If anybody could do a worse job than SOE, it's LucasArts. LucasArts has a long track record of being their own worst enemy. All of their licenses have gone on to do better things than their own efforts. If the author wrote that last sentence as a jab at SOE, they failed miserably. There are better things to bitch and moan about than SW:G.
Seriously, get an 8600 with whatever the best graphics card they offer now happens to be. You can find coupons at get a 1.6 or 1.7 centrino at a pretty decent price. You will be more than happy. It runs Farcry better than my desktop (which is a p4-2.8ghz with a gig of ram). And their warranty is just icing.
Every single new system that is to be released has at least one article accompanying it that says 'may be hurt by lack of games at launch.' Even if 2 of 5 games are killer apps. When Gamecube was launched we saw the articles that said, "BUT NINTENDO HAS NO THIRD PARTY DEVELOPERS. OH NOES!" When Playstation was released we saw the articles that said, "Will the playstation be able to hold it's own against Nintendo and Sega? Will the lackluster release be enough?" When Dreamcast was launched...bad example. When XBox was launched we saw this same article (albeit for different reasons). But then Halo was released, all was forgiven. Seriously, this isn't news. This is just typical speculation of the cutthroat industry that is gaming.
Ironically enough, I don't remember seeing these articles for the Virtual Boy.
It sucks for the game because the person who bought the level 245 Necromancer Dark Elf Paladin is skipping the majority of the world that the developers put their blood, sweat and tears into.
It sucks for the players (not all of them) but the ones he might interact with because having skipped the majority of the game, in all likelihood, doesn't know shit about the game and will wreck nothing but newbie havok upon those stupid enough to group with him.
MMOGs are a game, yes. But it's also a type of business that relies on player retention. When someone skips from the beginning to the end the chance of retention is probably dropped about 90% because the only thing the player will take part in is the endgame.
The person who played 20 hours a week may very well have catassed his way up there. But I can guarantee you he'll generate more free PR through word of mouth than the guy who dropped his wad on a pre-leveled character.
"So basically, we're out $3000, or about 70% of our profits since January. And to be completely honest, it hurts."
Sorry, you sir need to get into a new business. The one you are currently in sucks for you, sucks for the game, and sucks for the people playing the games. MMORPG's are NOT a job. People who are spending real money for in-game advantage through third parties should be shot in the street for being so stupid.
That said, you're an idiot for using PayPal. Blame yourself, not the person that caught you with your pants down.
'Think Different' was an Ok ad-campaign when MacOS was actually better than Windows95/98. But in the age of XP and 2000, you'd be lucky to get such stability from an OSX machine.
Heh, as interesting as this is to me, and really - it is - shouldn't the idea be - make better games, get more male and female gamers? I mean, EVERYONE likes to have fun, from the poor kid down the street with one of those second edition Nintendos to the upper class catholic schoolgirl only child who got her choice of two cars when she turned 16. Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?'
Doesn't seem to make sense to me. But what do I know, I have a penis.
If he'd read the goddamn company web site he would have seen that they boast, and I quote:
"Over 30,000 Polygons per location"
Don't talk to us about the wonders of the adventure games of yore. Especially after you haven't looked at the goddamn reference material linked in the article.
Jesus christ, go boot up your 386 and play some Kings Quest 3.
We make jokes, but truth be told, Sex Sells. There's no two ways about it. For every 5 ubergeeks on slashdot that make fun of this, there are five girls or erhm...guys getting off in japan that don't care what lewd subtle jokes you may be making.
The video conferencing thing with people over xbox live is nice, though I worry it may be absolutely shitty quality. What is that? Four other people on the screen at once, in live video from four different places? That's a lot of throughput, unless the rez is like 60x40.
As in, I have my own board, stones, etc. I have played numerous games, but am horribly amateur. This is besides the point though, I've read a lot about Go, it's history, etc. And I find myself confused - what's the point of slapping a graph on a 3 dimensional object and calling it a Go Board?
Because I'll clue you in, just because it has the rules of Go, doesn't mean it is Go. This is the result of boredom and a little too much use of artistic license.
You're not playing Go on a mobius strip, you're playing something else on a Mobius strip with the same rules. Feh.
I know about a billion Chinese people who would mod this as +5, insightful, but I have a feeling I'm going to get -1, flamebait. Enjoy.
Sega tried this. Remember the dreamcast erhmmm the 32x and THEN the dreamcast?
Remember the CD-i? Remember the 3D0? Remember the Atari Jaguar?
These weren't experimental systems. They were meant to beat the big guys to the punch, whether it was Nintendo or Sega back then.
The Dreamcast (still my favorite recent gen system) got trashed by the ps1 and the n64. It keeps me up at night thinking about how much better games for the Dreamcast would have been.
However, if I remember correctly, the PS2 was launched a year before the GC and the Xbox....Hmmmm, no one was naysaying when Sony was planning on doing that, and look at them now - on top by a large margin.
XBox shooting themselves in the foot? Not if they have Ninja Gaiden, a Halo spinoff and other stuff coming out. Oh and backwards compatibility, they NEED backwards compatibility, no matter HOW HARD it is. I'd put some cash, money, hoes on that being the reason the PS2 succeeded as quickly as it did.
That's funny, because like, just 2 days ago I could've sworn that there was an article about the death of PDA's.
I can't wait for my refrigerator to have a toaster, speakerphone, tv, and real doll embedded in the doors.
Who pays these people to make blanket statements like this. What do I have to do to get a job like that? I can get a Harvard Diploma online for $10, kk?
Nintendo is one tough console to code for, am i rite?
Seriously, of everything I've read, Nintendo with their notoriously proprietary systems and odd technical specifications are not an easy company to deal with when making games. Their installed gamerbase does make it worthwhile to license their dev kits though.
I'm still waiting for the day Nintendo just stops making homes consoles and focuses on the portable market (and subsequently dominates it. Forever.) and makes 1st party games for the PS2 and XBox (or whatever other system roles around, eerhmm maaf d excluding the Phantom).
This guy wants $100,000 US for this? Ok, so it's a serious collection worth serious money. Perhaps he should've realized that 'spelling' is important on something like this. For $100k I want the seller to understand business, he's likely never to come across money like this again. So let's just get this straight - there is no such system as the "Sega Deramcast."
Some of you might say "with that collection he can spell everything however he wants." I'm sorry, but when you ask for that much money for ANYTHING, you can not make yourself look like a first grade jackass.
...with some software. I mean, look at it this way, a LOT of R&D and coding time can go into a piece of software and who better to fix the bugs and modify (in a positive manner) than the public. In addition to the fact that it won't cost the government shit to let the public find all the holes and patch them up so they don't have to [spend money doing so themselves].
So I guess the cliche applies here: 1. Government Funded GPL project 2. Unleash on public 3. ??? 4. Profit!
Whether this is good or not, someone, within 30 comments of this post will post a jab at Bush.
Seriously though, these aren't new formats, they just took longer to catch on - I'm honestly surprised SACD is still around given the name branding of DVD-Audio. But I digress, these formats aren't new, computer companies are just getting around to supporting them and people are just getting around to buying them.
Heh, that doesn't sound very much like a PDA. It sounds more like a medical appliance. I know I'm just picking nits, but when something is changed to accomodate the needs of a specific industry, it ceases to function in it's role for the general public. So the article is still correct; PDAs are dead.
To understand why arcade games became a dead pasttime in America, you have to understand why they are so popular in Japan. It's quite simple actually.
Japan is condensed. Children over there like to rebel against their parents, get out of the house, and partake in some escapism and vices. What's better than beer, cigarettes, and arcade machines? Having them all in one centralized place where all of your friends can meet up. With the popularity of more social/active games rising (DDR, Beatmania, Donkey Konga, etc) - it's no wonder why arcades are so popular over here.
The inverse of the arcade's rise to popularity in Japan explains why they just fell apart here:
1. They are usually targeted at younger kids, i.e. kids who have $5, and that's it, cuz their mom is shoe shopping next door and doesn't trust the kid to not go off with a stranger and be kidnapped. 2. Arcades in the 80's were a haven for the 'geek' archetype. Once people could play games in their own home (most of which were better than the arcade variant), the geeks started staying at home. We're anti-social, am i rite? 3. Dave and Buster's is aiming for the Japanese style arcade where smoking, drinking, and social gaming rules the roost. Unfortunately they card you at the front door. So if you're under 21 without a parent you can't get in, so they don't get the foot traffic a regular non-smoking, non-alcohol-serving arcade gets.
Well, not really. Companies were making laptops smaller and smaller upon the release of the centrino chip thereby rendering the wimpy (by comparison) PDAs obsolete. But that wasn't really the final nail in the coffin - mobile phone manufactures kept upping the resolution on cell phones screens while increasing their size centimeter by centimeter. The result is a mobile phone that can store all your necessary info in one pocket, and computers that you had no reason not to take on lunch break and inbetween home and work.
PDAs were a gimmick, nothing more. No matter how shiny they got, and no matter how many I owned (which amounted to 3 at one point, a palm V, a palm Vx, and one of those ridiculous Sony Clie jobbers) they still couldn't replace the ease of use a cell phone provided me.
Gaming on them was a horrific joke as well. What with the release of the PSP on the horizon and my Gameboy SP charging next to me through USB, the PDAs of the world were simply replaced by superior technology.
This happens to fads. I don't see many people wearing 'hammer pants' anymore, despite the fact they provided the same use as any other pair of pants.
++ I make no apologies for the run-on sentences contained above.
Slashdot Mirror
If anybody could do a worse job than SOE, it's LucasArts. LucasArts has a long track record of being their own worst enemy. All of their licenses have gone on to do better things than their own efforts. If the author wrote that last sentence as a jab at SOE, they failed miserably. There are better things to bitch and moan about than SW:G.
Video Game reviews are controversial? What?
Dude, you're getting a dell.
Seriously, get an 8600 with whatever the best graphics card they offer now happens to be. You can find coupons at get a 1.6 or 1.7 centrino at a pretty decent price. You will be more than happy. It runs Farcry better than my desktop (which is a p4-2.8ghz with a gig of ram). And their warranty is just icing.
I haven't the slightest clue what that mean, +5 funneh! The holder of the biggest, geekiest wang is you!
Every single new system that is to be released has at least one article accompanying it that says 'may be hurt by lack of games at launch.' Even if 2 of 5 games are killer apps. When Gamecube was launched we saw the articles that said, "BUT NINTENDO HAS NO THIRD PARTY DEVELOPERS. OH NOES!" When Playstation was released we saw the articles that said, "Will the playstation be able to hold it's own against Nintendo and Sega? Will the lackluster release be enough?" When Dreamcast was launched...bad example. When XBox was launched we saw this same article (albeit for different reasons). But then Halo was released, all was forgiven. Seriously, this isn't news. This is just typical speculation of the cutthroat industry that is gaming.
Ironically enough, I don't remember seeing these articles for the Virtual Boy.
--
schild
editor, f13.net
It sucks for the game because the person who bought the level 245 Necromancer Dark Elf Paladin is skipping the majority of the world that the developers put their blood, sweat and tears into.
It sucks for the players (not all of them) but the ones he might interact with because having skipped the majority of the game, in all likelihood, doesn't know shit about the game and will wreck nothing but newbie havok upon those stupid enough to group with him.
MMOGs are a game, yes. But it's also a type of business that relies on player retention. When someone skips from the beginning to the end the chance of retention is probably dropped about 90% because the only thing the player will take part in is the endgame.
The person who played 20 hours a week may very well have catassed his way up there. But I can guarantee you he'll generate more free PR through word of mouth than the guy who dropped his wad on a pre-leveled character.
Doesn't sound like you play MMOGs much.
From the thread:
"So basically, we're out $3000, or about 70% of our profits since January. And to be completely honest, it hurts."
Sorry, you sir need to get into a new business. The one you are currently in sucks for you, sucks for the game, and sucks for the people playing the games. MMORPG's are NOT a job. People who are spending real money for in-game advantage through third parties should be shot in the street for being so stupid.
That said, you're an idiot for using PayPal. Blame yourself, not the person that caught you with your pants down.
Uh, dude, 'principles' don't pay the bills.
'Think Different' was an Ok ad-campaign when MacOS was actually better than Windows95/98. But in the age of XP and 2000, you'd be lucky to get such stability from an OSX machine.
Apple could really use a sale like this.
-1,FLAMEBAIT, ROCK.
Heh, as interesting as this is to me, and really - it is - shouldn't the idea be - make better games, get more male and female gamers? I mean, EVERYONE likes to have fun, from the poor kid down the street with one of those second edition Nintendos to the upper class catholic schoolgirl only child who got her choice of two cars when she turned 16. Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?'
Doesn't seem to make sense to me. But what do I know, I have a penis.
Who modded this guy up?
If he'd read the goddamn company web site he would have seen that they boast, and I quote:
"Over 30,000 Polygons per location"
Don't talk to us about the wonders of the adventure games of yore. Especially after you haven't looked at the goddamn reference material linked in the article.
Jesus christ, go boot up your 386 and play some Kings Quest 3.
We make jokes, but truth be told, Sex Sells. There's no two ways about it. For every 5 ubergeeks on slashdot that make fun of this, there are five girls or erhm...guys getting off in japan that don't care what lewd subtle jokes you may be making.
The video conferencing thing with people over xbox live is nice, though I worry it may be absolutely shitty quality. What is that? Four other people on the screen at once, in live video from four different places? That's a lot of throughput, unless the rez is like 60x40.
As in, I have my own board, stones, etc. I have played numerous games, but am horribly amateur. This is besides the point though, I've read a lot about Go, it's history, etc. And I find myself confused - what's the point of slapping a graph on a 3 dimensional object and calling it a Go Board?
Because I'll clue you in, just because it has the rules of Go, doesn't mean it is Go. This is the result of boredom and a little too much use of artistic license.
You're not playing Go on a mobius strip, you're playing something else on a Mobius strip with the same rules. Feh.
I know about a billion Chinese people who would mod this as +5, insightful, but I have a feeling I'm going to get -1, flamebait. Enjoy.
Sega tried this. Remember the dreamcast erhmmm the 32x and THEN the dreamcast?
Remember the CD-i?
Remember the 3D0?
Remember the Atari Jaguar?
These weren't experimental systems. They were meant to beat the big guys to the punch, whether it was Nintendo or Sega back then.
The Dreamcast (still my favorite recent gen system) got trashed by the ps1 and the n64. It keeps me up at night thinking about how much better games for the Dreamcast would have been.
However, if I remember correctly, the PS2 was launched a year before the GC and the Xbox....Hmmmm, no one was naysaying when Sony was planning on doing that, and look at them now - on top by a large margin.
XBox shooting themselves in the foot? Not if they have Ninja Gaiden, a Halo spinoff and other stuff coming out. Oh and backwards compatibility, they NEED backwards compatibility, no matter HOW HARD it is. I'd put some cash, money, hoes on that being the reason the PS2 succeeded as quickly as it did.
Does someone pay people to come up with stupid shit like this?
This won't end well.
I'm not reading all these comments, but let me just say:
8 hours is enough time for me to copy 30 dvds between my computers. It's time for the MPAA (and France) to go back to the drawing board. OR JUST STOP.
Movie based games are utter shite.
Movie INSPIRED games tend to be good.
That's funny, because like, just 2 days ago I could've sworn that there was an article about the death of PDA's.
I can't wait for my refrigerator to have a toaster, speakerphone, tv, and real doll embedded in the doors.
Who pays these people to make blanket statements like this. What do I have to do to get a job like that? I can get a Harvard Diploma online for $10, kk?
Nintendo is one tough console to code for, am i rite?
Seriously, of everything I've read, Nintendo with their notoriously proprietary systems and odd technical specifications are not an easy company to deal with when making games. Their installed gamerbase does make it worthwhile to license their dev kits though.
I'm still waiting for the day Nintendo just stops making homes consoles and focuses on the portable market (and subsequently dominates it. Forever.) and makes 1st party games for the PS2 and XBox (or whatever other system roles around, eerhmm maaf d excluding the Phantom).
Though, I could be absolutely insane.
This guy wants $100,000 US for this? Ok, so it's a serious collection worth serious money. Perhaps he should've realized that 'spelling' is important on something like this. For $100k I want the seller to understand business, he's likely never to come across money like this again. So let's just get this straight - there is no such system as the "Sega Deramcast."
Some of you might say "with that collection he can spell everything however he wants." I'm sorry, but when you ask for that much money for ANYTHING, you can not make yourself look like a first grade jackass.
And yes, the pictures are quite 'purdy.'
...with some software. I mean, look at it this way, a LOT of R&D and coding time can go into a piece of software and who better to fix the bugs and modify (in a positive manner) than the public. In addition to the fact that it won't cost the government shit to let the public find all the holes and patch them up so they don't have to [spend money doing so themselves].
So I guess the cliche applies here:
1. Government Funded GPL project
2. Unleash on public
3. ???
4. Profit!
Whether this is good or not, someone, within 30 comments of this post will post a jab at Bush.
No, your opinion, it is wrong.
Record -> 8-track -> tape -> cd -> hdcd (or whatever that was) -> SACD, DVD-Audio, and the 500,000 different kinds of computer compressed audio files.
So I have to wonder, what the hell are you talking about with this global format nonsense?
Oh, by new you mean 3 years old. My mistake.
Seriously though, these aren't new formats, they just took longer to catch on - I'm honestly surprised SACD is still around given the name branding of DVD-Audio. But I digress, these formats aren't new, computer companies are just getting around to supporting them and people are just getting around to buying them.
Heh, that doesn't sound very much like a PDA. It sounds more like a medical appliance. I know I'm just picking nits, but when something is changed to accomodate the needs of a specific industry, it ceases to function in it's role for the general public. So the article is still correct; PDAs are dead.
To understand why arcade games became a dead pasttime in America, you have to understand why they are so popular in Japan. It's quite simple actually.
Japan is condensed. Children over there like to rebel against their parents, get out of the house, and partake in some escapism and vices. What's better than beer, cigarettes, and arcade machines? Having them all in one centralized place where all of your friends can meet up. With the popularity of more social/active games rising (DDR, Beatmania, Donkey Konga, etc) - it's no wonder why arcades are so popular over here.
The inverse of the arcade's rise to popularity in Japan explains why they just fell apart here:
1. They are usually targeted at younger kids, i.e. kids who have $5, and that's it, cuz their mom is shoe shopping next door and doesn't trust the kid to not go off with a stranger and be kidnapped.
2. Arcades in the 80's were a haven for the 'geek' archetype. Once people could play games in their own home (most of which were better than the arcade variant), the geeks started staying at home. We're anti-social, am i rite?
3. Dave and Buster's is aiming for the Japanese style arcade where smoking, drinking, and social gaming rules the roost. Unfortunately they card you at the front door. So if you're under 21 without a parent you can't get in, so they don't get the foot traffic a regular non-smoking, non-alcohol-serving arcade gets.
If you are skimming this I'll sum it up shortly:
American Arcades suck.
Well, not really. Companies were making laptops smaller and smaller upon the release of the centrino chip thereby rendering the wimpy (by comparison) PDAs obsolete. But that wasn't really the final nail in the coffin - mobile phone manufactures kept upping the resolution on cell phones screens while increasing their size centimeter by centimeter. The result is a mobile phone that can store all your necessary info in one pocket, and computers that you had no reason not to take on lunch break and inbetween home and work.
PDAs were a gimmick, nothing more. No matter how shiny they got, and no matter how many I owned (which amounted to 3 at one point, a palm V, a palm Vx, and one of those ridiculous Sony Clie jobbers) they still couldn't replace the ease of use a cell phone provided me.
Gaming on them was a horrific joke as well. What with the release of the PSP on the horizon and my Gameboy SP charging next to me through USB, the PDAs of the world were simply replaced by superior technology.
This happens to fads. I don't see many people wearing 'hammer pants' anymore, despite the fact they provided the same use as any other pair of pants.
++
I make no apologies for the run-on sentences contained above.