I don't see why game consoles cannot have application stores that are every bit as successful as the iTunes Store, perhaps games requiring more storage will require different content models,
The console itself may not be dead, but will just become one more internet "appliance", doing precisely what Konami says, accessing the net on demand to play the users game of choice.
Back in the original NES days, there was one winner and the rest were afterthoughts.
Of course, the NES generation was the last one where one single player dominated the entire video games console industry.
The very next generation was split nearly 50/50 between the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
The two generations after that, Sony made a strong showing, causing Sega to leave the market completely and hurting Nintendo. Nintendo burned bridges by sticking with cartridge format for the Nintendo 64 and had poor third-party support on its subsequent console because of it.
This generation, Nintendo clawed its way back to the top with the Wii, with the Xbox 360 hot on its tail... Sony didn't fair so well this time around... but that could (theoretically) still turn around, as the PS3 Slim (with its price cut) has doubled PS3 sales, or so Sony said just recently.
I'm guessing you have 100 Gbit judging by your numbers? That might be fine for you, but seeing as 100 Tbit is the lowest I could get even if I tried here in the Borg Collective, I can't imagine going back to what I had literally 14(!) years ago. And no, I'm not saying I need 100 Tbit/s (my current speed) 24/7, however, once you experience how fast your every day Internet becomes, there's no turning back.
*cough*
We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt to serve us. Resistance is futile.
When the PS2 was new, writable DVDs and burners were expensive too. And HDs were in the 10GB range.
While that may be true, the PS3 was new in Q4 2006. It's Q2 2010 now. Since the PS2 was released in North America in Q4 2000, what were the DVD Writer/DVD-R prices and HD sizes like in Q2 2004?
Piracy doesn't directly affect system sales. Well, that may not be true, it may actually increase them.
What it does is get the publishers to release less exclusives for it.
Seriously, though, the PS3 is the least pirated current system because it uses Blu-Ray discs. Your two options there are to 1. buy a Blu-Ray burner (expensive) and writable BD-ROMs (expensive?), or 2. have an HDD connected (internal or external) with images of games that could be up to 50GB each.
Achievements are not designed to combat piracy. They are there as a small reward for those that don't pirate and keep the pirates at the bottom of the pile.
Achievements aren't designed to combat piracy as much as to provide and incentive to buy the game.
Makes it easy to spot some cheat with 200hrs and no account achievements. Along with other methods it's easy way to gather stats that are close to being accurate on the problem.
err... no. Pirates are going to install the fake Steam client DLL on their computer and never connect to Steam in the first place for a single-player game.
Once again online play is not the problem if there is desire to clean it up.
Which would be why I said single-player. Multiplayer has its own protections, mainly the server validating Steam IDs through Steam's master servers. There are cracked servers to get around this, but only for Windows (and you don't even have to ask me about what I think of Windows servers...).
One ethical problem with patents like 7254698, aside from obvious ones like trying to patent basic linear algebra equations, is the supporting docs are all from 1999 to 2001 ish era. But its doing the submarine thing in that it was not issued until August 7 2007, "around a decade" after they were shipping silicon, more or less, sort of. And it won't expire until around 2023 which in the computer field is an absolute eternity.
In that case, prior art will be very easy to locate to get that patent overturned.
P.S. Didn't Symbol Technologies v. Lemelson make submarine patents unenforceable in the US?
VirtualBox now has experimental Direct3D 8/9 support (ONLY, 1-7 and 10-11 are not supported) using WineD3D, but you have to boot the VM to safe-mode when installing the Guest Additions to get it.
VMWare's free (as in money) VMWare Player also appears to support Direct3D (including earlier versions), but VMWare makes you sign up for an account with them to download it, and it certainly isn't Open Source.
One strange tendency to help combat piracy that I've noticed in single-player PC games is to add achievements. Or at least that's what Valve did. I guess they figure people want to show off and stuff, I don't really know if that works, though... Valve may be able to comment on that with Portal and the second HL2 episode.
Of course, Valve also has DRM in the form of Steam, but that's fairly easy to bypass now.
This is why services like Steam should offer an x-day money-back guarantee. Buy it. If you think it sucks, tell them. They can then remove the game from your account and you can "delete local game data," in exchange for a full refund.
Give users a "limit" to how often they can do it to the same game.
I'd love a feature like that. I've had kicked Lucidity off my account so fast. I'm not the only one who disliked that game.
Lesson learned: Don't buy a game based solely on the developer's reputation.
some of the complexity of the game would have to be removed so that it was playable on a console's controller.
Incidentally, this is why nearly all MMOs are limited to PCs.
The MMOs that aren't were explicitly developed for consoles, sometimes with terrible PC ports (Final Fantasy XI, I'm looking at you).
Some other genres are stronger in PC space for the same reason, although some of them may have console ports. I believe that the Command and Conquer series was mentioned earlier, and even StarCraft had a Nintendo 64 port... which, as I recall, was a failure.
Maybe the future of consoles is Steam, a service like Steam to download games from internet, socialize, and things.
Allow me to introduce you to Xbox Live (introduced in 2002, a year before Steam launched),the PlayStation Network (introduced in 2006), and the Wii Shop Channel (introduced in 2006).
Right, but that's no different from me saying that you can't play PC exclusives on a PS3 or 360 or Wii. Consoles are by no means the only systems with exclusives.
It's in Valve's interest to low-ball the price of their games. Once you're on Steam, you'll hopefully buy games from Steam. Not every game developer has their own publishing platform.
Steam has for more sales every weekend, and sometimes a second one during the middle of the week. That's far too many sales for just Valve games.
Pre-ordering is usually the only sale price a game has for the first six months or so on Steam. This includes Torchlight, which was put on sale just past the first six months.
This isn't really a surprise, though. Once a digitally distributed game has recouped its losses, all you have to pay for is the bandwidth to download the game.
Not only that, but Valve also tends to sell game bundles on Steam. Bundles are almost always cheaper to buy than the separate prices of the games in them*. The Orange Box and Valve Complete packs in particular you'd be stupid to buy the individual games separately: From memory, the individual prices are HL2 $10, HL2:Ep1 $10, HL2Ep2 $10, Portal $20, TF2 $20. The Orange Box bundle is $30, cheaper than Portal and TF2, let alone the other 3.
*except when some games in the bundle are on sale, but the bundle isn't.
"Sell me an awesome game dirt cheap or I'll just pirate it. I don't care about the fact that in the gaming industry winners cover losers. I don't care that $50 is cheap when you consider inflation over the last 10 years. I know how to pirate so you better offer me the perfect game at the perfect price and even then I probably won't pay for it since I'm saving my money for a new video card."
Congrats on having the mentality of most pc gamers. This is why publishers are moving to consoles, online-only games or casual games like The Sims that are sold to 12 year old girls who don't have the same entitlement mentality as your 18-35 year old male that knows how to torrent.
It's funny that you implied he said that. In addition to mentioning $5 for Torchlight, the GP also said this:
I'm going to buy SC2 because it's going to be an awesome game, etc.
which is the exact opposite of what you just said.
Blizzard doesn't rival the largest console companies, because it's had to merge with what is primarily a console company to stay competitive- Activision.
I think you've confused Blizzard with its then-parent company Vivendi. Vivendi only had one or two profitable division at the time (Blizzard and possibly Vivendi Universal Games) and several money-losers (Sierra, Vivendi Mobile Games) which have since been closed.
The fact that it's Activision Blizzard and not Activision Vivendi tells you exactly which division of Vivendi was the most profitable.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but given that it's down to 4 US servers, I'm guessing it won't last too much longer.
Question: What is the last console you used?
All the consoles of the current generation, starting with the Xbox 360 in 2005, have app stores. They go by the names Wii Shop Channel (Wii), Xbox Live Marketplace (Xbox 360), PlayStation Store (PS3 and PSP), and DSi Shop (DSi).
Like the Onlive console?
I wonder if this is Kojima's way of saying he plans on developing titles for OnLive.
Of course, the NES generation was the last one where one single player dominated the entire video games console industry.
The very next generation was split nearly 50/50 between the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
The two generations after that, Sony made a strong showing, causing Sega to leave the market completely and hurting Nintendo. Nintendo burned bridges by sticking with cartridge format for the Nintendo 64 and had poor third-party support on its subsequent console because of it.
This generation, Nintendo clawed its way back to the top with the Wii, with the Xbox 360 hot on its tail... Sony didn't fair so well this time around... but that could (theoretically) still turn around, as the PS3 Slim (with its price cut) has doubled PS3 sales, or so Sony said just recently.
The first thing that came to mind when I read the summary was OnLive. With OnLive, all the processing is done on OnLive's side.
Heaven forbid you get any lag, though.
And in the United States. I think it was available in Europe, too.
But only to Gold subscribers.
I'm guessing you have 100 Gbit judging by your numbers? That might be fine for you, but seeing as 100 Tbit is the lowest I could get even if I tried here in the Borg Collective, I can't imagine going back to what I had literally 14(!) years ago. And no, I'm not saying I need 100 Tbit/s (my current speed) 24/7, however, once you experience how fast your every day Internet becomes, there's no turning back.
*cough*
We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt to serve us. Resistance is futile.
What will they use to hunt Heavies down? They could Spy on them... or hire a Sniper. An Engineer could come in handy, too.
You just have to watch our for those pesky Medics following them around. ...Wait, we're not talking about Team Fortress 2?
While that may be true, the PS3 was new in Q4 2006. It's Q2 2010 now. Since the PS2 was released in North America in Q4 2000, what were the DVD Writer/DVD-R prices and HD sizes like in Q2 2004?
Piracy doesn't directly affect system sales. Well, that may not be true, it may actually increase them.
What it does is get the publishers to release less exclusives for it.
Seriously, though, the PS3 is the least pirated current system because it uses Blu-Ray discs. Your two options there are to 1. buy a Blu-Ray burner (expensive) and writable BD-ROMs (expensive?), or 2. have an HDD connected (internal or external) with images of games that could be up to 50GB each.
Achievements aren't designed to combat piracy as much as to provide and incentive to buy the game.
err... no. Pirates are going to install the fake Steam client DLL on their computer and never connect to Steam in the first place for a single-player game.
Which would be why I said single-player. Multiplayer has its own protections, mainly the server validating Steam IDs through Steam's master servers. There are cracked servers to get around this, but only for Windows (and you don't even have to ask me about what I think of Windows servers...).
In that case, prior art will be very easy to locate to get that patent overturned.
P.S. Didn't Symbol Technologies v. Lemelson make submarine patents unenforceable in the US?
Maybe I'm wrong about the Open Source bit, VMWare Player has an Open Source tab on their downloads page.
VirtualBox now has experimental Direct3D 8/9 support (ONLY, 1-7 and 10-11 are not supported) using WineD3D, but you have to boot the VM to safe-mode when installing the Guest Additions to get it.
VMWare's free (as in money) VMWare Player also appears to support Direct3D (including earlier versions), but VMWare makes you sign up for an account with them to download it, and it certainly isn't Open Source.
One strange tendency to help combat piracy that I've noticed in single-player PC games is to add achievements. Or at least that's what Valve did. I guess they figure people want to show off and stuff, I don't really know if that works, though... Valve may be able to comment on that with Portal and the second HL2 episode.
Of course, Valve also has DRM in the form of Steam, but that's fairly easy to bypass now.
I'd love a feature like that. I've had kicked Lucidity off my account so fast. I'm not the only one who disliked that game.
Lesson learned: Don't buy a game based solely on the developer's reputation.
Incidentally, this is why nearly all MMOs are limited to PCs.
The MMOs that aren't were explicitly developed for consoles, sometimes with terrible PC ports (Final Fantasy XI, I'm looking at you).
Some other genres are stronger in PC space for the same reason, although some of them may have console ports. I believe that the Command and Conquer series was mentioned earlier, and even StarCraft had a Nintendo 64 port... which, as I recall, was a failure.
Allow me to introduce you to Xbox Live (introduced in 2002, a year before Steam launched),the PlayStation Network (introduced in 2006), and the Wii Shop Channel (introduced in 2006).
Right, but that's no different from me saying that you can't play PC exclusives on a PS3 or 360 or Wii. Consoles are by no means the only systems with exclusives.
Steam has for more sales every weekend, and sometimes a second one during the middle of the week. That's far too many sales for just Valve games.
Pre-ordering is usually the only sale price a game has for the first six months or so on Steam. This includes Torchlight, which was put on sale just past the first six months.
This isn't really a surprise, though. Once a digitally distributed game has recouped its losses, all you have to pay for is the bandwidth to download the game.
Not only that, but Valve also tends to sell game bundles on Steam. Bundles are almost always cheaper to buy than the separate prices of the games in them*. The Orange Box and Valve Complete packs in particular you'd be stupid to buy the individual games separately: From memory, the individual prices are HL2 $10, HL2:Ep1 $10, HL2Ep2 $10, Portal $20, TF2 $20. The Orange Box bundle is $30, cheaper than Portal and TF2, let alone the other 3.
*except when some games in the bundle are on sale, but the bundle isn't.
It's funny that you implied he said that. In addition to mentioning $5 for Torchlight, the GP also said this:
which is the exact opposite of what you just said.
Speaking of Orange Box, have you tried Team Fortress 2 yet? :D
I like TF2, plus Valve has continued updating it in the 2+ years its been out.
I think you've confused Blizzard with its then-parent company Vivendi. Vivendi only had one or two profitable division at the time (Blizzard and possibly Vivendi Universal Games) and several money-losers (Sierra, Vivendi Mobile Games) which have since been closed.
The fact that it's Activision Blizzard and not Activision Vivendi tells you exactly which division of Vivendi was the most profitable.
This practice is already being done on consoles.
Except there it's not to prevent piracy, but to prevent second-hand sales.
Actually, isn't GameStop currently being sued over this?
It works from the "lost sales" point of view, too. I know I sure as hell won't buy it.