No no no, obviously the parent knows far more than a multi-billion dollar company that only specializes in high impact, ridiculous performance databases.
Duh.
Linus > Every Linux User. Ever. Jobs > Everyone. Ever. We mean it. Seriously. Ballmer > Duck! Incoming chair! Bush > All you stupid smart people.
As soon as you give me a link to a titanium exo-skin, I'm buying one. Is it self powered? How much of an impact can it stand? How does it rate compared to the crazy bear guy's suit?
"Their machines are built better, and last longer. But whenever they have a problem that affects a small fraction of a percent of their customers, there's suddenly a huge controversy."
Actually, the machines built are of a more controlled nature and Apple has substantially fewer machines in the field than "PCs". Built better and last longer? That's simply conjecture. I know plenty of Apple hardware that has went belly up on the consumer end. And there's more of a controversy because the Reality Distortion Field begins to flicker any time Apple's "perfect" product has a flaw because, shock of shocks, sometimes they DO have flaws.
"Ask any IT manager, and they'll be able to identify a certain series of machines that were extremely prone to failure (motherboards and power supplies being the usual culprits). You NEVER hear about this sort of thing in the PC world, even though it happens all the time."
Yes, but that's not because Apple makes BETTER hardware. Apple simply makes less hardware and you hear about it because with Mac-zealots, everyone has taken it upon themselves to be the vocal minority. I had to deal with the bad-capacitor issue on the GX270s from Dell. I didn't hear much about it because whenever a machine failed it was fixed on-site at no charge under Dell's warranty with no complications. I don't know what Apple's standards are for next day repairs on their machines, I'd be interested in hearing how their business hardware support is.
"However, you rarely see a Pentium II sitting on someone's desk anymore)"
That's because a PC user can afford to spend $500 on a current hardware Dell every couple of years where as Apple is asking $1200 for their low-end iMac. Its much easier to justify disposal of the 9 year old machine when the 6 year old machine can fill its role and the 3 year old machine can fill the latter's role. Apple's cost makes it harder to keep investing at the cash level they're offering. Oh, also, if a new set of hardware is better, we'll switch to it and not have to wrestle with throwing out an old G3 because its "cute." Like that IKEA commercial a few years back...
"How many of you feel sorry for the lamp? That's because you are crazy! It is a lamp. It has no feelings! And the new one is much better."
I haven't looked deep enough into it to know the exact procedure but http://www.trillian.cc/Trillian allows for an end-to-end secure session with another Trillian user. I haven't bothered with any other IM clients since I bought Trillian so I couldn't say about the others.
- A proper KILL command -- I'm admin on the dam box, let me kill that process.
Just a quick note, you can kill processes as an admin of a box. Find the process id of the process you want to kill, go to a command line, and use the "kill" command. Its not exactly the same as killing a Linux process on a Linux command line but it certainly works and gets the job done. I personally had to employ it to stop the WMI service because of an issue with Backup Exec.
Thank the Lord that you cleared this all up for me. I figured I was going to have to waste my weekend disproving all those "facts" to my family but now I can actually enjoy my entire vacation on one of the four edges of our glorious garden called Earth.
Praise Jesus!
PS. You forgot to say Praise Jesus after the end of your letter. I know its polite to assume that everyone thanks our Lord and savior for his eternal gift but it still would be great of you to make sure to end all your documents, notes, emails, correspondence, phone calls, and fast food orders with a hearty Praise Jesus! It just makes the world better.
I for one, was born from a test tube. I have no soul. I don't know what its like to love. My friends tell me this all the time to remind me. (Its also an inside joke that I expect to bounce completely over the/.ers heads. But hey, who cares anyway?)
Actually, when our site managers go out to a construction job, they can use their camera phones to take pictures of lots of things and instantly send them back to the office for review. And then, if a contract or change order comes across, they can log into our web based management system and type in things using their keyboard. All of this without having to drive 45min to another jobsite just so they can "be there" to manage things.
And you're absolutely right, the iPhone isn't out yet but then again, I don't decide one day to just go out and buy a new server and "just plug it in." Seeing as there's only 9 days left before launch, I'd say that anyone who hasn't looked in-depth into the iPhone yet has already missed the boat on being able to integrate it into their support structure by launch date.
Oh, and bosses never make unreasonable demands to the IT department. Nor do they ever demand to have something work regardless of cost or logic.
But your entire post shows exactly why Microsoft does need to do a PR campaign. None of the reasons provided other than your "XP is mature, Vista is not" were technical. Both your wife and son made judgment calls based on water-cooler evidence and proclamations by (possibly not) tech savvy 3rd parties.
I have Vista on my laptop, came pre-installed on my Toshiba. It works fine with the exception of needing more RAM, but 1gb of ram was never enough to run Photoshop and Illustrator at once on Windows XP either (let alone City of Heroes and anything else...).
My desktop was another story. My hard drive crapped out and I said what the hell, lets give it a try. My problems with Vista on my desktop had nothing to do with the OS itself. nVidia has no nForce3 support so I had some performance issues with the hard drives, the reason it worked at all is because Microsoft (possibly through partnership) provided a functional SATA IDE driver. My DX1 input pad needed home-brew drivers because ErgoDex can't seem to get 64-bit drivers through the door. My older ATI X800 Pro worked flawlessly though. Long story short, I went back to XP. I PLAN to get back to Vista as soon as I get a motherboard that is actually supported by the manufacturers.
Oh, and that bit about "attending to needs"; try to say that to your average Linux-zealot and see what kind of reaction you get.
And the parent is still completely right. The debris doesn't block paths or produce cover. The terrain didn't actually deform after the nuke strikes. And quite honestly, if those things happened, the hard-core fans of the original would have a fit.
Go play Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes to see what the parent is REALLY talking about.
Hills that block fire simply because (shocker!) you can't fire through hills! Tanks that explode and leave their carcasses around for use as cover. Chunks of the world being reformed in violent ways... Those things aren't in StarCraft. They never have been and they most likely never will be. StarCraft never seemed to be "that kind of game." Micro-managing your clicks in ridiculously furious fashions and streamlining build orders down to the microsecond; that's StarCraft. Thought out strategic planning and maneuvering? Not so much.
I'm sure describing the Romanian Samophlange would work just fine. If you were to describe your Romulan Manifest to me, I know my brain would crack under the pressure. I mean, what the heck is a Ramen Mainframe anyway?
It CAN be, but it was never setup that way from the beginning. My friend said something the other day that I really like. "The right system for the environment." Something like that but far more clever. The point is, there's nothing inside the D&D/AD&D system that actually enhances the world. Or at least not to the point of say Storytellers (pre 4th) or L5R. At least those two systems have components to them that only make sense within their respective worlds.
I can roleplay with the same effectiveness using IRC as I can with D20. The system certainly needs to support the fiction or else you start getting disconnects. And when you start having disconnections THAT low in your play system, there are going to be serious hurdles to get past later.
The level of rule consistency in D&D (3.5) today is probably at least as good as the Hero System (5th edition), although Hero is more flexible (i.e. you can play almost ANY type of game with Hero whereas the D&D rules, with the possible exception of the core D20 stuff, is limited to the fantasy setting). The criticism was valid ten (10) years ago, but not as much anymore...IMHO.
This is what I find so fascinating about games. We're playing the same system yet we have such a different attitude towards them. I'm actually specifically referencing 3.5 as having these bizarre rule issues. Most of these issues came out when we were putting together some Jack and Slash games a couple months ago. Jack and Slash is pretty much like it sounds. Its a really cruddy hack and slash adventure with some rules mixed in to allow for re-rolling based on alcohol consumption. Due to the nature of the game we were playing, we had made up characters at various levels and attempting just watching how internally complex things got between levels 5 and 10, and then again between 10 to 15 to 20, it was horrible.
if your players are more interested in cracking jokes and taking PlayStation breaks then it doesn't matter if you have the greatest rules system in the world...the game is going to fall apart.
I treat that as an inherent rule whenever that type of discussion comes about. If you can't get past that, then there's no point in having a discussion about it. (Not saying YOU are, just using that global 'you') The things I'm talking about are along the lines of things not specifically stated in the rules. In D&D it comes down to a blind stat roll, and generally, if the roll is outside your stat scope, you're screwed. God help the fighter that needs to do something intelligence based. Where as in Hero, in the games that I've played in, you still have a shot in accomplishing your mediocre goal.
For your final point, I totally understand that the GM has the last call. But when you're using your GM as a buffer against more than a fair percentage of rolls, there's probably a mis-match between the system and what the GM/Players are looking for. My gaming group has run into that issue more often with D&D than any other system we've played. Namely, Whitewolf, D&D 2/3.5, Hero, L5R roll and keep (not d20), and... god help me, Rifts.
I just started using the Hero System in its current iteration (5th Revised). My only excuse is that I was born in the 80's and got hooked into other paths of RPGs. Anyway, while I agree that Hero is very complex as a basic ruleset, it optimizes VERY well. Once you get through the pre-loading of your characters and your game world, a lot of that 500 page book manages to disappear. Once you have your limitations and advantages set up in your powers, you don't need to review them.
Similarly, I have to take an opposite stance than you in D&D. Where as Hero seems to be pretty consistent across most of its lines, D&D is chock full of exceptions and little tiny rules that you HAVE to remember in order to play the game. And its not just one part of the system, they are abound in it, especially considering spell casting. As well, D&D never seemed to lend itself to roleplaying. If all you were looking for was a number-crunching dungeon crawl and stat min-maxing, great, go with D&D, otherwise, prepare for defeat at the hands of only a die roll.
Doesn't really matter much. We all know that the true stepping stone would be Doctrine: Air Power...
Now where have all my formers run off too? Damn auto-forming...
Point 1: Immature graphics drivers. It will get better in time, just like it did for Win95, Win98, WinMe, Win2k, WinXP, OSX, and *gasp* Linux.
Point 2: Ok, hard drive bloat is bad. I agree with you there.
Point 3: Vista caches commonly used programs in your free ram so they load quickly the next time you use it. That memory is still available at any time for any other program. Welcome to actually using the resources your computer has available.
Point 4: I don't understand why people are so bent out of shape over the damn popup window. I've been using Vista for a week and its already part of my work flow. Yes, a box comes up. Fucking click it and get on with your life. When's the last time you bitched about sudo requiring a password?
And then after all that you snake in that nice chestnut of "heavy DRM." So... how are those HD movies on your Linux machine anyway? Oh... right, nevermind. But I'm glad you came onto/. with your completely non-biased review of Vista, thanks. (queue the "must be new here jokes")
I suppose you're one of those bitter EVE players that got your mad l3wts blowed up!!!! while having a casual relation to any of the parties involved in the employee "scandal." While I can't really blame you for being angry at a mis-managed situation, I can blame you for being a short-sighted twit that needs to get out and see the sun once in a while.
And, yes, that was a rather personal attack against you but I figure its alright because you seem perfectly justified to attack another stranger's character with absolutely no evidence. Maybe next time you could actually attend the GDC, speak with some of the developers, and possibly be able to create a more accurate rendition of the situation.
Have a wonderful day.
I love TMBG and their live shows are always fantastic events. Unfortunately it seems like more and more, underage drunk morons seem to be showing up in greater proportions. When I have to turn around and treat a 17-year old like a 9-year old, that makes me very, very angry.
Actually, wouldn't the problem be that I can afford to buy $100-200 worth of additional items AND a cheaper system as opposed to a more expensive system with nothing?
I remember back in the day saving up my pennies so that I could buy my own SNES. Now, I know this whole "teaching your kid (financial) responsibility" thing is on the way out, but for those few parents encouraging their kids to save up for a smart purchase a $100-200 cut is huge.
1xPS3 @ $499 = 1xWii @ $250 + 5xGames @ $50 ea
More potential customers care about price point than those that care about ZOMG GRAPHICS!!!! (especially true when the potential customer's parent is the one that ends up footing the bill)
The average triple-A title is going to be between $10-15m for the 360/PS3 generation of games. Given that a developer may only ever see $15 per box sold, in the current business model, you sell a million units or bust.
This is why we see so much crap these days. The publishers (ie, the guys with the money) shell out hundreds of millions on several projects. If one goes gangbusters, they win. In that process however, several developers are bought out, shut down, or dispersed before you even get to see their projects. Its a real shame. Remember Clover Studios? Gone. Looking Glass Studios? Gone. These were companies making fantastic games but weren't able to hit a bandwagon bubble.
If we're lucky, we'll see a huge shake up this year.
Slashdot Mirror
No no no, obviously the parent knows far more than a multi-billion dollar company that only specializes in high impact, ridiculous performance databases.
Duh.
Linus > Every Linux User. Ever.
Jobs > Everyone. Ever. We mean it. Seriously.
Ballmer > Duck! Incoming chair!
Bush > All you stupid smart people.
See? Now we can keep growing the list.
As soon as you give me a link to a titanium exo-skin, I'm buying one. Is it self powered? How much of an impact can it stand? How does it rate compared to the crazy bear guy's suit?
Superhero-dom, here I come!
We do, its called the death penalty. If you strangle enough cats and the system is doing its job, you may wind up dead.
Disclaimer: I seriously don't want to start a flamewar or anything, please keep it civil.
The legalization of abortion also occurred in a similar time frame and also has been attributed to a large statistical decrease in violent crime. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-10490717_ITM
Are both studies wrong? One study? More bending of statistics to make up for science? Anyone specifically in the know?
"Their machines are built better, and last longer. But whenever they have a problem that affects a small fraction of a percent of their customers, there's suddenly a huge controversy."
Actually, the machines built are of a more controlled nature and Apple has substantially fewer machines in the field than "PCs". Built better and last longer? That's simply conjecture. I know plenty of Apple hardware that has went belly up on the consumer end. And there's more of a controversy because the Reality Distortion Field begins to flicker any time Apple's "perfect" product has a flaw because, shock of shocks, sometimes they DO have flaws.
"Ask any IT manager, and they'll be able to identify a certain series of machines that were extremely prone to failure (motherboards and power supplies being the usual culprits). You NEVER hear about this sort of thing in the PC world, even though it happens all the time."
Yes, but that's not because Apple makes BETTER hardware. Apple simply makes less hardware and you hear about it because with Mac-zealots, everyone has taken it upon themselves to be the vocal minority. I had to deal with the bad-capacitor issue on the GX270s from Dell. I didn't hear much about it because whenever a machine failed it was fixed on-site at no charge under Dell's warranty with no complications. I don't know what Apple's standards are for next day repairs on their machines, I'd be interested in hearing how their business hardware support is.
"However, you rarely see a Pentium II sitting on someone's desk anymore)"
That's because a PC user can afford to spend $500 on a current hardware Dell every couple of years where as Apple is asking $1200 for their low-end iMac. Its much easier to justify disposal of the 9 year old machine when the 6 year old machine can fill its role and the 3 year old machine can fill the latter's role. Apple's cost makes it harder to keep investing at the cash level they're offering. Oh, also, if a new set of hardware is better, we'll switch to it and not have to wrestle with throwing out an old G3 because its "cute." Like that IKEA commercial a few years back...
"How many of you feel sorry for the lamp? That's because you are crazy! It is a lamp. It has no feelings! And the new one is much better."
PS. I don't drink Apple's Kool-Aid.
I haven't looked deep enough into it to know the exact procedure but http://www.trillian.cc/Trillian allows for an end-to-end secure session with another Trillian user. I haven't bothered with any other IM clients since I bought Trillian so I couldn't say about the others.
- A proper KILL command -- I'm admin on the dam box, let me kill that process.
Just a quick note, you can kill processes as an admin of a box. Find the process id of the process you want to kill, go to a command line, and use the "kill" command. Its not exactly the same as killing a Linux process on a Linux command line but it certainly works and gets the job done. I personally had to employ it to stop the WMI service because of an issue with Backup Exec.
Hope that helps.
Thank the Lord that you cleared this all up for me. I figured I was going to have to waste my weekend disproving all those "facts" to my family but now I can actually enjoy my entire vacation on one of the four edges of our glorious garden called Earth.
Praise Jesus!
PS. You forgot to say Praise Jesus after the end of your letter. I know its polite to assume that everyone thanks our Lord and savior for his eternal gift but it still would be great of you to make sure to end all your documents, notes, emails, correspondence, phone calls, and fast food orders with a hearty Praise Jesus! It just makes the world better.
I for one, was born from a test tube. I have no soul. I don't know what its like to love. My friends tell me this all the time to remind me. (Its also an inside joke that I expect to bounce completely over the /.ers heads. But hey, who cares anyway?)
"Wierd" Al brought one out on stage when he did White & Nerdy at a recent show in Atlantic City, NJ.
And obviously, "Wierd" Al is pretty much a reliable baseline for the average US Citizen.
Actually, when our site managers go out to a construction job, they can use their camera phones to take pictures of lots of things and instantly send them back to the office for review. And then, if a contract or change order comes across, they can log into our web based management system and type in things using their keyboard. All of this without having to drive 45min to another jobsite just so they can "be there" to manage things.
And you're absolutely right, the iPhone isn't out yet but then again, I don't decide one day to just go out and buy a new server and "just plug it in." Seeing as there's only 9 days left before launch, I'd say that anyone who hasn't looked in-depth into the iPhone yet has already missed the boat on being able to integrate it into their support structure by launch date.
Oh, and bosses never make unreasonable demands to the IT department. Nor do they ever demand to have something work regardless of cost or logic.
But your entire post shows exactly why Microsoft does need to do a PR campaign. None of the reasons provided other than your "XP is mature, Vista is not" were technical. Both your wife and son made judgment calls based on water-cooler evidence and proclamations by (possibly not) tech savvy 3rd parties.
I have Vista on my laptop, came pre-installed on my Toshiba. It works fine with the exception of needing more RAM, but 1gb of ram was never enough to run Photoshop and Illustrator at once on Windows XP either (let alone City of Heroes and anything else...).
My desktop was another story. My hard drive crapped out and I said what the hell, lets give it a try. My problems with Vista on my desktop had nothing to do with the OS itself. nVidia has no nForce3 support so I had some performance issues with the hard drives, the reason it worked at all is because Microsoft (possibly through partnership) provided a functional SATA IDE driver. My DX1 input pad needed home-brew drivers because ErgoDex can't seem to get 64-bit drivers through the door. My older ATI X800 Pro worked flawlessly though. Long story short, I went back to XP. I PLAN to get back to Vista as soon as I get a motherboard that is actually supported by the manufacturers.
Oh, and that bit about "attending to needs"; try to say that to your average Linux-zealot and see what kind of reaction you get.
Now I see why you're not at your post, you've been on /. the whole time.
You're fired.
Have a nice day,
Lord Vader
And the parent is still completely right. The debris doesn't block paths or produce cover. The terrain didn't actually deform after the nuke strikes. And quite honestly, if those things happened, the hard-core fans of the original would have a fit.
Go play Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes to see what the parent is REALLY talking about.
Hills that block fire simply because (shocker!) you can't fire through hills! Tanks that explode and leave their carcasses around for use as cover. Chunks of the world being reformed in violent ways... Those things aren't in StarCraft. They never have been and they most likely never will be. StarCraft never seemed to be "that kind of game." Micro-managing your clicks in ridiculously furious fashions and streamlining build orders down to the microsecond; that's StarCraft. Thought out strategic planning and maneuvering? Not so much.
I'm sure describing the Romanian Samophlange would work just fine. If you were to describe your Romulan Manifest to me, I know my brain would crack under the pressure. I mean, what the heck is a Ramen Mainframe anyway?
It CAN be, but it was never setup that way from the beginning. My friend said something the other day that I really like. "The right system for the environment." Something like that but far more clever. The point is, there's nothing inside the D&D/AD&D system that actually enhances the world. Or at least not to the point of say Storytellers (pre 4th) or L5R. At least those two systems have components to them that only make sense within their respective worlds.
I can roleplay with the same effectiveness using IRC as I can with D20. The system certainly needs to support the fiction or else you start getting disconnects. And when you start having disconnections THAT low in your play system, there are going to be serious hurdles to get past later.
The level of rule consistency in D&D (3.5) today is probably at least as good as the Hero System (5th edition), although Hero is more flexible (i.e. you can play almost ANY type of game with Hero whereas the D&D rules, with the possible exception of the core D20 stuff, is limited to the fantasy setting). The criticism was valid ten (10) years ago, but not as much anymore...IMHO.
This is what I find so fascinating about games. We're playing the same system yet we have such a different attitude towards them. I'm actually specifically referencing 3.5 as having these bizarre rule issues. Most of these issues came out when we were putting together some Jack and Slash games a couple months ago. Jack and Slash is pretty much like it sounds. Its a really cruddy hack and slash adventure with some rules mixed in to allow for re-rolling based on alcohol consumption. Due to the nature of the game we were playing, we had made up characters at various levels and attempting just watching how internally complex things got between levels 5 and 10, and then again between 10 to 15 to 20, it was horrible.
if your players are more interested in cracking jokes and taking PlayStation breaks then it doesn't matter if you have the greatest rules system in the world...the game is going to fall apart.
I treat that as an inherent rule whenever that type of discussion comes about. If you can't get past that, then there's no point in having a discussion about it. (Not saying YOU are, just using that global 'you') The things I'm talking about are along the lines of things not specifically stated in the rules. In D&D it comes down to a blind stat roll, and generally, if the roll is outside your stat scope, you're screwed. God help the fighter that needs to do something intelligence based. Where as in Hero, in the games that I've played in, you still have a shot in accomplishing your mediocre goal.
For your final point, I totally understand that the GM has the last call. But when you're using your GM as a buffer against more than a fair percentage of rolls, there's probably a mis-match between the system and what the GM/Players are looking for. My gaming group has run into that issue more often with D&D than any other system we've played. Namely, Whitewolf, D&D 2/3.5, Hero, L5R roll and keep (not d20), and... god help me, Rifts.
I just started using the Hero System in its current iteration (5th Revised). My only excuse is that I was born in the 80's and got hooked into other paths of RPGs. Anyway, while I agree that Hero is very complex as a basic ruleset, it optimizes VERY well. Once you get through the pre-loading of your characters and your game world, a lot of that 500 page book manages to disappear. Once you have your limitations and advantages set up in your powers, you don't need to review them.
Similarly, I have to take an opposite stance than you in D&D. Where as Hero seems to be pretty consistent across most of its lines, D&D is chock full of exceptions and little tiny rules that you HAVE to remember in order to play the game. And its not just one part of the system, they are abound in it, especially considering spell casting. As well, D&D never seemed to lend itself to roleplaying. If all you were looking for was a number-crunching dungeon crawl and stat min-maxing, great, go with D&D, otherwise, prepare for defeat at the hands of only a die roll.
Doesn't really matter much. We all know that the true stepping stone would be Doctrine: Air Power... Now where have all my formers run off too? Damn auto-forming...
Point 1: Immature graphics drivers. It will get better in time, just like it did for Win95, Win98, WinMe, Win2k, WinXP, OSX, and *gasp* Linux.
/. with your completely non-biased review of Vista, thanks. (queue the "must be new here jokes")
Point 2: Ok, hard drive bloat is bad. I agree with you there.
Point 3: Vista caches commonly used programs in your free ram so they load quickly the next time you use it. That memory is still available at any time for any other program. Welcome to actually using the resources your computer has available.
Point 4: I don't understand why people are so bent out of shape over the damn popup window. I've been using Vista for a week and its already part of my work flow. Yes, a box comes up. Fucking click it and get on with your life. When's the last time you bitched about sudo requiring a password?
And then after all that you snake in that nice chestnut of "heavy DRM." So... how are those HD movies on your Linux machine anyway? Oh... right, nevermind. But I'm glad you came onto
I suppose you're one of those bitter EVE players that got your mad l3wts blowed up!!!! while having a casual relation to any of the parties involved in the employee "scandal." While I can't really blame you for being angry at a mis-managed situation, I can blame you for being a short-sighted twit that needs to get out and see the sun once in a while.
And, yes, that was a rather personal attack against you but I figure its alright because you seem perfectly justified to attack another stranger's character with absolutely no evidence. Maybe next time you could actually attend the GDC, speak with some of the developers, and possibly be able to create a more accurate rendition of the situation.
Have a wonderful day.
I love TMBG and their live shows are always fantastic events. Unfortunately it seems like more and more, underage drunk morons seem to be showing up in greater proportions. When I have to turn around and treat a 17-year old like a 9-year old, that makes me very, very angry.
Actually, wouldn't the problem be that I can afford to buy $100-200 worth of additional items AND a cheaper system as opposed to a more expensive system with nothing? I remember back in the day saving up my pennies so that I could buy my own SNES. Now, I know this whole "teaching your kid (financial) responsibility" thing is on the way out, but for those few parents encouraging their kids to save up for a smart purchase a $100-200 cut is huge. 1xPS3 @ $499 = 1xWii @ $250 + 5xGames @ $50 ea More potential customers care about price point than those that care about ZOMG GRAPHICS!!!! (especially true when the potential customer's parent is the one that ends up footing the bill)
The average triple-A title is going to be between $10-15m for the 360/PS3 generation of games. Given that a developer may only ever see $15 per box sold, in the current business model, you sell a million units or bust.
This is why we see so much crap these days. The publishers (ie, the guys with the money) shell out hundreds of millions on several projects. If one goes gangbusters, they win. In that process however, several developers are bought out, shut down, or dispersed before you even get to see their projects. Its a real shame. Remember Clover Studios? Gone. Looking Glass Studios? Gone. These were companies making fantastic games but weren't able to hit a bandwagon bubble.
If we're lucky, we'll see a huge shake up this year.
I can't be the only one looking at the insightful and shaking my head. Oh well, guess I should go run my monthly NOSMOKE.EXE...