Re:Reusable paper good idea but only in volume
on
Self-Recycling Paper
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· Score: 1
dude, you have any idea how much an illuminated manuscript on the bowel movements of St. Cuthbert would be worth? "Priceless" could describe the first historiated initial, let alone the rest of it.
Besides, the Archimedes manuscript was redone in Constantinople, where they couldn't give a rat's ass about St. Cuthbert.
Oh yeah, and all you do is scrape the manuscript. The palimpsest ink stays deeper in -- and why? Because it's not paper, but parchment.
Come to think of it, this whole post strikes me as a troll, down to the specious Latinity of the signature.
hey, 15 years ago, I was given the metrics that the average buyer played a game for 5 hours.
Yeah, many of us will play a 70+ hour game. But might it be more memorable if it were shorter? I mean, there's lots of crappy dialogue and "filler" out there. Would I have enjoyed GTA3:Vice City just as much if they left half of it out? By the end, I knew the city inside-out, twice....
It's the Harry Potter vs. Lord of the Rings dilemma: do make it absolutely clear how you spend you money, or do you leave the world a little fuzzy in the edges? Tolkien had laid several layers of mythology/backstory, which cheerfully got nodded at in the movies: by just, for example, leaving statues of the kings, without explanation, we get the feeling the screen (and the world) is bigger than what we see.
With Harry Potter, we get the feeling we're on the veranda of a big South American plantation house, overlooking the pampas. But when we turn around, there's no house.
Yeah, well, for one, consolidation is not always the solution. Take GM's Saturn, for one. They created an entirely new division, with a different philosophy and entirely separate revenue stream. Then, to "streamline things", they integrated it. Killed off sales, collateral hit another division (Oldsmobile), and the result is "yet another GM car"; oh yeah, and they're in serious financial trouble now. (Though that I just blame on corporate stupidity for riding the SUV streetcar all the way to the end of the line.)
As far as our buddy Brad goes -- don't sweat it. The fact this memo got leaked has all but sealed his fate.
Disclosure: my free mail site is Yahoo Mail, and has been for over a decade. I average about one piece of real mail every two weeks, 200 pieces of spam a day in my junk box, and 75/day in my inbox. And I know I'm lucky.
Sure, but what good is it gonna do? at best it'll be a complex communication device. We've already seen the trouble cellphones give to insurrectionists in Paris. You want to give the Third World WHAT? And you think it "might do some good"? Dude, _we_ need _their_ resources to make laptops so cheap. So the next time we get an insurrection down there, they'll have built a sophisticated C3I network and it'll take more than a planeload of Wild Geese to get the copper we need!
Much better is the idea you already suggested: One Playstation Per Child. The Revolution Will be Televised, but nobody watches CNN if they've got Rrrrridge Racer!
Great idea on paper. It boils down to personnel though. You're talking about fusing development teams with experience. Will they work together well? Or will the elevator assets go work for someone else, leaving the understudies to bicker about with an ignoramus boss unable to figure out which engineers are clever and which are just suckups?
I'm not saying it won't work; I'm saying that fusing development teams with expertise is a lot different than fusing different components onto the same board. And that, in turn, is a lot different than a multi-option fuze.
Wikipedia should never be cited, not because of some academic mumbo-jumbo like "hasn't been through a peer-reviewed process". In my field, most of the stuff I cite hasn't been through peer-review -- it's just too expensive, and suited only to the lucrative sciences (like those where they give a damn about Phosphatidylmyo-inositol mannosides). Nor should the "doesn't contain original research" rule be used -- it's perfectly fine to cite a source that's a rehash of stuff for background information. Encyclopedia articles sometimes have great bibliographies -- why not refer to them?
But the basic problem with Wikipedia is also its strength: it's mutable. There's no static text you can refer to. The whole article can change from when you cite it to when someone reads it.
Not to mention mechanical issues. Not everyone has a decent mouse. In fact, most mice I have found people using are at best mediocre for control. I often find myself clicking on the wrong item already. I go to this site, start to read something, and all of a sudden it jumps to some entirely different section, and I have no way to get back. Forget it.
Adapting the interface for more practical apppliations? Hey, didn't I see you cheering on the Wii the other day?
If it is "all about the games", what kind of effect is this going to have on those developers working towards "Launch Window" games? Will the effect be minimal, because those who actually buy the system have all the disposable income imaginable to buy every single game out there? Or are we looking at marketing budgets going to the toilet because nobody has the console anyway? 80,000 on release day in Japan, and they expect how many by the end of the first month? Could it be possible that the Xbox360 will beat the PS3 in (holding infinitesimally small portions of the) Japanese market share, simply because Sony can't build them fast enough?
So the PS3 is gonna blow this holiday season too, and no doubt it's due to the whole Blue-Ray thing.
There's nothing in there about price, but plenty about their target region: India (and by extension, you can imagine China, SE Asia, and parts of Africa in there too). So you can get two things out of it:
A) It will be cheap. B) It will not be sold to us rich Westerners.
Of course, it is just what many folks are looking for.
Yeah, it's amazing how most of the "Big business" distributors screw this up, yet how important it is.
Actually, it's not amazing at all. The "indies" have a strong advantage here, almost to the point of being a market inefficiency, because of the different business models: With a "Big House" developer or distributor, marketing is separate from development. A "demo" or "Beta Demo" is a marketing requirement on development. If developers are trying to hold a timeline, that inevitably means that they won't always be receptive to putting out a free demo. On the other hand, for an "indie game", the marketing budget is pretty darn small. The demo gets into the hands of a lot of potential players, pretty fast. Even someone who won't be a customer, whether because they don't have access to the cash, or because they're outright pirates, can at least be an unpaid "advertiser" for the product.
But demos are two-sided. A really, really crappy demo will scare people away from the product. Those who do this for commercial reasons often release crappy product. You don't want a demo of that. And then there's the threats-by-committee. What if you release a game with a major online component, and the "free area" becomes more successful than the "pay area"?
Exactly my point. Dell recalled their batteries, which happened to be manufactured by Sony. There's one mention of Sony, and it's neutral. That gives the press the ammo they need to slather the blame all over Sony. The Apple PR would have been more effective without the "While we are angry with Microsoft..." dig.
The difference is that Dell's press releases don't mention Sony batteries, but _their_ batteries, which Sony happened to manufacture. Ford sold trucks with Goodyear-branded tires, and recalled same.
I repeat, for those fanboys who are hard of hearing: it's the job of the professional media trolls to place the blame. Apple coulda scored tons by just profusely apologizing for the Windows virus getting into their distribution system. There are plenty of press hacks who will "go the extra mile" and explain why Windows sucks. This has nothing to do with fanboys and everything to do with business sense. Sorry, Apple screwed up. Don't cry too much, or your tears might crack your G4 cube.
The buck stops with the label on the cover. Sorry, whoever you contract to do stuff with is your business; when you're selling something with your trademark on it, any problems are between YOU and the CUSTOMER. In Apple's case, their problems are between APPLE and the CUSTOMER. Blaming third-parties, whether those contracted to, or those completely uninvolved (Microsoft), is just unprofessional. I know Apple was itching to score points at an easy target like Microsoft, but guys: this is a screwup, APPLE's name is on the front, not whatever podunk assembly in the Hunan Province, and not Microsoft. Even a "minor" attack like, "Bad Microsoft, Worse Us" is out of place in PR copy. Leave that bit of trollwork to professionals, like Dvorak.
Heh. You know, huge sci-fi films don't always make bank, and well, video game titles may give you success, but brand awareness in the vid field does not directly translate into box-office sales. Besides, Microsoft from the start has tried to "play" Hollywood with their Halo title. So maybe this is Hollywood's way of saying "You don't play a player".
And what kinda spoiled rich kid gets a $200M budget as his first real job? And do you really think he would do a good job? I mean, look at the president of the US!
getting agents to do those things in three-d space to the level of refinement of a cutscene takes a lot of work.
Of course:
'It's not just about graphics,' he said. 'It's about 7.1 audio, it's about speech, it's about having up to 1080p movies built into the game; it's high-res textures, it's animation, it's everything that goes into making a very rich and varied next-gen experience. Partly it's visual, partly it's sound, and partially it'll be down to gameplay benefits as well - more levels, more detail, richer experiences.'"
:translation: 'It's not just about graphics, it's about audio as well.'
Actually, Burger King had three stars for several decades. It was only when the story leaked that Subservient Chicken was taking bribes in exchange for favorable selection of Idaho spuds that the King lost his star. Since then, he's been sneaking around, trying to catch the leaker who flame-broiled his glory.
Actually, that was my point. Now that Ebay owns skype, and the FCC apparently mandates VoIP backdoors, who knows what's going on with Skype encryption? In any case, with skype, the weak point doesn't even have to be the encryption; the user password delivers "the keys to the kingdom" with no oversight. Skype delivers the private key based on a relatively unsecure password, and there's no way to tell how many clients are connected under the same username, or even if someone tried a brute-force attack on a password. So even if they establish the keys well (which, seeing the obvious security holes, is questionable), and even if they haven't divulged to DHS's unquestionably impenetrable servers, and even if there are no backdoors, it's still not hard to get.
Thanks for the info about zfone, that is useful and good news, and to me, far more interesting than TFA.
Article translation: SKYPE: OMG! A supernode! you gotta be kidding me! You mean if I turn it on, it might use more bandwidth than I imagined? And if you use it to make phone calls, and lose your password, you probably won't get your money back. Gizmo: Well, at least it uses SIP. Full Open Source SIP stuff: Now this is the way to go. Too bad there's not much out there anybody else uses.
Okay, it's Mad Penguin, but who exactly are we preaching to?
Supernodes. Yeah, skype does that, and it can be a pita. If skype is running more than 4 contacts, you've been elected. If you don't like it, shut it down. If you can't monitor your network activity, and are running Linux, what kinda geek are you?
Terrible news if you lose your skype password, you might lose up to 25 bucks! If you were using an open-source alternative, you wouldn't have this problem, because you wouldn't be making or receiving PSTN calls.
The #1 reason why I use Skype over SIP: It's encrypted. At least that's what they tell me. Give me a solution that's F/OSS and uses point-to-point encryption, and I will switch to the superior product. #1 reason why others use Skype: it just works: those supernodes do their job and it blows through most obstacles those idiots in IT try to put in the way. Turn it on, it connects and it works.
Another interesting Skype weakness: A second client can be connected to skype under the same account, and will receive a copy of all correspondence without the other client knowing about it.
Hold fire suppression systems are not that I know mandatory, and if they were, it is questionable whether they'd be effective on a Li-Ion fire. There's a discussion about just this stuff going on at the NTSB right now, since laptop batteries are strongly suspected in a recent hull-loss.
From the July 12-13 hearing about the UPS DC-8 that burned right after landing back in February. They found plenty of laptop batteries in the hold, most of them crisped. Cause has not been assigned yet, but
2. Design, Testing, and Failure Modes of Lithium Batteries.
* Testimony about lithium batteries will include discussions of their benefits and their hazards, as well as their safety features and failure histories.
3. Operations and Regulations concerning Lithium Batteries.
* Discussion under this topic will focus on the requirements involving air transportation of lithium batteries--including differences in these requirements between passenger and cargo aircraft--and ways in which the hazards associated with lithium batteries can be minimized and finally,
4. Aircraft Fire Detection and Suppression Systems and Regulations
* The Safety Board has issued recommendations in the past for incorporation of detection and suppression systems on commercial aircraft. Discussion under this topic will include a review of technology and regulations of these systems, difficulties and challenges that these systems may bring, and differences in these areas as they pertain to both passenger and cargo aircraft.
At that meeting, they noted a case in December, in Chicago:
Several lithium battery incidents have occurred in recent years, including a lithium-ion battery fire that occurred less than two months ago on an airplane in Chicago. Flight attendants used extinguishers on an overhead bag that was smoking. The bag was removed from the airplane and placed on the ramp, where it then caught fire. The fire apparently started from a spare laptop battery being carried in the bag.
In these cases, the batteries were not on, nor even in computers. The things are dangerous.
First, Fan-hype can be bad, really bad. Fanatics don't always share the same interests as the mainstream, and the things they find really, really cool may not be the same as the general public.
Also, developers do not exactly have control over what their fans say. Consider some of the stuff I've seen:
A) Fans for Team Fortress 2 posting on another in-development game forum how TF2 is gonna be far better than the other game, and getting into a flamefest. All those posts did was remind everyone that only male adolescents should be playing Team Fortress. B) In a liver interview, PR guy is asked a question about a highly technical feature on a product in beta. PR Guy says "I don't know, I'd have to ask". Boards explode with "OMG Feature X isn't there!"
C) Developer makes the mistake of sharing his "Vision" of the game. Fans translate the vision into real, technical details.
D) Fans convincing themselves and others that obvious problems in trailers, videos, screenshots, soundfiles or whatnot are because "the product is still in beta", and convince themselves and everyone else that "it will be fixed by release".
THe upshot: fans and reputation don't tell you a whole lot. Managing their hype is practically impossible. But there's a lot that cna be done to prevent hype from running away, and it boils down to a few simple rules:
A) Talk about what is in the game B) Don't ever discuss features that are still in development. C) discuss the game experience in as concrete details as possible. Don't paint pictures of things that just aren't gonna work out.
Yeah, I dunno. developers be damned. > 4 gigs of content is expensive. Most of that is gonna be Full motion video and stuff. I don't see a problem with releasing a hybrid disc, with the useless junk on the HD part, and offering promo downloads and what have you. Run that for a couple years, then towards the end of the cycle, "forget" about the DVD-only boxes. It works for Apple; it'll work for Microsoft.
Yeah, but the darn thing rings so hollow it's ludicrous.
I mean, come on, they throw questions like:
Where's the innovation? Xbox and Nintendo are trying new things and the PS3 seems like "Just another PlayStation."
[BURNS VOICE]A tough question, but a fair one[/BURNS VOICE]
come on, not even the most slackjawed drooling Xbox360 fanboi thinks that the PS3 is "just another playstation". It has impressive hardware in there -- that's one of the major points of attack for its critics. Why claim otherwise?
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dude, you have any idea how much an illuminated manuscript on the bowel movements of St. Cuthbert would be worth? "Priceless" could describe the first historiated initial, let alone the rest of it.
Besides, the Archimedes manuscript was redone in Constantinople, where they couldn't give a rat's ass about St. Cuthbert.
Oh yeah, and all you do is scrape the manuscript. The palimpsest ink stays deeper in -- and why? Because it's not paper, but parchment.
Come to think of it, this whole post strikes me as a troll, down to the specious Latinity of the signature.
...It's working in a different direction.
hey, 15 years ago, I was given the metrics that the average buyer played a game for 5 hours. Yeah, many of us will play a 70+ hour game. But might it be more memorable if it were shorter? I mean, there's lots of crappy dialogue and "filler" out there. Would I have enjoyed GTA3:Vice City just as much if they left half of it out? By the end, I knew the city inside-out, twice....
It's the Harry Potter vs. Lord of the Rings dilemma: do make it absolutely clear how you spend you money, or do you leave the world a little fuzzy in the edges? Tolkien had laid several layers of mythology/backstory, which cheerfully got nodded at in the movies: by just, for example, leaving statues of the kings, without explanation, we get the feeling the screen (and the world) is bigger than what we see.
With Harry Potter, we get the feeling we're on the veranda of a big South American plantation house, overlooking the pampas. But when we turn around, there's no house.
Or was that Borges?
Yeah, well, for one, consolidation is not always the solution. Take GM's Saturn, for one. They created an entirely new division, with a different philosophy and entirely separate revenue stream. Then, to "streamline things", they integrated it. Killed off sales, collateral hit another division (Oldsmobile), and the result is "yet another GM car"; oh yeah, and they're in serious financial trouble now. (Though that I just blame on corporate stupidity for riding the SUV streetcar all the way to the end of the line.)
As far as our buddy Brad goes -- don't sweat it. The fact this memo got leaked has all but sealed his fate.
Disclosure: my free mail site is Yahoo Mail, and has been for over a decade. I average about one piece of real mail every two weeks, 200 pieces of spam a day in my junk box, and 75/day in my inbox. And I know I'm lucky.
Sure, but what good is it gonna do? at best it'll be a complex communication device. We've already seen the trouble cellphones give to insurrectionists in Paris. You want to give the Third World WHAT? And you think it "might do some good"? Dude, _we_ need _their_ resources to make laptops so cheap. So the next time we get an insurrection down there, they'll have built a sophisticated C3I network and it'll take more than a planeload of Wild Geese to get the copper we need!
Much better is the idea you already suggested: One Playstation Per Child. The Revolution Will be Televised, but nobody watches CNN if they've got Rrrrridge Racer!
Great idea on paper. It boils down to personnel though. You're talking about fusing development teams with experience. Will they work together well? Or will the elevator assets go work for someone else, leaving the understudies to bicker about with an ignoramus boss unable to figure out which engineers are clever and which are just suckups?
I'm not saying it won't work; I'm saying that fusing development teams with expertise is a lot different than fusing different components onto the same board. And that, in turn, is a lot different than a multi-option fuze.
Wikipedia should never be cited, not because of some academic mumbo-jumbo like "hasn't been through a peer-reviewed process". In my field, most of the stuff I cite hasn't been through peer-review -- it's just too expensive, and suited only to the lucrative sciences (like those where they give a damn about Phosphatidylmyo-inositol mannosides).
Nor should the "doesn't contain original research" rule be used -- it's perfectly fine to cite a source that's a rehash of stuff for background information. Encyclopedia articles sometimes have great bibliographies -- why not refer to them?
But the basic problem with Wikipedia is also its strength: it's mutable. There's no static text you can refer to. The whole article can change from when you cite it to when someone reads it.
Oh yeah, and there's a lot of crap out there.
Bah? No Military Madness/Nectaris? Screw it Nintendo, you just lost yourself a customer!
wha?
You JUST LOST YOURSELF A CUSTOMER!
Not to mention mechanical issues. Not everyone has a decent mouse. In fact, most mice I have found people using are at best mediocre for control. I often find myself clicking on the wrong item already. I go to this site, start to read something, and all of a sudden it jumps to some entirely different section, and I have no way to get back. Forget it.
Adapting the interface for more practical apppliations? Hey, didn't I see you cheering on the Wii the other day?
If it is "all about the games", what kind of effect is this going to have on those developers working towards "Launch Window" games? Will the effect be minimal, because those who actually buy the system have all the disposable income imaginable to buy every single game out there? Or are we looking at marketing budgets going to the toilet because nobody has the console anyway? 80,000 on release day in Japan, and they expect how many by the end of the first month? Could it be possible that the Xbox360 will beat the PS3 in (holding infinitesimally small portions of the) Japanese market share, simply because Sony can't build them fast enough?
So the PS3 is gonna blow this holiday season too, and no doubt it's due to the whole Blue-Ray thing.
There's nothing in there about price, but plenty about their target region: India (and by extension, you can imagine China, SE Asia, and parts of Africa in there too). So you can get two things out of it:
A) It will be cheap.
B) It will not be sold to us rich Westerners.
Of course, it is just what many folks are looking for.
Yeah, it's amazing how most of the "Big business" distributors screw this up, yet how important it is.
Actually, it's not amazing at all. The "indies" have a strong advantage here, almost to the point of being a market inefficiency, because of the different business models:
With a "Big House" developer or distributor, marketing is separate from development. A "demo" or "Beta Demo" is a marketing requirement on development. If developers are trying to hold a timeline, that inevitably means that they won't always be receptive to putting out a free demo.
On the other hand, for an "indie game", the marketing budget is pretty darn small. The demo gets into the hands of a lot of potential players, pretty fast. Even someone who won't be a customer, whether because they don't have access to the cash, or because they're outright pirates, can at least be an unpaid "advertiser" for the product.
But demos are two-sided. A really, really crappy demo will scare people away from the product. Those who do this for commercial reasons often release crappy product. You don't want a demo of that. And then there's the threats-by-committee. What if you release a game with a major online component, and the "free area" becomes more successful than the "pay area"?
Exactly my point. Dell recalled their batteries, which happened to be manufactured by Sony. There's one mention of Sony, and it's neutral. That gives the press the ammo they need to slather the blame all over Sony. The Apple PR would have been more effective without the "While we are angry with Microsoft..." dig.
The difference is that Dell's press releases don't mention Sony batteries, but _their_ batteries, which Sony happened to manufacture. Ford sold trucks with Goodyear-branded tires, and recalled same.
I repeat, for those fanboys who are hard of hearing: it's the job of the professional media trolls to place the blame. Apple coulda scored tons by just profusely apologizing for the Windows virus getting into their distribution system. There are plenty of press hacks who will "go the extra mile" and explain why Windows sucks. This has nothing to do with fanboys and everything to do with business sense. Sorry, Apple screwed up. Don't cry too much, or your tears might crack your G4 cube.
The buck stops with the label on the cover. Sorry, whoever you contract to do stuff with is your business; when you're selling something with your trademark on it, any problems are between YOU and the CUSTOMER. In Apple's case, their problems are between APPLE and the CUSTOMER. Blaming third-parties, whether those contracted to, or those completely uninvolved (Microsoft), is just unprofessional. I know Apple was itching to score points at an easy target like Microsoft, but guys: this is a screwup, APPLE's name is on the front, not whatever podunk assembly in the Hunan Province, and not Microsoft. Even a "minor" attack like, "Bad Microsoft, Worse Us" is out of place in PR copy. Leave that bit of trollwork to professionals, like Dvorak.
Heh. You know, huge sci-fi films don't always make bank, and well, video game titles may give you success, but brand awareness in the vid field does not directly translate into box-office sales. Besides, Microsoft from the start has tried to "play" Hollywood with their Halo title. So maybe this is Hollywood's way of saying "You don't play a player".
And what kinda spoiled rich kid gets a $200M budget as his first real job? And do you really think he would do a good job? I mean, look at the president of the US!
Of course:
:translation: 'It's not just about graphics, it's about audio as well.'
please pass my name on to your employer. I could do a better job of astroturfing, with higher efficiency and more discretion.
Actually, Burger King had three stars for several decades. It was only when the story leaked that Subservient Chicken was taking bribes in exchange for favorable selection of Idaho spuds that the King lost his star. Since then, he's been sneaking around, trying to catch the leaker who flame-broiled his glory.
Actually, that was my point. Now that Ebay owns skype, and the FCC apparently mandates VoIP backdoors, who knows what's going on with Skype encryption? In any case, with skype, the weak point doesn't even have to be the encryption; the user password delivers "the keys to the kingdom" with no oversight. Skype delivers the private key based on a relatively unsecure password, and there's no way to tell how many clients are connected under the same username, or even if someone tried a brute-force attack on a password. So even if they establish the keys well (which, seeing the obvious security holes, is questionable), and even if they haven't divulged to DHS's unquestionably impenetrable servers, and even if there are no backdoors, it's still not hard to get.
Thanks for the info about zfone, that is useful and good news, and to me, far more interesting than TFA.
Article translation:
SKYPE: OMG! A supernode! you gotta be kidding me! You mean if I turn it on, it might use more bandwidth than I imagined? And if you use it to make phone calls, and lose your password, you probably won't get your money back.
Gizmo: Well, at least it uses SIP.
Full Open Source SIP stuff: Now this is the way to go. Too bad there's not much out there anybody else uses.
Okay, it's Mad Penguin, but who exactly are we preaching to?
Supernodes. Yeah, skype does that, and it can be a pita. If skype is running more than 4 contacts, you've been elected. If you don't like it, shut it down. If you can't monitor your network activity, and are running Linux, what kinda geek are you?
Terrible news if you lose your skype password, you might lose up to 25 bucks! If you were using an open-source alternative, you wouldn't have this problem, because you wouldn't be making or receiving PSTN calls.
The #1 reason why I use Skype over SIP: It's encrypted. At least that's what they tell me. Give me a solution that's F/OSS and uses point-to-point encryption, and I will switch to the superior product. #1 reason why others use Skype: it just works: those supernodes do their job and it blows through most obstacles those idiots in IT try to put in the way. Turn it on, it connects and it works.
Another interesting Skype weakness: A second client can be connected to skype under the same account, and will receive a copy of all correspondence without the other client knowing about it.
In these cases, the batteries were not on, nor even in computers. The things are dangerous.
I have to disagree.
First, Fan-hype can be bad, really bad. Fanatics don't always share the same interests as the mainstream, and the things they find really, really cool may not be the same as the general public.
Also, developers do not exactly have control over what their fans say. Consider some of the stuff I've seen:
A) Fans for Team Fortress 2 posting on another in-development game forum how TF2 is gonna be far better than the other game, and getting into a flamefest. All those posts did was remind everyone that only male adolescents should be playing Team Fortress.
B) In a liver interview, PR guy is asked a question about a highly technical feature on a product in beta. PR Guy says "I don't know, I'd have to ask". Boards explode with "OMG Feature X isn't there!"
C) Developer makes the mistake of sharing his "Vision" of the game. Fans translate the vision into real, technical details.
D) Fans convincing themselves and others that obvious problems in trailers, videos, screenshots, soundfiles or whatnot are because "the product is still in beta", and convince themselves and everyone else that "it will be fixed by release".
THe upshot: fans and reputation don't tell you a whole lot. Managing their hype is practically impossible. But there's a lot that cna be done to prevent hype from running away, and it boils down to a few simple rules:
A) Talk about what is in the game
B) Don't ever discuss features that are still in development.
C) discuss the game experience in as concrete details as possible. Don't paint pictures of things that just aren't gonna work out.
Yeah, I dunno. developers be damned. > 4 gigs of content is expensive. Most of that is gonna be Full motion video and stuff. I don't see a problem with releasing a hybrid disc, with the useless junk on the HD part, and offering promo downloads and what have you. Run that for a couple years, then towards the end of the cycle, "forget" about the DVD-only boxes. It works for Apple; it'll work for Microsoft.
Yeah, but the darn thing rings so hollow it's ludicrous.
I mean, come on, they throw questions like:
Where's the innovation? Xbox and Nintendo are trying new things and the PS3 seems like "Just another PlayStation."
[BURNS VOICE]A tough question, but a fair one[/BURNS VOICE]
come on, not even the most slackjawed drooling Xbox360 fanboi thinks that the PS3 is "just another playstation". It has impressive hardware in there -- that's one of the major points of attack for its critics. Why claim otherwise?