if you play them on your old fashioned tv. Real HD tv's aren't selling yet.
This bit comes from the struggle between those who wish to cancel analog tv broadcasts and go digital completly (saves cost and avoids dragging the conversion on for decades) vs those who do not with to burden every household with the costs of a new expensive hd tv.
What if the public (no not people who post here) decided to buy neither of these consoles? What if they remain with the current hardware and instead of buying a 360 and next christmas a PS3 instead give their kids a nice bundle of games? Games that can be played on the old console and the old tv in the kids room (so dad can watch soccer on the living room tv in peace).
360 sales have been limited to say the least. Of course there is a shortage but with the numbers mentioned in the article it would have to have been very bad for the 360 if there hadn't been a shortage.
Could the big number, the number of customers that made the PS2 stand so far ahead in sales stay away? Hardcore gamers will buy anything and they can be significant but not enough to make a profit. When you read that a 1:2 ratio for handhelds:games is not bad it explains those gamers I know that got a GBA in every color.
What if the x-box and nintendo sales were the core dedicated gamer market, who also own a PS2 and the difference between those and the PS2 sales was the rest of the market that is currently in the stores deciding what goes under the christmas tree? For how many x-box/gamecube owners was that their only console?
Not having the actuall 360 on the shelves makes it easy to decide not to buy that one this year. Next time for such a purchase in normal households would be a kids birthday. Only those kids lucky enough not to be born near the holiday season however. Then the PS3 will be coming closer and closer making it easier to postpone a 360 purchase to see what the PS3 will do. And then it will be time for the 360 to make a price cut so lets wait till then.
Is this likely? Well no perhaps not but I find it intruguing. It has happened with other replacement techs were the consumer just did not pick it up. Granted the 360 is not to the x-box what the mini-disc was to the cd but still. Wouldn't it be fun if all the consoles bombed.
No sony is just still a padawan, MS is the true dark lord of the sith.
What would be real scary if the two join up.
Nah, PC is a cheap hobby. An uncle of mine used to collect model trains. They are just pieces of plastic with an electric motor yet cost as much as a top of the line GPU.
Should I talk about people that follow their favorite soccer clubs to other countries? 12 hour drives just to sit on a plastic seat and back again? For that matter just a pair of concert tickets to a mainstream band. Thank god I don't like them because I am not plunking down the price of a mobo to stand among teenagers.
Once you become an adult and get a real job you will realize that you will have money to burn (provided you don't get kids who will burn it for you) on your chosen hobby. For some that is gaming.
As for democratically elected? I remember comments from russian reporters who had just finished reporting on the collapse off the soviet union and were now part of the brave new free press reporting on the american election between I think Clinton and Whats-his-name, they found themselves odly at home. 2 candidates with virtually the same agenda both put forward by the party with limited access by the press and only with pre-approved questions. Oh sure, the differences between the soviet union and the US, and parts of europe are huge. Just sometimes you need reminding.
So the big difference is that the 360 is more like current multicore PC's while the PS3 seems to lean more towards a cluster setup like openmosix.
As to wich is better? Well look at recent PS2 games. They show such graphical improvement that it might be true that PS2 still has untapped capabilties. The X-box on the other hand is pretty much at its limit. This was clear by developers complaining the PS2 was hard to develop for and the x-box was easy. Same with the next generation.
Given that the cores have the same basic design (64bit power) and Sony claims the same or even higher clockspeeds it would be easy to assume that 7+1 core > then 3 cores. I also seen larger cache sizes being claimed and even faster bus speeds. Is it all true? And even if it is will game developers succeed in tapping those resources? And even if they do, will that result in fun games?
Remember that currently the fast majority of games do not take advantage of dual core PC's even hyperthreading is rarely supported worse having it on can sometimes degrade performance. Now imagine having to write your code in such a way that it can be split across 7 processors. OR is that central core in te Cell processor capable of splitting up non- threaded applications? (Just random quesswork). After all it is supposed to be become more then the current PS3 chip it is supposed to be included in the next generation of TV's and other entertainment products.
That would be a huge advancement. The holy grail of grid computing (the cell is supposed to be like that) were you no longer have to worry about the specifics of your enviroment but can just run your code and the system will take care of it.
What I find a far more intresting proposition that with the PS3 supposedly so powerfull yet also so similar to the 360 is that it might just be possible to run 360 games on the PS3.
As for using consoles for number work. Already being done with both systems. They are so cheap yet so powerfull that all you have to do is wait for someone to break them open. Same as PC GPU's are being used for number crunching work. However GPU's is no problem wereas circumventing the PS3 or 360's protections might be in more repressive goverments (such as found in the west).
All off the above is just random speculation based on hilarious press reports. Any resemblance to the facts is unlikely.
But mentioning live as the deciding factor is ignoring history. The x-box had it and it didn't sell. Nobody has ever in my opinion come up with a satisfactory reason for the failure of the x-box. The gamecube is easy. It just didn't have the right image. While I thought about 1 or 2 games as worth playing that was it. The rest I considered to cutsey and consoly for my tastes. I don't mind this on my handhelds where it actually helps (don't want to scream like a girl playing fear in public) but not at home.
Another one that amazed me is that one post said the x-box had signed the big names. Bungie and EA. Wtf? Bungie IS NOT a big name. They got 1 game and that is it. EA is big but EA signs on to anything. Getting EA to endorse your new console is like getting a hooker to go out with you for money. Even /.ers should be able to manage that.
The only real advantage that MS has over both Sony and Nintendo that MS doesn't have to win the money race. They can afford to loose money on this generation and the next and the next.
As for the graphics being amazing. Oh please. I already play at higher resolutions on my now 2yr old PC. Richer friends won't accept anything less then 1600x1200 while sony's own games like eq2 can already make use of 512mb video cards despite the fact they were not even out. Other recent games to can make use of hardware features that even top of the range pc's don't have let alone these weak consoles.
I still remember console fans being excited over star fox while I was playing x-wing.
No saying that anyone is going to win the current battle is insanity. The 360 is lacking launch titles and has not got the mindshare with the general public. The PS3 is an unknown quantity and Sony's reputation might be damaged (but this should equally have counted against MS with the X-box) and Nintendo seems to try another gamecube wich didn't work well the first time. The PC (often not counted) has such titles as WoW wich simply cannot run on any of the consoles yet is a huge earner for its parent company. Oh and has all that live crap except at no-charge.
Frankly I find these discussions very amusing but only as an outsider. I remember people defending their console in each of the battles and use the same arguments regardless of the wether they made sense before.
Console fans are like generals. Always willing to fight the last war again regardless of the outcome.
The PlayStation 3 will be made by Sony, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet. As oppossed to Microsoft maker of windows? Geez, sure sure xp and 2k3 are nowadays a lot more stable then the crash fest that the 9x series and ME well lets just not go there. Yet it is still Windows that is THE zombie paradise. Oh and on wich OS did the sony rootkit install anyway? I wonder wich company distributes software that allows just anyone to install a rootkit? Frankly if you are talking evil empires then this is like choosing between the nazi's and the japs. With nintendo perhaps being the italians. Perhaps the dreamcast relaunch mentioned earlier is d-day? Oh and the 360 stability. I seen it in 3 stores. 2x it was in a crashed state. Wonderfull.