I don't think 3d Realms would care if Steam was a wholly owned subsidiary of Valve as long as they didn't freely exchange more data with Valve than they do with other companies offering games on the service so Valve cannot see the stats for e.g. Prey's downloads or the feedback from a feedback system they might use in a future game (like Valve did with HL2Ep1).
I agree that FF and MGS won't go away from the PS3 and are unlikely to go multiplatform, at least the two upcoming games in the series. It could change for the following games but it's too early to say whether it will. However, Square Enix said they want to support more platforms now in order to prevent a clear winner (which could abuse its monopoly powers). In order to do that, they cannot release Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on the same day. DQ is also much less demanding for the hardware than FF and a bigger seller in Japan. I don't think they'd put it on the 360 unless they liked MS a LOT since that system is an abysmal failure in the market DQ sells the most and even with its console-selling importance won't be able to sell as much as its predecessors. Some fanboys claim Dragon Quest is going to the Wii if that Dragon Quest Swords game sells.
I don't think simply telling the kids they aren't allowed to play those games is the right approach. Banning something only increases their desire to get it (remember, kids ALWAYS try to rebell against their parents). The kids need to understand WHY you don't want them playing those games*. And better yet, they should be able to tell right from wrong and real from virtual by the time they actually encounter videogames.
*=Randomly reminds me of when my parents told me not to play a game called Zaxxon because I pronounced that like Sexxon and they thought that's what the game is about as they've never seen the game itself. It's a simple isometric shmup, actually.
And most likely it's connected to a display that can only do 640x480. Sure, there's HDTV but we're talking about likely, i.e. most people. 640x480 can't hold a lot of readable text, interlacing and the generally bad quality of most TV pictures means you need larger letters than on a PC to keep them from blurring to all hell and the increased viewing distance takes its toll as well. Now add the internet and websites that haven't been designed for use at 640x480 for years and applications that take even more (I think XSI was one of those applications that won't run below 1280x960). There's a reason WebTV didn't take off.
Sony will get 1st place because they can lose half their market from the PS2 and still move 50+ million units and well they won't lose half their followers.
No, they cannot do that and keep #1. They would if the other two kept selling the same number of consoles they did last gen but those 50 million people they'd no longer have probably want a new console, too. If half of them picked the 360 and half picked the Wii Sony's lead would be insignificant, if the distribution was less even Sony would be #2.
Losing half their market is being generous, from the looks of it they're heading for a self-reinforcing cycle that hurts the PS3 and helps the competition (games and developers leave the platform -> fewer buyers -> games and developers leave the platform). If they lose the lead at the start more and more games are going to migrate (and many are already doing that) to the competition and by the time the PS3 reaches an acceptable price the competition will have control of many major game series that were exclusive to Sony on the PS2. Square Enix said they want to go multiplatform, GTA4 will be multiplatform! They've only got MGS4 and FF13 remaining as their big draws and both are too far off while the competition is hitting with Gears of War and Zelda right now.
I suspect your real problem is that your son has bricks which are not actually Lego bricks. Mega blocks and others try to be like Lego but the quality just isn't there in their bricks. I've been kicking a few out of my collection recently that I found while sorting.
I don't think that's it, I've had only genuine Legos and the connection strength varied depending on the stone, some were almost impossible to separate while others fell apart at the slightest touch. I think the age of the blocks was correlated closely to the looseness (if the shape was consistent, some shapes were also stickier than others) so maybe it's just the bricks wearing out and deforming over time?
Noone would cluster his army like that outside of extreme situations, they know the threat of artillery and airstrikes and would most likely keep squads some way apart which also covers more area.
I'm not sure the other EU countries would feel safe should the US go to war with one of them. There'd also be the question of the reasons for the war. Most reasons to go to war with one EU country would probably apply to the rest of them as well which pretty much forces them to fight the US as well since they know they'd get attacked eventually and fighting while your allies are still standing is more effective than waiting until you're alone.
Now for Nintento... They said they would have 2 million for NA launch. However, now it appears that they actually meant 600k worldwide.
I heard 1 million myself but there is no difference between NA and worldwide right now, the Wii hasn't been released in any other territory yet.
My observation of them is that "if" the PS3 was down to say $400 by next Christmas a few of them would buy it. "If" it was down to $300 then most of the families there would buy one.
I agree, had Sony launched at 300-400$ they'd be well on their way to pull a hattrick but I'm not sure it'll hit that pricepoint soon, we're talking about a 200$ pricedrop within the first year. At this rate they might have slower growth and the dev support will wander off to other platforms (they've already lost some of that because of the price and the barrage of bad news the PS3 produced so far in addition to their arrogance when dealing with third parties) meaning the competition will win even faster.
In 2005 EA sold twice as many units as Nintendo in the US (25% marketshare vs. 14% or so). The rankings constantly shift. I think Ubi was #3 after EA and Nintendo some years ago (which would be their #2 third party goal). EA is more stable than Nintendo whose sales seem to vary depending on the console lifecycles.
Of course that law is nonsensical and banning the sale of porn to minors is just exploiting a loophole but the majority of the population doesn't mind that law and looks the other way.
Yes but usually it's win on first try or die failing. MS is using their vast profit from their monopolies to force a console into the market against all forces of the market itself. The Xbox lost 5 billion dollars and sold barely more than the Gamecube. Only their monopolies kept it alive, everyone else would have thrown the towel after such a miserable bilance. Nintendo had reason to stay since the Gamecube was still profitable but the XBox was an utter failure by both metrics (sales and profit). MS is simply persistzent and rich enough to afford it. This is the brute force approach and the only way they can make their investment back is gaining a monopoly. Never mind that last I checked leveraging a monopoly you have to gain another monopoly is illegal (and I've seen a former monopoly telco get hit for "selling" phone time below cost to undercut competitors). While the razor and blade business model may be standard for the console market (although it was usually break even on the console instead of the huge losses we're seeing now) I'm not sure MS can do that as a convicted monopolist.
Actually the Wii didn't sell 2M consoles at launch, it's only at 700k for now (official numbers for America, the only territory it's available in). And Gamerankings now lists Zelda TP higher than Soul Calibur.
This isn't supposed to generate money, this is purely for fun and the learning experience (and the pride of providing fun to others). Users cheating? Other opensource games do online without that problem (and really, how are you planning to cheat in an MMORPG anyway? There may be exploits but the point of opensource is that those can be fixed immediately when someone spots them instead of waiting for developers to react to constant complaints on some forum). Cheat servers? Why not, their right to play it the way they like and you can't get the cheats from one server to another without the consent of the operator.
They aren't trying to save the company, they're trying to buy the IP and put it under the GPL so everyone can have their fun with it. Profit? Well, you could make a profit if you run a server that provides a service that's so much better than what the free servers offer that you cancharge money to play on it.
There are plenty of (illegally) user-run servers for many popular MMORPGs, I don't think there'll be much difficulty in finding someone willing to run a server.
Conveniently choosing to ignore how Microsoft has been able to establish itself as a major player in the game console world in surprisingly short time
Interesting that you consider that surprising since all other major players were major players quickly after their first console launched. Atari, Nintendo and Sony took #1 on the first try.
so you think the famously non-technical governments taking over the development of a version of Linux would turn out to be a great OS?
Do you think they'll put politicians in front of computers and tell them to write code?
I've used Linux as it is now and it completely and utterly sucks. There was almost no thought put into ease of use or easy user understandability.
Or maybe you need to get a brain and try reading the manuals that come with many distros. No OS is perfectly intuitive, Windows only manages to get by because everyone is forced to learn it.
They have to pay almost a billion to those greedy idiots after a corrupt, biased, bullshit trial and go ahead and google search what % of windows copies in Europe are pirated.
Yeah, because pirated copies of Windows cost them SO MUCH money. The piracy rates matter jack shit (and in your plan would just hit 100% anyway), what matters is how many legal copies are sold in the area. You can't tell me that all Microsoft software and hardware combined doesn't make more than a billion dollars a year in Europe. They'd lose all Office, Windows and Xbox sales in the area permanently (returning would get them arrested after all) and give the competition a free victory. Their shareholders would run into their headquarters and strangle Ballmer.
If they pulled it from there, which is easy as pie to enforce no matter what you think, they'd have saved probably 2 billion or more and showed those idiots what happens when they create their own bullshit lawsuits and run them through their own bullshit courts just to get some money.
Yeah because governments really have no business punishing corporations that violate the law as long as they are big enough, right? And because it's really impossible to just FUCKING DOCUMENT THE API OF AN OS YOU WROTE YOURSELF WITHIN A TIMEFRAME OF TWO YEARS. Clearly documenting the Windows API is so expensive that you'd rather ceede an entire continent to the competition.
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I don't think 3d Realms would care if Steam was a wholly owned subsidiary of Valve as long as they didn't freely exchange more data with Valve than they do with other companies offering games on the service so Valve cannot see the stats for e.g. Prey's downloads or the feedback from a feedback system they might use in a future game (like Valve did with HL2Ep1).
I agree that FF and MGS won't go away from the PS3 and are unlikely to go multiplatform, at least the two upcoming games in the series. It could change for the following games but it's too early to say whether it will. However, Square Enix said they want to support more platforms now in order to prevent a clear winner (which could abuse its monopoly powers). In order to do that, they cannot release Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on the same day. DQ is also much less demanding for the hardware than FF and a bigger seller in Japan. I don't think they'd put it on the 360 unless they liked MS a LOT since that system is an abysmal failure in the market DQ sells the most and even with its console-selling importance won't be able to sell as much as its predecessors. Some fanboys claim Dragon Quest is going to the Wii if that Dragon Quest Swords game sells.
I don't think simply telling the kids they aren't allowed to play those games is the right approach. Banning something only increases their desire to get it (remember, kids ALWAYS try to rebell against their parents). The kids need to understand WHY you don't want them playing those games*. And better yet, they should be able to tell right from wrong and real from virtual by the time they actually encounter videogames.
*=Randomly reminds me of when my parents told me not to play a game called Zaxxon because I pronounced that like Sexxon and they thought that's what the game is about as they've never seen the game itself. It's a simple isometric shmup, actually.
usually a kid buys something with their parent, so it's their responsibility to check on the rating.
You can be pretty damn sure that a kid won't buy the game when his parents are around and likely won't agree with the purchase.
Furthermore how many 12 year olds have enough allowance to buy a game on their own?
Games can get pretty damn cheap if you wait for them to pop up in the bargain bin. When I was at that age I bought very few full price games.
And most likely it's connected to a display that can only do 640x480. Sure, there's HDTV but we're talking about likely, i.e. most people. 640x480 can't hold a lot of readable text, interlacing and the generally bad quality of most TV pictures means you need larger letters than on a PC to keep them from blurring to all hell and the increased viewing distance takes its toll as well. Now add the internet and websites that haven't been designed for use at 640x480 for years and applications that take even more (I think XSI was one of those applications that won't run below 1280x960). There's a reason WebTV didn't take off.
Sony will get 1st place because they can lose half their market from the PS2 and still move 50+ million units and well they won't lose half their followers.
No, they cannot do that and keep #1. They would if the other two kept selling the same number of consoles they did last gen but those 50 million people they'd no longer have probably want a new console, too. If half of them picked the 360 and half picked the Wii Sony's lead would be insignificant, if the distribution was less even Sony would be #2.
Losing half their market is being generous, from the looks of it they're heading for a self-reinforcing cycle that hurts the PS3 and helps the competition (games and developers leave the platform -> fewer buyers -> games and developers leave the platform). If they lose the lead at the start more and more games are going to migrate (and many are already doing that) to the competition and by the time the PS3 reaches an acceptable price the competition will have control of many major game series that were exclusive to Sony on the PS2. Square Enix said they want to go multiplatform, GTA4 will be multiplatform! They've only got MGS4 and FF13 remaining as their big draws and both are too far off while the competition is hitting with Gears of War and Zelda right now.
I suspect your real problem is that your son has bricks which are not actually Lego bricks. Mega blocks and others try to be like Lego but the quality just isn't there in their bricks. I've been kicking a few out of my collection recently that I found while sorting.
I don't think that's it, I've had only genuine Legos and the connection strength varied depending on the stone, some were almost impossible to separate while others fell apart at the slightest touch. I think the age of the blocks was correlated closely to the looseness (if the shape was consistent, some shapes were also stickier than others) so maybe it's just the bricks wearing out and deforming over time?
Do those computer simulations know where those silos and subs actually ARE?
Noone would cluster his army like that outside of extreme situations, they know the threat of artillery and airstrikes and would most likely keep squads some way apart which also covers more area.
Man, are you that new ultra-secret US weapon?
No, he's the President of the United States of America and you better call him "sir"!
I'm not sure the other EU countries would feel safe should the US go to war with one of them. There'd also be the question of the reasons for the war. Most reasons to go to war with one EU country would probably apply to the rest of them as well which pretty much forces them to fight the US as well since they know they'd get attacked eventually and fighting while your allies are still standing is more effective than waiting until you're alone.
Both sides would have nukes so the battle would be pointless anyway, everybody dies.
Now for Nintento... They said they would have 2 million for NA launch. However, now it appears that they actually meant 600k worldwide.
I heard 1 million myself but there is no difference between NA and worldwide right now, the Wii hasn't been released in any other territory yet.
My observation of them is that "if" the PS3 was down to say $400 by next Christmas a few of them would buy it. "If" it was down to $300 then most of the families there would buy one.
I agree, had Sony launched at 300-400$ they'd be well on their way to pull a hattrick but I'm not sure it'll hit that pricepoint soon, we're talking about a 200$ pricedrop within the first year. At this rate they might have slower growth and the dev support will wander off to other platforms (they've already lost some of that because of the price and the barrage of bad news the PS3 produced so far in addition to their arrogance when dealing with third parties) meaning the competition will win even faster.
That's fiscal year AFAIK.
Interesting, I don't recall Atari, Nintendo or Sony spending "Gigabucks" on their first console.
In 2005 EA sold twice as many units as Nintendo in the US (25% marketshare vs. 14% or so). The rankings constantly shift. I think Ubi was #3 after EA and Nintendo some years ago (which would be their #2 third party goal). EA is more stable than Nintendo whose sales seem to vary depending on the console lifecycles.
Oh and don't forget Europe.
Of course that law is nonsensical and banning the sale of porn to minors is just exploiting a loophole but the majority of the population doesn't mind that law and looks the other way.
Yes but usually it's win on first try or die failing. MS is using their vast profit from their monopolies to force a console into the market against all forces of the market itself. The Xbox lost 5 billion dollars and sold barely more than the Gamecube. Only their monopolies kept it alive, everyone else would have thrown the towel after such a miserable bilance. Nintendo had reason to stay since the Gamecube was still profitable but the XBox was an utter failure by both metrics (sales and profit). MS is simply persistzent and rich enough to afford it. This is the brute force approach and the only way they can make their investment back is gaining a monopoly. Never mind that last I checked leveraging a monopoly you have to gain another monopoly is illegal (and I've seen a former monopoly telco get hit for "selling" phone time below cost to undercut competitors). While the razor and blade business model may be standard for the console market (although it was usually break even on the console instead of the huge losses we're seeing now) I'm not sure MS can do that as a convicted monopolist.
Actually the Wii didn't sell 2M consoles at launch, it's only at 700k for now (official numbers for America, the only territory it's available in). And Gamerankings now lists Zelda TP higher than Soul Calibur.
This isn't supposed to generate money, this is purely for fun and the learning experience (and the pride of providing fun to others). Users cheating? Other opensource games do online without that problem (and really, how are you planning to cheat in an MMORPG anyway? There may be exploits but the point of opensource is that those can be fixed immediately when someone spots them instead of waiting for developers to react to constant complaints on some forum). Cheat servers? Why not, their right to play it the way they like and you can't get the cheats from one server to another without the consent of the operator.
They aren't trying to save the company, they're trying to buy the IP and put it under the GPL so everyone can have their fun with it. Profit? Well, you could make a profit if you run a server that provides a service that's so much better than what the free servers offer that you cancharge money to play on it.
There are plenty of (illegally) user-run servers for many popular MMORPGs, I don't think there'll be much difficulty in finding someone willing to run a server.
The engine is opensource already, what they're trying to buy is the rest.
Conveniently choosing to ignore how Microsoft has been able to establish itself as a major player in the game console world in surprisingly short time
Interesting that you consider that surprising since all other major players were major players quickly after their first console launched. Atari, Nintendo and Sony took #1 on the first try.
so you think the famously non-technical governments taking over the development of a version of Linux would turn out to be a great OS?
Do you think they'll put politicians in front of computers and tell them to write code?
I've used Linux as it is now and it completely and utterly sucks. There was almost no thought put into ease of use or easy user understandability.
Or maybe you need to get a brain and try reading the manuals that come with many distros. No OS is perfectly intuitive, Windows only manages to get by because everyone is forced to learn it.
They have to pay almost a billion to those greedy idiots after a corrupt, biased, bullshit trial and go ahead and google search what % of windows copies in Europe are pirated.
Yeah, because pirated copies of Windows cost them SO MUCH money. The piracy rates matter jack shit (and in your plan would just hit 100% anyway), what matters is how many legal copies are sold in the area. You can't tell me that all Microsoft software and hardware combined doesn't make more than a billion dollars a year in Europe. They'd lose all Office, Windows and Xbox sales in the area permanently (returning would get them arrested after all) and give the competition a free victory. Their shareholders would run into their headquarters and strangle Ballmer.
If they pulled it from there, which is easy as pie to enforce no matter what you think, they'd have saved probably 2 billion or more and showed those idiots what happens when they create their own bullshit lawsuits and run them through their own bullshit courts just to get some money.
Yeah because governments really have no business punishing corporations that violate the law as long as they are big enough, right? And because it's really impossible to just FUCKING DOCUMENT THE API OF AN OS YOU WROTE YOURSELF WITHIN A TIMEFRAME OF TWO YEARS. Clearly documenting the Windows API is so expensive that you'd rather ceede an entire continent to the competition.
What I get and pay for with more expensive products is usually brand names and advertising budgets, or at least that's how I feel.