I think your post deserves a little more love. If the OLED keyboard is one thing in one application, the entire reason for this is so that it can be another thing in another application. It stands to reason that the default case for terminal, vim, and emacs, would look like a real keyboard. Until the emacs guys make a version that makes all the buttons different flavors of cotton candy or whatever, at least.
I'm so glad these guns will need software to work. As someone who works with computers every day, I'm very impressed at how software always does exactly what I expect it to every time. So much so that I'm really hoping that something that my life could depend on could also rely on software.
Oh, and radio signals. That's another thing that always works for me in every circumstance.
Oh, and batteries. I have a 100% success rate with batteries, they have never failed on me or anyone else in any circumstance.
Oh, and fingerprint recognition. That always works the first time. I never need to reposition my finger repeatedly, and I have never had it just refuse to read based on temperature of the sensor, more or less blood in my hand, or gods only know what astral plane bullshit affects it. None of that ever happens.
Also none of these things are disturbable by hostile actors in any way. Software has security, so no one ever gains access in an unauthorized fashion, and it is impossible to disrupt legitimate access via any manner of denial of service. Software is immune to this. Likewise, radio can never be jammed, spoofed, or otherwise screwed with. Just as when seconds count the police are only minutes away, when someone has a twelve dollar Chinese jammer than blocks your communication with your gun, the FCC is only weeks away from sending a fine to the perpetrator, or perhaps days if there are local ham volunteers. And there's definitely no problem with having an RF signal that is detectable at some distance, especially if your life depends on your hiding. That's definitely not a problem.
I say, lets bundle up the software, with the radio, and the battery, and then mandate that everyone use it to defend their lives. Nothing can go wrong!
In fact, New Jersey has already mandated the exclusive use of these as-yet nonexistent weapons, the moment they actually exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Such a great idea! For you, at least. I mean, I'm sure the police and military will stick with old fashioned weapons. They are so traditional like that!
> And honestly, I think Bernie would have been too good for that. I think he'd have been too nice to Trump, and not given Trump the reason to prove what his natural temperament was.
Right, but without thirty years of accusation and baggage, without a ton of awful shit on his record, Bernie wouldn't have had to try to turn Trump into some demon in order to prevail. We wouldn't have a bunch of stuff on the record of Bernie cheating Hillary out of the nomination, for instance. This election would have a totally different character, possibly without massive damage to the national psyche. It's not really fair to compare them, but I'm still of the opinion that Bernie would have a better chance of defeating Trump than Clinton does, and, win or lose, the USA would be in a much better spot after a Trump/Sanders election than a Trump/Clinton one.
Politifact is run by the Tampa Bay Times, which has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Right wing sites throw around its somewhat loose ties to Clinton Foundation donors, which you may or may not find compelling (I don't). There's also a whole (right wing) site devoted to calling out stuff politifact does, http://www.politifactbias.com/ . Those claims at least can be accepted or rejected on a case-by-case basis.
When a site claims to be neutral or know facts, even if it is launched and initially operated with the BEST of intentions, there's a big chance it will become biased via some method or other, soon enough.
It's morphed into Jill Stein, not breitbart. Republicans don't like their nominee being called a "pied piper candidate", for instance, which Wikileaks absolutely called him (the quote is from a Democrat email, of course). The Green party is absolutely calling out the Democratic party too, remember.
Also note that Assange spoke at Jill Stein's nomination. He didn't endorse anyone (neither did Wikileaks), but when asked whether he prefers Clinton or Trump his quote was "you are asking if I prefer cholera or gonorrhea".
The party of the president is the ruling party when it comes to something that is handled by the executive branch, such as a great deal of military actions (these days, everything except open war). Make no mistake, the president could not oppose a fully or nearly united congress- but that would normally take a president who is wildly out of touch or tyrannical. Even veto overrides on generally popular legislation are pretty rare (though we just had one).
If this had been an actual attack, all internet services would be rendered inoperative for long enough for whomever the fuck is doing this to have accomplished whatever the fuck awfulness they desire.
> Can't do that with Switch if the batteries are dead and non-replaceable.
Pretty sure you can "plug it into a modern TV" in the future and do that. It may not be portable if the battery can't be changed, but it will still run on power.
> one device that going forward will have essentially both the Wii and 3DS games then I'm already sold
Well, it's a capitulation in some ways. The 3DS offered stuff no console could do, besides portability. The Wii-U offers some things no console can do, and also has more capability than mobiles. Nintendo seems to be gambling that no one will be willing to risk this form factor before they have established a home there, and that they can get both the 3DS and the console stuff on board. It seems kinda likely, to be honest, but we'll see.
Top selling? Highest grossing? Most profitable? These are all different metrics. How do you calculate Niantic's Pokemon Go? It sold 0 copies, but made millions instantly. I guess it isn't a top seller. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 cost 200 million to make and market, and is in any top whatever list with its roughly 800 million-ish of gross income.
The top selling game is World of Warcraft. Wait, does that count? They constantly tweak and update the game. The original version of the game can only be played on private servers, and is only a very small subset of the original game- arguably the current WoW has nothing in common with the original WoW- the addons from then don't work, every aspect of the GUI has changed since then, how items are tracked has changed, every character model has changed, every spell and ability has changed, every class has dramatically changed, and even the old places you can walk to are completely different now, so not even the old maps from launch are around any more.
Yea, they still are. I like how your cutoff for analysis is 2012 (a loss year for them), ignoring the billion dollar profit 2011 year, but I'll go into that later.
Their R+D is pretty big, and varies. When you spend 53 billion yen on just R+D and have a relatively small 7 billion yen profit, and the next year you spend 72 billion yen on R+D and have a 23 billion yen loss, what you are seeing is a company investing in the next few years, not a company that lacks sales or has huge internal expenses. http://www.marketwatch.com/inv...
So if they do start screwing up, they have plenty of time to change course. Their conservative financials lets them take risks in the market, which they do pretty much constantly.
My point is this: they don't need to turn a huge profit to be happy. They don't require a Wii fad, they aren't counting on it.
Here's some companies that got into the video game hardware business, and then got out of it (or went out of business), all after Nintendo got into making video games:
3DO Sega Hudsonsoft / NEC SNK...basically stuff you was in the 80s and 90s that you don't see today. This list excludes guys who got in just a couple years before Nintendo and got blown out, of whom there were some (Mattel, Coleco, etc).
And here's some companies that have risen and fallen ENTIRELY within Nintendo's lifespan:
Pan Am Atari RCA Compaq Honeywell Arthur Anderson (lasted a mere 89 years)
Hell, technically HP.
> Nintendo can't afford to keep losing money forever
They aren't losing money, though. Your link shows this: 2016: 136.99M 2015: +380.78M 2014: -232.22M 2013: +85.89M 2012: -548.7M 2011: +931.48M
Any analysis that tries to paint them in a shitty light needs to start at 2012. Start at 2013 and they are doing JUST fine. Start at 2011 and they are doing JUST fine. Even if you start at 2012, you are looking at a very small shortfall compared to their overall everything. They could screw up two more launches, if they really wanted to, and still be happy staying in business without hardware.
The Wii-U is the same console generation as the Xbone and the PS4. It lags both of those on specs, but that's not important. What is important is, the portable tablet thing they just showed can at least run games ported straight from their own console.
> Parents will hate it because kids will keep losing
The gameboy cartridges? The N64 memory packs? The PS2 memory cards? The Wii controller? The Wii nunchuk? Their expensive Charizard card? Their fucking iPhones that kids have now?
Please. Kids aren't going to lose their expensive gaming tools any more now than before.
> They're playing on the TV, then the rest of the family needs the TV so they move over and carry on playing
That's actually the secret appeal of the Wii-U right now. Game is starting, the child presses the button that makes the pad into the output AND the input. You just can't go super crazy far from the console. This makes it into an actual portable, I guess. More compact than a Wii-U pad I think, though?
> I would just carry a real tablet that can do so much more
Without knowing how much the Switch costs, let me assure you that it will be less than a "real" tablet. Also, the big game changer here is a useful way to actually have fucking CONTROLS instead of just touch touch touch touch. Controllers are huge, and control the types of games that can be made.
I don't see this as a tablet competitor just because it has the same form factor at a glance. Adding controllers effectively and usefully gives them a niche. You might point out, hey, buy this controller, it can talk to your iPad or Android tablet. And that's true, but few games make decent use of that.
Nintendo doesn't seem to think that this is in competition with them either, with them finally entering the mobile market with a Mario game, and finally allowing their licenses onto mobiles with Pokemon Go.
Nintendo will have no problem "surviving". Their profits are always high. Worldwide, Nintendo has like five thousand employees. It's difficult to compare that to the video game divisions of other corporations, but Nintendo runs pretty damned lean. Nintendo historically makes money when you buy their console, whereas everyone else loses money when you buy their console, and only goes into profitability when you have purchased several of their games.
> can't easily handle ports from the PS4 and XBone
It looks to be about as powerful as a Wii-U, if not more. I could be wrong- their video makes no claims except showing Wii-U games ported to the Switch. The big problem is this: ports fucking suck for Nintendo. When Nintendo has offered superior graphics in some case, the port doesn't use them. When Nintendo has offered different inputs, the ports ignore them. When Nintendo has offered different outputs, the ports ignore them. This is a BIG deal for them, because it basically means that ports are garbage. A game built for the Xbone will come over to PC with no optimization, shitty framerate, and bad controls. That same game will go over to the PS4 pretty damned well- maybe even better. But the Wii-U version will lack online features in many cases (even though Nintendo offers those), not use the motion controls, not use the tablet addition on the Wii-U, and instead just sit there with worse framerate, details, or levels. Because the port is just like a goddamned recompile and ship, apparently. If you have an Xbone and a Wii-U, you aren't playing ANY of those games on the Wii-U. You play Nintendo games on the Nintendo console- mostly.
There's ultimately no way for a portable to match the full consoles in power, right? So this is pretty clearly a departure from the Xbone / PS4 market, which they were only arguably sorta in to begin with.
The Wii-U was their best model before IMO. With more inputs and outputs than anything else, and the ability to just put most games straight on the pad and play portably anywhere in TV range, the console offered family friendliness and general coolness. Meanwhile, it was backward compatible with all Wii games and controllers. This thing looks cool, but I doubt it will work with everything. One of the screens shows it apparently using a Wii-U controller, but I can't be sure.
Will it be huge? Maybe, probably not. But it doesn't need to be huge for Nintendo to be profitable. That's always been the case. Nintendo will be fine with any manner of success. They have plenty of cash reserves if they bomb, but I doubt they'll bomb.
Right, because the only use of an Macbook pro is someone serious about audio work.
If you're using your Mac for office style work, you might need a headphone jack to listen to or create a presentation, or participate in a meeting. If you're programming on it, you might just be listening to music on it too with your itunes, or just streaming from something else. You might be doing video editing and need the audio out for some other reason. Sure, you COULD do this with some wireless shit, but that's ultimately more drama- and of course, you can do this with wireless shit NOW, no need to subtract a jack for it.
Also, a MacBook Pro that someone uses for their work, may also be used for recreational things from time to time, or even nightly.
If they remove the headphone jack, it's solely for market lock-in reasons. Same as on the iPhone.
Slashdot Mirror
The lowest end model has keys, not the new do-dad. But the do-dad is just app-sensitive keys: if you need it to be an escape key, then it is.
Microsoft just announced a product line, it is pretty damned relevant.
Marketing would link to their incredible advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Not shown: everything you do being uploaded to Redmond
:%s/performant/good/g
I think your post deserves a little more love. If the OLED keyboard is one thing in one application, the entire reason for this is so that it can be another thing in another application. It stands to reason that the default case for terminal, vim, and emacs, would look like a real keyboard. Until the emacs guys make a version that makes all the buttons different flavors of cotton candy or whatever, at least.
He's just a space cadet, temporarily lost in time.
I'm so glad these guns will need software to work. As someone who works with computers every day, I'm very impressed at how software always does exactly what I expect it to every time. So much so that I'm really hoping that something that my life could depend on could also rely on software.
Oh, and radio signals. That's another thing that always works for me in every circumstance.
Oh, and batteries. I have a 100% success rate with batteries, they have never failed on me or anyone else in any circumstance.
Oh, and fingerprint recognition. That always works the first time. I never need to reposition my finger repeatedly, and I have never had it just refuse to read based on temperature of the sensor, more or less blood in my hand, or gods only know what astral plane bullshit affects it. None of that ever happens.
Also none of these things are disturbable by hostile actors in any way. Software has security, so no one ever gains access in an unauthorized fashion, and it is impossible to disrupt legitimate access via any manner of denial of service. Software is immune to this. Likewise, radio can never be jammed, spoofed, or otherwise screwed with. Just as when seconds count the police are only minutes away, when someone has a twelve dollar Chinese jammer than blocks your communication with your gun, the FCC is only weeks away from sending a fine to the perpetrator, or perhaps days if there are local ham volunteers. And there's definitely no problem with having an RF signal that is detectable at some distance, especially if your life depends on your hiding. That's definitely not a problem.
I say, lets bundle up the software, with the radio, and the battery, and then mandate that everyone use it to defend their lives. Nothing can go wrong!
In fact, New Jersey has already mandated the exclusive use of these as-yet nonexistent weapons, the moment they actually exist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Such a great idea! For you, at least. I mean, I'm sure the police and military will stick with old fashioned weapons. They are so traditional like that!
> And honestly, I think Bernie would have been too good for that. I think he'd have been too nice to Trump, and not given Trump the reason to prove what his natural temperament was.
Right, but without thirty years of accusation and baggage, without a ton of awful shit on his record, Bernie wouldn't have had to try to turn Trump into some demon in order to prevail. We wouldn't have a bunch of stuff on the record of Bernie cheating Hillary out of the nomination, for instance. This election would have a totally different character, possibly without massive damage to the national psyche. It's not really fair to compare them, but I'm still of the opinion that Bernie would have a better chance of defeating Trump than Clinton does, and, win or lose, the USA would be in a much better spot after a Trump/Sanders election than a Trump/Clinton one.
Politifact is run by the Tampa Bay Times, which has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Right wing sites throw around its somewhat loose ties to Clinton Foundation donors, which you may or may not find compelling (I don't). There's also a whole (right wing) site devoted to calling out stuff politifact does, http://www.politifactbias.com/ . Those claims at least can be accepted or rejected on a case-by-case basis.
When a site claims to be neutral or know facts, even if it is launched and initially operated with the BEST of intentions, there's a big chance it will become biased via some method or other, soon enough.
> It's morphed into Breitbart.
It's morphed into Jill Stein, not breitbart. Republicans don't like their nominee being called a "pied piper candidate", for instance, which Wikileaks absolutely called him (the quote is from a Democrat email, of course). The Green party is absolutely calling out the Democratic party too, remember.
Also note that Assange spoke at Jill Stein's nomination. He didn't endorse anyone (neither did Wikileaks), but when asked whether he prefers Clinton or Trump his quote was "you are asking if I prefer cholera or gonorrhea".
The party of the president is the ruling party when it comes to something that is handled by the executive branch, such as a great deal of military actions (these days, everything except open war). Make no mistake, the president could not oppose a fully or nearly united congress- but that would normally take a president who is wildly out of touch or tyrannical. Even veto overrides on generally popular legislation are pretty rare (though we just had one).
> bring your AK-47 to a tank fight. See how it turns out
It'll turn out better than if you show up with your fucking dick in your hand and hope your conquerors show mercy.
If this had been an actual attack, all internet services would be rendered inoperative for long enough for whomever the fuck is doing this to have accomplished whatever the fuck awfulness they desire.
They showed people playing on a normal controller too, one that is ergonomic and wing shaped like all of them.
> Can't do that with Switch if the batteries are dead and non-replaceable.
Pretty sure you can "plug it into a modern TV" in the future and do that. It may not be portable if the battery can't be changed, but it will still run on power.
I definitely wonder about the battery, though.
> one device that going forward will have essentially both the Wii and 3DS games then I'm already sold
Well, it's a capitulation in some ways. The 3DS offered stuff no console could do, besides portability. The Wii-U offers some things no console can do, and also has more capability than mobiles. Nintendo seems to be gambling that no one will be willing to risk this form factor before they have established a home there, and that they can get both the 3DS and the console stuff on board. It seems kinda likely, to be honest, but we'll see.
Top selling? Highest grossing? Most profitable? These are all different metrics. How do you calculate Niantic's Pokemon Go? It sold 0 copies, but made millions instantly. I guess it isn't a top seller. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 cost 200 million to make and market, and is in any top whatever list with its roughly 800 million-ish of gross income.
The top selling game is World of Warcraft. Wait, does that count? They constantly tweak and update the game. The original version of the game can only be played on private servers, and is only a very small subset of the original game- arguably the current WoW has nothing in common with the original WoW- the addons from then don't work, every aspect of the GUI has changed since then, how items are tracked has changed, every character model has changed, every spell and ability has changed, every class has dramatically changed, and even the old places you can walk to are completely different now, so not even the old maps from launch are around any more.
Hrm....
> Not anymore they aren't.
Yea, they still are. I like how your cutoff for analysis is 2012 (a loss year for them), ignoring the billion dollar profit 2011 year, but I'll go into that later.
Their R+D is pretty big, and varies. When you spend 53 billion yen on just R+D and have a relatively small 7 billion yen profit, and the next year you spend 72 billion yen on R+D and have a 23 billion yen loss, what you are seeing is a company investing in the next few years, not a company that lacks sales or has huge internal expenses.
http://www.marketwatch.com/inv...
Meanwhile, they always keep bankrolls:
http://www.gurufocus.com/term/...
So if they do start screwing up, they have plenty of time to change course. Their conservative financials lets them take risks in the market, which they do pretty much constantly.
My point is this: they don't need to turn a huge profit to be happy. They don't require a Wii fad, they aren't counting on it.
Here's some companies that got into the video game hardware business, and then got out of it (or went out of business), all after Nintendo got into making video games:
3DO ...basically stuff you was in the 80s and 90s that you don't see today. This list excludes guys who got in just a couple years before Nintendo and got blown out, of whom there were some (Mattel, Coleco, etc).
Sega
Hudsonsoft / NEC
SNK
And here's some companies that have risen and fallen ENTIRELY within Nintendo's lifespan:
Pan Am
Atari
RCA
Compaq
Honeywell
Arthur Anderson (lasted a mere 89 years)
Hell, technically HP.
> Nintendo can't afford to keep losing money forever
They aren't losing money, though. Your link shows this:
2016: 136.99M
2015: +380.78M
2014: -232.22M
2013: +85.89M
2012: -548.7M
2011: +931.48M
Any analysis that tries to paint them in a shitty light needs to start at 2012. Start at 2013 and they are doing JUST fine. Start at 2011 and they are doing JUST fine. Even if you start at 2012, you are looking at a very small shortfall compared to their overall everything. They could screw up two more launches, if they really wanted to, and still be happy staying in business without hardware.
The Wii-U is the same console generation as the Xbone and the PS4. It lags both of those on specs, but that's not important. What is important is, the portable tablet thing they just showed can at least run games ported straight from their own console.
The original Gameboy had:
A battery cover. Batteries. Headphones. Small carts. An AC cable with AC/DC converter.
It's reasonable to expect that the kids who will get toys will not break them at some new and amusing rate. Nothing has changed. Ever.
> Parents will hate it because kids will keep losing
The gameboy cartridges? The N64 memory packs? The PS2 memory cards? The Wii controller? The Wii nunchuk? Their expensive Charizard card? Their fucking iPhones that kids have now?
Please. Kids aren't going to lose their expensive gaming tools any more now than before.
> They're playing on the TV, then the rest of the family needs the TV so they move over and carry on playing
That's actually the secret appeal of the Wii-U right now. Game is starting, the child presses the button that makes the pad into the output AND the input. You just can't go super crazy far from the console. This makes it into an actual portable, I guess. More compact than a Wii-U pad I think, though?
> I would just carry a real tablet that can do so much more
Without knowing how much the Switch costs, let me assure you that it will be less than a "real" tablet. Also, the big game changer here is a useful way to actually have fucking CONTROLS instead of just touch touch touch touch. Controllers are huge, and control the types of games that can be made.
I don't see this as a tablet competitor just because it has the same form factor at a glance. Adding controllers effectively and usefully gives them a niche. You might point out, hey, buy this controller, it can talk to your iPad or Android tablet. And that's true, but few games make decent use of that.
Nintendo doesn't seem to think that this is in competition with them either, with them finally entering the mobile market with a Mario game, and finally allowing their licenses onto mobiles with Pokemon Go.
> Nintendo can continue to survive
Nintendo will have no problem "surviving". Their profits are always high. Worldwide, Nintendo has like five thousand employees. It's difficult to compare that to the video game divisions of other corporations, but Nintendo runs pretty damned lean. Nintendo historically makes money when you buy their console, whereas everyone else loses money when you buy their console, and only goes into profitability when you have purchased several of their games.
> can't easily handle ports from the PS4 and XBone
It looks to be about as powerful as a Wii-U, if not more. I could be wrong- their video makes no claims except showing Wii-U games ported to the Switch. The big problem is this: ports fucking suck for Nintendo. When Nintendo has offered superior graphics in some case, the port doesn't use them. When Nintendo has offered different inputs, the ports ignore them. When Nintendo has offered different outputs, the ports ignore them. This is a BIG deal for them, because it basically means that ports are garbage. A game built for the Xbone will come over to PC with no optimization, shitty framerate, and bad controls. That same game will go over to the PS4 pretty damned well- maybe even better. But the Wii-U version will lack online features in many cases (even though Nintendo offers those), not use the motion controls, not use the tablet addition on the Wii-U, and instead just sit there with worse framerate, details, or levels. Because the port is just like a goddamned recompile and ship, apparently. If you have an Xbone and a Wii-U, you aren't playing ANY of those games on the Wii-U. You play Nintendo games on the Nintendo console- mostly.
There's ultimately no way for a portable to match the full consoles in power, right? So this is pretty clearly a departure from the Xbone / PS4 market, which they were only arguably sorta in to begin with.
The Wii-U was their best model before IMO. With more inputs and outputs than anything else, and the ability to just put most games straight on the pad and play portably anywhere in TV range, the console offered family friendliness and general coolness. Meanwhile, it was backward compatible with all Wii games and controllers. This thing looks cool, but I doubt it will work with everything. One of the screens shows it apparently using a Wii-U controller, but I can't be sure.
Will it be huge? Maybe, probably not. But it doesn't need to be huge for Nintendo to be profitable. That's always been the case. Nintendo will be fine with any manner of success. They have plenty of cash reserves if they bomb, but I doubt they'll bomb.
The promo videos are showing Wii-U ports running at full speed.
Right, because the only use of an Macbook pro is someone serious about audio work.
If you're using your Mac for office style work, you might need a headphone jack to listen to or create a presentation, or participate in a meeting. If you're programming on it, you might just be listening to music on it too with your itunes, or just streaming from something else. You might be doing video editing and need the audio out for some other reason. Sure, you COULD do this with some wireless shit, but that's ultimately more drama- and of course, you can do this with wireless shit NOW, no need to subtract a jack for it.
Also, a MacBook Pro that someone uses for their work, may also be used for recreational things from time to time, or even nightly.
If they remove the headphone jack, it's solely for market lock-in reasons. Same as on the iPhone.