I really thought that 'Overly Critical Guy' would have enough critical thinking to figure out that most pictures show of consoles before their launch are fake. Or stand-ins. Or not representative of the final product in some way. Usually size, shape, and color.
The fact that an Xbox 360 is priced at $400 makes it geared toward 'hardcore freaks'?
Maybe a lot of people don't worry about spending $400 on something like a console. Maybe someone grew up, and got a real job.
If I drive a Mercedes, does that make me a hardcore freak driver? Or does it just mean that I have enough money to afford a Mercedes, and that is the car I like...?
No, I have not seen the Revolution in comparison to other systems.
By 'other systems' I assume you are talking about the 360 and the PS3.
Well, the PS3 and the Revolution haven't been released yet. I am sure that very few people have actually seen the Revolution AND the PS3. Are you one of them?
The 360 is not 'geared solely toward hardcore freaks.'
I liked Doodi's response when they asked him when the site started..
v.: So the site opened in August 2005? D.: Yeah, around then... it's up for debate, no one really remembers...
Dude(ie)- it's only been FIVE MONTHS! Why can't anyone remember? And besides, you're a big-time web programmer, go look at the date your first files were created.
Man, the messed up part of the story is that I knew that cage-father. I was in the Army with him. (HHB 6/52 ADA in Wurzburg Germany during the late 80's - early 90's)
His wife breast-fed all of their children up to age 7 or 8, or whenever the kids started 'refusing' to eat that way she really pushed it on them. It wasn't their primary food, but during the time I knew them, they had 4 kids nursing. Ages 7, 5, 3 and 1.
It was very strange to see a 7 year old walk up and lift his moms shirt, grab a tit and start sucking...while she was having a conversation with someone else. I'm not against breastfeeding at all, in public, etc. etc. but this was a little weird. The fact that they became controlling parents is not a surprise to anyone who knew them. The guy was a little 'off'...or really, WAY off.
But more to the point...like everyone else on this thread, I don't think that 26 qualifies as 2old2play. I'm 37, and I've been playing non-stop since I was 8 (Fairchild channel F). I still play games almost every day. And yes, I have a 'real' life too. Games are just something I do for maybe 5 minutes, or possibly 5 hours each day. Kinda like that kid suckin' his mom's tit, I just can't seem to break away.
Most annoying thing for me as a person who has been playing video games since the beginning (lots of the original Pong at Sears as a kid...but didn't own a system until Fairchild) is the writing on most game sites/magazines. They write about games like Zelda was the beginning. And to them, Green Day was an early punk band. I don't get nostalgic about games, and I really don't care about anything other than the game I am currently playing, but most of the writers do care about 'history'. I just wish they would get it right.
Oh well, at this time I just take whatever scraps the gaming industry will throw at me. I know the types of games, and the genres I like. I rarely buy a game that I hate. I'll give Kameo one more try before I put it in the 'failed' pile, but usually I avoid things like this. But the biggest advantage is that being older usually means more money, so I can buy all the games I want without worry.
Last thing- I love Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360) online (lag issues aside) because of the pace of the game. It's slow. My days of Unreal Tournament, Quake and that type of game are long gone- just can't do it.
"PGR3 is just a re-hash...Call of Duty 2 is also available on the PC..."
My question is: Does that make them lesser games?
No. I haven't played PGR2, nor have I played COD2 on the PC. I just look at this from the perspective of someone who bought the console, and bought a few games- it's great.
Geometry wars wouldn't be playable on any controller without two sticks. There is no way to play that game on a PC, so I'm not sure what would be available 'all over the web.'
I've got a 360, I've had it since December 22nd. I haven't put the controller down yet.
A lot of the games are awesome- PGR3 and Call of Duty 2 in particular.
Then there is Geometry Wars. I've been late to work because of that one quite a few times- "Just one more game!"
And the integration with my computers is also a great thing.
Yes, I have one and I love it. The other people I know who have a 360 also love them. All of the negative noise I hear is from people who don't have a 360....
Or, more correctly, UT turned into 'Unreal Championship' on the Xbox. It was met with a decent response. It even spawned a sequel, which scored in the 90% range at most gaming journals.
Personally, I avoided it because Halo 2 was still (is still) pretty popular, and I didn't need another on-line FPS to play. (Since graduated to Call of Duty 2 on the 360)
Even if Halo 2 wasn't out, I probably would have avoided Unreal Championship 2 because the ultra-fast gameplay either doesn't suit the Xbox controller, or I am just too damn slow to figure it out.
The only problem with the staff who is knowledgeable about games, is that they put too much of their own opinion into it.
Last two games I bought at a retail store were Blitz: The Leage and SSX: On Tour. Football and snowboarding.
The guy working the register spent about 5 minutes trying to convince me that Call of Chtulu was better. And that I *should* be buying Morrowind because I hadn't played that yet. He went on and on about it.
Finally, the girl that works at the store told him, "Hey- I don't think he wants those games, sell him the ones he asked for!"
Thank god she was there, because I was getting ready to shove his Chtulu doll (yes...the guy had one) up his RPG lovin' ass.
Yes- I *do* like sports games. And it is annoying as hell to have these guys trying to push their own personal favorite games on me. Trust me, I've tried them, I don't want to play them. If I want to play the 5th re-hash of a snowboarding game, so be it. (I really liked it...)
Now I just buy my games online, or from some anonymous big box store. Because I don't want to deal with the bozos at my local EB Games.
It reminds me of record stores...where the guys who work at the store think they are so damn cool for pushing the Velvet Underground to some kid who just wants the latest Green Day album.
I think the author of the article is a little optimistic. In his paragraph about Tesla, he writes that public interest in 'the free energy genius' will increase because David Bowie is portraying him in a new movie. Then he said that the 150th anniversary of his (Tesla, not Bowie) birth will increase international awareness.
No...nobody cares about Tesla.
It's like the George Foreman Grill. Nobody knows who really invented the thing. But we all know that some ex-boxer turned nice-guy advertises it.
In America at least, they would be better off having the women of 'Desperate Housewives' do a pitch for renewable energy, that would generate a lot more interest than Tesla.
For those of you who do not live in America, please feel free to insult the United States and tell us how shallow we are. Then imagine that instead of the women from Desperate Housewives your own celebrities were used. Maybe Kylie Minouge, or Sophia Loren, or Bridget Bardot...or Jerry Lewis.
I don't think that any of the game publishers would want to cooperate with Gamefly. This is exactly the type of business that loses the publishers money.
I would guess that I would get better service calling about a disk with an error than Gamefly would.
One of the two top-rated games on the Xbox 360 is Project Gotham Racing 3.
Controls:
Gas: right trigger Brake: left trigger E-brake: 'A'
That's it, that is about all you need to know. And playing on 'novice' or 'easy' can be picked up immediately. But, if someone wants to go further, there is a lot more to the game.
And also, the Xbox Live Arcade games are designed to be picked up quickly. I've logged dozens of hours in Hexic and Geometry Wars. Neither of them is difficult to understand. Now Geometry Wars is difficult to play, but simple to understand...
In fact, the thing most peopl say when they first see the game is, "So the entire thing is just in that little box? Do you ever get to leave the box?"
I owned a business for a long time- a new business opened up next to mine, it was listed as an 'art gallery'. It had the crappiest art you've ever seen (I don't mean like a 6 year old, I mean like an idiotic 19 year old...which is what it was.) They put old couches out in front of their place, spray painted their half of the building, put up horrible hand-painted signs, etc. etc. This was for a building we shared where I was paying $2.50/square foot- back in 1993.
One of my customers was actually the city code enforcement officer. When he came into my place of business, I asked him about the signs, couches, etc. etc.
His only answer was, "There ain't no law against ugly."
I used to be a subscriber to OXM for exactly this reason- the demo disks. I passed on, or bought, a lot of games based on the demos. It was always good to get through the hype of the previews and see what the game was actually like.
So far, I plan on relying on the downloadable demos (which are huge) to do this for me. If not enough demos are released, I guess I'll have to re-subscribe to OXM.
I believe the subscription price was like $17 per year...much better than paying $9.99 retail per issue.
Keep looking at the rest of the pictures on the site...here is another example then tell me how a bunch of computer geeks managed to use photos that are 640x480 pixels, yet had a file size of over 150K each.
Actually, I know a lot of the people there, and a lot of them work on web related projects. View the HTML source on the same page...
It just amazes me what these people seemingly get away with, because they other people believe they have some tech/geek-cred just because they use an alternative operating system.
Just because you use Linux doesn't mean you know what is going on.
Sorry, don't want to sound like a pain in the ass, but when I am sitting there at a meeting at work (I work with a lot of them), and these clowns try to tell everyone who will listen that the world must start using open standards, it's frustrating. They actually gave a class about CSS once...yet they obviously don't pay attention to it themselves.
Anytime a Beta product is compared to a released product, it's a sham.
Did you see the prices on the other commercial products? If our small company is choosing their database by price, then the SQL Server Standard Edition is priced fairly with the other commercial offerings.
Standard Edition is not the Enterprise Edition..so it is one of their 'junior' products.
Yes, MySQL would have them all beat on price. But putting a free beta product vs. other commerical products is a load of crap.
I really hate the idea that you have to develop in the Popular Flavor of the Month in order for some people to think you know what you are doing.
In the past 10 years, there have been at least 6 or 7 big 'waves' that have hit, and if you tried to follow them all, you would never really get to know any of the languages.
What about saying: "Well, this really works for me. It may not be the latest and greatest...but today's latest and greatest is going to be tomorrow's old dirty shoe. So I'll just stick with today's old dirty shoe, until there is a reason so compelling that I will change."
It works...really...if you value productivity and efficiency.
Viva La Cobol
Okay, not really Cobol...but you get the idea.
And for those Cobol programmers out there...good job. Just hang on a few more years and you'll be able to retire.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh.
I really thought that 'Overly Critical Guy' would have enough critical thinking to figure out that most pictures show of consoles before their launch are fake. Or stand-ins. Or not representative of the final product in some way. Usually size, shape, and color.
The fact that an Xbox 360 is priced at $400 makes it geared toward 'hardcore freaks'?
Maybe a lot of people don't worry about spending $400 on something like a console. Maybe someone grew up, and got a real job.
If I drive a Mercedes, does that make me a hardcore freak driver? Or does it just mean that I have enough money to afford a Mercedes, and that is the car I like...?
No, I have not seen the Revolution in comparison to other systems.
By 'other systems' I assume you are talking about the 360 and the PS3.
Well, the PS3 and the Revolution haven't been released yet. I am sure that very few people have actually seen the Revolution AND the PS3. Are you one of them?
The 360 is not 'geared solely toward hardcore freaks.'
Xbox Live Arcade- check into it.
Why does it matter if gaming is 'too popular'?
You sound like a high-school kid talking about his (former) favorite band, that he used to like, until they became 'too popular'.
If someone really likes gaming, they should play games. Then we all get more games, more genres, better hardware.
It's not an "I'm so cool" popularity contest- it's just plain entertainment.
Well, I'll say something before the trolls get here-
I've got a 360, and I love it. Rock solid all around, including visuals, sound, connectivity to other devices...
So far I am playing 3 games- Call of Duty 2, Project Gotham 3, and Geometry Wars.
Yes, each of those games is a sequel, but they are all awesome.
A lot of people probably hate the 360- but if Microsoft can put enough consoles out, then they should have a winner on their hands.
I agree wholeheartedly with the comment about sequels that use the same engine...I *hate* those.
Total waste of money.
Yeah, I know, "It's not just about the graphics..."
Well, I want a new engine to go along with my new game.
Unless it's a $20 add-on pack.
So your old job was riding the train...and your new job is filling out this guy's crossword puzzle so he can impress his friends?
I don't believe the above comment was a troll. I think it was absolute fact.
Dude(ie)- it's only been FIVE MONTHS! Why can't anyone remember? And besides, you're a big-time web programmer, go look at the date your first files were created.
Man, the messed up part of the story is that I knew that cage-father. I was in the Army with him. (HHB 6/52 ADA in Wurzburg Germany during the late 80's - early 90's)
His wife breast-fed all of their children up to age 7 or 8, or whenever the kids started 'refusing' to eat that way she really pushed it on them. It wasn't their primary food, but during the time I knew them, they had 4 kids nursing. Ages 7, 5, 3 and 1.
It was very strange to see a 7 year old walk up and lift his moms shirt, grab a tit and start sucking...while she was having a conversation with someone else. I'm not against breastfeeding at all, in public, etc. etc. but this was a little weird. The fact that they became controlling parents is not a surprise to anyone who knew them. The guy was a little 'off'...or really, WAY off.
But more to the point...like everyone else on this thread, I don't think that 26 qualifies as 2old2play. I'm 37, and I've been playing non-stop since I was 8 (Fairchild channel F). I still play games almost every day. And yes, I have a 'real' life too. Games are just something I do for maybe 5 minutes, or possibly 5 hours each day. Kinda like that kid suckin' his mom's tit, I just can't seem to break away.
Most annoying thing for me as a person who has been playing video games since the beginning (lots of the original Pong at Sears as a kid...but didn't own a system until Fairchild) is the writing on most game sites/magazines. They write about games like Zelda was the beginning. And to them, Green Day was an early punk band. I don't get nostalgic about games, and I really don't care about anything other than the game I am currently playing, but most of the writers do care about 'history'. I just wish they would get it right.
Oh well, at this time I just take whatever scraps the gaming industry will throw at me. I know the types of games, and the genres I like. I rarely buy a game that I hate. I'll give Kameo one more try before I put it in the 'failed' pile, but usually I avoid things like this. But the biggest advantage is that being older usually means more money, so I can buy all the games I want without worry.
Last thing- I love Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360) online (lag issues aside) because of the pace of the game. It's slow. My days of Unreal Tournament, Quake and that type of game are long gone- just can't do it.
Yeah, I hear that a lot-
"PGR3 is just a re-hash...Call of Duty 2 is also available on the PC..."
My question is: Does that make them lesser games?
No. I haven't played PGR2, nor have I played COD2 on the PC. I just look at this from the perspective of someone who bought the console, and bought a few games- it's great.
Geometry wars wouldn't be playable on any controller without two sticks. There is no way to play that game on a PC, so I'm not sure what would be available 'all over the web.'
Whoops, that should have been November 22nd.
I've got a 360, I've had it since December 22nd. I haven't put the controller down yet.
A lot of the games are awesome- PGR3 and Call of Duty 2 in particular.
Then there is Geometry Wars. I've been late to work because of that one quite a few times- "Just one more game!"
And the integration with my computers is also a great thing.
Yes, I have one and I love it. The other people I know who have a 360 also love them. All of the negative noise I hear is from people who don't have a 360....
UT has been on a console.
Or, more correctly, UT turned into 'Unreal Championship' on the Xbox. It was met with a decent response. It even spawned a sequel, which scored in the 90% range at most gaming journals.
Personally, I avoided it because Halo 2 was still (is still) pretty popular, and I didn't need another on-line FPS to play. (Since graduated to Call of Duty 2 on the 360)
Even if Halo 2 wasn't out, I probably would have avoided Unreal Championship 2 because the ultra-fast gameplay either doesn't suit the Xbox controller, or I am just too damn slow to figure it out.
The only problem with the staff who is knowledgeable about games, is that they put too much of their own opinion into it.
Last two games I bought at a retail store were Blitz: The Leage and SSX: On Tour. Football and snowboarding.
The guy working the register spent about 5 minutes trying to convince me that Call of Chtulu was better. And that I *should* be buying Morrowind because I hadn't played that yet. He went on and on about it.
Finally, the girl that works at the store told him, "Hey- I don't think he wants those games, sell him the ones he asked for!"
Thank god she was there, because I was getting ready to shove his Chtulu doll (yes...the guy had one) up his RPG lovin' ass.
Yes- I *do* like sports games. And it is annoying as hell to have these guys trying to push their own personal favorite games on me. Trust me, I've tried them, I don't want to play them. If I want to play the 5th re-hash of a snowboarding game, so be it. (I really liked it...)
Now I just buy my games online, or from some anonymous big box store. Because I don't want to deal with the bozos at my local EB Games.
It reminds me of record stores...where the guys who work at the store think they are so damn cool for pushing the Velvet Underground to some kid who just wants the latest Green Day album.
I think the author of the article is a little optimistic. In his paragraph about Tesla, he writes that public interest in 'the free energy genius' will increase because David Bowie is portraying him in a new movie. Then he said that the 150th anniversary of his (Tesla, not Bowie) birth will increase international awareness.
No...nobody cares about Tesla.
It's like the George Foreman Grill. Nobody knows who really invented the thing. But we all know that some ex-boxer turned nice-guy advertises it.
In America at least, they would be better off having the women of 'Desperate Housewives' do a pitch for renewable energy, that would generate a lot more interest than Tesla.
For those of you who do not live in America, please feel free to insult the United States and tell us how shallow we are. Then imagine that instead of the women from Desperate Housewives your own celebrities were used. Maybe Kylie Minouge, or Sophia Loren, or Bridget Bardot...or Jerry Lewis.
I don't think that any of the game publishers would want to cooperate with Gamefly. This is exactly the type of business that loses the publishers money.
I would guess that I would get better service calling about a disk with an error than Gamefly would.
One of the two top-rated games on the Xbox 360 is Project Gotham Racing 3.
Controls:
Gas: right trigger
Brake: left trigger
E-brake: 'A'
That's it, that is about all you need to know. And playing on 'novice' or 'easy' can be picked up immediately. But, if someone wants to go further, there is a lot more to the game.
And also, the Xbox Live Arcade games are designed to be picked up quickly. I've logged dozens of hours in Hexic and Geometry Wars. Neither of them is difficult to understand. Now Geometry Wars is difficult to play, but simple to understand...
In fact, the thing most peopl say when they first see the game is, "So the entire thing is just in that little box? Do you ever get to leave the box?"
I owned a business for a long time- a new business opened up next to mine, it was listed as an 'art gallery'. It had the crappiest art you've ever seen (I don't mean like a 6 year old, I mean like an idiotic 19 year old...which is what it was.) They put old couches out in front of their place, spray painted their half of the building, put up horrible hand-painted signs, etc. etc. This was for a building we shared where I was paying $2.50/square foot- back in 1993.
One of my customers was actually the city code enforcement officer. When he came into my place of business, I asked him about the signs, couches, etc. etc.
His only answer was, "There ain't no law against ugly."
I used to be a subscriber to OXM for exactly this reason- the demo disks. I passed on, or bought, a lot of games based on the demos. It was always good to get through the hype of the previews and see what the game was actually like.
So far, I plan on relying on the downloadable demos (which are huge) to do this for me. If not enough demos are released, I guess I'll have to re-subscribe to OXM.
I believe the subscription price was like $17 per year...much better than paying $9.99 retail per issue.
Because Dell doesn't sell servers using AMD processors.
The one in the dark blue shirt MIGHT be a chick...
But don't think LUGs are just boring, here is a group in Davis, CA that combined the fun and excitement of open source, with MAGIC!
see the pictures.
You can't tell me that LUGs aren't cool.
Keep looking at the rest of the pictures on the site...here is another example then tell me how a bunch of computer geeks managed to use photos that are 640x480 pixels, yet had a file size of over 150K each.
Actually, I know a lot of the people there, and a lot of them work on web related projects. View the HTML source on the same page...
It just amazes me what these people seemingly get away with, because they other people believe they have some tech/geek-cred just because they use an alternative operating system.
Just because you use Linux doesn't mean you know what is going on.
Sorry, don't want to sound like a pain in the ass, but when I am sitting there at a meeting at work (I work with a lot of them), and these clowns try to tell everyone who will listen that the world must start using open standards, it's frustrating. They actually gave a class about CSS once...yet they obviously don't pay attention to it themselves.
Absolutely, I think it is a smart buy too. But, it is not their 'full' version.
It is comparable to the other vendors light versions in the fact that it is a step down from their premier offerings.
Anytime a Beta product is compared to a released product, it's a sham.
Did you see the prices on the other commercial products? If our small company is choosing their database by price, then the SQL Server Standard Edition is priced fairly with the other commercial offerings.
Standard Edition is not the Enterprise Edition..so it is one of their 'junior' products.
Yes, MySQL would have them all beat on price. But putting a free beta product vs. other commerical products is a load of crap.
Yeah, it's like that whole Christmas tree thing...if people would just wait a few days later, they could find them out in the street!
I really hate the idea that you have to develop in the Popular Flavor of the Month in order for some people to think you know what you are doing.
In the past 10 years, there have been at least 6 or 7 big 'waves' that have hit, and if you tried to follow them all, you would never really get to know any of the languages.
What about saying: "Well, this really works for me. It may not be the latest and greatest...but today's latest and greatest is going to be tomorrow's old dirty shoe. So I'll just stick with today's old dirty shoe, until there is a reason so compelling that I will change."
It works...really...if you value productivity and efficiency.
Viva La Cobol
Okay, not really Cobol...but you get the idea.
And for those Cobol programmers out there...good job. Just hang on a few more years and you'll be able to retire.