I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not an Apple fanboy by any means and I'm definitely not buying an iPhone.
How did the RAZR succeed? By being a high priced toy to the wealthy at first. How did Blackberry succeed? By being a high priced email toy for business elites. The iPhone really combines both - a sleek design with email, web, and calendar built in. The downside is that it isn't compatible with Outlook.
But, for the low low price of $500, only the elitist of the elite will be able to afford it. And Apple will open it up for development if a large enough enterprise requests it. They want the marketshare and if a Wall Street Bank or Music Studio requests it, they'll do it to add to the cool factor of having those rich famous people carry it around - just like the RAZR and the Blackberry.
That's why I advocate the elimination of minimum wage and the revocation of all child labor laws! Screw summer camp, send them to the coal mines to become productive members of society!
People don't question Sony's decision to enter the video game market do they?
Of course they don't - Sony dominated the market for two generations. They didn't need to question Sony's decision. Microsoft got obliterated by a late start last generation and this generation they're only ahead because 1) they underpriced their main competitor, who only are losing due to massive PR fuckups and 2) they released earlier than anyone else. But I think there isn't a person who doubts that the Wii will catch Microsoft by year's end. It's still up in the air whether Sony is going to catch Microsoft (they're outselling the Xbox in Japan, and catching up in Europe) and now they've gone and made a disastrous decision to launch a new Xbox model with a few upgrades and a higher price - thus eliminating the biggest advantage they had! People don't buy 360 over PS3 for Xbox Live, they do it because it's cheaper and has more titles out. But Sony has shown it can develop a large library, so basically Microsoft is one slipup away from finishing two generations in a row in last place.
The elevators in my office building run Windows 95. How do I know? You walk into the Elevator and the screen has a giant BSOD on it. Then they reboot with the Win 95 logo showing up. However, everytime it shakes a little bit as it descends, I can't help but wonder whether it's Microsoft or the elevator that's causing it....
True, but I have a couple memory cards and use the card reader to transfer files between the two systems. I guess I just don't trust my cats around the wires or something. YMMV.
I would think the next things to go would be the useless card reader (really now, does ANYONE plan on using their PS3 as a photo album?)
The card reader is actually quite helpful for transferring files to and from your PSP and PC. When you download the PS1 games from PSN, how are you supposed to get htem to your PSP? Via the card reader, of course. You can also move movies and music this way as well, unless you want to sit down and design a website that both consoles can view to download music and movies individually, but that sounds annoying.
This isn't even addressing the issue that the PS3 is already arguably starved for RAM, AND has a slower media drive on top of that.
Arguably being the key word here. I haven't seen any developer familiar with the PS3 actually complain about the amount of memory available to them. Obviously, Linux performance suffers a bit under the hypervisor, but that's because Sony is hiding the graphics chip, not because there isn't enough RAM available. The claims of lack of memory came out of the revelation that Oblivion was caching to the hard drive to improve load times, I believe, but Bethesda said that the same thing was done on the 360 as well.
that cached any data like that to the hard drive was Oblivion. And Bethesda said they did that in the 360 version too. Those are pretty much lies.
And have you ever thought that the reason people stick to the 9 gigs on Sony ports is because they really don't want to pay to produce the extra content? I would probably argue that the 360 is limiting the space to 9 gigs before I argued that the BluRay is way too big to be filled. The same thing has been said about CDs and DVDs. It's moot to try and even argue it anymore.
Almost forgot - another thing to note about NYC is the ethnicity lines in certain neighborhoods. NYC has always been known for its ethnic diversity, and it's always segregated somehow. The use of Russians, for instance, is interesting because most Russian populations today live in the Brighton Beach and Coney Island area of Brooklyn and also in distant Queens as well. To my knowledge, there isn't a distinctly Russian neighborhood in Manhattan (someone can correct me). So they almost have to commit to this kind of scale if they want to be true to life. Of course, it's a video game and they can take artistic license, but I just thought I'd point that out.
is the scale - so many people don't realize how huge NYC really is when you include all 5 boroughs. If the idea of other cities is dropped for Staten Island (difficult because you can't really get there directly from Manhattan by car) and even outer Brooklyn/Queens and the Bronx, you'll have a ton of real estate to cover. Almost to the point where I doubt they'll be able to do even close to 1:1 scale. I would venture that the game would have to be about the size of Oblivion (possibly a little smaller) to achieve that. The thing that gives Oblivion a truly large feel is the fact that you don't have a fast car, you have a moderately fast horse or slow walking, so it seems bigger than it really is.
but that doesn't change my wallet's position. Oh well, in 50 years $2 songs will be a steal at double the price, right? And we'll be paying those prices for the same classic songs!
It does need a better interface for media libraries though. At least the PSP allows you to create playlists on your memory cards (by creating boxes/folders when you load your music from your PC). The PS3 is pretty annoying in terms of music playback. Video playback isn't too bad, though. No playlist control there either, to my knowledge.
Raytracing, by definition, is not hardware-accelerated. Of course the RSX isn't being used
Well, isn't a graphics chip just a piece of specialized instructions optimized for graphics applications? The point I think the developers are making is not that the RSX would be useless for the ray tracing calculations due to the fact that it's not specialized for those algorithms, but that the graphics display in the end (polygon rendering, shading, etc.) is not accelerated either - you're getting raw processing from the Cell itself.
I don't think this is very exciting, however. It's not like it has gaming applications; you need three PS3s to get it done. Wake me up when one PS3 can do realtime raytracing in-game.
Then you must not know much about computer graphics. I doubt you could have done this with the PS2 or the XBox. The fact that a next gen machine can do this is very interesting, especially in a distributed fashion over the network. Distributed computing really is the future, and may someday take place inside game consoles as well. IF you have a spare processor and your buddy doesn't, is it efficient for him to borrow your CPU time? This is definitely a discussion that is occurring in normal computing space, let alone console gaming.
Not to mention, this isn't being done with the Sony SDK. This is done using free tools available via the internet. A college student could build this for a research project if they wished. This is proving that Sony allowing people access to Linux on the machine really is working. It counters the argument of XBLA's framework being the best thing ever. In fact, they could release this code as part of the GPL for free and it wouldn't be encombered by any Microsoft system or Sony system whatsoever.
The fact that it's portable isn't exactly unique to the PSP, but I think one thing going forward with it will be the ability to link directly to the Playstation 3 using your PS3 and a wireless router (you no longer connect directly to the PS3, IIRC). So once they give you the ability to play the PS3 games on your PSP using the remote feature, you basically will have a portable PS3 at home. And it's probably likely they'll do this, given that the PS3 to PSP functionality is more like Terminal Services than actual emulation.
So now, you can play your PS3 on the same TV that your parents are watching TV or a movie. Or, in my case, if your fiance wants to watch Sex in the City reruns on TBS.
The downside is that the wireless connection kills your already low battery life because it takes so much bandwidth to transfer the pixels I assume, but because you're home you just need to plug the PSP into the wall.
I use gentoo, and because I'm sadistic I love the install process. The acutal gentoo install is about two hours I think now that they've eliminated stage 1 and 2. But I like to compile everything from sources after that so it takes me another day (not straight through, I usually do it while I'm at work) to compile open office, firefox, x.org, and the like. Then it takes me another day or so to make sure my laptop can handle things like ACPI (I always forget to compile it for some reason), 3D acceleration (stupid ATI drivers), suspend-resume, framebuffer, E17, gensplash, and whatever else takes a bit of time. I don't mind it because I like the feeling of starting fresh without all those packages that you use once and never again being installed.
Seriously, enough of this. Microsoft is represented as a borg on this site for a reason, so don't argue that they're holier than thou. That leaves you with Nintendo. I go home and copy my Nintendo cartridges to my Sony portable all the time. And then I play them on my legally obtained SNES emulator which runs on my iPod. Of course, I then copy the Gamecube discs and put them on my blank Wii Optical discs I got at Gamespot so they run well in my brand spanking new Wii.
Give me a break. Each console maker does their own copy protection. You don't like that? Play solitaire.
A lot of people have stayed away from Sony apparently because their products are so expensive. Now you're getting a $170 game player, web browser, music and movie player all in one. Combine that with upcoming Home (Sony said it would port it to PSP in some form) and the fact that 2GB memory sticks are getting really cheap (about $75 or so) and you have a $240 price point that really competes with a video iPod pretty well. If Sony really does go ahead and launch the music/movie store that's rumored (integration of BMG, Sony Pictures, and SOE is inevitable), then I think this will work out for them.
Ummm..so on the news that the PS3 has actually now sold 3 million consoles worldwide, this really looks like a dumb decision by Eidos, especially when considering that in March 2006, the 360 had sold less than half that. This idiotic "PS3 is dead" banter from the Nintendo and 360 fanboys is kind of old. To say that a console isn't selling well and stop releasing titles at this point is a dumb business move, especially when the growth rate of hardware sales is trending upwards and the big selling points are still coming. So, they can delay but at their own peril. This is especially highlighted by the fact that they really don't have any new properties. I didn't know Tomb Raider was still "hot" - only the first two games even appear on the top 200 titles of all time in sales on vgcharts.org.
That was the most shocking thing - she's a trained civil engineer, with admittedly no experience in natural sciences. I have an MS in Computer Science, and I'd like to think that if I were appointed to that position I'd respect what the scientists in charge show me based on their research. Here we have someone with some knowledge of science and math and yet no respect for the general tenets of those fields whatsoever.
Yep, there's multiple ways to transfer to your PSP - memory card if you have the 60gb SKU, and via Remote Play (although it won't transfer to your actual PSP, it just will play). I do find the Remote Play kind of annoying though - the PSP uses so much battery with the WiFi built in that I don't think it would last two hours if I tried to watch a movie. Has anyone found a solution or had a problem with this?
I'm so glad you created a troll thread for everyone else to throw in. Where in the article does it say they're increasing the price of the PS3? Only the 360's price is going up; this hasn't even been announced yet by Sony, let alone any pricing details released.
Ummm...the Wii is only a couple of months old. How did you break it almost immediately after buying it? Did you impale it with your Wiimote or was there a hardware failure? Also, if there is such a huge shortage of Wiis right now, how did you manage to get your hands on another one, and how long was your wait?
Nintendo still can't keep with with the DS Lite in Japan, and the Lite revision has been out for over a year, and thats the last place they want to have shortages.
Sorry, but I just want to point out the house of cards you're arguing about the Wii - they aren't faking the shortage because there obviously is a shortage due to the fact they can't keep up with demand. Wouldn't an artificial shortage cause it to appear there's high demand due to a shortage? If there wasn't a shortage, demand would be sated and inventory would be on the shelf. So arguing that they can't keep up with the DS Lite doesn't prove anything about it being a fake shortage or not - including the fact that we're talking about the Wii and not the DS Lite. Maybe it suggests that they are faking a shortage on the DS Lite as well. Sure, there might be overwhelming demand for the DS Lite, but is that demand more than the Wii? Can you show that it's more than the Wii?
So how does your argument prove there isn't an artificial shortage?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not an Apple fanboy by any means and I'm definitely not buying an iPhone.
How did the RAZR succeed? By being a high priced toy to the wealthy at first. How did Blackberry succeed? By being a high priced email toy for business elites. The iPhone really combines both - a sleek design with email, web, and calendar built in. The downside is that it isn't compatible with Outlook.
But, for the low low price of $500, only the elitist of the elite will be able to afford it. And Apple will open it up for development if a large enough enterprise requests it. They want the marketshare and if a Wall Street Bank or Music Studio requests it, they'll do it to add to the cool factor of having those rich famous people carry it around - just like the RAZR and the Blackberry.
That's why I advocate the elimination of minimum wage and the revocation of all child labor laws! Screw summer camp, send them to the coal mines to become productive members of society!
People don't question Sony's decision to enter the video game market do they?
Of course they don't - Sony dominated the market for two generations. They didn't need to question Sony's decision. Microsoft got obliterated by a late start last generation and this generation they're only ahead because 1) they underpriced their main competitor, who only are losing due to massive PR fuckups and 2) they released earlier than anyone else. But I think there isn't a person who doubts that the Wii will catch Microsoft by year's end. It's still up in the air whether Sony is going to catch Microsoft (they're outselling the Xbox in Japan, and catching up in Europe) and now they've gone and made a disastrous decision to launch a new Xbox model with a few upgrades and a higher price - thus eliminating the biggest advantage they had! People don't buy 360 over PS3 for Xbox Live, they do it because it's cheaper and has more titles out. But Sony has shown it can develop a large library, so basically Microsoft is one slipup away from finishing two generations in a row in last place.
The elevators in my office building run Windows 95. How do I know? You walk into the Elevator and the screen has a giant BSOD on it. Then they reboot with the Win 95 logo showing up. However, everytime it shakes a little bit as it descends, I can't help but wonder whether it's Microsoft or the elevator that's causing it....
True, but I have a couple memory cards and use the card reader to transfer files between the two systems. I guess I just don't trust my cats around the wires or something. YMMV.
Umm, a few points need to be made here:
I would think the next things to go would be the useless card reader (really now, does ANYONE plan on using their PS3 as a photo album?)
The card reader is actually quite helpful for transferring files to and from your PSP and PC. When you download the PS1 games from PSN, how are you supposed to get htem to your PSP? Via the card reader, of course. You can also move movies and music this way as well, unless you want to sit down and design a website that both consoles can view to download music and movies individually, but that sounds annoying.
This isn't even addressing the issue that the PS3 is already arguably starved for RAM, AND has a slower media drive on top of that.
Arguably being the key word here. I haven't seen any developer familiar with the PS3 actually complain about the amount of memory available to them. Obviously, Linux performance suffers a bit under the hypervisor, but that's because Sony is hiding the graphics chip, not because there isn't enough RAM available. The claims of lack of memory came out of the revelation that Oblivion was caching to the hard drive to improve load times, I believe, but Bethesda said that the same thing was done on the 360 as well.
that cached any data like that to the hard drive was Oblivion. And Bethesda said they did that in the 360 version too. Those are pretty much lies.
And have you ever thought that the reason people stick to the 9 gigs on Sony ports is because they really don't want to pay to produce the extra content? I would probably argue that the 360 is limiting the space to 9 gigs before I argued that the BluRay is way too big to be filled. The same thing has been said about CDs and DVDs. It's moot to try and even argue it anymore.
So how much did you pay? My bridge is a linksys router cost about $50 I think, possibly higher. That's still quite a lot of money for an add on.
Almost forgot - another thing to note about NYC is the ethnicity lines in certain neighborhoods. NYC has always been known for its ethnic diversity, and it's always segregated somehow. The use of Russians, for instance, is interesting because most Russian populations today live in the Brighton Beach and Coney Island area of Brooklyn and also in distant Queens as well. To my knowledge, there isn't a distinctly Russian neighborhood in Manhattan (someone can correct me). So they almost have to commit to this kind of scale if they want to be true to life. Of course, it's a video game and they can take artistic license, but I just thought I'd point that out.
is the scale - so many people don't realize how huge NYC really is when you include all 5 boroughs. If the idea of other cities is dropped for Staten Island (difficult because you can't really get there directly from Manhattan by car) and even outer Brooklyn/Queens and the Bronx, you'll have a ton of real estate to cover. Almost to the point where I doubt they'll be able to do even close to 1:1 scale. I would venture that the game would have to be about the size of Oblivion (possibly a little smaller) to achieve that. The thing that gives Oblivion a truly large feel is the fact that you don't have a fast car, you have a moderately fast horse or slow walking, so it seems bigger than it really is.
but that doesn't change my wallet's position. Oh well, in 50 years $2 songs will be a steal at double the price, right? And we'll be paying those prices for the same classic songs!
No major system has ever failed for having too many games
I thought Conventional Wisdom considered the PC a failed platform?
</snark>
Umm, the PS3 already does H.264. It's only xvid that it doesn't do, to my knowledge.
It does need a better interface for media libraries though. At least the PSP allows you to create playlists on your memory cards (by creating boxes/folders when you load your music from your PC). The PS3 is pretty annoying in terms of music playback. Video playback isn't too bad, though. No playlist control there either, to my knowledge.
Raytracing, by definition, is not hardware-accelerated. Of course the RSX isn't being used
Well, isn't a graphics chip just a piece of specialized instructions optimized for graphics applications? The point I think the developers are making is not that the RSX would be useless for the ray tracing calculations due to the fact that it's not specialized for those algorithms, but that the graphics display in the end (polygon rendering, shading, etc.) is not accelerated either - you're getting raw processing from the Cell itself.
Umm, let's take a look at what you're saying there...
know there's been some limited applications of realtime raytracing in gaming. IIRC your temple in Black & White had some in the ceiling
Umm, I think you have Radiosity confused with ray tracing.
I don't think this is very exciting, however. It's not like it has gaming applications; you need three PS3s to get it done. Wake me up when one PS3 can do realtime raytracing in-game.
Then you must not know much about computer graphics. I doubt you could have done this with the PS2 or the XBox. The fact that a next gen machine can do this is very interesting, especially in a distributed fashion over the network. Distributed computing really is the future, and may someday take place inside game consoles as well. IF you have a spare processor and your buddy doesn't, is it efficient for him to borrow your CPU time? This is definitely a discussion that is occurring in normal computing space, let alone console gaming.
Not to mention, this isn't being done with the Sony SDK. This is done using free tools available via the internet. A college student could build this for a research project if they wished. This is proving that Sony allowing people access to Linux on the machine really is working. It counters the argument of XBLA's framework being the best thing ever. In fact, they could release this code as part of the GPL for free and it wouldn't be encombered by any Microsoft system or Sony system whatsoever.
The fact that it's portable isn't exactly unique to the PSP, but I think one thing going forward with it will be the ability to link directly to the Playstation 3 using your PS3 and a wireless router (you no longer connect directly to the PS3, IIRC). So once they give you the ability to play the PS3 games on your PSP using the remote feature, you basically will have a portable PS3 at home. And it's probably likely they'll do this, given that the PS3 to PSP functionality is more like Terminal Services than actual emulation.
So now, you can play your PS3 on the same TV that your parents are watching TV or a movie. Or, in my case, if your fiance wants to watch Sex in the City reruns on TBS.
The downside is that the wireless connection kills your already low battery life because it takes so much bandwidth to transfer the pixels I assume, but because you're home you just need to plug the PSP into the wall.
I use gentoo, and because I'm sadistic I love the install process. The acutal gentoo install is about two hours I think now that they've eliminated stage 1 and 2. But I like to compile everything from sources after that so it takes me another day (not straight through, I usually do it while I'm at work) to compile open office, firefox, x.org, and the like. Then it takes me another day or so to make sure my laptop can handle things like ACPI (I always forget to compile it for some reason), 3D acceleration (stupid ATI drivers), suspend-resume, framebuffer, E17, gensplash, and whatever else takes a bit of time. I don't mind it because I like the feeling of starting fresh without all those packages that you use once and never again being installed.
Seriously, enough of this. Microsoft is represented as a borg on this site for a reason, so don't argue that they're holier than thou. That leaves you with Nintendo. I go home and copy my Nintendo cartridges to my Sony portable all the time. And then I play them on my legally obtained SNES emulator which runs on my iPod. Of course, I then copy the Gamecube discs and put them on my blank Wii Optical discs I got at Gamespot so they run well in my brand spanking new Wii.
Give me a break. Each console maker does their own copy protection. You don't like that? Play solitaire.
A lot of people have stayed away from Sony apparently because their products are so expensive. Now you're getting a $170 game player, web browser, music and movie player all in one. Combine that with upcoming Home (Sony said it would port it to PSP in some form) and the fact that 2GB memory sticks are getting really cheap (about $75 or so) and you have a $240 price point that really competes with a video iPod pretty well. If Sony really does go ahead and launch the music/movie store that's rumored (integration of BMG, Sony Pictures, and SOE is inevitable), then I think this will work out for them.
Ummm..so on the news that the PS3 has actually now sold 3 million consoles worldwide, this really looks like a dumb decision by Eidos, especially when considering that in March 2006, the 360 had sold less than half that. This idiotic "PS3 is dead" banter from the Nintendo and 360 fanboys is kind of old. To say that a console isn't selling well and stop releasing titles at this point is a dumb business move, especially when the growth rate of hardware sales is trending upwards and the big selling points are still coming. So, they can delay but at their own peril. This is especially highlighted by the fact that they really don't have any new properties. I didn't know Tomb Raider was still "hot" - only the first two games even appear on the top 200 titles of all time in sales on vgcharts.org.
That was the most shocking thing - she's a trained civil engineer, with admittedly no experience in natural sciences. I have an MS in Computer Science, and I'd like to think that if I were appointed to that position I'd respect what the scientists in charge show me based on their research. Here we have someone with some knowledge of science and math and yet no respect for the general tenets of those fields whatsoever.
Yep, there's multiple ways to transfer to your PSP - memory card if you have the 60gb SKU, and via Remote Play (although it won't transfer to your actual PSP, it just will play). I do find the Remote Play kind of annoying though - the PSP uses so much battery with the WiFi built in that I don't think it would last two hours if I tried to watch a movie. Has anyone found a solution or had a problem with this?
I'm so glad you created a troll thread for everyone else to throw in. Where in the article does it say they're increasing the price of the PS3? Only the 360's price is going up; this hasn't even been announced yet by Sony, let alone any pricing details released.
A couple of months ago, however, my Wii broke.
Ummm...the Wii is only a couple of months old. How did you break it almost immediately after buying it? Did you impale it with your Wiimote or was there a hardware failure? Also, if there is such a huge shortage of Wiis right now, how did you manage to get your hands on another one, and how long was your wait?
Nintendo still can't keep with with the DS Lite in Japan, and the Lite revision has been out for over a year, and thats the last place they want to have shortages.
Sorry, but I just want to point out the house of cards you're arguing about the Wii - they aren't faking the shortage because there obviously is a shortage due to the fact they can't keep up with demand. Wouldn't an artificial shortage cause it to appear there's high demand due to a shortage? If there wasn't a shortage, demand would be sated and inventory would be on the shelf. So arguing that they can't keep up with the DS Lite doesn't prove anything about it being a fake shortage or not - including the fact that we're talking about the Wii and not the DS Lite. Maybe it suggests that they are faking a shortage on the DS Lite as well. Sure, there might be overwhelming demand for the DS Lite, but is that demand more than the Wii? Can you show that it's more than the Wii?
So how does your argument prove there isn't an artificial shortage?