So for what platform should a company develop video games if the games are in a genre that doesn't work well with a flat sheet of glass as the only input device
The touchpad isn't the only input device for the WiiU... it's just the only one that comes with it. Incidentally, the WiiU's tablet controller also has an analog stick on it, it's just a pain to hold to use it. The WiiU also supports the WiiU Pro Controller (the one that looks like an Xbox 360 controller) and and Wii-compatible controller including the Wiimote and its addons.
So for what platform should a company develop video games if... the company isn't big enough to attract the attention of Nintendo? (Before you say 2D Boy, Nintendo has since reworded its developer qualifications to rule out 2D Boy's loophole of using a coffee shop as its "secure office.")
Yes, that's a legit problem here. I could answer that with "the Xbox 360" but their Indie games aren't that well promoted, plus they require that you use XNA and C#.
The best platform for Indie games at the current point is still PC to a greater extent, and to a lesser extent, Steam specifically.
The Ouya is kind of cool, and I may even purchase one when it comes up, but it looks severely under-powered and my main interest in it is as a hackable device. Do you really care about playing cell-phone games on your TV?
Not only that, but there's a console that is more powerful than the Ouya that launches in... 9 days. Created by an extremely well known video game company and backed by a number of major developers of the non-cell-phone game persuasion.
Yes, it's more expensive than the Ouya, but it's also quite a bit more powerful and comes with its own touchscreen tablet that supposedly runs for 30 hours before needing a recharge.
The Wiimote's pointer functions are used in very few games and in some of them it's completely contrived when they do ([optional prefix] Super [optional Paper] Mario [optional suffix] [optional number] for instance).
The Wiimote's motion controls are used in very few games. Up until the launch of the Wii Motion Plus, it was implemented poorly. Example: The Legend of Zelda: Poor GameCube Port (aka Twilight Princess), which also suffers from the pointer issue previously mentioned.
Isn't that the very definition of gimmick controller? For 95% of the games on the wii, you could remove the motion controls and pointer from the controller and they'd work exactly the same as they do now!
Also seems to me that there were a lot more games from back in the day with the Interplay name on them, not just these 32.
Interplay was also a publisher. Among other things, they published Blizzard's earlier games, such as The Lost Vikings and The Lost Vikings 2: Norse by Norsewest.
The latter was on the Interplay 15th Anniversary collection in the 90s, but Interplay's then-new owners sold their publisher rights in 2001ish.
There were also the various Star Trek games, whose license likely ended years ago.
And of course any Windows RT app you write will run on Windows 8 and Windows 8 Phone(and the tablets for that matter).
ONLY if it's a.NET app. If you write a C++ app with a WinRT interface, it's only going to run on the platform it's compiled for (although the developer CAN compile multiple versions of it).
Neither Apple (PDF) nor Lenovo (PDF) show their profits per product segment, although Apple does show its revenues ($4,933,000 on Macs, down 3% from this quarter last year).
Comparing the overall profits and revenues from both companies would be pointless here as we're specifically discussing their PC lines, not their phones or tablets. Unless you were planning on pulling a strawman to expand the scope.
According to the Gartner report released on October 10, 2012 (8 days ago), Lenovo ousted HP as the largest PC manufacturer in the world in Q3 2012. Lenovo sells PCs without Windows?
Valve just pushed out an update for Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Day of Defeat: Source, and Team Fortress 2 that is supposed to fix the con_logfile bug in those games.
Unfortunately, their other multiplayer games remain unpatched, most notably Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
"Most web applications will work great on these slim browsers" you just proved to have no real world grasp of browser based apps used in real corporate settings.
You just proved you have no clue whatsoever what a browser based app is, what it's advantages are. Clue: if it's a browser app, the hardware platform is irrellivant... the browser is the platform. The app will work the same on a Windows sludge box, a Mac, or a browser on a phone... again DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THE HW IS SO LONG AS THE BROWSER IS STANDARDS COMPLIENT. Otherwise... the entire browser app endeavor holds no portability advantage over native platform applications.
I think you missed his point. Which would be that a great many browser apps still require IE because of the short-sightedness of the business using them.
And so they go into a store and see a shiny iPhone or a usuable Android phone of a cheap symbian feature phone and a pile of dog poo just begging for a shoe. And they step around it, because they can. Windows is something you use, because you are forced to. People LOVE switching to OSX, you can't shut up the Linux users about how free they are but windows users. "mwah, I have to use it for work and it came with my PC and I need it for games". No windows user says "Yeah, I LOVE using it, it enables me, it enriches me".
For PCs, Windows is the status quo. At this point, you have to go out of your way to get a new PC with OSX (buy from Apple) or Linux (build it yourself or buy a PC from the few manufacturers who offer Ubuntu or SUSE as an option). Not surprisingly, people aren't going to notice because that's what they expect.
Easy proof? MS keyboards and mice. They are not bad. But who buys them? Nobody! Nobody will admit to buying a MS keyboard. There are plenty of fan sites for logitech products but a MS keyboard? People just hide it and claim it came with the PC. You can make billions with a necessary product that people loathe but you can't launch a new gadget with that reputation.
Microsoft used to be the golden standard in mice with the Intellmouse line, but these days the market is a lot bigger than it was back in the late-90s/mid-2000s.
Most people don't bother to get a mouse or keyboard to replace the one that comes with their PCs. Microsoft's mice are also consistently more expensive than Logitech's... not sure about their keyboards. If you're a gamer, you're likely going to pick up a more expensive mouse and keyboard made by companies like Razor or SteelSeries.
To be honest, Microsoft only makes one product that people buy strictly because they want it: The Xbox 360. I can't exactly fault Redmond for making a touch interface... their second ever after WP7; all their previous phone OSes were clearly desktop OSes ported to a mobile device. However, trying to force-feed it to desktop users is a huge mistake. This is the one route where Apple definitely did things right: Making an entirely new version of the OS for phones/tablets. Although from what I've heard, newer OSX versions are having more iOS features sneaking into it despite users not wanting them... such as reversing the scrollbar direction in Lion last year.
That may be true for current touch screens. But new interface technologies are going to change all that. Soon, you'll be able to use hand and/or finger gestures to control a sharp point on the screen
Or you could just plug a USB mouse into an Android tablet and live the future now.
You could also plug in a keyboard and monitor.
However, if you're always using it like that, it defeats the entire point of having a tablet.
0) People chose GPL v2 for the kernel for very good reasons and the sheer success of it from phones to all Top 500 clusters is proof..nuf said on that. 1) You can use LGPL if you want to release code that is GPL but allow people to link with proprietary blob but without forbidding users to see and modify the LGPL code. 2) Linux kernel is GPL V2.0 licensed not LGPL...so if you want to bind to it and release the binary then you have to release the code under GPL V2 of your stuff that is calling the kernel stuff...you don't need to contact any body if you abide by this 3) You can request all the copyright holders in the kernel code to release that bit of the code to you under another license if you do not like GPL.
Again, this is about calling an API which, if it's dynamically linked, doesn't include any code other than the API's headers (which are not copyrightable in the US where nVidia is based; see Oracle v. Google for the most recent ruling in this matter: "This command structure is a system or method of operation under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act and, therefore, cannot be copyrighted.") in the calling program. And since this is a kernel API, it will be dynamically linked.
This isn't about just the interface, but the code in the kernel that does the stuff that is exposed/called through the interface. They're of course free to re-implement that on their own w/o using any GPL'd code - but it's a bit more work than a Hello World!...
No, it's about using a kernel API and rewriting it would be useless as the entire point is to allow all video drivers that use the same API to write to each others framebuffer.
Denying this to the company that makes roughly half of the gaming 3D cards is cutting one's nose off to spite one's face.
Of course, the GPL's assertions that you can't write code to call an API (which you only need the headers for in your own code) is tenuous at best.
Also, you can see where the government is involved when you and thousands of others are tasked with bringing materials to repair a bridge and yet here, years later the bridge still isn't repaired. Stupid government scam to extract as much money and value while providing only enough service to not cause riots is a bad way to do business./quote? If we're talking about the Redridge bridge, I thought it was finally repaired in December 2010. It took them over 5 years to repair it, though.
Ford did not invent the Automobille. What they did was popularize these technologies by refining them and making them more practical, and yes, marketing them.
Ford didn't invent the automobile, he created the modern factory that uses assembly lines, which drove production costs way down. We still use these to produce all sorts of manufactured goods over a century later, albeit with significantly more automation.
To make this more on topic: iPhones and the like are produced in factories that use these ideas.
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So for what platform should a company develop video games if the games are in a genre that doesn't work well with a flat sheet of glass as the only input device
The touchpad isn't the only input device for the WiiU... it's just the only one that comes with it. Incidentally, the WiiU's tablet controller also has an analog stick on it, it's just a pain to hold to use it. The WiiU also supports the WiiU Pro Controller (the one that looks like an Xbox 360 controller) and and Wii-compatible controller including the Wiimote and its addons.
So for what platform should a company develop video games if... the company isn't big enough to attract the attention of Nintendo? (Before you say 2D Boy, Nintendo has since reworded its developer qualifications to rule out 2D Boy's loophole of using a coffee shop as its "secure office.")
Yes, that's a legit problem here. I could answer that with "the Xbox 360" but their Indie games aren't that well promoted, plus they require that you use XNA and C#.
The best platform for Indie games at the current point is still PC to a greater extent, and to a lesser extent, Steam specifically.
VMWare Player is free and doesn't even require that you sign up for a VMWare account like you used to. Why not try it?
Plus, as I recall, it's the only one that works properly with DirectX across all DX versions for Windows VMs.
Parallels might be OK for OSX hosts, but the article specifies starting on a Windows host and then maybe switching to a Linux host.
Your post reminded me of this tumblr.
The Ouya is kind of cool, and I may even purchase one when it comes up, but it looks severely under-powered and my main interest in it is as a hackable device. Do you really care about playing cell-phone games on your TV?
Not only that, but there's a console that is more powerful than the Ouya that launches in... 9 days. Created by an extremely well known video game company and backed by a number of major developers of the non-cell-phone game persuasion.
Yes, it's more expensive than the Ouya, but it's also quite a bit more powerful and comes with its own touchscreen tablet that supposedly runs for 30 hours before needing a recharge.
The Wiimote's pointer functions are used in very few games and in some of them it's completely contrived when they do ([optional prefix] Super [optional Paper] Mario [optional suffix] [optional number] for instance).
The Wiimote's motion controls are used in very few games. Up until the launch of the Wii Motion Plus, it was implemented poorly. Example: The Legend of Zelda: Poor GameCube Port (aka Twilight Princess), which also suffers from the pointer issue previously mentioned.
Isn't that the very definition of gimmick controller? For 95% of the games on the wii, you could remove the motion controls and pointer from the controller and they'd work exactly the same as they do now!
Microsoft could perhaps sway me by making ... an advanced command parser... available for Windows
Wasn't that the entire point of PowerShell? Granted, I've never used it...
it hasn't got enough registers (same problem intel has)
The largest gain when switching from x86 applications to x86-64 applications is that x86-64 has twice as many registers as x86 does.
Also, there is NOT only one kernel. Depending on what you are running, it may even be as drastic as 2.4.* vs 2.6.*.
You mean 2.6.x.y vs 3.6.z right? :P I mean, that only spans the last 15 months...
Also seems to me that there were a lot more games from back in the day with the Interplay name on them, not just these 32.
Interplay was also a publisher. Among other things, they published Blizzard's earlier games, such as The Lost Vikings and The Lost Vikings 2: Norse by Norsewest.
The latter was on the Interplay 15th Anniversary collection in the 90s, but Interplay's then-new owners sold their publisher rights in 2001ish.
There were also the various Star Trek games, whose license likely ended years ago.
And of course any Windows RT app you write will run on Windows 8 and Windows 8 Phone(and the tablets for that matter).
ONLY if it's a .NET app. If you write a C++ app with a WinRT interface, it's only going to run on the platform it's compiled for (although the developer CAN compile multiple versions of it).
No.
Neither Apple (PDF) nor Lenovo (PDF) show their profits per product segment, although Apple does show its revenues ($4,933,000 on Macs, down 3% from this quarter last year).
Comparing the overall profits and revenues from both companies would be pointless here as we're specifically discussing their PC lines, not their phones or tablets. Unless you were planning on pulling a strawman to expand the scope.
the largest PC maker sells PC's without windows.
According to the Gartner report released on October 10, 2012 (8 days ago), Lenovo ousted HP as the largest PC manufacturer in the world in Q3 2012. Lenovo sells PCs without Windows?
The fact that it is using Windows 8 (A desktop level OS?) means it may fill the void about software.
Except that Windows RT can't run x86 Windows apps since it uses an ARM processor.
Valve just pushed out an update for Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Day of Defeat: Source, and Team Fortress 2 that is supposed to fix the con_logfile bug in those games.
Unfortunately, their other multiplayer games remain unpatched, most notably Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Just to be clear, is this API for plugins only or can any JavaScript on the web run it?
"Most web applications will work great on these slim browsers" you just proved to have no real world grasp of browser based apps used in real corporate settings.
You just proved you have no clue whatsoever what a browser based app is, what it's advantages are. Clue: if it's a browser app, the hardware platform is irrellivant... the browser is the platform. The app will work the same on a Windows sludge box, a Mac, or a browser on a phone... again DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THE HW IS SO LONG AS THE BROWSER IS STANDARDS COMPLIENT. Otherwise... the entire browser app endeavor holds no portability advantage over native platform applications.
I think you missed his point. Which would be that a great many browser apps still require IE because of the short-sightedness of the business using them.
And so they go into a store and see a shiny iPhone or a usuable Android phone of a cheap symbian feature phone and a pile of dog poo just begging for a shoe. And they step around it, because they can. Windows is something you use, because you are forced to. People LOVE switching to OSX, you can't shut up the Linux users about how free they are but windows users. "mwah, I have to use it for work and it came with my PC and I need it for games". No windows user says "Yeah, I LOVE using it, it enables me, it enriches me".
For PCs, Windows is the status quo. At this point, you have to go out of your way to get a new PC with OSX (buy from Apple) or Linux (build it yourself or buy a PC from the few manufacturers who offer Ubuntu or SUSE as an option). Not surprisingly, people aren't going to notice because that's what they expect.
Easy proof? MS keyboards and mice. They are not bad. But who buys them? Nobody! Nobody will admit to buying a MS keyboard. There are plenty of fan sites for logitech products but a MS keyboard? People just hide it and claim it came with the PC. You can make billions with a necessary product that people loathe but you can't launch a new gadget with that reputation.
Microsoft used to be the golden standard in mice with the Intellmouse line, but these days the market is a lot bigger than it was back in the late-90s/mid-2000s.
Most people don't bother to get a mouse or keyboard to replace the one that comes with their PCs. Microsoft's mice are also consistently more expensive than Logitech's... not sure about their keyboards. If you're a gamer, you're likely going to pick up a more expensive mouse and keyboard made by companies like Razor or SteelSeries.
To be honest, Microsoft only makes one product that people buy strictly because they want it: The Xbox 360. I can't exactly fault Redmond for making a touch interface... their second ever after WP7; all their previous phone OSes were clearly desktop OSes ported to a mobile device. However, trying to force-feed it to desktop users is a huge mistake. This is the one route where Apple definitely did things right: Making an entirely new version of the OS for phones/tablets. Although from what I've heard, newer OSX versions are having more iOS features sneaking into it despite users not wanting them... such as reversing the scrollbar direction in Lion last year.
That may be true for current touch screens. But new interface technologies are going to change all that. Soon, you'll be able to use hand and/or finger gestures to control a sharp point on the screen
Or you could just plug a USB mouse into an Android tablet and live the future now.
You could also plug in a keyboard and monitor.
However, if you're always using it like that, it defeats the entire point of having a tablet.
I confess one of the prerequisites for my tablet was a physical keyboard. The model I got just happened to have a track pad.
So, essentially your tablet PC... isn't a tablet PC at all?
0) People chose GPL v2 for the kernel for very good reasons and the sheer success of it from phones to all Top 500 clusters is proof ..nuf said on that.
1) You can use LGPL if you want to release code that is GPL but allow people to link with proprietary blob but without forbidding users to see and modify the LGPL code.
2) Linux kernel is GPL V2.0 licensed not LGPL...so if you want to bind to it and release the binary then you have to release the code under GPL V2 of your stuff that is calling the kernel stuff...you don't need to contact any body if you abide by this
3) You can request all the copyright holders in the kernel code to release that bit of the code to you under another license if you do not like GPL.
Again, this is about calling an API which, if it's dynamically linked, doesn't include any code other than the API's headers (which are not copyrightable in the US where nVidia is based; see Oracle v. Google for the most recent ruling in this matter: "This command structure is a system or method of operation under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act and, therefore, cannot be copyrighted.") in the calling program. And since this is a kernel API, it will be dynamically linked.
This isn't about just the interface, but the code in the kernel that does the stuff that is exposed/called through the interface. They're of course free to re-implement that on their own w/o using any GPL'd code - but it's a bit more work than a Hello World! ...
No, it's about using a kernel API and rewriting it would be useless as the entire point is to allow all video drivers that use the same API to write to each others framebuffer.
Denying this to the company that makes roughly half of the gaming 3D cards is cutting one's nose off to spite one's face.
Of course, the GPL's assertions that you can't write code to call an API (which you only need the headers for in your own code) is tenuous at best.
What I find really irritating is that the web font printing bug was finally marked as fixed in Bugzilla two weeks ago.
It didn't make it into Firefox 16.
What is the point of having a 6-week release cycle if you're not including bugs you've fixed during that period?
Also, you can see where the government is involved when you and thousands of others are tasked with bringing materials to repair a bridge and yet here, years later the bridge still isn't repaired. Stupid government scam to extract as much money and value while providing only enough service to not cause riots is a bad way to do business./quote?
If we're talking about the Redridge bridge, I thought it was finally repaired in December 2010. It took them over 5 years to repair it, though.
Ford did not invent the Automobille. What they did was popularize these technologies by refining them and making them more practical, and yes, marketing them.
Ford didn't invent the automobile, he created the modern factory that uses assembly lines, which drove production costs way down. We still use these to produce all sorts of manufactured goods over a century later, albeit with significantly more automation.
To make this more on topic: iPhones and the like are produced in factories that use these ideas.