I personally have a similar thing with Nintendo, they're a bit like Disney, they make good games / films, but frankly you wouldn't want to soley watch / play them. As an adult I'd kinda like more variety in the general themes of the games, rather than near 100% "family friendly" fare.
Nintendo seem rather unwilling to do it themselves (for fear of tarnishing the brand?) and leave it to 3rd parties, but lately they've been having a lot of trouble attracting them. Perhaps they should create a Miramax or something, to do what Nintendoesn't.
Well, I think some of it is just the fact the EU prices include VAT. Although using the UK rate (17.5%) that did leave about 40 shortfall between the US and EU prices for the/$500 system, so there is a fair amount of rounding up as well.
I'm a bit unconvinced about it, Sony themselves still seem to use the "Spiderman movie" logo, like here. The old PlayStation text is gone, long live PLAYSTATION (why do companies keep on doing stupid things with capitalisation? We know your logo is all upper / lower case, you don't have to keep on using it that way in your press releases, it looks stupid...)
Unless they're really crippling it, I'd guess you can still get analogue component (ie: the same as Xbox 360) from the AV port, so it'll still do HD, just not as nicely as with HDMI. And movie studios may screw up your movies becuase if you use analogue you're clearly a pirating scumbag.
But this is bad PR for Sony, as half the people seem to be thinking "No HDMI, No HD at all".
Does anyone actually have proof Nintendo directly make a profit on the hardware itself? The last time I asked all I got for proof Nintendo as a whole made a profit, which doesn't show that they aren't say propping up losses on the Gamecube hardware with Gameboy / DS sales, or software sales.
But with the handheld cash cows, Nintendo aren't going anywhere that fast.
b) the X360 core with a memory card can play every Xbox 360 game released so far for $160
Ehh-Err[1]
Football Manager 2006 requires the Xbox 360 Hard Drive (check the feature list). So you can play most of Xbox 360 games without the hard drive, but there will be some you do need it for.
[1] Is that the correct way to put the Family Fortunes buzzer?
Looking at the discs of my PAL copy it seems to be 2 x DVD5 (single layer discs), not 2 x DVD9 (dual layer discs). The same goes for Xenosaga II (except for the bonus DVD Video). They could probably be fitted onto a single disc each if they used DVD9s. I think I've heard that developing dual-layer games can be troublesome on the PS2 for some reason, but that may be fanboys talking bollocks.
But you're technically right, they are games spanning multiple DVDs.
Well, Dancing Stage / DDR games were amongst the last games released on the original PlayStation, continuing after most other stuff had stopped (at least in the UK), there's a good chance it'll be the same with the PS2, as part of the market is the "casual gamer", and they're less likley to spend hundreds of pounds on a new console.
Usually in those cases the companies don't use the same name in the same markets - ABC (Australia) could probably be sued by ABC (US) if they started a US TV station called ABC. In some markets the US Budwieser is just called "Bud" becuse the Czech company owns the trademark, although in others they do both use Budweiser. There's also Viz, the American publisher of Japanese comic books, and Viz, the British comic book.
As Apple Corps and Apple Computer both use the trademark in the same countries (in this case the UK), there is a more solid case, but still not much of one.
Re:I looked for the Churchill speech
on
On The BBC 2.0
·
· Score: 1
Well, I doubt the archive will appear on the catalouge, seeing as it's basically a front end to the BBC archive's internal database. It's basically a very bid index.
I suppose stuff like the iMP could have archive programming however, but there may be rights issues preventing stuff to appear, plus putting the entire archive online would probably be rather unfeasible from a time and money perspective.
I think the BBC is also supposed to make money from stuff like DVDs as well. It's all rather confusing and contradictory...
Re:great resource, but incomplete
on
On The BBC 2.0
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The search apparently screws up with one letter terms (Just a Minute returns no results but Just Minute does for example), and Blake's 7 is under Blake's Seven for some reason anyway, and the Q series are under the umbrella series of "Spike Milligan", with the episodes as Q5 / Q6 / etc. I'd guess it probably makes more sense if you work in the BBC archives and are used to the various qwirks of the database.
Re:Nintendo's Wii akin to Chevrolet's Nova?
on
Both Sides of Wii
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· Score: 1
Well, seperatley the two bits of the Revolution controller aren't exactly new.
As for remote control style game controllers, the CDi and PS2 beat them (you can control games with the PS2 DVD remote, although it's pretty useless at it), plus games on digital TV services use a remote as well.
Motion sensitive controllers isn't exactly the newest either, AFAIK there have been a couple of arcade games that used them (including, naturally, a sword fighting one). Sega were apparently planning one for the Saturn for "Air NiGHTS", and I suppose Sambda De Amigo's maracas count as well.
I suppose the entire package, and having it as standard may be "Revolution"ary though.
The trouble is I'm not sure if there will be any fresh jokes left by tomorrow, at the rate they're being used up, we could be dry in a couple of hours.
Why announce the new name in English, on the US Nintendo.com site then? Sadly, we may be stuck with this, unless Nintendo have a sudden turnaround over it.
Actually, I was kinda thinking you were making a point whilst using an Airplane reference at the same time. I didn't realise you were just making an Airplane reference for the sake of making an Airplane reference.
Anyway, I did use it to grab a reply page at the same time, might look into doing something, but I can't think of anything that imaginative apart from a bit of a tidy up really.
Well, I suppose if you're first attempt is to change every page yourself, but the competition seems to ask (at least initially) for a few mockups, which doesn't exactly need more than a few fakes static pages.
Surely that isn't needed to change the stylesheet? You could just save some static examples to disc and tweak the stylesheets from there.
Although the pages do seem to suffer from the Unix / Windows linebreak differences, but that's just becuase I tend to keep it really far too simple and use Notepad.
Half-Life 2 - 15 Sonic Gems Collection - U Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack - 12 Timesplitters Future Perfect - 15 Soul Calibur - 15 Resident Evil - 15 Resisdent Evil Code Veronica - 15 Xenosaga Episode II - 12 The Ultimate Doom - 15 (at least for an old big-box version)
I've seen a couple of poker / casino games that are PG as well (they seem to have got 18+ ratings for PEGI, which is a rather major difference in opinions on the evils of gambling), and the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game is a U as well. The infamous Night Trap is a 15.
I think some of these (notabley Sonic Gems and the Halo 2 Map Pack) are rated for for video content outside the game rather than the games themselves, I think usually if a game ends up falling into BBFC ratings for sex or violence, they usually get a 15 or 18, but it definatley isn't always an 18. I think the BBFC have tightened up on the video clips thing recently, I've noticed a lot more games with U / PG / 12 certfificates than there used to be.
One way these laws differ from the UK law is that certain violent / sexual content does put games into the legally enforcable BBFC ratings, but the BBFC ratings aren't a simple cutoff to an 18 rating, the BBFC have their own ratings system that runs in parallel to the PEGI system, that's also used for videos / DVDs, so you can see games with other BBFC ratings as well as 18 ones.
(There's also a second way for BBFC ratings to appear on games, as although most games are exempt from classification, most video content isn't, so some games end up with a BBFC rating from that instead).
Thus why I said "slice of backstory" instead of "complete backstory." All of the characters, at least, have a reason for being (yes, even the moogle and the yeti.)
They're still pretty throwaway, you could easily get rid of half of FFVI's playable characters for the core story to work.
And what if that "prick in a clown costume" poisoned entire villages,shattered the world, and sent his wrath upon anyone who dared to disobey him? Would you take him seriously, then?
Not really. He's a generic evil villian, his only standout feature is he wears a clown costume, and has a stupid theme tune.
and the whole "fighting really nice static images drawn in a completley different style to your own characters" bit about the battle system)...which existed in just about every other 16-bit RPG.
Most of them that I've played at least aren't as obvious about it as the Final Fantasy games. They could've at least had the enemies and the protagonists drawn in the same style.
Every one of the many characters had his/her own personality and slice of backstory.
What, even the moogle, the mime, and the abomniable snowman? It's a bit like they decided to have a seperate character for every "class", and by the end ran out of ideas. A few of the other characters are a bit disposable as well IMO. I have a bit of a general dislike of the whole thing in RPGs where you end up with a dozen characters but you can only use about three of them at once, so maybe I'm biased about it...
(My other main issues with FFVI is that I personally can't take a prick in a clown costume seriously as the main villian, and the whole "fighting really nice static images drawn in a completley different style to your own characters" bit about the battle system)
Well, Namco and Microsoft are different companies, they may have different views of working with EA. Plus a publishing deal is different to a deal to sublicence some IP, the transaction is going opposite ways, Namco is giving EA a product to distribute, whilst EA would have to give Microsoft the right to distribute Goldeneye.
Slashdot Mirror
I personally have a similar thing with Nintendo, they're a bit like Disney, they make good games / films, but frankly you wouldn't want to soley watch / play them. As an adult I'd kinda like more variety in the general themes of the games, rather than near 100% "family friendly" fare.
Nintendo seem rather unwilling to do it themselves (for fear of tarnishing the brand?) and leave it to 3rd parties, but lately they've been having a lot of trouble attracting them. Perhaps they should create a Miramax or something, to do what Nintendoesn't.
Well, I think some of it is just the fact the EU prices include VAT. Although using the UK rate (17.5%) that did leave about 40 shortfall between the US and EU prices for the /$500 system, so there is a fair amount of rounding up as well.
I'm a bit unconvinced about it, Sony themselves still seem to use the "Spiderman movie" logo, like here. The old PlayStation text is gone, long live PLAYSTATION (why do companies keep on doing stupid things with capitalisation? We know your logo is all upper / lower case, you don't have to keep on using it that way in your press releases, it looks stupid...)
At a quarter of the normal resolution.
Although the lack of HDMI on all PS3s may be another thing to stop movie studios actually using the stupid "no DRM, crippled playback" option.
Unless they're really crippling it, I'd guess you can still get analogue component (ie: the same as Xbox 360) from the AV port, so it'll still do HD, just not as nicely as with HDMI. And movie studios may screw up your movies becuase if you use analogue you're clearly a pirating scumbag.
But this is bad PR for Sony, as half the people seem to be thinking "No HDMI, No HD at all".
Does anyone actually have proof Nintendo directly make a profit on the hardware itself? The last time I asked all I got for proof Nintendo as a whole made a profit, which doesn't show that they aren't say propping up losses on the Gamecube hardware with Gameboy / DS sales, or software sales.
But with the handheld cash cows, Nintendo aren't going anywhere that fast.
b) the X360 core with a memory card can play every Xbox 360 game released so far for $160
Ehh-Err[1]
Football Manager 2006 requires the Xbox 360 Hard Drive (check the feature list). So you can play most of Xbox 360 games without the hard drive, but there will be some you do need it for.
[1] Is that the correct way to put the Family Fortunes buzzer?
Looking at the discs of my PAL copy it seems to be 2 x DVD5 (single layer discs), not 2 x DVD9 (dual layer discs). The same goes for Xenosaga II (except for the bonus DVD Video). They could probably be fitted onto a single disc each if they used DVD9s. I think I've heard that developing dual-layer games can be troublesome on the PS2 for some reason, but that may be fanboys talking bollocks.
But you're technically right, they are games spanning multiple DVDs.
Well, Dancing Stage / DDR games were amongst the last games released on the original PlayStation, continuing after most other stuff had stopped (at least in the UK), there's a good chance it'll be the same with the PS2, as part of the market is the "casual gamer", and they're less likley to spend hundreds of pounds on a new console.
Usually in those cases the companies don't use the same name in the same markets - ABC (Australia) could probably be sued by ABC (US) if they started a US TV station called ABC. In some markets the US Budwieser is just called "Bud" becuse the Czech company owns the trademark, although in others they do both use Budweiser. There's also Viz, the American publisher of Japanese comic books, and Viz, the British comic book.
As Apple Corps and Apple Computer both use the trademark in the same countries (in this case the UK), there is a more solid case, but still not much of one.
Well, I doubt the archive will appear on the catalouge, seeing as it's basically a front end to the BBC archive's internal database. It's basically a very bid index.
I suppose stuff like the iMP could have archive programming however, but there may be rights issues preventing stuff to appear, plus putting the entire archive online would probably be rather unfeasible from a time and money perspective.
I think the BBC is also supposed to make money from stuff like DVDs as well. It's all rather confusing and contradictory...
The search apparently screws up with one letter terms (Just a Minute returns no results but Just Minute does for example), and Blake's 7 is under Blake's Seven for some reason anyway, and the Q series are under the umbrella series of "Spike Milligan", with the episodes as Q5 / Q6 / etc. I'd guess it probably makes more sense if you work in the BBC archives and are used to the various qwirks of the database.
Well, seperatley the two bits of the Revolution controller aren't exactly new.
As for remote control style game controllers, the CDi and PS2 beat them (you can control games with the PS2 DVD remote, although it's pretty useless at it), plus games on digital TV services use a remote as well.
Motion sensitive controllers isn't exactly the newest either, AFAIK there have been a couple of arcade games that used them (including, naturally, a sword fighting one). Sega were apparently planning one for the Saturn for "Air NiGHTS", and I suppose Sambda De Amigo's maracas count as well.
I suppose the entire package, and having it as standard may be "Revolution"ary though.
The trouble is I'm not sure if there will be any fresh jokes left by tomorrow, at the rate they're being used up, we could be dry in a couple of hours.
Why announce the new name in English, on the US Nintendo.com site then? Sadly, we may be stuck with this, unless Nintendo have a sudden turnaround over it.
"It's clearly going to piss all over the competition" is clearly a better joke than my first attempt.
Urine!
No, I think you mean Wii.
But I'm a big boy now...
Seriously, this is possibley the stupidest name in console history, and that includes the Gizmondo.
(Reference: This Flash animation)
Actually, I was kinda thinking you were making a point whilst using an Airplane reference at the same time. I didn't realise you were just making an Airplane reference for the sake of making an Airplane reference.
Anyway, I did use it to grab a reply page at the same time, might look into doing something, but I can't think of anything that imaginative apart from a bit of a tidy up really.
Well, I suppose if you're first attempt is to change every page yourself, but the competition seems to ask (at least initially) for a few mockups, which doesn't exactly need more than a few fakes static pages.
Surely that isn't needed to change the stylesheet? You could just save some static examples to disc and tweak the stylesheets from there.
Although the pages do seem to suffer from the Unix / Windows linebreak differences, but that's just becuase I tend to keep it really far too simple and use Notepad.
A quick few I've got...
Half-Life 2 - 15
Sonic Gems Collection - U
Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack - 12
Timesplitters Future Perfect - 15
Soul Calibur - 15
Resident Evil - 15
Resisdent Evil Code Veronica - 15
Xenosaga Episode II - 12
The Ultimate Doom - 15 (at least for an old big-box version)
I've seen a couple of poker / casino games that are PG as well (they seem to have got 18+ ratings for PEGI, which is a rather major difference in opinions on the evils of gambling), and the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game is a U as well. The infamous Night Trap is a 15.
I think some of these (notabley Sonic Gems and the Halo 2 Map Pack) are rated for for video content outside the game rather than the games themselves, I think usually if a game ends up falling into BBFC ratings for sex or violence, they usually get a 15 or 18, but it definatley isn't always an 18. I think the BBFC have tightened up on the video clips thing recently, I've noticed a lot more games with U / PG / 12 certfificates than there used to be.
One way these laws differ from the UK law is that certain violent / sexual content does put games into the legally enforcable BBFC ratings, but the BBFC ratings aren't a simple cutoff to an 18 rating, the BBFC have their own ratings system that runs in parallel to the PEGI system, that's also used for videos / DVDs, so you can see games with other BBFC ratings as well as 18 ones.
(There's also a second way for BBFC ratings to appear on games, as although most games are exempt from classification, most video content isn't, so some games end up with a BBFC rating from that instead).
Thus why I said "slice of backstory" instead of "complete backstory." All of the characters, at least, have a reason for being (yes, even the moogle and the yeti.)
...which existed in just about every other 16-bit RPG.
They're still pretty throwaway, you could easily get rid of half of FFVI's playable characters for the core story to work.
And what if that "prick in a clown costume" poisoned entire villages,shattered the world, and sent his wrath upon anyone who dared to disobey him? Would you take him seriously, then?
Not really. He's a generic evil villian, his only standout feature is he wears a clown costume, and has a stupid theme tune.
and the whole "fighting really nice static images drawn in a completley different style to your own characters" bit about the battle system)
Most of them that I've played at least aren't as obvious about it as the Final Fantasy games. They could've at least had the enemies and the protagonists drawn in the same style.
Every one of the many characters had his/her own personality and slice of backstory.
What, even the moogle, the mime, and the abomniable snowman? It's a bit like they decided to have a seperate character for every "class", and by the end ran out of ideas. A few of the other characters are a bit disposable as well IMO. I have a bit of a general dislike of the whole thing in RPGs where you end up with a dozen characters but you can only use about three of them at once, so maybe I'm biased about it...
(My other main issues with FFVI is that I personally can't take a prick in a clown costume seriously as the main villian, and the whole "fighting really nice static images drawn in a completley different style to your own characters" bit about the battle system)
Well, Namco and Microsoft are different companies, they may have different views of working with EA. Plus a publishing deal is different to a deal to sublicence some IP, the transaction is going opposite ways, Namco is giving EA a product to distribute, whilst EA would have to give Microsoft the right to distribute Goldeneye.