Listen well to the voice of experience. I went straight from high school to work as a programmer. Anyone who tells you that lack of a degree will not hold you back or will not get you a job - or that you wouldn't want those jobs anyway - has been fortunate or short-sighted. You need the degree for upward mobility and continued job security.
I worked full time while getting two associates, a bachelor's, and a master's (of sorts - long story). It's hard, even harder if you're married and have kids, but this is something you have to do for yourself and your family.
If you live in any sort of a big city, there's bound to be a college that offers night classes. That's the right way to do this. It won't be a diploma mill but the professors will care about you and will not be trying to wash you out or just see you as a paycheck. One side benefit is that you'll learn while going through the process. Maybe you know all there is about computers, but learning all the other courses you might think are BS, they'll help you think and speak and write.
Daley died years ago and he didn't write many books but his two-book Coramonde series is fantastic. Strongly suggest you pick up Doomfarers of Coramonde and try it. The book looks short but he builds a terrific world within it.
Once you have a smartphone, you can't live without it. Not because you get addicted to it like crack, but because it's so darn useful and versatile.
On a recent vacation, I used my HTC Thunderbolt as: a phone, a text message device, a satellite navigation unit (GPS), a web browser, an MP3 player, a game console, and a camera. Seven functions. When I started thinking about it, it can also be: a calculator, a flashlight, a notepad, a WiFi hub, a voice recorder, an FM radio, and a bubble level. I'm sure there's many more. Having all that functionality in one device in your pocket is incredible.
It's the computing equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. Get a smartphone and you'll love it.
When the PS3 first came out, Tycho was so unhappy with the high cost, he refused to buy one. Now, I know the price has come down some and that he's bought one, but it's still a long way from righteous indignation to joining forces.
What's next? The Cardboard Tube Samurai switching to steel?
The fact that the fee is per channel gets me thinking. At Pandora, I have two defined channels. Those channels introduce me to new music, new artists, perhaps artists not represented by the RIAA. Think about that.
If Pandora has ten thousand listeners like me, that's twenty thousand stations times $500 per station is ten million dollars. That's probably enough to kill Pandora and any other customizable channel internet radio site. But if the internet radio site only had say five channels, that's only $2,500, easily affordable by a commercial site.
My conclusion from this little exercise is that the RIAA is out to kill customizable channels. They don't want you to learn about music on your own. They only want you to listen to whatever the latest pop sensation is. They want to eliminate choice and the extra expense of having so many artists. If they can make it so all you ever hear is the generic artist of the moment, that's all you'll know and all you'll buy.
This is all about control. RIAA wants to make sure they control not just your access to their artists but your ability to discover new artists not under their contracts. Internet radio is a growing force and a growing threat to their ability to pick what music you buy.
I can only hope that they have overreached; that the huge amount of money involved here makes their motives visible to Congress. And that Congress cares. That sure makes it sound like a lost cause, doesn't it?
I seriously enjoy every time I see a rumor about a PS3 price cut. Having moved firmly into the anti-Sony camp, these are the best things around. The more play the rumors get, the more likely it is that anyone thinking about getting a PS3 will hold off, thereby keeping PS3 sales low. Then Sony has to come out and deny the rumors, making themselves look greedy.
Now, the best part: let's assume one of these days the rumor is true. That's almost better! There's no way it'll ever get down to competing with the Wii. If it gets close to 360 territory, MS will simply lower their price. Everyone will jump on Sony for having denied the rumor and, the best part, Sony will be taking a larger loss on every unit sold.
The only thing that could possibly go wrong is that Sony ends up selling enough PS3s so that BluRay becomes the dominant standard for next-generation DVD. I actually think this will happen... for physical media. But electronic distribution will hopefully make it a hollow victory. That way, Sony can have seriously injured their best money making division (SCE) for the sake of forcing another one of their formats down our throats.
Oh! Almost forgot! I heard from a friend of my brother's ex-wife's next-door neighbor, who knows a guy who works at Sony, that they're about to drop the price of the PS3 all the way to 50 cents!
Remember the big stink about the HP board hiring people who used pretexting to investigate board leaks? Wanna bet HP might have a couple of copyrights and patents? This little exemption the RIAA wants would mean HP was exempt from fraud for that.
One step further: Probably all large corporations hold copyrights and patents. Does this mean they should all be exempt from fraud charges? Oh, wow, is this a bad, bad idea! I sure hope congress is smarter than this.
Please, oh mighty Blizzard, hear my plea. Port Diablo, Diablo II, or best yet, a new Diablo III to the DS. The touch screen interface on the bottom for all the clicky-clicky. The inventory screen and map on the top screen. Yes, pure gaming bliss.
Throughout this thread, I haven't seen anything from folks who have been the victims. Here's mine and it shows why I am pleased that the merchant has to eat the charge.
I took a vacation year before last and stayed in Memphis. I only used my credit card in one place in Memphis: the hotel. A couple weeks after I got back, the credit card company called me and asked about some charges that did not match my usual pattern. I identified the fraudulent charges, thanked them, and received my new card in the mail a couple of days later.
In the meantime, I called one of the merchants who accepted the fraudulent charges, a large mail-order catalog company. I called them because they mailed me a confirmation statement. That statement listed my home in Texas as the billing address with the ship to address in Memphis. When I got customer service on the phone, I explained the situation and the reply was that the credit card company would take care of it and not to worry. They didn't even take my name or try to identify the charges. Odds are they hadn't yet shipped the goods because the confirmation said some were on back-order.
I didn't hear anything for a couple of months. Except for the fact that I was now on their mailing list and started getting mail-order catalogs from everyone and their dog. Then I received a bill from them for the order. You see, the credit card company had rejected the charge so they came after me. I won't prolong this with all the details but it was an absolute nightmare getting this straightened out. I really hope the merchant had to eat the charges because they were very difficult to deal with.
Every media company in the world has this same conflict. Newspapers, magazines, TV networks, local stations, radio; all of them sell their wares to you and, essentially, sell you to their advertisers. Yes, I suppose that's a bit of a conflict of interest but not much.
Think about it this way: the advertisers want you to see the ads. That's what they are paying for: your attentions. That makes it in the best interest of the media company to provide news, entertainment, or what have you that people like. Specifically, that the people the advertisers are trying to reach like. That's why you see beer ads during football and detergent ads during Oprah.
People objecting to TiVo selling aggregated use behavior data to advertisers seem short-sighted to me. If, for example, Nissan learns that I don't like their stupid Titan ads with the too-loud heavy metal music, maybe they'll change the ads. As long as the data is not specific to me, as long as it's general, this in no way hurts me. Indeed it helps me.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, but I think worrying about this data being sold is a bit too paranoid.
Re:All a business reader should care about is
on
Will the Wii Work?
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· Score: 1
One thing people seem to forget is that Nintendo will not be making a profit on the console immediately. Yes, Reggie said they would but he's glossing over sunk costs. That is, while the Wii will be sold for more than it costs to manufacture, Nintendo has spent a considerable amount of R&D money to develop the console. While the CPU/GPU processing may not be a huge cost due to it being an incremental improvement, the development for the controller, WiFi, DS connectivity, etc, could not have been free.
Same goes for the games. DVDs don't cost much to press, but game development is very expensive. Getting to the point that only very well-financed companies can develop games. So, again, Nintendo will sell the games for well more than the manufacturing cost, but they'll have to sell a certain number before they are really making a profit.
All that said, I think TFA is full of it. Sony has a real public relations problem on their hands right now. From rootkit to excessively arrogant pronouncements by the executives to a sky-high price, they've dug a great deep hole. And while the/. crowd is a minority of the game buying public, most of us are used as a recommendation resource by our friends and family. If you think I'm recommending a $600 console from a company I've become convinced is more predatory than Microsoft, you might need to reconsider.
One intersting add-on for the GameCube is the GameBoy Player. If you don't know, it's an adapter that lets the Cube play GBA games. There was a previous adapter that let you play GBC Pokemon games on the N64. I sense a trend.
But how, you might ask, can you emulate the touch-screen DS on a TV? How about with the Revolution's TV-Remote controller? Think about it: if you have a widescreen TV, you could put the two DS screens side-by-side (might make Sonic Rush a bit strange) and use the pointing controller like the DS's stylus. On a 4:3 TV, you could put the screens one on top of the other.
Now admittedly, the resolution of the DS is such that the games wouldn't look all that great, but that's not the point. The point is adding one more unique aspect to Nintendo's unusual gaming approach. And while the games wouldn't compare to 360/PS3, they'd be close to N64 standards, and that's not too bad. Remember for many people, especially younger players who Nintendo targets, it's the games that count, not the ultra-realistic graphics.
The article is correct that it's all about the games. But it's not like Microsoft isn't trying. Please remember that MS has many new agreements with Japanese development houses. Those games aren't out yet. It's not Microsoft's fault they aren't out yet. Don't attribute to malice or neglect what is simply bad luck or poor planning.
Microsoft rushed the 360 out the door. Many of the games, as most of us know, were still undergoing certification as they were being manufactured. And that's from MS and other American publishers. The Japanese publishers have a longer learning curve and are taking longer to get their product out the door. But DOA4 has been released and others are coming quickly.
I'm not an MS fanboy. I own neither an XBox nor a 360. I think MS just over-reached. They should have kept the launch in US and Europe and waited on Japan until they had more appealing Japanese games. That would have given them better numbers and more positive press. Now, will the 360 ever dominate the the Japanese market or compete on an even foting with PS3 over there? I don't think so. But I do think it will do much better than the original XBox. (Can't do much worse...)
Remember the MS rule of three. First version stinks. Second version competes. Third verion dominates. Sony is tough competition and know the Japanese market much better than MS and it's no foregone conclusion who will win. But don't count the 360 out just yet in Japan.
There are many reasons to choose the DS over the PSP. Others have already pointed out the more, better games angle. That is, of course, what a gaming system is all about. The point about backward-compatibility with hundreds of cheap GBA games has also already been made. I have a couple of other items, though.
Game mechanic variety. At the risk of stating the obvious, the DS has two screens. It has a touch screen. It has WiFi. It has a microphone. I'm not sure any one game makes use of all these features, but many make use of one, two, or three. That means that when I get tired of using the stylus on Meteos and Advance Wars, I switch to a dual screen game like Sonic Rush or Metroid Prime Pinball. Then I switch to a WiFi game like Mario Kart DS. Then I switch to a game that uses the mic like Phoenix Wright or (if I had it) Nintendogs. With all these different mechanics, there is a huge amount of variety between the games. So not only are they good, they are different from each other.
The Bad Sony Factor. Whether you got screwed by a dead-end format (8mm, MiniDisc), had your computer messed by nasty DRM hidden on a CD, or (like me) are truly ticked at a Sony DVD player that refuses to recognize CD-R disks, Sony has shown themselves to be a rather ugly piece of work. Nintendo has been known to pull a few nasty tricks of their own, but nobody (including the behemoth in Redmond) goes out of their way to harm their customers like Sony.
I'm an adult gamer and I could afford to buy the PSP if I wanted one. I don't. Instead I have a DS and a nice library of highly-rated games for it.
And now a plea to any developers listening. Please, the DS is made for it, bring me a hack-and-slash RPG Diablo-type game for my DS!
There was a recent news article about Nintendo's profit suffering due to sluggish GameCube sales. It has been in third place this generation and is surely being drowned now that the first of the next gen consoles is out. I can't help but wonder how far their profits will decline as the 'Cube gets further and further marginalized.
The GBA, even the SP and Micro editions, is old news and is often viewed (incorrectly) as replaced by the DS. The DS itself is great (I love mine) but it hasn't captured the public's imagination nearly as well as the PSP. When I look at sales fliers for Best Buy, Circuit City, Game Stop, etc., Nintendo's products don't have anywhere near as much space as 360, PSP, or PS2. They are rapidly losing mindshare.
Don't take me wrong. In my house, we have no XBox, no PSP, 1 GBC, 2 GBA, 2 GBA SP, 1 DS, 1 N64, and 1 GC (and 1 lonely, lovely Dreamcast), all in working order and all except the GBC get regular use. I really like Nintendo products. But I'm worried that the Revolution will trail the announcement by six months or more. If they give the 360 two Christmas seasons before bringing out the Revolution, they're toast in the home market. (They still may be fine in portables.)
Microsoft have 1 loss-making console and some keyboards worth of experience manufacturing consumer hardware
Actually, Microsoft has no console manufacturing experience. Nor will they gain any with Xbox360. The XBox was originally manufactured by Flextronics and now has a second source, I don't remember who though I think Solectron. The 360 is similiarly outsourced.
Now, you may have never heard of those companies, after all, you won't run down to Best Buy and pick up any electronics with the Flextronics logo on them. However, the odds are pretty good that you own a bunch of gear they made. Flex has a huge amount of manufacturing experience and are known for their ability to produce at a low cost.
I'm sure Sony has low-cost manufacturing options also. With the amount of electronics they make and sell, they certainly get very good component prices. So does Flex. My point is that both will have low-cost manufacturing. Sony has no inherant advantage there.
People (normal non-fanboy people) don't buy consoles for the console. They buy them for the games. If MS wants to sell 10M 360's in a year, they had better be standing on Bugie's throat for Halo 3...
How can they think that because XBox360 has those types of capabilities that the console wars are no more? Do you think Sony isn't going to reply in kind? And who has more potential multi-media content that can be instantly brought to the console? Last I knew, Microsoft did not own a movie studio and a music label.
Nintendo will continue to go their own (very different) way, but I think this console war between MS and Sony is just getting interesting. MS was fighting at a huge disadvantage with the XBox. Too little consumer electronics experience. This time around, they start on equal footing.
The war rages on. And we're winning. That is, those of us who use and enjoy game consoles are the winners. The more slick stuff the console does, the better for us.
Actually, I'm safer running Win98SE than WinXP. The new virues coming out attack the security holes built into XP. Since it's a very different code base than 98, those exploits rarely infect 98.
I have talked to several people with XP boxes who have gotten infected while my 98SE box is just fine. Now, I protect that box with anti-virus, a hardware firewall, and using Mozilla and maybe that has something to do with it, or maybe I'm just lucky, but you have to admit that 98 is immune to many of the latest viruses.
Research is always sponsered. Think about it. The people doing the research have to eat. The forms, computers, whatever, cost money and that money has to come from somewhere. Yes, colleges do research and that appears unsponsered but somebody's paying somewhere.
What this means is not that you shouldn't trust any reasearch but that you should always look behind the research. Even if it's supposedly independant research, look at who's doing the research and what their agenda is.
Of course, what's really important is to look at the how of the research. Look for good scientific basis (things like double-blind studies, statistically significant sample sizes, no self-selecting groups, etc.) for the research.
I find that I have to trust sponsered research...but only once I understand how it was done and by whom.
If you'll read the articles from Nintendo, the Nintendo DS is not a replacement for the GBA. Heck, it doesn't even have "Gameboy" in the title, just "DS." Nintendo knows the GBA is the goose that laid the golden egg and they have no intention of killing it off.
The DS and the GBA are targeted at different markets with the GBA staying with the traditional younger player and the DS aimed more at an older player. While they don't say so right out, I think Nintendo views the DS as a bit of a gamble. Yeah, they are betting on it, but they aren't betting the house.
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, Don't panic! The GBA has a long life ahead of it. Me, my money is on the DS being a surprise hit, which I'll play, while my kids keep on playing new Pokemon games on their GBAs.
I played through Ground Control a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. If you are thinking that a game you get for free must be pretty marginal, think again. This is a tactical game, not really an RTS. You don't do harvesting of resources or anything - it's straight combat all the way!
I particularly enjoyed the fully 3D camera in this game and the graphics were very sweet for the time. At that time, I was running a P3 600 with 128 MB of RAM and a 64 MB Kyro 2 Graphics card. I had to turn down detail a bit for that rig to keep up so if you've a good modern system, it should look quite sweet. I fired it up on my new machine a couple of weeks ago to revisit the game when I heard the sequal was coming out and it still looks very nice today.
Anyway, if you've the time and bandwidth, this free game is WELL worth getting.
The Atari 5200 and 7800 followed the 2600. I believe the 5200 had backwards compatibility with 2600 cartridges. Not sure on that, though.
On the otherhand, there's the single most successful console ever to hit the market: GameBoy! The latest GBA SP still plays original GameBoy games. The DS, coming later this year, is supposed to provide GBA backwards compatibility, though will not catch the entire range.
Microsoft has their own game studios and has purchased Bungie and Rare. They also have the cash to bribe^Hconvince other studios to develop for Xenon. If they are not going to provide backwards compatibility, they better spend a lot of cash and have a very convincing launch library. They can't afford another console with one good game.
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Listen well to the voice of experience. I went straight from high school to work as a programmer. Anyone who tells you that lack of a degree will not hold you back or will not get you a job - or that you wouldn't want those jobs anyway - has been fortunate or short-sighted. You need the degree for upward mobility and continued job security.
I worked full time while getting two associates, a bachelor's, and a master's (of sorts - long story). It's hard, even harder if you're married and have kids, but this is something you have to do for yourself and your family.
If you live in any sort of a big city, there's bound to be a college that offers night classes. That's the right way to do this. It won't be a diploma mill but the professors will care about you and will not be trying to wash you out or just see you as a paycheck. One side benefit is that you'll learn while going through the process. Maybe you know all there is about computers, but learning all the other courses you might think are BS, they'll help you think and speak and write.
I think a nice drive to Seguin in November sounds like great fun! I'd love to legally open it up and go 85.
Daley died years ago and he didn't write many books but his two-book Coramonde series is fantastic. Strongly suggest you pick up Doomfarers of Coramonde and try it. The book looks short but he builds a terrific world within it.
On a recent vacation, I used my HTC Thunderbolt as: a phone, a text message device, a satellite navigation unit (GPS), a web browser, an MP3 player, a game console, and a camera. Seven functions. When I started thinking about it, it can also be: a calculator, a flashlight, a notepad, a WiFi hub, a voice recorder, an FM radio, and a bubble level. I'm sure there's many more. Having all that functionality in one device in your pocket is incredible.
It's the computing equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. Get a smartphone and you'll love it.
What's next? The Cardboard Tube Samurai switching to steel?
If Pandora has ten thousand listeners like me, that's twenty thousand stations times $500 per station is ten million dollars. That's probably enough to kill Pandora and any other customizable channel internet radio site. But if the internet radio site only had say five channels, that's only $2,500, easily affordable by a commercial site.
My conclusion from this little exercise is that the RIAA is out to kill customizable channels. They don't want you to learn about music on your own. They only want you to listen to whatever the latest pop sensation is. They want to eliminate choice and the extra expense of having so many artists. If they can make it so all you ever hear is the generic artist of the moment, that's all you'll know and all you'll buy.
This is all about control. RIAA wants to make sure they control not just your access to their artists but your ability to discover new artists not under their contracts. Internet radio is a growing force and a growing threat to their ability to pick what music you buy.
I can only hope that they have overreached; that the huge amount of money involved here makes their motives visible to Congress. And that Congress cares. That sure makes it sound like a lost cause, doesn't it?
Now, the best part: let's assume one of these days the rumor is true. That's almost better! There's no way it'll ever get down to competing with the Wii. If it gets close to 360 territory, MS will simply lower their price. Everyone will jump on Sony for having denied the rumor and, the best part, Sony will be taking a larger loss on every unit sold.
The only thing that could possibly go wrong is that Sony ends up selling enough PS3s so that BluRay becomes the dominant standard for next-generation DVD. I actually think this will happen... for physical media. But electronic distribution will hopefully make it a hollow victory. That way, Sony can have seriously injured their best money making division (SCE) for the sake of forcing another one of their formats down our throats.
Oh! Almost forgot! I heard from a friend of my brother's ex-wife's next-door neighbor, who knows a guy who works at Sony, that they're about to drop the price of the PS3 all the way to 50 cents!
One step further: Probably all large corporations hold copyrights and patents. Does this mean they should all be exempt from fraud charges? Oh, wow, is this a bad, bad idea! I sure hope congress is smarter than this.
Please, oh mighty Blizzard, hear my plea. Port Diablo, Diablo II, or best yet, a new Diablo III to the DS. The touch screen interface on the bottom for all the clicky-clicky. The inventory screen and map on the top screen. Yes, pure gaming bliss.
I can just see it now: Frodo Street 2008. Improved by modeling each individual toe hair.
I took a vacation year before last and stayed in Memphis. I only used my credit card in one place in Memphis: the hotel. A couple weeks after I got back, the credit card company called me and asked about some charges that did not match my usual pattern. I identified the fraudulent charges, thanked them, and received my new card in the mail a couple of days later.
In the meantime, I called one of the merchants who accepted the fraudulent charges, a large mail-order catalog company. I called them because they mailed me a confirmation statement. That statement listed my home in Texas as the billing address with the ship to address in Memphis. When I got customer service on the phone, I explained the situation and the reply was that the credit card company would take care of it and not to worry. They didn't even take my name or try to identify the charges. Odds are they hadn't yet shipped the goods because the confirmation said some were on back-order.
I didn't hear anything for a couple of months. Except for the fact that I was now on their mailing list and started getting mail-order catalogs from everyone and their dog. Then I received a bill from them for the order. You see, the credit card company had rejected the charge so they came after me. I won't prolong this with all the details but it was an absolute nightmare getting this straightened out. I really hope the merchant had to eat the charges because they were very difficult to deal with.
Every media company in the world has this same conflict. Newspapers, magazines, TV networks, local stations, radio; all of them sell their wares to you and, essentially, sell you to their advertisers. Yes, I suppose that's a bit of a conflict of interest but not much.
Think about it this way: the advertisers want you to see the ads. That's what they are paying for: your attentions. That makes it in the best interest of the media company to provide news, entertainment, or what have you that people like. Specifically, that the people the advertisers are trying to reach like. That's why you see beer ads during football and detergent ads during Oprah.
People objecting to TiVo selling aggregated use behavior data to advertisers seem short-sighted to me. If, for example, Nissan learns that I don't like their stupid Titan ads with the too-loud heavy metal music, maybe they'll change the ads. As long as the data is not specific to me, as long as it's general, this in no way hurts me. Indeed it helps me.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, but I think worrying about this data being sold is a bit too paranoid.
Same goes for the games. DVDs don't cost much to press, but game development is very expensive. Getting to the point that only very well-financed companies can develop games. So, again, Nintendo will sell the games for well more than the manufacturing cost, but they'll have to sell a certain number before they are really making a profit.
All that said, I think TFA is full of it. Sony has a real public relations problem on their hands right now. From rootkit to excessively arrogant pronouncements by the executives to a sky-high price, they've dug a great deep hole. And while the
But how, you might ask, can you emulate the touch-screen DS on a TV? How about with the Revolution's TV-Remote controller? Think about it: if you have a widescreen TV, you could put the two DS screens side-by-side (might make Sonic Rush a bit strange) and use the pointing controller like the DS's stylus. On a 4:3 TV, you could put the screens one on top of the other.
Now admittedly, the resolution of the DS is such that the games wouldn't look all that great, but that's not the point. The point is adding one more unique aspect to Nintendo's unusual gaming approach. And while the games wouldn't compare to 360/PS3, they'd be close to N64 standards, and that's not too bad. Remember for many people, especially younger players who Nintendo targets, it's the games that count, not the ultra-realistic graphics.
Microsoft rushed the 360 out the door. Many of the games, as most of us know, were still undergoing certification as they were being manufactured. And that's from MS and other American publishers. The Japanese publishers have a longer learning curve and are taking longer to get their product out the door. But DOA4 has been released and others are coming quickly.
I'm not an MS fanboy. I own neither an XBox nor a 360. I think MS just over-reached. They should have kept the launch in US and Europe and waited on Japan until they had more appealing Japanese games. That would have given them better numbers and more positive press. Now, will the 360 ever dominate the the Japanese market or compete on an even foting with PS3 over there? I don't think so. But I do think it will do much better than the original XBox. (Can't do much worse...)
Remember the MS rule of three. First version stinks. Second version competes. Third verion dominates. Sony is tough competition and know the Japanese market much better than MS and it's no foregone conclusion who will win. But don't count the 360 out just yet in Japan.
Game mechanic variety. At the risk of stating the obvious, the DS has two screens. It has a touch screen. It has WiFi. It has a microphone. I'm not sure any one game makes use of all these features, but many make use of one, two, or three. That means that when I get tired of using the stylus on Meteos and Advance Wars, I switch to a dual screen game like Sonic Rush or Metroid Prime Pinball. Then I switch to a WiFi game like Mario Kart DS. Then I switch to a game that uses the mic like Phoenix Wright or (if I had it) Nintendogs. With all these different mechanics, there is a huge amount of variety between the games. So not only are they good, they are different from each other.
The Bad Sony Factor. Whether you got screwed by a dead-end format (8mm, MiniDisc), had your computer messed by nasty DRM hidden on a CD, or (like me) are truly ticked at a Sony DVD player that refuses to recognize CD-R disks, Sony has shown themselves to be a rather ugly piece of work. Nintendo has been known to pull a few nasty tricks of their own, but nobody (including the behemoth in Redmond) goes out of their way to harm their customers like Sony.
I'm an adult gamer and I could afford to buy the PSP if I wanted one. I don't. Instead I have a DS and a nice library of highly-rated games for it.
And now a plea to any developers listening. Please, the DS is made for it, bring me a hack-and-slash RPG Diablo-type game for my DS!
The GBA, even the SP and Micro editions, is old news and is often viewed (incorrectly) as replaced by the DS. The DS itself is great (I love mine) but it hasn't captured the public's imagination nearly as well as the PSP. When I look at sales fliers for Best Buy, Circuit City, Game Stop, etc., Nintendo's products don't have anywhere near as much space as 360, PSP, or PS2. They are rapidly losing mindshare.
Don't take me wrong. In my house, we have no XBox, no PSP, 1 GBC, 2 GBA, 2 GBA SP, 1 DS, 1 N64, and 1 GC (and 1 lonely, lovely Dreamcast), all in working order and all except the GBC get regular use. I really like Nintendo products. But I'm worried that the Revolution will trail the announcement by six months or more. If they give the 360 two Christmas seasons before bringing out the Revolution, they're toast in the home market. (They still may be fine in portables.)
Actually, Microsoft has no console manufacturing experience. Nor will they gain any with Xbox360. The XBox was originally manufactured by Flextronics and now has a second source, I don't remember who though I think Solectron. The 360 is similiarly outsourced.
Now, you may have never heard of those companies, after all, you won't run down to Best Buy and pick up any electronics with the Flextronics logo on them. However, the odds are pretty good that you own a bunch of gear they made. Flex has a huge amount of manufacturing experience and are known for their ability to produce at a low cost.
I'm sure Sony has low-cost manufacturing options also. With the amount of electronics they make and sell, they certainly get very good component prices. So does Flex. My point is that both will have low-cost manufacturing. Sony has no inherant advantage there.
People (normal non-fanboy people) don't buy consoles for the console. They buy them for the games. If MS wants to sell 10M 360's in a year, they had better be standing on Bugie's throat for Halo 3...
Nintendo will continue to go their own (very different) way, but I think this console war between MS and Sony is just getting interesting. MS was fighting at a huge disadvantage with the XBox. Too little consumer electronics experience. This time around, they start on equal footing.
The war rages on. And we're winning. That is, those of us who use and enjoy game consoles are the winners. The more slick stuff the console does, the better for us.
I have talked to several people with XP boxes who have gotten infected while my 98SE box is just fine. Now, I protect that box with anti-virus, a hardware firewall, and using Mozilla and maybe that has something to do with it, or maybe I'm just lucky, but you have to admit that 98 is immune to many of the latest viruses.
What this means is not that you shouldn't trust any reasearch but that you should always look behind the research. Even if it's supposedly independant research, look at who's doing the research and what their agenda is.
Of course, what's really important is to look at the how of the research. Look for good scientific basis (things like double-blind studies, statistically significant sample sizes, no self-selecting groups, etc.) for the research.
I find that I have to trust sponsered research...but only once I understand how it was done and by whom.
The DS and the GBA are targeted at different markets with the GBA staying with the traditional younger player and the DS aimed more at an older player. While they don't say so right out, I think Nintendo views the DS as a bit of a gamble. Yeah, they are betting on it, but they aren't betting the house.
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, Don't panic! The GBA has a long life ahead of it. Me, my money is on the DS being a surprise hit, which I'll play, while my kids keep on playing new Pokemon games on their GBAs.
I particularly enjoyed the fully 3D camera in this game and the graphics were very sweet for the time. At that time, I was running a P3 600 with 128 MB of RAM and a 64 MB Kyro 2 Graphics card. I had to turn down detail a bit for that rig to keep up so if you've a good modern system, it should look quite sweet. I fired it up on my new machine a couple of weeks ago to revisit the game when I heard the sequal was coming out and it still looks very nice today.
Anyway, if you've the time and bandwidth, this free game is WELL worth getting.
On the otherhand, there's the single most successful console ever to hit the market: GameBoy! The latest GBA SP still plays original GameBoy games. The DS, coming later this year, is supposed to provide GBA backwards compatibility, though will not catch the entire range.
Microsoft has their own game studios and has purchased Bungie and Rare. They also have the cash to bribe^Hconvince other studios to develop for Xenon. If they are not going to provide backwards compatibility, they better spend a lot of cash and have a very convincing launch library. They can't afford another console with one good game.