It's not controls as much as game mechanics. Sequels usually feature the same game mechanics and specific behaviours (if they don't you can bet your ass the fans will complain). For example, many RTS games control the same but the Command & Conquer series has a clear split between vehicles and infantry where most weapons are only effective against one of them and generally battles are pretty short. Contrast that with the Age of Empires games (and its imitators) where units can take a lot more damage, generally there's a lot more rock-paper-scissors balancing (where each unit is a counter for a specific other unit, not a unit group) and many ressource types. There was a big uproar when C&C Generals replaced the C&C standard monolithic build system with the genre standard system where each factory or constructor had an independent build queue.
I don't think it's playing by itself as much as the time listed there. Four hours per day was where they started measuring some impact. I don't know about others but I usually got home from school at 16:00 or 17:00, playing for four hours would keep me busy till 20 or 21 o'clock, if we add dinner, homework and whatever chores you do at your house to that you'd easily end up going to bed at 23 o'clock or later. Assuming you have to get out of bed at 6-7 you're not getting a lot of sleep. No wonder the grades slip if the kid doesn't get enough sleep, concentrating on a subject is pretty hard if you're sleepy.
No, I don't expect lower premiums from it but I expect better coverage since they'd be required to cover everyone. There has to be some reason people don't end up paying as much if they are hospitalized in countries with complete cost sharing.
Problem with chronic illnesses is they can cost a lot, even millions (of course over lifetime), to treat constantly. Others mentioned insurances having a lifetime limit of a few million $ in their contracts that a chronically ill person can easily hit. Up-front payments won't cover them forever, either. At the rate you need to throw money at some of them the payout would have to be bigger than the lottery jackpot to last until your death.
Are you sure the plexiglass cases weren't ventilated? XBox 360 demo units don't look like it but the plexiglass case is actually ventilated with a fan in the rear "pillar". Wouldn't surprise me if the PS3 cases used a similar system. Putting any console into an unventilated box will cause overheating, even the SNES had warnings about that.
Is that a metal desk perchance? I'm observing the same effect on my mouse in addition to a range of less than 20cm where others have claimed they use the same type of mouse from 10m away.
Sony is in the valley with no cover, and little reinforcements [..] and Microsoft is rolling a giant ball (Katamari if you will to the edge of the cliff)
Given that we're talking about soldiers here I'd say rolling an Odama down the hill is more appropriate.
The problem is that insurance means a company that makes a profit and as such will avoid covering those in need as much as possible while pandering to the healthy. From what has been said in this discussion most insurances are unwilling to cover chronic illnesses. And that's what RAW is suffering from.
There are many people who want to pay into a cost-sharing system like and HMO and avoid paying directly for most of their health care. For people who use more than the average amount of health care this is a great plan (as long as they can dupe some below-average users into the same plan). But I can budget for my routine medical expenses, and insure myself against expenses outside of my bugdet, just like I do for my car and home. Adding this sort of nomenclature confusion to the mix does not help anyone.
The problem is the basic egoist mindset of pretty much every person out there. Making these optional would not work as the healthy don't think they'll need it and the chronically sick will drain your funds quickly. The only real way to handle it is to force EVERYONE to pay their share. Guess it boils down to forcing people to help each other (socialist) or adopting a stance of "help yourself or die" (liberal). Obviously the people who need help prefer the former and the people who can help themselves (at least now, who knows if you get hit by a car tomorrow and spend the rest of your days in a wheelchair) prefer the latter.
They didn't spot Hot Coffee but the game was rated 18 already so it didn't matter anyway. Of course there are higher "ratings" possible (indexed or outlawed) but those aren't given out for a bit of porn. For a comparison, the Leisure Suit Larry games excluding the latest are rated 16 while the latest is rated 18 and the game Singles which got rated AO by the ESRB has a rating of 16. Because there are ratings that are worse than 18 and the 18 rating is given pretty often no retailers I know of refuse to stock the 18 rated games (they refuse to stock indexed games but those are only allowed to be sold under the counter so that's to be expected).
The ESRB could split the M rating into a 16 M rating and an 18 S (severe) or something rating while AO remains reserved for hardcore pornography. That way retailers can say they aren't stocking the worst of games and the ESRB can still hand out 18 ratings.
I live in a country where the testers are required to play through the whole games. I don't see any chilling effect. The developer/publisher just hands them a beta and they're done before it's gone gold. If the dev/pub feels smart and puts in new objectionable content after the test the rating is invalidated (see e.g. Far Cry which got de-rated and subsequently indexed).
AFAIK the other media (especially TV) are worried about videogames competing for their viewers'/listeners'/whatevers' time. That might also explain why the news likes to blame videogames since videogames are competition but not a regular information outlet so they can't talk back.
Censorship? I got news for you, the USK has been doing that for years. And they've been rating thousands of games a year.
Of course they aren't safe from criticism, their frontpage has an article about some politicians going "think of the children!", demanding a ban on violence-promoting games and claiming the industry self-regulation has failed and has to be replaced with a federal agency. Well, guess what we've done three years ago... I realize politicians are dumb as hell but they should at least remember what they did three years ago.
Not really. Look at the current generation. You can reach 100M users by making a PS2 game while an Xbox or GC game would reach 25M (note that all of these numbers are probably a bit too high). You can gain 50% more potential buyers by making the game multiplatform but you'd lose 75% if you made it exclusive to the Xbox or GC (never mind the different demographics buying those consoles resulting in less buyers for e.g. jRPGs). Square-Enix doesn't seem to make multiplatform games very often.
Spreading your games over multiple machines also makes it harder for people to gobble up everything you release (S-E has plenty of fanboys that would). Look at Sega, their fanbase is distributed over all three consoles.
20% is no controlling share, after the Enix merger thant went down to single digit per cents and Square-Enix has already announced they will spread their games out over all three consoles in order to prevent monopolies like the PS2.
This wouldn't be a software patent since the algorithm would run on a very specific device and be pretty much inseparable from it. Since adding a camera to a boomerang in a meaningful way isn't as easy as duck-taping it the whole assembly could be patented, including whatever software runs on it (since the software could just as well be a chip that's hard-wired to perform that algorithm).
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It's not controls as much as game mechanics. Sequels usually feature the same game mechanics and specific behaviours (if they don't you can bet your ass the fans will complain). For example, many RTS games control the same but the Command & Conquer series has a clear split between vehicles and infantry where most weapons are only effective against one of them and generally battles are pretty short. Contrast that with the Age of Empires games (and its imitators) where units can take a lot more damage, generally there's a lot more rock-paper-scissors balancing (where each unit is a counter for a specific other unit, not a unit group) and many ressource types. There was a big uproar when C&C Generals replaced the C&C standard monolithic build system with the genre standard system where each factory or constructor had an independent build queue.
I don't think it's playing by itself as much as the time listed there. Four hours per day was where they started measuring some impact. I don't know about others but I usually got home from school at 16:00 or 17:00, playing for four hours would keep me busy till 20 or 21 o'clock, if we add dinner, homework and whatever chores you do at your house to that you'd easily end up going to bed at 23 o'clock or later. Assuming you have to get out of bed at 6-7 you're not getting a lot of sleep. No wonder the grades slip if the kid doesn't get enough sleep, concentrating on a subject is pretty hard if you're sleepy.
No, I don't expect lower premiums from it but I expect better coverage since they'd be required to cover everyone. There has to be some reason people don't end up paying as much if they are hospitalized in countries with complete cost sharing.
Problem with chronic illnesses is they can cost a lot, even millions (of course over lifetime), to treat constantly. Others mentioned insurances having a lifetime limit of a few million $ in their contracts that a chronically ill person can easily hit. Up-front payments won't cover them forever, either. At the rate you need to throw money at some of them the payout would have to be bigger than the lottery jackpot to last until your death.
Are you sure the plexiglass cases weren't ventilated? XBox 360 demo units don't look like it but the plexiglass case is actually ventilated with a fan in the rear "pillar". Wouldn't surprise me if the PS3 cases used a similar system. Putting any console into an unventilated box will cause overheating, even the SNES had warnings about that.
Are you the man who invented the spelling of "pwn"?
Is that a metal desk perchance? I'm observing the same effect on my mouse in addition to a range of less than 20cm where others have claimed they use the same type of mouse from 10m away.
Sony is in the valley with no cover, and little reinforcements [..] and Microsoft is rolling a giant ball (Katamari if you will to the edge of the cliff)
Given that we're talking about soldiers here I'd say rolling an Odama down the hill is more appropriate.
The game is exclusive, not the engine. There's plenty of PS3 projects using it.
The problem is that insurance means a company that makes a profit and as such will avoid covering those in need as much as possible while pandering to the healthy. From what has been said in this discussion most insurances are unwilling to cover chronic illnesses. And that's what RAW is suffering from.
There are many people who want to pay into a cost-sharing system like and HMO and avoid paying directly for most of their health care. For people who use more than the average amount of health care this is a great plan (as long as they can dupe some below-average users into the same plan). But I can budget for my routine medical expenses, and insure myself against expenses outside of my bugdet, just like I do for my car and home. Adding this sort of nomenclature confusion to the mix does not help anyone.
The problem is the basic egoist mindset of pretty much every person out there. Making these optional would not work as the healthy don't think they'll need it and the chronically sick will drain your funds quickly. The only real way to handle it is to force EVERYONE to pay their share. Guess it boils down to forcing people to help each other (socialist) or adopting a stance of "help yourself or die" (liberal). Obviously the people who need help prefer the former and the people who can help themselves (at least now, who knows if you get hit by a car tomorrow and spend the rest of your days in a wheelchair) prefer the latter.
Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor, Terence Hill for president?
If you need more electricity, you develop an infrastructure capable of generating it. There's still much that can be done with nuclear power
Unless you've been declared a part of the "Axis of Evil" by the US.
Sorry but that was what came to mind here.
What if they planned for this and added armor to the mask... Perfect for a horror movie.
They should have used the King of Town instead.
They didn't spot Hot Coffee but the game was rated 18 already so it didn't matter anyway. Of course there are higher "ratings" possible (indexed or outlawed) but those aren't given out for a bit of porn. For a comparison, the Leisure Suit Larry games excluding the latest are rated 16 while the latest is rated 18 and the game Singles which got rated AO by the ESRB has a rating of 16. Because there are ratings that are worse than 18 and the 18 rating is given pretty often no retailers I know of refuse to stock the 18 rated games (they refuse to stock indexed games but those are only allowed to be sold under the counter so that's to be expected).
The ESRB could split the M rating into a 16 M rating and an 18 S (severe) or something rating while AO remains reserved for hardcore pornography. That way retailers can say they aren't stocking the worst of games and the ESRB can still hand out 18 ratings.
I live in a country where the testers are required to play through the whole games. I don't see any chilling effect. The developer/publisher just hands them a beta and they're done before it's gone gold. If the dev/pub feels smart and puts in new objectionable content after the test the rating is invalidated (see e.g. Far Cry which got de-rated and subsequently indexed).
AFAIK the other media (especially TV) are worried about videogames competing for their viewers'/listeners'/whatevers' time. That might also explain why the news likes to blame videogames since videogames are competition but not a regular information outlet so they can't talk back.
Censorship? I got news for you, the USK has been doing that for years. And they've been rating thousands of games a year.
Of course they aren't safe from criticism, their frontpage has an article about some politicians going "think of the children!", demanding a ban on violence-promoting games and claiming the industry self-regulation has failed and has to be replaced with a federal agency. Well, guess what we've done three years ago... I realize politicians are dumb as hell but they should at least remember what they did three years ago.
Not really. Look at the current generation. You can reach 100M users by making a PS2 game while an Xbox or GC game would reach 25M (note that all of these numbers are probably a bit too high). You can gain 50% more potential buyers by making the game multiplatform but you'd lose 75% if you made it exclusive to the Xbox or GC (never mind the different demographics buying those consoles resulting in less buyers for e.g. jRPGs). Square-Enix doesn't seem to make multiplatform games very often.
Spreading your games over multiple machines also makes it harder for people to gobble up everything you release (S-E has plenty of fanboys that would). Look at Sega, their fanbase is distributed over all three consoles.
20% is no controlling share, after the Enix merger thant went down to single digit per cents and Square-Enix has already announced they will spread their games out over all three consoles in order to prevent monopolies like the PS2.
Or maybe he had parents that didn't like games about shooting people and got him Gradius instead?
This wouldn't be a software patent since the algorithm would run on a very specific device and be pretty much inseparable from it. Since adding a camera to a boomerang in a meaningful way isn't as easy as duck-taping it the whole assembly could be patented, including whatever software runs on it (since the software could just as well be a chip that's hard-wired to perform that algorithm).
Acually it's a counterfeit Nokia Li-Ion battery with its trigger wired to this system.
Oh, wait, here on Slashdot people only get it if I say Sony battery.
It was also heavily based on the experience with the system in the Weimarer Republik.