Myself, I have never been interested in online duels, which is what most people seem to mean when they say "online multiplayer games." Trash-talking, griefing, and players who obviously spend way more time than I have available to play do not make playing against another human more fun than playing against a computer. I do not relish getting mad while I game, nor do I think that being able to make other people mad automatically elevates the quality of a game.
The console industry is not the games industry. It is a part of the industry, but not the entire industry. I'd argue it may not even be the most popular or influential part of the industry.
Also, with PS/3 being a fully functional computer with a keyboard/mouse/blueray, its more than just a console. And Xbox live with internet access to media is more than a console. The Wii is a console and priced like it.
And yet, if I want to buy a console, why would I pay for more than what I wanted? If I wanted a fully functional computer, I would buy or (more likely) already own one. If I wanted a DVD/blueray player, I would buy one. How many people who can afford to buy a PS3 don't already own a computer of some sort?
"Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?" Cuban added during the event at Advertising Week in New York.
Well, according to this the all time high is 33 million views, with dozens of others in the one to ten million range. I know these aren't all unique viewers, and I'm not an advertising expert, but that sounds like a lot of people to me.
Cuban cautioned advertisers against investing heavily in so-called viral campaigns that are spread by users beyond their initial point of distribution on YouTube or other video-sharing sites. But he touted opportunities to run commercials on high-definition television such as his HDNet network.
So he's basically bad-mouthing Youtube in order to promote his own network. To paraphrase Cuban himself, only a moron would believe everything this guy says.
Let's do some math. Data from Wikipedia and a Sylvania lighting catalog. Let's assume $0.15 per kWh electricity cost.
60W incandescent consumes 60W (duh), lasts 1000 hrs, puts out around 900 lumens, and costs $0.50. An equivalent CFL uses 19W, lasts 8000 hours, puts out 1000 lumens, and costs about $3. As pointed out above, some places sell it for more, some for less.
For 8000 hours of operation, you will use up eight 60W incandescent lamps at a cost of $4, and consume 480 kWh at a cost of $72. The total cost will be $78. During the same period, you will use up one CFL at a cost of $3, and consume 152 kWh at a cost of $22.80, for a total cost of $25.80. If a household had 10 such lamps and used them 4 hours per day, that's an annual cost savings of $100.74.
To replace one incandescent with one CFL costs $2.50 more, but you will save that much money in electricity cost in under four months. It doesn't take "the most thorough and forward-looking planners" to see the value in using CFLs over incandescents. There is no excuse for not doing this; smoke one less cigarette a day if you have to. Scrape together 300 pennies to buy one such bulb, and in four months use the money you've saved on electricity to buy another bulb; four months after that use the money saved to buy two more bulbs. It's not like you're being asked to spend $8000 to put a kilowatt of solar cells on your roof.
I haven't heard anything about such problems with CFLs, but I would imagine that the problems may have been reduced or eliminated since electronic ballasts became available. With the old magnetic ballasts, the lamps would buzz and flicker at 120 Hz, but the 20,000 Hz oscillation of current electronic ballasts eliminates that problem.
Redundant: I challenge the author to finish the sentence "The console wars are bad for gaming because..." without using the word "Dreamcast."
Insightful: I say the console wars are good for gaming because they force companies to make better consoles and better games. But also the console wars are bad for gaming because too much effort is going into doing what everyone else is doing, but doing it slightly better, and not enough effort is going into creating something new and interesting. Nintendo appears to be trying a new direction with Wii, but only time will tell how creative it is, or if it's more of the same with a new gimmick. But at least they're putting their balls on the line and trying some innovation, rather than the Xbox 360 (Same games, better graphics!) or the PS3 (Same games, higher prices!).
I train in iaijutsu, or Japanese sword drawing. Every so often we do tameshigiri, or mat cutting. I can say from experience that if you've got the proper technique, when you cut through mats you feel almost no resistance at all.
But I do agree that if there's something hard in the game that you're swinging against, such as an armored opponent or someone's shield, you should feel resistance. Maybe audio and visual cues, enough to let you know that you've hit something and moving the Wiimote more in that direction will be useless.
To demonstrate these ideas, Molyneux showed off two test sequences -- one on a staircase and one in a bar. Though these featured characters from Fable, Molyneux insists this was just done to save time and these are not tests for Fable 2.
Later,
Towards the end of Molyneux's talk, he made it clear that this panel was not a thinly veiled way of promoting the combat in one of his company's upcoming games, though these are naturally ideas he and his team are considering. "A lot of what I've talked about here will never make it into any game, but maybe some of it will," he said. We expect to see Fable 2 at Microsoft's X06 event next month, and we'll be on the lookout to see how much, if any, of the ideas in today's talk make it into that game.
It doesn't sound to me like he's saying anything about what is going into Fable 2. Rather, the author seems to be trying to mention Fable 2 as much as he can, despite the panel not having any information at all about the game. This was simply a talk from Molyneux about what would be cool to incorporate into a game, not what is feasible or what will go into any games he might be designing.
Or rather, throw a big spoiler warning on the article. It reveals a plot development from Superman Returns, in case anyone hasn't seen the movie and wants to not know the ending beforehand.
Another idea is a virtual date who you could practice your best lines on, building confidence and giving you a chance to make an ass of yourself over and over in private until you get it right.
How about a virtual girlfriend who I can....uh....you know........breasts!
Besides, most WoW are former Evercrack addicts anyway.
Let's look closely at that chart for a moment. Everquest's subscription numbers from July 2001 till July 2004 is a nice, straight line hovering at just under 500k subscribers, with a slight bump right before WoW was released. WoW, by contrast, started at zero during September 2004, and has basically taken a straight line path up to 6.5 million today.
I would say that that indicates that WoW subscribers are coming from somewhere other than Everquest. In my time in WoW, I've only met one person who said he had played EQ before; most everyone else either played something else (myself, FFXI and Puzzle Pirates before WoW) or had not played MMOs at all before WoW.
I agree that WoW fills the after work void better than other games do. Not counting endgame content, you can log in to WoW, play for a half hour, and log off, and feel that you've done something useful with your time. You don't have to commit an entire evening, you don't have to spam "LFG" for hours and hours because there are other things to do, and you don't have to spend an hour waiting for a boat to arrive at a port so you can get from one island to another. *cough*Vanguard*cough*
Perhaps WoW is not "hardcore" or "immersive," but if you really wanted the true immersive, realistic experience that has been mentioned by those who long for hard grinds and wait times, you could walk (don't drive) to the nearest forest, wait for a squirrel or rabbit to run by, whack it with a shovel, and then walk back to your house. That's as immersive as immersive gets.
...Jack in the Box has announced that its new burger, the "Jumbo Jack 2" will be priced at $250 and contain a generous portion of "the finest Russian caviar."
Jack in the Box CEO Jack said, "I don't think it's an expensive burger. I think it's actually a cheap burger. If you think that that much caviar itself might be $300-$400, and we're coming in at only $250, it's a bargain."
...there is nothing here but a way to capture and purify the water vapor in engine exhaust. No magic, no alchemy. When hydrocarbons are burned, lots of various reactions take place, but most significantly:
C + O2 = CO2, and
H + O2 = H2O
Internal combustion engine exhaust is chock full of that nasty pollutant, dihydrogenmonoxide. The only new and interesting development here is someone is attempting to perfect a method to capture that H2O in a useable form, at a rate of "one gallon of water for every two gallons of fuel burned."
It bears mentioning that they're only prevented from refiling a case against the mother, and they were trying to expedite a filing against the daughter by amending the motion to dismiss. There's nothing that says they can't open a new suit against the daughter and force everyone to go through this whole exercise again.
"With this next generation of gaming, Marvel fans will finally have the ability to create choices with their favorite Super Heroes, villains and creatures in unbelievable detail, all with the power of Marvel's incredible vision and the Xbox platform."
Slashdot Mirror
Yup.
Myself, I have never been interested in online duels, which is what most people seem to mean when they say "online multiplayer games." Trash-talking, griefing, and players who obviously spend way more time than I have available to play do not make playing against another human more fun than playing against a computer. I do not relish getting mad while I game, nor do I think that being able to make other people mad automatically elevates the quality of a game.
Ohhh, so you're the guy who keeps ordering Neopets.
You must be new here.
And yet, if I want to buy a console, why would I pay for more than what I wanted? If I wanted a fully functional computer, I would buy or (more likely) already own one. If I wanted a DVD/blueray player, I would buy one. How many people who can afford to buy a PS3 don't already own a computer of some sort?
...from here.
"Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?" Cuban added during the event at Advertising Week in New York.
Well, according to this the all time high is 33 million views, with dozens of others in the one to ten million range. I know these aren't all unique viewers, and I'm not an advertising expert, but that sounds like a lot of people to me.
Cuban cautioned advertisers against investing heavily in so-called viral campaigns that are spread by users beyond their initial point of distribution on YouTube or other video-sharing sites. But he touted opportunities to run commercials on high-definition television such as his HDNet network.
So he's basically bad-mouthing Youtube in order to promote his own network. To paraphrase Cuban himself, only a moron would believe everything this guy says.
You might be asking the wrong crowd that question.
60W incandescent consumes 60W (duh), lasts 1000 hrs, puts out around 900 lumens, and costs $0.50. An equivalent CFL uses 19W, lasts 8000 hours, puts out 1000 lumens, and costs about $3. As pointed out above, some places sell it for more, some for less.
For 8000 hours of operation, you will use up eight 60W incandescent lamps at a cost of $4, and consume 480 kWh at a cost of $72. The total cost will be $78. During the same period, you will use up one CFL at a cost of $3, and consume 152 kWh at a cost of $22.80, for a total cost of $25.80. If a household had 10 such lamps and used them 4 hours per day, that's an annual cost savings of $100.74.
To replace one incandescent with one CFL costs $2.50 more, but you will save that much money in electricity cost in under four months. It doesn't take "the most thorough and forward-looking planners" to see the value in using CFLs over incandescents. There is no excuse for not doing this; smoke one less cigarette a day if you have to. Scrape together 300 pennies to buy one such bulb, and in four months use the money you've saved on electricity to buy another bulb; four months after that use the money saved to buy two more bulbs. It's not like you're being asked to spend $8000 to put a kilowatt of solar cells on your roof.
I haven't heard anything about such problems with CFLs, but I would imagine that the problems may have been reduced or eliminated since electronic ballasts became available. With the old magnetic ballasts, the lamps would buzz and flicker at 120 Hz, but the 20,000 Hz oscillation of current electronic ballasts eliminates that problem.
Wikipedia entry on ballasts.
Redundant: I challenge the author to finish the sentence "The console wars are bad for gaming because..." without using the word "Dreamcast."
Insightful: I say the console wars are good for gaming because they force companies to make better consoles and better games. But also the console wars are bad for gaming because too much effort is going into doing what everyone else is doing, but doing it slightly better, and not enough effort is going into creating something new and interesting. Nintendo appears to be trying a new direction with Wii, but only time will tell how creative it is, or if it's more of the same with a new gimmick. But at least they're putting their balls on the line and trying some innovation, rather than the Xbox 360 (Same games, better graphics!) or the PS3 (Same games, higher prices!).
Troll: Blah blah bad article blah blah Zonk blah blah idiot.
Funny: In the Soviet Union, wars are not good for game consoles!
Warning: Sword geek response below.
I train in iaijutsu, or Japanese sword drawing. Every so often we do tameshigiri, or mat cutting. I can say from experience that if you've got the proper technique, when you cut through mats you feel almost no resistance at all.
But I do agree that if there's something hard in the game that you're swinging against, such as an armored opponent or someone's shield, you should feel resistance. Maybe audio and visual cues, enough to let you know that you've hit something and moving the Wiimote more in that direction will be useless.
To demonstrate these ideas, Molyneux showed off two test sequences -- one on a staircase and one in a bar. Though these featured characters from Fable, Molyneux insists this was just done to save time and these are not tests for Fable 2.
Later,
Towards the end of Molyneux's talk, he made it clear that this panel was not a thinly veiled way of promoting the combat in one of his company's upcoming games, though these are naturally ideas he and his team are considering. "A lot of what I've talked about here will never make it into any game, but maybe some of it will," he said. We expect to see Fable 2 at Microsoft's X06 event next month, and we'll be on the lookout to see how much, if any, of the ideas in today's talk make it into that game.
It doesn't sound to me like he's saying anything about what is going into Fable 2. Rather, the author seems to be trying to mention Fable 2 as much as he can, despite the panel not having any information at all about the game. This was simply a talk from Molyneux about what would be cool to incorporate into a game, not what is feasible or what will go into any games he might be designing.
Or rather, throw a big spoiler warning on the article. It reveals a plot development from Superman Returns, in case anyone hasn't seen the movie and wants to not know the ending beforehand.
Another idea is a virtual date who you could practice your best lines on, building confidence and giving you a chance to make an ass of yourself over and over in private until you get it right. How about a virtual girlfriend who I can....uh....you know.... ....breasts!
Besides, most WoW are former Evercrack addicts anyway.
Let's look closely at that chart for a moment. Everquest's subscription numbers from July 2001 till July 2004 is a nice, straight line hovering at just under 500k subscribers, with a slight bump right before WoW was released. WoW, by contrast, started at zero during September 2004, and has basically taken a straight line path up to 6.5 million today.
I would say that that indicates that WoW subscribers are coming from somewhere other than Everquest. In my time in WoW, I've only met one person who said he had played EQ before; most everyone else either played something else (myself, FFXI and Puzzle Pirates before WoW) or had not played MMOs at all before WoW.
I agree that WoW fills the after work void better than other games do. Not counting endgame content, you can log in to WoW, play for a half hour, and log off, and feel that you've done something useful with your time. You don't have to commit an entire evening, you don't have to spam "LFG" for hours and hours because there are other things to do, and you don't have to spend an hour waiting for a boat to arrive at a port so you can get from one island to another. *cough*Vanguard*cough*
Perhaps WoW is not "hardcore" or "immersive," but if you really wanted the true immersive, realistic experience that has been mentioned by those who long for hard grinds and wait times, you could walk (don't drive) to the nearest forest, wait for a squirrel or rabbit to run by, whack it with a shovel, and then walk back to your house. That's as immersive as immersive gets.
...Jack in the Box has announced that its new burger, the "Jumbo Jack 2" will be priced at $250 and contain a generous portion of "the finest Russian caviar."
Jack in the Box CEO Jack said, "I don't think it's an expensive burger. I think it's actually a cheap burger. If you think that that much caviar itself might be $300-$400, and we're coming in at only $250, it's a bargain."
But...I just wanted a burger.
...but it had the exact same headline last time.
C + O2 = CO2, and
H + O2 = H2O
Internal combustion engine exhaust is chock full of that nasty pollutant, dihydrogen monoxide. The only new and interesting development here is someone is attempting to perfect a method to capture that H2O in a useable form, at a rate of "one gallon of water for every two gallons of fuel burned."
It bears mentioning that they're only prevented from refiling a case against the mother, and they were trying to expedite a filing against the daughter by amending the motion to dismiss. There's nothing that says they can't open a new suit against the daughter and force everyone to go through this whole exercise again.
As opposed to what they can do now in COH?
I, for one, welcome our new female gamer overlords. With open arms. Come on, I'm waiting...
...I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords. They are certainly preferable to our old Yahoo and MSN overlords.
...can become a city planner by playing Sim City.
"I think so Brain, but me and Pippi Longstocking...what would the children look like?"