Three words: Out of print. People want to buy a console before a particular title goes out of print permanently.
I'm not sure that's as much a selling point for new consoles. Instead I would say it applied more to the older, soon-to-be-discontinued consoles. I recently bought an Xbox1 because of the hacking potential and because I'm sure Microsoft will axe the product as soon as 3-shi**y comes to market.
Anyway, as I said in another post: With the game stores embracing used merchandise and the huge yard-sale site known as eBay, the buy-it-now its-your-only-opportunity argument isn't really so true anymore. Ten years ago when Playstation and Saturn were first out, I would defintely worry about getting a particular game before it was discontinued. Today, if it disappears I just hop on eBay and look for it.
These days I regularly buy 6-month old titles for half-price, instead of paying full price "just to have it" on day one.
Then please find me a new copy of Ikaruga for the Gamecube. Heck, I'd take a used copy at a reasonably price...
Checking ebay I instantly found 11 copies for sale. I've recently been bolstering my own collection from ebay, and now that the game stores have embraced selling used merchandise it is much easier getting ahold of older titles than, say, when N64 and original Playstation were king.
One of these was Betamax. Technically, it was superior.
Ugh, not this historical reconstruction again. This is going to sound like flaimbait, but since I actually lived through the Betamax period here goes the truth:
Technically, the original Betamax tapes could only record about 60 to 90 minutes. It took more than one tape to record a TV movie or to copy from a commercial tape. Copying was popular because of the incredibly high prices of commercially released tapes. Knowing "the guy" at the video rental really paid off in those days. The high equipment costs meant you often cribbed the videos off the local video-rental dealer (these were the days before Blockbuster, and before Macrovision crap) for the price of a rental + a blank tape, and he had enough equipment laying about to do it. Big movie releases (over 90 minutes) meant more tapes had to be bought and needed more man-handling to copy them. Anyone with a library of tapes in the early 1980's had shelves full of these "homemade" releases, not the commercial tapes.
VHS, with its bigger cartridge and longer tape, was able to record two full hours which made it much nicer for prime-time TV recording and pirating videos. It was also nicer for rentals, where you didn't need to change tapes in the middle of the movie [a side note, this was also a setback for 12-inch LaserDiscs which required disc-flipping]. Not that it was a huge deal, nor that many movies ran long enough to require Betamax double-tapes, but it was one detail which made BetaMax seem inferior to VHS. It was quite a few years before typical Hollywood releases ran over the two-hour mark that VHS handled easily.
Sony may have wanted large licensing fees, but Betamax had a big headstart in video releases. And for years every movie had a Betamax and VHS release. I think people just got tired of the double-tape movie releases. And when Betamax finally came out with 2-hour tapes, VHS countered with T-160 tapes. Once again, piracy is what drove the marketplace. I fully believe VHS 'won' more because of the early two-hour capacity than anything else.
I do not *cost* my employer any money. Yes: my employer *makes* money off of me.
Speaking as an employer, I can definitely say unless you are directly bringing in revenue (i.e. sales), you would be considered a cost (of business). Obviously, the bigger a firm the more help you need which is a benefit, but never assume you are _not a cost.
If your customers only care about IE you are doing the wrong thing and costing them more by designing for 'standards' (which are only one group's perception of the standard) instead of IE which, frankly, is the most popular standard.
IE has been slipping in popularity, especially now that Opera and others have stopped reporting themselves as IE.
As Microsoft is more likely than anyone to change how their next revision handles displaying web content, his billing method strikes me as quite brilliant. Under this method, his method is more likely to work in the future especially as popularity of other browsers (even among Microsoft's own revisions) shifts. And its easy to come in and re-bill for new features bif it becomes necessary.
On the other hand, your method of programming to one application is highly likely to break in the future. Its almost like you expect recurring business on the basis of continually "fixing" your clients' code. Either that, or you are simply a hack who slaps enough barely enough code together to work only under a narrowly defined environment. Not a good way to bolster a reputation. I noticed you posted this AC. Worried about your karma, are you?
Consumers are becoming less and less likely to purchase a NEW game over a Used Game... what happens when they realize the trade ratio is about 3 to 1
The Gamestop near me is right near the local high school. Whenever I stop in, there is almost always at least one kid trading in lots of games. I guess the point it that kids don't value things the way adults would. But after thinking about it awhile and expanding on that, I have to say if somebody is done with a game and won't use it again it holds zero value -- and might as well be used as a trade in. Otherwise it has no use at all for that owner. Speaking as someone who used to hoard his games, I finally realized my collection was doing nothing but taking up room in my house. These days my concern is more about when Gamestop either stops accepting or highly devalues trade-ins because they are choking on 60 copies of overstock on every title.
Back on topic a bit: I think huge hits like WoW will continue to fragment the market and drive many game-makers to the consoles. From what I have read PC game sales have been slipping for years, while consoles have been gaining. If I were a business, I have to think hard about wanting to compete with WoW and The Sims in a limited marketplace, when otherwise there are tens of millions of consoles. Its actually already happening.
I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
Let's forget for a a minute that that is illegal.
Okay, this is getting off-topic, but as the spouse of an employer... It is certainly not illegal to have prejudice against an applicant. The only illegality would be not hiring them because of specific age and racial characterisitics. Geez, with all the self-appointed legal experts on this site I sometimes wonder if Slashdot is trying to be the next Groklaw.
The article compares this move to the video rental market, whereas here these old game get a second chance at life (and revenue). But I get the distinct feeling Microsoft is leasing these games to Exent simply watch what happens before taking over this market.
Folks who follow the gaming news should realize that Xbox 360 is being set up almost entirely around the "Live" service. J Allard even admits this is their current strategy. Anyone with more than a couple brain cells to rub together should realize Microsoft is going to use the new Live service to nickel and dime their customers to death. Xbox 360 Live will be a delicious post-purchase revenue generator for MS. Monthly game rentals would seem a good fit with all the other Live revenue-enhancers and, if this experiment pans out with Exent, I wouldn't doubt these type of "rentals" will also begin showing up on Xbox360 Live.
the government in the past has brought an anti-trust suit against Microsoft for being a monopoly, however they themselves would help to propagate this by using their software.
It's even worse. I work at a small law office, undergoing ECF (electronic case filing) training and conversion right now. The federal courts, you know the ones which convicted Microsoft of being a monopoly in the browser market, have issued system specs which require Internet Explorer. The mind reels.
it will help to drive bad products off the market, and replace the bad products with good products.
The problem is that the vendor has to take all of the risk buying and warehousing a product before ever knowing if it is going to be good, bad, popular or whatever. Newegg has offered a number of bad or underperforming items as 'free gifts with order' to eliminate stock (I remember a particularly bad brand of DVD-R discs becoming 'customer gifts'). Newegg isn't so bad with the voter ratings, even if they remove some reviews. But I can see how tempting it might be "fixing" reviews of underperforming products at unethical merchants.
Buyer Beware - especially of reviews on the merchant's site.
I've never had a problem buying and using GameBoy games in any store or airport in the world. If I can't do the same with the Sony PSP, it holds less value (crappy battery time notwithstanding). Sony really needs to get their head out of their ass with this.
Just further proof in TiVo's recent moves to subsidise your subscription with payola from advertisers. This along with the 'yellow-star' ads, the in-the-middle- of-your-menu promotions, and the pop-ups during fast-forward, not to mention the DRM encryption and extremely lackluster TiVo-to-Go "feature" which is a joke. Really, they ought to start making the machines free, since they're running full-steam ahead into the arms of marketing. It's too pricey for as far down the slippery slope they've fallen.
As a long-time TiVo subscriber, this trend has me disturbed. To the point I learned to hack my box, blocked the ads, and lock it at v.4.02 software.
I don't know if you have response email turned on, but I'll reply to this one.
About 10 years ago, when I was still a lad working a student gig at University, we actually got a few PCs with the LS120 drives. Nice piece of kit, and as you point out backwards compatible with regular diskettes. Except that using 120MB at floppy-drive speeds was a hair-pulling experience. Plus the disks (at the time) were quite pricey.
you might just burn a CD-R, but then you could be wasting a 700MiB CD just to send a couple of MB.
Depending on what country you happen to be in, CD-Rs can actually be cheaper than floppies. In those bulk "cake packs" you can often beat floppy prices, and floppies (at least around here) seem to command a higher price because it is such a niche item nowadays. I've been known to burn a paltry 3MB worth of files to CD just for somebody's convenience.
The bigger problem, as I think someone else pointed out, is that CD mastering software is nowhere near as quick and easy as just popping a diskette in and out of the "A:" drive.
And I bought a 1GB USB keychain drive for $70 this year. Cost per MB is really not the point or everyone would be walking around with 3.5-inch harddrives.
At work (law office) we keep a copy of client files on floppy - right inside the folder, with their paperwork. Simple, effective. Saved our a** when the server croaked, and handy for the lawyers when they need to make document modifications out at the courthouse. But we'd never use a $70 keychain drive per file.
The floppy is not dead. Just like VHS, it'll still be kicking around in the background for years to come.
That, and the modern day equivalent of horrible b-grade 50's campy sci-fi... which I don't think is really what most viewers want to watch on there.
Maybe I'm wrong,
You're wrong.
I happen to like both Battelstar Galactica and "It's half man, half mosquito!" shlock. (I personally feel Mansquito has been underrated for a great cheesy monster movie, and usually rebuked by people who haven't even watched it.)
Maybe I don't represent the majority of viewers, but I certainly appreciate shlocky monster flicks a lot more than most of the 'reality' garbage shown on other channels.
The lesson I've learned is that any Microsoft release tends to be highly exploitable. What I remember most about the WindowsCE on the Dreamcast was it made the box easy to exploit and run other software (DreamSNES emulator being of particular note).
Like the Dreamcast, now Microsoft's own console is also easy to exploit. An old copy of MechAssault or Splinter Cell (the original) and a special save-game mod you can patch Xboxen all day long -- without any special chips or anything. Those of us suffering under hope that Dreamcast's emulators would ever improve have mostly moved on to softmod'ed Xboxes, which do a darned good job in that respect.
Well you already point out the annoying DRM crap as a reason, plus decoding the DRM'ed video only works on Windows boxen (not Mac or Linux).
Personally, I enjoy the freedom of my hacked TiVo (locked at v4.02 software). No DRM, no fast-forward banner ads. Just today I figured out tymplex and MFSFTP for uploading my kids' DVD movies into the TiVo. Try that with your stock box!
Well, that was kind of my point -- the Best Buy clerk didn't seem to know what result the pen should be providing. If it didn't turn black, but it "smeared", then she's an idiot.
Except that the only reason he was there in the first place was that Best Buy jacked him around on the installation fee. They had originally waived the fee, then called him the next day saying he better pay or they were going to have him arrested. In protest, he went and paid with $2 bills (which he uses in his touring business), and Best Buy couldn't cope. In fact, it was the store manager who shackled him down and called in the police.
Best Buy created the situation by being hostile with their own customer. Then they made it worse by continuing to be hostile with their customer.
First of all, this story is like a month old. What I'd really like to see is a followup article.
The cashier noticed smearing of the ink - which apparently was actually there.
The linked article is horribly abridged, and the original points out that she used one of those "chemical pens" to mark the bills, which may have smeared. Smeared the pen or smeared the bill's own ink? It is not clear. But obviously the clerk didn't know how the pen identifies counterfeit paper -- it turns black.
When the officer came, he noticed that the bills all had sequential serial numbers - apparently a common sign in counterfeit currency.
I'd be more concerned if they all had the same serial number.:)
Will any of these Patents help Tivo with competitors, and their long term survival?
From a quick glance at a couple of these patents, I'd say at least some of them relate to the upcoming pop-up ads (while fast-forwarding) which TiVo seems bent on providing to their paying subscribers. That, and reporting which ads get watched (or better, rewound and re-watched), and which are skipped.
After last year's Super Bowl Janet Jackson boob slip-up... er, slip-out... TiVo was able to provide very good statistics about how many viewers rewound and rewatched that segment. It makes Nielson surveys look like cave-man technology. TiVo has been able to turn the corner and start winning over advertisers who were initially against TiVo. Their main revenue source seems to be changing from subscriptions over to ads, and ad monitoring. The pop-up ads are the newest way to sell and monitor those ads. Last week TiVo already said they expect to be profitable be the end of this year.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure that's as much a selling point for new consoles. Instead I would say it applied more to the older, soon-to-be-discontinued consoles. I recently bought an Xbox1 because of the hacking potential and because I'm sure Microsoft will axe the product as soon as 3-shi**y comes to market.
Anyway, as I said in another post: With the game stores embracing used merchandise and the huge yard-sale site known as eBay, the buy-it-now its-your-only-opportunity argument isn't really so true anymore. Ten years ago when Playstation and Saturn were first out, I would defintely worry about getting a particular game before it was discontinued. Today, if it disappears I just hop on eBay and look for it.
These days I regularly buy 6-month old titles for half-price, instead of paying full price "just to have it" on day one.
Checking ebay I instantly found 11 copies for sale. I've recently been bolstering my own collection from ebay, and now that the game stores have embraced selling used merchandise it is much easier getting ahold of older titles than, say, when N64 and original Playstation were king.
Ugh, not this historical reconstruction again. This is going to sound like flaimbait, but since I actually lived through the Betamax period here goes the truth:
Technically, the original Betamax tapes could only record about 60 to 90 minutes. It took more than one tape to record a TV movie or to copy from a commercial tape. Copying was popular because of the incredibly high prices of commercially released tapes. Knowing "the guy" at the video rental really paid off in those days. The high equipment costs meant you often cribbed the videos off the local video-rental dealer (these were the days before Blockbuster, and before Macrovision crap) for the price of a rental + a blank tape, and he had enough equipment laying about to do it. Big movie releases (over 90 minutes) meant more tapes had to be bought and needed more man-handling to copy them. Anyone with a library of tapes in the early 1980's had shelves full of these "homemade" releases, not the commercial tapes.
VHS, with its bigger cartridge and longer tape, was able to record two full hours which made it much nicer for prime-time TV recording and pirating videos. It was also nicer for rentals, where you didn't need to change tapes in the middle of the movie [a side note, this was also a setback for 12-inch LaserDiscs which required disc-flipping]. Not that it was a huge deal, nor that many movies ran long enough to require Betamax double-tapes, but it was one detail which made BetaMax seem inferior to VHS. It was quite a few years before typical Hollywood releases ran over the two-hour mark that VHS handled easily.
Sony may have wanted large licensing fees, but Betamax had a big headstart in video releases. And for years every movie had a Betamax and VHS release. I think people just got tired of the double-tape movie releases. And when Betamax finally came out with 2-hour tapes, VHS countered with T-160 tapes. Once again, piracy is what drove the marketplace. I fully believe VHS 'won' more because of the early two-hour capacity than anything else.
Speaking as an employer, I can definitely say unless you are directly bringing in revenue (i.e. sales), you would be considered a cost (of business). Obviously, the bigger a firm the more help you need which is a benefit, but never assume you are _not a cost.
IE has been slipping in popularity, especially now that Opera and others have stopped reporting themselves as IE.
As Microsoft is more likely than anyone to change how their next revision handles displaying web content, his billing method strikes me as quite brilliant. Under this method, his method is more likely to work in the future especially as popularity of other browsers (even among Microsoft's own revisions) shifts. And its easy to come in and re-bill for new features bif it becomes necessary.
On the other hand, your method of programming to one application is highly likely to break in the future. Its almost like you expect recurring business on the basis of continually "fixing" your clients' code. Either that, or you are simply a hack who slaps enough barely enough code together to work only under a narrowly defined environment. Not a good way to bolster a reputation. I noticed you posted this AC. Worried about your karma, are you?
The Gamestop near me is right near the local high school. Whenever I stop in, there is almost always at least one kid trading in lots of games. I guess the point it that kids don't value things the way adults would. But after thinking about it awhile and expanding on that, I have to say if somebody is done with a game and won't use it again it holds zero value -- and might as well be used as a trade in. Otherwise it has no use at all for that owner.
Speaking as someone who used to hoard his games, I finally realized my collection was doing nothing but taking up room in my house. These days my concern is more about when Gamestop either stops accepting or highly devalues trade-ins because they are choking on 60 copies of overstock on every title.
Back on topic a bit: I think huge hits like WoW will continue to fragment the market and drive many game-makers to the consoles. From what I have read PC game sales have been slipping for years, while consoles have been gaining. If I were a business, I have to think hard about wanting to compete with WoW and The Sims in a limited marketplace, when otherwise there are tens of millions of consoles. Its actually already happening.
Okay, this is getting off-topic, but as the spouse of an employer... It is certainly not illegal to have prejudice against an applicant. The only illegality would be not hiring them because of specific age and racial characterisitics. Geez, with all the self-appointed legal experts on this site I sometimes wonder if Slashdot is trying to be the next Groklaw.
But being a Sony, it will have very stylish duct tape.
The article compares this move to the video rental market, whereas here these old game get a second chance at life (and revenue). But I get the distinct feeling Microsoft is leasing these games to Exent simply watch what happens before taking over this market.
Folks who follow the gaming news should realize that Xbox 360 is being set up almost entirely around the "Live" service. J Allard even admits this is their current strategy. Anyone with more than a couple brain cells to rub together should realize Microsoft is going to use the new Live service to nickel and dime their customers to death. Xbox 360 Live will be a delicious post-purchase revenue generator for MS. Monthly game rentals would seem a good fit with all the other Live revenue-enhancers and, if this experiment pans out with Exent, I wouldn't doubt these type of "rentals" will also begin showing up on Xbox360 Live.
It's even worse. I work at a small law office, undergoing ECF (electronic case filing) training and conversion right now. The federal courts, you know the ones which convicted Microsoft of being a monopoly in the browser market, have issued system specs which require Internet Explorer. The mind reels.
The problem is that the vendor has to take all of the risk buying and warehousing a product before ever knowing if it is going to be good, bad, popular or whatever. Newegg has offered a number of bad or underperforming items as 'free gifts with order' to eliminate stock (I remember a particularly bad brand of DVD-R discs becoming 'customer gifts'). Newegg isn't so bad with the voter ratings, even if they remove some reviews. But I can see how tempting it might be "fixing" reviews of underperforming products at unethical merchants.
Buyer Beware - especially of reviews on the merchant's site.
The upcoming Grand Theft Auto is reported to be region-locked. There was quite a hubbub about a leaked game manual a couple months back.
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-11721-1458 -4-6-x
I've never had a problem buying and using GameBoy games in any store or airport in the world. If I can't do the same with the Sony PSP, it holds less value (crappy battery time notwithstanding). Sony really needs to get their head out of their ass with this.
This update also apparently helps enforce region encoding (e.g. DVD players), which of course is incredibly stupid on a handheld portable device.
Upcoming games reportedly use region locks.
Just further proof in TiVo's recent moves to subsidise your subscription with payola from advertisers. This along with the 'yellow-star' ads, the in-the-middle- of-your-menu promotions, and the pop-ups during fast-forward, not to mention the DRM encryption and extremely lackluster TiVo-to-Go "feature" which is a joke. Really, they ought to start making the machines free, since they're running full-steam ahead into the arms of marketing. It's too pricey for as far down the slippery slope they've fallen.
As a long-time TiVo subscriber, this trend has me disturbed. To the point I learned to hack my box, blocked the ads, and lock it at v.4.02 software.
I don't know if you have response email turned on, but I'll reply to this one.
About 10 years ago, when I was still a lad working a student gig at University, we actually got a few PCs with the LS120 drives. Nice piece of kit, and as you point out backwards compatible with regular diskettes. Except that using 120MB at floppy-drive speeds was a hair-pulling experience. Plus the disks (at the time) were quite pricey.
Depending on what country you happen to be in, CD-Rs can actually be cheaper than floppies. In those bulk "cake packs" you can often beat floppy prices, and floppies (at least around here) seem to command a higher price because it is such a niche item nowadays. I've been known to burn a paltry 3MB worth of files to CD just for somebody's convenience.
The bigger problem, as I think someone else pointed out, is that CD mastering software is nowhere near as quick and easy as just popping a diskette in and out of the "A:" drive.
And I bought a 1GB USB keychain drive for $70 this year. Cost per MB is really not the point or everyone would be walking around with 3.5-inch harddrives.
At work (law office) we keep a copy of client files on floppy - right inside the folder, with their paperwork. Simple, effective. Saved our a** when the server croaked, and handy for the lawyers when they need to make document modifications out at the courthouse. But we'd never use a $70 keychain drive per file.
The floppy is not dead. Just like VHS, it'll still be kicking around in the background for years to come.
You're wrong.
I happen to like both Battelstar Galactica and "It's half man, half mosquito!" shlock. (I personally feel Mansquito has been underrated for a great cheesy monster movie, and usually rebuked by people who haven't even watched it.)
Maybe I don't represent the majority of viewers, but I certainly appreciate shlocky monster flicks a lot more than most of the 'reality' garbage shown on other channels.
The lesson I've learned is that any Microsoft release tends to be highly exploitable. What I remember most about the WindowsCE on the Dreamcast was it made the box easy to exploit and run other software (DreamSNES emulator being of particular note).
Like the Dreamcast, now Microsoft's own console is also easy to exploit. An old copy of MechAssault or Splinter Cell (the original) and a special save-game mod you can patch Xboxen all day long -- without any special chips or anything. Those of us suffering under hope that Dreamcast's emulators would ever improve have mostly moved on to softmod'ed Xboxes, which do a darned good job in that respect.
Well you already point out the annoying DRM crap as a reason, plus decoding the DRM'ed video only works on Windows boxen (not Mac or Linux).
Personally, I enjoy the freedom of my hacked TiVo (locked at v4.02 software). No DRM, no fast-forward banner ads. Just today I figured out tymplex and MFSFTP for uploading my kids' DVD movies into the TiVo. Try that with your stock box!
More than you know, especially with BMW using MS computer systems and Ford's new inititiative with Microsoft.
Well, that was kind of my point -- the Best Buy clerk didn't seem to know what result the pen should be providing. If it didn't turn black, but it "smeared", then she's an idiot.
Best Buy created the situation by being hostile with their own customer. Then they made it worse by continuing to be hostile with their customer.
First of all, this story is like a month old. What I'd really like to see is a followup article.
The linked article is horribly abridged, and the original points out that she used one of those "chemical pens" to mark the bills, which may have smeared. Smeared the pen or smeared the bill's own ink? It is not clear. But obviously the clerk didn't know how the pen identifies counterfeit paper -- it turns black.
I'd be more concerned if they all had the same serial number. :)
From a quick glance at a couple of these patents, I'd say at least some of them relate to the upcoming pop-up ads (while fast-forwarding) which TiVo seems bent on providing to their paying subscribers. That, and reporting which ads get watched (or better, rewound and re-watched), and which are skipped.
After last year's Super Bowl Janet Jackson boob slip-up ... er, slip-out... TiVo was able to provide very good statistics about how many viewers rewound and rewatched that segment. It makes Nielson surveys look like cave-man technology. TiVo has been able to turn the corner and start winning over advertisers who were initially against TiVo. Their main revenue source seems to be changing from subscriptions over to ads, and ad monitoring. The pop-up ads are the newest way to sell and monitor those ads. Last week TiVo already said they expect to be profitable be the end of this year.