Notice the amount of hardware sold... in a week... in Japan. The DS completely dominates with more than 100,000 sold in a WEEK. This is months after it has launched, while the PS3 has only 80,000 to sell. Now yes, the DS costs much less, but notice that Nintendo probably makes a profit on it rather than a loss, AND this amount of units allows them to sell more software.
How much software is going to move for the PS3 when it's launch is only 80,000? Most of those best seller games are in the area of several 100 thousand to several million units sold. That isn't going to happen for a while. So yes the PS3 sold out, but we can't call it any kind of success yet with this few sold. Maybe if they pushed out 1 million units and sold them all, then we can say they were a success.
Seems like a good deal. If you don't want to pay extra, just go take the notes yourself... you paid for it already anyway. If you want the stuff for free, just get someone else to record it for you.
But yes, if he is offering very clear, and clean mp3 versions of his lecture, this could be a non trivial task to make sure the audio is audible, which is what your money would be paying for. This is on top of the lecture. He is isn't required to do this.
Most other professors have written notes instead... which probably would be more useful than this.
Was it just me, or was the GameCube Zelda derided for being cel shaded? So why is it that a similar cartoon like game for the PS2 not seeing this similar treatment?
(I suppose I know the answer for that... but it's still an observation.)
Ok so in the United States, porn is basically not legal to buy by a minor. The store can't sell it to you, and you can't rent it.
And hell, NC-17 movies exist, as do R movies (which require a parent).
So why do games not have similar levels of preventative measures?
I guess the question I have is... why should games NOT have such similar measures (I'm in favor of NO limitations to who can buy actually) while porn and movies do? And if you believe that games should be freely buyable, would you consider allowing porn and any rated movie to also be freely buyable? What about cigerettes and alcohol?
It seems that we keep on having specific rules/laws per each individual "substance", and many are inconsistent with each other in terms of necessity.
The Wii seems to appeal more to the people who actually game because of the games. The PS3 and XBOX360 seem to appeal to people who game because of the image (however yes, there is some good stuff there, but they are selling an image in addition to the games). Just look at all the new "gamers" who jumped on the Halo bandwagon who tout it as the best fps ever, when PC gamers have been fragging each other for years already with games that are better than Halo.
So yes, everyone who loves gaming loves the Wii (well... almost everyone), because it's bringing us back to our roots with the old school Nintendo stuff. All the people who play because it's the in thing to do right now, well... they probably don't want to look silly flailing around, so they'll go with the other options.
Me... I'll get the Wii first, the XBOX360 soon after it's price drop, and the PS3 when it gets a price drop in a year or two.
You know Nintendo must be doing something right if a REMAKE of the DS is selling like hotcakes. Hopefully this continues on with the Wii, forcing Sony to actually do something interesting for their PS4.
BTW... I want one, but since I already have the red Mario Kart DS... I'll wait for other colors first.
I personally disagree with the built in dvd player. Who doesn't have one right now?
As for those who want it to be the media center... the Wii isn't about that. It's small enough to just fit into a nook among the rest of your media center. And besides, you could spend under $50 to get yourself a dvd player if needed. For the XBOX and PS2 (and the XBOX360 and PS3) it might have been necessary since the size of the thing might have prevented easily fitting in both the console AND the dvd player.
As for me, I already have a dvd player sitting right here on my desk. It's a computer. I don't need another one, and wouldn't want Nintendo to foot the bill on something that quite a few people have already. And well... if you don't have it, the dvd dongle costs less than most stand alone dvd players. So the option is the best way to go in my opinion.
Maybe they should take the strategy of not listening to what the customer says, just like Nintendo (which was also suggested in the linked article). All of this "my way or the highway" from the user base is ridiculous considering it isn't their game and it isn't their work.
The games should be made to be fun, and when it is, people will come. It seems that games nowadays are made to be a bragging grounds, fun or not. It has to be an overly difficult game that rewards time (and lots of it) to pander to the "still in school" crowd who have that much time to burn.
I'm not sure that making a game specifically for these people... the uh, fanbois, if you will, is that ideal anyway. The turn coat pretty quick, and hop onto the next free thing.
I haven't played a true Mario style platformer in a while, and the return to a game where exact precise movements must be required, or death happens, was pretty jarring. Contrast this with most current games that feature leveling and increases in health that allow you more second chances before death.
Just as a note... the difficulty is in the levels themselves, introducing new elements I haven't seen yet in a Mario game. However, due to saving (and the unlockable save anywhere) and massive amounts of free lives, finishing the game is easy. In addition, having a secondary carried powerup definitely makes some levels much easier as it gives you additional hits you can soak.
Of course, no matter how many extra lives you get, it doesn't make some of the later levels any less challenging (especially the secret exit levels where you have to play the ENTIRE map as small Mario which is a one hit kill).
Looking at where the game market is heading in terms of PC, PS3, and XBox360... more is better. People want their pretty graphics, isn't that the whole point of the PS3? HD this, Bluray that, massive res, cool lighting, explosions, gore...
Except all of this content doesn't just magically appear when the hardware is made. Someone has to make it. And that someone has to be paid. So at this point, the entry into the big name game market is similar to the entry into the big name movie market. If you want to push out a blockbuster title in either industry, you have to put down the big bucks.
Luckily... with the PC and Wii market, there is a chance for indy developers to make cheaper title that are still fun, similar to the small indy movie developers. It won't be huge in terms of special effects and big name actors, but it's still got a chance to be good. Good movies do not require millions upon millions of dollars, and the same with games.
The sooner people realize a good game doesn't need great graphics (like how good movies don't need great special effects), the easier the lives of the indy guys.
"We felt that if you want to save something on your Memory Stick, most people have those readers on their PC, which is easily adaptable to the PlayStation 3 with a USB cord," said Hirai. "The only difference is HDMI - and at this point, I don't think many people's TV's have that. The ultimate result, to my eyes anyway, is there's not a discernable difference between what you get between HDMI and other forms of high definition."
This seems utterly bizarre. Over the course of the PS3's development, Sony has promised quite a bit, and yes they did include most of what they said (Cell, Blu Ray), but one of the biggest bits of HD. And now the president says there aren't enough TV's to warrant putting HDMI on the low end PS3?
Wasn't Nintendo getting flak for just this for the entire time that they said that HD wasn't yet the norm? Granted... Nintendo's max resolution still pales to the PS3's max resolution even without the HDMI.. but BluRay movies with the DRM bit set won't even work at max resolution on the low end PS3. Perhaps this was the point of the delay over the DRM announced previously.
Note that in WoW (I was able to get into the open beta before it closed) the "penalty" is not quite a penalty, which is quite good.
In WoW, you lose no experience, no gold, no equipment... infact, your character comes back intact. What you do lose is time... and a lot of it. And you can also lose your place in the game.
Basically you spawn as a ghost at some graveyard, and now you can either hike to your body or pay the penalty of 10 minutes with a curse on your stats (a major curse) and all armor on you and your inventory takes a hit on durability. This basically puts you out of the game for 10 minutes, loss of potentially a substantial amount of gold, and you spawn fresh at the grave site which could be many minutes away from where you were. That's a decently big penalty of basically... you have to wait 10 minutes before you can attempt what ever you tried again, which could have taken half an hour.
If you attempted to walk back as a ghost, you have to walk back for potentially 10 minutes (Barrens comes to mind), and when you get there you have a chance of not having a safe spawn point in which case you could just die again and repeat this process.
So yes there is no character based penalty... but with the potential of needing to basically start a segment of your quest from scratch (especially where its instanced since you have to start at the start... and enemies respawn at some rate) after a relatively long run back to perhaps a hostile spawn area (and you spawn without buffs at that)... or a choice to take 10 minutes of ability drain and gold sacrifice...
WoW is not without its penalties. But the penalties are not your character... the penalties are on you the player.
It's a pretty obvious answer. And struggling through pages of manual text to get to the point of being able to proficiently play a game may not be considered fun to some people (though some PnP players may disagree... I also enjoy going through manuals sometimes). If there is a high learning curve, it just is a barrier to the real point of the game, fun.
On a similar note, there are just some people who do not get the point of RPG's and won't try them, probably because they won't try to learn the interface and the rules behind it and would rather play an fps which takes no time to learn (in most cases).
People go out and learn martial arts to protect themselves just incase. (Well... most of them do) They don't just go out and learn it to take down the next person they meet on the street.
Just because this information is laid out as it is, doesn't mean you should use it just because and cause such a malicious environment.
Remember, it takes everyone to create that happy environment.. but just one person to create that malicious environment. This is for that time when that one guy (or guys if you are really unlucky) is on you and you need to protect yourself.
So will virus scanners detect these or will they be paid off as well?
If not... there really isn't much use in them if they can be paid off to not detect such things (so the gov can do the same and bill gates can do the same etc...).
There were some NES games (and i think even some SNES games) in the past that had various codes and such (like the famous Konami code), and some games even had a reset code. This basically just reset the game by giving a specific key sequence (usually just hold every button down) and boom, the game resets with out you needing to walk up to the console.
Perhaps the ms ie engineers were just too lazy to hit the x button on ie so they developed this nifty little "feature" to make restarting ie that much easier. How?
Simple... make an htm doc on the desktop, put in these 5 lines, make it your homepage (obviously this prevents loading ie to begin with, but you can just load some other page first) and since home can be gotten to with some keypresses, this means it can be bound to the mouse buttons in some of the newer models.
And there you have it. Instant ie restarting from your mouse! You don't have to waste time clicking the x and then double clicking the ie icon. Genius!
(BTW, perhaps ms can be/.'d through too many users sending in bug reports?)
I hope I'm not the only one to note that a watch is not the best place for such tech? I mean... your hands are used to do some crazy stuff (uh.. i didn't mean that) such as... washing in water, bathroom stuff, eating, handling large objects, and so on.
So why put hundreds of dollars worth of equipment a mere inch away from the most active part of the body and risk damage? Why not just make an all in one wireless device that you put in your pocket somewhere that does everything instead? Do we really need this all on our wrists (not to mention that they do look pretty big, and wearing something clunky on my wrist isn't exactly a good thing either).
Kinda reminds me about a scene in a movie... (Spy Kids 2) where the boy gets a wrist watch that has everything a movie spy ever needs, pushing a button will expand the thing into a massive gargle of everythingness with a sat dish, scanning devices, keyboard, holo projected screen, everything and the kitchensink...
but no time. The inventor comments that he didn't have room to fit in the time on the watch.
Too bad there isn't any tactile feedback... but you can tap on the glass and make it look like your interacting.
Woot, this is a godsend for us college students.
on
Reading Lips In Software
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Maybe now with a cluster at our finger tips and this sound visual lip analyser thing, we may be able to (finally) understand what all those foreign heavy accented professors are actually mumbling about...
And well, beats manual note taking if the computer can read the board and his mouth and his voice.
Although it is quite obvious that games may not teach all types of stuff, there may be some things that it may teach better than other forms of teaching, such as logic and problem solving.
Since you cannot actually "teach" these skills persay, but can only use/exersize/practice them, games are actually quite a good idea in these cases. But what games? RPG's, adventure games, and puzzle games of course. Of course it depends on the game itself, but given the right game, you can learn quite a bit.
Take your classic computer adventure game (King's Quest, etc) and you can see that there is a scripted logic puzzle as the basis of the game (even though there is a huge trial and error base, which may not be a good thing). Or even a console adventure game like the Zelda series with its room clear puzzles, though they are relatively simplistic (though the water dungeon in Zelda 64 was quite a pain at first glance, and the time element in the sequel did increase the difficulty of some of the puzzles).
Then you have rpg's and the story element weaved in, forcing you to find the logical completing event in the story to go forward (though even this may sometimes be arbitrary), and possibly the tactical nature of the battles can teach problem solving skills (not the mass xp till your god and bash the boss, but the whip through the game with as low of a level as you possibly can get and see if you can still beat the last boss style of play).
And finally the puzzle games. Everyone loves these and they can possibly teach spatial logic and such (tetris and the like), as well as hand eye coordination and speed of thinking (in these terms).
So although games as some posters have said, are not really suited for teaching some things like facts and information (that schools teach) they can be useful in teaching other things that require practice and not data crunching.
Slashdot Mirror
So does this mean that the PS3 is a kiddy system because it won't actually have any "adult media" while the XBOX360 can?
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/10/japanese-hardwar e-sales-30-october-5-november-incredibly-inn/
Notice the amount of hardware sold... in a week... in Japan. The DS completely dominates with more than 100,000 sold in a WEEK. This is months after it has launched, while the PS3 has only 80,000 to sell. Now yes, the DS costs much less, but notice that Nintendo probably makes a profit on it rather than a loss, AND this amount of units allows them to sell more software.
How much software is going to move for the PS3 when it's launch is only 80,000? Most of those best seller games are in the area of several 100 thousand to several million units sold. That isn't going to happen for a while. So yes the PS3 sold out, but we can't call it any kind of success yet with this few sold. Maybe if they pushed out 1 million units and sold them all, then we can say they were a success.
Seems like a good deal. If you don't want to pay extra, just go take the notes yourself... you paid for it already anyway. If you want the stuff for free, just get someone else to record it for you.
But yes, if he is offering very clear, and clean mp3 versions of his lecture, this could be a non trivial task to make sure the audio is audible, which is what your money would be paying for. This is on top of the lecture. He is isn't required to do this.
Most other professors have written notes instead... which probably would be more useful than this.
Was it just me, or was the GameCube Zelda derided for being cel shaded? So why is it that a similar cartoon like game for the PS2 not seeing this similar treatment?
(I suppose I know the answer for that... but it's still an observation.)
Ok so in the United States, porn is basically not legal to buy by a minor. The store can't sell it to you, and you can't rent it.
And hell, NC-17 movies exist, as do R movies (which require a parent).
So why do games not have similar levels of preventative measures?
I guess the question I have is... why should games NOT have such similar measures (I'm in favor of NO limitations to who can buy actually) while porn and movies do? And if you believe that games should be freely buyable, would you consider allowing porn and any rated movie to also be freely buyable? What about cigerettes and alcohol?
It seems that we keep on having specific rules/laws per each individual "substance", and many are inconsistent with each other in terms of necessity.
The Wii seems to appeal more to the people who actually game because of the games. The PS3 and XBOX360 seem to appeal to people who game because of the image (however yes, there is some good stuff there, but they are selling an image in addition to the games). Just look at all the new "gamers" who jumped on the Halo bandwagon who tout it as the best fps ever, when PC gamers have been fragging each other for years already with games that are better than Halo.
So yes, everyone who loves gaming loves the Wii (well... almost everyone), because it's bringing us back to our roots with the old school Nintendo stuff. All the people who play because it's the in thing to do right now, well... they probably don't want to look silly flailing around, so they'll go with the other options.
Me... I'll get the Wii first, the XBOX360 soon after it's price drop, and the PS3 when it gets a price drop in a year or two.
You know Nintendo must be doing something right if a REMAKE of the DS is selling like hotcakes. Hopefully this continues on with the Wii, forcing Sony to actually do something interesting for their PS4.
BTW... I want one, but since I already have the red Mario Kart DS... I'll wait for other colors first.
I personally disagree with the built in dvd player. Who doesn't have one right now?
As for those who want it to be the media center... the Wii isn't about that. It's small enough to just fit into a nook among the rest of your media center. And besides, you could spend under $50 to get yourself a dvd player if needed. For the XBOX and PS2 (and the XBOX360 and PS3) it might have been necessary since the size of the thing might have prevented easily fitting in both the console AND the dvd player.
As for me, I already have a dvd player sitting right here on my desk. It's a computer. I don't need another one, and wouldn't want Nintendo to foot the bill on something that quite a few people have already. And well... if you don't have it, the dvd dongle costs less than most stand alone dvd players. So the option is the best way to go in my opinion.
Maybe they should take the strategy of not listening to what the customer says, just like Nintendo (which was also suggested in the linked article). All of this "my way or the highway" from the user base is ridiculous considering it isn't their game and it isn't their work.
... the uh, fanbois, if you will, is that ideal anyway. The turn coat pretty quick, and hop onto the next free thing.
The games should be made to be fun, and when it is, people will come. It seems that games nowadays are made to be a bragging grounds, fun or not. It has to be an overly difficult game that rewards time (and lots of it) to pander to the "still in school" crowd who have that much time to burn.
I'm not sure that making a game specifically for these people
I haven't played a true Mario style platformer in a while, and the return to a game where exact precise movements must be required, or death happens, was pretty jarring. Contrast this with most current games that feature leveling and increases in health that allow you more second chances before death.
Just as a note... the difficulty is in the levels themselves, introducing new elements I haven't seen yet in a Mario game. However, due to saving (and the unlockable save anywhere) and massive amounts of free lives, finishing the game is easy. In addition, having a secondary carried powerup definitely makes some levels much easier as it gives you additional hits you can soak.
Of course, no matter how many extra lives you get, it doesn't make some of the later levels any less challenging (especially the secret exit levels where you have to play the ENTIRE map as small Mario which is a one hit kill).
Looking at where the game market is heading in terms of PC, PS3, and XBox360... more is better. People want their pretty graphics, isn't that the whole point of the PS3? HD this, Bluray that, massive res, cool lighting, explosions, gore...
Except all of this content doesn't just magically appear when the hardware is made. Someone has to make it. And that someone has to be paid. So at this point, the entry into the big name game market is similar to the entry into the big name movie market. If you want to push out a blockbuster title in either industry, you have to put down the big bucks.
Luckily... with the PC and Wii market, there is a chance for indy developers to make cheaper title that are still fun, similar to the small indy movie developers. It won't be huge in terms of special effects and big name actors, but it's still got a chance to be good. Good movies do not require millions upon millions of dollars, and the same with games.
The sooner people realize a good game doesn't need great graphics (like how good movies don't need great special effects), the easier the lives of the indy guys.
"We felt that if you want to save something on your Memory Stick, most people have those readers on their PC, which is easily adaptable to the PlayStation 3 with a USB cord," said Hirai. "The only difference is HDMI - and at this point, I don't think many people's TV's have that. The ultimate result, to my eyes anyway, is there's not a discernable difference between what you get between HDMI and other forms of high definition."
This seems utterly bizarre. Over the course of the PS3's development, Sony has promised quite a bit, and yes they did include most of what they said (Cell, Blu Ray), but one of the biggest bits of HD. And now the president says there aren't enough TV's to warrant putting HDMI on the low end PS3?
Wasn't Nintendo getting flak for just this for the entire time that they said that HD wasn't yet the norm? Granted... Nintendo's max resolution still pales to the PS3's max resolution even without the HDMI.. but BluRay movies with the DRM bit set won't even work at max resolution on the low end PS3. Perhaps this was the point of the delay over the DRM announced previously.
Note that in WoW (I was able to get into the open beta before it closed) the "penalty" is not quite a penalty, which is quite good.
In WoW, you lose no experience, no gold, no equipment... infact, your character comes back intact. What you do lose is time... and a lot of it. And you can also lose your place in the game.
Basically you spawn as a ghost at some graveyard, and now you can either hike to your body or pay the penalty of 10 minutes with a curse on your stats (a major curse) and all armor on you and your inventory takes a hit on durability. This basically puts you out of the game for 10 minutes, loss of potentially a substantial amount of gold, and you spawn fresh at the grave site which could be many minutes away from where you were. That's a decently big penalty of basically... you have to wait 10 minutes before you can attempt what ever you tried again, which could have taken half an hour.
If you attempted to walk back as a ghost, you have to walk back for potentially 10 minutes (Barrens comes to mind), and when you get there you have a chance of not having a safe spawn point in which case you could just die again and repeat this process.
So yes there is no character based penalty... but with the potential of needing to basically start a segment of your quest from scratch (especially where its instanced since you have to start at the start... and enemies respawn at some rate) after a relatively long run back to perhaps a hostile spawn area (and you spawn without buffs at that)... or a choice to take 10 minutes of ability drain and gold sacrifice...
WoW is not without its penalties. But the penalties are not your character... the penalties are on you the player.
Why do we play video games?
For fun.
It's a pretty obvious answer. And struggling through pages of manual text to get to the point of being able to proficiently play a game may not be considered fun to some people (though some PnP players may disagree... I also enjoy going through manuals sometimes). If there is a high learning curve, it just is a barrier to the real point of the game, fun.
On a similar note, there are just some people who do not get the point of RPG's and won't try them, probably because they won't try to learn the interface and the rules behind it and would rather play an fps which takes no time to learn (in most cases).
People go out and learn martial arts to protect themselves just incase. (Well... most of them do) They don't just go out and learn it to take down the next person they meet on the street.
Just because this information is laid out as it is, doesn't mean you should use it just because and cause such a malicious environment.
Remember, it takes everyone to create that happy environment.. but just one person to create that malicious environment. This is for that time when that one guy (or guys if you are really unlucky) is on you and you need to protect yourself.
Can they be Me, Myself, and I?
So will virus scanners detect these or will they be paid off as well?
If not... there really isn't much use in them if they can be paid off to not detect such things (so the gov can do the same and bill gates can do the same etc...).
There were some NES games (and i think even some SNES games) in the past that had various codes and such (like the famous Konami code), and some games even had a reset code. This basically just reset the game by giving a specific key sequence (usually just hold every button down) and boom, the game resets with out you needing to walk up to the console.
/.'d through too many users sending in bug reports?)
Perhaps the ms ie engineers were just too lazy to hit the x button on ie so they developed this nifty little "feature" to make restarting ie that much easier. How?
Simple... make an htm doc on the desktop, put in these 5 lines, make it your homepage (obviously this prevents loading ie to begin with, but you can just load some other page first) and since home can be gotten to with some keypresses, this means it can be bound to the mouse buttons in some of the newer models.
And there you have it. Instant ie restarting from your mouse! You don't have to waste time clicking the x and then double clicking the ie icon. Genius!
(BTW, perhaps ms can be
I nominate the Fruit Fscker 2000!
- 02 -11&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002
Absolutely hilarious... I need one for our next drinking party.
I hope I'm not the only one to note that a watch is not the best place for such tech? I mean... your hands are used to do some crazy stuff (uh.. i didn't mean that) such as... washing in water, bathroom stuff, eating, handling large objects, and so on.
So why put hundreds of dollars worth of equipment a mere inch away from the most active part of the body and risk damage? Why not just make an all in one wireless device that you put in your pocket somewhere that does everything instead? Do we really need this all on our wrists (not to mention that they do look pretty big, and wearing something clunky on my wrist isn't exactly a good thing either).
Kinda reminds me about a scene in a movie... (Spy Kids 2) where the boy gets a wrist watch that has everything a movie spy ever needs, pushing a button will expand the thing into a massive gargle of everythingness with a sat dish, scanning devices, keyboard, holo projected screen, everything and the kitchensink...
but no time. The inventor comments that he didn't have room to fit in the time on the watch.
I wouldn't be surprised if that happened one day.
So which of the 4 poor saps sued by the RIAA (and then settled) paid for the congressman's trip?
Porn in 3d!
Too bad there isn't any tactile feedback... but you can tap on the glass and make it look like your interacting.
Maybe now with a cluster at our finger tips and this sound visual lip analyser thing, we may be able to (finally) understand what all those foreign heavy accented professors are actually mumbling about...
And well, beats manual note taking if the computer can read the board and his mouth and his voice.
Although it is quite obvious that games may not teach all types of stuff, there may be some things that it may teach better than other forms of teaching, such as logic and problem solving.
Since you cannot actually "teach" these skills persay, but can only use/exersize/practice them, games are actually quite a good idea in these cases. But what games? RPG's, adventure games, and puzzle games of course. Of course it depends on the game itself, but given the right game, you can learn quite a bit.
Take your classic computer adventure game (King's Quest, etc) and you can see that there is a scripted logic puzzle as the basis of the game (even though there is a huge trial and error base, which may not be a good thing). Or even a console adventure game like the Zelda series with its room clear puzzles, though they are relatively simplistic (though the water dungeon in Zelda 64 was quite a pain at first glance, and the time element in the sequel did increase the difficulty of some of the puzzles).
Then you have rpg's and the story element weaved in, forcing you to find the logical completing event in the story to go forward (though even this may sometimes be arbitrary), and possibly the tactical nature of the battles can teach problem solving skills (not the mass xp till your god and bash the boss, but the whip through the game with as low of a level as you possibly can get and see if you can still beat the last boss style of play).
And finally the puzzle games. Everyone loves these and they can possibly teach spatial logic and such (tetris and the like), as well as hand eye coordination and speed of thinking (in these terms).
So although games as some posters have said, are not really suited for teaching some things like facts and information (that schools teach) they can be useful in teaching other things that require practice and not data crunching.
We already have enough liberal arts majors serving fries.