I love my GC dearly, but I've seen it crash- the Metroid Prime US 1.0 freeze glitch. If you skipped the monsters put in your way to buy the game time to load, the system crashed. It would crash occasionally with elevators.
This whole article seems like a puff piece to me. The author is so busy praising the PS2 (whose shoddy engineering is holding the entire generation back in my opinion) that he can't even get his facts straight. Take his claim that it has a "PC-level graphics chip" for example. That's a load. But even when it launched the PS2 didn't have anything near PC-level graphics capability. There are some pretty games for the PS2, but nothing that looks as good as RtcW- which ran at 1024x768 on a machine I owned before the PS2 came out.
Ok, guilty as charged. You are correct on both counts. I didn't really research which was first, I just knew that they both predated the iPod (BTW, I said the Rio was the first portable MP3 player- not the first one with an HDD). That being said, the point of the grandparent post remains the same: Apple wasn't first, but they deserve some credit on the innovation front.
I've been known to grumble when people gush over their iPods- especially when words like "revolutionary" are thrown around. The iPod is a good implementation, but Apple gets far too much credit considering that the Diamond Rio and Creative Nomad Jukebox had already taken the title of first portable MP3 player, and the first one with a HDD respectively. That being said, claiming that the iPod isn't innovative is a bit harsh. Innovation doesn't come just from being the first to have an idea, but from successfully combining two existing ideas together (come on, who wouldn't call the chocolate and peanut butter guys innovative?). Apple saw a need in the market for a smaller, lighter HDD-based player with better battery life, and they filled that hole. That's innovative. Similarly, they realized that most of the people who own iPods are fashion/trend-conscious (which is part of my problem with the iPod- but that can be saved for another post), so they added colors to the lineup. Once again they took an already successful idea, and added to it. And once again, I'd argue that they've innovated.
By the article's logic, neither the TR-1 nor the iPod are actually innovative. The car industry came up with the concept of a product in multiple colors well before then, and the concept of a smaller lighter radio just builds upon the pre-existing transistor radio. What the author doesn't seem to see is that almost all technology builds upon pre-existing ideas. The automobile is based upon the pre-existing idea of the wheel, and the engine- which in turned is built upon the idea of a steam engine. The CD player is the child of the radio, the laser, and the record player. It isn't so much about coming up with the idea first as it is about improving upon it. To be an innovator you don't have to re-invent the mouse trap, you just have to make it better.
Sure, if cutesy kids games are your thing, go for Nintendo.
They certainly are if I have to choose between them and the masturbatory, self-indulgent tripe that passes for "mature" these days. Honestly, don't you guys feel the least bit patronized? Or are tits and violence the only things you want from an experience?
I believe the reference was to the weird little GameBoy Micro they just released; and I'm inclined to agree with the Sony guy actually, it is a gimmick.
I disagree. I think it's a well-placed shot at the low-end and cell phone game playing crowd. It's cheap, it's small, it looks pretty slick, and it's got a HUGE library of games. Let's face it: for most people the PSP and the DS are big and expensive. And if you just want something to fill that 10 minute gap before the subway comes, neither system's games don't have enough pick up and play value. The GBA fits the bill perfectly.
I've always hated the term "machinima". Whats wrong with something self-explanitory like "realtime 3D" or "in game"? "Machinima" just sounds so pretentious- like they're trying to gain legitimacy through buzzwords.
It is not a game development platform / engine... their intent is to use their game engine as a game engine, not to sell it 'competively'.
From the "Technology" section of projectoffset.com:
"The Offset Engine is a complete platform for creating next generation games. Though it aims to be a top tier engine, OE is not just built with large developers in mind. Every aspect of the engine is designed around the goal of reducing development time and cost, while empowering designers and artists with the tools they need to create spectacular visual effects and immersive environments."
Yeah, they're totally not designing it to be licensed.
One more day turning up the contrast on the subtle flaws in the logic of fellow/.ians.
Seems to me you just turned your own brightness way down.
1) Boobies = No women gamers
A good point, but they don't seem to get to the root of the issue. It's not just the shabby treatment of women in games that turns them off. It's or the violence, or the language either. The fact is, your average "mature" title these days is dripping with pure unadulterated testosterone. Developers are too busy trying to grab their current target audience (males 17 to 25) to cultivate new audiences.
The biggest games- the ones that sell millions of copies to non-traditional gamers- are almost all aimed at a wider audience. Halo 2 was big, there's no denying that- but it pales in comparison to The Sims or Rollercoaster Tycoon in raw staying power- they're practically cultural phenomena. The same can be said for Nintendogs in Japan, which helped the DS steamroll Sony's entire console family in May (haven't seen sales figures since then). That's the kind of stuff that will bring gaming to the masses, not a game designed to appeal to some 19 year-old trying to look cool sitting alone in his parents' basement.
2) Peripheral gouging
I'll concede the memory card point (despite it being pretty much moot for the Xbox and the upcoming 360 and Revolution consoles), since it's pretty much required to use the system. The second controller, on the other hand, isn't necessary at all. There are plenty of people who don't need them, so why require them to pay for something they won't even use? Not to mention that the console manufacturers are selling the hardware at a loss- they're not gouging, just trying to hit a price point with the basic system.
3) The Sims branched out into the realm of fantasy.
Kinda like a humor magazine that branches out into totally unfunny "worst of" lists... Wha? Oh, sorry I tend to ramble sometimes. Seriously, they're EXPANSIONS. If you don't want them, don't buy them- the basic game is fine on its own. Secondly, games are all about escapism. If gamers don't mind it being unrealistic (obviously they don't), then so be it.
4) Sega consoles fail.
Um, this point would've been relevant almost 5 years ago.
5) The play timer proves what a loser you are.
See today's article about speed runs. I'll leave whether or not that proves loserdom or not up to you.
6) Unlockables suck!
Unlockables can really lengthen the life of a game. A great example of this is Super Smash Bros. Melee: collecting trophies, and unlocking stages and characters kept me playing the single player element of the game much longer than if I would've otherwise (the multiplayer STILL gets a ton of play in my circle of friends too). When used with a good game, it just makes for an even more addictive experience.
7) Downloading patches sucks.
Would you rather they just leave it broken? Games are complicated, ESPECIALLY ones as big as MMOs. Bugs are pretty much inevitable, and getting them fixed improves the player's experience. They also fail to mention that a lot of said MMOG patches include content updates. Would you rather eschew all that new material just to save a few minutes logging on every month? I didn't think so.
8) Cutscenes are boring!
I think it's time to take your Ritalin.
9) Sub-par cell phone games
For all the choppy cell phone games out there, there are also a lot of great ones. Popcap makes a veritable treasure trove of great phone games, and pretty much every smartphone platform on earth has a Worms port. And these are just a few examples.
10) Hype
Good point, though it's ironic to see it on Gamepro.com.
My point holds true. The maximum supported resolution for non-UMD video is significantly lower than UMD video. It may look decent, but it's still likely an artificial limitation put on the system to encourage you to buy UMD movies.
"With the codec and video expertise of our favorite geek friend, Craig, we tried to convert a video into MPEG-4 format with a 480x272 resolution, which is the native resolution of the PSP LCD. A 480x272 video file should be of higher quality than a stretched 320x240 pixel picture, but unfortunately, all of our attempts failed, no matter what we tried. We would always end up with Incompatible Data or Corrupted Data displayed on our PSP, though it played perfectly on a Windows box."
Personally I don't see them point of them at all. But then if I had any inclination to play movies, I'd rip them and use a memory stick. I'm sure Sony are gambling that the majority of PSP owners don't bother.
Or the fact that the maximum supported resolution for such videos is considerably lower than that of UMD movies.
Last time I heard, the PS3 was going to be way more than $200. No official price point yet, but SCEJ president Ken Kutaragi was quoted as saying "I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it'll be expensive." That doesn't sound like it's going to be cheap to me.
4 Times faster is a pretty vague claim; there is really no supporting information to determine whether that is good or bad.
It's more specific than publishing raw polygon counts with no shading, no texturing, no AI, and no realtime audio. It's also better than publishing raw MHz or gigaflops (without telling us what floating point operation they're measuring with). It gives us a point of comparison to something that actually exists, rather than theoretical numbers that mean nothing.
While they haven't posted any hard specs yet, Nintendo has announced that Revolution will be two to three times as powerful as the Gamecube (there are other sources with this info, I just linked to the first one Google gave me). So there is somewhat of a basis for his comments. That being said, comparing it to the current generation gives us a fairly reliable metric for what to expect (none of the unshaded, untextured polygon numbers game bullshit), while we've yet to see any real-world information (Sony and Microsoft's E3 demos are anything but realistic) from the competition. Wait and see is the only option.
Yeah- both of mine are import CDs, and I don't miss the licensed stuff all that much (except the Guitar Vader stuff that didn't make it on the first one). Oh and as much as I like it, having "Birthday Cake" on constant rotation gave me a headache.
The real meat of both soundtracks- I own them both on CD, where the licensed content was largely omitted -was composed by Hideki Naganuma. None of it is available anywhere except in the game or on the OST, so I think it qualifies as original. Hell, I can't even find anything by him in CDDB or FreeDB. While some of the soundtrack may be licensed, enough of it isn't that I think it counts as original.
Slashdot Mirror
I love my GC dearly, but I've seen it crash- the Metroid Prime US 1.0 freeze glitch. If you skipped the monsters put in your way to buy the game time to load, the system crashed. It would crash occasionally with elevators.
That's not just unsold PSP units in the warehouse- he's talking about store inventories as well.
This whole article seems like a puff piece to me. The author is so busy praising the PS2 (whose shoddy engineering is holding the entire generation back in my opinion) that he can't even get his facts straight. Take his claim that it has a "PC-level graphics chip" for example. That's a load. But even when it launched the PS2 didn't have anything near PC-level graphics capability. There are some pretty games for the PS2, but nothing that looks as good as RtcW- which ran at 1024x768 on a machine I owned before the PS2 came out.
Great idea! I was thinking of making an emulator that lets you play PS2 games on your PSP, but the publishers have beaten me to it.
Ok, guilty as charged. You are correct on both counts. I didn't really research which was first, I just knew that they both predated the iPod (BTW, I said the Rio was the first portable MP3 player- not the first one with an HDD). That being said, the point of the grandparent post remains the same: Apple wasn't first, but they deserve some credit on the innovation front.
I've been known to grumble when people gush over their iPods- especially when words like "revolutionary" are thrown around. The iPod is a good implementation, but Apple gets far too much credit considering that the Diamond Rio and Creative Nomad Jukebox had already taken the title of first portable MP3 player, and the first one with a HDD respectively. That being said, claiming that the iPod isn't innovative is a bit harsh. Innovation doesn't come just from being the first to have an idea, but from successfully combining two existing ideas together (come on, who wouldn't call the chocolate and peanut butter guys innovative?). Apple saw a need in the market for a smaller, lighter HDD-based player with better battery life, and they filled that hole. That's innovative. Similarly, they realized that most of the people who own iPods are fashion/trend-conscious (which is part of my problem with the iPod- but that can be saved for another post), so they added colors to the lineup. Once again they took an already successful idea, and added to it. And once again, I'd argue that they've innovated.
By the article's logic, neither the TR-1 nor the iPod are actually innovative. The car industry came up with the concept of a product in multiple colors well before then, and the concept of a smaller lighter radio just builds upon the pre-existing transistor radio. What the author doesn't seem to see is that almost all technology builds upon pre-existing ideas. The automobile is based upon the pre-existing idea of the wheel, and the engine- which in turned is built upon the idea of a steam engine. The CD player is the child of the radio, the laser, and the record player. It isn't so much about coming up with the idea first as it is about improving upon it. To be an innovator you don't have to re-invent the mouse trap, you just have to make it better.
Mea culpa. Pasted the wrong URL and then didn't preview.
How about the Xbox "Bert and Ernie" overflow exploit?
Sadly for Microsoft, those Flash game playing dilettantes are worth a LOT of money.
Sure, if cutesy kids games are your thing, go for Nintendo.
They certainly are if I have to choose between them and the masturbatory, self-indulgent tripe that passes for "mature" these days. Honestly, don't you guys feel the least bit patronized? Or are tits and violence the only things you want from an experience?
I believe the reference was to the weird little GameBoy Micro they just released; and I'm inclined to agree with the Sony guy actually, it is a gimmick.
I disagree. I think it's a well-placed shot at the low-end and cell phone game playing crowd. It's cheap, it's small, it looks pretty slick, and it's got a HUGE library of games. Let's face it: for most people the PSP and the DS are big and expensive. And if you just want something to fill that 10 minute gap before the subway comes, neither system's games don't have enough pick up and play value. The GBA fits the bill perfectly.
I've always hated the term "machinima". Whats wrong with something self-explanitory like "realtime 3D" or "in game"? "Machinima" just sounds so pretentious- like they're trying to gain legitimacy through buzzwords.
Err, typo on my part. 7.4% is more like it.
Sheesh, you don't even have to RTFA, just read the /. summary correctly. Firefox didn't lose 8%. It lost 0.64%. It went from 8.71% to 8.07%.
.64% drop in total users, but a 7.8% drop in FireFox's share.
Do the math. It's a
It is not a game development platform / engine... their intent is to use their game engine as a game engine, not to sell it 'competively'.
/.ians.
From the "Technology" section of projectoffset.com:
"The Offset Engine is a complete platform for creating next generation games. Though it aims to be a top tier engine, OE is not just built with large developers in mind. Every aspect of the engine is designed around the goal of reducing development time and cost, while empowering designers and artists with the tools they need to create spectacular visual effects and immersive environments."
Yeah, they're totally not designing it to be licensed.
One more day turning up the contrast on the subtle flaws in the logic of fellow
Seems to me you just turned your own brightness way down.
1) Boobies = No women gamers
A good point, but they don't seem to get to the root of the issue. It's not just the shabby treatment of women in games that turns them off. It's or the violence, or the language either. The fact is, your average "mature" title these days is dripping with pure unadulterated testosterone. Developers are too busy trying to grab their current target audience (males 17 to 25) to cultivate new audiences.
The biggest games- the ones that sell millions of copies to non-traditional gamers- are almost all aimed at a wider audience. Halo 2 was big, there's no denying that- but it pales in comparison to The Sims or Rollercoaster Tycoon in raw staying power- they're practically cultural phenomena. The same can be said for Nintendogs in Japan, which helped the DS steamroll Sony's entire console family in May (haven't seen sales figures since then). That's the kind of stuff that will bring gaming to the masses, not a game designed to appeal to some 19 year-old trying to look cool sitting alone in his parents' basement.
2) Peripheral gouging
I'll concede the memory card point (despite it being pretty much moot for the Xbox and the upcoming 360 and Revolution consoles), since it's pretty much required to use the system. The second controller, on the other hand, isn't necessary at all. There are plenty of people who don't need them, so why require them to pay for something they won't even use? Not to mention that the console manufacturers are selling the hardware at a loss- they're not gouging, just trying to hit a price point with the basic system.
3) The Sims branched out into the realm of fantasy.
Kinda like a humor magazine that branches out into totally unfunny "worst of" lists... Wha? Oh, sorry I tend to ramble sometimes. Seriously, they're EXPANSIONS. If you don't want them, don't buy them- the basic game is fine on its own. Secondly, games are all about escapism. If gamers don't mind it being unrealistic (obviously they don't), then so be it.
4) Sega consoles fail.
Um, this point would've been relevant almost 5 years ago.
5) The play timer proves what a loser you are.
See today's article about speed runs. I'll leave whether or not that proves loserdom or not up to you.
6) Unlockables suck!
Unlockables can really lengthen the life of a game. A great example of this is Super Smash Bros. Melee: collecting trophies, and unlocking stages and characters kept me playing the single player element of the game much longer than if I would've otherwise (the multiplayer STILL gets a ton of play in my circle of friends too). When used with a good game, it just makes for an even more addictive experience.
7) Downloading patches sucks.
Would you rather they just leave it broken? Games are complicated, ESPECIALLY ones as big as MMOs. Bugs are pretty much inevitable, and getting them fixed improves the player's experience. They also fail to mention that a lot of said MMOG patches include content updates. Would you rather eschew all that new material just to save a few minutes logging on every month? I didn't think so.
8) Cutscenes are boring!
I think it's time to take your Ritalin.
9) Sub-par cell phone games
For all the choppy cell phone games out there, there are also a lot of great ones. Popcap makes a veritable treasure trove of great phone games, and pretty much every smartphone platform on earth has a Worms port. And these are just a few examples.
10) Hype
Good point, though it's ironic to see it on Gamepro.com.
My point holds true. The maximum supported resolution for non-UMD video is significantly lower than UMD video. It may look decent, but it's still likely an artificial limitation put on the system to encourage you to buy UMD movies.
From Engadget:
"With the codec and video expertise of our favorite geek friend, Craig, we tried to convert a video into MPEG-4 format with a 480x272 resolution, which is the native resolution of the PSP LCD. A 480x272 video file should be of higher quality than a stretched 320x240 pixel picture, but unfortunately, all of our attempts failed, no matter what we tried. We would always end up with Incompatible Data or Corrupted Data displayed on our PSP, though it played perfectly on a Windows box."
Personally I don't see them point of them at all. But then if I had any inclination to play movies, I'd rip them and use a memory stick. I'm sure Sony are gambling that the majority of PSP owners don't bother.
Or the fact that the maximum supported resolution for such videos is considerably lower than that of UMD movies.
Last time I heard, the PS3 was going to be way more than $200. No official price point yet, but SCEJ president Ken Kutaragi was quoted as saying "I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it'll be expensive." That doesn't sound like it's going to be cheap to me.
Frankly calling it PS or PS1 after the PS2 was announced made more sense to me than PSX ever did.
Except that invites confusion with the PSOne. Go Sony marketing!
4 Times faster is a pretty vague claim; there is really no supporting information to determine whether that is good or bad.
It's more specific than publishing raw polygon counts with no shading, no texturing, no AI, and no realtime audio. It's also better than publishing raw MHz or gigaflops (without telling us what floating point operation they're measuring with). It gives us a point of comparison to something that actually exists, rather than theoretical numbers that mean nothing.
While they haven't posted any hard specs yet, Nintendo has announced that Revolution will be two to three times as powerful as the Gamecube (there are other sources with this info, I just linked to the first one Google gave me). So there is somewhat of a basis for his comments. That being said, comparing it to the current generation gives us a fairly reliable metric for what to expect (none of the unshaded, untextured polygon numbers game bullshit), while we've yet to see any real-world information (Sony and Microsoft's E3 demos are anything but realistic) from the competition. Wait and see is the only option.
Yeah- both of mine are import CDs, and I don't miss the licensed stuff all that much (except the Guitar Vader stuff that didn't make it on the first one). Oh and as much as I like it, having "Birthday Cake" on constant rotation gave me a headache.
The real meat of both soundtracks- I own them both on CD, where the licensed content was largely omitted -was composed by Hideki Naganuma. None of it is available anywhere except in the game or on the OST, so I think it qualifies as original. Hell, I can't even find anything by him in CDDB or FreeDB. While some of the soundtrack may be licensed, enough of it isn't that I think it counts as original.