According to the pictures, there's a zoomed mode. The bottom screen displays the web page (shrunken down of course), and you can use the stylus to get a full-sized view of page in the top window (like in Electroplankton). Also, if they implement cleartype methods for downscaling stuff, they can get much more legibility out of it. They just have to be careful to note that while the top screen is RGB order, the bottom is BGR.
It could be handy for quick (read) access to Web mail, sports, weather, etc. Not a Blackberry replacement though.:-)
True, it can't really replace a Blackberry. There are a ton of features missing and web browsing won't replace them. But as far as only reading web mail,... why? The touchscreen keyboard on the DS works very well in Animal Crossing, and I'm sure that handwriting recognition could be implemented (despite the Simpsons, handwriting recognition worked fairly well on the Newton, and that had far less horsepower than the DS).
If one could pair the right software with the Datel 4GB HDD for the DS that was announced recently, you could get some relatively decent mobile computing out of it.
Check out NOW from PBS. I know that it's cosidered liberal in general, but they covered this guy this week and they did a decent job of keeping somewhat in the middle. They, most importantly, devote an entire half hour to the subject. This allows people on the show to be heard in complete context and to clarify opinions.
http://www.pbs.org/now/ (This week's show is available in the podcast, but apparently not in the archive.)
This article is pure BS because I seem to remember something like 15 digits of precition on either side of the decimal point (999999999999999.999999999999999).
And regardless of the inherent precision of your standard x86 "double" in C++, they could've used the good ol' BigInt class to take care of it.
(BigInt and other similar ascii math classes store numbers as text strings, and then does math in base-10 decimal place by decimal place. While slow, it offers practically limitless precision and will run on any platform.)
Minor correction. Nintendo is 117 years old. I know it was probably just a math fluke, but here's some trivia for others:
Nintendo was founded in 1889 and manufactured Hanafuda trading cards. Replicas of these cards are on display at the Nintendo World Store in NYC.
The GameBoy was released in 1989 as part of Nintendo's 100th anniversary celebration.
For more info check out the Wikipedia entry.
Just stop right there, really. Nintendo has been surrounded by rumors of a buyout ever since the NES was released. All of the rumors are crap, and Nintendo themselves have countless time reaffirmed that they'd go out of business before they sell the company.
Part of it is the pride they have in being an independent company since 1889. In Nintendo's eyes, Cisco is a fucking infant.
It wasn't an easter egg. The scene was removed. Problem is that it was removed poorly (i.e., by changing some options which effectively made the compiled and working code inaccessible through normal means).
I think Rockstar is on good footing. If the Hot Coffee mod violates the EULA in any way, then they can argue that when used properly, the game does indeed fall under the MA rating and that the game is exactly what they claim it is. The game is indeed MA when as long as you don't go out, find the mod, and apply it.
Actually, there's really no evidence to say that anybody in management or even most of the programming staff knew that there was a "good chance" (or even remote chance) of it being hacked. The most likely scenario is that the DMA guys were kicking the idea around and decided not to put the scene into the final game, but neglected to remove it properly from the code and from the art. I'd be willing to be dollars to doughnuts that this was almost entirely a case of one guy making a minor screw up, and that's why I'm pissed at all these people who want to crucify Rockstar and Take2 over this. It's so insanely trivial and inane that it actually makes my brain hurt.
I'm sure there would be less confusion if they used numbers of PSPs sold as oppsoed to shipped, but the fact of the matter is that Sony doesn't report units sold, and Nintendo doesn't report units shipped to the press. Of course, this benefits Sony, so they won't stop, and Nintendo doesn't want to artificially inflate its sales since they're a profit-driven company, so it's unlikely to change in the near future.
If you want a true look at how these two systems will fare in the future, take a look at game sales for each. You'll find Nintendo in the top 10 or top 20 consistently with DS games. It's hard to say the same for the PSP. If the game sales are lackluster, Sony will lose 3rd party support. If Sony loses 3rd party support, the library (and therefore sales of the system) will suffer.
I don't know why the PSP has such a reputation for fragility. It only looks fragile, it truly isn't.
It's not that it's fragile in general. It's that it's fragile compared to the DS, which has the edge here due to the clamshell design protecting the screen and the solid state media instead of spinning media. Would you drop your PSP onto a hardwood floor from a height of 5 feet? How confident would you feel that it'll work properly after the fall? I would feel comfortable dropping my DS (which I've done by mistake several times), and would expect it to play properly afterward.
In fact, it can be said that just about anything seems fragile compared to a Nintendo product. There's a video somewhere out there of some guys who try to kill a gamecube by dragging it behind their car on a dirt road. After the first attempt, it still works fine. So they drive on a worse road, and faster... and the thing still works fine. Eventually they give up with conventional methods and just smash it with a sledgehammer and cook it in a barbeque pit.
The PSP hasn't outsold the DS in any market, and thanks to this holiday season in Japan, it's trailing the DS fairly soundly in global sales. The article predicts that the PSP will outsell the DS in year two (which, if you're being specific, started in Novemeber for the DS and in January for the PSP). As far as "increasing" the lead, that's just a bad title, and it should probably be changed to "gaining" the lead for clarity's sake. How about it, Zonk?
And just for the record, industry analysts have reported such gems as "Microsoft to buy Nintendo in 5 years", "Nintendo to buy Sega" and "Duke Nukem Forever to be released in Fall 2001." I'd take what they say with a grain of salt.
Gamecube sales fell at a slightly lower rate this year than PS2 sales, and an extremely lower rate than X-Box sales, which hit the floor. It's entirely because the next gen is coming and nobody wants to buy hardware that's almost obsolete. As the PS3 and Revolution launches near, the PS2 and Gamecube sales will plummet. I'd say that the magnitude of decrease in sales is probably related to how soon the next iteration of that company's system is coming out.
MS is the king of this... counting units shipped both from the factory and after refurbishing. So slightly defective first-gen X-Boxes were actually counted twice.
Even still I'd bet that the difference between units shipped and units sold for the X-Box is minimal after 4 years, but might be more significant for the PSP (if they count the same way).
Gran Turismo 4 may have been very similar to its predecessor, but the predecessor scored perfect 10's in almost every magazine. I fail to see why that's necessarily a bad thing for GT4 but great for Madden every year.
Not to be a dick about it, but "sequel", not "sequal"...
Anyhow, on the whole, I agree with you. There were several titles this year, though, that weren't break-out hits, but were still kinda unique and/or successful. RE4 stands out in my mind, but there's also Nintendogs, Meteos, Mercury, Lumines, GT4, Katamari Damacy 2, Mario Strikers, Burnout Revenge, Ouenden, etc....
I think the problem with the article is that it's placing too much weight on the commercial success of the game, not the quality. It's been a great year for gamers, especially on the DS, but also on the PSP and GBA. The killer app this year was portable gaming, not Halo 2. Does that make it any less significant?
It doesn't, but compared to a set-top box designed around playing networked media, the X-Box 360 is fairly weak. Compared to a real DVD player, the X-Box and PS2 are pretty weak. It may be convenient for people to have an all-in-one console, but one has to expect to lose features when compared to having multiple components in your entertainment center.
I was more implying that since the meda center aspects are usually an afterthought (and, no, I haven't had a chance to evaluate the X-Box 360 in person, so I'm going by the PS2 and X-Box on this), they aren't implemented as well as they would be in a dedicated device.
Actually, each game licenser (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft) specifies menu rules, and those menu rules may even change from region to region. For example, on the PS2, X selects and Square goes back. On the PS2 in Japan, Circle selects and X goes back. I understand that my friends don't understand the gamecube controller because they're simply soooo aclimated to the PS2, not because they're dumb.
I love making fun of my Playstation playing friends when we sit down to play a GCN game. They sit, staring at the menus totally confused. Eventually they break down and ask "what do I press?" I laugh at them, tell them to look at the controller, and take a wild guess.
And then they still don't get it. So that's when I say, in a "no-duh" voice "try the giant fucking green one" And then "How do I go back" is met with "If green went forward, what color do you think brings you back?""What?"
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times... it all depends on what you do with the hardware.
Guessing by your wording, you know what I'm talking about when I talk about the Revolution controller. Just how radically different it is from the current paradigm ensures that there will be great changes in gameplay coming from the Revolution. This is something that I'm looking forward to.
But does the X-Box 360's lack of "innovative" (i.e. trend-bucking) hardware necessarily mean that it won't lead to innovative gameplay that wasn't previously possible? Think about how powerful that CPU is. What kinds of things could be done with physics on it? What could you do with AI? Look at the large (for a console) ammount of memory. How large can levels get? How could you ever fill all that up? Look at the powerful GPU. What can you draw now that you couldn't before? Are there game concepts that people were looking at before that were simply impossible because previous consoles couldn't draw the output?
So, while the hardware is nothing earth-shaking or radically different, it opens up possibilities to developers that simply weren't available on the original X-Box. We just have to hope that (a) developers take advantage of the hardware in that way, and (b) we gamers actually buy the innovative games to support the trend.
I omitted a lot of your post, but only to save space... MS will pay for it... they'll pay for it in development time for patches (but more likely it's a defective batch of chips that will necessitate console replacements). The one thing you say though that gets at me is that MS is in this for profit. We know from the X-Box that they're not. They're in it for market share. (The X-Box had 1 profitable quarter in its entire lifespan, and that was only when Halo 2 was released. In terms of profit, it was a dismal failure.)
MS doesn't care, though, that they're not making any money at all on the venture. Their plan is to get enough market share that they can nudge Sony and Nintendo out of the market and then start making the "real" profits that come from having no competetors. At somewehre around 15-20% market penetration for the original X-Box, they've got a long way to go.
Nintendo's 'problem', if you can call it that, is that they don't target people who don't already play games.
From the horse's mouth:
"We will attract casual gamers better than anyone, using consumer-friendly content, control, and the internet. We will even draw non-gamers to the revolution, showing them how much fun there is. We call this all-access gaming. It is my job to run a global company," concluded Iwata. "But in my job, what gives me the most satisfaction is seeing someone pick up a controller and finding surprise and delight. What catches their heart still catches my heart. Thank you very much."
Nintendo E3 Press Conference, May 2005
So, whether you feel they were adequate in getting non-gamers to their hardware in this generation, they're making a concerted effort to do it in the next.
I'm well aware of this. They removed support because very few people actually used it. If you call the number, they'll offer to replace your gamecube with one that has component video out or slap the port back on. Having been released in 2001, the GCN went the majority of its time with component video support.
And the simple fact of the matter is that the underlying DOL-101 hardware is still capible of doing 480p, it's just that they opted not to solder on the port for the component cables.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the pictures, there's a zoomed mode. The bottom screen displays the web page (shrunken down of course), and you can use the stylus to get a full-sized view of page in the top window (like in Electroplankton). Also, if they implement cleartype methods for downscaling stuff, they can get much more legibility out of it. They just have to be careful to note that while the top screen is RGB order, the bottom is BGR.
If one could pair the right software with the Datel 4GB HDD for the DS that was announced recently, you could get some relatively decent mobile computing out of it.
Check out NOW from PBS. I know that it's cosidered liberal in general, but they covered this guy this week and they did a decent job of keeping somewhat in the middle. They, most importantly, devote an entire half hour to the subject. This allows people on the show to be heard in complete context and to clarify opinions.
http://www.pbs.org/now/ (This week's show is available in the podcast, but apparently not in the archive.)
(BigInt and other similar ascii math classes store numbers as text strings, and then does math in base-10 decimal place by decimal place. While slow, it offers practically limitless precision and will run on any platform.)
So, yeah,... definitely bullshit.
Yeah, but you have to reset it every hour and it randomly shuts off the wireless portion.
Part of it is the pride they have in being an independent company since 1889. In Nintendo's eyes, Cisco is a fucking infant.
It wasn't an easter egg. The scene was removed. Problem is that it was removed poorly (i.e., by changing some options which effectively made the compiled and working code inaccessible through normal means).
I think Rockstar is on good footing. If the Hot Coffee mod violates the EULA in any way, then they can argue that when used properly, the game does indeed fall under the MA rating and that the game is exactly what they claim it is. The game is indeed MA when as long as you don't go out, find the mod, and apply it.
Actually, there's really no evidence to say that anybody in management or even most of the programming staff knew that there was a "good chance" (or even remote chance) of it being hacked. The most likely scenario is that the DMA guys were kicking the idea around and decided not to put the scene into the final game, but neglected to remove it properly from the code and from the art. I'd be willing to be dollars to doughnuts that this was almost entirely a case of one guy making a minor screw up, and that's why I'm pissed at all these people who want to crucify Rockstar and Take2 over this. It's so insanely trivial and inane that it actually makes my brain hurt.
I'm sure there would be less confusion if they used numbers of PSPs sold as oppsoed to shipped, but the fact of the matter is that Sony doesn't report units sold, and Nintendo doesn't report units shipped to the press. Of course, this benefits Sony, so they won't stop, and Nintendo doesn't want to artificially inflate its sales since they're a profit-driven company, so it's unlikely to change in the near future.
If you want a true look at how these two systems will fare in the future, take a look at game sales for each. You'll find Nintendo in the top 10 or top 20 consistently with DS games. It's hard to say the same for the PSP. If the game sales are lackluster, Sony will lose 3rd party support. If Sony loses 3rd party support, the library (and therefore sales of the system) will suffer.
In fact, it can be said that just about anything seems fragile compared to a Nintendo product. There's a video somewhere out there of some guys who try to kill a gamecube by dragging it behind their car on a dirt road. After the first attempt, it still works fine. So they drive on a worse road, and faster... and the thing still works fine. Eventually they give up with conventional methods and just smash it with a sledgehammer and cook it in a barbeque pit.
The PSP hasn't outsold the DS in any market, and thanks to this holiday season in Japan, it's trailing the DS fairly soundly in global sales. The article predicts that the PSP will outsell the DS in year two (which, if you're being specific, started in Novemeber for the DS and in January for the PSP). As far as "increasing" the lead, that's just a bad title, and it should probably be changed to "gaining" the lead for clarity's sake. How about it, Zonk?
And just for the record, industry analysts have reported such gems as "Microsoft to buy Nintendo in 5 years", "Nintendo to buy Sega" and "Duke Nukem Forever to be released in Fall 2001." I'd take what they say with a grain of salt.
Funny that, I don't know anyone under 18 who has one. And that includes almost everyone I know.
Gamecube sales fell at a slightly lower rate this year than PS2 sales, and an extremely lower rate than X-Box sales, which hit the floor. It's entirely because the next gen is coming and nobody wants to buy hardware that's almost obsolete. As the PS3 and Revolution launches near, the PS2 and Gamecube sales will plummet. I'd say that the magnitude of decrease in sales is probably related to how soon the next iteration of that company's system is coming out.
MS is the king of this... counting units shipped both from the factory and after refurbishing. So slightly defective first-gen X-Boxes were actually counted twice.
Even still I'd bet that the difference between units shipped and units sold for the X-Box is minimal after 4 years, but might be more significant for the PSP (if they count the same way).
Gran Turismo 4 may have been very similar to its predecessor, but the predecessor scored perfect 10's in almost every magazine. I fail to see why that's necessarily a bad thing for GT4 but great for Madden every year.
Not to be a dick about it, but "sequel", not "sequal" ...
....
Anyhow, on the whole, I agree with you. There were several titles this year, though, that weren't break-out hits, but were still kinda unique and/or successful. RE4 stands out in my mind, but there's also Nintendogs, Meteos, Mercury, Lumines, GT4, Katamari Damacy 2, Mario Strikers, Burnout Revenge, Ouenden, etc
I think the problem with the article is that it's placing too much weight on the commercial success of the game, not the quality. It's been a great year for gamers, especially on the DS, but also on the PSP and GBA. The killer app this year was portable gaming, not Halo 2. Does that make it any less significant?
It doesn't, but compared to a set-top box designed around playing networked media, the X-Box 360 is fairly weak. Compared to a real DVD player, the X-Box and PS2 are pretty weak. It may be convenient for people to have an all-in-one console, but one has to expect to lose features when compared to having multiple components in your entertainment center.
I was more implying that since the meda center aspects are usually an afterthought (and, no, I haven't had a chance to evaluate the X-Box 360 in person, so I'm going by the PS2 and X-Box on this), they aren't implemented as well as they would be in a dedicated device.
Actually, each game licenser (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft) specifies menu rules, and those menu rules may even change from region to region. For example, on the PS2, X selects and Square goes back. On the PS2 in Japan, Circle selects and X goes back. I understand that my friends don't understand the gamecube controller because they're simply soooo aclimated to the PS2, not because they're dumb.
Well, you know the old saying ... Jack of all trades, master of none.
I love making fun of my Playstation playing friends when we sit down to play a GCN game. They sit, staring at the menus totally confused. Eventually they break down and ask "what do I press?" I laugh at them, tell them to look at the controller, and take a wild guess.
And then they still don't get it. So that's when I say, in a "no-duh" voice "try the giant fucking green one" And then "How do I go back" is met with "If green went forward, what color do you think brings you back?" "What?"
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times ... it all depends on what you do with the hardware.
Guessing by your wording, you know what I'm talking about when I talk about the Revolution controller. Just how radically different it is from the current paradigm ensures that there will be great changes in gameplay coming from the Revolution. This is something that I'm looking forward to.
But does the X-Box 360's lack of "innovative" (i.e. trend-bucking) hardware necessarily mean that it won't lead to innovative gameplay that wasn't previously possible? Think about how powerful that CPU is. What kinds of things could be done with physics on it? What could you do with AI? Look at the large (for a console) ammount of memory. How large can levels get? How could you ever fill all that up? Look at the powerful GPU. What can you draw now that you couldn't before? Are there game concepts that people were looking at before that were simply impossible because previous consoles couldn't draw the output?
So, while the hardware is nothing earth-shaking or radically different, it opens up possibilities to developers that simply weren't available on the original X-Box. We just have to hope that (a) developers take advantage of the hardware in that way, and (b) we gamers actually buy the innovative games to support the trend.
MS doesn't care, though, that they're not making any money at all on the venture. Their plan is to get enough market share that they can nudge Sony and Nintendo out of the market and then start making the "real" profits that come from having no competetors. At somewehre around 15-20% market penetration for the original X-Box, they've got a long way to go.
I'm well aware of this. They removed support because very few people actually used it. If you call the number, they'll offer to replace your gamecube with one that has component video out or slap the port back on. Having been released in 2001, the GCN went the majority of its time with component video support.
And the simple fact of the matter is that the underlying DOL-101 hardware is still capible of doing 480p, it's just that they opted not to solder on the port for the component cables.