I'd say this is trolling. I mean come on, it's not because Microsoft has a history of producing buggy software that the game companies who produce gams for the Xbox are going to make all sort of bugs themselves.
To my knowledge, no game had a patch for Xbox yet. Games are generally well made and don't contain show stoppers bugs. Mainly glitches, but that's to be expected on all games, either Xbox, PS2, PC or GC.
Except Enter the Matrix, which I've heard is bug ridden. And not developped by Microsoft.
Yeah, I read about this game. It's definitely on my rental list. The only think that seams missing from these screenshots are shadows. I've been playing a lot of Splinter Cell lately, and all I can say is : Give me my stencil shadows!!!:p
I generally I'm an Xbox supporter (especially since I own one, and bought Soul Caliber yesterday, best looking game ever), but now that Nintendo has a two or three hundred thousand lead over Xbox in International sales, I see this price drop as very bad for Microsoft. I hope they won't have Halo 2 and Project Gotham 2, two games that the first iteration sell a gazillion copies, rushed in effort to sell more boxes, since these are two games I'm been waiting for since I bought the console 5 months ago.
I bet that people who buy GameCubes don't give a rat's ass about Eidos or Akklaim ending their support for the CG. Hell, I know that if I owned a gamecube, I would be playing only the Nintendo games. I'd leave the cross-plaform games to my Xbox.
So I don't see Nintendo as being less and less a player. It has less and less games, but hey, who cares if Akklaim never makes another Mortal Kombat or Eidos never makes another Tomb Raider for the GC?
The reason behind that is simple. When Square released Final Fantasy 1, they were in deep financial troubles and they thought it would be their last game, so they called it Final Fantasy. The rest is history.
FF : The spirits within, made 62 millions according to IMDB. Don't forget those worldwide sales. Sites like Yahoo only mention domestic sales. Movies that seem like a failure because they generated only a couple of millions (Like Johnny English) in the US sometimes are big successes overseas, making over one hundred million. Still, they didn't make enough money to cover the cost of the movie, they still made a whopping 79 million dollars on the DVD sales of FF:TSW, and then you have 149 million, so the movie must not have lost that much money.
... is how they could say 3 weeks before a game launches that it would be ready, and two weeks after they realise they still have another 2 months to work on the game?
Unless he was teasing us with the September 30th launch date. It's dissapointing, since I would expect that sort of behavior by a marketing person or a lawyer, but not a game programmer.
If they said 5 months ago that it would be ready on the 30th, and now announced it was going to hit the shelves in two months, I wouldn't mind, I mean, you can't always predict things like this. But now?
Maybe they saw the last Doom3 demo and decided to improve a little more?
One that gave me a really big laugh was when when you clicked over and over on the Observer and heard "I sense a soul in search of answers!" from Diablo 1.
... and thinking after all those years he's the best vilain in videogame history, I'd say his laugh his the sound I remember the most from past video games experience. That, and the Mario Bros's theme.
Stupid companies are everwhere, that I have to hand to you. Thing is, the service can be really great in some other countries, like in Canada. Over here, you can get a unlimited uncapped Internet cable access at 60CAN$ a month with Videotron. Maybe you should consider moving here.;)
What if I want to send video of my kids school play to my parents, ready for them to burn with their new DVD-R. There's my 3-5 gb of uploading right there. Yes you're right, but honestly, I don't think you'd find it really viable to send a 5 gig video file to someone. I recently uploaded 100 megs to someone and it took an hour. Even if I had 10 times the speed, it would still take me around half a day to send the file. But you're right, it can be done. Now, I don't agree that ISP should not put a cap because one out of a ten thousand people are sending 5 gig video files. It's like saying stores should always have size 18 shoes in stock because some people wear size 18 shoes.
What if I want to subscribe to divx.com or one of those places that makes movies available for download? Well, I guess a streamed movie is about 700 megs. So technically, I could download as many as 20 movies in a month, which I bet is a lot more than what the majority of people are going to rent in a 3 to 6 month period. Again, this is a pretty hardcore use of your connection. Or iTunes or rhapsody or streaming radio, for that matter. While I highly doubt you can BUY 15 gigs of music in one month, I think streaming music is pretty much falls in the same category as multiplayer gaming on the Internet, as a steady flow of data is coming to and going from your PC. And I agree with you, that is the kind of usage than is probably prohibitted by download caps. I haven't done the maths, but I'm sure you could stream more than a few gigs a week.
But of course, counter argumenting each of your point is useless, since we probably have different opinions of the subject and you're more than likely to come up with some other clever idea but. There will always be people who have special needs (even streaming music for 8 hours a day should be considered a special need), and that why my cable modem provider has an uncapped service, and it costs 60.00CAN$/month compared to the normal 39.99CAN$/month. Now if others ISPs follow, everyone will be happy.
Two or three years ago you would have been right to say that downloading TV episodes could be somewhat legal, but as complete season come out on DVDs now (think 24 which completed last season 2 last spring and the full season 2 DVD came out two or three weeks ago), I think we'll soon see TV companies looking for filetraders like movie and music studios are doing right now.
People can try to have a clear concience by saying that they can't buy them in North America, but the truth is someone who would have waited a year could have rented the full season of XYZ at the local anime video store. In a way, you can still say that that person has done something illegal, since by downloading the subbed-episodes, he or she hasn't paid a penny to the creators of the show when said product was realeased a year and a half later.
Now, we could talk about import prices that are ridiculously high (40.00CAN$ for 3 half-hour episodes of a 24 episode anime) and the time it takes to cross over seas, but fact is that, LEGALLY, you still have done something wrong. Morally, well... that's a whole other debate according to some sources...
I bet you are referring to Bell Canada. I find it hillarious that now they use the unlimited download argument as an incentive for customers to switch to Bell Canada.
If I had the cash, I'd buy an XBox in addition to my GBA. Meanwhile, the GBA (SP, actually) is my primary console, and my DreamCast mostly sits in the cabinet. Interresting, since I was telling myself exactly the opposite the other day. I own an Xbox, and if I had money for another console, I'd go with the GBA-SP.:)
Since day one about 6 years ago when I subscribed to the local cable Internet connection in Montreal, Canada, I've been subject to download caps. It started off with 6 gigs of download and 1 gig of upload a month. Downloads were 300k/sec max and uploads were capped at 15k/sec. Over the years, the service has IMPROVED (well, competition helped a lot for that to happen) and now I have 450k/sec in download and 50k/sec in upload, plus I get 15 gigs in download and 5 gigs in upload. Now, I wonder what legal uses people are making of 15 gigs a month.
Personnally, the only times I was able to download over 3 gigs in a month is when I decided to download all the Alias episodes so I could start watching the show on ABC this season. I did the same in the past with 24, Smallville and That 70's Show.
Otherwise, I mostly watch trailers on Apple.com and video trailers off Gamespot or Xbox.com, read the news and do instant messenging. That typically sums up to about 2 gigs of usage in download. And I use the Internet often. So, what can you people legally do with 13 others gigs of download? Yeah, I know, Linux distributions are 2 gigs now and VNC is pretty bandwidth intensive, but I bet more than 99% of broadband users don't give a flying squirrel about VNC or Linux and thus have no LEGAL use of 15 gigs a month. With only maybe the exception of multiplayer games, are there really any reasons to have 15 gigs a month in download?
Of course, if you're into heavy music, movie and software piracy, I'm sure that 15 gigs a month is not enough for you. Especially since the only people I hear complaining about download and upload caps are the ones who are using their connection for illegal activities. Me, I complain only when I have to wait another month to download the last 3 Alias episodes. But it's over now, and I'm back to my normal Internet usage.
You're right when you say that Microsoft in itself didn't make Halo and Project Gotham Racing, but since these games are distributed by Microsoft, my guess is that these games fall under the 2nd party kind of game, which is more profitable to Microsoft than games published by Namco or Capcom.
I wasn't aware though that platinum hits were only for games that sold over 350,000 copies and not a million. So maybe some I named weren't million sellers then.
Then, after a little digging on the Xbox website, here are the million sellers from Microsoft Studios: Amped Blinx : The time sweeper Bloodwake Oddworld : Munch Odysee Rallysport Challenge
There may be some others, but they're not on the Platinum Hits collection yet, like Halo for example.
What do you mean Microsoft only has Halo as 1rst party title?
Taken from their website: Inside Pitch 2003 Midtown Madness 3 NBA Inside drive 2003/2004 Grabbed by the Ghoulies Halo Mechassault Sudeki Project Gotham Racing 1 and 2 True Fantasy Live Online NHL Fever 2004 Voodoo Vince Top Spin Fable Kamero Kung Fu Chaos Brute Force BC Rallisport Challenge Counter-Strike (well, they are distributing it) Crimson Skies Nightcaster
And the list continues...
Okay, so not all of these games are million sellers (at least, Halo, Nightcaster and Project Gotham are), but Microsoft has a lot of first party titles and a lot of them are interresting.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that was a nice movie.
We're talking games here.
I'd say this is trolling. I mean come on, it's not because Microsoft has a history of producing buggy software that the game companies who produce gams for the Xbox are going to make all sort of bugs themselves.
To my knowledge, no game had a patch for Xbox yet. Games are generally well made and don't contain show stoppers bugs. Mainly glitches, but that's to be expected on all games, either Xbox, PS2, PC or GC.
Except Enter the Matrix, which I've heard is bug ridden. And not developped by Microsoft.
vehicular combat added into the stealth action ;)
Where's the stealth in a siege tank? I know, I know, it's not all about the vehicules.
Yeah, I read about this game. It's definitely on my rental list. The only think that seams missing from these screenshots are shadows. I've been playing a lot of Splinter Cell lately, and all I can say is : Give me my stencil shadows!!! :p
I generally I'm an Xbox supporter (especially since I own one, and bought Soul Caliber yesterday, best looking game ever), but now that Nintendo has a two or three hundred thousand lead over Xbox in International sales, I see this price drop as very bad for Microsoft. I hope they won't have Halo 2 and Project Gotham 2, two games that the first iteration sell a gazillion copies, rushed in effort to sell more boxes, since these are two games I'm been waiting for since I bought the console 5 months ago.
I bet that people who buy GameCubes don't give a rat's ass about Eidos or Akklaim ending their support for the CG. Hell, I know that if I owned a gamecube, I would be playing only the Nintendo games. I'd leave the cross-plaform games to my Xbox.
So I don't see Nintendo as being less and less a player. It has less and less games, but hey, who cares if Akklaim never makes another Mortal Kombat or Eidos never makes another Tomb Raider for the GC?
Japanese anime (especially OVAs) are often straight to video, so it doesn't mean it's going to suck.
The reason behind that is simple. When Square released Final Fantasy 1, they were in deep financial troubles and they thought it would be their last game, so they called it Final Fantasy. The rest is history.
FF : The spirits within, made 62 millions according to IMDB. Don't forget those worldwide sales. Sites like Yahoo only mention domestic sales. Movies that seem like a failure because they generated only a couple of millions (Like Johnny English) in the US sometimes are big successes overseas, making over one hundred million. Still, they didn't make enough money to cover the cost of the movie, they still made a whopping 79 million dollars on the DVD sales of FF:TSW, and then you have 149 million, so the movie must not have lost that much money.
... 1.2x10^12 bytes or 1.2x1024^4 bytes?
... is how they could say 3 weeks before a game launches that it would be ready, and two weeks after they realise they still have another 2 months to work on the game?
Unless he was teasing us with the September 30th launch date. It's dissapointing, since I would expect that sort of behavior by a marketing person or a lawyer, but not a game programmer.
If they said 5 months ago that it would be ready on the 30th, and now announced it was going to hit the shelves in two months, I wouldn't mind, I mean, you can't always predict things like this. But now?
Maybe they saw the last Doom3 demo and decided to improve a little more?
at release. TF2 is still vaporware
:p
I think the only software that wasn't vaporware this past few years from Valve was "Steam".
Hu hu hu.
Obviously, I forgot to mention those were canadian dollars.
I think the original NES cost a little more than that. I remember my parents buying me the NES/Mario/DuckHunt/Zapper bundle for 200$ at the time.
One that gave me a really big laugh was when when you clicked over and over on the Observer and heard "I sense a soul in search of answers!" from Diablo 1.
... and thinking after all those years he's the best vilain in videogame history, I'd say his laugh his the sound I remember the most from past video games experience. That, and the Mario Bros's theme.
Stupid companies are everwhere, that I have to hand to you. Thing is, the service can be really great in some other countries, like in Canada. Over here, you can get a unlimited uncapped Internet cable access at 60CAN$ a month with Videotron. Maybe you should consider moving here. ;)
What if I want to send video of my kids school play to my parents, ready for them to burn with their new DVD-R. There's my 3-5 gb of uploading right there.
Yes you're right, but honestly, I don't think you'd find it really viable to send a 5 gig video file to someone. I recently uploaded 100 megs to someone and it took an hour. Even if I had 10 times the speed, it would still take me around half a day to send the file. But you're right, it can be done. Now, I don't agree that ISP should not put a cap because one out of a ten thousand people are sending 5 gig video files. It's like saying stores should always have size 18 shoes in stock because some people wear size 18 shoes.
What if I want to subscribe to divx.com or one of those places that makes movies available for download?
Well, I guess a streamed movie is about 700 megs. So technically, I could download as many as 20 movies in a month, which I bet is a lot more than what the majority of people are going to rent in a 3 to 6 month period. Again, this is a pretty hardcore use of your connection.
Or iTunes or rhapsody or streaming radio, for that matter.
While I highly doubt you can BUY 15 gigs of music in one month, I think streaming music is pretty much falls in the same category as multiplayer gaming on the Internet, as a steady flow of data is coming to and going from your PC. And I agree with you, that is the kind of usage than is probably prohibitted by download caps. I haven't done the maths, but I'm sure you could stream more than a few gigs a week.
But of course, counter argumenting each of your point is useless, since we probably have different opinions of the subject and you're more than likely to come up with some other clever idea but. There will always be people who have special needs (even streaming music for 8 hours a day should be considered a special need), and that why my cable modem provider has an uncapped service, and it costs 60.00CAN$/month compared to the normal 39.99CAN$/month. Now if others ISPs follow, everyone will be happy.
Two or three years ago you would have been right to say that downloading TV episodes could be somewhat legal, but as complete season come out on DVDs now (think 24 which completed last season 2 last spring and the full season 2 DVD came out two or three weeks ago), I think we'll soon see TV companies looking for filetraders like movie and music studios are doing right now.
People can try to have a clear concience by saying that they can't buy them in North America, but the truth is someone who would have waited a year could have rented the full season of XYZ at the local anime video store. In a way, you can still say that that person has done something illegal, since by downloading the subbed-episodes, he or she hasn't paid a penny to the creators of the show when said product was realeased a year and a half later.
Now, we could talk about import prices that are ridiculously high (40.00CAN$ for 3 half-hour episodes of a 24 episode anime) and the time it takes to cross over seas, but fact is that, LEGALLY, you still have done something wrong. Morally, well... that's a whole other debate according to some sources...
I bet you are referring to Bell Canada. I find it hillarious that now they use the unlimited download argument as an incentive for customers to switch to Bell Canada.
If I had the cash, I'd buy an XBox in addition to my GBA. Meanwhile, the GBA (SP, actually) is my primary console, and my DreamCast mostly sits in the cabinet. :)
Interresting, since I was telling myself exactly the opposite the other day. I own an Xbox, and if I had money for another console, I'd go with the GBA-SP.
Since day one about 6 years ago when I subscribed to the local cable Internet connection in Montreal, Canada, I've been subject to download caps. It started off with 6 gigs of download and 1 gig of upload a month. Downloads were 300k/sec max and uploads were capped at 15k/sec. Over the years, the service has IMPROVED (well, competition helped a lot for that to happen) and now I have 450k/sec in download and 50k/sec in upload, plus I get 15 gigs in download and 5 gigs in upload. Now, I wonder what legal uses people are making of 15 gigs a month.
Personnally, the only times I was able to download over 3 gigs in a month is when I decided to download all the Alias episodes so I could start watching the show on ABC this season. I did the same in the past with 24, Smallville and That 70's Show.
Otherwise, I mostly watch trailers on Apple.com and video trailers off Gamespot or Xbox.com, read the news and do instant messenging. That typically sums up to about 2 gigs of usage in download. And I use the Internet often. So, what can you people legally do with 13 others gigs of download? Yeah, I know, Linux distributions are 2 gigs now and VNC is pretty bandwidth intensive, but I bet more than 99% of broadband users don't give a flying squirrel about VNC or Linux and thus have no LEGAL use of 15 gigs a month. With only maybe the exception of multiplayer games, are there really any reasons to have 15 gigs a month in download?
Of course, if you're into heavy music, movie and software piracy, I'm sure that 15 gigs a month is not enough for you. Especially since the only people I hear complaining about download and upload caps are the ones who are using their connection for illegal activities. Me, I complain only when I have to wait another month to download the last 3 Alias episodes. But it's over now, and I'm back to my normal Internet usage.
So, is capping really THAT bad?
You're right when you say that Microsoft in itself didn't make Halo and Project Gotham Racing, but since these games are distributed by Microsoft, my guess is that these games fall under the 2nd party kind of game, which is more profitable to Microsoft than games published by Namco or Capcom.
Here you go.
I wasn't aware though that platinum hits were only for games that sold over 350,000 copies and not a million. So maybe some I named weren't million sellers then.
Then, after a little digging on the Xbox website, here are the million sellers from Microsoft Studios :
Amped
Blinx : The time sweeper
Bloodwake
Oddworld : Munch Odysee
Rallysport Challenge
There may be some others, but they're not on the Platinum Hits collection yet, like Halo for example.
What do you mean Microsoft only has Halo as 1rst party title?
:
Taken from their website
Inside Pitch 2003
Midtown Madness 3
NBA Inside drive 2003/2004
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Halo
Mechassault
Sudeki
Project Gotham Racing 1 and 2
True Fantasy Live Online
NHL Fever 2004
Voodoo Vince
Top Spin
Fable
Kamero
Kung Fu Chaos
Brute Force
BC
Rallisport Challenge
Counter-Strike (well, they are distributing it)
Crimson Skies
Nightcaster
And the list continues...
Okay, so not all of these games are million sellers (at least, Halo, Nightcaster and Project Gotham are), but Microsoft has a lot of first party titles and a lot of them are interresting.