The internet used to be a lot more interesting during the boom years; now that there is less money there are less interesting and informative sites.
See, I think it was a lot more interesting before the boom years.:) I wouldn't be too sad if a lot of the currently powerful companies get off the net - a certain class of person is always going to create internet content, regardless of profit. And a lot of these persons create things that are quite good.
But there are ways to still do ads without annoying users - Google is obviously a major example of this approach. I don't block their ads because they are perfectly reasonable, and sometimes even truly useful. I suspect most users feel similar. If the ad is potentially valuable to me and not annoying, there is no reason to block it...
I'm just saying that if you are sick of the 4 genres that dominate PC gaming the game consoles are an exit. I used to predominantly play PC games, with only a little console gaming on the side - but the general decline of PC gaming (and the resurgence/evolution of console games) has reversed this in the last four or five years. The pure variety available in new games for any of the major consoles (even Gamecube if we are comparing it to the PC) is just wonderful...
It may be because I hate shooters like Einhander, but having played it - it still counts as "nothing good". Sorry. I am not sure if your opinion is particularly valid if you literally hate the genre. I merely dislike JRPGs, and even I would hestitate to decide if one was truly bad/good.
Einhander certainly isn't the best shmup out there, but it has plenty of great stuff (cool boss battles, awesome soundtrack, interesting story, nice graphics, varied gameplay system).
California has some kind of law that says various entertainer professions are exempt from getting overtime wages (there are other limitations, obviously - you need to be making a pretty high salary, for one). Those are the laws EA is taking advantage of. But their usage of them is pretty questionable - it is clear many of their employees simply don't qualify.
(Psss....escape to the world of videogame consoles like the rest of us PC gaming expatriates have over the last 5 years or so...there's just a lot more genres there...)
Not really an argument, but something to point out: The Neo Geo Pocket had inferior processing capaibilities to the GBA. SIGNIFICANTLY inferior. (Both audio and graphics.)
Something also to point out is that the NGP was released 3 years earlier than the GBA, of course.
What I 'asserted' was tha destroying Nintendo's monopoly is not necessarily a good move. Competition's fine, but when the market says "we like this", then taking it down just because of the big M word is not always the right approach. Nintendo's monopoly isn't due to lack of competition. It's due to making the best handheld. Bad bad bad?
Yes, because there is still a sizable audience that isn't interested in the GBA. Breaking the 'Nintendo portable monopoly' might help get a portable release for the rest of us...
I could have sworn it was not releasing a good game since Final Fantasy VII that did it, but, what do I know? Apparently the Square fans are willing to accept whatever crap they offer, since Japanese stuff is always cool.
From my "buyme" list: Atmosphere, RJD2, Sage Francis, Kid Koala, Kid606, Dwayne Sodahberk, The Decemberists, Hot Snakes, Arcade Fire -- AllOfMP3 had none of these. iTunes had all of them. And that's not even the obscure stuff. Yeah, all of those musicians are fairly popular, don't you know!
The Internet ad industry is causing an arms-race they won't be able to win. If the increasingly popular pop-up (or pop-under really in this case) blockers start getting defeated, that is just going to force the average browser user to start using a custom Hosts file of some kind to block nearly all ads. There isn't too much the ad industry can do about that, IMO, with the possible exception of making the ads come from the same server as the content. This will be okay for some sites, but I can't imagine too many people will want to give up that much control over their sites.
(But maybe that control is the ultimate plan of the ad industry - it would really make things easier on them...)
Hell, the original Super Mario Kart itself had this rubber band system. It was especially strong in Mario Kart 64. I have no idea why some commentators are spinning this as new.
Either this doesn't work on a nationwide level, or Blockbuster is just full of shit.
They are full of shit. They won't even carry R-rated films like the Last Temptation of Christ (this might have changed recently, but it was true for many years). They also don't carry certain unrated films. Though in certain rare towns offering porn, etc. might actually slightly hurt them economically, making it a nationwide policy is needless. Most of the nation buys/rents/watches/reads porn of some kind. It is strictly for moral reasons.
(As an aside, the Family Video chain, very common throughout the rural Midwest, has a pretty sizable porn section in every store I have been to. And porn sales in the Bible Belt have always been pretty strong. So I doubt that it would even have any economic impact - but it is possible I suppose.)
You would rather that instead of debating it we just killed the preachers of creationism?
In a healthy republic matters of all importance are openly debated...
Now if only we could get the creationists to believe that too...
Keep in mind that most of the US lives much, much more sparsely than Europeans. They are not (for the most part) crowded into dense polluted cities. They are spead out over rual areas with clean air, clean water, and blue skies.
That isn't actually true. Other people have already pointed out how the US puts out more than twice the CO2 emissions per capita as Europe does, and that living in less dense areas can actually create more pollution (because of more car usage). But most Americans (as in ~80%) live in urban areas, not rural areas. Some European countries have a higher percentage (Germany, UK), but many actually have less (France, Spain, Italy). (We also have a significantly higher percentage than Japan, which is almost the popular cliche of dense urban living.)
(And I assume the "clean water" thing is a joke. I've lived in parts of rural America, and the water was anything but clean. "Outright poisonous water" is probably a better description. Much of rural food production is massively bad for the local water supply.)
Just wanted to point out the same thing happens to me. I can hear when a muted TV is on in other rooms of my house (even when it's in the basement and I am not, though I do have to be close to the stairs). My hearing isn't all that great, either.
I think it really depends on what kind of games you play. The rumble function is an integral gameplay feature in racing games like Rallisport Challenge 2 or music games like Amplitude, so I would be sad to see it go. And it can be put to good use in other types of games, too. But yeah, some games certainly don't make use of it.
You could replace it with audio/visual cues in some cases (not for rallying games though because you need that input while paying strict attention of already existing audio/visual input), but the point is kind of to engage yet another sense. It can make for a better gameplay experience if done correctly.
Anyway, I seriously doubt MS will not have rumble on their next-gen controllers.
Yeah, and according to the first law of thermodynamics nothing can truly be free, because energy can't be created! You are arguing semantics, apparently to score some kind of silly libertarian propaganda point. Obviously when referring to things like libraries or Wikipedia being "free", people mean "free usage", not that it was created by god out of nothingness.
DVD playing was free on the launch PS2s in Japan, too. In fact, that's really the reason it did so well initially (being the cheapest DVD player around - though you definitely got what you paid for). For the first few months of its existence the PS2 actually had more consoles sold than games - Japanese people were using them as DVD players. So what extra built-in features are you referring to exactly?
This is all ignoring that the hard drive (no memory cards!) and built-in ethernet on the Xbox are a far better freebie than a sub-standard DVD player...
And the Xbox's graphics are clearly superior in all but the worst cases (bad ports, really - maybe some budget games). You don't have to look "real close", and neither does the average gamer. Just put a PS2 and Xbox next to each other and open your eyes.
So since all EA games are designed for the PS2 as the primary system (oftentimes the Xbox and PS2 versions even being developed independently by lesser devs like in the pre-Underground NFS games), how does that work out exactly in this example?
Calling the PS2 graphics "dirty" is about as perfect a description as I have heard. Whether it's the fact that the games have less AA, poor texture filtering, more limited lighting models, less texture RAM, inferior video output hardware, no bump mapping, or some combination of multiple factors, the PS2 graphics just don't look very clean compared to your average Xbox or GC game (or hell, even compared to many Dreamcast games, since the tile based rendering gave the system pretty much free super sampling, an excellent form of AA). Some PS2 games still have really excellent art, of course, but most of them do look really dirty.
Largely because 9.95 isn't a good deal for a sub-CD quality album, especially with the added 'bonus' of DRM. Most of the music I listen to is non-RIAA stuff anyway, so the CDs aren't much more expensive ($12 or under usually - and oftentimes even cheaper than iTunes). The extra quality and the control I have over the music I purchased is worth the minimal extra expense.
But really what I want is just to explore new music nearly all of the time. Purchasing full albums is a pretty poor way to do that, functionally and economically - this was the point I was trying to make. I was bringing up the fact that people use iTunes mostly to buy singles, because that kind of service is designed for those people more than it is for music fans with more ecletic tastes...
The radio model is far better for what I want, and that's essentially what Napster is. (As are a few other competitors, IIRC.)
If I were a top-40 drone, Napster would be of much greater value. Isn't it the other way around? Napster allows you to sample absolutely huge amounts of different music for $15 a month. Lots of differents artists, genres, singles and albums. Everything in the catalog. That sounds far more orientated for people with diverse tastes in music.
iTunes is really more for the people who just want to listen to singles (which would include "top-40 drones"). IIRC, Apple's sales data backs this up (most iTune users stay away from albums). I know that's why it has yet to seriously interest me - it would be way too expensive for me to seriously explore the diversity of music I am accustomed to. (I haven't bought into Napster yet, either, for the record. But it is more appealing as of now.)
Then Nintendo lied to you. Peter Main said publicly (at Spaceworld 2001) that the Gamecube was initially to be sold at a small loss. (Your confusion is probably because Nintendo likes to be vague/deceptive about this. See their oft-quoted "We're not in the business of losing money" quote when asked if the Cube is being sold at a loss.)
More importantly, people often ignore what happens when a console undergoes a price drop. It almost inevitably is sold with at least a small loss until manufacturing efficienty catches up with the price drop. For example, the PS2 was sold at a loss for the first six months or so after Sony had their first PS2 price drop, according to reliable commentators. The same thing happened when the Gamecube was dropped to $99 (N's Perrin, in a January 2001 IGN interview: "I would say that our losses are really negligible."). Obviously we don't need to even talk about the Xbox being sold at a loss (though it is apparently at laest breaking even now at least).:D
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The internet used to be a lot more interesting during the boom years; now that there is less money there are less interesting and informative sites.
:) I wouldn't be too sad if a lot of the currently powerful companies get off the net - a certain class of person is always going to create internet content, regardless of profit. And a lot of these persons create things that are quite good.
See, I think it was a lot more interesting before the boom years.
But there are ways to still do ads without annoying users - Google is obviously a major example of this approach. I don't block their ads because they are perfectly reasonable, and sometimes even truly useful. I suspect most users feel similar. If the ad is potentially valuable to me and not annoying, there is no reason to block it...
I'm just saying that if you are sick of the 4 genres that dominate PC gaming the game consoles are an exit. I used to predominantly play PC games, with only a little console gaming on the side - but the general decline of PC gaming (and the resurgence/evolution of console games) has reversed this in the last four or five years. The pure variety available in new games for any of the major consoles (even Gamecube if we are comparing it to the PC) is just wonderful...
It may be because I hate shooters like Einhander, but having played it - it still counts as "nothing good". Sorry.
I am not sure if your opinion is particularly valid if you literally hate the genre. I merely dislike JRPGs, and even I would hestitate to decide if one was truly bad/good.
Einhander certainly isn't the best shmup out there, but it has plenty of great stuff (cool boss battles, awesome soundtrack, interesting story, nice graphics, varied gameplay system).
California has some kind of law that says various entertainer professions are exempt from getting overtime wages (there are other limitations, obviously - you need to be making a pretty high salary, for one). Those are the laws EA is taking advantage of. But their usage of them is pretty questionable - it is clear many of their employees simply don't qualify.
(Psss....escape to the world of videogame consoles like the rest of us PC gaming expatriates have over the last 5 years or so...there's just a lot more genres there...)
Not really an argument, but something to point out: The Neo Geo Pocket had inferior processing capaibilities to the GBA. SIGNIFICANTLY inferior. (Both audio and graphics.)
Something also to point out is that the NGP was released 3 years earlier than the GBA, of course.
What I 'asserted' was tha destroying Nintendo's monopoly is not necessarily a good move. Competition's fine, but when the market says "we like this", then taking it down just because of the big M word is not always the right approach. Nintendo's monopoly isn't due to lack of competition. It's due to making the best handheld. Bad bad bad?
Yes, because there is still a sizable audience that isn't interested in the GBA. Breaking the 'Nintendo portable monopoly' might help get a portable release for the rest of us...
I could have sworn it was not releasing a good game since Final Fantasy VII that did it, but, what do I know? Apparently the Square fans are willing to accept whatever crap they offer, since Japanese stuff is always cool.
Hey, Einhander was pretty cool...
From my "buyme" list: Atmosphere, RJD2, Sage Francis, Kid Koala, Kid606, Dwayne Sodahberk, The Decemberists, Hot Snakes, Arcade Fire -- AllOfMP3 had none of these. iTunes had all of them. And that's not even the obscure stuff.
Yeah, all of those musicians are fairly popular, don't you know!
The Internet ad industry is causing an arms-race they won't be able to win. If the increasingly popular pop-up (or pop-under really in this case) blockers start getting defeated, that is just going to force the average browser user to start using a custom Hosts file of some kind to block nearly all ads. There isn't too much the ad industry can do about that, IMO, with the possible exception of making the ads come from the same server as the content. This will be okay for some sites, but I can't imagine too many people will want to give up that much control over their sites.
(But maybe that control is the ultimate plan of the ad industry - it would really make things easier on them...)
Hell, the original Super Mario Kart itself had this rubber band system. It was especially strong in Mario Kart 64. I have no idea why some commentators are spinning this as new.
Either this doesn't work on a nationwide level, or Blockbuster is just full of shit.
They are full of shit. They won't even carry R-rated films like the Last Temptation of Christ (this might have changed recently, but it was true for many years). They also don't carry certain unrated films. Though in certain rare towns offering porn, etc. might actually slightly hurt them economically, making it a nationwide policy is needless. Most of the nation buys/rents/watches/reads porn of some kind. It is strictly for moral reasons.
(As an aside, the Family Video chain, very common throughout the rural Midwest, has a pretty sizable porn section in every store I have been to. And porn sales in the Bible Belt have always been pretty strong. So I doubt that it would even have any economic impact - but it is possible I suppose.)
Now if only we could get the creationists to believe that too...
Something important to note about Chicago is that it used to have a much nicer public transportation system. A major factor of its disappearance was GM buying all of the public streetcars in the 40s and destroying them (the city fined them a whole $5000 for this). So while politics are definitely a factor, the real issue is the power major corporations have over the average person's life - not necessarily some kind of unwillingness on the part of your average American.
(And I assume the "clean water" thing is a joke. I've lived in parts of rural America, and the water was anything but clean. "Outright poisonous water" is probably a better description. Much of rural food production is massively bad for the local water supply.)
Just wanted to point out the same thing happens to me. I can hear when a muted TV is on in other rooms of my house (even when it's in the basement and I am not, though I do have to be close to the stairs). My hearing isn't all that great, either.
Really, all I could do is laugh at this one. How do you Windows people deal with it?
;)
Well it's either that or putting up with the insufferable Apple elitists. So it's a toss-up really.
I think it really depends on what kind of games you play. The rumble function is an integral gameplay feature in racing games like Rallisport Challenge 2 or music games like Amplitude, so I would be sad to see it go. And it can be put to good use in other types of games, too. But yeah, some games certainly don't make use of it.
You could replace it with audio/visual cues in some cases (not for rallying games though because you need that input while paying strict attention of already existing audio/visual input), but the point is kind of to engage yet another sense. It can make for a better gameplay experience if done correctly.
Anyway, I seriously doubt MS will not have rumble on their next-gen controllers.
Yeah, and according to the first law of thermodynamics nothing can truly be free, because energy can't be created! You are arguing semantics, apparently to score some kind of silly libertarian propaganda point. Obviously when referring to things like libraries or Wikipedia being "free", people mean "free usage", not that it was created by god out of nothingness.
Comparing Apple rumors to cancer, tsunamis, famines, and war... you certainly are one of the crazier Apple fanboys out there, aren't you?
DVD playing was free on the launch PS2s in Japan, too. In fact, that's really the reason it did so well initially (being the cheapest DVD player around - though you definitely got what you paid for). For the first few months of its existence the PS2 actually had more consoles sold than games - Japanese people were using them as DVD players. So what extra built-in features are you referring to exactly?
This is all ignoring that the hard drive (no memory cards!) and built-in ethernet on the Xbox are a far better freebie than a sub-standard DVD player...
And the Xbox's graphics are clearly superior in all but the worst cases (bad ports, really - maybe some budget games). You don't have to look "real close", and neither does the average gamer. Just put a PS2 and Xbox next to each other and open your eyes.
So since all EA games are designed for the PS2 as the primary system (oftentimes the Xbox and PS2 versions even being developed independently by lesser devs like in the pre-Underground NFS games), how does that work out exactly in this example?
Calling the PS2 graphics "dirty" is about as perfect a description as I have heard. Whether it's the fact that the games have less AA, poor texture filtering, more limited lighting models, less texture RAM, inferior video output hardware, no bump mapping, or some combination of multiple factors, the PS2 graphics just don't look very clean compared to your average Xbox or GC game (or hell, even compared to many Dreamcast games, since the tile based rendering gave the system pretty much free super sampling, an excellent form of AA). Some PS2 games still have really excellent art, of course, but most of them do look really dirty.
Largely because 9.95 isn't a good deal for a sub-CD quality album, especially with the added 'bonus' of DRM. Most of the music I listen to is non-RIAA stuff anyway, so the CDs aren't much more expensive ($12 or under usually - and oftentimes even cheaper than iTunes). The extra quality and the control I have over the music I purchased is worth the minimal extra expense.
But really what I want is just to explore new music nearly all of the time. Purchasing full albums is a pretty poor way to do that, functionally and economically - this was the point I was trying to make. I was bringing up the fact that people use iTunes mostly to buy singles, because that kind of service is designed for those people more than it is for music fans with more ecletic tastes...
The radio model is far better for what I want, and that's essentially what Napster is. (As are a few other competitors, IIRC.)
If I were a top-40 drone, Napster would be of much greater value.
Isn't it the other way around? Napster allows you to sample absolutely huge amounts of different music for $15 a month. Lots of differents artists, genres, singles and albums. Everything in the catalog. That sounds far more orientated for people with diverse tastes in music.
iTunes is really more for the people who just want to listen to singles (which would include "top-40 drones"). IIRC, Apple's sales data backs this up (most iTune users stay away from albums). I know that's why it has yet to seriously interest me - it would be way too expensive for me to seriously explore the diversity of music I am accustomed to. (I haven't bought into Napster yet, either, for the record. But it is more appealing as of now.)
No it won't. There is a reason the PS3 is using an NVIDIA 3D chipset in addition to the Cell!
Then Nintendo lied to you. Peter Main said publicly (at Spaceworld 2001) that the Gamecube was initially to be sold at a small loss. (Your confusion is probably because Nintendo likes to be vague/deceptive about this. See their oft-quoted "We're not in the business of losing money" quote when asked if the Cube is being sold at a loss.)
:D
More importantly, people often ignore what happens when a console undergoes a price drop. It almost inevitably is sold with at least a small loss until manufacturing efficienty catches up with the price drop. For example, the PS2 was sold at a loss for the first six months or so after Sony had their first PS2 price drop, according to reliable commentators. The same thing happened when the Gamecube was dropped to $99 (N's Perrin, in a January 2001 IGN interview: "I would say that our losses are really negligible."). Obviously we don't need to even talk about the Xbox being sold at a loss (though it is apparently at laest breaking even now at least).