I'd like to see commodity game hardware. I think they did it, after a fashion, in the old atari 2600 days.
Atari licensed (and built) their 2600 console for Sears under the Sears moniker, but otherwise it was a pretty basic and open system. So open, that competitors were soon able to create and market cartridge games which ran on the base hardware. Ever since the crash of '83, console makers have added various "lockout" devices to make sure they remain in charge of their own console and its games.
Anyway, as folks have pointed out, 3D0 was originally a hardware console make. They tried to pass around this idea of licensing the core hardware to multiple manufacturers, but it never really went anywhere. Munfacturers are left with the problem of how to differentiate a game machine which is functionally identical to their competitors. Ultimately, it becomes a price war with slim-to-no profit margin.
The One Console To Rule Them All idea seems to be in Microsoft's game plan (ha ha, a pun). They enter the market with their v1.0 Xbox, a modified PC running a DirectX platform. Establish themselves, developers (buy them if necessary), and supply-chain. Quickly abandon the v.1 hardware and come out with incompatible and quite different v.2. They just to inch up the install base a bit with each release, much like DOS and later Windows. With Microsoft's resources I'm sure in their eyes it is a war of attrition, certainly helped along by Sony's recent habit of shooting their own toes/feet/legs off all over the place. Microsoft seems to think all they need to do it outperform Sony and out-spend Nintendo. In other words: Microsoft wants to become the de facto "commodity" console of which you speak.
I'm sure in J. Allard's twisted fantasies, 10 years from now nobody will heed to any other console besides Xbox. In fact, if reality doesn't intervene and Xbox actually lasts that long, I'd be surprised if Microsoft didn't start licensing out Xbox hardware design and focus on the DirectX (or whatever) software underpinnings to run on those other makers 'Xbox' machines, much like the PDA and PC market today.
Re:an interesting tidbit:
on
iPods at War
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, let the MPAA and RIAA go after the piracy of media by soldiers afield.
I know two soldiers who've come back from Iraq and Kuwait. One of the rationales they've told me behind heavy bootlegging (movies and MP3s) is simply that there are no applicable copyright laws in those countries to violate. It's attractive to soldiers to horde "IP" while they're in the desert.
The guy said "something like $300", and was probably referring to the PS3. Wii will probably be about $100.) This is to discourage people who aren't going to pick up the thing on release to shy away.
That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, since many of those slimey stores are just as likely to sell your unit to whomever walks in the door flashing enough cash, or the manager takes a few home himself to plaster up on eBay.
Pre-orders used to be a guage for interest in a few high-visibility products. These days, more than not, it seems geared to boost 'guaranteed' store sales by locking you into purchasing at a specific venue. You'd still be on the hook waiting for the "next shipment" to come in, because you're already quite far down the hole on the pre-order price and they don't tend to give you cash back -- usually only store credits (which you then have to use in the same store). Guaranteed income for that store, one way or the other. I don't see any rationale explaining that a higher pre-sell price is going to reallytruly guarantee you an actual boxed console on release day. You're fairly likely to be console-less (ha, a bit of a pun) and out quote a few C-notes for your troubles.
Changing PHANTOM to a gaming service on my computer will be just fine, so long as it works with my Phantom Gaming Keyboard and Mouse setup. That is, as soon as said keyboard setup actually comes to market.../holding-breath
The real news there is the fact that when Intel comes back to the bargining table Dell can always point to the AMD machines as a "reminder" that Intel really does have competition.
It has been rumuoured and reported for years that Dell has used the threat of AMD to keep favorable bulk pricing from Intel. One might think that with Intel's recent stock-price woes they finally called Dell's bluff, so now Dell has to follow through the motions of making an AMD-based machine.
once upon a time, you could get free shipping and have something a few days later. Then, Super Saver started taking longer... and longer... and longer.
I'm sure escalating fuel prices have a hand in the corner-cutting you've seen and written about. I've noticed a lot of other online vendors no longer offer the free shipping options, and the regular shipping has crept upwards over the last year or so.
Given Amazon's recent stock price woes, It's quote possible that your subject line is correct... Prime will probably kill them eventually.
As a technical-type guy, I should add that machines of any kind (indeed, any things of any kind) rarely can be made to operate any better by slamming one's fist against any part thereof.
Au contraire! As a technical-type guy I've found on many occasions that beating on the equipment can improve results. From wiggling the hub on those 3.5-inch diskettes to smacking the side of that flakey monitor. Occasionally (okay... once) I've even gotten a hard drive back into service by beating it against the countertop.
...having a bigger game library than the Nintendo Wii.
Let's be realistic here. The Wii will have Gamecube backwards compatibility, as well as the reported classic system emulations giving it a large library right from the get go. I'm sure the PS3 will also have a decent level of backwards compatibility as well. Backwards compatibility for the Xbox360 has been extremely hit-and-miss -- Dubious at best, certainly over-hyped, which forces Microsoft to rely on building new expensive titles for their new system. I predict their 15 million units prediction is also over-hyped.
As others have pointed out, it doesn't solve the problem of selling the one you've got on eBay for scad of money -- if you'd call that a problem.
The bigger problem as I see it, like the Xbox2 launch, is those dealers which take your deposit and then turn around and sell your reserved console away anyway. I don't see how higher deposits will alleviate that issue.
I'd be much more willing to believe that Nintendo felt that the Japanese SMB2 would be poorly received because the American gaming demographic skewed younger than their japanese demographic and that small children would be turned off by a weak cash-in of a game that was so frustrating that you wanted to bash the cartridge into tiny bits.
I would be more willing to believe that since SMB2 was on that NES-disc thingie which never came out in the US or Europe, the western divisions of Nintendo scrambled around for something interesting and playable which they could quicky change out the player sprites. Especially since SMB2 seems to be more of an add-on, or extension to the original game -- the gameplay changes also seem annoying (Poison Mushrooms). Taking a great game in development (Doki Doki Panic) and branding it as a Mario followup seems like an easy (and fast) way to capitalize on the popularity of Mario in the western markets without the disc drive player.
WHY do you think buying music on allofmp3 is different then pirating it?
Or, by virtue of being located in a different country, AllOfMP3 actually (legally, at least currently in Russia) provides what the market wants -- easy downloads from a wide catalogue in your format of choice (DRM-less), at a reasonable price. None of this "We rent you" crap.
It astounds me at least a full 7 years after the original Napster came into being that the domestic (U.S.) music industry still can't seem to figure out what customers want.
cannot be captured in a cover letter, interview, or golf outing, but in one's day-to-day commitment to the work. If that passion is the one which his managers look for then I am certain that your 'Bob' would find himself well rewarded.
And that is where the problem lies -- where lesser companies take, say, Apple as an example but completely misinterpret the idea and begin hiring the least qualified people based upon such subjective intangibles as passion. I can see 'Bob' easily getting sidelined -- Showing up for work every day and getting the job done isn't passionate. It's the Dilbert principle in full effect.
"Cheaper than a computer" has always been a feature of consoles, trying to justify the PS3 cost by comparing it to the computers is a bit of a strawman.
A bit!?! I just saw a Dell television commercial featuring a complete desktop computer (model B110 if I recall) for $299. What are folks (at least 'regular' people) going to think when mainstream computer setups are half the price of this new game console?
forsees needing over 1TB worth of storage on a laptop-sized hard drive?
Well, perhaps out of the mainstream but my initial reaction was that a large capacity, small drie would be nice for a media-server type of thing. A mini-ITX format machine with a condensed hard drive would fit pretty well in this scenario. I'm sure there are others which might crop up from high-capacity, small-size storage. Although, personally I think the future is in high-capacity flash-memory type storage.
What did she do for that money?
She had ancestors who created marketable characters. Well, great for her.
You can use that fact to make small talk about yourself, but make your own damn money.
Seeing as how Clare Milne has cerebral palsy, that was a crummy thing to write. In actuality, IIRC, Christopher Robin (Milne) refused any 'Pooh' money until his daughter was born with that medical condition. He realized she would need money so as to be looked after, when he was gone.
Isn't that exactly what a Tivo is without a subscription?
Actually, no. A Tivo (at least series-2 units) without a subscription is more like a $300 doorstop. Even for series-1 units, they removed the "dumb VCR" mode in later versions of the TiVo OS. Nice, eh... keeps the pleebs tied to that monthly service fee.
One of the parts of this is that the Department of Labor--not the employer--has to certify that the person they sponsor is paid the prevailing wage in the area.
I've also known some H1B workers in the past. Although not making minimum wage, they were usually at the bottom of the salary scale. As I've seen answered here already, H1B's are easier to manage because they pretty much become indentured servants to their sponsers.
Pitfall takes place in some wierd spacetime, where the route changes depending on what direction you run:-)
Climbing down into the underground path, with the scorpions and such, travels three screens. You really needed to write out a map to find the screens with the treasures, and the quickest route (usually by taking some underground "shortcuts") to get them.
Are you saying adding motion-sensing was a bad idea? In what way? It's a feature. Worse case is it sucks and no one uses it and the controller is the same controller the PS2 had. How is this a problem?
Because they removed (arguably) the industry's best rumble set from the venerable Dual-Shock model to do it. Because they did it in a rushed managerial fit to chase Nintendo, after publicly lambasting the N for the Revolution [wii] control system. And in the end, it still won't have the spacial position-tracking to be, you know, actually useful, which Nintendo has been working on for at least 2 years.
It stinks of a crappy rush job, when the console is due to market in just a few months. That's why it's a problem.
This legal move by the networks, which obviously has no customer benefit
End viewers are not the Networks' customer. Large ad firms are their customer. Once you put the argument in perspective it begins to make sense, even despite the apparent twistedness of this revelation.
When the mini-disc came out, I thought it was going to kill a lot of formats at once.
The major impedement to me concerning Mini-Disc was that in the end it was still a magnetic format. I've had troubles and data loss with every magnetic media I've ever dealt with, I guess I sort of a black-thumb for data. I loved when CD-Rs came out, and although some of the offshoots (like the blue-dyes) had some playback issues in first-generation computer CD-ROM drives they worked really well. Of course, this was all before we found out that CD-Rs are only good for 4 or 5 years. Anyway, MD was magnetic, and that alone turned me away from the format.
As I recall, the MD blanks weren't all that cheap either. Like Zip disks, they couldn't compete with the floor-falling price of CD-Rs every few months. And, at the time a whole lotta computers were beginning to ship with CD-ROM standard.
will there be any financial reprocussions from Intel after the announcement of this deal?
I think this has a lot to do with AMD's current lawsuit against Intel. Intel can't easily go around anymore making shady backdoor deals with the builders to exclude AMD products. (Recently, as a result of this ongoing lawsuit AMD has made large strides gaining back marketshare and profits.) If anything, I think it proves the legitimacy of AMD's claims against Intel.
Sony appears to have tossed all that out the window by making a console that is (reportedly) significantly more difficult to program for, thus creating a much greater barrier to entry for new titles.
At the minimum this will probably be good for Microsoft, as the 360 development environment is reportedly pretty nice to work on. I expect with the PS3's high price, difficult programming mountain and similar capabilities of the 360 hardware, it will be regulated to lots of ports of Xbox360 games. In other words, there's not much to differentiate the PS3.
Relating back to the article, Nintendo has not yet released price nor availability information but I'm already waiting to get a Wii! (Still holding hope they change the name, though)
Slashdot Mirror
Atari licensed (and built) their 2600 console for Sears under the Sears moniker, but otherwise it was a pretty basic and open system. So open, that competitors were soon able to create and market cartridge games which ran on the base hardware. Ever since the crash of '83, console makers have added various "lockout" devices to make sure they remain in charge of their own console and its games.
Anyway, as folks have pointed out, 3D0 was originally a hardware console make. They tried to pass around this idea of licensing the core hardware to multiple manufacturers, but it never really went anywhere. Munfacturers are left with the problem of how to differentiate a game machine which is functionally identical to their competitors. Ultimately, it becomes a price war with slim-to-no profit margin.
The One Console To Rule Them All idea seems to be in Microsoft's game plan (ha ha, a pun). They enter the market with their v1.0 Xbox, a modified PC running a DirectX platform. Establish themselves, developers (buy them if necessary), and supply-chain. Quickly abandon the v.1 hardware and come out with incompatible and quite different v.2. They just to inch up the install base a bit with each release, much like DOS and later Windows. With Microsoft's resources I'm sure in their eyes it is a war of attrition, certainly helped along by Sony's recent habit of shooting their own toes/feet/legs off all over the place. Microsoft seems to think all they need to do it outperform Sony and out-spend Nintendo. In other words: Microsoft wants to become the de facto "commodity" console of which you speak.
I'm sure in J. Allard's twisted fantasies, 10 years from now nobody will heed to any other console besides Xbox. In fact, if reality doesn't intervene and Xbox actually lasts that long, I'd be surprised if Microsoft didn't start licensing out Xbox hardware design and focus on the DirectX (or whatever) software underpinnings to run on those other makers 'Xbox' machines, much like the PDA and PC market today.
I know two soldiers who've come back from Iraq and Kuwait. One of the rationales they've told me behind heavy bootlegging (movies and MP3s) is simply that there are no applicable copyright laws in those countries to violate. It's attractive to soldiers to horde "IP" while they're in the desert.
That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, since many of those slimey stores are just as likely to sell your unit to whomever walks in the door flashing enough cash, or the manager takes a few home himself to plaster up on eBay.
Pre-orders used to be a guage for interest in a few high-visibility products. These days, more than not, it seems geared to boost 'guaranteed' store sales by locking you into purchasing at a specific venue. You'd still be on the hook waiting for the "next shipment" to come in, because you're already quite far down the hole on the pre-order price and they don't tend to give you cash back -- usually only store credits (which you then have to use in the same store). Guaranteed income for that store, one way or the other. I don't see any rationale explaining that a higher pre-sell price is going to really truly guarantee you an actual boxed console on release day. You're fairly likely to be console-less (ha, a bit of a pun) and out quote a few C-notes for your troubles.
/me pre-order free, since 1995.
Changing PHANTOM to a gaming service on my computer will be just fine, so long as it works with my Phantom Gaming Keyboard and Mouse setup. That is, as soon as said keyboard setup actually comes to market... /holding-breath
I would say that headaches defined the Virtual Boy. It didn't really matter which game you were playing.
(I actually had quite a number of the VB games at one time, when retail stores were dumping their stock.)
It has been rumuoured and reported for years that Dell has used the threat of AMD to keep favorable bulk pricing from Intel. One might think that with Intel's recent stock-price woes they finally called Dell's bluff, so now Dell has to follow through the motions of making an AMD-based machine.
I'm sure escalating fuel prices have a hand in the corner-cutting you've seen and written about. I've noticed a lot of other online vendors no longer offer the free shipping options, and the regular shipping has crept upwards over the last year or so.
Given Amazon's recent stock price woes, It's quote possible that your subject line is correct... Prime will probably kill them eventually.
Au contraire! As a technical-type guy I've found on many occasions that beating on the equipment can improve results. From wiggling the hub on those 3.5-inch diskettes to smacking the side of that flakey monitor. Occasionally (okay... once) I've even gotten a hard drive back into service by beating it against the countertop.
Let's be realistic here. The Wii will have Gamecube backwards compatibility, as well as the reported classic system emulations giving it a large library right from the get go. I'm sure the PS3 will also have a decent level of backwards compatibility as well. Backwards compatibility for the Xbox360 has been extremely hit-and-miss -- Dubious at best, certainly over-hyped, which forces Microsoft to rely on building new expensive titles for their new system. I predict their 15 million units prediction is also over-hyped.
As others have pointed out, it doesn't solve the problem of selling the one you've got on eBay for scad of money -- if you'd call that a problem.
The bigger problem as I see it, like the Xbox2 launch, is those dealers which take your deposit and then turn around and sell your reserved console away anyway. I don't see how higher deposits will alleviate that issue.
I would be more willing to believe that since SMB2 was on that NES-disc thingie which never came out in the US or Europe, the western divisions of Nintendo scrambled around for something interesting and playable which they could quicky change out the player sprites. Especially since SMB2 seems to be more of an add-on, or extension to the original game -- the gameplay changes also seem annoying (Poison Mushrooms). Taking a great game in development (Doki Doki Panic) and branding it as a Mario followup seems like an easy (and fast) way to capitalize on the popularity of Mario in the western markets without the disc drive player.
Or, by virtue of being located in a different country, AllOfMP3 actually (legally, at least currently in Russia) provides what the market wants -- easy downloads from a wide catalogue in your format of choice (DRM-less), at a reasonable price. None of this "We rent you" crap.
It astounds me at least a full 7 years after the original Napster came into being that the domestic (U.S.) music industry still can't seem to figure out what customers want.
And that is where the problem lies -- where lesser companies take, say, Apple as an example but completely misinterpret the idea and begin hiring the least qualified people based upon such subjective intangibles as passion. I can see 'Bob' easily getting sidelined -- Showing up for work every day and getting the job done isn't passionate. It's the Dilbert principle in full effect.
A bit!?! I just saw a Dell television commercial featuring a complete desktop computer (model B110 if I recall) for $299. What are folks (at least 'regular' people) going to think when mainstream computer setups are half the price of this new game console?
Well, perhaps out of the mainstream but my initial reaction was that a large capacity, small drie would be nice for a media-server type of thing. A mini-ITX format machine with a condensed hard drive would fit pretty well in this scenario. I'm sure there are others which might crop up from high-capacity, small-size storage. Although, personally I think the future is in high-capacity flash-memory type storage.
Seeing as how Clare Milne has cerebral palsy, that was a crummy thing to write.
In actuality, IIRC, Christopher Robin (Milne) refused any 'Pooh' money until his daughter was born with that medical condition. He realized she would need money so as to be looked after, when he was gone.
Actually, no. A Tivo (at least series-2 units) without a subscription is more like a $300 doorstop. Even for series-1 units, they removed the "dumb VCR" mode in later versions of the TiVo OS. Nice, eh... keeps the pleebs tied to that monthly service fee.
I've also known some H1B workers in the past. Although not making minimum wage, they were usually at the bottom of the salary scale. As I've seen answered here already, H1B's are easier to manage because they pretty much become indentured servants to their sponsers.
Climbing down into the underground path, with the scorpions and such, travels three screens. You really needed to write out a map to find the screens with the treasures, and the quickest route (usually by taking some underground "shortcuts") to get them.
Because they removed (arguably) the industry's best rumble set from the venerable Dual-Shock model to do it. Because they did it in a rushed managerial fit to chase Nintendo, after publicly lambasting the N for the Revolution [wii] control system. And in the end, it still won't have the spacial position-tracking to be, you know, actually useful, which Nintendo has been working on for at least 2 years.
It stinks of a crappy rush job, when the console is due to market in just a few months. That's why it's a problem.
End viewers are not the Networks' customer. Large ad firms are their customer. Once you put the argument in perspective it begins to make sense, even despite the apparent twistedness of this revelation.
The major impedement to me concerning Mini-Disc was that in the end it was still a magnetic format. I've had troubles and data loss with every magnetic media I've ever dealt with, I guess I sort of a black-thumb for data. I loved when CD-Rs came out, and although some of the offshoots (like the blue-dyes) had some playback issues in first-generation computer CD-ROM drives they worked really well. Of course, this was all before we found out that CD-Rs are only good for 4 or 5 years. Anyway, MD was magnetic, and that alone turned me away from the format.
As I recall, the MD blanks weren't all that cheap either. Like Zip disks, they couldn't compete with the floor-falling price of CD-Rs every few months. And, at the time a whole lotta computers were beginning to ship with CD-ROM standard.
No, that was already on display over at the Sony booth...
I think this has a lot to do with AMD's current lawsuit against Intel. Intel can't easily go around anymore making shady backdoor deals with the builders to exclude AMD products. (Recently, as a result of this ongoing lawsuit AMD has made large strides gaining back marketshare and profits.) If anything, I think it proves the legitimacy of AMD's claims against Intel.
At the minimum this will probably be good for Microsoft, as the 360 development environment is reportedly pretty nice to work on. I expect with the PS3's high price, difficult programming mountain and similar capabilities of the 360 hardware, it will be regulated to lots of ports of Xbox360 games. In other words, there's not much to differentiate the PS3.
Relating back to the article, Nintendo has not yet released price nor availability information but I'm already waiting to get a Wii! (Still holding hope they change the name, though)