Are you kidding? That would require objectivity in regards to an Microsoft product. If an article doesn't at least slam MS in a back handed way it's not going to get on Slashdot because real "nerds" only like Linux and Nintendo and Apple.
Why should they support a 12+ year old OS? Anyone still using Windows 95 for example has already got more than their money's worth out of it. The fact that MS was still making critical security patches for Windows 98 is actually pretty good compared to software support from other companies. I am sure that there will be a lot of MS bashing and objections to my post, but in the end it's a business and you can only support a product for so long when it's not generating any more revenue for you.
They started out as a fan based machinima group. MS liked waht they did and gave them their blessing and later made a commercial deal with them. You should really get your facts straight.
Wow, you are about as clueless as it gets. MS has to protect it's trademark and if they don't it's at their own peril. If you go out and create a mod using someone else's IP without express permission you are going to get F'ed in the A the vast majority of time. And if you think that Bungie couldn't make an RTS based in the Halo universe if they wanted then you have your head firmly planted in your dark nether regions.
The bigger market share? It's already MCE of course. And you (and TH) got one point very wrong, Windows (and MCE) both support hardware and software decoding and encoding. The average Joe is NEVER going to need any scalable architecture for a friggin' media center. Lastly, I have no idea what they are smoking when they say you can only play on the same device. It's entirely possible to move music and videos to a portable player from Windows MCE.
Agreed. Somehow Mac fans and, well just about anyone anti-Microsoft, think that somehow Apple is not a large company with the same lawyers, shareholder obligations and occasional predatorial business practices that most large corporations have. They may try and project sandals, Hacky Sack, anti-conformist hipsterism, but in the end they have the same goals as any other corporation and that's to make as much money as possible and to build value into their shares.
Ummm lead time means they have to get the strategy guide done long before the game has shipped. This is why so many are rife with errors. And it's also why I disagree with the author's premise. If you are in the middle of sever crunch trying to get a game out the door you aren't going to fritter away time conspiring with guide book makers to put useless crap into your game just to sell more guides. The useless crap comes when people have downtime and that's not near the end of the ship cycle.
Your "facts" don't prove anything other than games have gotten more complex and some developers, id in this case, like to hide easter eggs that could probably only be discovered by persistence or the cheat codes you mention. It's not like the cheats and easter eggs don't appear on the net for free within weeks of a games release, so there is no need to buy one unless you feel compelled to for some other reason. And where did I make a mistake? A quote directly from the article, "Call me cynical, but it seems to me that it's become standard practice these days for developers to put secrets into games that are next to impossible to find without the official strategy guide next to you." That seems to me to be exactly what I was calling out. And to say it's not a gaming site is particularly ridiculous. The byline is "a website for gamers over 25". Also, I don't buy the "Oh poor us, we got Slashdotted" argument. This site was created for people to read and obviously with ads they'd either like to cover their expenses or make a little profit. Nothing wrong with that, but I've seen this 1000 times over the years. Someone makes a contentious statement, it gets picked up by bigger news sites because topics like that draw clicks and then they get residual traffic. I am not saying the author doesn't believe what he says, I just think it's ridiculous. As for my experience, you can choose to believe me or not, it's not skin off my nose.
Maps and art content as well as audio might be able to be done well procedurally, but I have yet to see anything that could even come close to pulling off what a good designer/writer could do. So, if you wanted hack and slash dungeon crawls then your idea works and has already been done. Story and design wise that ain't going to happen any time soon.
Well, except for the fact that it's not true. Or at least I've never heard of such a thing and I've been working in games for seven years now. The lead time on glossy strategy guides is so long and deadlines are so tight there is no way any sane company would waste time on something like this.
I really think this is complete and utter BS. I can't remember a single designer on any game I have ever worked on even considering a strategy guide when it came to design. This just screams of another gaming site grasping at straws and posting a contrversial topic just to get hits and it worked.
Good question, not to mention the fact that it's an 9 month old piece. Some days I wonder how stories get on this site. So much crap and reposts get posted and yet seemingly relevant stories that I and other friends have submitted over the years get turned down on a regular basis. Maybe if I was a paying subscriber it would increase my chances?
Exaclty. It will take years to get the cost of the BR drive and the Cell processor down and any price reduction is going to be that much more money Sony has to recover in licensing fees. The PS2 doesn't have the highest game/console ratio, so nothing makes me think the PS3 will be any better. Sony has a challenge in front of them. I plan to buy a PS3, but it will be a few years from now when the hardware is stable and the price is lower.
Honestly, if you think the PS3 is going to be monster hit at that price I'd say you should start looking in the mirror to see who is the fanboy. Sony is arrogant and assumes that it's brand name will sell the PS3 no matter what. Well, the last time I looked at the consumer market I saw a fickle group that is more than willing to jump on whatever the "hot" trend is. So, if Nintendo or MS become the hot property over the next few years Sony will suffer. They will sell out at first because there are enough early adopters out there, but at the premium they are asking they won't sustain that level of sales for long past the holidays.
You and your friends might not like SA, but there were millions of folks that disagreed wholeheartedly. If a game is fun, well designed and polished it has a good chance of selling regardless what the setting is. You make some REALLY broad statements that you present as fact, that are in reality just the opinions of you and your circle of friends.
If you are making your games based on "data points" and not what is a fun, well designed game then maybe you are in the wrong industry. So many "well researched" products have flopped and "doomed failures" have made it that this kind of research is almost useless. Hell, EA sheepishly admits they tried to kill The Sims 7 times because their research said it wouldn't sell.
Do a little bit of research and you will see that you are making a completely false statment. The RIAA did not negotiate any deal with AllofMP3 or ROMS.
Slashdot Mirror
Kind of proves my point. Apparently you have no "nerd" cred if you don't hate Micro$oft.
Are you kidding? That would require objectivity in regards to an Microsoft product. If an article doesn't at least slam MS in a back handed way it's not going to get on Slashdot because real "nerds" only like Linux and Nintendo and Apple.
Says the person posting in the comments on an internet site.
They enact laws that are really about preserving their tax base.
That I can't stop running after mushrooms. It's not bad when I go for a walk in the park, but it's hell in grocery stores and pizza places.
Why should they support a 12+ year old OS? Anyone still using Windows 95 for example has already got more than their money's worth out of it. The fact that MS was still making critical security patches for Windows 98 is actually pretty good compared to software support from other companies. I am sure that there will be a lot of MS bashing and objections to my post, but in the end it's a business and you can only support a product for so long when it's not generating any more revenue for you.
Because it's made with a competitor's game. Why would MS want to help EA sell more copies of their games?
They started out as a fan based machinima group. MS liked waht they did and gave them their blessing and later made a commercial deal with them. You should really get your facts straight.
Wow, you are about as clueless as it gets. MS has to protect it's trademark and if they don't it's at their own peril. If you go out and create a mod using someone else's IP without express permission you are going to get F'ed in the A the vast majority of time. And if you think that Bungie couldn't make an RTS based in the Halo universe if they wanted then you have your head firmly planted in your dark nether regions.
The bigger market share? It's already MCE of course. And you (and TH) got one point very wrong, Windows (and MCE) both support hardware and software decoding and encoding. The average Joe is NEVER going to need any scalable architecture for a friggin' media center. Lastly, I have no idea what they are smoking when they say you can only play on the same device. It's entirely possible to move music and videos to a portable player from Windows MCE.
Agreed. Somehow Mac fans and, well just about anyone anti-Microsoft, think that somehow Apple is not a large company with the same lawyers, shareholder obligations and occasional predatorial business practices that most large corporations have. They may try and project sandals, Hacky Sack, anti-conformist hipsterism, but in the end they have the same goals as any other corporation and that's to make as much money as possible and to build value into their shares.
Ummm lead time means they have to get the strategy guide done long before the game has shipped. This is why so many are rife with errors. And it's also why I disagree with the author's premise. If you are in the middle of sever crunch trying to get a game out the door you aren't going to fritter away time conspiring with guide book makers to put useless crap into your game just to sell more guides. The useless crap comes when people have downtime and that's not near the end of the ship cycle.
Your "facts" don't prove anything other than games have gotten more complex and some developers, id in this case, like to hide easter eggs that could probably only be discovered by persistence or the cheat codes you mention. It's not like the cheats and easter eggs don't appear on the net for free within weeks of a games release, so there is no need to buy one unless you feel compelled to for some other reason. And where did I make a mistake? A quote directly from the article, "Call me cynical, but it seems to me that it's become standard practice these days for developers to put secrets into games that are next to impossible to find without the official strategy guide next to you." That seems to me to be exactly what I was calling out. And to say it's not a gaming site is particularly ridiculous. The byline is "a website for gamers over 25". Also, I don't buy the "Oh poor us, we got Slashdotted" argument. This site was created for people to read and obviously with ads they'd either like to cover their expenses or make a little profit. Nothing wrong with that, but I've seen this 1000 times over the years. Someone makes a contentious statement, it gets picked up by bigger news sites because topics like that draw clicks and then they get residual traffic. I am not saying the author doesn't believe what he says, I just think it's ridiculous. As for my experience, you can choose to believe me or not, it's not skin off my nose.
Maps and art content as well as audio might be able to be done well procedurally, but I have yet to see anything that could even come close to pulling off what a good designer/writer could do. So, if you wanted hack and slash dungeon crawls then your idea works and has already been done. Story and design wise that ain't going to happen any time soon.
Well, except for the fact that it's not true. Or at least I've never heard of such a thing and I've been working in games for seven years now. The lead time on glossy strategy guides is so long and deadlines are so tight there is no way any sane company would waste time on something like this.
I really think this is complete and utter BS. I can't remember a single designer on any game I have ever worked on even considering a strategy guide when it came to design. This just screams of another gaming site grasping at straws and posting a contrversial topic just to get hits and it worked.
Good question, not to mention the fact that it's an 9 month old piece. Some days I wonder how stories get on this site. So much crap and reposts get posted and yet seemingly relevant stories that I and other friends have submitted over the years get turned down on a regular basis. Maybe if I was a paying subscriber it would increase my chances?
Proof please. Oh, and unless they are putting down a sizeable deposit it's pretty easy to "pre-order" anything.
Exaclty. It will take years to get the cost of the BR drive and the Cell processor down and any price reduction is going to be that much more money Sony has to recover in licensing fees. The PS2 doesn't have the highest game/console ratio, so nothing makes me think the PS3 will be any better. Sony has a challenge in front of them. I plan to buy a PS3, but it will be a few years from now when the hardware is stable and the price is lower.
Honestly, if you think the PS3 is going to be monster hit at that price I'd say you should start looking in the mirror to see who is the fanboy. Sony is arrogant and assumes that it's brand name will sell the PS3 no matter what. Well, the last time I looked at the consumer market I saw a fickle group that is more than willing to jump on whatever the "hot" trend is. So, if Nintendo or MS become the hot property over the next few years Sony will suffer. They will sell out at first because there are enough early adopters out there, but at the premium they are asking they won't sustain that level of sales for long past the holidays.
You and your friends might not like SA, but there were millions of folks that disagreed wholeheartedly. If a game is fun, well designed and polished it has a good chance of selling regardless what the setting is. You make some REALLY broad statements that you present as fact, that are in reality just the opinions of you and your circle of friends.
If you are making your games based on "data points" and not what is a fun, well designed game then maybe you are in the wrong industry. So many "well researched" products have flopped and "doomed failures" have made it that this kind of research is almost useless. Hell, EA sheepishly admits they tried to kill The Sims 7 times because their research said it wouldn't sell.
Why is this in the Games section?
Do a little bit of research and you will see that you are making a completely false statment. The RIAA did not negotiate any deal with AllofMP3 or ROMS.
Well, I didn't ask. Didn't think it was polite if he didn't offer himself.