The outcome was pre-determined. I knew what was going to happen, I could tell how it was going to end. It was predictable. Remember, I didn't know the story.
The whole thing where you think that Gollum was killed, then he comes back right at the climax - cheesy.
I found the Hobbits to be very annoying, especially Sam. They were just too corny for me.
Battle scenes - ugh. Sure, they were fantastic, but bordered on cheesy. Oh no, we are about to be defeated AGAIN. Whee, here come some eagles to save us. It just got a little tired.
I know a lot of people hold this story very dear and may take offense at my comments (I am sure I'll be modded appropriately), but I am looking at the MOVIE with no pre-conceptions. If anything, I watched the trilogy to see what all the hype was about. I still really don't know.
Most of your problems with the movie come from (more than likely) misconceptions of what the Lord of the Rings is. The story was written primarily for children. This alone tends to lead to it being predictable, at least in my opinion.
Gollum's return had some purpose, and although there's some cheese involved in that, I think most people seem to have missed it completely.
The hobbits lost quite a bit in the movie, but again the books were written for children, and some of the cheese shines through in everything the hobbits really are. Then again, Tolkein seems to have really believed that the hobbits were everything good in humanity.
Realistically, I don't think many people really come away from the books with a good impression unless they can get through them at a young age, and it's not surprising to see some people come from the movies the same way (but the movies have the effects to pull it off with those that spend less time analyzing a movie, and work well with those that read the books and tend to fill in the rest in their own heads). In the end, though, what really contributes to some of the problems with the whole thing is that almost everyone that's done anything in fantasy since the 1950s has ripped something from LotR.
Nobody's claiming that Rare made *good* games during their last years with Nintendo, they just pumped them out at a respectable rate compared to that of, say, Silicon Knights (the only game they've published in the last several years is Eternal Darkness). The trick is to keep them coming that fast, and have them be good, too.
And the point is that unless you severely inflate the size of the company and maintain seperate development studios within the company (ie like Nintendo's several development divisions), you get crap when you increase the output. It's very easy to make games quickly when quality is less important.
In any case, regardless of what Nintendo does right now, any game that goes into development today isn't likely to be on a shelf before the middle of next year, unless it's crap. Almost everything Nintendo could possibly do to help the Cube that involves game development has to have already been done. Anything else involving game development will probably be focused on the next console.
If you bought an Xbox with hopes to play games like Kirby's Air Ride, then you are a marketer's worst nightmare.
Especially because Kirby is owned by Nintendo, the games are made by Nintendo, so every marketer would hope that someone wanting the game would know, because of their marketing efforts, that it's a Nintendo game. As a Nintendo game, like every other Nintendo game since the NES was released, it's on a Nintendo console.
XBox owners only have a reason to complain about exclusive titles because there's a much lower percentage of exclusive titles than either of the other systems. This is exactly why the XBox was the third of the current-generation consoles I purchased (it simply didn't have enough titles I couldn't play on my PS2; the first was the DreamCast). I bought my first Cube because $150 wasn't bad and I wanted to play a half dozen or so games that had already been released (interestingly, the half dozen mark seems to be where I buy most consoles, but at $150 I really don't care as long as it has something really good). I bought the second Cube at the $99 mark w/ Zelda bundle because it allowed me to put it in the bedroom, where my gf can play Animal Crossing without tying up the TV with the rest of the consoles attached to it.
So here's a politician who says someone has the right to do something, but in practically the same breath says that the thing is wrong. How long will it be before some politician (I wouldn't put it past Lieberman himslf) says that the rights themselves should be eliminated? And this is an election year, too, so any slippery slope that may exist has been lathered down with extra suck-up grease by pinwheels who want to sound like they're responding to issues (even invented ones).
And with this being Lieberman, and an election year, he's naturally toned down his rhetoric. If he wasn't in the national spotlight trying to pick up a nomination for the presidency, or, like 4 years ago, trying to support someone trying to win the presidency, he would be holding hearings in Congress about the evils of GTA rather than putting in that minor portion about their right to make that kind of game.
The real problem in politics is when someone in a party that doesn't normally support these types of things finds arguments that sound good to his or her party. Once his own party is on board, it's very easy to pass legislation, because the opposing party made the boat to begin with, he just jumped on and built a ramp. The Republicans have an almost scary platform when it comes to legislating morality, but it's not until key members of the Democrat party come over that things actually happen (pro-life reforms put into play by Clinton & friends continued by Bush, the PMRC founded by Tipper Gore, etc). The Republicans generally keep out of this because it's seen as a corporate issue, something they generally stay out of, but when a Democrat brings it to the table, people don't pay as much attention to the votes and statements made by the opposing party.
In any case, I won't be voting for Bush or anyone up for the Democrats' nomination. There's bound to be someone in one of the third parties that understands that the government shouldn't be spending money on this.
I think its fair statement to say that the GBA will probably be home to the 'next-generation' of turn based strategy games. The successes are hard to deny; Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and now Fire Emblem (Zero for long time fans).
If you haven't checked them out yet, you might want to try Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis and Onimusha Tactics for the GBA. Both are more in the style of FFTA, but offer significant differences to justify owning each of them (assuming you're enough of a strategy RPG junky to play through 4 or 5 of these games at a time). I'd be hard pressed to choose one over another, though I've probably spent the most time with Tactics Ogre (which is significantly better than the PS1 game I have in that particular series).
How about if the developer decides thay want you to buy the new game?
Valve: "Now that HL2 is out, we can't see any reason you would want to play HL1, so we're disabling the servers that verify keys for online play. Have fun playing alone!" You: "What!?!........How!?!?.....DAMMIT!!!"
(AFAIK, HL1 can't be disabled that easily, but it's just an example.)
HL1 can easily be disabled, but only for online play (then again, I don't like the single player portion of HL). If Valve wanted to force all of their users to Steam, they'd simply have to have Won shut off the HL auth servers. This is even more interesting because other games (Soldier of Fortune, iirc) haven't had Won servers authorizing them for quite some time.
Putting the control of your legally purchased games in the hands of the developers is crazy. As you said, they're concerned with profits. People playing the obsolete "Game '99" doesn't make them profits. Purchases of "Game '04" does.
I agree, but we've been on that slippery slope for a while now, and Valve has been pushing people down it since their first release. The problems with Won authentication for Half-Life would be legendary, if it weren't for the fact that Half-Life broke sales records and smashed records for the number of people playing online fps games.
The only situation where this system is acceptable is the MMO game, where the game cannot be played offline anyways. The MMO structure puts all control in the hands of the company anyways. The only caveat I would put is to allow users to download the game for free, as they have to pay to play it anyways.
I agree, but the only thing I can do right now is decide what games I do or do not buy, and lately my PC game purchases have been pretty minimal.
Beth: We're talking about a new type of semiconductor memory that will hold up to one gigabit of memory. This is the software storage method. We will use a new type of semiconductor memory that will be able to hold up to 1 gigabit of memory which is roughly 8 times the storage capacity of the current GBA semiconductor memory. With an increased amount of storage in a small package, we think this semiconductor memory will allow us to maintain our stellar anti-shock protection while keeping the size and weight of the portable device to a minimum. It's not going to be optical discs.
No anti-skip mentioned, though I'm sure the possibility of skipping with optical discs is what was being referred to (or that last sentence wouldn't have been there). It's pretty pointless if taken alone, but if you see it as a forward-looking statement aimed at the PSP, it makes a bit more sense. "See, our system doesn't skip in a moving car, even off-road", yeah, because it uses a cartridge, gee, that must've taken some real work to manage.
And even if the majority party chairman does the hiring, I'm sure the minority party isn't completely out of the loop
And even if they were completely out of the loop, why bother keeping party-related documents on a committee server? Not to excuse any wrong-doing that may have occurred, but who in their right mind wouldn't expect someone in the opposing party to try to access party documents on a server to which they have open access? At the very least short-term staff and others low on the pecking order might try to access such documents simply to try to gain some favour with the party.
So they were protected (perhaps not too well), and it was a vulnerablity that let the GOP in.
The story didn't give enough detail to really say that. Of course, it's also unlikely that we'll ever really hear any detail on what exactly happened, just a lot of "Republicans this and Democrats that" crap.
Beyond the vague descriptions, I'm not exactly happy to take at face value reports that the poor Democrats were being spied on by the cracker/hacker Republicans from a paper openly supporting a Democrat's presidential campaign (well, I guess it could be worse, they could decide not to link to a story that they're supporting the campaign on their front page).
It means one of two things: 1) The gameboy doesn't need anti-shock properties, it just naturally has them simply because it doesn't use anything that's especially sensitive to shock (in the sense of vibration, not electrical shock)
2) They're talking about the ability to drop the gameboy and have no problems, though I wouldn't test this myself and imagine the screen would have more problems than anything else, with or without protection.
Wasn't the great thing about frontlighting is that you could still see it in the sun?
I thought the front lit screen was much better then most backlit screens I have used.
I've generally found the reverse to be true. Frontlighting works just as well as backlighting in the dark, but frontlighting has more problems with sunlight (probably because the sun and the light come from similar directions).
Also backlighting sucks battery life. Unless it is OLED.
Given Nintendo's history with battery life, I'd imagine they would try to use a similar proportion of battery for lighting as they do in the GBA SP, though obviously they have more screen area to light now (and the screens themselves use the battery, too).
and if it uses a GBA chip but doesn't support compatability I would feel frowny.
I would like it to support backwards compatability, especially if it's got good controls (after all, it's backlit and has 2 screens, but we dont know much more about it), but it's not really crucial to me, as I probably won't get rid of my GBAs anyway.
No, it has frontlighting, and this is specifically mentioned in one of the articles to differentiate between the lighting on this system and the SP. There are some lighting conditions that cause problems with frontlighting that don't with backlighting (though both look best in the dark). I have 2 SPs myself, and think they're great, but would still prefer to have the bright backlit screen I had with the Atari Lynx (too bad it ate batteries, but then AC and cigarette lighter adapters got me through most of my uses for it at that age).
As for the rest of your comments, I hope it's not a touch screen, and if it requires use of a touch screen I will not be buying one. I have this strange thing about wanting to feel the controls I use, and a touch screen that allows pressure sensitivity would just be an extra expense (well, I can hope that they would allow pressure variation in a standard buttons and an analog stick configuration). Additionally, I've never seen a touch screen that works well sensing multiple objects at once (not to say it doesn't exist, I've simply never seen it), meaning that you'd be back to doing 1 thing at a time.
Unfortunately PHP isn't the same way. Sometimes I might slip and type $MyvAr instead of $MyVar,and the code will compile fine but generate bad output because "$MyvAr" is a perfectly valid variable. Then I have to wade through page after page of code to find it because notepad's "Search" function isn't case sensative!
That's not even truly a question of case sensitivity, it's an argument for requiring variable declarations, which is exactly what you do when you set the explicit option in VB. If you have to declare your variables and try to assign to $MyvAr when only $MyVar is declared, the compiler should complain, or at the very least warn you.
There's just no justifyable need to have $foo and $Foo in the same scope, except for personal, ingrained preference to coding style. That's really what it comes down to - "this is the way I learned so that's the way I think it should be".
$Foo $foo = new $Foo(); as most have already pointed out. Or, to make it more obvious: int Int = 0; (or int Int = new int();) which is obviously better for a variable with small scope and little use than int x = 0; (or int x = new int();) because at least you know what the variable is by looking at it, rather than hunting down the definition of x (though good coding will put the definition at the beginning of it's scope and good IDEs will give you a "Go to definition" option).
Many coding standards have exceptions and special cases for using underscores, so after a few years using numerous languages with different groups of people, you may find yourself avoiding using them in code altogether, unless it's part of a library you're calling somewhere.
Yes, I know it's used for "dumb" UI's and prototypes since you get something that you can see and "grab" very quickly, but doing big (> 10.000 lines of source) programs with VB would be insane, IMHO. After all, the "Visual" is followed by "BASIC" which still after all those years means "Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". The language was meant for your first steps in the world of programming, and never was intended to be used for "real" applications.
Realistically, whatever intents there were originally for BASIC, VB.Net is pretty effective as a fairly complete programming language that's good for beginners and useful for real programming tasks. I personally don't use it much [any longer], especially for larger programs, but it's because I'm more fond of C/C++ -style syntax and use C# for most programs that need to be done and debugged in a short timeframe on Windows. In other words, I don't use VB.Net because I don't like to read it, but it's perfectly capable of doing what needs to be done most of the time (especially since it's fairly easy to call C/C++/C#/etc dlls from most.Net languages, including VB).
If this was so awesome, we'd probably have seen it by now. Nothing stopping current games from taking their head-to-head 2-player mode and providing the user with two views, even in one-player mode. Nothing preventing RTSs from dedicating half the screen to a map.
It's not about dedicating half the screen, though, it's about supporting dual-monitor setups. This means setting up your software to talk to 2 video cards (or a dual-head video card which should appear more or less like 2 video cards to the programmer) concurrently, and deciding on what to offer the player for the second view without short-changing the users that don't have a second monitor. On the other hand, with the platform being standardized with 2 monitors which can be used as 1, you simply have to decide whether what you want to present to the user is worth using part (or all) of that second monitor for.
The reality is, if you have X viewing space, at the resolutions we have right now, you want about 4X or 5X space dedicated to your main task. The only thing that this might help with is a form-factor that is not conducive to RTS or FPS (depending on if the screens are arranged vertically or horizontally)... but that's a weakness, not a strength.
With games that typically support multiple monitors, you generally end up with either peripheral views in the second (and third) monitor, or with support views (ie maps and other info). The idea is that the information on the secondary monitor is secondary information. Just because you've extended the view in an FPS to >90 doesn't mean you're always focusing on the second monitor, because you generally will not (unless you have a pair of really small monitors on your computer).
It looks damn cool, but if you really seriously try to think clearly about holding one of these in your hands, seriously playing an RTS, see if you don't start wanting the two screens to become just a bigger integrated view onto the playing field.
Splitting the screen is only useful when the value of the two views is such that BOTH of the following are true: You want to see both screens immediately at all times, AND both screens are so close to equally valuable as to make no difference.
And the developers have the option of using both screens as one or splitting the view. This should encourage developers to use the second screen for valuable information rather than useless things. That being said, your eyes will focus on the area containing the most valuable information, and can still take in the remaining information peripherally, allowing you to shift focus when needed.
Again, if those conditions were true, we'd already be playing games that dedicated half their screen to maps or something.
Except, again, that most people don't have dual-screen/monitor setups, so they'd be adding the feature for minimal use. As it stands, we have context shifts in almost every type of game we play, whether it's for menus, full-screen maps, or whatever. Perhaps RTS games could even have more useful maps if the developers knew that end-users had 2 monitors and they could move the map to full screen on the 2nd monitor.
The console may make it, but after a first generation of games, we will not see "one entire screen dedicated entirely to a map" anymore. Instead, it will be a bigger screen onto the relevant playing field, and while you may be able to pull up a map onto just that screen, you'll have to invoke it, it won't be there full time, and you'll begrudge that extra space, not be thankful the second screen is there for the map. First generation games always fall prey to hype and learn the hard way what really works about the system.
I think we'll see most of the first generation 3rd party games using the 2 screens just as you say, for one big playing field. This will most likely be the easiest way for them to port existing games, even though they have to split the rendering between two processing paths. The second generation gam
I pointed out that there is an Outlook look-alike/work-alike called Evolution that has been around for years, and Linux users do not have the same problem.
Evolution was developed to work and look like Outlook, not Outlook Express, and the reason for that is obvious: Outlook is the primary email client used in business, and Evolution was designed as a replacement for business email (especially in a setting where Exchange is used as the server).
Yes, yes, we've heard it hundreds of times: Anyone who has the latest version of *whatever* and knows how to admin a Windows box is relatively safe. Well, that description doesn't fit most folks, and it has nothing to do with my original comment.
So you think it's perfectly ok to continue blaming Microsoft for mistakes they made in the past, and not give them credit for fixing the problems? What happens if Linux does manage to gain some space in the desktop and you get people using the OS as root, do we get to blame Linus or whoever developed a particular portion of the system when computers start going down because of 5-year-old security holes? Windows has automatic updates which also handles updates for Outlook Express, but in order for people to even have that feature they have to have updated their system at some point in the last 4 years, so I guess we can't expect people to protect themselves, we should find some other way, like banning them from the networks.
In any case, I'm used to at least seeing the occasional message straggle through with blocked attachments (usually blocked by the mail server long before they get to me) when one of these worms runs wild, but so far Bagle/Beagle has been a no-show. Perhaps the IT department finally started targeting people that perpetuated these things on our network for training and forced updates.
One, the distribution costs fall through the floor. Less money required to distribute the game means more money to develop it -- or it could give games which might not be blockbusters a chance to appeal to their niche market without having to produce a limited-yet-expensive run of boxed games just for those people who want the game. Online distribution is cheap and the savings are passed on to you in one form or another.
With the way most of the developers and publishers have gone to 3rd parties to distribute patches and demos, why does anyone still think it's cheap to distribute online? It's cheaper than distributing boxes, but it's not cheap. Some developers currently cut about $5 off the cost for a download-only version, and many of them will allow you to download now and have the box sent for that extra $5. It stacks up, but if the cost savings are really significant they'll find other ways to spend the money than passing it on to consumers. On the good side, they don't eat as much in publishing costs on titles that don't sell as well as expected, because you can always find a way to use the extra bandwidth. You also have to factor in increased tech support costs for your distribution method, because people will have problems downloading your software and, depending on the methods, other problems they wouldn't normally face with a CD-based installation.
Two, it eliminates the middleman -- the one step that prevents independent game developers from making mad money is that they can't afford to get a box onto the shelves. If you sell content online then you control every aspect from front to back of your game's distribution. Cheaper, more flexible, more suitable for a smaller company. Even if the company contracts out to an 'online distributor', it's still good for independent game developers since you could easily take your hobby and go professional with it via services offered by an online distribution center.
This one I actually agree with, but only in the case of small developers. With the bigger developers you're usually dealing with larger downloads and an increased likelihood to be pushed into whatever publishing method your publisher chooses, unless you're a company like Valve that is mostly self-funded.
Now, the disadvantages.
One, ensuring that you can re-install the game or transfer it to a new machine. This is solvable by having a key system that makes sense -- allowing you to re-download games, allowing you to burn games to a CD, allowing you to jot down an easily accessible game key for later use. It's a minor, minor hurdle and one that can be surmounted if you're willing to loosen (useless) piracy controls. People who want a physical CD can make one themselves and do it for less money.
Actually, you don't have to be willing to loosen piracy controls, your consumers just have to be willing to give up a little more privacy. You can lock the key to a specific user based on their ordering information (name, address, credit card number), so they can request a new download at any time, but they can't play without an internet connection because their key will be checked every time they try to play. Or you go the Steam route and download-as-you-play, meaning you never have all of the content to begin with. Of course, I'm not saying this is the ideal method, simply saying it's among the methods currently in use, and is most appealing to the publishers and (some) developers.
Two, you can't include Infocom-esque extras. Except nobody does this anymore. Your average PC game comes with a paper-sleeved CD, a manual (which is duplicated in PDF format on the CD anyway) and a bunch of pack-in glossy paper promotional flyers. When I get home from the store the first thing I do is throw everything but the disc itself and the manual away. I only keep the manual if there's a key printed in it and there's no electronic copy provided, and even then they tend to pile up on my desk in a useless, rarely accessed stack of booklets.
or at least more people will vote simply because it doesn't involve finding and going to your polling place. It's sometimes quite an odd feeling to roam through an unfamiliar part of the neighborhood and then trying to find a parking spot nearby just to walk into a stranger's garage to vote.
Of course, it could be worse, as I could live in a state that uses a caucus, which just strikes me as a deterrant to voters.
These days, most boxes are fairly useless. Big bulky empty cartons that often don't even have much in the way of a manual. Blizzard is still nice and usually includes a pad of paper or other such in their boxes to show appreciation, but other than that I don't really want a box. Physical media, absolutely, but the boxes in most cases are disposable...
Blizzard's actually gotten better over time, but for the really good boxes they charge more. The Diablo 2 collector's edition had all kinds of fluff when the DVD alone probably would've justified most of the extra cost, and the WarCraft 3 collector's box had a fair amount of high quality fluff to justify it's price (which was, iirc, more than the Diablo 2 collector's box). I still have both of the boxes, and use the Diablo 2 box to store a lot of my other games' manuals (the WC3 box is a little too specialized for that, with an insert fitted for most of the material that goes into it). I stopped actually holding onto most of the boxes when I filled a bookshelf with them, and have a moving box full of manuals that I've been considering disassembling to scan into my computer so that I can actually put the box away for storage instead of keeping it in the computer room. Most of the 'extras' that came with the games are floating around the apartment or in storage boxes, and I almost always have a Blizzard paper pad next to the computer to take notes of various things (work, games, whatever).
I'll always be glad to have the jewel cases (or maybe they can finally move to DVD cases some day) around, though. I want to be able to reach up to that shelf in 5 years and pull out the Doom 3 disc to give it a whirl and remind me of what games were like in 2004, and, hopefully, do it again in another 5 years with whatever games came out in 2009.
Reality for PC Games- publishers have the potential to make more money, and are able to release a more diverse range of games that would otherwise be unprofitable...like EV: Nova. Bigger titles like GalCiv will probably end up selling both ways, but some games will never get published except by direct sales.
I don't think anyone's really complaining about that facet of the matter. I, personally, really enjoy downloadable games now and then, especially for smaller games that I normally wouldn't buy outside of some outrageously large collection with maybe 1 or 2 games I actually want to play. I also like the fact that small developer groups can put out a game online with very little hassle, and possibly bring forward something that otherwise wouldn't have been published.
On the other hand, I'm not going to spend $40-50 on a download-only game. I'd rather have the disc for backup, and I'd rather have the manual and maybe some extras packaged in with it. I'm just as irritated with the increasing practice of reducing what's in the box (smaller to non-existant manuals or manuals on the CD, no extra material, sometimes no jewel cases) as I am with the idea some people (Valve, the makers of the Phantom console, occasionally Microsoft, etc) keep spouting about a future where we don't buy physical media for software and games.
The only major (>$30) purchase of software I've ever made online without having a box sent to me worked out fine, but it eventually came down to having to burn a CD and write the key on the CD itself in order to have a reasonable backup, and eventually the file on the hard drive did become inaccessable due to hardware failure (and an odd combination of hardware that lead to OS corruption when trying to bring my computer back to life).
I won't even buy music online until I can get whatever I want at the same quality as (or better than) the media I would get at the store, and can easily burn that music to CD and convert it to formats of my choosing for other uses. If any of the labels I normally buy music from decides to try to copy protect something I buy in order to prevent me from shifting the media to a format and quality level I choose, I will do my best to get around that protection and strongly reconsider purchasing anything further from them. I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA wanted me to buy my CDs on cassette to play in my car.
Anyway, this comment sortof went in the wrong direction, but in the end the point is still that for downloads to work the installer needs to be easily shifted to physical media, and even then there's often not much reason, for me, to go that route instead of just buying the physical media.
To be fair, he didn't really mention PC games, and specifically mentioned DVD cases as the current standard for the 3 major home consoles being a great benefit.
The worst, imo, were the old PC game boxes, although they left plenty of room for extras (though very few games actually had anything in those boxes).
Therefore, the 2 screen idea has seriously limited potential. I hear "oh, for maps, inventory" etc. So? How hard is it to press a button to bring that up then resume to your game. Exactly the same as having two screens. Both methods involve a change of focus. Even driving a car, looking in the rear view mirror changes where your attention is directed and seriously limits your ability to look at the road ahead.
Why do you look in your rear-view mirror? Do you periodically shift your attention to it or only when needed? I can't speak for everyone, but unless I noticed I haven't looked at it for a while, I only focus on it if something in it catches my eye or I'm changing lanes.
Do you have to focus on HUD overlays in most games to have a good idea of the information on those overlays, even if they're in the corners of the screen where little action is occuring? Most people would say they only focus on that information when they want something very specific from it, but otherwise they're only peripherally aware of it. Adding another screen doesn't require ever-shifting focus, it simply gives you space of which you would be peripherally aware, or may even maintain focus on if the two screens are used as one.
Do you do everything on your computer in full-screen? I know the one thing I tend to always use in full-screen still splits the screen up into several areas to present many useful views of the available data as well as interface elements. It'd be nice to see a game use something like this to move interface elements away from the gameplay screen while presenting more data, but that's not even the most innovative idea possible with this sort of setup.
All of that being said, I'll reserve judgment until this thing ships and has a good number of titles available to play with. It's not just about the hardware, after all (otherwise the PS2 would've flopped), but the games and how the developers use the hardware.
3D games. Yeah, "graphics don't make a game", but they sure sell a console. The Game Boy doesn't have much serious competition now, which is why it can survive as a mostly 2D platform. The N-Gage doesn't count as serious competition.
To date, 3D games have not sold more than a handful of portable consoles. Perhaps in the future, and PSP will probably be the test for that, but it remains to be seen at the moment. You can't automatically equate the home and portable console markets, and the N-Gage doesn't count as serious competition, I agree, but is also proof that 3D doesn't sell a console.
Looking at gaming history, everything gets passed from higher-end hardware to lower-end hardware over time. For example, there was a point where a game like Tetris would be a major feat to implement on an affordable home computer. The "game cycle" tends to run something like this:
HIGH-END PC --> HOME GAME CONSOLE --> PORTABLE CONSOLE --> TRASH CAN
You missed remake in there somewhere, and the fact that there's little transition between home game consoles and gaming PCs (outside of the remake cycle which generally puts very old console games on every platform), in either direction. Currently PC and console games occupy almost completely different market segments, though there's been a recent creep of FPS games onto consoles, and one major hit on the PC RPG style moving to consoles, while RTS games in the PC style remain a PC staple. Platformers and console-style RPGs remain part of the console world with little success for PC ports, though with some minor successes here and there for that style on the PC. Portable consoles also seem to be seeing a real rebirth of some game types that don't do as well on home consoles, especially with 2D graphics. Turn-based strategy and tactical/strategy RPGs have really been doing well on portables, but not as much so on home consoles (though Disgaea got some initial praise).
Unfortunately, these old-school 2D games are approaching the trash can. It's about time that 3D games made their way to the portable console market.
How many 3D games have you played on a 240x160 screen, or even 320x240? Now think about that screen also being a 3 inch diagonal? I have a feeling that if someone does put out a successful portable with 3D graphics capabilities we'll still see a lot of 2D-based games, simply doing 2D gameplay with enhanced graphics made possible by 3D technology, ala Ikaruga and Viewtiful Joe (both of which are beautiful and terribly addictive on the Cube). Even the GBA is *capable* of limited 3D graphics, they simply aren't used very often because a good developer can do more with the power of the console in 2D.
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The outcome was pre-determined. I knew what was going to happen, I could tell how it was going to end. It was predictable. Remember, I didn't know the story.
The whole thing where you think that Gollum was killed, then he comes back right at the climax - cheesy.
I found the Hobbits to be very annoying, especially Sam. They were just too corny for me.
Battle scenes - ugh. Sure, they were fantastic, but bordered on cheesy. Oh no, we are about to be defeated AGAIN. Whee, here come some eagles to save us. It just got a little tired.
I know a lot of people hold this story very dear and may take offense at my comments (I am sure I'll be modded appropriately), but I am looking at the MOVIE with no pre-conceptions. If anything, I watched the trilogy to see what all the hype was about. I still really don't know.
Most of your problems with the movie come from (more than likely) misconceptions of what the Lord of the Rings is. The story was written primarily for children. This alone tends to lead to it being predictable, at least in my opinion.
Gollum's return had some purpose, and although there's some cheese involved in that, I think most people seem to have missed it completely.
The hobbits lost quite a bit in the movie, but again the books were written for children, and some of the cheese shines through in everything the hobbits really are. Then again, Tolkein seems to have really believed that the hobbits were everything good in humanity.
Realistically, I don't think many people really come away from the books with a good impression unless they can get through them at a young age, and it's not surprising to see some people come from the movies the same way (but the movies have the effects to pull it off with those that spend less time analyzing a movie, and work well with those that read the books and tend to fill in the rest in their own heads). In the end, though, what really contributes to some of the problems with the whole thing is that almost everyone that's done anything in fantasy since the 1950s has ripped something from LotR.
Nobody's claiming that Rare made *good* games during their last years with Nintendo, they just pumped them out at a respectable rate compared to that of, say, Silicon Knights (the only game they've published in the last several years is Eternal Darkness). The trick is to keep them coming that fast, and have them be good, too.
And the point is that unless you severely inflate the size of the company and maintain seperate development studios within the company (ie like Nintendo's several development divisions), you get crap when you increase the output. It's very easy to make games quickly when quality is less important.
In any case, regardless of what Nintendo does right now, any game that goes into development today isn't likely to be on a shelf before the middle of next year, unless it's crap. Almost everything Nintendo could possibly do to help the Cube that involves game development has to have already been done. Anything else involving game development will probably be focused on the next console.
If you bought an Xbox with hopes to play games like Kirby's Air Ride, then you are a marketer's worst nightmare.
Especially because Kirby is owned by Nintendo, the games are made by Nintendo, so every marketer would hope that someone wanting the game would know, because of their marketing efforts, that it's a Nintendo game. As a Nintendo game, like every other Nintendo game since the NES was released, it's on a Nintendo console.
XBox owners only have a reason to complain about exclusive titles because there's a much lower percentage of exclusive titles than either of the other systems. This is exactly why the XBox was the third of the current-generation consoles I purchased (it simply didn't have enough titles I couldn't play on my PS2; the first was the DreamCast). I bought my first Cube because $150 wasn't bad and I wanted to play a half dozen or so games that had already been released (interestingly, the half dozen mark seems to be where I buy most consoles, but at $150 I really don't care as long as it has something really good). I bought the second Cube at the $99 mark w/ Zelda bundle because it allowed me to put it in the bedroom, where my gf can play Animal Crossing without tying up the TV with the rest of the consoles attached to it.
So here's a politician who says someone has the right to do something, but in practically the same breath says that the thing is wrong. How long will it be before some politician (I wouldn't put it past Lieberman himslf) says that the rights themselves should be eliminated? And this is an election year, too, so any slippery slope that may exist has been lathered down with extra suck-up grease by pinwheels who want to sound like they're responding to issues (even invented ones).
And with this being Lieberman, and an election year, he's naturally toned down his rhetoric. If he wasn't in the national spotlight trying to pick up a nomination for the presidency, or, like 4 years ago, trying to support someone trying to win the presidency, he would be holding hearings in Congress about the evils of GTA rather than putting in that minor portion about their right to make that kind of game.
The real problem in politics is when someone in a party that doesn't normally support these types of things finds arguments that sound good to his or her party. Once his own party is on board, it's very easy to pass legislation, because the opposing party made the boat to begin with, he just jumped on and built a ramp. The Republicans have an almost scary platform when it comes to legislating morality, but it's not until key members of the Democrat party come over that things actually happen (pro-life reforms put into play by Clinton & friends continued by Bush, the PMRC founded by Tipper Gore, etc). The Republicans generally keep out of this because it's seen as a corporate issue, something they generally stay out of, but when a Democrat brings it to the table, people don't pay as much attention to the votes and statements made by the opposing party.
In any case, I won't be voting for Bush or anyone up for the Democrats' nomination. There's bound to be someone in one of the third parties that understands that the government shouldn't be spending money on this.
I think its fair statement to say that the GBA will probably be home to the 'next-generation' of turn based strategy games. The successes are hard to deny; Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and now Fire Emblem (Zero for long time fans).
If you haven't checked them out yet, you might want to try Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis and Onimusha Tactics for the GBA. Both are more in the style of FFTA, but offer significant differences to justify owning each of them (assuming you're enough of a strategy RPG junky to play through 4 or 5 of these games at a time). I'd be hard pressed to choose one over another, though I've probably spent the most time with Tactics Ogre (which is significantly better than the PS1 game I have in that particular series).
How about if the developer decides thay want you to buy the new game?
Valve: "Now that HL2 is out, we can't see any reason you would want to play HL1, so we're disabling the servers that verify keys for online play. Have fun playing alone!"
You: "What!?!........How!?!?.....DAMMIT!!!"
(AFAIK, HL1 can't be disabled that easily, but it's just an example.)
HL1 can easily be disabled, but only for online play (then again, I don't like the single player portion of HL). If Valve wanted to force all of their users to Steam, they'd simply have to have Won shut off the HL auth servers. This is even more interesting because other games (Soldier of Fortune, iirc) haven't had Won servers authorizing them for quite some time.
Putting the control of your legally purchased games in the hands of the developers is crazy. As you said, they're concerned with profits. People playing the obsolete "Game '99" doesn't make them profits. Purchases of "Game '04" does.
I agree, but we've been on that slippery slope for a while now, and Valve has been pushing people down it since their first release. The problems with Won authentication for Half-Life would be legendary, if it weren't for the fact that Half-Life broke sales records and smashed records for the number of people playing online fps games.
The only situation where this system is acceptable is the MMO game, where the game cannot be played offline anyways. The MMO structure puts all control in the hands of the company anyways. The only caveat I would put is to allow users to download the game for free, as they have to pay to play it anyways.
I agree, but the only thing I can do right now is decide what games I do or do not buy, and lately my PC game purchases have been pretty minimal.
Beth: We're talking about a new type of semiconductor memory that will hold up to one gigabit of memory. This is the software storage method. We will use a new type of semiconductor memory that will be able to hold up to 1 gigabit of memory which is roughly 8 times the storage capacity of the current GBA semiconductor memory. With an increased amount of storage in a small package, we think this semiconductor memory will allow us to maintain our stellar anti-shock protection while keeping the size and weight of the portable device to a minimum. It's not going to be optical discs.
No anti-skip mentioned, though I'm sure the possibility of skipping with optical discs is what was being referred to (or that last sentence wouldn't have been there). It's pretty pointless if taken alone, but if you see it as a forward-looking statement aimed at the PSP, it makes a bit more sense. "See, our system doesn't skip in a moving car, even off-road", yeah, because it uses a cartridge, gee, that must've taken some real work to manage.
And even if the majority party chairman does the hiring, I'm sure the minority party isn't completely out of the loop
And even if they were completely out of the loop, why bother keeping party-related documents on a committee server? Not to excuse any wrong-doing that may have occurred, but who in their right mind wouldn't expect someone in the opposing party to try to access party documents on a server to which they have open access? At the very least short-term staff and others low on the pecking order might try to access such documents simply to try to gain some favour with the party.
So they were protected (perhaps not too well), and it was a vulnerablity that let the GOP in.
The story didn't give enough detail to really say that. Of course, it's also unlikely that we'll ever really hear any detail on what exactly happened, just a lot of "Republicans this and Democrats that" crap.
Beyond the vague descriptions, I'm not exactly happy to take at face value reports that the poor Democrats were being spied on by the cracker/hacker Republicans from a paper openly supporting a Democrat's presidential campaign (well, I guess it could be worse, they could decide not to link to a story that they're supporting the campaign on their front page).
why does the gameboy need anti-shock properties?
It means one of two things:
1) The gameboy doesn't need anti-shock properties, it just naturally has them simply because it doesn't use anything that's especially sensitive to shock (in the sense of vibration, not electrical shock)
2) They're talking about the ability to drop the gameboy and have no problems, though I wouldn't test this myself and imagine the screen would have more problems than anything else, with or without protection.
Wasn't the great thing about frontlighting is that you could still see it in the sun?
I thought the front lit screen was much better then most backlit screens I have used.
I've generally found the reverse to be true. Frontlighting works just as well as backlighting in the dark, but frontlighting has more problems with sunlight (probably because the sun and the light come from similar directions).
Also backlighting sucks battery life. Unless it is OLED.
Given Nintendo's history with battery life, I'd imagine they would try to use a similar proportion of battery for lighting as they do in the GBA SP, though obviously they have more screen area to light now (and the screens themselves use the battery, too).
and if it uses a GBA chip but doesn't support compatability I would feel frowny.
I would like it to support backwards compatability, especially if it's got good controls (after all, it's backlit and has 2 screens, but we dont know much more about it), but it's not really crucial to me, as I probably won't get rid of my GBAs anyway.
GBA-SP has backlighting.
No, it has frontlighting, and this is specifically mentioned in one of the articles to differentiate between the lighting on this system and the SP. There are some lighting conditions that cause problems with frontlighting that don't with backlighting (though both look best in the dark). I have 2 SPs myself, and think they're great, but would still prefer to have the bright backlit screen I had with the Atari Lynx (too bad it ate batteries, but then AC and cigarette lighter adapters got me through most of my uses for it at that age).
As for the rest of your comments, I hope it's not a touch screen, and if it requires use of a touch screen I will not be buying one. I have this strange thing about wanting to feel the controls I use, and a touch screen that allows pressure sensitivity would just be an extra expense (well, I can hope that they would allow pressure variation in a standard buttons and an analog stick configuration). Additionally, I've never seen a touch screen that works well sensing multiple objects at once (not to say it doesn't exist, I've simply never seen it), meaning that you'd be back to doing 1 thing at a time.
Unfortunately PHP isn't the same way. Sometimes I might slip and type $MyvAr instead of $MyVar,and the code will compile fine but generate bad output because "$MyvAr" is a perfectly valid variable. Then I have to wade through page after page of code to find it because notepad's "Search" function isn't case sensative!
That's not even truly a question of case sensitivity, it's an argument for requiring variable declarations, which is exactly what you do when you set the explicit option in VB. If you have to declare your variables and try to assign to $MyvAr when only $MyVar is declared, the compiler should complain, or at the very least warn you.
There's just no justifyable need to have $foo and $Foo in the same scope, except for personal, ingrained preference to coding style. That's really what it comes down to - "this is the way I learned so that's the way I think it should be".
$Foo $foo = new $Foo(); as most have already pointed out. Or, to make it more obvious:
int Int = 0; (or int Int = new int();)
which is obviously better for a variable with small scope and little use than
int x = 0; (or int x = new int();)
because at least you know what the variable is by looking at it, rather than hunting down the definition of x (though good coding will put the definition at the beginning of it's scope and good IDEs will give you a "Go to definition" option).
Many coding standards have exceptions and special cases for using underscores, so after a few years using numerous languages with different groups of people, you may find yourself avoiding using them in code altogether, unless it's part of a library you're calling somewhere.
Yes, I know it's used for "dumb" UI's and prototypes since you get something that you can see and "grab" very quickly, but doing big (> 10.000 lines of source) programs with VB would be insane, IMHO. After all, the "Visual" is followed by "BASIC" which still after all those years means "Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code". The language was meant for your first steps in the world of programming, and never was intended to be used for "real" applications.
.Net languages, including VB).
Realistically, whatever intents there were originally for BASIC, VB.Net is pretty effective as a fairly complete programming language that's good for beginners and useful for real programming tasks. I personally don't use it much [any longer], especially for larger programs, but it's because I'm more fond of C/C++ -style syntax and use C# for most programs that need to be done and debugged in a short timeframe on Windows. In other words, I don't use VB.Net because I don't like to read it, but it's perfectly capable of doing what needs to be done most of the time (especially since it's fairly easy to call C/C++/C#/etc dlls from most
If this was so awesome, we'd probably have seen it by now. Nothing stopping current games from taking their head-to-head 2-player mode and providing the user with two views, even in one-player mode. Nothing preventing RTSs from dedicating half the screen to a map.
It's not about dedicating half the screen, though, it's about supporting dual-monitor setups. This means setting up your software to talk to 2 video cards (or a dual-head video card which should appear more or less like 2 video cards to the programmer) concurrently, and deciding on what to offer the player for the second view without short-changing the users that don't have a second monitor. On the other hand, with the platform being standardized with 2 monitors which can be used as 1, you simply have to decide whether what you want to present to the user is worth using part (or all) of that second monitor for.
The reality is, if you have X viewing space, at the resolutions we have right now, you want about 4X or 5X space dedicated to your main task. The only thing that this might help with is a form-factor that is not conducive to RTS or FPS (depending on if the screens are arranged vertically or horizontally)... but that's a weakness, not a strength.
With games that typically support multiple monitors, you generally end up with either peripheral views in the second (and third) monitor, or with support views (ie maps and other info). The idea is that the information on the secondary monitor is secondary information. Just because you've extended the view in an FPS to >90 doesn't mean you're always focusing on the second monitor, because you generally will not (unless you have a pair of really small monitors on your computer).
It looks damn cool, but if you really seriously try to think clearly about holding one of these in your hands, seriously playing an RTS, see if you don't start wanting the two screens to become just a bigger integrated view onto the playing field.
Splitting the screen is only useful when the value of the two views is such that BOTH of the following are true: You want to see both screens immediately at all times, AND both screens are so close to equally valuable as to make no difference.
And the developers have the option of using both screens as one or splitting the view. This should encourage developers to use the second screen for valuable information rather than useless things. That being said, your eyes will focus on the area containing the most valuable information, and can still take in the remaining information peripherally, allowing you to shift focus when needed.
Again, if those conditions were true, we'd already be playing games that dedicated half their screen to maps or something.
Except, again, that most people don't have dual-screen/monitor setups, so they'd be adding the feature for minimal use. As it stands, we have context shifts in almost every type of game we play, whether it's for menus, full-screen maps, or whatever. Perhaps RTS games could even have more useful maps if the developers knew that end-users had 2 monitors and they could move the map to full screen on the 2nd monitor.
The console may make it, but after a first generation of games, we will not see "one entire screen dedicated entirely to a map" anymore. Instead, it will be a bigger screen onto the relevant playing field, and while you may be able to pull up a map onto just that screen, you'll have to invoke it, it won't be there full time, and you'll begrudge that extra space, not be thankful the second screen is there for the map. First generation games always fall prey to hype and learn the hard way what really works about the system.
I think we'll see most of the first generation 3rd party games using the 2 screens just as you say, for one big playing field. This will most likely be the easiest way for them to port existing games, even though they have to split the rendering between two processing paths. The second generation gam
On an aside, a point I wanted to make about the 128MB of memory announced for this device
They more or less confirmed in one of the articles in this story that it's the cartridge for the system, not anything internal.
I pointed out that there is an Outlook look-alike/work-alike called Evolution that has been around for years, and Linux users do not have the same problem.
Evolution was developed to work and look like Outlook, not Outlook Express, and the reason for that is obvious: Outlook is the primary email client used in business, and Evolution was designed as a replacement for business email (especially in a setting where Exchange is used as the server).
Yes, yes, we've heard it hundreds of times: Anyone who has the latest version of *whatever* and knows how to admin a Windows box is relatively safe. Well, that description doesn't fit most folks, and it has nothing to do with my original comment.
So you think it's perfectly ok to continue blaming Microsoft for mistakes they made in the past, and not give them credit for fixing the problems? What happens if Linux does manage to gain some space in the desktop and you get people using the OS as root, do we get to blame Linus or whoever developed a particular portion of the system when computers start going down because of 5-year-old security holes? Windows has automatic updates which also handles updates for Outlook Express, but in order for people to even have that feature they have to have updated their system at some point in the last 4 years, so I guess we can't expect people to protect themselves, we should find some other way, like banning them from the networks.
In any case, I'm used to at least seeing the occasional message straggle through with blocked attachments (usually blocked by the mail server long before they get to me) when one of these worms runs wild, but so far Bagle/Beagle has been a no-show. Perhaps the IT department finally started targeting people that perpetuated these things on our network for training and forced updates.
One, the distribution costs fall through the floor. Less money required to distribute the game means more money to develop it -- or it could give games which might not be blockbusters a chance to appeal to their niche market without having to produce a limited-yet-expensive run of boxed games just for those people who want the game. Online distribution is cheap and the savings are passed on to you in one form or another.
With the way most of the developers and publishers have gone to 3rd parties to distribute patches and demos, why does anyone still think it's cheap to distribute online? It's cheaper than distributing boxes, but it's not cheap. Some developers currently cut about $5 off the cost for a download-only version, and many of them will allow you to download now and have the box sent for that extra $5. It stacks up, but if the cost savings are really significant they'll find other ways to spend the money than passing it on to consumers. On the good side, they don't eat as much in publishing costs on titles that don't sell as well as expected, because you can always find a way to use the extra bandwidth. You also have to factor in increased tech support costs for your distribution method, because people will have problems downloading your software and, depending on the methods, other problems they wouldn't normally face with a CD-based installation.
Two, it eliminates the middleman -- the one step that prevents independent game developers from making mad money is that they can't afford to get a box onto the shelves. If you sell content online then you control every aspect from front to back of your game's distribution. Cheaper, more flexible, more suitable for a smaller company. Even if the company contracts out to an 'online distributor', it's still good for independent game developers since you could easily take your hobby and go professional with it via services offered by an online distribution center.
This one I actually agree with, but only in the case of small developers. With the bigger developers you're usually dealing with larger downloads and an increased likelihood to be pushed into whatever publishing method your publisher chooses, unless you're a company like Valve that is mostly self-funded.
Now, the disadvantages.
One, ensuring that you can re-install the game or transfer it to a new machine. This is solvable by having a key system that makes sense -- allowing you to re-download games, allowing you to burn games to a CD, allowing you to jot down an easily accessible game key for later use. It's a minor, minor hurdle and one that can be surmounted if you're willing to loosen (useless) piracy controls. People who want a physical CD can make one themselves and do it for less money.
Actually, you don't have to be willing to loosen piracy controls, your consumers just have to be willing to give up a little more privacy. You can lock the key to a specific user based on their ordering information (name, address, credit card number), so they can request a new download at any time, but they can't play without an internet connection because their key will be checked every time they try to play. Or you go the Steam route and download-as-you-play, meaning you never have all of the content to begin with. Of course, I'm not saying this is the ideal method, simply saying it's among the methods currently in use, and is most appealing to the publishers and (some) developers.
Two, you can't include Infocom-esque extras. Except nobody does this anymore. Your average PC game comes with a paper-sleeved CD, a manual (which is duplicated in PDF format on the CD anyway) and a bunch of pack-in glossy paper promotional flyers. When I get home from the store the first thing I do is throw everything but the disc itself and the manual away. I only keep the manual if there's a key printed in it and there's no electronic copy provided, and even then they tend to pile up on my desk in a useless, rarely accessed stack of booklets.
or at least more people will vote simply because it doesn't involve finding and going to your polling place. It's sometimes quite an odd feeling to roam through an unfamiliar part of the neighborhood and then trying to find a parking spot nearby just to walk into a stranger's garage to vote.
Of course, it could be worse, as I could live in a state that uses a caucus, which just strikes me as a deterrant to voters.
These days, most boxes are fairly useless. Big bulky empty cartons that often don't even have much in the way of a manual. Blizzard is still nice and usually includes a pad of paper or other such in their boxes to show appreciation, but other than that I don't really want a box. Physical media, absolutely, but the boxes in most cases are disposable...
Blizzard's actually gotten better over time, but for the really good boxes they charge more. The Diablo 2 collector's edition had all kinds of fluff when the DVD alone probably would've justified most of the extra cost, and the WarCraft 3 collector's box had a fair amount of high quality fluff to justify it's price (which was, iirc, more than the Diablo 2 collector's box). I still have both of the boxes, and use the Diablo 2 box to store a lot of my other games' manuals (the WC3 box is a little too specialized for that, with an insert fitted for most of the material that goes into it). I stopped actually holding onto most of the boxes when I filled a bookshelf with them, and have a moving box full of manuals that I've been considering disassembling to scan into my computer so that I can actually put the box away for storage instead of keeping it in the computer room. Most of the 'extras' that came with the games are floating around the apartment or in storage boxes, and I almost always have a Blizzard paper pad next to the computer to take notes of various things (work, games, whatever).
I'll always be glad to have the jewel cases (or maybe they can finally move to DVD cases some day) around, though. I want to be able to reach up to that shelf in 5 years and pull out the Doom 3 disc to give it a whirl and remind me of what games were like in 2004, and, hopefully, do it again in another 5 years with whatever games came out in 2009.
Reality for PC Games- publishers have the potential to make more money, and are able to release a more diverse range of games that would otherwise be unprofitable...like EV: Nova. Bigger titles like GalCiv will probably end up selling both ways, but some games will never get published except by direct sales.
I don't think anyone's really complaining about that facet of the matter. I, personally, really enjoy downloadable games now and then, especially for smaller games that I normally wouldn't buy outside of some outrageously large collection with maybe 1 or 2 games I actually want to play. I also like the fact that small developer groups can put out a game online with very little hassle, and possibly bring forward something that otherwise wouldn't have been published.
On the other hand, I'm not going to spend $40-50 on a download-only game. I'd rather have the disc for backup, and I'd rather have the manual and maybe some extras packaged in with it. I'm just as irritated with the increasing practice of reducing what's in the box (smaller to non-existant manuals or manuals on the CD, no extra material, sometimes no jewel cases) as I am with the idea some people (Valve, the makers of the Phantom console, occasionally Microsoft, etc) keep spouting about a future where we don't buy physical media for software and games.
The only major (>$30) purchase of software I've ever made online without having a box sent to me worked out fine, but it eventually came down to having to burn a CD and write the key on the CD itself in order to have a reasonable backup, and eventually the file on the hard drive did become inaccessable due to hardware failure (and an odd combination of hardware that lead to OS corruption when trying to bring my computer back to life).
I won't even buy music online until I can get whatever I want at the same quality as (or better than) the media I would get at the store, and can easily burn that music to CD and convert it to formats of my choosing for other uses. If any of the labels I normally buy music from decides to try to copy protect something I buy in order to prevent me from shifting the media to a format and quality level I choose, I will do my best to get around that protection and strongly reconsider purchasing anything further from them. I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA wanted me to buy my CDs on cassette to play in my car.
Anyway, this comment sortof went in the wrong direction, but in the end the point is still that for downloads to work the installer needs to be easily shifted to physical media, and even then there's often not much reason, for me, to go that route instead of just buying the physical media.
To be fair, he didn't really mention PC games, and specifically mentioned DVD cases as the current standard for the 3 major home consoles being a great benefit.
The worst, imo, were the old PC game boxes, although they left plenty of room for extras (though very few games actually had anything in those boxes).
Therefore, the 2 screen idea has seriously limited potential. I hear "oh, for maps, inventory" etc. So? How hard is it to press a button to bring that up then resume to your game. Exactly the same as having two screens. Both methods involve a change of focus. Even driving a car, looking in the rear view mirror changes where your attention is directed and seriously limits your ability to look at the road ahead.
Why do you look in your rear-view mirror? Do you periodically shift your attention to it or only when needed? I can't speak for everyone, but unless I noticed I haven't looked at it for a while, I only focus on it if something in it catches my eye or I'm changing lanes.
Do you have to focus on HUD overlays in most games to have a good idea of the information on those overlays, even if they're in the corners of the screen where little action is occuring? Most people would say they only focus on that information when they want something very specific from it, but otherwise they're only peripherally aware of it. Adding another screen doesn't require ever-shifting focus, it simply gives you space of which you would be peripherally aware, or may even maintain focus on if the two screens are used as one.
Do you do everything on your computer in full-screen? I know the one thing I tend to always use in full-screen still splits the screen up into several areas to present many useful views of the available data as well as interface elements. It'd be nice to see a game use something like this to move interface elements away from the gameplay screen while presenting more data, but that's not even the most innovative idea possible with this sort of setup.
All of that being said, I'll reserve judgment until this thing ships and has a good number of titles available to play with. It's not just about the hardware, after all (otherwise the PS2 would've flopped), but the games and how the developers use the hardware.
3D games. Yeah, "graphics don't make a game", but they sure sell a console. The Game Boy doesn't have much serious competition now, which is why it can survive as a mostly 2D platform. The N-Gage doesn't count as serious competition.
To date, 3D games have not sold more than a handful of portable consoles. Perhaps in the future, and PSP will probably be the test for that, but it remains to be seen at the moment. You can't automatically equate the home and portable console markets, and the N-Gage doesn't count as serious competition, I agree, but is also proof that 3D doesn't sell a console.
Looking at gaming history, everything gets passed from higher-end hardware to lower-end hardware over time. For example, there was a point where a game like Tetris would be a major feat to implement on an affordable home computer. The "game cycle" tends to run something like this:
HIGH-END PC --> HOME GAME CONSOLE --> PORTABLE CONSOLE --> TRASH CAN
You missed remake in there somewhere, and the fact that there's little transition between home game consoles and gaming PCs (outside of the remake cycle which generally puts very old console games on every platform), in either direction. Currently PC and console games occupy almost completely different market segments, though there's been a recent creep of FPS games onto consoles, and one major hit on the PC RPG style moving to consoles, while RTS games in the PC style remain a PC staple. Platformers and console-style RPGs remain part of the console world with little success for PC ports, though with some minor successes here and there for that style on the PC. Portable consoles also seem to be seeing a real rebirth of some game types that don't do as well on home consoles, especially with 2D graphics. Turn-based strategy and tactical/strategy RPGs have really been doing well on portables, but not as much so on home consoles (though Disgaea got some initial praise).
Unfortunately, these old-school 2D games are approaching the trash can. It's about time that 3D games made their way to the portable console market.
How many 3D games have you played on a 240x160 screen, or even 320x240? Now think about that screen also being a 3 inch diagonal? I have a feeling that if someone does put out a successful portable with 3D graphics capabilities we'll still see a lot of 2D-based games, simply doing 2D gameplay with enhanced graphics made possible by 3D technology, ala Ikaruga and Viewtiful Joe (both of which are beautiful and terribly addictive on the Cube). Even the GBA is *capable* of limited 3D graphics, they simply aren't used very often because a good developer can do more with the power of the console in 2D.