Books get delayed all the time. Phillip Pullman's The Book of Dust has been "in progress" for years. J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was delayed far longer than any other book in the series (and had a record launch as far as book sales go).
Some games have plot (and in exceptional cases about as good as your average fantasy book). Why shouldn't they be able to delay? Some (though not all) of the books we still read as great literature were edited and rescripted for 20 years. Screw cash flow and give me quality!
#1.3 Reply by cowabunga on 13 Feb 2004 - 02:16
About when is it time to buy som Microsoft stock? In an hour when it plummets and then sell tomorrow when its back up after they find out its all bull
Maybe someone trying to make some money this way or MS is agressivly pushing their customers over to XP
The article you're linking to is about MyDoom.C. This article is about DoomJuice and DeadHat, which are a considerably more interesting development than the Umpteenth version of the same virus (and, heck MyDoom will probably reach Z too...given enough time).
Yes, Microsoft started from Ground zero, but there are a few points to consider. In a lot of ways Nintendo was starting from a very low point as well. Whenever a previous console "bombs" people remain highly skeptical about the next one. Nintendo made a console that's easy to develop for, managed to attrack back a lot of third parties including Squaresoft, and generally pulled out of a nosedive that the N64 seemed to send them into. Who else has ever recovered from a previous faliure? Not Atari; they never caught up again. Not Sega; they were dead in the water after the Saturn, or possibly after the Sega-CD. Nintendo seems to have done the impossible by stabilizing and perhaps even turning around for market share.
Microsoft, on the other hand, looks to be trying the same thing Nintendo was doing after the N64: flip around their policies. The XBox2 has a chipset that looks more like a GameCube with multiprocessing than an XBox with no hard drive. They're going for the early (and thus less powerful in the end) and less expensive console on the market, as opposed to the late, expensive powerhouse. While I do think there's a bigger market for this, they'll alienate XB1 fans who like high-power hard-drive systems, and it may not even have backward compatibility. It has every indication of scrapping an old idea and starting fresh, right down to the early axing of the XBox1. This will call for a shift in marketing policies. Could it work? Yes: they've broken in to one market niche, they can presumably do so to another. Still, they're taking a risk.
In short, Microsoft isn't the only company who broke significant ground last round, and the way they're playing their cards, they'll need to break a lot of ground this round too.
I can understand using a ROM for old games; stuff you can no longer find. I haven't done it myself (...honest) but I know plenty of people who have especially for games more than five years old, and it doesn't bother me. Lying, just to get a game a few days early in order to get a jump start on cracking it is pushing things very far.
On who should be controlling these, the article says:
ISC (previously mentioned in this context) would indeed be a fine choice as it has proven itself to be reliable and politically independent over time.
Right, I'm an ignorant user who doesn't pay much attention to this politics stuff. Before I write any letters supporting ISC, what's Slashdot's general oppinion of the group?
I've only heard this from friends who've visited Japan, but my understanding is that the gaming market is near 50/50 so it can be done. The female population in North America and Europe represents a HUGE untapped market, and while Sony and Microsoft are both putting all resources into the young adult male, this leaves the door wide open to capture the young adult female (and the kids market is nicely cornered off by Nintendo). Not to say that Nintendo should avoid the adult male market; Metroid Prime and Eternal Darkness are good.
Wait, so Microsoft is doing worse than Nintendo in console sales, and is losing money, while the GCN is doing better in sales and Nintendo is making a good profit off of it, yet it's Nintendo that should bow out of the Console market and make way for Sony and Microsoft? Excuse me?
How is this tired Nintendo=Sega argument remotely insightful? I'm going to repeat the (also redundant) response of:
"Nintendo is making money, and lots of it. Sega was not. Quit Trolling."
there's no good reason for them to make their game discs that small
a) They dramatically reduced load times with those discs.
b) It's harder to break/damage those discs.
c) It's harder to make ROMs of the discs; in fact the GCN is still uncracked last I heard.
d) The small size appeals more to the Japanese market.
e) There's future potential for portable systems.
Amusing what I found in the article
on
Hackers Hall of Fame
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
From the article itself:
Eric Steven Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond is the granddaddy of today's hackers, a man who revels in living the life in all its geeky glory. According to him, "The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved."
Annoyed by the fact that most people misuse the term "hacker," he wrote The Hacker's Dictionary and How to Be a Hacker. (Raymond says the basic difference is that "hackers build things, crackers break them.")
Not only is he respected for his astounding skills as a programmer, but Raymond is also valued as a fierce defender of the Open Source Movement, which is based on the premise that programmers should be able to read and modify all software source codes. In this IT paradise, programmers would be able to improve software and fix any potentially lethal bugs. Steve Wozniak would be a god. Bill Gates would be the serpent.
In addition to programming, Raymond is also a fan of libertarianism, neo-paganism and the right to bear arms.
20 hours, which is below average for an RPG, but I've played ones that were 10. I'll agree that I would like it to be longer, but this doesn't show a lack of polish.
I'd hit the limit of the number of medals which I could use. Thus I lost the joy of collecting and shuffling around and getting ever better medals
The point is you're supposed to choose between the badges (medals) not equip them all at once. Some of them work more effectively in a combo than others, and I often find myself switching between offensive setups to defencive setups to evasive setups and so on depending on the fight. This is no different than not being able to wear every accessory or every piece of armor at once in a standard RPG--Badges are your equipment and you need to select the right equip for the fight (and they honestly turned out more interesting than any other equipment system I've seen).
having the princess and that star thing do all the work with no effort at all was just lame. The final boss in Mario RPG was damn hard to beat with a surprise second form that was even harder than the first
The Princess didn't do all the work; she only made it so that he wasn't invincible anymore. Bowser was a step above the previous bosses for difficulty, though not "damn hard to beat" (though, a lot of people would argue that Smithy isn't either). They did quite a good job of gradually increasing difficutly. Oh, and he did have two forms.
Better music throughout the game too.
Well SMRPG has some tracks which I definitely like better, though I do particularly like some of the Paper Mario boss themes. My memory is too fuzzy to compare them exactly.
The Super Nintendo was a good jump above the NES. The PSX and the N64 allowed 3D, though at the expense of either low space or long loading times. The PS2 and GCN got rid of the above weaknesses, and have very detailed 3D already. Seriously, WHY buy a new system when I pretty much can't tell the difference between the graphics?
I've been hoping this would happen, and now that it has I'll probably go out and buy a GameCube. Nintendo: don't upgrade systems until there's VR or lots of HDTVs around or something to make it worthwhile. I'd be quite happy hanging on to the same system for 10 years...like my old GameBoy actually....
And SMB2j is universally lowly regarded; I haven't played it myself, but people who have claim that the level design was essentially just worse than SMB. In addition, the remade version of Doki Doki panic was later released in Japan as "Super Mario USA", and promptly outsold the Japanese SMB2.
It's also been thoroughly incorporated as a Mario game, as a fair number of enemies (sparkies, pokies, et c.) have returned throughout the years along with a lot of the music.
Sure, it wasn't intended as a Mario game, but it is one now, and it certainly has competition in the innovation category (Yoshi's Island and even SMB3 both tossed in a number of new ideas).
Despite the fact that another poster has suggested that Geist is not, let's suppose that it is. However, isn't Halo just a Quake clone or a Goldeneye clone or a Half-Life clone? Presuming Geist was in the same mold wouln't it also be a clone of one of these older games as opposed to a clone of Halo? I mean clearly Megaman X5 is a clone of Megaman X4, and not the original Megaman or even Megaman X *sarcasm*. Oh, and while we're at it, whoever's the most recent person to try and pattent one-click search engines must have come up with the idea, and everyone after them is clearly violating copyright.
Though as a disclaimer I don't know first hand in the case of Halo; I've really had no incentive to go out and play it since every report I've heard suggests that it's very much a clone.
Indeed, FE seems like a more promising genre to push, as the public seems to latch more onto the swords-and-sorcery of Tolkien/Squaresoft, and SSB:M has catapulted them into the domain of the well-known.
Though, isn't FE developed by R&D1? (i.e. Inteligent Systems, i.e. the people who made the Metroid and Advance Wars series). They didn't really survive the transfer to 3D IIRC. (The one 3D game of theirs I can think of is Paper Mario, and that was in development for a good six years; godly polish when it finally came out though...I've played through it several times).
The point is that I'm guessing FE would have to be transferred to another development studio to pull this off.
Nobody really complained that there are a half dozen 2D Marios that all have you doing roughly the same thing
Oh but they did. Super Mario Bros. 2, which incidentally was perhaps the most innovative of the lot, and the people who actually give it a chance love it, has been heavily shunned. This seems to be a universal rule among games; the sequel either improves upon the original in every way and the original is forgotten (see: Streetfighter 2, Warcraft 2, Suikoden 2, and all that) or, more commonly, the sequel is hated, but game #3 is loved (see: Mario, Zelda (for all that IMO Zelda II is the best of the series), Metroid, FF VII...kinda, Wild ARMs...).
Public response is fairly predictable. At least it's not like the movies where I can't think of a single sequel which is more highly regarded than the original (by the public at large, that is). TV, of course, has Star Trek, where Next Gen is universally thought of as superior to the first.
I agree. Will these games even sell? I know DoA Beach Volleyball bombed comapratively speaking, and there was supposedly some even more overdone volleyball game (Outlaw Volleyball? Frankly I can't remember) which just plain missed the radar alltogether.
"The Guy Game"...well it's telling that it was IGNCube that reported it; which makes me wonder if this is just another cheap image push for Nintendo. Remember "Conker's Bad Fur Day"? Pathetic sales; we're talking ~1/10 that of Perfect Dark, which in turn is a rather far cry from Goldeneye. However CBFD had a large community of praisers, and gained respect around the Internet. Whether or not all these people had ever played the game was immaterial; it still produced the requisite "good publicity" for Nintendo.
As for this random game made in Germany that's a PC-only release well...first it sounds very obscure, and second I'm kind of surprised this hadn't been done already; PC+hackers with no life+Sims fan = that. All you'd need is for someone to leak the Sims source....
Legally, is it my obligation to keep my Xbox Live information up to date to avoid this dilemma?
Unfortunately I'm guessing it is, though I've never looked at the XBox agreement contract in particular. It's just that ToS agreements tend to thoroughly cover all such bases. For example, when you have a Paypal account you "waive your rights to credit card consumer protection laws, and that you may not issue a chargeback for anything you purchase using your credit card and PayPal account" (or...at least according to paypalsucks.com). Though, I'll admit I tend to just press "I Agree" and not worry about it; if they actually abused such contracts consumers would revolt...right?
As someone who did a minor in English...no, just no. Maybe journalism or editing, but not English. English is not like Computer Science where your essay does not compile if you miss a comma or don't dot your i. Most first drafts look far worse than your average modded up post on Slashdot (which people do tend to edit a bit). Sure, you proofread for a few days if it's a major paper, but don't delude yourself that the average English major is a grammar whore; in fact I've known more non-English major grammar whores.
Yes, you can copy the data. And anyone who is running out of PS1 memory will generally have at least one PS1 memory card already. Copying is a minor inconvenience, but then again, switching between memory cards for me is also a minor inconvenience.
Consider Bridge, which was on display at the Olympics recently. Consider Chess, which is in similarly high regard. Consider competitions like Math Counts which are clear academic games. Alternatively Reach for the Top for a more trivia-based pursuit. Or, the program I've gotten heavily suckered into, which is a battle of creative problem solving the Future Problem Solving Program or its rival Odyssey of the Mind. ALL of these are taught to gifted children in many schools.
Magic the Gathering, on the other hand, is deplored by some fundamentalist christians for the pictures it uses, known perhaps more for its business side than its academic side, and continually changing the dynamic of the game.
Don't get me wrong, it's already harder for an intellectual athlete to get funding to go to international meets for the more traditional academic competitions, and a local basketball trophy will usually be more proudly displayed than an international medal even for the better accepted intelectual athletics. I just think MtG is likely to generate even less respect.
Slashdot Mirror
Err what?
The Canada of the United Kingdom is Ireland if anything. (And the Canada of France is...Belgium I guess).
The rest look good, though.
Some games have plot (and in exceptional cases about as good as your average fantasy book). Why shouldn't they be able to delay? Some (though not all) of the books we still read as great literature were edited and rescripted for 20 years. Screw cash flow and give me quality!
Yes, yes we were
First post on that: 05:23:19 PM; time of your post 05:53PM, so about the peak of the linking.
Oh, and this deserves mirroring:
The article you're linking to is about MyDoom.C. This article is about DoomJuice and DeadHat, which are a considerably more interesting development than the Umpteenth version of the same virus (and, heck MyDoom will probably reach Z too...given enough time).
Microsoft, on the other hand, looks to be trying the same thing Nintendo was doing after the N64: flip around their policies. The XBox2 has a chipset that looks more like a GameCube with multiprocessing than an XBox with no hard drive. They're going for the early (and thus less powerful in the end) and less expensive console on the market, as opposed to the late, expensive powerhouse. While I do think there's a bigger market for this, they'll alienate XB1 fans who like high-power hard-drive systems, and it may not even have backward compatibility. It has every indication of scrapping an old idea and starting fresh, right down to the early axing of the XBox1. This will call for a shift in marketing policies. Could it work? Yes: they've broken in to one market niche, they can presumably do so to another. Still, they're taking a risk.
In short, Microsoft isn't the only company who broke significant ground last round, and the way they're playing their cards, they'll need to break a lot of ground this round too.
I can understand using a ROM for old games; stuff you can no longer find. I haven't done it myself (...honest) but I know plenty of people who have especially for games more than five years old, and it doesn't bother me. Lying, just to get a game a few days early in order to get a jump start on cracking it is pushing things very far.
Slashdot should Slashdot Washington DC. Let's stick with what we do best!
I've only heard this from friends who've visited Japan, but my understanding is that the gaming market is near 50/50 so it can be done. The female population in North America and Europe represents a HUGE untapped market, and while Sony and Microsoft are both putting all resources into the young adult male, this leaves the door wide open to capture the young adult female (and the kids market is nicely cornered off by Nintendo). Not to say that Nintendo should avoid the adult male market; Metroid Prime and Eternal Darkness are good.
How is this tired Nintendo=Sega argument remotely insightful? I'm going to repeat the (also redundant) response of:
a) They dramatically reduced load times with those discs. b) It's harder to break/damage those discs. c) It's harder to make ROMs of the discs; in fact the GCN is still uncracked last I heard. d) The small size appeals more to the Japanese market. e) There's future potential for portable systems.
20 hours, which is below average for an RPG, but I've played ones that were 10. I'll agree that I would like it to be longer, but this doesn't show a lack of polish.
I'd hit the limit of the number of medals which I could use. Thus I lost the joy of collecting and shuffling around and getting ever better medals
The point is you're supposed to choose between the badges (medals) not equip them all at once. Some of them work more effectively in a combo than others, and I often find myself switching between offensive setups to defencive setups to evasive setups and so on depending on the fight. This is no different than not being able to wear every accessory or every piece of armor at once in a standard RPG--Badges are your equipment and you need to select the right equip for the fight (and they honestly turned out more interesting than any other equipment system I've seen).
having the princess and that star thing do all the work with no effort at all was just lame. The final boss in Mario RPG was damn hard to beat with a surprise second form that was even harder than the first
The Princess didn't do all the work; she only made it so that he wasn't invincible anymore. Bowser was a step above the previous bosses for difficulty, though not "damn hard to beat" (though, a lot of people would argue that Smithy isn't either). They did quite a good job of gradually increasing difficutly. Oh, and he did have two forms.
Better music throughout the game too.
Well SMRPG has some tracks which I definitely like better, though I do particularly like some of the Paper Mario boss themes. My memory is too fuzzy to compare them exactly.
I've been hoping this would happen, and now that it has I'll probably go out and buy a GameCube. Nintendo: don't upgrade systems until there's VR or lots of HDTVs around or something to make it worthwhile. I'd be quite happy hanging on to the same system for 10 years...like my old GameBoy actually....
Disturbingly enough, it's comming back into style. Though, granted, not for the same reasons as Einstein included it in the first place.
It's also been thoroughly incorporated as a Mario game, as a fair number of enemies (sparkies, pokies, et c.) have returned throughout the years along with a lot of the music.
Sure, it wasn't intended as a Mario game, but it is one now, and it certainly has competition in the innovation category (Yoshi's Island and even SMB3 both tossed in a number of new ideas).
Despite the fact that another poster has suggested that Geist is not, let's suppose that it is. However, isn't Halo just a Quake clone or a Goldeneye clone or a Half-Life clone? Presuming Geist was in the same mold wouln't it also be a clone of one of these older games as opposed to a clone of Halo? I mean clearly Megaman X5 is a clone of Megaman X4, and not the original Megaman or even Megaman X *sarcasm*. Oh, and while we're at it, whoever's the most recent person to try and pattent one-click search engines must have come up with the idea, and everyone after them is clearly violating copyright.
Though as a disclaimer I don't know first hand in the case of Halo; I've really had no incentive to go out and play it since every report I've heard suggests that it's very much a clone.
Though, isn't FE developed by R&D1? (i.e. Inteligent Systems, i.e. the people who made the Metroid and Advance Wars series). They didn't really survive the transfer to 3D IIRC. (The one 3D game of theirs I can think of is Paper Mario, and that was in development for a good six years; godly polish when it finally came out though...I've played through it several times).
The point is that I'm guessing FE would have to be transferred to another development studio to pull this off.
Oh but they did. Super Mario Bros. 2, which incidentally was perhaps the most innovative of the lot, and the people who actually give it a chance love it, has been heavily shunned. This seems to be a universal rule among games; the sequel either improves upon the original in every way and the original is forgotten (see: Streetfighter 2, Warcraft 2, Suikoden 2, and all that) or, more commonly, the sequel is hated, but game #3 is loved (see: Mario, Zelda (for all that IMO Zelda II is the best of the series), Metroid, FF VII...kinda, Wild ARMs...).
Public response is fairly predictable. At least it's not like the movies where I can't think of a single sequel which is more highly regarded than the original (by the public at large, that is). TV, of course, has Star Trek, where Next Gen is universally thought of as superior to the first.
"The Guy Game"...well it's telling that it was IGNCube that reported it; which makes me wonder if this is just another cheap image push for Nintendo. Remember "Conker's Bad Fur Day"? Pathetic sales; we're talking ~1/10 that of Perfect Dark, which in turn is a rather far cry from Goldeneye. However CBFD had a large community of praisers, and gained respect around the Internet. Whether or not all these people had ever played the game was immaterial; it still produced the requisite "good publicity" for Nintendo.
As for this random game made in Germany that's a PC-only release well...first it sounds very obscure, and second I'm kind of surprised this hadn't been done already; PC+hackers with no life+Sims fan = that. All you'd need is for someone to leak the Sims source....
Unfortunately I'm guessing it is, though I've never looked at the XBox agreement contract in particular. It's just that ToS agreements tend to thoroughly cover all such bases. For example, when you have a Paypal account you "waive your rights to credit card consumer protection laws, and that you may not issue a chargeback for anything you purchase using your credit card and PayPal account" (or...at least according to paypalsucks.com). Though, I'll admit I tend to just press "I Agree" and not worry about it; if they actually abused such contracts consumers would revolt...right?
As someone who did a minor in English...no, just no. Maybe journalism or editing, but not English. English is not like Computer Science where your essay does not compile if you miss a comma or don't dot your i. Most first drafts look far worse than your average modded up post on Slashdot (which people do tend to edit a bit). Sure, you proofread for a few days if it's a major paper, but don't delude yourself that the average English major is a grammar whore; in fact I've known more non-English major grammar whores.
Yes, you can copy the data. And anyone who is running out of PS1 memory will generally have at least one PS1 memory card already. Copying is a minor inconvenience, but then again, switching between memory cards for me is also a minor inconvenience.
Magic the Gathering, on the other hand, is deplored by some fundamentalist christians for the pictures it uses, known perhaps more for its business side than its academic side, and continually changing the dynamic of the game.
Don't get me wrong, it's already harder for an intellectual athlete to get funding to go to international meets for the more traditional academic competitions, and a local basketball trophy will usually be more proudly displayed than an international medal even for the better accepted intelectual athletics. I just think MtG is likely to generate even less respect.