Re:Nintendo Cliches
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Nintendo are, like MS and Sony, a "big bad company". They get away, in the eyes of the slash-horde, with practices that other companies would be instantly damned for.
And in the eyes of the non-slash-horde, mainly media and "gamers," Sony can do no worng.
Remember when Nintendo said try using a dead pixel DS for a week or two, and if it is too annoying, then we'll replace it for you free of charge? Well, the gaming media and the "gamers" out there lambasted Nintendo for saying try it and see if it is too annoying before just sending it back in.
Well, guess what? Sony is now saying THE EXACT SAME THING for the PSP, and the gaming media and the "gamers" out there are like "WOW SONY IS T3H R0XX0R F0R D01NG 7H1S F0R US!!!!!111!!!!!eleventyone!"
I think getting away with some things in the eyes of some and not in the eyes of others is they way it goes for everything. After all, how many people thank God Microsoft put in a built in pop up blocker in SP 2, when it's IE's fault they were getting pop ups in the first place?
MS and Sony aren't perfect either, but it seems that their games departments are more in touch with what gamers genuinely want.
That depends. Most of the "gamers" you speak of are not true gamers, really. They're Madden players, and graphics whores. If a game promises to push X million polygons, they cream themselves. If the game says EA Sports on it, they buy it. and they don't buy much else.
If the system has the words Sony PlayStation on it, they buy it, and continue buying it after it breaks down within a year each time because of Sony's shitty QA for their consumer grade electronics.
Why do wonderous games like ICO fail? Because of these same "gamers" that MS and Sony seem to be more in touch with, according to you. It's the same reason that Wanda and the Collosus will fail... it looks to be a fun, and gorgeous game.... but the "gamers" that you speak of don't care about wonderous game play, all they care about is Madden, NASCAR, and tons of blood in a game that could be a lot better off without it. Game play be damned, to them, it's just gotta have EA Sports on it, or it's shit.
What I think that would be beneficial to the gaming industry, in the attempts to get more girls and women into gaming would be to let the standard "overly topheavy with a waist so small she shouldn't be able to hold her ginormous mammary glands aloft while standing" character models go by the wayside, as well as the obvious thought that women in armor should somehow be showing off as much skin as poosible (completely negating the whole idea of protective armor, mind you).
Do I think women don't want violence in the games they play? No, I don't think that. I think like any other person, they will play a game with violence if it is a game they enjoy.
What I do think would help publishers would be to make realistic female protagonists with strong personalities, and intelligence. Sure, let them be just as unrealistic in the fact that they're super spys, or hauling around tons of weapons, or are insane martial artists that would kick Bruce Lee's ass while he's along side people like Jet Li and Donny Yen and she's alone.
But make them believable in character. Make them just as prone to saving their own lives and the lives of others, while still being emotional when necessary (something male characters should be as well, but often aren't). In some ways, Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield from the RE series show this; in other ways Zelda from Ocarina of Time (in the future) shows this. And, of course, the ultimate in strong female characters (physically, her character's personality is rarely actually looked at, the games focus on almost nothing beyond her physical abilities except in the most recent GBA games) is Samus Aran in the Metroid series.
I think one game that would do exceptionally well, with both male and female players, could be a new twist on The Legend of Zelda series; wherein Zelda is not taken hostage, but instead has her own journey and quests to go on that expemplify her physical strengths (stealth, acrobatics) as well as give her more challenging puzzles to work on, some of which might have diplomatic parts (she is a princess, after all, she should know something of diplomacy). Maybe even make it two games in one. Male gamers and female gamers could probably equally get into each characters and their individual stories, but the positive look at a female protagonist who isn't running around in a body that is disproportionate to reality and who has her own inner strength as well could be something the rest of the gaming world looks at and takes notice.
Nah I was thinking more like the people that press the CDs, the people who run the plants that do that, the artists who design the package, the actual shipping to regional centers.. Etc... I'm sure that the people you mention have other sources of income. Your unwavering hatered of MS aside, there are people who have to make a living off of working for them.
Again, the people working here are getting paid their money whether Halo 2 has new maps or not, just like the Bungie employees are getting thier paychecks whether maps are being made or not. Microsoft makes tons of products, and the two big ones, Windows and Office, make enough money to ensure everyone working for Microsoft gets paid their paycheck and profit bonuses (if MS has these). The CD/DVD pressing plant gets its money, the printing gets its money, etc. But, they get paid for the work done at the time, not continually paid long after the fact.
Yes, they do... However the relationship between the two isn't like "Hey go down the hall and talk to Bob in Bungie to do this." It's a seperate entity and still gets "Paid" for the work it does.
And because they are part of Microsoft, they get paid when Microsoft cuts their payroll checks, just like everyone else in the company. Whether this is every week or every two weeks or whatever, is irrelevant. They are getting paid their agreed upon salary/hourly wages. If they weren't, they'd be quitting and suing for back wages.
So it is your belief that making maps DOES NOT cost money? Hrmm... Well no, I suppose that making a map itself could be fan driven.
And on the PC, it is largely fan driven and thriving. And while it can take some time, good mappers can put out tons of maps in a fairly short amount of time. And they get put out for free. The same for skin makers and model makers for the mod community. Hell, the most popular online game, ever, Counter-Strike is just a fan made mod for Half-Life, and was released for free to the owners of Half-Life. Valve was just smart enough to hire those guys on after CS became popular so they could them make some money off of selling a stand alone CS game disk.
And I'm pretty sure the people that designed these new maps wouldn't be happy with your suggestion that they work for free.
The point being they aren't working for free, like many fan map makers are. They got paid their salary, period. They got paid for their work, and they're going to continue getting paid for their time at their job, even if they don't start working on more content until near Xmas. They aren't going to be going to work at Bungie for free, unless they're dumb as bricks.
We all know it made money... What's the problem with that?
Nothing is wrong with them making money off of the product. The product sold.
Now it's wrong to make money off of something people like?
No, but to try and pull the "well, it cost us money to make this" bullshit is just that, bullshit. They've made well over 10x whatever they spent on making Halo back, maybe even closer to 20x (well, MS did, the Bungie people now work for their MS salary). They've made more than enough on Halo 2, already, to keep paying the Bungie people's slaraies for a good long time, and since it is still selling, it is going to be paying their salries for a long time to come.
To try and "justify" the price of maps because, yes it takes some labor hours to make them, is ludicrous. Now, if Halo 2 was a complete flop, they could justify it by saying that more, because they'd be trying to make their money back. But only a fool would beleive that the amount of money they spent on salaries justifies any cost when the game has made back enough that Bungie could be a successful stand alone development studio for a good few years just on the Halo franchise, even if they don't release the next one for 2 or 3 more years.
Halo2 has been the best multiplayer experience that I've ever had.
Oh, so you mean the sales from Halo 2 go to paying Ballmer, the workers in the Windows division, and the Office division, and the MSN division, etc.? Grow a brain, Windows and Office bring in all the profits necessary for all the other money losing divisions combined to be paid for years upon years by the end of each fiscal year.
paying back Bungie
Why would MS have to "pay back" Bungie for anything? Microsoft OWNS Bungie. There is no publisher/developer relationship here with royalties and other bullshit, MS is Bungie and Bungie is MS. And, you know, building off of your "paying the employees" part in the Bungie case, developers working at a company get paid the same amount whether they are working on a curent project or got done one a month before or whatever... or do you think development studios just pay people once a year when those people have done over a year's worth of development in some cases?
and the money that goes towards keeping XBL running with all the extra Halo players
What extra cost in keeping XBL running? XBL IS A GODDAMN PEER TO PEER NETWORK! The only thing MS runs are a few small regional data centers hooked into a centralized server to keep matchmaking options open and stat tracking. These are not massive server farms for each and every Xbox Live game because they need to keep those persistant worlds going because they're all super MMORPGs with millions of players each. These are just regional servers/data centers connected to a main server to store things like gamertags, and stats. No game, and I mean NO game on XBL, to date, has been anything but peer to peer when in the games. PSO has servers up, for the lobbies, but once the game is going, it's all P2P.
That's it. MS isn't doing jack shit for badwidth here, son. If you join a Halo 2 game, MS isn't hosting it, one of the players is, so MS isn't paying for bandwidth for you to play. The person whose Xbox you are connected to is paying his cable or DSL company for the bandwidth for you to play.
The only time MS has bandwidth costs that are anywhere near meaningful is when new content is released. For the longest time, MS owned the servers that distributed content, and did not allow third parties to host their own servers... but to get EA on XBL, they had to chnage that. So, this means they have even less bandwidth to worry about, because now third party content may be on a MS owned XBL server, or it might be on that third party's server and not costing MS a cent in bandwidth charges.
If you honestly think MS needs Halo 2's sales money to pay Ballmer's and everyone else's salary; has to "pay back" anything to Bungie, a company they own; and that XBL is some massive centralized super server system that is costing MS tons of money in bandwidth every month, when it is in a fact a peer to peer system for EVERY SINGLE GAME, you're too dumb to even be on the Internet.
I'm just sorry that you've joined the growing number of people who feel they DESERVE something for free.
No, I don't "deserve" anything for free. But I'm not dumb enough to fall for the "well, making maps costs money" line on Bungie's site. So does making an ending to the game that doesn't lick a nut, Bungie, but I see that didn't stop them from making a crap ending. Bug testing and fixing costs money too, something MS has lots of, and yet the game still shipped with super exploitable bugs and glitches that have ruined the experience for more than a few people.
The game has made back all its development costs, plus the cost of making 9 maps, and bug fixing, probably more than 10 fold by now. I honestly doubt the game took over $18 million to make.
So, you're right, I don't deserve anything for free, But MS and Bungie don't DESERVE any money for this content either, because by pulling the "well this stuff costs money" card, they seem to forget that some people know that they've made a killing on the Halo franchise--hell
If you buy the maps on XBL, you save a whole $1.01!!!! YES! And no stupid disk to keep around! And you don't get the other extra stuff that might make a $20 DVD game disk kind of worth having like the extra cinematic and the documentary!
Man, Bungie and MS know how to please their true fans, don't they?
If I get the maps (I'm thinking of selling Halo 2 at this point), I'll wait until they are all free. I don't pay for maps, sorry. MS can't say they're trying to recoup losses on time spent making maps... Halo 2 has sold over 6 million copies, and even if MS only gets $30 of the $50-$55 (collector's edition) price tag, that's over $180 million. Now, I highly doubt that the making of Halo 2, these new maps, and the bandwidth to distribute them cost them more than $180 million. Anyone else agree?
There are exploits used (non-solid geometry to pull things through, sword flying, and others), as well as stanby cheating (putting your modem on standby, doing things, turning off standby and having what you did happen to everyone else). The standby is the main cheat (there are a few others, but they aren't used as much), but there are others. Why Bungie made the netcode for Halo 2 so fucked up that someone, even if not the host, can standby and basically almost lag out, and then when he turns off standby the entire rest of the game has to catch up to his Xbox (the complete opposite of what should happen, he should catch up to the rest of the game) is beyond me.
Then dont, convert the ones you have to memory stick. It supports that.
But none of the PCs in my house, or my iBook have slots for Memory Sticks built in. Thus, another additional cost to buy a Memory Stick reader/writer. No thanks.
And even if I could just use the built in USB to transfer stuff from the PC/Mac to the PSP Memory Stick, it wouldn;t be worth it to me.
I couldn't care less. Have fun carrying an ipod and PSP around, and rigging up headphones to take audio data from both devices simultaneously for custom soundtrack support.
If I cared about custom soundtracks, don't you think I would have more than one CD ripped to my Xbox? It's not a feature I particularly care for on my console games, so why would it be a huge factor for me while playing a handheld game?
Actually, I already have something that plays games, plays music, and plays DVDs; and is portable enough to use in the passenger/back seat of a car, on a train, or (where I use it a lot) on a plane. It's called my 14" laptop.
The extra advantages to the laptop being I can also use it for (WiFi if available, Ethernet or modem otherwise) Internet access to surf the web in my hotel rooms or check my email or upload files to my site's FTP and such, as well as do writing, photo editing, video editing, sound editing, etc.
So I wouldn't need to buy the other things, but I could, if I wanted to. The only one I am considering is an iPod, or other digital music player, mainly for when I am in areas where pulling out my laptop to listen to music would be silly.
The fact remains, though, that the PSP is using the PlayStation name, hence that means gaming. Otherwise, don't you think Sony would have just put out another type of player, maybe with the Walkman name, that did the other things the PSP does? The gaming aspect is what is there to sell the PSP, not the multimedia aspects. The PlayStation name is what is there to sell the PSP, and the games. For everything else the PSP can do there are single purpose devices that will do them better than the PSP will, or multipurpose devices like laptops that also do those same things better than the PSP.
The only way that the PSP is, as Hirai put it "convergent portable entertainment device," is if people plan on only buying Sony products for it (UMDs, Memory Sticks). They shouldn't try to sell it on the multimedia aspects, they should try to sell it on the gaming aspects (even if the majority of the games will also be available in a larger form on the PS2).
Joy. So if I want 40 GB of them, since these are after market SanDisk ones, not Sony branded ones, it's still $7,192. Those are $89.90 each from there, so I'm sure the Sony branded ones are around $100 or more.
I know you are just correcting my forgetting that normal Meory Stick Duos won't work, though. Gotta be the Pro versions.
I don't own anything that uses Sony Memory Sticks or any version of them... so AFAIAC, the PSP is just the way to try and get their Memory Sticks into people's homes, and in a way that will be potentially bigger than digital cameras and such that use them. After all, I can buy a Kodak, or Olympous, or whatever digital camera and never have to use Memory Sticks. If people want to do stuff with the PSP, though, it's Memory Sticks all the way.
It's a goddamn gaming device. I don't care what Kaz "The button isn't supposed to line up over its contact, because we designed it that way" Harai says. It's a gaming device, with some extra functions I'm not interested in.
MP3 playback? I could get an iPod for a little more, and save thousands of dollars in memory sticks to get the capacity I'd want. If I want something to play music on, I'll get something with that purpose designed into it, and not one where I need to buy hundreds of Sony Memory Stick Duos at their outrageous prices to fit all my music on. 40 GB of Memory Stick Duos is over $10K... no thanks, I'll spend $400-$500 on an iPod first.
Movie playback? I don't feel like buying my movies AGAIN on another proprietary format just to be able to watch them on the go. I can get a portable DVD player, and have all my DVD extras (because I'm fairly certain all the bonus features I buy DVDs for won't be on UMDs), and not have to buy my movies all over again.
So, yeah, it's a gaming device, with other things thrown on top to try and justify the price and the hype. It's also how Sony really hopes that they can sell tons and tons of Memory Sticks.
Never know. It could have been dropped and landed at just the right angle to break the screen is all.
I had dropped my old cell phone tons of times over the course of a few years, and nothing ever happened to the screen. Then one time it fell, and hit at just the right angle to nearly shatter the screen.
It's possible that the PSP was just dropped, and it just happened to land at that angle to break the screen.
Still, it makes me wary for people throwing it in backpacks or pockets full of stuff. No screen cover is just a bad design decision by Sony. And we all know there's no way in hell they'll replace a broken screen for free because it isn't covered under their warranty (hell, dead pixels in Japan, not the fault of the consumer, are not covered by the warranty, it says so in the Japanese manual).
a) Do sony's fortune's need turning? Surely they are absolutely giant in quite a lot of markets thus aren't doing too badly for themselves
Yes, Sony's fortunes do need turning. Go to the SEC and check out their annual filings for the past two years, you'll see they basically turned into a version of Microsoft, except not the type of Microsoft that makes billions in profit from a few divisions. Sony's Game Division is the only thing consistently making money right now; last fiscal year it was Sony Pictures and Sony Games that made a profit, nothing esle in the company did.
Unfortunately for Sony, unline Microsoft--who makes billions on Windows and Office--they have been in the red for a few years now. Sony Games is the only division consistently making money, but it hasn't been enough to keep Sony from losing money, as an overall company, for the past few years straight.
So, since the company is losing money right now, overall, and have been for a few years... I'd say, yes, they probably want a reversal of fortune right now.
Review boards wouldn't be necessary for most games, as they are obviously targetted to adults and could go straight to the stores with a rating of 18+. If a game is meant for a younger audience (or for all ages), it can be submitted and reviewed and then deemed appropriate. This also has the effet of stopping violent games from "slipping thru the cracks."
Except for the fact that most games are not intended just for people 18 and over. The games intended for that audience, the current M and AO rated games, make up only around 10% of games released each year (and AO games make up way less than 1% of games each year, and you'll never see them on store shelves anyway). The other 90% are either rated E (and soon to be E10) or T, and therefore meant for either a younger audience or deemed appropriate for all ages.
Therefor, most games would still be submitted for review by the granparent's post. Might as well keep the current rating system, then. It works, when parents actually know what the ratings are and use them to know what games are fine for their children, or what they feel is OK for them.
Ever look at MS' SEC filings? The Home and Entertainment division has been bleeding money since the release of the Xbox, with only calendar Q4 2004 showing a profit because of all the Halo 2 sales worldwide.
If they are making a profit on every console sold, oh great seer, then why has the Home and Entertainment Division lost over $2.5 BILLION since November 2001? And, for the record, since the launch of the Xbox, the division's losses have gone up up up. Before the launch of the Xbox, the worst loss they had in a single quarter in that division was around $45 million; since the launch the division has seen many a quarter losing over $100 million (almost consistently each quarter since mid-2002), and one quarter alone has shown a loss of well over $300 million (that's losing over $100 million a month!).
Money is being lost somewhere; and if you seriously believe they are making a profit on the Xbox hardware at it's current $150 price point, then perhaps you can explain where the rest of the money they are losing is coming from.
Actually, ideas are non-copywriteable. You patent ideas, and copyright finished work.
So, if you have an intriguing idea for software, you could try and patent the idea, however, the final code would be subject to copyright laws as well as patent laws, because if the idea was patneted, and the source code was the implimentation of the idea, then the patent for the idea also hangs over the copywritten souce code.
The problem people have with software patnets, is that sometimes they are trying to patent ideas for software (say, the Eloas browser plugin suit vs MS, the browser plugin is an idea), and sometimes they are writing up code for something, and then sending in the code for patenting (and sometimes getting the patents), so they have just patented a mathmetical algorithm (which is technically not allowed under patent laws, but since the USTPO has so little clue as to how software works, they let these patents through all the time).
So, to clarify for you: ideas cannot be copywrited, they can be patented. That's the whole idea behind patents, to allow an inventor to patent his idea and try to make it or sell his idea to others.
And because I am the only one who uses my Xbox and my Xbox Live, then I should then be forced to use a password, similar to how I need to on the PS2 when I do want to play games online?
Think about it. Either way, I'm forced to do an extra step that I shouldn't have to do. Either I have to manually turn off my presence when I start getting game requests, or I have to spend an extra few seconds to enter a password when I do want to get online.
Instead, offline games with online presence should be off by default and only on when you want it to be on. Most people playing single player games want to play that single player games at that time. If they wish to also be online, then let them choose it, let the rest of us who don't want to be bothered by people when we aren't playing online games have our peace.
Which is annoying as hell. If I'm playing a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, then I don't feel like playing an online game, because if I felt like playing an online game, I'd be playing an online game at the time.
It's crap that I have to go in and then use an option to turn off my online presence, because the game and Xbox put you online by default.
No, because microsoft will not let developers release patches via live for anything other than multiplayer balance.
False. Many games have had patches released for not only multiplayer issues, but also single player issues. For example, Crimson Skies has a problem where if you changed something in the multiplayer settings, it made you unable to play the single player game, so the patch for Crimson Skies fixed that and some other minor issues, but there was no "multiplayer balance" issue to be fixed in Crimson Skies.
Other games have also had issues with their single player games patched on XBL. Halo 2, for instance, had its 480p mode fixed that affected both single and multiplayer where the HUD was cut off on the far left side of the screen.
1) It would have full support for muse with scrollwheel and 3 buttons.
It does. Just plug it in, and it just works (TM). No waiting for Windows to detect new hardware and install the drivers, or having to install drivers in Linux (since I don't use Linux, I don't know if you do or how long it takes to do so). So, point one is taken care of.
2) It would have ports of good games, instead of overrated, marketing-driven crap, that lacks innovation and thought.
Since I don't know yout taste in games, I'll just give you a URL to check to see if any of them work for you. http://www.apple.com/games/ then you can seach for game until your heart is content.
3) It would not require purchase of hardware that costs twice as much as its PC twin with the same performance.
Funny how my 1 Ghz G4 iBook with it's standard 256 MB RAM (before I upgraded the RAM) outperformed my father's brand new laptop with its 1.7 Ghz P4 with 256 MB RAM with Windows XP Pro. You seem to beleive in the Mhz myth. Even before my RAM upgrade, my iBook G4 would switch focus faster than the "faster" P4, and I could have much more open at the same time and perfrom multiple tasks much easier.
I could be running iTunes listening to streaming music, Photoshop CS, iChat AV (built in Mac AIM client in OS X Panther and beyond), Safari (with multipe tabs open), and Apple Works for word processing and switch focus much faster than I can just switch focus while I have Firefox (with multiple tabs open), iTunes listening to Internet radio, AIM, and MS Word on his laptop. I'd not even consider running Photoshop CS on his laptop with it's 256 MB of RAM with anything else open, knowing that it would take forever to switch focus.
I often have had multiple apps open on my iBook, and been able to do more than I could on his "faster" laptop. The Mhz doesn't mean diddly, the fact that OS X is just a more streamlined OS when it comes to multitasking than Windows is what matters.
Oh, and no, there's not a ton of spyware/adware/other malware on his laptop to slow it down, the first time he was online with it was in my presence, and I installed Firefox and all the Windows critical updates, including SP 2. Internet Explorer never gets opened on his laptop, and his programs on it are minimal.
PS2: $300, died a year and a half later with constant Disc Read Errors on any disk put in it, finally bought a slim PS2 for $150 a few months back to replace it after borrowing my friend's for over a year and a half (since he never played it). 4 Memeory cards at @$20 each: $80. Total Price: $530.
Xbox: $200 (bought well after launch, just two weeks before the JSRF bundle was announced) plus $150 total on XBL ($50 on XBL launch, $50 after first year, another $50 this year). Has a POS Thomson drive in it, the drive is now so bad it barely reads anything anymore. MS wants $80 plus shipping to fix it, which will be better for me than buying a new one and losing all my game saves. Total price after I send it in for repairs: $420+shipping costs, $280+shipping costs if we don't count XBL costs.
GameCube: $200, launch day unit, no problems. 2 memeory cards at $20 each. Total cost: $240.
As far as not counting the game costs, or controller costs (I've had to replace 2 Xbox controllers so far because they just decide to stop reading when I pull down on the left analog stick sometimes, and 1 GC controller that got thrown to the ground and the A button stopped working), by your logic, the GameCube has been my best value. I spent less for it than my original PS2, and have had it longer than my Xbox, yet it hasn't cost me any extra money because of disk drive problems.
And I'm not the only one who has had bad experiences with Sony's shoddy disk drives, they did lose a class action lawsuit that forces them to fix or replace any PS2 with Disc Read Erors for free, after all. And I'm also not the only one who has had problems with Microsoft's use of Thomson DVD drives in older Xboxes, either. Google Xobx Thomson problems and see how many hits you get. I'll give you a hint on that one, Google says "about 49,800" hits.
The PS2 has hardly been a "better value" for me, or for the thousands of others who have had it die in less than two years of use because Sony's QA has gone to shit over the past decade or so for consumer electronics.
Maybe in the UK they've broadcast all 13 episodes... but in North America we've only had 6 or 7 (Can't remember which it is) broadcast so far. The last one aired was where Number 6 manifested as someone people could see and accused Baltar of treason.
Before the launch of the Xbox and GC, Microsoft did attempt to aquire Nintendo. Nintendo said they'd sell, too... for $25 billion in cash.
You're right, MS has never taken an aquisition like that... that'd be half their short term investments and cash reserves right there. A few million dollars here and there to buy out a company (or a few hundred million in some cases) is much easier on the reserves than $25 billion is.
Slashdot Mirror
And in the eyes of the non-slash-horde, mainly media and "gamers," Sony can do no worng.
Remember when Nintendo said try using a dead pixel DS for a week or two, and if it is too annoying, then we'll replace it for you free of charge? Well, the gaming media and the "gamers" out there lambasted Nintendo for saying try it and see if it is too annoying before just sending it back in.
Well, guess what? Sony is now saying THE EXACT SAME THING for the PSP, and the gaming media and the "gamers" out there are like "WOW SONY IS T3H R0XX0R F0R D01NG 7H1S F0R US!!!!!111!!!!!eleventyone!"
I think getting away with some things in the eyes of some and not in the eyes of others is they way it goes for everything. After all, how many people thank God Microsoft put in a built in pop up blocker in SP 2, when it's IE's fault they were getting pop ups in the first place?
MS and Sony aren't perfect either, but it seems that their games departments are more in touch with what gamers genuinely want.
That depends. Most of the "gamers" you speak of are not true gamers, really. They're Madden players, and graphics whores. If a game promises to push X million polygons, they cream themselves. If the game says EA Sports on it, they buy it. and they don't buy much else.
If the system has the words Sony PlayStation on it, they buy it, and continue buying it after it breaks down within a year each time because of Sony's shitty QA for their consumer grade electronics.
Why do wonderous games like ICO fail? Because of these same "gamers" that MS and Sony seem to be more in touch with, according to you. It's the same reason that Wanda and the Collosus will fail... it looks to be a fun, and gorgeous game.... but the "gamers" that you speak of don't care about wonderous game play, all they care about is Madden, NASCAR, and tons of blood in a game that could be a lot better off without it. Game play be damned, to them, it's just gotta have EA Sports on it, or it's shit.
What I think that would be beneficial to the gaming industry, in the attempts to get more girls and women into gaming would be to let the standard "overly topheavy with a waist so small she shouldn't be able to hold her ginormous mammary glands aloft while standing" character models go by the wayside, as well as the obvious thought that women in armor should somehow be showing off as much skin as poosible (completely negating the whole idea of protective armor, mind you).
Do I think women don't want violence in the games they play? No, I don't think that. I think like any other person, they will play a game with violence if it is a game they enjoy.
What I do think would help publishers would be to make realistic female protagonists with strong personalities, and intelligence. Sure, let them be just as unrealistic in the fact that they're super spys, or hauling around tons of weapons, or are insane martial artists that would kick Bruce Lee's ass while he's along side people like Jet Li and Donny Yen and she's alone.
But make them believable in character. Make them just as prone to saving their own lives and the lives of others, while still being emotional when necessary (something male characters should be as well, but often aren't). In some ways, Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield from the RE series show this; in other ways Zelda from Ocarina of Time (in the future) shows this. And, of course, the ultimate in strong female characters (physically, her character's personality is rarely actually looked at, the games focus on almost nothing beyond her physical abilities except in the most recent GBA games) is Samus Aran in the Metroid series.
I think one game that would do exceptionally well, with both male and female players, could be a new twist on The Legend of Zelda series; wherein Zelda is not taken hostage, but instead has her own journey and quests to go on that expemplify her physical strengths (stealth, acrobatics) as well as give her more challenging puzzles to work on, some of which might have diplomatic parts (she is a princess, after all, she should know something of diplomacy). Maybe even make it two games in one. Male gamers and female gamers could probably equally get into each characters and their individual stories, but the positive look at a female protagonist who isn't running around in a body that is disproportionate to reality and who has her own inner strength as well could be something the rest of the gaming world looks at and takes notice.
Again, the people working here are getting paid their money whether Halo 2 has new maps or not, just like the Bungie employees are getting thier paychecks whether maps are being made or not. Microsoft makes tons of products, and the two big ones, Windows and Office, make enough money to ensure everyone working for Microsoft gets paid their paycheck and profit bonuses (if MS has these). The CD/DVD pressing plant gets its money, the printing gets its money, etc. But, they get paid for the work done at the time, not continually paid long after the fact.
Yes, they do... However the relationship between the two isn't like "Hey go down the hall and talk to Bob in Bungie to do this." It's a seperate entity and still gets "Paid" for the work it does.
And because they are part of Microsoft, they get paid when Microsoft cuts their payroll checks, just like everyone else in the company. Whether this is every week or every two weeks or whatever, is irrelevant. They are getting paid their agreed upon salary/hourly wages. If they weren't, they'd be quitting and suing for back wages.
So it is your belief that making maps DOES NOT cost money? Hrmm... Well no, I suppose that making a map itself could be fan driven.
And on the PC, it is largely fan driven and thriving. And while it can take some time, good mappers can put out tons of maps in a fairly short amount of time. And they get put out for free. The same for skin makers and model makers for the mod community. Hell, the most popular online game, ever, Counter-Strike is just a fan made mod for Half-Life, and was released for free to the owners of Half-Life. Valve was just smart enough to hire those guys on after CS became popular so they could them make some money off of selling a stand alone CS game disk.
And I'm pretty sure the people that designed these new maps wouldn't be happy with your suggestion that they work for free.
The point being they aren't working for free, like many fan map makers are. They got paid their salary, period. They got paid for their work, and they're going to continue getting paid for their time at their job, even if they don't start working on more content until near Xmas. They aren't going to be going to work at Bungie for free, unless they're dumb as bricks.
We all know it made money... What's the problem with that?
Nothing is wrong with them making money off of the product. The product sold.
Now it's wrong to make money off of something people like?
No, but to try and pull the "well, it cost us money to make this" bullshit is just that, bullshit. They've made well over 10x whatever they spent on making Halo back, maybe even closer to 20x (well, MS did, the Bungie people now work for their MS salary). They've made more than enough on Halo 2, already, to keep paying the Bungie people's slaraies for a good long time, and since it is still selling, it is going to be paying their salries for a long time to come.
To try and "justify" the price of maps because, yes it takes some labor hours to make them, is ludicrous. Now, if Halo 2 was a complete flop, they could justify it by saying that more, because they'd be trying to make their money back. But only a fool would beleive that the amount of money they spent on salaries justifies any cost when the game has made back enough that Bungie could be a successful stand alone development studio for a good few years just on the Halo franchise, even if they don't release the next one for 2 or 3 more years.
Halo2 has been the best multiplayer experience that I've ever had.
You
Oh, so you mean the sales from Halo 2 go to paying Ballmer, the workers in the Windows division, and the Office division, and the MSN division, etc.? Grow a brain, Windows and Office bring in all the profits necessary for all the other money losing divisions combined to be paid for years upon years by the end of each fiscal year.
paying back Bungie
Why would MS have to "pay back" Bungie for anything? Microsoft OWNS Bungie. There is no publisher/developer relationship here with royalties and other bullshit, MS is Bungie and Bungie is MS. And, you know, building off of your "paying the employees" part in the Bungie case, developers working at a company get paid the same amount whether they are working on a curent project or got done one a month before or whatever... or do you think development studios just pay people once a year when those people have done over a year's worth of development in some cases?
and the money that goes towards keeping XBL running with all the extra Halo players
What extra cost in keeping XBL running? XBL IS A GODDAMN PEER TO PEER NETWORK! The only thing MS runs are a few small regional data centers hooked into a centralized server to keep matchmaking options open and stat tracking. These are not massive server farms for each and every Xbox Live game because they need to keep those persistant worlds going because they're all super MMORPGs with millions of players each. These are just regional servers/data centers connected to a main server to store things like gamertags, and stats. No game, and I mean NO game on XBL, to date, has been anything but peer to peer when in the games. PSO has servers up, for the lobbies, but once the game is going, it's all P2P.
That's it. MS isn't doing jack shit for badwidth here, son. If you join a Halo 2 game, MS isn't hosting it, one of the players is, so MS isn't paying for bandwidth for you to play. The person whose Xbox you are connected to is paying his cable or DSL company for the bandwidth for you to play.
The only time MS has bandwidth costs that are anywhere near meaningful is when new content is released. For the longest time, MS owned the servers that distributed content, and did not allow third parties to host their own servers... but to get EA on XBL, they had to chnage that. So, this means they have even less bandwidth to worry about, because now third party content may be on a MS owned XBL server, or it might be on that third party's server and not costing MS a cent in bandwidth charges.
If you honestly think MS needs Halo 2's sales money to pay Ballmer's and everyone else's salary; has to "pay back" anything to Bungie, a company they own; and that XBL is some massive centralized super server system that is costing MS tons of money in bandwidth every month, when it is in a fact a peer to peer system for EVERY SINGLE GAME, you're too dumb to even be on the Internet.
I'm just sorry that you've joined the growing number of people who feel they DESERVE something for free.
No, I don't "deserve" anything for free. But I'm not dumb enough to fall for the "well, making maps costs money" line on Bungie's site. So does making an ending to the game that doesn't lick a nut, Bungie, but I see that didn't stop them from making a crap ending. Bug testing and fixing costs money too, something MS has lots of, and yet the game still shipped with super exploitable bugs and glitches that have ruined the experience for more than a few people.
The game has made back all its development costs, plus the cost of making 9 maps, and bug fixing, probably more than 10 fold by now. I honestly doubt the game took over $18 million to make.
So, you're right, I don't deserve anything for free, But MS and Bungie don't DESERVE any money for this content either, because by pulling the "well this stuff costs money" card, they seem to forget that some people know that they've made a killing on the Halo franchise--hell
Man, Bungie and MS know how to please their true fans, don't they?
If I get the maps (I'm thinking of selling Halo 2 at this point), I'll wait until they are all free. I don't pay for maps, sorry. MS can't say they're trying to recoup losses on time spent making maps... Halo 2 has sold over 6 million copies, and even if MS only gets $30 of the $50-$55 (collector's edition) price tag, that's over $180 million. Now, I highly doubt that the making of Halo 2, these new maps, and the bandwidth to distribute them cost them more than $180 million. Anyone else agree?
I think the well over $100 million made by Halo 2 by now covers any such bandwidth expenses, don't you?
There are exploits used (non-solid geometry to pull things through, sword flying, and others), as well as stanby cheating (putting your modem on standby, doing things, turning off standby and having what you did happen to everyone else). The standby is the main cheat (there are a few others, but they aren't used as much), but there are others. Why Bungie made the netcode for Halo 2 so fucked up that someone, even if not the host, can standby and basically almost lag out, and then when he turns off standby the entire rest of the game has to catch up to his Xbox (the complete opposite of what should happen, he should catch up to the rest of the game) is beyond me.
Nice job using CTRL+C and CTRL+V on my post from the last article, and getting yourself modded up, Karma Whore.
But none of the PCs in my house, or my iBook have slots for Memory Sticks built in. Thus, another additional cost to buy a Memory Stick reader/writer. No thanks.
And even if I could just use the built in USB to transfer stuff from the PC/Mac to the PSP Memory Stick, it wouldn;t be worth it to me.
I couldn't care less. Have fun carrying an ipod and PSP around, and rigging up headphones to take audio data from both devices simultaneously for custom soundtrack support.
If I cared about custom soundtracks, don't you think I would have more than one CD ripped to my Xbox? It's not a feature I particularly care for on my console games, so why would it be a huge factor for me while playing a handheld game?
The extra advantages to the laptop being I can also use it for (WiFi if available, Ethernet or modem otherwise) Internet access to surf the web in my hotel rooms or check my email or upload files to my site's FTP and such, as well as do writing, photo editing, video editing, sound editing, etc.
So I wouldn't need to buy the other things, but I could, if I wanted to. The only one I am considering is an iPod, or other digital music player, mainly for when I am in areas where pulling out my laptop to listen to music would be silly.
The fact remains, though, that the PSP is using the PlayStation name, hence that means gaming. Otherwise, don't you think Sony would have just put out another type of player, maybe with the Walkman name, that did the other things the PSP does? The gaming aspect is what is there to sell the PSP, not the multimedia aspects. The PlayStation name is what is there to sell the PSP, and the games. For everything else the PSP can do there are single purpose devices that will do them better than the PSP will, or multipurpose devices like laptops that also do those same things better than the PSP.
The only way that the PSP is, as Hirai put it "convergent portable entertainment device," is if people plan on only buying Sony products for it (UMDs, Memory Sticks). They shouldn't try to sell it on the multimedia aspects, they should try to sell it on the gaming aspects (even if the majority of the games will also be available in a larger form on the PS2).
I know you are just correcting my forgetting that normal Meory Stick Duos won't work, though. Gotta be the Pro versions.
I don't own anything that uses Sony Memory Sticks or any version of them... so AFAIAC, the PSP is just the way to try and get their Memory Sticks into people's homes, and in a way that will be potentially bigger than digital cameras and such that use them. After all, I can buy a Kodak, or Olympous, or whatever digital camera and never have to use Memory Sticks. If people want to do stuff with the PSP, though, it's Memory Sticks all the way.
MP3 playback? I could get an iPod for a little more, and save thousands of dollars in memory sticks to get the capacity I'd want. If I want something to play music on, I'll get something with that purpose designed into it, and not one where I need to buy hundreds of Sony Memory Stick Duos at their outrageous prices to fit all my music on. 40 GB of Memory Stick Duos is over $10K... no thanks, I'll spend $400-$500 on an iPod first.
Movie playback? I don't feel like buying my movies AGAIN on another proprietary format just to be able to watch them on the go. I can get a portable DVD player, and have all my DVD extras (because I'm fairly certain all the bonus features I buy DVDs for won't be on UMDs), and not have to buy my movies all over again.
So, yeah, it's a gaming device, with other things thrown on top to try and justify the price and the hype. It's also how Sony really hopes that they can sell tons and tons of Memory Sticks.
I had dropped my old cell phone tons of times over the course of a few years, and nothing ever happened to the screen. Then one time it fell, and hit at just the right angle to nearly shatter the screen.
It's possible that the PSP was just dropped, and it just happened to land at that angle to break the screen.
Still, it makes me wary for people throwing it in backpacks or pockets full of stuff. No screen cover is just a bad design decision by Sony. And we all know there's no way in hell they'll replace a broken screen for free because it isn't covered under their warranty (hell, dead pixels in Japan, not the fault of the consumer, are not covered by the warranty, it says so in the Japanese manual).
Yes, Sony's fortunes do need turning. Go to the SEC and check out their annual filings for the past two years, you'll see they basically turned into a version of Microsoft, except not the type of Microsoft that makes billions in profit from a few divisions. Sony's Game Division is the only thing consistently making money right now; last fiscal year it was Sony Pictures and Sony Games that made a profit, nothing esle in the company did.
Unfortunately for Sony, unline Microsoft--who makes billions on Windows and Office--they have been in the red for a few years now. Sony Games is the only division consistently making money, but it hasn't been enough to keep Sony from losing money, as an overall company, for the past few years straight.
So, since the company is losing money right now, overall, and have been for a few years... I'd say, yes, they probably want a reversal of fortune right now.
Except for the fact that most games are not intended just for people 18 and over. The games intended for that audience, the current M and AO rated games, make up only around 10% of games released each year (and AO games make up way less than 1% of games each year, and you'll never see them on store shelves anyway). The other 90% are either rated E (and soon to be E10) or T, and therefore meant for either a younger audience or deemed appropriate for all ages.
Therefor, most games would still be submitted for review by the granparent's post. Might as well keep the current rating system, then. It works, when parents actually know what the ratings are and use them to know what games are fine for their children, or what they feel is OK for them.
Damn DHMO. It just can't stop popping up in places it doesn't belong! It is especially frustrating when it falls from the sky!
If they are making a profit on every console sold, oh great seer, then why has the Home and Entertainment Division lost over $2.5 BILLION since November 2001? And, for the record, since the launch of the Xbox, the division's losses have gone up up up. Before the launch of the Xbox, the worst loss they had in a single quarter in that division was around $45 million; since the launch the division has seen many a quarter losing over $100 million (almost consistently each quarter since mid-2002), and one quarter alone has shown a loss of well over $300 million (that's losing over $100 million a month!).
Money is being lost somewhere; and if you seriously believe they are making a profit on the Xbox hardware at it's current $150 price point, then perhaps you can explain where the rest of the money they are losing is coming from.
So, if you have an intriguing idea for software, you could try and patent the idea, however, the final code would be subject to copyright laws as well as patent laws, because if the idea was patneted, and the source code was the implimentation of the idea, then the patent for the idea also hangs over the copywritten souce code.
The problem people have with software patnets, is that sometimes they are trying to patent ideas for software (say, the Eloas browser plugin suit vs MS, the browser plugin is an idea), and sometimes they are writing up code for something, and then sending in the code for patenting (and sometimes getting the patents), so they have just patented a mathmetical algorithm (which is technically not allowed under patent laws, but since the USTPO has so little clue as to how software works, they let these patents through all the time).
So, to clarify for you: ideas cannot be copywrited, they can be patented. That's the whole idea behind patents, to allow an inventor to patent his idea and try to make it or sell his idea to others.
Think about it. Either way, I'm forced to do an extra step that I shouldn't have to do. Either I have to manually turn off my presence when I start getting game requests, or I have to spend an extra few seconds to enter a password when I do want to get online.
Instead, offline games with online presence should be off by default and only on when you want it to be on. Most people playing single player games want to play that single player games at that time. If they wish to also be online, then let them choose it, let the rest of us who don't want to be bothered by people when we aren't playing online games have our peace.
It's crap that I have to go in and then use an option to turn off my online presence, because the game and Xbox put you online by default.
False. Many games have had patches released for not only multiplayer issues, but also single player issues. For example, Crimson Skies has a problem where if you changed something in the multiplayer settings, it made you unable to play the single player game, so the patch for Crimson Skies fixed that and some other minor issues, but there was no "multiplayer balance" issue to be fixed in Crimson Skies.
Other games have also had issues with their single player games patched on XBL. Halo 2, for instance, had its 480p mode fixed that affected both single and multiplayer where the HUD was cut off on the far left side of the screen.
It does. Just plug it in, and it just works (TM). No waiting for Windows to detect new hardware and install the drivers, or having to install drivers in Linux (since I don't use Linux, I don't know if you do or how long it takes to do so). So, point one is taken care of.
2) It would have ports of good games, instead of overrated, marketing-driven crap, that lacks innovation and thought.
Since I don't know yout taste in games, I'll just give you a URL to check to see if any of them work for you. http://www.apple.com/games/ then you can seach for game until your heart is content.
3) It would not require purchase of hardware that costs twice as much as its PC twin with the same performance.
Funny how my 1 Ghz G4 iBook with it's standard 256 MB RAM (before I upgraded the RAM) outperformed my father's brand new laptop with its 1.7 Ghz P4 with 256 MB RAM with Windows XP Pro. You seem to beleive in the Mhz myth. Even before my RAM upgrade, my iBook G4 would switch focus faster than the "faster" P4, and I could have much more open at the same time and perfrom multiple tasks much easier.
I could be running iTunes listening to streaming music, Photoshop CS, iChat AV (built in Mac AIM client in OS X Panther and beyond), Safari (with multipe tabs open), and Apple Works for word processing and switch focus much faster than I can just switch focus while I have Firefox (with multiple tabs open), iTunes listening to Internet radio, AIM, and MS Word on his laptop. I'd not even consider running Photoshop CS on his laptop with it's 256 MB of RAM with anything else open, knowing that it would take forever to switch focus.
I often have had multiple apps open on my iBook, and been able to do more than I could on his "faster" laptop. The Mhz doesn't mean diddly, the fact that OS X is just a more streamlined OS when it comes to multitasking than Windows is what matters.
Oh, and no, there's not a ton of spyware/adware/other malware on his laptop to slow it down, the first time he was online with it was in my presence, and I installed Firefox and all the Windows critical updates, including SP 2. Internet Explorer never gets opened on his laptop, and his programs on it are minimal.
PS2: $300, died a year and a half later with constant Disc Read Errors on any disk put in it, finally bought a slim PS2 for $150 a few months back to replace it after borrowing my friend's for over a year and a half (since he never played it). 4 Memeory cards at @$20 each: $80. Total Price: $530.
Xbox: $200 (bought well after launch, just two weeks before the JSRF bundle was announced) plus $150 total on XBL ($50 on XBL launch, $50 after first year, another $50 this year). Has a POS Thomson drive in it, the drive is now so bad it barely reads anything anymore. MS wants $80 plus shipping to fix it, which will be better for me than buying a new one and losing all my game saves. Total price after I send it in for repairs: $420+shipping costs, $280+shipping costs if we don't count XBL costs.
GameCube: $200, launch day unit, no problems. 2 memeory cards at $20 each. Total cost: $240.
As far as not counting the game costs, or controller costs (I've had to replace 2 Xbox controllers so far because they just decide to stop reading when I pull down on the left analog stick sometimes, and 1 GC controller that got thrown to the ground and the A button stopped working), by your logic, the GameCube has been my best value. I spent less for it than my original PS2, and have had it longer than my Xbox, yet it hasn't cost me any extra money because of disk drive problems.
And I'm not the only one who has had bad experiences with Sony's shoddy disk drives, they did lose a class action lawsuit that forces them to fix or replace any PS2 with Disc Read Erors for free, after all. And I'm also not the only one who has had problems with Microsoft's use of Thomson DVD drives in older Xboxes, either. Google Xobx Thomson problems and see how many hits you get. I'll give you a hint on that one, Google says "about 49,800" hits.
The PS2 has hardly been a "better value" for me, or for the thousands of others who have had it die in less than two years of use because Sony's QA has gone to shit over the past decade or so for consumer electronics.
Maybe in the UK they've broadcast all 13 episodes... but in North America we've only had 6 or 7 (Can't remember which it is) broadcast so far. The last one aired was where Number 6 manifested as someone people could see and accused Baltar of treason.
You're right, MS has never taken an aquisition like that... that'd be half their short term investments and cash reserves right there. A few million dollars here and there to buy out a company (or a few hundred million in some cases) is much easier on the reserves than $25 billion is.