Unless I'm mistaken, I thought part of the appeal here was the idea of a mass-market, easy-to-use Linux computer. Average Joe can go out and buy a cheap desktop, sure, but given how messy some of the Linux distros are to install and use I don't seem him going out of his way to put Linux on the computer...especially since he'd have to figure out which of the multiple distros he wants to use in the first place.
Paul Kim, brand manager for Everex, said selling the gPC online was "significantly more effective" than selling it in stores. From my experiences online, it seems like there's a higher percentage of geeks with significant problems with Wal-Mart than there is in the rest of the population. Is it possible that that had an effect?
In any case, I think part of the problem is that most people I know wouldn't envision Wal-Mart as a PC retailer. Be it my computer-illiterate neighbor whose spyware I'm constantly removing or my grandparents who only use their computer for occasional e-mail, I'd bet the majority would go to an electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City over a general retailer like Wal-Mart for a purchase that big. Wal-Mart may not be a bad place for cheap groceries or clothing, but the employees there won't know jack about the computers they're selling...and even if that's also true at the local electronics chain store, the perception that they know at least something about computers can make all the difference.
Time and time again, I'd look at the iTunes store and NBC's shows would be some of the top sellers. The Office, Battlestar Galactica, Monk, and Heroes were continuously four of the best-selling shows on iTunes, which means that people actually wanted to buy them from there.
I'm not sure why NBC thought it would be a good idea to try an ad-based streaming service, or how they thought it'd be comparable at all to allowing you to download shows onto an iPod or iPhone and watch them while you're stuck on a plane, but it's good to see that it only took them half a season to realize that they weren't the same thing.
Of course, it doesn't matter right now anyway - other than the first half of the seasons from this year, it's not like they've got much new content to sell because of that little writer's strike.
The only issue I've had with libraries is getting a movie in poor shape. When it starts skipping halfway through and you can't make it to the end, that isn't much fun.
That said, the library nearest my house has a good selection, and has a lot of TV shows too. They're the reason why I watched and loved Firefly. They've got all of Monty Python's Flying Circus. They've even got the Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain sets if I want to relive some childhood memories.
There are a lot of DVDs that don't respond to the .
And let me tell you - when you've got to sit through the same two minute ad for a cable channel every time you put in the DVD, it gets old. It's even worse when the disc in question is part of a season set for a TV show and the same trailer is on every disc.
I mean, how many PS3's sold for xmas? How many Xbox 360s sold for Christmas? Yes, the HD-DVD component is sold separately for the system but since it's less than $200 and has been bundled with ridiculous amounts of free content (at one point last year, Best Buy was offering the first season of Heroes and seven movies) it's a very attractive purchase.
I wouldn't assume that Blu-Ray is going to win because of the PS3. Everything I've seen indicates that the PS3 is still in last place among the current consoles, and I think it's still too early to declare either format a winner when they're both still minorities compared to plain old DVDs.
When people try to justify downloading music, they say it's okay because they wouldn't have bought the album in the first place, which means that no money was lost in the process.
Wouldn't the same kind of logic hold here? How can Nintendo lose money on nonexistent consoles if they're already at full production?
"You need puzzles and monsters," he says, "or people won't want to play... What we've really learned is, you've got to start with a game first," Castronova says. "You just have to." That formula worked wonderfully for Typing of the Dead. It may not be quite the kind of "academic game" they're talking about, but I'd argue it is because typing is a crucial skill. In any case, it's the only typing tutor I've actually enjoyed playing, which lends credence to his statement.
Right now, I'm stuck with Comcast - I live in a college-run apartment building, and that's the only option they offer. Unless I find somewhere else to live next year, I'm stuck with Comcast for at least another year and a half.
But after that, I'm jumping ship as soon as I can, and never returning as long as I've got the choice.
I'm sick of having my internet go down without warning, with no indication as to how long it'll be before I can get back online to finish my homework.
I'm sick of Comcast taking channels for no reason - CSPAN2 and one of the leased access channels vanished a week ago, and the four city-run info channels are about to become digital-only at the end of the year I can't say I ever watched those channels for more than thirty seconds at a time, in passing, but they do have their uses and I know that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Comcast is replacing them with new content - over the past year or so, I don't think we've gotten a single new channel, but others keep vanishing, one or two at a time.
I'm sick of the fact that, in a Big Ten college town with one of the nation's most successful and popular football teams, Comcast is not only refusing to carry the Big Ten Network (the only cable or satellite company here that doesn't - but is running a smear ad campaign against them. I'm sorry, but it's hard to sympathize with your cost argument doesn't hold much water when you make over five hundred million dollars in profit. And no, carrying ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 doesn't count as a response for showing football games - it counts as a basic cable package.
I'm even sick of their advertising. Nine times out of ten, the Comcast ads are so painfully bad that I'll actually stop what I'll doing so I don't have to sit through them. Whether it's the smiling, emotionless Botoxed spokeslady, the "Just Ask Zak" ads where a kid breaks into people's homes to tell them how much better Comcast could make their lives, the previously mentioned Big Ten network attack ads, or the new musical style ads about their phone service (which are so awful that I haven't been able to sit through one of them once), the ads are almost reason enough to jump ship in and of themselves.
We haven't gotten to a point yet where buying shows on demand from iTunes or where watching things online legally is quite a viable option - iTunes is still missing a lot of content I'd like to see and is too expensive to allow for following multiple programs, and the network-run streaming sites have some quality issues. Since other alternatives arenn't available, I'll just have to live with Comcast for now - I need high-speed internet for my engineering classes. But between the service issues and the fact that they seem to go out of their way to make me dislike them even more than I do now, I can't wait until the day when I can finally make sure that Comcast never sees a dime of my money again.
I still agree with the conclusion building your game just for one OS is just stupid if you want to make money.
Valve doesn't seem hard-pressed there.
And while they might not support the minority that use Linux and Apple OSes, I would assume that supporting the consoles instead (which they are doing) would bring in more money. Much more money.
Considering that Steam didn't exist until a few years after XP launched, you're going to be hard-pressed to find that data. In any case, I don't think that the numbers are completely useless - from my experience, my friends who are hardcore PC gamers are the only ones who rush out to upgrade right away. Everyone else just seems to wait until they have to buy a new computer, at which point Vista isn't optional anymore.
There are reasons to upgrade to Vista...they just don't matter to most of the people I know.
The summary neglects to mention two important parts of the (admittedly long) blog post I saw mentioned elsewhere that I think are important.
First, NPD will still be releasing annual and quarterly hardware figures. Not as nice as monthly, maybe, but the data will still be out there in at least some form, even if it is in a form that's not nearly as useful for analyzing sales throughout the year.
More importantly, though, NPD is going to cut back on game figures as well - they'll only be releasing a monthly Top Five instead of a Top Ten from now on (though the Top Ten will be quarterly and annually released as well). I don't have a clue why they chose to do this...anyone have any insights on why that decision might have been made? With the amount of software released in a month and the presence of perennial best sellers like Super Smash Brothers in the sales figures, I can't imagine the usefulness of a pared down list.
His use of "same time" is up for interpretation, though I'd agree with you that it implies a shorter period than the PS3 has been available for.
I guess we can't entirely discount the theory that Sony was involved in this; if they're worried about the upcoming holiday system, they may well have asked NPD to stop releasing the figures. Unfortunately, we'll probably never have a more definitive answer than the quotes that are in the article...which aren't saying much.
Yet, for similarly braindead reasons, developers of these amazing, cult-following sorts of titles steadfastly refuse to make sequels to their games even when millions of people all over the globe are clamoring for them.
Not so much here, actually. There's a good reason why Psychonauts didn't make the Greatest Hits lines for either the PS2 or the Xbox, or why the game was cleared out at ridiculously low prices (I think my sister paid $5 for her copy). The game was good, but I don't think it sold nearly well enough to make a sequel a sure thing, or even a safe bet.
The news will surely come as a blow to Sony rivals Nintendo and Microsoft, who have see sales of PS2 suffer somewhat due to the introduction of Wii and Xbox 360 in recent years....What? I could be wrong but I don't think that sales of a seven year old console are going to intimidate the other companies much, or damage the lead that the Xbox 360 and Wii have built up. Sure, it'll cause some increase in sales numbers but I'm not sure where the author is pulling this from.
Besides, I'd assume that Nintendo and Microsoft consider the PS3 their competition now. It's like Microsoft worrying about Nintendo DS sales - it might matter, but it's also not their primary competition.
I also agree. Unfortunately, most of the wii games have absolutely no quality gameplay and for the most part the only enjoyable Wii games are the ones that require at least two people to play. Keep in mind that the system is still in its first year. Quality software takes time, especially since none of the third party publishers appear to have any idea how to make even decent Wii games at the moment.
Worse, folks who tried to 'make it right' by buying a local copy have found they're basically SOL.
"Basically?" I've been following this on the CAG forums and if you try to enter another serial after you've been locked out, Steam won't accept it because you "already own the game." Since there's no way to remove the other serial, it means that you're not basically SOL...you're just SOL, plain and simple.
Super Mario Bros. is still the best. You just can't find the original version anywhere these days! ...Are you joking? The game has been rereleased at least three times in physical form (Super Mario All Stars, Super Mario Deluxe, and the Classic NES GBA port) and has been for sale on the Virtual Console since it launched. Hell, even ten years ago the game was as common as dirt - Funcoland used to sell the Mario/Duck Hunt cart for $0.29 in the mid-nineties, and most stores had at least five or ten copies of it just sitting on the shelves.
If it wasn't for the fact that you suggested a FPS that (as far as I know) isn't common knowledge, I'd write this off as a joke post, but now I'm just confused. o_0
However, I'm worried that their downloadable content will be priced similarly to previous offerings, aka insanely high. Hopefully, since it's similar, they'll go no higher than the iTunes route with $1/track $10/album.
$1 a track seems low for this to me - keep in mind that these songs are interactive, and that these have four instrumentations you can play instead of just the guitar track from GH2. Beyond that, the first few albums - Who's Next, Nevermind, and Metallica's "One" - are all headliners and, save for one GH2 track, none of these bands have appeared in Guitar Hero before.
If the price rises, I wouldn't be very happy, but keeping it in line with the 360 prices seems fair to me. If you're not interested, then don't pay for it. I know that, whatever the cost ends up being, I'm probably going to get more play out of Who's Next and Nevermind than I have out of GH2 as a whole.
At my college (30,000+ students and a highly ranked college of engineering), every Windows computer I've used this year has been switched to Office 2007. I've had to use it a few times, though not by choice.
well, anybody with a brain. those that do shop there don't realize that used game sales are as big a threat to the video game industry as piracy.
I guess piracy must not have been much of a threat, then...unless I'm mistaken, I don't think that Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft are on the verge of folding due to buying used games. Saying that is just preposterous - not everybody can afford $50 for a game the day it comes out, and games only have limited shelf life. Let's say I want a copy of Mario Tennis for my GameCube. I could get a copy of Mario Strikers or Mario Baseball, yes, but those aren't tennis.
Also, regarding the "anyone with a brain" comment: nine times out of ten, new games I've gotten from GameStop have been opened so they can be stored behind the counter. This wasn't an issue before, but became one when my sister got a new copy of Elite Beat Agents and was crushed to find that everything had already been unlocked. A new game should be new, not taken home by bored and underpaid employees. As far as I'm concerned, GameStop doesn't deserve money for new games if that's going to happen...especially when I can get the same game for the same money from Target or Best Buy, and know that it actually is new and won't be scratched up or containing someone else's save files because it's still sealed.
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Unless I'm mistaken, I thought part of the appeal here was the idea of a mass-market, easy-to-use Linux computer. Average Joe can go out and buy a cheap desktop, sure, but given how messy some of the Linux distros are to install and use I don't seem him going out of his way to put Linux on the computer...especially since he'd have to figure out which of the multiple distros he wants to use in the first place.
In any case, I think part of the problem is that most people I know wouldn't envision Wal-Mart as a PC retailer. Be it my computer-illiterate neighbor whose spyware I'm constantly removing or my grandparents who only use their computer for occasional e-mail, I'd bet the majority would go to an electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City over a general retailer like Wal-Mart for a purchase that big. Wal-Mart may not be a bad place for cheap groceries or clothing, but the employees there won't know jack about the computers they're selling...and even if that's also true at the local electronics chain store, the perception that they know at least something about computers can make all the difference.
Time and time again, I'd look at the iTunes store and NBC's shows would be some of the top sellers. The Office, Battlestar Galactica, Monk, and Heroes were continuously four of the best-selling shows on iTunes, which means that people actually wanted to buy them from there.
I'm not sure why NBC thought it would be a good idea to try an ad-based streaming service, or how they thought it'd be comparable at all to allowing you to download shows onto an iPod or iPhone and watch them while you're stuck on a plane, but it's good to see that it only took them half a season to realize that they weren't the same thing.
Of course, it doesn't matter right now anyway - other than the first half of the seasons from this year, it's not like they've got much new content to sell because of that little writer's strike.
The only issue I've had with libraries is getting a movie in poor shape. When it starts skipping halfway through and you can't make it to the end, that isn't much fun.
That said, the library nearest my house has a good selection, and has a lot of TV shows too. They're the reason why I watched and loved Firefly. They've got all of Monty Python's Flying Circus. They've even got the Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain sets if I want to relive some childhood memories.
Good for you - this isn't a Trivial Pursuit or a trip to Candy Land we're talking about here.
There are a lot of DVDs that don't respond to the .
And let me tell you - when you've got to sit through the same two minute ad for a cable channel every time you put in the DVD, it gets old. It's even worse when the disc in question is part of a season set for a TV show and the same trailer is on every disc.
I wouldn't assume that Blu-Ray is going to win because of the PS3. Everything I've seen indicates that the PS3 is still in last place among the current consoles, and I think it's still too early to declare either format a winner when they're both still minorities compared to plain old DVDs.
I bought that book for a dollar at Borders last year.
Now that was a well-spent dollar!
When people try to justify downloading music, they say it's okay because they wouldn't have bought the album in the first place, which means that no money was lost in the process.
Wouldn't the same kind of logic hold here? How can Nintendo lose money on nonexistent consoles if they're already at full production?
Right now, I'm stuck with Comcast - I live in a college-run apartment building, and that's the only option they offer. Unless I find somewhere else to live next year, I'm stuck with Comcast for at least another year and a half.
But after that, I'm jumping ship as soon as I can, and never returning as long as I've got the choice.
I'm sick of having my internet go down without warning, with no indication as to how long it'll be before I can get back online to finish my homework.
I'm sick of Comcast taking channels for no reason - CSPAN2 and one of the leased access channels vanished a week ago, and the four city-run info channels are about to become digital-only at the end of the year I can't say I ever watched those channels for more than thirty seconds at a time, in passing, but they do have their uses and I know that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Comcast is replacing them with new content - over the past year or so, I don't think we've gotten a single new channel, but others keep vanishing, one or two at a time.
I'm sick of the fact that, in a Big Ten college town with one of the nation's most successful and popular football teams, Comcast is not only refusing to carry the Big Ten Network (the only cable or satellite company here that doesn't - but is running a smear ad campaign against them. I'm sorry, but it's hard to sympathize with your cost argument doesn't hold much water when you make over five hundred million dollars in profit. And no, carrying ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 doesn't count as a response for showing football games - it counts as a basic cable package.
I'm even sick of their advertising. Nine times out of ten, the Comcast ads are so painfully bad that I'll actually stop what I'll doing so I don't have to sit through them. Whether it's the smiling, emotionless Botoxed spokeslady, the "Just Ask Zak" ads where a kid breaks into people's homes to tell them how much better Comcast could make their lives, the previously mentioned Big Ten network attack ads, or the new musical style ads about their phone service (which are so awful that I haven't been able to sit through one of them once), the ads are almost reason enough to jump ship in and of themselves.
We haven't gotten to a point yet where buying shows on demand from iTunes or where watching things online legally is quite a viable option - iTunes is still missing a lot of content I'd like to see and is too expensive to allow for following multiple programs, and the network-run streaming sites have some quality issues. Since other alternatives arenn't available, I'll just have to live with Comcast for now - I need high-speed internet for my engineering classes. But between the service issues and the fact that they seem to go out of their way to make me dislike them even more than I do now, I can't wait until the day when I can finally make sure that Comcast never sees a dime of my money again.
I still agree with the conclusion building your game just for one OS is just stupid if you want to make money.
Valve doesn't seem hard-pressed there.
And while they might not support the minority that use Linux and Apple OSes, I would assume that supporting the consoles instead (which they are doing) would bring in more money. Much more money.
What was the upgrade rate from ME/2k to XP?
Considering that Steam didn't exist until a few years after XP launched, you're going to be hard-pressed to find that data. In any case, I don't think that the numbers are completely useless - from my experience, my friends who are hardcore PC gamers are the only ones who rush out to upgrade right away. Everyone else just seems to wait until they have to buy a new computer, at which point Vista isn't optional anymore.
There are reasons to upgrade to Vista...they just don't matter to most of the people I know.
All of that, but no mention of Goatse, NAMBLA, or the GNAA? You've still got some work to do, young'un!
The summary neglects to mention two important parts of the (admittedly long) blog post I saw mentioned elsewhere that I think are important.
First, NPD will still be releasing annual and quarterly hardware figures. Not as nice as monthly, maybe, but the data will still be out there in at least some form, even if it is in a form that's not nearly as useful for analyzing sales throughout the year.
More importantly, though, NPD is going to cut back on game figures as well - they'll only be releasing a monthly Top Five instead of a Top Ten from now on (though the Top Ten will be quarterly and annually released as well). I don't have a clue why they chose to do this...anyone have any insights on why that decision might have been made? With the amount of software released in a month and the presence of perennial best sellers like Super Smash Brothers in the sales figures, I can't imagine the usefulness of a pared down list.
His use of "same time" is up for interpretation, though I'd agree with you that it implies a shorter period than the PS3 has been available for.
I guess we can't entirely discount the theory that Sony was involved in this; if they're worried about the upcoming holiday system, they may well have asked NPD to stop releasing the figures. Unfortunately, we'll probably never have a more definitive answer than the quotes that are in the article...which aren't saying much.
Yet, for similarly braindead reasons, developers of these amazing, cult-following sorts of titles steadfastly refuse to make sequels to their games even when millions of people all over the globe are clamoring for them.
Not so much here, actually. There's a good reason why Psychonauts didn't make the Greatest Hits lines for either the PS2 or the Xbox, or why the game was cleared out at ridiculously low prices (I think my sister paid $5 for her copy). The game was good, but I don't think it sold nearly well enough to make a sequel a sure thing, or even a safe bet.
The news will surely come as a blow to Sony rivals Nintendo and Microsoft, who have see sales of PS2 suffer somewhat due to the introduction of Wii and Xbox 360 in recent years. ...What? I could be wrong but I don't think that sales of a seven year old console are going to intimidate the other companies much, or damage the lead that the Xbox 360 and Wii have built up. Sure, it'll cause some increase in sales numbers but I'm not sure where the author is pulling this from.
Besides, I'd assume that Nintendo and Microsoft consider the PS3 their competition now. It's like Microsoft worrying about Nintendo DS sales - it might matter, but it's also not their primary competition.
Worse, folks who tried to 'make it right' by buying a local copy have found they're basically SOL.
"Basically?" I've been following this on the CAG forums and if you try to enter another serial after you've been locked out, Steam won't accept it because you "already own the game." Since there's no way to remove the other serial, it means that you're not basically SOL...you're just SOL, plain and simple.
If it wasn't for the fact that you suggested a FPS that (as far as I know) isn't common knowledge, I'd write this off as a joke post, but now I'm just confused. o_0
I hope that by buying the discbox and encouraging people to buy it, it offsets the poorer people and the college kids.
:)
As a college kid (and a poor person, thanks to my ridiculously high tuition), I'd like to thank you.
However, I'm worried that their downloadable content will be priced similarly to previous offerings, aka insanely high. Hopefully, since it's similar, they'll go no higher than the iTunes route with $1/track $10/album.
$1 a track seems low for this to me - keep in mind that these songs are interactive, and that these have four instrumentations you can play instead of just the guitar track from GH2. Beyond that, the first few albums - Who's Next, Nevermind, and Metallica's "One" - are all headliners and, save for one GH2 track, none of these bands have appeared in Guitar Hero before.
If the price rises, I wouldn't be very happy, but keeping it in line with the 360 prices seems fair to me. If you're not interested, then don't pay for it. I know that, whatever the cost ends up being, I'm probably going to get more play out of Who's Next and Nevermind than I have out of GH2 as a whole.
At my college (30,000+ students and a highly ranked college of engineering), every Windows computer I've used this year has been switched to Office 2007. I've had to use it a few times, though not by choice.
well, anybody with a brain. those that do shop there don't realize that used game sales are as big a threat to the video game industry as piracy.
I guess piracy must not have been much of a threat, then...unless I'm mistaken, I don't think that Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft are on the verge of folding due to buying used games. Saying that is just preposterous - not everybody can afford $50 for a game the day it comes out, and games only have limited shelf life. Let's say I want a copy of Mario Tennis for my GameCube. I could get a copy of Mario Strikers or Mario Baseball, yes, but those aren't tennis.
Also, regarding the "anyone with a brain" comment: nine times out of ten, new games I've gotten from GameStop have been opened so they can be stored behind the counter. This wasn't an issue before, but became one when my sister got a new copy of Elite Beat Agents and was crushed to find that everything had already been unlocked. A new game should be new, not taken home by bored and underpaid employees. As far as I'm concerned, GameStop doesn't deserve money for new games if that's going to happen...especially when I can get the same game for the same money from Target or Best Buy, and know that it actually is new and won't be scratched up or containing someone else's save files because it's still sealed.