Yeah and then they'd all come together, each with his own ideas about what a good movie should have and finance one gigantic example of design by committee.
If middlemen are nothing but money leeches then surely those who don't have middlemen should surpass those who do due to lower costs and drive them out of the market, right?
Meh, I've said it often enough: The only reform I think we need is making copyright usage dependent. You get a free period after the initial publication (so you can prepare and all that), after that you lose the copyright if the work or a close derivative is no longer available for (new) sale* to the public at large at a reasonable price ("reasonable price" would have to be based on the original retail price and potentially some court interpretation) for a certain period of time (I'd say 2 years or so for "unused" expiry, 10 years initial safe time). Obviously the burden of proof that it was available would be on the rightsholder (that shouldn't be a big burden). Possibly also have a maximum duration though IMO that's optional, the death of the publisher would usually doom a work to unavailability and thus release and the publisher will probably die at some point by losing relevance or something.
That way stuff the rightsholder fails to preserve can be preserved by the public yet a rightsholder will benefit from making a hugely successful work that remains relevant for many decades (which happens so rarely I think the few cases that do manage it deserve a reward for it). I'm not entirely sure how to handle components, e.g. Mickey Mouse is still in use even though I'm sure there are at least a few works with him that would lapse by this approach, I think verbatim reproduction of the entire work should be permitted then though derivatives of the components that are still in use maybe not.
*=or for free or whatever, as long as people can obtain copies legally.
I'm pretty sure a large number of them factor the copyright law (or simple ignorance) into their value assessment. Buying something legally has value to many people, remove the law and those people would see no value in legal purchases anymore (especially since making it legal would allow it to rise prominently to the surface instead of being hidden away in the dark corners of the internet).
In the end governments work like people accuse pharma companies to work: Instead of working on a cure they build up a treatment that can be delivered regularly around the election period.
Maybe this is why so many people would rather see a benevolent dictator, he'd have no need to keep his ratings up with total nonsense.
They had to cut out the humans in the games back in the day. Half-Life had robot soldiers, C&C had "cyborgs" (which got funnier with C&C2 (called 3 here) which had a dedicated cyborg unit). Maybe we should make a game showing that noone was actually hurt in the Iraq war because the people down there aren't humans...
Touchscreen + dpad is painful (though bearable in short bursts like when the dpad is only used as a trigger/shift key instead of movement input) and the touchscreen often fails when shoehorned into something that wasn't designed for it but there are also many games that benefit from it, especially the pure touchscreen ones. Games like Professor Layton wouldn't feel right without the touchscreen (or a mouse but those don't fit on portable systems) and many games that were designed to use the thing obviously work pretty well. Something like Chou Soujuu Mecha MG would be pointless with button controls.
The point is that you always get piracy no matter what you do but many people still make big money with good products. There's a large number of people that will buy a game legally if it appeals to them and as long as these exist you're going to make money. It doesn't matter how many people pirate your product, the only number that matters for your bottom line is how many pay for it.
Nintendo seems to care mostly about hardware, not software. They attack flashcarts, counterfeit games, etc but not the actual ROMs on the net (they probably do a bit but not nearly as much as they do against the sellers of physical goods). Not sure why but I'd guess either because it's just much more feasible to stop the distribution of things that must be manufactured in a factory (usually outside of the countries in which the largest console markets exist which means they have to be shipped as well) than simply copied on any computer connected to the internet or they just figure that emulation and such on a home computer isn't a big threat since it's always going to be a step behind compared to home consoles and lacks the portability of a portable system. Plus with the DS the control system, which is a major selling point for many of the bigger games on the system, can't be replicated easily and especially not on most portable systems (I don't think touchscreen controls can be done on the PSP).
WoW didn't become #1 out of sheer inertia (how?), it became #1 by doing MMORPGing better and in a way that the average joe could appreciate. That's why it didn't simply convert the EQ and UO players or whatever was on the MMO market before WoW, it converted non-MMO players (which may not actually have been playing any games before) into MMO players.
Same for the Game Boy and DS, they became #1 by doing portable gaming better than the competition and by increasing the appeal of gaming (Game Boy: Tetris, DS: Nintendogs, Brain Age), bringing new non-gamers into the portable gaming market instead of attempting to convert home console users into portable gamers. The PSP didn't do that, it tried to expand Sony's home console monopoly (a monopoly is not completely unopposed, just without effective opposition) into the portable realm by offering the same things as the home console (a big advertised game was the GT4 PS2-PSP connectivity), forgetting that the home console market already has a better gaming system at home and its games were designed for playing at home, leaving the PSP with few unique selling points. From what I hear from Americans over there portable gaming isn't very big anyway because public transportation is pretty bad and you can't play a game on the commute when you're steering a car. The DS, even when played at home, still offers a unique experience with unique games that the hiome consoles don't even approach.
Modeling apps don't exactly do high framerates, often scenes have to be simplified in the editing mode so you can actually get them rendered somewhat fast and even then single-digit framerates are acceptable. If you don't mind untextured scenes at single-digit framerates (often with reduced complexity on the models, replacing stuff with its bounding primitives and whatnot), sure, you can get Jurassic Park on the PSP...
Plus I wonder what the power usage on an SGI workstation is, I doubt it'd run on a 2000 mAh battery for long.
I don't think the PSP's niche is "fans of Japanese games" because the DS has way more of those games (especially the big ones, you know, the Nintendo titles).
From what I see the hardware sells pretty well though of course not on the same level as the DS. The PSP's problem is in its low software sales. On the other hand handheld systems tend to have much lower tie-in ratios than home consoles in general and the PSP is marketed as a multimedia device so quite a few purchases can probably be attributed to people buying the thing as a movie or music player that also happens to play games (or they find out that home console games are designed in a way not suitable for portable play and the PSP gets mostly home console games...). The DS isn't exactly free from piracy either and we don't see Nintendo complain about that thing.
Well, I got a pro for 200€ and didn't buy any extras for that (no mandatory ones at least, I got a 6€ or so HDMI cable but you can skip that since it makes no difference), just plugged it into the nearby switch (even came with a network cable for that), the other cable into the TV and it worked. Of course finding games for it is still proving difficult...
Then again FO3 has nothing to do with my 360 anyway because I got it for the PC where it's 20€ cheaper. Haven't upgraded the PC in a while (five years) but the game ran fine anyway.
EB/GameStop have a very small store and almost no hardware, you'd have been better off asking at an electronics retailer, they have entire shelves of joysticks with unpacked ones placed on the top of the shelf so you can try them out before picking one.
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Yeah and then they'd all come together, each with his own ideas about what a good movie should have and finance one gigantic example of design by committee.
If middlemen are nothing but money leeches then surely those who don't have middlemen should surpass those who do due to lower costs and drive them out of the market, right?
Meh, I've said it often enough: The only reform I think we need is making copyright usage dependent. You get a free period after the initial publication (so you can prepare and all that), after that you lose the copyright if the work or a close derivative is no longer available for (new) sale* to the public at large at a reasonable price ("reasonable price" would have to be based on the original retail price and potentially some court interpretation) for a certain period of time (I'd say 2 years or so for "unused" expiry, 10 years initial safe time). Obviously the burden of proof that it was available would be on the rightsholder (that shouldn't be a big burden). Possibly also have a maximum duration though IMO that's optional, the death of the publisher would usually doom a work to unavailability and thus release and the publisher will probably die at some point by losing relevance or something.
That way stuff the rightsholder fails to preserve can be preserved by the public yet a rightsholder will benefit from making a hugely successful work that remains relevant for many decades (which happens so rarely I think the few cases that do manage it deserve a reward for it). I'm not entirely sure how to handle components, e.g. Mickey Mouse is still in use even though I'm sure there are at least a few works with him that would lapse by this approach, I think verbatim reproduction of the entire work should be permitted then though derivatives of the components that are still in use maybe not.
*=or for free or whatever, as long as people can obtain copies legally.
I'm pretty sure a large number of them factor the copyright law (or simple ignorance) into their value assessment. Buying something legally has value to many people, remove the law and those people would see no value in legal purchases anymore (especially since making it legal would allow it to rise prominently to the surface instead of being hidden away in the dark corners of the internet).
I don't see any purpose in making use for profit differ from use not for profit.
So once the last lawyer is stuffed into the Ark B those words become meaningless and censorship is abolished?
In the end governments work like people accuse pharma companies to work: Instead of working on a cure they build up a treatment that can be delivered regularly around the election period.
Maybe this is why so many people would rather see a benevolent dictator, he'd have no need to keep his ratings up with total nonsense.
I think it still doesn't compare with our minister of the interior attempting to rebuild the Reich...
They had to cut out the humans in the games back in the day. Half-Life had robot soldiers, C&C had "cyborgs" (which got funnier with C&C2 (called 3 here) which had a dedicated cyborg unit). Maybe we should make a game showing that noone was actually hurt in the Iraq war because the people down there aren't humans...
Maybe a better solution would be to dress politicians up like kids so they get raped instead.
Not entirely impossible, if you get told when you've reached a blocked IP you can verify whether that IP is actually CP or not.
1) Child Porn
2) Communists
3) Union Workers
4) Jews
5) YOU
Yeah, the only case of that I've heard about was pirates stealing a freighter full of DSs.
Touchscreen + dpad is painful (though bearable in short bursts like when the dpad is only used as a trigger/shift key instead of movement input) and the touchscreen often fails when shoehorned into something that wasn't designed for it but there are also many games that benefit from it, especially the pure touchscreen ones. Games like Professor Layton wouldn't feel right without the touchscreen (or a mouse but those don't fit on portable systems) and many games that were designed to use the thing obviously work pretty well. Something like Chou Soujuu Mecha MG would be pointless with button controls.
The point is that you always get piracy no matter what you do but many people still make big money with good products. There's a large number of people that will buy a game legally if it appeals to them and as long as these exist you're going to make money. It doesn't matter how many people pirate your product, the only number that matters for your bottom line is how many pay for it.
Nintendo seems to care mostly about hardware, not software. They attack flashcarts, counterfeit games, etc but not the actual ROMs on the net (they probably do a bit but not nearly as much as they do against the sellers of physical goods). Not sure why but I'd guess either because it's just much more feasible to stop the distribution of things that must be manufactured in a factory (usually outside of the countries in which the largest console markets exist which means they have to be shipped as well) than simply copied on any computer connected to the internet or they just figure that emulation and such on a home computer isn't a big threat since it's always going to be a step behind compared to home consoles and lacks the portability of a portable system. Plus with the DS the control system, which is a major selling point for many of the bigger games on the system, can't be replicated easily and especially not on most portable systems (I don't think touchscreen controls can be done on the PSP).
WoW didn't become #1 out of sheer inertia (how?), it became #1 by doing MMORPGing better and in a way that the average joe could appreciate. That's why it didn't simply convert the EQ and UO players or whatever was on the MMO market before WoW, it converted non-MMO players (which may not actually have been playing any games before) into MMO players.
Same for the Game Boy and DS, they became #1 by doing portable gaming better than the competition and by increasing the appeal of gaming (Game Boy: Tetris, DS: Nintendogs, Brain Age), bringing new non-gamers into the portable gaming market instead of attempting to convert home console users into portable gamers. The PSP didn't do that, it tried to expand Sony's home console monopoly (a monopoly is not completely unopposed, just without effective opposition) into the portable realm by offering the same things as the home console (a big advertised game was the GT4 PS2-PSP connectivity), forgetting that the home console market already has a better gaming system at home and its games were designed for playing at home, leaving the PSP with few unique selling points. From what I hear from Americans over there portable gaming isn't very big anyway because public transportation is pretty bad and you can't play a game on the commute when you're steering a car. The DS, even when played at home, still offers a unique experience with unique games that the hiome consoles don't even approach.
Modeling apps don't exactly do high framerates, often scenes have to be simplified in the editing mode so you can actually get them rendered somewhat fast and even then single-digit framerates are acceptable. If you don't mind untextured scenes at single-digit framerates (often with reduced complexity on the models, replacing stuff with its bounding primitives and whatnot), sure, you can get Jurassic Park on the PSP...
Plus I wonder what the power usage on an SGI workstation is, I doubt it'd run on a 2000 mAh battery for long.
I don't think the PSP's niche is "fans of Japanese games" because the DS has way more of those games (especially the big ones, you know, the Nintendo titles).
From what I see the hardware sells pretty well though of course not on the same level as the DS. The PSP's problem is in its low software sales. On the other hand handheld systems tend to have much lower tie-in ratios than home consoles in general and the PSP is marketed as a multimedia device so quite a few purchases can probably be attributed to people buying the thing as a movie or music player that also happens to play games (or they find out that home console games are designed in a way not suitable for portable play and the PSP gets mostly home console games...). The DS isn't exactly free from piracy either and we don't see Nintendo complain about that thing.
4) Anti-Radiation Missiles.
Depends, are you a construction worker?
Well, I got a pro for 200€ and didn't buy any extras for that (no mandatory ones at least, I got a 6€ or so HDMI cable but you can skip that since it makes no difference), just plugged it into the nearby switch (even came with a network cable for that), the other cable into the TV and it worked. Of course finding games for it is still proving difficult...
Then again FO3 has nothing to do with my 360 anyway because I got it for the PC where it's 20€ cheaper. Haven't upgraded the PC in a while (five years) but the game ran fine anyway.
Fallout: San Andreas? Are they going to go the GTA route with that?
Introduce an enjoyable, playable game with many hours of playable/mod-able content, and you will strike it rich.
You forgot the "make it appeal to the masses" part there.
EB/GameStop have a very small store and almost no hardware, you'd have been better off asking at an electronics retailer, they have entire shelves of joysticks with unpacked ones placed on the top of the shelf so you can try them out before picking one.