Try again. Show me how to access "Hot Coffee" without any after market modifications.
I don't need to Try again. Take Two is getting pummeled by lawsuits and by Wall Street because of their attempted misdirection. What you're trying to say is "If you don't want trouble, don't go looking for it" (which I would normally agree with) but that is not the whole story.
Take Two (or specifically their Rockstar division) left working Hot Coffee code within the game, which can be reached with a few address pointer fixes. Whether you reach it through a gameshark, a downloaded savegame file, or a memory glitch in the console doesn't matter -- Hot Coffee is still there, and relatively easy to get to. The ESRB states they need to review all content shipped with a game, and don't make any exemptions for whether or not game code requires cheat codes, unlock codes, perfect scores, or any other special conditions. Take Two shipped a game with Hot Coffee code hidden within it, didn't run it past the ESRB, and then lied to the public that it was some sort of aftermarket mod and that it wasn't really there!
How do you unlock it on a console without further manual modification of the original product requiring other after market modifications? Please elaborate.
With a GameShark, adjusting a few addresses so the Hot Coffee missions become active.
Take Two originally said: "So far we have learned that the "hot coffee" modification is the work of a determined group of hackers who have gone to significant trouble to alter scenes in the official version of the game" which becomes a provable false statement once enough technical folk start looking at the so-called "mod". It was dumb for Take Two to publically go out on a limb like this, making them either (1) hoping the issue would "go away" or (2) too stupid to investigate the root problem in their own product.
But then the hackers showed that all they did was unlock a few sections of existing code and it backed Take Two into a corner they couldn't escape from.
Well, the sub-$400 is going to be tricky. The Fuji SnapScans are going for around $495 retail and have pretty good reviews (I think somebody said something about not being real TWAIN scanners, though).
I can say from experience, the single-sided Kodak i30 is about $600 (with software, cable, and even USB interface card if you have a really old computer), it's seriously fast and as small as a typical inkjet printer. We use it for electronic case filing (ECF) with the Federal court. The Kodak i40 is double-sided and the same footprint size, but runs around $850 or so. I'm not sure what you're going to get for under $400, but some of the "home scanners are getting better.
I've also got a Canon LiDE 80 at home, which is about $150 and has a "kickstand" of sorts to make it vertical for supposedly easier document scanning. It is only one-page at a time, and really meant more for color photos and the like. Its one of the cheaper home "USB2.0 Hi-Speed" scanners, and relatively fast. But man, that Kodak's speed puts it to shame! The LiDE 80 is rather nice for scanning photos (not waiting for minutes like our older scanners) and we're just starting to do like you mentioned: scan the old bills and bank statements and store them electronically so we can shred the avalanche of paper.
It's really clearly starting to look to me like the biggest mistake Take Two made with the hot coffee incident was admitting fault.
Not quite... the biggest mistake they made was first blaming it on nebulous "hackers" who "modified" the programming, as if the Hot Coffee content was some sort of homebrew add-on. This was incredibly stupid (I suspect spokespeople and the bigwigs didn't understand the situation with their own product) and turned out shown to be factually wrong because the code was then shown to be unlockable in the consoles as well. Once proved to be wrong (or worse, lying) all TakeTwo could do at that point is admit fault and do damage control.
They made it much worse on themselves by essentially saying HotCoffee didn't exist and then being proven wrong.
All I want from scanner manufacturers is come up with a model of scanner that can scan _multiple_ pages, from _both sides_, _automatically_, bundled with decent OCR software and archiving software. I'd just feed all the paperwork I receive in a week into it and have a searchable archive. Unfortunately, the industry is run by morons and it's not gonna happen.
You mean like the Kodak i40? I'd say it does just about everything you mention, and has a nice supply of included software to boot.
At the office, we have the single-sided sibling (Kodak i30) for scanning client paperwork. Feeds and reads B&W documents in about 2 seconds per page. Color may take longer, but we haven't used the color feature.
I just saw an ad for a new Fuji SnapScan scanner which should be cheaper, alhough I don't know what they include with it.
reality needs to be admitted. The Microsoft of 2006 is not the Microsoft of the late 1990s. They simply no longer have the power to walk right into a market and sweep everyone else aside.
Outside of computer software, I don't think Microsoft has ever had the power to sweep aside other markets. Granted, if you were a software developer which MS suddenly entered into, you were pretty much up against the wall. But for anything else, Microsoft has displayed poor results.
Let's rundown some of Microsoft's poorly fared ventured: WebTV email service, Ultimate TV satellite DVR, MSN Search (Even MSN Internet Dial-Up is not a big revenue genreator for them), those wierd electronic teddy-bear toys. Even PocketPC has taken so long to become barely moderately useful and mostly due to Palm's complete incompetence and implosion. PC SideWinder Joysticks - no longer around. The grand game console pissing match they've gotten into with Sony so far has generated $4-billion in losses, and your quoted article makes it looks like those may continue.
I hope their keyboards and mice hang around, because I actually tend to like those. But in nearly every non-software market, Microsoft has pretty much had their asses handed to them.
"In the Future", every game will have an online component and an unlocking system ala Steam.
I know that there was controversy surrounding Steam, especially when on the Half-Life 2 release the servers bogged down. I see the problem slightly differently: Not all publishers will use Steam, so you will end up with 12 or so different resident "Steam-like" programs running on your computer system -- possibly incompatible with each other.
And the day I need to hook up my television game console to the 'Net for "authentication" (DIVX machines come to mind) is the day I stop buying games.
We've been here before. Back in 1995, Sega announced their early release of the Saturn to get the drop on Sony. They were quite proud of themselves and thought that their $399 price tag (equivalent to Sony's expected price) combined with the early release would put them in the lead. Then the spokesperson got up to the microphone at the E3 and said three words that killed the Saturn on arrival.
"two ninety-nine"
The Playstation undercut the Saturn by a full hundred dollars, maintaining its expected lead in the market. It was released several months later to much fanfare, while no one purchased a Saturn.
Writing as somebody who bought (and still owns) the Saturn and original Playstation I can tell you what hampered Saturn more than Sony's undercutting price announcement: First the rather high price at release (noted), and the lack of games. Saturn launched with about six games, months ahead of schedule in the spring of 1995 -- and then nothing else! Folks who paid for the early release got to sit on their hands with no new titles, while Sony continued to prep and hype their Playstation release (in the U.S.) for September. Sega took far too long between releases and they never looked nearly as nice as the Playstation games (Sony really pushed game developers on the 3D aspect).
When the Playstation released in 1995, its 3D graphics rivaled what was available at the arcades. Despite the questionable control, Battle Arena Toshinden was generally considered far better (and "pretty") than Sega's blocky Virtua Fighter (except obviously for total Sega die-hards). BAT also had 3D range of movement while VF was still stuck on a linear 'track'. Saturn was 'OK' as a Genesis successor, but that Playstation was jaw-dropping! Within a week of its release, I cashed in all my penny-jars and immediately bought a Playstation, along with BAT and Ace Combat. Never regretted it. The Saturn purchase still pains me a bit.
Sony likes to pile on the hype for all their releases, but the original Playstation really did live up to most of it.
Amusing anecdotes, and correct for the most part. Microsoft has built an empire based upon "Microsoft everywhere". Back in the 'old days' (late 1970's) it was MS BASIC and ran on just about any piece and shape of silicon out there. Didn't matter what you owned, as long as you had MS BASIC you can run all your same programs.
Obviously with the IBM-PC, Microsoft everywhere morphed into DOS everywhere. When all the clones came out, MS made sure that DOS would run on any brand PC. Then came Windows (poor Mac ripoff, based on their early experience making Excel), and they bent-over backwards to get it running on any PC. At some point, they became so entrenched that MS could begin dictating what features need to go into the PCs.
Developers love Windows, because in part MS makes a easy IDE to program with (when any idiot can program for Windows, any idiot does program for Windows) and since Windows is so obiquitous there isn't any reason to spent money and effort on any other platform. If I were a company, I'd shudder at the thought of getting my stuff running on all sorts of various OSes, each which had a significant chunk of the maretplace. Microsoft's monopoly has made it easier for developers, and they like it.
Microsoft's downfall, if it ever happens, will be continued security problems which make them shunned in the market. Despite all the viruses and malware, I don't see too many folks making drastic changes in dumping Windows. Not yet, anyway. If Vista turns out to be too different, where existing applications don't run, people will either keep what they've got (bad for MS) or switch to something else altogether (also bad for MS).
Re:What other effects might this have?
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Toy Story 3 Scrapped
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Disney has historically been one of the worst offenders as far as pushing DRM.
Not just the DIVX discs, they also refused to release titles on DVD -- at least until the DIVX format went belly-up and they had no market. Disney was an early adopter of Macrovision on videotape, kept prices higher than other typical movies, and limited the quantities available on the market -- the infamous Disney Vault, where they only release a movie a shorttime every 7-to-10 years. Disney was also involved in designing the "disposable" DVD discs which degraded over a couple days after you open the plastic wrapping.
So, yes. Disney has been involved in DRM, if that's the right term, for many many years now.
Apple used to be kings of product supply shortages, to inflate demand by introducing artificial limitations on products. The only difference is that there was actual demand for Apple products
Remembering back on some of Apple's product launches, I seem to recall Apple being terrible at reading the market and overproducing undesirable models while having chronic shortages of the nicer ones. Over and over again. Nowadays, they've streamlined (i.e. reduced) the number of varying models and have improved, if you call it improvement, at least to the point where they have shortages of every model as opposed to oversupply of anything. They still seem to have trouble keeping up with demand, so perhaps you're right it is a marketing gimmick at this point.
I still can't understand though why MS keeps saying they wanted to sell 2.something million units when there was never that many units in existence. It would be different if they had 2 million units sitting in a warehouse, but when they could only get 600,000 made, why even make that statement in the first place.
I think we're just seeing another example of Microsoft's incredible hubris. Aside from software (Windows OS and Office), Microsoft has pretty much gotten their asses kicked in every other market they've tried to enter. WebTV email console, UltimateTV DVR, ActiMates talking toys, MSN internet service, MSNBC cable news, search engines, MS smartphones, online music services, and even PocketPC has limped along for years before becoming modestly useful (and mostly because Palm was completly incompetent and self-destructive). The Xbox console division has reportedly lost $4 billion, and chronic shortages of a machine which costs them more to build than they sell isn't helping them (no machines means no game sales to make up the loss).
IMHO the Xbox shortage is due to poor yields and supplier troubles, which they probably didn't fully investigate before spouting off numbers to the press. MS isn't really a hardware manufacturer, they subcontract to electronics builders (Flextronics and Wistron) in an "oversight" position, and they can't cope when their suppliers are late or short on shipments. Widely reported Xbox360 problems are probably causing them tons of PR grief and costing more time to thouroughly test each unit before it leaves the factory, and that likely easts in the yields as well. All speculation, but if anything this all means you can't trust MS's "predictions" and as you said they are quickly losing their rushed lead in pushing this thing out the door.
a cop asks me if I stole something and I invoke my 5th amendment right to remain silent. Is my act of remaining silent evil or not evil?
You are completely missing the point. This would be more like the cops _not asking if you committed a crime, but instead directed you (without a judge's approval) to start writing down everywhere you've been and everyone you interacted with for $However_Long_Ago. It is at the very least an undue burdon on you, and possibly harrasment for their fishing expedition.
I was travelling between Britain and Oregon via Seattle. Britain shows you the price you will pay and Oregon has no sales tax. Is this deliberately done to confuse?
Its partly tradition, and partly because each state (and sometimes individual cities) sets a different sales tax rate. Vendors will often advertise a particular price, which can reach across various taxable venues. So, the price is the price, and the tax is added at the local rate wherever you happen to buy it. Different states also define differently what types of items or services are taxable. Some business purchases are also tax-free (usually warehouse type purchases where the end item is to be resold to the public), and adding tax into the end-price makes it difficult to subtract tax when it isn't due.
I'm no tax expert, but as a non-resident you can usually do one of a couple of things to get out of paying the tax. First, you can explain to the cashier your non-resident, non-taxable status but the likely reaction of most troglodytes is a blank stare (sometimes they can remove the tax from the bill without complaint). The other, harder way is to collect receipts and fill out a bunch of forms to send to the state capital and get a refund check.
Pokemon... In 15 years, today's 8 year-olds will have disposable income, and will want to relive (albeit, a more mature version) of the series they loved as a child.
So, you mean like a full-contact Pokemon game with blood splatters? One wonders what kind of games will show up for the Revolution.
next time, if they can't tell you exactly what day you're going to get your item when they're selling you the pre-order, don't buy the pre-order!
Is this the time to use my Nelson voice and say: Ha ha! ?
Anyway, I guess I've been around the block enough times to know better than to pre-order anything anymore. But there is always a new generation of high schoolers who they can go take advantage of.
It *used to be* that pre-orders were a way for the store and manufacturer to guage interest in a product, and make sure there were enough units for everyone who might want it on release day. Nowadays, it seems to simply be a way to have a "hook" into your customer so that they don't want to shop another store. The ATI "includes Half Life 2" fiasco and this Xbox360 'shortage' crap are prime examples, and there are scores of other less-remembered ones. I think two months after release the fact that some folks still don't have their machine (and plenty of other folks who didn't pre-order do have one) should underscore how badly pre-orders have become a scam and should be ringing loudly in everyone's head.
I think these kinds of 'gadget' based keyboards have a limited future, if they can ever get something like that Optimus OLED keyboard on the market. Of course, it'll cost more, but can be customized for *any* game and any application.
The measuring stick for the games industry needs to be actual gamers, rather than how much money is being spent.
Actual money being spent is a useful statistic for the game companies. Actual number of gamers doesn't really help a lot, and in fact could look more damaging to companies
For example: Sony's much touted 100-million PS2 units. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), you have to think how many of those are secondary units in a household or replacements for a dead one. I know I'm on my second PS2, because the first croaked and I'm certainly not re-buying all my games. A 100-million units doesn't necessarily mean 100-million gamers. OTOH, one unit in a household could be played more several people. How do you measure?
Or how about Xbox Live, where only about 10% of customers paid for it. Last I heard, even the new 360 unit only has about 10% "active" customers, and even the "free" Silver Subscription is only being tried by half the new 360 customers. With all the online content Microsoft seems to be pushing, a 10% attraction rate doesn't look that great to anybody. A better number is how much money people are spending once on Xbox Live.
So, number of gamers doesn't really help the industry and actually makes it look worse than it possibly might be. The important thing is attachment rate to systems and how much money are these folks spending on new titles. (Used titles are the bane of the makers because you get the game and they don't get a cut.)
If I swipe your lawnmower and sell it to your neighbor, does he get to keep it because he paid for it?
If I copy your lawnmower and sell it to your neighbor, does he get to keep it because he paid for it?
This is kind of a asinine hypothetical, given the context of the article in question. Let me rephrase it for you:
If I copy your lawnmower and keep it, does the lawnmower distributor still deserve a chunk of money for it?
But, what about product placement in movies? Do you have to pay Ford to use their cars in movies? What about cars in comercials? Do movies use generic soda cans because they can't use Pepsi or do they use generic soda because it creates a market for Pepsi to buy placement.
Those are trademark issues (showing a Pepsi product on a table) and are related to the company "image". A sandwich ad inserted on the side of Valve's otherwise generic building isn't the same.
Apple is not the answer, unless you like paying 2x as much for a computer thats 1/2 as fast as a PC.
Did you miss the big announcements, yesterday? Apple has already released the first Intel iMacs and laptops. So you can now pay 2x as much for a computer the same speed as a PC.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but exactly how is a terrorist going to hijack a spacecraft and crash it into even the approximate neighbourhood of Pennsylvania Avenue?
I'm sure they're more worried about crshing the spaceship into military satellites, or other expensive prominent ones such as the Hubble telescope.
Well, I don't know about you, but I ahve a high-def monitor, and with the crappy "HD" digital cable content, I'd actually like to see HD movies coming over my component video cable.
If you're using component video, the DRM on these HD/Blu-Ray discs downgraes your signal anyway. The only way to get full-res is over the (encrypted) HDMI* hookups.
*HDMI - Oh I'll bet you are an early HDTV adopter, one whom doesn't have this late-entry DRM'ed connector! Isn't that nice of the content and electronics industry, to screw over the people who've helped them the most.
I have a 360 collecting dust on my desk at home, and a Oblivion pre-order in my wallet.
At least you got your 360 machine. While units rot on the shelf in Japan, there are still people here at the local game shop (U.S.) who put down pre-order deposits and still haven't received their XBox 360 consoles, even after Christmas and New Years. Talk about a screwed up launch!
This is a problem specifc to several root causes, with more than just CNET but other sites and magazines as well:
Review Products which are supplied by the vendor (prototypes or cherry-picked units). The supplier can swing reviews in their favor by sending out fortified review units while actual production units are not as well-made. Its always better to trust a reviewer who buys the equipment from a mechant, like anyone else would.
Payola, or in review markets advertising on the review site. Not producing "nice enough" reviews gets you moved to the bottom of the list of people to recieve the next intresting product (or off the list completely). Again, this ties into sites which rely on the vendor to supply the preview/review wares.
Lack of real-world testing. I can't tell you how many times I've been frustrated by reviewers who look at a product in the most basic lab-like conditions (gee, its shiny!), but fail to comment on reliability or real-world usage issues.
When the "editor" product review varies that heavily from user reviews, you can tell there is a problem -- not just with the product but the review process as well.
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I don't need to Try again. Take Two is getting pummeled by lawsuits and by Wall Street because of their attempted misdirection. What you're trying to say is "If you don't want trouble, don't go looking for it" (which I would normally agree with) but that is not the whole story.
Take Two (or specifically their Rockstar division) left working Hot Coffee code within the game, which can be reached with a few address pointer fixes. Whether you reach it through a gameshark, a downloaded savegame file, or a memory glitch in the console doesn't matter -- Hot Coffee is still there, and relatively easy to get to. The ESRB states they need to review all content shipped with a game, and don't make any exemptions for whether or not game code requires cheat codes, unlock codes, perfect scores, or any other special conditions. Take Two shipped a game with Hot Coffee code hidden within it, didn't run it past the ESRB, and then lied to the public that it was some sort of aftermarket mod and that it wasn't really there!
With a GameShark, adjusting a few addresses so the Hot Coffee missions become active.
Take Two originally said: "So far we have learned that the "hot coffee" modification is the work of a determined group of hackers who have gone to significant trouble to alter scenes in the official version of the game"
which becomes a provable false statement once enough technical folk start looking at the so-called "mod". It was dumb for Take Two to publically go out on a limb like this, making them either (1) hoping the issue would "go away" or (2) too stupid to investigate the root problem in their own product.
But then the hackers showed that all they did was unlock a few sections of existing code and it backed Take Two into a corner they couldn't escape from.
Well, the sub-$400 is going to be tricky. The Fuji SnapScans are going for around $495 retail and have pretty good reviews (I think somebody said something about not being real TWAIN scanners, though).
I can say from experience, the single-sided Kodak i30 is about $600 (with software, cable, and even USB interface card if you have a really old computer), it's seriously fast and as small as a typical inkjet printer. We use it for electronic case filing (ECF) with the Federal court. The Kodak i40 is double-sided and the same footprint size, but runs around $850 or so. I'm not sure what you're going to get for under $400, but some of the "home scanners are getting better.
I've also got a Canon LiDE 80 at home, which is about $150 and has a "kickstand" of sorts to make it vertical for supposedly easier document scanning. It is only one-page at a time, and really meant more for color photos and the like. Its one of the cheaper home "USB2.0 Hi-Speed" scanners, and relatively fast. But man, that Kodak's speed puts it to shame! The LiDE 80 is rather nice for scanning photos (not waiting for minutes like our older scanners) and we're just starting to do like you mentioned: scan the old bills and bank statements and store them electronically so we can shred the avalanche of paper.
Not quite... the biggest mistake they made was first blaming it on nebulous "hackers" who "modified" the programming, as if the Hot Coffee content was some sort of homebrew add-on. This was incredibly stupid (I suspect spokespeople and the bigwigs didn't understand the situation with their own product) and turned out shown to be factually wrong because the code was then shown to be unlockable in the consoles as well. Once proved to be wrong (or worse, lying) all TakeTwo could do at that point is admit fault and do damage control.
They made it much worse on themselves by essentially saying HotCoffee didn't exist and then being proven wrong.
You mean like the Kodak i40? I'd say it does just about everything you mention, and has a nice supply of included software to boot.
At the office, we have the single-sided sibling (Kodak i30) for scanning client paperwork. Feeds and reads B&W documents in about 2 seconds per page. Color may take longer, but we haven't used the color feature.
I just saw an ad for a new Fuji SnapScan scanner which should be cheaper, alhough I don't know what they include with it.
Outside of computer software, I don't think Microsoft has ever had the power to sweep aside other markets. Granted, if you were a software developer which MS suddenly entered into, you were pretty much up against the wall. But for anything else, Microsoft has displayed poor results.
Let's rundown some of Microsoft's poorly fared ventured: WebTV email service, Ultimate TV satellite DVR, MSN Search (Even MSN Internet Dial-Up is not a big revenue genreator for them), those wierd electronic teddy-bear toys. Even PocketPC has taken so long to become barely moderately useful and mostly due to Palm's complete incompetence and implosion. PC SideWinder Joysticks - no longer around. The grand game console pissing match they've gotten into with Sony so far has generated $4-billion in losses, and your quoted article makes it looks like those may continue.
I hope their keyboards and mice hang around, because I actually tend to like those. But in nearly every non-software market, Microsoft has pretty much had their asses handed to them.
I know that there was controversy surrounding Steam, especially when on the Half-Life 2 release the servers bogged down. I see the problem slightly differently: Not all publishers will use Steam, so you will end up with 12 or so different resident "Steam-like" programs running on your computer system -- possibly incompatible with each other.
And the day I need to hook up my television game console to the 'Net for "authentication" (DIVX machines come to mind) is the day I stop buying games.
Writing as somebody who bought (and still owns) the Saturn and original Playstation I can tell you what hampered Saturn more than Sony's undercutting price announcement: First the rather high price at release (noted), and the lack of games. Saturn launched with about six games, months ahead of schedule in the spring of 1995 -- and then nothing else! Folks who paid for the early release got to sit on their hands with no new titles, while Sony continued to prep and hype their Playstation release (in the U.S.) for September. Sega took far too long between releases and they never looked nearly as nice as the Playstation games (Sony really pushed game developers on the 3D aspect).
When the Playstation released in 1995, its 3D graphics rivaled what was available at the arcades. Despite the questionable control, Battle Arena Toshinden was generally considered far better (and "pretty") than Sega's blocky Virtua Fighter (except obviously for total Sega die-hards). BAT also had 3D range of movement while VF was still stuck on a linear 'track'. Saturn was 'OK' as a Genesis successor, but that Playstation was jaw-dropping! Within a week of its release, I cashed in all my penny-jars and immediately bought a Playstation, along with BAT and Ace Combat. Never regretted it. The Saturn purchase still pains me a bit.
Sony likes to pile on the hype for all their releases, but the original Playstation really did live up to most of it.
Amusing anecdotes, and correct for the most part. Microsoft has built an empire based upon "Microsoft everywhere". Back in the 'old days' (late 1970's) it was MS BASIC and ran on just about any piece and shape of silicon out there. Didn't matter what you owned, as long as you had MS BASIC you can run all your same programs.
Obviously with the IBM-PC, Microsoft everywhere morphed into DOS everywhere. When all the clones came out, MS made sure that DOS would run on any brand PC. Then came Windows (poor Mac ripoff, based on their early experience making Excel), and they bent-over backwards to get it running on any PC. At some point, they became so entrenched that MS could begin dictating what features need to go into the PCs.
Developers love Windows, because in part MS makes a easy IDE to program with (when any idiot can program for Windows, any idiot does program for Windows) and since Windows is so obiquitous there isn't any reason to spent money and effort on any other platform. If I were a company, I'd shudder at the thought of getting my stuff running on all sorts of various OSes, each which had a significant chunk of the maretplace. Microsoft's monopoly has made it easier for developers, and they like it.
Microsoft's downfall, if it ever happens, will be continued security problems which make them shunned in the market. Despite all the viruses and malware, I don't see too many folks making drastic changes in dumping Windows. Not yet, anyway. If Vista turns out to be too different, where existing applications don't run, people will either keep what they've got (bad for MS) or switch to something else altogether (also bad for MS).
Not just the DIVX discs, they also refused to release titles on DVD -- at least until the DIVX format went belly-up and they had no market. Disney was an early adopter of Macrovision on videotape, kept prices higher than other typical movies, and limited the quantities available on the market -- the infamous Disney Vault, where they only release a movie a shorttime every 7-to-10 years. Disney was also involved in designing the "disposable" DVD discs which degraded over a couple days after you open the plastic wrapping.
So, yes. Disney has been involved in DRM, if that's the right term, for many many years now.
Remembering back on some of Apple's product launches, I seem to recall Apple being terrible at reading the market and overproducing undesirable models while having chronic shortages of the nicer ones. Over and over again.
Nowadays, they've streamlined (i.e. reduced) the number of varying models and have improved, if you call it improvement, at least to the point where they have shortages of every model as opposed to oversupply of anything. They still seem to have trouble keeping up with demand, so perhaps you're right it is a marketing gimmick at this point.
I think we're just seeing another example of Microsoft's incredible hubris. Aside from software (Windows OS and Office), Microsoft has pretty much gotten their asses kicked in every other market they've tried to enter. WebTV email console, UltimateTV DVR, ActiMates talking toys, MSN internet service, MSNBC cable news, search engines, MS smartphones, online music services, and even PocketPC has limped along for years before becoming modestly useful (and mostly because Palm was completly incompetent and self-destructive). The Xbox console division has reportedly lost $4 billion, and chronic shortages of a machine which costs them more to build than they sell isn't helping them (no machines means no game sales to make up the loss).
IMHO the Xbox shortage is due to poor yields and supplier troubles, which they probably didn't fully investigate before spouting off numbers to the press. MS isn't really a hardware manufacturer, they subcontract to electronics builders (Flextronics and Wistron) in an "oversight" position, and they can't cope when their suppliers are late or short on shipments. Widely reported Xbox360 problems are probably causing them tons of PR grief and costing more time to thouroughly test each unit before it leaves the factory, and that likely easts in the yields as well. All speculation, but if anything this all means you can't trust MS's "predictions" and as you said they are quickly losing their rushed lead in pushing this thing out the door.
You are completely missing the point. This would be more like the cops _not asking if you committed a crime, but instead directed you (without a judge's approval) to start writing down everywhere you've been and everyone you interacted with for $However_Long_Ago. It is at the very least an undue burdon on you, and possibly harrasment for their fishing expedition.
Its partly tradition, and partly because each state (and sometimes individual cities) sets a different sales tax rate. Vendors will often advertise a particular price, which can reach across various taxable venues. So, the price is the price, and the tax is added at the local rate wherever you happen to buy it. Different states also define differently what types of items or services are taxable. Some business purchases are also tax-free (usually warehouse type purchases where the end item is to be resold to the public), and adding tax into the end-price makes it difficult to subtract tax when it isn't due.
I'm no tax expert, but as a non-resident you can usually do one of a couple of things to get out of paying the tax. First, you can explain to the cashier your non-resident, non-taxable status but the likely reaction of most troglodytes is a blank stare (sometimes they can remove the tax from the bill without complaint). The other, harder way is to collect receipts and fill out a bunch of forms to send to the state capital and get a refund check.
So, you mean like a full-contact Pokemon game with blood splatters?
One wonders what kind of games will show up for the Revolution.
Is this the time to use my Nelson voice and say: Ha ha! ?
Anyway, I guess I've been around the block enough times to know better than to pre-order anything anymore. But there is always a new generation of high schoolers who they can go take advantage of.
It *used to be* that pre-orders were a way for the store and manufacturer to guage interest in a product, and make sure there were enough units for everyone who might want it on release day. Nowadays, it seems to simply be a way to have a "hook" into your customer so that they don't want to shop another store. The ATI "includes Half Life 2" fiasco and this Xbox360 'shortage' crap are prime examples, and there are scores of other less-remembered ones. I think two months after release the fact that some folks still don't have their machine (and plenty of other folks who didn't pre-order do have one) should underscore how badly pre-orders have become a scam and should be ringing loudly in everyone's head.
I think these kinds of 'gadget' based keyboards have a limited future, if they can ever get something like that Optimus OLED keyboard on the market. Of course, it'll cost more, but can be customized for *any* game and any application.
Actual money being spent is a useful statistic for the game companies. Actual number of gamers doesn't really help a lot, and in fact could look more damaging to companies
For example: Sony's much touted 100-million PS2 units. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), you have to think how many of those are secondary units in a household or replacements for a dead one. I know I'm on my second PS2, because the first croaked and I'm certainly not re-buying all my games. A 100-million units doesn't necessarily mean 100-million gamers. OTOH, one unit in a household could be played more several people. How do you measure?
Or how about Xbox Live, where only about 10% of customers paid for it. Last I heard, even the new 360 unit only has about 10% "active" customers, and even the "free" Silver Subscription is only being tried by half the new 360 customers. With all the online content Microsoft seems to be pushing, a 10% attraction rate doesn't look that great to anybody. A better number is how much money people are spending once on Xbox Live.
So, number of gamers doesn't really help the industry and actually makes it look worse than it possibly might be. The important thing is attachment rate to systems and how much money are these folks spending on new titles. (Used titles are the bane of the makers because you get the game and they don't get a cut.)
This is kind of a asinine hypothetical, given the context of the article in question. Let me rephrase it for you:
If I copy your lawnmower and keep it, does the lawnmower distributor still deserve a chunk of money for it?
Those are trademark issues (showing a Pepsi product on a table) and are related to the company "image".
A sandwich ad inserted on the side of Valve's otherwise generic building isn't the same.
Did you miss the big announcements, yesterday? Apple has already released the first Intel iMacs and laptops. So you can now pay 2x as much for a computer the same speed as a PC.
I'm sure they're more worried about crshing the spaceship into military satellites, or other expensive prominent ones such as the Hubble telescope.
If you're using component video, the DRM on these HD/Blu-Ray discs downgraes your signal anyway. The only way to get full-res is over the (encrypted) HDMI* hookups.
*HDMI - Oh I'll bet you are an early HDTV adopter, one whom doesn't have this late-entry DRM'ed connector! Isn't that nice of the content and electronics industry, to screw over the people who've helped them the most.
Yeah, but Blu-ray discs comes in a shiny blue box!
(Seriously, as much as I despise this "format war" and especially Sony, I think Blu-Ray has a much better marketing catch.
At least you got your 360 machine. While units rot on the shelf in Japan, there are still people here at the local game shop (U.S.) who put down pre-order deposits and still haven't received their XBox 360 consoles, even after Christmas and New Years. Talk about a screwed up launch!
This is a problem specifc to several root causes, with more than just CNET but other sites and magazines as well:
When the "editor" product review varies that heavily from user reviews, you can tell there is a problem -- not just with the product but the review process as well.