And has been growing at... what? 1% a year? So it'll be around 20-30% at the most when the revolution is dead.
That's assuming that the growth rate remains constant for that period of time, which is quite a dubious thing to assume. The range of HDTVs is increasing, the price is dropping, and awareness of the existence of HD is growing. Sooner or later most people going to buy a new TV will know that HD exists and that it's better, and they'll find that there's a large range of HDTVs to choose from, some of them at very close to the price of what they may have been planning to buy anyway. The HD takeup rate is very shortly going to significantly accelerate - and it's quite likely that gamers in general are going to own a disproportionate number of those HDTVs.
Sony needs Linux on their console for the same reason they've needed it on the PS2: to dodge import taxes. I don't know what the situation is in the USA, but in the EU if it's a general purpose computer, it doesn't get taxed the way toys do.
That was true last generation.
However, this tax on games consoles as opposed to computers no longer exists.
It wouldn't make sense to say many bad things about a game before it's even finished; it wouldn't be fair.
It makes complete sense, unless you assume that the only purpose of a "preview" is to work up excitement for a game (in which case it shouldn't be called a preview - it should be called "Hype").
Most of the time, the reason someone reads a preview is not just to find out what the good bits of an upcoming game are - they're read by people trying to figure out what to buy next, and they'll be just as concerned with how bad the game might be as how good it might be.
What happened was that Blu-ray adapted the same managed copy system as HD-DVD at HP's request, so both disc formats now have similar DRM systems. Still harsh, but a slight improvement on "you can't copy it ever in any way unless we explicitly say so which we won't". Not adding region restrictions was seriously considered by the AACS Licensing Administrators but in the end the movie companies (with the exceptions of Warner, and apparently Sony) killed the idea and Blu-ray will have three regions, roughly corresponding to North America/Japan/East Asia, Europe/Africa/etc and China/Russia.
"41. Tactically, the best Monopoly properties to buy are the orange ones: Vine Street, Marlborough Street and Bow Street."
I believe they're called New York, Tennessee Avenue and St. James Place. And this is just common sense - their relationship with jail, and the fact that they're on the end of a row (More bang for buck, house/hotel wise, and a 6,8, or 9 after jail yields a hit), makes them ideal.
It seems to have escaped your notice, but there are about a million different versions of Monopoly, including localised ones for lots of countries. The BBC are obviously using the (main) UK one.
The US (with help) is currently stretching itself attempting to control Iraq and Afghanistan, and that's after removing a dictator from power and so on and so forth. Invade and control Europe? Maybe in an alternate neoconservative fantasy version of Earth, but otherwise, completely unthinkably ridiculous.
If Sony are actively delaying AACS, then they're going to have to be pretty careful, since it's as much a part of the Blu-ray spec as it is of the HD-DVD spec. I'd imagine that, given they co-operate with Toshiba in a number of areas, and given HD-DVDs recent setbacks, they probably aren't working too hard to push back the day when AACS gets finalised.
Lots of points to get through:
- The only reason the SNES wasn't backwards compatible with the NES was that a cost-effective way couldn't be found. Nintendo wanted it to happen.
- Ceople did mind. Sure, the more dedicated gamers didn't, but most people don't want big huge piles of consoles connected to their TVs, and some of the people who wouldn't mind do have partners who would. For many, two consoles under the TV is the limit, and pushing it at that.
- Consoles break. Yes, I have an Xbox. I have an Xbox now. Will I have an Xbox in two years? Three? There's no guarantee that the disc drive and hard drive will last as long as I want them to. Which am I going to prefer - having a shiny new 360 for 360 games and spluttering, dying Xbox for Xbox games, or one console that does both?
- I don't know how many people buy older games for their new consoles, but giving them the option of doing so is surely better than not.
- Backwards compatibility can improve old games. Look at the 360 - generic effort at achieving 720p in every Xbox game. It won't be a vast improvement, but it will make things better. Loading time should also improve.
- There is no old architecture in the 360. It is not in any way "constrained". It is exactly the same machine as it would be if there were no backwards compatibility.
Second, I don't understand the inclusion of Flash memory - Wouldn't a small 1GB HDD be less costly?
It looks like the priority for that was to make it robust instead of cheap, since the intention is for a significant percentage of these machines to be used in pretty laptop-unfriendly environments. It will mean that the capacity of the machines is rather limited but I suppose they're meant to be for things like documents rather than video and music.
It's for all of Europe, not just the EU, so yes, it does include Russia, as well as the European countries that are not a part of the EU. I don't see why we'd limit it to the EU, since that's not what the games industry does, or what "Europe" means.
Sony has always done pretty well in Europe because very few American/Japanese games actually MAKE it to Europe, with Sony having the biggest chunk.
Those are the standard conceptions, yes, and without checking I'd guess that most people would agree with you.
However, the reality is slightly different. From that link, Europe has gotten a lot more games than North America. There are several reasons for this. The main three are, firstly, that games released in North America do tend to get released in Europe eventually, with very few exceptions, so most of the lineups will be the same. Secondly, in Europe we tend to get the occasional game that the North American audience just aren't interested in - soccer games, for example, or games based on other sports that aren't quite so popular in the US.
The final major reason is that following various court cases against Nintendo and Sega quite a while ago, content "approval" (SCEA-style) isn't legal. Once a publisher has a publishing license in Europe, SCEE can't do much stop them from releasing a game - certainly not as much as SCEA can. This means it's easier to release a game in Europe - you can, for example, just pick up a Japanese license for very little, spend a bit on translation, and have yourself a PAL game the wasn't originally intended for release outside of Japan. There are even various budget labels that specialise in this.
The size of the market doesn't seem to have much to do with the release date. If it did, then the US would be first, without question, and the Japanese launch would be an afterthought.
Look at Sony's own software shipment figures. Right now, the market for games goes US > Europe > Japan, and I assure you game developers care about this.
As well as that, all the major game hardware manufacturers define "Europe" rather liberally. They also include the Middle East, most of Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and some of South America (perhaps all - can't remember). The potential size of the market is therefore rather huge.
If we're limiting ourselves to just Europe (rather than the extra bits games companies add in) then the most recent total population figure I can find is 731,018,523.
The idea that Japan is the major market for games consoles is quite wrong. You need only look at the figures that pglee has provided to see that - for every console EU sales eventually exceed Japanese sales.
If you want further proof - look at the Xbox. Its dismal performance in Japan hasn't stopped it from being a moderate sales success.
You're probably right about Firefox users tending to be more savvy, on the whole - but there are still plenty of people who, for one reason or another, don't know a whole lot about computers in general and the internet in particular, yet still use Firefox.
As well as that, one of the aims of the Firefox community is to get as many people as possible using the browser. If we ever start seeing FF market share starting to approach that of IE's, then plenty of the new users will be people who will fall for a phishing scam - it's best to have at least some measure of protection for them ready and waiting. Relying on users having some degree of knowledge isn't really a proper substitute for having measures in place, especially if FF is aiming at the mainstream.
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That's assuming that the growth rate remains constant for that period of time, which is quite a dubious thing to assume. The range of HDTVs is increasing, the price is dropping, and awareness of the existence of HD is growing. Sooner or later most people going to buy a new TV will know that HD exists and that it's better, and they'll find that there's a large range of HDTVs to choose from, some of them at very close to the price of what they may have been planning to buy anyway. The HD takeup rate is very shortly going to significantly accelerate - and it's quite likely that gamers in general are going to own a disproportionate number of those HDTVs.
Writology and writonomy.
That was true last generation.
However, this tax on games consoles as opposed to computers no longer exists.
It makes complete sense, unless you assume that the only purpose of a "preview" is to work up excitement for a game (in which case it shouldn't be called a preview - it should be called "Hype").
Most of the time, the reason someone reads a preview is not just to find out what the good bits of an upcoming game are - they're read by people trying to figure out what to buy next, and they'll be just as concerned with how bad the game might be as how good it might be.
What happened was that Blu-ray adapted the same managed copy system as HD-DVD at HP's request, so both disc formats now have similar DRM systems. Still harsh, but a slight improvement on "you can't copy it ever in any way unless we explicitly say so which we won't". Not adding region restrictions was seriously considered by the AACS Licensing Administrators but in the end the movie companies (with the exceptions of Warner, and apparently Sony) killed the idea and Blu-ray will have three regions, roughly corresponding to North America/Japan/East Asia, Europe/Africa/etc and China/Russia.
Given the politics of the new disc formats, if that does happen, it will actually happen on Blu-ray.
I believe they're called New York, Tennessee Avenue and St. James Place. And this is just common sense - their relationship with jail, and the fact that they're on the end of a row (More bang for buck, house/hotel wise, and a 6,8, or 9 after jail yields a hit), makes them ideal.
It seems to have escaped your notice, but there are about a million different versions of Monopoly, including localised ones for lots of countries. The BBC are obviously using the (main) UK one.
The US (with help) is currently stretching itself attempting to control Iraq and Afghanistan, and that's after removing a dictator from power and so on and so forth. Invade and control Europe? Maybe in an alternate neoconservative fantasy version of Earth, but otherwise, completely unthinkably ridiculous.
If Sony are actively delaying AACS, then they're going to have to be pretty careful, since it's as much a part of the Blu-ray spec as it is of the HD-DVD spec. I'd imagine that, given they co-operate with Toshiba in a number of areas, and given HD-DVDs recent setbacks, they probably aren't working too hard to push back the day when AACS gets finalised.
Lots of points to get through: - The only reason the SNES wasn't backwards compatible with the NES was that a cost-effective way couldn't be found. Nintendo wanted it to happen. - Ceople did mind. Sure, the more dedicated gamers didn't, but most people don't want big huge piles of consoles connected to their TVs, and some of the people who wouldn't mind do have partners who would. For many, two consoles under the TV is the limit, and pushing it at that. - Consoles break. Yes, I have an Xbox. I have an Xbox now. Will I have an Xbox in two years? Three? There's no guarantee that the disc drive and hard drive will last as long as I want them to. Which am I going to prefer - having a shiny new 360 for 360 games and spluttering, dying Xbox for Xbox games, or one console that does both? - I don't know how many people buy older games for their new consoles, but giving them the option of doing so is surely better than not. - Backwards compatibility can improve old games. Look at the 360 - generic effort at achieving 720p in every Xbox game. It won't be a vast improvement, but it will make things better. Loading time should also improve. - There is no old architecture in the 360. It is not in any way "constrained". It is exactly the same machine as it would be if there were no backwards compatibility.
Apparently they could.
It looks like the priority for that was to make it robust instead of cheap, since the intention is for a significant percentage of these machines to be used in pretty laptop-unfriendly environments. It will mean that the capacity of the machines is rather limited but I suppose they're meant to be for things like documents rather than video and music.
It's for all of Europe, not just the EU, so yes, it does include Russia, as well as the European countries that are not a part of the EU. I don't see why we'd limit it to the EU, since that's not what the games industry does, or what "Europe" means.
Those are the standard conceptions, yes, and without checking I'd guess that most people would agree with you.
However, the reality is slightly different. From that link, Europe has gotten a lot more games than North America. There are several reasons for this. The main three are, firstly, that games released in North America do tend to get released in Europe eventually, with very few exceptions, so most of the lineups will be the same. Secondly, in Europe we tend to get the occasional game that the North American audience just aren't interested in - soccer games, for example, or games based on other sports that aren't quite so popular in the US.
The final major reason is that following various court cases against Nintendo and Sega quite a while ago, content "approval" (SCEA-style) isn't legal. Once a publisher has a publishing license in Europe, SCEE can't do much stop them from releasing a game - certainly not as much as SCEA can. This means it's easier to release a game in Europe - you can, for example, just pick up a Japanese license for very little, spend a bit on translation, and have yourself a PAL game the wasn't originally intended for release outside of Japan. There are even various budget labels that specialise in this.
Look at Sony's own software shipment figures. Right now, the market for games goes US > Europe > Japan, and I assure you game developers care about this.
As well as that, all the major game hardware manufacturers define "Europe" rather liberally. They also include the Middle East, most of Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and some of South America (perhaps all - can't remember). The potential size of the market is therefore rather huge. If we're limiting ourselves to just Europe (rather than the extra bits games companies add in) then the most recent total population figure I can find is 731,018,523.
The idea that Japan is the major market for games consoles is quite wrong. You need only look at the figures that pglee has provided to see that - for every console EU sales eventually exceed Japanese sales. If you want further proof - look at the Xbox. Its dismal performance in Japan hasn't stopped it from being a moderate sales success.
As well as that, one of the aims of the Firefox community is to get as many people as possible using the browser. If we ever start seeing FF market share starting to approach that of IE's, then plenty of the new users will be people who will fall for a phishing scam - it's best to have at least some measure of protection for them ready and waiting. Relying on users having some degree of knowledge isn't really a proper substitute for having measures in place, especially if FF is aiming at the mainstream.