I didn't even watch the video, just looked at the pictures, and I think it's pretty hideous for something that was supposedly designed to be aesthetically pleasing. You flip it open, and you have this weird squareish bit jutting out the back. You close it, and the top surface of the laptop is disturbed by a fat hinge groove line running across it. Compare that to the MacBook Air, where the design is a true clamshell, no square protrusions at the back, and the hinges are relatively hidden underneath the unit, not apparent from a top view at all.
Credit to Dell for trying to move beyond the Heinous Grey Box school of design, but it's painfully obvious that they've got a ways to go. Normally I wouldn't care much about the aesthetic considerations since that's not a top concern of mine when buying new kit. However, when you specifically market your products based on their aesthetic merit, you'd better make sure they don't have serious aesthetic flaws.
No one knows for sure, and Nvidia isn't telling. The Inquirer says practicallyall of them, but their author has a history with Nvidia so there's quite a potential for bias there. The running theory is that the problem is due to thermal properties of a substrate material. This substrate material supposedly expands and contracts at a different rate than surrounding material in the chip package. Over time, this stresses the silicon or solder points, eventually causing a failure of the part. Laptop parts are definitely affected, you only need to look in notebook manufacturers forums and you'll see an incredible number of posts from owner of notebooks with, for example, 8600 GT mobile parts.
Desktop parts may also be affected, since they're all based on the same core silicon with (supposedly) the same substrate materials. It's possible that the problems aren't as apparent (at least not yet) due to the different thermal conditions you'd see in a tower chassis compared to a notebook. The very popular 8800GTs out there may start failing en masse in three months, six months, a year's time, or maybe never. Because Nvidia won't specifically say which parts are affected, whether it's all the parts or only certain manufacturing runs, etc., we have only speculation and rumor to go on.
So odds are high that this card is going to die early too.
Did you buy a card with a lifetime warranty? Both EVGA and XFX offer lifetime warranties on 8800GTs. Personally, I won't buy RAM or video cards from a company that doesn't offer a lifetime warranty, as there are more than enough manufacturers for both products offering these warranties. My current 8800GT is an EVGA, and it's nice knowing they're on the hook for this flaw if it happens to strike me. The card manufacturer has probably spent millions on Nvidia silicon, so they have clout to extract some compensation from Nvidia, whereas I do not.
I recently switched to TekSavvy from Bell Symaptico, and I've been very happy with the change. My reason for switching? Bell stealthily introduced bandwidth caps (30GB combined up/down per month in my case), and starting charging a hefty $1.50 per GB over the cap. They wouldn't charge more than $30 in overage fees in a month, but still... When I compared their service to what TekSavvy was offering, making the switch was a complete no-brainer. TekSavvy's non-unlimited service does have a transfer cap, but it's a generous 200GB per month combined up/down, and the fee per GB over cap is an entirely reasonable $0.25. Plus the basic 5M service is $15-20 cheaper per month than Bell! The difference in price, for what amounts to the same speed, is shocking to say the least.
The only thing new about this technology is that it's noninvasive. Neuropsychologists have known for years that the occipital lobe contains a 2D map of what you're looking at. This was studied many years ago by injecting radioactive tracers into animals and taking xrays while they were looking at image patterns. The patterns could be seen mapped out on the surface of the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. The only difference now is that they're able to do it without injecting tracers or exposing you to xrays.
As for the "ethical concerns", give me a break. The only thing this technology can do is tell what you're looking at in realtime. Your employers and the government can do this a lot more easily by simply looking at your face and figuring out where your eyes are pointing. They can't use this technology to tell what you've looked at in the past, it probably can't even tell them what elements of your visual field you're actually paying attention to, and they certainly can't use it to read your memory or current thoughts. It's not technology that's ever likely to be at all useful outside a lab, it's simply being used to help us better understand how the brain works. Maybe one day there'll be a machine that can pull private information out of your brain, but this isn't it. Put the tinfoil hats away, people.
This quote in the Register piece from the Telco 2.0 analyst just kills me:
The problem with the current ISP model is it is like an all you can eat buffet, where one in 10 customers eats all the food, one in 100 takes his chair home too, and one in 1,000 unscrews all the fixtures and fittings and loads them into a van as well.
Well let's flip it around. The ISPs are complaining about the minority who consume massively, when there's no rule against massive consumption? What about the majority of users who are paying for the full buffet but then only consuming the bandwidth equivalent of a light snack? The reality here is that the ISPs want to be able to charge a flat rate to people who underconsume, while charging per GB to people who overconsume, and they shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways. If ISPs want to introduce a consumption-based pricing model, then the cost of access for people who use relatively little bandwidth should go down overall, and somehow I don't see that happening. I have little sympathy for a group of companies that are actively trying to get the best of both worlds at their customers' expense.
I expect we'll see a lot of hybrid models that are really crappy deals for consumers. For example, Bell Sympatico recently introduced bandwidth fees on top of their already uncompetitive monthly prices. Needless to say, the price per GB ($1.50 per) over your plan's cap is also exceptionally high compared to other offerings in the market. If you go to their support site, you can see such hilarious questions as "How much Internet is included in my plan?" Remember, it's not a dumptruck, it's a series of tubes! Perhaps it's no coincidence that I'm switching from Bell to an ISP with monthly rates, bandwidth caps and overage fees that are actually reasonable.
Right now, games just recognize 2 or 3 movements (slash, stab, etc), and play a fixed animation, which is bullshit.
You are so stuck in 2007. Welcome to 2008. A limited repertoire of movements recognized and corresponding canned animations is a detail of the implementation, and does not necessarily indicate a limitation of the hardware.
The _real_ improvement would be the ability to use it as a light saber.
I completely, absolutely agree with you, mainly because paper ballots are what we use here in Canada. And just so you know, they don't have to take long to count. Here in Canada, if you want to run a candidate in a riding, you have to provide someone called a scrutineer to every polling station in that riding. The scrutineers are usually low-paid party staff, or completely unpaid volunteers. Each party/candidate has one scrutineer at each polling station, and once the polls close, they all count every ballot. Two important facets of the system prevent counting fraud. One, the counts from each scrutineer have to match, or they don't get to go home. And two, any interested voter is allowed to watch the counting process. The budget for Elections Canada is far, FAR less per capita than in the US, and we know who our new prime minister is on the night of the election. I shake my head and sigh every time I see one of these threads on/. advocating technology as the answer. You're barking up the wrong tree, folks, and wasting an assload of money in the process.
The problem is the counting system, not the ballots. Paper ballots actually work fantastically well, if you have a smart system for counting ballots. Canada does, thankfully, and it uses paper ballots. We know for certain who our next prime minister is hours after the polls close, all ballots are counted at the polling station, and any interested voter is allowed to watch the counting. At the same time, we spend a fraction of what the US spends per capita on elections. For more detail or a non-Canadian perspective, Robert X. Cringely has a good little write-up (it's down toward the end of the page).
The same people that developed the 360 and PS2 & 3 versions developed the Wii version. From Wikipedia:
The game is published by Activision and RedOctane, with Neversoft as the developer for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii consoles...
If there is no option to purchase new tracks for the Wii version, the limitation is probably the Wii's Shopping Channel. Having both a 360 and a Wii, I'm firmly of the opinion that the Wii's Shopping Channel is a pale imitator of the 360's Live Marketplace. The Shopping Channel is far too slow to load and navigate, and as far as I can tell there is no 3rd party content on there currently. How did you expect them to sell you the additional songs if Nintendo won't let them sell the content via the Shopping Channel?
Look, something is causing it, either come up with better suggestions, logical debates or back the (insert derogatory of choice) off.
Ruling out things that are not the cause is an excellent way to narrow down the number of things we need to study, and propel research in this field into looking in new directions. Proving and disproving are both valuable efforts in the scientific method. I fully agree that we need to keep looking for the cause of autism, but the fact that this study definitively tells us where not to spend time, effort and money looking does not in any way diminish its scientific value.
What? How the hell do you figure that? The recorded diagnoses of autism rose at roughly the same rate as vaccination using vaccines containing mercury as a preserving agent. Based on the subsequent hue and cry, the mercury preserving agents were removed. Thus, exposure to mercury as a preserving agent in vaccines has fallen to zero. Despite this, the number of autism diagnoses has not dropped. Therefore, there is no other conclusion but to say that the mercury preserving agent did not cause the autism. If it had been, we would currently be seeing a reduction in the rate of autism diagnosis. There could be something else in the vaccine causing autism, or something related to the vaccination process, but it can't be the mercury anymore because it's no longer there. Seriously, it's not rocket science. The rest of your post is what we call "anecdoctal evidence", and has absolutely zero relevance to the matter at hand.
They don't talk to her for this piece I think (the corporate proxy won't let me confirm that), but all the guys here in the office were talking in hushed and awed tones about Jade Raymond a few weeks back. She's the producer for Assassin's Creed, and she was on one of the local news stations here in Montreal talking about the project. There are a lot of pictures of her on a fansite, which I won't link here. You can Google it easily enough if you're so inclined. Now, how utterly creepy is it that fans have put together an unofficial home page for her as a gathering point for videos and stills gathered from press events and interviews? Don't get me wrong, she's smokin' hot and all, but it's obvious to me that the vast majority of women wouldn't want to put up with that kind of attention in order to pursue a career in games. Heck, the vast majority of women wouldn't want to have to put up with that kind of attention to go buy a game, and that's exactly the kind of attention they're likely to get from the average male nerd GameStop employee. The fact that women are currently the minority in gaming should surprise absolutely no one, and the nature of the games themselves is only partly to blame.
Well, to each their own I suppose. Personally, I hated Oblivion, but I love Mass Effect. I didn't like the "use it to level it" system they use in the Elder Scrolls series. Mass Effect lets you level a skill into competency before you start using it. I didn't like the way quests were scattered all over the damn place right from the get-go in Oblivion. The quests you get introduced to in Mass Effect are always in the same system that you're currently in, or an adjoining system. I didn't like the travel time to get to new areas in Oblivion. Travel to areas both new and old is near-instant in Mass Effect. I didn't like the way that enemies scaled in Oblivion, making me feel like I was really on a pointless levelling treadmill. I really felt a sense of growing more powerful with Mass Effect. Oblivion's story never really grabbed me, the Mass Effect story was a lot more interesting and well-told, for my money.
But the thing I hated most about Oblivion was the impossibly wide scope of the world. It took too long to get anywhere initially, and it was too easy to get side-tracked. Seriously, in hour two of Oblivion I was being given quests on the complete opposite side of the game world, in the complete opposite direction from the main storyline. Why?? How does that add to the game?? Maybe it's just me, but it felt like the gameplay equivalent of waterboarding: here's a bucket full of choices, let's pour them all right up your nose. With Mass Effect, I can fully explore most uncharted jump points in about an hour, including exploring the planets, scanning everything, taking care of any side quests there, etc. Makes it a lot easier to just take bite-sized chunks of the game, and I never feel like I'm being drowned in choices.
Assassin's Creed has something similar with its viewpoint system. Each city is divided into quarters (well, thirds really, things like the Poor Quarter, the Merchant Quarter and the Rich Quarter). In each quarter are half a dozen or so tall vantage points which are premarked on your map. You can scale one of these towers and survey the area, which will put all mission objective in the vicinity of that tower on a map. While the cities are quite large and complex, you can easily break them down into smaller chunks, and clear out each chunk before moving on to the next one. Mass Effect uses the multiple layers of the galaxy map (Galaxy > Jump Node > System > Planet) to do the same thing. I think for a lot of gamers, this sort of thing is a really important feature to include in any game with a significant measure of openness and nonlinearity in the game world. Without it, people like me play the game for a couple hours, get overwhelmed with too many choices and not enough tools to track them, and then leave and never come back.
Too bad we can't mod Mass Effect, it has some very good potential.
I'd say it's a given that there will eventually be a PC port of Mass Effect, probably around the six month mark from Mass Effect's release. I'm sure enterprising PC users will find a way to tweak the game. There are certainly lots of issues that could use addressing (loading times, texture caching, the cover system, and oh god, the interface system), but I think it says a lot about the game that I am completely willing to tolerate its flaws in order to experience the core gameplay. Personally, the mod I'm looking forward to is called Mass Effect 2. If I were giving notes to Bioware, I'd say convince Microsoft to let you cache to disk on those systems that have a hard drive, make the cover system work like the one in RB6: Vegas, overhaul the inventory system, but otherwise just open up another 3rd of the galaxy for me to explore and fill it with new content.
Why is it that everyone claiming that bioshock really IS all that is good and right in a game ignores the arguments against that position that actually have substance. Things the DRM clusterfuck and bloody wierd mouse controls
...which only affected the PC version. The Xbox 360 version has sold over 1 million copies already, but I can't find any sales numbers for the PC version. My guess is that the game is far more common on the 360.
tallscreen FOV
I assume you're talking about the way widescreen was implemented. That's fixed as of right now, on the 360 at least. And really, was it ever a real issue? If I hadn't seen side by side screens on a forum somewhere, I never would have noticed. It certainly didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game, anyway.
player character's lack of impact on the world
What sort of impact were you expecting, but didn't find? More importantly, how would this additional impact have fundamentally improved the game? I was happy with the amount of impact I could have on the gamespace. Hacking or destroying a turret was persistent, harvesting a Little Sister was permanent, and the actions of the Big Daddies would change after the Little Sister in its area was gone. And of course, there were other major changes as you progressed through the game (e.g. destroying the reactor). What else were you looking for? Fully destructable environments? Would that have somehow made the game better? As far as I can see, it would have been pointless eye candy, and a lot of development effort that would ultimately contribute nothing to the narrative of the game.
Did anyone ever figure out how on earth the sensitivity manages to slowly change over time after loading and saving?
Not sure what you're talking about here; maybe this is another PC issue?
In all, I think most people ignore these complaints about the technical issues because they don't affect the majority of the people playing the game. As far as I'm concerned, it's primarily a 360 title that had a same-day release of a PC port. I don't think it's a perfect game by any stretch, but I do think it's a very good game, and an excellent example of how game designers can include a rich narrative in a game without using cut-scenes. Technical issues with the game on the PC simply don't factor in to my appraisal of the game.
I hear if you frag a friend, then a friend of that friend, then a friend of that friend, and so on to a depth of six people, you will eventually frag Kevin Bacon.
Agreed, Sony's statement is incredibly vague. I don't know how much stock to put in vgchartz.com's numbers (they're mostly estimations, after all), but they're showing an 84% week-to-week increase in PS3 sales in North America for the week end 24 Nov. 07. PS3 sales in Europe increased only slightly compared to the previous week (~25%), because there's no Turkey Day-related shopping bonanza on that side of the pond. Japanese data for the same week isn't up yet, but I'd guess that if sales there are increasing at all, it would be more similar to Europe than North America. If these numbers are even close to accurate, then the only way PS3 sales could be said to have tripled is if Sony is comparing last week's sales to the same week last year, and lumping PS3 sales for all regions together. That would be pretty deceptive, since this time last year, the number of PS3's being sold in Europe was pretty close to zero. Oddly enough, if you go from "close to zero" to "roughly 100k," it looks like a pretty big jump. Even then, I don't think you could accurately say sales have tripled. Anyway, to put things in perspective, it looks like the Wii still outsold the PS3 by a 2-to-1 margin in North America last week, and the 360 outsold it by roughly 30%.
The actual good news I see for Sony is that they've finally started selling more systems than the Wii in Japan, on a week-to-week basis. For quite a while, they were lagging behind even in their own backyard. I think it was kind of inevitable that they'd start to move some systems over there though. The 360 isn't taken seriously in Japan, and has hardly moved any units compared to either the Wii or PS3. If you want to do high def console gaming in Japan, the PS3 is considered to be the only game in town. Popular Japanese series are finally starting to drop for the PS3 (e.g. Shin Sangoku Musuo 5, will be released in NA as Dynasty Warriors 6 in '08, quarter of a million copies sold in Japan in two weeks, according to vgchartz), and that's driving hardware sales I think. Now they need to get a title with similar system-selling potential out in North America. Ratchet & Clank is close I think, but not quite enough of a household name. Something like a Metal Gear Solid or GTA title exclusively for the PS3 is what they need if they want to have any hope of catching the 360 or Wii in North America, but I don't think they have any titles with that kind of must-have cachet on the near horizon.
To be honest, I think you're nuts. I can't imagine buying a PS3 when there are so many top-notch 360-only or 360-and-PC-only titles available right now. The only top-shelf title the PS3 currently has access to is Oblivion, everything else is essentially good but not great. Furthermore, with only 17% of the next-gen market currently, the PS3 has a lot of ground to make up. The quirky and interesting games that represent a risky investment for publishers are going to show up on the system(s) with the largest market share. I wouldn't want to buy into a platform that is unlikely to see this generation's Guitar Hero, or Katamari, or Shadow of the Colossus. I'm not talking about the sequels to those games, I'm talking about the wholly new games that no one's heard about yet, but everyone will be playing a year or two from now. In the previous generation, all of those titles appeared on the PS2 because its market share was so dominant, but that's not going to be anywhere near the case for the PS3 at this rate.
I've never had a game lock up on me, and none of my friends who own a 360 have ever mentioned anything of the sort. If game lockups were a common occurrence, you can bet that the game review and news sites would be all over it too. I'd bet that your 360 has poorly-mounted heat sinks, or is possibly in an area where it can't get adequate airflow. If it's just an airflow issue, put the 360 somewhere with good ventilation. If that's not it, then hit up MS for a replacement, newer units and refurbs have improved heat dissipation. I believe all existing units can take of advantage of the extended warranty for overheating issues, as well as the Red Ring of Death.
I just spent five minutes googling for the company names in question, as well as searching for " sucks." I saw lots of "X sucks" search results, but few if any ads, and no advocacy ads. Given that the main contention of the article (Google censors ads on a political basis) has turned out to be bunk, I'm willing to bet this additional supposition (Google allows its own policy to be selectively violated) is equally worthless. The original article in question was a shoddy opinion piece with no fact checking done. It doesn't take much effort to discover for yourself that it was, in fact, total crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, because you can't beat a Corley!
I didn't even watch the video, just looked at the pictures, and I think it's pretty hideous for something that was supposedly designed to be aesthetically pleasing. You flip it open, and you have this weird squareish bit jutting out the back. You close it, and the top surface of the laptop is disturbed by a fat hinge groove line running across it. Compare that to the MacBook Air, where the design is a true clamshell, no square protrusions at the back, and the hinges are relatively hidden underneath the unit, not apparent from a top view at all.
Credit to Dell for trying to move beyond the Heinous Grey Box school of design, but it's painfully obvious that they've got a ways to go. Normally I wouldn't care much about the aesthetic considerations since that's not a top concern of mine when buying new kit. However, when you specifically market your products based on their aesthetic merit, you'd better make sure they don't have serious aesthetic flaws.
No one knows for sure, and Nvidia isn't telling. The Inquirer says practically all of them, but their author has a history with Nvidia so there's quite a potential for bias there. The running theory is that the problem is due to thermal properties of a substrate material. This substrate material supposedly expands and contracts at a different rate than surrounding material in the chip package. Over time, this stresses the silicon or solder points, eventually causing a failure of the part. Laptop parts are definitely affected, you only need to look in notebook manufacturers forums and you'll see an incredible number of posts from owner of notebooks with, for example, 8600 GT mobile parts.
Desktop parts may also be affected, since they're all based on the same core silicon with (supposedly) the same substrate materials. It's possible that the problems aren't as apparent (at least not yet) due to the different thermal conditions you'd see in a tower chassis compared to a notebook. The very popular 8800GTs out there may start failing en masse in three months, six months, a year's time, or maybe never. Because Nvidia won't specifically say which parts are affected, whether it's all the parts or only certain manufacturing runs, etc., we have only speculation and rumor to go on.
Did you buy a card with a lifetime warranty? Both EVGA and XFX offer lifetime warranties on 8800GTs. Personally, I won't buy RAM or video cards from a company that doesn't offer a lifetime warranty, as there are more than enough manufacturers for both products offering these warranties. My current 8800GT is an EVGA, and it's nice knowing they're on the hook for this flaw if it happens to strike me. The card manufacturer has probably spent millions on Nvidia silicon, so they have clout to extract some compensation from Nvidia, whereas I do not.
Mod parent +1 doubleplusgoodthink!
I mean really... Does anyone with a lick of sense actually give their real name to a free web-based service?
I recently switched to TekSavvy from Bell Symaptico, and I've been very happy with the change. My reason for switching? Bell stealthily introduced bandwidth caps (30GB combined up/down per month in my case), and starting charging a hefty $1.50 per GB over the cap. They wouldn't charge more than $30 in overage fees in a month, but still... When I compared their service to what TekSavvy was offering, making the switch was a complete no-brainer. TekSavvy's non-unlimited service does have a transfer cap, but it's a generous 200GB per month combined up/down, and the fee per GB over cap is an entirely reasonable $0.25. Plus the basic 5M service is $15-20 cheaper per month than Bell! The difference in price, for what amounts to the same speed, is shocking to say the least.
The only thing new about this technology is that it's noninvasive. Neuropsychologists have known for years that the occipital lobe contains a 2D map of what you're looking at. This was studied many years ago by injecting radioactive tracers into animals and taking xrays while they were looking at image patterns. The patterns could be seen mapped out on the surface of the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. The only difference now is that they're able to do it without injecting tracers or exposing you to xrays.
As for the "ethical concerns", give me a break. The only thing this technology can do is tell what you're looking at in realtime. Your employers and the government can do this a lot more easily by simply looking at your face and figuring out where your eyes are pointing. They can't use this technology to tell what you've looked at in the past, it probably can't even tell them what elements of your visual field you're actually paying attention to, and they certainly can't use it to read your memory or current thoughts. It's not technology that's ever likely to be at all useful outside a lab, it's simply being used to help us better understand how the brain works. Maybe one day there'll be a machine that can pull private information out of your brain, but this isn't it. Put the tinfoil hats away, people.
Well let's flip it around. The ISPs are complaining about the minority who consume massively, when there's no rule against massive consumption? What about the majority of users who are paying for the full buffet but then only consuming the bandwidth equivalent of a light snack? The reality here is that the ISPs want to be able to charge a flat rate to people who underconsume, while charging per GB to people who overconsume, and they shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways. If ISPs want to introduce a consumption-based pricing model, then the cost of access for people who use relatively little bandwidth should go down overall, and somehow I don't see that happening. I have little sympathy for a group of companies that are actively trying to get the best of both worlds at their customers' expense.
I expect we'll see a lot of hybrid models that are really crappy deals for consumers. For example, Bell Sympatico recently introduced bandwidth fees on top of their already uncompetitive monthly prices. Needless to say, the price per GB ($1.50 per) over your plan's cap is also exceptionally high compared to other offerings in the market. If you go to their support site, you can see such hilarious questions as "How much Internet is included in my plan?" Remember, it's not a dumptruck, it's a series of tubes! Perhaps it's no coincidence that I'm switching from Bell to an ISP with monthly rates, bandwidth caps and overage fees that are actually reasonable.
"Kittyhawk" was the name for a different tech project I can remember. Not a very auspicious choice on IBM's part...
I completely, absolutely agree with you, mainly because paper ballots are what we use here in Canada. And just so you know, they don't have to take long to count. Here in Canada, if you want to run a candidate in a riding, you have to provide someone called a scrutineer to every polling station in that riding. The scrutineers are usually low-paid party staff, or completely unpaid volunteers. Each party/candidate has one scrutineer at each polling station, and once the polls close, they all count every ballot. Two important facets of the system prevent counting fraud. One, the counts from each scrutineer have to match, or they don't get to go home. And two, any interested voter is allowed to watch the counting process. The budget for Elections Canada is far, FAR less per capita than in the US, and we know who our new prime minister is on the night of the election. I shake my head and sigh every time I see one of these threads on /. advocating technology as the answer. You're barking up the wrong tree, folks, and wasting an assload of money in the process.
The problem is the counting system, not the ballots. Paper ballots actually work fantastically well, if you have a smart system for counting ballots. Canada does, thankfully, and it uses paper ballots. We know for certain who our next prime minister is hours after the polls close, all ballots are counted at the polling station, and any interested voter is allowed to watch the counting. At the same time, we spend a fraction of what the US spends per capita on elections. For more detail or a non-Canadian perspective, Robert X. Cringely has a good little write-up (it's down toward the end of the page).
If there is no option to purchase new tracks for the Wii version, the limitation is probably the Wii's Shopping Channel. Having both a 360 and a Wii, I'm firmly of the opinion that the Wii's Shopping Channel is a pale imitator of the 360's Live Marketplace. The Shopping Channel is far too slow to load and navigate, and as far as I can tell there is no 3rd party content on there currently. How did you expect them to sell you the additional songs if Nintendo won't let them sell the content via the Shopping Channel?
They don't talk to her for this piece I think (the corporate proxy won't let me confirm that), but all the guys here in the office were talking in hushed and awed tones about Jade Raymond a few weeks back. She's the producer for Assassin's Creed, and she was on one of the local news stations here in Montreal talking about the project. There are a lot of pictures of her on a fansite, which I won't link here. You can Google it easily enough if you're so inclined. Now, how utterly creepy is it that fans have put together an unofficial home page for her as a gathering point for videos and stills gathered from press events and interviews? Don't get me wrong, she's smokin' hot and all, but it's obvious to me that the vast majority of women wouldn't want to put up with that kind of attention in order to pursue a career in games. Heck, the vast majority of women wouldn't want to have to put up with that kind of attention to go buy a game, and that's exactly the kind of attention they're likely to get from the average male nerd GameStop employee. The fact that women are currently the minority in gaming should surprise absolutely no one, and the nature of the games themselves is only partly to blame.
But the thing I hated most about Oblivion was the impossibly wide scope of the world. It took too long to get anywhere initially, and it was too easy to get side-tracked. Seriously, in hour two of Oblivion I was being given quests on the complete opposite side of the game world, in the complete opposite direction from the main storyline. Why?? How does that add to the game?? Maybe it's just me, but it felt like the gameplay equivalent of waterboarding: here's a bucket full of choices, let's pour them all right up your nose. With Mass Effect, I can fully explore most uncharted jump points in about an hour, including exploring the planets, scanning everything, taking care of any side quests there, etc. Makes it a lot easier to just take bite-sized chunks of the game, and I never feel like I'm being drowned in choices.
Assassin's Creed has something similar with its viewpoint system. Each city is divided into quarters (well, thirds really, things like the Poor Quarter, the Merchant Quarter and the Rich Quarter). In each quarter are half a dozen or so tall vantage points which are premarked on your map. You can scale one of these towers and survey the area, which will put all mission objective in the vicinity of that tower on a map. While the cities are quite large and complex, you can easily break them down into smaller chunks, and clear out each chunk before moving on to the next one. Mass Effect uses the multiple layers of the galaxy map (Galaxy > Jump Node > System > Planet) to do the same thing. I think for a lot of gamers, this sort of thing is a really important feature to include in any game with a significant measure of openness and nonlinearity in the game world. Without it, people like me play the game for a couple hours, get overwhelmed with too many choices and not enough tools to track them, and then leave and never come back. I'd say it's a given that there will eventually be a PC port of Mass Effect, probably around the six month mark from Mass Effect's release. I'm sure enterprising PC users will find a way to tweak the game. There are certainly lots of issues that could use addressing (loading times, texture caching, the cover system, and oh god, the interface system), but I think it says a lot about the game that I am completely willing to tolerate its flaws in order to experience the core gameplay. Personally, the mod I'm looking forward to is called Mass Effect 2. If I were giving notes to Bioware, I'd say convince Microsoft to let you cache to disk on those systems that have a hard drive, make the cover system work like the one in RB6: Vegas, overhaul the inventory system, but otherwise just open up another 3rd of the galaxy for me to explore and fill it with new content.
In all, I think most people ignore these complaints about the technical issues because they don't affect the majority of the people playing the game. As far as I'm concerned, it's primarily a 360 title that had a same-day release of a PC port. I don't think it's a perfect game by any stretch, but I do think it's a very good game, and an excellent example of how game designers can include a rich narrative in a game without using cut-scenes. Technical issues with the game on the PC simply don't factor in to my appraisal of the game.
I hear if you frag a friend, then a friend of that friend, then a friend of that friend, and so on to a depth of six people, you will eventually frag Kevin Bacon.
Agreed, Sony's statement is incredibly vague. I don't know how much stock to put in vgchartz.com's numbers (they're mostly estimations, after all), but they're showing an 84% week-to-week increase in PS3 sales in North America for the week end 24 Nov. 07. PS3 sales in Europe increased only slightly compared to the previous week (~25%), because there's no Turkey Day-related shopping bonanza on that side of the pond. Japanese data for the same week isn't up yet, but I'd guess that if sales there are increasing at all, it would be more similar to Europe than North America. If these numbers are even close to accurate, then the only way PS3 sales could be said to have tripled is if Sony is comparing last week's sales to the same week last year, and lumping PS3 sales for all regions together. That would be pretty deceptive, since this time last year, the number of PS3's being sold in Europe was pretty close to zero. Oddly enough, if you go from "close to zero" to "roughly 100k," it looks like a pretty big jump. Even then, I don't think you could accurately say sales have tripled. Anyway, to put things in perspective, it looks like the Wii still outsold the PS3 by a 2-to-1 margin in North America last week, and the 360 outsold it by roughly 30%.
The actual good news I see for Sony is that they've finally started selling more systems than the Wii in Japan, on a week-to-week basis. For quite a while, they were lagging behind even in their own backyard. I think it was kind of inevitable that they'd start to move some systems over there though. The 360 isn't taken seriously in Japan, and has hardly moved any units compared to either the Wii or PS3. If you want to do high def console gaming in Japan, the PS3 is considered to be the only game in town. Popular Japanese series are finally starting to drop for the PS3 (e.g. Shin Sangoku Musuo 5, will be released in NA as Dynasty Warriors 6 in '08, quarter of a million copies sold in Japan in two weeks, according to vgchartz), and that's driving hardware sales I think. Now they need to get a title with similar system-selling potential out in North America. Ratchet & Clank is close I think, but not quite enough of a household name. Something like a Metal Gear Solid or GTA title exclusively for the PS3 is what they need if they want to have any hope of catching the 360 or Wii in North America, but I don't think they have any titles with that kind of must-have cachet on the near horizon.
To be honest, I think you're nuts. I can't imagine buying a PS3 when there are so many top-notch 360-only or 360-and-PC-only titles available right now. The only top-shelf title the PS3 currently has access to is Oblivion, everything else is essentially good but not great. Furthermore, with only 17% of the next-gen market currently, the PS3 has a lot of ground to make up. The quirky and interesting games that represent a risky investment for publishers are going to show up on the system(s) with the largest market share. I wouldn't want to buy into a platform that is unlikely to see this generation's Guitar Hero, or Katamari, or Shadow of the Colossus. I'm not talking about the sequels to those games, I'm talking about the wholly new games that no one's heard about yet, but everyone will be playing a year or two from now. In the previous generation, all of those titles appeared on the PS2 because its market share was so dominant, but that's not going to be anywhere near the case for the PS3 at this rate.
I've never had a game lock up on me, and none of my friends who own a 360 have ever mentioned anything of the sort. If game lockups were a common occurrence, you can bet that the game review and news sites would be all over it too. I'd bet that your 360 has poorly-mounted heat sinks, or is possibly in an area where it can't get adequate airflow. If it's just an airflow issue, put the 360 somewhere with good ventilation. If that's not it, then hit up MS for a replacement, newer units and refurbs have improved heat dissipation. I believe all existing units can take of advantage of the extended warranty for overheating issues, as well as the Red Ring of Death.
I just spent five minutes googling for the company names in question, as well as searching for " sucks." I saw lots of "X sucks" search results, but few if any ads, and no advocacy ads. Given that the main contention of the article (Google censors ads on a political basis) has turned out to be bunk, I'm willing to bet this additional supposition (Google allows its own policy to be selectively violated) is equally worthless. The original article in question was a shoddy opinion piece with no fact checking done. It doesn't take much effort to discover for yourself that it was, in fact, total crap.