I play for a couple of hours on my two days off, and otherwise will run outside on my lunch break to use the sun driver if I happen to be purifying a boss.
Just an hour or two a week is more than enough to charge up the solar battery in the game a lot. Plus, the sun bank will give 12% interest on what you store with them;)
The sun certainly makes the game more engaging. I like it a lot more than I liked Metal Gear GBC.
And, yea, Disgaea's waiting until I'm in a Tactics mood. I'm replaying Metal Gear Solid in prep for GCN Metal Gear:)
It's not just friendly, it can be great for team building and morale too.
Playing a practical joke once in a while isn't a sign of not enough work -- it's a sign of a good group of workers who like each other, and have a good sense of each other. The team that plays together stays together, you know?
Both don't play DVDs. Just today, I had someone ask me if they'll ever come out with "a DVD playing hookup" for the GameCube.
Most people don't know or care that console DVD playback is about the same or worse than a 60$ DVD player you can get at Wal-Mart. It's just another feature to add on the game system they want to buy.
"Can you give *any* supported arguments that back up your implication that the Gamecube is going the way of the Dreamcast?"
Let's see: continuing plummeting prices, 3rd parties dropping support, innovative games and ideas that don't come out anywhere else and are ignored by the Madden buying, Grand Theft Auto loving masses.. no DVD playback, millions of units shipped, and a widespread expectation of failure.
Frankly, the GameCube's best feature is also its worst feature -- the games that come out for it. Pikmin, Billy Hatcher, etc, are neat, innovative games that just don't exist anywhere else. So were Shenmue, Space Channel 5, and Chu Chu Rocket.
Dreamcast was with us for 2 christmas seasons. The launch season, and the 2000 season. Sega axed it in early 2001 and officially had it dead by fall (at least in North America). GameCube has hung on -- it had its launch christmas of 2001, and survived 2002 on the strength of all the key Nintendo titles that were released. 2003 christmas looms -- it's not going to be as crazy as last year, but it's going to be a deciding factor in Nintendo's 2004 big announcement.
It might just be that Nintendo takes a while longer to go the way of Sega, and even bigger profits from being third party.. maybe. How many copies of Wind Waker would've sold if Nintendo had released it on the PS2? We're talking numbers that'd make EA's yearly sports drop look small.
Single proccessor systems are the most common, and always will be. There are millions of millions of them out there.
Dual proc and quad proc systems are also semi-common, but usually only in server scenarios. The best ratio you'll ever see on them is probably around 50 to 1 -- 1 quad CPU server, 50 uni CPU clients.
Each time you move up, you get diminished returns. At what point do you go, "hey, making Linux scale more is causing a detriment to our single-CPU millions, and we're spending man years going from 512 CPUs to 1024 CPUs -- is it worth it?"
I'm sure Irix is great for 1024 CPU installs, because SGI sells the hardware and has no problem charging an arm and a leg for the software needed to run it. After all, if you're on the market for a 1024 CPU nuclear fission simulation computer, you can't really go and grab just anything off the shelf to do it on.
The Linux community won't gain anything if we go to the point where 16 or more CPUs is something the kernel can do easily. How many of us own these systems? How many of us can develop and bugtest on these systems? How complex will the kernel locking on all the subsystems become in that setup? When is Linux scaled too much?
If I'm a home user, or even a user who only uses 10-20gb a month, the extra latency from the 5 people who combined push ~500gb a month through the pipe will make my websurfing, online gaming, and VoIP stuff not-fun. Untill we're all using IPv6 and I can rely on QoS fixing problems, there's no way I can live with 5 people ruining the service for the other hundreds of people.
Accidently chose "Funny" instead of "Overrated" on your ludicrous post. While it's funny that you could post that Peter Moore was NOA (maybe you're thinking of Howard Lincoln), when he used to work for Sega, it's also a bunch of useless crap.
"Are you saying that M$ has to keep Halo expensive (for whatever reason)?"
Until Microsoft can come up with some more first-party titles that fail to suck, they need to keep the one they do have expensive.
Nintendo has lots of great first-party titles: Smash Bros, Mario Party series, Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, etc, etc, etc. I can name at least 10 titles that have come and gone on the 'Cube. What awesome MS titles have you soon on the Xbox?
Halo? Yea, and maybe Mech Assault too.. Fuzion Frenzy? Blinx? Brute Force? Any XSN Sports game? Come now, those aren't even in the same league.
It's the same problem Sony has: Dark Cloud 2 is neat, as is the Getaway, but flops like Amplitude, Primal, and Downhill Domination don't cut it. Sony doesn't have a strong 1st or 2nd party presence the same as MS doesn't. The thing is that MS doesn't have really cool 3rd party exclusives like Sony does, so they can't afford to make their only cool flagship title budget priced -- despite how well it's selling -- until they bring out Halo 2.
Within a week of Halo 2 being out, Halo 1 will have an MSRP of 19.99 USD. Watch for it, kids!
"Consoles. Lucasarts made it big on the PC. It has made good money from a loyal fanbase. So what does it do to reward us and continue the good relations? Develop console only games. Grrr."
Whine, whine, whine, "I can't get my games, woe is me, I shall now cry pathetically on Slashdot."
You ignore that they made a lot of PC-only cames. Oh, how shall I ever forgive that Lucasarts because I can't get the early Monkey Island or Grim Fandango games on my favourite console?
Game developers develop for the audience they think will provide the most revenue, pure and simple. They don't put games just on consoles to spite the high and mighty SmallFurryCreature -- they do it because there is interest and demand for console Lucasarts games (despite their sub-par record with games recently).
Or perhaps you're just bitter because Xbox got KOTOR months before the PC did. If so, rest well knowing that you got Jedi Academy a couple of months before the Xbox version.
Whinning about how good a game is if only you had the console for it just proves you didn't care enough about the game -- otherwise you'd have bought it and played it.
For shame, that 32-byte key will be the end of inumerable Xbox controllers!
Seriously, though, you seem to have forgotten that a bit is 1/8th of a byte, which would be 1 character you type in via the keyboard.
I'd be more worried that your keyspace will be restricted since Xbox Live!'s little keyboard will only let you enter a-zA-Z0-9 and some punctuation (instead of a full range of nul to char 255).
"I never have to wait on an asshole at a green light because they are putting in a CD."
I'd prefer that a person return to the full upright position with both hands on the wheel, even if I wait a second or two at a green light, rather than have them speed off into traffic partially hunched over and with only one hand on the wheel.
Most drivers are lax in their attention while on the road, and it's very dangerous. Any time you do not have both hands on the wheel and are not scanning is a time when an accident is going to happen. You only have 400ms to react, and the time it takes to process + understand something is usually around 200ms -- assuming you're giving 3 seconds following distance.
Nintendo is working towards producing games that have an easy enough control scheme, but contain a great depth of gameplay (good examples of such games are Ico, Pikmin, Monkey Ball, Animal Crossing).
It's a good decision because gaming won't be free of people who decry its "violence" and won't be free of stygmatization until it's at least as mainstream as movies. Nintendo revived gaming in North America. Sony made it 3D. Now Nintendo is trying to make the initial barrier less so more people can game.
"The Gnome-panel bug is a new one for me; filing a bug report would likely be very appreciated by the devels."
I have this happen as well. I've also had specific applets crash (notably the pager area one) on exit. There's no way to get cores or tracebacks for it, since Gnome will not abort shutdown if it detects an error like this.
Essentially, we all know it's there, but are unable to reproduce it without shutting down, or get more information during the shut down process.
"So far, North America is the biggest territory in which Halo hasn't been bundled, ever."
Do you know what an Xbox Adrenaline pack is? It's a bundle of 1 Xbox system, 1 Controller S, 1 copy of Amped, and 1 copy of Halo for an MSRP of 279.99 Canadian.
You're either ignorant that Canada has Adrenaline packs, or you willfully don't include Canada in your view North America (27 million people can be wrong!;)). Either way, you should do research on what you post on Slashdot before posting it.
You're not ignorant of the fact that Microsoft's more than happy to keep selling Halo at a higher MSRP than most first-gen titles. I don't think you'll see Halo go Platinum Hits until Halo 2 is out -- Microsoft can't afford to have its own home-grown title that's universally well known selling at budget prices unless it has another title to back it up. Besides, as you point out, Halo still sells well at its current price. With the constant perception that the GameCube is a system only for younger people, Microsoft has to keep Halo expensive in the US so they can keep their older demographic happy.
"Actually what you need to do is buy used CDs -- the RIAA doesn't see a dime from those sales. That way you can have your music and stick your tongue out at the RIAA at the same time."
I know it's been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: by purchasing used music, you are increasing the demand for used music. This makes it easier for people who buy new music from the RIAA to resell their music when they are done with it, thus indirectly increasing their new music consumption.
If you wish to annoy the RIAA and listen to music, either pirate it (which will get you sued and is illegal), or properly boycott it by spending your money on a more beneficial industry such as video gaming.
"LOGICALLY, I should have every right to share, without any finical gain, media in my pocession with whomever I wish."
Except that without any actual media to share, you're suddenly in position of being a content mass duplicator and distributor without permission of the original producer. That's illegal.
Do you agree with the statement, "a system is awesome based on its specs, not the games that are available"?
If you don't agree, you're not a retard.
The original poster you replied to does seem to have a bit too much nostalgia, but you seem to ignore the games part of the argument. I'm just pointing out the obvious flaws in your statement.
Besides, little example arguments that are completely made up to only prove one point (given that they are so far from reality as to not apply to reality) are crap. They only cloud the issue and distract from the real logic flaws in the part of the argument that applies to real life.
"I was refuting this by saying that if a handheld were released where all others things were equal but the graphic capabilities of this new handheld were equal to the PS2, the more capable model would sell well."
Besides that being a complete crap statement because it would not exist in real life (being that there would be no way that two such systems could exist differening only in graphics capability and not in cost or availability), the fact of the matter is games are the only measure of a system. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until you retards understand it. I don't play the Dolby Digital on an Xbox any more than I play the PS2 DVD movie feature -- they're just features, entirely tangental to wether there are games worth playing on the damn console!
You can make a SuperDuperGameWhiz9000 which claims 7.1 audio, ultraD mega-defitition cornea vision graphics, and pants-shittingly good controllers that also have the ability to bend time -- but without a game to play on it that's worth anything, your console will sell nowhere near as well as the original NES because people buy game consoles to play games, not to wank off to a set of static features in a brochure.
I also reassert: if Nintendo ever went to the trouble of putting TV out and a power adapter in with the GBA player + a controller and sold it for ~100$ CDN, it would sell. Parents would have no problem buying it for the kids, because it would be inexpensive and judged to be easier for the younger ones. When you make your coke-head examples where market forces like these don't exist, you only prove your ignorance of the game market.
"If I leave my car unlocked in a bad neighborhood, does that make me a felon if my car gets stolen?....
Then why are the people hosting files on the Internet getting sued for having files available for download?"
Availability. If you are a person who's handing out drugs to 12-year-olds, if you're leaving guns laying around, if you're leaving bottles of whiskey on your passenger side seat -- in all cases you are the agent by which something considered negative is happening.
In this case, it's considered negative to content creators to have their content distributed without their consent. By making them available to download, you are no different than people in Hong Kong who hawk copies of DVDs and music which haven't been officially released yet. Yes, you aren't charging anything, but you are dilluting its value by making it available without control. You damage the value of the rights which control the content as much as if you were on a Hong Kong street corner yourself.
Maybe if you'd look at things logically, instead of trying to fop off an illegal activity as legit, you'd see this.
I don't share copyrighted material on P2P networks because it's wrong. I do not have permission to distribute, disseminate, or otherwise share something unless I own the entire rights to it. If I do not respect this, how would I expect other people to respect these rights in regards to content I create (specifically, my writting and GPL programs which all fall under the same copyright law)?
Slashdot Mirror
I play for a couple of hours on my two days off, and otherwise will run outside on my lunch break to use the sun driver if I happen to be purifying a boss.
;)
:)
Just an hour or two a week is more than enough to charge up the solar battery in the game a lot. Plus, the sun bank will give 12% interest on what you store with them
The sun certainly makes the game more engaging. I like it a lot more than I liked Metal Gear GBC.
And, yea, Disgaea's waiting until I'm in a Tactics mood. I'm replaying Metal Gear Solid in prep for GCN Metal Gear
"A gamer is someone who would, say, post messages in a Slashdot Games forum to debate the finer points of speech given by a Nintendo executive. =)"
:)
;)
No, because the gamer would be too busy outside playing Boktai until the sun goes down -- at which point they would swap to Disgaea
The person arguing about stuff on Slashdot clearly doesn't have enough games
It's not just friendly, it can be great for team building and morale too.
Playing a practical joke once in a while isn't a sign of not enough work -- it's a sign of a good group of workers who like each other, and have a good sense of each other. The team that plays together stays together, you know?
They scoffed, since 450$ USD is about 7 times what a GCN costs. They could easily buy that and an Xbox or PS2 and be happy.
Both don't play DVDs. Just today, I had someone ask me if they'll ever come out with "a DVD playing hookup" for the GameCube.
Most people don't know or care that console DVD playback is about the same or worse than a 60$ DVD player you can get at Wal-Mart. It's just another feature to add on the game system they want to buy.
"Can you give *any* supported arguments that back up your implication that the Gamecube is going the way of the Dreamcast?"
Let's see: continuing plummeting prices, 3rd parties dropping support, innovative games and ideas that don't come out anywhere else and are ignored by the Madden buying, Grand Theft Auto loving masses.. no DVD playback, millions of units shipped, and a widespread expectation of failure.
Frankly, the GameCube's best feature is also its worst feature -- the games that come out for it. Pikmin, Billy Hatcher, etc, are neat, innovative games that just don't exist anywhere else. So were Shenmue, Space Channel 5, and Chu Chu Rocket.
Dreamcast was with us for 2 christmas seasons. The launch season, and the 2000 season. Sega axed it in early 2001 and officially had it dead by fall (at least in North America). GameCube has hung on -- it had its launch christmas of 2001, and survived 2002 on the strength of all the key Nintendo titles that were released. 2003 christmas looms -- it's not going to be as crazy as last year, but it's going to be a deciding factor in Nintendo's 2004 big announcement.
It might just be that Nintendo takes a while longer to go the way of Sega, and even bigger profits from being third party.. maybe. How many copies of Wind Waker would've sold if Nintendo had released it on the PS2? We're talking numbers that'd make EA's yearly sports drop look small.
Single proccessor systems are the most common, and always will be. There are millions of millions of them out there.
Dual proc and quad proc systems are also semi-common, but usually only in server scenarios. The best ratio you'll ever see on them is probably around 50 to 1 -- 1 quad CPU server, 50 uni CPU clients.
Each time you move up, you get diminished returns. At what point do you go, "hey, making Linux scale more is causing a detriment to our single-CPU millions, and we're spending man years going from 512 CPUs to 1024 CPUs -- is it worth it?"
I'm sure Irix is great for 1024 CPU installs, because SGI sells the hardware and has no problem charging an arm and a leg for the software needed to run it. After all, if you're on the market for a 1024 CPU nuclear fission simulation computer, you can't really go and grab just anything off the shelf to do it on.
The Linux community won't gain anything if we go to the point where 16 or more CPUs is something the kernel can do easily. How many of us own these systems? How many of us can develop and bugtest on these systems? How complex will the kernel locking on all the subsystems become in that setup? When is Linux scaled too much?
their plan has hit a snag; this ice shelf was in the arctic -- penguins live in the antarctic.
Poetic justice dispensed, once again, due to the evil empire running their own software.
That's why the defective PC games are exchanged discs-only -- no new boxes are handed out.
Because people like you are dishonest.
If I'm a home user, or even a user who only uses 10-20gb a month, the extra latency from the 5 people who combined push ~500gb a month through the pipe will make my websurfing, online gaming, and VoIP stuff not-fun. Untill we're all using IPv6 and I can rely on QoS fixing problems, there's no way I can live with 5 people ruining the service for the other hundreds of people.
The space shuttle!
Accidently chose "Funny" instead of "Overrated" on your ludicrous post. While it's funny that you could post that Peter Moore was NOA (maybe you're thinking of Howard Lincoln), when he used to work for Sega, it's also a bunch of useless crap.
"Are you saying that M$ has to keep Halo expensive (for whatever reason)?"
Until Microsoft can come up with some more first-party titles that fail to suck, they need to keep the one they do have expensive.
Nintendo has lots of great first-party titles: Smash Bros, Mario Party series, Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, etc, etc, etc. I can name at least 10 titles that have come and gone on the 'Cube. What awesome MS titles have you soon on the Xbox?
Halo? Yea, and maybe Mech Assault too.. Fuzion Frenzy? Blinx? Brute Force? Any XSN Sports game? Come now, those aren't even in the same league.
It's the same problem Sony has: Dark Cloud 2 is neat, as is the Getaway, but flops like Amplitude, Primal, and Downhill Domination don't cut it. Sony doesn't have a strong 1st or 2nd party presence the same as MS doesn't. The thing is that MS doesn't have really cool 3rd party exclusives like Sony does, so they can't afford to make their only cool flagship title budget priced -- despite how well it's selling -- until they bring out Halo 2.
Within a week of Halo 2 being out, Halo 1 will have an MSRP of 19.99 USD. Watch for it, kids!
"Consoles. Lucasarts made it big on the PC. It has made good money from a loyal fanbase. So what does it do to reward us and continue the good relations? Develop console only games. Grrr."
Whine, whine, whine, "I can't get my games, woe is me, I shall now cry pathetically on Slashdot."
You ignore that they made a lot of PC-only cames. Oh, how shall I ever forgive that Lucasarts because I can't get the early Monkey Island or Grim Fandango games on my favourite console?
Game developers develop for the audience they think will provide the most revenue, pure and simple. They don't put games just on consoles to spite the high and mighty SmallFurryCreature -- they do it because there is interest and demand for console Lucasarts games (despite their sub-par record with games recently).
Or perhaps you're just bitter because Xbox got KOTOR months before the PC did. If so, rest well knowing that you got Jedi Academy a couple of months before the Xbox version.
Whinning about how good a game is if only you had the console for it just proves you didn't care enough about the game -- otherwise you'd have bought it and played it.
Not 32 characters!
For shame, that 32-byte key will be the end of inumerable Xbox controllers!
Seriously, though, you seem to have forgotten that a bit is 1/8th of a byte, which would be 1 character you type in via the keyboard.
I'd be more worried that your keyspace will be restricted since Xbox Live!'s little keyboard will only let you enter a-zA-Z0-9 and some punctuation (instead of a full range of nul to char 255).
"I never have to wait on an asshole at a green light because they are putting in a CD."
I'd prefer that a person return to the full upright position with both hands on the wheel, even if I wait a second or two at a green light, rather than have them speed off into traffic partially hunched over and with only one hand on the wheel.
Most drivers are lax in their attention while on the road, and it's very dangerous. Any time you do not have both hands on the wheel and are not scanning is a time when an accident is going to happen. You only have 400ms to react, and the time it takes to process + understand something is usually around 200ms -- assuming you're giving 3 seconds following distance.
Nintendo is working towards producing games that have an easy enough control scheme, but contain a great depth of gameplay (good examples of such games are Ico, Pikmin, Monkey Ball, Animal Crossing).
It's a good decision because gaming won't be free of people who decry its "violence" and won't be free of stygmatization until it's at least as mainstream as movies. Nintendo revived gaming in North America. Sony made it 3D. Now Nintendo is trying to make the initial barrier less so more people can game.
"The Gnome-panel bug is a new one for me; filing a bug report would likely be very appreciated by the devels."
I have this happen as well. I've also had specific applets crash (notably the pager area one) on exit. There's no way to get cores or tracebacks for it, since Gnome will not abort shutdown if it detects an error like this.
Essentially, we all know it's there, but are unable to reproduce it without shutting down, or get more information during the shut down process.
Base packages are 249.99$ CDN in all major centres, and FFX is a Greatest Hits game (29.99$ MSRP) as of early August...
"So far, North America is the biggest territory in which Halo hasn't been bundled, ever."
;)). Either way, you should do research on what you post on Slashdot before posting it.
Do you know what an Xbox Adrenaline pack is? It's a bundle of 1 Xbox system, 1 Controller S, 1 copy of Amped, and 1 copy of Halo for an MSRP of 279.99 Canadian.
You're either ignorant that Canada has Adrenaline packs, or you willfully don't include Canada in your view North America (27 million people can be wrong!
You're not ignorant of the fact that Microsoft's more than happy to keep selling Halo at a higher MSRP than most first-gen titles. I don't think you'll see Halo go Platinum Hits until Halo 2 is out -- Microsoft can't afford to have its own home-grown title that's universally well known selling at budget prices unless it has another title to back it up. Besides, as you point out, Halo still sells well at its current price. With the constant perception that the GameCube is a system only for younger people, Microsoft has to keep Halo expensive in the US so they can keep their older demographic happy.
"Actually what you need to do is buy used CDs -- the RIAA doesn't see a dime from those sales. That way you can have your music and stick your tongue out at the RIAA at the same time."
I know it's been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: by purchasing used music, you are increasing the demand for used music. This makes it easier for people who buy new music from the RIAA to resell their music when they are done with it, thus indirectly increasing their new music consumption.
If you wish to annoy the RIAA and listen to music, either pirate it (which will get you sued and is illegal), or properly boycott it by spending your money on a more beneficial industry such as video gaming.
"LOGICALLY, I should have every right to share, without any finical gain, media in my pocession with whomever I wish."
Except that without any actual media to share, you're suddenly in position of being a content mass duplicator and distributor without permission of the original producer. That's illegal.
Do you agree with the statement, "a system is awesome based on its specs, not the games that are available"?
If you don't agree, you're not a retard.
The original poster you replied to does seem to have a bit too much nostalgia, but you seem to ignore the games part of the argument. I'm just pointing out the obvious flaws in your statement.
Besides, little example arguments that are completely made up to only prove one point (given that they are so far from reality as to not apply to reality) are crap. They only cloud the issue and distract from the real logic flaws in the part of the argument that applies to real life.
"I was refuting this by saying that if a handheld were released where all others things were equal but the graphic capabilities of this new handheld were equal to the PS2, the more capable model would sell well."
Besides that being a complete crap statement because it would not exist in real life (being that there would be no way that two such systems could exist differening only in graphics capability and not in cost or availability), the fact of the matter is games are the only measure of a system. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until you retards understand it. I don't play the Dolby Digital on an Xbox any more than I play the PS2 DVD movie feature -- they're just features, entirely tangental to wether there are games worth playing on the damn console!
You can make a SuperDuperGameWhiz9000 which claims 7.1 audio, ultraD mega-defitition cornea vision graphics, and pants-shittingly good controllers that also have the ability to bend time -- but without a game to play on it that's worth anything, your console will sell nowhere near as well as the original NES because people buy game consoles to play games, not to wank off to a set of static features in a brochure.
I also reassert: if Nintendo ever went to the trouble of putting TV out and a power adapter in with the GBA player + a controller and sold it for ~100$ CDN, it would sell. Parents would have no problem buying it for the kids, because it would be inexpensive and judged to be easier for the younger ones. When you make your coke-head examples where market forces like these don't exist, you only prove your ignorance of the game market.
"If I leave my car unlocked in a bad neighborhood, does that make me a felon if my car gets stolen? ....
Then why are the people hosting files on the Internet getting sued for having files available for download?"
Availability. If you are a person who's handing out drugs to 12-year-olds, if you're leaving guns laying around, if you're leaving bottles of whiskey on your passenger side seat -- in all cases you are the agent by which something considered negative is happening.
In this case, it's considered negative to content creators to have their content distributed without their consent. By making them available to download, you are no different than people in Hong Kong who hawk copies of DVDs and music which haven't been officially released yet. Yes, you aren't charging anything, but you are dilluting its value by making it available without control. You damage the value of the rights which control the content as much as if you were on a Hong Kong street corner yourself.
Maybe if you'd look at things logically, instead of trying to fop off an illegal activity as legit, you'd see this.
I don't share copyrighted material on P2P networks because it's wrong. I do not have permission to distribute, disseminate, or otherwise share something unless I own the entire rights to it. If I do not respect this, how would I expect other people to respect these rights in regards to content I create (specifically, my writting and GPL programs which all fall under the same copyright law)?