Keep in mind that the article was written by the Executing VP of Sales and Marketing for Nintendo of America. He's talking about his company, which has had four generations of home consoles:
I'm not following your logic here. The crash was caused largely by tons of really bad games flooding the market. This article is about a shortage of consoles. How are the two situations even remotely alike?
There are probably two reasons you see people complaining about the 360's lineup:
1. Many people are interested in games that aren't sports games or first person shooters. Your list demonstrates this problem perfectly. 2. Most people don't consider games 6 months out to be launch titles. The issue is whether or not it's a good buy at launch, not whether it might be a good buy someday.
Honestly, number 1 is enough for me. The genres that are being focused on just don't interest me, and the few 360 games I might like are probably coming to the PC or other next gen consoles.
While you've got a very nice rant laced with thinly veiled insults, the point has completely sailed over your head.
PCs do have certain advantages over consoles. They have better graphics, more modding capability, and the keyboard and mouse. Graphics are nice, but they're hardly a deal breaker. Dealing with lower resolutions isn't the horror you make it out to be. Modding capability is a great plus. The keyboard and mouse are great for some genres and horrible for others.
The thing is, while you can deny it until you're blue in the face, consoles also have their own advantages over PCs. Price, ease of use, and a greater selection of games are the big ones. Even buying a brand new $400 XBox 360 console at launch with "accessories + tv + cheapo internet pc" is going to be cheaper than buying a gaming PC. Most people already have the TV and internet PC anyway. I'd rather spend my gaming time playing games instead of messing with drivers and configuration settings.
Which set of advantages you prefer is a matter of personal preference, but don't pretend that PCs are superior in every way.
It sucks that Taco had to change his name, but guess what? He should have known from the beginning that the name was against the rules. It's not like anything suddenly changed; that was the rule all along. If Taco didn't want to have to change the name of a well established character, he shouldn't have chosen a name that was blatantly against the rules in the first place.
I might have some sympathy for him if the name didn't completely break any immersion into the world. Sorry, but "CmdrTaco" is not a fantasy name. I wonder how many other players were ticked off by that name before it got changed.
Wireless controllers don't have to suck, they just generally do. The Nintendo Wavebird is a good example of a non-sucking wireless controller. The batteries last seemingly forever, and I've never had any latency or interference problems. If Microsoft and Sony can pull off something similar, it shouldn't be a problem.
Of course that has very little to do with the 360's potential success in Japan, but I figured I'd mention it anyway.
If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't get past that damned third level playing as evil either. I seem to recall there being a huge gap between two of the cities, and without my creature I could never expand my influence far enough to do anything in the city I needed to reach. No amount of sacrificing children and throwing fireballs could do anything to help. In fact, they generally hurt since I needed as many worshippers as possible to expand my sphere of influence.
At that point in the game, the pointless micromanagement of mundane tasks started getting boring, and my wrists started to hurt from repeating the same mouse gestures over and over. I gave it up.
It's almost like nobody finished playing the game before release. The first two levels are great, but by the third level, the novelty of it all wears off and the game's problems become blatantly obvious.
You're right, the DS isn't completely backwards compatible. But come on. The original GB is over 15 years old. The GBC is 7 years old. I'm surprised that Nintendo maintained backwards compatibility as long as they did. If somebody does have some pressing need to play GB or GBC games, the GBA is still for sale just about everywhere. The Game Boy Player for Gamecube is also an option.
Just make sure that the server you join is playing "base" and nothing else, and you should be okay. If Tribes 1 is anything like it was a year or two ago, it's not hard to find a base server. Just be aware that the only people still playing Tribes are probably going to completely stomp you. After playing the game for years on end, their Tribes 1 skills have been honed to perfection.
No, if it turns out to be crap, they don't release it in the first place. See Warcraft Adventures, the game Blizzard eventually scrapped because it wasn't good enough. Ghost has been in development a while, and by most accounts it's shaping up to be a mediocre game. I'm honestly sort of surprised it hasn't met the same fate by now.
If you're too lazy to read the debunking, here's the rundown. You have to break your serial number sticker to even get at the screws to open the DS, and the pictures don't show a broken sticker. As for the screenshots with Pokemon running, they're taken using an emulator called Goomba. You'll notice that the game supposively running on the DS isn't colorized even though the GBA automatically colorizes GB games. Goomba doesn't.
Most damning of all, the connections this guy says he's making are actually on the the wireless adaptor, not the CPU.
"In other words, Steam gets in the way of pirating HL2 and they're pissed."
This mantra is often repeated on Slashdot and it doesn't align with reality. Steam is doing absolutely nothing to piracy. Pirates are getting cracked versions of the game. Why should they care about Steam? Their cracked single player game doesn't need it! As for multiplayer, CD keys were already working fine, so it's not as if Steam is making any inroads there. Maybe a couple pirates will have to spend 5 seconds downloading the crack, but other than that I doubt they care at all.
Legitimate users, on the other hand, have been inconvenienced by Steam. If I don't want to have a Steam account, why should I be forced to get one to install a single player game? Should I be required to get a Microsoft Passport in order to install Office? It's not difficult to imagine a future where every developer requires you to get an account with them in order to play their single player game. Is this really a step forward?
I can't speak for these Steam Watch people, but make no mistake, there are some people who haven't bought HL2 all or in part because of Steam. I'm one of them. And no, I haven't pirated it either.
Exactly. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that Photoshop is a moving target. Unlike, say, Internet Explorer, where there hasn't been much development in years, Adobe is always working on making Photoshop better. The GIMP might eventually be as good as today's Photoshop, but Photoshop will be even better by that point in time. The GIMP has a lot of catching up to do, and being complacent isn't the way to catch up. Ignoring or dismissing valid complaints isn't the way to catch up either.
The GIMP seems to be more of a Paint Shop Pro killer than anything. If somebody just wants to crop an image or make some simple graphics, it works fine and has an unbeatable price.
It seems very unlikely that Valve will remove the single player authentication at some future point in time. Didn't Valve originally say that Steam wouldn't be required for single player? What happened to that? If HL1 is any indication, there will be more stupid crap like this in the future, not less.
The thing that really gets me is that the offline Steam requirement doesn't hurt pirates at all. Let me say that again, as it can't be said enough times: It's not going to do anything to piracy. Pirates are going to get cracked versions anyway! Valve's paying customers, on the other hand, have been and will be inconvenienced by this.
To me the issue is about forcing Steam on people who don't want or need it. What if Microsoft forced you to get a.NET Passport in order to install Windows or Office? I'm sure most people here would be up in arms, and rightly so.
Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 04, @01:45PM
from the nintendo-must-be-weeping-right-now dept.
GamesIndustry.biz has the story that major retailers Gamestop and EBGames are likely going to stop DS Preorders because they're coming so fast that they won't be able to meet demand when the system launches. From the article: "It appears that six games will be available on day one - Nintendo's Super Mario 64 DS, Sega's Feel The Magic XY/XX, Activision's Spider-Man 2, Ubisoft's Asphalt Urban GT and two from EA - Madden NFL 2005 and The Urbz: Sims in the City." Gamespot also has details on the handheld shortage.
You're right, how on Earth would anybody figure out that this is a story about video games? Slashdot is absolutely cryptic about this sort of thing! It would be nice if Slashdot somehow categorized stories into different sections. There could be, you know, a Games section or something. A nice big picture of a Gameboy next to the summary would be nice too. But I'm just talking crazy talk here.
Except that your pets never die. Ever. Even if you don't feed them for a year or more, they'll be starving to death, but not dead, when you come back.
In a way, that's almost worse. Somebody convinced me to play Neopets, and I did for about two days. But I found most of the games boring, so I stopped. Now I have some Neopet out there who will be suffering starvation for all eternity because I don't remember my username or password.
I do have to say, though... anybody seriously worrying about gambling problems and Neopets probably hasn't played Neopets.
More discussion is bad? What's your objection? Why arbitrarily limit debates to two people?
You're right on one thing, though... a third party doesn't have a chance of winning the presidential election. But that's partially because they have no coverage and no way to get their voice heard. A televised debate could help solve that.
The bottom line is this: Badnarik is on the ballot in enough states to mathematically capture a majority of the electoral votes. Therefore there's no good reason why he shouldn't be allowed to debate with the other candidates. This goes for Cobb, Nader, and Paroutka too.
There's a very simple and obvious solution to this. Just invite everybody who's on enough ballots to theoretically win the majority in the Electoral College. That's six candidates. Not a whole lot, really.
The CPD's candidate selection process already selects candidates based on that and constitutional ability to be president.
There's no problem there. The complaint is in their third requirement, indicators of electoral support. A candidate has to have a level of support of at least 15%. But how is a candidate supposed to get public support when they can't even get on a televised debate? It's a catch 22.
More importantly, how is a third party candidate supposed to get well-known when there isn't even any media coverage of two presidential candidates being arrested? Seriously, I read Google News and I hadn't even heard of this story! What does a third party candidate have to do to get some attention, crash some planes into some buildings or something?
Almost, but not quite. We didn't originally get FF2, as you said, but like FF5, that's changed. Final Fantasy Origins for the Playstation has a revamped version of both FF1 and FF2. In fact, you can play every Final Fantasy (excluding FF3 and a few oddballs, like Mystic Quest and Crystal Chronicles) on the PS2.
That's why it's interesting to see FF3 as a DS launch title... the US hasn't gotten to play that one yet, so it's probably going to be a big seller. If history's any indication, this could be great for Nintendo. FF7 was the reason a lot of people bought a PS1, and the same thing seemed to happen again with FF10.
The sad part is that we're not surprised and that we have no reason to be surprised. We have such poor leadership that we expect our politicians to be greedy and corrupt. No, it's not surprising, but it's still news.
And yes, it's appropriate for nerds too. If you don't want to read it, don't. Don't click the link and don't waste your time commenting on something you don't care about. The people who actually do care will be happy that they won't have to hear people complaining on every single politics topic about "News for Nerds."
"I don't understand why these companies keep coming up with trivial add-ons therefore making the damn thing more expensive."
In general, I agree that extra features are annoying and unneeded, especially if they're not done well. (see sidetalking) I know I certainly don't want a device that can do everything at once but nothing well.
On the other hand, it's already been confirmed that the DS is going to launch at 150 bucks... pretty damn good for what it seems to be offering. Even though this whole story is nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor, if it was true I'd hardly call a wireless peer-to-peer network on a portable system a "trivial add-on."
Some of the DS' already confirmed features seem like they'll lead to some interesting new gaming ideas. Nintendo doesn't have much of a history of half-assing hardware, either. I guess time will tell...
Agreed. I want to own my games. I don't care if they have the best developers and the best games in the world... I still won't buy a Phantom. Even if it was Nintendo or Sony trying this idea, I still wouldn't buy it.
Of course, that's even assuming that the Phantom is a real product. The whole thing sounds like a scam to me.
"You know what slippery slope we're on? The one that'll kill us? The one were everyone constantly get 1 more right and 1 less responsibility."
You've got the slippery slope backwards. Day by day, bill by bill, everybody living in the United States is losing rights. Nobody's really asking for more... they just want the ones they rightly had before. I guess that's too much too ask?
I could just as easily turn around and ask "How little of a life do you have to have to immediately post on Slashdot about somebody else's life based only on the fact that they run a website?"
Despite what some may think, everybody on Slashdot doesn't think exactly alike or have the exact same opinions about everything. The people bashing Microsoft aren't necessarily the same people praising the Xbox.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind that the article was written by the Executing VP of Sales and Marketing for Nintendo of America. He's talking about his company, which has had four generations of home consoles:
Nintendo
Super Nintendo
N64
Gamecube
I'm not following your logic here. The crash was caused largely by tons of really bad games flooding the market. This article is about a shortage of consoles. How are the two situations even remotely alike?
There are probably two reasons you see people complaining about the 360's lineup:
1. Many people are interested in games that aren't sports games or first person shooters. Your list demonstrates this problem perfectly.
2. Most people don't consider games 6 months out to be launch titles. The issue is whether or not it's a good buy at launch, not whether it might be a good buy someday.
Honestly, number 1 is enough for me. The genres that are being focused on just don't interest me, and the few 360 games I might like are probably coming to the PC or other next gen consoles.
While you've got a very nice rant laced with thinly veiled insults, the point has completely sailed over your head.
PCs do have certain advantages over consoles. They have better graphics, more modding capability, and the keyboard and mouse. Graphics are nice, but they're hardly a deal breaker. Dealing with lower resolutions isn't the horror you make it out to be. Modding capability is a great plus. The keyboard and mouse are great for some genres and horrible for others.
The thing is, while you can deny it until you're blue in the face, consoles also have their own advantages over PCs. Price, ease of use, and a greater selection of games are the big ones. Even buying a brand new $400 XBox 360 console at launch with "accessories + tv + cheapo internet pc" is going to be cheaper than buying a gaming PC. Most people already have the TV and internet PC anyway. I'd rather spend my gaming time playing games instead of messing with drivers and configuration settings.
Which set of advantages you prefer is a matter of personal preference, but don't pretend that PCs are superior in every way.
I don't think he missed the point at all.
It sucks that Taco had to change his name, but guess what? He should have known from the beginning that the name was against the rules. It's not like anything suddenly changed; that was the rule all along. If Taco didn't want to have to change the name of a well established character, he shouldn't have chosen a name that was blatantly against the rules in the first place.
I might have some sympathy for him if the name didn't completely break any immersion into the world. Sorry, but "CmdrTaco" is not a fantasy name. I wonder how many other players were ticked off by that name before it got changed.
Wireless controllers don't have to suck, they just generally do. The Nintendo Wavebird is a good example of a non-sucking wireless controller. The batteries last seemingly forever, and I've never had any latency or interference problems. If Microsoft and Sony can pull off something similar, it shouldn't be a problem.
Of course that has very little to do with the 360's potential success in Japan, but I figured I'd mention it anyway.
If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't get past that damned third level playing as evil either. I seem to recall there being a huge gap between two of the cities, and without my creature I could never expand my influence far enough to do anything in the city I needed to reach. No amount of sacrificing children and throwing fireballs could do anything to help. In fact, they generally hurt since I needed as many worshippers as possible to expand my sphere of influence.
At that point in the game, the pointless micromanagement of mundane tasks started getting boring, and my wrists started to hurt from repeating the same mouse gestures over and over. I gave it up.
It's almost like nobody finished playing the game before release. The first two levels are great, but by the third level, the novelty of it all wears off and the game's problems become blatantly obvious.
As for Gamecube/Revolution backwards compatibility, it's already been confirmed.
Just make sure that the server you join is playing "base" and nothing else, and you should be okay. If Tribes 1 is anything like it was a year or two ago, it's not hard to find a base server. Just be aware that the only people still playing Tribes are probably going to completely stomp you. After playing the game for years on end, their Tribes 1 skills have been honed to perfection.
No, if it turns out to be crap, they don't release it in the first place. See Warcraft Adventures, the game Blizzard eventually scrapped because it wasn't good enough. Ghost has been in development a while, and by most accounts it's shaping up to be a mediocre game. I'm honestly sort of surprised it hasn't met the same fate by now.
If you're too lazy to read the debunking, here's the rundown. You have to break your serial number sticker to even get at the screws to open the DS, and the pictures don't show a broken sticker. As for the screenshots with Pokemon running, they're taken using an emulator called Goomba. You'll notice that the game supposively running on the DS isn't colorized even though the GBA automatically colorizes GB games. Goomba doesn't.
Most damning of all, the connections this guy says he's making are actually on the the wireless adaptor, not the CPU.
This mantra is often repeated on Slashdot and it doesn't align with reality. Steam is doing absolutely nothing to piracy. Pirates are getting cracked versions of the game. Why should they care about Steam? Their cracked single player game doesn't need it! As for multiplayer, CD keys were already working fine, so it's not as if Steam is making any inroads there. Maybe a couple pirates will have to spend 5 seconds downloading the crack, but other than that I doubt they care at all.
Legitimate users, on the other hand, have been inconvenienced by Steam. If I don't want to have a Steam account, why should I be forced to get one to install a single player game? Should I be required to get a Microsoft Passport in order to install Office? It's not difficult to imagine a future where every developer requires you to get an account with them in order to play their single player game. Is this really a step forward?
I can't speak for these Steam Watch people, but make no mistake, there are some people who haven't bought HL2 all or in part because of Steam. I'm one of them. And no, I haven't pirated it either.
Exactly. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that Photoshop is a moving target. Unlike, say, Internet Explorer, where there hasn't been much development in years, Adobe is always working on making Photoshop better. The GIMP might eventually be as good as today's Photoshop, but Photoshop will be even better by that point in time. The GIMP has a lot of catching up to do, and being complacent isn't the way to catch up. Ignoring or dismissing valid complaints isn't the way to catch up either.
The GIMP seems to be more of a Paint Shop Pro killer than anything. If somebody just wants to crop an image or make some simple graphics, it works fine and has an unbeatable price.
It seems very unlikely that Valve will remove the single player authentication at some future point in time. Didn't Valve originally say that Steam wouldn't be required for single player? What happened to that? If HL1 is any indication, there will be more stupid crap like this in the future, not less.
The thing that really gets me is that the offline Steam requirement doesn't hurt pirates at all. Let me say that again, as it can't be said enough times: It's not going to do anything to piracy. Pirates are going to get cracked versions anyway! Valve's paying customers, on the other hand, have been and will be inconvenienced by this.
To me the issue is about forcing Steam on people who don't want or need it. What if Microsoft forced you to get a .NET Passport in order to install Windows or Office? I'm sure most people here would be up in arms, and rightly so.
Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 04, @01:45PM
from the nintendo-must-be-weeping-right-now dept.
GamesIndustry.biz has the story that major retailers Gamestop and EBGames are likely going to stop DS Preorders because they're coming so fast that they won't be able to meet demand when the system launches. From the article: "It appears that six games will be available on day one - Nintendo's Super Mario 64 DS, Sega's Feel The Magic XY/XX, Activision's Spider-Man 2, Ubisoft's Asphalt Urban GT and two from EA - Madden NFL 2005 and The Urbz: Sims in the City." Gamespot also has details on the handheld shortage.
You're right, how on Earth would anybody figure out that this is a story about video games? Slashdot is absolutely cryptic about this sort of thing! It would be nice if Slashdot somehow categorized stories into different sections. There could be, you know, a Games section or something. A nice big picture of a Gameboy next to the summary would be nice too. But I'm just talking crazy talk here.
Except that your pets never die. Ever. Even if you don't feed them for a year or more, they'll be starving to death, but not dead, when you come back.
In a way, that's almost worse. Somebody convinced me to play Neopets, and I did for about two days. But I found most of the games boring, so I stopped. Now I have some Neopet out there who will be suffering starvation for all eternity because I don't remember my username or password.
I do have to say, though... anybody seriously worrying about gambling problems and Neopets probably hasn't played Neopets.
More discussion is bad? What's your objection? Why arbitrarily limit debates to two people?
You're right on one thing, though... a third party doesn't have a chance of winning the presidential election. But that's partially because they have no coverage and no way to get their voice heard. A televised debate could help solve that.
The bottom line is this: Badnarik is on the ballot in enough states to mathematically capture a majority of the electoral votes. Therefore there's no good reason why he shouldn't be allowed to debate with the other candidates. This goes for Cobb, Nader, and Paroutka too.
The CPD's candidate selection process already selects candidates based on that and constitutional ability to be president. There's no problem there. The complaint is in their third requirement, indicators of electoral support. A candidate has to have a level of support of at least 15%. But how is a candidate supposed to get public support when they can't even get on a televised debate? It's a catch 22.
More importantly, how is a third party candidate supposed to get well-known when there isn't even any media coverage of two presidential candidates being arrested? Seriously, I read Google News and I hadn't even heard of this story! What does a third party candidate have to do to get some attention, crash some planes into some buildings or something?
Almost, but not quite. We didn't originally get FF2, as you said, but like FF5, that's changed. Final Fantasy Origins for the Playstation has a revamped version of both FF1 and FF2. In fact, you can play every Final Fantasy (excluding FF3 and a few oddballs, like Mystic Quest and Crystal Chronicles) on the PS2.
That's why it's interesting to see FF3 as a DS launch title... the US hasn't gotten to play that one yet, so it's probably going to be a big seller. If history's any indication, this could be great for Nintendo. FF7 was the reason a lot of people bought a PS1, and the same thing seemed to happen again with FF10.
And yes, it's appropriate for nerds too. If you don't want to read it, don't. Don't click the link and don't waste your time commenting on something you don't care about. The people who actually do care will be happy that they won't have to hear people complaining on every single politics topic about "News for Nerds."
In general, I agree that extra features are annoying and unneeded, especially if they're not done well. (see sidetalking) I know I certainly don't want a device that can do everything at once but nothing well.
On the other hand, it's already been confirmed that the DS is going to launch at 150 bucks... pretty damn good for what it seems to be offering. Even though this whole story is nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor, if it was true I'd hardly call a wireless peer-to-peer network on a portable system a "trivial add-on."
Some of the DS' already confirmed features seem like they'll lead to some interesting new gaming ideas. Nintendo doesn't have much of a history of half-assing hardware, either. I guess time will tell...
Agreed. I want to own my games. I don't care if they have the best developers and the best games in the world... I still won't buy a Phantom. Even if it was Nintendo or Sony trying this idea, I still wouldn't buy it.
Of course, that's even assuming that the Phantom is a real product. The whole thing sounds like a scam to me.
You've got the slippery slope backwards. Day by day, bill by bill, everybody living in the United States is losing rights. Nobody's really asking for more... they just want the ones they rightly had before. I guess that's too much too ask?
I could just as easily turn around and ask "How little of a life do you have to have to immediately post on Slashdot about somebody else's life based only on the fact that they run a website?"
Despite what some may think, everybody on Slashdot doesn't think exactly alike or have the exact same opinions about everything. The people bashing Microsoft aren't necessarily the same people praising the Xbox.