By the way, this was created by a PR agency - just click here.
I never disputed it was made by a PR agency - I was disputing absolute proof that the Kokatu comment was. How do we know that wasn't made by the author of this article and then used by him as absolute proof of a conspiracy? It might have been a 10 year old who actually liked the movie and decided to share it. You don't know, and only Kokatu can prove different, which they haven't so far.
Okay stop drinking the kool-aid. Here's a nice article from IGN on a viral-marketing campaign by Sony in 2000. Promoting what game? Perfect Dark. Where does the site DataDyne.com point to now? Rare, developer of Perfect Dark. Everyone's reaction? Smartest thing ever!!!!!! So, when one company uses a little bit of hidden marketing it's perfectly fine, but when another more evil company does it, it's the end of the world and we need to protect the children.
I don't know about anyone else but if I'm going to have someone lying to my face I'd rather they actually make it believable.
So alliwantforxmasisapsp.com isn't obvious enough for you? How about the following quote from said website:
consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss - whoever - so they know what you really want.
Nope, I guess that's definitely a hormone raging teenager who really really wants a PSP. The scary thing is that statement resembles many fanboy comments on slashdot, but that's all I'm going to say about that.
If Nintendo or Apple did this, it would be called genius. Instead, it's a total marketing scam because it was done by Sony, who most likely just paid the company to market it and said you guys are the smart ones, you figure out the campaign. This article smacks of teenage journalism, completely down to the Liar, Liar DVD cover. Are these guys just realizing now that marketing companies play dirty to get you to buy their product? Welcome to reality, children.
I'm also a little confused as to how the comment on Kokatu was linked directly to this marketing company. The commenter is mrjohnstamos who has no linking information whatsoever and only one comment. Suspicious, but nowhere near the proof that the evil hand of Sony is behind this.
I agree. I think Microsoft is scared of Apple's dominance in the "public image" department as being cool. They may still have market share but that is mostly in the Business space. Apple is creeping up on the consumer space largely through the iPod and their recent marketing campaigns (the television commercials are really good). Aero definitely was in response to Aqua and I think the announcement today that Office won't support VBA on OS X definitely is a flag from Microsoft they're going to start to play tough. And of course, there is the Zune.
Verizon is still primarily a Northeast provider, and I have them in NYC. When I went to Las Vegas last year their coverage was pretty good as well as their coverage in Seattle. When we drove from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, though, the network dropped to nothing. I kind of expected that, however, as their maps pretty much showed that to be a roaming area.
The one complaint I will have about Verizon (a bit of a tangent) is that their EVDO network coverage isn't fantastic yet. The problem is that on my phone it's really hard to override searching for an EVDO network so if I'm at my parents house I get good voice coverage but the battery dies quickly as it's looking for the EVDO network as well. It's just random pockets though.
On top of this, IGN did a review of the Linux rollout Main takeaways:
The graphics chip is not supported at the moment, and neither is 3D graphics. IGN reports that one half of the system's memory isn't visible. This makes sense since the 512MB is split between the video and the processor.
The system runs pretty smoothly. Startup for Firefox was about 5 seconds, which sounds normal to me on my P4 3ghz running E17.
Screenshots include the E17 desktop, which looks fairly complete. No word on what modules are supported for E17, but remember it's in active development and just recently overhauled the entire module system, including adding the shelf.
You can only install Linux in one of two configurations - a 50/10 split on the 60gb drive. So you either give most of your space to linux or to the PS3 for games and media, but you can't split it 30/30 or any other way.
Unlike a comment below, IGN reports that the Wireless card is supported, but not automatically detected. You'll have to choose the driver manually apparently.
Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, the GIMP, and OO.o are included. Flash is not since it doesn't exist for the Cell processor yet.
Titan, which I've never heard of, is the default media player but has no plugins available. You have to download them on your own.
Seems like a nice rollout, but I don't like the hard drive allocation. It'd be nice if you could just install the OS's side by side and let them share media across. I hope you can do that.
because most people already have rechargeable batteries for their remote controls, gameboys, PSPs, etc.
And most people love rechargable batteries because they don't have to spend money on new ones. Rechargable double A's are nice, but I think it definitely is a knock on the system that the Wiimote isn't rechargeable. Sure, you can go out and get a decent charger and four batteries, but that's an extra $25 to spend on a cheap system, right? And they couldn't just add that in for no cost and potentially take a small loss if necessary?
I don't think weight is really an excuse - does an iPod nano weigh 4 pounds?
It's completely the UMD access - that is the one failing of the PSP I'll admit. If you let the disc spin down it takes forever for it to spin back up. At least, that's my take after playing some 10-15 different games and movies. Never have I had a problem with games like Virtua Tennis or GTA, which is amazing when you consider how complex the GTA environment is over Sims 2. It's just bad programming. I bet they tested off of a memory device or something other than the UMD itself (which is plausible as they probably didn't burn a UMD every time they wanted to test).
I love my PSP but it's serious flaw is the UMD. Games that don't realize that tend to suffer, and EA just doesn't get it.
The only reason this is such a hot topic is because the US Technology Czar and the businesses he is in bed with want the US to believe India is being chosen for out sourcing because of "More Skilled" employees
Whomever this Czar is, I'd like to meet him. The reality is that businesses who send work overseas recognize that they don't need to pay a lot of money for easy work like simple follow-the-design programming. If the "More Skilled" employees were in India, don't you think the executive positions would be going there as they are ultimately more qualified? Instead, the first work to be sent there was simple call center work where you follow a checklist. No critical thinking whatsoever. Your logic doesn't make sense.
Bring someone up on multi-core programming and I'd bet they'd find programming for a single core a bitch too.
I'm going to disagree with you there. They might find it a bit limiting but I doubt they'd complain too much. First, the simplicity of one core makes it far simpler to code for one core - there are many issues you just don't need to worry about. Second, there really isn't anyone whose being "brought up" on multi-core programming. Most developers are trained on single core (if they learn anything about processor programming at all) and it's only those interested in distributed programming and the like that would move to multi-core. You can't crawl before you walk, or something like that.
I agree with you. Most movies do cost more to produce. Some would say that movies are mass-marketed to a wider audience. However, everyone has heard that the games industry is second in sales only to porn. They beat the music and the movie industries. Such is the cost of stardom - if your business is big it's going to cost more to play. People know you're making money hand over fist and they're going to want a piece of that pie. And once you're required to meet and exceed expectations, quality is going to have to increase as well, which costs money. I say shut up and make a decent game. They finally reduced the size of packaging and digital distribution is on the horizon - hell it's already here. That will save them a boatload of money.
I have no pity for EA. All they've been doing is complaining lately. Heck, two months ago EA was complaining that the PSP is a horribleplatform! They seem to be the only ones having an issue with it, however, as all their games have either been buggyon release or just plain slow and choppy (Sims 2 I'm looking at you). I say stop complaining about costs, shrink your development team sizes, get your products under control, and release some quality games and you'll see your costs decrease. EA really annoyed me with their support of the PSP to the point where I'm not buying any of their games at this point. The only exception I might make is Spore, but that's it.
Future also publishes PC Gamer magazine. It's the only print magazine of any type I actually subscribe to. I hope they don't decide to close it or any of the other mags down.
Let's take a look at where the article is getting this 30 games number:
By one analyst's calculation, which assumes that Sony makes about $10 in revenues on each game whether produced by itself or a third party, 30 games must be sold per PS3 console - compared with eight for the PlayStation2 - to make up for the losses which Sony will incur over the next few years before the hardware itself achieves break-even.
That's 30 games not to turn a profit, but to make up for the losses before they turn a profit on the console. The summary is definitely a bit misleading IMO. One more thing -
They assume that you're going to make $10 per game. Here's the problem, as this article points out - the console is selling for different prices in different regions.
Recent reports by independent engineers who have stripped the PS3 to its component parts suggest that each unit is currently costing Sony a little over Y90,000 ($763). This in turn causes the company a loss of about Y30,000 every time a PS3 is sold in the US or Japan.
But based on analysts' assumptions that the high-end PS3 will be sold at retail for about 590euro ($757) in Europe and Britain, Sony will be losing less than Y3,000 per unit when the revenues from those markets are translated back into yen.
This part is a bit messy. It costs them supposedly $763 per console in the US and Japan, and they're selling for $600. So they lose $163 per console in the US and Japan. In GBP, they're selling for $757, so they're only losing about $6 per console.
So by UBS's calculations, they need to sell one game for every PS3 sold in Britain and 17 games for every PS3 sold in the US and Japan. The only cost left is R&D, which is hard to quantify and might justify the extra 15 games sold in the US and Japan, but that definitely requires a lot of speculation.
I agree. Obviously the 360 has a better library than the PS3 right now but there's no way they can overcome a free service. If Sony can keep the pressure on with good online support then I think they have the advantage. I also heard you can plug a USB keyboard into the console? That would basically convert your PS3 to a computer. If you could chat using the keyboard and play with the controller you'll have a really nice combo that's hard to match.
Until we have a good sales history and ample supply with which to predict the sales of these consoles, it would be best to stick to the official figures released by the respective companies...
...snip...
It's worth noting that 15,000 PS3 units could be as much as 10% of the North American supply. Given that we don't know the actual figures shipped, it's just as possible that 15,000 is 5% of the supply. Either way, it's a significant percentage of the PS3 consoles.
So you say that no one should cite a site spouting statistics based on unverified info and then turn right around and give a statistic based on unverified info? You also neglected to note that 30,000 of 600,000 Wii's is about 5% as well, which according to you is significant.
That's my point -- you don't need their approval. You make predictions routinely. They are correct routinely.
The problem with this argument is that you assume your predictions come true the majority of the time. In many cases, environmental science especially, this assumption is not true. So what happens when you make your predictions and those predictions are wrong? While I think that his book on environmental theory was a bit of a sham, Michael Crichton definitely had a good idea when he proposed that scientists should be separated from donors - all research grants should either be anonymous or via the government, which as NASA and NOAA would attest, is never biased.
The big question is whether or not you were in an EVDO area. If you were, and your phone had it enabled, then Verizon definitely would have a problem. If you weren't or your phone didn't support it, then you probably would notice a difference between then and now. I just bought a KRZR (stupid name, nice phone) for my upgrade and I got a month of the VCAST music service for free. You can definitely notice a difference between EVDO and non-EVDO.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, this was created by a PR agency - just click here.
I never disputed it was made by a PR agency - I was disputing absolute proof that the Kokatu comment was. How do we know that wasn't made by the author of this article and then used by him as absolute proof of a conspiracy? It might have been a 10 year old who actually liked the movie and decided to share it. You don't know, and only Kokatu can prove different, which they haven't so far.
Okay stop drinking the kool-aid. Here's a nice article from IGN on a viral-marketing campaign by Sony in 2000. Promoting what game? Perfect Dark. Where does the site DataDyne.com point to now? Rare, developer of Perfect Dark. Everyone's reaction? Smartest thing ever!!!!!! So, when one company uses a little bit of hidden marketing it's perfectly fine, but when another more evil company does it, it's the end of the world and we need to protect the children.
I don't know about anyone else but if I'm going to have someone lying to my face I'd rather they actually make it believable.
So alliwantforxmasisapsp.com isn't obvious enough for you? How about the following quote from said website:
consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss - whoever - so they know what you really want.
Nope, I guess that's definitely a hormone raging teenager who really really wants a PSP. The scary thing is that statement resembles many fanboy comments on slashdot, but that's all I'm going to say about that.
If Nintendo or Apple did this, it would be called genius. Instead, it's a total marketing scam because it was done by Sony, who most likely just paid the company to market it and said you guys are the smart ones, you figure out the campaign. This article smacks of teenage journalism, completely down to the Liar, Liar DVD cover. Are these guys just realizing now that marketing companies play dirty to get you to buy their product? Welcome to reality, children.
I'm also a little confused as to how the comment on Kokatu was linked directly to this marketing company. The commenter is mrjohnstamos who has no linking information whatsoever and only one comment. Suspicious, but nowhere near the proof that the evil hand of Sony is behind this.
Can we get some real news now?
I agree. I think Microsoft is scared of Apple's dominance in the "public image" department as being cool. They may still have market share but that is mostly in the Business space. Apple is creeping up on the consumer space largely through the iPod and their recent marketing campaigns (the television commercials are really good). Aero definitely was in response to Aqua and I think the announcement today that Office won't support VBA on OS X definitely is a flag from Microsoft they're going to start to play tough. And of course, there is the Zune.
Verizon is still primarily a Northeast provider, and I have them in NYC. When I went to Las Vegas last year their coverage was pretty good as well as their coverage in Seattle. When we drove from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, though, the network dropped to nothing. I kind of expected that, however, as their maps pretty much showed that to be a roaming area.
The one complaint I will have about Verizon (a bit of a tangent) is that their EVDO network coverage isn't fantastic yet. The problem is that on my phone it's really hard to override searching for an EVDO network so if I'm at my parents house I get good voice coverage but the battery dies quickly as it's looking for the EVDO network as well. It's just random pockets though.
So there's 9 authors on this paper. Which one are you and which one is the submitter or the article?
So up above, a joke about running linux gets modded funny, and this one gets modded troll. Who gives these people mod points anyways?
Seems like a nice rollout, but I don't like the hard drive allocation. It'd be nice if you could just install the OS's side by side and let them share media across. I hope you can do that.
I can't tell if that's sarcasm or truth. Scary.
because most people already have rechargeable batteries for their remote controls, gameboys, PSPs, etc.
And most people love rechargable batteries because they don't have to spend money on new ones. Rechargable double A's are nice, but I think it definitely is a knock on the system that the Wiimote isn't rechargeable. Sure, you can go out and get a decent charger and four batteries, but that's an extra $25 to spend on a cheap system, right? And they couldn't just add that in for no cost and potentially take a small loss if necessary?
I don't think weight is really an excuse - does an iPod nano weigh 4 pounds?
It's completely the UMD access - that is the one failing of the PSP I'll admit. If you let the disc spin down it takes forever for it to spin back up. At least, that's my take after playing some 10-15 different games and movies. Never have I had a problem with games like Virtua Tennis or GTA, which is amazing when you consider how complex the GTA environment is over Sims 2. It's just bad programming. I bet they tested off of a memory device or something other than the UMD itself (which is plausible as they probably didn't burn a UMD every time they wanted to test).
I love my PSP but it's serious flaw is the UMD. Games that don't realize that tend to suffer, and EA just doesn't get it.
The only reason this is such a hot topic is because the US Technology Czar and the businesses he is in bed with want the US to believe India is being chosen for out sourcing because of "More Skilled" employees
Whomever this Czar is, I'd like to meet him. The reality is that businesses who send work overseas recognize that they don't need to pay a lot of money for easy work like simple follow-the-design programming. If the "More Skilled" employees were in India, don't you think the executive positions would be going there as they are ultimately more qualified? Instead, the first work to be sent there was simple call center work where you follow a checklist. No critical thinking whatsoever. Your logic doesn't make sense.
Bring someone up on multi-core programming and I'd bet they'd find programming for a single core a bitch too.
I'm going to disagree with you there. They might find it a bit limiting but I doubt they'd complain too much. First, the simplicity of one core makes it far simpler to code for one core - there are many issues you just don't need to worry about. Second, there really isn't anyone whose being "brought up" on multi-core programming. Most developers are trained on single core (if they learn anything about processor programming at all) and it's only those interested in distributed programming and the like that would move to multi-core. You can't crawl before you walk, or something like that.
I agree with you. Most movies do cost more to produce. Some would say that movies are mass-marketed to a wider audience. However, everyone has heard that the games industry is second in sales only to porn. They beat the music and the movie industries. Such is the cost of stardom - if your business is big it's going to cost more to play. People know you're making money hand over fist and they're going to want a piece of that pie. And once you're required to meet and exceed expectations, quality is going to have to increase as well, which costs money. I say shut up and make a decent game. They finally reduced the size of packaging and digital distribution is on the horizon - hell it's already here. That will save them a boatload of money.
I have no pity for EA. All they've been doing is complaining lately. Heck, two months ago EA was complaining that the PSP is a horrible platform! They seem to be the only ones having an issue with it, however, as all their games have either been buggy on release or just plain slow and choppy (Sims 2 I'm looking at you). I say stop complaining about costs, shrink your development team sizes, get your products under control, and release some quality games and you'll see your costs decrease. EA really annoyed me with their support of the PSP to the point where I'm not buying any of their games at this point. The only exception I might make is Spore, but that's it.
You forgot to mention the password is usually "pleasechange" and it's running IIS 5.0.
Future also publishes PC Gamer magazine. It's the only print magazine of any type I actually subscribe to. I hope they don't decide to close it or any of the other mags down.
Sorry I wrote GBP because I'm working too hard here. I meant Britain/Europe.
Let's take a look at where the article is getting this 30 games number:
By one analyst's calculation, which assumes that Sony makes about $10 in revenues on each game whether produced by itself or a third party, 30 games must be sold per PS3 console - compared with eight for the PlayStation2 - to make up for the losses which Sony will incur over the next few years before the hardware itself achieves break-even.
That's 30 games not to turn a profit, but to make up for the losses before they turn a profit on the console. The summary is definitely a bit misleading IMO. One more thing -
They assume that you're going to make $10 per game. Here's the problem, as this article points out - the console is selling for different prices in different regions.
Recent reports by independent engineers who have stripped the PS3 to its component parts suggest that each unit is currently costing Sony a little over Y90,000 ($763). This in turn causes the company a loss of about Y30,000 every time a PS3 is sold in the US or Japan.
But based on analysts' assumptions that the high-end PS3 will be sold at retail for about 590euro ($757) in Europe and Britain, Sony will be losing less than Y3,000 per unit when the revenues from those markets are translated back into yen.
This part is a bit messy. It costs them supposedly $763 per console in the US and Japan, and they're selling for $600. So they lose $163 per console in the US and Japan. In GBP, they're selling for $757, so they're only losing about $6 per console.
So by UBS's calculations, they need to sell one game for every PS3 sold in Britain and 17 games for every PS3 sold in the US and Japan. The only cost left is R&D, which is hard to quantify and might justify the extra 15 games sold in the US and Japan, but that definitely requires a lot of speculation.
We have release dates (WarioWare in January, Mario Party in March, Mario Galaxy sometime after March)
Translation: WarioWare in March, Mario Party by June, Mario Galaxy around 2008
I agree. Obviously the 360 has a better library than the PS3 right now but there's no way they can overcome a free service. If Sony can keep the pressure on with good online support then I think they have the advantage. I also heard you can plug a USB keyboard into the console? That would basically convert your PS3 to a computer. If you could chat using the keyboard and play with the controller you'll have a really nice combo that's hard to match.
Until we have a good sales history and ample supply with which to predict the sales of these consoles, it would be best to stick to the official figures released by the respective companies...
...snip...
It's worth noting that 15,000 PS3 units could be as much as 10% of the North American supply. Given that we don't know the actual figures shipped, it's just as possible that 15,000 is 5% of the supply. Either way, it's a significant percentage of the PS3 consoles.
So you say that no one should cite a site spouting statistics based on unverified info and then turn right around and give a statistic based on unverified info? You also neglected to note that 30,000 of 600,000 Wii's is about 5% as well, which according to you is significant.
That's my point -- you don't need their approval. You make predictions routinely. They are correct routinely.
The problem with this argument is that you assume your predictions come true the majority of the time. In many cases, environmental science especially, this assumption is not true. So what happens when you make your predictions and those predictions are wrong? While I think that his book on environmental theory was a bit of a sham, Michael Crichton definitely had a good idea when he proposed that scientists should be separated from donors - all research grants should either be anonymous or via the government, which as NASA and NOAA would attest, is never biased.
The big question is whether or not you were in an EVDO area. If you were, and your phone had it enabled, then Verizon definitely would have a problem. If you weren't or your phone didn't support it, then you probably would notice a difference between then and now. I just bought a KRZR (stupid name, nice phone) for my upgrade and I got a month of the VCAST music service for free. You can definitely notice a difference between EVDO and non-EVDO.