I can answer some of this as an amateur user of both.
I'm going to go ahead and say that.NET is certainly faster than Java, at least from what I've seen. I've not run any tests or anything, but it certainly never feels slow when using the programs, as every single Java app I've ever used does from time to time. And.NET programs obviously will generally use less resources, at least on Windows machines (I admit, I have no idea how Mono works), since there's no VM to run. Not that the programs have incredibly small memory footprints, mind you.
As for reliability, I suppose it's pretty much the same. And as for file size, well,.NET programs are executables. They're certainly larger than Java bytecode.
I think SOny's focus on numbers is terrible, since none of them actually MEAN a damn thing. Even the ones that aren't just made up are irrelevant.
Check out the Nintendo press conference. At the beginning, when Reggie comes out, he talks about numbers a little, yes. But at the same time, he makes fun of the other number-heavy presentations a little, when they put up a huge slide that just has a big "2" on it. I think their presentations show where they want to go with their ideas, and that's more meaningful than some numbers.
Plus, you sure as hell never see Sony Entertainment's top dog up there talking about how nothing makes him happier than seeing the birth of a new gamer.
shut the hell up you expanded universe geek. NONE of the fan books count.
While Lucas has the right to ignore them, LucasArts games have 'confirmed' several things that came from books. It's hard to say that the games don't count, since they have the Lucas name on them, so you can't say NONE of the books count. Hell, Shadows of the Empire was actually named after the book it was (a little loosely) based on.
In fact, one of the 'confirmed' characters is the central villain in the series that many would love to see an attempt at a third trilogy made from. Thrawn. (See TIE Fighter.)
I can confirm this. In fact, it ends up being destroyed much later, in that same black hole cluster that was invented to make Han's Kessel Run statement in IV make sense. While Lucas obviously doesn't always stick to the EU (Boba Fett!!!) he can certainly agree with it if he chooses.
I think it was awesome...for the last half. Perhaps from the point where Obi-Wan confront Greivous. In the earlier parts of the movie, everything was simply too fast, and the characters seemed oblivious to it. I felt no emotional involvement in Dooku's death, and that was wrong.
After a bit though, it slowed down, and I appreciated it far more. I certainly consider the last hour, at the least, to be on par with 3-6, but the first 45 minutes or so just left me bored.
As a disclaimer, I'm positive that I would have liked it far more if I had waited to read the novelization.
The novel is fantastic, really, isn't it? I have to wonder how much of the stuff in there (that wasn't in the film) was a result of Lucas, and how much was purely the creation of the author.
In the novel, the fight with Tyrannus is brilliant. Seeing the version that they put on the screen was a letdown. I didn't expect to be able to see Tyrannus thinking his way through the battle, of course, but still, a good 10 pages in the book were reduced to about a minute of screen time.
It was also disappointing to find that the best humor in the book (particularly a much less over-the-top version of Obi-Wan's wry sense of humor, which Ewan McGregor obviously tried valiantly to save despite some of his mediocre lines) was completely missing in the film. When Grievous said, "I was trained by Count Dooku himself!" (or similar) I braced myself to smile at Obi-Wan's reply, "Well, I trained the man who killed him." And then, it simply wasn't there.
You do know that Live is no longer a unique feature, right? And hell, it seems very likely that Nintendo's first party games will be free to play. Free is less than $80.
Halo 2? If you play the best, shouldn't you be playing Goldeneye or something? Maybe Timesplitters 2. Halo 2 isn't the best, it's just the most hyped. And how newthe game is has nothing to do with how fun it is to play.
Whoa, er, wait a second. Is that supposed to be a GOOD thing? 1% failure rate is pretty high, considering that I've never seen a GameCube fail, played daily or not.
It would be nice, yes. In fact, if I were Sega (pretending Sega isn't a huge company and is just one person, of course), I'd be easy to convince. "You really wanna support these upstarts, Sega? Come on, man, back in the day, you know, THE DAY! It was just you and me! We had sweet games, man! Everybody had us!"
Also, unlike reality, there would be no way in HELL that I'd ever make a game for a Sony system. Ever. In fact, I think most of my games would include Playstations as enemies.
Yeah, uh, what the hell are you talking about? If you're talking about Nintendo, they only show actual graphics, no FMV. But...I really don't even know if that IS what you're talking about.
I don't think they plan on doing it that way. One of the reasons they were so hesitant to have an online service is that they didn't want to charge a fee for it.
I use Firefox, but I'm constantly on the edge of switching to Opera just to keep my system resources under control. In the last week, I've had Firefox's memory usage cap 200MB with no tabs open and I've had it's CPU usage ride near 100% for five minutes (till I shut it down) with no tabs open. Opera never does these things. Even when Firefox is performing 'normally' I still find that it uses far more resources than Opera does.
Firefox's current performance makes it impossible to, say, leave it open while I play WoW, despite that fact that there are a great many situations in which I would want to do so. Looking up info, killing time without logging out of the game, reading HTML docs while setting up game addons...
I will acknowledge that the GCN controller is bad for fighters, due to the configuration. I'll also acknowledge that the L and R buttons are sometimes used improperly...that's incredibly annoying. While the face button placement really doesn't slow me down, forcing me through all 256 levels of sensitivity to get to the click at the end does.
Well, since you expressed you opinion, my turn, heh. I actually think the Dual Shock is the WORST out of the current gen controllers, assuming we use the newer XBox one.
Reasons are as follows. The tiny handles make my hands hurt after only 20 minutes or so. Reaching for the left thumbstick is not at all comfortable, and I find the seperated D-pad difficult to use. I can't and never will remember which button is which. I will always need to look at the controller every time I need to press anything other than Triangle. It's on the top!!! I remember that one because it makes sense. The triangle looks like an up-pointing arrow, so it's on the top. It's nice to have four shoulder buttons, I suppose, but I can never remember which of THOSE is which, either. 1 and 2 are not meaningful, damn you! It's even harder to look at those than to look at the face-buttons!
By comparison, it's incredibly easy to remember where each button on the GC is. I have no problem reaching any of the buttons, with the exception of the Z button. (Incidentally, it was added at the begging of developers. Which developers? I've yet to play a game where it serves a meaningful function!) The L and R buttons are incredible for any game that has a good use for them.
The only company I trust to actually tell me what their systems can do is Nintendo. The reason? They've earned it. I've never seen a misleading statement from N when it comes to their hardware capabilities. Remember that incredibly impressive Zelda demo back when the GameCube was unveiled? Well, Twilight Princess looks even prettier than that did.
Microsoft's claims I take with a grain of salt. Whwnever Sony says something, well, at least I can be absolutely positive that they're lying.
First, realize that they surely plan to make all announcements well before XBox launches. None of the competing hardware will be in any living rooms.
Now, I maintain that E3 is a bad place to build hype. Sure, you have to compete simply to get coverage, that much is obvious. But moreover, you will be more directly compared to the competition, and more harshly. Usually, you system will not be the best at every single thing. With Nintendo, they don't give as big numbers. (This is partially because they're, you know, honest.) Sony gives massive numbers, even though they often have no basis in reality. Nintendo doesn't want any focus on numbers, it doesn't work for their marketting and it doesn't fit their philosophy.
I'd expect that they would want to wait until they can get full media coverage, and not be missed. They want to have a meaningful amount of gameplay footage available, both theirs and Sony's, to take away the larger-than-reality difference that numbers can imply.
They've done this in the past. The GameCube unveiling stood all on its own at SpaceWorld.
The real reason that this seems to be the truth, though, is that there's simply no other reason for them to be so quiet. I would say that things are now advanced enough that they can let out any secrets. Sony, and certainly Microsoft, don't have time to incorporate them into their plans. If they have games underway, it's not as if they don't have prototype controllers available. They certainly KNOW what they have to announce, it's not as if they haven't decided on things yet. Iwata, at least, was clearly aware of what kinds of functionality he was hinting at.
Playing antique games is a novelty, NOT a major selling point! It's like having a Video Camera that also plays back mp3s
What if you wanted a camera, and also had use for an MP3 player? This is not a 'novelty.' The Micro is, essentially by Nintendo's own admission, a novelty. But I would consider such backwards compatibility quite the feature. Assuming everything pans out, I WILL be buying a Revolution, and I WILL be using it to play old games.
You use the word 'antique' as if the games aren't fun anymore. The correct term is 'classics.' If you disagree, I don't believe that you've ever played these games.
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For one thing, .NET's online user manual is really at least as good as Java's. It's certainly much easier to navigate.
.NET is free, too.
For another,
I can answer some of this as an amateur user of both.
.NET is certainly faster than Java, at least from what I've seen. I've not run any tests or anything, but it certainly never feels slow when using the programs, as every single Java app I've ever used does from time to time. And .NET programs obviously will generally use less resources, at least on Windows machines (I admit, I have no idea how Mono works), since there's no VM to run. Not that the programs have incredibly small memory footprints, mind you.
.NET programs are executables. They're certainly larger than Java bytecode.
I'm going to go ahead and say that
As for reliability, I suppose it's pretty much the same. And as for file size, well,
Who in the fuck would buy a system with "Banner Ads" built into the damned GUI?
Because we all know how badly StarCraft turned out.
I think SOny's focus on numbers is terrible, since none of them actually MEAN a damn thing. Even the ones that aren't just made up are irrelevant.
Check out the Nintendo press conference. At the beginning, when Reggie comes out, he talks about numbers a little, yes. But at the same time, he makes fun of the other number-heavy presentations a little, when they put up a huge slide that just has a big "2" on it. I think their presentations show where they want to go with their ideas, and that's more meaningful than some numbers.
Plus, you sure as hell never see Sony Entertainment's top dog up there talking about how nothing makes him happier than seeing the birth of a new gamer.
It'd be nice to actually see a side-by-side comparison of the graphics power.
I agree, but you know we'll have nothing reliable until...well, until the PS3 actually launches, honestly.
shut the hell up you expanded universe geek. NONE of the fan books count.
While Lucas has the right to ignore them, LucasArts games have 'confirmed' several things that came from books. It's hard to say that the games don't count, since they have the Lucas name on them, so you can't say NONE of the books count. Hell, Shadows of the Empire was actually named after the book it was (a little loosely) based on.
In fact, one of the 'confirmed' characters is the central villain in the series that many would love to see an attempt at a third trilogy made from. Thrawn. (See TIE Fighter.)
I can confirm this. In fact, it ends up being destroyed much later, in that same black hole cluster that was invented to make Han's Kessel Run statement in IV make sense. While Lucas obviously doesn't always stick to the EU (Boba Fett!!!) he can certainly agree with it if he chooses.
I think it was awesome...for the last half. Perhaps from the point where Obi-Wan confront Greivous. In the earlier parts of the movie, everything was simply too fast, and the characters seemed oblivious to it. I felt no emotional involvement in Dooku's death, and that was wrong.
After a bit though, it slowed down, and I appreciated it far more. I certainly consider the last hour, at the least, to be on par with 3-6, but the first 45 minutes or so just left me bored.
As a disclaimer, I'm positive that I would have liked it far more if I had waited to read the novelization.
The novel is fantastic, really, isn't it? I have to wonder how much of the stuff in there (that wasn't in the film) was a result of Lucas, and how much was purely the creation of the author.
In the novel, the fight with Tyrannus is brilliant. Seeing the version that they put on the screen was a letdown. I didn't expect to be able to see Tyrannus thinking his way through the battle, of course, but still, a good 10 pages in the book were reduced to about a minute of screen time.
It was also disappointing to find that the best humor in the book (particularly a much less over-the-top version of Obi-Wan's wry sense of humor, which Ewan McGregor obviously tried valiantly to save despite some of his mediocre lines) was completely missing in the film. When Grievous said, "I was trained by Count Dooku himself!" (or similar) I braced myself to smile at Obi-Wan's reply, "Well, I trained the man who killed him." And then, it simply wasn't there.
You do know that Live is no longer a unique feature, right? And hell, it seems very likely that Nintendo's first party games will be free to play. Free is less than $80.
Halo 2? If you play the best, shouldn't you be playing Goldeneye or something? Maybe Timesplitters 2. Halo 2 isn't the best, it's just the most hyped. And how newthe game is has nothing to do with how fun it is to play.
Whoa, er, wait a second. Is that supposed to be a GOOD thing? 1% failure rate is pretty high, considering that I've never seen a GameCube fail, played daily or not.
It would be nice, yes. In fact, if I were Sega (pretending Sega isn't a huge company and is just one person, of course), I'd be easy to convince. "You really wanna support these upstarts, Sega? Come on, man, back in the day, you know, THE DAY! It was just you and me! We had sweet games, man! Everybody had us!"
Also, unlike reality, there would be no way in HELL that I'd ever make a game for a Sony system. Ever. In fact, I think most of my games would include Playstations as enemies.
I try, but I can't believe that a company who is deep, deep in the red on a project is doing a "wonderful job."
Ooh, ooh, and for it's father, the Saturn...
Yeah, uh, what the hell are you talking about? If you're talking about Nintendo, they only show actual graphics, no FMV. But...I really don't even know if that IS what you're talking about.
I don't think they plan on doing it that way. One of the reasons they were so hesitant to have an online service is that they didn't want to charge a fee for it.
I use Firefox, but I'm constantly on the edge of switching to Opera just to keep my system resources under control. In the last week, I've had Firefox's memory usage cap 200MB with no tabs open and I've had it's CPU usage ride near 100% for five minutes (till I shut it down) with no tabs open. Opera never does these things. Even when Firefox is performing 'normally' I still find that it uses far more resources than Opera does.
Firefox's current performance makes it impossible to, say, leave it open while I play WoW, despite that fact that there are a great many situations in which I would want to do so. Looking up info, killing time without logging out of the game, reading HTML docs while setting up game addons...
I will acknowledge that the GCN controller is bad for fighters, due to the configuration. I'll also acknowledge that the L and R buttons are sometimes used improperly...that's incredibly annoying. While the face button placement really doesn't slow me down, forcing me through all 256 levels of sensitivity to get to the click at the end does.
Actually, they said it had nothing to do with touch screens.
Well, since you expressed you opinion, my turn, heh. I actually think the Dual Shock is the WORST out of the current gen controllers, assuming we use the newer XBox one.
Reasons are as follows. The tiny handles make my hands hurt after only 20 minutes or so. Reaching for the left thumbstick is not at all comfortable, and I find the seperated D-pad difficult to use. I can't and never will remember which button is which. I will always need to look at the controller every time I need to press anything other than Triangle. It's on the top!!! I remember that one because it makes sense. The triangle looks like an up-pointing arrow, so it's on the top. It's nice to have four shoulder buttons, I suppose, but I can never remember which of THOSE is which, either. 1 and 2 are not meaningful, damn you! It's even harder to look at those than to look at the face-buttons!
By comparison, it's incredibly easy to remember where each button on the GC is. I have no problem reaching any of the buttons, with the exception of the Z button. (Incidentally, it was added at the begging of developers. Which developers? I've yet to play a game where it serves a meaningful function!) The L and R buttons are incredible for any game that has a good use for them.
The only company I trust to actually tell me what their systems can do is Nintendo. The reason? They've earned it. I've never seen a misleading statement from N when it comes to their hardware capabilities. Remember that incredibly impressive Zelda demo back when the GameCube was unveiled? Well, Twilight Princess looks even prettier than that did.
Microsoft's claims I take with a grain of salt. Whwnever Sony says something, well, at least I can be absolutely positive that they're lying.
Since when is having some people hate your profitable product a 'problem'?
Here's my speculation:
First, realize that they surely plan to make all announcements well before XBox launches. None of the competing hardware will be in any living rooms.
Now, I maintain that E3 is a bad place to build hype. Sure, you have to compete simply to get coverage, that much is obvious. But moreover, you will be more directly compared to the competition, and more harshly. Usually, you system will not be the best at every single thing. With Nintendo, they don't give as big numbers. (This is partially because they're, you know, honest.) Sony gives massive numbers, even though they often have no basis in reality. Nintendo doesn't want any focus on numbers, it doesn't work for their marketting and it doesn't fit their philosophy.
I'd expect that they would want to wait until they can get full media coverage, and not be missed. They want to have a meaningful amount of gameplay footage available, both theirs and Sony's, to take away the larger-than-reality difference that numbers can imply.
They've done this in the past. The GameCube unveiling stood all on its own at SpaceWorld.
The real reason that this seems to be the truth, though, is that there's simply no other reason for them to be so quiet. I would say that things are now advanced enough that they can let out any secrets. Sony, and certainly Microsoft, don't have time to incorporate them into their plans. If they have games underway, it's not as if they don't have prototype controllers available. They certainly KNOW what they have to announce, it's not as if they haven't decided on things yet. Iwata, at least, was clearly aware of what kinds of functionality he was hinting at.
Playing antique games is a novelty, NOT a major selling point! It's like having a Video Camera that also plays back mp3s
What if you wanted a camera, and also had use for an MP3 player? This is not a 'novelty.' The Micro is, essentially by Nintendo's own admission, a novelty. But I would consider such backwards compatibility quite the feature. Assuming everything pans out, I WILL be buying a Revolution, and I WILL be using it to play old games.
You use the word 'antique' as if the games aren't fun anymore. The correct term is 'classics.' If you disagree, I don't believe that you've ever played these games.