Excuse me? PC gaming suffers from lack of innovation where consoles mitigate this problem?
Ever seen a moddable console game before? How's that for innovation? Where is the console "Perimeter"? Are there open source games for consoles?
Poor quality control? At least if I buy a PC game I can be reasonably sure that bugs can be fixed by a patch. I read quite a lot about bugs in console games. I understand a certain James Bond game has bugs so wide you can install Linux with it. Is that quality control?
Ever increasing hardware requirements? I want to play the latest Mario Bros on my Nintendo Master System. What do you mean it won't run? I'll just put a new video card in it. What do you mean I can't do that? I have to buy an *entire* new system at over 100% of the cost of the original rig? Now tell me about "hardware requirements".
Competition from consoles is only prevalent for a few key reasons:
1) Lower cost of entry (mitigated by a poorer gaming experience, you get what you pay for) 2) Supply forces (Console games are being shoved down our guts because they're cheaper to make and they have a much higher turnaround - quality of console games is lower) 3) Proprietary lock-in (I own this DRM console and I have to play DRM games that MS/Sony/Nintendo tell me to, I have no other choices).
The big reason that sales are down for PC games is because PC games represent greater value for money for the consumer - one license of Half-Life will have you playing that, CounterStrike, Natural Selection, Team Fortress.. the list goes on. One license of BF1942 opens a huge array of different mods.
So the only reason people are buying more console games is because they wear out so fast, they're narrow minded, finished with easily, and have no lastability. If that's what you consider quality, you're a publishers wet dream.
There are two ways to look at this, and trust me, they're being looked at.
What this is all about is whether Microsoft is really costing people money or not. Why would Microsoft cost you money? Because you *had* to install or use their often defective products. Because you had no choice. So, two ways to look at it.
1) You have no choice. Linux simply doesn't do what Windows can. I don't agree with this but then this is what the parent is suggesting. Is the open source community letting us down? Besides, since we have no choice but to use Windows (and they are legally recognised as having a monopoly), we can already see that the DoJ has forced remedy on them for the whole antitrust thing. So the clear course of action is to take them to court.
2) You do have a choice. You can install Linux or BSD. These operating systems do most of the same things Windows does, and cheaper. Now, what if there is a bug in Linux. That would mean that, in theory, Linux should also be applicable to the Lemon Law, and you should be able to sue the provider/author, in the case of a bug. Now, Linux is floating around the version 2.8.x area. Surely some of the fixes between 1.0 and 2.8.x were bug fixes? In which case we have to accept that Linux may still have flaws, which although less than Windows ones, still makes Linux and OS developers fair game for Lemon Law litigation, which they can ill afford compared with MS.
So at first I imagine it will just be product placement in games, like the vending machines are all Coke or whatever. You see that today in some games.
Then maybe some banner ads.
Then before you know it, you crash your car in Need for Speed because you couldn't see the road because a huge popup was in your way.
And the flashing "shock the monkey and win your free ipod" ads are all over the place.
Then we can expect rogue advertisers to get into the swing of things. So in splinter cell, before you can steal the secret plans from the briefcase, you have to read this letter from president mugabe's uncle that says he has TEN MILLION US DOLLARS hidden in geneva that he trusts in complete confidence for you to send your bank account details to him so he can give you the money because of political strife.
Hopefully we will see some good members of the modding community hack the ads out of PC versions of games. Console gamers are doomed tho.
I find it amazing that people even consider FPS games and games like Counterstrike to have a future! (No, this is not a BSD is dead troll).
The bulk of the industry that put counterstrike where it is today (Microsoft, Valve, etc) are all desperately trying to kill off PC gaming and move to console gaming.
Consoles don't do FPS, nowhere near the league of pro counterstrike. Can you imagine a professional tournament for ? Where all the contestants bring in their PS2 from home and their controllers with analog sticks? It's not going to happen. There simply isn't anything professional about consoles.
But you look at the next great generation of computer games, and even those are being ported over to the console arena. Even DooM3, the same DooM that made PC FPS gaming what it is today is being released on XBox. That's how great the pressure is from the console moguls on the gaming industry. They don't want big cash prize CS tournaments. They want you strapped to your couch playing PS2. And history has shown, what the corporations want is where the market goes (See MS Windows).
Actually I read an earlier report posted on slashdot that mentioned the same 3.5GHz figure, whether the fanboy just read this and recycled it or not I don't know.
But one thing was apparent in that report, the 3.5GHz figure was bollocks and it was really a 3 core CPU with each "core" running at 1.16GHz. And as we know, 3 cores @ 1.16GHz != 1 core @ 3.5GHz. This is a pretty reasonable assumption because the IBM G4/G5 CPU's don't have anywhere near the optimisations to run at 3.5GHz. I also like the 3x1.16 figure, because that scales nicely with the 733MHz CPU they used in the original XBox.
In fact, 3.5GHz is pretty unrealistic for just about any modern CPU, apart from intel. Intel is a bad example - due to marketing reasons, intel has forgone all real world performance in favour of sheer clockspeed. Most of the rest of the industry (AMD, Motorola, Transmeta, Via, IBM) have decided that either performance, low power draw, low price/performance, or enhanced capabilities are much more important than clockspeed.
But why aren't a lot of these open source projects labelled a little more clearly? Thankfully the topic actually mentions that Sunbird is a Calendar. Although you ask a guy on the street what "Firefox" is and they'll think it's a TV show. You ask them what Internet Explorer is and they'll tell you it's a web browser.
Wouldn't it help if it was called the "Sunbird Calendar" and "Firefox browser"?
I have a smartphone. My PDA is my phone. My web browser is my phone. My camera is my phone. My MP3 player is my phone. One 266MHz device, one battery, all that functionality.
Remember, the gist of the actual article has little to do with wrist phones per sei, rather that these devices are now small enough to be used in such a way, or in wearable clothing, purely to make them more convenient so you don't have to lug as many gadgets around with you.
Of course if you use a PDA and a cellphone for sending SMS's, you probably fit into the 80% of people who are going to keep carrying a lot of baggage and a lot of different batteries for every gadget you have. So basically in order to have the same level of functionality you get from a single handset, you're carrying your handset, a bluetooth headset and a PDA?
Which is fine of course, each to his own, but I'm very happy with the way convergence lets me carry all that functionality in one device.
I don't quite understand what the poster is trying to do exactly, but it's pretty bizarre. Let me paraphrase:
"Hi. I'm putting a completely unpatched Windows box directly on the internet and I'm deliberately turning off the Windows firewall *and* the third party firewall I installed. But I get virused! Whyy??? Windows sucks."
That's just like people who build their houses on floodplains crying and moaning because God took their houses away when it rained. Then they build their new houses on the floodplain again. Some people just, well, they're just not smart. And so bad things happen to them.
But back to the security issue - what would happen if you put a Linux box, unpatched, directly on the internet with no firewall? How long would it take to get rooted? How about if you had an insecure root password? It would take longer than Windows, but it would still happen.
This isn't a windows problem, it's an end user problem. If you do stupid things, bad things happen to you.
Warrior kings very similar to the combat style of Total War, but without the macromanagement. Many people have mentioned Starcraft/Warcraft/C&C, but those games are really concerned with smaller unit activities (someone even mentioned X-Com!).
There are very few large scale battle simulators however, at least that involve micromanagement. Perhaps the poster would be interested in old style wargames? I strongly recommend War of the Lance, which is ancient but an excellent example of a wargame.
Try some of the scenarios included with Play The World and Conquests - they heavily mod the tech trees, units, and even the gameplay.
For instance, the Japanese scenario has each player with a superunit (the Daimyo) that gains attack/defence bonuses after each promotion. The problem is that if the Daimyo is killed, you lose the game. And the ages, technologies, and units are all different, from ashigaru, samurai and so on.
Recently I bought a Creative Labs Audigy 2ZX, a reasonably good quality gaming card, sitting just below professional audio specifications.
The Audigy 2 ZX supports EAX4 and EAX3 audio standards. EAX3 makes a tremendous difference in 5.1 audio output when gaming, it's very precise and the environmental effects are amazing to listen to. The quality of output is vastly superior to any onboard sound solution.
Nonetheless, very few games use EAX3, I don't know of any that use EAX4. But for the games that do, the difference is noticeable.
Also, the Audigy ZX is very independant of the CPU when gaming, so when you do play games with full audio, you get better performance from your hardware. Many review sites run benchmarks with the audio disabled for the game, just to remove that area of confusion - however this makes benchmarks even more obfuscated from real world performance.
So there are two reasons why you can benefit from a little spending on your game audio. But unless you're a particularly hardcore audiophile, most mainboards have onboard 5.1 sound nowadays. So no real need to splurge, unless you want the luxury, or the cutting edge responsiveness from your hardware, or the trippy environmental effects.
This is crazy. How can selling more consoles ever cure a slump in hardware sales? Consoles cause the slump in hardware sales. You buy a PC, a monitor. Costs a little more than a console but you get a much better product. And you might buy a new HDD, a new video card after a year or so. You don't have to, but upgrading a PC is usually cheaper than buying a new console, and it adds to hardware sales.
Buying a console - you buy the console. Then you go spend your money on a big screen TV, new couch, and because console games usually last much less in terms of playability than a PC game, you buy a lot more games than you would on a PC to get the same "fix".
Consoles do not help any aspect of the IT industry. Never.
People are missing the point here! The question of which is the most technically superior browser is moot. There have been technically superior browsers for years, before and after MSIE came along.
I think it's laughable that Firefox could "make IE tremble". Maybe I'm missing something, IE has a rather significant advantage over every other browser in the known world.. unless..
How did the Firefox authors manage to persuade Microsoft to bundle Firefox with Windows? Because that's the only way it could possibly make a dent. Everyone else who is in a position to consider using a different browser already is.
I agree with that sentiment - to an extent. Bush is amazingly disliked around the world and within America, just look at Mike Moore's latest documentary. He isn't doing anything novel, it's just the Cannes equivalent of being a Karma Whore.
However, let's consider the "free" trade agreement proposed between the USA and Australia (This is a loose term, it is really being shoved forcibly down Australia's throat by John Howard and whichever parts of the american government he's working for). This agreement, as we all know, will be disastrous for Australia. It will place Australia in a position where we are essentially part of the greater american corporate community, but with even less of the same rights as the american citizens enjoy. This is a bad thing. So I'm feeling very anti-american about the american government foisting this agreement on us.
It's nothing to do with Bush. The american government sucks, and it's doing bad bad things to Australia. At least we're not getting invaded like Iraq is. The scarey part is that we have oil, too. Are we next?
If it's not consoles sucking all the decent programmers out of the PC gaming platform, it's the MMORPG's.
I like RPG's fine, I play a lot of them myself, I used to MUD for like two years, but eventually you realise you just can't stay on the leveling treadmill forever.
I guess PC game publishers have realised that PC games aren't the 5 minute wonders that console games are. Now they're going the other way - they don't want you for 5 minutes, they want you for life. And that's fine because they can charge you a subscription fee! What's the cost of running a counterstrike server compared to one of these MMORPGs? It's the same! And yet they have managed to charge people a fee for providing the same service.
So publishers are now angling for either a console release, or a subscription MMORPG. I'm not sure if there will be any PC games worth playing that fit into either model!
Yeah... very clunky... low res, lower polygon counts, and look at all those jagged edges! I have a midrange graphics card and I can still run FSAA when I'm playing Far Cry. I guess it is worth spending the extra money on a PC to enjoy the higher quality experience.
Display resolution - PC's cost more because the display you buy is of better quality. Giving a console the same quality display revokes the consoles cost advantage where display is concerned.
Processing power - Surely a CPU is a CPU is a CPU, and they all have the same cost. If a console is to have the processing power of a Opteron 8xx, then surely it will also have the same cost as an Opteron 8xx.
Input devices - When you add a keyboard and mouse to a console, you can't play on your couch in front of the TV anymore. Then you need to either move it into the study or move the study into the living room. This is a much bigger handicap than you may think, many console games won't make that step, not seeing a value in the PC/Mouse input combination. People playing FPS's on consoles with keyboards/mice? They're just PC gamers in denial. Also, to this day, a console can't do half the things a PC can. Hook up your scanner/digital camera/lexmark printer to your PS2 and you'll see what I mean. It won't work.
The Amiga was a PC. It just had a different architecture and OS.
If you install Linux on a computer, it doesn't stop being a PC.
This will probably make some shortsighted Apple guys freak out a bit, but the Apple is also a PC.
Curiously, the games on all of these platforms are very similar in nature. An FPS on Mac looks just the same on x86/Windows, and it plays just the same, too. You do pay more for the hardware and O/S, but that's just product differentiation.
The interface does make the PC. A cash register isn't a "personal computer" no matter what's underneath the hood. At work here, we use x86 processors in blade servers. Even though they're x86s, and they run Windows, they aren't PC's. The interface and API's on a server are different to a PC, so the same games just aren't there.
XBox however is very, very proprietary. You can't install any operating system you like on an XBox without breaking the DMCA buy either putting a third party chip in, or exploiting a badly written game.
Also, XBox games won't work out of the box on a PC, due to their proprietary nature.
So it's more than just the producer of these systems, it's the lock down and DRM.
Warcraft 4 might well move to consoles, but Warcraft is a very simplistic RTS, it's practically a console game now. The models were all very low quality for a PC game. There's no need for higher resolution for Warcraft to port to console.
FPS will not successfully move to console instead of PC's. They can't. Consoles don't have the required interface for an FPS. As games converge, and PC gamers play against console gamers online, you'll see the difference the analog control of a mouse really makes in the scores. This again has nothing to do with TV resolution.
Cluttered interface has nothing to do with the quality of a game. Space invaders had a simple, uncluttered interface. That doesn't make it state of the art. Black and White had a simple, uncluttered interface, and that was a bomb. This is nothing to do with innovation.
You mentioned higher resolution - where's this resolution going to come from? You going to get a console with enough power under the hood to display over 60fps 16x aniso tap and 8x FSAA? You just might. How much cost for a console with that horsepower, sporting an ATI R420 or better graphics processor? I tell you what. It'll cost you about the same as an equivalently powered PC. But your HDTV capability? A nice HDTV that can smoothly display 1600x1200 @ 60Hz or above? Bet that'll cost you more than a PC monitor.
Why then spend $X on a PC system (assemble your own or buy from HP/Dell/whoever) when you can spend $X on a console and $Y on a HDTV?
Currently you might spend a little more on a PC system than you would spend on a console, this is true. But did it even occur to you that the PC is vastly better in quality than the console? Have you even seen screenshots of Far Cry?
Of course I won't mention that the PC you can buy for $X will also be fully upgradeable... one day they'll probably release the upgradeable console... then where will you be?
I beg to differ. If they start selling consoles with keyboard and mouse, the console moves out of the living room and into the study.
You can't sit comfortably on a couch with a keyboard in front of the TV. There's no flat surface on a couch or your lap for a mouse to go.
So when the console gets into the study, it has to displace the PC, right? But it can't do that either. The PC is good for web browsing, the resolution of your average monitor is much better than the TV. Consoles won't take over web browsing, otherwise WebTV in its many guises would rule the world. You do all your email and spreadsheets and download your photos from your camera onto your PC. That's where you do all your work stuff too. Console can't do that, so the console can't displace the home PC as a workstation.
So content creation, which really does need more of a PC style interface, won't happen on the console. Not unless Microsoft releases Microsoft Office for XBox. Who would buy that? Will Lexmark start making printer and scanner drivers for XBox too?
Here's another tack. How much cost for an XBox or Playstation that can do all the things a PC can do? Word processing, data storage, MP3 playback, high resolution web browsing? What if it costs the same as a PC from Dell or Wal*Mart?
The console can't encroach on all of the market segments that the PC holds. Gaming it can make a dent in, but then the console can't get into every PC gaming area either.
My TAC-2 still works to this very day. Only ever owned one, only ever needed one. The fire button contacts need to be cleaned every now and then, however.
Of course, if Europe says Microsoft has to open their code, and they knock down the appeal, Microsoft has two choices.
1) Open up their code, which would bring in a new era of windows programming as vendors can make more tightly integrated applications, spyware makers can make more tightly integrated spyware, and the windows monopoly would probably continue otherwise unfettered. Although Linux would also interoperate better with Windows apps.
2) Microsoft can stop trading Windows in Europe. That's a lot of revenue they'd be missing out on just to preserve their code and stop giving Linux a competetive inch.
Of course I have no doubt that Microsoft will be granted their appeal and an injunction to allow them to keep their code hidden, so we will have a long three years before anything interesting really does happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me? PC gaming suffers from lack of innovation where consoles mitigate this problem?
Ever seen a moddable console game before? How's that for innovation? Where is the console "Perimeter"? Are there open source games for consoles?
Poor quality control? At least if I buy a PC game I can be reasonably sure that bugs can be fixed by a patch. I read quite a lot about bugs in console games. I understand a certain James Bond game has bugs so wide you can install Linux with it. Is that quality control?
Ever increasing hardware requirements? I want to play the latest Mario Bros on my Nintendo Master System. What do you mean it won't run? I'll just put a new video card in it. What do you mean I can't do that? I have to buy an *entire* new system at over 100% of the cost of the original rig? Now tell me about "hardware requirements".
Competition from consoles is only prevalent for a few key reasons:
1) Lower cost of entry (mitigated by a poorer gaming experience, you get what you pay for)
2) Supply forces (Console games are being shoved down our guts because they're cheaper to make and they have a much higher turnaround - quality of console games is lower)
3) Proprietary lock-in (I own this DRM console and I have to play DRM games that MS/Sony/Nintendo tell me to, I have no other choices).
The big reason that sales are down for PC games is because PC games represent greater value for money for the consumer - one license of Half-Life will have you playing that, CounterStrike, Natural Selection, Team Fortress.. the list goes on. One license of BF1942 opens a huge array of different mods.
So the only reason people are buying more console games is because they wear out so fast, they're narrow minded, finished with easily, and have no lastability. If that's what you consider quality, you're a publishers wet dream.
There are two ways to look at this, and trust me, they're being looked at.
What this is all about is whether Microsoft is really costing people money or not. Why would Microsoft cost you money? Because you *had* to install or use their often defective products. Because you had no choice. So, two ways to look at it.
1) You have no choice. Linux simply doesn't do what Windows can. I don't agree with this but then this is what the parent is suggesting. Is the open source community letting us down? Besides, since we have no choice but to use Windows (and they are legally recognised as having a monopoly), we can already see that the DoJ has forced remedy on them for the whole antitrust thing. So the clear course of action is to take them to court.
2) You do have a choice. You can install Linux or BSD. These operating systems do most of the same things Windows does, and cheaper. Now, what if there is a bug in Linux. That would mean that, in theory, Linux should also be applicable to the Lemon Law, and you should be able to sue the provider/author, in the case of a bug. Now, Linux is floating around the version 2.8.x area. Surely some of the fixes between 1.0 and 2.8.x were bug fixes? In which case we have to accept that Linux may still have flaws, which although less than Windows ones, still makes Linux and OS developers fair game for Lemon Law litigation, which they can ill afford compared with MS.
So at first I imagine it will just be product placement in games, like the vending machines are all Coke or whatever. You see that today in some games.
Then maybe some banner ads.
Then before you know it, you crash your car in Need for Speed because you couldn't see the road because a huge popup was in your way.
And the flashing "shock the monkey and win your free ipod" ads are all over the place.
Then we can expect rogue advertisers to get into the swing of things. So in splinter cell, before you can steal the secret plans from the briefcase, you have to read this letter from president mugabe's uncle that says he has TEN MILLION US DOLLARS hidden in geneva that he trusts in complete confidence for you to send your bank account details to him so he can give you the money because of political strife.
Hopefully we will see some good members of the modding community hack the ads out of PC versions of games. Console gamers are doomed tho.
I find it amazing that people even consider FPS games and games like Counterstrike to have a future! (No, this is not a BSD is dead troll).
The bulk of the industry that put counterstrike where it is today (Microsoft, Valve, etc) are all desperately trying to kill off PC gaming and move to console gaming.
Consoles don't do FPS, nowhere near the league of pro counterstrike. Can you imagine a professional tournament for ? Where all the contestants bring in their PS2 from home and their controllers with analog sticks? It's not going to happen. There simply isn't anything professional about consoles.
But you look at the next great generation of computer games, and even those are being ported over to the console arena. Even DooM3, the same DooM that made PC FPS gaming what it is today is being released on XBox. That's how great the pressure is from the console moguls on the gaming industry. They don't want big cash prize CS tournaments. They want you strapped to your couch playing PS2. And history has shown, what the corporations want is where the market goes (See MS Windows).
Actually I read an earlier report posted on slashdot that mentioned the same 3.5GHz figure, whether the fanboy just read this and recycled it or not I don't know.
But one thing was apparent in that report, the 3.5GHz figure was bollocks and it was really a 3 core CPU with each "core" running at 1.16GHz. And as we know, 3 cores @ 1.16GHz != 1 core @ 3.5GHz. This is a pretty reasonable assumption because the IBM G4/G5 CPU's don't have anywhere near the optimisations to run at 3.5GHz. I also like the 3x1.16 figure, because that scales nicely with the 733MHz CPU they used in the original XBox.
In fact, 3.5GHz is pretty unrealistic for just about any modern CPU, apart from intel. Intel is a bad example - due to marketing reasons, intel has forgone all real world performance in favour of sheer clockspeed. Most of the rest of the industry (AMD, Motorola, Transmeta, Via, IBM) have decided that either performance, low power draw, low price/performance, or enhanced capabilities are much more important than clockspeed.
But why aren't a lot of these open source projects labelled a little more clearly? Thankfully the topic actually mentions that Sunbird is a Calendar. Although you ask a guy on the street what "Firefox" is and they'll think it's a TV show. You ask them what Internet Explorer is and they'll tell you it's a web browser.
Wouldn't it help if it was called the "Sunbird Calendar" and "Firefox browser"?
I have a smartphone. My PDA is my phone. My web browser is my phone. My camera is my phone. My MP3 player is my phone. One 266MHz device, one battery, all that functionality.
Remember, the gist of the actual article has little to do with wrist phones per sei, rather that these devices are now small enough to be used in such a way, or in wearable clothing, purely to make them more convenient so you don't have to lug as many gadgets around with you.
Of course if you use a PDA and a cellphone for sending SMS's, you probably fit into the 80% of people who are going to keep carrying a lot of baggage and a lot of different batteries for every gadget you have. So basically in order to have the same level of functionality you get from a single handset, you're carrying your handset, a bluetooth headset and a PDA?
Which is fine of course, each to his own, but I'm very happy with the way convergence lets me carry all that functionality in one device.
I don't quite understand what the poster is trying to do exactly, but it's pretty bizarre. Let me paraphrase:
"Hi. I'm putting a completely unpatched Windows box directly on the internet and I'm deliberately turning off the Windows firewall *and* the third party firewall I installed. But I get virused! Whyy??? Windows sucks."
That's just like people who build their houses on floodplains crying and moaning because God took their houses away when it rained. Then they build their new houses on the floodplain again. Some people just, well, they're just not smart. And so bad things happen to them.
But back to the security issue - what would happen if you put a Linux box, unpatched, directly on the internet with no firewall? How long would it take to get rooted? How about if you had an insecure root password? It would take longer than Windows, but it would still happen.
This isn't a windows problem, it's an end user problem. If you do stupid things, bad things happen to you.
Warrior kings very similar to the combat style of Total War, but without the macromanagement. Many people have mentioned Starcraft/Warcraft/C&C, but those games are really concerned with smaller unit activities (someone even mentioned X-Com!).
There are very few large scale battle simulators however, at least that involve micromanagement. Perhaps the poster would be interested in old style wargames? I strongly recommend War of the Lance, which is ancient but an excellent example of a wargame.
Try some of the scenarios included with Play The World and Conquests - they heavily mod the tech trees, units, and even the gameplay.
For instance, the Japanese scenario has each player with a superunit (the Daimyo) that gains attack/defence bonuses after each promotion. The problem is that if the Daimyo is killed, you lose the game. And the ages, technologies, and units are all different, from ashigaru, samurai and so on.
But seriously.
Recently I bought a Creative Labs Audigy 2ZX, a reasonably good quality gaming card, sitting just below professional audio specifications.
The Audigy 2 ZX supports EAX4 and EAX3 audio standards. EAX3 makes a tremendous difference in 5.1 audio output when gaming, it's very precise and the environmental effects are amazing to listen to. The quality of output is vastly superior to any onboard sound solution.
Nonetheless, very few games use EAX3, I don't know of any that use EAX4. But for the games that do, the difference is noticeable.
Also, the Audigy ZX is very independant of the CPU when gaming, so when you do play games with full audio, you get better performance from your hardware. Many review sites run benchmarks with the audio disabled for the game, just to remove that area of confusion - however this makes benchmarks even more obfuscated from real world performance.
So there are two reasons why you can benefit from a little spending on your game audio. But unless you're a particularly hardcore audiophile, most mainboards have onboard 5.1 sound nowadays. So no real need to splurge, unless you want the luxury, or the cutting edge responsiveness from your hardware, or the trippy environmental effects.
This is crazy. How can selling more consoles ever cure a slump in hardware sales? Consoles cause the slump in hardware sales. You buy a PC, a monitor. Costs a little more than a console but you get a much better product. And you might buy a new HDD, a new video card after a year or so. You don't have to, but upgrading a PC is usually cheaper than buying a new console, and it adds to hardware sales.
Buying a console - you buy the console. Then you go spend your money on a big screen TV, new couch, and because console games usually last much less in terms of playability than a PC game, you buy a lot more games than you would on a PC to get the same "fix".
Consoles do not help any aspect of the IT industry. Never.
People are missing the point here! The question of which is the most technically superior browser is moot. There have been technically superior browsers for years, before and after MSIE came along.
I think it's laughable that Firefox could "make IE tremble". Maybe I'm missing something, IE has a rather significant advantage over every other browser in the known world.. unless..
How did the Firefox authors manage to persuade Microsoft to bundle Firefox with Windows? Because that's the only way it could possibly make a dent. Everyone else who is in a position to consider using a different browser already is.
It's still going to be a levelling treadmill. People will still farm loot.
But it will look prettier and so it will garner more subscriptions for Sony.
Free copy of HL2!?
Why don't you just download the source?
Oh wait.
I agree with that sentiment - to an extent. Bush is amazingly disliked around the world and within America, just look at Mike Moore's latest documentary. He isn't doing anything novel, it's just the Cannes equivalent of being a Karma Whore.
However, let's consider the "free" trade agreement proposed between the USA and Australia (This is a loose term, it is really being shoved forcibly down Australia's throat by John Howard and whichever parts of the american government he's working for). This agreement, as we all know, will be disastrous for Australia. It will place Australia in a position where we are essentially part of the greater american corporate community, but with even less of the same rights as the american citizens enjoy. This is a bad thing. So I'm feeling very anti-american about the american government foisting this agreement on us.
It's nothing to do with Bush. The american government sucks, and it's doing bad bad things to Australia. At least we're not getting invaded like Iraq is. The scarey part is that we have oil, too. Are we next?
Because if it goes through, Johnny will get another photo-op with Arnie.
Actually I imagine it's just going through because most of the pollies are getting some sort of kickback from it.
And Johnny is firmly stuck somewhere in Dubyas pants.
If it's not consoles sucking all the decent programmers out of the PC gaming platform, it's the MMORPG's.
I like RPG's fine, I play a lot of them myself, I used to MUD for like two years, but eventually you realise you just can't stay on the leveling treadmill forever.
I guess PC game publishers have realised that PC games aren't the 5 minute wonders that console games are. Now they're going the other way - they don't want you for 5 minutes, they want you for life. And that's fine because they can charge you a subscription fee! What's the cost of running a counterstrike server compared to one of these MMORPGs? It's the same! And yet they have managed to charge people a fee for providing the same service.
So publishers are now angling for either a console release, or a subscription MMORPG. I'm not sure if there will be any PC games worth playing that fit into either model!
Yeah... very clunky... low res, lower polygon counts, and look at all those jagged edges! I have a midrange graphics card and I can still run FSAA when I'm playing Far Cry. I guess it is worth spending the extra money on a PC to enjoy the higher quality experience.
Think carefully about this.
Display resolution - PC's cost more because the display you buy is of better quality. Giving a console the same quality display revokes the consoles cost advantage where display is concerned.
Processing power - Surely a CPU is a CPU is a CPU, and they all have the same cost. If a console is to have the processing power of a Opteron 8xx, then surely it will also have the same cost as an Opteron 8xx.
Input devices - When you add a keyboard and mouse to a console, you can't play on your couch in front of the TV anymore. Then you need to either move it into the study or move the study into the living room. This is a much bigger handicap than you may think, many console games won't make that step, not seeing a value in the PC/Mouse input combination. People playing FPS's on consoles with keyboards/mice? They're just PC gamers in denial. Also, to this day, a console can't do half the things a PC can. Hook up your scanner/digital camera/lexmark printer to your PS2 and you'll see what I mean. It won't work.
The Amiga was a PC. It just had a different architecture and OS.
If you install Linux on a computer, it doesn't stop being a PC.
This will probably make some shortsighted Apple guys freak out a bit, but the Apple is also a PC.
Curiously, the games on all of these platforms are very similar in nature. An FPS on Mac looks just the same on x86/Windows, and it plays just the same, too. You do pay more for the hardware and O/S, but that's just product differentiation.
The interface does make the PC. A cash register isn't a "personal computer" no matter what's underneath the hood. At work here, we use x86 processors in blade servers. Even though they're x86s, and they run Windows, they aren't PC's. The interface and API's on a server are different to a PC, so the same games just aren't there.
XBox however is very, very proprietary. You can't install any operating system you like on an XBox without breaking the DMCA buy either putting a third party chip in, or exploiting a badly written game.
Also, XBox games won't work out of the box on a PC, due to their proprietary nature.
So it's more than just the producer of these systems, it's the lock down and DRM.
You missed a couple of things there.
Warcraft 4 might well move to consoles, but Warcraft is a very simplistic RTS, it's practically a console game now. The models were all very low quality for a PC game. There's no need for higher resolution for Warcraft to port to console.
FPS will not successfully move to console instead of PC's. They can't. Consoles don't have the required interface for an FPS. As games converge, and PC gamers play against console gamers online, you'll see the difference the analog control of a mouse really makes in the scores. This again has nothing to do with TV resolution.
Cluttered interface has nothing to do with the quality of a game. Space invaders had a simple, uncluttered interface. That doesn't make it state of the art. Black and White had a simple, uncluttered interface, and that was a bomb. This is nothing to do with innovation.
You mentioned higher resolution - where's this resolution going to come from? You going to get a console with enough power under the hood to display over 60fps 16x aniso tap and 8x FSAA? You just might. How much cost for a console with that horsepower, sporting an ATI R420 or better graphics processor? I tell you what. It'll cost you about the same as an equivalently powered PC. But your HDTV capability? A nice HDTV that can smoothly display 1600x1200 @ 60Hz or above? Bet that'll cost you more than a PC monitor.
Why then spend $X on a PC system (assemble your own or buy from HP/Dell/whoever) when you can spend $X on a console and $Y on a HDTV?
Currently you might spend a little more on a PC system than you would spend on a console, this is true. But did it even occur to you that the PC is vastly better in quality than the console? Have you even seen screenshots of Far Cry?
Of course I won't mention that the PC you can buy for $X will also be fully upgradeable... one day they'll probably release the upgradeable console... then where will you be?
I beg to differ. If they start selling consoles with keyboard and mouse, the console moves out of the living room and into the study.
You can't sit comfortably on a couch with a keyboard in front of the TV. There's no flat surface on a couch or your lap for a mouse to go.
So when the console gets into the study, it has to displace the PC, right? But it can't do that either. The PC is good for web browsing, the resolution of your average monitor is much better than the TV. Consoles won't take over web browsing, otherwise WebTV in its many guises would rule the world. You do all your email and spreadsheets and download your photos from your camera onto your PC. That's where you do all your work stuff too. Console can't do that, so the console can't displace the home PC as a workstation.
So content creation, which really does need more of a PC style interface, won't happen on the console. Not unless Microsoft releases Microsoft Office for XBox. Who would buy that? Will Lexmark start making printer and scanner drivers for XBox too?
Here's another tack. How much cost for an XBox or Playstation that can do all the things a PC can do? Word processing, data storage, MP3 playback, high resolution web browsing? What if it costs the same as a PC from Dell or Wal*Mart?
The console can't encroach on all of the market segments that the PC holds. Gaming it can make a dent in, but then the console can't get into every PC gaming area either.
My TAC-2 still works to this very day. Only ever owned one, only ever needed one. The fire button contacts need to be cleaned every now and then, however.
Of course, if Europe says Microsoft has to open their code, and they knock down the appeal, Microsoft has two choices.
1) Open up their code, which would bring in a new era of windows programming as vendors can make more tightly integrated applications, spyware makers can make more tightly integrated spyware, and the windows monopoly would probably continue otherwise unfettered. Although Linux would also interoperate better with Windows apps.
2) Microsoft can stop trading Windows in Europe. That's a lot of revenue they'd be missing out on just to preserve their code and stop giving Linux a competetive inch.
Of course I have no doubt that Microsoft will be granted their appeal and an injunction to allow them to keep their code hidden, so we will have a long three years before anything interesting really does happen.