In other RFID news today, Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
For now, the cost is too high to put in smaller denominations, but I'm guessing that with the huge numbers of bills, the cost will eventually no longer be a deciding factor.
The GameBoy Player is the device you're talking about. It's already been released in Japan, and it will be coming to the US in June or July. You can read hands-on impressions of it here at IGN.
It seems as though Nintendo is slowly coming out of it's slumber. They are beginning to realize what their fans have been clamoring for, and are trying to give the fans what they want. The original GBA comes out and no one can see anything without a spot light on the screen, so they release a new GBA with a lit screen and rechargeable batteries. The GameCube isn't marketed well, so they offer free games with every purchase. Original NES fans want their favorite series revamped, so they get Metroid Prime, and other oldies to be shown at E3 (perhaps Earthbound). Nintendo perhaps finally realizes the threat that Microsoft can pose and that soley by marketing out the ying-yang, they have taken a sizeable portion of the pie. Maybe the GBA SP is but another small step towards the agressive Nintendo we grew up with in the 80's.
GTA3, State of Emergency, Hitman, etc. are all really violent and have adult themes. They are also only as entertaining as your attention span is long.
I couldn't agree with you more. That is the best description for those games I think I've ever heard.
It's not true that Wal-Mart won't sell a game with a M rating. They just won't sell MOST games with M ratings. They sell the most popular ones that can bring them the most profits... just look at Grand Theft Auto III. They sell that, and last I checked, that was definitely M rated.
As further testament of Star Trek's near universal appeal, I read this on ESPN Page 2 yesterday...
Last spring, "Enterprise" wound up with part one of a time-travel cliffhanger. You may recall that in the original Captain Kirk episodes -- which come after "Enterprise" chronologically, since the new series is a prequel -- time travel was depicted as an astonishing discovery.
In "Enterprise," time travel has already happened several times and is practically viewed as common. So how could Kirk, who is supposed to be born years after the era depicted in "Enterprise," not have known that? And how come in "Enterprise," the Vulcans are the big spacefaring power in Earth's part of the Milky Way, their ships and diplomats everywhere -- but in the Captain Kirk episodes, which happen later, the Vulcans are depicted as an insular, technologically modest people, and Spock is described as the first Vulcan ever to explore space.
And one guy did the music, and one guy made the levels, and you wrote it all down in a notebook? Well, just in case you lost it, here's that notebook."
If people are willing to edit your movie to supply the demand for such a thing (ala The Phantom Edit) then why don't movie makers pick up on the demand themselves, and re-release the movies in the way that the audience wants to see them? I know that I'd glady pay another $20 for an official Phantom Menace DVD that had the bright yellow "New and improved! No Jar Jar!" sticker on it...
How much longer will it be before unscrupulous 900 number operators enlist people to alter this virus to make it dial their numbers? Given that it takes a month to get a phone bill, the culprits can close up shop and move on long before anyone even realizes there is a probem...
Reminds me of the lunar base I designed when I was about 9 years old for a school project. Too bad I didn't have the backing of NASA or the ESA back then.
So you're implying that you DO have the backing of NASA or the ESA for all of the lunar bases you're designing now?
Here's another interesting thing to note about the awards this year. The Legend of Zelda took the award for best console game overall, but yet didn't even manage to finish 1st or 2nd in it's own category; adventure. How is that possible?
Granted, the record companies have the big bucks if you want a cash settlement, but if you want to stamp this kind of thing out, I'd think you'd be better off putting the Macrovision-level companies out of business instead.
Once a few of those companies have been sued into smoking holes in the ground, their surviving ilk should be hesitant to repeat the same mistake.
The problem with this logic is that it should be able to be applied to P2P networks. Napster was sued out of existence, yet there are plenty more networks popping up all the time. Wherever there is a demand for a product, there will be a supply of the product. Therefore, no matter how many copy protection companies disappear, the music industry will continue to demand copy protection, so new companies will fill that void.
This is precisely why Microsoft announced that all of the Xbox's online games will be run off of Microsoft controller servers. They've seen how cheating can rapidly cause a subscriber base to shrink. By controlling everything themselves they hope to limit the damage done by those looking for ways to cheat. I imagine that just in case anything should go wrong, this means frequent backups that can be restored upon a users requests.
...and if the Xbox had Sega's name on it, it would be succeeding because that meant that the Xbox GAME CONSOLE had some good GAMES being produced for it. If the Xbox had more than 1 good exclusive game, it'd be in a lot better shape than it is in now.
According to Yahoo News Nintendo is doing better than ever.
Nintendo, the big maker of video game consoles, said that it expected to earn a record profit for the second consecutive year, thanks to a weaker yen. Nintendo raised its profit forecast 38 percent, to 110 billion yen ($833 million), for the year ended March 31. Ken Belson (NYT)
I can't see Nintendo getting out of the hardware market as long as they have a monopoly on the handheld market. Nintendo is in the position where they can use the GameBoy Advance to subsidize the GameCube if they have to. I don't think they'll end up doing that however. Take a look at the Famitsu Top 10 Most Wanted (for Japan.)
1. Final Fantasy XI - Square, PS2 2. Star Ocean 3 (tentative) - Enix, PS2 3. Biohazard 0 - Capcom, GCN 4. Super Mario Sunshine - Nintendo, GCN 5. Legend of Zelda GC (tentative) - Nintendo, GCN 6. Biohazard 4 - Capcom, GCN 7. Tales of Destiny 2 - Namco, PS2 8. Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 - Chun Soft, PS2 9. Sakura Wars Series - Sega, PS2 10. Popolocrois: First Adventure - SCE, PS2
4 of the top 6 are for the GameCube. Nintendo won't have any trouble keeping up in the console war.
This reminds me of an old Wired article that talked about the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. In the article they discuss some of the possible "down sides" to the experiments... "In theory, RHIC could trigger the runaway formation of a poorly understood breed of subatomic particle known as a strangelet, which 'eats' all matter it encounters, a chain reaction that would consume everything everywhere."
Then comes what I think is one of the funniest quotes of all time. "MIT physicist Bob Jaffe says that the chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are 'exceedingly rare' bordering on nil, but as he admits, 'you never know.'"
That's comforting Bob. Glad to see that we aren't all about to be eaten by runaway particles, but hey... you never know.
I don't know about you, but fast moving dragons always cause me to relax.
It would seem to me, that the developers would have better luck going in the opposite direction (i.e. the goal being to get the dragon to walk). You would start off the game with the dragon flying, and as you relax and calm down the dragon also relaxes and calms down...
Sometimes history is bound to repeat itself. If you recall, something similar happened back in the days prior to the PlayStation. Nintendo and Sony met to cooperate on a CDRom add-on for the SNES. Nintendo broke off talks after Sony had already announced the new drive at E3. Sony went on to create the PlayStation out of what it had learned from Nintendo. Isn't it also possible that exactly the opposite of what you suggest happened... that Microsoft got into talks with Nintendo to learn what it could about the industry because it already new it was going to launch it's own console? Microsoft could gain a tremendous amount of information from the company that has been in the console market longer than any other, Nintendo.
There's a problem with your logic. The Dreamcast had a huge number of GREAT games and yet it still fell prey to the onslaught of PS2 hype that Sony generated.
Unfortunately, in this day and age good games aren't enough to carry a system. You also have to spend lots of cash on solid marketing and name recognition.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Triforce is that it will be able to interface with the GameBoy Advance and GameCube memory cards. You'll be able to save your data (for example in Super Smash Bros. Melee) at home and take that with you to the arcade. You'll be able to raise a Chao on your GBA and enter it into a battle in the arcade.
Also, since Nintendo has been out of the arcades since the early-mid 90's, I think it's pretty likely that this means that Killer Instinct 3 is on it's way (their last big arcade game.)
Does anyone else know of ANY computer company other than Apple that would have a new design featured on the cover of Time? As far as I can tell there are none.
I'd highly recommend picking up Super Monkey Ball if you've gotten a GameCube. If you haven't gotten a GameCube, I'd recommend picking up one of those two, while you're buying Super Monkey Ball. There are many many play modes (Main -think Marble Madness, Practice, Competition - multiplayer main, Monkey Race, Monkey Fight, Monkey Target - monkey hangliding, trying to hit a target, Monkey Billiards, Monkey Bowling, and Monkey Golf). The single player is deep, and gets extremely difficult on the expert setting. There are at least 93 different boards on the main mode. This game is the perfect party game. No one I know who has seen or played a game of Monkey Bowling has gone away unsatisfied. When it comes right down to it, a game with monkeys inside of balls cannot be anything other than great.
I have played it in a store. The graphics are indeed nice, but they are not breathtaking. My biggest problem was with the Xbox controller/control scheme. You move with the analog stick or digital pad on the left. You look with the analog stick on the right. You also fire/reload/switch weapons with your right hand. I found it to be very difficult to run around and actually manage to shoot something. Typically you'll use your thumb on the right analog stick (to look around) and your index finger to fire the gun. How then are you going to reload or switch guns if your remaining fingers are all on the bottom of the controller? Answer: you're not. You'll have to give up looking at your enemy or shooting your enemy in order to do so. That puts you at a major disadvantage if you ask me. I think if Bungie had used the z lock control scheme from Perfect Dark (currently the best console FPS imo) they would have had a lot more success.
Slashdot Mirror
In other RFID news today, Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
For now, the cost is too high to put in smaller denominations, but I'm guessing that with the huge numbers of bills, the cost will eventually no longer be a deciding factor.
You can check it out here.
The GameBoy Player is the device you're talking about. It's already been released in Japan, and it will be coming to the US in June or July. You can read hands-on impressions of it here at IGN.
It seems as though Nintendo is slowly coming out of it's slumber. They are beginning to realize what their fans have been clamoring for, and are trying to give the fans what they want. The original GBA comes out and no one can see anything without a spot light on the screen, so they release a new GBA with a lit screen and rechargeable batteries. The GameCube isn't marketed well, so they offer free games with every purchase. Original NES fans want their favorite series revamped, so they get Metroid Prime, and other oldies to be shown at E3 (perhaps Earthbound). Nintendo perhaps finally realizes the threat that Microsoft can pose and that soley by marketing out the ying-yang, they have taken a sizeable portion of the pie. Maybe the GBA SP is but another small step towards the agressive Nintendo we grew up with in the 80's.
GTA3, State of Emergency, Hitman, etc. are all really violent and have adult themes. They are also only as entertaining as your attention span is long.
I couldn't agree with you more. That is the best description for those games I think I've ever heard.
It's not true that Wal-Mart won't sell a game with a M rating. They just won't sell MOST games with M ratings. They sell the most popular ones that can bring them the most profits... just look at Grand Theft Auto III. They sell that, and last I checked, that was definitely M rated.
As further testament of Star Trek's near universal appeal, I read this on ESPN Page 2 yesterday...
Last spring, "Enterprise" wound up with part one of a time-travel cliffhanger. You may recall that in the original Captain Kirk episodes -- which come after "Enterprise" chronologically, since the new series is a prequel -- time travel was depicted as an astonishing discovery.
In "Enterprise," time travel has already happened several times and is practically viewed as common. So how could Kirk, who is supposed to be born years after the era depicted in "Enterprise," not have known that? And how come in "Enterprise," the Vulcans are the big spacefaring power in Earth's part of the Milky Way, their ships and diplomats everywhere -- but in the Captain Kirk episodes, which happen later, the Vulcans are depicted as an insular, technologically modest people, and Spock is described as the first Vulcan ever to explore space.
And one guy did the music, and one guy made the levels, and you wrote it all down in a notebook? Well, just in case you lost it, here's that notebook."
Hmmm... that doesn't look like my handwriting.
If people are willing to edit your movie to supply the demand for such a thing (ala The Phantom Edit) then why don't movie makers pick up on the demand themselves, and re-release the movies in the way that the audience wants to see them? I know that I'd glady pay another $20 for an official Phantom Menace DVD that had the bright yellow "New and improved! No Jar Jar!" sticker on it...
I want a R2D2 that has a "Bring me Natalie Portman" option.
How much longer will it be before unscrupulous 900 number operators enlist people to alter this virus to make it dial their numbers? Given that it takes a month to get a phone bill, the culprits can close up shop and move on long before anyone even realizes there is a probem...
Reminds me of the lunar base I designed when I was about 9 years old for a school project. Too bad I didn't have the backing of NASA or the ESA back then.
So you're implying that you DO have the backing of NASA or the ESA for all of the lunar bases you're designing now?
Here's another interesting thing to note about the awards this year. The Legend of Zelda took the award for best console game overall, but yet didn't even manage to finish 1st or 2nd in it's own category; adventure. How is that possible?
Granted, the record companies have the big bucks if you want a cash settlement, but if you want to stamp this kind of thing out, I'd think you'd be better off putting the Macrovision-level companies out of business instead.
Once a few of those companies have been sued into smoking holes in the ground, their surviving ilk should be hesitant to repeat the same mistake.
The problem with this logic is that it should be able to be applied to P2P networks. Napster was sued out of existence, yet there are plenty more networks popping up all the time. Wherever there is a demand for a product, there will be a supply of the product. Therefore, no matter how many copy protection companies disappear, the music industry will continue to demand copy protection, so new companies will fill that void.
At least they weren't fooled by stories like "This Just In: Bill Gates Buys Evil From Satan" or "Death Star Opens Day Care Center."
I can imagine them running through the streets of Beijing saying "Look at the size of that thing!" and "That's no moon!"
This is precisely why Microsoft announced that all of the Xbox's online games will be run off of Microsoft controller servers. They've seen how cheating can rapidly cause a subscriber base to shrink. By controlling everything themselves they hope to limit the damage done by those looking for ways to cheat. I imagine that just in case anything should go wrong, this means frequent backups that can be restored upon a users requests.
...and if the Xbox had Sega's name on it, it would be succeeding because that meant that the Xbox GAME CONSOLE had some good GAMES being produced for it. If the Xbox had more than 1 good exclusive game, it'd be in a lot better shape than it is in now.
According to Yahoo News Nintendo is doing better than ever.
Nintendo, the big maker of video game consoles, said that it expected to earn a record profit for the second consecutive year, thanks to a weaker yen. Nintendo raised its profit forecast 38 percent, to 110 billion yen ($833 million), for the year ended March 31. Ken Belson (NYT)
I can't see Nintendo getting out of the hardware market as long as they have a monopoly on the handheld market. Nintendo is in the position where they can use the GameBoy Advance to subsidize the GameCube if they have to. I don't think they'll end up doing that however. Take a look at the Famitsu Top 10 Most Wanted (for Japan.)
1. Final Fantasy XI - Square, PS2
2. Star Ocean 3 (tentative) - Enix, PS2
3. Biohazard 0 - Capcom, GCN
4. Super Mario Sunshine - Nintendo, GCN
5. Legend of Zelda GC (tentative) - Nintendo, GCN
6. Biohazard 4 - Capcom, GCN
7. Tales of Destiny 2 - Namco, PS2
8. Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 - Chun Soft, PS2
9. Sakura Wars Series - Sega, PS2
10. Popolocrois: First Adventure - SCE, PS2
4 of the top 6 are for the GameCube. Nintendo won't have any trouble keeping up in the console war.
This reminds me of an old Wired article that talked about the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. In the article they discuss some of the possible "down sides" to the experiments... "In theory, RHIC could trigger the runaway formation of a poorly understood breed of subatomic particle known as a strangelet, which 'eats' all matter it encounters, a chain reaction that would consume everything everywhere."
Then comes what I think is one of the funniest quotes of all time. "MIT physicist Bob Jaffe says that the chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are 'exceedingly rare' bordering on nil, but as he admits, 'you never know.'"
That's comforting Bob. Glad to see that we aren't all about to be eaten by runaway particles, but hey... you never know.
I don't know about you, but fast moving dragons always cause me to relax.
It would seem to me, that the developers would have better luck going in the opposite direction (i.e. the goal being to get the dragon to walk). You would start off the game with the dragon flying, and as you relax and calm down the dragon also relaxes and calms down...
Sometimes history is bound to repeat itself. If you recall, something similar happened back in the days prior to the PlayStation. Nintendo and Sony met to cooperate on a CDRom add-on for the SNES. Nintendo broke off talks after Sony had already announced the new drive at E3. Sony went on to create the PlayStation out of what it had learned from Nintendo. Isn't it also possible that exactly the opposite of what you suggest happened... that Microsoft got into talks with Nintendo to learn what it could about the industry because it already new it was going to launch it's own console? Microsoft could gain a tremendous amount of information from the company that has been in the console market longer than any other, Nintendo.
There's a problem with your logic. The Dreamcast had a huge number of GREAT games and yet it still fell prey to the onslaught of PS2 hype that Sony generated.
Unfortunately, in this day and age good games aren't enough to carry a system. You also have to spend lots of cash on solid marketing and name recognition.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Triforce is that it will be able to interface with the GameBoy Advance and GameCube memory cards. You'll be able to save your data (for example in Super Smash Bros. Melee) at home and take that with you to the arcade. You'll be able to raise a Chao on your GBA and enter it into a battle in the arcade.
Also, since Nintendo has been out of the arcades since the early-mid 90's, I think it's pretty likely that this means that Killer Instinct 3 is on it's way (their last big arcade game.)
Does anyone else know of ANY computer company other than Apple that would have a new design featured on the cover of Time? As far as I can tell there are none.
I'd highly recommend picking up Super Monkey Ball if you've gotten a GameCube. If you haven't gotten a GameCube, I'd recommend picking up one of those two, while you're buying Super Monkey Ball. There are many many play modes (Main -think Marble Madness, Practice, Competition - multiplayer main, Monkey Race, Monkey Fight, Monkey Target - monkey hangliding, trying to hit a target, Monkey Billiards, Monkey Bowling, and Monkey Golf). The single player is deep, and gets extremely difficult on the expert setting. There are at least 93 different boards on the main mode. This game is the perfect party game. No one I know who has seen or played a game of Monkey Bowling has gone away unsatisfied. When it comes right down to it, a game with monkeys inside of balls cannot be anything other than great.
I have played it in a store. The graphics are indeed nice, but they are not breathtaking. My biggest problem was with the Xbox controller/control scheme. You move with the analog stick or digital pad on the left. You look with the analog stick on the right. You also fire/reload/switch weapons with your right hand. I found it to be very difficult to run around and actually manage to shoot something. Typically you'll use your thumb on the right analog stick (to look around) and your index finger to fire the gun. How then are you going to reload or switch guns if your remaining fingers are all on the bottom of the controller? Answer: you're not. You'll have to give up looking at your enemy or shooting your enemy in order to do so. That puts you at a major disadvantage if you ask me. I think if Bungie had used the z lock control scheme from Perfect Dark (currently the best console FPS imo) they would have had a lot more success.