Were you really pissed off when you went and saw the Neverending Story and then it ended?
Kinda a bad example since they made the Neverending Story 2 (and 3 actually). I mean, I understand that the part of the story that the movie covered had to end, but shouldn't the second Story have been a different Neverending Story in a different place and time? See, each Final Fantasy has been a new fantasy. Until X2. Now we have a true sequel to something that was Final. So like the Neverending Story being a trilogy (shudder), yes its still, no matter how many times people say it, REALLY stupid that a Final Fantasy has a true sequel. Its also kinda sad on Square's part to do this, but they illustrated that themselves from this slashdot story, "There's some sense of danger among the staff that the way we're heading [in not 'taking risks'], we may only be able to produce Final Fantasy games."
Clearly you are confusing "market share" as in sales for the week, versus "installed user base" which is consoles in homes. The second is the important number in every venue but Nintendo of America press releases. C'mon man, know what you are talking about before you try to correct someone. Mod this man down -1 Just Plain Wrong.
I'm here, but I never said they were doomed to fail. Just that they were losing big in the US and still are. They are basing that 2 million number on the fact that sales skyrockted for the one week after the price dropped. Well duh. But will they sustain it through the holiday season to hit 2 million consoles in the US from now until 1/1/04? Even given 4 weeks to pull it off they would have to sell 250k consoles per week. Clearly not. At best its wishful thinking, at worst they are deceiving investors. But then they aren't really an American company so they can lie all they want over here.
Hey, you can keep Mario Kart, I bought it once before, I'm still not going to buy a console just to play the same games again.
I think it is, it just depends on what level the website wishes to enforce it. For every unblock you can come up with I have another block. I win when my blocks are so complete that its worth it for the average user to just see the ads. This is all in response to Norton only of course, which is the first truly widespread noobie-ish product to include this feature. For now, thats the only one I have to defeat.
Check for the presense of Norton -> if present, return error message informing user to call Norton technical support -> the flood of calls prompts Norton to release a patch removing the feature.
Sure there will always be someone with 20 ad blockers installed, but that just has to stay in the minority. Norton moves it to the majority.
Read what you want to read out of this, but this is just a glorified SDK.
Either way, it's too late to prod the genie back into the bottle now. Open Source is well and truly coming to commercial gaming.
Just because you state it so firmly doesn't make it true. As soon as an open source game runs on an unmodified Gamecube, then "Open Source" (capitalization yours) will have "truly come to commercial gaming." Until then its just amateurs making crappy, buggy mods.
So I read alot of posts, some intelligent others less so, and since this is an ask slashdot, I have an alternate solution for you, and pretty much any free/ad model site. Block them.
It is easy enough to detect what browser someone is using. If it is one that includes a pop-up or ad blocker, block them. Devise a test for Norton 2004 and block them. Block anyone who does not agree to participate in your business. As many have said, they have the right to opt out of your ads, you also have the right to opt out of doing business with them. Do not send them your content. If enough free/ad sites start to do this, people will notice. Hotmail/Yahoo, CNN, ESPN, and yes slashdot have banner or other ads. If those sites, and many others, dropped off of my internet I would, in fact, care. Hell, it would drive me away from whole pieces of software. Block them.
Maybe I am vindictive, but maybe this is what people are asking for. Do not send content to people who can't be bothered to "pay" for it. Do that, and you save your business model. The people you block weren't making you any money anyway.
Oh yeah, but in doing so, put up a page they will directed to informing them why they cannot see the main page. "You are seeing this message because you are trying to freeload off of me. Disable or uninstall any ad blocking software to view this webpage." That way, Norton will get lots of Customer Support calls about their anti-virus program "breaking the web". Enjoy!
Torque. Crystal Space 3D. There's more of 'em to. Personally, I licensed Torque. It cost me a whopping $100 for the license and souce code. If (and only if) the game starts to hit big (in excess of $500k in business for the company, or the publisher I deal with) then I have to move to the 'commercial' license - which is $10k. still pretty good.
I notice this is an "if", call us when your game makes the 500,000 in gross. 500k/10 people/1 year is only 50k per year for one year. I am grossly unimpressed and you would be hard pressed to sell this as "success".
Call me when an indie engine is consistently used by an industry big boy. Until then its id technology and Renderware until the cows come home.
And here's what's cool... the Indie situation continues to improve. Suddenly, someone figured out there's a whole new market segment to sell to. So now there are products and services showing up that are less expensive, and aimed directly at Indie budgets. Heck, if I need to construct and entire city, I can buy all the parts for building, roads, street lights, etc. all in one package for $20! Indies are likely to save time, and reuse the content rather than build new - which means the game gets much more likely to hit the market (online or otherwise.) Art is just one example - sound, music, models, programming (and it's not uncommon to do programing-for-art trades, or vice-versa), etc....really this whole point
YAY! Games built by putting lego pieces together! That sounds way better than having all original content!!!111
Sorry, I do not feel for the independent and I am unimpressed by your points. The parent's post was 100% correct.
The important bit from the article..."Nonetheless "The Simpsons" (the show, not the characters) issued an apology yesterday: "Matt was being satirical and certainly there was never any issue between the show and Fox News. We regret any confusion.""
So, total people misled by NPR today who posted to slashdot >750. Total number of people who believed what they heard on NPR absolutely without further checking and posted to slashdot >750. Did someone say something about misperceptions? You should not believe any "news source" absolutely. Always get a second opinion, we don't want a whole thread full of people with egg on their face making fun of something that didn't really happen.
Close, but you took an extreme when the extreme is not representative of whats actually going on. He is running OSX 10.2 so a more accurate comparison would be Windows 2000 or ME depending on your chosen flavor.
A quick search shows security updates for 2000 as recently as 10/29/03 and ME as recently as 10/14/03. I am running neither of these OS's so this is just checking the website; there may be more from the windows update service itself. Check please.
Maybe my copy is different than your's smart guy. Mine doesn't say Activision O2 on it anywhere. Neither does their website. In fact, good luck finding a current reference to O2 anywhere. Have fun!
And since you really don't know what you are talking about, O2 was never a seperate entity, it was a brand, just like EA Big. Im sorry, your answer is incorrect, please try again later.
Dont believe the hype. If that was the reason why THUG is not Live, why did Activision add Live support to SofII, RtCW, and JK:JA and others? Think harder young one, why would a company make a game online for one system and not all systems? Why would any game come out on one system and not others?
I'm pretty sure there is nothing philosphical going on here. This has little to do with MS. Think hard about what might motivate someone...
Yes, that is the moniker I chose for slashdot. Because it is funny. For me it is a reference to a practical joke played by Consolidated Skateboards when they announced that they had signed Tony Hawk's brother Mike to the team. This actually went largely unnoticed for a while. It still makes me smile. Did it make you smile?
Your handle there is "dafoomie". This is more credible to you? The other random "leetd00d47" or "potman420" names are? The name Mike Hawk is clearly a joke, and to me a funny one given the historical reference.
The news story is valid, and actually higher brow than most of the games section stuff, imho. Had it made it to the main slashdot page the discussion over patent law and its application in this case would have become quite heated, as all patent discussions tend to do. So, tell me again what's fishy about Mike Hawk?
You are disappointed? This would indicate you had expectations. What would these expectations be based on? That all game source gets released? That's not true. That you had been promised unrestricted access to this proprietary work? That can't possibly be true. That you were owed something? What were you owed, and for what?
Don't release the source, people bitch. Release the source, people still bitch. Why bother?
Yes, far inferior to having grade school children making laws. Or maybe chefs should make the laws. OF COURSE! Door-to-door salesmen should make the laws! How obvious.
They should distribute the load of the physical office space? Hmmm, there is plenty of good reason to have one central customer support office. This isn't servers, these are people. The fire is threatening the physical building where people sit and work.
I suppose I should have thought ahead and distributed my house and family too. Nevermind that its prohibitively expensive to apply redundency to large physical objects and impossible with current scientific methods to duplicate people. But hey, a bitter slashdotter can't be wrong, right?
Actually, my left-wing friend, any tool can become a weapon.
A car becomes a deadly weapon when I intentionally strike you or run you over with one. I am using my tool as a weapon. In this case, you being killed or greatly injured is not a side-effect, but in fact intended effect.
A crowbar is a tool with many uses. If I bash you over the head with it, it just became a weapon. A power drill is also a multi-use tool, unless I plunge it into your skull during sleep. Again a weapon. A butcher knife is a tool for preparing food, unless I use it to sever your genitals.
Guns are tools which are used for deterrence, among other things. They are not used for killing unless I point it at you and shoot you with it. Not that I am threatening to do that or ever could do that to anyone.
Now do I agree with the parent? No. Guns shouldn't have serial numbers either.
If they are doing so well, why do they keep explaining themselves?
Apple hasn't had to give a bunch of interviews about why iTunes and iTMS is being perceived as unsuccessful. Sony doesn't have to give a bunch of interviews about the PS2's perceived failure. EA isn't out talking to everyone about the perceived poor reception of Madden '04.
Of course they have had to explain themselves for EA.com plenty of times. Quite the parallel I'd say.
People and companies don't explain themselves unless they have explaining to do. I love how they always talk about worldwide terms on the Nintendo side. I don't live worldwide, I live in the US. EA, Activision, THQ, Take-Two, these are not worldwide companies and don't care about the Gamecube's success or failure in Japan. They want consoles in the houses in the US and Europe and Nintendo just isn't delivering.
If they didn't have explaining to do, they wouldn't be doing these interviews. Period.
Slashdot Mirror
Were you really pissed off when you went and saw the Neverending Story and then it ended?
Kinda a bad example since they made the Neverending Story 2 (and 3 actually). I mean, I understand that the part of the story that the movie covered had to end, but shouldn't the second Story have been a different Neverending Story in a different place and time? See, each Final Fantasy has been a new fantasy. Until X2. Now we have a true sequel to something that was Final. So like the Neverending Story being a trilogy (shudder), yes its still, no matter how many times people say it, REALLY stupid that a Final Fantasy has a true sequel. Its also kinda sad on Square's part to do this, but they illustrated that themselves from this slashdot story, "There's some sense of danger among the staff that the way we're heading [in not 'taking risks'], we may only be able to produce Final Fantasy games."
And thats exactly why you are not a judge - your narrow-minded, bitter view of the situation.
Yup, making them and testing them is research. Distributing them is something else...
Did you see Mr. Mentalist's explanation?
Do you understand now?
Do not correct people when you do not understand what you are talking about.
The obvious flaw in your arguement is that noone is playing Pikmin or Super Monkey Ball because they are only on Gamecube.
No, they didn't. You don't understand what you are talking about.
Clearly you are confusing "market share" as in sales for the week, versus "installed user base" which is consoles in homes. The second is the important number in every venue but Nintendo of America press releases. C'mon man, know what you are talking about before you try to correct someone. Mod this man down -1 Just Plain Wrong.
I'm here, but I never said they were doomed to fail. Just that they were losing big in the US and still are. They are basing that 2 million number on the fact that sales skyrockted for the one week after the price dropped. Well duh. But will they sustain it through the holiday season to hit 2 million consoles in the US from now until 1/1/04? Even given 4 weeks to pull it off they would have to sell 250k consoles per week. Clearly not. At best its wishful thinking, at worst they are deceiving investors. But then they aren't really an American company so they can lie all they want over here.
Hey, you can keep Mario Kart, I bought it once before, I'm still not going to buy a console just to play the same games again.
I think it is, it just depends on what level the website wishes to enforce it. For every unblock you can come up with I have another block. I win when my blocks are so complete that its worth it for the average user to just see the ads. This is all in response to Norton only of course, which is the first truly widespread noobie-ish product to include this feature. For now, thats the only one I have to defeat. Check for the presense of Norton -> if present, return error message informing user to call Norton technical support -> the flood of calls prompts Norton to release a patch removing the feature. Sure there will always be someone with 20 ad blockers installed, but that just has to stay in the minority. Norton moves it to the majority.
Read what you want to read out of this, but this is just a glorified SDK.
Either way, it's too late to prod the genie back into the bottle now. Open Source is well and truly coming to commercial gaming.
Just because you state it so firmly doesn't make it true. As soon as an open source game runs on an unmodified Gamecube, then "Open Source" (capitalization yours) will have "truly come to commercial gaming." Until then its just amateurs making crappy, buggy mods.
So I read alot of posts, some intelligent others less so, and since this is an ask slashdot, I have an alternate solution for you, and pretty much any free/ad model site. Block them.
It is easy enough to detect what browser someone is using. If it is one that includes a pop-up or ad blocker, block them. Devise a test for Norton 2004 and block them. Block anyone who does not agree to participate in your business. As many have said, they have the right to opt out of your ads, you also have the right to opt out of doing business with them. Do not send them your content. If enough free/ad sites start to do this, people will notice. Hotmail/Yahoo, CNN, ESPN, and yes slashdot have banner or other ads. If those sites, and many others, dropped off of my internet I would, in fact, care. Hell, it would drive me away from whole pieces of software. Block them.
Maybe I am vindictive, but maybe this is what people are asking for. Do not send content to people who can't be bothered to "pay" for it. Do that, and you save your business model. The people you block weren't making you any money anyway.
Oh yeah, but in doing so, put up a page they will directed to informing them why they cannot see the main page. "You are seeing this message because you are trying to freeload off of me. Disable or uninstall any ad blocking software to view this webpage." That way, Norton will get lots of Customer Support calls about their anti-virus program "breaking the web". Enjoy!
Torque. Crystal Space 3D. There's more of 'em to. Personally, I licensed Torque. It cost me a whopping $100 for the license and souce code. If (and only if) the game starts to hit big (in excess of $500k in business for the company, or the publisher I deal with) then I have to move to the 'commercial' license - which is $10k. still pretty good.
I notice this is an "if", call us when your game makes the 500,000 in gross. 500k/10 people/1 year is only 50k per year for one year. I am grossly unimpressed and you would be hard pressed to sell this as "success".
Call me when an indie engine is consistently used by an industry big boy. Until then its id technology and Renderware until the cows come home.
And here's what's cool... the Indie situation continues to improve. Suddenly, someone figured out there's a whole new market segment to sell to. So now there are products and services showing up that are less expensive, and aimed directly at Indie budgets. Heck, if I need to construct and entire city, I can buy all the parts for building, roads, street lights, etc. all in one package for $20! Indies are likely to save time, and reuse the content rather than build new - which means the game gets much more likely to hit the market (online or otherwise.) Art is just one example - sound, music, models, programming (and it's not uncommon to do programing-for-art trades, or vice-versa), etc....really this whole point
YAY! Games built by putting lego pieces together! That sounds way better than having all original content!!!111
Sorry, I do not feel for the independent and I am unimpressed by your points. The parent's post was 100% correct.
IT WAS A JOKE.Sorry for the registration, don't shoot.
The important bit from the article..."Nonetheless "The Simpsons" (the show, not the characters) issued an apology yesterday: "Matt was being satirical and certainly there was never any issue between the show and Fox News. We regret any confusion.""
So, total people misled by NPR today who posted to slashdot >750. Total number of people who believed what they heard on NPR absolutely without further checking and posted to slashdot >750. Did someone say something about misperceptions? You should not believe any "news source" absolutely. Always get a second opinion, we don't want a whole thread full of people with egg on their face making fun of something that didn't really happen.
Bah, cmon, that was all just build up to ask you if there is anything fishy about Mike Hawk. Thats funny.
Close, but you took an extreme when the extreme is not representative of whats actually going on. He is running OSX 10.2 so a more accurate comparison would be Windows 2000 or ME depending on your chosen flavor.
A quick search shows security updates for 2000 as recently as 10/29/03 and ME as recently as 10/14/03. I am running neither of these OS's so this is just checking the website; there may be more from the windows update service itself. Check please.
Maybe my copy is different than your's smart guy. Mine doesn't say Activision O2 on it anywhere. Neither does their website. In fact, good luck finding a current reference to O2 anywhere. Have fun!
And since you really don't know what you are talking about, O2 was never a seperate entity, it was a brand, just like EA Big. Im sorry, your answer is incorrect, please try again later.
Dont believe the hype. If that was the reason why THUG is not Live, why did Activision add Live support to SofII, RtCW, and JK:JA and others? Think harder young one, why would a company make a game online for one system and not all systems? Why would any game come out on one system and not others?
I'm pretty sure there is nothing philosphical going on here. This has little to do with MS. Think hard about what might motivate someone...
Yes, that is the moniker I chose for slashdot. Because it is funny. For me it is a reference to a practical joke played by Consolidated Skateboards when they announced that they had signed Tony Hawk's brother Mike to the team. This actually went largely unnoticed for a while. It still makes me smile. Did it make you smile?
Your handle there is "dafoomie". This is more credible to you? The other random "leetd00d47" or "potman420" names are? The name Mike Hawk is clearly a joke, and to me a funny one given the historical reference.
The news story is valid, and actually higher brow than most of the games section stuff, imho. Had it made it to the main slashdot page the discussion over patent law and its application in this case would have become quite heated, as all patent discussions tend to do. So, tell me again what's fishy about Mike Hawk?
You are disappointed? This would indicate you had expectations. What would these expectations be based on? That all game source gets released? That's not true. That you had been promised unrestricted access to this proprietary work? That can't possibly be true. That you were owed something? What were you owed, and for what?
Don't release the source, people bitch. Release the source, people still bitch. Why bother?
Yes, far inferior to having grade school children making laws. Or maybe chefs should make the laws. OF COURSE! Door-to-door salesmen should make the laws! How obvious.
They should distribute the load of the physical office space? Hmmm, there is plenty of good reason to have one central customer support office. This isn't servers, these are people. The fire is threatening the physical building where people sit and work.
I suppose I should have thought ahead and distributed my house and family too. Nevermind that its prohibitively expensive to apply redundency to large physical objects and impossible with current scientific methods to duplicate people. But hey, a bitter slashdotter can't be wrong, right?
Mod -1: Corporate Shill.
I turn to TV and a hotmail account when I want advertisements, thanks.
Actually, my left-wing friend, any tool can become a weapon.
A car becomes a deadly weapon when I intentionally strike you or run you over with one. I am using my tool as a weapon. In this case, you being killed or greatly injured is not a side-effect, but in fact intended effect.
A crowbar is a tool with many uses. If I bash you over the head with it, it just became a weapon. A power drill is also a multi-use tool, unless I plunge it into your skull during sleep. Again a weapon. A butcher knife is a tool for preparing food, unless I use it to sever your genitals.
Guns are tools which are used for deterrence, among other things. They are not used for killing unless I point it at you and shoot you with it. Not that I am threatening to do that or ever could do that to anyone.
Now do I agree with the parent? No. Guns shouldn't have serial numbers either.
If they are doing so well, why do they keep explaining themselves?
Apple hasn't had to give a bunch of interviews about why iTunes and iTMS is being perceived as unsuccessful.
Sony doesn't have to give a bunch of interviews about the PS2's perceived failure.
EA isn't out talking to everyone about the perceived poor reception of Madden '04.
Of course they have had to explain themselves for EA.com plenty of times. Quite the parallel I'd say.
People and companies don't explain themselves unless they have explaining to do. I love how they always talk about worldwide terms on the Nintendo side. I don't live worldwide, I live in the US. EA, Activision, THQ, Take-Two, these are not worldwide companies and don't care about the Gamecube's success or failure in Japan. They want consoles in the houses in the US and Europe and Nintendo just isn't delivering.
If they didn't have explaining to do, they wouldn't be doing these interviews. Period.
You post implies that one must be traded for the other. I do not assume this. Do not seek to hold me back because of your lowered expectations.