When you watch a movie, that is usually all you are doing (and if not, please don't watch it with me). When you play a game, that is usually all you are doing. However, music is typically background stuff. So you might have played that song 20x, but did you play it 20x doing nothing but pondering its beats and rhythms, mulling over the meaning of the message? Probably not. Most likely it just made your drive to the store not so quiet, or it blocked the noise of your computer while you surfed the web. Perhaps it enhanced the mode during your dinner. As an example, iTunes says that I've listened to Still Alive (from Portal) over 200 times, but I was really paying attention to the code I was writing. Unless at a concert, music is rarely on the center stage of what you are doing.
But even that is missing the underlying point. Time is a really lousy measure of enjoyment. That's saying that any 2 hour movie is just as enjoyable as any other 2 hour movie. If I listen to music for three hours, is that exactly as enjoyable as three hours of a Lord of the Rings movie? Is that as enjoyable as playing through Portal? Maybe, depends on what you find enjoyable. But that is a big dependency.
But even that is missing the underlying point. You pay the amount that both you and the seller agree to. If the seller is smart, he takes into consideration how much of the market is willing to pay what amount and maximizes his profits. If the buyer is smart, he considers how much the seller is selling it and how much it is worth it to him. The music industry in general might not be selling at maximum customers, or even maximum profit, but they've picked a price. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
The car cannot be shared (if you have it, it is unavailable for the 2AM emergency trip to the ER)
Unless the car is on the street, you have to cross property lines
The car (presumably) isn't advertising itself
The car is personal property
The connection is access to the public Internet
The car is NOT access to the public roads
A more apt analogy would be playing music. You could lock your music down so that only you hear it (headphones or turn it down) but if you are playing it loud enough for it to cross your property line into mine or into public spaces and I sit and listen to it then what harm is done. However, even that analogy sucks because sound is nearly unlimited bandwidth whereas Internet access usually is not. Also, the ISP could charge data rates. In that case I see a problem.
Ultimately this is a separate and new thing. There is no good analogy and neither does there need to be one. Most of us here are able to think about and understand concepts without needing analogies, no matter how good or crappy they are.
So here is the issue. If you wanted, you could very easily lock your wireless access point down such that no one could use it (or at least not trivially). Because of that, if I happen upon an access point that is wide open, then I will take it to mean you meant for it to be open. Now comes the really stupid analogies: "But what if you come across an unlocked car?" Here are the problems with that.
The car is private property. Sure, the hardware providing access to the Internet is private property, but I'm not taking the hardware. I'm not touching the hardware. I don't even need to see it, know where it is, or even what it is. But we're not talking about the hardware. Internet access is quite different from a physical car. I'm using the atmosphere to send electromagnetic waves. The atmosphere is public. The electromagnetic waves don't interfere (as per the FCC in the US anyway). Me being there doesn't harm, hinder or hamper you or any one else in any way shape or form.
The car is used often. That might sound silly, so let me explain. You get into and out of a car a lot. Every time requires you to lock or unlock it. Sometimes you're only going to be a minute, so you don't bother locking it, sometimes you know the area you are in and don't bother locking it, etc. Access points aren't like that. You make a decision to lock or not, and that's it. You are done. If car's were like access points, then personally, I would decide to lock it as soon as I bought it and be able to get in and out without ever having to unlock it. In fact, that's a great idea. Since everyone likes to compare open access points to a car, let's compare a car to an open access point.
If my car were like my router, I would lock it once I got home and never have to unlock it again even though I'm getting in and out of it all the time. When my friends come over, we can all take the car to different places at the same time. In fact, we could also all have the radio dialed to a different station at the same time. Now does that tired unlocked car analogy sound sufficiently stupid to you?
Ah here is the crux of the matter. They can back port it, there is no doubt about it. They don't want to and that is their decision. They want to use it as a selling point for Vista, and that is fine. No problems so far. They said they couldn't for technical reasons. DING DING DING. We have a winner. No, they don't want to do it because it won't be a selling point for Vista. Like I said, that's fine. It's ultimately their software and their decision. They don't have to do it if they don't want to. But I expect people (and companies are run by people) to be honest. They lied. Why did they lie about it? What is it about Vista that is so crappy that they have to lie? Why can't they just tell us the truth? Of course they are using DX10 to sell Vista. Whatever, so what, big deal, no problem. But they have to go and lie about the reasons for using it to sell Vista. Now we have a problem.
The post you replied to mentioned Halo 2. That was obviously a Vista only product to help sell Vista. Did you see how upset people got about that? Hardly at all. They even had to work to make it Vista only. The game was on the Xbox originally, which had DX8 I believe. They had to work to make it DX10 instead of doing the easy port. Did they lie about it and say it could only be DX10 for technical reasons? No, they just did and people got over it and saw it as a stupid gimmick, but they all moved on. But that they lied about DX10 is the problem. It's trust here that is at the core of the issue.
Just so you know, I'm not following you around on/. just to post to you. I was just looking through the thread and thought that this post here was getting away from the "logic" and getting closer to what I originally was talking about.
Would it have been more clear if I had used the word "essentially" in my original post. I'm talking about gut reactions. If you have to lie to make something sound good, then my gut reaction is to say that what you are lying about is complete crap. They lied about DX10 with regards to Vista and XP, so my gut reaction is that Vista is crap and needs DX10 in order to sell. If I were only trying to use pure Aristotelian logic then no, it makes no sense for one feature to suggest that there are no other features. However, that was not my point. I was perhaps unclear on that. I'm talking about gut reactions and feelings.
MS could have gone about this in all sorts of ways. They could have said they weren't back porting DX10 to XP for all sorts of reasons. Hell, they could have even told the truth. Maybe that might get some people upset, but lying gets even more people upset. If they had said it would take a massive effort to get it on XP, an effort they felt better spent on making Vista all the better, they could have even spun it to be a good thing. Instead they pissed people off by not back porting it, then made it worse by lying about it. There was a path that was honest and forthright and could have been made to sound good (though it still would have made some mad), but instead they chose a path that was deceitful and in the process made a lot more people both mad and untrusting of them. Again, when you lie about a product, no one can logically say that there is necessarily anything wrong about it, but common sense and history and gut reactions, etc, etc, etc should be ringing bells that there is a reason for the lie and most likely it's because that something, in reality, sucks.
So ignore the logic. Using precise logic you can't possibly deduce the quality of Vista based on the DX10 on XP issue. That is not what I'm talking about though. MS has lost face and trust by lying about this issue. Thus, I can't trust them about the quality of Vista. Now if that reverse that decision and admit they were lying, they save some face. However, I already said that would only remove one barrier from me buying Vista. They have a lot of truth telling to do before I start believing MS.
It's interesting that you mention this. When Steam completed the survey for me last night Vista use percentage was closer to 18%, but now it is at 15.35% and dropping.
I'm not saying we could make some interesting conjectures about those stats. I'm just agreeing with you that we can't make any sense of any stats until things have stabilized a bit (probably at least a week).
Actually, the Xbox360 uses an advanced version of DX 9, not 10. However, there still is no technical reason why it can't be ported to XP.
Reports all over the internet for all sorts of games suggest that DX10 is terrible on performance and not worth it for the slight upgrade in graphics. This is not a Crysis-only thing.
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying here. Vista users can install DX10, but they need a DX10 capable card in order to use any of its features. Vista plus an Nvidia 7900 or ATI x1950 won't do it. You need Vista plus a DX10 capable GPU in order to have DX10.
So are you saying that if Valve developed for DX10 that all of the Vista user base would rush out to buy a $250+ graphics card? Eventually I suppose that would be the case. But that's the whole issue. Eventually (big assumption here) Vista's installed base will look like XP currently, but right now it doesn't.
So Valve is saying that there is a lot of effort into putting in a DX10 path into their code, but only 9% of people right now could use it, and even those people aren't going to see a large improvement in the graphics. This is partly due to DX10 not being a large improvement and especially true since Valve has already made those improvements on DX9 cards.
The reason they won't backport DX10 is to make it an incentive to buy Vista, of this there is no doubt. However, MS has always backported new versions of DX to their previous releases. The latest nonDX10 version is available for Windows 98 for crying out loud. So now you have a feature that has never been (Windows) OS dependent that suddenly becomes so for "technical reasons," but every day we learn more and more that it was a complete lie. That says to me that it is one of Vista's only selling points. If there really were technical reasons then I could accept that. If it weren't technical reasons and they never said that it was, then I might think differently. Unfortunately, they lied that it was technical reasons when it really wasn't. That says to me that Vista has nothing worth upgrading for except DX10.
Both of those concepts have to be realized together. They've always backported DirectX to their supported systems AND they lied that it was technical reasons they couldn't do it this time. Why are they lying? If they had just come right out and said "DirectX 10 is only on Vista so that we can add another reason to the already long list of worthy upgrades" then I would understand that, but that's not what they did. They came out and gave us the lie "We aren't going to backport DX10 like we've done with all other versions because it's technically not possible." That says to me that they don't have a long list of reasons to upgrade, they have DX10.
That said, even if they did backport it and admit they lied, I still wouldn't buy Vista.
I admit that I wasn't clear on that. In the first paragraph I'm saying that Valve probably doesn't think it's worth it and probably won't for Episode 3 either. In the second paragraph I was just throwing out my wants and wishes without any regard as to whether Valve would think it is worth it.
Even so, it is still a different thing. Adding DX10 capabilities to their engine makes their games slightly prettier for people who can already run it. Adding Mac/Linux support increases their customer base. I know that a lot of people already use Wine/Cedega to get it running on Linux, but I'm sure there are more people who would buy a Valve game just because it runs on Mac/Linux, then there are people who would just because it supports DX10. More specifically, I'm sure there are more people who haven't bought Valve games because they aren't on Mac/Linux than there are people who haven't bought them because they aren't DX10 capable.
You are right in that keeping feature X restricted to an OS does not by itself say there isn't any other reason to upgrade. But when feature X has historically not been restricted to the new OS, then it does start to look like that. Then you have the OS and feature X maker claiming that it is for technical reasons, yet you have the Alky Project that has a version (admittedly alpha) of feature X working on the restricted OS even though they don't have the source code to actually do proper porting, then it really starts to look like the only reason for feature X being restricted is to make the new OS actually worth anything.
Having Vista is only half of it, though. Right under "Windows version" is this
DirectX10 Systems (Vista with DirectX10 GPU) - 9.00% of users
So 20% have Vista, and some odd % have DX10 cards and the intersection of those two groups is 9%. Is it worth it now to create a whole rendering path that is only usable to 9% of your users? From the last survey they did there was only 2.31% of DX10 systems. That was 8 months ago. So if every 8 months DX10 systems goes up 6.5% then maybe it will be worth it for them to make Episode 3 DX10, but even then my guess is for just an episode that would be a waste of time. No, I suspect that Half Life 3 or whatever might be DX10 capable, but I wouldn't expect it for Episode 3.
Having said that, I think they ought to port it to Linux and Mac. They already have their engine running on the PS3 (which means it isn't using DX at all) so it can't be that hard.
This might sound odd, but if DX10 was available on XP, I would be more willing to look into Vista. By keeping DX10 Vista only, they tell me there is nothing in Vista worth upgrading to except DX10, but if it's on XP, then they are saying Vista can stand on its own compared to XP.
Granted, it still wouldn't get me to buy it, but that would remove at least one barrier.
More to the point: does it really matter all that much?
No, it doesn't matter at all. My parents never played video games with me. They just didn't care for it. Parent's should take an interest in what their kids do, not necessarily be interested in it. That is, my parents regulated what I played and how long I played because they had an interest and that interest was my well being. They knew what was appropriate for me both in terms of content and time. That's what's important, not that they are actually playing the games. Sure there was a bonding time missed their, but it's not exactly like I was allowed to play a lot. We always had dinners together as a family, we went on vacations together, spent lots of time together, but when we had our free time, they let us do what we wanted but knew the whats, whens, wheres, and how longs of the situations.
I'm not saying my parents knew everything that was going on. Kids (and I include my siblings and I) can and do get away with things by doing stuff at their friend's house or whatever. But overall, a parent that is concerned with their children's well being like mine were will always have some idea of what is going on, and kids know that and respect that. Kids can tell when parents are looking out for them and when parents are just being controlling.
XNA? Do you honestly think a company like Valve is going to use XNA?
Regardless, it's a moot point as the Orange Box is going to be on the PS3, which means that the engine has already been ported to use something other than DirectX. So at this point it doesn't really matter if DirectX had only Direct3D or was so powerful it could produce a Half-Life 2 type of game with a point-and-click interface.
You make some good arguments and I agree with your post as a whole. But one part stuck out to me (and I've seen it in more posts as well): having a robot to walk your dog. There are many reasons to walk a dog, some of which are beneficial to you such as exercise, getting outside, spending time with a pet (there are known psychological benefits here), etc. Some of those reasons pertain to the dog such as exercise, spending time with its master, get out of the house to go to the bathroom, etc. If you have a robot to walk your dog, there is little point for you to even have a dog. You aren't getting the exercise (though you now have time to do different kinds of it), you aren't spending time with it, you aren't getting outside (at least not with the dog).
I realize that I'm being very general here and that some people have dogs for specific purposes and as such need to maintain that dog by taking it on walks on occasion. For example, guard dogs and seeing eye dogs. However, if you have a robot that could walk the dog, then you could use a robot to be a guard, or as a seeing eye robot. The more I think about it, assuming robots were that capable right now, the only reason to own a dog would be the psychological benefits, but if you aren't willing to walk it, then what is the benefit at all?
It used to be there were several games a year that required rigs that were insane. Now there's maybe 1 or 2.
I haven't noticed that. What I've seen is that usually games will reach a plateau for a while (maybe a plateau with a slight incline) and then suddenly jump forward. For example, Doom 3 and Half Life 2 were both released withing a few months of each other, and Unreal Tournament 2004 was released only a few months before Doom 3 (UT2k4 required enough of a boost over UT2k3 that I included it). But then there wasn't much after that for a while. But this year we have BioShock, Crysis, and UT3, which all go towards upping the requirements quite a bit. Granted that is for all the eye-candy they can offer (which is what a $500 video card is for).
However, there has been a general trend in computing power in the last few years where people aren't upgrading that often. Some attribute it to computers being fast enough to run just about everything. Personally I think it's because we've been with Windows XP for so long, which is an argument for a another time. However, regardless of the reasons why people aren't upgrading that often, game developers are realizing that a lot of their money is coming from people still running DirectX 8 video cards and they had better make their games at least playable to them. Another reason is that the costs of producing a game are soaring, and developers also realize they cannot entirely rely on the hardware-upgraders for sales like they could in ye olden days of 10 years ago. So they let the market grow by allowing people with non-top-of-the-line computers to run their games. It's not a large expansion, but it is a growth nonetheless.
Nevertheless, people willing to put out "insane" amount of money for a good mobo and GPU, are not typically going to be the kind of people that would pay that same amount for the two to be one unit.
people who just run whatever "Install The Internets" package provided by their ISP
Holy crap! Do people really do that? Seriously what ISP needs to install something on your computer in order for it to work? I've always taken the coaxial cable, plugged into my own modem, then taken the cat5 from the modem to my own router and I've never had a problem. Maybe I'm so far removed from people who have no clue, but I've always wondered how they can charge so much for installation when they don't really do anything*.
*I don't use Comcast, but a quick check on their website for my house:
$9.95 for me to self-install
$50 for one of their techs to do it
$150 for one of their techs to hook up a home network
And all these prices are the same whether I already own a modem and/or router. What the crap are they charging for?
the resulting board would be seem to be insanely expensive until you realize that most of the cost is the graphics
There is the problem. If someone were willing to put a lot of money into a motherboard just because of the good graphics card on it, they are most likely the kind of person who is willing to put in a lot of money into a new video card in a year or so. Which means that now their expensive motherboard w/ GPU was a stupid purchase, since they could have started with a regular mobo and separate GPU for the same price or less. Instead they bought an insanely expensive mobo that has an obsolete (to them) GPU after a year but that they can't remove and put in a less powerful system or sell or donate to a friend or family member.
They would be at odds if any of the PS2's competitors (the Xbox and the Gamecube) also had a life-span of the PS2. As it is, since the PS2 is the only console of that generation still selling, then of course it is the most powerful console from that generation that is still around. So when a developer makes a game for a last gen console they pick the PS2 (obviously) but they also have all the experience of it being around for so long that they know the ins and outs.
Flash forward a few years to when developers have 5-6 years of experience developing for the PS3 or the 360. Suppose both are going to have the same life-span as the PS2 (which is probably the case per this article). So now when a developer wants to make a game for a "last-gen" console, they will pick the PS3 (I'm just following the GPs argument here) because while it is more difficult to code for, they now have the requisite experience with the difficulties and can make it that much better than they could on the 360 even thought they have the same amount of experience with it as well.
In all of this, I'm not necessarily agreeing with the GP (though he does have a good argument). I'm just pointing out that there is no contradiction here simply because the PS2 has faced no competition from its generation once the current generation began. Apparently the PS3 will have competition and thus the relative capabilities of the machine does come into play, whereas the relative capabilities of the PS2 did not.
And that's not all. I personally liked confessions 21 and 22, especially in light of each other. #21 essentially says to never buy used off-brand accessories as they are unreliable. #22 then goes on to say to consider buying new off-brand accessories, especially Gamestop branded stuff. These aren't confessions. These were written by Gamestop marketing.
to upgrade it you can spend $70 for more RAM, and $100 for a better graphics card and your looking at a $210 game and when a Wii costs $250 and games cost $50
And then 3-4 years later you have to upgrade your system again to play a different game while the Wii will be supported for around 5-6 years.
This is actually one are where PC games can shine, though. First off, if all you are doing is upgrading your RAM or GPU then you have 100% backwards compatibility. But in 5-6 years a new game for a console will look 5-6 years old(1), whereas a new game for a PC will look new. Also, you talked about one game ending up costing $210 due to upgrades, but those upgrades work for all your other games. I don't have to make an upgrade for the Orange Box, and then Quake Wars, and then Crysis, and then UT3(2). I upgrade for one and I'm good to go. So the extra $170 (I'll use your numbers for simplicity) is now spread out over the number of games you buy, which admittedly is the same for a console. If you only buy a 360 and Halo 3, then that cost you a lot.
So you have to spread out the cost to the usefulness of the system as a whole. Most people still buy a computer in addition to their console because they need it for things which a console does not do. Assuming they buy a cheap Dell (I think ~$400 right now) and a cheap console (either PS2 or Wii) you are already looking at costs that are more than what I spent a year ago ($550) on a computer that plays the Orange Box and Quake Wars just fine (I have not yet tried the Crysis and UT3 demos) at a resolution of 1280x1024 (which is higher than the PS2 and Wii can achieve. If you look at consoles capable of HD then the price becomes even bigger. But I just have to upgrade to a new GPU (maybe $150) and/or a new CPU (maybe $100) and I'm back up to near top of the line. So for less than the cost of a new console I get 100% backwards compatibility and all my old games can look newer than they did before the upgrade. If you buy an 360 or PS3 to play your Xbox or PS2 games (if they work) you don't get updated graphics, only better fps.
Seriously, the big difference between consoles and PCs is the number of people who can play on a given system, the ease of setup, and the types of games. How you play the games (keyboard and mouse or sitting on the couch) is a moot point as you can hook up keyboards and mice to the new consoles (at least the PS3, I'm not sure about the others or even how well it is supported) and you can always play a PC game on the couch with either a wireless keyboard/mouse combo or by plugging in a controller. So if you want to know which to buy, you just determine which type of games you like(RTS or fighting game), how you like to play (buddy sharing screen space or not), etc. But cost has nothing to do with it.
1) I realize that developers do learn the platforms as time goes by. However, tweaks to make something run faster is not the same as much faster GPU, especially when the time frame is 5-6 years.
2) I mention these games mostly because they are currently the most hardware taxing games, even if two of them are only demos right now.
the childhood memories I had of looking at the craters in clear view with a 100x telescope could never be experienced by the next couple generations
Once we have the ability to economically mine the moon, future generations will be having childhood memories of going to space, not just looking at it with a telescope.
Slashdot Mirror
When you watch a movie, that is usually all you are doing (and if not, please don't watch it with me). When you play a game, that is usually all you are doing. However, music is typically background stuff. So you might have played that song 20x, but did you play it 20x doing nothing but pondering its beats and rhythms, mulling over the meaning of the message? Probably not. Most likely it just made your drive to the store not so quiet, or it blocked the noise of your computer while you surfed the web. Perhaps it enhanced the mode during your dinner. As an example, iTunes says that I've listened to Still Alive (from Portal) over 200 times, but I was really paying attention to the code I was writing. Unless at a concert, music is rarely on the center stage of what you are doing.
But even that is missing the underlying point. Time is a really lousy measure of enjoyment. That's saying that any 2 hour movie is just as enjoyable as any other 2 hour movie. If I listen to music for three hours, is that exactly as enjoyable as three hours of a Lord of the Rings movie? Is that as enjoyable as playing through Portal? Maybe, depends on what you find enjoyable. But that is a big dependency.
But even that is missing the underlying point. You pay the amount that both you and the seller agree to. If the seller is smart, he takes into consideration how much of the market is willing to pay what amount and maximizes his profits. If the buyer is smart, he considers how much the seller is selling it and how much it is worth it to him. The music industry in general might not be selling at maximum customers, or even maximum profit, but they've picked a price. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
- 2AM
- Not using it
Differences:- physical thing
- that takes wear and tear
- The car cannot be shared (if you have it, it is unavailable for the 2AM emergency trip to the ER)
- Unless the car is on the street, you have to cross property lines
- The car (presumably) isn't advertising itself
- The car is personal property
- The connection is access to the public Internet
- The car is NOT access to the public roads
A more apt analogy would be playing music. You could lock your music down so that only you hear it (headphones or turn it down) but if you are playing it loud enough for it to cross your property line into mine or into public spaces and I sit and listen to it then what harm is done. However, even that analogy sucks because sound is nearly unlimited bandwidth whereas Internet access usually is not. Also, the ISP could charge data rates. In that case I see a problem.Ultimately this is a separate and new thing. There is no good analogy and neither does there need to be one. Most of us here are able to think about and understand concepts without needing analogies, no matter how good or crappy they are.
So here is the issue. If you wanted, you could very easily lock your wireless access point down such that no one could use it (or at least not trivially). Because of that, if I happen upon an access point that is wide open, then I will take it to mean you meant for it to be open. Now comes the really stupid analogies: "But what if you come across an unlocked car?" Here are the problems with that.
The car is private property. Sure, the hardware providing access to the Internet is private property, but I'm not taking the hardware. I'm not touching the hardware. I don't even need to see it, know where it is, or even what it is. But we're not talking about the hardware. Internet access is quite different from a physical car. I'm using the atmosphere to send electromagnetic waves. The atmosphere is public. The electromagnetic waves don't interfere (as per the FCC in the US anyway). Me being there doesn't harm, hinder or hamper you or any one else in any way shape or form.
The car is used often. That might sound silly, so let me explain. You get into and out of a car a lot. Every time requires you to lock or unlock it. Sometimes you're only going to be a minute, so you don't bother locking it, sometimes you know the area you are in and don't bother locking it, etc. Access points aren't like that. You make a decision to lock or not, and that's it. You are done. If car's were like access points, then personally, I would decide to lock it as soon as I bought it and be able to get in and out without ever having to unlock it. In fact, that's a great idea. Since everyone likes to compare open access points to a car, let's compare a car to an open access point.
If my car were like my router, I would lock it once I got home and never have to unlock it again even though I'm getting in and out of it all the time. When my friends come over, we can all take the car to different places at the same time. In fact, we could also all have the radio dialed to a different station at the same time. Now does that tired unlocked car analogy sound sufficiently stupid to you?
Ah here is the crux of the matter. They can back port it, there is no doubt about it. They don't want to and that is their decision. They want to use it as a selling point for Vista, and that is fine. No problems so far. They said they couldn't for technical reasons. DING DING DING. We have a winner. No, they don't want to do it because it won't be a selling point for Vista. Like I said, that's fine. It's ultimately their software and their decision. They don't have to do it if they don't want to. But I expect people (and companies are run by people) to be honest. They lied. Why did they lie about it? What is it about Vista that is so crappy that they have to lie? Why can't they just tell us the truth? Of course they are using DX10 to sell Vista. Whatever, so what, big deal, no problem. But they have to go and lie about the reasons for using it to sell Vista. Now we have a problem.
/. just to post to you. I was just looking through the thread and thought that this post here was getting away from the "logic" and getting closer to what I originally was talking about.
The post you replied to mentioned Halo 2. That was obviously a Vista only product to help sell Vista. Did you see how upset people got about that? Hardly at all. They even had to work to make it Vista only. The game was on the Xbox originally, which had DX8 I believe. They had to work to make it DX10 instead of doing the easy port. Did they lie about it and say it could only be DX10 for technical reasons? No, they just did and people got over it and saw it as a stupid gimmick, but they all moved on. But that they lied about DX10 is the problem. It's trust here that is at the core of the issue.
Just so you know, I'm not following you around on
Would it have been more clear if I had used the word "essentially" in my original post. I'm talking about gut reactions. If you have to lie to make something sound good, then my gut reaction is to say that what you are lying about is complete crap. They lied about DX10 with regards to Vista and XP, so my gut reaction is that Vista is crap and needs DX10 in order to sell. If I were only trying to use pure Aristotelian logic then no, it makes no sense for one feature to suggest that there are no other features. However, that was not my point. I was perhaps unclear on that. I'm talking about gut reactions and feelings.
MS could have gone about this in all sorts of ways. They could have said they weren't back porting DX10 to XP for all sorts of reasons. Hell, they could have even told the truth. Maybe that might get some people upset, but lying gets even more people upset. If they had said it would take a massive effort to get it on XP, an effort they felt better spent on making Vista all the better, they could have even spun it to be a good thing. Instead they pissed people off by not back porting it, then made it worse by lying about it. There was a path that was honest and forthright and could have been made to sound good (though it still would have made some mad), but instead they chose a path that was deceitful and in the process made a lot more people both mad and untrusting of them. Again, when you lie about a product, no one can logically say that there is necessarily anything wrong about it, but common sense and history and gut reactions, etc, etc, etc should be ringing bells that there is a reason for the lie and most likely it's because that something, in reality, sucks.
So ignore the logic. Using precise logic you can't possibly deduce the quality of Vista based on the DX10 on XP issue. That is not what I'm talking about though. MS has lost face and trust by lying about this issue. Thus, I can't trust them about the quality of Vista. Now if that reverse that decision and admit they were lying, they save some face. However, I already said that would only remove one barrier from me buying Vista. They have a lot of truth telling to do before I start believing MS.
Not exactly what you were looking for, but relevant all the same. My compliments to hardburn for the link.
It's interesting that you mention this. When Steam completed the survey for me last night Vista use percentage was closer to 18%, but now it is at 15.35% and dropping.
I'm not saying we could make some interesting conjectures about those stats. I'm just agreeing with you that we can't make any sense of any stats until things have stabilized a bit (probably at least a week).
Actually, the Xbox360 uses an advanced version of DX 9, not 10. However, there still is no technical reason why it can't be ported to XP.
Reports all over the internet for all sorts of games suggest that DX10 is terrible on performance and not worth it for the slight upgrade in graphics. This is not a Crysis-only thing.
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying here. Vista users can install DX10, but they need a DX10 capable card in order to use any of its features. Vista plus an Nvidia 7900 or ATI x1950 won't do it. You need Vista plus a DX10 capable GPU in order to have DX10.
So are you saying that if Valve developed for DX10 that all of the Vista user base would rush out to buy a $250+ graphics card? Eventually I suppose that would be the case. But that's the whole issue. Eventually (big assumption here) Vista's installed base will look like XP currently, but right now it doesn't.
So Valve is saying that there is a lot of effort into putting in a DX10 path into their code, but only 9% of people right now could use it, and even those people aren't going to see a large improvement in the graphics. This is partly due to DX10 not being a large improvement and especially true since Valve has already made those improvements on DX9 cards.
The reason they won't backport DX10 is to make it an incentive to buy Vista, of this there is no doubt. However, MS has always backported new versions of DX to their previous releases. The latest nonDX10 version is available for Windows 98 for crying out loud. So now you have a feature that has never been (Windows) OS dependent that suddenly becomes so for "technical reasons," but every day we learn more and more that it was a complete lie. That says to me that it is one of Vista's only selling points. If there really were technical reasons then I could accept that. If it weren't technical reasons and they never said that it was, then I might think differently. Unfortunately, they lied that it was technical reasons when it really wasn't. That says to me that Vista has nothing worth upgrading for except DX10.
Both of those concepts have to be realized together. They've always backported DirectX to their supported systems AND they lied that it was technical reasons they couldn't do it this time. Why are they lying? If they had just come right out and said "DirectX 10 is only on Vista so that we can add another reason to the already long list of worthy upgrades" then I would understand that, but that's not what they did. They came out and gave us the lie "We aren't going to backport DX10 like we've done with all other versions because it's technically not possible." That says to me that they don't have a long list of reasons to upgrade, they have DX10.
That said, even if they did backport it and admit they lied, I still wouldn't buy Vista.
I admit that I wasn't clear on that. In the first paragraph I'm saying that Valve probably doesn't think it's worth it and probably won't for Episode 3 either. In the second paragraph I was just throwing out my wants and wishes without any regard as to whether Valve would think it is worth it.
Even so, it is still a different thing. Adding DX10 capabilities to their engine makes their games slightly prettier for people who can already run it. Adding Mac/Linux support increases their customer base. I know that a lot of people already use Wine/Cedega to get it running on Linux, but I'm sure there are more people who would buy a Valve game just because it runs on Mac/Linux, then there are people who would just because it supports DX10. More specifically, I'm sure there are more people who haven't bought Valve games because they aren't on Mac/Linux than there are people who haven't bought them because they aren't DX10 capable.
You are right in that keeping feature X restricted to an OS does not by itself say there isn't any other reason to upgrade. But when feature X has historically not been restricted to the new OS, then it does start to look like that. Then you have the OS and feature X maker claiming that it is for technical reasons, yet you have the Alky Project that has a version (admittedly alpha) of feature X working on the restricted OS even though they don't have the source code to actually do proper porting, then it really starts to look like the only reason for feature X being restricted is to make the new OS actually worth anything.
- DirectX10 Systems (Vista with DirectX10 GPU) - 9.00% of users
So 20% have Vista, and some odd % have DX10 cards and the intersection of those two groups is 9%. Is it worth it now to create a whole rendering path that is only usable to 9% of your users? From the last survey they did there was only 2.31% of DX10 systems. That was 8 months ago. So if every 8 months DX10 systems goes up 6.5% then maybe it will be worth it for them to make Episode 3 DX10, but even then my guess is for just an episode that would be a waste of time. No, I suspect that Half Life 3 or whatever might be DX10 capable, but I wouldn't expect it for Episode 3.Having said that, I think they ought to port it to Linux and Mac. They already have their engine running on the PS3 (which means it isn't using DX at all) so it can't be that hard.
This might sound odd, but if DX10 was available on XP, I would be more willing to look into Vista. By keeping DX10 Vista only, they tell me there is nothing in Vista worth upgrading to except DX10, but if it's on XP, then they are saying Vista can stand on its own compared to XP.
Granted, it still wouldn't get me to buy it, but that would remove at least one barrier.
I'm not saying my parents knew everything that was going on. Kids (and I include my siblings and I) can and do get away with things by doing stuff at their friend's house or whatever. But overall, a parent that is concerned with their children's well being like mine were will always have some idea of what is going on, and kids know that and respect that. Kids can tell when parents are looking out for them and when parents are just being controlling.
XNA? Do you honestly think a company like Valve is going to use XNA?
Regardless, it's a moot point as the Orange Box is going to be on the PS3, which means that the engine has already been ported to use something other than DirectX. So at this point it doesn't really matter if DirectX had only Direct3D or was so powerful it could produce a Half-Life 2 type of game with a point-and-click interface.
You make some good arguments and I agree with your post as a whole. But one part stuck out to me (and I've seen it in more posts as well): having a robot to walk your dog. There are many reasons to walk a dog, some of which are beneficial to you such as exercise, getting outside, spending time with a pet (there are known psychological benefits here), etc. Some of those reasons pertain to the dog such as exercise, spending time with its master, get out of the house to go to the bathroom, etc. If you have a robot to walk your dog, there is little point for you to even have a dog. You aren't getting the exercise (though you now have time to do different kinds of it), you aren't spending time with it, you aren't getting outside (at least not with the dog).
I realize that I'm being very general here and that some people have dogs for specific purposes and as such need to maintain that dog by taking it on walks on occasion. For example, guard dogs and seeing eye dogs. However, if you have a robot that could walk the dog, then you could use a robot to be a guard, or as a seeing eye robot. The more I think about it, assuming robots were that capable right now, the only reason to own a dog would be the psychological benefits, but if you aren't willing to walk it, then what is the benefit at all?
However, there has been a general trend in computing power in the last few years where people aren't upgrading that often. Some attribute it to computers being fast enough to run just about everything. Personally I think it's because we've been with Windows XP for so long, which is an argument for a another time. However, regardless of the reasons why people aren't upgrading that often, game developers are realizing that a lot of their money is coming from people still running DirectX 8 video cards and they had better make their games at least playable to them. Another reason is that the costs of producing a game are soaring, and developers also realize they cannot entirely rely on the hardware-upgraders for sales like they could in ye olden days of 10 years ago. So they let the market grow by allowing people with non-top-of-the-line computers to run their games. It's not a large expansion, but it is a growth nonetheless.
Nevertheless, people willing to put out "insane" amount of money for a good mobo and GPU, are not typically going to be the kind of people that would pay that same amount for the two to be one unit.
*I don't use Comcast, but a quick check on their website for my house:
- $9.95 for me to self-install
- $50 for one of their techs to do it
- $150 for one of their techs to hook up a home network
And all these prices are the same whether I already own a modem and/or router. What the crap are they charging for?They would be at odds if any of the PS2's competitors (the Xbox and the Gamecube) also had a life-span of the PS2. As it is, since the PS2 is the only console of that generation still selling, then of course it is the most powerful console from that generation that is still around. So when a developer makes a game for a last gen console they pick the PS2 (obviously) but they also have all the experience of it being around for so long that they know the ins and outs.
Flash forward a few years to when developers have 5-6 years of experience developing for the PS3 or the 360. Suppose both are going to have the same life-span as the PS2 (which is probably the case per this article). So now when a developer wants to make a game for a "last-gen" console, they will pick the PS3 (I'm just following the GPs argument here) because while it is more difficult to code for, they now have the requisite experience with the difficulties and can make it that much better than they could on the 360 even thought they have the same amount of experience with it as well.
In all of this, I'm not necessarily agreeing with the GP (though he does have a good argument). I'm just pointing out that there is no contradiction here simply because the PS2 has faced no competition from its generation once the current generation began. Apparently the PS3 will have competition and thus the relative capabilities of the machine does come into play, whereas the relative capabilities of the PS2 did not.
And that's not all. I personally liked confessions 21 and 22, especially in light of each other. #21 essentially says to never buy used off-brand accessories as they are unreliable. #22 then goes on to say to consider buying new off-brand accessories, especially Gamestop branded stuff. These aren't confessions. These were written by Gamestop marketing.
So you have to spread out the cost to the usefulness of the system as a whole. Most people still buy a computer in addition to their console because they need it for things which a console does not do. Assuming they buy a cheap Dell (I think ~$400 right now) and a cheap console (either PS2 or Wii) you are already looking at costs that are more than what I spent a year ago ($550) on a computer that plays the Orange Box and Quake Wars just fine (I have not yet tried the Crysis and UT3 demos) at a resolution of 1280x1024 (which is higher than the PS2 and Wii can achieve. If you look at consoles capable of HD then the price becomes even bigger. But I just have to upgrade to a new GPU (maybe $150) and/or a new CPU (maybe $100) and I'm back up to near top of the line. So for less than the cost of a new console I get 100% backwards compatibility and all my old games can look newer than they did before the upgrade. If you buy an 360 or PS3 to play your Xbox or PS2 games (if they work) you don't get updated graphics, only better fps.
Seriously, the big difference between consoles and PCs is the number of people who can play on a given system, the ease of setup, and the types of games. How you play the games (keyboard and mouse or sitting on the couch) is a moot point as you can hook up keyboards and mice to the new consoles (at least the PS3, I'm not sure about the others or even how well it is supported) and you can always play a PC game on the couch with either a wireless keyboard/mouse combo or by plugging in a controller. So if you want to know which to buy, you just determine which type of games you like(RTS or fighting game), how you like to play (buddy sharing screen space or not), etc. But cost has nothing to do with it.
1) I realize that developers do learn the platforms as time goes by. However, tweaks to make something run faster is not the same as much faster GPU, especially when the time frame is 5-6 years.
2) I mention these games mostly because they are currently the most hardware taxing games, even if two of them are only demos right now.