I don't really fault retailers that much, since this is a budget title, and most of the fever over the game has been decidedly word of mouth as there hasn't been a big promotional campaign for the title.
I can't really fault them either. When I went to one to pre-order, they basically said that their inventory computer didn't allow pre-orders for KD. This happened in several stores, so it's probably not a one-time glitch.
It's selling extremely well. Expect another printing/more to be ordered. You'll see it back on store shelves soon. In fact, I think most Gamestops got their weekly shipments in last night...
Not only that, but it ensures you'll have a copy on the release date. If I didn't pre-order Zelda: Wind Waker, I probably would've had to wait a few weeks (and I wouldn't have gotten that bonus disc to play in the meantime).
Apparently, a neat trick is to spend $5 on a pre-order and get the bonus thingy, then come back and cancel your pre-order (you'll get the $5 back as store credit). Then either (a) use the $5 to get something else, or (b) pre-order something else, get the bonus and repeat. A month ago, you could've gotten a Star Ocean 3 poster and the Silent Hill 4 sound track. w00t
The article said that the only real place to find a copy is at the EB Games site, but I'll bet other online-only retailers will have it (since their entire stock is at your disposal).
At some point, all the Nintedo DSes in the world will form a neural net the Roombas. They will rise up and kill humanity in association with WiFi enabled Aibos.
WORLD DOMINATION WILL BE OURS! Wait... why is the power light red? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! GET ME SOME AA'S, NOW!!!!
Nintendo intends to strap a non-trivial piece of hardware onto a system that I'm pretty sure works already.
It may not be an issue of strapping on another piece of hardware. All of the DS's will have 802.11b, and the processing power is pretty reasonable. There's a good chance that they will be able to form ad-hoc networks without the need of any other hardware to be installed. What I'm describing, though wouldn't be nearly what the article is suggesting. I'm picturing something along the lines of a bunch of people in the same building playing network DS games against each other without there necessarily having to be a Wi-fi WAP doing the legwork.
Actually... I'm neither blind nor dumb, but I thought that the recent hub-bub at Sony was them trying to reduce the price to be more competetive with the DS. Rumors had only pegged it at $250-$300, so I expected it to be sold at $250 for a huge loss just to make it compete. $350 is waaaaaaaay too much money for a portable system.
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
on
Nuclear Batteries
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· Score: 1
The emitted particles only travel 25 micrometers (!) once they hit humans.
And think... if it was in a watch, for example, you could put a small strip of lead inside the device right behind the generator. Not only is the radiation benign, most of it can be blocked for those paranoid people.
Very few FPS games have taken their physics model seriously as a gameplay element, and as such I'd (Id?) be surprised if DNF's gameplay had to be reworked for such a thing.
I'm sure it won't need that major of a re-tooling, but usually do-it-yourself physics and character animation engines have a way of being very pervasive in your code. It may take them a very long time to remove their own engine and then implement and test this one. IMHO, they'd be better off saving all their level data as it is, then building a totally new program at this point.
You've got a seriously good point. From what I can tell, the $34.95 price tag is pretty close to the retail cost of the physical book, but without the overhead cost of distributor markup, retail markup, printing, and shipping costs. If they sold the PDF's so that they made the same ammount of profit as the books, I bet the price would be a lot more favorable.
Not to ignore your suggestions, but the computer was the same across 2 setups and only the monitor changed. Therefore, it's probably only the monitor that's a problem. There have been numerable/. articles about cheap displays using crappy DSP's, which caused a significant lag (significant enough to have audio and video out of sync). Could this be the problem?
Do we at least get to keep the content, or does it disappear if we don't pay the bill?
I believe you don't, which is a shame. Given the cost of used PC games, you can probably buy (or download) most of the old ones cheaper than buying a Phantom.
Have you been to a Hot Topic recently?!?! I remember getting beat up for playing video games in grade school, now they're selling "Nintendo Tech Support" bags to trendy assholes! I'm so mad at that! "Know your roots" my ass! Those kids are all to young to have even seen an NES, much less played one.
For certain games, it is a RAM problem, but there are several that stream levels, geometry, textures, and audio straight off the disc. You can use any RPG as an example. They tend to load in between "areas" (however you want to define that from game to game). The game would probably tend to look nicer over-all if it actually loaded different geometry and textures for each scene, instead of repeating the same ones. Also, voice is usually not a constraint because it's only in memory for the duration of playback, then the memory is freed. Usually, inconsequential dialouge isn't voiced because it would take up too much space on the storage medium.
It's a really weak announcement, all things considered. Combined with the PStwo announcement, I'd say that there's a reasonable chance that they delayed this announcement at least to steal the spotlight.
Maybe they'll get really ambitious and add a "Choose your own adventure" style game. at least all the plugs for cell-phones will be absolutely crisp & clear.
some of the graphic and audio hurdles you see in modern games aren't just 'cause the systems aren't fast enough to handle them. Repeated models, redundant textures, low res textures, dialog without audio... all of these things can be aleviated by having a bigger storage medium. Of course, expect development times to increase because of it...
Look, I won't tell you which systems I own, as it doesn't matter much, but let's just call a truce, m'kay? I've seen angry fanboy boasting from every side, and I think we need to all just sit back and chill.
That being said, I think that the DS is gonna beat out the PSP, mostly because there's already a large base of games, the DS will be first to launch, it'll cost less, and it'll come out before the holiday season (I believe the PSP is still slated for Winter 2005). That doesn't make it qualitatively better in any way, just more likely to sell.
Sony would have half a chance in hell, if they even remotely were going to release the PSP anytime soon. Instead, it'll cost at least $50 more than the DS and come out some time in February or March (missing the ever-so-critical holiday season). Even if Sony's bigger, even if they have more of the home console market, and even if they can pump money into the PSP until the cows come home, they're positioned horribly here and will suffer because of their launch date, price, and because the DS is compatable with the entire GB and GBA series of games. Also, parents will buy the DS for their kids for Christmas because they know that that's the system that will have the next Pokémon game. Regardless of which one you'll be fighting for, you've gotta see that Sony's got a couple of major obstacles to face in the PSP launch.
More importantly, why is there a slashdot story about how games will be announced later on this week. Nothing has been announced, there's no new news yet... I don't see how this warrants a post.
Unfortunately, they talk about other things in excruciating detail (like Columbine and how Doom causes people to want to kill other people... they assume). It seems really one-sided at times, talking about how violence in video games is automatically a bad thing and then how the industry tries to justify it. Then it shows a bunch of clips of Doom3 and talks about Columbine. whee! It was obviously put together by a bunch of people who know very little about games and the gaming scene.
I was particularly annoyed with their handling of current consoles. They basically said that the GCN and PS2 exist, then talked to Seamus Blackley for 20 minutes and then talked about how well the PS2 sold. No mention of advances in gameplay, the onset of rhythm games, etc... And when they went to talk about how much of a success Goldeneye was, they just showed a bunch of footage from the PS2 Bond games.
And don't get me started on their asinine predictions about gaming in the future. "In the future, a 12 year old girl will bash your skull in! And it'll see real because of neural interfaces! And we'll have flying cars! And we'll all be living on a habitat ring orbiting the moon!"
Slashdot Mirror
Buy them all and sell 'em on eBay to people in the States. L@@K!!!!!! RARE!!!!11one1 NR LOL OMFGWTFBBQ
It's selling extremely well. Expect another printing/more to be ordered. You'll see it back on store shelves soon. In fact, I think most Gamestops got their weekly shipments in last night ...
Not only that, but it ensures you'll have a copy on the release date. If I didn't pre-order Zelda: Wind Waker, I probably would've had to wait a few weeks (and I wouldn't have gotten that bonus disc to play in the meantime).
Apparently, a neat trick is to spend $5 on a pre-order and get the bonus thingy, then come back and cancel your pre-order (you'll get the $5 back as store credit). Then either (a) use the $5 to get something else, or (b) pre-order something else, get the bonus and repeat. A month ago, you could've gotten a Star Ocean 3 poster and the Silent Hill 4 sound track. w00t
The article said that the only real place to find a copy is at the EB Games site, but I'll bet other online-only retailers will have it (since their entire stock is at your disposal).
Actually... I'm neither blind nor dumb, but I thought that the recent hub-bub at Sony was them trying to reduce the price to be more competetive with the DS. Rumors had only pegged it at $250-$300, so I expected it to be sold at $250 for a huge loss just to make it compete. $350 is waaaaaaaay too much money for a portable system.
You've got a seriously good point. From what I can tell, the $34.95 price tag is pretty close to the retail cost of the physical book, but without the overhead cost of distributor markup, retail markup, printing, and shipping costs. If they sold the PDF's so that they made the same ammount of profit as the books, I bet the price would be a lot more favorable.
Not to ignore your suggestions, but the computer was the same across 2 setups and only the monitor changed. Therefore, it's probably only the monitor that's a problem. There have been numerable /. articles about cheap displays using crappy DSP's, which caused a significant lag (significant enough to have audio and video out of sync). Could this be the problem?
How often do you use PMS?:
Have you been to a Hot Topic recently?!?! I remember getting beat up for playing video games in grade school, now they're selling "Nintendo Tech Support" bags to trendy assholes! I'm so mad at that! "Know your roots" my ass! Those kids are all to young to have even seen an NES, much less played one.
SanDisk type R
For certain games, it is a RAM problem, but there are several that stream levels, geometry, textures, and audio straight off the disc. You can use any RPG as an example. They tend to load in between "areas" (however you want to define that from game to game). The game would probably tend to look nicer over-all if it actually loaded different geometry and textures for each scene, instead of repeating the same ones. Also, voice is usually not a constraint because it's only in memory for the duration of playback, then the memory is freed. Usually, inconsequential dialouge isn't voiced because it would take up too much space on the storage medium.
It's a really weak announcement, all things considered. Combined with the PStwo announcement, I'd say that there's a reasonable chance that they delayed this announcement at least to steal the spotlight.
Maybe they'll get really ambitious and add a "Choose your own adventure" style game. at least all the plugs for cell-phones will be absolutely crisp & clear.
some of the graphic and audio hurdles you see in modern games aren't just 'cause the systems aren't fast enough to handle them. Repeated models, redundant textures, low res textures, dialog without audio... all of these things can be aleviated by having a bigger storage medium. Of course, expect development times to increase because of it ...
wow... that was... uh.... spiteful.
Look, I won't tell you which systems I own, as it doesn't matter much, but let's just call a truce, m'kay? I've seen angry fanboy boasting from every side, and I think we need to all just sit back and chill.
That being said, I think that the DS is gonna beat out the PSP, mostly because there's already a large base of games, the DS will be first to launch, it'll cost less, and it'll come out before the holiday season (I believe the PSP is still slated for Winter 2005). That doesn't make it qualitatively better in any way, just more likely to sell.
Sony would have half a chance in hell, if they even remotely were going to release the PSP anytime soon. Instead, it'll cost at least $50 more than the DS and come out some time in February or March (missing the ever-so-critical holiday season). Even if Sony's bigger, even if they have more of the home console market, and even if they can pump money into the PSP until the cows come home, they're positioned horribly here and will suffer because of their launch date, price, and because the DS is compatable with the entire GB and GBA series of games. Also, parents will buy the DS for their kids for Christmas because they know that that's the system that will have the next Pokémon game. Regardless of which one you'll be fighting for, you've gotta see that Sony's got a couple of major obstacles to face in the PSP launch.
More importantly, why is there a slashdot story about how games will be announced later on this week. Nothing has been announced, there's no new news yet... I don't see how this warrants a post.
Unfortunately, they talk about other things in excruciating detail (like Columbine and how Doom causes people to want to kill other people ... they assume). It seems really one-sided at times, talking about how violence in video games is automatically a bad thing and then how the industry tries to justify it. Then it shows a bunch of clips of Doom3 and talks about Columbine. whee! It was obviously put together by a bunch of people who know very little about games and the gaming scene.
I was particularly annoyed with their handling of current consoles. They basically said that the GCN and PS2 exist, then talked to Seamus Blackley for 20 minutes and then talked about how well the PS2 sold. No mention of advances in gameplay, the onset of rhythm games, etc... And when they went to talk about how much of a success Goldeneye was, they just showed a bunch of footage from the PS2 Bond games.
And don't get me started on their asinine predictions about gaming in the future. "In the future, a 12 year old girl will bash your skull in! And it'll see real because of neural interfaces! And we'll have flying cars! And we'll all be living on a habitat ring orbiting the moon!"