"With the current online gaming scene dominated by Modern Warfare, Gears of War and Halo 3, it's pretty clear that tastes have moved away from the "bouncy deathmatch" model of the Quake series."
This is partly because of the proliferation of the game pad. Nothing demonstrates the weakness of a game pad like an acrobatic game of Quake.
The other part is that people like the realistic, punchy weapons you can find in the games you mentioned. Ever since Quake 1, iD has had difficulty making weapons with a satisfying punch to them.
We just need better multiplayer. People want it, but hate getting "served" by better players. Smart implementations help alleviate this. Class-based multiplayer is one example. Skill-based matchmaking is another. It's too clunky right now, in most cases. Streamline the multiplayer experience and you'll get a lot less moaning about it. Left 4 Dead has one of the best multiplayer implementations I've seen. It's co-op by default, and the vs. multiplayer (zombies vs. survivors) is not apples-to-apples, which encourages people to interest themselves in the *team* goal rather than individual score comparisons.
I hate this word. Is it one word? Is it two? Who knows. But it's one of the few words we have to describe the stuff that goes on while you are playing a game. We need something better, or we need some dictionary to step up and add it.
Apple doesn't need a recall to fix the problem: future phones can have a coating, and a free bumper ($10 cost to Apple) to existing customers solves all the problems.
No matter what they do, Nokia will not out-iPhone the iPhone. They aren't Apple and they shouldn't try to be. What they are is *European* and they should use that to their advantage. They should become the Swatch of cell phones and start selling phones based on a combination of simplicity, price, and wild looks. Fashion trends change rapidly, and nothing is stopping the large (for a phone) iPhone from being supplanted as a fashion accessory.
No, it doesn't. It'll be good 99% of the time, but even when "correctly stowed," something small will occasionally happen and despite being small it will irritate me. Believe me I have spent plenty of time perfecting cord stowage. There's still a cord there, and cords don't always behave the way you want them to.
I'm sure pros still use corded mice because a little added friction here and there is, to them, better than a total malfunction. I get that.
The cord on a mouse has never been a problem. Wireless mice have issues and cost more. I'm all for technology but a wireless mouse has always, with a few niche exceptions, seemed like a pointless innovation.
The device never moves more than about 4 inches. Added complexity. Added cost. No upside. It's a completely pointless feature.
As an avid online FPS game player since 1996, I disagree. When you are attempting to make rapid precise movements with as little interference as possible, the mouse cord sometimes is a huge issue. It gets bunched up, it rubs, it gets stuck under things. Even a tiny amount of added friction can throw off a critical shot. Apparently I'm not alone on this. I've seen several cord hangers being sold in the past, precisely to prevent cord bunching. I also had a gaming mouse pad that had a cord clamp for the same reason. It wasn't perfect, but it definitely helped.
I must be the only one who LIKES the vuvuzela. I don't watch soccer, but when I'm clicking by and I see a match in progress, the weird noise draws me in. It's surreal.
But I can't justify having it forward to my cell phone because if anyone calls me from a cell phone, the combined lag makes the conversations really hard to have.
The good news is everyone will continue to call you back with whatever pops up on their caller ID (your cell phone number) despite your best efforts to coach them all into using your GV number.
Worth it just for the shortened answering machine message. Say sayonara to the Long Winded Lady.
Re:Was Not Impressed at All
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 4, Funny
So the 'sideways' timeline could have been thousands of our timeline years since Hurley could have been guardian for the island for who know's how long before he joined the group at the church.
As a computer guy who wants things to be either "yes" or "no", unambiguously, I found this state of affairs very difficult to accept. But it's just part of being human.
I wish my supervisor would accept this. But then, his supervisor would need to accept it, and on and on to the top. I feel like I spend more time at my job trying to quantify my work than actually doing it. And the resulting numbers are always meaningless.
I think you forget the stock is an asset itself governed by market forces, apart of and independent from the company itself. And valuation of the company and its profits barely effect its valuation at all, over sufficiently short periods of time.
You are stating what stocks currently are, but you are not explaining why we should allow them to be such.
Increased liquidity has a great advantage for society -- like the ability for businesses to obtain capital, for investors to get their money, for enterprise to thrive and generate more capital.
Seeking investors the old fashioned way--demonstrating a viable business model--is not sufficient? This "advantage" you speak of means that companies are more likely to get funding undeservedly, which deceives well-intentioned investors and diverts funds away from more worthy businesses.
I would assume (read: HOPE) that Rockstar had the brains to test the hell out of this binary
Surely extensive QA testing is far more resource-intensive than just removing the DRM yourself, so my educated guess says that any QA testing would have to be minimal. And what kind of QA testing is going to catch back doors and rogue code? Those guys are used to looking for game glitches, not tracking down trojans.
I don't see how cartridges ever went out of style. Nintendo DS games come on cartridges. PSN on PSP downloads games to a Memory Stick PRO Duo. Wii downloads games to SD. And there are even still new NES games coming out, like Sivak's Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril and ProgAce's Bio Force Ape vs. Dur Butter.
First, I think SD and Memory Stick cards are disqualified because they are merely storage devices. The term "game cartridge" implies that you buy it off the shelf with a game already on it.
Second, even Nintendo is getting away from cartridges (see the Nintendo DSi). If you are into the DS scene very much, you'll know there are bootleg devices (utilizing the cartridge slot) that are waaaay too effective. This may have been the reason that it took Nintendo so long to allow the Wii to launch games from the SD slot.
So, a Wii 2 would do nothing more than introduce new hardware which they
would have to try and get into everyone's homes where there is still so much more to be done with
the Wii before it's "old and crappy".
I agree, wholeheartedly. Part of what made the Wii work so well competition-wise is that it brought
something truly novel to the table. I have trouble imagining what the next big novel development
would be, but that's the thing about real novelty -- it's new.:) Maybe 3D? That would depend on TV
technology, so probably not. Maybe some funky new control scheme? That might open up a whole can of
lawsuit worms, but who knows? It's fun thinking about, and anticipating, and it's fun playing the
current Wii to, so there you go.
I have no idea what Nintendo plans to do, but I think I know what they should do. I think the
control scheme cat is out of the bag, as evidenced by my own lackluster impression of the new Sony
controller. And 3D is a gimmick for early adopters. What's left is HD, yes, but that's not enough.
The next Wii needs to be a media hub. The Wiimote is already the gold standard for TV
interaction. Give Grandma and Grandpa a 360 pad and they won't know where to start, but hand them a
Wiimote and they'll get the hang of it. Ideally, the next Wii needs to be to to TV watching what
iPhone App Store is to software purchasing. Click a big fat icon, watch your favorite show. Hulu, Youtube, and all the rest in one seamless interface. Essentially, Boxee, but with the notoriety of the Wii. This would require a multitude of partnerships, but I think
it's what people want. And like the motion controls, I think it's something they would tell their friends about.
Of course this is what people have been saying the 360 and the PS3 are destined to become, but the Wii is approachable in a way that those other two are not, and it has the Wiimote.
videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before
the battery is fully drained.
This is really good SPIN. Steve is right in that the very OLD verion of flash before 2007 (3 years in internet time is a VERY LONG TIME.) version 9, did use a CPU based codec. But as stated above, H.264 is now the standard and all sites using flash are now using the same H.264 files in flash as is compatible with the Hardware accelerated decoders. As such, Flash 10.1 is as efficient as that can possibly be on these mobile devices. Steve implies Flash cannot do this. Again deceptive and untrue.
But lets get into the OSX story here. Apple like to blame Adobe for the poor video performance on OSX. Unfortunately, again, Steve has failed to supply the full story. The reason Flash on OSX is so slow and buggy is as follows.
1. Video, Apple has refused to, until recently, supply the API required to implement it. Flash 10.1 for OSX will have Hardware acceleration as, the API has only just been made available. Steve conveniently failed to mention this. (See Adobe will accelerate Flash video using new Apple API)
...anyone know how the developers themselves feel about the "no servers/mods" policy with PC Modern Warfare 2? I'm hoping *maybe* that was an Activision decision and *maybe* Respawn's future stuff will have a less lame implementation.
Name me *ONE* case of someone "stealing" $5,000 worth of goods (read: it was left somewhere by its rightful owner), returning it, then being raided by police.
Name one that's had this much publicity. Most cases don't have this much information readily available to the cops. Besides, you neglected to mention that the person who stole it sold it, and the person who illegally bought it was the one who returned it, after he was done messing with it.
I have sympathy for the journalist though. Even if he was wrong, this was not the type of mean-spirited act usually associated with felony theft.
Companies like Nintendo have always feared demos and tightly control them. I guess they fear that demos will undermine their business model, but the thing is, they *work*. For proof that demos work look no further than the iPhone App Store. Demos are everywhere, because having no demo is the kiss of death for anything short of a heavily promoted big-publisher game (which isn't really how things are going on the iPhone). If the console companies did not have such tight control of things, I'm sure we would have had 3rd party demo discs coming out of our ears back in the 90s, and I'm sure sales would have been a lot better, especially for 3rd parties.
It seems to me that the trend toward tightly-controlled software distribution (digital distribution on X360/PS3/Wii, iPod/iPad) is what will hold back PC gaming far more than any hardware issues. The model is already popular and is getting more popular every day. What hope will PC gamers have when they eventually port WoW (or whatever comes after that) to one of these devices? I would imagine publishers really like the increased control and extra piracy deterrents (constant OS updates to lock out hacks) regardless of whether it really thwarts piracy or not. And the public seems to be gobbling up the model. What's stopping it from taking over?
Right now these platforms don't resemble your typical PC very much, but I bet we'll see PC-esque versions soon (keyboard/mouse) designed to be a "true" PC, and the Windows machines will be marketed more and more as no-fun workstations.
Will it still count as PC gaming if the OS is dumbed down?
This doesn't sound "breathtakingly stupid" to me. It's debatable. Maybe it's "breathtakingly stupid" that it slipped through without notice, but if we are talking about what's right and what's wrong, it can be argued (and often is, I'm sure) that one should expect to have privacy in regards to their browsing habits*. The fact that it negatively impacts businesses should be irrelevant, if we are talking about protections for the individual.
* Yes, you can turn off cookies from the user end, but laws are sometimes there to protect people who don't know any better, and there are a *lot* of them in this case.
So you would rather have it behave exactly like a real book? As soon as you loan it to a friend, it will be wiped from your eBook reader? Really?
Actually, I would prefer that style of DRM. Yeah, I'd rather have that. (It's not like you're never going to get it back, unless you have one of *those* friends.)
I just think we don't have enough information to decide if A-list titles really need to be dropping their prices. Left 4 Dead's results are interesting, but without a way to test different prices under the exact same conditions, we're taking educated guesses. So the game sold a lot of copies when the price was reduced. So what? It was a recent game, and it was given a temporary price reduction; of course people are going to be jumping on the deal. The question is whether the company makes more money in the long run, and I can't think of a good way to test that since you only get one shot at it.
I forget all the marketing terms I learned in college, but here's one thing to consider: If everyone lowers their price, then public perception will shift. Suddenly $40 will seem expensive for a new game, and $30 will become the new $40. You won't necessarily see game sales rocket on a broad scale, because there's a limit to the amount of media an individual person is willing to ingest. It's a big mind game and if there's a science to it, I don't see it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is partly because of the proliferation of the game pad. Nothing demonstrates the weakness of a game pad like an acrobatic game of Quake.
The other part is that people like the realistic, punchy weapons you can find in the games you mentioned. Ever since Quake 1, iD has had difficulty making weapons with a satisfying punch to them.
You have a $320 Comcast bill!? How is that even possible?
We just need better multiplayer. People want it, but hate getting "served" by better players. Smart implementations help alleviate this. Class-based multiplayer is one example. Skill-based matchmaking is another. It's too clunky right now, in most cases. Streamline the multiplayer experience and you'll get a lot less moaning about it. Left 4 Dead has one of the best multiplayer implementations I've seen. It's co-op by default, and the vs. multiplayer (zombies vs. survivors) is not apples-to-apples, which encourages people to interest themselves in the *team* goal rather than individual score comparisons.
I hate this word. Is it one word? Is it two? Who knows. But it's one of the few words we have to describe the stuff that goes on while you are playing a game. We need something better, or we need some dictionary to step up and add it.
$10 cost to Apple? More like $0.10.
No matter what they do, Nokia will not out-iPhone the iPhone. They aren't Apple and they shouldn't try to be. What they are is *European* and they should use that to their advantage. They should become the Swatch of cell phones and start selling phones based on a combination of simplicity, price, and wild looks. Fashion trends change rapidly, and nothing is stopping the large (for a phone) iPhone from being supplanted as a fashion accessory.
No, it doesn't. It'll be good 99% of the time, but even when "correctly stowed," something small will occasionally happen and despite being small it will irritate me. Believe me I have spent plenty of time perfecting cord stowage. There's still a cord there, and cords don't always behave the way you want them to.
I'm sure pros still use corded mice because a little added friction here and there is, to them, better than a total malfunction. I get that.
As an avid online FPS game player since 1996, I disagree. When you are attempting to make rapid precise movements with as little interference as possible, the mouse cord sometimes is a huge issue. It gets bunched up, it rubs, it gets stuck under things. Even a tiny amount of added friction can throw off a critical shot. Apparently I'm not alone on this. I've seen several cord hangers being sold in the past, precisely to prevent cord bunching. I also had a gaming mouse pad that had a cord clamp for the same reason. It wasn't perfect, but it definitely helped.
I must be the only one who LIKES the vuvuzela. I don't watch soccer, but when I'm clicking by and I see a match in progress, the weird noise draws me in. It's surreal.
The good news is everyone will continue to call you back with whatever pops up on their caller ID (your cell phone number) despite your best efforts to coach them all into using your GV number.
Worth it just for the shortened answering machine message. Say sayonara to the Long Winded Lady.
And he still didn't lose any weight!
I wish my supervisor would accept this. But then, his supervisor would need to accept it, and on and on to the top. I feel like I spend more time at my job trying to quantify my work than actually doing it. And the resulting numbers are always meaningless.
You are stating what stocks currently are, but you are not explaining why we should allow them to be such.
Seeking investors the old fashioned way--demonstrating a viable business model--is not sufficient? This "advantage" you speak of means that companies are more likely to get funding undeservedly, which deceives well-intentioned investors and diverts funds away from more worthy businesses.
Surely extensive QA testing is far more resource-intensive than just removing the DRM yourself, so my educated guess says that any QA testing would have to be minimal. And what kind of QA testing is going to catch back doors and rogue code? Those guys are used to looking for game glitches, not tracking down trojans.
First, I think SD and Memory Stick cards are disqualified because they are merely storage devices. The term "game cartridge" implies that you buy it off the shelf with a game already on it.
Second, even Nintendo is getting away from cartridges (see the Nintendo DSi). If you are into the DS scene very much, you'll know there are bootleg devices (utilizing the cartridge slot) that are waaaay too effective. This may have been the reason that it took Nintendo so long to allow the Wii to launch games from the SD slot.
I have no idea what Nintendo plans to do, but I think I know what they should do. I think the control scheme cat is out of the bag, as evidenced by my own lackluster impression of the new Sony controller. And 3D is a gimmick for early adopters. What's left is HD, yes, but that's not enough. The next Wii needs to be a media hub. The Wiimote is already the gold standard for TV interaction. Give Grandma and Grandpa a 360 pad and they won't know where to start, but hand them a Wiimote and they'll get the hang of it. Ideally, the next Wii needs to be to to TV watching what iPhone App Store is to software purchasing. Click a big fat icon, watch your favorite show. Hulu, Youtube, and all the rest in one seamless interface. Essentially, Boxee, but with the notoriety of the Wii. This would require a multitude of partnerships, but I think it's what people want. And like the motion controls, I think it's something they would tell their friends about.
Of course this is what people have been saying the 360 and the PS3 are destined to become, but the Wii is approachable in a way that those other two are not, and it has the Wiimote.
That's a pretty dang good point.
...anyone know how the developers themselves feel about the "no servers/mods" policy with PC Modern Warfare 2? I'm hoping *maybe* that was an Activision decision and *maybe* Respawn's future stuff will have a less lame implementation.
Name one that's had this much publicity. Most cases don't have this much information readily available to the cops. Besides, you neglected to mention that the person who stole it sold it, and the person who illegally bought it was the one who returned it, after he was done messing with it.
I have sympathy for the journalist though. Even if he was wrong, this was not the type of mean-spirited act usually associated with felony theft.
Companies like Nintendo have always feared demos and tightly control them. I guess they fear that demos will undermine their business model, but the thing is, they *work*. For proof that demos work look no further than the iPhone App Store. Demos are everywhere, because having no demo is the kiss of death for anything short of a heavily promoted big-publisher game (which isn't really how things are going on the iPhone). If the console companies did not have such tight control of things, I'm sure we would have had 3rd party demo discs coming out of our ears back in the 90s, and I'm sure sales would have been a lot better, especially for 3rd parties.
It seems to me that the trend toward tightly-controlled software distribution (digital distribution on X360/PS3/Wii, iPod/iPad) is what will hold back PC gaming far more than any hardware issues. The model is already popular and is getting more popular every day. What hope will PC gamers have when they eventually port WoW (or whatever comes after that) to one of these devices? I would imagine publishers really like the increased control and extra piracy deterrents (constant OS updates to lock out hacks) regardless of whether it really thwarts piracy or not. And the public seems to be gobbling up the model. What's stopping it from taking over?
Right now these platforms don't resemble your typical PC very much, but I bet we'll see PC-esque versions soon (keyboard/mouse) designed to be a "true" PC, and the Windows machines will be marketed more and more as no-fun workstations.
Will it still count as PC gaming if the OS is dumbed down?
This doesn't sound "breathtakingly stupid" to me. It's debatable. Maybe it's "breathtakingly stupid" that it slipped through without notice, but if we are talking about what's right and what's wrong, it can be argued (and often is, I'm sure) that one should expect to have privacy in regards to their browsing habits*. The fact that it negatively impacts businesses should be irrelevant, if we are talking about protections for the individual.
* Yes, you can turn off cookies from the user end, but laws are sometimes there to protect people who don't know any better, and there are a *lot* of them in this case.
Actually, I would prefer that style of DRM. Yeah, I'd rather have that. (It's not like you're never going to get it back, unless you have one of *those* friends.)
I just think we don't have enough information to decide if A-list titles really need to be dropping their prices. Left 4 Dead's results are interesting, but without a way to test different prices under the exact same conditions, we're taking educated guesses. So the game sold a lot of copies when the price was reduced. So what? It was a recent game, and it was given a temporary price reduction; of course people are going to be jumping on the deal. The question is whether the company makes more money in the long run, and I can't think of a good way to test that since you only get one shot at it.
I forget all the marketing terms I learned in college, but here's one thing to consider: If everyone lowers their price, then public perception will shift. Suddenly $40 will seem expensive for a new game, and $30 will become the new $40. You won't necessarily see game sales rocket on a broad scale, because there's a limit to the amount of media an individual person is willing to ingest. It's a big mind game and if there's a science to it, I don't see it.