The Dreamcast had other factors against it- like being from a cash-starved console maker (read: not Microsoft) who had spent the past 5 years pissing off western gamers. None of the others had the multi-tiered flop that was the 32x/Sega CD/Game Gear/Saturn/Pico fiasco. Sega's past mistakes are what killed them, not being first to market. Their image was so tarnished that the Sony hype machine stomped all over them.
You seriously underestimate the power of being first to market. I mean look at the Nintendo DS if you want an example. I'm a big Nintendo fan, but even I would argue that the DS launch was pretty dismal. Sure there was plenty of hardware to be had, but the launch library was pretty pathetic and key features like internet play didn't even hit the market until a full year later. If you'd asked me this time last year, I would've predicted that the PSP was going to steamroll the DS. Nonetheless, they've built up a hell of a lot of steam with their lead time and the sales figures speak for themselves. For another point of comparison, the PS2 had a far worse launch than the 360. There were severe hardware shortages, and the launch library was pretty sad. But by being first out of the gate(yes the Dreamcast was earlier, but I'm not counting it for simiplicity's sake) Sony was able to dominate Nintendo and Microsoft with momentum alone.
The very fact that we've yet to hear anything from Sony is the whole reason such speculation exists. Spring 2006 is way too close for them to not have a launch date, price point, or initial shipment figures. Even more than rabid gamers, retailers like to have these figures well in advance so they can incorporate it into their budget, and decide how much shelf space to dedicate to it. While November is pretty much a guess, it's not much of a stretch to see their logic: summer is a slow season for games, so it's an unlikely choice for a launch; and November gives them access to the same holiday hype that the 360 enjoyed.
Ok, time to come clean: first off, the author of the article is my older brother; secondly, I edited the piece for him before he submitted it for publication. As such, I've read the article many times- enough to see that Zonk missed the point entirely when he selected a quote. Yes, the article posits that gamers are usually addicted to their hobby, and as such willing to sometimes do some extreme things- much like devotees of other amusements. But that's far from the main thrust of the article.
The point is that, when he let his gaming habits get out of hand, my brother didn't do it because it was fun, so much as it was better than what he was supposed to be doing. Instead of investigating <i>why</i> games are so addictive for some of us, he argues that a severe addiction can be a proverbial dead canary for your normal life. He wasn't doing something he really enjoyed, so he escaped into games instead (it didn't help that there were six PCs, two Playstations, two Saturns, an N64, an SNES, and six people in a space smaller than your average living room- but that's beside the point). Much like I said, his gaming was a symptom of a larger problem, rather than a problem unto itself. His tale is meant to serve as a warning: if you're spending too much time on your hobby, take a look at your life- you may find something in dire need of fixing.
Man, none of those sites ever create the donators who helped get that ROM dumped (myself included).:\ Ah well, I guess the game itself is its own reward.
It's true that you won't find a monitor that size probably at all, much less for a price that low. My 24" LCD monitor (Dell 2405FPW, which is capable of displaying 1080p) retails for $1200. I paid less than that, but it's still a hell of a lot more than a TV. That being said, it does have a far superior vieweability to projection TVs. My roommate owns a Panasonic 50" LCD projection HDTV (which, by the way, is one of those sets that doesn't natively support 1080i), and its optimum viewing angle range is positively tiny- even when compared to my LCD. You get a little color abberation with LCDs, true, but with projection TVs you get a muddy, dark picture when you aren't looking practically straight on, which is considerably harder to deal with.
Honestly I wasn't trying to argue that monitors are somehow more viable than HDTVs as displays. Indeed, I considered buying a small HDTV and using it as my computer display. I just wanted you to check your facts. I knew from my own research that you're not going to find a display that big for less than a grand- especially with the 1080i stipulation.
Point me to a 50" 16:9 computer monitor that can do at least 1920x1080 for under $1000.
First point me to a sub-$1000 50" HDTV that supports 1080i. The only things I could find in that price range don't natively support 1080i- they downscale to 720p. That automatically disqualifies them according to your specs. And they're mostly projection displays, which come with a huge set of drawbacks (hugely limited optimum viewing angle for one).
Most of the factors it uses depend on a human already deciding that a movie's going to be a success. You don't get a star studded cast unless you think it's going to be a hit. You don't spend lavishly on special effects unless you think it's going to be a hit. And distribution size is determined by its commercial potential. When that's already decided, there's not much point to having a computer algorithm say the same thing.
A true turing test requires you to talk about a wide variety of sibjects, whereas ELIZA forces you into a faux psychotherapy session. It's not the same.
Nintendo has made more profit than both Sony and Microsoft combined actually.
I'm a Nintendo fan myself, but I very much doubt that's the case in overall terms. Yes, Nintendo knows how to pack a lot of punch into a little box, and do it cheaply enough to be profitable even at a low price. That being said, there's more than that to making an overall profit in the video game industry. To use the standard cliche, it's giving away the razor to sell the blades. Sony may lose a lot of money on their hardware, but they've got an incredibly large installed base. And along with that comes more companies interested in making games for their system, as well as paying the licensing fees that make the whole thing worthwhile for the manufacturer. This in turn creates more interest in the console, since it has more games, which grows the installed base even further. Repeat ad inifinitum. If everything goes well, you've got a powerful money making engine on your hands. Sony's been extraordinarily successful at this, as demonstrated by the abundance of PS2 titles available. While Nintendo has certainly done better than Microsoft at this (largely because, as you said, they're the only one who consistently profits on their hardware), the dearth of GC games vis a vis the PS2 games clearly shows that they've got a long way to go before they beat out Sony Computer Entertainment's profitability. Sony's created demand that builds upon itself exponentially, while Nintendo struggles to keep gamers interested in the GC with excellent but woefully infrequent first-party releases.
A good portion of their woes, as you probably already know, lie in their inability to shake their image as a "kiddie" manufacturer. This is part of the reason they're going the way they are with the Revolution. Their attempts rebuild their image amongst hardcore gamers has fallen largely on deaf ears, and it's not financially feasible for them to battle it out head to head with the titans like Sony and Microsoft. So, rather than go after the traditional market, they're taking on a much more interesting plan- to expand the market beyond its traditional bounds. If they succeed, they'll be able to create a money engine on a much greater scale than Sony's wildest dreams.
Do you rely on the cashier at Wal-Mart for information on your favorite director's next film or for the latest info on HD technology?
No. But, on the other hand, do you ask store managers for supply information? Yes. They're totally different things. A clerk doesn't necessarily need to know about what he's selling (it'd be much better if s/he did, but that's neither here nor there), but a manager damn well better know what inventory is coming into the store.
I'm not so sure this is artificial scarcity anymore. It's one thing to create a buzz with a brief period of scarcity. It's another thing to extend it so long that you eat up all of your much touted lead time on the competition.
The commercials are specifically designed to evoke Apple's distinctive "dancing shadows" commercials. It may not be marketed as an iPod spinoff in name, but the connection is purposefully obvious.
There's as much of a chance (if not a greater one) of Apple damaging the iPod brand image as there is of driving people to standalone iPods. The potential gains don't seem worth the immense risk. I'd chalk this one up as a crackpot conspiracy theory.
Has anyone else noticed that 1up excels at taking up 2 or 3 pages of space in their articles, despite never actually saying anything? They read like one of those papers you write in school when you aren't sure what you want to say, but you started writing anyway because it's due the next morning.
Monolith's "F.EAR" is the most recent game to actally creep me out. It's got hallucinatory effects that are genuinely spooky. Silicon Knights' "Eternal Darkness" had something similar (and was creepy in its own right), but it was tied to a "sanity meter"- so if you played right, you'd never even encounter them. Kinda unfortunate, since they made it possible (and desirable) to avoid the coolest feature of the game. FEAR, on the other hand, does it at set points so that it's unavoidable. It's definitely a game best played in the dark with the sound turned way up.
Another creepy game is Thief 3: Dark Shadows. It's not necessarily the atmosphere that's scary, as the constant tension of sneaking around. That's not saying the game isn't scary in its own right, though- the sanitarium is one of the single creepiest levels I've ever played.
I'm not sure how my system ranked as high as it did. I've got a lot of RAM (1.2GB) and HDD space (350GB in total), but the rest of my system is pretty mediocre: Athlon XP 2400+ and a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. It'll pay most games at decent speed, but it's definitely not a cutting edge gaming machine. Somehow I've managed to be in the 80th percentile of their database. I'm guessing they've either seen a lot of crappy computers, or their algorithms just suck.
Slashdot Mirror
understand that this is no mere rhythm exercise.
Everyone knows that the rhythm method doesn't work anyway.
The Dreamcast had other factors against it- like being from a cash-starved console maker (read: not Microsoft) who had spent the past 5 years pissing off western gamers. None of the others had the multi-tiered flop that was the 32x/Sega CD/Game Gear/Saturn/Pico fiasco. Sega's past mistakes are what killed them, not being first to market. Their image was so tarnished that the Sony hype machine stomped all over them.
Also you should note that you can plug the DS in mid-gameplay and chage it without restarting the system.
You seriously underestimate the power of being first to market. I mean look at the Nintendo DS if you want an example. I'm a big Nintendo fan, but even I would argue that the DS launch was pretty dismal. Sure there was plenty of hardware to be had, but the launch library was pretty pathetic and key features like internet play didn't even hit the market until a full year later. If you'd asked me this time last year, I would've predicted that the PSP was going to steamroll the DS. Nonetheless, they've built up a hell of a lot of steam with their lead time and the sales figures speak for themselves. For another point of comparison, the PS2 had a far worse launch than the 360. There were severe hardware shortages, and the launch library was pretty sad. But by being first out of the gate(yes the Dreamcast was earlier, but I'm not counting it for simiplicity's sake) Sony was able to dominate Nintendo and Microsoft with momentum alone.
The very fact that we've yet to hear anything from Sony is the whole reason such speculation exists. Spring 2006 is way too close for them to not have a launch date, price point, or initial shipment figures. Even more than rabid gamers, retailers like to have these figures well in advance so they can incorporate it into their budget, and decide how much shelf space to dedicate to it. While November is pretty much a guess, it's not much of a stretch to see their logic: summer is a slow season for games, so it's an unlikely choice for a launch; and November gives them access to the same holiday hype that the 360 enjoyed.
Ok, time to come clean: first off, the author of the article is my older brother; secondly, I edited the piece for him before he submitted it for publication. As such, I've read the article many times- enough to see that Zonk missed the point entirely when he selected a quote. Yes, the article posits that gamers are usually addicted to their hobby, and as such willing to sometimes do some extreme things- much like devotees of other amusements. But that's far from the main thrust of the article.
The point is that, when he let his gaming habits get out of hand, my brother didn't do it because it was fun, so much as it was better than what he was supposed to be doing. Instead of investigating <i>why</i> games are so addictive for some of us, he argues that a severe addiction can be a proverbial dead canary for your normal life. He wasn't doing something he really enjoyed, so he escaped into games instead (it didn't help that there were six PCs, two Playstations, two Saturns, an N64, an SNES, and six people in a space smaller than your average living room- but that's beside the point). Much like I said, his gaming was a symptom of a larger problem, rather than a problem unto itself. His tale is meant to serve as a warning: if you're spending too much time on your hobby, take a look at your life- you may find something in dire need of fixing.
Um, that's the Japanese name for Bust-A-Move.
Man, none of those sites ever create the donators who helped get that ROM dumped (myself included). :\ Ah well, I guess the game itself is its own reward.
It's true that you won't find a monitor that size probably at all, much less for a price that low. My 24" LCD monitor (Dell 2405FPW, which is capable of displaying 1080p) retails for $1200. I paid less than that, but it's still a hell of a lot more than a TV. That being said, it does have a far superior vieweability to projection TVs. My roommate owns a Panasonic 50" LCD projection HDTV (which, by the way, is one of those sets that doesn't natively support 1080i), and its optimum viewing angle range is positively tiny- even when compared to my LCD. You get a little color abberation with LCDs, true, but with projection TVs you get a muddy, dark picture when you aren't looking practically straight on, which is considerably harder to deal with.
Honestly I wasn't trying to argue that monitors are somehow more viable than HDTVs as displays. Indeed, I considered buying a small HDTV and using it as my computer display. I just wanted you to check your facts. I knew from my own research that you're not going to find a display that big for less than a grand- especially with the 1080i stipulation.
Point me to a 50" 16:9 computer monitor that can do at least 1920x1080 for under $1000.
First point me to a sub-$1000 50" HDTV that supports 1080i. The only things I could find in that price range don't natively support 1080i- they downscale to 720p. That automatically disqualifies them according to your specs. And they're mostly projection displays, which come with a huge set of drawbacks (hugely limited optimum viewing angle for one).
Most of the factors it uses depend on a human already deciding that a movie's going to be a success. You don't get a star studded cast unless you think it's going to be a hit. You don't spend lavishly on special effects unless you think it's going to be a hit. And distribution size is determined by its commercial potential. When that's already decided, there's not much point to having a computer algorithm say the same thing.
In the immortal words of Cibo Matto: "Spare the rod and spoil the chick before you go and shit a brick".
Get a dictionary and look up the word "slander".
A true turing test requires you to talk about a wide variety of sibjects, whereas ELIZA forces you into a faux psychotherapy session. It's not the same.
Not only is this article from June, but it's been reported on before.
I think Iwata meant it more on the conceptual level than the buisness level.
Nintendo has made more profit than both Sony and Microsoft combined actually.
I'm a Nintendo fan myself, but I very much doubt that's the case in overall terms. Yes, Nintendo knows how to pack a lot of punch into a little box, and do it cheaply enough to be profitable even at a low price. That being said, there's more than that to making an overall profit in the video game industry. To use the standard cliche, it's giving away the razor to sell the blades. Sony may lose a lot of money on their hardware, but they've got an incredibly large installed base. And along with that comes more companies interested in making games for their system, as well as paying the licensing fees that make the whole thing worthwhile for the manufacturer. This in turn creates more interest in the console, since it has more games, which grows the installed base even further. Repeat ad inifinitum. If everything goes well, you've got a powerful money making engine on your hands. Sony's been extraordinarily successful at this, as demonstrated by the abundance of PS2 titles available. While Nintendo has certainly done better than Microsoft at this (largely because, as you said, they're the only one who consistently profits on their hardware), the dearth of GC games vis a vis the PS2 games clearly shows that they've got a long way to go before they beat out Sony Computer Entertainment's profitability. Sony's created demand that builds upon itself exponentially, while Nintendo struggles to keep gamers interested in the GC with excellent but woefully infrequent first-party releases.
A good portion of their woes, as you probably already know, lie in their inability to shake their image as a "kiddie" manufacturer. This is part of the reason they're going the way they are with the Revolution. Their attempts rebuild their image amongst hardcore gamers has fallen largely on deaf ears, and it's not financially feasible for them to battle it out head to head with the titans like Sony and Microsoft. So, rather than go after the traditional market, they're taking on a much more interesting plan- to expand the market beyond its traditional bounds. If they succeed, they'll be able to create a money engine on a much greater scale than Sony's wildest dreams.
Somebody set up us the bomb... er, Vista.
Do you rely on the cashier at Wal-Mart for information on your favorite director's next film or for the latest info on HD technology?
No. But, on the other hand, do you ask store managers for supply information? Yes. They're totally different things. A clerk doesn't necessarily need to know about what he's selling (it'd be much better if s/he did, but that's neither here nor there), but a manager damn well better know what inventory is coming into the store.
I'm not so sure this is artificial scarcity anymore. It's one thing to create a buzz with a brief period of scarcity. It's another thing to extend it so long that you eat up all of your much touted lead time on the competition.
The commercials are specifically designed to evoke Apple's distinctive "dancing shadows" commercials. It may not be marketed as an iPod spinoff in name, but the connection is purposefully obvious.
There's as much of a chance (if not a greater one) of Apple damaging the iPod brand image as there is of driving people to standalone iPods. The potential gains don't seem worth the immense risk. I'd chalk this one up as a crackpot conspiracy theory.
Has anyone else noticed that 1up excels at taking up 2 or 3 pages of space in their articles, despite never actually saying anything? They read like one of those papers you write in school when you aren't sure what you want to say, but you started writing anyway because it's due the next morning.
Monolith's "F.EAR" is the most recent game to actally creep me out. It's got hallucinatory effects that are genuinely spooky. Silicon Knights' "Eternal Darkness" had something similar (and was creepy in its own right), but it was tied to a "sanity meter"- so if you played right, you'd never even encounter them. Kinda unfortunate, since they made it possible (and desirable) to avoid the coolest feature of the game. FEAR, on the other hand, does it at set points so that it's unavoidable. It's definitely a game best played in the dark with the sound turned way up.
Another creepy game is Thief 3: Dark Shadows. It's not necessarily the atmosphere that's scary, as the constant tension of sneaking around. That's not saying the game isn't scary in its own right, though- the sanitarium is one of the single creepiest levels I've ever played.
I'm not sure how my system ranked as high as it did. I've got a lot of RAM (1.2GB) and HDD space (350GB in total), but the rest of my system is pretty mediocre: Athlon XP 2400+ and a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. It'll pay most games at decent speed, but it's definitely not a cutting edge gaming machine. Somehow I've managed to be in the 80th percentile of their database. I'm guessing they've either seen a lot of crappy computers, or their algorithms just suck.