If this generation of consoles ends up anything like last generation, picking the winner now is vital if you want to avoid having to buy a second console later on. The PS2 outsold all other consoles combined by a two to one margin (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#World_wi de_sales_figures_5). It's no surprise then that certain marquee, out of left field titles originally appeared only on the PS2. I'm talking here about games like Katamari Damacy and Guitar Hero. Every system is going to have its staple first-party titles, the real wildcard is the publishers who have a crazy idea they want to try, but are only willing to risk the development dollars by targetting the most commonly available platform. Yes, I know, Guitar Hero II is coming out for the 360 in the near future, but that game is old news now (and I already own it for the PS2). I'm interested in those wholly unexpected games, the ones no one's even heard about yet, and where they're going to show up. Console sales numbers may be able to tell me that.
If you look at the numbers for the previous generation, you'll quickly realize that 10 million is a piddling number:
* Nintendo GameCube: 21.20 Million as of September 30, 2006 (Japan: 4.02, The Americas: 12.44, Other: 4.75)
* PlayStation 2: 111.25 Million shipped as of September 30, 2006 (Japan: 23.99, USA: 44.86, Europe: 42.40)
* Sega Dreamcast: 10.6 Million as of December 2004 (Japan: 2.30, Other: 8.30)
* Xbox: more than 24 Million as of May 10, 2006
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#World_wi de_sales_figures_5 for sources. Out of the more than 160 million previous gen systems sold, fully 2/3rds were PS2s. The Dreamcast sold 10 million for crying out loud, and look where they ended up. The first console to break the 50 million mark is probably going to be the dominant system, and we're a long way off from that. MS has a head start, but it's still anyone's game.
What other shocking truths will these crazy journalists uncover next! I hear they're working on a piece regarding new evidence that water is apparently wet. Mind-blowing!
No, you're dead wrong. Each person having their own personal keyboard would mean they're carrying them around all the time, including when they interact with patients. It's bad enough that communal keyboards in hospitals are a germ warren right now, but introducing a situation where hospital staff bring their germ-laden keyboards into close contact with patients, that's even worse.
Maybe because hospitals have more complex data entry needs than "Combo #3 with Fries"? I work for a medical systems vendor, efficiency is vital to these organizations, both for patient care and for their bottom line. There's no way in the world a radiologist would be willing to enter reports on the kind of keyboard you're talking about.
The best-paid, best-trained cleaning staff in the world isn't going to be able to get all the germs out of every nook and cranny of a keyboard. By contrast, even the lowest-paid, least-trained cleaners can probably figure out how to wipe down a flat, seamless desk with disinfectant.
Why can't we have social commentary on that level in games? Where is it written that games must be frivolous? I'm not saying that all games need deeper meaning, or social commentary, but it would be awfully nice if *some* game producers actually tried to take it to the next level. That's what Mr. Bogost and the Serious Game Source site are advocating, because the best way to get regulators to take games seriously is to produce games that take themselves seriously.
Dude, did you not read the article? This is exactly what they just junked in Quebec. Instead of a simple paper ballot that you mark an X on which subsequently gets counted by a human being, they had something that looked very much like those scantron cards that I too used in high school. It got fed into a machine, where the votes got counted. Ask any high school teacher how accurate those scantron machines are, and they'll tell you they make mistakes plenty often. This is what they found in Quebec. There were bugs, the machines made scanning mistakes sometimes, and in many cases manual recounting was required.
If you're a proponent of electronic voting, ask yourself: What problem is this technology supposed to fix? In Canada, we know the results of elections one to two hours after the polls close, we spend far less per capita on elections than the US does (for example), and it's all based off pencil, paper and a set of really clever people procedures. Adding technology isn't a solution, it's just a new set of problems.
'You make it sound as if all they did was sell "official" Playstation products.'
In the context of this latest series of lawsuits, that *is* all they did! They sold official, unmodified asian-region PSPs in Europe. They haven't sold modchips or GBA flash carts since 2002, and had successfully rebuilt themselves since that time as a merchant of imported titles and hard-to-find accessories. It's all on the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lik_Sang
'I guarentee you Sony did not fight Lik-Sang just because they sold PSP's and to flame a company for protecting their's as well as other's intelectual property well...'
I'm sorry, but that's exactly what the lawsuit was about. Lik-Sang wasn't infringing Sony's intellectual property in any sense that the vast majority of consumers would consider meaningful. They weren't making copies of their games, they weren't modifying consoles to allow pirated copies to play, they weren't selling gear to allow for such modification. What they *were* doing was allowing European customers to circumvent Sony's regional distribution. The primary reason Sony releases consoles, games and movies separately in Europe is because it allows them to charge more for them. If you're trying to tell me Sony is a righteous crusader for intellectual property protection because they get foreign courts to uphold their regional price gouging tactics, I'm sorry, but you're simply delusional.
"- Election official who can count" While I almost completely agree with you, your system would flawed without multiple independent counters. Otherwise, there's nothing to prevent fraudulent counting on the part of a single election official. Yes, it might get caught by a random audit, but audits take a lot of time, which runs counter to the goal of delivering election results in a timely fashion.
The Canadian system requires every candidate who runs in an area to provide a scrutineer. This is usually an unpaid volunteer affiliated with the candidate's political party. Each scrutineer counts the ballots, and if the counts don't match with the ones delivered by other candidates' scrutineers, they all have a choice: either make a concession and agree on a set of results, or count the votes again. Enlightened self-interest on the part of the scrutineers (they are *unpaid* volunteers after all, and the polls close at 8pm) ensures that they come to a consensus and phone in a final tally in a timely fashion. Enlightened self-interest on the part of the candidate ensures that the people chosen to count for that person are a) not willing to sell away votes for their party, and b) not so weak-willed that they'll let themselves be bullied into agreeing to a false total.
"Seriously, who the hell cares about digital records or fast counts?" For true! Digital records don't do anything to ensure greater accuracy, they just cause greater confusion, and remove understanding of the system from the masses. Canadians know definitively who their next prime minister is *two hours* after the last polls close, and that's with paper ballots and people counting by hand. The problem with the US system is *not* a lack of technology, but rather fundamental flaws in the system. Piling technology on top of the existing gaps merely distracts from the fact that there are much, much deeper problems.
Two painfully obvious facts reveal this article for the utter crock it is. First, studies have shown that there is no correlation between attractiveness and intelligence (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ j.1467-6494.1995.tb00799.x). In fact, I think there are even some studies showing the opposite, i.e. that attractive people sometimes tend to be less intelligent, presumably because they can literally "get by on their looks" more often. Second, less intelligent people tend to be poor; poor people have more children than rich people; the more children you have, the greater the chances one of them will be a freak genius, or just incredibly. The sheer number of "rags to riches" stories out there, "I was the youngest child in a family of 12, and I became a millionaire!", etc., should tell you that genetics is only part of the story. And once you're rich, there's a pretty strong tendency for people to turn a blind eye to that fact that you're a hideous abomination. Just look at Donald Trump!
I played the demo of BF2142, and was underwhelmed. I've played a lot of BF1942 (well, mostly the Desert Combat mod) and BF2, so I thought BF2142 would be a definite purchase for me. Still, I found I didn't enjoy the demo as much as I anticipated I would. I figured I'd wait a bit, see if some friends bought it, maybe pick it up after a patch or two was released. However, if they're going to attempt to spy on my other computing activities so they can deliver targetted ads in-game, I definitely will not be buying it now or at any point in the future. Glad I chose to wait!
The problem is shelf space, by and large. Because the games are cheap, the margins on them don't amount to a lot, so game stores give more shelf real estate to titles that make them more money (primarily PS2 / Xbox / Xbox 360). The tiny amount of leftover space given to DS titles means that older titles get pushed off the shelf rather quickly to make room for new releases. The games are still in print, usually, but the major retailers don't bother to stock them. I imagine someone somewhere did the math and found that the cost of maintaining the stock on those games was greater than the profit made after the year or so they usually stock them for.
Thankfully there are some smaller stores that actually try for a more complete selection. Because I live in Canada, if I'm looking for a hard-to-find DS title, I'll usually order it from http://videogamesplus.ca/. Fantastic store, with a very wide selection, most importantly including those games that I can't find at Best Buy (or equivalent) any more. I don't know of any US or UK equivalents, but I'm sure they're out there. Perhaps some other slashdot posters can toss us a few links.
"We need more game companies like Shiny"
The problem is game companies like Shiny don't survive. They had some very creative ideas, I'll give you that, but as often as not, their creativity fell flat in actual execution. Messiah was bug-riddled at release and subsequently flopped, commercially speaking, I've never even heard of Wild 9, they squandered their Earthworm Jim capital by releasing an absolutely horrendous 3D version, and they never really had a smash-hit million-copy seller to my knowledge. If all you produce are quirky niche titles, then all you get are the dollars available from a quirky niche audience. I knew their goose was cooked as soon as Atari acquired them; heck, look at the poorly-selling Matrix-related schlock they've produced since that time.
What we really need are game companies that are half Shiny, half Valve... Sure, make that predictable, money-in-the-bank sequel, but then put some of that revenue into making a quirky niche title. Then go back to the well for another sequel to pay the bills. Or, alternately, we need indie-style game developers who can actually stick to indie-style game budgets and keep themselves from getting swallowed and digested by publishers. However, that would require indie-style game consumers who are willing to put up with lower production values for more creative titles, and right now that market either doesn't exist, or just isn't being effectively tapped into.
According to the president of NCSoft North America, Robert Garriott (brother to Richard Garriott of Ultima fame, who now works as a game designer at NCSoft Austin), they're not competing against themselves. They're making churn their friend. From their insight into the MMOG space, they see customer paying and playing for around 10 months, then they move on to some other game. By having lots of MMOG games in their stable, they increase the chances that that, the next time you're looking for an MMOG, you land on another NCSoft product. In this particular case, I don't think they care that they already have a superhero-themed MMOG. Maybe people get sick of CoH/CoV, and they want a different superhero MMOG; in that case, NCSoft's got another option to sell you. Or maybe you go on to Guild Wars, or one of their other products. They don't really care which. At the same time, it allows them to get the Marvel lawsuit off their backs; even if the game barely breaks even, they'll come out way ahead. You can read more of their thoughts on these topics in this Escapist Magazine article: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/63/28
"There is a clear distinction between a review of a work - a movie, a book, a piece of art, or even a video game - and a critique of one. Movies, literary works, and pieces of art all have critiques written about them all of the time, so why not video games?
It may have to do with the fact that a lot of people still view video games as for children, that games don't really have anything to say, any depth to them.
But whatever the reason (I'm not exploring that issue here), video games are made by a team of people, and each of those individuals wants to leave their mark in some way or another. With so many people coming together to create one thing, how can there not be layers, hidden meanings, subtext behind the work?
These meanings may be planned or not, but it is the critics' job to point them out or, quite possibly, to 'create' the artistic work by coming up with meanings simply from critiquing what is there in front of them."
If you disagree with her interpretation of the difference, that's fine, but c'mon man, it's on the very first page. At least read the article before you trash the article.
I have a Dell 2005FPW, and it's fantastic for games. It especially shines if you can run the games at the panel's native resolution (1680x1050). More and more games are including support for widescreen aspect ratios. For example, right now I'm running World of Warcraft at native, and it looks fantastic. Even when I run games at lesser resolutions, the scaling is pretty good on this unit. I'd like to be running Oblivion at 1680x1050, but my video card (GeForce 6600GT) can't quite keep up at that resolution. There is no ghosting when playing games on this monitor, at least not that I've noticed.
I'd recommend not paying attention to the manufacturer's listed response times, there's a sickening amount of gamesmanship going on with those specs right now. For example, many LCD monitors are advertised as 8ms refresh because that's the response time in one *very narrow* range of the color spectrum. When you actually play games on these monitors, it quickly becomes apparent that the refresh times for wider spectrum shifts is actually much longer than the value advertised by the manufacturer. You're better off getting real-world measurements from somewhere like Tom's Hardware. See the bottom of the linked page for an example of one of their LCD refresh latency graphs: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/03/27/the_spring_ 2006_lcd_collection/page3.html
If you can't find that kind of detailed review for the unit you're considering, go with subjective impressions of people who game on that monitor. I'd heartily recommend the Dell 2005FPW, and so would four of my gamer friends.
Having trouble parsing this?
'It depends. If it's the game that everyone is expecting then, yes. For us it's about making a proper impact on the platform. It has to be something with huge significance, so we won't be rushed.'
Let me me phrase it another way for you:
'It depends. If we get the game to a point where it will meet gamer's expectations, then yes, we'll release it this year. We want to make this game as big for the Xbox360 as Halo was for the original Xbox. It has to be really good though or we won't make bazillions of dollars like last time, so we won't be rushed.'
EWJ *not* a classic?? I hope you don't consider yourself an avid gamer or similar, because if you don't have nostalgic memories of one of the most creative and distinct platform games of all time, those labels just don't apply to you.
...or rather, blame the games. Want something to pin slow console sales on? How about the fact that Xbox360 still doesn't have a killer title! Perfect Dark Zero was a decent enough game, but by most accounts it fell short of being the must-have title that would drive sales of the hardware. The Xbox had Halo, the Xbox360 has... nothing even close to that in terms of popularity. No wonder they can't sell the hardware, there's no Xbox360-exclusive game that people really, really want.
Activist games are not really that new, though it's nice to see them getting some more mainstream press. Here are some other good examples that I saw at the 2005 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference in Vancouver:
Escape From Woomera, http://www.escapefromwoomera.org/ Built on the Halflife engine, you are a Palestinian refugee trapped in a concentration camp in the Australian outback. It plays like an adventure game; you talk to people, collect items, trade with other prisoners, all in an effort to escape. The activist spin: just like the actual concentration camp occupants it's based on, there's no way for you to escape and win the game.
Blowhard, http://quasi-cause.com/blowhard/index.php Two players wear respiration masks and try to out-blow their opponent. The harder you breate, the faster your "threat meter" (a la the US threat index) builds up. First to reach Red/Severe wins. The display is very retro 8-bit Nintendo, and the installation was quite neat, complete with plastic drop-sheeting and official-looking quarantine notices.
Those were the most activist-oriented productions that I saw while I was there. Nice to see people doing interesting things with games!
Slashdot Mirror
If this generation of consoles ends up anything like last generation, picking the winner now is vital if you want to avoid having to buy a second console later on. The PS2 outsold all other consoles combined by a two to one margin (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#World_wi de_sales_figures_5). It's no surprise then that certain marquee, out of left field titles originally appeared only on the PS2. I'm talking here about games like Katamari Damacy and Guitar Hero. Every system is going to have its staple first-party titles, the real wildcard is the publishers who have a crazy idea they want to try, but are only willing to risk the development dollars by targetting the most commonly available platform. Yes, I know, Guitar Hero II is coming out for the 360 in the near future, but that game is old news now (and I already own it for the PS2). I'm interested in those wholly unexpected games, the ones no one's even heard about yet, and where they're going to show up. Console sales numbers may be able to tell me that.
...the films 'Daredevil,' 'Miss Congeniality,' and 'Red Planet'...
...for a criminal lack of taste, if nothing else.
If you look at the numbers for the previous generation, you'll quickly realize that 10 million is a piddling number:
i de_sales_figures_5 for sources. Out of the more than 160 million previous gen systems sold, fully 2/3rds were PS2s. The Dreamcast sold 10 million for crying out loud, and look where they ended up. The first console to break the 50 million mark is probably going to be the dominant system, and we're a long way off from that. MS has a head start, but it's still anyone's game.
* Nintendo GameCube: 21.20 Million as of September 30, 2006 (Japan: 4.02, The Americas: 12.44, Other: 4.75)
* PlayStation 2: 111.25 Million shipped as of September 30, 2006 (Japan: 23.99, USA: 44.86, Europe: 42.40)
* Sega Dreamcast: 10.6 Million as of December 2004 (Japan: 2.30, Other: 8.30)
* Xbox: more than 24 Million as of May 10, 2006
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#World_w
What other shocking truths will these crazy journalists uncover next! I hear they're working on a piece regarding new evidence that water is apparently wet. Mind-blowing!
No, you're dead wrong. Each person having their own personal keyboard would mean they're carrying them around all the time, including when they interact with patients. It's bad enough that communal keyboards in hospitals are a germ warren right now, but introducing a situation where hospital staff bring their germ-laden keyboards into close contact with patients, that's even worse.
Maybe because hospitals have more complex data entry needs than "Combo #3 with Fries"? I work for a medical systems vendor, efficiency is vital to these organizations, both for patient care and for their bottom line. There's no way in the world a radiologist would be willing to enter reports on the kind of keyboard you're talking about.
The best-paid, best-trained cleaning staff in the world isn't going to be able to get all the germs out of every nook and cranny of a keyboard. By contrast, even the lowest-paid, least-trained cleaners can probably figure out how to wipe down a flat, seamless desk with disinfectant.
"go watch something like the basketball diaries"
Why can't we have social commentary on that level in games? Where is it written that games must be frivolous? I'm not saying that all games need deeper meaning, or social commentary, but it would be awfully nice if *some* game producers actually tried to take it to the next level. That's what Mr. Bogost and the Serious Game Source site are advocating, because the best way to get regulators to take games seriously is to produce games that take themselves seriously.
Dude, did you not read the article? This is exactly what they just junked in Quebec. Instead of a simple paper ballot that you mark an X on which subsequently gets counted by a human being, they had something that looked very much like those scantron cards that I too used in high school. It got fed into a machine, where the votes got counted. Ask any high school teacher how accurate those scantron machines are, and they'll tell you they make mistakes plenty often. This is what they found in Quebec. There were bugs, the machines made scanning mistakes sometimes, and in many cases manual recounting was required.
If you're a proponent of electronic voting, ask yourself: What problem is this technology supposed to fix? In Canada, we know the results of elections one to two hours after the polls close, we spend far less per capita on elections than the US does (for example), and it's all based off pencil, paper and a set of really clever people procedures. Adding technology isn't a solution, it's just a new set of problems.
'You make it sound as if all they did was sell "official" Playstation products.'
In the context of this latest series of lawsuits, that *is* all they did! They sold official, unmodified asian-region PSPs in Europe. They haven't sold modchips or GBA flash carts since 2002, and had successfully rebuilt themselves since that time as a merchant of imported titles and hard-to-find accessories. It's all on the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lik_Sang
'I guarentee you Sony did not fight Lik-Sang just because they sold PSP's and to flame a company for protecting their's as well as other's intelectual property well...'
I'm sorry, but that's exactly what the lawsuit was about. Lik-Sang wasn't infringing Sony's intellectual property in any sense that the vast majority of consumers would consider meaningful. They weren't making copies of their games, they weren't modifying consoles to allow pirated copies to play, they weren't selling gear to allow for such modification. What they *were* doing was allowing European customers to circumvent Sony's regional distribution. The primary reason Sony releases consoles, games and movies separately in Europe is because it allows them to charge more for them. If you're trying to tell me Sony is a righteous crusader for intellectual property protection because they get foreign courts to uphold their regional price gouging tactics, I'm sorry, but you're simply delusional.
"- Election official who can count"
While I almost completely agree with you, your system would flawed without multiple independent counters. Otherwise, there's nothing to prevent fraudulent counting on the part of a single election official. Yes, it might get caught by a random audit, but audits take a lot of time, which runs counter to the goal of delivering election results in a timely fashion.
The Canadian system requires every candidate who runs in an area to provide a scrutineer. This is usually an unpaid volunteer affiliated with the candidate's political party. Each scrutineer counts the ballots, and if the counts don't match with the ones delivered by other candidates' scrutineers, they all have a choice: either make a concession and agree on a set of results, or count the votes again. Enlightened self-interest on the part of the scrutineers (they are *unpaid* volunteers after all, and the polls close at 8pm) ensures that they come to a consensus and phone in a final tally in a timely fashion. Enlightened self-interest on the part of the candidate ensures that the people chosen to count for that person are a) not willing to sell away votes for their party, and b) not so weak-willed that they'll let themselves be bullied into agreeing to a false total.
"Seriously, who the hell cares about digital records or fast counts?"
For true! Digital records don't do anything to ensure greater accuracy, they just cause greater confusion, and remove understanding of the system from the masses. Canadians know definitively who their next prime minister is *two hours* after the last polls close, and that's with paper ballots and people counting by hand. The problem with the US system is *not* a lack of technology, but rather fundamental flaws in the system. Piling technology on top of the existing gaps merely distracts from the fact that there are much, much deeper problems.
From TFA:
/eyeroll
/ j.1467-6494.1995.tb00799.x). In fact, I think there are even some studies showing the opposite, i.e. that attractive people sometimes tend to be less intelligent, presumably because they can literally "get by on their looks" more often. Second, less intelligent people tend to be poor; poor people have more children than rich people; the more children you have, the greater the chances one of them will be a freak genius, or just incredibly. The sheer number of "rags to riches" stories out there, "I was the youngest child in a family of 12, and I became a millionaire!", etc., should tell you that genetics is only part of the story. And once you're rich, there's a pretty strong tendency for people to turn a blind eye to that fact that you're a hideous abomination. Just look at Donald Trump!
"He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo."
Because when you're airing reruns of Xena: Warrior Princess, Knight Rider and Starsky & Hutch, you're emminently qualified to commission someone to peer ten thousand years into the future.
Two painfully obvious facts reveal this article for the utter crock it is. First, studies have shown that there is no correlation between attractiveness and intelligence (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111
I played the demo of BF2142, and was underwhelmed. I've played a lot of BF1942 (well, mostly the Desert Combat mod) and BF2, so I thought BF2142 would be a definite purchase for me. Still, I found I didn't enjoy the demo as much as I anticipated I would. I figured I'd wait a bit, see if some friends bought it, maybe pick it up after a patch or two was released. However, if they're going to attempt to spy on my other computing activities so they can deliver targetted ads in-game, I definitely will not be buying it now or at any point in the future. Glad I chose to wait!
The problem is shelf space, by and large. Because the games are cheap, the margins on them don't amount to a lot, so game stores give more shelf real estate to titles that make them more money (primarily PS2 / Xbox / Xbox 360). The tiny amount of leftover space given to DS titles means that older titles get pushed off the shelf rather quickly to make room for new releases. The games are still in print, usually, but the major retailers don't bother to stock them. I imagine someone somewhere did the math and found that the cost of maintaining the stock on those games was greater than the profit made after the year or so they usually stock them for.
Thankfully there are some smaller stores that actually try for a more complete selection. Because I live in Canada, if I'm looking for a hard-to-find DS title, I'll usually order it from http://videogamesplus.ca/. Fantastic store, with a very wide selection, most importantly including those games that I can't find at Best Buy (or equivalent) any more. I don't know of any US or UK equivalents, but I'm sure they're out there. Perhaps some other slashdot posters can toss us a few links.
"We need more game companies like Shiny"
The problem is game companies like Shiny don't survive. They had some very creative ideas, I'll give you that, but as often as not, their creativity fell flat in actual execution. Messiah was bug-riddled at release and subsequently flopped, commercially speaking, I've never even heard of Wild 9, they squandered their Earthworm Jim capital by releasing an absolutely horrendous 3D version, and they never really had a smash-hit million-copy seller to my knowledge. If all you produce are quirky niche titles, then all you get are the dollars available from a quirky niche audience. I knew their goose was cooked as soon as Atari acquired them; heck, look at the poorly-selling Matrix-related schlock they've produced since that time.
What we really need are game companies that are half Shiny, half Valve... Sure, make that predictable, money-in-the-bank sequel, but then put some of that revenue into making a quirky niche title. Then go back to the well for another sequel to pay the bills. Or, alternately, we need indie-style game developers who can actually stick to indie-style game budgets and keep themselves from getting swallowed and digested by publishers. However, that would require indie-style game consumers who are willing to put up with lower production values for more creative titles, and right now that market either doesn't exist, or just isn't being effectively tapped into.
This is the problem with scientists, no sense of romance.
According to the president of NCSoft North America, Robert Garriott (brother to Richard Garriott of Ultima fame, who now works as a game designer at NCSoft Austin), they're not competing against themselves. They're making churn their friend. From their insight into the MMOG space, they see customer paying and playing for around 10 months, then they move on to some other game. By having lots of MMOG games in their stable, they increase the chances that that, the next time you're looking for an MMOG, you land on another NCSoft product. In this particular case, I don't think they care that they already have a superhero-themed MMOG. Maybe people get sick of CoH/CoV, and they want a different superhero MMOG; in that case, NCSoft's got another option to sell you. Or maybe you go on to Guild Wars, or one of their other products. They don't really care which. At the same time, it allows them to get the Marvel lawsuit off their backs; even if the game barely breaks even, they'll come out way ahead. You can read more of their thoughts on these topics in this Escapist Magazine article: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/63/28
It's unfortunate that you couldn't take the time to state that originally. I stand by my original comment: read first, then post.
For TFA:
"There is a clear distinction between a review of a work - a movie, a book, a piece of art, or even a video game - and a critique of one. Movies, literary works, and pieces of art all have critiques written about them all of the time, so why not video games?
It may have to do with the fact that a lot of people still view video games as for children, that games don't really have anything to say, any depth to them.
But whatever the reason (I'm not exploring that issue here), video games are made by a team of people, and each of those individuals wants to leave their mark in some way or another. With so many people coming together to create one thing, how can there not be layers, hidden meanings, subtext behind the work?
These meanings may be planned or not, but it is the critics' job to point them out or, quite possibly, to 'create' the artistic work by coming up with meanings simply from critiquing what is there in front of them."
If you disagree with her interpretation of the difference, that's fine, but c'mon man, it's on the very first page. At least read the article before you trash the article.
I have a Dell 2005FPW, and it's fantastic for games. It especially shines if you can run the games at the panel's native resolution (1680x1050). More and more games are including support for widescreen aspect ratios. For example, right now I'm running World of Warcraft at native, and it looks fantastic. Even when I run games at lesser resolutions, the scaling is pretty good on this unit. I'd like to be running Oblivion at 1680x1050, but my video card (GeForce 6600GT) can't quite keep up at that resolution. There is no ghosting when playing games on this monitor, at least not that I've noticed.
_ 2006_lcd_collection/page3.html
I'd recommend not paying attention to the manufacturer's listed response times, there's a sickening amount of gamesmanship going on with those specs right now. For example, many LCD monitors are advertised as 8ms refresh because that's the response time in one *very narrow* range of the color spectrum. When you actually play games on these monitors, it quickly becomes apparent that the refresh times for wider spectrum shifts is actually much longer than the value advertised by the manufacturer. You're better off getting real-world measurements from somewhere like Tom's Hardware. See the bottom of the linked page for an example of one of their LCD refresh latency graphs:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/03/27/the_spring
If you can't find that kind of detailed review for the unit you're considering, go with subjective impressions of people who game on that monitor. I'd heartily recommend the Dell 2005FPW, and so would four of my gamer friends.
...is that Rupert Murdoch chooses not to adapt to new technologies. He'd be doing the world a favor.
Having trouble parsing this? 'It depends. If it's the game that everyone is expecting then, yes. For us it's about making a proper impact on the platform. It has to be something with huge significance, so we won't be rushed.' Let me me phrase it another way for you: 'It depends. If we get the game to a point where it will meet gamer's expectations, then yes, we'll release it this year. We want to make this game as big for the Xbox360 as Halo was for the original Xbox. It has to be really good though or we won't make bazillions of dollars like last time, so we won't be rushed.'
EWJ *not* a classic?? I hope you don't consider yourself an avid gamer or similar, because if you don't have nostalgic memories of one of the most creative and distinct platform games of all time, those labels just don't apply to you.
...or rather, blame the games. Want something to pin slow console sales on? How about the fact that Xbox360 still doesn't have a killer title! Perfect Dark Zero was a decent enough game, but by most accounts it fell short of being the must-have title that would drive sales of the hardware. The Xbox had Halo, the Xbox360 has... nothing even close to that in terms of popularity. No wonder they can't sell the hardware, there's no Xbox360-exclusive game that people really, really want.
Activist games are not really that new, though it's nice to see them getting some more mainstream press. Here are some other good examples that I saw at the 2005 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference in Vancouver:
Escape From Woomera, http://www.escapefromwoomera.org/
Built on the Halflife engine, you are a Palestinian refugee trapped in a concentration camp in the Australian outback. It plays like an adventure game; you talk to people, collect items, trade with other prisoners, all in an effort to escape. The activist spin: just like the actual concentration camp occupants it's based on, there's no way for you to escape and win the game.
Blowhard, http://quasi-cause.com/blowhard/index.php
Two players wear respiration masks and try to out-blow their opponent. The harder you breate, the faster your "threat meter" (a la the US threat index) builds up. First to reach Red/Severe wins. The display is very retro 8-bit Nintendo, and the installation was quite neat, complete with plastic drop-sheeting and official-looking quarantine notices.
Those were the most activist-oriented productions that I saw while I was there. Nice to see people doing interesting things with games!