The main potential damage will come later, because the PS4 may be burdened with extra cost having to support the PS3's game medium instead of striking it out in the best-way-they-can without worrying about legacy support.
The loss of Blu-Ray movie playing as added incentive will certainly hurt, but... it's hard to calculate. I do, however, find it funny that the same people saying losing the format war would tank the PS3 are the same ones saying that no one cares about Blu-Ray movie playing to begin with.
Name a game other than an RPG that came out on multiple disks.
Now look at how many more games on console are FPSes, racing games, etc. Name all the non-GameCube games last gen that came on multiple disks. Name how many games you think want to bother switching, remember which to boot off of to play single-player versus multi-player...
Similarly, will a single-layer BR disk be perpetually more than 2x the cost to manufacture than two DVD-9's? If not, then BR is both the convenience option and the COST option, and both developers and publishers would be hungrier for it.
Meanwhile, no developer is being "lazy with their compression" for it. Insomniac's Resistanceis compressed and has 40+ levels with 300+ MB of unique data in each. (At least thus says Insomniac.) So while there can certainly be reasons to leave data uncompressed and repeat data, those are not in play for THAT first-generation game. One distinctly lacking in FMV. (Uncompressed data, meanwhile, is no "lazy way to increase performance," either. What you gain by not having to dedicate CPU time to decompressing data (and this in itself depends on a machine not having hardware dedicated to doing this essentially for free, a la the GameCube) you lose in slower disk read times and harder streaming--which tends to be more of a choke point. Effective compression will simply be BETTER, and PS3 developers are not now and will not in the future be looking to ignore it. BR allows them to do exactly what they're doing now with the DVD, but with a much bigger palette.
Meanwhile, the "$300" comment is, of course, completely off. You're "forced to pay" an extra ~$100, if you want to bitch about it. That's the amount that shifts the low-end PS3 to the same price as the high-end 360, the major difference between which is... you guessed it! The Blu-Ray drive. (Otherwise, 20GB drive, lack of built-in wifi, etc.) Another ~$100 comes from that damn forced hard drive (which no console has ever done before! Oh, wait...), which--of course--has a great many gaming implications; as does the Blu-Ray drive. There is a reason the low-end 360 is DECIDEDLY gimp, whereas the low-end PS3 is only "gimp" to those who don't know what the hell they're talking about. (Especially now that the already-non-issue-lack-of-HDMI is now a thorough-non-issue.) Would I pay an extra $100 for 40GB more storage, an HDMI port, and built-in WiFi? I guess, since I'd already be shelling out a lot. Would it make any difference to my gaming? Not at all. (Of course now that HDMI's in there anyway, would I still pay the extra $100? Well, let's just say I'm holding off and waiting to see what info comes out about how easy the "upgrade your HD to whatever you want" path is, because I could get WAY better than a 60GB drive for that much.;) )
In the end, Blu-Ray offers distinct advantages, not the least of which is simply in letting developers not HAVE to curb themselves around format limits. This is always, always, ALWAYS a good thing. The only question is "is it worth an extra $100 to you as a gamer?" Are enough developers (whose games you want to play) going to take advantage of it, or are they going to get held back by the format limitations on the 360 and Wii anyway and not toss in anything worthwhile? Similarly, is the mandatory hard drive worth it to you?
Sony's playing the long and unpopular (and much more risky) game, but come 2009 I think we'll be surprised at just what that extra front-end money delivers us.
...I'm playing Okami--which is so artistically engrossing it's making me want to lick the screen--and the one element that does NOT immerse me anymore is... well... the Immersion tech.
I've made the complaint before, but now I'm really starting to notice it; vibration may be nice, but until they really work on the mechanics of it and developers actually do something other than "stick it in a game," it's distinctly unimpressive anymore. (And, like a low-rez texture here or there, can indeed stick out like a sore thumb when it doesn't measure up to the rest of the game.)
- Change Election Day from Tuesday to Saturday. Nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that elections must be held on Tuesday, and I'm sure many people agree it's not such a great day to do it.
Hell, why does it even have to be just ONE day? Why not spread it out over a whole extended weekend? Saturday-to-Tuesday, and make the final Tuesday a federal holiday. That would allow for a much easier time of it for ALL, more time to confirm votes, perform on-site hand recounts to confirm daily totals...
As well, I support the complete and utter NON-SECRECY of any form of data like this. We already know that in our media environment it will fail anyway, so therefore our best hope in limiting fraud is to INCREASE the number of hands holding the data. (The count as it's progressing, that is, not the ability to identify an individual citizen's voting options.) Have the voter confirm the vote after casting it, and immediately send it off to all parties' command centers, any press organization that wants it, any think-tank and concerned organization... There can still be one (or, my vote, three) official "tally" point(s), but everyone else would be able to conduct their own, and therefore the ability to manipulate the counts after the fact would shink to negligent proportions.
This would certainly not stamp out ALL forms of fraud, but it would certainly make voter disenfranchisement harder, and manipulation of the count behind the scenes extremely difficult. The biggest threat to democracy is, indeed, how much of it is behind closed doors. Which is asinine in regards to voting, the #1 public concern.
Try explaining how iTunes works in laymans terms to people, and you'll find they don't like DRM very much.
Explain LOTS of computer stuff in layman's terms to people and you find they don't like it very much.;-) Point is, most people don't know even the first thing about DRM, so it can't be a factor in their digital music purchasing reasons.
Seriously, the music business is trying to use digital media in a way to prevent all the advantages that can be gained by going digital.
The music business (like the movie business) is notoriously stupid about every form of technical advancement, and tries to stand in the way until they just CAN'T anymore, at which point the find it turns into a huge cash cow for them.
A CD on itunes still costs more than a CD on the high street - and they have the physical costs of running a store, shipping costs for the media, etc.
APPLE's margins are low. The music industry is the one truly drawing profit from it. (Apple is, of course, drawing massive profit from the iPod hardware industry at large, and is why they've kept song prices as low as they have.)
It won't always be this way, as electronic distribution fleshes out, but for now Apple has kept their margins low to make iTunes succeed (it has), sell more hardware (it has), and draw people into an arena where they'll find there's JUST A TAD of vendor lock-in. 8-P
Better than that, Nintendo never lost money fromthe GameCube.
They did, but it was relatively minor. Every once in a while their price drops (like the one to $99) would eek over the limit and they'd lose a bit until manufacturing-et-al caught up, but it was probably no more than $10-20 at any one time. Pisswater compared to what they pull in on all their 1st party software, however.;-)
By reporting about this incident, these outlets are providing the video a vast amount of exposure that it otherwise would not receive.
Yeah, but the spoof sucks. Like... REALLY sucks. Painfully bad sucking.
I think the more exposure it gets the more people will see that Republicans and their sponsors have no humor and can't even lodge an effective mockery.;-)
Sony never ever had that, and with the new system, I'm not betting they will.
Never ever? Not one fun game? Not ONE? Never EVER?
Man, your standards are pretty strict.
I do believe what they mean in this case that they will deliver 2 million units by October (and then continue on to fulfill the rest of their contract at whatever production rate they are at by then; 400k or so?), not that they will be able to produce 2 million units PER month by then.;-)
Especially seeing that Sony could not remotely sell through 2 million units a month from just ONE of their suppliers.
Slashdot Mirror
The main potential damage will come later, because the PS4 may be burdened with extra cost having to support the PS3's game medium instead of striking it out in the best-way-they-can without worrying about legacy support.
The loss of Blu-Ray movie playing as added incentive will certainly hurt, but... it's hard to calculate. I do, however, find it funny that the same people saying losing the format war would tank the PS3 are the same ones saying that no one cares about Blu-Ray movie playing to begin with.
Name a game other than an RPG that came out on multiple disks.
;) )
Now look at how many more games on console are FPSes, racing games, etc. Name all the non-GameCube games last gen that came on multiple disks. Name how many games you think want to bother switching, remember which to boot off of to play single-player versus multi-player...
Similarly, will a single-layer BR disk be perpetually more than 2x the cost to manufacture than two DVD-9's? If not, then BR is both the convenience option and the COST option, and both developers and publishers would be hungrier for it.
Meanwhile, no developer is being "lazy with their compression" for it. Insomniac's Resistance is compressed and has 40+ levels with 300+ MB of unique data in each. (At least thus says Insomniac.) So while there can certainly be reasons to leave data uncompressed and repeat data, those are not in play for THAT first-generation game. One distinctly lacking in FMV. (Uncompressed data, meanwhile, is no "lazy way to increase performance," either. What you gain by not having to dedicate CPU time to decompressing data (and this in itself depends on a machine not having hardware dedicated to doing this essentially for free, a la the GameCube) you lose in slower disk read times and harder streaming--which tends to be more of a choke point. Effective compression will simply be BETTER, and PS3 developers are not now and will not in the future be looking to ignore it. BR allows them to do exactly what they're doing now with the DVD, but with a much bigger palette.
Meanwhile, the "$300" comment is, of course, completely off. You're "forced to pay" an extra ~$100, if you want to bitch about it. That's the amount that shifts the low-end PS3 to the same price as the high-end 360, the major difference between which is... you guessed it! The Blu-Ray drive. (Otherwise, 20GB drive, lack of built-in wifi, etc.) Another ~$100 comes from that damn forced hard drive (which no console has ever done before! Oh, wait...), which--of course--has a great many gaming implications; as does the Blu-Ray drive. There is a reason the low-end 360 is DECIDEDLY gimp, whereas the low-end PS3 is only "gimp" to those who don't know what the hell they're talking about. (Especially now that the already-non-issue-lack-of-HDMI is now a thorough-non-issue.) Would I pay an extra $100 for 40GB more storage, an HDMI port, and built-in WiFi? I guess, since I'd already be shelling out a lot. Would it make any difference to my gaming? Not at all. (Of course now that HDMI's in there anyway, would I still pay the extra $100? Well, let's just say I'm holding off and waiting to see what info comes out about how easy the "upgrade your HD to whatever you want" path is, because I could get WAY better than a 60GB drive for that much.
In the end, Blu-Ray offers distinct advantages, not the least of which is simply in letting developers not HAVE to curb themselves around format limits. This is always, always, ALWAYS a good thing. The only question is "is it worth an extra $100 to you as a gamer?" Are enough developers (whose games you want to play) going to take advantage of it, or are they going to get held back by the format limitations on the 360 and Wii anyway and not toss in anything worthwhile? Similarly, is the mandatory hard drive worth it to you?
Sony's playing the long and unpopular (and much more risky) game, but come 2009 I think we'll be surprised at just what that extra front-end money delivers us.
...I'm playing Okami--which is so artistically engrossing it's making me want to lick the screen--and the one element that does NOT immerse me anymore is... well... the Immersion tech.
I've made the complaint before, but now I'm really starting to notice it; vibration may be nice, but until they really work on the mechanics of it and developers actually do something other than "stick it in a game," it's distinctly unimpressive anymore. (And, like a low-rez texture here or there, can indeed stick out like a sore thumb when it doesn't measure up to the rest of the game.)
I guess if you insist on pre-rendering everything or you are trying to piggyback a Blue Ray install base on the PS3.
A) Procedurally generating everything is about as common as... oh... something extremely uncommon among developers right now.
B) They are. 8-P
- Change Election Day from Tuesday to Saturday. Nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that elections must be held on Tuesday, and I'm sure many people agree it's not such a great day to do it.
Hell, why does it even have to be just ONE day? Why not spread it out over a whole extended weekend? Saturday-to-Tuesday, and make the final Tuesday a federal holiday. That would allow for a much easier time of it for ALL, more time to confirm votes, perform on-site hand recounts to confirm daily totals...
As well, I support the complete and utter NON-SECRECY of any form of data like this. We already know that in our media environment it will fail anyway, so therefore our best hope in limiting fraud is to INCREASE the number of hands holding the data. (The count as it's progressing, that is, not the ability to identify an individual citizen's voting options.) Have the voter confirm the vote after casting it, and immediately send it off to all parties' command centers, any press organization that wants it, any think-tank and concerned organization... There can still be one (or, my vote, three) official "tally" point(s), but everyone else would be able to conduct their own, and therefore the ability to manipulate the counts after the fact would shink to negligent proportions.
This would certainly not stamp out ALL forms of fraud, but it would certainly make voter disenfranchisement harder, and manipulation of the count behind the scenes extremely difficult. The biggest threat to democracy is, indeed, how much of it is behind closed doors. Which is asinine in regards to voting, the #1 public concern.
Try explaining how iTunes works in laymans terms to people, and you'll find they don't like DRM very much.
;-) Point is, most people don't know even the first thing about DRM, so it can't be a factor in their digital music purchasing reasons.
Explain LOTS of computer stuff in layman's terms to people and you find they don't like it very much.
Seriously, the music business is trying to use digital media in a way to prevent all the advantages that can be gained by going digital.
The music business (like the movie business) is notoriously stupid about every form of technical advancement, and tries to stand in the way until they just CAN'T anymore, at which point the find it turns into a huge cash cow for them.
I do not rate them highly on smurts.
I really don't buy their margins are low.
A CD on itunes still costs more than a CD on the high street - and they have the physical costs of running a store, shipping costs for the media, etc.
APPLE's margins are low. The music industry is the one truly drawing profit from it. (Apple is, of course, drawing massive profit from the iPod hardware industry at large, and is why they've kept song prices as low as they have.)
It won't always be this way, as electronic distribution fleshes out, but for now Apple has kept their margins low to make iTunes succeed (it has), sell more hardware (it has), and draw people into an arena where they'll find there's JUST A TAD of vendor lock-in. 8-P
I... er... um...
huh?
I got TWO WOOD for your sheep!
"...using menus in any way, shape or form. But on, like, an electronic thingee! Which is the clever bit, and makes it patentable. Really."
Zune just sounds ridiculous. I can't even imagine saying, imma play this on my zune.
It makes me think I'll be playing a PopCap game.
Better than that, Nintendo never lost money fromthe GameCube.
;-)
They did, but it was relatively minor. Every once in a while their price drops (like the one to $99) would eek over the limit and they'd lose a bit until manufacturing-et-al caught up, but it was probably no more than $10-20 at any one time. Pisswater compared to what they pull in on all their 1st party software, however.
He means it in the "Microsoft's killer product" way, man.
(didn't many initial DVD drives on the PC do this as well?) ...but still retarded in this day and age.
By reporting about this incident, these outlets are providing the video a vast amount of exposure that it otherwise would not receive. Yeah, but the spoof sucks. Like... REALLY sucks. Painfully bad sucking. I think the more exposure it gets the more people will see that Republicans and their sponsors have no humor and can't even lodge an effective mockery. ;-)
After the infamous ROOTKIT incident, I'm not interested in giving Sony a dime ever again.
I'm curious, have you ever given a dime again to Ubisoft, Codemasters, or anyone that's ever used StarForce?
They remove the touch sensor, sides, and track ball to have just ONE button?
Sony never ever had that, and with the new system, I'm not betting they will. Never ever? Not one fun game? Not ONE? Never EVER? Man, your standards are pretty strict.
I do believe what they mean in this case that they will deliver 2 million units by October (and then continue on to fulfill the rest of their contract at whatever production rate they are at by then; 400k or so?), not that they will be able to produce 2 million units PER month by then. ;-)
Especially seeing that Sony could not remotely sell through 2 million units a month from just ONE of their suppliers.
Congrats!
Shockingly, billions of people don't purchase consoles when they cost $10, either. Film at 11!
That is pointless and geeky enough to make me ALMOST regret being so goddam lazy. 8-P
Just think! It takes me more than $60 to ship products overseas, most of the time... You're getting a bargain!
Let's just hope they don't pick the N64's price point for games... ;-)