To be fair, Will Wright hasn't released anything this year, and those are THIS YEAR's most influential game personalities, and he hasn't released anything this year, tough we heard a lot about Spore. But Spore is only hype and vapor right now, it hasn't shipped. He will definitely make the list next year tough. if the game is any good.
That being said, I'm not going to read the article because I simply don't care.
It's not like there's much comparison between Gears of War and Wolfenstein 3D (or perhaps more fairly, Quake)
I couldn't agree less. Not even considering that the gameplay is not shown from the same perspetive (Gears is 3rd person, Quake is 1rst), the pacing of both games is very different. And the gameplay mechanics, mostly the cover, the reloading and the realistic movement (the guys walk and run at human speeds, unlike Quake and Unreal series) make those two games VERY different. If you want to compare Quake to something and show that FPSes haven't evolved gameplay-wise, you dont' have to look further than Quake 4 or from what I saw on the 360 demo FEAR. FEAR seems to have a really nice story tough, which Quake didn't have. (Did it even have one???)
I'd love to see a new 2D side-scrolling installment of Castlevania or Zelda
Well, if you consider the DS to be the next gen of portable gaming (the PSP being the portable's space Jaguar), then you will find your 2D Zeldas and Castlevanias in there, looking better than ever.
Well, you could make the game for the PC using the 360 controller and then pitch it to Microsoft, saying : "I am interrested to selling this on Marketplace. Let's make a deal." And apparently this is what Microsoft is looking for, so it could work.
It's called hibernation. Use it. Laptops and desktops have had it for years. I never turn my Windows machine down. I always send it in hibernation. My computer has been running for a month like this. Next time I actually reboot is probably when I BSOD or install a new driver.
As for TVs, and VCR, they are wayyyyyyyy simpler. That's the reason they turn on so quickly.
You also need to have better hardware support. Everytime I get a new computer, I have problems running Linux on it. There's always something. On my previous computer it was my integrated sound. This time it's my ATI video card. There's always something that needs tweaking and I lose hours trying to figure it out and lose patience and reinstall Windows where it takes me 2 or 3 hours to setup everything correctly, simply installing drivers and then letting Windows Update do it's thing. It's not quick, but patching and fixing Windows is a brain dead thing and you just have to go through the motions and it's done.
And if the Net is the platform of the future for applications (and that's a very big IF I wouldn't put my money on, but hey, for the sake of the discussion, let's assume that what Google is offering is going to replace Office and whatever), you'll still need something to run your browser on. And your games. And store you stuff. Linux? Yeah right, I think I've read that Linux has been ready for primetime (meaning the desktop) like 5 years in a row now on Slashdot and it still isn't. Windows is going to be here for a while.
I didn't read Bungie wanted to do exactly with this, but maybe their are only looking for stability issues and to stress test the servers? In that case, you want fanboys who have nothing else to do with their lives because they are going to just play and play and play and hammer your servers and stress the code. Besides, BETA is normally a phase when all the features are done, you are simply fixing bugs.
And judging from how much Halo 2's multiplayer is loved by almost everyone, I'm pretty sure Bungie has a good clue on what to do for H3.
Detecting Tailgaters With Lasers I was scrolling the main page quickly and read "Detecting ALIGATORS with lasers" instead and "laser-mounted sharks" detecting aligators just popped inside my head. I need to get out more.
Thats half the reason right there that Nintendo made a console that -forces- developers to give up on the fancy graphics.
The problem with that statement is that there already was a lot of crappy games on the GameCube (and other consoles) before, and the Wii is 2-3 times more powerful. According to your reasoning, if companies didn't invest in fun before, why would they now?
It's because game companies are now incapable of producing games so good you'd spend days of your life crusing and screaming in frustration and still count the game as among the best you've ever played.
You should try Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. It's easily one of the best game for the system and it's difficulty is legendary at the higher difficulty level. The enemies are not cheap. When you die, you messed up, the AI didn't cheat on you. Ohhhhh the hours cursing after that game.
And if you feel retro, you can unlock the original NES games for even more pain.
Well, that image was 720P, and I personally prefer the way Marcus looks in the game. The ingame version looks more bad-ass than this screenshot. As for the rest, you may be right, I only saw gameplay trailers of GoW before buying it, so the graphical hype didn't seem overblown to me.
Besides, GoW right now on the 360 looks better than what Bungie's screenshots (which we have no idea if they are doctored or not) for Halo 3. It only feels like a higher resolution version of Halo2. The lighting hasn't evolved much it seems.
I agree that the complete experience if waaaaaaayyy better on the 360, the online portion is really well executed on the 360, but if you are comparing them and trying to justify the 50$ tag, the comparison needs to be made on what that 50$ gets you. But hey, that's just me.
Anyway, in the end, anyone with 250$ and a 360 wins over a PS3 with free online play. 250$ over five years is nothing in online fees. My high-speed cable Internet access costs almost 40CAN$ a month (20 gigs download, 10 upload, 500kiloBytes/sec downstream, 80k/sec upstream). That extra 6$ is not that much more.
Maybe. Doesn't change the fact that his comparison was unfair. He should compared the the Silver membership to what Sony offers or in other words, compare MS's free offering to Sony's free offering. Sony has free online play, and MS has better integration between games and friend lists. I've only had a Gold account for a month now (got it a week or so before GoW came out), but so far free online play would rank higher for me than a buddy list. I can always call my friend on the phone and ask him if he wants to play a game. But at least with MS, you know that every single multiplayer game is going to have invites and voice chat. That's something to consider.
Acutally... I have a 360, and while I hope the PS3 fails because of price and shoving Blu-Ray down our throat, your post is far from being impartial. You seem to like your Xbox quite a lot.
EVERYTHING you are mentionning is available for free with XBox Live Silver. You can chat with your friend who's playing online for free even tough you are not Gold, you just won't be able to play the game with him/her. The ONLY advantages of the Gold account are
1) early access to some content (multiplayer demos, betas and some trailers and movies) 2) online multiplayer 3) receive online game invites for multiplayer gaming
Everything else is free. As a silver member, I can see what you are doing, where, what you've played, everything. I just can't play it with you online.
Sorry, I should have been clearer, I meant "Give me a version of the "iTunes Store" that doesn't have DRM". Tough, as I pointed to someone else, I wasn't aware about the extra DRM the Zune puts on your files. That's a new low I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
... how many libraries of congress can this puppy print per hour?
This reminds me of an old Penny-Arcade strip.
Add to that film companies who composite and edit their movies, ads, video clips in Toxik, Combustion, Smoke, Flame and Inferno.
Does Microsoft make money of IE? No. They give it away for free, while throwing butt-loads of money developing it
As long as people are not trying alternatives and using Microsoft software, they are making money. IE is one part of that strategy.
To be fair, Will Wright hasn't released anything this year, and those are THIS YEAR's most influential game personalities, and he hasn't released anything this year, tough we heard a lot about Spore. But Spore is only hype and vapor right now, it hasn't shipped. He will definitely make the list next year tough. if the game is any good.
That being said, I'm not going to read the article because I simply don't care.
It's not like there's much comparison between Gears of War and Wolfenstein 3D (or perhaps more fairly, Quake)
I couldn't agree less. Not even considering that the gameplay is not shown from the same perspetive (Gears is 3rd person, Quake is 1rst), the pacing of both games is very different. And the gameplay mechanics, mostly the cover, the reloading and the realistic movement (the guys walk and run at human speeds, unlike Quake and Unreal series) make those two games VERY different. If you want to compare Quake to something and show that FPSes haven't evolved gameplay-wise, you dont' have to look further than Quake 4 or from what I saw on the 360 demo FEAR. FEAR seems to have a really nice story tough, which Quake didn't have. (Did it even have one???)
Maybe you should stay away from one dollar strippers. Just in case you might catch something.
I'd love to see a new 2D side-scrolling installment of Castlevania or Zelda
Well, if you consider the DS to be the next gen of portable gaming (the PSP being the portable's space Jaguar), then you will find your 2D Zeldas and Castlevanias in there, looking better than ever.
Well, you could make the game for the PC using the 360 controller and then pitch it to Microsoft, saying : "I am interrested to selling this on Marketplace. Let's make a deal." And apparently this is what Microsoft is looking for, so it could work.
It's called hibernation. Use it. Laptops and desktops have had it for years. I never turn my Windows machine down. I always send it in hibernation. My computer has been running for a month like this. Next time I actually reboot is probably when I BSOD or install a new driver.
As for TVs, and VCR, they are wayyyyyyyy simpler. That's the reason they turn on so quickly.
You also need to have better hardware support. Everytime I get a new computer, I have problems running Linux on it. There's always something. On my previous computer it was my integrated sound. This time it's my ATI video card. There's always something that needs tweaking and I lose hours trying to figure it out and lose patience and reinstall Windows where it takes me 2 or 3 hours to setup everything correctly, simply installing drivers and then letting Windows Update do it's thing. It's not quick, but patching and fixing Windows is a brain dead thing and you just have to go through the motions and it's done.
You are right. The problem is the other order of magnitude is pirating the games. Those are gamers too. And they love their Windows for that.
And if the Net is the platform of the future for applications (and that's a very big IF I wouldn't put my money on, but hey, for the sake of the discussion, let's assume that what Google is offering is going to replace Office and whatever), you'll still need something to run your browser on. And your games. And store you stuff. Linux? Yeah right, I think I've read that Linux has been ready for primetime (meaning the desktop) like 5 years in a row now on Slashdot and it still isn't. Windows is going to be here for a while.
I didn't read Bungie wanted to do exactly with this, but maybe their are only looking for stability issues and to stress test the servers? In that case, you want fanboys who have nothing else to do with their lives because they are going to just play and play and play and hammer your servers and stress the code. Besides, BETA is normally a phase when all the features are done, you are simply fixing bugs.
And judging from how much Halo 2's multiplayer is loved by almost everyone, I'm pretty sure Bungie has a good clue on what to do for H3.
Detecting Tailgaters With Lasers
I was scrolling the main page quickly and read "Detecting ALIGATORS with lasers" instead and "laser-mounted sharks" detecting aligators just popped inside my head. I need to get out more.
Thats half the reason right there that Nintendo made a console that -forces- developers to give up on the fancy graphics.
The problem with that statement is that there already was a lot of crappy games on the GameCube (and other consoles) before, and the Wii is 2-3 times more powerful. According to your reasoning, if companies didn't invest in fun before, why would they now?
It's because game companies are now incapable of producing games so good you'd spend days of your life crusing and screaming in frustration and still count the game as among the best you've ever played.
You should try Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. It's easily one of the best game for the system and it's difficulty is legendary at the higher difficulty level. The enemies are not cheap. When you die, you messed up, the AI didn't cheat on you. Ohhhhh the hours cursing after that game.
And if you feel retro, you can unlock the original NES games for even more pain.
Well, that image was 720P, and I personally prefer the way Marcus looks in the game. The ingame version looks more bad-ass than this screenshot.
As for the rest, you may be right, I only saw gameplay trailers of GoW before buying it, so the graphical hype didn't seem overblown to me.
Besides, GoW right now on the 360 looks better than what Bungie's screenshots (which we have no idea if they are doctored or not) for Halo 3. It only feels like a higher resolution version of Halo2. The lighting hasn't evolved much it seems.
Huh? Seriously? I think the game actually looks better than the screenshot. Don't know what you are complaining about.
And for the record. Resistance is nowhere near Gears in terms of graphics.
Three stand out games and a bunch of other really, really ordinary titles doesn't really scream greatness to me.
To me Rare is best summed up as Killer Instinct 2. God I loved that game. I hope they're making a new one for the 360.
This should sound familiar to Canadians.
I was just about to point this out since I'm from Canada. I wonder if we are double fined on the Zune over here then?
I agree that the complete experience if waaaaaaayyy better on the 360, the online portion is really well executed on the 360, but if you are comparing them and trying to justify the 50$ tag, the comparison needs to be made on what that 50$ gets you. But hey, that's just me.
Anyway, in the end, anyone with 250$ and a 360 wins over a PS3 with free online play. 250$ over five years is nothing in online fees. My high-speed cable Internet access costs almost 40CAN$ a month (20 gigs download, 10 upload, 500kiloBytes/sec downstream, 80k/sec upstream). That extra 6$ is not that much more.
Maybe. Doesn't change the fact that his comparison was unfair. He should compared the the Silver membership to what Sony offers or in other words, compare MS's free offering to Sony's free offering. Sony has free online play, and MS has better integration between games and friend lists. I've only had a Gold account for a month now (got it a week or so before GoW came out), but so far free online play would rank higher for me than a buddy list. I can always call my friend on the phone and ask him if he wants to play a game. But at least with MS, you know that every single multiplayer game is going to have invites and voice chat. That's something to consider.
Acutally... I have a 360, and while I hope the PS3 fails because of price and shoving Blu-Ray down our throat, your post is far from being impartial. You seem to like your Xbox quite a lot.
EVERYTHING you are mentionning is available for free with XBox Live Silver. You can chat with your friend who's playing online for free even tough you are not Gold, you just won't be able to play the game with him/her. The ONLY advantages of the Gold account are
1) early access to some content (multiplayer demos, betas and some trailers and movies)
2) online multiplayer
3) receive online game invites for multiplayer gaming
Everything else is free. As a silver member, I can see what you are doing, where, what you've played, everything. I just can't play it with you online.
Sorry, I should have been clearer, I meant "Give me a version of the "iTunes Store" that doesn't have DRM". Tough, as I pointed to someone else, I wasn't aware about the extra DRM the Zune puts on your files. That's a new low I guess.