The difference is that neonazis are now a confined minority with several counter-minorities keeping them in check even before you consider government interference (in fact the government has to put more effort into making sure the neonazis don't get beaten to death by the rest of the population). The old nazis were more than an ideology, they were a form of organized crime (they had the SA spread terror among their opposition even before they got any official power). That structure got stomped out even if a few silly kids still think Hitler was cool.
If people judge a game's worth by its filesize maybe the solution is just to bloat the filesize to high heaven. Meanwhile I have no problem with paying 40€ for a 30MB game provided the game is good. I've certainly played 128kB games that were better than 10GB games.
Considering the Wii has 100% backwards compatibility with the Gamecube I don't think that's a fair criticism (only the PSP Go might deserve it). Yes, you have to rebuy NES games if you want to play them on the Wii but really, do you expect them to slap 8 cartridge slots and a 1541 disk drive on the system? The Virtual Console is for those among us who don't own the original releases. The NES and SNES ports for the GBA are also of games that were at least a decade old and for a device that couldn't feasibly have had a cartridge slot for those formats (my GBASP is smaller than a SNES cart).
As do most European countries. Here in Germany that creates funny situations like restaurants clearly having to mark whether the food is sold for consumption in-house (counts as a service, full tax) or take-away (runs under the reduced tax for food).
These days jRPGs are waning in popularity (and quality) while western cRPGs are on the rise. Whereas Final Fantasy used to lord over consoles now it's secondary to a game like Mass Effect 2 or Fallout 3.
By the way, Nintendo has bought Monolith, the maker of Xenosaga (not to be confused with the Monolith that made Tron 2.0 and FEAR) and has them working on Xenoblade, they've also got Mistwalker working on The Last Story. Obviously there's Dragon Quest 9 on the DS which hasn't reached the west yet but then again the DS is currently the go-to place for jRPGs.
A clown who makes nonsensical claims about the videogame market and even got several web video shows where he can spout his nonsense. Technically he's an analyst but one that has been wrong so often you'd be stupid to follow his advice.
Reviewed by internet-dwelling hardcore gamers. Among the general populace most of the traditionally high scoring games are no good because brutally killing aliens with a chainsaw is not what people like.
Windows sucks in terms of core design but it dominates in terms of software support which is really what people buy it for. I don't use Windows because I love the security issues and whatnot, I use it because most of the software I use (games primarily) only works with Windows. Similarly I have an XBox 360, not because I like that failure rate but because it had games I wanted to play. I have a PS2 despite hating the hardware itself (going by hardware alone the Gamecube trashes it) but you can't argue with its software lineup. I got that iPod Touch for the App Store, not because I'm fond of Apple hardware. And yes, I have a Wii not because I enjoy the weak graphics but because it has games I want to play.
The Wii sells so many systems because the games it has appeal to the most people. I'm not the kind of person who plays Just Dance but I got other games to play on there while the people who prefer Just Dance or Wii Sports get taken by the Wii by default. People like me are fought over, all systems try to sell their games to me while those other people are ignored by everyone except Nintendo and thus Nintendo wins them by default.
That's if you define generations by resolution, something we haven't done since SVGA became history. On the other hand the Wii is currently the only motion control generation console out, the PS3's half-assed sixaxis is just a dualshock with some crappy motion detection taped on (reminiscent of the Saturn's shoehorned 3D as a response to the Playstation) while the true motion generation inputs for the other two consoles are still not released. There are many ways to define generations but at least motion controls greatly impact the player's experience while graphics are pretty much a commodity these days.
Like the summary said, it's so far behind the other consoles, not to mention PC's, that it requires a completely separate codebase.
That's not stopping game development on the DS and PSP.
I think that Nintendo made a serious tactical error by targeting "casual" gamers. A casual gamer might shell out a few bucks for World of Goo or Popcap stuff, but paying $50+ for a game you're only casually interested in? Not going to happen, at least not more than a few times.
The trick is to make the casual gamer seriously interested which is how Nintendo's games manage to sell more than ten million copies regularly despite costing 50$ or more (Wii Fit!). The casual label is arbitrary, it doesn't mean these people only show a casual interest in any game, in fact they tend to bite into a game and never let loose. See a "casual" gamer play his favourite game (be it Tetris or Bejeweled) and you'll often see crazy amounts of skill because he plays it for many months again and again.
Nintendo may be profitable, but it cost them their reputation. There was a time they were synonymous with gaming; now they're firmly latched into the el cheapo lodge.
They are again synonymous with gaming because they brought gaming to millions who've never gamed before. After the SNES it was Sony that was synonymous with gaming (seriously, in that time the generic term for a console was "Playstation", not "Nintendo"). Nintendo lost its reputation over a decade ago.
That's because the first party games are leagues better than the trash the third parties casually shit out. Most of the games released by third parties are shovelware that was created with the customer analysis of "people are stupid and will buy anything with party in the name" (if they strike gold it's because they accidentally made the game appeal to other people too). The few games that are actually aimed at people who exist usually are aimed at people who exist only in small numbers (artsy niche games) or make a half-hearted attempt at competing with a huge pile of highly polished games that any semi-savvy customer will buy first (most of the "core" games). It feels like the entire industry has pegged Wii owners as retards who will buy anything and then gets all surprised when the "retards" DON'T buy anything.
I would argue that everyone who wants a Wii has one at this point, and that's why sales are dropping off - not due to lack of interest so much as a lack of people to sell to.
Read your statement again: everyone who wants a Wii. With more interest there would be more people wanting to buy a Wii. You only run out of people once there's nobody left to convince. Nintendo's whole goal this generation was to find the reasons people are disinterested and fix them. That's what this whole expanded audience push is about, making the Wii interesting to people who weren't interested in what gaming offered before.
Gameplay is more than mechanics, I've seen many different mechanics employed in flash games. The other part of the equation is the content that runs through those mechanics, levels and such. Most flash games have a unique mechanic or two but sorely lack levels that really make use of it. Many people don't realize that mechanics alone don't make a game and often their idea only covers mechanics but no decent amount of content.
The industry has millions of ideas it never uses, it's one thing to have an idea, it's another thing to make sure it's good and turn it into something worthwhile.
While we're on the topic, my sig is peddling a game that was indeed started by an idea guy coming around and other people thinking "hell, it's not much work, let's contribute". After that it became a fun testbed for new ideas and uncertain implementations and grew.
Artists usually don't count as "idea people", usually their role is to make all the graphics for the game (the data, not the code for it) and that can easily become way more work than the actual code. I know quite a few mod projects that have the coders to implement any feature but lack the artists to provide suitable looks.
Slashdot Mirror
But what if the satellite ISN'T red?
The volume covered by these orbits is gigantic. Covering that with dust is going to be extremely hard.
Not really, EULAs only come with computer software, other media don't have those. When you buy a DVD you own the physical DVD.
The difference is that neonazis are now a confined minority with several counter-minorities keeping them in check even before you consider government interference (in fact the government has to put more effort into making sure the neonazis don't get beaten to death by the rest of the population). The old nazis were more than an ideology, they were a form of organized crime (they had the SA spread terror among their opposition even before they got any official power). That structure got stomped out even if a few silly kids still think Hitler was cool.
But that doesn't explain why the Wii doesn't have the same problems.
If people judge a game's worth by its filesize maybe the solution is just to bloat the filesize to high heaven. Meanwhile I have no problem with paying 40€ for a 30MB game provided the game is good. I've certainly played 128kB games that were better than 10GB games.
Actually their piracy complaints are about the DS, not the Wii. The DS has less than half the tie-ratio (games sold per system) of the Wii.
Considering the Wii has 100% backwards compatibility with the Gamecube I don't think that's a fair criticism (only the PSP Go might deserve it). Yes, you have to rebuy NES games if you want to play them on the Wii but really, do you expect them to slap 8 cartridge slots and a 1541 disk drive on the system? The Virtual Console is for those among us who don't own the original releases. The NES and SNES ports for the GBA are also of games that were at least a decade old and for a device that couldn't feasibly have had a cartridge slot for those formats (my GBASP is smaller than a SNES cart).
The DS has practically no demos so the lack of a demo for a game is rarely quality based.
As do most European countries. Here in Germany that creates funny situations like restaurants clearly having to mark whether the food is sold for consumption in-house (counts as a service, full tax) or take-away (runs under the reduced tax for food).
These days jRPGs are waning in popularity (and quality) while western cRPGs are on the rise. Whereas Final Fantasy used to lord over consoles now it's secondary to a game like Mass Effect 2 or Fallout 3.
By the way, Nintendo has bought Monolith, the maker of Xenosaga (not to be confused with the Monolith that made Tron 2.0 and FEAR) and has them working on Xenoblade, they've also got Mistwalker working on The Last Story. Obviously there's Dragon Quest 9 on the DS which hasn't reached the west yet but then again the DS is currently the go-to place for jRPGs.
The point is that the attach rate actually ISN'T lower than normal. If you want a low attach rate try the DS.
A clown who makes nonsensical claims about the videogame market and even got several web video shows where he can spout his nonsense. Technically he's an analyst but one that has been wrong so often you'd be stupid to follow his advice.
Reviewed by internet-dwelling hardcore gamers. Among the general populace most of the traditionally high scoring games are no good because brutally killing aliens with a chainsaw is not what people like.
Windows sucks in terms of core design but it dominates in terms of software support which is really what people buy it for. I don't use Windows because I love the security issues and whatnot, I use it because most of the software I use (games primarily) only works with Windows. Similarly I have an XBox 360, not because I like that failure rate but because it had games I wanted to play. I have a PS2 despite hating the hardware itself (going by hardware alone the Gamecube trashes it) but you can't argue with its software lineup. I got that iPod Touch for the App Store, not because I'm fond of Apple hardware. And yes, I have a Wii not because I enjoy the weak graphics but because it has games I want to play.
The Wii sells so many systems because the games it has appeal to the most people. I'm not the kind of person who plays Just Dance but I got other games to play on there while the people who prefer Just Dance or Wii Sports get taken by the Wii by default. People like me are fought over, all systems try to sell their games to me while those other people are ignored by everyone except Nintendo and thus Nintendo wins them by default.
That's if you define generations by resolution, something we haven't done since SVGA became history. On the other hand the Wii is currently the only motion control generation console out, the PS3's half-assed sixaxis is just a dualshock with some crappy motion detection taped on (reminiscent of the Saturn's shoehorned 3D as a response to the Playstation) while the true motion generation inputs for the other two consoles are still not released. There are many ways to define generations but at least motion controls greatly impact the player's experience while graphics are pretty much a commodity these days.
Like the summary said, it's so far behind the other consoles, not to mention PC's, that it requires a completely separate codebase.
That's not stopping game development on the DS and PSP.
I think that Nintendo made a serious tactical error by targeting "casual" gamers. A casual gamer might shell out a few bucks for World of Goo or Popcap stuff, but paying $50+ for a game you're only casually interested in? Not going to happen, at least not more than a few times.
The trick is to make the casual gamer seriously interested which is how Nintendo's games manage to sell more than ten million copies regularly despite costing 50$ or more (Wii Fit!). The casual label is arbitrary, it doesn't mean these people only show a casual interest in any game, in fact they tend to bite into a game and never let loose. See a "casual" gamer play his favourite game (be it Tetris or Bejeweled) and you'll often see crazy amounts of skill because he plays it for many months again and again.
Nintendo may be profitable, but it cost them their reputation. There was a time they were synonymous with gaming; now they're firmly latched into the el cheapo lodge.
They are again synonymous with gaming because they brought gaming to millions who've never gamed before. After the SNES it was Sony that was synonymous with gaming (seriously, in that time the generic term for a console was "Playstation", not "Nintendo"). Nintendo lost its reputation over a decade ago.
That's because the first party games are leagues better than the trash the third parties casually shit out. Most of the games released by third parties are shovelware that was created with the customer analysis of "people are stupid and will buy anything with party in the name" (if they strike gold it's because they accidentally made the game appeal to other people too). The few games that are actually aimed at people who exist usually are aimed at people who exist only in small numbers (artsy niche games) or make a half-hearted attempt at competing with a huge pile of highly polished games that any semi-savvy customer will buy first (most of the "core" games). It feels like the entire industry has pegged Wii owners as retards who will buy anything and then gets all surprised when the "retards" DON'T buy anything.
Okay, wasting my mod points...
I would argue that everyone who wants a Wii has one at this point, and that's why sales are dropping off - not due to lack of interest so much as a lack of people to sell to.
Read your statement again: everyone who wants a Wii. With more interest there would be more people wanting to buy a Wii. You only run out of people once there's nobody left to convince. Nintendo's whole goal this generation was to find the reasons people are disinterested and fix them. That's what this whole expanded audience push is about, making the Wii interesting to people who weren't interested in what gaming offered before.
It's really more of a red herring, whether Al Gore is a lying scumbag or not has no bearing on the issue.
Gameplay is more than mechanics, I've seen many different mechanics employed in flash games. The other part of the equation is the content that runs through those mechanics, levels and such. Most flash games have a unique mechanic or two but sorely lack levels that really make use of it. Many people don't realize that mechanics alone don't make a game and often their idea only covers mechanics but no decent amount of content.
The industry has millions of ideas it never uses, it's one thing to have an idea, it's another thing to make sure it's good and turn it into something worthwhile.
Let me guess... That's what your sig is peddling?
While we're on the topic, my sig is peddling a game that was indeed started by an idea guy coming around and other people thinking "hell, it's not much work, let's contribute". After that it became a fun testbed for new ideas and uncertain implementations and grew.
Artists usually don't count as "idea people", usually their role is to make all the graphics for the game (the data, not the code for it) and that can easily become way more work than the actual code. I know quite a few mod projects that have the coders to implement any feature but lack the artists to provide suitable looks.
Usually it's "let's make game X but better!", often with a team that couldn't even match the quality of game X, never mind exceed it.