Games are worthwhile investments of leisure time despite what people might say. Over the years I've had more people backstab me, betray me, dump me and be so fucking unreliable in general, having an outlet to get away from the daily grind and the crappy low quality of people on this planet is a godsend. Video games might eat into relationship time but if you're SO is not that into you then why should you spend time away from your hobbies? I mean come on, I bet half these "Gaming widows" complaining don't do anything to pull their SO's away from their games (i.e. sex, schedule a weekend away, etc).
Too much blame is often saddled with guys but usually the guy who gets dumped never knows what was wrong because the girl keeps that shit to herself in the firstplace. They are vocal on the internet but many just act irrationally and expect their SO to read their mind.
IMHO the quality of people I have met in modern life have declined significantly, I think the rise of video games and entertainment speaks about the decline of the quality of life and the quality of people in SOCIAL settings in general.
All my gamer friends while somewhat nerdy and perhaps not as socially graceful can be all around better people to hang out with then people who aren't into games and use you for superficial BS like competing for social status and money.
I dont value human relationships because I dont value all the BS and social games people play, many just can't face reality and be true to themselves, they are so wound up in social BS it's hard to see anything of value.
Yeah well I was one of those people, I have 80Kilobytes upload, and I was uploading 4-10 GIGS straight for 12/24 hours at a time. Downloading episodes and movies and such.
Games are supposed to be fun, but many people find extended play not that fun.
As a hardcore gamer myself I can play a fun game for hours on end straight for entire day, but most normal people do not think that way. People have priorities in their life above gaming and above even *gasp* fun! As gamers we put fun on a pedestal but its not the ultimate in what appeals to people of different psychologies, everyone prioritizes things differently.
ISP's get in the way of good ratio's if you go over a certain amount of gigabytes of upload in a month expect a letter form any SANE ISP.
This is exactly why I had to become a "leecher" for fear of disconnection of my internet connection even though I wanted to seed.
Re:Here comes a flamebait mod, but still...
on
MMOG Economies Examined
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Buying items saves time for people to do other things. Think about it, if I'm rich do I really want to spend hours grinding in a game to get the best weapons, or do I spend my excessive wealth on ways to skip the boring parts of the game to experience the best parts with the best stuff?
There are always people who have the means and will pay for it. There are over a million rich people and I'm sure there are plenty of middle class people who work regular hours who dont have time to sink into MMO's and are willing to pay for in game items, they probably make more in a week or month then it would cost them to spend real world hours playing the game anyway. Think about it.
I dont think people buying in game items is moronic. It's just another way of buying time for yourself to do other things then sit in front of a screen for hours on end where the designers of the game have drawn out the tasks and jobs in the game to try to keep players hooked for months.
If you want kids to get excited about higher education make sure there will be jobs for them, thats the #1 reason I know lots of people skipping higher education and going for trades, because they can't as easily be outsourced. Higher education is becoming increasingly commoditized worldwide, a higher education won't do you any good if you can't pay back the debt and can't find a job. It's all about the bottom line: Money.
Why do people think all kids have the same potential? They don't, no matter how hard you try to educate some kids, they have hard "hardware limits" just like if you were trying to run Windows XP on a 486 33mhz with 8MB of ram.
This is why there are psychological and intelligence tests to test performance of intelligence, speed, memory and overall ability.
Lets face facts, even if everyone could be a genius that doesn't mean there are enough seats for all the jobs people would like to do. In any system of things all things being equal there will always be someone that "loses out" even when they succeed.
I think theres a bit of a generation gap. Most experienced gamers have played the shit out of FPS on the PC, and the last 4-5 years thats pretty much the only Genre that keeps coming out with games frequently that are for the PC.
I think console gamers and newer less experienced gamers in general have played less games then hardcore gamers period (in the library of games they have previously played). And this is really why you have yuppies thinking Halo 2 is the greatest thing "evar!!" it's not. It simply copies what has existed since the Doom and quake days with slight refinements, it does not play "radically differently" then any other game, you can have just as much fun in Serious Sam or SS 2nd encounter then you can in halo. The AI may be good but even if the AI was dumb as shit Halo would still get glowing reviews and still have millions of drooling idiots claiming its the best thing ever.
The thing halo has is Master Chief and the fact that they nailed the feel of the universe and style of aliens well enough to make the game universe appealling.
If you replaced all the graphics in halo with placeholder art I doubt halo 2 would get such glowing reviews. The halo experience is really about the small things they layer to the game that adds up to an overall experience on top of the graphics. They got things like the cpu controlled team mates right and the fact you feel they aren't just mindless dolls. They keep the pacing of the game going by having the recharging shield so you dont have to run around to find health and theres usually always plenty of ammo because you can pick up alien weapons and use them against your enemy.
It's nothing revolutionary they just limit your guy and force you to make decisions. You can't carry 10 guns at once and pull them out of your ass you can only carry two.
I still think its because most console gamers this generation have never been exposed to a lot of great FPS and thats why you see Halo selling so well.
Again we would design a better evolutionary processes in the first place. Why rely on nature when you can ENGINEER change into your offspring?
IMHO all invention is born of necessity and when people get so advance they can modify themselves we'll see radical changes in what we consider "humanity", imagine having your memory linked to a hive mind or "collective" (AKA the borg) that acts as a massive storage for 1000's of lifetimes of memories, while your enhanced brain acts as one component of a much larger system.
... people will still die due to accidents, nature, etc. Not to mention billions of years out if there are no inherent "natural law" based limits that constrain our travel outward, I can easily see Humanity getting wiped out by Stars going belly up or cosmic evolution despite them having achieved "immortality" and near "godhood" in science and knowledge. You can't really run from a blackhole.
They are still dependent on nature of matter and energy to live even if they can exist in a non-biological fashion they will still suffer from decay and a host of other natural processes.
Wake me up when they make a MM Action RPG like Diablo. Every single MMO I have ever played caters to people who have no twitch skills and the pacing of combat is something to be desired, I'm an action gamer at heart whenever I am doing third or first person 3D games and MMO's do nothing for me. You have a single character to control and the range of moves and things those characters can do leave a lot to be desired when you compare it against ANY single player action game or even single player RPG, most console / single player RPG's run rings aroudn MMO's most of the time and dont cost $15 a month either.
WoW doesn't radically alter the MMO formula because frankly no one's willing to have an actual game based on SKILL rather then stats and computer controlled attacks where you decide to tell your character to cast this or that or use this or that item every now and then. I'd love if they'd take the mechanics of fighting games and implement them in RPG's, Diablo in my opinion was the first step to truly enjoying combat with different moves for your characters. MMO's have not reached the gameplay nirvana of fun that an action RPG like Diablo has years after its release.
Whatever, most everything I said was true, most of your counter points were totally off the mark, hence I didn't bother respoding to them. Most of your counterpoints didn't make any sense.
Dreamcast, Sega Saturn and the Sega CD all had CD/Optical disc based hardware and failed because they had no developer support or killer app exclusives to sell the system, you prove once again you responded out of knee jerk reaction rather then rational thought. You couldn't see the forest from the trees in my post, I end my post with my conclusion and you think that invalidates it because some of my points weren't exactly articulated the best.
You're just nitpicking because you have nothing better to do. Look at the numbers in the console industry today, The installed base of consoles PS2 is enormously in the lead and it was because of the dominance they secured with former SNES developers in the PS1 era. That fact sir is indisputable.
I guess thats why your post hasn't been modded UP for its terribly factual data, correct? Not. The bulk of what I said is true in the first three paragraphs the rest was fluff until the end. Maybe you were too stupid to realize that, but hey this IS slashdot. Sony was FF VII's publisher, SO WHAT?
The point remains that all the fighting games, RPG's and everything else went to PS1 primarily because Nintendo was not seen as a viable system to make games for as well as money, it wasn't just about economics of CD versus cartridges, many developers were also gamers and knew about the technology lest you forget. Also even with the added costs of cartridges why were there hardly any multiplatform games made for both the PS1 and the N64 with the N64's 30 million installed base? Because the playstation was a better system to make games for and had a much bigger installed base.
I didn't say the N64 sucked or had bad games, but that doesn't mean squat. The PS2 had inferior hardware to both the gamecube and xbox and it raped them both in units sold because of the games and the developers like Konami and square that release Heavy hitters like MGS 2, 3 and FFX, Grand theft auto 3 and up? How many PS2's were sold for just those 3 games, the fighting games and the rpg's, a fuckload. You can bet Nintendo is practically begging to get those developers back to getting good games on their consoles. Go and compare the titles on PS1 to the SNES and you realize that Nintendo got totally raped of all their best 3rd party franchises and developers because not even the N64 got any decent fighting games from Capcom. Nintendo practically had to beg for the one 3D castlevania from Konami that they released for the N64, while you were getting 2D wonders like Symphony of the Night for the PS1 (another great franchise that was formerly for the SNES and went to PS1 exclusivity). If you think the PS1 sucked ass you're simply mistaken every single 2D game made for the ps1 ran circles around the SNES's graphics, I own all the streetfighters for the PS1 and the own the SNES's graphics so hard because I owned the SNES versions of those games as well.
You're reasoning is still a little cloudy, go check all the titles on the PS2 and compare them to the developers and Titles formerly on the SNES, almost every single developer FORMERLY developed for the Super Nintendo before jumping to PS1 which secured the exclusives for PS2's dominance. The reason was the developers jumped ship to PS1 due to superior storage capacity that enabled you to make superior games with more content, better textures, and graphics then you could on a cart, lets face it, Cartridges were measured in mere megabits, a CD is 650Mbytes, there is no way you would want to develop for a cartridge. That is the whole reason Square left nintendo after 3 sequels to its legendary final fantasy series (and its still going strong and sells playstation 2's today), which was the smartest move on Sony's part ever was to get all the best 3rd party devs doing their system totally screwing over Nintendo.
Nintendo lost half their market in one fell swoop because of the mistake that ended up being the N64, all the developers that were formerly developing for the snes TOTALLY abandoned the N64 for the Playstation, Konami with Metal gear (which btw, the original was originally released on Nintendo's NES way back in the day), Street Fighter Series, Tekken, all the best fighting games, and all the Japanese RPG's went to the PSX while the N64 totally got shafted. I couldn't stand how Final fantasy became a PSX exclusive and that sealed the deal and I had to get a Playstation, their worst mistake ever was not realizing that they needed hot 3rd party exclusives to secure #1 and sell consoles. The reason N64 did ok was because of fanboyism and hopes and dreams left over from the SNES era, I remember wishing against fate that N64 would get some good games because my brother recieved one for christmas while I owned a PS1. You have to realize hardware manufacturers like Sony don't sell playstation 2's, the developers sell playstation 2's by developing MUST HAVE games that force you to buy the hardware. This is the way the console industry works. Games drive the hardware sales.
At least 60-80% of nintendos best 3rd party devleopers games and their sequels were all moved over and released on playstation and became exclusives to that platform. This is what killed Nintendo, they didn't realize the power of third party developers until it was too late and they lost the system wars.
While nearly all the developers who formerly made games for SNES didn't release ANYTHING at all worth playing for the N64 if they even released *anything*. Squaresoft TOTALLY shafted the N64 completely as well as every other major RPG maker and most other developers of different genres as well. ALL the developers wanted to develop for the PS1 with that massive storage that enabled near perfect reproductions of many fighting arcade games and FMV and other graphical niceties at the time. FF VII would not have even been possible on those small dinky cartridges. Ocarina of time had washed out textures and practically had to use super compression to get as much content on the ROM as possible.
It is very VERY clear that nintendo lost due to superior hardware primarily because of the storage medium they chose becuase the developers wanted to make great games, what are you going to choose, a 32, 64 or 256Megbit cartridge or a 650Megabyte CDROM??? If you're a developer you can easily, do the math on what kind of game you can create! NES sold 60 something million units with SNES pulling in something like 50-54 Million units, a drop in 20 milllion or so units of market share is MASSIVE compared to their past domination with NES and SNES.
It's very clear why the N64 failed because they didn't realize that they couldn't carry the system by themselves and that a huge library of games coupled with all the hottest 3rd party developers (Konami, Capcom, Square, etc) killed them completely. All the best series on Nintendo in the NES and SNES days are all now practically exclusives on the playstation and playstation 2.
Which brings up an interesting point, since the encyclopedia is for profit does that mean they are less inclined to keep checking stuff they have already checked for errors and just re-hash the same words from previous encyclopedias without checking them for errors as well? What happens when encyclopedia authors "downsize" due to lack of funds/profit does that mean their article quality and resources to perform error checking and "serious research" take a hit as well?
I'd think that money is that if you dont have the resources to do something right its likely you'll introduce errors and mistakes, correct?
Yeah well we're not all omniscient. That and you can't figure out someones intent from an email. It's just text, you're just reading what someone else wrote. Business credibility on the internet are not very visible, you never know if the guy behind "Mega corporate X's" website might be some guy living with his mom in his basement.
Thats why I said mixed. i.e. not every aspect of the economy functions under a planned model. Some economies only have one or few buyers or the same buyers always (i.e. food, shelter, etc).
Your post makes a good argument in favor of planned economies or mixed socialism/capitalist policy because humans love inequity and love to exploit one another for personal gain since most people have no problems with letting go of their ethics as long as they get to exploit and steal from you.
I lent someone (best friends for years) $5K and I got backstabbed and haven't seen a red cent from them in 3 years and am currently taking them to court. Wish me luck.
Welcome to capitalism 101, the people with money exploit the workers.
In fact over the last 100 years it most companies have been going this way, wal-mart and other stores force their employee's to work 35 hours a week so they dont have to pay other things required by law. Exploitation of the worker goes on in almost every business unless you as the worker have power or some rare skill thats in demand by those with lots of cash. Supply vs. Demand vs. Prestige.
It was never about Xbox or PS2, Playstation 1 took all the former Nintendo developers and you can bet if nintendo had released a CD based console in the PS1 era sony would have never gained dominance. Note how many Nintendo sequels were done for the playstation 1 and you will see why the PS2 succeed, most hardcore PS2 owners own a GC as well I would imagine.
Need for speed had replays and I believe it predates (or about the same time) had it. Not every speed in the series had it but I believe it was the first one (or #2) and Porsche unleashed for sure had it.
Like socialism was ever a bad thing compared to the capitalistic (outsourcing) anarchy we have today where those who have the most economic power (huge businesses) run to wherever the labor is cheapest to make the most profit, people and country be damned.
If there are no businesses that need your country or people then you are fucked, this is why Einstein was a firm believer in a form of socialism and having some aspects of the economy planned.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate mmo's with a passion I could never stand the passive nature of those games, they are way too drawn out, tedious and boring.
Games are worthwhile investments of leisure time despite what people might say. Over the years I've had more people backstab me, betray me, dump me and be so fucking unreliable in general, having an outlet to get away from the daily grind and the crappy low quality of people on this planet is a godsend. Video games might eat into relationship time but if you're SO is not that into you then why should you spend time away from your hobbies? I mean come on, I bet half these "Gaming widows" complaining don't do anything to pull their SO's away from their games (i.e. sex, schedule a weekend away, etc).
Too much blame is often saddled with guys but usually the guy who gets dumped never knows what was wrong because the girl keeps that shit to herself in the firstplace. They are vocal on the internet but many just act irrationally and expect their SO to read their mind.
IMHO the quality of people I have met in modern life have declined significantly, I think the rise of video games and entertainment speaks about the decline of the quality of life and the quality of people in SOCIAL settings in general.
All my gamer friends while somewhat nerdy and perhaps not as socially graceful can be all around better people to hang out with then people who aren't into games and use you for superficial BS like competing for social status and money.
I dont value human relationships because I dont value all the BS and social games people play, many just can't face reality and be true to themselves, they are so wound up in social BS it's hard to see anything of value.
Yeah well I was one of those people, I have 80Kilobytes upload, and I was uploading 4-10 GIGS straight for 12/24 hours at a time. Downloading episodes and movies and such.
Games are supposed to be fun, but many people find extended play not that fun.
As a hardcore gamer myself I can play a fun game for hours on end straight for entire day, but most normal people do not think that way. People have priorities in their life above gaming and above even *gasp* fun! As gamers we put fun on a pedestal but its not the ultimate in what appeals to people of different psychologies, everyone prioritizes things differently.
Not all seeders want to be leechers.
ISP's get in the way of good ratio's if you go over a certain amount of gigabytes of upload in a month expect a letter form any SANE ISP.
This is exactly why I had to become a "leecher" for fear of disconnection of my internet connection even though I wanted to seed.
Buying items saves time for people to do other things. Think about it, if I'm rich do I really want to spend hours grinding in a game to get the best weapons, or do I spend my excessive wealth on ways to skip the boring parts of the game to experience the best parts with the best stuff?
There are always people who have the means and will pay for it. There are over a million rich people and I'm sure there are plenty of middle class people who work regular hours who dont have time to sink into MMO's and are willing to pay for in game items, they probably make more in a week or month then it would cost them to spend real world hours playing the game anyway. Think about it.
I dont think people buying in game items is moronic. It's just another way of buying time for yourself to do other things then sit in front of a screen for hours on end where the designers of the game have drawn out the tasks and jobs in the game to try to keep players hooked for months.
If you want kids to get excited about higher education make sure there will be jobs for them, thats the #1 reason I know lots of people skipping higher education and going for trades, because they can't as easily be outsourced. Higher education is becoming increasingly commoditized worldwide, a higher education won't do you any good if you can't pay back the debt and can't find a job. It's all about the bottom line: Money.
Why do people think all kids have the same potential? They don't, no matter how hard you try to educate some kids, they have hard "hardware limits" just like if you were trying to run Windows XP on a 486 33mhz with 8MB of ram.
This is why there are psychological and intelligence tests to test performance of intelligence, speed, memory and overall ability.
Lets face facts, even if everyone could be a genius that doesn't mean there are enough seats for all the jobs people would like to do. In any system of things all things being equal there will always be someone that "loses out" even when they succeed.
Thats why planned/regulated economies are better then free market capitalism in regards to certain industries that will always exist.
Planned economies if the world were under one government would also prevent exploitation and businesses moving out of reach of the law of the land.
I think theres a bit of a generation gap. Most experienced gamers have played the shit out of FPS on the PC, and the last 4-5 years thats pretty much the only Genre that keeps coming out with games frequently that are for the PC.
I think console gamers and newer less experienced gamers in general have played less games then hardcore gamers period (in the library of games they have previously played). And this is really why you have yuppies thinking Halo 2 is the greatest thing "evar!!" it's not. It simply copies what has existed since the Doom and quake days with slight refinements, it does not play "radically differently" then any other game, you can have just as much fun in Serious Sam or SS 2nd encounter then you can in halo. The AI may be good but even if the AI was dumb as shit Halo would still get glowing reviews and still have millions of drooling idiots claiming its the best thing ever.
The thing halo has is Master Chief and the fact that they nailed the feel of the universe and style of aliens well enough to make the game universe appealling.
If you replaced all the graphics in halo with placeholder art I doubt halo 2 would get such glowing reviews. The halo experience is really about the small things they layer to the game that adds up to an overall experience on top of the graphics. They got things like the cpu controlled team mates right and the fact you feel they aren't just mindless dolls. They keep the pacing of the game going by having the recharging shield so you dont have to run around to find health and theres usually always plenty of ammo because you can pick up alien weapons and use them against your enemy.
It's nothing revolutionary they just limit your guy and force you to make decisions. You can't carry 10 guns at once and pull them out of your ass you can only carry two.
I still think its because most console gamers this generation have never been exposed to a lot of great FPS and thats why you see Halo selling so well.
Again we would design a better evolutionary processes in the first place. Why rely on nature when you can ENGINEER change into your offspring?
IMHO all invention is born of necessity and when people get so advance they can modify themselves we'll see radical changes in what we consider "humanity", imagine having your memory linked to a hive mind or "collective" (AKA the borg) that acts as a massive storage for 1000's of lifetimes of memories, while your enhanced brain acts as one component of a much larger system.
... people will still die due to accidents, nature, etc. Not to mention billions of years out if there are no inherent "natural law" based limits that constrain our travel outward, I can easily see Humanity getting wiped out by Stars going belly up or cosmic evolution despite them having achieved "immortality" and near "godhood" in science and knowledge. You can't really run from a blackhole.
They are still dependent on nature of matter and energy to live even if they can exist in a non-biological fashion they will still suffer from decay and a host of other natural processes.
Wake me up when they make a MM Action RPG like Diablo. Every single MMO I have ever played caters to people who have no twitch skills and the pacing of combat is something to be desired, I'm an action gamer at heart whenever I am doing third or first person 3D games and MMO's do nothing for me. You have a single character to control and the range of moves and things those characters can do leave a lot to be desired when you compare it against ANY single player action game or even single player RPG, most console / single player RPG's run rings aroudn MMO's most of the time and dont cost $15 a month either.
WoW doesn't radically alter the MMO formula because frankly no one's willing to have an actual game based on SKILL rather then stats and computer controlled attacks where you decide to tell your character to cast this or that or use this or that item every now and then. I'd love if they'd take the mechanics of fighting games and implement them in RPG's, Diablo in my opinion was the first step to truly enjoying combat with different moves for your characters. MMO's have not reached the gameplay nirvana of fun that an action RPG like Diablo has years after its release.
Whatever, most everything I said was true, most of your counter points were totally off the mark, hence I didn't bother respoding to them. Most of your counterpoints didn't make any sense.
Dreamcast, Sega Saturn and the Sega CD all had CD/Optical disc based hardware and failed because they had no developer support or killer app exclusives to sell the system, you prove once again you responded out of knee jerk reaction rather then rational thought. You couldn't see the forest from the trees in my post, I end my post with my conclusion and you think that invalidates it because some of my points weren't exactly articulated the best.
You're just nitpicking because you have nothing better to do. Look at the numbers in the console industry today, The installed base of consoles PS2 is enormously in the lead and it was because of the dominance they secured with former SNES developers in the PS1 era. That fact sir is indisputable.
I guess thats why your post hasn't been modded UP for its terribly factual data, correct? Not. The bulk of what I said is true in the first three paragraphs the rest was fluff until the end. Maybe you were too stupid to realize that, but hey this IS slashdot. Sony was FF VII's publisher, SO WHAT?
The point remains that all the fighting games, RPG's and everything else went to PS1 primarily because Nintendo was not seen as a viable system to make games for as well as money, it wasn't just about economics of CD versus cartridges, many developers were also gamers and knew about the technology lest you forget. Also even with the added costs of cartridges why were there hardly any multiplatform games made for both the PS1 and the N64 with the N64's 30 million installed base? Because the playstation was a better system to make games for and had a much bigger installed base.
I didn't say the N64 sucked or had bad games, but that doesn't mean squat. The PS2 had inferior hardware to both the gamecube and xbox and it raped them both in units sold because of the games and the developers like Konami and square that release Heavy hitters like MGS 2, 3 and FFX, Grand theft auto 3 and up? How many PS2's were sold for just those 3 games, the fighting games and the rpg's, a fuckload. You can bet Nintendo is practically begging to get those developers back to getting good games on their consoles. Go and compare the titles on PS1 to the SNES and you realize that Nintendo got totally raped of all their best 3rd party franchises and developers because not even the N64 got any decent fighting games from Capcom. Nintendo practically had to beg for the one 3D castlevania from Konami that they released for the N64, while you were getting 2D wonders like Symphony of the Night for the PS1 (another great franchise that was formerly for the SNES and went to PS1 exclusivity). If you think the PS1 sucked ass you're simply mistaken every single 2D game made for the ps1 ran circles around the SNES's graphics, I own all the streetfighters for the PS1 and the own the SNES's graphics so hard because I owned the SNES versions of those games as well.
You're reasoning is still a little cloudy, go check all the titles on the PS2 and compare them to the developers and Titles formerly on the SNES, almost every single developer FORMERLY developed for the Super Nintendo before jumping to PS1 which secured the exclusives for PS2's dominance. The reason was the developers jumped ship to PS1 due to superior storage capacity that enabled you to make superior games with more content, better textures, and graphics then you could on a cart, lets face it, Cartridges were measured in mere megabits, a CD is 650Mbytes, there is no way you would want to develop for a cartridge. That is the whole reason Square left nintendo after 3 sequels to its legendary final fantasy series (and its still going strong and sells playstation 2's today), which was the smartest move on Sony's part ever was to get all the best 3rd party devs doing their system totally screwing over Nintendo.
Nintendo lost half their market in one fell swoop because of the mistake that ended up being the N64, all the developers that were formerly developing for the snes TOTALLY abandoned the N64 for the Playstation, Konami with Metal gear (which btw, the original was originally released on Nintendo's NES way back in the day), Street Fighter Series, Tekken, all the best fighting games, and all the Japanese RPG's went to the PSX while the N64 totally got shafted. I couldn't stand how Final fantasy became a PSX exclusive and that sealed the deal and I had to get a Playstation, their worst mistake ever was not realizing that they needed hot 3rd party exclusives to secure #1 and sell consoles. The reason N64 did ok was because of fanboyism and hopes and dreams left over from the SNES era, I remember wishing against fate that N64 would get some good games because my brother recieved one for christmas while I owned a PS1. You have to realize hardware manufacturers like Sony don't sell playstation 2's, the developers sell playstation 2's by developing MUST HAVE games that force you to buy the hardware. This is the way the console industry works. Games drive the hardware sales.
At least 60-80% of nintendos best 3rd party devleopers games and their sequels were all moved over and released on playstation and became exclusives to that platform. This is what killed Nintendo, they didn't realize the power of third party developers until it was too late and they lost the system wars.
While nearly all the developers who formerly made games for SNES didn't release ANYTHING at all worth playing for the N64 if they even released *anything*. Squaresoft TOTALLY shafted the N64 completely as well as every other major RPG maker and most other developers of different genres as well. ALL the developers wanted to develop for the PS1 with that massive storage that enabled near perfect reproductions of many fighting arcade games and FMV and other graphical niceties at the time. FF VII would not have even been possible on those small dinky cartridges. Ocarina of time had washed out textures and practically had to use super compression to get as much content on the ROM as possible.
It is very VERY clear that nintendo lost due to superior hardware primarily because of the storage medium they chose becuase the developers wanted to make great games, what are you going to choose, a 32, 64 or 256Megbit cartridge or a 650Megabyte CDROM??? If you're a developer you can easily, do the math on what kind of game you can create! NES sold 60 something million units with SNES pulling in something like 50-54 Million units, a drop in 20 milllion or so units of market share is MASSIVE compared to their past domination with NES and SNES.
It's very clear why the N64 failed because they didn't realize that they couldn't carry the system by themselves and that a huge library of games coupled with all the hottest 3rd party developers (Konami, Capcom, Square, etc) killed them completely. All the best series on Nintendo in the NES and SNES days are all now practically exclusives on the playstation and playstation 2.
Which brings up an interesting point, since the encyclopedia is for profit does that mean they are less inclined to keep checking stuff they have already checked for errors and just re-hash the same words from previous encyclopedias without checking them for errors as well? What happens when encyclopedia authors "downsize" due to lack of funds/profit does that mean their article quality and resources to perform error checking and "serious research" take a hit as well?
I'd think that money is that if you dont have the resources to do something right its likely you'll introduce errors and mistakes, correct?
Yeah well we're not all omniscient. That and you can't figure out someones intent from an email. It's just text, you're just reading what someone else wrote. Business credibility on the internet are not very visible, you never know if the guy behind "Mega corporate X's" website might be some guy living with his mom in his basement.
Thats why I said mixed. i.e. not every aspect of the economy functions under a planned model. Some economies only have one or few buyers or the same buyers always (i.e. food, shelter, etc).
Your post makes a good argument in favor of planned economies or mixed socialism/capitalist policy because humans love inequity and love to exploit one another for personal gain since most people have no problems with letting go of their ethics as long as they get to exploit and steal from you.
I lent someone (best friends for years) $5K and I got backstabbed and haven't seen a red cent from them in 3 years and am currently taking them to court. Wish me luck.
Welcome to capitalism 101, the people with money exploit the workers.
In fact over the last 100 years it most companies have been going this way, wal-mart and other stores force their employee's to work 35 hours a week so they dont have to pay other things required by law. Exploitation of the worker goes on in almost every business unless you as the worker have power or some rare skill thats in demand by those with lots of cash. Supply vs. Demand vs. Prestige.
Bootleggers help catch the original pirate!
Now if thats not ironic and funny I dont know what is.
It was never about Xbox or PS2, Playstation 1 took all the former Nintendo developers and you can bet if nintendo had released a CD based console in the PS1 era sony would have never gained dominance. Note how many Nintendo sequels were done for the playstation 1 and you will see why the PS2 succeed, most hardcore PS2 owners own a GC as well I would imagine.
Need for speed had replays and I believe it predates (or about the same time) had it. Not every speed in the series had it but I believe it was the first one (or #2) and Porsche unleashed for sure had it.
Like socialism was ever a bad thing compared to the capitalistic (outsourcing) anarchy we have today where those who have the most economic power (huge businesses) run to wherever the labor is cheapest to make the most profit, people and country be damned.
If there are no businesses that need your country or people then you are fucked, this is why Einstein was a firm believer in a form of socialism and having some aspects of the economy planned.