A decently done Halo 3 coupled with a good pricecut will sell systems though and good marketing. If they can get Halo 3 out the door in 1 year from now, drop the price of the 360 to $199/$299 (core/premium or whatever they are calling it), they'll push some units for Christmas 2006. The other thing that they could move a ton of merchandise would be to launch Halo 3 in a pack that includes whatever you don't get in the premium kit for $100, and get all the people who bought the core system this year to shell out for an upgrade. Not a new console sale, but the markup on the accessories junk is so high anyways that they'd probably make a killing.
Uh, Halo was an Xbox launch title. It was THE Xbox launch title. Aside from PGR1 it was pretty much the only game worth buying from the XBox launch, as I recall. Also, I think you meant to say give ALL THREE consoles time. People who act like this is a two horse race (and presumably discount Nintendo as a non-player) are in for a suprise, I think. Unless you mean to say give them both a chance to see which one gets to sit next the Revolution everyone buys for the unique first party games?
WTF are you even talking about? De-interlacing is the taking an interlaced signal and converting it to a progressive scan output. Interlaced video takes a 30fps "full resolution" image, splits each frame into two images each consisting of every other line in the original frame. You are then left with 60 half resolution frames per second.
My point is that interlacing nor de-interlacing enters into this discussion at no point. The process of stretching a widescreen image onto a full frame picture and then stretching it back during output onto either a widescreen display or a letterboxed 4:3 display is called anamorphic encoding. You really having any idea what you are talking about, do you? Are you just picking random words from an HDTV forum and posting them here?
I actually think it is a combination of both of those... here's my theory: MS wanted to launch significantly ahead of the rest, but they also wanted to have a machine that will compete with systems that will be out nearly a full year after them. So, they need tomorrows console at todays prices. My theory goes that MS built what is a $500+ machine right now, on the expectation that it will be a ~$400 machine in 6 months. They are selling them at a significant loss right now, just to get them into consumer hands. They need to limit the total number of systems they ell for a little while to keep overall losses down. Once they go from taking over $100 loss on each system to under $50 they will manage to "overcome the manufacturing issue" that have been creating the shortage.
This way they get the best of both worlds. They are the first to market, they have a competitive console, they got a ton of good publicity for free (must have holiday gift shortage of the year), AND they manage to not give away TOO much money until they can get production costs down.
Well, as far as playability, you KNOW anything with the Zelda name on it is going to be really good. As far as graphics go, all the shots I've seen look like either promotional pics, or they are game play pics that are 'meh'. Example: gameplay vs. promo. Now, the 360 has some pretty nice graphics, and I am sure once developers get a feel for the system they will make some amazing looking games, but for now, I think that this looks pretty damn close to the 360 launch games.
For the record, I will freely admit that I am a Nintendo fanboy. They have a console that has ALWAYS been less expensive than any of it's competitors, but is able to produce game experiences at least is good, if not better than what Sony or MS is offering. I had an XBox for while, and it didn't offer me ANYTHING that I couldn't get better from a PC. I bought a used GameCube a couple years ago and my non-gamer wife loves it, AND I get to play all the first party exclusives that Nintendo has to offer.
DVDs are stored stretched like that because the DVD spec calls for an NTSC signal. You simply can't put a widescreen video file and have it still be a DVD. The choices for getting a widescreen movie onto a DVD would be putting a letterbox video file into the NTSC frame, losing about 25% of the available information space; OR you can put the film stretched onto the whole frame, use 100% of the storage available, and then stretch it out on the display.
It's going to be REALLY funny when Zelda: Twilight Princess comes out and looks about as good as the 360 launch titles (and plays much better, too). $400 system with no games, or a $99 system that comes with a fun pack in game (Mario Party 7, Mario Kart, or whatever Nintendo is packing in these days) and has games out that look as good as the 4x as much console (Zelda and Metroid 2)... tough choice.
Hrm. 480p is AT BEST 852*480 = 408960 pixels. 720p is 1280*720 = 921600 pixels. 921600/408960 = ~2.25 more pixels. At worst, 480p is 640*480 = 307200 pixels, giving 720p 3 times the overall pixel count.
If you don't understand it, why are you responding to it? Definately a case of "better to keep your mouth closed and appear a fool then to open it and remove all doubt".
The only things that look worse on an HDTV than on a standard set are low quality broadcasts. There's a lot of graininess introduced as the video is stretched and scaled. DVDs and other high quality sources look EXCELLENT on a decent HD set. I fully expect that the Revolution will be 480p on ALL games (the GC has 480p on about half of games now) and 16:9 on almost if not all games as well. It'll look as good as a well encoded DVD being played through a nice DVD player on an HDTV. In other words, it's not going to be a serious issue, except for with a few people who think they can't play at anything less than 1280*720.
While they aren't going to be actively persueing the graphics arms race, they need to at least make an attempt to be competitive. There will still have to be some cross platform titles they will need to get onto the Rev, and they will have to at least TRY to appease the "hardcore" market, if for nothing else than to just shut them up. The GC can pull off some impressive visuals. The videos of the next Zelda game prove that. I suppose that given a year of technology growth/price reductions, and if they are willing to make less on the Rev at $99 than a GC at $99 (and I do remember reading somewhere that they are making more now at $99 per console than they were at launch of the GC at $199) they COULD pull it off, but I don't think most people will mind paying an extra $50 for a little more console. $149 would be an AMAZING price point to launch a new console at, considering the trend for the rest of the gaming world.
There's some scuttlebutt (rumor's) floating around (Joystiq.com published it I think) that Nintendo is aiming at a $99 launch. It's pretty far-fetched, but maybe they looked at the GC sales and saw that they sold the best at a sub-$100 price? Now, knowing that Nintendo hasn't in the past sold consoles at a loss, and not expecting them to start, I have trouble believing that. Since the GC is still a $100 system, I would expect that the Rev. could only be as powerful as a GC at that price point, which won't fly. (Yes, next year it could be fairly more powerful, but I don't think that even that would go over well).
Now, $200 is pretty doable for me (especially if I can trade in my GameCube and maybe a game or two I don't play anymore), but I wonder if Nintendo will see how MS's Core and Premium what are they calling the expensive one?)? Say $149 for the system and one controller, and a pack with the system, 2 wand controllers, a gamepad style controller add on, either a game, or some sort of cool special edition disc with some tech demos for the controller that normally aren't released, and some kind of download credit for a few SNES/n64 games. I think Nintendo USED to do this back in the SNES and NES days... they had differnt packages you could buy, with not only games, but extra controllers, light guns, running pads, robots, you name it...
Well, let's think about this for a second. Let's assume that the Rev. at best will produce widescreen 480p signals (not far-fetched at all). That's 852*480 pixels, for a total of about 409k. At the lowest (as MS has stated) 360 games will be 720p; that's 1280*720, a total of 921k. Now, by my math, pushing less that half the total pixels will let the Revolutions a) perform more 'impressive' effects (bump mapping, lightings, etc), b) use less power (and hence cheaper hardware) to produce the same effects, or c) some combination of the two. I'm going to guess (c).
Is a 7800GT twice as powerful as a 6600GT video card? No, it's more powerful for certain, but not twice as powerful. It costs twice as much, though. You pay a very high premium for "the best" hardware. Nintendo could easily make a machine that is 75% as fast/powerful/whatever as MS for 50% of the price.
I have an HD TV, and while I think it is really amazing, I also think that a high quality 480p source can look GOOD ENOUGH (DVDs come to mind here).
Yup, that's one of my favorite things about OS X. As a "power user" I can stay logged in as an Admin and be able quickly make settings changes, install apps, etc. BUT, as soon as something wants to modify the kernel or do anything that requires ROOT access I am prompted for a password. It keeps the number of times I entereing the root password pretty infrequently, and as such it keeps it from being a routine event, so I actually pay attention to what is going on.
I can't wait until the first Intel iBook comes out and I can run WINE on it. I can bring my own Mac to work and never have to use Windows again. Bwahahah.
Did you read the article? Seriously? I can understand if you didn't read it and then posted anyways, I do it all the time... but to correct someone else about the article when it seems pretty clear you didn't read it is a bit much. This is unedited at all, FTFA:
One thing's for sure: The Revolution will not support high definition video, a marked divergence from the path Microsoft (Research) and Sony (Research) are taking. And it's not something the company is re-thinking, despite the fervent hopes of some hardcore gaming fans.
Casual and non-gamers, the company feels, are less interested in flashy graphics than enjoyable games. And the large files that go hand in hand with high definition video result in "almost interminably long" load times for games, said Fils-Aime, something that would also be detrimental to a mainstream audience.
"What we'll offer in terms of gameplay and approachability will more than make up for the lack of HD," he said.
They are talking about HiDef. The current norm seems to be that HD=HiDef, HDD=Hard Disc Drive. The Revolution won't have either, but that won't keep me from buying one. If it's $200 at launch, I'll grab one, otherwise I will wait for the first price drop or used sales to get below $200.
That's pretty beside the point, however. I suspect that while the "majority of people" will not have HD in 5 years, the majority of people buying a new video console WILL. I still don't think it is a mistake, though. I have an HDTV (a modest 30" widescreen CRT). At full 1080i it looks spectacular. At 480p widescreen (ie DVD) it looks REALLY GOOD. If Nintendo supports widescreen/anamorphic 480p (the GC does, so it's not that far fetched) and either component or full digital outputs it will look very nice. For $100 cheaper system and $10 cheaper games, plus having spare GPU cycles to render lighting, mapping, whatever effect is the new hotness, it'll DAMN good.
The grandparent poster is right, it's not the lawyers fault. It is our legal system that is so broken it attracts the greediest, most amoral people to the legal profession. In a society as large, diverse, and advanced as ours we absolutely need a complex set of laws to govern everything and make things (for lack of a better word) "fair". It would be a terrible misstep to expect everyone to know enough to defend themselves, or to prosecute a criminal, themselves. What we need to do, rather than kill the lawyers, is fix the legal system, especially torts, so that the legal profession is more about promoting justice and less about making lawyers rich. For examples, see the recent the Netflix class action.
The site is also really slow right now. If it was running at a speedier pace you could probaby up that, even factoring n fatigue. After the page loads for example, even including the 2 "extra" clicks needed to accept and submit the form, it takes MAYBE 10 seconds to chose the "correct" answer. I wonder if you could write a grease monkey script that automatically accepted an HIT that you were presented (it looks for the "accept this HIT" button and follows that link) and then also submitted the selection automatically after you selected an answer (once you choose a radio button it follows the form submit link)? That would surely speed things up.
I had a similar one to that. It looks like they have a system where they drive down a street and pictures are automatically taken every second or so, with a very high speed shutter, so there is no motion blurring. I'd guess that the photo's are tagged with GPS data as they are taken and then the address of a business is used to get a set of photo's they think are nearby it. After a few people select a given picture as actually being that business they could put it into an online yellowpages/mapping service. You enter in a business category, pick a place, get the phone number/address/website/whatever info, a map leading you there and a picture of the destination to help you ID it when you get there. That'd be pretty helpful.
All the pictures I have seen have been of pretty dodgy looking neighborhoods/businesses though, so that might dissuade me from going there!
If the site ever goes back to being responsive I'll probaby spend a few hours a week click through these "chose an image" for 3 cents HITs. They are completely mindless, don't involve the keyboard, and I can do them on a second monitor or in a smallish window while I watch downloaded TV shows, sports events, etc. The money isn't much, but it is SOMETHING, and if I'm going to be sitting there anyways I mind as well make a few bucks.
I think that your estimate of 100/hour is pretty low. If the site responds at a "reasonable" speed (ie, more or less immediately like most sites do over broadband) I could see doing 180 an hour (3 per minute) pretty easily. That's $5.40/hour - round down to $5/hour to be a decent estimate. Say 4 hours a week, 6 if I spend half my lunch hour clicking away, and I've earned beer money for the week easily. Save up a couple weeks or a months worth and I could buy a new video game, computer toy, , without my wife getting on me about spending "our" money on it.
I think you are right on this one... Nintendo wants to be number 1 not by beating the competition, but rather by not being in the same category as they are. I think they would like to win by having a different enough experience and a good enough product with a nice range of must have exclusive apps (not hard to do with a unique and original control scheme and what is promising to be a healthy online experience) that every one has a Revolution AND EITHER an XBox or a PS3.
The GameCube was almost that product. People generally had an XBox or a PS2 along with their GC. They just failed to reach the critical mass they needed for everyone to have to have one. The Revolution has a good shot at that, though.
I need a new laptop, and I am (somewhat) patiently waiting for the first 12" Intel iBook to be released so I can see if it will be enough for me. I'm hoping for a 2ghz Pentium-M, 512mb RAM (with 2 slots for upgrading to 2 or 4gbs), something around the power of a 6600go with 128mb VRAM, 60-80gb HDD, combo drive (upgradable to superdrive), and a 12" screen with AT LEAST WXGA resolution, preferably more. For $1000, please.:)
Are we suddenly interested in the rights of game cheaters? Whose rights are being impacted here?
Seems like people are more interested in the rights of non-cheating WoW players? People who play WoW SHOULD know that their systems are monitored, and if they don't like it they can quit. Presumably, they are ok with the trade off of "my system is monitored, but so is everyone else's, so at least I can play the game knowing that it is an even field". Sony has given people a way to defeat that, and in doing so taken away all the advantages of having the Warden system, but done nothing to the disadvantages it presents (the fact that it is mildly invasive of your privacy).
I'll start by saying that I agree with you, giving preference to frequent renters wouldn't help the problem. Better solutions would give weight to accounts that have had a particular movie in their queue for longer, and more weight for the higher it has been in the queue. Combine that with rental habits, and I think you would better serve more people.
Also, while I am sure the agreement they have with the MPAA would make it difficult, getting more copies of popular movies would be the ideal solution. Netflix gets 'custom' editions of a lot of DVDs (they say Netflix right on the disc), so I presume that the distribution company is running of a couple thousand for them, at a price of probably less than a dime each. Why not just run a few thousand more, on the condition that the 'excess' be returned after 90 days or so? Recycle the discs, and keep the 1000 copies they need after the rush is over?
Netflix is selling used DVDs now, and I wonder who gets the money from those sales? Does Netflix own the disc and resale rights like a typical movie rental store? If so, maybe relinquishing those rights to movies that they get a huge "free" over run on for rentals, and then sell the discs to customers, giving the profits (or a good part of) to the distributor?
Slashdot Mirror
A decently done Halo 3 coupled with a good pricecut will sell systems though and good marketing. If they can get Halo 3 out the door in 1 year from now, drop the price of the 360 to $199/$299 (core/premium or whatever they are calling it), they'll push some units for Christmas 2006. The other thing that they could move a ton of merchandise would be to launch Halo 3 in a pack that includes whatever you don't get in the premium kit for $100, and get all the people who bought the core system this year to shell out for an upgrade. Not a new console sale, but the markup on the accessories junk is so high anyways that they'd probably make a killing.
Uh, Halo was an Xbox launch title. It was THE Xbox launch title. Aside from PGR1 it was pretty much the only game worth buying from the XBox launch, as I recall. Also, I think you meant to say give ALL THREE consoles time. People who act like this is a two horse race (and presumably discount Nintendo as a non-player) are in for a suprise, I think. Unless you mean to say give them both a chance to see which one gets to sit next the Revolution everyone buys for the unique first party games?
My point is that interlacing nor de-interlacing enters into this discussion at no point. The process of stretching a widescreen image onto a full frame picture and then stretching it back during output onto either a widescreen display or a letterboxed 4:3 display is called anamorphic encoding. You really having any idea what you are talking about, do you? Are you just picking random words from an HDTV forum and posting them here?
This way they get the best of both worlds. They are the first to market, they have a competitive console, they got a ton of good publicity for free (must have holiday gift shortage of the year), AND they manage to not give away TOO much money until they can get production costs down.
For the record, I will freely admit that I am a Nintendo fanboy. They have a console that has ALWAYS been less expensive than any of it's competitors, but is able to produce game experiences at least is good, if not better than what Sony or MS is offering. I had an XBox for while, and it didn't offer me ANYTHING that I couldn't get better from a PC. I bought a used GameCube a couple years ago and my non-gamer wife loves it, AND I get to play all the first party exclusives that Nintendo has to offer.
DVDs are stored stretched like that because the DVD spec calls for an NTSC signal. You simply can't put a widescreen video file and have it still be a DVD. The choices for getting a widescreen movie onto a DVD would be putting a letterbox video file into the NTSC frame, losing about 25% of the available information space; OR you can put the film stretched onto the whole frame, use 100% of the storage available, and then stretch it out on the display.
What does that have to do with anything? Why would it matter how many more pixels it had in one dimension on a two dimensional display?
It's going to be REALLY funny when Zelda: Twilight Princess comes out and looks about as good as the 360 launch titles (and plays much better, too). $400 system with no games, or a $99 system that comes with a fun pack in game (Mario Party 7, Mario Kart, or whatever Nintendo is packing in these days) and has games out that look as good as the 4x as much console (Zelda and Metroid 2)... tough choice.
I could be wrong, it is late.
If you don't understand it, why are you responding to it? Definately a case of "better to keep your mouth closed and appear a fool then to open it and remove all doubt".
The only things that look worse on an HDTV than on a standard set are low quality broadcasts. There's a lot of graininess introduced as the video is stretched and scaled. DVDs and other high quality sources look EXCELLENT on a decent HD set. I fully expect that the Revolution will be 480p on ALL games (the GC has 480p on about half of games now) and 16:9 on almost if not all games as well. It'll look as good as a well encoded DVD being played through a nice DVD player on an HDTV. In other words, it's not going to be a serious issue, except for with a few people who think they can't play at anything less than 1280*720.
While they aren't going to be actively persueing the graphics arms race, they need to at least make an attempt to be competitive. There will still have to be some cross platform titles they will need to get onto the Rev, and they will have to at least TRY to appease the "hardcore" market, if for nothing else than to just shut them up. The GC can pull off some impressive visuals. The videos of the next Zelda game prove that. I suppose that given a year of technology growth/price reductions, and if they are willing to make less on the Rev at $99 than a GC at $99 (and I do remember reading somewhere that they are making more now at $99 per console than they were at launch of the GC at $199) they COULD pull it off, but I don't think most people will mind paying an extra $50 for a little more console. $149 would be an AMAZING price point to launch a new console at, considering the trend for the rest of the gaming world.
Now, $200 is pretty doable for me (especially if I can trade in my GameCube and maybe a game or two I don't play anymore), but I wonder if Nintendo will see how MS's Core and Premium what are they calling the expensive one?)? Say $149 for the system and one controller, and a pack with the system, 2 wand controllers, a gamepad style controller add on, either a game, or some sort of cool special edition disc with some tech demos for the controller that normally aren't released, and some kind of download credit for a few SNES/n64 games. I think Nintendo USED to do this back in the SNES and NES days... they had differnt packages you could buy, with not only games, but extra controllers, light guns, running pads, robots, you name it...
Is a 7800GT twice as powerful as a 6600GT video card? No, it's more powerful for certain, but not twice as powerful. It costs twice as much, though. You pay a very high premium for "the best" hardware. Nintendo could easily make a machine that is 75% as fast/powerful/whatever as MS for 50% of the price.
I have an HD TV, and while I think it is really amazing, I also think that a high quality 480p source can look GOOD ENOUGH (DVDs come to mind here).
I can't wait until the first Intel iBook comes out and I can run WINE on it. I can bring my own Mac to work and never have to use Windows again. Bwahahah.
One thing's for sure: The Revolution will not support high definition video, a marked divergence from the path Microsoft (Research) and Sony (Research) are taking. And it's not something the company is re-thinking, despite the fervent hopes of some hardcore gaming fans.
Casual and non-gamers, the company feels, are less interested in flashy graphics than enjoyable games. And the large files that go hand in hand with high definition video result in "almost interminably long" load times for games, said Fils-Aime, something that would also be detrimental to a mainstream audience.
"What we'll offer in terms of gameplay and approachability will more than make up for the lack of HD," he said.
They are talking about HiDef. The current norm seems to be that HD=HiDef, HDD=Hard Disc Drive. The Revolution won't have either, but that won't keep me from buying one. If it's $200 at launch, I'll grab one, otherwise I will wait for the first price drop or used sales to get below $200.
That's pretty beside the point, however. I suspect that while the "majority of people" will not have HD in 5 years, the majority of people buying a new video console WILL. I still don't think it is a mistake, though. I have an HDTV (a modest 30" widescreen CRT). At full 1080i it looks spectacular. At 480p widescreen (ie DVD) it looks REALLY GOOD. If Nintendo supports widescreen/anamorphic 480p (the GC does, so it's not that far fetched) and either component or full digital outputs it will look very nice. For $100 cheaper system and $10 cheaper games, plus having spare GPU cycles to render lighting, mapping, whatever effect is the new hotness, it'll DAMN good.
The grandparent poster is right, it's not the lawyers fault. It is our legal system that is so broken it attracts the greediest, most amoral people to the legal profession. In a society as large, diverse, and advanced as ours we absolutely need a complex set of laws to govern everything and make things (for lack of a better word) "fair". It would be a terrible misstep to expect everyone to know enough to defend themselves, or to prosecute a criminal, themselves. What we need to do, rather than kill the lawyers, is fix the legal system, especially torts, so that the legal profession is more about promoting justice and less about making lawyers rich. For examples, see the recent the Netflix class action.
The site is also really slow right now. If it was running at a speedier pace you could probaby up that, even factoring n fatigue. After the page loads for example, even including the 2 "extra" clicks needed to accept and submit the form, it takes MAYBE 10 seconds to chose the "correct" answer. I wonder if you could write a grease monkey script that automatically accepted an HIT that you were presented (it looks for the "accept this HIT" button and follows that link) and then also submitted the selection automatically after you selected an answer (once you choose a radio button it follows the form submit link)? That would surely speed things up.
All the pictures I have seen have been of pretty dodgy looking neighborhoods/businesses though, so that might dissuade me from going there!
I think that your estimate of 100/hour is pretty low. If the site responds at a "reasonable" speed (ie, more or less immediately like most sites do over broadband) I could see doing 180 an hour (3 per minute) pretty easily. That's $5.40/hour - round down to $5/hour to be a decent estimate. Say 4 hours a week, 6 if I spend half my lunch hour clicking away, and I've earned beer money for the week easily. Save up a couple weeks or a months worth and I could buy a new video game, computer toy, , without my wife getting on me about spending "our" money on it.
The GameCube was almost that product. People generally had an XBox or a PS2 along with their GC. They just failed to reach the critical mass they needed for everyone to have to have one. The Revolution has a good shot at that, though.
I need a new laptop, and I am (somewhat) patiently waiting for the first 12" Intel iBook to be released so I can see if it will be enough for me. I'm hoping for a 2ghz Pentium-M, 512mb RAM (with 2 slots for upgrading to 2 or 4gbs), something around the power of a 6600go with 128mb VRAM, 60-80gb HDD, combo drive (upgradable to superdrive), and a 12" screen with AT LEAST WXGA resolution, preferably more. For $1000, please. :)
And passed by a Republican controlled Congress, no?
Seems like people are more interested in the rights of non-cheating WoW players? People who play WoW SHOULD know that their systems are monitored, and if they don't like it they can quit. Presumably, they are ok with the trade off of "my system is monitored, but so is everyone else's, so at least I can play the game knowing that it is an even field". Sony has given people a way to defeat that, and in doing so taken away all the advantages of having the Warden system, but done nothing to the disadvantages it presents (the fact that it is mildly invasive of your privacy).
Also, while I am sure the agreement they have with the MPAA would make it difficult, getting more copies of popular movies would be the ideal solution. Netflix gets 'custom' editions of a lot of DVDs (they say Netflix right on the disc), so I presume that the distribution company is running of a couple thousand for them, at a price of probably less than a dime each. Why not just run a few thousand more, on the condition that the 'excess' be returned after 90 days or so? Recycle the discs, and keep the 1000 copies they need after the rush is over?
Netflix is selling used DVDs now, and I wonder who gets the money from those sales? Does Netflix own the disc and resale rights like a typical movie rental store? If so, maybe relinquishing those rights to movies that they get a huge "free" over run on for rentals, and then sell the discs to customers, giving the profits (or a good part of) to the distributor?