In High School Civics, my teacher explained that Civil Liberties are things you have freedom *from*, such as the freedom from illegal search and seizures, the fredom from making self-incriminating, etc. Civil Rights are things you have the right *to*, such as the right to free speech, the right to travel between states freely, etc. So for example, the gov't wiretapping scandal recently violates your Civil Liberties, while being arrested without a warrant or trial is a violation of your Civil Rights.
First of all, Anonymous Coward, get off your high horse, or supposed high horse since you listed no credentials.
Secondly, PS2's market share is a type of snowball effect. They got to market first, and snatched a lot of market share. Developers then had to decide between fledgling Microsoft and Nintendo consoles, or go with the PS2 with a large installed base. Following the statistics, they went for the PS2. No matter what you claim, the majority of developers would find the PS2's media capabilities much more limited than the Xbox or Gamecube, period.
I agree that ease of homebrew doesn't necessarily represent ease of professional DevKit development, but in this case it is almost unanimous that the Xbox and Gamecube/Dolphin devkit experience is far nicer on the developer than the PS2. In your comment you seem to only compare PS2/Xbox, excluding Gamecube and Microsoft's new XNA development environment.
However, seeing how Sony just got devkits to some companies recently, and they are still reputed to be very unstable (I can't confirm becuase I haven't used one) I still congratulate you if you have in fact created code on one and find it easy and enjoyable.
You're right...I've always wanted to go to New Zealand, but hey! I should just look at the pretty pictures and read about it on the internet instead. Same with the Declaration of Independence, right? Those school trips to see it in person are so silly.
One of the most special things of the human experience is just that, the experience. In much the way that the Moon landing brought awe that humans could walk around on something that was mythical for most of our history, I'm sure that the first Man on Mars will bring tears to my eyes, too. Let alone in the future when civilians can have such an incredible experience.
Yes, "gimmick" is what Nintendo-naysayers were saying about the DS too, but then it launched, got a load of incredibly good games, and became the fastest selling console in history. 13 million consoles sold don't lie, or the fact that while Xbox 360 was getting all the hype, the DS/Nintendogs bundle was going for $250+ on eBay.
Did you read the article? The main text is a sales chart for the week beginning December 26th.
# FORMAT TITLE
1 DS Brain Training 2
2 DS Animal Crossing: Wild World
3 DS Mario Kart DS
4 PS2 Kingdom Hearts II
5 DS DS Training For Adults: Work Your Brain (Brain Training)
6 PS2 Front Mission 5: Scars of the War
7 DS Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
8 DS Gentle Brain Exercises
9 DS Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop!
10 DS Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon: Blue Rescue Force
As you can see, the DS is outselling EVERYTHING, not just the Xbox360, but also the PS2, Gamecube, GBA, and PC games. 8 of the Top 10, and all of the Top 3. For those that may say "but that's just game sales" also read the other article about 13 million DS's being sold. Not shipped, not "sent to retailers", SOLD.
Sure, the console will support traditional games, but the GameCube supports online games and look where that lead it.
If by "traditional games" you mean Madden 2009 "with added spin-move!!" or Medal of Honor XII "Kill the Germans again in this town this time!" then I'll be happy to not have all of them.
If Nintendo really pulls through with what they say, and there are tennis games where you swing the controller like a racket, Zelda games where you swing it like a sword, then use it like reins on a horse, then pull it back like a bow and arrow, or the metroid game where you move it like a gun, or the conductor's game that I could play with my 5 year old nephew or my 85 year old grandmother without spending 15 minutes explaining that "the b button does this, and the joystick does this", then I think that a huge portion of the market would move away from the "traditional games" and truly open a new horizon of gaming. Sure, I love current gen games as much as the next guy, but if I could play games in a completely different way like the Revolution promises, for less money than Sony wants for their 9 cores, then I would jump ship in a heartbeat.
And let's not forget that although the Gamecube isn't the "it" console, Nintendo was the only one of the big 3 to post a profit in their gaming division last year.
Yes, I can definitely see your point that stealing personal information, including Social Security Number and photos, is definitely a "silly prank" and not harmful at all.
I love how so many people are angry at the rates of identity theft, then turn around and say it's ok becuase he was a juvenile and the victim was Paris Hilton.
Can I please have your SSN and address now? I'm in the mood for a fun harmless prank.
People are fast to assume that because a premium membership is offered it means that the 360 won't be online out of the box. This is patently false. Everyone can play online, with all the current XboxLive features, for free. Only the "special" content costs extra.
Yes, and we all know that multi-disc games are doomed to failure, and that the developer and producer will fail as well, like what happened with
Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX; Arc the Lad Collection; Legend of Dragoon; Gran Turismo 2; Star Ocean Till the End of Time; I could go on but you get the point.
Pressing a second disc is incredibly cheap compared to the rest of the development process.
"and you'll end up with a bunch of people willing to kill, rob, join gangs, and a host of other activities that are frowned on in real life"
Exactly! That is what games are for, an escape from reality accompanied with a suspension of disbelief. I play GTA, and guess what? I rob cars! I mug people! I play Katamari Damacy, and I roll over helpless sticks of bubble gum and trees and cars. The great thing about videogames is there aren't real-world consequences for your virtual actions.
However, in this case, this linked his virtual actions to the real world when he sold the goods for money. That is what the problem is, not the fact that in Lineage II it promotes PvP, swordfighting, and other actions that are "frowned on in real life."
A.xxx TLD would make it much easier for parents and schools to screen out a lot of pornography by blocking all.xxx domains. Their argument that this "creates a virtual red light district" is as inane as claiming placing all the dirty magazines behind the counter creates a "haven of smut in 7-11" as opposed to making them easier to control.
Hopefully along with the fee comes a Microsoft quality screening similar to the process that the games go through. Every gamer knows that first party controllers, memory cards, etc hold up better than most third party, and that there is a huge gap in quality between a Logitech controller and some no-name piece of garbage. Since Logitech is more likely to pay the fee than a get-rich-quick company making "2x the MEMORY!!" memory cards, hopefully the market will see a big step forwards in the average quality of third party peripherals.
Yes, Amador Valley is where I went to highschool, and my Junior year the UAV team beat all the other competitors, including MIT. This year they placed 5th, still very respectable for a high school with an (assumably) much smaller budget than these colleges. Not absolutely positive, but the year that Amador won, the budget was $3k. Funny thing is that although the UAV competition is prestigious, even when we won 1st almost nobody outside of the sciences on campus noticed.
Those game development jobs will have fully escaped U.S. borders
Creating games isn't like coding a database or writing back-end bank account managing software; there are many cultural aspects involved that will prevent the "escape" of these jobs outside of US borders. I don't ever see an Indian company (or any other tech-export country) creating a game that is able to strike American gamers' emotional chords as well as a US or Japanese publisher. Japan has retained their quality game development companies, as had the US, and I don't see those jobs going anywhere soon.
In spite of that, I do agree with your first statement that ethnic distribution doesn't matter. Any efforts to change the "ethnic distribution" would come off just as every other attempt in other industries has: shallow, insensitive, disruptive, and ultimately ineffective.
Although it's true that game creators aren't as "cool" as rock stars or John Lennon, I think that Shigeru Miyamoto has had as powerful an impact on world popular culture and entertainment as any rock star. As gaming becomes more mainstream (whether we like it or not) game creators will become just as well known as Spielberg or Lucas. Lucas created an empire worth $9 bil+, Miyamoto revitalized an industry and pushed Nintendo to billions of dollars of revenue over the past twenty years with his Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda franchises. It is inevitable that soon we will have a game creator that is as well known as a rock star.
Generally, the youths that make a habit out of choices that are detrimental to society don't live into maturity (or never mature), and therefore never achieve a status where they can influence the morals or ethical standpoint of society.
Art in all of its forms continues to become more openminded, as it has for all of recorded history. Paintings used to only have religious figures, then were depicted but much smaller, then individual portraits, to still lifes, Impressionism, cubism, and modern art. Now, we are witnessing the flowering of art in game form, and as in the past with other forms of art, it will take time before the more open-minded art is accepted into the morals of popular culture.
The two-view screen would be perfect for in-car screens becuase the driver would see a GPS/navigation app, while the passenger could be watching a DVD. As it is now (at least in CA), in-dash DVD screens are crippled so that they can't play unless the car is in park, keeping the driver's eyes on the road but also robbing the passenger of entertainment. This type of screen would solve that issue.
Although I'm sure some will see the $10 million price for the script, and the "Bible" as a sign of Microsoft's vanity, I see it as a good thing.
The "Bible" will keep the script from hurting the Halo 1-2 story continuity, and also make sure the film doesn't set precedents that the game developers don't want to follow.
Second, the $10 million price tag will make sure the film studio is fully committed to the project, ensuring a large budget for the film and therefore a better chance at high-quality visual effects and good actors.
(Endnote: I do realize a big budget != good quality film, but it does help with creating a believable universe. Could the LOTR trilogy be as good as it is if Jackson didn't have such a huge budget to allow the development of Massive and the recruitment of quality actors?)
They are specifying earbuds since they draw less power than an external set of speakers would. Lots of portable cheap speakers draw all their power from the headphone jack (and therefore from the iPod battery).
I don't understand why everybody thinks that this shows that Nintendo is "behind" or "not prepared" to show Revolution to the public. I think the decision makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint.
Nintendo can unveil it at E3, and go up against Microsoft and Sony's HUGE marketing budget and hype. Magazines would probably have a triple feature, with sections given to each system and the respective company booths.
Or, Nintendo can wait a couple of months until the media coverage dies down a little bit, unveil the console, and get the cover of every non-platform-specific major game magazine in the biz. This decision shows not a lack of preparation or a schedule issue, but a smart martketing choice.
Gamegirladvance must be friends with one of the admins to have so many links to articles in such a short time period!
Especially when the article in question is just a copy/paste of the Terra Nova article, with only two typo-ridden sentences as commentary tacked on the end.
As for the DDOS attacks being linked to national unrest, it seems like a rather odd way to vent frustration and anger about the China/Japan situation. I can't imagine anyone in power noticing something as trivial as gameservers in the current situation, and the effect on the average Japanese user is slight at best.
Slashdot Mirror
In High School Civics, my teacher explained that Civil Liberties are things you have freedom *from*, such as the freedom from illegal search and seizures, the fredom from making self-incriminating, etc. Civil Rights are things you have the right *to*, such as the right to free speech, the right to travel between states freely, etc. So for example, the gov't wiretapping scandal recently violates your Civil Liberties, while being arrested without a warrant or trial is a violation of your Civil Rights.
First of all, Anonymous Coward, get off your high horse, or supposed high horse since you listed no credentials.
Secondly, PS2's market share is a type of snowball effect. They got to market first, and snatched a lot of market share. Developers then had to decide between fledgling Microsoft and Nintendo consoles, or go with the PS2 with a large installed base. Following the statistics, they went for the PS2. No matter what you claim, the majority of developers would find the PS2's media capabilities much more limited than the Xbox or Gamecube, period.
I agree that ease of homebrew doesn't necessarily represent ease of professional DevKit development, but in this case it is almost unanimous that the Xbox and Gamecube/Dolphin devkit experience is far nicer on the developer than the PS2. In your comment you seem to only compare PS2/Xbox, excluding Gamecube and Microsoft's new XNA development environment.
However, seeing how Sony just got devkits to some companies recently, and they are still reputed to be very unstable (I can't confirm becuase I haven't used one) I still congratulate you if you have in fact created code on one and find it easy and enjoyable.
You're mistakenly thinking of "Giant Squid" instead of "Giant Octopus". This IS giant for an octopus.
You're right...I've always wanted to go to New Zealand, but hey! I should just look at the pretty pictures and read about it on the internet instead. Same with the Declaration of Independence, right? Those school trips to see it in person are so silly.
One of the most special things of the human experience is just that, the experience. In much the way that the Moon landing brought awe that humans could walk around on something that was mythical for most of our history, I'm sure that the first Man on Mars will bring tears to my eyes, too. Let alone in the future when civilians can have such an incredible experience.
Yes, "gimmick" is what Nintendo-naysayers were saying about the DS too, but then it launched, got a load of incredibly good games, and became the fastest selling console in history. 13 million consoles sold don't lie, or the fact that while Xbox 360 was getting all the hype, the DS/Nintendogs bundle was going for $250+ on eBay.
Did you read the article? The main text is a sales chart for the week beginning December 26th.
# FORMAT TITLE
1 DS Brain Training 2
2 DS Animal Crossing: Wild World
3 DS Mario Kart DS
4 PS2 Kingdom Hearts II
5 DS DS Training For Adults: Work Your Brain (Brain Training)
6 PS2 Front Mission 5: Scars of the War
7 DS Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
8 DS Gentle Brain Exercises
9 DS Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop!
10 DS Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon: Blue Rescue Force
As you can see, the DS is outselling EVERYTHING, not just the Xbox360, but also the PS2, Gamecube, GBA, and PC games. 8 of the Top 10, and all of the Top 3. For those that may say "but that's just game sales" also read the other article about 13 million DS's being sold. Not shipped, not "sent to retailers", SOLD.
Sure, the console will support traditional games, but the GameCube supports online games and look where that lead it.
If by "traditional games" you mean Madden 2009 "with added spin-move!!" or Medal of Honor XII "Kill the Germans again in this town this time!" then I'll be happy to not have all of them.
If Nintendo really pulls through with what they say, and there are tennis games where you swing the controller like a racket, Zelda games where you swing it like a sword, then use it like reins on a horse, then pull it back like a bow and arrow, or the metroid game where you move it like a gun, or the conductor's game that I could play with my 5 year old nephew or my 85 year old grandmother without spending 15 minutes explaining that "the b button does this, and the joystick does this", then I think that a huge portion of the market would move away from the "traditional games" and truly open a new horizon of gaming. Sure, I love current gen games as much as the next guy, but if I could play games in a completely different way like the Revolution promises, for less money than Sony wants for their 9 cores, then I would jump ship in a heartbeat.
And let's not forget that although the Gamecube isn't the "it" console, Nintendo was the only one of the big 3 to post a profit in their gaming division last year.
Good point, although I shop at Newegg because it is 150% the quality at around the same price. :-)
Yes, I can definitely see your point that stealing personal information, including Social Security Number and photos, is definitely a "silly prank" and not harmful at all.
I love how so many people are angry at the rates of identity theft, then turn around and say it's ok becuase he was a juvenile and the victim was Paris Hilton.
Can I please have your SSN and address now? I'm in the mood for a fun harmless prank.
Thanks for giving me my first real laugh of the day. That was hilarious. I want a unicorn controller too....
People are fast to assume that because a premium membership is offered it means that the 360 won't be online out of the box. This is patently false. Everyone can play online, with all the current XboxLive features, for free. Only the "special" content costs extra.
Yes, and we all know that multi-disc games are doomed to failure, and that the developer and producer will fail as well, like what happened with Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX; Arc the Lad Collection; Legend of Dragoon; Gran Turismo 2; Star Ocean Till the End of Time; I could go on but you get the point.
Pressing a second disc is incredibly cheap compared to the rest of the development process.
"and you'll end up with a bunch of people willing to kill, rob, join gangs, and a host of other activities that are frowned on in real life" Exactly! That is what games are for, an escape from reality accompanied with a suspension of disbelief. I play GTA, and guess what? I rob cars! I mug people! I play Katamari Damacy, and I roll over helpless sticks of bubble gum and trees and cars. The great thing about videogames is there aren't real-world consequences for your virtual actions. However, in this case, this linked his virtual actions to the real world when he sold the goods for money. That is what the problem is, not the fact that in Lineage II it promotes PvP, swordfighting, and other actions that are "frowned on in real life."
A .xxx TLD would make it much easier for parents and schools to screen out a lot of pornography by blocking all .xxx domains. Their argument that this "creates a virtual red light district" is as inane as claiming placing all the dirty magazines behind the counter creates a "haven of smut in 7-11" as opposed to making them easier to control.
Hopefully along with the fee comes a Microsoft quality screening similar to the process that the games go through. Every gamer knows that first party controllers, memory cards, etc hold up better than most third party, and that there is a huge gap in quality between a Logitech controller and some no-name piece of garbage.
Since Logitech is more likely to pay the fee than a get-rich-quick company making "2x the MEMORY!!" memory cards, hopefully the market will see a big step forwards in the average quality of third party peripherals.
Yes, Amador Valley is where I went to highschool, and my Junior year the UAV team beat all the other competitors, including MIT. This year they placed 5th, still very respectable for a high school with an (assumably) much smaller budget than these colleges. Not absolutely positive, but the year that Amador won, the budget was $3k. Funny thing is that although the UAV competition is prestigious, even when we won 1st almost nobody outside of the sciences on campus noticed.
Those game development jobs will have fully escaped U.S. borders
Creating games isn't like coding a database or writing back-end bank account managing software; there are many cultural aspects involved that will prevent the "escape" of these jobs outside of US borders. I don't ever see an Indian company (or any other tech-export country) creating a game that is able to strike American gamers' emotional chords as well as a US or Japanese publisher. Japan has retained their quality game development companies, as had the US, and I don't see those jobs going anywhere soon.
In spite of that, I do agree with your first statement that ethnic distribution doesn't matter. Any efforts to change the "ethnic distribution" would come off just as every other attempt in other industries has: shallow, insensitive, disruptive, and ultimately ineffective.
Although it's true that game creators aren't as "cool" as rock stars or John Lennon, I think that Shigeru Miyamoto has had as powerful an impact on world popular culture and entertainment as any rock star. As gaming becomes more mainstream (whether we like it or not) game creators will become just as well known as Spielberg or Lucas. Lucas created an empire worth $9 bil+, Miyamoto revitalized an industry and pushed Nintendo to billions of dollars of revenue over the past twenty years with his Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda franchises. It is inevitable that soon we will have a game creator that is as well known as a rock star.
Yes, but all your cousins' illegitimate children would have nothing to do but play GTA until they reached puberty. :-)
Generally, the youths that make a habit out of choices that are detrimental to society don't live into maturity (or never mature), and therefore never achieve a status where they can influence the morals or ethical standpoint of society.
Art in all of its forms continues to become more openminded, as it has for all of recorded history. Paintings used to only have religious figures, then were depicted but much smaller, then individual portraits, to still lifes, Impressionism, cubism, and modern art. Now, we are witnessing the flowering of art in game form, and as in the past with other forms of art, it will take time before the more open-minded art is accepted into the morals of popular culture.
The two-view screen would be perfect for in-car screens becuase the driver would see a GPS/navigation app, while the passenger could be watching a DVD. As it is now (at least in CA), in-dash DVD screens are crippled so that they can't play unless the car is in park, keeping the driver's eyes on the road but also robbing the passenger of entertainment. This type of screen would solve that issue.
Although I'm sure some will see the $10 million price for the script, and the "Bible" as a sign of Microsoft's vanity, I see it as a good thing.
The "Bible" will keep the script from hurting the Halo 1-2 story continuity, and also make sure the film doesn't set precedents that the game developers don't want to follow.
Second, the $10 million price tag will make sure the film studio is fully committed to the project, ensuring a large budget for the film and therefore a better chance at high-quality visual effects and good actors.
(Endnote: I do realize a big budget != good quality film, but it does help with creating a believable universe. Could the LOTR trilogy be as good as it is if Jackson didn't have such a huge budget to allow the development of Massive and the recruitment of quality actors?)
They are specifying earbuds since they draw less power than an external set of speakers would. Lots of portable cheap speakers draw all their power from the headphone jack (and therefore from the iPod battery).
Nintendo can unveil it at E3, and go up against Microsoft and Sony's HUGE marketing budget and hype. Magazines would probably have a triple feature, with sections given to each system and the respective company booths.
Or, Nintendo can wait a couple of months until the media coverage dies down a little bit, unveil the console, and get the cover of every non-platform-specific major game magazine in the biz. This decision shows not a lack of preparation or a schedule issue, but a smart martketing choice.
Especially when the article in question is just a copy/paste of the Terra Nova article, with only two typo-ridden sentences as commentary tacked on the end.
As for the DDOS attacks being linked to national unrest, it seems like a rather odd way to vent frustration and anger about the China/Japan situation. I can't imagine anyone in power noticing something as trivial as gameservers in the current situation, and the effect on the average Japanese user is slight at best.